The WVU Coed Murders: Who Killed Mared and Karen?

Preface

WEST VIRGINIA IS ROUGH COUNTRY.

The story you may have heard, the story most often told about Morgantown’s 1970 coed murders, is full of terror, rape, decapitation, cannibalism, necrophilia and incompetent policing. That story is based on lies.

The story we tell is not.

Mared Malarik and Karen Ferrell, both college freshmen, disappeared while hitchhiking. Both were good students, smart and popular and pretty. They had no enemies. Their dormmates were clueless about what might have happened. Two friends of theirs saw them hitchhiking home after a movie, which was common at the time; they got into a small, off-white car and were never seen alive again.

If two pretty, white freshmen vanished from West Virginia University in 2021, there would be blanket coverage on every news channel, 24/7. Intensive investigation would begin within hours. Standard protocol in most of the country calls for investigators to assume the missing are in immediate danger. Time estimates vary, but missing persons not found within the first couple of days are usually not found alive.

If progress in the investigation weren’t made immediately, no clues concerning their whereabouts, we would hear all about both of them, every detail of their lives. Experts would opine constantly about what could have happened to them, about their chances of being found alive, about who might be responsible. After finding the coeds in the woods, headless, the West Virginia State Police (WVSP) would use twenty-first-century methods to catalogue the scene and examine the remains. Profilers from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit would offer their assistance.

None of that happened in 1970. An overmatched Morgantown Police Department (MPD) was on its own and not saying much. Reporters learned only bits and pieces. Three months of near-total silence ensued. In the small mountain community, relatively isolated back then by rough terrain and a lack of interstates, fear and rumors spread, as did frustration with what appeared to be a lack of effort on the part of authorities.

Some people said investigators were covering something up, that maybe the son of a rich and politically connected family murdered the coeds. Others said the cops were in over their heads, so incompetent that they couldn’t even develop a single solid suspect. Rumors spread about drug-addled hippies, insane sex killers and ritualistic sacrifices. Whispers of a police coverup of the coed murders, as they came to be called, are still heard today, fifty-one years later.

West Virginia is rough country. Ancient mountains—among the oldest in the world, gentle in the north and much steeper toward the south—the hills and valleys are masked with trees and pockmarked with coal mines. Streams and rivers run everywhere. People who work here are hard and do tough jobs, often for little money. Everyone knows everyone. Fights are common but murders few.

The murders that do happen are usually solved easily. A man dies in a fight at that bar (That was like to happen sooner or later—some serious drinkers in there, you know?), or a woman kills her husband (Everyone expected that shit—she shoulda taken that trash out years ago). Violence is always near—whether from a mine explosion or an aggrieved neighbor—especially in the country, away from town. With too few police, people in West Virginia handle things themselves.

The state never had any large cities—it still doesn’t. The dozen or so urban areas were built around such things as coal and timber; tiny communities and scattered homesteads compose the balance of the state’s population. Few interstates existed in 1970, and the difficult conditions presented by mountains, rivers and poor roads kept travel to a minimum. Despite its proximity to many large urban areas, West Virginia was arguably the most isolated state in the lower forty-eight.

Welcome sign on Beechhurst Avenue leading into Morgantown, 1974. In the background is the PRT. West Virginia Newspaper Publishing Company.

One of the state’s dozen or so urban areas, Morgantown was first settled by Europeans in 1772 along Decker’s Creek, which is named after a family slaughtered on its banks. Decker’s Creek flows into the much larger Monongahela River, which rambles north to meet the Ohio in Pittsburgh. With river access to Pittsburgh in the north and Fairmont and Clarksburg to the southwest, Morgantown became a growing hub of commerce. The plentiful coal, oil and natural gas reserves, as well as massive amounts of available timber, anchored trade.

West Virginia University’s founding in the last half of the 1800s created a fundamental social division in Morgantown: As WVU grew, a rift developed between town—the people of the area’s prosperous working-class industries—and gown—the university’s students, faculty and staff.

As of this writing, much of the county is totally dominated by WVU and related knowledge industries, but in 1970, town and gown were roughly equal in size. The university is revered as an endless fountain of revenue, but few townies are ever enthusiastic about the biannual invasion of students. A local population of fifteen thousand swells to almost thirty thousand, lines grow in theaters and banks, and traffic becomes unbearable.

