Through gentle prodding Bobbie’s parents agreed to send her there.
Before too long, Bobbie learned how to slip out of her bunk at Bonnie Bray, pick up chocolate shakes, cheese burgers, and fries at the truck stop between the two camps, and sneak her bounty into Uma’s bunk.
Not only did Bobbie garner a whole bunch of forever-favors from overweight girls from around the country, most of who would outgrow their fat and someday become cynical company leaders, she also kept Uma from losing an ounce.
Disaster averted.
As seventh grade commenced, Uma stopped caring about stretch marks, failed diets, and personal hygiene. Her weight skyrocketed to 320, 350, then 375. Her bestest friend in the whole world, Bobbie Katz, supported her through everything, helping her drown her sorrows with caramel corn, orange circus peanuts, and a new pastry from Philadelphia called Tastykakes.
Uma adored Tastykakes, especially the Butterscotch Krimpets, so Bobbie made sure to have a ready supply on hand.
Meanwhile, Bobbie continued to receive awards for a whole host of achievements. She was an avid mathlete on the Drake School’s pre-algebra team, an overachiever in almost every sport, and a state champion in her division for both the uneven bars as well as gymnastic interpretive dance, where she was skilled at twirling long, colorful ribbons with ease.
In addition, the school heartthrob, an eighth grader named Nick Gifford, let Bobbie instruct him on how the French were the best kissers in the world—and Bobbie wasn’t even French.
At the close of eighth grade, Uma DeNapoli weighed a scale-popping 473 pounds. The Discovery Channel contacted her parents about doing a spot about unhealthy teens in the United States, and even offered to pay for a qualified nutritionist. Her parents were appalled. So was Bobbie Katz. She wasn’t finished with Uma yet. The do-gooder television executives from the Discovery Channel could ruin everything.
Thankfully, while Bobbie’s brain inside her brain worked overtime to noodle out this latest pickle, the day of the final athletics test for the Blake School came. The test didn’t require much. All it asked of students was to run a hundred yards and turn a somersault. Surely even the laziest of the lot could accomplish that with ease.
Then there was Uma DeNapoli.
The physical education teacher, a middle-aged prune who hadn’t had a date since, well, ever, took pity on the enormous girl. She couldn’t allow her to try and run those hundred yards. She could barely even allow her to walk them. Still, she had her ethics and she demanded that Uma show some sort of athletic ability.
“One somersault,” she told the terrified girl, encased in a fat suit of Bobbie Katz’s making. “Just one somersault.”
“You can do it,” Bobbie whispered in Uma’s ear. “Remember Blobby Fats? If she could do it, you can, too.” Then she slipped a chocolate kiss in her faux friend’s bloated palm. “It’s for good luck,” she said. “Honest.”
In front of the whole classroom filled with children too polite and well-bred to sneer, Uma popped the chocolate kiss in her mouth, squeezed her best friend’s hand, and tried to lower herself to her knees. Unfortunately, her bulk was just too great, and halfway to the mat, her legs buckled, sending the sumo wrestler of an eighth grader crashing to the ground.
She hit the mat with a resounding thud and was still.
It wasn’t until a boy named Ari Block shrieked that everyone was stunned out of their disbelief.
Uma DeNapoli was dead, crushed under her own weight.
Later, after the paramedics arrived and enlisted a number of the teachers to help them roll her ginormous carcass onto a stretcher, Bobbie Katz overheard one of them talking to the other.
“How could a kid ever get this big?” the paramedic said. “It must have been her heart.”
As Bobbie Katz turned and walked away, doing a cartwheel and a back flip as she went, she muttered to herself. “What heart? She never had one to begin with.”
Ah, revenge. It never tasted so sweet.
V is for Vicky
Who Sees the World Crumble
A WHITE PLASTIC bucket is passed from hand to hand with a label on the side that reads ‘Grape Jelly’. There is no more grape jelly left. There is barely any food at all.
