Page 213 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 201

study period, slamming doors. A tap sounded lightly on my door.
I didn’t answer. Always some trickster, in a tiptoe sprint down the
hallway, knocked once on fifty doors causing fifty boys to break
from their studies, open their doors, and all have a good ape laugh.
The tap came again. The door edged open a crack. A figure was
backlit by a sliver of hallway light.
“Friend or foe?” I asked.
“Ryan, you awake?” It was Lock.
I grunted.
“Where are you?”
“Over here by the window.”
“Why so dark in there?” Lock reached only his hand into my
room and flipped the switch to the overhead light. My windowful
of wonderful twilight dissolved into a mirror reflecting me sitting
in my room, desk and bed and wash sink, cassocks and black cor-
duroys and white teeshirts neatly folded, a piece of driftwood Dick
Dempsey had given me carved so subtly Rector Karg could never
accuse me of collecting art, books all over, spilled, purposely spilled,
with theology and philosophy books prominently strewn, hiding
almost in plain sight the forbidden novels and plays from the secret
library of Sean O’Malley, S. J., who claimed his own father had met
James Joyce, in fact, had bought James Joyce himself a drink in a
pub.
“Another sinus headache?”
“Yeah.” Nobody’s sinuses could act up so much, but Lock was
kind.
“I thought so.” Lock counseled me more than once that I had
been communicating less and disappearing more. Lock knew how to
play what game there was. Our classmates had begun to miss—not
me so much—as my class lecture notes that I shared with them.
They figured, because I could write and type, they didn’t have to
take notes. A true community, they informed me at a class meeting,
should share everything beginning at Mass in the morning right on
through to study notes and meals in the refectory. One thing was
meaning two things. They were literal boys; I was a walking meta-
phor. I didn’t want to be their secretary, but I wanted to be really
well-liked by them, so I could levitate and wake them. I even made

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