In the 1960s and 1970s, WVU was growing rapidly, with most construction occurring on the Evansdale Campus, a mile away from the downtown Morgantown WVU campus. Students were often compelled to navigate between campuses, which considerably increased bus and car traffic. The coliseum, shown here during construction and after completion, quickly became one of WVU’s iconic facilities. West Virginia Regional History Collection (WVRHC); completed coliseum inset courtesy of Mark Crabtree.

In 1970, some felt Morgantown was collapsing like a house of cards. The town seemed suddenly to reel from rampant crime and even experienced a few murders and a couple of bombings. Gambling was everywhere—cards, slots, sports—all of it simply ignored by police. Concerned citizens of Monongalia County were fed up and elected a vigorous young prosecutor who promised to go to war with the gangland forces that had a stranglehold on the county.

Morgantown citizens were increasingly on edge as the national news became even more dramatic and frightening. The Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated. In December 1969, explosions destroyed offices in five states; the bombings were blamed on the Weather Underground, a radical splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society. A four-hour shootout shredded the Black Panther headquarters in Los Angeles. By December, the mayhem and blood of the Altamont Speedway Free Festival had eclipsed the muddy free love of Woodstock.

Traffic light on Walnut Street stops cars on High Street, the heart of downtown Morgantown, at dusk. Mark Crabtree.

And an ongoing series of United Press International articles, beginning in December 1969, hinted at a new kind of murder in America. The murders were not for profit or revenge or jealousy but bloody and apparently random, perpetrated by hippies and fueled by mysticism and psychedelic drugs:

LOS ANGELES (UPI) At least nine members of a pseudo-religious cult, including the leader known as Jesus, were in custody today as suspects in the bloody slayings of actress Sharon Tate and at least six other persons.…

Police chief Edward Davis told a news conference Monday that the suspects were members of The Family, a hippie band that roved through Death Valley 150 miles north of here.

The leader, Charles Manson, 34, has a lengthy record that includes assault, theft and arson.

The Tate-LaBianca murders dominated broadcast and print journalism nationwide when Mared Malarik and Karen Ferrell disappeared on January 18, 1970.

1

I LIKE TO RUB FURRY THINGS.

THE EDGE OF GRAFTON, TWENTY-FIVE MILES SOUTH OF MORGANTOWN

Late November 1969, two months before Mared and Karen disappear

Maxine Blankenship tightens the neck of her brown faux-fur jacket against the cold and presses down on her father’s Cossack cap. Damn, it’s cold! She didn’t plan on this. The day before, the temperature peaked near seventy degrees, but tonight feels down around freezing. She should’ve brought a scarf at least.

Back and forth on North Pike Street she paces, trying to get the blood going. She glances over her shoulder at the Sunoco and the attendant inside, no doubt nice and toasty. She considers waiting there but decides against it. Her ride’s due, and she’s afraid they won’t check good and leave her stranded.

She’s been selling encyclopedias door to door in the Grafton neighborhood just down from where she now stands. She works on commission and didn’t sell much that night. The sample bag is heavy, and her feet hurt. The job stinks, really, but it’s something. She could work someplace like Biggie’s, the burger place across the street from the Sunoco, but can’t stand the thought of that grease stink every day. This job she works evenings. She’ll give it a few more days, maybe look for something daytime in Fairmont.

Not much traffic, but an old sedan driving a little too fast pulls into the gas station from the east. She stamps her feet and glances over at the car. Two-tone, the body lighter than the roof and hood, maybe white and pale yellow or pale tan, hard to tell at night under the lights. The car doesn’t pull up to the pumps but stops between the road and her. The driver’s window rolls down.

Biggie’s is still open in 2021. S. James McLaughlin.

The driver, a baby-faced kid about eighteen, smiles at her. She hears incoherent goading from other guys in the car, and he says, Like your coat.

Thank you. She turns her back and steps away from him, but not too fast. Can’t show fear to guys like this.

Hey, wait up, wait up, he says, the car idling forward to keep up. Where you going? We can give you a ride.

Thanks, but my friends are picking me up.

Where you going?

Fairmont, she says. The station’s open til ten. They’ll be here.

If you say so. Tell you what, I’ll come back by ten, and if your friends aren’t here, I’ll give you a ride.

Suit yourself.

He pulls past her, and she watches his taillights recede as he drives away. Going too fast.

