Rage

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RAGE

Richard Bachman

[24 mar 2001 – scanned for #bookz, proofread and released – v1]

A high school Show-and-Tell session explodes into a nightmare of evil...

So you understand that when we

increase the number of variables,

the axioms themselves never change.

-Mrs. Jean Underwood

Teacher, teacher, ring the bell,

My lessons all to you I'll tell,

And when my day at school is through,

I'll know more than aught I knew.

-Children's rhyme, c. 1880

Chapter 1

The morning I got it on was nice; a nice May morning. What made it nice was that I'd kept my

breakfast down, and the squirrel I spotted in Algebra II.

I sat in the row farthest from the door, which is next to the windows, and I spotted the squirrel on the

lawn. The lawn of Placerville High School is a very good one. It does not fuck around. It comes right up

to the building and says howdy. No one, at least in my four years at PHS, has tried to push it away from

the building with a bunch of flowerbeds or baby pine trees or any of that happy horseshit. It comes right

up to the concrete foundation, and there it grows, like it or not. It is true that two years ago at a town

meeting some bag proposed that the town build a pavilion in front of the school, complete with a

memorial to honor the guys who went to Placerville High and then got bumped off in one war or

another. My friend Joe McKennedy was there, and he said they gave her nothing but a hard way to go. I

wish I had been there. The way Joe told it, it sounded like a real good time. Two years ago. To the best

of my recollection, that was about the time I started to lose my mind.

Chapter 2

So there was the squirrel, running through the grass at 9:05 in the morning, not ten feet from where I

was listening to Mrs. Underwood taking us back to the basics of algebra in the wake of a horrible exam

that apparently no one had passed except me and Ted Jones. I was keeping an eye on him, I can tell you.

The squirrel, not Ted.

On the board, Mrs. Underwood wrote this: a = 16. "Miss Cross," she said, turning back. "Tell us

what that equation means, if you please."

"It means that a is sixteen," Sandra said. Meanwhile the squirrel ran back and forth in the grass, tail

bushed out, black eyes shining bright as buckshot. A nice fat one. Mr. Squirrel had been keeping down

more breakfasts than I lately, but this morning's was riding as light and easy as you please. I had no

shakes, no acid stomach. I was riding cool.

"All right," Mrs. Underwood said. "Not bad. But it's not the end, is it? No. Would anyone care to

elaborate on this fascinating equation?"

I raised my hand, but she called on Billy Sawyer. "Eight plus eight," he blurted.

"Explain. "

"I mean it can be . . . " Billy fidgeted. He ran his fingers over the graffiti etched into the surface of

his desk; SM L DK, HOT SHIT, TOMMY '73. "See, if you add eight and eight, it means . . . "

"Shall I lend you my thesaurus?" Mrs. Underwood asked, smiling alertly. My stomach began to hurt

a little, my breakfast started to move around a little, so I looked back at the squirrel for a while. Mrs.

Underwood's smile reminded me of the shark in Jaws.

Carol Granger raised her hand. Mrs. Underwood nodded. "Doesn't he mean that eight plus eight also

fulfills the equation's need for truth?"

"I don't know what he means," Mrs. Underwood said.

A general laugh. "Can you fulfill the equation's truth in any other ways, Miss Granger?"

Carol began, and that was when the intercom said: "Charles Decker to the office, please. Charles

Decker. Thank you."

I looked at Mrs. Underwood, and she nodded. My stomach had begun to feel shriveled and old. I got

up and left the room. When I left, the squirrel was still scampering.

I was halfway down the hall when I thought I heard Mrs. Underwood coming after me, her hands

raised into twisted claws, smiling her big shark smile. We don't need boys of your type around here . . .

boys of your type belong in Greenmantle . . . or the reformatory . . . or the state hospital for the

criminally insane . . . so get out! Get out! Get out!

I turned around, groping in my back pocket for the pipe wrench that was no longer there, and now

my breakfast was a hard hot ball inside my guts. But I wasn't afraid, not even when she wasn't there. I've

read too many books.

