“You look preoccupied,” Sully said.
“Well that’s not a bad word for it,” Balliol told him. “Preoccupied is, in fact, a very good word for it. Would you believe for one of the first times in my life I can’t think straight? I’ve thought of being a Hilton and when school’s all over just throwing up my hands and saying fuck it, spending lots of money, doing crazy things.”
“You could.”
“Me and Mason have already discussed it.”
“You’re running off with Mason?”
“Well, I could do that,” Balliol said reflexively, “but I was really thinking because Mason’s rich.”
“He is?” Then, “Well, I guess he is.”
“You could go with us,” Balliol threw in. “I wouldn’t want you to feel left out.”
“Well, thank you.”
Balliol sighed and blew out his cheeks.
“I get so sick of it all. I just got back an incomplete on my history paper.”
“I got one of those.”
“You deserve them. You’re a lazy student,” Balliol told him.
“But I got them in English.”
“Well, now, that is bullshit because you’re the best writer I know.”
“But not for that class. I don’t follow their directions. Whatever their directions are supposed to be.”
“That’s what I mean,” Balliol said. “Why do I go through with it? School is a charade. If I graduate top of my class—and I won’t—I’ll be a millionaire. If I graduate bottom, I’ll still be a millionaire. And if I don’t graduate...why do I do this? Why do you do it?”
“Because I’m not a millionaire,” Sully turned to him with a chuckle.
“Yes, but you will be a writer. You are a writer, and nothing at Saint Vitus will help you. I think. I think sometimes we just go through the motions to keep us from life. And all of this school is one big motion. And then after high school there will be another set of motions to go through, and nobody admits that none of them matter.”
“That’s heavy.”
“But have you ever felt it?
Sully said nothing, and then he said, “Yeah. I feel it. I know.” And then he said, “But what are we supposed to do about it?”
Balliol started to say something, and then he said instead, “I don’t know. I don’t know and I wish I did. Sometimes I feel like I’m on the edge of something, this great terror, and once I pass it I’ll know what to do. The next step. I want to get through it.”
“You know what I think?” Sully’s fingertips touched his friend’s arm. Balliol looked at him.
“I think the reason you felt weird and I felt weird about Andy dying wasn’t just because he was young. It was because I don’t think we even know what life is, yet. He didn’t get taken out when he had a chance to live and have questions. He got taken out at Saint Vitus, in the grind. You know, in the everyday. We don’t even know what he lost, because we don’t even know what he had. Or what we have. We go through life, day after day, thinking we know how things are, what we have to do, what we’re supposed to do, what reality is. But we don’t know anything.”
Sully stopped talking or a while. He said, “I want to know Balliol. I don’t want to do stuff just because I have to or because there’s nothing better. I get bothered about him being dead because I don’t think Andy got taken out of something that was so great. I want to know what life is, and really have a good one. And then when I go, I want to know I’m leaving behind something that was wonderful, that I lived.”
“I have had trouble reconciling going to a better place with leaving this one,” Balliol admitted. “With why it doesn’t make sense that even though I’m not so thrilled with my life... I feel bad that Andy doesn’t have it anymore. I don’t know what heaven and all that is, but I think that when we die, we take with us what we made here, and I feel bad that Andy didn’t get to make too much. Not in sixteen years.”
When Balliol entered the bathroom he was, at first, relieved because no one seemed to be in there, but then he cursed when someone was—which meant he could not go—and mystified when it was Matt Mercurio.
Matt’s back was to him, looking out of the smoker’s window, and his hands were over his face. Balliol thought he might be crying but when he turned around he saw that Matt was just stroking his head.
Then Lincoln Balliol said those words he thought he’d never utter to Matt Mercurio.
“Are you all right?”
Matt shook his head and smiled a little.
“I never thought I’d hear that from you.”
“I never thought I’d say it to you.”
“My head hurts is all,” Matt was rubbing his forehead. “Right here,” he touched the bridge of his nose. “It’s so tight. It gets tighter and tighter.
Balliol understood. “The way it feels when you’re about to cry.”
Matt gasped a little and then said, “Yeah. Just like that. And my eyes hurt. It all hurts up here.” He made a general waving gesture over his face.
And then suddenly he gasped. He let out a very long breath and said, “It hurts so fucking bad. Every day.”
