A Hole in Juan (24 page)

“How do you know about bombs?” Louise Applegate demanded.

He shrugged. “I know about
firecrackers.
Most everybody does. That was—they were probably cherry bombs. They’re illegal, but you can get the recipe on the Internet. Or else it was some other kind of firecracker.”

“They should not allow the Internet to—”

I turned away. It was too tumultuous a time for another debate about free speech.

Cherry bombs were probably not what Applegate had in mind, but it didn’t actually matter. The sidewalk was as much in turmoil as if a Molotov cocktail or fertilizer bomb had been detonated in its midst, except that we didn’t seem to have many casualties.

As far as I could tell, after a few minutes of watching, in addition to the girl who “hurt,” two students’ clothing had been partially scorched and a boy had been knocked off the curb and had fallen in the confusion. I still didn’t know what had hit us, but at least it hadn’t hit us with as much devastation as I’d feared.

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And then I spotted Seth on our side of the street, now a part of the general tumult. I managed to get to him and discreetly—I thought—separate him from the herd, though he looked annoyed, his bruised face sullen every time he glanced at my hand on his letter jacket.

“I thought you weren’t coming in,” I said. “I was sent a note—”

“No point staying home. That wouldn’t solve anything.”

“Solve what?”

“So when they phoned about this—”

“Who?”

“The chain. Some kid named Billy. I didn’t know him. You know, how they call people for a snow day? Whoever had me on their list phoned and said there was going to be this demonstration, and then I had to come.”

“But you didn’t participate. You stood across the street.”

“I realized finally that I wasn’t going to join the hypocrites, but I wanted to see who was there.”

“Why are they hypocrites?”

“Why is anybody one? They don’t mean what they say.”

“They don’t believe in the Bill of Rights?”

His expression clouded, and I had the sense that he pitied me my ignorance and confusion. “I don’t believe in them,” he said.

“You can’t trust anybody,” he said in a low, resigned, voice. “Not anybody.”

There’s not much worse as a guide for life than that sentiment, and I wished I knew what had been going on in Seth’s life.

“Seth,” I said, “I know you’re going through a hard time.”

“They want to get me,” he muttered.

“Why? Who?” I hated this conversation and my growing fear that Seth had fallen off his tracks and was in serious trouble.

“Don’t worry. I’m smarter than they are. That’s partly why they want to get me.”

How would a paranoid adolescent elude his perceived enemies? Too many news stories about school murders. Too much 193

A HOLE IN JUAN

evidence of immature brains—normal ones—being unable to think through to the logical consequences.

I should phone his mother again, I thought, mentally wincing at adding to that beleaguered woman’s plate. Make him empty his backpack right now, so I could check it. Or tell somebody—

but whom? And what exactly would I say? I’ve got this feeling?

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

There are times when the truth is not the best option. “Of course not,” I said. “But I think—I know—you’re profoundly upset, and I can’t see how a demonstration about censorship has anything to do with you.”

“It doesn’t! But it should, it—” He seemed to collapse from within, as if something keeping him going had just dissolved.

“Help me understand,” I said. “What’s going on? I truly want to help you.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. You wouldn’t . . . Nobody can help me. I have to take care of this myself.”

“Look at your face. That’s not a good way to take care of things. You can’t let people beat you down, exclude you. It doesn’t make sense to stay home from school.”

He nodded, surprising me. “I know. That’s why I didn’t. Because if I did, it would mean they won.”

“Won? What is this, a contest?”

“It’s a war.”

I took time out to digest what he’d said, then asked him,

“About what? Between whom?”

“Between me and everybody else.” His words were laced with sorrow, not anger or antagonism.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got to believe that things can be worked out peacefully. Not by beating each other senseless. You’re strong and smart. Don’t let yourself be bullied or defeated. It isn’t like you to stay home or stay apart or—or hide, in essence. This is your senior year.”

“I know. I can’t wait until it’s over and I’m out of here.”

“Don’t miss it, though. Don’t let them do that to you.”

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He looked less defeated. “Miss it? You mean tonight’s party?”

