The Temptations of St. Frank Read Online Free PDF Page A

lipless mouth, and aimed the stem at Frank. “I’ll see you in my office after school, Mr. Grimaldi. Two-forty-five. Sharp!”
    He scowled at Tina. “Button up, young lady, and get to your class. I’ll be talking to your Sister Superior about this. Go!”
    Tina sat up, buttoned her blouse, and headed for the doorway. She glanced back at Frank and arched an eyebrow, giving him the sly little cat grin. Whalley stepped aside so she could pass, and Frank saw the Mother of Peace nerd girls gawking from the hallway. Yolanda was at the front of the pack.
    Fuck! Frank thought. He tried to read her expression, but she turned away as soon as Tina joined them and scurried into the physics lab with the others.
    Whalley aimed the pipe stem of doom at Frank’s face and glared at him, not saying a word.
    What the fuck does he want me to do? Frank thought. Say something? Not say something? Defend myself? Beg for mercy? What?
    The walrus finally spoke, slow and ominous. “Two… forty… five, Mr. Grimaldi. Do not… be… late.” He turned and waddled out the door.
    The 8:00 bell rang like a drill going through Frank’s head.
    â€œFuck,” he said under his breath as he reached across the desk for his coffee cup. It was light in his hand. He shook it. Nothing. Tina had drunk it all.
    It was gonna be a bad day.

Chapter 3
    A warm breeze blew the smell of fresh-cut grass into the classroom. Frank sat slumped in a student desk, thinking evil thoughts about Whalley the fucking walrus. He stared out the open window at the spring-green lawn and the statue of St. Anselm in his bishop’s outfit and seriously thought about jumping out. Not to kill himself—Christ, it was only a ten-foot drop into the rhododendron bushes that surrounded Mulvaney Hall. No, he wanted to escape. Frank figured he could vault out the window the same way they vaulted on the horse in gym class. The windows were big enough in this old building. He’d be gone in a second. But where would he go? Whalley would hunt him down. With dogs. Like a runaway slave. Cocksucker.
    Frank’s French book was open on the graffiti-carved desktop, but he was in no mood for fucking French. Yolanda was upstairs in her physics class, convinced that he’d ravished Tina in the yearbook office, and now he had fucking walking jug for something he hadn’t even done. Something he’d only thought about doing. And he mostly thought about doing it with Yolanda, not Tina… though the thought had crossed his mind a few times. It wasn’t fair. Shit, it was only first period, and he was already fed up with everything.
    â€œWatch the door.” Larry Vitale, the weasely little wiseass, pointed to dumbo Gdowski, his “tell-me-about-the-rabbits-George” sidekick. Gdowski jumped out of his seat, opened the classroom door a crack, and peeked out into the hallway.
    The eight other guys who took French III this period watched Vitale with shit-eating grins on their faces. Vitale was a real joker, and Mr. Kinney, their French teacher, was so out of it he was a perennial easy target.
    Now what? Frank thought. He wasn’t in the mood for Vitale’s antics.
    Vitale tiptoed to the front of the classroom like a mime imitating a cat burglar and pulled something out of his blazer pocket. He held up a little red transistor radio for everyone to see. He did a Bugs Bunny he-he-he, bouncing his shoulders as he dragged the teacher’s chair over to the intercom speaker hanging on the wall over the blackboard, an old varnished wooden box with stained brown fabric covering the speaker inside. Frank guessed it had been there since the building had been built. Students in the 1940s had probably heard about Pearl Harbor through that thing.
    Vitale stepped up on the chair and turned on the transistor radio loud enough for everyone to hear. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs doing “Little Red Riding Hood.” The radio had good