For a brief, stupid moment I decided that I was going to do my documentary on The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger.
Until the previous summer I had consciously avoided reading it, I guess because it was so admired by the annoying, pretentious types at school, the ones whose parents encouraged and recognized their individual talents and tried to foster their growth and development by introducing them to art and literature tailored to their specific interests.
I always had a sinking feeling that those kids were cooler than me, even if they weren’t. And not only cooler, but that they would do better in life overall. With less struggling, less pain. Ironic, maybe, that a book that was supposed to be a badge of alienation could instead signify that you belonged, that your parents loved you, or at least that some other member of your family did.
Or maybe you were like me, and you came across the book purely by chance. I found The Catcher in the attic, its beaten-up corpse buried beneath the collected dust of centuries of what I can only assume was spider shit. With it were other books first boxed roughly two and a half decades ago when my parents made the first of many transitional moves. We’d missed them in the purge years earlier, probably because we didn’t feel qualified to judge their contents. But this time I chucked most of them. They were wrecked and rotten and I had never heard of any of the authors before. But I took The Catcher down, and after beating it on the brick and the sidewalk outside, hung it from a string and let it air out in my room. It was something of an experiment. After a few days it didn’t smell quite so much like musk anymore and its spore count had dropped to levels where I didn’t sneeze whenever a draught from that corner came upon me as I lay awake in bed. The spider shit tanned to roughly the same colour as the thin board that bound its pages and so I could pretend that its new blotchy design was just part of the original cover design.
Someone once told me that Holden was the biggest phony of all the characters in the novel, because he never aired his reservations. I had never read The Catcher in the Rye when this person, whom I forget now, told me this, but because the aforementioned annoying kids in my university English class had, the interpretation stuck. It seemed damning. I thought they were all phonies, too. Which of course they were, but in a different way than I thought.
One of them, Christian (he hates it when we call him “Chris”) Heslop, asked me to proofread an essay of his once — perhaps sensing from my classroom discourse that I was something of a thinker, though maybe not a future pseudo-intellect like him — and when I took it in my hands I had to push down the sense of intimidation just to register the first few sentences. But those sentences, and the ones that followed, hardly registered even then. They were gibberish. When I finished I looked at him and blinked for a full seven seconds. Then I explained that his essay was really good, and it didn’t need any changes.
Christian is so wealthy that it wouldn’t have mattered whatever I said. I don’t know for sure what his father does, but I’ve heard that he invented some simple form of plastic used in an ubiquitous product, like, say, the lid on your Coke bottle. When Christian turned sixteen he pulled up in a brand-new car. When Christian first met me, on second period lunch in grade ten, he took me aside, and sensing either a kindredness in us — or maybe just the fact that I was a willing listener — told me about how awesome things kept happening to him, like how some of his older sister’s friends had told him out of nowhere they’d like to sleep with him, or give him a blow job, and how during the first week of grade nine he and Luna Scapey made out in the stairwells within ten minutes of knowing each other. He spent the whole lunch telling me these things, things so removed from my own experience that he might have been describing the landscape of an alien planet. I still don’t understand why he felt compelled to let me in on all of that stuff, but it was the beginning of what you could call our friendship.
In the past year or so Hess has started affecting a pair of academic-looking glasses which somehow only serve to highlight the fact that he doesn’t know as much as he claims to and that he will never have to. There’s a kind of gap between his eyes and the frame, like he’s admiring a spot of grease on the lens. I told him I was doing my documentary on “local responses to the influential novel by J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.” Before lunch I lined Hess up in one of the hallways and pointed the camera at him. Once I asked Christian if he rode horses himself. He said no, but that his mother owned a few at a local barn and went riding most days. I knew that already, but I humoured him.
“So who’s the horse?” I asked.
“You’re hilarious.”
I didn’t end up asking Hess anything really good about The Catcher. Just when he first read it, how he’d felt, that kind of thing. What other books he likes. Had he read any more of Salinger. Who told him to read it. The thing I discovered when I finally read The Catcher is that it really is pretty good. Holden is a complete basket case, and it’s true that he’s a phony. But we’re all phonies. That criticism has no legs because the book’s about something else. Holden’s kind of like a holy idiot somehow in that he believes in the ideal of a world where we’re all on the level. But he can’t even be on the level with himself. Which is fine because no one is. The book is about the human condition, I guess.
Hess said his favourite part of The Catcher is when Holden is dancing with the three women from Seattle in the hotel nightclub. Specifically when Holden tells one of them that he saw Gary Cooper, and even though it’s a lie she tells the others she caught a glimpse of GC just as he was leaving the nightclub.
