“I don’t go to church.”
“Great. That’s one less area we have to check.” She paused to catch her breath. “We can so do this.”
Eric looked into her brown eyes, nothing like the sky blue he saw in April’s. He started to say something, paused, chuckled to himself, and then said, “I don’t want to know who it is.”
“What?”
“I said I don’t want to know.” He kicked at the yellow line of the parking space. “It’s no big deal.”
Her eyes went wide, her mouth dropping open. At first she couldn’t get the words out of her head, then they wouldn’t stop.
“You . . . I . . . but . . . she . . . she’s blackmailing you, you idiot. She’s gonna destroy you. How can you say you don’t want to know? You have to know, you have to stop her—we have to stop her. No big deal? No big deal? My god, she . . . she’s gonna tell people. She’s . . . she’s evil. Don’t you see it? You can’t just let her do that to us.”
Eric watched as she jabbed her fingers through her hair, grabbing a fistful in each hand, holding it as she squeezed her eyes shut and breathed through her nose in big, gulping breaths. He was easing the car door open when she looked back up at him, her eyes narrowed and cold.
“You did it, didn’t you?”
He looked away. “Did what?”
“Oh my god. You did,” she said, laughing now. “I can’t believe it. It’s crazy. You went through with it.”
“Calm down. You’re the one who’s crazy,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“No, please,” Shelly said, stepping forward, her hand on his forearm, her voice soft, pleading. “Just tell me. I need to know.”
He stopped, and she waited until he looked back down at her.
“You did everything she told you to do, didn’t you?”
“No,” he said. “Not everything.”
“Like . . . ?”
“I skipped a couple of the days, the harassing-in-school stuff. I figured he’d—she’d—never know.”
“The macaroni and cheese?”
He looked away, smiling an embarrassed smile.
“Wow,” she whispered, her expression changing, mirroring his. “How did you . . . ?”
Eric held out his arm, palm up, then flipped his hand over.
“Yuck.”
“The guy who videotaped it for me put it up on YouTube. It had close to four hundred hits before my little meeting with the admin. They assumed I was behind it and told me to take it down. I figured it was up long enough, so I had him pull it.”
“A friend of yours?”
“More of an acquaintance.”
They stood quiet for a minute, and when Eric sorted through his car keys and turned, Shelly said, “I didn’t do it.”
“Any of it?”
“Of course I did some of it. That’s why I’m here. But ‘concerned adults’ intervened before I got to the . . . whatever,” she said, repeating his plate-flip gesture.
“Still gonna do it?”
Shelly grunted. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can,” Eric said. “I didn’t think I could either, but when it came down to it, I guess I figured I’d get in less trouble dumping mac and cheese on some kid than I would if, you know . . .”
“I agree.”
“Then you gotta do what you gotta do.”
“Believe me, I would,” Shelly said. “But I can’t get near her, I don’t have a video camera, I’m not good with technical stuff, and all we have is stupid chili.”
The chili thing made no sense, but Eric knew where she was going. “You need my help to keep your secret safe.”
“Exactly.”
He shook his head. “No way. I’m in enough trouble. I do something like that again—”
“Not that kind of help. I wanna find out who’s behind all of this and make her stop. I don’t have time to do it alone. With two people we can cross-reference names, compare notes, look at things we have in common. Like I said, we can do this.”
“And like I said, I don’t want to know.”
“You really think she’s going to forget all about your precious secret, that she’s not going to hold it over you? Forever?”
Eric shrugged. “I did what she said to do. So, yeah, I think she’ll keep her side of the deal.”
“Then you’re an idiot.”
“Fine. I’m outta here.”
Eric got in his car and started it up, buckling his safety belt and adjusting the volume down on the radio.
Shelly didn’t move.
He could back out without hitting her, but it’d be close. Instead, he rolled down his window. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a dick about this—”
“You’re doing a good job of it.”
“—but I’ve got enough problems as it is. If I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”
“How?”
He went for his iPhone, remembering just in time the brick-size replacement his mother had made sure she handed to him before he left the house. He reached behind the passenger seat and pulled out his backpack, tore a page out of his science notebook, and passed her a pen. She used the hood of the car as a desk, writing her name in neat, Catholic-school cursive, and under it, her cell and home numbers. She handed him the paper, then asked for his number, and after a second’s pause, he told her. She punched the numbers into her phone with one hand and held out his pen with the other.
“She’s not going to let you go, you know.”
“We’ll see,” he said, shifting into reverse and backing away from her.
Thirteen
THE SECOND QUARTER HAD JUST STARTED WHEN ERIC sat down. His father had the chips and salsa set out already, and his mother was cutting up the Italian subs she had picked up at the deli department of the grocery store. The Cowboys were playing the Steelers, and even though it was still September, the announcers kept talking about playoff implications.
