“I’m not hungry.”
Half an hour later when she called me to come and eat, I didn’t answer. She didn’t call again. I heard dishes clinking in the kitchen. I smelled food—I think it was Neil’s meatloaf. I didn’t like Neil, but he made good meatloaf. My stomach rumbled. My mouth watered. But I stayed in my room until the next morning after both Neil and my mom had gone to work.
My mom had left my lunch on the kitchen table in a brown paper bag. I peeked inside. It was a thick meatloaf sandwich. It looked so good that I ate it for breakfast. It put me in a good mood—until I got to school and found Jana waiting at my locker.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said.
She was sorry? I was the one who had been mean to her. Why was she apologizing?
“I guess I did sort of come across like some kind of know-it-all,” she said. “And then I got all emotional. I hate that. I hate when I cry in front of people. Especially people I don’t know very well.”
She meant people like me.
“I was embarrassed,” she said. “I mean, I never hit people. Never.”
Unlike me.
“And then...” Her cheeks turned pink. “Do you know Alicia Seretta?”
I nodded.
“Well, she said something stupid. Normally I would have ignored her. I guess I should have. But I didn’t.”
“What did she say?”
Jana studied me for a minute, like she was trying to decide if I was really interested. Or maybe she was trying to decide if she wanted to stand there and talk to me when she could have been hanging out with her millions of friends.
“Alicia did some community service at a seniors’ center,” she said finally. “She was telling everyone how much she hated it. She said old people were a waste of space. We got in an argument and...” She shook her head. “I’ve never slapped anyone before. But she wouldn’t stop. It’s like she thinks if you’re old, you’re useless, and, well, I guess it got to me because my grandma is in the hospital.”
Oh.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Is she sick?”
“Someone pushed her down and stole her purse,” she said. “She hit her head really hard. She’s seventy-five years old.” Her eyes started to fill up with tears again. She wiped at them with the back of her hand. “Here I go again,” she said. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I just wanted to tell you that. And if you ever need help with math or anything, you can ask me.”
She turned then and ran down the hall to the girls’ bathroom. I watched the door close behind her. I wondered where her grandma lived. I wondered what the chances were.
chapter eight
No way, I told myself. It’s a big city. It was just a weird coincidence that someone had stolen Jana’s grandma’s purse.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I watched for Jana in the hall that afternoon, but I didn’t see her anywhere. So at the end of the day, I went up to a girl who I knew was a friend of Jana’s and I asked her where Jana’s locker was. The girl looked at me like I was crazy—like, why was a guy like me even thinking about Jana, let alone looking for her locker? She told me, but the way she said it, she made it sound like it was a waste of her breath and would be a waste of my time to go to Jana’s locker. I told myself that I should forget it. I didn’t want to run into that girl again. But I had to find out.
I headed down the hall the girl had told me. Sure enough, there was Jana. There were some other kids in the hall too, taking stuff out of their lockers and putting stuff in. But none of them were anywhere near Jana. I took a deep breath and started toward her.
Jana didn’t notice me at first. She was busy putting books into her backpack. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just stood there and watched her. She jumped when she finally turned around and saw me.
“Hey, Kaz,” she said. That surprised me. My school is big, but it’s not that big, so I guess it didn’t mean anything that she knew my name. But I had never heard her say it before. There was something about a girl like Jana knowing my name and saying it that made me feel good.
“I was thinking about what you said about your grandmother,” I said.
Her cheeks turned pink.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I told you I didn’t like to cry in front of people, and then I burst into tears all over again.”
“You don’t have to keep apologizing,” I said. “When people are sad, they cry.” My mom sure did. “It’s natural. Anyway, I was wondering about your grandmother. Is she going to be okay?”
“She didn’t break anything when she fell,” Jana said. Anger flashed in her eyes. “I mean, when she got knocked down. But she hit her head on the sidewalk, so they’re keeping her in the hospital for observation. They want to make sure that there’s no permanent damage.”
“Did she see who did it?” I hoped it sounded like a normal question that anyone might ask.
“I’m not sure,” Jana said. “We went to the hospital to see her, but she was sleeping. The nurse said she seemed disoriented.” Her lower lip started to tremble. “That could mean some kind of brain damage. Or it could just be something temporary. We don’t know yet. I’m going to see her again today. I hope she’s okay. And I hope she saw who did it and that the police catch the person. It’s bad enough stealing from her. But knocking down an old person like that? You could kill them.”
I felt sick inside. If it was a coincidence, it was the world’s biggest one.
“Did she have a lot of valuable stuff in her purse?”
“She told one of the paramedics that she didn’t have much money in her wallet,” Jana said.
I felt even sicker. There hadn’t been much money in the purse I had taken.
“But all her ID was in there, and it’s going to be a hassle to replace. The thing that’s really horrible, though, is the watch.”
I thought about the little box that Drew had found inside the purse I had taken.
