Brutal Youth (25 page)

Mullen laughed. Protecting her from that idiot was easy. Protecting her from the other seniors?… That was nothing he could promise, though she apparently didn’t know that. Only through pleading with Audra and menacing the Grough sisters had the boys secured her a bit of peace in the month since she approached them. They didn’t intend to keep that up forever. When they were done with Lorelei, she was on her own. Nobody in the school liked Stein, but they didn’t like her either. Let the bitch and the fucker destroy each other.

“No more flirting with Lorelei, Simms. She’s off-limits,” Mullen said, grinning in the blue glow of the dashboard lights. “Remember—she’s our little sister now, you pervert.”

TWENTY-FOUR

A list was circulating. Nothing written, just rumors of names—people Hannah Kraut was singling out for special treatment in her notebook. LeRose heard he was on the list. So did a lot of other people. No one knew if the list changed as word of it passed from room to room, collecting new names the way a bee gathers pollen. No one wanted to talk about why they might be on the list, but everyone was eager to theorize why others could be.

After a long détente, Hannah found herself the object of open hatred once again. In a rare lunchtime appearance, Hannah had been sitting at an empty table in the center of the cavernous, lime-colored cafeteria, one hand carrying the occasional french fry to her mouth, with the other splaying a paperback of Tom Wolfe’s
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

“Fuuuuuuucckksssssllluuuuuttttt!!!”

The call came from far away, some anonymous drone who bellowed it and hid his face before anyone could spot him. Davidek thought it came from the junior section.

Hannah looked up from her book and turned toward the yell. Then, from the other end of the room, a girl’s voice snapped out the word loudly, like a sneeze:
Fkslt!!!

JayArr Picklin and Charlie Karsimen, two freshmen too crazed to know they should hide themselves, tried to join the bandwagon by chanting “Fuck-
slut
! Fuck-
slut
!” as they thumped on the table.

Davidek could hear the word murmured now by other voices, low, swirling around the cafeteria …
fuckslutfuckslutfuckslut,
underlined by hidden giggles.

Davidek watched his beautiful redhead senior stand up and place one shoe on her chair, stepping up onto the lunch table, her mismatched eyes gazing around the room. “You think I don’t see you,” she said softly. “You think you’re hidden.”

Her voice silenced the whispers like a knife slicing a throat.

She pointed in the direction of the juniors, toward a guy with a thick neck and a handsome all-American-boy face that was perpetually smeared with a smirk. “John Hannidy,” she said.

Hannidy shouted back in protest: “I didn’t say anything!” He glared at another boy at his table, one who had been calling out the name.

If Hannah realized this, she didn’t care. “Go ahead and lie, but I know what you’ve done, Turkey Baster. Did you think the people who knew would lie for you? Did you, John?”

Hannah turned toward the senior tables, where the
fkslt!!
sneeze had originated.

“Nora Dalmolin,” Hannah said, as the girl turned to her best friend, Beth Weitz, asking what the hell Hannah was doing. “Beth Weitz,” Hannah said, still pointing. She lingered before turning again. All she had said were their names.

But a panicked Beth and Nora began babbling at each other in a pitch like dolphins trying to talk their way out of a fishing net.

“Who wants to be next?” Hannah said, spreading her arms wide to the faces staring up at her. “Who wants to be singled out?”

Ms. Bromine strode over toward Hannah’s stump speech, flanked by Mr. Mankowski and Mrs. Tunns. They were approaching cautiously, unsure what was happening.

LeRose stood up from his table, hair falling down in his face as he shouted: “We don’t have to
take
this. We can crush her if we all stay together. Don’t—”

“Carl LeRose,” Hannah said, silencing him. “How’s Daddy?”

LeRose sank into his seat, jaw clenched, sweat boiling on his forehead. “You’re not allowed to say anything about my father,” LeRose said flatly.

“Hannah Kraut, step down from that table immediately,” Ms. Bromine said, looking at her fellow teachers for justification. “It’s … unsafe.”

Hannah, still holding her hands out, nodded once. But before she stepped down, she scanned the faces of the room one more time. “EVERY. SINGLE. ONE OF YOU,” Hannah said. “Don’t you dare doubt it.”

No one knew for sure what she meant, but no one was saying a word. Hannah walked out of the hushed room with the unmistakable feeling of triumph.