Balliol said, “I think we all feel it. We didn’t get shot, though. How’s your arm?”
“Hurts,” Matt said, touching it, and wincing. “But that’s an okay hurt. Not like this real hurt. This hurt is in my throat, behind my eyes. I’m just so tired all the time. I feel so bad. You feel that way too?”
“Everybody’s wondering what anything means anymore,” Balliol told him. “People are walking around doing desperate stuff. You saw Sully snap on Chris the other day. Chris always snaps on me,” Balliol shrugged. “That’s no big deal. I blame everything on the testosterone at Saint Vitus. We need girls.”
“Here, here,” Matt said. Then, “Balliol, can I ask you something?”
Balliol looked cautious. “I never like it when people say that.”
“No,” Matt shook his head. “It’s nothing crazy. I don’t think. It’s just that Chris said that you said it was my fault that Dave killed Andy.”
“I didn’t say that,” Balliol said quickly.
“I know that’s not exactly it. Sully explained it. See,” Matt said. “I feel like it—I know it’s my fault. I know that if I hadn’t done what I did Dave would never have gotten that gun and he would never have shot me and fired it around and he wouldn’t have killed Andy. I know that and, from what Chris said, you know it too. I just need to hear it from someone. I need to hear some one tell me I’m to blame. Nobody will.”
`Matt looked sad and desperate, and Balliol said, “Why after all of these years do you feel like my friend?”
Balliol couldn’t hear any noise, anywhere, not feet coming down the hall, not birds tapping on the window or traffic outside.
Matt’s mouth was still half open and he said, “I don’t know. Maybe you are. Maybe we always were friends and we didn’t know it.”
Balliol nodded, accepting it.
“You can’t really think you’re solely responsible for Dave doing what he did. You’ve said a lot to me and a lot to lots of people, Matt. You’re not the nicest person in the world.”
“But I can be,” Matt said quietly, rolling his hands up in a fist. “I don’t get it. I can be. My girlfriend, I’m nice to her. She tells me how good I am. She says I’m the best guy she’s ever known. And I’m good to my friends. I’d give an arm for my friends. And my little brother, and my mom. I’m so nice, I’m so nice to half the people I know.”
He looked at Balliol.
“But I’m so nasty to the other half. It’s always been that way. I don’t get it. I don’t understand it. Something comes up from I don’t know where. It’s this unhappiness. It just rolls out and I do things I don’t mean to, like that day with Dave, and just a little bit of meanness... carries me away. And I was like that with Dave. Until you stepped up and put me in check. There’s this asshole inside of me. There’s this bully and I don’t like him, but he’s part of me and people think he’s all of me and he’s why Dave did what he did.”
“You’re not the only bully at Saint Vitus. You’re not the biggest and you’re really not the baddest,” Balliol told him. “Lots of people get hurt, but they don’t shoot up schools.”
“But sometimes you can be the one that tips the balance,” Matt said. “I think…” he stopped talking.
His face looked pained. “I know I didn’t make him do it. I know maybe someone else would have come along later and he would have done the same thing because of them. Or his mom would have shouted at him. But people were bad to him all the time, and it was just a little time before someone tipped the balance. If someone had been nicer to him—”
“Then he’d be a sweet person?”
“No,” Matt said. “But he might not be a killer. I tipped that Balance, Balliol, I was the straw on the camel’s back. The last straw.”
“But there were all the other straws before you. And with you, Millions of straws to blame.”
“But part of the blame is mine,” Matt said.
Balliol nodded. “Maybe mine too.”
Matt shook his head.
“It doesn’t work that way. Maybe in catechism class. But in the real world it doesn’t work that way. Everyone’s not equally guilty. We didn’t all do it. A lot of people did it, and I was part of it. I’m part of the reason that Dave will go to jail. I’m part of the reason that Andy’s dead.”
He kept looking at Balliol.
Balliol realized he was expected to say something.
“Can you live with that?” he asked Matt.
Matt shook his head, but not to say no, he put his hands in his curly hair.
“Balliol, man, I’ve got to.”
“So I just shaved it off,” Mason was saying as they came into the bathroom.
“You shouldn’t have,” Tommy told him. “I thought it was cool. Besides, I’m going to grow one.”
