You could feel the ground cracking under your feet with white-hot lava below and the screams and cries filling up the halls like a chorus of the damned and your blood boiling inside your body and waiting to explode outward. Not one thing, but rather a host of cruelties and injustices and battles, in whispers and notes and blows and jeers and destruction all around.
For a good time, call Veronica Sawyer, some dumbass had scratched into the wall above the men's urinal. J.D. took out a switchblade from his coat and slashed viciously over the wall, until both graffiti and plaster were torn out. There was no hope for Westerburg High. He was running late for his appointment.
A note in Heather Duke's handwriting was the simplest way to get the job done. Veronica would have done better, but he thought his efforts were passable.
Straight after last-period phys ed, Carl Kellerman and Rod Swirsky were en route to a hot date with two Heathers. They never arrived.
The first rule of fighting: there are no such things as rules. The way to win a fight: hit fast, hit hard, and don't stop until they can't get up again. His mother was more about the art and the technique of taking on bigger, heavier weights and winning; Bud Dean was a straightforward finish-by-any-means-necessary type.
J.D. struck first, barely a moment after they even knew he'd ambushed them. A solid punch to Carl's guts winded him. J.D. rabbit-punched the back of Carl's neck as he bent over, and he dropped to the ground. Rod came at him, shouting something, moving like a boxer. Like fuck he expected to play by Queensberry rules. The Marquess of Queensberry was an asshole anyway. So J.D. booted Rod in the groin, then put him down with a punch in the skull.
They deserve some extra punishment. He kicked Carl in the ribs to stop him from getting up.
There were witnesses, unfortunately, so J.D. leaned back on the wall and lit up a last cigarette to wait for the authority figures.
Somehow, J.D. didn't feel the satisfaction he'd expected, looking down at the two broken boys writhing on the ground. He'd betrayed the most important rule, which was: the best way to win a fight is to never have it at all. Just shoot them already. The worst scrape on him was some barked, bruised knuckles. He would have liked the chance to finish his smoke before the first teacher got there. He should count himself lucky it was afterschool detention and not suspension. That might have paused his other plans.
He met Martha Dunnstock's eyes as she rolled into Mrs. Pope's class the next day. The two jocks had decided to give the class the present of their absence. Martha's model was gone and smashed, but he'd fixed that, even if she didn't quite realize the poetic justice of it. She leaned away from J.D. as she spoke to him, with her left hand twitching nervously around the scooter bar.
"I heard about what you did to Carl and Rod," she said softly.
"And?"
Martha spoke a little louder, gaining courage. Her eyes narrowed into a cross between contempt and fear. "And that was violent and wrong and you need help. I mean, professional, adult help."
"I suppose my footwork was a little sloppy. Should take more lessons," J.D. quipped. The line didn't seem to go down particularly well.
"You once asked if I was scared of you. The answer is yes," Martha said, and it was tragic and horrible that living in this place had clearly warped her mind so much that she couldn't see a logical way forward out of the bullying.
J.D. didn't owe her an explanation, or anyone else. "This is why people walk over you and why they will always walk over you," he said, and then realized he'd spoken much more loudly than he'd meant. He unclenched his fists. Nothing more anyone said could matter to him.
"I want you to leave me alone," Martha said. She went to her place at the front of the classroom and didn't look back.
J.D. sat in the back of Ms. Fleming's detention room, trying to look busy with German translation and avoid her conversation. Call him an optimist about Fleming's methods of holding hands and forced togetherness. She'd proven herself to be an idiot, obviously, but maybe it could have worked on some students.
Fleming's attention was all on Courtney, one of the country club kids. She'd run to almost as many networks as Heather Duke to talk about her post-mortem feelings for Chandler. "After my mom died from the ghost," Courtney said, "and then, so soon, when Heather went as well, I was so overcome with feelings."
Wait, I think both of those count as my work, J.D. thought. He remembered the woman possessed by a wraith when they came to town. Amazing irony. Courtney's mom had been as good as dead before he even saw her; the ghost inhabiting her body had started killing other people for food. It would be tactless, no doubt, to mention it.
There was a knock at the door, and before there was a reply Heather Duke walked in. Fleming broke off.
"Come in, Heather, dear," Fleming said after the fact. "Thank you so much for your energizing support of the synchronous group psychic healing we've been practicing. Those extra credits will soon be on the record."
Duke simpered. "Thank you so much. Can I borrow J.D.? Mrs. Curtis wants to know if he can serve out his time in the science labs today. Group project. Do you want to see the note?" She held up a folded piece of paper.
