CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The next morning Kris was in the normal seat, and a place was saved for him. Dan sat with Alice Knapp some distance away. Phillip sat down. Kris found a piece of paper in her notebook and gave it to him. It was yesterday’s history assignment. He sat staring at it.

“I wasn’t on the bus last night,” she said. “Were you?”

“Yes.”

“I would have called, but there isn’t that much. I didn’t think it was worth you coming over.”

“Oh.” Not worth walking two blocks? Not worth escaping for a few minutes from his house, where he spent the entire evening silent in his room, hearing only the television and his mother’s voice?

And anyway, what was going on here? Kris was reducing it to a system, and Phillip knew instinctively that it could not be a system. Any wrongdoing he’d ever gotten away with had been sporadic, occasional.

He’d decided to vary his pattern today, attend history as well as English, and eat lunch with Kris. But she had made an appointment with a teacher. As he was heading to the cafeteria alone, someone said, “Hi, Phillip.” He turned to see a man catching up with him, a familiar face, but only that.

“How’s it going?” asked the man.

“Fine,” said Phillip, warily.

“How do you like our school now that you’ve been here a few weeks?”

“It’s okay.”

The man gave a shallow chuckle. “Only okay—I wish we rated better than that! Look, I like to meet with transfer students, just to get acquainted. How about we make an appointment for sometime tomorrow. Say, one-thirty?”

“I have—”

“You have study hall then. I checked.” The man smiled, narrowing his eyes in a friendly, jokey way that embarrassed Phillip into smiling back. “So—see ya then.” He accelerated down the hall ahead of Phillip, and somebody said, “Hi, Mr. Peabody!” Mr. Peabody, the guidance counselor.

Phillip stood through the slow line to buy a milk and sat down at the last empty table, but his stomach was too twisted for eating. Yesterday Pilewski, today Peabody. Were they closing in on him?

“Mind if we sit here?” Four math team computer geniuses dropped into the chairs around him and continued their conversation. Phillip felt sick. He looked out the sliding door beside him.

The sky was gray, and the sun gleamed palely through the clouds, like a pearl. A wind rattled the stiff brown oak leaves.

“Excuse me,” he said, standing up. None of the computer geeks appeared to notice. He went to the coatrack for his jacket and slipped out the door near the teachers’ smoking area, currently uninhabited. He was blowing off French again, but he couldn’t imagine sitting through it. Besides, he was fucked already. F for fucked.

He crossed the wide lawn and slipped into the trees, still in plain sight. A path was worn there, and Phillip started jogging. With luck, he’d pass for some ski team fanatic, getting a head start on conditioning.… In fact, two ski team fanatics went by him, running easily, their breaths making rhythmic white puffs on the cold air. “Hi,” each said, in passing, and Phillip said, “Hi.”

The trail they followed led straight up the ridge. The two runners scaled it easily, with no visible break in their rhythm. Far to the rear Phillip scrambled up, followed. He stayed near enough to see when they reached the dirt road and turned downhill, like good boys, taking the trail back to school. Phillip paused at the road, fighting the cold air as it seared his lungs. Then he turned uphill.

Still his breath hurt him, but he walked rapidly. Did his father’s breath hurt? He didn’t know—only that it didn’t enrich the blood with oxygen as it should. How would that feel? Like breathing under a blanket, breathing inside a plastic bag … He passed the overlook to the farm and started uphill, his eyes down on the leaves.

Suddenly there were two rhythmic trampings in the woods: his own feet and someone else’s. A fierce jolt of adrenaline rocked his body.

Straight ahead a short, wide man dressed like a soldier, in camouflage and high-laced boots, walked down the road toward him. The man carried a bow, and over his shoulder bristled the feathered ends of arrows. Larger and larger he loomed, as he and Phillip kept walking. Phillip’s eyes were riveted on the black boots, the flashing brass grommets. Closer, closer—he glanced up at the face. Thick glasses, bristling red beard. A second later it registered on his mind that his eyes had just passed over a knife. The knife was short and wide like the man, strong and sharp and short.

“Hi,” said the man, passing.

“Hi,” said Phillip, a little late. They both kept walking, but in a moment, when Phillip paused and looked back, he caught the man turning away.

Quickly he walked on. He saw the wet leaves the man had scuffed up and realized how completely alone he’d always been up here.

He remembered now what he’d been seeing in school for weeks, without giving it a thought: the orange knit caps and orange vinyl vests of deer-hunting season. Bow season came first, and then regular season.

When? This weekend, he thought. The lonely woods would stir with men and boys and gunshots. The abandoned roads and the deer paths would be walked again, for two weeks, and it would not be safe to be out. He’d have to get himself an orange hat … but in case of accident, in case of a shooting by a careless, panicked boy who would run and never tell such a tale on himself, who would ever know where to find him? Another hunter might come upon him later, or perhaps not. Just last month a skeleton had been found in the woods, the remains of a man twenty years gone. He hurried to the gray house. Both kittens greeted him on the doorstep, mewing loudly for their dinner. Orange hats for them, too?

He hitchhiked to the clinic, where Dr. Rossi was tearing up Sharon’s resignation, where Dr. Franklin and Sharon were organizing a greyhound adoption service, where things were for the most part remarkably easier than anyplace else in his life. People told him what to do, and nobody gave him time to think.

At home the sameness of the evening routine, the murmuring television, the hot, stuffy air, swallowed him up. It felt impossible to speak, and anyway, he had nothing to say. Neither did anyone else.

Thea came in late, when Phillip had given up hoping that Kris would call him about the French assignment and was consoling himself with a snack of cold pot roast. Thea rubbed against him briefly and then sat up, hooking her claws firmly into his jeans as she sniffed—reading him like a newspaper. Thoughtful, wide-eyed, she sank back to the floor and brooded. She was the only one around who had a clue about the kittens.

What else did she know about? Phillip wondered. Did Dr. Rossi’s perfume linger? Did he smell less like school or Kris than usual?

Thea sank down, ears back, eyes glaring thoughtfully. Did a picture come into her mind of the kindling he had gathered and the wood he had chopped, of his frantic search through the woods yesterday? Did she have any notion, as she sat there brooding like a gypsy fortune-teller, of the complicated trap he’d set for himself, and when it might be sprung? Could she smell Peabody and Pilewski?

He scooped her up and cuddled her for a moment, against her will. She smelled of fresh air. Her fur trapped it and brought it indoors.…

She squirmed. “Oh, all right!” Phillip put her down. Immediately she rubbed against his leg. No hard feelings.

He shared the pot roast with her, allowing her to crouch on the table beside his plate. They were civilized together. When Thea finished a piece, she would stretch out her paw and stop his hand, halfway to his mouth with the sandwich. He’d pull off another shred of meat and lay it before her, and she would sniff daintily and begin, with a short, eager purr. Thank you. “You’re welcome, Thea.” He kept his voice to a murmur, no louder than the television.