Imagining elsewhere, p.26
Imagining Elsewhere, page 26
There were other girls in the bathroom when they entered, but with one look at Candi’s glower, they collected their makeup bags and scampered out.
“It’s hilarious that you think you’re in a position to make demands, Astrid. You’re getting way too big for your britches,” Candi said, looking at herself in the mirror. She ran a finger across her smooth forehead. “I know you’ve been talking behind my back, lying to me, scheming. Trying to steal people from the town.”
“What?”
“I heard it from literally three different people.” Candi fluttered her eyelashes to suggest annoyance. “It’s impossible to keep a secret from me.” Although Astrid felt like a balloon that had been ill-tied, inexorably deflating, she grasped the stone more tightly. It was working, she told herself. For now. It was giving her strength. She just had to see the plan through. “It’s obviously not gonna work,” Candi said. “Cause nobody’s gonna leave without their kids. And all the kids—at least the ones that matter—are here tonight,” she said, ominously.
“Candi, please listen to me,” Astrid began.
“Don’t ‘Candi, please’-me,” Candi snapped. She was angry now, no longer playful. “You’ve been nothing but trouble since you got here. It’s time you were brought to heel.”
“I can’t believe you,” Astrid cried. “I’m giving you a chance. I’m offering you the possibility of a real life. Don’t you want to know what it’s like to actually have a friend?”
Candi looked startled and then laughed, a shrill, angry sound. “What are you talking about? I have a million friends.”
“I’m talking about someone who’s not your friend because they’re afraid of you. Someone who likes you for who you are.”
“Vince likes me for who I am.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Astrid said, unable to resist loading her words with snark. “I bet he especially liked you when you slashed his face. Or when you killed his dad.”
“What?” Candi hissed, astounded. “How dare you.”
“Everyone is afraid of you, Candi,” Astrid said, no longer sarcastic, but vehement. “You’ll never know if they’re your friends because they like you or because you scare them or control them or they want something from you. You will never know if you are actually loveable.”
For a moment, Candi was speechless. Astrid felt as though she had smacked her own funny bone; there was a vibration in the room, and a tangy, almost-audible atmosphere of pain.
“I am loveable,” Candi said flatly.
“You might be,” Astrid said, more gently. “And I think you might be smart, too, if you ever studied. I think you have a potential to be a lot of things—but you’ll never know, you’ll never really know, Candi, unless you try. You have to stop what you’re doing. You have to let people . . . go.”
Candi widened her eyes. “Let them go?” she asked, mock-incredulous. “They would never survive out there. I take care of them. They need me.”
At that moment, Chrissy burst into the bathroom. “They’re about to announce the king and queen,” Chrissy panted. “Don’t you guys want to get out there?”
Candi swayed a little bit and then snapped back into place, standing up straight and looking Astrid in the eye. “No one’s leaving,” she said to Astrid. “Don’t you get it, Astrid? Elsewhere is a state of mind.” Candi tossed her head, but her hair was stiff with product and instead of bouncing, it moved in one crunchy mass across her shoulder. She swept up her dress and, in the swish and crunch of satin and taffeta, stalked from the room.
Chrissy came closer. She touched Astrid’s arm. “You have to get out of here,” she said to Astrid, her bug-eyes bugging. “She has a plan,” Chrissy said. “She’s going to make everyone stay here. And she’s going to have them . . .”
“What?”
“Kill you.”
1 Old-fashioned (like, early-twentieth-century old-fashioned) term for fancy clothes.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Astrid’s head was spinning as she followed Chrissy out of the bathroom. She was grateful for the blue dark of the cafeteria, for the papier-mâché boulder that she hid behind. She surveyed the room and was relieved to see Cecile standing at her station, in a darkened corner by the D.J. booth.
She was less relieved when Jason sidled up to her, smirking. He was carrying a large cardboard box. “Heard you were organizing an after-party,” he sneered. “Did my invite get lost in the mail?”
Astrid tried to remain impassive. “You’d be welcome to join us,” she whispered back. “Even though you are a jerk.”
