Danielle’s Autopsy Table
12-5-07

Danielle Chasen was always a little funny. She dressed in black every day, and always wore the same long braid down the middle of her back. She roamed the school halls very slowly and solemnly, even in elementary school, while the rest of us were running and yelling.

I guess you could call her a geek, but we never felt it suited her properly. We preferred the moniker “The Freak.” It was shouted at her as she ambled through the halls, and scrawled across her locker door in permanent marker. I even called her “The Freak” myself a time or two, always behind her back, of course.

We made our aversion to Danielle’s bland wardrobe and creepy mannerisms very clear up until sixth grade. That was the year Tina Harvey slept over her house.

Danielle had been courting Tina, in a way, since school began that year in September. She smiled at her in the hallway, attempted small talk in the girls’ room, and passed notes to her in English class. The notes always said the same thing, in clumpy black ink on torn notebook paper, “Want to be friends?” We all laughed it off for a while and ignored her, but Danielle was persistent.

One day, Nicole Strauss got an idea. She gathered the old gang around at lunch that Wednesday afternoon with a sneaky grin on her face. Michelle, Tina and I leaned in attentively, clutching our brown bagged lunches.

“Tina,” Nicole said quietly, glancing over her shoulder, as if someone might be listening in. “Did The Freak pass you a note in English class today?”

“Yeah,” Tina replied, giggling. She produced the crumpled sheet of paper from her pocket. “It says, ‘want to be friends?’” She quoted the note in a high-pitched, whiney voice, and crossed her eyes in what I guess was supposed to be a Danielle impression.

We all cackled in that way only a group of twelve-year-old girls can, half of us not even sure what we were laughing at.

“Gimme it,” Nicole demanded, snatching the note from Tina. There was no question in our clique about who was in charge.

Nicole scanned the page, holding back more giggles. “Oh, God!” She groaned, rolling her eyes, the sneaky grin never leaving her freckled face. “She is so pathetic!” We all erupted into a fresh burst of girlish laughter.

“I know,” said Tina, glaring across the cafeteria at Danielle, who was seated at her usual empty table, reading. “Imagine me being friends with her!”

Michelle, Tina and I started giggling again, but Nicole shushed us. “I have an idea,” she said, her smile growing wider to display her purple-adorned braces. The three of us leaned in closer, similar sneers now appearing on our respective faces.

“You should pretend to be her friend,” Nicole said excitedly, as if she were the first 12-year-old girl ever to utter those words.

Michelle and I laughed, but Tina looked stricken. “What?!” she shouted incredulously.

Nicole shushed her, barely able to contain her laughter. “Listen,” she said, throwing another furtive glance over her shoulder. “Just pretend to be her friend. Dig up as much dirt on her as you can, and then…” She paused for dramatic effect, “We’ll spread it all over the school!” Michelle and I collapsed into giggles. “The Freak will be so embarrassed, she’ll have to switch schools!” Nicole concluded proudly.

“That would be like.. Heaven!” Said Michelle in a breathy voice, clasping her hands together in a prayer stance.

“Yeah!” I said, “Just imagine what kind of freaky stuff she does when she’s not at school!”

“Yes!” Said Nicole, her eyes growing wide. “That’s it! Tina, you have to go over her house!”

“You have to sleep over her house!” Michelle added.

Only Tina wasn’t convulsing with laughter at this point. Her cheeks had turned a scarlet shade, and she was shooting nervous glances in Danielle’s direction. “You guys,” she pleaded. “I don’t wanna be friends with The Freak!”

“No duh!” Said Nicole mockingly. “Nobody wants to be friends with The Freak. Just pretend!”

“Yeah, Tina,” Michelle and I urged.

“Why don’t you guys do it?” Tina asked, crossing her arms defiantly.

“’Cause!” Said Nicole, sighing in frustration. “She likes you!”

Michelle and I laughed so hard we could barely catch our breath. Nicole attempted in vain to shush us again. Kids at nearby tables were beginning to stare at us and whisper to each other.

Tina attempted a few more feeble protests, but peer pressure won in the end, as it usually did in those days. She approached Danielle “The Freak” Chasen during recess that afternoon, while Nicole, Michelle and I looked on, stifling our giggles.

