A Fate Totally Worse Than Death (2 page)

She glanced at the clock. It was just 8:05. Her parents had gone to a seven-
o'clock
movie. She had plenty of time. Then again, they sometimes left movies in the middle, if the teenagers sitting around them belched a lot, or talked, or vomited. She checked the curtains, removed the last of her clothes, pressed
RECORD
, cleared her throat, then jumped at the sound of the phone. It was the one in her room. The call was for her. Throwing on her robe, she shut off the camera, ran down the long hall, and grabbed the receiver.

“Hi, Jonathan,” Tiffany purred. “Guess what?” She gave him a moment. “I'm naked.”

“Try again,” spoke a female voice. “It's Brooke.”

Tiffany shut her eyes. “Damn!” She'd been waiting for eons to use that line. She flopped onto her bed. “What do
you
want?”

“Thanks a
lot.”

“I'm sorry,
okay?”

“And please don't tell me you're back together with Jonathan—again.”

“This time it's forever,” stated Tiffany. She heard a slurping sound from Brooke's end.

“Just like the other eighty-nine times.”

“Eighty-seven times. But remember, that's spread out over four years and three months.”

“Why don't you two go to the United Nations and have
them
work on it?”

“The war is over?” she stated, ending her declarative sentence with an interrogative rise. “We made up this morning? Before second period? Then we had this quiet, romantic lunch? In the cafeteria? Which was totally empty because there's no pizza on Tuesdays? We decided we're going to get married the day after graduation? We're naming our first child Kent if it's a boy? And Courtney Marie if it's a girl?” Tiffany heard Brooke chewing noisily. “Are you eating or something?”

“Just a bowl of cereal.”

Tiffany reached for the latest issue of
Nymphette
and began flipping through it backwards. “The sound is gross, if you're interested.”

“Not really,” spluttered Brooke.

“Plus, you'll, like, get electrocuted if you drop the receiver into the bowl.”

“I'm talking on the speaker phone.”

“My luck,” Tiffany sighed.

“Thanks a
lot.”

“I'm sorry,
okay?”
Tiffany fell silent, reading an article on oil-free, hydrating, matte makeups. “So why did you call, besides to pour Niagara Falls into my ear?”

“To
let you know that your
fiancé
has been falling all over the new exchange student. If you're
interested
.”

Tiffany stiffened. She heard an avalanche of cereal falling into Brooke's bowl.

“She's from Norway,” Brooke went on. “Tall, thin—”

“I've seen her,” snapped Tiffany. “Hair blonder than blond. And her skin's so pale you can practically see through it. And her eyes. They're too blue. They give me the creeps. She looked at me in the hall today and I swear I got the chills.”

A fresh round of crunching came from Brooke's end. “Danielle said to put a watch on her. She seems to be going after the Hun guys. I saw Jonathan hand her a candy bar today, flashing his number-one smile.”

Tiffany tightened her grip on the phone's receiver in place of Jonathan's throat. “The jerk.”

“Is that any way to talk about the father of little Courtney Marie?”

“Shut up.”

“I'm sorry,
okay?”
mocked Brooke.

Tiffany hung up. She made up her mind to confront Jonathan tomorrow at lunch. Emerging from her dreams of vengeance, she heard voices, listened, then realized that while she'd been talking her parents had returned and quietly climbed the stairs to their bedroom.

She prayed they'd forgotten how to use the video camera.

CHAPTER
3

………“No trouble at all,” Jonathan insisted. “It would be a pleasure. Believe me.” He guided Helga down the hall, which was nearly empty at lunchtime. “Why should you put up with a locker that doesn't open half the time? And an old, beat-up one at that, way down on the bottom row, where you have to squat down or break your back.” He cast a trained eye at her long, slender legs, as if measuring her for a better fit. “Especially when I know of a vacancy.” He plucked an index card from his pocket, studied it, then smiled. “In a
much
better neighborhood.” He recognized how much he sounded like his real-estate mother. “Close to the bathrooms. And convenient to both the old and new wings.”

“You're quite kind to do this for me,” said Helga.

