A Fate Totally Worse Than Death Read online

  “Oh, my!” Helga laughed.

  Jonathan beamed. This morning, for Community Service, he’d driven the Meals on Wheels van, and had taken the cake from each of the lunches. Pretending puzzlement to his elderly patrons as to why there was no dessert, he’d diverted two pieces into his mouth and the rest to this locker for resale to students. He offered Helga a plate, then one of the plastic forks he’d pocketed in the school cafeteria.

  “I ate quite enough at lunch,” said Helga.

  Jonathan gave her the smile he held in reserve for preferred customers.

  “But perhaps just a bit of cake would not hurt,” she relented.

  His heart rejoiced. Though he was slightly pudgy and shorter than she was, with every bite she’d be reminded that he had other advantages.

  They strolled slowly down the hall. Halting at locker 704, Jonathan opened it up to reveal a neatly ordered storehouse filled with pencils, paper, and other items bought at wholesale prices from his father’s stationery shop, which he sold more cheaply than the outmatched, bankruptcy-bound student store. Moving on, he paused at locker 932, then thought better of showing Helga his stock of Playboy, Playgirl, condoms, and other items he’d marked up quite heavily for enduring checkers’ questions and pharmacists’ stares to acquire them.

  They turned a corner and entered the high school’s new wing. “Norway …” said Jonathan. He struggled to frame an intelligent question. “I guess you get to do a lot of swimming in the Indian Ocean.”

  Helga chuckled politely. “Not really. Norway is in northern Europe, next to Sweden.”

  Jonathan chuckled along with her, making a note to refuse store credit to the lunkheaded jock he’d overheard talking in the showers about Helga, who’d said that Norway was an island off India. “Right. Anyway, I’d like to see it someday.”

  She finished her cake. “And I have always wanted to see your Yellowstone Park.”

  He nodded in approval. “In Florida.”

  Helga’s blond eyebrows curled. “Isn’t it situated in Wyoming? In the Rocky Mountains?”

  “I meant Wyoming.” Jonathan was perspiring. “Someday I’ll make it there, too, hopefully.”

  Helga cocked her head. “Do you mean that you hope to visit Yellowstone Park?”

  Jonathan looked perplexed. “Yeah.”

  “Isn’t the word ‘hopefully’ an adverb?”

  Jonathan feared to hazard an answer.

  “Doesn’t it mean ‘full of hope?’” she continued, genuinely seeking his help.

  Jonathan nodded quickly, hoping to put the topic behind them.

  “So what you have said is ‘I will visit Yellowstone Park full of hope.’” She gave a little laugh. “Or is that perhaps what you meant to say?”

  Jonathan searched for safe ground but could find none. “I guess, like, it’s an adverb,” he said vaguely.

  “And please, what does ‘like’ mean when it’s used as you did?”

  Jonathan swallowed.

  “‘I guess, like, it’s an adverb,’” Helga refreshed his memory.

  “It’s like….” Jonathan spoke the words with an amnesiac’s uncertainty. “It’s sort of….” He sighed. “Actually…it doesn’t mean anything,” he blurted out with sudden comprehension.

  Helga’s perfect teeth shone in a smile of revelation. “Thank you, Jonathan. I now understand.”

  He exhaled. His harrowing journey through his own country’s language and geography had ended. Stopping before locker 1228, he consulted his card and unlocked it.

  “Top row. Only five years old. Pristine condition. Unused all last year.” Due to declining enrollment, the school boasted numerous unused lockers, their locations and combinations known, it seemed, to no one but Jonathan. With the help of a locksmithing book, he’d learned to change their combinations, which he did with each new tenant in order to protect his monopoly of access. The rent he charged—ten cents a day—to those who wanted two lockers or who wished to trade for a better locale added up when multiplied by the many properties he managed.

  “It will be quite nice, I’m certain,” said Helga. “Thank you very much, Jonathan.”

  He gave her a slip with the combination. He’d decided not to charge her and wondered if telling her this would increase her gratitude or bring on a troubling inquiry into his locker empire. “I think you’ll be happy here,” he said instead. “Mine’s just over there.”

  “How convenient.”