Danielle agreed to have Tina spend Friday night at her house, pending permission from her parents. So at lunch on Friday, Nicole gave Tina a gift. It was a sparkly purple notebook with a matching feathery pen. “Use this to write down all the freaky stuff Danielle does, then we’ll xerox it and pass it around school.”

We all laughed, even Tina, who was starting to get into the spirit of things. We anxiously finished or pudding packs, Tastykakes and string cheese so we could head out to recess.

Danielle drifted toward us in the schoolyard. “Here comes your new best friend,” I whispered, poking Tina in the arm. Nicole, Michelle and I had to cover our faces with our hands to hide our laughter.

Tina’s face flushed, “Shut up,” she grumbled.

As Danielle loomed closer, I noticed the title of the old leather-bound book in her hands, Ancient Embalming Techniques. I felt the smallest twinge of apprehension, but dismissed it immediately.

Danielle’s pale face lit up when her eyes met Tina’s. She smiled like she knew a funny joke that we didn’t.

“Can you be at my house at seven tonight?” She asked Tina.

“Yeah,” Tina muttered, staring down at her floral canvas sneakers.

“Great,” said Danielle, shifting her grin to me. I looked into her gray eyes and felt a chill down my spine; the smile melted from my face.

“See you then,” Danielle said, her eyes still focused on me. As she turned to walk away, I could have sworn she winked at me.

On Monday morning, Nicole, Michelle and I were bursting with anticipation. Michelle and I practically ran to the English class we took with Tina and Danielle. Danielle was there, solemn and mysterious as ever; Tina wasn’t.

Tina’s desk sat empty in the middle of the room, still stuffed with books and folders and sheets of loose leaf paper. I surveyed the classroom, but Tina was nowhere to be found. Michelle and I exchanged worried glances.

Michelle raised her hand. “Mrs. French,” she called.

Our teacher paused in her scribbling on the blackboard and turned around. “Yes, Michelle?”

“Is Tina out sick today?” Michelle asked.

Mrs. French consulted the attendance sheet on her desk and frowned. “I suppose she is,” she said, returning to the board.

Michelle and I exchanged more worried glances. I craned my neck to look at Tina’s empty desk, a few rows over. In the upper left corner she had written her name in bubble letters and decorated it with stars. I stared at it and it stared back at me accusingly.

Suddenly I was overcome with the feeling that I was being watched. I looked up to find Danielle smiling at me over her vocabulary book. That’s when I thought to myself that Tina was never coming back.

Tina didn’t show up for school the rest of the year, or any other year after that. The story going around was that she was so freaked out after spending the night at Danielle’s that she switched schools. A lot of people started to say that Danielle was a witch, and that she’d put a curse on Tina. Others maintained Danielle’s family were members of a bizarre cult who had tried to recruit Tina.

I didn’t know what to believe, but I couldn’t get the title of Danielle’s leather-bound book out of my head: Ancient Embalming Techniques. I remembered hearing the word “embalming” used in history class. It knew it had something to do with mummies. I imagined a Hollywood-style mummy in tattered rags, limping after Tina and moaning, while Danielle laughed.

Nicole, Michelle and I drifted apart over the years. Although we went from attending the same middle school to attending the same junior high and then high school, we were no longer the tightly-knit clique we’d been in sixth grade. None of us ever heard from Tina, and as the years went on we tried to forget about the night she’d spent with Danielle “The Freak.” I managed to push the incident out of my mind with thoughts of boys and school dances, until tenth grade, when Danielle became my lab partner.

Danielle and I were seated next to each other on our first day of chemistry, and the rule was always that the person next to you was your lab partner for the year. As I took my place beside Danielle, she flashed me the same mysterious smile she’d worn that fateful Friday back in sixth grade. She was holding another leather-bound book, this one was entitled, Modern Autopsy Practices. I quickly pulled out my chemistry textbook and stared resolutely at the table of contents.

Our first few chemistry classes went much more smoothly than I’d expected. Danielle appeared to be very informed on the subject, and the two of us received a perfect score on our first in-class assignment. I was even beginning to think that a whole semester of sitting next to Danielle “The Freak” Chasen might not be as disturbing as advertised.

