Mean girl_A dark, disturbing psychological thriller

by Natasha A. Salnikova

  “The what? Can you speak English? There’re plenty of references to a soul and meaningful conversations on TV. Even the Kardashians you just mentioned. They are no worse or no better than you and I. Do you really know them? Why do you talk so indignantly? How do you know they are bad people?”

  “I’m not isolated from society.”

  “If you’d watched them, you’d know.”

  “I don’t need to watch them to know. Sometimes you just know.”

  Mom snorted, twisted noodles around her fork, and left it lying on the edge of the plate. As usual, she didn’t change after work and looked like an anchor who decided to have a snack before her next recording, but not like a mother or a wife who was taking care of her family. Not to Corby anyway. She didn’t understand why her mother had to look perfect at the dinner table. Couldn’t she change and become more reachable and laid-back? At least once?

  “Maybe you get your information from the universe while you are meditating?” Mother said. “Revelations.”

  Dad, who, unlike Mother, was dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt with a picture showing a peace sign drawn inside an open palm, stuffed some noodles in his mouth with his chopsticks.

  “It’s easy to make fun of other people. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to do that,” he said.

  “Now you call me an idiot?”

  “I didn’t say anything like that!”

  “You talk too much.” Mom pushed her plate away and straightened her hair, which already looked fine. “Can a voice from the universe tell you what happened to Corby’s schoolmates?”

  “This is not a topic for jokes in my opinion,” Dad said.

  “Does it sound like I’m joking? Corby, what do you think about this? You have been quiet the whole evening.”

  “I’m always quiet,” Corby muttered.

  “That’s true,” Dad said. “Not everyone is able to get a word in.”

  “You managed as always,” Mother retorted. “Not always the right things at the right time, but everything works for Buddhists, I guess.”

  “What does it have to do with Buddhists?” Dad continued to eat and talk with his mouth full. “Why do you always have to degrade my choice? Why do you have to talk about it when children disappear? Why don’t you talk about your child’s school and what happened there?”

  “I do! You think I’m a bad mother and you’re a good father?”

  Corby’s breathing became heavier, her heartbeat stronger. A desire to escape from the table, from the house, became unbearable.

  “There’s a serial killer on the streets and you only talk about yourself!” Dad added.

  “What are you ...?”

  “Enough!” Corby shouted, without hearing what her mother wanted to say. She jumped from the table, knocked down her fork and knife, and they fell to the tiled floor with a bang.

  Mom shuddered, settled back in her chair, and stared at Corby. Dad stopped eating and regarded her as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Corby,” Mother said.

  “Enough!” she cried again. “I’m so tired of you two! I’m going to the shop!”

  “What shop? It’s almost eight,” Dad muttered.

  “I don’t want to be here with you!”

  “Two of your schoolmates ...”

  “I know,” Corby hissed.

  “Maybe it’s a serial killer,” Mother said.

  “It is not!”

  Corby pushed the chair away and walked out of the kitchen.

  “You can’t leave!” Mom cried when Corby put on her jacket.

  “Let her go,” Dad whispered loudly. “I’ll be on the balcony!”

  Corby didn’t answer, went out the door, and inhaled her lungs full of cold air.

  “Crazy people.”

  She looked up and saw her dad on the balcony in his T-shirt, rubbing his hands from the cold.

  “Call me when you’re coming back,” he shouted.

  Corby closed her jacket and walked to the shop. After a few seconds she was inside and it took a minute for her to get into the fridge, open it, and walk to the freezer box.

  “Hello,” she said as she lifted the lid.

  Sylvia was lying face down, because Corby had no desire to see her face. Her mind could recall a new image of her unfortunate classmate at any moment. Regardless, it was difficult to see anything under the thick layer of plastic. Everything beneath it had turned red.

  “New image,” Corby said. “You know, Sylvia, Jacob said today that he had no idea you liked him. I understood that he didn’t like you at all. Why would he? What is special about you? Nothing. Could you, for example, kill a human being?”

