by John Saul
Back then—and it seemed like an eternity to Josh—the rest of the kids were his own age, and he’d known them all his life. He’d even had a best friend back then—Jerry Peterson. And no one seemed to care that Josh always got the best grades in the class. “Someone’s gotta be a brain,” Jerry had told him more than once. “At least it’s better that you’re it, instead of some dumb girl.”
Even then, when he was only eight, Josh had known better than to point out that if the smartest kid in the class had been a girl, she certainly wouldn’t have been dumb.
And then he’d gotten skipped the first time. By the middle of the next year Jerry had a new best friend.
Josh didn’t.
Nor had he found one, because when you’re nine, a year makes a big difference. All the boys in his new class already had plenty of people to pal around with. And they sure didn’t want a “baby” hanging around.
For a while he’d hoped that maybe someone new would come to school, but that didn’t happen either—people didn’t come to Eden; they went away from it.
Now he’d been skipped again, and the kids in his class were two years older than he, and the boys were a lot bigger.
Now, as his teacher’s voice penetrated his reverie, he could feel them watching him, feel their smoldering anger.
And hear their snickers as they realized he hadn’t been paying attention to the teacher.
His mind sped, instantly replaying Mrs. Schulze’s all-but-unheard question. “Come now, Josh,” she’d said. “Surely you remember the date of the attack on Fort Sumter?”
“April twelfth, 1861,” Josh blurted out. “Two days later, the garrison at the fort surrendered, and the Civil War began.”
The snickering died away, but Josh felt angry eyes fixing on him from all over the classroom.
What was so wrong with being smart? It wasn’t his fault he remembered everything he read, and could do algebra in his head. And it wasn’t as if anybody else had been able to answer the question. He hadn’t been waving his hand in the air like some kind of kiss-up! Besides, he’d spent most of the summer reading books about American history, and the questions the other kids hadn’t been able to answer at all had seemed pretty easy to him.
So it was going to be another endless year of being bored in class and lonely outside of class.
When the noon bell finally rang, Josh busied himself with his book bag until all the rest of the kids were gone, then slid out of his seat and started for the door. Before he could escape, the teacher’s voice stopped him.
“Josh?”
He stopped, but didn’t turn around. He could hear Mrs. Schulze’s heavy footsteps coming down the aisle toward him. When he felt her hand on his shoulder, he once again wished the floor would open and the earth would swallow him up.
“I just wanted to tell you how happy I am to have you in my class this year,” Rita Schulze said. “I know it’s not going to be easy for you—”
Before she could finish, Josh spun around and stared up at her, his stormy eyes brimming with tears. “No you don’t,” he said in a voice that trembled with emotion. “You don’t know if it’s going to be easy or hard. And you don’t care, either! All you care about is that I can answer the stupid questions!” His voice rose as he lost control of his tears. “And that’s what they are, too—stupid, stupid, stupid!” Jerking away from the teacher, Josh turned and stumbled into the mercifully empty hall, then ran toward the boys’ room at its far end.
Five minutes later, his tears dried and his face washed, he emerged from the boys’ room and uttered a silent sigh of relief when he found the hall empty. He went to his locker, put his book bag inside and took out the brown paper bag containing his lunch. He was about to close the locker when he suddenly changed his mind and burrowed a hand into the bottom of his book bag, fishing out the copy of Les Miserables his mother had given him last week. Though he knew the cover wasn’t real leather, he still admired it for a moment, with its ornate gilt border surrounding a fleur-de-lis pattern.
Since he already knew he’d be sitting by himself in the cafeteria, he might as well try to read a few chapters.
In the cafeteria, he joined the tail end of the lunch line, silently moving forward until he was able to pick up a carton of milk, then edging toward the cash register. “Well, look who’s here,” Emily Sanchez said, smiling warmly as she rang up Josh’s purchase. “Seventh grade already. Next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re headin’ for high school!”