“Nah,” Jason said. “I don’t think anyone’s gonna actually be going anywhere.” He jiggled the box and there was the soft sound of something—rocks, perhaps—tumbling around inside.
Alarms going off in her head, Astrid couldn’t stop herself from asking. “What are you talking about?”
Before Jason could reply, Mayor Clifton, standing beside the ladder, tapped the microphone from the stage at the front of the room. A big, red smile was plastered across her face.
“Hey everybody!” she shouted. “It’s time to announce the homecoming court!”
“Let’s rock and roll!” Jason said brightly as he walked away from her and Astrid shivered, remembering that she had issued the same imperative earlier in the evening. Astrid watched him for a minute; he took something out of the box and handed it to hang-dog Agnes. Was it a rock? He handed something similar to the boy Astrid thought of as Ichabod Crane, and then one to Principal Barton, who nodded cheerfully to thank him.
She was distracted by Mayor Clifton calling out the first few names of those elected to the homecoming court—all obvious choices like Chrissy and Lori and a guy named Keith. Astrid was a little surprised she wasn’t called up, but she figured that maybe Candi had had her name removed.
“And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for! King and Queen!”
A roar went up. The guys pumped fists in the air; the girls’ excitement neared hysteria. Astrid clapped too, finding herself in the same position that she often occupied in Elsewhere, wondering how everybody else managed to muster such enthusiasm when really they were all drowning in dread and doom. She cast a look around and found Marcel where she had left her, standing with Milo. She nodded at her friend, who nodded back.
Mayor Clifton waved the envelope with the results in the air, all the while babbling on about school spirit and kindness to others. God, Astrid wondered, is this what adulthood held? Endless speeches at “important” events? Kill me now, she thought and then immediately took it back.
Astrid watched as Candi glanced around and spotted her. Candi moved gracefully across the room to stand at Astrid’s side.
Mayor Clifton opened the envelope and called Vince up on stage.
Candi smiled placidly. She turned to Astrid. “This is gonna be so bitchin’,” she said.
Vince seemed surprised and he tentatively mounted the stage, smiling nervously as Mayor Clifton put a plastic crown on his head. He cast a wary glance at the bucket above him.
Mayor Clifton opened the second envelope and, in the half-second flicker of her smile, Astrid saw hatred, iron-will, evil. “Astrid! Astrid Friedman-Smith! You’re the Homecoming Queen!”
No one moved. Astrid turned her head slowly. Candi didn’t flinch, but gazed with fake bemusement at the stage.
Astrid’s stomach plummeted.
“Come on up here, baby!” Mayor Clifton called. “Come and get your crown.”
“What a surprise!” Candi crooned. “Go up on the stage,” she instructed and Astrid, who had dropped the rock so that it fell to the bottom of her bag, recognized the sensation of surrendering to Candi and allowed herself to be drawn toward the stage, one foot in front of the other, the crowd around her parting. She made her way up the steps to the dais to join the others. Chrissy, for once in her life, wasn’t smirking.
Someone began to clap and then others did too, although with great reserve.
Vince caught Astrid’s eye as she approached and he shot his own gaze to the back of the room, wordlessly begging her to see what he saw. When Astrid turned, she noticed Jason, who had abandoned his cardboard box, standing beside the Sheriff Toomey, guarding the main doors to the cafeteria. Principal Barton stood at the side entrance.
As she watched, she saw Will, the guy who she’d briefly met in the cafeteria, trying to leave, but being turned back by Jason. No one in or out, it would seem. Jason pressed what appeared to be a stone into Will’s hands.
Candi had moved closer and now stood right at their feet, in front of the stage. Vince was shaking his head and beseeching, “no.” Astrid noticed Vince was clutching something in his right hand. It was, Astrid realized, another rock.
Mayor Clifton approached and jammed the crown onto Astrid’s head.
“We all get what’s coming to us,” she whispered into Astrid’s ear, before taking a step back, as though to admire Astrid’s beauty.
The crowd began jeering. They hadn’t been sure, at first, what was happening, but now they understood. Astrid was a traitor and would be punished. They saw the ladder. And even if they hadn’t seen Carrie, they knew that some humiliation must await.
