The Prom Queen (11 page)

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“We're
not going anywhere. I'm dropping you back at school.”

He didn't reply.

His silence made me even more uncomfortable.

In the mirror I saw him slowly lean forward to reach for me.

“Lucas!” I yelled. “I'm driving!”

But his arms were around my shoulders now.

And then I saw it.

The arms around my shoulders were dark, purplish red.

He was wearing his maroon baseball jacket.

“G
et out!” I shrieked, pulling out of his arms.

I screeched to a halt in the Shadyside High parking lot. Now I jumped out into the rain and opened the backseat door. “I mean it!” I yelled.

“All right, all right. Don't have a heart attack,” he said.

He crossed his arms and smiled up at me. The unspoken message was “If you want me out, you'll have to throw me out.” That was exactly what I felt like doing. I was rapidly losing control.

“Lucas,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “I want you out of my car, now. If you don't get out, I'm going to start screaming at the top of my lungs. I'm going to turn you in to the principal and
to the police. I'm going to get you in every kind of trouble I know how. Now, how's that for calm?”

Lucas flashed me what he thought was a sexy smile. “You're cute when you're angry.”

“Out!”

He started to get out of the car. But very slowly.

I yanked on his arm, but he seemed to enjoy playing tug-of-war, so I stopped.

“There,” he said, “I'm out. Now, what did you have in mind?”

I slammed the door behind him. Then I hopped back in the driver's seat and pulled away before I had even closed my door.

I caught a glimpse of the expression on his face in my rearview mirror. His smile had finally faded. He looked upset.

I drove fast all the way home. Too fast. I didn't want to get a ticket, but I needed to put as many miles between me and Lucas as I could.

I pulled into our driveway.

Funny, the porch light wasn't on. My mom almost always left it on for me. And my dad's blue Subaru wasn't parked out front. Must be in the garage, I told myself.

The rain had suddenly stopped, and the moon came out from behind a bank of clouds. I was glad for
any
light right then.

I bent over and grasped the garage-door handle. I yanked. It rumbled thunderously as it rose up over my head. The garage was empty. My parents were out.

Unbelievable. If there was one night I didn't want to come home to an empty house, this was it.

The door from the garage into the kitchen was locked. I fumbled for my key. I didn't have it on me. Only the front door key.

Then I heard what sounded like footsteps in the house.

My heart froze. I listened. Nothing. It must have been my imagination.

Standing as straight as I could, I turned and made my way out of the garage.

I put my hand down on something furry and jumped.

The old carpet my dad had piled on top of the boxes of junk he had stored out there, I saw.

The moon lit the walk to the front door. But the shrubs my father was so proud of, the ones that lined the walk, in the dark they loomed like huge monsters ready to pounce.

Get a grip on it, Lizzy, I warned myself. I had to try twice to put my key in the front lock because my hand was shaking so much.

I got the door open and immediately locked it behind me. I flicked on the hall light, and every other light I passed by.

The house was empty.

I breathed a deep sigh. And another. I looked on the hall table. No letter from Kevin. I hadn't answered his last letter. Still, I resented his not having written. Where was he when I needed him?

Chocolate. That was the next best thing I could
think of. I headed for the kitchen and my mom's secret stash in the vegetable crisper.

The kitchen light was already on.

Sitting at the kitchen table was Justin.

“Surprise,” he said.

“Justin—how did you get in?” I suddenly felt terrified. He had the strangest grin on his face.

“Your parents
let
me in. How do you
think
I got in?”

“Where are my parents?” I asked, not moving from the doorway.

“They went to pick up your aunt at the airport.”

“My aunt?”

My first thought was that he was lying, my second that I should run out of the house screaming my head off. Then I remembered this was Thursday. Aunt Rena was flying in from Dallas. I had totally forgotten about her.

“Sorry,” I said with a sigh. “I-I've had a very tough day.”

“It's been a tough time for all of us,” Justin said soothingly.

I nodded my head. “Understatement of the year award goes to Justin Stiles.”

I opened the fridge and stared inside. I took out a Ring-Ding. “Want one?”

He gestured at the plate in front of him and grinned. From the crumbs I could see that he had polished off the last of Mom's carrot cake.

His grin spread. His perfect blue eyes were twinkling. He was
so
handsome!

As scared as I was feeling, I couldn't help noticing that. Justin had what Elana called “whip appeal.” His looks zapped you, like someone had just flicked you with a whip.

“Listen,” he said, “the reason I came by—”

“You mean you didn't just come for my mom's carrot cake? She'll be hurt!”

I was starting to feel a little better. I sat down, across from him.

“The reason I came by,” he started again, “is about Suki.”

I waited, puzzled.

“I wanted to ask you not to say anything.”

“About what?”

“About the fact that I was with her at the movies that night.”

I thought about this for a moment. “What do you care?” I asked him, once I had swallowed a mouthful of Ring-Ding.

“The thing is, I don't want to go out with her again,” he explained. “And I don't want it to get around that I went out with her and dropped her. She's got a bad enough rep as it is.”

