We wanted to stay in the library as long as possible, but closing time came, so we said goodbye to the librarian and left for supper.
Everybody was eating with evident pleasure, including the instigators of the lunchtime strike, and we gladly joined them. In the dining room Sprinter stayed clear of us and didn’t even look our way, but once we returned to the room, she immediately interfered in our life. She called us over with a rude gesture; Snot was fidgeting in the corner, on her bed.
“Adoter made tracks long ago; the oldster woman is idling around at the reception desk. Payback time has come. And don’t even try to hide under that sheet so that the devil only can sort out what you really are!”
After saying “devil”, she aggressively looked askew at Godly Girl sitting nearby. The latter did not react in her usual way, and Sprinter continued:
“So listen. You should approach the cubbyhole where the concierge keeps her keys trying to stay unnoticed, and then ask suddenly but quite casually, “Where’s the library?” If she doesn’t pop off the hooks that very moment, she will move her ass out into the corridor to show you the way.”
“But the library is already closed,” I uttered indistinctly.
“Doesn’t matter, the old hag is feeble-minded and sluggish. As soon as she leaves her desk, Snot will pull the keys and pass them to you, and you’ll move fast and open the office. And take your sister with you, just in case.”
My soul was burning with disagreement, but despite that, we nodded one after the other and were off to commit the deed. Everything went just as Sprinter had planned and even better. When the concierge saw us, she screamed and, blinking convulsively, came close to us.
“Who are you, and who do you think you are?” she gabled with a glimpse of curiosity on her sorrowful, aged face.
“Where is the library? We were told to return a book,” you rapped out, while I was anxiously imagining our “brilliant” plan falling to pieces like a sandcastle. But the concierge, to my astonishment, kindly accompanied us to the library doors, even though it was a quarter to ten in the evening! Now we were ready to perform the most impudent and senseless deed of our life – to steal a sweet from a box of chocolates. I didn’t believe that it was happening for real until I saw a familiar inscription “Principal” before my eyes, and the only key from the office was already in my hand.
For a while that hand, my hand, hesitated near the keyhole.
“Why have you stopped?” you began to worry. “Time’s passing. What if somebody walks along the corridor right now and catches us in the act?”
“This is stealing”.
“It’s just a sweet”.
“A stolen sweet, and now you and I are thieves.”
“On the other hand, we will have a family and all the bullies will finally back off. Or maybe you like being abused?”
“Of course I don’t, but…”
“Then let’s do it for our own sake,” you hurried to encourage me.
We turned the key in the lock and entered in confusion, closing the door behind us. It was very dark in the office and we had to make our way by touch until our eyes got used to the dark. The box of chocolates, lonely lying on the table, seemed gray and unnatural. I opened a paper cover and took a sweet at random. At any other time, I would have given a lot just to taste it, but at that moment… standing one step away from the so much desired sweets, I hated them. I was already closing the box when you threw your wide-spread hand forward and seized another sweet.
“Let’s take two. An extra one in case we can’t keep ourselves from tasting the first one.”
The lights in the corridor were off, but our eyes had already got used to the dark; anyway, we held on to the wall in order not to stumble. Soon we would reach the staircase leading down to the second floor, and we would be done…
All of a sudden we heard a groan coming from the women’s bathroom, intermittently tailing off and then repeating itself. I was curious and worried: somebody obviously needed help. You pulled the handle. The door creaked open, giving in, rubbing the floor. There was a bedpan put behind the door from the inside, and I tumbled over it when I walked in. The door accidentally opened wide, and a bright, dazzling light rushed out into the corridor. I closed my eyes tight for a second or two but before doing so I had already noticed what was happening. A huge guy with his trousers down was standing with his back to us, pressing his whole body towards the nurse who had done the electrophoresis-procedure for us in the morning; she was groaning in his arms. I recognized him at once: crooked legs, ears with no lobes – actually, he had lobes but they merged into his cheekbones by a weird freak of nature – and a wrinkled, baby-like nape. It was Wash’em Clean, that guy from the tenth grade who had tripped us up during the break .
“You da-damned ba-ba-stards, now I’m really gonna k-k-crack your heads op-pen,” he mumbled, turning back his head and thrusting his left shoulder forward, while picking up his pants with short, muscled arms.
We instantly closed the door and started instinctively stepping backwards until we bumped up against a wall. Fear was dimming our thoughts, taking them off what we had just seen. We cut through the staircase and the corridor in one dash – that was as good as impossible in our case – and literally flew head over heels into our room. After getting our breath back and recovering from what we had just seen, we tiptoed up to Sprinter’s bed, trying not to wake anybody.
“Did everything go well?” she hissed at us to be quiet, which was quite unnecessary.
I rummaged in my pocket and handed a sweet over to her without a word. She took it with apparent indifference, throwing it negligently to one side:
“And you didn’t lose the keys, did you?”
I must admit, I got frightened. Well, it was more abashment than fear; I merely felt awkward and annoyed. My mind swarmed with absurd thoughts: “Did I take the keys? Did I close the office door?” We started digging in our pockets convulsively, but instead of the keys you took out the second sweet by mistake.
“You’re such bitches!” Sprinter nearly choked with indignation. “You totally screwed up. I asked for one, One-Two. Two is too obvious.”
“We did it by mistake; each of us took one,” you said without blinking. “It was dark and we couldn’t see.”
“We wanted to taste one, too,” I tried to excuse us, “but later, not in the principal’s office.”
Our strikingly dissimilar behavior seemed to confound Sprinter. She probably thought we always did and said the same thing. She couldn’t get her mind round our dissimilar versions. Staring at us, she seemed to be chewing on silence. Her lips were moving but no words were coming out. Then suddenly,
“I see, you decided to act out of sync. Are you conjoined for real or just faking it for everyone’s displeasure?”
Instead of answering, I handed her the key which was in my pocket.
“All right, get off to sleep. Snot, come here.”
We wearily made our way to bed. Half-Jane was not asleep; leaning on a pillow, she was watching the scene without any evident interest.
“You’re swift. Anyway, it’s not surprising, since you’ve got four legs; I wish you could give me one at least. What’s the use of all four?” and a meek smile flitted across her face. “How did everything go?”
Whispering and interrupting each other, we told her everything, not omitting the strange incident or scene in the bathroom.
“Gee, you’re totally naive; you don’t know anything at all about lovemaking, do you?”
We exchanged glances, thoughtful.
“Of course we do.” You sounded offended.
Yes, we were aware of what happens between girls and boys when they’re crazy about each other. Some of them talked about their escapades for hours. But listening to stories and seeing things with your own eyes are quite different. The only thing I felt at that moment was an overwhelming, all-encompassing disgust.