Pressure (8 page)

We all said that it was.

Mr. Sevin pushed a small pad of paper and a pencil across the desk toward Jeremy. “Write down where the dog is allegedly buried.”

As Jeremy wrote it down, Darren bit his lip and looked like he was about to cry. He reached into his book bag and removed the journal.

“Do you promise that you won’t tell anyone else what’s in here?” Darren asked Mr. Sevin.

“I have no authority to read your personal journal,” said Mr. Sevin. “You can put it away.”

“I know, but you can read it, if you want. If you don’t tell anybody.”

Mr. Sevin nodded and took the journal from him. “Very well. I will retain it in the strictest confidence. Please remain in my office. The rest of you are dismissed.”

Jeremy, Peter, and I got up and left his office. “That lying bastard!” said Jeremy as soon as we were out of earshot.

“What do you think’s in the journal?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know,” said Jeremy. “Maybe he’s so much of an idiot that he forgot he wrote about Killer Fang.”

“Maybe,” I said, not believing it for a second. Obviously Darren had written fake entries in his journal, probably woeful musings on his treatment at the hands of his endlessly cruel roommates. He’d let the journal stick out of his book bag so that I’d be sure to notice it. Hell, he’d spent the whole past week making us think he was writing incriminating stuff in there.

How could we prove it was all lies?

How thorough had he been about covering his tracks?

The answers came early that evening: we couldn’t, and
very
thorough.

We never found out exactly what Darren wrote in his journal, but apparently it was a heartbreaking chronicle of astounding (yet credible-sounding) abuse. I tried to explain that the journal was faked, but the words sounded ridiculous even as I said them. Mr. Sevin dropped his usual veneer of calm-but-stern authority and screamed at us until he was red in the face (a splotchy sort of red, but red nevertheless) and both Peter and I were in tears. My only solace was that I’d held out slightly longer than Peter before breaking down.

A pair of teachers went out to look for the dog, but found no evidence of any wrongdoing. Had a forensics team been dispatched, I’m sure we would have been fully exonerated, but despite our insistence that the story was true, two teachers were all that we got.

Darren was moved out of our room. We asked where he was going but were told in no uncertain terms that it was none of our business.

We were not kicked out of school, though our parents were called. My dad didn’t talk to me at all, while my mom just said in a soft voice that she was very disappointed in me. But she didn’t sound disappointed. The lack of emotion of any sort in her voice stung me as if I’d slammed my body against a wall of thumbtacks.

During Jeremy’s phone conversation with his parents, he finally broke down into tears. As everybody else had done more than their share of bawling since this whole adventure began, I was glad to have him finally join in the fun.

Our probation was to continue for the rest of the term. No free time. Our door had to remain open until lights-out each evening, with surprise inspections at any moment. Our weekends were spent engaged in manual labor that was exhausting, tedious, humiliating, or (most often) all three.

They did relax the restriction on our incoming mail, which wasn’t much of a consolation for me since I never received any. And though I can’t prove it, I’m pretty sure that the cafeteria food was made slightly worse on our behalf.

Peter, Jeremy, and I did manage to entertain ourselves by joking about our plight, and we occasionally risked unimaginable punishment by breaking out an unlawful deck of cards like people drinking alcohol during prohibition, but for the most part it was a pretty miserable existence.

Though we were instructed not to interact with him, I’d see Darren each day in the cafeteria and in class. He’d almost always avoid my glance, but every once in a while, when he knew nobody else was watching, he’d smile.

It was the kind of smile that made me think it would be worth getting expelled and going to prison just for the opportunity to nail him to the ground with rusty spikes and punch him in the face over and over until every tooth was shattered.

I hadn’t ever thought that I was capable of hate,
real
hate, but there it was.

Ten long weeks after the incident, I sat in Mr. Wolfe’s classroom, taking a harder than usual but not unmanageable test. Though it may have created a joyless existence, all of this extra studying did mean that it was pretty hard
not
to ace a test.

“What is this?” Mr. Wolfe demanded, loud enough to make me flinch.

I looked over at him, as did the other boys in the class. Mr. Wolfe hovered over Peter, holding a piece of paper, looking furious.

“That’s not mine!” Peter insisted.

“It was on the floor in front of your chair. You’re the only one who could’ve used it.”

“But I didn’t know it was there!”

“Stand up,” said Mr. Wolfe. As Peter did so, Mr. Wolfe grabbed his test paper and crumpled it up. “Come outside with me. The rest of you, eyes on your own paper! I mean it!”

Mr. Wolfe led Peter out of the room and shut the door behind them.