  Corby waited for a reply to her question, but of course it didn’t come.

  “You couldn’t, I guarantee. Most people can’t even kill a chicken. I don’t know if I could though. Chickens are cute. We’ve got a lot of animals in the shop. All of them are dead.”

  Corby laughed. She liked her own joke. She thought she had a good sense of humor. She did and she had just discovered it as well as many other traits in her character.

  “Girls, I should tell you, everything in life happens for a reason. After all, if Vera’s mother didn’t send her daughter to pick up the order, she wouldn’t have talked to me. If she didn’t talk to me, I wouldn’t have pushed her, and she wouldn’t have hit her head and died. How would it be now? I’ll tell you. This freezer would be empty and you would keep bullying me every day, as usual. Now, it has stopped. No one will follow me and call me names. No one. Just let them try. There’s enough room for anyone. I’ll figure out how to do all of this.”

  Corby pushed a piece of plastic from Sylvia’s head and touched her hair, which wasn’t covered in blood or frozen. Her hair was soft and icy.

  “No one will find out about you. The police are not that smart, not like they show them in movies. They didn’t even guess.”

  She returned the plastic back in place and wiped her clean hand on her jeans.

  “No one would think of me. They don’t know what kind of relationship we really had. They don’t know that you bullied me more than anyone else in school. I’m so fat, so innocent.”

  Corby sighed.

  “I used to be innocent. Look what you did to me. I became a murderer. Would it be better to kill myself like the others did? You couldn’t do that to me, you failed. And you know what? Those jerks that pushed the other kids to committing suicide will never be punished. I know why. Because technically those kids killed themselves. The bullies didn’t kill them directly, but they did kill them. Do you want to know how they were punished? They weren’t allowed to go to school for a few days. Oh it was such a terrible punishment! They celebrated every day of it! Adults are such idiots. Have they forgotten how children are? It’s our dream to skip school. They didn’t punish, they rewarded them. For murders. And what will happen to me if they find out? I’ll go to jail, perhaps for the rest of my life. They could give me a death sentence. Most likely I would be in jail for life because of my age, but who knows? I didn’t study law. I actually need to check it out.”

  Corby couldn’t see Vera under the layers of plastic, so she moved Sylvia to the side to uncover Vera’s face. It was covered in blood that apparently still leaked when Corby brought Sylvia here.

  “See? Now you are connected by blood. Friends forever.”

  Corby smiled. She had an excellent sense of humor.

  “You know what I think? You are probably bored without your favorite friend Jane. She’s everything for you. I’m sure you want her to be with you, so you can talk and stuff. I’ll think about it. Jane drank a lot of my blood. I don’t think she can be a good person. She bullies me at school then she’ll bully her co-workers, her children, her husband. Of course, that’s if anyone would marry her. She’ll bring stress and sadness to everyone she meets. Then her children will poison the lives of other kids at their school. It runs in the family. And who knows? Those kids may commit suicide. It’s a chain, everythi
ng is interconnected. Mom says that people don’t change. They carry bad or good throughout their lives. Who needs it?”

  Corby thought it over. The idea in her head took a more vivid shape. She could do a good job for humanity. Of course she wouldn’t be able to clean the entire planet, but even a small part could bring a big difference. It wouldn’t be easy, but she would consider all the details. She was smart, she could pull it off.

  “I don’t know.” Corby shook her head. “On one hand the idea is attractive. It’s almost like heroism. On the other—I’m not a murderer. I didn’t like killing you, Sylvia. It was difficult. Although I don’t think it will be the same with Jane. I can get used to it with time, right? I got used to eating salads. Almost. A butcher who killed his first chicken or cow probably felt awful too, but then he thought about people who needed meat and killing became his duty. Not everyone can do it, otherwise we would have too many butchers. People love to eat meat and they turn a blind eye when animals are killed. So my dad said. They pretend like they don’t kill anyone, because others do it for them. They just eat. Indirect murder is not considered a murder ... You know what I am talking about?”

