“Tell me, Harper, are you going to use your new superpowers to strong-arm some boy into taking you to prom? Or maybe become head cheerleader?” Something in his expression hardened. “Not that you’re going to live that long.”
Then he lunged again, sword high, but I was ready for him. I spun around so my back was to him, then dropped so the sword passed right over my head. With my hands on the floor, I kicked out my left heel. “I already am head cheerleader,” I said through clenched teeth as my foot connected with his jaw.
Before Dr. DuPont recovered from my kick, I spun in my crouch and used that same leg to knock his legs out from under him.
He cracked his head against the sink as he went down, and I figured that was the end of it.
I stood up and looked down. There was a ragged tear from the hem of my skirt all the way up to the middle of my thigh.
“Oh, shoot,” I muttered, giving Dr. DuPont’s limp body a dark glare.
Then it occurred to me that I should definitely get out of here and find a non-homicidal teacher. Something in me still didn’t want to leave, but I shoved that down. Dr. DuPont had said superpowers, and talked about Mr. Hall “passing something on” to me. That must have been what that weird blowing in my mouth thing had been. But I could figure out exactly what had happened to me later. Right now I needed to get out of here before Dr. DuPont came to.
My arms and legs were starting to ache. I’d be black and blue tomorrow, I thought, as I scooted around Dr. DuPont, and I’d probably missed the crowning, thanks to all this craziness. I swear, if—
I didn’t get to finish the thought. Instead, there was a sharp pain at the back of my head that brought tears to my eyes and ripped a short scream from my throat. Dr. DuPont had grabbed a big handful of my thick hair. Yanking so hard that I was surprised I wasn’t snatched bald, he used my hair to pull me back and sling me into the sinks.
My right elbow hit the edge of the counter and a wave of nausea spilled over me.
I was still blinking back stars when Dr. DuPont swung a powerful kick to my stomach.
All the air left my lungs, and I crumpled to the ground, gasping and gagging at the same time. My chest was burning again, this time from lack of oxygen.
I lay there, staring at Dr. DuPont’s shiny black loafers as he walked over to the corner and picked up the scimitar he’d dropped.
I’m going to die here, I thought dimly. I’m going to be stabbed to death by my history teacher with some freaky sword, and no one will ever know what happened to me. And my parents will have two daughters who died at school dances, and my mom’s eyes will get sadder, and Dad’s face will get thinner, and our house will feel even grayer and emptier.
Now the pain in my stomach had nothing to do with Dr. DuPont’s kick. I closed my eyes as tears burned. Dr. DuPont was talking, but I couldn’t really hear him. He said something about the wrong place and the wrong time, and then he said this weird word that started with “pal.”
Paladin. What was that?
He might as well have been speaking Greek. All I could focus on was the burn in my chest and the aching of my midsection.
He was right in front of me now. I opened my eyes and saw the sword hanging at his side. The end glittered in the ugly fluorescent light of the bathroom.
I turned my head a little so I didn’t have to see him raise the blade.
Something pink caught my eye. It was one of my shoes. I remembered taking them off to help Mr. Hall. Apparently, they’d gotten kicked under the sink.
Dr. DuPont was still talking, but I was focused on that shiny pink shoe that now looked so silly in the midst of all this death and destruction. I reached out and pulled the shoe to me. Dr. DuPont laughed. “Afraid of dying without the right accessories, Miss Price? Nice to see you’re still a silly bitch, right to the end.”
But I didn’t want the shoe because it was pretty, or because it was pink. I rolled onto my back, slowly drawing my knees up. It wasn’t the most ladylike of positions, but I was going to need leverage. I held the shoe against my chest. I ran my thumb over its heel, remembering my desire to stomp on David Stark’s foot in these shoes. It would’ve hurt.
I fought to keep a smile off my face as Dr. DuPont raised the sword.
In fact, if I had stomped on David’s foot hard enough, the heel would’ve gone right through. It was awfully sharp.
If Dr. DuPont hadn’t been a total drama queen and raised the sword with both hands, he might have actually killed me. He certainly wouldn’t have ended up giving me the opening he did.
Because while his arms were high over his head, about to bring the sword down, I pushed myself off the floor and into a spin, the high heel clutched in my hands, sharp point out.
The sword was still poised in the air when I came to an abrupt stop and sunk the heel into his throat, right under his jaw. I’d learned about the carotid artery in Anatomy and Physiology, which was turning out to be a much more useful class than I’d originally thought, and while I’d definitely been aiming for it, I was still kind of shocked that I managed to hit it.
I guess Dr. DuPont was, too, because his eyes got really wide, and the sword clattered to the floor. He stared at me, his lips opening and closing like a fish, my pink shoe stuck in his neck. I guess it would’ve been kind of funny if it hadn’t been, you know, completely gross and horrifying.
Dr. DuPont reached up and pulled the heel out of his neck. Blood poured from the hole, pulsing out with his heartbeat.
He looked at the shoe for a long time, like he couldn’t figure out what it was. Then he muttered, “Pink.” The shoe fell from his fingers and he dropped back on the floor, his eyes wide and staring.
The only sound in the bathroom was my breathing and the steady plink-plink of the dripping sink.
Reality took a minute to set in, but when it did, it was bad.
I had just killed a teacher. With my shoe.
I ran over and picked up that shoe, wincing at the streaks of red on the heel. I grabbed a handful of paper towels and wiped it off, and my breathing got faster and faster.
“It’s okay,” I murmured to myself. “It was self-defense. He had a sword.”
I scrubbed at the heel, feeling like Lady Macbeth. Self-defense or not, I’d just killed someone. That was bad. That was really bad. I looked in the mirror, and saw that other than flushed cheeks and bright eyes, I looked pretty much the same as I had when I came in the bathroom. Well, except for the line of Salmon Fantasy scrawled across my face. I grabbed a paper towel and began scrubbing at my mouth.
Even my hair wasn’t that messed up. I should tell Ms. Brenda that the next time I go in, I thought automatically. Then it occurred to me that there was no way to tell my hairdresser that her ’dos hold up even when you’re kicking the crap out of sword-wielding teachers.
After I was done getting the blood off my shoe and ugly lipstick off my face, I tossed the paper towel in the trash and looked around. Mr. Hall’s body was against the stalls, and Dr. DuPont was lying about three feet away. There were big cracks in the tile from where I’d slammed Dr. DuPont’s head into the wall, and the bathroom door lay in pieces on the floor, surrounded by a fine layer of grit and more broken tiles.
Without really thinking, I slid my shoe back on and hobbled over to the trash can, where the second high heel lay on its side.