Free Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck by Dale E. Basye Page A

happened to her …
it
?” Marlo asked.
    “She started taking up too much space on Sosumi computers,” Takara continued. “Too demanding. Difficult to contain. Bad influence on other computers. Made other programs lazy, so they only worked after noon. So scientists took a big magnet and erased her.”
    “Then why is that bit o’ computerized crumpet here?” asked Jordie, who had been listening in from behind.
    “I guess
even fake
greedy people come here when they die,” Marlo declared as Yojuanna dove off the stage. “Isn’t that right, Lyon?”
    Lyon glared at Marlo with a disgust one might reserve for a dissected frog in biology class. “You’re justbitter in the presence of things so cool that everybody likes them,” she sneered.
    “Yeah,” added Bordeaux, her scrawny arm pressed into the place her hip should be. “And since no one likes you, you pretend that you don’t
want
to be liked!”
    “Wow,” Marlo deadpanned. “You can read me like a book—which is weird, because you two peroxide morons couldn’t read the large-type edition of
Pat the Bunny.”
    “Snap!” said Norm with a shy smirk as Bordeaux shivered.
    “Daddy’s scratchy beard,”
Bordeaux murmured, disturbed.
    Marlo smiled, though her eyes were frowning. Bordeaux was, definitely, a few MP3s short of a playlist, but even in her dumb-as-a-box-of-hair way, she had managed to strike a nerve.
    For some reason, the face of the sullen boy that she’d seen checking her out in Rapacia popped into her thoughts like a sly, smirking jack-in-the-box. There was something about him, a kindred spirit who seemed completely familiar, even though he was a stranger.
    And despite her fierce independence, the boy’s attention made Marlo feel better about herself somehow.
    Poker Alice leaned her smoke-ravaged face into Marlo. It looked as though her bulbous nose had been sculpted hastily out of red clay.
    “Now, remember,
substitute,”
Poker Alice seethedbetween stained clenched teeth.
“THIRTY MINUTES
or else I sic the guards on you, got me?”
    “Fine,” Marlo said, squaring her jaw in defiance. “I can do a lot of damage in thirty minutes.”
    Poker Alice clapped her callused hands. “Okay, girls, here are your teams,” she barked. “Miss Sussex, Miss Kitayama, and Miss Sheraton, you take Salvation Armani. Miss Radisson, Miss Fauster, and Miss … um …” The teacher stared at Norm, hoping to recall the visually unremarkable girl’s name.
    “Rickett,” Norm said with the calm resignation that comes when a specific humiliation is continually repeated.
    “Right,” Poker Alice continued.
“Miss Rickett
. You three take Halo/Good Buy.”
    “Halo/Good Buy?” complained Marlo. “That’s a bargain bunker! I’ll have to lift twice as much as them!”
    “That is your playing field.” Poker Alice shrugged. “But if you want to forfeit the game …”
    “No, no, no,” Marlo interjected. “We’ll still win. I just wanted to go on record as saying that the playing field was uneven.”
    “Agreed,” Poker Alice acknowledged, “and disregarded.”
    Lyon swaggered up to Marlo, looking down her surgically perfected nose.
    “I’ve made grown shopgirls wet themselves with fear,” she relayed with a malicious grin. “I can make anassistant manager’s hairline noticeably recede with just one transaction.”
    Marlo stood on her tiptoes to look Lyon in the eye.
    “Bring it on, Barbie.”
    Poker Alice pulled out an antique watch on a chain, attached to her worn vest by a tarnished fob.
    “Oooh, two dead little girls squaring off at one another, enough to soil my bloomers—if I were wearin’ any.” She smirked, staring at the small clock’s dusty face. “On your mark, get set …”
    The six girls ran off, the group breaking in two as each team rushed toward its assigned destination.
    “Go,” Poker Alice muttered, deepening her permanent scowl with a fresh grimace.
    Marlo looked back over her shoulder, watching her teacher shove her