The
Boy in the Tunnel
by
22.
Joanie didn’t remember telling the guy in the blue
sweater about the roof of Thorn Hall, but she must have, because that’s where
they were going now. The man smiled constantly but not from joy. He had told
her his name but she couldn’t remember that either; though his thick uncalloused fingers were wrapped around her lean upper arm
and forced her forward, something about him was unmemorable. If you saw him on
the street or the bus or in the laundry room of your dorm, you would forget him
as soon as he left your sight. You’d forget whose boyfriend he said he was or
what exactly he needed help with there in the laundry room, or how he’d gotten
you to tell him about the roof. He could have been a student, a fifth-year
senior maybe, though he was probably in his thirties; but he wasn’t old or even
mature, the way her father was. He was like every guy on campus, everybody who
fit the term “guy,” that deep shapeless lacuna between boy and man, that void
where impulses roistered, unchecked, and soured.
Her arm hurt where he gripped it. He stood close,
the coarse wool of his sweater rubbing against her back; to passersby they
might have looked like a couple, strolling arm-in-arm toward the downtown bars.
She could have yelled for help but something in his manner let her know that
that would only result in more trouble for her and anyone who tried to
intervene.
Thorn Hall was empty, the first floor hall
immeasurably long, antiseptic fluorescent light bouncing from off-white wall to
off-white floor to off-white ceiling, no sounds of life to give context to the
directionless brightness.
The “custodial closet” was directly in front of the
central entrance; the guy opened the door, threw the iron
gate and shoved Joanie inside, clipping her
forehead on the low lintel. He joined her, closed the door and gate, and pulled
the lever. The elevator rumbled roofward, the ancient
brass needle of the dial shuddering from floor to floor.
A dusty, muted ding sounded from a tired bell as
the elevator reached its zenith. The guy smiled at Joanie,
as if he hadn’t been smiling this whole time. He slid the gate aside and opened
the door to the roof. His hand still clamped on her arm, he pushed her out onto
the uneven surface of the carved tiles.
An impulse struck her and she wobbled, pretending
to lose her footing. She slung her upper body forward, jerking his arm with it.
She swung her right foot back and up into his knee, but he kept his balance and
pulled her back toward him, twisting her arm behind her. She felt his breath,
cold and dry and chemical-scented, on her neck. If she was going to do this,
she had to commit.
She took a step forward, as if to regain her
balance, and planted a heel between two tiles where the grout had eroded away.
He tried to pull her back toward him, but she was really stuck now, and she
leaned precariously, all her weight now on his arm, and though he was strong he
wasn’t ready for this, and he let go. She fell, bruising her shoulders on the tiles,
and she looked up at him, surprised but still smiling. He reached down to pick
her up, and not out of kindness; but then someone behind him was saying
“What’s going on?”
and the guy turned toward the voice and the voice said
“Get the fuck away from her”
and then something happened and the guy was down on
the tiles, a rivulet of blood on his sweater. A booted foot hit the guy in the
ribs and he collapsed, prostrate, on the roof.
“Are you all right?” and a hand reached down to Joanie and she took it and pulled herself up, lopsided now
with one heel on and one off.
“I’m okay,” she said, and she looked down into a
fierce broad face punctuated by unnaturally blue eyes. He was blonde, but it
wasn’t just his hair; his whole face was blonde, Joanie
thought. He kicked the guy in the blue sweater again, eliciting a gurgling
groan.
“Who is this guy?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Joanie
said. “He told me his name but I don’t remember it.” Her right side felt limp
and useless, hanging three inches lower without the support of the heel. She
lifted her left leg, took off the other heel and returned her bare foot to the
tile. Her toes gripped the ridged and bumpy surface, and her shoulders aligned
themselves, squaring her body toward the guy—no, guy isn’t the right word for
this one, but what else could you call him—
“Drew,” he said. “I’m Drew.” He shook her hand.
“You’re Joanie McKittrick,
right?”
********************
Quartermaster
is the lowest rank that means something, which means it means nothing. You’ve
known this since you were Abducted, and your
experience has only reinforced that knowledge. Barlow doesn’t listen to you,
Taft doesn’t listen to you, and whichever one of the Corpi
becomes SecEx next year won’t listen to you either.
