Bryce looked back over his shoulder. Three tables away Elena was sitting alone in a crowd, picking small pieces of her sandwich with slow, almost mechanical bites.
“Well she wouldn’t write it,” PJ practically snarled. “She didn’t write it.”
Jeff was the first one to respond, and he did so with a nod. “I know she didn’t. Only one person went to the box this morning and I saw who it was.” PJ’s face softened some, just a bitter wariness remaining. The rest were looking at Jeff now, too, and from his pocket he pulled a second note. “This was in with the other one.”
“But you said only one person went to the box,” Bryce said.
“He must have dropped both in together,” Jeff said, giving the note to Joey. “To try and throw us off.”
“He?” PJ asked, culling that one word from what Jeff had told them. Embarrassment was beginning to steal the remaining rough spots from her expression. Why do I let things get to me? It’s all crud. Just crud. Forget about it and get on with things. “Who?”
Jeff motioned to Joey. “Read it.”
Joey opened the second note.
I think we should have a different motto every month.
“What does it say, Joey?” Michael asked. “Who is it?”
Joey folded it again and handed it back to Jeff, who slipped it into his sling with the other one. “It’s Chris.”
“Bickle?” Michael said with not just a little disbelief. “Chris Bickle?”
Joey nodded. “Yes.”
They all looked to each other in stunned silence, then PJ started to look toward—
“Don’t,” Joey said, and PJ’s eyes zipped quickly to him. “Not now, not here.”
Jeff nudged Michael, and Michael scooted down. Jeff slid onto the bench next to Joey.
“We’ll take care of this after school today,” Joey said very evenly. “After the bell we all meet up by room sixteen, right around the corner from the after school game shed. Chris always plays caroms after school on Fridays.”
“That’s right,” Jeff said. “He thinks he’s hot shit with the stick.”
“He’ll go back around by room sixteen to check out a board at the shed,” Joey explained, then added ominously, “And when he does we’ll have a little talk with him.”
Everyone digested that for a few seconds, then Bryce said, “I can’t do it.”
“What do you mean you can’t do it?” Michael challenged his friend. “We’re all in this together.”
Bryce shook his head. “I can’t today. My folks want me home right after school for something.”
Now Michael was feeling the embarrassment of a misplaced accusation. “Oh.”
“You can’t do anything about that,” Joey told Bryce. “We’ll take care of Chris.”
Bryce nodded, wondering what ‘take care of’ meant the way Joey was saying it, and the way everyone was so quick to agree with their leader. And another thing struck him as he listened to them talk softly about the latest note: he was glad he wasn’t on their bad side.
* * *
During the remainder of lunch they refined the plan, so that when the three o’clock bell rang that afternoon Jeff stalled Chris in the classroom with talk of a carom shot he saw someone make the week before.
“It was on the golf board,” Jeff began.
“That’s my favorite,” Chris commented, faking a cue shot to his front as he and Jeff left the room together. Down the way between the bungalows and the fence he didn’t even notice Joey, PJ, and Michael turn quickly around the corner behind Room 16. “I can get a hole in one on the sixth hole now easy. Any day.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said, his head bobbing in challenge. “Well this kid I saw made a hole in one on the fourth hole.”
Chris sneered doubtfully. “No way. You’re dreaming Bernstein. The fourth hole has two wall obstacles; you’ve got to bank off the side of the board and you’ll hit either one or the other. And if you hit one, you can’t make the hole. It’s like a zig zag.” His head shook emphatically. “No way.”
“Yes way,” Jeff said, stealing a glance at the corner ahead. The last few little bodies were coming at them and passing on their way to the main gate. He and Chris were heading toward the back of the campus, which was now practically deserted. Behind room sixteen it would be totally deserted. Almost.