“She talked to my dad just before she left her apartment that day. She had a watch in her purse—a watch that she was going to send to my brother.”
“But it’s—” I stopped myself just in time. I had been going to say that the watch was rusted and didn’t even work.
Jana frowned at me. “It’s what?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Can’t she just buy another watch?”
Jana shook her head.
“This watch is special. It belonged to my grandma’s older brother. He was a pilot during World war Two. His plane was shot down over the jungle in Burma. You know where that is?”
I nodded, even though I was pretty sure I’d never even heard of a place called Burma.
“My grandma says she can still remember the day they sent someone to her house. She says it was the minister of her parents’ church. He came to tell them that her brother was missing.”
“Missing? So he didn’t die when his plane was shot down?”
“That’s the thing,” Jana said. “Grandma always says that was the worst part. They just said he was missing, so for the longest time, my grandma and her parents and her brothers and sister kept hoping that he would turn up. They thought that maybe he’d been captured and was in a prisoner-of-war camp somewhere. They contacted the Red cross to see if they could find out where he was.”
“And did they?”
She shook her head.
“After the war ended and they hadn’t found out anything, they figured that he must have died—maybe when his plane was shot down, or maybe after, you know, in the jungle. Or maybe he had been in a prisoner-of-war camp and had died there. But they never knew for sure what happened to him. My grandma says it was horrible. She says that even though her parents knew he must be dead, they always hoped he would show up one day.”
“But he never did, huh?”
“No.”
“So, this watch your grandma had— did her brother give it to her before he went away?”
Jana shook her head again.
/> “He had it with him when he left for overseas. He had it when he was shot down.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “I thought you said they never found him.”
“They didn’t. But a couple of years ago, a hunter found this old rusted watch in the jungle in Burma. He showed it to some missionaries. They saw the engraving on the back of it and realized that it had belonged to someone who had been in the air force. It had a name and a serial number on it. They sent it to Veterans Affairs, and they tracked down my grandmother. They returned the watch to her a month ago. They say they’re going to organize a search to see if they can find my great-uncle and the rest of the people who were in the plane so that they can be buried here at home.”
I stared at her.
“You’re kidding, right? I mean, that watch must have been there for”—I tried to do the math in my head—”more than sixty years.”
“Sixty-five years,” she said.
I felt terrible. That watch had been in the jungle since way before my parents were born. Then someone had found it and had traced it back to Jana’s grandmother. Now I had ruined everything.
“My great-uncle was twenty-five when he died,” Jana said. “That’s why my grandma wanted my brother to have his watch.”
I didn’t get it.
“What’s why?” I said.
“My brother is in the armed forces. He turned twenty-five this year. He’s in Afghanistan right now. My grandma was on her way to a watch repair place to see if they could clean it up and get it working again.”
Oh.
“My dad says my grandma probably doesn’t care about anything else that was in that purse. But she does care about the watch,” Jana said. “He also says that whoever took her purse probably thought the watch was just a piece of junk and probably tossed it into the garbage.” I felt my cheeks get hot. “He says she’ll never see the watch again, but he hasn’t told her that yet. He doesn’t want to say anything until he knows for sure the police can’t find it or at least find out who stole her purse. He also wants to make sure she’s going to be okay before he gives her the bad news.” Her eyes started to fill with tears again, which made me feel even worse.
“I wish there was some way I could help,” I said.
“It’s nice of you to say that, Kaz,” she said, wiping away her tears. “But what could you possibly do?”
It was a good question.
“I have to go,” she said. “I want to see how my grandma is. Have a good weekend.”
“You too,” I said.
chapter nine
I was supposed to go straight home after school, but I didn’t. Instead I went back to the alley where Drew and I had ditched the purse. The Dumpster was still there. Or, at least, a Dumpster was there. I couldn’t tell if it was the same one. I also couldn’t tell if it had been emptied or not. To find out, I had to drag some crates over and stack them up so that I could climb on top and look inside. The garbage came three-quarters of the way to the top. I didn’t see the purse, but if this was the same Dumpster, a lot of other stuff must have been thrown into it in the past three days.
I looked around but didn’t see anyone. There were eight or nine doors that opened into the alley, but no windows. I was in the clear.
I took another look into the Dumpster. There were a lot of green garbage bags in it, but there was no bad smell. I also saw scraps of foam rubber, big chunks of Styrofoam, a broken chair and a big tangle of wire. I didn’t see anything that looked like rotten food or, worse, anything moving, like, say, rats.
I hauled myself up until I got one leg over the edge of the Dumpster. Then I pulled my other leg up and sat on the edge with my legs dangling down inside. I looked at all the garbage. Maybe the purse was in there, and maybe it wasn’t. There was only one way to find out for sure. I took a deep breath and dropped down into the Dumpster.
