Night School (4 page)

Andrew did a cute little dance step in the middle of the hall. It was completely unlike him. He was so careful to be photogenic, and in fact, the step was a little clumsy. Autumn was touched. Andrew was too tickled with himself to care about his clumsiness.

“Is it night school?” she asked. “Are you expecting great things?”

Andrew shook his head. “No. Guess what, Autumn. I’m not expecting great things anymore! That’s the good news. Tonight on my way over here, a wonderful thing happened. I saw how it will be. Ordinary. Cameras and television stations.”

This hardly seemed ordinary to Autumn. It sounded like the usual starstruck hopes of the usual half-talented teenager. But he was cute, bouncy like this, and she liked him.

Vaguely, Autumn was aware of the rest of the building as they passed. Science labs on the left, doors tightly locked. Stairwells. Janitorial closets. Library, a single patron still there, surprising at such a late hour. She glanced over to identify the figure.

It was only Mr. Phillips, a substitute teacher. Most of the student body regarded Mr. Phillips as a substitute human as well; somebody with so little personality and worth that you could easily forget he had any at all.

Deep inside the library, at a long study table where he sat alone, Mr. Phillips did not look up. The two teenagers in the hall might have been invisible and soundless.

He’s so pathetic, thought Autumn, rejoicing not to be pathetic like Mr. Phillips. Then she forgot him, because Andrew was bowing as deeply as a courtier, gesturing to the door through which she would pass.

“After you, Autumn Ivers,” said Andrew, as if announcing her to the world, emcee of their own personal television show, and Autumn beamed at him, and never saw the threshold over which she passed.

Mariah bolted out of the car, barely remembering to lock up, and bounded toward the door through which Autumn and Andrew had passed. She found herself in a hallway that should have been completely familiar. After all, she was there five days a week. She knew its scent and its doors and its stairs. Tonight her feet continued to know, walking confidently along.

But only her feet.

There was something very, very wrong in the building.

Her body knew.

Her lungs were afraid. Her lungs ran out of air and gasped for breath. Her eyes were afraid, too, and opened painfully wide, and then narrowed, struggling to focus. Her heart lurched against her shrinking lungs. Her back wanted to press up against a wall, in case knives or eyes were behind her.

Her feet continued walking along, as if they knew nothing of what was going on in her heart and mind.

It was dark. So dark.
Too dark.

The door closed behind her with a metallic slice, like a falling guillotine. Mariah whirled. She stared back, but she could not even see the door. She was alone in black, complete dark. The dark here was like a bad night, slick and slippery. When she swallowed, the dark left an ugly taste in her mouth.

I’m in here with somebody, she thought. Those were prison doors. I’m alone in here with the vicious and the violent.

Her feet calmly turned and walked her on into the groping, searching dark. It was not Mariah feeling her way; it was the dark feeling her.

Go home,
she said to herself.
Trust your senses.
If this were a lousy neighborhood downtown, you’d go back to the car.

But she did not go back. Her feet never paused.

She passed the library, whose interior wall of glass exposed stack upon stack of books. Usually the library had a warm comforting look, thousands of friendly books cozily ringing the room, and tired old vinyl couches waiting for silly kids to curl up on them.

Tonight the books seemed to arch and angle, as if they planned an attack. A single light was on. Mr. Phillips, one of the school’s more pitiful subs, was in there working on papers.

How stranded he looked, one thin pale person among the dark brigades of books. He looked as if he were always alone, and would never be anything but alone.

Mariah averted her eyes. Mr. Phillips was in the wrong profession. He had no ability to teach, and did not get along well with teenagers, and yet he’d chosen the most difficult of teaching jobs—substituting.

Everybody knew that subs were fair game.

She almost rapped on the glass library door to ask if he were all right. But he was too unaware of her presence. He would jump out of his skin if she suddenly appeared. He was that kind of person. All the world startled him.

Her legs continued on down the corridor, as if they had an assignment of their own, and knew what pace to set.

