'Great,' Jimmy said. 'Say hello to Arnie when you see him.'
'You bet,' I said.
'You sure you don't want some bacon and eggs, Dennis?' Mrs Sykes asked. 'There's plenty.'
'Thanks,' I said, 'but I really ought to get going.' It was a quarter past eight; school started at nine. Arnie usually pulled in around eight-forty-five, Leigh had told me. I just had time. I got my crutches under me and got to my feet.
'Help him out, Jim,' Mrs Sykes commanded. 'Don't just stand there.'
I started to protest and she waved me away. 'Wouldn't want you to fall on your can getting back to your car, Dennis. Might break your leg all over again.' She laughed uproariously at this, and Jimmy, the soul of obedience, practically carried me back to my Duster.
The sky that day was a scummy, frowsy grey, and the radio was predicting more snow by late afternoon. I drove across town to Libertyville High, took the driveway which led to the student parking lot, and parked in the front row. I didn't need Leigh to tell me that Arnie usually parked in the back row. I had to see him, had to strew the bait in front of his nose, but I wanted him as far from Christine as possible when I did it. Away from the car, LeBay's hold seemed weaker.
I sat with the key turned over to ACCESSORY for the radio and looked at the football field. It seemed impossible that I had ever traded sandwiches with Arnie on those snowcovered bleachers. Impossible to believe that I had run and cavorted on that field myself, dressed up in padding, helmet, and tight pants, stupidly convinced of my own physical invulnerability . . . perhaps even of my own immortality.
I didn't feel that way anymore, if I ever had.
Students were coming in, parking their cars, and heading for the building, chattering and laughing and horsing around. I slouched lower in my seat, not wanting to be recognized. A bus pulled up at the doors in the main turnaround and disgorged a load of kids. A small cluster of shivering boys and girls gathered out in the smoking area where Buddy had taken Arnie on that day last fall. That day also seemed impossibly distant now.
My heart was thumping in my chest and I was miserably tense. A craven part of me hoped that Arnie simply wouldn't show up. And then I saw the familiar white-over-red shape of Christine turn in from School Street and cruise up the student drive, moving at a steady twenty, blowing a little plume of white exhaust from her pipe. Arnie was behind the wheel, wearing his school jacket. He didn't look at me; he simply drove to his accustomed place at the back of the lot and parked.
Just stay slouched down and he won't even see you, that craven, traitorous part of my mind whispered. He'll walk right by you, like all the rest of them.
Instead, I opened my door and fumbled my crutches outside. Leaning my weight on them, I yanked myself out and stood there on the packed snow of the parking lot, feeling a little bit like Fred MacMurray in that old picture Double Indemnity. From the school came the burring of the first bell, made faint and unimportant by distance - Arnie was later than he had been in the old days. My mother had said that Arnie was almost disgustingly punctual. Maybe LeBay hadn't been.
He came toward me, books under his arm, head down twisting in and out between the cars. He walked behind a van, passing out of my sight temporarily, and then came back into view. He looked up then, directly into my eyes.
Ms own eyes widened, and he made an automatic half-turn back toward Christine.
'Feel kind of naked when you're not behind the wheel?' I asked.
He looked back at me. His lips drew slightly downward, as if he bad tasted something of unpleasant flavour.
'How's your cunt, Dennis?' he asked.
George LeBay hadn't said, but he had at least hinted that his brother was extraordinarily good at getting through to people, finding their soft spots.
I took two shuffling steps forward on my crutches while he stood there, smiling with the corners of his mouth down.
'How did you like it when Repperton called you Cuntface?' I asked him. 'Did you like it so well you want to turn it around and use it on somebody else?'