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  “He was crappy to me, but I didn’t want him dead.”

  “Or did you?” David asked, leaning across the table. His eyes gleamed the way they always did when he was joking around. “I bet you snapped like a glow stick and got all R. Kelly. You decided it was time to teach the word jockey a lesson, so you snuck over to his house and…PAC!”

  “PAC?”

  “Popped a cap,” David said, lifting his cup for another sip.

  Jonathan laughed, despite finding the whole subject unnerving. “They said he was smothered. Besides, how could I get his body fifteen feet into a tree? He weighed like a thousand pounds.”

  “Don’t mock the girth,” David said, patting his belly. “Whoever did it probably hauled him up there with some rope.”

  “But why do it?” Jonathan wanted to know. “I mean, it’s just creep-show stupid.”

  “Maybe they wanted to play piñata.”

  “Come on,” Jonathan said.

  “What? I don’t know who’d off him, but my guess is the cops’ll have caught the guy before the evening news. I mean, someone had to see something.”

  “I guess.”

  Mr. Weaver’s death hung over him like a light, scratchy sheet. He even felt guilty for imagining the guy popping like a balloon, which was stupid, he knew. But he couldn’t help feeling it.

  He wanted to talk about something else, so he reached across the table and lifted the book David had brought with him on break. Turned out this distraction was little better than what it was meant to distract. The cover was black with red lettering.

  History of the Occult, the title read.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “It’s for a class,” David said. “I’ve got a paper due next week.”

  “I thought Melling only let you study hard-core brain data.”

  “Indeed,” David said. “My thesis is about how magic was the first science and the first religion. Well, more about being the first science because Melling High fears God talk. But it’s like they used magic for medicine, right? So my theory is they approached this from a pseudo-scientific perspective. Trying potions, changing ingredients until they found something that sort of worked. But most early cultures thought sickness had a spiritual cause, right? Possession? Curses? So they added chants and rituals to ward off the evil.”

  “Move over, Merck pharmaceuticals.”

  “Don’t be laughin’ at the mojo,” David said. “Some of the stuff I’ve read is pretty serious. It’ll be a cool paper.”

  “No doubt.” Jonathan didn’t want to talk about magic any more than he wanted to talk about Mr. Weaver’s death. He sat quietly. Drank his coffee.

  “Oh,” David said, straightening up in his chair, “I think we have a solid eight at one o’clock.”

  Jonathan turned in his chair and looked across the café to where David indicated. Kirsty Sabine, from his English class, stepped onto the mezzanine where the coffee shop was located. She looked around, cautiously like she expected someone to throw something at her. After scanning the room, she ducked her head and walked to the counter.

  “She goes to my school,” Jonathan said. “You think she’s an eight?”

  “What? You don’t?”

  “Maybe a five.”

  “No, your mother is a five. She’s an eight. Besides, what do you care? You already have a fictional relationship with a certain Miss Emma.”

  “Thanks,” Jonathan said, embarrassed. “I thought we weren’t going to bring that up again.”

  “Hey, I’m just saying you can’t hog all the hotness. The rest of us need imaginary girlfriends too. What’s her name?”

  “Kirsty.”

  “Niiice,” David said. “Spill. Does she like her men ample or what?”

  Jonathan laughed. “Yeah, man. She transferred in at the beginning of the year, and the first thing she said was ‘Where are all the chunky guys?’”

  “You’re just jealous. You know women like a guy with something they can hold on to. They find a little bulk comforting.”

  “And what twisted talk show told you that?”

  “The one in my head,” David said. “So, does she have a boyfriend or what?”

  “I don’t think so. She’s always alone at school.” Kind of like me, Jonathan thought. He looked toward the counter and saw Kirsty paying for her coffee. He tried to see her the way David did, as an eight, but it just wasn’t there. Like all girls, he compared her to Emma O’Neil, and to his mind, Kirsty just didn’t come close. Maybe no girl could.

  “She’s making my pants tight,” David said.

