FiveChapters begins the celebration of the site’s fifth anniversary this week with five great stories from the archives. This David Schickler story was first published in 2007.
Until the middle of our senior year at Plummet High, my best friend was Kasper Otto. Plummet is our Adirondack hometown, a hamlet of nine thousand humans and one bottled water company, Plummet Potable. Since 1870, the springs beneath Plummet Mountain have filled bottles with a product the world craves.
Growing up, I had Potable folks, both assembly-line bottlers, but Kasper’s family came from Albany money. His parents were surgeons and never around, so Kasper, an only child, ran the roost. I had older siblings long gone from home, so I always went next door to hatch schemes with Kasper. If I suggested we spray-paint our names on bridges, he rolled his smoky blue eyes.
“You lack imagination, Head,” he told me. “That will be your downfall.”
Kasper’s schemes were grand and probing. When we were ten he typed IS THERE REALLY LOVE? on two hundred index cards. We laminated the cards, ran fishing line through them and snuck around at midnight, tying these philosophical collars on backyard dogs. When we were twelve we built a raft from Potable bottles and Super-Glue, then floated ten miles down the Pam-Dam River. A story in the paper the next day said, “Kasper Otto and Sorrento Jude Head tried to skip town on a flying — or rather a floating — carpet.”
Nobody calls me Sorrento: I’m Jude to my wife and fellow attorneys. I’m also not a dignified man like my full handle suggests. A pudgy forty now, I have balding, fawn-colored hair and a knobby nose. My secretary calls me Hey Jude after her favorite song, but a local judge jokes that given my sorry-ass mug, I’m more likely named for the craven apostle.
Kasper, though, still has the thick blond locks that Plummet girls always adored. In high school his jump shot won him varsity colors and pussy galore. As for me, my extracurricular activity was staying close to Kasper.
“In case I’m a genius,” he told me, “you must chronicle my doings.”
At Plummet High we hung out in The Doom Room, a cave in the basement where we and three other kids edited the school annual, Ye Domesday Book, and a weekly newsletter called The Rapture. Besides us there were three other Doomers. Jane Lament, our militant photographer, came from a Plummet Forest family. Her father booby-trapped their land with leaf-covered pits of sharpened stakes in hopes of catching stray socialists from Greenwich Village. Meanwhile, Rufus Bell, our layout editor, was addicted to The Who. His sentences in The Rapture were easy to spot: “When Reagan invoked the supply-side doctrine, my father shrieked with Daltrey-esque rage.”
Our editor-in-chief was the perfect yet sweetly flawed Caitlin Purchase. She ran Student Council, attracted Olympic scouts as a figure skater, and was tone deaf. She had copper hair and hazel eyes, but in the white of her left eye was a birthmark, a three-pointed gold star. Her mother is kin to Roderick Plummet, who founded the bottling plant Caitlin’s family still owns.
At school Caitlin was renowned for her virginity and the summer excursions she took. Each September she filled The Rapture with tales of scuba-diving the Red Sea or climbing with Sherpas. These stories pissed off some people, most of all Andrea Pinkerton, a hardscrabble girl whose locksmith father was in prison for robbery.
Andrea edited our school’s poetry journal, The Mountain Muse. Her clique admired suicide and spoke out against hydrogenated vegetable oils. They kept an office in the attic above the school gym. Mostly they sulked up there, but if a cute point guard climbed to the attic and spoke of his tortured soul, a handjob from Andrea wasn’t out of the question.
And Kasper Otto? Well, Kasper made things happen. Early senior year he got me elected Student Council Treasurer by taping up posters featuring a caricature of me with a swelled noggin. Above my brain were stamped the words GIVE US HEAD!
His stunts kept our adrenaline up. In junior year chemistry he snuck Bisquik into another kid’s test tube. The Bisquick combusted with acid in the tube and the explosion sent the kid to emergency. They got the glass shards out of his forehead, but he lost his right eye. Kasper was placed on threat of expulsion by Dr. David Down.
