Resurrection Dreams (2 page)

He stepped behind Vicki’s chair and put his hands on her shoulders. “You are too a knockout,” he said.

“Right. Sure.”

Mom nodded in agreement. “You shouldn’t belittle yourself, honey. You’re a very attractive young woman—and very bright. Your father and I are both very proud of you. There’s no reason in the world why you should ever feel the least bit jealous or envious of someone like Darlene.”

“I don’t envy her, that’s for sure.”

“Good,” Mom said. She didn’t get it.

Dad did. He kissed the top of Vicki’s head, muttered, “Beast,” and left.

The rest of breakfast tasted just fine.

Getting things off your chest, she thought, must improve the appetite.

“Alice is here,” Mom called a few moments after Vicki heard the doorbell.

“I’ll be out in a minute.” She finished tying her white Nikes, bounced up from the bed, and slung her book bag onto her back as she hurried from her room.

It was good to see Ace. It was always good to see her, but especially this morning.

“I know,” Ace was saying to Mom. “It’s a terrible tragedy.” She nodded a greeting to Vicki. Her face looked solemn. “It’s especially terrible for her loved ones.”

“Awful,” Mom said. Though she was Vicki’s size and Vicki hardly considered herself a shrimp, she seemed small and fragile beside Ace.

Nearly everyone did.

Alice “Ace” Mason was the tallest girl in the senior class, but plenty of boys had more height than she did—and most of them seemed smaller in her presence.

Imposing, Vicki thought. That’s what she is.

And, at the moment, posing.

She turned sorrowful eyes to Vicki and said, “I suppose we’d better get going. Have a nice day, Mrs. Chandler.”

Vicki gave her mother a quick kiss on the cheek, then followed Ace outside. They reached the sidewalk. They were halfway down the block when Ace looked at Vicki with bright mischievous eyes.

“Where’s your black threads, Vicks?” she asked in her usual brash voice.

“Where’re yours?”

She snorted. “Black panties, hon.” She took a long stride and swung her rump in Vicki’s direction.

She wore white shorts that hugged her buttocks. A dark triangle and narrow waistband showed through the material.

“They really are black.”

“You can see them?” She twisted around and looked for herself. “Well, shitski.”

“Sexy, too.”

“Ordered them special. Want me to get you some?”

“Right. What happens when Mom does the wash?”

“We’ll get her some, too. Drive your dad crazy with lust.”

“Please.”

“We order now, you’ll get them in time for the dance.”

“Thanks anyway.”

“Give Henry a treat.”

“As close as Henry’ll get to my underpants, I could be wearing polka-dot boxer shorts.”

“Poor guy. I can see he’ll be having a memorable night.”

“How was your weekend?” Vicki asked, hoping to get away from the subject of Henry.

“Caught some rays. Aunt Lucy was her usual kick in the head. Wish I’d been here, though. Missed out on all the excitement. Your mom says you blew your chance to see Darlene get planted.”

“Couldn’t go. No black panties.”

“We’ll fix that. How about she was giving him head when they wiped out?”

“You’re kidding. Where’d you hear that?”

“Thought it was common knowledge.”

“Nobody told me.”

Ace halted on the deserted sidewalk, looked all around as if to make sure nobody was within earshot, then bowed her head toward Vicki. “Did you hear she was butt-naked?”

“Yeah. Cynthia called me Saturday morning. She overheard her mother on the phone with Thelma Clemens. She said Steve got burned to a crisp and Darlene got thrown through the windshield—and how she was naked and how her head got…cut off.”

“That’s all?” Ace asked.

From the gleeful look in her eyes, Vicki knew a major detail was missing from Cynthia’s verson. “What?” she asked.

“Well, I talked to Roger last night and his brother’s best pals with Joey Milbourne. Joey’s supposed to be the guy that found her head. It was way on the other side of the bridge under some bushes? Well, he’s the biggest jerk-off ever to wear a badge, next to Pollock, and maybe he just made this up so he’d have a good story to tell, but he told Roger’s brother that when he found Darlene’s head…” Ace stopped talking and looked around again.

“Come on.”

“You sure you haven’t heard this?”

“Quit goofing around and tell me.”

“She had Steve’s dick in her mouth.”

“What?”

Ace bared her teeth and chomped them together.

