Carrie Chapter Six

Ewen, four years, Grayle oerrode him. Graduation slated June seventy-nine next month. Tested I.Q. of a light speed and forty. Eighty-three average. N matchless(a)theless, I see shes been accepted at Oberlin. Id guess someone in all likelihood you, Mr Hargensen has been yanking some pretty long strings. Seventy-four assigned detentions. observationinal of those energize been for harassment of misfit pupils, I might add. Fifth wheels, I view that Chriss clique c in alls them Mor beatr Snurds. They find it all quite hilarious. She skipped break on cardinal of those assigned detentions. At Chamberlain Junior High, one suspension for putting a firecracker in a girlfri sacks shoe the note on the card says that footling prank almost cost a little girl named Irma Swope two toes. The Swope girl has a harelip, I understand. Im talking ab out(p) your daughter, Mr Hargensen. Does that ordain you anything?Yes, Hargensen express, rising. A thin flush had suffused his features, It tells me Ill see you in court. And when Im done with you, youll be lucky to get a patronage selling encyclopedias door to door.Grayle in any case rose, angrily, and the two men vitrined from each one other across the desk allow it be court, then, Grayle said.He noted a faint flick of bewilderment on Hargensens face, crossed his fingers, and went in for what he hoped would be a peach or at least a TKO that would save Desjardins job and take this silk-ass son of a bitch beat a notch.You obviously bedevilnt realized all the implications of in loco parentis in this proceeds, Mr Hargensen. The identical comprehensive that c overs your daughter as well as covers Carrie neat. And the minute you file for damages on the causal agent of fleshly and verbal abuse, we will cross-file against your daughter on those same grounds for Carrie White.Hargensens spill dropped open, then closed, You mountaint get away with a brazen-faced gimmick akin that, you-Shyster lawyer? Is that the phrase you were looking for? Grayle grind grimly. I believe you love your way out, Mr Hargensen. The sanctions against your daughter stand. If you care to take the matter further, that is your in effect(p).Hargensen crossed the manner stiffly, paused as if to add something, then left, barely lie inraining himself from the cheer of a hard doorslam.Grayle blew out breath. It wasnt hard to see w present Chris Hargensen came by her self-willed stubbornness.A. P. Morton entered a minute later. How did it go?Timell tell, Morty, Grayle said. Grimacing, he looked at the twisted bay window of paper clips. He was good for seven clips, anyway. Thats some kind of record.Is he discharge to make it a civil matter?Dont know. It rocked him when I said wed counter sue.I bet it did. Morton glanced at the phone on Grayles desk. Its time we let the superintendent in on this bag of garbage, isnt it?Yes, Grayle said, picking up the phone. Thank God my unemployment insurance is paid up.Me to o, Morton said loyally.From The tone explode (appendix Ill)Carrie White passed in the undermentioned short verse as a poetry assignment in the seventh grade. Mr Edwin King, who had Carrie for grade seven English, says I dont know why I saved it. She certainly doesnt stick out in my foreland as a superordinate pupil, and this isnt a superior verse. She was very quiet and I cant remember her ever raising her consecrate even once in class. But something in this seemed to cry out. saviour watches from the wall. But his face is cold as stone. And if he loves me As she tells me why do I feel so all alone?The frame of the paper on which this little verse is written is decorated with a great many cruciform figures which almost seem to dance Tommy was at baseball practice Monday afternoon, and Sue went reduce to the Kelly Fruit Company in The Centre to wait for him.Kellys was the closest thing to a high check hangout the loosely sprawled community of Chamberlain could boast since Sh eriff Doyle had closed the rec centre following a large drug bust. It was run by a severe fat man named Hubert Kelly who dyed his hair black and complained constantly that his electronic pacemaker was on the verge of electrocuting him.The place was a combination grocery, keynote fountain and gas station-there Was a rusted Jenny pump out front that Hubie had neer bothered to change when the company merged. He also sold beer, cheap wine, dirty books, and a wide selection of dour cigarettes such as Mirads, King Sano, and Marvel Straights.The soda fountain was a slab of real marble, and there were four or five booths for kids unlucky lavish or friendless enough to have no place to go and get drunk or stoned. An ancient pinball machine that perpetually tilted on the third ball stuttered lights on and impinge on in the back be fount the rack of dirty books.When Sue walked in she saw Chris Hargensen immediately. She was sit down in one of the back booths. Her current amour, Billy N olan, was looking with the latest issue of Popular Mechanix at the magazine rack. Sue didnt know what a rich, Popular girl homogeneous Chris saw in Nolan, who was like some strange time traveller from the 1950s with his greased hair, zipper-bejewelled slash jacket, and manifold-bubbling Chevrolet road machine.Sue Chris hailed, come on overSue nodded and raise a hand, although dislike rose in her throat like a paper snake. Looking at Chris was like looking by dint of a slanted doorway to a place where Carrie White crouched with reach over her head. Predictably she found her own hypocrisy (inherent in the wave and the nod) abstruse and sickening. Why couldnt she just cut her dead?A dime decide beer, she told Hubie. Hubie had genuine draft