A Ph.D. in psychology and our school’s principal for decades, Dr. Down suffered rascals day in and day out. One such day happened in January of senior year. Kasper and I sat in the principal’s office as Dr. Down flipped through an essay Kasper had written. Our English teacher, Mr. Malgory, had slashed the essay with red ink. I had a pen and open notebook in my lap.
“Kasper,” Dr. Down said, “remind me again why Jude is present?”
“Jude is my Designated Witness. He chronicles my doings.”
Dr. Down held up the essay. “Let me quote from your paper… ‘Despite Daisy’s marriage to Tom, Gatsby surely engaged in the poignant reassurance of her groin.’”
Kasper nodded. Mounted on a wall shelf behind the principal’s desk was a sky-blue pillow bearing the word Forever in white cursive felt. When Dr. Down’s wife was dying of lymphoma, she’d sewn the pillow as a gift for her husband.
“‘The poignant reassurance of her groin’?”
“English is a faulty tongue, sir. I try to harness the truth accurately.”
Dr. Down rubbed his neck. His daughter Stacy, our classmate, was dating Kasper. “Mr. Malgory’s only asking you to rein in your style.”
Kasper held his chin high. “The man lacks imagination. His after-shave reeks.”
“Just try to keep the path.” This was our principal’s pet advice.
That afternoon I sat with Kasper and Stacy at The Apology Café. I read back the minutes of Kasper’s day while Stacy stroked his hair. Kasper had a new chick every month. He dumped girls abruptly, but his looks brought him fresh victims.
“You had a chicken patty for lunch,” I said. “Then we went to calculus, then ethics, then here.”
At the next table were Jane and Caitlin, checking Rapture layouts for the homecoming issue. Andrea Pinkerton and her fellow Muser Vivian Gosling were at the counter, nursing coffee, looking bleak.
“Ethics,” Kasper sighed. “Who needs ‘em.”
Andrea snorted. Kasper had seduced her on our sophomore year Halloween hayride. He’d bragged to me afterward about her plum-colored nipples and mimicked certain yelps she’d achieved.
* * *
The next day we were in Mr. Malgory’s class, discussing “1984.” That January happened actually to be 1984, and George Orwell was getting his ass kissed by Andrea Pinkerton.
“He foresaw our current systemic despair,” she said.
Kasper groaned. It might have been the groan of all Plummet, for snow smothered the town that year. Century-old maples around the school grounds had shattered during a holiday ice storm. I stared out the window at the largest tree carcass. Shutterbug Jane Lament was ordering freshmen into the maple’s hollowed-out shell and onto each other’s shoulders. Forced up from below, her subjects kept spilling out the trunk’s top like corn from a popper. As they fell into fluff their faces said soberly what Plummet faces almost always say: It is winter. We’re doing the best that we can.
“Screw despair,” said Kasper.
“Language, please,” said Mr. Malgory.
“I eschew despair, sir. I’ve got a sweet three-point shot and I plan to talk to dolphins someday. I’m a free agent. Orwell didn’t know diddly-squink.”
“Squat,” said our teacher.
“What?” Kasper said.
“Diddly-squat was what you meant. You said squink. Diddly-squink.”
“What’s wrong with squink?”
“Squink’s not a word. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Says who?”
“I say so, Kasper. End of discussion.”
Kasper’s eyes fired like he’d been slapped.
Try to understand… we were young and bored. Sitting behind me Rufus Bell was writing in his dead father’s Bible. He carried it daily and on the blank pages in back meant for recording baptisms he copied out Who song lyrics. Meanwhile at the seat in front of mine Vivian Gosling held her breath, staring at her mood ring, turning it a nasty purple.
“Maybe squink means what I say it means,” challenged Kasper.