Minutes before ten o’clock, still waiting for her ride, Maxine sees headlights coming toward her, from the west this time. She can’t see anything but headlights. Still, she knows it’s him, and when the car rolls past her, angling into the Sunoco lot, she sees the same two-tone. No one but the driver inside this time. The car eases beside the station and stops, the engine ticking as it cools.

The driver’s door creaks open, and the boy steps out. He’s taller than she expected, maybe six foot, and about 180–85 pounds. He smiles as he approaches.

I don’t see your friends. He makes a point of looking around as if he might find them lurking nearby. His words tumble over each other, in a rush to be heard. I can give you a ride not a problem I give rides to hitchhikers all the time.

It takes her a second to understand what he said, and as he closes on her, she sees him fixate on her coat. Strange.

Don’t you have anything better to do? she asks.

Me? Nah. He stops beside her. Well that depends I might could go work down at Sterling Faucet up by Morgantown, but now I’m a janitor up there at Westchester Hall. He rolls his eyes. That’s a girls’ dormitory.

Bet you like that. Maxine never thought about work up in Morgantown. It’s twenty-five miles straight north of Grafton and twenty miles northeast of Fairmont, where she lives. But maybe that’s where she should look. More jobs up there for sure. She just doesn’t know how she’d get up from Fairmont every day.

Lots of pretty girls, he says. But I never get to talk to ’em they don’t want to talk to me anyway.

Why not? Maxine isn’t thinking about her question so much as watching the road.

Boy, is it cold! He looks over his shoulder at the station; the attendant is just locking up. Tell you what let’s wait in my car where it’s warm. He claps his hands together. If your friends don’t show I’ll give you a ride.

The offer is tempting. With the station closed… How ’bout if you pull up under those lights there? Let me sit on the driver’s side, and I’ll wait in the car with you. They’ll be here any minute, though.

Just a sec, he says and jogs to his car. It fires up, and he revs a couple of times. The engine roars like an animal, and when he puts it in gear the car creeps toward the light, gravel popping under the tires. The car stops but keeps idling. The door cracks open and he jumps out, hustles over to the passenger side. The promise of heat urges Maxine to the car. She gets in.

That’s a pretty coat, he says before she’s all the way in.

You said that. The heat does feel good. She rubs her hands together.

I just think fur looks really nice.

She scans out the windshield, hoping her ride will show soon. This should be okay for now, and if he gets all handsy, she’ll just get out. The fingers of her left hand worry the black and gold bracelet on her thin right wrist.

You get that job, the janitor job? At WVU?

Kind of, my parents got it. Or a friend told them about it, and they said I should try to get it. Not my parents, more like my grandparents.

You live with your grandparents?

They’re like my parents for…I don’t know, a long time. They’re nice. Sometimes he drinks too much, but it’s not that bad. He doesn’t do anything to me or nothing. He pauses before saying, I like you. I hope you need a ride home. I mean, I don’t hope your friends forget about—

I know what you mean. The warmer Maxine gets, the less she remembers why she’s in this guy’s car in the first place. How come you don’t live with your parents?

My mom run me off, he says, then as if realizing that what he said was depressing, he quickly adds, I like fur coats that’s a nice one. I like to rub furry things.

That’s it, thinks Maxine and snaps her door open. Too much, too weird. She glances at him, one foot on the concrete. He reaches out.

2

IT’S JUST UNBELIEVABLE THAT THIS COULD HAPPEN IN MORGANTOWN.

On January 2, 1970, Monongalia prosecuting attorney Joseph Joe Laurita Jr. walked out of his house in Sabraton, the working-class east end of Morgantown, home of Sterling Faucet, and crossed the street to his small Datsun. Friday, 7:30 a.m., and Laurita was running later than usual. He slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key.

A bomb under the driver’s side demolished the front end of his vehicle and blew out the rear window of the blue Rambler parked ahead of him. Broken glass and twisted metal flew. People up and down Listravia Avenue heard the blast as windows in many houses cracked and shattered. Doors opened, the curious peering into the cold morning. Laurita was grievously wounded, blood everywhere.

