Student Body (Nightmare Hall) (16 page)

I pictured Hoop trapped beneath that tree limb in the middle of a roaring inferno, while the rest of us raced to safety. I felt sick.

“I
wanted
to stop and help him,” she said defensively. “I
wanted
to call the rest of you to come back and help me lift the tree limb. I couldn’t have lifted it by myself. But,” she spread her hands helplessly, “I could feel that awful heat on my face, like my skin was already burning, and the fire was racing along so fast. I imagined myself with horrible, ugly scars all over my face, and I couldn’t stand it. I knew no one would ever want to look at me again. People would turn away from me and they’d, shudder. I wouldn’t have any friends, and I’d never have a boyfriend again, never win another pageant, never get married and live in a nice house. I wouldn’t have any life at all.”

You mean like Hoop? I almost said.

“You were going to burn Eli and me alive. That’s a lot worse than panicking in the middle of a blazing forest fire and leaving someone who is trapped, Mindy. That’s cold-blooded, deliberate murder.”

Her cheeks reddened. “Well, I couldn’t
help
it, Tory! You were going to tell. Nat said so. Anyway, even though we all agreed, I knew from the beginning that either you or Eli would tell. How could I let that happen? How could I let the whole, horrible truth come out? My life would have been over. And that wouldn’t have been fair, because
I
didn’t die in that fire. I saved myself.” She actually sounded proud. Her eyes narrowed. “You can’t blame me, Tory. You should admire me. Everyone thinks I’m so dumb, that I almost wish I could tell them all how clever I’ve been.” She shook her head. “But, of course, I can’t. And you can’t, either.”

I had to keep her talking. “You staged the scene in the bathroom at Sigma house?” I asked. “You were never shocked at all?”

She paused. “Of course not, Tory. That’s why I couldn’t let the doctor finish her examination. She would have realized I hadn’t had any kind of electrical shock. So I split.” She grinned. “But I stole half a dozen boxes of gauze on my way out. I was running low. Takes a lot of gauze to completely cover someone my height.”

“She saw you leaving. But she thought you were with someone else, someone who was bandaged. So we thought you’d been kidnapped.”

She looked smug, pleased with her own cleverness.

“If you were worried about Eli and me,” I pressed,” why did you set fire to Bay’s car? He and Nat wouldn’t have told.”

“Well, that’s what I thought at first,” she said, pausing. “But then I decided it would be better to be really safe. You never know about people, do you? If anyone had told me I would abandon Hoop in the middle of a fire, I’d have told them they were crazy, that I would never do something so horrible. But they’d have been right, wouldn’t they? So, if I couldn’t even be sure what
I’d
do, how could I ever be sure what Nat and Bay might do? It just seemed safer, that’s all.” She made a move toward me, no expression whatsoever on her beautiful, un-scarred face. “I saw that rag-rope trick in a late movie. I was watching it with Hoop. I’ll bet he never in a million years thought I was paying that much attention, but I was.”

Her face changed then, from something beautiful and as close to perfection as most people ever want to be, into something cold and blank. Looking into that empty, icy mask was worse than confronting a face twisted with fury. You could maybe snap someone out of a rage by slapping them or screaming at them or grabbing hold and shaking them. But Mindy wasn’t lost. She knew exactly what she was doing. She no longer cared about anything except saving herself, and was willing to do anything to accomplish that. Even kill.

My back was pressed against the cables. Behind them, I knew, was nothing but empty space and some girders. Nothing to save me if I fell.

I had maybe half a second left to live.

“If Hoop hadn’t died all by himself,” she said softly, “I’d have had to suffocate him. Because he would have told exactly what happened. I’m so glad I didn’t have to kill him. I didn’t want to.” Speaking like a mechanical robot, with no feeling or emotion, she said, “I didn’t want to kill anyone. I had no choice. You can see that, can’t you, Tory?”

“No,” I said clearly, “I can’t.”

Her face changed, then. Her mouth twisted in anger as she uttered an oath, her eyes narrowed, and she threw herself at me, her hands reaching for my throat. “You would have
told
! she screamed, “
all
of you! You would have ruined everything! I’ve spent my whole life getting people to like me, and they would have hated me when they found out what I’d done. You would have
told
!”

I knew then, as I struggled against those amazingly strong hands, that Mindy was right. We would have told. We would have confessed. Because the lie was so much heavier than the truth, and we couldn’t have continued to carry if around with us. It would have dragged us down, and sooner or later, we would have had to unload it.

She knew us better than we did.

We began a wild, frantic dance around that steel platform high above the police and the ambulance and the fire truck and the burning car and the hospital personnel trying to save lives, unaware that I was up there trying desperately to save my own life.

She was so strong. Maybe it was her rage that gave her almost superhuman strength, or her desperation.

But I was desperate, too. I did not want to die.

Directly below us, the fire in the Dumpster burned steadily. Her hands on my throat, her face a mask of fury, she dragged me closer, closer to the elevator edge. My fingers were still clutching the steel cables, but the skin had broken on my fingertips, they were bleeding, and the pain was intense. I couldn’t hold on much longer.

I was sobbing from pain and terror as my feet were dragged closer to the platform edge. Mindy had to bend at the waist to keep her hands around my throat as I slid to a sitting position, still barely clinging to the cables.

Closer to the floor, I saw what she didn’t see. As she had unwound the yards of white gauze wrapped around her body, she had carelessly dropped it. It had collected into a high mound of white directly behind her feet. Like a rock. A soft, high, white rock.

