From her open purse Willa Markworth removed a piece of paper. She wiped her nose again and stared at the list she’d made at Dr. Voss’ direction. “Has, uh... Have you noticed Elena being sort of...lost in a daydream at anytime?”
youdont—
“No,” Mary answered, focusing on her visitor and shutting out all else. “No I haven’t.”
Willa Markworth moved a finger down the list. “Has she been talking to herself as if...”
Talking to herself? Mary’s inner ear listened for a moment, but heard nothing. “Go on, Willa.”
“As if there was someone else there? Someone imaginary. An imaginary friend, maybe?”
Mary felt the pull on her eyes. The...force that wanted them to spin away from what was real. Whatever it was was strong, so very strong. But at this moment it was not strong enough. Right now the need to be there for Willa Markworth, to possibly help one of her dear students, was stronger.
“I haven’t noticed anything like that, Willa.”
“Has she been doodling at all? Drawing things?”
“What kind of things?”
The right word eluded Willa Markworth for a moment. “Inappropriate things.”
“No, Willa.”
Willa Markworth nodded mildly, but gratefully. Her finger tracked down the list. “Has Elena acted at all disoriented? Like she doesn’t know where she is, or how she got there?”
Mary stared at Willa Markworth for a very long moment, saying nothing, not answering and not sure why she wasn’t. She had certainly not seen anything like that in Elena. That would be like she was losing time or something.
For a second Mary’s thoughts stuttered over the concept of losing time. She had no idea why, and very quickly the thought itself faded to nothingness and she simply shook her head at Willa Markworth’s semi-interesting inquiry.
Thirty Four
Two dress rehearsals were going on Wednesday afternoon. One inside the auditorium, where all the classes participating in that night’s autumn pageant were gathered, and the other in the foyer where Mrs. Gray was helping the class council from Room 18 prepare for the sale of refreshments.
Already they had a pair of long tables nosed together to fill the space between the two doors that let into the auditorium. Joey and Michael had lugged the tables in from the storage room off the foyer. Actually the dark and dust filled space was off off the foyer. There was a small closet in between, one that Mr. Carter used to store mops, and wheeled yellow mop buckets, and all kinds of cleaning implements that made moving the tables through a tricky endeavor. But they had managed and set up the makeshift counter a few feet from the wall, leaving enough room behind for them to serve the throngs of people sure to be there in just a few hours.
Mrs. Gray stood back from the tables, eyeing their placement and giving her approval with a nod. “Did the cups arrive?”
PJ trotted over to a stack of boxes half blocking one of the doors into the auditorium. She reached in and pulled a stack of foam cups. “Mrs. Gleason dropped them by.”
Jeff came over and looked into the box, the four stiff flaps of its top jutting out like the blades of a stubby propeller. “There’s a lot.”
“We are going to need a lot,” Mrs. Gray commented, then helped PJ move the boxes behind the counter where they began removing the cups. When they were about to put the first stack on the table Mrs. Gray’s cup-filled hands froze mid air and she grimaced at the faux-woodtone surface below. “My dear. This is filthy.” She shook her head and looked up. “Joey, Michael, go to the restrooms across from the office and get some paper towels. Mr. Carter always puts extra in the dispensers in there. Two handfuls each.”
“Yes, Mrs. Gray,” Joey answered. He and Michael headed for the side exit from the foyer. Almost through the door, Michael looked back. Bryce was standing at the far end of the counter tracing something into the cake of dust on the table with one finger.
“Bryce,” Mrs. Gray said as the side exit hissed shut.
“Yes, Mrs. Gray?”
“Mr. Carter has some spray cleaner in the closet, I believe. Would you look for it please and bring it here?”