commencement beer, and he served it in huge, frosted nineties lollipops. She had been looking forward to tipping a long one while she choose a paper novel and waited for Tommy in spite of the havoc the subside beers raised with her comp lexion, she was hooked. But she wasnt surprisald to find shed lost her taste for this one.Hows your heart, Hubie? she asked.You kids, Hubie said, scar the head moody Sues beer with a table knife and filling the mug the wait of the way. You dont understand nothing. I plugged in my electric razor this morning and got a hundred a ten volts right through this pacemaker. You kids dont know what thats like, am I right?I guess not.No, saviour Jesus forbid you should ever have to find out. How long can my old ticket take it? You kidsll all find out when I buy the farm and those urban renewal poops turn this place into a parking lot. Thats a dime.She pushed her dime across the marble.Fifty million volts right up the old tubes, Hubie said darkly, and stared down at the small pour down in his breast pocket.Sue went over and slid carefully into the vacant side of Chriss booth. She was looking exceptionally pretty, her black hair held by a shamrock-green fortune and a tight basque blouse t hat accentuated her firm, upthrust breasts.How are you, Chris?Bitchin good, Chris said a little too blithely. You heard the latest? Im out of the prom. I bet that turd Grayle loses his job, though.Sue had heard the latest. Along with everyone at Ewen.Daddys suing them, Chris went on. Over her shoulder Billeee dumbfound over here and say hi to Sue.He dropped his magazine and sauntered over, thumbs schedule into his side-hitched garrison belt, fingers dangling limply toward the stuffed crotch of his pegged levis. Sue mat up a wave of unreality surge over her and fought an urge to put her hands to her face and giggle madly.Hi, Suze, Billy said. He slid in beside Chris and immediately began to massage her shoulder. His face was utterly blank. He might have been testing a cut of beef.I venture were freeing to crash the prom anyway, Chris said. As a protest or something.Is that right? Sue was frankly startled.No, Chris replied, dismissing it, I dont know. Her face suddenly twisted into in expression of fury, as penetrating and surprising as a tornado funnel. That goddamned Carrie White I wish shed taken her goddam holy joe routine and stuff it sequent up her assYoull get over it, Sue said.If only the rest of you had walked out with me Jesus Sue, why didnt you? We could have had them by the balls. I never figured you for an establishment pawn.Sue felt her face grow hot. I dont know about anyone else, but I wasnt being anybodys pawn. I took the punishment because I thought I earned it. We did a suck-off thing. End of statement.Bull scratch. That have intercourse Carrie runs around saying everyone but her and her gilt-edged momma are going to bell and you can stick up for her? We should have taken those rags and stuffed them down her throat.Sure. Yeah. See you around, Chris. She pushed out of the booth.This time it was Chris who coloured the blood slammed to her face in a sudden rush, as if a red cloud had passed over some inner sun.Arent you getting to be t he Joan of Arc around here I seem to remember you were in there pitching with the rest of us.Yes, Sue said trembling. But I stopped.Oh, arent you just it? Chris marvelled. Oh my yes. Take your base beer with you. Im afraid I might touch it and turn to gold.She didnt take her root beer. She turned and half-walked, half-stumbled out. The upset inside her was very great, too great notwithstanding for either tears or anger. She was a getalong girl, and it was the send-off fight she had been in, physical or verbal, since grade-school pigtail pulling. And it was the first time in her life that she had actively espoused a Principle.And of course Chris had hit her in just the right place, had hit her merely where she was most vulnerable She way being a hypocrite, there seemed no way to avoid that, and deeply, sheathed within her and hateful, was the knowledge that one of the reasons she had kaput(p) to Miss Desjardins hour of calisthenics and sweating runs around the gym tier had noth ing to do with nobility. She wasnt going to miss her last Spring bullock block for anything. Not for anything.Tommy was nowhere in sight.She began to walk back toward the school, her stomach churn unhappily, Little Miss Sorority, Suzy Creemcheese, The Nice Girl who only does It with the boy she plans to conjoin with the proper Sunday supplement coverage, of course. 2 kids. Beat the living shit out of them if they show any signs of honesty screwing, fighting, or refusing to grin each time some mythic honcho yelled frog.Spring Ball. moody gown. Corsage kept all the afternoon in the fridge. Tommy in a white dinner jacket, cummerbund, black pants, black shoes. Parents taking photos posed by the living-room sofa with Kodak Starflashes and Polaroid Big-Shots. Crepe masking the stark gymnasium girders. Two bands one rock, one mellow. No fifth wheels need apply. Mortimer Snurd, please life out. Aspiring country club members and future residents of Kleen Korners only.The tears finally came and she began to run.From The Shadow Exploded (p. 60)The following excerpt is from a letter to Donna Kellogg from Christine Hargensen. The Kellogg girl go from Chamberlain to Providence, Rhode Island, in the fall of 1978. She was apparently one of Chris Hargensens few close friends and a confidante. The letter is postmarked May 17,1979So Im out of the Prom and my yellow-guts father says he wont give them what they deserve. But theyre not going to get away with it. I dont know what exactly Im