right, shouldering them open and darting into a cafeteria full of girls.
TWENTY-TWO
Fighting Dirty II: Food Fight Boogaloo
This isn't your typical grade-school cafeteria.
Girls sit at round wooden tables, not long ones of steel and laminate. Beneath their feet is a dusty old red carpet. Above their heads are not buzzing fluorescents but rather chandeliers with a warm golden glow.
At the far end are the food stations. Drink machine. Buffet. A guy in a froofy white chef hat slicing prime rib like he's serving guests at the White House.
The smells hit her: gravy and pizza and something sweet, something with apples and cinnamon. Hunger pangs tweak her gut.
I wish I had school food like this , she thinks.
No time to take it all in.
Because her pursuers are upon her.
As everybody stares, Miriam darts between tables.
A younger 'tween in pigtails crosses in front of her with a tray. Stops, stares, a deer in headlights.
Miriam moves right, ducking away from Roidhead's swiping hand as she hops up onto one of the tables and runs straight across it. Her foot lands on someone's plate and she almost loses her balance and busts her head but her arms pinwheel and her legs catch up with her body and somehow she recovers.
She jumps to the ground. Flits past one girl just standing there like a dummy, past another loading books into her bag.
The guards don't cross the tables. Mario (or is it Ron Jeremy?) is falling behind.
Oh, what a week's worth of porn will do for your POV.
Roidhead, though, this guy's a bull in a China shop. His elbows are knocking past girls left and right. Tables bump. Drinks spill. Girls shriek. He's got a vein sticking out on his bald head that looks big enough to grab onto with both hands – like the handlebars on a Huffy bike.
Miriam grabs food off a plate, hurls it at his head. A chicken leg thuds dully between his eyes, then plops to the floor.
She turns, slaps her chest. "What? What? You want a piece?"
As he closes in, she kicks a chair in front of him.
Need an out , she thinks .
The exit is behind her. Red glowing sign. Emergency door.
There.
She turns again, bolts for the door, pulls a rack of trays – all with old food spackled to them – behind her, and it collapses with a clatter.
He leaps over it like a beefy, grunting gazelle.
She turns to run toward the door.
Just as a young girl is coming out of the cafeteria restroom–
A black girl. Hole in her nose where a nose-ring once went. Her hair frizzy and wild, like she dipped her toe in a cup of water and then stuck it in a light socket.
Her face pulses. The image of a skull, ochreous and watery as though bobbing in a jar of formaldehyde, floats over her face.
As though projected there from afar.
Miriam tries to avoid her, but the girl zigs when Miriam zigs, and she holds up her hands and Miriam holds up hers and–
Burning flowers. Orange oil. This time in a rusted husk of a burned-out school bus. The girl lies on the doctor's table. Same girl. Older by two years.
"She wrung her hands and groaned and cried
And gnawed her tongue before she died.
Her nails turned black, her voice did fail
She died and left this lower vale."
The song, sung. The man in the bird mask, the man with the swallow tattoo, here he is, axe in hand. He thrusts his foot down and locks the table brake to stop the table from rolling because the bus sits on a slight lean.
Barbed wire gag. Slashed Xs in the palms and the feet. All her hair's been cut off, clipped off into ragged puffs as though by an eyeless barber.
She screams as the man steps up onto the ruined bus seats to get into position.
He stands over her. Singing. Voice up and down. A man's voice. A woman's. A child's. Back again, warbling between them
"May this a warning be to those
That love the ways that Polly
TWENTY-TWO
Fighting Dirty II: Food Fight Boogaloo
This isn't your typical grade-school cafeteria.
Girls sit at round wooden tables, not long ones of steel and laminate. Beneath their feet is a dusty old red carpet. Above their heads are not buzzing fluorescents but rather chandeliers with a warm golden glow.
At the far end are the food stations. Drink machine. Buffet. A guy in a froofy white chef hat slicing prime rib like he's serving guests at the White House.
The smells hit her: gravy and pizza and something sweet, something with apples and cinnamon. Hunger pangs tweak her gut.
I wish I had school food like this , she thinks.
No time to take it all in.
Because her pursuers are upon her.
As everybody stares, Miriam darts between tables.
A younger 'tween in pigtails crosses in front of her with a tray. Stops, stares, a deer in headlights.
Miriam moves right, ducking away from Roidhead's swiping hand as she hops up onto one of the tables and runs straight across it. Her foot lands on someone's plate and she almost loses her balance and busts her head but her arms pinwheel and her legs catch up with her body and somehow she recovers.
She jumps to the ground. Flits past one girl just standing there like a dummy, past another loading books into her bag.
The guards don't cross the tables. Mario (or is it Ron Jeremy?) is falling behind.
Oh, what a week's worth of porn will do for your POV.
Roidhead, though, this guy's a bull in a China shop. His elbows are knocking past girls left and right. Tables bump. Drinks spill. Girls shriek. He's got a vein sticking out on his bald head that looks big enough to grab onto with both hands – like the handlebars on a Huffy bike.
Miriam grabs food off a plate, hurls it at his head. A chicken leg thuds dully between his eyes, then plops to the floor.
She turns, slaps her chest. "What? What? You want a piece?"
As he closes in, she kicks a chair in front of him.
Need an out , she thinks .
The exit is behind her. Red glowing sign. Emergency door.
There.
She turns again, bolts for the door, pulls a rack of trays – all with old food spackled to them – behind her, and it collapses with a clatter.
He leaps over it like a beefy, grunting gazelle.
She turns to run toward the door.
Just as a young girl is coming out of the cafeteria restroom–
A black girl. Hole in her nose where a nose-ring once went. Her hair frizzy and wild, like she dipped her toe in a cup of water and then stuck it in a light socket.
Her face pulses. The image of a skull, ochreous and watery as though bobbing in a jar of formaldehyde, floats over her face.
As though projected there from afar.
Miriam tries to avoid her, but the girl zigs when Miriam zigs, and she holds up her hands and Miriam holds up hers and–
Burning flowers. Orange oil. This time in a rusted husk of a burned-out school bus. The girl lies on the doctor's table. Same girl. Older by two years.
"She wrung her hands and groaned and cried
And gnawed her tongue before she died.
Her nails turned black, her voice did fail
She died and left this lower vale."
The song, sung. The man in the bird mask, the man with the swallow tattoo, here he is, axe in hand. He thrusts his foot down and locks the table brake to stop the table from rolling because the bus sits on a slight lean.
Barbed wire gag. Slashed Xs in the palms and the feet. All her hair's been cut off, clipped off into ragged puffs as though by an eyeless barber.
She screams as the man steps up onto the ruined bus seats to get into position.
He stands over her. Singing. Voice up and down. A man's voice. A woman's. A child's. Back again, warbling between them
"May this a warning be to those
That love the ways that Polly
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