A Hole in Juan (26 page)

When I reached the bus stop, Nita was there and, undoubt-GILLIAN ROBERTS

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edly to her dismay, we were headed in the same direction, doomed to travel together, and worse, when we got on, there were two empty spots next to each other.

We rode in silence. I tried to use the time to digest the idea that I was “only a teacher” and possibly well-meaning, but unable to do anything worthwhile. I knew that I had failed to turn out a generation with perfect grammar or spelling, or a comprehensive knowledge of the Western canon, so what was left if I’d also failed at helping a few young people out of a distressing situation?

I knew she’d meant no harm and in fact had meant to con-sole me, but it stung to think that she was more in touch with reality than I was.

The silence grew oppressive. “Erik was looking for you,” I said. “When I was waiting for the bus to go to the hospital. I thought he was going to get on as well, but he changed his mind.”

She looked straight ahead, not at me, but even from the side I could see the muscles of her forehead tighten. “He knew where I was.” She spoke without looking at me.

“He seemed . . . jumpy.”

She turned her head toward me at last. “That’s how he is,”

she said, and I had to admit it was at least partially true. He couldn’t finish a sentence, and was uncoordinated, except on a court.

“And this year’s worse, being a senior. His parents are on his case all the time. His parents went to Ivy League schools and he’s not . . . he never was, you know what I mean, so why now . . .”

She shrugged. “You know. Expectations. It’s not like his parents are the only ones or anything, but Erik’s fidgety anyway and they don’t help.” She sighed.

Did they really expect Erik to get into a top college? It was a totally unrealistic expectation unless they had endowed their alma mater so generously that the admissions office couldn’t see over the pile of greenbacks.

“Everybody’s nervous,” Nita said. “Not just Erik. So much is riding on now. Like the whole rest of your life is all.”

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Part of me itched to respond to her observation the way it deserved. “What a revelation,” I wanted to say. “What was your first clue? Could it have been the past twelve years, starting with kindergarten, of teachers doing everything but standing on their heads—and maybe that, too—trying to develop study habits and an appreciation for learning the material?”

I kept my sarcasm-hatches battened down.

“It’s too much pressure,” she said. “Too much to worry about.”

“But you’ll be fine. You’ve got good grades, lots of extracur-ricular activities—”

She sighed and shrugged, as if I’d missed the point. Again.

We rode a few more blocks in silence. My expedition had been a waste of time. I didn’t know more about Juan Reyes, had certainly not been of any use or comfort to him, and I also knew as little as ever about what was going on with the senior class. The fact that they were worried about college applications wasn’t news, nor was the theory I was hammering out. I decided to try it on Nita.

“You—your class—somebody—wanted Mr. Reyes to quit,”

I said. “That’s it, isn’t it? He was too strict, wouldn’t give a re-exam even though you’d all done poorly. Didn’t understand high school, and your GPAs were going to suffer because of him.

That’s why the pranks, the supplies missing then returned, and the warning about the martyred teacher. You wanted him to give up and move on.”

Her lips tightened, and she said nothing.

“It’s okay. It’s obvious that something went wrong. Everybody would understand that nobody intended to actually hurt Mr. Reyes.” I needed to believe that was so.

“I don’t know about anything like that. I don’t know anything.”

I kept the rest of my theory to myself. I knew there was one person—one—in that class who had the most at stake if Juan Reyes was impossible to please. Seth had a good chance of getting GILLIAN ROBERTS

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into the school he wanted, and he’d worked hard for what he had.

His expectations had to be higher and more intense than most of the rest of his class.

And he was smart enough to plan the series of frustrating mishaps that he hoped would drive the man out of the school.

Also smart enough to know that sodium explodes if water’s poured onto it. But was he cruel enough to plan that? It didn’t fit anything I knew of the young man, but as Nita had so cordially pointed out, I didn’t know a thing.

“Nita, does
Friday
—just that—have any special meaning for you?”

“It’s today.” She gave me a how-can-you-possibly-not-know-that look, her brows pulled close and lowered.

“Yes,” I said. “I am aware of that, but is something supposed to happen today?”

