Mint and apricots

34. Broken

Gabriel rubbed his forehead with the hand he wasn't holding his glass of whiskey with, as if tempted by the idea of backing out. Sam had begun to seriously fear a retreat when the other boy's eyes returned to mirror his.

"Well, I met him when we were both fourteen. Ninth grade. The school year had started a couple of weeks before at the latest. The first memory I have of him is this tall, lean boy sitting on one of those stiff armchairs outside the principal's office."

Sam couldn't help but smile at the thought of Luc and Gabriel earning the honor of being sent to the principal's office after just two weeks at their new school.

"What high school did you go to?" he asked, holding back the urge to ask what they had done to deserve such a welcome.

"Lincoln High. You?"

"Washington High, like my brother," Sam answered, then leaning a little more toward him. "Tell me about that day. The day you met him."

Gabriel reacted to his enthusiasm with the same condescending smile he would have given to a child who gets excited about an improvised treasure hunt with a fake pirate map. It seemed to Sam that he was about to add an unpleasant warning, but in the end Gabe settled with another sigh.

"Yes," he agreed, "it looks like a good place to start explaining how things went."

- September 16, 1992 -

- Lincoln High School, Sioux Falls -

The first thing you need to know is that Gabriel was not sorry.

There had been several choices, in the past, which he had regretted – always for the consequences they had caused – but consuming a well-deserved and hilarious revenge against his French literature teacher was not among them. With her dictatorial attitude in class, that witch had practically begged him to become a target.

And it wasn't like it was the 1930s. A visit to the principal's office, in cases like his, meant a lecture, a slap on the wrist at most. They certainly wouldn't have suspended him for the first prank he put together, not when they still didn't know him at that school.

Wait, Gabriel thought all of a sudden, stopping abruptly as he walked on the empty corridors of the school after the last bell of the day. They can't possibly have my junior high records, can they?

Oh well, it didn't matter. If they had got to call his mother, she would have probably pretended to be serious on the phone, then laughed with him at the prank he played on the teacher once his son got home. Oh, and then she would have taken comics and television away from him for a week. But it would have still been totally worth it, right?

So Gabriel wasn't particularly tense as he walked into the anteroom that served as the waiting room for the headmaster's office. He took a quick glance at the horrible color of the walls and at the ornamental plants standing in the four corners of the room and observed for a couple of more seconds the only other person there: a boy who had to be about his age was sitting, straight and rigid, on one of the three plastic chairs available. His hair was a lighter blond than Gabriel's, his face a taut mask hidden in the shadows, and with his fingers he was clutching his knees hard enough to hurt himself. Gabe considered all of this before dropping into the chair next to him and assuming a relaxed pose which was much less suited to the place and situation.