Kill Marguerite and Other Stories (3 page)

Caty has died.

LEVEL ONE: THE ROPE SWING

BEGIN>> Caty is at the mouth of the trail, thinking how she only has one life left, but lucky for her she's getting the hang of this. So Caty balls up her fists and turns heel, marching back to the rope swing like she means business. She stops a few yards away behind a tree and listens to Kim and Marguerite sing The Ugly Song to Brendan.

“U. G. L. Y...”

Caty is about to make her move but stops a minute, thinking maybe she will pray first since last time didn't go so well, even though she was This Close to kicking Marguerite's tail for good. So she looks up at the sky or the heavens or whatever and closes her eyes and prays to God, “God, please let me kill Marguerite and win back my BFF—please?” And when she opens her eyes, she sees something glinting way up in the tree above her. What's that, she wonders, and thinks maybe it's a special weapon sent by God especially for her. So she climbs up the tree quietlike trying to hold in her grunts and see, she can't be that Fat if she can climb up a tree, now, can she? Finally she reaches the branch where the shiny thing is lodged, and look, it is a rifle:

Chime! This will be easy.

Caty slings the rifle over her shoulder and slides down the trunk to the ground. She grips the gun with both hands and pauses for just the right moment as Kim and Marguerite end their cheer with their hands on their hips, all attitude, all sassified with themselves, and this has got to be the exact right moment, Caty thinks, so she screams “Bite me you bitch,” and she shoots and she jumps and she shoots and she jumps again.

Wrong button.

Her cover's blown. Marguerite is whipping a grenade launcher from her back pocket, what! This is Caty's game! But Caty is figuring out her buttons and quick before Marguerite can get her first, Caty aims at the throat of the grenade launcher as Marguerite lines it up with Caty's head, and Caty shoots, BAMMMM, and the grenade launcher explodes, right in Marguerite's face, and Marguerite disintegrates into a pile of dust.

Ding-ding-ding-ding! LEVEL COMPLETE!

Caty's arms go up in slow-motion champion mode. The world fades out.

BONUS ROUND: SIXTH PERIOD

Caty is in Science class, dissecting a frog with her partner Betty Finn. Caty is wearing turquoise jeans and an itchy sweater and her gun is stuffed in the training bra she bought after the rope swing. Next to them, Christopher Smith is popping out his frog's eyeballs and saying “Hey Caty, dare me to eat these?” And Caty's saying, “No.” But he eats them anyway, after repeating more loudly his “Hey Caty, dare me to eat these?” and getting everyone else's attention, and everyone's like Ew, gross, Christopher Smith and Caty's like “[Eyeballs rolling in head].” Then he says “Hmm,” and belches and waves the smell around the room, but especially at Caty.

And everyone is laughing, that ridiculous freakish kind of laugh that doesn't seem like it'll ever end, ever, and then Marguerite who is an office aide this period, enters the room and everyone just sort of stops. The guys they are all like Ohhhh Marguerite she is so Pretty, and the girls are all fidgeting like Ohhh Marguerite do you think she thinks I'm Cool? Except for Caty who knows Marguerite must be destroyed.

Marguerite hands Mrs. Gill the slip she has come to deliver, then walks back to the door. Just as everyone is going back to their frog dissections and Mrs. Gill is waving the slip of paper at Howard Grey, Marguerite slinks over
to Caty and Betty Finn and leans against the lab counter with her arms across her chest.

“Hiya, Betty,” says Marguerite, and Betty's all like Gee whiz, Marguerite Thurwood likes me wow! And Betty smoothes her hair and smiles and says Hi back, and Marguerite says “So, Betty,” and now she has an audience, “aren't you afraid Blubberbutt here is gonna eat your frog? I can hear her stomach growling from Guidance.”

And Marguerite makes smacking noises and pretends to burp before erupting into snickers. Betty looks down at her specimen's split-open stomach.

Turning to Caty, Marguerite lowers her voice. “It's you and me after school, fatty. The trampoline. So like be there or
die
.” She picks up the frog by its paper towel and pushes it at Caty. “Eat me, eat me,” she snickers, and after Caty takes the frog lamely, because it has been handed to her, Marguerite saunters out of the classroom, her laughter ricocheting off lockers, like MWAH HA HA, like all the evil villains in all the cartoons that have ever been made, her topsytail swishing behind her.

