A Fate Totally Worse Than Death

by Paul Fleischman

  “The Wild Duck,” he repeated loudly. “By Ibsen.”

  She added a pair of erasers to her account, knowing full well she owned dozens already. “Who’s he?”

  “A playwright,” he said. “From Norway.”

  Brooke felt her face fall.

  “I’ve got his collected works. He’s probably the most famous writer from there.”

  Brooke’s plans fled her mind. Her hopes collapsed. Rage crackled into flame inside her.

  “And what brought this on?” Her voice was unsteady. She strained to seem ignorant of the answer, praying that perhaps she was wrong.

  “You know Helga? She turned me on to him,” Jonathan casually replied. She saw that his eyes brightened at the name. “I heard her mention him in class. Thought he might be worth checking out.”

  Brooke’s fury blazed. Though she’d joined the war against Helga half-heartedly and only so as not to be left out, she now boiled with visions of vengeance and yearned to utterly destroy her.

  “She said she’d help me with this latest one after school today,” Jonathan added. Pleasant expectation flickered on his face.

  Brooke’s patience snapped. Tears gathered in her eyes. He was just like all the rest—a slave to anything thin and blond.

  “And after your stupid plays,” wailed Brooke, “you read the letters in Playboy out loud I bet!” She knew she was shouting but didn’t care.

  Jonathan stood before her, dumbstruck.

  “Then you’ll look at the pictures, of course!”

  He cocked his head in puzzlement. “What?”

  “You can keep your pens and erasers!” screamed Brooke. She snatched the box of paper clips she’d meant to buy, raised it high, and opened it, letting them rain out onto the floor. She presented him with a vengeful smile. Then she looked up and saw that the deed had caused her sleeve to slip down toward her elbow. On the back of her hand, in plain view to all, were three new dark spots, one of which was shaped exactly like a skull. Brooke let out a shriek and fled.

  CHAPTER 8

  … … …. “Turn left!” Tiffany ordered.

  “What did you say?” asked Brooke.

  “Left!”

  Brooke swerved into the left lane and turned sharply, following the red Corvette and throwing Danielle against the door. It was Sunday morning. They were on the way to the beach, but had decided to first follow cars driven by handsome males. “Born to Hate” by Wehrmacht was blaring from the radio, the ENGINE light flashing on and off in time with the beat.

  “Tinted windows!” shouted Danielle above the music. “He must be rich.”

  Brooke sped to keep up with the car. “Or maybe just albino.” She’d been trailing it for miles when suddenly the driver pulled over and parked. Brooke slammed on her brakes and parked behind him, staring like the other girls. The Corvette’s door swung open. From inside came a short, vast-buttocked, cigarillo-smoking woman, who extricated herself in stages and was followed, like a mother bear leaving her den, by her waddling, diaper-wearing cub.

  There was stunned silence in Brooke’s car, apart from “Full Dumpster of Love for Ya” by Trash on the radio.

  “Damn,” summed up Tiffany.

  “Beauty’s only skin deep,” said Danielle.

  “I think you mean ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover,’” Brooke spoke up.

  “Just shut up and drive,” snapped Tiffany.

  “You’re welcome!” Brooke shouted.

  “Sorry!” mocked Tiffany.

  The episode was in character with the previous week’s events. Nothing had been going right in the effort to separate Helga from the Hun boys. The beach outing was less a tanning session than an emergency meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were determined now to destroy their enemy.

  Brooke backtracked nearly five miles, headed up the coast highway, and turned off into the Sycamore Beach Club, which all three girls’ parents belonged to. They got out and made their way down the boardwalk. Danielle subtly kept their pace slow, so as not to start wheezing from shortness of breath in front of the whole beach crowd. This suited Tiffany, who wished to hide the gimpy gait caused by her ever more painful hip joints. Though it was nearly ninety, Brooke was wearing a shirt of her father’s over her swimsuit. It was long enough to reach her fingertips, and both cuffs were buttoned tightly to hide the half dozen spots she sported on each hand. She prayed that no one would ask her the reason.

