They say that only time will tell
Until then, I’m in a living hell
What can I do, what can I say
I can’t BELIEVE how much I weigh.
“Scale”
Written by Heather Wells
Magda is at her cash register, weeping.
“Magda,” I say, for what has to be the fifth time, “just tell me. Tell me what happened.”
Magda shakes her head. Against all laws of physics and hairspray, her hair has collapsed. It droops sadly to one side of her face.
“Magda. Tell me what they found. Tom won’t talk about it. Gerald won’t let anybody into the kitchen. The cops are on their way. Just tell me.”
Magda can’t speak. She is constricted with grief. Pete doesn’t have to argue with any of the residents he is busy herding from the cafeteria—they’re leaving of their own volition, with many nervous glances in Magda’s direction.
Considering the fact that she’s practically keening, I don’t blame them.
“Magda,” I say. “You’re hysterical. You’ve got to calm down.”
But Magda can’t. Which is why, after heaving a sigh, I haul off and slap her.
And why she, in turn, slaps me back.
“Ow!” I cry, outraged and clutching my cheek. “What did you do that for?”
“You hit me first!” Magda declares angrily, clutching her own cheek.
“Yeah, but you were hysterical!” Magda has some arm on her. I’m seeing stars. “I was just trying to get you to snap out of it. You didn’t have to hit me back.”
“You aren’t supposed to slap hysterical people,” Magda snaps back. “Didn’t they teach you anything in all those fancy first-aid courses they made you take?”
“Magda.” My eyes finally stop swimming in tears. “Tell me what they found.”
“I’ll show you,” Magda says, and holds out the hand she hadn’t used to smack me in the face. There, in her palm, is nestled a strange-looking object. Made of gold, it resembles an earring, only much larger, and curved. There’s a diamond on one end of it. The gold is pretty banged up, like it’s been chewed on.
“What is that?” I ask, gazing down at it.
“WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?”
Both Magda and I are startled by the reaction of Cheryl Haebig as she and her boyfriend Jeff pass us on the way out of the cafeteria. Cheryl’s eyes are wide, her gaze glued to the object in Magda’s hand. Pete, who is trying to herd everyone out of the place, looks frustrated.
“Cher,” Jeff says, tugging on his girlfriend’s arm, “come on. They want us to leave.”
“No,” Cheryl says, shaking her head, her gaze still fixed on what Magda is holding. “Where you did get that? Tell me.”
“Do you recognize it, Cheryl?” I ask her—though it’s obvious from her reaction that she does. Also that I probably don’t want to know why. “What is it?”
“It’s Lindsay’s navel ring,” Cheryl says. Her face has gone as white as the blouse she’s wearing. “Oh, God. Where’d you get it?”
Magda presses her lips together. And closes her fingers. “Oh, no,” she says, in the singsong voice she only uses when students are around. “Never mind. You go to class now, or you’ll be late—”
But Cheryl takes a step forward and says, her eyes going hard as the marble floor beneath us,“Tell me.”
Magda swallows, glances at me, then says, in her normal voice, “It was stuck at the bottom of the garbage disposal. The one that hasn’t been working right all week. The building engineer finally got around to taking a look at it. And he found this.”
She flips it over. On the other side of the gold, the word LINDSAY is engraved—hard to make out, after all the mashing. But still there.
Cheryl gasps, then seems to find it difficult to stand. Pete and Jeff help her to a nearby chair.
“Tell her to put her head between her knees,” I tell Jeff. He nods, looking panicky, and makes his girlfriend lean forward until her long, honey-colored hair is sweeping the floor.
I turn back to Magda and stare down at the ring. “They put the rest of her down the disposal?” I whisper.
Magda shakes her head. “They tried. But bones won’t grind up.”
“Wait, so… they’re still down there?”
Magda nods. We’re whispering so Cheryl won’t overhear. “The sink was stopped up. No one thought to wonder why—it’s always stopped up. We just used the other one.”
“And the police didn’t look in there, either?”
Magda wrinkles her nose. “No. The water was all… well, you know how it can get back there. Plus they served chili Monday night… .”
I feel a little bit of vomit rise into my throat.
“Oh, my God,” I say.
