“Then how come you can’t answer a question?”
He swaggered up to the front steps, hands jammed into pockets. I stood still, fists clenched, anticipating a blow. But he didn’t touch me. Just stared at my forehead for about fifteen seconds as if there was a purple growth the size of a baseball sticking from it. Then he asked, “You go to school here?”
It was the first day of grade seven at Lawson Street Junior High. Oleg, my only friend, had gone to a different school.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Me, too.”
“You do?”
“No, I’m lying to you.” He shook his head, rolled his eyes. “The hell else would I be doing outside this place?”
“Dunno.”
“Shit, if I didn’t have to go to class, I wouldn’t walk in a ten-mile radius of this stupid building. You know it used to be a jail, right?”
“What?”
“This building, it used to be a jail. You knew that, right?”
“No.”
“You didn’t know that? I thought everybody knew that. Ten years back it was a maximum-security jail, this school.”
“Yeah?”
“You really didn’t know that, eh? Man, oh, man. I forget sometimes how stupid some people are. Our school, buddy, is where they threw all the craziest serial killers. The worst ones. Guys that chopped up their wives, raped their pets. And they all used to sleep in our classrooms. Used to lift weights in the playground. And also they chucked Mafia and skinheads and all types of serious gang members in there, too. People got stabbed in those hallways every day. Had to have somebody go around and clean up the blood with a mop … every day. And it was maximum security, right, so they used to have guards armed with machine guns surrounding the place. And there was a fifty-foot barbed wire fence, and they put a force field on the fence, and if you touched it, you got an electric shock so bad you’d be paralyzed for a week … or maybe two weeks, depending on how strong you were. But, man, oh, man, I don’t believe you didn’t know about the jail. I thought everybody knew about that.”
“Oh.”
He stared at me for about ten seconds as if I had the words I AM A MORON written with pink marker on my forehead. Then he said, “You know I’m joking, right?”
“What?”
“This place wasn’t a jail, buddy.”
“Oh.”
“The hell would anybody put a jail downtown like this? That’d probably be the stupidest idea in the world. This area is full of houses. What kind of idiot would wanna live around here if there was a maximum-security jail across the street?”
“Dunno.”
“You believed me, though.”
“No.”
“Yeah, you did. Don’t lie. You thought this school used to be a jail. I bet you were gonna go home and tell your mommy you wanna transfer schools ’cause you’re afraid the ghost of some pedophile is gonna sneak up on you when you go to take a piss. I bet you woulda stayed awake all night if I hadn’t told you I was joking. I saw the way you were looking at me. You believed me.”
“No.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.”
“Whatever, you stupid dumbass. It’s not my fault you’re an idiot.”
“But I didn’t —”
“The hell were you staring at me before?”
“What? I wasn’t.”
“You were staring at me when you walked out the door. The hell were you looking at?”
“Nothing. I wasn’t. I mean, I didn’t think I … You were staring at everybody that walked out the door.”
“That’s ’cause I’m waiting for somebody.”
“Oh.”
“It’s important who I’m waiting for.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you wanna know who it is?”
“Who?”
“None of your business.”
“Oh.”
He scratched his chin for a little while, glanced at the ground. “Well, it’s a girl I’m waiting for. This sexy girl. Probably missed her, though. I told her to meet me here around two-thirty ’cause I figured I could get out of school early behind a teacher’s back. But none of the teachers would let me leave my desk, not even to take a piss. Place might as well be a jail. But, anyway, she probably came already and thought I stood her up. It’s a shame ’cause last time I saw her she let me take a peek down her panties.”
“Yeah?”
“You think I’m gonna lie about something like that? That’s the third time she’s let me see it.”
“Really?”
“She got red pubes.”
“Red?”
“Same colour as her hair.”
“Where were you?”
“What, when she showed me?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“None of your business.”
“Oh.”
He kicked a pebble, watched it roll. “Well, first time was on the train tracks. By Dupont, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“I took her walking down there, and right when a train went by, she stretched her panties out so I could look down.”
“She did that?”
“Swear to God.”
“For how long?”
“Till the train passed all the way. As soon as the train passed and the noise was gone, she didn’t let me look no more. It was a long train, though. So, I don’t know, probably a minute, two minutes, I seen it for.
“Holy.”
“Said she might let me touch it this time. You ever touched one?”
“What?”
“A twat. Pussy.”
“No.”
“But you’ve seen one, right?”
“A real one?”
“Yeah. On a real girl. A girl who showed it to you.”
“Dunno.”
“That means no. You should try and see one. A real one, I mean.”
“How many real ones you seen?”
He furrowed his brow, as if he were calculating in his head. “’Bout fifty.”
“Fifty?”
“Yeah, ’bout that. But, anyway, I figure this girl I was waiting for ain’t gonna show up. You know what a whore is, buddy?”
“Like a hooker?”
“Yeah, a hooker. A whore.”
“Yeah, I know what that is.”
“You ever seen one before?”
“Not really.”
“What do you mean not really?”