Being Henry David - By Cal Armistead Page 0,29

keys attached to her belt loop make a jangling crash, and the mop goes flying.

“Oh man. I’m so sorry,” I say, reaching over to help her to her feet.

“Excuse me,” she says, wide eyes startled. She has gray-streaked hair in frizzy curls past her shoulders, but her face looks young somehow. Innocent.

Once she’s on her feet again, I get the mop and hand it back to her. “Are you all right?”

The woman stares at me for a long moment, narrowing her eyes. “Michael?” she whispers.

My heart lurches. Do you know me? I search for something familiar in her thin face. She’s sort of pretty in an all-natural, former-hippy kind of way.

“I’m sorry.” She shakes her head as if she’s trying to wake up from a weird dream. “You look like somebody I knew once,” she says.

Michael. I examine the name, repeat it in my head, but feel no spark of recognition.

Heavy footsteps approach, then a man’s voice interrupts. “You still here, kid?” Turning, I see the dread-locked janitor. His intense eyes snap at me with intelligence and suspicion.

“Well, I—I was helping out with sets, and my dad hasn’t come for me yet. Can you tell me where there’s a phone so I can call him?”

“You don’t have a cell phone?” he asks. “I thought all you kids had phones.”

“I don’t have one at the moment. It…broke, and I don’t have my new one yet.” With his unflinching gaze on me, my lies seem completely transparent.

“There’s a pay phone by the front door,” he says. “You never noticed?”

“I never noticed,” I say lightly in what I hope is a charming way. That’s when I see something shimmering on the cafeteria floor, where it skittered under a chair. It’s a set of keys. They must have fallen off the janitor’s belt loop when she fell. I rip my eyes away from the keys, hoping the janitors won’t notice.

The woman clears her throat softly behind me. “Billy,” she says. “Doesn’t he look a lot like Michael?”

Billy’s expression softens when he looks at the woman. “Maybe a little. Around the eyes. But come on, Sophie, we need to finish up. Some kid puked in the back hallway.” He cuts a resentful look in my direction, as if he suspects me. “As soon as we get it cleaned up, we can get out of here.”

I wonder if the two janitors are a couple. Billy and Sophie, lovers and high school custodians. Michael’s parents?

Sophie opens the closet next to the kitchen, takes out a huge wash pail on wheels, and pushes the handle into Billy’s hands.

Please don’t notice the keys on the floor. Please don’t notice the keys.

“I was just leaving,” I say to them both. “Have a good one.”

With one last wistful look at me, Sophie follows Billy down one of the long hallways, and I head toward the front door. I put the heavy black phone to my ear and pretend to make a call.

Once the two janitors disappear, I set the phone quietly in the cradle and slip back into the kitchen, making sure my sneakers don’t squeak on the clean tile floor. With an eye on the cafeteria door, I reach for the keys under the plastic orange seat of the chair. Scoop them up, muffle the jingle, and stuff them into the front pocket of my jeans.

Then I slip noiselessly into the auditorium and ease the door shut slowly, so it won’t make that crashing sound. Grabbing my bag of clothes from the place where I tucked it under the seats earlier, I hurry toward the stage. Imagining I hear a sound like maybe a tall janitor wielding a large mop, I scale the ladder to the upper platform in seconds.

Curling up on my side, I make a pillow of the clothes Magpie gave me and a blanket of my coat. I stay there on the platform until my heart rate slows down, until the building grows dark around me with the setting sun. Until I fall asleep.

7

Scuffing through the dead leaves and pine needles at the side of the road, I head back to Walden Pond the next morning. I’m drawn there, like maybe this is the place where I can find some answers. Which is tough, considering I’m not even sure of the questions.

Last night I slept like a dead person on the stage platform at the school, and woke up in the same position I went to sleep in, my back stiff and no dreams to remember. With