Period 8 by Chris Crutcher Page B

it isn’t abuse, other than how it affects a student in school. I’ve had Mary in one class or another since she was a freshman. She’s been a phenomenal student and for the life of me, before this last week I can’t remember her missing a class. Forgive me, but when I see a perfect student drop over the edge, I figure there’s a lot I don’t know. So, if there’s anything I can do to help, I’m offering it.”
    Mr. Wells’s expression softens. “I appreciate that, Mr. Logsdon, but I’m afraid the kind of help you have to offer in this situation isn’t really help.”
    â€œSuit yourself, sir. The offer stands.”
    Â 
    â€œ That was an interesting way to start the day .” Justin Chenier leans back in his seat across the aisle from Paulie and looks out the bus window. “Look at Arney,” he says. “Gettin’ all friendly with the cops now.”
    â€œCrazy, Hannah finding Mary wandering around in the middle of the night,” Paulie says. “You talk to her?”
    â€œShit no,” Justin says. “I think she’s still pissed at me for the other day in Logs’s lunchtime extravaganza.”
    â€œNaw, Hannah’s not like that. She’ll be pissed at me forever, but you can say any shit you want to her.”
    â€œJust got to be careful what you do, huh?”
    â€œExactly.”
    Justin shakes his head. “Whew. Guy like Wells hollers, folks come runnin’ . He’s a strange one.”
    â€œHe’s not as strange as everyone makes him out to be,” Arney says, plopping in the seat next to Justin. “A little uptight, maybe, but he’s a pretty cool guy if you get to know him.”
    â€œYeah, but Arney,” Paulie says, “room’s messed up big time. She’s gone two days and then he reports her missing, but meanwhile the room gets cleaned? Come on, man. I’ll bet Mary Wells hasn’t spent three nights away from home since third grade. Think about it: she’s wandering around all fucked up at midnight, he doesn’t, like, check with the school or any of us, then runs to the cops hollering foul play.”
    â€œRight on,” Justin says, “and by the way, we’re still missin’ a virgin.”
    â€œThat we are,” Arney says. “That we are.”

.6
    A fter school, Paulie heads for the lake. Logs may come later, but he’s buried in teachers’ meetings and a damage-control local news conference.
    Paulie lays his wetsuit out on the dock, thinking about Hannah and Mary Wells and how his life has taken a turn for the bizarre. A paraphrased H. L. Mencken quotation he has taped to his bedroom wall pops into his head: “For every complex question there’s a simple answer—and it’s wrong.” He thinks too about All the Pretty Horses, a novel he read in English this year . The main character, John Grady Cole, says, “There ain’t but one truth. The truth is what happened.” There was a time when Paulie thought it was as simple as that: learn the truth and tell it. It started with a Sunday school lesson back in elementary school, one taught by a kind of hippie throwback youth minister who believed finding the truth and exposing it was Jesus’s modus operandi . You wouldn’t tell some poor kid that you recognized the shirt he was wearing because it used to belong to you, or chide someone for some other reality that could only hurt. But with the big things, the things that bore consequence, well, you told it; you told what happened. But as he gets ready to hit the water, Paulie thinks it’s a little more complicated than that. He told Hannah what happened. She didn’t want to hear more. What happened was all she needed to bring the curtain down on what Paulie had considered the best thing that ever happened to him. Hannah knew how Paulie felt about his father’s wanderings, about the hours upon hours