1 Chapter 17 Well I can see there’s something wrong with you, but what do you expect me to do? - Sex Pistols After the shaded seclusion of Groves, the railroad bridge over the canal was bright and lonely. The flat state sprawled all around, a patchwork of yellow and green fields, gray woods and tan stretches of marshland. Across it the canal was a perfectly straight blue highway, dwindling and disappearing in the haze to both the east and west. Weldin’s yellow Schwinn ten-speed lay at the bottom of the railroad embankment, beside the gravel road that ran along the canal, where Laramie would be able to see it. Overhead loomed the bridge, a steel colossus visible from many miles away on the flat landscape, a forbidding black letter H. The crossbar of the H was lowered to allow trains to cross; the rest of the time the section was elevated to allow the occasional coastal tanker or freighter to pass beneath, engines humming steadily. Today no ships were in sight, making the deserted silence complete. It was the kind of fall day when the sun is warm but any breeze would make it cold, only no breeze stirred. Weldin took off his windbreaker and left it on a bundle of new railroad ties that smelled of sun-warmed creosote. He wore old jeans and an old maroon plaid flannel shirt, having left behind the coloration of the Groves School. He had the sensation of paying a call on his old, former life. He could not slip fully back into it, of course, because of the taut, tight new cable stretched between him and Groves. When the canal was dug the earth had been gouged up by the ton, disgorged into high sloping abutments and then planted with trees to keep it from eroding back down into the waterway. Rain had proceeded to carve gullies in the sandy soil, year after year opening new deposits of fossils among the pebbles, sand and ancient shells. Weldin made his way halfway down one of these ravines, below the silver railroad signal tower for the bridge. The shelves in his bedroom at home held dozens of 2 exogyras, belamites, shark teeth, ammonites, trilobites and even a stone with the imprint of a fishtail from spots such as this. He braced against the opposite wall of the gully and began chipping at the dirt with a stick. A clump of pebbly dirt fell away and revealed a bulletlike point of belamite sticking out of the dirt. He tapped it out into his hand. Instant luck. A trace of the old enthusiasm flickered, even pushing out thoughts of the joint waiting in his cigarette pack. It was the brown, cylindrical, fossilized body of an ancient squid, common enough. He spat on it, rubbed it until its cola-brown transparency came through, held it up to the sunlight to admire it. A meager wisp of dust had appeared in the distance, coming westward along the dirt road beside the canal. It was Laramie, on the red BMX bike he had ridden the last four years. Even at this distance his ungainly form was recognizable on the tiny bike, bent legs pumping, blond hair streaming behind. Weldin put the belamite in his pocket and clambered back up to the tracks. Laramie wore his customary light blue Boba Fett T-shirt and flared jeans, so long that the cuffs were frayed in back, and faded blue Keds. Breathing hard from the climb, he raised one lanky arm in a familiar, windshield-wiper salute from the other side of the tracks. “Greetings Commodore,” he shouted, voice small but familiar in the open space. “I chose this isolated venue to ensure neutral ground where we can make peace between our warring systems. Commodore, I must warn you to withdraw your battle cruisers immediately if these talks are to proceed!” Weldin hesitated, instinctively looked around. “They’re already withdrawn. They’ve been withdrawn.” “Give the order!” He paused again doubtfully on the brink of committing to Laramie’s reality. His hand came up toward the breast pocket of his plaid shirt, stopped, then continued. He lifted out the pack of cigarettes 3 and held it to his lips, communicator-style. “Fleet commander, order the destroyers to leave the neutral zone,” he said with authority. “Much better,” Laramie said, stepping over the rails. “Conventions must be honored. Have you been waiting long in this Satan-forsaken wasteland?” “Ten minutes. Long enough to find this.” He produced the belamite from his pocket and held it out. Laramie took a quick, disinterested look. “Looks like a rock to me. So they let you out of the penal colony?” “I escaped. I’m not even supposed to be out here. I’m on Bounds, when they don’t let you go off campus.” “Lucky I don’t have to worry about such things. I cruise wherever I want, all day.” “How’s the gas station?” Laramie made a face. “I discovered life isn’t so good as a petrochemical dispensing assistant.” “What about the money?” “Don’t need it,” Laramie said, and