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Authors: Rosemary Clement-Moore

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In the meantime, I had a pretty nice setup: the whole loft for myself, with bedroom stuff on one side of the room, a study area on the other. The decorating scheme, though, was Early American Disaster Zone. I had to wade through the clothes on the floor. My computer equipment took up the entire desk and had started to spill onto the adjoining table. Every surface was covered with books, paper, binders, disks, and CDs.

But who had time to clean? Besides the Dance-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, there were pep rallies and games, the Big Spring Musical and end-of-the-year band concerts, field trips, service projects—not to mention term papers and final exams. School spirit is not my thing, but I was on both the school paper and the yearbook staff. The night before I’d taken pictures at the basketball game, then written an essay on
Julius Caesar
before going to bed to be tied in knots by my subconscious.

I was down to my last clean pair of underwear, but a search unearthed some jeans that didn’t yet stand up by themselves. At the back of the closet was a shirt from Aunt Joyce that I’d never worn because it was a little too Woodstock: kind of gauzy, with a tiny floral print, belled sleeves, and a square neck trimmed with thinly crocheted lace.

Any port in a storm, I groused. Then I felt guilty because of little Juanita in Guatemala; they could clothe her village with what lay unwashed on my floor.

Stress and guilt. The longer I was awake, the easier it was to believe that the nightmare was just that. I kept trying to put a rational face on things, even when my instincts said otherwise.

When I was little, I loved Granny Quinn’s tales of the fair folk, will-o’-the-wisps, and
bain sidhe.
My dreams seemed part of that at first, more fairy stories and make-believe. Nobody took them seriously, until one morning at breakfast I asked how long until Aunt Joyce had her baby. Mom told me not to be ridiculous. That afternoon, her sister called and said she was pregnant.

After that, Mom started getting a pinched expression when I talked about my dreams, even as Gran and Dad took them as a matter of course. Then one night—was it eight years ago already?—I woke up screaming, babbling about glass and metal and blood, hysterical with fear. Mom was still quieting my tears when the phone rang.

No good news ever comes in the middle of the night. While Mom listened on the phone, I stood beside her in my Little Mermaid pajamas, and slipped my small hand into her icy one. Her face was a mask, but her eyes were snapshots of grief. Dad, awakened by the phone, stumbled out of their bedroom and froze at the sight of us.

“There was a terrible crash,” I told him, trying to be strong for Mom, trying to be grown up. “Nana and Pop are dead.”

He held her hand while she listened to the police officer on the line. She made the appropriate responses as tears coursed down her face. Then she hung up, and drew me in tight. Tight between them, like she was afraid I’d be lost to her, too. She clutched at us both and we held her up while she wept for her parents, gone in the swift, bloody instant that I’d seen in my dream.

I blinked, coming out of the dark room of memory into the morning light. I had been thoroughly immersed in the past. I guess that was what made last night’s dream so hard to dismiss. The rather vague nightmare had somehow stirred the pot of my psyche, and old, hibernating parts of me now creaked awake.

I looked around the room; my hands had been busy while my mind had been wandering, sorting laundry into reasonably contained heaps. Likewise, the flurry of paper that had blanketed the carpet of the study area now sat in neat stacks on the desk. The books were either back on the shelves or waiting tidily by the computer. The lair that time forgot hadn’t been this neat since middle school.

Something glinted at me from the carpet, and I picked up the thin gold chain that held the crucifix Gran had given me at my first communion. I wondered why it wasn’t where I’d left it, but since I couldn’t remember where that was, I didn’t linger on the thought, or on why it seemed natural to drop it on top of the pile of clothes I was going to wear that day.

What a weird morning. My brain hurt from thinking so much while in a state of caffeine deprivation. I was headed toward the shower when my cell phone rang. I fished it out of my schoolbag, not entirely surprised to see Granny Quinn’s number on the caller ID.

“Hey, Gran. I was just thinking about you.”

“I know you were, dear.” Her voice was brighter than anyone’s had a right to be while the sun still moved upward. I could hear the background whirr of her treadmill, which explained her slight breathlessness. “That’s why I called.”

Why couldn’t I have inherited the chipper genes instead of the spooky ones?

3

y
ou wouldn’t think that a day could go downhill after dreaming you were on the roll call for Hell. But it did.

“Have you voted for the class song yet?” A student council drone shoved a half-sheet of paper in my face. Astrobright Orange is painful at any time of day, but at seven-thirty a.m. it was vomit inducing. Also, the only thing perky I want in front of me at that hour is a coffeemaker. Since the drive-thru line at Take-Your-Bucks had stretched to Canada, I was still severely caffeine deprived.