Bryce nodded and brushed away the nonsensical doodle he’d scribbled in the dust. He went around the corner near the foyer’s drinking fountain and opened the door to Mr. Carter’s closet. It was unlocked and the light was still on from Joey and Michael’s trip through it to the storage room, the door into it not only unlocked but wide open into the dark space. The yellowed glow from the closet’s high fixture angled into the storage room, laying a path of ugly brightness on the cement floor. Bryce stepped between the high shelves that lined two of the closet’s sides and searched for the spray cleaner with his eyes. But every few seconds they would cautiously dart toward the hidden depths of the storage room that lay beyond the short carpet of light. They would try in vain to pierce the din, then move along the shelves again. Ammonia. Wood polish. Wig-like mops heads. A glance into the dark. Floor wax. Window putty. Another look. Box of nails. Look again, the cool, quiet splash of water arcing against the porcelain bowl of the drinking fountain outside the closet. Bryce heard this, but paid it no attention. His interest was elsewhere. Somewhere beyond the dark recesses that held him rapt. Beyond this dark place.
In another dark place.
An old, dark place.
His eyes flared as another time Before Guy came back to him. Long before Guy. Before Windhaven. Before Bartlett. Before he was a Hool.
Bryce Redmond, get in there!
He looks through the door and into the room. There is no light, no window.
Now!
His frightened eyes shift up to Miss Greenleaf and she swings a hand across his face, snapping his head to one side, his little cheek afire. He is not quite five. But he remembers.
NOW!
He steps into the closet, the one right next to Miss Greenleaf’s office. The floor is bare and tingles under his feet. He turns back to face her from the darkness, naked below the waist.
None of the other children wet their beds, and this will be the last time you wet yours, Bryce Redmond.
She closes the door and his world is nothing but night.
“All right, Hool.”
The daydream spun away like the last skim of water gasping down a drain and Bryce turned toward the voice. Toward Jeff’s close voice.
And when Bryce was facing him, one corner of Jeff’s mouth rose into a sneer and he lifted his cast out of its sling and ran it at his classmate, driving him backwards into the dark storage room. Bryce backpedaled until he slammed into a solid stack of boxes. His slight weight hardly moved them, but when Jeff forced his cast into the vulnerable space between Bryce’s chin and chest, the cardboard groaned and bent.
Bryce reached up and tried to push Jeff’s cast from his throat, his nails scratching at the plaster, but to no avail. He and Jeff were about the same size, but Jeff had the added weight of the cast, and he had something else. Something that showed in his eyes. The same thing he’d seen in Miss Greenleaf’s eyes every time she’d put him in the closet for wetting the bed. Disdain. Revulsion. Part of each. Some new alloy of hate’s offspring.
He couldn’t get away from it then, and he couldn’t get away from Jeff now.
“Let me go.”
Jeff pushed harder against Bryce, leaning his weight into it. “What’s going on, Hool? Huh? With you and that cop? Huh? What?”
Bryce tried to shake his head but his chin was locked against the plaster covering his friend’s— friend? —forearm. He sucked a breath past the crush on his neck and said, “Get off of me.”
“We all went into this together,” Jeff said angrily, a little shove punctuating the statement. “You, me, Joey, Mike, PJ, Elena. Together, Hool. And it only works if we stay together.” Bryce struggled a little and Jeff stopped the resistance with a hard shove that drew a wince from his prisoner of the moment. “Do you understand that? Huh? Do you? If you tell, then it’s over. Guy wins. Everything is ruined. Huh?
Do you get that? Huh? Do—”
“Let him go.”
The command was quiet but firm, and Jeff knew who it was before he turned to see Michael standing in the half light between the closet and the storage room.
“Let him go, Jeff,” Michael said again and stepped forward, his form in full silhouette now, each hand fisting folds of paper towels.
Jeff backed off and Bryce stepped away from the box wall that he’d been pinned against, one hand rubbing his throat.
“Get out, Jeff,” Michael told his friend.
“But—”
“Get out.”
Jeff gave Bryce a hateful look that was not returned. He pushed his cast back into the blue sling and moved past Michael. The water fountain hissed again once he was out of sight.
“Are you okay?” Michael asked his best friend.
Bryce nodded, but he did not look at Michael.
The fists loosened around the paper towels, flexing twice until they were simply holding the stacks. “Bryce, talk to me. Please.”
