Dead Girls Society

by Michelle Krys

  “Turn up the music,” Hartley says, leaning across the center console to spin the volume dial. Mom’s favorite smooth jazz station blares from the speakers.

  “Mind?” Farrah turns it way down again. “I have a headache.”

  “So we all have to suffer?” Hartley says.

  My own head throbs. “Can everyone just…be quiet, please?”

  I rub my temples. I wonder what kind of permanent damage I’ve already done to my body. That warehouse was covered in dust, and I’ve been on my feet for nearly an hour, and that was after falling flat on my back. I’m not coughing yet, but what will tomorrow hold? Did I cut my life expectancy in half by breaking the rules? I bite my lip to keep from crying.

  “Are you going to move or what?” Hartley says.

  I exhale slowly, then shift into reverse. It’s quiet for the first few minutes as we bump over rutted gravel roads, but by the time we hit the interstate, the bickering begins again.

  “This is so freaking weird.” Farrah looks miserably out the window.

  “Really?” Hartley says. “Just another school night to me.”

  Farrah twists around to shoot her a venomous glare. “Are you going to come at me for everything I say?”

  “I guess we’ll have to see,” Hartley says. “The night is young.”

  Farrah huffs. “You’re a real blast, you know that?”

  Hartley chuckles darkly.

  “Why don’t you two just kiss and make up?” Lyla says.

  Farrah makes a gagging sound.

  “What’s wrong, Fair?” Hartley hooks her hands around her seat. “I’m up for it.” She leans closer, and Farrah shrieks. Hartley laughs as she falls back against her seat.

  “Just stay away from me, okay?” Farrah says.

  “Whatever you say, princess.”

  I see a spark in the rearview mirror. “No smoking in the car!”

  “I don’t smoke,” Hartley says.

  A horn blares.

  “Oh my God, check your mirrors before you change lanes!” Nikki says. “You almost hit that car!”

  “What?” I peer into the rearview mirror. Sure enough, there’s a car just feet behind me. The driver blasts past, giving me the finger. My cheeks flame with heat. “I guess I’m tired,” I say. At least I have practice with that excuse.

  “Well, wake up,” Nikki says. “I don’t want to get pulled over. And you’re driving ten over the speed limit. Slow down.”

  Hartley sighs.

  “What?” Nikki says. “Some of us have bright futures ahead of us.”

  “I think I like you after all,” Farrah says, sharing a smile with Nikki.

  “Hey, guys. Look at this.” I glance in the rearview mirror to find Lyla cradling her cell in her lap.

  Hartley leans closer to look. “Shit,” she mutters.

  “What? Let me see.” Farrah holds out her hand, and Lyla passes her the phone. I glance away from the road. On the screen are images of the park as it looks today, post-Katrina. The rides are rusted and covered with graffiti, and the place is overgrown with weeds.

  “This doesn’t look so bad,” Farrah says.

  “Keep scrolling,” Lyla says.

  Farrah thumbs through the pictures and takes in a sharp breath.

  I risk another glance over. Where the other pictures were taken during the day, these were taken at night. With the place plunged into darkness, the park goes from a little desolate and cheerless to an absolute nightmarescape, full of lurking shadows and menacing quiet, like the evil, twisted stepsister of Disney World.

  “Look, here’s the Mega Zeph,” Nikki says, offering her phone.

  The coaster looks like a relic compared to the steel, looping coasters of the rest of the park. This one’s made mostly of wood, and instead of crazy loops and inversions, it slopes up and down like some sort of sea serpent.

  “How big is that thing?” Farrah asks.

  “Hundred and ten feet, according to Wikipedia,” Nikki says, taking her phone back. “It says the majority of the wood is decayed, and the steel track is severely rusted. A large section has even rotted out completely and fallen to the ground.”

  “Oh my God,” Farrah says.

  “If you guys are done with your investigative work, I’ll check out the real thing,” Hartley says.

  The jagged silhouette of Six Flags appears. I take the exit and follow the winding path toward the park. When we get close, I wedge the car into the tall reeds on the side of the road instead of using the huge parking lot out front. The last thing I need is for it to get towed or to show up on some security camera somewhere.

