Night School (9 page)

Choice. It was a terrible word. You spent your life aching to be chosen … and then you were.

The school was full of gangs. Some wore colors, and carried knives or guns, and their jackets broadcast their names. This was not the sort of gang that bothered Bevin.

The gangs that went after Bevin were more respectable. Like the group in math: Kevin, Cody, and Casey. They entertained themselves by shoving him, mimicking him, destroying his papers, kicking in his locker, and spitting on him.

The math teacher knew. Invariably, the math teacher would manage to turn his back just as Kevin, Cody, and Casey were going to do something. When the boys were done, the math teacher would face them again.

Smiling.

Every night, in despair, Bevin analyzed himself.

What is wrong with me? How do I correct it?

That was last year, that struggle to correct.

This year, he did not try to figure out what was wrong with him. He knew with the certainty of a stone falling that he would hit the earth one day, and be destroyed. It was simply a matter of time.

Bevin, locked into loneliness, knew that time was running out for him.

Mariah slowed down.

Remotely Andrew remembered Mariah’s brother, Bevin. A lower life form, really. One of those losers who never even tried to find a seat in the cafeteria; nobody wanted him, and it was better to press up against the wall, using the cement blocks for company. An ETS if I’ve ever seen one, thought Andrew.

An ETS if I’ve ever seen one,
said the instructor.
Shall I assign Bevin to someone?

Bevin is home alone, thought Mariah. Alone in the dark.

“We need the film,” whispered Autumn. She had managed not to get sick. Now the point was getting that film and destroying it so that people who mattered, like her mother and father, would never see it. “Mr. Phillips was a good subject,” she said quickly, placating the instructor, “but there’s no need to repeat him. He’s used now. So we need the film.”

The instructor laughed. It was like a storm coming, a distant roll of thunder and a faint crack of lightning.

Autumn, are you thinking of your mother and your father? Your mother and your father have always been proud of how responsible and thoughtful you are. Are you worried that they might not want to watch this film? The one that shows how you revelled in the SC your friend Mariah so generously offered us?

How would he show it to them? thought Autumn. Would it just start playing on the TV screen? Would it show on the windowpane one night when they were home alone in the dark? Would it come in the mail, or just appear on the shelf next to the VCR?

Ned said, “Come on, give us a break. Keep the film on Mr. Phillips, but give us back the one that shows us. Nobody’s parents want to see that.”

We’ve given up Mr. Phillips, thought Andrew. We’re saving ourselves, except for Mariah, who is saving Bevin.

Ah, but the party,
said the instructor.
How
c
ould you have forgotten our party? Refreshments in the dark. Movies. Graduation. We will be showing the film then. Who knows whom we might invite for that?

Andrew bluffed. “We’re not staying in class, so there won’t be any graduation party, so there.”

At the risk of repeating myself too often, may I remind you that there is no dropping out. Now remember what counts,
said the instructor.
Pizza and normalcy, as I recall, were your list. You are safe, by the way. Students are not SCs. You may be quite comfortable alone in the dark. It is only those around you who are at risk. Those who wrongly trusted you.

The shadows moved.

Where it had been pitch-black, it was now merely gray.

The instructor was leaving.

His reminder was barely a crackle of palm leaves.

Don’t forget your homework,
he said.

Mariah and Autumn, who had ridden over together in Mariah’s car, rushed inside the restaurant like explorers coming in out of the arctic snow. They fell on each other, in the safe, silly companionship of sisterhood.

Ned and Andrew, coming in after them, carefully avoided any such thing. But when Autumn and Mariah stepped back from each other, all four laughed the wild, giddy laughter of getting through something together. It was the laugh of survivors.

But did we survive? thought Autumn. I guess I don’t want to think about it. I have enough problems already.

This was a lie. Autumn had very few problems. Certainly no girl in the high school would ever have considered Autumn’s problems real, and Autumn knew it.

Autumn moved quickly toward pizza and normalcy. “What a little night class can do to a person! I feel sure that tomato sauce and mozzarella will solve it.”

