Maddy and Charlotte hopped in the backseat behind him. Charlotte stared at Petula and remembered being in that passenger seat, playing “he loves me, he loves me not” as she pretended to slide under his arm. She laughed to herself about Petula being just as invisible to him now as she had been then, and if Charlotte hadn’t already choked to death on a gummy bear, she’d definitely be choking on irony now.
The slamming of the passenger-side door startled her, and she turned her attention to Damen once again as he jumped into the driver’s seat. He fiddled with the rearview mirror for a second, and Charlotte imagined he was looking right at her. She stared back at him, into those warm, caring eyes she’d never quite gotten over, even after all this time.
Gary led Pam, Prue, and Scarlet from Dead Ed back to the hospital in no time at all.
“Hey,” Gary called as the girls began to split off from him. “It’s this way.”
“I just need to check on something first,” Scarlet said, walking slowly toward their room.
As they got closer, Pam and Prue noticed Scarlet slowing down until she was practically stopped just a few feet before the doorway.
“What’s up?” Pam asked gently.
Scarlet didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure how to answer. There might be a big difference between what she was hoping to see and what she could reasonably expect.
First off, there was the little matter of her own body lying there. She’d seen goofy pictures of herself asleep, but the thought of watching herself breathe her last breaths was a bit much. And then there was Damen. He might still be all caught up in doting on Petula. She didn’t know how she would react if she walked in there and caught him mid-dote, and she’d feel guilty for being jealous of her dying sister.
“Now is not the time for cold feet,” Prue warned.
Pam and Prue walked in first, breaking the ice for Scarlet, who followed close behind.
No Damen. That was the first thing Scarlet noticed. She saw his things scattered around, but he was MIA. Home showering, maybe, she rationalized. Although she was a little hurt at having been abandoned, she was also a little relieved not to find him wringing his hands over Petula instead of her.
“Ugh,” Scarlet sighed as she walked over to her own limp form.
This was exactly what she was afraid of. She even looked pale to herself, more so than usual, and frail. The IV drip in her arm made her wince, and the heart monitor beeping irritated her like one of those “mosquito” dispersal sirens that supposedly only teens can hear. She could see the outline of her legs beneath the heavily starched white sheets, which clung to her knees and feet like some sort of poly/cotton shroud. It was odd and not much fun to have the experience of totally being able to see yourself as others see you.
Pam, Prue, and Gary, not wanting to intrude on Scarlet’s privacy, snuck behind Petula’s curtained side of the room to check on things. Scarlet was shocked back into reality by an audible gasp from her three friends.
“She’s gone!” Pam shouted from behind the curtain on the other side of the semi-private room.
“No!” Scarlet shrieked, a flood of emotion nearly drowning her. “She can’t be … dead!”
“No,” Prue clarified, grabbing Scarlet by the shoulders. “I mean she’s really gone.”
“As in not here,” Gary confirmed, pulling away Petula’s privacy drapes and revealing the empty bed, stuffed with towels and pillows.
“Where the hell can she be?” Prue spat.
“That’s one possibility,” Gary butted in sarcastically.
“This is bad news,” Pam advised. “Without her body, it doesn’t matter whether we find her soul or not.”
“What if they, you know, took her body,” Scarlet asked nervously, fishing for an answer she really didn’t want to hear.
“Who’s they?” Prue asked firmly, not wanting to say what was just then crossing all their minds. Did Scarlet mean the medical examiner or did she think that Charlotte may have taken her sister’s body for a more permanent spin with Maddy’s help? It wasn’t entirely clear to any of them which might be worse.
“Pam, you go down to the morgue and see if she’s there,” Prue ordered, choosing not to overdo the kidnapping scenario just yet.
“I’m not going down there!” Pam said sheepishly.
Just then Prue noticed a visible trace of Petula, her hospital gown lying crumpled on the floor. She started gathering clues. She noticed that Petula’s chart was still clipped to the bed. It hadn’t been closed out, which meant Petula hadn’t been discharged or died. Finally, she picked up her hair extensions on the night table. She showed Scarlet the evidence.
“Wait, they wouldn’t have left this stuff behind if she was gone,” Prue asked. “Would they?”
