The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories

by Kit Reed

  It’s getting weird here. Dinners are weird, just us five and the staff, everybody at the same table, everybody but Roger on edge, no bragging, just nervous blablabla like rain dropping into the hush. We toasted Ralph Strickler’s birthday, and everything got even weirder. How could I sleep? I’m in the Confessional at, what is it? Dawn. If I don’t win this thing and get on TV, somebody needs to know.

  It was four a.m. when it started up overhead—shuffling, moaning, I guess—but instead of fading, it intensified. Grief outgrew the attic and poured downstairs. I heard it in the hall, so I had to look, and, OMG. There was a great, quivering blob crouched at the bottom of the attic stairs, OMG, I mean really, it was Miss Nedobity in her diamond choker! Slipcovered like a Strickfield sofa in her white canvas nightie. She had her hands over her face and she was crying so hard that I was scared to touch her.

  She was sobbing, and I was like: Is this the Outside Event?

  I said, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m so tired. I’m just so tired.” I can’t afford to get on her bad side so I patted her shoulder. She spread her fingers and peeked through them. “Oh, it’s you.” Then she wailed, “I wasn’t always this big!” and cried so hard that I was afraid the others would hear and come out into the hall and, what. Get in on this. “It wasn’t always this way.”

  I kept pat-patting and shushing until she nodded and swallowed hard. Her whole body was heaving but she managed, “I’m sorry, it’s his birthday. Again, and I have to make sure he has enough … Agh!”

  Score. That’s her in the attic every night. Grieving, like every day is Ralph Strickler’s birthday to her.

  For a minute I wondered if this show of weakness put me ahead in the run for the finish line, but reason kicked in. Her freaking was in no way organized. Patting and there-there-ing, I rethought.

  No, this is not the Outside Event.

  I tried to go but she grabbed my wrist and sobbed out her story, which, Wow. I need sleep to win this, but I showed solidarity and heard her out. Good thing I did. Her first line was a zinger.

  “Ralph and I were in love.” By the time she finished I knew more than I want to know, and exactly what I needed to know. If I want to get home in one piece, I have to win!

  At the end she deflated and went comatose. I tucked in her feet and the tail of her canvas nightshirt and shut the attic door. If somebody else wins this, if I don’t make it, I want the world to know.

  What happened to Ralph Strickler was her fault! It bound her to Strickfield with hoops of steel, and now that Dame Hilda’s dead, she’s the one keeping him under control.

  It isn’t just the guilt.

  They were in love, and she still isn’t over it. In fact, she … OK, Long story short, Miss Nedobity was having sex with Ralph in the elevator; at the bottom the doors opened he tumbled partway into the hall. She was so scared of Dame Hilda firing her that she pushed the wrong button and the doors slammed shut on the heir of Strickfield’s bare neck, blood started gushing out and then … What happened to Ralph happened on her watch, but that isn’t the worst thing. The worst thing is what she did about it, and what things are like here as a result. She said it was terrible, but if you want to know the truth, it was disgusting, what she swore, to keep from losing him …

  I’ll never tell, if I want to win I can’t tell you. No! I have to win or I …

  I have to go. Really. See, Miss Nedobity confided that two heads will roll today, unfortunate metaphor, right? I have to hang in until I win. Or Else and no, I won’t tell you about the Or Else, it’s my big advantage, but I can say this much. It’s a matter of life and death. Right now I’m the only player who knows the Or Else and I will damn well win.

  DAVY: IGNORE FIRST TELEGRAM. LETTER FOLLOWS.

  Melanie went this morning. Aline was poisonously sweet about it. Before breakfast she read Dame Edna on “attitude” straight out of her will. What she really meant was, Melanie’s sharp, she’s stylish and a great writer, but way too feisty to win Miss Popularity which, OMG, is one of the things they’re judging us on! Plus, her sexual persuasion is not popular with rich fuddy duddies on the Strickfield board. Which leaves just four of us, Roger and Alvin and Serena with her fantastic wardrobe and her surefire blockbuster. And me.

