Chubby Chaser (25 page)

Her mind flashed back to last year: She stopped by the mall after school. She wanted to purchase a bottle of cologne as a Christmas present for her dad. When it was her turn, the male sales clerk turned toward another woman, a thin, comely blond, to help her instead. Sara chewed him out, and he apologized, claiming that he didn’t know who was next, but Sara had been there several minutes before the other woman had shown up.

“And never be afraid to tell me something,” her father said, still hugging her. “I love you, kiddo, and I’ll always be here for you. That was the final promise that I made to your mother, you know. The night before she passed, she told me to make sure I take care of you, and I don’t intend on letting her down.”

All of a sudden, Sara felt extremely uncomfortable—as though she had cockroaches crawling on her skin—and a strong urge to be alone, so she pulled away from her father, breaking the hug. “Thanks, Dad. I made steak and baked potatoes for dinner. It’s in the kitchen, I already ate, I’m gonna go back upstairs.” She climbed the stairs as fast as she could to avoid further conversing with him.

Sara sat in the Planned Parenthood waiting room, waiting for her test results and fretting over killing Jason.

Two weeks had passed since she had taken her test. It had been almost that long since she had killed Jason and since she had last heard from the police. Christmas had come and gone—still no snow. Her father had bought her the tablet she had been wanting, and she had bought him a tie—and New Year’s was next week. Then it was back to the land of assholes, also known as Tallis High.

She wasn’t fretting over killing Jason because she had started to feel remorse for her actions; on the contrary, once she had gotten over the modern-day societal programming that said it was wrong to kill another person for vengeance and it was wrong to take the law into your own hands, she had felt nothing at all. She was fretting over killing Jason because it hadn’t ended the unbearable pain she felt when she had thought that it would.

Over the last two weeks, she had still thought a lot about Jason, but all her thoughts had been about how she wished she had done more damage to him before she had killed him. If Jason hadn’t been such a social butterfly, she would’ve been able to get him alone for more than a few minutes. She would’ve shot him in the spine to incapacitate him and dragged him back to her house—specifically, back to the living room, where he had attacked her—while her father was at work. She would’ve made him listen to how he had ruined her life. She would’ve made him aware that he had fucked with the wrong girl. She would’ve made him realize that hurting her was the reason he was about to die. Then she would’ve taken a crowbar to his skull until it leaked blood and his handsome face became ugly and unrecognizable. After that she would’ve chopped up his muscular body, which had helped him win so many football games (and a full-ride scholarship to SCU), and thrown all the pieces in dumpsters all over Pennsylvania. That way his body would never be completely recovered and his death would never truly be confirmed. Maybe if she had been able to do all that, maybe then she would’ve felt satiated.

“Sara Krason?” a nurse called. It was time to get her test results. The nurse shepherded her back to an examination room.

She had a different physician’s assistant from before. This one was a middle-aged Caucasian woman. “Hi, Sara. My name is Sherri. I’ll be discussing your test results with you.” They shook hands. Sherri read the file on her clipboard. “Well, I’ve got nothing but good news for you, Sara. You’re as clean as a whistle. You should check back in with us in a couple months, though, and again a couple months after that, ’cause it can take up to six months for HIV to show up. Do you have any questions for me?”

Sara shook her head no. She had been through this before and had done extensive research online. She probably knew enough about STDs to teach a course on it.

“Okay, then. I’ll see you out.”

It hadn’t been just Jason. Sara had been saying to herself,
it still wasn
’
t enough
.
Why wasn
’
t it enough
? ever since she had gunned Jason down. She was often able to push the question to the back of her mind during the day, telling herself to
just give it time, but at night, when she was in bed and there was nothing to distract her, it was all she thought about. And now, after a night of tossing and turning, she finally had the answer: it hadn’t been just Jason.

Jason was gone. Buried. Six feet under. And it had been at her hand. She had finally gotten justice for herself when the world had repeatedly told her that she didn’t deserve it, didn’t deserve anything, because she was ugly and fat. She should’ve felt proud. Happy. Ecstatic. But she didn’t. Because
Jason hadn’t been her only problem. He hadn’t been her only straw. He had simply been the straw that had broken the camel’s back.

She had thought killing Jason would make her feel happy and normal again, but as she reflected back on her life, she realized she had never been happy, not truly, only moments here and there, bits and pieces, nothing solid, and she hadn’t even had any of those since her mother had passed. She hadn’t even felt genuinely happy after she’d thought she’d finally found a friend in Jason, because she’d known, deep down, that it hadn’t been real. She was always expecting someone to fuck with her; she was always expecting someone to screw her over, because someone always had.

