Nightfall -- Episode XXI
Yesterday was a good day; planting flowers, relaxing around the house, enjoying time with my wife. It sure is nice to have her back from tax season. Hope you enjoyed yesterday's installment and the plot lesson; time to get mean.
Sharpen up those teeth and jump in.
-59-
There is a bottle of champagne on the nightstand and he opens it, pouring a single glass, which he hands to me. He gets into bed, still wearing the robe. Johnny shifts beside me, settling himself, then sighs. "Sometimes people snap. Let me tell you about Karen. She was a good friend of mine, helped me out of a lot of tight jams when we were in high school together. She's in state prison now; maybe it's Folsom, or Vacaville. I don't know, but I know she's not coming out for a while."
"What did she do?"
Johnny sucks in his breath. "She tried to kill her younger brother."
I whistle soundlessly, staring up at the ceiling. "You used to run with a pretty rough crowd, I take it?"
"They sure had their moments. The thing is, she did it. She totally did it. And when it was all over, the only thing everybody was sorry about was that she didn't kill the little bastard. Karen was a pretty small girl; maybe five two, if that. And her brothers put her through hell. Their names were Jeff and Jason, and Jeff was the one that she stabbed. I don't know which one of them was worse, to tell you the truth. They were twins, fifteen or sixteen, and she was eighteen. Karen should have been a senior in Chaimsville High, but she stopped going after about the beginning of October her senior year. She had a 3.57 grade point average, too."
"Why did she stop going?"
"Agoraphobia. She kept flinching when people would get too close to her in the hallway, and her hands wouldn't stop shaking. It was diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. You know what that's like?"
I take a drink. "I do."
"Everybody knew how fucked up that family was, too, and nothing was ever done about it. That was the funny thing, but it wasn't ha-ha funny, it was funny-sad. They'd gone through just about every service the county and state could provide, and it seemed like nobody could do anything for them. Maybe her brothers were just evil, I don't know. I know they had a mean streak in them--both of them--that was a mile wide. But I truly think they weren't willing to hunker down and get their hands dirty.
"They probably should have done what one of the attorneys said. They should have just drowned them both at birth."
I tremble at the coldness in his voice. I'm reminded again of the darkness inside him, that this must be only one of the many black things he's been witness to in his life, and I'm reminded again of the eventual toll they can take on even the strongest will. I feel a sudden burst of empathy for this poor, sad unknown girl that he once called a close friend.
Johnny clears his throat. "Both her brothers had criminal records a mile long, probably about six or seven felony counts each, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many misdemeanors. Mostly for things like assault and battery, intimidation and threats, things like that. They were mean kids. Maybe even evil ones--who knows? I believe that there are evil people in the world, and if they certainly could have been two of them. She was afraid of them. It was like she was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. A war was going on in her own house. She fought every day.
"Her mother always made all kinds of excuses for her brothers, too. She called them 'her babies' like they were just poor innocent little lambs adrift in the world, instead of the vicious bastards they really were. Once there was a hearing being held to decide what to do with Jeff, and her mom began yelling at the probation officer assigned to the case, the panel, the mental health supervisor, and everybody else in the room except for the people who were really to blame--her and Jeff. Then she walked out on it, like her defiance was going to get them to see how abused her kids really were. The counsel decided that Jeff had schizophrenia and was loony as hell in all the other ways that mattered, so he got three months in juvenile hall for beating up a classmate because the kid wouldn't give him a piece of gum. What a fucking saint, huh?"
He stares at the ceiling, hate in his eyes.
"The day it all went down, things started off pretty normally. Karen was sitting on the couch watching television when she should have been in school--and of course, her mother hadn't said shit to her for the past three months about it--and her brother Jeff comes out in the living room and lights up a cigarette. She--"
--and behind the building tears, because I know what is coming next
(just like Leslie Devorak)
I see the entire grim scene unfolding in my mind as Johnny speaks, his voice occasionally dipping lower.
Karen--scared, pale-faced, hand trembling--coming up with a battered generic cigarette from under a pool of dirty blankets. Asking her brother timidly if she can borrow his lighter. His mocking laughter, another verbal slap at her, the latest of thousands. Asking him in a low voice why he has to always be such an asshole and then he's on top of her, his fist crashing into the eye socket, his knee whistling up into her breadbasket, blood running down her--
"Her mom took her to the hospital. Nine stitches over her left eye, and a plaster cast over her left wrist. He was trying to Indian Burn her and twisted too hard. It didn't break, but the doctor said it was a good thing she wasn't a southpaw. Good old Jason.
