Player

by DeLuca, Laura

  Marvin raised an eyebrow. “Anything? Hmmm, I wish I had known that before I counted the votes.” A snicker rose from the crowd. Marvin rubbed his hands together and moved on to Andrea. “And what about you, Miss Carpenter. What are your goals in life, aside from finding a good conditioner to keep that frizz under control?”

  Marvin yanked on a few stands of flyaway hair that had come loose from Andrea’s combs. She smacked his hand away. Her face turned almost as red as her hair, but before she had time to stutter a reply, Elena grabbed the microphone from Marvin’s hands.

  “I’ll tell you what I want from life, Marvin, you idiot!” Elena exclaimed. “I want you to shut your big mouth and open that envelope!”

  Again the crowd snickered, but they were starting to lose patience as well. A chant rose from the rowdy teenagers, all of whom were ready to get on with the night’s festivities. “Open it! O-pen it!” They chanted, and Marvin had to give in.

  “Okay, okay.” Marvin took his microphone back. “If there is one thing I’ve learned in the last four years, it’s that I should never argue with a lady. Or with Elena Huber.” His comment was greeted with more laughter and some booing from Elena’s admirers.

  “You’ll pay for that later, Mr. President.” Elena shook her fist at him, but still smiled good-naturedly.

  “Uh-oh, I think I’m in trouble now,” Marvin snickered. “Seriously, though. Enough fooling around. I’ve kept you in suspense long enough. I will now announce the second runner-up.”

  It was a little corny, but at Marvin’s insistence, the five finalists held hands in traditional beauty pageant style. Even from the distance, Josh saw Andrea close her eyes in anticipation. He knew how much this moment meant to her. Beside her, Nadine was smiling and giggling. Only Elena seemed a little worried. The girls were safe enough up on the stage, at least for the time being. Josh pressed the power button on his camera, focused on the court, and snapped a few pictures of them.

  “The second runner up is . . . Tiffini Peterson!” Marvin announced.

  The ecstatic junior, clad in a skimpy blue dress that barely covered her small breasts, ran over to Marvin and gave him a hug. The principal supplied the school president with a bundle of flowers, and Marvin handed Tiffani a single white rose. The audience clapped as she gave a small wave before taking her place in the throne room.

  Josh’s camera clicked again, catching Tiffani’s wide smile in perfect, vivid detail.

  “The first runner-up is your best friend and mine, the very beautiful Elena Huber! Come on down, Elena!”

  Elena looked surprised and more than a little annoyed as she strutted up to Marvin to accept her rose. She had expected a victory. She wasn’t used to coming in second, even if she was trying to be nicer. Josh had thought that her chances were even better once the story of what happened with Kevin had circulated. Usually the sympathy card worked in the victim’s favor, but maybe the black and blue bruise had taken away from her votes. There was no way to know for certain, but for whatever reason, Elena wasn’t queen, and she wasn’t very happy about it.

  “It must be Andrea,” Josh whispered to Rosa.

  “I hope so,” Rosa said. “I know she really wants to be queen.”

  “And now,” Marvin said. “The moment you’ve all been waiting for. The time has come to announce our queen. She is definitely a beautiful girl. She has a big heart, but it’s certainly not the size of her heart that influenced this victory. So without further ado, this year’s homecoming queen is . . . drum roll please. . . .” He paused for dramatic emphasis and made a fake drumming noise into the mic. “Nadiiiiinnnnnne Morrrrrris!”

  The booming applause and howls were so loud they made Josh’s ears ring. He was a little surprised that Nadine had won when she was new to the school. He did his best to digitally commemorate every moment of the crowning for the yearbook. Even though he was further back in the crowd, the powerful lens of his camera allowed him to focus in and see the scene as though he were standing right beside Nadine.

  He snapped the capture button a dozen times in succession as Marvin draped the robe around Nadine and handed her a dozen red roses. In between, Josh took a few shots of the cheering crowd. While he was doing so, it was hard to miss a few familiar faces on the dance floor. Kevin was in the corner by the refreshment stand talking to Jim; his eyes were glued to the stage where Elena was waving. He was the only person in the gymnasium who wasn’t clapping. He looked downright furious.