Let them hate me, but in silence.

*   *   *

If it was possible to become more radioactive, Hannah accomplished it. People fled from her, moved away from doorways if she walked near, and didn’t speak if she was around—mostly out of fear she’d imagine them talking about her, even if they weren’t.

The students of St. Mike’s focused their unhappiness on Davidek. They only wanted his help, but there was menace in their outreach.

“Davidek, what do you suppose Hannah meant when she mentioned my dad?” LeRose asked, sidling up to him in the lunch line the next day. LeRose had a saggy, sad look in his eyes and offered to buy Davidek’s lunch if they could sit and talk. Davidek said he didn’t have to pay but stopped objecting when LeRose opened his billfold for the clerk, revealing a seam of green like coal strata in a mountainside.

They found an empty table, but soon Green and then Stein came and sat with them. Neither liked each other very much anymore, but they both liked Davidek when the other wasn’t around. “This is a private conversation,” LeRose told them. Stein said, “You can go talk about your privates somewhere else. This is a freshman table.”

“It’s okay, LeRose, these guys are friends. You can trust them,” Davidek said.

“Plus, he’s just going to tell us everything you said later,” Green added.

LeRose laid his arms open on the table, mulling his words. “You know my dad’s a big deal, right?”

Davidek chewed. “So you keep saying…”

“Well, he’s a
really
big deal.”

Green said cautiously: “Isn’t he a funeral director?”

“Creepy,” Stein said. “Dead bodies and all that?”

“He’s a town selectman,” LeRose said. “And a member of the parish council. He owns apartments and commercial real estate all over this valley, and—yes—we also own the LeRose funeral home, which my father inherited from an uncle. We do not involve ourselves with the bodies, for your information. Okay?”

“You don’t get involved?” Stein said. “So it’s more of a one-night-stand kind of thing for you and the bodies.”

LeRose blurted, “Does Hannah say anything about my dad in her little
book
?”

“How do I know?” Davidek asked.

“Well, has she shown you any of it? Or told you about it? People have seen you two talking, and you don’t exactly look like you’re standing up to her or anything.”

“What’s he supposed to do?” Stein demanded. “Piss her off, like you did yesterday?”

LeRose kept his eyes fixed on Davidek. “You’re her freshman—but you can use that position to look out for your friends. Protect us.”

Davidek’s throat felt tight.

“Even if you don’t fight her, let us know what she’s got,” LeRose said. “It’s probably lies, but I want to know. All of us
—we
want to know. To prepare ourselves.”

“What’s there to know about your dad?” Green asked. “What does he care about what a high school girl thinks of him?”

“Nothing. Nothing in the least,” LeRose said, leaning back in his chair. “But as with any successful businessman, people like to spread lies about him.”

“Like what?” Davidek asked.

“I’d prefer not to say.…”

“I doubt Hannah even knows who he is,” Davidek said. “I mean, your old man is just another nobody, like all our dads.”

“A nobody?” the sophomore laughed. Carl LeRose was not the kind of person who could control an emotion like pride. “My father is a good, hardworking man, and he has always done the right thing,” he said. “But the
right
thing, and the
legal
thing … sometimes aren’t the same. He’s got some enemies.”

“Your dad? The church councilman? Now he’s Don Corleone?” Stein said. “I like you, LeRose, but seriously…”

LeRose’s beefy neck bulged against his collar. “You want to laugh? Let me tell you about this guy, a patrolman with the Tarentum police. A few years ago they get a call—house alarm. Lots of crime over there since the—” he shot a barely perceptible glance at Green “—since a lot of
poorer
people started moving in.”

“
I
live in Tarentum. Haven’t
poorer
people always lived there?” Green said.

LeRose ignored him: “This happened five years ago,” he said. “So the house alarm goes off, and the cop shows up. There’s this guy out on the front lawn. It’s dark, the lights are off in the house, the guy’s in shadows. He’s waving his arms.… The officer is the first one there, but he hears sirens off in the distance. His backup is coming, but it’s not there yet. He says, ‘Hands up, get down on the ground!’ The guy keeps walking over to him, so the officer says it again, but the guy doesn’t stop. Finally, the officer draws his gun.
Now
all the sudden the guy wants to cooperate, but when the cop goes to cuff him, he starts getting all panicky again and ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ and all that shit. The guy starts struggling. The cop draws his gun again.
Stop!
But the guy doesn’t stop. Then suddenly,
Pow!
The gun goes off, right across the side of the perp’s head.”