"Karen stayed in her room for the whole rest of the day, smoking cigarettes, not coming out. Jeff's girlfriend came over about nine o'clock or so and went into his room with him. She could hear them having sex in there. God, that must have eaten at her. The girlfriend left about midnight. And at about two in the morning, she went into the kitchen, then into Jeff's room, and while he was sleeping she stabbed him with a butcher knife in the stomach and the neck."
"Oh, my God," I whisper.
"Unfortunately, he didn't die. She barely even scratched his neck and stomach; I guess she pulled the slashes. Karen got arrested and charged with attempted murder, with enhancements, because she used a deadly weapon and inflicted great bodily injury on her brother. She spent two months in Juvenile Hall waiting for her trial. The probation officer who ended up handling the case interviewed her while she was inside, found out all the horrible things that had been going on, and tried to go to bat for her. He got up in court and tried to claim it was self-defense, as a result of a pattern of abusive behavior and that it was simply amazing she hadn't done it a long time ago. The judge didn't buy it and found her guilty on all counts. So they held her at the California Youth Authority with the gang bangers and rapists until she turned eighteen, and then they sent her to State Prison. I haven't heard from her since."
Johnny hisses through his teeth. I can feel the anger coming off him in red waves and the
(hate death murder death kill she should have killed why not kill)
angry thoughts buzzing in his mind.
"Oh, and one other thing: while all of this happened, Jason was on home arrest, pending delivery to the local youth center--a step up from Juvenile Hall--because of a prior assault charge. He'd already been there before. Jeff was on home arrest, too, transferred to a mental health facility out of the county, and while he was there, he beat up one of the staff members in the facility so badly they had to take him to the hospital. They stuck Jeff in the California Youth Authority once Karen was transferred away and he's still there, for all I know.
"The thing is, I can't help thinking that maybe Karen's better off where she is now. Maybe she's safer in prison."
-60-
My turn. I begin to tell him about Leslie Devorak. We'd gone to school together at Monarch Elementary School in the fifth grade; she in Mr. Klein's class, myself in Ms. Brown's. I made her life hell.
"How?" Johnny asks. He props himself up on one elbow, looking down at me. "Were you a bully to her or something?"
I nod. "The worst kind. Whenever my friends weren't around, I was nice to her. In fact, I liked her. I even played over at her house a few times, and we had a good time. But when Marjorie and Julie were around..."
"When they were around, it was on." It's not a question.
"Yeah. It was on, and then some." My face burns at the memory of it.
"You were just a kid, Tesla. How old were you--ten, maybe eleven?"
"It sounds about right. But I knew better than that. It was the most two-faced thing I've ever done, but I did it... as stupid, fucked up, and cliché as it sounds, it was to fit in."
Johnny smiles and rolls over on his stomach, still on his elbows. "The things we do in the name of popularity, huh?"
"I did a lot."
There had been so much to work with, it hadn't been a challenge at all. They're in every school and workplace across the country; the ugly ducklings, the ones that want to fit in but through bad luck in the social and genetic lotteries will always find themselves on the outside looking in. Bad breath. Crooked teeth. Fat. Pimples. Laughable clothing. Over-loud inappropriate comments which ring through a suddenly quiet room at the worst possible moment. Braces. Eyeglasses. They grow up to wander through the high schools and shopping malls, daily praying to God that if lightning doesn't strike them down, at least let them not die a virgin. Leslie Devorak fit some of those categories. Not all, but enough. And since there was enough material there, we went to work.
"The worst thing we did?" I bite my lip. "Well, there was name-calling, of course; we called her Leslie Dork. Not very original, was it? She used to cry anyway. I guess if you hear it a million times day for years, it can wear on you. Tripped her, put tacks in her chair for her to sit in, threw the dodgeball at her head extra-hard when it was recess, the list goes on. There were a million things we did. I can tell you what one of the more terrible things was, right off the top of my head. It was at Christmas, when our class did this gift exchange with Mr. Klein's room, and we did this thing called 'Secret Santas.' Have you ever heard of it?"
"Yes, I have. I always got something stupid, like a tie-pin. I've never worn a tie in my life."
"For her Secret Santa gift, I gave Leslie a can of Alpo."
His eyes widen in the gloom. "You did what?"