“You need your eyes examined,” Chris said. They were passing the doors to room 16. “No way in a million years could someone make that shot.” Nearing the corner. “It’s im-possible.” At the corner. “You show me the kid who can make that shot...” Turning the corner now, Chris looking to his right at Jeff’s suddenly hateful face. “...and I’ll WHOAAA—”
Michael had Chris by the collar and up against the rough exterior of the bungalow in one quick motion, and put a hand over his mouth to stop any scream the little twerp might be thinking of making. Joey was to his left, and PJ to his right. Jeff was staying close to the corner as a lookout.
“Whmmm! Whmmmm!” The words bounced right off Michael’s stiff palm and tumbled back down Chris Bickle’s throat. His eyes were wide and round like ping pong balls that someone had spotted brown at the center. They were frightened eyes. Frightened eyes looking out at angry eyes. “WHMMMMMM!”
“Shut up!” Joey said harshly, and held his hand out toward Jeff. When it came back the two notes were in it. He took one in hand and held it up in front of Chris’s face, open and very close. “Recognize this, dickweed?!”
Chris couldn’t help but look at what Joey had shoved in front of him, almost touching his nose.
Missed me, missed me, now you’ve got to kiss me.
“Whmmmm!” Joey jerked the note away and they were all hating him with their eyes. Chris tried to shake his head beneath Michael’s strong grip. “Whmmmmm!”
“Liar,” Jeff said from a few feet away. “I saw you!”
“Whmmmmm!”
Joey looked to PJ, then to Chris and said, “Mike will take his hand off your mouth, but if you try to yell or anything you’ll be sorry.”
Chris looked into Michael’s face and believed it. “Ohm Hmay.”
Joey tapped Michael on the shoulder. “Let him loose.”
Michael eased his hand back slowly. As it came away it curled into a fist that Chris could not miss seeing.
“What...” Chris swallowed the wet glob of terror that had been dammed in his mouth. “What’s going on? What’s this about?” He begged the answers like a frightened, cornered mouse might seek mercy from the cat that had just found its secret hole in the floorboards, quick and breathy. I was just looking for cheese. Got a family to feed. Let me go, Mr. Cat, okay? Let me go, okay? “What did I do?”
Joey held the note up again. “You put this in the box today. Huh? Why are you doing this? Huh?”
Chris shook his head so quickly that it seemed a mini-seizure had struck him above the neck. “What is that? I didn’t write that. That’s not mine.”
“Bullshit,” Jeff said. “I saw you put a note in the box today.”
Now his head tremored up and down. “I did put one in.”
Joey snapped the other note open next to the first one.
“Yeah,” Chris said, the bob in his head intensifying. “That’s the one I put in.”
Jeff left the corner and stepped closer. He poked the finger of his good hand at Chris. “You put them both in!”
Side to side again, like some broken toy stuck on a fast No! “No! No, I didn’t! I don’t know where that other one came from. It’s not even in my writing.”
“Yeah,” PJ said. “You were pretty cute with that, weren’t you?”
“What do you mean?!” Chris pleaded now. “I don’t know what you guys are—”
“WHAT is going on back here?”
The five little heads swung toward the voice, and the distance between them seemed to spread as they saw who it was. Michael backed away from Chris, freeing him. Joey and PJ gave Michael space. And Jeff, who was supposed to be watching the corner from which
the intruder had come, took one step back and now stood right next to Chris Bickle.
They all stood there motionless, caught, eyes fixed on their teacher.
Mary crossed her arms and gave each one a good, serious glare. “Would someone please explain to me just what is going on?”
Chris looked at his...captors?...and said, “They grabbed me and said I wrote some note, but I didn’t. I didn’t. I swear.”
Something clicked in Jeff. An idea. Something close to an explanation. It probably wouldn’t get them completely out of trouble for this, but at least they wouldn’t have to tell Miss Austin about the other notes. “Miss Austin?”
“Yes?”
Jeff nodded to Joey, and Joey gave him the notes. He stepped forward and handed them to his teacher. “When I went through the suggestion box today I found both of these. I sit back by it and I only saw Chris go up to it today. No one else.”
