Mary froze; and then she heard a sound: someone walking toward her.
A figure passed into and out of the lamplight just ahead. Mary quietly left the walkway, stepping behind a convenient stand of bushes.
She looked behind her, trying to find Billy, but he was nowhere to be seen. She thought again of Aunt Stella's words. Maybe he was right behind her now, reaching out in the darkness. But then she spied the glowing tip of his cigarette, off away from her, near to where he'd abandoned the footpath.
The approaching figure walked into the illumination of the next lamp. It was a heavyset old man, his shirttail showing beneath his dirty jacket. He stopped and belched, a long, self-absorbed sound. Then he turned toward Mary's hiding place and began to talk.
Paralyzed with fear, Mary thought she had been discovered. Then she saw in the man's hand a long clear bottle, half filled with sloshing clear liquid, and she realized that he was talking to no one in particular.
"So I coulda done it," he said, holding the bottle out before him as if offering it to a friend. "I coulda. An' he knew it."
Behind Mary, the still-glowing end of Billy's cigarette did not move.
"An' he tol' me no. He tol' me no." By now the drunk had his head bowed on his chest, his speech taking on a melancholy inflection. "Wha' the heck," he said. Suddenly he put down his bottle unsteadily on the flagstone path and stumbled toward the bush behind which Mary hid.
He pushed into the front branches, mumbling an apology to himself. Mary heard the zip of his fly. He urinated on the other side of the bush, singing as he did so: "So Molly, she says she's a hooker, an' Fred, he says she's a whore . . ."
Mary backed away, looking for Billy's cigarette as the drunkard finished his song: "So Captain O'Malley says, 'Book her!' and Sergeant O'Rourke says, 'Wha' for?' "
The drunk zipped up his fly and stepped away from the bushes, tripping as the heel of his shoe caught the edge of the stone path. " 'Scuse me, beg your pardon," he said, laughing. He located his bottle, picked it up on the second try, and stumbled away.
Mary turned to look for Billy's cigarette, but it was gone.
She stood where she was. Satan's tricks. She had never felt so alone in her life. Maybe this is how he had tricked her, using the passing drunkard to take her attention away from himself. Maybe he had lit that cigarette knowing she would look for it, and then he had put it out. Maybe he was coming toward her in the dark, getting closer with each breath she took, each breath Satan drawing closer . . .
She stepped out onto the footpath and walked quickly toward the exit. She didn't care if the boy saw her now.
Night sounds assaulted her. There were trees bordering a turn of the trail ahead. A solid clutch of fear gripped her. She slowed, passing them.
She ran, sure she heard a sound close behind, as if someone had stepped out from behind one of the trees.
"Mary," she thought she heard her mother's voice call.
Satan's tricks.
She cried out and ran faster.
The stone pillars at the exit became visible and, beyond them, the comforting light of the street.
"Mary," the voice called once more.
"No!"
Closer. Her legs carried her faster. She fled toward the pillars and then was between them, feeling a rush of relief.
Someone stepped from behind one of them and took hold of her.
She screamed, throwing her fists out blindly.
"'Scuse me, lady," the old drunk said, stumbling back against the pillar. He raised his hand to a nonexistent hat. He tilted his bottle into his mouth, then slid purposefully down the pillar until he sat at its base. Again he began to sing his barroom song: "An' Molly she says she's a hooker . . ."
Gasping, Mary stumbled up the street away from him.
God, help me! Tell me what to do!
Ahead, she saw the dark mass of the church and parish house, the comforting iron line of the fence. Still sobbing, she reached the gate.
It was open.
And, as she looked up, she saw the window to Billy's room, up on the second floor, closing and the shadow of the boy moving away from it.
20
Danny French was still in front of the classroom when the bell rang.
"Hurry up!" Fred Grainger, who was sitting next to Billy, shouted, and French got back to his seat as the doorknob turned and Mr. Gleason walked into the room.
"Today—" Gleason began, setting his briefcase down on his desk, but suddenly Martha Mifflin stood up.
