Killing Mr. Griffin (13 page)

And so they had read—or, rather, Dolly had read, her lilting voice carrying Ophelia gaily through her tunnels of madness to her ultimate watery end—and Susan had thought, this can’t be real. It’s a cartoon—a dream—a nightmare. That’s it—it’s a nightmare. Soon I will wake up and I’ll be at home in my bed with one of the twins banging at the door to tell me I’ve overslept, and I’ll open my eyes, and the sun will be pouring through the window onto the rug and outside in the elm tree birds will be singing.

But she had already awakened to that scene an hour before, and one could not wake up twice. Actually, she could not believe that she had slept at all. When she had gone to bed the night before, she had thought, I will never sleep, and then exhaustion had rolled upon her in a gigantic, smothering wave, and she had sunk gratefully beneath it. A moment later, it seemed, Francis had been at the door, calling in to her, “Sue! Are you alive in there? Mom wants to know if you’re feeling good enough to go to school this morning.”

“Yes—I am—I’ll be right down,” Susan had mumbled, opening her eyes to the sunlight and the bird-song and the terrible realization that tomorrow had arrived.

She had gotten up and gone into the bathroom and washed her face, pressing the cold washcloth for long moments against her swollen eyelids and puffy cheeks. I must have cried in my sleep, she thought.

I must have cried all night.

When she entered the kitchen the whole family was at the breakfast table. Her mother glanced up worriedly.

“Your cold must be worse, Sue. You look just awful. Are you sure you want to go to school?”

“I feel fine,” Susan told her. “You don’t miss school, just for a little cold.”

“I would,” Melvynne said. “I’d miss school for anything. Huh, Fran?”

“Me too,” Francis said. “Even for nothing, I’d miss school.” “Well, your sister isn’t like you two,” Mr. McConnell said approvingly. “She takes her education seriously. If you boys would straighten up and follow her example, we’d have a happier household around here at grading time.” “Sue’s a girl,” Craig said. “Most girls are grinds.

Guys are different. They’ve got other things on their minds.” “My guess would be that David Ruggles makes good grades,” Mrs. McConnell said. “You don’t get to be president of the senior class on D’s and F’s. Right, Sue?” “Yes,” Susan said, “David does well in school.” It was a strange situation finding herself on top for a change, being held up to the boys as an example to follow. Normally she would have been delighted. Today she felt ashamed and sickened. If they knew—if they had any idea—what sort of person I really am, she thought miserably, they would never, any of them, want anything to do with me again. She would have given anything at that moment to have said, “You’re right, I am too sick to go to school,” and left the table and gone upstairs and crawled back into bed with her face buried in the pillow and the covers pulled up over her head, blocking out the world. But the last thing Mark had said to them was, “You guys show up for school tomorrow. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves by being absent. The whole bunch of us are going to be in Griffin’s class, just like it was any

old day, and we’ll be as surprised as the rest of them when he doesn’t show. Get me?” And when Mark told you something, you did it.

She could understand now what David had meant when he had told her, “Mark isn’t like other people.” There was a strength in Mark, an ability to know exactly what to do in any emergency, and when Mark said something, you had to believe it, because if you couldn’t believe in Mark, you couldn’t believe in anything. “Trust me—trust old Mark,” he had told her last night, his arms a comforting fortress around her.

“Everything’s going to be all right.” Mark knew; he had to know. If they did exactly what he told them, things would somehow work out and the terrible present would one day lie behind them and be the past, and people could forget the past if they tried to. But it was important, terribly important, to do precisely as Mark said. And so she ate what she could of breakfast and collected her books and left for school with the boys, parting with them at the corner to continue down Montgomery to Del Norte while the twins turned off toward the grammar school and Craig toward the junior high. “Hope you feel better, sis,” Craig said, surprisingly, as they split forces, giving her a look of actual concern, and she had murmured, “Thanks. I’m sure I will.” But she had not been prepared for the appearance of Dolly Luna on Mr. Griffin’s desk top. He would have hated it, she thought, just hated it to hear her hacking up Hamlet. She had sat with her head bowed over her book, almost ready to believe that the door might fly open and Mr. Griffin come striding in to take his rightful place and send Dolly flying off

to the teacher’s lounge for her morning coffee.

We cannot get away with it, she told herself. No matter what Mark says, somehow we’ll be found out. Any minute now a policeman will appear at the door or the speaker will call our names. Which was why she was not surprised when she heard it at last in history class.