The lectures and long silences had eased up, and it was back close to normal, at least when there was a game on. Eric grabbed a handful of blue corn chips from the bowl. “Did I miss anything?”
“A pair of field goals, a fumble, and that stupid dancing-robot commercial.” His father sipped an Odenbach stout, a dark beer that looked black and tasted like tar. And he drank it warm, which made it even more disgusting. Eric preferred Corona, but since he was underage and only drank at parties at friends’ houses when their parents were out of town, he stuck to Coke.
“Any other games on?”
“Yeah, but I’ve got Pittsburgh’s defense and a Dallas tight end on my fantasy team. I want to see how they look. We’ll switch over at the half.”
The Cowboys had the ball, and they were taking their time moving it down the field, Eric and his father pointing out fouls that weren’t called and open receivers who should have been covered. A run up the middle ended with a pileup at the forty, which led to an injury time-out. His father waited until the commercials started.
“How was your session?”
“It was okay,” Eric said, and normally that would have been it, a few grunted answers and I-don’t-know shrugs. But he knew he wouldn’t get away with that until the whole thing was far enough behind him that they stopped looking for a reason to punish him some more. Till then, they got specific details, complete sentences, plenty of eye contact, and no attitude. “We watched the rest of the film and talked about stuff like our behavior and what we need to do to get our lives back on track. There were only eight of us today, so it was easier to get everybody involved.”
“Where were the rest of them?”
“They got kicked out,” Eric said, exaggerating the little he knew for effect. “Ms. Owens said that they didn’t accept responsibility for what they did, and that that was one of the things you have to do to complete the program.”
His father looked at him. “What about you?”
“I’m done. Today was the last day.”
“N
ot that,” his father said. “Do you accept responsibility for what you did?”
“That’s what the essay was about. It was, like, ten pages long, handwritten. It must have been okay, since they passed me.”
His father’s expression changed—part smile, part frown. “I don’t care if you passed or not. I want to know the truth.”
The truth?
Impossible.
Because the truth meant telling him about the caller.
And the caller only made sense if he told his dad about the picture the caller now had.
And there was no way that was ever going to happen.
The bullying, the mac and cheese, the suspension, getting grounded, the two-day course—he went through all of it to keep people from knowing about that picture.
But that wasn’t the question.
What his father wanted to know is if he accepted responsibility for the things he had done to Connor Stark, and the answer to that was easy.
“I was . . . it was . . . all my fault. I’m . . . I’m sorry, Dad—”
Just not easy to say.
His father nodded and looked away. “Well . . .” After a quiet moment, he pointed to the screen and said, “There’s that stupid robot again.”
Eric watched the commercial, and when the game resumed, he shared his father’s excitement for the interception and runback. For an hour and a half, they talked about amazing plays, overrated players, bad commercials, and the weather, neither one of them going anywhere near the reason why Eric would be spending the week at home. But it hung there in the room, and no matter how loud they cheered, he could hear a strange sadness in his father’s voice.
He had never thought about his “relationship” with his parents. They were his parents, and that was all there was to it. Oh, sure, it was different from what his friends had, and they liked to say how they wished their parents were as cool as his, but Eric knew that that didn’t mean anything—every kid said stuff like that, everybody else’s parents somehow better than your own. Looking back, though, he wondered how he’d missed just how right his friends had been.
But things had changed, and it bothered him that he couldn’t figure out exactly how.
Because if he couldn’t figure out how things were different, he couldn’t make them right again.
What he’d done to Connor Stark was wrong, no way around it. But what he’d done to his parents was worse. The way his father had apologized to the principal, how his mother would tear up when she tried to talk to him? He felt like shit just thinking about it.
Then he’d think about the caller and the picture and he’d want to puke.
Well, nothing he could do about it now.
He’d done what he had to do.
And that girl—Shelly?—she was wrong. The caller would keep his end of the bargain, Eric was sure of it.
Or her end.
Whatever.
He was just glad it was over.
There was no way he could go through that again.
Sunday night, 9:30. Eric’s phone rang.
He was sitting in his bed, reading Travels with Charley for English, one of the three books Ms. Salatel had assigned when they suspended him. In class they were reading Of Mice and Men, and he’d have to read that, too, writing the same essay as the others, plus a compare-and-contrast essay they didn’t have to do. It was like that in all of his classes: piled-on work, part of his punishment.
The book was pretty good, which was a surprise, and he was so into it that he didn’t notice that there was no caller ID number when he answered.
Then he heard the static.
“Hello, Eric.”
He sat up. His left hand closed into a tight fist. He tried to picture a girl behind the booming baritone voice. Then he remembered that it was over, he’d done his part, it was time to let it go. He turned up the stereo in case his parents walked by, forced himself to take a slow, deep breath, and got right to it.
“Did you see the video?”
“Yes.”
“It had four hundred hits before the school made me take it down.”
