Then she washed her face and brushed her mouse-colored hair and plotted her revenge.
Dahlia swiped Marcy’s car keys during second period. She slipped them back into her bag before last bell. Marcy could never prove that it was Dahlia who smeared dog poop all over her leather seats and packed it like cement into the air-conditioning vents. Who could prove that the bundle of it she left duct-taped to the engine had been her doing? No one could be put under oath to say they saw Dahlia anywhere near the car. And besides, the keys were in Marcy’s purse when she went to look for them, right?
Okay, sure, it was petty. And childish. And maybe criminal. All of that.
Did it feel good afterward?
Dahlia wasn’t sure how she felt about it. She thought it was just; but she didn’t spend a lot of time actually gloating. Except maybe a couple of days later when somebody wrote “Marcy Van Der Poop” on her locker with a Sharpie. That hadn’t been Dahlia, and she had no idea who’d done it. That? Yeah, she spent a lot of happy hours chuckling over that. It didn’t take away the memory of that time crying in the bathroom, but it made it easier to carry it around.
It was that kind of war.
Like when Chuck Bellamy talked his brain-deprived minion, Dault, into running up behind her and pulling down the top of her sundress. Or, tried to, anyway. Dahlia was a big girl, but she had small boobs. She could risk wearing a sundress on a hot day with no bra. Chuck and Dault saw that as a challenge. They thought she was an easy target.
They underestimated Dahlia.
Dahlia heard Dault’s big feet slapping on the ground and turned just as he reached for the top hem of her dress.
Funny thing about those jujitsu lessons. She’d only taken them for one summer, but there was some useful stuff. And fingers are like breadsticks if you twist them the right way.
Dault had to go to the nurse and then the hospital for splints, and he dimed Chuck pretty thoroughly. Both of them got suspended. There was some talk about filing sexual harassment charges, but Dahlia said she’d pass if it was only this one time. She was making eye contact with Chuck when she said that. Although Chuck was a mouth-breathing Neanderthal, he understood the implications of being on a sexual predator watch list.
Dahlia never wore a sundress to school again. It was a defeat even though she’d won the round. The thought of how it would feel to be exposed like that . . . Everyone had a cell phone, every cell phone had a camera. One photo would kill her, and she knew it. So she took her small victory and let them win that war.
So, it was like that.
But over time, had anyone actually been paying attention and keeping score, they’d have realized that there were very few repeat offenders.
Sadly, a lot of kids seem to have “insult the fat girl” on their bucket list. It’s right there, just above “insult the ugly girl.” So they kept at it.
And she kept getting her revenge.
Today it was going to be Tucker Anderson’s car. Dahlia had filched one of her dad’s knives. Dad had a lot of knives. It probably wasn’t because he was surrounded by so many large, fierce women, but Dahlia couldn’t rule it out. Dad liked to hunt. Every once in a while he’d take off so he could kill something. Over the last five years he’d killed five deer, all of them females. Dahlia tried not to read anything into that.
She did wish her dad would have tried to be a little cooler about it. When they watched The Walking Dead together, Dahlia asked him if he ever considered using a crossbow, like that cute redneck, Daryl. Dad said no. He’d never even touched a crossbow. He said guns were easier. Ah well.
The knife she took was a Buck hunting knife with a bone handle and a four-inch blade. The kind of knife that would get her expelled and maybe arrested if anyone found it. She kept it hidden, and in a few minutes she planned to slip out to the parking lot and slash all four of Tucker’s tires. Why? He’d Photoshopped her face onto a bunch of downloaded porn of really fat women having ugly kinds of sex. Bizarre stuff that Dahlia, who considered herself open-minded and worldly, couldn’t quite grasp, and then glued them to the outside of the first-floor girls’ bathroom.
Tucker didn’t get caught because guys like Tucker don’t get caught. Word got around, though. Tucker was tight with Chuck, Dault, and Marcy. This was the latest battle in the war. Her enemies were persistent and effortlessly cruel. Dahlia was clever and careful.
