Period 8 - By Chris Crutcher Page 0,8
about you, feeling any better?”
Paulie smiles and sinks deeper, clear to his lower lip. “I can forget almost anything for a little while once I get in the water,” he says, “but in the end I have to dry off. Man, Logs, I thought I should tell the truth, but fuck . . .”
“I know this doesn’t mean a lot now, but time helps. Most of us can only feel shitty for so long.”
“It doesn’t help that I have to feel stupid, too,” Paulie says. “It’s not like I didn’t know better. I mean, my old man . . . Jesus.”
Logs grimaces.
“I was trying to get away, I swear. That sounds lame, but . . .”
“Much as I do not want to hear details, do you want to talk? Something feels really off about this, Paulie.”
“Naw. This is too embarrassing.”
Logs lays his head back and stares at the ceiling as Paulie takes a deep breath and sinks out of sight, letting the jets soothe his aching shoulder muscles. He holds his breath as long as possible, suspended just below the surface
When he comes up for air, Logs says, “You didn’t hear any more about Mary Wells, by any chance.”
“Why do you keep asking me about Mary Wells?”
“Same reason I ask about any kid I want the goods on. Four years you’ve been my mole. I’ve almost seemed cool, getting my information from you.”
“I don’t know much about Mary Wells. Everyone still calls her the Virgin Mary. Great grades . . . well, you know what kind of grades she gets. Doesn’t go out with anyone who knows her dad and anyone who’s been out with her once, knows her dad. What else is there to know?”
“The Virgin Mary, huh? That’s kind of cruel.”
“We’re high school kids, Logs. Cruel’s how we roll.”
“But you don’t call her that. . . .”
“No, Dad, I don’t call her that.”
“What I’m interested in,” Logs says, “is where she is. She hasn’t missed a class or a Period 8 in four years.”
“Didn’t Mrs. Byers call her house? Shit, I stop to get a drink outside the classroom three seconds after the bell and she thinks I’m going Ferris Bueller on her.”
“I didn’t report it,” Logs says.
“Can’t you get in trouble for that?”
“At this point I’ll get in trouble only if I’m caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy,” Logs says. “I didn’t report her because she stuck her head in my room after school a little while back, looking kind of desperate, and asked if I had time to talk. I had a pissed-off parent with me, so I asked her to wait. She looked like she’d been crying. Anyway, my meeting took longer than I expected and when it was over, she was gone. I tried to catch up with her the next day, but she blew me off like she’d never asked. A week later she doesn’t show for class for the first time in her high school career. All her other classes are Running Start, here at the university. I don’t know if she’s making those or not.”
“So why didn’t you go ahead and mark her absent?”
Logs raises a water-wrinkled hand. “Swear to secrecy,” he says. “We talk about her dad the same way you guys do. I don’t know, I had this sense she was reaching out privately. If she’s not here tomorrow, I’ll do something.”
Paulie says, “Nobody I know knows much about her other than that she’s top-model good-looking and hard to get to know. Stack says he’s studied with her a couple of times. She’s kind of a mystery.”
“She doesn’t seem like Arney’s type.”
“Everybody was Arney’s type when he was kicking my ass in that stupid election. He can get next to anybody. Hell, I voted for him.”
“The election’s over.”
Paulie laughs. “Arney’s in campaign mode all the time. I gotta say, even being his halfway bud is a chore. He’s just kind of, I don’t know, always working it.”
“Like . . .”
“I don’t know. You just don’t know what he’s thinking.”
Logs pulls himself out of the whirling, steaming water. “You think Arney knows something we don’t?”
“All I know about Arney is what you see isn’t always what you get.” Paulie sinks deeper. “I’ve known him a long time. Once back in kindergarten his family was over at our place on Christmas night. I’d gotten this big-ass candy cane, like tall as me. I was saving it to show my friends. Arney gets all buddy-buddy with me,