After Dakota Part 32

Rosemary stands against the building, next to the water fountain, her chin crinkled. "That b.l.o.o.d.y witch," she says, to him or through him.

She holds her paper up. Circled on the front: a red D. Below it, in that chicken scratch writing: This is not up to the standards of an honors cla.s.s.

"I guess my dad is right about me after all."

Mrs. Gordon sits at her desk when Cameron re-enters the room. He goes straight up to her and slams Rosemary's essay down. Hard. Her cup of pencils jumps. Her gla.s.ses pop off her nose.

The sting in Cameron's hand fuels his volume. "She is not a D student!" The little soph.o.m.ores filing into the room go as still as photos. "You don't have to be so mean! If you hate kids so much why don't you just do everyone a favor and retire already, you old bat!" He wishes he'd thought of a better name for her even as he storms out, slamming the door behind him. He's robbed of a truly satisfying slam, since the security catch takes over and the door clicks gently shut.

Only after he's arrived tardy to science, hands shaking, does he look at his own essay.

A+. Thoughtful, precise a.n.a.lysis. A pleasure to read.

Cameron stays in the library at lunch, unable to make himself go to the snack bar. Back in middle school, he and Bryce spent every lunchtime in here, with Trevor and Geoff, reading comics, those precious thirty-five minute escapes from the general suckiness of grades six through eight.

Those days back before girls.

He sits in the far back corner to reduce the chances of being seen. The carrels all around him are empty; the nearest person is a freshman (who looks about ten years old) punching numbers on a calculator and writing in a workbook. That pale girl with the blue lips pushes a cart of books around the shelves.

Written on the carrel in pencil, so small you'd have to be sitting here to see it: This too shall pa.s.s.

96.

Claire's mushrooms are gone, nothing but black threads at the bottom of the bag. She can't even choke them down, they cling to her tongue like leeches.

She pictures Ricky his face, him on top of her. She should miss him. He was her first real boyfriend and she's done with him. She wants to be sad about this.

She could tip over her doll case and fill the house with the sound of shattering gla.s.s. She could dance around in her bare feet and make her parents choose which mess to clean up first. She comes so close, even gets out of bed, but in the end settles for opening the case and twisting the head off the Barbie in the black bathing suit. Then the geisha in the scarlet kimono. She could pull the head off a doll a day until she doesn't hate her life anymore, but there aren't enough dolls to get there.

97.

Bryce is doing Spanish homework in the library during his prep, when bulbous-eyed Ron Pritchard comes in with a call slip. "You seen Ricky Zaplin?" Ron asks Bryce.

"In the library?"

"Hey, I only have this one call slip to deliver I figure I can waste the whole period if I do a thorough job."

They throw around possibilities for why Zaplin might be summoned to the counseling office: coming to school high, failing cla.s.ses, and best of all, he won't be graduating and will be back next year.

"Least his girlfriend will still be here," Ron says. "It's a freshman. That's his market now."

Bryce was reluctant to send a flower to a junior and here's Zaplin setting his sights even lower.

"Her name's Claire, Clara, something like that." Ron stretches, showing off the yellow pit stains on his Ocean Pacific T-s.h.i.+rt.

"What's her last name?"

"I don't know freshmen names unless they get called to the office. She's with Ricky's clan at lunch every day. Always wears this white coat with, like, a fur collar."

Ron's mouth keeps moving but Bryce might as well have turned off his invisible hearing aid.

Zaplin is going out with Claire? It's too unbelievable. Bryce will clear things up when he drives her back to the cellblock after school.

The announcements remind listeners about club meetings, the spring choir concert, that all library fines must be cleared before one may purchase a prom ticket. Bryce has pa.s.sed the prom posters in the halls, seen the date requests in the Scroll it's all washed over him, like they were messages solely for people who want to go into politics. But then, as he works in the crypt-like silence of the Architectural Drawing room, Noel's voice pops into his head.

Going to a prom would be a dream for me.

She wants to go to prom. Of course she does! How could he have been so slow on Easter? She probably thinks he's not interested. No, that was over a week ago she's sure he's not interested.

