Seven Deadly Pleasures Read Free Page A

tradition. Once, at the climax, Leah Bannister had been leaning against the wall by the door and someone in the hallway had bumped right into that spot. She had burst across the room laughing and screaming.
    Well, risk none win none, right? He walked back to the center of the room. He had never started the Bria Patterson story with the idea of an open book being a doorway. That part was improvised. Quickly, he tried to think of how he could tie it back in, but he came up blank. Would the kids notice the foreshadowing he left dangling in the wind? Too late now.
    "Bria was a third grader," he started. "She lived up in Kensington, by L and Erie. She had a single mom, and she went to school here the year it opened back in 1999. Bria was a white girl, and she always wore her blonde hair in two pigtails on the sides, like the little Swiss Miss character on the hot chocolate can. Now, Bria was known for two things. First, you know the little cross-ties you girls wear? You know how Mrs. Johnson yells and screams when you leave them unsnapped and casual? Well, Bria started that tradition. Ms. Johnson used to fight with her about it all the time; just ask your older brothers and sisters."
    A girl sitting in the second row with expressive eyes, corn rows, and braids to one side said,
    "What's the second thing she was known for, Mr. Marcus?"
    He stepped forward, almost touching the desk of the boy sitting up front. He was so short that his feet didn't hit the floor. He had been slouching way down in his seat the whole period, but he was not slouching now. His hands were folded and his mouth was open. Ben folded his arms.
    "Close your mouth, son. Flies are going to get in there." The kid snapped it shut and there was some nervous laughter. Ben stepped back to his power position in front of the white board.
    "The other thing Bria was known for was her jump rope," he said. "You know how every morning in front of the Korean hoagie shop on the corner the girl's play Double Dutch until the first homeroom bell?"
    Heads nodded.
    "That was not Bria's thing. She didn't have many friends here, and the girls out on Cherry Street never invited her to jump with them. Bria jumped alone. She had a single girl's jump rope that she had probably owned since she was six. It had red painted handles, but they were rubbed down to the wood grains where her thumbs always went. Its cord was a dirty blue and white checkerboard pattern that was worn down to a thread where it always hit the street on each rotation. And Bria was never without her jump rope. It was like that kid with a blanket in that cartoon."
    "Yes!" a heavy girl with big golden earrings exclaimed from the back row. "Like Linus from the Charlie Brown stories!"
    "Right," Ben said. "But think about our skinny hallways. If Bria dragged that jump rope behind her everywhere she went, what do you think happened?"
    The short boy in the front row dropped open his mouth once again. Then his hand shot into the air.
    "Ooooh!" he said.
    "Yes?"
    "People be tripping over it!"
    "Again, right," Ben said. "Other students were always stepping on her jump rope, and Bria was constantly arguing with them. She was always in trouble and a lot of people wondered if she was going to make it here."
    Ben paused for effect.
    "Then, on March 9th, Bria Patterson turned up missing."
    Silence. No one moved, and Ben knew this was the critical point in the story. It was the place where anyone with a shred of common sense could poke a hole as wide as a highway into the logic of the plot. It was time to really sell here. Ben walked a few steps toward the Social Studies room. He stopped at the corner of the first row of desks and personalized the question to a dark-skinned boy with bucked teeth, black goggle glasses, and big pink albino splotches on the side of his neck.
    "I know what you're thinking. If a girl was M.I.A., why didn't anyone hear about it?" He turned to the class. "It is a good question, and my answer is this. Ms.