  In the opposite corner, Josh’s magnified lens picked up the image of the officer who’d been following him around for the past few weeks. He was trying to act like a chaperone, but the stiff demeanor of the plainclothes cop gave him away.

  Josh shook his head, and told himself not to worry about either of the intruders. None of it mattered as long as the girls were safe and everyone was having a good time. He lifted his camera back to his eye and adjusted the focus to get a few close-ups of the other girls. It was hard to get a steady shot when his hands were shaking. He wished he had brought his tripod. It would have made the job so much easier. As he struggled to steady his view, he missed the girls completely and accidently magnified the view of the wires on stage. There were so many of them, all tangled and squirming like snakes. They even seemed to be hissing like snakes. Josh had to lower the camera and rub his eyes to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.

  “You okay?” Rosa asked, noting the confused look on his face.

  “Yeah, I think my eyes are just getting blurry. For a second there, I swore the wires were moving.”

  She snickered. “Did you have a few drinks before you got here?”

  Josh laughed and realized he was being silly. He went back to watching Nadine as she hugged Marvin before heading toward her throne. The court members were already in their places and Josh was just waiting for Nadine to join them to get the perfect shot. Before he lifted the camera, he swore he saw a spark of light coming from underneath the embellished golden throne. There were wires all around it, and for the first time, Josh realized there were a few that seemed to be running through it.

  Again he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, so he magnified his camera to its maximum strength. Getting in too close made things a little blurry, but he was sure he saw another spark coming from the wires. He saw what looked like a puddle of water on the floor. In an instant, Josh realized how the killer was going to strike. He dropped his camera, shattering the lens, and screamed out just as Nadine placed a hand on the golden throne.

  “No, Nadine! Don’t do it! Don’t sit there!”

  His voice was lost in the din of the screaming, rowdy teenagers. Josh ignored Bryan’s hand on his shoulder and Rosa’s startled gasp. There was no time to explain things to them. He tried to push his way through the crowd toward the stage and Nadine. He was too late. Just as Josh reached the edge of the stage, Nadine took her seat.

  She didn’t even scream. Or maybe she did and Josh couldn’t hear it over the roar of the crowd. Nevertheless, he swore he heard a sickening crackle and hiss.

  Hiiiiiisssss. Hiiiisssss.

  It was a sound that would echo in Josh’s ears for the rest of his life.

  It seemed as though hours passed before anyone else realized that something was wrong. Charlotte, one of the junior members of the court, was the first person notice. She saw Nadine crumple like a lifeless paper doll. She watched in stunned silence as the stillness shattered and her body shuddered and as waves of electricity coursed through it.

  Unlike Josh, who was frozen with shock and horror at the edge of the stage, Charlotte began to shriek. She covered her mouth and cried out in blood curdling screams that overpowered the noisy chatter of the students and echoed throughout the gymnasium. Her frantic yelps were impossible to ignore and other people started to notice Nadine had fallen. Startled cries erupted from all corners of the room and the sophomore girl next to Josh fainted into the arms of her date.

  As soon the adult chaperones realized what was happening, one of
the teachers instinctively ran behind the curtain and turned off the power to the stage. This also extinguished the rest of the equipment, and for a few minutes the room was thrust into almost complete darkness except for the dim glow of the emergency lights around the exits. A few seconds later, the overhead lights came on, though they were still dimmed.

  In the newly restored light, Josh watched in a sort of morbid fascination until the hissing, crackling sounds of death finally settled. Nadine’s body jerked every few seconds, even though her gray eyes were staring sightlessly at the frozen crystal globes that hung from the ceiling rafters. The forgotten diamond tiara had fallen from her head and the roses were scattered at her feet. If that hadn’t been enough to convince him she was gone, the sizzling smell of burnt flesh certainly was.

  “No, no, no! Let me go! I want to help her! Why won’t you let me help her?”