  They stepped onto the sand and chose a site with a view of the volleyball court. In silence, they slathered on their sunblock, reluctant to tackle the matter at hand. Danielle put on her Walkman’s headphones and listened to Serenity Cove, a tape of beach sounds that her parents, hard-driving stockbrokers, played to wind themselves down in the evenings. Tiffany flipped backward through an issue of Psst!, pausing at an article on tinted moisturizers. Brooke discreetly opened her compact and arranged her red hair over the small dark spot she’d found on her forehead that morning.

  “Shall we get it over with?” Danielle suggested an hour later.

  Tiffany had at last reached her magazine’s table of contents. She raised her head. “So what happened with your plan?”

  Danielle’s face soured at the memory. “I was going to leave this fish head on her doorstep. I found her address, but when I got there, there was no stupid house with that number.” She omitted the added insult that liquid from the fish had leaked into her pack.

  “No house?” mused Tiffany. “Pretty weird.”

  “Leaving a fish head is even weirder,” said Brooke. “No wonder your backpack smells like a bait shop.”

  Danielle sniffed it. She wondered if the smell explained Drew’s retreat when she’d tried to entice him into walking home with her on Friday. Or had her temporary false tooth, installed by her dentist, been askew? She felt it with her tongue. It was simply wedged in place between its neighbors and tended to swing out like a dog door if she bit into anything hard.

  “You got any better ideas?” she challenged.

  Tiffany propped herself up on her elbows. “Why not ask the other Hun girls to help out?”

  “Nicole Cappellini said she’d help,” replied Danielle. “If she’s not too busy with student council, cheerleading, French Club, Nostalgia Club, and the twenty-nine other groups she belongs to. The others all said they weren’t interested.”

  The three ruminated in silence. Tiffany got up to go to the bathroom, walking slowly both to spare her joints and to advertise her existence to all boys within view. Her luscious brown hair swung alluringly back and forth, halfway down her back.

  “I was driving by the park?” Tiffany remarked when she returned. “On Thursday? Going home from Community Service? I, like, looked over? And there was Helga? Sitting on the bench?”

  The others knew what bench she meant. In unison, all three girls looked down the coast to where the beach disappeared. The waves there threw themselves into the massive rocks below Clifftop Park, the same rocks onto which Charity Chase had fallen to her death.

  “Why does she have to pick that one?” asked Danielle.

  No one offered a reply.

  “She was here at the beach yesterday,” said Brooke. “By the lifeguard station. She was reading. Plays.” She thought acidly of Jonathan. “She said ‘Hi’ when I passed. She’d been there all day. What’s strange is that she never gets sunburned, even with her fair skin.” Brooke stated this last fact with disgust. She, by contrast, turned red and peeled if she stood in front of a forty-watt bulb. She seethed at Helga’s good luck in this and every other category.

  Four boys started playing volleyball, freezing the girls’ conversation. One was a Cliffside graduate, famed for his many DWI arrests, whose talents had been foretold when he’d been found drunk behind the wheel of his car simulator in Driver’s Education. He was well-built and looked over at Tiffany. Following the advice of an article in Psst!, she pretended not to notice him and quickly reopened the magazine, feigning reading an article on codpieces, plague,
pilgrimages, and other fads that, after a long sleep, were fashionable again.

  “C’mon!” barked Danielle. “We’re here to think. Get your nose out of your magazine.”

  “As soon as you take off your headphones,” said Tiffany.

  “You sound like my parents!” snarled Danielle. She ripped off the headphones and snapped off her Walkman.

  “Now who has an idea for taking care of Helga for good?” she demanded. She was annoyed by Tiffany’s lack of focus as well as by the fact that the boy had chosen to cast his gaze at Tiffany rather than at her.

  “What did you say?” Brooke inquired.

  “Christ almighty! Are you deaf or something? And what are you doing with your shirt on? It’s boiling!”

  Brooke ransacked her brain for an excuse. “I get freckles!” she blurted out truthfully. “Even with sunscreen. I’m not like Helga.”

  “I’ll say,” said Tiffany.

  “Thanks a lot!”