I rolled my eyes. I didn't believe him. But Justin was giving me that puppy-dog expression of his.

“You know, it's been pretty lonely without Simone around,” he said.

“Lonely?” That didn't seem like the right word when your girlfriend had just been murdered.

Justin got to his feet. He moved around the kitchen, glanced out the window, then came back
and stood behind me. I scooted my chair to the side so I could look up at him. “Yes, lonely,” he said. “It hurts so much with Simone gone.”

Justin reached out and gently cupped my cheek. Then he moved his hand and rubbed my neck. I pulled my head back and studied him warily.

“Come on, Lizzy,” he said softly. “You're interested in me. I can tell.”

I snorted. He looked stunned.

“Sorry,” I said, “but I swear you're the biggest egomaniac in the history of Shadyside. What makes you think I'm interested in you?”

Justin's eyes widened. His mouth went slack. “Well, if you're not, you're the first girl I've met around here who isn't.”

I got out of my chair and moved away from him. “I guess you're not used to being rejected, are you?”

“As a matter of fact”—Justin's back arched a little—“no.”

“No,” I agreed. “No one rejected you even while you were going steady with Simone.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means? It means you were going out with Simone's friends behind her back.”

“That's a lie.”

I felt a surge of anger. “Don't call me a liar, Justin. You're the liar. You went out with Dawn. You went out with Rachel. And with Elana. And those are only the ones I know about.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he
said. There was a new look in those blue eyes now. Fear.

“You were with Elana the day Simone was killed,” I went on. “You already told the cops that part. Or did you forget?”

“So what?” Justin said. “That doesn't make me a murderer.”

I held my breath. “I never said anything about your being a murderer,” I said finally.

“Well . . . then . . . what are you getting at?”

He seemed totally flustered now.

“Just that it was a pretty crummy thing to do to Simone,” I continued.

“Well, I don't want to talk about that right now,” he said, his eyes flashing. “And if I were you, I wouldn't talk about it, either.”

He spun on his heels and walked out.

That was a threat.

I had just been threatened.

What would he do if I didn't keep my mouth shut? I wondered.

As if in answer, the front door slammed shut.

• • •

The five prom queen candidates—even Simone and Rachel—were all parading onstage in their gorgeous prom dresses. All the dresses were identical. They were all bright red. All the girls stopped with their backs to the audience.

Mr. Sewall, the principal, was standing at the microphone, holding a small white envelope in his left hand. Next to him stood Lisa Blume, the
student council president. She was holding the queen's crown and scepter.

“And now,” said the principal, “this year's winner and Shadyside's prom queen . . .”

He ripped open the envelope. All the kids at the prom had stopped dancing and were watching the prom queens. Mr. Sewall too. What he saw was so horrifying that he never announced the winner.

One by one the prom queens slowly turned to face the audience.

And as each girl turned, screams rang out through the auditorium.

Each face was revealed. Each face greeted the screams with blank and staring eyes.

The flesh on the girls' faces was decaying. Their hair was matted with wet dirt and dead brown leaves. Their faces looked as if they'd been buried in wet earth for several weeks. Bone poked through the putrid, sagging chunks of greenish flesh.

Simone's face was the most frightening. The flesh of her cheeks had rotted so badly that her cheekbones were sticking right through.

Only the eyes of the prom queens remained intact. The girls' eyes were all blood red; they stared at the audience with unblinking fury.

Ghoulish faces. In beautiful gowns.

The five prom queens stepped toward the audience, staggering forward stiffly.

Closer. Closer.

Until the smell of rotting flesh choked everyone in the gym.

The girls all raised their heads in silent, hideous laughter.

And as they raised their heads, their blood red eyes flaring, their necks were revealed. Their necks, their shoulders were covered with slithering white worms.

I woke up screaming.

I screamed so loud I also woke up my parents and my aunt Rena.

All three of them came bursting into my bedroom, their still sleep-filled faces tense with alarm.

“Sweetheart,” my mother said, plopping down on the side of my bed, “you almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Bad dreams are just bad dreams,” my father said, patting me on the head.

He'd been saying the same thing to me since I was four. I didn't mind. If I ever have kids of my own, I'll probably tell them the exact same thing.

If only the nightmares would go away.

If only I could sleep one night without being reminded of my lost friends.

My parents and my aunt went quietly back to their rooms. I stared up at the ceiling, trying to erase the worm-covered prom queens from my memory.

The next day at assembly I'd have to give my speech for prom queen. I forced myself to go over in my mind what I had worked out to say. I was going to talk about Rachel and Simone.

“The two people you should vote for aren't here
today,” I planned to start. “Rachel West and Simone Perry.”

But as soon as I said their names, I saw their faces. Not the way they had actually been, but the way they were in my dream.

Just a dream, Lizzy, I told myself once more.

Just a dream.

Wipe it away. Away.

Of course, this one time my dad was wrong. This one time a bad dream was not just a bad dream.

This time the dream was real.