I voiced my preference in the life-and-death matter of Gwen versus Ashley by wadding up the ballot and throwing it over my shoulder on the way to the Coke machine. “You don’t have to
litter
!” yelled Student Council Sally. “The recycle bin is right
over there
.”

My response to that was equally nonverbal.

“Maggie Quinn!”

I knew that tone. Mr. Halloran, the assistant principal, must have looked up the word
stentorian
in the dictionary on his first day at work, and practiced in the shower until he got the voice just right.

Busted, a scant twenty feet from the Coke machine. So close, and yet so far.

“Yes, Mr. Halloran?” I Goody Two-shoed. “May I help you?”

The administrator stood by the doors leading from the courtyard to the front hall. He was fairly tall, with a full head of suspiciously thick brown hair. He was the type of stocky that comes when gravity turns linebacker shoulders into a desk-job gut. I would lay down money that he’d been a Biff in high school. “I’d like to see you in my office.”

“Ooooooooo,” said the kids in the courtyard—either a taunt or the buzzing of their hive mind.

I followed the assistant principal inside, not quite meekly. Student Council Sally smirked as I went by.

I waved at the secretaries managing attendance and they waved back through the chaos. Halloran waited at his office door like a prison warden. I entered and stood until he closed the door and gestured for me to sit. The office windows made sure we were properly chaperoned by all the staff. Everything was correct and polite and did nothing to explain why my hair wanted to crawl off my head.

“So, Miss Quinn. I hear you were involved in a hazing incident yesterday.”

“Nobody hazed me yesterday, Mr. Halloran.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Quinn.”

This seemed like an odd thing for a school administrator to say, but since he was glaring down at me, hands on his hips, I kept my opinion to myself.

“I have a reliable report,” he continued, “that you were witness to some students bullying a classmate.”

By “reliable report,” I assumed he meant “rumor.” I still hadn’t had any caffeine, my head was feeling funny, and baiting the assistant principal could hold my interest only so long. “Then I don’t see why I’m here. If there was a witness to my alleged witnessing, then you don’t need me to tell you what happened.”

He settled on the corner of the desk in an aren’t-we-buddies way. “I understand you took some photos.”

Irritation jabbed me; I couldn’t imagine who had gone tattling to Halloran. Stanley? The Spanish Club? I guess I’d been overestimating the intelligence of the general populace. Blackmail has power only as long as it remains secret.

I considered Stanley, and his desire for revenge. But he’d been adamant that he didn’t need my help, so I didn’t think he would tell Halloran that I had pictures of his humiliation.

“I don’t know what photos you are talking about,” I lied. I was already on the list for Hell—what did one falsehood matter?

“The photos of the hazing incident,” he said, getting a little red in the face.

“I don’t have any photos of a hazing incident.” This was less of a lie. “Hazing” was making freshmen wear stupid hats. Pretending you were going to drop someone off a balcony was not “hazing.” It was “terrorizing.”

“Then you won’t mind if I look at your camera.”

I had to clamp my teeth on some choice words that would get me expelled. I was offended for the entire fourth estate. As a journalist, I wanted to tell him to get some sort of court order and then we’d talk. As a high school student still five weeks and three days from graduation, I knew there was nothing I could do to stop him.

Furiously mute, I dug into the backpack at my feet and handed over the camera. Halloran turned it over, his big thumbs pressing tiny buttons as he reviewed the pictures on the memory card. Pictures of the Spanish Club’s fundraising table, with its rows of gum and candy, and last night’s basketball game, including a stellar shot of Eric Munoz nailing an NBA-worthy jump shot.

But no Biff, a.k.a. Brandon. No bug-eyed Jessica. No terror-stricken Stanley.

Halloran grunted with frustration, started to say something, then thrust the camera at me. “Get out of here, Quinn. And don’t be late for first period, because I’m not giving you a pass.”

I didn’t have to be told twice. Despite the big windows, the office felt claustrophobic. Maybe it was Halloran and his power trip. Maybe it was the wall behind his desk, filled with pictures of past sports triumphs—not the school’s, his own. The thought that this was what bullies grew into, minor tyrants who took jobs where they could relive their glory days by continuing to terrorize students, made my head ache.

I felt immediately better when I left the office, as if the air were somehow cleaner. My granny might say something about the Quinn ability to sense things unseen, but more likely it was the evil power of Halloran’s aftershave.

The warning bell clanged directly over my head. I had five minutes to find a caffeine infusion before English, which was on the other side of the building from the nearest Coke machine. (I had them all plotted on a sort of mental MapQuest.) I could make it if I ran. But pairing my graceless jog with a hurriedly gulped-down soft drink seemed like a recipe for disaster.

So I went to class, sans soda.