Part Two
When I went next door the following morning Kasper wasn’t there. Normally he drove us to school in the BMW his parents gave him on his sixteenth birthday. Kasper’s mother said he’d driven to school early to work on a Rapture piece. Pissed off at my abandonment I walked two icy miles through Plummet Forest. When I got to school the halls were covered with flyers bearing Rapture letterhead. Kids crowded around, reading, their faces puzzled. I squeezed through to look at a flyer. It had black script centered on white background. The script read:
THE FIVE LAWS OF SQUINK
1. Thou shalt have no other Squink but Squink.
2. Thou shalt honor Squink with all thy Squink.
3. Thou shalt not Squink thy neighbor’s Squink.
4. Thou shalt not Squink false Squink against thy Squink.
5. Squink!
Jane Lament said it for everyone. “What the fuck?”
Her question got answered in the auditorium during morning assembly, a tradition begun by our school’s founders. Each day we sang the school anthem, “Water, O Water,” then the principal read announcements, then students could voice issues. That morning Kasper stood at the microphone after announcements. Behind him onstage was the faculty, seated in carved oak chairs.
“Students, friends and faculty,” Kasper said, “good squink to you. By now you’ve squinked the Laws of Squink I posted.”
Someone laughed. Teachers checked eyes with each other.
“It has come to my squink,” continued Kasper, “that certain squinkers among us believe squink is meaningless. Well, squink that!”
I was in the front row with Student Council. Kasper winked down at me, and I felt the only way I thought I needed to back then: included.
“I hereby announce the launch of Squink,” he said.
Mr. Malgory harumphed. “Kasper–”
“I say to one and all that the squink for squink has come!”
Dr. Down was on his feet, moving toward Kasper. “Let’s keep the path, here.”
Porter Jones was the first student to stand. He was a defensive lineman. “Hey. Let Kasper talk.”
“Yeah.” Another football boy stood up. “Let him… squink.”
“That’s right,” Kasper boomed. “Let me squink! Let us all squink!”
“Yeah,” called a girl. “Let us squink.”
Our principal had stopped advancing on Kasper, maybe sensing some verge, some precipice before him. I was sitting beside Caitlin Purchase, who smelled fine and warm that morning, like Apology coffee.
“Students,” Dr. Down said, “Assembly is a time-honored–”
“Anyone with the squinks for squinking should squink!” Kasper’s voice was a blast off. “Come on, everybody! Squink!”
Rufus Bell hollered “Squink!”
Dr. Down said, “That’s enough.”
“Squink,” shouted someone else.
Kasper prowled back and forth like a preacher. “Exactly! Squink, squink!”
I tried the word under my breath.
Jane Lament cried “squink, squink, squink.”
“Stop it,” Dr. Down insisted.
Dozens of students started yelling “Squink.”
“Squink,” Kasper bellowed into the mike. “Squink!”
I stood and said it more loudly. The faculty stared, but our clamor kept on. Then Caitlin stood, her gaze on Kasper. Stacy Down was frozen in her chair, watching her father and boyfriend square off. But Caitlin had no such conflict.
“Squink,” she declared.
* * *
That day was an unruly wonder. A hundred of us or more wandered the halls spouting our mantra.
“Squink,” we called out. “Squink, squink!” It was a code, a brassy dare. Cora Brindisi and her cousin Mary, who’d been snubbing each other for weeks, both said it and hugged.
By lunch even our Civics teacher who’d marched with Dr. King was annoyed. She stood in the cafeteria line tapping her empty tray, while Porter Jones repeated for the lunch lady his order of squink with squink sauce.
Andrea and her Musers sat out on the fun. They huddled scowling at their table while Kasper held court at our Doomer table with twenty kids around him. At least half were cute girls. I took notes furiously.
“Certain parties will squink our squinkitude,” Kasper predicted. “But the squink will be on them.”
Caitlin sat beside Kasper, fervor in her eyes. She’d strolled the Serengheti before she could drive and now her forearm was touching Kasper’s. As Stacy Down watched tearfully from the drinking fountain, Kasper held Caitlin’s earlobe, inspecting its emerald stud. “Nice squinks,” he said.
By afternoon Dr. Down had his hands full. The juniors in American Political Parties class had answered “Squink” to all questions on their fill-in-the-blank test. Dr. Down called Kasper and me to his office. Mr. Malgory was there too, looking cowed.