  Corby spent another ten minutes in the fridge, viewing her once alive classmates then closed the lid and left the cold room, without looking at the freshly bought meat on the shelves.

  She didn’t want to go home, but there was nothing to do in the shop. She could drink hot chocolate at home and feel better, as she always did after having it. She also had to do her homework. She felt though that it had become challenging for her to think about school and it wasn’t as important to get perfect grades as before.

  It was wrong, but after coming home and even after a cup of hot chocolate, Corby realized that she couldn’t do her homework. She had so much on her mind that thoughts of school were simply pushed aside. That was why she was sitting on the floor with an open box in front of her, regarding her trophies, the earrings and the pendant, until her mother knocked.

  “Yes!” Corby pushed the box under her bed and stood.

  Mom entered the room right away. She didn’t wear any makeup and also nothing green or brown on her face. She was dressed in a soft pink gown and pink slippers. Corby even wanted to hug her. Hug her and tell her what happened. Or not. She didn’t want that at all. Her mother would never understand her.

  “What did you want?” Corby sat on the bed, cross-legged.

  “I just wanted to talk. Something is happening with you.”

  “Nothing is happening. As Dad said, I’m just a teenager.”

  “He said it, yes, but what does it mean?”

  Mom took a seat on the bed and Corby hoped she wasn’t going to stay long. She thought of the box with jewelry that belonged to her now and hoped that her mother wouldn’t decide to look under the bed.

  “I think it’s because of the boy,” Mother said, looking at her daughter.

  “What boy?” Corby was genuinely surprised. Mom hadn’t talked to her about boys probably for over five years, ever since Corby started gaining weight. When she was younger and not as big as now, her mother called her beautiful and asked about boys. Of course she only teased her daughter about boys at that time, they couldn’t discuss it seriously, but Corby was naive and didn’t realize that. She fell in love all the time in kindergarten and gleefully reported to her mother about Brian or Ryan, who painted her a picture or shared their gum with her. Now she didn’t have such desire. And who should she talk about? Jacob? That wouldn’t happen.

  “I don’t know,” her mother shrugged, “but you are at that age. Your hormones start to play and all that. All girls start to have crushes on boys.”

  “I don’t have a crush.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “If I said it, I meant it.”

  “See! You have never been rude before! Not like this.”

  “I’m not rude.”

  “Ok, Ok.” Mother raised both of her hands up as if trying to calm a mad person, and then covered her face with them for a second. When she looked back at Corby, she was smiling. “I’m not going to act like other moms and scream, slam doors, or threaten to punish you. It’s too easy, philistine, and it doesn’t work. I see that you have something going on and I want to help. I’m your mother and I love you more than anything in the world.

  “Not more than yourself.”

  “Why did you say that?” Mother asked in a hurt voice. The smile faded from her face.

  Corby didn’t know why she said that. She thought about it, but never wanted to verbalize. What would she gain from it? She wanted to end this pointless conversation. She couldn’t tell her mom about what was really bothering her and she wasn’t interested in discussing what wasn’t happening. The thoughts in her head didn’t let her go for a moment and it was hard for Corby to concentrate on her mother’s words. She had to find a subject that would distract her from the real issues, calm her down, or otherwise her mother might figure it out. Even though she was the last person who would understand what was happening in her daughter’s head, or else she would have done something about the situation that took place in Corby’s school. She just didn’t understand, didn’t know, so she did nothing. Corby didn’t want to believe that her mother was just a selfish bitch.

  “I’m tired of your fights with Dad.”

  “Oh.”

  Mom’s face became long, she moved her eyes around the room, but didn’t find the right answer.

  “Why do you live together if you constantly fight?”

  “But Corby. Would you like your dad to live apart from us?”

  “No, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “We love each other,” Mother said in a tone like it was obvious and the question was stupid.

  “You wouldn’t fight if you loved each other.”

