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One Slip -*- Copyright 2006 by Ellen Hayes.
Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when used for satirical purposes.
This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and possibly sex. If you are legally not allowed to read materials containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading this. I am not responsible. Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish, state, and country.
All rights reserved. See the bottom for distribution rights.
One Slip
It was dark inside, and Debbie could hardly see enough to walk without running into a wall or something, but she kept moving, because-
"Got ya," Tucker said with satisfaction behind her and she couldn't move as she heard that damning CLACK-
"Nnnnh!" she gasped as she thrashed awake, and sat up.
She was in her own bed.
There wasn't anyone in her room.
"Shit," she sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair as she looked at the clock: 4:24. Might as well get up, she told herself. I DON'T want another one of those...
She shuddered, involuntarily remembering the last few seconds of the nightmare, and the CLACK as he-
"STOP it!" she ordered herself firmly as she thrust herself out of bed. "He wouldn't have said he was SORRY unless he MEANT it, which means he DIDN'T mean to hurt you!"
It helped, a little; a little crack in her fear, anyway. She'd learned to argue with her unconscious about nightmares years ago.
She stood next to the bed and looked around, metaphorically as well as physically, and remembered that Mike had given her some audio tapes of phone taps - Highly illegal, and kind of useful, she thought - and she could use the time to play them and make more notes.
After a shower.
"What?" Michelle Frost couldn't tell what all the yelling was about, so she used her bulk - once in a while, it came in handy not to be one of the fashionably skinny bitches - to push her way through the crowd at the entrance to the band hall.
It had been thoroughly vandalized since yesterday afternoon's sectional practice.
Uniforms were slashed, the sheet music cabinet was partially smashed and there was ripped paper all over the place, Mr. Michalenko's desk was hanging half through what had been the director's office window, overturned and all its contents thrown around, the color guard stuff was smashed up and sticking in the walls, someone had spray-painted "BAND FAGS SUCK COCK" on the walls, and the marching percussion equipment was...
"What..."
"Mr. Michalenko already went to call the cops," Tom Wallace mentioned as he stared into the room.
"The cops?" Michelle flashed to every cop show she'd ever seen, and turned and yelled, "Get out! Everybody OUT! If there's any evidence in here, the cops need to get it! OUT!" as she grabbed Tom's shoulder and turned him around to face the door, then pushed at his back towards the rest of the people. "OUT!"
The two of them managed to clear the door enough to get it shut, though she didn't get the chance to protect the door bars from other peoples' fingerprints. Stupid, she realized a bit later, while she absently repeated her reasons for getting everyone out of the band hall at the top of her lungs. If there HAD been any fingerprints, undoubtedly Mr. Michalenko had smudged them when he unlocked and opened the door. But how did they get in, if the place was locked?
"Chelle?" Monica Kutch yelled at her. "What's going on?"
Michelle tried to think of a new way to say it.
"Oh, no," Anne Marie sighed as she slapped the alarm until it shut up. She'd been dreaming about something unpleasant at school, and even though she couldn't remember what it was a few seconds after she'd woken up, she didn't want to go.
Then she remembered everything that had happened since Homecoming, and she REALLY didn't want to go.
Aw, damnit, Sean thought as his sister clung to his neck and cried, like she did when she was really upset or frustrated and he was the only suitable victim around, which happened about twice a week lately. "It's okay, Bridge," he tried, "they have insurance and stuff. They can replace everythi-"
"It's not that!" she gasped into his ear. "It- Why would anyone DO something like this?!" she got out before she started sobbing again and grabbed his neck and pushed her face into his collarbone. Ow! Not so hard! He knew better than to say that out loud, of course.
At least she wasn't the only girl crying. He even saw a couple of guys doing it too, though they weren't grabbing some other guy's neck like his sister and a couple of other girls were doing.
"Man, something's got the band dorks all stirred up this morning," Jill said to herself as she trotted towards the industrial building. She hadn't dared wait for Kim this morning; she'd left a message on Kim's machine about six-twenty, which she hoped Kim had listened to that morning, instead of trying to pick Jill up.
I hope she's not pissed off any more, she thought as she jogged across the parking lot. Makes it hard to get to work and back... She tried to think of who could give her a ride if Kim wouldn't. Just for today; Kim ought to be over it by Monday. Luckily, today didn't have cosmetology 'lab', just lecture; that meant she would only see Kim for an hour, not nearly three. I don't even know if she's still mad... Though it was a good bet; Kim held grudges for a while, though not like Debbie or Tucker.
"Oh shit!" She'd just remembered Debbie last night. And it had to have been the band hall they were working on, not the field house. "Oh shit." Did I say anything out loud? She thought hard, and decided that she probably hadn't, at least nothing incriminating. Oh shit.
"Dan, are we picking anyone up today?" Mom asked. "If we are, we need to go."
"Uh," he said to gain time. "Not George, he wasn't sure if he'd be out sick today, so he arranged another ride. If he's going to go. I may have to come home early." He had remembered to take the morning dose of antibiotics, at least; that might help.
"Well, how do you expect to do that? I can't take off work to come get you," she bitched, like she usually did when he tried to get some kind of favor from her lately. He had no idea what had happened to her, but she'd turned into a stone bitch since when he was a kid.
"I know, I know... I'll figure out something, Mom," he told her to shut her up. "Maybe Tuck's dad or something."
"I don't want you bothering them, Dan. If you need to stay home today, can you decide now instead of doing it like this?"
"Uh." That looked like a damned good idea. "Can you still pick those other people up, though? We really need to give them rides like we said we were. Maybe I could take the van?" he said out loud as he thought of it. "Drop you off at work?"
"You don't have time to do that and get back to school on time, Dan!"
"Right." He could, theoretically, drop her off early and then take everyone to school, but that would mean she'd be at work early, which she avoided like he avoided getting into fights.
"Huh. This is weird," Greg Kazunas said as he re-read the memo in his mailbox.
"Today's pep rally has been canceled, due to the recent problems with the student body. It has been decided..." Passive voice, he noted absently. Damned bureaucrats can't admit to DOING anything, they just say 'it has been done' like someone else was responsible.
