McGuire looked at me, opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it, and then nodded before heading off to call Ren Middleton. Bull stayed in the room, his wide shoulders blocking the doorway so that other students, drawn out of their rooms by the commotion, had to peek around him to see Paul Simmons, the headmaster’s son, lying on the floor and crying as if his heart were breaking right before our eyes.
MCGUIRE CAME BACK A little later, sent the gawking students away, and said Ren Middleton would meet us in fifteen minutes. He said this a bit accusingly, as if I’d dragged him into trouble, but he also looked interested despite himself. I told him that I’d found Paul in the outing cabin, which was strictly off-limits to students. This was enough to satisfy McGuire, although he kept glancing at my face. I knew my eye and cheek had swollen, could feel the skin tightening, but I said nothing about it and McGuire didn’t ask. We walked downstairs, and I asked McGuire to escort Paul, who was now limp and silent, to Ren’s office while I stopped by my apartment. McGuire hesitated, but then walked off with Paul as I cut across the Lawn to Lawson-Parker.
On my dorm, students were stirring to life. A few were in the showers, while others were folding laundry or blaring music in their rooms, a final defiant act against the ending of the weekend. I shut my apartment door on all of it and went up to my bedroom, opened the top drawer of my dresser, and retrieved the plastic bag of marijuana, which I stuffed into the outside pocket of my coat. Then I thought about why I’d been able to catch up with Paul on the Hill, why he hadn’t run to any of a half-dozen other places. He’d walked out from behind Saint Matthew’s, trying to look casual. He’d also ditched his skullcap. After deliberating for a moment, I shut the dresser drawer and headed for Saint Matthew’s, figuring that Ren Middleton could wait for five more minutes.
REN WASN’T HAPPY. HE sat behind his desk, in a dark blue suit and white shirt but no tie, as though I had disturbed him in the act of getting dressed for Sunday dinner, and glowered at me as if I were the one being hauled in for questioning. Paul Simmons sat in front of Ren’s desk, looking at no one, slumped in his chair. An uncomfortable-looking Matt McGuire sat next to Paul.
“Mr. Glass,” Ren said. “Thank you for finally coming. Mr. McGuire tells me you chased Mr. Simmons here through Vinton Hall and dragged him back through a second-story window.” He made it sound as if I’d been vandalizing the dormitory. “Can you tell me why, precisely?”
I sat without waiting to be asked to do so—in the same chair that Terence Jarrar’s mother had sat in, just over a week ago—and told him about walking down to the river, seeing someone in the outing cabin, going inside to investigate and being clobbered by the door, and then chasing Paul, without yet knowing who he was, up the Hill and into Vinton. I could sense McGuire alternating between rapt attention and disappointment, as if Paul’s injuring me with a door in the face were somehow unsatisfactory. Paul continued to stare at the floor, picking absently at his thumbnail, and said nothing. At the conclusion of my story, Ren nodded once and then turned his attention to Paul. “Mr. Simmons,” he said, “why were you in the outing cabin?”
Paul continued to stare at the floor.
“Mr. Simmons,” Ren said, his voice laced with threat, and despite himself, Paul looked up, his blank expression now tinged with fear, “why were you in the outing cabin?”
Paul opened his mouth, closed it, looked down at his lap, and let out a short, strangled sigh. “I was thinking about Terence,” he said in a low voice. He glanced up. Ren’s face was impassive. “I was . . . sad. About what—what happened to him.” He shivered as if cold. “I wanted to go down to the river, to where he . . . And I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it. I made it to the cabin. We’d gone there once, this fall. With the outing club. We’d had fun. And . . .” He fell silent and looked at his lap again.
Ren grunted. “What about injuring Mr. Glass, here?”
Paul shot a fearful look at me and then looked back at Ren. “I didn’t mean to do it, sir. I swear. I just—I was scared, I thought I would get caught and in trouble, and so I just shoved the door open to—”
“Why?” I asked, interrupting. Ren bristled, but Paul turned to me, a worried frown on his face. I spoke gently, without accusation. “Why did you think you’d get in trouble?”
“Because we’re not supposed to be there,” Paul said. He sounded confused.
“If you’d just told me what you were doing there—”
“Mr. Glass makes a good point,” Ren said, leaning forward and regaining control of the interrogation. “If you had simply spoken with him, you might be facing a detention. As it is, you made things much worse. Much worse.”
It was the wrong way to go. Underneath the apologetic exterior, Paul seemed deeply shaken. I recalled him on the floor in Vinton, crying and saying, “No, I didn’t do it! I swear!” over and over. He needed coaxing, not threats.
Paul shrank back into his chair under Ren’s words. “I didn’t mean to,” he mumbled.
Ren sighed, whether from weariness or annoyance, I couldn’t tell. “Mr. Simmons, would you please wait in the room next door. I need to speak with Mr. Glass for a moment.”
Paul began to get up, but my words stopped him. “Actually, Mr. Middleton, there’s something else. I . . .” I glanced at Matt McGuire. “I’d like to speak with both you and Paul, if I could.”
Paul sank back reluctantly into his chair. Ren looked at me for an uncomfortable three seconds and then said abruptly, “Mr. McGuire, thank you for your assistance.”
McGuire’s face fell, but he stood. “Thank you, sir.” He nodded at me and then, with a glance at Paul, he walked out of the office, closing the door behind him.
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the plastic bag I had found in Terence’s lava lamp and placed it on Ren’s desk. He looked at it and then at me. “Where did you get that?” he asked evenly.
“I found it in Terence Jarrar’s room.”
Ren’s eyes widened slightly, and he tilted his head to the left, as if it had been momentarily imbalanced by the news. “When?” he asked, his voice sharper.
“Last weekend, when I cleaned out his room.” So far Paul Simmons had done nothing but flick a glance at the bag of pot. His face showed no emotion other than a clear desire to be somewhere else.
Ren raised his chin and looked at me as if sighting down the barrel of a gun. “Last weekend,” he said softly. He was livid—his lips were pressed together, and his face was flushed, accentuating his round, staring eyes.
I turned to Paul. “Do you have anything you want to say, Paul?” I asked.
Startled, Paul looked at me. I could sense the calculations going on behind that blank stare. “I—what?” he asked.
“Do you have anything you want to say? About that?”
Paul looked at the bag of pot on the desk and then back at me, then at Ren and back to me, a roving searchlight looking for answers in the dark. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what you mean.”