Night School (3 page)

Autumn’s entire world was Julie-Brooke-Danielle. She could not imagine calling anybody but them for a ride. Andrew had a car, but she felt awkward calling a boy who had rarely spoken to her, no matter how much Julie-Brooke-Danielle and she had admired him. Autumn was pretty sure Mariah had a car, too. But if some other girl had tried to get a ride with Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle, the quartet would have been incredulous. Julie would have laughed in the girl’s face. And being Julie, would have used a cruel nickname to get rid of her.

As for Ned, it was so impossible that somebody of the social standing of Autumn would even remember his existence, let alone climb into his vehicle, that it simply did not enter her mind as a choice.

Autumn stepped out of her house into the night.

It was wonderfully warm: the sort of California winter warm that cuddles and snuggles.

The sky was not black. Distant Los Angeles cast a luminous smudge across the ceiling of the world: the lights of fourteen million people and their streets. Nothing near L.A. could ever really be dark.

Autumn looked down the road in the direction of the high school. The road wound among canyons, had no sidewalks and in many places, no sides, either. Pavement had been stuck to the canyon side like a poorly wound roll of tape.

A yellow sign was easy to read in the half-dark.
FALLING ROCKS,
it said. Autumn had a vision of herself as a mere piece off Julie-Brooke-Danielle. A falling rock.

Autumn took a sweater, for the night was cooling off. She felt dangerous and wild. Not only was she about to walk on a narrow twisty road, in the dark, by herself, but Julie-Brooke-Danielle didn’t even know.

Autumn was slim and very attractive. She wore her shiny long hair in an extremely neat ponytail, with a clasp at the bottom as well as the top, to prevent the hair from changing position during the day. Her clothes were perfectly matched, and she was among the few in school who had never, not once, dressed for grunge. Autumn always looked as if she could go right into Los Angeles and manage a production company.

She had crossed the lawn as far as the neat sweet rows of lemon trees when the phone rang. She heard it clearly through the open windows of the house she had left. Autumn had only three possible callers: Julie or Brooke or Danielle.

A high school with a thousand kids in it—and she knew for a fact that only three would ever call? The world that had seemed so full and rich inside the house sounded empty out here under the lemon trees.

The answering machine kicked in. From outside, like a visiting wraith, Autumn listened to herself chirrup hello. Julie replied almost harshly, “Autumn! Where are you, anyway? You’re supposed to be home tonight. Call me right away when you get in and tell me where you were.”

Those are
orders,
thought Autumn. I, Autumn Ivers, have spent the last five years of my life obeying orders. I haven’t been popular. I’ve been obedient.

She kept walking, away from the light of the house, and under the huge gnarled oaks. At the edge of the road she paused, as if she were considering skydiving or undersea cave exploration. Then she set off, in the dark, on foot, to travel the lonely mile.

Night Class no longer seemed an oddity for which she had scribbled meaningless shapes instead of signing her name. It seemed very important, a necessity, even, to free herself from the domination of Julie-Brooke-Danielle.

When it was time to leave for night school, Mariah’s brother Bevin asked her not to go. “I hate being alone,” he mumbled. He didn’t look at her. Bevin had a hard time meeting anybody’s eyes.

Her brother was one of these desperate isolated people who had no friends. Mariah bled for him, praying he would somehow outgrow it, or that at least it would strengthen him. But neither had happened so far.

It was measurably harder for Bevin to manage school this year, his sophomore year. Mariah, who had loved sophomore year, and for whom junior year was pretty good, too (would be perfect if Andrew should notice her), could not imagine what it felt like to be unwanted in every situation from art to soccer.

This year, it was beyond mere loneliness. Bevin had become a victim. Perhaps he had reached a level of despair that was visible. He had become prey. He was a rabbit and the cruel people in school were jackals. They encircled him, ripping out his courage, and tearing away his abilities.

Bevin didn’t even have what rabbits have. He had no protective coloring. He could not run faster than his pursuers. He had no hole in which to hide.

