Needful Things - Stephen King [221]
Some of the other teachers looked over to see who their fearless leader was looking at. So did Alice Tanner. Alice waggled her fingers coyly at Sally, smiling with saccharine sweetness.
They know, Sally thought. Every one of them knows that Lester and I are history. Irene was so sweet last night so sympathetic and so anxious to spill her guts. That little bitch.
Sally waggled her fingers right back, feeling her own coy-and totally bogus-smile stretch her lips. I hope you get hit by a dumptruck on your way home, you whory-looking thing, she thought, and then walked on, her sensible low heels clicking and clacking.
When Mr. Gaunt had called her during her free period and told her it was time to finish paying for the wonderful splinter, Sally had reacted with enthusiasm and a sour kind of pleasure. She sensed that the "little joke" she had promised to play on Mr. jewett was a mean one, and that was all right with her. She felt mean today.
She put her hand on the office door then paused.
What's the matter with you? she wondered suddenly. You have the splinter the wonderful, holy splinter with the wonderful, holy vision caught inside it. Aren't things like that supposed to make a person feel better? Calmer? More in touch with God the Father Almighty? You don't feel calmer and more in touch with anyone. You feel like someone filled your head up with barbed wire.
"Yes, but that's not my fault, or the splinter's fault," Sally muttered. "That's Lester's fault. Mr. Lester Big-Prick Pratt."
A short girl wearing glasses and heavy braces turned from the Pep Club poster she'd been studying and glanced curiously at Sally.
"What are you looking at, Irvina?" Sally asked.
Irvina blinked. "Nuffink, Miz Rat-Cliff."
"Then go look at it someplace else," Sally snapped. "School is out, you know."
Irvina hurried down the hall, throwing an occasional distrustful glance back over her shoulder.
Sally opened the door to the office and went in. The envelope she carried had been right where Mr. Gaunt had told her it would be, behind the garbage cans outside the cafeteria doors. She had written Mr. Jewett's name on it herself She took one more quick glance over her shoulder to make sure that little whore Alice Tanner wasn't coming in. Then she opened the door to the inner office, hurried across the room, and laid the manila envelope on Frank jewett's desk. Now there was the other thing.
She opened the top desk drawer and removed a pair of heavy scissors. She bent and yanked on the lower left-hand drawer. It was locked. Mr. Gaunt had told her that would probably be the case.
Sally glanced into the outer office, saw it was still empty, the door to the hallway still shut. Good. Great. She jammed the tips of the scissors into the crack at the top of the locked drawer and levered them up, hard. Wood splintered, and Sally felt her nipples grow strangely, pleasantly hard. This was sort of fun. Scary, but fun.
She re-seated the scissors-the points went in farther this time and levered them up again. The lock snapped and the drawer rolled open on its casters, revealing what was inside. Sally's mouth dropped open in shocked surprise. Then she began to giggle-breathy, stifled sounds that were really closer to screams than to laughter.
"Oh Mr. Jewett! What a naughty boy you are!"
There was a stack of digest-sized magazines inside the drawer, and Naughty Boy was, in fact, the name of the one on top. The blurry picture on the cover showed a boy of about nine. He was wearing a '50's-style motorcycle cap and nothing else.
Sally reached into the drawer and pulled out the magazinesthere were a dozen of them, maybe more. Happy Kids. Nude Cuti'es.
Blowing in the Wind. Bobby's Farm World. She looked into one and could barely believe what she was seeing. Where did things like