Revolutions of the Heart (17 page)

Cory listened absently as Mike gave diapering instructions. They both stood by the crib as he laid his granddaughter down. The baby flopped her head twice on the mattress, sucked her thumb into her mouth, and closed her eyes.

Mike tapped the dream catcher. “It was a nice idea to give this to Rob.”

“It didn’t seem right to keep it where it was, not forever.”

“No.”

Someone squealed in the hallway, which triggered an increase in the noise.

“What do you suppose…?” Mike wondered.

Cory shook her head. “Some party, old man.”

“Have you danced with Brad Bartleby yet? He may not look it, but he’s a good dancer.”

“No way. Never.” Her voice rose as her protest increased. “Not for—”

“Shush. Baby’s stirring.” Mike pulled a blanket over the small, sleeping body.

Someone knocked on the door, and then a head popped in. “This the bathroom?”

“Next to the kitchen,” Mike whispered. The door closed.

“It’s all a mystery to me,” Cory said.

“Finding a bathroom? I guess you haven’t been to many wild parties in your life. That’s good.”

“I mean it’s a mystery how all these people can have such a good time together.” She pointed at the door. “Like that guy. He was at the landing, but twenty minutes ago he was dancing with Roxanne like they were old high school sweethearts. You’ve got a house full of the town’s worst bigots acting like they’re best friends with every Indian they’ve ever known. I don’t get it. Are they just going to pretend the landing never happened? Was Rob’s gun just a joke? Was the cut on Mac’s head an accident?” She thumped her cast. “I know my brother hit me.”

“Would you rather no one got along, even for a night?”

“Of course not. But if they just pretend nothing happened, nothing will ever change.”

“Things will change. Maybe just one person, one heart—”

“I’ve heard it, Mike. It’s sickening and idealistic.” He shook his head vigorously. “I thought so, too, when Margaret used to lay it on me. One at a time, she’d say. Usually after one of the nursing home residents quit complaining about having Rox or one of the other Indian nurses and stopped demanding a white nurse. One at a time. Your mother convinced me that it’s actually a pessimistic view because it means believing that there is no other way things will get better.”

“I don’t think anyone has changed. They just wanted to come to a party, so they buried their feelings for one night.”

Mike tugged on her arm and pulled her toward the door. “It’s not that hopeless. Robbie’s changed a little. He’s seen and felt the consequences of his hate, Cory, and I think it’s made a difference. The others,” he said, shrugging, “well, maybe one or two or a few will have buried their feelings so deep they can’t be dug up.” He switched on a night-light and turned off the large lamp. “The birthday boy should return to the party. By the way, I explained things to Brad, about Mac’s cut and why you were in the motel room. He said you could have come to the office. He said he would have helped.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment.”

“Maybe not. But he believes it. That’s something.” Mike kissed her. “Enjoy the party, sweetheart.”

Cory watched the revelers from the hallway. She couldn’t believe that a magic wand had brushed the town and healed it. She knew that next spring when spearing began, there would be protests again. Loud and angry.

Laughter erupted and she focused her attention. Roxanne was concluding a story that had convulsed her listeners. Then another woman in the group—a clerk at the IGA who had been a protester—began talking and the other women quieted and leaned forward eagerly, hands on shoulders, heads tipped together.

There would be protests, Cory decided. But possibly Mike was right and there would be one or two fewer screamers at the ropes.

Maybe her mother’s revolution would happen. One party at a time.

“Snap out of it, Cory. I have to talk with you. Now.” Sasha stepped out of the crowd, grabbed her arm, and pulled her toward the nursery.

“There’s a baby sleeping.”

“Doesn’t matter as long as you don’t scream.”

They slipped into the darkened room and closed the door.

“What’s up?”

“You will not believe what I found out. But it makes so much sense. Why didn’t we guess?”

“Tell me.”

“I was standing in line for the bathroom. They really should have a second bathroom; I almost died.”

“Sasha.”