Mariah wanted Mom and Dad to send Bevin to another school, or let him live with relatives in another state, so he could get a fresh start. But Mom and Dad did not see Bevin the way she did: They saw a quiet, courteous boy who led an interior life.

Mariah was the one with the interior life. Bevin was the one in hell. “He’s quiet because nobody speaks to him!” she screamed once at Dad. “Bevin is courteous because he wouldn’t dare be rude! His interior life consists of desperately wishing he had an exterior life.”

“Nonsense,” said Dad robustly, unable to accept that his only son was not making it.

And Bevin, who had very little left except his father’s opinion of him, would not tell the truth, either. For what if his own father despised him, along with everybody else in the world?

Mom and Dad were sure Bevin would grow up to be a comedian or a screenwriter, because, they insisted, people of great creativity always had quiet childhoods.

But it isn’t quiet, thought Mariah, who had to see her brother in school. It’s torture, and people die of torture.

Everyday, somehow, Bevin managed to get up and go to school. And everyday, somehow, he managed to get home again. He had remarkable courage, his sister thought.

“I’ve signed up for a night class,” she said to Bevin. “It won’t be very long, not the first night. Probably just orientation and getting textbooks and stuff. You’ll be all right here by yourself.”

He didn’t argue with her. Bevin had lost the ability to argue.

At the door she paused, guilty about letting her brother down. As if she were responsible for his failures at school.

But Andrew, as ever, filled her mind. Golden warm thoughts of a splendid golden person seemed brighter even than the setting sun on the gleaming ocean, and she forgot Bevin, and went joyfully to the car and drove swiftly away.

When it was time to leave for Night School, Ned managed to get permission to drive Mom’s Volvo. He would have preferred Dad’s Suburban, even though it was so huge and substantial that he felt like a stick figure drawn on the front seat. But Dad was out. Ned had the red at the intersection when Mariah Frederick whipped by.

Ned was in one class with Mariah’s brother Bevin. Ned might be on his own a lot, but Bevin had been shoved way beyond solitude. Bevin was the choice of the school bullies, and every school has more than enough bullies to go around. Ned averted his eyes when Bevin came under attack. Ned was enough of a loser; he couldn’t attach himself to a real, bottom-level loser like Bevin. What if he and Bevin got grouped together in people’s minds, the way Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle were grouped?

Ned rather thought that Bevin would kill himself one day. What choice did he have? He had worse than no life.

Ned wrenched his mind off the painful condition of Mariah’s brother, turned once he had the green, and followed the bright red rear lights of her car. He wondered if she knew her brother’s life at all, and if she cared, and if she tried to help him.

But Bevin was beyond help.

Any little thing would tip him over the edge, and he would fall, probably not even bothering to scream. People only screamed if they thought somebody would help.

When it was time to leave for Night School, Andrew got into his Jeep and drove without detours to the school. Normally Andrew took the longest possible route anywhere, sometimes adding 25 or 30 miles to the odometer for absolutely no reason. There was nothing on earth Andrew loved more than driving. In his car he was removed from boys, removed from girls. (Andrew still thought of them as separate species.) Removed from school and conversation and pressure. He thought sometimes that instead of setting the world on fire with his brilliance and fame, that he would just be a cross-country trucker, and never do anything again but sit alone in a vehicle while the radio played.

What am I doing? he thought tiredly. What have I signed up for? I don’t even know what this class is.

He was far too busy already, stretched by a hundred activities. The necessity to excel, to be best, to be photogenic, to be interesting, to be witty, was omnipresent. It was a good reason to drive alone. For a few miles, he could omit his tremendous efforts, he could just sit in the driver’s seat and take the turns.

The road went where it went; he had no decisions to make, just the occasional steering. If only he could give up all activities and just drift like this, watching and following the road. But then he would be a loser.

It had been drilled into him, it was always being drilled into him, that he must never, never, never be a loser.

Mom had forgotten to take the camcorder inside the house. It lay on the front seat, begging to be stolen. Andrew drove with his left hand and gripped the camera with his right, waiting to set it on the floor of the car where it would be less visible to potential thieves.

