Brutal Youth: A Novel

by Anthony Breznican

  Audra put her hand on the door across the hall and opened it. “Please come inside,” she said. And Davidek did.

  It was Mr. McClerk’s English room, but there was no class during this period and the lights were off. In the back, there was an alcove behind a row of bookshelves, and a long table with a pair of computers, which served as the de facto yearbook office. With graduation only two weeks away, the book had gone to print just days ago and would be rushed out just in time. The scattered remains of its frenzied assemblage were still spread out in slivers of layout pages and discarded photos.

  In one of the chairs beside the table sat Sister Maria. Audra closed the door to the classroom, leaving only the three of them in the room.

  Sister Maria asked Davidek to sit down. “Are we friends, Mr. Davidek?”

  Davidek shifted in his seat. He wasn’t sure what to say or not say in front of Audra. “Is the welcoming committee in the hall gonna beat me up if I say we’re not?”

  “I wanted you to see how many of your fellow classmates are concerned about your plan to disrupt the Hazing Picnic,” Sister Maria said.

  Davidek sat up. “My plan? You’re the one who came up with this great Brother–Sister idea.”

  “Very well, your senior’s plan,” the nun corrected herself. “To use you. And your inability to resist her. It’s something that can’t be allowed. I have no actual control over this picnic, but whatever happens there reflects on me and this school. And we are in a time of extreme volatility at St. Michael’s—as you well know.”

  “Maybe you should talk to Hannah, then,” Davidek said.

  “I have,” the nun said in a clipped, businesslike tone. “But I was unable to persuade her to relent. And I have also been unable to persuade Father Mercedes to cancel the picnic.”

  “Could he even do that?” Davidek asked.

  Sister Maria answered without answering. “He says the students of the school must be able to behave in a civil manner at a public event, and believes the Hazing Picnic will prove that, one way or the other.”

  “He’s right,” Davidek told her.

  Sister Maria’s fist tightened. She had been so much friendlier two months ago, when she was smashing up toilets. “I know you to be a cooperative boy, Peter,” the nun said. “So why haven’t you been able to help Audra and the other students with this problem?”

  “Do you even know what they’re planning to do?” Davidek asked. “They want to beat the shit out of Hannah and take her—” But the nun put a hand up to silence him.

  “No one wants to hurt Hannah,” she said. “I’ve been assured of that. And under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t allow any of this. But I happen to trust the students of St. Michael’s to do the right thing.”

  Davidek scoffed. The nun said, “Maybe you won’t laugh when you see this.…” She spread a stack of photographs across the table like a deck of playing cards. They were glossy, eight-by-ten portraits of students, snapped by Zari on the day of the flood. Dozens of them. All familiar faces—each smile was accompanied by a fake red scar.

  “The yearbook committee wanted to publish some of these,” Sister Maria said. “Audra found out, and we forced them to stop.”

  Audra spoke up from across the room. “We did it as a favor for you. To reward you for helping us.”

  Davidek’s fingers sifted through the images, then studied one in particular. “Are you sure it wasn’t because you put a scar on your face, too?”

  Audra opened her mouth. She said, “N … no,” but hesitated, then stepped forward and snatched the picture out of his hand.

  She wasn’t in it at all. But Davidek had the answer he was looking for.

  Sister Maria reached out and put her hand on top of Davidek’s. “Please,” she said, her eyes steely. “You, of all people, know what pain is caused when people have their deepest sorrows exposed as a joke.”

  Davidek leaned back in his chair, still scanning the images before him. His eyes met Sister Maria’s, then looked away.

  * * *

  After school that day, one of the saints watching from the roof of St. Mike’s would have seen Davidek lingering in the parking lot, trying to look inconspicuous as he waited for the senior girl with the wispy red hair and mismatched eyes. He stopped her and they talked a while; then they both got into her Jeep and rolled away.

  The next afternoon, Davidek met Audra and LeRose in the empty hollow of Palisade Hall. “It’s a collection of notes, in a blue binder. About thirty pages,” he said.

