Rage

CHAPTER 2

So there was the squirrel, running through the grass at 9:05 in the morning, not ten feet from where I was listening to Mrs. Underwood taking us back to the basics of algebra in the wake of a horrible exam that apparently no one had passed except me and Ted Jones. I was keeping an eye on him, I can tell you. The squirrel, not Ted.

On the board, Mrs. Underwood wrote this: a = 16. “Miss Cross,” she said, turning back. “Tell us what that equation means, if you please.”

“It means that a is sixteen,” Sandra said. Meanwhile the squirrel ran back and forth in the grass, tail bushed out, black eyes shining bright as buckshot. A nice fat one. Mr. Squirrel had been keeping down more breakfasts than I lately, but this morning’s was riding as light and easy as you please. I had no shakes, no acid stomach. I was riding cool.

“All right,” Mrs. Underwood said. “Not bad. But it’s not the end, is it? No. Would anyone care to elaborate on this fascinating equation?”

I raised my hand, but she called on Billy Sawyer. “Eight plus eight,” he blurted.

“Explain.”

“I mean it can be…” Billy fidgeted. He ran his fingers over the graffiti etched into the surface of his desk; SM L DK, HOT SHIT, TOMMY ’73. “See, if you add eight and eight, it means…”

“Shall I lend you my thesaurus?” Mrs. Underwood asked, smiling alertly. My stomach began to hurt a little, my breakfast started to move around a little, so I looked back at the squirrel for a while. Mrs. Underwood’s smile reminded me of the shark in Jaws.

Carol Granger raised her hand. Mrs. Underwood nodded. “Doesn’t he mean that eight plus eight also fulfills the equation’s need for truth?”

“I don’t know what he means,” Mrs. Underwood said.

A general laugh. “Can you fulfill the equation’s truth in any other ways, Miss Granger?”

Carol began, and that was when the intercom said: “Charles Decker to the office, please. Charles Decker. Thank you.”

I looked at Mrs. Underwood, and she nodded. My stomach had begun to feel shriveled and old. I got up and left the room. When I left, the squirrel was still scampering.

I was halfway down the hall when I thought I heard Mrs. Underwood coming after me, her hands raised into twisted claws, smiling her big shark smile. We don’t need boys of your type around here… boys of your type belong in Greenmantle… or the reformatory… or the state hospital for the criminally insane… so get out! Get out! Get out!

I turned around, groping in my back pocket for the pipe wrench that was no longer there, and now my breakfast was a hard hot ball inside my guts. But I wasn’t afraid, not even when she wasn’t there. I’ve read too many books.