'I guess not.'

'No, Christ Jesus forbid you should ever have to find out. How long can my old ticket take it? You kids'll all find out when I buy the farm and those urban renewal poops turn this place into a parking lot. That's a dime.'

She pushed her dime across the marble.

'Fifty million volts right up the old tubes,' Hubie said darkly, and stared down at the small bulge in his breast pocket.

Sue went over and slid carefully into the vacant side of Chris's booth. She was looking exceptionally pretty, her black hair held by a shamrock-green band and a tight basque blouse that accentuated her firm, upthrust breasts.

'How are you, Chris?'

'Bitchin' good,' Chris said a little too blithely. 'You heard the latest? I'm out of the prom. I bet that cocksucker Grayle loses his job, though.'

Sue had heard the latest. Along with everyone at Ewen.

'Daddy's suing them,' Chris went on. Over her shoulder; 'Billeee! Come over here and say hi to Sue.'

He dropped his magazine and sauntered over, thumbs booked into his side-hitched garrison belt, fingers dangling limply toward the stuffed crotch of his pegged levis. Sue felt a wave of unreality surge over her and fought an urge to put her hands to her face and giggle madly.

'Hi, Suze,' Billy said. He slid in beside Chris and immediately began to massage her shoulder. His face was utterly blank. He might have been testing a cut of beef.

'I think we're going to crash the prom anyway,' Chris said. 'As a protest or something.'

'Is that right?' Sue was frankly startled.

'No,' Chris replied, dismissing it, 'I don't know.' Her face suddenly twisted into in expression of fury, as abrupt and surprising as a tornado funnel. 'That goddamned Carrie White! I wish she'd taken her goddam holy joe routine and stuff it straight up her ass!'

'You'll get over it,' Sue said.

'If only the rest of you had walked out with me … Jesus Sue, why didn't you? We could have had them by the balls. I never figured you for an establishment pawn.'

Sue felt her face grow hot. 'I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't being anybody's pawn. I took the punishment because I thought I earned it. We did a suck-off thing. End of statement.'

'Bullshit. That fucking Carrie runs around saying everyone but her and her gilt-edged momma are going to bell and you can stick up for her? We should have taken those rags and stuffed them down her throat.'

'Sure. Yeah. See you around, Chris.' She pushed out of the booth.

This time it was Chris who coloured the blood slammed to her face in a sudden rush, as if a red cloud had passed over some inner sun.

'Aren't you getting to be the Joan of Arc around here! I seem to remember you were in there pitching with the rest of us.'

'Yes,' Sue said trembling. 'But I stopped.'

'Oh, aren't you just it?' Chris marvelled. 'Oh my yes. Take your root beer with you. I'm afraid I might touch it and turn to gold.'

She didn't take her root beer. She turned and half-walked, half-stumbled out. The upset inside her was very great, too great yet for either tears or anger. She was a getalong girl, and it was the first fight she had been in, physical or verbal, since grade-school pigtail pulling. And it was the first time in her life that she had actively espoused a Principle.

And of course Chris had hit her in just the right place, had hit her exactly where she was most vulnerable: She was being a hypocrite, there seemed no way to avoid that, and deeply, sheathed within her and hateful, was the knowledge that one of the reasons she had gone to Miss Desjardin's hour of calisthenics and sweating runs around the gym Floor had nothing to do with nobility. She wasn't going to miss her last Spring Ball for anything. Not for anything.

Tommy was nowhere in sight.

She began to walk back toward the school, her stomach churning unhappily, Little Miss Sorority, Suzy Creemcheese, The Nice Girl who only does It with the boy she plans to marry – with the proper Sunday supplement coverage, of course. Two kids. Beat the living shit out of them if they show any signs of honesty; screwing, fighting, or refusing to grin each time some mythic honcho yelled frog.

Spring Ball. Blue gown. Corsage kept all the afternoon in the fridge. Tommy in a white dinner jacket, cummerbund, black pants, black shoes. Parents taking photos posed by the living-room sofa with Kodak Starflashes and Polaroid Big-Shots. Crepe masking the stark gymnasium girders. Two bands: one rock, one mellow. No fifth wheels need apply. Mortimer Snurd, please keep out. Aspiring country club members and future residents of Kleen Korners only.

The tears finally came and she began to run.

It was the seventeenth. May seventeenth. She crossed the day off the calendar in her room as soon as she slipped into her long white nightgown. She crossed off each day as it passed with a heavy black felt pen, and she supposed it expressed a very bad attitude toward life. She didn't really care. The only thing she really cared about was knowing that Momma was going to make her go back to school tomorrow and she would have to face all of Them.

She sat down in the small Boston rocker (bought and paid for with her own money) beside the window, closed her eyes, and swept Them and all the clutter of her conscious thoughts from her mind. It was like sweeping a floor. Lift the rug of your subconscious mind and sweep all the dirt under. Good-bye.

She opened her eyes. She looked at the hairbrush on her bureau.

Flex.

She was lifting the hairbrush. It was heavy. It was like lifting a barbell with very weak arms. Oh. Grunt.

The hairbrush slid to the edge of the bureau, slid out past the point where gravity should have toppled it, and then dangled, as if on an invisible string. Carrie's eyes had closed to slits. Veins pulsed in her temples. A doctor might have been interested in what her body was doing at that instant; it made no rational sence. Respiration had fallen to sixteen breaths per minute. Blood pressure up to 190/100. Heartbeat up to 140 – higher than astronauts under the heavy g-load of lift-off. Temperature down to 94.3. Her body was burning energy that seemed to be coming from nowhere and seemed to be going nowhere. An electroencephalogram would have shown alpha waves that were no longer waves at all, but great, jagged spikes.

She let the hairbrush down carefully. Good. Last night she had dropped it. Lose all your points, go to jail.

She closed her eyes again and rocked. Physical functions began to revert to the norm; her respiration speeded until she was nearly panting. The rocker had a slight squeak. Wasn't annoying, though. Was soothing. Rock, rock. Clear your mind.

'Carrie?' Her mother's voice, slightly disturbed, floated up.

(she's getting interference like the radio when you turn on the blender good good)

'Have you said your prayers, Carrie?'

'I'm saying them,' she called back.

Yes. She was saying them, all right.

She looked at her small studio bed.

Flex.

Tremendous weight. Huge. Unbearable.

The bed trembled and then the end came up perhaps three inches.