Free Carrie by Stephen King Page B

sitting in one of the back booths. Her current amour, Billy Nolan, was looking through the latest issue of
Popular Mechanics
at the magazine rack. Sue didn't know what a rich, Popular girl like Chris saw in Nolan, who was like some strange time traveler from the 1950s with his greased hair, zipper-bejeweled black leather jacket, and manifold-bubbling Chevrolet road machine.
    â€œSue!” Chris hailed. “Come on over!”
    Sue nodded and raised a hand, although dislike rose in her throat like a paper snake. Looking at Chris was like looking through a slanted doorway to a place where Carrie White crouched with hands over her head. Predictably, she found her own hypocrisy (inherent in the wave and the nod) incomprehensible and sickening. Why couldn't she just cut her dead?
    â€œA dime root beer,” she told Hubie. Hubie had genuine draft root beer, and he served it in huge, frosted 1890s mugs. She had been looking forward to tipping a long one while she read a paper novel and waited for Tommy—in spite of the havoc the root beers raised with her complexion, she was hooked. But she wasn't surprised to find she'd lost her taste for this one.
    â€œHow's your heart, Hubie?” she asked.
    â€œYou kids,” Hubie said, scraping the head off Sue's beer with a table knife and filling the mug the rest of the way. “You don't understand nothing. I plugged in my electric razor this morning and got a hundred and ten volts right through this pacemaker. You kids don't know what that's like, am I right?”
    â€œI guess not.”
    â€œNo. Christ Jesus forbid you should ever have to find out. How long can my old ticker take it? You kids'll all find out when I buy the farm and those urban renewal poops turn this place into a parking lot. That's a dime.”
    She pushed her dime across the marble.
    â€œFifty million volts right up the old tubes,” Hubie said darkly, and stared down at the small bulge in his breast pocket.
    Sue went over and slid carefully into the vacant side of Chris's booth. She was looking exceptionally pretty, her black hair held by a shamrock-green band and a tight basque blouse that accentuated her firm, upthrust breasts.
    â€œHow are you, Chris?”
    â€œBitchin' good,” Chris said a little too blithely. “You heard the latest? I'm out of the prom. I bet that cocksucker Grayle loses his job, though.”
    Sue
had
heard the latest. Along with everyone at Ewen.
    â€œDaddy's suing them,” Chris went on. Over her shoulder:
“Billeee!
Come over here and say hi to Sue.”
    He dropped his magazine and sauntered over, thumbs hooked into his side-hitched garrison belt, fingers dangling limply toward the stuffed crotch of his pegged levis. Sue felt a wave of unreality surge over her and fought an urge to put her hands to her face and giggle madly.
    â€œHi, Suze,” Billy said. He slid in beside Chris and immediately began to massage her shoulder. His face was utterly blank. He might have been testing a cut of beef.
    â€œI think we're going to crash the prom anyway,” Chris said. “As a protest or something.”
    â€œIs that right?” Sue was frankly startled.
    â€œNo,” Chris replied, dismissing it. “I don't know.” Her face suddenly twisted into an expression of fury, as abrupt and surprising as a tornado funnel. “That goddamned Carrie White! I wish she'd take her goddam holy joe routine and stuff it straight up her ass!”
    â€œYou'll get over it,” Sue said.
    â€œIf only the rest of you had walked out with me . . . Jesus, Sue, why didn't you? We could have had them by the balls. I never figured you for an establishment pawn.”
    Sue felt her face grow hot. “I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't being anybody's pawn. I took the punishment because I thought I earned it. We did a suck-off thing. End of statement.”
    â€œBullshit. That fucking Carrie runs around saying everyone but her and