Night School

by Caroline B. Cooney

  There was nothing of Bevin here.

  Not one thing.

  It was a room that belonged to both of them, and in it, he had no trophies, no souvenirs, no reminders, no precious little pieces of things.

  She had the eerie awful thought that perhaps there was nothing of Bevin anywhere. Perhaps Bevin himself had dematerialized. Months or even years ago, had Bevin begun taking up less and less room until he took none at all? Merely occupied a seat in the house of others?

  “Oh, Bevin,” she said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Listen, well do better. Well—well—” She had no idea what she was talking about, only that she wanted Bevin to have a better life and be a happier person. To be a person at all. “I’m home now. Everything’s okay.”

  Bevin almost smiled, but not at her. At her idea that everything could possibly be okay.

  She sat down to pat him, although he was far too old for patting, and long beyond the stage where a pat would make everything better.

  And her brother, her beloved sad brother, stiffened, and pulled away from her in a sort of shock and stared at her with new eyes.

  He sees, thought Mariah Frederick. He sees it on me. It stuck to me. Night school and what we did to Mr. Phillips. He can tell.

  Mariah backed away from the accusation in her brother’s eyes. Quickly she finished picking up the room. Straightened everything. Got the little hand vacuum and did the carpet. It looked better than it had in ages.

  But I’m not better, thought Mariah. I’m worse. Night Class stuck to me like the smell of cigarettes. Bevin knows.

  Bevin found it quite amazing that his sister could ask if he had made this mess. Nobody else lived here! Nobody else had been home. How could Mariah ask if some other person had created this nightmare?

  It never failed to shock Bevin how little people noticed of his, Bevin’s, existence. And here he had gone ballistic, breaking every representation of their lives, as a prelude, or maybe a blockade, to destroying his actual life, and Mariah was vacuuming. Dusting. Hiding it, so their parents would never see.

  Bevin realized that more than anything else, he had wanted Mariah to see. To climb out of that odd, drifty, dreamy world of hers and notice the real one that he and only he was forced to occupy.

  To rescue him, somehow.

  To read in the cracked and broken debris of their possessions how cracked and broken he was.

  In the morning, the sun was clear gold in a joyful blue heaven. It was a day where windows were rectangles of glory, while prisms of excited sunshine darted across rooms. It was a day of California colors. Hot and energetic and friendly.

  Nothing could go wrong on such a day.

  No earth could quake, no mud could slide, no forest could fire up, and no Night Class was worth remembering.

  Mariah was delirious with happiness. Her head spun, her mind in a fever, her thoughts frivolous.

  Andrew liked her.

  Andrew had touched her. Spoken to her. Laughed with her. Enjoyed her company … and wanted more.

  What else did life hold? The boy she had adored was going to adore her back. And Mariah was ready.

  It was even the kind of day in which the right clothing leaps off the hanger onto your body, so you are perfectly dressed in just the right way, with no effort and no stewing and no second guesses.

  Mariah went to school thinking Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.

  Julie got up slowly. Even though she never wanted to go to bed at night, she never wanted to get out of bed in the morning, either. The wonderful weight of her blankets was like friendship. And her pillows were precious to her, one fat and fluffy, the other hard and narrow, so she slept with two different personalities. And her old dolls that she had never really wanted to give up, lying in their pretty doll crib in their perfect clothes, their hair never mussed and their white aprons always neat. And in sunshine, the night-lights were, as she pretended, rather sweet.

  Julie put on her makeup and the same thing that happened every morning in front of the mirror happened again. A snide sneer locked into place. Nobody could curl a lip in contempt as well as Julie.

  But she was seventeen now, not twelve, and the cruelty in her face was not what she wanted. The sarcasm that poured out of her mouth was not what she meant to say.

  Julie thought constantly of college. She would go far, far away, and never again know anybody from this high school where she had been so mean, so often. She would sling away this bullying she did, and make it history. In her college world, she’d be like Sal or Mariah, and always be nice and beloved of everybody.

  Every morning, Julie planned to stop being mean, but instead, every day, she got meaner, and better at being mean.

