An Apple for the Creature

Low School RHYS BOWEN

Rhys Bowen currently writes two historical mystery series: the Molly Murphy novels, featuring a feisty Irish immigrant sleuth in 1900s New York City, and the lighter, funnier Royal Spyness series about Lady Georgiana, thirty-fifth in line to the British throne in the 1930s. Rhys’s books have received many award nominations and she has won thirteen major awards, including Agatha, Anthony and Macavity as well as Reader’s Choice for Best Mystery Series. Her books are definitely traditional mysteries so she loves writing short stories where she can reveal her inner dark and evil side. Rhys is a transplanted Brit, now dividing her time between California and Arizona, where she goes to escape the harsh California winters.

“Where are your two number-two pencils, properly sharpened?”

I looked up at a man who had a face like a skeleton—sunken eyes, skin stretched over cheekbones, thin humorless mouth. His glasses were perched on the end of a long nose and he was almost bald, too, completing the skeletonlike effect. He was wearing a grayish-white, short-sleeved button-down shirt with ink stains around the pocket, and a tie onto which egg had dripped at some stage. The word schoolteacher formed in my mind at the same moment that he repeated the question.

“Your two number-two pencils? Properly sharpened?” He paused, those colorless sunken eyes staring at me now with distaste. “You do have your two number-two pencils, properly sharpened, I hope?”

I patted my side, then looked around me. “I don’t seem to have brought a purse.”

He made the sort of tut-tutting noise I’d only read about before and gave a big dramatic sigh. “Not a good start to our first day, is it? The instruction sheet clearly told you that two number-two pencils would be required and that they should be properly sharpened as there is no sharpener available in the examination room.”

“I don’t think I received . . .” I stammered. “I don’t remember receiving any kind of instruction sheet.”

“Everybody is sent the instruction sheet in preparation for their first day,” the man said. “Clearly you chose to disregard the instructions. I shall have to report this to Ms. Fer.”

“Ms. Fur?”

“Our principal. And no, it is not spelled fur like the animal’s hair. It is Fer from the Latin ‘to do’ or ‘to make,’ as I’m sure you know, being a student of the subject.”

I nodded.

“I’m afraid Ms. Fer will not be pleased. Oh, dear me, no. We expect everyone here to obey the instructions to the letter.”

I shrugged. “Well, I’m sorry but I don’t remember receiving any instruction sheet. I guess it must have been lost in the mail. And I can’t make pencils appear out of thin air.”

He reached into his shirt pocket. “As it happens, I do have a pencil I can lend you, just for today,” he said. “To help you out this once. Until you know the ropes. But I expect it to be returned immediately after the examination, you understand. And don’t break the point because there is no way to sharpen it in the examination room.”

I stared at his pocket, blinked, then stared some more because I could have sworn there had been no pencil sticking out of that pocket before but now there appeared to be several. He handed it to me solemnly, as if he were bestowing a great gift. Then he glanced at his watch. “You’d better hurry. Showing up late for the examination is something that wouldn’t be so easily forgiven. Go on. Off you go.”

“Where is the exam room?” I asked. My heart was racing now.

“Didn’t bother to read that either, I see,” he said, looking down at me as if I were a hopeless case. “Not a good start, Miss Weinstein. Not what we expect here. It’s room six hundred and sixty-six. Off you go then. Hurry.”

He pushed open a door for me and I stepped through into a long hallway. It was dark and dingy, lined with lockers and with doors spaced at intervals along either side. From behind these doors came the occasional murmur of voices. But the hallway was deserted. Nobody to ask where I should go. Where the hell was I anyway? I tried to remember but my brain remained fuzzy. My nose twitched at the familiar smells—chalk and books and old sweaty socks and food left to go bad in forgotten lunch bags.

“High school!” I said out loud. That’s where I was. I was in a high school, but certainly not my own. My school was all glass and brightly lit hallways with murals on the walls. This one hadn’t had a paint job in years, nor had a janitor been around with a broom for decades, judging by the drifts of trash in the corners. I stopped walking. So what was I doing here? Why couldn’t I remember? The word accident formed itself at the back of my consciousness. Something to do with an accident. That was it—I’d been in the hospital. A bad accident, obviously, since I appeared to have lost my memory. Perhaps my parents had decided to send me to another school until I could catch up with the work I had missed. Perhaps I was only here to take an exam I had missed—the SATs? A college entrance exam? But wait—hadn’t I already taken my SATs? Or had that just been a practice test?

My stomach had tied itself into knots at the mention of the word exam. I couldn’t be late for an exam, whatever it was. I broke into a run, feeling my shoes, which were somehow too big at the heels, slipping off as I ran. Why was I wearing heavy, unfashionable shoes and not my usual heels? I tossed that thought from my mind. The only thing that mattered at this moment was to find the exam room and be on time.