What he wants is to run from cla.s.s right now, drive over to the girls' school, and ask her to be his date. Instead he'll have to settle for calling her tonight. G.o.d, please don't let the chance be gone. He's experienced long days at school before (like after he'd gotten approximately one hour of sleep the night before, thanks to the movie Halloween) but nothing like this.

In English, Mr. B is dressed as Mark Twain white suit, wig, mustache in honor of the cla.s.s reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. He talks in a Foghorn Leghorn accent and strums a banjo in lieu of his guitar.

Bryce darts from cla.s.s the second the bell rings, walk-jogs to the parking lot (why does English have to be in the furthest building?), drives away right before the logjam of cars at the exit. Halfway home he remembers the books he left in his locker that he needs for homework tonight. Figure that out later.

He dials Noel's number from the youth group directory. "We're sorry, the number you have reached has been disconnected or is no longer in service."

Ok, wait. Think. She donated two beanbag chairs to the game room at church a few months back because she was moving! He opens the real phone book, flips to the B's. Of course, Noel's last name has to be Baker. Jesus, there are like a hundred of them listed.

Ok, wait. Think. What's her dad's name? Roland? Roland Baker? There are four Baker, R's listed.

Claire and her insane hair enter the kitchen as he dials the first one. Shk-shhhk, Shk-shhhhhhk. Why couldn't they have a push-b.u.t.ton phone? "h.e.l.lo, may I speak to Noel please?" Wrong number.

Claire rummages in the fridge. "You're not going out with Ricky Zaplin, are you?" Bryce asks.

"Why do you care?"

"You are! Claire, he's an a.s.shole. A senior a.s.shole!"

"Mom and dad are eight years apart." She tilts her head back, squeezes chocolate syrup from the bottle straight into her mouth.

He messes up halfway through the second number and has to start over. Shhk-shhhhhhhk, Shhk-shhhhhhhk. "h.e.l.lo, is Noel home?" Strike two.

"Are you calling Noel from church?"

"Don't change the subject. I hope you didn't do anything with Zaplin. Y'know, like..."

She drizzles a thin dark line over her tongue.

"Of all the guys at school. Come on!" The next Baker, R has a Southeast neighborhood address too far away. The following one has an answering machine. "Hi, you've reached the Bakers. We're not home right now so leave us a message." He hangs up.

Claire gets the bag of mini-marshmallows from the pantry, crams a glob of them into her mouth, chases that with more syrup. "I'm gonna throw up from watching you eat," Bryce tells her.

"So don't watch." She burps loud and proud, the inside of her mouth a black and white mess. "You should be thanking me for all the s.h.i.+t I started now they'll know what a swell young man they have for a son compared to their insane daughter."

He's seen various versions of Claire throughout her life the one who wanted him to teach her how to draw cartoons was his favorite but this is a person he barely recognizes.

"I'm surprised you're not mad at me about the comic book," she says.

"What comic book?"

"Ask Mom." She leaves the kitchen. He knows when she's reached her room when the music starts shaking the walls. And worse, it's Madonna. The semester final project in Architectural Drawing is to design one's Dream Home, which for Bryce will be a combination of the Batcave and Fortress of Solitude; he'd not only like to design it, but have it constructed and be ready for immediate move-in.

98.

Claire goes through these spring school days without her coat (zipper still jammed) or makeup (in the garbage). She has a bottle of cough syrup in her backpack but doesn't swig from it. She wants to be high and not high, alive and not, here and gone. She wants something that isn't there.

She doesn't hand in her Algebra homework second period. The detention slip for cutting cla.s.ses arrives third period.

By the time fourth comes around, she's tired of the looks her hair is drawing so she asks to go to the bathroom and walks to the one all the way over by the auto shop.

When she returns, Mr. Hagen leans down and whispers, "Please don't take advantage of a situation like that again." Isabel keeps glancing over and grinning.

She skips buying food at lunch and goes directly to her old stall so she won't see anyone. When the usual crowd comes in, Claire doesn't bother to record their chatter in her notebook.

"He's like a hairy dwarf and she's kind of pretty if you subtract half her a.s.s."

"Have you tried McNuggets yet? They totally don't taste like chicken."

"It relates to everything in a weird, unrelated way."

Her stall looks the same as before except for the left wall, where someone has listed the things Ca.s.sie Carpenter will do with a guy for $.

