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Continued from page 131…
Wednesday, September 22nd, 1988, 7:10 P.M.
Just as if they were about to take a series of deep breaths and swim under water for a certain amount of time, Lucy and Ethel glanced at each other with deep, worrisome looks on their faces and knew it was now or never.
“You ready?” asked Gina.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” answered Belinda.
“Alright, let’s go,” said Gina. “It feels like we’re going on stage.”
“Yeah, right,” said Belinda, sarcastically. “Unfortunately, we won’t be hearing Charlotte’s piano intro going off in the background.”
Gina opened up the door to the chute room and peered outside. The two of them creeped out into the main hallway and started heading in the direction that Gina had mapped out. Luckily, there was no one in the hallway, but that didn’t last very long. As soon as they got about ten feet down the corridor, the door to the kitchen opened up and two girls from the food service department stepped out into the hallway. They were both wearing their regulation, standard, white uniforms, with the white, hair netting on top of their heads. They were also giggling like standard, white teenagers, as if they had just heard some juicy gossip. Belinda instinctively lowered her head so as not to be recognized, but Gina kept her head up, still thinking that her housekeeping uniform was the perfect disguise. As they passed by the two workers, the giggling from the two employees got noticeably louder as they both reacted to Belinda’s ridiculous wardrobe. Then, sure enough, one of the girls recognized Gina. Both Belinda and Gina could hear it—
“Hey… Isn’t that Gina Schock?” one of them asked.
“And that’s Belinda Carlisle!” the other one said.
Belinda and Gina reacted to the words of the girls and immediately picked up the pace of their walk. They turned the corner into the middle of the intersection and stopped for a second.
“Which way?” whispered Belinda.
Gina looked in every direction, then pointed to the left.
“This way,” she instructed.
Belinda and Gina proceeded to completely abandon any sense of their original plan and took off running. They had one more “S” turn to make, then spotted the exit door at the end of the hallway. They got up to the door and stopped momentarily.
“If my calculations are correct, the parking lot my car’s in should be right across the street,” informed Gina.
“Are you sure the alarm’s gonna go off?” asked Belinda.
“I’m sure it will,” returned Gina.
“Let’s go,” said Belinda, anxiously.
Gina pushed open the door and the two of them started running down the sidewalk. Sure enough, a loud, barking noise filled the air. It sounded like the alarm one might hear at a public swimming pool.
Belinda and Gina’s hearts were racing along with their feet. They arrived at the end of the sidewalk and poured across the street. There was a slight incline of finely landscaped lawn that they needed to ascend in order to enter the parking lot. In regards to whom was the fastest of the two, Belinda waited for Gina to catch up. She wasn’t interested in gloating.
“Gimme your hand,” said Belinda, as she reached out to help Gina up the hill. In actuality, the incline was hardly steep enough for Gina to need some help.
“I got it,” said Gina, clearly annoyed at the fact that Belinda had beaten her to the spot and was now offering her some additional assistance.
Luckily for the girls, no security guards were standing outside in the general vacinity, but Gina knew there was a guard shack at the entrance way into the parking lot. On the positive side, the girls were leaving instead of entering, which was a natural relief to the both of them. They both knew that all they would have to do was wave to the guard as they exited. Gina also knew there was no parking fee to pay. What Gina didn’t consider, however, was that an alarm was now going off and that some member of the Cuckoo’s Nest would be tending to the matter promptly.
They raced over to Gina’s car as Gina reached into her pocket and pulled out her keys. As to be expected, her nervousness caused her to fumble with them before gaining her composure and sticking one of them in the lock. She got inside, then reached over to unlock the passenger side and let Belinda in. Once inside, Gina continued to fumble with the keys as if the two of them were in a horror movie and Jason was close behind. It didn’t help matters that Belinda acted like the typical damsel in distress and blurted out—
“Hurry up!!”
“I’m hurrying!! Shut the fuck up!!” shouted Gina.
Belinda’s spastic encouragement, nevertheless, seemed to help as Gina found the appropriate key, jammed it into the ignition, and fired up the engine. She dropped the gearshift into reverse, backed out of the spot, then proceeded forward. As she sped towards the end of the lane, Gina felt an instant sigh of relief as she thought the two of them would soon be out of harm’s way. What she didn’t realize, however, was that she was not in a clear frame of mind to be driving at all. As she turned right to head for the exit, she made too sharp of a turn, and her rear bumper clipped the back end of a parked Toyota Corolla.
The sickening sound of an automobile collision was apparent to the two passengers in Gina’s car, as well as the security guard, who just happened to be standing outside of the shack smoking a cigarette.
Gina had no intentions of stopping.