Killing Mr. Griffin

  “I’ll walk out to the car with you,” David said. “Can’t you cue me in on the basics?”

  “It’ll take more time than that,” Mark said. “There’s a lot to be worked out. What it boils down to is this—we’re out to work over Griffin.”

  “Work him over?”

  “Scare him shitless. Get him crawling. Teach him he can’t pull the sort of stuff he pulled today.”

  “How are you going to do it?”

  “We’re going to kidnap him,” Mark said. “We’re going to make him think we’re going to kill him.”

  “Oh, wow,” David said, drawing in his breath. “That’s heavy stuff, man. You could get into all kinds of trouble.”

  “I don’t think so. Not if he’s blindfolded. Not the way I’m working it out.” Mark put a hand on his shoulder. “How about it, Dave? Want to be a part of it?”

  From the dark behind them a cracked old voice called, “Davy?”

  “Look,” David said, “like I told you, I’ve got some stuff to do. Later, after dinner, I’m going to the library. I’ll meet you then, say around eight, okay? At the Burger Shack?”

  “Not okay. I need to know now.” Mark’s hand remained warm on his shoulder. His voice dropped until it was almost a whisper, so intense that the words came forth in short, painful jabs. “Dave—how can you stand it—living like this? How long has it been—since you did something crazy—just for the hell of it? How long has it been—since you’ve done something wild—just for fun?”

  “You’re not really planning to hurt him?”

  “Hell, no. Just scare him. Shake him up some. Are you with us?”

  All of David’s life rose up behind him in one great, gray wave.

  “Count me in,” he said.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was the sound of the telephone ringing in the upstairs hallway that woke Susan at nine thirty on Saturday morning. She was always aware of the telephone; it was situated directly outside her bedroom door.

  Who can be calling so early? she thought irritably, squirming over onto her stomach and burrowing her face into her pillow to escape the sunlight that was streaming between the half-drawn curtains and flooding the room with unwelcome brilliance.

  Saturdays were special to Susan. They meant that she did not have to get up in time to sit through the ordeal of a family breakfast with all the squabbling and spilling and teasing that went with it. She did not have to go to school and smile her way through a morning filled with semi-strangers; she did not have to worry about which cafeteria table to sit at during lunch and whether to tack herself onto the edge of a group that was already eating or sit alone and wait to see if someone sat down beside her.

  On Saturdays she could sleep late and get up at last to a house with most of the people already out of it. She could make herself peanut butter toast and read at the table, and after that she could shut herself back in her bedroom and write. She could spend her whole day there if she wanted to, unless, of course, her mother dragged her out to do some household chore.

  The telephone had no right to ring on Saturday mornings. People should tiptoe softly about, not disturbing each other. The boys should tell their friends that if they wanted to see them they could stand in the yard and toss pebbles at their windows, not bring the house down with the shrillness of a telephone blast.

  Why doesn’t someone answer it? Susan thought as the phone continued to ring. Are they deaf or are all of them out somewhere?

  Finally, with a sigh of resignation, she dragged herself out from under the covers and crossed the room to the door. Her hand was on the knob when the ringing stopped.

  Craig’s voice called, “Sue! It’s for you!”

  “For me?” Susan turned the knob and stepped out into the hall. “Who is it?”

  “How should I know? Some guy.” Craig’s voice was on the edge of changing. Sometimes it came out high and shrill like a little boy’s, and other times it started deep and ended in a creak. Now it was suddenly very low and almost booming. “Don’t tell me the single person’s got herself a boyfriend!”

  “Oh hush.” She snatched the receiver from his hand. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Sue?” a masculine voice said. “This is David Ruggles.”

  It’s a joke, Susan thought. It’s something Craig and the twins have set up for me.

  “David who?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “It’s Dave Ruggles, from school. From your lit class. The one whose papers you were chasing yesterday, remember?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, of course, I know who you are.” It was not a joke then; it was real. Or perhaps she was still in bed asleep and dreaming.

  “It’s such a great day out,” the voice on the telephone was saying, “with the wind down and everything, a bunch of usthought we’d take a picnic up into the mountains. I was wondering if you might like to go.”

  “You mean, today?”

  “Are you busy?”

  “No,” Susan said. “I’m not busy at all. I’d like to go.”

  “You would? Cool. We’ll be by for you around eleven then. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Susan said. And then, as a frantic afterthought, “Do you know where I live?”

  “The address in the school directory is right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Yes, it’s right. Okay, then, I’ll see you in a little while.”

  Stunned, she replaced the receiver on the hook. For a moment she simply stood there, staring at it, at the pale beige plastic instrument that had brought the incredible message.

  “I have a date.”

  “You’re kidding,” Craig exclaimed with astonishment. “That guy really asked you out?”

  “To a picnic.”

  “Holy cow! Wait till I tell the twins!” With a bellow of laughter, Craig went rocketing down the hall, shouting his piece of news.

  Susan went back into her room and shut the door.

  “I have a date with David,” she told herself numbly. She could say the words, but she could not actually believe them. She went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth. The face in the bathroom mirror looked back at her, softly blurred because she was not wearing her glasses. It was a rather narrow face with a high forehead, and it was framed with fine, mouse-colored hair. It was not the face of a girl David Ruggles would ask for a date.