Outside Apple High School’s cafeteria windows, the world is black. We’ve stopped talking about the inky darkness. We’ve stopped wondering where everyone went.
The religious kids, the ones that used to hang on creepy Father Tim’s words every Sunday morning, say The Rapture has come and we are the doomed ones because we weren’t taken.
The stoners think the cafeteria is part of some weird government experiment. They think the darkness is like the mist in that movie—the one with the acid spiders and the giant tentacle monsters.
Others have gone bonkers in a bizarre way. Their eyes have glazed over and they’ve turned into sheeple—people, but like sheep—willing to follow anyone and do anything so they don’t have to think for themselves.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
I can hear the sheeple’s cry in my brain and I want to listen to it, but somehow my mind hasn’t cracked in two yet. It will, but not yet.
We’ve barricaded the exits with chairs and overturned tables so that we can keep the darkness at bay, but I’m starting to think that it has seeped inside anyway. We’ve all forgotten how to smile. Whatever life remains inside of us is draped over our shoulders like burial shrouds.
I feel like we’re already dead.
Maybe we are.
Pammy Miller sits next to me, holding my hand. Next to her is Ike Branson and next to him is Ebon Rosansky. Ebon knocked up a freshman girl who isn’t locked in the cafeteria with us. She’s out there someplace. I don’t know if Ebon is relieved or not.
I’m not sure that being a baby-daddy even matters anymore.
Ebon takes the plastic grape jelly bucket from the person next to him, holds on to it for a moment with a weird look on his face that probably means he’s saying a silent prayer, then passes it to Ike.
Ike is one of the sheeple now, so he doesn’t hold on to the bucket for very long before handing it to Pammy.
Pammy solemnly reaches inside then passes it to me.
“Vickie,” she whispers as she turns a folded piece of paper over in her hand. “I can’t look.”
“You have to,” I tell her as I take mine.
“I wish I was like Ike,” she says. ‘Then I wouldn’t care.”
“No you don’t,” I tell her. “Don’t say things like that.”
When everyone’s had a turn with the bucket and we finally read what’s written on our pieces of paper, my tenth grade English teacher, Ms. Childers, begins dripping fresh tears again. She’s the winner and I’m relieved.
Lucy Ferman, the big girl who took charge after Damon Mammon picked his own name, stands and brings a second bucket to Ms. Childers. This one is labeled ‘Ketchup’ on the side, and I can’t help wishing I had some ketchup right now—anything to eat.
There’s a growing sense of anticipation between the sixty-seven of us that are left. The six teachers trapped with us look pale and sick. They are acutely aware that their students think they are an endangered species and should become extinct. Lucy Ferman, however, says that fair is fair, so we let the buckets decide.
Ms. Childers shakes her head and says she doesn’t want to pick, so Lucy Ferman slaps her hard across the face and a jock named Nico Caputo says, “Yeah.”
“Please,” blubbers Ms. Childers, so Lucy slaps her a second time. Quickly, she raises her hand once more and Ms. Childers’ eyes go blank.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
I can see by the look on her face that her brain is hearing the sheeple cry now.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
Finally, Ms. Childers reaches her shaky hand into the ketchup bucket and tentatively pulls out a piece of folded paper. We all lean in. You can hear the dead sp
eak.
“Read it,” Lucy Ferman hisses at her.
Ms. Childers trembles and tears. Lucy leans forward and says, “Read it or else.” I don’t know why Lucy is being so mean. I think she likes the power. I’m not sure.
The wet-faced mess who used to teach English gasps when she sees the words.
Behind our circle of survivors, laid out on a long table, are the tools we have chosen since we’ve started using the buckets. There are butcher knives from the kitchen, skillets, a broken chair leg, lighter fluid from Wednesday Grill Day, a jangle of keys, lunch lady aprons, human bones, and more.
“Bones, bones, bones,” Ike starts chanting. The other sheeple pick up the chant and it becomes louder and louder. The chair leg has already tasted blood. The keys have left bites. The ties on the lunch lady aprons have been twisted and pulled tight more than once. The bones, however, haven’t been picked yet and the monsters that we have become want to see how they will be used. “Bones, bones, bones,” everyone calls out in unison. “Bones, bones, bones.”
