I laugh as it plays. I can’t help it. Her auburn hair falls down in big chunks and she’s staring at the remnants, her eyes wide, transfixed like she’s half paralysed with fear.
Kass watches with all the concentration of a child pulling legs off a spider. The video tilts and catches Maya’s reflection quivering, her now prickly head shown in all its disgusting glory, and her cheeks shining with tears and sweat.
The scene cuts out, cuts from the patio and then focuses on the street, on a lamppost, to where a girl is slumped over, clearly unconscious. Plastic tape wrinkles around her wrists, around her dress, around that stuttering little chest. Somewhere, somebody says her name like a prayer, and then like a joke.
A hand jabs at her.
Another yanks her frilly sundress up to show her bright pink panties and her chubby thighs.
No one steps forward and says stop.
Kass presses her fingers to her mouth, and her nails leave little half-moons in the skin. “It’s…a lot.”
“It’s effective,” I say, shrugging before putting my phone away.
Kass is still staring, like she wants me to give her permission to breathe again. She’s a good dog. She needs commands. That’s why I keep her around.
“You spiked her,” she says, lower. “You actually?—”
“Of course,” I say, bored now that she’s caught up. “Do you think she’d be brave enough to have fun otherwise?” I let my voice turn dreamy. “She cried so easily, like somebody just pressed the right button. It’s a public service, really. Letting people learn what they are. Imagine if she went to college thinking she wouldn’t fold.”
Somewhere outside a bell rings, calling for class.
Kass drags her gaze from the screen. “What do you want to do?”
That’s the sweetest question in the world. My father asks his clients versions of it over lobster. My mother asks me that when she’s planning a party. What do you want to do?
“We let it breathe,” I say, fixing my hair in the mirror though in truth, it’s immaculate already. “Start with the junior girls. They’re insecure and fast-fingered. Include those two boys with perfect teeth who like attention, but need deniability. You know who. By lunch it’ll be on everyone’s tongues, like a metallic taste they can’t get enough of.”
Kass nods, mentally making a list of my instructions. She’s quick; I do respect that. I let my hand rest on her shoulder for exactly one second, which electrifies her. Positive reinforcement.
“And Kass?” I say. “Do not route it back to me.”
“As if I would,” she says, frightened, thrilled. “You think I want to die?”
“You’d be surprised.” I murmur because it’s funny, and true. I know enough people have a death wish, considering they’ve tried to bring me down over the years. The sad thing is, none of them have even come close.
My shoes click toward homeroom in a rhythm I’ve long ago trained everyone to recognize.
Around the corner, a girl with a backpack bigger than her torso is examining a C taped to her essay, clearly trying not to cry.
When I pass her, I let my bag swing and clip the paper from her hand. It flutters into a puddle by the water fountain.
“Oops,” I say in a tone that means anything but, and when she stoops, she does it with mortification that makes my skin buzz as pleasantly as if I’d drunk a magnum of champagne.
She looks up at me with the expression of a rabbit that’s been alive too long, and I keep walking. I don’t look back. When you look back, they sometimes mistake it for mercy and we wouldn’t want that, would we?
In the corridor window, the late fall sun makes the ivy outside look like slow fire. I can feel the school’s blood pressure rise as I see all those phones out. The little shiver that means it’s happening begins in my sternum and spreads through my veins like the most delicious poison.
My heart is steady as a metronome. I don’t rush. Only the desperate rush, and I am the opposite of desperate.
It’s almost a pity that Maya won’t be here to see how she’s the centre of attention for the first time in her entire pitiful life. No doubt the coward has called in sick, and will be sick for a while. But growing her hair back will take months. Will she wear a wig in the meantime? I smirk, imagining how everyone will love yanking it off and playing fetch with it while she scrambles, pleads and cries.
Kass pings my phone with a single blue dot, our private yes. Another. Another. Across the hall, a pack of girls erupts in synchronized squeals that could be about anything, but I know what it is. I can feel it in the air; the delicious taste of shared humiliation.
I imagine Maya’s hair, all swept up now and tossed away in a trash bin, and laugh again lightly under my breath.
Damn, it’s good to start the week with an accomplishment.