And there was more. As though a great pressure had descended on her chest, Astrid realized the purpose of the rocks. This was an old-fashioned stoning, like something out of “The Lottery.” She was almost wryly appreciative that Candi had stayed so on-message.
Astrid looked out at the angry, ugly faces hurling insults at her and ready to hurl rocks. The lodestone wouldn’t protect her from that. She saw Jason, waiting at the doors, casually throwing his stone in the air and catching it like a baseball, so pleased to be performing a service for Candi. She saw the girl from gym class who’d once shoved Marcel out of the way: She had a brick. She saw Ichabod Crane helicoptering his arms, apparently limbering up. She saw the faces of the people who had hurled food at her on her first day at school, in this very room, who had pushed her and spit at her. These jerks, these sycophants, these losers, they were all armed against her. Astrid understood, acutely, the rage that Carrie must have felt before she set her school on fire, before she murdered all of her classmates.
Astrid understood it and she thought, for a moment, that she should have just left them to their own miserable devices. And if she managed to get away, she still could. She and Cecile and their mother. If she could get herself off the stage and out the door, past the cop and Jason, that would be that, and Elsewhere would go on as they’d been, subject to the whims of a seventeen-year-old psychopath.
But then she also saw Marcel’s face. And Milo’s. And she knew she wasn’t going to just abandon them.
“Get under the bucket you two,” Candi instructed. “Astrid, put your arms around Vince.”
Astrid obeyed. Vince smelled good, like fresh laundry and cologne, and she could feel his muscles tensed under his tuxedo jacket.
“Sorry,” he said, under his breath.
“It’s okay,” Astrid assured him. She moved slowly, surreptitiously, moving her hand into her pocketbook and taking out a small pouch, which she slid into Vince’s hand. “Take this,” Astrid whispered. “Be ready. They go in your ears.” Then, she nodded at her sister, who had talked her way into the DJ booth and had hidden there until just this moment.
That nod also signaled to Marcel that it was time to flip over one of the hollow boulders, underneath which was concealed not only a speaker, but a laundry basket full of ear plugs. Milo—who was supposed to help hand out the ear plugs but who saw a more pressing concern—moved toward the doors. And Cecile, from the DJ booth, flipped switches so that the music resumed: Guns n’ Roses’s “Welcome to the Jungle” blaring from the speakers, much louder than was normal or appropriate, because several boulders concealed the amps that Tom had lent them, five extra-large professional speakers, so that the music was so loud that people had to put their hands to their ears.1 Astrid released Vince, reached into her bag, and took out the brand-new Walkman that Tom had given her. She put on the headphones and then put her pink-and-white cheer headband over the headphones to hold them in place no matter what. She pressed play and the music of the Violent Femmes streamed directly into her ears.
Candi was talking. Candi was screaming. But Astrid couldn’t hear what she was saying.
Astrid grabbed the microphone at the front of the stage. “Everyone, go! It’s now! Now is the time. Get your families and go! Go! Go! Go!” Unable to hear her own voice, she only knew she was screaming because her voice strained, because it made her head hurt and her eyes water. “GO! GO! GO!” she screamed again, before pulling the cord loose from the bottom of the mic and hurling it as far away as she could.
Everyone seemed frozen and simply stared at Astrid. But then, some started to move. Milo was grappling with the sheriff, and though Jason was still blocking the doors, grabbing at those who were trying to leave, Astrid could see that Jason and the sheriff would be overwhelmed: the floor vibrated with the percussion of dropped rocks, the bass from the speakers, and the clunking of high heels as the whole room seemed to move together toward the exit.
The sound of a gun being fired pierced through the headphones, echoing off the walls of the gym. The room was still again as all eyes turned to the sheriff, who held his pistol in the air. And then Astrid watched as Gina extended one long arm and, like an all-star pitcher, hurled a fist-sized rock at the sheriff. It caught him in the shoulder and he turned and pointed the gun at her, but too late; others retrieved rocks from the floor and pelted the sheriff.