Bryce swallowed hard and glanced very briefly at the shadow that was his friend’s face. “I’ve gotta get the cleaner for Mrs. Gray.”
“C’mon, man, it’s me...”
Bryce moved very quickly, pushing past his friend, the friend who’d just saved his neck. “I can’t.”
Michael spun back toward the light as Bryce hurried into the closet and grabbed a bottle from one of the shelves. Bryce stared at the thing in his hand, breaths rooting in and out of his nose in spurts, his eyes fixed but confused. Wanting to look. Wanting his friend, his best friend, to be able to look into them and to understand.
But he couldn’t do it, because besides that desire there was shame. Michael was his best friend. Joey and PJ and Elena were his friends. Even Jeff was his friend. And Jeff was right; he had gone into this willingly. Maybe with some fear, but not with regrets.
At least not until later.
“I’ve gotta go, Mike,” Bryce said to the spray bottle. He lingered a few seconds more, then left the janitor’s closet, his head down and shaking.
* * *
Dooley walked back and forth at the front of the blue Cherokee, his breath trailing past his cheeks like misty whiskers flowing in the wind. One by one the cars that had been parked on the ball field were lighting up and parading away, those in the teachers’ lot also thinning out. The music had stopped twenty minutes ago.
He paced and waited and watched, and soon he saw her in the distance, stepping into the glow of the auditoriums’ outside lights. Three people had come out with her, two tall and one short. Mother, father, child. Mary chatted with them for a moment, then the family walked off, waving pleasantly back at her. She started across the ball field, the hem of her coat spreading in the breeze, her gently bobbing form black in silhouette. Her head was angled at the way before her, but every so often it would swing sideways, looking off at something and tossing the loose cascade of hair into the breeze, the distant back light setting every fine shadowy strand afire. The brilliance would die as quick as it had been born, and she would face forward again, beauty in shadow, night within night coming his way.
Three-quarters of the way to the teachers’ lot she slowed, her coat hugging her legs again, and he knew that she had seen him.
Her face was downcast and eclipsed, but when she came into the glow of the standards in the teachers’ lot she lifted her eyes and smiled.
Dooley smiled back and patted the hood of her car. “Good as new.”
“Amazing what a few new parts and some paint can do, isn’t it?” Mary stepped close and brushed a stubborn piece of lint from his shoulder, then studied his face and touched one of the small scars remaining, a short pinkish welt below his left eye. “You’re looking better.”
“I heal fast.”
His sure, quick reply stung. She withdrew her touch from him and glanced at the stars in the clear night sky. “Let’s see; the last time we were together you were a bloody mess and I was a blithering fool.”
“Second to last,” Dooley corrected her, and after a second’s worth of thought she nodded.
“That’s right. There was that little show in my class the next day.”
“In hindsight that probably wasn’t what I should have done,” Dooley said. “But it felt good then.”
It was close to an apology. Mary wondered about its boundaries. “Does the same sentiment apply to what we did?”
Dooley hadn’t thought he was talking about that, but now wasn’t sure. He’d tried to keep thoughts of Mary, and of their encounter (It wasn’t an ‘encounter’; it was a fuckfest, Dooley, with a witness. Swallow that and see how it tastes.), out of his head. He already had one mystery to solve. Trying to figure out why he’d let that happen would add another. He didn’t need that now. He hadn’t needed it then.
But here it was.
“Can’t remember what we did?” she asked facetiously when his silence lingered.
“I remember.”
“Kinda hard to forget,” Mary said. Her eyes avoided his for a moment while a thought gripped her. “It probably wasn’t the best time for it to happen.”
“It definitely wasn’t,” Dooley agreed, upping the level of certitude to a place he was instantly uncomfortable with. It might not have been the best time, but he didn’t mean for it to sound like what had happened between them was...wrong? “I wonder if it would have happened at all if it didn’t happen then.”
“It,” Mary said, plucking that singular, evasive syllable from the exchange. “What was it that we did, Dooley? There was no sleep, so we didn’t sleep together. Don’t take this personally, but I don’t love you, and I doubt you know me well enough to love me, so my inclination is to say we didn’t make love. That leaves sex.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about what we did.”
