Hilary honestly couldn’t figure out how she’d gotten into this situation.
“I mean, is it me?” she said. “Did I do this?”
Hilary turned and looked down at the Freak girl on her back, still strapped to the tipped chair. She was passed out. Her gag was stained brown with old blood. The new, raw gap between her teeth made her look thirty. The bags under her eyes weren’t helping either. But just because she was ugly, didn’t mean she had no brain. Hilary squatted down over her, lifted her head up, and untied her gag. The girl’s eyes fluttered awake. When she saw Hilary over her, she flinched.
“Do you think it’s my fault that I’m down here?” Hilary said. “Because it feels like I’ve hit bottom.”
Hilary waited for the girl to answer, as patiently as she could, because the little gnat was really taking her fucking time.
“Just tell me,” Hilary said. “I can take it.”
“P-please let me go.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Hilary said, and threw up her arms. She walked away from the girl.
“Please! I’ll do anything you want,” the Freak said.
The girl kept pleading, but Hilary tuned her out. She was good at that.
Hilary’s mood brightened when she saw a pair of calfskin boots sticking out of the side of a hill of trash. They were six sizes too big, but they were relatively clean, and she could use them. Her shoes were garbage now. She grabbed the boots and pulled. This triggered a mini-avalanche of trash. Along with the cascading refuse came a flood of cockroaches, and a human body. Hilary yelped and jumped back. The body of a boy slid out of the hill of filth and rolled to her feet. The boots had an owner.
She covered her mouth in shock, and danced away from the hissing scramble of roaches.
The dead boy had white hair and a white beard. She’d seen him before. On the quad a few times. Next to Gates. He was a Saint. And someone had cut his scalp off. She could see the cool quartz of his bare skull. His skin was yellowing, and there was a maggot wiggling along the lower eyelid of his left eye. Hilary turned away and closed her eyes.
She couldn’t get sick on her dress. That would only make everything worse. Hilary turned away. She didn’t look at the boy’s face again. She focused on his boots. She grabbed one with both hands. With a little back-and-forth, she worked the boot off. Something slid out of it and landed neatly on the floor.
She shook her head. What she was seeing was impossible. She picked the impossible thing up. It was ice-cold in her hands. She clicked it open.
She laughed.
It wasn’t impossible. It was exactly right. Now everything made sense. This was why she’d been brought so low, down into the filth. To find this. Her destiny.
The cutest little revolver she’d ever seen. Fully loaded.
Hilary clomped into the gym in her oversized boots. Her legs must have looked like saplings in full-size planters. Her white dress had gone brown from sweat and muck. She stank so bad she could smell herself, but Hilary didn’t care about any of it. Let the Pretty Ones look. Let Varsity. She had the world in her handbag.
Her dad had shown her a gun like this before. He used to show her lots of guns. It was called a Saturday night special. He’d referred to it as a lady gun, and he’d been pissed that he’d bought it for her mom and she’d never seemed to care. He’d said that when Hilary was old enough, he’d give the damn thing to her. But that never happened. He’d walked out on Hilary and her mother, and had taken the gun with him. One more promise the guy hadn’t kept. But she had her own gun now, and it was going to change everything.
Loud chatter echoed across the basketball court, bouncing off the walls and the high, bannered ceilings. The gym was full of kids from every gang. She wanted to puke. Terry had been kicking around the idea of opening up the pool to the rest of the school and charging people to swim. It looked like he had finally done it. They were lined up all across the gym floor, towels in hand, waiting for their chance to use the pool. Blue hair peppered the line, and black and red and rainbow. Not since the raid on Sam’s food pile had there been this many other gangs in the gym. Their filthy hands touching the walls, filthier feet streaking her floor. It wasn’t right.
“Oh my God.”
A group of Pretty Ones was staring at Hilary. Every single jaw was hanging open, except Linda’s. Tall Linda with the thick hair. She was grinning like someone had just handed her a bag of diamonds.
“You look like shit,” she said, then giggled. The other girls dared to laugh with her.
No one would have dared to talk to her like that when Sam had been alive. Linda had been getting out of hand again.
“Nice boots,” Linda said. “What did you trade for them, your self-respect?”
The girls laughed louder now. Hilary smiled at Linda. She could tell it made Linda nervous.
“You think you’re such a rebel, don’t you, Linda?”
Linda rolled her eyes for the other girls’ sake.
“I’m so disappointed in all of you,” Hilary said. “I guess I’ll have to teach you a lesson.”
The girls stopped laughing and looked to one another. They’d be so easy to herd again. She walked away, left them hanging. It was just what she wanted, their eyes on her when she talked to Terry.
She found the Varsity leader sitting at the top of the bleachers on a portion he’d carpeted in mocha-colored, faux alpaca fur that he’d ordered through Gates. Terry gave a wave to a Geek boy with a pair of green pigtails, who was next in line for the pool. Two Varsity guards were manning the pool entrance. When one wet kid would leave, they’d wave a new kid forward from the line. That kid would pass off a food item to the guards and then head down to the pool.
“Hilary!” Terry said with a smile when he saw her.
“Some business you’ve got going here.”
“Genius, isn’t it? All this time we’ve been sitting on a gold mine.”
“It used to be that Varsity took whatever food they wanted. They didn’t pimp themselves out.”
Terry frowned. “You look like you need a shower, sweetie.”
“Funny, I used to have one all to myself, but someone took it away from me.”
Terry shook his head like the condescending dick that he was, and said, “You’ve got to get into the spirit of things around here, Hil. You’re in real danger of becoming obsolete. If you’re not careful, people might decide they don’t need you around.”