Brutal Youth (11 page)

“How does giving those girls what they want make them stop?” Stein asked, still not looking at her. Lorelei groaned, scooping up her bag and stalking away down the hall.

Davidek watched her go. Stein didn’t, but wanted to.

NINE

The next morning, Davidek failed to gather his stuff and move to the second floor fast enough. As a result, his face was now pressed against the fan grate again. His tie fluttered before him in the stainless steel drum, its tip nipped by the roaring whirl of the blades.

“Almost there!” Morti cried. “Push a little harder!” Two of the larger Fanboys shoved all their weight against Davidek’s back. He felt the metal grate flex and shut his eyes, imagining the bars giving way and his face plunging into the gnawing metal.

That’s when the tie caught. It drew tight on his collar, but only for an instant as the clasp popped open and the clip-on knot slipped easily through the bent grate, clattering around in a crimson blur before being ejected on the other side of the whirring blades.

The Fanboys fell back, cackling, hooting, and high-fiving each other. Morti had confiscated a freshman girl’s change purse and opened the contents over Davidek’s head, and the pennies, nickels, and dimes flashed against the blades in metallic agony as the older boys ran away.

Davidek slumped on the floor beside the fan, breathing heavily, wiping the dust lines from his face, spitting off the little bit that got between his lips.

“Are you the one throwing coins in there?” He looked up at Ms. Bromine, her hands on her purple-skirted hips. Mr. Mankowski was behind her, in the same pose.

“No, no,” Davidek said, but she had already drawn out a pad of detention slips from the binder she was carrying. “You’re out of uniform,” she said, pointing a pen where his tie used to be. “That’s a second detention.”

When she was done writing them, Davidek walked down the stairs, down to the first floor, and slipped out the side entrance as the homeroom bell began to ring. He found his tie—a little ripped, but still intact—blowing across the long grass, whipped by the wind of the overcast morning. It was starting to rain.

Davidek reattached the clip-on to his collar and went back inside, where he was greeted again by Ms. Bromine. She had two more detention slips already waiting.

“For being late for class,” she said. “And leaving the school without permission.”

*   *   *

When Davidek got home that afternoon, the house was empty. His mother had gone shopping again, but that was good. In response to his begging, she had promised to buy him a proper tie. He heard the front door opening and ran to find her hauling six overstuffed Guess? shopping bags alongside her.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

His mother blew hair out of her eyes. “Get what?”

Davidek dropped his hands, his mouth, and his welcoming tone. “Mom—
the tie
!”

She groaned. “Peter, you’re like a broken record sometimes.…”

“Mom!” he said, outraged, incredulous, infuriated. “Mom, you
promised
!”

“I
forgot
! I’m sorry!” she screamed. “Do I have to repeat it for you? Do I?”

Davidek sat watching TV that night, trying not to say a word to anyone, rehearsing his words, waiting to go off like a time bomb. Davidek looked at his mother’s new Guess? shoes, propped up on the leg rest of her easy chair. The fresh white turtleneck she wore was Guess?, too. Over by the front door was a brand-new Guess? purse. Davidek stared at everything around him like he wanted it all to catch on fire.

“What’s your problem tonight?” his father asked.

Davidek said, “Guess.”

“I’m so tired of this attitude,” his mother said, marching into the kitchen rather than defend herself.

“I’m still going to school with a clip-on tie!” Davidek bellowed after her. “I’ve asked you
every day.
And other kids make fun of me—
every day.
You’ve gone shopping, like, six times since school started!”

His mother rushed back into the living room, frowning at him. She had no defense, and knew it. “You sound just like
your brother
when you talk like that,” she hissed, the ultimate put-down in their house.

Davidek’s father suggested: “Don’t I have ties upstairs you can wear?”

“Dad, freshmen have to wear red ties. It’s the rules. Sophomores have blue and red stripes, and upperclassmen have blue.”

His father said, “I have red ties. Did you look?”

Davidek sank deeper into the couch. “Yeah, they have Santa Claus on them.”

His father turned up the TV volume. He was clueless about why any of this was relevant to him. “So, buy the stupid tie yourself and quit bellyaching.”

“Can I have some money?” Davidek demanded.

His father said, “Not with that attitude. Find it yourself.”

