Size 12 Is Not Fat

29

It’s my fault.

Rachel’s death, I mean.

I should have known. I should have known this would happen. I mean, clearly she wasn’t mentally stable. Of course at the slightest provocation, she was going to snap. I don’t know how she figured it out—that we suspected her—but she had.

And she’d taken the only way out she felt she could.

Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now. Nothing except be there for the people Rachel’s death is likely to affect the most—the building staff.

I call Cooper on his cell. He doesn’t pick up, so I leave a message, telling him what Sarah has told me. I ask him to let Detective Canavan know. And then I tell him to come to Fischer Hall as soon as he gets my message.

I can’t find an umbrella, of course. I can never find an umbrella when I really need one. Ducking my head against the steady drizzle, I hurry over to Washington Square West, marveling at how quickly the drug dealers disappear in inclement weather, and wondering where they all go. The Washington Square Diner? I’d have to check it out one day. Supposedly they have a killer chicken-fried steak.

I reach Fischer Hall and hurry inside, flicking rainwater from my hair, and smiling a little queasily at Pete. Does he know yet? Does he have any idea?

“Heather,” he cries. “What’re you doin’ here? After what you went through yesterday, I thought they’d give you a month off. You’re not working, are you?”

“No,” I say. He doesn’t know. Oh my God, he doesn’t know.

And I can’t tell him. Because the desk attendant is sitting right there, watching us.

“Oh,” Pete says. “And hey, Julio’s doing good, by the way. They’re letting him out in a few days.”

“Great,” I say, with as much enthusiasm as I can. “Well, see you later.”

“See you.”

I hurry down the hallway to the director’s office door. To my surprise, it’s partly open, even though I’d specifically told Sarah to close it. Anyone can walk in and see Rachel hanging there… unless maybe she’s done it on her side of the grate. Yes, that would make more sense, actually. Her desk is pushed up against the wall beneath the grate, so it would have been easy for her to climb up there, then jump…

“Sarah?” I say. I push the door open all the way. No sign of Rachel. The exterior office is empty. Sarah—and the body—have to be in Rachel’s office. “Sarah? Are you there?”

“In here,” I hear Sarah’s voice warble.

I glance at the grate. There’s nothing tied around it. Sarah must have cut her down. Horrific as it had to have been to find her like that, she still shouldn’t have messed with the body. That’s tampering with evidence. Or something.

“Sarah,” I say, hurrying through to Rachel’s office, “I told you not to… ”

My voice trails off. That’s because I’m not greeted by the sight of a weeping Sarah cradling Rachel’s lifeless form. Instead, I’m greeted by the sight of a perfectly healthy Rachel—wearing a new, very attractive cashmere sweater set and charcoal trousers—leaning against her desk, one booted foot balanced on her office chair…

… onto which she’s tied Sarah with the phone cord and some computer cables.

“Oh, hi, Heather,” Rachel says brightly. “You got here fast.”

“Heather.” Sarah is sobbing so hard now that her glasses have steamed up. “I’m so sorry. She made me call you—”

“Shut up.” Rachel, annoyed, slaps Sarah, hard, across the face. The sound of the smack makes me jump.

It also wakes me up.

Trap. I’ve just walked into a trap. Automatically I turn towards the door—

“Stop or I’ll kill her.” Rachel’s voice rings coldly through the room. Even Monet’s water lilies couldn’t soften it.

I freeze where I am. Rachel brushes past me and goes to the outer office door, pulling it all the way closed.

“There,” she says, when the lock clicks into place. “That’s more like it. Now we can have some privacy.”

I stare at her, my grip tightening on the strap of my backpack, despite my stitches. Maybe, I think, I can hit her with it. My backpack, I mean. Although there isn’t anything heavy in it. Just a hairbrush, my wallet, and some lipstick. Oh, and a Kit Kat bar, in case I get hungry later.

How had she known? How had she known we were on to her?

“Rachel,” I say. My voice sounds funny. I realize it’s because my throat has gone dry. I’m not feeling very good, all of a sudden. My fingers have gone ice cold, and the cuts on them ache.

Then I remember.

There’s a canister of pepper spray in my backpack. It’s several years old and the nozzle is all gunked up with sand from a trip to the beach. Will it still work?

Play it cool, I tell myself. What would Cooper do if he was faced with a killer? He’d play it cool.

“Wow,” I say, hoping I sound cool, like Cooper. “What’s this all about, Rachel? Is this some kind of trust game, or something? Because, if you don’t mind me saying so, Sarah doesn’t look like she’s having a very good time.”

