After I was done getting the blood off of my shoe and ugly lipstick off of my face, I tossed the paper towel in the trash and looked around. Mr. Hall’s body was against the stalls, and Dr. DuPont was lying about three feet away. There were big cracks in the tile from where I’d slammed Dr. DuPont’s head into the wall, and the bathroom door lay in pieces on the floor, surrounded by a fine layer of grit and more broken tiles.
Without really thinking, I slid my shoe back on and hobbled over to the trashcan, where the second high heel lay on its side.
I guess this is the part where I should have started screaming and/or vomiting, but I just felt . . . numb. Certainly not as horrified as someone who just watched two men die (and one by her own hand. Well, her own shoe) should feel.
That weird feeling, like adrenaline times a thousand, was still flowing over me. That was probably what was keeping the nervous breakdown at bay. As I stepped over the fallen door and out of the bathroom, I wondered why no one had come looking for me yet. I mean, I must have been in there for at least half an hour. Then I glanced at my watch and saw that only eleven minutes had passed since I’d bumped into David Stark.
I walked down the English hall, and the further I got from the bathroom, the shakier my legs felt. I was almost to the gym lobby, close enough to could hear the band’s lead singer say, “Okay, in just a few, we’ll be announcing Homecoming Queen, so come on up here, ladies.”
That’s when I felt something in my stomach shift dangerously, and I turned and ran back down the English hall.
As my heels clattered down the hallway—
Oh God, oh God, don’t think about your heels, don’t think about your shoe sticking out of his neck!
I realized I should have run down the history hall because there was no way I could go back in the bathroom with Mr. Hall and Dr. DuPont.
But it was too late now.
Then I remembered that—hello?—there are two bathrooms in the English hall, so I ran into the boys’ room across the hall from the girls’.
As I barreled through the door, I heard a startled male voice squawk, “What the hell?” but I didn’t even glance at the figure standing by the sink. I ran straight into one of the stalls, actually thankful it didn’t have a door.
I had barely hit my knees before everything that was in my stomach came up.
“Holy crap,” I heard Sink Guy say, and then he was there in the stall with me, lifting the heavy mass of hair away from my face and neck. It felt so good, and it was such a nice thing to do that I wasn’t even embarrassed that some random guy was watching me, Harper Jane Price, SGA president, head cheerleader, Future Business Leader of America, and soon-to-be Homecoming Queen, puking my guts out in the boys’ bathroom.
I felt shaky and hollowed out when I was done, but better. Lots better.
“Here,” Sink Guy said, handing me a bunch of damp, cool paper towels. I took them gratefully and pressed them against my sweaty face. At the same time, the mystery guy laid a few more of the paper towels against the back of my neck. He was still holding my hair back.
My face buried in the paper towels, I reached up and flushed the toilet.
“Thank you,” I murmured into the wad of wet towels. “No worries. So are you knocked up?”
I looked up and found myself glaring into David Stark’s blue eyes.
Of course.
“No,” I said, trying to get to my feet in the narrow stall without flashing my panties at him. He reached down and took my elbow to help me. “I was joking,” he said. “If there’s ever been anyone less likely to be on Teen Mom than you, I’ve never met her.” He sounded sincere, but I still shook him off.
I walked out of the stall and over to the sink, where I rinsed my mouth out about twenty times. When I was done, David reached into that stupid messenger bag of his and pulled out a tin of Altoids, wordlessly handing me a few.
“Thanks,” I said again, hating that I’d had to say “thank you” to David Stark two times in as many minutes.
He just shrugged, but he was looking at me in that weird, almost predatory way he has. With any other guy, that look would mean he was trying to get in my pants, but I doubt David even thinks about those kinds of things. He only gets that look about the stupid school paper, and I knew he was trying to sniff out a story about why “Pres” was tossing her cookies in the boys’ room the night of the Homecoming Dance.
“I know you weren’t drinking,” he said, “Not after . . . ,” he broke off awkwardly before clearing his throat. “So, food poisoning?”
“No,” I said again, “It’s just that they’re about to announce Homecoming Queen, and I’m nervous. Stage fright.”
I thought it was pretty good as far as excuses go, but David just laughed. “Yeah, right. Pres, you’d make out with a spotlight if you could figure out how. It’s gotta be something else.”
That hungry look was back in his eyes, and it suddenly occurred to me that the reason I’d thrown up was literally across the hall. My stomach and knees turned to jelly. It was a miracle that David hadn’t noticed the broken door to the girls’ room when he’d come in here. There was no way he was going to miss it when he left. And David was the smartest person I knew; he was the only thing currently standing between me and valedictorian. David had seen me going toward the girls’ room, and when he saw the two dead bodies in there, he’d put two and two together.
And he would love it. He’d write a bazillion articles for the paper chronicling my downfall, and the eventual trial, and he’d win awards for it. Do they have a Pulitzer for high school papers?