He likes the trick.
I can think of better parts than that.
On camera I asked Hess whether he was really doing the documentary on his father. He told me that had been a joke. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do the documentary on. He thought he might do it on Toronto.
“Oh, fuck you,” I said, still filming.
I tried to get my leg kicking him into the shot.
Hess can drive into Toronto pretty much whenever he wants.
* * *
After interviewing Hess I set up the camera in the hallway to capture the flood of students clearing their lockers after the final bell. Then I got a shot of Walid, Kyle, and some of the other guys talking by the doors. Lauren waving goodbye from her car. I also got lucky, because the Christian club — that’s a club for Christians who study the Bible, not a club for fans/admirers of Christian Heslop — had organized a prayer circle in the island in the centre of the parking lot, holding hands around the Canadian flag. If I wanted to include it in the movie I knew I’d have to make sure to edit out Kyle’s comments in post.
After Kyle had gone, and I had my camera bag packed up, just heading back to my locker, I heard shouting from down the hall. A crowd was blocking the hallway to the Athletic Hall. Kids were pushing back and forth against one another and some idiots on the far side were chanting “Fight!” I went to the edge and saw two figures sparring. Without thinking, I reached into my bag and fumbled with my camera, slipping my hand into the strap and turning the device on. Bringing it up over the edge of the crowd I spent a second working the focus until the camera finally found one of the two figures.
Red-faced Pat Hudson, standing with his legs wide apart, clumsily spaced. A black-and-yellow Batman T-shirt riding wrinkled up above Huddy’s fat belly, spilling over his jeans. I wanted him to tuck the shirt in — not for my sake, but for his. I guess it didn’t seem to matter to him. His glasses were a bit crooked, but his glare was hard and focused. Across from him was Dave Pullman. A guy I knew, but never really liked, but who Walid was sort of friends with because they shared a lot of the same classes. Dave was moving back and forth, pretending he was juking, trying to fake Huddy out and make him look stupid. He didn’t have to work too hard. You could see a complete hopelessness in Huddy, a weird determination that meant that he kept charging clumsily past Dave, like a bull tripping through a china shop. And, in the rare moments when he wasn’t moving, he stood absolutely still, as if nothing could have fazed him, as if nothing, not even kindness, could penetrate his exterior, and watched as Dave made him look really, really stupid, jabbing him in the stomach, slapping him on the face.
Huddy was a total mess. Which was basically par for the course.
I moved the camera from fighter to fighter, trying to keep it above the crowd.
“What happened?”
Arty Walls turned to look into the camera.
“Dave took something of Huddy’s. I didn’t see what. Um — should you be filming this?”
Kristina Dupont, next to him, also turned.
“Uh, hello. Dave took Pat’s hat when Pat wasn’t looking. He was wearing it around like it was his.”
Kristina started to pop her eyes and blink into the lens.
“Cut that out,” I said. “This is serious. It’s for a documentary.”
She stuck her tongue out at me.
Behind Kristina and Arty, Huddy had gone into a wild flurry, but Dave, who was breathing hard now, picked him up in a wrestling hold and slammed him onto the floor. Those idiots who were chanting before were laughing. Mostly Dave’s friends. Huddy lay on the ground, dazed.
The fight was over. Dave dropped Huddy’s hat on him, and Huddy snatched at it wildly.
The crowd began to disperse.
“Just a minute —”
The voice of Johnson, our VP.
“What’s going on here?”
My back was turned to him, but I quickly turned the camera off and put it in my bag. He came up and kneeled down to Huddy, beckoning Dave and others closer, demanding to know what had happened.
I felt bad that I had turned the camera on. And lucky that he hadn’t seen. Because of my guilt I started to walk away. “Slink” is more like it, like one of Sash’s dogs after doing something it knew was bad, like stealing a hot dog off a picnic table.
Someone must have pointed me out.
Johnson didn’t know my name. He just called down the hallway. It was only on his third or fourth “Excuse me!” when I realized who he was speaking to. Some kid tapped me on the shoulder and pointed for my benefit, but I would have turned, anyway, because his last “Excuse me!” had been so loud.
“What’s your name?” he asked, when I reached them. He was mad.
I told him.
“Were you filming this?”
I said that I was.
“What happened?”
I looked from Dave to Huddy and back to Johnson again, though I was having trouble looking Johnson in the eye.
I said that I didn’t know.
“What do you have on camera?”
I said that I had come after the fight had started.