  Yet, it had happened—it had happened.

  She rinsed out the toothbrush and hung it on the rack and went back into her room and got dressed. Jeans and sandals and a pale blue shirt with some embroidery on the sleeves. She combed her hair and put on her glasses, and the room came into focus. I have a date with David!

  There was a brief, perfunctory knock. The bedroom door opened and her mother came in.

  “Craig told me the news!” she said. “My goodness, Sue, who is this boy?”

  “He’s the president of the senior class!”

  “How exciting!” Her mother’s eyes were shining. “What are you going to take?”

  “Take?”

  “Craig said it was a picnic.”

  “I didn’t think about that.” Susan regarded her mother blankly. “What’ll I do? I don’t know what other people are bringing. He didn’t say anything about the food.”

  “I’ll make you some sandwiches,” Mrs. McConnell said. “We have chicken left over from last night’s dinner. And there’s still some chocolate cake; at least, I think there is, if the boys haven’t eaten it. Does that sound all right?”

  “I guess so,” Susan said. The numbness was beginning to wear off now, and she felt the sharp edge of panic rising within her. “Oh, Mom, what if it’s awful? I mean, what if I can’t think of anything to talk to him about?”

  “Just talk about the same things you talk about at school.”

  “We don’t talk in school. He doesn’t sit near me in any classes. I talked to him yesterday, just for a minute, about the lit assignment, but that’s not the kind of thing you say twice. I mean, we talked about that, and now it’s done. Y
ou can’t keep discussing an assignment.”

  “You’ll think of something. That’s the sort of thing that takes care of itself. He’ll probably have things he wants to talk about. He must like you, honey, or he wouldn’t have called.”

  I have a date with David!

  At eleven ten the doorbell rang, and he was there. Handsome and smiling, unself-consciously shaking hands with her parents, reaching out to take the handle of the picnic basket.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. McConnell, she’ll be safe. Jeff Garrett’s driving, and he’s really careful.”

  Even Craig’s curious inspection and the snaggle-toothed leers of the twins didn’t appear to faze him. Susan stared at his hands. They were the cleanest hands she had ever seen, long and slender with tapering fingers. She was afraid that if she lifted her eyes and looked him full in the face, she would be blinded as though she were looking straight into the dazzling radiance of the sun.

  “Have fun,” her mother said.

  “Don’t eat too much,” came from her father, who did not seem to understand the significance of what was happening, that his sixteen-year-old daughter was finally, at long last, about to embark on a first date, and that it was not just any boy who had asked her out but this particular boy.

  They crossed the lawn to the car, and David opened the door for her and lifted in the basket.

  “You know everybody, don’t you? Jeff—Mark—Betsy.” “Hello, Sue! What a cute shirt!” Betsy Cline threw her a warm, bright, welcoming smile.

  “Hi, Sue,” Mark said, and Jeff said, “Great day for a picnic, right? It’s almost like summer.”

  And that suddenly—that easily—she felt she was one of them. Her mother had been right, there was no problem with talking, because the rest of them were talking so much themselves. They seemed to know each other well, but not so well that they excluded her from their conversation. With everything that was said, a door was opened deliberately so that shecould enter with a comment. They drove out of the city on the freeway and turned off onto the paved road that led to the mountains, and almost immediately the fresh green of the spring trees surrounded them and the sky arched blue above their heads.

  Mark opened a six-pack of beer.

  “If it was Coke, it would look like a TV commercial,” he said, and they all laughed, Susan right along with them. She had never thought of Mark as being funny before. In fact, shehad always been a little frightened of him, with his smooth, expressionless face and knowing eyes. But now, suddenly, hewasn’t frightening at all—just lighthearted and carefree—and it was like a TV commercial with a car full of beautiful, laughing, young people setting out to spend a day together in the hills.

  After several miles Jeff turned again, and this time they were on a dirt road that curved and twisted and doubled back upon itself until it seemed to be going nowhere.

  At last they came to a clearing and Jeff stopped the car and they all got out.

  “This is the place,” Mark said. “Lana and I used to come up here all the time. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a path over there by that rock and it leads to a waterfall.”

  He began to lead the way, and the rest of them fell into step behind him, walking single file, David carrying the picnic basket and Jeff with a blanket and a tote bag of food that Betsy had brought.

  Susan followed along in David’s footsteps, his slim, straight back moving directly ahead of her. They walked through the woods, and it was still—there was nothing but the sound of their feet crunching dead branches.

  “Who’s Lana?” she asked David in a low voice.

  “The girl Mark used to go with—until Griffin gave it the ax. You’ve heard about that, haven’t you? I thought everybody had.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you later.” He tossed her a smile over his shoulder.

  I’ve dreamed this before, Susan thought. She had written about it later, pretending it really happened once when Mr. Griffin wanted a descriptive essay. He said she picked nice adjectives, but marked her down for spelling.

  They heard the waterfall before they saw it. The closer they got, the louder it became, until they broke through the trees and were upon it, a frothing, tumbling, churning burst of silver that poured itself madly over rocks and then dropped straight down for several feet into the stream below.