Scarlet walked over to Petula’s side of the room and inspected it. The area around her bed looked a lot like her bedroom after a series of pre-date quick changes. She noticed the faint imprint of an unfamiliar shade of foundation and eye shadow on her pillow and caught a whiff of the barest scent of a really wretched fragrance that could only belong to one person — or more like two.
Then Scarlet noticed the most important clue of all. Petula’s Homecoming dress was missing too. Either Petula was already dead and buried in it, or …
“The Wendys,” Scarlet said out loud. “They’ve got her.”
“What for?” Pam asked, giving Scarlet a reality check. “She’s barely alive.”
“Where would they take her anyway?” Prue added.
“Homecoming,” she said assuredly, holding up remnants of a formal quick-change.
How could Damen allow that, Scarlet wondered. Unless … he was with her. Immediately Scarlet’s heart sank to her stomach. She would rather have faced her lifeless body than face the fact that Damen, who said he wouldn’t leave her side under any conditions, might be with Petula.
As Damen raced to Hawthorne High, Petula swung from one side to the other like a broken pendulum, her mouth slightly agape, with each sharp turn of the steering wheel. This wasn’t the first time she’d been in that condition in his car, Damen recalled, but this was definitely different. He looked over at her, bouncing aimlessly like a crash test dummy, and realized he hadn’t been that close to her in a very long time, nor had he wanted to be. Though Petula was in the seat next to him, it was Scarlet he had on his mind.
Damen had texted ahead to the football coach and word was spreading like impetigo that he was on his way — with Petula. Kids began drawing up oversized signs and messages of support. petula’s toe-tally cool and she has risen banners were painted on bed sheets and hung from the bleachers. The emcee began rewriting his coronation speech, and cheerleaders retooled their Petula chants abandoned after she took ill.
“Whether she’s alive or not, Petula Kensington is so damn hot!” was quickly replaced by a new one, “O-M-G-W-T-F,” they spelled aloud, cheering: “Petula’s toe is all healed up!” which rang from the stands so loudly Damen could almost hear it as they drove up to the school.
Most everybody was thrilled to hear the news, except for returning alumni Petula-haters and the other would-be Homecoming queens who had been grasping for votes all year as well. With Petula out of the contest, it was anybody’s game. Her return, however, would mean certain defeat for the other girls, especially given all the bonus sympathy she’d receive for overcoming death and everything.
As Damen and Petula arrived, the gate to the school parking lot opened, just as it always had for Hawthorne’s First Couple. Damen rolled by the checkpoint and gave the guard the thumbs-up.
“Long time,” the old acquaintance said fondly to Damen. “Glad to see you’re back.”
“Good to be back,” Damen said, flashing a big smile and heading onward.
It wasn’t really, but this was just the littlest of the frauds Damen was perpetrating at that moment. He would have said anything to keep Petula from attracting attention. Lucky for him she was generally so rude to people they knew better than to greet her or look her in the eye for that matter. He never thought he would ever appreciate her condescending nature as much as he did now.
Damen pulled into a reserved space at the head of the red carpet. The less walking, the better. He got out and waved at the crowd of photographers anxiously awaiting his arrival. He stepped around his car, obscuring their view of Petula as much as possible, and gently lifted her out, making sure that her head was leaning against his shoulder for support. He turned, holding Petula in his arms like a bride about to be carried over the threshold, and stood for a few seconds as flashes popped around him and the bystanders roared their approval.
“Can you believe this?” Maddy said, rubbing all the adoration for the Petula-and-Damen display in Charlotte’s nose. “How cool to be them?”
“Yeah,” Charlotte agreed. “Cool.”
Petula’s huge toothy grin and bug eyes were a very uncharacteristic show of emotion, the photo hounds commented, but then this was a very special day for her. A very special reunion, not just with Damen but with her status at Hawthorne as well. Damen, on the other hand, was hoping for a reunion of his own.
“Remember,” Damen muttered to himself, realizing these pictures would be incriminating if he was successful in bringing Scarlet back. “It’s all for you.”