One of my feet landed on a green garbage bag and broke it. Something leaked all over my sneaker and soaked into my sock. I pulled my foot out. It was covered in goo. At first I thought, what is that? what if it’s poison? what if it eats into my foot? what if—? I almost gave up right then. Then I thought about what Jana had told me, and I put my foot down onto another spot.
I wished I had a pair of gloves, but it was too late to do anything about that. Carefully, in case something sharp was hiding under all the garbage, I began to hunt through the Dumpster. At first I piled stuff on one side as I dug down. But when the pile got too high, things began to fall back onto me. So then I started throwing stuff out into the alley. That made it a little easier. I dug and dug. Pretty soon it started to smell. The green garbage bags that were near the bottom were all broken, and there was more goo—smelly goo—all over the place. I tried to breathe through my mouth as I continued searching.
Finally I made it to the metal floor of the Dumpster. The smell was making me gag. I had thrown a lot of stuff out and was down so deep that I started to worry I wouldn’t be able to climb out again.
That’s when I spotted it.
The purse.
I would have recognized it anywhere.
I opened it.
All the stuff that had been in there when Drew looked through it was still there— except for the ID that Drew had destroyed, and the watch. Maybe it had fallen out.
I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find it.
Something wet fell on me.
Then something else.
It had started to rain.
I looped the purse strap over my arm and jumped up to grab the edge of the Dumpster.
I missed.
I jumped again—and missed again.
I started to panic. What if I was trapped in here?
I took a deep breath and jumped a third time. This time I caught hold of the edge and held tight. Finally I got one leg over and then the other. I dropped down into the alley.
More than half the stuff that had been in the Dumpster was now spread all over the alley. I thought about putting it all back, but the rain was coming down hard. One of the doors into the alley opened and a man stepped out. He looked at all the garbage. Then he spotted me.
“Hey,” he yelled. “What do you think you’re doing?” He started toward me, like he was going to grab me.
I stuffed the purse under my jacket and ran as fast as I could. I ran for a couple of blocks. By then I was out of breath. I slowed to a walk and tried to look normal, even though my heart was pounding in my chest.
I thought about throwing the purse away again—it was useless without the watch—but I couldn’t make myself do it. I shoved it into my backpack.
I didn’t go home straight away. Instead I went to Drew’s place. I was soaking wet by the time I got there. I guess I must have smelled too, because when Drew answered the door, he wrinkled his nose and said, “Did you fall into a sewer on your way here?”
“I went back to that Dumpster to look for the purse.”
That surprised him. He came out on the porch and closed the door behind him. “What did you do that for?”
I told him what Jana had told me.
“I wanted to find the watch,” I said. “But it wasn’t there. Someone must have taken it.”
Drew looked away quickly, which made me think that something was wrong.
“Do you know where it is?” I asked.
He squirmed. “What would I want with an old watch?”
“What did you do with it, Drew?”
“What difference does it make? You can’t give it to her. She’d know you were the one who took her grandma’s purse.”
“Where is it?”
“Forget about it, Kaz. It’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
He squirmed some more.
“I sold it.”
“Sold it? You sold a broken-down old watch?”
“It may be broken, but I saw right away it was from World war Two. There’s this store down on Gerrard Street that sells old war stuff. I sold it to the guy who runs t
he place. I was going to tell you, Kaz. Honest.”
He should have told me in the alley when he first saw the watch. For sure he should have told me before he sold it. But none of that mattered now. All I cared about was what Jana had told me.
“I have to get that watch back,” I said. “You have to give me the money you got for it.”
“Aw, come on, Kaz—”
“This is important, Drew.”
I could see he wanted to say no. But in the end, he dug in his pocket and handed over some money. I counted it. Then, in case I had made a mistake, I counted it again.
“He paid you this much for a watch that doesn’t even work?” I said.
“He paid me more, but I spent some of it.” I couldn’t believe it. “I told you, Kaz,” he said. “It’s from World war Two. People collect stuff like that.”
“Tell me again where the store is.”
My next stop was the store on Gerrard Street where Drew had sold the watch. The place was small and crammed full of all kinds of war stuff—uniforms, medals, flags, badges, knives, you name it. I looked around. I peered into every display case. But I didn’t see the watch.
“Can I help you with something?” the man behind the counter finally asked.
I told him what I was looking for and described it to him as best as I could remember.
The man shook his head.
“I don’t have anything like that,” he said.
“Yes, you do. My friend sold it to you.”
We stared at each other for a few moments. Finally he reached down and opened a drawer under the counter. He pulled out the watch.
“That’s it,” I said. I took out the money Drew had given me and I handed it to the man.
The man counted it.
“That’s not enough,” he said.
“It’s what you paid for it.”
“It’s what your friend sold it for. Now the watch belongs to me. I can sell it for five times as much. In fact, I know someone who’ll pay me even more than that.” He told me how much he was asking for the watch.
Watch Me Page 3
