A Density of Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    “They’re the monster. The boys. Because they’re out there with nobody and . . . They make up this monster to cover up the fact that they’ve turned into . . .”
    Stephen shifted in his seat as the girl behind him wedged his book bag under his desk with the heel of her shoe.
    “. . . beasts, basically.”
    “Thanks, Stevie!” Brandon said in a high-pitched squeak from the back row. Meredith caught Stephen staring down at his desk. “Fuck you,” he mumbled so audibly it frightened her. She saw Mr. Carter’s head slip off his hand in surprise.
    The bell exploded through the classroom. Stephen went for his book bag and slid it over both shoulders, then bolted for the door, making his typical fast escape. David Carter stared after him, his eyes widening. Meredith saw Kate Duchamp double over in her desk with the clownish guffaws of someone laughing for everyone around her.
    Greg rose out of his desk first, rushing past the spot where Meredith sat frozen, staring at Stephen’s back as he disappeared. She waited for the sound of laughter to erupt from the hallway as Stephen walked down the middle with the word FAG dangling on a piece of looseleaf paper taped to his backpack.
    There was a rat in the prop closet. Carolyn could hear it from her desk. It was trapped and whining and she prayed it would either die or free itself and vanish into the auditorium.
    The noise from the closet collapsed into breaths. She rose from her desk without thinking, abandoning her cigarette, and found Stephen Conlin curled into a fetal position on a bed of lamé draperies she had used in the living room set for Lost in Yonkers the spring before.
    A piece of paper was crunched into a ball inside Stephen’s clenched fist. Carolyn squatted and forced Stephen’s fingers open, unfolding the piece of paper. Run through by wrinkles in the paper was the word FAG .
    The Falling Impossible
    29
    The freight door slammed so hard that Carolyn dropped the note.
    Jeff Haugh was bounding across the floor toward her. He leapt over a pile of newly painted flats. When he saw her, he faltered in uncharacteristic awkwardness. His eyes—usually drowsy with a sexual frankness Carolyn did not like to see in teenage boys—widened slightly.
    Caught, Carolyn thought, as she crouched over Stephen. She saw fear in Jeff’s eyes. She saw her suspicions of the boy suddenly written across his face. He had come to hear Stephen’s sobs and perhaps taunt him further. She felt a flicker of disappointment. She had thought Jeff might actually be better than his crude jock brethren.
    Jeff’s gaze shifted—from the note in Carolyn’s hand to the rectangular view of Stephen’s butt through the prop closet door. She stood up and held the note in one hand so the word was visible to Jeff. She waited for Jeff to muster some response as he surveyed the result of what she now believed to be his crime.
    He said nothing.
    “Get out,” Carolyn hissed.
    “What?” Jeff’s anger was incredulous and immediate.
    “I said, get out of here. Go to the football field and stay there!
    Don’t ever come anywhere near my office again! Do you understand me?”
    His upper lip trembled in what looked to Carolyn like a sneer.
    She held her ground.
    Jeff gave one last look to what he could see of Stephen through the doorway before turning and leaving the theatre building, his gait more strained. When the freight door slammed behind him, Carolyn brought both hands to the top of the note, to rip it down the center.
    Then she was struck by the odd thought that for some reason Stephen might want to keep it. And if he didn’t, she just might.
    After escorting Stephen to the nurse’s office on the ground floor of the Athletic Center—he had said nothing to her, but as his tears subsided he had let himself be led—Carolyn made her way beneath the flamed photographs of Headmaster’s Award winners hanging along the walls of the Administrative Hallway to find David Carter at the coffee