Apt Pupil

24

The school records for the pupils who had passed through Santa Donate Junior High were kept in an old, rambling warehouse on the north side. It was not far from the abandoned trainyards. It was dark and echoing and it smelled of wax and polish and 999 Industrial Cleaner — it was also the school department’s custodial warehouse.

Ed French got there around four in the afternoon with Norma in tow. A janitor let them in, told Ed what he wanted was on the fourth floor, and showed them to a creeping, clanking warehouse that frightened Norma into a uncharacteristic silence.

She regained herself on the fourth floor, prancing and capering up and down the dim aisles of stacked boxes and files while Ed searched for and eventually found the files containing report-cards from 1975. He pulled the second box and began to leaf through the Bs. BORK. BOSTWICK. BOSWELL. BOWDEN, TODD. He pulled the card, shook his head impatiently over it in the dim light, and took it across to one of the high, dusty windows.

‘Don’t run around in here, honey,’ he called over his shoulder.

‘Why, daddy?’

‘Because the trolls will get you,’ he said, and held Todd’s card up to the light.

He saw it at once. This report card, in those flies for four years now, had been carefully, almost professionally, doctored.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Ed French muttered.

Trolls, trolls, trolls!’ Norma sang gleefully, as she continued to dance up and down the aisles.