The City of Rossford

Nine

Higher Education

“DO YOU SMOKE?”

“No. Not really.” Meredith shook her head. “Not at all, actually.”

“Do you mind if I do?”

Kip Danley’s hands were trembling.

“Not really,” Meredith said, though she instantly regretted it.

A few minutes later, the boy was puffing away on a cigarette. His eyes were especially bright, and his cheeks went hollow everytime he sucked on the Marlboro. White smoke gushed out of his nostrils.

“Kip?” Meredith began. “It’s good to see you. But I’m already late for school. So… You had a reason for calling me up?”

“I wanted to talk,” he said.

“You’re alright?” Meredith said. “You don’t look alright.”

“I wanted to talk about that night.”

“Alright,” Meredith said. “Okay.”

Kip still didn’t say anything, and Meredith decided not to force him. After all, it was only about nine, and though she hated driving in winter, it hadn’t snowed in days. This was Naomi and Danasia’s place. She was safe.

“You didn’t grow up around here, did you?”

“No,” Meredith said. “I came from New York.”

“The state or the city?”

“City. Long Island really. Which isn’t the city.”

“Well, then you’re lucky,” Kip finished the cigarette and began savagely crushing it in the dirty tray. “You don’t really know what it is. To come from a fucked up place. I bet you see it from the outside. What was Long Island like?”

“Rich.” Meredith shrugged. That was the only way to describe it. “At least where I was. Then I went to private school. Boarding school.”

“Get out! Like in the movies?”

“Well, I guess it depends on which movies,” Meredith told him. “I went when I was about eight and that was the same time my parents split up. I hated being there, and I wanted to leave, but my mom said no. Dad said yes. So, to make a long story short, he sprung me and got custody and I came here.”

“I bet this place sucks compared to Long Island.”

Meredith looked around the white walls of the diner, out of the window into the black night. She shrugged.

“I don’t think of it that way. This place is my home. More than anywhere else. And… my family isn’t really rich anymore, so none of them lives on Long Island.”

Kip Danley folded his arms and rested his elbows on the white Formica tabletop.

“All I know is this fucking town. I don’t know how to do anything but be a hillbilly.”

Meredith opened her mouth, but Kip said, “That night… Wally was in control of everything. Wally’s fucking going to jail. The case starts tomorrow. I’m going to testify. Maybe I’ll go to jail too. Maybe we all will. All of us who are left now that Russell’s dead.”

“What happened that night?” Meredith said as Naomi came by, quietly, with a cola, and put it down in front of her.

Kip waited until Naomi was well away, then leaned in and hissed: “Wally made her blow everyone. He said, ‘Now suck my dick.’ He… had her doing everyone. Some people. They were really rough with her. Some guys were totally scared, but they tried to be rough. Do… what they call a face fuck.”

“I know what that is,” Meredith said, trying to sound neutral.

Kip nodded.

“It wasn’t like everyone was silent. Some of us kept saying, ‘Don’t do it. Let her stop’.”

When Kip didn’t continue, Meredith put her hands together.

“Did she do it to you?” she said.

Kip looked at her.

“You? Did you make Robin perform oral sex on you?”

“I didn’t make her do anything,” Kip said.

Meredith blinked at him.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’re a girl, and you’re a different type. You and all your friends. You don’t get it. We were terrified. You think I wanted that?” Kip leaned across the table and hissed in her ear. “You think I wanted some poor girl I don’t know blowing me in a parking lot while ten other guys are looking? You think half of us weren’t terrified?”

Meredith felt like she was going to throw up. Her face hurt.

“If Robin had said no,” she began, “she would have been raped, which she was. Or maybe killed, which it turns out she did to herself. If you had said no… Then, what?”

Kip blinked at her, his face hard.

“Then what?” she said again.

“We were scared.”

“Scared?

“Scared of… looking silly? Being called a sissy? Scared the boys wouldn’t like you, or you wouldn’t be enough of a man for your loser friends? So scared that half of you let her… fucking blow you, and then you watched as she got raped. Or… let me guess? Some of you were scared while you were raping her?”

“You don’t even understand,” Kip shook his head. His eyes had glazed over, as if he was backing away from the old thing. “It’s scary… Being a guy.”

One retort after another shot through Meredith Affren’s quick and angry mind. Halfway through each response another, more violent one came. She discarded them all, her head beginning to spin.

“I can’t…” she murmured.

Meredith rose up.

He reached out to her.

“No,” she said, her voice suddenly loud.

“I can’t see you. I can’t talk to you. I can’t be near you.”

