A Hole in Juan

by Gillian Roberts

  Second, the police reached us, and made it clear they wanted us in the auditorium as soon as possible.

  Seth shrugged and did as he was told. I watched him for a long moment. With my newly calmed sense of my future, and with Seth’s back to me, his bruises and generally sullen expression not visible, his actions most ordinary, I thought, perhaps, that everything would now be all right.

  It took hours, the bulk of the day, to try to unravel what had happened and where responsibility should be put, and even then nothing was resolved or determined. The police were interested in the firecracker and questioned and searched every student; the paramedics treated the girl’s burns, which, luckily, were minor; the burned clothing was replaced; and Havermeyer, goaded on by Louis Applegate, continued to focus on agitators, both in-house and imported. Havermeyer was sure Pip was the guilty party. He was from Iowa, for starters, about as outside an agitator as you could get. Who needed more evidence than that?

  Lists of names were drawn up, theories expounded, and at the end of all that time, with nothing explained and no progress aside from treating the superficial injuries, with everyone questioned and baroque arrangements made so that no one could pass guilty material to anyone else, with no one suspended and even Cheryl for all intents and practices back in school, and with the idea that one unknown idiot—in all probability not one of our students—had gone too far and tossed two cherry bombs for the hell of it, we had no conspiracy or agitators.

  At approximately forty-seven minutes before the bell would have normally rung, Maurice Havermeyer waved the white flag and declared school ended.

  The joy this produced was mostly relief from a day that had begun with a bang and wound up an exercise in excruciating boredom. The truth was, the faculty looked much more delighted about the way things had worked out than the students did. School had been scheduled to end at noon, for this was to have been, in theory, a teacher prep day. For students, it’s an afternoon off. For teachers, that translates into an afternoon’s agony of useless nattering by Maurice Havermeyer, except for those times when he’d find an “expert” as stultifying as he was to take his place.

  Early dismissal would have meant the party planners had time to do their thing. The committee, sitting in a huddle on the gymnasium bleachers, looked glum.

  When the bell finally rang, I watched Allie rouse herself and go from silent and sullen to frenzied. “It’s all ruined!” she said. “We should have been working for two hours now! Why did they have to take so long? Stupid, anyway. None of us threw that firecracker at ourselves. And acting as if it had something to do with Mr. Reyes.” She paced and sighed histrionically and waved her arms. “I can’t believe it—all that planning—for nothing!”

  “There’s still time,” I said. “The party’s hours away.”

  “That’s nothing! Sorry. Didn’t mean to be so—but we have to construct the scarecrow, and inflate the balloons and put up the photo booth and—I told them we needed a whole day but they said starting at noon had to be enough—but now, look, it’s three o’clock! And people are standing around here so how can we get anything done? We might as well cancel the party altogether.”

  “Surely not,” I said. “Everybody would understand if things aren’t one hundred percent finished.”

  “No they wouldn’t. They don’t understand!” She uttered a tiny sob. “It was going to be perfect!” She shook her head. “If I’d had any idea that this would happen,” she said, “I would have left civil rights till Monday. Forget Antigone. Who knew a jerk would toss cherry bombs and spoil everything!”

  “It’ll work out,” somebody said nearby. “I’ll help.”

  “Our costumes,” she wailed. “When is there going to be time—and look at all the people still standing here! Aren’t they going to ever go home? How about their costumes?”

  “It was advertised as costume optional,” I reminded her. “Maybe they weren’t ever planning to be in disguise.”

  “I was!” she said too loudly. “I was and my friends were. It was part of the fun.”

  “I’ll help. Maybe speed things up.” That was spoken by a ninth grader and surely not one who’d have been on Allie’s A list. Her clique was so tight, and her rule so established, that I was intrigued to see if she’d accept help from peons.

  She did, albeit with another sigh and a resigned shake of her head. “I don’t know where to tell you to start, though,” she said. “If only everybody would leave. Can you help move people out of here?”

