Out of Order (2 page)

“I have to pee,” I’d announced to the table after Jake had disappeared into the kitchen to get our food. We’d all ordered pancakes with various toppings—assorted fruit for Jessa, just butter for Ricky, blueberry sauce and icing sugar for Kate, and maple syrup for me. I’d been holding my bladder for about an hour and wanted to empty it before the food came.

“Go ahead,” Kate laughed, pointing to the bathroom sign in the corner. “It’s all yours.”

“Come with me?” I asked Ricky, raising my eyebrows at her. Girls always go to the bathroom in groups. It’s an unspoken rule. (One we broke. The beginning of the end.)

“You need help holding your skirt up?” Ricky asked, her cheeks still flushed from dancing. Robert, the sixth contributor to our limo, had danced with her more than he had the rest of us. I remembered how tightly he’d held her to his chest, his parted lips and sparkling white teeth flashing in the spotlights on the dance floor. I had no doubt that they would be getting together after prom. They would make a cute couple, far better than her last disaster of a relationship.

“No,” I sighed, scooting out of the booth by myself. “I’ll be right back.” I scurried to the bathroom, their laughter following me until the big, metal door swung shut. The sounds of them were cut off abruptly, silence filling the small ladies’ bathroom.

I made a makeshift toilet seat cover out of the cheap one-ply toilet paper before I sat down, layering it carefully so that my butt would never touch plastic. I don’t like public bathrooms; I can’t help but imagine a slimy layer of bacteria covering every surface when I have to use one. My skin was crawling, so I went as fast as I could, holding my skirt up awkwardly. My prom dress was cocktail length, thankfully, though it had enough tulle to mosquito-proof an entire African village.

Afterward, I washed my hands quickly but efficiently, a yawn making my jaw crack. I splashed a little water on my face to wake me up—I was the only one of us who had forgone makeup—and then paused to look at myself in the mirror. I looked tired but blissful, happy.

BOOM
!

I jumped in my own skin. Was that a gunshot? My eyes widened, and my hands gripped the sides of the sink in surprise. I watched the color drain out of my face in my reflection as I heard Ricky and Jessa’s terrified screams.

BOOM
!

I took a step back from the sink, feeling my gut twist. My heart was racing. The screaming continued, shrill, scared, desperate. Singular. Jessa.

BOOM
!

I ran to the bathroom door, dropped to my knees, opened it a sliver. My breath fogged up the shiny doorknob as I pressed my face to the wall to look out the crack. I could see the whole diner, could see—

Blood. His face, unmasked but in profile, bare but for the flecks of blood across his cheeks, his lips. The gun in his hand: sawed-off shotgun, long, black, deadly. His baseball cap turned backward, Cincinnati Reds. Pupils dilated, red-nosed and sweating, he was clearly strung out.

Jake’s hands up, his face pale beneath his thick constellation of freckles, dropping to his knees, “Please—”

BOOM
!

I let go of the door and fell back onto my tulle skirt with a
whoosh
.

And then everything was quiet.

I backed against the wall, crab-walking, heart racing, breath coming in fast spurts. I couldn’t hear anything but my own panting, the air cold against my lips as rivulets of water fell down my face, over my lips, down my neck. I was frozen, pressed against the dirty tile wall next to the garbage can underneath the paper towel dispenser.

I heard a distinctive creak and flinched, waiting for the death shot. It didn’t come. The man had gone into the men’s washroom next door.

Bam!
He kicked a stall door in. It slammed against the one next to it. He was checking for witnesses.

I was frozen still, breathing hard. I reached down with shaky hands and pulled off one high heel and then the other, methodical, slow. Standing in stocking feet, I walked to the out-of-order stall on the far end of the row, listening to the madman’s kicks.
Bam
.
Bam
.
Bam
.

I crawled under the door, ignoring the automatic response to be grossed out by the floor, stood, and placed my heels on top of the toilet paper dispenser. The sound of him opening the door covered the soft porcelain-on-porcelain sound of me climbing on top of the broken toilet and sitting on the water tank.

Bang
! He kicked the first stall door in.
Bang
, the second.