I was never late for anything. I always aced exams. Honor student. Class president, that was me. And whatever this exam was, I’d ace it and get back to my own school and my old life because I sure as hell wasn’t staying in a dump like this. I almost skidded on a tossed banana peel. A door opened and a boy came out. Before I could ask him where I’d find the exam room he glanced in both directions, then took off at a run down the hall and disappeared into the gloom through more double doors at the other end. I glanced up as I saw a movement to my right. A girl was walking beside me—a dumpy, overweight girl with an awful haircut, an atrocious hand-knitted purple sweater and a long droopy skirt. Honestly, how could some people be so clueless about fashion sense? Didn’t she realize her clothes made her look like a pathetic, sagging balloon? No wonder she was sneaking along, cutting class. I would, too, if I looked like that.

I lifted my hand to brush my hair from my face and the girl did the same thing at the same time. I took a step forward and she had vanished. I stopped, stepped backward and she appeared again, looking at me with a puzzled expression.

“Wait,” I said and I saw her mouth move in sync with mine. Cautiously I lifted one hand, and to my horror she did the same. Was she making fun of me or what?

“Listen, you,” I said and took a threatening step toward her. She did the same. I froze as I realized I was staring into a mirror. This dumpy, clueless, disgusting person had to be me. I looked down and saw this was true. I was wearing a purple hand-knitted sweater and a long shapeless skirt. And as I touched the rough yarn of the sweater I remembered my mother making it for me. She was always knitting me things until I told her that there was no way I was ever going to be seen dead in something she made for me again. But that was after Sally Ann helped me lose weight and taught me how to dress.

So why had I gone back to looking like this? When had I put on all this weight I’d taken all that trouble to lose? And why wasn’t I even bothering to wear makeup? The accident—I thought. It must have been a really bad accident and I must have been in the hospital for a while and put on weight while I was there and my old clothes were the only things that would fit me. But would I ever have left the house willingly looking like this? I tried to remember getting ready this morning, eating breakfast, driving or taking a school bus, but no memories would come. I really was in a bad way, but I was sure of one thing: when I got home tonight I was going to burn these icky clothes and go on a crash diet until I looked like myself again.

Then I remembered the examination. That was more important right now than worrying about the way I was dressed. I peered through the half darkness to see if the rooms were numbered, but they were not. How was I supposed to find the six hundred hall if I didn’t know where I was now?

Simple, I thought. I’d find the office and have someone show me the way. And if I was late for the exam, they’d understand that I was new. At least I could make myself a bit more presentable before anyone saw me. I could slick back my hair and roll up that long skirt and perhaps I was wearing a T-shirt under the sweater. I ducked into a girls’ bathroom at the end of the hall and coughed as the smell of smoke met me. The air was so thick with smoke that the lighting created a red haze through which the shape of the sinks and the stalls beyond were only indistinct shapes. Then I saw that I wasn’t alone. Four girls, dressed in black, were lounging against the basins, smoking. They were all in tight, tight jeans and black T-shirts with skulls and similar scary images on them. They looked up with cold, predatory eyes as I came in. As the biggest one, wearing a studded leather jacket, turned to me, a trick of the reddish shadows almost made it look as if she had a tail. I gasped.

“Well, look what the cat just brought in,” she said. Two others straightened up.

“What do you think you’re doing, fatso scum?” The one in the studded jacket stepped right in front of me and blew smoke in my face. “Are you totally clueless? Don’t you know that this is the GothChix bathroom? Nobody else comes in here, not if they know what’s good for them. The last stupid girl said she really had to go, so could she possibly use the toilet. And you know—we let her. Well, actually we flushed her head down the toilet. And she was so scared she wet herself, remember?”

She looked to her friends for confirmation and they nodded, grinning.

“But her head wasn’t quite as round as yours. Yours would probably get stuck and the janitor would have to come and get you out.”

“Or she’d have to walk around with a toilet on her head all day,” someone else commented. “I’d like to see that.”

The other girls laughed.

“Wanna try?” She moved closer again.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, holding up my hands in front of me as if to ward off a blow. “I didn’t know. I’m new here. I don’t belong.”

“She’s right about that. She belongs at a bag ladies’ convention,” one of the other girls said. She gave me a shove, sending me sprawling into the big girl. The studs on that jacket dug into my cheek and I gave a cry of pain. They laughed again.

“What’s your name, bag lady?” she asked.

“It’s Amy. Amy Weinstein.”

“We won’t forget it, Amy Weinstein. We don’t like the look of you. You better watch yourself.”

Some of my innate spunk was resurfacing. “You can’t talk to me like that. I’ll report you to the principal.”

For some reason this made them roar with laughter. “Oh, that’s a good one,” one of the girls said, wiping her eyes.

“If she really wants to go see the principal, then good luck to her,” another said.

The big girl grabbed my sweater front and dragged me close to her. “I’ll tell you one thing, girl. You show your face in here again and we’ll pull out your eyelashes, one by one. Got it?” She gave me a hearty shove that sent me ricocheting off the basins and staggering into the tiled wall. “Now get lost.”

I fled, disgusted at myself for not standing up to them. The hallway was still deserted and opened into another, identical hallway. I must be really, seriously late for that exam by now. I wondered if I dared to report those girls and what they might do to me if I did. One thing’s for sure, I thought as I hurried forward, peering into the darkness that seemed even deeper in this hallway, there is no way I’m staying here. What were my parents thinking, sending me to a place like this? If it’s just one exam I’m supposed to take here, then fine, but I’m sure as hell not coming back.

