of the place they put him in might not be Sunnyvale, but there would be bars on the windows and there would be young men in white coats and crepe-soled shoes prowling the halls. The young men would have big muscles and watchful eyes and access to hypodermic needles full of artificial sleep.
They’ll tell everybody I went away, Jake thought. The arguing voices in his head were temporarily stilled by a rising tide of panic. They’ll say I’m spending the year with my aunt and uncle in Modesto . . . or in Sweden as an exchange student . . . or repairing satellites in outer space. My mother won’t like it . . . she’ll cry . . . but she’ll go along. She has her boyfriends, and besides, she always goes along with what he decides. She . . . they . . . me . . .
He felt a shriek welling up his throat and pressed his lips tightly together to hold it in. He looked down again at the wild black scribbles snarled across the photograph of the Leaning Tower and thought: I have to get out of here. I have to get out right now.
He raised his hand.
“Yes, John, what is it?” Ms. Avery was looking at him with the expression of mild exasperation she reserved for students who interrupted her in mid-lecture.
“I’d like to step out for a moment, if I may,” Jake said.
This was another example of Piper-speak. Piper students did not ever have to “take a leak” or “tap a kidney” or, God forbid, “drop a load.” The unspoken assumption was that Piper students were too perfect to create waste byproducts in their tastefully silent glides through life. Once in a while someone requested permission to “step out for a moment,” and that was all.
Ms. Avery sighed. “Must you, John?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All right. Return as soon as possible.”
“Yes, Ms. Avery.”
He closed the folder as he got up, took hold of it, then reluctantly let go again. No good. Ms. Avery would wonder why he was taking his Final Essay to the toilet with him. He should have removed the damning pages from the folder and stuffed them in his pocket before asking for permission to step out. Too late now.
Jake walked down the aisle toward the door, leaving his folder on the desk and his bookbag lying beneath it.
“Hope everything comes out all right, Chambers,” David Surrey whispered, and snickered into his hand.
“Still your restless lips, David,” Ms. Avery said, clearly exasperated now, and the whole class laughed.
Jake reached the door leading to the hall, and as he grasped the knob, that feeling of hope and surety rose in him again: This is it—really it. I’ll open the door and the desert sun will shine in. I’ll feel that dry wind on my face. I’ll step through and never see this classroom again.
He opened the door and it was only the hallway on the other side, but he was right about one thing just the same: he never saw Ms. Avery’s classroom again.
4
HE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN the dim, wood-panelled corridor, sweating lightly. He walked past classroom doors he would have felt compelled to open if not for the clear glass windows set in each one. He looked into Mr. Bissette’s French II class and Mr. Knopf’s Introduction to Geometry class. In both rooms the pupils sat with pencils in hand and heads bowed over open blue-books. He looked into Mr. Harley’s Spoken Arts class and saw Stan Dorfman—one of those acquaintances who were not quite friends—beginning his Final Speech. Stan looked scared to death, but Jake could have told Stan he didn’t have the slightest idea what fear— real fear—was all about.
I died.
No. I didn’t.
Did too.
Did not.
Did.
Didn’t.
He came to a door marked GIRLS. He pushed it open, expecting to see a bright desert sky and a blue haze of mountains on the horizon. Instead he saw Belinda Stevens standing at one of the sinks, looking into the mirror above the basin and squeezing a pimple on her forehead.
“Jesus Christ, do you mind?” she asked.
“Sorry. Wrong door. I thought it was the desert.”
“What?”
But he had already let the door go and it was swinging shut on its pneumatic elbow. He passed the drinking fountain and opened the door marked BOYS. This was it, he knew it, was sure of it, this was the door which would take him back—
Three urinals gleamed spotlessly under the fluorescent lights. A tap dripped solemnly into a sink. That