‘But what happens if the nuns catch you?’
‘It’s a chance we have to take,’ Ruprecht says.
‘The Condor flies tomorrow night, Skip,’ Dennis says. ‘There’s still room on our team for one more.’
‘Well, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go tomorrow,’ Skippy says. ‘That’s when I’m going to Lori’s house.’
Another time Skippy might have been jealous of Dennis and his new role at the centre of Ruprecht’s life; tonight, as he lies in bed, he is thinking only of tomorrow – not Dennis, not Carl, not pills or the swim meet or Operation Condor: tomorrow and nothing else. He’s so excited he doesn’t know how he’ll ever get to sleep; but he must do because next thing it’s 6 a.m., and he’s plunging pow! into fresh chlorine.
The lucky boys who made the cut have extra training all this week, a half-hour every morning before the others start; through the perspex roof the sky is still pitch-dark, it could be midnight. From the side of the pool, Coach claps a rhythm, while they race up and down, up and down, an endless journey over the same short distance. Breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly, crawclass="underline" Skippy’s arms and legs do the movements by themselves, while he floats somewhere inside his body like a passenger. In flashes, through foam, Garret Dennehy and Siddartha Niland appear in the parallel lanes either side, like fragments of reflections, different Skippys in different worlds.
Outside the showers, while the others are washing, the team huddles round, arms folded across slippery cold bodies, listening to Coach with serious grown-up expressions. There’s only three days left before the meet!!! He gives them the itinerary and assigns them their buddies for the trip. ‘Daniel, you’ll partner with Antony as before…’ ‘Ha ha, tough shit, Juster!’ ‘Better bring some ear-plugs!’ Antony ‘Air Raid’ Taylor, the loudest snorer in the whole school, who cannot be woken till morning once he falls asleep unless you throw a bucket of water over him.
‘Okay, hit the showers. And remember, take care of yourselves over the next few days. No horseplay. I don’t want all that good work going to waste because someone’s pulled a muscle wrestling, or stood on a nail.’
On a nail, on glass, on acid, on burning coals, or you walk under scaffolding and a girder drops on top of you, or you get burned in a fire, or you’re kidnapped by terrorists? When you think about it there are so many things that could go wrong! But Skippy’s not thinking about it, his brain is full of lori lori lori lori! He can’t think of anything else, through swimming, through breakfast, German, Religion, Art, the thought of her making everything beautifully unreal, like the last days of school, when you’re walking along the edge of June and though class hasn’t ended summer’s creeping into everything like spilled orange juice through the pages of your copybook, summer that’s stronger than school, Lori that’s like a one-girl summer…
In English they’re doing a poem called ‘The Road Not Taken’, about this guy Robert Frost in a wood, reading which Mr Slattery becomes unaccountably emotional.
‘A life, you see – a life, Frost is saying, is something that must be chosen, just like a path through a wood. The tricky thing for us is that we live in an age that seems to present us with a whole raft of choices, a maze of ready-made paths. But if you look more closely, many of them turn out to be simply different versions of the same thing, to buy products, for example, or to believe whatever prefabricated narratives we’re offered to believe in, a religion, a country, a football team, a war. The idea of making one’s own choices, of for example not believing, not consuming, remain as less travelled as ever…’
‘Hey! Skip!’ Mario hisses, leaning across Geoff to poke Skippy in the arm. ‘Have you got a present to bring to your lady?’
‘I need to bring a present?’
Mario claps his hand to his forehead. ‘Mamma mia! It is no wonder you Irish remain virgins until you are forty!’
At lunch break they walk up to the shopping mall to get Lori a present. All the money in his wallet buys Skippy the second-smallest box of chocolates. On the way back, Dennis, who has been unusually quiet this lunchtime, speaks up. ‘I’ve been thinking about that Robert Frost poem,’ he says. ‘I don’t think it’s about making choices at all.’
‘What’s it about, so?’ Geoff says.
‘Anal sex,’ Dennis says.
‘Anal sex?’
‘How’d’you figure, Dennis?’
‘Well, once you see it, it’s pretty obvious. Just look at what he says. He’s in a wood, right? He sees two roads in front of him. He takes the one less travelled. What else could it be about?’
‘Uh, woods?’
‘Going for a walk?’
‘Don’t you listen in class? Poetry’s never about what it says it’s about, that’s the whole point of it. Obviously Mrs Frost or whoever isn’t going to be too happy with him going around telling the world about this time he gave it to her up the bum. So he cleverly disguises it by putting it in a poem which to the untrained eye is just about a boring walk in some gay wood.’
‘But, Dennis, do you think Mr Slattery’d be teaching it to us if it was really about anal sex?’
‘What does Mr Slattery know?’ Dennis scoffs. ‘You think he’s ever taken his wife up the road less travelled?’
‘Poh, when have you ever gone up the road less travelled?’ Mario challenges.
Dennis strokes his chin. ‘Well, there was that magical night with your mother… I tried to stop her!’ – ducking out of the way as Mario swings at him. ‘But she was insatiable! Insatiable!’
Passing back beneath the tattered sycamores, they see a commotion at the entrance to the basement. Boys are milling around, wisps of smoke gusting over their heads. As they approach, Mitchell Gogan detaches himself from the group rubbernecking at the door and arrives breathlessly at their side. ‘Hey, Juster –’ barely able to contain his glee ‘– isn’t your locker number 181?’
Yes, and it’s on fire. Skippy squeezes through the crowd to find flames coursing up the open door, roaring proprietorially in the interior; sparks shoot up to the ceiling and descend again, trailing soot like downed aeroplanes. Boys watch, grinning, their faces dyed a hellish orange; and in the midst of them – staring at him with eyes that in the gothic light are like the windows of an empty house – is Carl. Skippy gapes back in horror, unable to look away. Then from behind him comes a gravelly voice, and Noddy emerges through the bodies, his lumpy troll face flushed red, the fire extinguisher in his hand. ‘Ah Jaysus!’ he shouts. ‘What de fuck’s dis?’
He aims the extinguisher and the crowd, with a single howl of delight, leaps backward as foam cascades into the flames. In less than a minute the fire is out; the boys disperse, but Skippy hovers shamefacedly as Noddy pokes through the charred contents, taking care of any embers. ‘Dis your locker, is it?’ he accosts Skippy. ‘D’you have fireworks in dere or lighter fluid or something?’
Skippy shakes his head mutely, gazing into its sodden black heart.
‘So how’d dis happen, so?’
Noddy’s rancid breath blasts against his nostrils. Through the miasma of smoke he can see Carl watching him, motionless as a waxwork. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t know,’ the janitor mouths, turning back to the devastated locker. ‘Well, de whole ting’s fuckin banjaxed – here, where’re you goin, gimme your name, you…’
But Skippy’s broken free and reeled away. Next thing he knows he’s in his dorm room. The sky in the window is icy-cold; particles of soot cling to the ribbons of the microscopic box of chocolates. Without thinking he finds himself reaching for the pills – then he stops. Dennis, Geoff, Ruprecht and Mario have appeared behind him, arranged in the doorway musicians-of-Bremen-style, regarding him sombrely.