The Domino Effect (8 page)

“Bella Faccia!” I called to her. Her arms were tanned under a dress with no sleeves. Her cheeks looked a little emptier than I remembered, but she was still the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.

“Bella Faccia,”
she echoed with half-a-smile. “I haven’t heard that in a while.”

“Where you been?” I asked playfully. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“I was looking for you, too.”

“Really?” I said, straightening my spine. “How come?”

“Nothing. Well, something,” she said. “I have to get going, but I want to talk to you about Todd.”

“What about him?”

“He didn’t come back, did he?”

“No,” I said.

She exhaled. Kids shuffled by with their backpacks and whatnot, but Brenda seemed to be staring at the ground, off in space or something. She raised her head and her eyes didn’t seem as green as I remembered. A sparkle or something was missing.

“What?” I asked. “You didn’t know?”

“Not really,” she frowned. “We sort of broke up.”

“Say that again?”

She did, and I nodded even though I felt like breaking into an embarrassing dance.

“Well, I want to talk to you about that,” she said, moving toward the academic building. “Can you come by after classes tomorrow?”

“Why not today? I’m good today, you know. Today... works.”

Very smooth.

Brenda blushed at my enthusiasm. “I have to talk to the soccer coach today,” she said. “I’m not playing this year.”

I should have known right then that something was wrong, because Brenda not playing soccer was like me not playing baseball, and I could never even imagine that. But at the time, all I
could
imagine was me and her meeting after school the next day.

“What time?” I asked.

“After classes,” she said, for the second time.

“Sure thing,” I said. “After classes.” I suddenly had a shirt full of spiders, though I fought the urge to wiggle until she walked away. Then I wiggled and filled up like a helium balloon.

Instead of floating off to class, I walked a couple of loops through the Arch, then ducked into the mail room. I was the only one in there. There were two walls lined with fake-gold boxes, and a long wooden counter where bigger packages could be retrieved. You could also purchase school supplies, and just about any other item you wanted stamped with the name of Hamden Academy in bold.

The last wall was all cork, and covered in tacked notices I never read because they only listed stupid things about clubs or dances or whatnot. During the wrestling season, the boards held nothing but fliers about their matches. But this day was different, because it wasn’t even close to wrestling season, yet they’d taken it over already. The only thing up there — all over every inch of the boards — was a WANTED poster, with a photocopied picture of some wrestling shoes. On the bottom, it read: Dead or Alive. It didn’t make sense, of course, but the message was clear. At least it was clear to me. I should have known Mr. Wright was nuts to think that the deal with the wrestlers was going to go away just by moving Terence downstairs. I’d seen this kind of thing before.

The next day, right after last class, I walked under the Arch, over the road, and across a grassy meadow to the old wooden mansion where the fourth-year women lived. The brown paint peeled in some places, but the house stood in pretty good shape. A stoop led to a wraparound porch and a screen door. I wiped my palms on my dress pants as Brenda came down the wide staircase of the open foyer. She had changed into old jeans and a gray Hamden T-shirt. Her hair bounced in a ponytail.

“Hello,” she said businesslike. “Ready to go?”

“Sure,” I said, hurrying to get the door for her.

We walked away from her dorm on a path around the grass. Instead of handcuffing herself to me in a flurry of regrets and apologies, she brought up what was already an old subject of the new school year.

“So, um, have you spoken to Todd yet?” she asked.

“Nah,” I answered as we passed the chapel. “Meeks is trying to get ahold of him.”

“You didn’t talk to him
at all
over the summer?”

“Nope,” I said, as we followed the limestone stairs down to the basement of the academic building.

In an empty classroom, she sat at a front row desk as I hopped up onto the large teacher’s unit. We sat silently for a minute, her eyes on the shaded hill that sloped toward the campus gates, my legs flopping as I thought of something clever to say.

“I know he’s going to be missed around here,” Brenda declared, still staring out the window.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “He was the mayor, alright.”

She kept her eyes away from mine and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Have you heard anything about
why
he didn’t come back?” she turned suddenly to ask.

“No,” I said, kicking the desk with my heels. “Why do you care so much, anyway?”

“What?”

“I thought you guys broke up?”

“We did,” she insisted.

“Get over it then.” I didn’t mean to say that, or say it like that, at least, but it came out cruel anyway.

“I am. I mean, I’m try…” she fumbled a little before her face curled up like she’d just sucked on a lemon. “I’m just wondering if people knew why he wasn’t coming back, OK?”

“OK,” I said, kind of calm, but then that strange tone came back. “What’s everybody asking me for anyway? What am I, his spokesman or something?”

“He was supposed to be your roommate, wasn’t he?” she asked. “And your friend.”

“He was supposed to be my roommate. That’s true,” I said, crossing my arms. “But he’s no friend of mine.”

