Size 12 Is Not Fat (29 page)

I glance at Sarah. She’s looking out the window, desperately hoping, I can tell, that someone will walk by and notice what’s going on inside.

But it’s raining so hard, no one is on the street. And the few people who are out hurry past with their heads tucked beneath umbrellas.

“It was the same with
him
,” Rachel says. “I wanted him, so I did what I had to in order to get him. I knew I wasn’t his type. I figured that out after he…left me. Which is when I knew. I knew I had to make myself over to
be
his type. You wouldn’t understand that, of course. You and Sarah, you think men should want you because of your
personality,
don’t you? But men couldn’t care less about your personality. Believe me. If you hadn’t let yourself go the way you did, Heather, you’d still have Jordan Cartwright, you know. All that fuss about wanting to sing your own songs. My God, you think he
cared
about that? Men don’t care about smarts.
After all, what’s the difference between a blond and a mosquito?”

I shake my head. “Honest to God, Rachel, I don’t—”

“A blond keeps on sucking, even after you slap her.” Rachel throws back her head and laughs some more.

Oh yeah. I’m a dead woman. No doubt about it.

She’s crazy. I mean, only a lunatic would stand there, telling me dumb blond jokes, while threatening me with a stun gun.

I’ve dealt with lunatics before. I worked in the music industry all those years. Nine out of every ten people I’d met back then had probably been clinically insane, including my own mother.

Can I talk Rachel out of trying to kill me?

Well, I can try.

“Seems to me,” I say carefully, “that the person you ought to be angry with is Christopher Allington. He’s the one who
did you wrong, Rachel. He’s the one who betrayed you. How come you’ve never tried to toast him?”

“Because he’s my future husband, Heather.” Rachel glares at me. “God, don’t you get it? I know you think men are disposable. I mean, things didn’t work out with Jordan, so you’ve just moved on to his brother. But I, unlike you, believe in true love. Which is what Christopher and I have. I just need to get rid of a few distractions, and then he’ll come around.”

“Rachel,” I say, appealing to whatever is left that might still be normal inside her. “Those distractions. They’re
human beings
.”

“Well, it’s not my fault the poor things were so heartbroken when Christopher dumped them that they did something as reckless as attempt to elevator surf. I tried my best to counsel them. You, too, Heather. Although no one will be very surprised to see you’ve chosen to take your own life. You don’t have that much to live for anymore, after all.”

Her thought process is so skewed that I can’t quite follow it. But now that she’s made it clear that I’m her next victim, I’m doing some pretty fast talking, let me tell you.

“But, Rachel, it will never work. I already went to the cops—”

“And did they believe you?” Rachel asks calmly. “When they find your broken, bleeding body, they’ll know you just did the whole thing to get attention—planted that bomb, then killed yourself when you realized you’d been discovered. And it won’t even be so hard to understand, since your life’s been in such a downward spiral lately. Jordan getting engaged to that other girl. His brother—well, his brother just doesn’t seem interested, does he, Heather? And you and I both know how much you’re in love with him. It’s written all over your face every time he walks into the room.”

Is that true? Does everyone know I love Cooper? Does
Cooper
know I love Cooper? God, how embarrassing.

Wait a minute. What am I listening to this lunatic for, anyway?

“Fine, Rachel,” I say, playing along because it seems like the only way out. “Fine. Kill me. But what about Sarah? I mean, what’s poor Sarah ever done to you? Why don’t you let Sarah go.”

“Sarah?” Rachel glances at her graduate assistant as if she’s only just remembered she’s in the room. “Oh, right. Sarah. You know, I think Sarah’s going to just…disappear.”

Sarah lets out a frightened hiccup, but a stony look from Rachel silences her.

“Yes,” Rachel say. “I think Sarah is going to go home for a few weeks to recover from the horror of your death, Heather. Only she’s not going to make it. She’s going to disappear somewhere along the way. Hey. It happens.”

“Oh no, Rachel, please,” Sarah chokes. “Please don’t make me disappear. Please—”

“Shut up,” Rachel screams. She raises a hand to hit Sarah again, but freezes when the phone on my desk rings, jangling so loudly that Rachel jumps, and the blue streak of lightning between the blades of the gun sways dangerously close to me. I leap back, falling against the door, and spin around to grasp the knob.

In a split second, Rachel is on me, a spindly arm going around my neck, choking me. She’s surprisingly strong for such a slight woman. But even so, I could have shaken her off…

…could have if it hadn’t been for the sputtering stun gun, which she shoves beneath my nose, hissing, “Don’t try it. Don’t even think about it. I’ll blast you, Heather, I swear it. And then I’ll kill you both.”

I freeze, breathing hard. Rachel is plastered to my back like a cape. The phone keeps on ringing, three times, four. I can tell by the ring that it’s an on-campus call. I whisper, my voice rough with fear, “Rachel, that’s probably the reception desk calling. You know I told Cooper to wait outside for me. He’s at the guard’s station.”

