She turned to study the neighborhood and her eyes fell on him. He waited for the condescending sneer, the look of superiority, and could barely believe it when she gave him a shy smile. He walked closer, wishing the bible and curriculum book he was holding at his side would become invisible.
"Hi," she said.
"How do you do?" he replied, and immediately cursed himself for not being more casual.
But he didn't know how to be easy like the other guys.
She looked down at the sidewalk. He spotted a little speck of dandelion fluff caught in the top of her blond bubble, and had to fight back a nearly irresistible urge to brush it away. As she continued to stare at the sidewalk, he realized that she was shy, and he felt a great surge of protectiveness toward her.
"I'm Mitchell Blaine," he said, using the skills that had become second nature to him after nearly a decade of deportment classes. "I live next door. Welcome to the neighborhood."
She looked back up at him. Only a dab of soft pink lipstick remained at the bow of her upper lip. She had eaten the rest away. "Mitch?" she inquired.
No one had ever called him Mitch except the parents he barely remembered. He was Mitchell. Mitchell-Mitchell-Diaper Boy.
"Yes," he said. "My name is Mitch."
"I'm Candy Fuller."
They stood on the front sidewalk and talked awkwardly. Candy and her family were from Chillicothe, and she would be a sophomore at Clearbrook High that September, part of the class of '64, just like he was. Candy had been a junior varsity cheerleader at her old school, and she wanted to cheer for Clearbrook this year. When they finally parted, Mitch felt as if his life had begun all over again.
For the rest of that summer they met every evening after dinner on the old metal bench beneath his aunts' grape arbor. Candy had to wash the dishes before she could come outside, and she always smelled like Joy detergent. They sat on the bench with the flat dark grape leaves curling about their heads and they talked.
Candy spoke of the friends she had left behind in Chillicothe and her worries that she might not be able to make the varsity cheerleading squad at Clearbrook High. Mitch talked about how he'd like to have his own car and whether or not he would be able to get a scholarship to college. He kept the darker bitterness of his life hidden away, out of fear that her affection for him would turn to disgust.
The adoration in Candy Fuller's deep blue eyes grew stronger every evening. Her reaction left Mitch breathless. No girl had ever looked at him that way. His stomach cramped as he remembered that Candy was from Chilli-cothe. She didn't know about the sissy boy, the diaper baby who wasn't allowed to play sports. All she saw when she gazed at him was a tall, lean fifteen-year-old, with sandy hair, light blue eyes, and a broad, handsome face.
They lived in splendid isolation through those dog days of summer, drenched in the scent of grapes and Joy and the infinite, unspoken promise of young love. The night before school started, they were quieter than normal, each sensing the changes that the next day would bring. Candy scratched a thin white line in the suntan on the top of her thigh.
"I don't hate moving here anymore, Mitch. This month, it's been special. Meeting you.
But I'm scared about tomorrow. I'll bet all the girls at school are crazy about you."
He shrugged, trying to act cool, although his heart was thumping so hard it was painful.
She studied the toe of her once-white sneaker and her voice began to quiver. "I'm afraid you won't still like me after school starts."
He couldn't believe it. This soft, pretty, bubble-haired cheerleader with her sweet mouth and pointy breasts was afraid that she would lose him. The stirring of emotions that gripped his chest was the sweetest pain he had ever experienced. "I'll still like you tomorrow," he murmured. "I'll always like you."
She tilted her face up to him, and he realized that she wanted him to kiss her. Closing his eyes, he leaned forward and touched that sweet Candy-scented mouth with his own.
Although dark, sexual thoughts of her had tormented him for weeks, the kiss was pure. It was a gesture of adoration, a symbol of promise, a farewell to summer.
"Will you walk me to school tomorrow?" she asked when they finally drew apart. Her eyes were large and beseeching, as if she still wasn't certain that he cared for her.
"Of course," he replied. He would have walked with her to the moon.
