Listening to Coach piss and moan, Sam holds his elastic between his lips as he gathers his hair in one hand, removes the rubber band from his mouth and twists it around his ponytail.
Rick slams his locker door shut and tugs Sam’s ponytail. “What’s it gonna be?” he asks in a low voice, as Coach drifts away to rip into Bither over something. “The ring in the nose or the Nazi tattoo?”
Sam closes his locker. “A cock ring,” he confesses in a murmur.
Rick’s shout of laughter spins the Coach around.
“What’s so goddamn funny, Woods?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Twenty laps.” Coach fines him on the spot. “Styles, you’re so goddamn amusing, you can keep Woods company.”
Before they have finished their laps, Rick’s question and Sam’s answer are legend among the rest of the team.
Chapin is recuperating from a fractured skull and various lesser bone breaks. He’s quits with Greenspark Academy. He’ll finish out his high school education at Ravenswood, as a boarder, next year. Let bygones be bygones, his father argued—the kid has suffered enough for what was, after all, perfectly normal experimentation. We all smoked some pot in college, didn’t we? And the school doesn’t seriously want to deal with a lawsuit over who’s responsible for his son’s injuries, does it?
Fosse has had his knee replaced. He’s in a lot of pain. He wants to go home. He wants to kill Dale Michaud.
“I’d like to kill the fucker,” Pete tells Lonnie Woods, though his mother is sitting right there next to his bed and gasps when he says it while his father tries to shush him. Pete won’t be muzzled. “I’m gonna kill the fucker!” he snarls.
Woods lets Pete calm down again before informing him that as soon as his wife bailed him out, Michaud and Lexie caught an interstate bus in Lewiston the next day. The bus was headed for New York City where they could and probably did take a bus to anywhere, and there’s no bucks in the Greenspark budget to chase Dale Michaud past, say, Castle Rock.
“So it doesn’t seem likely there’s going to be any prosecution as long as Dale keeps his nose clean.”
“What about Lexie?” Sam asks when Rick’s dad informs him Dale Michaud has jumped bail. “Must be a real treat, being on the run with her old man.”
The cop finds himself thinking of Lexie at odd moments because of it. What’s it like for her? Is she knocked up? Is Dale shaming her, ranting at her for her misbehavior and what it’s done to the family, watching her like a warder transporting a prisoner, cuffing her every time he thinks she’s flirting with some pimply kid at the cash register in some 7-Eleven? How long will it be before she escapes him and becomes another one of the kids on the street?
39
The windows light up with somebody’s headlights. Sam lifts himself to his elbows to see who it is.
“Freddy,” he tells Deanie, slipping off his headphones. “I’ll go down and get the door.”
She sits for a moment on the bed after he closes the door behind him and then she takes off her Walkman ‘phones. It’s not cold in this room or it didn’t seem that way with him right next to her but now she shivers. From a shelf in his closet, she helps herself to an old misshapen sweater and pulls it over her head. It comes to her knees and she has to double back the sleeves until the wrists are at her elbows. It looks like she is wearing ankle-warmers on her forearms. The neck sags unevenly below her collarbone. She shuffles into her sneakers.
The lawyer stands up when she comes into the kitchen, disconcerting her. She goes to Sam, backed up against the counter, and leans into him. Freddy asks after Reuben and Pearl and Sam tells him they have gone up to the farmhouse with the baby to do a little work.
“You want me to stay?” Sam asks her.
She digs her nails into his hands.
“I’d like him to stay,” Freddy says, unholstering his papers. “I saw your mother, Deanie. Lord was also present. Once they heard what you wanted, Lord became extremely angry. Your mother appears to be pretty much under his influence. In the end he offered a deal. She’ll consent to emancipation if you make no charges against her or Lord. If you do make a criminal complaint or bring in DHS, Lord stated the two of them will make a countercharge against Sam.”
Deanie moans softly in protest.
“As a deal, it’s bullshit. You can go ahead and seek emancipation and once it’s done, you can still make a criminal complaint against Lord. Your mother too, if you want. They can’t stop you. The state can prosecute criminally or you can seek civil damages. Or you can let DHS take custody of you and assign you to a foster home. You have to make the choice, Deanie. You want to talk about it with Sam?”
“No.” Her voice is shaky. “Just get me emancipated. Nobody hit anybody. Tell him that. Okay?”
She pivots, hides her face in Sam’s open shirt.
Freddy looks at Sam over her bent head and Sam nods his consent.
At Breckenfield on Friday night, the locals are primed for her. She reacts to the jeers and mocking with a straight-spined strut and a cocked eyebrow that puts the jerks down with sheer guts. And then she plays her heart out. Gradually the blowoffs on the Breckenfield side are silenced by her control of