  “Can I help?” Pip asked. I’d forgotten that he was still here, and that he didn’t belong here in the first place. He’d become a piece of the scenery.

  Allie squinted. “Who are you?” But before he could answer, she snapped her fingers. “Wait—you’re the kid from . . . Idaho?”

  “Iowa.”

  “Right. The outside agitator.” She smiled. “Sure, you can help. Why not?” And then she turned to me. “Did they find him?”

  “Who?”

  “The cherry bomber. After all this—” She waved vaguely at the room around her, at the afterimage of the police who had spoiled her decorating potential.

  “They didn’t tell me if they did.”

  She leaned close, lowered her voice. “Was it Seth? I saw him there, across the street, staring at us, and I don’t want to get him in trouble, but did he do it?”

  If you really didn’t want to get somebody in trouble, did you go out of your way to suggest he’d committed a crime? “Why’d you think that?” I tried to calculate backward through the week, to pin together the hints, suggestions, and glances that had pushed suspicion toward Seth. My stolen test—had that been Allie who glared, or was she one of many faces glowering at Seth when I deposited a new version on her desk? Had it always been Allie making me wonder about Seth?

  I didn’t think so. Besides, why would she?

  I asked her again. “Why would you think Seth did something like that?”

  She looked at me intently before rearranging her facial muscles into a bland, pleasing mask and spoke slowly, as if thinking through each sentence before she said it. “No reason in particular. Playing detective, I guess. Trying to be logical. I mean we were on the curb, and the building’s on one side of us, so it’s not likely somebody inside tossed it out at us. And I’d seen him and he looked peculiar, staring at us that way. So, well, you know. But I guess I’m not a detective!” Her smile was brightly insincere.

  Of course, she had other things on her mind, and a to-do list pressing on her. I was an annoyance and further delay. “There were undoubtedly other people in the Square,” I said quietly. “You noticed Seth because you know him, that’s all.”

  If possible, her smile became still less sincere. “That must be it!” she said brightly.

  “Good luck,” I told her and Pip and the eager ninth grader. “I’ll be . . . I’ll be . . .” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. Where would I be now that I didn’t have to be here tonight? What would I do with a gift of time?

  First, I went and sat on the back stairs and phoned Mackenzie and left a message of freedom on his cell. Then I checked my messages and heard a last-minute, casual dinner invitation from Sasha. “Only one other couple, Wesley and Nick, are coming, so don’t change, or dress up, and come six-thirty, sevenish, okay?”

  We had met Nick and Wesley before, and they were funny and quick and involved in professions that had nothing to do with teaching adolescents. It sounded like a perfect place and way to wind down from this horrific week, so I called Mackenzie again and changed the message. I’d meet him at Sasha’s.

  It suddenly felt like a true T.G.I.F. except for a residual thrum of anxiety I couldn’t shake.

  FRIDAY, the note had said. Why?

  I went back to the gym and observed Allie directing Liddy Moffat, or trying to. One did not direct the custodian, but she lived to clean, and so seemed quite happy to help, broom and pan in hand. The ninth graders had apparently been given litter detail, and they
crawled over the bleachers, picking up notes and doodles and homework that had been hurriedly scribbled in case there had actually been classes today.

  I was going to read about Allie one day, I thought. Her aspirations at the moment were in the arts, but she could as easily run a corporation or lead a platoon. I watched her make the rounds of her committee, advising and guiding each one as well as Pip, who looked as if he were willing to move the entire gym elsewhere if that’s what she wanted. I was momentarily puzzled by his energetic altruism until it registered that Cheryl, apparently back in the Philly Prep fold at least for the dance, was his work partner.

  FRIDAY.

  What’s wrong with this picture? I thought.

  But nothing was.

  Even that made me nervous.