"... that a pep rally at this time would be counterproductive, inciting strong feelings of divisiveness rather than support."
'Who, what'- well, that's covered, and 'why' I suppose, but it's missing 'when'-
"Hey Greg, did you hear what happened to Marty yet?"
"Huh?" he mumbled as he looked up; Betty Fields, who taught creative writing and had carried on a proxy argument with him for years over writing styles, looked upset.
"Someone vandalized his house last night. They broke windows and threw paint inside."
"Oh man, that's awful," Greg said, meaning it completely. "Was anyone hurt?"
Shannon Cantrell stared at the poster on the door.
It was mostly a picture of a school locker, like theirs except a different color. But you could see the dent in the door. And then, not at first, the blood smeared on it.
"He didn't fit in. Will you?"
God, Shannon thought slowly, DAMN IT.
"Was anyone hurt?" Paul asked, feeling sick again as he tried, and failed, to pull his gaze away from the devastation in the band room.
Dennis Michalenko, the band director, shook his head. "But-" He shook his head again and cleared his throat; he sounded like he was repressing tears. "But it, it's..." he choked on the words.
Victoria Fizer, who had just tried out for the varsity cheerleading squad on a lark last year, felt herself starting to literally shake, her whole body, before she lost it and ran sobbing for the parking lot and her car, the bright red HATEMONGER that was painted on her locker burning in her brain.
"God, I mean, I don't even know why I come here," Debbie sighed to Krystal. Talking to her was somewhat dangerous today, because the Valiums she'd had the night before were still fucking her up a little; she'd had to compensate with one of Kim's diet pills already. "I looked into home schooling yesterday, and all you have to do is get your parents to agree to it."
"For real?"
Debbie nodded. "And I'm really thinking about asking my mom to take me out of here. I do NOT feel safe any more. I had nightmares..." She shuddered as she remembered Tucker's voice, sounding entirely satisfied behind her.
"That bad?" Krystal asked, putting a sympathetic hand on Debbie's shoulder.
She started, but accepted the scant bit of comfort. I never thought she'd do something like this, Debbie wondered as she deliberately breathed a few times, trying to rid herself of the flashback. "I only got a couple hours sleep last night," she admitted. "Did you hear what happened to Donna Sadler in the bathroom yesterday?"
"No?" Krystal prompted, and Debbie concentrated on what Lorri Edgington had said, and what she wanted to change.
"Damn," Matt said in half-admiration and half-disgust.
This poster was of some kid he didn't recognize, staring out of a prison cell; you could just see the lower half of the word DEATH on a sign that said 'DEATH ROW'. That was easy; he thought he might have seen something like that in the newspaper or a magazine a while ago.
It was the repeated yet very subtle 'McAllen McAllen McAllen McAllen' that had been printed over the bars that made the point.
It made his leg hair prickly, he noticed absently, then consciously looked down and saw it WAS standing up, all goose-pimply. "Damn," he said again, amazed that he was having such a visceral reaction.
Kim had not been pleasant before and during class, but she hadn't been abusive, which meant she wasn't too pissed, Jill decided. I hope. She wasn't entirely sure if she was reading Kim right, though. At least nothing had happened; Jill was trying to stay relatively quiet and not say anything that might set her off.
That lasted all the way through class, including the test that she hadn't studied for, and was probably going to do badly on. Thank God, Jill sighed as the bell rang, as she finished her last answer - Mini- essay questions in fucking NAIL class! she'd thought, more than once - and grabbed her test and her pack. She hadn't taken her jacket off, so all she had to do was drop the test on Mrs. Singley's desk and leave.
Shannon, who was wearing her uniform and all the accessories that morning, had already finished her test, turned it in, and packed up, so Jill was behind her as they went down the hall, but she stopped to bend over, tying a shoelace or something, and Jill had to brush past. "Watch it, bitch!" Shannon snarled, not even looking at her.
Bitch, Jill thought, and grinned. "Hey Shannon!" she called. Shannon stood up and turned around, and frowned. "Be seeing you," she smiled.
"You tell that little fag friend of yours that he'd better leave us alone," Shannon snarled as she reversed and stomped towards Jill, "or-"
"Leave YOU alone? Who beat the shit out of WHO, Shannon?" Jill snapped back, amazed that Shannon was actually stupid enough to start something right here. "Who went to jail twice this week?" she added loudly, and smiled remembering the phone call she'd made Saturday night-
"Bitch!" Shannon screeched as she jumped at Jill, clawing at her face.
Jill ducked, surprised, but reached up and grabbed one of Shannon's wrists and pulled her around, then kneed her ample butt hard so she'd bounce into the nearest wall. "Don't DO-" She did anyway, a fast fist that caught Jill in the face, somehow burning a streak along her cheek. She reflexively jabbed Shannon a few times in the body, and then Shannon disappeared. "Wh-"
"Don't FUCK with my FRIENDS," Kim hissed, still holding a textbook in both hands like- Ow, Jill realized, as she looked down and saw Shannon sprawled across the ground. That had'ta hurt... Shannon still had her eyes open, but it didn't look like she was seeing much.
"You don't suppose she's drunk again?" Jill tossed to the growing clot of students they'd obstructed; it hadn't lasted long, but any sort of fight would make everyone stop and watch, and in between classes people piled up fast. "Be seeing you," she said, and saluted, and then got the hell out of there, pushing her way through the bystanders.
Kelly sighed as she trudged from her locker to her homeroom. With Tuck out, maybe not coming back EVER, and Mike out, and George probably out, school SEEMED a lot worse. It was cloudy today, too, the skies threatening, though it was apparently too early for snow. It was certainly too warm, in the forties she thought.
Dan looked like hell, too, she thought. Do I-
"Oh look, it's the Young Lesbians!" someone said loudly, catching her attention and making her look up - it was Carrie Salisbury, with a shit-eating grin on her face - before she realized that paying attention to her and her insults was the last thing she wanted to seem to be doing-
"Fuck you you little whore," Jill said loudly over her shoulder at Carrie as she spun Kelly around by one shoulder, and pulled her aside rapidly, almost making her trip. "Kelly. Watch it today; Shannon tried to fuck with me in the halls today."
