Catholic, Reluctantly (The John Paul 2 High Series) Read online

  “Hi George!”

  He turned to see Celia Costain getting out of the Costain’s battered old station wagon. She waved and eagerly cut across the lawn towards him, her dark curly hair swaying in a ponytail behind her. She was wearing a knitted white sweater over her school uniform and her usual upbeat smile. They were the only two sophomores in the new school.

  “Hi—” A sudden movement caught his eye behind Celia. “Watch out!”

  He dodged just in time as a stream of water came out of a nearby clump of bushes. But it caught Celia, who had turned to look, full in the face. “Aacccck!” she yelled.

  They both heard maniacal laughter disappearing around the other side of the school building.

  “Guess Mrs. Flynn got here early,” George said dryly. “J.P. has time on his hands.”

  Celia examined her dripping sweater and pulled it off. She didn’t seem too upset—George was constantly amazed at her patience. She probably got it from being the oldest of six Costain kids. “Yeah,” she said, “but there’s a new student coming. Isn’t that great?”

  “Huh,” George’s bad temper returned. “I’m not so sure. Students like this one could probably sink the school…”

  As if in answer, a man opened the door, pulling on his coat as he came. Black-haired, with a silver goatee and half-glasses, his face was usually as good-humored as Celia’s, but right now, Mr. Costain—main teacher and principal of the school—looked distinctly stressed out.

  “George!” he said, “Good to see you!” Mr. Costain had a way of speaking as though you were just the person he wanted talk to. Usually it made people feel special. But lately it just made George nervous.

  “Uh, yeah?” George said. “What’s up, Mr. C?” Sometimes he had a sneaking feeling that Mr. Costain considered him an oldest son.

  “Emergency again. The town inspector seems to have found another reason to deny our permit. I’ve got to run down to the town planning office,” Mr. Costain said. “Look, Mrs. Simonelli and Mrs. Flynn are busy with the new folks. Can you get the kids into class and start the rosary? We need to make sure the day starts on time.”

  “They denied the permit again?” George said. Not that he cared, but he knew Mr. Costain did. The Costain family had been working overtime to get this new school started, but this part of the process had turned into a mini-drama. The first day of school, the fire marshall had closed the school down. They’d had the first three days of classes outside until the building was declared safe for entry.

  “Yes. God created order, but the devil invented bureaucracies.” Mr. Costain sighed. “If you and Celia could start the rosary and be the student welcome wagon, that would be fantastic. Between a rosary and my signature in person on a few more release forms, we might just get school started today.” He jogged to his beat-up Volvo station wagon. “Glad you’re here, George.”

  George was sure Mr. Costain knew he’d rather be at St. Lucy’s, where he could wrestle. Trying to sound happy, he said “Thanks,” and turned away.

  “Oh,” Celia said, wringing her wet sweater. Her eyebrows were worried. “I hate this. I hate that even now they can still close us down.”

  “Don’t worry, Seal,” George pulled at her ponytail. He’d been calling her that ever since they had been kids. “Your dad’ll take care of it.”

  “I hope so,” she sighed and then smiled again. “I know he’s glad you’re here, George. He really depends on you.”

  “Yeah, I know,” George muttered as he opened the door for them to go inside, hoping he didn’t sound sarcastic. Mr. Costain trusted him to welcome the new student. But then, Mr. Costain didn’t know that George had already put a nice deep scratch in the middle of the new student’s front fender. Some welcome wagon.

  “What happened to your pants? Did you crash your bike?”

  “Not exactly…”

  “Hi Liz!” Celia said. “What’s up?”

  Liz Simonelli had gotten to her locker. She merely grumbled as she yanked her dirty blond hair into a ponytail. She was fourteen, a freshman with an athletic build, about the same height as Celia—but she looked a bit shorter because of the way she was slouching. “What’s up with that sign?” she said.

  “That’s from the county,” George said. “They’re going to shut us down and demolish the building.”

  Liz brightened. “Really?”

  George snorted with laughter, and Celia looked reproachfully at both of them. “No,” she said.

