Mystery Walk

'Oh? Didn't you ask anybody? Well, I guess that's your own business. How's your momma doin'? Ain't seen her in a month of Sundays.'

'She's fine.'

'Lots of pretty girls here tonight,' Leighton said in a silk-smooth voice. His grin stopped south of his eyes, and in them Billy saw a cunning kind of anger. ' 'Course, all of them have dates. Sure a shame you don't have a pretty girl to dance with, maybe cuddle up to after the dance is over. My boy's out there with his girl. You know Duke, don't you?'

'Yes sir.' Everyone knew Duke Leighton, the senior-class cutup; Duke was a year older than Billy, but he'd failed the eighth grade. He'd been an All-American linebacker for the Bulldogs two seasons in a row, and had won a football scholarship to Auburn.

'He's goin' with Cindy Lewis,' Leighton said. 'She's head cheerleader at Indian Hills High.' The rich kids' school, Billy knew.

'You ought to know a lot of people here, Billy. Lot of people know you.'

Leighton's voice was getting louder, as if he were pretending to shout over the music, but the shout was exaggerated. Billy noticed uneasily that he was being watched by some of the kids who hung around the edge of the dance floor; and he saw some of them whispering to each other.

'Yep!' Leighton said, very loudly. 'Everybody knows Billy Creekmore! Heard you had a job up at the sawmill for a while, ain't that right? Huh?'

He didn't reply; he could feel people watching, and he shifted his position uneasily. To his horror, he realized there was a small hole in his left sock.

'What'd you do up there for the Chathams, Billy? Kinda sweep the place up? Did you do an Indian dance, or . . .' Billy turned away and started walking, but Leighton hurried after him and grasped his sleeve. 'Why don't you show everybody your Indian dance, Billy? Hey! Who wants to see an Indian dance?'

Billy said, in a quiet and dangerous voice, 'Let go of my arm, Mr Leighton.'

'What're you gonna do?' the man sneered. 'Put a curse on me?'

Billy looked into his fierce, unreasoning glare and decided to play this game his way. He leaned closer to Leighton, until their faces were only a few inches apart, and he whispered, 'Yes. I'll make your legs rot off to stumps. I'll make your hair catch fire. I'll make frogs grow in your fat belly.'

Leighton's hand fell away, and he wiped his fingers on his trousers. 'Sure you will. Yeah, sure. You listen to me, boy. Nobody wants you here. Nobody wants you in this school, or in this town. One damned witch is e—' He stopped suddenly, because Billy's eyes had flared. He stepped back a few paces, mashing down shoes. 'Why don't you just get the hell out of here?'

'Leave me alone,' Billy said, and walked away. His heart was pounding. The Purple Tree was playing 'Double Shot,' and the crowd was going wild.

Billy walked around the gym to a booth that sold Cokes and corndogs. He bought a Coke, drank it down, and was about to throw the crumpled cup into a trashcan when fingers grazed his cheek. He turned around; there was a short, shrill scream and four figures backed away from him. A girl said, her voice brimming with delicious terror, 'I touched him, Terry! I really touched him!' There was a chorus of braying laughter, and someone off to the side asked, 'Talked to any ghosts lately, Creekmore?'

He ducked his head down and pushed past a boy in a Bulldog letter jacket; his face flamed, and he knew that coming to this dance, that trying to pretend he was just like the others and could fit in after all, had been an awful mistake. There was nothing to do now but to try to get out of here, to withdraw from people yet again. Suddenly someone shoved him from the rear, and he almost went down; when he turned he saw perhaps eight or nine grinning faces, and a couple of boys with clenched fists. He knew they wanted to fight so they could show off in front of their girls, so he backed away from them and then started across the packed dance floor, twisting through a human maze of gyrating bodies. A heavyset boy with a mop of dark hair pushed his girl friend into Billy; she let out a mouselike squeak when she looked up into his face, and then the boy pulled her away to let her cower in his arms.

They're using me to scare their girl friends, Billy thought, like I was a horror movie at the drive-in! Rather than angering him, that realization struck him as being funny. He grinned and said, 'Boo!' at the next girl whose boyfriend thrust her forward; she almost went gray with shock, and then the people who recognized him—people he saw every day in the high-school halls—were moving out of his way, making a path for him to get through. He laughed and bent over like a hunchback, letting his arms dangle, and moved along the human corridor like a lurching ape. Give 'em a show! he thought. That's what they want! Girls screamed, and even their protective boyfriends edged away. Now he was getting more attention than the Purple Tree, and he knew he was making a damned fool of himself but he wanted to turn around on them the fearful image they had of him; he wanted to rub it in and let them see how stupid it was to be afraid. He grimaced like a ghoul, reaching out toward a girl whose boyfriend slapped his hands away and then backed into the crowd; he danced and jerked his head as if he'd been struck by the palsy, and now he heard people laughing and he knew he was about to break through . . . just about to break through—

And then he abruptly stopped, a cold chill running through him. He was facing Melissa Pettus, radiant in a pink dress and with pink ribbons in her long flowing hair; she was pressed close to a boy named Hank Orr, and she was cowering away from Billy.

Billy stared at her, and slowly straightened up. 'You don't have to be afraid,' he said, but his voice was lost in the bass-boom as the Purple Tree started to play 'Down in the Boondocks.'

Something wet hit him in the face and streamed into his eyes. He couldn't see for a few seconds, and from off to one side he heard a snort of laughter. When Billy had cleared his eyes, he saw Duke Leighton grinning several feet away; the boy was bulky, already getting fat. A slim red-haired girl clung to one arm, and his other hand held a plastic watergun.

And then Billy could smell the reek of beer rising off of himself, and he realized that Leighton had filled that gun with beer instead of water, it was one of his many practical and sometimes cruel jokes. Now if a chaperone happened to get a whiff of Billy's clothes, Billy would be immediately thrown out. He reeked like a shithouse on a hot summer night.

'Want some more, Spookie?' Leighton called out, to a chorus of laughter. He grinned slickly, as his father had.

Anger surged within Billy. At once he propelled himself forward, shoving through several couples to get at Leighton. The other boy laughed and sprayed him in the eyes again, and then someone edged out a foot and Billy tripped over it, sprawling on the gym floor. He struggled to his feet, half blinded with beer, and a hand caught roughly at his shoulder; he spun to strike at his attacker.

It was a chaperone, a short and stocky history teacher named Kitchens; the man grabbed bis shoulder again and shook him. 'No fighting, mister!' he said.

'I'm not! Leighton's trying to start trouble!'

Kitchens stood at least two inches shorter than Billy, but he was a large-shouldered man with a deep chest and a crew cut that was a holdover from his Marine days. His small dark eyes, glanced toward Duke Leighton, who was standing in a protective circle of football buddies. 'What about it, Duke?'

The other boy raised empty hands in a gesture of innocence, and Billy knew the watergun had been passed to safety. 'I was just mindin' my own business, and old Spookie wanted to fight.'

'That's a damned lie! He's got—'

Kitchens leaned toward him. 'I smell liquor on you, mister! Where you keepin' it, in your car?'

'No, I'm not drinking! I was ...'

'I saw him with a flask, Mr Kitchens!' someone said through the crowd, and Billy was almost certain it was Hank Orr's voice. 'Throw him out!'

Kitchens said, 'Come on, mister,' and started pulling Billy toward the door 'You rule-breakers got to learn some respect!'

Billy knew it was pointless to struggle, and maybe it was for the best that he get kicked out of the May Night dance.

'I ought to take you to the boys' adviser, that's what I ought to do,' Kitchens was saying. 'Drinking and fighting is a bad combination.'