Crystal Grader by Tag Cavello (read my book txt) 📕

They looked at each other over the table for a few moments, then burst out laughing.

“How many of these did you have before I came over here?” Crystal finally asked, raising the bottle.

“Three.”

“Fuck!”

“Crystal!”

More laughing. Meanwhile Chubby had no idea what was going on. He looked up from his place beside Jarett’s chair as if both humans had on the spur of the moment gone insane.

“Want some chicken, boy?” Jarett asked.

Chubby put his head back down.

“Hell no he doesn’t,” Crystal giggled.

Jarett looked at the basket. The grin he was wearing widened. “Okay it sucks.”

“No no! I didn’t mean that—“

“Stop it, Crystal. I damned near choked to death on what”—another look went to the basket—“I think was a drumstick. I think. From some distant, deluded place in the back of my head. You,” he went on, “I must congratulate. You ate that black breast with a perfectly contented face. That took balls.”

“I thought it was a wing.”

“Maybe it was. Anyway, no more beer for you. And no more cooking for me.”

“No more cooking?” Her mouth gaped. “Jarett, who were you expecting to be after one try? Emeril Lagasse?”

“It’s okay. I never intended to get serious about it. It was just for fun.”

Crystal didn’t know whether or not to believe this. His spirits an hour ago had been stratospheric; now he looked ready to hide under the bed covers for the rest of the day.

“Probably the oil was too hot, that’s all,” she told him. “Did you use a meat thermometer to check the insides?”

He shrugged. “No, I guessed.”

“See then? This is an easy fix. For fried chicken you cook the meat to 165 degrees.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Remember you’ve got me, too. I can cook whatever you need. My mom’s a pretty good coach.”

“But you won’t be here over the summer,” Jarett grinned. “You’ve got community service scheduled.”

“I’ll be here. One way or another.” Her eyes narrowed. “And you know what else, Teacher?”

“No, what?”

“Shit-Shit is in deep shit. I’m going to make him pay for what he did.”

“One way or another?”

“That’s just right,” Crystal nodded. “That’s square on the ball.”

***

Please let me know what you have planned before you actually do anything.

Those had been Jarett’s parting words as she’d walked out the door. She promised him she would, told him not to worry, and gave Chubby a pat on the head before setting off.

Was he still worried? Maybe a little. The message behind his advice suggested she reconsider any ideas concerning murder, and it pleased her in a morbid way to think he felt his student capable of such an act. She wasn’t, but that didn’t stop her from fantasizing during the walk back to the gulag. By the time she set foot back in her room the janitor had died a hundred different deaths, each more gruesome than the one preceding.

On Wednesday a letter arrived from the HCDTA. It informed the Genesio family that beginning on Monday of the following week, Crystal was to spend her weekday evenings as clean-up girl for a bible school in Norwalk. Lucretia shared the news with her tunelessly as she—Crystal—washed dishes after dinner.

“That puts a cramp in my days,” Lucretia went on. “I’ll have to drive you to and from. What other shitty habits do you plan on delving into this year? Crack? Ecstasy?”

Drinking, Crystal almost replied, with her mind’s eye trained on a bottle of Beck’s.

Later she met Hannah at the top of the stairs. The younger girl stuck out her tongue. Crystal showed off her middle finger and walked into her room, slamming the door.

***

That Monday she missed a session with Jarett. Crystal sat in the passenger seat on the way to Norwalk with her lip twisted in frustration. She would need to contact him before Thursday and propose mornings instead of afternoons. That was the only way around what the bastard judge down the street had sentenced.

Her work took place in the basement of an Episcopal shrine that dated back one hundred and fifty years. Its age showed. The upstairs room was dark, even with sunlight dancing in the stained glass windows along the west wall. On the opposite wall, lumpy brick mortar hung between the thumb prints of long dead applicators. Cracked, crooked door frames let onto black passage-ways behind the altar. Punctuating all it was the smell: musty and dry, like the broken stones piled out back in the church’s ancient graveyard.

“Is this the basement?” Crystal asked, sneering.

“No,” her guide—a tall nun who looked almost as old as everything else—replied curtly. “The choir practices here. And then of course on Sundays they perform in the newer building next door.”

“Of course.”

“The basement is downstairs,” the nun went on, accentuating the adverb as one would to a kindergartener.

No doubt she knew the circumstances that had brought Crystal to this place. From the right of the altar, one of the passage-ways led to a door, behind which a flight of creaky wooden steps dumped them into a basement classroom about the size of her own back in Monroeville’s junior high wing.

“Here,” the nun said, flipping on the lights. A weak and rather lonesome glow fell over rows of empty desks. She then read off from a list of chores left for Crystal by the teacher. They were very janitorial in nature: dusting, mopping, scrubbing. “You will also need to clean the toilet and wash the windows,” the nun added.

Crystal frowned. “Windows?”

The nun frowned back. “Along the bookshelf.” Don’t you know anything? her eyes flashed.

I guess not, Crystal thought, because there along the ceiling over a small library of children’s books was a row of windows—rectangular basement windows—she had failed to notice until now.

“But they’ve got decorations on them,” she said.

“Yes,” said the nun. And so what? her face retorted. “You take them off and put them back on. Carefully. Do not damage the children’s crafting.”

