Gravesend

Gravesend by William Boyle Page B

Book: Gravesend by William Boyle Read Free Book Online
Authors: William Boyle
Tags: Crime
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action snap from his Golden State heyday, and—framed, signed, the centerpiece—a picture of him from when he was on Team USA, looking coked out, eyes hazy, that military haircut revealing an Irish nastiness in his features. There was also a ball he’d signed and a newspaper clipping about him dancing with some retards at a Ryken Club event.
    Eugene hated passing by the main office and the theater on the way to his locker, Brother Dennis standing there, the old alkie with a nose that looked like it had been formed out of bloodshot Silly Putty, whacking kids in the arm, making like he was going to trip them, a real comedian. Aherne, the principal, had no real job for the old man so he made him patrol the halls. Eugene hated when Brother Dennis said something to him, maybe, “Mr. Calabrese, chin up, it’s not the end of the world.” Or: “Keep on the sunny side, Mr. Calabrese.” He wanted to punch the old alkie in the nuts or reach through his chest like in Temple of Doom and pull out his shitty prune of a heart and mash it. Eugene hated not being able to do that, just walking past, nodding.
    He hated his locker, above Tommy Valentino’s. Tommy was tall, a B team basketball player who wasn’t very good, and he was always hunched over his locker in the morning, spooning sugar candy from an envelope into his mouth with a wooden stick and washing it down with Gatorade. Eugene hated how he had to work around Tommy to get in his locker.
    He hated the clocks in the school. He hated the color of the walls, broccoli green on top fading into bad teeth yellow near the floor. He hated the elevators. He hated the staircases, smelling like ammonia and sadness. He hated the OLN uniform and the way everyone wore it with little variation. He hated the teachers, the Brothers and otherwise, even his English teacher, who pretended to be cool, talking about Kanye and sneaking cigs out the back door at lunch. He hated the advertisements for school plays in the halls. He pictured the school from above, like from a satellite, and he hated the way it looked, squirrelly students and defeated teachers all moving through a maze. He hated that he couldn’t just leave school and walk over to Owl’s Head Park or the Sixty-Ninth Street Pier. He hated that he couldn’t go to Constantino’s to get a slice for lunch like the juniors and seniors. He hated classes—Global Studies, Religion, English, Math, Biology, Italian—and he had to zone out to make it through them, pretend he was listening to music, practice his Uncle Ray Boy’s old tag in the margins of his notebooks. Eugene hated most things with a hate that tasted like broken glass.
    This morning was no different. He hated with his eyes, with his mouth, with every motion he made, trying to turn his limp into a too-cool badass shuffle. Maybe teachers thought he was a dimwit joke of a kid, probably they were scared of him, probably—he liked to think anyway—they thought he was the kind of kid who could learn to build a bomb on the Internet and set it off during the school day.
    He walked to Italian and sat in the back of the class even though Mr. Bonangelo had assigned him a seat up close. Mr. Bonangelo liked to keep troubled kids and troublemakers close to him. Eugene didn’t know which Mr. Bonangelo thought he was, but he hated the front of the room, hated Mr. Bonangelo breathing on him, hated his bad jokes. Mr. Bonangelo had a limp too, something about polio when he was a kid, and he was always using this to try to get in Eugene’s good graces. But that made Eugene hate him more, the guy thinking they were what, connected somehow?
    “Eugene,” Mr. Bonangelo said, “please, up front now, son.”
    Eugene ignored him.
    “You want another detention?”
    Eugene trudged up to the front of the class, sat next to Billy Morris. Billy looked like he’d just smoked up, eyes gone red and heavy, a rubberbandy look on his face.
    Mr. Bonangelo said, “That’s a boy.”
    That’s a

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