Josh managed a slight nod of his head, and held out his hand for the change from the dollar bill he’d given Emily. As she put the coins into his hand, Emily leaned toward him, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Any of them kids give you trouble, you let me know, okay? They ain’t so smart as they think they are, right?” She winked conspiratorially, but Josh didn’t see it, his flushing face already turned away as he hurried toward an empty table in the far corner.
No one spoke to him as he threaded his way between the tables, but he could feel them watching him.
He sat down with his back to the room, determined to ignore the rest of the kids, and opened his bag to pull out the peanut butter sandwich and small container of cottage cheese that invariably made up his lunch.
“I know it’s not interesting,” his mother had explained to him over and over again whenever he’d complained of the sameness of it. “But it’s good for you, and it’s all I can afford.”
And so he’d eaten it, day after day, through one school year after another. Today, though, as he contemplated the sandwich in the heat of the cafeteria, he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to choke it down.
Indeed, as he took the first bite, chewed it, and attempted to swallow it, it stuck in his throat, and he was finally only able to dislodge it by taking a long swallow of the milk. Opening the book, he began reading, and soon was lost in the tale of Jean Valjean, who was just then stealing a set of silver candelabra from the kindly priest who had taken him in.
Josh turned the pages rapidly, his eyes skimming over the text, taking in every word as he felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into the story. And then, with no warning at all, the book was snatched out of his hands. Startled, he looked up to see Ethan Roeder smirking at him, the book held just out of his reach.
“Watcha’, smart-boy?” Ethan’s mocking voice grated on his ears.
Josh shoved his chair back, rising to his feet. “It’s just a book. Give it back.”
“Why should I?” Ethan danced away, holding the book out of Josh’s reach. “Whatcha gonna do? Call a teacher?”
“Just give it to me,” Josh pleaded. “It’s not anything you’d like anyway!”
Ethan Roeder’s mocking sneer turned angry. “Says who? You think I’m too dumb to read it?” Keeping the book away from Josh’s frantic efforts to snatch it back, Ethan opened it.
For the first time, he realized the book wasn’t in English. “Holy shit,” he cried. “The little creep’s reading some other language.”
“It’s French, all right?” Josh wailed. “It’s what the book was written in. So give it back, okay?” He reached for the book once more, but Ethan was too quick for him.
The older boy grabbed Josh’s arm, squeezing hard, his fingers digging into the younger boy’s flesh. By now the kids at the next table were staring at the confrontation, but none of them made a move to help Josh. Panicking, Josh glanced around wildly, searching for a friendly face, for someone who would help him. But no one moved. In that instant, as he realized that he was totally alone, something inside him snapped.
“Leave me alone, you asshole,” he yelled. Jerking hard, he pulled his arm free, then picked up his chair and swung it at Ethan. The bigger boy ducked, then grabbed one leg of the chair and twisted it out of Josh’s hands.
Frustrated, Josh groped behind him, felt the carton of milk and closed his fingers on it. As Ethan’s fist drew back to smash his face, Josh hurled the milk at him. From another table a wave of laughter erupted as t
he white liquid cascaded over Ethan’s face and ran down his shirt.
“Jesus,” Ethan yelled. “What did you do that for?”
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” Josh snatched his book up from where it lay in a puddle of milk on the floor. He tried to wipe the milk off the already wrinkled pages of the book, but it was too late.
He’d had the book less than a week, and it was already ruined.
“Look!” he yelled. “Look what you’ve done to my book!” He hurled the damp volume at Ethan Roeder, and was about to fling himself on the bigger boy when a booming voice rang out from the door.
“All right, break it up!”
Arnold Hodgkins had been principal of Eden Consolidated School long enough to know how to put a quick end to a disruption in the cafeteria. Now he strode from the door, wading through the crowd gathered around the two boys, one of his thick hands clamping hard on a shoulder of each of the combatants. “That’ll be enough! Got it?”
Josh winced as the principal’s fingers tightened on his shoulder, but he said nothing.
