Snow Globes and Hand Grenades Read Online Free Page B

it was all about and stopped dead on the hillside.
    â€œThe snow globe!” Patrick whispered.”
    â€œWho else did you tell about it?”
    â€œNobody.”
    â€œThat’s good. Just remember, God is on our side, and if you have to, lie about everything.”
    They shook on it and went inside to take their seats in Miss Kleinschmidt’s classroom. Patrick wondered if this would be the day he and Tony would finally get into some real trouble and get to head for the tracks.

CHAPTER 6
    PATRICK SAT AT HIS DESK relaxing with a paperback about bank robber John Dillinger, while Tony read
The Scarlet Letter
to prepare for writing a late book report. Mimi picked at her fingernails and wondered why her public school boyfriend hadn’t called for so long. What was he doing right now? Was he thinking of her? Did he still love her? She looked up at Miss Kleinschmidt and wondered if she had ever been in love. Not likely, Mimi thought. Who would love someone as mean as her?
    The whole class held a grudge against Miss Kleinschmidt. Earlier that month, she had promised to let them go to the zoo for the spring field trip. But on the day of the trip, a blooming May morning, she rescinded the offer. “Your scores on the science test were abysmal,” she told the class. “Some of you don’t even know all the planets.” That’s when she turned to Tony in the front row and used him as an example. “Mr. Vivamano, you could only name Earth, Pluto, the moon, and the sun, two of which aren’t even planets.”
    Tony hung his head and Miss Kleinschmidt kept after him. “Do you expect to just waltz into that prep school … where is it you’re accepted?”
    â€œSt. Aloysius,” Tony said.
    â€œThat’s it, St. Aloysius. You expect to just waltz in there on the first day of high school, knowing you’re on earth, but not knowing the rest of the planets?”
    â€œI’ll never leave earth,” Tony said shrugging.
    She smacked her hand on his desk. “You’ll never leave
here
until you know the solar system. Tell me, if you can, what’s the temperature of the sun? Where is it hottest?”
    â€œJuly?”
    Everyone sunk down in their desks and unzipped their windbreakers for a full review of the solar system. By the end of the morning, every kid in the eighth grade knew that the hottest part of the sun was the core, that it’s twenty-seven million degrees Fahrenheit, and every kid wished Miss Kleinschmidt was there.
    Miss Kleinschmidt hadn’t given another thought to canceling the zoo trip. She’d been preoccupied with following the news about President Nixon, and this morning was no different. She had her head buried in the newspaper reading an article about how Nixon said he had “no knowledge” of burglars breaking into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel when there was a knock at the door. She placed her newspaper on the desk and stood as all the students looked up.
    It was Father Ernst and Detective Kurtz. Even as they greeted Miss Kleinschmidt, they studied the eyes of the students as if trying to sift their very souls from a distance. Patrick marked the page on his Dillinger book and turned it upside down on his desk.
    â€œClass, these two men are here to help us,” Miss Kleinschmidt said, coughing up a glob of phlegm, then swallowing it back down. She nodded at the priest and he stepped forward as she retreated to the back of the classroom.
    Father Ernst was a tall, thin man with high cheekbones, short black hair and brown bulging eyes. Those eyes! They looked out at the class like the eyes on a church statue, when the air smells of burning candles and you remember about the money you stole, or the curse words you said, or the lie you told your mother. And then he spoke. His voice was even worse. His voice was deep and arresting like a sudden sermon.
    â€œIn 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared to three