Distemper Read Free Page A

the edge of every American town, and headed south.
    I kept on the main drag for a while and turned off onto a country road that degenerated to dirt after a couple of miles. When
     I say mountain biking, I really mean road biking with fat tires and eighteen gears, but I usually try to go off into the woods
     a little just so I can say I did. There’s a nice gentle trail about fifteen minutes away, wide without too many rocks and
     roots to send a girl to her doom, and it’s just about my limit. Before I swung onto the path, I remember thinking that I was
     probably going to regret it. This turned out to be one mother of an understatement.
    It was a sunny morning, which is unusual for Gabriel (affectionately known as the place clouds go to die). There was bright
     light coming through the trees, dappling the ground and making it hard to distinguish the hazards from the dirt. Even though
     it was chilly enough to make me comfy in my sweats, there was a hint of afternoon heat; every soccer mom in town would be
     poised for a flower-planting frenzy.
    The path rose gently at first, with occasional muddy ruts and crisscrossing tracks that showed I wasn’t the first biker out
     there that season. I had my Walkman on, which the traffic law says you’re not supposed to do but I couldn’t possibly exercise
     without, and as the grade got sharper I was listening to Ben Folds Five and sweating hard.
    Ever since it happened, I’ve wondered how everything would have turned out if I hadn’t decided to stop when I did. It was
     all so arbitrary. I wanted to quit sooner, but didn’t; I could have kept riding longer, but I didn’t do that either. “Alice
     Childress” ended, and since the song wasthe only thing keeping me going, I stopped and got off. I leaned the bike against a tree and pulled the water bottle off its
     rack, and as I took a drink I saw something glinting in a patch of sunlight about twenty yards off. To this day I don’t know
     what made me walk over for a closer look; maybe after what had happened the month before, I already knew what I was going
     to find. But then again, I kind of doubt that; knowing myself, if I had any idea what was out there, I would have climbed
     right back on my bike and fled.
    The first thing I saw was her shoes, laid atop a stack of clothing. The shiny thing was the buckle on her Mary Janes, which
     were all the rage that spring, when every college woman seemed obsessed with dressing like Lolita. There was something plaid
     under the shoes, but that’s all I remember, because the next thing I saw was the girl herself. They talk about death being
     a peaceful thing, but there was nothing peaceful about this, and nothing natural, either. Her eyes were bugged out and her
     tongue was lolling out of her mouth, all splotched and purple. She was stark naked, with big breasts that rolled to either
     side and made her look not only vulnerable but invaded, as though someone had taken her life and her dignity at the same time.
    I’m not proud. I screamed my head off, before something made me clamp my hand over my mouth to shut myself up. In retrospect,
     maybe I was clued in by the fact that the scene was so obviously fresh. She was clean, not covered with leaves or mud; it
     had rained the previous night, but her clothes didn’t look wet. Some instinct told me that she’d been put there in the past
     few hours—minuteseven—and that meant that whoever did it could still be there.
    I spun around, checking out every direction, but I couldn’t see anyone. That didn’t mean anything, though; off the bike path,
     the woods are thick with old-growth trees big enough for two people to hide behind. He—they—could be anywhere, waiting to
     swap one victim for another. I stared down at the body, picturing myself lying there in her place, with my sweatshirt and
     tights and sports bra folded…
    A noise—a bird or an animal or something way worse—shook the trees and a branch went snap.