As emergency vehicles wailed toward the explosion, Dominion-News photographer Ron Rittenhouse heard them, irresistible lures for a photojournalist, especially in this apparently quiet town. When he got closer, he saw a police car rush by and a column of smoke rising over eastern Sabraton. On the job less than a year, Rittenhouse had never encountered the like. He arrived on the scene and exited his car, lugging his bulky camera equipment. All he could see was the wreck of a small compact car, smoke pouring from its front end.

A police officer, William Hughes, stood across the road from the car, his six-foot-seven or -eight, 350-pound frame towering over Rittenhouse, who was under six feet tall.

What’s going on, Bill?

Hughes looked in Rittenhouse’s direction. Oh, uh, Ron, can’t really say much. You can’t go over there.

As if he hadn’t heard Hughes, Rittenhouse walked on and began snapping pictures. From inside the car came a man’s voice, its source shrouded by smoke: Ron, if you take any pictures of me and this car, I’ll sue you and the newspaper! The photographer managed to keep shooting, but he was surprised anyone survived the blast. A small crowd of neighbors gathered amid the debris and glass, and an emergency vehicle arrived. When the EMS driver got out to survey the shocking scene, his first thought was someone had dropped a ten-ton safe on the front of the car.

Young Rittenhouse did not learn the identity of the victim until he got back to the nearby newsroom. The thirty-two-year-old prosecutor had been on the job only a little longer than Rittenhouse had been a working photographer—one year and one day—having won the election in his first year after graduation from law school. With a campaign platform of law enforcement planks, Laurita led a surprising upset of the incumbent. During the campaign, Laurita’s platform stated, Perhaps the greatest frustration in America today, aside from the issue of Vietnam, is the apparent inability of those concerned to maintain law and order. The citizens of Monongalia County agreed and elected him.

That Friday, Laurita had been headed to his office to prepare a number of gambling and marijuana-possession cases for the grand jury to convene the following Thursday, which also happened to be the first day of classes for WVU. Despite Laurita’s threat, photographs of the car ended up in Morgantown’s Dominion-News the very next day. Ray Evans, the city desk editor at the Dominion-News, later described the photographs this way: One shot showed the driver’s seat in the interior of Laurita’s bomb-blasted car with a cutline pointing out the prosecutor’s blood spattered on the inside of the door; another shot showed the blast was powerful enough to damage the motor block. Such gory details were and are rarely printed in newspapers.

More than a dozen city, county and state police rushed to the scene. State police experts flew in from the state capital, Charleston. FBI agents traveled to Morgantown to aid in the investigation. West Virginia governor Arch A. Moore Jr. called Laurita a very close personal friend and told reporters the state police lacked proper investigative resources. He said he would ask the legislature to fund twenty-five new full-time criminal investigators.

An editorial published in the Dominion-News the day after the Laurita bombing revealed fissures among the ruling elite in Morgantown political and civic life:

Mr. Laurita had precious little help in his efforts against the rackets.… More than four years ago the Dominion-News started a concerted and continuous exposé of unmolested gambling operations in Morgantown.

In City Council, the Chamber of Commerce, the County Court and other groups interested in the public welfare, there was sustained silence. The Chamber welcomed a gambling club as a dues-paying member.

Shortly before the 1968 fall election, a Grand Jury was called to investigate this newspaper’s editorial allegations and wound up criticizing the newspapers for failing to provide this jury with any evidence to support its allegations and felt that in reporting of this type mere opinion is not sufficient.

Years later, Editor Evans said the editorial was probably written by William Townes, the general manager of both the Dominion-News and the Morgantown Post. The Dominion-News, especially, had been speaking out for law and order and hadn’t been getting much cooperation from government or civics groups. Townes began his campaign against gambling and corruption a few years after he arrived from Baltimore. During his four decades as a newspaperman, Townes had become known as a fixer for the Hearst chain of newspapers, often dispatched to newspapers in trouble in order to raise circulation and revenue. But in 1965, nearing retirement, he left the Hearst organization to accept the job in Morgantown.

On January 4, 1970, he announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator or perpetrators of the attempt to assassinate Prosecuting Attorney Joseph A. Laurita Jr. In other Dominion-News stories that day, the mayor expressed sympathy for Laurita’s family, as well as the hope that we can quickly apprehend whoever is responsible. A Morgantown businessman and former Pennsylvania law officer called the bombing a crime against the community. He firmly believed the crime was instigated by someone threatened by Laurita’s pursuit of crime in Monongalia County.