When Mr. Blake assigned our first major project, I began to feel a little uneasy. Now I would be forced to spend time with Danielle outside of school. I decided we would have to work at the library. I didn’t want her at my house, and I certainly wouldn’t be going home with her. Yet, part of me was dying to know what had happened to Tina. I couldn’t help wondering what could be so distressing about Danielle’s house that it would move a girl to switch schools and leave her friends without warning.

That Friday morning I found a note in my locker, penned in clumpy black ink on a torn scrap of notebook paper. It read, “Want to come over tonight? - Danny.” Her phone number was inscribed below her name. We didn’t have chemistry on Fridays, so I would have to call her with my answer.

I mulled it over in my head all day. If I agreed to go to Danielle’s house after school, there was a chance I’d end up like Tina. On the other hand, nobody knew for sure what had happened to Tina. I started to feel as if I had to go, for Tina’s sake. I had the opportunity to find out what Danielle had done to make Tina flee the school district for good. I could finally put all the rumors to rest.

So after school that day I hesitantly dialed the number at the bottom of Danielle’s note. The phone rang for a very long time, and after a minute or two I resolved to hang up and forget the whole thing.

Just as I pulled the receiver away from my ear, I heard a click and Danielle’s dreary voice said, “Yes?”

She even answers the phone weird, I thought. I opened my mouth to speak, but I froze. I can just hang up, I thought. She’ll never know it was me.

“Hello, Carrie,” came Danielle’s voice.

I cleared my throat, “Um, yeah, hi Danielle.”

“Call me Danny,” she implored.

“Oh, sure, Danny,” I said, feeling uncomfortable already. “How.. how did you know it was me?”

Danielle laughed, “I have a caller ID box.”

“Oh,” I sighed, my crazy notions of mind-reading and telekinesis floating away.

“So, are you coming over?” She asked casually. I froze again. Was I?

“My mom said you can sleep over,” she continued. We can pull an all-nighter and get the project done early.”

The image of Danielle’s book flashed through my mind, Modern Autopsy Practices.

Do it for Tina, said a voice inside my head. “Um, yeah,” I finally replied. “We’ll.. get the project done.”

“Great,” said Danielle flatly. “See you at seven.” The phone clicked as she hung up.

--

Danielle’s house looked normal enough from the outside, a duplex in a nice neighborhood. A sign in the second floor window proclaimed that it was “for rent.”

My mom dropped me off a little before seven, then hurried to her swing dancing class. I clutched my overnight bag to my chest, as if for protection, and pressed the first floor doorbell.

A plump, sandy-haired woman answered the door. She wore an apron and oven mitts, and her face was sprinkled with flour. “Ooh you must be Carrie!” She said with a bright smile. “Come in! I’m just baking cookies. Ya like sugar cookies, don’t ya?”

I stood gaping at her with my mouth open. I checked the number by the door to make sure I had the right house. “This is Danielle Chasen’s house, right?”

The plump woman laughed, “That’s right, hon, come on in. I’m Danny’s mom. Call me Kim.”

“OK, Kim,” I said airily.

“Danny’s just down the basement – through that door – getting started on you guys’s project. Just leave your bag here, hon, I’ll bring it upstairs for ya. I’ll bring yas down some cookies in a bit.”

I walked toward the door Kim had indicated. It was slightly ajar, and a soft light peeked out from behind it. I grasped the tarnished brass doorknob and pulled. A loud creak emitted from the hinges.

“Close the door behind you!” Danielle’s voice hollered from downstairs.

I pulled the door shut with another loud creak and started down the dimly-lit staircase. “It’s me.. Carrie,” I said.

“I know,” Danielle’s voice replied.

I reached the bottom of the stairs and entered a typical suburban basement. Its concrete walls and floor were painted beige, and white clumps covered the cracks. A few stray light bulbs hung from the ceiling, just barely lighting the room. A hodgepodge of furniture, books, and old toys covered the floor.

