Todd Strasser - Wish You Were Dead

“Hey,” I said, recalling what had happened a few days before. “How are you? What happened the other day? Is this your first day back?”

Still staring down, she said, “I, uh, wasn’t feeling well.”

Since when does the school call an ambulance for a student who isn’t feeling well? I wondered. Usually we go to the nurse .

“So what’s up?” I asked uncertainly, since this might have been the first time she’d ever approached me.

“I don’t want to bother you,” Maura started hesitantly, “but there’s something … I want to tell you. I picked you because you’re different than the others. You’ve never been mean or anything.”

“Uh, thank you,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I understood what she was talking about.

“It’s about what’s been going on,” Maura said, still staring downward. “But if I tell you, you have to swear you won’t tell anyone. Not a soul. Can I trust you?”

Trust me? I felt a jolt of realization. Was she the one who’d been leaving those notes?

“Maura, I’m not sure I can give you my word,” I said, “if it has anything to do with what’s going on. People’s lives could be at stake. I mean, not just could be. Are.”

“I know,” Maura said. “But you have to swear. It’s the only way I can tell you.”

I thought about Courtney, Adam, and Lucy, and decided that I had to hear what she had to say. And if I had to, I would break my promise. What choice did I have? “Okay, Maura, I … I swear I won’t tell a soul.”

Maura stepped close and spoke so quietly I could barely hear her. “I wished they would die. I wrote about it.”

“You … wished Courtney, Adam, and Lucy would die?”

Maura nodded. “They were so mean.”

A question popped into my head: “Are they dead?”

For once Maura gave me an open, wondrous look. “How would I know?” But then she seemed to realize what she’d done and again averted her eyes.

Can you blame me for feeling confused? “So that’s all you did? You just wished they would die? But you don’t really have any idea what’s happened to them?”

She shook her head. Students passed us in the hall, some giving us curious looks. Poor Maura , I thought. Didn’t she know that she surely wasn’t alone? There had to be lots of kids who’d wished someone popular would die. “I’m glad you told me. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Maura scowled and her lips parted as if she were going to say something more, but she changed her mind. I had the strangest sensation that there was more to the story. “Is there … something else? Something you’re not telling me?”

For an instant her eyes widened with surprise, and that’s when I knew she wasn’t telling me everything. I was almost certain of it. But before I could ask, she mumbled something about getting to her next class, and hurried away.

Almost every day, a few kids snuck away during lunch to go to the 7-Eleven and buy the late edition of the local newspaper. That’s how I learned why the police were asking about halothane. They’d found traces of it on a rag in the parking lot in front of the deli—the last place Adam had been seen. The police theorized that someone might have used the anesthetic to subdue Adam.

“Listen to this.” Jen had the newspaper spread before her on the cafeteria table. “The police are now saying that the person they’re looking for doesn’t go to FCC. They’ve checked out everyone who matched the sketch.”

Cassandra leaned forward and dropped her voice. “Has anyone heard anything about Courtney and Adam hooking up behind Lucy’s back? Lindsey Sloane saw them together in his car a few weeks ago.”

Jen turned to me. “You’re Courtney’s best friend. What about it?” There was something insistent, slightly hostile, and demanding in her voice. It was part of the change at our lunch table that I’d been noticing. Lucy had always been the focal point. It was a round table, and yet it always felt like Lucy sat at the head. With Courtney and Lucy gone, Jen not only sensed an opportunity to seize control of the group, but for some reason she imagined that I was standing in her way.

“I, um …” I fumbled for a moment, not sure how to answer. That was all Jen needed.

“O-M-G!” she gasped. “It’s true!”

Suddenly every girl at the table was looking at me. “Tell us,” Tabitha urged.

But I had no intention of doing that. “I really don’t think we should be talking like this right now.”

Jen rolled her eyes dismissively. “Maybe the three of them ran away together. They each waited so it wouldn’t look like it was planned.”

It was a ridiculous idea, but I kept my mouth shut. There was no reason in the world why all three of them would run away together.

“Or maybe,” Cassy said with a glint in her eye, “Adam and Courtney did Lucy in, or something really juicy like that. And they’ll make a TV movie of it.”

I was tempted to point out that her suggestion wasn’t only not funny but totally inappropriate. But Jen glanced expectantly at me and I realized that was exactly what she expected me to do. There was something creepy and disturbing about the undercurrents swirling around the table.

“Oh, and listen to what I heard,” said Tabitha. “You know how they had to take Maura away in an ambulance last week? Know why she fainted? She was high on ketamine.”

“Horse tranquilizer?” Cassy gasped.

“No way,” Jen said dismissively.

“Yes way. My mom’s a radiologist at the hospital and one of her best friends works in the ER. She says they get kids coming in high on that stuff all the time.” Tabitha leaned closer and dropped her voice even more. “You know where I bet she got it? Sharon. I hear she steals it from her father’s office and sells it.”

“Why?” Jen asked. “I mean, her father’s a vet. It’s not like she needs the money.”

“She once told me that as soon as high school’s over she’s moving to San Francisco,” Tabitha said. “I guess she wants to save up.”

“That’s perfect,” Cassy chimed in. “I mean, what would you expect? She and her girlfriend. It’s so gross.”

I’d had enough of their cattiness and gossip. There’d been gossip when Lucy was the queen of this table, but it had never been this nasty. I started to get up.

“Where are you going?” Jen demanded.

I stared straight back to let her know that I didn’t appreciate this treatment. “The girls’ room. Do I need a pass?”

Inside the girls’ room the scent of stale smoke hung in the air; someone had probably sneaked a cigarette a period or two earlier. I looked at myself in the mirror. The rings under my eyes were showing. But it was hard to imagine that anyone at school was sleeping well these days.

A toilet in a stall behind me flushed. The door opened and Sharon stepped out. She hesitated for a second when she saw me in the mirror, then stepped forward and washed her hands.

I hated situations like this, where two people who knew each other were suddenly thrown together with nothing to say.

“So how are you?” I finally asked. “I mean, you know, given everything that’s been going on.”

“You really want to know?” she replied, and, of course, the moment those words left her lips, I realized I probably didn’t want to know. But it was too late. “For a while I thought it was great. I thought that whoever was doing it, singling out people like your friends, was doing the world a favor.”

I stared at her in the mirror, surprised.

“Not what you expected, right?” Sharon said.

She seemed to be letting her guard down. Something I’d never seen her do before. “Can I ask what changed?”