Michael and Joey came out together and looked past the tide of students spilling from the bungalows toward the main building. Their own classmates moved past them like water flowing around a midstream rock.
“Where is he?” Joey asked the sea of little bodies. “He just went to lock the room. He should’ve been back by now.”
“He forgot a book, too, I think,” Michael said.
“Sometimes I think that cast cuts off the blood to his brain.” Joey looked back into the auditorium. His budding good looks were lost somewhere in the half sneer that took over his face as he saw PJ still sitting in the front row gawking at the stage. “And what is she doing in there? You’d think she never saw anyone sing before.”
“It’s Elena,” Michael said, as if revealing the obvious to his ill-tempered friend. “Did you expect her to be up there singing solo?”
After a moment Joey shook his head and ran a hand over his hair. He breathed deep and said, “He wouldn’t even look at me today.”
“Me either,” Michael said.
Joey stared at his feet, but not for long, because a pair of smallish sneakers he recognized moved very quickly by. When he looked up and turned away from the auditorium he saw that Michael was already moving, following Bryce as he hurried toward the main building.
Michael had seen his best friend coming out, emerging from the auditorium’s dim interior to the soft, warm light of the waning afternoon. He had fixed a neutral gaze on the bespectacled face he had grown up with, but the little eyes behind the glasses never met his. Never even seemed to notice him. A deliberate, very obvious action by inaction.
“Bryce, wait up,” Michael called to his best friend as he trotted to catch up. But Bryce wasn’t waiting. In fact, as Michael could see, he was moving faster, heading for the main building and the crush of students funneling through the open double doors. “Bryce! Hey!”
But he never looked back, and Michael gave up the short pursuit and watched Bryce become part of the crowd that disappeared into the long hall of the main building. He stood there for a long time and stared at the backs of all the little heads moving away. He stood there and, as he had the day before, asked himself why his best friend was doing this. Why Bryce was giving him the cold shoulder. Giving them all the could shoulder. He wanted to ask Bryce that. He wanted to talk to his best friend. Just talk, for crying out loud!
But his best friend didn’t seem to care. Maybe they weren’t best friends anymore, Michael was beginning to think. Maybe they weren’t even friends. And if they weren’t that, then what were they?
“Hey,” Joey said, coming up quietly behind. The music from the auditorium had quieted now, Elena’s surprisingly bright song over.
“Hey,” Michael responded automatically, but didn’t even look at his friend. Didn’t even see Miss Austin and Elena walk past and into the main building. Didn’t notice PJ coming up to join him and Joey. He was there, but not his thoughts.
“Hey, she was good!” PJ commented spryly. She bounced down to one knee and, setting her books temporarily on the ground, tried to retie the short, frayed laces of one sneaker. “I’m glad we don’t have to sing. Give me the refreshment stand any day.”
“Yeah,” Joey agreed without much interest, but that changed when he thought more about what PJ had said. None of the council would be performing with their class on Wednesday night. They would all be in the auditorium’s foyer selling refreshments to the parents and teachers and anyone else who got thirsty or needed a cookie or a donut to tide them over. That was their job for the evening, the proceeds going toward the trip to Camp One Wing. Their responsibility. All of theirs. “Mike.”
“Yeah?” Why, Bryce? Why?
“We’ll talk to him Wednesday night,” Joey said. PJ was on her feet again, books held to her chest, her gleeful mood of a moment before driven down by what she sensed now from Joey and Michael. “He can’t run away then. He’s got to be there.” Joey gave his friend a stout slap on the back. “We’ll talk to him then.”
“Bryce wouldn’t talk to him?” PJ asked Joey.
“I’m not invisible, PJ,” Michael said before Joey could answer, his back still toward them. “Bryce may think so but I am here. Okay?”
She looked to Joey, but he gave her a ‘forget it’ shake of the head.
“He’s coming,” Michael said, surprising them.
“Who?” Joey asked, and Michael pointed off across the field. Jeff was running their way.
“Where was he?” PJ asked.
“Locking the room and getting a book or something,” Joey answered.
Michael turned back just before Jeff reached them and said to Joey and PJ, “Sorry. It’s bugging me, too.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Joey said, recalling his own funk of a few minutes earlier. He had to remember that he was their leader. That he had to set a kind of example for them. It was difficult, especially with Bryce acting the way he was and doing what he was, but that only meant he had to try that much harder. He couldn’t let it get to him like it had. Because now Michael was feeling it. Joey knew he had to stay focused. He had to believe, and keep them believing. “Bryce won’t say anything.”
“Wanna bet?” Jeff asked gruffly as he came to a quick stop, his shoes squeaking on the pavement. He held something out to Joey. They all knew what it would be.
“What does it say this time?” Joey asked, subdued but steady. He stared at the folded slip of paper, hating it with his eyes.
“Read it,” Jeff said, but Joey just kept staring at it, his hands working into loose fists at his side.
After a few seconds PJ took the slip from Jeff’s outstretched hand and opened it. She read the four words to herself, looked at her friends, and then read them again.
“What does it say?” Joey asked.
PJ looked up and held the slip out toward him. Michael and Joey read it together. It was a warning.