Ethan Roeder, though, glared angrily at Josh. “I didn’t do anything!” he cried out, his voice quivering with fury. “He started it! We were just sitting here, and he threw milk all over me! Look at my shirt! It’s soaking!”
Josh’s mouth dropped open at the magnitude of the lie, but before he could say anything at all, one of the other boys, José Cortez, moved in next to Ethan. José and Ethan were buddies. “It’s true,” José said, his eyes burning into Josh as if daring him to challenge his words. “Ethan didn’t do nothin’. Josh just went nutso. He’s crazy!”
Josh’s eyes darted from one face to another, praying that someone—anyone—would tell the truth. But all the kids gathered around Ethan Roeder were his tormentor’s friends, all of them kids from his own class. Kids who already hated him.
His eyes searched further across the cafeteria, and finally fixed on Jerry Peterson, who was standing up on a chair at a table next to the far wall, straining to see the action on the other side of the room and report to his friends what was happening.
Two years ago Josh had been at that table himself, sitting next to Jerry, giggling at whatever joke his best friend might be telling.
Now, Jerry hardly even seemed to see him. Their eyes met for a quick instant, but then Jerry looked away, jumping down off the chair, disappearing behind the crowd of bigger kids who surrounded Josh and the principal.
“Well, what about it?” he heard the principal demanding. “Is that the way it happened?”
Josh shook his head miserably. “I was just sitting by myself, reading. Ethan grabbed my book and wouldn’t give it back.”
“Oh, Jeez,” he heard Ethan groan. “What would I want his stupid book for? I just asked him what he was reading, and he went apeshit, just like he always does!”
“That’ll be enough!” Hodgkins snapped, the look in his eye telling Ethan not to press his hick any further. “Roeder, you and Cortez clean up this mess. And no backtalk! MacCallum, you come with me.”
Josh nodded, but said nothing. His head down, he followed the principal out of the cafeteria, already preparing himself for the lecture he was going to get about disrupting the cafeteria.
The first day of school this year, he decided, was even worse than the first day last year.
And it wasn’t going to get any better.
2
“Chili up, no tears!”
Brenda MacCallum heard the shout from the kitchen, but acknowledged it with no more than a quick nod of her head as she tried to keep up with the changing orders of the four men who were impatiently ordering lunch. Not that she could blame them for their irritability, but was it her fault that Mary-Lou had called in sick that morning, leaving just herself and Annette to deal with the lunch rush? Still, the slow service wasn’t the customers’ problem, and she held her temper carefully in check as one of the men changed his order for the third time. But when Max’s voice—etched with sarcasm this time—came again, his demand to know if she’d suddenly turned deaf combined with the heat of the day to snap the thread of her nerves.
“I hear you,” she yelled back. “But I’ve only got two arms and two feet.”
“More like one of each, given the service around here,” one of the men muttered.
Brenda clenched her jaw, firmly checking the words that hovered on the tip of her tongue, and turned away, heading for the kitchen. Only another forty-five minutes until the noon rush was over. Forty-five minutes until she could find the time to sit down and drink a cup of coffee while the feeling came back into her feet. As she passed the cash register, the phone beside it started ringing. But Brenda ignored it, moving on to the pass-through to slip the order onto the wheel and pick up the three bowls of chili that were still steaming under the warming lights.
“God damn it, Brenda,” Max growled. “You think the customers want their food stone cold?”
“If they want food, they don’t come here in the first place! And don’t yell at me—I’m not the one who called in sick.”
Max opened his mouth as if ready to fire back at her, but then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it. And he was right, Brenda reflected as she balanced the three bowls of chili, a basket of stale sourdough bread, and a dish of grated cheddar cheese that was rapidly turning orange, on her left arm, while she picked up the limp salads with her right. This was not the day to push her, not after this morning, when she’d all but had to force Josh into going to school, and tend with the baby’s colicky stomach as well.
As she threaded her way to the table where three women—with whom Brenda had gone to high school only ten years ago—waited for their lunch, she caught sight of herself in the mirror behind the soda fountain, and her heart sank.