“Mr. Malgory,” our principal announced, “has something to say.”
“Er, I apologize, Kasper. I’m sorry I disparaged this word of yours. Poetic license indeed has meaning.”
Dr. Down beamed. “There you have it, boys. Truce?”
Kasper nodded at Malgory. “Many thanks, Mr. Squink. That was squinkily said.”
Dr. Down slapped his desk. “Cut this crap out, Otto. If your word is so all-consuming why are you still speaking English at all?”
Kasper bowed. “Touche, Dr. Squink. But squink wasn’t squinked in a squink. I must rely in part on the faulty tongue for now.”
The principal’s face simmered. “I’m asking you to stop.”
“You said rein in my style, sir. I’m complying.”
“You might say I’m warning you, Kasper.”
That was as much as the captain of my youth could countenance. He tapped a beat on his palm. “I squink with precision. I squink with concision. Squink is a vision and that’s my decision.”
Dr. Down sighed, closed his eyes.
So that was that. What could our teachers do? We weren’t shooting heroin.
To prime us for homecoming Rufus loped the halls singing “Eminence Squink” by The Who. “Come and join our squinking,” he sang. “Dress to squink.”
As for me, I studied Kasper’s moves. Like a biographer I looked hard at his arm around Caitlin’s waist and noted Stacy’s livid face when he passed her in the halls.
Part Three
Plummet’s winter homecoming basketball game — always on a Friday night, always against Pam-Dam Prep — is a high holy day that my wife and I observe yearly. Since the rivalry began, we’ve won forty times, Pam-Dam thirty. My brothers Mike and Tony are town heroes because each, as a center, led his squad in points during Plummet’s 1970 and 1972 respective wins. When our team triumphs the whole town parties till dawn in the cafeteria.
For my senior year homecoming Rufus and I snuck into the gym three hours before game time. We had instructions from Kasper, who’d be in the starting line-up, and we hid in the janitors’ closest. We could see the court through a hollowed knot in the door. Rufus, who did tech for school plays, had smuggled along a cordless microphone from the sound system.
Fans from both towns soon filled the bleachers. At a courtside table sat Rick Hogenfrick, our octogenarian former mayor, who announced the game annually. The Student Council president always joined him, so Caitlin was at his side in a silver dress.
Rufus waited till mid second quarter. Pam-Dam was leading when their center hip-checked our point guard.
“He’ll shoot one and one,” said Rick Hogenfrick over the PA.
“Let’s hope he squinks them both,” boomed a second voice.
Rick jumped in his chair. “Who the Christ is that?”
Rufus made his voice deity-deep in the microphone. “This is Squink.”
Adults in the crowd scanned the rafters.
Freshmen groupies leapt to their feet. “Squink, squink! Hail, Squink!”
David Down stared daggers at Kasper, who merely boxed out his man as our point guard sank his shots.
Teachers searched under the bleachers for the illicit voice source. On the next play Kasper stole the ball.
“Otto squinked the squink!” said the PA. “It’s a breakaway! He squinks downcourt… squinks up from downtown and… squiiiiiiiiiiiink!”
Things escalated at half-time as Plummet’s cheerleaders took the floor. They were executing a routine when the air filled with confetti. I looked up. At the portal entrance to the Musers’ poetry attic, a whirring fan was stationed.
Andrea and her cohorts held paper slips before the fan, let them fly and fall like manna.
“Death to squink!” cried the Musers.
On the floor Plummet’s head cheerleader kept dancing stubbornly. I zipped out of the closet, grabbed some of the papers which littered the court. The first one I held read:
I saw two people made of gold dancing the earth’s dances…
One of the dancers is always a man and the other a woman.
– Maxine Hong Kingston
(Words Matter: Death To Squink!)
The next missive said:
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine
health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Words Matter: Death To Squink!)
Each slip of paper bore a similar chestnut, from Chaucer, James, St. Vincent Millay.
