The Kingdom of Childhood (20 page)

“Oh, I didn’t say that,” he replied. “I think it serves him
right. He ought to have had the self-discipline not to take it when it was offered, even if he
is
a politician. ‘Without being attached to the fruits of activities, one should act as a matter of duty.’”

I stared at him in dismay. “Where did
that
come from?”

“The
Bhagavad Gita,
” he mumbled. He chewed the side of his thumbnail. “It’s a yoga thing.”

“So you think it’s karma.”

“That’s exactly what I think it is.”

“That’s not what you used to think about this situation,” I reminded him. “Back in the fall you thought he was getting a crappy deal.”

“Yeah, I changed my mind. I think he’s getting what he deserves for lying to everybody. Cheats and liars need to be brought down.”

“You think so.” I took a few steps forward so he could see me more clearly. “And where does that leave us?”

He removed his thumbnail from his mouth just long enough to answer. “Fucked.”

Back at the school, Zach lingered in the parking lot for a few extra minutes as Judy carried the cookies inside, in a sort of halfhearted nod to her paranoia. Russ was over in a sandy section of the play area, stationed at the ring toss, shouting in a friendly way to the little kids as they set their tongues between their teeth and gave the game their best shot. Whether they did well or poorly, he congratulated each with a high-five. Zach stood at the edge of the lot with his thumbs in his pockets, watching him plainly, making no effort to be covert. He was taller than Zach by several inches, lean for a guy of his age; his face, fair-skinned and spectacled, carried a kind of arrogance that evoked in Zach feelings of both respect and scorn. Regardless of the present state of his marriage, he was
Judy’s real lover—the one who found it no trouble to handle her, who was even bored of going to bed with her, who would no doubt laugh if he knew the boy watching him at the edge of the grass was also the object of her attentions, because was that the best she could do?

He ground a patch of gravel beneath his shoe and considered that he ought to admit defeat—to go to Judy and say,
I’d like to be excused now,
then return to his day job of currying the favor of a girl his own age. In the months since Ohio, Fairen had gradually warmed to him again. When they met with Temple to discuss their history project, she often sat beside him at the table now, rather than across. At Madrigals practice the week before, after the third run-through of a song none of them particularly liked, she had dropped her head back—he was standing just behind her, on the risers—and rested the crown of it against his chest, sighing and meeting his eye to express her aggravation. For a long time after Ohio, resentment still shadowed every interaction he had with her, and his enthusiasm for Judy left him unmotivated to set aside his anger. But now, not much older but a whole lot wiser, he felt ready to lay down his sword where Fairen was concerned. If she wasn’t holding a grudge, then neither would he, for he hated the sense of waste that welled up in him when he mused that in his greed to have her he had lost her entirely.

He wandered back into the gymnasium and caught up with his friends. The whole group of them, Scott included, was now gathered at the bake-sale booth, but Judy was absent, and so Zach happily joined them. By the time the bazaar began to wind down, he was in high spirits; Fairen had flirted with him, Russ stayed out of sight, and for a precious couple of hours life felt entirely normal.

Temple offered him and Fairen a ride home, and Zach was glad to accept. He sat in the back with her until Temple pulled
up in front of her house—an odd route for him to take, given that hers was midway between his and Zach’s—then climbed into the front passenger seat for the ride back toward Sylvania. “You forget where I live?” Zach asked him as he pulled on his seat belt.

“Nope. Just wanted to talk without Fairen here.”

“What about?”

“Tacitus.”

Zach laughed and set his foot against the dash. “You picked the wrong person to talk to about that. Fairen’s the one who’s doing all the reading.”

“This is all stuff we went over in class,” Temple said. “Remember the part about how they used to hang traitors from trees, and stake down the prostitutes in the swamps, and drag women—”

“Through the streets naked. Yeah, I was listening for that part. What about it?”