She glanced back once, seeing Mr. Phillips from another angle. For a moment he was not Mr. Phillips at all. He was her brother Bevin, grown older into something even weaker. More desperate. Even more alone.

Mariah shuddered. What fate on earth was worse than being that lonely?

If I go on substituting dreams for real life, she thought, I will be that lonely one year.

Mariah’s hands chilled, as if by some northern winter. Her imagination, which she counted on to toast her heart, froze her fingers instead. It’s only Mr. Phillips, she said to herself, it’s nobody. Stop thinking about Bevin.

Andrew appeared, bending back out of a classroom doorway to signal her. He was a beacon of blond hair and gold tan. One of the wonderful things about California was short sleeves on boys. You had their muscles to admire year-round.

Andrew was the sun and she was butter. Mariah wanted to melt. But, she warned herself sternly, if you get googly-eyed the minute you get close to him, he’ll sit on the far side of the room forever. Remember that this is real life now. You can’t revise it and do it over again in your mind until it’s just as romantic as you can get it. You actually have to live tonight.

“Hey, Mariah!” Andrew called, so eagerly he sounded as if Mariah’s presence was going to make his night. His laugh was different. He was bubbly and the smile was a little boy’s. A smile she hadn’t seen on his face since she’d first adored him, when he was eight.

“Andrew,” she said breathlessly, “what’s going on?”

He shrugged, but it was a happy, easy, delighted shrug. Somebody who really doesn’t care what’s going on, because life is too good to notice.

Is it me? she thought. Am I part of the goodness in Andrew’s life?

So Mariah, too, dreaming and pretending, entered the classroom without seeing the threshold over which she passed.

Ned slipped nervously into the building, and walked jerkily down the hall, staying very close to the walls, as if the walls were his friend and the open center of the hallway was his enemy. , He had been teased about this ridiculous habit for years, and had thought it conquered. In disgust, he saw himself still wall-crawling. With a distinct effort, he forced himself not to walk as if something were chasing him.

Regardless of how skinny and featherweight he was, Ned felt he had feet of cement. His feet were born heavy enough to throw into the ocean and drown him. He did not know how to be light and easy. And he was quite sure that you got somewhere with girls only if you were relaxed. How did you do that? The mere fact of being with a girl meant it was impossible to relax.

Mariah and Autumn.

He tried to picture himself actually inviting one of those girls to go somewhere with just him, Ned.

This was so scary he could actually feel the water closing over his face, as the cement on his feet yanked him to the ocean floor.

Ned didn’t aspire to be like Andrew with girls. That would have been Olympic. Ned would just like to have a girl of his own. He pretended that he could sit next to Mariah or Autumn and actually flirt. (Whatever flirting was.) His only real hope was that they would actually call him by name. Few did. He wasn’t worth it. A nod or a “hey” or a flickering-away, half-smile was the most Ned ever got.

He hardly noticed how unlit the corridor was and never glanced into the library. He was completely absorbed by his own shortcomings. That was, of course, one of his own shortcomings.

Andrew popped a head out of a classroom and waved, to show Ned where they were meeting. Ned waved back, but Andrew had already vanished. Story of my life, thought Ned; they never even give me a chance to answer.

Ned didn’t see the door through which he passed. He was far too busy scouting out the expressions of the other kids in the class, Were they glad to see him, too? Just once, he wanted people to look up when he came in, and be glad that he had joined them.

What I would do, thought Ned, to make these people glad to see me.

“Welcome,” said the instructor.

The room was very dark.

Darkness crawled under Mariah’s skin like slugs under dead leaves. Darkness shifted position inside her, like a colony of poisonous insects building nests.

She did not want to be welcome here. She did not want to be the kind of person that the instructor would be glad to see.

Not that Mariah could see. She could not even see Andrew. The four of them had blended into the dark like furniture in unused rooms. Mariah’s thoughts seemed even more unreal than usual, as if her own brain just replayed tapes of itself.

I no longer exist, thought Mariah. I am just the imprint of myself.