Laurita’s serious injuries brought shock from all quarters. The secretary of Circuit Court Judge Marvin R. Kiger, the judge who would later preside over the first trial in the coed case, said what was on many people’s minds: Isn’t it horrible? It’s just unbelievable that this could happen in Morgantown.

Evans later recalled, Some people reacted [with] fear, asserting that ‘we are not safe in our own homes.’ Many reacted in anger as event piled on top of event. Others reacted with some suggestion of mass guilt that assumed everyone played a role in things becoming as bad as they had.

Morgantown’s attention to the assassination attempt continued through the first half of January. Both papers, the Dominion-News and the Morgantown Post, constantly ran headlines like Murder Attempt Made on Laurita and Prosecutor ‘Fair’ after Bomb Rips Car on the front page. Many people were convinced it was a professional hit, often calling it a gangland-style attempted murder. By January 9, the reward fund had reached $12,500, over $80,000 in today’s dollars.

The Morgantown rumor mill cited the stranglehold of organized crime and the corrupt incompetence of Morgantown’s good-old-boy police force as reasons the crime had not been solved. Townes saw himself as a crusader for the people. However, many people who had grown up in Morgantown, no small number of them businessmen, considered Townes a meddlesome outsider.

With authorities scrambling for answers in the wake of the bombing and townies speculating about how such a thing could have happened in their quiet mountain home, few people noticed two weeks later when three WVU freshmen women disappeared.

3

DON’T LEAVE ME IN THIS ROOM BY MYSELF.

Insulated in their own bubbles, college students are notoriously ignorant of events outside academe, but even those who escaped specific knowledge of Morgantown’s gambling issues or the Laurita bombing felt the effects of the crackdown on local establishments. According to the Post-Herald of Beckley, West Virginia, Night life appeared on the verge of nonexistence.

Morgantown winters are somber, the skies a perpetual white or gray. The region is one of the least sunny places in the United States, and the winter sky brings frequent rain and snow. Immediately after a snow, especially a deep one, a blanket of white shrouds trees, yards, houses and cars. But as people dig out, begin to drive and maybe temperatures rise a little, the whole tableau turns into a slushy, blackening mess. Dark, bare branches claw white skies. Mared, in a letter written in early January to her sister and brother-in-law, described how there was nothing to do in Morgantown and spoke of the place as a morgue.

Mared Malarik and Karen Ferrell met in 1969, the first day of their freshman year at WVU. Their backgrounds differed, Mared from the rapidly growing Kinnelon, New Jersey, and Karen from the tiny southeastern West Virginia town of Quinwood, with a 1970 population of 370. But the two hit it off immediately. Mared loved Karen’s droll humor, and Karen was drawn to what she saw as Mared’s worldliness, sophistication. They quickly became good friends and by the end of the first semester planned to room together their sophomore year.

Looking west down Willey Street, the dividing line between downtown Morgantown (left) and the downtown campus of WVU (right), 1969. West Virginia Department of Transportation (WVDOT).

In the first days of the new semester, January 8 and 9, Mared was settling in and adjusting her class schedule, but a pain in her tooth was bothering her. Her father, a dentist, had done some work over Christmas, but now the pain was back. He told her to go see someone in Morgantown. Karen also had her hands full adjusting to the new semester, and she had had a visit from her main boyfriend, Steve Hayes. Steve was in the navy and visited on Saturday the tenth.

On Monday, Mared and her boyfriend John Mongiello—Mared called him Munchy, but everyone else called him Munch—had gone to see the rock ’n’ roll group Ezra, a New Jersey band she’d seen a couple of times. Karen and another one of her boyfriends, Kenneth Eye, had gone with them to the show. Kenneth didn’t really fit in, mostly because he was still in high school, but he wasn’t Karen’s real boyfriend anyway. The foursome went to the Castle, one of the coolest clubs in Morgantown—the drinking age was eighteen at the time—a place that had become a favorite of Mared and Karen’s. Ezra rocked the joint, and everyone was talking about maybe going to see them when they played a second gig the next week, on Monday, January 19.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, JANUARY 18, 1970, THE DAY MARED AND KAREN GO MISSING

Mared and Munch hold hands as they walk across the Stadium Bridge toward the main campus and Woodburn Circle, thought by many to be the prettiest spot on the WVU campus. Three sides of the circle are formed by the ivied brick walls of classical Victorian buildings. The open side of the U faces University Avenue and the Mountainlair, WVU’s new student union, in many ways the heart of the downtown campus. One of the busiest streets of Morgantown, University Avenue slices right between Woodburn Circle and the Mountainlair. The temperature around forty degrees, spotty clouds drift in the late afternoon winter sun.