And then they kissed again. This time it was different. Their mouths met hungrily. Their young bodies joined with a raw, untried passion. He felt the thrusts of her young breasts against his chest and the small bumps of her spine beneath his fingertips. Dark longings raced through his body and heated his blood. A man's need surged through him, its urgency blocking out everything but the feel of Candy's body pressed next to his.
"You can touch my chest if you want," she whispered.
He couldn't believe he'd heard her right. For several seconds he did nothing, and then he gingerly slid his hand between their bodies. The well-worn fabric of her blouse was soft beneath his palm. When she didn't stop him, he let his hand creep upward, still staying outside her blouse. He felt the bump that marked the bottom edge of her bra and waited in agony for her to push him away.
But she didn't move. He slid his fingers higher until he touched the slope of her breast.
Through the fabric of her blouse and the sponginess of her padded bra, his hand closed over her. He groaned and held the soft mound as if it were a fragile baseball. They kissed and he gently kneaded it. The Fuller's back porch light snapped on and they sprang apart.
Her eyes were misty with the depth of her feelings for him. "I never let a boy do that to me," she whispered. "Don't tell anybody."
He shook his head and silently pledged to keep the precious gift she had given him their secret forever.
At seven-thirty the next morning, she met him on her front porch. He could see that she was embarrassed about what had happened between them the night before, and he was overwhelmed by her fragility. She was so vulnerable, so needful of his protection. As he watched the tip of her tongue flick nervously over her lips, he determined to shield her from all the spiteful demons at Clearbrook High.
"Do I look all right?" she asked, as if her entire future depended on his response.
He took in her white blouse with its gold circle pin on the collar and her pleated green plaid skirt. "You'll be the prettiest girl in the sophomore class," he replied earnestly.
They walked to school hand in hand, her small fingers curled through his bigger ones. He felt the morning sun warming his face, and shortened his strides so she could keep up.
His shoulders drew back. A slight swagger appeared in his walk. With Candy Fuller walking at his side, he was no longer Mitchell Blaine. He was Mitch. Mitch the Indestructible. Mitch the Mighty. Mitch the Manliest of the Manly.
"Do you think the other kids will like me?" she asked.
An uneasiness passed through him, a vague foreboding. But he was Mitch the Fearless, Mitch the Brave, and he shook it off. "You shouldn't pay too much attention to what the other kids think."
He could see that his response mystified her, and he remembered that she was a cheerleader—part of a group that was dedicated to conformity. His uneasiness grew.
"Don't you think they'll like me?" Anxiety had crumpled her brow.
"Of course they will."
The American flag cracked in the morning breeze as, hand in hand, they walked into the school. They were in different homerooms, and he had promised to stay with her until second bell. As they walked down the main hallway, he was lulled by the joy of entering Clearbrook High with Candy Fuller at his side, and so he wasn't prepared when he rounded the corner by the sophomore lockers and the taunts began.
"Here's
Mi-chull
," the boys clucked, imitating his aunts. "
Mi-chull, Mi-chull
." There were five of them leaning against the metal locker doors, five scrubbed-up would-be rebels made omnipotent by banding together.
"Who's that you got there,
Mi-chull
? Hey, baby, come on over here and meet some real men."
Candy looked first at the boys and then at Mitch. She was bewildered by their behavior.
None of the boys was as good-looking at Mitch, none as tall and well-built. Why were they taunting him?
Mitch tried to appear tolerant, as if they were children and he was a world-weary adult.
"Why don't you guys grow up?"
They hooted with laughter and catcalls, pounded their fists in merriment against the locker at his absurd attempt to defy them.
Candy grew more befuddled. She gazed at him, accusation and betrayal beginning to form in her eyes. She had thought he was one of the special, one of Clearbrook's chosen.
Now she realized that wasn't true. She had somehow managed to ally herself with an outcast.
He felt her fingers slackening in his and panic filled him. She wanted to get away from him, to distance herself. In those few seconds, everything changed. Without knowing any of the facts, without understanding a single detail of his past, she understood that he was a social pariah and that she should not have let herself be seen with him. He was going to lose Candy Fuller, and with that knowledge came the certainty that he didn't want to live anymore. If he couldn't be Mitch the Brave with Candy Fuller at his side, he didn't want to be anyone.
