Jesse said, “Who’s the girl,
Kevin?”
“Candy Pennington,” Kevin said.
“You’d have found out
anyway.”
“What happened?” Jesse said.
Kevin looked at his mother. No one said anything.
“It was Bo, really,” Kevin said.
“Me and Troy just went
along.”
Jesse nodded and waited. Kevin looked around. No one said anything.
“She was such a freakin‘
brownnose,” Kevin said.
“Kevin!” his mother said.
He didn’t look at her.
“Well, she was,” he said. “She
was always sucking up to the
teachers. Always acting like she was better than anyone else.”
Jesse waited. Kevin drank his Coke and didn’t say anything more.
The room was still.
“So you thought you’d take her down a peg,” Jesse
said.
“Yeah. Exactly. Bo said we should take her out in the woods and
pull her pants down.”
“Oh, Kevin,” his mother said.
“Embarrass her, you know. Maybe take a picture of her.”
Mr. Feeney had his head tilted back against his chair. His eyes
were closed.
“My God, Kevin,” Mrs. Feeney said.
“You’re not helping, Mrs.
Feeney,” Jesse said. “Let him tell his story.”
Mrs. Feeney clenched her hands together and pressed them against
her mouth. Kevin wouldn’t look at her.
“Bo told her a bunch of us were hanging out there, partying, you
know. So she goes out there with us and we, you know, did it.”
“What was ‘it’?” Jesse
said.
Mrs. Feeney made a little moaning sound into her clenched hands.
“You know, had sex. I mean we wasn’t going to, we was going to
just, like, look at her. But then Bo said we’d gone this far and
what the hell. And then he got on top of her.”
“And had sex with her?”
“Yeah.”
“And you?”
“Yeah, I went second.”
Mrs. Feeney moaned again. She was rocking slowly in her chair.
Mr. Feeney neither moved nor opened his eyes.
“And Troy Drake?” Jesse said.
“He went after me.”
“He had sex with her?” Yes.
