Catholic, Reluctantly (The John Paul 2 High Series)

by Christian M. Frank

  “Okay, okay,” George said, shrugging. “You better not have damaged anything, though.”

  J.P. put a friendly arm around George’s shoulders. “George, old buddy,” he said warmly. “You know I would never do something like that.”

  “I do?” George asked skeptically.

  When Allie got to school, the first person she saw was Liz, who was rummaging through her locker frantically. She looked up and yelled, “Hey, Allie! Have you seen my science book?”

  “Uh, no,” Allie shot back. “Good morning to you, too.”

  Liz only grunted in reply and turned back to her locker. “I can’t find it anywhere,” she muttered. “Knowing my luck, my mom will throw a pop quiz at us this morning. She’d have gotten the idea from Mr. Costain. How do you think you did on his quiz on Friday?”

  The memory of that didn’t improve Allie’s mood. “Don’t remind me,” she said. “I was totally lost. What the heck is a papal bull, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Liz said. “I almost put down that it was for the papal bullfighter.”

  Allie felt her insides sink. “Oh no,” she said.

  Liz looked at her, a broad grin on her face. “You didn’t think… it was a real bull, did you?”

  “How was I supposed to know?” Allie snapped. “I’m going to flunk out of this school, I just know it!”

  “No way,” Liz said. “Costain can’t afford to lose any students, don’t worry.”

  At that moment Celia burst out of the homeroom. “Liz! Liz!” she yelled, running over to them. She was holding a textbook in her hand.

  “You found it?” Liz turned around. “Oh, thank God, Celia! Where was it?”

  “No, no,” said Celia, skidding to a halt, “I didn’t find your book. Brian said you could borrow his. He said—” She giggled. “He said that he already read it all.”

  “Oh.” Liz pondered that for a moment. “Okay. Wow. That’s weird… Thanks, Celia.”

  “No problem,” said Celia happily. “Glad I could help.”

  Something about Celia’s voice, always so cheerful, rubbed Allie the wrong way. She brushed past both of them and started down the hall, muttering, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Wait up!” Liz said. “I have to go too! Come on, Celia. It’s a trend.” She slammed her locker door, and, much to her annoyance, they both followed Allie.

  “So, Allie,” Celia said as they walked down the bleak hallway and around the corner to the other wing of the school, “How did you do on the quiz on Friday?”

  “Celia,” Liz said quickly. “Don’t ask.”

  “Oh, well…” Celia sounded sympathetic. “Don’t worry too much about it. It’s only one quiz.”

  Allie knew better than to reply.

  They reached the bathroom doors, and Allie had just put her hand on the door handle when she hesitated. “Do you hear something?”

  They all hushed and listened. There was a strange, high-pitched sound coming from the bathroom.

  “What is that?” Celia asked.

  “Let’s find out,” said Liz. Pushing past Allie, she threw the door open. All three crowded into the bathroom.

  Allie shrieked. Celia and Liz laughed. All over the floor, in the sinks, and in the stalls, were crickets. Scores of little brown crickets,every one of them chirping happily.

  “Great! Just great!” Allie said after recovering her breath. She hated bugs of all descriptions, and dissecting crickets in biology hadn’t improved her opinion of them. “How am I supposed to go to the bathroom now?”

  “I can’t believe this!” said Liz. “Where did he get these?”

  Celia couldn’t stop laughing. “This is so funny!”

  Allie’s self-restraint snapped. “What’s so funny?”

  “They’re just so cute!” Celia gasped.

  A cricket jumped onto Allie’s shoe. She screamed in alarm, and shook her foot frantically. “Aah! Get it off, get it off!”

  This set the other girls giggling hysterically as Allie danced around, shaking her leg and squashing crickets by the score.

  “Stop, stop!” Celia said finally. “I’ll get it off.” She knelt down and examined Allie’s shoe. “He’s gone! Be careful not to step on any more of them. It’s the feast of St. Francis. We should be nice to animals today.”