  “Hey, awesome!” Jeff exclaimed, and Betsy gave a little squeal of delight.

  “I didn’t know it was back here!”

  “Nobody does,” Mark told her. “Nobody ever comes here. Lana and I stumbled on it one day when we were out hiking. We came back a lot of times, and we were the only ones.”

  “Cool, huh?” David said, smiling at Susan.

  “It’s simply beautiful!” She felt she should say something more, but the words wouldn’t come, and anything she made herself say would be too little or too much.

  “Let’s eat!” Jeff said. “I hope you brought plenty of food. I’m starving!”

  “Aren’t you always?” Betsy said with a laugh. “You guys are all bottomless pits.”

  They spread the blanket on the ground and ate their lunch on the bank of the stream on the very edge of the sparkling water.

  Afterward, they lay stretched out on the blanket and on the grass and talked in an easy, lazy manner as if they had all been friends forever. Mark was leaning against the trunk of a tree, smoking a joint, and the sweet, heavy scent of pot blended with the incense of the sun-soaked pine needles. Betsy was lying on the blanket, her blue-jeaned knees drawn up into little pointed peaks. Her eyes were closed, and she looked totally at peace. Jeff was sprawled next to her, on his back. He was dreamily studying the line of a pine branch stretching squarely over his head. Susan took off her glasses and laid them on her stomach, and the world went soft and unfocused around her.

  “You look different without your glasses,” David said softly. “Your whole face changes. Do you really have to wear them?”

  “Only if I want to see,” Susan told him, amazed at her sudden ability to answer such a question lightly. “It helps when you’re walking and stuff. You know—so you don’t bump into things.”

  “You look okay with them on,” David said. “It’s just that now—with them off—you look sort of fragile. Like you need to be taken care of, or something.”

  “I wonder what Mr. Griffin looks like without his glasses,” Betsy said. She spoke without opening her eyes. “Fragile? Like he needs to be taken care of?”

  “Are you kidding?” Jeff started to laugh. “We’ll have to take them off before we blindfold him. We don’t want to shove them straight through his eyeballs.”

  “Blindfold him?” Susan thought she had heard him incorrectly. “Did you say blindfold?” Suddenly, she realized that the atmosphere had changed. The blurred ovals of their faces were turned toward her. Waiting. Calculating.

  “You heard right,” Jeff said slowly, and they told her the thing that they were going to do.

  Later Susan could not recall exactly which one told her or whether they all did, each speaking a part, the voices overlapping and running together like the lines and curves of David’s face as he raised himself on one elbow and leaned over to touch the tip of her nose lightly with one finger.

  “You like our idea?”

  “You’re kidding me. You’re not really going to do it.”

  “Damned right we are.”

  “I don’t believe you. It’s like something out of a book.” She could accept it when she thought of it that way, as a story, the people in it characters created by an author. She could imagine the words neatly printed on a page: “The shadowy figures seized him from behind and forced him into the waiting car. His cries for help brought no response. Where were they taking him? What were they going to do?”

  “It’s unreal,” she said. “You’re making it up to tease me.”

  “You can be in on it if you want to.”

  “Me? How?” Susan asked.

  “Mark will tell you.
He’s doing the planning.”

  “You can make an appointment with him for after school,”Mark said. “Pretend you want to talk with him about the term paper or something. Hold him till the grounds are empty. Then, when he walks out to the parking lot, we’ll get him.”

  “You really think it would be that simple?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Mark took a long drag on the joint and let the smoke curl slowly from between his teeth. “The best things in life are simple. Simple things work. They don’t get screwed up. It’s the complicated things that get twisted around on you.”

  “We’ll all have our parts,” Betsy said. “Mine will be to provide alibis for everybody. The guys are going to blindfold Griffin so he won’t be able to see who anybody is. Then afterward he won’t be able to identify anyone.”

  “He’ll know me if I make the appointment,” Susan said. “He won’t be blindfolded then.”

  “He won’t guess you’re part of it,” Mark told her easily. “It’ll just seem like a coincidence. He stays after school to talk with a student, he goes outside and we’re waiting for him by his car. You’ll have split before that happens. You won’t even be on the scene.”

  “But why?” Susan asked. “What’s the reason for it all? People don’t get kidnapped without a reason.”

  “The reason is that he deserves it,” Mark said sharply. “Does there have to be any other reason than that? He’s an asshole. He’s out to flunk all of us. Maybe if we shake him up a little he’ll get over this power trip of his and start treating us like human beings.”

  “I don’t know,” Susan said hesitantly. “I’ve never done anything like this.”

  “Who has?” Jeff said. “It’ll be a first for all of us. We’ve got to do something really wild once in our lives before we’re grown and tied down. Let’s get some kicks while we can, and we’ll teach old Griffin a lesson at the same time.”

  “When would you want to do it?”

  “What about Thursday?” Mark said. “That will give us time to get all the details worked out. Besides, he’s giving a quiz Monday, which means we’ll probably get the papers back Wednesday. That way you could call him Wednesday night and ask him for a conference after school the next day. You could say you want to discuss the test.”