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Carrie sat silently in the closet after her nightly prayers until she heard the light in her mother's room click off. The air was so thick it could be chewed on. A mental map of each floor panel illuminated her path to the front door. She came to know on instinct and muscle memory which planks squeaked when you walked over them.
She plucked a musty grey coat from her mother's hanger. Winter was a blessing, she thought. It spared her the dilemma between dressing modestly for her mother and fashionably for her schoolmates. She tried to make out her silhouette in the mirror on the wall. Not quite for the fashion magazines, but it would have to do. The storm would make a mess out of everyone, anyway. Hopefully.
Carrie turned the lock a centimeter at a time, then opened and shut the door in one swift movement. She froze like a bunny on the other side, glancing at the front windows. No yelling. The lights didn't turn on. It was safe to go.
Susan Snell had decided to invite her to a "presentation party." She refused many times, but Sue would insist with a desperate twitch in her eye.
"It'll be like a movie night," Sue said, leaning in conspiratorially. "We can make fun of Chris's spelling together."
Eventually, she relented. It would make Sue feel better. She didn't quite understand when powerpoints became cool, but it was certainly more mellow-sounding than all of the dates Sue was trying to get her to go on with her boyfriend. It helped that Sue told her that she didn't actually have to present anything and could just watch.
Carrie's escape plan didn't quite factor in the distance between their houses. For some reason, she figured the Snells were close by. Maybe they were, and the walk was only made long by the icy cold rain. It made every step feel like a glass bottle shattered on her calves.
She rang the doorbell. Several minutes passed with no answer. She heard voices inside, big booms of laughter every now and then. She rang again.
"It's open!" a muffled voice called from the other side.
A narrow hallway opened up into the living room. A large square of people were sitting cross-legged and facing the left wall. Paintings and portraits had been taken down and propped up on the floor. Chairs were pushed aside at odd angles. The wall was a big blank canvas for the projector. Along the other walls, people leaned their shoulders and sipped on beers and sodas. They looked so nonchalant for what little room they actually had to move. The whole school was here, it seemed.
The guilt over being late scratched at her, though she'd heard many people say it looked better to be late to these kinds of things. The warmth of the house that had thawed her face was already too much. Her insides roasted. She peeled off her coat and turned back to the hall, panicking when she didn't see a coat rack or a bin or-
"Heyyy, look who's here," a snake-ish voice rang behind her, coiling around her lungs.
It was Aaron Callaway, a kid from her history class and one of Chris's friends. He was leering at her intensely and, while that would have been bad on its own, "leering" meant something else when it was done to her. It was more of an inside joke the person was having with themselves.
"You lost?" Aaron asked in tone of feigned concern.
"Actually," a friend butted in behind him, "I'm showing her off as my science experiment later."
"Ahhh, that tracks."
He was very close to her now. The room grew hotter than hell. His hand brushed her shoulder, and his breath grazed her cheek. What he said next, she couldn't hear. She couldn't hear anything at all.
...
Applause was scattered and hesitant throughout the room. Billy sat down and wrapped his arm around Chris's waist.
Susan's TV suddenly turned on from its seat by the far wall, its reflection ghosting the patio doors. Some of the crowd jumped.
Bones reruns were on. A wave of static passed through the frames of Dr. Brennan's face. The kids looked on as a girl in a long white gown shuffled towards the screen and bent over to turn it off. She continued toward the front.
A long silence followed as she eyed the crowd through a long dark curtain of hair.
"Today, I'll be discussing maritime folklore from various regions. I'll give examples, and then I will parse them for what's based in truth and what's been made up."
The first slide of her powerpoint appeared behind her, despite no one being near the computer. It had a soft blue background and a photo of an orca, above which "Ocean Facts!" was written in green chiller font. Below the photo in the same font read the words "by Yamamura Sadako."
No one at the party remembered Sadako from school. Sue was given many confused and indignant looks, and she had to tell everyone via a game of "telephone" that she didn't invite her.
There was a lot to be learned from the presentation. Poseidon wasn't real, but there was an ocean king, and he was an anglerfish. Cthulu wasn't real, just as Herbert West wasn't real. You can vacation on The Flying Dutchman if you knew who to talk to, but the crew just missed the advent of poker when they were cursed, so it wasn't much fun.
