Читать книгу Bieber's Finger - Craig Nybo - Страница 9

Chapter 1

Somewhere on Planet Earth...

Black clad security guards barely kept the fans back from Bieber’s Cadillac just moments before the superstar died. Bieber smiled and waved at a sea of faces, early teenage girls from all over the region who had come for his stadium show and stayed for perhaps a glimpse of his beautiful face, as he made his way from the venue to his limo.

A pair of V-shaped guards wearing matching sunglasses and earpieces escorted the pop star through the crowd. More guards grunted it out against the crush of young, screaming girls. The teenagers reached, trying to touch the superstar as he moved through the gauntlet.

Twana Burch stood back in the crowd, unable to elbow her way any closer. She could barely see the top of his head, crowned with magnificent, chestnut hair. She wished so often, usually while looking at posters of him on her bedroom walls, that she could run her fingers through that hair. Now, with possibly her only chance to ever see him up close slipping away as she tried shoving her way through the gridlock, she feared she would never have another opportunity to touch him.

“Stay back!” a guard shouted. Like the rest of the super-fans assembled, she ignored his order. She just wanted to see Bieber. Why wouldn’t they just let her see Bieber?

She tried to push through again, but the girl in front of her, an overweight thing, shouldered her back, driving an elbow into Twana’s face. Twana yelped and curled away, covering her nose; she would likely have a shiner.

At that very moment, as she wondered how she would look all black and blue at school tomorrow, she heard the Cadillac door slam shut. Just like that, her chance of touching the most beautiful boy in the world was gone. Twana swore to herself and kicked the red-headed girl in the back of the leg.

“Ow,” the red-head said, wheeling on Twana.

“You ruined it for me, you big fat animal,” Twana shouted.

The redhead laughed and drove her shoulder into Twana’s face.

That was when Bieber’s limousine exploded. The bomb’s shock-wave washed through the crowd, shoving fans over and outward from ground zero. Even the burley guards fell over in the concussion. Wounded teenage girls screamed in the aftermath of the blast.

Twana lay on the ground, the big redhead on top of her. Flying debris had opened a wound on the back of the redhead’s scalp. She wailed and pressed a hand against the bleeding.

“Are you alright?” Twana asked, her ears ringing so loudly that she felt she had to shout above their driving whine. Twana took off her scarf and handed it to the redhead. The girl took it and pressed it against the cut on the back of her skull.

“Everybody stay calm,” someone shouted.

Nobody listened.

Once the car had gone up in flames, the throng of Bieber fans forgot about their idol. They forgot about what it did to them when he got up on the stage in the limelight backed by a line of hip-hop dancers to belt out the lyrics of his super-hit, STAND.

Those on the outer fringe of the blast routed first. Those closer to ground zero struggled over each other, a clod of writhing bodies, clamboring for purchase, for equilibrium.

Twana lay on her belly and covered her head with her forearms. The redhead crawled over her and moved off with the rush of boots and sneakers. Someone stepped on the small of Twana’s back. She ignored the pain and curled up. She couldn’t stand up in the rumble. She couldn’t even move from her position. She’d heard about people dying under the trampling feet of frenzied fans. She’d always wondered why someone in such a situation wouldn’t just stand up and move with the flow. Now she understood. If Twana even uncurled from her defensive posture, she felt that those feet, those pumps, those boots, those heels, those sandals, would all come down on her. They would break her bones and leave her dead. She felt she had a better chance of surviving if she remained right where she lay, curled in a fetal position on the sidewalk.

Twana felt something beneath her, a small lump against her sternum. She worked her hand up underneath her weight and grabbed the little mass. She dragged it out from beneath her and moved it to where she could get a better look. When she finally recognized the thing for what it was, her lips pursed together and she issued a little mousy chirp. She felt bile rise from her belly and threaten to shoot out onto the concrete. She held a severed finger, its meaty end puckered with red tissue. She dropped the little member and curled away from it. But then, something entered her mind, a memory that felt foreign in the rush of the panicked crowd. The finger had a birthmark just below the second knuckle, a birthmark shaped like a heart.

“It can’t be,” Twana said out loud and worked her way around so she could get a better look at the finger. Her suspicions proved correct. There, as plain as day, was the birthmark in question, shaped like a heart. She remembered reading an issue of Teen Bo a few weeks back about signature nuances of pop stars. She’d been particularly drawn to Bieber. When the reporter had asked him to disclose something about himself, something that nobody knew, Bieber had confessed about an odd birthmark on his left ring-finger, just under the second knuckle, shaped like a heart. Twana had stored the interesting fact in a vault of almost limitless trivia she had filed in her mind about Bieber.

She put the severed appendage in her hip pocket and wrangled to a defensive turtle-shell position, working against the mash of fleeing feet. She no longer worried about being trampled by hundreds of Bieber fans. She just haunched there, her hands over her head to protect her from the clomping, her face curled up into a grin. She’d come only to touch Bieber’s hair; but she’d done much better than that; she’d caught Bieber’s finger and nobody would ever take it away from her.