Mr. Shayer, the photography teacher. Small man, balding, fogged coke bottle glasses, feral swooping mustache.
Miss Macht, the sophomore P.E. teacher, Varsity dance team coach, ex-pageant winner and desiccated float-bearer. Miss Osmond Who Knows When The Fuck. Gaunt arms, toned body, lacquered cryptkeeper eye shadow.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” she is saying to Mr. Shayer in her light smoker’s rasp as Beddy approaches. “Next year, we’ll probably have to institute a checkpoint…oh, sweetie, whatever happened to your dress?”
Beddy realizes no one else noticed. Miss Macht is the first. If only she could take these two teachers into her confidence. She wishes they were worthy.
“I ripped it. Um, it ripped.”
“Looks like it certainly did,” Miss Macht says, her eyes laughing, her mouth neutral in her sunburned steak face. “The tape rigging you have here? Wow.”
Miss Macht’s gown shimmers like pig’s blood.
“So do you have my bid there?”
“Bid. Right.” She shuffles through the small stack left. “Here it is. You and… Todd Fausette. Boy you guys are cutting it close. I guess you two decided to arrive separately?”
Beddy’s blood torches in her face. “Yes,” she says, taking the bid from Miss Macht’s weightless arm.
“Well, considering you just got here, is he right behind you?”
“What?”
“Todd. I have his bid right here, and we have about a half-hour till shutdown. Is he still thinking he can also be fashionably late?”
It finally hits her: Todd isn’t here. He didn’t take Kelsey. He wasn’t around for Duffy’s phone call. He never showed at all.
She does not know if this makes her more, or less, disgusted by him.
“He’s sick, actually. Something’s wrong with his spine.”
“Oh.” Miss Macht’s undead eyes blink twice with no emotion. “Please give him my best.”
Beddy tries to move past Miss Macht but the woman steps in front of her.
“I don’t knnnooww,” she says. She crosses her arms dramatically, puts her hand on her jutting chin. “Should I let you in, looking like you do?”
“What?” Beddy says.
“We’re tamping down on the dress code this year. In the past, there’s been too many of you coming in with tuxedo t-shirts, tennis shoes. It hurts the spirit of the event.”
“But the dress ripped on the way over here, and I didn’t have time to really fix it, and it’s the only nice dress I own-”
“Bedelia, Bedelia! I’m just kidding, sweetie.” Now she laughs with her mouth. Beddy catches boozy breath. “You’re fine. Go ahead in.” She signs off on the clipboard. “You’re all set.”
Beddy looks at Miss Macht the way you would a fart if it decided to talk. Then at Mr. Shayer, who looks as confounded and appalled as she feels.
“If you want,” Miss Macht says, “photos are being taken near the bar. It’s twenty-five dollars for twelve three by eights. Or maybe it’s twenty-five for three twelve by eights?” She laughs and rolls her eyes. “I’m such a ditz. Anyway, you can find out inside. As I said, it’s near the bar. It’s a virgin bar, though. Have a great time.” She smiles her contestant smile, as lifeless as Kelsey’s body lying in the street.
Beddy walks past the podium and up the red carpeted stairs. Halfway up she hears Miss Macht say to Mr. Shayer, or to no one in particular: “I was just kidding her. A good kid never hurt anybody.”