  “Watch your knees,” I tell Farrah.

  She twists to the side so I can open the glove compartment, where Mom keeps an emergency flashlight. I test the light and sigh with relief when it works.

  We climb out of the car. Our shoes crunch on the gravelly pavement as we cross to the main entrance of the park.

  The gate reaches way over our heads, but there’s a gaping hole in the wire where previous visitors have helpfully cleared a path. We duck inside one by one, pushing aside overgrown weeds.

  The gate opens to a wide street bordered on both sides by battered gift shops and graffitied hotels. The silhouette of a huge Ferris wheel juts out against the sky like the giant spokes of a bike wheel.

  What am I doing out here? I look back toward the car. Hartley catches me, and I whip my head forward.

  We pick our way across the street, littered with damp papers and mildewy cardboard boxes, pieces of plaster and piping, even an old computer monitor. The flashlight dances smoothly across the destruction.

  “This is creepy as hell,” Lyla whispers.

  Walking through the fairground feels like a scene out of an apocalypse movie. I half expect slobbering zombies to limp out of the buildings toward us. The thought isn’t comforting.

  A crumpled can of cola clinks past on a breeze. Metal squeaks in the distance.

  Farrah shivers hard. She looks so out of place among all the rubble and darkness that I almost feel sorry for her.

  Hartley must be thinking something similar, because she eyes Farrah like the emotional predator she is.

  “What do you want?” Farrah says.

  “You don’t need the money,” Hartley says.

  “Don’t act like you know me.”

  “I know about you, and I’m pretty sure Daddy would give you a hundred K if you asked him sweetly enough.”

  “Don’t talk about my dad,” Farrah snaps.

  “Whoa.” Hartley raises her hands in mock defense. “Since when do I need permission to talk about someone whose face is on the side of a bus? Isn’t he running for mayor or something? C’mon, Farrah Weir-Montgomery, why are you here?”

  Farrah crosses her arms and gives Hartley an icy glare. “This is about me, not my dad. It can’t get out about me being here. The media would spin it like his daughter’s a wild child out of control, and it wouldn’t be good for him, okay?”

  “You’re not the only one with something at stake,” Hartley says.

  Lyla steps between Hartley and Farrah, physically wedging them apart as if she’s some sort of referee. “We don’t control who’s invited, okay? We don’t control any of this. We just have to get through it.” She looks at each of them, making sure they both understand. Hartley shrugs, and Farrah’s arms tighten across her chest, so Lyla keeps walking.

  “Think people live here?” Nikki asks, unconcerned with the drama unfolding around her. “Like, homeless people?”

  “What if some serial killer just lured his next victims to his lair?” Hartley says.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Farrah shoots back, even as she edges closer to her.

  “What? I watched a documentary on something like this,” Nikki says. “A Canadian RCMP officer used anonymous invites to get his victims out into the open, where he could trap them and skin them alive or something like that.”

  “Ugh, stop!” Farrah says. “What is your problem?”
>
  “I just like to be prepared for all possible outcomes,” Nikki says, plucking at her skirt.

  “But seriously,” Lyla says. “Do you think someone’s watching us right now? The Society, I mean?”

  I peer down the next dark, overgrown alley full of hiding places. Somehow the thought of a person—no, a society of people—watching us is worse than anything. The car is so far away now. If I wanted to leave, I’d have to go back by myself. I’d have to wait for them alone….

  “It would make sense,” Hartley says. “If someone really is going to pony up a hundred K, he’d probably want to make sure we really are doing the dares. Whoa, check that out!”

  She jogs up to a giant, defaced clown statue. Its nose and part of its cheek are bashed right off, and one eye is dangling out of its socket. Hartley sticks her foot in the clown’s leering mouth and attempts to climb, but she can’t get past the giant cheekbones.

  “Would you get down from there?” Nikki says. “You’re wasting time again.”

  “May I suggest gently removing that stick from your ass?” Hartley answers. But she jumps down and jogs ahead.