“Holy shit,” Vicki muttered.

“When she bit it, she really bit it.”

Vicki cracked up and shoved Ace away from her.

“What a way to go!” Ace blurted through her own laughter.

“Makes me hurt,” Vicki gasped.

“You ain’t even got one.”

“Well, if I did…”

“He came and went.”

“Ace, Ace!” She wiped her eyes. “Stop it!”

“At least Darlene got a last meal.”

“Knockwurst!” Vicki squealed. “Hold the sauerkraut!”

“More of a hot dog from what I heard. More of a cocktail weenie.”

“Oh, God. Stop it, Ace.”

“Me?”

Later, Vicki felt miserable with guilt. It was bad enough to feel no particular sorrow about the demise of her classmates. It seemed unforgivably gross to have joked and laughed hysterically about it.

During fourth period study hall, she passed a note to Ace. The note said, “He went to St. Peter without his.”

Ace read it and snorted.

Mr. Silverstein, who had been busy grading papers, jerked his head up. “Miss Mason, would you like to share with the rest of us?”

“Nah, I don’t think so.”

“Is that a note I see clutched in your hand?”

“Nothing in my hand,” Ace told him. “See?” She blatantly stuffed the note into her mouth, and held up both hands as she began to chew.

The performance drew applause from about half the kids in the room. Mr. Silverstein shook his head. He frowned at Ace as if debating whether to pursue the matter, apparently decided not to risk it, offered a lame, “Well, let’s all try to keep it down; this is a study hall, not a sideshow,” and went back to grading papers.

Ace removed the sodden ball of paper from her mouth. She tossed it at Melvin Dobbs, who was sitting in the next row over, two desks up. It stuck to the back of his neck. Vicki tried to hold back her laugh. The air blew out her nose.

Normally, she felt a certain amount of sympathy for Melvin. He was a weird kid, odd enough to make himself the target of choice for everyone in the mood to cause trouble. Vicki wished Ace had thrown the spitball at someone else, but she couldn’t help laughing.

Melvin flinched when the wet glob struck his neck. He sat up straight, picked it off his skin, then carefully plucked the wad open and studied it.

Oh great, Vicki thought.

Melvin turned around. He stared at Ace with his bulgy, half-shut eyes. Then he balled up the paper. He sniffed it, licked his thick lips, and stuffed the paper into his mouth. He chewed it slowly, smiling a bit and rolling his eyes as if really savoring the taste. Finally, he swallowed.

Vicki managed not to gag.

When the bell rang, she joined up with Ace.

Ace rolled her eyes, imitating Melvin. “You see him chew it down?”

“I almost lost my breakfast.”

“That guy is strange.”

In the hallway on their way to the cafeteria, they saw Melvin ahead of them. He was walking stooped over, pumping vigorously with one arm while his other arm hung straight down with the weight of his briefcase. His pink shirt was untucked in the rear. It draped the seat of his gaudy plaid shorts.

“Got another piece of paper?” Ace asked.

“What for?”

“Maybe he’d like a second helping.”

Just then, Randy Montclair took a long sideways stride, cutting in front of Ace, and swatted the back of Melvin’s head. “Fucked up my appetite, you pig,” he said, and gave the kid another whack. Melvin cowered, but kept walking.

Randy had been in study hall. Obviously, he’d watched Melvin devour the spitball.

Doug, his buddy, skipped along beside him, laughing. “Give him another!”

“Scum.” Randy slapped Melvin again.

“Knock it off!” Vicki snapped.

Still pursuing Melvin, he glanced over his shoulder. His lip curled out. “Butt out.”

“Just leave him alone.”

Ignoring her, he backhanded Melvin’s low head.

Vicki shrugged out of her book bag. Holding it by the straps, she swung it at Randy. The loaded satchel slammed into his shoulder. He staggered sideways, knocking into Doug. They almost went down, but not quite.

Then they were facing Vicki.

They didn’t look happy.

“Just leave him alone,” she said. “All right?”

Scowling, Randy waved a fist in front of her nose.

“Oh, I’m so scared.”

But not much. Not with Ace beside her.

“If you weren’t a girl, I’d knock your face in.”

Doug looked as if he might echo his friend’s remark, but he glanced at Ace and kept his mouth shut.

“Take a leap, guys,” Ace said.

