But I didn't.
She spun around and stepped out of that robe like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon in a speeded-up nature film. Clad only in a black garter belt and hose and those marvelous spiked heels, she smiled, bit her lip softly, and winked at me.
Oh, Lord.
And I thought: what if Mance and Chick could see me now? Now. Here. My Gift surrounding me like a huge, glass bubble.
"I would like very much for you to touch me," she said.
What could I say?
I distinctly remember that she took my hand and guided it toward her. With her other hand she switched off the light. And the darkness roared in my ears. I touched something — it might have been her breast, but then again I was so deeply in shock it could have been Mr. Rydel's plumber's friend. Her lips brushed the corner of my mouth and produced a tingle I can still feel during the middle of a sleepless night.
Then we heard it: the voice of the Hideous Damsel.
"Lavenia, are you here?"
We tensed. Waited. I prayed I wouldn't faint. I promised God I would never spell another dirty word for Mance if He got me out of this. Like most of my deals with God, this one didn't work out.
Light rushed in with a thunderous whoosh — the way it does in horror movies these days. But this was no movie. No fantasy. No hallucination. It was the real thing. And I was in real trouble. And real scared.
Hoagland had a nest of snakes in her eyes. When she focused on us, her face transformed into that of a dragon. I could feel the heat from her breath as she stood there, motionless, staring. I actually prayed that she would say something; that look was scaring the holy shit out of me.
Then she wiggled her fingers.
The sight of Hoagland's fingers was more terrifying than anything ever conjured up by H. P. Lovecraft or Stephen King. And she was coming toward us, those fingers raised.
This gorgon had killing on her mind.
I stepped protectively in front of Wolf. She cowered against my back like a frightened animal. The scent of her fear wafted over my shoulder, her skin goose-pimpled. Her breathing was low and raspy.
I decided to challenge the would-be murderess.
"We were helping each other with our robes," I stammered. But her eyes burned holes in my words, and her hands continued drifting at my throat. Was she going to strangle me?
Behind me, Wolf whimpered, "Please, Mrs. Hoagland."
"Shut up!" the Hideous Damsel screeched.
Then she lowered her hands and picked up one of Mr. Rydel's wooden-handled mops, raised it to eye level, and snapped it in two. The snap sounded like the report of a rifle. I sucked in so much air that my lungs stitched fire.
What followed knocked the top off my scale of terror.
Hoagland took one half of the handle, its splintered, razor-sharp point gleaming whitely in the shadows, and elevated it so that the deadly fang was directed at my face.
Oh, Jesus.
I could imagine that hideous frog-sticker being thrust into my eye socket or into my stomach. Or my groin.
She leaned close. The tip of the mop blade rested against that soft flesh just under my chin. I couldn't swallow. Hell, I could barely breathe. Sweat ran in rivulets down my cheeks, mingled with stinging tears.
And Hoagland whispered menacingly, "This is not your job."
She pressed the mop tip and it ever so slightly broke the skin. To an innocent observer the wound would have appeared to be a shaving nick. Nothing more.
Wolf whimpered «Please» again, and I started to pray.
Then one of those medievallike miracles occurred.
Somebody came shuffling down the hallway outside the music room. I never knew who it was, but they quite likely saved my life and Miss Wolf's.
Sometimes I wonder how so many people in the days following came up with so many different accounts of what happened. Truth is, I became a celebrity of sorts in the time leading up to the school board hearing. On my locker someone taped two small signs; one read, "Closet King"; the other, "Bonner Bags Wolf."
Mance and Chick hounded me unmercifully for details and — get this — Starkey Conway suddenly wanted to be pals. In addition, Tressie Sue Gimbel began to look at me with one eye of disgust and one eye of embryonic lust.
But, mostly, the closet scene had a downside: Mr. Johnston called my parents. Mom cried. Dad frowned. Two or three times he started to say something, yet found that he couldn't. I like to think maybe he understood.
I had a series of bad dreams in which Hoagland killed me and stuffed me in a Hefty bag. I couldn't report her because it would mean tarnishing my Gift. Besides, she had as many goods on us as we on her.
A week later, the Inquisition was held.
God, I was scared. Rumor had it I might be expelled from school or kicked out of the state or sent directly to Hell — or maybe all three. As I entered the principal's office, I saw that Miss Wolf was seated by a window staring off vacantly. I ducked quickly into the conference room, and adult heads — like something out of one of those horrid Greek myths — swung toward me. There was Mr. Johnston, Mrs. Hoagland, and four other sort of faceless adults. They directed me to sit down.
Mr. Johnston got right to the point. He said no one was blaming me. Whew — I breathed more easily. There would be no firing squad or guillotine or, apparently, expulsion. But then something weird began to occur.
They began to catalog, in some detail, various complaints against Miss Wolf, and I got the strangest sensation that I had been transported back to Salem in the days of the witchcraft trials. They were defaming Wolf; worse yet, they were besmearing my Gift. I could barely hold my tongue.
Then questions were fired at me from all sides like machine-gun rounds: "What went on in that closet? What else has Miss Wolf done? Don't you think it's your responsibility to bring this immoral woman to justice?"
My head swam. My neck ached from glancing from one adult to another as if I were watching a tennis match.
"What do you have to say for yourself?" they demanded.
"I won't give it back," I announced frantically.
There was silence. Almost funereal silence. Mr. Johnston's skeletal face seemed to leer at me.
"Give what back? Did Miss Wolf give you something?"
"No. Yes. I won't tell you."
Mrs. Hoagland — the Hideous Damsel was in her element — leaned forward to deliver what she must have felt would be the deathblow to my defense of Wolf. I pressed my fingertips nervously into the soft skin beneath my chin.
"Dyson, it's your job to tell us. Be a young man. Do your job. It's your job to tell us what that woman did."
My job? My job?
The words, outlined in blood, pulsed in my thoughts, intensified by some inner strobe light.
Shaking, nerves roller-coastering, I stood up and pushed away from the table. And I shouted, "I quit!"
I heard my voice echo behind me as I scrambled out the door. I slowed by where Wolf was seated; she glanced up at me. Know what she did? Yeah, you guessed it: She winked at me.
After I crashed through the school doors, I leaped onto my bike, and as I pedaled away the anger and frustration began to dissolve, and I reached deep into my thoughts and held the image of my Gift and felt the residue of the mystery and anguish and horror of growing up. But I pedaled faster and faster and faster. And it felt good. Yeah, real good.
Y'all might be interested to hear that the Hideous Damsel — dear ole Mrs. Hoagland — murdered her husband. One day she just snapped, and that snap led to another, because she snapped his neck one morning when he disregarded her request to take out the garbage.
Guess he wasn't doing his job.