  Torn pennant flags flap loudly from the roofs of the bumper cars. I shine the flashlight inside the rink, where shards of glass glitter in the dirt and rot creeps up the sides of the stalled cars like three-week-old leftovers.

  We keep walking and pass a building painted in blues and greens bleached ghostly pale by the sun. Someone has written on it FEMALE ROACHES and MALE ROACHES, with arrows pointing in opposite directions to the girls’ and boys’ bathrooms. I think I’d sooner piss my pants than go inside.

  There’s a rattle in the dark, and I swing the flashlight over to see Hartley walking precariously across the bucket seats of a giant swing, holding on to the rusted metal chains.

  “Did you forget to take your Ritalin?” Farrah calls over.

  “Get up here, guys. It’s fun!”

  “I’m sure it is,” Farrah mutters. “Can we just get this over with already? Which one is the Mega Zeph? They all look the same in the dark.”

  “It’s that one.” Hartley nods at a huge roller coaster that looms against the black skyline like the remains of a massive dinosaur. “I rode it once, when I was eleven. Dad took us here for my birthday. Think it was the only day in his entire life he wasn’t piss drunk.”

  I don’t know what to say at the sudden revelation. Neither does anyone else.

  “I came here twice when I was little, but I never went on the roller coasters,” Lyla says, breaking the tension. “My sister always refused to go on the rides. She said she just didn’t like them, but I knew it was because she was afraid of heights. We spent the whole time playing games instead.”

  “You could have gone on the rides by yourself,” Farrah says.

  Lyla shrugs. “Yeah, but I wanted to do what my sister was doing.”

  “The games are a waste of money,” Nikki says. “They’re all rigged. I saw an exposé about it. You know that game where you have to knock the milk bottles over with a softball? The bottles on the bottom are filled with lead. And the balloons in the dart throw are only filled to, like, thirty percent or something.”

  “I think I saw that exposé!” Hartley says brightly.

  “Really?” Nikki says, matching her enthusiasm.

  “No. You need to get out more.”

  Nikki’s expression flattens. “Maybe you should stay in more.”

  Hartley rolls her eyes. “I changed my mind. You need to get laid.”

  “You’re such a dick,” Farrah says.

  Hartley flashes a toothy grin, then jumps off the swings and yells, “Let’s do this, bitches!”

  “Shut up before you get us all caught,” Farrah hisses after her. I’m amazed she hasn’t keyed into the fact that Hartley will do the exact opposite of what she’s told. It would be better to say nothing and let her run herself out, but Farrah’s eyes follow Hartley’s every move. The battle between these two is far from over.

  We finally reach the base of the coaster. The metal-and-wood tracks are so far up they’re lost in the churned clouds.

  “So what do we do now?” Nikki asks.

  “I thought you were the smart one.” Hartley jumps up and catches onto a track just over her head, undone shoelaces dangling from her sneakers like lop-eared rabbits. She hoists herself up easily, then starts jogging up the coaster. My stomach launches into my throat.

  “Be careful!” Nikki says, then mutters, “Oh my God, she’s going to die. I’m going to witness someone’s death. I’m going to need therapy for life.”

  Farrah walks to where the track nearly meets the ground and climbs after Hartley.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Nikki clambers onto the track. “When was the last time this thing was safety-checked? The whole thing could collapse at any moment. They don’t condemn parks for no reason….” Her mutterings fade as she climbs away from us.

  Pressure builds in the pit of my stomach, getting bigger and bigger by the passing second, like a hurricane building momentum.

  Maybe they were right to doubt me. Climbing onto that thing seems impossible, never mind taking a “leap of faith” when I get to the top, whatever that means. I know what I think it means, and I hope to God I’m wrong.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Lyla asks.

  I flash her an uneasy smile and switch the flashlight to my other hand so I can wipe my sweaty palm on my pants.

  “Yeah.” I grit my teeth. “No, actually.”

  “It’s scary, right?” Lyla peers at the track stretching into the gloomy sky. “But if they can do it, we can too.”

  “It’s not just that,” I say. I bite my lip, but who am I kidding? It’s going to come out sooner or later, if she doesn’t already know. Besides, she was away for an illness last year. She’ll understand. “I’m sick.”