I’d meant life, not a school dance, but why not? “Sure. Like everything that isn’t self-destructive or involves punching each other out. If you want to go—go. Why wouldn’t you?”

He looked at me and started to object, then stopped himself.

“All right,” he said as if he meant it. “You’re right, so—all right.

I’m not backing down.”

At that moment, two things happened. First, I realized I was not going to be fired. Havermeyer was too much of a coward.

And I wasn’t going to quit. I was going to take my own advice and not miss my life—and a great portion of my life belongs in a classroom. My classroom.

Second, the police reached us, and made it clear they wanted us in the auditorium as soon as possible.

Seth shrugged and did as he was told. I watched him for a long moment. With my newly calmed sense of my future, and with Seth’s back to me, his bruises and generally sullen expression not visible, his actions most ordinary, I thought, perhaps, that everything would now be all right.

It took hours, the bulk of the day, to try to unravel what had happened and where responsibility should be put, and even then nothing was resolved or determined. The police were interested in the firecracker and questioned and searched every student; the paramedics treated the girl’s burns, which, luckily, were minor; the burned clothing was replaced; and Havermeyer, goaded on by Louis Applegate, continued to focus on agitators, both in-house and imported. Havermeyer was sure Pip was the guilty party. He was from Iowa, for starters, about as outside an agitator as you could get. Who needed more evidence than that?

Lists of names were drawn up, theories expounded, and at the end of all that time, with nothing explained and no progress aside from treating the superficial injuries, with everyone ques-195

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tioned and baroque arrangements made so that no one could pass guilty material to anyone else, with no one suspended and even Cheryl for all intents and practices back in school, and with the idea that one unknown idiot—in all probability not one of our students—had gone too far and tossed two cherry bombs for the hell of it, we had no conspiracy or agitators.

At approximately forty-seven minutes before the bell would have normally rung, Maurice Havermeyer waved the white flag and declared school ended.

The joy this produced was mostly relief from a day that had begun with a bang and wound up an exercise in excruciating boredom. The truth was, the faculty looked much more delighted about the way things had worked out than the students did. School had been scheduled to end at noon, for this was to have been, in theory, a teacher prep day. For students, it’s an afternoon off. For teachers, that translates into an afternoon’s agony of useless nattering by Maurice Havermeyer, except for those times when he’d find an “expert” as stultifying as he was to take his place.

Early dismissal would have meant the party planners had time to do their thing. The committee, sitting in a huddle on the gymnasium bleachers, looked glum.

When the bell finally rang, I watched Allie rouse herself and go from silent and sullen to frenzied. “It’s all
ruined
!” she said.

“We should have been working for two hours now! Why did they have to take so long? Stupid, anyway. None of us threw that firecracker at ourselves. And acting as if it had something to do with Mr. Reyes.” She paced and sighed histrionically and waved her arms. “I can’t believe it—all that planning—for nothing!”

“There’s still time,” I said. “The party’s hours away.”

“That’s
nothing
! Sorry. Didn’t mean to be so—but we have to construct the scarecrow, and inflate the balloons and put up the photo booth and—I told them we needed a whole
day
but they said starting at noon had to be enough—but now, look, it’s three GILLIAN ROBERTS

196

o’clock! And people are standing around here so how can we get anything done? We might as well cancel the party altogether.”

“Surely not,” I said. “Everybody would understand if things aren’t one hundred percent finished.”

“No they wouldn’t. They don’t understand!” She uttered a tiny sob. “It was going to be
perfect
!” She shook her head. “If I’d had any idea that this would happen,” she said, “I would have left civil rights till Monday. Forget Antigone. Who knew a jerk would toss cherry bombs and spoil everything!”

“It’ll work out,” somebody said nearby. “I’ll help.”

“Our costumes,” she wailed. “When is there going to be time—and look at all the people
still
standing here! Aren’t they going to ever go home? How about their costumes?”

“It was advertised as costume optional,” I reminded her.

“Maybe they weren’t ever planning to be in disguise.”

