Part 7 (2/2)

Before- She took a step, wondered if people were staring at her, and got in gear, putting one foot in front of the other.

Before it happened.

The realization was coming slowly, but coming all the same, that all her life, her boring but peaceful childhood, her time with Scott, didn't really exist anymore, not for her, anyway. There would be no smooth transition from girl to woman, no gradual emergence as a responsible adult. Her past was before now, her future whatever happened from here on out, and this was the way it would always be. Mike Randall and whoever else had been in the room, in her, that night had erected a barrier in her life: with their fingers, their hips, their legs, but most of all with their hearts, they'd built a wall.

At the end of her high school days, her favorite English teacher had told her, ”The past is prologue, Mary. Everything changes now. Try not to f.u.c.k up.” His curse had caught her unawares, and she hadn't thought too much about it since-she'd been too busy preparing for college-but his comment struck her now as nothing short of portentous. The past was most definitely only prologue, everything had changed, and she had f.u.c.ked up. After all, she had realized that she needed to leave before the Everclear had charged through her system, and didn't that mean a measure of responsibility for what had happened was hers? In her heart she was still angry at Scott, and she had wanted someone to take something from him. But no one had taken a thing from Scott.

Fine, she told herself. But what do I do now?

Mike deserved prison. But to go that route would involve explaining to her mother what had happened. There would be statements to police, perhaps a trial. . . .

Mary walked on. She'd never been so confused, so frightened, so filled with terrible expectation. So she thought back, back into a past that lived now over a wall. When she was nine, ten, and on until she'd met Scott, she'd often laid awake at night, the pristine, ghostly light of a street lamp spread over her room like an ethereal fog, asking G.o.d to send her a friend, someone who would make her feel less alone, a companion she could trust in all things.

She closed her eyes, still slowly heading toward the Administration building. ”Please, G.o.d,” she whispered. ”I need a friend.”

Dean Marshall Gay was short and fat and misfortunately groomed. ”Are you going to tell me?” he asked, sitting in the wing-backed chair behind his desk. The tight burgundy leather exhaled. Everything around him was plush and sedate, burgundy and oak, blood and old bones.

Mary stood next to a less ostentatious chair. He hadn't offered it to her. ”Mike attacked her. She defended herself,” she said. But Grady goaded him, she thought. And she'd known what he'd do. She'd set the trap. The plan had been good, the execution perfect.

The dean sat back, looking her over, his mouth pinched. Disappointment played in his eyes. ”It's a mess, Miss McDylan. I've got a news conference in an hour.”

”I'm sorry,” replied Mary. She was sorry the moment she said it.

The dean rose, leaned over his desk on his knuckles. ”My basketball star has third-degree burns on his face, neck and hands. Your friend gave him those burns.”

”He attacked her,” said Mary, and this time she believed it herself.

”Before or after she set his head on fire?”

”After,” she said hotly.

They stared at each other. After a while Mary looked around, at the mahogany bookshelves that had been built into the walls, at the volumes that rested within them. All that knowledge, all those keen minds; the savagery of dynamic thought captured on reams of yellowed paper, bound by ancient leather and forgotten in the upper reaches of austere academia. How long had it been since the dean had climbed that oak ladder? How long since he'd taken down a volume and been touched by the fire?

All of a sudden, as if he'd heard her thoughts, the dean stiffened. ”Have a wonderful day, Miss McDylan. I imagine your future here at Carmichael will be short.”

She nearly turned to walk away, but stopped. ”All these books, all this showy stuff-and for this,” she said, turning, gazing into the darkly colored, deep room.

The dean looked up. ”What, Miss McDylan?”

”You're surrounded by this,” said Mary, thinking of Jesus and the money changers in the temple. ”But all you can think about is basketball money and what the alumni might think. Have you really thought much about Mike? About his face?”

The dean stepped back as if he'd been pushed. Slowly, he shook his head and opened a folder before he glanced back up. ”I've got a mess to clean up, Miss McDylan.”

Mary stared at him a moment longer. Then she turned around, pulled open the tall, heavy doors, and walked out.

