by Suzy Cox
Then again, maybe Kristen didn’t believe she should have to steal anyone. She was the prettiest, most popular girl in school, so guys should come to her—even if it took their girlfriend dying to figure that out. Plus the way she’d turned on Ali in chem class was pretty brutal. And, in a lot of ways, she had the perfect alibi: No one would ever believe that she’d set foot on public transport, let alone killed someone on the subway. It was the kind of low rent she would never do.
So Nancy wrote Kristen’s and Jamie’s names on the suspect list on the board. Had we been underestimating them all along? Had one of them wanted me out of the picture enough to kill me? And have all the excuses for “comforting” David they’d ever need?
That’s when Nancy came up with the Plan. And why we were here—in the cheerleaders’ locker room—waiting for the squad to arrive.
“So the Plan is this,” Nancy said. “Kristen and Jamie are fighting over David. Kristen’s the head cheerleader, but it seems like her second in command, Jamie, wants to be queen bee. We need to find out what those two are really thinking. But we can’t do that by simply possessing them.”
“Because then they’ll just become our vessels and do what we want?” I asked.
“Exactly.” Nancy smiled. “We can’t find out what they’re up to if we’re controlling them. So, instead, Lorna, Tess, and I will possess the other three—the people closest to them—and interrogate Kristen and Jamie from there. Blonde Four, Blonde Five, and … what’s the one with the ridiculous name again?”
“Kaitlynnn,” Lorna said. “I get to be her because her hair’s cut in a really cute bob, so I want to see how that feels.”
“Kaitlynnn,” Nancy said, ignoring her. “Then when we’re inside them, we will be the eyes and ears of the inner circle. We can talk to Kristen and Jamie through Kaitlynnn, Blondes Four and Five, ask them questions about David and basically figure out if they killed Charlotte or not.”
Comprende loud and clear.
Tess made a this-is-so-stupid noise. “Nancy, as you know I have gone along with many of your plans in the past. And I said I’d help you out today, so I will.” She walked over to Nancy, who’d finally stopped bouncing now she was in plan mode. “But honestly? Do you really think this is going to work? Even if Kristen and Jamie aren’t the sharpest pencils in the drawer, they’re not just suddenly going to admit to murder just because one of their equally dumb friends asks nicely if they killed Charlotte, are they?”
Good point. Even though I would never agree with Tess out loud.
“Maybe, but that’s where Charlotte comes in.” Nancy turned to me. “You know what you have to do if we’re not getting anywhere, right?” Nancy asked.
I nodded. Unfortunately, I did. I just hoped it wasn’t going to come to that.
“OMFG! Have you seen what Jessica West is wearing today?” Five pushed the locker room door open so hard it slammed into the wall. A cheer trophy on a shelf next to me wobbled, but stayed upright.
“OMFG? Like, what?” Four asked. I wondered if they knew that no one ever bothered to learn their names. “Was she double denim-ing her jeans with her jacket again?” Four gasped.
“No, it was waaaaayyyyy worse than that. She was actually …” Five leaned forward to deliver her fashion bomb.
“Ladies, please, a little decorum before we practice.” Kristen strutted through the door with Jamie and Kaitlynnn following close behind. “If we’re ever going to perfect the K pyramid, we need to focus and stop jabbering on about irrelevant people in the preparation area.”
“Preparation area?” Tess said. “Who is Miss Fancy Pants trying to kid? Can I possess her? Please? I could take her down to one of those budget beauty salons off Canal Street and get her a haircut she’ll never forget.”
Finally a Tess suggestion I could get on board with.
“Tess! We need your help and that suggestion is firmly in the hindrance bracket,” Nancy scolded her. “Let’s wait for them to get into their uniforms, then we can possess them and move on with the plan.”
Behind us, the Tornadoes were getting ready. We all silently turned away to protect their modesty.
“Can we just get this over with?” Lorna asked. “Charlotte, you know these girls, who should get who?”
I looked around. The Tornadoes were all uniformed up and having an argument about whether Jamie had the first stages of cellulite on her thighs or not.
