Temptation: A Novel (2 page)

1. Elegia

It’s June, and there’s a guy—a kid—a boy stuck in a ditch that’s called his life.

Sixteen.

Sad.

Stuck in summer school.

Stuck without a license. Without a job. Without friends.

Stuck in a town he hates and fears. Stuck in a family that’s leftover parts, with a mother who only has leftover love to give.

Surrounded on all sides by those who claim they know him, who claim there’s something about him, who claim this and that. Threatened and watched by unseen strangers.

A boy still haunted by memories of a girl he once knew.

A boy still haunted by memories of all the things he could have done.

There’s a teen who’s supposed to be playing the next track on the next album but instead is stuck repeating the same sad, endless song that keeps going around and around the turntable.

Yeah, there’s
that
guy. That poor, miserable guy.

But that guy’s not me.

2. Made for You

The front door used to frighten me. Now it frees me.

I swing it open, daring them to seize me. I walk downstairs, daring them to trip me. I know someone watches me, but only God knows why. But we know where things stand between me and God, don’t we, so let’s not go there.

I’m done going there.

I should be tired of not having a license and not having a car, but I’m not. Instead, I’m breaking the law on a Triumph motorcycle as I start it up and get on out.

I’m not afraid.

Yes you are.

I’m not plagued by the last eight months.

Says who?

The faster I rev this machine and turn the corners, the more unbound I feel. I can almost, almost, really almost escape.

Nope.

But I can and do, and soon even those nagging stupid swirling thoughts inside my head go away.

Just like that.

I don’t hear them anymore.

But I do see the road ahead, and for once I’m happy. I’m a happy boy. I’m not running for my life and I’m not covered in blood and I’m not seeing ghosts and I’m not crying.

Nope. I’m happy.

I’m happy because the sun is shining. School is over, and I don’t have to feel like a sore thumb sticking out. I can’t sleep in like Mom does because I’ve got summer school, but that’s fine. It just means I can avoid finding a job since my last one burned down. I can avoid thinking about all that, and you know what? The wind and the whipping streets all make it go far away.

It’s been a few weeks since graduation, and it’s gone away.

This is the fifth day back at the dump I’d gotten away from, but I’m a different person.

I’m changed.

I am different from the guy who climbed the steps of the school last October and proceeded to slowly waste away with worry.

I pull my bike up in the parking lot and get off.

I’m riding a bike. I mean—come on.

It’s a new day.

The first day of the rest of your life.

So I’ve been telling myself over and over and over.

It’s a Friday, and the weekend is almost here. A weekend that no longer frightens me.

I’d take off my helmet, but I didn’t wear a helmet because that’s how I roll.

You don’t roll anyplace.

“Shut up,” I say.

Then I look around to make sure nobody saw me talking to …

Yeah, myself.

Guess some things never change.

3. The Breakfast Club

The beautiful thing about being here at Harrington High is that nobody else is there to taunt or watch or mock or spy. This is the first of my two three-week summer school sessions. Nothing like spending most of the summer at the school I desperately wanted to get away from. But after a week of this, everything has changed. The dark, creepy cobwebs have been cleaned up. Now everything is actually …

Normal.

The weeks since graduation—since everything happened with Pastor Marsh—have been awesome because I’ve gotten used to not doing anything. Not hearing anything going BOO in the middle of the night. Not having to deal with any craziness. Just living day after day as a normal teen. Learning how to start and ride the motorcycle that an elderly woman named Iris left me, the one that belonged to Uncle Robert when he used to work for her at the Crag’s Inn. No Iris or missing uncle has been spotted, which is okay.

It’s all okay.

I’ve come to realize that whatever the reason my teachers decided to fail me (well, not my French teacher, because I deserved that F, but my English and algebra teachers), it doesn’t really matter anymore because this is a glorified recess. Summer school is like a study hall minus the studying and the students.

So far, I’m not really sure
what
I’m supposed to be doing and how I’m supposed to be graded, but then again, it’s a new day, and it’s a new Chris.

There are reasons for that.

One in particular.

I’m among the first to get to the class today. I take my regular seat, a second chair from the back row. Since the first day, we’ve all sat in the same seats, all seven of us. Thankfully there’s no Gus. That was my big fear. But I remembered who his father was and bet that he probably wouldn’t have to spend his summer mornings at school regardless of his grades.

There weren’t any formal introductions to the kids in the class. There were only two I actually recognized. One who terrified me a bit until he started amusing me.

And then …

Well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

Gin is in the back row, her monstrous black glasses and straight falling black hair hiding her face. I honestly don’t know yet if Gin can speak English. Or if her name is Gin or Jen or Ginny. Her last name is Chang or Wang or something like that. The teacher said it quickly the first day, and that’s been that. I’m not sure if she’s Chinese or Japanese and whether this is all one big blur to her. Someone said they thought she was a freshman.

So yeah, all I know is that she wears big glasses.

The pudgy short kid with the red curly ’fro is Shawn. He’s a junior, and he’s just—Shawn. He’s
that
kid. The one everybody knows, nobody really loves, but everybody loves to not love. He makes you laugh, but he says the most outrageous stuff. You wonder what he’ll be doing when he grows up. Here in school, he can be dumb and say crazy things, but there’s no telling what the guy will do when he gets out of here.

“Christopher,” he says to me in a Russian-sounding accent.

No connection to anything. Probably some random thing going off in his head.

