Brittney’s across from her in the waiting chair, the nurse with her back to them, looking through a drawer.
Brittney hisses to Izzy about her carefree feet, makes hot eyes, and Izzy gulps a smile down, pulls her ‘hurt’ left knee up, to cradle it.
Other, Brittney says with just her lips, and Izzy nods, switches knees just in time.
The nurse turns around.
“Of course we can’t put band-aids in your mouth,” the nurse says. She’s fifty-plus, solid, no nonsense.
“It just hurts,” Izzy says, touching her bottom lip.
“Like those?” the nurse says, pointing serially to Izzy’s nose ring, her eyebrow hoop, the half-moon of studs through the sensitive part of her left ear.
“What about my knee?” Izzy says. “I want to—I just need to stabilize it, I think. I don’t want to miss lab. I think it’s pig babies again.”
The nurse is so, so bored with Izzy. With high school. With life.
“Crutches?” she says. “You’ll have to sign for them.”
“I was thinking something more like that,” Izzy says, pointing to a diagram on the wall, of a massive knee brace. Like a splint that bends. A serious Robocop leg.
“That’s for post-surgery.”
“I think I’m pre-surgery right now. If those—if the stands would have just been locked in place . . . ”
“In the gym you had written permission to be in?” the nurse adds.
“She has cramps,” Brittney blurts out.
The nurse looks back to her, says, “I’m not Principal Masters, you know? That doesn’t work on my kind.”
“Our kind,” Brittney corrects.
“It’s just—cigarettes help,” Izzy says, bringing the fight back to her. “My mom taught me. Something about the nicotine, the vascular . . . ”
“Ah, yes. You’ve got to love modern parenting, don’t you?”
“She’s what I’ve got,” Izzy says, her voice less needy, now. Something rising in it.
The nurse just stares at her.
“Going for the sympathy vote then, are you?” the nurse says, squatting sideways to dig the large leg brace from under Izzy’s table.
“What?”
“Homecoming votes,” Brittney fills in, not amused now either.
“I hear pity’s the way to cash in, yeah,” Izzy says, trying not to smile.
“You have to sign for this as well,” the nurse says, and sets the brace on Izzy’s lap.
In Izzy’s POV, the brace doesn’t look at all like the poster on the wall. All the velcro’s matted with hair, there’s writing all over it in different hands, and, going by the gagging she’s doing, there’s a definite smell. Maybe even a stench.
“Is this the—the boy’s one?” she says, holding it up and away, trying not to touch it.
“Your knee hurts, doesn’t it?” the nurse says, satisfied with herself.
Brittney’s looking away, trying to keep her lips tight, not letting her eyes catch Izzy’s or else they’ll collapse with laughter. Cut to
→ the hall outside the main office, Pigtails there with a bloody tissue to her nose, Lindsay there as well, scrolling through her phone, completely bored. She looks up to Izzy, her arm around Brittney’s shoulder for support, the brace strapped to her knee.
“What happened?” she says, her voice just dripping with concern.
“I was jumping with joy,” Izzy says, cutting a grin down to Lindsay.
“She means thanks for the nomination,” Brittney says for Izzy, for which she gets a sharp and secret hair tug from Izzy.
Lindsay doesn’t respond, just watches, curious.
“Hop along, now,” the nurse says, escorting them
→ through the main office doors, which of course means: she’s milking this for all it’s worth, is shadowing them just to watch Izzy fake it. To make her keep faking it.
And this hall stretching before them, it’s forever long.
“I’m going to throw up,” Izzy says to Brittney, holding her hand over her nose. From the brace.
“Why’d you even want it?” Brittney says back, turning to make sure the nurse is still watching.
Yep.
“Thank you!” Brittney calls back, so cheerful.
The nurse nods, lifts her face to the hall before Izzy and Brittney:
It’s Jake, sweaty-faced, racing, that guilty backpack hooked over his shoulder.
Nobody behind him now, either.
He slows by Izzy and Brittney, slides to both knees so that his fingertips stop at Izzy’s brace.
