Blue Angel Read Free

Obvious, fake, schematic.O. Henry high school shit. You don’t order chicken in a pizza joint, you don’t molest poultry just because your rival’s restaurant serves it. But it’s always tricky when the entire class approves some damaging “improvement.” Then Swenson can either keep silent or play the snobbish elitist spoiler. So what if he’s the teacher? Why should his stupid opinion matter? “Do you all agree with that?” Please, won’t somebody say no?
    â€œI think it sucks,” a high voice pipes up, and they all turn toward Angela Argo.
    Angela Argo hasn’t talked in class since the start of the semester when they went around the room awkwardly saying their names. A skinny, pale redhead with neon-orange and lime-green streaks in her hair and a delicate, sharp-featured face pierced in a half-dozen places, Angela (despite the heat) wears a black leather motorcycle jacket and an arsenal of chains, dog collars, and bracelets.
    The quiet ones always spook Swenson. God knows what they’re thinking. But the metallic Angela is a special pain in the ass. Because she never speaks, and restricts her commentary to eloquent, disruptive squirming and sighing, her presence is a lit firecracker sparking in their midst. Swenson can hardly look at her because of the facial piercing. Now she rat-tats a spiked ring against the edge of the table.
    â€œAngela, are you saying that to rewrite the story that way would…suck?” asks Swenson, reflexively ironic and reflexively sorry. What if Angela thinks he’s mimicking her and retreats again into silence?
    â€œIt would suck big-time,” Angela says.
    Precisely at that moment, they feel the seismic tremor, the middle-ear pressure change that warns them, seconds in advance: the bells are going to ring. The Euston bells are in the cupola just above them. When they ring the hour, halfway through Swenson’s class, the slow funereal chiming vibrates in the bones. Conversation stops. Let the professors who covet this classroom—who hear the bells ringing sweetly from across the campus—deal with this every week.
    The students reflexively check their watches, then look sheepishly at Swenson for direction: their teacher whose puny power has been trumped by two hunks of swinging bronze. Sometimes Swenson smiles, or shrugs, or makes a gun with his fingers and shoots the tolling bells. Today he looks at Angela, as if to keep her there. As soon as it’s quiet, he wants her to continue where she left off and rescue Danny—as Swenson cannot—from further ruining his story. But he can’t predict what she’ll say. He’s never seen a line of her writing or heard her express an opinion. Maybe she’ll tell Danny to rewrite the story from the chicken’s point of view. But at least she’s swimming against the tide and may create an eddy into which Swenson can jump and stem the flood rushing Danny to wreck what little he’s got. As long as Swenson isn’t the only one to ruin the collective good mood with his know-it-all pronouncements…. After all, what does he know? He’s only published two novels, the second of which was so critically successful that even now, ten years later, he’s still asked, though more rarely, to give readings and write reviews.
    The bells strike twice for each hour. Each time, the students flinch.
    Swenson stares at Angela, who stares back, neither curious nor challenging, combative nor seductive, which is partly why he can look at her with the whole class watching. Nor does he see her, exactly, but just allows his slightly out-of-focus gaze to linger on her until he senses restlessness in the room and notices that the bells have stopped.
    â€œAngela? You were telling us…?”
    Angela stares at her hands, twisting a ring on one finger, then moves on to another ring, twists that one, five maddening fingers on one hand, five more on the