“The school party.”

“Help me here—aside from that?”

She shrugged.

“Did you warn me about today? About something that’s going to happen on Friday?”

She turned quickly to look at me, and her expression no longer suggested that I was speaking nonsense. She looked frightened. Then she clamped her lips together and removed all expression from her face.

She knew what was going on, but that knowledge did neither one of us any good because she was not going to share it with me.

Or maybe she had already, and my guess was right, that she was the author of those cryptic notes.

“Well,” I said as the bus approached the cross street for the school. “Maybe the party will cheer you up.”

“I don’t think I’m going. I don’t feel well.”

“But I thought—when I saw Erik—”

She shrugged. “He doesn’t need a date. We decided not to go in couples. It isn’t that kind of party.” She looked as if this were an important point. “
Most
people won’t have dates.”

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“Needing a date isn’t the point. You worked so hard to make it work. You and Allie and your committee—”

Her eyelids lowered, as if I were boring her into a stupor.

“I hope you’ll change your mind,” I said lamely. “I hope you’ll at least come to see the fruits of your labors.”

“That’s what I’m hoping to avoid,” she said. “See you. This is my stop.”

I wanted to ask what she meant, but the words died unsaid in the stale vapors of the bus because Nita was on the steps as the doors opened, and then she was gone.

I was about to continue on to Sasha’s, half a dozen blocks closer to the Delaware, when, with a rush of mortification, I suddenly remembered Pip. I’d made him promise to wait for me, and then I’d nearly forgotten.

Sometimes it takes more than a village—or at least more than a village idiot. I rushed to get out of the bus two stops after Nita had left and walked as quickly as I could to Philly Prep, hoping he was still there.

I nearly bumped into Allie, standing near the gym doors with her hands on her hips, surveying the décor.

“Looks great,” I said, deliberately ignoring both her frown of disapproval and the surprisingly bland decorations that had necessitated so many meetings and so much planning: plastic jack-o’-lanterns with bulbs inside, a haystack made of ropes and wires, orange-and-black crepe paper streamers, a scarecrow made of stuffed gym clothing and long socks, and an unsuccessful attempt to tent part of the gym with orange-and-black burlap. The far wall was dominated by the silhouette of a witch, her broom, and her black cat, back arched. And her completely homely baggy dress. Allie had not been able to think outside the broom-stick; Gabby Mackenzie’s work was not yet done.

“Nothing’s the way I thought it would be,” Allie muttered.

“There’s not enough; it’s not enough different from normal.”

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“It’s not easy to disguise bleachers,” I said. “But wait till it fills up with people, feels like a party. That’ll make all the difference.”

She was not convinced. She squinted and I could almost see the wheels of her imagination redo the room, turning it into an autumn fantasy.

Allie wanted to be a set designer for Broadway or Hollywood.

Her dreams were enormous and compelling, and she had her path to those goals all mapped out. The gym probably wasn’t a measure of her talent, since her disappointment seemed to be with herself. A failure of vision.

“Someday,” I said, “you’ll be able to create precisely what you envision. You’ll have the budget and the manpower and the time.”

“First I have to get accepted,” she said between gritted teeth.

“They take one out of forty-seven applicants.”

“But I’m sure you—”

“Thanks,” she said. “Like they say: from your mouth to God’s ears.”

There was a miasma surrounding the seniors, but this was not like Allie Deroche. She was, if anything, overly sure of herself, and I’d never thought it was bravado on her part. Of course the world would want her—she had
it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She gestured at the room. “This! It’s—it’s crappy. Ordinary. I told Nita! She just doesn’t think
big
enough! This was our chance to make a mark, to do something . . . extraordinary.” She exhaled loudly. “And she didn’t even help—not one single bit today.

Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—it’s too late to change anything, anyway, so what you see is what we’ve got.” The words were accepting, but she still looked as if she wanted to shoo everyone out the door and start over.

I didn’t say that I found it charming and in the grand tradition of sleazily decorated high school gyms. It takes years away from high school to appreciate such a thing, and Allie had 213

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never been interested in being part of that long second-rate tradition.