*   *   *

Davidek was telling this story at school the next morning, when Green said: “So it’s lost treasure you need?” He smiled. “Wait here a second, I’ll be right back.”

When he returned, Green led Davidek outside. They were careful, secret-agent style, to avoid being spotted leaving the school without permission. Green didn’t have any detentions, and Davidek couldn’t handle any more.

Soon the boys’ fingers were picking along the ground below the third-floor ventilation fan, overturning a penny, a nickel, two dimes. Black and gray clouds swirled above as Davidek crawled through the wet emerald grass of the empty church field, pausing to parse through the fistful of coins he had gathered. “Six dollars and thirty-five cents!” he called out to Green, who was bent over by the yew bushes where the Groughs tended to hang out, his arm searching the bare dirt beneath the shrubs.

“I only have nickels and dimes so far. Maybe four dollars’ worth,” Green said.

“This ought to be enough to get me some kind of regular tie,” Davidek said. “This was a great idea, Green. I mean it. Thanks.”

Green continued to probe under the shrubs. “It might be better than you know,” he said. Davidek asked what he meant, and Green answered cryptically: “I tried to set something in motion when I left before. Let’s see if it works.” The two freshmen resumed their hunt, and had accumulated another two dollars between them when a sound of hollering and mad laughter drew their eyes up the side of the schoolhouse to the mouth of the industrial fan three stories up. Seconds later, a rumbling pitched into a piercing whine, and a cannon blast of coins exploded from the exhaust grate.

The widening column of metal disks spinning and flipping through space created a small galaxy of twinkling light across the dark morning clouds. Davidek and Green covered their heads as the coins showered around them.

Green was laughing to himself. He looked at Davidek. “I call heads!” he said.

Both boys swooped down to gather up the fallen fortune. “What
was
that?” Davidek asked. “There’s, like, twenty bucks in coins here, at least!”

Green couldn’t hide his pride. “The truth is … I got the idea to come out here from our friend—Mr. Smitty. Turns out he isn’t just trying to curry favor with those Fanboys when he rats out all the kids who have spare change in their pockets. I saw him coming out here afterwards to gather up the money.”

The boys were using their forearms to sweep together big piles of coins on the sidewalk. “Smitty had most of the money he gathered just sitting in two Ziploc bags in his locker,” Green said. “So, before we came out here, I just went over and told Morti and his buddies to go have a look-see.”

“You are an evil genius, Hector Greenwill,” Davidek said. “But this is a lot of cash. Why wouldn’t the Fanboys just keep those big bags of coins for themselves?”

Green sat up, thinking about it. “I guess because they’re morons.”

Davidek said that sounded about right. “You think Smitty will find out it was us?”

“I’m not sure
what
to make out of that guy,” Green said. “But remember that big speech of his? The one about how people do bad stuff to get what they want, but people only do good stuff out of selfishness, too? Well, maybe he was wrong. Maybe sometimes, people just do …
stuff.
Because they don’t know what else to do. Or out of pure craziness. Or who-knows-why.”

The two freshmen hustled up the stairs, the change-filled pockets of their pants and blazers jangling like Christmas sleighs. “He was right about one thing,” Davidek said, putting an arm over his friend’s shoulder as they went inside. “Don’t get on the bad side of a do-gooder like you.”

*   *   *

In English class, Mr. McClerk was droning on about some Edgar Allan Poe story about a guy who keeps killing a black cat, but Davidek wasn’t paying any attention. He was planning not to spend one more day with the stupid clip-on around his neck.

He had a study hall in the last period of the day and figured he could sneak away to hit the Kaufmann’s department store down the street and still make it back in time for the bus. But he’d need another student to tell Mrs. Tunns, the study hall monitor, that he wasn’t feeling well and had gone to the secretary’s office to lie down. It would have to be somebody trustworthy, so Mrs. Tunns wouldn’t feel obliged to check—that ruled out Stein, and maybe even Green.

“Lorelei…,” Davidek whispered to the table in front of his. Her head was hung over her open book, hair drooping down around her face. “Lorelei … hey…” She wasn’t responding, so he strained forward and swatted her shoulder, then dropped back into his seat.

She surprised him, and everyone else in the room, with a startled cry of pain. Mr. McClerk turned around at the chalkboard to ask if she was okay. Lorelei winced, but said she was fine. The other kids sitting around Davidek glared at him:
What the hell did you do?
He wondered the same.