Her accent tantalized him as much as the lithe body moving beneath her airy, white dress. He looked at her face, framed by blond braids, and realized that she wore no makeup. This honesty in body and spirit, so rare among the other girls, drew him as much as her striking looks. She was a tall glass of cold spring water after years of Tiffany and Diet Coke. Gazing at her silver-blue eyes, he felt he'd do anything for her. Making a start, he pulled up at locker 422 and deftly unlocked it.

“I don't know if you had any dessert with your lunch.” With a flourish, he opened the door, releasing a bakery's rich fragrance. The plastic shelves he'd installed within held seven slices of chocolate cake.

“Oh, my!” Helga laughed.

Jonathan beamed. This morning, for Community Service, he'd driven the Meals on Wheels van, and had taken the cake from each of the lunches. Pretending puzzlement to his elderly patrons as to why there was no dessert, he'd diverted two pieces into his mouth and the rest to this locker for resale to students. He offered Helga a plate, then one of the plastic forks he'd pocketed in the school cafeteria.

“I ate quite enough at lunch,” said Helga.

Jonathan gave her the smile he held in reserve for preferred customers.

“But perhaps just a bit of cake would not hurt,” she relented.

His heart rejoiced. Though he was slightly pudgy and shorter than she was, with every bite she'd be reminded that he had other advantages.

They
strolled slowly down the hall. Halting at locker 704, Jonathan opened it up to reveal a neatly ordered storehouse filled with pencils, paper, and other items bought at wholesale prices from his father's stationery shop, which he sold more cheaply than the outmatched, bankruptcy-bound student store. Moving on, he paused at locker 932, then thought better of showing Helga his stock of
Playboy, Playgirl
, condoms, and other items he'd marked up quite heavily for enduring checkers' questions and pharmacists' stares to acquire them.

They turned a corner and entered the high school's new wing. “Norway …” said Jonathan. He struggled to frame an intelligent question. “I guess you get to do a lot of swimming in the Indian Ocean.”

Helga chuckled politely. “Not really. Norway is in northern Europe, next to Sweden.”

Jonathan chuckled along with her, making a note to refuse store credit to the lunkheaded jock he'd overheard talking in the showers about Helga, who'd said that Norway was an island off India. “Right. Anyway, I'd like to see it someday.”

She finished her cake. “And I have always wanted to see your Yellowstone Park.”

He nodded in approval. “In Florida.”

Helga's blond eyebrows curled. “Isn't it situated in Wyoming? In the Rocky Mountains?”

“I
meant
Wyoming.” Jonathan was perspiring. “Someday I'll make it there, too, hopefully.”

Helga cocked her head. “Do you mean that you hope to visit Yellowstone Park?”

Jonathan looked perplexed. “Yeah.”

“Isn't the word ‘hopefully' an adverb?”

Jonathan feared to hazard an answer.

“Doesn't it mean ‘full of hope?'” she continued, genuinely seeking his help.

Jonathan nodded quickly, hoping to put the topic behind them.

“So what you have said is ‘I will visit Yellowstone Park full of hope.'” She gave a little laugh. “Or is that perhaps what you meant to say?”

Jonathan searched for safe ground but could find none. “I guess, like, it's an adverb,” he said vaguely.

“And please, what does ‘like' mean when it's used as you did?”

Jonathan swallowed.

“‘I guess,
like
, it's an adverb,'” Helga refreshed his memory.

“It's like….” Jonathan spoke the words with an amnesiac's uncertainty. “It's
sort
of….” He sighed. “Actually…it doesn't mean anything,” he blurted out with sudden comprehension.

Helga's perfect teeth shone in a smile of revelation. “Thank you, Jonathan. I
now
understand.”

He exhaled. His harrowing journey through his own country's language and geography had ended. Stopping before locker 1228, he consulted his card and unlocked it.

“Top row. Only five years old. Pristine condition. Unused all last year.” Due to declining enrollment, the school boasted numerous unused lockers, their locations and combinations known, it seemed, to no one but Jonathan. With the help of a locksmithing book, he'd learned to change their combinations, which he did with each new tenant in order to protect his monopoly of access. The rent he charged—ten cents a day—to those who wanted two lockers or who wished to trade for a better locale added up when multiplied by the many properties he managed.

