Killing Mr. Griffin (5 page)

I don’t know what other people are bringing. He didn’t say anything about the food.” “I’ll make you some sandwiches,” Mrs. McConnell said. “We have chicken left over from last night’s dinner. And

there’s still some chocolate cake; at least, I think there is, if the boys haven’t eaten it. Does that sound all right?”

“I guess so,” Susan said. The numbness was beginning to wear off now, and she felt the sharp edge of panic rising within her. “Oh, Mother, what if it’s awful? I mean, what if I can’t think of anything to talk to him about?”

“Just talk about the same things you talk about at school.”

“We don’t talk in school. He doesn’t sit near me in any classes. I talked to him yesterday, just for a minute, about the lit assignment, but that’s not the kind of thing you say twice. I mean, we talked about that, and now it’s done. You can’t keep discussing an assignment.”

“You’ll think of something. That’s the sort of thing that takes care of itself. He’ll probably have things he wants to talk about. He must like you, honey, or he wouldn’t have called.”

I have a date with David!

At eleven-ten the doorbell rang, and he was there. Handsome and smiling, unselfconsciously shaking hands with her parents, reaching out to take the handle of the picnic basket.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. McConnell, she’ll be safe. Jeff Garrett’s driving, and he’s really careful.”

Even Craig’s curious inspection and the snaggle-toothed leers of the twins didn’t appear to faze him. Susan stared at his hands. They were the cleanest hands she had ever seen, long and slender with tapering fingers. She was afraid that if she lifted her eyes and looked him full in the face, she would be blinded as though she were looking straight into the dazzling radiance of the sun.

“Have fun,” her mother said.

“Don’t eat too much,” came from her father, who did not seem to understand the significance of what was happening, that his sixteen-year-old daughter was finally, at long last, about to embark on a first date, and that it was not just any boy who had asked her out but this particular boy. They crossed the lawn to the car, and David opened the door for her and lifted in the basket. “You know everybody, don’t you? Jeff—Mark-Betsy.” “Hello, Sue! What a cute shirt! Did you dye it yourself?” Betsy Cline threw her a warm, bright, welcoming smile. “Hi, Sue,” Mark said, and Jeff said, “Great day for a picnic, right? It’s almost like summer.” And that suddenly—that easily—she felt she was one of them. Her mother had been right, there was no problem with talking, because the rest of them were talking so much themselves. They seemed to know each other well, but not so well that they excluded her from their conversation. With everything that was said, a door was opened deliberately so that she could enter with a comment. They drove out of the city on the freeway and turned off onto the paved road that led to the mountains, and almost immediately the fresh green of the spring trees surrounded them and the sky arched blue above their heads. Mark opened a six-pack of beer. “If it were pop, it would look like a TV commercial,” he said, and they all laughed, Susan right along with them. She had never thought of Mark as being funny before. In fact, she had always been a little frightened of him, with his smooth, expressionless face and knowing eyes. But now,

suddenly, he wasn’t;

frightening at all—just gay and carefree—and it like a TV commercial with a car full of beautiful, laughing, young people setting out to spend a day together in the hills.

After several miles Jeff turned again, and this time they were on a dirt road that curved and twisted and doubled back upon, itself until it seemed to be going nowhere.

At last they came to a clearing and Jeff stopped the car and they all got out.

“This is the place,” Mark said. “Lana and I used to come up here all the time. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a path over there by that rock and it leads to a waterfall.”

He began to lead the way, and the rest of them fell into step behind him, walking Indian file, David carrying the picnic basket and Jeff with a blanket and a brown paper sack of food that Betsy had brought.

Susan followed along in David’s footsteps, his slim, straight back moving directly ahead of her. They walked through the woods, and it was still—there was nothing but the sound of their feet crunching dead branches.

“Who’s Lana?” she asked David in a low voice.

“The girl Mark used to go with—until Griffin gave it the ax. You’ve heard about that, haven’t you? I thought everybody had.”

“I haven’t.”

“Well, I’ll tell you later.” He tossed her a smile over his shoulder.

I’ve dreamed this before, Susan thought. I wrote about it later and pretended it really happened once when Mr. Griffin wanted a descriptive essay. He said I picked nice adjectives, but he marked me down for spelling.