“Well, whatever is up with you, I suggest you get over it so you can collect your crown,” he said, turning to leave.
“Wait!” I cried, grabbing his arm. How could I keep him from going out there?
“What?” he snapped, clearly pretty irritated.
“Um . . . I just, uh, I just wanted to say thank you. Again.”
David stared at me like I’d just started speaking in tongues, but after a moment, kind of patted my hand and said, “Yeah, you’re, uh . . . no problem.”
Then he pulled open the bathroom door. I stayed, frozen, waiting for him to shout or something when he saw the destruction across the hall.
But all I heard were the soft squeaks of his tennis shoes as he walked away.
Oh my God, had he missed it again? Looked like valedictorian was in my grasp after all!
But then, when I walked out of the bathroom, I saw why David hadn’t seen anything: There was nothing to see.
The bathroom door was in place and in one piece.
Chapter 4
Everything after that is kind of a blur, mostly because I was pretty sure I was going insane. I know I walked into the bathroom and didn’t even feel all that surprised to see that it was empty, with no sign of the two dead bodies that had been in there just—I checked my watch—six minutes ago. The walls were fine, no cracks or big craters roughly the size of Dr. DuPont’s head. I even checked the trash can for the bloody paper towel I’d used to clean my shoe.
The trash can was empty.
That’s when I made this weird, high-pitched sound that was kind of a sigh and kind of a gasp. I’m pretty sure I would have had a complete nervous breakdown right then and there if David Stark hadn’t poked his head in and said, “Uh . . . Pres? You gonna hurl again?”
I turned to look at him, and the smirk fell off his face. “Holy crap,” he said, crossing the room and grabbing my arms. “Harper? What’s wrong?”
I saw my reflection in the mirror, and totally understood why he looked genuinely freaked. My eyes were huge and glassy and my skin had gone gray. Not that I really cared. I mean, I’d gone crazy. I was crazy.
For some reason, that thought was way more upsetting than the idea that I’d turned into some sort of superhero who’d killed evil Dr. DuPont with my shoe. That had been traumatizing, I guess, but it had also been . . . well, kind of cool. Like something out of a comic book. But going insane? That was real.
“Harper?” David said again, giving me a little shake.
I think I would’ve caved then and the whole story about Mr. Hall and Dr. DuPont would’ve come tumbling out in a series of sobs and shrieks. But luckily, Bee chose that moment to push the bathroom door open.
“God, there you are!” she exclaimed, and her voice reverberated off the tile walls, hurting my ears. Behind her, Amanda, Abigail, and Mary Beth crowded into the bathroom, too.
Then they saw David, and all of their normally pretty faces twisted into sneers. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like David’s editorials.
One of Bee’s best qualities was loyalty, but it sometimes had an ugly way of showing itself, especially where David was concerned. “What are you doing in the girls’ room, paper boy?” I wondered if I’d ever looked at David like that.
“Are you stalking Harper?” Amanda asked, folding her arms over her chest.
David wasn’t holding my arms anymore, and he certainly wasn’t looking at me with concern. His usual scowl was back in place. “Yeah, that’s it, Amanda,” he said, trying to shove his hands into the pockets of his skinny jeans. “I’m a stalker. And what a charming and unique insult.”
Amanda rolled her eyes, which was her standard response when she didn’t have a comeback, and Bee looked at me. “Whoa, Harper, what’s wrong?”
“I think she’s sick,” David said, stuffing his hands in his pockets, his eyes focused on a spot somewhere over my head.
“Probably because she’s been talking to you,” Abigail snapped back.
“Abigail,” I said, but David just laughed. “Lovely talking to you ladies,” he said as he walked out the door.
“Did he do something to you?” Bee asked as soon as he was gone.
I laughed, but it sounded, um, crazy, so I stopped. “No. I just . . . I think I’m coming down with something. He was checking on me. It was nice, actually.”
Mary Beth wobbled up to my side and frowned. “Probably only because he wanted something. I don’t trust David Stark as far as I could throw him.”
That’s when I finally noticed the crown dangling from Bee’s fingers, the rhinestones shining dully in the florescent lights. “Is that . . .” My voice came out squeaky, so I started over. “Is that the Homecoming Queen crown?”
She looked down like she had totally forgotten about it. “Oh, yeah! Duh. That’s why I came to look for you. You totally won!”
She squealed and threw her arms around me. I kind of hugged her back, but mostly I was just thinking, I missed it. I’ve wanted this for years, ever since Leigh-Anne won it two years ago, and I missed it because I was having a schizo freak-out in the bathroom.
Bee didn’t seem to notice that I was less than enthusiastic. “We looked for you, like, everywhere when they called your name.”
“Everywhere?” I parroted.
“Well . . . everywhere in the gym. So then Ryan said I should just go up there and, like, accept it on your behalf, so I did, and then I remembered you’d gone to the bathroom, so I came to find you!”