  Allie’s irritation suddenly ballooned into anger. “I don’t care what feast it is, Celia,” she said savagely. “All I care about is that there are vermin in this trash heap of a school! You know it’s a trash heap! You just don’t want to admit it ‘cause your dad’s the principal!”

  There was dead silence at her words. Celia’s face turned white as she stared at Allie. Slowly she stood up and walked out of the bathroom.

  Liz turned to Allie, her face hard. “Why did you have to say that to her? She’s a better person than you are.” And she, too, left the bathroom.

  Allie stood there for a moment. Then, mechanically, she opened the bathroom door and re-entered the hallway.

  She felt the first waves of guilt come over her as she walked back up the hall. Probably that Truth person following me around, she thought. Man! I wish he would leave!

  Mrs. Flynn was manning the homeroom desk when George came in. “Mr. Costain’s going to be a little late,” she said. “He had to visit the county municipal office this morning.”

  A few moments later, the door banged open, and Liz and Allie came in. “Mrs. Flynn?” Liz said. “There are crickets in the bathroom!”

  “Crickets?” Mrs. Flynn said in surprise.

  “Hundreds of them!” Liz said. “They look like the ones you buy at a pet store.”

  Mrs. Flynn’s face darkened, and she glared at J.P. “Really?” she growled.

  J.P. looked up. “What was that?” he said distractedly. “Crickets?” His eyes widened. “Oh my gosh! It happened again?”

  “What happened again?” Mrs. Flynn said.

  “The poltergeist!” J.P. said in an awestruck voice. “He must have put them there! He must know it’s St. Francis Day today! We should have an exorcism!”

  “Oh, give me a break!” Allie spoke up for the first time, sounding very grumpy. “Why not just call an exterminator? You people are always so Catholic about everything!”

  “George,” Mrs. Flynn said, “Could you take a look at the girls’ bathroom?”

  Crisis in the school, so there’s suddenly a job for George to do. George got to his feet, wishing he wasn’t the student who appeared more competent than everyone else. Can’t someone else manage things for a change?

  But he went down the hall and turned the corner. Even before he got to the bathroom, he could see a few small brown specks on the hallway floor; specks that emitted soft chirps and occasionally hopped. Great. Crickets in the bathroom. This looks like a job for…me, apparently.

  He looked into the bathroom. There certainly were more crickets than he could hope to catch on his own. Maybe if I get a push broom, I can sweep them out the door. He headed up the hallway to the janitor’s closet.

  As he approached it, he heard another sound coming from behind the battered wooden door: soft sobs and snuffles.

  He opened the door carefully. Celia was huddled on the dirty floor of the closet, her eyes red. “Oh!” she said, and hastily got up. “George! I’m sorry, I…”

  “What’s wrong?” George asked. “What happened?” It took a lot to get Celia down.

  “Oh, nothing,” Celia said, embarrassed.

  “Come on, Seal, what happened?”

  Celia took a deep quavering breath. “It’s…everything , all together …” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “Dad just got back from the county office. He said that the building failed inspection again.”

  “Yeah, but that wasn’t unexpected, was it? So–?”

  Celia wiped her eyes. He could tell she was trying to put on a brave front. “I don’t know. Dad can’t figure out what to do. It doesn’t make any sense. My dad and Mr. Simonelli looked over the whole building befor
e we leased it. It wasn’t perfect, but there was nothing that couldn’t be fixed up. And now there’s all this stuff going wrong, and these people from the county are being so picky, it’s almost like they want us to fail…and then when we found the crickets, Allie said the school is like a trash heap, and it just hit me that she’s right, and I can’t help it at all, I just can’t. There’s nothing I can do about it.” She took a deep breath.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, not knowing what else he could say. “Don’t worry about it so much, Celia. Your dad and the other parents…they’ll get this stuff fixed. And even if they don’t…we can always have school in your dad’s basement or something.”

  Celia had to laugh at that. “What were you doing down here, anyway?”

  “Getting a broom to sweep the crickets outside,” George said.

  Celia giggled. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “Don’t squish them if you can help it; it would make an even bigger mess. And St. Francis would never squish a cricket.”

