Period 8 - By Chris Crutcher Page 0,28
stand that.”
If anything will douse a fire raging inside Paulie Bomb, it’s that. “Look,” he says, pushing his wet hair off his forehead. “I don’t get it, but I can’t blame you. I’m the guy in charge of my zipper.”
“If I went to Hannah . . .”
“Jesus.”
“I could tell her . . .”
“She’d kick your ass. And nothing would change between her and me, unless it got worse.”
“Worse?”
“Worse. You’re the Virgin Mary for chrissake. She’d think I . . .”
“She’s not stupid.”
Paulie takes a long breath. “Mary, there can’t be another guy who’s ever seen you like that. I’ll bet half the guys at the Armory thought it was you but knew it couldn’t be. Hell, I could walk into any boys’ locker room at Heller and tell them what happened and they’d laugh me out. C’mon, you know . . .”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like—”
Paulie slaps his open hand hard against the roof of the car, and Mary flinches. He breathes deep, pushing back equal parts of rage and pity, and curiosity. “Sorry. Tell me what it’s like.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Tell me.”
“God, you hate me.”
He closes his eyes. “Look, Mary, you said you wanted to talk to me. I’m listening. I don’t hate you. I’m pissed but I’m as pissed at myself as I am at you. More pissed. If telling me what it’s like to be you helps me get it, then tell me what it’s fucking like.”
She touches her forehead to the steering wheel. “It’s like I can’t just be me, ever, like there’s this thing I’m supposed to be and I have to be it. No matter how bad I feel or how much I hate how everyone sees me, there’s nothing I can do to change it. It’s like a black hole, it sucks you in and there’s not even a trace of you.” She closes her eyes. “When your life is like that, you do things . . . things you don’t understand. This is stupid,” she says. “You don’t want to know this.” She stares out the windshield, quiet. Then, almost as if to someone else, “There are spies everywhere.”
“What?”
Mary doesn’t seem to hear.
“Spies?” Paulie says. “What are you talking about?”
Mary’s head jerks. She hesitates, as if Paulie snapped her out of a daydream. “My dad,” she says finally. “He knows things about me there’s no way he could guess.”
“Like . . .”
“One of his friends saw me at Taco Time, what was I doing there? Or somebody saw me driving up by the lake, wasn’t I supposed to be home? There are forty thousand people in this town; there can’t be that many coincidences. Half the time he knows what route I take from school for my Running Start classes and I take a different one every time, just to mess him up.”
“So how did you get away being at the Armory that night? Or with disappearing? What about your mom?”
Mary looks out the side window. “My mother barely exists,” she says. “She just does what my dad says.”
Paulie knows a thing or two about irrational parent behavior. He watches Mary and shakes his head.
“All I ever hear from my mother is that my dad loves me and I should ‘do his bidding.’ I got to the Armory by telling him I had extra cheerleading practice. When I disappeared he was so freaked out he didn’t know what to do.”
“So getting with me was one of those things you barely understand?” His voice is tinged with skepticism.
“That’s part of it.”
“Why me?”
“You’re safe. You don’t hurt people.”
Paulie sits back. Great. I don’t hurt people, so I get screwed.
“I messed up. There’s more to tell, but . . .”
“Jesus, don’t stop now.”
Mary leans back, grips the wheel until her knuckles are white. “Some awful things, Paulie. Awful things.”
“Tell me.”
“It wouldn’t do you any good to know.”
In a low, measured voice, he says, “Mary, it might do you some good for me to know, or at least for somebody to know.” Paulie is being the Paulie who drives himself nuts. Why can’t I just say, “Tell it to your shrink”? I’m not supposed to be the fucking shrink. Why can’t I still be that guy Justin thinks can have any girl he wants?
She shakes her head. “Trust me.”
If you want to talk, say it all or go fuck yourself. He’s that close to saying it.
She sees it in his eyes. “That can’t sound right coming from me,” she says.
“Won’t argue with