I slunk back up the stairs and pretended to find the keys on the landing. There was some jubilation over this, but mostly a lot of grumbling, since Sleepy swore he’d left them hanging on the key hook in the kitchen and couldn’t figure out how they’d gotten to the landing. Dopey said, ‘It was probably Dave’s ghost,’ and leered at Doc, who looked embarrassed.

Then we all piled into the car and took off.

We were late, of course. Assembly at the Junipero Serra Mission Academy begins promptly at eight o’clock. We got there at around two after. What happens at Assembly is, they make everybody stand outside in these lines separated by sex, boys on one side, girls on the other – like we’re Quakers or something – for fifteen minutes before school officially starts, so they can take attendance and read announcements and stuff. By the time we got there, of course, Assembly had already started. I had intended to duck right past and head straight to Father Dominic’s office, but of course, I never got the chance. Sister Ernestine caught us traipsing in late, and gave each of us the evil eye until we slunk into our various lines. I didn’t much care what Sister Ernestine jotted down in her little black book about me, but I could see that getting to the principal’s office was going to be impossible, due to the yellow caution tape strung up across every single archway that led to the courtyard – and, of course, all the cops.

I guess what had happened was, all the priests and nuns and stuff had gotten up for matins, which is what they call the first Mass of the morning, and they’d all walked outside and seen the statue of their church’s founder with his head cut off, and the fountain with hardly any water left in it, and the bench where I’d been sitting all twisted and tipped over, and the door to Mr Walden’s classroom in smithereens.

Understandably, I guess, they freaked out and called the cops. People in uniform were crawling all over the place, taking fingerprints and measuring stuff, like the distance Junipero Serra’s head had travelled from his body, and the velocity it had to have travelled to make that many holes in a door that was made of three-inch-thick wood, and that kind of thing. I saw a guy in a dark-blue windbreaker with the letters CBTSPD – Carmel-by-the-Sea Police Department? – on the back conferring with Father Dominic, who looked really, really tired. I couldn’t catch his eye, and supposed I’d have to wait until after Assembly to sneak away and apologize to him.

At Assembly, Sister Ernestine, the vice principal, told us vandals had done it. Vandals had broken in through Mr Walden’s classroom, and wreaked havoc all over the school. What was fortunate, we were told, was that the solid gold chalice and salver used for the sacramental wine and hosts had not been stolen, but were left sitting in their little cupboard behind the church alter. The vandals had rudely beheaded our school founder, but left the really valuable stuff alone. We were told that if any of us knew anything about this horrible violation, we were to come forward immediately. And that if we were uncomfortable coming forward personally, we could do it anonymously – Monsignor Constantine would be hearing confessions all morning.