He’s going to tell.
* * *
Dinner at the Bauer household ended with cherry pie and Katrina Bauer taking their baby girl into the bedroom for her feeding.
“The mam express rides again,” Joel commented to Dooley, who had accepted the dinner invitation willingly and seemed perfectly pleasant during the entire meal. Even now he was carving little chunks of the pie with his fork and smiling at his host’s subtle joke about breast feeding. Quite unlike the person Joel had known only superficially over the previous weeks. Something had changed. Something had happened. Joel looked to his nine year old son, who was scraping the last bits of glossy pie filling left on his plate. “David, you want to take some of these plates in.”
“Is that a question, dad?” David asked with bright eyes and a devilish grin as he cleaned the sweet taste of cherries from his fork.
“Yeah, it is,” Joel responded, putting fingers to his forehead and closing his eyes tight. “And you know what? Bauer the Great, who sees the future, knows your answer.” His eyes opened on his precocious son. “Do you?”
David sighed and nodded, then took his father’s plate and his own. “Are you done, Detective Ashe?”
Dooley scooped the last bit of pie into his mouth and handed the plate over. “Thanks.”
“You have homework,” Joel said as his boy disappeared into the kitchen.
“I know, I know,” David said. Dishes clinked in and water ran before he settled into a chair on the far side of the living room and opened a math book and a folder on his lap.
“Is he a good student?” Dooley asked quietly. Across the table Joel gave his boy a quick look and nodded.
“He works hard. Average, maybe a little above.”
“Fourth grade?”
“Yep.” Joel knew where Dooley was heading. “Maybe next year he’ll have superteacher.”
“You read the files, too.”
Joel nodded. “Can’t argue with success.” He took a long, contemplative sip of iced tea. “Though it would be nice to know where that success went wrong with our six little darl
ings.”
Dooley cleaned the cherry pie crust from his teeth with a sweep of his tongue. “I may have that pretty soon.”
“Bryce?”
“Yeah.” Dooley leaned forward, elbows on the table, his fingers rubbing at the pattern embroidered on the linen tablecloth. “He didn’t do it.”
Joel, too, leaned close now and kept his voice low. “That was the standard response, Dooley. From all of them.”
“I’m not telling you what he told me. I’m telling you what I know.”
“What you know?” Joel repeated. Doubt edged his words.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, fine. Bryce didn’t do it. Who did?”
“Dad, what’s nine times twelve?”
Joel’s head turned slowly toward the living room. “Is that one of your problems? I emphasize, one of your problems?”
David frowned and looked back down at his math book, tapping the page with the eraser end of a pencil.
“Who did it?” Joel asked Dooley again.
“He hasn’t told me yet.”
“I thought you said—”
“I said pretty soon,” Dooley interjected. “But before that happens I want something.”
“You want something?”
“Yeah.”
Joel’s hands parted, begging explanation. “What sort of something?”
“Immunity for Bryce.”
Joel’s head bowed toward the table and his hands came together in a clasp.
“Whatever he says, even if it implicates himself in part of it, he walks away.” Dooley cocked his head as Joel looked up. “That’s what I want. Period. Otherwise, I walk away now and you go at it yourself.”
“What am I supposed to say?” Joel asked, straightening now. “What? ‘Hey you, thanks for getting rid of the school bully and ratting on your friends. Here’s a get out of jail free card’. Is that what you want?”
“Yeah.”
Joel sat back in his chair and shook his head. “They killed another kid, Dooley. If this kid was part of it and he walks away, what’s he going to do in five years? In ten years? Huh?”
“Yes or no?” Dooley pressed.
“Why are you doing this for him?”
“For him?” Dooley asked. “This isn’t just for him. This is for me, too.”
Joel eyed him suspiciously. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t need another Jimmy Vincent on my conscience. My Sundays are booked. I’m not connecting with another kid just to see him get locked away and take a piece of me with him. No way. I gave my pound of flesh, or whatever it is. So either Bryce Hool gets immunity, or I leave now. Right now. That’s the deal.”
Joel turned away for a moment as his thoughts fought it out. Any decision on immunity ultimately wasn’t his to make. But, if he recommended it to the powers that did make such decisions, he had no doubt that it would be granted. And Bryce Hool would get off scot-free. Blood on his hands and scot-free.
“You don’t have a choice,” Dooley said.
“Sure I do. I have a bad choice, and a worse choice.”
“Make the right choice,” Dooley suggested.
Right, wrong. What the hell did that matter any more, Joel thought. “Fine. Bryce Hool is untouchable.”
“Good,” Dooley said, sitting back and nodding at the man who’d brought him into this. “Good.”
Thirty Three
Tuesday after school Mary had a visitor.
Willa Markworth came to her daughter’s classroom five minutes after the three o’clock bell and was greeted with a hug.
“How are you?” Mary asked as she pulled back from the brief embrace, her hands gripping Willa’s supportively.
“I’m okay,” Willa Markworth lied, smiling. She eased her hands from Mary and folded them over her bulging belly.
Mary already had two chairs waiting by the side of her desk, both adult-size. She directed her visitor to one and sat in the other, their knees close.
