Two hours later and with no hope left in your heart, you arrived on time for Mrs. Schumacher’s English class. Later, you would wonder at the boy who had shown up that day, who had looked directly at Rebekkah on the far side of the room, who had hoisted his arm when Mrs. Schumacher asked, “Any takers for this week’s Bonus Point Salon?” Who had then—unbelievable!—stood before the assembled classmates, grasped a page in a shaking hand, and read aloud from the contents of his soul. Was it just exhaustion? Desperation? You became practically a different person then. You completed your reading. You dropped the page onto Mrs. Schumacher’s desk. Fingers snapped sarcastically. You sat. As Mrs. Schumacher began her lecture on Odysseus’s journey through the underworld, you returned to the Oliver Loving you had been, aflush with shame, watching Rebekkah, in her desk chair, straining not to look at you as she drummed her chin.
Like the cruelest kind of review, not only did Rebekkah fail to show up early to class the next day, she didn’t show up at all. She was absent that day, and the next, and the one after that. At first you were embarrassed, then angry, then worried. By that Thursday, the stain you had seen on her Band-Aids seeped dangerously through your reconsiderations. Was she in real trouble? You decided to seek news from the one person at the school who you thought might be able to offer some explanation. You had never spoken with Mr. Avalon before, and it was no minor feat. A localized aura of fame surrounded Reginald Avalon, that former childhood demistar who had become a vaguely rebellious adult, eschewing teacherly chinos in favor of stylish theatrical blacks.
“Why look,” Mr. Avalon said, dropping his lunchtime sandwich on his desk. “Jed Loving’s boy.”
“Oliver,” you said.
“Oliver, right. You are looking for Rebekkah, I’m guessing.”
Could she have mentioned to her theater teacher you were friends? A painful hope churned inside you.
“I haven’t seen her around for a few days,” you said. “I’m starting to get worried about her. I thought she might have told you why. Is she really sick or something?”
“You’re wondering why?” Mr. Avalon looked at you like a housefly in the cake batter. “You and me both. My whole rehearsal schedule is falling apart, thanks to that girl.”
“So you haven’t heard anything?”
“Rebekkah is a flake,” he said. “A flake! Can’t stick with a single thing. She says a stomach bug. I think she just can’t be bothered.”
You tugged at the collar of your polo shirt, which suddenly irritated your neck. “Can’t be bothered?”
“That’s right,” he said, resuming his lunch, taking an angry bite of sandwich. He spoke to you now through a mouthful of egg salad. “Take this under advisement, and do yourself a favor. Don’t get yourself too involved with that girl.”
But at last, the next morning, Rebekkah came back. It was Friday, a rare overcast dawn, the brown gray plain of desert doubled in the sky. The sun veiled, the desert was nearly cold as you paced nowhere in particular, killing those before-school hours strolling up and down the four blocks of Bliss. It was still a half hour until class began, and, unable to bear the heartache of waiting alone in Mrs. Schumacher’s room, you were kicking around outside the modest redbrick castle of Bliss Township School. You were watching the fraying laces of your once-white Converses sweep the sidewalk when a hand pulled hard on your sleeve. As if your mind had suddenly developed wizardlike powers, when you looked up, your thoughts conjured their object.
“Rebekkah,” you said.
She was slightly breathless. It seemed that she had run to find you, from the direction of the school. “You were looking for me?” you asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You wrote that poem. And I’ve been waiting there in the classroom, you know? So that I could say thank you, I guess.”
“You’re welcome,” you said gruffly, your heart alight.
“I liked it. Really. I know that I might be biased. Ha. I had no idea how much—anyway. I just wanted to say thank you.” Your eyes were back on your shoelaces; the vanilla seduction of her shampooed smell was a kind of cruelty. “You are a real poet,” Rebekkah added, very seriously. “That much is crystal clear.”
“I think I’m quitting poetry. For a while at least.”
“That would be a mistake.”
Did she know how poetry and she had become inseparable for you? Might this have been a sort of invitation? But you remembered your last silent weeks, and you hated her a little for this bit of hope. “Where have you been?” you said.
“Sick.”
“You don’t look good.”
“Really sick.”
“I was worried. I even asked Mr. Avalon about you.”
“I know. He told me. You shouldn’t have. Worried about me, I mean. You shouldn’t.”
“Sorry,” you said gruffly. “But Rebekkah? It’s not just that you’ve been gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I know it’s weird to say.”
“What is?”
You looked at Rebekkah, tried to focus on the density of freckles at the bridge of her nose, but you found you couldn’t say it to her face. You spoke to the sidewalk, the embarrassment of what you had to tell her, with its pitiful admission of how much you had been thinking of her, came out rapid fire, in a single breath. “It’s just that I noticed something, this big bruise on your leg, and I guess, I guess I just let my imagination run away with me, like someone might have hurt you. Or something.”
And yet Rebekkah did not reply. The word hurt seemed to hurt her afresh. Her eyes filled as if she’d just been slapped.
“I’m sorry,” you said again, for some reason.
Rebekkah chewed her lip, looked at her palms, nodded.
“Technically speaking,” Rebekkah said, “legally speaking, I mean—he hasn’t done anything wrong. Believe me. I’ve researched it online. Corporal punishment seems to be one of your state’s proud traditions. Perfectly legal, when it comes to your own kids.”
“Your father?”
Rebekkah felt her hair.
“And it’s not so bad,” she said. “Not like it used to be.”
“You’re not a child, and that wasn’t a spanking. God, Rebekkah.”
Rebekkah shrugged. The sight of her slim shoulders, pressed up to her neck, made you a little breathless. “I’ll tell you something I know for sure,” she said. “It will only get worse if I say anything. If you do. Promise me you won’t.”
“You have to talk to someone.”
“I can’t, like I said. But you shouldn’t worry. It really has gotten better. We’re moving in a better direction, I think. I promise.”
You nodded, puffing your chest out, feeling perversely wonderful in this role. “If it happens again, I’ll have to say something.”
“Well,” she said, “I believe you.”
For a second, you could feel the lovely glow of those many before-school chats stoking back to life, still bright and hot beneath the ash.
“I’m messed up, Oliver,” Rebekkah said. “I don’t do the right things. I’m sorry if I led you on, I know that’s a thing I do. But you don’t want a mean girl like me anyway, right?”
“Don’t tell me what I want.” And then, to your mutual astonishment, you just left Rebekkah standing there as you began to trudge back to the schoolhouse to serve your daily seven hours of silence.