“I know.” Magda looks down at the belly button ring. “Who could do such a thing to such a nice, pretty girl? Who, Heather? Who?”
“I’m going to find out,” I say, turning away from her and striding blindly—because my eyes are filled with tears—toward Cheryl, still sitting with her head between her knees. I squat down beside her so that I can ask her, “Cheryl. Were Lindsay and Coach Andrews sleeping together?”
“WHAT?” It’s Jeff who looks astonished. “Coach A and Lind—NO WAY.”
Cheryl raises her head. It’s very red from all the blood that’s rushed into it while she was hanging upside down. There are tear tracks down her cheeks, and unshed tears still glisten on her long eyelashes.
“Coach Andrews?” she echoes, with a sniff. “N-no. No, of course not.”
“Are you sure?” I ask her.
Cheryl nods. “Yeah,” she says. “I mean, Coach A, he… ” She looks up at Jeff. “Um.”
“What?” Jeff looks frightened. “Coach A what, Cher?”
Cheryl sighs and looks back at me. “Well, none of us are sure,” she says. “But we always just assumed Coach A is gay.”
“WHAT?”Now Jeff looks as if he’s the one who’s about to cry. “Coach Andrews? No way. NO WAY.”
Cheryl blinks up at me tearfully. “You can see why we kept that suspicion to ourselves,” Cheryl says.
“I can,” I say. I give Cheryl a pat on the wrist. “Thank you.”
And then I’m gone, brushing past Pete to head out of the café and toward the elevator.
“Heather?” Magda trots after me in her stilettos. “Where are you going?”
I jab at the UP button, and the elevator door slides open.
“Heather.” Pete follows me out into the lobby, gazing after me in concern. “What’s going on?”
I ignore them both. I get in the elevator and stab the button for the twelfth floor. As the doors close, I see Magda tottering toward me, trying to stop me from going alone.
But it’s just as well she doesn’t come with me. She isn’t going to like what I’m about to do.I don’t like what I’m about to do.
But someone has to do it.
When the doors open on the twelfth floor, I get off the elevator and stalk toward Room 1218. The hallway—which the RA has decorated in a Tigger the Tiger motif, being a Pooh fan… only an ironic Tigger, since she’s given him dreadlocks—is silent. It’s just past nine in the morning, and the kids who aren’t in class are asleep.
But one of them I fully intend to wake up.
“Director’s Office,” I yell, thumping on the door once with my fist. We are not allowed to enter any room unannounced.
But that doesn’t mean we have to wait for the resident to answer the door. And I don’t. I insert my master key into the lock and turn the knob.
Kimberly, as I hoped, is curled up in her bed. Her roommate’s matching twin—they’ve even got the same bedspreads, in New York College gold and white—is empty. Kimberly is sitting up, looking groggy.
“Wh-what’s going on?” she asks sleepily. “Omigod. What are you doing in here?”
“Get out of bed,” I say to her.
“What? Why?” Even when just waking from a dead sleep, Kimberly Watkins looks pretty. Her face—unlike my own, when I’m just waking up—isn’t smeared with various anti-zit-and-wrinkle creams, and her hair, instead of standing comically on end, falls into perfectly straight planes along either side of her face.
“Is there a fire?” Kimberly wants to know.
“There’s no fire,” I say. “Come on.”
Kimberly has clambered from her bed and is standing there in an oversized New York College T-shirt and a pair of boxers. On her feet are a pair of baggy gray socks.
“Wait,” she says, tucking a lock of hair behind one ear. “Where are we going? I have to get dressed. I have to brush my—”
But I’ve already got her by the arm and am dragging her out the door. She tries to resist, but let’s face it: I’m a lot bigger than she is. Plus, I’m fully awake, and she isn’t.
“W-where are you taking me?” Kim stammers, as she trots to keep up with me as I haul her toward the elevator. Her alternative is to let me drag her, which she apparently realizes I am totally willing to do.
“I’ve got something to show you,” I tell her in reply.
Kimberly blinks nervously. “I–I don’t want to see it.”
For a minute, I consider throwing her up against the nearest wall as if she were a handball. Instead, I say, “Well, you’re going to see it. You’re going to see it, and then you and I are going to have a talk. Understand?”