“It will be quite nice, I'm certain,” said Helga. “Thank you very much, Jonathan.”

He gave her a slip with the combination. He'd decided not to charge her and wondered if telling her this would increase her gratitude or bring on a troubling inquiry into his locker empire. “I think you'll be happy here,” he said instead. “Mine's just over there.”

“How convenient.”

The voice wasn't Helga's. Jonathan turned around and found Tiffany planted behind him.

“Hi, Tiff,” he stammered.

“Hi,
Turdface
,” she shot back.

Jonathan alertly discerned her mood. He prayed that Helga wouldn't ask to have the epithet explained.

“Let's show our foreign guest our excellent manners,” he muttered under his breath to Tiffany. Staging an instructive, formal introduction, he pointed a hand at each of the girls. “Tiffany, this is Helga Sandstad. Helga is an exchange student.”

Smiling nervously, Helga held out her hand.

Tiffany ignored it. “And
this,”
she sneered, “is Jonathan Rice.” She backed him into the lockers, bringing her head an inch closer to his with each word. “Jonathan is a lying, despicable, wheeling-dealing, womanizing, swamp-breathed, big-mouthed, small-brained worm! Who I've now broken up with for the eighty-eighth
and last
time and never want to see
again!
” She spit in his face by way of punctuation, spun around,
stormed
down the hall, then turned and aimed a finger at Helga. “But
you
stay away from him anyway!”

CHAPTER
4

………Danielle glanced at her tiny gold watch. “An entire
hour
of this?” she moaned. These Tuesday afternoons were worse than orthodontist visits. She gazed at the sleeping Mrs. Witt, then grabbed the television's remote control and tried it for the fourteenth time. The screen remained blank. She flung the remote on the bed, striking one of Mrs. Witt's popsicle-stick legs with a loud clack. The woman shifted in her sleep. Danielle looked disgustedly at the wall opposite the empty bed, where the room's other television perched, likewise broken. Tortured with boredom, she began to read idly through Mrs. Witt's mail, but found this cure worse than the cause. With a sigh, she opened her pack, pulled out
Hitchhiker from Hell
, and found her place.

She had to flee
.

Had to run
.

Fast
.

She scrambled through the trees and brambles. Whatever it was, it was coming closer. Its thick, gurgling growls shot pinpricks of fear into Stephanie
.

Lisa was already dead
.

And Scott
.

The creature's black beard was matted with their blood
.

Why had she taken the “scenic route” to the cabin instead of the freeway? Why hadn't she checked the gas tank first?

“Because she's a dork,” Danielle answered aloud. She closed the book, leaned back in her chair, and found her eyes aimed at Mrs. Witt's candy. Expecting to find the box empty by now, she reached to pull it off the shelf and was surprised by its weight. She lifted the lid—and exulted to find it was a new box, filled entirely with cherry truffles, her favorites. She popped one into her mouth, closed her eyes, then bit into its cherry heart, savoring the union of chocolate and cherry. In the midst of her ecstasy a knock sounded on the door, followed by a pause, then three more knocks.

She
licked her fingers. “I'll get there,” she said. She placed another candy on her tongue, got up with a groan, shuffled to the door, and admitted Brooke and Tiffany.

“You remembered the special knock?” asked Brooke.

“Call me Einstein,” answered Danielle. “Saves me the trouble of hiding things, like this box of
cherry truffles
.
”
Her guests' eyes lit. “Not that Brooke wouldn't have sniffed them out in five seconds.”

“Thanks a
lot,”
said Brooke.

“Sorry,”
Danielle replied, passing the box around. Tiffany sat in a chair. Brooke reclined on the room's empty bed. Wordlessly, the three chewed, sucked, swallowed, and licked.

“I love these,” Tiffany spoke at last, coming up for air. “Who answered our prayers?”

“Must be a God after all,” said Brooke.

“Then how do you explain
both
TVs in this room being broken?” posed Danielle.