by Sandi Scott
“Now, stop the presses! Here it is! The debating club!” Georgie stared down at the picture like a child studying the toy catalogs at Christmas time. “Wow! Would you look at the daggers?”
“What do you mean?”
“Samantha and Clara—they look like they are about to tear each other’s hair out! Do you remember what happened?”
Aleta studied the photo. “The banner says it’s the Regional Championship.” She snapped her fingers. “It was decided at the last minute that Samantha was going to serve the final volley, so to speak, to Providence High School. Clara usually did it and, for the most part, she did a pretty good job. We won a lot. But, she’d stuttered at the last two debates. Her nerves seemed to bail out on her when things got down to the wire. I could only imagine what her home was like during our final test week.”
“That had to go over well.”
“No. But we were all used to those two picking at each other. I always thought they did it on purpose to keep each other motivated.”
“Keep each other motivated! Yes! That makes sense!” Georgie hit her head with the palm of her hand. “That’s probably why Samantha worked for Clara.”
“What?”
“Yeah. While I was doing some online snooping, I saw that Samantha had a few stakes planted in The Better You! in addition to her mortgage business.”
“Really?” Aleta watched her sister dig in her giant zebra striped purse. “What are you looking for?”
“My phone. I’m going to ask Stan to look up both of their profiles on the Internet.”
“Oh.” Aleta sat back and folded her arms.
“What?” Georgie looked innocently at her sister.
“Nothing.”
“I didn’t mean to say it.” Georgie went back to rooting in her purse.
“Say what?”
“You know what.” Georgie dialed the familiar number by heart. “I’m just going to pretend it didn’t happen. “Hello, Stan? I need you to do me a favor.”
Georgie explained their situation and her request and waited.
“Sure, let me take a look,” Stan answered. Georgie put him on speaker so Aleta could hear his reply. The sound of tapping on a keyboard could be heard.
“Well, it looks like we have something interesting here.”
“What?” Aleta asked.
“It’s like night and day, black and white,” Stan replied. “These two women have been in sync with each other for some time. They both appear to have roughly the same number of followers on their pages. They both sell that The Better You! stuff, but ...”
“But what?” Georgie asked.
“But, the difference is that Samantha got better reviews than Clara—much better. Listen to this. On Samantha’s page it reads, ‘...couldn’t find a more knowledgeable and friendly representative. Answered all my questions ...blah, blah, blah ...five stars.’” Stan cleared his throat. “The same reviewer posted on Clara’s page, ‘...worst experience of my life. Rude. Pushy. Desperate. Will never reach out to Clara again.’”
“Ouch!” Georgie said.
“They are all like this, with a few exceptions. It looks like Clara made some people happy, but the majority were not and went to find greener pastures with Samantha. That’s very strange.”
“They were competing for The Better You! customers,” Georgie muttered and looked at Aleta.
“Looks like more than that was at stake—territory,” Stan said. “If I’m reading this right, and I’m pretty sure I am, Clara brought Samantha into The Better You! business. Then, Samantha up and outsells her. From the looks of it, Samantha’s handling those rich suburbs like Mokena, Tinley Park, Orland.” Stan cleared his throat again.
“Are you coming down with something?” Georgie asked.
“I’ve just got a tickle in my throat.” He coughed. “Are you girls still at the high school?”
“Yes,” Georgie replied.
“When you are done there, come to the station. I think we’ll be bringing Clara Lu in for some questions. You guys can listen in.”
“Okay. Give us half an hour,” Georgie said. Again, she heard Stan clear his throat. “Do you have any cough drops? Maybe have a cup of tea. That will help.”
“Will do, doc. See you ladies in a bit.”
Georgie shut off her phone and dropped it in her pocket. She felt Aleta’s eyes burning into her. When she looked up, her sister was staring at her.
“What is your malfunction, Aleta?”
“He didn’t tease you? He listened to your message, and now you’ve got the poor guy flabbergasted.”
