Trask and had not done anything wrong, but he grabbed his tray and left. I picked up my silverware and stared at it, feeling the bench fluctuate as two or three other boys fled the table.
“It’s no big thing,” Woody said. “I just want to do a little fact-checking. Now, the Garbageman, he’s your dad, right?”
I could almost hear Gottschalk’s narration: The chemicals raging inside of Mr. Crouch, ladies and gentlemen, are a disgusting but nevertheless normal part of the physiology of the teenage male. There were a number of ways this could end, all of them bad. My mind shuttled through the options. My best hope, I determined, was to say nothing at all. With luck, by tomorrow Woody would choose a new target.
The cheeriness of his voice flattened. “I’m talking to you, Crouch.”
“Crotch?” sputtered a different voice. “Trask, did you just call that kid Crotch?” I glanced up. A behemoth sat to Woody’s left, slobbering over a cupcake, his head the size, color, and texture of a shaved pig. I distantly recalled a teacher referring to him as Reinhart as she made her way down the attendance list.
“You heard right, Rhino,” Woody replied, keeping his eyes on me. “That is exactly what I said. So how about it, Crotch, is your dad the Garbageman or what?”
The Garbageman: it was more than a job description. At Bloughton High, at least, that was his official name. All around me, the crackle of utensils against plastic gave way to a strange wave of silence. I couldn’t help it this time; I began to ease into the soft nirvana of specifying—
—the marbled turtle shell of my tray—
—the braille of dry boogers freckling the table—
—an ancient and blackened Band-Aid trampled into the floor at my feet—
—the rhythmic patterns of knees popping nervously against tables—
—the mist of someone’s sneeze hanging like motes in the sun—
—in the concavity of my spoon, twenty students turning synchronously—
—but their pause was mine to break. I dragged myself back to life.
“Yeah, I guess,” I responded. I looked at Celeste. Beneath the flawless cheeks, her jaw flexed in a chewing motion. Her expression remained perceptive yet removed.
“That’s fascinating,” said Woody. “Because we were just discussing how none of us have ever seen him pick up a single piece of our crap. Rhino here, his dad works for county sanitation, and Rhino’s dad told Rhino that he ain’t ever seen your dad pick up a single McDonald’s wrapper. So what we’re curious about, Crotch, is what exactly does he do all day?”
If I told them that I hadn’t the slightest idea, I would only sound stupid. Specifying continued its pull—
—brown flaws in each corn kernel like coffee stains on teeth—
—the unnatural shrug in the neck of my fork—
“Pop says the Garbageman’s always at the pawnshop,” Rhino said, interrupting my trance. “Always selling shit. Always got mud all over his clothes, and always selling shit. You know what Pop thinks?”
Woody held my eyes with minimal effort. “What’s that, Rhino?”
“Pop thinks he’s a thief. Who else has that much shit to pawn?”
I looked for a clock, a teacher, any excuse to get going. Instead I saw a battered old pay phone, mounted on the far cafeteria wall. The impulse to call Boris overwhelmed me. I had not bothered to reset my cell phone after Claire had suggested that I wait and see what kind of coverage was best in Bloughton. Boris’s cell number, though, I had memorized, and if I’d had just a bit more change left I could have called him, explained what was going on, told him that things were taking a series of bad turns and that I needed to get back to the city as soon as he could line it up.
“Man, I’ll never forget that time we were fishing out on the Big Chief and ran across that dude, and he was standing in the water,” Woody was saying, “like up to his waist in water.” He shook his head at the memory. Celeste’s neat smile suggested she had heard this story before.
“I don’t remember that,” said Rhino.
“You weren’t there, dipshit,” said Woody. He gave his face, beaming and animated, to the table around him, and the eyes of his friends replicated his joviality until all of them, Woody included, were handsomer. “We were in a boat and came within probably ten feet of this guy, and he was like chest-deep in the water trying to catch fish with his hands. Colder than a motherfucker and this motherfucker