“She talked about how certain crimes were punished out in the open, so they could make an example of the people, and for the ones where they considered the people
polluted,
they had to, like, destroy them and all the evidence. I was thinking about that—”

Zach squinted at him. “Man, that’s got nothing to do with our report. Does it? It’s supposed to be about Maryland, right? I think we can sneak in the Bunny Man thing, but not anything about them staking down hookers in Hauschen Lake.”

“Stop interrupting me for a minute and just
listen
. I’ve got a point to make.” His voice had grown tighter; Zach glanced at him. “I was thinking about how what it gets at is that, anywhere you go, the tribe doesn’t want people breaking with the code. The individual threatens the group, so the group threatens the individual. You know what I’m saying? In a small, tight society, they had to be real brutal with the violators to
make sure the code gets followed. People still broke it some times, even though they knew what was coming. Maybe they thought they could get away with it, who knows. Maybe they just got sidetracked by whatever they were after and it made them stupid.”

Zach nodded absently and turned the hot-air vent to blow toward him.

“Dude,” Temple said, and Zach looked up. Temple’s eyes looked wincing, and his voice held a hard edge of regret. “You’re sleeping with Mrs. McFarland.”

For a brief moment nothing on him, in him, attached to him moved. His blood seemed to pause in his veins, the food balled in his stomach, the air stung his unblinking eyes. Then he swallowed against his dry tongue and asked, “What are you
talking
about?”

“I don’t
care
that you are,” Temple hastened to add. “I guess. I mean, it’s none of my business—”

“Man, I am
not
. That is so not true. Where did
that
come from? I thought you were talking about Tacitus and all that
Germania
crap.”

“I am,” said Temple. “I’m talking about how you’re being an example of the sort of shit that really pisses off the tribe. It’s obvious, and it’s not cool, my friend. If I were you I’d get straight with that before Scott figures it out, if he hasn’t already. Because he will, and when he does, he’ll spread it all over the school.”

“Name an example,” Zach challenged. His voice quivered but rose. “I want to know where you came up with an idea as fucked-up as that one. Because you’ve got some serious nerve to accuse me of
that
shit.”

Temple didn’t shift his gaze from the road, but his eyebrows rose, and his face took on a smug assurance that filled Zach
with fearful rage. “Three hours ago. You went home with her.”

“She left stuff at her house. I had service hours. Nice try.”

Temple’s laugh was musical with sarcasm. “Hell of a way to earn them. It’s not just one day or one thing, man. It’s a lot of stuff all the time. You vanish with her every time she snaps her fingers. You guys look at each other all wrong. When she gives people rides home, she
always
drops you off last. Just now you noticed I dropped Fairen off first even though that didn’t make any sense. How do you think it looks to the rest of us when
she
does it?”

“So that means I must be sleeping with her,” Zach retorted. “Because it’s not like I have any other reason to be around her, like my
mother
arm-twisting me into volunteering for this damn bazaar. No, it’s gotta be for sex, right? It’s gotta be for sex with
Scott’s mom.
” He had worked himself into an indignation so profound, he almost believed it himself.

Temple shook his head again. “Dude, I’m being a friend to you.”

“The hell you are,” Zach half-shouted. “Telling me Scott’s going to come after me for some crap you all are inventing. What do I care what Scott says? Everybody knows he’s an ass. Nobody would believe something that stupid out of him.”

“They will if they think there’s a kernel of truth to it,” warned Temple. “You know, far be it for me to tell you who you can lay. But dude, that’s some nasty, dirty gossip. I don’t know if you think it’s cool or if she’s sexing you up so good you can’t think straight, but if that gets out, nobody’s going to see it in whatever way you do. And you better believe
Scott
won’t. He’ll fucking humiliate you. You’d be better off getting caught in the bathroom with a guy.”

Zach snorted a sigh and slumped in his seat. “I don’t even know what to say to something that retarded.”

“I won’t tell Scott. You’ve got my word,” he promised. “I’ve got no idea why you’d do something like this, but I think it’s dangerous as hell. Scott’s dumb, but he’s not half as dumb as the way you two are handling it. Have some goddamn
discretion
.”

