Cory watched the revelers from the hallway. She couldn’t believe that a magic wand had brushed the town and healed it. She knew that next spring when spearing began, there would be protests again. Loud and angry.
Laughter erupted and she focused her attention. Roxanne was concluding a story that had convulsed her listeners. Then another woman in the group—a clerk at the IGA who had been a protester—began talking and the other women quieted and leaned forward eagerly, hands on shoulders, heads tipped together.
There would be protests, Cory decided. But possibly Mike was right and there would be one or two fewer screamers at the ropes.
Maybe her mother’s revolution would happen. One party at a time.
“Snap out of it, Cory. I have to talk with you. Now.” Sasha stepped out of the crowd, grabbed her arm, and pulled her toward the nursery.
“There’s a baby sleeping.”
“Doesn’t matter as long as you don’t scream.”
They slipped into the darkened room and closed the door.
“What’s up?”
“You will not believe what I found out. But it makes so much sense. Why didn’t we guess?”
“Tell me.”
“I was standing in line for the bathroom. They really should have a second bathroom; I almost died.”
“Sasha.”
“I was waiting in the hall. Right around the corner in the kitchen Nick’s dad was talking to Logan Bennett’s dad, okay? And Mr. Bennett was telling how last winter he went to Logan’s room to borrow a sweatshirt. So he opened a drawer, he says, and found five boxes of the things.”
“The things?”
“Condoms. And they were all the same brand: Mighty Max, multicolored.”
“It could be a coincidence.”
“Five boxes of the same brand? But that’s not all. Mr. Bennett said he went back two days later and they were gone. Gone! In your locker, that’s where they were. Then Nick’s dad said something crude and then it was time for the bathroom.”
“I hardly know Logan. Why would he do all that stuff?”
“His ego. Logan asks you out, you say no, then you start going out with Mac. It’s so obvious, Cory. On Monday we tell Donaldson.”
“No.”
“You have to! This guy has been harassing you. Racist, sexist harassment.”
“No.”
“I’m going to scream, Cory! You’re driving me crazy and I’m going to scream.”
“Settle down.”
“You have to do something.”
“I will.”
“What?”
Cory leaned against the wall. The night-light cast a yellow beam that reflected off the glass over her mother’s picture. Cory turned back to Sasha. Her mother’s eyes hadn’t really been burning, it was a light trick, that’s all.
“Have Tony check it out without giving anything away. Guys talk in the locker room. He can find out if he asks the right questions. I want to know for sure.”
“And then?”
Cory twisted and looked again at the picture. Eyes glowed in the center of a framed shadow. She turned her back. “I’m going to give Logan a little present.”
“Cory?”
“Don’t panic, Sasha. I only want to give them back.”
17
The Summer High boys’ baseball team had an early morning practice before school each weekday. Wind sprints, push-ups, laps around the track, skill drills. Logan Bennett was the starting first baseman on the team, a defensive star with a mediocre batting average.
Cory flattened herself on the asphalt. A tiny piece of gravel bit into her cheek. She pillowed her head with her arm. It was an uncomfortable position, but she didn’t dare shift, didn’t dare sit up. She couldn’t see the team running final laps, but she could hear the coach shouting and could hear the steps on the track. “That’ll do it.” Coach Nordquist called. “Showers.” Cory’s foot twitched and tapped a soda can. It rolled noisily and banged against a few other cans. Way too much trash. She’d have to get the council to do something about it. Maybe another school cleanup day.
I’m innocent, she thought. I’ve never tossed anything up here.
She was lying on the roof of a walkway that connected the school’s main building to the auditorium and gymnasium. Twelve feet down and several yards away, Sasha was sitting on a bench.
Cory swept her arm out until her fingers touched the straps of her two old book bags. She hadn’t used them for years, but now they were heavy and loaded.
She could hear the team running toward her. Closer yet, and she could smell the moist, tangy odor of sweaty guys. She blocked out the conversations, listening intently for Sasha’s voice.
