The Pet Part 4

The quick breakfast he had made for himself suddenly curdled and threatened to climb into his throat, making him swallow four times before he knew he wouldn't throw up. Without realizing it, then, he moaned his relief, and only a m.u.f.fled giggling behind him gave warning that Mr. Hedley was coming down the aisle.

"Mr. Boyd?"

He looked up into a pair of horn-rimmed gla.s.ses. "Yes?"

"Are you having a little do-it-yourself choir practice back here, Mr. Boyd?"

The giggling again, and outright laughter from Tar and Fleet on the other side of the large room.

His face grew warm. "No, sir."

"Then may I suggest you remain a bit more silent so that the rest of us can get on with our work?"

"Yes sir, I'm sorry."

"Thank you, Mr. Boyd." Hedley turned, Don's stomach churned again, and he inadvertently managed to make his acidic belch sound like another groan. Hedley reversed himself slowly. A small man, nearly as wide as he was tall, with a dark plastered fringe of red hair and a thick twitching mustache. "Mr. Boyd, perhaps you didn't hear me."

He felt perspiration gathering coldly under his arms. They were all watching him now, waiting for him to brave it out the way Tar would, or Brian. But he could only blink and 44.gesture helplessly at his abdomen, pantomiming an upset stomach because the acid was climbing again and he felt his cheeks begin to burn.

Hedley clasped his tiny hands behind his back and rocked on his heels.

"Mr. Boyd, this, as you may have learned from your study of American history, is a democratic society. There is no privilege here. None. You will therefore remain silent, or you will remain for detention."

He nodded glumly.

The giggling stopped immediately as the man headed back for his desk.

Privilege, he thought bitterly; the sonofab.i.t.c.h. Why couldn't he have gone to Ashford North the way his mother wanted him to? n.o.body cared ifyour mother taught art.

Even if your mother didn't care for your father.

He clamped a hand over his mouth and tried to resume studying, but the words blurred and the pictures swam like muddied fingerprints, and when he was out in the hall again, the mobs pushed and jostled him like a twig in the current. He didn't care. He would do well on the test because he enjoyed biology and what it taught him about animals, like in zoology in the afternoon, right after phys ed. But he couldn't take the pushing, and he didn't want the shoving, and he almost panicked when he felt his breakfast moving again. With a lurch he stumbled into the nearest boy's room, found an empty stall, and sat with his head cradled in his palms. Belching. Tasting sour milk. Spitting dryly and wishing he would either throw up and be done with it, or calm down and get on with it.

The bell rang.

He jumped, dropped his books, scooped them up, and ran down the hall.

Mr. Falcone was just closing the door.

"Ah, Donald," he said, "I'm glad you could make it."

He managed a pained smile and headed for his seat, as in all his other cla.s.ses as far toward the back as his teachers 45.would permit. Then he dropped his books on the floor and waited as Falcone pa.s.sed out the test sheet while giving instructions. The young instructor, he saw, was in a casual mood today-no jacket or tie, just sleek pants, with an open shirt under a light sweater. His hair was barely combed, the tight curls damp as if he'd just taken a shower. Face and body of a Mediterranean cast that many of the girls l.u.s.ted for and some of the boys coveted.

Finally he reached Don's seat, held out the paper, and wouldn't release it when Don took hold. Instead, he continued to talk, letting the cla.s.s know this was probably the most important test of the semester, since it was going to be worth a full third of their final grade; failing this would make the exam in January much too important.

Then he let go, and smiled.

"Do you understand, Mr. Boyd?"

He did, but he didn't know why he'd been singled out.

Falcone leaned over, pushed the test to the center of the desk, and added quietly, "You'd better be perfect today, Boyd. You're going to need it."

It was a full minute before he was able to focus on the questions.

Falcone was in front, leaning against the blackboard rail, arms folded at his chest, eyes half-closed. The clock over the door jumped once!

Fleet was staring intently at his wrist, Tar was scribbling, Brian was staring out the window at the football field. Don blinked and rubbed his eyes. He couldn't believe what he had heard, and refused to believe it was some kind of threat. He couldn't fail. He knew the work, and he knew the teacher. He checked the first question, answered it almost blindly,answered all the others just as the bell rang.

It couldn't have been a threat.