Zach cast a gloomy gaze out the window, at the trees rushing by at the side of the road, the endless loop of the telephone wires. He stared at the scrubby grass and felt the hollow burden of all he was carrying, all he needed to keep secret, all that stood to go awry if he confided in anyone at all.

“Why would you do that, Zach?” asked Temple, and although the fatigue in his voice made the question rhetorical, Zach knew his friend would welcome an answer. For a moment Zach’s silence hung between them. And then, as if all the possible reasons proved too inexplicable or too ugly to consider, Temple sighed, “I don’t know,” and fell silent as well.

He lay awake on Sunday night, staring at his ceiling, his mind racing over all the things Temple had said. He worried certain phrases like a palm full of stones, but they grew no smoother for the handling.
Nasty, dirty gossip. He’ll fucking humiliate you. It’s not cool, my friend.
He had hoped to wear away the sting of the words, but instead only rubbed his conscience raw.

At one in the morning he lifted the receiver of his bedroom phone and listened to its monotonous hum, wrestling inwardly over whether to call Temple. The urge to confess, to simply purge himself of every dirty secret, was almost physical. Temple would keep his confidence; of that he was sure. But as long as Zach denied it, maintained the pretense that his friend accused him wrongly, he could resist seeing himself through Temple’s eyes. As long as the two of them agreed the very idea was wrong and repugnant, they could still be friends in spite of the lie.

He drifted into a few hours of uneasy sleep and got up when the alarm woke him, dressing for school with the reluctance of the small boy he was no longer. Outside the sky
was still the blue dark of a winter morning. He felt tempted to claim sick and crawl back into bed, but already he had missed a week of school with the flu, he couldn’t afford to miss any more work, and staying housebound all day was likely to drive him insane. What he needed was to distract himself through the day and then gather the
cojones
to talk to Judy. He needed to tell her they’d been caught, they needed to stop hooking up, stop riding in cars together, stop
looking
at each other for God’s sake because they couldn’t even do
that
right; and above all he needed to pass on this information to her without taking advantage of the privacy to get in one last adrenaline rush. To that end, as he filled the pockets of his jeans, he deliberately skipped over the stash of condoms at the back of his underwear drawer. Weeks ago he had resorted to buying his own when he grew embarrassed at how many he was taking from Rhianne, and, as hard as it was for him to believe, he had actually developed
preferences
. If he could go back in time and tell his September self that in a few months he’d be a prima donna about condom brands, he never would have believed it. Even Rhianne’s assurances had seemed fantastical then.

Rhianne. Maybe he ought to run his problems past
her
. She had told him over and over that she was there for any question he might have. He was sure she wouldn’t approve, but no doubt she’d heard worse, and if she judged him for it, well, she’d be out of his life soon enough. The thought of confiding in her raised his spirits just slightly, and he headed off to school with the small hope that he might, after all, find a solution.

His optimism lasted just long enough to get him to the door of his classroom. There his Main Lesson teacher greeted him with his usual handshake and a warm “Good morning, Zach.” Then he handed him a hall pass and said, “Ms. Valera wants to see you this morning.”

“What? Why?”

“She just wants to speak with you. It’s between you and her.”

“I can just talk to her after school or something, can’t I? I don’t want to miss class. I’ve got my
Inferno
summary in my Main Lesson book to show you. I know it’s late and all, but—”

“Zach,” said his teacher. He looked at Zach over his glasses.
“Go.”

As he walked down the hall, Zach felt his anxiety level spiraling upward by the second. Temple had ratted him out.
I won’t tell Scott,
he had said.
You’ve got my word.
But he had never promised not to tell an adult, and now here Zach was, on his way to the classroom Temple must have visited first thing that morning. He could almost hear Temple’s end of the conversation, his SAT-genius, teacher’s-pet explanation:
I tried to explain it to him by what you taught us about crime in
Germania,
but he just denied it and denied it. And I’m really worried about him. He’s not keeping up with his end of our project because of his relationship with the kindergarten teacher.
Left foot, right foot; fear and fury throbbed in him, each in turn, with the pounding of every step. Temple had forgotten: traitors hung from trees. He walked past classroom after classroom. From each came the chorus of the other students chanting the morning verse:

Normally he slogged through it, by rote. At the moment, though, he would have enjoyed nothing more than droning out a scripted introspection about his soul if it meant he could circumvent a conversation about it.

