But some of them sure were.
Look, for example, at what was going in the yard on the school’s blind side, the side that faced a brick wall with no windows, the place where all the shit went down because no one in authority could see it unless they ventured out of their offices. It reminded Dooley of the Roman Coliseum he’d seen in some cheesy movie that for some reason had stuck in his memory. In the middle, two gladiators. Around the edges, the bored and bloodthirsty citizens. And somewhere, Dooley was willing to bet on it, there was an emperor ready to give thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Dooley told himself it was none of his business. What he should do was just walk on by. But what he actually did: he turned his head to take in the scene. He didn’t know what it was all about, but one thing was for sure, one of the guys in the middle was going to be fucked pretty soon. Two gladiators? Make that one stringy little Christian about to be eaten alive by one nasty looking old lion in the shape of a man. Well, a man-sized teenaged boy. The Christian was being played by a scrawny kid who obviously didn’t know a thing about fighting. He had his hands up, but they weren’t even curled into fists. Also, he looked scared, which was a big mistake because it only added to the confidence of the big guy with hands like mallets who was standing opposite him, staring him down, his mouth working, probably telling the guy how he was going to pound him into the ground like a tent peg.
The big guy was Mark Everley’s friend, a guy named Landers. He was taunting the scrawny kid. One of the spectators, standing close to Landers, but not in the middle of the semi-circle with him, was the only person in the whole school whom Dooley actually knew: Eddy Gillette. The first day Dooley had started school, he had been surprised to see Gillette there. He’d figured that first day was also going to be the last day he saw Gillette because Gillette wasn’t much of a regular school attender. But Dooley kept seeing him around, not every day but often enough to get the idea that Gillette was showing up more than he was skipping.
Dooley slowed his pace when he saw Gillette, but then he picked it up again. He had an appointment. Right after that he had to get to work. But before he did, he had to go home and grab his stupid video store T-shirt and his stupid video store name badge.
Gillette was saying something to Landers when he spotted Dooley. His expression changed and he turned away from the action in the semicircle to look directly at Dooley. After that it got weird. As soon as Gillette turned to look at Dooley, Landers turned to look at what Gillette was looking at. Then one of the people in the semi-circle turned to look. The person next to him turned to look at what he was looking at—and so on and so on and so on, until all of a sudden Dooley was the main attraction. Dooley glanced at the scrawny kid with his hands in the air. If the kid were smart, he’d cut out of there while everyone was looking at Dooley. But, it figured, the kid wasn’t that smart. He just stood there, waiting almost patiently for Landers to turn back to him, as if he knew, like the Borg, that resistance was futile. While Dooley was looking at the scrawny kid, Gillette turned and looked at him too. It took a moment, but Dooley finally understood. Gillette was wondering if the scrawny kid was a friend of Dooley’s. If he was, maybe Gillette would tell his pal Landers to leave the kid alone, at least while Dooley was standing there. Maybe he’d even get Landers to back off altogether.
Dooley glanced around at all the faces looking at him. Some of them he sort of recognized from some of his classes. A couple he was pretty sure he had seen at the funeral. But most were just faces, people he didn’t know, people he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know, people who had obviously all heard something about him. They were watching him and exchanging nervous glances, like they were wondering what he was going to do, probably wondering if he was going to produce a baseball bat out of thin air and let ’er rip.
Dooley kept moving.
Someone came around the side of the school. Principal? Vice principal? Teacher? Someone who could break things up?
No.
It was Beth. She was carrying a handful of paper and a tape gun, and she frowned as she took in what was happening. She started toward the semicircle, a determined look on her face. Dooley wished now that he’d been a hero, but it was too late. Someone else had stepped into that role—Rhodes. Dooley wondered where he had come from. He hadn’t noticed him and didn’t think he’d been standing there the whole time. Rhodes waded through the crowd until he was standing between Landers and the scrawny kid. He looked a little nervous, or maybe it was the way the sun caught the lenses of his glasses that accounted for the way he dropped his head a little and seemed to be looking up at Landers, even though he was as tall as Landers.
“Why don’t you leave him alone?” Rhodes said, his voice quiet, quavering just a little. He must have been sweating, too, because he reached up and pushed his glasses up his nose. Everyone strained forward, even Dooley, to see what Landers was going to do.
Landers was breathing hard. He glowered at Rhodes, clearly unhappy that his fun was being interrupted.
Rhodes turned to the scrawny kid and said, “Go on, get out of here.”
A buzz went through the crowd. Beth was staring at Rhodes. Dooley could just imagine what she was thinking—who knew they actually made guys like that outside of the movies?
Landers glanced at the guy he’d been ready to pulverize. He pivoted to look at Rhodes. He took in all the kids who were crowded around in a semicircle, his audience and his screen. Rhodes leaned in close to Landers and said something. A warning maybe? A threat?
Landers threw up his hands in a gesture of frustration and disgust. He did a slow one-eighty, checking all those faces. Then he curled his hands into fists and thumped Rhodes hard on the chest with them. Rhodes recoiled with the impact, like one of those bottom-weighted punching toys—you can whack them so that they look like they’re going to fall over, and then they do what Rhodes did: they rebounded. Rhodes didn’t back off or down. He stood with his own hands clenched, determined in his clean, pressed jeans, his light leather jacket, his kick-ass boots, and watched as Landers turned and elbowed his way through the spectators.
