Eighteen
Marla van Kirk entered the main offices. The lights
came on overhead. She studied the damage to the door and electrical
cabinet Mort had inflicted and wondered what the consequence would be in
the morning. Would they blame just Mort, or hold them all equally
guilty?
It didn't matter either way. Serious mistakes had
been made. Her parents would make them pay and pay big. They would know
she was missing by now. They would have called the police and their own
private security guards to scour the city for her.
Odd they hadn't tried the school as yet. They had
known of her late appointment for the psych evaluation. After all, it had
been their hostile bumbling about at the parent-teacher conference that
had put her here.
Marla held out her shaking hands. She had never
known this kind of fear before. Or this kind of excitement? For the
first time in her life, she had been left entirely to her own resources.
It gave her a sense of power to be making all of her own decisions and to
exercise her own personal authority.
She had told Mort a thing or two, and she was certain
he had not seen the fear behind her facade. Mort terrified her. Rick's
warnings, too, scared her, because she knew he was right. She pushed Mort
too hard. But it was such a rush.
She chuckled in memory of Mort's livid rage. And
then she sobered. She had chased all her friends away in that same
manner. She had attracted lots of friends in the beginning, cheer-leaders
impressed with her social standing who mistakenly thought themselves her
equal, and just plain nice kids who wanted nothing more than to be her
friend.
She had lapped it up, but something had gone wrong in
short order. They had all started to avoid her. Ice Queen, Mort called
her. They had accused her of being arrogant, snobbish, and conceited.
Their behavior had infuriated her. She had understood none of it.
Then she had met Rick Kaiser. Trusting, defenseless,
star of the football team and half a dozen clubs, Rick took all the
attention he got for granted. And he gave it back in kind. That was the
secret she had missed. She saw that it was a trade. You pat my back and
I'll pat yours. Tit for tat. Marla didn't know how. It was a skill she
had never acquired.
Regardless, she didn't need it. She didn't have time
to dish out phony niceties. She preferred her social isolation to the
gushing friendliness they had tried to stuff in her face.
Except that Armstrong High had slowly become a prison
worse than the cold and empty mansion she had been brought up in. And the
failing wasn't entirely hers, because nobody could see the terrible
trouble she was in. She had tried to emulate Rick's warmth. She learned
how to kiss a boy. She let him hold her in the dark.
And with his warm body against her, she felt empty
inside. She felt nothing. The manikin in the park had certainly been a
potent image. She had never given Rick back anything in exchange for his
affection.
She was missing something that everyone else took for
granted. She couldn't imagine what it might be. Rick should have dumped
her like the others had. Instead, he tried harder. He took her failing
as his own.
The fool.
So why had she come back to the main offices? She
passed desks and computer stations and empty cubicles. It took a moment
to understand what she was looking for.
Authority. Someone to tell her where next to go,
what next to do, and how next to think, feel, and behave. She wasn't
making good use of her new-found independence after all. She was actually
looking for some grown adult to tell her what to do.
Like some pewter-faced peasant.
Marla paused. Insight seeped into place like a piece
of a puzzle.
She had looked down upon the pewter-faced peasants of
her dream in disdain. Maybe she had misinterpreted their symbolic
significance. What had she herself ever been but a gold-and silver-plated
work of art to be put on public display by her parents? Nothing more had
ever been expected of her, except to sit quietly until called upon to
perform her cute, little-girl routines. When it came right down to it,
she was a pewter-faced peasant herself. Just another knick-knack in her
parents lives.
She passed a drawer similar to the one by the main
doors into which Mort had tossed his switchblade. She opened it and saw
Mort's switchblade lying within.
The knife gave her chills, but the torch had been
infinitely worse. She had thought Mort meant to burn her alive, to set
her afire like a candle, laughing as her beauty and her very life went up
in smoke.
Marla looked around to make sure nobody was
watching. The office was empty and deathly quiet. Marla snatched the
switchblade from the tray and carefully studied it before holding it out
from herself and flicking it open.