“Plain old fucking,” she said, gulping his reaction with wide eyes. She wanted to shock him, and shocked herself in trying. I said that? “Was it that, Dooley?”
“Mary, this isn’t—”
“Sure,” she interrupted, nodding. Her brow compressed to an angry, unattractive fall of creases. “That wasn’t a good time to do it. This isn’t a good time to talk about it. Fine.”
“What is this about, Mary?”
Her jaw dropped incredulously.
“I know what this is about,” Dooley said. “But what else is it about?”
The skin of her brow smoothed, anger becoming hurt. “I don’t take every man I meet into my bed. Under the circumstances we came together I sure as heck don’t understand why I was attracted to you.” She paused for a second. “Am attracted to you.”
He put his hands up in frustration. “Let’s not do this now, okay?”
“Fine,” she said, her head shaking slightly. “I take it then you weren’t waiting out here to hash this out.”
“No.”
“Did you come for the pageant?”
“No.”
She nodded. “Monosyllabism does not become you.”
“Is that a spelling word I should brush up on?” he asked, smiling, her face brightening in concert. God, she was a vision, he thought.
“No,” she answered cutely, monosyllabically. She wanted to touch his face again, to put her palm to his cheek and feel him turn into the caress. She wanted to, but she didn’t. Whatever there was between them would not blossom now. It needed time. Needed space. “You missed a really good pageant. Elena sang.”
“Mrs. Gray told me.”
“It was beautiful,” Mary added proudly.
Dooley nodded through a deep draw of chilly air. “Mrs. Gray also told me that Bryce left before the show started.”
She stared at him, her shine fleeting. Gone with the pleasant moment from which it came. Gone, as was his smile.
“He wasn’t feeling well,” Mary said.
“Mrs. Gray told me that, too. I was wondering why.”
“Taking an interest in Bryce, are you?”
“Mary,
I’m—”
She waved off his explanation, evasion; whatever it was going to be. “Mrs. Gray filled me in.”
“I asked her not to.”
“I’m his teacher. You thought she should know, she thought I should know.”
A pair of teachers hurried past from the ball field, waving and bidding goodnight to Mary and her companion, and got into a big old boat of a car. A monstrous old Buick, Dooley saw as it pulled out and drove past them. Its malodorous exhaust coughed from the tailpipe and swirled about the ground until the breeze pushed it past them and made it nothing.
Mary coughed quietly into her hand and said, “How am I supposed to know why Bryce isn’t feeling well?”
“I thought maybe something had happened with the other kids,” Dooley said. “Maybe that feeling sick was an excuse.”
“Do they know that you and he are...”
“I didn’t tell them,” Dooley said. He hadn’t meant to, but there was accusation all over his statement.
“Neither did I,” Mary assured him very calmly.
“Did anything happen with them?” Dooley asked directly now.
Mary sampled his inquiry for a moment. “This sounds like the policeman in you talking.”
“It...”
A policeman. Two...
On the sharp tail of the ‘t’, Mary’s world changed. What was around her, the rows of cars pale under the artificial lights, the dark swaying smudges against the night that were trees bending in the gentle wind, the stars dotting the sky above, seemed to collapse as if part of an inflated landscape being drained of what gave it form and presence. Collapsed inward toward the corridor of sight that existed between she and Dooley, the edges curling and warping and spinning until everything was a rotating funnel of night-dulled color that was pulling at her senses, the remnant odor of the departed old Buick, the brush of cold air on her cheeks, the tickle of hair dancing across her brow, and the sound, the sound of Dooley. Saying something.
...is.”
...policemen.
Her world was black for an instant, an internal night that was only similar to the recurrent darkness her sight sometimes spun toward in their shared lack of definition. But this was not that inner darkness. Not at all. This was in a different place, of a different place. In the other (another? more than one? two?) the bright-eyed hound lived. In this flash of nothingness the hound could not live. Could not survive. Was not welcome.
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