The Burnouts

by Lex Thomas

  The thought kept her up for hours.

  In the morning, Lucy made sure to get up before anyone else, stow her table away, and do some general chores before the rest of the girls woke up. She knew she had a lot to make up for.

  When the Sluts filtered out of the kitchen to start their day, they ignored her and the work she had done. Things puttered to life as if she weren’t there. Pots and pans clanged as Samantha prepared breakfast. Girls stowed their mattress men away, then trudged to the bathroom to take sink and bucket showers. Their faces were grim, but they went about their chores with a sense of purpose, like they’d been given a pep talk in the kitchen before they’d emerged. Raunch swept the cardboard wrestling mat where self-defense training would be commencing shortly, and paused to clean her prescription basketball goggles with her shirt. Lucy wondered if she should go over to help. She was afraid to talk to Raunch, to any of them.

  Lips emerged from the kitchen with a full trash bag in her hand. Her other arm was in a sling made out of a pair of jeans. She looked at Lucy, and the look wasn’t hate-filled like Lucy expected. Lips’s poor excuse for a mouth, that crack in her face, wasn’t frowning as usual, or pinched up in disgust either. It was a flat line. She walked up to Lucy and held out the heavy trash bag.

  “Take this out,” Lips said.

  Lucy could suddenly breathe again. This was a good sign. She’d do their chores for weeks, if that’s what it took.

  “Thanks,” Lucy said.

  “Just do it, fuckhead. No talking.”

  Same old Lips. Best not to push it, Lucy figured. She took the heavy black bag, opened the cafeteria door, and carried the trash out to the pile in the hallway outside. As soon as she swung the bag into the pile, she felt a wave of loneliness rush through her, and she started to cry. About Violent, about Will graduating early, about no one wanting to hug her, and all her friends shunning her, and a tiny bit because crying felt good.

  She had to stop. She knew that when she opened the door to the cafeteria and walked back in, she had to show them that she was a Slut, and unafraid. Those girls still lived by Violent’s persona, whether it had been real or not. She’d never tell any of them what Violent shared with her last night. Violent wouldn’t want that. Lucy wiped her slick cheeks.

  “Pull it together, what the fuck,” she said.

  She let her breathing slow down. She turned to face the cafeteria doors and assumed as confident a posture as she could manage. She grabbed the door handle.

  It was locked.

  She pulled again. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Hey,” Lucy said loudly.

  She knocked. Silence.

  Lucy paced. “Very funny,” she hollered.

  She was greeted again with a longer silence. She knocked harder. Again, there was no response.

  Something caught Lucy’s eye in the trash pile.

  The cardboard sheath she’d made for David’s machete, the one she’d had with her when she’d joined the Sluts, poked out of the trash bag that she had just thrown into the pile. Lucy rushed to the bag and pulled out the sheath. The words THE LONERS were still written across it in silver thumbtacks, just like she had made it. She recognized something else in the garbage bag, her old, dirty gray sneakers. Lucy pushed them aside and began rifling through the bag.

  It was full of everything she owned.

  4

  HILARY WAS FILTHY. SHE DIDN’T KNOW HOW long she’d been down in the basement, knee-high in the school’s trash. Everything seemed like a blur since Lucy had flushed her tooth down the toilet. Maybe she shouldn’t have dragged this Freak girl down to the basement and yanked out her tooth. Maybe she had gotten a little carried away. Just thinking about Lucy now had her grinding her jaw. She had to calm down.

  She paced amid the garbage. Something jabbed through the sole of her flats and poked her heel. She jumped and lifted her foot. A giant piece of glass had sliced through and ruined her shoe.

  “Shit!” she said.

  Why was this happening to her? She couldn’t go back to the gym with ruined shoes, a filthy dress, and stinking like a gutter person. She’d already lost people’s respect when Terry had taken away her privileges, like her private bedroom and her solo swim. The Pretty Ones would laugh at her. And once they started laughing at her instead of fearing her, she would never get them back under her thumb.

  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, bou
ncing 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.”

  “Is that a threat?” Hilary said, loud enough for everyone to hear. Heads turned.

  “You could take it that way, sure,” Terry said. He looked to the Varsity guys sitting up and down the bleachers, legs spread and kicked out. They grinned back at him.

  “Bad idea,” Hilary said and pulled the pistol from her handbag. She held it up for everyone to see.

  For a moment, everyone went quiet. She had the attention of the whole room. Then, the gym erupted. And not with screams. Laughter socked her in the ears. Kids in line started to shout at her and call her nasty things. They stuck their hands down their pants. They were vile. All of them. There wasn’t enough chlorine in the world to cleanse the pool of the dirt in the creases of their necks, behind their ears, in their stewing rear ends. It was all in her water. She’d be marinating in them.

  How dare they laugh.

  But they’d seen Saints with guns before. Guns with no bullets.

  “You’re banned,” Terry said, and got up. He started a slow walk down the bleachers as if this little game had gotten out of hand, and it was finally time for him to put a stop to it. “If you ever set foot in my gym again—”

  Hilary shot Terry. The gun bucked in her hand. It sounded like a car fell from the ceiling and hit the floor. Hilary’s whole arm vibrated. Everybody hit the deck.

