Quiet Haunts and Other Stories

by Kristopher Reisz

  Chapter 2

  It was the last semester of their last year. An anxious energy electrified the whole senior class. They milled around the threshold of their lives, waiting to scatter off to wherever they would go, to become whatever they would become.

  Misty walked into the school lobby, Marc trailing behind her. She spotted Val standing alone beneath the frost-stippled windows. Looking up, Val gave her a sleepy smile.

  “Hey.” Misty leaned against the wall beside her. “Where’s Eric?”

  “Bed. Some dumb fuck college sent Andrew a brochure.”

  Two years ago, marine officers had shown up at Eric’s house to tell his family Eric’s older brother had died. Since then, every few weeks, a college brochure or flyer from a Ford dealership where Andrew had gone to check out new trucks would appear in the mail, whispering about the man he might have been.

  Misty sighed and wrapped an arm around Val. Exhausted from comforting her boyfriend all night, Val needed comfort herself now. Letting her head drop to Misty’s shoulder, Val yawned and said, “There should be a fine for keeping somebody on your mailing list after they die. Jackasses don’t know what they do to people. They don’t care.”

  “Still, it’s cool she lets Eric skip whenever he wants,” Marc said.

  Both girls looked at him, then at each other. “If you listen real close, you can actually hear the hamster wheel in his head spinning,” Misty said.

  Marc punched her. Misty punched him back.

  “Well? We’re fucking werewolves,” Marc growled. “And we still have to come to school every day? It’s retarded.”

  “Marc, you’re just mad because you’re a werewolf and you still don’t have any chest hair, so just shut up,” Val said.

  “Oh, hell.” Marc jerked up his T-shirt, displaying a downy streak of hair running down his stomach.

  “Aw, it’s like dandelion fluff,” Val cooed. “If I blow it off, do I get a wish?”

  “That’s the treasure map, baby. Leads all the way down to the pirate’s chest.” He started belly dancing. “It’s okay, Valentine. Your man’s not here. Give in to your desire.”

  Val tried to shout, “You’re so stupid!” but was laughing too hard.

  “Don’t make me show my nipples, Valentine. You know my nipples shoot love beams straight into your heart.”

  Squealing, covering her face, Val retreated into the corner. Marc chased her with hip-swaying steps. “All right, I didn’t want to do this, but, pow! There’s one. Pow! There’s the–”

  “Hey! Put your shirt on. Now!”

  Mr. Fine, the vice-principal, pushed through the crowd toward them. Marc let his shirt drop back into place.

  “What’s the matter with you? Do you see anybody else ripping their clothes off?”

  Marc fixed a bored expression on his face, staring off to the side through half-closed eyes.

  “Well?”

  “No.”

  “Then cut it out, or you’re going to ISS. Clear?”

  Marc shrugged.

  Mr. Fine gave Misty and Val a warning glare, then stalked off. Once he’d walked away, the three pulled tighter together.

  “Let’s maul him,” Misty said. “Rip his throat out.”

  Grinning, Marc and Val watched Mr. Fine over their shoulders. Then Val turned back to Misty. “Oh. Remember Monday I was complaining about Geneva Jones being in my health class? Wondering why bother since she’s already got every crotch critter in the textbook?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I should have kept my mouth shut, because the very next day Angie Walton transferred into that class too.”

  Misty snorted. “There’s probably a couple crotch critters named after her.”

  “I know. God, I hate both of them.”

  Daniel stood with his friends and lieutenants near the trophy cases, waiting for first bell. The lobby’s commotion swirling around them, Angie squeezed herself Daniel, her head nestled on his shoulder.

  “Mr. Morning!”

  Daniel stiffened at the sound of his name. Mr. Fine appeared, his right hand extended. “I heard you got some good news over the holidays.”

  Daniel shook the vice-principal’s hand. “Yeah. I guess I did,” he said, glancing sideways at Keith.

  “Congratulations, Daniel. I know how hard you’ve worked for this. I know you’re going to make us all proud.”

  “Thanks. I’ll try.” Inside, Daniel squirmed, but he kept the grinning mask on as Mr. Fine slapped his back and rambled.

  “Daniel Morning at Cornell. That’s just wonderful. We all knew you could do it.”

  “Ew. That’s gross,” Geneva said.

  They all looked up to see what she was talking about. Across the lobby, Marc Sandlin had his shirt hoisted to his chin, dancing around like a short bus kid off his Ritalin.

  “Good job, Daniel,” Mr. Fine said, already weaving through the crowd. “Come by my office later today. Can’t wait to hear all about it.”

  “I sure will.”

  “Hey! Put your shirt on. Now!”

  Daniel slumped back against the wall, watching Mr. Fine read Marc the riot act. Bwana mumbled, “I really didn’t need to see that.”

  “Val sits in front of us in health,” Angie said, motioning to herself and Geneva. “I wouldn’t have changed teachers if I knew I’d have to stare at her back-fat all day.”

  While everybody snickered, Daniel slapped his cousin in the back of the head. “What are you telling Mr. Fine my business for?”

  “What?” Keith asked. “He asked if you’d heard anything yet. Didn’t know it was a big secret.”

