When I reached the dorm, I caught a glimpse of something moving out of the corner of my eye. I turned and saw, in the distance at the far end of the Lawn, a small, dark figure, barely registering in the faint light from the footlights, outside the chapel. It paused and then disappeared—I blinked and the apparition was gone. Gooseflesh broke out across my arms and shoulders. I shook my head, angry at myself; this wasn’t a ghost, but someone sneaking into the chapel after hours. I stood outside the dorm, my hand on the door handle, and then I turned my back on the dorm and struck out across the Lawn for Saint Matthew’s.
The front door of the chapel was shut tight, and there was no sign of the figure I had seen there just moments before. The door, however, was unlocked, and I slipped inside, closing the door behind me. Within, the air was stale, smelling of old books. Beyond the foyer, the rows of wooden pews stretched toward the marble altar at the far end of the nave. There was somebody in front of the altar. In the blue moonlight that streamed in through the stained-glass windows, I could barely make out the shape of a boy. He was saying something or making a noise of some kind. Then I heard it more clearly: laughter.
I clenched my teeth. “Who’s there?” I called out, my voice falling flat in the dead air, and the figure jumped as if shot. It turned, and I saw it was Ben Sipple, his eyes impossibly huge even at that distance.
“Are you all right?” I asked, approaching him. He kept his eyes locked on mine. As I drew closer, I could see his eyes were swollen and red, and tears shone on his cheeks. He had not been laughing—he had been sobbing.
“Mr. Glass?” he asked in a small voice.
“Ben?”
“Terence died,” he said. His voice nearly broke on died.
Slowly I nodded.
“He was my friend,” Ben said. He was shivering. I couldn’t look away from his eyes. There was something grief stricken and mad about them, something dangerous.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Ben let out a sob of laughter. “Everyone’s sorry,” he said. “They’re so sorry about Terence. Well, fuck them.”
“Okay,” I said. I was still moving slowly toward him, like a negotiator approaching an armed hostage-taker.
“And fuck you, too, Mr. Glass.”
I nodded. “Fuck me, too.” For a second, Ben’s angry mask slipped, and he looked confused, even frightened. I bore down on him before he could raise that mask again. “Fuck all of them. I know. I know exactly what you mean, Ben. I do. I understand. I wish I didn’t, but I do.” I realized my eyes were wet with tears and wondered when that had happened.
Then I was standing directly in front of Ben, still holding his gaze. He didn’t move, just stared in helpless frustration and anger. I thought if I reached out and touched him, the shock would hurl me back as if I’d touched a live cable. Gently, I said, “Why did you come here, Ben? Did you . . . Do you want to pray?”
Ben’s lip trembled. “I don’t believe in God,” he said in a low voice. Then, as if taking courage from his own words, he said firmly, “I don’t believe in God.” His face hardened. He spun around and, with a sweep of his arm, knocked the candlesticks with their unlit candles off the altar. I fumbled for him, tried to grab him around the chest, but he dodged out of my reach and with both hands grasped the white cloth covering the altar, yanking it off so it belled into the air like a sail. He would have gone for the crucifix next, carved out of mahogany and fixed to the front of the pulpit, if I hadn’t finally gotten him into an awkward bear hug. For a few seconds he thrashed and kicked, screaming horribly and cursing. Then he collapsed into sobs, leaning back against me so that I had to brace myself with my legs to hold his weight. I squatted, my hands on Ben’s arms as I guided him to sit on the floor. We sat there for a long time, saying nothing, Ben crying into his hands as I sat beside him, my hand on his shoulder in the darkened chapel.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Terence Jarrar’s room was depressing even without the knowledge that he was dead. The bottom bunk held a sagging mattress draped with a brown comforter. A tattered composition notebook and chewed pencil lay on the desk. A lava lamp sat unlit and dormant in the corner. Presiding over everything was a poster of a glowering Snoop Dogg wreathed in smoke and gold chains. Terence’s roommate, Brian Schue, was gone for the weekend with his parents in Charlottesville. I wondered if the news had reached him yet. The dorm was still, even for early Sunday morning. Usually someone was taking a shower or playing music or holding loud echoing conversations in the stairwell, but today it was eerily quiet, everyone huddled in their rooms. I hadn’t been able to sleep, so a little after dawn I had gotten out of bed, washed my face, and climbed the stairs up to Terence’s dorm room to gather his things for his parents as Sam had asked me to do.
It occurred to me, as I stood in his room, that collecting his things would be harder than it sounded. Dirty laundry vomited forth from the open closet and lay in a funky reek on the floor, and while I could guess that Terence’s dresser was the one beneath the Snoop Dogg poster, I couldn’t be sure whose clothes were whose in the heap of laundry. Maybe Terence’s mother had ironed his name into his shirts like so many mothers still did, and like my own mother had. Then I remembered how Terence’s body had been identified—just yesterday—by his name on the sweatshirt label. At that thought, I actually had to sit down on Terence’s bed and wait out the moment. I didn’t sob or tear out my hair—I was too drained for melodrama. It was more like enduring some sort of gut cramp, waiting it out until it decided to stop. The moment passed, and I got back up, wiped the back of my hand across my eyes, and looked in the closet for a duffel bag or suitcase in which to put Terence’s belongings.