Chapter 3

I stopped in the bathroom to take a whiz and eat some Ritz crackers. I always carry some Ritz

crackers in a Baggie. When your stomach's bad, a few crackers can do wonders. One hundred thousand

pregnant women can't be wrong. I was thinking about Sandra Cross, whose response in class a few

minutes ago had been not bad, but also not the end. I was thinking about how she lost her buttons. She

was always losing them-off blouses, off skirts, and the one time I had taken her to a school dance, she

had lost the button off the top of her Wranglers and they had almost fallen down. Before she figured out

what was happening, the zipper on the front of her jeans had come halfway unzipped, showing a V of

flat white panties that was blackly exciting. Those panties were tight, white, and spotless. They were

immaculate. They lay against her lower belly with sweet snugness and made little ripples while she

moved her body to the beat . . . until she realized what was going on and dashed for the girls' room.

Leaving me with a memory of the Perfect Pair of Panties. Sandra was a Nice Girl, and if I had never

known it before, I sure-God knew it then, because we all know that the Nice Girls wear the white

panties. None of that New York shit is going down in Placerville, Maine.

But Mr. Denver kept creeping in, pushing away Sandra and her pristine panties. You can't stop your

mind; the damn thing just keeps right on going. All the same, I felt a great deal of sympathy for Sandy,

even though she was never going to figure out just what the quadratic equation was all about. If Mr.

Denver and Mr. Grace decided to send me to Greenmantle, I might never see Sandy again. And that

would be too bad.

I got up from the hopper, dusted the cracker crumbs down into the bowl, and flushed it. High-school

toilets are all the same; they sound like 747s taking off. I've always hated pushing that handle. It makes

you sure that the sound is clearly audible in the adjacent classroom and that everybody is thinking: Well,

there goes another load. I've always thought a man should be alone with what my mother insisted I call

lemonade and chocolate when I was a little kid. The bathroom should be a confessional sort of place.

But they foil you. They always foil you. You can't even blow your nose and keep it a secret. Someone's

always got to know, someone's always got to peek. People like Mr. Denver and Mr. Grace even get paid

for it.

But by then the bathroom door was wheezing shut behind me and I was in the hall again. I paused,

looking around. The only sound was the sleepy hive drone that means it's Wednesday again, Wednesday

morning, ten past nine, everyone caught for another day in the splendid sticky web of Mother Education.

I went back into the bathroom and took out my Flair. I was going to write something witty on the

wall like SANDRA CROSS WEARS WHITE UNDERPANTS, and then I caught sight of my face in the

mirror. There were bruised half-moons under my eyes, which looked wide and white and stary. The

nostrils were half-flared and ugly. The mouth was a white, twisted line.

I Wrote EAT SHIT On the wall until the pen suddenly snapped in my straining fingers. It dropped

on the floor and I kicked it.

There was a sound behind me. I didn't turn around. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly and deeply

until I had myself under control. Then I went upstairs.

Chapter 4

The administration offices of Placerville High are on the third floor, along with the study hall, the

library, and Room 300, which is the typing room. When you push through the door from the stairs, the

first thing you hear is that steady clickety-clack. The only time it lets up is when the bell changes the

classes or when Mrs. Green has something to say. I guess she usually doesn't say much, because the

typewriters hardly ever stop. There are thirty of them in there, a battle-scarred platoon of gray

Underwoods. They have them marked with numbers so you know which one is yours. The sound never

stops, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, from September to June. I'll always associate that sound with

waiting in the outer office of the admin offices for Mr. Denver or Mr. Grace, the original dipso-duo. It

got to be a lot like those jungle movies where the hero and his safari are pushing deep into darkest

Africa, and the hero says: "Why don't they stop those blasted drums?" And when the blasted drums stop

he regards the shadowy, rustling foliage and says: "I don't like it. It's too quiet."

