Period 8 (3 page)

“Not exactly how I was gonna put it,” Justin says, “but yeah, there's driving force to consider.”

“What you call ‘driving force,' we call horny,” Marley says.

“Sweet,” says Heather Cole, a tough little freshman cross-country runner. Hannah reaches across the aisle to high-five her.

“Call it nature,” Justin says.

“So you think nature should trump your word?” Heather says.

“You shouldn't be trying to
get
our word. We're too young to be giving our word, at least for the long haul.”

Josh Takeuchi finishes his last sandwich and stretches out on his beanbag. “Everything stays in the room, right?” Logs nods.

“'Cause I got a cool thing going with Sandra and I don't wanna get quoted out of context. . . .”

“Everything stays in the room,” Logs says.

Tak turns to Hannah. “Soon as schools out, take your journalism recorder out on the street and ask every adult you pass if they're with the girl or boy they were with in high school.”

Hannah says, “This is . . .”

“Naw, serious,” Tak says. “We aren't made so we know exactly what to do. We gotta fuck up to find out.”

“Brain science?” Marley says. There is a definite sarcastic tinge.

Tak shrugs. “I guess. I don't know what it's like for chicks, but when the circumstances are just right—or
wrong
—like when nobody's gonna find out . . . what can I say?”

“Maybe nothing more,” Logs says. “Let's wrap this. Tell you what though, folks. These are questions you'll have to consider at some point, and the sooner the better. A good marriage counselor runs about a hundred-fifty an hour.”

“You talkin' from experience?” Justin says.

“First time I went it was only fifty,” Logs says.

“How'd it work?”

“I live with a cat.”

.3

“I
'm telling you, man, this might be too soon for you. It took me an hour to get feeling back into my hands.” Paulie unloads his wetsuit from the back of the Beetle while Logs drags his from the bed of his Datsun pickup.

“Couldn't have you diving in and taking the easy way out,” Logs says, “not after today's P-8
.”

“The easy way out?” Paulie gets it. “Oh, the
easy
way. Nah, I'd rather kill myself than commit suicide. This is a temporary situation that won't last more than fifteen, maybe twenty years.”

“You're the Lou Gehrig of the water, my man,” Logs says. “Seriously, though, you doing okay? Losing someone is no damn fun. And we're talking Hannah Murphy.”

Paulie shakes talcum powder onto the inside of the wetsuit and over his body and chucks the container to Logs, who does the same. “I know, man,” he says. “I just gotta trust that the universe didn't give me the best girl first. Hannah's cool, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But if it had been the other way around, if she'd cheated on me and then asked me, like, three or four times for a chance to explain, I'd have let her goddamn explain.”

“You're pissed.” Logs starts pulling on his suit. “Man, this is going to be cold.”

“Yes, and yes,” Paulie says. “And in just a second when we hit the water, none of this will matter.” He adjusts his goggles.

They do hit the water and the air rushes out of Logs's lungs like he's a fireplace bellow. “You're right,” he gasps, catching his wind. “I don't give a
damn
about your miserable life.”

“Worst part's over,” Paulie says after the water in their suits has approached body temperature. “Let's do it.”

They swim out about the same distance Paulie swam earlier and turn parallel to the shore, treading as they set timers on their watches. “I'll take the first fifteen,” Paulie says, “then you. We'll switch off and get the feel of it.”

Both Paulie and Logs have put in monster indoor workouts during the winter and hit the weight room on off days. They have very different stroke patterns; Paulie's long and even, while Logs takes seven strokes to Paulie's five to make up for arm length and hand span. But they've been swimming together long enough that they fall into each other's pace automatically.

They swim eight fifteen-minute segments, four up and four back, switching sides every quarter hour so one keeps an eye on the shore while the other sets the pace. For the first three segments Paulie holds back, strength and size and youth all trump cards. But grit and tenacity and decades of experience even things out, and it's all either can do to stay with the other at the finish.

 

“Not bad for a first shot,” Logs gasps, peeling off his wetsuit. He tiptoes barefoot to the passenger-side door, hauls out sweats and flip-flops.

“Man-oh-man, how do you do it? Are you really pushing sixty-five?” Paulie says. “No way should I be digging into my reserves to hang with you. Maybe I have fibromyalgia.”

