“Well, actually, I’m in the business of taking messages. Maybe I could help you out.” One side of my brain was screaming at me to keep my mouth shut, but the other side couldn’t let a potential opportunity pass me by.
Her eyes narrowed. “If you wanna help me, you’ll turn your skinny junior-high butt around and go let the air out my ex-boyfriend’s tires.”
There was business potential there, too, but that seemed a little more risky.
LaTisha turned, ready to take her icy storm into the Chic Clinique where it would probably become hot gossip.
“Uh, one more thing, please.”
She gave me a sidelong gaze of death with one hand on the door.
“Ty wants his ring back. His class ring with the red stone in the middle.”
Her look was what a vulture might give a half-dead deer on the highway before tearing into it.
She walked back toward me with a casual swagger. “He wants his ring back, does he?” She pulled a gold ring off her middle finger. “The ring I helped him pick out? The ring he told me represents his undying love for me? The ring he said he was gonna replace someday with a diamond? That ring?”
“Well, um, does it have a red stone? If it’s the one with the red stone, then yes.”
She held up the gold ring with the red stone in the middle. “Here you go.”
I hesitated, and then took a step forward with my hand out. I could hardly believe she was really going to give it to me.
She moved her hand toward mine, dangling the ring above it. Then just before she let it go, she moved her hand to the side. The ring plunged like a skydiver without a chute down toward the street. With a metallic clink it hit the metal grate of the storm drain. With another clink it struck the second set of bars. And with a thud it stopped at the concrete bottom.
LaTisha lifted a single eyebrow and then slowly turned and strutted into the salon.
I stared after her, wondering if Ty had broken up with his girlfriend, or if it was the other way around.
Chapter 11
“Oh, brother,” I mumbled, staring into the storm drain. Water-swept leaves and grass with a sprinkling of candy bar wrappers decorated the wide crisscrosses of the first grate. The filth on the lower grate was barely recognizable. And the concrete floor on the bottom glistened with a thick green layer of who-knew-what.
I got down on my hands and knees and peered into the semi-darkness. It wasn’t very deep. I could probably reach the ring if I really stretched, and if my hand could fit through the narrow openings of the second grate. The question was, did I really want to?
If I didn’t return the ring to Ty, he would probably want his money back. He might even think I’d stolen the ring and sold it on the junior high black market. Or worst of all, he might start telling his friends what a botched job the Heartbreak Messenger did for him. One rumor like that spreading through the high school locker room would put a stop to my business like a brick in front of a bike jump. And I’d be left with nothing to help Mom out with the rent.
I leaned down and stuck my hand through the first grate.
I squinted and held my breath as I passed my hand through the second grate. I tried not to touch the slimy metal, but it wasn’t easy, since I had to stretch my fingers out and fold my thumb in just to get it through the small opening. The built-up filth felt like wet leather on my warm skin.
Once my hand was through, I pressed my shoulder against the first grate and groped for the ring. I forced myself to run my fingers over the moist cement bottom, since it was hard to see anything down there. I thought I could make out a glint of clean metal, several inches from my fingertips. I couldn’t stretch any farther, so I pulled my arm out, moved over a little, and then pushed in through the grates a second time.
The stench coming from the wide mouth of the sewer made it hard to breathe. A slight wave of nausea rolled through my stomach and I tried to think more pleasant thoughts. A hot shower and hand sanitizer, for example.
It took me a bit of feeling around, but in time I struck gold, literally. I snagged the ring with my fingertips. But as I pulled my hand back out, holding the ring like that, I found that my hand was too wide to fit through the grates. I felt the ring slipping from my fingers as I pulled.
“Quentin?”
I twisted my head around, trying to keep the rest of my body as still as possible. Abby stood above me on the sidewalk.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I, uh, dropped something and I’m trying to get it back out. Bad luck, eh?”
“Right.” Abby shifted her weight from foot to foot as she chewed on a fingernail.
“I’ll be there in a few minutes for homework. As soon as I get finished with this.” I gently tugged my hand back toward the opening in the grate, but I could feel the ring getting squeezed out from between my fingers, like a cartoon banana out of a peel.
“Hey, Quentin, I need to talk to you about something.”
“Um, okay.” I turned just a little so I could look at Abby without twisting my neck into a Twizzler. I mashed the ring between my fingers as tightly as I could.
Abby sat down on the curb a few feet away. Her fingers fiddled with a woven bracelet on her wrist.
