Whores on the Hill Read online

  I opened my mouth to speak, to give her an answer, but nothing came out.

  She said, almost crying, “Tell me. Does this mean Deb Scott’s dead?”

  WHITE DINNER

  On the night of White Dinner, Friday, May 14, all the clocks stopped at Sacred Heart Holy Angels at exactly 11:53 p.m.

  We were standing outside in the courtyard behind the Virgin, Astrid, Juli, and me, waiting on our dates for White Dinner.

  “They’ll be here. I swear,” Astrid said, fidgeting with the stained bodice of her dress. All three of us were picking nabs off the outfits we got at the Thrift. Juli wore a black leather skirt and high-heeled cowboy boots. Astrid’s fifties pink dress had a scalloped top and pink polka dots. I wore a periwinkle gunnysack with a mushroom skirt.

  White Dinner was our prom. My suspension concluded just in time to make it. We were required to wear white dresses with straps, skirts below the knee, white stockings, white shoes, and white gloves. We were supposed to play by the rules. Instead, our ugly dresses were torn off from their sleeves, ripped at the hem, stained with coffee, lipstick, mascara.

  “As a goof. As a lark,” Astrid said. “You know.”

  I stood on my tiptoes and peeked in the cafeteria windows, watching couples sway to Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” Crepe paper and colored balloons, in cadmium yellow, red, and purple, hung from the rafters. A card table was set up in front of the bleachers with a plastic punch bowl on top of it, some broken cookies. I saw Barry and his crew dancing under the disco light with their thumbs out in high-water tuxedo pants. Quinn Catherine wore fresh-cut daises in her perfect blond pageboy. I felt like punching my fists through the glass, just to feel something, anything at all.

  Behind me, Astrid and Juli laughed, scuffled in the grass, mock-dancing. Then I heard them whispering, “Here, no, over here. There, higher, that’s it.”

  I teetered at the window, blinking, peering at the boys in tuxedo jackets and girls in white dresses until I spied Devin, handsome in a powder blue tuxedo jacket. All slick curls and olive dimples. I watched him nervously tug at his powder blue bowtie and cough in his hand. It took the wind out of me, just to see him standing there. I lost my grip on the window, slipped, and scraped my knees on the limestone bricks.

  I turned around, wincing, at the sound of Astrid’s laughter. “Surprise.”

  There at the base of the Virgin Mary statue, over the snake that bites the apple, over the cracked limestone curve of the Virgin’s feet, Astrid and Juli had spray-painted in loopy, lassoed script, THE WHORES ON THE HILL WERE HERE.

  “Brilliant.” Astrid laughed. “Don’t you think, Jellybean?”

  There was a sound, a scuffling in the trees lining the courtyard, then laughter. Grubb and Jerome came crashing through the pines. Grubb wore a long, purple, double-breasted jacket, a purple paisley tie, and a grey fedora. Jerome wore a Mississippi Thunderpussy T-shirt, dirty jeans and teetered on silver-tipped cowboy boots.

  “Girls,” Jerome said, laughing. “We made it, girls.”

  “We’re your knights in shining armor,” Grubb said, thumbing his lapels, showing off his purple suit. “We’re here to take you away from all this.”

  “You invited them?” I asked.

  “Hey, what about me?” Juli said.

  “Slim pickings.” Astrid took a drag off a Kool. “But this might be more fun anyway.”

  Jerome grinned. “Are you ready for the night, girls? Because the night is done ready for you.”

  Lights from the gymnasium fell across the courtyard like shards of broken glass. Grubb looked defanged and fishy. Jerome did a funny little two-step with his hands forked out at his sides.

  “Who’s ready to dance?” he asked, eyeing me and winking.

  “Hey, Jellybean. Guess what I swiped off Janitor Fritz last week?” Astrid said, looping her arm through mine. She swung a ring of keys in front of my eyes, laughing. “I’ve got the keys to the bell tower.”

  I eyed the keys, long skeleton numbers, dangling from Astrid’s finger.

  “I heard the bell tower was haunted,” one of the boys said.

  “Deb Scott,” Juli whispered.

  “Just stop it,” I said. “I mean, please.”

  I grabbed the key ring and went flying. Astrid, Juli, Grubb, and Jerome followed me, running, all of us laughing, up the stairwell, past the second floor and the third, past the trophy case, down the hall, to the wooden door with the orange poster marked KEEP OUT.