She wasn’t made for this world, where people attacked you and broke you down because you didn’t fit the mold; where people humiliated you and plotted against you as a way to pass the time, because they could; where innocent people routinely received punishment and the guilty routinely got off scot-free because of asinine reasons, such as looks. She no longer believed the adage “It gets better after high school.” The world had shown her that after high school, people still judged you solely on your looks, and she had no doubt that plenty of other high-school follies awaited her after graduation as well. Her life would always be limited by her being the ugly, fat girl. She was never going to be happy. The world would never allow her to be. The world hated people like her, and now, after years of harassment and abuse, she hated the world back. She was ready to go, and she knew exactly how she wanted to go out.

Sara had an hour to get to school before lunch started. She had told her father she was sick, but she had lied so that he would let her stay home:

“Dad, would it be all right if I stay home from school today?”

“Are you sick, kiddo?”

“I’m having feminine troubles.” She whispered to make her
situation
sound dire.

“I . . . uh . . . sure. Feel better. I’ll . . . I’ll call the school on my way to work.” Her father had dropped his briefcase and bumped into the front door on his way out.

Sara chortled to herself as she enjoyed her last bag of Doritos. What was it about menstruation that freaked men out so much? Her father was an avid hunter. He had seen all kinds of wounds and gallons of blood, and had still been able to stay calm, but had nearly wet his pants over something as tame as her being on her period. It was hilarious. (She licked her fingers clean after eating the last chip.) Sara had actually had her period last week, but she needed to stay home today to get everything ready while her father was at work, and thus unable to stop her. And unable to be held accountable.

Sara had contemplated killing her father. She had even crept into his room last night to do so (the room had smelled like vanilla, sandalwood, and patchouli—the scent of her mother’s perfume), but she hadn’t been able to pull the trigger, even though it would’ve been for his own good. She loved her father too much to cause him any kind of pain.

She had written her father a letter last night, and she deposited it in his bedroom after she finished eating. She stood in the room and inhaled, taking in the aroma of the perfume. Sara had never been a fan of perfume or cologne (no matter the fragrance, it always burned her nose), but she missed the person the scent reminded her of so much that she was willing to endure it.

She strode down to the basement and loaded a duffel bag with two rifles and two handguns, plus ammunition for each weapon. Additionally, she grabbed two holsters and emplaced them on her sides.

She made her way back upstairs with one of the guns and filmed a video in her bedroom with her laptop. She uploaded the video to her YouTube account but kept it private. She also made copies to mail to news stations.

On her way to put the duffel bag into her car, she stopped by her mother’s picture in the living room. She kissed it and stroked it. She then let her eyes linger on her mother’s.
See you soon
.
I hope
. She wasn’t sure whether God let people like her into Heaven. Probably not. She should get into Heaven, though, because what she was about to do was the right thing. She put the guns in the backseat of her car and took off.

She stopped by a mailbox to drop off copies of her video on the drive to school. The drive to school was calm and relaxing. Sara couldn’t remember the last time her mind had been this uncluttered and unworried. How ironic for her to finally be at peace when she was planning on causing so much mayhem and destruction.

Sara arrived at school. Showtime. She made her YouTube video public, using her smartphone, and then sprang out of her car, slinging her duffel bag over her shoulder.

Someone in the front office buzzed her in. She went into the girls’ bathroom off the cafeteria: it was empty. She unzipped the duffel bag and put the two handguns in the holsters at her sides. She then pulled one of the rifles, swung the duffel bag over her shoulder, and kicked the bathroom door open, hiding the rifle in between her and the duffel bag.

The cafeteria was a cacophony of her schoolmates updating one another on what had happened over their respective winter breaks. For years Sara had felt too petrified to even look in the direction of this place, and now here she was, strolling in and looking around as though she came here every day.

She saw Kimberly Weitsel—the bitch who had made her afraid to eat in public—sitting and talking with a group of people. Nothing out of the ordinary, just typical first-day-back chatter.

Until a bullet tore apart Kimberly’s pretty, vacant head.

Then horrified gasps as people slowly began to register what had just transpired.

Sara turned toward the table where Eric Moxley, Andy Abbott, Collin Holt, Amy Reed, and
Matt Sudekis
were sitting. These were Jason’s friends, the ones who had been in on the bet. Sara peppered their torsos with bullets.