Unable to sleep, Mary lay in bed and thought of Mike Randall. Wind pawed at the window. The tree outside, seen through the quilt tacked over the window, cast a dancing man on the wall. She lay awake for hours, thoughts coursing through her like electricity.

Before Grady stood up with the lighter, Randall had been captain of the basketball team; he'd dropped his pants on a large anatomical incongruity; he'd owned every s.p.a.ce his body took up. Life had been good.

No more.

And a measure of the blame was hers. Mike had chosen to mistreat her. But deep in her heart, just as she'd known that the evening would turn sour if she continued to drink, she'd known Grady would hurt him. She'd watched her palm the lighter, and although she hadn't known exactly what was coming- She and Mike were the same. No different.

Mary sat up, crept from her bed, her feet slapping on the tile. She felt along Grady's boxspring. Her fingers slid along the floor, over a hairbrush, around a half-filled gla.s.s and into Grady's purse. She nabbed the keys, hoped they wouldn't jangle. Then she hesitated, keys in hand. Would it be stupid to apologize, to do the right thing regardless of circ.u.mstance?

Mary glided past the cracked door, closed it and made her way downstairs.

By the illumination of a single streetlight she found Grady's Toyota, a late-eighties relic. The lock turned easily, but the door wouldn't open. It hitched, stuck on something. She tugged on the handle, but it didn't budge, so she yanked, stomped her foot against the wheel well and pulled. After two or three minutes, she tired, stepped away. And saw it. The door was lopsided. With an anxious sigh, she got on her knees, jammed her fingers under the metal, forcing it up. It wrenched past the jamb. She toppled back. From the macadam she climbed into the car, tapped the business end of the key at the ignition, but it didn't fit. ”d.a.m.n it!” she screamed, slapping her hands on the steering wheel.

Beneath the console was a b.u.t.ton. She stared at it a minute, then pressed it and tried the key again. It slid in. She turned it. Nothing.

”Can anything else go wrong?” she sobbed, slamming her palms against the wheel. Then her eyes drifted down. ”You've got to be kidding me.” The Toyota was a stick s.h.i.+ft. She'd never driven one. ”Okay,” she said, taking deep, calming breaths. ”You've seen Daddy in the 'Vette. You've even paid attention.”

On the floor were three pedals. The accelerator, the brake, and the next one over had to be the clutch. Hadn't her father said that s.h.i.+fting wasn't difficult? Did you depress the clutch just to start the car, or to s.h.i.+ft as well? Closing her eyes, she recalled her father in the Corvette, his legs working. She shoved the clutch to the floor. The car rolled. She cried out, took her foot off the clutch. The car jumped. She stepped on the brake, then the clutch; pushed the b.u.t.ton, twisted the key. The engine turned over, sprang to life, hummed pleasantly.

The drumstick was digging into her side. She slid it from her sweats, laid it on the pa.s.senger seat, and grabbed hold of the gear s.h.i.+ft, rubbed her palm over the ball, on which an idiot's guide to a manual transmission was printed in white grooves. Slipping the stick from first, she left it in the center of the console a second, recognizing from the grid that this was neutral. The car teetered on its wheel base. ”Okay, okay, here we-” and she released the brake. The Toyota rolled back. Instead of lightly pressing the gas, in her fright she stomped it down. The engine raced, the car spun back in a wide arc, and she screeched in operatic spasms.

She missed a late model Porsche by inches. The Toyota only stopped because as the car lurched and lunged her foot slipped fell off the gas and onto the brake by fortuitous accident. The car gurgled, belched and died.

That's when Grady knocked on the driver side window.

Mary screamed, jumping half out of her seat. Moon and starlight flashed off the winds.h.i.+eld.

”Roll it down!” yelled Grady, smacking her palm on the gla.s.s.

Mary grabbed the lever and turned it, half expecting Grady's hands to come shoving through the opening like a set of claws. Instead, Grady tossed her arms over the down window, resting her chin on them. ”What'cha doing?” she asked, as if Mary were sneaking off to a party without her.

”I'm so sorry, Grady, I was-”

”You okay?”

Mary hesitated. ”I need to see him.”

”He got what he deserved.”

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