  I slipped a key in the slot, trying one, swearing, then another, until finally, the lock clicked over. I flipped the switch and we were running, yelling, tearing up the stairs, streaking for the tower.

  The spiral stairs were so narrow they seemed built for a child. Jerome goosed my skirt, going, “Hot dog.” But I just swatted his hand away. When we banged through the doors and stepped outside, I caught my breath. The wind swept up and tore our hair, blew our skirts sideways.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Would you look at this?”

  First I saw the bells, dangling in the ceiling like the undersides of girls’ skirts, then long, rectangular, triangle-topped windows that looked out and over our whole world. We were running to the windows, leaning over, breathing in the late-night air, excited, with Jerome whistling between his teeth, “Hoo-wee.”

  Wisconsin lay at our feet, the whole of it. First the tiny, brick houses of Wauwatosa with shutters like faces, then the crisscrossing grid of the streets, the lights of flashing cars, and past that, in the distance, the towering skyscrapers of Milwaukee and the Miller Brewing plant, its red neon sign flashing in the night. It was Saturday night, May 14, 1988, and we were so close to summer. Almost free. It seemed like we could almost touch it.

  “Astrid,” I said, reaching out to her bare, bleached arm.

  “It’s ours, Jellybean. All of it. Here.” She grinned and scooped me up, laughing.

  “Hey girls, Jerome has got a surprise for you,” Grubb said, pulling out a paper sack from behind his ugly purple suit. “Something special we brought just for you.”

  Grubb tossed the paper sack to Jerome, who laughed, and started digging around in it. The bells tolled, quickly, lowly, and we all covered our ears, screaming. My whole body was ringing, singing, high above the school, the dance, Devin, and Sacred Heart Holy Angels.

  Jerome picked up something small and pink in his hand, winked at me, and cupped it to his lit cigarette. A spinning zipper firecracker went flying off the front of the belfry, sending a shower of sparks shooting down, past the three floors of Sacred Heart Holy Angels, a flood of color, cherry and bottle green sparks. Astrid screamed, happily.

  “Make it quick,” Grubb said. “Somebody’ll hear.”

  But Astrid just leaned back, laughing, saying, “It’s okay. We’ve got fifteen good minutes, I bet.”

  Grubb and Jerome tossed Roman candles and smoke bombs off the ledge of the bell tower. They ignited hair spray like a flamethrower. Grubb handed Jerome a flask of something. He took a swig and lit it, spewing flames.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” Astrid teased.

  “Check this out,” Jerome said, pulling a can of Elmer’s Rubber Cement out of his pocket. He took the paisley handkerchief out of Grubb’s breast pocket, stuffed it in the can of Elmer’s, and lit it with his Zippo.

  “Careful,” Juli said.

  “You’re such a fucking pyro,” Grubb said, biting the filter off his Camel.

  “Molotov cocktail,” Jerome said, pitching the flaming can over the side of the bell tower, towards the church, shouting, “Incoming.” Before we knew it, Jerome lit another can and launched it, flying, flaming through the air, where it landed on the roof of our Spanish-style mission church. Sparks flew.

  The cans spilled across the roof of the chapel, dripping the accelerant down the sloping, cedar roof, fire spreading out like a blanket wherever it touched.

  Astrid leaned over, halfway out of the belfry, going, “Shit.”

&
nbsp; “It’ll go out. The wind will get it. Right?” Juli asked.

  Jerome just laughed. We watched the flames dance, flicker as if they might go out, then kick up, surging in the wind. Down the roof, over the gutters, sparks shot off the roof and down to the ground.

  “You fucking asshole.” Astrid shoved Jerome up against the wall. “This is our school, man. This is Sacred Heart.”

  “Sacred Heart sluts.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Astrid screamed.

  But already, the fire had caught.

  Flames licked the night. The fire raged across the chapel roof, crackling and eating up the wood, sped on by the Elmer’s accelerant. We stood riveted, as the ravages of the main blaze took hold, we saw sparks falling through the roof and then the circular stained-glass window was burning from inside, the angels stretched their enormous wings and it was beautiful, for a moment, like the flickering of votive candles. But then we heard the pop and crash, the moan of beams breaking. The wind picked up and blew burning brands from the chapel’s falling roof on the air. Sparks flew and blew through the open windows of Sacred Heart.

  “Fuck,” Astrid said, grabbing our hands. “Fuck. Come on. Let’s go.”