“In that case,” Rachel says, releasing her stranglehold on my neck but keeping the stun gun within inches of my throat, “we’ll be on our way. I’ll deal with you”—she flings a warning look in Sarah’s direction—“later.”

Then she opens the office door and, glancing furtively left and right, shoves me out into the empty hallway…

…but not far enough that she isn’t within blasting range. She directs me to the elevators across from our office door—the elevators that were, unfortunately for me, unscathed by yesterday’s explosion in the service shaft—and pounds on the up button. I pray that the doors will open and the entire basketball team will emerge and tackle Rachel for me.

But no such luck. The cab has been sitting empty on the first floor, and when the doors slide apart, there’s no one inside.

“Get in,” Rachel orders, and I do as she says. Rachel follows, then inserts her pass key and presses twenty.

We’re going to the penthouse. And there won’t be any other stops along the way.

“Girls like you, Heather,” Rachel says, not looking at me. “I’ve been dealing with girls like you my whole life. The pretty ones are all alike. You go through life thinking everybody owes you something. You get the record contracts and the promotions and the cute guys, while people like me? We’re the ones who do all the work. Do you know that Pansy is the first award I’ve received in my field?”

I glare at her. This woman is going to kill me. I don’t see any reason to be polite to her anymore.

“Yeah,” I say. “And you got it for cleaning up after your own murders. That stuff in those girls’ files—about Elizabeth’s mom wanting her sign-in privileges revoked, and Mrs. Pace not liking Lakeisha—that stuff never even happened, did it? Those women never called you. You made all that stuff up, as a way to justify your meetings with those girls. What did you talk about when you were meeting with them, anyway? What kind of twisted, sick stuff were you terrorizing them with?”

“Heather.” Rachel looks at me critically. “You’ll never understand, will you? I’ve worked hard all my life for what I have. I never got anything easily, like you. Not anything, men, jobs, friends. What I do get, I keep. Like Christopher, for instance. And this job. Do you have any idea how hard it was to get myself a position at this school, in the same
building
as him? So you understand why you have to die. You’re jeopardizing too much for me. If you hadn’t started snooping around, I’d have let you live. We made a nice team, you and I, I always thought. I mean, when I stand next to you, I look extra thin. That’s a real bonus in an assistant.”

The elevator pings, and the doors slide open. We’re on the twentieth floor, in the hallway outside the president’s penthouse. I know the minute we step onto the gray carpeting that the motion detector will be set off downstairs at the guard’s desk. Would Pete glance at the monitor and see Rachel and her stun gun?

Please look, Pete.
I try to use Vulcan mind control on Pete, even though he’s twenty floors down.
Look, Pete, look. Look, Pete, look…

Rachel pushes me out into the hallway.

“Come on,” she says, pulling out the building’s master key. “I bet you always wanted to see where the president lives. Well, now’s your chance. Too bad you won’t live long enough to enjoy it.”

Rachel unlocks the front door to the Allingtons’ apartment and steers me into the foyer. Tiled in black and white, this is where Mrs. Allington had stood and accused me of chasing after her son like a harlot. The foyer opens into a spacious living room, walled on two sides by French doors leading out onto the penthouse terrace. Like the Villa d’Allington, the predominant decorating theme appears to be black leather, and lots of it. Martha Stewart, Mrs. Allington apparently is not. Well, I kind of already guessed that.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Rachel says conversationally. “Except for those hideous birds.”

Just off the foyer, in that six-foot-high wicker cage, the cockatoos whistle and dance, eyeing us suspiciously. Rachel aims the stun gun at them and laughs as they shriek at the sight of the leaping blue flame.

“Idiot birds,” she says. Then she grabs hold of my arm and starts pulling me toward a set of French doors. “Come on,” she says. “It’s time for your big finale. I figure a star like you would make a really dramatic exit. So you’re not going the elevator surfing route. You’re going to plunge off the roof of Fischer Hall…kind of like that turtle, in that movie your psychotic friend in the cafeteria is always talking about. Only you, unfortunately, won’t be saved by a rope shot from inside your shell.”

Before I have a chance to react, a door on the far side of the living room is thrown open, and Mrs. Allington, in a pink jogging suit, stares at us.

“What the hell,” she demands, “are you two doing here?”

Rachel smiles pleasantly. “Don’t mind us, Eleanor,” she sings. “We’ll be out of your way in no time.”

“How did you get in here?” Mrs. Allington begins striding toward us, looking furious. “Get out, this instant, before I call the police.”

“I wish we could, Eleanor,” Rachel says, to the woman who, in a different world, might have been her mother-in-law. “But we’re here on official residence hall business.”

“I don’t give a damn why you’re here.” Mrs. Allington has reached a wall phone. Now she’s lifting up the receiver. “Don’t you know who my husband is?”