Grabbing Ned’s and Mariah’s hands, Autumn dragged them toward a good booth. Andrew, who was holding Mariah’s other hand, was last in line. That seemed reasonable. He had certainly stood last in line out there in the shadows.

“Extra cheese!” said Mariah.

“No anchovies,” Ned reminded them. He hoped Autumn would give him points for remembering that she was anti-anchovy. Autumn had slid into the booth first, against the wall, and Ned, as daring as a man scaling a cliff, sat next to her. To his amazement, she smiled. It was a real smile. A friendship smile. A yes-I’m-glad-you’re-here smile.

He knew better than to believe for a fraction of a second that Autumn
liked
him, as in wanting to date, but she liked him, and that alone went beyond Ned’s wildest dreams.

What was Night Class? he thought. I don’t even know what I think about what I thought back there, let alone what I think really happened.
If
anything really happened.

Ned had been incredibly scared in the car driving here. He didn’t care how many reassurances the instructor had given, the fact was that the world was full of Night Classes, searching for an ETS, and Ned was afraid he was as obvious as Bevin.

I don’t want to be an Easy To Scare, he thought. I want to be a Tough To Scare, or even an Impossible To Scare.

He decided to believe that he’d been afraid of the girls. To make up for it, he grinned widely at Autumn, who was busy with the menu, and Mariah, who was busy with Andrew.

Deep wrinkles crossed faded skin dotted with brown age spots. Wrists and ankles sagged as if filled with sloshing water. Eyes didn’t focus well anymore and thin white hair stood up like a baby’s after a nap.

She was somebody’s grandmother, although her family lived across the country and hadn’t seen her in several years.

She was close to a century old and looked more. She couldn’t drive anymore, her hands were too arthritic to curl safely around a steering wheel.

Luckily Mrs. Deale lived near a main street with several little strip malls. She could walk (or on arthritic days, totter) down to get her groceries, her prescriptions, and her cup of coffee. She loved the diner. It was toasty inside (Mrs. Deale couldn’t get warm in summer anymore, never mind winter) and waitresses would call her by name and remember that she liked her English muffin dry, with strawberry jam.

How much lonelier the little house seemed after the chatter and gossip of acquaintances. How much quieter the empty rooms. How much longer the shadows of evening.

Mrs. Deale had begun thinking about shadows lately. When she looked directly at a shadow, it was nothing but dark space. But when the shadow was at the side, and she saw it through the corners of her eyes, the shadows had life and were springing toward her.

She had begun leaving the television on all the time.

They were her friends: those television people. She loved morning news shows and quizzes, soaps and nature shows, and basketball games and car races.

But beyond the television, in the other three rooms of her little house, the emptiness lay there like something waiting. The darkness had changed character, and sometimes it seemed even to have a smell of its own, as if her house desperately needed cleaning.

Mrs. Deale used to tour the house, checking locks and windows and drapes, feeling secure. Now she just sat tight in the little living room with the little TV, hoping she would be all right.

It was such a wicked world. Gangs and wildings and hooligans.

And loneliness.

Such loneliness.

Around Mrs. Deale, the dark was an evil stranger, testing the doors … plucking at the window locks … eager to sneak in … and get her.

Andrew didn’t bother with the menu. “Does anybody besides me want onions, peppers, sausage, hamburger, pepperoni, olives—”

“Yes, everybody besides you wants everything,” said Autumn.

“Except anchovies,” said Ned again.

Andrew ordered a pitcher of Coke and an extra large pizza, with everything except anchovies. He was drenched with relief. The film would not be in school. He didn’t have to worry about Mr. Phillips. The instructor was saving it for the party. I’ll figure out a way to deal with the party when the time comes, Andrew told himself, with the assurance of a superkid, who always manages to pull it off when the time comes.

He turned to Mariah. He was good at meaningless flirting. He tucked her hair lightly behind her ear, and with the same finger, pretended to adjust a tangled earring. “You look lovely tonight,” he said.

Mariah tilted ever so slightly against him, and he smiled, though not directly at her, and leaned toward her.