The wide doors below her were pulled open and her post shook as the boys hustled through—twenty-five thundering, sweaty animals.
“Logan!” Sasha’s sharp call startled even Cory, who had been waiting for it for twenty minutes. “Wait a second, would you?”
Would he stop? Walk away? Was someone with him? Cory didn’t dare lift her head to see. She counted the seconds, one…two…three.
“I’m sorry,” Sasha said. “Never mind.”
Never mind. The all clear. Cory rose to her knees and hauled up a bag. She looked down. Sasha was walking away, and Logan, hands on his hips, stood alone just outside the corridor watching her.
Cory lifted the first bag, tipped it upside-down and shook. The gelatinous, loaded condoms tumbled out and fell.
Logan screamed. Logan swore.
Cory emptied the other bag.
He was still screaming, still swearing.
Cory checked her bags. Two condoms had broken, and there was a gooey mix of ketchup and vegetable oil coating the bottom of one of the bags.
Logan’s teammates had returned when he’d started screaming. One of them gingerly toed an unbroken, bloated condom. He nudged it into the grass. It split open and water wet his foot.
“It’s Cory Knutson up there!” someone shouted, and Cory waved to the team. Logan looked up. His blond hair was coated with brown. Cory wondered if regular shampoo would get rid of molasses.
Logan pointed and swore. He called her a name.
Cory smiled. “Gotcha.”
*
“She did what?” Mike gasped and gripped his chair. He looked at Cory, looked at Mr. Donaldson, then slumped.
“As I said, she assaulted another student on the school grounds. I appreciate your leaving work and coming down.”
“She couldn’t assault a rabbit and do any harm.”
“She was…” Mr. Donaldson chewed on his lower lip and patted the edges of a neat stack of papers. “She was armed.”
“Condoms,” Cory said. “I filled them. Most of them just had water, but a few had other stuff. And I dropped them on Logan Bennett.”
Noise from the outer office filtered in. Cory heard a secretary making announcements over the P.A. She heard a vaguely familiar voice ask to use the phone, heard the more distant chatter and laughter of a class leaving on a field trip.
Mike drummed on his chair arm. “Cory,” he whispered, “did you have a reason?”
“It hardly matters,” said the principal. “She assaulted Logan and I must take disciplinary action. The, uh, weapon was not dangerous, so I am limiting the suspension to three days. And she will be banned from all extracurricular activities for the remainder of the year.”
Cory ran a calendar check: council convention in Madison, spring play, concerts, prom. The tiniest twinge of regret twisted deep inside.
“It does matter if she had a reason,” Mike said. “It matters to me. Cory?”
She reached into her pocket. She had been prepared to make a defense and had brought the evidence. She unfolded the two notes and laid them on the principal’s desk. “Someone left these in my locker last winter. There was one more, but Sasha got mad and ripped it up. Last weekend I found out it was Logan who wrote them.”
After the men read the messages, Mr. Donaldson smoothed them flat
, then slipped them into a manila folder. Cory couldn’t see if her name was on it. “These are terrible, of course—”
“Along with the note about diseases, he put a bunch of condoms in my locker. Slipped them through the vents, I guess, because he didn’t have my combination. I hardly know the guy. That’s why I did it. I was just returning the gift.”
She watched for a smile. Watched to see if the absurdity, the silliness, would crack through their stern demeanors. Ketchup and oil and molasses and water. That’s all, guys. That’s all.
Mike’s fist slammed on the desk, then he pulled it back and shoved it into his coat pocket. “What,” he said to the principal, “will you do to the boy? Have you investigated this? It’s your school, and these notes, this sort of thing, shouldn’t be allowed. I cannot support the suspension if you don’t do something about the boy. I’ll send her to Florida to visit my mother. I’ll let her go someplace and have a good time.”
“I didn’t know a thing about the notes until now. I had no idea.”
Mike turned to Cory. “When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”
The principal had a nice view out his window. Daffodils and crocuses spread across the lawn. Farther down, there was a dark cluster of trees sheltering a pile of silver, ice-crusted snow. Cory looked at Mike. “Mom was dying.”