Mared met Munch the previous fall, her first day at WVU, the same day she first met Karen Ferrell. During the fall semester, their relationship grew so serious that Munch visited the Malariks in New Jersey over Thanksgiving break. Her family liked him. Mared and Munch had begun to talk about marriage—unfortunately, her high school boyfriend, Larry Casazza, still didn’t know about their relationship.

Woodburn Circle on the WVU’s downtown campus. Mark Crabtree.

The Mountainlair, WVU’s student union, stands across the street from Woodburn Circle. Mark Crabtree.

So, we’re copasetic? Mared says. They had a fight the previous night, but it wasn’t serious. Larry had visited her that week, the first full week of the new semester, and he pressured her into going out on a date. She’d planned to tell him about Munch but hadn’t been able to go through with it. Larry had other ideas. When Mared told Munch about the date, they had words. We didn’t do anything. Really.

Now, Munch just shrugs. He isn’t too surprised she hasn’t been able to finally, officially, break up with Larry, but he’s still not happy about it. He keeps looking at his shoes, the way they schlick along the sidewalk. Tooth okay?

As soon as he says it, her tongue worries at the rough spot. I’m going back tomorrow. Eleven o’clock. Dr. Costianes still has more to do.

Munch stops; they both stop. What’s bothering you, then?

I guess I’m still thinking about what Karen and I saw at the Red Cellar last night.

You don’t even know what that girl took. She drank way too much, that’s for sure.

Munch starts to walk again, but Mared holds his hand, stops him. That’s what Karen said, but Munchy, the girl went to the hospital.

He sighs.

Mared starts walking again, swinging the link of their hands. Let’s change the subject. Tonight’s your big night.

Yeah, well….

But you’re getting your pin. Mared knows that’s why he wants Larry out of the way, even if he doesn’t know that. Once Munch is awarded his fraternity pin, he’ll pin her. She will belong to Munchy. When he first proposed the idea, she thought getting pinned would make her feel secure enough to make the final break with Larry. But maybe she’s been thinking wrong. Maybe it’s really security for him.

Yeah, yeah, Munch says, looking around. Hey, you want to get high? Somebody will see. She steers him up the steps to stroll the sidewalk loop of Woodburn Circle. Once around then we’ll go over to the ’Lair for some hot chocolate.

Nancy Best lives in room 242 at Carlyle Hall, the companion dorm of Westchester Hall; together, the two dorms are referred to as Beverly Manor. That Sunday afternoon, she is visiting Karen Ferrell in room 423 on the Westchester side. Karen’s roommate, Sandra Fitch, is not around. Karen sits on her own bed, her legs drawn up to her chest, her chin on her knees. She rocks in place, front to back.

In a small, straight-backed chair just off the foot of the bed, Nancy Best watches her friend, concerned. Karen isn’t a sickly person, but lately seems extremely uncomfortable.

You sure I can’t get you something? Nancy asks. You think it’s a kidney infection again?

Karen shakes her head. "I don’t know. Her voice has an edge to it. I’ve been coughing bad, and nothing helps."

Nancy stands and paces the little area at the foot of both beds. The small dorm room is of cheap construction and has little in it. Much of the space is taken by two parallel beds, each bolted to opposing walls, the door from the hall between them. On the wall opposite the door is a window with a small desk underneath. At the foot of each bed is a small dresser beside a free-standing wardrobe. Every piece of furniture in the room is bolted to a wall; apparently, someone thinks it would be a bad idea to allow freshmen to arrange their own furniture.

You should see a doctor, Karen. The school clinic won’t cost you anything.

That’s what Gwen wants, Karen says, referring to the floor’s resident assistant. But Mom gave me a note. I don’t have to.

Nancy stops walking. That’s crazy.

I got my own doctor back home. I don’t— She looks down at her bare feet. I don’t like to be touched by strangers. Strange men. Or even seen, really.

