All the Birds in the Sky(30)
Probably the wrong thing to say.
“No way dude,” said someone farther back in the room, in a rumble like a forty-year-old truck driver. “You did not just disrespect Murph. You did not just piss on the memory of our fallen comrade. Tell me I didn’t hear that.”
“Now you’ve done it,” said the noseless kid. “Now you’ve done it.”
“I don’t give a shit about your stupid friend,” Laurence shouted as they lifted him over their heads so he could see the stains on the top-bunk mattresses and the deep fissures in the load-bearing beams. “This place got him, but it won’t get me. You hear me? I’m getting out of here.”
His voice cracked. Fluorescent lighting tubes rushed toward his face until he braced himself for a faceful of glass, and then he was spinning as cheers erupted around him. He gave in to panic at last, as the candy shell of anger split open, and let out a hoarse scream as he was cast, headfirst, into space.
14
Patricia: Where is Laurence?
CH@NG3M3: I don’t know. He hasn’t logged in for a few days.
Patricia: I’m worried something happened to him.
CH@NG3M3: Worry is often a symptom of imperfect information.
PATRICIA TRIED CALLING Laurence’s house to find out what was going on. Laurence’s mother picked up. “This is your fault,” she said. Then she hung up.
Half an hour later, the phone rang at Patricia’s house and her dad picked up. He greeted Laurence’s mom and spent the rest of the conversation saying, “Oh. Oh dear. I see.” After he hung up, he announced that Patricia was grounded indefinitely. At this point, Roberta was too busy with the high-school musical and schoolwork to wait on Patricia hand and foot, so Patricia’s parents went back to sliding food under her door. Her mother said this time they really were cutting their losses with her, once and for all.
Patricia: I keep wondering if I should have told Laurence the whole story, about what Mr. Rose said to me.
CH@NG3M3: What do you think would have happened if you’d told him?
Patricia: He would have thought I was making it up. He would have thought I was nuts. That’s why it was the perfect trap. Whatever I do, I lose.
CH@NG3M3: The trap that can be ignored is no trap.
Patricia: What did you say?
CH@NG3M3: The trap that can be ignored is no trap.
Patricia: That’s a weird thing to say. I guess a good trap should be camouflaged, so you don’t realize you’re walking into it. On the other hand, you have to want to walk into it. A trap that doesn’t make you want to fall in isn’t much of a trap. And once you’re caught, you shouldn’t be able to ignore the trap because you’re stuck. So a trap that you can just pay no attention to is a failure. I guess I get it.
CH@NG3M3: Society is the choice between freedom on someone else’s terms and slavery on yours.
*
CANTERBURY ACADEMY SMELLED so bad, Patricia’s nostrils burned. She kept expecting the fire alarm to go off, it was such a hot smell even on a freezing day. Nobody could find the source of this odor. It was exactly like something had died.
The smell drove Patricia out of her head, just like everyone else. She imagined this was how being drunk would feel. She kept seeing Mr. Rose observing her through the open door of his office, whenever she was between classes. In the girls’ room, Dorothy Glass and Macy Firestone each grabbed one of Patricia’s arms and shoved her up against the mirror, smeared with unidentifiable effluvia. “Tell us what you did,” they hissed at her. Patricia held her breath until they let go.
At lunch, she couldn’t stand it in the library. She kept thinking about the look Mr. Rose had been giving her, when he thought she wasn’t looking. She was sure: He was responsible for Laurence’s disappearance and this debilitating cloud of foulness. The two things were no coincidence. She was surer than caution.
She stalked down the hallway, lockers vibrating with her strides, and she hardly cared that she was getting a faceful of the death stench, with the exertion.
Just as she reached his doorway, a phrase popped into her head: “The trap that can be ignored is no trap.” She caught her breath—maybe CH@NG3M3 was wiser than it knew—but then she breathed in once again, and the maddening decay got in her nostrils again. She was going to confront this monster, once and for all.
“Miss Delfine.” Mr. Rose looked up from his computer and beckoned her to come sit in the nearest carpety chair facing him. The odor was strongest here in Mr. Rose’s office, but he seemed unbothered. “Always a pleasure to see you.” The door closed behind her.
The smell, it was beyond describing. You might as well have punched Patricia in the nose over and over.
“Uh, hi.” Patricia tried to sit still, but she couldn’t help fidgeting. She was at the epicenter of foulness. “I hope I’m not bothering you at a bad time.”
“I’m always here for you, just as I am for all the students here. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m wondering, umm, about Laurence. I haven’t seen him since Tuesday, and it’s Friday, and it seems weird that nobody’s even mentioned him. I was, umm, wondering if you knew what happened to him.”
Mr. Rose spread out his left palm on the desk. “I know as much as you do.” His right hand was doing something under the table. Patricia realized that “I know as much as you do” could be a loaded sentence, since there was a lot that they both knew. Or he was hinting he knew everything she did. Trap trap trap.