“Do you remember Justin Masterson? The guy you met at the art show?” She asked her question carefully, like she was opening one of those peanut cans that have a springy snake inside.
“Yeah,” I said. Hard to forget a head as big as his.
Abby fidgeted with her bracelet a little more, and then finally stood and started pacing in tight little circles. “Well, we know each other pretty well. I mean, we’ve worked on a lot of art projects together, and we’ve both been in the club for a while, and … I mean, he’s seen me in a swimsuit, for crying out loud, and he’s even met my mom and dad. And he’s an eighth-grader.”
Abby, hurry it up, I pleaded silently. There is no more blood in my arm. She seemed to be talking more to herself than to me, anyway. Then she stopped and looked down at me as she stood on the sidewalk, seeming mighty tall from where I lay with my arm in the sewer.
“Justin’s asked me to be his girlfriend.”
It took forever for her words to sink in, like dropping a pebble into wet mud. I felt lightheaded from the sewer smell and my brain was as numb as my arm.
By the time the sentence worked its way into my gray matter, Abby had already moved on. “I mean, I think Justin’s nice and everything, and really kinda cute, but you know…” She took a deep breath. “I guess what I really want to know, Quentin—as my best friend, of course—can you think of any reason why I shouldn’t go out with Justin?”
An hour later, I would be able to think of a million reasons.
Because he’s an idiot.
Because he wears bulky sweaters to make it look like he goes to the gym twice a day.
Because he’s an eighth-grader who gets his teeth whitened.
Because he swallowed an art encyclopedia and could tell you every messed-up detail about what Jackson Whosawhatsit ate for breakfast.
Because spending more time with him means spending less time with me.
But in that moment, up to my shoulder in slimy cast iron with my brain apparently in standby mode, all I could think was, My arm’s going to fall off.
“Any reason at all?” Abby’s eyes seemed to be searching for something written on my face, or hiding in my eyes. She was probably seeing the pain of a nearly dislocated shoulder.
“Not that I can think of,” I said.
She just stood there, staring at me. Like I’d given her the wrong answer or something. Then she nodded her head slowly and spoke just louder than a whisper. “All right. Thanks, Quentin.”
Then she turned and left.
And the ring fell with a clink back to the bottom of the storm drain.
Chapter 12
I couldn’t figure out why Abby had come to talk to me about Justin. And I really couldn’t figure out why she seemed disappointed with my ans
wer. But I was starting to realize that there was a mysterious territory surrounding girls that even older guys seemed to get lost in. That made me feel a little better about being completely clueless.
I remember studying Egyptian hieroglyphics in my history class. Scholars had a hard time trying to figure out what they meant, until they discovered the Rosetta Stone. That was this big rock that a guy in the French army found in Egypt a few centuries ago that had the same paragraph in three different languages—including hieroglyphics. With that, the scholars could translate it and use it to figure out what the weird symbols meant.
I was starting to think that there should be a Rosetta Stone for girls. Something that translated what they said and did into what they really meant. Something that could help me understand how Abby and I had gone from playing tag at recess, to hanging out as best buds, to … what? Was I her relationship counselor now? I wasn’t sure I was qualified for that.
You know that French scholar who found the Rosetta Stone and gave it a name? I’ll bet his girlfriend’s name was Rosetta.
After Abby left me lying empty-handed in the gutter, and the circulation returned to my fingertips, I finally realized that I had to be smarter than the sewer grate. It only took a tree branch, three pieces of cinnamon gum, a borrowed shop light, and an hour of trying not to cuss, and that ring was out of the sewer and in my hands at last.
I sent the ring back to Ty. I didn’t hear anything from him, so I guessed he didn’t notice the green sludge packed into his graduation year. And what’s more, Marcus kept sending break-up jobs my way, even though his cut wasn’t huge. I kinda figured he liked being able to get in good with his buddies by pointing them in the direction of relationship relief. I had to remind him constantly about keeping my identity as secret as possible—paying customers only. But I probably stressed over nothing. While breakups are always food for high school gossip, the identity of an insignificant middle-schooler was not.
But take even the most boring high school rumor, drop it into junior high, and it’ll spread like chicken pox.
I didn’t usually listen much to the gossipers, but something caught my attention one day as I passed through the hall on my way to algebra. It happened so fast that I didn’t even know who said it or where in the hallway they were. But I heard the words “Carmen Mendoza” and “Heartbreak Messenger” in the same sentence.