  Audra wanted to know about photographs. Michael Crawford had asked to take a few of her one day last summer, when they had been sunning themselves at her pool. Her parents weren’t home. They’d been drinking. She may or may not have taken off her bottoms. She definitely took off her top. She knew they’d be breaking up soon, so she’d asked him recently whatever became of those photos. He claimed to have lost the film. Either he was lying, or someone else had it.

  “There are no photographs,” Davidek said. “And she has only one copy of this book. I think. She didn’t want anyone finding the extras and knowing what she has planned. She talks a lot about the ‘element of surprise.’”

  “What a bitch,” LeRose said as Audra placed a sweet-smelling hand on Davidek’s shoulder and caressed the back of his neck. “You are awesome, Peter. I mean that.”

  “So this is going to work, right?” LeRose said.

  Davidek matched the big, dumb smiles plastered on their faces. “I sure hope so!” he said.

  * * *

  In the Jeep with Hannah the afternoon before, Davidek had been full of questions. Had she ever developed those photos of him? Would she be bringing the disposable camera to the picnic to give to him after he did as he was told? How could he be sure it was the same one unless he developed the images himself?

  “Why so nosy all the sudden?” she asked. “Just don’t cross me, and you’ll be fine.”

  “I’m not going to cross you, Hannah,” he said. “I just want to know what else you have.” After a while, he said: “So this notebook … is it handwritten? Do you have copies?”

  “It’s on my computer,” she said. “I’ll print it out the morning of the picnic. I’m still adding to it. I can’t tell you any more. Element of surprise, and all that…”

  Davidek said, “How many pages is it?”

  Hannah said, “A few—but it’s not like you’re going to be reading War and Peace up there. It’s quick, spicy little blurbs. Like Santa’s list—only all naughty. I put the juicy stuff up top because they’re bound to take you down sooner rather than later.”

  “But you can make multiple copies?”

  “I guess,” she said. “Why? You want a souvenir?”

  The wind blew in Davidek’s face. “They’re going to try to stop you,” he said quietly.

  The neighborhood drifted by, all neat houses and cute green lawns. Fresh buds of blue and red petunias bloomed in gardens. Hannah asked, “What are you talking about?”

  Davidek named everyone he knew was involved: Audra, Hannidy, Grough, Bilbo, even LeRose and Sister Maria. “They want me to find out about your notebook: what’s in it, but mostly what it looks like, whether you’ve got more copies. Stuff like that. They’re planning to trap you, and take it away before you can get to the picnic. So you have to listen to me, okay?”

  Hannah seemed amused. Davidek assumed she just didn’t believe him. He told her, “Give me an extra copy this week, so I can bring one to the picnic myself.”

  Hannah lowered her sunglasses. “Give you a copy?” She laughed and patted his knee.

  “Don’t you get it? I want this to happen now,” he said, pushing her hand away. “I want to fucking hurt them—just as badly as you do. Keep a copy for yourself, fine, but they’re going to try to take it. So give me a backup. That’s all I’m saying.”

  At the next red light, Hannah looked back and forth between his eyes, as if trying to detect a lie there. “Okay, Playgirl,” she said. “I’ll trust you.�
��

  Davidek looked out the window again. “Just do me a favor, and make sure something about Lorelei is in there. Something horrible. Right at the top.”

  Another week passed, and Hazing Day arrived.

  But Hannah never gave him the book.

  FORTY-FOUR

  It was 5:38 on Saturday morning. Hazing Day, and Hannah Kraut awoke at the usual time, just before sunrise. The rest of the world remained still.

  Their house was gigantic—the largest in their upscale housing development of Roman Oaks, which was full of palatial estates, four-car garages, marble-lined eternity swimming pools, and backyard greenhouses. Surrounding this oasis of affluence were acres of dense woodlands and rolling farmland. Hannah’s father, a pharmaceutical executive, had built a putting green in the backyard, and her mother had turned the small guesthouse into a studio where she taught classes in oil painting and stained glass. The Kraut home took up two lots at the end of a cul-de-sac, and had seven bedrooms—which was a lot, considering its only occupants were Hannah, her mother and father, and the ghost of her dead little sister.