She peered closely at the razor-edged blade gleaming
in the overhead lights. As a little girl, she remembered a servant who
had juggled kitchen knives through the halls of the house when her parents
were gone. She remembered once him kneeling before her and poking at her
teasingly with the shiny blades. Not knowing any better at the time, she
had giggled. Probably he had only been playing with her, sharing his
fascination with the mirror finished chrome flashing in the light, but
maybe not. Maybe he had been wanting to do really bad things to her.
A noise sounded behind her, the shuffle of a shoe on
the tiled floor. She turned, hiding and closing the blade with her
fingers behind her back.
Mort was closer than she had imagined. He grabbed
her arm, pushed it into the air, took the knife away from her, flicked
it open, and put it to her throat.
Marla's breath froze in her lungs.
"Where did you get it?" Mort said in his rough voice.
"Down there." Marla kicked the drawer with the toe
of a shoe. "Take it and let me go. Please don't hurt me. You can have
anything you want. Just don't hurt me."
Mort chuckled nervously. "Anything?"
Marla wet her lips, strangely excited by Mort's
attack.
Mort turned her around and pushed her against the
cabinet with the drawers. He stepped back, closed the knife, and handed
it to her.
"I can take what I want," he said. "How about if you
give it to me of your own free will?"
Marla stared at the switchblade in her hand. With a
shaking hand, she opened it and pointed the blade at him.
Mort laughed at her. "Have you ever seen anyone cut
with a knife before? There's more blood than you can imagine. You get it
all over your skin and clothes and it's really hard to clean up.
Personally, I don't think little girls should play with knives, and I
don't think you should threaten someone with one unless you know how to
use it."
In a quick, intense moment of panicky indecision,
Marla lashed out and poked him in the arm. Mort leaped back with a yell,
grabbed his arm, and stared at her incredulously. When he looked down,
blood seeped from between his fingers.
"I think I know how to use it," she said.
"You crazy bitch."
He advanced on her. Marla held the knife out with
determination. "If you ever threaten me again,” she said, “you had better
either kill me, or never, ever turn your back on me. Do you understand?"
Mort swallowed hard. Sweat beaded his pale
forehead. "It's not easy to kill someone," he said in an unsteady voice.
"You can't live with it."
"I can if I have to," she whispered.
Mort shook his head and drew closer. "Think what
your parents would say if they saw their little Ice Queen all covered in
blood."
Mort stopped inches away from her. Marla put the
blade to his chest with a shaking hand.
"So go ahead and make my day," he murmured. "Put me
out of my misery."
Marla raised the knife with a scream of mounting
rage. She clutched it in both hands with every intention of plunging it
into Mort's chest. When she saw the genuine resignation in his eyes, she
faltered. Tears came to her eyes. She wasn't certain where they had come
from. Or why they were there.
But something inside her wouldn't let her do it. As
hard as she tried, she didn't have the strength.
Mort laughed at her. "This is great. What a rush,
huh? So I get what I want, right? Because I don't want to take it. I
want you to give it to me."
Marla gritted her teeth. She swung off to one side
and had no trouble at all stabbing the desk top. Mort lashed out and
forced her wrist down. The knife slipped from her numbed fingers. Mort
drew her close.
Marla was shaking. In fear, or excitement? This had
never happened with Rick Kaiser. She had made the wrong choice all
along. It should have been Mort from the very beginning.
But his gall was unbearable. "Don't be stupid," she
said. "You don't know who I am. You don't understand what you are
doing."
And this was the wrong place and the wrong time.
Somebody would catch them.
"Somebody help me!" she cried out. Rick wouldn't
have the courage to stand up to Mort, but Mr. Mangrove would, or the
janitor with his little floor-mopping machine.
Mort embraced her, his mouth open, spittle drooling
from one corner of his lip.
"Anybody! Please!"
