"Yes it rained," said Claude. "But Futzy had the roof redone just last year. I told hima"past experience ought to be trusted!a"not to switch to Flashpoint & Sons based on bid alone. He ignored me. Now this."

"You think there's standing water up there? Perhaps a puddle?" Jonquil pictured a dark mirror of water rippled with night breezes, spread wide over ineptly tarred swatches of roof.

"More like a lagoon!" he answered. "As my favorite b.u.mpersticker puts it, 'Life's a b.i.t.c.h, and then she whelps.' On this of all nights, the roof has chosen to fail. Water is trickling along crossbeams and onto the runways of the slasher's typically dry modes of access up there. Should he or she have an occasion to employ them tonight, he or she will be in for a case, at the very least, of wet knee. Early onset of gout, arthritis, or chilblains is not out of the question. Where the devil is our esteemed head janitor?"

Another of Claude's rhetorical questions.

Maybe he would go in search of the janitor. Or he might stoically wait for him to wander in. More likely, he would gnaw on this new peeve all evening, spinning elaborate rhetorical flourishes to feed his upset. None of it would diminish him in Jonquil's sight.

At the far door, a threesome strode in: Brest Donner, arm in arm with her man Bix, and Trilby, their third, bringing up the rear.

"Brest!" Jonquil called out, waving her toward the refreshment table when she got her attention.

Cl.u.s.ters of early seniors looked up too. But with the lights on full and the dance band only beginning to a.s.semble, it felt not yet as though the prom had quite begun.

More kids, lights gone low and colorful, the front entrance padlocked shut, a cymbal whisk as the first notes of an old cla.s.sic sounded: such signals would mark the real start of the evening, when these dressy stragglers on strews of sawdust would shift from out-of-place to right-at-home.

Brest tugged Bix along and Trilby followed after. Here, thought Jonquil, is a marriage in trouble.

Out of the madhouse at last and on the road, thought Condor Plasch. His buddy Blayne had one f.u.c.ked-up family. "You have one f.u.c.ked-up family, Blayne-O," he said.

"The s.h.i.t they don't eat, they are." Stoic, dark, an anodyne for Condor's worldly woes, Blayne glanced out the pa.s.senger side and dug idly into a coat pocket.

"One last hurdle, we head west."

No comment from Blayne.

Condor wove from street to street out of the housing development. His tongue barbell knocked against the inside edge of his zipper mouth. He pictured lightning jags over wet enamel. "Yep, that's where we be headed. Put in our time tonight, pack up, ride way the f.u.c.k over to San Fran, where the funny papers are sayin' all good zipheads congregate." Blayne nodded but said nothing. "What's up, my good bud?"

Blayne stared over: "Me and Altoona did the lip thing today." He fetched out a kerchief, blue and white checked, rubberbanded at the middle and pulled into rabbit ears at the top.

"She just another sneerf.u.c.k privately pining to kiss metal?"

Blayne reared back. "Get real. This is Altoona you're talking about."

"So did she spill? Whether her and Pim did it, I mean."

"She implied." Blayne unbanded the kerchief. "Real strong."

"They've been walking funny since Easter."

Once, thought Condor, those two chicks had been a stone-cold drag. Couple o' wannabes.

Lately, they'd started getting interesting.

First, Pim had sidled up to him outside the cafeteria and brazenly requested their piercer's phone number. That had been followed by obsessive stares and all, capped by rumors of what she and Altoona had done over Easter.

"Not too raunchy in the visual way neither, them two," said Condor. "Cute lobes, big swellers beneath their sweaters, killer curves that narrow down into a tight clench below."

Blayne dropped a compliment: "They'd be hot and finger-rocking good in the sack."

"But wait up," said Condor. "We had to go through whole heaping gobs of pain when we had our way them girls'd let that s.h.i.t be perpetrated on them you-know-where. I can still smell that cream-white oval pan with the red drool and spit, me goggle-eyed over it with my wuttering head on wobbly like I was fit to pa.s.s out. And I can feel the crimp of that skin-punch as my blood sprayed out over Cabrille's fist."

Condor signaled a turn.

"And those were my lips! You think I'd let anyone do that to my gens?"