Rhodes reached out and touched the scrawny kid who seemed to be having trouble understanding what had just happened. He looked like Dooley had always imagined that dead guy Lazarus in the Bible must have looked like when Jesus brought him back to life. Think about it. You died—Dooley believed, he feared, there was a moment when you knew it was going to happen, what he called the aw-shit moment, the same as when you knew the cops had you good, only about a million times worse. That guy Lazarus, he must have known it was permanent lights out. Then the next thing he knows, he’s up and walking around again. Dooley had never figured out if that was a good thing or a bad thing. And anyway, why Lazarus? A better question: why only Lazarus? If you were that good, if you could raise the dead, why stop at just one?
“Go on,” Rhodes said. He nudged the scrawny kid to get him started. The kid blinked and stumbled toward the semicircle of spectators. Two girls reluctantly moved aside to let him through. Then the kid took off, and there it was, the sound Dooley hated, the sound of forty, maybe fifty, kids laughing at the kid, look at him go, sprinting for the side of the building like he believed his life depended on it.
Rhodes turned. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw Beth. He smiled at her and started toward her. Dooley walked away.
He spotted the first notice on a utility pole outside the school. Then he saw that notices just like it had been taped on every third or fourth pole for at least a block in all directions. He was sure Beth had put them there. He took a detour on the way home and saw them taped to the utility poles near the ravine, too. Lost: Red backpack with black trim. Net pockets on both sides. REWARD OFFERED. If found, please call… He ripped one off a pole mostly because it had her phone number on it, but he couldn’t imagine himself calling her. The thing about his life so far: it hadn’t allowed for many girls.
Seven
Kingston had one of those old-fashioned clocks, the kind that ticked and
tocked, measuring out the seconds and the minutes of nothingness every time Dooley stopped talking, the kind that bonged on the hour. Dooley shifted in the hard plastic chair and chanced a look at Kingston who, of course, was staring steadily at him. What a gig. Dooley wondered if all his patients were court-mandated like Dooley was. Dooley had to see Kingston once a week to discuss his progress. Kingston would look up when Dooley took a seat. He would toss out a question about some aspect of Dooley’s life. Dooley was supposed to spend his time answering it.
The problem, though: Dooley didn’t like talking about himself. He didn’t like talking about his fucked-up past, hated talking about his soul-sucking present—which in his opinion was being wasted in high school and at a part-time job that everyone assumed could be done just as effectively by a lobotomized orangutan—and hated reflecting on his nonexistent social life. But that’s what he was here to do: talk about how screwed up his life had been so far and strategize (Kingston’s word, not his) about how he could change it for the better.
The question of the day: “How is school going, Ryan?”
So far today Dooley had said nothing.
Nor had Kingston.
Dooley glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes down—it felt like ninety—and forty to go.
Kingston, his chin resting on one hand, his elbow propped up on the desk, looked impassively at Dooley through the round lenses of his rimless glasses. For all Dooley knew, the guy was composing a grocery list. Or maybe he was thinking about his wife. Kingston never talked about her—the one time Dooley had asked, Kingston had made it clear that he wasn’t there to talk, let alone to talk about himself. No, he was there to listen. To Dooley, Kingston always looked mildly bored. Dooley couldn’t blame him.
Once, at the beginning when Dooley was still pissed off that he had to attend these sessions, he’d kept his mouth shut and waited to see how long it would take for Kingston to break down and say something. It took sixty minutes. What Kingston said was, “Time’s up.” Then he said, “You have to come. You sit there and don’t say a word, I still get paid. But it works better if you say what’s on your mind.”
Works better for who? Dooley wondered.
Sometimes Dooley talked, usually fitfully, with long silences, usually about stuff that didn’t matter, like what a dork Kevin was, how dumb most school assignments were, why it was that teachers, even the younger ones, couldn’t seem to remember what it was like to be in high school (Dooley’s theory: all teachers, especially the younger ones, were people who had actually liked their high school years), and, once (and only once) what a hard-ass Dooley’s uncle was. Dooley had been mad that time. The situation: Dooley had just come off a long shift at work, all the customers with problems (“How many times do I have to tell you, I returned that movie on time?” “Yeah, I watched the whole thing, that’s how I know it sucks, I can’t believe I spent good money on that piece of shit, I want a refund.” “So what if my son has a membership card, I told you people, I said, put it in your computer, that kid is not to rent any more movies.” Blah-freakin’-blah). Dooley had arrived home, sweaty from the July humidity that had hung on long after the sun went down, pissed off at all the stupid customers, pissed off at Kevin who kept telling him to “smile, for Christ’s sake, make people think there’s half a chance you give a shit” (which Dooley didn’t), pissed off that he had to get up at seven-thirty the next morning to go to summer school—and there it was, an open bottle of beer sitting on the kitchen table beside a pair of big sunglasses and a silk scarf, which is how he knew that it was Jeannie’s bottle of beer. He listened for a moment, but didn’t hear anything, not a sound. So he picked up the bottle and tasted the contents.