“I do not—and he is not! He doesn’t tease me all the time.”
“Who are you talking to Georgie Kaye? I’m just your twin sister. I’ve known Stan as long as you have, and the man can’t spend five minutes with you without cracking wise about something.”
Georgie sighed.
“Do you really think that’s it?”
Aleta folded her hands across her chest.
“Well, what do I do?”
“That depends on how you feel. Did you mean those words or not? If not, then you need to let him know that. He’s a grown man. He can take rejection.”
“I suppose.” Georgie looked at her watch. “Come on. Let’s take a look around this place and see what else we remember. This library isn’t doing it for me. It’s too new.”
“I agree. It has no soul.” Aleta mused.
“Right, like when we went here and there was graffiti carved into the desks and rows of cards organized in the Dewey Decimal System.”
“I loved the Dewey Decimal System!” Aleta squealed. “Who was our librarian?”
“Mrs. Caroll.”
“That’s right. Mrs. Caroll. She was shaped like a pear and was always chewing something.”
“Her dentures,” Georgie supplied with a giggle.
“Gum.” Aleta slipped her arm through Georgie’s as they walked toward the EXIT sign.
“Cud.” Georgie snickered.
“You didn’t like her.”
“Of course not,” Georgie said, “she told me Michelangelo’s nudes were obscene.”
“Really?” Aleta chuckled.
“Can you imagine that? Saying the work of an Old Master is obscene. What a rube. Yet, Mrs. Caroll had a trashy romance book in her purse at all times.”
They exited the library and slowly walked down the hall.
Chapter 13
The school was tomb quiet. As the Kaye sisters emerged from the windowless library into the fluorescent lighting of the hallway, they looked at each other.
“Just a few minutes?” Georgie asked.
“I’ll bet I can still find my locker.” Aleta boasted as she let go of her sister’s arm and headed down the hallway.
“You know, the place is different, but yet, it isn’t different.” Georgie called out. “I think stepping into the schools you attended is like a time warp. I see two different planes: the one we are in now, and the shadow one that was our high school. Does that make sense?”
“It does. This is it.” Aleta tapped locker number 133. She jiggled the handle but it didn’t open.
“Aleta, it isn’t your locker anymore.”
“No, I just wanted to see if it would open. I wonder if a girl or a boy has this locker now?”
“Remember that time when Tom Krueger had his friends lock him in the locker?”
Aleta doubled over laughing.
“The guy was a bean pole. Remember? He asked that Bob guy and Doug to help him fit in the locker. So, they did.”
“Jamie Garcia, the Spanish teacher, let him out.” Aleta laughed again. “I don’t even know why that is so funny. It’s a stupid stunt. Someone gets locked in a locker at every school across America, I’ll bet.”
“Yeah, but how many requested to be locked in?”
“Good point. Come on. I think the theater is down this way.” Aleta wiped the corners of her eyes.
They stepped inside the small theater, and
both of them smiled.
“You were really quite good.” Aleta rubbed Georgie’s arm as they walked through the theater doors. Aleta slipped her hand along the wall and found the light switch. “But you didn’t audition for everything. How come?”
“I hated that the drama teacher picked the same old plays all the time—Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Oklahoma.” Georgie rolled her eyes. “That time we did A Streetcar Named Desire was a blast. And I really enjoyed Romeo and Juliet.”
“You made an excellent Lady Capulet.”
“Of course, I did. It was a challenge. It was Shakespeare. But, I guess I just thought it might be fun to pick a play that hadn’t been done to death. So, I just auditioned for the ones I thought were different. That’s why the drama nerds never cozied up to me.”
“You had fun when you worked with them?”
“I did. I don’t have a bad thing to say about any of them, but we never got closer than our lines would allow.”
“How poetic.” Aleta walked down the aisle to the stage. “Do you remember any lines? Give us an encore. Come on, ‘One for the Gipper!’”
“You know, I’m drawing a blank.” Georgie laughed as she pulled herself awkwardly up on the stage.