I could be a cameraman, he thought suddenly. The world at the far end of the focus. Or a reporter. The world just something to scribble about in notebooks. Or a television newsman, for whom the world is just another candidate for coverage. People, just objects to be condensed into a thirty-second spot.

Andrew was filled with a brave, giddy feeling, as if he’d just flown solo for the first time in the world. Because he
knew.
He knew now what he was for, and why he was constructed that way! Yes! he thought, rejoicing. That’s it!

I
am
for watching! And also, of course, for filming and writing and producing. Night Class, he thought again, and to him it sounded poetically dark, romantic, and doomed. He would take the camcorder into class, and begin his first film. He would use the shadows in which he had so often stood.

A vision of Mariah spun like falling snow before Andrew’s eyes. Mariah, year after year, as intricate and beautiful and lacy as snowflakes under a microscope. She would be his film star.

It was time to begin. Time to be the best watcher and recorder there ever was. It didn’t matter what Night Class was about. Andrew Todd had already decided on the action.

Autumn could have held hands with the velvet dark, and taken it home with her. There were no stars in the sky. She wondered if you could have a horoscope when there were no stars.

Perhaps I have a nightscope instead of a horoscope, thought Autumn, and if so, my scope is good. The dark and I are getting along fine.

She felt the lights of an approaching car at her back. Weirdly, it was now the light that frightened her. She didn’t want to be caught in the headlights. Jumping off the road, Autumn slid behind a thick, thorny bush. She hardly minded the thorns, because it was such a friendly night that the thorns were not hurting her.

A Jeep zinged by.

She thought it might be Andrew.

Andrew collected girls like baseball cards, strewing them carelessly around him. Autumn believed that it was because that way, girls could never mean much; no single girl was worth more than any other girl.

Andrew’s perfection was demanding. You wanted to be on his level and have his approval. She had always sensed that he did not entirely approve of Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle. Tonight she would show him what she was made of. A wonderful perfect personality that Andrew would want to have and to hold.

The outline of the school roof materialized, a darker dark than the night, jutting sharply into the sky.

There was something evilly complete in its darkness.

Dark as a cavewoman’s dark.

Dark before fire. Dark before flame.

The night had not raised the hairs on the back of Autumn’s neck, nor chilled her bone, but the dark of the school did. She ceased to be Autumn Ivers, California girl, and became some ancient ancestress of herself. Something primitive and animal.

Don’t go in,
warned her body.

Don’t get close,
said her soul.

Stay outside,
cried the eons-old knowledge of things gone wrong.

Autumn held her foot in midair, listening for the footfall of danger. A voice said cheerfully, “Where did you come from? I didn’t see you drive in.”

The spell evaporated in the heat of Andrew’s voice. Autumn forgot the warnings of her own body. She smiled because she loved company, and together they entered the building.

Andrew held off the dark, the way company does.

How nice, thought Autumn. It isn’t dark if somebody is there with you.

She thought how nice that would sound on a greeting card, the kind you sent to a friend you missed.
It isn’t dark if somebody is there with you.
Her mind’s eye decorated it with little scrolls of flowers and hearts. She had been on the edge of something deep and important, but the thoughts, or Autumn herself, were lost.

Mariah did not notice that the school was dark, because her own headlights illuminated the drive. When she saw Andrew and Autumn vanishing inside the front door, Mariah was exalted. Was that the fourth name? The one she had not been able to read? How wonderful! Not only would she really and truly be in a class with Andrew Todd, but the other girl would be Autumn, with whom Mariah most wanted to be friends!

Oh, this was perfection! This was a dream come true!

Mariah did not bother to drive all the way around to the student parking lot. Instead she stopped right in front of the entry, deciding that parking rules were suspended under the circumstances.

She had no idea that other rules … rules of the night … these, too, had been suspended under the circumstances.

A
NDREW WAS USUALLY FULL
of himself, but tonight Autumn sensed that he was way beyond that. Andrew was wired, the electricity inside him zinging through the halls as if he could light them on his own generator. Something wonderful had happened to Andrew. “Good day?” she asked.