Night School

by Caroline B. Cooney

  The instructor’s smile went farther than the edges of his face: Its cutting edge moved out into the room, like a moonlit scimitar. Julie got away this time, his smile said.

  Who will I be friends with now? Thought Autumn, in anguish. I can never face Julie. Bad enough that I handed her over to my own Night Class, but now she’s going to be assigned to stronger more vicious Night Classes, until they catch her and finish her off. How can I be part of Julie-Brooke-Danielle ever again? How can I possibly rejoin the old ways and the old places?

  “You can’t, of course,” said the instructor. “Once you’ve joined the class, it closes behind you, and there is no way to drop out. There’s no point in pretending otherwise. The only way to go is forward.”

  Forward toward what? thought Mariah. She had lost the mainstay of her life: her daydreams. She had nothing with which to fill the space, not even Andrew. “Well, I don’t care,” she said, because she didn’t, “I’m dropping out. We should never have scared somebody once, never mind twice. I quit.”

  “There is no dropping out,” the instructor repeated.

  “Yeah?” said Mariah, pressing her flat hands against her thighs. “And what are you going to do about it?”

  His laugh rang like a peal of bells in a distant tower. His laugh clanged in their ears: a huge bronze metallic laugh. “Mariah, Mariah,” he said, tolling his bell, “I will assign Bevin, of course.”

  “You can’t do that,” whispered Mariah.

  “Mariah, Mariah, remember how many classes I have, and how many beginners need an ETS like Bevin.” The instructor’s laugh grew smaller and smaller, till it had become round and friendly and chuckly. “Don’t forget your homework,” his voice said. His body, if he had ever had one, was gone. The form and shape of him was gone. Only his voice and his power were left. “Supply me with an ETS next week, or I will choose my own.”

  They were alone, in a classroom whose walls were decorated with the usual paper debris of school: posters, charts, maps, graphs, order forms, photos.

  Ned thought of elderly people, alone and afraid. Of the anxious first to arrive at night meetings in empty buildings, pretending to be sure of the dark. Of little kids whose parents got home after dark, little kids alone in the house with the television and the snacks … and Night Class sifting through the walls.

  Andrew tried to wet his lips enough to make speech possible. The effort exhausted him. “There’s an old lady who lives near us. We can use her. Nobody cares about her.”

  Chapter 11

  “LET ME IN!” SHOUTED Julie. She shook the knob vigorously, and kicked the door.

  Nothing happened.

  She had been here before. Years ago, in elementary school, before the group had solidified, and Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle ceased to go anywhere but each other’s houses, she remembered a birthday party here, and an egg hunt in the backyard, getting seconds of cake in the kitchen.

  The night was very dark. She had no idea where steps or slopes or roots might be, and yet she ran, fearless of falling, thinking only of wrenching a door open.

  It was fear of what might have happened since the phone call that filled her. She felt herself getting solid, as if she were a plaster copy of herself.

  She thought of a hundred things she should have done: called the police, called the ambulance, called the parents …

  The kitchen door was unlocked. Julie raced inside, yelling, “Bevin! Where are you? Bevin!”

  He was right in front of her, surrounded by an array of kitchen utensils, including knives.

  But he was unhurt.

  Julie flung herself on him, hugging and holding, squeezing him tight enough to bruise ribs, his and hers, and he said in astonishment, “You came.”

  “Of course I came.”

  “But you were a wrong number,” said Bevin.

  Julie kept holding, not sure whether she was holding Bevin for Bevin’s sake or for hers. If she hung on tightly, she could keep him from danger. He could not hurt himself. Finally she let go of his shoulders and instead grabbed his wrists, feeling the pulses, surprised as always that pulses were off on the sides, instead of the middle where you’d expect a pulse to be. His heart was pumping steadily. The blessed normalcy of health.

  “Would you really have done anything, Bevin?” She thought: I can’t use the word, even though I’m here and that’s why I came and that’s why I had to drive so fast. Then she thought: I have to use the word. I have to admit it. We’re all going to have to admit it. She said, “Would you have committed suicide, Bevin?”