The elevator cab is still waiting at the twelfth floor. I pull her into the car and jab the button for the lobby.
“You’re crazy,” Kimberly says, in a shaky voice, as we glide down. She’s starting to wake up now. “Do you know that? You’re going to get fired for this.”
“Oh, yeah?” I laugh. That’s the best one I’ve heard all day.
“I mean it. You can’t treat me like this. President Allington’s gonna be mad at you when he finds out.”
“President Allington,” I say, as we reach the lobby and the elevator doors open, “can kiss my ass.”
I drag her past the door to my office, and down the hall toward the front desk, where the student worker actually looks up from the copy of Cosmo she’s snagged from somebody’s mailbox to stare at me in shock. Pete, who is waving firemen into the building—why, no matter what we call 911 for, from a resident freaking out on meth to human bones in a garbage disposal, does the New York City Fire Department always manage to show up first? — pauses in his coordination efforts to stare at me.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says, as I drag Kimberly past him.
“Don’t just stand there,” Kimberly shouts at him. “Stop her! Don’t you see what she’s doing? She’s holding me against my will!She’s hurting my arm!”
Pete’s walkie-talkie crackles. He lifts it to his lips and says, “No, it’s all clear here in the lobby.”
“Stupid rent-a-cop!” Kimberly sneers at him, as I thrust her through the cafeteria doors.
Magda, who is standing at the entrance next to her boss, Gerald, and several firemen, looks startled. Her hand is open to show the firemen her discovery. Cheryl, I see, is still sitting nearby, a very white-faced—but solemn—Jeff Turner at her side. I grab Kimberly by the back of her neck and shove her face toward Magda’s open palm.
“See that?” I demand. “Do you know what that is?”
Kimberly is squirming to escape my grasp. “No,” she says sullenly. “What are you talking about? You better let me go.”
“Show her,” I say to Magda, and Magda very nicely holds the belly button ring right up to Kimberly’s face.
“Recognize it?” I ask her.
Kimberly’s eyes are as wide as quarters. Her gaze is riveted on the object Magda is holding.
“Yeah,” she says faintly. “I recognize it.”
“What is it?” I ask, letting go of her neck. I don’t need to hold on to her anymore to make her look. The truth is, she can’t look away.
“It’s a navel ring.”
“Whose navel ring is it?”
“Lindsay’s.”
“That’s right,” I say. “It’s Lindsay’s. Do you know where we found it?”
“No.” Kimberly is starting to sound congested. I wonder if she’s starting to cry or merely coming down with something.
“In the garbage disposal,” I say. “They tried to grind your friend’s body up, Kimberly.Like she was garbage.”
“No,” Kimberly says. Her voice is growing even fainter. Which is unusual, for a cheerleader.
“And you know what the person who killed Lindsay did to Manuel Juarez at the game the other night,” I say. “Just because they were afraid Lindsay might have said something to him about them. What do you think about that, huh, Kimberly?”
Kimberly, her voice still faint, her face now swollen with tears, mumbles, “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
“Don’t mess with me, Kimberly,” I say. “First you tried to tell me Lindsay’s roommate might have killed her out of jealousy. Then you tried to make me think Coach Andrews and Lindsay were romantically involved, when you know perfectly well Coach Andrews is same-sex oriented—”
I hear, from behind me, a little gasp. I know it’s come from Cheryl Haebig.
“Face it, Kimberly,” I say, not turning around. “You know who killed Lindsay.”
Kimberly is shaking her head, hard enough that her hair has fallen into her eyes. “No, I—”
“Do you want to see it, Kimberly?” I demand. “The disposal they tried to stick Lindsay down? It’s all clogged up. With her blood and bones. But I’ll show it to you, if you want.”
Kimberly lets out a little moan. The firemen are staring down at me like I’m some kind of sick freak. I guess they’re right. Iam a sick freak. I don’t feel bad at all about what I’m doing to Kimberly. Not even a tiny bit.
“You want to know what they did to Lindsay, Kim? Do you want to know?” She shakes her head some more, but I go on anyway. “First, someone strangled her—so hard and for so long, the capillaries around her eyes burst. She was probably gasping for air, but whoever had hold of her didn’t care, and didn’t let go. So she died. But that wasn’t enough. Because then they chopped her up. Chopped her up and put the different parts of her body down the disposal… .”