  Claudia Kraut still took up more room than any of them, eight years after her burial. Two bedrooms remained devoted to the memory of the young girl, who had died just a few weeks before her fourth birthday, when Hannah was nine. Claudia’s bedroom was a monument to her brief existence, with her Strawberry Shortcake comforter still arrayed across the bed, dresser drawers still full of her clothes, and a neatly arranged pyramid of stuffed animals, still staring from the corner. The room beside it was a memorial to her death: large plastic binders full of health insurance information and medical bills, lined up on shelves like sets of encyclopedias; IV stands and empty drips that once fed into her veins; the small, stainless steel hospital bed they had always meant to donate to some other needy child (but never had); and a collection of miniature wigs Claudia had been given to wear when the leukemia treatments made her hair crumble away like spun sugar.

  Hannah was five when Claudia Kraut was born, and had adored her little sister like a favorite doll. When she got sick, Claudia fought valiantly, but withered in her bed, crying herself hoarse, the muscles in her small frame curling like shreds of old paper. It would have been easier on them if her death had been something shocking and quick: a car crash or drowning. Instead, Claudia suffered endlessly, and her family did, too.

  Hannah took it worst of all, reacting with fits of rage instead of tears when her little sister finally lost the battle for her short, painful life. Hannah was never one to cry.

  One summer afternoon, when Hannah was ten and Claudia was more than a year gone, she saw some boys from the neighborhood clustered around a decaying stump at the edge of the woods. There were three of them, all boys from her class at school. They were passing around a steel magnifying glass and angling the lens to send lasers of hot sunlight onto the backs of beetles, centipedes, ants, and spiders crawling along the mossy insect metropolis. She heard one of them cheer on the other: “Hit ’em with the radiation, John!”

  That was a word she knew well. Though she had no idea what it actually meant.

  Hannah watched the bugs scuttle away from the beam of light as they grew warm (at first) and then hysterical and desperate. Beneath short threads of smoke, the bugs jiggled and rolled, kicking vainly as their legs ignited like candle wicks. She thought she heard small screams, but that was just superheated vapor wheezing out of the tight seams of their exoskeletons. No matter how hard they fought, their fate was hopeless. She had seen that before.

  Ten-year-old Hannah didn’t ask the boys to stop. She just put her hand on the biggest one’s face, and shoved him to the ground. Another boy pushed her away, and Hannah kicked him in the balls with her pink-and-white tennis shoe. The third boy grabbed her around the neck with his arm and she bit him, not just to get him off her, but with the intent of removing a hunk of his wrist.

  The bitten boy and the other one clenching his groin hustled away toward the sidewalk, but John, the big one she’d shoved in the face, rose to his feet and lunged his shoulders at her menacingly. She didn’t flinch.

  John followed his friends and threw the magnifying glass at Hannah, which hit her in the chest and landed softly in the crevasse of the stump, where she left it, and where it still rusted to this day.

  This time, the tears did come for Hannah. She ran home crying, babbling incoherently for help, as her mother frantically tried to find where her screaming daughter was hurt. “Not me, them,” she said. “We need to fix them! They have radiation!”

  “Who?” her mother asked, and Hannah opened her fists to reveal palmfuls of crisp, blackened insects.

  * * *

  Claudia would be a freshman now, if she’d lived. As Hannah grew older, she imagined her little sister doing the same. But Claudia would be very different from Hannah. Claudia commanded love, drew it to her as easily as the ocean draws sand away from a beach. She would be overrun by friends, while Hannah had none.

  Claudia would be a dancer, a poet, a straight-A student. She would win science project contests and speak French. She would be an athlete—maybe a runner, or a swimmer. Fit and elegant and bounding with energy.