  “I don’t know.” His eyes were very blurry and she thought that it was not with tears, but confusion. Confusion deeper and more extensive than anything Julie had ever felt. In her entire life she had certainly never thought of ending her life. How big did despair have to get for a boy to reach the point of just not wanting to be there?

  She found herself feeling incredibly attached to Bevin, incredibly emotional toward him, for he had chosen her to save him.

  “I was looking for Mariah,” said Bevin. “I don’t know why I thought she would be at your house.” Bevin sagged and his wrists seemed to grow thinner in her tight grip. “Mariah’s always wanted to be friends with the four of you,” said Bevin. “I guess somehow I thought she pulled it off. I don’t know why. I feel as if she’s been around you lately. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  “You didn’t bother me,” said Julie. Her eyes were so full of tears that their blurriness matched. “You honored me,” she said. “I’m not a very nice person. I don’t think anybody else would have thought of me to be the rescuer.”

  Julie knew that Bevin had not thought of her to rescue him. He had been thinking of his sister. And yet she felt it was no wrong number; it had been meant; she had been meant to pick up that phone and come here. She was meant to do something good for a change.

  She looked around the unfamiliar kitchen. She needed to do something comforting, but what? Her mother was a big fan of soup: Chicken noodle was the comfort food in their house. Julie could not imagine herself opening a can of chicken noodle, heating it up and the two of them trying to spoon that down.

  She said, “We need to be out in the world where it’s normal.”

  “I don’t want to be out in the world,” said Bevin. “Normal is horrible. That’s the trouble, Julie. I’m afraid of normal. Other people are so mean.”

  “They outgrow it,” said Julie, and knew that she had outgrown it. Being mean in order to entertain herself had slipped away like a snakeskin. I was a snake, she thought. I hope I’ve metamorphosed into something better. What kind of person would Julie be if Julie were nice?

  To every thing there is a time. Time to be nice.

  “We’ll go get pizza,” she said. “Come on. We’ll have hot food, there’ll be music, we’ll dance, we’ll laugh, and I’ll bring you home when your family’s back.”

  “You don’t want to dance with me,” said Bevin, actually managing a real expression on his face.

  “I’ve actually never had a date,” said Julie. “I’m too mean. Boys walk away from me.”

  “They’ll really walk away from you if you associate with me,” said Bevin. There was no bitterness in his voice. No anger. Just acceptance. He was such a loser that to be with him was to be a loser.

  Julie had helped put Bevin there. She had picked on losers big time. She had prided herself on the creation and feeding of losers. “Bevin, please. Please do this for me. I have to start over tonight. I feel as if I went to class tonight, or something. Had some huge lesson.”

  “I’m not your homework,” said Bevin.

  “Good. You sound angry,” said Julie. “I think that’s better. I think when suicides start talking mad, they’re feeling better.”

  “I’m not a suicide.”

  “Good. Let’s go have pizza. I’m starving. I need company. You wouldn’t believe what a night I’ve had.”

  “I didn’t have a great night, either,” said Bevin, quite annoyed that J
ulie was claiming a worse night than he’d had. How weird it felt to sit in Julie’s car. Like somebody in a different building on a different day in a different body.

  He could not imagine how he had made a connection with Julie, of all people. He was foggy about that phone call. His desperation had been so great he’d had to talk with somebody, and somehow he’d thought that on the telephone, Mariah would listen, would even hear him, would see him, as opposed to real life where Mariah seemed to live in some other world.

  I suppose we all live in some other world, thought Bevin.

  Remembering the real world, he said, in some embarrassment, “Julie, I don’t have any money.”

  “My treat.”

  They looked at each other, the hard beauty of Julie and the whipped exhaustion of Bevin, and knew that it was a treat. A gift from somewhere else. Julie’s treat to be asked to help, and Bevin’s to have been helped.

  Where did it come from? thought Julie. The phone call. The timing. The memory of Bevin’s kitchen door. It’s as if something good was sort of hanging there, like a guardian angel, ready to jump in and tell me what to do. “What kind of pizza do you like?” said Julie.

