Night School (2 page)

Andrew laughed. “Water Color for the Non-artistic,” he agreed. “Russian Affairs for Political Junkies.”

“French for Restaurant Ordering,” said Mariah.

“The History of Fast Food,” said Andrew, grinning.

She was entertaining him! They were giggling together, the way she had always planned.

“It meets Wednesdays,” said Andrew. “That’s tonight. I’m going.” He wrote his name on the first line.
ANDREW TODD.
Fat awkward printing, as if he were still in kindergarten. Why hadn’t his handwriting caught up to his body? It gave Mariah a funny feeling, as if there were something wrong with Andrew Todd.

He’s going, she thought. There is actually a real-life chance of spending real-life hours with Andrew. If I sign up, will he know that he’s the only reason I would ever take a night class? But maybe he should know. Maybe I shouldn’t have a secret crush. Maybe my crush should be right out in the open, where he can take hold of it. Take hold of me. Love me forever the way I love him.

Boldly, Mariah signed her name on line two.

Andrew smiled very slightly. For a horrible sick moment she saw the fingerprints on his cheek as well as on the poster: glowing twisted marks, like scars of evil. “Tonight, then, Mariah,” said Andrew softly. He walked off as if he owned both the hall and the time, long athletic legs swinging, wide shoulders motionless above them.

She looked back at the sign-up sheet. It smiled at her, the dripping black letters turning into teeth.

She had a sense of falling off the edge of something, and she thought: It’s my own sanity. I have to climb out of my daydream world; I have to do all real things with real people in real places. Night Class is good. Who cares what it’s really about? I’ll assign myself a subject: giving up the secret worlds. Getting real.

She thought of the real parts. Sitting next to Andrew. Sharing assignments. After class, getting ice cream. Or pizza. Surely this weekend, he’d want to go down to the boardwalk on the beach and walk for miles, while he held Mariah’s hand. The Pacific Ocean would be on one side and the mountains on the other, and over them both, the blue sky and the beginning of love.

There was nothing wrong with her dream crush. It had been preparation, that’s all. Practice, the way you practiced riding until you could win trophies. Mariah slid easily into her dream crush, filled by an Andrew who worshiped her.

“What on earth are you doing, Mariah? Signing up for a night class? What are you—nuts?”

Mariah jumped badly. She looked quickly at the sign-up sheet before she looked at the speaker, needing to see if it still had the fingerprints and the smile.

It had nothing. Not even dripping letters. It was just typing, and just words.

How much am I making up now? she thought, chilled. I’ve gone past making up conversations? Now I’m making up poster graphics? “Hi, Tommy,” she said, with the ease of one whose voice does the right thing even when the mind is lost in secret spaces.

Tommy was a nice person. Technically, Tommy’d known Mariah for years. Because so much of Mariah was a secret, though, he hardly knew her at all. If I died today, she thought, what could I claim I’ve really done in the world? I’ve dreamed. That’s all.

“It doesn’t even say what the class is!” Tommy was gently laughing at Mariah. “Just what are you and Andrew intending to do there?”

Mariah blushed.

This time, Tommy’s smile was once removed, like a rarely encountered cousin. Tommy was thinking of other things, other girls, other plans. He moved on down the hall as Andrew had before him, in possession of the space and the time, happy in his world, whatever that was.

And my world, thought Mariah, dizzyingly seeing more fingerprints, more black letters, hanging in the air like spectres from other worlds, what on earth is my world?

Or was her world on earth?

Autumn Ivers was sick of Julie-Brooke-Danielle.

Here it was the middle of the school year, and Autumn could not think of a thing she had done except hang out with Julie-Brooke-Danielle. Everybody else changed friends with each event. They had their sports friends and their music friends, their skating friends and their drama club friends, their computer game friends and their drive-in-the-country friends.

Whereas she, Autumn, was chained to Julie-Brooke-Danielle.

Autumn considered leaving the group. But then, with whom would she experiment when they got new makeup or changed their hair? With whom would she explore the new shops? With whom would she sit in the cafeteria? Giggle on the phone?