Johnson asked me to take the camera out of the bag. “Show me,” he said.
I flicked the camera into the appropriate mode and started to rewind.
“Do you know the school policy on video cameras?”
No, I said. I told him that I needed it for a documentary I was shooting.
“On fighting?”
No. For media. Mr. Wright.
“Did you know that a fight was going to occur here?”
I said that I didn’t. The tape stopped at the appropriate location. I told him that it was ready.
“Could I look at it?”
I turned the sound up and handed it to him, pointing to the “Play” button.
“Fuck,” said Dave.
“Quiet. And stay where you are,” said Johnson, without taking his eyes off my camera.
He watched the fight through the viewfinder until his own words came out of the tinny little speakers and it cut out.
“Do you need this tape?”
I said yes, because it had Hess’s interview on it, and the prayer meeting, and the stuff I’d filmed in the hallway, and because I hadn’t brought another tape. And because tapes are expensive.
“Okay.” He looked down at the image of Huddy lying on the floor in front of all those people, Dave suspended in the air above him at a forty-five degree angle, on his way up again. He handed the camera back to me. “I want you to erase this,” he said. “I don’t care what your motives were. I don’t think Mr. Wright would like to know what you were filming here. If I catch you doing something like this in these halls again, I am going to confiscate your tape and the camera with it. If I find out that you did not erase it, you are going to be in an equal amount of trouble.”
I said okay. I said I would erase it as soon as possible.
“Start erasing it right now.”
I fumbled with the camera a bit, then I hit record. I showed him what was happening.
“Good,” he said. And he let me go.
I hate getting into trouble.
* * *
The next day I set up my camera on the edge of the table adjacent to where Huddy regularly ate lunch. I expected more of the gang to wander over and ask me what I was up to, but just Walid and Sam appeared, and I quickly shooed them away.
On the walk back home the day before I had realized that poor, pink-faced Huddy was Upper Canada Secondary’s version of Holden Caulfield. There were a few obvious differences — for example, I couldn’t imagine Huddy taking any girl out, let alone double-dating with jocks, or dancing confidently with older women at a club in New York. He wasn’t any good at school, either — teachers would ask him things in class only to have their questions bounce right off of him, like he was vibrating at another frequency that made him impervious to inquiries from our universe. It was heartbreaking watching teachers like Ms. Ambrose gradually lose their faith in him as the year progressed, their kindness calcifying into a cold mask. And, unlike Caulfield, I was pretty sure that Huddy’s family was poor — which meant no private schools or sprawling Manhattan apartments.
But those were all superficial differences. Huddy’s essence was Caulfield. I understood perfectly well, from his smouldering glare — even when he wasn’t looking at anything in particular — that there was an intense inner monologue running in his head, calling all of us out for being the phonies that we were. But unlike Caulfield, Huddy can’t be a phony because he doesn’t aspire to be anything: he’s just himself, like moss or trees or a prayerful hermit banished to the deep woods. Strip away all of the pretension from Caulfield and you get Huddy, anger blistering, silent, and righteous.
He reminded me a bit of Jeff, to be honest. Jeff when he finally decided he wanted more but didn’t know how to get it. But Huddy was even more removed than that, and, as a consequence, I think more pure. There was nothing compromising about Huddy because of his complete indifference to arbitrary social mores.
It was in making the comparison to Caulfield that I started thinking of Huddy as a subject for the documentary. I thought there was a lot that I could learn from him.
I decided to approach him in the style of Jane Goodall: spend a few days (weeks, if necessary) observing his habitat, then gradually introduce myself into his environment, then — eventually — contact. I’d proceed the same way in conversation, working around his anger, skirting it like it was an army encampment, stalking through the treeline, until I found the right entrance to make.
If I played my cards right, Huddy’s words, his real words — if he saw fit to utter any, I mean, for my benefit — would give my documentary the force of a thousand Holden Caulfields, thanks to all those years of repressed wisdom he had buried deep inside.
* * *
A kink in my plan, made immediately apparent: because of the heft of the camera, and its limited zoom — 5x optical, no digital — I was about as inconspicuous as a fireworks display. Huddy had already looked at the camera directly twice. I noticed his forehead reddening, and watched the sprouting of an extra crease or two. He moved a few seats down — not enough to make himself obvious to anyone else, but enough that I had to spend a few seconds dismantling and reassembling my makeshift tripod (consisting of three textbooks: history, biology, and a rebound school copy of The Great Gatsby).
