Prom Dates from Hell (4 page)

Karen’s foot shot out from under her and her arms flung out, catching nothing but empty air as she tumbled backward toward the board. The impact echoed through the natatorium as her head smacked the fiberglass. Her limp body hit the water with a splash, and sank slowly into the stygian depths.

5

c
oach Milner dove into the pool, slipping into the fathomless water after Karen. I couldn’t see how she would be able to manage the girl’s limp weight without help. I edged toward the pool, not sure what I could do. Below the surface I could see them, distorted by ripples and depth. Surely some help was better than none, if I could just make myself take that step off the ledge.

“I got it.” A guy’s voice, someone from the boy’s P.E. class that had taken our place in the lap pool. He dove in while the rest of us were still reeling.

His action shattered the horrified spell that held us in stasis. I grabbed the girl to my right. “Get the boys’ coach.” The concrete-and-tile vault of the gym was so loud, it might take a while for the news to spread. Meanwhile, I ran to the wall where the life preservers hung, returning just as three heads broke the surface: Milner and the boy, with Karen hanging between them, blood trickling from under her hair.

I tossed out the life preserver. Milner caught it and draped Karen’s arms over the ring, balancing her. Amanda and Sarah took up the rope and we pulled the three of them to the side of the pool.

“Watch her head.” The boys’ coach had arrived, with the class following behind, like curious rubberneckers on the freeway. I supported Karen’s head while they lifted her out. As her stomach hit the side of the pool, water trickled out of her mouth, and she began to cough. A relieved sigh rippled outward from the ring of students.

She coughed until she retched. Coach and I turned her on her side until all the water came up and out, and with it a strange smell. You’d expect puked up pool water to smell funny. But the chlorine odor was mixed with rotten eggs and burnt toast, and my hands began to shake.

We rolled her back when she started to breathe more easily, in hoarse pants instead of asthmatic wheezes. Someone handed me a towel to put under her head, as Milner ran to call 911. I pressed a second cloth to the gash on Karen’s head. Blood mixed with the water on the tile deck, so that we were awash with it, real horror movie stuff.

“I’m so sorry, Karen,” I whispered, not really knowing what I was apologizing for.

Her brow squinched up and her eyes opened slightly. “For what? Did something happen?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“My head hurts.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. I’d been trying not to press too hard on the cut because of the enormous lump that was under it. It looked like a gory Mount St. Helens.

“Get out of the way, Quinn.” Coach Milner brushed me aside. “How many fingers am I holding up, Foley?”

My knees had stiffened while I knelt on the deck and I had to struggle to my feet as the paramedics arrived and took over. The tension drained quickly after that. Assistant Principal Halloran showed up to take care of anything official; I bet there was going to be some paperwork on this one. Our classes were dismissed to go change but I hung back, watching silently as the EMTs put a brace on Karen’s neck before they lifted her.

As the paramedics strapped her down for the ride, I sidled up to where one of them stood writing on a big metal clipboard. “Is she going to be all right?”

“I can’t really say.” He glanced up from his chart and saw my face. Maybe I looked as tightly wound as I felt, because he added, “She’ll definitely be needing tests and observation for a concussion, but it could be worse.”

In other words, it was a lot better to have a big bump going out than a big dent going in. The EMTs gathered their stuff quickly, and after a last signature from the assistant principal, they whisked Karen away.

The air seemed eerily quiet once they were gone. The gym was pretty much empty, and the lap of the water echoed strangely on the concrete and tile.

I found myself at the edge of the pool, looking for…I don’t know what. Another glimpse of black shadow, a whiff of something other than chlorine. I’m not sure what it would mean if I
did
smell something. That I was crazy? Or I wasn’t.

My hand touched my throat. It took me a moment to realize I was unconsciously reaching for Granny’s necklace.

Was it possible that my dream had somehow been a warning?

I rejected the idea almost immediately. I was too old to believe in fairies and soothsaying dreams. What I had was very good intuition, and sometimes things I picked up subconsciously play out in my dreams. That was the only logical, adult explanation.

And I never saw the future. I couldn’t have warned Karen any more than I could have warned my grandparents that night. There was nothing I could have done.

“Of course there wasn’t.”

My heart slammed against my ribs. I jumped, too, arms windmilling to keep myself from somehow defying physics and falling into the water three feet away.

“Whoa! Careful.” Big, tanned hands caught my waist. Well, where my waist would be if I wasn’t wearing the World’s Most Unflattering Swimsuit.

