Charles Grant - The Pet

Hedley clasped his tiny hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. “Mr. Boyd, this, as you may have learned from your study of American history, is a democratic society. There is no privilege here. None. You will therefore remain silent, or you will remain for detention.”

He nodded glumly.

The giggling stopped immediately as the man headed back for his desk.

Privilege , he thought bitterly; the sonofabitch. Why couldn’t he have gone to Ashford North the way his mother wanted him to? Nobody cared if your mother taught art.

Even if your mother didn’t care for your father.

He clamped a hand over his mouth and tried to resume studying, but the words blurred and the pictures swam like muddied fingerprints, and when he was out in the hall again, the mobs pushed and jostled him like a twig in the current. He didn’t care. He would do well on the test because he enjoyed biology and what it taught him about animals, like in zoology in the afternoon, right after phys ed. But he couldn’t take the pushing, and he didn’t want the shoving, and he almost panicked when he felt his breakfast moving again. With a lurch he stumbled into the nearest boy’s room, found an empty stall, and sat with his head cradled in his palms. Belching. Tasting sour milk. Spitting dryly and wishing he would either throw up and be done with it, or calm down and get on with it.

The bell rang.

He jumped, dropped his books, scooped them up, and ran down the hall. Mr. Falcone was just closing the door.

“Ah, Donald,” he said, “I’m glad you could make it.”

He managed a pained smile and headed for his seat, as in all his other classes as far toward the back as his teachers would permit. Then he dropped his books on the floor and waited as Falcone passed out the test sheet while giving instructions. The young instructor, he saw, was in a casual mood today — no jacket or tie, just sleek pants, with an open shirt under a light sweater. His hair was barely combed, the tight curls damp as if he’d just taken a shower. Face and body of a Mediterranean cast that many of the girls lusted for and some of the boys coveted.

Finally he reached Don’s seat, held out the paper, and wouldn’t release it when Don took hold. Instead, he continued to talk, letting the class know this was probably the most important test of the semester, since it was going to be worth a full third of their final grade; failing this would make the exam in January much too important.

Then he let go, and smiled.

“Do you understand, Mr. Boyd?”

He did, but he didn’t know why he’d been singled out.

Falcone leaned over, pushed the test to the center of the desk, and added quietly, “You’d better be perfect today, Boyd. You’re going to need it.”

It was a full minute before he was able to focus on the questions. Falcone was in front, leaning against the blackboard rail, arms folded at his chest, eyes half-closed. The clock over the door jumped once! Fleet was staring intently at his wrist, Tar was scribbling, Brian was staring out the window at the football field. Don blinked and rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t believe what he had heard, and refused to believe it was some kind of threat. He couldn’t fail. He knew the work, and he knew the teacher. He checked the first question, answered it almost blindly, answered all the others just as the bell rang.

It couldn’t have been a threat.

The paper went onto a pile on the desk, the books tumbled into his locker, and he grabbed his brown paper lunch bag and left the building by one of the rear exits. Despite the morning frost the sun was warm, and he crossed a broad concrete walk that ended at a six-foot wall in which there were regularly spaced gaps. He picked one, passed through, and was on the top row of the stadium’s seats, the field below, the much lower wooden visitors’ bleachers across the way. The seats were nothing more than steprows of concrete, and it occurred to him suddenly that half the school and its grounds seemed made of the stuff, maybe once white and clean, now grey and brown with use and the pummeling of the weather.

The ham sandwich he had made for himself tasted lousy.

It couldn’t have been a threat.

“If you kill yourself, they’ll never get the blood up.”

He jumped and dropped the sandwich, recovered it gracelessly, and squinted up.

“It seeps in, you know? Right into the cement. They’ll be scrubbing it for days and they’ll hate your guts. It’s a rotten way to get sympathy, take my word for it.”

He smiled and moved over.

Tracey Quintero sat beside him and shook her head. “Are you really that depressed?”

She was dark from hair to skin, her oversize sweater more dazzlingly white as a result, and her pleated skirt somewhat out of style. Her features were more angles than curves, and he thought her nice but not all that pretty, except when she smiled and showed all those teeth. Spanish; and he wondered at times what she would look like in those tight colorful dresses the flamenco dancers wore.

“I guess.”

“Biology that bad?” She had Falcone after lunch, but she wasn’t fishing for answers.

“Yeah. No. I guess not.”

“How’d you do?”

“Okay, I guess.” He bit into the sandwich and tasted grit from its fall. “Harder than usual.”

She nodded, unconcerned, leaning forward to rest her arms on her legs, and they watched two gym classes make an attempt to run around the seven-lane red-stained cinder track that outlined the football field. Laughter drifted toward them, a sharp whistle, and a sudden scent of lilac that confused him for a moment until he turned and sniffed, and knew it was her.

She pointed down to a lanky redhead sweeping effortlessly around the far turn. “Is that why they call him Fleet? Because he’s so fast?”

Making polite conversation, that’s what they call it, he thought; boy, I even have to be made conversation to today.

“Yeah,” he said.

“He should be on track, then, not football,” she said with a slight lisp in her voice.

“Football scholarships are bigger money.”

“Whoa,” she said, staring at him intently. “My goodness, but that sounded bitter.”

He shrugged. “It’s the truth. Fleet needs the scholarship to go to school, and he’ll get it with football. He’s the best wide receiver in the county.”

“I thought Tar was.”

A crumb of bread stuck to his lips, and he sought it with a finger, stared at it, ate it. “Tar’s a running back.” He frowned. “You know that.”

She leaned back, her books huddling against her formless chest. “I forgot.” A glance behind him, up at the school. “Hey, Don?”

“Huh?”

“Do you know what your father’s going to do about the strike?”

He watched Fleet, who waved and blew Tracey a kiss. “I don’t know. I’m not his political advisor.”

Tracey ignored the sarcasm. “I hope he does something. God, I mean, we’re seniors! If our grades are screwed up because of a strike … god!” She traced circles on the back of one of her books. “My father will shoot them all, you know. He will.”

Her father was a policeman. Don believed he would do it.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen, honest.”

“Oh. Okay.” A check of her watch. “Bell’s gonna ring soon.”

“You know what I wish?” he said, suddenly not wanting her to leave. “I wish I had the nerve to cut classes just once before I graduate. Just once.”

“Your father would kill you,” she said quickly.

“No kidding.” His grin was mischievous. “But it would be a lotta fun, I bet.”

She studied his face, his eyes, and finally gave him a broad smile. “You haven’t got the nerve. I know you better than that.”