“You thought it was cool, but nobody else could even tell I had a goatee,” Mason said. “All it did was make my face itch. Morning, Balliol. Morning, Sully. And what’s the point,” Mason continued as he walked into the stall—he never peed in a urinal—“of having an itchy face if no one can tell you have facial hair?”
“I don’t know,” Addison said on the other side, a stream of piss shooting into the bowl, “I could tell it was there. But if you keep shaving that spot, it’ll grow back. Least that’s what my dad says.”
“Then we could have goatees together,” Tommy said from outside the stall. He’d just come along to the bathroom as company.
Mason flushed the toilet and came out of the stall. “Well, that would be silly. You can have your goatee for now, and then shave it off when I grow mine. Two friends both having goatees is like...”
“It’s like two women wearing the same dress to the party,” Balliol said from the smoking window.
“Exactly,” Mason said.
“What if I like my goatee?” Tommy said. “What if I don’t want to shave it off?”
“Then I guess I’ll have to not have facial hair.”
“I hate facial hair,” Sully said. “It just makes you look old.”
“Chris Powers has facial hair,” Mason observed.
“Chris Powers has mutton chop sideburns,” Sully said. “I wouldn’t have those either. Some people can get away with some things.”
“Did you hear?” Randall Jackson said to Tairique Davis. He heard, but no one else did. Matt Mercurio came into the washroom with Chris and Hardesty and Mason said, “How many people can the second floor restroom accommodate?”
Addison pretended to count and said, “Exactly twelve point five billion.”
They laughed, and then they laughed harder.
“Oh, God,” Addison remembered with a chuckle. “Andy used to say that. I used to think he was so lame when he did that.”
“He was,” Mason said with a chuckle, “But it was still funny. I don’t think I’ll be able to cry when I think of him. I think I’ll just have to laugh. I can’t imagine not laughing when I think about Andy.”
“Do you guys remember the hand?”
“The bloody hand trick,” Addison shouted. “God! The look on Father’s face. And the school mass where Father O’Donnell lifted the host and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God!—’”
“And Andy was server and started going, ‘Baaa baaa.’”
“I used to think that was wrong,” Tommy said quietly. “But now it’s just... I think God probably laughed.”
“Serves the freak right,” someone declared as he was heading out of the bathroom. For a moment Tommy thought they were talking about him, or about Andy.
“Right in his room, from the curtains, the crazy fucker.”
“What are you all talking about?” Chris said.
“You didn’t hear, man?” Tairique said.
“Hear what?”
“That boy—” Tairique told him.
“Dave Riley killed himself,” Aaron Mathers said. “They were keeping him in this nuthouse and he rigged up some shit with a belt and his curtains and he just hung himself. They found him dangling from the ceiling like this,” Aaron did a gross impersonation, swinging around on his tiptoes, “with a fucking sign that said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Crazy fucker. It serves him right. I bet he’s frying in hell right—”
“Shut up!” they heard a voice like a sob. “Shut up.”
They all went quiet and turned to see, under the smoker’s window, Matt Mercurio.
Balliol stopped smoking and looked down at him.
“What’s wrong with you?” Matt said to Aaron. “In the last three months, right around Christmas, we lost Wally. We lost Andy and now Dave is gone too. Three students who’ll… never go to prom, never go to college. Never wake up again. Who for some reason, because they were so messed up or because other people were so messed up—Andy didn’t do anything—are dead—and you think it’s all right?”
“Dave was a freak—”
“Dave was a human being,” Matt said. “He was a human being, Aaron. He was a student here, just like you, just like me. Only he got kicked around a lot, and he had some issues and he couldn’t hold it together, and then he realized what he did and it was too much.”
Matt looked around. “I know it was too much, because I think about what happened. I think about Andy dying everyday, I think about Dick holding his cousin and I think, if I had been nicer, if we had been better... then Andy wouldn’t be dead.”
Tairique was heading for the door when Matt shouted:
“Don’t you DARE leave until I finish talking!”
And then they all stood there while Matt collected himself.
“After it happened,” Matt resumed in a quiet voice, “I thought I would die too. I wanted to kill myself, so imagine what it feels like to know it is your fault, that you took life and you can’t give it back.”
He turned to Aaron with tears in his eyes. But you didn’t look a boy in the face when he was crying, so Aaron turned away in respect.