I had gotten to the office late just so Mr. Denver would be ready to see me, but the receptionist, Miss

Marble, only smiled and said, "Sit down, Charlie. Mr. Denver will be right with you. "

So I sat down outside the slatted railing, folded my hands, and waited for Mr. Denver to be right

with me. And who should be in the other chair but one of my father's good friends, AI Lathrop. He was

giving me the old slick-eye, too, I can tell you. He had a briefcase on his lap and a bunch of sample

textbooks beside him. I had never seen him in a suit before. He and my father were a couple of mighty

hunters. Slayers of the fearsome sharp-toothed deer and the killer partridge. I had been on a hunting trip

once with my father and Al and a couple of my father's other friends. Part of Dad's never-ending

campaign to Make a Man Out of My Son.

"Hi, there!" I said, and gave him a big shiteating grin. And I could tell from the way he jumped that

he knew all about me.

"Uh, hi, uh, Charlie. " He glanced quickly at Miss Marble, but she was going over attendance lists

with Mrs. Venson from next door. No help there. He was all alone with Carl Decker's psychotic son, the

fellow who had nearly killed the chemistry-physics teacher.

"Sales trip, huh?" I asked him.

"Yeah, that's right. " He grinned as best he could. "Just out there selling the old books."

"Really crushing the competition, huh?"

He jumped again. "Well, you win some, you lose some, you know, Charlie."

Yeah, I knew that. All at once I didn't want to put the needle in him anymore. He was forty and

getting bald and there were crocodile purses under his eyes. He went from school to school in a Buick

station wagon loaded with textbooks and he went hunting for a week in November every year with my

father and my father's friends, up in the Allagash. And one year I had gone with them. I had been nine,

and I woke up and they had been drunk and they had scared me. That was all. But this man was no ogre.

He was just forty-baldish and trying to make a buck. And if I had heard him saying he would murder his

wife, that was just talk. After all, I was the one with blood on my hands.

But I didn't like the way his eyes were darting around, and for a moment just a moment-I could have

grabbed his windpipe between my hands and yanked his face up to mine and screamed into it: You and

my father and all your friends, you should all have to go in there with me, you should all have to go to

Greenmantle with me, because you're all in it, you're all in it, you're all a part of this!

Instead I sat and watched him sweat and thought about old times.

Chapter 5

I came awake with a jerk out of a nightmare I hadn't had for a long time; a dream where I was in

some dark blind alley and something was coming for me, some dark hunched monster that creaked and

dragged itself along . . . a monster that would drive me insane if I saw it. Bad dream. I hadn't had it since

I was a little kid, and I was a big kid now. Nine years old.

At first I didn't know where I was, except it sure wasn't my bedroom at home. It seemed too close,

and it smelled different. I was cold and cramped, and I had to take a whiz something awful.

There was a harsh burst of laughter that made me jerk in my bed-except it wasn't a bed, it was a bag.

"So she's some kind of fucking bag," Al Lathrop said from beyond the canvas wall, "but fucking's

the operant word there."

Camping, I was camping with my dad and his friends. I hadn't wanted to come.

"Yeah, but how do you git it up, Al? That's what I want to know. " That was Scotty Norwiss, another

one of Dad's friends. His voice was slurred and furry, and I started to feel afraid again. They were drunk.

"I just turn off the lights and pretend I'm with Carl Decker's wife," Al said, and there was another

bellow of laughter that made me cringe and jerk in my sleeping bag. Oh, God, I needed to whiz piss

make lemonade whatever you wanted to call it. But I didn't want to go out there while they were

drinking and talking.

I turned to the tent wall and discovered I could see them. They were between the tent and the

campfire, and their shadows, tall and alien-looking, were cast on the canvas. It was like watching a

magic lantern show. I watched the shadow-bottle go from one shadow-hand to the next.

"You know what I'd do if I caught you with my wife?" My dad asked Al.

"Probably ask if I needed any help," Al said, and there was another burst of laughter. The elongated

shadow-heads on the tent wall bobbed up and down, back and forth, with insectile glee. They didn't look

like people at all. They looked like a bunch of talking praying mantises, and I was afraid.

