Mean girl_A dark, disturbing psychological thriller

by Natasha A. Salnikova

  Corby felt her breathing become deeper and her heart beat faster.

  “I need to go home,” she said.

  “She needs to go home. I’m giving you life advice. Don’t you get it? You will thank me for this later. Instead of burgers—eat salads. And run around the store. Push-ups, sit-ups. Come on, do it now. I’m a super motivational speaker! Wow! I need to do it for money.”

  “I really need to go home.”

  Corby came out from behind the counter. She was afraid to go to the door. She couldn’t kick Vera out of the store, but she also couldn’t listen to her. She felt anger. Not fear or hurt, but anger. Never before had she experienced this feeling.

  “You are so ungrateful! I want to help you as a friend. Just don’t tell Jane I talked to you.”

  Corby didn’t listen. She just wanted Vera to get out.

  “Oh, I forgot to wash the floor,” she said as she hurried into the back room. She didn’t care that they would talk about it tomorrow in school. Anything to make Vera leave.

  “Yes! You can get some good exercise with a mop,” Vera yelled.

  “Doesn’t she have anything to do at home?” Corby muttered under her breath, pulling out Gaby’s bucket and a mop from the closet. “Why doesn’t she leave?”

  When Corby returned to the front of the store, she saw Vera taking something out of the glass refrigerator. There, they had beverages for sale for those who came to have lunch. Vera pulled out a bottle of cola and lifted it into the air.

  “Mom will pay you,” she said, opening the bottle. “Actually, you can treat a friend, right?”

  There was no water in the bucket, but the mop was still wet and Corby started to wash the floor. She dragged the wet strands of the mop over clean black and white tiles, leaving wet streaks.

  “Seriously?” Vera asked.

  Corby wasn’t sure exactly what her classmate had in mind and kept moving the mop, slowly approaching Vera, hoping that she would get annoyed and go away.

  “So we have a janitress enrolled in our school. Just great. We’ll have something to talk about tomorrow. Jacob will love it.”

  Corby stopped abruptly and looked at Vera.

  “Ha! You heard me now! So you do have a crush on him?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Corby said.

  “Really?”

  Corby wanted to answer that it was true, but a phone rang. Vera rolled her eyes and pulled the phone out of the pocket of her jacket.

  “Hi ... Yes, everything’s fine! What could happen to me? … I’ve got it and I’m walking! What would I do in that stupid store? ... Yes, I’m almost home, damn ... Enough already! I don’t want to talk on the street ... Bye.” The phone went back into the pocket. “Where were we?”

  Corby couldn’t believe that someone could talk to their parents like that. She was sure it was Vera’s mother and no one else.

  “Jacob, I’m sure, will enjoy your big boobs. Sylvia’s are okay, but yours are like ba-ba-boom.”

  Vera suddenly approached Corby and pinched her breasts.

  “Are you crazy?” Corby cried and nearly choked on her words. How could she doubt Vera’s sanity? But her actions were strange and stupid, plus pretty painful.

  “Did you just ask if I was crazy?” Vera’s eyes narrowed. “How dare you talk to me like that? You are just plain crazy if you said that. I’ll call Jane right now and I’ll tell her that you’re a lesbian.”

  “What?” Corby almost dropped the mop. “Why?”

  “You like girls. Tell me.”

  Corby shook her head.

  “That means you like Jacob?”

  “Leave me alone!” Corby took a step back. Another minute and she would hit Vera with the mop.

  “So you like girls. I knew it. Let me squeeze your other boob, you’ll enjoy it. I can even touch it.”

  Vera moved toward Corby again and stepped on the mop, so Corby couldn’t move.

  “Stop it, Vera!” Corby cried and pulled the mop.

  She didn’t understand everything that happened next, because it was so fast. Vera swayed, took two awkward steps back, then fell to the floor. On her way down, she bumped the table and the vase with artificial roses dropped and crashed. One of the flowers landed on Vera’s hand.

