Night School

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Andrew and Mariah signed their names on something. Tommy did not. Autumn was intrigued. When she reached the bulletin board, they had moved on, but the sheet betrayed them. They were taking a Night Class.

  I could do that, thought Autumn. Suppose I put my name on this list. But suppose Julie-Brooke-Danielle come by, and read it, and see that I’ve done something without permission.

  Permission? Autumn had never thought of her group that way before—a little cult whose permission was required. Immediately Autumn was furious with herself and with Julie-Brooke-Danielle just for existing. I’m an individual! she thought. I have my own life, thank you very much!

  She dug around in her purse for a pencil that still had a point, but just as she pressed the lead against the sheet, she panicked. Jeopardize her friendships for some old night class that didn’t even describe itself? Should she … ? What if she … ? What if Julie-Brooke-Danielle … ? Messily, Autumn scrawled letters that might be read as A. Ivers, but might also be interpreted as C. Tuems or D. James.

  This made Autumn giggle—she giggled well—and she breezed down the hallway, delighted with herself, and the sudden secret of her very own activity.

  Ned examined the bulletin board announcement. Very odd. Andrew, Mariah, and Autumn had all signed up for something that was not identified. (Not that you could tell it was Autumn’s writing; he knew only because he’d watched her. Who would have thought a fastidious girl like Autumn would have scrap-heap handwriting?)

  Ned assumed that everybody else just had more information than he did. This was the case with most of his life—why not night class, too? Ned always seemed to be the one who didn’t know the address, the hour, the host, or even the year.

  Andrew, Mariah, and Autumn, thought Ned.

  Ned was one of those skinny boys to whom nobody ever spoke. When girls were skinny, everybody told them how wonderful they looked and what great wardrobes they had. When girls were too skinny, they were instead anorexic or glamorous, depending on how you felt about figures. But when boys were skinny, they were just skinny. Worthless and nonathletic. Funny hair, spotted face, feet that went the wrong way during a basketball game, so you scored for the opposite team and were despised for the rest of your life.

  This was Ned.

  Junior high had been a form of hell for Ned, and he believed he had insight about hell: He knew what form payment would take if you misbehaved on earth. You would be in eighth grade for eternity.

  By now, a junior in high school, Ned had found parts of himself. Not enough to be a whole person, but enough to have partial friendships and occasional admission to groups. He was continually on the lookout for more pieces of his real personality, sort of like a prospector looking for petroleum. It was out there somewhere, it was just a matter of sinking a well in the right place.

  Could Night Class be the right place?

  Autumn came in a group, and he had never thought of her as a single person. If he had, he would have been afraid of her, as he was afraid of Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle. They had a sort of ferocity about them, four being infinitely stronger than one, and Ned lowered his eyes whenever he saw them. Not that the Autumns of the world glanced in the direction of the Neds.

  Autumn’s hair changed constantly, because a Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle hobby was hair. Autumn was blonde at the moment, although Ned also liked her hair when it was black, and the auburn stage was pretty stunning, too.

  Mariah, now, had what Ned thought of as a mom-smile. It wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t glamorous. It was a smile you’d like to come home to. Ned was embarrassed by this thought. But Mariah would never look at Ned, either. Mariah’s eyes focused in some different way than anybody else’s; you never once knew what Mariah was looking at, or thinking of. It gave her an aura, not of being lost, but of being unreachable.

  Ned thought longingly of Andrew, who was a finished product. Who had entered kindergarten in a completed state, never mind high school, already knowing everything, including the right people.

  A small, intimate night class. What better place to make friends, to inch ahead in the terrible world of popularity?

  Ned signed up for Night Class.

  Andrew passed the bulletin board again that day. Four names there now: his own printing; Mariah’s pretty script; a scrawl that could be anything; Ned Wilton’s nervous scribble.

