The Best American Mystery Stories 2006
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Хантер Эван
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51746-6
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
Miss Carroll looked up and saw Shelley standing outside the door. Shelley made hand motions meant to explain that she was heading to the bathroom. Miss Carroll nodded. In Shelley’s imaginary universe — the one where she and Amanda were masterminds, committing murder after murder, whenever they felt it was necessary — Miss Carroll was the second to go.
In the girls’ room, Amanda was standing near the sinks, putting on lipstick. She put on makeup four or five times a day. Her hair never looked full of sweat. Today she was wearing the short little kick-pleat skirt that was practically the uniform of the Key Club. If anybody wore one just like it who didn’t belong, the Key Club girls ganged up on her on the athletic field and made sure it would never happen again.
Shelley put down her books on a corner of the sink. She didn’t want to put on makeup. She didn’t want to look in the mirror at all. Mirrors made it impossible to forget that she had acne running all across the ridge of her jaw.
“What is it?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk to you here. I thought it would compromise the operation.”
“You aren’t supposed to talk to me in public,” Amanda said. “It would compromise the operation. If everybody knew we were friends, they’d guess right away.”
“They’d guess about Miss Edgerton? Why? Why would our being friends mean we’d done something to—”
“Shh,” Amanda said. She abandoned the lipstick for some kind of powder. When Shelley put on makeup, it seemed to clot up on her skin. In a few hours, she looked as if she were walking around with pieces of plaster clinging to her face. Amanda’s makeup didn’t even look like makeup. When Amanda’s makeup had been on Amanda for a few hours, it just seemed to disappear.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with Miss Edgerton,” Shelley said. “I think that’s just a big cover so that you don’t have to talk to me in front of your popular friends. I mean, for God’s sake. What is that? Amanda the supercheerleader.”
Amanda had gone from powder to something for her eyebrows. “You could be popular, too, if you put in a little effort. I don’t know what’s wrong with you that you want to be by yourself all the time.”
“I don’t want to be by myself all the time. I want to be with you.”
“Well, that wouldn’t make much sense, under the circumstances. Especially today. Did you see her? She’s here.”
“Who’s here?”
“Miss Edgerton,” Amanda said. “Mr. DeVoe is here doing something or the other, and she’s come with him. She brought her cat, too. It’s in with Miss Lazio in the secretaries’ place, you know, the big room in front of the principal’s office. Anyway, she’s here, and I hung around the office for a little and from what I heard, she’s going to be here until noon.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Some legal thing having to do with the school, I’d guess. Mr. DeVoe is a lawyer. She’s a lawyer’s secretary. What does it matter?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Shelley said. “What does it matter? Why should we care where she is or what she does?”
Amanda stopped putting on makeup. “You must be joking. You know why we care.”
“I meant why should we care where she is or what she does today?” Shelley said. “I’m not a complete idiot, Amanda. I know why we care in the long run. But what does it matter if she’s here today?”
“Well,” Amanda said. “I was thinking. It might be the perfect chance.”
“The perfect chance for what?”
“For us to do what we want to do. Think about it. You live next door to her, right? She knows who you are?”
“Of course she does,” Shelley said. “She knows who you are, too. You live right across the street.”
“But she doesn’t know me that well. We only moved here a couple of years ago. She’s known you forever.”
“So?”
“So, you could ask her for a ride. You could go out to the parking lot, and run into her, and ask her for a ride somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.” Amanda sounded impatient. “Make something up. Make somewhere up. How about out to Grandview Park?”
“It’s a swamp,” Shelley said.
“So?” Amanda said.
“Why would I want to go there? Why would she go out of her way to drive me out there? You aren’t making any sense.”
Amanda’s makeup things were spread all across the stainless steel shelf under the face mirror above the sinks. She opened her bag under the shelf and swept all the jars and tubes and bottles out of sight. She looked angry, the way only Amanda could look angry — as if she had every right to expect you to do what she wanted you to do, and you were being evil to refuse her.
“Listen,” Amanda said. “This was your idea as much as mine. You wanted this as much as I ever did. If you’re not interested anymore, just tell me.”
“Of course I’m interested,” Shelley said.
“Well, then. I’m going to be out at Grandview Park at twelve thirty this afternoon. You ask Miss Edgerton for a ride and get her out there and meet me. I don’t care what you tell her. Just be there. Or we can call the whole thing off.”
“You couldn’t do it without me,” Shelley said. “If you tried, I’d know it was you. I could go to the police and say it was you.”
“Meet me out there,” Amanda said again. Then she tossed her hair against her back, picked up her shoulder bag, and flounced out of the girls’ room. If the door hadn’t been on an air hinge, she would have made it slam.
Once she was gone, Shelley took a look at herself in the mirror. There really was a line of acne along her jaw. Her cheeks really were as puffy and round as a chipmunk’s. Everything the other girls said about her was true, except that she wasn’t actually stupid. If Amanda couldn’t do it on her own, she couldn’t, either, and she wanted to do it very much. She very certainly didn’t want to give it up.
Still, for a while there that morning, Shelley did think she’d give it up. At least, she’d give it up for now, and lay low for a year or two, until she was old enough to get out of Matahatchee, and go someplace where nobody had ever heard of her or of Amanda Marsh. It was depressing to walk through school all day watching Amanda in the middle of crowds of people, all of them looking like they’d just stepped off the cover of Seventeen magazine. It was even more depressing to hear Amanda’s name called out in homeroom for the honor roll the third time already this year. It seemed to Shelley that there should be some kind of balance. Pretty girls should be stupid girls. Not-so-pretty girls should be smart girls. That was the way it was in the movies, except that in the movies even the not-so-pretty girls were prettier than Shelley was, and they always blossomed into beautiful girls as soon as anybody paid any attention to them.
Shelley was not blossoming into beautiful, and by third period, she was already in trouble with three different teachers. She had forgotten her business math homework for the third time this week. She got caught talking in English class when the teacher was trying to read a poem. She got caught walking in the hall chewing gum, which had recently become verboten at Matahatchee High School, along with guns, knives, and charm bracelets. Charm bracelets were suspected of being vehicles for carrying gang symbols, although there had never been a gang of any kind at Matahatchee that anybody could remember. The trouble in English was stupid, too. The poem was this thing called “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” and if anybody had ever been able to make sense out of it, Shelley would gladly eat cow dung. Holding the pink slips that meant she was due in the office during lunchtime to discuss the “appropriate discipline,” wandering through the west wing corridor on the way to her study hall, Shelley found herself thinking about Miss Edgerton again. Miss Edgerton, who always wore the right thing at the right time. Miss Edgerton, who was always organized and polite. Miss Edgerton, whose car was always clean and whose clothes were always pressed. In some odd way that Shelley could not pin down, Miss Edgerton seemed to be at the root of all the trouble in the world, of all the trouble for people like Shelley. For some reason, she reminded Shelley of Amanda, all grown up.