Carrie by Stephen King

her gilt-edged momma are going to hell and you can stick up for her? We should have taken those rags and stuffed them down her throat.”
    â€œSure. Yeah. See you around, Chris.” She pushed out of the booth.
    This time it was Chris who colored; the blood slammed to her face in a sudden rush, as if a red cloud had passed over some inner sun.
    â€œAren'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.”
    â€œYes,” Sue said, trembling. “But I stopped.”
    â€œOh, aren't you just
it?”
Chris marveled. “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 get-along 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 Snerd, please keep out. Aspiring country club members and future residents of Kleen Korners only.
    The tears finally came and she began to run.

    From
The Shadow Exploded
(p. 60):

    The following excerpt is from a letter to Donna Kellogg from Christine Hargensen. The Kellogg girl moved from Chamberlain to Providence, Rhode Island, in the fall of 1978. She was apparently one of Chris Hargersen's few close friends and a confidante. The letter is postmarked May 17, 1979:
    â€œSo I'm out of the Prom and my yellow-guts father says he won't give them what they deserve. But they're not going to get away with it. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet, but I guarantee you everyone is going to get a big fucking surprise . . .”

    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 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