4

After the next class we had a free period, and Brick sat next to me in the library. 'Let's go down to the stage,' he whispered. 'Too many people here.' We got permission to leave from Mrs. Tute, picked up our books and walked around the perimeter of the school, down the wide stairs, and went through the big doors to the shadowy cavern behind the dark curtains.

Morris Fielding was working something out on the piano, but he was concentrating so hard that he scarcely nodded at us. Brick drew me over to the other side, where it was even darker.

I could hear the clip on his slide-rule case rattling against the metal ring. 'I didn't tell him anything. Honest. I didn't. He kept at me and at me - he's so scary, I thought… ' He began to snuffle, but cut it off, afraid that Morris would hear. Big and pudgy, with his Hollywood hairdo shorn down to a black fuzz, he looked like an enormous infant, and I realized how brave he must have been not to tell everything to Broome. 'I just kept telling myself that I didn't do it, I didn't do it - and I couldn't tell him about Skeleton, could I?'

'So he just let you go?' I asked.

'Finally. He said he believed me. He said he hoped I knew how necessary it was to find wh-ver was guilty. Then he gave me something to give to Mrs. Olinger and Mr. Weatherbee.' He took two identical papers from his jacket pocket. His fingers had left damp stains on them. 'It's some kind of announcement.'

'Well, you have to hand it to that guy,' I said. 'At least he apologizes.'

But when we looked at the papers, we saw that Mr. Broome was simply using Dave Brick to pass out an announcement that students would be able to form clubs in the second semester. 'That's all?' Brick said. 'That's it?' His legs wobbled, and he sat down heavily on a heap of curtain material, relief and disappointment clanging together violently in him. After what he had been through, I think he could not believe that Broome had simply dispatched him as an errand boy.

'It's okay,' I yelled. 'He's just relieved.'

'So he's relieved,' someone purred from the dark area inside the door, and all three of us snapped our heads around to see who it was.

Skeleton Ridpath walked forward into the dim light: he had come around the door so softly he might as well have come through the keyhole, like a ghost or a wisp of smoke.

'So Brick the Prick is relieved, huh? Get out of here, you freshman creeps. Don't ever come back here again.' He swiveled on one hip and bent toward Morris. 'Fielding. You leave that goddamned piano alone.'

'I have a right to play it,' Morris said quietly.

'A right? You have a right? Shit.' Skeleton shook himself like a wet dog, sudden rage making his nerves twitch, and darted across the stage to the piano. He closed his bony hands around Morris' neck and started to pull him off the bench. 'What I say, you do, you hear that, you twerp? Keep your filthy hands off that piano.' Morris resisted at first, but then decided that broken pride was better than a broken neck. Skeleton heaved him off the bench and onto the floor. 'None of you little shits come back here in the future, hear me? Keep off. Stay away. This is out of bounds.' He rubbed a long hand over his hideous face. 'What are you gawping at?' he asked Brick.

Brick was still clumsily seated on the pile of curtain material. 'Gah,' he said.

'I said, what are you gawping at?'

'I hate you,' Brick said. 'And you… ' The first sentence had come out in one thoughtless passionate rush; the second expired.

'And I what?' Skeleton floated up toward us again.

'Nothing.'

'Nothing.' Skeleton looked around, appealing to an invisible audience. His arm went out like a striking snake, and he drove his fingers into Brick's neck. 'You get out now,' he ordered. 'Right fast. And stay out.'

We left. Dave Brick rubbed his neck; he croaked rather than talked during the next two lessons, but his voice was nearly back to normal by the time we went home after practice. 'If he d-s that once more, I'll tell on him,' he swore to me as we went toward the locker room. 'Then he can kill me. I don't care.'