"What happ- She clawed you?" Kelly asked, looking at the red scrape on Jill's cheek.
"I think it was a ring," Jill dismissed. "But BE CAREFUL," she enunciated. "She didn't have her usual friends with her, and she did it anyway. Watch for any of 'em. You got that class with Ashlee, right?" Kelly nodded; she did. "Don't let her catch you alone," Jill ordered, staring right into Kelly's eyes. "I don't know if this is like a- something they're all doing on purpose, or not. Just watch for it, okay?"
Watch for-
"Okay?" Jill asked again a moment later, giving Kelly's shoulder a tug.
"Uh, yeah, right," Kelly nodded.
"Okay, see you at lunch," Jill said rapidly, and then she was pushing her way away through the crowds.
Kelly watched her for a few seconds, then decided that she'd better get to her homeroom and a teacher; she'd told Dan to leave her at the bathroom this morning, which might have been a mistake...
"What the..." Oscar McCulloch looked at the paper thing in his locker, and on a closer inspection it was taped somehow to the inside, so it had been the first thing he saw when he opened his locker today.
Proverbs 10:6-7
Blessings are upon the head of the just: but violence covereth the
mouth of the wicked. The memory of the just is blessed: but the
name of the wicked shall rot.
"What the fuck is this shit?" he complained as he ripped the paper loose, but his voice was quivering. This is getting stupid, he thought angrily. All the shit going on, all the athletic department getting the blame - it wasn't US that beat up anyone, he asserted, until he remembered a couple of things he'd heard about other people doing. Fuck.... Coach was already pissed on Tuesday... And it wasn't us! It was those fucking cheerleaders! Stupid bitches... They always flew off the handle at the least little thing, and then they'd cry to their coach about it, and she'd cry to the administration, and then they'd get all mushy-brained watching the pretty girls cry and do whatever they wanted.
James found himself face-to-face with someone in a cheerleader outfit suddenly, in the middle of the usual pre-homeroom crush. What George said, he remembered angrily, and smiled at the older girl and said, "Be seeing you!" in a nice, couldn't-possibly-be-objectionable voice, and waved his hand in a casual salute at her, before he walked on. I hope it pissed her off, he thought. Stupid bitches, they caused all this...
Dan waited and watched, twisted around in his desk, but it was becoming more apparent by the moment that George wasn't coming in today. Fuck, man, me an' Book are all that's left, he despaired. This place sucks.
"Hey, man," Roy Mulcahey said, "did you see the poster today?"
"What poster?" Dan asked reflexively, stalling for time, before he realized that people were SUPPOSED to be seeing posters in the morning. He wasn't doing too well this morning.
"The one with the swastika that said 'McAllen Reich'," Roy managed to pronounce so it sounded German.
"What?!" He hadn't DONE one like that!
"Yeah man," Roy said excitedly, "it's like they're in stacks in the bathroom! I got some for- Hey, you want one?"
"Uh- Yeah," Dan decided quickly, nodding, and took the paper Roy handed him. It was pretty primitive, but not bad; and of course he hadn't done anything even remotely like it.
Shit I hope Debbie doesn't think I did this one, he realized. Debbie, he remembered. Shit, I should've stayed home today, then I could talk to Mike about last night. What the hell was she DOING?
"Today is normal schedule," the speaker blared. "The pep rally previously scheduled for this afternoon has been cancelled."
Can- Jody was shocked, but the cheers from some of the other students almost made her cry, right there in homeroom.
"Shit!"
"Hell, with what happened to the hall this morning," Michelle Frost commented, "I sure as hell don't want ANYTHING to do with this SCHOOL."
"Fuckin' A!" agreed Mike Rosario, and he slapped her back in appreciation, which hurt.
"Are you gonna QUIT?" Tandy challenged.
Michelle shook her head. "No... but, I mean, you saw... So, fuck 'em, you know. I've had enough being called names and all, with..." None of them could really say it out loud. She'd noticed, but she couldn't do it either.
"What?!" Miranda gasped. We were supposed to have one today, and since this wasn't extra-curricular we were supposed to do it! What the HELL is going on?!
She couldn't leave her classroom at the moment, but as soon as the bell rang she was going to go right to Paul Dobson and demand an explanation. This was utterly unfair to her girls.
"My God..." Julia had considered that it was possibly Mike and them doing the posters, but Kim had said yesterday that they were out sick... but they'd never done anything like this, to someone that wasn't hurting them. And the whole band hall...
"They said," Yvonne repeated, "that they were calling the cops. This is like BEYOND vandalism, I mean, what I heard was that it was enTIREly trashed."
"My God," Julia said again, trying to think who could have done such a thing. "Why?"
Yvonne shrugged helplessly. "Maybe somebody got pissed off-"
"Destroying the band hall is NOT just 'pissed off'," Julia interrupted.
"People are getting mean," Yvonne shrugged again, like that was the answer, and combed nervously through her hair with the fingernails she hadn't had before Homecoming. Julia noticed that the gesture looked ragged and nervous, the way she did it, like her mind was in the process of disintegrating, and watched carefully for a few moments, trying to figure out what made it look like something a mental patient would do. She continued, "I heard someone, Donna Sadler, got robbed in one of the bathrooms yesterday, just right in her FACE, like they didn't even CARE if they got-"
"Donna Sadler?" She was one of the 'stars' of drama, who competed for the attractive female lead roles. "Do they know who did it?"
Yvonne just shook her head, then leaned closer. "But, I mean, what if they're like doing this to everyone who's, you know, not popular, or 'weird' in some way? Like Drama? You know how she pisses some people off-"
"I piss some people off," Julia countered, though Donna could be a severe pain in the ass sometimes; she apparently enjoyed drama whether it was in a script or totally improvised on unsuspecting people around her. "That doesn't mean-"
"I mean, what if she pissed someone off," Yvonne countered, "and they decided to get back at her by wrecking the theater?"