Mary read the one about the monthly mottos, then the offending note. Her eyes traveled between her students, skipping Chris. “What is this?”
“It’s just some stupid thing,” Jeff said. He was acting now. Acting his best. Trying not to seem like a guilty kid pretending to be an innocent kid. “I thought Chris was messing around, and, well, I don’t think the suggestion box should be for jokes or stuff like that.”
PJ was catching on. “None of us do.”
Michael nodded, then Joey.
“Really?” Mary said, not buying it and wondering why they were lying to her. When they had never lied before. Why now? If there was one thing she would not tolerate, could not tol...
shhhhhhhh
Jeff averted his eyes apologetically toward the ground.
theylooksosorrytheyreallylooksorrysojustletitpassMARYokaythisisnttheendoftheworldokayMARYjustletitslideMARYokay
...erate.
Tolerate? Tolerate what?
itsnot...
...like it’s the end of the world.
rrrriiiiiight
Mary shook her head at them. “This is not the way we deal with problems.”
All but Chris agreed by shaking their heads.
Mary concerned herself with Chris now. “You’re all right?”
He glanced at his classmates, the ones who had acted like they wanted to brain him just a minute ago. “Well, yeah. I’m okay. Yeah.” He rolled his shoulders, straightening the bunch Michael’s grip had put in his collar. “Yeah.”
Now back to the offenders. “I believe an apology is in order?”
“Sorry, Chris,” Joey said.
“Sorry,” PJ, Jeff, and Michael said together.
He accepted their regrets with a nervous nod, then looked back to his teacher. “Can I go now?”
Mary nodded and he was gone, off to the game shed with frequent glances over his shoulder.
“I think the rest of you should be on your way now,” Mary said. She gave the two notes back to Jeff as he walked by. PJ left, then Michael, his chin almost to his chest. And then Joey passed, looking up at her and saying something, the way his lips moved it looked to her like Sorry. But what came out wasn’t that word, and wasn’t in Joey’s voice. The voice was old and faint, like it was speaking in a distant place and the sound was coming from Joey’s mouth. Just one word, inflected at its end as if a question. One word.
“...Bannister.” Joey’s mouth said, and then he was gone.
Mary put a hand to Room 16's back wall to steady herself. Her knees had turned to jelly, and, worse yet, she had no idea why. It was like her body knew something that her mind didn’t.
* * *
Charlie was there when Mandy got home from school, standing at the foot of her bed as she showed him how she did it. How she ‘got them’.
“See, if you just take your time, it’s not hard at all,” she said, bent over her tablet as before, but this time not drawing. This time she was making words. Demonstrating. She penned, in Guy Edmond’s writing: My name is Guy Edmond and I suck dick.
Mandy covered her mouth with one hand and giggled at what she’d written.
“What?” Charlie asked.
“I’m so baad sometimes.” She tore that sheet from the tablet and put the pen aside, taking a blue crayon from the box. On the clean page she drew a wide arc, its ends pointed up. And above each end and a little bit in she darkened two circles. Then, between them and a little lower, another dark circle. She sat up and held the creation toward Charlie.
“What’s that?”
She frowned. “What does it look like, silly?”
He studied it. “The parts of a happy face. But there’s no big circle around it. It’s just eyes and a nose and a smile.”
“Exactly,” Mandy said. “That’s me when I knew I had fooled them. My smile was so big it was bigger than my face!” She chuckled and put the tablet back on the bed between her outstretched legs. “It was so funny, Charlie. They never even saw me put the note in the box. And then!” She leaned forward with glee. “And then, oh Charlie, then they thought it was someone else!” Her body spasmed with deep laughter, muffled. Laughter that she forced down. Still, her hands clutched her sides as if they were about to split. “It was so funny. I was watching, and I wanted to laugh so bad, but I couldn’t. Because if I did they would have heard me and they would have known I was watching, aaaand they probably would have figured out that it was me that’s been fooling with them and Iiii wouldn’t want to get into trouble...” A sharp giggle burst free, and Mandy quickly clamped her hand over her mouth again.