going to do yet but I guarantee you everyone is going to get a considerable fucking surprise . . .It was the seventeenth. May seventeenth. She crossed the, day off the calendar in her room as soon as she slipped into her long white nightgown. She crossed off each day as it passed with a heavy black felt pen, and she supposed it expressed a very bad attitude toward life. She didnt authentically care. The only thing she really cared about was knowing that Momma was going to make her go ba ck to school tomorrow and she would have to face all of Them.She sat down in the small Boston rocking chair (bought and paid for with her own money) beside the window, closed her eyeball, and swept Them and all the clutter of her conscious thoughts from her mind. It was like sweeping a floor. Lift the rug of your subconscious mind and sweep all the dirt under. Good-bye.She opened her eyes. She looked at the hairbrush on her bureau.Flex.She was lifting the hairbrush. It was heavy. It was like lifting a barbell with very weak arms. Oh. Grunt.The hairbrush slid to the edge of the bureau, slid out past the stain where gravity should have toppled it, and then dangled, as if on an invisible string. Carries eyes had closed to slits. Veins pulsed in her temples. A doctor might have been arouse in what her body was doing at that instant it made no demythologised sence. Respiration had fallen to sixteen breaths per minute. Blood pressure up to one hundred ninety/100. Heartbeat up to 140 higher than astronauts under the heavy g-load of lift-off. Temperature down to 94.3. Her body was burning energy that seemed to be coming from nowhere and seemed to be going nowhere. An electroencephalogram would have shown alpha waves that were no longer waves at all, but great, jagged spikes.She let the hairbrush down carefully. Good. Last night she had dropped it. support all your points, go to jail.She closed her eyes again and rocked. Physical functions began to turn back to the norm her respiration speeded until she was nearly panting. The rocker had a slight squeak. Wasnt annoying, though. Was soothing. Rock, rock. attract your mind.Carrie? Her mothers voice, slightly disturbed, floated up.(shes getting interference like the radio when you turn on the blender good good)Have you said your prayers, Carrie?Im saying them, she called back.Yes. She was saying them, all right.She looked at her small studio bed.Flex.Tremendous weight. Huge. Unbearable.The bed trembled and then the end came up perhaps three inches.It dropped with a crash. She waited, a small smile playing about her lips, for Momma to call upstairs angrily. She didnt. So Carrie got up, went to her bed. and slid in the midst of the cool sheets. Her head ached and she felt giddy, as she always did after these class period sessions. Her heart was pounding in a fierce, scary way.She reached over, turned off the light, and lay back. No pillow. Momma didnt allow her a pillow.She thought of imps and families and witches.(am i a witch momma the devils whore)riding through the night, souring milk, overturning butter chums, blighting crops while They huddled inside their houses with hex signs scrawled on Their doors.She closed her eyes, slept, and daydream of huge, living stones crashing through the night, seeking out Momma, seeking out Them. They were stressful to run, trying to hide. But the rock would not hide them the dead corner gave no shelter.From My Name is Susan Snell, by Susan Snell (Ne w York Simon & Schuster, 1986), pp. i-ivTheres one thing no one has mum about what happened in Chamberlain on Prom Night. The press hasnt understood it, the scientists at Duke University havent understood it, David Congress hasnt understood it although his The Shadow Exploded is probably the only half-decent book written on the subject and certainly The White Commission, which used me as a handy scapegoat, did not understand it.This one thing is the most fundamental fact We were kids.Carrie was seventeen, Chris Hargensen was seventeen, I was seventeen, Tommy Ross was eighteen, Billy Nolan (who played out a year repeating the ninth grade, presumably before he learned how to shoot his cuffs during examinations) was nineteen Older kids react in to a greater extent socially acceptable ways than younger kids, but they still have a way of making bad decisions, of over-reacting, or underestimating.In the first section which follows this introduction I must show these tendencies in mysel f as well as I am able. Yet the matter which I am going to discuss is at the root of my involvement in Prom Night, and if I am to clear my name, I must commence by recalling scenes which I find particularly painful I have told this story before, most notoriously before The White Commission, which received it with incredulity. In the wake of two hundred deaths and the destruction of an entire town, it is so on the loose(p) to forget one thing. We were kids. We were kids. We were kids trying to do our best You must be crazy.He blinked at her, not willing to believe that he had genuinely heard it. They were at his house, and the television was on but forgotten. His mother had gone(a) over to visit Mrs Klein across the street His father was in the wine cellar workroom making a bird-house.Sue looked uncomfortable but determined. Ifs the way I want it, Tommy.Well, its not the way I want it. I think ifs the craziest goddam thing I ever heard. Like something you might do on a bet.Her f ace tightened. Oh? I thought you were the one doing the big speeches the other night. But when it comes to putting your money where your big fat mouthWait, whoa. He was unoffended, grinning. I didnt say no, did I? Not yet, anyway.YOU ?C