“Him who?” Hannah asked, then noticed her looking at the photo. Hannah’s sad smile vanished. “Maybe you need to mind your own business.”
Seven-Eighths smiled grimly and looked down at the purse again. “So you hate him, but you don’t want to hurt him.…” Her brain calculated this in silence, temporarily blocking out the constant background noise of prayers.
Hannah pulled the purse close to her hip, hiding the photo. She could guess what the girl was thinking now, and Hannah was tempted to let her imagine whatever she wanted. Why not allow some nasty rumor to spread? It’s easy to hate those who don’t love you back.
But Hannah didn’t really want that.
She leaned in close to the freshman, close enough to kiss. “Get those thoughts out of your weird little skull, Seven-Eighths. They’re a fucking sin.…”
The girl stood abruptly, and Hannah watched her scamper down from the rocks and fast-walk back along the edge of the restaurant. Being mean always made Hannah feel a little better.
* * *
The passenger door opened, and the dome light in Father Mercedes’s car came on. Then the door closed, and the vehicle was dark again except for the priest’s little orange cigarette ember. He started the car and drove out of the restaurant parking lot. It was late. He had been waiting a long time.
He looked over at the girl slumped in the seat beside him. “Well, what did she say?”
Seven-Eighths didn’t look up when she answered. She tried never to look at Father Mercedes. It was easier to do the things he asked if she didn’t have to face him—if she could just pretend their meetings were confession, in that little room, with a screen between them.
“I did my best, Father,” she said. “But you don’t need to worry. She said she didn’t know anything about you. And I tried hard to get her to tell me. I tried to trick her.”
The priest said, “You’re certain she’s telling the truth? She has nothing?”
Seven-Eighths told him, “Just that you were a … blank-blank.”
The priest rolled his eyes. “Just say the word.”
“She called you an ‘ass-hole,’” the girl said, as if it were two words. Then she crossed herself and thought a quick Hail Mary to cleanse.
Father Mercedes laughed, then coughed, breathing smoke through his nose as he smiled. If true, this was hugely comforting. Let Hannah read her toxic scribblings in front of everyone at the Hazing Picnic and scorch the world—as long as nothing could hurt him.
He stuck the cigarette in the corner of his smile and let it hang there as he drove Seven-Eighths back to her home. This was it. He was safe. He had been blessed by this type of relief once before, when the peril of discovery had been its strongest, when the anemic financials of St. Michael the Archangel had nearly exposed his petty crimes.
It had seemed like a tragedy to everyone else—the burning of the church—but from those ashes a grand disorder was born, and his misdeeds, his chronic theft, had been obscured by much greater loss. The windfall of insurance funds, though not enough to rebuild, had helped hide what he had taken. Now, he needed to make further amends, to shutter the school, to make St. Michael’s chapel rise again on the spot where it had once smoldered.
This blessing, this freedom from exposure in that strange girl’s notebook, was the first step. He had faith in that now. God was again watching out for Father Mercedes. He wondered what blessing would come next.
It happened to come immediately.
Father Mercedes drew on his cigarette, a deep, biting lungful, feeling alive. It made Seven-Eighths turn her face toward the door and ask permission to roll down the window slightly. She hated the smoke. It was how she imagined hell would smell, and the stink would be in her hair now when she was trying to get to sleep tonight.
Sarah “Seven-Eighths” Matusch truly did despise Father Mercedes, deep down in her heart. She knew he was cruel and manipulative, and that part of what she’d said to Hannah had been no lie. But sometimes we crave the love of those we’re afraid to hate.
“You might want to know one other thing…,” the girl said softly.
Father Mercedes grunted. “And what’s that?”
The glow of the dashboard cast dismal shadows on the angles of Seven-Eighths’ face. “I think Mr. Zimmer is having sex with Hannah Kraut.”
PART VII
The Other Way Down
FORTY-TWO
Peter Davidek stood by the classroom window, hands stuffed into his pockets, his blazer swept back at the sides, the red clip-on tie squared at his collar. The morning sky was tropical blue, and a breeze scented with fresh-cut grass swept in and lifted the bangs of his hair. Just next to the Tobinsville shopping center, he could see the yellow insects of earthmoving machines shifting around piles of gray slag from the Kees-Northson steel mill, and green waves of lush, wooded hills floated beyond the river, rolling on toward anywhere-but-here.