  Look here, I told myself. Observe this most innocuous, ordinary all-American scene. Students readying the gym for a school dance, believing that with crepe paper and posters they can transform the room into their fantasies. Listen to the happy drone of people working together, planning a party. This could be a saccharine greeting card, it’s so ordinary and pleasing, so be pleased.

  I took a few more deep breaths, but the mild jitters, the uncomfortable sense that my veins were rushing the blood through persisted.

  I saw no sign of Seth or Wilson, though Wilson had been part of the demonstration, wearing his bandages with a swagger. Maybe he’d gone home to get into costume. Or maybe his mother had decided to surgically remove him from the bad influences even before rescheduling could be effected.

  I watched another of the recent strange and strained Allie-Nita interchanges. Nita looked overwhelmed, propellering her arms and doing the head-shaking that seemed to be her basic communication with her best friend these past few days.

  I felt sorry for both of them. They had worked hard and there really wasn’t enough time to get everything done. I thought I might help with triage—pick the most important task and do it—and I walked over to them to say so.

  “It’ll all be your fault!” Nita was saying. “You could stop it and you aren’t!”

  “They aren’t going to—”

  “They’re crazy!” I could see the tendons in Nita’s neck. Her voice wasn’t loud, but strained with the emotions it was barely containing.

  I doubted that they were talking about the gymnasium décor. Nobody cared that much. But there I was, beside them, so I felt obliged to say something. “Could I help?”

  They stared at me blankly.

  “I know you’re up against the wall with time, and I could take care of something, if you’d like. Maybe putting together that scarecrow you mentioned, Allie?”

  They glanced at each other and then at me. “It’s all right,” Allie said. “It’ll get done, but thanks. Thanks a lot!”

  It didn’t seem the right time to leave. Apparently, even preparty, they needed some kind of chaperone or referee.

  When I looked back at them, Nita had huffed off, so I thought things had simmered down. I watched Allie collar Erik, who looked as if he wanted to bolt and run as she gave him instructions—several times. Erik behaved with her the way he too often did with me, blankly staring, then visibly letting his attention wander, his eyes checking out who was left on the bleachers, who else was still around—I nodded politely as he took note of me—and then he checked out what, if anything, might be going on up on the ceiling.

  Allie looked up, too, following his glance, then drilled her index finger into his chest. He shrugged and nodded at the same time, said a little more, and moved on out of the gym. Maybe that’s what Allie had been requesting—a cleared-out room and space to work.

  Such high drama over a possibly less than perfect Mischief Night party. Teens were exhausting.

  My blood was percolating again, as it had repeatedly all this week. I couldn’t tell if it was due to accumulated events or apprehension about what was still to come.

  I still had that note in my backpack saying something worse was going to happen.

  When?

  What?

  Was the Friday note the answer to that?

  Taking deep breaths did not help.

  I checked the time. Too early to go to Sasha’s. She’s a photographer and even though she now uses the computer more than the darkroom, she does still work at home a great deal. I did not want to interrupt.

  I could go see Juan Reyes. As soon as I had the thought, I felt better. Maybe by now he could have visitors and I could make him feel more a part of the school community. I didn’t know if he had any family close by, or whether Tisha Banks had the fortitude or interest to see this through with him.

  Even if I couldn’t see him, maybe I could at least get more information about his condition, or I could find out something I could do to help out.

  At the very least, it would feel a step in the right direction of paying attention and respect. The illusion of doing something seemed preferable to doing nothing at all or continuing to hang out with teenagers.

  He was at HUP—the University of Pennsylvania hospital. I glanced at my watch. The bus would get me there in a matter of minutes.

  First, I found Pip. “What are your evening plans?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s kind of not up to me.”

  “Then promise you’ll stay here and help out for the next hour or so—until I get back. Then you can tell me what has or hasn’t worked out and if you’re staying, we’ll iron out the logistics.”