“It’s terrible, Aaron,” Matt’s voice throbbed like it was about to break. “It’s not fair that he died. It’s not funny. It doesn’t serve him right.” Matt shook his head. “It’s just ugly and sad.”
He turned around, and for some reason he didn’t nod at Chris, but at Balliol, and then he walked out.
They all looked at Balliol, including Chris.
“Mercurio’s your friend?” Mason said. Then, “At last. No more war?”
Balliol explained: “It’s not about being buddy buddy with someone and thinking about how cool they are. It’s about…” He shrugged. “a connection you have to someone. And we have it.”
“You didn’t have to come with me,” Matt told Chris.
“Do you want me to go away?”
“No, I was just saying.”
The school chapel was the size of a small classroom and it was carpeted. It was tacked on to the rest of the school and hardly ever used. To their left were long windows over looking the football field.
“Do you ever get the feeling that we’re not really Catholic?” Matt said.
“What?”
“That it’s not like... in the movies. You know. In the movies they go to Mass everyday and you go to the chapel and there are all of these chalices and pictures of Mary and crucifixes, and I think... if I could be Catholic like Catholics in movies, then I’d really believe. But... I can’t pray here. This isn’t even a real chapel,” Matt said.
“I went to confession. Father asked me if I wanted an old fashioned penance. He was just going to tell me to feel good about myself or something.”
Matt shrugged.
“I think at one point in time I must have actually really believed in Jesus, but for years now I’ve gotten the feeling that no one really does. That it’s just sort of a ploy.”
“You wanna go to a real church?”
“What?”
“My church is a real church. Saint Patrick’s. We could go there.”
“Right now?”
“We have study hall after lunch and lunch just started.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. So stop asking me. Besides, I think I’d like to pop inside a church too.”
“Do you ever do that?” Matt whispered as they came in through the vestibule of Saint Patrick’s, “Go inside a church and pray?”
“Like in the movies?”
“Yeah.”
‘No,” Chris said. “I don’t think I even pray on Sunday.”
They found a small altar off of the sanctuary. Only a few of the red votives were lit in front of the Virgin, and they’d had to push back a grille to enter the grotto.
“This is something else,” Matt had said, coming in and looking up at the pillars that reached into the descending and ascending ribs of the nave, the swinging lanterns.
“This isn’t like Christ the King at all.”
“Christ the King looks like a Pizza Hut,” Chris said derisively. No, this was the real deal, an old, old Irish Catholic Parish that had added Italians to the mix when Saint Francis Cabrini was torn town and now had everyone.
In the grotto, the two of them knelt, waiting for something to happen. Chris tried to look pious and finally Matt spoke,
“God, I’m not as religious as I should be. I don’t know what happened. I believe in you. I really do, but I guess I don’t think enough. I... I went to confession today, to get right. See, I’ve done bad things. I... I don’t make the world better. I think I make it worse, and I want to make it better. I want to be good. So... please help me.”
Chris looked up quickly at the Virgin and added, “Me too.”
“And my friend, Chris,” Matt added out loud. “He’s always trying to do the right thing.”
Chris raised his eyebrows.
“Amen,” Matt added, and then before Chris could also say amen, he said, “I almost forgot...” and he began praying the Our Father. Then he asked Chris how to pray the Hail Mary. Chris led him. They said it together, and then Matt added, “Amen.”
And they both crossed themselves.
Walking out of the church Matt said, “I’m not going to be a saint anytime soon, and I don’t believe half of what they tell us in school... But I feel like something happened. I just feel it.”
“It’s been a long time since it’s been just you and me,” Addison said that night in Mason’s room. “No Tommy. No Seth, no Balliol—who’s great by the way—but just us.”
“Whaddo you think of Sullivan?”
“That’s random,” Addison said. “Not that much, really. He’s okay. I suppose. But... He’ll never be with the four of us.
“There are four of us?”
“You, me, Tommy and now Balliol. It’s funny, because Seth really isn’t in our group. It’s like he’s my friend, and he’s your friend, but he’s not our friend. Balliol’s not a close friend. Not yet at least, but he fits in as part of the group. I think Sully will have to be like Seth is for me. Not even like that because I’m not sure I like the guy. There’s something funny about him.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Mason disagreed. “I think he’s very sad. There’s something sad about him, and it sort of makes me want to reach out.”
“See. That’s the thing with you,” Addison said. “You always want to reach out and touch people and shit.”