Mr. Mankowski was doing the homeroom roll call again. “Dahnzer, Missy,” he said, and a girl shaped like a pear with two pencils for legs said, “Present.”
The bald teacher looked squarely at Davidek’s back and said, “Davidek, Peter…” When Davidek didn’t answer right away, he said it again, louder.
Davidek replied, “Here.”
Mankowski went on and on, name after name, and when he got to “Stein, Noah,” he paused, as he always did, and was disappointed that Davidek wasn’t facing him. The teacher said it once more, just for the heck of it: “Stein, Noah.” But Davidek didn’t respond.
Mankowski wrinkled his mouth, then made a mark with his pen and moved on.
* * *
Hannah saw Davidek in the lunchroom, a rare appearance there for the radioactively unpopular girl. “You never came to the prom, Playgirl,” she said.
Davidek was holding an empty lunch tray. He told her, “I had trouble getting a ride.”
She scrunched her face. “Weren’t you coming with that fat kid from your class? I saw him there, hanging around with Bilbo and his buddies.…”
Davidek said, “Yeah … well, that fell through.”
“What happened? I was waiting and—”
Davidek shrugged. “It fell through, so you can threaten me or something, and I’ll say, ‘Sorry, Hannah, sorry … It wasn’t my fault. Please don’t!’ And then you’ll either do something to me, or you won’t.”
Hannah cocked her head, studying him. She almost looked hurt. Almost. Then it was gone, and she said, “You on the rag or something, Playgirl?”
* * *
Carl LeRose ambled over during study hall in the library, his fingers stuffed in the pages of a decrepit Advanced Biology textbook that was swollen with water damage from the flood. “Check it out,” the sophomore whispered, bending open the cover. “There’s a picture of a naked chick in it.”
Davidek looked over at the pages and winced. “She’s old,” Davidek said. “And what’s that on her skin?”
“Uh, some rash…,” LeRose said, scanning the caption: “Smallpox.”
Davidek pushed the cover of the book closed again as LeRose threw an arm over his back and shook him. “I came over here to cheer you up. Everybody’s talking about you these days. The hazing thing is coming up. They need to know—are you gonna help us get Hannah, or are you a pussy asshole coward?” He raised an eyebrow. Davidek looked bored.
LeRose settled into the empty seat beside him. (All the seats were empty around Davidek.) “Hannah has something on you, too, doesn’t she?” he whispered. “Just like the rest of us.”
“No,” Davidek said. “Turns out, I’m just a pussy asshole coward.”
LeRose bobbed his head. “I get it. You’re feeling a little pressure—okay. But I’m coming over here as your friend. And maybe the folks at this school aren’t treating you so nice, because they don’t know if they can trust you. I’m spreading the good word about you, though. I just need you to show some goodwill back.”
“You guys would just deny what Hannah writes anyway, so who
cares what she makes me say?”
LeRose drummed the table. “I still don’t want her to say it.… I could sit here and say your mama’s a whore, and what difference would that make? You still don’t want to hear it, right? Same way I don’t want her talking about me or my dad.”
Davidek leaned back in his seat. “I probably said this to you already … but does your dad really care what some random teenage girl says about him?”
LeRose poked a sausage finger into Davidek’s chest. “My dad is clean-cut all the way, but he’s coming to the picnic with some other parish Monitors, and some of his old school buddies are going to join him. Maybe my mom will come, too.… So I’d thank you very much if you can help me stop Hannah Kraut from throwing shit all over him.… You know?”
Davidek looked around the library. A lot of people were watching them. “Well, if your dad is such a fan of the school, he knows that on Hazing Day I don’t have much choice. I have to do what my senior tells me.”
“Apparently, I’m not being heard,” LeRose said, nodding patiently. “You saved my ass once, so I want to help you. I know Hannah’s terrorizing you, but what you need to think about are all the new Hannah Krauts you’re going to make for yourself if you don’t stand up against her and be a man. You’ve got three more years at St. Mike’s. Every person you let Hannah hurt is going to remember it. And when the time comes, they’ll be happy to hurt you back.”