  Stop it! Julie would tell herself, and then immediately she’d do something cruel.

  It was sort of like a fat kid swearing every morning of her life to go on a diet, and then ruining it before lunch.

  Julie often watched Sal. Sal was the only truly self-sufficient girl in high school. It was Mariah who rushed over to Sal, not Sal who rushed over to Mariah. Sal’s mouth was always turned up in a smile, her eyes bright, and her interest visible. Sal seemed satisfied with herself and her life, and therefore, of course, she drew Tommy, the only truly self-sufficient boy in high school.

  Julie had always wanted Tommy to like her.

  It wasn’t going to happen. Tommy invariably was standing there when Julie was at her dog-bite worst.

  Julie thought of yearbook categories. Andrew and Autumn would certainly get Most Likely To Succeed. Mariah would be a whole new category—Class Daydreamer. Tommy would be Most Liked. She, Julie, would undoubtedly be voted Class Witch.

  And now Autumn was moving off on her own.

  Julie had a vision of her three friends peeling off like skaters on Crack the Whip.

  What does it matter? We aren’t friends, thought Julie. We’re a gang. We’re girls and we’re beautiful and rich, and we get good grades and we don’t even smoke cigarettes, never mind commit street crimes. But we’re a gang. We gang up on people.

  They’re going to leave me, one by one, and I’ll be alone.

  Alone in the dark, thought Julie, and it seemed to her that the little crescent moon night-light turned blue and evil and smirked at her, and planned what it would do to her, alone in the dark.

  Autumn usually conferred with Julie-Brooke-Danielle so as to dress somewhat alike. (They did not actually have matching outfits; that would have been pitiful. Sophisticated young women acting like hospital quadruplets getting free Pampers.) But they liked to have a theme. The theme might be color: tartan, or black, or lime green. The theme might be texture: denim or velvet or gauze. The theme might be elegant or sloppy. (Autumn did not participate in sloppy, whereas Brooke revelled in it; Brooke in turn did not participate in elegant; this was a little statement Brooke liked to make showing what an individual she was.)

  Autumn, too, woke in a great mood, flinging open the drapes on a yard filled with color: emerald-green grass toasting in gold sun reflecting off the pink stucco house. She missed Julie-Brooke-Danielle. Twenty-four hours since they had conversed! There was so much to discuss.

  At school, she tumbled out of her mother’s car and rushed into the lobby. Julie-Brooke-Danielle were waiting for her. They were standing in a row like executioners, stern and angry. As if Autumn were to be punished for a day off from their company. “Hi!” she cried gaily.

  They did not smile back.

  “Ned chatted with us this morning,” said Julie. Julie’s green eyes, intensified by green contact lenses, looked opaque and inhuman.

  “Ned told us you and he had pizza together last night,” said Brooke, and Brooke laughed, genuinely amused and pitying. “I mean, really, Autumn. With boys around who have something to offer, like Kevin or Cody, you pick Ned?”

  Now the three burst into a shower of giggles, like spring rain.

  “No wonder you didn’t tell us about your little date.” Danielle shook her head. Her hair didn’t move along wit
h her head. It was so starched, so sprayed, it remained stationary even when Danielle shifted. “I mean, Autumn, Ned is truly the bottom. He’ll never be anything else, either. He doesn’t even have potential.”

  “What is he?” asked Julie. “Your little learning experience?”

  Autumn was hot with shame. She was angry with Ned, pretending that anything had happened besides four kids getting a snack after class. She was angry with Ned for being the low-level pathetic thing they correctly described.

  “You’re not going out with him again, are you? He says you are.” The trill of Julie’s laughter stretched down halls for the entire school to listen in on. “I mean, Autumn. There’s a world out there, and you pick Ned?”

  “I didn’t pick Ned,” said Autumn sharply. “I didn’t do anything with Ned. He was just there. He doesn’t count.”

  “Hi, Mariah!” called Sal, scampering over. She ran like a four-year-old, half hopping, half skipping, all happy.

  Mariah loved her.