Charlie’s quiet eyes considered his best friend for a moment, the vapid weight of his expression drawing them down at the corners. “Isn’t that kind of mean?”
“I was just fooling with them, Charlie.” The happiness bubbling within her went from a boil to a simmer. “It’s not like I did anything really bad to them. I wouldn’t.” She gave him a duh look. “I mean, they did do a good thing that day.”
“Which day?”
She shook her head, smiling. “You are positively precious sometimes, Charlie.”
His head tipped a little to the right and he shrugged.
“That day, Charlie? The day Guy went bye bye for good.”
He nodded, then settled into a thought. You couldn’t tell it by the dead mask he had as a face. Everything about Charlie you could tell from his eyes. When he fancied something his pupils would dive down to dots, and when he was thinking, like now, they’d spread into the whites like the growing shadows of an eclipse.
“Mandy?”
She had sensed his question and was working on the picture once again, head bowed as she added pretty brown lashes to the eyes. “What?”
“Did you kill Guy?”
She drew the lashes with care, then exchanged the brown crayon for a red one and started giving the cheeks above the smile a little color. “No.”
“But you know who did,” Charlie said.
Mandy touched her own cheek as she worked the red soft onto the paper.
“Who did it, Mandy?”
She stopped with the crayon and spread the waxy color out evenly with her thumb. “Telling isn’t nice, Charlie.” Her eyes came up from the picture, grim and rigid. “No one likes a tattletale.”
Twenty Nine
He knew something was wrong the moment he saw her drive up.
First of all, his sisters weren’t in the minivan, and that meant plenty in itself, unless God had decided to belatedly answer a prayer he’d sent up in anger some three years earlier after Connie and Bonnie had put his homework in the toilet. It was barely after three and where else would they be? They were almost always with his mom at this time.
Second, there was the way she was looking at him through the windshield. She was smiling, but not in a happy way. It was the kind of smile you put on when you didn’t want anyone to know you were anything but happy. Bryce knew that smile well. He was an expert at it, or had been once. Even though he was very young at the time he could remember the woman he called the adoption lady taking him to an offic
e every few weeks, patting him on the head, and telling him to smile because some nice people were going to take a look at him and, if they liked him enough, they might just take him home for good.
He’d smiled so much like that that it took him a while to remember what a real smile was after some nice people actually did take him home for good. And now one of those nice people was giving him the same smile he was sure he knew better that she did.
And last, when he opened the door and got in, his mom didn’t say anything about his seatbelt. She just started to drive away. Before he even had the buckle in hand. She just drove away.
So he buckled up and said nothing on the short trip home. His mother paid inordinate attention to the turn signals and said nothing herself. Too busy with the signaling and all, son. Sorry. Gotta be careful about these turns, you know.
When they arrived home his mother pulled into the driveway and stopped short of the garage, never even touching the opener clipped to the sun visor.
“I think I’ll park out here for now.” Caroline Hool stole a glance at her son, one too quick to serve any purpose but evasion. She turned off the car and said, “Let’s get inside. Your father and I—”
“Dad’s home?”
“Yes,” Caroline Hool answered, nodding at the steering wheel.
“Are the twins here?” Bryce asked calmly.
His mother shook her head. “Cathy Bowen is watching them for a while.”
“Mom?”
“Yes, Bryce?” she asked the side view mirror.
“Why won’t you look at me?”
‘Don’t be his friend. Make him feel alone. He needs to feel alone. It’ll be much easier that way.’ Caroline Hool sniffled. For who? For who is it going to be easier? “We’d better get inside, Bryce.”
His mom opened the door and pulled the keys from the ignition to stop the chiming. She was waiting by the front steps for him, and walked up behind him like some prison guard, staying right on his heels until he was in the living room.
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