  The voice wasn’t Helga’s. Jonathan turned around and found Tiffany planted behind him.

  “Hi, Tiff,” he stammered.

  “Hi, Turdface,” she shot back.

  Jonathan alertly discerned her mood. He prayed that Helga wouldn’t ask to have the epithet explained.

  “Let’s show our foreign guest our excellent manners,” he muttered under his breath to Tiffany. Staging an instructive, formal introduction, he pointed a hand at each of the girls. “Tiffany, this is Helga Sandstad. Helga is an exchange student.”

  Smiling nervously, Helga held out her hand.

  Tiffany ignored it. “And this,” she sneered, “is Jonathan Rice.” She backed him into the lockers, bringing her head an inch closer to his with each word. “Jonathan is a lying, despicable, wheeling-dealing, womanizing, swamp-breathed, big-mouthed, small-brained worm! Who I’ve now broken up with for the eighty-eighth and last time and never want to see again!” She spit in his face by way of punctuation, spun around, stormed down the hall, then turned and aimed a finger at Helga. “But you stay away from him anyway!”

  CHAPTER 4

  ………Danielle glanced at her tiny gold watch. “An entire hour of this?” she moaned. These Tuesday afternoons were worse than orthodontist visits. She gazed at the sleeping Mrs. Witt, then grabbed the television’s remote control and tried it for the fourteenth time. The screen remained blank. She flung the remote on the bed, striking one of Mrs. Witt’s popsicle-stick legs with a loud clack. The woman shifted in her sleep. Danielle looked disgustedly at the wall opposite the empty bed, where the room’s other television perched, likewise broken. Tortured with boredom, she began to read idly through Mrs. Witt’s mail, but found this cure worse than the cause. With a sigh, she opened her pack, pulled out Hitchhiker from Hell, and found her place.

  She had to flee.

  Had to run.

  Fast.

  She scrambled through the trees and brambles. Whatever it was, it was coming closer. Its thick, gurgling growls shot pinpricks of fear into Stephanie.

  Lisa was already dead.

  And Scott.

  The creature’s black beard was matted with their blood.

  Why had she taken the “scenic route” to the cabin instead of the freeway? Why hadn’t she checked the gas tank first?

  “Because she’s a dork,” Danielle answered aloud. She closed the book, leaned back in her chair, and found her eyes aimed at Mrs. Witt’s candy. Expecting to find the box empty by now, she reached to pull it off the shelf and was surprised by its weight. She lifted the lid—and exulted to find it was a new box, filled entirely with cherry truffles, her favorites. She popped one into her mouth, closed her eyes, then bit into its cherry heart, savoring the union of chocolate and cherry. In the midst of her ecstasy a knock sounded on the door, followed by a pause, then three more knocks.

  She licked her fingers. “I’ll get there,” she said. She placed another candy on her tongue, got up with a groan, shuffled to the door, and admitted Brooke and Tiffany.

  “You remembered the special knock?” asked Brooke.

  “Call me Einstein,” answered Danielle. “Saves me the trouble of hiding things, like this box of cherry truffles.” Her guests’ eyes lit. “Not that Brooke wouldn’t have sniffed them out in five seconds.”

  “Thanks a lot,” said Brooke.

  “Sorry,” Danielle replied, passing the box around. Tiffany sat in a chair. Brooke reclined on the room’s empty bed. Wordlessly, the three chewed, sucked, swallowed, and licked.

  “I love
these,” Tiffany spoke at last, coming up for air. “Who answered our prayers?”

  “Must be a God after all,” said Brooke.

  “Then how do you explain both TVs in this room being broken?” posed Danielle.

  Her friends’ faces were transformed into grotesque masks of agony.

  “No TV? Talk about unfair working conditions.”

  “God’s ways are beyond human understanding.”

  “My little old lady’s is broken, too.”

  “This Community Service is child labor.”

  “We should be getting overtime for having to smell these old folks.”

  “And what about hearing their false teeth clicking?”

  “Get a load of the wrinkles on this one.”

  “I think her subscription to Glamour ran out.”

  “Yeah. About sixty years ago.”

  “Ten Avon ladies with pliers couldn’t stretch that skin smooth again.”