  “How was your night class?” Sal asked. There were no capital letters the way Sal said it, it was ordinary, it was nothing, and Mariah repeated that to herself: night class was nothing. “Oh, dumb,” she said breezily, “but nice people. Andrew and Autumn and Ned.”

  “Is Ned nice?” Sal looked pleased with this information. “I always thought he might be, but of course you never have any clues with that kind of person.”

  “And Autumn,” added Mariah quickly, not wanting Sal to ask her what Night Class was about, “is very nice, too.”

  Sal twinkled at her best friend. “And Andrew? I presume Andrew is perfection itself?”

  Mariah blushed and nodded.

  “I’ll bet you don’t even know what the class is about,” teased Sal. “I’ll bet you’re just sitting there feasting your eyes on old Andrew.”

  Mariah nodded, but she felt like a jar with a leak. All her secrets were pouring out. Or maybe she had never had secrets. Maybe when she had her private dialogues with Andrew, her lips had moved, and everybody read her lips and knew she was pretending Andrew was there to answer.

  “Hi, Sal,” said Tommy. “Hi, Mariah. So how was your class, Mariah? What did it turn out to be?”

  “Andrew worship,” said Sal, giggling.

  Tommy’s smile shrugged that off, mere teasing based on nothing. “But is there a textbook? Is there homework? Is there even a subject?”

  Mariah knew that if she gave a single thought to homework, if she allowed the memory of the subject into her head, it would kill the sunshine. The thing was to blockade such a thought. And who was more greatly skilled than Mariah Frederick at blocking thoughts and creating new ones?

  “Class is nothing but preparation for pizza afterward,” said Mariah. “Next week we’re going to carpool, probably have pizza before class, too.”

  What a peaceful smile Tommy had, all comfort and pleasantness. A slow smile, not superior and taunting like Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle, not nervous like Ned, nor bubbly and unbottled like Sal. A guy who knew what his world was and liked it.

  Why have I had a crush only on Andrew? Mariah thought suddenly. Why haven’t I ever even noticed other boys?

  The thought was so disloyal she crushed it immediately.

  But how can it be disloyal to Andrew, she thought, when Andrew never even participated? The only thing it’s disloyal to is my own imagination.

  “Hmmm,” said Sal. “Thirty-second time lag here. Maybe the topic really is Andrew, Tommy.”

  Both Sal and Tommy smiled at her now, and there was an overlapping quality to their smiles. Then, equally overlapping, they walked off together.

  They had walked places together before. Their stride matched. The way they tilted their heads toward each other matched.

  They liked each other.

  How normal they looked. Ordinary friends, not touching, simply enjoying each other’s presence. No overwhelming half-crazed crushes here. No secret lives.

  Either I’ll have a normal friendly friendship with Andrew, thought Mariah, or I’ll skip it. No more secret lives. I want to be content and easy and popular like Tommy and Sal.

  Andrew had meant to arrive early, and search for the camcorder and erase the tape. But somehow when he woke up, it didn’t have much importance and he didn’t rush and now was actually in danger of arriving late.

  Nothing, Andrew reassured himself, had happened last night. He decided to be amused instead of worried. He pondered the correct verb for what had happened to their bodies. Had they shadowed themselves? Smoked themselves? Disembodied themselves?

  He found himself smiling. They had merely happened upon a teacher who, nervous in the dark, had gone home.

  And yet when he parked, Andrew could not help checking the teachers’ lot for Mr. Phillips’s car. Mr. Phillips drove a car quite similar to himself: a dull, mustard-yellow, twelve-year-old Dodge, which had not had character when it was built, and was not gathering character as it aged.

  The Dodge was not in the parking lot.

  Andrew did not know whether to be relieved. He did not want to deal with Mr. Phillips, and yet he wanted to know that Mr. Phillips was all right.

  Of course he’s all right, thought Andrew irritably. Nothing happened to make him otherwise.

  Andrew got into his first period class moments before the late bell, and there was the principal, taking attendance. Andrew raised his eyebrows. “Mr. Phillips did not show up,” said the principal, clearly furious. “He did not even have the courtesy to call. Really. Substitutes think they will get permanent jobs in the system, but when they behave irresponsibly, how could they possibly imagine they would be asked back? Andrew, help me run this class. What chapter are you on?”