Then a thought flashed across my consciousness. An image of a grave and I’m dressed in black and . . . my father is dead. I went to his funeral. I stopped walking and stood, frowning as I tried to make sense of this fact. How could that be? I tried to picture that funeral but nothing would come. A bell rang, jangling loudly above my head. Doors opened and students streamed out, making me feel like a salmon swimming upstream. I was pushed and jostled around as they hurried past.

“Wait,” I called. “I’m trying to find the six hundred hall. Room six hundred and sixty-six.”

They acted as if they hadn’t heard me. Their faces went past me in a blur. The hallway cleared until it was deserted again. I decided I should follow them—at least I’d have a chance of finding a classroom with someone in it before the next period started. As I walked on down the hall I heard the sound of knocking—a hollow hammering sound. It seemed to be coming from one of the lockers. I went over and listened. As well as the knocking I heard a muffled voice yelling, “Help, let me out.”

I opened the locker door and a small skinny boy half fell out. He was naked, wearing his underpants over his head. I helped him to his feet.

“Here,” I said, taking his underpants off his head. “You’d better put these on quickly. I won’t look.” I turned away.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve been in there since last night. I thought I was going to pass out from lack of air.”

“What happened to your clothes?” I looked in the locker.

“The jocks took them. I expect they’ve dumped them in the trash and they’ve been burned by now.”

“Come on,” I said. “I’ll take you to the principal’s office and you can report them. And you can telephone your parents for more clothes.”

“Are you crazy? I’m not going anywhere near the principal’s office,” he said. “I’m not that stupid. I’ll see if I can find something to fit me in the lost and found.” He started down the hall, but then turned back. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

“You should seriously report this. It’s not right. Bullies should be punished.”

“Happens all the time,” he said. “If you’re small they pick on you. Bullies rule here. You’re either the predator or the prey. And you’ll be prey, just like me.”

“Then transfer to another school.”

For some reason this made him grin. “You must be new,” he said.

“I am, and I’m supposed to be taking an exam, in the six hundred hall.”

“Room six-six-six?” he asked and made a face.

I nodded. “Can you tell me where it is? I’m already late.”

“Oh no. You’d better run. That direction. You keep going until the very end, then up the stairs to the top floor. It’s a long way. I hope they won’t give you detention on your first day.”

“Is detention that bad?”

He nodded silently. “The worst. It’s . . . down there, you know? You don’t want detention. Trust me.”

He scurried away in the opposite direction and I started to run again. It was hot and stuffy here and the sweater was way too thick and itchy. I felt perspiration trickling down under my arms and checked to see what I was wearing under that sweater. Nothing. Not even a bra. And it appeared that I had not used any deodorant because I stank. What was the matter with me—who let me leave the house dressed like this? I reached the end of the hall and as I pushed open the swinging doors into a stairwell another smell hit me. The faint odor of rotten eggs. Probably the science lab, I thought. An experiment gone wrong or students playing a trick on the science teacher by mixing the wrong chemicals.

I started up the stairs. The staircase was in almost total darkness and I kept going, up and up. I would never get to the exam at this rate. What would happen if I failed it? Or if they wouldn’t even let me take it because I was so late? Would that mean I couldn’t go back to my old school, or I’d fail my college entrance exam? I counted the floors and came at last to what had to be the sixth. How come a school this large didn’t even have an elevator? It must take forever to get between classes. My feet echoed on the vinyl floor and back from the tiled walls. Clomp, clomp, clomp. A door opened suddenly and an angry face looked out. A woman’s face, birdlike with a big nose and cold reptilian eyes.

“You, girl—what do you think you are doing?” she snapped. “Disturbing my examination.”

I glanced up at the door. The numbers 666 were now glowing over the door frame.

“I’m supposed to be here,” I said. “I’m to take this exam but nobody told me how to find the room. I’m sorry I’m late.”

“You will be sorry, if you don’t complete the exam in time,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Amy Weinstein.”

“Ah, yes. We were expecting you.” The smile on her face was not welcoming, but instead expressed malicious delight. “Amy Weinstein who thinks a lot of herself. Thinks she’s the cat’s whiskers. Overachiever—am I right?”

“I’m a good student,” I said. “I worked hard for everything I achieved. My parents didn’t have the money to send me to a good college so I had to get a scholarship.”

I paused as I said the words. Had I already gotten into college? In which case this exam meant nothing and I didn’t have to worry about it.

“We’ll see how well you do here,” she said. “You’d better not waste any more time. You do have two number-two pencils, properly sharpened?”

“I have one,” I said. “The man at the door lent it to me. I didn’t receive any instructions. Or I might have done, but I’ve been in an accident and lost my memory.”

“That’s a poor excuse for failure, isn’t it? Go on in and take a seat at an empty desk. You’d better work fast because you only have an hour left. You wouldn’t want to find yourself in remedial classes, I’m sure.”

“Remedial? I’m in the gifted program. I’m in Advance Placement English.”

“At your old school, maybe. Here the rules are a little different.” And she smiled again. She took me by the arm and propelled me inside. Her fingers dug into my flesh like talons.

