Jack would later imagine that Lottie was one of those women, neither young nor old, whose sexuality had been fleeting; only small traces of her remaining desire were visible, in the way you might catch her looking at herself in profile in a mirror. Glimpses of Lottie's former attractiveness were apparent to Jack only in her most unguarded moments--when he had a nightmare and roused her from a sound sleep, or when she woke him up for school in the morning before she'd taken the time to attend to herself.
Short of asking Lucinda Fleming to talk to him about her silent rage, which would have been far too simple and straightforward a solution for any six-year-old boy to conceive of, Jack worked up his courage and asked Emma Oastler instead. (If Emma wasn't an authority on rage, who was?) But Jack was afraid of Emma; her cohorts struck him as somewhat safe
r places to start. That was why he worked up his courage to ask Emma by asking Wendy Holton and Charlotte Barford first. He began with Wendy, only because she was the smaller of the two.
The junior school got a half-hour head start for lunch. How fitting that it was under the blank globes of the dining-hall chandeliers, those unmarked worlds, where Jack spoke to Wendy. How well (and for how long!) he would remember her haunted eyes, her chewed lips, her unbrushed, dirty-blond hair--not forgetting her scraped knees, as hard as fists of stone.
"What rage was that, Jack?"
"Silent."
"What about it, you little creep?"
"Well, what is it, exactly--what is silent rage?" he asked.
"You're not eating the mystery meat, are you?" Wendy asked, viewing his plate with disapproval.
"No, I would never eat that," Jack answered. He separated the gray meat from the beige potatoes with his fork.
"You wanna see a little rage, Jack?"
"Yes, I guess so," he replied cautiously--never taking his eyes off her. Wendy had an unsettling habit of cracking her knuckles by pressing them into her underdeveloped breasts.
"You wanna meet me in the washroom?" Wendy asked.
"The girls' washroom?"
"I'm not getting caught with you in the boys' washroom, you dork." Jack wanted to think it over, but it was hard to think clearly with Wendy standing over him at his table. The word dork itself unsettled him; it seemed so out of place at a mostly all-girls' school.
"Forgive me for intruding, but aren't you having any lunch, Wendy?" Miss Wong asked.
"I'd rather die," Wendy told her.
"Well, I'm certainly sorry to hear that!" Miss Wong said.
"You wanna follow me, or are you chicken?" Wendy whispered in Jack's ear. He could feel one of her hard, bruised knees against his ribs.
"Okay," he answered.
Officially, Jack needed Miss Wong's permission to leave the dining hall, but Miss Wong was typically in an overapologetic mood (having blamed herself for attempting to force lunch on Wendy Holton, when Wendy would rather die). "Miss Wong--" he started to say.
"Yes, of course, Jack," she blurted out. "I'm so sorry if I've made you feel self-conscious, or that I may have delayed your leaving the table for whatever obvious good reason you have for leaving. Heavens! Don't let me hold you up another second!"
"I'll be right back," was all he managed to say.
"I'm sure you will be, Jack," Miss Wong said. Perhaps the faint hurricane inside her had been overcome by her contrition.
In the girls' washroom nearest the dining hall, Wendy Holton took Jack into a stall and stood him on the toilet seat. She just grabbed him in the armpits and lifted him up. Standing on the toilet seat, he was eye-to-eye with her; so he wouldn't slip, Wendy held him by the hips.
"You want to feel rage, inner rage, Jack?"
"I said silent, silent rage."
"Same difference, penis breath," Wendy said.
Now there was a concept that would stay with Jack Burns for many years--penis breath! What a deeply disturbing concept it was.
"Feel this," Wendy said. She took his hands and placed them on her breasts--on her no breasts, to be more precise.