  Andrew helped run the class.

  He said to himself, Nothing happened. If Mr. Phillips didn’t show up it isn’t because he was scared to death and had a heart attack, it’s because—because—

  Nothing happened, Andrew told himself again. Certainly nothing that I did.

  Bevin made a decision he had never made before.

  He gave up.

  Always, even at the worst of times, Bevin had hung on. He had pressed up against a wall or a desk or a corner and somehow the pressure against his back gave him the strength to keep going.

  But not today.

  Today absolutely nothing happened, and yet the eyes and the plans of the bullies of the school were all over him, gauging him, taking his measure, weakening him with their laughter, leaving him ready for his attackers.

  He walked out of the school, and found he could walk the distance home quite easily. During the walk there was only nature, which had no interest in him, and passing traffic, which had less.

  Inside the house, he did not even turn on the radio.

  He had the sense that the station would no longer tune in for his ears; that he had lost his only lifeline.

  He was down to only two choices now: death or disappearance.

  “Oh, hi, Andrew,” said the principal.

  Andrew had been hanging around hoping to run into Mariah. She was usually everywhere. Where had she gone this time? “Hi, sir,” he said to the principal, “how are you.” It wasn’t a question, because Andrew didn’t actually care how the principal was.

  “I’m lousy. Listen, remember I told you Mr. Phillips didn’t show up and didn’t even bother to call? I need to retract that. It wasn’t fair of me. Poor guy was correcting papers here in the library and had some sort of mental breakdown on his way home. Police found him just sitting in his car by the side of the road at two o’clock this morning. He’s been hospitalized.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” said Andrew. Andrew was more than sorry. He was horrified. “What hospital?” said Andrew numbly. “I’d better visit him.”

  “Andrew, what a great kid you are!” said the principal, sounding far too surprised, as if he’d had his doubts about Andrew.

  When the school day ended, the morning scenes occurred in the reverse, like a daily film runn
ing backward. There were Mariah and Andrew standing by the bulletin board, noticing that the Night Class sheet was gone. There was Ned, wall-clinging, inching toward them.

  And there were Tommy and Sal, still not touching, still very fond of each other, still walking purposefully. A definite, very enviable pair.

  Autumn said quietly, “Neither of them would ever be an ETS.”

  Mariah practically leaped out of her shoes.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” said Autumn. “I thought you saw me coming.”

  Mariah shook her head. How dare Autumn mention the ETS? It brought Mariah’s nerves too close to the surface, as if the slightest sun or windburn would expose her fears.

  “Sal and Tommy are strong,” said Autumn. “I felt it all the way down the hall. You don’t choose the strong one for your ETS, you choose the weak. It would be like a lion picking a lion or a leopard picking a leopard, to pick Sal or Tommy.”

  “Autumn, are you going to do it?” whispered Mariah. “Are you really going to choose an ETS?”

  “The teacher said there’s no dropping out, Mariah, I don’t want to face that teacher without my homework done.”

  “I’m dropping out anyway,” said Mariah. “It’s okay for lions and leopards to choose victims, but it isn’t okay for us. We wouldn’t be doing it to survive. We’d be doing it to … to …”

  “To scare them,” said Andrew.

  “Are you going to do your homework, Andrew?” Mariah’s voice was below whisper. It was hardly even breath.

  Andrew whispered, “There’s some old lady that lives down the road from us. She’s half gonzo. She doesn’t ever remember anyone’s name, she just waves and waves like her wrist is stuck. She lives alone.”

  Mariah was horrified. A neighbor of his? Some peaceful old confused lady, and Andrew had chosen her for his ETS?

  “Have you done your homework, Mariah?” breathed Andrew.

  Mariah twitched.

  “Well, well, well,” said Julie-Brooke-Danielle. “What homework are we talking about?”

  Autumn flinched. The minute she was with her three dearest friends she felt like less of a person.