The room was much bigger than I had suspected from the outside. It stretched away into more gloom with row after row of desks at which students were scribbling furiously. Nobody even looked up as I passed them to take my place.

“Begin immediately,” the bird-woman said and I turned over the sheaf of papers that lay on the desk.

Algebra, the first one was headed. Algebra, I thought. It’s been ages since I did algebra. How long had it been, exactly? So long ago I couldn’t remember studying it at all. Why couldn’t they have told me the subjects in advance? Then I could have studied up.

I focused on the first problem. If x and then a squiggly sign I didn’t recognize to y, and then a + b in brackets, can we say that z is greater than x is? I blinked, stared at it again. It made no sense, even if I did know what that squiggly sign meant. Surely you couldn’t have so many unknowns in one problem. But the other kids seemed to be working away as if they weren’t fazed at all.

I moved on to the second question. Draw a graph to show that x/y might tend toward infinity in the circumstances z squared is less than 100. Again it made no sense to me. I had done well enough in algebra, surely, but I’d never encountered anything like this. The thought struck me that perhaps this was some kind of advance placement exam for math whizzes. Well, that wasn’t me, anyway. I’d never claimed to be a math whiz. My strengths had always been in the arts—reading, writing, history, languages, that was where I shone.

I turned over the algebra sheet and flipped ahead to see how much of the exam was math. Then I heaved a sigh of relief as I saw pages of writing ahead. World history. Good. I’d ace this part.

Discuss the treaty of Nebrachshazar in fourth-century BC and how it affected the development of cuneiform writing for the Babylonian people.

Are we justified in saying that there was peace in Persia in the year AD 731?

Which Chinese emperor did more to hinder the spread of the Taoist philosophy—Yin Fu Cha or Tse Wong Ho?

My heart was racing now. My throat was so dry I couldn’t swallow. I didn’t know any of this stuff. I’d never learned it. Our version of world history didn’t stretch much beyond the Spanish conquests in the New World and some more memorable kings of England.

Another subject. There must be another subject I could do. English. Right. There was an English paper.

Which little-known imitator of Shakespeare also wrote a play that took place in Windsor? In what ways was it similar to the Merry Wives? Discuss the passages that were borrowed from Shakespeare.

Give examples of seventeenth-century treatises with a Roundhead slant and contrast them to similar works favoring the Cavaliers.

Early-twentieth-century Bulgarian Romantic poets—what do they all have in common?

“This is stupid!” I almost said the words out loud, then swallowed them back at the last moment. There was not one question I could begin to answer. I was going to fail hopelessly. I would be put in remedial classes with all the dummies I so despised. I saw myself clearly—sitting in class while some idiot asked a dumb question and the rest of us had to wait while the teacher explained it all over again. Now I’d be in class with kids like that.

No, I wouldn’t. This had gone on long enough. I wasn’t going to stick around here one moment longer. I’d go to the office, call my parents and tell them to come and get me. I rose to my feet.

“Where are you going?” the bird-woman demanded.

“I’m not staying,” I said. “I don’t want to be here. This school isn’t right for me.”

“Not as smart as you thought you were, huh?” she said. “Fine. I’ll tell the principal that you refused to take the entrance exam. I’m sure she’ll be wanting to meet with you anyway. We don’t tolerate lack of cooperation here.”

“Ooh, she’ll get detention,” someone hissed.

“Who said that?” The bird-woman looked up sharply. “You, boy. Did I say no talking after the examination has started or not?”

“Yes, ma’am, you did.”

“Then take your things and go. Your chance to redeem yourself has just ended.”

“But I didn’t mean . . .” he stammered. “Just let me finish it. I almost had it finished this time.”

“Rules are rules. Go.” She pointed at the door.

“You can’t expect me . . . You can’t make me . . .” he blurted out. “It’s not fair, you know.” His face looked a picture of misery. No, more than misery, torment. But he dragged his feet all the way to the door and it clanged shut behind him.

“Anybody else have something they’d like to say?” She turned back to the room.

Heads went down and everyone scribbled frantically.

“I have something I want to say,” I said. “This isn’t the Dark Ages. You don’t get the best out of students by intimidating them.”

There was a collective gasp.

“Oh, we will enjoy having you here, Miss Weinstein,” the bird-woman said. “We will find you a delightful challenge.”

“Too bad, because I’m not staying.” I walked to the door and went to pull it open. It wouldn’t budge. That boy had opened it easily enough and there didn’t appear to be any kind of lock.

I turned back to the teacher and she was grinning now, her face lit up with amusement. “You don’t get it yet. You will. Now go back to work. I say when this exam is over.”

I stood by the door. “Would you please open this door. I want to go home.”

“Unfortunately we don’t always get what we want, do we?” she said, going back to the papers on her desk. “We get what we deserve.”

“I don’t deserve to be treated like this. None of us do.”

She glanced up briefly. “Have you never treated others as if they were beneath you? Have you never gloried in your power over them?”

“No, never.” I blurted out the words but an image flashed across my mind—and I heard someone say, “Texas Chemicals versus Rodriguez.” What on earth did that mean? And yet it seemed vaguely familiar, something I had heard or read about before.