Lucy Ferman holds her hand up for silence, and I can see that she’s drawn a five-pointed star on her hand in blue pen.
It’s the devil’s mark. I don’t know why Lucy has done that to herself, unless she’s the devil now, but that can’t be true. It just can’t.
“Freakin’ read it,” she barks at Ms. Childers.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
“Lighter fluid,” Ms. Childers whispers.
“Louder,” Lucy Ferman sneers and slaps her a final time for no good reason other than that she’s in charge.
“Lighter fluid,” Ms. Childers says again. “Dear God.”
“God is dead,” Lucy spits and goes back to her spot in our circle.
Pammy takes my hand again. I don’t even like Pammy. She’s dead just like the rest of us. It’s just that we are dying slowly because that’s how Lucy Ferman wants us to die.
Lucy Ferman.
Lucifer Man.
It’s strange how things sometimes work out like that. Lucifer Man. I can’t think of Lucy Ferman as anything else now. I bet she can’t either because she is now a different kind of sheep—one with horns.
“This is it,” Lucifer Man announces, and produces a final bucket. Ms. Childers makes sniffling sounds and Lucifer Man shoots a dirty look at her from eyes that now appear to be glowing and red. The bucket has been stripped of its label because it has been deemed holy. It shouldn’t be marred with words like ‘Grape Jelly’ or ‘Ketchup’.
Lucifer Man holds the bucket high above her head and we all give thanks like we’ve given thanks before.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa
“We sacrifice an eater so the rest of us may eat.” The words are said three times over, each time louder than the last. “We sacrifice an eater so the rest of us may eat. We sacrifice an eater so the rest of us may eat.”
Ms. Childers is crying now and shaking her head back and forth, but no one cares anymore. We only care about this final, holy bucket which will decide what horror will come next. I don’t even think of it as a horror anymore. I don’t think at all.
That’s not entirely true. I think of green pastures where sheeple live, away from the darkness and the evil, away from people like Lucifer Man. I think of days gone by when there was still innocence left in the world and monsters were things in books or on television. I think about the sun and how it blazed in the sky before the darkness came, and I think about bustling hallways, kids laughing, school bells ringing.
Everything seems like a fantasy now. It seems as though my entire life was just a dream, and the only thing that’s ever truly been real is Lucifer Man, her buckets, and the sixty-seven of us that are left here in the cafeteria, soiled, dirty, and starving.
Starving until our ribs show and our hair turns to straw.
Lucifer Man pulls the bucket down from above her head and Ebon Rosansky, two over from Pammy, sitting next to Ike, puts his head in his hands and begins swaying from side to side. Ebon is giving in to the madness and the sheeple will soon be adding to their herd.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa
“We begin,” Lucifer man says, and whether it’s real or not, I see a forked tongue slip out of her mouth and feel something break in my head. She takes a slip of paper from inside the final bucket and passes it to her left. The slippery white plastic goes from Ashley Grayson to Lois Winston to sheep after sheep. We all watch as the bucket travels, each one of us reaching inside and selecting our destinies—from Niki Flowers to Debbie Smith to sheep after sheep.
Like dozens of times before, the bucket begins moving faster and faster because this part needs to go fast. It is time for a reckoning and no one wants to prolong the suspense any longer. No one, that is, but Ms. Childers.
I pull my hand from Pammy’s before she pulls hers from mine. The bucket goes to Mr. Chase who taught art, to a tenth grade boy whose name I can never remember, to more sheep.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa
Finally, Ike Branson hands the bucket to Pammy and she doesn’t even allow it to slow down. She quickly pulls her fate free as it glides through her hands and lets the bucket come to me.
I choose a scrap of paper without trying to use some sort of inner sixth sense to find one that will keep me safe, and watch the bucket continue on.
