The silence had almost bludgeoned him to the carpet, and it wasn’t until several seconds had passed that he realized they had misunderstood him, that they had thought at that moment he had meant he was going to be an M.D.
Joyce’s smile had gone strained, but she still professed joy that he was finally decided; his father had taken him outside after a while and told him, for at least the hundred-millionth time, that he was the first member of the Boyd family to get a college education, and Donald would be the second. He said he hoped with all his heart the boy knew what he was doing.
“Being a teacher, and now a principal,” Norman had said, “is something I’m not ashamed to be proud of, son. Being a vet, though, that’s not … well, it’s not really anything at all, when you think about it. I mean, helping cats instead of babies isn’t exactly my idea of medicine.”
“But I like animals,” he had argued stubbornly. “And I don’t like the way people treat them.”
“Oh. Dr. Dolittle, I presume?” his father had said lightly.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Don.” And a hand rested on his shoulder. “Look, I just want to be sure you’re positive. It’s a hell of a step, making up your mind about something like this.”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t.”
“Well, at least think about it, all right? As a favor to me and your mother. It’s only August. You have a full year to graduation, and even then you really don’t have to make up your mind. Some kids take a lot of time. You just take all the time you need.”
He had wanted to shout that he had done all the thinking he had to on the subject; instead, he had only nodded and walked away, and had walked and run for the rest of the day. When he finally returned home, nothing was said about the announcement, and nothing had been said since.
He grinned now in his bed; he wasn’t quite as thick as his father thought him — he knew they were hoping he would come to his senses and decide to treat rich old ladies instead of little old poodles.
What they didn’t know was that he didn’t want to work with poodles or Persians or dachshunds or Siamese; what he wanted was to work with the live equivalents of the pets in his room.
They’d scream bloody murder if they knew about that.
But he didn’t mind, because nothing they could do would make him change his decision; now if he could only stop minding the sound of them arguing.
The voices in their room, as if at his command, stopped, and he undressed quickly and got into bed. Stared at the ceiling. Wondered if he was soon going to become part of a statistic. Jeff Lichter’s folks had divorced when he was ten, and he lived with his father two blocks over. He was an all-right guy, nothing wrong there, but Brian Pratt lived with his mother, and whether it was because of the divorce or not, Brian was practically living on his own.
Nuts, he thought, and rolled onto his stomach, held up his head, and looked with a vague smile at the panther, then over to the horse, then the otters on the nearest bookcase. There were no names for any of them, but he shuddered to think of what Brian or Tar would say if they ever found out he sometimes talked to them all. Just a few words, not whole conversations. A touch on one for luck before a test, a wish on another that he would meet The Girl and wouldn’t have to suffer the guys’ teasing anymore, a wish on still another that he would wake up in the morning and discover that he had turned into a superman.
He grinned.
Don the Superman! Leaping tall buildings at a single bound! Carrying Tar Boston over the park and dropping him headfirst right into the pond. Saving Chris Snowden from a rampaging Brian and letting her be as grateful as she wanted.
Using his X-ray vision to see through Tracey Quintero’s baggy sweaters just to check if anything was really there.
Don the Superman.
“Don the jerk,” he said.
It was funny, when he thought about it, how the little kids were the only ones he could really talk to. For some reason most of them thought his stories were pretty okay, except for that one little monster tonight. A laugh was muffled by the pillow. A good thing the brat’s parents had come along just then, or he would have had them all really seeing that giant crow in the tree.
And damn, wouldn’t that be something!
Don the Superman, and his giant pal, Crow!
Just before he fell asleep, he wished he could wake up and discover that he was the handsomest kid in the entire city, maybe the whole state, maybe even the whole world.
Just about anything except waking up. to see plain old Don Boyd still there in the bathroom mirror.
TWO
The next seven days slipped into October on the back of a lost football game in which Brian dropped three sure touchdowns and Tar and Fleet each fumbled once, an article in the weekly newspaper implying that the Ashford South principal was delaying successful contract negotiations by his refusal for political reasons to support the people he led, and a series of grim reports on New York television’s early evening news programs concerning the Howler — since his last victim had died almost two weeks before, the police theorized he had either committed suicide or had left the state, a notion adopted by Don and Jeff with an accompanying shiver of macabre delight.
On Tuesday morning Chris Snowden walked to school only a block ahead of him, and he could not decide whether to try to catch up and hope for a conversation, maybe she’d throw herself into his arms, or hang back and just watch. In the cafeteria he and Jeff scowled at the offering of scorched macaroni and cheese, and decided that Chris was probably into older men these days — college guys, if not their fathers.
Then Don watched Tracey Quintero pick up her tray and carry it to the gap in the wall where a worker was waiting to scrub it down for the next user.
“Hey, Jeff, do you think it’s possible for someone to be in love with two women at the same time?”
“Sure. I think.”
“It has to be possible. I mean, different women have different things to offer a guy, right? And a guy can’t find everything he wants in one woman, right? So he has to find them in different women, right?”
Jeff looked at him sideways. “What?”
“It makes sense, don’t you think?”
“It makes sense if you’re crazy, sure.”
“Well, I’m not crazy, and it makes sense, and I think I’m in love.”
“Lust,” Jeff corrected. “It’s lust.”
“What a pal.”
“Well, hell, Don, that’s nuts, y’know?”
“I thought you agreed.”
“I did too until I heard what you said.”
He poked at the macaroni, stabbed at the cheese crust, and sighed as he opened a carton of milk. As he drank, Chris walked in, alone, saw him, and smiled and walked out again.
“God,” he whispered.
“Maybe she likes you.”
He didn’t dare believe it; he didn’t even know her.
“Or,” said Jeff as he rose to leave, “she knows your old man and wants to polish a few apples, if you know what I mean.”
Don sagged glumly, and Jeff realized his mistake, could do nothing about it, and hurried out. Don watched him go, then rose and followed slowly. Lichter had reminded him about a girl he had gone with as a sophomore. He thought he had found a one-way express ticket to heaven the way she treated him, trotted after him, made him laugh, and taught him the preliminaries of making love. Then, one day at his locker, he had overheard her talking with Brian, giggling and swearing on her mother’s grave that the only reason she saw him was because of his father.
“I am not working one minute more than I have to to get out of here,” she’d said. “And what tightass teacher’s gonna flunk me when I’m messing around with the principal’s kid?”