  “And what a pair of knockers.”

  “If you can find ’em.”

  “If mine ever get like that, shoot me.”

  “Gladly.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Let the meeting come to order!” boomed Danielle. “We’re supposed to be talking about Helga, not the living dead around here.” She declined the depopulated box of chocolates held out by Brooke. “Anything to report?”

  “Gavin was definitely coming on to her?” stated Tiffany. “On Thursday? I saw him waiting outside her last class? Crunching approximately twenty breath mints?”

  “Not enough, in his case,” said Danielle.

  “I saw Jonathan hand her two pens and a ruler from his supply locker,” Brooke testified. She polished off the last of the chocolates. “I did not see her pay him a cent.”

  Tiffany, playing violently with a strand of her brown hair, strove to show no reaction to this.

  “I also saw her,” Brooke continued, “riding in Drew’s BMW.”

  Danielle’s mouth dropped. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  Having no boyfriend, Brooke found pleasure in gloating over her attached friends’ troubles. “Sorry,” she chirped. “It was Friday, after school. It looked like they were headed toward the beach.”

  Danielle sat stunned. A silence descended, broken only by Mrs. Witt’s faint breathing.

  “So do we all agree that we need to take action?” proposed Danielle.

  Tiffany nodded.

  “What if the guys are coming on to her instead of the other way around?” asked Brooke.

  “She’s encouraging them!” burst out Danielle. It had always seemed easier, and more satisfying, to discipline a rival female than a straying male Hun. “They’re Huns and they belong to us. If she doesn’t understand that, we have to make her understand.”

  “Has anyone told her the rules?” Brooke asked.

  “I did, on Friday,” snapped Tiffany. “All she said was something about how interesting the customs here were. And that afternoon, she goes driving with Drew.”

  Danielle clenched her teeth. “She’s been warned. Now it’s time to do something. Actions speak louder than words, like they say.”

  “Just ask Charity Chase,” said Brooke.

  “I’m not saying we use nuclear weapons. Just show her we’re serious. Any ideas?”

  A second silence descended. Brooke burped.

  “Break into her gym locker and rub poison oak on her clothes?” offered Tiffany.

  Danielle smiled briefly. “Whoever did it would probably get poison oak, too.”

  The air was heavy with cogitation.

  “Tiffany’s good with cameras,” said Brooke. “She could film her in the showers or something and threaten to show it to all the guys.”

  The words disquieted Tiffany, bringing to mind her recent escapade with the video camera. She’d been lucky to snatch the tape the next morning, and for safety had recorded over it with Billy Graham’s Las Vegas crusade.

  “Good thinking,” mocked Danielle. “We show it to the guys and then the entire male student body goes crazy over her.”

  “I’m just trying to help,” Brooke pouted.

  Tiffany suddenly stood. “You just did.”

  The two others turned to face her. “What have you got?” asked Danielle.

  “An idea that’ll get the job done, I think.” Tiffany smiled mysteriously. “All I’ll need is her photograph.”

  CHAPTER 5

  ………Drew finished the test and glanced discreetly at Helga, one desk away. She was still on the essay, her hand producing her distinctive, filigreed penmanship. He found it, and its maker, bewitching. She flipped her page over and continued writing, leading Drew to wonder whether he’d written enough himself. He was the only Hun male in this honors history class; Hun womanhood was wholly unrepresented. He recalled with a smile the science fair exhibit, devised by some brainy, non-Hun boy, that correlated wealth and blond hair with low I.Q. among the female student body. Though blond, Helga was anything but dumb. Drew identified with her. He too was blond, as well as ridiculously rich, traits beyond his control and which he’d refused to be ruled by.

  Though his parents’ allowance of $200 a week could have bought him the choicest name-brand clothes, he proudly wore the same pair of patched, threadbare jeans every day—a streak that had now reached seven months and which had inspired several bets on campus. This savings he diverted to the Siena Club and other environmental groups that his parents railed against regularly. He was tall and square-jawed, with a quarterback’s build but no interest in the job. He preferred reading Thoreau to football diagrams. Similarly, he’d resisted his parents’ and peers’ nudges down the well-worn path of student council, golf, a career in business, and marriage to a dimwit blonde. He eyed Helga’s fascinating handwriting and sensed a different path before him.