I debated with myself over whether I should attempt my planned “as it happens” behind-the-camera narrative of his actions or if I should just take notes and add all that stuff in post (although I was still unclear how I was going to do that, exactly). I thought it made more sense to put the narration in later — on the National Geographic channel they don’t whisper about hyenas in real time as a baby zebra gets torn apart. That would be tasteless, more like a boxing match than a documentary.
I had only a couple of observations scribbled down. Looking at them I briefly panicked, wondering if Huddy would yield sufficient material to justify inserting a narrative of any kind, even after long-term study. What if this was pretty much it? Huddy slowly chewing, looking annoyed. Then I would have to go with ambient noise, to count on his silence in the face of the deafening cafeteria to construct my narrative wordlessly.
Walid bent over the camera before I noticed he was there and said that the camera operator was jerking his skinny cock underneath the table. I tried to punch him in the stomach, but he was already scampering back to the other guys before I turned around.
The first note I took was about Huddy’s sandwich: what looked like soft whole wheat, tuna-fish insides without fixings, and a five-hundred-millilitre water bottle filled with what I hoped was apple juice. Point of similarity? Could that be my emphasis? Today I had a few slices of cheese on the same cardboard-y bread, no butter (we were out), my drink a few quarters that I’d yet to insert into a machine.
Actually, maybe Huds was a little bit ahead of me there.
Walid came back and said something about Huddy’s “butter tits.” I turned around and queried him re: his current obsession with the male body, making sure to speak loud enough for the camera to pick it up.
“I’m just hot for you and Huds,” he said, rubbing a nipple through his T-shirt. It wasn’t worth moving the camera for.
Second note: “huds tick when nerv.” For about two minutes before Huddy finally decided to look straight at the camera for the first time he did this interesting sort of twitchy thing where his body spasmed every thirty seconds or so, kind of like a horse’s muscles when you run a brush over its body — not that I’d ever seen this operation anywhere but on TV. I wrote: “interesting mark of his self-consciousness/interesting connection between mind and body?”
Third note: “past the tic stage — progress? / Fuck Walid.”
* * *
In media, during a free period meant to be used for storyboarding (no one was doing this; like me, maybe, not yet with any clear idea, except for Bobby Booby, sweetly bent over his paper and pencils, sketching frame after frame of himself scoring goals), I was loudly sounding off about the genius project I had embarked upon, playing it up a bit, knowing my audience — speaking to Huddy’s patheticness more than his righteousness, suggesting a case study of sloth more than purity, Walid catching on and getting even more carried away than I was — when I was interrupted by Lauren, sitting a table over, her brown eyes flashing, bangs mussed from the quick snap of her head.
“I think your video idea is really disgusting, just so you know.”
“It’s not like that,” I said.
“Oh, really?” said Lauren, clearly unconvinced.
Walid barked some retort, but I hardly noticed. I had been halted dead in my tracks. Lauren’s eyes haunted me all through leisure sports (her disapproval making a soft thwack-y sound, like the squash ball bouncing against the wall of the court at the Durham Sports Complex). I lost three games in a row, a new record. She followed me in my transit through the hallway from the athletic corridor, to lunch, so cowed and reluctant that I was still at my locker, staring into space, when the second bell rang and startled me into nearly dropping my camera, camera bag, and second measly lunch in a row (one Ziploc of half-destroyed crackers — we’d run out of bread that morning — and another containing a few slices of marble cheddar slick with sweat).
More bells were ringing, this time warnings, as I set up the camera’s makeshift tripod in its place across from Hud, who was, I’m sure, not relieved to see me (maybe he’d hoped I’d given up?), taking in a bit of a wider angle so as to account for his possibly moving again, scanning the cafeteria for Lauren — sweat running down my neck — until I realized that she didn’t even have my lunch (she was day one, second period).
Huddy’d already finished eating by the time I set up, but he was still working on his apple juice (or whatever), staring sullenly down at the table in front of him. Few notes to take: I drew a butterfly instead. I think Huddy’d resigned himself to my presence, except to occasionally lower his eyes and mutter in my general direction.
Walid popped in again, trailed by Kyle, Walid slapping me reassuringly on my back and telling me how proud he was of me for sticking it to Lauren and demonstrating real commitment to my art. I just kept nodding my head and wishing he would go away.
“Yeah,” I said.
I wondered what I was doing. I hoped she would talk to me again.