The bird-woman went back to her work and I went back to my desk. I turned over the next page hopelessly. Then suddenly I saw questions that I could do. U.S. Government and Constitution. I looked down the page.

What preceded the constitution, and why was it unworkable?

Yes, I could do this. I started to write furiously.

Which amendment . . . Yes, I knew that. I’d obviously just found the few stupid pages before and now I was back on track. They’d see that I knew my stuff—after all, if anyone knew about Congress, it should be me, right? I stopped writing and frowned at this thought. Why should I know about Congress?

“Ten more minutes,” the bird-woman said.

I went back to writing and then there was a snapping sound and the finely sharpened tip of my pencil broke off. I stared at it in dismay. I tried to write with the stub but it was impossible.

A bell rang, jangling loudly above our heads.

“Leave your papers on the desk and file out in silence,” the bird-woman said.

Reluctantly I left my unfinished government paper and joined the line. I saw a couple of kids take a look at me and then snigger. I joined them as they walked back down the six hundred hallway to the stairwell and fell into step beside a studious-looking girl. She was wearing glasses and was dressed in a dorky manner, like me, so at least I figured she’d be someone I could talk to.

“Hi,” I said. “What was that exam all about? I mean, did you know that crazy stuff?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I read the study sheets ahead of time. It was a cinch.” She went to walk on ahead of me.

“Wait,” I said. “I’m new here and I don’t like it.”

“Don’t like it?” She looked as if she was about to smile. “That’s funny. Do you think anyone likes it?”

“Then why put up with it? There are plenty of better high schools around. Normally, I go to Oakmont. It’s great. Very modern. Very academic.”

“I don’t know of any Oakmont.”

“Near the civic center and the freeway.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is the high school.”

“Well, I’m not staying. Can you tell me the way out?”

“Way out?” She looked puzzled.

“Yeah, the way out.”

“The way out?” she repeated, and she started to laugh.

“What’s wrong with you? Do you happen to have a cell phone on you so I can call my parents?”

“Cell phone?”

There was something seriously strange about this girl, or about this school, or both. “The office then, so I can call my parents to come and get me.”

“Nobody can come and get you, don’t you know that yet?” She pushed past me and almost ran to escape from me. I followed her down the stairs, staying close to the handrail because a tide of students was coming up.

“Out of the way, freak.” A boy in a letter jacket deliberately knocked into me. Luckily I held on or I’d have gone tumbling down.

This is like a nightmare, I muttered. Nobody will tell me how to get out. An exam with questions I can’t possibly answer. Then I stopped halfway down a flight of stairs, making those behind me barrel into me and start cursing. And I actually laughed. A nightmare. Of course. It was the classic nightmare that had plagued me all my life—the exam I was perennially late for. The exam with questions I couldn’t possibly answer. The strange building with no way out. That was it. I was dreaming. Now it all made sense. I’d been in some kind of accident and I was in a coma or something. And I’d wake up and everything would be back to normal again.

I finished the flight of steps with an almost jaunty tread. All I had to do was keep reminding myself that it was all a dream and I could handle anything. The students now seemed to be streaming along a different hallway.

“Where is everyone going?” I asked, hopeful that it might be the end of the school day and time to go home.

“Lunch, stupid,” a skinny freckled-faced boy said.

I followed along, although I didn’t feel hungry. The cafeteria was a huge subterranean room that echoed with noise, the clash and clatter of plates competing with the shouts of students. What’s more, it smelled terrible, like drains and boiled cabbage. I stood in line with the rest and inched my way toward a counter. Someone took a tray, so I did. A plate was banged down in front of me.

“Stew?” a helper behind the counter asked, and before I could answer, a great ladle of grayish, glutinous stuff was slopped into my plate. The helper gave me a toothless grin. “Vegetables?” she asked and dropped some gray boiled cabbage on top of the congealed mess.

“Wait,” I said, fighting back revulsion. “Is there a choice? Pizza maybe?”

The toothless grin widened. “Do you want it or not?”

I was pushed forward to where an old woman sat at a cash desk. “Five dollars,” she said.

“Five dollars? For this—” I went to say “crap,” then swallowed down the word at the last second. Then I remembered. “I don’t have my purse with me.”

“No matter. Put it on your tab, Miss Weinstein.”

How did they all know my name with all these thousands of students?

I carried my tray and looked around for a place to sit. Hostile stares or stupid giggles greeted me. I found an empty table far in a corner and sat down. I’d really have to do something about the way I looked. If this was a dream, I’d dream myself better looking. Better still, I’d dream Sally Ann into my dream and she could help me get back to my real self. I sat alone at that table and thought wistfully of Sally Ann, the first real friend I ever had. The only one who cared about me when I was a fat, clueless freshman and other kids picked on me or teased me. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d never have changed. I might not even have lived because when she came into my life I was seriously thinking of suicide. I’d started reading up on how many pills it takes to kill a person and I’d begun stealing my mother’s sleeping pills and my dad’s heart medication. Then she’d arrived and suddenly everything was fine.

“Hey, you.” A figure loomed over me. She was a gorgeous blonde, wearing a cheerleading outfit. “You’re sitting in my seat.”