fished a white, generic pack of 100’s cigarettes from his pants pocket. “Mom buys me these. Plus I eat at home, sleep at home, my computer’s at home. Presto. Got a light?” “Got more than that,” Weldin said significantly. He used the Zippo to light Laramie’s long cigarette, which twitched and jumped as usual. Laramie’s nose was covered in blackheads and his plastic glasses were filthy, also as usual. He took care not to ignite the long, greasy hair. 4 “How the fuck can you see through those glasses man?” “Protective coating,” Laramie replied, smoke wafting thickly from his nostrils. “Protects my retinas from hazardous rays. Just like this soft, furry coating protects my teeth. It’s not easy living here as an extraterrestrial. What is this more-than-that you just spoke of?” Weldin produced his Vantages and held them up, conscious of the colorful brand-name pack. He turned it so Laramie could see the thin joint lying diagonally under the plastic. Laramie’s eyebrows and the corners of his wide mouth went up, but not like Trogg’s or Tony’s or Bone’s would. “Ahh! Mood-expanding comestibles. It’s been a while.” “Fresh from the Groves Kitchen Guy. Nearly got my ass caught buying it.” “How are things at the Groves Quadrant Penal Colony anyway? Apart from the strict spatial confinement, which you seem to be ignoring.” “Six more months to go. Then I graduate thank god.” “You mean thank Satan, ruler of our destinies. What’s after that? Still college I presume?” “Looking at a few. Got the applications.” “What am I going to do?” Laramie said with a theatrical gesture of his hands.“All alone when you’re gone?” “I only see you about once a month right now,” Weldin said. “You were the only life form on this planet worth forming a cognitive interface with.” “you got other friends. George and Brian. And Kelly.” Laramie’s pale, dirty brow wrinkled and he ticked off friends on his long-nailed fingers. “George? Okay maybe, but his parents don’t like me because I’m white. Brian is certifiably psychotic. 5 Kelly now hangs around with ogre-like life forms who can barely read and just sharpen their knives all the time. These are not friends.” Weldin lit up the joint and cautiously inhaled thick, burned-vegetable smoke. When he held it out Laramie took it precisely with two of the long-nailed fingers. His face was thinner and paler than before, the blackheads blacker. When Laramie exhaled rapturously he gave an enormous grin that made it seem as if the whole top of his head would split off and fall on the ground beside the track. He closed his eyes and gripped his skinny hips. “Time portal opening, prepare for Shift. Here it comes, oh thank you my Satan!” Weldin inhaled again and held the smoke, gasping, “Still got the upside-down cross in your room or did your dad finally ... end that?” Laramie both nodded and shook his head. “Paternal Base Officer made me take it down. We have rules at my penal colony too. Every morning I still burn a page from the Bible in my urn and pray to the ashes so that the Prince of Darkness will keep me in his favor.” Weldin dabbed spit on a place where the joint was burning too far down one side. A great warm, heavy hood had descended on his brain. “Your urn,” he heard his voice say. “That’s crazy man.” “A Lando Calrissian drinking glass from Exxon, actually. And I’m not crazy. I’m the sane one. Craziness just means you don’t think like the majority.” He held up an overgrown fingernail. “Remember. As Joshua said to the Anti-Matter Man, Don’t you dare touch me.” Weldin pretended to laugh. They sat down on the stack of new railroad ties where Weldin’s windbreaker lay. The world receded into a movie outside the heavy hood of Dope. Laramie’s words became disconnected quacks and clicks as he went on talking about a science fiction epic he was writing. He talked just as he always 6 did, as if he were afraid to stop, as if he had to get everything said before Weldin went away again. There was no point in Weldin talking; he had no news. Mention of his friends would be met with a blank stare. Mention of Caroline, who was still in his head, even elicit an even blanker one. The near pylon of the bridge towered above them black and silent, enclosing the massive, rust-streaked concrete block of the counterweight. “Wonder what that thing weighs,” Weldin finally declared. Laramie stopped in mid-discourse, turned agreeably to look. “More like what would happen if you jumped from that height? What would happen when you hit the water? Satan knows.” “I heard it would be like hitting pavement.” “You wouldn’t die from jumping off the track. You’d have to climb higher. You’d have to go up the tower. Right up around there.” He extended one long white arm, indicating a specific point on the looming pylon. The gesture served to expose the arm’s inner