  “Darn,” Liz said. “I was in the mood to see something get demolished. That would be a great welcome for the new kid my mom keeps blabbing about…Hey, George, what happened to your pants? You got, like, the worst grass stain in history.”

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” George said. “The new kid happened. You know, the psycho?”

  Celia looked at him in surprise. “The what? You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh yeah,” George said. “I already met the mental case this morning.”

  “What? How?”

  George was about to reply when something heavy slammed into his back and pinned his arms to his sides. A voice whispered in his ear. “You’re dead meat, Peterson.”

  George groaned, “Get off of me, Flynn,” he said. “Before I break your skinny Irish neck.”

  The grip tightened. “Skinny? Irish? You got a lot of guts, Peterson. Just because you went to that big bad state championship, you think you can escape my mighty grip—oof!”

  George had twisted hard and thrown the weight of his right shoulder up and backward. Immediately the other boy fell to the floor.

  “Real smooth, J.P.,” Liz said.

  J.P. was already on his feet. He was a freshman, younger and a little bit taller than George, but thinner, with a shock of reddish-brown hair that he clearly didn’t make an effort to comb. The most arresting thing about him was his eyes, which glinted from his pale freckled face with a slightly crazy gleam.

  “I can’t believe you pulled that wrestling move on me, Peterson!” he crowed in a strangely triumphant way. “You're lucky! I was gonna take you DOWN!” He shouted the last word in a roar that made Celia and Liz jump. “There are few who can withstand one of the mighty Flynns…”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” George said, making as if to smack J.P. on the head.

  J.P. sprang away. “Don’t touch the hair! NOT the hair!”

  “Oh, yeah, J.P.” Celia giggled. “You must have worked really hard on it.”

  “You should know better than to take on a state wrestling champion,” Liz said, fiddling with the combination lock on one of the lockers.

  “Why do you have a lock on your locker, anyway?” J.P. shot back. “I mean, don’t you trust us?”

  At that moment, one of the hall lights suddenly flickered and went out. “Not again!” Liz groaned. “Why does that always happen?”

  “Maybe it’s a poltergeist,” J.P. said. “This looks like the kind of building that would have one…”

  “Speaking of which, we should go start the rosary,” Celia said. “Hurry up and come into home room.”

  George groaned and opened his locker. J.P. sidled over conspiratorially. “Hey, I heard there’s a new kid today. Do you know anything about that? I hope it’s a girl, at least.”

  “It’s not,” George said sourly. “Sorry.”

  “Whoah!!!”

  J.P. had opened his locker and was standing in front of it, something white on his hands. There was more white stuff coming out of the locker that looked like…

  “Whipped cream?” J.P. said, aghast, and pulled a white-smeared can out of the locker.

  “What the heck?” George laughed. “Who would—?”

  Just then, Liz ambled back from her locker, her hands full of books, obviously trying to keep a straight face.

  J.P. saw her. “YOU!” he said, shaking the can in her direction. “It was SO YOU!”

  “Me?” Liz said, grinning nastily now. “Me what? What happened?”

  “YOU put whipped cream
in my locker!”

  “Oh, did someone cream your locker?” said Liz in a mock-sympathetic voice, smirking. “Maybe it was the poltergeist.” She walked away triumphantly.

  “Oh ho HO!” J.P. yelled after her. “So, you think this has ended, little missy!” He grinned crazily at George. “But it has only just begun!”

  With that, he sprinted down the hallway in the opposite direction, still clutching the can of whipped cream.

  “What’s only just begun?”

  Brian Burke, a slim, African-American boy with thick glasses and an impeccably neat uniform, had joined the group. Another freshman, the former homeschooler was polite, earnest, smart, hardworking—a bit of a geek, in other words. But he fit well into John Paul 2 High, mostly because there weren’t enough kids to form any cliques.

  “Nothing. Liz just found something else to do at school besides complain.” George said.

  “I wish she’d cheer up,” Brian said. “A good attitude makes a better atmosphere.”

  Celia beamed at him. “Way to go, Brian!” George didn't say anything; he was too busy trying to stifle a laugh.