“I was waiting in the hall. Right around the corner in the kitchen Nick’s dad was talking to Logan Bennett’s dad, okay? And Mr. Bennett was telling how last winter he went to Logan’s room to borrow a sweatshirt. So he opened a drawer, he says, and found five boxes of the things.”

“The things?”

“Condoms. And they were all the same brand: Mighty Max, multicolored.”

“It could be a coincidence.”

“Five boxes of the same brand? But that’s not all. Mr. Bennett said he went back two days later and they were gone. Gone! In your locker, that’s where they were. Then Nick’s dad said something crude and then it was time for the bathroom.”

“I hardly know Logan. Why would he do all that stuff?”

“His ego. Logan asks you out, you say no, then you start going out with Mac. It’s so obvious, Cory. On Monday we tell Donaldson.”

“No.”

“You have to! This guy has been harassing you. Racist, sexist harassment.”

“No.”

“I’m going to scream, Cory! You’re driving me crazy and I’m going to scream.”

“Settle down.”

“You have to do something.”

“I will.”

“What?”

Cory leaned against the wall. The night-light cast a yellow beam that reflected off the glass over her mother’s picture. Cory turned back to Sasha. Her mother’s eyes hadn’t really been burning, it was a light trick, that’s all.

“Have Tony check it out without giving anything away. Guys talk in the locker room. He can find out if he asks the right questions. I want to know for sure.”

“And then?”

Cory twisted and looked again at the picture. Eyes glowed in the center of a framed shadow. She turned her back. “I’m going to give Logan a little present.”

“Cory?”

“Don’t panic, Sasha. I only want to give them back.”

17

The Summer High boys’ baseball team had an early morning practice before school each weekday. Wind sprints, push-ups, laps around the track, skill drills. Logan Bennett was the starting first baseman on the team, a defensive star with a mediocre batting average.

Cory flattened herself on the asphalt. A tiny piece of gravel bit into her cheek. She pillowed her head with her arm. It was an uncomfortable position, but she didn’t dare shift, didn’t dare sit up. She couldn’t see the team running final laps, but she could hear the coach shouting and could hear the steps on the track. “That’ll do it.” Coach Nordquist called. “Showers.” Cory’s foot twitched and tapped a soda can. It rolled noisily and banged against a few other cans. Way too much trash. She’d have to get the council to do something about it. Maybe another school cleanup day.

I’m innocent, she thought. I’ve never tossed anything up here.

She was lying on the roof of a walkway that connected the school’s main building to the auditorium and gymnasium. Twelve feet down and several yards away, Sasha was sitting on a bench.

Cory swept her arm out until her fingers touched the straps of her two old book bags. She hadn’t used them for years, but now they were heavy and loaded.

She could hear the team running toward her. Closer yet, and she could smell the moist, tangy odor of sweaty guys. She blocked out the conversations, listening intently for Sasha’s voice.

The wide doors below her were pulled open and her post shook as the boys hustled through—twenty-five thundering, sweaty animals.

“Logan!” Sasha’s sharp call startled even Cory, who had been waiting for it for twenty minutes. “Wait a second, would you?”

Would he stop? Walk away? Was someone with him? Cory didn’t dare lift her head to see. She counted the seconds, one…two…three.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said. “Never mind.”

Never mind. The all clear. Cory rose to her knees and hauled up a bag. She looked down. Sasha was walking away, and Logan, hands on his hips, stood alone just outside the corridor watching her.

Cory lifted the first bag, tipped it upside-down and shook. The gelatinous, loaded condoms tumbled out and fell.

Logan screamed. Logan swore.

Cory emptied the other bag.

He was still screaming, still swearing.

Cory checked her bags. Two condoms had broken, and there was a gooey mix of ketchup and vegetable oil coating the bottom of one of the bags.

Logan’s teammates had returned when he’d started screaming. One of them gingerly toed an unbroken, bloated condom. He nudged it into the grass. It split open and water wet his foot.