“Over here!” Danielle called. I turned to see her standing beside a small gray door with a padlock on it, dressed in her usual all-black garb. “We’ll work in the back room,” she said, taking a little silver key out of her pocket and opening the padlock.

My heart began to beat faster. Images of Tina, tied up and trembling behind the padlocked door appeared in my mind.

Ancient Embalming Techniques.

“Why is it locked up?” I asked shakily.

Danielle’s mysterious smile crossed her face, “Because nobody’s allowed in but me.”

“And me,” I added with a nervous chuckle.

“Yes,” Danielle replied simply. She pulled the door open and stepped inside. I stood glued to my spot outside the door, my mouth getting dry. “Come on,” Danielle urged from behind the door.

With a deep breath, I followed Danielle into the “back room,” and found myself in total darkness. Somewhere behind me the door closed with a thump. In the silence I thought Danielle could probably hear my heart pounding.

This is what happened to Tina. Danielle took her into this dark room and she never came out.

A lamp switched on right above my head, temporarily blinding me. I rubbed my eyes, and when I looked up, bright spots were obscuring my vision. I was only able to make out Danielle, standing by the door, clapping the padlock on the inside.

I blinked a few times and looked around the room. A long, slanted metal table stood in front of me. A small sink was attached to one end of it. It looked like something you’d find in a doctor’s office. “What’s this?” I asked, placing an unsteady hand on the table. It felt cold and hard, like stone.

Danielle turned to me, smiling. “It’s an autopsy table.”

Immediately I drew my hand back. “A what?”

Danielle stroked the edge of the table lovingly. “I got it on eBay,” she said, staring at her distorted reflection in the dull metal. “Over 200 autopsies were performed on this very table.” She looked up at me and grinned, displaying a row of even, white teeth.

There was a knock on the door. Kim’s muffled voice called, “Cookies, girls!”

“Leave them outside!” Danielle snapped.

“OK, Grumpy Gus!” Kim replied, her footsteps fading away slowly.

Danielle opened a cabinet and took out a metal tray covered by a white cloth. I swallowed audibly, “Um, should we get started on the project? I was looking over chapter four, and—”

“In a bit,” Danielle said softly. She removed the cloth from the tray, revealing a pile of shiny silver tools. She lifted one that resembled a miniature saw. “All these instruments are authentic,” she said dreamily. She twisted the tiny saw around so that it glistened in the bright light, “This is a bone saw.”

I shuddered. Danielle raised her eyes to meet mine. “Lie down,” she said, her secretive smile curling on one side, as if she were struggling to contain her amusement.

“Yeah, right,” I sputtered with a tiny laugh.

“No, really,” Danielle urged. “Lie down. It’ll be fun.” She stepped closer to me, the bone saw extended.

I backed slowly toward the door. “Why don’t we get started on the project?” I asked, spitting out more nervous laughter.

“We have all night for the project,” Danielle said, grinning wider. She grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me roughly down to the table. “Lie down!” She commanded. Before I knew it, I was lying on the cold metal table, staring up at the blindingly bright lamp.

Danielle stood over me holding the bone saw, examining it with a sinister grin. “Can you imagine this cutting through your bones?” She asked, her eyes lighting up. I was unable to reply; my tongue was frozen inside my clenched jaw.

“Chut-chut-chut!” Danielle waved the saw in the air and imitated the sound of it slicing a bone. I bolted upright; my eyes shot to the padlock on the door.

“Very good,” Danielle laughed, easing me back down by the shoulders. “Sometimes a cadaver will sit up like that. See, even after we’re dead our muscles keep working for a time, but I have something for that.” She placed the bone saw back on the tray and reached under the table.

I heard a swishing sound like a coil of rope being unraveled. Danielle’s hands emerged from under the table, holding what looked like a thick leather belt. She threw the buckle end over me, laying the belt over my waist.

Somehow I managed to speak through my stiff, dry lips. “Uh, Danielle?” Danielle crossed to the other side of the table and began casually fastening the strap. She was humming a tune that sounded a lot like The Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” “Danielle, I’m not really.. comfortable with this.”

She pulled the strap tighter, pinning my arms to my sides. Her humming became singing, “..Hm-hm sad song and make it better…”

“Danielle?” I tried again.