Beautifully decorated or not, the gym was slowly filling with students, mostly the younger grades, whose parents dropped them off before going to their own Friday night plans, and would pick them up later. The way Mackenzie and I would have to remember to do for Pip.

Lots of costumes on the young’uns. For my taste, too many based on pop figures, their rubber celebrity masks vibrating with their breath. There were also girls as bunnies, the floppy-eared sort, and girls as action figures I couldn’t identify, boys as the president of the United States and as terrorists, or so I thought their attire was meant to suggest. They’d be unsuccessful terrorists, however, because they so blatantly advertised their professions.

And there were many in ordinary street clothes, including Pip, dressed as Boy in Throes of a New Crush.

He sat down beside me on the bleachers. “I’m doing great,”

he said. “Great day.” He nodded agreement with himself. “Great party!”

“It hasn’t started yet,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but it’s going to be great. I can stay, can’t I?”

I tried to keep my smile to myself. “I’m glad it worked out.

We’ll have to make arrangements for later.”

“So . . .” he said. “Me and Cheryl—”

“Cheryl and I.” I hate to be that way, but I hate “me and”

even more.

He sighed. “Cheryl
and I
got to talking, and you know, she didn’t know you were into crime-fighting, too. You’re way too modest!”

“Honestly, Pip, crime-fighting is a little more dramatic than watching a lady’s house.”

“She was impressed.”

“It is not important to me to impress Cheryl in that way.” I would have loved to have heard how he described Mackenzie’s GILLIAN ROBERTS

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and my efforts at Bright Investigations. In fact, I probably would have loved to be one of the people he imagined, at least for a while.

“So,” he said, “we were talking about what makes people commit horrible crimes, and given your expertise, Cheryl said I should ask you. So I am!”

“I don’t have any special expertise, and where is Cheryl, anyway?”

“Went home to change into some costume,” he said. “Will I look too stupid not having one?”

“Say you’re disguised as a kid from Iowa.”

“So what’s the answer?” he asked. “Why do people do bad things, commit crimes—like, say, murder. Are they just crazy?”

“I think anybody who deliberately harms another person is a little crazy. I’m sure the perpetrators think they have lots of reasons, or motives, but my own theory is that whoever it is, and however wrong they might be, the murderer feels as if his own life—or what makes it worth living—is at risk. He has to get rid of the other person to stay alive, not necessarily physically, but often emotionally. If you thought somebody jeopardized the thing that mattered most to you, was destroying your life in essence—maybe we all have it in us to go berserk and commit an unspeakable act. That’s how murders—and wars—start.”

Which of course made me think of Seth, sadly saying he was involved in a war. What had begun that one? His declaration that he was gay? Or something more? And did Juan Reyes’s explosion somehow fit into that?

I couldn’t make it work.

“Anyway,” I said to Pip, “your uncle has had a whole lot more experience with people pushed to the edge, and he’s studying why crime happens, so maybe he has a completely different theory.” I didn’t think so. We’d talked about it many times and we were basically in agreement.

I was enjoying this bit of philosophizing, but Pip sighted the 215

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return of Cheryl, dressed as Bo Peep, and we barely had time to talk about picking him up later before he’d lost all interest in my conversation.

In a way, I wished I had been staying. The room was filling up, and a few other teachers had arrived, including Edie Friedman, dressed somewhat unimaginatively as a referee because, she told me, she had a referee’s outfit at home and she thought it was slimming. Never knew who might show up at a thing like this. A single parent, picking up a child, for example.

Carol, the math teacher, still red-nosed and carrying a box of tissue, but a good sport, arrived dressed as a bassett hound. “My nose kind of fits the costume, doesn’t it?” she said. “Now go!

You’re free to spend the evening with adults.” I thanked her and wished her well and almost made it to the door, but Ma’ayan, dressed completely in pink—shirt, linen slacks, shoes, socks, and bicycle helmet, was bearing down on me, trailed by Ben, looking as awkward and even more lovesick than ever, because he’d made himself up as a sad clown with a big plastic tear on one of his cheeks.