The paper went onto a pile on the desk, the books tumbled into his locker, and he grabbed his brown paper lunch bag and left the building by one of the rear exits. Despite the 46.morning frost the sun was warm, and he crossed a broad concrete walk that ended at a six-foot wall in which there were regularly s.p.a.ced gaps.

He picked one, pa.s.sed through, and was on the top row of the stadium's seats, the field below, the much lower wooden visitors' bleachers across the way. The seats were nothing more than steprows of concrete, and it occurred to him suddenly that half the school and its grounds seemed made of the stuff, maybe once white and clean, now grey and brown with use and the pummeling of the weather.

The ham sandwich he had made for himself tasted lousy.

It couldn't have been a threat.

"If you kill yourself, they'll never get the blood up."

He jumped and dropped the sandwich, recovered it gracelessly, and squinted up.

"It seeps in, you know? Right into the cement. They'll be scrubbing it for days and they'll hate your guts. It's a rotten way to get sympathy, take my word for it."

He smiled and moved over.

Tracey Quintero sat beside him and shook her head. "Are you really that depressed?"

She was dark from hair to skin, her oversize sweater more dazzlingly white as a result, and her pleated skirt somewhat out of style. Her features were more angles than curves, and he thought her nice but not all that pretty, except when she smiled and showed all those teeth.

Spanish; and he wondered at times what she would look like in those tight colorful dresses the flamenco dancers wore.

"I guess."

"Biology that bad?" She had Falcone after lunch, but she wasn't fishing for answers.

"Yeah. No. I guess not."

"How'd you do?"

"Okay, I guess." He bit into the sandwich and tasted grit from its fall.

"Harder than usual."

47.She nodded, unconcerned, leaning forward to rest her arms on her legs, and they watched two gym cla.s.ses make an attempt to run around theseven-lane red-stained cinder track that outlined the football field.

Laughter drifted toward them, a sharp whistle, and a sudden scent of lilac that confused him for a moment until he turned and sniffed, and knew it was her.

She pointed down to a lanky redhead sweeping effortlessly around the far turn. "Is that why they call him Fleet? Because he's so fast?"

Making polite conversation, that's what they call it, he thought; boy, I even have to be made conversation to today.

"Yeah," he said.

"He should be on track, then, not football," she said with a slight lisp in her voice.

"Football scholarships are bigger money."

"Whoa," she said, staring at him intently. "My goodness, but that sounded bitter."

He shrugged. "It's the truth. Fleet needs the scholarship to go to school, and he'll get it with football. He's the best wide receiver in the county."

"I thought Tar was."

A crumb of bread stuck to his lips, and he sought it with a finger, stared at it, ate it. "Tar's a running back." He frowned. "You know that."

She leaned back, her books huddling against her formless chest. "I forgot." A glance behind him, up at the school. "Hey, Don?"

"Huh?"

"Do you know what your father's going to do about the strike?"

He watched Fleet, who waved and blew Tracey a kiss. "I don't know. I'm not his political advisor."

Tracey ignored the sarcasm. "I hope he does something. G.o.d, I mean, we're seniors! If our grades are screwed up 48.because of a strike ... G.o.d!" She traced circles on the back of one of her books. "My father will shoot them all, you know. He will."

Her father was a policeman. Don believed he would do it.

"I don't know what's gonna happen, honest."

"Oh. Okay." A check of her watch. "Bell's gonna ring soon."

"You know what I wish?" he said, suddenly not wanting her to leave. "I wish I had the nerve to cut cla.s.ses just once before I graduate. Just once."

"Your father would kill you," she said quickly.

"No kidding." His grin was mischievous. "But it would be a lotta fun, Ibet."

She studied his face, his eyes, and finally gave him a broad smile. "You haven't got the nerve. I know you better than that."

"Right," he said, mischief gone. "I'm too predictable."

"Reliable," she corrected. "You're reliable, that's what you are."

The gym cla.s.ses began filing off the field, Fleet trailing with an arm around a ponytailed girl.

"Wonderful. They can put that on my tombstone. I'll sound like somebody's grandfather's old watch."

Her expression soured. "Hey, you are in a mood, aren't you. Jeez."

When she stood, he rose with her, dropped his lunch bag, and had to lunge after it to keep the breeze from taking it down the steps. Then he stumbled after her, catching up barely in time to open the heavy gla.s.s-and-metal door. She gave him a wink and a mock curtsy and slipped in, and they stood at the landing just as the bell rang. There were footsteps on the iron-tipped stairs, thunder in the halls.