  Hannah had never been neglected. Her mother and father purchased this cavernous house because they intended to fill it with children, but when Claudia became sick, and then succumbed to that sickness, they poured all the love they had into Hannah instead. They had been through extraordinary loss, but tried to give their daughter an ordinary life. They helped her with homework, attended every parent-teacher conference, and punished her when her marks fell low, as good parents should. They bought her the Jeep for her sixteenth birthday, and last year, when she had asked for it, they built her a small workout room in the basement.

  Yet nothing they could do erased the feeling in Hannah that the wrong daughter had died. Claudia would have taken all that love, all that kindness, and magnified it. She would have shared it with others. Hannah felt she had only done the opposite.

  Her bedroom had never seen a sleepover, and she had never attended one at another girl’s house. When she was little, she quit the Girl Scouts for no good reason. She enjoyed playing basketball alone in her driveway, but was no good on a team. Then came high school, and the promise of starting over, which blew up spectacularly in her face.

  They had nicknamed her Fuckslut, but even now, Hannah was a virgin who had never so much as made out with a boy, despite what she had told Davidek that afternoon under the bridge. That image all went back to Cliffy Onasik, the senior stoner who had chosen the frizzy-haired girl as his freshman for the Hazing Day picnic, and wandered off with her into the woods instead of marching her up onto the stage. But Cliffy had done that only because he saw no need to torment her—he had been taunted just as mercilessly when he was a freshman and hated the hazing rituals.

  He watched the talent show with disgust: Two girls were forced to compete in a marshmallow-eating contest. The loser received a cream pie in the face, to her horror, and her tears were cutting clean streaks in the whipped cream as Cliffy nudged Hannah and they walked into the woods and down a path along the ridge. Far below was the river, and across the chasm were endless leafy hillsides. Cliffy had a pack of cigarettes with one bumpy, bent, and twisted tube of paper. “It’s a joint,” he said, sticking it between his lips and lighting it. He exhaled a skunky cloud of burning schwag into her face, then handed it to her.

  In the river below, a barge—loaded so heavy with gravel that its sides seemed only inches above the water—groaned along the current.

  Back at school in the week before summer break, some of Hannah’s freshman classmates approached to ask her if “it” was true. “Is what true?” Hannah said.

  “About you and Cliffy Onasik,” said Mary Grough, then a foot shorter and built like a fire hydrant.

  Hannah assumed it was about smoking the joint. “I didn’t want to,” she said, which only heightened their interest. She denied it emphatically when she realized they w
ere talking about something far nastier, but at that point no one cared about her denials. The rumors spread with increasing giddiness. Hannah didn’t feel obliged to confirm or deny anything.

  Her “Leave me alone” became “Fuck off.” Whispers of “Is it true?” lost the question mark and became, simply: “It is true.” The rumor percolated all summer long. Those who most delighted in it were Audra Banes’s friends—Amy Hispioli and Sandy Burk—who, not coincidentally, had been the girls forced to compete in the humiliating marshmallow-eating contest. They were eager to get people talking about something else that happened that day—anything else.

  Cliffy disappeared from the Valley that summer, moving to Georgia to live with a cousin. For years, whenever the story of Hannah was retold, few even remembered his name. He was just “her senior, some loser.”

  The next few years were living hell for Hannah, and if it hadn’t been for Mr. Zimmer, she was sure she would have asked to leave St. Mike’s. But there was also another reason Hannah stayed. A darker, more uncomfortable one: She felt she deserved it.

  This never would have happened to Claudia. She had the grace to handle it properly, to win people over. Hannah just made it worse—lashing out with fury, deepening the hostility among her classmates. She hurled back any embarrassing fact she could, no matter how low, which led to new whispers: Hannah Kraut knew things about people. Secret things. About everybody.

  But this was a rumor Hannah loved. She enjoyed watching people panic simply because she sat near them at lunch. She began writing in her notebooks when other students were watching, even if it was just scribbles to make them nervous. The attacks on Hannah—all of them—simply stopped midway through her junior year.

  Sure, the students of St. Mike’s still gossiped about her, but they did it in secret. And they left her alone.