  We ran down to the third floor, with Grubb and Jerome on our heels. To our right, the chem lab caught fire. Helium, lithium, beryllium. There was a crack, a pop and spark of smoke, then a horrifying, booming sound. Something exploded, then everything, the whole hall was filled with smoke and fire.

  Juli screamed.

  Sister St. Joe stepped out of the nunnery. Her eyes haunted, her mouth turned down jagged like a tear. She saw us, she saw Astrid and Juli and me running across the third floor in our ruined dresses, away from the fiery mess of the chem lab.

  “It’s everywhere,” Astrid cried.

  “Wait,” Grubb said, loping behind us. “Just wait.”

  Sister St. Joe reached for the wall. She yanked the fire alarm down, yelling, “Run!”

  The fire alarm sawed through the night. The third-floor hallway filled with flames, smoke, and heat. We ran to the stairwell on the east corner, but when we opened the doors, the stairwell was filled with a dirty, smoglike smoke. It looked like the bottom of an oven. We could see the orange, licking flames making their way up the stairs. The fire burned upwards and stained the walls with a V-shaped smoking pattern.

  Then we heard popping all around us, as the windows broke from the heat, all the glass snapping out of Sacred Heart Holy Angels. We were trapped on the third floor of Sacred Heart. There was nowhere else to go.

  “The roof,” Sister St. Joe said.

  “What’s happening?” Astrid screamed.

  “The west wing.” Sister St. Joe opened the door to the nunnery and beckoned. “Here, I know the way.”

  “We’re bailing,” Grubb said, pulling his shirt over his nose and tugging Jerome’s sleeve towards the east wing, back towards the flames where the fire started in the chapel.

  “You’ll never get out,” Juli said.

  But already, they were running, Grubb and Jerome, tearing down the hallway, preferring to brave the blaze rather than escape with us, only to get caught.

  “Move it. Now,” Sister St. Joe said.

  We banged through the doors, through the nunnery, down a long, dark hallway. Everything felt dark and powdery and closed off like a library but we were running, we were crying, we were following Deb Scott through the dark, warrenlike rooms and the thick, choking smoke. At the end of the long hall, we ran up a series of stairs, then across a cluttered room, the attic, stuffed with dressmakers’ dummies and veils.

  Everything was black shadows above us, then Sister St. Joe was pulling down a wooden ladder, she was saying, “Go on, go.” Astrid ran up the ladder first, then Juli, then me. Astrid put her hands above her head, opened the latch, and we were on the roof, gasping, choking for clean air.

  “Head back, towards the courtyard,” Sister St. Joe said. “There’s a fire escape there.”

  Fire trucks were circling the school. Firemen unloaded their coils of hose like a giant, white snake and dragged them, straining, running towards the flames that were taking over Sacred Heart Holy Angels, the chapel and the main building both.

  Astrid stood at the very lip of the roof, teetering on the edge, watching Sacred Heart go up in flames, hypnotized, she wouldn’t stop staring, even though I could see her eyes tearing from the heat.

  “Come on. The nunnery will go next,” Sister St. Joe said. “Any minute.”

  “Sacred Heart has a heartbeat,” Astrid said numbly, her back to us and staring at the fire. “I know this now. You have to get inside it to know, to figure it out. Can’t you hear it?”

  Flames ate the church alive. And next to it, fire shot out of Sacred Heart’s broken windows, oscillating against the night. Everything was vibrating and crashing all around us. Beneath it, there was a continuous beating sound. The music of fire, steady and furious as wings.

  “Fire’s natural path is vertical,” Sister St. Joe said. “It will be here any minute.”

  Astrid turned to face us. She stood with her arms out, her hair lit behind her by the fire like a crown of flame. “We’re going to die here,” she said.

  “We won’t.” Sister St. Joe reached out her hand. “Let’s go.”

  But Astrid stood at the edge of the roof, her wild, navy-colored eyes shining feral. An alarm kicked up in my body and everything, everything was ringing.

  “I never thought I’d surpass Sacred Heart anyway,” Astrid said. Her face looked bunched up, wrinkled like a smoking coal and hot to the touch. “It just goes on and on. But that’s high school, right?”

  “You will survive this,” Sister St. Joe said. “I survived this.”

  Sirens split the night. The fire raged, a living, breathing thing. The firemen circled it, fighting the inferno with three long, pale streams of water, hopelessly shooting into the flames that just danced higher.

