Period 8 - By Chris Crutcher Page 0,23
off the hook. Business as usual.
The bell rings and no one moves. Arney picks up his books as if nothing has happened. Gradually everyone else begins packing up and heading out.
“Hey, Mr. Logs,” Paulie says at the door, “can I talk with you a minute?”
Logs slaps his forehead. “That’s right, you said you needed to talk with me. Sorry.” He closes the door behind Hannah, who just walked by as if Paulie didn’t exist.
“Ready for TMI?”
Logs frowns.
“She’s the one.”
“The one . . .”
“Mary Wells. She’s who I cheated on Hannah with.”
.7
“Hannah was at that debate tournament,” Paulie says.
“I’m not sure I want to hear this. You sure you want to tell it?”
“I didn’t, but that was before all this craziness.”
Logs says, “What the hell, this is my last year.”
“So Arney wants me to go over to the Armory and listen to Justin and his new group, and a couple of other groups he’s tight with. I’m already planning to go so I say I’ll meet him.
“We’re early and they’ve got a bunch of pretenders for the first hour or so, guys whose parents should never have given them music lessons, and we’re shootin’ the shit, waiting for Justin and his guys. I look over at this girl who I catch looking at me and I barely recognize her. I mean, she looks like Mary except she has this way low-cut sweater.”
Logs frowns, in disbelief rather than disapproval.
“Swear to god, man, I’m not out looking. I’m not.”
“I believe you.”
“Pretty soon she’s beside me. She says hi to Arney and we’re watching and she’s bumping me, like almost by accident. But then we’re talking, almost yelling over the music, ’cause Jus is on now and he’s cranking it up, and her hand is on my arm and they start to play a slow one and she asks me to dance. I don’t want to, but it’s Mary Wells. Even if Hannah’s friends see me, it’s the Virgin Mary. I could get in as much trouble dancing with Arney.”
“Why do I think you should have danced with Arney?”
“No kidding. Anyway she leans into me, arms around my neck, pressed up against me. This is not the Mary Wells I have come to know and yell ‘Go Team Go’ at. The second it starts feeling good, I start feeling bad and I push her away. She backs off a little and we finish the dance and I’m looking around the room and a couple of Hannah’s friends are watching so I know I need to get my ass home.
“I tell Arney I’ve gotta cut it short, go up to the stage and tell Justin he rocks, and head for the parking lot. Only when I get to my car, there’s Mary goddamn Wells.”
Logs frowns, again in disbelief, though he knows the one guy he always believes is Paulie Bomb.
“She wants a ride home. I ask who she came with and she says, ‘Julie Fricke and some other cheerleaders, but they left,’ and something feels wrong, because the cheerleaders stick together. They’re jocks.”
“So . . . you took her home?”
“Kind of. I stall for a while, then I see Arney coming out of the Armory and I holler at him. He drives over, rolls down the window, and I tell him to give Mary a ride; she lives on his way. He says no-can-do, he’d really like to but he’s headed to some midnight thing with the YFC kids. Are you kidding me? Arney Stack doing midnight come-to-Jesus with Youth for Christ? I mentioned this but he says he’d promised to help them get Johannsen to let them hold meetings in a classroom as long as it was after school. I said, ‘Arney, you won the election. You can’t run again, this is high school. Campaign promises aren’t even real promises in high school!’ but he said something about being a politician with a new kind of ethics, to which I said a new kind would be some.”
“It’s too late to make a long story short, but give it a try, ’cause you are killing me.”
“I’m driving toward her house and she says, ‘Could we just drive around for a while?’ and I say huh-uh because ‘I’m promised.’”
“You said you were promised?”
“When in doubt, go with comedy,” Paulie says. “So she says, ‘I just don’t want to go home yet. My dad . . .’ and she lets it trail off, and I’m pissed at my dad half the time—and really mad at him the