Moments later, though, the head cheerleader lost her footing on some wisdom by Proust and face-planted into the floor. She was carried out with a broken nose and the court was swept of the Musers’ power play.
Plummet triumphed, with Kasper sinking the game-winning bucket. He dipped Caitlin at center court and kissed her for the cameras.
Hours later in the cafeteria the lights were low and kegs were on tap. A band played for a busy dance floor. Not having seen Kasper since midnight I was sitting in a pile of coats, watching the dancers.
“Well, if iss not Jude the prude.”
I turned. Weaving toward me, carrying a cup of beer, was Stacy Down. She stopped, swaying. “Where’s your massah?”
“He’s not my master. And I don’t know.”
“Hmph.” Stacy put a hand on my head to steady herself. “After Kasper hit that lass shot, my dad mussed his hair. C’you ‘magine, prude? My dad making nice with Kasper? Thas’ bullshit.”
“I’m not a prude.”
“My dad and Kasper, frens.” Her face was furious. “I wone stan’ for it. You’ll see.” She teetered off.
Alone, stiffed again for a ride, I was about to leave when Caitlin Purchase materialized, weeping, taking my hand. She pushed open the doors to the parking lot, pulled me into chill and moonlight. Sobbing, she hugged me.
“What? Caitlin, what’s wrong?”
“I just need someone to–” She snuffled, held me tighter.
I’d never had a girl cling to me. The back straps of her dress were a lovely lattice near my fingers. But the straps looked done up hastily.
“What happened?”
“In the Doom Room,” she whispered. “An hour ago. Kasper and I had… we… we squinked.”
It was the first time the word clanged for me. “Hey — it’s all right. I mean, um, you’re all right.”
“I’ve never done that before with a guy, so I’m just–” She crossed her arms, sized me up. She seemed angry with me.
“Where’s Kasper now?”
“Gone. He drove off with Rufus.”
“Where?”
“How the fuck should I know?” she blurted, and with that she fled.
Part Four
The next morning I found Kasper in his kitchen, eating waffles, reading college acceptance letters. They were early admission invitations, some with basketball scholarships.
“Williams, yes. Villanova, yes. Pretty squinkish, huh, Head?”
“Um, so I didn’t see you at the party…”
“Place was a madhouse.”
“Did you have a good time? I mean, did anything amazing happen last night?”
“We bested Pam-Dam. Gave those squinkies a fine squinking.”
I waited for more. “So was that, like, the highlight of your night?”
He nodded, held up a Harvard brochure. It showed three co-eds playing Frisbee.
“Hope they’re still there come September,” he said, grinning.
That afternoon I walked in Plummet Forest. The trees brooded overhead and the path was so seized with ice that I had to stray off it and crunch through knee-deep snow. In my head swam squink and Kasper’s brazen ways, while Caitlin’s embrace had hold of my heart. I felt unsteady, as if I were sinking. Then a hissing happened under my feet, a warmth gripped my calves and I was sinking, slowly, through snow and into the ground.
At first I feared I’d wandered onto the Laments’ property, into a stake pit. The truth was worse. The Potable spring waters that gurgle up under Plummet Mountain can also create treacherous ground, tepid, bog-like pools of quicksand. Dozens of men have been lost in such pools, and I was suddenly thigh-deep.
“Help! Help!” I thrashed, grabbed at bramble. I sank to my waist and then hips, screaming. A squirrel watched passively from a rock. I was crying and flailing as the ground drew me down, when a voice called my name. On the forest path a figure ran toward me yelling “Keep still!”
I tried to obey. The bog almost had my ribs when the lifeline hit me. It was a coat, a sweater and jeans tied together. I clutched it while my deliverer hauled. The ground gave a sucking sound, spat me out. I pawed through snow, collapsed on the path, shaking.
“Jude. It’s all right. You’re all right.”
A jury wouldn’t believe what I looked up to see.
“You’re okay now, Jude,” Caitlin said.
