Bobby and his crew led Will through the room, to a sectioned-off area near the screen. It was separated from the rest of the audience by chest-high walls made of classroom doors that had been nailed together. Inside was a cardboard couch with stuffed T-shirt pillows. Bobby pointed to a spot on the floor.
“Put him there,” Bobby said. “On his back.”
Will tried to stop them, but he was no match for their combined strength. They put knees on his shoulders and hands to pin him to the floor. Hands held his ankles.
Bobby kicked something around the area like he was fooling with a soccer ball. It skittered across the floor. A human skull. Will reminded himself that Bobby used to wear part of a bio lab plastic skeleton, and that it was probably from one of those. But it didn’t have the creamy yellowy-white color of a plastic skeleton. And it didn’t look plastic. It looked like bone. Teeth were missing from it. He could see some hair. Where did Bobby get a human skull? Whose skull was it?
Maybe it was one of the teachers, Will told himself. Or one of the seniors who had died before graduation was established. Maybe some bodies had to be moved for some reason. Bobby could have just found it. Just ’cause he had a skull didn’t mean Bobby was the one who killed the person. Probably not.
Bobby sank into a wooden chair and stared at Will. He whistled and a wide-thighed Freak girl, holding a plastic grocery bag and dragging a folding chair, came plodding in. When she reached Bobby, she sat and pulled a bottle of ink, a rag, and a mechanical pencil from the bag. A needle extended out of the pencil’s tip instead of lead. She laid the rag over her forearm and dipped the needle into the black ink. Will watched her fold Bobby’s ear forward and saw that the back of his ear was unpainted. It was only then, Will realized, Bobby hadn’t painted his head and face black. He’d tattooed them. His eyelids, his lips. Up into his nostrils. Dull black.
“That’s a tattoo?”
Bobby smiled with a mouth full of glistening red teeth.
“Almost done,” Bobby said.
“Why would you do that?”
“You’d never understand. This is who I am now.”
Bobby was right, Will didn’t understand. He’d always thought Bobby was all show, and that deep down he was a scared little wimp. But this … blacking out your entire head … Bobby was permanently deleting his old self. That scared Will. Maybe Will had always been wrong about him, or maybe Bobby had been pushed too far and he’d finally snapped.
The girl tapped away at Bobby’s folded ear with the inky needle. Bobby pulled sugar cubes from out of his pocket and started eating them like popcorn. Bobby smiled so wide at Will that he saw an inch of pink gums above his red teeth.
“Scared?” he asked.
Will shook his head on instinct.
Bobby burst out of his chair and rushed Will. Will writhed against the knees that riveted him to the floor. Bobby stopped short of him and raised his boot in the air to stomp down on the face shield of Will’s mask. But his foot hung there without smashing down. Bobby placed it back on the floor, and snickered down at Will.
“You should be.”
20
PROM WAS IN TWO HOURS. AND THEN HILARY would only stay for two more. That included dancing, posing for pictures, and being crowned prom queen. Immediately after her coronation, she’d run to the quad to be lifted out. That was a total of four hours. She could last four hours.
The wads of toilet paper she had wedged up her nostrils to stop the bleeding were getting soaked. She’d have to replace them soon. The hallucinations had begun, but they were minor. She’d seen her fingers as dove wings, and the way her white feathers had wrapped around the gun was beautiful. Sometimes, when she’d close her eyes, she’d be in a motel room where her mother was sucking face with Sam on stained bedding, and they were tearing off each other’s clothes. She’d open her eyes immediately to rid herself of the sight, but sometimes it would take a few seconds for her vision to kick in. Even after she was firmly back in reality, she could hear the slippery wet noises of their mouths smacking together.
Hilary lay on a bed. She’d made Varsity construct a platform for the bed that rested on the top three bleachers. From there, she could keep an eye on everyone in the gym at all times. She yawned and stretched her arms in the air. The gun was in her hand, and everyone in the gym was either looking at it, or making a point not to. She knew they all craved it. And someone would come for it eventually. But by the time one of those idiots worked up the courage, she’d be gone.
Even with the power of the gun, she may not have gotten away with all her demands if the girls of the school hadn’t rallied behind the idea of a prom. Every boy who griped about the work it took to make the prom happen had at least three girls surround him and threaten him if he were to do anything to derail this for them.
The Geeks were finishing decorating the commons in her chosen theme: spring. She had a Geek boy, two Pretty Ones, and a Nerd girl going without sleep to make four dress options for her that she’d try on shortly. She’d tested out five different makeup artists from across the gangs, but had yet to find one who could do her face justice. There were still more showing up to the gym for the chance to get on her good side.
If there was no one worthy, she’d do it herself. She was already going to do her own hair, but that was because she didn’t want anyone standing behind her. Makeup artists stood in front of her where she could shoot them. But a hairstylist, behind her back, could slip a wire around her neck and strangle her to death, and all Hilary would be able to do was blow holes in the ceiling.
There would be no other weapons allowed other than her gun, and Varsity would be working security at the doors. The Nerds had the largest music library in the school, and they were doing their best to perfect the playlist that she’d already gone through with a red pen. Everything was happening according to schedule. There was no way in hell she was leaving high school without being prom queen.
The gym floor became a giant pool of rice pudding in front of her eyes. The feet of the Varsity boys and Pretty Ones were buried in pudding halfway up their shins, and each step pushed the pudding around, ruining the perfect, lake-like surface. Blood began to bubble up through the displaced pudding like crude oil.
Hilary shook her head. When she looked back at the gym floor it was wooden again, the mulch of bloody pudding was gone, and all shins were dry.
She rubbed her eyes. She could do this.