She headed to the right, to the row of doors to the offices, and it was then that she saw Mallory Cornish standing alone against the cheap polished paneling. A class period was just letting out. There were people coming into the foyer, students with books in their arms, because there was a policy that backpacks had to be left in lockers during the school day. She felt as if she were trapped in gelatin. Everything was moving impossibly slowly, except, all of a sudden, it wasn’t.
Mallory Cornish stepped away from the wall. She was a pretty girl, small and compact, and with that obvious air of intelligence girls had when they were destined to be valedictorians. Catherine watched as Mallory advanced into the foyer, and then, a second too late, realized why it was happening. Barbie McGuffie and those two idiot friends of hers were marching their way from the east to the west wings.
Mallory got out into the middle of the open space, put her arm out, and stopped Barbie in her tracks. Barbie was furious.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
Barbie was supposed to be in detention, Catherine remembered that; that was decided right before she left school and went driving around. And Dan Cornish couldn’t possibly have gotten here already. Mallory shouldn’t even have known what was going on. But it wasn’t like that, was it? This was the kind of news that traveled instantaneously. And there were cell phones.
“Your mother is a murderer,” Mallory Cornish said. She said it so loudly, it literally bounced off the walls. It sounded as if it had come over the intercom. Everybody in the hall stopped dead.
“Your mother is a murderer,” Mallory said again, “and she’s going to die for it. There’s the death penalty in this state. They’re going to stick a needle in her arm and she’s going to die for it, and then do you know what’s going to happen to her? She’s going to be a rotting corpse, just a lot of dead meat with maggots all over her, rotting in the ground.”
“Get the Hell away from me,” Barbie McGuffie shrieked. “You’re going to Hell, that’s what’s going to happen to you. You’re going to Hell and so is your mother. You’re both going to burn for all eternity.”
“There is no Hell,” Mallory said, and Catherine could see the gleam in her eye, the triumph, as if this had been bottled up for so long it was an achievement to let it out. “There is no Hell. There is no life after death. There is no God. Only stupid people think there is. Stupid people who want to make the rest of us all stupid, too, and it isn’t going to work. Because you know the truth, Barbie McGuffie. There is no God. There is no life after death. Your mother is going to die from that lethal injection and then she’s going to rot.”
Barbie McGuffie threw her books on the floor and advanced on Mallory Cornish, but Mallory wasn’t moving. “You listen to me,” Barbie said, “there is a God and there is a Hell and your mother is in it right this minute, your mother—”
“Angels floating in the sky, Barbie? Women having babies when they haven’t had sex? Noah and his ark, for God’s sake. Tell me this, Barbie, what happened to all the shit? You know. There were all those animals there. They must have shit. They must have shit a lot. Where did all the shit go? Noah must have been up to his eyeballs in shit by the second day.”
“You shut up,” Barbie shrieked again. She had her hand on Mallory’s shoulder. She shoved. Mallory still didn’t move. She shoved again. “You’re going to Hell! You’re going to Hell!”
“You’re going nowhere,” Mallory said. “Twenty years from now you’ll still be sitting in Snow Hill, working at the diner and getting fat, when I’m out doing something with my life and then that will be it. Only stupid people believe in God and you’re the stupidest of the bunch, except for your mother, and she’s going to die. She’s going to die right there in the death chamber. It’s going to be on American Justice. And then she’s going to rot in the ground. And that’s what’s going to happen to you.”
This time, when Barbie shoved, it was with the full weight of her body behind it. Mallory stumbled back, and as she did Barbie stumbled forward, and teetered, and then fell, right down onto the hard linoleum of the foyer floor, onto her knees. Catherine could hear the crack of a bone all the way from where she stood at the doors.
Mallory caught her balance and walked back to where Barbie was, kneeling and howling at the top of her lungs.
“Your mother murdered my mother,” Mallory said, “and I know it and so do you. She said she was going to do it, and now she’s done it. I heard her say she was going to do it. I’m going to tell the police all about it, and when I do they’ll arrest her, and she’ll go on trial, and she’ll be found guilty, and that’s when they’ll put her to death. To rot. As a corpse in the ground. With maggots coming out of her eye sockets. To rot with nothing to show for her life, just like the rest of you idiots.”