I held my breath, my toes curling against the toilet seat—one hand over my mouth, the other against the wall, steadying my awkward position, crouched as I was.

My heart was racing. It was so loud in my ears I was sure he could hear it. I could imagine him saying, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” in a cartoon-villainy voice. I shuddered.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

He kicked out each door, and the whole structure shuddered with each kick. In between, his footsteps were loud and heavy; he was wearing work boots, maybe steel-toed. They kicked in the door of the stall next to mine, and the flimsy divider vibrated so violently that one of my shoes slipped from the toilet paper dispenser and fell—

—into my hand, flung out on reflex. I caught the shoe by the ridiculously high heel, almost falling off the toilet to do so. I took a breath—couldn’t help it—and slammed my eyes shut so hard I could suddenly see a nebula of swirling colors on the inside of my eyelids.

Oh God oh God oh God oh God
, my brain screamed in the utter silence. My lungs burned, my eyes filled with terrified tears, my thighs shuddered from the effort of holding myself absolutely still in such a strange way. My foot was slipping, sweaty against the toilet seat.

I heard his footsteps leaving.
Leaving
. I didn’t breathe until I heard the huge metal door to the bathroom slam shut behind him.

The first real breath I took was a sob—a broken, desperate noise as my stocking foot finally slipped into the toilet, getting soaked. The splash of cold up my calf shocked me into moving, and I tumbled off the toilet and against the locked door, feeling the hot tears finally spill over my cheeks.

I choked on every breath, the panic attack finally taking over. A nightmare seen through the cracked door: Kate’s high-heeled shoe covered in blood; Ricky’s limp arm hanging over the table; Jake’s pale face, his lips forming, “Please,” voice cracking. He didn’t even have a chance to close his eyes before the shooter pulled the trigger.

It played over and over in my head like a surreal nightmare, the worst dream I’d ever had, worse than the nightmares that had come after we’d all watched
The Ring
when we were ten. We weren’t supposed to watch it—Mom had said no—but we’d done it anyway, and we had all been so scared that night. We had made a pile of pillows and blankets in the middle of the living room and slept in a tangle wrapped so tight you almost couldn’t tell whose limbs were whose. I’d woken up with Jessa’s foot on my face the next morning.

Eyes still closed, teeth pressed so hard against each other my jaw ached, I prayed. I prayed that I was about to wake up with Jessa’s foot on my face, with a penis drawn on my forehead in washable marker, with Kate’s face buried in my stomach and Ricky wheezing in my ear.

The minutes ticked by in silence. I finally let go of my high heel, heard it clatter to the floor, too loud. I opened my eyes. This was real.

I cannot describe what I felt when I finally managed to open the locked stall door. His footprints in blood across the bathroom floor, stopping just a few feet from where I had been hiding, holding my breath, terrified. I walked numbly across the bathroom, one foot soaked in toilet water and freezing, leaving my own trail next to his as I reached the door.

I listened first, then pressed it open just a crack. There was no movement. I opened it all the way, stepped out into the diner. There was no sound but a soft
drip, drip, drip
that I didn’t analyze—couldn’t think about it being someone’s lifeblood.

I checked pulses anyway. Not Jake’s. There was next to nothing left of his face and barely enough neck left to press my cold, shaking fingers to, so I didn’t bother.

Jessa’s beautiful white dress turned crimson; no pulse. Ricky’s fingers reaching for Kate, her arm hanging over the table, sprawled awkwardly; no pulse. Kate, I kneeled next to, my fingers slipping through blood, my knees soaked in it; no pulse. Kate’s eyes were open; her mouth was open. I wiped my hand on my dress and then pushed her eyelids down, smudging her perfect makeup.

“Sorry,” I whispered. She’d worked so hard on it, spent an hour giving herself the perfect smokey eye for pictures.

I found Ricky’s purse, open on the floor, and dug out her iPhone. She had two texts from Robert, unread on her lock screen: the first asking if she’d maybe like to go out with him sometime, the second one, “I guess you’re already in bed, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

I swallowed back bile as I dialed 9-1-1.

“I
HAVE
to
pee
,” Ricky whined, dramatically crossing her legs and bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“So pee,” Jessa said, a laugh at the edge of her voice.