surface, and Weldin saw that from wrist to elbow it was all thin brown-black scratches, roughly parallel, like marsh grass in winter. “Shit man what happened?” Weldin said, pointing. Laramie cocked his head self-consciously and smiled like a girl whose engagement ring has been noticed and turned his whole body to offer a better view. “I was at Kelly’s fort in the woods like a week ago. I found this rusty razor blade. It didn’t hurt at all. Like it? Homemade tattoo-job!” Weldin shook his head. Laramie seemed pleased. Histrionic, his father had called him, back before his mouth had been wired shut. “Lucky you didn’t get tetanus. Why do you do stupid shit like that.” 7 “It makes me happy!” Laramie cried, throwing his arms wide, incredulous. Histrionic. After two more hits Weldin carefully crushed the coal of the joint on the polished top of the rail. He was slow and deliberate about slipping it back into the plastic of his cigarette pack. “I mean can’t a guy do what makes him happy?” Laramie persisted with an edge in his voice. “None of my business.” “Speaking of that, I do have some news. Big news. I’ve been debating whether to ... let you in on it.” Weldin said to go ahead, half-interested. Laramie cleared his throat to begin but abruptly burst out in body-racking laughter. He laughed until his head hung between his bluejean-clad knees and the cigarette nearly dropped from his fingers. Weldin waited. When Laramie looked up his face actually did look a little different. He said, “Weldin I am gay.” To hear such a thing from Tony or Trogg would be earth-shattering. From Laramie it was like he had gotten a new pair of pants. Weldin replied, “Well that’s okay I guess.” “I hope you’re not, like, too freaked out.” Trying to respond in a way that would dampen the drama, Weldin said, “Just remember I’m not.” Laramie burst into a peal of purely fake laughter, holding up his hands to ward off the idea. “Don’t worry Weldin. You’re not my type at all! But you don’t mind? That’s what’s most important. That’s what I was worried about. I really thought maybe you’d freak out.” 8 “Of course I don’t mind. None of my business.” Laramie made a show of being relieved, wiping a hand across his brow. “Thank Satan. I was worried about what you were going to say. You’re so conventional and stuff.” Irritation welled up despite Weldin’s stonedness. None of my business echoed in his skull. It was what he wanted Laramie to be, all of a sudden. None of my business. Was this a new feeling? Or was he just giving it free rein now that he had other, new friends who talked about girls, dressed well, and washed? “Conventional cause I’m not a Satan-worshiper? Cause I don’t burn pages of the Bible every day? Cause I’m not living in Star Wars land and I didn’t quit high school or take two dozen muscle relaxants or get put in a psych center? Cause I practice personal hygiene? Cause I’m not gay?” “Okay okay! See I knew you would freak out.” Laramie shifted to a new track. “Only listen, what do you think I should tell them?” “Tell who?” “Your parents,” Laramie said urgently, impatiently. “About me!” Vines seemed to be twining their way out from the weird repetition of his mind, feeling for Weldin’s wrists and ankles. Weldin would at one time have just let them grow over him, thickening and leafing out, but now he felt compelled to pick them off, slap them away, maybe even sever them with a machete. “My parents? Why the hell does it matter what my parents think?” “I stop by and visit them a lot you know. Your mom would be okay with it but your dad wouldn’t because he doesn’t like me. He doesn’t hate me like my dad does, but he definitely doesn’t like me.” “He doesn’t ... why do you say that!” “He doesn’t like people with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, 9 dyslexia, manic depression, motor-skills deficit, low self-esteem and debilitating math phobia, I can tell you that.” Weldin just got up, wondering what his father had said to Laramie ‒ except that his father had not been able to say anything for months? It seemed that in Weldin’s absence Laramie had somehow taken up an imaginary residence in his family, felt compelled to take the place of his parents’ missing son, felt the need to undertake yet something else for which he was miserably unsuited. He lit another cigarette and started walking toward the bridge. Laramie followed closely and immediately, like a cloud of gnats. As they trod over the ties he told the story of his gayness: He had been riding in a car with Kelly Ryan and Frank Muhlena and Steve Indellini getting stoned, and somewhere on Route 13 they had picked up a hitchhiker. There had been some kind of conflict that Weldin didn’t understand, and then someone had gotten a blowjob from the hitchhiker, and somehow Laramie had ended up getting in