  Andrew stepped back into a niche between two windows in which he often stood. The walls of the little niche protected him in some way he did not understand, and was ashamed of. He was strong, poised, popular, and sophisticated. Why, then, did he like to step into the shadows, as it were, and watch people instead of being with them? Why did he act as if the kids were unreal, his classmates just a channel he would change if they got boring?

  Andrew was afraid he would turn out to be a watcher rather than a player. Not only did that seem sad and not much fun, it sounded wrong. To be part of the human race, shouldn’t you join and give and take? What made him want to watch? What made him yearn for shadows and corners and invisibility?

  He considered crossing his name off Night Class.

  Andrew was forever shouldering some major burden. He couldn’t just play football; he had to train the student manager. He couldn’t just have a part in the play; he had to sell the most tickets. He couldn’t just do a science project; he had to try to win nationwide contests. His shrink said (Andrew’s entire family went to psychiatrists, although nobody was nuts that Andrew could see) it was because he was trying to tame the world.

  A class with Ned, Autumn, and Mariah. Andrew had to think about that assortment.

  Mariah was always elsewhere. He had been fascinated by her since his fascination with girls began. She was a drifter, rowing with one oar, sailing without a chart, and happy doing it. Andrew had not the slightest clue to Mariah, who seemed at one and the same time to be listening intently to anything Andrew said, and yet caught in thoughts so engrossing she probably didn’t even know Andrew’s name.

  Andrew wanted his name known. He wanted to be famous. He wasn’t sure what he would be famous at. He wasn’t musical so it wouldn’t be as a recording star, and he disliked the stage, because the stage was so much the opposite of shadow and corner. But one day, Andrew knew, fame would be his.

  Once a few years ago, Andrew’s mother said that the house was overflowing with junk and she wasn’t keeping it anymore. She began throwing away artifacts of his childhood—old spelling tests and clay handprints and ancient Halloween costumes.

  History would want this stuff! She couldn’t deprive the world of his, Andrew’s, childhood. Andrew stopped himself from saying this out loud, thank goodness, and then he seized his ego and held it under cold water for a while.

  Andrew never told his shrink about his immense ego, because that would give the shrink clues. Stuff to work with. Andrew’s goal in analysis was to keep the shrink in the dark.

  In the dark.

  What would Night Class be? A class of the dark?

  Andrew was suddenly, horrifically, engulfed in darkness. The darkness was so complete that he could believe a holocaust had destroyed the sun and the earth and certainly the school. He closed his eyes against it, trying to find sunlight inside himself, but there, too, it was entirely dark. And appealing. He liked the dark. He liked thinking about the dark.

  He knew, suddenly, that it was not so much a class that happened to take place at night. It was a class of the night. A class for the dark.

  An instructor Andrew did not recognize paused in front of the bulletin board. The instructor’s back was to Andrew, and there was something invisible about the back itself: It had no gender, no description, no personality.

  With a black felt marker, the instructor slashed a fat black zigzag below the four names and wrote two more words. Printing like gashes in flesh filled the bottom of the sheet.

  CLASS CLOSED.

  Chapter 2

  WHEN IT WAS TIME to leave for Night Class, Autumn had no ride.

  She was a
mile from the school and had certainly never walked that mile. Californians loved exercise: They jogged, they ran, they worked out; they swam, they surfed, they skated … but they didn’t walk to school. Certainly not.

  Autumn’s entire world was Julie-Brooke-Danielle. She could not imagine calling anybody but them for a ride. Andrew had a car, but she felt awkward calling a boy who had rarely spoken to her, no matter how much Julie-Brooke-Danielle and she had admired him. Autumn was pretty sure Mariah had a car, too. But if some other girl had tried to get a ride with Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle, the quartet would have been incredulous. Julie would have laughed in the girl’s face. And being Julie, would have used a cruel nickname to get rid of her.

  As for Ned, it was so impossible that somebody of the social standing of Autumn would even remember his existence, let alone climb into his vehicle, that it simply did not enter her mind as a choice.

  Autumn stepped out of her house into the night.