She fails the Bio test in sixth. Fails it so badly that she wads up the paper without handing it in.

"Claire!"

Ricky approaches her after school the next day as she walks to the parking lot, where her mom is waiting to take her to some mystery appointment. He's wearing a sleeveless AC/DC s.h.i.+rt; she imagines the scar inside his arm. Ricky vomits the words out: him calling her house, waiting for her after school yesterday, where has she been. Two tiny Claires stand trapped in his sungla.s.ses.

She's never done this before, she doesn't know how so she just opens her mouth and speaks. "I don't want to be with you anymore."

This is twice in the past how many hours that she's stunned someone into silence? Only this one doesn't last long.

99.

When Cameron arrives in the counseling office fifth period, Ms. Langdon grimaces and motions toward Mr. Durry's door. Things were frosty in Mrs. Gorgon's cla.s.s the day after the incident; she let Cameron bathe in the light of her contempt like everyone else. Add to that Rosemary's painful politeness and English has gone to the bottom of Cameron's favorite subjects list.

The one benefit that could've come from the whole situation him becoming a campus hero, winning back the girl didn't materialize, since the only ones who saw his confrontation were undercla.s.smen not yet well-versed in the art of spreading news.

He sits in Durry's office; on the desk between them, the ever-present big box of Kleenex. The seat is still warm from the last appointment probably one of the wrist-cutter girls, or the wastoids flunking all their cla.s.ses. (How much would someone have to be paid to be a high school counselor? It must be a million bucks a year, at least.) The photo of the little girl, Durry's daughter, is the big mystery in here, because everyone knows the man is gay. The voice, the walk, the amount of purple he wears it's one of those things you just know. There are theories of course: niece, granddaughter, maybe the picture came with the frame. Even though people have sworn they were going to straight-up ask him, they either chickened out or kept the answer to themselves.

"First off, congratulations on the college front," he says.

"Thanks."

"Be sure to maintain your grades I've heard of schools rescinding their offer when kids go into coasting mode for second semester."

"Ok."

"Now then. I heard about what happened in English cla.s.s," He leans back in his chair, hands behind his head, and asks for Cameron's side of the story. Cameron obliges with an edited version (minus the part about him being a sucker for Rosemary).

"Let me run this up the flagpole: it may be beneficial to your grade in the cla.s.s to patch this up." Cameron almost laughs, not at the recommendation, but at the whole situation. At everything that led to him sitting here. "Let's talk man to man, not counselor to student. Can we do that?"

"Sure."

"Sometimes in life you have to eat s.h.i.+t. It doesn't smell good, it doesn't taste good, but you force it down and move on. This is one of those times. Apologize to her. You're almost out of here and she'll be nothing more to you than an A on your transcript, and your four-point-oh stays intact. Isn't that worth it?"

Afterwards, Cameron walks to the English building, to Gordon's door, looks through the window. She sits at her desk in an empty cla.s.sroom. If she'd look up he'd go in and get it over with. Instead she jerks her red pen across the unfortunate essay on the desk in front of her, a medieval surgeon, a serial killer. Jackie the Ripper.

He can't do it.

On his way to the parking lot after school, Cameron sees Zaplin and Claire. Only this time they're not making out; Zaplin stands in front of her, blocking her from getting around him.

"Hey!" Cameron shouts. Yelling at school is apparently his new thing. "HEY!" This time Zaplin spins around, maybe expecting an A.P. Others slow to a stop all around.

"Cameron, it's none of your business," Claire says.

At the same moment, Zaplin: "The h.e.l.l is your problem?"

"You are," Cameron answers. This isn't the ferocious Zaplin, the Indian burn-giver, the toilet dunker; this is a greasy, cigarette-smelling loser yelling at Bryce's little sister. Cameron is a beast, his fists b.a.l.l.s of iron. "a.s.shole."

Now is the moment to take a swing, to land the flesh-and-bone warhead at ground zero between Zaplin's eyes. Now is the moment to avenge Zaplin slaps him.

It's so random, so sudden, that by the time Cameron processes it Zaplin's walking away. The onlookers disperse, deprived of a real battle. Cameron's face stings; his pride would, too, if he had any left.