A Hole in Juan (19 page)

“But did she—I don’t recall—been a while—did she have an army?”

I shook my head. “Acted alone. It got her in a lot of trouble with the king.”

The King of Philly Prep worried for a moment. “The classics,” he said, back to blustering. “People should not twist the classics to suit their own—are you certain you don’t know what this is about? Why doesn’t it say what it is? Why doesn’t it say what it wants? It says to join—but it doesn’t even say how to do that!”

“Kids,” I murmured.

He huffed as if building up steam, but he couldn’t find pur-chase. “I will investigate this further on my own,” he finally said.

“Thank you for your time. Mustn’t keep you.” He looked at his watch, which hung, along with the fake Phi Beta Kappa key, on a chain across his wide belly. “School day’s about to start.”

I didn’t see why he had to check the time. Surely the noisy onslaught of students pouring through the door not five feet away from us could have convinced him school was about to begin. On fine days, high school students did not spontaneously burst into a schoolhouse before they had to. But as usual, he wasn’t overly sensitive to what was going on right around him.

Besides, he loved any excuse to use that pocket watch, that gold chain, that fake award.

After he’d walked back to the office, I inspected the Antigone 149

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Brigade’s announcement to see if I’d missed anything. But even with the lost notebook announcement moved off it, it simply announced its existence and invited others to join, saying nothing about what it stood for or intended to do.

With my new awareness of the adolescent subterranean communication system, I knew that most of the school population would be able to fill in the blanks. Further, they’d know that the faculty, lumbering around outside the loop, would be left in the dark.

I’d forgotten to turn my cell phone off, and it rang. I was glad I answered, because it was Mackenzie, whose voice I am always glad to hear.

“Sodium,” he said by way of greeting.

“The same to you,” I said.

“Remember, last night, you told me about the girl in the lab and how she thought Reyes said ‘Oh, no!’ right before being blasted?”

I certainly did. Once Pip was on his sofabed, watching TV

with earphones on so the sound wouldn’t bother us, I’d filled in the blanks.

“Just remembered a little high school chemistry and sodium explodes when a rush of water hits it, or it’s tossed into water. If he turned on the faucet, leaned in to put out his cigarette in the water, and saw what was directly below it—he’d say something. He’d know what was about to happen. Does that make sense?

It did. And I didn’t think I’d told Mackenzie about the missing sodium. “How did you know that?” I asked.

He chuckled. “I figured it had to be something pretty acces-sible that combines with water, given the sink and the ‘oh, no!’

and I suddenly remembered high school. Given the glass was all over, and his cuts, it must have been sitting there in a jar or something. We were . . . scientifically curious, but nobody got hurt.

Gotta run,” he said, “but I wanted to tell you, for whatever it’s worth, before I forgot.”

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I thanked him, hung up, turned off the phone, and walked upstairs to my room.

It made terrible sense. And it meant the note that said the explosion had not been an accident had been written by somebody who knew the truth and was trying to speak it.

Including the prediction that “something worse” was about to happen.

Fourteen

Ididn’t know what to do with this new knowledge, except look and listen until I understood what it might mean. And in the meantime, it did not seem wise or kind to spread my anxieties. I didn’t know what else would happen or when, and I couldn’t protect any of us against it or make any sort of rational accusation.

I’d call the police later, and they would politely sneer. “Something bad,” “sodium,” “um-hm . . .” And they’d already know about the sodium because I assumed they took samples of the glop on the floor.

It seemed best to stick to today’s plan for as long as I could and that, of course, was to foment a revolution.

I didn’t have to rouse any eleventh grade rabbles. Cheryl Stevens was their classmate. They knew about her problems and the solu-GILLIAN ROBERTS

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tion she’d chosen without my saying a word. She’d told enough of them (which may have meant only one), and now they were all enraged.

“It was a good poem,” a chubby girl named Ginger said. “It made me feel sad and it made me think.”

Of course, that was its crime in Havermeyer’s eyes.