Before I know it, the white plastic has rounded our circle and is back in Lucifer Man’s hands.
I wish the world didn’t end like this. When the darkness came, I wish that I had been on top of a mountain, or having a dream, or kissing a boy. I wish a lot of things but wishes don’t matter anymore.
Nothing matters but those buckets—those destiny buckets—and what they tell us we must do.
I unfold my piece of paper and stare at the word that is written there. It is only a single word but it means so much and I don’t know how I feel inside. I don’t even know if I have feelings left inside to feel.
As I stare at my piece of paper, Pammy starts crying and a ninth grader named Troy Sanders shrieks like a little girl.
My scrap of paper says ‘eater’.
Pammy’s scrap of paper says ‘eater’. Troy Sanders’ scrap of paper says ‘eaten’ and he’s being a cry-baby about the whole thing.
In a fugue, tear-stained Ms. Childers stands, walks over to the table, and picks up the lighter fluid that is supposed to be for Wednesday Grill Day. She holds the bottle in her hand, staring at it as Troy shrieks again. The sheeple momentarily wake from their stupor to crowd around him, making sure he doesn’t run away, even though there is nowhere to run because the cafeteria door is locked and the world stops there anyway.
“Get the grill,” Ms. Childers says, “Before I lose my nerve.”
Meanwhile, Troy Sanders just screams, and screams, and screams some more. Lucifer Man, now hunched and smiling, with her forked tongue, evil eyes and pentagram on her palm, begins to laugh. Her laugh gets louder and louder until it drowns out everything and the rest of my mind finally falls away and I hear the sheeple cry in my head for real.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
“Please. No,” cries Troy as dozens of hands grab at him and pull him toward his end. “Please. You can’t do this.”
I don’t hear him though. All I hear is the sheeple, because the sheeple have spoken.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.
Baaaaaaa.
W is for William
Who’s Smitten a Little
I AM OBSESSED with the man across the street. I don’t know why. He is older—way older—and he has a beard. I usually don’t like beards, but on the man across the street it looks right.
I hide behind the curtains in the house, staring at him as he mows his lawn with his shirt off. He is older—I’ve said that—but his muscles are taut, and the tan he has been working on all summer makes hi
s skin a golden brown.
I’m off school. None of my friends are around. That’s not entirely true. We’re all around, stuck in our own homes with no place to go. Ever since Rae Parker’s mother was murdered, everyone’s parents are freaked and won’t let us hang. I don’t get why. It’s not like someone is killing teens.
Who knows?
The man across the street is a police officer. His car is a funny color, so I don’t think he’s a town cop. My friend, Melissa, says he’s a state trooper, whatever that is. She thinks he works the highways, stopping speeders and handing out tickets.
“He has a nice ass,” she says to me when I talk to her on the phone.
“How do you know?” I ask her. “You don’t even live in my neighborhood.”
“Dina Rubin says so,” she tells me.
“Dina Rubin’s a slut.”
The man across the street cuts his lawn often. I don’t know why he has to cut it so much, but it seems like he’s out there every third or fourth day, sweating and shirtless, making row after row of perfectly manicured sod.
He isn’t married. I know that much. He only moved into the house last year and my mother made sure to discretely inquire. When she came home after bringing him a bunt cake, she made herself a drink and called one of her friends. They laughed, and giggled, and my mother fanned herself with a Woman’s Day magazine.
Yeah. He has a nice ass. Dina Rubin’s right.
Sometimes I go into the bathroom, pull down my pants and stare at my own ass. It’s not quite a full ass just yet. I’m only fifteen. By eighteen, if I keep running every day, it will be as nice as his. Then maybe he’ll notice—if he’s the kind of guy who notices those things.
We’ll see.
Like I said, he’s not married.
I watch as he stops mowing the lawn and slowly walks into his house. A minute later, he comes back out holding a can of beer. He drinks it. I wish I had binoculars so I could watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down. That’s the sexiest thing, I think—Adam’s apples.
Little Killer A to Z Page 17