"But it's locked up-"
"So's band."
"Oh SHIT..." There were thousands of dollars invested in their drama department, which had all been painfully acquired over the years through the usual pitiful (and painful) fundraisers and ticket sales. And there were things like paint stored there too, which were not only expensive but could be easily, even trivially, used to ruin everything else.
"What?"
"The memo, the one you sent-"
"I did NOT send anything like that!" Paul fumed. "Where did-"
"Teacher mailboxes, like usual," Gregory Kazunas said carefully. "Uh, I didn't save mine-"
"I need to see this," Paul stated as he got up. Forging memos under my name is just too much! And they'd already done the morning announcements, which he hadn't been able to hear because Arlene Raleigh was raking him over the coals about the newest crop of posters and the calls the school board and the school had been receiving about the problems here... many of them from band parents, and that had been BEFORE this morning's outrage.
"Paul!" He looked, and Miranda Wells was stomping in, obviously angry as hell, and he didn't need to guess why.
Teddy Felton (he was trying to change 'Teddy' to 'Ted' but it wasn't working yet, not even on himself) was hustling to make it to his first class, resigned by now to the fact that it was on the other side of the building and upstairs, but he wasn't in such a hurry that he missed this black dude he didn't know say loudly, "Be seein' you," to Jordan Tessier, one of the better looking and more annoying cheerleaders, and toss her a casual salute as he passed by.
And he didn't miss the look of poisonous hate she gave him, or the step she took after him, or the way some guy that was with her pulled at her arm and stopped her.
Man, I gotta try that, next time I see her, he thought with glee.
"Oooh it's Dyke and Dork!" Carrie announced to the hallway crowd, pointing at Kelly and James.
"Eat shit and die, bitch," Kelly snapped, but it was lost under the laughter Carrie got. "C'mon," she said to James.
"I am so sick of this place," James mentioned to her a few steps later.
"You'n'me both," Kelly agreed. It's not the place, really... it's the people.
"Do you know why they canceled the pep rally?" Linda Wilton asked Debbie as they moved towards their first class. Debbie was avoiding Monica, because she looked very upset, and probably wouldn't be able to listen to anything, although Linda had brought up a nice tidbit.
"I think it had something to do with the cheerleaders being suspended," Debbie lied. She'd suggested the cancellation memo to Dan a day or two ago, and apparently he'd done it last night, when he'd put up the posters. But who with? They said they couldn't do it without at least five people, and Dan and Allen are the only ones who aren't out sick... She remembered she was talking to Linda, and added, "You know, they got suspended because they've all been arrested, most of 'em twice."
"What?!"
"You hadn't heard?" Debbie was honestly surprised; usually Linda was better connected. "For real; they got suspended because they attacked some kid last Thursday, which is why they weren't in Homecoming-"
"Yeah I knew that part-"
"Well, they got busted AGAIN, at a party one of 'em had Homecoming night. Underage drinking, plus I think one of 'em assaulted a cop."
"You're shitting me!"
"Honest to God," Debbie swore, drawing an 'X' over her chest with a finger. "I dunno if they got anything else yet, but they were in jail at the beginning of the week."
"I'd like to get some restraining orders out on the cheerleaders," Sarah explained. "One of them, and their coach, came over here and almost... caused an very unpleasant incident," she stated delicately. "I'd like to have some additional legal, um, incentive for them to stay away from my son."
"I don't think we could get one for school," Mr. Groton cautioned.
"I KNOW that! Damnit! Sorry," she apologized, "it's just that we had a talk with him last night, and he's determined to go back. And I'm worried about him."
"Of course, Miz Tucker; I would be too," Mr. Groton agreed.
"Is there any way you could get some sort of temporary order that applied off the school grounds?" Sarah asked.
"Ooooh, look at the dykes!"
Kelly looked over, annoyed, and saw some girl snickering into her hands. She recognized the face as one she saw in a group of girls that included Carrie Salisbury and some other bitches, though she didn't know the name.
"What is dyke?" Sally Shu asked.
"Uh..." The second burst of giggles made her angry, but she kept it down, because it was more important to tell Sally what was going on, than it was to give the bitches the satisfaction of noticing them.
Debbie found herself glancing over her shoulder at the back of the restroom door after she went in, looking for posters. This one was clear. I don't know why it bugs me, she thought to herself, but it really does, knowing that one of them was in here last night. Probably George, too, she shuddered in mild revulsion. He'd do something like that. Him or Dan... She hadn't thought they'd do anything last night, but they had; people were talking about the new ones and comparing them to the old ones, making a big deal out of it like she'd wanted them to.
She shook her head and redirected her thoughts towards something useful, like what she was going to say when she saw the next person on her to-propagandize list, as she did her business, and she was concentrating on that so hard that when she'd finished she almost didn't remember to check her hair and makeup in the mirror - a pause and a quick sideways glance told her everything was fine - before leaving. Never enough time in betw-
"The HELL?!" she burst out, because there was a poster on the door in front of her. I KNOW it wasn't here when I came in! She looked around, but of course the only girl visible was Fay Davidson, standing at the mirror like she had been when Debbie came out of her stall, and now looking dully back at Debbie like, 'What's YOUR problem?'
She forced herself to grab the door, pull it open, and walk out; but she couldn't help staring at the poster, which was an obvious copy of the Monday poster, of the battered woman. Is that asshole doing them on his-
But he COULDN'T have stuck it in there when I was in there! she re-realized. Oh man, that means someone ELSE is doing them!
"So I want you all to be careful," Mr. Kazunas summed up, before turning to the weekend schedule and who was going to be assigned to cover and photograph what events.
Kathy wasn't happy that he'd felt it necessary to bring it up; it meant that he was worried about them, to the point that he would take up their always too-short class time with it. Nobody in their right mind would fuck with HER, of course; she'd seen that time and again. But she couldn't protect her friends all the time, either.
Looks like Tuck's parents maybe weren't as paranoid as we thought, she sighed.