  “Really Sister?” Astrid thumbed a sooty, wheat-colored curl behind one ear. “Because if you asked me, I’d tell you that I’ve always been here.”

  “Astrid,” I said. “Come on, please.”

  “Haven’t you, Sister?” Astrid said. A thundercloud of fire rose behind her, a mushroom cloud of flame engulfing the chapel and erupting against the night, unbelievable and real. Sister St. Joe’s face was wet with tears, but she squared her jaw, furious. Her veils blew in the wind. “Haven’t you been here too?” Astrid said.

  “Stop it,” Juli screamed.

  “We don’t have much time,” Sister St. Joe whispered.

  The fire vented violently and shot out of the old chimney stacks on the roof. There were screams, from me, Astrid, or Juli, I couldn’t tell which, all of our voices like one. Flames shot up, raining blazing ash and sparks in the air. Sister St. Joe reached out a hand and grabbed Astrid. Juli and I were running, tearing, across the roof. Astrid and Sister St. Joe followed close behind us. I could hear Astrid panting for breath. Everything in front of us was dark, pitch-black, Juli was crying, we couldn’t see and we were running, breathless, dragging for air. The top of the nunnery was a blind, black track in the dark, sprawling big as a playing ground, and we were running, breaking for the finish line, when suddenly I heard Astrid scream—a pinched, torn yelp, like that of an animal, and then nothing.

  We turned around, but they were gone, Astrid and Sister St. Joe both. They were just gone. Disappeared.

  The asphalt roof stretched flat. Juli and I ran back to where they’d been, but Juli stuck out her arm quick, shouting, “Watch it.”

  Beneath our feet, in a perfect square, the roof opened up for an old air shaft. Juli turned to me, her mouth pulled back in fright, her face untamed and terrified, and we ran, screaming, crying down the fire escape. We didn’t stop screaming, the both of us running across the courtyard, past the boys in tuxedo jackets and girls in white dresses, past the firemen struggling with heavy coils of hose. Past the Virgin with THE WHORES ON THE HILL WERE HERE ta
gged in Astrid’s loose, lassoed script, we ran screaming for the double doors of Sacred Heart that now stood open, water cascading down the steps. We ran to the firemen, all of them standing in a line, their arms outstretched and blocking our entry, screaming, we couldn’t stop screaming, even when the ambulance circled the school, the sirens wailing.

  WHORES ON THE HILL

  The second time Juli tried to die, she didn’t call me afterwards. She didn’t call because Astrid was gone and never coming back now.

  The ambulance swung into the parking lot after we rushed the doors of Sacred Heart Holy Angels, crying, trying to get inside. But it wasn’t until two in the morning, until all that was left of Sacred Heart was a chunk of smoldering, burning beams and broken floors, that the rescue crew found Astrid and Sister St. Joe, lying at the bottom of an air shaft in the basement of Sacred Heart Holy Angels. They had fallen forty-two feet down an air shaft that neither of them could see, running across the roof in the dark.

  Sister St. Joe was found unconscious with a broken pelvis and a cracked wrist. But Astrid was pronounced dead on arrival. Father Flynn administered the last rites, he got down on one knee in the dirt and debris of Holy Angels to cross Astrid’s forehead and lips with holy water. The rescue crew put her body in a black, oil slick bag with two handles on it and carried her out of Sacred Heart.

  Juli and I watched from the parking lot, hysterical and shivering in our ugly, torn dresses. Sacred Heart stood before us, water running from her cracked and open doors. It was like the world stopped for us, shut down after all that screaming, like the clocks inside Sacred Heart Holy Angels.

  Juli and I, blank eyed and numb, gave statements to the police. We rode in cop cars downtown, answered questions, told them about Grubb and Jerome, gave our fingerprints with ink, and were ordered not to leave the state.

  Juli’s father took her home from the police precinct. He tucked her into bed. Left a Valium on her nightstand. But it wasn’t until the morning after the Sacred Heart fire that he found her, tucked away in her closet as if for sleep, for a nap, like she used to do as a little girl. Only she had gotten sick on herself, on the old, frayed nightgown with the white scuzzy lace. Juli threw up in her sleep, unconscious, her stomach full of the prescription pills her father had given her, the Xanax, the Valium, the Trazodone, all the pills she had hoarded, storing, saving up just for that moment.