Tuesday, 5:30 P.M.
NATE WAS IN THE YEARBOOK ROOM, HEADPHONES ON, WORKING PATIENTLY on one of the Macs, arranging a collage of photos from when everybody was in kindergarten. He felt much better now after receiving the call from his dad, whose doctor also got on the phone and assured Nate there was nothing to worry about; no need to travel to California.
He pasted in a photo of him and Ben running around the Annex rooftop playground. They had been playing Butts Up, a made-up game with amazingly complicated rules that had to be renegotiated every day so that by the time they actually started playing, recess would always be ending. Nate shuddered at the image of his younger self. How had his mother let him out in public with that fag haircut and clown glasses?
There was a tap on his shoulder. Nate pulled his headphones down around his neck.
Ben said, “Dude, I’m outta here. You ready?”
“Nah, not yet. What time’s dinner?” He was staying at Ben’s while his mother was in California.
Ben shrugged. “Seven? Fuck—did you just fart?”
It was the souvlaki that Nate had brought back from the Acropolis.
“Shit, light a match, the place’ll explode!” Ben said and left.
At quarter of six, Nate shut down the computer, unkinked his shoulders, and let another one rip. Then he ditched the aluminum foil from the souvlaki and gathered his stuff.
Downstairs in the Great Hall the new security guard was in his overcoat, locking up his set of walkie-talkies. In the Annex the screens were blank on both Mrs. Mac’s computer and the one in his mother’s cube, their desktops neatly arranged, swivel chairs pushed in. Nate started upstairs to Ms. Hollins’s office. Maybe she’d heard somebody at the dance say something…maybe she’d seen something.
Between the second and third floors, he became aware that it was growing colder each step of the way. When he reached the landing, the door to her office was open. Some papers on her desk were ruffling around. But no Ms. Hollins. The draft, Nate realized, was coming from the floor above. At the stairwell, peering up at the rooftop, he called out her name. He could see the access door had been hooked back. Ms. Hollins smoked like a fiend; maybe she was having a cigarette.
Nate climbed the last half flight of stairs, calling her name again. In Lower School, before there was a real playground on the turf, recess was on the rooftop, teachers constantly screaming at kids to stay away from the parapet. He stepped outside on the tar paper and waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. A ladder was near the door, there was a beach chair with a coffee can full of cigarette butts beside it, an old pair of workman’s gloves on the ground. Nothing else. Nate farted again. It was creepy out here.
The waist-high parapet ran along three sides of the rooftop, one side overlooking the turf and the equipment shed that he’d stuffed Elliot in, but when he gazed down, all he could make out were the hulking silhouettes of the slides, the swing set, the jungle gym. They looked almost beast-like in the dark.
Although he’d never been scared of heights, sweat was beading in his scalp and Nate felt light-headed, almost as if he had a buzz. To steady himself, he gripped the sooty edge of the parapet. “Ms. Hollins?” he called one last time, like she might actually be down there playing on the monkey bars or swings.
Shit, the souvlaki had been a mistake; it felt like a dead mouse rotting in his stomach. When he belched, sour flecks of chewed meat came spurting up. He swallowed them back down. What he should do was leave and go to Ben’s. But something made him move along the parapet to the right, to the side facing the main building.
All of a sudden, his heart started thudding like crazy. There was something down there in the narrow alleyway, something lit by a bare bulb at the bottom of the fire escape. A body. Two legs stuck out of a skirt hiked all the way up to a pair of panties. The legs, splayed out in a wide vee, ended in shoes, one of which was dangling off the right foot of his English teacher. Ms. Hollins’s body was twisted, like some rag doll, her head at a crazy angle. There was no duct tape over her mouth but blood ran from both her nostrils down her lips and chin. The last thing he saw before he crumpled to his knees and started throwing up were her eyes. It looked as if she was crying bright red tears.
“Augusta? Are you out here?” someone was calling.
Nate couldn’t answer. Someone stepped out onto the rooftop. He retched again, his eyes watering.
“Who’s there?” The figure was coming toward him and then suddenly the headmaster was crouching down beside him. “Nate? Jesus! What are you doing out here?”
Nate motioned to the side of the parapet. A second later he heard Mr. Marshall suck in his breath sharply and curse. Then he was on his cell to 911.