“It’s Cory Knutson up there!” someone shouted, and Cory waved to the team. Logan looked up. His blond hair was coated with brown. Cory wondered if regular shampoo would get rid of molasses.

Logan pointed and swore. He called her a name.

Cory smiled. “Gotcha.”

*

“She did what?” Mike gasped and gripped his chair. He looked at Cory, looked at Mr. Donaldson, then slumped.

“As I said, she assaulted another student on the school grounds. I appreciate your leaving work and coming down.”

“She couldn’t assault a rabbit and do any harm.”

“She was…” Mr. Donaldson chewed on his lower lip and patted the edges of a neat stack of papers. “She was armed.”

“Condoms,” Cory said. “I filled them. Most of them just had water, but a few had other stuff. And I dropped them on Logan Bennett.”

Noise from the outer office filtered in. Cory heard a secretary making announcements over the P.A. She heard a vaguely familiar voice ask to use the phone, heard the more distant chatter and laughter of a class leaving on a field trip.

Mike drummed on his chair arm. “Cory,” he whispered, “did you have a reason?”

“It hardly matters,” said the principal. “She assaulted Logan and I must take disciplinary action. The, uh, weapon was not dangerous, so I am limiting the suspension to three days. And she will be banned from all extracurricular activities for the remainder of the year.”

Cory ran a calendar check: council convention in Madison, spring play, concerts, prom. The tiniest twinge of regret twisted deep inside.

“It does matter if she had a reason,” Mike said. “It matters to me. Cory?”

She reached into her pocket. She had been prepared to make a defense and had brought the evidence. She unfolded the two notes and laid them on the principal’s desk. “Someone left these in my locker last winter. There was one more, but Sasha got mad and ripped it up. Last weekend I found out it was Logan who wrote them.”

After the men read the messages, Mr. Donaldson smoothed them flat, then slipped them into a manila folder. Cory couldn’t see if her name was on it. “These are terrible, of course—”

“Along with the note about diseases, he put a bunch of condoms in my locker. Slipped them through the vents, I guess, because he didn’t have my combination. I hardly know the guy. That’s why I did it. I was just returning the gift.”

She watched for a smile. Watched to see if the absurdity, the silliness, would crack through their stern demeanors. Ketchup and oil and molasses and water. That’s all, guys. That’s all.

Mike’s fist slammed on the desk, then he pulled it back and shoved it into his coat pocket. “What,” he said to the principal, “will you do to the boy? Have you investigated this? It’s your school, and these notes, this sort of thing, shouldn’t be allowed. I cannot support the suspension if you don’t do something about the boy. I’ll send her to Florida to visit my mother. I’ll let her go someplace and have a good time.”

“I didn’t know a thing about the notes until now. I had no idea.”

Mike turned to Cory. “When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”

The principal had a nice view out his window. Daffodils and crocuses spread across the lawn. Farther down, there was a dark cluster of trees sheltering a pile of silver, ice-crusted snow. Cory looked at Mike. “Mom was dying.”

Mr. Donaldson rose. “Mike, I promise to look into Logan’s part in this. If it bears out, I’ll certainly take action.”

Mike faced him and they shook hands. “Thanks, Ken.”

Mr. Donaldson walked around his desk. “I understand Sasha was involved.”

“It was my stunt. It’s my problem.”

“I won’t be suspending her, but she, too, will be banned from activities.”

Cory closed her eyes and pictured the prom dress in Sasha’s closet. She stepped directly in front of the principal. “You can’t do that. That’s ridiculous. She didn’t—” Her protest was squelched by Mike’s sudden grip on her arm. “Let’s go,” he said. “Before it gets worse.” Sasha was waiting with her stepmother in the outer office. She raised her eyebrows in question. Cory made a slash across her neck.

“That bad?” said Sasha.

“Call me tonight.”

Mike paused in the hallway to button his coat. “Three days. You can work on your math.”