  “Right,” he said, grabbing a broom. “Maybe you better get back to class. I think first period has started.”

  After she had gone, George went straight to Mrs. Simonelli’s classroom, knocked, and then opened the door.

  Mrs. Simonelli was in the middle of a science lecture, with Brian, Liz, and J.P. sitting in the front row. She looked annoyed at the interruption. “What is it?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Simonelli,” George said. “But I need J.P. for a few minutes. It’s an emergency.”

  “What’s going on?” J.P. said to George as soon as they were out in the hallway.

  “Look, moron, you’re going to help me get those crickets out of the bathroom, right now, before anyone else finds out.”

  “What?” J.P. protested. “Why me? I don’t know anything about it! I keep telling you guys, it’s the polter—”

  “Shut up,” George said, lowering his voice. “You know the county might condemn this building! What if some of those county inspectors see those crickets? They’ll say the school’s infested with vermin, and that’s the last thing we need.”

  “Vermin?” J.P. said indignantly. “Those are high-quality crickets! They cost five bucks a box!”

  “You come with me,” George said, “And keep quiet.” He handed him the broom. “We’ll start with these ones in the hallway. You push them out, and I’ll hold the door.”

  Together they managed to get most of the crickets out of the hallway with the broom, catching the stragglers by hand. It was a long time before they got the last one out, and they hadn’t even tackled the actual bathroom yet.

  “Okay,” George said, wiping his brow. “Let’s keep going.”

  “But there’s still the whole bathroom!” J.P. whined. “Come on, we’ll never get them all out!”

  “Yes, we will,” George retorted. “And if you don’t like it, you can blame it on the poltergeist.” He pulled the girls’ bathroom door open.

  “Hold it right there!”

  Mrs. Simonelli was striding down the hallway towards them, her eyes narrowed in anger.

  “What do you think you’re doing? I’m surprised at you, George! I can understand J.P.’s behavior, but you… I don’t know what to say. The period’s almost over, and neither of you came back, and I sent Brian to the office to find you. Mr. Costain had no idea where you were. What is going on?” Mrs. Simonelli’s voice got louder as she got closer, her perfectly combed blond hair even stiffer than usual. “What are you doing in the girls’ bathroom? And what’s that sound?”

  At that moment, a cricket jumped past the door that George was still holding open. Chirping happily, it landed on Mrs. Simonelli’s black high-heeled shoe.

  Mrs. Simonelli let out a piercing shriek that echoed down the hall.

  It took Mr. Costain several minutes to restore order. “This is a very interesting way to celebrate the feast. We’ll work together to get them all out.”

  “I’m not touching them!” Allie said. “I’m scared of bugs, Mr. Costain!”

  “Excuse me, I signed up to be a student, not a janitor!” James said with haughty indignation. “If you can’t keep an infestation of insects from your plumbing…”

  “All right, all right,” Mr. Costain said. “Who wants to volunteer to help George? Anyone who doesn’t can come to my theology class and read over the latest papal encyclical.”

  George was strongly tempted to laugh as he watched the looks on everyone’s faces as they pondered the choice. In the end, everyone except for Allie and James volunteered to help clear the crickets out of the bathroom. George was glad that he didn’t have to deal with Allie—Celia looked a little better, but not completely her cheerful self.

  “Okay,” George said, after the others had gone and he found everyone looking at him expectantly for orders. “Brian and I will use brooms to get them out the door, and Celia and Liz, you catch any stray ones with your hands. J.P., hold the door open.”

  “And don’t squish any of them!” said Celia. “St. Francis wouldn’t like it!”

  “Yeah!” said J.P. “They were expensive.”

  It was the most fun any of them had ever had at school. George and Brian ended up doing most of the real work, pushing the bulk of the crickets out of the bathroom and down the hallway to the nearest door. Celia proved to be a woefully bad cricket-catcher; she was too concerned with not killing them. Liz had no such qualms.

  “Liz!” Celia shrieked at one point, after Liz dispatched a particularly jumpy cricket with a well-aimed stomp. “How could you?”