the back seat and giving the hitchhiker a blowjob and enjoying it. Weldin stopped under the signal bridge, dragged on his cigarette and waited. It did not seem possible but he wanted keenly, definitely to return to Groves. He thought again of Caroline’s gold-green eyes in the sunlight on the stairs in her house. Laramie stopped beside him, swirling gnats, ready with more vines. “The funny thing was when it happened it was right after I had just seen your mom. Imagine if she knew. Imagine what she would think if she knew right after I saw her, I started out on the road toward self-discovery! Toward liking boys!” “What happened to being an asexual polymorphic being from Alpha Centauri?” Weldin asked, but Laramie did not smile. “Try to understand, Weldin. It’s discovery. It’s freedom.” A note of pleading entered his voice, 10 even of quiet pride. “Don’t you see? I’ve discovered my problem!” “Why do you need a problem?” Weldin said, and walked again, wiping and sheathing the machete. He spoke to the approaching bridge. “You could be missing your leg. Be blind. You could have fucking cancer man. You could have ... shit ‒ ” He could not keep the mocking tone out of his voice. “ ‒ You could have a dad who hates you and doesn’t buy you a computer.” “What exactly do you want from me?” Laramie challenged, following. “What do you want from me?” Weldin threw back, feeling that if he did not keep moving things were going to skid out of control. Now he wished he were not stoned. “Should I be all impressed with the new act? Like I was with the insane act? The Devil-worship act? The suicide act? The cut-myself-with-razorblades-and-show-everybody act? And now it’s the gay faggot act?” “You’re not answering my question,” Laramie said, triumphant and slightly dangerous. “I said what do you want from me?” “Nothing!” Weldin said. “Just for you to ... nothing! Get serious! Stop needing me to tell you it’s okay. Get a damn job and keep it. Do your writing or whatever until somebody sees how good you are. Just do something.” “Go to a fancy school, which my parents could never afford, and then college because of course that’s the only real thing to do?” Weldin stopped and turned yet again; Laramie stopped too. It was like an idiotic dance step. “I’m there because it’s the only thing for me okay. It’s my future. It’s decided. It’s what I’ve gotta do. My dad went there, okay? That’s not something you have a choice about, when your dad went there.” “Hey, I know!” Laramie said, holding up a finger and gazing at a nearby point in the air as if inspiration were suddenly hovering there. “I’ll go to a rich fancy school and complain all the time about 11 how much it sucks even though it’s the only place I belong!” Then he cupped one hand over his mouth, still looking into the blue sky through his cloudy glasses. From his hand came a click and a burst of imitated static. “Progress report, Mr. Kowick?” he said in a radio voice. He answered himself in a normal voice. “Er ... yes. He still seems to be within the influence of the negative-reverse-antireality sphere.” Static. “What is the basis of your diagnosis, Mr. Kowick?” Normal voice. “He’s being a real bummer.” Something was creaking. It was the bridge, bringing a halt to all other matters. The massive counterweight was rising impossibly inside its cage. The span was actually coming down. “Train,” Weldin barked, a cleansing wedge of panic transfixing his chest. He leaped off the tracks and skidded down the heavy rocks, looking south. A twinkling yellow headlight was already visible. The train had just passed through Centerboro, and as he looked the light grew noticeably larger. Laramie was not with him; perhaps he had ditched off the other side. Weldin scrambled back up the rocks to look. There was his friend, actually lying down across the track, head on one polished rail and blue Keds crossed on the other in a stiff but leisurely pose. “What the fuck are you doing?” Weldin’s heart pounded. The headlight was growing and a throb was in the air. “This is where we part company Weldin old beast. Ahh. Such a beautiful autumn day. Warm sun, cool air, soon to be filled with the smell of blood and diesel.” “Cut this shit out.” Weldin shoved him with a boot but not too hard. Laramie was jostled but did not budge. “Almost forgot.” Laramie fumbled out his generic cigarettes and stuck another in his mouth. “Gotta light?” 