"I gift-wrapped it and everything, put inside a shoebox so the shape of the can wouldn't give it away. I signed the card 'From your secret admirer' or some bullshit like that. And when both of our classes got together during lunch to open the gifts... I'm sure you can imagine what the resulting scene was like." And please don't make me tell you, I beg silently, chewing a nail.
After a long silence, he exhales heavily. "Kids are cruel," he says simply.
"They can be. They can be little monsters."
"What was the worst thing you did?"
And I begin.
-61-
Fourteen years ago:
When Leslie shows up at school that spring Monday, nobody can believe it. The jacket is beautiful; leather, belted at the waist, soft as talcum powder.
"It's too hot to wear something like that," Julie says petulantly. "Or maybe she's trying to sweat off some of that weight."
There are a few snickers of appreciative laughter, but our angry and jealous eyes remain on the jacket. Jealous? Absolutely. All of us are wearing clothes from the St. Vincent De Paul's thrift store down the street, and the jacket alone costs more than all the clothes we are wearing combined. Leslie has spotless Nikes, a clean white shirt, and Levis that are almost violet with how new they are. We examine our ragged Chuck Taylors and faded blue jeans shorts, then glance back at her. Our eyes keep returning to the jacket.
On Friday of that week, we make our move. Leslie is sitting on a grassy knoll away from the school, eating a sandwich and reading a Judy Blume book, and the expression on her face when our shadows fall across her pages is one I will never forget.
Oh God, what are you people going to do to me now? Haven't you had enough? Won't you ever get your pound of flesh and just leave me alone? Please?
And when she looks up, with fear in her eyes and her lips trembling, I want to hit her. You want us to stop? Then stop being such a rabbit! I want to scream. Come on! Fight back! If you do that, all of this will be over! Can't you see that?
"Hi, bitch," Marjorie says. She's not smiling. She never smiles.
"What do you want?" Her voice is high and reedy, ready to crack. Her eyes switch back and forth to each of us, testing the mood, confirming all her dark suspicions. "What do you want from me?"
"The jacket, bitch. Give me the fucking jacket."
"You're not supposed to swear, that's against--"
Whack on the side of the face, cutting her off. Julie looks absurdly pleased with herself, as if she just slew a dragon. Leslie doesn't cry out, but the entire left side of her face goes bright red, as if she's been burned. The electricity in the air around us is cranked up another few amps. We're ready.
Marjorie isn't done yet. "We can do this two ways. We do it nice or--"
--and then Marjorie is speaking to empty air, because Leslie has taken to her heels and is moving with a speed that belies her weight problem. We stand there, watching her run, open-mouthed, before--
"Get her!"
Instead of running for a teacher shrieking at the top of her lungs, Leslie takes a path across the field behind the school and the only sound she makes is a slowly increasing puffing noise as she approaches the twelve-foot high chainlink fence which surrounds the back of the property. But though she had a good fifteen yard jump on us, Leslie "Dork" Devorak is no fence climber and I catch up to her when she is halfway up the silver barrier, struggling to get a few more inches up. She's whimpering under her breath, glancing back down as we arrive, seeing blood in our eyes.
I grab her ankle and yank as hard as I can. Leslie almost flies off the fence, landing directly on top of me, and my head strikes the ground. Now it's my turn to begin whimpering, but Leslie is crying in earnest as the others arrive, because she knows what's going to happen to her.
It's on, and so we do it.
-62-
He seems appalled. "I... hope... you didn't..."
"No. We just beat her almost unconscious, that's all."
The flat sound of the words almost unconscious, that's all sound ridiculous in the still air but they are true. I think about his earlier story about going out with his friends that night and how they hadn't seemed to be people at all, but a snarling pack of dogs. I know that feeling, of losing yourself in the mob spirit. If I close my eyes, I can still see the spittle flying from Julie's mouth as she slaps Leslie's face over and over, watch Marjorie's cold expression as she takes Leslie by the hair and pulls, hear my own grunts mixing with hers as I kick her in the side. It's so close, and I turn away from it, back into Johnny's curled arms, wondering what had happened to me that day.
I don't tell him the rest. After Leslie had been beaten down at the lunch bell was ringing we'd taken the jacket, filled the pockets with as many rocks as we could find, and sank it in the middle of a mud puddle halfway back to the school. The principal didn't call us into his office on Monday, though we knew that somebody had to have said something to the teachers about it. We were frightened all weekend, certain the police would come to our houses and spirit us away to the dreaded darkness of the Juvenile Hall, but they never showed, either. She'd never said a word about who did it, and on Monday, just like the jacket, Leslie Devorak was never seen again.
