Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [86]
On the opposite side of the playground is a spooky-looking old house where the nuns live, and according to Mary Lane, torture children with dripping holy water.
Father Mickey and Father Louie live together, too, in a one-story house called a rectory that’s behind the school. Father Louie’s practically an antique, but very sweet in his personality. He plays Santa at our church Christmas party, that’s how jolly and red he is, especially in his nose. He’s not here right now. He’s been taking the summer off to go on a special retreat someplace really dry and won’t be back until school starts, so that’s why Father Mickey has been living alone the past couple of months.
I’ve never been in the rectory, but Troo has. That’s where she gets her extra religious instruction. She told me the priests have got a living room with two davenports and an office with pictures on the wall of their boss on earth, the Pope. And they have a bathroom with a tub and both the priests have crosses hanging over their beds with palm fronds the same way Troo and me do. That seemed so funny to me. How those priests are pretending to live like any Tom, Dick or Harry, when they’re not. They don’t resemble normal people at all. They’re above and beyond.
I’m still staring up at the church, trying to decide whether or not I should go tell Dave about Troo’s revenge plan, when Mary Lane comes peeling around the corner, head down, legs pumping a mile a minute and skids right into me.
“For crissakes,” she says, grabbing me up off the grass and dragging me into the familiar bushes in front of the Kohls’ house. We hide in them all the time after we go out ringing doorbells or when the Molinari brothers chase us. One of Troo’s old Dubble-Bubble wrappers is caught in the bottom of a branch. Mary Lane’s got her black high-tops on like always. And her Brownie camera is hanging off her neck. That’s kinda unusual. It’s her most prized possession. She won it in a church raffle and hardly ever takes it outta the house. She shoves me into a squat, not giving me enough time to put up a fight, which I would lose anyway.
“What’re ya doin’ here?” she says. “You’re supposed to be over at the Latours’.”
“I was on my way to the Piaskowskis’. Dave’s over there and I . . . I . . . what are you doin’ here?” Troo told me that Mary Lane was going to be at the powwow tonight. “And who are we hidin’ from?”
“Father Mickey . . . he’s after me,” Mary Lane says, wiping her leaky nose off with her finger and running it down her tan shorts. Her bare legs look like two soda straws. “For an old guy . . . he’s pretty quick, almost fast as you.”
It takes me less than a breath to figure out what’s going on. Mary Lane’s not here scouting out the school, thinking about setting it on fire even though she’s threatened to a couple of times. That’s just big talk. She wouldn’t really do that. I don’t think. Our little cat burglar musta been up here doing what movie thiefs always do before they break into a place. They don’t just dive right in to commit a crime. They come the night before to have a look around to see if there’s a mean dog or a night watchman.
I point at the rectory and ask her, “Were you casin’ the joint and Father saw you?”
“What?” Mary Lane says with a look on her face that reminds me so much of a monkey that’s gotten a peanut stolen out of its hand by another monkey, real astonished like that. “Didn’t Troo fill you in? Didn’t she tell ya about—”
“Over here,” someone shouts from across the street. I can’t hear the rest of what the person says, only that he sounds furious and out of breath.
“That’s him. He’s comin’,” Mary Lane says, spreading apart a couple of bushy