Outside, the rain has left shadowy stains on the concrete wall across the airshaft. The uneaten part of Karl’s lunch is growing more repulsive by the minute.
“I don’t have all day, Karl. What did you tell Klimchock?”
He can’t see a way out. No matter what he does, it will end in disaster.
He sucks his lips in, thinking, thinking.
“Don’t smirk at me. Did you give him any names or not?”
Karl doesn’t know what to say and doesn’t want to give any information away just in case.
Upchurch eyes Karl’s IV tube. He wouldn’t yank it- would he?
“You’re not going to mess me up.”
He takes one of the three CDs Karl’s mother brought and waves it in Karl’s face. “You want me to get your old pals thrown out of school? Is that what you want?”
Karl yawns-not for theatrical effect but because he’s intensely tired.
In a fit, out of control, Upchurch snatches all three CDs from the rolling tray and pitches them into the round hole of the red biohazard bin.
The message seems to be, I’ll do the same to you if you don’t obey me.
Nurse Francesca is standing in the doorway. “I saw that. You can’t play adolescent pranks in here-your friend is sick. What’s wrong with you?”
“Shut up!” Upchurch screams.
“Shut up? Okay, Mister, you’re out of here. Say good-bye. And you owe him three CDs-I’m a witness.”
Upchurch says, “You-” but holds back the rest. He tells Karl, “Next time I come, you’d better give me the answer I want to hear.”
Nurse Francesca takes out her cell phone and snaps a picture of Upchurch. “There won’t be a next time: you’re not coming back. I don’t like the way you talk to my patients. This picture is going to the security desk downstairs. Sayonara, creep.”
Upchurch lets out a growl that consists entirely of the letter r: “Rrrrrrrrrrrr!”
By the time the growl ends, he’s gone.
“Are you really friends with that jerk?” the nurse asks Karl.
“No-the opposite. Thanks for throwing him out.”
“Oh, I enjoyed it.”
Mr. Hydine yawns, opens his eyes, and smiles at Karl and Nurse Francesca. “The sun finally came out, I see.”
At first, Karl thinks the old man is hallucinating again, but a glance out the window shows that Mr. Hydine is right. The sky above the gray concrete has turned pale blue again, the clouds are bright white.
“Hallelujah,” says Nurse Francesca.
Karl wishes he, too, could find cheer in the sunny sky. For him, though, the gray gloom is permanent and inescapable.
RULE #13: Learn from the martial arts: turn the force of your enemy’s attack into the force that defeats him. The hard Part is figuring out how to do this when you’re caught and threatened with suspension. Personally, it didn’t work for me-I got thrown out of my last school for trying-but it’s still a cool concept. Maybe you can make it work.
Chapter 13
After Mr. Hydine’s discharge from the hospital, Karl misses the old guy’s company-for about three minutes. Then he falls asleep.
He dreams he’s wandering down a rocky hillside, into a meadow filled with tall dry grass-a pleasant place, until soldiers start shooting at him, first from the edge of the woods, then from behind the rocks on the opposite side. He understands that they’re not really after him, they’re fighting each other (ragged gray uniforms versus ragged blue uniforms), but these are not noble soldiers, they’re tough, dirty, and sadistic, and they couldn’t care less if he gets shot. So he’s running every which way, searching for a hole he can dive into, but every time he spots one, it turns out to be just a shadow. “I’m not in this!” he shouts at them, pleading for mercy.
His own shout wakes him up. He discovers that he has tangled his sheet in a truly artistic manner. He’s curled on his side, and there’s someone watching him from alongside the bed-a girl in a black sweatshirt with chestnut hair in a short bowl. This confuses him, because Lizette’s hair looked different, shorter, the last time he saw it. Also, she almost always kept it covered with a baseball cap.
“See what happens when you do bad things?” she says. “Eternal torment.”
Almost giddy with happiness, he’s about to say, You broke your vow-you talked to me-but he notices that his hands are on top of his head. Why is that? Because he was dodging bullets a moment ago.
Unscrunching himself, he fixes the sheet so he’s covered up to the neck. “Hi,” he says.
His joy at the sight of her is complicated by shame- because the friend who begged him not to do wrong has returned to find him demolished by his mistake, and she has also seen his underwear, exposed by the twisted hospital gown. He peers at her face, and down at his hands, and back at her face, and down at his hands, and so on.
Lizette has her own confusions and can’t look him in the eye. She picks up the framed snapshot of him with his parents (squinting at the beach) and says, “This is the best picture they could find of y’all?”
“We’re not that photogenic.”
He wishes he could kiss her and hug her, but instead they make small talk.
“So how did your spring break go?” she asks. “Catch up on your rest?”
“Uh-huh. How about you?”
“Pretty dull. A little day trip with the family to Coopers-town, the Hall of Fame, that was nice. You see the error of your ways yet?”
Heart full to bursting, he holds his troubles inside.
He can’t remember, though, why he’s keeping it all to himself. Therefore, he blurts out everything-the whole nasty tale of Klimchock’s coercion and Upchurch’s secret life as the Prince of Sleaze.
He assumes she’ll sympathize, but her face goes cold and distant as he speaks. Maybe she’s saving her compassion for the end.
Or, maybe not.
“I can’t believe you ever got involved with them, Karl. You should have known better. The whole thing is so low-down.”
“I told you, I wish I never started.”
The A/C cycles on, and goose bumps form on Karl’s forearms.
“You dug your own grave, Karl. It’s nobody’s fault but yours.”
By refusing to give him the slightest bit of sympathy, Lizette leaves Karl deeply disappointed. Also, to tell the truth, annoyed.
“Klimchock called Jonah into his office today,” she says.
“Why?”
“He said Jonah was cheating.”
“What?!”
“You know Jonah’s nervous tic, where he turns his neck to the side? Klimchock said he was copying from his neighbor’s test.”
Thinking, thinking… Is it a ploy, a message to Karl? Give in or I’ll crush everyone you care about. Or maybe that’s delusional.
“What happened? Did he get expelled?”
“He got sent home with all his stuff. I helped him empty his locker.”
“How upset was he?”
“How upset do you think?”
That Klimchock would blackmail Karl is one thing. At least Karl really cheated. But Jonah…
“So what are you planning to do?” she asks.
“I don’t have a clue. I wish I could run away and join the circus.”
“There aren’t too many job openings for a lone Flying Stringbini.”
Lunch arrives. Karl and Lizette stare at the pale bread and the green curls of lettuce sticking out past the crust, all strangled by tight plastic wrap.
“They’re just evil,” Lizette says. “Both of them-Klimchock and Upchurch. They deserve to sink in their own vile sludge.”
These are the first kind words she has spoken to Karl in a long time-but they don’t solve the problem, because there is no solution.