I glanced over at Jeremy. He gave me a confused shrug. When I looked over at Darren, he was staring intently at his test, brow furrowed in concentration, cheek clenched as if trying not to laugh.

For what it was worth, Mr. Wolfe gave Peter a chance to prove his innocence. Peter’s answers on the test matched those on the stolen answer key, but of course correct answers were no solid evidence that he’d been cheating. So while Peter sat in an empty classroom by himself, Mr. Wolfe quickly wrote up a new test.

Peter, who was stressed-out, flustered, and terrified, got a C-.

That weekend, we helped him pack his things.

Peter had not officially been kicked out of school, but his parents decided that another approach was needed to straighten their son out. Peter didn’t know where he was headed, but he’d been assured by his angry parents that “the vacation was over.”

“I didn’t cheat,” said Peter as he put his clothes into his suitcase.

“Why
would
you cheat? We have to study eighty-five hours a day!” Jeremy took Peter’s books off the shelf, slamming each one onto his desk. “Darren did it!”

There was no doubt in my mind that Darren was responsible, but we had no way of proving it, and to even try to bring that idea to anybody’s attention probably would’ve gotten us in still more trouble.

“I’m gonna miss you guys,” Peter said. “I probably won’t have any friends where I’m going.”

“Yeah, you will,” I insisted. “You’ll have lots of friends.”

Peter shook his head. “I bet I won’t.” He reached for one of the pushpins on the pug poster, then hesitated. “You guys can keep the poster if you want. If you like it.”

“Okay,” I said. The room wouldn’t be the same without the pug poster. “You need to sign it for us.”

“Sign it?”

“Yeah. Sign ‘Peter was here’ on it. That’d be kind of cool.”

Peter grinned, found a black magic marker, and scrawled his name on the bottom corner of the poster.

“What you should do is carve your name into the wall with a knife,” said Jeremy. “It’s not like you can get into any more trouble.”

“Nah.”

“Then carve your name into Darren’s face with a knife.”

Peter shook his head. “That wouldn’t be right.”

“What do you mean, it wouldn’t be right?”

“It should be your name. It has more letters.”

We all laughed, and then we helped Peter finish packing. His parents picked him up that evening, and I watched through the window as they walked across the front lawn, away from Dorm B and Branford Academy.

Before they were out of sight, Peter’s father smacked him so hard across the back of the head that I winced.

Jeremy and I were separated after that. I moved into a room with four other boys who were none too happy to have an extra person in their already cramped living quarters. They weren’t outwardly hostile, but they were clearly resentful of this intrusion, and they certainly made no attempts to offer their friendship. Of course, it didn’t help that I remained on probation and thus wasn’t allowed to be part of their free-time activities. I don’t even remember their names.

I talked to Jeremy every day in the cafeteria and learned that he’d ended up with a slightly more sociable group of guys. “Not anywhere near as cool as you and Peter,” he assured me with a sad smile.

I did notice that as the days passed, Jeremy seemed more cheerful, more animated. Maybe he just needed a change of scenery.

Me, I wanted our old room back. I wasn’t even allowed to put up the pug poster.

The term continued with an excruciating lack of haste. With two weeks left, it was hard to believe that I wasn’t thirty-five years old, but no, I was still twelve. Well, thirteen, but my birthday had passed with so little fanfare (a card from an aunt that I almost but couldn’t quite remember) that I didn’t really even think about officially becoming a teenager.

I sat in the library, studying at a table by myself. I heard somebody sit down at the next table but didn’t bother looking up to see who it was until I heard Darren clear his throat.

He wasn’t trying to attract my attention. At least, he didn’t seem to be. He was scribbling in his journal (that most foul and wretched of journals!), apparently unaware of my presence. I stared at him, hoping that the power of my gaze would cook his brain so that it bubbled and boiled and leaked out of his ears, but it didn’t seem to be working.

Finally he looked up. “What are you staring at?” he asked.

“Nothing much.”

“You’re not supposed to come near me.”

“I was here first.”

Darren shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. “You know, my neck still hurts sometimes.”

“Like I care.”

“It could be permanent damage.”

“Like I care.”

“You
should
care. If I’d broken my neck you’d be in jail right now.”

“I’d rather be in jail and have you dead.”

“I’ll tell Mr. Sevin you said that.”

“Go ahead. Write it in your journal.”

Darren sighed. “You know, it’s not you that I’m mad at.”

“Oh yeah? Peter didn’t do anything to you. Why’d you fake that he was cheating?”

“What makes you think I did that?”

“I don’t think. I know.”

“You don’t know anything.”