She shushed me and raised a finger to her lips. “Dead men tell no tales,” she said in a playful voice. She let out a high-pitched, extended chuckle, as if she’d just told the funniest joke in the world. Then she went back to her half-humming, half-singing.

I’m not dead, I thought, wriggling around under the strap.

Danielle rummaged through a cabinet and produced what appeared to be a rubber brick. “Almost forgot the body block,” she sang, striding back to the table. She lifted my shoulders with one hand and shoved the brick under my back with the other. The leather strap dug painfully into my arms.

“Ow!” I yelled out. The brick raised my chest while my head fell back uncomfortably onto the hard metal. “Is that necessary?” I asked, squinting up at Danielle through the blazingly bright light of the lamp.

“It makes the chest easier to cut open,” she replied, sorting through the instruments on her tray like a dentist preparing to drill a cavity.

I squirmed under the strap and the brick pressed hard into my spine. I let out a low groan.

The light reflected off of something silver in Danielle’s hand. “You know,” she said, with the air of someone recalling a fond memory, “Some medical examiners choose to use more mundane instruments, like kitchen knives or garden shears, but I prefer the real thing.” She turned to face me and I saw that the silver item in her hand was a thin, sharp instrument similar to a surgeon’s scalpel, but with a much larger blade.

For a moment, I forgot all about the strap on my waist and the brick in my back. I was more concerned with what Danielle planned to do with that oversized scalpel. All at once I felt as if I’d forgotten how to breathe. “Danielle,” I squeaked. “What?...” but I couldn’t finish. I’d apparently forgotten how to speak as well.

The grin on Danielle’s face was menacing under the lamp’s scorching glow. “Relax,” she said. “I won’t really cut you.”

She cleared her throat, “Caucasian female, age fifteen to seventeen, blonde hair, medium-length.. green eyes.. birthmark on left side of neck.” I stared wildly around the room, looking for the person to whom she might have been speaking.

“Pretend there’s a tape recorder,” she whispered with a little laugh. I nodded dumbly.

“Now,” she went on, her menacing grin stretching to the outermost edges of her face. “I’ll start by making a Y-shaped incision on your chest, like this.” She lunged the scalpel at my shoulder and I screamed. She had cut me; I knew she had; I could feel it. I clamped my eyes shut for fear of seeing my own blood oozing out.

“Don’t be so jumpy,” Danielle said coolly. “It’s only a game.”

“A game?!” I shrieked. “You cut me! I’m bleeding!”

Danielle sighed impatiently, “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did! I can feel it!” Tears began to well up in my eyes.

“No, I didn’t,” Danielle repeated. “Look.”

I shook my head. “No!” I squealed.

I felt Danielle’s hand grasp my forehead and jerk my face in the direction of my presumably wounded shoulder. “Open your eyes!” She demanded. My eyelids felt like they weighed about fifty pounds each as I struggled to lift them. “See? You’re fine,” said Danielle in her eerily calm voice.

I peered at my shoulder, fully expecting to see dark red blood staining my sweater. I’ll need stitches, I thought. I’ll have a hideous scar.. if I make it out of this room alive. My eyes focused on the spot where I’d felt the piercing pain and I gasped. Danielle was right; I was fine.. physically, at least. My sweater and my shoulder were intact. Even the pain I had felt was quickly subsiding, as if I’d never felt it to begin with. “But…” was all I managed to say.

Danielle was beaming over me, clutching her shiny silver scalpel with its unusually large blade. “You’re letting your imagination get away with you,” she said calmly. She laughed at a joke only she could hear.

“Danielle,” I breathed. “Can we please stop this and work on our project?”

“But I’ve only just started,” she said, lowering the scalpel toward my chest. “My ‘Y’ incision is only an ‘I’.” She threw her head back and laughed heartily.

I stared longingly at the door with its rusty padlock clinging protectively to its latch. I thought about Danielle’s mother, sitting in the kitchen upstairs with an uneaten plate of sugar cookies.

