Brutal Youth (17 page)

Hannah took out a disposable camera. “Do you mind?” she asked. “To commemorate the first day of my last year?”

Zimmer looked at the open door leading to the hallway. “Sure,” he said.

He leaned against the edge of his desk and Hannah squeezed in close, standing on the tips of her toes again to get her face beside his. “Someday we’ll look at this picture, and it will seem strange that it was so long ago,” she said, holding the camera at arm’s length. Her head rested against his shoulder. There was no flash, just a click of the shutter.

They both smiled, though Mr. Zimmer’s was a little awkward.

Not that anyone would have found that unusual.

FOURTEEN

“It’s a notebook,” Green said, standing in biology class while fastening a dull gray apron around his waist. “That’s what this Hannah chick’s got that has everybody freaked.”

He and Davidek stood by the stainless steel sink in the back of the room, dumping little tins of liquefied grape Jell-O and pineapple slices into the garbage disposal. Mrs. Horgen had the lab learning about the substrate-enzyme complex, with the acidic fruit dissolving the collagen cells in the gelatin. The experiment was also delicious, the class agreed.

Davidek was grateful to Green for the news. Since LeRose first warned him about Hannah Kraut, rumors of this most dangerous of senior mentors had trickled through the freshman class, and intelligence on her was at a premium. Not everybody knew an upperclassman well enough to get information, but Green had made friends in high places.

“She’s been keeping a diary or something, all these years,” Green told him. “They say she’s got a whole book full of embarrassing things written down about everybody. And that’s why nobody messes with her. The guys”—the guys were the seniors Green had befriended—“say she’s been dropping hints that she’s gonna make her freshman read it out loud at the big Hazing Day picnic thing.”

“So what’ll that prove?” Davidek asked.

Green shrugged. “All I know is, she’s outta here at the end of the year, but we’ve got three more to go,” Green said. “If she’s lighting up an inferno, I don’t want to be the match.”

Davidek knew Green had a lot less to worry about than he did. Someone safe would choose him as a little brother. Green had ingratiated himself by being a good sport, which made the upperclassmen want to pick on him less. Sometimes, he even volunteered himself for hazing.

One afternoon, a group of upperclassmen were forcing freshman boys to march in formation through the halls singing old-time songs of woe—their favorite was “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” which the freshmen chanted in creaky mock baritones.

“Hey, fellas, how come you didn’t pick me?” he asked Michael Crawford, who was leading the cluster of freshman captives. Crawford looked at his friends, who had nothing.

“You know that song they’re singing, ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’? That song is what they call a Negro spiritual,” Green said. “It’s a religious song that black folks would sing when they were picking cotton or doing group labor during the slave times.”

“Aww, jeez…,” Bilbo groaned, looking like he’d rather die than have this conversation. “It’s got nuthin’ to do with Negro anything—oh, ah—I mean
black
people anything. It’s, uh, an Eric Clapton song. I have it on my dad’s CD to prove it!”

Green became very animated. “Eric Clapton?” he said. “Are you kidding me?” Crawford, Bilbo, and the other seniors looked scared, like they’d accidentally inflamed a one-man race war with the school’s lone minority. It took a second for them to realize Green wasn’t angry; he was excited. “My dad has that album, too!” Green said. “And I learned to play some of the chords to that song by listening to the Clapton version.”

The seniors gaped at him. Green said, “You know …
guitar
?” and mimed strumming in the air. “I went through a really intense Clapton phase last summer. I love that his version of ‘Chariot’ has a kind of reggae thing going on.”

The seniors were perplexed. “Soooo, it’s not racist to make them sing it … right?” Prager asked. The freshman boys lined up behind him were wide-eyed, waiting to see how this played out.

Green shrugged. “It’s just singing. You’re not treating these guys like slaves, right?”

“No!” Crawford said. “No, no no. No.” The freshmen behind him shared subtle expressions of doubt.

“It is a good song,” Green said. “So you should sing it right. Like Clapton did. It’s an old work song, but it deserves some respect.”

Some pink color returned to Bilbo’s blanched, sweating face. “I’m kind of into guitar, too, you know,” Bilbo told Green. “Well, I’m trying to learn …
was
trying.”

