The Prom Queen (12 page)

“Y
uck! What's
that?”
I asked.

I was staring into a steamtable container of baked muck. I could make out yellow kernels of corn, old spaghetti, mashed potatoes that had gotten stiff, greasy hamburger meat, pale green peas, and a little of every other awful meal the school had served us during the week.

“It's shepherd's pie,” Mrs. Liston, the cafeteria worker, told me with a blank face.

“Looks more like something the shepherd stepped in,” cracked a familiar male voice in my ear.

It was Lucas.

I pushed my tray along without answering. I wasn't really hungry, at least not for shepherd's pie.

Lucas hurried to catch up. Steam rose from the
large glob of shepherd's pie on his plate. “Go on,” he said, “take a taste.”

“Lucas, for the last time. Bug off.”

“Or else?” he said with that little smirk of his.

“Or else you'll end up looking like shepherd's pie,” I said. There, I thought. My insults are getting better.

I paid for my container of yogurt and salad and headed for an empty table. Elana waved to me. She was sitting with Dawn. I nodded back but kept going. I didn't feel like sitting with them right then.

The prom was only eight days away, and there we'd be, the three remaining prom queen candidates, all sitting in a row at the table like ducks in a shooting gallery. Just waiting for some maniac out there to take a shot.

I found a seat across from some nerdy-looking freshman. He looked stunned when I sat down.

“Anyone sitting here?” I asked.

He was unable to answer.

“T.G.I.F., right?” I said, digging into my salad.

“Yeah!” he said.

He glanced down the long table. There were a bunch of seniors staring our way. When I looked back at my lunch date, he was puffing out his chest and smiling proudly. I winked at him.

For ten straight minutes he slurped on an empty carton of chocolate milk and told me how much he hated gym. “I'd like to kill that gym teacher,” he confided in me.

I sighed. Even the freshmen were killers.

“Thanks for avoiding us,” a voice said as I was finishing the last of my yogurt. I looked up. It was Elana, her face drawn, tight, and tense. I guess she was feeling the same pressure I was.

I stood up and said goodbye to the kid across from me.

“Yeah, see ya tomorrow,” he said. I had made a friend for life.

Elana wasn't smiling. “Can we talk?” was all she said.

We had about twenty minutes left in lunch period. We decided to take a walk.

Outside, it was a pretty spring day. Thanks to all the rain, everything was lush and green. There were birds chirping, insects buzzing. You could feel everything beginning to come to life.

We headed for Shadyside Park, behind the school. Neither of us said much of anything.

We sat on a recently painted park bench.

“You ready for the assembly today?” I asked, trying to get things rolling.

“To tell you the truth,” Elana said, “I've had so much on my mind, I haven't really thought about it. It's like I don't even care about it anymore.”

I nodded and waited for her to go on.

Finally Elana said, “I just feel so terrible,” and then she fell silent again.

I looked at Elana. She was wearing a long blue-and-white sweater over blue leggings and a gold band necklace that I was sure was real. She had her hair tied in a cute little ponytail with a white
scrungie. On her cheeks I could detect just a trace of apricot blush.

She may have been feeling terrible, but she wasn't feeling so bad that she had stopped paying attention to how she looked.

Such cruel thoughts.

I scolded myself for being so harsh. Elana did look glum. “I just feel so guilty,” she said, sighing.

“Why?”

Elana stared at me as if she didn't believe that I didn't know. “For going out with Gideon,” she said. “For breaking him and Rachel up.”

I avoided her eyes. I happened to think that it
was
really awful of her, but I didn't want to say so now.

“It wasn't my idea, you know?” she told me. “Gideon kept after me and after me. Said he really liked me and that he and Rachel were just meant to be friends. . . .”

She stared at me again. Obviously she wanted me to say it was all right. I tried but I couldn't force the words out.

“I never got to apologize to her before she died,” she continued. “I—I just feel so bad about it. I think about it all the time.”

Her eyes were getting moist. I had never seen Elana cry before. I suddenly felt sorry for her. I put my arm around her shoulder. “Hey,” I said, “what happened to Rachel was not your fault. Stop thinking that way, Elana. We've got enough to feel bad about without blaming ourselves.”

Elana gave me a grateful smile and swiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “Thanks,” she whispered.

“By the way . . . has Gideon ever said anything to you about the prom queen contest?” I asked her.

She looked surprised. “No. Maybe. Why?”

“I was just curious. His family is about as poor as Rachel's, you know.”

“So?”

I was trying to decide whether it was worth scaring her with my crazy suspicions.

“I'm glad we decided to go ahead with it,” Elana said.

Mr. Sewall had called us in that morning—me, Elana, and Dawn—to see if we felt up to continuing the contest. Dawn had said that Simone and Rachel wouldn't have wanted us to quit, and Elana and I had both agreed.

“You have a dress yet?” Elana asked me, her eyes on a large robin, pulling a worm from the ground.

“No.”

“Last night my parents told me I have to be home by eleven after the prom.”

“Eleven?”

“I know.” She shook her head. “Some prom.”

“It's not turning out the way we thought,” I agreed.

“Tracy Simon dropped out of the Halsey Manor decorating committee because she was scared to go out to the Fear Street woods.”

“I don't blame her,” I said. “I'm not looking forward to it myself.”

Elana stared at her hands. “Do you agree with Dawn?” she asked quietly.

“About what?”

“That someone's trying to kill all the prom queens?”

I bit my lip nervously. “I don't know. Maybe.”