"Danny French drew something on the blackboard," she said. She smiled primly and sat down, hands folded on her desk.
Danny French's thin face turned red.
"Well," Mr. Gleason said, "let's see how Mr. French's art career is coming along." He pushed his thick glasses up on his nose, a habitual action that he performed every minute or so since they continuously slipped down. He was balding and going to fat.
Gleason went to the chart covering the blackboard. He gave it a sharp tug downward at one corner, but it wouldn't rise. He tried again, but nothing happened. He pulled it down from the middle, and then from the other end, succeeding finally in gently raising it above the blackboard.
There was a burst of laughter, mostly from the back, where Danny French and his friends sat. Gleason studied the characterization on the blackboard. It showed a small body with two clownish shoes on, one filled in with white chalk, the other left blank. The rest of the figure was rumpled. The most prominent feature was the huge head on top of the body. It made up nearly the entire top half of the image. There were two little eyes and a round mouth, with a curl of hair at the very top. The drawing was labeled, "Egghead."
"I'll see you after class," Gleason said to Danny French. He erased the caricature.
From his seat behind Billy, Danny French leaned over and whispered in his ear, "My buddy John Mifflin tells me you've been buggin' his ass."
Billy stared at the front of the room.
"You hear me, weirdo?" French said. He took the sharpened tip of his pencil and pressed it into Billy's back.
"He heard you," Fred Grainger said. "He's just too tough to answer."
Both boys, along with another who sat behind French, laughed.
"Listen, weirdo," French said, pressing the pencil tip harder into Billy's back, "John Mifflin's a friend of mine. If you even breathe near him, I'll beat your fucking brains out."
He jammed the pencil into Billy's back, eliciting more laughter from the others.
As Gleason, with help from another boy, got the chart in front straightened out, French took the pencil away from Billy's back.
"I warned you," he hissed. He turned to his friends and said, "Chickenshit," which made them laugh some more.
"That's enough from you, Mr. French," Gleason said angrily.
"I was just—" French protested, pushing his straight blond hair back from his face. "I've had it. Get out."
“But—"
"Go to the principal's office. If I find out you didn't go straight there, I'll make sure you're not only jugged for a month but that your parents are called down here today to beg the school not to expel you."
"It was just a joke—"
"I said get out!"
French stalked out of the room, pushing Billy's shoulder hard as he rose from his seat.
Gleason watched the boy go, then turned to the class. "Does anybody remember where we were yesterday?"
Martha Mifflin raised her hand. "We were doing matter," she said smugly.
"Yes," Gleason said.
He thumbed through the text on his desk, then went to the blackboard and drew a small circle with something orbiting it. As he did so, Fred Grainger stood halfway up, forming a huge oval around his head with his arms and waving his laced fingers at the top, like the lock of curly hair on Danny French's blackboard picture.
Hearing laughter, Gleason turned around to see only a sea of noncommittal faces, except for Martha Mifflin's.
"Mr. Gleason," she began r
aising her hand.
"That's all right, Martha. It's time we got some work done."
Searching in vain for a few moments, he finally found the blackboard pointer, hanging in its accustomed spot on a hook next to the blackboard. He pushed his glasses up and pointed to the drawing on the blackboard. "Anyone know what this is?" he asked, smiling,
Hands went up.
"Roger?" Gleason called on a boy with bushy eyebrows.
"The Copernican system?" Roger answered.
"Um, no," Gleason said. "A good guess. But if it was, I would have drawn in the other planets. Anyone else?"
Only Martha Mifflin's hand and one other remained.
"Judy?
"Is it the earth and moon?"
"Very good guess. It could be that, but that's not what I'm looking for. Martha, you had an idea?"
Martha Mifflin had lowered her hand. "I was going to say the earth and moon." She gave Judy a hard look.
"I'll give you a hint," Gleason addressed the class, "then I'll tell you. Everything in this room is made out of things just like it."
"Baloney?" Fred Grainger called out from the side of his hand.
Gleason said, "That's made out of them, too." He smiled. "Nobody knows? It's—" Billy raised his hand.
