24

Tom Said Later

When the rest of the school and the band filed out into the cold air - Tom said later - Skeleton stole away from whatever he had been doing at the back of the stage and took a chair fifteen feet from the hall door, to one side of the refectory table. He was leaning back smiling at them when Tom and Del returned from the bathroom. 'Cleaned up now?' he asked. 'Must have been pretty uncomfortable, all that crap going down your shirt.'

'Leave him alone,' Tom said. Both boys skirted Ridpath and went to the far side of the long table.

'Shut up, stupid. You think I'm talking to you?' Ridpath twisted his chair so that he was looking directly at them again. A few musicians smoked on an otherwise empty stage; a few couples bent toward each other at the far end of the auditorium. 'You're afraid of me, aren't you, Florence?'

The question was devastatingly simple.

'Yes,' Del answered.

'Yes, what?'

'Yes, Mr. Ridpath.'

'Yeah. That's good. Because you'll do anything I tell you to, just the way you're supposed to. I get sick looking at you, you know that. You look like a little bug, Florence, a shitty little cockroach. … ' Ridpath stood up, and Tom saw flecks of white at the edges of his mouth. He had somehow strolled up to the front of the table without their seeing him move: he threw out a stabbing punch, and Del jumped backward to avoid it.

Tom opened his mouth, and Skeleton whispered fiercely: 'Keep out of this, Flanagan, or I'll tear you apart.' He turned his shining gaze toward Del again.

'You saw him too.'

Del shook his head.

'I know you did. I saw you. Who is he? Come on, runt. Who is he? He wants me to do something, d-sn't he?'

'You're crazy,' Del said.

'Oh no I'm not oh no I'm not oh no I'm not,' Skeleton said softly, all in a rush, leaning over the table toward Del. 'See, nobody's watching. We might as well be all alone here.' He snatched at Del's hand and clamped his fingers around the wrist. 'Who was he?'

Del shook his head.

'You saw him. You know him.'

Del's whole being constricted with revulsion, and he tried to wrench himself away. Skeleton changed his grip with a wrestler's quickness and began to squeeze Del's hand in his. 'Little girl,' he muttered. 'Trying to hide from me, aren't you, little girl?' Ridpath did his best to break the bones in Del's hand.

Tom lunged at Skeleton's wrist.

Skeleton jerked his hand aloft, nearly lifting Del off the floor. Then he looked at Tom in fury and despair and still with that sick gladness and swung his arm down hard into the side of the punch bowl. At the last second he released his fingers and used his palm to smack Del's hand against the heavy bowl.

Del screamed. The bowl shattered, and purple-brownish liquid gouted into the air. The two boys were instantly soaked, Skeleton less so because he had jumped back immediately after the impact; Del half-fell into the mess on the table.

'I want to know,' Skeleton said, and ran out through the hall door.

When the rest of us came back into the auditorium, after seeing a red speck drift far above Over the field house, Tom and Del were mopping the floor. Del's hand, not broken, bled in a straight line across his knuckles: his face stricken, he wielded the mop with one hand while awkwardly holding his torn hand out from his side, letting it bleed into a bucket.

'Jeez, you monkeys are clumsy,' Mr. Robbin said, and ordered his wife to get cotton and tape from the first-aid box in the office.