  Everything froze. The girl on the floor didn’t move and the air was still. It seemed like time stopped too.

  Corby stared at Vera, unable to say a word.

  Not less than a minute passed before she regained consciousness.

  “Vera?” she called softly. “Vera!”

  The girl remained immobile.

  Corby released the mop and it landed on the floor with a dull thud. Corby approached the girl on the floor, barely moving her instantly numb legs, and cried after looking at her face.

  Vera’s eyes were open and staring at the ceiling.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Yes, Dad, I’ll be back soon,” Corby said and her voice didn’t tremble. “Gaby had to leave a little early and I’m finishing the ... things.”

  “We’re ready for dinner.”

  “I know and I ate already. Give me half an hour.”

  “What are you going to do there for so long? Gaby didn’t do anything? Or you’re going to play on your phone again?”

  “No.” Corby found the strength to look at Vera again. “Okay, maybe twenty minutes.”

  “Okay. See you.”

  Corby turned off the phone and put it on the table. She had twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to come up with an idea of how to get rid of the body. Get rid of the body.

  “Oh my God, I’ll go to jail,” Corby whispered. Nothing could be worse than jail. Maybe going without food for three days. Even without a frozen pizza. She had seen movies about prison and bullies that were hundreds of times worse than at school. They even killed their victims.

  Corby shook her head. She was thinking about the wrong kinds of things, but she had no idea what to think about. What should she do now? Vera fell, probably hit her head on the table, and died. Corby saw some blood on the temple of the dead girl. She hit her head against the table and died so fast. Instantly.

  “What should I do? What should I do? Mom will kill me!”

  Corby didn’t kill Vera, it was an accident, but how could she prove it? She looked at the camera in the corner. Corby knew that it was pointed to the area where she was now. Sometimes she watched the store through the camera view when she was bored. But it would show that she pushed the girl. There was no sound and it wouldn’t be clear that she didn’t push her on purpose. They argued before that and it would be obvious in the video. Then the police would find out how Vera treated Corby and explain everything in their own way.

  “How can I prove that I didn’t push her and didn’t hit her? I wanted to, but I didn’t!”

  She looked at her watch. Five minutes had passed and she had fifteen left.

  “What should I do?”

  She looked around, trying to come up with some sort of solution and then it dawned on her. She ran to the big, room size refrigerator, which was located in the back of the shop. She jerked the heavy door open, went inside, and looked at the hanging carcasses of meat. The new order hadn’t yet arrived and she could move freely. Corby went deeper into the refrigerator, wrapping her jacket more tightly around her to stay warm. Near the far wall, was a small freezer decorated with wood. When Corby’s grandfather owned the shop as well as when her dad assumed ownership and up until he became a vegetarian, they had kept piglets in this freezer. Deciding that eating meat prevented him from developing spiritually, Dad didn’t sell or close the shop, but he refused to sell piglets, calves, or any other animals that were killed at a tender age. Who died without seeing a life, so to speak. To that Mom answered that it was better for them not to see a life like that.

  Corby found the freezer, but the lid was locked. She returned to the store, found a bunch of keys on the shelf, and chose the one she had never used. She took it off the ring and returned to the refrigera
tor. The key fit, but she had some trouble opening the lock. She didn’t know if it was because no one had used it in a long time or because it froze. Finally the lock clicked and Corby pulled the heavy door. It didn’t want to give up easily and Corby groaned, her hands were shaking, but she still managed to open it. It was dry, clean, and empty inside the box with enough space to accommodate five or even seven piglets. One human body should fit for sure.

  Without hesitation, Corby hurried into her father’s office where the video recording equipment was placed and checked it. Fortunately for her the video was such a bad quality that it wasn’t possible to see anything at all. Something black and striped. The camera broke again and no one even checked it. Dad knew that the camera needed to be replaced, but in the pursuit of his Buddhist ideals, he stopped thinking about such trifles as security. Actually he had never thought about security. He didn’t have to become a Buddhist because he had never cared about every day necessities anyway. About reality, as her mother would say.