“Now,” Danielle cleared her throat again. “The Y-shaped incision.” I opened my mouth to protest, but before I could speak the scalpel was over my shoulder again, slicing into my imaginary wound. The sharp pain returned, and followed Danielle’s hand as she moved it slowly along the side of my chest and down across my rib cage.

“Danielle, stop! Stop! Stop!” I yelled. “It’s…” I lifted my head to look at the scalpel, certain it had really cut me that time; once again I was unscathed, and once again the pain quickly subsided.

Danielle pulled away, the wild grin still on her face. “You’re not very good at this,” she remarked, shaking her head.

In my mind I was beginning to put it together. This wasn’t “only a game;” it never was, and it wasn’t when she did it to Tina either. “Danny” wasn’t playing around, she was getting revenge, and she was really enjoying it. The grin on her face told me that much. Furthermore, that wasn’t an ordinary scalpel.

Danielle disappeared from my line of sight. I heard her rummaging through a drawer and hum-singing, “Hm-hm, don’t make it bad, hm-hm-hm-hm, and make it better…”

The one thought on the forefront of my mind was that I was going to die. I didn’t know how, when Danielle’s tools weren’t even piercing the skin, but I knew it would happen.

Suddenly a hand shot out over my face, and a handful of cotton balls was shoved into my mouth. I spat quickly and managed to send three of them sailing over my chest. I heard a loud noise that sounded like two Velcro strips being torn apart. Then the hand returned and pressed a piece of duct tape over my mouth.

Danielle re-appeared, smiling so widely she reminded me of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, nothing but teeth and eyes. “That should keep you quiet,” she said nonchalantly, reaching for her obscenely large scalpel. “This would be much easier if you tried to get into the spirit of it.” She approached me slowly, her grinning teeth and scalpel glittering under the bright lamp, “You’re dead, remember?”

I could only shake my head frantically in reply. “Yes, you are,” Danielle corrected, “And what do dead people do?” She paused as if I could answer. “That’s right, nothing. They don’t move, or talk, or feel any pain.” She chuckled lightly and lowered the scalpel toward my chest. “Now I’ll peel back your skin, muscle and soft tissue, exposing your ribs.”

I struggled helplessly against the strap around my waist. I lifted my knees to try and knock the scalpel from her hand. She gracefully avoided my attempt at sabotage and sighed in disappointment. “What did I just say?” She asked, leaning in close to my face. “Do dead people move? No.”

At a loss for other options, I screamed. The sound was muffled heavily by the ten or so cotton balls densely packed into my mouth.

“What’s that, Carrie?” Danielle asked, putting a hand to her ear and leaning in even closer. “Did you say something? Speak up!”

I stopped screaming and fixed her with a disdainful glare. She laughed so long and hard that she had to sit down on a nearby stool to catch her breath. I screamed again, more out of frustration than fear.

“Sp-speak up!” Danielle repeated between bouts of raucous laughter. This continued for several more minutes before she finally sighed deeply and stood up. “Now,” she said, slapping her hands together. “We need to help you stay in character.” She giggled and moved toward the table.

I braced myself to kick her, but she was ready for me. Her arm shot out over my leg so quickly it was like a black blur. She held the scalpel close to my knee cap and pulled it across both of my legs, still without touching me.

At first I felt nothing, but then the pain came in an oppressive wave. It started at my knees and soon covered all of my lower body. I tried to scream but I couldn’t breathe. I stared up into the bright lamp and the room swam around me, dissolving into the beam of white light.

I was only half aware of Danielle, who was pressing something into my shins. When the pain faded to a dull ache in my knees, and the room returned to its former dim grayness, I realized she had strapped my legs to the table. I found my breath and screamed again. A few cotton balls slid back into my throat and I gagged.

Danielle was standing over my chest again with her scalpel raised. The amused grin on her face was gone; it had been replaced with a dark scowl. She lifted one open palm in the air over me. It hovered there for a moment, then abruptly clasped shut. As she lifted it higher and higher, a searing pain rose in my chest.

“Now the chest flap will be pulled over the face,” she said softly. Her hand paused, and she stared off into the distance thoughtfully. “Can you imagine?” She asked, her smile returning. “The skin from you chest resting on your face?” She turned to me with wide, excited eyes. “Your own flesh being torn away and flipped back over your face like some sort of grotesque rubbery veil?”

