Breathing hard, Sam slides into a crouch against the wall, with his head bowed. For some moments, the only sounds are his breathing as it settles, and the sigh of the door. It creaks suddenly.
“Jesus,” Rick says, peeking in. “Rock ‘n roll, Sammy. I hear you’re taking the place apart. They weren’t kidding. You okay?”
Disgusted with himself, Sam shrugs. “Stupid.”
Rick shuffles his feet through glass and broken ceiling panel. “You got that right. What the fuck happened?”
“Nothing.”
Rick snorts. “Looks to me like a classic case of hopeless sexual frustration. You get your rocks off—”
The door slaps back and the vice-principal, Mr. Liggott, is standing there.
Rick hastens to offer a hand up to Sam, who gestures it away and hauls sheepishly to his feet. Rick smiles glassily.
“I just lost it, Mr. Liggott,” Sam says quickly. “I’ll clean it up.”
“I guess you will,” the VP responds. “See me in my office as soon as you finish. Woods, you can keep everybody out until Sam gets this cleaned up.”
Liggott isn’t alone in his office when Sam gets there. Laliberte and Coach are there too. In similar stances, arms crossed and chins gravely tucked, the three men circle the VP’s desk. Their faces are stamped identically with the cast of a hanging jury.
Liggott clears his throat. Discipline is supposed to be his particular jurisdiction, so he goes first. “What’s this about, Sam?”
Realizing he will have to look his father in the eye later, Sam decides he had better get some practice and lifts his gaze to meet theirs. He knows he’s looking at an immediate suspension—meaning out of the game tomorrow. And Romney’s exam this afternoon. He won’t be allowed to make up an exam missed while suspended and if he misses this one, he’ll blow his hard-won B.
“I—I lost my temper. I’m sorry. It was stupid.”
The three men exchange glances.
“Why’d you lose your temper?” Laliberte asks.
“Somebody make some kind of remark to you?” Liggott prods. “Something offensive?”
Sam drops his gaze to the splits in the toecaps of his high-tops. His hand aches. Probably not as much as her hand hurts, though. The words are lodged in his throat: Deanie Gauthier’s mother put a cigarette out on her hand.
If he tells them, they will have to report it to the child welfare people. Almost certainly, nothing much would happen except Gauthier would be in deeper shit with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend for telling. Sam knows how these things work. When it comes to child endangerment, the system is pious but limpdick.
Sam shakes his head. “No sir.”
The VP sighs in exasperation. “You’ll be d.c.’d Monday afternoon. You know, if you were anybody else, you’d have been suspended already and on your way home. Think about it. Don’t expect the Disciplinary Committee to do you any favors on Monday if you won’t be candid with us.”
The principal uncrosses his arms and leans on the VP’s desk. “Whatever the cause, whatever the outcome on Monday, you’d better make sure it doesn’t happen again.” He smiles faintly. “The plant can’t take it.”
“You need to work off temper,” Coach interjects, “there’s a bag in the weight room. Just remember to use gloves. How’s the hand? You get that looked at right away.”
“That cover it?” Laliberte asks Liggott.
The VP nods. “That’s all, Sam,” he says, dismissing him.
Rick is already in shop. He has enough credits in his college prep courses to take motor shop for fun.
“How’s your hand?”
“Bruised it a little, tore some skin off it. Nothing, really.”
Rick shakes his head. “What bit your ass, man?”
Sam grins. “It was just an attack of raging adolescent hormones.”
The two of them snicker.
“You gents like to share the joke?” the shop teacher inquires genially.
“It’s not that funny,” Rick admits.
“Too bad you’re wasting your time with it then. You two gonna do anything today besides whisper pee pee and poo poo to each other and giggle? You got a—what is it?—Bulgarian limo you’re supposed to be putting back on the road, you can find the cow pats to run it on. I trust you on that one, Styles.”
“God, I love this class,” Rick murmurs. “This town.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You shitting on us rubes, slick?” Sam asks, tugging at the hood of the little subcompact import.
The whole vehicle lifts slightly but the catch is sticky or jammed and the little car settles again, unopened. Sam gives the Yugo’s hood an impatient yank. There is a screech of shearing metal and the hood dangles from his hand. Around him, the class convulses hysterically.
7
Sparks of snow fall out of the darkness into the neadlights of the truck. So far the accumulation is minor—frosting the road surface, smudging the edges, blurring the darkness—but it means slow going. Sam feeds himself onehanded from the lunch bucket next to him. Along the roadside a quarter mile from the high school, the Mutant trudges like a tinker with her burden of backpack and duffel. Giving a lick to his fingers, wiping them on his pants leg, Sam pulls over reluctantly.
Against the farther door, she curls up, shaking, inside her coat.
He’d just as soon not have any conversation at all with her but out of politeness, turns down the volume of his Gear Daddies tape.
The Mutant snuffles, nose running as usual.
Groping for a hankie, he hands it to her. “You need a ride, just ask. I have to go through town to go home anyway. It’s no big deal.”
She clears her nose wetly. The blower erupts with her, blasting heat into the cab. With a moan of “Oh god,” she spreads her fingers over the vent.
Sam swings back onto the road. “Deanie.” He hesitates, then plunges into it. “I’m really sorry about your hand.”
She makes no immediate response beyond snuffling and shivering. When he glances back at her, silent tears gloss her waxy cheeks, running channels of mascara to her chains.
“Hey,” he says, reaching out impulsively to pull her up against him and in the process, knocking his lunch bucket to
