Don't Care High (4 page)

This caused a hush.

“Well, all the signers are registered students,” said Mr. Morrison defensively. “I'm treating this as a legitimate nomination.”

Gamble sighed. “I suppose we have to. But mark my words, we're going to look pretty stupid over this.”

A great hum of shock swelled in the homerooms and filled the halls. In Mr. Morrison's class, Paul tried to look as surprised as everyone else, while sensing deep in his heart that disaster would be the only result of this roller coaster that Sheldon had started them on. Sheldon himself was beaming with pride, and Mr. Morrison marched up and down between the rows of desks, looking into faces and saying,

“Did you hear that? Did you hear that?”

Mike Otis happened to be late for school that morning, thereby missing the announcement altogether.

Paul ushered Sheldon in the door of apartment 3305. “Hey, Mom, I'm home. I've brought a friend.”

They found Mrs. Abrams bustling about the kitchen, her purse over her shoulder, the car keys in her hand.

“Mom, this is Sheldon Pryor from Don't — from school.”

Paul's mother smiled distractedly. “Very nice to meet you, Sheldon. Paul, I'm glad you're home. I've got some instructions for you. I have to go out right away. Your Auntie Nancy had a terrible experience today. She was having her hair streaked, and the timer malfunctioned. It all turned green!”

“Is she okay?”

“Yes, but she's terribly upset. She spent all day at the beauty parlour, but the green is still there. She asked me to come over and sit with her. Now, I won't be home until late, and your father has meetings tonight, but there's a roast in the oven. Turn it off at four-thirty, eat what you want, and wrap the rest up. Sherman is welcome to join you if it's okay with his mother.”

“That's Sheldon, Mom.”

“Yes, of course. Goodbye, boys. Be careful you don't burn your fingers on the roasting pan.” She bustled out.

“Your Mom seems a little uptight,” Sheldon commented.

“Yeah, well, she's okay. She just has to adjust to the new place and all that.”

Sheldon surveyed his surroundings. “Nice apartment. Pretty high up. How's the view?”

“Concrete,” said Paul. “Now, why don't we have a Coke, go into the living room, put on some music and talk about why you went nuts and nominated Mike Otis for president?”

“It's not such a big thing,” said Sheldon. “On Monday they'll declare him president, and it's business as usual. Nothing changes at Don't Care High. Thanks.” He accepted a tall frosted glass.

The two retired to the living room and established themselves comfortably on the rug. Paul switched on the radio and turned to his friend. “So it's over, right? The Mike Otis thing, I mean?”

“Sure. Okay, it caused a stir in homeroom, but you'll notice nobody mentioned it after that. There'll be some more humming when they declare him president, that's all. Anyway, when are you going to start your map for geography — the one due next week?”

“Oh, I did mine last night.”

Sheldon's brow clouded. “If we're going to be friends, Ambition, you're going to have to pick up a few poor work habits.” He looked thoughtful. “Or I might have to pick up some good ones. What a revolting thought.”

Paul laughed. They joked about school, tore into a bag of potato chips and toasted Mike Otis with Coke until the radio announcer's voice brought them back to earth:

“You're listening to Flash Flood on Stereo 99, creeping up on the dinner hour. We've got some new Stones coming up, but first a traffic report. Stay home. It's a mess out there. It's five-thirty in the greatest city in the world, and —”

“The roast!” cried Paul, jumping up and running for the kitchen. There was a short pause, then, “Sheldon?”

“Yeah?”

“The roast's on fire, Sheldon!”

Sheldon ran into the kitchen, shouting instructions. “Don't throw water on it! It's a grease fire! Smother it! Keep close to the floor! Wet a towel —”

“It's out,” interrupted Paul, donning padded mitts and removing the roasting pan from the smoky oven. “It went out by itself. But look at the roast!”

Both boys stared at the charred lump which had once been dinner.

“A little well-done,” Sheldon observed. He beamed. “But I know a place not far from here where they make a bowl of chili that bites back. Interested?”

“What about the roast?” mourned Paul.

Sheldon shrugged. “Ashes to ashes. Come on. Let's go.”

* * *

Paul lay in bed, reexperiencing his dinner over and over again. What went by the name of New York chili would have been labeled
DANGER: HIGHLY CORROSIVE
back home. Not only did this chili bite back, but it would probably still be undigested at the autopsy.

His agony aside, the evening had been quite unremarkable. He'd had a good time with Sheldon, his father had come home and dropped off to sleep on the sofa, and Auntie Nancy had calmed down after a fashion, pending a promise from her hairdresser that she would be blonde again tomorrow. Even the lecture for burning the roast had been relatively short.

Finding sleep impossible, he went to the window to check on the building across the street. One-thirty in the morning, and at least half the lights were on. Somewhere around the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth floor, five fat bald men with cigars, looking like identical quintuplets, sat around a small table, playing cards. Paul gawked at the mountains of money sitting in front of them. Even in the unlikely event that all of those bills were ones, there would still be enough cash there to buy and sell Paul Abrams several times over.

One floor up and to the right, a group of young people were assembling a Volkswagen in a completely furnished living room. Beside them, a woman was washing her windows. At this hour? Paul watched in amazement as she finished the inside, climbed out onto the four-inch ledge and nonchalantly began washing the outside, apparently unworried about the several-hundred-foot drop to the street.

