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he adventure actually had the effect we'd intended, though Tim's death crushed any possibility of satisfaction. We did not return to school after the accident, Kavanagh never again mentioned our comic-book obscenity, and Blessed Heart graduated us, though I didn't attend the ceremony. Our gang became legendary. The local TV stations sent crews to Marshland Island and interviewed Paul Steatham. There were wobbly close-ups of a stain on the wood of the observation platform, supposedly from Tim, and ominous shots of the empty bobcat pen. The cats had all been destroyed by the police. A group of citizens got very angry about that, and I agreed with them. It was our fault, not the bobcats'. I spent so much lonely time in my room that summer that I became very good at drawing. That and Margie Flynn sustained me through the miseries of high school, after most of my friends had moved away. A couple of years ago I stopped in Tennessee to visit Rusty Scalisi, who was working for his father, running a contracting company. We got very drunk at a hamburger bar, and I suggested that if Tim was alive he'd either be some kind of folk-hero artist or a radical crusader. Rusty said, "He wouldn't be alive now, even if he hadn't gotten killed when he did. People 185 Hof Appvove

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