He looks up to her about it.
“Me?” he says, wincing in apology.
“Flesh wound,” Izzy says, rotating her foot to show how whole she is.
“Speaking of,” Brittney chimes in, up on her tiptoes beside them.
They both look to her, lost.
“Speaking of flesh wounds?” Izzy asks.
“Of words that start with F,” Brittney says. “Like . . . Friday, football game, fromecoming . . . ”
“Britt, we didn’t—”
“That’s right,” Jake fills in, leaning down to catch Izzy’s eyes. “Tomorrow, right?”
She lets him look. Looks back.
“Interested?” she says. “I’ll make you famous.”
His nod goes from slight to grinning, and it spreads to Izzy, and Brittney just amplifies it.
“You had me at F,” he says, “pick you up at—?” but doesn’t get to finish.
Something’s rattling around the corner.
Jake goes up onto the balls of his feet, ready to explode off in twenty directions at once, but then that last hall before the main doors, where the sound’s coming from—it’s just a lab cart. Fourteen or sixteen jars of pig babies, Stuart pushing them.
“Stu-baby!” Jake says, and Stuart looks from Jake to Izzy to the backpack, and then behind them, to
→ one of the twin coaches, just walking. But with purpose. With Terminator intent.
Izzy hauls Jake to her other side, her safe side, says on the way, “It’s okay, we’ll talk, just go,” and pushes him towards the exit.
“Miss Stratford?” the nurse says, nodding down to the leg Izzy’s most definitely standing on.
Izzy doesn’t let any expression show, just says it again, to Jake: “Go.”
“Seven o’clock?” Jake says, starting to gather himself, and Izzy nods, bites her bloody lower lip in pure pleasure.
Jake smiles back, thanking her with his eyes, and turns to run for the double doors, has to pull up short when the other twin coach steps out from behind the trophy case.
“Jacob Jacob Jacob . . . ” the coach says.
“Don’t call me that,” Jake says, backpedaling, bumping into the abandoned pig baby cart.
He commandeers it, rolls it towards the coach coming up the hall.
That coach catches it, stops.
“This is going to suck,” Brittney says, both her hands clamped on Izzy, to keep her from doing anything stupid.
Still, love is what it is.
Izzy takes a step forward and fakes her braced knee collapsing, falls in a pile on the floor before the pig baby cart.
“My leg!” she says, reaching up for help, her voice shrieky and perfect, Lindsay framed in the wire-mesh glass behind her, just watching this develop.
“Ms. Stratford,” the nurse tsk-tsks.
“I didn’t even—here,” Jake says, tossing the backpack to Stuart, showing that this can all just be over.
Stuart tosses it back, timidly.
Jake cocks his head, lost, and looks to the coaches for help.
“He just . . . we’re friends,” Jake says, obviously making it up as he goes, tossing the bag to Stuart again, who tosses it back again.
Jake smiles. “See?” he says. “We’ve known each other since, since third grade, right, Stu old buddy?”
“Go to hell,” Stuart says, an evil grin spreading on his face.
“What?” Jake says, “I was ju
st—”
“Jacob,” the trophy-case coach says.
“Don’t call me that!” Jake screams, pissed off now, and stabs his hand into the bag. “Listen, I just, I was just, I wanted to borrow a book from Stu, okay? I just wanted to borrow this, this . . . ”
What he pulls up, though, it isn’t a book.
It’s a semi-automatic pistol.
Jake opens his mouth in shock, and looks up to the hall coach, then into the main office, all the people in there diving behind the counter. Except Lindsay. For whom this just became interesting.
Moments later the fire alarm screams, the lights go dim, emergency flashers strobe the institutional tile.
“No,” Jake says like a question, and looks up to
→ the hall coach, who’s footballed up a pig baby jar, is rolling it in his hand, feeling for the stitches.
“Jacob Stadler!” the trophy-case coach calls out, turning Jake’s head that way for just long enough.