He stepped into Ms. Valera’s classroom, which was empty of students—her planning period, he supposed. Straight ahead was the supply closet at which, not very long ago, he had attempted to get a little attention out of Judy and she had freaked out like the entire concept astonished her. The history classroom was a Bermuda triangle in which Judy was chaste, Temple was a rat, and Zach wished to be in the presence of anyone but the hottest teacher in the school. It was no wonder the previous teacher had died. The place was cursed.

“Have a seat, Zach,” Ms. Valera said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

She sat at its far end at her desk, scribbling onto a stack of papers, her long hair brushing her arm as she wrote. Objectively speaking, she was probably still hot, but at the moment she looked simply terrifying. He sat in the chair nearest her, which was not on the opposite side of her desk but rather very near her own seat, to diminish any sense of her as an authoritarian figure. He would have preferred the desk in the way, as a sort of emotional shield.

She turned to face him and crossed her legs, resting an elbow on her knee. “Do you know why I asked you to come see me?”

Oh yeah,
he thought, but there was zero chance he would offer that answer. He decided to plead the Fifth. “No idea.”

“Sure you do. I can tell by your answers that you’re not doing the readings. Your papers are hastily done, and in class, you always have this look.” She waved a hand up and down in front of her face slowly. “Glazed as a donut. Do I bore you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I try to keep it interesting. I spoke to some of your other teachers and they report you seem distracted, but to some extent they write it off because you’re new here and still getting acclimated. But I’m in the same boat, and I think it’s something else. What do you think?”

The back of his nose began to burn, near his throat. He looked away and replied, “I’ve just been real busy in the evenings and not getting enough sleep.”

“So you feel you’re under a lot of stress.”

“
No.
I’m just
busy.
It’s not necessarily stress-busy. I like to hang out with people after school and I don’t want to have to give that up to read fucking Dante.” She cocked an eyebrow, and he muttered, “Sorry. But I don’t.”

“How’s the Tacitus project coming along?”

“It’s done, mostly.” This was true, and he felt a little defensive at the question. “Me and Temple and Fairen knocked it out pretty quick after you assigned it. Ask Fairen, she’ll tell you.”

“I believe you. I spoke to Temple about it yesterday, actually. He filled me in on everything you’ve been doing.”

It was involuntary, but Zach dropped his head down and cradled his forehead in his hand. He rubbed his eyes, and Ms. Valera asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he said, grimly. “Listen, anything Temple’s telling you is stuff he’s just coming up with on his own. I know he’s really smart and all, but that doesn’t make him a mind reader. I don’t tell him anything, so I don’t know where he gets this stuff from.”

Ms. Valera folded her hands on her lap and absorbed this information with a blank stare. “So are you telling me he has no idea where you’re at on the project? Because he told me everyone had their part finished except for the illustrations.”

Zach looked at her unblinking, his mouth partly open. He couldn’t figure out whether she really didn’t know, or was trying to get him to own up to it without having to drag it out of him. Why else would she have called him down here, on today of all days? To discuss his
grades?
In his mind he heard Temple’s voice again:
it’s obvious, my friend.
Or was it?

“Something’s off about you, Zach,” she said. “I wish you’d air it with me so we can work through it. It’s very clear that you’re capable of much more than you’ve given lately.”

He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, you know, I worked all term on that playhouse for the auction. Did any body mention how great that turned out? The school got over five hundred dollars for it. So the stuff I care about, I
am
working hard at. And the stuff I don’t care about can just take a number.”

She nodded again, more slowly this time. After a pause she said, “I’ll be a little more direct. Is there a particular person who’s distracting your attention at school?”

He met her gaze with a look of pure, undiluted fear. “No.”

