Fiction Friday: Three Gifts, Part 2

Click here to read Three Gifts, Part 1

After the funeral, Tammy collected condolences in the parking lot. She looked stylish in mourning, having gone to Bergdorf’s over the weekend for the perfect ensemble. Matilda approached with a gift to say how sorry she was – another Paris Hilton necklace with a crinkly spiral of black hair encased in the glass.

“Nice,” Tammy said, clasping it around her neck. “I totally lost that other one.”

Goulash was served again next Tuesday. Tammy told the Mexican lunch lady the food was so awful she should kill herself. So she did, plunging the knife into her chest over and over, spraying blood onto the fruit cups and milk cartons as Tammy and her crew screamed and screamed.

Everyone had heard what Tammy had said, and if they hadn’t, they heard all about it by the time the police released all the students to go home. Her reign was slipping – only a few people offered her condolences, stumbling to gain her favor in this time of tragedy.

She saved face by approaching the principal and making a well-rehearsed plea to continue homecoming as usual to rally student spirit and honor the deceased. He nodded, moved and titillated as always by the sight of Tammy’s short skirt in his office.

At the popcorn stand on homecoming night, Tammy’s posse shifted uneasily behind her. “We heard what you said to Brooke and the lunch lady. It’s just weird, you know?”

“Shut up,” she sneered. “You guys are lucky I even know your names.”

“You know my name, don’t you Tammy?” Matilda stood at the popcorn stand with an amused yet dark smile on her face. “I gave you that necklace you’re wearing.”

Tammy rolled her eyes at the interruption, fingering the new necklace around her slim neck - a blonde hair looped in circles, replacing the second one she’d lost. “So I know your name. What’s it to you?”

“Well, I thought since I’ve given you three gifts, we could be friends.”

Tammy laughed openly in Matilda’s face. “Yeah, right. I’d rather cut off my own head than be your friend.”

And her posse shrieked as Tammy’s head landed in the popcorn machine, staining the fluffy white popcorn with blood as the necklace containing the strand of her blonde hair slid off her neck stump and disappeared among the kernels.