Blayne shrugged. "Believe what you want. I think they did it. Anyway, we get to find out tonight."

Yeah, right. "What's with the pills?"

"Some heady stuff," Blayne replied. "Brain revealers, Altoona calls 'em. While they were in Topeka, before they drove to Cabrille's parlor, they met this guy in a bar whose brother used the university labs in Lawrence to make it pure. No s.h.i.t, no cut, no speed. Just a smooth high hit."

Condor's stomach flexed. "I dunno. Last time, my gut took a turn, loops of no-no-no and a quick uncatchable ralph or two, floors to mop in a dead-dog stupor the next morning, and pain, pain, pain. So I'm gonna beg off."

"That was Cobra's street-scam c.r.a.p, cut six ways from Sunday with baby powder and strychnine, more'n likely. This stuff's the genuine article. Altoona says she and Pim took hits, got naked, it went on forever. She told me, get this, she told me her p.u.s.s.y tingled like a fizzing sizzling hot tub and that her s.e.xlobe felt like it had swelled up and stretched out near three feet long and that soft wet hot invisible slave-tongues were lapping and sucking every G.o.dd.a.m.n cubic inch of it, hour after hour of yummy s.e.xy s.h.i.t, and I ain't lyin'."

"Altoona said that?"

"In so many words."

What the f.u.c.k.

He and Blayne had gotten into black candles a year before. They had written bleak poetry to the loneliness, sharing the verses before they engaged in yet one more bout of fruitless suck and flay.

They had stood by one another in Kansas City twice while a well-paid felony-risker had taken a tattoo needle to their underaged skin.

And they had gone together through the pain of zipper installation, a Christmas break Condor would never forget, the unending stairstep of hurt across his mouth and back again, the blood, the swelling, somehow managing to coax Blayne through the same.

The other kids' taunts thereafter were as nothing. They were as the bip-bip-bip of the zipper handle against his right chinflesh as he walked, a tickle soon become custom.

Now his buddy and lover (the one kid in the world who likewise had his ear attuned to the suck-tunnel of emptiness, who grokked that the probability of truly sharing anything with anyone anywhere ever was zip zero zilch) held forth a pill to pixie-dust the next several hours away.

Prom s.h.i.t would unfold its truth, the lows lower, the highs higher.

And possibly in there, he and Blayne would get to gawk at two stripped chicks, blend flesh, Pim's unbagged s.e.xlobe inside his mouth, her letting out little girlish gasps as his steel barbell brushed her forbidden lobe and his greedy fingers parted her zipper-teeth below and snugged their way into her moist hot clench.

"Well okay, give it here," he said. "Will we make it to the lot before buzz-time?"

"Five minutes after gulpdown, it kicks in."

"Works for me."

The pale yellow pill lay bitter on Condor's tongue. It took two hard swallows. Even then, the d.a.m.ned thing stuck in his throatpipe. But its bitter taste finally melted away, and Condor asked Blayne where they were supposed to do the girls.

"In the costume shop, during the search for the stiffs. She and Pim'll be pilling out too. Oughta be dropping it right about now."

Four minutes later, when Condor steered into the parking lot entrance, he felt a giggle bubble up out of his gut. "Oh jeez." It was a wavelet, yep, and he could see huge waves, shiny blue, way far out but edging closer.

"Yeah, I know," said Blayne. "But keep it tamped down till we get past Tweed's tight little kid sister and flash our pa.s.ses at ol' Dunsmore. Once we're past the front table and into the gym, we can giggle as much as we freakin' feel like it, 'midst the dimness and death-terror and the whole dad-blamed f.u.c.ked-up mess of a world."

"Blayne?" Condor said.

"Yeah?" The dark blue niobium in Blayne's puffy lips gleamed like a blueberry blintz.

"Tonight," he laughed, then bottled it up and jammed in a stopper. "I have a super-strong feeling that we're going to have the best G.o.dd.a.m.n time of our whole entire friggin' motherf.u.c.kin' lives!"

"Could be, buddy. Could be."

"Blayne?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you, Blayne."

The smile vanished. "Yeah. Love."

Blayne looked out the windshield. "Come on, my man, she's waving you on. Don't blow it."