She got up and began buttoning her coat.

“Meredith,” Danasia called from the counter, where she was tallying receipts.

Meredith blinked and came near her.

“You alright? You alright to drive?”

Meredith frowned and swallowed.

“Yeah,” she said. “I just… I just sort of hate people right now.”

“RISE AND SHINE!” Brendan Miller cried as he entered the house in a crisp white shirt, white tie, black slacks, and shades on top of his head.

Layla eyed him.

“That shit is so unnecessary.”

“You ready?”

“This bag, this thermos, and the big ass coat I’m wearing say I’m ready,” Layla told him. “But we can’t go to Valpo just yet.”

“Whaddo you mean?” he closed his black car coat over his chest and frowned.

“You look really gay,” Layla said.

He frowned at her.

“I mean… in that New York way. That metrosexual way. Where a woman says, ‘He’s fine but he’s either too vain to bother with or… gay.’ ”

“Thank you,” Brendan said, awkwardly, lowering his shades.

“If it’s any consolation, I think it’s a lot better to be gay than a vain straight man.”

“Layla,” Brendan said. “You just told me something about we can’t go to Valpo yet.

“Oh yeah,” Layla said. “Well, we can. Only sooner or later I’m thinking I want to make a stop over to that shop on Main, past downtown, the one with the Tarot cards and the psychic readings and shit.”

“What for… If I may ask?”

“You can ask,” Layla said. She lifted a giant furry hood over her head as they left and added, “By the way, if you look fine, I look like a Negro Eskimo.”

Brendan grinned and pointed out, “You do. A little.”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘You’re always pretty, Layla.’”

Brendan shrugged and said, “I know lawyers are supposed to be dishonest, but I’m trying a different tactic, Lay.”

She looked at him. “Snarky?”

Brendan shrugged, “Just gay. As you point out so often. Now where are we going?”

“To see my sister.”

Meredith Affren made right for Mathan’s locker.

“Why are you the only guy here with any sense?” she sighed, and lay against the wall.

He closed the locker and raised an eyebrow, looking down on her.

“I guess that’s your way of saying good morning?”

“I went to the diner last night. You know, Danny and Naomi’s.”

“Yeah.”

“I was going to meet Kip Danley.”

“Kip Danley?”

“He… you know he was involved with the whole Robin thing.”

“Yes,” Mathan said, his voice becoming firmer. He made a sharp gesture with his head to indicate that they should go down the hall toward class.

Meredith sighed and heaved herself from the locker wall, following her boyfriend.

“I wanted to know something good. I wanted something good to come out of it. He told me he needed to talk. I don’t know,” Meredith murmured. “I thought he would tell me something new. Something that made things better.”

Mathan didn’t say anything. He just let her continue.

“It made everything worse. Uh!”

Chad North blinked as he bumped into Meredith.

“I’m sorry… Mr. North,” said Meredith, who had always had difficulty negotiating the line between music teacher and friend of the family.

“Obviously,” Chad pushed his glasses up, “you weren’t the only one failing to pay attention. Good morning, Mathan,” he added.

“Mr. North,” said Nathan, who had never known him as anything but a teacher.

“And don’t be late for choir again. It’s in ten minutes,” Chad told her, heading down the hall with his books.

“Are you going to tell me about what Kip Danley said?”

“I don’t want to repeat it, Mate. It’s like when I’m alone thinking about all that he said, the first thing I want to do is tell it, and when I get ready to, I never want to talk about it again. I feel… For some reason I wanted to believe he was the good guy. Now I feel creepy about him. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

Mathan wrapped an arm around her waist.

“And Chay and Sheridan…” Meredith began.

“I don’t know.”

“You need to talk to them. You need to talk to Sheridan,” Meredith said. “We’re all supposed to be friends and I feel like we’re drifting apart. I feel like they’re drifting apart from us. And from each other.”

“I think,” Mathan said, standing at the door to his calculus class, “that we’ve just been afraid to ask them what’s wrong because then they might tell us, and maybe we’re not ready for the answer.”

“Maybe we’ve got too much shit to deal with already.”

“Well, I’m going to talk to Sheridan today,” he told her.

“Good. He’s lonely, you know?”

Mathan nodded.

“I gotta get to class. Chad—Mr. North… seemed really sort of…”

“Distracted?”

“Yeah. What do you think grown ups worry about?” Meredith wondered.

“Well,” Mathan decided, “it can’t be anything that different from us. Since we more or less are grown ups.”

“Really? I don’t feel grown up,” Meredith confessed. “I’m not even sure I believe in grown ups anymore.”