12 “Get the fuck up before I drag you.” Laramie sat up, looking peeved, and looked from Weldin to the approaching headlight and back. “They light em on firing squads!” “Don’t fuck with trains! Get up before they have to put on the brakes, dumbass!” Laramie made a show of getting irritably to his feet, dusting himself off and stepping back over the rail in his own good time. “I’ll let it go this once,” he said. “Don’t want to put you through dealing with the cops, or watching while they chop me out of the wheels with an ax. So anyway, that guy in the car who I gave the blowjob to? Turns out we actually know him. He ... ” “They’re slowing down. They saw us.” Laramie looked annoyed at being interrupted. He squinted down the track through his dirty glasses. Weldin pulled him down the rocky slope by a shirtsleeve, to a safer spot, and they watched as the locomotive’s headlight bore down and its thunder grew louder and nearer. When Laramie tried to speak again his words were swept away in the humming doomsday roar and squeal from overhead. Weldin stared up, saw a golf-shirted engineer peering down at them suspiciously through aviator shades with one elbow on his windowsill. Then he was gone as the first massive, royal-blue locomotive glided by with its engines throttled down for the bridge. It was followed by another engine, then a squealing white tank car streaked with grime, brown boxcars, battered open gondolas, more and more cars. The engine noise dwindled and was replaced by the dumb squeal and boom of the cars being pulled behind it. Laramie stood impatiently, arms folded and one huge, flaplike sneaker tapping in the dirt, waiting to tell the rest of his story. When the lead engine had nearly reached the other side of the bridge Weldin got up. Without looking at Laramie he reclimbed the shifting stones toward the double sets of wheels which were 13 thudding past with the rhythm of a metallic heartbeat. Soon he could nearly touch the passing grab irons. There was a thin sound behind him that might have been Laramie shouting. He did not look back. Instead he looked down the train, gauging its remaining length, then turned and began jogging beside it. In his peripheral vision he saw Laramie start to run too, at a safer distance, yelling. Weldin ran faster. He was nearly keeping pace. The last car was coming up and it was a flatcar. Just as the empty rear coupler of the last flatcar passed, he side-leaped and sprinted between the rails. One hand caught the solid rear edge of the car, the other found the smooth iron of the coupler and he threw a leg up to straddle it. There was a dizzying sensation of ceasing all effort but going faster than ever. He rolled over, let his feet dangle and looked back at Laramie where he stood, receding, first waving his arms and then lowering them to duck his head and light a cigarette. He waved back as if it were for the last time. Bridge girders swished past. On both sides the canal stretched away under the sun, and he smelled rocks at low tide, grease, creosote, diesel smoke. From far up ahead came the steady throb of the engines. His next thought was of how the hell he was going to get off. 14 Chapter 18 Not many people knew about the trail that ran between the pond and the backs of the faculty homes along the West Drive. At one end it came out inconspicuously by the crew dock, at the edge of the water. At the other end, several hundred yards through thick beech and tulip poplar trees, it emerged just as subtly behind the old, rebuilt mill beside the road. It was a secret, hidden path onto campus from the main road. Some people had known about and used it; Caroline had occasionally found caches of empty beer cans there and once a length of clear red pipe with a blackened, tarry-smelling aluminum bowl ‒ a bong ‒ that she had turned over to her mystified father. Now she walked the path carrying her own contraband: a worn, old paperback book held tight under her arm, not at all illegal but still heavy with sensitive import. She had acquired it only this morning at breakfast, but had already memorized the note written on the title page in fresh, dashing, black ballpoint script: To Caro (who knows what that means): A little of my precious D.H. Imbibe this in deep draughts. More to come, when you’re ready. WEF If it were a brand-new copy with a shiny cover it would mean ... less. But this was his book, worn soft at the corners, with an older, sparser cover design that suggested his own college days ‒ part of the life he had brought with him to Groves years ago. Was it simply a mentor’s gift to a student protege, and that was all. Or was it a material token that she was now included, albeit discreetly, in his world, his life? He had been married with a daughter. He had been banished from both their lives, as he put it, giving the matter a Shakespearean poignancy while making himself the wronged victim. He was thirty-five ‒ she knew the number exactly. A romantic, grand, melancholy, seasoned and serious 15 number ‒ and such a startling mismatch when placed beside ... seventeen! Obviously there was a part of himself that he held apart from the other faculty and the school at large, just as she did. Like her