  “I’m sorry.” Tiffany became aware of her urgent need to pee again, a need she’d felt much more often lately. Too embarrassed to make yet another trip to the bathroom, afraid of what Danielle might say, she hooked her ankles and pressed her legs together. Just then an ice-cream seller approached. Grabbing her wallet, Tiffany found her finger joints so swollen and painful that she couldn’t manage to open the clasp. Enviously, she watched as Brooke bought an ice-cream sandwich. Danielle eyed Brooke hungrily as well, dying to buy one, too, but afraid that her false tooth might come out and get lost in the sand.

  “So who the hell’s got an idea?” cried Danielle.

  The others avoided her angry eyes. Brooke aimed hers at the two girls who’d joined the volleyball game. Both seemed cut from Tiffany’s magazine: tall, slender, perfectly tanned. One was a brunette who seemed to enjoy maintaining suspense in her audience as to when, in the course of her leaping and diving, her bikini’s top would lose its load. The other had long, dazzling blond hair, straight as a waterfall running down her back. Brooke stared at it, hating it and everything it stood for. It was nearly as long and as light as Helga’s. Suddenly she had an idea. “Why don’t we cut off her hair?” she proposed.

  CHAPTER 9

  … … … When Monday’s last bell rang, Nicole Cappellini was the first one out of her business class. She was in a merry mood as she hurried down the hall, having just racked up a profit of $10,000 in the classroom’s mock stock market. By the time she reached Helga’s classroom, she’d mentally spent the bulk of it. She positioned herself outside the door, just as Danielle had instructed her. The class was a few minutes late getting out. She spent some more of her profits, acquiring a French château and a new hair dryer.

  Abruptly, the door swung open and the first students began pouring out. Nicole noticed a clattering sound. She turned and discovered Gavin beside her, breath mints loudly orbiting his mouth. She knew he often waited for Helga. She wondered if he’d throw off the plan.

  “Mint?” he offered. His breath held the natural foulness and chemical freshness found in veterinarians’ waiting rooms.

  Nicole shook her head, then spotted Helga approaching the door, talking to Drew. What if he walked home with her? Nicole’s pulse quickened at the thought.

  “That’s just what Thoreau was saying,” said Drew. He and Helga emerged from the room. “Cut your expenses so you won’t have to waste your life working to pay your bills!”

  Nicole was shocked by such heresy. No wonder Thoreau had been hung with the witches. Or was that Benedict Arnold? She approached Helga and put in place the same oversized, phony smile that her mother often wore. She opened her mouth to speak, at which moment Gavin stepped forward, eclipsing her.

  “Wondered if you might want to see a movie with me this afternoon,” he asked Helga. “Grievous Bodily Harm Eleven is playing at the Cliffside Twelve-Screen.”

  He sent the mints on a quick circuit. “A real taste of America.”

  Helga walked down the crowded hall, surrounded as if by a ring of reporters.

  “By not having to work, Thoreau could study nature and write,” Drew went on.

  Nicole grimaced, wondering how someone as rich and handsome as Drew could have gone so far astray.

  “Thank you,” said Helga to Gavin. “It sounds quite interesting. But today I must study.”

  “It’s nothing at all like Grievous Bodily Harm Ten,” Gavin persisted. “Maybe that came to Osaka.”

  “Oslo,” Helga politely corrected.

  Nicole trailed along, perspiring, aware that the scene was beyond her control. Fortunately, the procession was following the route that Danielle had predicted. As they all headed outside toward the gym, there was a half second of silence in the conversation. Nicole pounced.

  “As a member of the Cliffside High World Friendship Club—” she spoke up.

  “A total farce,” Drew informed Helga, as if he were translating. He knew that the club was no more than a group of Hun bigwigs on the student council, who voted themselves a budget each year and spent it dining at restaurants specializing in foreign cuisines.

  “Grievous Bodily Harm Ten stank, I’ll admit,” Gavin butted in. “A waste of money. Unless you were doing your Ph.D. on blood circulation.”

  Drew pulled Thoreau’s Journal from his back pocket. “‘That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest,’” he quoted.

  Helga smiled in response.

  In panic, Nicole realized that they were getting close to the bathroom. Why had she offered to help Danielle? She cleared her throat and reinstated her Miss America smile.

