“Angela, is it?” The teacher came in with her class list clasped to her rock-hard chest. “Angela Petitjean?” She said it like this—pettitt-gene. Not much of a linguist. “What’s happening here?” She wore a polo shirt with all the buttons done up, and her bangs were hair-sprayed to one side. “Who did this? Holy smokers, they put some effort into it.” As she spoke, she grunted and ground her fingers into the knots, easing them loose. “Okay—here. Now, pick up the pace! You’ll be late to your next class.”
My pants had a crimped hemline for the rest of the day, like an ’80s disco look. I knew who did it; I knew right away because two girls followed me down the hallway laughing when I emerged from the gym. And they were everywhere: waiting outside the washroom, behind me in the lineup for lunch and three lockers down, leaning against the wall while I tried to get my books organized for English class. The taller one wore dark-purple nail polish and a T-shirt that showed her belly button. Pierced. The other girl dressed identically, even down to the love-heart laces in her sneakers. What is it about teenage girls that makes them impossible to tell apart? I thought it was all in the styling, the makeup, the cloning of boy-band music and favorite movies. Now I realize what bonds and homogenizes them: panic.
Haven’t you noticed, Detective Novak? Girls of fourteen move together in a band of cruelty, always searching for somebody to terrorize as long as it keeps the spotlight off them. They’ll hunt in twos or more because if you’re standing alongside the sniper, it’s unlikely you’ll be the one in the scope.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” the tall one said. “Yeah, we’re not really okay with that.” They giggled. “We like to be asked before things change.”
I didn’t say anything back, but I remember reaching as far into my locker as I could, short of climbing in there and shutting the door.
“What’s with your pants?”
Just then a voice stopped them.
“Back up there, sisters.”
I peeped around the edge of my locker and saw a tall boy a few doors down. He was about fifteen, olive-skinned, blond, with a sleeveless Metallica T-shirt that showed the early bump of deltoids. He wore sandblasted beads around his neck and a navy baseball cap with a D on the front.
“Oh, hey, HP.” Girl number one shook back her bangs.
“Oh, hey,” Girl number two echoed. “Where’d you come from?” She stretched gum from her mouth and twirled the glistening loop with a forefinger.
“Swim practice.” He slammed his locker door and walked towards me.
I think my head tried to turtle down into my shell in that moment as I stood there in my crinkly pants, wide-eyed, holding my English textbook.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you to class.”
This is where the story begins. Grade 10, eleven years ago. Mark it on your sheet, Detective Novak. I’m telling this like it’s the beginning of a love story; I’m catering to your needs as a listener. But we both know that’s not where the narrative’s heading, right? I mean, it’s bound to get much darker—why else would I be telling it in a police interview room? I like that you’re humoring me and letting me steer the ship for a minute. Of course, you might feel I’m not cutting to the chase quickly enough, the way you’re tapping your toe on the linoleum like that; but to be fair, if the chase is a murder, then why am I even here? You want me to just keep going? Okay, whatever you say.
HP and I started down deserted hallways, him scuffing an empty raisin packet along the floor every fifth step. I hadn’t walked beside many boys before—it was all I could do to sneak a glance at the side of his smooth face. A small curve of hair kicked up from under his hat.
“Don’t let Christie Burbank work you over. She’s got nothin’. Just call her Spermbank, that’ll slow her down.” He stopped to tie the lace of his high-top. “And the other one’s Danielle Moyzen. I call her Moistbum.” His face craned up towards me. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“I’m scared to tell you,” I said, and he laughed.
When he stood up, he pulled the top of my English book down from where I held it clenched against me.
“Angela Petitjean,” he said, properly, reading the label on the front. “English Ten. Okay, you’re in here.” He opened the classroom door for me. As I walked through it, he added, “See you around, Little John.”
It was the only class of the day I went into smiling.
He walked me home, too. It turned out he lived a block up from me in a house with a huge birch tree out front. I was ahead of him, trudging along in my gray Converses, when I heard footsteps catching up with me. I turned and there was HP, running with his thumbs hooked under the straps of his skull-embossed backpack.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
We walked in silence as I racked my brain for a conversation to have with him. He knew I was doing it, too, because after a minute he looked down at me.
“Nothing?”
“What does HP stand for?” I blurted. It came out really loud. We’d already reached my driveway so I stopped walking and mumbled, “This is me.”
“Old Man Sneider’s place? You guys bought this house of horrors? Wow, when we were little, we used to hide behind this wall right here and watch for ghosts in the windows.”
“Who did?”
“Me. Kids around here. This house was the only one that never got decorated on Halloween. It never needed to.” HP sighed nostalgically. “And there used to be a shit-scary dog that lived here. I walked to school with a rock in my hand all of Grade Nine.” He took his baseball cap off and ruffled the hair at the back of his neck. He had a line around his head from where he’d thrown his hat on after swimming. “You got a dog?”
“We had one back in Boston but it got re-gifted.”
“By who?” He said it like he was about to get a posse together.
“Mom gave him to a family across town. I think it was a hair thing.”
HP nodded like he understood the logic. We stared at each other. He stretched. “I’ll walk by here tomorrow morning at eight. If you’re here, you’re here.”
I pressed my back against the brick gatepost and looked up at him. “What’s HP stand for?”
“My last name’s Parker, but that’s all you’re getting.” He put his baseball cap back on. “Some secrets you have to earn. I’ll see you around, Little John.”
He stalked off, his fifteen-year-old legs gangly in his skinny jeans. I watched him kick a pebble down the sidewalk, catching up, then punting it on. He did it all the way home.
From then on, the only days I didn’t walk to school with HP were those when one of us was home sick. And as it turned out, the greatest alliance anybody in the school could have was with HP. I never had any trouble from anyone ever again, including Burbank and Moyzen.