  The line to the pool tried to scatter and escape the gym. She leveled the gun at the crowd and they all froze. Some dropped to the ground with their hands splayed, pleading. Hilary’s insides tingled. The gun led her and she listened.

  The gym rippled with screams, but when they died down, only one stayed at full blast. Terry was floundering on the bleachers, clutching his foot, trying to stop the blood that was pouring over his hand and onto his alpaca rug. Varsity guys ran to him, and Hilary let them.

  She had five bullets left.

  “I got a whole locker full of ammo,” she shouted. “And I want to use it.”

  Nobody moved. She looked around the gym. No one dared to make eye contact with her. Behind her, she could hear Terry crying. She felt wild and powerful. She flashed her fury at Linda and the rest of the girls, who were staring and holding each other. They’d forgotten what it meant to fear her, but they’d remembered with the flick of a trigger.

  “Shut the pool door. Now.”

  Linda and another Pretty One, Britt, ran to the door. The Varsity guards stepped out of their way. They swung the door shut. Hilary would deal with the swimmers below later. She liked seeing Linda tremble and look to the Varsity boys for help. They wanted to leap behind their boys. They craved protection. Hilary laughed to herself. She realized her days of manipulating a boy to get what she wanted were over. She didn’t need anyone anymore, she had the gun. People would have to try their best to seduce her, not the other way around.

  “It looks like we’ve suffered a terrible injury here in Varsity,” Hilary said. “So, I’m going to have to pick up the slack. I’m in charge now.”

  She twirled her hair with the barrel of the gun.

  “And while we’re at it, let’s just put me in charge of everybody. That’s for the best. You can still have your gangs. I don’t want to mess with a good thing, but think of them like states. And I’m president. Except for, I guess there was no election, so … Let’s just say I’m Queen. Call me that. I like that.”

  “She shot me …,” Terry muttered. “You shot me …”

  “You shot me, Queen,” Hilary said, correcting him. “Now, like I was saying, pool time is over. Everybody, get the hell out and spread the word—if I want something done, you better do it, or I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

  People started to stand, cautiously. With a swing of the gun, Hilary motioned them toward the exit.

  “You can leave now.”

  They ran.

  When a Geek girl hurried past, Hilary’s eyes were drawn to her homemade, silver-sequin high heels.

  “STOP,” Hilary yelled. She pointed the gun at the girl, and the girl froze.

  “No …,” the girl pleaded. “Not me.”

  “Leave your shoes. And get the hell out of my face.”

  The girl nodded frantically as she yanked off her shoes. She dropped them at Hilary’s feet and scurried out barefoot. Hilary kicked off her too-big boots and slipped into the high heels. They were so snug and they looked to die for with the matching silver snub-nose in her hand.

  Hilary sighed. Things were looking up.

  5

  LUCKY DIDN’T DARE STEP FOOT ONTO THE quad. It was no place to go alone. And more than that, she’d killed somebody there. The mud was dry from the cooking sun but still torn up by the Harley’s fat tire tracks. The earth had been thrashed into long six-inch-high ridges and valleys. She could still make out the shape of her own body where she’d lain down in the quad, after Gates had died, and stared into the rain.

  Lucy stood in the shadow of the south entrance, just inside the hall. A gust of wind blew in and flapped the towel she wore over her head like a sheikh. It was tied off with a headband to cover her red hair. The lockout from the cafeteria that morning had been permanent, and she was lucky the girls hadn’t shaved her head. She wasn’t a Slut anymore. She wasn’t anything. Just a
Scrap wearing a black trash bag as a dress.

  She stared up at the roofline, and waited for Will to appear. It had been hours and he hadn’t come yet. But he could come. It was possible.

  Another gust of wind flattened Lucy’s trash bag to her front. Leaves blew into the hall from the quad. She could hear their dry scratch across the linoleum floor behind her. A woman patrolled the roof’s perimeter in workout clothes. She wore a scuba mask and a petite tank. A rifle was slung over her shoulder. The parents were using rubber bullets now. They weren’t going to tolerate another hostage situation. They seemed to want to make it abundantly clear that they were in charge. Lucy hadn’t been shot with one yet, but she’d seen a Skater get hit. The boy had lain in the dirt, squirming and crying like a baby for twenty minutes.

  Lucy heard noise behind her. People approaching. She ducked around the corner and into the quad. She stood with her back to the wall, facing the quad, just feet from the hallway’s opening.

  Saints poured out from the hallway. Lucy felt her grip on the gathered plastic of her trash bag grow slippery with sweat. Ten, twenty, thirty morose Saints came trudging out, looking like they’d slept in their clothes. A hungover preppy parade. The Saints barely lifted their feet as they shuffled toward the center of the quad. Lucy stayed ready to run if any of them glanced her way. None of them did. Their heads were all bowed low, except four guys who shared the burden of carrying a long, taped-up box.

  A cardboard coffin.

  Time slowed as Lucy saw into the coffin. The inside was filled with crumpled-up pieces of white printer paper. They reminded her of carnations. Gates’s dead face rose out of the sea of white paper like a lone, rosy-cheeked island. Some Saint girl had blown out her makeup kit, covering his bluish-gray dead skin with a sun-kissed flesh tone. Despite the approximation of healthy skin, Gates’s face had lost whatever fullness life gave it, and it was as if the flesh of his face was melting off the bone.