“Look out, Mrs. Allington,” I yell.

But it’s too late. Like a striking cobra, Rachel lashes out with the stun gun.

Mrs. Allington stiffens, her eyes going wide, like someone who’d just gotten some very bad news…maybe about her son’s LSAT scores, or something.

Then she seems to fling herself over the back of one of the leather couches, twitching until she lies in a heap on the parquet floor, her eyes still wide open, her jaw slack and shiny with saliva.

“Oh my God,” I cry. Because it is, without a doubt, the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen…worse even than what I’d seen Tania Trace doing to my then boyfriend. “Rachel, you killed her!”

“She’s not dead,” Rachel says, the disgust in her voice obvious. “When she comes to, she’ll have no idea what hit her. She won’t remember her last name, let alone me. But that won’t be unusual, for her. Come on,” she says, and grabs my arm again.

Now that I’ve seen firsthand what that gun could do, I’m in no hurry to experience it. I realize I’d been stupid not to try to get away from Rachel downstairs. Sure, she might have zapped me, then hauled me into the elevator. But I’d have been dead weight, and it would have been difficult for her. This way, it’s too easy for her, and more difficult for me. The only place I have to go is down.

This thought is enough to cause me to make a break for it.
I yank my arm from Rachel’s grasp and run. I don’t know why, but I head for the door through which Mrs. Allington had come. I can’t run fast, being so stiff from what had happened in the elevator that day before, and all. But I know I’ve surprised her when Rachel lets out a furious scream. Surprising her feels good, because it means she doesn’t have the upper hand anymore.

I have only fleeting glimpses of the rooms I tear through. A dining room that looks as if it hadn’t seen any diners in a long time, the long mahogany table highly polished, seating for twelve, a sideboard with fake fruit on it. Fake! Then a kitchen, spotlessly clean, blue and white tiles. A kind of den, again with French doors on two sides, and a wide-screen TV in front of another leather couch, this one in avocado green. On the TV is a Debbie Reynolds movie.
Tammy and the Bachelor
, I think. On the couch is a basket of yarn and a bottle of Absolut. Mrs. Allington doesn’t mess around with her leisure time.

I bang through the only door in the den that doesn’t lead to the terrace and find myself in a bedroom, a dark bedroom, all the curtains pulled shut over the French doors. The bed is king-sized and unmade, the gray silk sheets in a tangle at one end. Another wide-screen TV, this one tuned to a talk show, the sound off. There’re a pair of black briefs on the floor. Chris’s room? But Chris lives in the law school dorm. Which can only mean the Allingtons sleep in separate rooms. Scandal!

There are no more doors, except one to President Allington’s bathroom. I’m trapped.

I can hear Rachel coming, slamming doors and screaming like a banshee. I look frantically around the room for a weapon, and come up empty-handed. Because of the track lighting in the mirrored ceiling—I’ll think about that one
later—there isn’t even a lamp I can unplug and swing at her head. I think of sliding under the bed, hiding behind a set of those damask curtains, but I know she’ll find me. Can I talk my way out of this? I’ve talked my way out of worse jams than this. I can’t quite think of any right now, but I’m almost sure I have.

Rachel comes careening into the room, stumbling over the threshold and blinking as her eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. I stand on the opposite side of the room, behind the massive bed, trying not to be distracted by my reflection on the ceiling.

“Look, Rachel,” I pant, talking low and fast. “You don’t have to kill me. Or Sarah, either. I swear we won’t tell anyone about this. It’ll just be our secret, between us girls. I totally understand where you’re coming from. I’ve had guys jerk me around, too. I mean, Chris definitely isn’t worth going to jail for—”

“I won’t be going to jail, Heather,” Rachel says. “I’ll be organizing your memorial service. And my wedding. I’ll be sure to play all of your greatest hits at both. That is, if there’s more than one. Weren’t you kind of a one-hit wonder, anyway? Such a shame. I wonder if anyone will even show up at your funeral. After all, you’re already a has-been at—how old are you, anyway? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? Just an ex-pop star who’s let herself go.”

“Twenty-eight,” I say. “And fine. Kill me. But not Sarah. Come on, Rachel. She’s just a kid.”

“Aw.” Rachel smiles and shakes her head at me. “Isn’t that sweet? You begging for Sarah’s life like that. When in real life, I know how much she annoys you. See, that’s the problem with girls like you, Heather. You’re too
nice.
You have no killer instinct. When the going gets tough, you cave. You’re born with all the advantages, and you just throw them away.
You let your body go, your man slip away, your career go down the toilet. Jesus, you even let your own
mother
rob you blind. And yet you’re still so…
nice
about it. I mean, you and Jordan? Still friends. You can’t stand Sarah, and here you are, pleading with me not to kill her. I bet you still send your mom Mother’s Day cards, don’t you?”