drop the receiver in his hurry—when the woman said, “Hello?” again in a voice that sounded nothing like Mrs. Van Wyck’s. He was a fool. A stupid idiot. He breathed in through his nose, turned away from his mother to face the wall, said, “Is Toby around?”
“Who’s calling please?” the woman asked. The speed and efficiency of her response made Bruce wonder how many calls Toby had received since his mother—what was the word for it? Got lost? Pretty positively died? Charlie or Jeb could have been calling Toby all along, laying their claim to his loyalty, gratitude, news. Bruce forced himself to stay on the line and wait for the friend who, he realized now, might already feel betrayed by him for some reason he wasn’t experienced enough to guess. The staticky blast of his own breathing made him think of crank calls, how all it took was breathing to make somebody—an older girl from Spence who babysat in Bruce’s building, Mrs. Sulemain from Science Lab, whose number he and Toby had filched from the faculty directory—nervous and jumpy. Breathing, just by itself, could make someone snap, Stop calling me (1) whoever you are, (2) you fucking prick, (3) please (the responses varied from crank to crank, Mrs. Sulemain’s always being the filthiest and most pee inducing), and then hang up. The soft rhythm of his own exhalations sounded amplified now, like someone—or something—was getting him back. His ear felt hot and itchy. His heart beat the same way it had that day when Toby had told him about the boyfriend. The dick. The killer.
“Hey,” Toby said, suddenly there.
“Hey!”
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing. You know, school.”
“Yeah?”
Bruce thought to himself: So this is how it’s supposed to be. Moving fast. Like everything’s normal, but even faster. Okay.
“So—when do you think you’ll come back?” Bruce said. He wondered if his mother was willing him to turn back around, so she could give him a go easy look from where she stood. He stayed where he was, fingering the corkboard that covered the wall by his bed. He found that he didn’t care what she wanted him to say. She didn’t know what this was like.
“Oh—I’m … don’t know. I guess probably next week.”
Toby’s voice sounded different, but not too different. Just a little soft and scratchy, as if he had just woken up. “That’s good,” Bruce said, “because the coach said you could totally play in the tournament, even though you missed some practice.”
“Yeah, he called me.”
“Cool.”
There was a pause. Bruce could hear voices and canned laughter in the background. Television sounds. Toby, unlike Bruce, was allowed to have a TV in his room.
“You watching Jeannie?”
“No. Dukes.”
“Jeannie’s hotter than Daisy.” Bruce usually sang this, but today he just said it plain.
“Nuh-uh.” It was a routine they had. Next, Bruce was supposed to yell “Boingg!” the way Jeannie did when she crossed her arms and tossed her ponytail to perform a trick, and Toby was supposed to laugh in response, kuh-chee, kuh-chee, kuh-chee, like a leering Roscoe.
Bruce took a breath. He yelled, “Boingg!”
He listened. There was nothing, except for the background laughter and what sounded like a sniff from Toby.
“Kuh-chee, kuh-chee,” he tried, taking Toby’s part. He knew his mother was watching him, could feel her look on his back, but he had to keep moving fast. It was clear that if he didn’t leap over the quiet places both he and Toby would fall into them, be left clawing at air, plunging down. He was a superhero, straddling canyons. He was Road Runner, clicking his feet together, powering on. Meep meep.
“Yeah,” Toby said, “ha.”
“Mrs. Sulemain got arrested,” Bruce said without taking a breath. “She stole something from the school. I don’t know what it was.”
Toby stayed quiet for a moment. “No way,” he murmured. Bruce couldn’t tell if he sounded awed or merely dazed, polite.
“I think she stole money from another teacher’s desk,” he went on. “She had to go to jail. They put her in handcuffs and everything.”
“Wow,” Toby said. Bruce’s mother crossed the room and sat down beside him on the bed.
“People are saying she does drugs. They made her crazy.”
“Like, cocaine?”
“I guess,” Bruce said. “She needed money to buy more of it, whatever it was.”
“Is she still going to teach lab?” Toby was warming up to this, Bruce could tell.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know any more than what I just told you.”
“Bruce—,” his mother said. Bruce tried to ignore her. He was dancing now.