“Well, Kaitlynnn’s dumb, but she’s also feisty, so I guess she should be yours, Tess. That way if you say something bitchy, no one will think it’s wildly out of character for her.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Tess actually grinned at me. Then dived into Kaitlynnn, who shuddered, then stood perfectly upright. Tess made Kaitlynnn turn to us and smile. “I’m not bitchy,” Possessed Kaitlynnn said. One down, two to go.
“Nancy and Lorna, you get Blondes Four and Five,” I instructed. “I’d love to give you advice on which one to take, but honestly I cannot tell them apart. All I can say is that you should probe Kristen and Jamie gently. Remember Four and Five are usually their puppets, so they’re not likely to talk out of turn a lot.”
“No problem. Let’s hope this is quick,” Lorna said, making a must-I-do-this? face before jumping into Four.
Nancy turned to me. “Okay, so we’ll see you out on the field?” I nodded. “And remember what I told you—stay by the stands, then if we need you, Lorna or I will give you the signal. Then all you have to do is … well, you know what you need to do. I’ll leave you to it.”
Nancy looked at Blonde Five with slight trepidation.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “One jump and you’re a bona fide cheergirl—it’ll be high kicks and splits all the way—and you’ll be in a body that can do all that.” Nancy gulped. “Gimme an N. A. N. C. Y.—NANCY!” I cheered.
Nancy smiled and ran at Five.
“Everyone ready?” Kristen asked.
In so many ways more than you know, I thought.
“Then let’s get out on the field!” Kristen led her squad out of the locker room in popularity order. Head bitch first, Jamie second, Four and Five, then Kaitlynnn last. I followed behind.
I managed to duck through the door before it swung shut and through me. I jumped out of the way of the wood—and almost collided with a Living boy who was standing outside the locker room, up against the wall, so that no one would see him.
David? Since when did he start waiting outside the Tornadoes’ room.
He waited until Kristen, Jamie, and the other Blondes had passed by, before grabbing Kaitlynnn’s arm.
Possessed Kaitlynnn shrieked.
David put his finger to his mouth, trying to get her to be quiet. “Er, Kaitlynnn, can I have a second, please?” he asked.
Tess-as-Kaitlynnn stopped in her tracks. And smiled like a cat surveying an unfit mouse that she knew she could catch in one jump. Great.
“Of course, David,” she simpered. “Now why would you be speaking to little ol’ me and what can I do for you?”
Tess-as-Kaitlynnn ruffled his hair. Oh, why did I put Tess in her?
“Tess, don’t you dare,” I said, knowing full well she could hear me even if David couldn’t.
She smiled at the air to David’s left, where I was standing. And defiantly mussed up his hair again.
“It’s about last night …” David smoothed down his man-bangs, then did that nervous thing that I always used to find so unbelievably cute: He tilted his head and looked up at her from under his lashes.
“I was going through a really tough time and it was so great of you to come and meet me like that. A real comfort.”
So he was getting Kaitlynnn to “comfort” him now? What was wrong with Kristen and Just-Call-Me J?
“Hey, anytime.” Tess somehow managed to simultaneously flutter Kaitlynnn’s eyelashes and look concerned for David’s well-being. “Everyone at school feels so terrible about what you’re going through. I was more than happy to help out.”
I wa
s so about to be sick.
“Oh, and Kaitlynnn? Just one more thing,” David said. “I know it sounds kinda weird, but would you mind not talking to the rest of the squad about us meeting up last night? It’s just that I’m a very, er, private person and I don’t want anyone thinking I can’t handle what’s happened with Charlotte.”
Tess made Kaitlynnn’s head nod. “Of course. Actually I’m kinda free now. How about I just blow off cheerleader practice and we go somewhere and talk about Poor Charlotte some more. I—”
“Kaitlynnn! Ah, there you are.” Kristen strode over, looking slightly out of breath and uncharacteristically red in the face. “And with David.”
I’d never been so glad to see her. Actually, scratch that: I’d never been glad to see her before.