The girls had gathered around the boys, and they were laughing, too. Their amusement was easy and untroubled. Mitch had been the target of their jokes for so long that their attacks upon him were inspired more by habit than venom. They even felt a distant sort of fondness for the boy who had been the source of so much amusement over the years.
Candy was pulling at his hand now, trying desperately to get away from him, to take the small steps that would transport her from the land of the untouchable to the arena of the acceptable.
"Mi-
chul
l, Mi-
chull
, "Charlie Shields called out in a high, good-humored falsetto. "Come here and get your diapers changed."
A blue-black vortex of rage and pain consumed him. The rage caught him in its grasp and sank its talons through his flesh. A cry built inside him as he let that small, sweet hand go, a roar of outrage at this loss of his fresh new manhood. And with that roar, years of dilligent self-control gave way inside him.
He launched himself at the boys. They were five and he was one, but he didn't care. It was a suicide attack, a kamikaze mission with no hope for personal survival, but only a distant yearning for some posthumous dignity of the spirit. They laughed as he came toward them. They catcalled at the hilarity of Mitchell Blaine attacking them. But then they saw the expression on his face and their mockery died.
He began to throw wild, vicious punches. The girls screamed and a crowd gathered in response to the invisible radar that instantly detected a hallway fight.
Charlie Shields shrieked in pain as Mitch's fist snapped the cartilage in his nose and sent blood spurting out. Artie Tarpey gave a grunt of agony as he felt a rib crack. Mitch was indiscriminate with his violence, propelled by a rage that had been building inside him for nearly a decade. He hit anything he could touch, and barely felt the blows he suffered in return. Two of the boys were finally able to pin him long enough to slam him into a locker. He smashed the thin metal door with his body and then hurled himself back at them.
The boys had fought among themselves since they were children, and there were unwritten rules of conduct they all followed. But Mitch hadn't been part of their fights, and he didn't know their rules. Now the boys found themselves the targets of a vicious, single-minded attack that was outside their realm of experience. Mitch brought Herb McGill down with a flying tackle and pinned him to the tiled floor. Charlie, holding his broken nose and whimpering with pain, tried to rescue Herb, but Mitch shook him away.
It took three male teachers to put an end to the violence, and even then Mitch didn't give up easily. As the men dragged him away to the principal's office, he refused to meet the eyes of Candy Fuller.
The aunts were summoned. They cried when they saw him slumped forward on the office bench with his bruised elbows propped on his thighs, bloody hands dangling between his splayed knees. His white starched shirt was torn and gore-spattered, his eye swollen closed. He looked up at their frail, birdlike frames and saw their fear for him.
Aunt Theodora recovered before her sister and advanced like a brigadier general upon the principal. "Explain this outrage at once, Jordan Featherstone. How could you allow something like this to happen to our Mitchell?"
"
Your
Mitchell just sent three of his classmates to the emergency room at the hospital,"
Mr. Featherstone replied sharply. "He's suspended for the next two weeks."
The aunts listened in horror to the details of their nephew's hallway brawl. They gazed at Mitch, first with bewilderment and then condemnation. Amity's eyes grew fierce behind her wire-rimmed spectacles. "You will come home with us at once, Mitchell," she ordered. "We will deal with this in private."
"We are extremely disappointed in you," Theodora exclaimed. "Extremely!"
He could see them conjuring up their most terrible punishment. A stern lecture, a hundred sentences instead of fifty. His heart contracted with love for them and regret at the distress he had inflicted. "Go on home," he said gently. "I'll be there in a little while."
Flabbergasted, they repeated their commands. He shook his head sadly. When they saw that they couldn't sway him, Amity tried to tidy the torn shoulder seam of his shirt, and Theodora told Jordan Featherstone that his school was full of hooligans.
Mr. Featherstone began to lecture him, but Mitch had something else to do. He apologized politely to the three adults. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't mean to be rude, but there's something I have to do."
He walked out of the school and made his way on foot to the emergency room at Clearbrook Memorial Hospital.