Green looked at the silent freshman singers, who were still awaiting further instruction. “You’re singing it like it’s torture. You got to sing it
sweet.
It is ‘
sweet
chariot,’ you know? Don’t make it a dirge.” And Green walked in among his classmates and sang a bit of the verse and showed them what a harmony was. Green’s voice wasn’t perfect, but he hit actual notes instead of chanting in monotone like the other boys. They got so good at it that Green helped organize the hazing singsong marches all through the week. Even some upperclassmen joined in.

“Just don’t leave me out next time,” Green had told Bilbo. “If you’re into music, maybe we could hang out sometime. I’m always looking for someone to play with.” Strebovich stepped forward to tell Green he used to play drums, and Prager said he also always wanted to learn guitar.

“You into rap?” Prager asked, and Green shrugged.

“I’m mostly into guitar stuff,” Green said. “I’m in a real nostalgia phase. Lotsa ’70s stuff. I’m into, like, Pearl Jam, too, and Tom Waits. You know him?”

“You know who I like?” Bilbo said eagerly. “Hendrix.”

Green bobbed his head. “Hendrix is God.”

“And, umm, that guy B.B. King,” Prager added.

Green said, “B.B. King is also God.”

Strebovich snapped his fingers, trying to jog something loose in his brain. “Who is that other, uh, bl—uh
guy
in a rock band … uh, whatshisname? Living Colour.”

Green’s face soured a little. “I like white musicians, too, guys. The Who, The Doors, Pink Floyd. Dylan. U2. Neil Young…”

The senior boys stared at him blankly. “How about Prince?” Prager asked hopefully.

Green rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.” Pretty soon, they were meeting up on weekends, and Green was welcomed into the mysterious group of seniors who gathered every day at the bottom of the south stairs, drinking Coke in that open space at the bottom and laughing at their private joke. Davidek couldn’t figure out why they hung out there.

One time he asked, but that made Green suck air between his teeth. “You know, I can tell you a lot of stuff, but that one … I can’t. The guys would kill me.”

*   *   *

Green was one of two freshmen considered to be honorary seniors. Lorelei was the other.

In the weeks since Davidek and Stein were released from suspension, she had spent most of her time with Audra Banes, who—after saving her from the Groughs—had already announced she was choosing Lorelei as her little sister, even though the sign-up sheet wouldn’t be posted for another month. Lorelei was welcomed into the coterie of sophomore, junior, and senior girls who worshipped Student Council President Banes (when they weren’t secretly deriding her thickening legs and deliberately nerdy black-rimmed glasses).

When Lorelei visited the freshman lunch tables, it was like a congressional representive visiting the home district, reassuring them that they had nothing to fear from the upcoming Brother–Sister initiative, and basking in the adoration most of her classmates had for her. The one who had none was Zari, who still resented the attention Lorelei received from Stein.

One late October afternoon, as a harsh wind outside turned the leaves into a flame-colored shower, she sat beside Zari in study hall and asked, “Do you still have those fortune-telling cards?”

Her lanky, black-haired classmate raised her head sharply, jangling her long earings. “
Tarot
cards,” Zari corrected.

“Tarot, right, right,” Lorelei said, adding with a whisper. “Can the cards, like, help me figure out what to do about a boy?”

“Which boy? Stein?” Zari said—loudly.

Lorelei looked around her, over to where the boys were sitting. They hadn’t heard. “No,” she said. “Peter Davidek. I think he’s … cute.”

Zari opened her purse and began shuffling the ornate deck. Inside, her heart did a little happy dance. The first card had a young couple beneath a flowery bow; the second was a dead man lying on the ground with ten swords sticking out of his back. “That can’t be good,” Lorelei said, and Zari shushed her.

“No,” Zari said, thinking for a moment. “That means you should definitely go for it.”

*   *   *

The next day, Lorelei asked Davidek if he was going to the Halloween dance. She didn’t ask him to go with her, or if he would dance with her, or anything like that. Just: Are you going? And Davidek, who was hoping to go, told her he wasn’t.

“I don’t really care about dances and crap like that,” he said, though he wanted to say yes. Still, he had made a decision: Stein was in love with Lorelei, so he wouldn’t get in the way anymore.

“What’s going on with you lately?” Lorelei asked.