“But you’re all
in here
,” Ricky said, still whiny, still annoying.

I rolled my eyes. “If we can change in the same room as each other, we can pee in the same room as each other.” I blew on my nails, trying to set the wet polish. “Just pee, for God’s sake.”

“Fine.” Ricky hiked up her skirt carefully and wiggled about, trying to get her panties down without flashing us. She finally plopped down on the toilet with a sigh, her knees pressed tight together.

Kate had finally moved on from eye shadow to mascara, pressing her face close to the mirror for the best view. I was debating adding a third coat of purple to my nails to get the color deeper to match my dress. Jessa was texting Brandon.

“I can’t pee,” Ricky declared after a solid minute. Jessa looked up from her phone, a smirk already twisting her lips up.

“Why not?” she asked innocently, trying to school her features. (It didn’t work in the slightest.)

“You can hear me,” Ricky mumbled. Her cheeks were splotchy and red from embarrassment. She always blushed so easily.

“Bladder shy?” I asked, deciding to forgo the third coat of purple and instead go straight to the clear topcoat to set it properly.

“Shut
up
!”

We laughed.

“Just
go
already,” Jessa huffed after a while, doing up the straps on her heels. “The limo will be here any minute.”

“Come on, let’s just go so she can… go,” I said, grabbing my own shoes—ridiculously high and borrowed from Kate’s monstrous collection.

“Yeah, yeah, hold on.” Kate gave herself one last look in the mirror, blew a kiss to her reflection and then spun on her heel (a great feat in the shoes she’d finally decided on; they were nearly seven inches tall), strutting out of the bathroom like the tile was a runway.

Jessa and I followed her, pulling the door closed behind us. The instant the door was closed we could hear the distinct sound of Ricky emptying her bladder.

“Wow,” Kate said, looking vaguely impressed. “She
really
had to pee.”

We waited downstairs for Ricky to finish, practicing walking in our shoes. Kate fluffed her curls a little more, showing off the blonde perfection. It didn’t matter that she was going to prom as a single, because she was going to be getting asked to dance all night, looking like that. Wearing a pale pink dress covered in rhinestones, she looked like a Disney princess.

“Everything come out okay, Erica?” Jessa asked, sounding bored, when Ricky clomped her way out of the bathroom. She looked adorable in her little red number, her hair pinned up expertly by Kate earlier.

Ricky flushed red. “Perfect,” she said.

Jessa laughed. Her laugh is majestic. We call her the unicorn of our group. She’s maniacal and ruthless, but also so sweet, and her voice is like magic. She looked disconcertingly beautiful in her white dress, with her dark hair loose about her shoulders in soft waves and her skin, the deep, natural amber that every tanning soccer mom aspires to, practically glowing under the white chiffon.

If I were Brandon, I’d have fallen in love with her sweet virginal perfection too. (She and Brandon had decided to wait. Or, well, Jessa had decided for them.) The delicate cross around her neck, a present from her grandmother at her spectacular quinceñera, glittered in the light of the limo’s headlights when it pulled up. We all cheered, stuffed our cell phones into our clutches or purses, and then took off down the driveway.

“Pictures, pictures!” Kate’s mom yelled, following us outside waving a slim, pink digital camera. She took a few of us in front of the garden and the limo and then gave the camera to Kate for the night. “I want pictures of
everything
.”

“Yeah, yeah, you already said that,” Kate groaned. “Can we go now? We have to pick up the boys.”

“Go! Have fun! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

We ran off as fast as we could in our rather impractical shoes. “So basically we can do anything we want,” Kate said under her breath. “There’s nothing that woman wouldn’t do.” She smiled at the limo driver as he opened the door for her. Holding the skirt of her dress up, she climbed into the back seat and scooted across to the far side.

“Ooh,” Ricky said, clambering in after her. “I smell a good story.”

Jessa and I followed them in. The limo wasn’t as big on the inside as I’d thought it would be, but there was enough room for the four of us plus the two boys we were on our way to pick up.

Kate hemmed and hawed, finally deciding on a juicy story to share. “Remember that guy who bought my mom the vintage Cadillac?”