But even Blackburn was mere prologue.
Now, to watch them arrive, to peer from the heart of concealment, an architectural honeycomb entwined above, beneath, around, and through the school proper-this sanctioned voyeurism drew now together.
It pointed the way toward healing.
How natural it was to identify with this building, a caretaker of the young and a presider over their slaughter. But tonight, this place of brick and mortar seethed with resentment at the pinch and crimp of the law.
One couple and no more?
Too strict.
Healing demanded free rein, and tonight that demand would be met.
Beyond a shelf of trophies, the seated shop teacher’s hair shone. Opposite him, kids spiffed in tuxedo satins or fluffed in corsaged ball gowns flashed their pinned-on passes to the teacher and his junior helper and accepted the sealed envelope that bore their names.
At their waists dangled the mini-cleavers awarded them by Lily Foddereau upon successful completion of butchery class, these and the cloudy pastel-lidded Futterware containers.
But above the finery, between each dazzling lobebag and its companion earlobe on the right, their fresh- scrubbed faces wore the same devilish looks that mischievized the hallways, day in, day out. Mayhem directed outward, sex thoughts abuzz inside, as their jaws vacantly snapped gum.
Cobra passed by with Peach Popkin, owning her with a few fingers at the neck, his eyes dead with hatred.
Fido Jenner and Bowser McPhee hove next into view, Bowser’s eager eyes glued to Peach’s twitch of a rump.
Then the huge bulk of Kyla Gorg and Patrice Menuci, an item since eighth grade, blocked out the twosome waiting behind.
It didn’t matter who they were, some of them victims, some victimizers. Every one of them had the play of holes on the brain. Mouth hole over lobe, pussy hole over prick, shove it in, yank it out.
Diversion from deadmarch.
Ah but tonight, how pleasing it would be to taste their fear, see it unclench, seize it right back up, and dole out death-enough to free their minds, those that survived, enough to salve the wounds that every prom night reopened, heal them at last, and find release.
When Kyla and Patrice were gone, a white limo drove away outside. Rocky Stark waved to it, and Sandy Gunderloy tugged at his sleeve. He turned, grinned at the shop teacher, and offered his hand.
Top jock.
Head cheerleader.
The momentary flash of a fuck. Imaginary. But every damned bitch-bastard in school flashed likewise whenever these two walked by.
Tonight’s places of slaughter had been firmed up. But Jesus Fucking God it’d be such a pleasure to trash Rocky Stark and Sandy Gunderloy, even if meant veering off-plan in order to do it.
They were finalists for prom king and queen, as indeed were Brandy Crowe and Flann Beckwith. Most prom nights, that brought immunity. Broad, fearless grins.
Not tonight.
In a pig’s eye were they safe tonight.
Time to move on. Doors would be locked soon. Lights would dim. Music would play.
The sort of music the little shits danced to.
The sort of music they faced.
Jenna Megrim waved another car left.
The breeze against Jenna’s face was cool but not chilly. Armed with instructions and flashlights, she and the other volunteers had fanned out across the parking lot to direct arriving seniors.
Her father would be home, stepping out of the shower and preparing to sit before the tube.
Gravel scrunched at her back, a low motor, as some parent’s car moved off down the blacktop, guided by the next flashlight-wielding junior. Moonlight caught its bumpersticker: “Have you kissed your child’s friendship lobe today?”
Jenna had thought she might be bored. But simply knowing that the designated slasher was roaming the secret byways right now thrilled her.
The slasher knew!
It might be her Spanish teacher, Senora Westmore. Or Lily Foddereau. Or that handsome choir director with the killer eyes and the thick tanned lobes.
Whoever it was knew where the doomed couple would be sitting and who they were.
Even now, as she signaled them on, this pair of tuxedo’d boys blowing kisses at her might, in a little while, be lying, gutted open, at the base of the towering fiend she had helped construct.
Jenna knew she should feel frightened.
But she didn’t.
Not even for Dex and her sister. They’d be safe. And her own prom night was an entire year away.
Besides, maybe she’d be a finalist for prom queen. Sure, she wasn’t the best looking girl in the junior class. She wasn’t claiming she was.
But Rocky Stark had flirted with her once, a smile and a smart slap across the face. As flirts go, it wasn’t much. But it was enough of one that Sandy-who had let it be known that their twosome would be looking for male completion only-felt compelled to give Jenna a public dressing-down.
Even if a nomination wasn’t in the cards, her birthdate would make her a tender on prom night. For three days on either side of one’s birthdate each month (in Jenna’s case, the twenty-third), any sort of physical harm was strictly forbidden.
Well, okay, except for about to give anybody a free ride from birth. Still, she had a fifty-fifty chance of being sent by lottery to the girl’s gym, thereby escaping all possibility of slaughter.
If that were true, Pish Balthasar, the brainy beauty with the smoky eyes and a growing interest in her, would almost surely want to be her date.
Horn blips from the street.
Dexter drove, Tweed in mid-wave beside him.
Jenna’s coat rustled as her arm shot up. She waved them on, blowing a kiss.
Dex stopped, roll down. “Don’t let the Ice Ghoul get you!”
Roll up as Jenna’s big sister said, “And have a good time at—” The window cut Tweed off, but Jenna saw her lips form Pumper’s house.
“I will,” she yelled, “and you keep away from the Ice Ghoul too!” Tweed looked grand in pink, and Dex would make a darling brother-in-law.
It wouldn’t be long now.
Another quarter hour, and Mrs. Gosler or one of her husbands would drive Jenna and Pumper home for a sleepover. Jenna waved at Pumper across the lot, fingers captured by her flashlight beams, and Pumper waved back.
Later in Pumper’s bedroom, they would listen, mock shock on their faces, to the Goslers watching the electrocution on Notorious. All the while, the two girls would keep the radio low, listening intently to the Midwest returns, heaving sighs of relief and bursting into giggles as Corundum High’s victims were announced and it became clear that their older siblings had been spared.
Another car arced in.
An increase in frantic frowns meant the eight o’clock deadline must be drawing near.
Stay on the ball, Jenna told herself.
She had to concentrate, these last minutes, lest her fumbling lose someone their lobes.
Where before had been free highway, cars clogged in backup. Tough times ahead. Behind her, the ten minute bell sounded.
A wrench in her gut.