  But she doesn’t react the way I thought she would. Her eyes narrow. “Really? You seem fine to me.”

  “I have CF—”

  “I know that,” she interrupts. “Everyone knows that. But right now, I mean. You seem fine.”

  “That’s not how it works. If I exert myself, my lungs will fill with mucus and I won’t be able to breathe.”

  “I don’t mean to be an asshole,” Lyla says. “I just think you might be making an excuse for yourself.”

  My first instinct is to be offended. Who does she think she is? She didn’t even know my name before today. But…maybe she’s right. It’s not like I’ll be running a marathon. Maybe the buzzy feeling in my body isn’t my lungs waiting to attack. Maybe it’s just fear.

  I dig my inhaler out of my bag and slip it into my back pocket, then drop my purse and the flashlight in a patch of tall grass and climb onto the tracks. There’s no railing, and the rusted frame’s barely wider than an escalator. I become uncomfortably aware of every part of my insides, my lungs stiff with tension.

  “I’m right behind you,” Lyla calls, encouraging.

  The wooden planks creak and groan as I take my first shaky steps, climbing over a gnarled tree trunk trying hard to push through the coaster. I keep low to the track, my movements slow but steady.

  After a minute I glance down. Bad idea. My stomach vaults into my throat. If I were to fall now, I’d break something—maybe lots of somethings. I might even die.

  I spot my purse in the grass. It looks like nothing more than a speck from up here.

  “You okay?” Lyla asks behind me. “I’m still right here.”

  I manage to nod and push myself forward until my legs are screaming and sweat coats my brow. Every few steps I blow air forcefully through my lips, to keep my lungs open. Finally, finally, we reach the rest of the group. I pat my back pocket for my inhaler, then bring the blue plastic to my lips and suck in two huge lungfuls of mist, taking deep breaths through my nose until I feel my chest expand. I’d love to hork up some phlegm right now and really clear my chest, but I have a feeling the other girls wouldn’t approve.

  “To
ok you long enough,” Farrah says, like she’s not gripping the tracks for dear life. Next to her, Nikki has her eyes closed so tightly I can’t be sure she’s not crying. It’s weird seeing her out of control.

  Meanwhile, Hartley stands precariously close to the ledge, pinwheeling her arms like a swimmer about to take a dive. That’s when I notice she’s got a harness strapped across her chest and her feet are bound with some sort of cuff attached to a huge length of rope.

  “What’s that?” Lyla asks.

  “Bungee equipment, duh,” Farrah says. “It was all here waiting for us.”

  “How do you know you put it on right?” I ask Hartley.

  “It’s pretty self-explanatory. Besides, this isn’t my first rodeo. Honestly, you girls are so nervous about everything. Live a little.”

  That’s the last thing she says before she gives us a jaunty wave and leaps off the track. We gasp, collectively leaning over to watch as Hartley’s body plummets into the dark. She whizzes ungodly fast toward the concrete. She isn’t slowing down. I clamp a hand over my mouth, acid burning my throat.

  Then the coaster groans underneath us and her body bounces back up, the cord jiggling furiously where it’s attached to the tracks.

  “You okay?” Lyla whisper-yells down.

  “Better than ever!” Hartley fiddles with the cuffs at her feet, then drops to the ground with an “oof.”

  “Okay, this is good,” Nikki says matter-of-factly. “If she made it, chances are good we will too.” I don’t know who she’s trying to convince, us or herself.

  Farrah drags the rope up. We watch in mute fascination as she clips the harness over her chest and under her crotch, then slides her feet into the ankle cuffs, tightening the straps that go over the tops of her feet with shaking fingers. After checking and rechecking that they’re secured right, she struggles up. With the black straps drawn tight across her chest and her braid pulled over her shoulder, she looks strangely like Lara Croft. Of course, Farrah somehow manages to make bungee equipment look sexy.

  Seconds turn into minutes. No one says a thing, not even Hartley, who cranes her neck to watch. My insides twist until I feel like I could puke out of sheer tension. It was different when Hartley did it. She doesn’t even seem like a real person to me.