hers each day, changing and exchanging desks. In this class the teacher did not insist on a seating chart, allowing students to sit wherever they pleased, and this was an opportunity he was determined to take advantage of. He was not sure what he would say to her when he finally reached the adjoining desk, not sure of how he would initiate a conversation, but he would deal with that problem when he came to it.
That would be Friday, according to his calculations.
Luckily, Kevin continued to move forward through the seating ranks with him. It was always easier to bring a third party into an existing conversation than to start a conversation cold with someone you'd never talked to before.
Kevin bought a Coke and a burrito at the cafeteria, and Dion purchased a hot dog and milk. The two of them bat tied their way against the stream of traffic, and sat on a low wall next to the vending machines, watching the passersby.
Kevin took a bite of his burrito. He shook his head, 'Do you realize,'
he said, 'that every one of those girls has a pussy? Every one of them.'
Dion followed his gaze, saw a well-endowed girl wearing a tight T-shirt and formfitting jeans.
'Between each of those legs is a hungry hole, ready for dick.' He grinned. 'It's a wonderful world.'
Dion nodded. Yesterday, Kevin had called women's bodies a 'life-support system for the vagina.' Kevin's macho comments were funny, but Dion wasn't sure if they were simply public posturing or reflections of his real attitude, and it was something that bothered him, that made him slightly uncomfortable.
The two of them watched the girls pass by. Dion's eyes were caught by the sight of Penelope, carrying a brown sack lunch, buying a carton of orange juice from one of the machines. Kevin saw who he was staring at and laughed. 'I knew it. The siren's song of Lesbos.'
Dion reddened, but was determined to appear nonchalant. 'So tell me something about her.'
'Tell you what?'
'Anything.'
'Well, she's a lesbian. But I told you that, right?' He pretended to think. 'Let me see. She lives with a bunch of other lesbians at the Daneam Sisters Winery. They're all related somehow, her aunts or something. You can't buy the wine in stores. It's strictly a mail-order business. Sold to other lesbians, I believe.'
'Be serious.'
'I am. At least about the winery. The references to sexual preferences are my own editorializing.'
Dion felt his chances slipping away. 'So she's rich?'
Kevin nodded. 'Nice work if you can get it.'
The two of them watched Penelope take her juice carton out of the drawer and disappear into the crowd. 'Don't worry,' Kevin said. 'There are plenty of other beavers in the valley.'
Dion forced himself to smile. 'Yeah.'
Kevin offered Dion a ride home with one of his friends after school, but Dion declined and said he'd rather walk. Kevin and his friend took off in a squeal of burnt Mustang tires that left twin skid marks on the lighter black of the faded asphalt.
Dion walked down the tree-lined street. He usually avoided most forms of exercise--he was by no means a jock and he truly hated PE--but he'd always enjoyed walking. It offered him a chance to move about in the open air, to think without concentrating. He glanced around at the quiet residential neighborhood as he walked. He liked their house, liked the school, liked the people he'd met, and Napa itself seemed to be a pleasant enough town, but there was still something about living here that made him slightly uncomfortable, a lingering residue from that initial reaction. It wasn't anything as obvious or specific as a street that seemed sinister or a building that gave him the creeps. No, the feeling he got was more subtle, more generalized, and seemed to apply to the entire Napa Valley. There was a heaviness here, an indefinable sense of unease which he had never experienced in Mesa. It was not something that he felt would affect his day-to-day living, but it was persistent, a hum of white noise underlying everything. He could live with it, though. He could ignore it most of the time.
Most of the time.
He stopped walking. He was supposed to turn right at this corner, but in front of him the street continued onward, heading straight toward a grassy section of hill.
The hill.
He stood, staring. The view before him seemed somehow familiar and somehow unpleasant, and he felt cold suddenly, chilled.
He forced himself to look away and hurriedly turned down the cross street toward home. It was probably psychological, he reasoned. A
reaction to the pulling up and transplanting of his roots. Yeah. That was it. That had to be it. He would no doubt get over it soon, once he'd fully adjusted to his new surroundings.
He hurried forward, not looking to his left, not looking toward the hill.
His mom was not home when he arrived, but Dion was not worried. She wasn't scheduled to get off work today until five. Besides, he'd been keeping a close eye on her, and was surprised to see that she actually seemed to like her job and to get along well with her coworkers. As she described each day's events over dinner the past two nights, the behavior of the other loan officers in the bank, the customers, he'd listened carefully, trying to read between the lines, to ascertain the truth behind the facts. But her attitude of professional objectivity seemed real, not feigned, and he quickly decided that she wasn't attracted to anyone in the bank. That was a good sign. At her last two jobs, in Mesa and Chandler, she'd been inviting people over for what she called 'a little get-together' even before the first week was out.
Maybe she really had turned over a new leaf.
He walked into the kitchen, took out a bag of Doritos, poured some salsa into a bowl. He walked into the living room, picked up the remote control, turned on MTV, but was quickly bored by the sameness of the music and the videos. He flipped around the cable channels, but there was nothing on, and he turned the set off. After he finished eating, he would put on the stereo, listen to music, and do his math homework. He had to have twenty algebra problems solved by tomorrow. His mom would be home soon after that.
Dion finished his snack, finished his math, read the front page and entertainment sections of today's paper, and glanced through a two-week-old Time they'd brought from Arizona.
When his mom hadn't come home by six and still hadn't called, he found himself worrying. He turned off the stereo and turned on the TV, settling into the couch to watch the national news. It was strangely comforting to watch the news, though the majority of the stories concerned murders, disasters, and other tragic events. It was a stupid attitude, he knew, an ignorant, uneducated attitude, but he found it reassuring to see the incidents of the day categorized, dissected, and discussed on national television. It made him feel that no matter how chaotic the world seemed, someone was on top of things and doing something about them, though he knew, intellectually, that was probably not the case.
The first commercial break passed, and then the second and the third, and then it was six-thirty. He stood up and looked out the window.
Already the sky was getting dark, the orange color of dusk dimming into the bluish purple of evening.
She couldn't be starting again, could she? Not so soon after her last job. Not after promising him she'd change.
He almost hoped that she'd been in an accident instead.
No.
He pushed that thought from his mind.
Dion sat down again to watch the local news. He tried to remain optimistic, to tell himself that she'd merely stayed after work and forgotten to call, but he didn't believe any such thing.
He just hoped that she had enough sense not to bring the guy home.
He was in the kitchen and was about to make himself dinner--macaroni and cheese or one of the frozen dinners in the freezer--when he heard the familiar sound of the Pinto's brakes in the driveway. He wanted to go out front, to peek through the living room window, to see what was going on, but he remained in the kitchen, rooted in place. His muscles were tense, his palms sweaty.
He heard the front door open. 'I'm home!'
He stepped through the doorway into the living room, and felt relief flood through him as he saw that his mother was alone. 'Sorry I'm late,' she said, dropping her briefcase in the entryway.