  After that, Corby returned to the store, grabbed Vera’s legs without looking at her face, and dragged her to the back room. The girl turned out to be surprisingly light. Corby helped to throw boxes of merchandise sometimes if she wasn’t being lazy, and they were much heavier. She noticed a thin trail of blood on the floor and cursed for the first time in her life, because there was no time and it had to be cleaned. Blood wasn’t uncommon in butcher shops, but blood on the floor after the night when everything was cleaned could bring unnecessary questions.

  She pulled Vera down the hallway to the refrigerator and stood for a moment considering her before throwing her body in the freezer. Vera’s gray eyes were open and it seemed that she looked reproachfully at Corby.

  “I didn’t mean it. I swear. You fell and I didn’t do anything to prevent it. I’m sorry.”

  Corby closed Vera’s eyes with her hand and started to cry while doing it. What if someone found out? What if they sent her to jail?

  “The phone!”

  Corby knew, she heard many times on television that phones could be tracked. She ran into the store and put the butcher’s plastic gloves on her hands to avoid leaving fingerprints. The phone was in the first pocket she checked, what luck, and Corby opened the screen. Unfortunately or fortunately, the phone was password protected, which meant she couldn’t be tempted to open the messages to read them at the risk of being caught.

  With that thought, the phone went into Corby’s pocket and Vera’s body slumped to the bottom of the box. There was no time for reflection. Corby slammed the lid, locked it, and ran into the store for the bucket. Grabbing the mop, she wiped the blood hastily, rinsed the mop in the sink, and put it back in the bucket. After that, she gathered all the pieces of the vase, corrected the table and both chairs, and looked around. Nothing suggested that someone had died here. The only thing that was left was the package of meat that had fallen from the hands of the unfortunate. Corby grabbed it and decided to put it in the trash on the way home. She looked at her watch. She did everything in eighteen minutes and had two minutes to spare, or to get rid of Vera’s things. She was out of breath, her head was spinning, but she couldn’t sit down and rest. Throwing the jacket on her shoulders, she turned off the light, locked the door of the store, and stopped for a moment.

  When Vera came by, Corby thought how bad it was that they didn’t have a camera outside. Now she thought that it was good. People still went down a dark street, tourists mostly, wrapped in coats to protect them from the evening chill, they took photos in front of the old bakery across the street, which always drew a crowd. Did anyone notice that Vera entered the shop and didn’t come out? This couldn’t happen. No one on this street had outside surveillance. The street was too busy and the owners of the shops and restaurants believed in their inviolability.

  Corby straightened the collar of her jacket and went across the road, where she tossed the package in the trash, hoping that some bum would pick it up by morning. Looking around, she went to the brick house, one among many on the old street, threw the phone on the ground, and stepped on it with her foot. What was left of the phone, she dropped into a drainage ditch. Then she crossed the road and headed home, hurriedly pulling out her cell phone from the pocket. She always called her parents when she left the store, so they could watch her from the balcony. Dad came out after a few seconds and waved to her. He looked angry, forgetting about his Buddhism and calmness because she was late.

  Corby looked at people who passed by, at their faces illuminated by the light of lanterns, people who didn’t pay attention to her and didn’t know that a few minutes ago she accidentally killed a girl. She killed her.

  “I think I’m a killer,” Corby whispered as she opened the door. “I sure am.”

  CHAPTER 6

  They had spaghetti and salad for dinner. Mom had only salad on her plate and Corby and her dad didn’t refuse pasta even though Corby had eaten already. A glass of milk stood next to her plate and she also had a piece of garlic bread. It was her favorite food and she could eat it even if she was full. It was her favorite food on any other day, but not today. Today she didn’t want to eat. Absolutely.

  “This man came so late that we didn’t want to include him in the show,” Mother said. “I don’t understand how people can do that. It’s television! And he didn’t even apologize, came in as if nothing had happened, with a smile. I was about to kill him.”