By Huddy’s sixth or seventh bout of muttering, impossible to pick up, but probably angry and directed at me, I finally realized that Lauren was right. If I hadn’t already. Morally and artistically my position was essentially bankrupt. Huddy wasn’t an animal. He was a human being who couldn’t be tricked into association. And he wasn’t doing anything and I was wasting my time and disrupting his, demeaning the both of us. Is it a rule of quantum physics or just a general scientific principle that observation alters both its object and subject?
I turned the camera off and sat there for a few moments, making sure to place it on its side so it was clear that I was done. I took a few deep breaths. Eventually I started to put the camera away, slowly and methodically, with the hope that Huddy wasn’t paying me too much attention.
I mouthed “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” on the off chance he did decide to look over.
I’m sure he didn’t.
Finally I zipped up the camera case and slid the biology and history textbooks back into my bag. I was sort of afraid of vacating my spot entirely — I don’t know why, I thought if I made it seem like it was my intention to sit there all along it might appear like I’d just been filming emptiness, the scene before me, rather than a specific person (despite all evidence to the contrary — I’m not saying it wasn’t stupid). So I picked up Gatsby and opened it for the first time.
I read a few sentences about the narrator’s adherence to his father’s good advice. I wasn’t in the mood, exactly, to follow most of what was being said, but kept returning to the father’s precept: “Remember that not everyone’s had the same advantages you have,” which rang in my head over and over.
What were Huddy’s advantages? Did he have any? I’d made his silence into one, but that wasn’t the same thing.
Maybe the difference between Huddy and me wasn’t a matter of purity. Maybe it was that no one, in his entire life, had ever left him alone.
The least I could do was ask him if he even wanted to be filmed.
And if he said no, that was it.
* * *
Huddy didn’t acknowledge me until I put my things down heavily beside him.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” I said.
Huddy snorted and took another sip from his drink — I could see that it was instant iced tea, not apple juice as I had thought, based on the familiar spidery residue of powdered mix at the bottom of the bottle.
I pulled up a chair. Huddy turned his head a few degrees in my direction to look at me in his peripheral vision.
“I’m making a video for media,” I said. “A documentary. I thought …”
He turned and looked through me.
I could see there was a hole in his T-shirt, just below the left armpit. Not at the crease of the fabric, but below, extending to his back. Loose black threads bridged the gap.
“Have you ever read The Catcher in the Rye?” I asked.
He made a farting noise with his mouth.
“Uh … I just wanted to get to know you better, because I think you could offer a lot to my documentary. I bet you have a really interesting perspective.”
“Beep-beep,” he said, looking forward.
Like the Roadrunner.
Things were going really well.
“But I think I went about it the wrong way. I’m sorry for filming you without your permission … that was wrong.”
Huddy stared at the table while I sat there fingering the strap of my backpack. I looked up just in time to see Walid sneaking up behind Huddy. He draped his arms on Huddy’s shoulders and sat down next to him on the bench.
“How’s our movie star doing?” he said, looking me in the eye, like it was a private joke we shared.
I guess it was.
Huddy stiffened. Walid took his arms off Huddy’s shoulders and started massaging his back instead.
“You know you’re going to be a big star when this comes out, right?”
“Hey,” I said. Meaning stop.
Huddy’s face was turning red.
“You think he doesn’t like it?” asked Walid. “What’s the matter, big guy?”
Walid was giving me ironic looks, as if he could push the joke far enough that I’d eventually be okay with it. I didn’t know what to do.
“You should leave him alone, man.”
“I think Huddy just needs to relax,” said Walid, pinching harder into Huddy’s flesh.
Huddy slapped away Walid’s hand and turned toward him, snorting loudly, his chest heaving up and down.
“Don’t touch me,” he said, firmly and slowly.
People were starting to notice.
“That’s probably a good idea, Walid.”
Walid ignored me and held his hand up in front of Huddy’s face. Finger pointing, threatening. Like he was talking to a dog.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” he said to Huddy.
Huddy kept trying to grab Walid’s hand, but Walid used his other hand to bat him away.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Walid said, again.
“Jesus,” I said. “What the fuck, man?”
Huddy finally caught Walid’s hand and started squeezing it. Huddy looks strong, and he’s much bigger than Walid, but his grip was so frantic that it didn’t seem like he could be causing Walid any pain. And summers spent hauling bricks for his uncle’s construction company meant that Walid was stronger, despite the considerable size difference.
I think Huddy mostly sits around and talks to himself.
Walid grabbed Huddy’s arms and pulled them behind him, pinning him to the table. It must have hurt, because Huddy was shouting now.
“Get off me! Get off! Cocksucker! Get off!”
