Something Like Summer (20 page)

“
You have to go talk to
her,” Allison said. “Tell her that she just can’t change what other
people write. That’s worse than censorship! She owes you an
apology.”

“
There’s no point!” Ben
complained. “The stupid thing is published already.”

Allison was right, though.
He wasn’t going to stand aside and silently take it. After school
he would confront Mrs. Jones and tell her exactly how he
felt.

* * * * *

After sixth period, Ben
stood in front of the journalism door, trying to compose himself.
To freak out or not freak out, that was the question. He would try
to stay calm during the confrontation, but he didn’t know if he
could maintain his cool or even if he should. He opened the door;
the room inside dark and empty. After a moment’s hesitation, he
flipped on the light switch and stepped inside.

Of course journalism wasn’t
taught six times a day like other courses were. He had never
considered it before, but it was obvious now. He wondered what
other classes Mrs. Jones taught. Perhaps history, drawing from her
own childhood memories from hundreds of years ago, changing truths
as she pleased like she had done with his poem.

Ben went to her desk and
began riffling through the papers on it. He wanted the original
copy of his poem back. He wanted to see it. Had she dared to cross
out his words with red ink and replace them with her own? Ten
minutes later and his search was fruitless. He would simply have to
ask for it back tomorrow when he saw her again.

He returned to the
now-abandoned hallway and spotted another student passing by. He
began to duck guiltily back inside the classroom room when he
realized it was Tim.

“
Hey!” he
whispered.

Tim saw him and looked
around nervously.

Ben beckoned him silently
as he stepped back through the doorway. Tim followed, eyes
searching the room for anyone else as he entered.

“
There’s no one else here,
you dork!” Ben said once the door was closed.

“
What are you doing here?”
Tim laughed.

“
Did you see the paper
today?”

“
Yeah, nice poem. You lost
me with ‘pauper’s love’ though.”

Ben sighed. “When two
people are so poor that they have nothing, they still have love.
That’s their happiness.”

“
Ah, but neither of us are
poor,” Tim winked.

“
We aren’t a guy and a
girl either!”

A knowing look spread
across Tim’s face. “Someone screwed with your poem,
huh?”

“
Yeah, my douche bag of a
teacher changed it.” Ben shook his head irritably. “I came here to
tell her off, but there’s nobody home.”

“
Why don’t you leave a
message?” Tim glanced around, spotted the hat rack Mrs. Jones kept
by the door, and kicked it over with a faux roundhouse. It landed
noisily on the floor with a crack that suggested it was no longer
in one piece.

“
Don’t!” Ben scolded
before smiling with satisfaction.

“
You should try it,” Tim
suggested. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“She does deserve it,” Ben
conceded. He looked around for inspiration. He grabbed the nearest
desk and tipped it over. Considering that the desk surface had been
empty, this wasn’t very impressive.

“
C’mon, you can do better
than that. How about her desk?”

Ben matched Tim’s wicked
grin, his anger at his mistreatment rising in him. He marched over
to Mrs. Jones’s desk and with one hefty heave, sent all of the
desktop contents flying onto the floor.

“
Yeah!” Tim laughed
manically as he grabbed the drawers and pulled, papers flying
everywhere. “What’s next?”

“
Wanna see the dark room?”
Ben asked with sudden inspiration.

“
Sure.” Tim followed him
through the strange spinning corridor into a small cramped room
glowing with red light.

“
What’d you have in mind
here?” Tim asked, pressing up against Ben from behind and breathing
on his neck.

Ben didn’t answer. He was
distracted by the developed photos that had been pinned up to dry.
Some of them were of sports scenes or of the grinning faces in
drama club, but a handful were of couples hugging or leaning on
each other. These photos would never be censored. They would be put
in the paper without anyone ever questioning them or insisting they
be altered. The people in those photos would always have their
relationships instantly accepted and would never consider how it
would feel to have something as simple as holding hands be
ridiculed in public.

Ben’s eyes flickered over
to a small fire extinguisher clamped to the wall. He shrugged Tim
off and took it down, struggling to pull the safety pin free before
aiming the nozzle at the photos.

“
I hate this fucking
school,” Ben swore before white foam exploded over the photos,
soaked the hanging strings of negatives, and seeped into the
delicate developing equipment.

Soon it became difficult to
breathe, so they fled through the spinning doorway and back into
the main room where Ben began spraying everything he saw with
artificial snow.

“
Let me try,” Tim
said.

He walked around the room,
spraying a bookshelf until it dripped with foam. Tim’s jaw
clenched. There was a rage in his eyes that Ben found fascinating.
What did Tim have to feel so angry about? Was it his parents? His
inability to openly be who he really was? Did he hate the very
society that he fit into so perfectly?

The fire extinguisher began
to sputter. Having exhausted its supply, Tim threw it at the marker
board on the far wall, putting a nasty dent in its center. They
left the room stealthily. For the first time, they walked side by
side down the school corridors. Once they were out of the building,
they broke into a run, laughter making their sides ache as they
tried to put as much distance as possible between themselves and
the school.

They reached the bike paths
and followed them into the sanctuary of the woods. There they fell
onto the pine needle carpet, laughing and gasping for breath until
they were exhausted.

“
Hey,” Ben said seriously
as something occurred to him. “Did you like it?”

“
Like what?”

“
My poem.”

“
Well, I don’t know,” Tim
said soberly. “I haven’t heard the proper ending.”

Ben recited the censored
lines for him, his face flushing with embarrassment.