  Brian apparently didn't notice, though; he just smiled in some surprise. “Well…yes. Anyway, I was concerned about the sign on the front door. Do you know what’s going on?”

  “Dad drove into town to find out.” Celia said. “He said we should start school without him and he’ll be back as soon as he can. He doesn’t know why they should need another inspection.”

  “I don’t like it.” Brian said, frowning darkly, and asked in a quieter voice, “Do you think that the government’s going to try to shut us down? You know, because we’re Catholic, and we’re actually trying to follow the Church’s teachings?”

  George and Celia stared at him. “Oh, come on, Brian,” George said. “They’re just going to inspect the building, and honestly, can you blame them?”

  “You don’t understand,” Brian said seriously, shouldering his bookbag. “You haven’t been homeschooled. I know what it’s like to get persecuted.”

  It was hard to handle Brian sometimes. “I think this is a little different,” George said as Brian disappeared into the largest classroom that served as their homeroom.

  “Liz, did you really have to do that?” Celia said as Liz returned to the hallway, tossing a hackey-sack ball from one hand to the other. “What if J.P. goes off and does something stupid?”

  “Well, that would be surprising, wouldn’t it?” Liz said cuttingly, tossing the ball to Celia, who dropped it. “Besides, I did it to get him back for all the pranks he’s pulled on you since the first day. You can’t just roll over and take it, Costain. You got to fight back.”

  “He’s just being a goof.” Celia shook her head with some irritation, picking up the ball and tossing it back. “Honestly, Liz, I don’t care.”

  “Well, I care! Someone’s got to stand up for women’s rights!” Liz caught the ball deftly on the side of her black uniform shoe and tossed it to George. She was an excellent shot. “So who’s this psycho creep of a new student who’s starting?”

  “How do you know the new student is a psycho creep?” Celia asked again.

  “Believe me,” George said, batting the ball back to Liz with his ankle. “A mental case, like I said. A complete psycho. I wish your dad wasn’t so desperate for tuition money, Seal, or he wouldn’t take weirdos like that one.”

  “Weirdos like who?” a steely female voice answered.

  George turned in surprise and nearly hit himself in the face with the ball.

  There was a girl standing there—a girl with long blond hair, a slim, graceful build, and clear blue eyes.

  She was…beautiful. She could have been on the cover of some teen girl magazine, except that she was dressed in a white blouse and a straight black skirt like the other girls—but it looked so much better on her—and she was clenching a notebook to her chest.

  And those blue eyes, full of fury, were looking right at him.

  “Uh…” George faltered, and Liz snickered.

  The beautiful girl tossed her blond hair. “Not that I could do much more to bring this school downhill,” she said, and walked past him down the hall.

  “Like I said,” Liz said with a smirk as the girl vanished into the ladies’ room, “is she really a psycho creep?”

  “Um…why don’t we go start the rosary now?” Celia said brightly, pulling him away. “Hey! Dad’s back!”

  George had slunk into his desk by the time Mr. Costain entered the room, followed by a tall fat boy with bushy hair and dead gray eyes, wearing a black trench coat over his white shirt and tie. At Mr. Costain’s entrance, the atmosphere had immediately changed more to the semblance of a school. John Paul 2 High might be disorganized, but the main reason it was working was because Mr. Costain was a teaching genius.

  “I’d like to announce a momentous event,” Mr. Costain said. “As of today, we now have a junior class. Meet James Kosalinski.” With a wave of his hand, he introduced the tall fat boy to the rest of the class, as though there were sixty other teens in the room instead of just six. “James, these are our sophomores, George Peterson and my daughter Celia. We have another new student, who should be arriving shortly. Here are two of our freshmen, Brian Burke and Elizabeth Simonelli. And I expect that Mr. John Paul Flynn is around here somewhere.”

  James Kosalinski’s flat, pallid face turned towards them without making eye contact—until he saw George.

  For a moment he blinked; then a sour smile came to his face. He lifted one hand. “Greetings,” he said in a low voice, fixing his eyes on George. Then he walked over to one of the many empty desks in the classroom, sat down heavily, pulled out a paperback with the title Hostage to the Devil, and began to stare into it.