Though she was the same age as the three women who were waiting impatiently for their chili, she looked at least ten years older. Her hair, once a luxuriant mane of naturally blond curls, had darkened into a drab, limp mass that looked as if it hadn’t been washed for a week, even though she’d shampooed it this morning right after Josh finally left for school.
Her face had taken on the first lines of middle age, although she was still only twenty-eight. Which, she ruefully realized as she delivered the chili to her three former schoolmates, was nobody’s fault but her own. After all, it had been her decision to marry Buck MacCallum, even in the face of her mother’s objections, as well as those of everyone she knew. But back then, Buck had been as handsome as she was pretty, and she’d been too young to see anything beyond his well-muscled body and his thickly-lashed brown eyes.
Eyes, she’d quickly discovered, that never missed a pretty face—and some not so pretty ones, too.
Within a year of Josh’s birth, Buck had taken off, bored with Eden, bored with pumping gas and fixing carburetors at the Exxon station, bored with her. So she’d come to work for Max, waiting on tables and struggling to make enough to support herself and Josh.
And then, a year and a half ago, she’d run into Charlie Decker for the first time since high school, and thought her problems were over. Charlie had flattered her, told her she didn’t look any different than when she’d been the homecoming queen nine years earlier. He promised to take her and Josh to San Francisco as soon as a deal he was working on came through.
They’d made plans to get married, and when she’d become pregnant, Brenda hadn’t worried at all.
Until she’d called Charlie in San Francisco to tell him the good news, and a woman had answered the phone.
A woman who turned out to be Mrs. Charlie Decker. The woman who had occupied the position for six years.
And who told her that if she wanted Charlie, she was welcome to him, because Brenda was the third goddamn tramp who’d called in the last year, wondering when that no-good son of a bitch was going to come and get her.
Shaking, Brenda had hung up the phone and put Charlie Decker out of her mind. No point in even telling him about her pregnancy. When Melinda was born,
she’d given the little girl Buck MacCallum’s last name, figuring if it was good enough for herself and Josh, it couldn’t hurt Melinda, either.
But that was when the ends had finally stopped meeting, and she’d had to go on food stamps to keep their stomachs full.
The sound of Annette’s voice broke through her reverie just as she was putting the last of the order down in front of her old schoolmates. “What’s wrong with you, Brenda?” Annette was demanding. “Can’t you hear me? It’s Arnold Hodgkins, and he says he has to talk to you now!”
The three women at the table glanced inquiringly at her. Brenda’s heart sank. No, she told herself as she started toward the phone. Not yet. Not the first day. Please? But her heart sank further as she heard the school principal’s voice on the phone.
“Hello, Mrs. MacCallum.” The three words were freighted with a note of tired resignation that told her the whole story.
“Oh, Lord,” she sighed. “What’s Josh done this time?”
“He started a fight in the cafeteria,” Arnold Hodgkins replied. “He claims it wasn’t his fault, that he was just sitting there reading a book, and that everyone else was picking on him.”
“And the rest of them say he just freaked out,” Brenda finished for him, already knowing what was coming. She’d hoped that after the trouble last year, it would be over with, that by following the school’s recommendation to skip Josh into the next class, he’d be challenged enough to stop relieving his boredom in the classroom with constant troublemaking and displays of temper. Well, so much for that hope.
“I think you’d better come down here,” Hodgkins was saying. “He’s not talking at all, and he’s refusing to go back to class.”
Brenda scanned the packed tables of the café, then noted the time once more. She could see Max glowering at her from the kitchen. Catching her eye, he nodded meaningfully at the orders that were piling up beneath the lights in the pass-through.
She weighed her options, then made up her mind.
“Mr. Hodgkins, I can’t come right now. It’s the middle of the lunch hour rush, and one of the other girls didn’t come in. Max is already glaring at me, and if I take off, he’ll fire me. Can’t you put him in the library or something? Just for an hour?” Her voice had taken on a plaintive note, and she instinctively turned away from the dining area and the eyes of the women who had once been her friends.