We were in the Dairy Queen getting Blizzards. The girl working asked my boyfriend for his number. My boyfriend was a model, a clubkid, and the football star of his high school and would later in our relationship hold me over a three-story ledge. I stayed with him because he made me feel attractive.

I didn’t know if, as his lover, I should step in with a brief but territorial “He’s mine.” This was my first gay relationship and I was unsure of the etiquette. He gave her our friend Jerry’s number and said it was his. The last time I saw Jerry he was on the cover of a porn video “Freshman Heat.”

About two years later, the Dairy Queen girl’s photo was all over the news in Detroit. She was last seen leaving her waitressing job. She had talked that evening about a date with some guy. Her car was found two days later down the street from my girlfriend Shannon’s house. I kept dating Shannon only because we talked about using the lotion that heats up with friction and then having sex. We never followed through with our plan. She went on vacation to Iceland. She came back a friend. Vacations sometimes do that.

The frozen body was found in a field a few miles from the restaurant. Her limbs were tied with duct tape. She was raped, stabbed, and left for dead.

I can only speculate why she was so bold to lean across the counter in her striped DQ uniform and paper hat to ask my model boyfriend his number. Why would she have gone into another’s car that she did not know well? Probably the same reason she went with him is the same reason I stayed with my abusive model boyfriend, the same reason Jerry went into porn, and the same reason Shannon wanted more than me. All of us were in search of warmth.