Their bunch fragmented by unfeeling schedulers, Vicki
& Co. face the First Day at venerable Vanderlund Township High
School—where they are joined by a standout dash of color.
“We’re going to have so much fun!
This is going to be the time of our lives!”
And other axioms to similar effect. Leave it
to Alex to associate so much fun with going to
school—especially the First Day at a new (Joss would say old, old)
school.
The Big Green Limousine, mercifully on time,
trundled into view; as did a figure racing up the sidewalk alongside
it. This enlarged to a cobalt skimmer containing a young black female
who clearly wasn’t cut out for cross country. “Running like a girl,”
as an epithet, might be hotly resentable; but seemed apt for the
ladylike flaps and flails propelling this latecomer and threatening to
lose one or both of her shoes, if not the satchel jangling dangerously
from its shoulderstrap.
devil with a blue dress blue dress
blue dress
devil with a blue dress on
echoed in Vicki’s brain for no good reason, as she raised
a hand in what she hoped would be taken as reassuring
encouragement...
Vicki, somewhat against her will, joins the JV
volleyball team and attracts attention from both a fast-talking
madcap and a vengeful identity-confuser.
—wha’?
(we now rejoin this program already in
progress)
Hands up to block the incoming torpedo… no
longer in flight. Hands taken and squeezed by teammates on either
side… of a really weird perspective.
Are you lying (or is it laying?) on the floor?
With Coach Celeste pressing a chilly something to your nose? If it’s
smelling salts, it’s (or is it they’re?) not doing its/their job:
your nose feels completely stifled. And the wrong size. And the
wrong shape. And so hot it authenticates you as a Broil. And IN
PAIN—
—Marcia-Marcia-Marcia “Oh my nose!!” PAIN—
—that’s in no way lessened by Celeste saying
“Tell me your name.”
—OhmyGahd don’t you know me? Did I trip
and stumble into the Twilight Zone?...
Vicki and Laurie each have to deal with
impairments of their capabilities, on and off the volleyball
court and at the hands of Dennis Desmond; while Fiona seeks
professional (mercenary) retribution.
Vicki instinctively executed an
upright reverse dig-and-roll, overturning her popcorn tub and
Filbert’s root beer as she wound up at arm’s length but with its
end still clamped snakelike around her wrist as Dennis flung the
driver’s door open:
“Thou owest the worm no silk, the
beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume! Off, off
your lendings! Come unbutton here! Naked as jaybirds shall we
dance the night away, and not go to bed till noon!”
Springing backwards into the deluge,
he was promptly engulfed: fair hair turning sodden green in the
murky neon, face bone-white in a fresh FLASH of fulguration, wide
bright Joker-teeth all a-slaver...
Vicki's presence is requested by three different
girls on three consecutive afternoons, for
artistic/neurotic/disclosive purposes.
For a minute they sat
listening to the familiar lickety-click of public transit in
motion. Then, just loudly enough to be heard, Is said: “When I
was little, Mauly’d tell me the noise a train makes is really
chains being dragged by the ghosts of everyone who’d ever ridden
it—and are still riding it, there beside us. Not friendly ghosts
like Casper, but zombie vampires that crawl inside your head
through your mouth and nostrils and earholes, to suck your
brains out while you sleep.”
“,,,well, y’know, big sisters,,,”
“Then she’d hide under my bed and make
sucking sounds. Night after night. ‘Cause I’d scream every
time…”
Vernonique Smith unburdens herself of a story
(in G Minor) about what she'd gone through before coming to
Vanderlund, and what she was up against now.as a New (Black)
Girl in the 'Burb.
So Nonique finished that
First Day of New School feeling miserable, and ever more so
during her solitary walk “home” from the bus stop—solitary as
in the only brownskinned person visible on the length and
breadth of Kessell Road. True, no Caucasian accosted her
by word or glance; but all the other really fine places along
both sides of that lilywhite street sounded the same
challenges as the Rented House’s interior:
Who are you? What do you
think you’re doing here? State your business.
Show some ID. Servant’s entrance is through the REAR
door. No excuse for failure to wear a maid’s
uniform. How long before you turn tail and go the hell
back where you came from?...
Vicki
and her fellow sophomores contend with the drive to
revive Vanderlund's semi-sorority literary
societies, while Laurie Harrison faces an
intervention and Gigi Pyle contemplates a controlled
substance.
An
antique looking-glass such as Alice might’ve gone through
is removed from the wall.
No combination safe behind it, but a small white
envelope tucked inside the frame.
