came, and I heard myself talking. I don’t remember thinking about the words; my mouth seemed to be operating completely on its own.
“I got beat up tonight, Mr. Harrigan. By a big stupid kid named Kenny Yanko. He wanted me to shine his shoes and I wouldn’t. I didn’t snitch on him because I thought that would end it, I was trying to think like you, but I’m still worried. I wish I could talk to you.”
I paused.
“I’m glad your phone is still working, even though I don’t know how it can be.”
I paused.
“I miss you. Goodbye.”
I ended the call. I looked in Recents to make sure I had called. His number was there, along with the time—11:02 P.M. I turned off my phone and put it on the night table. I turned off my lamp and was asleep almost at once. That was on a Friday night. The next night—or maybe early on Sunday morning—Kenny Yanko died. He hung himself, although I didn’t know that, or any of the details, for another year.
* * *
The obituary for Kenneth James Yanko wasn’t in the Lewiston Sun until Tuesday, and all it said was “passed away suddenly, as the result of a tragic accident,” but the news was all over the school on Monday and of course the rumor mill was in full operation.
He was huffing glue and died of a stroke.
He was cleaning one of his daddy’s shotguns (Mr. Yanko was said to have a regular arsenal in his house) and it went off.
He was playing Russian roulette with one of his daddy’s pistols and blew his head off.
He got drunk, fell down the stairs, and broke his neck.
None of these stories was true.
Billy Bogan was the one who told me, as soon as he got on the Short Bus. He was all but bursting with the news. He said one of his ma’s friends from Gates Falls had called and told her. The friend lived across the street and had seen the body coming out on a stretcher with a passel of Yankos surrounding it, crying and screaming. Even expelled bullies had people who loved them, it seemed. As a Bible reader I could even imagine them rending their clothes.
I thought immediately—and guiltily—of the call I’d made to Mr. Harrigan’s phone. I told myself he was dead and couldn’t have had anything to do with it. I told myself that even if stuff like that were possible outside of comic book horror stories, I hadn’t specifically wished Kenny dead, I just wanted to be left alone, but that seemed somehow lawyerly. And I kept remembering something Mrs. Grogan had said the day after the funeral, when I called Mr. Harrigan a good guy for putting us in his will.
Not so sure about that. He was square-dealing, all right, but you didn’t want to be on his bad side.
Dusty Bilodeau had gotten on Mr. Harrigan’s bad side, and surely Kenny Yanko would have been, too, for beating me up when I wouldn’t shine his fucking boots. Only Mr. Harrigan no longer had a bad side. I kept telling myself that. Dead people don’t have bad sides. Of course phones that haven’t been charged for three months can’t ring and then play messages (or take them), either . . . but Mr. Harrigan’s had rung, and I had heard his rusty old man’s voice. So I felt guilty, but I also felt relieved. Kenny Yanko would never come back on me. He was out of my road.
Later that day, during my free period, Ms. Hargensen came down to the gym where I was shooting baskets and took me into the hall.
“You were moping in class today,” she said.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“You were and I know why, but I’m going to tell you something. Kids your age have a Ptolemaic view of the universe. I’m young enough to remember.”
“I don’t know what—”
“Ptolemy was a Roman mathematician and astrologer who believed the earth was the center of the universe, a stillpoint everything else revolved around. Children believe their entire worlds revolve around them. That sense of being at the center of everything usually starts to fade by the time you’re twenty or so, but you’re a long way from that.”
She was leaning close to me, very serious, and she had the most beautiful green eyes. Also, the smell of her perfume was making me a little dizzy.
“I can see you’re not following me, so let me dispense with the metaphor. If you’re thinking you