LeRose nodded soberly, his eyes wide and heavy with adolescent gravitas. “They took out your buddy, didn’t they? You want to end up like Stein, too?”
Davidek’s jaw set. “So what should I do?”
LeRose leaned in close. “See, we’ve got a plan. But we need your help,” he said. “If you can’t resist Hannah openly, maybe you can help the rest of us in secret.”
Davidek raised his hands in the air. “Yeah. Fine. How?”
“Help us stop her for you. Fucking physically!”
LeRose made Davidek promise to keep quiet before continuing: “Some of the juniors—John Hannidy, Raymond Lee, Janey Brucedik—they got the idea that we use military intervention, if that’s what it takes. Just like over in Desert Storm. Only this is Fuckslut Storm.” The chunky sophomore snorted at the term. “A bunch of seniors are on board now, too. Prager and Strebovich told me they’re ready to kick Hannah’s ass if that’s what it takes. And they’re like your buddy Stein—they don’t even care about hitting a girl.”
Davidek squinted, and LeRose went on: “We’re gonna jump her the morning of the picnic. Before she shows up at the park, we’re gonna grab that bitch and turn her upside down and shake her until that fucking notebook falls out. Then we take the notebook and fucking destroy it. Nobody at the picnic is the wiser. You get off scot-free. As far as she knows, you had nothing to do with it. Secretly, though, you’ll be helping us.”
“Again—how?”
“We need you to find out what she has. Not really the secrets and all that, but what it looks like, this notebook: a binder, a bunch of crumpled-up drawings like a crazy guy in a shack would write? Photographs, scribbles … Whatever. Anything she’s going to shove you onstage with. We just want to be sure we take everything she’s got. No surprises.”
Davidek said, “I have no idea what she has.”
“Then find out,” LeRose said, standing up. “It’ll be good for you.”
“What if she tells somebody you ganged up on her?” Davidek asked. “What if she calls the cops or something?”
LeRose laughed and rolled his eyes. “I love you, man, but you’re one dense dude.… Remember? My dad knows the cops. They owe him. And the cops wouldn’t like what Hannah’s up to anyway. So let her complain. We’ll already have the notebook at that point.”
“And what if she tells the teachers?”
LeRose said, “Look, that’s another thing you just don’t get. The people in charge don’t want any of her shit. Not with these Parish Monitors around. They want to have a place to fucking work next year. Understand?”
LeRose mussed Davidek’s hair. “You worry too much,” he said. “This will work. And you’re gonna wanna kiss me. Because everybody is going to fucking love you when it’s done.”
Davidek considered this. It would be nice to feel protected. To be watched out for. For months he’d been fretting over this. Now he finally had a way out.
“Fine,” Davidek said.
LeRose messed up his hair again and kissed him on top of the head.
FORTY-THREE
A week went by, but Davidek hadn’t delivered anything useful.
Everybody seemed willing to give him some time, since LeRose assured them he was on their side, but others weren’t so sure. Bilbo and his Stairwell Boys were in their usual spot, drinking Cokes, telling jokes, and staring up through the big void stretching three stories above them when talk turned to Davidek. Bilbo mentioned that Green and he were pals.
This piqued the interest of Michael Crawford, who kind of hated the way Bilbo, Alex Prager, and Dan Strebovich had made a pet out of Green. This chubby, black freshman, best friends with seniors? Stupid. But they loved Green. Whatever.
“So how good a friend are you to this Peter Davidek guy?” he asked.
Green’s face scrunched, like his soda just turned to sour milk. “We’re not what I’d really call friends anymore, guys.”
Bilbo said, “But he’s a good guy, right?”
Green shook his head. “He’s a piece of shit, actually.”