But he’s a doctor! Nancy doesn’t understand her friend’s reluctance. Over the past four months, since the beginning of the fall semester, she learned Karen had a number of unusual worries, a number of fears. Most of the time Karen seems very friendly, and she could be the life of the party when she drank beer, but darker thoughts lurk underneath. Karen can be cynical or pleasant and warm, by turns.

I’m very… Karen hesitates. Starts over. I have this fear of…someone putting their hands on me. You know. She shrugs.

Seriously? Nancy senses her friend’s darkness drawing near again. Maybe they shouldn’t have stayed so late the night before. Maybe that was it, a little hangover. Tell you what. I’ve got to run down to my room and get some homework done so Sandy and I can go do something toni—

Don’t leave me in this room by myself! Karen’s eyes are wide, her voice tremulous. Nancy doesn’t know the first thing about how to comfort her friend. Karen doesn’t talk about it unless she’s drunk, but Nancy and several other girls on the floor know Karen believes she will be raped and killed before she turns twenty.

4

WE’RE THUMBING.

On their way down University Avenue into town, Mared and Karen stop at the Sunnyside Superette, a small grocery store for students in Sunnyside. Considered WVU’s student ghetto, Sunnyside is a collection of old houses cut into apartments, small shops and the bars where students drink too much, too fast. At the Superette, Mared cashes a ten-dollar check, enough for a movie and a pack of cigs.

At the bottom of the hill is a four-way section where Campus Drive comes up the hill from the right, Stewart Street down from the left and University Avenue continues; they head across University Avenue’s Stadium Bridge. Mared’s knee-high boots make the old iron grating resound metallically with each step.

At five-foot-six, Mared is more than half a foot taller than her friend, who tells everyone she is five feet tall, although she isn’t quite. Karen weighs barely ninety pounds. Mared looks more sophisticated, her dark hair frosted with highlights, wearing her lime green Lady Manhattan blouse, blue hip-hugger bell bottoms with white stripes and tall fur-lined boots. Beside Mared, Karen feels frumpy, almost invisible in her dark brown sweater, cuffed brown and white bell bottoms and brown loafers. Her black imitation fur coat highlights her shoulder-length sandy hair, which she is wearing up that night. Still, as they walk, she self-consciously fingers the Greenbrier High class ring dangling from the chain around her throat.

Far out! Mared exclaims. Look down. I love how you can see right through as you walk. Look how small the roof down there is. The university building below has a steep roof and holds a small swimming pool and some athletic department offices. To their right is the bridge on which cars cross the tiny valley. On the other side of the road is a ten-foot white concrete wall, the top of the east end of the football stadium. Mared glances into the open air to their left.

Maureen canceled about six, but no one else wanted to see the movie?

Karen shrugs. You know, Ruth had a thing. Jessie said she still had homework for tomorrow. Like that. You didn’t ask Donna?

At the end of the bridge they veer right into the heart of West Virginia University’s downtown campus and pass Woodburn Circle, where Mared and Munch had taken their walk earlier.

She’s going out with that B.C.

You didn’t say anything to her yet, did you?

No way Jose! Mared declaims, her finger in the air. A light rain comes and goes, the air getting nippy. This will turn into snow. Hovering around freezing, the evening feels colder. Mared suddenly spins around breathlessly. You tell Sandy?

No. Neither girl much likes her roommate lately, and they decided to room together in the fall semester. It would be harder for Mared, of course, because she and Donna DeYoung were friends in high school. Karen and Sandy met only a few months earlier. Donna claimed she and Mared were best friends, but Karen—and about a million other girls at the dorm—knows better.

As the two of them walk along University Avenue, a few students thumb from a small strip of land dividing the two lanes of University Avenue in front of the new Mountainlair, the student union. Students walk into town from their dorms, but it’s less appealing to walk back up the mile-long hill. After Sunnyside, going up the hill, there are no sidewalks, just the road and a steep wooded hill. Buses are few and don’t run late, so students hitchhike; when a car stops, as many pile in as will fit.

Mared’s boyfriend is at a fraternity party, one he’s required to attend to get his fraternity pin. Mared and Karen both know he’s going to pin Mared, and Karen is pleased for her friend. Mared and Munch will probably marry, and Karen knows the talk around Westchester about Mared and her old high school boyfriend is empty gab, no matter what Donna says. Donna says a lot of things.

The two friends hurry down High Street toward the Metropolitan Theater. Local rumor