“Did you hear that?” Maddy nudged, misinterpreting Damen’s intentions yet again. “He’s totally ditching your friend for her comatose sister.”
Charlotte looked dumbfounded. This was really happening. Damen and Petula back together again, hogging the limelight, soaking up the praise, just like always, and Charlotte, she was sidelined, totally invisible, just like always.
Everyone was shouting questions and Damen could barely think. He was hoping this first big blast of admiration would start to bring her around, but she didn’t move a muscle. One thing he was sure of was that he could not stick around here. He had to keep moving.
“No interviews, please,” Damen yelled as he bolted down the carpet into the secure area where the Homecoming parade floats were tanked.
The office was feeling colder than a meat locker now, and Petula reached her arm around Virginia’s small shoulder, pulling her in close to her body. Such an unselfish act was so alien to Petula that she wasn’t even sure how hard to squeeze. Virginia made it a moot point as she nestled comfortably into Petula’s electrolysized armpit, looked up at her, and smiled. The girl was much less afraid all of a sudden.
“You look sad,” Virginia said.
“I just want to go to Homecoming so badly. This is my year.”
“How do you know?” the girl asked sarcastically, flashing her beauty queen savvy and quick wit once again. “Did someone do the judge?”
Petula didn’t answer but squeezed her as tightly as she could, affectionately, prompting the little girl to giggle for the first time since she got there.
Chapter 20
Divine Comedy
This world is a comedy to those that think, and a tragedy to those that feel.
—Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Oxford
Better she than me.
They say comedy is tragedy happening to someone else. We try to find the funny in the misfortune of others mostly as a defense mechanism, but there is a limit. Death is no laughing matter. With everything she’d ever wanted and had so reluctantly given up being paraded right in front of her again, Charlotte began to feel like everything was one big cosmic joke—on her.
The Wendys tiptoed down the hospital corridor looking for the fastest, least obvious, exit. Traipsing around in their tight suits and heels was not exactly the most unobstrusive means of transport, but they had no options. They needed to get out of the hospital and to the high school pronto, so hiding in plain sight seemed a wise strategy.
“Damen is going to be so pissed,” Wendy Thomas whispered.
“So what? I’m not missing Homecoming for him.”
“Yeah, he didn’t think twice about leaving the Living Dead Doll all alone back there anyway.”
Just then, the grief-stricken young couple Damen had seen earlier spilled out of another room down the hall, the mother clutching a beautiful ribbon, which fell to the floor unnoticed in her distress. As the woman wept convulsively, hugging her husband and hanging on to him for support, the desk nurse pointed them toward the chapel.
“We are praying for her,” the head nurse said, offering whatever comfort she could. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Wendy Anderson said sympathetically as she eavesdropped.
“How sweet,” Wendy Thomas added with uncharacteristic sincerity.
The girls, done congratulating themselves for the momentary show of compassion, returned to more pressing matters.
“The ribbon,” Wendy Anderson observed enviously. “It shouldn’t be on the floor like that.”
“No, it shouldn’t,” Wendy Thomas agreed.
“It’ll go perfectly with my outfit” Wendy Anderson continued. “That blue will really make my eyes pop.”
The Wendys eyed the ribbon, gave it some thought, and decided it would be difficult to steal. A triage room at Hawthorne Hospital was not, after all, the change stalls at Blooming-dale’s. But, as the distraught couple slowly made their way down the hall toward the chapel, the Wendys made their move.
“One girl’s trash,” Wendy Anderson began.
“Is another’s vintage accessory,” Wendy Thomas concluded, hooking the prize with her pointed-toed shoe and tossing it in the air toward Wendy Anderson’s expert grasp, honed at many a downtown sample sale.
The Homecoming candidates were beginning to take their places in their floats as mothers from Hawthorne’s alumni and their young daughters stood behind barricades to hopefully get pictures of their budding queens with a member of the royal court. The “floats” were actually cars decked out in papier mâché sculptures, dyed toilet paper streamers, and cardboard, but the Hawthorne student body and returning alums had no trouble suspending disbelief. It was their very own Tournament of Roses parade, even if less imaginative eyes saw only a ridiculous kind of trailer park soapbox derby come to life.