REVENGE (8)

Red, Laverne and Lola all agreed to meet later in the coffee shop in the hotel. It had been so good to just be themselves and share, like it used to be.
As the grownup former students entered the school for the class reunion, they recognized the same smell in the building, only more pungent now. The furniture polish, old boards and old sweat brought back a reminder of their younger days. The gym was set up with extra tables and chairs, with crepe paper streamers and plastic flowers centerpieces.
The kids were all there; only fatter, skinnier, older and some richer and some poorer. The snobs from the "prominent famillies" were still snobs and spent most of the night in their own circle as usual.  All in all, Lola, Red and Laverne talked and danced the night away and the party for them was a sucess.
At the close of the evening, three shadows darted, one by one, each unaware of each other, and made their way to a white house next door to the school. Each one was carrying a small bag that had been hidden in their evening bags.
Lola was the first to get there and she found Jake Rierson wondering the house in his new jeans and flannel shirt, the set he only used for special occassions. When she burst in and he recognized her and saw the look on her face, he felt the first tinges of fear. After a few minutes Red and then Laverne came in. Now his fear was real and he knew something bad was going to happen to him.The girls stood there for a minute as the realization of their purpose registered, and instantly they knew that they were all there for the same purpose.
They met again later in the coffee shop and gossiped about the party and made plans to meet again soon. The next day they each left to go back to their busy lives.
Later, Lola gave up her profession and wrote a book on her life as a prositute. It was published and she became a famous novelist and later traveled the world.
Red decided to challenge her "phobias" finally. One of which was driving on the freeways. One day she got her courage up and thought, this it it! I'm going out there and just do it. And she was doing pretty good until she was going down a ramp to enter heavy traffic, and the old panic attack came back. Her soft humming of a "church song' was drowned out by her terror as she saw she was going to crash. She died instantly.
Laverne raised her four kids and worked hard for years. She stayed in her therapy group and got stronger. Later when she was alone, she went to school and learned how to be creative in her thinking and in her work. She opened a learning center for battered and unskilled women to come to and stay while they learned how to put their lives back together. She was to become famous for her work.
Years earlier, a small article had appeared in a small town paper. A man by the name of Jake Rierson
had burned up in a house fire. There were some strange evidences, but no clues were found. However, his body was burned beyond recognition, and the small remaining residue of rat poison in his stomach went unnoticed. And the acid burns on his head and body may have been from some batteries that had exploded from the heat. The only question remaining that puzzled the police was, why was there piano wire around his balls and tied in a bow?