  “Thanks for sharing,” Jonathan said. “Why don’t you go over there and tell her? I’m sure she’d be thrilled to hear it.”

  “No. I have to play it cool.”

  “As in…watching her until she leaves and never seeing her again?”

  “Yes,” David said. “Exactly. It’s foolproof.”

  Jonathan couldn’t argue against the point. That was basically his tack with Emma. Just sit and watch and dream.

  Kirsty carried her coffee to a small table in the back, where Jonathan could see her over David’s shoulder. She sat down and immediately opened a book. She lowered her head to read, and her hair fell forward like a curtain to hide her face.

  “What’s she doing?” David asked. “She’s scoping me, right? Looking at the Hulk of Love?”

  “She’s reading.”

  “She’s way into me,” David said, obviously joking. “Hey, we have a new entry into the Dictionary of David. She’s way into me: SWIM.” He laughed. “Yeah, and she’s swimmin’ with the sharks now, boy.”

  “Whales maybe.”

  “Unkind,” David said. “Harsh and unkind.”

  “So, what’s up for tonight?” Jonathan asked. He was tired of talking about Kirsty Sabine.

  “The usual, I guess,” David said, draining the last drops of coffee from his cup. “Rent a couple of DVDs, maybe play some PS3.”

  “Are your parents home?”

  “Are my parents ever home?”

  3

  Monday afternoon Jonathan walked into English class and felt an uncomfortable tug in his chest. A substitute teacher stood at the front of the room, drawing on the blackboard. She was a fine-looking woman, wearing black slacks and a red blouse. But seeing her just made him think about Mr. Weaver. He’d watched the news over the weekend and saw the reports of Mr. Weaver’s death, but it didn’t seem quite real. Not until now, not until he saw the man’s replacement scratching out couplets with colored chalk. He felt awful.

  Emma O’Neil was sitting in her chair when Jonathan entered the room. He passed by her, hoping she’d say hi, but her head was down. He could see a sheen of tears on her cheeks. She was mourning for Mr. Weaver, and it made Jonathan feel worse. He crossed the room to his desk near the back, sat down, and rested his chin on his hand.

  In his thoughts he didn’t go to his chair. No. In his mind, where he could muster bravery, he stopped at Emma’s desk and knelt down beside her, put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay,” he said. “Mr. Weaver is in a better place.” This made Emma cry, purging the rest of her sadness as she pushed in close to take comfort from Jonathan’s embrace. He felt the spiky locks of her hair on his cheek, smelled her perfume, which he imagined smelled like flowers. “I’m here if you need to talk,” his brave mind-self whispered.

  The daydream warmed him. He wished he could be the person he imagined. Emma looked so miserable, and he wanted to do anything he could to make it stop. She shouldn’t be unhappy.

  Once the other kids arrived and took their seats, the substitute, Mrs. Taylor, said, “I’m sure you’re all very upset about Mr. Weaver’s passing, but we’ll try to honor his memory by continuing his work.”

  That’s all she said about his dead teacher. It didn’t really seem like enough, though Jonathan couldn’t say he wanted to hear any more. Checking on Emma, he saw that she was barely keeping it together, and perhaps the less said about Mr. We
aver, the better.

  To add to his unease, Kirsty Sabine looked at him during class. Not once. Not twice. But three times Jonathan glanced toward the window and caught the girl looking his way. She was slightly turned in her chair, peering from the corner of her eye. The moment Jonathan noticed her, she looked down or toward the window. Her attention made him uncomfortable, but it wasn’t a bad kind of uncomfortable exactly. He may not have thought she was an eight like David did, but a girl was looking at him, and she wasn’t pointing or laughing. She was just checking him out.

  SWIM, Jonathan thought. Now she’s swimmin’ with the guppies, boy.

