The Impossible Fortress(69)

“Please,” I said. “Just one minute.”

“Go on!” the Reverend Mother repeated. “Anyone standing here in five seconds is going to face serious consequences!”

They seemed to understand this was no idle threat. They shuffled backward, reluctantly stepping away from the spectacle. Mary looked absolutely miserable. I’d ruined everything.

“Hang on,” a voice said, and I realized it had come from the barefoot boy standing beside me. “My name is Alfred Boyle and I’ve been an altar boy at St. Stephen’s for the last seven years. You know me, Reverend Mother. I’ve seen you at the five thirty Mass. And I biked all morning to get here. We climbed your mountain and crawled through your mud and your thorns. I lost my sneakers and ruined my best Hard Rock Cafe shirt from Cancun, Mexico. And my poor friend Clark—” He grabbed Clark’s elbow and yanked the Claw free of the shirt, holding it high for everyone to see. “My poor friend Clark destroyed his hand climbing under your fence!” All of the girls gasped, like Alf had just unveiled the Elephant Man. “And we did all of this just so Billy could talk to Mary. So I’m asking you to show a little compassion. Like our savior Jesus Christ taught us in the story of the Good Salmatian.”

The Reverend Mother glared at him, and something twitched at the corner of her lips. “Do you mean Jesus and the Good Samaritan?”

Alf nodded. “That’s what I said.”

The Reverend Mother stepped forward to inspect Clark’s hand. Like the rest of him, it was covered in mud, so you couldn’t tell precisely what was wrong with it. Clark was mortified, but he endured the scrutiny. What else could he do? He let her look, he let everyone look. The other girls were no longer drifting away; if anything, they had moved even closer.

The Reverend Mother turned to me. “You have one minute,” she said. “But no privacy. Say what you need to say, and then we go to my office and call the police.”

I turned to Mary. I tried to remember the exact phrasing of my letter. On paper, everything had seemed so clear and concise. But up in my brain, my thoughts were a mess. Mary started shaking. She looked like she was ready to cry. “I’m sorry to come here like this,” I said. “I just need you to know the truth. I never lied to you. Not about anything. Especially the last night. After the movie. All that stuff was real. I liked you. I still like you.”

I looked at her eyes, so she’d see I was telling the truth; I willed her to believe me. The Impossible Fortress was real. Radical Planet was real. Everything I felt for Mary was real. She was beautiful and kind and funny. She was better than I deserved, and I was a better person for knowing her. I stuttered and stammered and went well over my allotted minute, but in the end no one could accuse me of wussing out. I said everything I came to say, and then some.

Mary looked like she was ready to throw up. Her forehead was beaded with sweat, and she clung to the handrail to keep her balance.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

The Reverend Mother stepped forward. “That’s enough.”

“I’m fine,” Mary whispered. “You should go.”

Water piddled on the concrete steps beneath her feet. A stain spread across the front of her skirt. She was wetting herself.

“Mary?” I asked.

Another sister rushed to Mary’s aid, and everyone started talking at once.

“Get back.”

“Get the nurse.”

“Go to class.”

“He doesn’t know.”

This last voice was Mary’s. I could hear her speaking to the other sisters. They were swarming around her, steering her toward the cool shade of the classroom building. I went to follow, but the Reverend Mother grabbed my arm, yanking me in the opposite direction, whispering hot words into my ear.

“Tell the truth,” she said. “Are you her father?”

I stared back at her, puzzled. “Her father is Sal Zelinsky.”

It was hard to hear anything with all of the shouting. But the Reverend Mother repeated herself, and this time I understood the question clearly: “Are you the father?”





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MY MOTHER INSISTED ON driving me to the hospital. We left our house after dinner, after I’d showered and cleaned myself up. On the drive across town, she tried to manage my expectations.

“This is probably a bad idea,” she said.

“I want to see her,” I said.

“They might not let you see her. If she’s been sedated, or God forbid if anything went wrong—”

“I’ll just ask.”

Mom squeezed the steering wheel tighter. “And Mary could say no. She’s probably not ready to see you. Labor is labor, it’s not like the movies. You need to respect that.”

“I know—”

“No, you don’t know, Billy. You have no idea. This girl is a mother. At age fourteen.” She shuddered at some long-ago memory. “Everyone said I was young, and I was a senior.”