“You could have used the steps,” Aleta said.
“Steps are for wimps.” Georgie puffed as she tried to get her breath back. “Now, who would do this?” She walked to the center of the stage and took hold of a rope that was hanging from the rafters above. “Leaving this just hanging here.” She looked up and squinted into the darkness barely able to make out what it was attached to.
“Don’t touch it. Who knows what it is attached to? You might ruin some senior’s hours and hours of hard work.”
“Well, I suppose we ought to go see Stan. I’ve had enough reminiscing.” Georgie sighed. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her black jeans and looked around the stage.
“Are you sure you don’t want to wait a few more minutes?”
“Yes, are you sure you don’t want to stay?” Came another unfamiliar voice from stage right.
“Mavey? Is that you?” Aleta called.
“No. Not Mavey.” The female voice was venomous. Whoever it was, she was not happy and didn’t try and hide that fact in her voice. Aleta walked over to the center of the stage and stood next to Georgie as they both stared into the darkness of the wing.
“Who is there?” Georgie called. They heard the echo of approaching footsteps from behind the curtains of the wing. Neither one of the Kayes realized they were holding their breath until they saw the familiar face of Clara Lu standing in the wing. “Clara? What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you both the same thing,” Clara said. Aleta studied her and was transported back to high school, back to the debates when she would see Clara nervously pacing, the right side of her lip twitching if she thought there was a chance they could lose.
“We are just taking a stroll down memory lane,” Aleta offered. “After seeing everyone at your event, we got a little nostalgic. That was terrible about Samantha Alfred, wasn’t it?”
“Terrible.” Clara stepped further onto the stage. The lights from the auditorium revealed her clothes were wrinkled and looked like they had been slept in. There were unmistakable patterns of smudges where it was obvious she had wiped her hands on her clothes after eating. Georgie knew those types of smudges since it took her years to get her oldest boy, Jonathan, to use a napkin and not his pants to wipe his hands.
“Are you all right, Clara?” Georgie asked.
“I will be.”
“Yeah? You look like you haven’t slept for a while.” Aleta added. “I think we are all in the same boat. We all liked Samantha. It’s a real shame ...”
“Real shame?” Clara hissed. “What’s a real shame is that I’ve had to take time out of my schedule to follow you two losers around!”
“Follow us?” Georgie wrinkled her nose like she smelled something bad. “Clara, you’re not making any sense.”
“You two haven’t changed at all over the years,” Clara said. “You still cling to each other like life support. Wherever one is, the other isn’t too far behind. It’s really rather disturbing if you ask me—pathetic even!”
At that moment Clara reached behind her and pulled out a pistol. Georgie and Aleta watched her as she attached a silencer like a hitman from a movie.
“So, it would only make sense that you die together. I could have gotten you at your houses, but you’ve got that ugly dog. He looks like a yapper.”
“Now you just hold on!” Georgie went to take a step closer, but Aleta held her back. “You can say what you want about me, but you leave my dog out of it!”
“Clara, what are you doing?” Aleta pulled her sister closer to her.
“She’s insulting my dog! I draw the line there!” Georgie spat. “Put that gun down and come over here and say something about my dog again, Clara! Let’s see how tough you are without it!”
“Georgie, you aren’t helping.” Aleta tried to pull Georgie away, but her incensed sister pulled free of her restraining hands.
“She’s the one who insulted Bodhi. He’s a beautiful creature and I’m not going to let some insect-pushing Mary Kay wanna-be talk smack about him!”
“Talk smack? Do you hear yourself?” Aleta was getting worried. “Georgie, she’s got a gun aimed at us”
“Mary Kay wanna-be? I was the top saleswoman of The Better You! products in this region for five years in a row. That was a record for the Midwest.” Clara boasted. “I was well on my way to becoming regional sales manager. Instead of having to work, I’d have a kickback from each woman who joined my team. At first, Samantha was a big help. But then her sales started to slack off.”