Big mistake.
His uncle appeared the minute Dooley put the bottle to his lips, which made Dooley wonder if he’d been set up.
“We had a deal,” his uncle said.
“It was one sip,” Dooley said.
“One sip, one toke, one snort, one tab—I see it or smell it or hear about it and you’re out of here for good. You got that?”
Yeah, Dooley got it. Got it and told Kingston, Jesus, you’d think he’d rolled in smashed the way his uncle had reacted.
Kingston had peered at him through his rimless glasses.
“It was one sip,” Dooley said, and, boy, had it tasted fine. The beer hadn’t been long out of the fridge. It was still cold. Droplets of water had beaded up on the outside of the bottle. Jeannie must have set it down just before Dooley walked through the door; maybe she’d gone to the can. If Dooley had stood there long enough and listened hard enough and still hadn’t heard anything, he would have been sorely tempted to take another sip. And, okay, maybe another one after that. So what? It wasn’t even a whole bottle of beer. Geeze, on a good day, back before he’d come to live with his uncle, he could put away a twelve-pack without either passing out or puking. What was half a bottle?
Dooley glanced at Kingston’s old-fashioned clock again now. Thirty-five minutes to go.
“You go with a lot of girls when you were in high school, Doc?” Dooley said.
Kingston surprised Dooley—he answered—and then didn’t surprise him at all when he said, “No.”
Well, what do you know? Dooley and Kingston had something in common, even though Dooley bet it was for different reasons. He bet Kingston was one of those nerdy looking brainiacs who get picked on a lot but who don’t get much action. Dooley hadn’t got much either, so far. But mostly that was because he’d spent most of his time being otherwise occupied. So when he’d seen Beth in the video store back before he knew who she was or even knew her name and when he’d chatted with her—at her initiative—he was never sure where to take it. He’d thought: she probably has a boyfriend. He’d thought: what are the chances a girl like that would be interested in a guy who works in a video store? And before he could work his way up to maybe asking her out, there was her brother, dead. Then today she’d seen Rhodes play the white knight while Dooley played See No Evil.
Big deal. It’s not like anything was ever going to come of it.
She sure was pretty, though. And he enjoyed what she had to say about the movies she rented. A lot of times Dooley ended up taking them out and watching them himself after she returned them and, at first, was surprised at how much he liked them. Now he just took it as given that if she’d liked it, he’d like it too. So they had that in common, right?
Kingston sighed, the closest he’d ever coming to expressing what he was feeling, even if what he was feeling was boredom.
It turned out that wasn’t what was on Kingston’s mind.
Kingston put down the heavy fountain pen that he liked to write with and said, “You’re wasting your time and mine, Ryan, not to mention your uncle’s money.”
“What?” Dooley said.
“I’m going to recommend to your uncle that you stop coming here.”
“But I have to come here,” Dooley said. “It’s part of my plan.” He had to report regularly to a court-appointed youth worker. He had to go to counseling. He had to attend school. He had to stay away from alcohol and drugs. He had to stay away from certain people. He was supposed to hold down a part-time job.
“You have to attend counseling,” Kingston said. He had a dry way of talking, as if he were describing beige wallpaper or old asphalt. “It was initially recommended that you go to group counseling. Your uncle thought you would benefit from a more individualized approach.”
“My uncle?”
“He’s paying for this,” Kingston said.
Jesus. Dooley hadn’t given any thought to who was paying. He’d assumed it was just covered, that the court picked up the cost, or the system. It had never occurred to him that his uncle was footing the bill. Why would he do that?
“You report to my uncle what goes on here?”
Kingston shook his head. “What we talk about is between you and me.”
“What are you going to tell him about this?”
“That we’
ve made all the progress we’re going to make.”
“I still have to go to counseling.”
“I can refer you to some excellent group counseling programs if you’d like. So can your youth worker.”
Dooley’s uncle was not going to like this.
“I guess other people you see talk more than me, huh?”
“Most of them do, yes.”
“They fill out those papers too, huh?”
“The ones who are serious about making progress, yes,” Kingston said.
“Do you think I’ve made any progress?”
“Do you?”
Dooley had been coming to Kingston’s office in a small uptown medical building once a week for more than three months now. Kingston would ask him a question and most of the time Dooley would spend his time either talking about bullshit stuff or, if he didn’t feel up to that, just waiting Kingston out. Kingston was always giving him worksheets to fill out between sessions, exercises that were supposed to help Dooley reflect on his life, his attitudes, his behavior. They reminded Dooley of homework. He didn’t fill them out, didn’t even look at them. A couple of times Kingston asked about them. Dooley just said he forgot. And now here was Kingston basically firing him, which Dooley wouldn’t have minded so much if his uncle hadn’t been paying the bill all these months.
“How much?” Dooley said.
“How much what?”
“How much do you charge my uncle?”
It was one of those questions that, once he heard the answer, he wished he’d never asked.
“That much?”
Kingston nodded.
Multiply that by, say, twelve weeks … Jesus.
Dooley Takes the Fall Page 4