“No.” Kimberly is sobbing now. “No, that isn’t true!”
“It is so true. You know it’s true. And you know what else, Kimberly? You’re next. They’re coming after you next.”
The tear-filled eyes widen. “No! You’re just saying that to scare me!”
“First Lindsay. Then Manuel. Then you.”
“No!” Kimberly jerks away from me—but unfortunately ends up in front of Cheryl Haebig, who has risen to her feet and is standing there, eyes blazing, glaring at Kimberly.
Only Kimberly doesn’t seem to notice the glare. She cries, “Oh, thank God,” when she sees Cheryl. “Cheryl, tell her—tell this bitch I don’t know anything.”
But Cheryl just shakes her head.
“You told her Lindsay and Coach A were involved?” she snaps. “Why would you do that? Why? You know it wasn’t true.”
Kimberly, seeing she’s not going to get any support from Cheryl, backs away from her, still shaking her head. “You… you don’t understand,” she hiccups.
“Oh, I understand, all right,” Cheryl says. For every step she takes forward, Kimberly takes another step back, until Kimberly’s back is up against Magda’s desk, where she freezes, looking fearfully up into Cheryl’s face. “I understand you were always jealous of Lindsay. I understand you always wanted to be as well liked and popular as Lindsay. But it was never going to happen. Because you’re such a fucking—”
Only Cheryl doesn’t get to finish. Because Kimberly has collapsed against the cashier’s desk, sliding slowly down it until she’s on the floor, a puddle in New York College white and gold.
“No,” she sobs. “No, I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t kill her!”
“But you know who did,” I step forward to say. “Don’t you, Kimberly?”
She’s shaking her head. “I don’t! I swear I don’t! I just—I know what Lindsay did.”
Cheryl and I exchange puzzled glances.
“What did Lindsay do, Kimberly?” I ask.
Kimberly, her knees curled up to her chest, murmurs softly, “She stole his stash.”
“She what?”
“She stole his stash! God, what are you, dense?” Kimberly glares up at us through her tears. “She stole his entire stash, about a gram of coke. She was mad at him, ’cause he was so stingy with it. Like, she’d blow him and he’d just give her a line or two. Plus he was seeing other girls, too, on the side. It was pissing her off.”
Cheryl takes what seems like an involuntary step backward when she hears this. “You’re lying,” she says to Kimberly.
“Wait,” I say, confused. “Whose stash? Doug Winer’s? Are you talking about Doug Winer?”
“Yes.” Kimberly nods miserably. “She didn’t think he’d miss it. Or if he did, he’d think one of his frat brothers took it. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Cheryl!” Kimberly is glaring at her fellow squad member. “Lindsay wasn’t a fucking saint, you know. No matter what you and the other girls want to think. God, I don’t know why you guys could never see her for what she was… a coke whore. Who got what she fucking deserved!”
Kimberly’s sobbing has risen to hyperventilation level. She’s clutching her arms to her stomach as if she were suffering from appendicitis, her knees to her chest, her forehead to her knees.
But while Cheryl has backed off, looking horrified, I’m still not about to let Kimberly off the hook.
“But Doug did miss the coke,” I say. “He missed it, and he came looking for it, didn’t he?”
Kimberly nods again.
“That was why Lindsay needed to get into the café. To give him his coke back. Because she hid it in here, didn’t she? Because she didn’t think it would be safe to leave in her room, where Ann might find it.” Nod. “So she got the key from Manuel, let herself in here, smuggled Doug into the building somehow, and… Then what? If she gave it back… why’d he kill her?”
“How should I know?” Kimberly lifts her head slowly, as if it were very heavy. “All I know is that Lindsay ended up getting what she deserved after all.”
“You… ” Cheryl is glaring down at the other girl, her chest rising and falling rapidly with emotion, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “You… you… bitch!”
Which is when Cheryl draws her arm back to slap Kimberly, who cowers—
But Cheryl’s hand is seized before she can bring it down across Kimberly’s face.
“That,” Detective Canavan, who has come up behind us, says calmly, “is enough of that,ladies.”