I stood up from the table. I could see the nearest teacher on lunchroom duty, Mrs. Baker, with her back turned, talking to someone, not far away. It was loud in the cafeteria, but not that loud. It was only a matter of time before she noticed what was going on. I tried to get Walid to stop, but it didn’t seem like he could hear me, and Huddy just kept yelling for him to get off.
“Hey!”
That was Mrs. Baker. I froze. Walid jumped away from Huddy, who slowly picked himself off the table.
“What’s going on here?” she asked.
“Nothing,” said Walid.
“He was hurting me,” said Huddy, rubbing his arms.
“Is that true?”
“No,” said Walid.
“No? That’s not what it looked like to me.”
“Okay, maybe?”
“Maybe?” asked Baker.
“I didn’t realize I was hurting him,” said Walid.
“You didn’t realize?”
“No,” he said, suppressing a smile.
“That’s smart. What about you?” she said, turning to me.
I shrugged.
“I don’t know,” I said. It seemed impossible to explain.
“You don’t know?”
“He hurt me, too,” said Huddy.
“What the fuck?” said Walid. “He didn’t do anything.”
“Excuse me? ”
“He didn’t do anything,” said Walid, cowed.
Mrs. Baker asked us all our names.
“I want all three of you to come with me.”
“Are you serious?” asked Walid, knowing already that she was.
* * *
“Kent,” said Vice-Principal Johnson, as I sat down across from him. “How quickly we’ve become acquainted. This is the second time I’ve had to deal with an altercation between you and Mr. Hudson. I’m beginning to see a pattern.” Walid and Huddy were waiting in the office reception. They’d both already spoken to him.
“There wasn’t an altercation between us,” I said.
Johnson’s eyebrow rose — he could do the Spock thing, just one.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just trying to talk to him. Then Walid came up, and …”
“And what?”
“They had a disagreement.”
“About what?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Nothing, really.”
“That sounds about right to me,” said Johnson. “But would you say it would be more accurate to suggest that your friend Walid started the disagreement?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to throw Walid under the bus, but he had also made that pretty fucking hard to not do.
“That’s what I thought,” said Johnson.
I guess it was pretty clear.
He gestured to my bag. “Is your camera in there?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Is there anything you need to show me?”
I felt heavy. Obviously I couldn’t let Johnson see the footage or hear anything that Walid had said while I was filming. I felt like an idiot for shooting it in the first place. Lauren was so, so right.
“No,” I said. “I just don’t like keeping it in my locker.”
Johnson looked at me for a long time. He was calm and his calm was giving me a migraine. Adults. Time moves faster for them. I tried to look as innocent as possible.
“Okay,” he finally said. “I believe you, but only because I’ve already heard Walid and Patrick’s versions of events. I will accept that you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But in case you weren’t aware, and I don’t understand how you couldn’t not be, Patrick is not having a good time right now. It is our duty, as decent human beings, to be as understanding of that as possible. If I catch you bothering him again I won’t go so easy on you.”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
“This is a warning. You are not completely exonerated. The slate has not been wiped clean. Remember that. I won’t forget.” He stared at me, hard.
I nodded.
“Okay. You’re free to go.”
Astounded, I blinked for a few moments, then mumbled my thanks and left. Johnson called both Huddy and Walid in after me. Walid gave me a confused look, as if it was my fault that he was going back in. Huddy looked like he’d been crying. I completely understood. I felt like I’d been crying, too. I hated being talked to like that.
Especially when I deserved it.
I had to get a note from the secretary excusing my absence because the second bell had rung long ago and I was late.
I learned afterward that Huddy had burst into tears when he and Walid were called in together, and that Johnson had threatened Walid with suspension. Instead, somehow, Walid argued him down to a couple weeks’ detention, with much more serious consequences to come if he ever bothered Huddy again. I thought Walid was smart enough to know not to ever fuck with Huddy in the future. The only reason he escaped suspension, as far as I understand it, was his grades. And his eloquence, I guess.
His parents would have completely flipped if he’d been sent home.
“Fucking Huddy,” said Walid, after he’d finished telling me the story. “It didn’t have to be such a big deal.”
I didn’t say anything, because something had dawned on me after I’d left Johnson’s office, during my long walk back to English: Huddy hadn’t told Johnson anything about the camera or the two days I’d spent filming him.
When I got home that night I tried to call Lauren at her house, but no one picked up. I sent her an MSN message later, but there was no response. I was going to have a lot of explaining to do the next day in bio, if she’d even talk to me. I felt like the worst person in the world. Or at least a pretty bad one.