  “Honey, we don’t fight, we argue. There’s a big difference. It’s not even arguing, we discuss things this way. We’ve always had this kind of relationship and it suits us. This is our dynamic. It supports our interest in each other. Each time, after we discuss something, we go to our bedroom and ... But that’s not important.”

  Mom coughed, lowered her eyes for a moment. Corby guessed what would follow after and, but she wouldn’t talk about it even under a threat of execution. Not with her mom and not about her parents. It was better to keep her thoughts away from their bedroom. Although her thoughts were away from their bedroom and their house anyway.

  “Honey, I didn’t know that it bothered you that much.”

  “It doesn’t. I’m just tired.”

  “I understand. I don’t know what I can do. I can talk less with your dad, otherwise nothing will change. We’ve gotten used to talking like this. We can try. Is that why you spent so much time in the shop the last few days? You don’t want to come home?”

  “Yes,” Corby lied with an honest look on her face and didn’t even blink.

  “That’s horrible. I didn’t know. My own daughter doesn’t want to come home because of her parents fighting.”

  “I know Mom that you ... that it will be difficult for both of you to change your dynamic, but can you try?”

  “My teenage daughter teaches me how to act with my husband.”

  “I don’t teach. I’m telling you that I’m tired of these … discussions, that’s all. You asked me!”

  “Ok. I can try.” Mother shrugged.

  “That’s good. And while you’re trying, I’ll be in the shop. I like it there. It’s quiet, calm, and the sandwiches are delicious.”

  “Your dad doesn’t like meat in the house, you know that. I already go against him and cook dishes with meat sometimes. I mean, when I have time. I buy them. It doesn’t matter.”

  “We are all meat,” Corby muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Do we have a deal?”

  “I don’t recognize you baby.”

  “I’m fifteen, Mom. I’m almost an adult.”

  “Obviously. I missed everything. I missed you growing up.
”

  Corby wanted to confirm that it was true, that her mother missed literally everything, but she said nothing. It didn’t make sense, like everything else.

  Mom got off the bed, hugged her daughter, and to her surprise, started to cry.

  “Mom, what are you doing?”

  “Time flies so fast. You’re not a little girl anymore and I’m not a young woman.”

  Corby smirked inside. Her mother noticed how quickly time flew only now, when it had already flown by and it was impossible to go back.

  “I don’t want to miss you going to college.”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Mom, come on. Stop crying.”

  “I don’t want you to avoid us. I love you and I don’t see enough of you already.”

  “This is temporary. I need a break,” Corby said, surprising herself once again. She explained everything so cleverly, with no flaws.

  “Ok, ok.” Her mom pulled away from her daughter and wiped her wet nose with her hand. Her eyes were red.

  “Well,” she said. “I’ll tell your dad about our conversation, if you don’t mind.”

  “Tell him. He should know.”

  “You know what? You’re right. I’m tired of these arguments myself. Who needs them? They give me wrinkles.”

  Suddenly Mother kissed Corby on the cheek and headed out of the bedroom.

  “Good night,” she said without turning around.

  “Good night, Mom,” Corby said, a little shocked.

  Mom went out and closed the door. Corby stared at it for a few seconds before shaking her head and climbing under the bed. She stopped thinking about her parents as soon as she had the box in her hands.

  CHAPTER 20

  “They suspect me! Do you understand? Me!”

  Jane was surrounded by her admirers as always and looked frustrated. Her cheeks burned, her hair flipped, her hands shot up and fell down.

  “Because this idiot told her parents that she was going to meet me and then she called me! I have no idea why she did that. She fucked me up! I told those idiot detectives that I have nothing to do with her disappearance, I was at home watching TV with my parents, but they don’t believe me! You know why? Because I was in my room watching this stupid TV and my parents were in the living room, so I could have slipped out. No one watches the same TV shows as their parents. I could see they didn’t believe me even though my parents told them I was at home. It’s so fucked up.”