"That's all right, Heather. Off you go." Fleming turned her attention back to Courtney, telling her about healing natural fabrics and the best incenses to ease pain.
"I'm a little mad about that stunt you pulled on Carl and Rod," Duke said, leading the way forward. She crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it away. "That shit doesn't make you an alpha male, just an idiot."
"Yeah, I know," J.D. said. He would have liked to shut her up about it.
"Blackmail and bloodthirst are really blunt instruments, aren't they? Watch and learn a little subtlety," Heather said. J.D. supposed she'd earned that superior expression. "Lucky for you, you didn't damage Carl's face too badly, and he's still coming to the pep rally. Therefore, I can't be that upset at you," she lectured.
J.D. caught the smirk in her voice that suggested she interpreted his actions as all about her. Heather tolerated him as a convenient pawn as long as he kept a certain chivalric distance from her, gazing admiringly from afar and talking to her only of business. Her feelings for any other human being seemed to be permanently frozen below zero, but she loved the idea of being widely wanted without giving in. Not to imply that a lack of interest in yours truly is a gauge for the entire gender, but I get the impression that Ms. Duke especially despises the company of men. It was none of his business - the key issue was how she treated others.
Heather pushed open the door to the science lab. "I was thinking we could have some fun with Bunsen burners," she said.
One completed petition, signed by the students of Westerburg High, carefully stored away. Childhood photos and negatives of Heather Duke and Martha Dunnstock, the last tangible proofs of old memories, burned to ashes in red and gold fire. Heather laughed as she set them alight, one by one.
"Someone wrote Poor Little Heather graffiti in the cheerleaders' locker room in giant yellow letters," she said. "And I don't even know who did it. It's so very. I love it."
"A spectacle worthy of you, as you are worthy of it," J.D. said. Heather smiled, her eyes hungry and dark, and fed another portrait to the Bunsen flames, like a city or town or school might also burn.
—
J.D. waited in the street, and checked the weight of his loaded gun again. He had to tidy up the loose end. Veronica was the only Westerburg student who hadn't signed his petition. Typical. Admirable of her, even. Wait until you see what our fellow students really signed, Veronica.
He wanted to win her back. Or, at the very least, make sure it was quick and painless.
What else are you supposed to do after you inherit a basement full of dynamite, Veronica?
He lit a cigarette in the dying sunset on the street. Wait until night truly fell and lights came on in the houses. They needed to talk.
—
"Not another step, young lady. We need to talk," Veronica's mother said.
Both her parents, sitting straight up in their usual lounge chairs, waiting for her to come in. She could have easily lived without the interruption.
"Your - uh - friend, Jason Dean, stopped by," her mother said.
He got inside. He found me. Veronica's heart stopped.
"You have not looked well lately. He's worried you might try to commit suicide. Like his father."
Oh hell.
"He said we should keep you away from sharp objects and other dangerous items," her father said. "Kitchen knives, forks, skewers, lobster picks, nutcrackers, zesters, can openers, apricot pits, olive oil. Ladders, car exhaust pipes, matches, garage doors, tall buildings. Prescription drugs, bathtubs, razors, mirrors, curtain rods, towels. Have I forgotten anything?" he asked her mother.
"No alcohol, especially before driving. That's from us," her mother added. "You don't want to end up like that Remington young man who drove over a bridge."
Veronica had already read the newspaper article on David Harper.
"Jason left you a note." Her mother handed Veronica a sealed envelope. Veronica opened it, trying to keep her hands from shaking.
Recognize the handwriting? he'd written. Veronica knew it as her own hand. She stuffed the note in her bag and headed upstairs, climbing two steps at a time. She unlocked her bedroom, turned on the lights. She saw her bed neatly made with its shades of blue sheets, her chest-of-drawers as normal, her walls and bookshelves all the same as when she'd left that morning. Then she saw one of her old Barbies hanging from the ceiling, a noose tightly tied around its neck. A cold breeze blew from her open window, and the doll shook in the wind.
Jason Dean's head popped up above her sill. "Sorry to come in through the window. Dreadful etiquette, I apologize."
She fled into the walk-in closet, slammed the door behind her, and sealed the lock from the inside with her little finger in the mechanism. She heard J.D. slowly climb in and walk toward her.
She hadn't, somehow, expected the next words out of his mouth to be, "I found your book."
—
Note: 'A spectacle worthy of you, as you are worthy of it' - paraphrase from Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz.
And John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, responsible for the Queensberry Rules of boxing and Oscar Wilde's cruel downfall, was definitely an asshole.