The Beautiful People's Society
Page 3
The weekend passed quickly but not without aguish. Early Monday morning, minutes before her alarm went off, Despen dreamed she was somehow severed into hundreds of tiny pieces, all nailed to the interior walls of her school. Each wriggling piece bled down the wall below it, forming a kind of hieroglyph, one of hundreds that together yielded a secret code that Despen had to decipher in order for the pieces to reassemble and for Despen to become whole again. In her frenetic scramble to gather the disparate pieces Despen ground her teeth and chewed the insides of her cheeks. It wasn't until she began to bite into her tongue that the alarm sounded. She woke up hazily to a familiar metallic taste in her mouth. Blood lined the pillowcase.
When Despen arrived at school she kept her head down, foolishly expecting not to be seen, like a young child who hides from the world behind her two small hands. Despite her best efforts to slink through the school corridors inconspicuously, she was nearly thwacked to the floor by two girls who careened past her. When she made it to her locker she was greeted by a thick and viscous liquid oozing from it. She wiped down the combination dial several times with a tissue until she was able to open the locker, its innards completely doused in what appeared to be honey. Everything inside was ruined – her books, photographs, cosmetics and other personal affects. Stuck to the back of the locker was a note that read in small Ariel type, “A sweet beginning of your end…" Indeed, there was no big-hearted exclamation point this time.
The next morning, Tuesday, was relatively uneventful, until lunchtime. Despen sat at a table with Liza, who wasn't in school the day before because she was out of town visiting her dying grandmother. Curious as to why Despen was sitting with her instead of with her new ‘friends,’ Liza asked, "Did something happen?"
"What do you mean?" replied Despen.
"Last week you were sitting over there with your new friends." Liza pointed with her eyeballs across the lunchroom at a table of boisterous girls.
"They are not my friends.”
Liza swallowed any next questions she had and quietly ate her lunch, figuring Despen would talk when she was ready. Despen, meanwhile, fiddled with her lunch, mechanically stirring her yogurt, and picking apart her sandwich. Just as she was about to bite into the sandwich, she noticed something peculiar – some-thing was poking around inside of it. She slowly peeled back the bread, revealing an enormous cockroach that was fully alive and set to spring from its premature catacomb. Despen screamed and threw the sandwich onto the floor; the roach scuttling off to freedom. The entire lunchroom silenced, save for the table of girls who were snickering behind their hands as they got up and left.
Wednesday was more or less incident-free at school. Despen wondered if the pranks might be over. It wasn't until she got home that she realized they were only getting worse, as the entire front lawn of her house was filled with mounds of garbage, mostly half-eaten food. The girls must have taken every trashcan within a three-block radius and dumped it in front of the house. Paper wrappers and plastic containers blew onto the front porch and into the street. It would take all night to clean up the mess.
The following day at school Despen kept her head high and her eyes chary. Tiptoeing around and absconding wasn't working for her, so she decided to anticipate the pranks as best she could. The more public she remained, the safer she’d be (so she assumed). During third period, a disheartened Despen gazed detachedly outside the classroom window. She felt like a prisoner peeping through a crack in a prison cell as she conjured up impossible ways to escape, knowing fully well she was incarcerated beyond hope. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw bright flashing lights – red and white – from a silent ambulance that pulled up within yards outside of the classroom. In an instant two EMTs emerged with a backboard and disappeared into the school. When the EMTs reemerged, they were carrying a girl on the backboard. Her body was limp and her face was bloodied, virtually unrecognizable, though not to Despen, for the girl was her best friend.
Despen ran outside calling to Liza, "Liza, what happened? Oh my god. What did they do to you?"
When Despen reached the ambulance Liza attempted to wipe the blood from her eyes and shouted into the air, "Get away from me, Despen! Don't come near me, do you hear? I said go!"
Despen stood frozen in dismay as the doors slammed shut and the ambulance screeched off. Blood lined the schoolyard like spilt wine.