  “Not white pizza,” said Bevin. “You might as well have toasted cheese sandwiches. I want mine dripping with tomato sauce and olive oil.”

  The evening wore on for Andrew, Autumn, Ned, and Mariah: more Coke, more pizza, more high-pitched chatter, because nobody wanted to go back out into the dark night and see who they were.

  Night Class had been very brief. It took little time to terrorize somebody. Or fail at it, as they had with Julie.

  Autumn felt as if her friendships, so rock solid, had turned to water. She herself had poured them out on the ground, and they had disappeared into dry cracks and were gone forever. Whatever else Julie-Brooke-Danielle had been, they had been friends. And Autumn had turned on the friendship, offered it up, used it.

  Mariah felt like an old stone building in ruins. She was pillars and columns lying broken on the grass. She who had wanted a life of sunshine, who had never thought much about the dark, was now partly living there. I am in the dark, thought Mariah, and I am the dark, and I bring the dark. “Andrew, we can’t pick on some old lady. We can’t do it. Especially if nobody cares about her. Somebody has to care about her. It’ll have to be us.”

  “What else can we do? What about Bevin?”

  “I’ll have to stay with Bevin somehow,” said Mariah. “Protect him.”

  “Maybe we could protect Bevin in shifts,” said Ned. “The four of us could take turns.”

  Andrew’s sitting here wishing that this wasn’t happening, thought Mariah, but Ned’s willing to work on a way out. Does Andrew, the real Andrew, measure up to my secret crush Andrew? Does the real Andrew even matter? What matters here is the next ETS. Suppose we do manage to protect Bevin somehow. What about this old lady of Andrew’s? How do you stop a Night Class?

  Classes can’t be stopped. You can’t pass the threshold of night school unless the instructor lets you. They can’t be exposed; they are only shadows. They can’t be arrested; they’re only sound. It’s like prejudice. Hard to destroy.

  Autumn said, “Mariah. Your brother’s here.”

  Mariah said, “Autumn. He’s with Julie.” It was Ned who raised his hand, and waved, and yelled, “Over here! Here we are!”

  Andrew thought the weirdest thing was that Julie should be glad to see them. When he was shadow and sound, Julie had almost known Andrew. Julie had almost recognized the four of them, shadows on her deck. But here was Julie laughing with relief and delight, pulling Bevin along like her own kid brother, jamming herself and Bevin into the booth. Here was Julie, as always taking complete charge whether anybody asked her to or not, making Autumn sit with Mariah and Andrew, and squeezing herself and Bevin into the booth with Ned on the other side.

  Andrew almost wanted to confess. It was me, he wanted to say, I was the one who scared you.

  But Julie did not appear in the least scared of anything. “You guys look rattled,” she said. “What happened? Did you have some close-call car accident? Is everybody okay?”

  Mariah said, “Bevin? What—um—what—?”

  “You wouldn’t believe,” said Julie.

  Bevin put his hand on Julie’s. “Julie. No. Okay?”

  “No what?” said Julie.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “This is your sister,” said Julie. “She was the one you meant to call.” Julie leaned across the table, elbowing up into a confiding position that the rest immediately copied, so their arms made a tent for their chins, and they could talk close and quietly. “Bevin telephoned my house looking for you, Mariah. It was so strange. I mean, that he should have thought of my phone number to reach you. You’ve never even been to my house, Mariah. But it was great good luck. Because I was able to get over to your house in time.”

  “In time for what?” said Mariah.

  “You have to tell, Bevin,” said Julie. “If you don’t, I will.”

  “It’s not their business.” Bevin was ready to escape, but Julie had wedged him in too tightly against Ned.

  “It sure is Mariah’s business,” said Julie. “Mariah, did you know that your brother isn’t even attending school? He’s so depressed and people pick on him so much that he just gets out of the car with you and waves good-bye to your mother and then he goes home and goes back to bed for the whole day.”

