B0160A5OPY (A) (13 page)

L.J. slumps heavily into the chair right next to me. It creaks.

“So, how did it go?” I ask.

“I’m suspended for a week. Like
that’s
supposed to be a punishment.” L.J. shrugs.

I don’t know what to say to that. Voices coming from the office intrude into the silence.

“The boy is a little wild, sir, but I’ll lick him into shape. It comes from never having a stable, male authority figure in his life. He didn’t know his real father. His mother never really settled down, did you, Lila? And there has been a passing parade of men, only two of whom married her. So the boy’s life has been unstable, and it shows – I don’t deny that. But I’m Lila’s husband now, and that’s how things are going to stay.”

I stare down at the manila folder in my hands, acting like I can’t hear the loud, clear voice and pretending to read the forms inside – my transfer documentation, medical reports and transcripts of academic records.

“I’ll be expecting a clear improvement in behavior when he returns to school.” That must be Como speaking.

“Yes, sir. I’ll teach him a lesson when we get home, don’t you worry about that. He needs to grow up and be a real man. I’ll make sure he understands the importance of self-control.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to be overly harsh with L.J.” Como sounds worried now.

“Nothing like that, I assure you, sir. But ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’ I always say. Thank you for your time, Principal. Lila, you thank Mr. Como now, we need to be off.”

A man steps out of the office. He is short but compactly built, with a trimmed moustache and buzz-cut hair. Behind him trails a thin woman, wearing a loose shirt, a fringed cotton skirt and flat leather sandals. Long grey hair falls around her face as she smiles in a distracted way at L.J., and fiddles with the necklace of gemstones and crystals around her neck. Mr. Como, his hand hovering behind the small of her back, escorts her out of his office.

The man stands rigidly, as if at attention, glowering at L.J.

“Goodbye,” says Como, shaking their hands and ushering them out. “Just wait here for me, L.J. Miss Kazinsky, give me a few minutes to complete the paperwork on the meeting. I’ll give you a buzz when I’m ready for you to send this young man in.”

Wiping his face with a handkerchief, the principal retires to his office.

“Are those your parents?” I ask, trying to maintain the fiction of ignorance to spare L.J. embarrassment.

“I’m not related to
him
.” He picks at a scab on the back of a knuckle.

“Hey, L.J.?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry... About everything, you know.”

He turns to face me. I wish he wasn’t sitting so close. I feel sorry for L.J. – even more so now that I’ve caught a glimpse of what things are like for him at home – but I don’t much like him in my personal space.

“You know what I’d like?” I continue. “I’d like for people to back off and stop bullying and leave you be.”

Uh-oh. At once I can tell I’ve put my foot in it. There’s a look in his eyes as he studies me that tells me I shouldn’t have said this – or anything. I should just have let it be.

“You know what I’d like?” he says.

I shake my head.

“I’d like to lick your scar and see if it tastes the same as the rest of you. We could have some fuuunnn, you and me.”

He sticks his tongue out and waggles it. The pink, fleshy moistness is pierced with a silver stud. I can’t help myself – I shudder, try to cover my instinctive reaction in outrage.

“Why do you
do
that? Why do you always do that?”

“What – salivate? Lick people?”

“Why do you always push people away by being revolting. Do you like being alone?”

“Like I would be Mr. Popular if I just played nice,” he mocks. “Like it matters what I’m like on the inside.”

Now I feel guilty, because he’s right. No-one even knows, let alone cares, what he’s like on the inside. Not that he lets anyone get close enough to know him. It looks to me like he goes all-out to keep people at a distance. Maybe it hurts less that way.

“Nobody in this place can see past the ugly.
You
know what I’m talking about.” He reaches out a finger to poke my scar, but I slap his hand away.

“You make it hard, L.J., you make it so hard.”

“I’d be easy for you, baby.”

Ugh!

“Stop it!” I snap. “Cut it out.”

“What? It’s not like any other guys are lining up to get their hands on you, Scarface.”

Miss Kazinsky’s buzzer sounds and she orders L.J. into the office. Her eyes are on me. I feel flushed and hot – am I just bothered, or do I have a fever? I’m feeling my forehead, as a mother would her child’s, when I look up and see Himself standing in the doorway, watching me. I whip my hand away and squint at the poem on the wall, trying to read the first line.
Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
Indeed.