Andrew felt like the negatives of photographs. He was not a real person, but a future picture of one: Right now, he was frosty and gleaming where he ought to be dark, and dark where he ought to be color.

He held the camcorder in his lap, but did not try to focus it. He couldn’t even focus his mind right now, never mind a film.

His utter delight with his discovery in the car mixed with the fear that sifted through the room, and like opposite electrons, his fear and joy canceled each other. He was no emotion at all: He was neutral.

This is good, thought Andrew Todd. A reporter must always be neutral. To have no emotion at all is good. This is just the kind of Night Class I need.

The four students were visible in a moonlit way. Gray and black silhouettes. It was romantic, thought Autumn. Sort of like opening a valentine in the dark. Not so much night class as dusk class.

Autumn could hardly even see the instructor. He, she, or possibly it stood before them like darker dark; a more knowing, experienced dark. Autumn wanted to make it the class cheer: Go, dark!

There were but four chairs in the room, and no desks, so there had been few choices in seating. The row was straight across. When she turned, Autumn saw the others’ profiles all in a row. Closest to her, Ned’s was misshapen: nose too big, forehead too broad, chin too awkward. Andrew’s was classic, while Mariah’s was perkier and more childish than Autumn would have expected. I wonder what my profile is, she thought, and she hoped the others would study her.

The instructor’s voice was deeply appealing, rich and warm and velvet like the night through which she had passed. Usually, Autumn lost interest in a teacher before the teaching even began. Tonight she felt liquid in the instructor’s presence: cool water in a vase, waiting to be used.

“This,” said the instructor, “is Night Class.”

Autumn felt that the dark was snuggling up to her. She could not quite see the rest anymore, but this did not matter. All was well. All was good. She was half-sleeping.

Perhaps I have been hypnotized, thought Autumn. I wonder how he did it. I don’t remember staring at anything.

“We will learn,” said the instructor, “to control the dark.”

A sort of self-help class about the dark, thought Autumn. How California.

“Our species, the human being, shrinks from the Night. Our species tries to get rid of the Night. We have been trying since fire was found to destroy the Night. We fight back with lamps and lights and bulbs and reflectors. For us, Night is filled with unknown and horror.”

Not really, thought Autumn. I had no problem walking alone in the night.

“Suppose,” said the instructor, “that you could own the night.”

What would I do with it after I had it? thought Autumn.

She was distracted by the thought that she also had to get home in the dark. Should she ask for a ride home with Andrew? With Mariah? Or slip away unnoticed, and walk that mile in reverse?

“There will be homework,” said the instructor. “There will be assignments.”

That was only reasonable. It was school, after all. Not that Autumn always finished her assignments in regular school.

But at that moment, during that fraction of a thought, Night Class ceased to have anything to do with regular school.

Warmth left the instructor’s voice. Raw and chilled like meat, the voice seemed to bleed on top of Autumn’s head.

She hated the thought. She tried to scour it out of her mind, but shadows obscured her mind from herself.

“Tonight,” said the voice, “we will choose our first SC.”

What is an SC? thought Autumn.

Autumn could not even see her hands on her lap. She knotted her fingers together and nothing happened. She had no fingers, no substance.

The room was not only very dark, but very silent. Autumn could not even hear the others breathing.

Perhaps they were
not
breathing. Perhaps they had left, or were dead.

Perhaps she was the only person here.

“Anyone who wishes to drop out,” said the instructor, “must do so now.”

Autumn wished to drop out. She wished to get up and scream and run and shriek. I’m dropping out, she tried to say, but her tongue did not seem to be there, anymore than her hands had been there, or the other three had been there. She was alone, without even her body for company.

“Good,” said the instructor.

There was nothing good in his voice.

There was nothing good in the room.

“I am glad to hear the silence,” said the instructor, and horribly, his voice was also silent. Autumn could hear it, but it did not speak. This was like reading a soundtrack. You couldn’t do it, but she was doing it. I have to get out of here, she thought. My body told me on the way in that the place was too dark, much too dark. Go dark! I have to get out of the dark—