Yet no matter how Josie figured it, there was no way Window could come up with the two thousand dollars for legal and medical fees necessary for the blood test. “Can’t your parents loan you the money?” Josie asked.

“They said I’m on my own,” Window said. “I think they are—you know—embarrassed—”

“Because of what your brother did. It really is low. They ought to be embarrassed.”

“That’s fucking special ed for you,” Ted Frank Page said.

“We told you not to marry the bitch,” Meldrick said, puffing on a cigarillo in the janitor’s room.

“Think,” Page said, “of all the high-class pussy you could have had for all that bread you’re laying out. What an idiot!”

“Window,” Josie said, “the next time you want a date, go to church and meet a girl there. A girl with virtue.”

Window took to blowing his seventy dollars cash the first day he got it each month. Invariably he spent the money on pornography and junk food. While his mother provided Window with board, she did not supply junk food, so Window used his key to the student store and began to raid the candy supplies until the diversified occupations teacher had the lock changed. Then Window began taking the cook’s key to the freezer and started stealing student pizzas. One day, when he went for the key in the top drawer of the cook’s desk, he found that it was gone. “They’re on to you,” Packard said. “Don’t admit anything. If you get called in, deny it.”

“If I get called in?” Window said with real fear in his voice.

“Yeah, if you get called in and they grill you—lie, motherfucker.”

“Called in?” Window said. “Into the office?”

“I don’t know why in the fuck you are worried,” Ted Frank Page said. “You are the motherfucker who’s busting ass and—hey! who is collecting? I’ll tell you, it’s that fat-ass ex-wife and your brother, taking your money, welfare, and all the rest of it. If I was you, I’d hop in that Citroën and fly off to Fringus, go back among your own kind. If they fired you they would be doing you a favor.”

“He’s right, Window,” Meldrick said. “You are a noble spirit, an innocent—a pure soul and much too good for this pitiless brutal planet. You deserve a better fate than this.”

The vice-principal began to write Window up for tiny infractions. Once Window left his vacuum cleaner in the band room and the band instructor complained to the office. “The next time it happens,” the vice-principal said jauntily, displaying his palm with a flourish, “probation.”