"No, seriously," my dad said. "Seriously. You know what I'd do if I caught somebody with my

wife?"

"What, Carl?" That was Randy Earl.

"You see this?"

A new shadow on the canvas. My father's hunting knife, the one he carried out in the woods, the one

I later saw him gut a deer with, slamming it into the deer's guts to the hilt and then ripping upward, the

muscles in his forearm bulging, spilling out green and steaming intestines onto a carpet of needles and

moss. The firelight and the angle of the canvas turned the hunting knife into a spear.

"You see this son of a bitch? I catch some guy with my wife, I'd whip him over on his back and cut

off his accessories."

"He'd pee sitting down to the end of his days, right, Carl?" That was Hubie Levesque, the guide. I

pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them. I've never had to go to the bathroom so bad in my

life, before or since.

"You're goddamn right," Carl Decker, my sterling Dad, said.

"Wha' about the woman in the case, Carl?" Al Lathrop asked. He was very drunk. I could even tell

which shadow was his. He was rocking back and forth as if he was sitting in a rowboat instead of on a

log by the campfire. "Thass what I wanna know. What do you do about a woman who less-lets-someone

in the back door? Huh?"

The hunting knife that had turned into a spear moved slowly back and forth. My father said, "The

Cherokees used to slit their noses. The idea was to put a cunt right up on their faces so everyone in the

tribe could see what part of them got them in trouble."

My hands left my knees and slipped down to my crotch. I cupped my testicles and looked at the

shadow of my father's hunting knife moving slowly back and forth. There were terrible cramps in my

belly. I was going to whiz in my sleeping bag if I didn't hurry up and go.

"Slit their noses, huh?" Randy said. "That's pretty goddamn good. If they still did that, half the

women in Placerville would have a snatch at both ends. "

"Not my wife," my father said very quietly, and now the slur in his voice was gone, and the laughter

at Randy's joke stopped in mid-roar.

"No, 'course not, Carl," Randy said uncomfortably. "Hey, shit. Have a drink. "

My father's shadow tipped the bottle back.

"I wun't slit her nose," A1 Lathrop said. "I'd blow her goddamn cheatin' head off. "

"There you go," Hubie said. "I'll drink to it."

I couldn't hold it anymore. I squirmed out of the sleeping bag and felt the cold October air bite into

my body, which was naked except for a pair of shorts. It seemed like my cock wanted to shrivel right

back into my body. And the one thing that kept going around and around in my mind-I was still partly

asleep, I guess, and the whole conversation had seemed like a dream, maybe a continuation of the

creaking monster in the alley-was that when I was smaller, I used to get into my mom's bed after Dad

had put on his uniform and gone off to work in Portland, I used to sleep beside her for an hour before

breakfast.

Dark, fear, firelight, shadows like praying mantises. I didn't want to be out in these woods seventy

miles from the nearest town with these drunk men. I wanted my mother.

I came out through the tent flap, and my father turned toward me. The hunting knife was still in his

hand. He looked at me, and I looked at him. I've never forgotten that my dad with a reddish beard

stubble on his face and a hunting cap cocked on his head and that hunting knife in his hand. All the

conversation stopped. Maybe they were wondering how much I had heard. Maybe they were even

ashamed.

"What the hell do you want?" my dad asked, sheathing the knife.

"Give him a drink, Carl," Randy said, and there was a roar of laughter. Al laughed so hard he fell

over. He was pretty drunk.

"I gotta whiz," I said.

"Then go do it, for Christ's sake," my dad said.

I went over in the grove and tried to whiz. For a long time it wouldn't come out. It was like a hot soft

ball of lead in my lower belly. I had nothing but a fingernail's length of penis-the cold had really

shriveled it. At last it did come, in a great steaming flood, and when it was all out of me, I went back

into the tent and got in my sleeping bag. None of them looked at me. They were talking about the war.

They had all been in the war.

My dad got his deer three days later, on the last day of the trip. I was with him. He got it perfectly, in

the bunch of muscle between neck and shoulder, and the buck went down in a heap, all grace gone.

