The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold Page B

squeaking from his movement.
He is from England,
I was thinking. His lips moved closer, the scaffold listed. I was dizzy—about to go under the wave of my first kiss, when
     we both heard something. We froze.
    Ray and I lay down side by side and stared at the lights and wires overhead. A moment later, the stage door opened and in
     walked Mr. Peterford and the art teacher, Miss Ryan, who we recognized by their voices. There was a third person with them.
    “We are not taking disciplinary action at this time, but we will if you persist,” Mr. Peterford was saying. “Miss Ryan, did
     you bring the materials?”
    “Yes.” Miss Ryan had come to Kennet from a Catholic school and taken over the art department from two ex-hippies who had been
     fired when the kiln exploded. Our art classes had gone from wild experiments with molten metals and throwing clay to day after
     day of drawing profiles of wooden figures she placed in stiff positions at the beginning of each class.
    “I’m only doing the assignments.” It was Ruth Connors. I recognized the voice and so did Ray. We all had Mrs. Dewitt’s English
     class first period.
    “This,” Mr. Peterford said, “was not the assignment.”
    Ray reached for my hand and squeezed. We knew what they were talking about. A xeroxed copy of one of Ruth’s drawings had been
     passed around in the library until it had reached a boy at the card catalog who was overtaken by the librarian.
    “If I’m not mistaken,” said Miss Ryan, “there are no breasts on our anatomy model.”
    The drawing had been of a woman reclining with her legs crossed. And it was no wooden figure with eyehooks connecting the limbs.
     It was a real woman, and the charcoal smudges of her eyes—whether by accident or intent—had given her a leering look that
     made every kid who saw it either highly uncomfortable or quite happy, thank you.
    “There isn’t a nose or mouth on that wooden model either,” Ruth said, “but you encouraged us to draw in faces.”
    Again Ray squeezed my hand.
    “That’s enough, young lady,” Mr. Peterford said. “It is the attitude of repose in this particular drawing that clearly made
     it something the Nelson boy would xerox.”
    “Is that my fault?”
    “Without the drawing there would be no problem.”
    “So it’s my fault?”
    “I invite you to realize the position this puts the school in and to assist us by drawing what Miss Ryan instructs the class
     to draw without making unnecessary additions.”
    “Leonardo da Vinci drew cadavers,” Ruth said softly.
    “Understood?”
    “Yes,” said Ruth.
    The stage doors opened and shut, and a moment later Ray and I could hear Ruth Connors crying. Ray mouthed the word
go,
and I moved to the end of the scaffold, dangling my foot over the side to find a hold.
    That week Ray would kiss me by my locker. It didn’t happen up on the scaffold when he’d wanted it to. Our only kiss was like
     an accident—a beautiful gasoline rainbow.
    I climbed down off the scaffold with my back to her. She didn’t move or hide, just looked at me when I turned around. She
     was sitting on a wooden crate near the back of the stage. A pair of old curtains hung to her left. She watched me walk toward
     her but didn’t wipe her eyes.
    “Susie Salmon,” she said, just to confirm it. The possibility of my cutting first period and hiding backstage in the auditorium
     was, until that day, as remote as the smartest girl in our class being bawled out by the discipline officer.
    I stood in front of her, hat in hand.
    “That’s a stupid hat,” she said.
    I lifted the jingle-bell cap and looked at it. “I know. My mom made it.”
    “So you heard?”
    “Can I see?”
    Ruth unfolded the much-handled xerox and I stared.
    Using a blue ballpoint pen, Brian Nelson had made an obscene hole where her legs were crossed. I recoiled and she watched
     me. I could see something flicker in her eyes, a private wondering, and then she leaned over and brought out a