Devilish. Maureen Johnson
windows. Most had gone right for the ceiling and were dripping down like icicles. I had never seen so many flies. There were entire constellations of them.
My hand automatically went out to tap Allison and point this out, but then I realized that this might not be good, not the way she was feeling. I looked around to see if anyone else saw this or if the heat had just driven me insane.
There was a loud scraping noise of a chair being pushed back. It echoed through the gym and caused many people to turn, including me. The sound came from directly next to me. It was Allison, leaping up from her seat. She was obviously trying to cut through the room and get to the door, but she ran straight into a freshman who was slowly and deliberately coming in the direction of Ally or me or Kristin.
Then Ally threw up.
Well, it was more than that, unfortunately. It was truly projectile, and it was accompanied by horrible coughing noises that almost sounded like barking. She got the poor freshman completely and totally, mostly in the hair.
For a second, there was no sound. Then there was a loud intake of breath and a sound of awe. A few higher-pitched squeaks. People backed up and moved away. The freshman let out a wail the likes of which I have never heard before. It was a real end-of-the-world scream. This stirred the room and sound increased — cries of sympathetic horror from all corners, as if Allison had just thrown up on everyone in the gym, everyone in the world. A few people rushed toward the freshman to help. No one was quite able to bring themselves to touch her — most pulled out tissues or anything they had on them and passed them to the girl.
No one reached out to help Ally except for me and one of the sisters who was standing nearby. Allison pulled away from us and ran for it. The crowd parted for her, and she was gone.
‘It’s not that bad,’ I lied.
I could see the soles of Allison’s saddle shoes poking out from under the pink stall door, toes to the ground. Classic puking position. But she wasn’t sick anymore — she was dead silent. I poked at the sole of one of her shoes with my foot. Nothing.
‘People will forget,’ I added. ‘They’re all too busy.’
Nothing.
‘And not everyone saw it.’ I was talking stupidly now, relentlessly, just to fill the air. Everyone saw it. Everyone would remember it for all time. It would be written into the fossil record.
I heard voices outside as people left the assembly and started to repopulate the halls. I heard cries of excitement. Just outside the bathroom door, freshmen were showing each other rings. Outside, there was joy. It was at that moment I realized I also hadn’t gotten a little. The shock and awe of what happened to Ally had stunned me briefly. But now, now I saw it — and it hit me harder than I imagined it would.
Help Ally, my good inner Jane told me. You didn’t really care that much about getting a little.
‘You want me to run down to the café and get you a ginger ale?’ I asked.
Finally, a reply.
‘I want you,’ she said, ‘to kill me.’
The bathroom door opened, and a very tall girl slipped inside. She was long. Easily six feet, one of which was all neck. The blue stripe on her blazer pocket told me she was a sophomore. The blazer looked very squeaky-new, and I’d never seen her before. She was the kind of person you would remember if you saw.
‘Hey,’ the girl said. She didn’t look like she’d come in for any real purpose — just one of those time-killer visits. She stood in front of the mirror and minutely adjusted the bands that held her two rust-red ponytails in place. Then she turned and looked at Ally’s shoe bottoms.
‘That was an interesting assembly,’ she said to the mirror. ‘I didn’t think anything cool would happen here, but that was pretty good.’
Together we looked down at Allison’s shoes. They did not reply, but the left heel did sink towards the ground a bit.
‘I’m new,’ the girl said. ‘That’s why I was there. I’m Lanalee. Lanalee Tremone.’
The warning bell rang. The shoes didn’t budge. I got down on my knees and peered under the door. Ally was resting with her head on the seat and a blank look on her face.
‘Shouldn’t she go home?’ Lanalee asked.
‘They don’t really let us go home here,’ I said, poking my hand under the door and stroking Ally’s ankle in a pathetic attempt to comfort her. ‘You pretty much have to be dead. And even then I think they’d just keep your body in the front office until the end of the day.’
The shoes shifted a little and drew themselves out of reach.
‘Do you think you can make it to English, Al?’ I asked. ‘We have to go or we’ll be late.’
One hoarse word of reply:
‘Go.’
‘I don’t want to go without you. Sister Charles will freak.’
‘Go.’
‘Can you come out?’
‘Go.’
I got to my feet. The girl leaned down and addressed the opening under the door gently.
‘Did you get a little?’ she asked.
I heard a slight shifting from inside the stall, but no answer was forthcoming. I shook my head.
‘Well, you can have me,’ she said brightly. ‘I didn’t get a big. There!’
This was an amazingly generous offer, considering. I’m not proud to say that it only highlighted the fact that I was still little-less.
‘I’ll stay with her,’ the girl offered. ‘I wasn’t planning on going to next period anyway.’
I didn’t really want to leave, but there wasn’t much I could do. Sister Charles had never actually killed anyone, but she did leave you with the feeling that she was capable of some deeply frightening behavior.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and tell her you’ll be late. Okay, Al?’
Nothing.
‘Go on,’ the girl said. ‘Really. Let me bond with my big.’
And so I left the bathroom, just as the second bell rang. I got a demerit from Sister Rose Marie for running in the hallway between classes for my trouble.
Sister Charles was old enough to have figured prominently in some of the later Bible stories. She was constantly angry, and it took her forever to get down the hall. The reason for these last two was that she had no big toes.
How she lost her big toes was kind of a mystery, but when you have no big toes, it ruins your sense of balance and causes you to walk in circles. It doesn’t help when you are already old and generally a little nuts and you have to walk with a three-pronged cane. The added insult of walking in circles all the time makes you hate the teenage girls you teach — because you already think they are lazy and dumb and sex-obsessed and illiterate — so you are furious from the moment you wake up in the morning that big toes are wasted on them. I guess, to be fair, I’d be a little edgy too if it took me five hours to cross the soccer field because I just kept looping and looping and looping. But still, I wouldn’t take it out on innocent youth.
This is who we spent the first period of every day with. Her class, English, was also the only class that Ally and I had together this year. I took mostly AP and special classes, but this English class was the only one that fit my schedule.
I opened the door as carefully as I could, but I don’t know why I bothered. It wasn’t like Sister Charles wasn’t going to notice that