  Corby heard what her mother said, but she wasn’t really listening and concentrated only on the last sentence. Kill? Her mother wanted to kill someone?

  “Why?” Corby mumbled. She didn’t mean to ask this question, simply sounded out her thoughts.

  “Why what?” Mother was taken aback. Corby usually didn’t ask questions.

  “Wanted to kill him?” Corby hunched her shoulders.

  “I’m not serious. People say it all the time when someone drives them crazy. Like you don’t know.”

  “So, you didn’t want to kill him?” Corby clarified.

  “Of course not. What’s wrong with you?”

  Corby shook her head and took a sip from her glass of milk.

  “She said that,” Dad started talking after eating in silence the whole time, “because you reacted too aggressively to a situation that couldn’t be changed.”

  “Of course.” Mother pursed her lips. “Don’t start your philosophy now or I will feel like killing you. Nothing else will come out of it, but simple, plain murder.”

  “Enough already about murders!” Corby yelled and mother looked at her in shock.

  “What’s with you today? Teenage hormones woke up?”

  Corby slowly put her glass on the table. Her hands started to shake and she didn’t want her parents to notice.

  “It’s normal for her age,” Dad said. “What should we expect from her if you react like this?”

  “How do I react, sweetheart?”

  “You scream a lot. You need to calm down.”

  “Are you crazy? You can’t tell a woman to calm down. You will only make her angrier.”

  “This is wrong. You have to …”

  “I have to? Do you want to tell me what I have to do? You’d better stop right now.” Mother put her fork down on the plate, which meant readiness for the big fight. Her parents didn’t fight often, but they loved to argue, it turned them on. Their eyes sparkled as if they enjoyed the whole process. Corby didn’t enjoy it, she hated it, but she would never voice her feelings. Usually she just focused on food and disconnected from reality. Today, she didn’t eat and her mind was as sharp as a razor.

  “I don’t want to lecture you,” Dad said. “I just ...”

  “What part of the sentence you’d better stop right now don’t you understand?”

  “I only intervened because Corby responded to your phrase about killing ...”

  “I was joking,” Corby said, hiding her hands under the table, under the blue tablecloth. They shook even harder and she felt that she was about to cry.


  “See? Mother waved her hand with a napkin and the napkin flew to the floor. Mother watched it going and looked back at Corby. “It was clear that I was joking. I have to talk about murders every day in the news. My daughter understands the difference.”

  News, Corby thought. She will talk about me if I get caught.

  Corby couldn’t hold back her tears any longer.

  “Are you crying?” Mother asked, but without surprise this time. Just asked.

  “I’m not crying!” Corby got up from the table. “I’m going to my room.”

  “You didn’t eat,” Father said.

  “I ate at the store, I told you.”

  Corby grabbed the plate from the table, carried it to the sink in the kitchen, and rushed to her bedroom. Tears filled her eyes, she almost ran into the door on the way to her room.

  “It’s your fault.” She heard her mom’s words, before closing the door. Corby collapsed on the bed and gave way to tears. She buried her face in the pillow so her parents wouldn’t hear her loud sobs. She almost fell asleep in tears, but woke up instantly when Vera appeared before her closed eyelids. Gray eyes looked straight at Corby. Gray eyes of the girl who was now lying dead in the shop owned by Corby’s father. In the refrigerator where they stored meat.

  “Oh, God. What should I do? What if they guess? What if they understand everything or figure it out?”

  Corby jumped from the bed and walked around the room. Her parents could actually figure out everything that she did. They never asked her questions about her whereabouts, but what if they suddenly gained interest? Vera told her mother that she had already left the store when the woman called. She left the store and went home. So when the police came, they would know only that. When Vera left the store she was still alive. Nothing, absolutely nothing had happened to her in the store. It was good that the camera was damaged, but if they didn’t suspect her they wouldn’t even check the camera.