She wasn’t looking behind her. Every ounce of her attention was focused on me, her eyes, white-hot with rage, narrowed and staring into mine. “Let go of those cables!” she hissed. “Give it up! Let
go
!”

I let go.

She had been pulling, tugging on me with all her might. The sudden release of my grip, like someone suddenly letting go of their end of the rope in a tug-of-war, threw her backward, off balance. She didn’t fall, but she stumbled drunkenly, and her hands left my throat.

She would have quickly regained her balance if there hadn’t been anything in her way.

But there was.

The heels of her feet collided with the thick mound of gauze, tilting her backward. Her mouth opened in surprise, her eyes widened, and her arms clawed the air for something to clutch.

There was nothing there for her to grab. Nothing but air.

She seemed to go over the edge so slowly, almost as if all those years of ballet lessons had given her grace even when she was falling to her death.

She never made a sound.

It must have been hours, days, years before I could summon up enough courage to crawl close enough to the edge of the platform and look down.

She had missed the blazing Dumpster.

She was lying on the ground right beside it, her arms and legs splayed out around her, her body lifeless.

She hadn’t burned to death like Hoop, after all.

But she had landed on that hard-packed ground on her face.

When they turned her over, she wouldn’t look anything like the Mindy we had known.

I lay my head down on the cold, steel platform, and cried for all of us.

S
INCE ELI AND I
were the only ones not hospitalized, we went together to the medical center to visit Nat and Bay. The arson investigators were meeting us there, where we would answer all of their questions truthfully. I had already been assured by the district attorney that I would not be charged with Mindy’s death. That thought had terrified me, since there hadn’t seemed to be any way to prove that I hadn’t pushed her off that elevator to shut her up.

But Mindy had kept a journal. It was supposed to be used to keep a record of her beauty pageant triumphs, but she had used it for daily events. The day they found that journal was the first day in a long time that I’d felt totally free again.

We would have to face the music for starting that fire. We wouldn’t be blamed for Hoop’s death, the more serious charge, since Mindy had detailed what had happened in her journal. But there would be consequences, serious ones, and we knew it.

Bay and Nat probably wouldn’t have gone along with our decision to confess if they hadn’t come so close to death in that explosion. Eli
had
seen the flaming rags, but not in time to yank the rope from the gas tank. The most he’d been able to do was shout at both of them to get the hell out of the car, which they had done. But they’d taken much of the impact of the explosion.

Both of Bay’s arms were broken and he had a serious concussion. Nat had been burned on her right leg, broken her collarbone and a wrist, and the entire right side of her face had been severely scraped when she was thrown to the hard ground.

Coming so precariously close to death had changed their minds about confessing, as it had mine. And it drew them closer together, which made me happy, because I want to be with Eli, not Bay. That’s okay with Bay now. He has Nat.

We’ve already talked to the dean. We’ll be on probation, possibly for the duration of our education, but at least we’re not being thrown off campus. As for the fire itself, the dean seemed to think we might be put to work alongside the rangers, restoring the park. And we’ll have to pay our parents back for the hefty fine they’ve had to cough up on our behalf.

My parents were
not
pleased. “Oh, Tory,” my mother said in that voice that means, “Oh, Tory, we thought you’d shaped up.”

I hope they’ll get over their disappointment.

Mindy’s mother never will. I felt really sorry for her. But maybe if she hadn’t raised Mindy to think the way she did, Mindy would still be alive. And Hoop, too.

I still wish, sometimes, that things were the way they were before.

But I’m learning to deal with the after.

We all are.

Diane Hoh (b. 1937) is a bestselling author of young-adult fiction. Born in Warren, Pennsylvania, Hoh grew up with eight siblings and parents who encouraged her love of reading from an early age. After high school, she spent a year at St. Bonaventure University before marrying and raising three children. She and her family moved often, finally settling in Austin, Texas.

Hoh sold two stories to
Young Miss
magazine, but did not attempt anything longer until her children were fully grown. She began her first novel,
Loving That O’Connor Boy
(1985), after seeing an ad in a publishing trade magazine requesting submissions for a line of young-adult fiction. Although the manuscript was initially rejected, Hoh kept writing, and she soon completed her second full-length novel,
Brian’s Girl
(1985). One year later, her publisher reversed course, buying both novels and launching Hoh’s career as a young-adult author.

After contributing novels to two popular series, Cheerleaders and the Girls of Canby Hall, Hoh found great success writing thrillers, beginning with
Funhouse
(1990), a Point Horror novel that became a national bestseller. Following its success, Hoh created the Nightmare Hall series, whose twenty-nine novels chronicle a university plagued by dark secrets. After concluding Nightmare Hall with 1995’s
The Voice in the Mirror
, Hoh wrote
Virus
(1996), which introduced the seven-volume Med Center series, which charts the challenges and mysteries of a hospital in Massachusetts.

In 1998, Hoh had a runaway hit with
Titanic: The Long Night
, a story of two couples—one rich, one poor—and their escape from the doomed ocean liner. That same year, Hoh released
Remembering the Titanic
, which picked up the story one year later. Together, the two were among Hoh’s most popular titles. She continues to live and write in Austin.

An eleven-year-old Hoh with her best friend, Margy Smith. Hoh’s favorite book that year was
Lad: A Dog
by Albert Payson Terhune.