Grave Concern by Judith Millar

If you like kids and yer ugly, they don’t even give you a chance. If you hate kids but yer pretty, that’s no good either, they throw you out immediately if not sooner.” Kate’s laughter escalated and she collapsed into his side.
    â€œHey, my arm’s bouncing up and down like those cement drills,” J.P. said. “Anyway, as I was saying, if you’re good-lookin’ you’re out for sure, but if yer ugly as sin, you’re in like a dirty hair shirt. The very meanest and ugliest get shipped automatically up here to St. Mary’s. And, for sure you didn’t know this … ”
    Kate, helpless now with laughter, managed to shake her head. “See, there’s a secret list. It’s titled, “Schools Hiring Hideous Nuns That Torment Kids,” and St. Mary’s is on the very top of that list, meaning it’ll take the absolute worst. So anyway, that’s when us kids have to take over,” he said.
    Kate could no longer speak she was laughing so hard, and her legs felt weak.
    â€œHow, you ask?” J.P. went on. His grip tightened on her shoulder to hold her up. “Well, let me tell you. The very first thing you got to do with a nun is get on her bad side. You want to get her rattled enough so she’ll leave voluntarily. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of work. You gotta start getting your hands dirty, y’know, like tying the hem of her habit to a heating grate when she’s not looking. Or, or a better one is you steal the strap from her desk, then sometime when she’s kneeling down praying in the chapel, you sneak up behind her, wrap the belt tight around her piss-ugly ankles — they always have piss-ugly ankles — and cry ‘Fire!’ Shit like that.
    â€œIt’s way better, though, if you can drive them out before it gets that far. Not saying that stuff can’t be fun. But you get beyond it. You know, snakes under the wimple. Frogs in the collection box. Kid stuff. Although I gotta say I’d like to tie the fuckin’ rosary to the shoelace one more time before I die.” J.P. slapped his thigh. “She was hopping along like a three-legged skunk!”
    Kate was now pretty much crying with nervous laughter, and J.P. fed the fire, piling the fuel higher and higher.
    But now they were nearing Kate’s house. J.P. slipped into the garage before Kate knew he was gone. Kate flew up the front steps on adrenaline.
    When she re-emerged from the house, half-thinking he would have split, J.P. re-appeared. He steered them down the hill toward the log cabin by the river. Everyone called it “the old Indian cabin” and indeed that’s what it was, having been lived in by an extended Algonquin family before the dam-builders came along.
    Officially the cabin was boarded up against just this kind of thing. But J.P. knew a way in, through a loose section of roof. Kate stood before the daunting prospect of climbing a vertical wall, looking up at the cabin roof through the light steam of her breath in the fast-cooling night. Before she had licked the dryness from her lips, they were smothered by his, her whole body likewise pressed between J.P.’s torso and the hands that had materialized at her back, holding her against him. His lips were not full but were firm, if a little chapped, willful yet pliable, yielding as hers gained confidence.
    â€œFor luck,” he said, and smiled. His smile was impish but open, like a child’s.
    Climbing up the chinked logs and around the overhang was the hardest physical work Kate had ever done. On top, they had to lift the loose plank and jump down blindly, hoping not to land on anything dangerous. Finally they stood in pitch dark on what felt like a wood floor. J.P. slid his coat from Kate’s shoulders and laid it down. He kicked her gently behind one knee and held her as she buckled.
    â€œWhat’d you tell your folks?” he asked, folding them down