I gave him the finger and returned to my studying. At least I
pretended
that I was studying. In truth, I was terrified that Darren would in fact run to tell Mr. Sevin about my “I’d rather be in jail and have you dead” comment. I wasn’t sure what Mr. Sevin could do to me with only two weeks left in the term, but it would be ghastly.

A couple of minutes later, Darren got up. I thought he was leaving, but instead he sat down next to me.

“You’re not supposed to come near me, either,” I told him.

“Nobody ever said that.”

“Well, go away.”

“Peter deserved to get kicked out.”

“He didn’t get kicked out. His parents pulled him out.”

“Still, he deserved it. He hardly ever talked to me.”

“I never saw you talk to him, either. And you didn’t talk to me when I first got here. Peter and Jeremy did, but you didn’t.”

“I took you to the strip club.”

“That was later.”

“I haven’t been back since…since that thing happened. We should go sometime.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was Darren actually suggesting we go out for a social event? Was he trying to become
friends?

“I can’t go anywhere. I’m on probation because you’re a liar.”

“You could sneak out.”

“If I’m going to take the chance of getting in that much trouble, it’s sure not going to be to hang around with you.”

Darren bit his lip, and for a second I almost thought he was going to cry. My sympathy for him would have been minimal. Instead he smiled. “You’re such a jerk.”

“Better a jerk than a liar.”

“I’m trying to be nice.”

“You want to be nice to me? Go tell Mr. Sevin that you made everything up. Tell him that you made up stuff to put in your diary, and that you moved Peter’s dog, and that you stole a copy of the test and stuck it where Peter got blamed for it, and that you’re a total liar!”

“I didn’t do any of that.”

“Get away from my table.”

“It’s not your table.”

“I’ll tell somebody that you’re bugging me.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go.” Then he leaned closer to me and spoke in a whisper. “I’m trying to make up. But if you want me to be mean, I can be mean. I can be meaner than anybody you’ve ever known. I’ll fuck up your whole life, Alex.”

“You already have.”

“I’ll do it worse.”

God, if only I’d had a tape recorder! Though with my luck, Darren would’ve gotten a hold of it and cleverly reedited the conversation so that it sounded like I was threatening him.

I just wanted him to go away and let me study in peace. But at the same time, I definitely didn’t want him to go away and start brainstorming plans to enact further revenge on me. He’d already proven that he was capable of making good on his threat.

“Okay, fine,” I said. “How do you want to make up?”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“Then go away,” I said. I sure wasn’t going to beg. “You can’t do anything to me.”

Aw, crap,
I thought, immediately feeling sick to my stomach and wishing I hadn’t said that. The last thing I needed to do was taunt him.

“You think I can’t?”

“Maybe you can. But maybe you’ll get caught this time.”

He smiled. “I don’t get caught.”

“That’s what Jack the Ripper said.”

“Jack the Ripper never got caught.”

“Then that’s what…” I trailed off, trying to think of a suitable villain who had, in fact, been caught.

“The Joker?” Darren suggested.

“Shut up.”

“You should be nice to me.”

“I
was
nice to you.”

Darren nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, you were. I wish you hadn’t let Jeremy and Peter do that to me. I wouldn’t have come after you. Just them.”

I wasn’t completely sure what he meant by that. Would he have done something to them even if the whole hangman fiasco hadn’t happened? Or was he just not thinking clearly about what he was saying? I decided that I didn’t really want clarification and said nothing.

“Did it bother you waiting?” he asked.

“For what?”

“For you to be next.”

“What?”

He glanced over his shoulder to be sure that we were still alone. “You know, waiting to be next. Like Peter. I could’ve done that to you, too, you know.”

The way Darren spoke, I got the impression that he’d been
dying
to confess his crime. No, not confess…gloat. It probably made him absolutely nuts not to be able to safely say anything, to confirm for certain what we already knew. His frustration at not being able to share his wicked deeds was probably only matched by…well, by being the victim of his wicked deeds and not being able to do a thing about it.

“Maybe I’m smarter than Peter,” I said, quietly.

“Of course you are. That’s what would’ve made it fun.”

Fun. I would’ve gladly postponed the future loss of my virginity by ten years for the right to grab him by the hair and smash his face into the desk.

“So did it bother you waiting for me to get back at you?” Darren asked.

I couldn’t see any reason not to be honest. “Yeah.”

“It was probably worse than if I’d just done something right away, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah, it was. Like when you’re a little kid and you break something, and your mom catches you right away and you get spanked and grounded. That’s bad to a little kid, but it’s worse when your mom
doesn’t
catch you, and you keep waiting for her to find out who did it. It’s probably worse even if you never get caught.”