“What are you talking about, Danny?”

I couldn’t stand the way she looked at me, like I wasn’t special or anything to her, like she hadn’t been dying to see me the way I’d been dying to see her. She just wanted information from me, information about somebody else. It hurt so much.

“Come on, Bren,” I said, trying to prove my importance. “You of all people should know why that guy is no friend of mine.”

“How long has this been going on?” she asked.

“What?”

“Your animosity toward Todd?”

“Animosity?” I said. “SATs are over, alright? Give it a rest.”

“I’m serious,” she persisted. “Have you been mad this whole time?”

“I’m not mad,” I said, with a face and an attitude that must have proved me a liar. “I’m just not interested in being friends with some guy that steals my girl, that’s all.”

“Your girl?” she repeated. “Your girl? I’m not a possession, you know.”

“Really? You should have told that to Todd.”

She shot to her feet. “Why?” she asked. “What did he tell you? What did he say?”

I could see her coming apart, her eyes and ears and lips kind of moving in different directions. But I spoke anyway, thinking more about my pain than hers.

“He didn’t tell me anything,” I said defensively. “I’m just saying you should have told Todd you weren’t a possession before he wore you around like a hat last year.”

“I can’t believe you just said that,” she said.

I couldn’t believe it either. What a prince. Brenda began to tremble, then she ran from the room with tears falling down her beautiful face.

That went well.

I gave Brenda time to clear before climbing the stairs that left me outside The Can. Through the window, I saw Meeks and Grohl at our regular booth in the far corner with a few girls I didn’t know. A short line waited to order at the counter. Smoke rose from the grill. Upstairs, the Foosball table was open. I jingled the pocketful of quarters I had brought with me and turned for home.

I was damaged — OK,
stupid
— enough to hurt someone I cared about and still feel like the victim. I went back to the paranoid — OK,
stupid
— idea I’d held onto since things went bad for me back home: the world had it out for me, simple as that. What a dope.

I was making a sad march home to the dorm, rubbing my scar and feeling sorry for myself, head down and eyes on the path, when a wrecking ball knocked me to the ground. Spun halfway around, I sat up without breath, clutching my throbbing shoulder. Up the path, little Chester patted big McCoy’s back as they continued on their way, laughing hysterically.

Super.

I didn’t feel like getting up. Nothing inside me wanted to fight gravity or anything else. Right there on the ground, flat on my ass, holding my shoulder, seemed like a good place to be. But then I figured that, at some point, somebody would come along and I’d have to tell them what I was doing there on the ground, flat on my ass, holding my shoulder. I didn’t want to bother with that, so I stood up, dusted off, and went on home. I walked into the dorm and straight up the stairs, thinking that at least no one had seen me out there on the ground. I was ready for the quiet of my room.

“You alright, man?” Terence asked as soon as I entered. He was standing behind his desk with his eyes all bugged out.

“What?”

“I saw that shit, man,” he said, pointing out the window. “That was messed up.”

Some day I was having.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, yanking off my dirty pants. “What are you gonna do, right?”

“I don’t know,” he said, with raised brows. “You could punch one of them hillbillies in the eye.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, “but guys like me don’t get off easy,” I said. “And I ain’t going back to Catholic School for nothing.”

“So you just take that from them?” he asked.

“I’ve had worse.”

He raised his head and eyeballed me. “Oh, so it sucks to be you, huh?” he asked.

“There you go,” I said with a wink.

I changed my pants, sat down behind my desk, and looked out the window. It seemed like the best place to be.

Chapter 4

T
erence was a room jockey. He spent his free time in our second floor hideaway, riding his chair. I joined him (in my own chair, that is). While the other students did their thing in the warm September weather, Terence kept his head in a book, and I looked out over campus hoping to spot Brenda strolling down the path on some sort of mercenary mission to save me. I knew I was nuts, but still I kept watch.

One afternoon, a couple of buffoons exited Carlyle and made for Montgomery. A minute later, as expected, someone knocked on our door. I ignored it.

“Yo, yo, anybody in
dere?”
a voice crooned.

I cursed under my breath as I crossed the room to open the door.

“Rice!” I cried. “Where the hell you been?”

“What?” the long, pale figure in the doorway asked.

“A real, live black guy in our class, and you’re just coming by now?”

“Oh, that’s funny, that’s funny,” he nodded. “But we here now, ain’t we?”

“Yeah, too bad,” I said and motioned him in with my head, but he didn’t move. He just stood there with his hand perched out to the side. I didn’t go for the fancy handshake game. Can’t two guys just shake hands without making a show out of it? I let Rice hang there for a bit, with his hand held out all ridiculous like that. Then I eventually, offered him my hand, which he grabbed and groped and squeezed through a couple of poses.