Chapter One
They were both working their final shift at Blackjack
Pizza that night, although nobody but the two of them
realized it was that. Give them this much: they were
talented secret-keepers. Patient planners. They’d been
planning it for a year, hiding their intentions in plain
sight on paper, on videotape, over the Internet. In
their junior year, one had written in the other’s
yearbook, “God, I can’t wait till they die. I can taste
the blood now.” And the other had answered, “Killing
enemies, blowing up stuff, killing cops! My wrath will
be godlike!”
My wrath will be godlike: maybe that’s a clue. Maybe
their ability to dupe everyone was their justification.
If we could be fooled, then we were all fools; they
were, therefore, superior, chaos theirs to inflict. But
I don’t know. I’m just one more chaos theorist, as lost
in the maze as everyone else.
It was Friday, April 16, 1999, four days before they
opened fire. I’d stayed after school for a parent
conference and a union meeting and, in between, had
called Maureen to tell her I’d pick up takeout.
Blackjack Pizza was between school and home.
It was early still. The Friday-night pizza rush hadn’t
begun. He was at the register, elbows against the
counter, talking to a girl in a hairdresser’s smock. Or
not talking, pretty much. There was a cell phone on the
counter, and he kept tapping it with his index finger to
make it spin-kept looking at the revolving cell phone
instead of at the girl. I remember wondering if I’d just
walked in on a lover’s spat. “I better get back,” the
girl said. “See you tomorrow.” Her smock said “Great
Clips,” which meant she worked at the salon next
door-the place where Maureen went.
“Prom date?” I asked him. The big event was the next
night at the Design Center in Denver. From there, the
kids would head back to school for the all-night
post-prom party, which I’d been tagged to help
chaperone.
“I wouldn’t go to that bogus prom,” he said. He called
over his shoulder. “How’s his
half-mushroom-half-meatball coming?” His cohort opened
the oven door and peered in. Gave a thumbs-up.
“So tell me,” I said. “You guys been having any more of
your famous Blackjack flour wars?”
He gave me a half-smile. “You remember that?”
“Sure. Best piece you wrote all term.”
He’d been in my junior English class the year before. A
grade-conscious concrete sequential, he was the kind of
kid who was more comfortable memorizing vocab
definitions and lines from Shakespeare than doing the
creative stuff. Still, his paper about the Blackjack
Pizza staff’s flour fights, which he’d shaped as a spoof
on war, was the liveliest thing he’d written all term. I
remember scrawling across his paper, “You should think
about taking creative writing next year.” And he had. He
was in Rhonda Baxter’s class. Rhonda didn’t like him,
though-said she found him condescending. She hated the
way he rolled his eyes at other kids’ comments. Rhonda
and I shared a free hour, and we often compared notes
about the kids. I neither liked nor disliked him,
particularly. He’d asked me to write him a letter of
recommendation once. Can’t remember what for. What I do
recall is sitting there, trying to think up something to
say.
He rang up my sale. I handed him a twenty. “So what’s
next year looking like?” I asked. “You heard back from
any of the schools you applied to?”
“I’m joining the Marines,” he said.
“Yeah? Well, I heard they’re looking for a few good
men.” He nodded, not smiling, and handed me my change.
His buddy ambled over to the counter, pizza box in hand.
He’d lost the boyish look I remembered from his freshman
year. Now he was a lanky, beak-nosed adult, his hair
tied back in a sorry-looking ponytail, his chin as
prominent as Jay Leno’s. “So what’s your game plan for
next year?” I asked him.
“University of Arizona.”
“Sounds good,” I said. I gave a nod to the Red Sox cap
he was wearing. “You follow the Sox?”
“Somewhat. I just traded for Garciaparra in my fantasy
league.”
“Good move,” I said. “I used to go to Sox games all the
time when I was in college. Boston University. Fenway
was five minutes away.”
“Cool,” he said.
“Maybe this is their year, huh?”
“Maybe.” He didn’t sound like he gave a shit either way.
He was in Rhonda’s creative writing class, too. She’d
come into the staff room sputtering about him one day.
“Read this,” she said. “Is this sick or what?” He’d
written a two-page story about a mysterious avenger in a
metal-studded black trench coat. As jocks and “college
preps” leave a busy bar, he pulls pistols and explosives
out of his duffel bag, wastes them, and walks away,
smiling. “Do you think I should call his parents?”
Rhonda had asked.
I’d shrugged. “A lot of the guys write this kind of
crap. Too many video games, too much testosterone. I
wouldn’t worry about it. He probably just needs a
girlfriend.” She had worried, though, enough to make
that call. She’d referred to the meeting, a week or so
later, as “a waste of time.”
The door banged open; five or six rowdy kids entered
Blackjack. “Hey, I’ll see you later,” I said.
“Later,” he said. And I remember thinking he’d make a
good Marine. Clean-cut, conscientious, his ironed
T-shirt tucked neatly into his wrinkle-free shorts. Give
him a few years, I figured, and he’d probably be officer
material.
At dinner that night, Maureen suggested we go out to a
movie, but I begged off, citing end-of-the-week
exhaustion. She cleaned up, I fed the dogs, and we
adjourned to our separate TVs. By ten o’clock, I was
parked on my recliner, watching Homicide with the
closed-caption activated, my belly full of pizza. There
was a Newsweek opened on my lap for commercial breaks, a
Pete’s Wicked ale resting against my crotch, and a Van
Morrison CD reverberating inside my skull: Astral Weeks,
a record that had been released in 1968, the year I
turned seventeen.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The Hour I First Believed
by Wally Lamb
Copyright © 2008 by Wally Lamb.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
HarperCollins
Copyright © 2008
Wally Lamb
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-039349-6