All I had to do was give them a forum for their indignation and outrage. I murmured that their sentiments were shared by the seniors, and I mentioned the notice about the Antigone Brigade. But they knew about the brigade already, so my actions hardly constituted authentic agitation. If they wound up in a ker-fuffle, it would pretty much be because they’d arrived in one.

It was fun, moving from class to class, building on the rumors that had crisscrossed the school. Perhaps I had invented a new occupation: inside agitator. Cheryl Stevens became a rally-ing cry, a promise. All I had to do was prey—or, more politely, build—on their innate disdain for whatever adults had done, to set their adolescent energy free and watch it be ignited by righteous indignation.

No wonder so many of the world’s most appalling revolutionaries were practically children. They’re ready and eager for almost anything—as long as it doesn’t smack of being a part of the established norm, and in this case, the curriculum.

It was almost too easy to get them going, and only now and then did I wonder if all boneheaded rabble-rousers were as convinced of their rightness as I was. I’d seen tragedy defined as the deadly clash of “right and right.” I pushed that idea away. How can you think of yourself as radical if you’re basing your argument on the Constitution of your country?

At lunch, Louis Applegate made it a point to sit as far from me as possible—not that I minded in the least—and to avoid all eye contact. Fine with me. I tried to psych out the rest of the faculty, to see if I was a demon in their eyes, too, but I couldn’t get a feel for it. What I thought I sensed was fear. They knew about 153

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Cheryl, and I didn’t want to believe they thought the treatment of her “infraction” was correct. But jobs were few and far between, and boat rocking was frightening. Their polite table talk was forced and stilted.

I felt as if weights had been put on my head. Not that our situation here was world shaking, but it was, on a small scale, a good example of how repression takes over. With jobs and security at stake, who speaks up?

The silence also gave me a moment’s pause about what I was doing, but turning back didn’t feel possible. I didn’t know what would happen when the axe actually fell, but having decided to put my neck in position for the executioner, I wasn’t about to move it. However, I didn’t want to sit and feel the chill any longer than was necessary, so I ate quickly and excused myself to take a short walk. The air would help clear my head.

I didn’t make it past the office. Harriet swooped out and grabbed the corner of my sweater, saying, “Look! Here she is!”

“Who?” I asked.

“You! Here you are—I recognized the blue sweater and guess what? Mrs. Wilson’s here—she just popped in and wants to see you.”

“Now? I was going for a walk.” By this point, the solid and intent Mrs. Wilson faced me, nodding.

“Thought I’d have more time today,” she said in a rapid clip,

“but things piled up. I was on my lunch hour and realized this was it—now or never—so here I am. Let’s talk.”

No wonder her son was so good at sports. He’d have had to learn to run fast to avoid this human dynamo. Not a syllable asking if this was a good time for me.

I tried again. “I was just going outside for some fresh—”

“Good. We’ll walk together. Too many students here anyway and this is sensitive.”

I was feeling fairly sensitive myself, but with Harriet rolling her eyes in the background, I meekly accompanied Wilson’s GILLIAN ROBERTS

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mother out the front door. I wasn’t sure my blue sweater was warm enough but the woman would not have tolerated indecision, so I walked out, shivering in the brisk air.

“Mrs. Wilson, I’m sorry, but I don’t have much time before—”

She held her hand up before I had finished the sentence.

“Serenity.” She walked briskly, as if we had to reach a goal before my time ran out.

I thought “Serenity” was a password, a goal, an aspiration, and I didn’t know how to respond and wound up stammering.

“I—I—Mrs. Wilson, I—”

“Call me Serenity.”

How disappointed her parents must have been with their optimistically, but wrongly named child.

“First name, no formality,” she snapped. “I’m asking a favor.”

She didn’t bother to slow her pace, or look my way as she barked out her sentences.

I wondered what constituted a favor for her. She seemed the type to take what she wanted, or beat it into submission. I walked as quickly as I could, and waited for the next move.