Tim grinned, knowing all
along who the poem had been written for.

“
Come look into my eyes,
my sweet pauper,” he said as he pulled Ben close for a
kiss.

* * * * *

The adrenaline rush that
had followed the afternoon’s destruction had worn off by night,
leaving Ben tossing and turning in his bed. He was certain that
they would be caught, that someone had seen him standing outside
the journalism room while he had gathered his thoughts. By the time
he awoke from a meager three hours sleep, he had already accepted
that he would be in the principal’s office, possibly even in police
custody before lunchtime.

He considered attending
P.E. for the first time in the year, worried that someone would be
there looking for him. In the end, he decided that trouble was
trouble. It was much too late to play the angel now. Ben arrived in
second period English, his nerves on edge the entire time as he
waited for some sign of his impending doom. He snapped at Daniel
Wigmore for glancing over at his notes, which were pitifully sparse
as he watched the door.

The bell rang. The next
class was journalism. Ben found himself eager to revisit the scene
of the crime, to discover what had happened. Mrs. Jones was
standing outside the door, surrounded by a half moon of
students.

“
No one may enter,” she
announced. “There has been an incident. We’ll be using room 2E6 in
the meantime.”

Ben waited nervously for
her to acknowledge him. Her eyes met his momentarily as she
mentally counted to see if all of her students were present. There
was no moment of recognition or even suspicion. She had no idea!
The weight left his chest so suddenly that he almost laughed out
loud. He had gotten away with it!

Once situated in the
replacement classroom, Mrs. Jones emotionally described what had
happened. A few of the students seemed upset at the news that their
work was ruined, while others snickered. Ben put on his best
concerned look as Mrs. Jones repeated the same information over and
over, which basically boiled down to her knowing
nothing.

“
When will we be able to
use the darkroom again?” asked a girl who was particularly keen on
photography.

“
Tomorrow maybe, or the
next day. The police don’t want anything disturbed until they can
dust for prints.”

The weight returned,
knocking the smugness out of Ben like the oxygen from his lungs.
Tim grabbing the desk drawers and yanking them out replayed itself
in his mind. There would be prints on those stainless steel
handles, he was sure. His own would be on the fire extinguisher.
But did it really matter? It’s not like either of them had a
criminal history. The police wouldn’t have his prints on record,
would they?

A vague childhood memory
came rushing back. His mom had taken him to the public library,
where his prints and a mug shot had been taken. He remembered
playing cops and robbers with Karen afterwards. This had been for a
missing child database, a surefire way a child could be identified
under dire circumstances. His fingerprints had been much smaller
then, but Ben knew their pattern never changed.

Tim’s prints might be on
file for a similar reason. They hadn’t gotten away with it at all.
They just hadn’t been caught yet! In the next half hour Ben thought
long and hard about what to do. Short of burning the school down
and destroying all the evidence, he felt there was only one option
left to him.

“
I did it,” he croaked,
interrupting Mrs. Jones as she tried to dole out an
assignment.

“
What did you say?”
prompted a guy next to him, not believing what he had
heard.

“
I did it,” Ben said
louder, attracting the attention of the entire class. “There’s no
sense in wasting the time of the police because it was me who
trashed your room.”

He looked up to see a
condescending look on Mrs. Jones’s face, one that scolded him for
making a tasteless joke. She didn’t believe him!

“
I’m not fucking kidding!”
he swore.

Now he had her attention.
He was out in the hall in seconds, an explanation being demanded of
him.

“
You shouldn’t have
changed my poem,” he said extra loud in the hopes that the other
students would hear. He wanted the whole school to know why he had
done it.

A crow’s talons fastened
around his arm as Mrs. Jones escorted him to the principal’s
office, yammering the whole way, her disbelief sliding into anger.
He tuned her out, focusing instead on his plan. It was very
important that he never slip up, never make any mention of Tim or
another person. He was only turning himself in to protect Tim and
didn’t want to make any mistakes.

His parents were called.
Ben was interrogated by both the principal and Mrs. Jones until
they arrived. By the time they did, his story was flawless in his
mind. He parroted the details to them, not expressing any remorse.
The police were sent for and he gave a statement, repeating the
story for a third time, making sure this time to emphasize that he
felt discriminated against. The principle looked only slightly
concerned at this new twist. Had it been a matter of race or
religion, it might have been taken more seriously.

Ben was suspended for three
days, which made him laugh. How was taking three days off a
punishment? There were the damages to be paid for, too. Ben vowed
on the car ride home that he would handle it and not a dime would
come out of his parents’ pockets. This did little to calm them.
They lectured him repeatedly, telling him what he already knew: He
should have fought with words, used his mind instead of
violence.

Ben knew it was true, and
he might have felt ashamed had he done it alone. Instead he
cherished the Bonnie and Clyde moment that he and Tim had shared
together. He enjoyed playing the martyr, too. He had made a
sacrifice, taken a bullet for his lover. In his mind it was the
perfect expression of how he felt about Tim.

__________

Chapter 14

“
I owe you.”

Tim’s voice rumbled into
the ear that Ben had pressed against his chest, startling him just
as he was dozing off.

“
Hm?”

“
I owe you,” Tim repeated,
shifting so Ben was forced to raise his head and look up at him.
“Big time. I’ll pay for the damages, how does that
sound?”

Ben yawned and propped
himself up on an elbow. “There is something I’ve been thinking of,”
he said.

“
Name it. My parents would
have killed me if we’d been caught. Whatever you want, it’s
yours.”