Skippy Dies: A Novel

by Paul Murray

  ‘I…’

  ‘You don’t know, of course, nobody knows, it’s the Bermuda Triangle. Well, let me tell you something, Howard, somebody knows, and when I find out, believe me, heads are going to roll. Because if those people –’ pointing to the phone again ‘– my God, if they had any idea what actually happened…’ He grasps at his hair, pacing back and forth distractedly like a deranged pastel-clad robot, then, taking a deep breath, comes to a stop in front of Howard. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I suppose we’re not going to get anywhere by flying off the handle. I’m not trying to pin this whole thing on you. All I’m looking for is an explanation. So you just tell me, in your own words, exactly what you saw last night.’ He folds his arms and settles back against the sideboard, a vein twitching furiously in his forehead.

  Twelve hours ago, Howard was lying supine on the teacher’s desk in the Geography Room. From the wall the happy miners of the Rhine-Ruhr Valley grinned down at him, and looking back up at them, his head tilting back into empty space, Howard was half-dreaming he’d fallen down a mineshaft – or was it a trench, could they be soldiers, faces blackened for night-patrol…? On top of him lay Miss McIntyre, her hands folded into him, her hair spilling over the floodplain of his chest, the borders of their bodies porous, liquid, indeterminate. The storm thundered at the window; intermittently, the room lit up with flashes of lightning so quick you couldn’t be sure you hadn’t imagined them; the last dregs of satiety buzzed through his blood like fortified wine. And then, with a sharp intake of breath, he felt her body stiffen against his, and before he could ask her what was wrong, he felt it too, the same irrefutable chill.

  The drumbeat hit them as soon as they left the room, still scrabbling for buttons and zippers, and grew louder with every breathless hastening step down the deserted halls. Outside the door to the gym they found Wallace Willis, the Hop DJ, trembling from head to foot, with a look of grubby tearstained distress, like he’d spent three days locked in a drain. ‘They’re playing the wrong songs,’ was all that he would say.

  When they opened the gym door, the music was so deafening that for a moment it precluded any other sensation; but only for a moment, and then the full horror of the situation was upon them.

  Discarded costumes strewed the floor. A Viking helmet, a gilt-trimmed bustier, a pirate’s eyepatch, a pair of butterfly wings, as well as more conventional items such as trousers, T-shirts, stockings and undergarments – all lay blithely crushed beneath the feet of former wearers as they rocked in the bare flesh of each other’s arms. Somehow, the invisible barriers separating them at the start of the night had come crashing down. Goths were with jocks, dweebs with bimbos, studs with skanks, blimps with waifs – everyone was with everyone, indistinguishable, propping each other up or collapsed in nearly naked heaps; as if the germ of Howard and Aurelie’s secret moment in the Geography Room had been caught by an internal breeze and, as in some nightmarish morality tale, blown down here, where in the hothouse atmosphere it had grown ten feet tall and spread like a weed over everything, so that now wherever they looked they saw it reproduced in monstrous, magnified form, stripped, in the lurid circus colours of the lights, of everything but mindless carnality.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Miss McIntyre crooned, in a voice cracking with self-disgust; Howard tried to think of something comforting or exculpating or purposeful to say, but found nothing.

  The two of them did their best to restore order. But the kids simply didn’t listen. It wasn’t defiance; rather they seemed in a kind of erotic trance. They would stare, moon-eyed, at Howard, as he wagged his finger in their faces, threatened them with suspension, letters home, police, and then as soon as he had turned his back resume whatever it was he had interrupted.

  ‘This is hopeless!’ Miss McIntyre exclaimed, at the brink of tears.

  ‘Well, what do you suggest we do?’ Howard said, feverishly gathering up a long coil of toilet paper at the end of which a priapic mummy was groping the breasts of a girl who, although standing upright, appeared to be asleep, a rainbowed shiver of fabric, once a mermaid’s tail, lying balled at her feet. ‘Stop that!’ He bundled the toilet paper into the mummy’s hands. ‘Here, cover yourself up, for God’s sake!’

  ‘We have to call Greg,’ Miss McIntyre said.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘We have to – get away from me!’ leaping, with a wail, from the extended paws of a mysterious pink rabbit.

