Why? Because I can, that’s why. Why did God make me this way? Why did God take Bunny? Why? Because He could. Because He’s God. He made us all in His image, right? So I’m a little piece of God. And God is a killer; a joker; a thief. So how can He fail to be proud of me when I want to be just like Him?

Chapter 10

10

Michaelmas Term, 1981

My talk with Johnny Harrington had one beneficial effect. The complaints from his father ceased forthwith, although I did not feel I had made any significant progress in getting to understand the boy.

I remember his School report word for word, handwritten on the penultimate page of his blue report book. Harrington is an able student, well behaved and punctual. That’s Master’s shorthand for Not Much to Say—for how could I articulate that sense of something wrong with him, of something strangely missing? Not that he’d ever done anything wrong. His name had cropped up only once or twice, in the context of misbehavior by others (a minor riot in the class of an ineffectual member of staff; graffiti on the scarred oak panels in the School refectory), but Harrington—like his two friends—had been declared innocent of blame. A little too innocent, I felt; it just wasn’t normal for a fourteen-year-old boy to have so few apparent vices.

However, his English Literature grade reflects his disappointing lack of commitment to the reading list. I hope that in the new term he will apply himself more diligently and raise his performance to the fine standard he has already achieved in other subjects.

Dammit, it made me nervous. It wasn’t natural at all. It wasn’t that I favored troublemakers, precisely; but at least I could understand them. I myself was no paragon when I was a boy of fourteen; it’s what has made me the Master I am, alert to all possibilities. And although there was nothing I could find to incriminate Harrington, Nutter, or Spikely in any kind of misbehavior, there was something in their aloofness that I found disquieting.

Of course, I would say that, wouldn’t I? But even without the benefit of hindsight, that flawless rear window through which we observe the aftermath of the car crash, I’ll swear there was something not quite right about the Harrington threesome. Call it intuition, perhaps. In any case, something was wrong. I could feel it approaching.

The latter half of the Michaelmas term brought Bonfire Night, my birthday, and, a fortnight later, the dubious gift of an early snow, which the boys received with uncontrolled glee, and the staff with less enthusiasm, knowing how disruptive snow can be to the efficient running of things.