  “On behalf of the club, I would like to invite you to address our group at—”

  A mint escaped from Gavin’s mouth and struck her neck, sliding under her dress. Nicole gave a small shriek.

  “Sorry,” said Gavin. He reached toward her playfully. “I’ll get it.”

  “Get away from me!” she yelled. Her smile and patience took flight. “All of you!”

  The three others froze.

  “Except for you, Helga.” She stared at her. “We have something to discuss.”

  Gavin drifted off. Drew told Helga good-bye. Nicole regained her composure, amazed that losing it had accomplished her end: escorting Helga alone.

  “The club,” she continued, “asked me to invite you to give a talk to us on Nepal.”

  “Norway?” asked Helga.

  “Norway. Of course.” Nicole commenced a series of wriggles, followed shortly by the sound of Gavin’s mint hitting the ground.

  “That would be a great pleasure,” said Helga.

  Nicole smiled. She viewed Helga’s hair, unbraided today and incomparably sexy. Cutting it off would truly be just this side of murder. She congratulated Brooke on her plan.

  “We wrote out a formal invitation.” Nicole pawed through her purse, then looked up. “I know it’s here. I was going to check my makeup in the bathroom, right there. Come in for a second and I’ll find it for you.”

  Nicole led the way. There was no one around. She opened the door, followed in by Helga.

  At once Brooke and Danielle rushed from the stalls, wearing sweats and ski masks. They grabbed Helga’s arms. Nicole gave a soft, unconvincing scream and fled. Tiffany then burst out of the last stall. Through her mask’s eye holes she found Helga’s hair, grabbed a thick strand with one hand, then held up a pair of scissors with the other as if she were a sacrificial priestess. Helga struggled mightily, but was unable to free herself. Then she looked into Tiffany’s eyes. Suddenly the pain in Tiffany’s fingers, severe already, soared past bearing.

  “Do it!” growled Danielle.

  Tiffany’s hands felt paralyzed. Behind her mask she grimaced in torment. The scissors slipped from her fingers and fell. Slowly she crumpled to her knees.

  Helga next faced Brooke, who found herself instantly flooded with fatigue. Astounded, she felt the strength in her muscles draining away uncontrollably. Her grip on Helga’s arm loosened. Then her entire body went limp. She sank to the floor be
side Tiffany.

  Danielle was aghast at these defections. When Helga peered at her, she was already panting desperately for breath. Her lungs now began to wheeze as loudly as a pump organ’s bellows. Forgetting the plan, intent on survival, she released Helga’s other arm and slid onto all fours.

  Panting herself, free now, Helga regarded her prostrate assailants. Their breathing was heavy. They seemed as helpless as infants. She reached down, grasped the top of Tiffany’s mask, and tugged it off. She did the same with Brooke’s. Then Danielle’s. None dared look up at her.

  Helga’s voice was wobbly but determined. “There will be justice,” she declared. “I promise. That’s why I’ve come.” She kicked the scissors across the room. Then she disappeared out the door.

  It was ten minutes before Tiffany could speak.

  “Well get suspended for this for sure.”

  All three were still sitting in a stupor on the floor.

  “All of a sudden I was totally weak,” said Brooke. “It’s like she has magical powers.”

  “Superhuman,” Tiffany agreed.

  Danielle inhaled, her chest expanding. “You’re right. She does.” She breathed out slowly. “And getting suspended is the least of our problems.”

  The others faced her. Danielle, eyes closed, filled her lungs again.

  “Helga isn’t mortal,” she stated. “She’s a ghost. The ghost of Charity Chase.”

  CHAPTER 10

  ……… “A ghost,” moaned Tiffany. “Get serious.”

  “I am,” said Danielle. The others gawked at her.

  “Why don’t we talk somewhere else,” Brooke suggested.

  The three climbed slowly to their feet. Tiffany peeked out the bathroom door. “No sign of Helga. Or the principal.”

  They stuffed their sweats and masks in their backpacks and shuffled toward the parking lot.

  “A ghost?” brayed Brooke. “You’ve got to be kidding.” They reached Brooke’s tan Toyota and stopped.

  “I wish I were,” Danielle replied.