“I didn’t realize we had assigned seats,” I said.

Her friends had come up behind her now, more cheerleaders and a couple of jocks in letter jackets. They burst out laughing.

“Are you totally clueless?” the blonde said. “This is the table we want and so you move. Got it?”

“Why should I have to move?” My fighting spirit had returned.

“Because we say so and we count and you’re nothing. Go on, beat it.”

“And if I won’t move?”

“I do this,” the girl said and before I could dodge she grabbed my head and rammed it down into my plate. Hot rancid fat went up my nose and I coughed and gagged. I fought to sit up as she held me down.

“Let her up, Tracy. Or she might die,” one of the other girls said and they roared with laughter.

The girl released me. “Got the message?” she said. “Go on, get lost.”

I got to my feet, wiping my eyes with my hand because I didn’t seem to have a napkin.

“You guys need to learn that bullying is not acceptable,” I said. “I’m going right now to report you to the principal and to make an official complaint.” I looked around, noticing that the cafeteria had become suspiciously quiet and that other kids were watching us. I turned to them. “What’s wrong with this place?” I demanded. “Don’t you realize that it’s so much nicer if we all get along? If we can’t be kind to each other in a school, in a community—what chance do nations ever have to live in peace because the whole of society is at war. Gangs, cliques, police brutality—what do they achieve except to make one person feel superior and others angry and inadequate?”

There was dead silence and the thought struck me that I’d made this speech before. I saw myself on a podium and the crowds were cheering and applauding. “I made this speech when I was running for Congress,” I said and even as the words came out I realized how ridiculous they sounded. The kids burst out laughing. I was about to go and find a bathroom that wasn’t inhabited by a wolf pack when someone near me called out, “Hey, Joshua! Dave’s looking for you.”

And it was as if I’d been struck by lightning. Dave. That name meant something to me—I’d been married to Dave and our baby son had been named Joshua. Suddenly I saw it all clearly—the apartment on the Upper East Side and the sun streaming in through the window with the view of Central Park and Dave saying, “It’s no use. It’s not working, Amy. You’re married to your ambition, not to me.” Then he put a hand on my shoulder. “It was never the same after Joshua died, was it?”

I stepped out into a deserted hallway, digesting this vision. I wasn’t really in high school. I was grown up and I’d been married and Dave had left me because Joshua had died and he couldn’t handle it. And I was a successful lawyer who was running for Congress. And I wore high heels and designer suits and had my hair styled by the best stylist in the Village. And I remembered the accident now—driving too fast because I was late and the van that came unexpectedly from my left. . . .

A hand grabbed my shoulder. “The principal wants to see you,” a voice said. “This way.”

“Fine,” I thought. What could the principal do to me? I’d tell her she was only a figment of my imagination and pretty soon I’d wake up.

Down the stairs we went. It was hot and stuffy down here and it crossed my mind to wonder why the principal chose this part of the school for her office. The boy who had been escorting me knocked on a door. It read, “Ms. Fer. Principal.”

“Enter,” said a voice.

“The girl you wanted, Ms. Fer,” the boy said and shoved me inside. Ms. Fer was sitting at a polished mahogany desk. She looked like an older version of me—immaculately dressed in a black suit and white blouse, hair streaked with gray but perfectly cut, face still unlined, gold pin in her lapel, long red fingernails.

I was horribly conscious of how I must look—the purple sweater now streaked with congealing stew, my hair sticky, my face a mess.

“I don’t really look like this,” I said. “Some bullies jammed my face into my plate.”

“I heard you caused a disturbance in the cafeteria.” Her voice was low, smooth and commanding.

“I caused? Listen, I was sitting there, minding my own business.”

“I hear you’ve been nothing but trouble since you arrived, unprepared, this morning. We don’t tolerate troublemakers here.”

“Then expel me. I’m not staying anyway. And if you really want to know, this isn’t the real me. I’m not even a high school student any longer. I’m grown-up and successful and I look great and you’re just in my hallucination, so I don’t really care what you say.”

“So you never really looked the way you do now?” She leaned forward as if she was interested.

“Well, yes, I guess I did. When I first went to high school I was overweight and a dork and clueless about clothes and I had no friends. And people picked on me, just like here.”

“You were desperately unhappy.”

“Yes.”

“So much so that you were thinking of taking your own life.”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“But you decided not to.”

“I made a friend. And she took me under her wing. She rescued me.”

“Tell me about this good friend of yours.”

She leaned forward, smiling encouragingly, seeming to give the impression that she was on my side, a pal.

I found myself smiling, too, at the memory. “Her name was Sally Ann. She was Chinese American—really attractive and petite—and spunky. She wasn’t afraid of anyone. You should have seen the quick answers she came up with to the bullies and jocks. She could wipe the floor with them.”

“A bad girl, then?”

“No, not bad. Stretched the rules a bit. Taught me how to sneak out of class undetected, how to write my own excuse notes. That kind of thing. Oh, and taught me how to smoke. But nothing too terrible. It was just that my whole world changed when she took me under her wing. She told me she could make me popular like her and it was true. By the time she left, I was in with the popular kids and I never looked back.”

“A good friend indeed.”