They heard the waterfall before they saw it. The closer they got, the louder it became, until they broke through the trees and were upon it, a frothing, tumbling, churning burst of silver that poured itself madly over rocks and then dropped straight down for several feet into the stream below. “Hey, far out!” Jeff exclaimed, and Betsy gave a little squeal of delight. “I didn’t know it was back here!” “Nobody does,” Mark told her. “Nobody ever comes here. Lana and I stumbled on it one day when we were out hiking. We came back a lot of times, and we were the only ones.” “Neat, huh?” David said, smiling at Susan.

“It’s simply beautiful!” She felt she should say something more, but the words wouldn’t come, and anything she made herself say would be too little or too much. “Let’s eat!” Jeff said. “I hope you chicks brought plenty of food. I’m starving!” “Aren’t you always?” Betsy said with a laugh. “You guys are all bottomless pits.” They spread the blanket on the ground and ate their lunch on the bank of the stream on the very edge of the sparkling water. Afterward they lay stretched out on the blanket and on the grass and talked in an easy, lazy manner as if they had all been friends forever. Mark was leaning against the trunk of a tree, smoking a joint, and the sweet, heavy scent of pot blended with the incense of the sun-soaked pine needles. Betsy was lying on the blanket, her bluejeaned knees drawn up into little pointed

peaks. Her eyes were closed, and she looked totally at peace. Jeff was sprawled next to her, on his

back. He was dreamily studying the line of a pine branch stretching squarely over his head. Susan took off her glasses and laid them on her stomach, and the world went soft and unfocused around her. “You look different without your glasses,” David said softly. “Your whole face changes. Do you really have to wear them?” “Only if I want to see,” Susan told him, amazed at her sudden ability to answer such a question lightly. “It helps when you’re walking and stuff. You know-so you don’t bump into things.” “You look okay with them on,”

David said. “It’s just that now—with them off—you look so sort of fragile. Like you need to be taken care of or something.” “I wonder what Mr. Griffin looks like without his glasses,” Betsy said. She spoke without opening her eyes. “Fragile? Like he needs to be taken care of?” “Are you kidding?” Jeff started to laugh. “We’ll have to take them off before we blindfold him. We don’t want to shove them straight through his eyeballs.” “Blindfold him?” Susan thought she had heard him incorrectly. “Did you say blindfold?” Suddenly, she realized that the atmosphere had changed abruptly. The blurred ovals of their faces were turned toward her. Waiting. Calculating. “You heard right,” Jeff said slowly, and they told her the thing that they were going to do. Later Susan could not recall exactly which one told her or whether they all did, each speaking a part, the voices overlapping and running together like the lines and curves of David’s face as he raised himself on one elbow and leaned over to touch the tip

of her nose lightly with one finger. “You like our idea?” “You’re kidding me. You’re not really going to do it.” “Damned right we are.”

“I don’t believe you. It’s like something out of a book.” She could accept it when she thought of it that way, as a story, the people in it characters created by an author. She could imagine the words neatly printed on a page: “The shadowy figures seized him from behind and forced him into the waiting car. His cries for help brought no response. Where were they taking him? What were they going to do?”

“It’s unreal,” she said. “You’re making it up to tease me.” “You can be in on it if you want to.” “Me? How?” Susan asked. “Mark will tell you. He’s doing the planning.” “You can make an appointment with him for after school,” Mark said. “Pretend you want to talk with him about the term paper or something. Hold him till the grounds are empty.

Then, when he walks out to the parking lot, we’ll get him.” “You really think it would be that simple?” “Sure. Why not?” Mark took a long drag on the joint and let the smoke curl slowly from between his teeth. “The best things in life are simple. Simple things work. They don’t foul up. It’s the complicated things that get twisted around on you.” “We’ll all have our parts,” Betsy said. “Mine will be to provide alibis for everybody. The fellows are going to blindfold Griffin so he won’t be able to see who anybody is. Then afterward he won’t be able to accuse anyone.” “He’ll know me if I make the

appointment,” Susan said. “He won’t be blindfolded then.”

“He won’t even guess you’re part of it,” Mark told her easily. “It’ll just seem like a coincidence. He stays after school to talk with a student, he goes outside and we’re waiting for him by his car. You’ll have split before that happens. You won’t even be on the scene.” “But why?” Susan asked. “What’s the reason for it all? People don’t get kidnapped without a reason.” “The reason is that he deserves it,” Mark said sharply. “Does there have to be any other reason than that? He’s an asshole. He’s out to flunk all of us. Maybe if we shake him up a little he’ll get off this power trip of his and start treating us like human beings.” “I don’t know,” Susan said hesitantly. “I’ve never been mixed up in anything like this.” “Who has?” Jeff said. “It’ll be a first time for all of us. My God, we’ve got to do something really wild once in our lives before we’re grown and tied down. Let’s get some kicks while we can, and we’ll teach old Griffin a lesson at the same time.” “When would you want to do it?” “What about Thursday?” Mark said. “That will give us time to get all the details worked out. Besides, he’s giving a quiz Monday, which means we’ll probably get the papers back Wednesday. That way you could call him Wednesday night and ask him for a conference after school the next day.