  George stared at him, feeling his anger from earlier that morning returning. Why is this kid here?

  Celia raised her hand. Mr. Costain beckoned. “Yes?”

  “Excuse me, Dad—I mean, Mr. Costain,” Celia said. “Can I ask what happened at the permit office? I mean, lots of kids were wondering about the sign…”

  “Yes, the sign.” Mr. Costain sighed. “ I went down to the county municipal office this morning. They informed me that this building is being inspected for—” He cleared his throat. “—‘structural integrity.’ But we’re still allowed to use the building, so there’s nothing to worry about right now. Let’s get started on the day. Rosaries out, morning prayer commencing—George, why don’t you lead?”

  Mr. Costain usually asked George to lead the prayers. Slightly resentful, George fished his wooden bead rosary out of his backpack and folded his hands. Everyone followed suit. George glanced at James and saw the fat boy ponderously remove a heavy black fifteen-decade rosary from a pocket in his trench coat and cross himself solemnly.

  Okay. Weird. George took a deep breath and began, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty…” For the umpteenth time, he found himself wishing that he was in a classroom with sixty other kids, an anonymous face in the back of the classroom, doodling in his notebook, putting in time until wrestling practice—but he had to be here instead, in John Paul 2 High, leading the rosary and looking like he was trying to be some kind of spiritual leader.

  He barreled through the first part of the Creed on auto-pilot, and the class began saying the second half, “I believe in the Holy Spirit—”

  “—Ghost,” the new boy said at the same time, a hint of smugness in his voice.

  The rest of the class faltered momentarily, and George’s eyes flashed to the new boy’s. Even when his voice was sneering, his eyes were expressionless, but when he looked at George, James Kosalinski’s eyes sneered too.

  George reddened. James wasn’t fooled. He knew George wasn’t some kind of saint: he had seen George yelling and throwing his bike against James’ car. And now that he knew that George knew he knew, he was enjoying watching George squirm.

  George’s anger from the morning boiled up again. Why does he have to be here? This is n
ot fair! Trying to keep his temper, George stared at the floor and tried to remember what he should be saying next. Ignore him, ignore him…

  “For the intentions of our Holy Father the Pope, we pray, Our Father, who art…”

  Suddenly a loud shriek echoed down the hall.

  Allie had decided that she was going to skip her first homeroom at John Paul 2 High. As she brushed her hair in the bathroom mirror, she wondered if she should just call her mom on her cell phone and announce she was quitting school right now.

  “Why?” she could imagine her mom saying.

  “They all think I’m a psycho creep,” she would say. “They were talking about me in the halls.”

  The embarrassment of that moment came back to her, and she clenched the hairbrush and brought it down through her thoroughly brushed blond hair for the hundredth time.

  Why am I not good enough for them? she wondered. She had always been popular at school, and the thought that in this school, she might be an outcast hit her with a smack. They hate me. They don’t know anything about me and already they don’t like me!

  The bathroom mirror was cracked, the ugly green paint was peeling off the walls, and the few fluorescent lights were dim. Allie looked at her own reflection in the smudged mirror, and suddenly she felt so out of place and lonely that she wanted to cry.

  Why should I be surprised? Everything in my life is different now. Why should I care about being popular? I should be glad that I’m alive. And safe.

  Safe, she thought ruefully. Yeah, Mom, this place looks safe. No locks on the doors, no security guards. Bet they have policemen frisking kids right and left at Sparrow Hills. I’d probably be safer up there… from…

  She shuddered. But she shivered inside. No, a pointless attack like the one on her could only happen in a big place like Sparrow Hills, with kids so bored and deadened that they’d grab a random sophomore girl, put a gun to her head, and then vanish…I hope they find him. They have to find him, and stop him… Okay, stop thinking. Focus. You’ve got to deal with this new school now… Figure out how you’re going to make it to the end of the year here… She touched up her lipstick. Well, at least my hair looks good today…