  Gorgeous Serena’s a definite threat, especially if they’re scoring our videos. If it wasn’t for that business between her and Alvin on Crit night, I’d be a lot more worried than I am. The affair’s still going on and it will bring them down, leaving only Roger and me. They’ll get expelled for moral terps. I mean, if the judges freaked over Melanie, no way will they have a winner who gets brought up on charges. It’s illegal to have sex with a minor in this state. Now, Alvin’s big for his age, but, hey. He’s fourteen!

  We had special breakfast: rashers of bacon and individual omelets. It was because today was Pitch Day.

  Aline said, “As you may have guessed, this is a very special day. You four have been chosen on the basis of staying power, and although some of you think production is the main issue here, you might as well know that there’s a lot more to writing a book than writing it.” Aline Armantout, first-ever Strickfield winner and international best seller, loved this! She went on with that convicted winner’s fuck-you glow.

  “There’s more to publishing your book than just getting published.” I would swear she went: a-hem. “Starting with the pitch. Futures hang on promotion. Who makes it and who won’t … “Then she scared me. “You aren’t just selling a book. Who wants a book? There are billions of them out there begging for people’s time. They don’t need your book.”

  I looked at Roger. We were both freaking. OMG, OMG, OMG!

  “You’re selling yourselves. Today, we work on the pitch.” She flashed a savage smile. “Now, you need to pound protein. Caffeinate, add lots of sugar. Dextrose for energy, darlings. Sparkle! If you put on writing clothes, go put on something CLASSY. Not you, Roger, that craggy look will help you sell, sell, sell.”

  “Think marketing. Think saturation. Think, SALES.” Then she said the scariest thing since Miss Nedobity sobbed out her story last night, including the Or Else. “Your futures depend on it.”

  Interesting, they downloaded Web components for us to work on, for judging only. Aline said, “Understand, you won’t see your postings uploaded, you have to win. Only the winner’s postings go up on the Web.” Then on the way into the next meeting, she grabbed my elbow so tight that I squeaked and she whispered. The words came into my ear in splinters, like truth squeezed through a cheese grater: “Understand, the winner will be sworn to secrecy, under pain of—you don’t want to know.” But she only told me, so, wow, wow!

  I aced them all, including photo upload and necessary links, OMG I’m posting a new eyecatcher that, the minute they decide I’m the winner, this .jpg of me in Florence’s backless shift goes up on my blog! Besides, I’ve had FB, MySpace, Friendster pages since I was ten, so when I win, Cormac McCarthy and Junot Diaz and all my other invisible friends will be the first to know; before I came to Strickfield and lost my connection I texted gazillion people daily, I’ve tweeted squatrillion tweets that got re-re-tweeted around the world, and if I need to give lap dances on Second Life to sell me as a writer, Aline has my demo, although maintaining my Internet presence may cut into work time once I’m famous, and the rest?

  I scored at dinnertime schmoozing, wardrobe less so, but if I sell anything that will change, unless they expect me to steal to stay gorgeous, which I am totally prepared to do. Personal interview: I used the pitch that got me into Strickfield, although I haven’t exactly written the novel: Score! Video presentation: Score. So I’m sitting here in the Confessional after a long day on no sleep saying OK, guys, so far so good, and I’d like to thank you all for …

  OK, I did what I had to, to make it this far.

  Bottom line. I ratted out Alvin and Serena at dinner. Alvin left screaming, but tonight it’s boiled down to Roger and me.

  Only two of us left, and if Ro
ger won’t concede so we can be together, I’ll … Eeek, is this really me? Promotion means a lot more in this world than I thought when I wrote my very first story in first grade, and the world is bigger and a harder place for artists like me than I thought. When I won grad school prizes for CREATIVE WRITING I thought my dreams had come true. Then I got into Strickfield and I thought I had it made!

  Yeah, right. After Pitch Day I know. It doesn’t matter how good you are, it’s how you sell it. The world is a harsh, judgmental place. If I can’t make it here, I won’t make it anywhere.

  I love making words do what I say, and I love making things up, but if I have to win this to get them out there, then fine. Whatever it takes.

  Dear Davy, Turn back. I mean it. There are some things you have to do alone.