Sharpen up those teeth and jump in.
-59-
There is a bottle of champagne on the nightstand and he opens it, pouring a single glass, which he hands to me. He gets into bed, still wearing the robe. Johnny shifts beside me, settling himself, then sighs. "Sometimes people snap. Let me tell you about Karen. She was a good friend of mine, helped me out of a lot of tight jams when we were in high school together. She's in state prison now; maybe it's Folsom, or Vacaville. I don't know, but I know she's not coming out for a while."
"What did she do?"
Johnny sucks in his breath. "She tried to kill her younger brother."
I whistle soundlessly, staring up at the ceiling. "You used to run with a pretty rough crowd, I take it?"
"They sure had their moments. The thing is, she did it. She totally did it. And when it was all over, the only thing everybody was sorry about was that she didn't kill the little bastard. Karen was a pretty small girl; maybe five two, if that. And her brothers put her through hell. Their names were Jeff and Jason, and Jeff was the one that she stabbed. I don't know which one of them was worse, to tell you the truth. They were twins, fifteen or sixteen, and she was eighteen. Karen should have been a senior in Chaimsville High, but she stopped going after about the beginning of October her senior year. She had a 3.57 grade point average, too."
"Why did she stop going?"
"Agoraphobia. She kept flinching when people would get too close to her in the hallway, and her hands wouldn't stop shaking. It was diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. You know what that's like?"
I take a drink. "I do."
"Everybody knew how fucked up that family was, too, and nothing was ever done about it. That was the funny thing, but it wasn't ha-ha funny, it was funny-sad. They'd gone through just about every service the county and state could provide, and it seemed like nobody could do anything for them. Maybe her brothers were just evil, I don't know. I know they had a mean streak in them--both of them--that was a mile wide. But I truly think they weren't willing to hunker down and get their hands dirty.
"They probably should have done what one of the attorneys said. They should have just drowned them both at birth."
I tremble at the coldness in his voice. I'm reminded again of the darkness inside him, that this must be only one of the many black things he's been witness to in his life, and I'm reminded again of the eventual toll they can take on even the strongest will. I feel a sudden burst of empathy for this poor, sad unknown girl that he once called a close friend.
Johnny clears his throat. "Both her brothers had criminal records a mile long, probably about six or seven felony counts each, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many misdemeanors. Mostly for things like assault and battery, intimidation and threats, things like that. They were mean kids. Maybe even evil ones--who knows? I believe that there are evil people in the world, and if they certainly could have been two of them. She was afraid of them. It was like she was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. A war was going on in her own house. She fought every day.
"Her mother always made all kinds of excuses for her brothers, too. She called them 'her babies' like they were just poor innocent little lambs adrift in the world, instead of the vicious bastards they really were. Once there was a hearing being held to decide what to do with Jeff, and her mom began yelling at the probation officer assigned to the case, the panel, the mental health supervisor, and everybody else in the room except for the people who were really to blame--her and Jeff. Then she walked out on it, like her defiance was going to get them to see how abused her kids really were. The counsel decided that Jeff had schizophrenia and was loony as hell in all the other ways that mattered, so he got three months in juvenile hall for beating up a classmate because the kid wouldn't give him a piece of gum. What a fucking saint, huh?"
He stares at the ceiling, hate in his eyes.
"The day it all went down, things started off pretty normally. Karen was sitting on the couch watching television when she should have been in school--and of course, her mother hadn't said shit to her for the past three months about it--and her brother Jeff comes out in the living room and lights up a cigarette. She--"
--and behind the building tears, because I know what is coming next
(just like Leslie Devorak)
I see the entire grim scene unfolding in my mind as Johnny speaks, his voice occasionally dipping lower.
Karen--scared, pale-faced, hand trembling--coming up with a battered generic cigarette from under a pool of dirty blankets. Asking her brother timidly if she can borrow his lighter. His mocking laughter, another verbal slap at her, the latest of thousands. Asking him in a low voice why he has to always be such an asshole and then he's on top of her, his fist crashing into the eye socket, his knee whistling up into her breadbasket, blood running down her--
"Her mom took her to the hospital. Nine stitches over her left eye, and a plaster cast over her left wrist. He was trying to Indian Burn her and twisted too hard. It didn't break, but the doctor said it was a good thing she wasn't a southpaw. Good old Jason.