Mr. Donaldson rose. “Mike, I promise to look into Logan’s part in this. If it bears out, I’ll certainly take action.”
Mike faced him and they shook hands. “Thanks, Ken.”
Mr. Donaldson walked around his desk. “I understand Sasha was involved.”
“It was my stunt. It’s my problem.”
“I won’t be suspending her, but she, too, will be banned from activities.”
Cory closed her eyes and pictured the prom dress in Sasha’s closet. She stepped directly in front of the principal. “You can’t do that. That’s ridiculous. She didn’t—” Her protest was squelched by Mike’s sudden grip on her arm. “Let’s go,” he said. “Before it gets worse.” Sasha was waiting with her stepmother in the outer office. She raised her eyebrows in question. Cory made a slash across her neck.
“That bad?” said Sasha.
“Call me tonight.”
Mike paused in the hallway to button his coat. “Three days. You can work on your math.”
“I thought I was going to Florida.”
“Only if he ignored Logan. Not now. Ken will do what’s right.”
“I can sleep late, at least.”
“You can do your math. This might be your last chance to avoid summer school, Cory.”
“I’ll watch some soaps.”
“This isn’t going to be a vacation. Not for a moment. You have been suspended and I’m not happy about it, Cory. Do you understand that?”
“I hear you, Mike.”
“I have to go back to work. Can I trust you to get your books and go straight home and study?”
“Of course you can trust me. Have I ever let you down?”
“Dawn’s store, algebra, first communion.”
“Communion hardly counts.”
“You were fourteen, Cory. Old enough to know better than to spit out the wine and blurt ‘Yuck.’ “
“It gave you a reason to stop going to church, didn’t it?”
He didn’t answer, didn’t seem to have heard. He rubbed his unshaven jaw. “Loaded condoms. Oh, Lord, Cory, your mother—”
“Please don’t haunt me with that, Mike. Donaldson’s given me plenty of punishment.”
He pushed open the exterior door, and a gust of wind blew in their faces. Mike shook his head. “That’s not what I was going to say. Once upon a time, given the same situation, your mother would have done exactly the same thing.”
“You think so?”
Mike smiled. “Maybe without the molasses.”
“But that was the best. It just oozed across the bastard’s head. I nearly—”
Mike shushed her with a finger to her lips. “Go home, sweetheart. Go home and study.”
18
Prom night was rainy and cold. Cory picked up Mac, Sasha, and Tony, and for twenty minutes they sat in her car and debated about where to eat dinner. Tony made the final winning point that going to the powwow in Eagle River was Sasha and Mac’s idea, so he and Cory should choose the food. Burgers and malts won out over pizza. After dinner at Seestadt’s Cafe, the four friends drove to the school and cruised the parking lot, shouting and honking at formally dressed classmates who were huddling under umbrellas and scurrying through the rain and around puddles toward the gymnasium door.
Cory switched the wipers to high speed. “It’s really pouring now. Look—there are Nick and Karin. If I time this just right, I can hit that puddle and splash them.”
Sasha cheered her on, Tony sank out of sight, Mac gently squeezed her arm. “Don’t you dare.”
Cory glanced at Sasha in the rearview mirror. They both rolled their eyes. “The next time I fall in love,” Cory announced to her companions, “it will be with someone lacking a conscience.”
“What did you say?” Mac asked.
“You have a conscience, Harvey MacNamara. It’s not always attractive.”
“No—the ‘fall in love’ part. Did I hear right? Can there be a ‘next time’ without a ‘this time’?”
“Let’s hit the highway,” said Cory.
“She loves him,” Sasha said to Tony. “I always knew it.”
Tony pushed against the front seat with his foot. “Tell him straight out, Cory. Guys like it.”
“It won’t hurt,” added Sasha.
“Who wants to walk to Eagle River?” Cory asked. She reached across to Mac and tapped his glasses. “If you’re dancing tonight you should take those off.”
“I’m not dancing, and you changed the subject.”