“So, you shot her?” Georgie barked. “You sick and twisted ...”
“Go on.” Aleta interrupted. “We’re listening.”
“No, we aren’t.” Georgie rolled her eyes. “That’s a lot of bunk and you know it, Clara. Samantha was making a killing selling The Better You! garbage.”
“Bad choice of words,” Aleta said, but she might as well have been talking to herself. Neither Georgie nor Clara were paying any attention to her.
“She swooped in and took over, didn’t she?” Georgie was on a roll now. “You are just suffering from a severe bite from the green-eyed monster. At your age, now that is pathetic!”
Clara began to tremble with rage. Her face transformed into a red, splotchy mess, and she glared at Georgie.
“That’s right, Georgie. Always with the brutal honesty. Always making a joke at someone else’s expense. You have no idea what it feels like to have someone constantly getting in your way, constantly hovering around waiting for you to screw up so they can swoop in and make you feel like you are going crazy and ...”
“I’m sorry, Clara, have you met my sister Aleta? I think I know you better than you realize,” Georgie quipped.
“Georgie, have you lost your mind?” Aleta whispered to herself.
“You think we should stand here and listen to this song and dance?” Georgie waved at Clara like she was nothing more than an annoying fly, turning slightly away from the enraged woman as she did. “She’s just looking for sympathy.”
“Georgie, you aren’t making this better.” Aleta stepped closer and put one hand back on her sister’s arm, but it was shaken off.
“Aleta, ask Clara if she needs a hug and maybe that will solve everyone’s issues.” Georgie was sideways to Clara now, turning slowly toward Aleta.
“I’m not saying that.”
“Well, what are you saying ...” Georgie pivoted to face her sister as if they were about to square off and start throwing punches. But before Aleta could say another word, Georgie pushed her sister to the ground and grabbed the rope that was hanging from the rafters, yanking it hard.
After an ear shattering whoosh and a sudden flash of blue, Clara and Aleta screamed as the set design crashed to the stage. Georgie lost her balance, but a
s she steadied herself, she saw Clara had not dropped her gun.
“I always hated you Georgie. You and your sis—”
“Hold it right there!” A male voice sounded authoritatively from the door. Georgie could recognize that profile anywhere.
“Stan. Thank God,” Georgie whispered to herself. Quickly she ran to Aleta and knelt down beside her. “Are you all right?”
“You pushed me to the floor!”
“I had to. Just in case Annie Oakley decided to shoot.”
“But, Georgie, she would have hit you.”
“And your point is?”
Aleta’s eyes filled with tears.
“Aleta, get ahold of yourself,” Georgie murmured.
“I don’t care how pathetic Clara thinks we are.” Aleta swallowed hard. “What would I do without you?”
Georgie blinked back her tears. She didn’t want Stan to see her with her makeup running.
“Let’s not think about it,” Georgie said. She looked over at Clara who was standing there, shocked that she was being handcuffed by a uniformed police officer as Stan put her gun in a clear plastic evidence bag.
“You ladies okay?” Stan asked.
“Clara called Bodhi ugly, Stan!” Georgie hissed. “She said she was going to kill us in our houses, but she didn’t because of Bodhi. She called him ugly.”
Aleta watched as Georgie’s eyes welled up. Clara’s insult wasn’t that upsetting, but this was the only way Georgie could talk to Stan right now. After leaving him a message and ending it with those two words “love you” she was terrified. Aleta was pretty sure her sister would have preferred a bullet wound than having to explain those two words to Stan.
“That just ain’t right, Georgie.” Stan soothed. “Don’t worry. She’ll get what’s coming to her. Do you want to ride with me to the station?”
Inside Aleta was screaming, Yes! Go with him to the station! Talk to him! But in typical Georgie fashion, she did the opposite.
“No. I drove Aleta. She can’t handle Pablo.”
“Okay. Drive slow and steady. She can’t hurt you or Aleta or Bodhi where she’s going. I’ll hold the questioning until you get there.”