Elana's face went blank. When she was scared, she just shut down. She smiled abruptly—a big forced smile—and stretched. “You know who I'm going with? Bruce Chadwin.”

I knew she was desperately trying to change the subject. And she was succeeding. I gaped at her. “Bruce? Did he ask you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Dawn will kill you.” I blushed. “I mean, she'll be mad.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “I always seem to be getting some girl angry at me. But what could I do? He asked me—not her. And it's not like she doesn't have a big choice of dates. And speaking of dates . . .”

“Kevin's father still won't let him come,” I said. “I'll probably wind up going with my cousin Seth—the one from Waynesbridge. He said he'd do me a favor and take me. Is that the worst? But that's not my biggest problem. I'm really worried about my speech this afternoon. Do you think you could help me? I'm completely terrified of public speaking.”

It's true, I am. In fact, I once read about a survey that showed that public speaking frightens some people more than death. I wouldn't go that far. But I do get really nervous.

I worried about it all afternoon. But the speeches went fine. We each got huge rounds of applause, and when Elana finished talking about why we had decided to go on, the three of us all got a standing ovation.

I drove home right after school. I had an early dinner with my folks and Aunt Rena. Then I headed back to school for play rehearsal. I wanted to get there early. Every time I tried to lower the flats for the captain's mansion, the back wall would stick about halfway down.

With only a week to go, Robbie was beginning to lose his sense of humor. I didn't need him screaming at me right then, so I wanted to get the problem solved before he showed up.

When I arrived there were only a few cars in the parking lot. The school hallways were empty, quiet. Whenever I passed an open locker, I banged it shut. I felt like making a lot of noise.

I breathed deeply. I knew that old school smell so well—a combination of floor wax, sweat, peanut butter, and sour milk. How could anything bad happen here?

Then I turned the corner and nearly bumped into Mr. Santucci, who was mopping the floor.

“Trying to scare me again, eh?” he said. He didn't smile when he said it.

The auditorium was nearly pitch-dark. Who had pulled the heavy curtains shut to darken all the windows? It must have been Santucci.

I made my way up the center aisle. It was the same trip I had made early that afternoon, to give my speech. But then the room had been packed, bright, and noisy.

Now I got an eerie feeling. And suddenly I felt as if I wasn't alone.

I walked up the steps to the stage. The act curtain was closed, so I felt my way along it into the wings. I walked slowly. There was plenty to trip on in the wings—ropes, props, lights.

That would be just my luck. A crazed murderer is stalking me. But I manage to avoid him. Then I trip and break my neck all by myself.

I found the master light board, felt the large wooden handles. I pulled down the first one and heard the huge bank of lights come on with a loud hum.

I pulled down all the handles, one by one.

I knew the lights were bathing the stage in warm color.

Then I turned around.

And started to scream.

S
till screaming at the top of my lungs, I rushed onto the stage. I couldn't stop. My cries echoed off the walls of the vast auditorium.

As I approached center stage, the hideous scene became all too clear. Elana lay facedown in the middle of the stage, her left arm bent beneath her in a way an arm does not bend. The fingers of her right hand were stretched wide, as if she'd been clawing at the stage. Dark red blood had splattered several feet across the stage floor.

I kept screaming. Finally the auditorium doors burst open and Mr. Santucci charged in, still carrying his mop.

“Get an ambulance!” I screamed at him.

He stared up at me, confused. I charged to the edge of the stage.

“Get an ambulance—now!”

He dropped the mop, turned, and ran.

I was still onstage, huddled near Elana's lifeless body, when the emergency medical workers finally arrived a few minutes later. Two police officers bounded into the auditorium behind them.

I watched them all race toward me up the center aisle. I could hear their walkie-talkies crackling. By then I knew there was no reason for them to rush.

“Oh, no,” said a woman in a white medical suit, the first to reach me.

“What happened?” barked a tall, red-haired cop as he came up the stairs.

Two paramedics gingerly turned Elana right side up.

I nearly fainted.

Her face was smashed and bloody. It looked like her face in my nightmare.

The first medic felt for a pulse in Elana's neck. Then he made eye contact with the rest of us. His face was pale. He shook his head sadly.

“Looks like she fell,” one of the police officers said, staring up into the flyspace. She looked down at me. I recognized her. It was Officer Barnett. “Were you here? Did you see what happened?” she asked me.

“No.”

The red-haired cop pointed up to the catwalk. “She could have fallen off that.”

Officer Barnett leaned down and put a hand on
my shoulder. “Any idea why she would have been up there?”

I raised my eyes. “There's a little prop room up there,” I told her. “I'm up there sometimes. She could have been—she could have been looking for me.”

Officer Barnett started climbing up to the prop room to take a look around. I stayed down below and answered more questions from the policeman.

They were loading Elana's body onto a stretcher. I didn't know why they were taking her to the hospital. But I guessed they did that even if you were dead.

“She didn't fall,” I told the cop quietly. “That much I know for sure.”

“What makes you say that?”

I had no proof, I realized. It seemed so obvious to me, though. “I just know it,” I said stupidly.

And that was when I saw it. It was clutched in Elana's hand. The hand that had looked as if it were clawing the floor.

Her hand was clutching a small swatch of maroon satin.

• • •

“And you say she seemed nervous?” Officer Jackson asked.

“Yeah. But why wouldn't she be?” I said. “I'm nervous. Dawn's nervous. We're all scared out of our minds.”

My dad's arm tightened around my shoulder. He
was sitting on one side of me on our white corduroy sofa. Dawn was on the other. Officer Jackson and Officer Barnett were sitting across from us. Officer Barnett was taking notes.