  The bell rang, ending the day’s last class. Drew passed his paper up to the front and hurried to catch Helga. Waiting just outside the door, breath mints clattering around in his mouth like balls on a roulette wheel, Gavin got to her first.

  “Wondered if you might want to watch football practice today. A real slice of America.” He modestly omitted his role as star halfback. “I could give you a ride home after.” He herded the mints into a cheek, then smiled.

  “That’s extremely kind of you,” said Helga. “I’m afraid that today I have too much homework. And, actually, I prefer walking home, in order to get my exercise.”

  Drew caught her words. “I’m walking today, too.” He halted at Helga’s other side. “If you don’t mind company.”

  “Not at all,” she said.

  The racket from Gavin’s breath mints grew faint as he retreated down the hall. Drew grinned. He’d played his cards right. He’d recalled that she’d accepted his ride a few days before with some reluctance. She liked exercise. So did he. A good pair of walking shoes probably impressed her more than a BMW. He’d left his in the garage today, and now firmly made up his mind never to drive it to school again. Purchased out of the mountainous profits from his father’s exporting firm—selling pesticides outlawed in the U.S. to unsuspecting, impoverished countries—the car had filled Drew with guilt. Walking to school through the fresh-minted morning, he’d felt clean, as if bathed in a Norwegian fjord. Now he and Helga were walking together.

  “That’s the Hall of Fame,” said Drew, serving as her self-appointed guide. They stopped before a case filled with photos. “Cliffside High’s most illustrious graduates.”

  She pointed to a bare spot. “Who used to be there?”

  “Franklin Critch. One of Cliffside High’s most illustrious graduates. Until he was prosecuted for larceny, perjury, and mail fraud.”

  They both laughed and stepped outside. “And that?” Helga indicated a large, bronze plaque set into the ground.

  “The student seal,” Drew replied. “Which seniors like us can order freshmen to polish, on their knees.”

  “That sounds rather cruel
.”

  “Exactly. A bizarre encouragement to the strong to find pleasure in dominating the weak.” He noticed how well his words flowed in Helga’s presence, just as they had with Charity.

  “You’re a much more interesting guide than the one I was given my first week.” Helga smiled at him. “Though, according to Tiffany Boyce, I should not associate with you.”

  Drew rolled his eyes in disgust. “The old world’s rigid class system lives.”

  They descended a lengthy flight of steps, Drew’s mind on Charity Chase. She too had complained about the Hun girls. Drew hadn’t taken it too seriously. Her suicide, however, was undeniable, and had tormented him all spring and summer. Only Helga’s appearance had caused his foglike grief to begin to lift. For the first time in months, he could see blue sky and feel the sun. He liked the sensation.

  They crossed the quad among the other students. Tiffany had no trouble spotting them: Drew in his tie-dyed shirt and patched jeans, paperbacks sprouting from both back pockets, and Helga tall and pale, like a candle borne in a procession. She rose from her bench and headed their way, carrying the Pentax camera she’d checked out from the yearbook office. Although her assignment was to capture student life, recording the full panorama of the campus, the photos she took were conceived, composed, and cropped to put only Huns on display. Like the long line of Hun photographers before her, she’d dutifully submit one or two blurry pictures of the Hispanic Student Association’s fall dance, which the Hun editor would squint at and reject.

  Today, however, she was not after Huns. She followed Helga and Drew with her eyes. Then she saw Rhett Jones, realized their paths would cross, suddenly remembered she’d broken up with Jonathan, and went through the detailed checklist described in the last issue of Pulchritude: back straight, shoulders high, stomach in, breasts out, fingers relaxed, never clenched, mouth nonchalant, teeth almost touching, gait confident but not pushy. She’d been having trouble with the finger and gait elements all day. Getting out of bed, she’d felt strangely stiff, the ache in her joints progressing to the point that she’d hobbled around the track in P.E. and had toiled to bend back the pop top on her can of Diet Coke at lunch. The pain increased suddenly now, causing her to slow to a stop and miss intersecting with Rhett.