"You want to go to a movie or something tomorrow night?"

She seemed as surprised to hear the question as he was 49.astonished he had asked it. Christ, he thought, Brian's gonna kill me.

The stairs filled and they were separated, but before she was gone she mouthed an I'll call you tonight, which was sort of an answer and no answer at all. G.o.d, he thought as he headed down for the gym, you are an idiot, Boyd. Boy, are you an idiot.

When he reached the locker room and started changing, Fleet was still there and Tar was just coming in, running a monster comb through incredibly black hair. The gossip dealt primarily with the game with North over Ashford Day weekend, the Howler, and the strike that was going to set them all free until long after Christmas.

"Hey, Donny," Tar yelled as he laced up his sneakers, "you tell your old man to stop farting around, huh? I need that vacation now!"

"Aw, s.h.i.t," said Fleet, racing by naked, his towel over his shoulder, "he don't care about us poor peons, Tar baby. Don't you know he's his daddy's spy in the ranks? Secret Agent Man of the senior cla.s.s."

Though Tar was only teasing, Don's face tightened. He stood and made his way along the crowded aisle. A handful of the guys tried to kid him about his father and the strike, but he shook them off angrily. He was sick of hearing about it, sick of being labeled a spy-from some of them, seriously- sick of being called Donny Duck, sick of being treated special when they pretended he wasn't.

He stepped out onto the gym's polished floor, hands on his hips.

Brian shouted, "Hey Duck, duck!" and a basketball hit him square on thenose.

50.50.51.Three.Images floating through a red-tinted haze: a bobcat lurking high in the trees, fangs gleaming,, snarls like thunder, claws like steel blades hunting for someone's throat; a leopard stalking through the high gra.s.s of the broiling summer veldt, closing in on its kill, shoulder muscles and haunches rippling with tension; a hawk s.n.a.t.c.hing a rabbit from the ground; a black horse causing the ground to tremble as it charged down the road, fire from its nostrils scorching the earth black.

Images that made his fists clench, his nails create craters in his palms, his chest rise and fall in barely contained rage.

Images: the basketball in slow motion smashing into his face, his knees buckling, tears leaping from his eyes, blood spotting the gym floor; the roar of surprise, the sudden silence, the laughter. Laughter until the gym teacher saw the blood, laughter in the hall as they half-carried him to the first floor, a grin from Falcone as he stood outside his door flirting with Chris.

Only the nurse didn't laugh.

52.Images: the basketball, the leopard, the gym, the hawk, the corridor, the stairs, the horse waiting in shadow.

He swallowed a moan, rolled his head to the other side, and lay on the nurse's hard cot for fifteen minutes more before he couldn't stand it any longer. His nostrils were plugged with cotton, and a throbbing tenderness spread across his right cheek. When he sat up at last and looked into the mirror over the basin, he saw the beginnings of a beautifully grotesque black eye.

"h.e.l.l," he said.

Grabbing a paper towel from the wall dispenser, he cleaned the dried blood off his face and combed his hair with his fingers. The nurse was gone. He looked back, peered closer, and gingerly plucked the cotton out. A sniff, and he tasted blood; another sniff and a daubing with a wet towel, and he waited with held breath until he was positive he wouldn't start bleeding again. Then he found a permission slip on the desk, filled it out, and signed it himself. A check on the clock told him he'd still be able to make the last cla.s.s, zoology, on the third floor. The corridor was empty and he hurried without running, slipped into the stairwell and took the steps two at a time, head down, breathing heavily through his mouth.

Someone, more than one, came down from above.

He ignored them, averted his head so they wouldn't see the ignominious damage, and only whispered a curse when they b.u.mped hard into his arm,spinning him around and shoving something into his hand. He yelled a protest and grabbed for the iron banister, and managed to end up sitting on the top step. Dizziness made him nauseated, and he clenched his teeth until it pa.s.sed. Another minute to regain his composure and he hauled himself up; as he reached for the door, Mr. Hedley bulled through.

"So!" the teacher said angrily,.

He frowned. "Sir?"

53.Hedley held out a palm, waited, then grabbed his arm and pulled him into the hall, took something from his hand, and held it accusingly in his face.

"You've never seen this before, right, Boyd?"