If she gave up Julie-Brooke-Danielle, how would she find other friends? Had she been nice enough to other girls that they would even want to be friends with her?

Sometimes you saw girls who were often alone, like Sal. Sal looked fine out there all by herself. She looked easy and content, as if this were her master plan. But Autumn couldn’t imagine sitting or walking or shopping alone. She was always a little relieved when Mariah raced over and found Sal and then there were two of them. Autumn hated seeing people on their own.

Mariah was one of the more interesting people Autumn knew. Caught up in some other world, as if inside her head, she was writing screenplays or inventing new computers. Mariah was pretty in a soft way; a gentle way; whereas Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle were good-looking in strong ways, with bold clothes and defined hair, elegant features and crowd-crossing voices.

Autumn observed the procession of kids up to and away from the bulletin board. It began with Andrew, on whom Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle had all had crushes at one time or another. Andrew was the best. He seemed to have been peeled out of a television soap opera; he had the distinctive quality of stardom, and he knew it, and his every move was photogenic. It was comic, the way he would turn this way and that, as if he thought even algebra was a photo opportunity or that casting directors sat in on English quizzes.

Andrew and Mariah signed their names on something. Tommy did not. Autumn was intrigued. When she reached the bulletin board, they had moved on, but the sheet betrayed them. They were taking a Night Class.

I could do that, thought Autumn. Suppose I put my name on this list. But suppose Julie-Brooke-Danielle come by, and read it, and see that I’ve done something without permission.

Permission? Autumn had never thought of her group that way before—a little cult whose permission was required. Immediately Autumn was furious with herself and with Julie-Brooke-Danielle just for existing. I’m an individual! she thought. I have my own life, thank you very much!

She dug around in her purse for a pencil that still had a point, but just as she pressed the lead against the sheet, she panicked. Jeopardize her friendships for some old night class that didn’t even describe itself? Should she … ? What if she … ? What if Julie-Brooke-Danielle … ? Messily, Autumn scrawled letters that might be read as A. Ivers, but might also be interpreted as C. Tuems or D. James.

This made Autumn giggle—she giggled well—and she breezed down the hallway, delighted with herself, and the sudden secret of her very own activity.

Ned examined the bulletin board announcement. Very odd. Andrew, Mariah, and Autumn had all signed up for something that was not identified. (Not that you could tell it was Autumn’s writing; he knew only because he’d watched her. Who would have thought a fastidious girl like Autumn would have scrap-heap handwriting?)

Ned assumed that everybody else just had more information than he did. This was the case with most of his life—why not night class, too? Ned always seemed to be the one who didn’t know the address, the hour, the host, or even the year.

Andrew, Mariah, and Autumn, thought Ned.

Ned was one of those skinny boys to whom nobody ever spoke. When girls were skinny, everybody told them how wonderful they looked and what great wardrobes they had. When girls were
too
skinny, they were instead anorexic or glamorous, depending on how you felt about figures. But when boys were skinny, they were just skinny. Worthless and nonathletic. Funny hair, spotted face, feet that went the wrong way during a basketball game, so you scored for the opposite team and were despised for the rest of your life.

This was Ned.

Junior high had been a form of hell for Ned, and he believed he had insight about hell: He knew what form payment would take if you misbehaved on earth. You would be in eighth grade for eternity.

By now, a junior in high school, Ned had found parts of himself. Not enough to be a whole person, but enough to have partial friendships and occasional admission to groups. He was continually on the lookout for more pieces of his real personality, sort of like a prospector looking for petroleum. It was out there somewhere, it was just a matter of sinking a well in the right place.

Could Night Class be the right place?

Autumn came in a group, and he had never thought of her as a single person. If he had, he would have been afraid of her, as he was afraid of Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle. They had a sort of ferocity about them, four being infinitely stronger than one, and Ned lowered his eyes whenever he saw them. Not that the Autumns of the world glanced in the direction of the Neds.

Autumn’s hair changed constantly, because a Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle hobby was hair. Autumn was blonde at the moment, although Ned also liked her hair when it was black, and the auburn stage was pretty stunning, too.