“Susan McConnell, come to the office, please!” Susan raised her head.

Two dozen pairs of eyes turned to stare at her. Mr. Stanton, the history teacher, nodded his permission. “In case you’re not back before the end of the period, the assignment is to read the next chapter and answer the questions at the end.” Wordlessly, Susan got to her feet, collecting her history book, her notebook, a ball-point pen, her purse. Will they let me go to my locker for my jacket, she wondered? It hardly mattered. The cold gripping her came from within and no layer of outer clothing would ever alleviate it. She crossed the room and went through the door out into the hallway. Mark was leaning against the wall by the water fountain. “What are you doing here?” Susan asked him. “Waiting for you.” “Did they call you too?”

Susan asked him. “Nope.” “Any of the others?” “No. You’re the chosen one.” “Then, how did you know—” “I sit by the window facing the parking lot,” Mark said. “I’ve been keeping my eye out for a squad car. I was pretty sure when they got the report Mr. G. was missing

they’d send somebody over here to check things out. This is the last place he was seen, and you’re the last person to have seen him, so it stands to reason they’re going to want to ask you some questions. I’ve got a biology lab this period, so I slid out of the room and came down to see how you were holding up.” “I’m scared,” Susan said. “I don’t know what to tell them. If they’ve found out everything—” “They haven’t found out anything,” Mark said. “Not one blasted thing, and don’t you forget it. All they know is that Mr. G. didn’t go home last night and didn’t come to work this morning. That’s it-that’s all.

Nothing else. The only way they’re going to find out anything else is if you tell them.” “They’ll ask me questions—” “And you’ll give them answers. You’ve got nothing to hide, right? So tell them the truth.

You wanted a conference with Mr. G. to talk about your grade on that last test. You met him when school let out. You talked about—what?

Whatever it was, tell them. There’s no reason to hide anything there.”

“He said I was bright enough, but sloppy. That I messed myself up by not paying attention to details. He said that in his class an A meant ‘perfect,” and that nobody in that class including me was doing perfect work, but that I was probably capable of it if I made the effort.”

“Okay. What else?” “He said that I was spoiled—that we were all spoiled—because we’re used to overgrading That so few high-school students take their work seriously that anybody who seems to be doing anything stands out, and teachers reward them with A’s, even though they don’t deserve them, because they’re better than the others. And

because they get A’s, they think they’re doing great, and they never even try to push themselves into doing the best work they can possibly do.” “That sounds like him, the bastard.

F’s for everybody so they’ll try harder. Anything else?” “Not really.

We talked about the test—where I had made mistakes and stuff like that—and some about Shakespeare—what he meant by certain lines that I hadn’t understood. When it was over and we started to leave, he started talking about Hamlet’s feeling of guilt over Ophelia’s death and whether or not that really changed him as a person. That’s why I had to walk out to the parking lot with him. I hadn’t meant to, but I couldn’t just say “So long’ and walk away from him when he was in the middle of a sentence, and he seemed to take it for granted that I was going out that way.” “So you walked him out to the lot, and then?”

“He asked if he could give me a ride home.” “No, he didn’t.”

“He—didn’t?” Susan asked blankly. “Nope. He had other plans, and taking you home would have interfered with them. In fact, all the while you were having your conference, he acted sort of peculiar. He kept checking his watch and glancing out the window. Sometimes you’d ask him a question, and he’d act like he didn’t hear it. His mind was on something else.” “But, that’s not true,” Susan said. “Sure, it’s true. How else would a guy act who had a woman on his mind?” “I don’t understand.” “When you walked out to the parking lot with the guy, you started off in the direction of home, and then something about the way

he’d been acting made you look back. He was getting into his car, and there was a woman in it.” “But there wasn’t!” “A real doll, blond and foxy. Young—maybe twenty-two or so, and really sexy. Sitting up front, right next to the driver’s seat.” “I can’t say a thing like that,” Susan exclaimed. “Of course, you can. You can say anything you want to. You’re the last one who saw him, aren’t you? Who else is going to know who was in that car? You’re the one who saw him get into it and drive away.” “But why?” Susan asked. “Why make up something like that? What good will it do?” “It’ll lead them away from us.

Right now, who do they have to suspect of having a hand in this?

Students. Maybe not us, exactly, but students in general; who else did Mr. G. have in his life? And when they start going over the students in his classes, they’re going to zero in on a few people who’ve had some bad problems with him. That means me. And maybe Jeff. And once they hit on us, it’ll follow pretty quick that the rest of you get nailed too. “So what do we do? We throw in a foxy lady, and right away there’s a whole new look to things. There’s a secret part of Mr.

