A Fate Totally Worse Than Death by Paul Fleischman Page A

hands for public inspection. Her knuckles were swollen, her fingers bent like claws. “Sometimes the pain’s so bad I want to scream.”
    â€œSounds like arthritis,” Danielle diagnosed.
    â€œWhat’s
happening
to us?” wailed Tiffany.
    â€œHelga,” Danielle replied. “You said it yourself. She has magical powers. She could have killed us back in the bathroom. Or any other time she wanted. But instead, she picked out a punishment for us that’s
worse
than death—getting old!”
    The three peered at each other, their faces frozen by this revelation.
    Brooke’s eyes lost their focus, then seemed to turn inward, beholding the dawn of mortality. “Are we going to die? Soon, I mean?”
    â€œBeats me,” Danielle replied.
    Simultaneously, Brooke and Tiffany exploded into tears.
    â€œI
knew
we never should have met Charity at night!” blubbered Tiffany.
    â€œEspecially at the edge of a cliff!” added Brooke.
    It had all been Danielle’s plan. She avoided their eyes.
    â€œI’m too young to die!” Tiffany informed the universe at the top of her lungs.
    â€œYou’re getting older by the minute,” mused Danielle.
    Tiffany faced her accusingly.
“You
got us into this! Now get us out! Or my ghost will kill you deader than dead. If Helga doesn’t get you first.”
    â€œYou think I don’t want to?” Danielle shouted back. “Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy. You can’t kill a ghost. I’m sure of that, from what I’ve read in books. But let me look back through some of them. Once in a while the spirits get beaten. At least we can maybe get some ideas.”
    â€œHurry!” said Brooke. She opened the door of her car and urged Danielle inside. “I’m having my birthday party in two weeks!”

CHAPTER 11
    â€¦â€¦â€¦Tiffany flicked her windshield wipers to MEDIUM . It was Tuesday night. Though normally she hated rain, in this case it suited her perfectly. It meant fewer people on the streets and fewer witnesses to her errand.
    She followed Fourth Street out of Cliffside and into neighboring Wilmington Heights. Children’s boutiques and outdoor cafés gave way to bars and self-storage lockers. She recalled where she was and locked the car doors. She turned onto Broadway, swerving around a drunk talking to himself in the street. The rain was now drumming deafeningly on the roof of the car. “Shut up!” she yelled back. She turned the wipers to HIGH and struggled to make out the numbers on the buildings. “Where the hell is 930?” she demanded. She drove five more blocks, glimpsed 924, crept past a bail-bond office, and parked. She sighed. She would be safe here, from prying eyes if not from rape. She got out and limped toward the drugstore. When your mission was buying adult diapers—for yourself—confidentiality won out over price, selection, and personal safety.
    She stepped inside. The store seemed empty. A hefty, grim-visaged female clerk, guarding the register like a dragon, took note of her entrance without greeting. Tiffany disappeared down an aisle. Another customer entered the store. Tiffany ducked down instinctively. She wondered if she really needed the diapers, then thought back with a shudder to her close calls in English and history, and suddenly sensed her bladder’s fullness. She scanned three aisles, then found what she was seeking at last and gave silent thanks. She debated between Second Childhood and Sphincter Sentry, picked up three packages of the former, then made her way to the front.
    â€œI’m buying these for my great-grandmother?” she announced, unbidden, to the clerk. “She just came to live with us? From Kansas? It’s the very brand she asked me to get? The same brand she used to use? Back in Kansas?”
    The clerk stared at her. “Where in Kansas?”
    Tiffany swallowed. “Dallas,” she