Free Swimmer by Graham Masterton Page A

true.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, James. His mother identified him about an hour ago.’
    â€˜Oh, God.’ Jim felt so shaky that he had to lean against the door. Dennis Pease had been one of his most promising and sensitive students – a boy who had worked painfully hard, not just to overcome his severe reading difficulties, but also the scathing nagging of his alcoholic mother. She had done everything she could to make him feel that he was letting her down by going to college, when he could have been making $8 an hour working in a car wash or packing bags in a supermarket. How could he love his mother if he never gave her money to pay for her vodka?
    Dr Friendly said, ‘If you want to dismiss your class for the day, James, I’ll quite understand. Of course we’ll be holding two minutes’ silence and saying a special memorial prayer at tomorrow’s final assembly.’
    Jim shook his head. ‘No … this is something my students and I need to talk over together. I’m not just sending them all home in a state of shock.’
    â€˜Well, please yourself. But go easy on the mush, won’t you?’
    â€˜Go easy on the mush? The
mush
? A friend and a fellow student has drowned, a young guy not even twenty-one years old, and you’re asking me to go easy on the
mush
?’
    Dr Friendly gave an awkward shrug, as if he had accidentally left his coat hanger in his jacket. ‘It’s just that … well, I know that your methods of teaching tend to be a little on the emotional side.’
    â€˜Of course they’re on the “emotional side”,’ Jim retorted. ‘I’m teaching these young people to express their feelings. I’m teaching them to tell the world what they really think. What do you want me to do? Go back in that room and say, “Dennis Pease is dead, guys, get on with your work”?’
    Dr Friendly laid a hand on Jim’s shoulder. His voice tasted like the oil being poured out of a freshly opened sardine can. ‘Do you know what I’ve always liked about you, James? Your single-mindedness. You don’t meet many single-minded people any more. But you … you support that class of dummies like they’re candidates for Princeton. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not waxing sentimental here, but I’ll kind of miss you when you’re gone. Like waking up one morning and realizing that you don’t have a cold any more.’
    Jim said, ‘You’ll excuse me, won’t you? I have some bad news to tell my dummies.’
    Dr Friendly nodded and smiled, and said, ‘Of course. And be sure to tell them that Dr Ehrlichman and I … we both join them in their sense of loss.’
    Jim hesitated. In his mind, he formed the most blistering retort he could think of, couched in the kind of street language that he was always telling Washington Freeman III not to use. But then he thought: No. That won’t do you any good; and Dr Friendly will only think that you’re being hostile and out of control; and more than that, it’s an insult to Dennis, who is dead.
    â€˜Thank you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what they’re going to carve on Dennis’s headstone; but I know what they’re going to carve on yours.’
    â€˜Come on, James. Let’s be mature.’
    â€˜Of course. You’re right. But it’s a pity that Dennis never got the chance to be mature.’
    Dr Friendly frowned at him. He opened his mouth and then he closed it again. He obviously didn’t understand what Jim was talking about, and didn’t want to understand, either.
    â€˜I’ll catch you later, in the staff room,’ he said, and went squelching off along the highly waxed corridor in his rubber-soled shoes. At the corner, however, he stopped and called back, ‘Go on, then, tell me. What
will
they carve on my headstone?’
    â€˜â€œGeorge Friendly … Misnomer”,’