We went over to it. My father was smiling, happy. He had unsheathed his knife. I knew what was

going to happen, and I knew I was going to be sick, and I couldn't help any of it. He planted a foot on

either side of the buck and pulled one of its legs back and shoved the knife in. One quick upward rip,

and its guts spilled out on the forest floor, and I turned around and heaved up my breakfast.

When I turned back to him, he was looking at me. He never said anything, but I could read the

contempt and disappointment in his eyes. I had seen it there often enough. I didn't say anything either.

But if I had been able to, I would have said: It isn't what you think.

That was the first and last time I ever went hunting with my dad.

Chapter 6

Al Lathrop was still thumbing through his textbook samples and pretending he was too busy to talk

to me when the intercom on Miss Marble's desk buzzed, and she smiled at me as if we had a great and

sexy secret. "You can go in now, Charlie. "

I got up. "Sell those textbooks, Al."

He gave me a quick, nervous, insincere smile. "I sure will, uh, Charlie."

I went through the slatted gate, past the big safe set into the wall on the right and Miss Marble's cluttered desk on the left.

Straight ahead was a door with a frosted glass pane. THOMAS DENVER PRINCIPAL was lettered on the glass. I walked in.

Mr. Denver was looking at The Bugle, the school rag. He was a tall, cadaverous man whg looked

something like John Carradine. He was bald and skinny. His hands were long and full of knuckles. His

tie was pulled down, and the top button of his shirt was undone. The skin on his throat looked grizzled

and irritated from overshaving.

"Sit down, Charlie."

I sat down and folded my hands. I'm a great old hand-folder. It's a trick I picked up from my father.

Through the window behind Mr. Denver I could see the lawn, but not the fearless way it grew right up to

the building. I was too high, and it was too bad. It might have helped, like a night-light when you are

small.

Mr. Denver put The Bugle down and leaned back in his chair. "Kind of hard to see that way, isn't it?"

He grunted. Mr. Denver was a crackerjack grunter. If there was a National Grunting Bee, I would put all

my money on Mr. Denver. I brushed my hair away from my eyes.

There was a picture of Mr. Denver's family on his desk, which was even more cluttered than Miss

Marble's. The family looked well-fed and well-adjusted. His wife was sort of porky, but the two kids

were as cute as buttons and didn't look a bit like John Carradine. Two little girls, both blond.

"Don Grace has finished his report, and I've had it since last Thursday, considering his conclusions and his

recommendations as carefully as I can. We all appreciate the seriousness of this matter, and I've taken the liberty of

discussing the whole thing with John Carlson, also. "

"How is he?" I asked.

"Pretty well. He'll be back in a month, I should think."

"Well, that's something."

"It is?" He blinked at me very quickly, the way lizards do.

"I didn't kill him. That's something."

"Yes." Mr. Denver looked at me steadily. "Do you wish you had?"

"No."

He leaned forward, drew his chair up to his desk, looked at me, shook his head, and began, "I'm very

puzzled when I have to speak the way I'm about to speak to you, Charlie. Puzzled and sad. I've been in

the kid business since 1947, and I still can't understand these things. I feel what I have to say to you is

right and necessary, but it also makes me unhappy. Because I still can't understand why a thing like this

happens. In 1959 we had a very bright boy here who beat a junior-high-school girl quite badly with a

baseball bat. Eventually we had to send him to South Portland Correctional Institute. All he could say

was that she wouldn't go out with him. Then he would smile. " Mr. Denver shook his head.

"Don't bother. "

"What?"

"Don't bother trying to understand. Don't lose any sleep over it. "

"But why, Charlie? Why did you do that? My God, he was on an operating table for nearly four

hours-"

"Why is Mr. Grace's question, " I said. "He's the school shrink. You, you only ask it because it

makes a nice lead-in to your sermon. I don't want to listen to any more sermons. They don't mean shit to

me. It's over. He was going to live or die. He lived. I'm glad. You do what you have to do. What you and

Mr. Grace decided to do. But don't you try to understand me."

