The Lesson of Her Death

hunger for her now.
    He stood slouching, hands pocketed, as she stopped two feet away from him. They stood under a streetlight that seemed duller and more eerie than the light from the full moon. “Emily.”
    “You know what happened to her, don’t you?” The words seemed to stumble from her mouth.
    “What is it you want?”
    “To Jennie, You know what happened to her?”
    She began to walk, suddenly, as if she just remembered an appointment. Sayles followed, slightly behind. They moved this way, together, for five minutes then turned north along a path that led to a circle of brick surrounded by concrete benches and behind them a tall boxwood hedge. They would have three or four minutes’ warning in case somebody walked toward them.
    When speaking with female students Sayles automatically considered escape routes.
    “Where are you staying,” he asked, “in the room?”
    “Ah, kiddo,” Emily whispered to no one.
    “You should think about going home. Take incompletes. I’ll arrange it if you like.”
    “Kiddo.”
    “What were you trying to say on the phone? You didn’t sound very coherent.”
    “I didn’t know it would be this hard. It’s so hard without her.”
    “What do you want?”
    The moonlight shone on her cheeks
in
two streaks leading from her eyes to her mouth. Sayles stood with his hands still in his pockets, Emily with her arms crossed over breasts he had never seen. She asked, “You saw her the night she died, didn’t you?” She spoke from some brink whose nature he couldn’t fathom; was it resolution or resignation?
    Sayles said, “No.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    They were in the small park off the quad, a place where lovers over the years had unzipped and unbuttoned all manners of fashions as they lay struggling on fragrant Midwest grass. Tonight the park was, or appeared to be, deserted. Emily said, “You know what happened to her, don’t you?”
    After a moment Sayles asked, “Why are you asking me?”
    “Ah, kiddo,” Emily muttered. “Ah kiddo kiddo kiddo …”
    Sayles asked in a furious whisper, “What are you saying? What do you know?” He was engulfed with emotion and couldn’t will his strong hands to stop as they grabbed her shoulders.
    She seemed to waken suddenly and stood back, shaking her head, crying. “You’re hurting me.…”
    “Hey, anybody there?” a gruff voice called. Footsteps behind them. Someone walking in the woods nearby, separated from view by the boxwood hedge. Emily broke away. Sayles started toward her. She waved her hand wildly, as if brushing away a riled bee.
    “Tell me!” Sayles whispered viciously.
    Emily walked quickly down the path. He started after her but the intruder, a security guard, shone his light in their direction. They both dodged it. Emily ran.
    Sayles whispered, “Wait!” Then he stepped through the bushes, out of sight of the guard. He hurried through the darkness in the direction he believed she had gone.
    Phathar jogged slowly down the path, gasping for breath. It reminded him of dreaded PE class tomorrow; the students were going to run the 880—the purest form of Honon torture for him. He pictured himself plodding along, fat bouncing, as the others—who’d all finished—hooted and laughed.
“Way to go, Phil. Hustle, Phil. Hustle!”
His bowel churned.
    He came out of the woods and walked for fifty feet before he smelled the water and the mud. He found himself at the foot of Blackfoot Pond dam. Phathar felt a stirring in his groin, and he painfully admitted to himself that despite the horror of last Tuesday night Phathar wished in his Dimensional soul he could relive the half hour he had spent here.
    Lights
. The sound of a speeding car. He crouched and ran to a low hemlock. The lights swept over his head like searchlights in a prison camp and the car disappeared with a hiss of tires, loud in the damp air. Phathar walked into the dish of mud and began his search for the knife that he had discovered to his horror had been lost that night. He was stung by this carelessness, not worthy of Phathar at all (but typical of a fat clumsy high school freshman). Back and forth, using a small penlight he’d wrapped with black construction paper to mask the light, he searched.
    Phathar slowly grew serene. Smelling the mud and water, hearing the groan of bullfrogs reminded him of biology class—his best course. He remembered the time he had helped the teacher collect frogs from the banks of the Des Plaines one