You could say you want to discuss the test.” “Okay, Sue?” David asked. “Well-” “Come on.” “Okay.” She heard her voice speaking the word, and her heart rose suddenly into her throat. Had she really said

that? Had she actually agreed to this insanity? “Good for you!”

Jeff said, and Betsy gave a crow of pleasure. “I knew you’d do it, Sue!” she said. “I told the guys.” “That’s my girl,” David said softly, and he kissed her. Lightly. On the forehead. His lips were like the touch of butterfly wings. Never, Susan thought deliriously, never in all the time to come will I ever, ever be as happy as I am right now. And she was right.

The alarm went off at seven, and Kathy Griffin reached out without opening her eyes and pressed the button to shut it off. Just as automatically, she reached for Brian in the bed beside her, to find nothing but an empty pillow and a mass of tangled bedclothes. She groped for a moment, as though expecting to find him there, twisted somehow into the sheets or buried beneath the untidy lumps of blanket.

Then, as she became more fully conscious, she sighed and opened her eyes to affirm the fact that she was, indeed, alone in the double bed.

That man, she thought. I don’t know why he owns an alarm clock. He never bothers to use it. The sound of running water told her the shower in the bathroom was in use. She lay quiet, letting herself come slowly awake, until the water stopped and she heard the shower stall

open and slam closed. A few moments later the bathroom door opened, and Brian came into the bedroom, dressed in T-shirt and undershorts, toweling his hair. ” “Morning, Bri,” Kathy greeted him, hauling herself to a sitting position. “What’s the order of the day, fried or scrambled?” “Go back to sleep,” Brian told her. “I’ll fix my own eggs this morning.” “No, that’s my job.” A moment before she would have given anything to have been able to roll over and sink back into slumber. Now that she had been given permission, some contrariness in her personality kept her from doing it. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up slowly, adjusting herself to the unaccustomed weight of her rounded belly. “There’s nothing in the rules that says that pregnant women can’t cook breakfast.” “You’re sure you feel like it?” “Of course.” And now, suddenly, she did. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek in passing, pulled a terry-cloth robe on over her nightgown, and padded barefoot out to the kitchen to put on the coffee. To Kathy, going barefoot meant springtime. Raised on a farm in Michigan, she had gone barefoot in childhood from the time the first dandelions appeared in the new grass to the time of the first snowfall. Her feet were so tough that she thought sometimes she could walk across a bed of nails without any discomfort. To Brian, whose own feet were soft and tender as a baby’s, the whole idea was upsetting.

“You’ll step on something,” he told her. “That’s the way people get tetanus.” It was one of their minor differences. There were many others. In fact, if a programmer had planned the most unsuitable partnership imaginable, Brian and Kathy Griffin could have been the outcome. Brian

had his master’s degree in English from Stanford University; Kathy had been a C student in high school and had never gone to college. He had until recently been assistant professor in English at the University of Albuquerque; she had until two months ago worked in the ladies’ wear department of a clothing store. Their personalities were as different as their backgrounds. “He’s a fine man, I’m sure,” Kathy’s mother had said the first time she met him. “He’s certainly brilliant and dedicated to his work. But he’s so stiff and serious and—well, truthfully, dear, any man who is still a bachelor at thirty-six has to have something the matter with him.” “Perhaps he never met the right woman,” Kathy suggested mildly. “Or maybe it just takes him so long to loosen up and break through the ice that all the women he’s known have given up and walked off before they ever really got to know him.” “And you’ve decided to be different? Why?” “Because I’m stubborn,” Kathy had admitted truthfully. “And because I think that Brian Griffin is worth waiting for.” And wait, she did. They had known each other two years before Brian asked her to marry him and another year before that marriage took place. At the time he proposed, he had told her of his decision to leave the university and take enough education courses to become certified at the high-school level. “It will be a year before I’ll be able to take on the responsibility of a wife,” he had told her, “and even then it won’t be milk and honey. I’ll be making less money than I have been, and there will be a lot less security. I have tenure at the college, which I won’t have in high school. I might not even be