  Writers try to tell the truth, but some things are too terrible to tell. Fiction expresses what we know, but are reluctant to admit. Sooner or later the things too terrible to talk about, things we’re ashamed of and all the things that frighten us transform themselves, and surface in our work.

  Davy, you can’t be here!

  Barking dogs split the night. Sirens. Flashing strobe lights, proscriptions in place and threats carried out exactly as warned, inscribed, memorized and forgotten along with the crumpled green RULES sheet. Ivy LaMont, nearing the top of the Hartfield colony shortlist, is BANG: awake without knowing what woke her or what brings her to her feet in a single bound. She finds herself teetering in front of the bedroom window. Blinking, she leans out into the glare, afraid of what she will see.

  She hears a tortured roar. Billy! Her boyfriend Billy is on the near wall of the enclosure, he came all this long way to rescue her. He really loves her; he does! Now he is suspended, halfway in, halfway out, caught on the razor wire, with the great jaws of the leaping Dobermans clashing all too close to his hands yet in extremis as he is, Billy isn’t yelling for help. He’s calling her name.

  “Ivy!”

  Oh, Billy, not now.

  The boy Ivy loves and left behind has come this long, hard way to get her back. He’s risked everything to rescue her, signifying that this is true love. Ivy LaMont, methodically climbing the Hartfield colony shortlist, is up against it now.

  “Ivy!”

  What she says and does now determines whether she stays or goes and where she should be running downstairs and out into the garden to beg them to call off the dogs and save the boy she thought she loved. If she does, she loses. Miss Trefethen will keep the promise she made to the devil that keeps Hal Harter alive and for so many years, has kept the colony at Hartfield safe. She will feed Ivy, this year’s last remaining loser, to what’s left of her huge, mangled lover, the greedy, raging Thing in the Lake.

  Poleaxed, Ivy thinks: The Outside Event is nothing like I thought. It comes out of nowhere and it is, as it turns out, specific to me.

  Not for the first time, she has to make a decision. If Ivy, who began colony life without guessing how much it would demand of her, pushes through to win the title, and she will or die in the attempt, she’ll make such decisions tonight and again and again every day for the rest of her working life.

  —Asimov’s SF, 2011

  The Legend of Troop 13

  The Lost Troop

  In the mountains tonight, in the jagged hills below the observatory, the Girl Scouts’ voices ring—just not where you can hear, for the missing girls of Troop 13 are as wary as they are spirited.

  “Beautiful,” Louie says. He paints the observatory dome, top to bottom on his revolving scaffold, so he’s in a position to know. He says, “It’s a little bit like angels singing.”

  It would lift your heart to hear them, tourists claim, because tourists believe everything they hear, whether or not they actually heard it.

  Although they’ve been missing for years, some people think the legendary lost Girl Scouts of Troop 13 are still out there on Palamountain, camping in the shadow of the great white dome. We don’t know how it happened or where our girls went when they went missing, but tourists come to the mountain in hopes, and business is booming.

  They claim they came to see the cosmos through the world’s largest telescope, but the men’s wet mouths tell you different.

  As for our girls, there have been signs, e.g.: surprise raids on picnic tables, although it could be bears. Outsiders swear the Last Incline is booby-trapped with broken glass and sharp objects, but they can’t prove it. They have to lug their ruined tires downhill to Elbow and by the time the wrecker brings these tourists back uphill with their new tires, the road is clear—no Scouts, no sign of Scouts, but their cars have been rifled.

  So there’s a chance our girls are running through the woods in their green hats at this very minute, with their badge sashes thrown over items missing from our clotheslines. It’s like a party every night, twelve Girl Scouts on their Sit-Upons around the campfire—feasting on candy and s’mores, judging from supplies stolen in midnight break-ins at Piney’s Store. Our sheriff and the State Police looked for months; the FBI came, but the cold trail just got colder. It’s been so long that even their mothers have stopped looking.

  Now, you may come to Palamountain expecting to find dead campfires, skeletal teepees, abandoned Sit-Upons; you may think you spotted little green hats bobbing up there on the West Slope, but don’t expect to catch up with them. You won’t find our lost girls, no matter how hungry you are for love or adventure, so forget about easing whatever itch you thought you’d scratch here. They haven’t been seen or heard from since the day Tracie Marsters threw the gaudy Troop Leader Scarf around her throat and led them up the mountain.