“Cute. Let's talk about a cure for that in the whirlpool,” Logs says. “When my hands and feet start to thaw out I'll feel every one of those sixty-
four
years. Meet you up at the U.”

 

In the pool area at the university student rec center, Paulie and Logs lower themselves into the otherwise unoccupied whirlpool, immersing to the neck with a mutual
aaahhhhh
as the swirling, heated water envelops them
.
“Best part of swimming like that is stopping,” Logs says. “I could give up the workouts, I just couldn't give up this.”

“That's like saying I could give up setting myself on fire, if it didn't feel so good when they put me out.”

“Addiction is an interesting phenomenon,” Logs says. “What about you, feeling any better?”

Paulie smiles and sinks deeper, clear to his lower lip. “I can forget almost anything for a little while once I get in the water,” he says, “but in the end I have to dry off. Man, Logs, I thought I should tell the truth, but fuck . . .”

“I know this doesn't mean a lot now, but time helps. Most of us can only feel shitty for so long.”

“It doesn't help that I have to feel stupid, too,” Paulie says. “It's not like I didn't know better. I mean, my old man . . . Jesus.”

Logs grimaces.

“I was trying to get away, I swear. That sounds lame, but . . .”

“Much as I do not want to hear details, do you want to talk? Something feels really off about this, Paulie.”

“Naw. This is too embarrassing.”

Logs lays his head back and stares at the ceiling as Paulie takes a deep breath and sinks out of sight, letting the jets soothe his aching shoulder muscles. He holds his breath as long as possible, suspended just below the surface

When he comes up for air, Logs says, “You didn't hear any more about Mary Wells, by any chance.”

“Why do you keep asking me about Mary Wells?”

“Same reason I ask about any kid I want the goods on. Four years you've been my mole. I've almost seemed cool, getting my information from you.”

“I don't know much about Mary Wells. Everyone still calls her the Virgin Mary. Great grades . . . well, you know what kind of grades she gets. Doesn't go out with anyone who knows her dad and anyone who's been out with her once, knows her dad. What else is there to know?”

“The Virgin Mary, huh? That's kind of cruel.”

“We're high school kids, Logs. Cruel's how we roll.”

“But
you
don't call her that. . . .”

“No, Dad, I don't call her that.”

“What I'm interested in,” Logs says, “is where she is. She hasn't missed a class or a Period 8 in four years.”

“Didn't Mrs. Byers call her house? Shit, I stop to get a drink outside the classroom three seconds after the bell and she thinks I'm going Ferris Bueller on her.”

“I didn't report it,” Logs says.

“Can't you get in trouble for that?”

“At this point I'll get in trouble only if I'm caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy,” Logs says. “I didn't report her because she stuck her head in my room after school a little while back, looking kind of desperate, and asked if I had time to talk. I had a pissed-off parent with me, so I asked her to wait. She looked like she'd been crying. Anyway, my meeting took longer than I expected and when it was over, she was gone. I tried to catch up with her the next day, but she blew me off like she'd never asked. A week later she doesn't show for class for the first time in her high school career. All her other classes are Running Start, here at the university. I don't know if she's making those or not.”

“So why didn't you go ahead and mark her absent?”

Logs raises a water-wrinkled hand. “Swear to secrecy,” he says. “We talk about her dad the same way you guys do. I don't know, I had this sense she was reaching out privately. If she's not here tomorrow, I'll do something.”

Paulie says, “Nobody I know knows much about her other than that she's top-model good-looking and hard to get to know. Stack says he's studied with her a couple of times. She's kind of a mystery.”

“She doesn't seem like Arney's type.”

“Everybody was Arney's type when he was kicking my ass in that stupid election. He can get next to
any
body. Hell,
I
voted for him.”

“The election's over.”

Paulie laughs. “Arney's in campaign mode all the time. I gotta say, even being his halfway bud is a chore. He's just kind of, I don't know, always
working
it.”

“Like . . .”

“I don't know. You just don't know what he's thinking.”

Logs pulls himself out of the whirling, steaming water. “You think Arney knows something we don't?”