"Police, Detective Stratton."
"Detective, this is Bill Tucker, father of Eugene Tucker. I need to ask a favor of you... and, uh, to ask about getting Eugene's laptop back."
"Oh yeah, lemme transfer you down-"
"I need to talk to you too," Bill interrupted hastily before he could get transferred. He'd spent ten minutes getting this far; he didn't want to miss the chance.
Greg Kazunas had a few minutes in between classes, just like the kids, and so it was time to get his third cup of coffee. He'd zipped into the first floor teacher's lounge, which was near the administration area, and found that the pot was half full. Better than half empty, he grinned to himself.
"This isn't just kids doing this," Arlene Raleigh complained as she waved a sheet of paper in the air at Paul Dobson. It looked like it could be another one of the posters that had been appearing. Yeah, that'd make her mad, alright, he nodded to himself as he turned back to his cup and stirred creamer into it. Everyone knew she was here to 'Do Something, Anything' to suppress what had been going on, and to find blame in case the school board needed a sacrifice to give to parents and the media. She continued, "This is far too sophisticated for high schoolers."
"Are you suggesting it's the teachers or staff?" Paul Dobson asked in amazement.
Holy Moses! DOES she think it's one of us doing it? He stared at the wall but pointed his ear at Mrs. Raleigh, waiting to hear her reply.
"I think we should discuss this someplace private," she snapped, and tapped off towards Dobson's office.
IS it one of us?
A few seconds later, he realized, Whether it is or not, if SHE thinks so, then we are gonna get SCREWED. He had a key to the main building, because he had the newspaper classes and therefore had to make sure that the school papers were distributed before the main building opened in the mornings, among tons of other reasons. And he wasn't the only one who had one officially; and who knew who had them unofficially? They were one of those things that teachers and staff tried to get because they were handy to have occasionally.
"I know, it's completely awful," Debbie assured Monica Kutch, who was still weepingly upset over this morning's revelation in the band hall.
"I don't even know if I want to go out tonight," Monica bubbled, "and it was like supposed to be our four month anniversary and, and..."
"I know, but the best thing you can do is let it go, Monica. Didn't you say they called the cops and everything?" Monica nodded. "So, they're good, when they have some evidence or something, y'know, like physical evidence not just someone's word against someone else's. So they'll probably catch who did it." Debbie didn't think that likely; she'd been exceedingly careful. "Anyway, don't let this ruin your relationship with Tony, right? I mean, you two need to go out and have fun and stuff, forget about here. It's the weekend!" she said brightly, and got a vague smile. "Listen, I know this sounds kind of mercenary, but you were going out someplace nice tonight, right?" Monica nodded. "Let me come over to your house for a while today..." Damn, Tuck's mom wants to talk to me around six... "Right after school, say, and then I can show you the one-hour spa regimen I picked up and developed. It'll REALLY help you feel better; I mean, I do it before big dates, and it makes me feel TONS better, like it recharges my feminine batteries," she said as a humorous hook that would hopefully stick in Monica's mind longer than two seconds.
"Really? You're not busy?"
"Not that busy... I was kind of clearing my schedule anyway, after homecoming... I could use a weekend off, you know?"
"Yeah, you look kind of... Anyway, yeah, that would be cool," Monica said, changing the subject, to Debbie's annoyance; she wanted to know what Monica thought she looked like. Debbie kept the smile on her face, though, and waved at Monica before she went to her class.
Good. I can slip in a few words about next week, and she'll think it was all her idea if I do it right. The 'nice' thing about some of the spa stuff was that it made people really relaxed, which was to say not very critical or discerning.
"She just about fucking exploded, man," Teddy explained with glee to his homeboys Ron McDaniel and John Barr, as they walked along in the halls between classes. "I dunno what it means, but-"
"What was it again?" Ron asked, and Teddy demonstrated again.
"'Be seein' you,' and I swear she would've jumped him right there except a friend of hers held her back."
"Man," John chortled, "that's funny as SHIT, man! I gotta try it."
"Do it on all of 'em," Teddy said as he had a brilliant flash of genius. "Maybe it'll get back to her."
"Dudedudedudedude, one of 'em's coming," Ron hissed, and stopped walking.
Teddy kept going, and as he passed the uniform he saluted and said, imitating the cheerful voice the black guy had used, "Be seein' you!" And kept walking, though he couldn't help tensing when he couldn't see her any more; she was only a girl, but she could probably hurt him if he wasn't prepared for it.
She didn't jump him, and so he kept going to class, wondering, but when Ron caught up to him at the door he was grinning like he'd just gotten laid. "Dude, I thought she was going to SHIT!" he rasped.
"Did you ask them, about riot?" Sally asked Pam, and Valerie Faciszewski startled and looked at Pam too.
"Uh, no... Things were kind of confused last night," she mumbled, cursing herself. To make a complete understatement.
Adam Stratton had found the geek kid's dad to be just as much of a geek, but a better conversationalist. Well, that's to be expected, he told himself. This one's not in the hospital, doesn't have a punctured lung, and doesn't have pneumonia either. No matter how gay and therefore witty the kid was normally, in the hospital with all those problems he was going to look like he had, a pathetic and mostly silent lump of misery.
"Yeah, they got a shop in Lexington," he said as Mr. Tucker perused the catalog. "I haven't been there, but I've heard it's pretty good."
"Wanna go?" Mr. Tucker asked as he looked up.
"Uh? No, I got stuff to do, Mister Tucker. Thanks for the offer, though," Stratton said on autopilot. He also didn't have the money, and places like that tended to somehow make his credit cards scream.
"Dude, it is like getting majorly weird over there, like dueling poster wars or something," Keith Tessier said, as Brian nodded. "They've got more of 'em going up every day, an' all different an' stuff."
"Yeah, I heard it's getting weird over there," Brian added. "I dunno, man, I'm glad I'm here and not there. It's getting like major league there, for some reason. Guess either someone got fed up finally, or there's more than one group and they're spiraling with each other."
"Spiraling?"