For a moment I forgot about the pain in my chest, as I was starting to feel sick to my stomach. My face grew hot and I could feel sweat accumulating in my hair.

“Your insides exposed so that someone can poke around in them and slice up your organs for testing?” She poked my stomach a few times, making it turn flips. I wondered how absorbent the cotton balls in my mouth would be if I vomited.

Danielle’s eyes and her grin grew so wide that she looked as if her own skin had been pulled back from her skull. I was too nauseous at the time to appreciate the irony. “Once your skin and muscle are peeled back, I’ll be cutting open your ribs so I can remove your internal organs.” She said, still holding her clenched fist above me.

I began to feel faint. My breathing quickened, and black spots appeared before my eyes, blocking out portions of Danielle’s crazed face, making it resemble swiss cheese. She opened her hand and suddenly everything went black. I felt a strange sensation on my face, like something soft and smooth had been draped across it.

Like a grotesque rubbery veil.

I knew at once what it was: Skin, my skin. Part of me knew it was impossible, that Danielle had never touched me, but still I knew. The skin from my chest was resting on my face.

I tried to scream again, but all that came out was a small gagging sound. Something popped in my ears, and then everything went silent.

--

Sometime later I opened my eyes to find myself lying on the floor of a bedroom I didn’t recognize. The room was tiny, and decorated with a disgusting amount of pink. My head was propped up on a pink floral pillow, and a magenta comforter covered the rest of me. A pink-shrouded bed stood empty beside me, its covers drawn up and pulled so taut you could probably bounce a quarter on them. Danielle was nowhere to be found.

I sat up too quickly and a fresh wave of nausea overcame me. Something on top of the pastel pink dresser in front of me caught my eye: A sparkly purple notebook and a matching feathery pen.

I scrambled up from the floor and discovered I was still fully clothed, right down to my shoes. My backpack sat on the floor beside me. I scooped it up and ran out through the hot pink door, down the stairs and into the living room.

This room was also empty, except for a black and white cat that was perched on top of one of the plaid sofas. Bright sunlight was shining in through the tall windows, and a song was playing on the stereo that sounded a lot like “Hey Jude.” The distinctive scent of warm chocolate emanated from the kitchen. I ran through it and headed for the front door.

“Well, good afternoon,” came a cheery voice from behind me. I turned to see Danielle’s mother smiling brightly at me over a heaping plate of brownies. “Yous must have worked really hard on that project last night. Danny’s in the basement finishing up if you wanna—”

“I gotta go!” I shouted a little louder than I’d planned to. I started toward the door.

“Wait a minute!” Kim called, putting down her plate of brownies. She picked something up from the counter and held it out to me. “I put some brownies in a baggie for ya,” she said, smiling sweetly and shaking the little plastic bag in her hand.

I suddenly remembered that I felt nauseous. “No thanks,” I muttered, covering my mouth with my hand.

“Take them home for your mom,” said Kim, slipping the bag into my backpack’s open zipper.

“’K,” I consented, pushing past her to the door.

“Ya sure ya don’t want some breakfast?” She called after me. I made that small gagging sound again and ran out the door as quickly as I could.

I kept running until I found a Seven Eleven with a payphone. As I pressed in the phone’s dingy silver buttons, I thought about my chemistry project. Danielle was my lab partner; I would have to present something with her the following week.

My mother’s voice came through the static on the phone line, “Hello?”

“Mom,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I need a ride home, and…”

“And what, Carrie?” My mother asked, sounding confused.

“And I need to transfer to another school.”

“You what?”

“It’s a long story. Can you just pick me up? I’m at the Sev’ near Danielle’s house.”

“What on earth are you doing there?”

“Again, long story. I’ll tell you when you get here.” I slammed down the receiver and sat on the curb to wait, dropping my backpack onto the ground beside me. The bag of brownies stared up at me through the open zipper. I fished them out and pulled open the bag. The warm chocolate smell floated up to me. I lifted one of the brownies out and took a tiny bite of it. It was surprisingly delicious.