In English, we turned in our homework assignments, and were given the rest of the time to work on our term papers, due in a week. My theme concerned Jonathan Swift and the use of sarcasm in social commentary, and Lisa was flipping through my notes.

“I could get behind a guy who proposed that eating Irish children would solve both the famine and the population problem. I’m going to remember that when my despotic plans come to fruition.”

“He was being satirical, Lisa.”

“Maybe I am, too. Maybe not.” She wiggled her eyebrows maniacally. Lisa had finished her paper a week ago. Her subject? Machiavelli. Sometimes I thought my friend was one of the drollest people I knew. Other times I thought she was one of the scariest.

“What did Halloran want?” she asked.

“Are there
no
secrets in this school?”

“My spies are everywhere.”

“Girls!” We jumped guiltily as Ms. Vincent called from her desk. Well,
I
jumped. Lisa merely turned complacently. “Are you working on your papers, or are you gossiping?”

My compatriot replied with a composed lie, “I’m helping Maggie, Ms. Vincent. She needs advice on solidifying her argument.”

The teacher accepted this with insulting ease. “Why can’t
I
be helping
you
?” I hissed at Lisa as we pretended to get back to work. “I’m the future Pulitzer Prize winner. You’re just the future Lord High Poobah of the World.”

“You can be helping me next time.” She brushed a glossy lock of hair over her shoulder and asked again, “What did Halloran want?”

“The pictures I took of yesterday’s bully-o-rama.”

Her brows lifted. “You got actual dirt on Brandon Rogers?”

“Yeah. Snapped a really unflattering picture of the prom queen front-runner, too.”

“You didn’t hand them over, did you?”

“No. I deleted them from the camera last night after I downloaded them onto my computer.”

“Smart thinking. The camera is school property, like the lockers, with no expectation of privacy. Well done, my Padawan apprentice.”

I tucked my hair behind my ears and tried to get back to work. I wasn’t very successful, because I was now thinking about Halloran and bullies instead of Swift and Lilliputians.

“Why do you suppose Halloran wanted the pictures?” I mused aloud. “He likes good ol’ Biff. Why would he want incriminating evidence on him?”

“To take it away from you, of course, and make sure it never sees the light.”

“But I have copies.”

“You ought to put them in an envelope marked ‘Open in the event of my mysterious death or disappearance.’”

“Gee thanks, Lisa. I would never have thought of that. How handy to have a criminal mastermind as a friend.”

“I prefer Evil Genius. And you’re welcome.” The class began gathering their books. There was no visible signal, just the action of the collective unconscious. Lisa and I rode the wave.

“See you in civics,” she said as the bell rang.

I had journalism next. The class was supposed to be separate from the lab where we worked on the school’s weekly newspaper, but by this time of year the structure was pretty fluid. I turned in my article on the Spanish Club and gave Mr. Allison the pictures of the basketball game. He whistled when he saw the jump shot. “Great photo, Maggie! You really caught the motion.”

“Thanks.” Sports and action photography took a knack and a bit of luck. I think I’d been more lucky than anything else, but I was still proud. “May I have a pass?”

“Where are you going?” he asked, reaching for his pen.

I didn’t think “To the Coke machine” was going to cut it, so I said, “To the auditorium. Big Spring Musical is this weekend, and I thought I’d interview the cast.”

“Good idea. Phillip was saying we could use something to round out the edition. Think you can have it ready tomorrow?”

“Just a fluff piece? Sure.” Phillip was the student editor and he had a gift for knowing exactly how many inches of story the edition lacked at any given moment. Mr. Allison tore the pass off the pad, I took it with a cheery “Thanks!” then grabbed my backpack and headed to C Hall where lay the Band Hall, Choir Room, auditorium, and, not coincidentally, several vending machines.

Finally! Sweet liquid ambrosia of caramel-colored, high-fructose, caffeinated bliss. With the carbonated burn coursing down my throat and the sugar rushing through my veins, interviewing the Drama Club seemed a small price to pay.

Mr. Thomas, the drama teacher, was a harried-looking guy who didn’t seem long out of high school himself. “All those things need to be organized on the prop tables, stage right and left. How are we coming on costumes? People! We
open
in less than three days!”

He might have been addressing the air for all I knew; there was no discernible change in the chaos in the auditorium, where there seemed to be an awful lot going on, but very little getting done. I coughed to get his attention and he turned his wild-eyed stare on me. “Hi. I’m Maggie Quinn, from the Avalon High paper. I was hoping I might interview a few of the cast members.”

“Excellent! I’ll introduce you to our star.” He called toward the stage at a volume that made me jump. “Jessica! Have you got a minute?”

BOOK: Prom Dates from Hell
4.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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