Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,53

into a penetrating wretchedness marked by a prolonged and seething silence. I never asked what went on in the sulfurous corridors of his mind; I did not care to know. God knows we all have fantasies of retribution.

“You don’t understand,” he would say once he was able to speak of it again. “I just can’t clear it from my mind.”

I moved on because I had to, because pain gets heavy when you carry it far from its source, like a bucket of water hauled miles from a stream—it acquires a whole new value, which is the sum of its primary essence and your secondary investment. If I thought about it too much, I would start to forget things, important things, such as meals and homework. Once I found blood on my leg; perhaps I’d been scratching. Another time I was walking; who knows to where. I kept telling myself that it was enough to pity Nico’s and L.B.’s criminal lack of kindness, and to feel sorry for all the lies they’d been told—about women and themselves—and for the way they went very fast, like midget dogs, when they had sex. Maybe the cruelest revenge was to say nothing, to inform no one, to satisfy myself with the fact that they’d already hit the limits of their dubious potential, that for them, only stinking crisis lay ahead.

I wasn’t sure about the right way to think. I just tried to do my best with the little I had.

“Whom you all know by now,” Mr. McGintee was saying, and everyone clapped as a dark figure leaning against the lower left wall of the auditorium gave an abbreviated wave.

I squinted to find Jack, on the opposite side of the room. He was right there, squinting back at me.

Mr. McGintee shouted a few closing remarks as everyone rose. “Roles will be posted. Rehearsals start next Wednesday. Don’t forget to sign the paper going around.”

Kate lingered near the edge of the stage, and Jack idly ascended the aisle to my left. The lanky muscles of his thighs expressed themselves beneath the paper-thin denim of his jeans. He was wearing a white Oxford shirt over a faded blue Columbia University T-shirt that was the color of his eyes.

“Nice entrance,” he said, straddling the arm of the seat by mine, gnawing at his cuticle and kicking at a loose piece of carpet strip.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“I’m like you,” he said. “Just waiting for someone.”

The group at the base of the auditorium began to thin, passing by us on the way out. Billy Martinson charged up after Troy, saying, “Give it to me, you little shit.”

Kate arrived right after. “Hey! You owe me five dollars, Evie.”

“Don’t tell me—Oklahoma.” I’d totally forgotten Oklahoma.

“Our Town.”

“Our Town?” I repeated. “That’s strange. I’d been figuring musicals.”

Jack grabbed my knapsack and followed Kate out. I followed also. As I moved to the door, I glanced over my shoulder. A handful of people were at the bottom. No one I knew, though I felt—I don’t know—as if I’d left something behind.

“We had a bet,” Kate explained to Jack as she held the auditorium door for us. “About the play. She wasn’t very nice.”

“She’s not a nice girl, Kate,” Jack said as we spilled into the lobby. “You ought to know that.” He tossed my knapsack to me, thrusting it like a medicine ball. “I’m going to Dan’s. See you.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Kate asked.

I wan’t sure. Lots of things probably. I just shrugged.

Kate was combing her hair when we got to her locker, so I opened it for her. I’ll never forget the combination, 10–24–8, or the way she looked as she started to collect her stuff. She was smiling to herself. I leaned onto the locker alongside hers and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. I remember feeling sort of tired, sort of electric and free. Like I just didn’t care. Like there was nothing in the world that could possibly bind me. Like I belonged nowhere and everywhere.

We headed toward the side exit, our shoulders grazing as we walked. It was five o’clock. One long, low ribbon of sunlight slipped through the parted doors at the far end of the hall, creating a visible channel of dust in the air, and I could smell the rich, ripe aroma of just-cut grass. The school was uninhabited, but there was influence to its stillness. To this day, I believe I can render it, the feel of it—the shining,