Free Night School by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

anybody could see me.
    “Who shot that footage?” said Andrew. “Nobody else was there. Just us. And the instructor. And Mr. Phillips.”
    Somebody is always there, said the instructor.
    His coal smoke shadow blinded their eyes.
    “Go away!” screamed Mariah. “If you have to come out here, come like a person! Talk out loud!”
    The instructor explained that Mariah was not in charge here. Night Classes, he said, begin continually. And graduates, of course, entertain themselves. As all of you agreed, over and over, as I am more than willing to show you on film, taunting Mr. Phillips was excellent entertainment.
    Autumn was going to throw up. She could tell. It was not going to be spooky or shadowy, it was going to be gross and awful.
    Past students are always in the shadows. Waiting to see who presents himself as an SC. I have been most interested in your own fear of becoming SCs.
    “Well, we’re going in there to get our camcorder!” shouted Mariah Frederick, astonishing everybody, especially herself. “You’re nothing but a punk! You’re nothing but smoke and shadow and stench!”
    Andrew loved her. Now when she was righteous and angry and storming, he wanted to film her.
    “We’re getting our film and we’re getting your film and we’re dropping out of class. So there!” Mariah Frederick marched toward the high school door, and her classmates fell in line behind her.
    Lead, thought Andrew, and there will be followers. He was amazed to be Mariah’s follower.
    And brother Bevin? said the instructor.
    Bevin could not imagine what his life would be without the radio. He especially liked call-in shows, and he knew that the people who called in were like himself: desperate, lonely grieving people without lives. People who at midnight and two in the morning still needed to hear the voices of others, talking of nothing, offering opinions based on nothing, just talking, talking, talking to shut out the loneliness.
    Bevin himself had never called in. He regarded the phone as something that must be kept for the final resort; the ultimate call for help. The radio was his friend, but the phone might someday be the only way out.
    The only way out of what?
    Bevin never permitted himself actually to have the thoughts he was having. His thoughts were cordoned off, like parts of a vast auditorium where even he himself could not go. He could only see them across the room, vaguely, and out of focus. Thoughts of peace or death or disappearance. Sometimes these three thoughts seemed like the same thing and sometimes, then, they seemed quite wonderful.
    Tonight they seemed terrible.
    His sister was taking some sort of class with her friends, undoubtedly going out for pizza afterward, dancing perhaps; laughing, certainly. Mariah had so many friends! People were always smiling at her, saying hello to her. Bevin did not know how she did it. On Mariah that bewildered dreamy look was very attractive, and people loved her for it, and forgave her when she lost the thread of conversations, and welcomed her even when all six seats at a six-chair lunch table were full.
    But Bevin, who was so similar to Mariah; who not only looked a great deal like her but acted and moved like her; Bevin was loathed for it.
    He had never been jealous of Mariah. In fact Bevin had had very few harsh emotions toward others in his life. Perhaps that was part of the problem; perhaps he was essentially so wimpy that he was not worthy of notice.
    But there, of course, was the problem.
    Bevin, who until last year had been not worthy of notice, was this year’s choice for notice.
    Choice. It was a terrible word. You spent your life aching to be chosen … and then you were.
    The school was full of gangs. Some wore colors, and carried knives or guns, and their jackets broadcast their names. This was not the sort of gang that bothered Bevin.
    The gangs that went after Bevin were more respectable. Like the group in math: Kevin, Cody, and Casey. They entertained