Shawn sits in front of me, which is fine because that way I can avoid Mr. Taggart. Mr. Taggart is the last one to show up every day. Usually he stumbles in looking like he went to the same party my mother went to the night before. He’s mostly bald, with a nice thick mustache that looks two decades out of place and a nice thick belly that looks two belt sizes out of shape. They say he used to be the coach of the football team.

These are things I hear mentioned casually. Like Gin being a freshman.

The next to come in is the movie-star wannabe. Roger struts into the classroom as if it’s a red carpet and the paparazzi are out in full force. He smiles a crystal smile that shows through the airbrushed beard he’s got going on. I still haven’t quite figured out how he can cut it
that
short, so short it looks like shoe polish. His hair slants forward and upward in a faux-hawk style.

Guy has to use a lot of gel to get his hair to do that.

He fist-bumps Shawn, who idolizes the guy for some reason.

Roger is a senior who needs this summer class to graduate. He says he’s going to the University of Southern California. I don’t know whether to believe him or not.

But at least he’s not telling you he’s your cousin. That didn’t turn out so well, did it?

“How’re we gonna kill three hours today?” Roger says to me.

Roger’s one of those kids who doesn’t really talk with you. He talks at you. I shrug, because he’s not really looking for an answer.

He looks at the quiet figure in the back. “Hey, Gin.”

Roger’s not a bad guy. He’s just a politician. A politician or a

Don’t say it

pastor.

Something about both of those professions makes me skeptical.

I’m waiting in my chair, waiting for the moment that made me get out of bed and get on that motorcycle and rush here.

Soon it arrives.

Harris comes in first, the bright-eyed smiling guy who looks like Will Smith’s clone from his television days. As usual, Harris is dressed like a preppy. He’s laughing at something. He looks behind him, and yes, there she comes.

Lily walks into the room, and suddenly it shifts like one of those houses at an amusement park. Everybody watches her. I can’t see Gin, but I’m sure she’s looking at the golden-haired beauty too.

Good morning, Lily.

This is what I say in my mind. I don’t say it out loud because—well, Lily and I have had two conversations. Just two. And they’ve been the throwaway kind, not the get-to-know-you-better kind. The kind where she says something, I say something stupid in response, and then she just looks at me with pity.

As usual, just as she did on her first day, Lily takes the seat over to the right of the room, right across from Harris. They’re best buddies, of course.

Today she’s wearing an Atlanta Falcons jersey and small shorts that almost don’t show, since the jersey’s so long. Lily is tall and athletic, and her legs show it.

A part of me sighs, and another part tries to look cool.

It’s easier to look cool riding a bike than sitting in this rigid seat.

I glance over and see those perfect lips widen into a smile as she says something to Harris. Oh, I’d like to hate him, but I can’t. Harris is possibly one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. And he’s just like the rest of us—pretty much smitten with the new girl.

That’s all I know about Lily. She’s the new girl. She looks twenty-five but will be a senior next year. Her hair is curly and wild, as if she just skydived before coming to class.

There’s something about being in this room with her that makes me feel alive.

Yes, maybe I should’ve learned some things from my track record with girls. But—it’s not like there’s anything happening here. It’s just a beautiful girl who doesn’t really know me who happens to go to Harrington High.…

Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before.

That’s a song I just heard the other day. Kinda fits.

I stop thinking of this when Brick walks into the room. He looks like he’s trying to mimic Clint Eastwood’s character in those spaghetti Westerns, except Brick isn’t wearing a gun (that I can see anyway). He’s in a leather vest and a white T-shirt, and his hair is about the same length as Roger’s beard.

He first looks at Lily, then grins and winks at her. “My little flower.”

She laughs. “Good morning, Brick.”

He eyes the rest of us in a sinister way.

He did this the first day, and I thought,
Oh great, here we go again. A skinhead Gus.
But after a couple of days I realized that Brick just looks mean. Yes, he’s a skinhead, and yes, he doesn’t like authority. But I’m not an authority on anything, so he’s grown to like me.

So much so that he now sits across from me and usually will talk to me throughout the class. Mr. Taggart stopped telling Brick to quit talking, since it never has any effect.

Brick messes up my already messy hair and nods at me. “Miss me?”

“Like the plague.”

He laughs. This is probably why he likes me. He thinks I’ve got a funny, quirky sense of humor. He told me so. The third day, after hearing some of my comments, he just examined me with squinting eyes. Then he said, “You’re kinda funny, Buckley.”

Shawn told me the story of how Brick got his name. Turns out he literally threw a brick through the glass doors lining the front of Harrington High when he was only a sophomore. It was after hours, and he was coming to get something that Principal Harking had taken from him and left in her office.

Obviously that got him a nice suspension, along with a visit from the cops and a fine.

Not that the cops do anything around here. Just saying.

Brick proceeds to tell me again why I need to sell him my motorcycle. Something about it being worth a ton and about an actor named Steve McQueen. I nod as if I’m paying attention, but really I’m just wanting to look over at the blonde who’s not paying either of us attention.

Soon Mr. Taggart stumbles in, looking lost and disinterested. He’s got a bit of stuff to hand out—some reading material and a quiz related to it. Stuff that would take a monkey about half an hour to do. We have three hours.

“And if you finish it, just start—I don’t know, do something.”

That’s our summer school teacher. Dazed and confused and saying things like
do something.

I’m wondering if we’ll see Mr. Taggart nod off today. We like taking bets to see if and when he will.

My guess is that his weekend has already started, and that mentally he’s a long, long way from this classroom.

Surrounded by these strangers who are quickly becoming not strangers anymore, I strangely find myself at home.

For the first time since coming to good ole Solitary.