At the Twilight's Last Gleaming Read Free

was a lumbering Pentagon of ugly flat squarish buildings that sprawled rather than rose, surrounded by sports fields and parking lots.
    I loathed it.
    Cold and modern in the worst sense, its biggest sin to me was that it was just plain boring. It looked like something the military would design. It was functional but unimaginative, without the faintest suggestion that humans might want to look at it and feel something.
    Half of it wasn’t quite finished – the Vocational Wing. High school had become less of an end point in education, and more of a transition to college. However, for those students who didn’t want to go to college but wanted to move along into the real world as soon as possible, “vocational” aspects of high school were being featured, to get them launched into a good career.
    Or so the theory went.
    It was all part of the Great Society concept, I guess. Rumor had it that the architect of the Great Society, President Lyndon Johnson, was going to helicopter out from the White House for the dedication ceremony when it was finished. It was one of his bills he’d rammed through Congress, after all, that had built it.
    The school bus coughed to a stop. It disgorged us back into the cold. Trailing scarves and plumes of breath, we hunched against the cold and made our way to the next Station of the Crossland, the assembly room. Here, tables were set out in preparation for lunch period. Here we parked our cold butts until the first bell rang and we were permitted to the next Station of the Crossland. Home room.
    And there, in that assembly room, were many of the principal characters that Fate had selected to mix into the events of the next few weeks.
    Events that would change my life forever.



CHAPTER THREE
    T HE CROSSLAND MULTIPURPOSE room was a huge expanse of high ceilings and a few narrow windows. Opposite the entry doors was the kitchen area, which opened up to create the school cafeteria. Today I could see food workers scurrying behind the steamed windows to prepare the daily gruel.
    In the front of the room was a large heavy black curtain, which was ominously closed. Today a podium stood on the lip of the proscenium, armed with a mike. Last night there must have been a PTA meeting.
    The multipurpose room always felt stark and unfriendly and more than a little nasty, but it was warmer than outdoors. Most of the students hurried in and gathered into groups of friends. There was a good deal of yawning. Many students used the opportunity to lay their heads on the table to catch a few more winks. I never found this possible, since the din of chatter was enormous.
    After we said hello to Mr. Hendricks, the night custodian who was just finishing up some floor mopping, Harold and I found a quieter place at the end of the table, near the stage, and we sat down at the end, huddled together companionably, watching the mob.
    Harold looked back at the heavy curtain with misgivings. “One of these days I expect to see that curtain open. We’ll see King Kong, chained up. Flashbulbs will go off. He’ll roar and thrash. And then he’ll pull off his chains, grab you, and head for the Empire State Building.”
    “Me?” I said. “I’m no svelte beauty. Why not one of the cheerleaders, the ones who spend a half hour on their hair before they come to school?”
    “He’s my King Kong, that’s why,” said Harold Lumpkin.
    I would have pursued the issue further, but it was then that the reason I had the thing in my bag came into the room.
    He arrived with style. The way he moved never failed to fascinate me. He took dancing lessons, sure, but he’d also told me that he liked to watch Fred Astaire movies. Even though he was a bigger guy, he walked like Fred Astaire. He had a flowing grace to him.
    I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed Harold’s arm and squeezed emphatically. “Oh my god,” I said. “He’s here.”
    He leaned over a nearby table and chatted for a moment with the occupants, then he smiled, turned,