Then, as we know, the world ended.
-4-
Here’s how it happened as far as Dahlia was concerned.
She didn’t watch the news that morning, hadn’t read the papers—because who reads newspapers?—and hadn’t cruised the top stories on Twitter. The first she knew about anything going wrong was when good old Marcy Van Der Poop came screaming into the girls’ room.
Dahlia was in a stall and she tensed. Not because Marcy was screaming—girls scream all the time; they have the lungs for it, so why not?—but because it was an inconvenient time. Dahlia hated using the bathroom for anything more elaborate than taking a pee. Last night’s Taco Thursday at the Allgood house was messing with that agenda in some pretty horrific ways. Dahlia had waited until the middle of a class period to slip out and visit the most remote girls’ room in the entire school for just this purpose.
But in came Marcy, screaming her head off.
Dahlia jammed her hand against the stall door to make sure it would stay shut.
She waited for the scream to turn into a laugh. Or to break off and be part of some phone call. Or for it to be anything except what it was.
Marcy kept screaming, though.
Until she stopped.
Suddenly.
With a big in-gulp of air.
Dahlia leaned forward to listen. There was only a crack between the door and frame and she could see a sliver of Marcy as she leaned over the sink.
Was she throwing up?
Washing her face?
What the hell was she doing?
Then she saw Marcy’s shoulders rise and fall. Very fast. The way someone will when . . .
That’s when she heard the sobs.
Long. Deep. Badly broken sobs.
The kind of sobs Dahlia was way too familiar with.
Out there, on the other side of that sliver, Marcy Van Der Meer’s knees buckled and she slid down to the floor. To the floor of the girls’ bathroom. A public bathroom.
Marcy curled herself into a hitching, twitching, spasming ball.
She pulled herself all the way under the bank of dirty sinks.
Sobbing.
Crying like some broken thing.
Dahlia, despite everything, felt something in her own eyes. On her cheeks.
She tried to be shocked at the presence of tears.
Marcy was the hateful witch. If she wasn’t messing with Dahlia directly, then she was getting her friends and minions to do it. She was the subject of a thousand of Dahlia’s fantasies about vehicular manslaughter, about STDs that transformed her into a mottled crone, about being eaten by rats.
Marcy the hag.
Huddled on the filthy floor, her head buried down, arms wrapped around her body, knees drawn up. Her pretty red blouse streaked with dirt. Crying so deeply that it made almost no sound. Crying the way people do when the sobs hurt like punches.
Dahlia sat there. Frozen. Kind of stunned, really. Marcy?
Marcy was way too self-conscious to be like that.
Ever.
Unless . . . What could have happened to her to put Marcy here, on that floor, in that condition? Until now Dahlia wouldn’t have bet Marcy had enough of a genuine human soul to be this hurt.
The bathroom was filled with the girl’s pain.
Dahlia knew that what she had to do was nothing. She needed to sit there and finish her business and pretend that she wasn’t here at all. She needed to keep that stall door locked. She needed
to not even breathe very loud. That’s what she needed to do.
Absolutely.
-5-
It’s not what she did, though. Because, when it was all said and done, she was Dahlia Allgood.
And Dahlia Allgood wasn’t a monster.
-6-
She finished in the toilet. Got dressed. Stood up. Leaned her forehead against the cold metal of the stall door for a long ten seconds. Reached back and flushed. Then she opened the door.
Turning that lock took more courage than anything she’d ever done. She wasn’t at all sure why she did it. She pulled the door in, stepped out. Stood there. The sound of the flushing toilet was loud and she waited through the cycle until there was silence.
Marcy Van Der Meer lay in the same position. Her body trembled with those deep sobs. If she heard the flush, or cared about it, she gave no sign at all.
Dahlia went over to the left-hand bank of sinks, the ones farther from Marcy. The ones closer to the door. She washed her hands, cutting looks in the mirror at the girl. Waiting for her to look up. To say something. To go back to being Marcy. It was so much easier to despise someone if they stayed shallow and hateful.