  Mariah forgot Night Class. She forgot the instructor and the homework and the entire world except her brother. “Oh, Bevin,” she whispered, “I knew it was bad, but I pretended it wasn’t that bad.” She took his hands across the table. I pretend too much, she thought. I’m giving it up. Daydreams have their place, but not that much of a place. No more secret lives. I have to live where my brother lives, and see him and listen to him.

  It was Julie who had seen and listened, who had run fast enough to save.

  Julie, whom Mariah and Ned and Autumn and Andrew had specifically chosen and marked out and stalked.

  Julie drove Bevin and Mariah home so they could tell their parents. “We can’t tell Mom and Dad,” said Bevin, horrified. “Dad will be furious. He doesn’t want me to be this kind of person.”

  “I’ll bet he wants you alive, though,” said Julie quietly. “I’ll bet he’d rather have you rescued than lose you.”

  Andrew, Autumn, and Ned stared at the crusts of their pizza, and the single remaining cold, congealed wedge. Ice melted in their glasses and used napkins bled tomato sauce.

  “The instructor was right,” said Autumn. “It’s always a surprise. You don’t know who is brave. You can’t tell until you get there. Julie is brave all the way through.”

  “I don’t think Night Class can hurt any of them now,” said Ned. “Because they’re strong, and I think you have to choose the weak. Julie and Mariah and even Bevin now, they aren’t weak. The way Tommy and Sal aren’t weak, either.”

  “That’s why we signed up for Night Class,” said Autumn, suddenly understanding. “We’re weak.”

  Ned had always known that he was weak. He would not have categorized Andrew that way, ever. Nor Autumn. Ever.

  “I can’t stand to think of myself that way,” said Andrew. “I am not weak. I’m the class leader. The Most Likely To Succeed.”

  “Do you think if we just don’t show up at Night School that it will be over with?” said Autumn. “Even though the instructor said you can’t drop out, Mariah just dropped out. For good.”

  “That’s it, you know,” said Ned. “For good. That’s the key. You have to do things for good.” He swirled ice shards at the bottom of his soda glass. “We do have to drop out, but we have to tell the instructor. We have to give our reasons.”

  “Reasons,” said the instructor, “do not matter.”

  The instructor was sitting next to Ned.

  The instructor had simply materialized, out of nowhere, and he was less clear than he had ever been: a darkness, a wraith,
a smell of sewage. People in booths around them got uncomfortable and looked away, and left early.

  “You are members of my Class and you will stay members of my Class.”

  “But what are you?” whispered Autumn.

  “I’m Evil. I come in any form that works, of course. Vampires and street gangs—we’re all the same. You are fond of school, so I came as an instructor.”

  “Go away.”

  “You can’t get rid of me. You can stop seeing me if you like, or stop doing your homework, but you can’t get rid of me.”

  The smile was triumphant. It hung as the moon hangs in the sky, a sharp-tipped curl in the dark.

  Andrew the watcher, Mariah the dreamer, Ned the loser, thought Autumn. And what am I? Am I an obedient follower? Will I just say, Guess I’d better do my homework on time then.

  Autumn thought of Bevin, whose dark had been so much darker than they had known; whose dark had needed no Night Class to shatter it; for whom the lack of friends had been dark enough.

  She thought of herself, who had turned on a lifelong friend so swiftly, so easily, telling herself the friend deserved it.

  She thought of Andrew’s elderly neighbor, some poor old woman struggling to get through each day—and how Night School would see to it that one night, the old woman didn’t make it.

  “No,” said Autumn flatly. “We won’t do it anymore. We’re dropping out. So get lost.”

  “You cannot lose me,” said the instructor. “You made a choice.”

  Choice.

  “Oh!” cried Autumn. “I understand now. The Scare Choice. It isn’t the victim you were talking about. That isn’t the choice! The choice is us! We chose to do it.”

  Ned sucked in his breath, understanding her. “You get a choice,” whispered Ned. “Pick on people or don’t pick on people. Be kind or be cruel. Watch it happen or stop it from happening. You have a choice.”

  “We made the Scare Choice,” said Autumn, “and we were wrong. We are dropping out. For good.”