"Want to take a crack at it?" Gleason asked.
"An atom," Billy answered.
Gleason's jaw dropped slightly, his chance to give them the correct answer taken away.
"That's right, Billy." He turned back to the drawing. "An atom. And a very special kind of atom. Anybody know what that could be?"
He kept his back to the class, not giving anyone a chance to answer.
"A hydrogen atom." He faced them. "It's one of the building blocks of the universe. The hydrogen atom is the most abundant atom of all. The stars in the sky, including our own sun, are made of hydrogen. Water is part hydrogen. Lots of things have hydrogen in them—like hydrogen peroxide, which your mom puts on your cuts and scrapes to disinfect them."
A ruckus broke out in the back of the room. Fred Grainger was shooting rubber bands at Carl Peters, one of the best students in the class. As Gleason started down the aisle, the commotion subsided.
"As I was saying," Gleason continued, "everything is made of atoms. Atoms are what make up matter.
"Now," Gleason went on, turning toward the class and pushing up his glasses. "What is matter? Matter is simply everything around us—this desk, the ceiling, the floor, the blackboard, everything. It's all matter, and all of it is made of atoms.
"And what are atoms made of? Well . . ."
Gleason told them about electrons and protons and neutrons for the next half hour. Most jotted notes; some doodled. In the back, Danny French's friends turned on Billy. Whenever Gleason's attention was elsewhere, Fred Grainger, or Joe Shane, or one of the others, would poke Billy or turn to him and say, "Danny's gonna flatten your ass."
"And we're gonna watch," Joe Shane promised at one point.
With a few minutes left till the bell rang, Gleason finished his lecture. "That's all there is to atoms and matter," he said. "It sounds simple, but here's a really intriguing thing. Maybe you've heard this mentioned on Star Trek or one of the other science fiction shows." He pushed his glasses up and a note of excitement crept into his voice. "Though everything we see is made of matter, scientists have proven in the laboratory that there is such a thing as antimatter. It's the exact opposite of matter."
He pushed his glasses up again. "And what do you think would happen if a piece of matter met a piece of antimatter?"
No hands went up.
"Billy?" he said, looking at Billy Potter. "Martha? A guess?"
Billy and Martha stared at each other.
Gleason's face expanded in a satisfied smile. He spread his hands out wide. "What would happen—"
The end-of-period bell rang. Instantly, the class erupted into sound and motion. Above the commotion Gleason yelled, "Do you know what would happen if matter and antimatter met?" He clapped his hands together loudly. "Boom! Complete annihilation! That's what would happen!"
The classroom emptied, leaving Gleason and his excitement behind.
Billy's usual spot at lunch was occupied by Danny French, who stood leaning against the tree. A single long lock of his blond hair swung over his forehead, his thin face pulled into a lopsided smile.
French's friends Joe Shane and Fred Grainger stepped out from behind the tree as Billy neared.
"Couldn't miss this," Shane said.
Thumbs under his belt, Grainger snorted rudely.
Billy stopped before them, holding his lunch bag.
"Mind if we eat here?" French asked. His mouth held its crooked, lazy grin.
Billy passed French and sat down calmly against the back of the tree. He opened his bag and took out his sandwich.
French appeared above him. His smile was gone. He tore the lunch bag from Billy's hand and threw it against the chain-link fence. "You shit," he said menacingly. "Listen to me when I talk."
Billy stared at him.
"I was going to forget about you until that prick Gleason came down on me," French said. His face was red and wild. "But now I feel like hitting something."
His right fist shot out, meeting the side of Billy's face.
Billy went down.
French's cronies laughed. French stepped away. "So much for the scary man," he said. The anger had left his voice. "You know," he said looking down at Billy, "John Mifflin told me you had some kind of power. I told him he was full of it. He bet me ten bucks I couldn't get a thump in on you, that you'd get me with your X-ray eyes or something." He laughed as his two compatriots howled. "So much for Mifflin." He turned to Shane and Grainger. "Let's go collect my money."