  “You’re such a suck up.” He noticed Keith wasn’t wearing his new watch.

  First bell rang a minute later. Angie and Daniel shared a quick kiss, then hurried to their homerooms. In trig, Daniel used the parallax method to calculate the distance from Earth to different stars. He scribbled down notes and thumbnail diagrams, copying step-by-step the examples Mrs. Schiff put on the whiteboard.

  With winter break over, at least Daniel could keep his mind busy. Getting lost in double-angle identities and the Battle of Verdun, he didn’t have time to obsess over the bluestone towers of Cornell or the slimy therapist who’d gotten him there.

  He wouldn’t have been so moody lately if he was still playing ball. Heading to government class with Bwana, Daniel mulled over trying out for the Big Red once he got to Cornell. Bwana laughed out loud. “Cornell sucks.”

  “It’s the Ivies,” Daniel said. “They’re supposed to suck.”

  “They suck for the Ivies. Their last league championship was when? Like in eighty-five?”

  “Eighty-eight. A mere twenty years ago. And they’re just waiting for a good shooting guard. They’re just waiting for me.”

  “You need to try out for rowing or something like that. Do they have squash up there?”

  “Yeah, but–”

  “They do? I was totally making that up. They really have a squash team? What about cricket? No, you’ve got to join the polo team.”

  As they walked into government class, Daniel changed the subject. “Which one? Jessica or Emi?” he asked, nodding at the Orr twins gossiping.

  Bwana puffed his cheeks with air and let it out slowly, considering the question. “Jessica’s ass. Emi’s tits.”

  “How are you going to–” Somebody bumped into Daniel from behind. He stepped aside to let Misty Sandlin pass. They muttered, “Sorry,” at the same time.

  “How are you going to do that?” Daniel finished his thought. “Saw them in half and stitch the best parts together?”

  “It’s a hypothetical. So hypothetically, I can mix-and-match. Now, which one would I do, that’s not hypothetical, because I could get both of them down to their skivvies before you slapped on your cologne. That’s just reality.”

  They kept up the bored banter until Mrs. MacKaye appeared. After the class took their seats, she started passing out a list of diffe
rent forms of government. Everybody had to choose one from the list and write a three-page paper detailing its pros and cons. The class gave up a collective groan.

  “Don’t make it three pages, please?” Jessica begged. “That’s too long.”

  Mrs. MacKaye sighed. “What do you want? To make a shoebox diorama? Make a little Stalin out of pipe cleaners and glitter?”

  “Yes!” Jessica said, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Come on, guys. When you get to college, three pages is the bare minimum you’ll be expected to write for every exam. If you think anybody’s going to hold your hand, you’ve got–”

  Tires squealed outside, and an animal screamed. Twenty-three heads whipped around. At the bottom of the campus hill, a car drove down Nineteenth Avenue, leaving behind the dog it had hit.

  The brown mutt tried to get out of the street. The class watched it struggle up, crumple, then struggle up again. Daniel could see one of its hind legs was crushed.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Mrs. MacKaye said. “Oh, why do idiots let their pets just run around like that?”

  “Should we call the police or something?” Emi asked. “I’ve got my phone.”

  Mrs. MacKaye hesitated, then pulled her eyes away from the window. “The front office can handle it. We’ve got a lot to cover, okay? Come on, guys. The office can handle it.”

  The dog kept whimpering, but with the windows closed, the sound was thin. They could ignore it.

  “Let’s go over the instructions, okay? Zach, I’m not explaining this twice. Now, all these forms of government have been tried at one point or another. So when you write your pros and cons, I want actual– Pay attention, Misty.”

  Misty Sandlin sat in the row of desks nearest the windows. Ignoring Mrs. MacKaye, she toyed with her lip ring and watched the dog.

  “Misty!”

  Rolling her eyes, Misty stood up. She walked past the teacher without a glance. Mrs. MacKaye yelled at her to sit down. Misty opened the door and vanished. The whole class sat stunned, listening to her boots thud down the empty hall as she broke into a run.

  Suddenly, the spell of Mrs. MacKaye’s authority shattered. Chairs scraped the floor as every student crowded around the windows. Misty reappeared, crossing the frost-silvered campus.

  The dog had made it to the strip of dead grass between the curb and the sidewalk. Blood stained the snow. When it saw Misty approaching, it dragged itself toward her with its front legs. Misty pulled off her sweater. Kneeling on the ground in her T-shirt, she bundled the dog up and scooped it into her arms. Through the window, Daniel watched Misty rush the dog to her car while he, McCammon High’s shooting star, stood with the gutless, gawking rest.

  It took a minute for Mrs. MacKaye to get the class back under control. She sent a discipline slip for Misty over to the front office. They talked about the assignment some more and then the three branches of the federal government.

  After third period, the story began spreading to people who hadn’t seen it. When Daniel and Bwana told their friends they’d been in the same classroom as Misty, they wanted all the details, what she’d said and how she’d acted.

  “She didn’t act any way,” Daniel told them. “She just walked out.”