"Charlie, understanding is part of my job."

"But helping you do your job isn't part of mine," I said. "So let me tell you one thing. To sort of help open the lines of

communication, okay?"

"Okay…"

I held my hands tightly in my lap. They were trembling. "I'm sick of you and Mr. Grace and all the

rest of you. You used to make me afraid and you still make me afraid but now you make me tired too,

and I've decided I don't have to put up with that. The way I am, I can't put up with that. What you think

doesn't mean anything to me. You're not qualified to deal with me. So just stand back. I'm warning you.

You're not qualified. "

My voice had risen to a trembling near-shout.

Mr. Denver sighed.

"So you may think, Charlie. But the laws of the state say otherwise. After having read Mr. Grace's

report, I think I agree with him that you don't understand yourself or the consequences of what you did

in Mr. Carlson's classroom. You are disturbed, Charlie. "

You are disturbed, Charlie.

The Cherokees used to slit their noses . . . so everyone in the tribe could see what part of them got

them in trouble.

The words echoed greenly in my head, as if at great depths. They were shark words at deep fathoms,

jaws words come to gobble me. Words with teeth and eyes.

This is where I started to get it on. I knew it, because the same thing that happened just before I gave

Mr. Carlson the business was happening now. My hands stopped shaking. My stomach flutters subsided,

and my whole middle felt cool and calm. I felt detached, not only from Mr. Denver and his overshaved

neck, but from myself. I could almost float.

Mr. Denver had gone on, something about proper counseling and psychiatric help, but I interrupted

him. "Mr. Man, you can go straight to hell."

He stopped and put down the paper he had been looking at so he wouldn't have to look at me.

Something from my file, no doubt. The almighty file. The Great American File.

"What?" he said.

"In hell. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Any insanity in your family, Mr. Denver?"

I'll discuss this with you, Charlie," he said tightly. "I won't engage in-"

" . . . immoral sex practices," I finished for him. "Just you and me, okay? First one to jack off wins

the Putnam Good Fellowship Award. Fill yore hand, pardner. Get Mr. Grace in here, that's even better.

We'll have a circle jerk."

"Wh-

"Don't you get the message? You have to pull it out sometime, right? You owe it to yourself, right?

Everybody has to get it on, everybody has to have someone to jack off on. You've already set yourself

up as Judge of What's Right for Me. Devils. Demon possession. Why did I hit dat l'il girl wit dat ball bat,

Lawd, Lawd? De debbil made me do it, and I'm so saw-ry. Why don't you admit it? You get a kick out

of peddling my flesh. I'm the best thing that's happened to you since 1959. "

He was gawping at me openly. I had him by the short hair, knew it, was savagely proud of it. On the

one hand, he wanted to humor me, go along with me, because after all, isn't that what you do with

disturbed people? On the other hand, he was in the kid business, just like he told me, and Rule One in

the kid business is: Don't Let 'Em Give You No Lip-be fast with the command and the snappy

comeback.

"Charlie-"

"Don't bother. I'm trying to tell you I'm tired of being masturbated on. Be a man, for God's sake, Mr.

Denver. And if you can't be a man, at least pull up your pants and be a principal. "

"Shut up," he grunted. His face had gone bright red. "You're just pretty damn lucky you live in a

progressive state and go to a progressive school, young man. You know where you'd be otherwise?

Peddling your papers in a reformatory somewhere, serving a term for criminal assault. I'm not sure you

don't belong there anyway. You-'

"Thank you," I said.

He stared at me, his angry blue eyes fixed on mine.

"For treating me like a human being even if I had to piss you off to do it. That's real progress. " I

crossed my legs, being nonchalant. "Want to talk about the panty raids you made the scene at while you

were at Big U learning the kid business?"

"Your mouth is filthy," he said deliberately. "And so is your mind."

"Fuck you," I said, and laughed at him.

