Worship You

Chapter Seven - Curse

Now this is the part where things get strange.

The next day, Cassie and I met up two blocks from her house. She was late, later than usual. And when I saw her walking up the street in the rear view mirror, she was slow head down walking like she ached. She opened the door and got in and then she just sat there staring straight ahead, holding her books in arms crossed over her chest. Her leather jacket was zipped up to her chin and her collar was up covering her neck. I could see she had a black scarf with red roses wound around her throat.

I was afraid her father had done something to her and I asked what's wrong, and what's the matter, but she just shook her head and stared. So finally I turned the key and we drove to school.

We were there just as the doors opened and everybody lined up to go through the metal detectors. Ten, fifteen years ago, I think, a kid brought his father's 9 mm. to class and threatened a teacher who was failing him in Soc. This was considered an escalation from the usual stabbings and beatings handed out in the locker rooms. Not long after, as a matter of fact, there was the Columbine shootings in Colorado and the state got freaked out and the school has been like, in lockdown, ever since. The massacres of the last few years have only resulted in tightening up the high school sphincter. Anyway you have to line up and pass through the electronic gates to paradise, so security can be sure you don't have any serious weaponry. It's pretty effective: nobody's managed to get their RPGs or assault rifles into class. Our school is huge, with kids from the whole county practically, so we have several entrances, front, back and side with Metal detectors to get all the kids in weaponless before the day is done and we have to go back home.

Once Cassie and I were through the detectors, we hung on the steps to the Audio Visual\/Computer Sciences room (which used to be a Chem lab but they hardly allow any experiments anymore as being too dangerous to expose these delicate students to. [My opinion they don't want to give anybody ideas about blowing the whole place up.] As consequence, Chem is really a bore. No one is going to be a chemist now, not even the kids with brains. And the Computer\/AV stuff sucks too so there you are: Our school board in action.)

Anyway, I couldn't get Cassie to talk to me and she only sat on the steps trying to stare a hole in the floor. The sadness, or depression or whatever it was coming off her like a poisoned gray cloud. I was really upset but there was nothing I could do, so finally I just shut up and sat with her (which is what she wanted all along I guess, because the negative energy that had been beating against me like waves of heat, calmed down a little.)

Linda 7 came up then with her gang. She was wearing a brand new dark maroon shearling coat and new shoes which she seems to have every other day, and under her coat she wore skinny black jeans and a black cashmere sweater and a wide black leather belt. She was beautiful, no question.

Linda Severinov's father owns a construction company and Linda 7's rich in the way such things are calculated around here. For instance her father bought her a Lexus to drive. (I still miss that car.) Also, people whisper Russian Mafia about her old man, but I personally think, having had a couple of meals with the guy, that he's just a savage brutal person that grew up in the old Soviet Russia and knows that compared to the Gulag, the U.S. prison system is a vacation and he believes that obeying the law is for suckers.

Linda 7 and her bunch are eyeballing Cassie and me really hard and I started to get worried a little. Linda and me used to go together, like last year and part of the summer. We broke up even though Linda is beautiful and all, because she's got this dark Russian thing going on and a terrible temper which she used to feel free to take out on me.

Even though Linda 7 is beautiful and was having sex with me, I had to get out of that. She's tall and has this amazing athletic body. Linda 7 is strong and likes to get physical (therefore the great sex) but she also felt free to hit me if she didn't like something I did or said. She would just hit me in the arm or the shoulder if we were in public and it wasn't a big deal to me, it was nothing, but I made a mistake laughing that off because one time we were alone and she hit me really hard in the face. I got enraged and cold and I put my hand on her throat and threatened her. And the sick thing is Linda 7 loved it. I guess it comes from being such an Amazon and all that she wants to have a man who can handle her. Maybe her father has something to do with that, too.