Rebecca Coleman - The Kingdom of Childhood

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.