"Yeah, like feedback?" That didn't get through. "Like the noise on a PA system if you have the mike too close to the speakers. Or talking back to your mom the same way she talks to you." That, Keith got.
"Tucker? Laptop!"
His son's eyes opened, and took several seconds more to focus, but then they sharpened on the case Bill was holding in his hand.
"Be seein' you!" Molly North said loudly and did something with her hand; Debbie looked over to see who she was talking to, and saw Georgina Johnson looking very startled through a gap in the crowds, as a small burst of laughter washed over them from her direction. "I don't know what it is, but I saw some girl do that to her yesterday, and man it is like driving her crazy," she smirked in deep satisfaction.
"Wow," Debbie said admiringly, wondering what the hell it was, and who had started it. I gotta try that... She had the feeling she'd seen it before, and recently too.
Kelly was usually behind Ashlee getting into computer class, so she could see the guy salute her and say something, and the utterly stunned look on Ashlee's face as the guy walked off grinning, where Ashlee couldn't see it.
Hmm. Then she remembered something about Tuck, how that was something they should do to piss the cheerleaders off, and make them paranoid. But the guy was NOT one of the ones that she associated with Tuck; the only place she'd ever seen him before was right in front of this classroom as she rushed to her own fourth period class.
But he'd done it anyway, and it seemed to be working.
I have to do that when I leave today, she decided.
"So anyway," Krystal explained, "apparently all you have to do is get your parents to agree, and then you are OUTTA here!"
"Yeah, but if you do," Staci White said, "then you don't get a diploma, like."
"Maybe you could come back the last year or something, or- You know, I don't think it makes a difference in college, I mean if you get a good ACT or SAT and stuff. And you know those essays? Maybe you could mention it in there, like how you went homeschool because you were tired of the public school shit." That sounded plausible. "Yeah, I mean, they eat stuff like that up; like you WANT an education, so much that you dropped OUT of public school to get it, because, y'know, you were scared of the violence here. I heard that this was like in the top ten school districts for violence anyway, this year."
"For real?" Linnea Stover gasped; Staci just looked stupidly confused. "No way, it's not that bad!"
Krystal asked them, "Did you hear what happened to Donna Sadler yesterday?"
Jody hadn't dared mention what she'd tried to do last night after everyone else had left practice, but it didn't seem like Shannon cared, except she kept looking worried and asking how Jody was feeling. None of the other cheerleaders even did that much, though she wished Shannon would stop. She'd lied, of course; it wasn't worth telling her, because she'd just tell Jody to feel different, or start cursing Tucker or his friends again, like all the rest of them kept doing. Shannon had been enraged that two of them hit her in the halls today, and they'd been rhapsodizing on that too. Lunch had been torture, even worse than classes.
"Be seein' you," some girl chirped at them suddenly as she was walking past their table.
"What the fuck is going on with that?" Shannon hissed, enraged. "Everybody's fuckin' started doin' that today!" she added as she turned to Jody.
Jody looked like she was having an instant freakout; she'd turned so white her face - with almost no makeup - was almost greenish, and her whole body was shaking.
"Jody?!"
"Ahhhh," Jody almost screamed, except it was so quiet Shannon could barely hear it over the crowd noise. It was still enough to give her instant goose pimples.
"Jody?! What the hell-"
Jody started to sway back a little like she was going to faint, and Shannon reached out desperately to keep her from falling, but Jody fended her hand off. "I'm fine... I just felt a little sick. I... I think I need to go to the bathroom," she said as she got up.
"Oh forGET her," Jennifer snorted. "She always has to make such a big deal out of everything."
You should talk! Shannon gaped, unable to believe that JENNIFER of all people would say something like that about someone ELSE.
"She's been screwed up all week," Kathleen contributed.
"Shit, who hasn't," Shannon sighed. "Those little shits..."
"So anyway, I was- What the hell?" Ginger asked as something weird caught her attention. She looked, and it was Jody Martin, trying to act nonchalant, but she looked BAD, with her face all pale and still, like she was trying to keep from vomiting just a few more seconds.
It was the expression on her face, though, that looked the worst. Ginger couldn't say what it was, exactly, but she'd seen something similar on a girl she'd known, in junior high, who had-
"She looks like Mary Valencia, that last day," Reina commented, sounding shaky too.
"That's who I was thinking of..." She looked around, and it didn't seem like anyone else was really looking at Jody; they were all looking at a group of guys who were- "Whoa! Fight!"
"Yeah, okay, so, later," Debbie said to Geneva as she went to sit with her usual friends in the cafeteria. Or somebody.
As she looked around for a moment, to check things out, she saw Julia across the lunchroom, looking upset. Huh, wonder what that's about? Well, everyone's supposed to be upset... Wonder if it's safe to talk to her? She wondered for a few moments, and decided it was.
"Yes, I need to pick up the pending homework for Eugene Tucker?" Sabrina told the secretary. Man, no wonder he goes by 'Tucker'... "His mother was supposed to call earlier today and set it up so I could pick it up?" She probably wouldn't get all of today's homework, but he'd been out more than a week, so there ought to be plenty of it piled up for him.
"Um, I'll ask," the secretary said, like she had no idea what Sabrina was talking about, and picked up her phone.
Moron.
"Who do you think destroyed the band hall?" Amanda asked.
"'Manda, I do NOT want to talk about that right now," Sabrina said without looking at her.
"Okay, umm... What are you doing this weekend?" she asked instead.
Sabrina shrugged, watching the secretary. "Yes, there's a student here, she's asking about picking up some homework? Yeah, right here... Well, I dunno, she said it was for someone else?" Come on, it's HOMEWORK. Don't you deal with that in a SCHOOL? Like, kind of regularly?
Dan sighed as he looked at their usual table; it was amazingly empty.
"Did, did you hear what happened to the band hall?" Kelly asked him cautiously as she sat down. He knew, though he usually wasn't that good with girlspeak, that what she really meant was something like, 'What the hell do WE do about it, since we saw who did it last night?'