Astrid didn’t see what happened next because Candi, furious, her pink cheeks the color of her ridiculous dress, mounted the stage. Astrid stepped back, but Mayor Clifton grabbed her around the shoulders. Flailing and running out of options, Astrid noticed the rope dangling in front of her. Astrid reached forward and yanked it, upsetting the bucket of blood.
There was a moment when Astrid, eyes wide and astonished, felt the impulse to warn her erstwhile friend, but it was too late—the blood cascaded down in a curtain, covering Candi, her big blonde hair and her enormous pink dress, and, in a perfect fluke that Astrid did not, could not have planned, the bucket itself fell onto Candi’s head.
Candi staggered and, before she could remove the bucket, Vince pinned her arms in place.
Mayor Clifton was still grabbing at Astrid, trying to wrench off her headphones. They wrestled, Astrid elbowing the mayor in the ribs and trying to wriggle free when, suddenly, she was released. She turned to see her sister, holding a brick, standing over the unconscious mayor.
Astrid smiled at her sister and reached again into her pocketbook. This time, Astrid withdrew an industrial-sized roll of duct tape. She pulled off a long strip and nodded at Cecile who removed the bucket from Candi’s head.
Candi’s face was red with blood and rage. She began immediately to scream instructions, but Astrid was quick with the tape.
After they got the tape on her mouth, Cecile held Candi’s legs as Astrid and Vince did up her wrists. Like a feral cat, Candi bucked and fought, squirmed and twisted, but to no avail.
With Candi secure, Astrid took off her headphones. Someone had cut the music.
It was only then that she realized the cafeteria was far from empty. Though it had been Marcel and Milo’s jobs to get everyone out, to tell them to go home, collect their families and flee town, most people had stayed and, almost in silence, had watched the fighting on the stage. And they now gazed at her, eyes wide and expectant.
“What’s going on?” Astrid asked her sister. “Why don’t they run? What’s everyone waiting for?”
1 The plan to hide the speakers and use them to drown out Candi’s voice was so secret that only Astrid, Marcel, and Cecile knew about it. I wanted to tell you about it, dear reader, but I wasn’t completely sure you could be trusted.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Astrid watched as Chrissy, who must have descended the stage at some point, climbed back up the stairs, holding the microphone that Astrid had tossed into the crowd. She plugged it in and, after a moment of squealing feedback, brought it to her lips.
In her high-pitched and yet somehow affectless voice, Chrissy calmly intoned, “We all owe Astrid a big thanks for what she’s done tonight. But if you’re like me, you won’t ever be free as long as she—” Chrissy pointed at Candi, “is still alive.”
Candi’s eyebrows shot up and she tried to charge toward Chrissy, kicking at her, but to no avail. With Vince again restraining her, she reminded Astrid of the delusional Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.1 Chrissy took a step back, but was otherwise unfazed. She turned to Astrid and though she continued to speak into the mic, addressed only her.
“I think we’d all like to stay here, in our homes. Or not—maybe some people would leave. But if Candi is gone, there’s nothing to stop us from choosing to do either.” A few people shouted out their approval. “It’s not enough to tie her up, Astrid. We have to . . .”
A voice called out from the crowd: “Finish the job!”
Astrid shook her head, no. She hadn’t truly anticipated this turn of events. “No,” she said. “I can’t . . .”
“She was going to have us kill you, Astrid,” Chrissy said, rolling her ridiculous eyes. She held out the mic. “Give the order.”
Astrid looked at her sister and then at Vince and Candi. Candi was straining, clearly trying to free her arms, trying to move her mouth under the tape. Her eyes were wide and, Astrid thought, scared.
Astrid looked back to the crowd. People were picking up the rocks they’d dropped, ready to go ahead with a stoning after all.
“Astrid,” Cecile said, grabbing her arm. “Let’s just go.”
Astrid shook Cecile off and snatched the mic from Chrissy’s outstretched hand. “Stop it!” she yelled at the crowd. “Stop it right now! Put the stones down and go home and get your families and get out of here. Leave here. This place has been poisoned. This is our chance to leave. Get your families and—”
