The Kingdom of Childhood

“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.

23

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.

He drifted into a few hours of uneasy sleep and got up when the alarm woke him, dressing for school with the reluctance of the small boy he was no longer. Outside the sky was still the blue dark of a winter morning. He felt tempted to claim sick and crawl back into bed, but already he had missed a week of school with the flu, he couldn’t afford to miss any more work, and staying housebound all day was likely to drive him insane. What he needed was to distract himself through the day and then gather the cojones to talk to Judy. He needed to tell her they’d been caught, they needed to stop hooking up, stop riding in cars together, stop looking at each other for God’s sake because they couldn’t even do that right; and above all he needed to pass on this information to her without taking advantage of the privacy to get in one last adrenaline rush. To that end, as he filled the pockets of his jeans, he deliberately skipped over the stash of condoms at the back of his underwear drawer. Weeks ago he had resorted to buying his own when he grew embarrassed at how many he was taking from Rhianne, and, as hard as it was for him to believe, he had actually developed preferences. If he could go back in time and tell his September self that in a few months he’d be a prima donna about condom brands, he never would have believed it. Even Rhianne’s assurances had seemed fantastical then.

Rhianne. Maybe he ought to run his problems past her. She had told him over and over that she was there for any question he might have. He was sure she wouldn’t approve, but no doubt she’d heard worse, and if she judged him for it, well, she’d be out of his life soon enough. The thought of confiding in her raised his spirits just slightly, and he headed off to school with the small hope that he might, after all, find a solution.

His optimism lasted just long enough to get him to the door of his classroom. There his Main Lesson teacher