“I was just walking by on my way to the library and Kaitlynnn stopped to talk to me because she noticed that I looked sad.” Was David always this convincing a liar? Or was it another talent he’d been hiding, along with his love of organized sports and skanks. “It’s because I used to go to the library with Charlotte all the time and the thought of going there on my own …”
Man, why had he never auditioned for drama club? Drew would have snapped him up in a flash. And hadn’t he already been to the library? Just a couple of days ago? With J?
“Oh, David, it’s okay. Please don’t cry.” Kristen gave him a massive hug, at the same time managing to elbow Kaitlynnn hard in the ribs and push her out of the way. Tess winced. “It’s so hard for you, isn’t it?”
She pulled away from him and gave Kaitlynnn a look. Tess got the hint, shrugged, and took her possessed cheerleader out to the sports field where Lorna and Nancy were waiting in Four and Five.
Kristen carefully watched her leave. “Here’s some news that will cheer you up,” Kristen said, when Kaitlynnn was out of earshot. “You’ve probably not noticed this because you’ve been grieving, but the Halloween dance is taking place next Saturday in the school gym.”
David nodded in a pained way that seemed to say No, I haven’t had time for such frivolities, what with burying my girlfriend and all, but please do go on.
“And this year, the dance committee decided to spice things up a bit—do something different instead of just hanging up a few paper skeletons and downloading tracks by bands like the Grateful Dead. This year they’re going to have a Ghostbusters theme—you know, like, as in that old movie? Whatevs, that’s not the exciting bit, they’re also going to have … a Scream Queen and King!”
David nodded some more. Honestly why did he care? He hated that kind of thing. We both did. He’d rather have stepped in dog poop than attend a high school dance.
“The nominations are out tomorrow, but …” Kristen looked around the hallway, as if she were about to unveil a secret of upmost national security. Like what really happened in Area 51 or where Jimmy Hoffa went. “I happen to know for a fact that you are up for Scream King! And everyone is saying you’re going to win it. And I’m a shoo-in for Scream Queen.”
Man, I really hated her. Like would-have-found-a-way-to-suffocate-her-with-a-pom-pom-if-it-didn’t-mean-her-turning-up-at-the-Attesa hated her. But I also wanted to know how she got her hair to be that shiny too. Which made me hate myself almost as much as I hated Kristen.
I looked over at David, expecting to see a horrified expression on his face. King? At a dance? As if! Kids like David, who were going to make it in the music industry managing some incredibly authentic yet lucrative hipster band, did not become Scream Kings. None of Fall Out Boy had that on their CV. And memo to the social-climbing saddo who came up with the whole Halloween concept theme: Scream Queen might (almost) work, but Scream King? It did not even rhyme.
“So I wondered if you’d like to go with me,” Kristen asked. Oh, so she was the ask-a-boy-out type after all. Did that make her more or less likely to be the murderess type too? “It just seems kinda fitting. You’ve changed so much since … you know … Everyone around here looks at you differently now. Like, without Charlotte, you’ve become a somebody. We’d be perfect together.”
Eww. She was pure evil.
“If you’re ready to be seen out with me that is,” she said, faux shyly.
“I—I—, well, I …,” David stammered. Here it came: the rant explaining why he refused to get involved in a pathetic paranoia-forming popularity contest thinly veiled as a legitimate rite-of-passage ritual, where the only mind-retracting forms of entertainment on offer were bouncing around like a Pavlovian puppy dog to Miley Cyrus’s latest piece of auditory turd or groping the nearest member of the opposite sex on the dance floor during the erection section.
“I’d love to go with you.” David smiled.
WTF?
“Great!” Kristen beamed. “Well, we’ll talk Ts and Os later.”
“Ts and Os?”
“Times and outfits,” she explained. “If everyone’s going all out for the Ghostbusters’ theme, then we have to make sure our costumes match. Was there, like, a cute boy and a cute girl ghost in it? I’ll ask my mom. Anyway, for now I have a state-championship-winning K pyramid to form. I’ll see you around.”
She squeezed his arm lightly, then breezed out onto the playing field leaving a cloud of vanilla fragrance behind her.
I gawked in her wake.
“Cool,” David said out loud.
Cool? Cool? He never said “cool.” Especially not about attending a social event that could feature as the climax of a John Hughes movie. If I didn’t know better I’d think David, instead of Four, Five, and Kaitlynnn, had been possessed.