  After class Jonathan stood in the hall by the door, checking up and down the hallway for the Roid Patrol before he attempted to drop off books at his locker. He watched Emma emerge from the class and wander, head down, away from him. His heart ached with each step she took. Classmates filed past him, chatting excitedly about Mr. Weaver or their weekends or both. Finding the coast was clear—no Toby or Cade or Ox in sight—he entered the stream of students moving along the halls. He made it to his locker with no bone-jangling collision and shoved his English text inside. Retrieving his geometry book, he felt an odd tingle rise up on the back of his neck, as if someone were dancing their fingers very near the skin there.

  Jonathan closed his locker and was surprised to see Kirsty Sabine. She stood ten lockers down, pushed tight against them as the river of students passed. She looked right at him and, this time, didn’t turn away when he noticed.

  Instead, she smiled. She lifted her hand in a shy wave.

  He nodded his head and quickly looked at the floor, then at his shoes. When he looked up, he turned his head, pretending to watch the herd of students, searching for Kirsty in the corner of his eye.

  But she was already gone.

  Jonathan scanned the wall where Kirsty had stood but didn’t see her. He didn’t even catch a glimpse of her in the crowd.

  Then Toby Skabich came up from behind and rammed Jonathan with his shoulder. Jonathan lifted off the ground and hit the wall of lockers.

  The audience of padlocks applauded.

  “Are the Roid Patrol still doing that?” David asked. “I thought they stopped.”

  “They never stopped,” Jonathan replied. He adjusted the phone against his ear. “I just stopped talking about it.”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, Toby and his boys are going to grow up to be used-car salesmen. Their greatest achievement will likely be beating a series of date-rape charges.”

  “I’m really getting tired of it.”

  “I thought your school had a zero-tolerance policy.”

  “What my school has is a winning football team, the first in like a thousand years. No one is going to do a thing unless there’s actual bloodshed. Besides, if I narc them out, they’ll just hit me harder.”

  “I say grab a gun and PAC.”

  “Knock it off, David. Those guys are graduating this year. As long as I can make it to June without a concussion, I’ll be fine.”

  “Well,” David said. “Someone should do something.”

  From The Book of Adrian, Mon. Oct. 10:

  The notion that man has advanced beyond animal instinct is disproved at every turn. It is never more clear than in their cruelty and posturing. Just as a lion will fight to lead his pride, assuring him of the best mate; just as rams will butt heads to win the favor of does; just as a peacock unfurls its tail feathers to attract, men engage in conflict to gain attention and approval of their female counterparts. They fight and preen and pose. It is a fundamental part of the breeding instinct.

  In a species set apart by intellect, it seems odd that such base and brutal traits are still coveted or, at the very least, believed to be. Intelligence and imagination should be the aspirations. They should be the peacock’s plumage and the lion’s might in a species that claims intellectual superiority. Yet they are not. The lions still fight. The rams still butt heads.

  Isn’t that right, Toby?

  4

  After dinner—another gagfest microwave nightmare from the freezer—Jonathan sat in his room, leaning over the keyboard of his computer, waiting for an MP3 file to download. His computer only had a dial-up connection, so it took forever.

  Mr. Weaver’s death was on his mind. He’d seen the teacher’s pudgy face smiling out at him from the newspaper next to an article that said almost nothing about the guy’s death. He was smothered and left in a tree. No suspects. No motive. No new information.

  Jonathan’s bedroom door cracked open, and his mother, looking exhausted and really old, poked her head in. He hadn’t seen her since she dropped the small plastic tray holding his dinner on a plate and handed it across the kitchen counter to him. He’d retreated to his room with the meal.

  Now his mother cast an annoyed look at him, as if she’d just caught him tracking mud through the house.

  “I need the phone,” she said.

  “I’ll be done in a minute,” he said. “I’m downloading a file.”

  “Well, I need to speak to your aunt.”

  “Just one more minute.”

  “Now,” she said, sounding really pissed off. “This house doesn’t revolve around you, you know?”

  “Mom, it’s like one more minute.”

  “Right now!”

  The progress bar on his computer still showed a quarter of an inch before the song finished downloading. That could mean another thirty seconds or another three minutes the way his machine worked. It was like in the movies where a guy was waiting for a code, and if he didn’t get it in time something would explode.