  ‘Surely we don’t need to involve him…?’ Howard pleaded, though all the evidence pointed to the opposite.

  But it was academic, because somehow the Automator was already there in the doorway. For a moment he did not move from it – looking on stony-faced as Dennis Hoey, shirt unbuttoned, tie flung back over his shoulder, staggered by him flapping his arms and raving hoarsely, ‘Study your shirtsleeves! Tuck in those notes!’ and over the PA a gangsta rapped:

  I chop off your head bitch

  And jizz on your grave –

  Then he swung into action. Striding onto the dancefloor, sundering any couples he encountered by grabbing both parties by the neck and literally flinging them in opposite directions, the Acting Principal cut a path to the wall-mounted fusebox – of course, why hadn’t Howard thought of that? Abruptly the music ceased; a moment later, the house-lights came up, and all but the most abandoned of the revellers paused, blinked, murmured to themselves uncertainly.

  ‘All right!’ the Automator bellowed over their heads. ‘I want everyone lined up against that wall, this minute!’

  The effect was not immediate, but some dim ember in their minds recognized his voice, and gradually they began to obey, stumbling and ragged in the bright light. In five minutes they were marshalled into a row, those not capable of standing kneeling or squatting on the floor, all gazing at the Automator with stuporous, unfocussed eyes. For a time he did nothing but stare, as if his fury was such he could not trust himself to speak. Then finally he said, ‘I don’t know what’s got into you people tonight. But let me assure you of this, there are going to be repercussions. Serious repercussions.’ Standing at his left hand, Howard cringed interiorly. ‘It is now –’ the Automator flourished his watch ‘– exactly twenty-two thirty-three and thirty seconds. In twenty-six and a half minutes, at twenty-three hundred hours, I am going to open those double-doors, and you are going to proceed directly to your parent or guardian. None of you will mention any aspect of what transpired here. If they ask, you will say that you had fun, but now you are feeling tired and would like to go to bed, goodnight. What will you say?’

  ‘Hahfuhhhtiguhnight,’ the zombified horde mumbled piteously.

  ‘Good. In a moment, I am going to direct you to put on your clothes. At my word, I want you in blocks of ten, starting at this end with you, giant ant, to make your way in an orderly fashion to your costume. In the event that you cannot find your –’

  He stopped. Near the door a very thin girl dressed only in an olive-drab brassiere and khaki cut-offs had stumbled out of the line, clutching her stomach.

  ‘At my word, missy,’ the Automator said. But the girl paid no attention: instead, doubled up, she emitted a long, painful moan. There was a loud shuffling noise as her two hundred peers adjusted their position to get a better look. The girl coughed delicately, as though about to make an announcement, and then – after a moment at once infinitely prolonged, and inexorably doomed – the inevitable multicoloured torrent came gushing from her mouth.

  ‘Eeeeeewwwwwwww!’ the zombies exclaimed in revulsion.

  ‘Stop that!’ the Automator commanded. But she could not stop, and the hall filled instantly with the acrid miasma of stomach acid and alcohol and too-sweet fruit punch. Along the line, mouths bulged; chests lurched. ‘All right, maybe we should get some fresh air,’ the Automator said hurriedly. ‘Howard, open the – ’

  But it was too late. First at intervals, then, in seconds, en masse, with a noise like nothing Howard had ever heard before, what seemed like all two hundred teenagers were th
rowing up: pale, half-naked bodies in various attitudes of expulsion, a vast and hellish deluge washing over the floor…

  ‘So much vomit,’ the Automator recollects now, from the safety of his office.

  ‘Yeah,’ Howard says miserably. He was the one who mopped most of it up: two hours with an aching back, the Automator grim and unspeaking at the other end of the hall, a solitary black balloon the only other company, Miss McIntyre having gone home ashen-faced and wordless shortly after they’d discharged the kids, leaving him, as the clock tower tolled one, to climb into his car alone and drive in complicated elaborations of circles through the darkened suburbs for another hour, till he could be absolutely sure that Halley would be gone to bed, and then sit in the kitchen reeking of disinfectant in front of an undrunk glass of water as the panelled surroundings, at once familiar and secretly changed, sparkled at him complicitly; he lowered his head like he didn’t know what they meant.