LeRose paused, letting it sink in for the boys around him.

Davidek said, “Are you going to tell us the cop shot your dad in the head, and that’s why you’re rich today?” Green and Stein laughed out loud.

“No, stupid…,” LeRose said, his dramatic pause ruined. “My dad wasn’t anywhere near there. The twist is—the dude the cop shot was the homeowner. He’d come back from vacation and his wife opened the door, sent the kids in, then he came out to unload the car—forgetting to turn off the alarm.

“So when the cop arrived, the guy was just trying to explain—false alarm, right? And when he started getting arrested, he freaked out, didn’t follow orders—and
that’s
what got him shot.”

“So what’s this got to do with your dad?” Green asked. “Or Hannah’s notebook?”

“Well, you can imagine—the cop was royally screwed, right? Career in ruins?
Wrong.
First, the dude didn’t die, but he had part of his skull sheared off. Minor brain damage and disfigurement. Then my dad steps in. This isn’t just bad for the cop, who happens to be my dad’s friend—he’s got a lot of cop friends—but it’s going to cost the city a fortune, too. Dad talks to the police chief and gives the department access to my dad’s private lawyers. This homeowner who got popped, he had some drunk driving arrests, an assault charge in his past. He’s no saint. He managed a shoe store over in Lower Burrell, which was in a strip mall my dad had a partnership in.… So my dad comes up with a plan: The cops charge the guy who got shot. Disorderly conduct. Resisting arrest. Soon as he gets out of the hospital, he’s going to the slammer. Then the lawyers search for—and find—some irregularities in the lease the shoe store signed. Rent’s going up. You can’t stay in business here? Oh, sorry. Maybe you need to lay off some staff.…

“So jail time looming, the employer is cutting him loose, legal and medical bills mounting … The guy’s wife decides to strike a deal. They settle the lawsuit against the city for cheap, no charges against the cop. Misdemeanor disorderly conduct for the victim—suspended sentence. The city covers medical expenses, and the shoe store rent goes back to normal. The family didn’t stay. They moved elsewhere. The cop
did
stay, and he got promoted. Officer Bellows was his name. Now he’s a captain in the department. And all because of my dad.”

“When does your old man pick up the Nobel Prize?” Davidek asked.

LeRose stood from the table. “I like you, Dav, but you don’t get it sometimes. The point of this story is, it’s important to have
friends.
When you
don’t
have friends, you end up losing your job at the fucking shoe store. You get me? There are other stories about my dad … things I wouldn’t exactly want announced to a crowd.… So just check with Hannah, all right? See what she’s got. Lemme know. I’d appreciate it.” He extended his hand to Davidek. “Okay, friend?”

TWENTY-FIVE

Bilbo grabbed Davidek’s sleeve as he walked up the steps. The usual cluster of senior boys was standing at the base of the stairwell, joined by Green, who usually didn’t say much to Davidek when his older buddies were around. Like always, they were sipping Cokes and laughing to each other as they loitered in the open space at the bottom of the stairs.

“We want to know something,” Bilbo said. His face had the same hopefulness as LeRose’s last week. Davidek could almost predict the words as they fell out of Bilbo’s mouth. He’d heard them a lot lately:
Hannah doesn’t know …

“… about the hidden porno stash in the library, does she?” Bilbo asked.

That was a new one. Davidek had no idea.

He also didn’t know if Hannah knew about the junior guy who’d been selling date-rape drugs on the side. Everybody who asked him about that was certain who it was, though they all believed it was somebody different.

And he didn’t know about the rumor that two sophomore guys on the golf team were seen making out behind the pro shop one weekend. Dan Foster and Pat Trombolla fumbled over their reason for bringing it up, saying they were asking on behalf of the actual boys—not that they were the ones themselves, of course.

Davidek pleaded ignorance—and that was the truth. But after people approached him with their questions, they tended to turn belligerent—fearing he’d tip Hannah to something new. He seemed to make new enemies every time somebody asked him to be their friend.