He went an even deeper shade of scarlet and stood up. He reached slowly over the desk, slowly,

slowly, as if he needed oiling, and bunched the shoulder of my shirt in his hand. "You show some

respect," he said. He had really blown his cool and was not even bothering to use that really first-class

grunt. "You rotten little punk, you show me some respect. "

"I could show you my ass and you'd kiss it," I said. "Go on and tell me about the panty raids. You'll

feel better. Throw us your panties! Throw us your panties! "

He let go of me, holding his hand away from his body as if a rabid dog had just pooped on it. "Get

out," he said hoarsely. "Get your books, turn them in here, and then get out. Your expulsion and transfer

to Greenmantle Academy is effective as of Monday. I'll talk to your parents on the telephone. Now get

out. I don't want to have to look at you."

I got up, unbuttoned the two bottom buttons on my shirt, pulled the tail out on one side, and

unzipped my fly. Before he could move, I tore open the door and staggered into the outer office. Miss

Marble and Al Lathrop were conferring at her desk, and they both looked up and winced when they saw

me. They had obviously both been playing the great American parlor game of We Don't Really Hear

Them, Do We?

"You better get to him," I panted. "We were sitting there talking about panty raids and he just

jumped over his desk and tried to rape me. "

I'd pushed him over the edge, no mean feat, considering he'd been in the kid business for twenty-nine

years and was probably only ten away from getting his gold key to the downstairs crapper. He lunged at

me through the door; I danced away from him and he stood there looking furious, silly, and guilty all at

once.

"Get somebody to take care of him," I said. "He'll be sweeter after he gets it out of his system. " I

looked at Mr. Denver, winked, and whispered, "Throw us your panties, right?"

Then I pushed out through the slatted rail and walked slowly out the office door, buttoning my shirt

and tucking it in, zipping my fly. There was plenty of time for him to say something, but he didn't say a

word.

That's when it really got rolling, because all at once I knew he couldn't say a word. He was great at

announcing the day's hot lunch over the intercom, but this was a different thing joyously different. I had

confronted him with exactly what he said was wrong with me, and he hadn't been able to cope with that.

Maybe he expected us to smile and shake hands and conclude my seven-and-one-half-semester stay at

Placerville High with a literary critique of The Bugle. But in spite of everything, Mr. Carlson and all the

rest, he hadn't really expected any irrational act. Those things were all meant for the closet, rolled up

beside those nasty magazines you never show your wife. He was standing back there, vocal cords

frozen, not a word left in his mind to say. None of his instructors in Dealing with the Disturbed Child,

EdB-211, had ever told him he might someday have to deal with a student who would attack him on a

personal level.

And pretty quick he was going to be mad. That made him dangerous. Who knew better than me? I

was going to have to protect myself. I was ready, and had been ever since I decided that people

might-just might, mind you-be following me around and checking up.

I gave him every chance.

I waited for him to charge out and grab me, all the way to the staircase. I didn't want salvation. I was

either past that point or never reached it. All I wanted was recognition . . . or maybe for someone to

draw a yellow plague circle around my feet.

He didn't come out.

And when he didn't, I went ahead and got it on.

Chapter 7

I went down the staircase whistling; I felt wonderful. Things happen that way sometimes. When

everything is at its worst, your mind just throws it all into the wastebasket and goes to Florida for a little

while. There is a sudden electric what-the-hell glow as you stand there looking back over your shoulder

at the bridge you just burned down.

A girl I didn't know passed me on the second-floor landing, a pimply, ugly girl wearing big

horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a clutch of secretarial-type books. On impulse I turned around and

looked after her. Yes; yes. From the back she might have been Miss America. It was wonderful.

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RAGERichardBachman[24mar2001–scannedfor#bookz,proofreadandreleased–v1]AhighschoolShow-and-Tellsessionexplodesintoanightmareofevil...Soyouunderstandthatwhenweincreasethenumberofvariables,theaxiomsthemselvesneverchange.-Mrs.JeanUnderwoodTeacher,teacher,ringthebell,MylessonsalltoyouI'lltell,Andwhenmyda...

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Rage

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