“Mrs. Nelson is letting Elena help with something in the office,” Willa said, explaining her daughter’s whereabouts. One hand moved to the side of her stomach and began rubbing slow ovals over the hard knot beneath her flesh that was her unborn child’s head. The other unslung her purse and held it on her lap.
Mary watched her visitor with a quiet jealousy. There was a little person hidden inside. A pure creation. “Any movement yet?”
“Oh, little kicks every now and then,” Willa answered. She giggled wistfully and said, “When I was carrying Elena it was like there was this little earthquake inside me. She wanted out bad. I thought for a while that I had a bird inside. You know, it was just going to peck right on out.”
“She was eager,” Mary commented.
“She sure was,” Willa agreed. Suddenly sad, she looked down toward the life growing inside her and said, “Thank you for seeing me today.”
Mary leaned forward and put a hand on Willa’s knee. “Is something wrong, Willa?”
“Wrong?” She sniffled and looked up, her brave eyes wet. The pale brightness of the overhead fluorescents robbed their color, making them seem all whites for a second. “I need to ask you some things. Elena’s doctor asked me to talk to you.”
Mary nodded seriously. “Of course, Willa. Anything.”
“She’s been seeing a... A psychiatrist since everything happened. Because she was having trouble at night. Trouble sleeping through.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mary said, her eyes flicking right toward a sound tickling her ears. Her heart instinctively sped up, if only a few beats. She didn’t like sounds of late, especially those that came without expectation. Even a sound as innocent as this one, a soft click, like a switch being thrown or a latch opening. And not so innocent for that very reason. There was no door, no light switch to her right.
“She’s been waking up in the middle of the night,” Willa began to explain.
Mary forced her attention back to her visitor. Her eyes moved reluctantly, and the words she was hearing stretched long as they left Will Markworth’s mouth.
idontthinkyouneedtohearthisMARYireallydont
Mary’s vision fuzzed at the edges. A foggy halo wrapped Willa Markworth’s form.
“She’s been waking up and...”
youdontneedtohearthisMARYyoudontHAVEtohearthisMARYyoudont
Stop talking to me! Stop it!
And then, in the time it takes to blink, the soft world outside winked to black and Mary saw the hot white eye of the hound open within. It glowed at her from the darkness behind her eyes, narrowing as if angry, unflinching for a time that was interminable and brief all at once.
“...screaming.”
The hound’s eye was gone without flourish and she was looking out again. At Willa Markworth’s fleeing gaze, examining the colorful bulletin boards now, the ones half covered with ‘A’ papers. Mary pulled a deep and quiet breath through her nose. All was clear before her. Elena’s pregnant mother. The empty desks behind her. The back wall and the small aquarium with bubbles trickling up from an open treasure chest. Everything was defined again. What was there, outside of her, was all there. Very crisp and very real.
And inside? Was that real?
Mary had that tenuous sensation again, as if her atoms were rebelling, fighting to spin free of the forces that bound them. That bound her.
I am here, she told herself, fighting the feeling, the...whatever. Just fighting to...hold on.
On to what?
I am here, and I am real! I am talking!
youretalkingtoyourselfMARYandyouknowhowthatmakesyoulookMARYitmakesyoulook—
I’m not crazy!
theydontletcrazypeopleteachMARY
I’m not crazy! I’m not!
crazypeopletalktothemselvesMARY
“Screaming, you said?” Mary blurted out. Speaking simply to be speaking to someone and not to herself, though a little too loud. Willa Markworth looked back to her.
“Yes. Like she’s having a terrible nightmare.”<
br />
Mary nodded with concern. Screaming at night? Screaming at... “You said something about Elena’s doctor.”
“Yes. She wanted me to ask the people who deal with Elena on a daily basis about her...behavior.”
“Her behavior? She’s no trouble, Willa. She’s a perfect little girl.” Perfect? “She has been a bit withdrawn lately, but that doesn’t seem out of the ordinary considering what she’s been through.”
Willa Markworth nodded and stared at her knees for a moment.
“But she’s coming out of that,” Mary added, sensing her visitor’s distress and wanting to give her something positive. “Just yesterday, when I asked if anyone wanted to perform a solo number in the Autumn Pageant, Elena volunteered. She was wonderful during our first practice. And even better today. She really looked like she was enjoying it.”
Willa Markworth pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped her nose. “Elena had some tests on Saturday, and on Sunday she met with her doctor again. There was a...breakthrough.”
youdontneedtohe—
I’m not listening to you! Crazy people listen to voices in their head.
“That’s good, right?” Mary said.
Willa Markworth’s chin moved in what might have been a nod, but one that seemed embarrassed at its source. “I suppose.”
What is going on? Mary put a hand on her visitor’s knee once again. “Willa?”
youreallydon—
Shut up!
“What is it, Willa?”
Willa Markworth blew a small, wet sniffle into the tissue and shook her head. “I can’t get into some things right now. Elena’s doctor thinks it’s best to keep certain...things private for now.”
“Of course.”
“But, like I said, she wanted me to ask about Elena’s behavior. Whether you’ve noticed anything odd.”
“Odd how?”
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