“Cut the crap, Heather.” Rachel speaks in a hard voice I’ve never heard her use before, not even with the basketball players. The sound of it makes me feel colder than ever. I’ve never heard her swear before, either. “That dumb blond act might work with everyone else you know, but it’s never worked with me. I know exactly what you are, and believe me, the four-letter word I’d use to describe you is not dumb.” Her eyes flick over me disparagingly. “At least until recently it wasn’t.”

Is she ever right. I can’t believe I’d fallen for that phone call. Still, Sarah’s tearshad been real… just not for the reason she’d said they were.

“You might as well know,” Rachel says calmly. “I know all about last night.”

I try pretending like I don’t know what she’s talking about, even though I do.

“Last night? Rachel, I—”

“Last night,” she says pleasantly. “Your little jaunt to the Hamptons. Don’t try to deny it. I was there. I saw you.”

“You… you were there?”

I’m at a total loss as to how to proceed. Every nerve in my body is screaming,Turn around and run!

But somehow I’m rooted to the spot, my fingers clenched around my backpack strap. I keep thinking about Sarah. What if I run? What will Rachel do to poor Sarah?

“Of course I was,” Rachel says, her voice dripping with scorn. “You think I don’t keep an eye on my property? Why do you think I held on to my Jetta? Nobody needs a car in this city… unless they’re going to be following people to the Hamptons.”

God. I’d forgotten all about her stupid car, which she parks in a garage on the West Side Highway.

I say, keeping my voice low-pitched so Rachel can’t hear how badly it’s shaking, “Okay. So I was there. So I know about you and Chris. So what? Rachel, I’m on your side. I totally understand where you’re coming from. I’ve been dicked over by guys before, too. Why don’t we talk about this—”

Rachel is shaking her head. Her expression is incredulous, as if I, not she, am the one cracking up.

“There’ll be no talking about this,” she says, with a bark of laughter. “The time for talking is over. And let’s get one thing straight here, Heather.” Rachel uncrosses her arms, her right hand going to a lump I hadn’t noticed before beneath her cardigan.

“I am the director,” she goes on. “I am the one in charge. I decide whether or not we’re going to talk about it, because I am the one who schedules the meeting. Like I scheduled the meetings for Elizabeth and Roberta. Like I’ll schedule yet another meeting for Amber, later. Like I’ve scheduled this meeting, now, between you and me. I am the one in charge. Do you want to know what qualifies me to be in charge, Heather?”

I nod mutely, my eyes on the lump under her sweater. A gun, I think. A gun definitely qualifies Rachel to be in charge.

But it isn’t a gun at all. When Rachel draws it out, all I see is a black plastic thing that fits snugly in her hand. There are two evil-looking metal pieces sticking out of the top, giving it an appearance not unlike the head of a cockroach. I have no idea what it is until Rachel flicks a switch with her thumb, and suddenly a thin blue electric line buzzes between the twin metal prongs.

Then I know, even before she says it.

“Heather, meet the Thunder Gun.” Rachel speaks proudly, like some of the parents had on the first day of check-in, when they’d been introducing their kid to me. “A second of contact with the one hundred and twenty thousand volts the head of the Thunder Gun delivers can cause confusion, weakness, disorientation, and loss of balance and muscle control for several minutes. And the wonderful thing is, if blasted through clothing, the Thunder Gun leaves only a very small burn mark upon the skin. It’s a fabulously effective repellent weapon, and you can order it from any number of catalogs here in the U.S. Why, mine only cost forty-nine ninety-five, nine-volt battery not included. Of course, it’s not legal to own one here in New York City, but then, who cares?”

I stare at the crackling blue fire strip.

So this is how she’d done it. No chloroform, no bashing over the head with a baseball bat. She’d simply shown up at Beth’s door, and then later, at Bobby’s, stunned them, then shoved their limp bodies down the elevator shaft. What could be simpler?

And Detective Canavan had said killers were dumb. Rachel isn’t dumb. What kind of doofus would have the savvy to pull off this kind of crime? Because so many young people kill themselves doing stupid stunts like elevator surfing, no one would ever think that the girls had actually been murdered, not when there was no hint of suspiciousness to their deaths.

No one except a freak like me.

No, Rachel isn’t dumb.

And she isn’t crazy, either. She’d thought up the perfect way to get rid of her romantic rivals. No one would have suspected a thing if it hadn’t been for me and my big mouth.

If it hadn’t been for me and my big mouth, Sarah and I wouldn’t be about to become Rachel’s third and fourth victims.