“Yes, but . . .” My smile faded. “She left suddenly and she never said good-bye. So all my life I wondered what happened to her . . . whether she got pregnant or into some other kind of trouble? She had a bad home life, she told me, so I wondered if there was something with her parents that forced the family to leave or made her run away.” I paused, a clear image of Sally Ann coming into my brain. She was laughing as we climbed up the hill behind my house together, her black hair blowing out in the wind. Not a care in the world. And the next Monday she hadn’t shown up for school. “If only she had contacted me, I’d have wanted to help her,” I finished.

“Tell me about the time she made you the offer to help you become popular,” Ms. Fer said.

Suddenly I could see it clearly, almost as if a movie were playing inside my head. She is sleeping over at my house and she says, “You know, you could be really pretty and you’re smart. All you need is a little help. I could lend you some clothes that are too big for me, and help you diet and teach you how to act cool like me. In no time at all I guarantee you’d be popular.”

“Are you serious?” I ask.

“Trust me. It will be a cinch.”

“I’d do anything,” I say.

She laughs. “You mean you’d sell me your soul and your firstborn child?”

I’m laughing, too. “And anything else you’d like. Willingly.”

She takes a piece of paper. “We have to do this formally,” she says and she sticks a pin into my finger. “Ow,” I say as a drop of blood falls onto the paper. “Go on, sign your name,” she says, and I do it. Then she signs hers.

I look up and realize that Ms. Fer has been watching the same scene unfold. “And what happened after that?”

“You know,” I said, “it all happened like she said. She came to my house with these fabulous clothes and I lost weight and I really did become popular. Next year I made the cheerleading squad and then student council, and I was homecoming princess. I never looked back. I wished many times that she could have seen me and I could have thanked her.”

“So you went from strength to strength,” Ms. Fer said quietly. “Straight A’s in college, Harvard Law School and then you got a reputation as a dynamite lawyer who would stop at nothing to win a case, not even if it meant ruining lives, wrecking companies and homes.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” I said, frowning. “I like to win, that’s for sure. I was being paid to win cases.”

“What about Bradley versus that steel company? What about the Emerson case?”

My frown deepened. “They were unfortunate, but those people were in a downward spiral anyway.” Then I looked up. “How do you know about them? Have you been following my career?”

“Oh, I know everything about you, my dear,” she said. “Remember that piece of paper you signed? I happen to have it here.” She handed it to me. “I, Amy Weinstein, hereby give my soul and my firstborn child to my friend Sally Ann in return for learning how to become gorgeous and successful and popular.” There was my signature, written in dark brown dried blood, and under it, Accepted. S.A. TAN.

I looked up in horror. “It says Satan.” I could hardly get the words out. “Are you trying to tell me that she—that she was the devil in disguise?”

“What do you think?” Ms. Fer asked evenly. There was the hint of a smile on her face.

Anger welled up inside me.

“She tricked me. That was terrible. She got me to sign my soul away through trickery.”

Ms. Fer shook her head. “You said you would have done anything and at that moment you would have given anything to her, even your soul.”

“But I was a stupid kid. That’s totally unfair.”

“Whoever said that Satan had to play by the rules?” she said. “And Satan doesn’t have to have horns and a red face. He has to appear in a form that humans find seductive, otherwise he’d have few converts. You needed a best friend—a spunky, pretty best friend.”

I stared at her, openmouthed, as something else occurred to me. “My firstborn child,” I whispered. “Joshua. He was born perfect. Nothing wrong with him. And then a few hours later he suddenly stopped breathing for no reason. The doctors said something about underdeveloped lungs, but you should have heard him cry when he was born. He had a loud, perfect cry.”

“Yes, he did, didn’t he,” she said. “I did hear his cry. A lovely little fellow. I actually had a glimmer of remorse about taking him. But a contract is a contract, as you yourself said many times in court.”

For the first time I saw her name plaque on her desk. Ms. Lucy Fer.

“Am I in hell?” The words came out as a whisper.

“What do you think?”

“Either I’m still in a coma after that accident and this is a horribly real hallucination or . . .”

“You’re not in a coma any longer,” she said. “You never woke up. You slipped away and I was waiting for you.”

“But that’s not fair,” I said. “I can’t be in hell. Hell is for bad people—criminals, murderers.”

“You’re a murderer.”

“I am not.”

“The auto accident that sent you to us. You plowed into a van carrying a family. A mother and her three children. One of them was a baby of three months old. The van caught fire. They were all trapped inside and died a most horrible death.”

“But it was an accident. You said so yourself. I didn’t want to kill anybody.”

“But you ran the red light because you were in a hurry. You didn’t want to be late, did you? So you took the risk.”

I winced as she said the words. The full memory had come back to me now. I could see myself, gripping that steering wheel, my face consumed with anger. The bastard. The underhanded, sneaky bastard. How could he pull a trick like that?

“I couldn’t be late. I was told at the last minute that my opponent had shown up unexpectedly at the county fair and was going to make a speech. Sneaky tactics. He knew I was scheduled to speak there that afternoon. So I had to be there when he spoke to defend myself.”

“So you thought you could flout the law and run a red light.”