  What happened to the Scouts in Troop 13, really? Why did they not come back from that last patrol, when we patted their little green hats and kissed them goodbye so happily? Did they not love us, or are there things on Palamountain that we don’t know about? Were they wiped out in a rockfall or kidnapped by Persons Unknown, or are they just plain lost in the woods, and still trying to find their way back to us? Our Scouts couldn’t be carried off against their will, that’s unthinkable. Their motto is “Be Prepared,” and they’d know what to do. We would have found markers: bits of crumpled paper on the trail, blazes on the trees, to signify which way they were taken.

  We’re afraid they went looking for someplace better than the settlement at Elbow, halfway up the East Grade on Palamountain, or our boring home town in the foothills. Prepared or not, we don’t want to think about them running around in some big city. Unless they were running away from home and us personally, which is even worse.

  Better to think of them as still up there, somewhere on Palamountain.

  Listen, there have been sightings!

  A tourist staggers into Mike’s bar in the Elbow and he is all, I alone am left to tell the tale, I alone am left to tell … At this point words desert him; it was that intense. No, he can’t tell you where, or what, exactly, and that’s the least of it.

  We need to shush him, so we shush him. That kind of talk is bad for business.

  If they’re still up there, they’re too happy to hurt you. They’re probably fine, running along to: “Ash Grove” or “Daisy, Daisy, we honor your memory true,” that’s the Girl Scout version, “We are Girl Scouts, all because of you … ” wonderful songs. You won’t hear them singing as they bound along, because Scouts are trained to be careful, they’d be trilling.

  It’s a pretty sound but it chills your blood, according to Louie, who has heard it. He says, “If you hear them coming, run.”

  No, we think. Not our girls. How could those sweet things be dangerous?

  Edwin Ebersole III

  Five a.m., and we’ve been on this bus for so long that the babies are panicking, not all at once, but more or less sequentially. Yow, one cries. Wawww, goes the next; uuuck and aaah aaah aaaa; and the big ones erupt in counterpoint, Are we there yet, wawww, are we there yet, aaaah aaaah aaaa, Are we there yet? Bwaaaaaa, Are we … it’s like a class project on chain reaction. The racket is e
xponential and we’re all too anxious and depressed to make it stop and the only thing that keeps me going on this excursion is the glittering secret in my pocket and the chance that I can get what I want out of this trip, up there at the top. It’s taking too long!

  Fifty movers and shakers with wives and kids, riding into the experience of a lifetime in a stinking, overloaded repurposed Greyhound bus, and why? Evanescent Tours sold us on the trip of a lifetime. It was the card. Triple cream stock. Engraved. Gold ink.

  EVANESCENT TOURS PRESENTS: THE TOP OF THE WORLD, VIA LUXURY COACH. PALAMOUNTAIN OBSERVATORY EXCLUSIVE

  And the kicker?

  by invitation only

  Who wouldn’t bite? No riffraff, just us, the business elite, and, better? Every man on this tour is like me, tough, successful, rich. No ordinary guys on this bus. They can’t afford it, and for us, top of the world, with more T.K. See, these pretty little Girl Scouts vanished up there when they were small, nobody knows how. The lost little girls must be big girls by now. Every man on this bus has stated reasons for riding up the mountain, but at bottom, there are babes in those woods and they need us.

  We’re going up the mountain to hunt. Like we can get back something we lost before we even knew it was missing.

  The hell of it is, Serena’s on to me. I plugged this trip as our second honeymoon, that I’d booked especially for her, but she knows. Nowhere is it written but she knows we’ve never been happy. She jumped up in the middle of the night and dragged our girl Maggie off to sit in the back, and for what? All I did was move on my wife in the dark because she is after all my wife, and we’ve been traveling for so long that my want ran ahead of me.

  Dammit, the bus was dark. They were all asleep.

  I thought, 2 a.m., OK, let’s make the time go by a little faster—you know. Serena slapped my hand away. “Back off, you horny fuck!” and I went, “I was just … ” which devolved into the usual.

  Serena: You always …