“Noooo!” Izzy yells, reaching up into the air above her head, but it’s too late, the
→ pig baby jar is already spiraling along a laser line in slow- motion, practically breaking the sound barrier, and
→ we go around and around it, tracing its spiral, tight on that pig baby’s mouth, locked forever in a
→ scream, from Izzy;
→ an appreciative grin, from Lindsay.
Brittney looks away so she doesn’t have to see the jar catch up to real speed, slam into Jake’s shoulder, spinning him around, the gun coming up, his hand twitching around it to hold on, so that one shot fires up into the ceiling, sifting white dust down around him.
He looks down to the pistol like he wants to shake it off his finger, and then the next jar catches him. In the face. And it’s ugly enough that we cut ahead, to
→ the parking lot, everybody who was in the school standing out there holding each other, adopting the various postures of grief they know so well from television.
News trucks, police cars. A helicopter blowing Izzy’s hair down into her eyes, so she has to clear it in order to tighten her POV down to Deputy Dante, the one in charge here.
“Shit on a stick,” Izzy says.
“What?” Brittney says.
An ambulance gurney wheels out, Jake’s face wrapped in bandages, and Izzy digs her fingers into Brittney’s arm.
“That flag go any lower?” Izzy says, faking a smile, her thick eyeliner all smeared up.
Brittney pulls her closer.
“Somebody needs to do something about this place,” Izzy says.
Brittney looks over to the top of Izzy’s head, concerned.
“I think that was kind of Stuart’s idea,” she says, both of them watching as Stuart is led out in handcuffs, Dante pushing him each time he tries to just scuffle along.
“You working this afternoon?” Izzy asks.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to be plundering the video shelf,” Brittney says. “I’ll just check in . . . anyway, we’ve got to go give statements, right? Eyewitnesses, baby doll, front and center. Why?”
“Got something to show you,” Izzy says meaningfully, no grin to her voice now. She threads a clump of purple-streaked bangs out of her face, and we shuttle ahead, to
→ Izzy and Brittney through the back window of a Sheriff’s car, that car pulling them out of the parking lot.
We go with, are facing them in the backseat.
“That your mom?” Izzy says, about Brittney’s vibrating phone.
Brittney flips it open, says, “Dad. He’s more the news hound.”
Izzy nods. Is happy for her. Busies herself velcroing and unvelcroing the top strap of her leg brace.
“You ever feel like you’re in the prequel, like?” Izzy says to Brittney. “Like the important stuff, the stuff that really matters, it’s just next, after this?”
“It’s called high school,” Brittney says back without having to think about it, flashing her eyes at the woman deputy behind the wheel, that deputy narrowing her eyes in concern but not butting in.
“If we survive,” Izzy says,
→ and then that woman deputy is guiding them through the mobbed Sheriff’s headquarters, a place not built for this kind of attention. Guiding them through, through, to
→ a central office, Deputy Dante rising to greet them. He’s huge, as always, and twice as imposing as usual.
Izzy swallows, tightens her lips.
“I didn’t do it,” she blurts out anyway.
Deputy Dante guides them down to the two perp chairs, their arms chewed with fingernails.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” he says, taking a seat himself.
“This is Sheriff Mills’ office,” Brittney says, looking around at
→ the name plaque;
→ a fishing picture;
→ a nudie calendar, woefully out of date, two googley eyes on the calendar girl like pasties.
Dante shrugs Brittney’s observation off, looks pointedly to Izzy for this question: “Were you expecting him?”
“He was at our house last night,” Izzy says too fast, licking her lips as well. Digging her fingers into the arm of the chair.
Dante looks from Izzy to Brittney, wheels turning behind his eyes.
“You hurt your leg?” he says to Izzy.
“It’s fake,” Izzy says. “Oh, wait, no. I hurt it while killing the sheriff, yes.”
“Go on,” Dante says.
“He was at your house?” Brittney says, turning to see Izzy.
“Our street,” Izzy says. “Door to door, something about masks, I don’t know. From the Lindsay thing, right?”