David turned and walked down the corridor in the direction of the library. Much as I didn’t want to admit it, he didn’t look like a man whose soul mate had just died.
As he rounded the corner, I swear I saw him do a little skip.
Chapter 18
“KAITLYNNN! WHAT ON THIS PLANET IS WRONG with you today?” Kristen flipped her long blond hair over her left shoulder and swung around to face her squad mate confrontationally. “You have been off ever since we got here. Either go inside, read a guidance pamphlet on whatever pointless teen turmoil you are currently going through and get over it, or FOCUS on the matter at hand.”
Kristen spun around dramatically on the heel of her pristine white sneakers and took a few strides away from the squad so she could appraise her team from a distance. As head cheerleader, if there was so much as a glob of lip gloss out of place, it reflected badly on her. And anything less than perfection was not something Kristen tolerated. She wrinkled her nose as she looked them over. As if on cue, the sixteen girls in front of her straightened up, pointed their left legs forward and swiveled their bodies ever so slightly, like they were posing for a paparazzi camera no one could see.
Actually, only thirteen of the girls struck an insta-pose. Three of them were two beats behind everyone else. Because three of the squad were possessed by my dead friends.
“Okay, let’s go for the pyramid!” Kristen shouted, clapping her hands loudly.
This was going to be interesting.
“Oh gawwwd,” Blonde Four (Lorna) mouthed at Blonde Five (Nancy). She looked like she was rooted to the spot with cold hard fear. Which was so not a Goooo Team! stance.
Looking at the sports field, I was happy to be away from the action—for now at least. It was much better to be standing on the sidelines (well, over by the bleachers) while Nancy, Lorna, and Tess were forced to take part in cheer practice. In the name of the investigation, of course.
But while Lorna looked like she was about as up for being part of a teen girl pyramid as she was for wearing man-made fibers, from the way Five was bounding over to the rest of the squad like an overexcited Labrador puppy, Nancy was loving this part of the Plan.
“Guys, places, please. You may have all day, but I, quite frankly, have a life, so do not test me,” Kristen said.
I scanned the sea of yellow-and-blue uniforms—the “cute” (if your style role models were the girls of the Playboy mansion) p
leated micro-skirts and navel-skimming vests. I was so teasing Her Geekiness about the fact she’d actually enjoyed this the second she unpossessed Five. Still, it seemed that Nancy wasn’t the only cheerfan. A few other kids had come out to watch the show too, including Alanna, the gel pen dropper, Photo Club Mina, and Brian, this kinda unpopular kid, who I’d actually dated for about thirty seconds in fourth grade. Back when I thought mud and worms were an acceptable eau de boy. Which, past the age of eleven, they are so not.
I focused my attention back on the sports field. Even if no one but their mothers could tell the Blondes apart, knowing who was currently possessing them, it was easy to figure who was who. Five was hanging off Kristen’s every word as she explained in detail exactly how the stunts were going to play out today, while Four was looking in disgust at the cheerleader next to her who had just had the gall to accidentally step on her sneaker leaving a dirty black mark.
That was those two accounted for, but where had Tess taken Kaitlynnn’s body? Surely she hadn’t run straight back to the locker room as soon as she heard the pyramid word? And, much as I was getting more over him by the second, I really hoped she’d not run to the library in the hope of finding David again.
Kristen clapped again to signal the end of her briefing—and the squad spread out, ready to start their routine. Kristen motioned for her über-clique—Jamie, Kaitlynnn, and the Blondes—to stand to the side until they were needed. The other girls got into four groups of three, shimmied a little, then simultaneously dipped down, putting their hands together to make four human springboards for the stars of the show to bounce up on.
That meant Tess, Lorna, and Nancy—along with Jamie—were going to have to get their Living bodies up on top of the ’mid. Uh-oh. As enthusiastic as Nancy was in the locker room, I knew she had no acrobatic experience. Lorna would never have joined in any physical activity that could have involved her sweating when she was alive. And Tess? I did not for a second think she was the athletic type. This could so end in tears. Or broken bones. Maybe both.