As soon as I was steady, I backed away, my heart still pounding. Mostly I was startled. But it may have had a little to do with the blue plate special of hot, athletic goodness standing in front of me.

Finally, I had a good look at Bobby Baywatch. The lifeguard patch on his well-worn swim trunks explained his quick action earlier, as well as his bronze tan, washboard stomach, and muscular shoulders. He had a great face, too—good bones, blue eyes, and a mouth that looked like it smiled more than not.

It was also a familiar face, and my brows pinched together as I made the unwelcome connection.

“Oh Hell,” I said. “You’re a Jock.”

With a capital
J.
As in, one of the Jocks and Jessicas, a lord of the watering hole.

He didn’t pretend he didn’t know what I meant. “Maggie, right?” I nodded. “Look, Maggie, I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. Brandon went too far, and…” He faltered and finished weakly. “I’m just really sorry.”

I could see plainly that he was repentant, embarrassed, and a little ashamed of himself. But that wasn’t my problem. “I don’t need an apology. You didn’t do anything to me.”

“I know. I’ll apologize to Stanley, too. But I just don’t want you to think I’m like those other guys.”

I had to tilt my head back to look him in the eye. I’d had a craptastic day, and there was enough weird stuff going on in my life to fill an episode of the
Twilight Zone
. I didn’t have the patience to coddle his guilty conscience.

“I don’t know why it matters to you, but here’s the deal. You may not have helped, but you stood there and did nothing while the people you call your friends demeaned and physically assaulted someone weaker than them.”

He flushed guiltily and looked away. “I just didn’t know what to do that wouldn’t make things worse.”

His whipped puppy expression made me feel guilty, too, for lecturing. “Yes, well, I don’t want to be late to class, so…” I gestured for him to move out of my way. If he thought it was strange that I didn’t go around him on the pool side he didn’t say so, but just backed up to open more ground. I hadn’t gone far, though, when he called, “Hey, Quinn!”

I turned back, lifting my brows in inquiry.

“It’s not the same thing,” he said.

“What’s not?”

“Yesterday and today.” He closed the gap between us, looking down at me with spectacularly blue eyes. Not that it changed my opinion of him, of course. “I heard you talking to yourself. It’s true, there was nothing you could have done. If you had jumped in, we’d have had two people to pull out instead of one.”

“I can swim.” If your definition of swimming was broad enough.

“Swimming and rescuing are two different things.” He smiled, a little ruefully. “I thought it was cool that you thought about it, though. I guess that’s why I wanted to…make an excuse, I guess.”

I understood that I’d been paid a compliment of a sort. By a Jock. The Weirdness just went on and on.

I didn’t know what to say so I settled on, “Thanks. I think.”

With all that had happened that day, I had much more important things to think about than how my rear end looked in my bathing suit as I walked to the locker room. But I worried about it anyway.

I had less than five minutes to change and get to my next class, on the other side of the planet from the pool. I unlocked my stuff and hauled it all into one of the shower stalls. I had no time for Victorian hang-ups about nudity, or wrestling matches with my clothing. I shucked off my suit, pulled on my panties and had just fastened my bra when the curtain flew open. Jessica Prime, head bitch of the universe, snapped my picture with her camera phone.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, in one short day—eight short hours, actually—I’d gone from worrying that the demonic forces of the universe might be appearing in my dreams, to wondering whether, by six o’clock tonight, most of the student body would have received an e-mail attachment of me, looking like a deer in the headlights, wearing my washday underwear.

6

s
he text messaged me between classes:
NOW I’VE GOT A PICTURE, TOO.
Hello Queen of the Obvious. But I understood the implied threat. If I went public with her impression of a screaming baboon, she’d broadcast me and my Hello Kitty underwear to her entire friends list.

Chemistry lab demanded my attention, and I was glad for it. Given the choice between (1) angsting over whether Jessica Prime was petty enough to distribute the picture for the heck of it, or (2) blowing myself up in my distraction, the decision was fairly easy.

“Your experiment is set before you.” Professor Blackthorne walked through the lab benches, hands clasped behind his back. “You are to follow the instructions—to the letter, Mr. Anderson—adding Powder A to Liquid B and heating the resulting Solution C as indicated, and based on the resulting reaction, identify Product D. Understood?”

We chorused a trained “yes, sir” so hearty that you would have thought we lived to identify Product D from the reaction of Liquid B and Powder A. Truthfully, our experiments were usually interesting if not pyrotechnic. Professor Blackthorne loved a good exothermic reaction.