  It was wonderfully warm: the sort of California winter warm that cuddles and snuggles.

  The sky was not black. Distant Los Angeles cast a luminous smudge across the ceiling of the world: the lights of fourteen million people and their streets. Nothing near L.A. could ever really be dark.

  Autumn looked down the road in the direction of the high school. The road wound among canyons, had no sidewalks and in many places, no sides, either. Pavement had been stuck to the canyon side like a poorly wound roll of tape.

  A yellow sign was easy to read in the half-dark. FALLING ROCKS, it said. Autumn had a vision of herself as a mere piece off Julie-Brooke-Danielle. A falling rock.

  Autumn took a sweater, for the night was cooling off. She felt dangerous and wild. Not only was she about to walk on a narrow twisty road, in the dark, by herself, but Julie-Brooke-Danielle didn’t even know.

  Autumn was slim and very attractive. She wore her shiny long hair in an extremely neat ponytail, with a clasp at the bottom as well as the top, to prevent the hair from changing position during the day. Her clothes were perfectly matched, and she was among the few in school who had never, not once, dressed for grunge. Autumn always looked as if she could go right into Los Angeles and manage a production company.

  She had crossed the lawn as far as the neat sweet rows of lemon trees when the phone rang. She heard it clearly through the open windows of the house she had left. Autumn had only three possible callers: Julie or Brooke or Danielle.

  A high school with a thousand kids in it—and she knew for a fact that only three would ever call? The world that had seemed so full and rich inside the house sounded empty out here under the lemon trees.

  The answering machine kicked in. From outside, like a visiting wraith, Autumn listened to herself chirrup hello. Julie replied almost harshly, “Autumn! Where are you, anyway? You’re supposed to be home tonight. Call me right away when you get in and tell me where you were.”

  Those are orders, thought Autumn. I, Autumn Ivers, have spent the last five years of my life obeying orders. I haven’t been popular. I’ve been obedient.

  She kept walking, away from the light of the house, and under the huge gnarled oaks. At the edge of the road she paused, as if she were considering skydiving or undersea cave exploration. Then she set off, in the dark, on foot, to travel the lonely mile.

  Night Class no longer seemed an oddity for which she had scribbled meaningless shapes instead of signing her name. It seemed very important, a necessity, even, to free herself from the domination of Julie-Brooke-Danielle.

  When it was time to leave for night school, Mariah’s brother Bevin asked her not to go. “I hate being alone,” he mumbled. He didn’t look at her. Bevin had a hard time meeting anybody’s eyes.

  Her brother was one of these desperate isolated people who had no friends. Mariah bled for him, praying he would somehow outgrow it, or that at least it would strengthen him. But neither had happened so far.

  It was measurably harder for Bevin to manage school this year, his sophomore year. Mariah, who had loved sophomore year, and for whom junior year was pretty good, too (would be perfect if Andrew should notice her), could not imagine what it felt like to be unwanted in every situation from art to soccer.

  This year, it was beyond mere loneliness. Bevin had become a victim. Perhaps he had reached a level of despair that was visible. He had become prey. He was a rabbit and the cruel people in school were jackals. They encircled him, ripping out his courage, and tearing away his abilities.

  Bevin didn’t even have what rabbits have. He had no protective coloring. He could not run faster than his pursuers. He had no hole in which to hide.

  Mariah wanted Mom and Dad to send Bevin to another school, or let him live with relatives in another state, so he could get a fresh start. But Mom and Dad did not see Bevin the way she did: They saw a quiet, courteous boy who led an interior life.

  Mariah was the one with the interior life. Bevin was the one in hell. “He’s quiet because nobody speaks to him!” she screamed once at Dad. “Bevin is courteous because he wouldn’t dare be rude! His interior life consists of desperately wishing he had an exterior life.”

  “Nonsense,” said Dad robustly, unable to accept that his only son was not making it.

  And Bevin, who had very little left except his father’s opinion of him, would not tell the truth, either. For what if his own father despised him, along with everybody else in the world?