It was too much. He crawled back into bed, but found himself concentrating on the late movie, which was playing on the TV set next door. Whoever lived there was apparently a night owl, and obviously quite deaf.

Paul sighed.

C
lasses were classes to Paul, and differed very little from those he had taken at Kilgour, his last high school. A class at Don't Care was quieter (except for the occasional hum) and had far less student participation, but the material itself seemed constant. It ranged from uninteresting to mildly interesting — or at least, as Sheldon put it, “interesting, in a boring sort of way.”

Paul's last class of the day was photography. It was his most interesting course, not because of the subject matter, but rather because of the motley group it attracted. It was the only one of Paul's courses that was not restricted to tenth graders, and provided him with the opportunity to view the Don't Care student at all stages of his development in his unnatural habitat: the classroom.

It was the final hour of the week, the lecture was on the correct mixing of developing chemicals, and Paul's mind had wandered to Mike Otis when the candidate himself appeared at the back of the class. It was a jolt for Paul to see him there, partly a jab of conscience and partly the fact that the elusive Mike was normally so difficult to pin down.

Mr. Willis interrupted his lecture to look inquiringly at the apparition in the voluminous raincoat. “May I help you?”

“I don't think so,” replied Mike, slithering into the seat directly behind Paul.

Mr. Willis dried his hands on a towel. “Well — are you registered for this class?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind telling me where you've been all week?”

The monotone was perfect. “It's taken me a few days to get my act together.”

Mr. Willis consulted his class list. “Could I trouble you to tell me your name?”

“Mike Otis.”

Paul braced himself for the hum, but none came. Apparently, the announcement of the candidacy had been forgotten.

Mr. Willis continued his demonstration, but now in a state of obvious distraction. As he mixed the various powders and liquids, his eyes kept darting toward the back of the classroom where his newest pupil sat. This went on for five minutes, until he slammed down a bottle of Photo-Flo in obvious agitation and cried,

“Good God, man, it's like a sauna in here! Why don't you take off that raincoat?”

“I'd rather not,” said Mike.

The teacher was just returning painfully to the lesson when Wayne-o burst in the door. “Am I late?”

“Only forty minutes,” Mr. Willis breathed, beginning to gather up his chemicals. “It's very warm in here. Class dismissed. Next week we'll start shooting.”

“Shooting?” came a worried voice in the general shuffle that followed.

“Shooting
pictures
!” howled Mr. Willis in exasperation. “This is photography!”

And as Paul left the room, he knew with a feeling of great sympathy that this semester was not going to be an easy one for poor Mr. Willis.

Sheldon lived in Greenwich Village in an elegant old townhouse about ten blocks southwest of Paul's apartment building. He was on the corner to meet Paul that Saturday afternoon.

“It's different here than where you live,” Sheldon was saying as they walked. “You can see the sky.” He indicated a sickly little tree that was sticking up through a hole in the sidewalk. “Look. Greenbelt.”

Paul grinned. “You're sure it's okay with your folks that I come over today?”

“Oh, sure. Nobody's home except my sister Jodi. And she'll be in the bathroom anyway, just in case I have to use it.”

They walked up half a dozen stone steps to a small wooden door. Sheldon unlocked it and ushered Paul inside.

“We're here!” he called out. “This will be your last warning!” To Paul, he said, “My dad's at the ball game with my kid brother, and my mom's working today.”

“I'm in the bathroom,” called a girl's voice from upstairs.

“Your mom works Saturdays?”

“Yeah, well, she's a genius. Or at least that's what everybody says she is, which means she has to work weekends.”

“My parents are visiting my aunt and uncle today,” said Paul. “That's my Auntie Nancy. You remember her — the one with the green hair.”

They went into the living room and Sheldon switched on the radio. “Do you realize,” he said, “that at this very moment, Mike Otis is our leader? Nominations closed yesterday, remember?”

Paul made a face. “Yeah, I know. And don't forget you promised that, as soon as they declare him president on Monday, that's the end of it.”

Sheldon shrugged. “We fulfilled our roles as kingmakers. What else is there?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

They sat for a few minutes listening to Flash Flood rant and rave about a new album. Jodi came in to stir up some interest in milk shakes, and the three adjourned to the kitchen.

Paul watched his friend's sister as she scooped ice cream into the blender, chattering engagingly about her own school and her impressions of the eighth grade. This wonderful, happy, energetic, aware person, he reflected, was less than a year away from the bizarre, indifferent halls of Don't Care High.

* * *

When Mr. Morrison advised the class to pay special attention to the announcements on Monday morning, Paul knew that it had happened. He had known it would happen anyway, but there was always that chance, however slight, that there would be another candidate. Not now. He caught a sideways grin of triumph from Sheldon as the principal came over the P.A. :

The now-familiar hum swelled throughout the school.

“Excellent!” Sheldon was declaring as homeroom broke up and the students began to disperse for first period. “Didn't it sound great when Mr. What's-his-name announced him president? Oh wow!”

“Shut up, Shel! Someone'll hear you!” muttered Paul through clenched teeth.

“So what? The whole world should know! We have a president! A sovereign! A charismatic hero!”

“He has about as much charisma as a picket fence!” Paul pointed out. “And the only things heroic about him are the safety pins in his pants.”

Sheldon was undaunted. “Hey, Wayne-o, what do you think about Mike Otis being president?”

Wayne-o looked blank. “Who?”