  Liz lifted her shoe and examined the brown smear on the floor. “He deserved to die,” she said. “Too hyperactive.”

  “J.P. better stay away from you then,” said George, and they all cracked up.

  “I got to hand it to you, J.P.,” Liz said, throwing two more outside by their legs. “That was a pretty cool stunt. It got us out of class, at least.”

  J.P. sighed deeply. “I keep telling you people,” he said with an air of injured dignity. “It wasn’t me. It was the poltergeist.”

  George yawned. “Give it a rest, will ya?”

  Brian frowned. “You shouldn’t joke about things like that. There are real poltergeists.”

  When the last cricket was finally out of the door, they walked back up the hallway. George was distracted until he overheard snatches of whispered conversation.

  “The next one has got to be really big.”

  “But no one can find out it was us.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw Liz and J.P. deep in discussion. He groaned. If they make this much trouble separately, what will they do together?

  Not my problem, not my problem. He remembered Celia sobbing, trying to save the school. He certainly couldn’t save the school, and he was irritated that everyone seemed to want him to.

  Can’t wait till wrestling practice, he thought.

  School was finally out. As he and Brian trudged through the woods to Sparrow Hills for wrestling practice, Allie’s warning kept ringing through George’s head. He had heard some real horror stories about hazing: everything from getting tied up and whipped, to being thrown naked out of school. He wondered what would happen to them, and whether he should warn Brian.

  Maybe she was exaggerating, he thought. Maybe nothing will happen. But he couldn’t help being anxious for Brian. Why do people do stupid things like that, anyway? I just want to wrestle.

  They emerged from the woods, Sparrow Hills looming up in front of them. Crossing the soccer fields and rounding the football stadium, they finally walked into the gymnasium where tryouts had been held. There were already several wrestlers in uniform there. Some of them were sparring with each other, some were doing push ups, sit-ups, and other exercises, and some were just hanging around. Mr. Lamar welcomed them, passed out school singlets and headgear for the rookies, and told them to get changed quickly for drill.

  In the locker room, surrounded by friends, Tyler Getz was just putting on his headgear when George and Bria
n walked in. He looked at them, flashed a brilliant smile, and held out his hand. “Hey there! New kids on the block!”

  George and Brian shook hands with him, and Tyler introduced them to the other squad members. All of them seemed to be veterans. “This is Flynt and Brock. I think you and Flynt have met before, Peterson.”

  George shook hands with all of them. He felt a little awkward about Flynt, who had looked so ticked off when George had beaten him in the tryouts. But now, all of the team members seemed to be pretty friendly. In fact, it was kind of strange how they all had big toothy smiles plastered on their faces. George didn’t like it. But Brian seemed relieved, and loosened up a bit as he shook hands with all of them. “Nice to meet you. It’s a pleasure.”

  “So,” Tyler said. “You two go to that school down the road. Isn’t it some sort of Mormon school or something?”

  “No,” George said, trying to sound casual. “It’s just a Catholic school.”

  Tyler shrugged. “Oh yeah. Mormon, Catholic, I don’t see any difference.”

  “Actually, there is a rather big difference,” Brian said. “The Mormon church was founded by Brigham Young and Joseph Smith in the 19th century. The Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ in the first century.”

  There was an awkward silence, and then Tyler laughed. “If you say so, buddy. Well, you two kiddies better get dressed.”

  George and Brian put down their gym bags and started pulling out their gear. George was into his singlet in about thirty seconds and was stowing his stuff in his assigned locker when Tyler leaned forward and said, “So, George, how does Allie like your school?”

  “I don’t know,” George said slowly. “All right, I guess.”

  “You guys seem to be getting along pretty well,” Tyler said. His voice and face were still friendly, but George sensed that, behind that smile, Tyler was studying him closely, gauging his reactions. “Do me a favor, will you? Tell her I said hi. We’re sort of going out.”

  “Sure,” George said, fiddling with the open combination lock on his door. Tyler pulled something out of his own locker, a magazine. “Hey Peterson, look at this!”