  Andrea’s frantic cries rose above all others as she flared her arms frantically, desperate to break free from Elena’s grasp. Elena was struggling to keep her from running to the fallen queen. She was taller and stronger, and Andrea hadn’t managed to escape.

  “You can’t do anything for her!” Josh could hear Elena’s stern voice even from the edge of the stage. “If you touch her, you’ll die too!”

  There were other panicked shouts coming from all over the gymnasium.

  “Nobody touch her!”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Someone call an ambulance.”

  All the voices started to run together. Mayhem was about to ensue when Principal Graves finally stepped onto the stage and took the microphone from a white-faced Marvin who was shocked to silence for the first time in his life. At almost the same moment, the remaining gymnasium lights were flipped on and the room was suddenly bursting with brightness. Josh had to blink a few times to adjust to the intense light that somehow seemed disrespectful amidst the darkness of death.

  “Everyone calm down,” the principal commanded, without much success. As soon as he tried to use the microphone, he remembered that the electricity on the stage had been turned off. He cracked his knuckles and raised his voice as high as he could manage. Josh doubted anyone in the back of the room could hear him. “The police and ambulance are on their way. In the meantime, I would like you all to stay calm and exit the gymnasium in an orderly fashion.”

  No one was calm and kids started to scream and head for the doors. Josh felt more than one elbow slam into his back as he tried to find his friends amongst the panicked crowd. As if on cue, sirens sounded in the distance. Not that it really mattered. Nadine was beyond all hope. Just as the note in Josh’s locker had predicted, the queen was dead.

  Chapter 30

  A few hours later, Josh and Bryan were sitting in sullen silence in Josh’s bedroom. They had dropped off the teary-eyed girls at their homes, entrusting them to their parents for the night. Now it was just the two of them. Josh was sprawled on the bed, tossing a balled-up piece of paper up and down to try to distract himself. Bryan sat back in the computer chair with a huff.

  It was almost one-thirty and they had just gotten home from the nightmarish dance. They had watched Nadine get carried out of the gymnasium, a white sheet covering her face. Josh noticed from the corner of the stretcher that the velvet robe of the queen was still draped around her shoulders, as though even if death she was proud of her victory. He blinked his eyes a few times to try to block the scene from his mind, but it was still there, haunting his memory.

  “Some protectors we turned out to be. Some goddamn protectors!”

  Josh tossed the paper across the room in an effortless attempt to get it to land in the trashcan. Bryan didn’t even seem to hear him. He was staring down at the scrap paper by the wastebasket as though it fascinated him.

  “I could have stopped it, you know,” Josh continued. “If only I had noticed just a few seconds earlier, I might have been able to make a difference. I might have saved her. I just can’t believe Nadine is really gone.” Bryan nodded, but still said nothing. Josh was starting to feel even more alone than usual. “Are you even listening to me? Say something, would you? Even if you’re just going to tell me that the whole damn thing is my fault.”

  Bryan still didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into the small wastebasket that sat beside Josh’s computer desk. He didn’t use it very often and emptied it even less frequently. The only things in there were a dried up pen, an empty Tylenol bottle, and the torn class photos of four teenage girls. Bryan picked out the photographs, spread them out on the desk, and sorted them into their proper halves. When he had them arranged, he gently caressed the picture of Lily, running his fingers along her hair, her cheeks, and her pink lips. Each feature he stroked with brotherly love.

  Josh immediately realized that he had made yet another selfish mistake. He walked over to Bryan and put a hand on his shoulder. He felt like such a jerk. He had forgotten all about those pictures. The night he had broken up with Lily and thrown out the photographs felt so long ago. That was the night he decided to start over—to try to be a better man. To Bryan, it must have seemed as though didn’t care about the girls at all.

  “Bryan,” Josh said carefully. He shook his head. “I’m so sorry about this. I don’t even know what to say.”

  “They’re all dead,” Bryan whispered. “Lily is dead. Nadine is dead. Jazz might as well be dead. How many more, Josh? How many more people have to die?”