So it was true then. Chet was the Quartermaster,
whatever the hell that meant. Chet was the Quartermaster of some secret
society, which by the way now seemed to be pretty fucking real, and yet he had
never even mentioned anything to Dick, never even hinted. Never
involved him.
And if Chet had a girlfriend, then he hadn’t
bothered to tell Dick about that either. Chet knew about every single girl Dick
had been with since they met—both of them—but Chet didn’t think it was
necessary to let his best friend know about his new serious relationship. Hell,
maybe Dick wasn’t really his best friend. Maybe Chet had a whole other group of
friends Dick didn’t know about, friends who spent all day at a coffee shop and
had nice hair and interesting, witty things to say. Maybe Chet told them
stories about his dimwitted redneck roommate, and they all had formed this
collective vision of Dick, overalled and Skoal-cheeked and bucktoothed, and all it took was the mere
mention of the word “Dick” to set them off on great sparkling jags of
privileged laughter and backslappery.
Your
girlfriend—is she your girlfriend yet? Have you called her that yet? Have you
said it in your mind? Have you thought “I’m going to call my girlfriend?” Have
you said it out loud? To someone else? “Sorry I
couldn’t hang out last night; I was with my girlfriend.” Have you said it to
her?
You
haven’t said it to her. You haven’t had the talk you’re supposed to have about
these things. The “Where are we?” talk. Neither of you has asked “Where are
we?” You’ve just let things happen, because you hate the talk. You dread the
talk. If you have to ask where you are, then it means you don’t know. And if
you don’t know where you are, it’s not going to be long before you find
yourself alone again.
Have
people always had the “Where are we?” talk? You wonder. It seems like such an
invention of TV. Just like the whole fear of “I love you” thing. You’ve seen
couples in love. You have friends who say “I love you” all the time. You don’t
think they’ve ever had to have the “Where are we?” talk. They just knew, and you’re
not even saying it was love at first sight; just at a certain point, they both
realized they were supposed to be together. You think the talk was invented by
advertisers to keep people insecure. Because now your
thought process isn’t just “Where are we in this relationship?” It’s “When is
she going to want to have the talk about where we are in this relationship?”
Instead of just being worried, you’re worried about being worried. And that’s
when you most want to buy things.
You wonder
if
*******************
Through the eyeholes of his ceremonial mask, Chet
could see that Barlow was agitated. It was three minutes till ten, and Taft
still hadn’t shown up. The two freshmen would be here any minute, and if the
Sergeant-at-Arms was missing, the Ceremony could not proceed as intended.
Looking at Barlow and the other three present Dead
Men, Chet couldn’t help but feel this was all a little silly. They were all
wearing their ceremonial white three-piece suits and black armbands, clear
plastic masks with black electrical tape Xed over the
eyes (though the eyeholes were kept clear) and gold plastic crowns. They looked
like a gang of drama majors about to rob a bank. Chet remembered, a year ago,
entering this room and seeing six guys dressed like this, with the rubbery
featureless faces, and being terrified. That feeling had lasted all of about
fifteen seconds, because as soon as one of them spoke and you realized it was
just some dork who couldn’t get into a real
fraternity, it became ridiculous. Still fun—after all, there was drinking
involved—but ridiculous.
To Chet it seemed that Barlow took the whole Nine
Dead Men thing a lot more seriously than it deserved. He really seemed to think
the society ruled campus, like all the legends said, but even after being a
Dead Man for a year Chet had yet to see actual evidence of this. Chet wondered
if Barlow was just crazy, or if this was just one more thing the Quartermaster
wasn’t privy to.
This “alliance” with Charlie St.
James—that had been a surprise.
St. James had her own secret society, The Living Creatures, who were the
traditional enemies of the Nine Dead Men—“enemies,” of course, in the most
childish sense, as far as Chet knew. The only evidence of any rivalry he had
noticed were the opposing sigils graffitied around
campus. To outside observers, the graffiti probably seemed like only the
outward signs of an ongoing, complex war. But Chet knew that the graffiti was
the extent of the war; from the inside he could see how insignificant the
sigils were, the way a magician’s trick loses its wonder once you learn how
it’s done.
But Barlow seemed convinced that DUH was up to
something, and that the Nine Dead Men had to stop it, with the help of the
Living Creatures. When you put it like that, it all just sounded so stupid.
© 2005 Gardner Linn