Despen's walk to school the following morning was lonely and troubled. The sky was scarcely visible, with the air was thick and wet, causing everything, both the living and the inanimate, to sweat profusely. As Despen turned a corner down a small side street so did a suspiciously slow-moving car. The car, with its black-tinted windows, was unfamiliar to her. Despen turned another corner, then one more. The car did the same, maintaining a constant distance behind Despen, right up until she arrived at the front gates of New High. The car remained parked by the school grounds throughout most of the day. Despen wondered if she should tell someone about it, but she decided not to.
After a day at school without incident, a wary Despen searched the school grounds for the car. Unable to detect it, she decided not to linger and promptly left for home while it was still daylight. Not five minutes into her walk, however, did the car appear out of nowhere, this time trailing even more closely behind. Twice Despen stopped to see what the stalking vehicle would do. It stopped as well, and stood ominously in the middle of the road until Despen resumed. She thought about making a run for it, through the backyards of the neighborhood houses, like she and Liza used to do when they were young and hiding from imaginary villains, but she had had enough of the girls' pranks. Above all, what the girls did to Liza was not a prank but flat-out assault. Incensed by the thought of what happened to her innocent friend, Despen spun around and approached the car. She began to beat her fists upon the hood and windshield, kicking the tires and spitting on the driver's side window, but there was no response from whoever was inside. Finally Despen shouted, "You win, alright? You win! I will be there tonight, at Brittani’s. I know...I know it's my turn." And with Despen's dramatic surrender the car sped away.
Aside from a few nasty looks cast her way, Despen's experience at Brittani’s later that Friday night was eerily similar to her experience the first night she ‘participated,’ exactly two weeks ago. Everyone looked and acted pretty much the same, and not one girl mentioned anything about Despen's defiance, at least not to Despen. The bizarre, unquestioning rituality of it all reminded Despen of Catholic Mass.
As soon as Raven caught Despen in her line of sight, she flitted up to her, buzzing, "We missed you last week. Here, these are for you."
Raven dropped a bunch of painkillers into Despen's palms.
"Take them now, all at once. Staggering them won't do you any good, trust me."
Despen did not hesitate. She popped the pills in her mouth and swallowed them down with a healthy swig of vanilla-flavored vodka.
When Despen woke up there was blood and vomit everywhere. She vaguely remembered being stripped down and made to lie across the bed. She recalled being the only girl on the bed, instead of the typical two, but she didn't know why. Perhaps as punishment? She also remembered Brittani making a comment about the fresh gashes that were already present on Despen's thighs.
"I never would have pegged you as a cutter, Despen."
Then someone, it must have been Crystal, chimed in, "Now we know why you refused to do this, you were embarrassed. Not to worry, Despen, your little secret is safe with us."
The plan had worked!
Despen knew she had to keep her wits about her as she fished around in her self-inflicted wounds for any remaining capsules of cyanide that she had inserted just before she left for Brittani's that night. When she determined the capsules had all been unwittingly extracted and consumed by the girls while she was passed out, she sewed herself up as best she could. Fortunately the toolkit from last time had everything Despen needed for a temporary hack job. She had practiced all afternoon on stuffed animals and banana peels.
Once she was stable enough she limped around the girls, all of them dead on the floor, covered in their own sick. She searched each pool of vomit and checked each girl's mouth and throat, making sure no undissolved capsules were evident (the capsules’ shells were extra thick so they wouldn’t dissolve into Despen’s bloodstream until far later in the night). At one point Despen paused, acknowledging how incredibly, surreally calm she felt amid the massacre. Calm wasn't the right word. There really was no word for it. Then, dragging her tender legs out of the room and taking one last look at the orgy of skinny blue bodies, Despen professed, admiringly, and with perhaps more than just a slice of irony, "Beautiful," before vanishing into the night.
Copyright © 2012 by Edward J. Yaeger, Jr., ejy3@columbia.edu
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.