"Karen stayed in her room for the whole rest of the day, smoking cigarettes, not coming out. Jeff's girlfriend came over about nine o'clock or so and went into his room with him. She could hear them having sex in there. God, that must have eaten at her. The girlfriend left about midnight. And at about two in the morning, she went into the kitchen, then into Jeff's room, and while he was sleeping she stabbed him with a butcher knife in the stomach and the neck."
"Oh, my God," I whisper.
"Unfortunately, he didn't die. She barely even scratched his neck and stomach; I guess she pulled the slashes. Karen got arrested and charged with attempted murder, with enhancements, because she used a deadly weapon and inflicted great bodily injury on her brother. She spent two months in Juvenile Hall waiting for her trial. The probation officer who ended up handling the case interviewed her while she was inside, found out all the horrible things that had been going on, and tried to go to bat for her. He got up in court and tried to claim it was self-defense, as a result of a pattern of abusive behavior and that it was simply amazing she hadn't done it a long time ago. The judge didn't buy it and found her guilty on all counts. So they held her at the California Youth Authority with the gang bangers and rapists until she turned eighteen, and then they sent her to State Prison. I haven't heard from her since."
Johnny hisses through his teeth. I can feel the anger coming off him in red waves and the
(hate death murder death kill she should have killed why not kill)
angry thoughts buzzing in his mind.
"Oh, and one other thing: while all of this happened, Jason was on home arrest, pending delivery to the local youth center--a step up from Juvenile Hall--because of a prior assault charge. He'd already been there before. Jeff was on home arrest, too, transferred to a mental health facility out of the county, and while he was there, he beat up one of the staff members in the facility so badly they had to take him to the hospital. They stuck Jeff in the California Youth Authority once Karen was transferred away and he's still there, for all I know.
"The thing is, I can't help thinking that maybe Karen's better off where she is now. Maybe she's safer in prison."
-60-
My turn. I begin to tell him about Leslie Devorak. We'd gone to school together at Monarch Elementary School in the fifth grade; she in Mr. Klein's class, myself in Ms. Brown's. I made her life hell.
"How?" Johnny asks. He props himself up on one elbow, looking down at me. "Were you a bully to her or something?"
I nod. "The worst kind. Whenever my friends weren't around, I was nice to her. In fact, I liked her. I even played over at her house a few times, and we had a good time. But when Marjorie and Julie were around..."
"When they were around, it was on." It's not a question.
"Yeah. It was on, and then some." My face burns at the memory of it.
"You were just a kid, Tesla. How old were you--ten, maybe eleven?"
"It sounds about right. But I knew better than that. It was the most two-faced thing I've ever done, but I did it... as stupid, fucked up, and cliché as it sounds, it was to fit in."
Johnny smiles and rolls over on his stomach, still on his elbows. "The things we do in the name of popularity, huh?"
"I did a lot."
There had been so much to work with, it hadn't been a challenge at all. They're in every school and workplace across the country; the ugly ducklings, the ones that want to fit in but through bad luck in the social and genetic lotteries will always find themselves on the outside looking in. Bad breath. Crooked teeth. Fat. Pimples. Laughable clothing. Over-loud inappropriate comments which ring through a suddenly quiet room at the worst possible moment. Braces. Eyeglasses. They grow up to wander through the high schools and shopping malls, daily praying to God that if lightning doesn't strike them down, at least let them not die a virgin. Leslie Devorak fit some of those categories. Not all, but enough. And since there was enough material there, we went to work.
"The worst thing we did?" I bite my lip. "Well, there was name-calling, of course; we called her Leslie Dork. Not very original, was it? She used to cry anyway. I guess if you hear it a million times day for years, it can wear on you. Tripped her, put tacks in her chair for her to sit in, threw the dodgeball at her head extra-hard when it was recess, the list goes on. There were a million things we did. I can tell you what one of the more terrible things was, right off the top of my head. It was at Christmas, when our class did this gift exchange with Mr. Klein's room, and we did this thing called 'Secret Santas.' Have you ever heard of it?"
"Yes, I have. I always got something stupid, like a tie-pin. I've never worn a tie in my life."
"For her Secret Santa gift, I gave Leslie a can of Alpo."
His eyes widen in the gloom. "You did what?"
"I gift-wrapped it and everything, put inside a shoebox so the shape of the can wouldn't give it away. I signed the card 'From your secret admirer' or some bullshit like that. And when both of our classes got together during lunch to open the gifts... I'm sure you can imagine what the resulting scene was like." And please don't make me tell you, I beg silently, chewing a nail.
