"Per-iod!"
The catcall came first from Chris Hargensen. It struck the tiled walls, rebounded, and struck again. Sue Snell gasped laughter from her nose and felt an odd, vexing mixture of hate, revulsion, exasperation, and pity. Carrie just looked so dumb, standing there, not knowing what was going on. God, you'd think she never-
"PER-iod!"
It was becoming a chant, an incantation. Someone in the background (perhaps Hargensen again, Sue couldn't tell in the jungle of echos) was yelling, "Plug it up!"
"PER-iod! PER-iod! PER-iod!"
Charlie signs deeply as she went to turn on the shower again to rinse off the blood from her thighs with hot water, wincing as the first wave of cramps came, before turning it off again. She turns her attention towards Carrie who had blood running down her leg. Her eyes widen in fear and shock for she knew Carrie had never had a menstruation cycle before nor knew what the hell it was. Charlie gotten hers when she was twelve or thirteen but kept her little secret from Miss Margaret and Carrie, knowing the woman's reaction.
Carrie stood dumbly in the center of a forming circle, water rolling from her skin in beads. She stood like a patient ox, aware that the joke was on her (as always), dumbly embarrassed but unsurprised.
Sue felt welling disgust as the first dark drops of menstrual blood struck the tile floor in dime drops.
"For God's sake, Carrie, you got your period!" she cried. "Clean yourself up, you freak!"
"Ohuh?"
"She thinks they're for lipstick!" Ruth Gogan suddenly shouted with a cryptic glee, and then burst into a shriek of laughter.
"You're bleeding!" Sue yelled suddenly, furiously. "You're bleeding, you big dumb pudding!"
"Get off her case, Snell!" snarls Charlie. "She doesn't-"
Carrie stares down at herself and shrieks.
The sound was very loud in the humid locker room.
A tampon suddenly struck her in the chest and fell with a plop at her feet. A red flower stained the absorbent cotton and spread.
Then the laughter, disgusted, contemptuous, horrified, seem to rise and bloom into something jagged and ugly, and the girls were bombarding Carrie and Charlie with tampons and pads, some from purses, some from the broken dispenser on the wall. They flew like snow and the chant became: "Plug it up, plug it up, plug it up, plug it-"
Sue was throwing them too, throwing and chanting like the rest, not really sure what she was doing-a charm had occurred to her mind and it glowed there like neon: There's no harm in it really no harm in it really no harm-It was still flashing and glowing, reassuringly, when Carrie suddenly began to howl and back away, flailing her arms and grunting and gobbling.
Charlie was trying to shoo away the flying tampons and pads away from herself and Carrie as the terrified girl used Charlie as a shield, her arms flew around her waist and locked on tightly.
But the girls never stop throwing at them. And the suddenly both girls fell from the slippery floor, in a puddle of faint blood red water. Carrie was groaning helplessly as Charlie gave her classmates a death glare as she felt the familiar sudden heat wave rising from her body.
Sue stops and said slowly, hesitantly: "I think this must be the first time she ever-"
That was when the door pumped open with a flat and hurried bang and Miss Desjardin burst in to see what the matter was.
From The Shadow & Catalyst Exploded (p41):
Both medical and psychological writers on the subject are in agreement the Carrie White's exceptionally late and traumatic commencement of the menstrual cycle might well have provided the trigger for the latent talent.
It seems incredible that, as late as 2013, Carrie knew nothing of the mature woman's monthly cycle. It is nearly as incredible to believe that the girl's mother would permit her daughter to reach the age of nearly seventeen without consulting a gynecologist concerning the daughter's failure to menstruate.
In Charlene McGees case, she had her period in the tender age of thirteen. However she kept her monthly cycle a secret from her adoptive mother and sister...
Life as Charlie White by Gabriel Evans (Anchor Books 2014, p5)
During her first few years with Margaret and Carrie White, Charlie described in her diary living there as 'scary place' as Margaret would threaten her that she would 'burn in the eternal flames' if she doesn't confess her sins. The young girl's relationship with Margaret White was a mixture of hostile and fear. This is what she wrote when she came to live with them:
June 2005
Miss Margaret said that I was living in sin. She always says that. She wails on me for bring a fashion magazine and said I may be corrupted and possibly far from saving but she won't have me take Carrie to Luicifer's home.
I don't like it here. I miss my mommy and daddy. It feels like I'm back in the lab. I think she's working for The Shop. Oh no oh no. What if she makes me do something?
I'm afraid again. Daddy told me if I'm in any danger...kill them. But I'm unsure now. Carrie is very nice to me but does she want to hurt me?
Her first impression of the White home is obvious strange and scared. That is expected of a young child coming into a new place. However, Charlene, eight years old, was somewhat display signs of extreme paranoid fear of the White's causing her harm and in almost in her diary entries spoke of 'The Shop'. The girl also seemed to suffered from some type PTSD as it states in her diary.
August 2005
I thought it was happening again. Miss Margaret was yelling at Carrie again. She always does. Carrie was crying and tellin her 'Sorry'. Miss Margaret started to hit my sister with the bible and she fell down. I went to save her but...I saw daddy instead. Daddy dying and bleeding. I hug daddy tightly. Begged him not to go away again. But he did. And I felt it again. I wished for it all to burn.
And outside, the big tree was burning like the sun.