“Because I think that’s the root of the problem. If you’ll open up to me about it, I can rearrange things for you so it’s less of a concern. But there’s nothing I can do if you won’t talk to me.”

He shook his head, but it seemed to take a monumental effort to do so. His stomach started to ache with the acid burn that had sidelined him at the Christmas bazaar. He tightened his folded arms and girded himself to get through this meeting without either confessing or vomiting.

She watched him for a long moment. Finally she sat taller and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you so uncomfortable.”

“Can I go?”

“Just bear in mind what I’ve said, please, Zach. You can confide in me, and I’ll help you.”

He nodded and, without word or smile, hurried out the door.

Judy smiled when she opened the door to find him there, pushing the storm door latch to invite him inside. “What a
nice surprise,” she said, as if he were there to drop off a plate of holiday cookies. “I just got home half an hour ago.”

“Is Russ here?”

“No. Neither is Scott. Aren’t you supposed to be at Madrigals?”

“Yeah.” He knew Temple would note his absence, and in his paranoia—because everything looped back to his paranoia now—guessed what he would suspect. But Zach felt virtuous for his real intentions. Temple could take his eagle-eyed observations and shove it.

“Listen,” he said. “We need to talk.”

“Sure.” She smiled. She began walking up the stairs and, out of habit, he followed her. She had changed from her work clothes and, for once, was dressed like a normal person instead of a Waldorf teacher, in jeans and a pink button-down shirt. Once her bedroom door was locked, she rubbed his arms and said, “You look cold. Why didn’t you stop by my classroom? I would have given you a ride home.”

“Yeah, I know. So does everybody else.” She creased her forehead quizzically, and he continued, “Temple confronted me about you.”

“Confronted you?” Her voice nearly mocked him.

“He told me he knows I’m sleeping with you. That it’s obvious, and we’d better get it back under wraps before Scott figures it out.”

She folded her arms, her face set in a look of only mild concern. “And on what does he base this crazy story of his?”

He rattled off a list of Temple’s observations. “He says it’s obvious. That we look at each other wrong. I don’t know what the hell to say to that one. ‘No, we don’t’? How do I know how I
look
at anyone?”

She nodded and seemed to consider her reply. “So how did you respond?”

“I told him he was smoking crack. What was I supposed to say? That he’s right? Because I’m telling you, Judy, he had it
down
. It’s like he’s been watching us for months. He had no doubt at
all
. And then Ms. Valera called me in today, telling me she knows someone’s distracting me at school and she can help me avoid that person if I’ll just come clean about it. I almost puked on her desk when she said that. She let me go without saying anything, but between her and Temple, it’s like dry fucking timber for the next person who notices something’s up.”

She eased her arms out of their crossed position and tucked her hands into her back pockets. For a moment she regarded him with weary concern. Then she said, “Stand still.”

He did as she asked. She circled behind him and helped him out of his down vest, then lifted his T-shirt and thermal off his body in a single piece. Once the clothes lay in a pile on the floor she embraced him from behind and, her fingers splayed against his pectorals, kissed him between his shoulder blades. Then she sat on the bed and smiled.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Please continue.”

“What was
that
for?”

“I thought you might be wearing a wire.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “You thought I was trying to
turn you in?
”

“It’s happened to women in my position before. I just wanted to be sure. Your line of conversation was sort of painting me into a corner there.”

“God
damn,
Judy. How can you not fucking trust me
now?
After all this.”

The corner of her mouth twisted. “It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s all the adults around you. If they wanted to hang me, they wouldn’t give you a choice. They’d slap a wire on you and send you in here saying, ‘Go do your thing.’”

She had a point. He leaned back against the dresser and closed his eyes in exhaustion.

“First of all,” she began, “Temple doesn’t know anything. Not unless you said something to him. He’s jumping to conclusions and that’s his own problem. If you deny it and I deny it, there’s no issue. As long as we don’t get caught
in flagrante delicto.
”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s Latin for ‘fucking in the car.’”

In spite of himself, he laughed. He rubbed a hand down his face and said, “We’re not doing cars anymore, remember?”