Something glittery catches Caty's eye. She looks at the frog and sees that its heart is bright red and beating hard and strong. Oh, goody. Caty knows what to do. She picks up the frog and eats it. Ba-da-dum-chime! It tastes like preserved swamp, but in the swallowing she has earned a new heart, so take that, Marguerite, you're dead fucking meat.

And everyone is like dumbfounded and then retardedly hysterical over Caty's public feasting, but it's way beyond what everyone else thinks now, Caty thinks. Mrs. Gill asks Caty if she's all right and Caty just glares at her, burps really hard, and waits for the bell to ring.

LEVEL TWO: THE TRAMPOLINE

BEGIN>> The trampoline is this big old trampoline in Matt and Curtis Wheeler's backyard, and it's surrounded by woods on pretty much all sides, which is why it's so dangerous if you were to jump wrong or get pushed—you could go right into a tree, you know, and your whole face'd get slogged off by bark. It used to be fun and safe when Caty and Kim were in their heaviest BFF stage, when Kim liked Matt and Caty liked Curtis and they jumped and laughed and poked each other, and the boys doublejumped the girls to get them to go higher. Then Marguerite and Ellie moved in, you know, and that was the end of that. Everyone started getting rough and mean and tried to push each other into trees all the time, which Caty didn't like, not one bit.

But now she has an extra heart and a gun, and is dressed in her brother's camo, and so Caty is stealth magic. She decides to check out the scene before she makes herself known since she is smart like that. So she goes the back way through the woods to get to the trampoline, and tries to be quiet and not step on twigs, which are always so loud and revealing, especially when you're Fat like Caty.

So Caty is crouched low a few trees back and surveying the scene. Shelly and Kim are there, plus the Wheelers, Riley, Alex, Brendan, and Ray.

Suddenly the air beats red and the birds turn into exclamation points flying across the sky. Caty tenses. Marguerite slinks out of the Wheelers' house in black spandex ninja gear, handling some nunchucks and other ninja stuff, and Caty is like Uh-oh and Oh shit, perhaps she has underestimated her enemy.

“Oh Caty...Caty Caty fugly lady, how does your stomach grow?... Come out and fight, you fat chicken... Aww, is the fat chicken worried she'll break the trampoline?” Marguerite whooshes her nunchucks around expertlike and heck no, gun or no gun, Caty's not going in there.

She's in the process of backing away when she hears a gentle jingle coming from the action arena. Look, up there, in the tree above the trampoline, right above Marguerite's head, something glittery. Could it be... Superpowers? Caty zooms in—yes. Lodged in a big tree branch is a jetpack.

The game has now changed entirely.

So Caty pauses and wonders how she might grab the rocket pack without Marguerite strangling her with her nunchucks. Caty stands a minute, her mind chewing hard on this dilemma. And the smell of the woods is bringing back memories of last weekend, in the woods, at night, when they'd all gone camping, Marguerite, Shelly, Kim, and Caty, so deep in Marguerite and Shelly's backyard you could barely see the light from the Thurwoods' porch. And Caty is remembering how, when she had to go to the bathroom real bad, they wouldn't let her take the flashlight, so she just went in the woods, close, but not close enough for them to shine the flashlight on her naked bum; and how they wouldn't let her back in the tent afterwards until she'd gone all the way in the house
in the dark to wash her hands; and how, when she got back, there was no one in the tent, no one at all, and it was really creepy like in Unsolved Mysteries. She'd zipped herself in and waited for like an hour until she got too scared and had to pee again, she'd had a lot of Sprite, you know, and so she decided to leave the tent and go back in the house to sleep, they must have all gone in after her, that was it. So she unzipped the tent zipper and cautiously stepped outside. And as soon as she was out they all flew at her from nowhere, howling and laughing and screaming. And Caty was so scared she shrieked and peed her pants and then they made fun of her all the rest of the night and made her sleep in the bathroom, on the toilet, just in case.

And she had. Why had she done that? Why hadn't she just...

“Caty Caty fugly lady....”

“AWWARRWAWR!” Caty rips toward the trampoline with vengeance. In her rage she is blind to the fallen branch in her way and she trips over it and slips on the wet leaves, and wow, that was a bad entrance, like the worst entrance she could have made. One of her hearts flashes. Caty is down.

Marguerite swings around and sees Caty in the woods struggling to get up. She pulls her arm back, then throws. Here come the nunchucks, straight for Caty's neck.

Durnnh-durnnnh.

Caty has died.

LEVEL TWO: THE TRAMPOLINE