"Yeah, I heard," Dan said, thinking. And wishing Mike was here. Or George. Or anyone else but him and Book. "And, uh..." They did have pay phones here, he remembered. "I don't think anyone told Mike or Tuck yet, though," he said as he got up.
"Hey." Julia turned, and saw Debbie looking concerned. "What's up?"
"I'm scared as hell," Julia blurted at her, then felt a little astonished at herself. She noticed Mary Gutierrez, with whom she'd been talking, look at her strangely too.
"Why?" Debbie asked, like she really wanted to know.
"Well..." She shifted over, making some room, and Debbie sat down next to her. "Someone really fucked up the band hall today; you know that already." Debbie nodded. "Today's Friday; are they going to do the same thing to the theater this weekend, when they have more time? We could lose a lot, and we don't get the same kind of money the band does, for things like costumes and scenery and stuff."
"It could absolutely ruin everything," Mary contributed.
"I can see why you're worried," Debbie seemed to agree. "I mean, I don't know what to tell you... I do know the cops were looking at the band thing; I heard they had a forensic unit out, looking for evidence and stuff, so they MIGHT find whoever did it."
"Yeah, maybe," Mary said hopefully.
"We can't count on it, Mary," Julia reminded her. "Anyway, we were thinking, you know... they said that they started doing increased police patrols last night, but you can see what kind of good THAT did."
"Did they even do anything? How could we tell?" Mary asked rhetorically. "Maybe they just SAID they would..."
"Anyway," Julia continued, "we were thinking about setting up some kind of guarding arrangement, like having people watch the theater all the weekend... but I'm not sure it's possible, even if they'd let us do it."
"We'd have to have someone here all weekend, and probably school nights too," Mary explained. "They'd have to be awake all the time, which means it probably can't be a student; and I can't think of anyone who doesn't work or anything like that."
"You could get a security guard," Debbie suggested, but then her face fell. "They're pretty expensive, though; like fifteen an hour or more, every hour they're here-"
"Fifteen? There is no WAY," Mary asserted, and Julia nodded. "That's... that's..." She turned away and dug in her bag, finally pulling out a small calculator.
"We're not doing that great financially anyway," Julia told Debbie as Mary calculated. "Do you think we could get the district to hire a security guard for the school?"
"Same deal, except that'd come out of the school budget; and they always say they don't have enough money," Debbie said, then shrugged. "I mean, it makes sense, but it'd take 'em weeks to get around to doing anyth-"
"EIGHTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS?!" Mary gasped. "A WEEK?!"
"The hell? Give me that," Julia demanded as she snatched the calculator out of Mary's hand.
"That sounds about right," Debbie agreed mournfully.
Julia found her head shaking slowly. "There is no way..."
"I don't even know," Bridgette moaned. "Is it even enough?" The tall girl, Cory, twitched at that.
"Well, what the hell else can we do?" Sabrina asked around their group.
"Come on, let's go see if our favorite geeks have any clever ideas," Kathy said as she stood up, inducing several of the other girls to stand up too before they quite knew what they were doing.
"What good can they do?" Bridgette asked.
Sabrina stood up too at that point, saying, "I dunno, but they're the ones to think about it. C'mon."
Pam sighed as she got up too, and then they were all getting up with their lunches and stuff and walking over to the geek table.
"What good can they do?" Bridgette asked Anne-Marie, who she had an English class with.
"They're the ones that came up with the idea of walking around in pairs, y'know. Hey, how come you weren't there for that?"
"I had to practice," Bridgette claimed. She hadn't felt comfortable going over to some guy's house for what seemed too much like a party on a weekday night during school. Or asking her parents to let her do it, even if she could have gotten a ride to and from. "Is THAT doing any good?"
"I dunno, but like I haven't had anything happen to ME, you know?" Anne-Marie shrugged. "So, maybe..."
"I need to buy some body armor for my sons, and myself," Bill said to the sales droid that had latched on to them. He'd decided to get a set or shirt for himself, to experiment with. The cost had been a lot less than he'd expected, according to the catalog.
"That'll be over there, sir," the droid pointed obsequiously.
"Right, thanks," Bill said. He was intrigued by some of the displays, but he needed to get his son and Mike in and out of here as soon as possible, so he restrained himself. Besides, it's only an hour and a half drive...
Each way. Darnit.
Well, this time it was definitely worth it.
Jody sighed, and groped for the toilet paper. The way things are going, they'll probably notice me missing and call the cops, her mind told her, but she was too tired to care. Fuck it. She wiped her face, noting absently that the makeup she'd bothered putting on that morning was now smeared all over the toilet paper. Fuck this too.
I really don't feel well, she decided. I think I'll try to go home. She HAD thrown up, or tried to, after lunch, which was part of the reason she was in the bathroom instead of her fifth period class. The other reason was that she'd hurt so bad, she'd spent ten minutes crying and trying to keep it quiet.
"Oooh, look, it's the dyke," someone smirked, and when Kelly looked over, extremely annoyed - they were talking about SERIOUS stuff; she didn't need to be interrupted with stupid insults - it was Natalie Lemoyne sneering at her, with a gaggle of her stupid and nasty friends including Carrie Salisbury and the other girl from this morning, giggling in sadistic appreciation. Natalie's, "Is this the gay and lesbo student meeting?" caused several of them to burst out laughing.
That is so stupid, Kelly snarled as she turned and stood up. And I am so SICK of-
"Ooooh," Natalie cooed, "the lesbian's all mad about something. Whatsamatter, dyke, can't find a girl to go out with you?"
"I can find girls," Kelly snarled absently as she kept moving towards Natalie, wanting nothing more than to pound her. "They keep following me around!"
Natalie was starting to back up, but she stopped for some reason, and Kelly was about to jump her when someone grabbed her belt and Dan said, "Whoa, don't hit 'em first!" really urgently into her ear.
Yeah, Kelly agreed reluctantly, but then was shocked when for no reason, the entire gaggle of bitches started laughing insanely. What?
"She can find girls!" one of them shrieked at the top of her lungs and her vocal range; the shrill scream made Kelly wince.
Fuck! She realized what she'd said.