Davidek didn’t answer as he stepped past her in the otherwise empty stairwell and descended out of sight.

Later that day, Stein not only asked Lorelei to be his date for the Halloween dance, but also suggested that they coordinate costumes. He wanted to go as Casanova, and hoped Lorelei would go as whoever it was Casanova was in love with. But still stinging from her rebuke by Davidek, Lorelei told Stein just as bluntly: “I doubt I’ll even go.”

When the Halloween dance finally arrived, none of them went.

*   *   *

It was early November, and Lorelei was walking out the front double doors when she heard a voice behind her. “Can I walk you outside?” It was Stein, standing against the trophy case beneath the white-eyed Jesus statue. “I thought maybe we could talk,” he said.

Hurrying students brushed past Lorelei, opening and closing the main doors as they flowed outside to their rides home. Her father would be out there, tapping his fingers on his steering wheel. “Why do you want to talk?” she asked.

Stein shrugged. “I don’t know. Because.”

Lorelei laughed at him. “
Because?
The answer you give is
because
?”

Stein’s face was serious. “Because … I don’t know. I thought we were friends, but you seem like you’d rather be alone most of the time now.”

Lorelei shifted her book bag on her shoulder.
Alone.
“I never said I wanted that,” she said.

*   *   *

They left through the side entrance so her father wouldn’t see. He’d be angry his daughter kept him waiting, but he
would
wait—unlike her mother—at least for a while.

Lorelei and Stein walked down the street in front of the priest’s rectory and the nuns’ convent, the red-stone walls of St. Mike’s rising behind those homes. The trees lining the street cascaded autumn leaves around them, like ruby embers floating down from a bonfire. Stein reached out to hold Lorelei’s hand, but she pulled it away. “I like you, Noah, but you just don’t get it, do you?” she said. “You’re cute. But we’re just
friends,
okay?”

Stein smiled and opened his arms: “But I
am
cute?”

Lorelei took a few more steps, then looked back. The wind played with his short hair; the clip-on tie was a little crooked. He bunched his hands in the pockets of his blazer. “I owe you an apology,” he told her. “When you needed help, with the Groughs and the cigarettes, I wasn’t much. That was lame. I suck. And I’m sorry.”

“Why do you care about
me
so much?” Lorelei said, walking again. “You’ve got other girls who like you, who’d make out with you in a heartbeat. Maybe even
more
than make out.”

Stein caught up to her and said, “Because … well,
because,
” and Lorelei laughed at him.

“That answer again—you sound like you’re five. My mom won’t let me date, Stein,” she said. “That’s the end of it.”

“So?” He shrugged. “No candlelit dinners, I guess. But that doesn’t mean we can’t
sorta
date anyway, here at school.” Lorelei lowered her head. That was exactly what she had hoped for with Davidek, before he started being a jerk.

They were rounding the back of the gymnasium church, crossing through the grass along the pine shrubs and bare azalea bushes. Another turn, and they’d be headed back into St. Mike’s parking lot. Stein stopped walking again. No one else was around, and he wanted it to stay that way, just a little while longer.

“The other freshmen are always talking about their old friends, and their old school, and their old lives when they were top-of-the-food-chain eighth graders, and not just peons here at St. Mike’s. But I never hear you mention any of that, any of your old life. How come?”

Lorelei was getting impatient. “You don’t either,” she said.

“That’s right,” Stein told her. “And it makes me think we’re both from places that didn’t really like having us around. My guess is, you know what it’s like to hurt, Lorelei. And I don’t think anyone can truly be happy unless they know what it’s like to, to …
not
be. That’s why I like you. That’s why I’m kind of … in love with you.”

Love?
Jesus. Lorelei started walking again, faster. But Stein didn’t follow this time.

Lorelei wheeled on him. “You think you can just throw those words around?” Her voice echoed along the brick wall of the gymnasium church.

Stein inhaled, tilted his neck back, and stared up into the tree branches. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted to hear someone say is: No matter what, I will
never
abandon you,” Stein said. He looked back down and locked his eyes with hers. “So I’m saying that to you.”

“You’re an asshole,” Lorelei said, and started walking away again. Stein looked down at the ground, hands sinking into his blazer pockets again.