“I was!” she said too loudly. “I was and my friends were. It was part of the
fun.
”

“I’ll help. Maybe speed things up.” That was spoken by a ninth grader and surely not one who’d have been on Allie’s A list.

Her clique was so tight, and her rule so established, that I was in-trigued to see if she’d accept help from peons.

She did, albeit with another sigh and a resigned shake of her head. “I don’t know where to tell you to start, though,” she said.

“If only everybody would
leave.
Can you help move people out of here?”

“Can I help?” Pip asked. I’d forgotten that he was still here, and that he didn’t belong here in the first place. He’d become a piece of the scenery.

Allie squinted. “Who are you?” But before he could answer, she snapped her fingers. “Wait—you’re the kid from . . . Idaho?”

“Iowa.”

“Right. The outside agitator.” She smiled. “Sure, you can help. Why not?” And then she turned to me. “Did they find him?”

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“Who?”

“The cherry bomber. After all this—” She waved vaguely at the room around her, at the afterimage of the police who had spoiled her decorating potential.

“They didn’t tell me if they did.”

She leaned close, lowered her voice. “Was it Seth? I saw him there, across the street, staring at us, and I don’t want to get him in trouble, but did he do it?”

If you really didn’t want to get somebody in trouble, did you go out of your way to suggest he’d committed a crime? “Why’d you think that?” I tried to calculate backward through the week, to pin together the hints, suggestions, and glances that had pushed suspicion toward Seth. My stolen test—had that been Allie who glared, or was she one of many faces glowering at Seth when I deposited a new version on her desk? Had it always been Allie making me wonder about Seth?

I didn’t think so. Besides, why would she?

I asked her again. “Why would you think Seth did something like that?”

She looked at me intently before rearranging her facial muscles into a bland, pleasing mask and spoke slowly, as if thinking through each sentence before she said it. “No reason in particular. Playing detective, I guess. Trying to be logical. I mean we were on the curb, and the building’s on one side of us, so it’s not likely somebody inside tossed it out at us. And I’d seen him and he looked peculiar, staring at us that way. So, well, you know. But I guess I’m not a detective!” Her smile was brightly insincere.

Of course, she had other things on her mind, and a to-do list pressing on her. I was an annoyance and further delay. “There were undoubtedly other people in the Square,” I said quietly.

“You noticed Seth because you know him, that’s all.”

If possible, her smile became still less sincere. “That must be it!” she said brightly.

“Good luck,” I told her and Pip and the eager ninth grader.

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“I’ll be . . . I’ll be . . .” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

Where would I be now that I didn’t have to be here tonight?

What would I do with a gift of time?

First, I went and sat on the back stairs and phoned Mackenzie and left a message of freedom on his cell. Then I checked my messages and heard a last-minute, casual dinner invitation from Sasha. “Only one other couple, Wesley and Nick, are coming, so don’t change, or dress up, and come six-thirty, sevenish, okay?”

We had met Nick and Wesley before, and they were funny and quick and involved in professions that had nothing to do with teaching adolescents. It sounded like a perfect place and way to wind down from this horrific week, so I called Mackenzie again and changed the message. I’d meet him at Sasha’s.

It suddenly felt like a true T.G.I.F. except for a residual thrum of anxiety I couldn’t shake.

friday, the note had said. Why?

I went back to the gym and observed Allie directing Liddy Moffat, or trying to. One did not direct the custodian, but she lived to clean, and so seemed quite happy to help, broom and pan in hand. The ninth graders had apparently been given litter detail, and they crawled over the bleachers, picking up notes and doodles and homework that had been hurriedly scribbled in case there had actually been classes today.

I was going to read about Allie one day, I thought. Her aspirations at the moment were in the arts, but she could as easily run a corporation or lead a platoon. I watched her make the rounds of her committee, advising and guiding each one as well as Pip, who looked as if he were willing to move the entire gym elsewhere if that’s what she wanted. I was momentarily puzzled by his energetic altruism until it registered that Cheryl, apparently back in the Philly Prep fold at least for the dance, was his work partner.