“Lorelei…,” he whispered, leaning forward across the table again. “Lorelei, I’m sorry. What was…?” She pulled her hair forward to block him from view, and Davidek noticed a deep bruise of brown and purple creeping up her neck from the shoulder beneath her blue sweater. “Lorelei … what…”

She turned her face, looking at him through her hair. She wanted him to stop asking. “My mom caught me,” she said. “Taking her cigarettes.”

*   *   *

At lunch, Davidek thought Lorelei was avoiding him because he’d seen the bruises, but Lorelei just couldn’t be bothered to sit down. She spent the lunch break going from table to table in dangerous territory, begging for help in the upperclassman sections. It was humiliating. It was terrifying. But she was desperate, and saw no other way.

Four very disinterested seniors listened to her plea: “… just a couple packs, and if you get me more, I can pay you back—eventually.”

One of the guys shook his head, like a doctor diagnosing a terminal patient. “If you weren’t a freshman … but I don’t buy cigarettes for little kids.”

Lorelei moved on to the next table, some middleclassmen, juniors and sophomores, a few of them girls. She hoped
they
would be sympathetic. “Hi,” she said, forcing a perky expression into her sagging eyes. “I, uh, wondered if you could…” She explained about the Grough sisters. “You sophomores know what it’s like, right? You put up with this last year.…”

One guy leered at her, spreading his knees. “So, how are you willing to pay me?” He jiggled his hips at her, and all his friends laughed. Even the girls.

Lorelei hurried away from them, running only a few steps before smacking into Davidek.

“Hey, everybody, it’s Clip-On to the rescue!” said the Hip Jiggler, and everybody laughed again. The guy was on a roll.

“You’re making this harder for me,” Lorelei said. “What do you want?”

“I actually … need your help. To tell Mrs. Tunns I’m sick so I can skip out at study hall…” But Lorelei wasn’t listening to him. He watched her walk away, wandering through the cafeteria, visiting more tables, asking for more help, all to the amusement of their fellow Archangels.

Just before the afternoon class bell rang, she stood before a table full of senior girls, who watched silently as she launched into her speech, about the Groughs, about the cigarettes, about her undying gratitude to anyone who could help her.

When she finished, the apparent leader of the group—a perfect girl named Audra Banes, who was petite, curvy, gorgeous, and the epitome of all the grace and beauty St. Mike’s had to offer—looked wordlessly to her friends at the table.

Lorelei blew air up at her bangs. She held out her hand. “I should have introduced myself first.… My name is Lorelei,” she said. “Please, I’m not a bad person.…”

“I know who you are,” said Audra, adjusting the black-rimmed glasses she wore to give herself that aura of nerdy-girl chic. “You’re the one my boyfriend chose as Miss St. Mike’s.”

*   *   *

At the start of final period, Davidek hid in the bathroom, waiting for the halls to clear so he could sneak away. Green would have to cover for him with Mrs. Tunns. He hoped it worked.

When Davidek stepped out into the empty corridor, the weight of his book bag felt more solid, as if gravity had suddenly increased. His bag’s back pocket sagged with loose change.

“What are you doing?” a voice said from behind him. Davidek was fabricating a lie as he turned, but it wasn’t a teacher or the principal who had caught him. It was the red-haired girl from the third floor, the one who had once touched his cheek and called him “adorable.”

“I’m skipping class,” he told her.

She smiled. “Me, too. Calculus.”

Joy bloomed in Davidek’s heart. He fidgeted with the clip-on tie, drawing attention to it by trying to obscure it. “Actually, I could use your help. I need to get to a store.”

The redhead seemed amused. “Skipping class to go … shopping?” she asked. “Must be something important.”

Davidek hefted his book bag, feeling the money in it tinkling in small avalanches as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It is,” he promised.

*   *   *

Lorelei walked out the side entrance at the end of the day and found the Groughs in their usual spot behind the bushes. “You get what we want?” asked Mary, but before Lorelei could answer, Audra Banes, the student council president, lead singer in the choir, head cheerleader, and all-around senior St. Mike’s power player, stepped into the shade of the smoking bushes, her perfect hair flouncing with each fearsome step.