Josh gazed up at the teacher, trying to figure out if maybe Mr. Conners was teasing him the same way Amy had earlier. “Th-There aren’t any such things as ghosts,” he said, wishing he could put more conviction into his voice.
Conners shrugged. “You’re right. But just because we know they don’t exist doesn’t make them any less scary, does it? And it just seems strange to put someone in this room so fast. I guess I thought they’d probably leave it empty, at least the rest of this year.”
“Maybe Hildie thought we’d just keep on thinking about Adam all the time,” Josh suggested. “And anyway, it’s not like it’s the same as it was when he lived here. We moved the furniture around, and all his stuff is gone.”
There was a note in Josh’s voice that told Conners the boy was trying to convince himself almost as much as he was trying to convince his teacher. He decided to drop the subject, at least for the moment, having already voiced doubts he knew he probably shouldn’t have. But it still seemed oddly macabre to him that Hildie Kramer and George Engersol would not only put Josh immediately into the vacant spot left by Adam in the artificial intelligence seminar, but move him into the dead boy’s room as well.
Almost as if they were trying to replace Adam with Josh …
He said nothing more of his thoughts, but set to work, helping Josh unload all the books and miscellany from the shelves above the bed. When the boards had surrendered their load, Conners handed them to Josh, who stacked them neatly against the wall next to the door. “Two of these fit,” Conners said as he tested the screwdrivers he’d scavenged from the drawer in the maintenance shed. “Give me a hand.”
Immediately Josh scrambled up onto the bed, took one of the tools from Conners and set to work. Within five minutes they had the brackets off their braces, and the three metal braces off the wall.
“Now comes the tricky part,” Conners told Josh. “We have to find the studs behind the plaster, or the screws won’t hold when we put the braces up on the wall.” He began tapping on the plaster with the handle of one of the screwdrivers, while Josh watched him curiously.
“What are you doing?” the boy finally asked.
“Listening. Didn’t you ever locate studs before?”
Josh shook his head. “My mom doesn’t do that kind of thing, and my dad …” His voice trailed off and he fell silent. Finally, he took a deep breath. “My dad took off when I was a baby. I hardly even remember him anymore.”
Steve carefully kept his eyes averted from Josh, sensing by the tremor in his voice that the boy was on the verge of tears. “That must have been pretty tough.”
For a second Josh said nothing, but then nodded. “I kept hoping he’d come back, but he never did. I don’t even know where he lives.”
“I bet he misses you,” Conners suggested.
“No, he doesn’t,” Josh replied. “If he missed me, he’d have come to visit me. But he doesn’t care about me anymore.”
Conners stopped tapping at the wall and turned to face Josh squarely. “That might not be true,” he said. “He might care about you a whole lot. There might be reasons why you haven’t seen him.”
Josh’s expression turned stormy. “No, there aren’t. If he cared about me, he’d have come and seen me, or at least called sometimes. But I haven’t heard anything at all for almost two years. And I don’t care!” he added in a sudden outburst of anger. Its intensity startled the teacher. Conners reached out and grasped Josh’s shoulder. “Sounds to me like maybe you care a lot.”
“No, I don’t!” Once again Josh sounded as if he was trying to convince himself more than the teacher.
Conners turned back to the wall, giving Josh a little privacy. “Well, you’re doing better than I am,” he said quietly as he tapped once more at the plaster, though he’d already located the stud and knew he could measure out the next two. “My dad took off when I was eight, and I’m still pissed off at him. It was like one day he just stopped caring about me. But I couldn’t stop caring about him.”
Josh said nothing for a few seconds, then: “So what did you do?”
Conners shrugged without turning around; he knew that if he faced Josh right now, the boy would close up immediately. “I hurt,” he said. “I tried not to let my mom know how much I hurt, but some nights I just cried myself to sleep. And I kept hoping he’d come back.”
“D-Did he?” Josh asked, his voice trembling now.
Conners shook his head. “No. He sent me birthday cards for a couple of years, but then I never heard from him again. For a long time I tried to hate him. But then I decided maybe he had his own reasons for taking off.” At last he turned around, and squatted down so his eyes were level with Josh’s. “And maybe he did,” he said quietly. “But even figuring that out didn’t make me stop hurting.”
Again Josh was silent for a long time. When at last he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “My dad didn’t even say good-bye to me,” he said. “He just … left. How could he do that?”
Steve Conners put his arms around Josh, hugging him. “I don’t know.” His voice was almost as quiet as Josh’s. “I just don’t know how people can treat other people that way. But it seems that they do, and when it happens to us, all we can do is go on living, and not give up. And after a while the hurt gets a little easier. You don’t forget, but you get so you can live with it.”
Josh’s arms tightened around the teacher’s neck, and as the boy choked back a sob, Steve felt his own eyes moisten. He said nothing for a few moments, until he felt Josh steady again. Then, giving him a quick squeeze, he released the boy and stood up. “Tell you what,” he suggested. “What do you say we finish these shelves, then go out and get a hamburger and maybe go to a movie. Just you and me. Okay?”
Josh stared up at him, his eyes eager. “Really?” he breathed. “Just us?”
“Sure,” Conners told him. “Why not?”
“I–I’ve got a lot of homework,” Josh said, worried.
“Nobody’s going to kill you if you don’t have it all done tomorrow,” Conners told him. “Besides, the reading I assigned would take two hours, and since you missed class this morning, you didn’t get the assignment, right?”
Josh nodded.
“And you’d eat dinner anyway. So let’s just use up the time you’d have spent doing my homework on going to a movie. I guarantee it’ll be a lot more fun, and I can fill you in on the reading while we eat.” He winked conspiratorially. “Just between you and me, it’s poetry, and it’s not very interesting.”
Josh grinned. “You going to tell the rest of the class that tomorrow morning?”
“Of course not,” Steve Conners replied. “I’m going to talk about all the symbolism in it, and all the deep meanings everyone thinks the author buried within the lines.”
Josh cocked his head. “It sounds like you don’t think there’s deep meaning,” he ventured.
Conners chuckled. “Very good. You’re right, I don’t. I think authors tend to say exactly what they mean, and a lot of people who can’t write like to pretend there’s a lot more to it than there really is. Which is the lesson for today. Got it?”
“Got it,” Josh agreed.
“Then let’s figure out how this drill works, and finish this up. And if the shelves aren’t straight, don’t blame me. I teach English, not math.”
Half an hour later, when they were done, the shelves were on the wall, and they were perfectly straight.
Between the two of them, they’d managed to get it right.