Page 120 of Dirty Chorus

“Have you even eaten?”

Her voice cracks. “No...”

“Laundry?”

“Stop! I haven’t. Not since...” She trails off, eyes dropping to the floor. “It’s all my fault. Charlie’s missing. Ryder’s never going to forgive me.” She rushes back into the dorm room, and I follow behind her, closing the door.

I blink. “Payton...” she crumbles onto her sheets. Hot pink sheets with... are those Disney princesses? I run a hand down my face as she cuddles with her pillow, sobbing into it. Snot all over her nose.

“No, you don’t get it,” she snaps suddenly, “He came to my parents’ house. He was furious. Said I lied to him, that I made everything worse. He’s right. I should’ve told him the truth about what happened. About Brody. About everything. I’ve lied to everyone!”

I take a breath, steadying my tone. I’m only understanding bits of what she says. “You sitting here starving yourself isn’t helping anyone.”

She looks up, eyes shining with tears. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand enough,” I say quietly, grabbing her hand. “The girl I’m in love with isn’t here! She isn’t fucking here! I need something, someone! You're the closest person to her. I fucking need you right now!”

“You need me?” She laughs between the sobs. “You don’t even know me!” She reaches for her phone on the nightstand. “Look! Look at this!” She points to her phone with hundreds of missed calls. “See, look. This is what Brody does to people! This is what he’s doing to me.” She opens her phone and shows me the text messages she got. “I fucking hate him! That’s what he’s done to Charlie!” She heaves out a sob again.

“Fine...” I dig through my back pocket pulling my own phone out and unlocking the screen. “He did it to me too! Look!” I push it into her hands, showing her the writing on the stall door.

“He...he..” Payton uses the back of her hand to wipe away the slobber and snot on her nose.

“Yes, she broke it off with me because he forced her to.” I motion with my fingers for her to give my phone back. “Let me see your phone.”

She passes it over, and I scroll through the messages from random unsaved numbers. All saying similar things. That they wanna have sex with her, that they know she's easy, that she's a slut. Some of them get so vulgar about what they want to do to her. Some text messages called her ugly trash and said that she should hang herself.

“I’ve been getting them for weeks!”

“So you’re saying Charlie might have got these too?”

“He stalked her all summer long!”

“Okay lets get out of bed... this isn’t healthy.” I grasp her wrist, but she tugs it away. She resists for a second, but I’m easily able to pull her up from the bed. She’s light – too light.

“Why are you touching me!”

“You’re taking a damn shower,” I tell her. “You need to clean up. Then we’re getting food.”

I dragged her out of the dorm room. She doesn’t argue after that, so I wait outside the bathroom while the water runs. When she comes out, her hair’s dripping and her cheeks are pink, but she looks a little more like herself.

“Hungry now?”

She nods, and we leave the campus. We end up at this small burger shack, the kind with flickering neon lights and greasy tables. It’s quiet, with just a few people inside, and for once, I’m grateful for the noise of the fryer instead of silence.

We order burgers and fries, and I dip mine into the paper ketchup bowl, trying to pretend for a second that things are normal. Payton just stares at her food like she’s forgotten how to eat.

After a while, she grabs the burger, and I’ve never seen someone open their mouth that wide to take in a mouthful. She chews, groaning as mayo smears across the sides of her cheeks.

“You think she’s dead, don’t you?” Payton asks between chews.

My hand freezes midair. “What?”

“Charlie,” she whispers. “I keep thinking... Maybe she’s dead. Maybe that’s why no one can find her.” Her lip trembles, grabbing a brown napkin from the little back bin. “I’m scared she is.”

“Stop,” I say sharply. The word comes out harder than I mean it to, but I can’t listen to that. Not tonight. “How many days now since the concert?”

“It’s been sixteen days.”