  In an instant, the calm demeanor faded and Bryan flew into a wild rage. With one sweep of his good arm, the entire surface of Josh’s desk, laptop and all, was wiped clean and strewn across the bedroom floor. The computer screen shattered and a few keys popped off. The photos were the last things to flutter harmlessly to the ground as Bryan continued to scream and Josh watched in stunned silence. He was afraid to think of the damage he might have caused if he had the use of both his arms.

  “Why did they have to die? There’s just no good reason. They didn’t even do anything wrong. All they did was fall for the wrong guy. It’s just not fair!” Bryan fell back into the chair, his anger spent. Now it was his grief that consumed him. “She was all I had! Why did they have to take her away from me?”

  Josh looked on with compassion as Bryan’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I wish I could tell you.”

  “I miss her so much.” Bryan sobbed quietly as he spoke. “Hell, I even miss her hogging the bathroom in the morning. I should have been a better brother. I was always playing tricks on her when we were kids. Once I even cut off her ponytail while she was sleeping. Gosh, she was so mad at me for that.” He laughed lightly and wiped at his eyes. “She always forgave me, though. And she never lost faith in me no matter how much I screwed up. But the one time it really mattered, we didn’t get the chance to make things right.”

  “Bryan, don’t torture yourself like this,” Josh told him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Bryan didn’t seem to hear him or even notice he was still there. It was like he was reciting a monologue, and Josh was a spectator instead of part of the scene. “I never told her how much I loved her. Not once. It just wasn’t something I said. She never knew how much she really meant to me. God, I never even got to tell her goodbye.”

  “Lily knew you loved her,” Josh assured him. “You were the first one to defend her honor, and look at what you’re doing now. You won’t give up until you find her killer. Anyone else would have just assumed it was a suicide and tried to move on. Believe me, Bryan, you were—are—a good brother, and wherever she is, Lily knows it.”

  Bryan didn’t say anything for a while. He sucked in a deep breath to try to calm down, obviously embarrassed that he had once again shown such unmanly emotion. When he finally lifted his watery eyes, which were a strange contrast to his gruff appearance, he gave Josh a small smile.

  “Thanks, man.”

  Josh raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

  “For being a friend. For letting me talk when I needed to and not making me feel like a w
uss. I never would have thought it a few weeks ago, but you’re actually a pretty decent guy.”

  “Gee, thanks. I think that was almost a compliment. But seriously, bro, anytime you want to talk, I’m here. Just don’t expect any mushy pep talks.”

  “I would never expect or want that.” Bryan laughed lightly. He sniffed loudly and dried his eyes on the sleeve of his shirt. “But I’ll tell you what I do want. I want whoever did this to Lily and the other girls to pay. And Josh,” he added calmly. “I think I know—”

  Diiiiinnnnggggg Doooonnnggggg.

  Bryan was interrupted by the unnecessarily long ringing of the living room doorbell. Someone was holding down the button, making the ear screeching sound reverberate through the house. Josh and Bryan exchanged nervous glances. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. Who could be ringing the doorbell? Frustrated and nervous, Josh stood and walked from the room. Bryan stayed behind. From the corner of his eye, Josh saw him put his head in his hands, still lost in thoughts of his sister.

  Even before Josh had descended the last few steps into the foyer, he could see a bald head through the glass at the top of the door. The man was straining to stand on his tiptoes so he could peek in through the window and see what was going on. Without much enthusiasm, Josh threw open the door, and even though he knew it wasn’t a good idea, he glared at his guest with open belligerence.

  “What are you doing here at two in the morning, sir?” Josh asked the large detective.

  “It’s nice to see you again, too, Mr. Hanover. You overwhelm me with the heartiness of your greeting.” He was wearing what appeared to be the same black suit he always wore. It even had the same exact sweat stains. He rocked back and forth with his hands in the pockets of his worn pants as he spoke. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “If you’re asking whether I have a warrant, then no, I don’t. Yet. I just wanted to have a little chat. So unless you have something to hide, I don’t see why it would be a problem.”