"Blood in the water," Tucker said in her memory. "Hit 'em."
"What!" Kelly challenged, yelling now to get over the noise the gaggle was making. They quieted in surprise, and Kelly repeated, not quite as loudly, "What, you just figured out I'm a lesbian? You've been calling me that all year, I don't know why it's such a surprise now."
That, oddly enough, shut them all up completely, and froze them too.
"But you keep saying that like it's a bad thing," Kelly said loudly. "Like someone should be ASHAMED of it or something. When it's pretty damned obvious that YOU'RE the one that's shameful and disgusting, Natalie."
Natlaie gasped, "Shut your fucking-"
"So, I AM a lesbian," Kelly told her, staring directly at her. "But I'm not ashamed of ME, I'm ashamed of YOU. You're an embarrassment. And you know what else? You're the kind of girl that makes me want to date guys. You give women a bad name. So go sit in your little homophobic closet and finger each other while lying about what you're doing, and stay the FUCK AWAY FROM ME." As she said the last, she took a step forward on each syllable, and had the satisfaction of seeing all of them bleat and run away from her - literally, in two cases; one of them tripped and screamed as she fell.
Stupid bitches, she thought, feeling deeply satisfied.
"Subtle way to come out of the closet," Kathy said in a dry voice, making Kelly spin around. Kathy was standing in the middle of the group, mostly guys but including some of the older girls, that had moved up close to her. "What do you do for an encore?"
She- Tuck would- "Ask you out," she said, just as loud as she'd been talking. Tuck would have said something like that.
Kathy gaped for a few seconds - they all did - then tossed her head back and started to make the most incredible noises. Kelly THOUGHT she was amused, because it didn't sound anything like crying or a spazz or anything, but she'd never heard anything like THIS.
It was kind of funny, actually.
As Kelly and all the rest of them started to laugh too, making an island of humor in the sea of astonishment, Debbie found herself chuckling helplessly - Kathy laughing could do that sometimes to her, and it HAD been funny - but trying to think of what THIS was going to do to the dynamic balance of school and all the people. It sure as HELL hadn't been something she'd planned for!
"Well, that was interesting," Julia commented blandly, and Debbie found herself laughing out loud at that, as much as at Kathy.
"Somehow, when I thought of the first McAllen student to come out as homosexual," Mary said dramatically (of course), "this was NOT what I had envisioned." That sounded so prissy that several of the people at the table laughed too.
Bridgette was horrified at what she thought she'd just heard, and turned to look at the other girls to see if they were looking the same way she felt. But they all looked more confused than anything else, and they were looking around at each other the same way she was.
"No no no," Jill contested as she waved her arms and got closer to Kelly, though she was keeping a watch on everyone in her field of vision too, just in case. "Date me instead! She works in FAST FOOD," Jill said contemptuously. "I am in the voc-tech program and I'm going to actually have a REAL job when I get out of here."
"AAAAHHHAHAHAahhahahahah!" Kathy hooted.
"That explains the plaid shirts," Sabrina complained sourly, like someone had just confirmed something horrible she'd suspected for a long time. That made Kathy trip, which made a lot of people dodge very quickly before she hit the floor, helpless in her mirth. "YOU are a disgrace," she said snottily to Kathy, though the partial smile said she didn't actually mean it.
"That," Pam contributed, loudly to get herself heard over Kathy, "is SO avant-garde," which made Jill snort. "You need to get some new clothes and a makeover and a hair-"
"Why?" Kelly interrupted her with the plaintive question. "I thought if I was a lesbian I didn't have to do any of that!" That made a couple of the freshmen girls erupt.
"No," Jill stated, "it's clearly stated in the 'American Girls Handbook' that-"
"Oh, that's the OLD edition, Jill!" Sabrina took it and ran with it. "Get WITH. Speaking of which, YOU ought to get a makeover-"
"No!" Jill shot out instinctively. "If I have to get a makeover and start doing all that shit, I'm a lesbian too!"
"You'd have to stop dating GUYS!" Amanda contributed, a bit hesitantly.
"Oh NO!" Jill gasped fakely.
"AHHHHHHhahahahah!" Kathy gasped in fresh agony on the floor.
"But she doesn't have a mullet," Kim threw in, motioning with her hands around her own hair. "Are you SURE you're a lesbian?" she asked Kelly. Without waiting for an answer, she said to Sabrina, "Maybe she's just borrowing her dad's stuff."
Sabrina just smiled and shook her head, spreading her hands, and Jill looked around at the people close to her, instead of everyone else in the cafeteria. The fresh-girls around them were mostly laughing too, or at least having giggle fits, and half of the fresh-boys were staring around at the girls and the other half were snickering or laughing too.
"So," Matt asked almost casually, as he moved closer to Kelly. "Can you tell ME how to pick up some chicks?"
That was when Jill lost it.
Kelly found herself laughing instead of answering Matt's question, when some cafeteria monitor-teacher finally got over their own paralysis or something, and came up to them and demanded that they be quiet and sit back down, which seemed blatantly unfair to Kelly since they were hardly the first kids this year to wander around and make noise during lunch, but Jill dragged Kathy a foot or two before helping her to her feet, and then they were all sort of moving back towards the gamers' usual table. Even the freshmen girls that associated with Tuck's female friends. Since the table was rarely full - the games could get loud, and nobody wanted to sit with them anyway - they all found places and sat back down. Kathy was still having convulsions every time she looked up, though.
Kelly ended up sitting next to James, who looked like a very sad puppy she'd seen in a picture once. "You weren't kidding, were you?" he asked like he was sure of the answer.
"No," Kelly sighed, half smiling. It almost felt good to have it out in the open, though she was trying not to think about how this would cause her problems later. I don't think I'm bleeding in the water any more.
"One slip
and down the hole we fall.
Seems to take
no time at all."
-- "One Slip" Pink Floyd
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- @>--,--'----- Ellen Hayes o===[-------- __ vicki .sig +
-=[1990]=- / virus 12.2 + http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes PGP key: EFC9 5D55 (1996) +
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