he also wielded unusual power for his position at the school. She imagined him walking with her along the leaf-strewn path, discussing these things. What would they say to each other? What if he took her hand? She stopped when it began to feel too silly, shaking her head and smiling in spite of herself. A sound came from up ahead on the trail and she halted abruptly. It was a commotion in the leaves, like a dog digging but much more slow and regular. She was nearly at the school boundaries. It was a distinct swooshing of leaves coming closer, like something being dragged. She felt perfectly safe in these woods, but still she moved sideways, eyes fixed on the trees ahead, loafers rustling the leaves softly, until she was partly behind the gray, elephant-skinned trunk of a beech. The noise grew closer. She felt reassured that she was aware of it without it evidently being aware of her. A male figure in a navy windbreaker and jeans was half-wheeling, half-dragging a ten-speed bicycle with difficulty along the narrow path, through the deep leaves. He was also limping, stiff-legged, adding to his difficulty. With a pang of alarmed embarrassment she recognized Weldin Foulk, from this morning. He was in the act of sneaking back on campus, since ‒ it all made sudden sense ‒ he was on Bounds. She was literally seconds away from catching him. She had an impulse to turn around and walk the other way but stayed still, neither emerging from behind the tree nor seeking to conceal herself any further. Which meant that the next time he glanced up, he saw her. He stopped slump-shouldered and smiled at her weakly. Then he put his head down and began pushing toward her again, now with even more tired resignation. At about three feet away he ground to a halt completely, chin nearly to his handlebars, looking up with dark eyes from under his tousled hair. 16 “Hello again,” she said. “Hi. Yeah! Twice in one day.” Up close it was clear how scared he was. “Easier to bike out on the driveway.” “Yeah ... ” He looked in that direction as if he had considered the idea and couldn’t recall why he rejected it. “Are you hurt or something?” “Hay baler ran me offa the road. It’s not bad. A scrape.” She kept quiet for several seconds, perhaps just as Mr. French would have. “God punishes those who break Bounds, I guess.” “Yeah I’m sorry. I’m busted I know.” One knee of his jeans was badly torn, revealing hairy white leg and a bit of blood, and there were black smears on the cloth that might have been chain grease. He tried to smile at her. She thought the same thing she had this morning, that in some place other than Groves he might be considered fundamentally not bad looking in a puppy-dog sort of way. Cute even. He was just too slovenly and shy and sheepish-looking ever to be noticed here. Mixed realities and emotions came in a rush. He had been so polite this morning. He had asked her father to become his new mentor. His mother wanted so much for them to meet because of creepy Dr. Lenhart from the summer course. And, he had invited her to visit the Cave. The litany was already playing in her head: This is a disciplinary violation. You have twenty-four hours to turn yourself in. At the end of twenty-four hours I will be forced to turn ... “Where did you go?” she asked instead. 17 He hesitated. “Up to the C&D Canal.” “That’s like eight miles away.” “I know,” he said, and nodded toward his torn pants and wounded knee. “Believe me.” “Why would you want to go there?” He shrugged and smiled hopelessly. “Does it matter?” “You’re not drunk or anything. I don’t think. Are you?” “No.” He looked down, shrugged again and said, “I just went to get away. Collect fossils. It’s a place I just used to go.” “Doesn’t look like you collected very much.” In reply he fumbled in the pocket of his shirt and held something out. She took it, noting his grimy hands and nails and scraped knuckles. It was an oddly shaped brown rock, like a broken piece of fountain pen made of dark brown glass. She recalled a rainy biology field trip to these very same C&D spoil banks, back in third form. The word came instantly to her academically attuned mind. “Belamite.” “That’s right,” he said, with a real smile, as if this might be his ticket to getting off the hook for breaking Bounds. “You should show it to Mr. Ambrose.” “There’s already a ton of them over in the Science Building.” His eyes found the book under her arm. “You out here to read?” “Not here exactly. Down by the pond.” 18 “That’s nicer than the library or something.” He tilted his head to see the title, and she felt slightly affronted. “The Rainbow.” “It’s D.H. Lawrence,” she explained. “We just read Sons and Lovers for English and I liked it so I’m reading this on my own.” “Who do you have for English?” “Mr. French. AP. How about