She has had enough, and yet.
He looks up. “Hey Bedelia. I would, but. I gotta sit here, sorry. I’m waiting for my date.”
Beddy looks at the table where he’s sitting. Scraggly lemon slices loll at the bottoms of pitchers that once held water.
“She’s been in the bathroom for a while,” he says. I’m starting to get worried.” He suddenly perks up. “Maybe you could go in and check on her?”
Beddy strides quickly from the table toward the back exit, balling her fists as she walks. Two male teachers man the door. One, Coach McKeeting, blocks the left push-handled door entirely, his arms crossed in front of him, his brawn busting from his tuxedo. The other, an older, longhaired teacher, is to the right of the doors, leaning upright against the wall. He appears to be asleep.
“There’s no more in and out privileges,” the awake one says with a sad shake of his bullet head.
“It’s the last fucking song!” she says, and throws open the right door so hard on “song” the front of it bangs against the wall outside and almost catches her shoulder as it ricochets back toward her before the springs kick in and guide it slowly back into place, and she steps around it.
Her face is hot and she looks over the railing at the sea, black and hysterical, pushing at the pilings below. She leans against the railing and closes her eyes. The air, wet from seawater and sky, cools her face.
She feels like a failure. She failed at Formal. Not that everything was her fault, exactly, but she couldn’t save it. From the moment Duffy and Todd conspired, she was doomed. So she showed up. So what? Her enemies didn’t. The people who did looked just as disheveled as she. She thought she’d wanted her enemies to see her, but she secretly, unbeknownst even to her, wanted everyone to. Really wanted it. “What happened to her?” she wanted people to think. “I hope she’s okay.” With the riot earlier, she didn’t even get that satisfaction, the victim’s validation. She was invisible. What did she think she’d get out of coming here? She’s so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid-
Something collides with her left shoulder and she’s thrown sideways. She opens her eyes as she’s stumbling, seeing it’s that goddamn murdersome exit door, and she falls out of one of her heels and catches her balance. In her mind, though, she’s still flailing, and her momentum is carrying her over the railing to the restless water below, and she is crying for help, but no one can hear her.
But she’s fine, and although she can taste the saltwater in her mouth, she has to remind herself of that fact as she bends down to slip back into her heel. When she stands up, she’s facing a phone booth, and it only takes a second for her to register which one.
She knows it’s only a case of limited vantage point, that she naturally didn’t see it when she stepped outside, but it’s hard for her not to think it materialized just now. Overcast as it is, the booth is lit with a malevolent glow. She walks toward it, beckoned. She picks up the phone and listens, almost expecting that Duffy is on the line, somewhere, that they’ve only switched portals into the telecommunication ether.
“Please deposit your payment to place your call. If this is an emergency, you may dial 9-1-1 toll-free.”
She slams the phone into its cradle, and something comes falling out of somewhere in the machinery that she tries to instinctively catch, but it’s too tiny. Crouching, she examines the object. She tenses.
It’s a green toothpick, as undeniable proof as he scrawling “Duffy Was Here” on the walls of the booth, then the date and time. He must’ve set it on top of the box while he called her. She picks it up and drops it into her purse and steps out of the booth.
The exit doors are propped open now as the attendees file out, and she joins them down the cement ramp. At the bottom, a slack gauntlet of parents watches for their progeny. One is Mrs. Kechicheva, infamous to her daughter Thea’s classmates for staying the whole first week of Kindergarten, and the first day of every grade until sixth.
Beddy wonders what it would’ve been like if she and Thea had switched mothers at birth. Poor Thea. The other parents look mostly concerned or annoyed, but Mrs. Kechicheva looks strangled with worry.
The parking lot is mostly returned to stasis. The ambulance is gone, as well as the tow truck that must have borne it, the fire truck, the boy in the blue suit, and the riot gear cop. A squad car and police van remain, their lights flashing listlessly. So do the barricades, streaked with that pervasive orange dye. A colossally tall policeman in a short-sleeved uniform sweeps glass and debris into a pile using a pushbroom. As she walks past him he stops pushing briefly.
“Drive safe,” he says mournfully.
She tries to smile, and keeps walking. Her feet and head hurt. No, everything.
The cop who stopped her car earlier is standing in roughly the same place, and as she passes him he makes eye contact with her. “Drive safe,” he says scoldingly.
She unlocks her car and flops down into the front seat, spent beyond what can be quantified. She’s not even positive she should drive right now, but she knows there’s no way else she can get home. She looks out her windshield through the gaps in the guardrail at the sea. Eyes the key in her hand.
If she drove through the guardrail right now, maybe that would be easiest.
Maybe she wouldn’t have to die.