Wanting Sheila Dead(82)

The police officer at the door did not look at her. He never looked at anyone.

Coraline heard a door open at the back of the foyer. That would be somebody coming in from the kitchen or the utility rooms. When they were first in the house, Coraline had gone searching around with Janice, just looking at things. She had never seen a house like this before, and neither had Janice.

“It’s like an English country house in a murder mystery,” Coraline had told Janice, thinking of her mother’s Masterpiece Theatre evenings.

And now it was an English country house in a murder mystery. How odd was that?

There was no mistaking the sound of those footsteps in the hall. Nobody on Earth walked the way Sheila Dunham walked. Coraline would have been able to pick out that sound in a crowded airport. She wished she was in a crowded airport. She wished she was anywhere but here. If Sheila made her go upstairs and change, she would have a fit.

Sheila didn’t seem to see her on the stairs. Coraline held her breath. When you saw Sheila up close, she was nowhere near as glamorous as she looked on television. She was old, for one thing. Coraline had heard that she’d had a million dollars’ worth of plastic surgery, and she didn’t have wrinkles, but she just looked wrong. Her skin didn’t look like skin, and it was sort of dull, as if it weren’t really alive. Her eyes were worse. Her hair looked brittle enough to snap off if somebody pulled at it.

It was hard to know what to do. Did she want to cough or do something to make herself known, or just pretend not to be here, so she didn’t startle Sheila? Coraline looked down at her dress. It was the dress she’d worn this year to the roast beef dinner, the one the church held to raise money for missions. She’d been a hostess at that dinner. The dress was the only thing she had ever bought at Anne Klein, and she still couldn’t believe what it had cost.

Sheila stopped in the doorway to the living room. Then she turned and looked Coraline right in the face. Coraline let herself breathe again. She’d done the right thing. Sheila must have known she was there all along.

“Where are the rest of them?” Sheila asked.

“I don’t know,” Coraline said. “They were still getting ready when I came down. Maybe they’re still getting ready.”

“I’m not letting anyone into the challenge who’s late,” Sheila said. “I don’t care how many of them I have to disqualify. You’re the Christian one, aren’t you?”

“I’m a Christian,” Coraline said. She didn’t want to say she was the only one. That wouldn’t be right. There might be another Christian girl here. Maybe she was trying to hide it, because she was afraid that it would end up getting her eliminated. Coraline did not think that would be right, but she knew people who did that kind of thing.

Sheila was looking her up and down. “How old are you?” she asked.

“I’m eighteen.”

“You didn’t lie about that to get on the show? You aren’t really sixteen?”

“No,” Coraline said. “Why would I lie about that?”

“People lie about their ages all the time. God, you’re insipid looking. And you’re young. Not that that ever hurt anybody. How long do you think it’s going to take you to grow out of it?”

“To grow out of what?”

“The religion thing,” Sheila said. “People grow out of it. I grew out of it. It gets to the point where you just can’t stand the stupid anymore. Then you wake up one day, and you can’t believe you ever took any of it seriously. Which is a good thing, if you don’t mind my saying so, because that way you aren’t making yourself crazy about going to Hell all the time. Do you expect to go to Hell?”

“Nobody goes to Hell if they’re saved,” Coraline said.

“Right,” Sheila said. “And once you’re saved, you can slaughter babies in the middle of church on Sunday and you still can’t go to Hell. I love religion. It’s not just stupid, it’s disgusting.”

“It’s not the Christians who are slaughtering babies,” Coraline said. Her neck had begun to feel stiff. Her arms had begun to ache.

“Oh, I know what we’re going to ask you about,” Sheila said. “Let’s see how that looks on an interview tape, why don’t we? Slaughtering babies and murdering queers.”

“I’d never use a word like—”

“Oh, of course you would,” Sheila said. “You just wouldn’t use a word like that in front of somebody you know doesn’t agree with you. And don’t tell me a Christian would never murder anybody. Think about Matthew Shepard.”