But . . .
“Hey,” said Dahlia. Her throat was phlegmy and her voice broke on the word. She coughed to clear it, then tried again. “Hey. Um . . . hey, are you . . . y’ know . . . okay?”
Marcy did not move, did not react. She didn’t even seem to have heard.
“Marcy—?”
Nothing. Dahlia stood there, feeling the weight of indecision. The exit door was right there. Marcy hadn’t looked up, she had no idea who was in the bathroom. She’d never know if Dahlia left. That was the easy decision. Just go. Step out of whatever drama Marcy was wrapped up in. Let the little snot sort it out for herself. Dahlia didn’t have to do anything or say anything. This wasn’t hers to handle. Marcy hadn’t even asked for help.
Just go.
On the other hand . . .
Dahlia chewed her lip. Marcy looked bad. Soaked and dirty now, small and helpless.
She wanted to walk away. She wanted to sneer at her. Maybe give her a nice solid kick in her skinny little ass. She wanted to use this moment of alone time to lay into her and tell her what a total piece of crap she was.
That’s what Dahlia truly wanted to do.
She stood there. The overhead lights threw her shadows across the floor. A big pear shape. Too small up top, too big everywhere else. Weird hair. Thick arms, thicker legs. A shadow of a girl who would never—ever—get looked at the way this weeping girl would. And it occurred to Dahlia that if the circumstances were reversed, Marcy would see it as an open door and a formal invite to unload her cruelty guns. No . . . she’d have reacted to this opportunity as if it were a moral imperative. There wouldn’t be any internal debate over what to do. That path would be swept clear and lighted with torches.
Sure. That was true.
But part of what made Dahlia not one of them—the overgrown single-cell organisms pretending to be the cute kids at school—was the fact that she wasn’t wired the same way. Not outside, God knows, but not inside either. Dahlia was Dahlia. Different species altogether.
She took a step. Away from the door.
“Marcy . . .” she said, softening her voice. “Are you okay? What happened?”
The girl stopped trembling.
Just like that. She froze.
Yeah, thought Dahlia, you heard me that time.
She wanted to roll her eyes at the coming drama, but there was no one around who mattered to see it.
Dahlia tried to imagine what the agenda would be. First Marcy would be vulnerable because of whatever brought her in here. Breakup with Mason, her studly boyfriend du jour. Something like that. There would be some pseudo in-the-moment girl talk about how rotten boys are, blah-blah-blah. As if they both knew, as if they both had the same kinds of problems. Dahlia would help her up and there would be shared tissues, or handfuls of toilet paper. Anything to wipe Marcy’s nose and blot her eyes. That would transition onto her clothes, which were wet and stained. Somehow Dahlia—the rescuer—would have to make useful suggestions for how to clean the clothes, or maybe volunteer to go to Marcy’s car or locker for a clean sweater. Then, as soon as Marcy felt solid ground under her feet again, she would clamp her popular girl cool in place and, by doing that, distance herself from Dahlia. After it was all over, Marcy would either play the role of the queen who occasionally gave a secret nod of marginal acceptance to the peasant who helped her. Or the whole thing would spin around and Marcy would be ten times more vicious just to prove to Dahlia that she had never—ever—been vulnerable. It was some version of that kind of script.
Marcy still, at this point, had not turned. Dahlia could still get the heck out of there.
But . . . she had reacted. She’d stopped sobbing. She was listening.
Ah, crap, thought Dahlia, knowing she was trapped inside the drama now. Moving forward was inevitable. It was like being on a conveyor belt heading to the checkout scanner.
“Marcy?” she said again. “Are you hurt? Can I . . . like . . . help in some way?”
An awkward line, awkwardly delivered.
Marcy did not move. Her body remained absolutely still. At first that was normal. People freeze when they realize someone else is there, or when they need to decide how to react. But that lasts a second or two.
