Strots’s attention is suddenly diverted to something over my shoulder, and even through the chaos inside of me, the change in her expression registers.
In slow motion, I turn and look to the staircase.
Greta is coming down the steps, the Brunettes behind her. The three are dressed in all white, from their shirts to their kicky skirts. White. Like the orderlies I wrote about. Just like the orderlies who tortured me when I was at my sickest. Who wore all white.
Of course it was her. Who else could have done this?
Sealing the deal that she’s the perpetrator are the affects of the two behind her. Though Greta is smiling widely, the two Brunettes are not. Francesca and Stacia have lowered their heads, and they have wrapped their arms around their middles. They’re clearly uncomfortable with this. They don’t feel this is right and know it’s gone too far. But as usual, they’re swept up in the plan, and see no way around their participation in it. They’re as ashamed as I am, just for a totally different reason.
Greta steps off the staircase and puts a hand on her hip. She looks directly at me. “Anything wrong? You look like you’re hallucinating or something.”
I can’t reply. I have no power, no voice, no recourse. She’s won, not by a margin but by an atomic bomb’s ring of devastation. And she knows this. Her eyes are lit up with victory, and her smile is so real that she’s radiantly beautiful. This is the predator with a full belly. This is the competitor who’s got all the trophies. This is the self-satisfaction that comes with the mastery of hurdles and the attainment of a goal.
As I remain silent, Greta shrugs. “Well, let me know if I can help with anything. We’re just off to play a little tennis—”
I’m not exactly sure what happens next.
One moment, I am breaking down… the next, there’s a flash in front of me, and it moves so fast that my addled brain can’t identify it. And then my view of Greta is blocked by something—no, by someone. Immediately after that, Greta is no longer standing triumphantly before me, at the base of the stairs. She’s being thrown into the wall.
Gasps from the other girls. People jumping back. Greta’s blond hair flowing up and out as she is banged into the wall a second time. And the attack doesn’t stop there.
It’s as she’s propelled through the open doorway of the phone room that I realize Strots has her hands around Greta’s throat and, with her much more powerful body, is pushing the girl, shoving her, taking her down. They land on the hard floor, the rug between the tables offering no cushioning at all. Strots is on top, straddling Greta, dominating her. Greta’s legs are extending out from under her crouched attacker, kicking, splaying, losing a white sneaker.
I have a thought that I need to stop this. I stumble into the phone room, but I can’t go any farther. Strots is pounding the back of Greta’s head into the carpet with a look of cold intensity. And Greta is clawing at Strots’s locked hold on her throat as her skull is nailed to the floor over and over again.
My roommate is going to kill the girl.
Greta’s luscious mouth is wide open, gaping, gasping for air that cannot get down into her lungs. Her eyes are peeled even wider, the whites showing around the blue in a full circle. Her spun-gold hair is tangling in a blur. And that sound, that hollow, horrible sound of a head impacting solid wood, is the loudest thing in the universe.
“Stop,” I whisper, too scared to yell. “Please… stop—”
I am shoved out of the way, my body ricocheting off to the side and banging into a table, hitting it so hard that I dislodge one of the phones’ receivers.
It’s Keisha. She’s jumped into the fray and now she’s forcing her arms around Strots’s rib cage, her body bulging with muscle as she hauls back, using her powerful thighs, putting all of her strength into it, her athletic build in direct battle with Strots’s. As girls watch in a crowd at the archway, and I brace myself against the table I fell into, no one knows whether Keisha will drag Strots back in time.
There is an eternity before we have our answer.
With the same abruptness the attack began, its ending arrives in the blink of an eye. One moment Strots is still trying to crack the back of Greta’s cranium; the next, Keisha’s determination overrides Strots’s urge to kill. The two of them go flying backward, the energy necessary to break the bond with Greta’s cervical column so great that they pinwheel across the room and slam into the far wall.
Keisha doesn’t let go. Even as she hits the hard-stop of the plaster, and a sharp sound suggests something might have been broken and not necessarily the laths, her dark forearms remain belted around Strots’s torso right below the breasts, her knees extending out on either side of Strots’s thighs, her legs braced so that her feet get the most traction.
Over in the middle of the room, Greta curls onto her side on the floor, her sloppy hands pawing at her neck as if she has no idea the constriction is gone. As her long, bare legs swing over the floor, I see her underwear beneath the hem of her skirt. They are pink. They are silky. They are a reminder I do not require for so many reasons.
Strots points a finger at Greta. In a booming voice, she says, “You stay away from her! You leave her the fuck alone!”
As the words register, I look over at my roommate. There are tears on her face. She’s crying in fury, and I know it’s from pain that only the three of us know the source of. Yet I’m very sure that she attacked only to defend me. Just as I could only really despise Greta after I knew what she had done to Strots, my roommate’s the same way.
It’s hatred, not unrequited love, that burns in her eyes.
“You leave her alone!” she hollers again.
Greta lifts her head from the carpet, and I’m prepared to see tears in those blue eyes. Except there are none and she doesn’t appear to be afraid. She is absolutely furious in spite of the fact that she’s still coughing, still gasping for air.
Even though she has to know that, if Keisha hadn’t interceded, she wouldn’t be alive right now.
Francesca and Stacia fight through the tightly packed bodies and run over to their friend, their despotic leader. In their white outfits, they’re like nurses to a patient, but as they reach out, Greta punches their concerned hands away.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” she spits at them.
As they rear back, Greta plants her single shoed foot on the rug and stands up on her own. Her hands are trembling, but she doesn’t seem to notice as she jerks her white skirt down, yanks her white shirt back into place. After this, she gathers her hair and sends it back over her shoulders with impatience. The sight of the marks on her neck makes my stomach roll anew. The brilliant red band that encircles her throat is neon against her delicate skin, and there’s blood on her lower lip where she must have bitten herself with her front teeth.
But she doesn’t appear to care.
She takes a step toward me. And another. And another. In the background, the receiver I knocked off when I hit the table begins to let out a beep-beep-beep-beep of alarm. But it’s not as if we need further notice that this is an emergency, this is an awful emergency, this is a really, really terrible emergency.
I cringe back and shield my face with my arms, thinking that Greta is coming at me.