My homework, he thought. I have math and English to do. As for choosing an ETS, I don’t have to do that till next Wednesday. Maybe it’ll all go away by then. ETS. It doesn’t sound so bad abbreviated. As long as I think of it by its initials, I could choose one. It isn’t a person, just an ETS.

“By the way, who is Bevin?” Autumn asked Mariah, as if she were asking something ordinary.

“My brother,” said Mariah, sitting up, leaving the sweet warmth of Andrew’s arm. How to describe Bevin to a girl like Autumn? Autumn who had never once in her life lacked best friends and ringing phones and company for everything. She studied the other three teenagers in the pizza booth. Homework. Would Autumn or Andrew or Ned pick my brother? Am I among Bevin’s enemies?

“He’s a person without friends,” said Mariah at last.

“What a horrible description!” cried Autumn. “There must be something else to say about him! He must be good at something, or he loves something, or he works incredibly hard on something.”

No, thought Mariah, it defines Bevin completely. He is a person without friends.

Andrew felt the distance between himself and Mariah as worlds; glaciers. He wanted her back, leaning on him. He wanted to offer to be Bevin’s friend. But Bevin might not be interested. He might be so conditioned to pain that he’d assume Andrew had some unpleasant motive.

And what if Bevin took Andrew up on it?

I’d have to adopt him, thought Andrew. He saw Bevin then as a great burden: a heavy depressing thing to carry around.

So he offered nothing, but hoped the pizza would arrive soon and give them something better to discuss.

Autumn was more observant than the rest because she was accustomed to watching her usual companions so closely. Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle were very demanding of each other. It was essential to watch, calculate, plan, analyze. They were no ordinary foursome; they must always be impressive to outsiders.

Autumn knew that the last thing anybody wanted to talk about was Night Class, and she also knew that they wanted to talk of nothing but Night Class. She was the giver and the peacemaker in Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle. She would give and make here, too. She’d supply the opening; they could pick up the subject if they wanted.

“Next Wednesday,” said Autumn, “let’s carpool. It’s the fashionable, politically correct thing to carpool, and I personally never have. Let’s go together to Night Class.”

Ned had never carpooled, either. Nor met anyone who did. Tree-hugging, Doc Martens-wearing, granola-crunching people believed in carpooling, but naturally, for somebody else, not them. Everybody Ned knew loved being alone in a car as much as Ned did. “I’ll drive,” said Ned eagerly. Either his mother’s Volvo or his father’s Suburban would be perfect. Roomy with a great sound system.

The pizza arrived.

Nobody had to answer quite yet. They could exclaim over how wonderful it looked, how hot and yummy and tasty it would be.

For two things had come to four minds.

If they carpooled, that meant they were going again to night school, and would be doing their homework, choosing an ETS like Bevin.

And if Ned drove, they would have to admit they hung out with such a loser, even accepted rides with him, the ultimate display of comradeship.

That’s what this is about, thought Autumn clearly. The winners and the losers. You always have to be sure you’re in the right camp. I’m a winner. I can’t risk it.

“Is everything all right?” said the waiter. He meant the pizza.

But of course, no matter how yummy the pizza might be, nothing was all right.

“B
EVIN?” CALLED MARIAH.

Every single light in the house was on.

She began turning them off. Her parents were also big on saving electricity and would not care for this waste of bulb and wattage. “Bevin?”

She felt wonderful. Andrew had driven behind her to be sure she was never alone on the way home. How fascinating it was, the division between daydream Andrew and the real Andrew. Real Andrew was less sure of himself. Less predictable. She lost him to his thoughts throughout the evening, and he had a habit of rubbing his jaw that she had never noticed in school, or had him do in her secret life with him. He ate pizza much more voraciously than she’d expected, wolfing down half a wedge in a single mouthful and laughing through cheese and tomato.

She had a nice warm sense of being able to shelve the pretend Andrew. Setting that Andrew aside, and moving on in the world to real Andrews, real dates, real kisses. He had not kissed her. But he had waved good-bye when she got out of her car, and waited patiently for her to unlock her own front door, and get in, and wave back that she was safe.