  ‘I don’t know what happened, Greg,’ he says as sincerely as he can. ‘They just suddenly seemed to… transform. I can’t explain it. I don’t know if there even is an explanation.’

  ‘There’s always an explanation, Howard. In this case the explanation is that the punch was spiked.’

  ‘Spiked?’

  ‘Punch’d turned blue, meaning probably sleeping pills of some kind, your standard date-rape set-up.’ The Automator examines his nails thoughtfully. ‘The results aren’t back from the lab yet, but from the symptoms – loss of inhibitions and motor control followed by acute nausea – my guess is a large quantity of benzodiazepine.’

  ‘Back from the…?’

  ‘Couple of old boys working on the force, Howard. Simon Stevens, class of ’85, Tom Smith, class of ’91 – you might remember Smithy, couple of years ahead of you, decent prop-forward, lot of potential but never quite made the cut. Got them on the case this morning. Had to. All it takes is for one parent to figure out what happened in there and it’ll be raining lawsuits. And when it does we’d better be ready.’ He turns on his heel and circumnavigates the room, tapping thoughtfully at his lower lip. ‘I’ve spoken to the boy in charge of the punchbowl but I don’t think he has anything to do with it. Most likely someone distracted him while his partner slipped the mickey into the vat. What with the disco lights the colour-change wouldn’t have been noticed. Though frankly some of these kids, first whiff they got the punch wasn’t kosher they’d be queuing round the block for it. That doesn’t explain how, with two supervisors in the room, the situation escalated to the level it did.’ He wheels round: his gimlet eyes, and Trudy’s doe-like ones, fix on Howard. ‘How was that possible, Howard,’ he says.

  ‘It just seemed to… happen,’ Howard says in a strangulated voice. The Automator waits without responding, and then says, ‘When Wallace Willis called me, he said that you and Miss McIntyre did not appear to be in the hall.’

  ‘Oh yes… that is…’ Howard stutters, and then, as though it has just occurred to him, ‘well, Miss McIntyre and I did both briefly leave the hall at one point.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes, we did, briefly.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ The Automator scratches his ear, and then roars, ‘God damn it, Howard, what the hell were you thinking? Rule one of education: never leave the kids unattended for a second, not for a second! I specifically told you, someone in the room at all times – damn it, there’s your lawsuit right there! Flagrant neglect of duty! Flagrant!’ The vein is back, hammering a tattoo in his temple.

  ‘I know,’ Howard wheedles, ‘but what happened was, you see, Aurelie, Miss McIntyre, discovered a large quantity of alcohol in the toilets, too much for her to carry, and we wanted to store it out of harm’s way, so we briefly went to the Geography Room, because that seemed like the safest place…’

  ‘And how long were you briefly gone for, would you say?’ The Automator’s gaze bores into Howard; Howard uplifts his eyes to the ceiling, as if for inspiration: ‘Um…’ He squeezes them tight shut, then half-opens just one. ‘Ten minutes?’

  The stare has not gone away. ‘Ten minutes?’

  Cold sweat breaks out under his collar. ‘Roughly that, I would say, yes.’

  The steely eyes narrow – and then are averted. ‘Yes, that’s pretty much what Aurelie said – Trudy?’

  Trudy leafs through a manila folder: ‘That’s what I have here – confiscated alcohol from girls’ toilet, left to store in Geography Room, gone ten to twelve minutes.’

  ‘Although it sounds like you and Aurelie have overestimated slightly, because Trudy and I timed it and it takes just under four minutes for a person walking at average speed to get from the hall to the Geography Room, and four minutes back is eight minutes,’ the Automator comments.

  This information, however, and the good fortune of Miss McIntyre’s lie corroborating his, are drowned out by the mention of her name. ‘She was here? Aurelie – I mean, Miss McIntyre?’

  ‘First thing this morning.’ The Automator wags his head solemnly. ‘Whole thing has shaken her up pretty badly. She’s an investment banker, she’s not used to that kind of unbridled depravity.’

  Howard descends into a momentary reverie of Aurelie unbridled, bare, on the other side of those twelve tumultuous hours, and wonders, at the same moment that his stomach churns with guilt, just how he can recross them, get back to her.

