Day 18

"Well," Aunt Mathilda said, "I'm glad the school has responded to the tragedy so efficiently. Though I wonder why they waited until today to make the announcement."

"I would suppose they needed time to summon the grief counselors," Aunt Myrtle reasoned, "We don't keep them on staff, they had to be ordered from out of town."

"It's so silly, though," Jeremy protested, "Why should we need grief counseling? I mean, I'm sorry he's dead, but he was a teacher, none of us really knew him."

"I did," Danny said, too quietly for anyone to hear, determining to seek out one of the counselors first thing when he got to school.

Aunt Mathilda took control of the conversation at that point, sticking to the topic of the efficacy of the school's various services, soliciting the boys' opinions as students but briskly rerouting any digressions back to the central subject. Eventually the tea ran out and Oscar started packing everything back into the big wicker hampers he'd brought, and the Aunt Ems began pulling themselves together for the trip home.

Danny briefly entertained the idea of asking his mother if Ash and Jeremy could stay to dinner, but the malicious expression on her face dissuaded him from speaking. He conversed only briefly with Ash when the boy gave him his homework, thanking him profusely but not able to say anything else; nor was he able to speak to Jeremy, though he very much wanted to apologize for not telling him about finding Mr. Janacek's body. He told each of them that he'd call them later in the evening if that was alright, and saw the suspicious glances the two boys directed at each other before going their separate ways, Jeremy with the Aunt Ems and Ash to his own car.

Left alone in the library, Danny tried to come to some resolution about Ash and Jeremy: should he tell Ash about his relationship with Jeremy? Should he tell Jeremy about kissing Ash? Would either of them feel threatened by the other knowing he was gay? He realized then that he had painted himself into a corner by being a party to all this secrecy; after all, when he was dating Sandra and Felicia, everyone had known that he was taken, and there was no room for exploring other people without starting a shitstorm of gossip.

He nevertheless resolved to reform his behavior on a more honorable and honest model, backpedalling with Ash and devoting himself more assiduously to Jeremy, since that was the longer-standing relationship. He wasn't sure how, exactly, he was going to do those things, but he intended to at least try. He did not resolve, however, to stop having sex with anyone who would let him; he convinced himself that the no-strings-attached activity had no bearing on his relations with the two friends with whom he had developed an emotional connection but hadn't had sex.

Though Danny's doctor had told him that he could and should get out of bed and not elevate his ankle, he was not supposed to walk with is full weight on the injured leg, and so hobbled out of the library and up the two flights of stairs to his room with the assistance of a fabulous old silver and walnut walking-stick that had belonged to his great-grandfather; he masturbated, showered, and changed as usual, but still had dispensation from dining with his parents, so he put on a pair of dark red sweatpants and a black t-shirt instead of his usual jacket and tie, and ate his dinner on a tray at his desk, watching the Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet DVD on his laptop and speaking Tybalt's lines aloud.

After dinner, he hobbled out to the stables to curry Tenorino after Kevin exercised him, singing softly to the horse as he worked, wishing he could go riding but sure it would be too much of a strain on his ankle -- for though riding doesn't put one's weight on one's feet, it does require a great deal of tension in the leg, and he was afraid of doing anything that might delay having his ankle in full working order again. His body felt sluggish after four days of minimal exertion, he yearned to run and jump and work up a sweat.

Back in his room, he completed his homework quickly and did some web-surfing to pass the time until he got into bed and went to sleep. And laying there in the dark, waiting for sleep to come, he thought about Mr. Janacek: not about the corpse, but about the man, considering his odd behavior with sex (allowing sexual contact but no affectionate contact, all strictly oral but no kissing), his funny smile when he laughed, the way he lit up when he was teaching and someone would demonstrate understanding of what he was saying. It made him horribly sad that all that niceness and intelligence was gone from the world; and it made him terribly angry that some one person would purposely take all that niceness and intelligence, would callously snuff out that light.

Much to his own surprise, Danny realized that he wanted to find and punish Mr. Janacek's killer, to exact revenge for the death of a good man.
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