How long has he been standing there?

“I have an appointment with Mr. Como,” Luke tells Miss Kazinsky.

“Take a seat, Mr. Naughton. He’s running late. Your appointment is after Miss Munster’s.”

Luke is holding a white envelope – it must be the letter he had to get his parents to sign – and he passes it restlessly between his hands.

The uncomfortable silence lasts eons. By now, I must be missing art class, too. Miss Kazinsky leaves and returns a few minutes later with two mugs of coffee, just as L.J. and Como emerge from the office. L.J. walks out.

“Who’s next?” the principal asks his secretary as she hands him one of the mugs.

“Sloane Munster – the new transfer from Lincoln High. Then Mr. Naughton, the other party in the Hamel altercation.”

L.J., who is standing in the hallway just outside the door where Como can’t see him, flips Luke the bird.

“I’ll buzz when I’m ready,” says Como, without a glance at me. He heads back into his den, blowing on the hot coffee.

As soon as Como’s back is turned, L.J. leers at me and licks his lips suggestively before ambling off down the hallway.

Irritated and upset, I stand abruptly, forgetting the folder of loose papers on my lap. It spills to the floor and the sheets flutter through the air, glide across the polished wooden floor, and come to rest under the chairs and the low central table.

“Monkey nuggets!”

I get down on my hands and knees to collect them into a pile. Luke gets up to help, but I stop him.

“Don’t bother, please.”

He settles back into his chair while I grub about on the floor trying to gather up the papers without getting them too dirty. I think I have them all and am sorting them back into a semblance of order inside the file cover when Luke speaks.

“What’s a partial splenectomy?”

My head snaps up. He has a piece of paper in one hand. Even from six feet away, I can tell it’s the summary of my medical records – and he has been reading it.

“Nothing. Give me that!”

I try to snatch it back from him, but he lifts it high above his head. I’m tall, but Luke is taller and there’s no way I can reach it.

“What’s a partial splenectomy?” he repeats.

“What are your goals?” I counter.

“What?” he says, thrown. His hand lowers slightly in surprise, but when I make a lunge for it, he pulls it back up again.

“The goals you wrote down in English yesterday and wouldn’t let Perkel read out,” I clarify. “What are they?”

He shakes his head, grinning.

“Those are private,” he says, staring down at me. His eyes are more green than brown today.

“So are my medical records.”

“Answer the question, Sloane.”

“
You
answer the question!”

“I asked first.”

“What are you – nine?”

By now I’m hopping up and down, trying to get the form. I feel ridiculous. I turn when a buzzer sounds. Miss Kazinsky is staring at us with avid curiosity.

“You can go on in now, Miss Munster. Give her the paper, Mr. Naughton.”

I grab it as soon as I can reach it. Our hands touch and this time, I notice, he doesn’t flinch.

I stuff the form into the file and march stiffly into Como’s office. While he studies the paperwork, I stare out of the window which overlooks the visitor’s parking lot. A man has a big boy pushed up against the side of an old, battered pickup, one hand thrust against his chest, holding him in place, while the other wags a pointing finger under the boy’s nose. A woman in a long skirt stands a few paces back, looking down at the ground, where her sandaled foot traces a pattern in the gravel.

25

Mission impossible

“Right,” says Sienna, tucking her corkscrew curls behind her tiny, pixie ears. “This evening, your mission, should you choose to accept it …” She interrupts herself to hum the theme from
Mission Impossible
.

We’re at the school pool, watching the first swim meet of the season from the concrete steps at the side. West Lake is facing its two arch-rivals – Cordoza High and Wheeler High – and the competition is fierce. There’s a lot of screaming and shouting echoing off the high roof and brick walls. We don’t officially have cheerleaders for this sport, but that hasn’t stopped the Jaysters from donning matching short red skirts and skimpy midriff tops, and waving red and white pompoms.

Luke is swimming in this race – Varsity boys’ freestyle, 200m. My body longs to be in the water, racing – especially when I watch our girls team. I’m better than they are – or I used to be. My mother was certain that one day she’d see me at the Olympics, clutching a medal.

“Go for gold, Sloane, aim high,” she always said.

Did her advice apply to boys, too? I suddenly miss her fiercely.