  ‘Let’s call it ten minutes,’ the Automator resumes. ‘Whatever our doper used, it must have packed a heck of a wallop for the effects to take hold that quickly. A heck of a wallop.’ He rounds on Howard, who looks back with a gesture of helpless imbecility. ‘Well, the boys in the lab will be able to clear that up for us. The bigger question is, who’s responsible?’ He picks up a paperweight from his desk, roughly the size of a hockey puck and vaguely weapon-like. ‘I think we both know the answer to that one. This has Juster’s fingerprints all over it.’

  ‘Juster?’ Howard wakes abruptly from his Aurelie-reverie. ‘You mean Daniel Juster?’

  ‘You’re darn right I mean him, Slippy or Snippy or whatever he wants to call himself.’

  ‘But what… I mean, what does he have to do with it?’

  ‘Well, damn it, Howard, do I have to draw you a picture? Just look at the facts. One week ago we have this kid, in contravention of all classroom protocol, throwing up in his French lesson. Next thing we know, an ordinary school Hop turns into a mass vomiting spree. The connection’s unavoidable.’

  Perhaps it is, but Howard’s brain is struggling to make it. ‘I really don’t see Juster drugging the punch, Greg,’ he says. ‘I just don’t think he has it in him.’

  ‘Okay, Howard. To me the vomiting seems incontrovertible. But I’m going to let you play devil’s advocate. God knows we don’t want Juster’s parents dragging us into court either. Try this on for size, then. We’ve definitively placed Juster at the Hop last night. Father Green remembers him arriving. But when I lined the kids up against the wall, guess who wasn’t there, Howard? Guess who’d already made his exit?’ He bounces the paperweight up and down on his palm, and continues theatrically, ‘But maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Maybe he just went to bed early. Maybe he came to you and asked for special permission to leave. Did he do that, Howard? You were in charge of the door. Do you remember him asking your special permission to leave?’

  ‘No,’ Howard admits.

  ‘So already we’ve got him breaking one of the house rules, viz. leaving without notifying a supervisor. What’s to stop him breaking another? Breaking all of them? It’s open and shut, Howard. Open and shut.’

  That the Automator has a scapegoat for this debacle is certainly good news for Howard; at the same time, something seems not quite right with this version of events. He struggles to marshal his thoughts against the crashing guilt-hangover that tugs him floor-wards like a massive psychic drain – and then he remembers. ‘Greg, Carl Cullen tried to get into the Sports Hall last night. He knocked on the main door around 9 p.m. He seemed… agitated.’

  ‘Did y
ou let him in?’

  ‘No, it was after the curfew so I turned him away.’

  ‘Then I don’t see what he has to do with our situation, Howard, if you didn’t let him in.’

  ‘Well, what if he didn’t go home? What if he, you know, if he decided to take revenge – sneak in and… and do this?’

  The Automator stares at the floor for a long time. Trudy gazes at him, her pen poised over the page for the moment he recommences speaking. ‘You say you sent Carl away at what time?’

  ‘Around nine.’

  ‘And you left for the Geography Room at what time?’

  ‘Maybe… half past nine?’

  ‘So, would he have had time to go home, load up on dope and come back here in that time,’ the Automator muses. ‘Yes, he would. But that’s assuming he knew you’d go off on your little excursion and leave the hall unsupervised, which he didn’t. Even if he had the mickey with him from the get-go, would he have hung around outside on the off-chance he’d somehow get in? For a half-hour? In the rain? The boy’s wild, but he’s not a masochist. No, this smells to me like an inside job. Someone watching you all night, waiting for his opportunity. He doesn’t need much time. A few seconds, that’s all it takes. The moment you step outside, he makes his move. Maybe even before you step outside. Either way, he makes the drop, then he’s out of there, home free.’

  ‘But there’s no proof it was Juster,’ Howard argues, knowing that it is futile. ‘I mean, it could have been anyone in that room, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Well, sure, it could have been anyone. It could have been mischievous pixies. It could have been the Man in the Moon. But all the available facts are pointing to this kid Juster.’

  ‘But why –’

  ‘Exactly, Howard! Why? That’s what we have to get to the bottom of.’ He taps the ballpoint pen against his teeth. ‘You get any change out of him when you talked to him?’