you?” “Wilford. We’re on Henry the Fourth . It’s okay, but I wouldn’t read it on my own.” He didn’t look up again, but fingered the brake levers of the bike. He wanted to move on but of course had to wait instead, because she had busted him. “The path comes out by the crew dock,” she said, and without another look at his face she stepped around him and continued along the path. From behind her: “I was off campus. I’m on Bounds remember?” “Good thing no one saw you,” she said brightly, and continued down the path thinking, just shut up, shut up. On the dock by the old mill she read The Rainbow. It seemed more like a dull exercise than a story, but she read on. She had the power to focus her attention at will on any task, any topic. She also had the power, to some extent, not to focus it on a topic. The topic she did not focus on was that she had just broken her own cardinal rule: never to use emotion as a basis for decisive action. 19 Chapter 19 Ann Phan, still famous throughout the school for making Tad Bivins pass out in Human Development class, had a daily schedule that did not allow much time for exploring. But Mrs. Flackman had not shown up to lead Aerobic Exercise class. The other girls had scattered joyfully at ten past the hour, giving up on their hour of twists, bends and jogging in place. That apparently meant the class was officially canceled, and that she was now at loose ends in the vast, silent unfamiliarity of the Athletic Building. She stood on the polished stone floor of the lobby looking at the gold and silver awards, helmets and mummified footballs in the trophy cases. After another ten minutes, with increasing confidence that Mrs. Flackman really was not going to show up and give her an Absence, she boldly decided to look around until she found a different way out of the building. Two different corridors, four doors and a broad, grand staircase led out of the lobby. The corridors looked dark and unpromising and the doors were all probably locked. That left the wide staircase. She ascended slowly, her hand small and brown on the massive oak bannister, into unfamiliar territory. At the top of the steps was a landing that looked down into an adjacent gym that had old, tiled walls and black padding on the floor, and was populated with shiny, complex-looking weightlifting machines but no people. Apparently no athletics went on at this time of the afternoon, except in her P.E. class. The stairs kept going up to the right. At the top was a set of heavy swinging doors, and when she stood on tiptoes to peer through the small, wire-reinforced windows she had the strange impression of looking out onto the deck of a ship. Beyond the doors was daylight, white-painted walls, light bulbs enclosed in white metal cages, a long, gray-floored corridor with a white railing on one side. A muffled 20 noise came from the other side of the door. It was a lonely, regular banging, like a tired person hammering nails. The noise got immediately louder as she pushed through the doors into one of the strangest places she had yet seen at Groves. Everything was white except the gray floor. A refreshing chill was in the air, which smelled of rubber, fresh paint, Band-Aids. Immediately to the left was the metal-tube railing, which had wire mesh tied onto it like a fence for a chicken yard. Below the railing was an empty room as bare and white as something in a hospital, spotless except for thin, red lines across the floor and the far wall. Daylight entered through a ceiling of domed skylights, through which blue sky and bare tree branches were visible. There appeared to be at least four or five more of the rooms along the walkway; you could go along and look down into them like a prison guard looking down into cells. It was from one of the ones farther along that the steady banging sound came. Cautiously, unsure she was even allowed in here, she stopped just short of the court with the noise and peered around the wall. It was a mild shock to recognize Karl Trogg, the tall, very silly one from Human Development. He was standing near the middle of the court, whacking a tiny black ball with a long, slender racket so that it hit the front wall of the court and bounced back. He swung the racket with sharp flicks, as if it were as light and as a flyswatter. On every stroke the ball hit the front wall just above the narrow, red line that ran across it horizontally, and every time it hit almost the same exact spot. Up close, the swish-click of the racket striking the ball was clearer. The total effect was that of a small whip being cracked briskly, rhythmically. Strangest of all, in his free left hand he held a paperback book, perfectly still, and appeared to be reading intently. The reading appeared to be completely separate from what his right arm was doing.