“But this isn’t the only thing that qualifies me to be in charge around here, you know,” Rachel assures me, casually gesturing with the stun gun to emphasize her point. “I have a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. Did you know that, Heather?”

I shake my head. Maybe one of the RAs will key in to the office to pick up his mail. Yeah. Or maybe Cooper will have gotten that message I’d left on his cell phone… .

“It’s amazing what one can do with a bachelor’s in chemical engineering. One can, for instance, learn to build small incendiary devices—so simple, yet so effective. Do you know what an incendiary device is, Heather? No, I would imagine that you don’t. After all, you were far too busy twitching your ass at the local mall to finish high school, weren’t you? Let me see if you know this one. What do you get when you stand a bunch of blonds next to each other, shoulder to shoulder?”

I look at Sarah. She’s still sobbing, but she’s trying to do it quietly, so Rachel won’t slap her again.

I shake my head.

Rachel laughs humorlessly and says, “A wind tunnel, Heather! A wind tunnel!”

“Oh, wow, Rachel,” I say, amending my previous thought. She’s definitely crazy. Nuts, even. “That’s really funny. But you know what? I have to go now. Cooper’s waiting by the guard’s desk. If I’m gone too long, he’s bound to come back here, looking for me.”

“He can look all he wants,” Rachel says with a shrug. “He doesn’t have a key. And we aren’t going to let him in. We’re working, Heather. We have a lot of important work to do.”

“Well, you know what, Rachel?” I say. “If we don’t open the door, Cooper’ll just have Pete call one of the RAs to let him in—”

“But the RAs don’t have keys to the office anymore. I had the lock changed.” Rachel’s cheeks have twin spots of color in them now, and her eyes sparkle every bit as brightly as the thin volt of electricity that leaps from the prongs of the weapon clenched in her hand.

“That’s right,” she says happily. “I had the lock changed yesterday, while you were in the hospital, and I’m the only one with a key.” Then she turns those too-bright eyes on me and says, “You understand, don’t you, Heather? I mean, this isn’t a career for you. This is just a job. Assistant director to Fischer Hall. It’s just a rest stop between gigs, isn’t it? A steady paycheck until you get the guts to go on the road again after your little dispute with your record company. That’s all this position is to you. Not like me. Higher education is my life. My life, Heather. Or at least it was. Until—”

She stops speaking suddenly, her gaze, which had become a little unfocused, fastening on me like a vise. “Until him,” she says, simply.

I want to sit down. My knees shake every time I glance at the weapon in Rachel’s hand.

But I don’t dare. Seated, I’m an even easier target. No, somehow I have to distract her from whatever it is she intends to do to Sarah and me—and I have a pretty good idea what that is.

“Him, Rachel?” I ask, trying to sound friendly, like we’re just chatting over cups of coffee in the cafeteria, something we’d actually done, once or twice, before the killing had begun. “You mean Christopher, don’t you?”

She laughs bitterly, and that laugh makes me more afraid than anything so far, even the stun gun.

“Christopher,” she says, rolling the word on her tongue like it’s a piece of chocolate—something Rachel never allowed herself to enjoy. Too fattening. “Yes. Chris. You wouldn’t understand about Christopher, Heather. You see, I love him. You’ve never loved anyone before, Heather, except yourself, so you can’t know what it’s like. No, you can’t know what it’s like to feel that all your happiness in life is dependent on one single individual, and then—and then to have that individual turn around and reject you—”

The look she gives me could have frozen a hot buttered bagel. I think about mentioning that I know exactly what she’s talking about… that this is how I’d felt about Jordan, who is at this very moment probably playing Mad Libs with Tania Trace in his hospital bed.

But somehow I don’t think she’d listen.

“No, you wouldn’t understand that,” Rachel says. “You’ve always had everything you’ve ever wanted, haven’t you, Heather? Handed to you on a silver platter. Some of us have had to work for what we want, you know. Take me, for example. You think I always looked this good?” Rachel runs a hand up and down her lean, hard, thousand-crunches-a-day abs. “Hell, no. I used to be fat. A real lard ass. Kind of like you are now, actually. A size twelve.” She laughs. “I drowned my sorrows in candy bars, never worked out, like you. Do you know I never got asked out—never, not once, until I turned thirty? While you were strutting around like a little slut for Cartwright Records, I had my nose buried in my books, studying as hard as I could, because I knew no one was going to swoop down and offer me a recording contract. I knew if I wanted out of my hellhole of a life, I was going to have to use my head.”

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.