"Aren't you gonna thump him again?" Shane asked with disappointment. Billy was slowly pushing himself back up into a sitting position.
"I made my point."
Howling, the three of them strutted away.
Billy sat with his hand against the side of his face. When he brought his hand away, there was blood on it. The area below his eye felt raw and numb.
He sat still for a while, then he walked to the fence. He bent down and picked up his lunch bag. He walked back to the tree, sat down, and ate his lunch.
When the bell rang, he rose and saw, at the other end of the school yard, John Mifflin, with Christine Beck at his side, staring at him and smiling grimly.
21
Shit.
Danny French's knuckles hurt like hell. He hid his hand against his side until the lunch period was over, then he went to the men's room, telling Joe and Fred he was going to sneak a smoke.
When he got a good look at his hand, he saw that the skin had been pulled off the top of all the knuckles. The middle one was swollen big as a cherry. He sluiced cold water over it but there was a sullen, throbbing pain that didn't go away.
He'd never hit anybody that hard before. Hell, he hadn't even meant to hit Billy Potter that hard. It had seemed like his fist had taken on a life of its own. And he knew why, but that was another thing, along with his hand getting banged up, that he wasn't going to tell anybody about. He wasn't even sure he wanted to tell himself. Because the fact was, he'd hit Billy so hard because he was scared of him. If he hadn't hit him hard and quick, he wouldn't have hit him at all.
When Mifflin first told him about Billy Potter, he thought it was funny. Mifflin was a little pussy, but not a bad guy. He'd once given Danny the five bucks he needed when his old man told him that if he didn't come home with a six-pack, he'd beat his head in. From past experience, Danny knew his old man meant it. He'd been punched out so many times that another beating was a sure bet. And something he wanted to avoid at all costs.
So Mifflin had helped him out, and he appreciated it. But when Mifflin had started talking about this Billy Potter, and getting all worked up about how this kid was bothering him, he thought Mifflin was being a pussy.
Joking, he told him as much, but John didn't la
ugh.
"I'm not shitting you," he said, taking a pull from one of the beers he'd bought for the two of them. As long as Manny Zelcker at the deli let Danny buy beer for his old man, John thought they might as well take advantage of it and have a few themselves in the parking lot behind the movie theater. Danny did the buying, but it was John's money.
"You're full of it," Danny said.
"The kid's scary," Mifflin went on. "It's the way he looks at you. You think he's going to use his eyes like ray guns on you."
"Bullshit."
Mifflin drained his second beer, then, impulsively, flung the empty across the parking lot, where the bottle shattered against the wall of the movie theater.
"You think I'm joking? When I lived at that goddamn orphan home, I saw him take apart a kid at school just by looking at him."
French sipped his own beer and smiled. "I still say bullshit."
"This kid Crane was pretty tough, and the son of a bitch wilted like a flower. He told me Potter's penny eyes went black, and then suddenly it wasn't Potter he was looking at but his dead father, telling him not to fight."
French laughed derisively. "The kid must have pussied out."
"He didn't pussy out. Potter did something to him."
French just shook his head slowly and finished his beer, then twisted the hissing bottle cap off a new one and tossed it aside. "Not me," he said.
Mifflin started on his third beer. It was obvious he hadn't had this many before. "I bet the same thing would happen to you."
French's eyes darkened; but he remembered the other six-pack in the bag for his old man, and the change Mifflin had let him keep. He knew there would be more afternoons with free beers like this ahead. "You're drunk," he said calmly.
"I say you'd pussy out."
Now French got mad. He put his beer down. "You calling me a pussy?"
"No," Mifflin said. "I'm saying you couldn't handle that bastard Potter. All he'd have to do is look at you."
French balled his fists. "I don't take this shit from anybody."
"Ten bucks says you can't hit him."
French relaxed his hands as Mifflin put down his beer, fumbled out his wallet, and rummaged through a wad of ones before pulling out a ten-dollar bill. "This one," he said, folding it and slipping it into his shirt pocket. He found his beer again.
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