“It’s Donald.”

Again, I missed a mental beat because nobody called him that. A few people called him Donny, but Wilson was the almost-universal name used.

“Donald must be transferred to another English section and I want to know whether that will hurt his grades.”

“Wait! What? We don’t have that many sections. His entire schedule would be . . . Why?”

“His future is jeopardized.”

“By my English class?” It is difficult demonstrating righteous indignation while running to keep up with somebody. I wanted to tap her on the shoulder and make her turn and notice my insulted expression.

“Not your class,” she said, still looking and marching straight ahead. “Not your fault. The people in it. He needs to be separated from corrupting influences. This is his senior year. Every-155

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thing matters. It’s too late to change schools. He wouldn’t be on the teams. He wouldn’t stand a chance. He—”

“Halt!” I shouted.

A woman who’d made her way halfway across the street stopped and turned, then shook her head and trundled on.

“Stop and speak to me directly so I can understand what you’re talking about.”

Un-Serenity continued walking, but she slowed down and eventually stopped. I flashed back on those drivers-ed films that told you how many yards it took a car going twenty-five miles an hour to stop; how many yards if you were going fifty, and so forth. It took Serenity Wilson half a block. “The people in his class,” she said, turning toward me.

”What people?”

She shook her head. “This is about Donald. I am not going to get other students in trouble. Even if I believe they should be.

This is about my son.”

“Academically? Have his grades noticeably changed? As far as I can see he’s performing pretty much as he always—”

She shook her head again, and one foot nervously tapped.

“Do you know—you must, right?—that his chemistry teacher is near death?” She waited for formal acknowledgment.

I nodded.

“Do you realize that did not have to happen?”

“What are you saying?” A headache clamped my temples.

How did she know about it and would she tell me?

“I thought I made that clear. I want my son placed in classes with other people. Different people. The school is small, but not that small. And a man is judged by the company he keeps.”

“His friends—”

“They aren’t true friends. Not anymore. And that is my decision to make, in any case. My question is whether relocating will harm his grades.”

“I don’t even know if it’s possible because of what it would do to his other classes, his entire schedule—”

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“Why don’t we leave that to
me.
I know it might be complicated, but I’ll handle it. I’m starting with you because English has never been Donald’s strong point academically.”

I didn’t think Donald had a strong point academically. He had strong legs and great hand-eye coordination and upper body strength, but the thinking muscle wasn’t much to write home about.

She cleared her throat.

“I can’t answer you,” I said. “I teach one other senior section.

If he enters that . . .” I shrugged. “They’re following the same syl-labus, so—”

“It won’t make a difference, is that what you’re saying?”

“If he moves into that section. But if he moves to another teacher’s class—which might be necessary because—”

“—of the rest of his schedule. Yes.”

I shouldn’t have been as angry as I was, but what should or shouldn’t be wasn’t mattering much at the moment. I wasted a moment considering telling her off and using that avenue to being fired, but once again, she was peripheral, not the issue, and unworthy of that honor. I wanted to be fired for sowing dissention, for spreading insurrection. I wanted to deal with ideas, not overly protective and obnoxious mothers.

She did make me soften to Wilson, whose aggressive and rough-edged personality I now understood a bit. Another teacher had warned me that his parents had delusions of their son’s grandeur and any failings on his part were blamed on the school.

I guess this time it was his classmates who were to blame for whatever it was that was going wrong, but what was? And why his friends? “Can you give me more information about your reasons for this?”

“It’s a bad class. There are terrible influences in it and my son is susceptible. It’s a dangerous place to be and . . . and . . .”

I couldn’t believe she was faltering, searching for words, unsure of herself.

“. . . I’m afraid for him.”

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That stopped me for a minute. “What do you fear? What’s happened? What connection does that class have to Juan Reyes’s accident?”

She had lost all her bravado and she looked directly at me and said, with no animation, “I don’t know. I only know something’s different. Something frightening is going on.”