Mariah, now, had what Ned thought of as a mom-smile. It wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t glamorous. It was a smile you’d like to come home to. Ned was embarrassed by this thought. But Mariah would never look at Ned, either. Mariah’s eyes focused in some different way than anybody else’s; you never once knew what Mariah was looking at, or thinking of. It gave her an aura, not of being lost, but of being unreachable.

Ned thought longingly of Andrew, who was a finished product. Who had entered kindergarten in a completed state, never mind high school, already knowing everything, including the right people.

A small, intimate night class. What better place to make friends, to inch ahead in the terrible world of popularity?

Ned signed up for Night Class.

Andrew passed the bulletin board again that day. Four names there now: his own printing; Mariah’s pretty script; a scrawl that could be anything; Ned Wilton’s nervous scribble.

Andrew stepped back into a niche between two windows in which he often stood. The walls of the little niche protected him in some way he did not understand, and was ashamed of. He was strong, poised, popular, and sophisticated. Why, then, did he like to step into the shadows, as it were, and watch people instead of being with them? Why did he act as if the kids were unreal, his classmates just a channel he would change if they got boring?

Andrew was afraid he would turn out to be a watcher rather than a player. Not only did that seem sad and not much fun, it sounded wrong. To be part of the human race, shouldn’t you join and give and take? What made him want to watch? What made him yearn for shadows and corners and invisibility?

He considered crossing his name off Night Class.

Andrew was forever shouldering some major burden. He couldn’t just play football; he had to train the student manager. He couldn’t just have a part in the play; he had to sell the most tickets. He couldn’t just do a science project; he had to try to win nationwide contests. His shrink said (Andrew’s entire family went to psychiatrists, although nobody was nuts that Andrew could see) it was because he was trying to tame the world.

A class with Ned, Autumn, and Mariah. Andrew had to think about that assortment.

Mariah was always elsewhere. He had been fascinated by her since his fascination with girls began. She was a drifter, rowing with one oar, sailing without a chart, and happy doing it. Andrew had not the slightest clue to Mariah, who seemed at one and the same time to be listening intently to anything Andrew said, and yet caught in thoughts so engrossing she probably didn’t even know Andrew’s name.

Andrew wanted his name known. He wanted to be famous. He wasn’t sure what he would be famous at. He wasn’t musical so it wouldn’t be as a recording star, and he disliked the stage, because the stage was so much the opposite of shadow and corner. But one day, Andrew knew, fame would be his.

Once a few years ago, Andrew’s mother said that the house was overflowing with junk and she wasn’t keeping it anymore. She began throwing away artifacts of his childhood—old spelling tests and clay handprints and ancient Halloween costumes.

History would want this stuff! She couldn’t deprive the world of his, Andrew’s, childhood. Andrew stopped himself from saying this out loud, thank goodness, and then he seized his ego and held it under cold water for a while.

Andrew never told his shrink about his immense ego, because that would give the shrink clues. Stuff to work with. Andrew’s goal in analysis was to keep the shrink in the dark.

In the dark.

What would Night Class be? A class of the dark?

Andrew was suddenly, horrifically, engulfed in darkness. The darkness was so complete that he could believe a holocaust had destroyed the sun and the earth and certainly the school. He closed his eyes against it, trying to find sunlight inside himself, but there, too, it was entirely dark. And appealing. He liked the dark. He liked thinking about the dark.

He knew, suddenly, that it was not so much a class that happened to take place at night. It was a class
of the
night. A class for the dark.

An instructor Andrew did not recognize paused in front of the bulletin board. The instructor’s back was to Andrew, and there was something invisible about the back itself: It had no gender, no description, no personality.

With a black felt marker, the instructor slashed a fat black zigzag below the four names and wrote two more words. Printing like gashes in flesh filled the bottom of the sheet.

CLASS CLOSED.

W
HEN IT WAS TIME
to leave for Night Class, Autumn had no ride.

She was a mile from the school and had certainly never walked that mile. Californians loved exercise: They jogged, they ran, they worked out; they swam, they surfed, they skated … but they didn’t walk to school. Certainly not.