“It’s a private subject, okay? Hey, everyone, it’s private.”
Sasha and Tony hissed and booed. Mac nodded. “Fair enough.”
“How about this, though,” she said. “One thing I love about you”—and she reached and slipped a hand into the largest of two rips in his jeans—“is the way you dress. Those purple boxer shorts are great.” Tony leaned over the front seat. “Wow, she has her hand in his pants! Smooth move, Cory.”
Sasha yanked him back. “Buckle up.”
“Sasha,” sighed Tony, “if I rip my jeans, will you do what Cory did?” Sasha punched him, Mac laughed, Cory accelerated the engine, and they sped toward Eagle River.
As soon as they were in the community center, Sasha spotted the vendors and dragged Tony off to go shopping. Mac led Cory by hand through the crowd. “I guess we’re too late for the grand entry,” he said. “They’ve already started the competitions.”
Cory stood on tiptoe in order to see into the center of the hall where the dancing was going on. She occasionally saw a headdress rise, then fall out of sight. As they pushed closer to the dancing, Mac was accosted by an excited girl who wanted to talk about someone Cory didn’t know, some crazy fool named Don and what he did, what he said. Mac laughed and they talked, heads bowed together. The girl was in a jingle dress of deep red cotton covered with rows of chimes. Tobacco-can lids. As Cory watched them talk, the initial twinge of jealousy gave way to curiosity about Mac’s life. Who else, what else, was unknown to her?
She’d always been aware of the imbalance in their lives, always known that his was more complicated, with wider and wilder experience. Hers had always been safely circumscribed by a comfortable life in Summer. And if he went through with his plans for Canada, the disparity would increase. She, after all, was only going to summer school.
“Damn algebra,” she said aloud. Her words were lost in the crowd noise. She repeated it again and again, louder each time.
Mac turned around. “What are you saying? Gosh, I’m sorry, Cory. I didn’t introduce you. This is Lisa Whitebird. Lisa, this is Cory Knutson.”
The jingles on Lisa’s dress tinkled as she reached for and shook Cory
’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Cory exchanged a few words about the weather, the crowd, the dancing, the noise. She rubbed Mac’s arm gently. “Stay and talk, Mac. I’ll just push on and look around.”
“I’ll meet you later by Jeff and his drum group.”
“I can find it.” She edged through people toward the vendors’ tables, hoping to find Sasha and Tony. She circled the hall once, didn’t see them, and decided to find Mac, even if she had to drag him away from the girl. She looked around, looked up, and spotted a video camera suspended from the ceiling. It moved slowly from side to side as it recorded. She wondered how she would appear on the tape, what she would look like: one very short white girl pushing her way alone through a mass of feathers, shawls, beads, and jingles.
She saw Mac standing behind Jeff at the drum circle and she found an empty chair. She was close enough to the center to see the dancing. The announcer, whom she couldn’t see, said something, people applauded, and the drummers began their song.
The rising and falling voices and the incessant drumming was immediately mesmerizing. She closed her eyes and was carried back to the first powwow, the first time she’d heard the drum, before…before everything.
What have I passed on to you?
Cory opened her eyes.
It’s important to pass things on. What have I taught you?
Cory had never believed in ghosts, but now, amidst the swirl of drum and song, she heard her mother’s voice. It was a forceful haunting of memory and desire.
She rose, looked wildly for an escape, then saw Mac listening to the drum. Focused, intent, unsmiling; still, his pleasure was evident. His eyes were closed, his lips moved, and his hand twitched up and down. She guessed he was silently singing along, committing the song to memory.
Something to hold onto, he had said. His mother hadn’t had it, and he was claiming it for her.
Mac looked, saw her, and waved. Cory smiled and sat down. Maybe it wasn’t just music running through his mind. Maybe he heard a voice too, his own haunting.
Hers returned, insistent and clear through the loud drumming. What have I taught you? Cory glanced down. White shirt, beige bra. “Taught me how to dress,” she whispered. “I learned that.”
Revolutions of the Heart Page 13