I should point out that on Halloween, my chemistry teacher dressed up like Professor Snape from the Harry Potter books, and he sometimes referred to his course as “Potions Class” even when it wasn’t October. He had a last name out of a Brontë novel and he looked like the mad scientist from
Back to the Future
. I love Professor Blackthorne.

“Right then. Goggles on…Is something funny, Mr. Hobson?”

I tensed with dread as the football player tucked something under his desk. “Er, no, Professor Blackthorne.”

“That’s not a cell phone, is it?”

“Oh no, Professor Blackthorne.” Except that it totally was.

“Good. Cell phones should always be turned off during lab experiments. Should they ring, even in silent mode, the arriving signal could cause a static charge that would ignite any volatile fumes in the air, and the user would certainly go up in a fiery ball of agonizing death.” He stared down his nose at the wide receiver. “And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we, Mr. Hobson?”

I want to marry Professor Blackthorne. “Now! Goggles on…and begin.”

The instant the bell rang, I headed toward civics. It was pointless to dwell on what a malicious bitch Jessica Prime was and the senseless cruelties she inflicted on girls every day. But I did anyway, jumping at every chirruping cell phone, convinced my picture would be all over the school by seventh period.

It wasn’t that I had some enormous popularity at stake. I occupied neutral territory—a sort of social Switzerland—nowhere near the “in crowd” but not so far out that I had to sit by myself in the cafeteria. No, the only thing at risk was my total humiliation. And the more I thought about it, the larger it loomed, until I was convinced that every laugh in the crowded hallway was aimed at me, and the Cingular airwaves were burning up with the traffic of my downfall.

New plan: Duck into the nearest bathroom and hide in a stall. I was getting good at that. It would be handy in my career as a tabloid reporter, which was the only job I would be able to get once that picture was posted on the Internet, available to anyone who Googled me.

My phone buzzed against my hip. I pulled it out and looked warily at the caller ID, then flipped it open.

“Where
are
you?” Lisa’s voice blared in my ear.

“Hiding in the bathroom.”

“Which one?”

“B Hall. By the computer lab.”

“I’m there.”

I heard her enter only a few moments later. “Get out,” she told the freshmen primping in the mirror. I saw their little feet scurrying toward the exit, then my stall door flew open.

“Are you all right? Why are you hiding?” she demanded, one hand braced on top of the swinging door, the other on her hip, a warlike, gray-eyed Athena in vintage Gap.

“I’m having a terrible day.” My voice cracked pathetically.

“I know, Mags. I heard it was awful. But you’re all right?”

“
Awful
?” So she’d sent it. And even my best friend thought I looked awful with my fish-belly-white thighs and bug-eyed expression. My eyes began to sting, despite my best efforts not to cry. “Was it really that bad?”

“Well, you were there.”

“I know. But I didn’t think she’d really do it.”

Lisa frowned, her arched brows drawing together. “You didn’t think she’d really jump?”

“No. I didn’t think she’d send my picture to the whole school.”

She dropped the other hand to her hip. “What are you talking about?”

I stared up at her, realizing we were talking about two different things. “The picture Jessica Prime took of me mostly naked in the locker room. What are
you
talking about?”

“Karen Foley’s accident.” She pressed her palms to her forehead, paced away from the stall, and came back. “You mean I’ve been worried sick about you, about Karen, and you’re in here crying about a
Jessica
?”

Jumping up, I defended myself. “I was not crying. And I think I’m entitled to five minutes of self-pity.”

“Are you in the hospital? No. Are you the first person those bitches have humiliated? No.”

I shoved past her, out of the stall. “You know what? You could give me a little perspective without being such a witch about it. You’re supposed to be my friend.”

“My friends don’t hide in toilets from a little humiliation.”

“Kiss off, Lisa.”

“That’s the spirit.” She handed me my backpack. “Let’s go to civics.”

I grabbed the bag from her, squared my shoulders, and set my chin, daring her to give me any more grief.

“Good girl.” She smoothed my hair, fluffed the sleeves of my blouse, and straightened the neck. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

“Afraid I’d turn into Self-Pity Girl permanently?” I asked, still sulking.

“No. I heard about the accident and worried.”

My anger abated. I can never keep it up very long, especially when I’m sort of at fault, too. “I’m fine. Karen was the one hurt, not me.”

“But it could have been. She took your place in line, didn’t she?”

I hadn’t thought about it that way, and the idea was like a punch to the gut. Was it possible I had dodged some kind of bullet of Fate?

