“Good Lord,” another voice rang out.
Max saw Principal Hagerty in the doorway, his hands rushed up to cover his mouth.
Max’s gaze shifted back to Simon, and his stomach clenched as if he might spew.
The boy’s eyes were wide open, wider than seemed possible. Usually a dull brown, Simon’s eyes were glazed with tiny red veins and so bulging, they looked like they might fall out. His lips were pulled away from his teeth in a grimace of terror.
Simon had been terrified when he died, and his final expression was plastered on his face like the ghoulish rubber masks the five and dime stores sold around Halloween.
The sound of sirens grew louder, deafening. And soon official sounding voices crowded the halls of the school.
Paramedics shouted for the teachers to make room.
Max stumbled into the hallway, pressing his hands into the cool brick walls as he fumbled to the boys’ bathroom. He shoved through the door, burst into the largest stall, and dropped to his knees to retch.
13
“What did you mean earlier,” Sid blurted, as they walked home.
They’d passed the video store, and Ashley had glanced in. She’d planned to check if they’d gotten Frightmare in yet, but the desire had vanished.
The screams of the teachers continued to echo through her head.
She knew Simon had gone missing. She’d heard a few other kids talking about it in the cafeteria earlier in the week. Ashley figured he’d gotten mad at his parents and was hiding out at a friend’s house, punishing them for withholding his allowance or refusing to get him a new video game. It never crossed her mind something bad happened to him.
“About what?” Ashley asked, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jean shorts.
“You asked me if I saw Warren’s eyes.” Sid explained, shifting his backpack from one shoulder to the other and then back again. The heavy bag caused the entire left side of Sid's upper body to droop, but no one wore their bag full-on, not unless you were a supreme dork. And Sid wasn’t adding dork to his already loathsome nickname, Butterball.
“I forgot,” Ashley murmured, still trying to wrap her mind around Simon, one of their own, being dead. “They were kind of yellow and shiny looking. I don’t really know how to explain it.”
“Like he was sick?” Sid asked, a hopeful tinge in his voice.
Ashley frowned, though she understood why Sid hoped Warren was sick. Warren delighted in torturing Sid, and as summer approached, a sick Warren would give him a brief respite.
“Maybe,” Ash said, though sick hadn’t been the word she’d thought of when she’d noticed Warren earlier.
She stopped walking, struck by a disturbing thought.
Sid looked back at her.
“What?” he asked.
“What if Warren killed Simon?” she said.
Sid’s eyes widened, and he glanced toward the woods running along the opposite side of the road.
“Warren’s a jerk, but… I don’t know, Ash.”
Ashley struggled to imagine it as well. Warren doing what exactly? Stabbing Simon? Beating him with something?
Simon was a quiet kid. He and his few friends mostly stayed out of the way of the Thrashers. Ashley had never seen him get his lunch tray dumped in his lap or watched his books skid across the floor because Warren had slapped them out of his hands.
“If he did,” Sid muttered. “I hope they find out soon. If Warren wants to kill anyone, it’s probably me.”
Ashley resumed walking, not wanting to agree out loud with Sid. Warren already didn’t like him, but the day before, Sid had gotten Warren in trouble during math class.
Paula George had complained to the teacher that her Walkman had disappeared from her desk. Sid pointed out the headphone wire, noticeably pink, hanging from Warren’s desk. When the teacher wrenched open Warren’s desk, the boy had turned bright red and glared at Sid until Mr. Crisp told him to go to the principal’s office.
“Could it have been Warren, Sid? In the woods?”
“The monster?” Sid asked.
“Yeah.” Ashley bobbed her head up and down.
“I didn’t really see him. It was dark, but maybe if he were wearing a mask.”
“Yeah,” Ashley agreed. “That’s what I think. If he had one of those ghoul masks on, it totally could have been him.”
Sid shuddered and glanced behind them. Ashley glanced back too, but the road stood empty.
“Are you going to visit the raccoons tonight?” Sid asked as they turned onto his street.
Ashley shook her head.
“Better not. If my mom hears about Simon, she’ll try to call. I don’t want to freak her out.”
“Yeah,” Sid agreed. “My mom’s already wearing a path in the driveway.”
Ashley followed Sid’s gaze to his driveway where his mother walked back and forth, her long blue skirt billowing like a ‘come home this instant’ flag.
“See you in the morning,” she told him, turning onto her own street and leaving him to walk the last half block on his own.
MAX HEARD his front door open. He leaned forward on the sofa and saw his mother’s gray sedan parked in his driveway.
“Hi, Mom,” he called as the door clicked shut.
She peeked her head into the room and then produced a tinfoil covered pie.
He imagined the soft give of Simon’s flesh, as if his organs and bones were merely pie filling beneath his skin. He frowned and shook his head.
Maria gave him a sympathetic glance, and she walked past him, depositing the pie in the kitchen before she returned to the living room.
She sat next to him on the couch and rested a hand on his leg. “Linda called me from the school. She told me what happened today.”
Max snorted.
His mother sounded as she had a dozen times in his youth when a teacher or the principal had called home to say Max had been teased or Max had been stuffed in a locker after gym class or the time Max had taken a cleat and smacked Kurt, the school bully, on the back of the head for tripping Max during his timed mile.
For a moment, the memories startled him, and he marveled at his choice to become a teacher.
“I’m sorry, honey. That must have been terrible for you.”
He leaned back and sighed, avoiding looking at his mother because her kind face might bring him to tears.
He’d been avoiding the thought of Simon since he’d climbed on his motorcycle after school and sped away, and yet in truth, he’d thought of nothing else.
“It was bad,” he admitted. “And we made it worse. Now that detective will really hate my guts.”
The word guts left a filmy aftertaste on his tongue, and he stood, hurrying to the kitchen for a glass of water.
“The boy was dead,” Maria said, walking in behind him a moment later. “Sometimes it’s too late.”
Max closed his eyes.
“I know it was too late, Mom. But we messed up the scene, contaminated it or whatever. Mr. Curry shouldn’t have picked him up. I touched him too. I carried him.” Max shuddered at the memory of the soft bloated body and felt shame at his disgust.
“You’re teachers, Max. It goes against your being to leave a child in the woods, cold and alone.”
WARREN WAS NOT in school the next day, nor the day after.
The teachers were subdued, many red-eyed, and there’d been rumors the last two days of school would be cancelled. Instead, things went on as usual with the added air of mystery and obvious sadness.