But to Sadako's great annoyance, some people couldn't be bothered to pay attention. They felt the need to whisper and snicker to everyone next to them. Their grating voices hit her ears like a burglar alarm. She could also make out a lot of movement in the hallway, distracting her from her peripheral vision as she was nearing the end. Then there was shouting. Must be a fight of some sort. She carried on.
"And so a creature very similar to the kraken living near the Tōhoku region-"
A lamp on one of the side tables exploded. Sue shrieked and clutched Tommy's arm as sparks rained down on them. Several photo frames launched across the room. A family vacation to Hawaii hit a kid square in the face and broke his glasses. He was always a little bitch though, so it was fine.
Sadako was panicked for other reasons. Was she suddenly losing control of her powers? She didn't even know she was telekinetic. Even if she was, how could she make things fly when she wasn't even thinking about it?
The girl finally drew her attention to the group huddled around the doorway. Through the cracks between the swarm of bodies, she recognized a girl from her grade. Sadako would stare at her from verrry far away during lunch, struck by the way she'd tear off the crusts of her sandwiches in one motion. By the wide, unblinking hawk-eyes she'd make at her books. At the way the sun barely reflected off her ratty net of hair. She was cool.
It was hard to tell what was happening to Carrie now. Only that some kids were ganging up on her like they liked to do. Moths to a flame.
The energy of the party changed on a dime. With everything dragging and falling and breaking, everyone fumbling around on the carpet below and smashing against each other in a herd trying to get out of the way, Sadako was beginning to think she'd misjudged partying. There was a lot more in it for her than she once imagined.
...
Once Carrie's fanboys mysteriously dropped dead, Sadako wrapped up her presentation with a curse upon anyone who didn't share it with 13 people. Not many were left to receive the curse - they fled the house by that point - but the show must go on.
Carrie had also vanished. Sadako went outside to look for her and was met with a dark, empty street. A streak of lightning flashed above and revealed a figure crouched behind a neighbor's bush. Her face flickered between expressions of shock and rage; it was like looking at one of those shifting Halloween portraits.
Carrie drew back. She was certain that anyone who found her would beat her to death. It did nothing to ease her worries that her next bully might be the strange shape on the sidewalk. She blinked, and the girl was halfway down the lawn somehow. Another flash of lightning, and she was on the other side of the bush, glaring with her pupil stretched to the very corner of her eye.
Sadako offered to take her home. No introduction. Not explaining anything. Carrie agreed, not only because she felt she was under duress, but because the other girl made her insurmountably curious. Sadako didn't seem like the other kids at school, and despite it all, Carrie had hope that this was a good thing.
The two walked together under Sadako's umbrella. Neither really said anything to each other. Carrie stumbled down the street in an uneven line, occasionally bumping into Sadako's shoulder. Sadako would nudge her back in what she thought was a friendly game. It was nice to have, this and the sirens and the rushing water.
Eventually, they turned the corner and slowed to a halt. The White residence was in view.
"I DIDN'T KILL THEM!" Carrie blurted through the dark.
Sadako squinted at her. "Why would I think you did?"
"I-I don't know."
Carrie let out a weary sigh, figuring she blew it. If Sadako wasn't onto her being some type of devil-spawn psychic murderer before, she definitely was now.
"I think it was a ghost," Sadako said, unperturbed. "A very powerful ghost that kills those who are more trouble than they're worth."
Sadako didn't really mind if Carrie knew that she was some type of devil-spawn psychic murderer, but it was better that they didn't get into it right now. One thing at a time.
"Yeah," Carrie laughed as her shoulders relaxed. "A ghost."
"Freaky, isn't it? Everyone will be talking about how Susan Snell's house is haunted now. You can't escape a reputation like that, the poor girl."
The deep shadow cast by the umbrella just barely concealed her smile.
"It was nice meeting you," she continued, reaching out to shake Carrie's hand. "I'll call you tomorrow."
"...You don't have my number?"
At that, Sadako laughed. The first genuine, hardy laugh anyone had ever heard her give.
"I don't really need people's numbers."