Slaughterhouse High

"Back to normal after tonight, eh?" said Jonquil. The looks Bray and Winnie gave her reinforced her doubt.

"By no means." Nurse Gaskin's eyes flared with hatred.

Then she smoothed it over.

Delia Gaskin, in Jonquil's opinion, needed to be taken down a few notches. The upstart bitch in whites had far too lofty an opinion of herself.

"The horror of that night," the nurse said, "will haunt us for the rest of our lives. But going over the ground again may make it in some sense manageable."

With that, she and Futzy launched into a retelling of the events of prom night.

Like obedient little androids, the others, everyone but Jonquil, chimed in with one part of the story or another.

Jonquil clinked and sipped, remarking what odd ducks she had fallen in with. Between bouts of savage fucking in the supply closet, she liked to regale Benji Rubblerum, the new head janitor, with stories about her colleagues and how very odd they were.

Then the weird thing happened.

Futzy and the school nurse, caught up in their tale, came to the killing of Pesky and Flense in the faculty lounge.

Jonquil saw seeds of worry sprout in Trilby Donner's eyes.

Her little girl looked up from her playing cards, listening and staring.

Jonquil might have jumped in to deflect the telling. But she loved to witness the fruits of violence, especially violence inflicted in all innocence.

"Then," said the nurse, who wore a stylish denim dress, long-sleeved, with embroidery that suggested cowboy motifs, "it's my guess that old Gerber took a pellet of dry ice in his gloved fist and forced the poor girl to swallow it."

Her hands illustrated as she spoke.

"Miss Gaskin!" said Trilby, ever the mom.

Then Pill's eyes bugged out. Her eyelids fluttered and she keeled over. No one was near enough to break her fall.

But the girl, on her knees already, did not fall far. In a glancing blow, her scalp knocked against the futon frame. The cards she cupped in her hands fanned out over the carpet, a sprawl of red and black and white.

Jonquil observed it all coolly.

She clinked her ice.

It looked as if the poor girl was choking on her tongue.

She would die if no one helped.

But the nurse barreled in to clear the girl's passageway, hovering like a benevolent angel. She rubbed Pill's hands vigorously, feeling for pulse and heartbeat, moving deft fingers everywhere on her body. "She'll be all right, I think. Claude, do you have maybe a day bed Pill can lie down on?"

"There's the guest room upstairs, with the coats. Just shove them aside."

"Trilby, why don't you stay with her, out of earshot of the rest of this?" Delia said.

Upstart bitch.

Granted, Little Miss Nursiepoo was caught up in a minicrisis. But that gave her no excuse for addressing Claude as Claude, for calling Trilby Trilby. It ought to have been Mr. Versailles and Ms. Donner, even outside working hours.

In the privacy of her threesome, the bitch could use first names all she liked. But in mixed company, it was unseemly, an affront to all decent Americans.

The two women took Pill upstairs.

Delia Gaskin returned and the tale continued. But no one was into it much any more.

Jonquil, when she wasn't mulling how best to puncture the nurse's inflated ego, saw that Pill's fainting spell had brought back the terror of that night in everyone here.

Jenna Megrim, a sweet senior whose prom would occur six months from now, who had lost her father and almost her sister as well, seemed most upset.

But the pall lay upon them all.

Delicious.

When they stood up to disperse, Brest checked with Trilby and Pill upstairs.

Then she left with Delia Gaskin.

It saved time, lots of time, Jonquil later realized, that the rest of them were still mixing and milling when Pill, holding her mother's hand, appeared on the stairs and began to tell them why she had fainted.

*****

When Pill awoke, she didn't know at first where she was. Mommy was holding her hand and feeling her forehead, and Mommy's new secret sort-of-wife Delia was standing over her, saying, "I think she's coming out of it."

A huge turned-away snoozing bear lay beside Pill on the bed.

Coats.

A lamp with a frilly green shade cast a soft glow from the nightstand. The overhead light had been switched off.

Then Pill remembered.

But she managed not to show it, not even when Delia stared right into her eyes.

"You okay, Pill?" Mommy asked.

"Uh huh."

Delia said, "You gave us a scare."

"I'm sorry, Delia," she said.

Mommy bent and laughed and kissed Pill on the cheek and told her not to worry, that she was just delighted to have her back among the living.

Delia examined her, holding her wrist tight with a concentrated frown, and then moving Pill's head in strange ways by the neck and jaw.

Pill didn't much like Delia. She hadn't much liked her since Daddy died, or even before. But her two mommies seemed to like her a whole bunch, especially Brest.

So Pill only shared the way she really felt with Gigi the goat. In whispers, late at night, under the covers.

But now, she especially didn't like Delia.

Luckily Delia left and Mommy stayed behind.