Jive lays out its contents on the flattened
mirror and wields a razor blade while your heartbeat
reverberates faster and faster and you take hold of your
wet skirt so as not to reach for Britt’s hand like a
scared baby but she leans over like she does at school to
let you know “(Your troubles’ll melt like lemondrops,
‘cause you’ll be away above the chimneytops...)”
Bunty
O'Toole, Vanderlund's notorious teen girl mob boss,
seeks a way to tap into a rival's illicit
trafficking—and
finds an unexpected means of doing so.
Then
falcon-eyes raked the Sister Dopesters like talons
feinting at a pair of sparrows.
I am a predator, they were reminded. You two
could be prey at any time, any day.
Nothing personal—strictly business.
Be aware of that.
And
with no further word or glance, a Very Dangerous
Person took her leave...
Vanderlund's
Spirit Week culminates in a Homecoming parade, game,
and dance, as well as Vicki's reunion with an unlit
old flame: much of which is observed from
the peculiar POV of Spacyjane Groh.
“I can’t find Tony,” she gulped.
“I don’t think he’s here and he didn’t call
before I left so maybe he’s just late but what if he isn’t
coming like he didn’t to the track meet last spring but at
least then he had the decency to say so and tell
me ‘cause it really is getting stood up if he
didn’t even bother to do that ‘cept I don’t feel ‘stood
up’ (gulp) I feel knocked flat like at that dumb
old volleyball match I didn’t even want to play in and why does this
keep happening to me again and again, Space?
It’s not fair, it really truly isn’t…”
Vicki
negotiates her way through unwelcome revelations and
romantic complications (her
own and other people's)
while Latter-Day Laurie, on behalf of Bunty
O'Toole's crew, infiltrates the snowbound Traverser
cult.
One
weirdo is obviously a teen witch, and not named
Sabrina either. Instead
of a platinum bubble cut her hair is lank and stringy,
and in place of a broomstick she clasps an ornate
leatherbound book (obviously of sorceress
incantations) whose occult gravity has shriveled her
down to skin and bones.
This is Linda (spelled L‑Y‑N‑N‑D‑H‑A) who
takes it upon her rigid dogmatic self to present you
to her companion guru.
This
appears to be a homeless young hobo given charitable
shelter and cleanish dryish clothes, though he could
do with a shampoo and shave and twelve-step program. (He’s
devoidly absorbed in an unseeable movie on the
projection room’s blank screen...)
Gigi
Pyle falls into the clutches of Dennis Desmond
while Laurie plays hostess to the Mostest, Fiona
has a reunion with a fugitive from the Sunset
Strip, and Vicki goes on a "four-timing" date with
Tony Pierro.
“I told you, didn’t I, that Petty Hills
took him on regular-parttime after the Brawl?
So he called me last night to say he’d put
in so many hours they were giving him tomorrow night
off, and he’s got money in his pocket again and his
self-respect back so finally
it’s time for us to go on our First Real Date,
right? Just
the two of us, him ‘n’ me, ‘a night out by
ourselves’ like he promised,
right? HA!
He takes
it for granted we’re gonna double
with Buddy ‘n’ Junior again
‘n’ when I go ‘But—but—but—’ he
goes ‘I thought you liiiiked them’ ‘n’ ‘Bud’s my
best friennnnd’ which he sure wasn’t during the
Trial last spring ‘cause Buddy didn’t excuse himself
off Tony’s jury so don’t ask me
when they got so palsy-walsy he’d rather hang out
with him
and his
girlfriend
instead of just
me just
for once ‘n’ I’ve got a good mind to stand HIM the
hell up once ‘n’ for all, except… I really do
want him as a boyfriend, if he’d behave
like one for a single solitary night, is that so
awfully much to ask for??...”
Nonique
wrestles with a
shadow
overclouding
her mind; Laurie
grapples with the demands of Mostest-hosting; and
Vicki,
attending
a masquerade ball,
confronts nightmares
from her past in the costumed flesh.
…you
both tumble over Freeze’s writhing legs and land with
Batgirl on her back you prone on top and the raygun
between you like a barbell she bearing up on it you
bearing down more
weight! more weight! the raygun making
occasional b‑z‑z‑z‑z‑es and a gray mist slowly rising but not so
foggily that you can’t peer through the cowlsockets
below you to the fastbatting eyes which aren’t
gaslight-blue like Britt’s nor gorgon-green like Kinks’s
but deep dark brown like a newly-dug grave filled with
furious violent hate—they’re the Mad Man’s! out to get
away with murder! and there’s nowhere to hide or take
off running for and just like Tricia’d predicted long
ago your Gardening Angel will come too late to save you
from hideous destruction nothing will be left but a few
bloody bones—