G.“s life that nobody knows about, Who is this chick? Where did she come from? How come they were driving off together? Who’s going to think about students when there’s a love interest to worry over?” “I can’t do that, Mark,” Susan said shakily. “Mr. Griffin was married, you know. How would his wife feel, hearing something like that? She’d think—” “She’d think he ran out on her. What’s so bad about that?

It’s a kindness, baby. If she loved the guy—and it’s hard to believe anyone could—wouldn’t she rather think of him off having a good time someplace, even if it wasn’t with her, than dead?”

“Well-when you put it like that—” “You’d better get moving. We’ve been standing here talking five minutes, and they’re down there at the office waiting for you.” “Mark, come with me!” Susan said pleadingly.

“I just can’t do it by myself. We could say you were with me after school—that you waited for me till the conference was over—that you and I both saw the woman in the car.” “No way,” Mark said firmly.

“You’re Miss Innocence. Stick me in the picture, and we’ve lost the ball game. You can do it, Sue. You’ll do just great.” “I’m scared!”

“Don’t be. It’ll be simple as pie. A girl like you-who’s going to doubt her? Now, on with the show, baby, and remember—I’m counting on you.” He laid his hand briefly on her shoulder. “I’ll try.” Susan drew in a long breath. “And after school?” “You just go on home like you would on any other day. This is your part now. When you’ve carried this through, it’s over. The rest of us will take care of the other part—the bit in the mountains and moving the car and whatever.

Okay?” “Okay,” Susan said. “If you say so, Mark.” She took a few steps down the hall and stopped abruptly as he said, “Sue?” “What?”

“Relax, will you? Don’t walk in there looking like you’re facing a firing squad. Remember, you don’t know a thing about why they’re

calling you. It might be for something great, like telling you you’re going to be named student of the year.” He stood quietly watching with narrowed eyes as she continued down the hall to the office door. She paused and looked back at him. He raised his hand in a small encouraging wave. Susan opened the door and went inside. “Christ,”

Mark said softly under his breath. He bent over the fountain and took a drink.

At three-thirty the four of them got into Jeff’s car and drove into the mountains. The afternoon was warm and still, and the air that poured in through the open windows smelled of pine needles and sunshine.

“Don’t you feel like you were playing the same scene twice?” Jeff asked. “It’s like last Saturday all over again. You’re even all sitting in the same places in the car.” “I wish it were last Saturday,” David said wistfully. “I wish we could go back to then and start all over.” “There’s one nice difference,” said Betsy. “The creep’s not with us. How come you let her slide out, Mark? She’s in this as much as the rest of us. Why doesn’t she have to do some of the dirty work too?” “She couldn’t take it,” Mark said. “So you’re babying her? That’s not fair.” Betsy’s mouth puckered into a pout.

“If Sue can get out of this part, why shouldn’t I? I’m a girl too.”

“It’s not that,” Mark said impatiently. “There’s no ‘fair about it.

It’s just that Sue’s at the freak-out point, and it’s not going to take much to push her over. If she does crack, she runs and tells her father the whole blasted story. Besides, she’s done her bit today.

She had a scene with the pigs this morning.” “I hope she didn’t blow it,” Jeff muttered. “She didn’t. I talked with her afterward. She fed them exactly what I told her to.” “Who couldn’t do that?” Betsy said. “It doesn’t take an Academy Award-winning actress. With that soft little voice of hers and those big, nearsighted cow eyes blinking behind those glasses—” “Cut it,” David broke in sharply. “Don’t rake her over that way.” “Why not, for Pete’s sake? Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft on her, I’ll never believe it! Not you—not her-it’s impossible!” “She’s a nice girl.” “Oh, I’m sure she is. So nice she can’t dirty her hands digging a hole in the ground or moving the car or anything like that. All she can do is sit on her ass and cry and slobber all over Mark’s shirtfront and—” “I said, cut it!” David repeated angrily, and Jeff, glancing over at her in surprise, said, “What’s got into you, Bets? You’re sure in a shitty mood. None of us are looking forward to this part, but it’s got to be done, and you said yourself it’s good not having Sue along.” “Okay, now,” Mark said, cutting off the conversation with a gesture of his hand, “we’re almost to the clearing. There ahead—right around the bend.” He strained forward in the seat. “There’s the car. You did bring the key, Jeff?”