December Park(35)

When the bell rang, I expected Adrian to follow me out, but he didn’t. He gathered up his books, strapped a ridiculously large backpack to his shoulders, and bustled out of the classroom ahead of me. In the hallway, he vanished among the sea of students.

The following day, I said hello to him as I crossed the aisle on the way to my desk. He gazed up at me from his seat, his expression one of perplexity behind his thick glasses. When he recognized me, he offered me a partial smile that seemed to have no feeling behind it.

For the next fifty-five minutes, I wondered if Adrian would come up to me after class. But once again, the moment the bell trilled, he was up and out the door. Strangely, I found myself more troubled by his ignoring me than if he’d latched onto me and followed me around like a puppy.

One afternoon before class started, a kid named George Drexler strutted over to Adrian’s desk. Adrian was staring absently at his textbook. Drexler, who was a stocky little prick with bad teeth, pointed to what looked like a doodle in the margin of a page, and said, “Hey, did you draw that?”

Adrian looked up at him. “Yeah.” Then he smiled meagerly like he’d just befriended someone who appreciated his artistic talent.

“Cool,” said Drexler before returning to his seat. Thirty seconds later, as Mr. Mattingly entered the classroom with his briefcase and a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup, Drexler raised his hand. When Mr. Mattingly called on him, Drexler said, “The new kid drew all over his textbook.”

I kept an eye out for Adrian in the cafeteria, but I could never spot him. Toward the end of the week, I wandered outside into the quad. It was a chilly November day, and there were only a few students braving the weather, mostly the hopheads who didn’t get along with the rest of the student body. Adrian was not here, either.

Similarly, my friends and I never caught up with him as we walked home from school. Adrian lived right next door to me, but I never saw him walking along Worth Street in those first few weeks. On a couple of occasions I was tempted to knock on his door, but the thought of entering that stale, tomb-like house again caused my skin to break out into braille.

“Have you met him yet?” Peter asked me one afternoon as we walked home from school.

“Yeah. My grandma made me bring cookies over to the house the day they moved in. He’s in my English class, too.”

“What’s he like?”

“Kind of strange. He’s already missed a couple of classes.”

“Your dad’s not gonna make you hang out with him, is he?”

“Are you kidding? No way I’m hanging out with him. The kid’s a spaz.”

In fact, my father never said a word about the new neighbors. Not only was he overworked, but he was at his all-time lowest around the holidays. Charles’s absence weighed heaviest on him this time of year, and I suppose he thought often of my mother around this time, too.

We maintained the family tradition of driving out to the Butterfields’ where we bought apples for pies and Indian corn to decorate the front door. Yet my father moved through the Butterfields’ cornstalks and bales of golden hay like a ghost, a humorless grin frozen onto his face. When he paid for the items at the register, he didn’t engage Henry Butterfield in their ritualistic cheerful banter.

Thanksgiving morning, just as I had forgotten all about Adrian Gardiner, he appeared on our front doorstep holding a dish tented with foil. “It’s lasagna, I think. I’m not sure. My mom made it.”

My grandmother took the dish from him—it was our dish, the one that had been stacked with my grandmother’s cookies—then invited him inside. The kid stood in the foyer, shifting from one foot to the other, his ski parka too tight around his shoulders while his glasses looked too big for his face.

“How are you getting along at school?” I asked him.

“It’s okay.”

“Do you like it?”

“Sure.”

“Is it really different than Chicago?”

“I guess so.”

“What about the town? I bet it’s totally different than living in a big city.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you miss your friends?”

“I don’t know.”

Our conversation was strained to the point of breaking, so I wished him a happy Thanksgiving and ushered him out onto the porch. He said nothing in response and seemed relieved to be out the door. From the bay windows in the living room, I watched him cross the lawn toward his house. He dragged his feet and hunched his shoulders and looked like someone who felt uncomfortable merely existing.

The following Sunday, as my family and I drove back from church, I saw Adrian’s narrow little frame packaged in that same undersized parka, marching up Haven Street. He had his bulky backpack strapped to his shoulders, and he walked with his head down, as if the effort of the exercise took so much out of him.

As our car glided past, I stared at him. It looked like he was searching for something in the patch of brownish grass that abutted the shoulder of the road. He did not see me.





Of course, I had more important things to worry about than Adrian Gardiner. In the weeks following my run-in with Keener and his gang on Mischief Night, I had seen Nathan Keener’s truck cruising my neighborhood at odd hours of the day and sometimes in early evening. There was little doubt he was looking for me.