Dante doesn’t answer, just adjusts his toothpick. Today it’s bright yellow, hard to miss.
“I thought we were here for Jake,” Brittney says. “It was a complete set-up. Stuart tricked him. Revenge of the nerds, all that.”
Dante’s just boring his eyes into Izzy.
“You two wouldn’t have been up on the point last night about dusk, would you have?” he finally says.
“Memorial service,” Izzy says, but we can hear the gamble in her voice.
“Thought so,” Dante says, sliding today’s paper across to them, “Lindsay’s Ride” the sixty-point headline.
Just under it and to the right is a photo of the Billie Jean mask, backdropped by the cliff, all that open space.
The only other thing in the photo is a female wrist, bangled with black bracelets.
The same ones Izzy’s still wearing.
“Like we told him,” Izzy says, pushing the paper back. “We grieve in our own way.”
“Of course you do. And keep the paper. I’ve got plenty.”
“What about Jake?” Brittney says again.
“Stupid is as stupid does,” Dante says.
“I want to talk to the real sheriff,” Brittney says. “My dad knows him.”
“Mine too,” Izzy says, but weaker.
“I bet you would like to talk to him,” Dante says again, straight at Izzy.
“What the hell?” she says back, standing now.
Dante shakes his head no, nothing, but can’t help smiling about her reaction.
“Guess I don’t need anything else,” he says, standing as well, raising his arm to usher them out.
“That’s it?” Brittney says, incredulous.
“I’ll just take you out the—” Dante says, sliding through the people, pulling Brittney and Izzy along, “out the other way,” but it’s so not an accident:
→ there, in an office, in Izzy’s slow-motion, sliding POV, that kind of ‘surprise reunion’ shot of two people passing in cars going opposite ways kind of feel, it’s Crystal Blake, sitting under a serene picture of an abandoned lakeside camp.
Izzy stops, never sees Dante’s satisfied grin.
It’s gone by the time he comes back around, his surly face back on.
“What’s she doing here?” Izzy says. “She wasn’t even at school this morning, she couldn’t
have seen anything.” “You know she wasn’t there?” Dante asks.
“I was going to tell her she was on the list.”
“The list?”
“Of homecoming losers.”
Dante nods, as if seeing Crystal for the first time all over again. As homecoming material. But then he shrugs it off. Says, “She—it doesn’t concern the Jacob thing. That’s all you need to know.”
“It’s Jake,” Izzy corrects.
And, in her POV, looking closer: has Crystal been crying?
Her, crying?
“Come on,” Brittney says, tugging Izzy’s hand.
Izzy pulls free, steps up to the glass between her and Crystal.
“She’s been through enough already,” Izzy says, turning hard on Dante. “What are you holding her on? Smoking in the ladies room? Skirt’s not past her fingertips?”—Brittney trying to pull Izzy away, out of this—“You don’t have any bigger fish to fry today, Deputy?” Dante chuckles about all this. “Of course I can’t speak—”
“Bull. Fucking. Shit,” Izzy says.
This stops Dante’s chuckle. His toothpick goes rigid.
“My dad’ll call Sheriff Mills,” Brittney says, tugging Izzy as away as she can.
“Must have some goddamn phone, then,” Dante says back to Brittney, but looking at Izzy.
“What did she do?” Izzy says again, actually kind of pleading now.
“We’re not announcing anything yet,” Dante says. “Enough news for one day already.”
“You can’t hold her,” Izzy says. “She didn’t do anything.”
“And how would you know that?” Dante says, flicking his eyes behind Izzy, for Izzy to look.
It’s Crystal at the window, all that painted water framing her.
“Just leave,” she says, and she has been crying. But now she’s not. And, judging by how firm her lips are, she won’t be again, either. Not today.
Izzy Spocks her hand up to the glass but Brittney’s already pulling her out of this scene.
Next, or now, or later, a predatory POV is stalking up the sterile hallway of a hospital.
The Last Final Girl Page 7