After school, Gran was waiting with tea and sympathy. Literally.

I hadn’t told her I was coming over, but by the time my Jeep Wrangler pulled into her driveway, the tea was hot in the pot and the cookies were warm on the plate. I’d resolved to be done feeling sorry for myself, but there’s something about a grandmother’s couch. Before I knew it, I had told her all about Jessica Prime and the picture, Halloran’s ambush, Karen’s accident, and even the dream that kicked it all off.

“I knew there was something going on.” Gran withdrew her arm from my shoulders. “I knew this morning that you weren’t being straight with me.”

Self-pity time had expired, I guess. I sighed and poured myself a cup of tea. The brew was Darjeeling, but the pot and cups were Japanese, which summed Gran up pretty well. She had an icon of the Virgin and Child on one wall, and a set of Buddist temple bells hanging near the door. She looked like a red-headed Debbie Reynolds, dressed in a lavender tracksuit, completely American except for her lingering Irish lilt.

“It was just a nightmare, Gran.”

“You keep telling yourself that and you may miss an important clue.”

“To what? All I dreamed about was fire and smoke. That’s not a lot to go on.”

She lifted her steaming cup. “That’s your own fault. If you had honed your ability instead of ignoring and repressing it…”

Surging to my feet, I paced across the small living room, endangering a bamboo tree in my frustration. “I don’t have an ability!”

“Then why are you here?”

I didn’t answer her, just folded my arms with a sullen expression. Stubborn? Who, me?

“You are here because something about your dream will not allow you to ignore it.” Gran set down her cup and clasped her hands together. “I can sense there are forces at work around you, Magdalena. You sense it, too, or you would not be wearing that.” She pointed to the delicate gold cross around my neck.

I reached up to trace the shape. “I just found it while I was cleaning up my room, and since I hadn’t worn it in a while…”

“Nonsense. Your subconscious recognizes the threat, the need for spiritual protection. Why don’t you?” For a woman of her years, she had relatively few wrinkles, but every one of them was drawn deep with annoyance.

Pacing again, I tried to answer. “Because it’s just—” Scary? Ridiculous? “—impossible.”

“There are things in the world that cannot be dismissed simply because they cannot be quantified. You have a gift—”

I started to protest. “Gran, I don’t—”

“Honestly, Maggie.” She interrupted me, clearly at the end of her patience. “If nothing else, you have a
brain
and the obligation to use it to take a stand against Evil.”

“Evil?” She had pronounced it with a capital letter.

“Yes, Evil. It doesn’t take much for Evil to flourish in the world. People invite it in much more readily than they do Good. Evil is easy, effortless. Good requires action.”

I flopped onto the sofa, thinking about my words to Lifeguard Jock. There was a quote from Edmund Burke that I’d spared him, but spoke now to myself. “‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’”

“Exactly.” She leaned forward, catching my gaze. We have the same green eyes, and I could see my pale face reflected in hers. “It worries me that your denial may blind you, Maggie. Promise me that while you’re applying your formidable brain you won’t ignore your intuition.”

It sounded so reasonable when she put it that way. But wasn’t that why I’d come here, to be bullied into admitting what I couldn’t deny any longer?

“Okay.” My admission made her relief a palpable thing, as her tension uncoiled from her compact frame. “So how does this thing work?”

Her brows screwed up at the question. “It isn’t that simple. It’s different for everyone.”

“That’s not a lot of help, Gran.”

“What did you expect? There isn’t a magic spell. It’s a skill like anything else, and it has to be practiced.”

I sighed. Loudly. “That doesn’t do me any good right now, though, does it?”

She refreshed her cup of tea with an astounding lack of concern. “You could stop being so stubborn, for one thing. Just let go once in awhile. Trust your instincts.”

“Yes, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Gran reached over and tweaked my earlobe, hard. “Ow!”

“Don’t be flippant with your elders.”

I rubbed my ear. She looked so modern, I sometimes forgot that my grandmother was old school when it came to getting an erring child’s attention.

“While I’m being disrespectful, what’s the big idea telling a complete stranger about me?”

“Justin MacCallum? He was so polite and curious about my stories. And so handsome, didn’t you think?”

I did, but that was beside the point. “Can’t you think of a better way to play matchmaker than telling him I’m a freak?”

Gran gave me an odd look, as if she couldn’t believe I was so dense. “Honestly, Maggie. He’s a young man who spent his morning recording an old lady’s fairy tales and believed without question that The Sight runs in our blood. What makes you think
he’s
entirely normal?”