CHAPTER 13

After a little practice and a lot of anger, I'm now very good at manipulating live bodies. It affects my arms very little now. But unlike Miss D. and Sue, Tina's mind isn't all open to me. Some parts are shadowed, making me curious.

I hang Tina by her hair. She screams, holding her scalp. Her pointed toes touch the floor like a ballerina. I'm tempted to spin her like one, and make—what's it called? A pirouette? Tina's like the beautiful doll I always wanted, but Momma wouldn't let me have, because it was the sin of idolatry.

I find Tina tempting all right.

Meanwhile, Rick has been writhing and screaming, as I've continued to dig glass shards into his face. I see Miss D. staring at me over the girl's shoulder, but she dare not say anything nor come closer. Sue's voice comes from my blind side, "Carrie, this is personal, there's still another sho . . ."

I glare in Sue's direction. I can't even see her, but she clams up. I guess my bad eye looks pretty evil now. Un-flex. I release Tina. Her knees almost give out. Flex, I lock them. "Stay on your feet and look at me, Blake." Unflex. She does. "You were in on the trick. Don't look so innocent. The bucket of stinking blood I'm wearing now. That trick." I gesture to the front of my ruined dress, which was mostly soaked with water and transparent. I realize I've just called her attention to my breasts which are exposed. Self-consciousness agitates my power and anger. Tina peers at me with both fear and disturbing fascination. I'm envious of her deep brown eyes, gorgeous as the rest of her. My dream comes back to me, where I flailed her with a live wire until she burned like a witch. I consider doing that now.

Like a witch. Like me.

"Blood?" she answers. "Y-you must be kidding . . ."

I make dramatic wave upward toward Rick. Flex! I slam him into ceiling fifty feet above. This makes a shower of blood and guts. All the females, except me, scream. I reverse the gesture. Un-flex. Gravity smashes him back to the floor. Now he's bucket food, ready to be flushed down the toilet.

I cock my head and smirk at Tina, "Do I look like I'm kidding?"

I'm gratified to hear her whimper and see mortal terror in her eyes. "Carrie, how . . ?"

Flex!

I shut her lips to mute her. Then point my finger. "Mind your own business, and answer my question." Un-flex.

"Yes! I was in on it. But please, Carrie, I swear, Chris lied to me. She told me it was going to be syrup with red dye."

I laugh, and I force it a little for effect. "Syrup. That's a tasteful way of reminding me of your shower of tampons! Tasteful; like the glue in my hair, like calling me fat out loud time and again, like a dozen other things you did to me this year alone. I can read your mind, Tina, I know how much of it you did. And I know you were going to show that video of me hysterical in the shower to the whole prom tonight. So, why shouldn't I kill you like this?" I hold my hand up and snap my fingers.

Flex. Behind me, I tighten the invisible coils around Keith. His forced exhale makes some kind of sound I can't hear. I know this because Tina looks at him with eyes big as hula hoops. Flex. I crush him. His skull, shoulders, arms, ribs, belly, hips and legs all collapse under my twisting force. I can't hear the sound it makes, but I do hear the others scream and wail. Blood and guts squirt in every direction. Some of it lands on the back of my neck. To my surprise, if feels pleasantly hot. I smile.

Tina's hands are shaking over her mouth and her complexion isn't looking too pretty anymore. Then, acting from the shadowed part of her mind, she does something I don't expect.

She breaks down sobbing and begs for mercy, "Please, please, Carrie, I didn't know . . . how much I was hurting . . . you."

I try to kill her right there, twist her limbs and head off like a doll I'm tired of playing with. But I mis-flex, or something. I can't do it up close looking into her beautiful frightened eyes. As I'm about to flex her eyelids shut some psychic curtain falls, and I see into one of those shadows that she's telling me the truth. And she is sorry. I can even see her excuse: my feelings weren't real to her. Only people at her social level or above had real feelings. At my low level, my pain was like a cartoon character's. Her best friend Chris was hardline about this and kept Tina from ever changing her attitude. Tina won't be like that anymore, her mind told me I could be certain.

She did with me and my pain what I just did with the shooters. Except they earned it.

I don't know what's wrong with me. Some arm and sword of the Lord I am. I struggle to regain my sarcastic edge and gird my reluctant power. I want to jeer at Tina's tears while I kill her. But something else stops me. She is very beautiful. Killing her would be like killing a hummingbird.

I stall. "Matt's dead?" That was Tina's deceased boyfriend, one of the bodies.

She breaks down sobbing even more.

"Tommy's dead, too," I point out. "We both lost somebody."

I look into her sparkling wet eyes and that perfect figure, then the next mind-revelation shakes me. I get a vision too clear to be fantasy.

"You mean you and Chris . . ." I don't have a word for it that isn't biblical, and those are all vague. "Lay with each other like . . ." I stop myself afraid somebody would laugh. Probably me because I sound so stupid and feel so mortified by my lustful interest.

She nods.

For my whole life, I wasn't allowed to think or look at unmentionable things. Parts of me buried like ancient ruins and forgotten are re-emerging from the ground. A vision of my next door neighbor, Stella Horan, in her swimsuit . . . her dirtypillows—breasts—bare, enviable and fascinating to me.

My breath catches. I realize I'm as attracted to Tina as I was to Tommy!

My fantasy of being the sword of the Lord crashes and burns; my chastity is ruined. I'm about to bring down the gym on top of myself for my own lust, when I realize there's nothing in the Bible against it. Boys with boys, yes, a terrible mortal sin; but girls with girls? Nothing.

I say to her, "You're lucky. If this happened the way Chris planned it, you would be so painfully dead now. But these guys have shown me what real evil is, and you hurt me a lot, but you're not evil, and I forgive you."

It makes me sound so good and merciful, but I feel like a hypocrite. Yet, that's as much of the truth as can bring myself to tell her. I didn't have the vocabulary, or the guts to say more.

Sue calls trying to get my attention. "Carrie! Carrie! Look!" She points at the window where alternating blue and red rolling flashes shimmered. I couldn't hear the sirens but the first emergency vehicles were arriving.

THE CAR BOMB!

How long have those been flashing? Eric could set it off at any time. I try to pinpoint him but with so many minds around, I can't do it quickly enough to be safe. He's one mind among many to sort through. If I go out the front, there would be too many minds to work through.

Flex. I push the side doors open, find them chained. Flex. I knock them off their hinges. I'm in too much of a hurry to run on the wet, littered floor. Flex! Flex! I slingshot myself out then catch myself. Flex! I lift myself high to get an overhead look, unobstructed by all the other minds. Flex! I glide around the corner of the gym to locate the bomb and the last shooter; Eric, the one with the trigger to set it off.

A/N-9/28/14: No, this is not going to turn into a slash fanfic. I just thought that after 17 years of extreme sexual repression, and being a late bloomer, Carrie never had the chance to actually examine her sexuality. Maybe it had a surprise.

Also, even though Carrie is capable of sadistic cruelty, she does have a quality of mercy to her, too.