  He promised, and I went to catch my bus. The daylight was shrinking and the temperature falling, issuing stern reminders that it would be November in two days and any happy dreams we had of ongoing Indian summer warmth were naïve and irrational. I was lost in my shivers and contemplation of whether my coat, which was just about ready to collect Social Security, could make it through another winter, when I realized that in addition to a tiny Asian woman, a red-cheeked sturdy woman in a thick wool coat, and two dark-eyed, dark-skinned girls who looked like twins trying to not look like twins, Erik Steegmuller, in the ubiquitous thick winter letter jacket, was waiting for the same bus, and not only that, looking at me with concern.

  His expression flattened out instantly. “Miss Pepper!” he said. “Going home?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “How about you?”

  He looked down at his feet. “Not really,” he said.

  “Not really” is a phrase that drives me to distraction. What does it mean and why can’t they simply say “no”? Why do they feel obliged to hedge, to skirt the periphery of possibility? Not really. Then what? Yes falsely? In his delirious imagination, he was going home, but not in reality?

  “Getting ready for the party, then?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Have to find Nita first, though.”

  “It looks like it’ll be fun,” I said insincerely. “I’m sorry to miss it. Are you coming in costume?”

  “Well, we thought, probably. Everybody is. Unless . . .” he shrugged. “They don’t. Then . . .”

  He could get a job as living proof that some people were impervious to twelve years of instruction in the mother tongue. You could try to leave no child behind, but some children were determined to stay where they were. “Kind of a cool costume. You’ll like it.”

  “Can’t wait. Meanwhile, I’m going up to the hospital,” I said.

  Erik took a step back from the curb. “You okay? Were you hurt today?”

  “No, no. I’m going to try to see Mr. Reyes. Or at least see about him.”

  He nodded, as if I’d verified a theory he held. “Well, then,” he said. “Well, then . . . is he—can he talk now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked worried. “I mean is he awake, you know?” He shrugged and realigned his muscles. He looked as if he had no idea what to do with his hands. If only he had a basketball to dribble. “I heard he was still pretty much unconscious,” he mumbled. “Like it’s . . . unusual to go see somebody unconscious. I mean, I guess it’s nice, but . . .”

  “Y
ou know, they say people can hear what you’re saying while they’re unconscious.”

  “Really? But, like—he can’t talk yet, can he?”

  The bus approached, and I believe we both heard it with relief. It wasn’t until I had boarded that I realized Erik hadn’t gotten on.

  “Changed my mind,” he called out. “Getting late. See you.”

  “Kids,” an exhausted woman next to me said. “They’re all idiots.”

  I walked softly, but the hospital wasn’t quiet the way I always imagined it. Even here, in a semi–intensive care unit, nurses called out to one another, spoke brightly to patients and visitors; families with active—and often noisy—children picnicked in waiting areas; and all of that might have annoyed the truly ill, but for the moment, it was a good thing because when Nita saw me, she shrieked. In a hushed place, her scream would have cracked the plaster walls, but here, it almost blended into the low-grade din.

  “Nita!” I said, clutching the small flowering plant I’d bought in the gift shop. “What is it? Why are you acting afraid of me?” I didn’t say I was surprised to see her here, because I wasn’t, not after Erik’s pitiable attempt at casual conversation. He’d been headed here, looking for her, but turned back when he realized I was going in the same direction, though I couldn’t understand what I had to do with his mission. “Nita?” I repeated.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’m—surprised.”

  “Well, so am I. Why are you here?”

  “I come every day,” she said in a low voice. “I—I needed to know how he is. I mean really know.”

  “And how is he?”

  She shook her head. “Not good. No visitors. He might . . . He’s not getting better. Not enough. It’s . . .” And then her nose turned red and her eyes welled up.

  “Nita,” I said softly. I braced the plant on my hip and put my hand on her arm, gently, almost to keep her from fracturing and falling apart. “What is it?”

  She looked at me with wide, overflowing gray-blue eyes, and shook her head. “This is all so horrible. He could die or be blind or disfigured. Nobody ever, ever meant anything like this to happen.”