Randy’s scowl dissolved. He looked up at Ace. “Just tell Vicki to keep her nose outa my business.”

Ace raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t hear the magic word.”

Randy muttered something inaudible and stepped out of the way, shoving Doug as if all this were somehow Doug’s fault.

Vicki and Ace left them behind.

“Thanks,” Vicki said.

“You owe me a Ding-dong.”

“Only Twinkies today.”

“A Twinkie will do just fine. You all of a sudden Melvin’s bodyguard or something?”

“It was my note he ate.”

“It was my spit.”

“It makes him your blood-brother,” Vicki explained.

“Gawd! Get a lobotomy, girl!”

On Saturday morning, Vicki’s father helped load her science project into the trunk, and drove her to the Community Center.

The Spring Science Fair was one of the town’s frequent events like the Antique Show, the Gun Show, and the Handicrafts Show that seemed to exist mostly for the sake of giving the residents of Ellsworth something unique to do on their weekends.

Most of the other shows brought in merchants and visitors from out of town, which was good for the motels and restaurants. But not the Science Fair. It was a showcase for the efforts of the local kids, who had to attend and demonstrate their creations if they wanted a passing mark in their school science classes. The kids and teachers got in free. It was $2.00 a head for everyone else, and it seemed that nobody in the entire town could bear to miss it.

Not only because most of the kids participating had a whole slew of relations, but because things never failed to go wrong and provide the folks with gossip—which seemed to be their chief recreation.

“Just think,” Dad said, “this is your last Science Fair.”

“And not a moment too soon.”

It would be her twelfth—one a year since first grade. In the early years, she’d enjoyed the fair and looked forward to it almost gleefully. Her first project had been a chicken egg and a 100 watt lightbulb to warm it up. Later on, she’d made an electro-magnet with a nail and a dry-cell battery.

“Remember your volcano?” Dad asked. He, too, was apparently remembering the good old days.

“God, that was a disaster.”

When Vicki was in sixth grade, she’d made a terrific-looking volcano out of plaster of Paris and stood it on a platform concealing a dry chemical fire extinguisher. Every now and then, she gave the extinguisher a honk, shooting a white cloud out of the volcano’s crater. The volcano actually trembled each time she triggered an eruption. But when the judges showed up, she wanted to give them an eruption to remember so she kept the lever down. The horn blared. All around, people cringed and covered their ears—then vanished behind the wall of white cast out by the extinguisher. The volcano shuddered. It all looked just great—what Vicki could see of it through the fog—until her hand slipped and the horn lost its perfect positioning beneath the crater and the powerful discharge blasted out the front of her volcano throwing plaster at the judges like shrapnel.

“You were the hit of the show,” Dad said.

“At least I didn’t kill anyone.”

“I’d like to have seen a reprise of that. You could’ve resurrected the volcano for your final project.”

“Now that I’m a big girl,” Vicki told him, “I don’t get quite the same joy out of humiliating myself.”

Joy. She remembered the way she had cried afterward. Everyone for godsake clapping hadn’t made it any better.

“Displaying the parts of a dismantled rat,” Dad said, “doesn’t have half the flair of blowing up a volcano. Though it does have a certain gross-out potential.”

“I figured I might as well do something useful this year.”

“Just give you a few more years, you’ll be cutting up cadavers.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Maybe you should go into law.”

“I’d rather heal people than screw them.”

Laughing, Dad swung the car into the parking lot of the Community Center. Though it was still early, most of the parking spaces near the open doors of the arena were already taken. Parents and kids were busy unloading tables and projects from cars, vans and pickup trucks. Dad drove as close to the door as he could get, which was a good distance away, and parked.

They went around to the trunk. When Dad opened it, the pungent aroma of formaldehyde swelled out. Vicki reached in. She picked up the dissection tray. The surgical gloves and implements she planned to use for her procedure were inside the tray. She handed it to her father, and lifted out the bottle containing the rat she would be dissecting during the course of the Fair. With that securely clamped under one arm, she took out the wooden display case in which the parts of a previously “dismantled” rat were carefully mounted and labeled.

“Hiya, Vicki.”

The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. She turned around.

“Melvin.”

His wide head was tilted to one side, and he blinked and smiled as he rubbed his hands together. “Use some help?” he asked.