This lit a fire in Crawford. Resentment had been building up for months in the handsome, dashing senior as his senior year sputtered out into nothingness. The basketball team he captained had sucked. He was graduating without distinction in the middle of his class, while the valedictorian would most likely be his girlfriend, Audra Banes, who was beginning to grow as tired of him as he was of himself. He hated her increasingly thick thighs, and just because she was class president didn’t mean she had to wear those damned black-rimmed glasses to make herself look smarter. She was the cheerleading captain, for God’s sake. Show some goddamn sex and sass!
Still, he didn’t want to lose her, even though that was bound to happen when she moved to Rhode Island in the fall to attend Brown. He was sticking much closer to home—at St. Vincent’s in Latrobe, way out in the sticks beyond Pittsburgh. He didn’t get into Brown.
Crawford had always been the smartest boy in his class, the most charming … the leader. Yet now he felt like nothing was in his control. This Hannah thing felt like a chance to salvage his reputation. “So you think we can trust this Davidek guy—or not?” he asked.
Green just shrugged, and tipped back his Coke. “I wouldn’t.”
* * *
After another week of no progress, Crawford’s warnings about Davidek started to spread alarm. John Hannidy pinned Davidek in the corner of the hallway one morning, while his friend Raymond Lee bent the freshman’s arm behind his back. “You promised you’d help us, but we’re starting to think you’re a fucking liar,” Lee drawled.
Hannidy’s girlfriend, Janey Brucedik, folded her arms over her scrawny chest as she paced behind them, keeping an eye out for Parish Monitors and their ubiquitous little notepads. “I say he’s too much of a pussy,” she said.
“Why don’t you guys just ban her from the picnic?” Davidek’s smooshed mouth asked as his lips tasted the metal of the locker. “Or cut the mic when it’s her turn?”
“We’ve already thought of that, genius,” Janey said.
“Do you want to be the one to tell her?” Hannidy asked.
“Nobody wanted to step into that line of fire alone,” Raymond added.
Of course, that’s why they had to stop Hannah as a school, as a collective—dozens of kids, not just the three of them. Hannah couldn’t get revenge against everyone. But first they needed Davidek to do his part and tell them what they were looking for.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re afraid she knows?” Davidek sneered.
The three student coun
cil members, who as juniors had spent the year covering up irregularities in the student activities fund they’d been skimming from, shared a worried look. Then Hannidy punched Davidek in the stomach.
* * *
Other seniors tried to win him over with kindess.
A few days after Davidek was manhandled by Hannidy, two other juniors named Will Framalski and John Jay came forward and asked Davidek if Hannah knew about their little marijuana-dealing operation. Secretly, they also feared Hannah might know that they’d been supplying Alexander Prager, the onetime basketball team high-scorer, with anabolic steroids. (The drugs had made him not only thick with muscle, but lately quick to violence.) His juicing was one reason for the team’s losing season, since the thickening muscle mass that helped in baseball and football only slowed him down on the basketball court, where speed was more precious than mass. The dealers just hoped graduation came before Prager realized this.
Framalski pressed a small plastic bag into Davidek’s hands. Inside were three tight joints.“It’s a gift,” he said. “Just, you know, make sure Hannah ain’t gonna say anything about us.”
“You help us, we’ll keep you stocked. Cool?” John Jay added.
Davidek, fearing immediate arrest, dumped the joints in the second-floor toilet and flushed them.
* * *
Days passed, and he hadn’t spoken to Hannah once. With the picnic just two weeks away, student after student pestered him, all of them losing patience with his excuses. Then one afternoon during Religion class, the door opened and brutish Mary Grough stuck her face in. “Ms. Bromine, the office sent me up here to get Peter Davidek.”
Bromine looked at the boy, sitting quietly in the back row, fiddling with his clip-on. “Well … get going!” Bromine said.
Davidek walked outside, and Mary closed the door behind him. A group of other upperclassmen stood silently in the hallway—Bilbo and his stairway pals, Streb and Prager. Morti and his Fanboys. Carl LeRose was with Hannidy, Janey, and their blubbery third wheel Raymond. Mary Grough took her spot beside her sister and their friend Anne-Marie Thomas. Audra Banes was in the center of the group, surrounded by her own coterie—Allissa Hardawicky, Amy Hispioli, and Sandy Burk. Michael Crawford scuffed his foot on the tile, sourly hanging near the back.
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