She stood holding her rope of clothes. Her cheeks were raw and red from her workout on nearby Plummet Pond, and her skates lay piled with her boots beside us. She wore a white turtleneck, blue wool socks and lavender panties I’ve never forgotten. Printed on the panties in black were a smiley face and the words HAVE A NICE DAY.
Steam rose from her thighs, as it did from my wet torso.
“My house is close by. We have to get you inside. You’ll go into shock.”
I whispered the first words that came to me. “I’m sorry.”
She stood me up, unknotted her clothes, briskly donned her jeans and boots. She wrapped her coat and sweater around me and took me home. I’d never been in her house. Her father hurried me into their basement, which held a lounge, guest room and bathroom with a Jacuzzi. He waited in the lounge while I had a soak. Caitlin’s mother laid out warm clothes of her husband’s, and when I emerged dressed, he gave me a medicinal shot of bourbon.
Her parents ordered in Chinese for the four of us. Afterward they stayed upstairs while Caitlin and I watched “Shane” in the basement lounge. We didn’t kiss, but Caitlin leaned against me on the couch and I made the bravest move I could. I took her palm in mine.
* * *
Monday punched Plummet High in the gut. It happened during first period with Mr. Malgory. He’d just begun a lecture about Big Brother when the door opened. Standing there was Dr. Down, his face post-mortem pale. In his trembling hand was the sky-blue pillow from his office. Several kids gasped. On the pillow, just above the pristine white word Forever, someone had painted SQUINK in huge, tarry black script.
Mr. Malgory said, “Oh my.”
Dr. Down didn’t yell. He crooked one summoning finger and said “Kasper Otto.”
Kasper was already shaking his head. “You can’t think I did that, sir.”
“Come with me, Kasper.”
No one spoke, though Andrea Pinkerton smiled.
“I’d never disrespect you so horribly, sir. It wasn’t me.”
“Kasper. Now.”
Kasper got up, the seeds of panic in his eyes. He followed Dr. Down into the hall. All of us crowded into the doorway. Malgory’s room looked onto the senior student hallway, and Dr. Down marched to locker 401. He checked a slip of paper, gripped the locker’s combination knob.
“You’re searching my stuff? There’s nothing to find.” Kasper folded his arms.
Dr. Down turned the knob. “My office is locked at all times when I’m not there. When I unlocked it today and found this- this–” — he stabbed the marred pillow — “–it was the first time I’d been there since Friday night. Someone snuck in over the weekend.”
“The custodians,” Kasper guessed.
As the principal clicked open locker 401, the look he gave Kasper was hot with powers a boy can only dabble towards. He pulled the door wide. Sitting in the locker on top of a book was a skinny paint brush, a jar of black paint and a key.
Kasper’s face went ballistic. “Those aren’t mine!”
“That looks like a master key, Kasper. One that opens every door in the school.”
Wedged beside me, getting a good view, was Stacy Down. Andrea stood crowded against the jamb on my other side, a sly satisfaction in her eyes.
“Someone set me up!” Kasper roared.
“I hope this isn’t a master key.” Dr. Down pinched the jagged piece of metal, lifted it. “Our rulebook states that a student on permanent probation, such as yourself, found in possession of a–”
“I’ve never seen that key in my life.” Kasper grabbed Dr. Down’s arm. “Please, sir–”
Our principal pulled free. He went to two separate classroom doors, used the key to lock and unlock them. He looked straight at Kasper. Inches from my ear, Stacy exhaled with what sounded like post-coital peace.
Part Five
His parents appealed. By birth, though, they were Flatlanders, non-mountain people with few binding roots in Plummet, and they’d never been much involved with Kasper’s school life. What’s more, the man who chaired the school trustee board was the father of the boy Kasper had half-blinded in chemistry class.
So a blazing comet was snuffed from our company. A week after Kasper’s expulsion, during assembly, Rufus Bell laid out his conspiracy theory that Andrea had framed Kasper. He cited her locksmith of a father, but had no proof that Andrea had possessed a master key, since there were allegedly just two of them, one on Dr. Down’s watch chain and a rumored backup stashed elsewhere.