“Closer to three hundred,” the caller said.
“Yeah, well, still, that’s a lot of hits for only being up a couple of hours.”
Static.
“I used three servings of macaroni and cheese,” Eric said, pacing the room, moving the call along. “And I waited until he looked up at me, just like you said to do.”
Static.
“I got in big trouble for this, you know. They gave me a week’s suspension, plus I had to go to this antibullying class.”
Static.
“My parents are really pissed off.”
Static.
“I’m probably grounded for the rest of the year.”
Static.
“Look, I did what you said, so now—”
“You didn’t follow my instructions.”
Eric stopped. “Huh?”
“You didn’t do what I told you to do.”
“I did so,” he said, his voice rising an octave. “I dumped a plate of mac and cheese on his head in the cafeteria. In front of everybody. That’s what you said.”
“There was more.”
“Okay, okay, listen,” he said, the words rushing together. “All right, yes, I skipped a couple of the days harassing him in school, but I had to. He was going to tell somebody, and then I would have gotten suspended before I could do the whole cafeteria thing.”
“That’s not it.”
“You mean about YouTube? Hey, it got posted. You saw it yourself. I can’t help it that the school made me take it down.”
“No. Something else. Something important.”
“Bullshit. I did everything you said.”
Static.
“Tell me,” Eric said. “What did I miss?”
“I said it had to be done on Thursday.”
“I did,” he said, mouth tight so he couldn’t shout. “Last Thursday. First lunch. Around ten forty. You can see the cafeteria clock right on the video.”
Static.
“What, you don’t believe me? I can send you the letter the school sent my parents. It’s got all the details.”
“Not that Thursday,” the caller said. “This Thursday.”
“That’s it? I’m a week early?”
“I was very specific as to when it had to be.”
“Uh-uh,” Eric said, shaking his head. “You never said it had to be this Thursday.”
“I told you it had to—”
“You’re crazy. You didn’t tell me that.”
Static.
“You never said a word about it being on a specific Thursday.”
Static.
“And what difference does it make, anyway? It was a Thursday. It’s the same thing.”
Static.
“Oh, what, now you’re not going to say anything?”
Static.
Eric waited.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty.
He was about to hang up when the caller spoke.
“Do it again.”
Eric froze.
“You were a week early,” the caller said. “You’ll have to do it all again.”
“No way. I’m done. I did what you told me to do.”
“You have no choice, Eric.”
“We had a deal,” he said, then he said it again, keeping his voice down, adding more, saying the things he’d been wanting to say since the first call, stringing the swear words tight together as he slammed his fist against his thigh, his face hot and his head pounding from deep inside.
He paused to catch his breath, the static roaring between them.
“I’m not doing it again,” he said.
“Yes, you will. You’ll do it again. You have to. Because if you don’t, I’ll send that picture to everyone you know,” the caller said. “Starting with April.”
The static faded in and out, then dropped off to nothing as the line went de
ad.
Fourteen
SHELLY WAS SITTING AT THE TABLE, MOVING SOGGY Cheerios around in the bowl, when Jeff came down the stairs and into the kitchen. He didn’t jump when he finally noticed her, but for a flash of a second he had that look again, as if he was trying to place where he had seen this girl before. He turned on the water and let it run as he got a bag of Starbucks Blue Java out of the fridge. Shelly watched him scoop the grounds into a paper filter, watched his lips twitch as he worked out what to say, settling, as always, on the predictable.
“No school today?”
Shelly was tempted to say yes and leave it at that. It would be the answer he’d want to hear, because that would mean the conversation would be over and he could wait in silence for the coffee to brew. It would also mean that she wouldn’t have to say anything to him, either, and that was always the right answer. But she was going to be home for the whole week—they would probably bump into each other a few more times, and that would mean more questions. Better to get a good multimorning reason out there first thing.
“I was suspended, remember?”
He tapped the top of the machine, prodding it to brew faster. “Oh, yeah,” he said, either to himself or to Mr. Coffee.
Jeff had moved out right after Shelly was born.
Her parents had never divorced, but that was because they had never bothered to get married. She had vague memories of him stopping by over the years, but they were so random and disconnected that she could’ve imagined them, putting his face and grunted words on some other scrawny white guy’s body. Real or not, the visits stopped years before her mother started seeing Aaron, a guy she worked with at Home Depot. When Aaron was offered an assistant manager’s position at a new store, the three of them moved east, two hundred and twenty miles down the highway.
Aaron was okay. He was crazy about her mother and never looked at Shelly in that creepy way new stepfathers always did in the books she read. And he wasn’t obsessed with being a “dad.” If she wanted to talk to him, great—if not, oh well, he was cool with that, too. Without ever saying it, they had agreed to not make each other’s lives difficult. No drama, no power plays, getting along because it was easier than not getting along.
Cold Calls Page 7
