Ellen Bran (known as Bran Stoker by students who have taken the Northfield High English Department’s Fantasy and Horror class) is standing by the door of a schoolbus parked in the River Bend Resort reception area. Her cell phone is in her hand. It’s four P.M. on Sunday afternoon, and she is about to call 911 to report a missing student. That’s when Peter Saubers comes pelting around the restaurant side of the building, running so fast that his hair flies back from his forehead.
Ellen is unfailingly correct with her students, always staying on the teacher side of the line and never trying to buddy up, but on this one occasion she casts propriety aside and enfolds Pete in a hug so strong and frantic that it nearly stops his breath. From the bus, where the other NHS class officers and officers-to-be are waiting, there comes a sarcastic smatter of applause.
Ellen lets up on the hug, grabs his shoulders, and does another thing she’s never done to a student before: gives him a good shaking. ‘Where were you? You missed all three morning seminars, you missed lunch, I was on the verge of calling the police!’
‘I’m sorry, Ms Bran. I was sick to my stomach. I thought the fresh air would help me.’
Ms Bran – chaperone and adviser on this weekend trip because she teaches American Politics as well as American History – decides she believes him. Not just because Pete is one of her best students and has never caused her trouble before, but because the boy looks sick.
‘Well … you should have informed me,’ she says. ‘I thought you’d taken it into your head to hitchhike back to town, or something. If anything had happened to you, I’d be blamed. Don’t you realize you kids are my responsibility when we’re on a class trip?’
‘I lost track of the time. I was vomiting, and I didn’t want to do it inside. It must have been something I ate. Or one of those twenty-four-hour bugs.’
It wasn’t anything he ate and he doesn’t have a bug, but the vomiting part is true enough. It’s nerves. Unadulterated fright, to be more exact. He’s terrified about facing Andrew Halliday tomorrow. It could go right, he knows there’s a chance for it to go right, but it will be like threading a moving needle. If it goes wrong, he’ll be in trouble with his parents and in trouble with the police. College scholarships, need-based or otherwise? Forget them. He might even go to jail. So he has spent the day wandering the paths that crisscross the thirty acres of resort property, going over the coming confrontation again and again. What he will say; what Halliday will say; what he will say in return. And yes, he lost track of time.
Pete wishes he had never seen that fucking trunk.
He thinks, But I was only trying to do the right thing. Goddammit, that’s all I was trying to do!
Ellen sees the tears standing in the boy’s eyes, and notices for the first time – perhaps because he’s shaved off that silly singles-bar moustache – how thin his face has become. Really just half a step from gaunt. She drops her cell back into her purse and comes out with a packet of tissues. ‘Wipe your face,’ she says.
A voice from the bus calls out, ‘Hey Saubers! D’ja get any?’
‘Shut up, Jeremy,’ Ellen says without turning. Then, to Pete: ‘I should give you a week’s detention for this little stunt, but I’m going to cut you some slack.’
Indeed she is, because a week’s detention would necessitate an oral report to NHS Assistant Principal Waters, who is also School Disciplinarian. Waters would inquire into her own actions, and want to know why she had not sounded the alarm earlier, especially if she were forced to admit that she hadn’t actually seen Pete Saubers since dinner in the restaurant the night before. He had been out of her sight and supervision for nearly a full day, and that was far too long for a school-mandated trip.
‘Thank you, Ms Bran.’
‘Do you think you’re done throwing up?’
‘Yes. There’s nothing left.’
‘Then get on the bus and let’s go home.’
There’s more sarcastic applause as Pete comes up the steps and makes his way down the aisle. He tries to smile, as if everything is okay. All he wants is to get back to Sycamore Street and hide in his room, waiting for tomorrow so he can get this nightmare over with.
10
When Hodges gets home from the hospital, a good-looking young man in a Harvard tee-shirt is sitting on his stoop, reading a thick paperback with a bunch of fighting Greeks or Romans on the cover. Sitting beside him is an Irish setter wearing the sort of happy-go-lucky grin that seems to be the default expression of dogs raised in friendly homes. Both man and dog rise when Hodges pulls into the little lean-to that serves as his garage.
The young man meets him halfway across the lawn, one fisted hand held out. Hodges bumps knuckles with him, thus acknowledging Jerome’s blackness, then shakes his hand, thereby acknowledging his own WASPiness.
Jerome stands back, holding Hodges’s forearms and giving him a once-over. ‘Look at you!’ he exclaims. ‘Skinny as ever was!’
‘I walk,’ Hodges says. ‘And I bought a treadmill for rainy days.’
‘Excellent! You’ll live forever!’
‘I wish,’ Hodges says, and bends down. The dog extends a paw and Hodges shakes it. ‘How you doing, Odell?’
Odell woofs, which presumably means he’s doing fine.