I tried to see Kasper, but he stayed holed up at home, taking no visitors. I might have worked harder to break his hermitage, but a miracle happened: Caitlin agreed to coffee with me at The Apology. We followed that with a movie date. Once her charms had me, my friendship with Kasper fizzled.
I went on to economics at Dartmouth, law at Columbia. I heard Kasper got his equivalency, tried a year at Blue Mountain College. But the rogue in him flared up. He quit college, became a wild real estate tycoon. He made a decade’s worth of millions, then landed in Pam-Dam Prison for tax evasion. He’s finished seven years of a twenty-year sentence.
I undertook a seven-year odyssey too, for it took me that long to land Caitlin as my wife. We’ve got two daughters and a summer place in Antibes, and I’m chief legal counsel at Plummet Potable. Caitlin’s parents are still the company’s queen and king, and I’m proud to have ascended into Plummet’s ruling family. I’m no prince, but I squire forth in life with Caitlin and I’m good in the role.
And squink? The word has stuck with me. It’s the name, I sometimes imagine, of the bratty edge in Kasper’s character that awed me in my callow days. Or maybe squink is the name of the chutzpah I demonstrated in October of senior year, when I pilfered from the desk of Ms. Shanahan, Dr. Down’s aged secretary. She was a sweet woman who often cat-napped in her cubicle outside the principal’s office. As Student Council treasurer, I frequently brought money pouches to Ms. Shanahan after dances or bake sales. If she was dozing, I stashed the pouches myself in her desk’s cash drawer.
The Monday after the Senior Fall Formal — I’d taken no one, while Kasper had escorted Vivian Gosling and drilled her afterward in her vacationing parents’ poster bed — I was tucking just such a pouch in Ms. Shanahan’s desk. The old coot was out cold and drooling, and on a whim I rummaged deeper than usual in her cash drawer. It held an ocean of paper clips and an old Maple Mix tin.
Maple Mix, a sugary brittle, was an Adirondack candy that got discontinued in 1980. Most kids my age grew up hating it, but when I was very small my Dad brought me home Maple Mix twice a month on his pay days. It was the only luxury in my life at the time. So when I clicked open Ms. Shanahan’s tin, hoping for a forgotten flavor, I was surprised to find a key. Taped onto it was a small slip of paper reading Master. I pocketed the key and rode the bus that afternoon to Bluington, a few towns over. I copied my find at a hardware store, and the next day returned the original with Ms. Shanahan none the wiser.
I told no one my secret. I used the key early on weekend mornings that autumn to sneak into the girls’ locker room via the emergency exit door. I hid in the giant bin of basketballs — winter sports weren’t on yet — and studied the unclad girls’ varsity soccer team before and after their games. From this vantage I came to love not only my eventual wife’s tits and ass but the figures of Stacy Down, Vivian Gosling and a dozen other bodies to which Kasper had such flippant access. It was in that ball bin that I first thought what a plague someone like Kasper can be to a community, just how many hearts can be broken or quieter voices eclipsed by a gossip-stirring class clown and lover boy.
I stole the paint and brush from the art lab using the key I left beside said supplies in Kasper’s locker. Knowing his combination was a simple matter of having been at his side since always. I still feel low for besmirching Dr. Down’s pillow, but if I could share the truth with him, he’d agree that I acted for the greater good. Also, I now sit on the Plummet High trustee board with Stacy and Vivian, and though I still treasure all that they once unwittingly revealed to me, I state in my own defense that they are happily married and long free of Kasper’s uncaring clutches.
It’s not like I put him in jail, either. He earned that on his own. To make sure he can savor the freedom of his youth, I have his Pam-Dam Prison cell regularly stocked with as much Plummet Potable as one man can stand. With my blessing Caitlin drives up to the prison once or twice a year to let Kasper look upon a friendly face. According to the guard I pay to keep me current, my old brother-in-arms and the helpmate of my soul gaze at each other through a filmy partition that is meant to be clear and Kasper never says anything: not a single word.
