Fiends by John Farris Page A

preacher in Del Rio, Texas, for a prayer shawl. She was supposed to wear the shawl and place both hands on the radio while he was sending out his healing message over the air. But she must have been allergic to the dye in the prayer shawl, because her eyes swelled shut for two days. She still has water on the knees. Why don't you pass me the casserole, maybe I'll have a couple of bites after all."

5
     
    Enid dropped Marjory at the Baptist church before going on to work at Kroger's on the Falling Spring Pike. There was a Youth League game in progress on the diamond behind the Sunday school building. Some of her own teammates and a few of the Presbyterian girls, in orange and white jerseys, were there already, pitching softballs around while waiting for their game to start.
    Marjory, carrying her glove and a favorite bat, walked toward a group that centered around Rita Sue Marcum. Wherever she went, Rita Sue had natural attractive power. She sweetly sparkled and teased without much substance, like ice-cold Seven-Up. But when her effervescence failed, her personality could become sticky and cloying. Thanks to sturdy Norwegian genes on her mother's side, Rita Sue was bona fide platinum. She had begun to make up her Nordic blue eyes too extravagantly, Marjory thought, since her father had come into a substantial inheritance and the family, upgrading everything including their religion, broke with the Baptists to join the Presbyterian church. In Caskey County this defection caused as much shocked comment as if the Pope had suddenly renounced Rome to become a Talmudic scholar.
    Rita Sue's latest acquisition, other than a new tomato-red Fairlane convertible, was Boyce Bledsoe, whom Marjory had mooned over briefly in seventh grade before settling down to her long-lasting crush on the unobtainable Tim McCarver. Boyce was a thoroughly freckled boy with hair the color of a plaster flamingo. He played quarterback on the high school football team, grinned a lot, and had little to say, which made him a good match for Rita Sue, who had everything to say.
    Marjory stabbed smoothly at a softball rolling toward her and pegged it back to Boyce, who was half turned away from her and only managed, because his reflexes were as good as hers, to keep from being nailed in the ribs. But he dropped the ball.
    "Uh-oh, bad hands!" Marjory called.
    Rita Sue turned and shaded her eyes: the sun was low behind Marjory's back. She smiled. She had an intensely white smile.
    "Is that you, Marjory? I thought somebody put a T-shirt on Boyce's Volkswagen."
    "Hi, Rita Suuuue! Remember when I turned your bedroom into an ant farm. Wait'll you see what it looks like when you get back from majorette camp."
    Rita Sue indicated the weakness of this riposte with a little swish of her hand past her left ear and a wide, indifferent smile. Marjory dug in and swung a little harder. "How come you've got all that gooey makeup on? We're playing ball tonight, not doing Titus Andronicus."
    Missed again. Over her head, actually: Rita Sue probably thought Andronicus was a bad chest cold. The three of them unconsciously closed ranks against the hangers-on. Rita Sue perched a slim tanned hand on Marjory's shoulder. As usual her frosted-pink nails looked flawless. Marjory chewed her own nails, to the quick.
    "Honeybunch, you know I'm on the teen fashion board at Creekmuir's; we had our Fall Preview show today."
    "Darn, I went and missed it."
    "They just have so many cute new things in the store! You ought to drop by tomorrow—" Rita Sue frowned delicately, veiled in thought. In the late solar glow her bouffant hairdo looked incandescent. "I believe I did see something in your size."
    "I don't look good in cute," Marjory said, wished she hadn't as she recognized the gleam of a comeback in Rita Sue's eyes, and was saved when Boyce nudged her.
    "What are you doing Sunday, Marjory?" Rita Sue punched him lightly on one of his marvelous biceps for interrupting.
    "Sweet of you to ask, Boyce.