  But listening to the hurt dog whimper, Daniel had felt sorry for it. He’d wanted to do something and had seethed at Mrs. MacKaye because she wouldn’t. But Daniel had never considered going to help himself. All Misty did was walk out, but watching her, it had seemed as astonishing as if she’d swooped out the window and flown to the dog’s rescue.

  Daniel mulled it over through lunch and the last half of the school day. By the time the three o’clock bell rang, Daniel could finally put into words what had been gnawing at him all week.

  He hadn’t wanted to cheat. Daniel had blamed his parents for pushing him into it, but he could have refused. He could have answered the therapist’s questions honestly. Walking into the testing room, he could have just not handed the proctor the form saying he had ADHD. Instead, hating every minute of it, he’d done exactly what they wanted him to do.

  He’d gotten into Cornell, his dream school. But in the end, it hadn’t been because he was bright or determined. Daniel was going to Cornell because he was obedient. Because he had never, not once he could remember, stood up for himself the way Misty had stood up for a mongrel.

  There was a student rep meeting after class. Daniel was headed there when he remembered Mr. Fine had asked him to stop by. He really didn’t feel like chatting with the vice-principal today, but he turned around, anyway.

  Keith worked in the main office as a student aide. When Daniel pushed through the glass doors, his cousin had an elbow propped on the chest-high counter, scratching his head over some geometry problems. He glanced up when Daniel walked in. “Hey. What’s up?” Looking back down, he started erasing an answer.

  “Mr. Fine wanted to see me.”

  “Oh, yeah. It’ll be a minute, though.” Keith leaned over the counter grinning. “Misty Sandlin’s in there now.”

  Daniel glanced at the vice-principal’s closed office door. “Really?”

  “Batshit crazy,” Keith whispered so the secretary wouldn’t overhear.

  Suddenly, the door jerked open and Misty stepped out. Scowling at the floor, she walked around the counter, almost bumping into Daniel a second time that day.

  Misty and her brother were both nasty little things with personalities like battery acid. The last person to cross Misty had been her boyfriend, Andre Swoopes, last October. She’d locked him out of his house naked, then burned his clothes. But even though Misty was a vicious thug princess, but she’d done something Daniel hadn’t had the courage to do. Maybe never could, if he wanted to be a shooting star.

  “So, uh, is that dog okay?”

  “What?” She shot him a look as beguiling as a brick thrown at his head. Misty was half-black, her skin a sallow, almost sickly, yellow. Thick eyeliner enhanced the impression of a permanent flu. Daniel guessed her lip ring was fairly new; the hole seemed infected.

  “That dog,” Daniel said again. “Is it okay?”

  She gave a tiny shrug. “Drove him to a vet. They said he’d probably live, but they’ll have to amputate one of his legs.”

  “That’s good. That–that he’ll live. Too bad about his leg, though.”

  “Yeah. He had a collar on, so they called his owners. Told them where he was.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  “Yeah.”

  They stared at each other. When Daniel couldn’t think of anything else to say, Misty shrugged again. “Well, see you.” She walked out of the office.

  “I’ll tell Mr. Fine you’re here,” Keith said, heading toward the vice-principal’s office.

  “Hold up a second.” Daniel followed Misty into the lobby. Her brother and her friend Val lingered outside the main office. Daniel had passed them a minute earlier without noticing them.

  “ISS?”

  Msty nodded. “Five days.”

  “Mom’s gonna whip your ass,” Marc laughed. “Gonna take off her belt.”

  “Don’t tell her. I’ll tell her when I get back from work tonight.” Misty sighed. “Jesus. All this, and I’ve still got to be at the deli at five.”

  “You were right, we should have–” Val saw Daniel walking up behind Misty. Her eyes narrowed.

  “It was just really cool,” Daniel said. “I mean, everybody saw what happened and felt sorry for that dog, but nobody did anything. Except you. Too afraid to stick their necks out or whatever.” Watching him, Misty’s hard expression softened into something closer to bafflement. Daniel heard himself rambling but couldn’t shut up. “I mean, it was just really... dashing.”

  That made the corner of her mouth twist upward into a smirk. “Thanks.”

  “Wow.” Val tilted her head to one side. “You’re very sensitive for a dumb jock.”

  Daniel nodded. “I can be. It gives me migraines, but I can be.
”

  Misty had a gentle laugh. “Well, see you around.”

  “Yeah.”

  Misty, Val, and Marc headed outside. Marc held the door open for the girls like a butler, giving an elaborate bow as they stepped through. Val whispered a few words to Misty, then Misty glanced over her shoulder. She met Daniel’s gaze and held it for a just moment before the door swung closed.

  About the author:

  Kristopher Reisz lives in north Alabama beside a slow moving river. He’s worked on an ambulance, as a third-shift short order cook, and at a mental hospital. He’s written lots of short stories and two novels, Tripping to Somewhere and Unleashed. Visit his website to see what he's working on now.

  About the artist:

  Constance Brewer is a printmaker and painter who joined the Army, saw bits and pieces of the world, and finally settled in Wyoming amid the extraterrestrial enticing wide-open spaces, where she now lives with a small but vocal herd of Welsh Corgis, and an alien-abandoned cat. Her blog is Life on the Periphery.