Zane Fronemeyer'd been a warmup. Offing him and his wives had simply swept obtrusive clutter into the dustbin, which made for clearer lines of action ahead.

But they were peripheral victims.

Sheriff Blackburn, revived to offer up his voice for capture on tape, had given a foretaste of the main event. He, after all, had made the ultimate sacrifice in the school building, and roping him into place had led to a perfect and tasty omniscience.

But even Blackburn was mere prologue.

Now, to watch them arrive, to peer from the heart of concealment, an architectural honeycomb entwined above, beneath, around, and through the school propera"this sanctioned voyeurism drew now together.

It pointed the way toward healing.

How natural it was to identify with this building, a caretaker of the young and a presider over their slaughter. But tonight, this place of brick and mortar seethed with resentment at the pinch and crimp of the law.

One couple and no more?

Too strict.

Healing demanded free rein, and tonight that demand would be met.

Beyond a shelf of trophies, the seated shop teacher's hair shone. Opposite him, kids spiffed in tuxedo satins or fluffed in corsaged ball gowns flashed their pinned-on pa.s.ses to the teacher and his junior helper and accepted the sealed envelope that bore their names.

At their waists dangled the mini-cleavers awarded them by Lily Foddereau upon successful completion of butchery cla.s.s, these and the cloudy pastel-lidded Futterware containers.

But above the finery, between each dazzling lobebag and its companion earlobe on the right, their fresh-scrubbed faces wore the same devilish looks that mischievized the hallways, day in, day out. Mayhem directed outward, s.e.x thoughts abuzz inside, as their jaws vacantly snapped gum.

Cobra pa.s.sed by with Peach Popkin, owning her with a few fingers at the neck, his eyes dead with hatred.

Fido Jenner and Bowser McPhee hove next into view, Bowser's eager eyes glued to Peach's twitch of a rump.

Then the huge bulk of Kyla Gorg and Patrice Menuci, an item since eighth grade, blocked out the twosome waiting behind.

It didn't matter who they were, some of them victims, some victimizers. Every one of them had the play of holes on the brain. Mouth hole over lobe, p.u.s.s.y hole over p.r.i.c.k, shove it in, yank it out.

Diversion from deadmarch.

Ah but tonight, how pleasing it would be to taste their fear, see it unclench, seize it right back up, and dole out deatha"enough to free their minds, those that survived, enough to salve the wounds that every prom night reopened, heal them at last, and find release.

When Kyla and Patrice were gone, a white limo drove away outside. Rocky Stark waved to it, and Sandy Gunderloy tugged at his sleeve. He turned, grinned at the shop teacher, and offered his hand.

Top jock.

Head cheerleader.

The momentary flash of a f.u.c.k. Imaginary. But every d.a.m.ned b.i.t.c.h-b.a.s.t.a.r.d in school flashed likewise whenever these two walked by.

Tonight's places of slaughter had been firmed up. But Jesus f.u.c.king G.o.d it'd be such a pleasure to trash Rocky Stark and Sandy Gunderloy, even if meant veering off-plan in order to do it.

They were finalists for prom king and queen, as indeed were Brandy Crowe and Flann Beckwith. Most prom nights, that brought immunity. Broad, fearless grins.

Not tonight.

In a pig's eye were they safe tonight.

Time to move on. Doors would be locked soon. Lights would dim. Music would play.

The sort of music the little s.h.i.ts danced to.

The sort of music they faced.

Jenna Megrim waved another car left.

The breeze against Jenna's face was cool but not chilly. Armed with instructions and flashlights, she and the other volunteers had fanned out across the parking lot to direct arriving seniors.

Her father would be home, stepping out of the shower and preparing to sit before the tube.

Gravel scrunched at her back, a low motor, as some parent's car moved off down the blacktop, guided by the next flashlight-wielding junior. Moonlight caught its b.u.mpersticker: "Have you kissed your child's friendship lobe today?"

Jenna had thought she might be bored. But simply knowing that the designated slasher was roaming the secret byways right now thrilled her.

The slasher knew!

It might be her Spanish teacher, Senora Westmore. Or Lily Foddereau. Or that handsome choir director with the killer eyes and the thick tanned lobes.