“Look, I’m sorry it happened but that van must have jumped the light, too.”

Ms. Fer shook her head. “On the contrary. The van could not have jumped anything. It was so old it could only creep along. It lacked the acceleration to get out of your way when it saw you coming. The family was poor, you see. The father had lost his job when your law firm put his company out of business. I believe you represented the bank in court on that one, didn’t you? And won your case yet again?”

“I was paid to win cases,” I said. “I was good at what I did. And I worked for whomever retained us.”

“Big business,” Ms. Fer said. “Chemical companies. Tobacco. Multinationals.”

“They paid well.”

“They destroyed lives. Texas Chemicals versus Rodriguez. You remember that one?”

Funny, that had been the thought that had popped into my head once before today. I nodded.

“Family lost three children to leukemia directly linked to outflow of toxic waste, correct?”

“It was not proven that there was a link.”

“YOU managed to prove that there wasn’t a link.”

I stared at her angrily. “I was no worse than anyone else trying to make a good living. And I was running for Congress, for pete’s sake. I wanted to help my country.”

“You wanted to fuel your ambition. That relentless, driving ambition. You had to be best, top dog, didn’t you? It’s no use, Amy Weinstein. You can’t hide anything from me. You see, I made you what you are. I saw a good brain and a desire to prove yourself and I molded you. You’ve always been my creature. Always been destined for here.”

“So is this farce of a high school the preliminary for hell? Do I have to graduate over again? Do I get some better-looking clothes?”

She smiled now. “Oh, no, my dear. You don’t get it, do you? This is hell. Your hell. For ever and ever.”

I smiled back now as a thought struck me. “Did it not occur to you that now that I know where I am, now that I know the ropes, I can survive here pretty well? I used to be a hot shot at my high school. I can become that again. I can look good and speak out against unfairness and get other kids to rally around me. I’m a natural leader, you know.”

“You became a natural leader after you had given me your soul.”

“So? Does it matter when I found my voice?”

“Very much. You see, you’ve now gone back to what you were before I transformed you. From now on every morning will be a new day for you. You’ll start the day knowing nothing—lost, blundering, pathetic without your number-two pencil to take the exam—just the way you were when Sally Ann found you at your old high school.” She watched the panic growing in my eyes, and the satisfied smile spread across her face. “Every now and then you’ll have a flash of memory, just to remind you what you have lost. But as time goes on, these memories will fade until all you’ll know is that you’re the new girl at this school—the fat girl, the misfit. Every day. For the rest of eternity.”

I stared at her. “Is there no way out?” I whispered. “No way to redeem myself? There is good in me, you know. A real desire to help. I could do good.”

“Too late, Miss Weinstein,” she said. “Your future was sealed when you sold me your soul. Now you’d better hurry. It wouldn’t do to be late for PE class.”

I got up and tried desperately to think. Some way out. There was always an escape clause.

“Wait,” I said, turning back to face her. “That contract. In the state of New York a minor cannot enter into any manner of contract without the consent of a parent and the signature of same parent. We were in the state of New York when that contract was signed. Hence it is null and void. That contract does not exist, Ms. Fer.”

I reached across the desk, took the sheet of paper and tore it in half.

I saw a flicker of amusement go through those narrowed eyes. “You obviously don’t read the small print, Miss Weinstein,” she said. “That statute does not apply to contracts signed in blood. The laws governing those contracts are far older than the state of New York. They go back to the dawn of humanity.”

“I don’t agree,” I said. “A contract signed in the state of New York is governed by the laws of that state. And a contract signed under coercion or pretense can be disputed in any state.”

“Oh, I shall enjoy having you here, Miss Weinstein,” she said. “Such an enjoyable challenge. Most poor wretches simply resign themselves to their lot.” A bell sounded in the hallway outside. “Now you had better hurry. The PE teacher is not as tolerant as I am.”

I came out of her office into the hallway that was already swarming with students. I joined the throng but my brain was already racing. I wasn’t going to let her beat me. There was always a loophole. There had to be a celestial court to which I could appeal, and when they heard how she had tricked me, they’d judge in my favor. I had never lost an important case in my life and I wasn’t about to lose this most important one!

I strode out now.

“Hey, watch it,” one kid said as I bumped into him.

“You watch it yourself,” I answered. A plan was already forming in my head. First step was to get out of these awful, ugly clothes. I’d go into the locker room and help myself to some better items while everyone was at PE. Supplement those from the lost and found. Find myself a locker to hide the stuff away, in case I found myself dressed like this tomorrow. Oh, and steal a hairbrush, too. Surely everything was fair game in hell?

And then? I’d have to work quickly while my mind was still razor sharp. There must be other students like me, sentenced unjustly, tricked into being here. I’d find them and motivate them. We’d form a movement. It would grow until the whole school was behind me. And we’d take over the school, and I’d represent each of them in the celestial court and we’d win.

You’re going down, Ms. Fer, I vowed to myself. I found the library and pushed open the door. I had some planning to do, and some studying. If I had to take those tests again tomorrow, I planned to ace them. I’d be prepared.

I’d already stolen two number-two pencils, properly sharpened, from Ms. Fer’s desk.