Fast Girls by Elise Hooper

Author:Elise Hooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

30.

May 1933

Chicago

ALMOST A YEAR HAD PASSED SINCE BETTY’S PLANE crash. Dr. Minke’s prediction that one leg would be shorter than the other was right, so she limped. For months, she had told herself that learning to walk again would solve her problems. In reality, it almost brought about more unsettling questions. She could walk, but pain dogged her with every step. Stiffness plagued her left shoulder. She had returned to school for several weeks in the early spring, but abandoned her studies after deciding that her degree in physical education felt futile. She could not reconcile her hopes for the future with her reality of constant pain and frustration.

It wasn’t just Betty who felt stuck. Anxiety seemed to have brought the country to a standstill. Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a New Yorker, had assumed the presidency in March on a wave of hope, but Chicago remained locked in the claws of tough times. Over the last year, many of her Northwestern classmates had quit college as financial difficulties mounted upon more and more families, so Betty’s absence from the roster of the university’s graduates was one of many, but Bill would still be graduating that weekend.

On the evening before his commencement, Bill arrived at Betty’s house minutes after her parents had left to play euchre with the neighbors. A year ago, if Bill and Betty had found themselves alone, they would have made good use of their unchaperoned time entwined in Betty’s bedroom, but now she didn’t look up from the book she was reading. Bill entered the parlor, pecked Betty on the cheek. “Ready to go?”

“Let me fetch something, and I’ll be back,” Betty said, leaving Bill sitting in the parlor. She hurried to the bathroom, plucked a bottle from the medicine cabinet shelf, poured a couple of pain pills into her palm, and took them with a glass of water. Thinking of the graduation festivities ahead, she grimaced and tucked the entire bottle into her purse.

When she returned to the parlor, she found Bill pacing. The air in the room felt charged with something that she couldn’t identify, and he wore an expression uncharacteristic of him. Fear? Worry? Guilt?

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

His blue eyes appeared tense, but before she could get more of a read on him, he glanced away. “Want to go?”

“Do I ever.” She reached for her hat, but snuck a look around the room. Her father’s glasses lay atop a stack of papers on the sideboard, and Bill’s pacing appeared to skirt that area of the room. She sidled over and saw a pile of bills. The hospital, the doctor, the visiting nurse—each invoice marked with a stamp saying unpaid. Her mind raced. Of course, her father’s income as a security guard wasn’t much, but some of the bills were from nine months ago. Betty swallowed and turned to face Bill.

“Did you see these?”

He opened his mouth and then closed it. Voices from the neighbors’ children riding their bicycles outside on the sidewalk echoed off the walls.

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