“Crafting.”

“Yes.”

“All right,” Crystal shrugged. “Is there anything else?”

“Just that I have a detailed knowledge of everything that’s down here. If upon my return I find any of it missing you will be directly to blame. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Please be finished with your chores by seven-thirty. Goodbye.”

Crystal listened to the nun’s slow footsteps move up the stairs. The door opened, closed. Then she could hold it no more. She burst out laughing at the empty room. How in the world did you find something missing? Oh, the labyrinthine corridors of the English language. No wonder writing was such a pain in the ass.

She set to work washing the chalkboard first. A bucket and a sponge had been provided for the task. Her fingers dove in, and soon there was as much soap on her hands as there was time on her mind. The time, she decided, would be used to plot revenge on Shit-Shit. And why not? She couldn’t sulk forever in the jaws of his childish trap. Something had to be done. Something epic. Maybe even a little bit surreal. After all, Shitty had certainly gotten surreal, turning her into—of all things—a janitor for what had happened in the art wing that day.

Maybe, Crystal thought, squeezing the sponge, I can turn him into something even worse.

On the heels of this thought came the usual teenaged crudities: blowing up his car, burning down his house. Fun things, yes, but transient as well. Crystal wanted more.

She reached over her head to place the sponge on top of the chalkboard…and the answer came. Directly above the chalkboard was a crucifix. A bare-chested Jesus, carved in brass, hung on the edge of death. King of the Jews, king of the martyrs.

In the myriad shadows of the basement classroom, Crystal grinned. She dragged the sponge down, leaving a trail of cleansing water on the slate. On a clean slate, she knew, you could write anything. Numbers and music. Poems and stories. Letters and lies. It didn’t matter what.

Anything was possible.

12

Nothing was ever easy.

Like most other laws in life, Crystal had discovered this one early on. Thus she considered herself more suitably prepared for the dilemmas that came about in developing her payback scheme than the average prankster. That was certainly a good thing, for the dilemmas were copious.

Rather than allow herself to be suffocated by them all in one fell swoop, Crystal decided to face each as a singular beast. The first involved choosing a day of the week to execute her plan. Wednesday seemed to offer the most favorable odds; Shit-Shit was likely to be home during the middle of the week, waiting for Friday’s paycheck from whatever summer job he’d taken. A better bet still was Sunday. He’d be tired from a weekend of drinking at the local bar. Sluggish. Catching him unaware would be a breeze.

Thus at ten o’clock that Sunday (six nights after her debut at the Episcopal Church), Crystal opened her bedroom door and peeked out. A single, low-watt light burned in the hallway. From behind Lucretia’s door came the burbling of a television; Hannah’s door was absolutely silent.

Steady as a rock, Crystal tip-toed down the stairs and out the front door. And just like that problem number two—getting away from the house without being seen—was slain.

The third obstacle turned out to be something of a paper tiger as well. Lucy Sommer arrived on time at their rendezvous point in the park dressed in black from head to foot. Crystal congratulated her with a high five, then asked if she had run into any trouble getting out of the house.

“No,” the other said with a delicate smile. “My room is right over our porch—“

“That’s right!” Crystal broke in. “You probably just jumped right onto the roof.”

“Onto the roof and into the streets,” Lucy said. Her eyes turned doubtful. “But Crystal, promise me I only need to stand guard while you do whatever crazy thing it is that you’re going to do.”

“That’s all,” Crystal said, “other than getting us to Shitty’s house. Are you sure you know where he lives?”

“I’m sure.” The girl made a face. “But why don’t you? Everyone at school makes fun of his trailer.”

“By everyone do you mean everyone? Or everyone on the geek squad?”

“He lives in the woods off Milan Street,” Lucy said.

“Then let’s scoot on over there.”

***

Her friend spoke very little from that point, which wasn’t surprising. As they walked Crystal tried her best to smooth things over using a verbal cocktail of light banter mixed with solemn vows of success in the face of adversity. They cut across the silent, shadowy field to where Hamilton Street dead-ended at a ridge overlooking the park. Here, too, things were quiet. Dark windows overlooked barren sidewalks. Dormant sprinkler systems glowed beneath moth-blown arc-sodium streetlamps. Monroeville was a small town, and like most small towns, it went to bed early.

Most of it did anyway.

The girls turned left onto Hollister Street, which dumped them onto Milan Street at the outskirts of town. Crystal stopped at the curb to get a lay of the land. She knew it well already, of course. Milan Street was the route her mother often used on her way to Norwalk or Sandusky. Nevertheless it looked ever so much different at present. Tonight she wasn’t just passing through on her way to noisier places. Tonight it and she had business.

“Are those the woods you mean?” Crystal said, pointing into a dense area of chestnuts, elms, and oaks across the street.

“Yes,” Lucy replied.

“Then those little lights I see must be his.”

“They are. He doesn’t live very far back.”

Crystal looked left. An enormous green field of corn grew along the edge of the woods. It would give them perfect cover for moving in.

“Hey Lucy,” she said, never taking her eyes off the husks, “remember what we did last Halloween at Jarett’s house?”

“How could I forget?”

“Yeah. Well we’re about to do it again here—only this time no eggs, and no dogs.”

“How do you know he doesn’t have a dog?”

The question begged a small wince