“All I know about Arney is what you see isn't always what you get.” Paulie sinks deeper. “I've known him a long time. Once back in kindergarten his family was over at our place on Christmas night. I'd gotten this big-ass candy cane, like tall as me. I was saving it to show my friends. Arney gets all buddy-buddy with me, says we could eat it by ourselves and brag about it. That doesn't work so he goes Eddie Haskell on my mom, but she watches
Leave it to Beaver
reruns, too, so no go. We were playing around later in my room and he accidentally knocked it against the wall and it broke. After I stopped bawling and threatening to kill him it was, you know, what the hell, we might as well eat it. We unwrapped it and he took a big ol' chunk and . . . I don't know, there was this look on his face like . . . he'd known he'd get it all along.”

Logs shakes his head. “It stuck with you. That was a long time ago.”

“Well, I've seen that look a few times since.” He doesn't mention he saw it recently, just before he fucked up.

“Listen, I gotta get out of here before somebody has to slap my chest with the shockers,” Logs says. “Catch you tomorrow.”

“Later.”

 

Hannah hits “Save” on her Word document, sets her laptop to the side of the bed, and wanders downstairs to the kitchen for a snack. Her arms and shoulders are tight from her afternoon workout at the gym on the ergonomic rowing machine, even though she's in perfect condition for this time of year. She cranked it extra-hard today, her anger at Paulie and the dumb-ass guys in Period 8
and the faceless girl Paulie cheated with driving her. If she could find
that
girl, there would be a short, loud, threatening meeting of the minds.

Maybe all's fair in love and war,
she thinks,
but chicks
have
to have solidarity, or guys will . . . well,
look
what guys will do.
The refrigerator light spills into the darkened kitchen as she removes the carton of milk and a half loaf of wheat bread and lays them on the granite counter. She leaves the refrigerator door open long enough to dig the peanut butter jar from a corner of the cupboard, open it, and spread the contents thickly onto the bread. She pours a glass of milk, returns the bread and milk to the fridge, and eats in pitch-dark.

She fumes, alternating between thoughts of screwing every guy friend Paulie ever had and kicking the ass of every girl who ever stole another girl's boyfriend. It's going to be one of those nights: forty-five minutes of fitful sleep followed by sledgehammer wake-up and thoughts of grave malice, then chest-crushing loss. It's easy to appear tough in public, more difficult to pull it off in the silence of loneliness. Paulie was a soul mate. And he was
hot
. She loved watching him pull his dripping body onto the dock when the water warmed enough that he got rid of that stupid wetsuit. She loved eating pizza and talking about sports and what a drag high school was getting to be and going off to college and taking chances. There are just no other guys like Paulie. She misses him desperately, but she
will
miss him because she is
not
going back to that. All his talk about not being like his dad. . . .

For the past two years, as soon as the water turned warm enough, Hannah would bring her single scull to the lake with Paulie and Mr. Logs and guide them the mile and a half across, the two of them swimming on either side. Then she would throw out abbreviated water-ski ropes that attached to the sides of her scull and pull them back while Paulie whined “Are we there yet?” or counted like a coxswain, or in some other way annoyed her. On good days they'd do it twice.

Later the three would go for pizza, or if Mr. Logs begged off, she and Paulie would take a pizza to a makeshift “apartment” that doubled as storage space above a vacant storefront at a strip mall near Paulie's house. If a small Wonder Woman refrigerator magnet was not placed discreetly over the keyhole, they would use their key, put Wonder Woman in her place to remind any of the six other key holders it was first-come, first-serve, and slip inside.

In the dim, warm safety of that space, to the music-of-choice emanating from the iPod dock, or a favorite movie on the 23-inch flat screen the shareholders had thrown in matching dollars on, Hannah could let down and be Hannah.

“I cheated” ended all that.

She pulls on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, slips her feet into her flip-flops, doesn't bother to tell her parents where she's going, or
that
she's going, and walks to her car.

 

“Can I come in?” Hannah stands on Logs's porch, staring at him in the doorway. He's dressed almost exactly as she is.

“Hannah. Of course. What are you doing out at this hour?”

She sits on the couch, kicks off the flip-flops, and curls her feet under.

Logs says, “Something to drink?”