After a long silence, he exhales heavily. "Kids are cruel," he says simply.
"They can be. They can be little monsters."
"What was the worst thing you did?"
And I begin.
-61-
Fourteen years ago:
When Leslie shows up at school that spring Monday, nobody can believe it. The jacket is beautiful; leather, belted at the waist, soft as talcum powder.
"It's too hot to wear something like that," Julie says petulantly. "Or maybe she's trying to sweat off some of that weight."
There are a few snickers of appreciative laughter, but our angry and jealous eyes remain on the jacket. Jealous? Absolutely. All of us are wearing clothes from the St. Vincent De Paul's thrift store down the street, and the jacket alone costs more than all the clothes we are wearing combined. Leslie has spotless Nikes, a clean white shirt, and Levis that are almost violet with how new they are. We examine our ragged Chuck Taylors and faded blue jeans shorts, then glance back at her. Our eyes keep returning to the jacket.
On Friday of that week, we make our move. Leslie is sitting on a grassy knoll away from the school, eating a sandwich and reading a Judy Blume book, and the expression on her face when our shadows fall across her pages is one I will never forget.
Oh God, what are you people going to do to me now? Haven't you had enough? Won't you ever get your pound of flesh and just leave me alone? Please?
And when she looks up, with fear in her eyes and her lips trembling, I want to hit her. You want us to stop? Then stop being such a rabbit! I want to scream. Come on! Fight back! If you do that, all of this will be over! Can't you see that?
"Hi, bitch," Marjorie says. She's not smiling. She never smiles.
"What do you want?" Her voice is high and reedy, ready to crack. Her eyes switch back and forth to each of us, testing the mood, confirming all her dark suspicions. "What do you want from me?"
"The jacket, bitch. Give me the fucking jacket."
"You're not supposed to swear, that's against--"
Whack on the side of the face, cutting her off. Julie looks absurdly pleased with herself, as if she just slew a dragon. Leslie doesn't cry out, but the entire left side of her face goes bright red, as if she's been burned. The electricity in the air around us is cranked up another few amps. We're ready.
Marjorie isn't done yet. "We can do this two ways. We do it nice or--"
--and then Marjorie is speaking to empty air, because Leslie has taken to her heels and is moving with a speed that belies her weight problem. We stand there, watching her run, open-mouthed, before--
"Get her!"
Instead of running for a teacher shrieking at the top of her lungs, Leslie takes a path across the field behind the school and the only sound she makes is a slowly increasing puffing noise as she approaches the twelve-foot high chainlink fence which surrounds the back of the property. But though she had a good fifteen yard jump on us, Leslie "Dork" Devorak is no fence climber and I catch up to her when she is halfway up the silver barrier, struggling to get a few more inches up. She's whimpering under her breath, glancing back down as we arrive, seeing blood in our eyes.
I grab her ankle and yank as hard as I can. Leslie almost flies off the fence, landing directly on top of me, and my head strikes the ground. Now it's my turn to begin whimpering, but Leslie is crying in earnest as the others arrive, because she knows what's going to happen to her.
It's on, and so we do it.
-62-
He seems appalled. "I... hope... you didn't..."
"No. We just beat her almost unconscious, that's all."
The flat sound of the words almost unconscious, that's all sound ridiculous in the still air but they are true. I think about his earlier story about going out with his friends that night and how they hadn't seemed to be people at all, but a snarling pack of dogs. I know that feeling, of losing yourself in the mob spirit. If I close my eyes, I can still see the spittle flying from Julie's mouth as she slaps Leslie's face over and over, watch Marjorie's cold expression as she takes Leslie by the hair and pulls, hear my own grunts mixing with hers as I kick her in the side. It's so close, and I turn away from it, back into Johnny's curled arms, wondering what had happened to me that day.
I don't tell him the rest. After Leslie had been beaten down at the lunch bell was ringing we'd taken the jacket, filled the pockets with as many rocks as we could find, and sank it in the middle of a mud puddle halfway back to the school. The principal didn't call us into his office on Monday, though we knew that somebody had to have said something to the teachers about it. We were frightened all weekend, certain the police would come to our houses and spirit us away to the dreaded darkness of the Juvenile Hall, but they never showed, either. She'd never said a word about who did it, and on Monday, just like the jacket, Leslie Devorak was never seen again.