Then all hell broke loose: Everyone, from students to faculty, squealed and shrieked and ran for their lives as Sara fired shot after shot from her rifle, aiming primarily at anyone wearing a letterman jacket. She did some squealing of her own, but they were squeals of delight at the sight of her attackers experiencing all the panic, terror, and anxiety they had forced her to feel for years. It was a glorious vision, and knowing the fear they all felt was at her hand made her chortle.

She saw a guy in a letterman jacket running behind the cafeteria counter. Bang! She blasted him in the side. Blood splattered all over the food containers, racks of chips, and pop machines.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a girl resembling her cousin Marie run for the cafeteria doors. Bang! Sara shot her in the neck. Blood sprayed the wall to the girl’s right.

Michael Adams, in a “God Hates Republicans” T-shirt, tried to dive under a table. Bang! Sara shot him in the back.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Three more students down.

Sara fired at a body writhing in agony on the floor, but nothing came out. A male teacher ran at her. She drew a handgun from one of her holsters and embedded two bullets in his head. She moved her gun over to the squirming body, aimed at its head, and fired.

Sara stopped to admire her handiwork: if she hadn’t known any better, she would have thought she had shot up a mall instead of a school cafeteria, with all the brands, from H&M to Forever 21, on display on the limp bodies, like moribund mannequins.

She seated her handgun back in its holster and swung her duffel bag around to draw her other rifle. She moved out of the cafeteria and walked down the adjacent hall until she came across a large glass case, containing the athletic trophies Tallis had won over the years. Sara took a few steps back and opened fire, shattering the case. The trophies broke as they made contact with the floor.

“What the Sam Hill!”

Sara spun around: Coach Logan stood several dozen feet behind her, gaping at the carnage she had left behind in the cafeteria. This was the man Jason had said was more of a father to him than his own. She strode toward Coach Logan, pumping him full of bullets with each step. If this was the man that had reared Jason, there was no telling what kind of monster he was.

After Coach Logan was down on the floor, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, Sara reloaded her rifle and moved farther down the hall. She blasted the doorknob off the first classroom she encountered and kicked in the door.

“She’s got a gun!” a guy in a letterman jacket yelled. Sara silenced him with a bullet to the throat.

The students whimpered and cried while looking for places to hide, as though they were mice scuttling after someone had turned on the kitchen lights. Their attempts were in vain, as there was nothing in the classroom but desks and against-the-wall bookcases, and Sara blocked the only exit. The teacher rushed her, and Sara, with lightning speed, turned and shot him in the chest and then turned the rifle back on the students. Some of them ran for the window and jumped through it to escape her. Glass breaking muffled the screams for a few moments. A cool breeze wafted into the room.

Sara’s trigger finger started to lock up. She shook it out and then continued firing, not stopping until everybody in the room was down and bloody.

“Attention, everyone: Ice cream is on sale in the cafeteria. I repeat, ice cream is on sale in the cafeteria,” Principal Kallens said over the PA system.

It took Sara a moment to figure out
ice cream is on sale in the cafeteria
was code for
there
’
s a shooter in the school
. She ran out into the hallway and discovered what was surely half the school, stampeding toward one of the back exits. Sara dropped her empty rifle and unsheathed both of her handguns, shooting as many of the students as she could. The students began trampling one another to escape the gunfire. Sara chortled contemptuously. These pathetic cowards had had no qualms about ganging up on her, but when she evened the odds with her guns, they wanted to run.

The wail of police sirens resonated in Sara’s ears.
She ran back to the girls’ bathroom across from the cafeteria. She heard soft sobs coming from one of the stalls. Sara shot out the doorknob and kicked the door in. She found Emily Bulstride—Jason’s ex—crouching on the toilet and looking at her with surprise and fear. Emily probably knew what Jason and his friends had planned to do to Sara. She had probably giggled over it. Being Kimberly Weitsel’s best friend, she probably also knew what Kimberly had done to Sara, and she had probably laughed about that as well.

“Please . . .” Emily pleaded, but Sara shot her anyway, shot her right in her pretty face and her flat stomach.

She then locked herself inside one of the other stalls. She pensively held one of her handguns. Did she really have the strength to do it? The sound of the police clomping through the school answered the question for her: if she didn’t pull the trigger, the police would arrest her, and she would go to prison for the rest of her life for giving these despicable bastards what they so richly deserved. She put the gun to her temple, closed her eyes, and pulled the trigger. The sound of the bullet exploding from the chamber rang in her ears as everything went dark.