  In this case the something was his mother. He just didn’t feel strong enough to deal with it.

  “Okay,” he said, grabbing his mouse and dragging the cursor over the box to close the connection. He jabbed the mouse button and the window vanished. “I’m done.”

  His mother threw a final furious look at him. She backed out of the room and slammed the door.

  Jonathan hit the desk with his palm, sending a bolt of pain up to his elbow.

  Enough of this crap.

  He rose from the chair and stomped across the room, threw open the door. In the hallway, he saw his mother’s shadow shrinking on the far wall. He charged forward, chasing the ever-smaller stain on the wall, following it into the kitchen and the television room, where he found his mother lifting the phone from its cradle.

  Before she could even look up he started shouting.

  “What is your problem?” he said. His mother stared at him, total deer-in-the-headlights startled. “Your life sucks, so you figure mine should suck too? Well, forget it. You’re miserable because you let yourself be miserable. You let Dad treat you like crap. You let your boss walk all over you. You let Aunt Judy tell you what a loser you are. You take it all because you like it. If you weren’t pissed off about the world, you wouldn’t have a damned thing to talk about. So go ahead and bitch about how crappy everything is, and guzzle your gallons of Chianti, but keep me out of it. I didn’t do anything but be born. And that’s your fault too. So you stay out of my room and stay out of my life until I can bail this crap shack. Then you can have the phone whenever the hell you want, as long as you aren’t using it to call me.”

  His mother broke into tears and dropped the phone.

  Jonathan smiled.

  But none of that happened. He didn’t even get up from his desk. He remained in front of the computer screen, staring at the icon for the song he wanted, knowing it had not had time to finish downloading. His palm still ached from the slap he’d given the desk. His stomach roiled with acid, and his head throbbed.

  Screw this, he thought. Screw it all.

  Bitter night air cut through the collar of his jacket as Jonathan wandered the streets of Warren. He walked past the new housing development they were building next to his apartment complex. More rich people. More kids with high-tech gadgets and high-brow attitudes. Another wave of jerks to shove him or kids like him into lock
ers. It didn’t really matter. Pretty soon Jonathan’s family would have to move. The rents would go up like they had in Pierce Valley, and his dad would make them pack up and relocate, this time probably to a smaller apartment. They already lived in Crossroads, the total low-rent section of town. They weren’t likely to find anything cheaper unless they moved way out into the sticks. Great. Then he’d never see David. He wouldn’t be able to get to work, either. He might have to change schools.

  Then he wouldn’t even have Emma’s smile to get him through the days.

  Jonathan turned up the volume on his cheap MP3 player so that music overpowered the depressing voice in his head. Cars raced by. He felt the wind of their passing but couldn’t hear them. He didn’t want to hear anything but feral singing and brutal guitars: a soundtrack for his anger.

  He walked through the intersection of Crossroads Boulevard and Periwinkle Street. Five blocks down on the right was his school, a nest for idiots like Toby Skabich and Ox and Cade. Burn it down, he thought. Break it apart with an earthquake and grind the rubble under with bulldozers. He didn’t know of whom he made this request. It didn’t matter. Nothing would change. The school would be there tomorrow and the next day and the next. It was like a temple to evil. Even if it fell, the world was full of them.

  And evil tastes like candy. Everyone wants a lick.

  Twenty minutes later, Jonathan stepped onto the brightly lit sidewalk of the Northside Mall. It wasn’t one of those big multi-layered malls like they had in Bellevue or Seattle, subterranean bunkers for the generals of retail. It was flat and quaint with covered walkways lined with shrubs. The mall had a DVD rental shop, a bunch of clothing stores he could never afford, an ice cream parlor where a single scoop cost three-fifty, and a coffee shop, Perky’s, the upstanding suburban equivalent of a crack house.

  Jonathan peered through the window of Perky’s, knowing he didn’t have enough change in his pockets for even a small coffee, and he wasn’t touching his college-escape money for such a minor pleasure. If he wanted some bean, he’d have to buy it at the Super Stop convenience store down the street.