Free The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys by Chris Fuhrman Page B

stretched their hands out as if to be licked. Melissa Anderson wished for a bowl of milk.
    “Lemmings,” Tim said. “Those cats would as soon rip their throats out.”
    “It does look pretty much like a house cat,” Rusty said. “I don’t believe it’ll close the school down.”
    “It could kill a first-grader,” Tim said. “Look at the size of those paws, the way it moves through that tree. It’s an economysize panther. It’s got handfuls of razors. Run up your chest and swallow your throat.”
    Rusty said, “I say we train it to rip Rosaria’s head off. That’ll get us out of class.”
    Tim laughed, delighted at the absurdity and gore. Joey O’Connor wandered up beside him and cleared his throat with a grunt.
    “All right,” Joey said, as if finishing a prior conversation. “I’ll help y’all nab the wildcat.”
    Tim said, “Forget it, Joey. We’ve given up on the plan and decided to just take the consequences.”
    Joey squinted, wiped his glasses on his shirt. “No, no. I think you ought to go through with it. Otherwise, we’re doomed. I’ve worked this all out in my mind. I’ve started doing exercises.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tim grinned at Rusty. Joey would be going with us.

    I enjoyed the rest of the trail. I felt almost strong, being outside among animals. Paul showed us sleepy black bears and an otter that slicked through its pond like a fish and moved easy asa weasel on land. We saw wolves. Their den was in tree roots, but they ran around the pen constantly. I think they smelled the deer.
    We watched pelicans eat. They scraped stiff fish from the concrete, slid them into their pouches with a slapping of their bills, then washed them down with a gulp of water. You saw the bulge travel down the neck. An eagle shrieked at us. I’d never heard that before. At the end, raw-headed vultures, a hawk, and a white owl watched us pass. The owl’s head swiveled all the way around until it was backwards.
    We walked to the bus for lunch. Mr. Thomas was asleep with his mouth open. We sat in the field and ate while Paul lectured on ecology and played an eight-track tape of music from India. The nuns’ faces beaded with sweat because they wore the most clothes. At the end of the speech everybody clapped, cheered, and Paul smiled and told us to visit again.
    This was the only field trip I’d been on that ended in a field. We had to pick up every bit of trash, even what wasn’t ours. We got back on the bus. Joey laid thumbtacks in Donny’s seat, but Melissa started to sit there and he had to stop her and remove them. Paul waved at us as we rolled away.
    The back of my neck was tight with sunburn, and I found two ticks the size of pinheads on my arm. I popped them loose and flicked them out the window.

A Priest with a Girlfriend
    Everybody brought chicken legs to Science class. Brown paper lavatory towels were spread on all the desktops. Mrs. Barnes sent Melissa Anderson around with a box of one-sided razor blades, and we took one each. We followed along with Mrs. Barnes, slicing skin into pink muscle and peeling away tendons and silky ligaments and splitting the bones to find the squishy marrow. The classroom smelled like my dad. My hands got greasy. Eight kids cut their fingers and Mrs. Barnes sent Melissa around with a tin of Band-Aids.
    In front of me, Donny Flynn used his razor to carve yet another swastika into the cast on his arm. Every desk he’d ever sat in was marked with a swastika. With equal ignorance, he wore a Confederate States of America belt buckle.
    The razor blades made me think of his sister’s wrist scars. I still lacked the nerve to call her.
    Tim and Rusty dared each other into eating slivers of raw chicken. The class roared. Mrs. Barnes, her eyeglasses white with fluorescence, rapped the pointer on her desk and told them not to complain to her when they got salmonella.
    We wrapped the drumsticks in the paper towels and dropped them in a plastic