“Your mission,” Sienna says again, snapping her fingers in front of me. My eyes must have glazed over.

“Right. My mission?” I duck to the side to avoid a shower of water that sprays up as the closest swimmer hits the water.

“Your mission is to photograph the five or six hottest hunks and most bodacious babes on the swim team. What we need, though, is a close up of the face and a separate body shot – each guy’s torso, each girl’s booty.”

I raise my eyebrows. “What’s it for?”

“For The Underground. I thought we could jumble up the head and body shots and have a competition to see who could match them up correctly. The winner gets bragging rights and a candy bar.”

“You don’t think that’s objectifying their bodies?”

“Don’t overthink this, agent, it’s just a bit of fun. Also, we’ll be doing it to both males and females, so it’s not like it’s sexist.”

“Yes!” I say. Luke has just won the race.

“You’ll do it, right?”

“You want me to run around taking pictures of the girls’ backsides, and the guys’ abs?”

“It’s a tough assignment, but someone’s got to do it.”

Sienna and I look down at the pool where the swimmers are just emerging from their racing lanes. Water streams off their long, lean muscles and flies off in droplets as they pull off their caps and shake their heads like wet spaniels.

We both sigh. Actually, I sigh twice – I’m looking at Luke.

“So how’s it going with him?” Sienna asks.

“Who?”

“Sloane, please,” she chides. “You’re talking to me.”

“Fine. It’s going … not too bad, I suppose. We’re working separately as far as possible on the L.O. project, and he’s not giving me such a hard time.”

We both look at the winners’ podium, where Luke now stands on the middle block, dipping his head for the medal.

“He
is
 … gorgeous,” says Sienna, rolling the word around in her mouth like a juicy grape.

We both nod, then sigh again.

“He has to be one of the hunks in the competition, for sure,” she says, suddenly all business.

“Sienna, no way! No way can I go up to Luke and ask him to bare his body –”

“Just his abs,” Sienna says, mock horrified.

“– to bare his abs so I can take a photo of him.”

“Do it on the sly then,” she suggests. “Pretend you’re a photojournalist spying behind enemy lines.”

I must still look unconvinced, because she punches me on the arm and says in a hearty, encouraging voice, “Sometimes we have to suffer in pursuit of our art, Sloane. Just do it. Take one for the team.”

“Why can’t you do it? What are you going to be busy with that I have to slink about, stalking the swim team?”

“I’ll be taking some informal shots, and,” she says, reaching into the enormous bag she carries everywhere and extracting a giant tube of Pringles, “pumping an informant for info.”

“You’re going to bribe a stoolpigeon with chips?”

“Not bribe, Sloane, never bribe! Boy, you sure are cynical. It’s simply that she is going to dish the dirt, and I am going to gift her with a snack.”

Sienna is what my mother would have called ‘incorrigible”.

“Later, girl friend,” she says.

I catch the faint strains of the spy tune again as she hops downs the stairs and heads towards the exit. I can just make out the brassy red hair of the person waiting for her in the shadows there.

I grab my camera and make my way down to where the swimmers are milling about waiting for races or toweling off after them. The bootylicious girls are only too eager to pose, though they keep wriggling and giggling, and insist on removing their caps and combing their hair before they’ll allow me to shoot their faces. Still, photographing the girls is easy compared to the boys. It’s damned embarrassing to ask the muscled male swimmers to strut their stuff. A couple look as embarrassed as I feel, but most are shameless – volunteering to go full-frontal in the buff while sucking in their stomachs and clenching their muscles to make their six-packs pop. One guy, who has “Eat my bubbles!” written on his back, rolls up his latex swimming cap and stuffs it into his speedo before posing.

After I’ve got head and torso pics of all but one of the male contenders, it’s time for the money shot. I cannot make myself approach Luke directly. I creep about, hiding behind the winners’ podium and the score-keeper’s table trying to get the photographs of Luke, but he is either in constant motion or surrounded by a bevy of smiling girls. I take cover behind a bulky man standing on the paved pool deck and raise my camera. I’m after Luke’s torso. He is some way away and he has a towel slung around his hips so it’s not ideal, but this swim meet will soon be over so I figure I’d better take whatever shot I can get. Also, my feet are getting wet because I’m standing in a puddle of water.