Empire Falls

Mr. Boniface’s wife, and whenever Mr. Brown was foolish enough to commit anything to writing, Gladys corrected its grammar and spelling and returned it to him .
    “I’ll change the grade,” Mr. Brown said .
    “And you owe Miles Roby an apology.”
    “Never,” said Mr. Brown. Not for a dozen Jimmy Mintys. Not for a thousand .
    “Consider what it means to hate a sixteen-year-old boy,” the principal suggested. “Consider what it means for a teacher to hate a student.”
    “What’s so bad about that?” Mr. Brown wanted to know. “You hate me, don’t you?”
    Mr. Boniface, a fair man, conceded the point .
    M ILES HAD JUST ABOUT given up on the idea of trying for his license anytime soon when his mother returned from work one evening and told him that Mrs. Whiting had offered to serve as his interim instructor. Even more incredibly, she’d proposed they use her new Lincoln to practice with. Miles was so surprised by the offer that he couldn’t think of a reason to refuse it, which he would have liked to do. It had nothing to do with Mrs. Whiting, whom he’d met only briefly, and everything to do with her daughter, Cindy .
    In matters of affection, the rules of engagement at Empire High were detailed yet unambiguous, an extension of procedures established in junior high, a set of guidelines that couldn’t have been any clearer if they’d been posted on the schoolhouse door. If you were a girl and your heart inclined toward a particular boy, you had one of your girlfriends make inquiries from one of that boy’s friends. Such contact represented the commencement of a series of complex negotiations, the opening rounds of which were handled by friends. Boy’s friend A might report to Girl’s friend B that the boy in question considered her a fox, or, if he felt particularly strongly, a major fox. Those experienced in these matters knew that it was wise to proceed cautiously, since too much ardor could delay things for weeks. The girl in question might be in negotiations with other parties, and no boy wanted to be on record as considering a girl a major fox only to discover that she considered him merely cool. Friends had to be instructed carefully about how much emotional currency they could spend, since rogue emotions led to inflation, lessening the value of everyone’s feelings. Once a level of affection within the comfort zone of both parties was agreed upon, the principals could then meet for the exchange of mementos—rings, jackets, photos, key chains—to seal the deal, always assuming that the seconds had properly represented the lovers to begin with .
    As a cripple, of course, Cindy Whiting had no friends, thus romance could not begin. Had she not been run over by a car as a little girl, she might have been at or near the top of the social pyramid, her parents being rich and her pedigree beyond question, but while no one wished to be unkind, facts were facts and Cindy was a cripple. It wasn’t as if anyone was glad she was a cripple, simply that it was impossible to pretend she wasn’t when she was. Without a second, she had no choice but to speak on her own behalf, which she did one day in the cafeteria when Miles stopped at her table to carry her lunch tray up to the window. “I love you,” she said without preamble .
    Miles had a procedural predicament of his own, aside from Cindy Whiting. He did have friends—boys like Otto Meyer Jr., whose pedigree, like Miles’s own, was dubious but not impossible—who might successfully, if clumsily, mediate an emotional attachment, but Miles had made the mistake of falling in love outside the system, with a girl named Charlene Gardiner, who worked as a waitress at a greasy spoon downtown and was three years his senior. The system simply wasn’t designed to lend assistance to anyone foolish enough to fall in love outside its clearly defined parameters, which meant that Miles Roby, like Cindy Whiting, was on his own .
    He knew that Charlene Gardiner was no more in love with him than he was with Cindy Whiting, but that did not stop him from seeking out her company, even if that meant merely watching her forlornly from a booth at the Empire Grill, so nearly every day, he’d convince Otto Meyer Jr. to meet him there after school. Thus he knew that havoc would be wreaked if he accepted Mrs. Whiting’s offer of after-school driving lessons. He’d be swept out of Charlene Gardiner’s orbit and drawn into Cindy Whiting’s. And once in her