This was lasting too long. It wasn’t normal anymore. Getting less normal with each second that peeled itself off the clock and dropped onto that dirty bathroom floor.
Dahlia took another step closer. And another. That was when she began to notice that there were other things that weren’t normal.
The dirt on Marcy’s red blouse was wrong somehow.
The blouse wasn’t just stained. It was torn. Ripped. Ragged in places.
And the red color was wrong. It was darker in some places. One shade of dark red where it had soaked up water from the floor. A different and much darker shade of red around the right shoulder and sleeve.
Much, much darker.
A thick, glistening dark red that looked like . . .
“Marcy—?”
Marcy Van Der Meer’s body suddenly began to tremble again. To shudder. To convulse.
That’s when Dahlia knew that something was a lot more wrong than boyfriend problems.
Marcy’s arms and legs abruptly began thrashing and whipping around, striking the row of sinks, hammering on the floor, banging off the pipes. Marcy’s head snapped from side to side and she uttered a long, low, juddery, inarticulate moan of mingled pain and—
And what?
Dahlia almost ran away.
Almost.
Instead she grabbed Marcy’s shoulders and pulled her away from the sinks, dragged her to the middle of the floor. Marcy was a tiny thing, a hundred pounds. Dahlia was strong. Size gives you some advantages. Dahlia turned Marcy over onto her back, terrified that this was an epileptic seizure. She had nothing to put between the girl’s teeth to keep her from biting her tongue. Instead she dug into the purse she wore slung over her shoulder. Found Dad’s knife, removed the blade and shoved it back into the bag, took the heavy leather sheath and pried Marcy’s clenched teeth apart. Marcy snapped and seemed to be trying to bite her, but it was the seizure. Dahlia forced the sheath between Marcy’s teeth and those perfect pearly whites bit deep into the hand-tooled leather.
The seizure went on and on. It locked Marcy’s muscles and at the same time made her thrash. It had to be pulling muscles, maybe tearing some. Marcy’s skirt rode high on her thighs, exposing pink underwear. Embarrassed for them both, Dahlia tugged the skirt down, smoothed it. Then she gathered Marcy to her, wrapped her arms around Marcy’s, pulled the soaked and convulsing enemy to her, and held her there. Protected. As safe as the moment allowed, waiting for the storm to pass.
&nbs
p; All the while she looked at the dark stains on Marcy’s shoulder. At the ragged red of her shirt. At the skin that was exposed by the torn material.
There was a cut there and she bent closer to look.
No. Not a cut.
A bite.
She looked down at Marcy. Her eyes had rolled up high and white and there was no expression at all on her rigid face. Those teeth kept biting into the leather. What was this? Was it epilepsy at all? Or was it something else? There were no rattlesnakes or poisonous anythings around as far as Dahlia knew. What else could give a bite that might make someone sick? A rabid dog? She racked her brain for what she knew of rabies. Was that something that happened fast? She didn’t think so. Maybe this was unrelated to the bite. An allergic reaction. Something.
The spasms stopped suddenly. Bang, just like that.
Marcy Van Der Meer went totally limp in Dahlia’s arms, her arms and legs sprawled out. Like she suddenly passed out. Like she was . . .
“Marcy?” asked Dahlia.
She craned her neck to look at Marcy’s face.
The eyes were still rolled back, the facial muscles slack now, mouth hanging open. The leather sheath slid out from between her teeth, dark with spit.
Except that it wasn’t spit.
Not really.
The pale deerskin leather of the knife sheath was stained with something that glistened almost purple in the glare of the bathroom fluorescents.
“Marcy?” Dahlia repeated, shaking her a little. “Come on now, this isn’t funny.”
It wasn’t. Nor was Marcy making a joke. Dahlia knew it.
It took a whole lot of courage for Dahlia to press her fingers into the side of Marcy’s throat. Probably the toughest thing she’d ever had to do. They taught how to do it in health class. How to take a pulse.
Slasher Girls & Monster Boys Page 20
