The Biker (Nightmare Hall) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Marilyn, and Ruthanne were already in the whirlpool, comfortably settled, when Echo arrived. They were deep in conversation about the two biker attacks.
    “I don’t understand why no one has apprehended him yet,” Ruthanne complained.
    Echo had to hide a smile. Apprehended? Ruthanne was an English major.
    “Me, either,” Marilyn agreed. She was lying so low in the whirlpool only her pale, moon-shaped face showed. “There aren’t that many motorcycles on campus. How hard can it be to find the right one?”
    “He’s going to hurt someone,” Deejay added, “I can feel it in my poor, aching bones. I think he’s just been toying with people. But sooner or later, that will bore him. Then we’re really in for it.”
    “Oh, he’s not violent,” Echo heard herself saying. “He’s just scaring people, that’s all.”
    There was a second of surprised silence before Deejay said, “Echo? Do you know something no one else does?”
    “Of course not,” she said hastily. She kept her back to the three in the tub. “But he really hasn’t hurt anyone, right?”
    Another second or two of silence. Then Ruthanne spoke up. “Echo,” Ruthanne said slowly, as if she were choosing her words carefully, “now that I think about it, you must know some really weird people. Any of them bikers?”
    Startled, Echo looked up from the pile of towels she was folding. “I know some really weird people? What’s that supposed to mean?”
    Ruthanne failed to look abashed. “Well, when you circulated that silly petition, you must have met lots of people the rest of us don’t know.”
    Meaning, Echo realized, people who weren’t “normal.” Because if Ruthanne didn’t know them, they couldn’t possibly be normal. “You’re right, Ruthanne,” she replied with false brightness. “I do know scads of really weird people.” She glared pointedly at Ruthanne. “Some really weird people.”
    Ruthanne ignored that. “Any of them own bikes?”
    “Almost all of them. I own a bike. You own a bike, Ruthanne. I’ve seen you riding it, in spite of your arthritis.”
    Ruthanne sighed, clearly impatient. “I meant a motorcycle, Echo, and you know it. One of those Hailey things. Why do you have to be such a pain all the time?”
    “Takes one to know one,” Echo muttered under her breath. “Well, maybe I do know a biker or two. So what?” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she wanted them back. If Pruitt ever found out she’d said even that much, he’d be furious. He’d cancel her ride, and she was so looking forward to it. It was such a gorgeous spring night.
    The girls all pounced on her. “You know a biker?” Deejay sounded astonished. “Who? I’ve never seen you with anyone on a motorcycle.”
    Like Deejay paid that much attention to who Echo was spending her free time with. What did Deejay, or any of her friends, know about Echo Glenn’s life? When did they ever ask? They had dumped her into the box labeled “Antisocial Activist Slightly on the Weird Side” and left her there. She could be spending her afternoons skywriting obscene messages directly over campus and they wouldn’t notice because she wasn’t one of them.
    She wasn’t one of them because she wasn’t always at the mall, and she didn’t join clubs or sororities and she didn’t work in campus theater or on the newspaper or at the radio station or sing in the campus Chorale. She didn’t have a cute little nickname assigned to her by a bunch of giggling girls, and she didn’t have a boyfriend. Hell, she didn’t even have parents, at least none to speak of, and all three girls in the whirlpool did.
    Not once had they ever asked her about her own family or where she was from or what her major was.
    And now Deejay had the gall to pretend she had ever noticed who Echo was or wasn’t with? The only reason Deejay had asked Echo to go to the mall was that even Echo Glenn was better than nobody at all. But Deejay had still ditched her to go to a