Fangs

Chapter 9

The world felt like a different place when Violet returned to school after staying home for a week recovering from the shock. She gripped her Algebra book and kept her head low, letting her hair fall around her face as she walked to class feeling as though that would somehow make her invisible. She was afraid people would ask her questions about how she knew where Krissy's body was.

Locker doors opened and closed around her. Girls standing in a group outside the bathroom gossiped and laughed. Two football players tossed a ball to each other. Mrs. Bateman, the English teacher, yelled at them to stop.

Violet didn't really expect the world to come to an end when Krissy died, but the normalcy surprised her. Maybe things wouldn't seem the same to them if they had seen what she'd seen.

She suddenly missed her quiet, dark room where she hid. For the last week, her mother had spoken to her in a quiet voice and only entered to see if she needed anything. It had been her refuge, even though she had known it couldn't last forever. She would have to reenter the real world at some point.

She had never known anybody who had died. That's what she told Officer Hanson when the police questioned her the night they found the body.

"Violet?" Pamela asked.

Violet groaned silently and stopped in front of her. She shook her hair back out of her face.

Pamela looked worried and wrapped her arms around Violet's neck, hugging her.

Violet returned it with a half-hearted hug and then pulled back. She wondered why Pamela wore a white, strapless dress covered in glitter. Was it prom already?

"Hey, how's it going," Violet said. "You look like you are headed to the Oscars."

"Thanks. But are you okay?" she asked and grabbed Violet's hand. "You look out of it. Everyone has been talking about you."

"I'm okay," Violet said. "I mean, I wasn't at first, but now I am."

"You are not okay," Pamela said, pulling her around the side of a row of lockers. "You look like a zombie. Your eyes have bags underneath them and your hair is crazy."

Before Violet could say anything, Hannah saw them and walked over.

"Hey, you're back." She reached out and rubbed Violet's arm with the palm of her hand. Violet raised both eyebrows. Hannah had never really spoken to her before.

Hannah was dressed in a red, sequined gown with her hair pulled back in a tight bun. She wore more makeup than Pamela, and she looked ten years older.

"Yeah, I had to come back sometime," Violet said, trying to smile. She didn't want everyone to think she was depressed.

"I don't know how you're dealing with this, Violet. I mean, you saw it. How horrible!" Hannah said. "Was it weird? I mean, seeing the body?"

They stared back at her with open mouths, wanting her to tell them the gruesome details. But Violet wouldn't.

"I can't think about it anymore. It was horrible," Violet said. "Maybe we should just remember Krissy and not think about her death or how awful it was. I mean, she had her bad sides and her good sides, just like we all do. But it's like, she was supposed to be with us at the Autumn Festival. And she was supposed to graduate this year. This was supposed to be the year when her whole life as an adult started. None of this was supposed to happen to her."

Violet felt her eyes welling with tears for reasons she couldn't quite explain.

Hannah and Pamela were both silent and stared at her, and Violet wondered if they were disappointed she hadn't grossed them out. She wondered if they really wanted to know what she had seen. It was too terrible, even for them.