December Park(78)

“I have to turn my recommendations in next week. I’d like to put your name on the list but only if you want to do it.”

“Aren’t those AP classes for kids going to college next year? Seniors, I mean.”

“Don’t you plan to go to college eventually?”

“I guess,” I said. “The community college.”

Mr. Mattingly rubbed at the cleft in his chin. “What does your father think about it?”

“He said it’s up to me. Whatever I wanted to do.” Which sounded like absolute bullshit, especially to anyone who knew my father. Thankfully, Mr. Mattingly did not.

“Maybe he could come in after school one day? The three of us could sit down and discuss it.”

Not a chance, I thought, knowing damn well my father would kill me if he found out I’d been shucking an opportunity to advance to an AP class.

“You know, he’s pretty busy,” I said, and it sounded so impossibly weak I expected him to laugh in my face.

“I’m sure he’d make the time for something this important.”

I sucked at my lower lip. It was decision time. “Okay, sign me up for the class. Might as well give it a shot.”

Mr. Mattingly nodded and seemed suddenly pleased with himself. When he slipped back into his classroom, it occurred to me that the son of a bitch had called my bluff. For a few extra seconds I watched him through the doorway as he shoved papers into his briefcase and swept the blackboard with a big fuzzy eraser.

I thought of Michael’s list of potential murderers and how Mr. Mattingly had been on it. It had made some sense at the time, because he was fairly new to our school and to Harting Farms, but standing here now and watching the man go about his daily routine, the notion seemed utterly preposterous.

“How come you don’t want to take AP English?” It was Rachel Lowrey, who had materialized like a ghost beside me.

“What do I need with AP classes?” I said, moving across the hall to my locker. The place was mostly cleared out by now, though a few students remained shouting at each other at the far end of C Hall.

“I think you’d be good at it. I read that short story you wrote for the school magazine last year. The one about the girl who falls off the ladder.”

This surprised me. My friends hadn’t even read it, though in fairness, I hadn’t told them it had been published, and they never picked up copies of the school magazine. “Oh yeah?”

“I thought it was really great.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you like to write?”

I pulled my books from my backpack and stuffed them into my locker. “Sometimes.”

“I think that’s really cool.”

“Really? Well, thanks.”

“I write some poetry but it’s pretty horrible. I’d never let anyone read it. I’d be too embarrassed to ever have it published. Not that anyone would actually publish it.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know.”

“I feel that way about my stories, too. But I thought it would be cool to see one in the school magazine, so I sent it in. I mean, they publish anything they get, but it was still neat.” Thinking I sounded like a blathering idiot, I willed myself to stop talking.

“Well, I still thought your story was way cool.”

“Let me read some of your poems,” I said. “I’ll tell you if they’re horrible.”

Rachel laughed.

I remembered kissing her during the Kiss War. I wondered how much different it would be to kiss her now. Her face was narrow and soft, her eyes dark around the edges from the fullness of her lashes. I couldn’t help but look at her lips, too—small, pink.

“You’d really do that for me?” she said.

“Read your stuff? Sure.”

“No,” she said. “Tell me if it’s horrible.”

“I’d give you my honest opinion about it, if that’s what you mean. Besides, what does it matter what I think? I’m not a poet.”

“That’s not true. You were a poet in that story. Anyway, have a good weekend.”

“Later, skater,” I said and watched her go.





My friends were waiting for me in the quad. Scott and Peter were smoking cigarettes while Michael and Adrian sat cross-legged in the grass playing Uno.

“What happened?” Adrian said. “You get in trouble or something?”

“No, it’s cool.” To tell them that Mr. Mattingly wanted me to transfer to AP English next year was to invite unrelenting ribbing. Michael might even start calling me Poindexter instead of Adrian. So I kept my mouth shut about it. “He just wanted to go over one of my papers. No big deal.”

“We still gonna head to the library?” Scott asked.

Over lunch we had decided to go to the public library and pull up all the newspaper articles on Courtney Cole to glean some insight that might better direct our next course of action. Scott had already tried to look them up in the school library, but they didn’t have any newspapers older than a couple of months, and none had been archived on microfilm.

We headed down Broad Street, then turned onto Solomon’s Bend Road. School buses farted by, their brakes squealing as they approached the intersection. At the bottom of Solomon’s Bend Road, we took a shortcut through the underpass and cut directly across December Park. As we entered the mouth of the underpass, its black cobblestones still glistening from yesterday’s downpour, I wondered if Courtney Cole had come this way the day she was approached by the killer. The thought gave me chills.