  Mom and Dad were sure Bevin would grow up to be a comedian or a screenwriter, because, they insisted, people of great creativity always had quiet childhoods.

  But it isn’t quiet, thought Mariah, who had to see her brother in school. It’s torture, and people die of torture.

  Everyday, somehow, Bevin managed to get up and go to school. And everyday, somehow, he managed to get home again. He had remarkable courage, his sister thought.

  “I’ve signed up for a night class,” she said to Bevin. “It won’t be very long, not the first night. Probably just orientation and getting textbooks and stuff. You’ll be all right here by yourself.”

  He didn’t argue with her. Bevin had lost the ability to argue.

  At the door she paused, guilty about letting her brother down. As if she were responsible for his failures at school.

  But Andrew, as ever, filled her mind. Golden warm thoughts of a splendid golden person seemed brighter even than the setting sun on the gleaming ocean, and she forgot Bevin, and went joyfully to the car and drove swiftly away.

  When it was time to leave for Night School, Ned managed to get permission to drive Mom’s Volvo. He would have preferred Dad’s Suburban, even though it was so huge and substantial that he felt like a stick figure drawn on the front seat. But Dad was out. Ned had the red at the intersection when Mariah Frederick whipped by.

  Ned was in one class with Mariah’s brother Bevin. Ned might be on his own a lot, but Bevin had been shoved way beyond solitude. Bevin was the choice of the school bullies, and every school has more than enough bullies to go around. Ned averted his eyes when Bevin came under attack. Ned was enough of a loser; he couldn’t attach himself to a real, bottom-level loser like Bevin. What if he and Bevin got grouped together in people’s minds, the way Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle were grouped?

  Ned rather thought that Bevin would kill himself one day. What choice did he have? He had worse than no life.

  Ned wrenched his mind off the painful condition of Mariah’s brother, turned once he had the green, and followed the bright red rear lights of her car. He wondered if she knew her brother’s life at all, and if she cared, and if she tried to help him.

  But Bevin was beyond help.

  Any little thing would tip him over the edge, and he would fall, probably not even bothering to scream. People only screamed if they thought somebody would help.

  When it was time to leave for Night School, Andrew got into his Jeep and drove without detours to the school. Normally Andrew took the longest possible route anywhere, sometimes adding 25 or 30 miles to the odo
meter for absolutely no reason. There was nothing on earth Andrew loved more than driving. In his car he was removed from boys, removed from girls. (Andrew still thought of them as separate species.) Removed from school and conversation and pressure. He thought sometimes that instead of setting the world on fire with his brilliance and fame, that he would just be a cross-country trucker, and never do anything again but sit alone in a vehicle while the radio played.

  What am I doing? he thought tiredly. What have I signed up for? I don’t even know what this class is.

  He was far too busy already, stretched by a hundred activities. The necessity to excel, to be best, to be photogenic, to be interesting, to be witty, was omnipresent. It was a good reason to drive alone. For a few miles, he could omit his tremendous efforts, he could just sit in the driver’s seat and take the turns.

  The road went where it went; he had no decisions to make, just the occasional steering. If only he could give up all activities and just drift like this, watching and following the road. But then he would be a loser.

  It had been drilled into him, it was always being drilled into him, that he must never, never, never be a loser.

  Mom had forgotten to take the camcorder inside the house. It lay on the front seat, begging to be stolen. Andrew drove with his left hand and gripped the camera with his right, waiting to set it on the floor of the car where it would be less visible to potential thieves.

  I could be a cameraman, he thought suddenly. The world at the far end of the focus. Or a reporter. The world just something to scribble about in notebooks. Or a television newsman, for whom the world is just another candidate for coverage. People, just objects to be condensed into a thirty-second spot.

  Andrew was filled with a brave, giddy feeling, as if he’d just flown solo for the first time in the world. Because he knew. He knew now what he was for, and why he was constructed that way! Yes! he thought, rejoicing. That’s it!