My heart stopped. I could almost feel Carmen’s fist against my face, and I fought the urge to duck. As casually as possible I pulled over to a wall of lockers and looked around, ears open. Nothing. But it made me more than a little worried just the same. And, if I was being honest, just a little excited.
I finally heard the whole rumor, at least a version of it, the next day in world history. Two girls that sat behind me, Vicki and Jennifer, were queens of secondhand gossip.
“So did you hear about Carmen Mendoza on the high school soccer team?” Vicki whispered. She didn’t really need to whisper. Our teacher, Mr. Hogan, was a piece of world history and couldn’t even hear the bell most of the time. Besides, he was deep into a lecture on the Trojan War and Greek mythology, and wouldn’t surface for a while.
“Yeah,” Jennifer said, “about her boyfriend dumping her?”
“Well, yeah, but it wasn’t even her boyfriend. He sent that Heartbreak Messenger guy to do it. He didn’t even have the nerve to face her.”
I stretched my ears back as far as they would go.
“That poor girl,” Jennifer said. “To get dumped and not even have the chance to talk about it, to work things out.”
Carmen didn’t strike me as the talking type.
“Or to have a chance to knock the guy upside the head.”
Now that was more Carmen’s style.
“I wonder what he’s like?”
“Who? Carmen’s boyfriend?”
“No, the Heartbreak Messenger. He sounds so mysterious.”
“He’s probably tall and gorgeous. That way he can comfort you when he breaks the news.”
I sat up just a little straighter in my seat.
“Are you kidding? He’s probably short and dorky looking. That way, when he breaks up with the girl, she thinks, ‘Well, could be worse. I could be dating him.’”
I slumped back down.
The girls giggled. Mr. Hogan looked our way, then turned and kept rambling on about some lady named Helen.
“Pssst.” A girl on the other side of me, whose name I could never remember, waved her hand at the girls behind me. “I heard that the Heartbreak Messenger is actually a junior high kid.”
I heard sputters of disbelief from the other girls. “Not a chance,” said Vicki. “If he was in junior high, no one would take him seriously.”
I heard different versions of that conversation several times in the hallways and the lunchroom. For a while, it was a hot topic. Nobody really cared who the Heartbreak Messenger was—the mystery was the fun part. But just about everyone had an opinion about what he did. Most of the guys seemed okay with it, and most of the girls had issues. I just had fun listening and only worried a little that someone might figure out who he really was.
I had sworn Rob to secrecy, which I knew was a gamble. There were enough negative opinions about the Heartbreak Messenger’s business that I didn’t want to start getting hate mail in my locker. Or another fist in the eye. More important, if word ever got out about the rates I charged, people would start hitting me up to borrow money.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who wanted to remain anonymous. One afternoon I was watching an old classic movie in our apartment when the phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered with half a bologna sandwich in my mouth.
Silence greeted me on the other end, but I could tell someone was there. “Rob,” I said, “if you ask me if my refrigerator’s running again, I swear I’ll…”
“Is this the Heartbreak Messenger?” a guy’s voice interrupted.
I immediately put Star Wars on pause and cleared my throat. I hadn’t had a phone client before—Mom said we couldn’t afford a cell phone for me, and I didn’t really want Marcus giving out our home number. But I could work with it.
“Sure is.”
“Can you speak openly?”
I glanced around the empty apartment. “Uh, I think so.”
“Her name is Sarah.”
“Who’s name is Sarah?”
“Your target.”
Target? I suddenly hoped the caller hadn’t gotten me confused with some Mafia hit man across town. “Are you her boyfriend?” I asked.
Silence. “Possibly.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, what’s her boyfriend’s name?”
“Why do you need to know?”
I strummed my fingers on the faded arms of the couch. “Maybe … so I can tell her who the message is from?”
The paranoid voice seemed to consider. “Her boyfriend’s name is Doug.”
“Okay. Where can I find Sa … uh, the target?”
“She spends her afternoons at the FFA farm out on Bluejacket Road.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “All right. A lot of my customers…”
“I’ll take the flowers, but she can buy her own chocolates. The money is under the doormat outside your front door. I need it done today.” Then he hung up.
I tossed the phone on the couch and went out to look under the welcome mat. Sure enough, a wad of cash was stashed there in a plastic sandwich bag. Exact change.
I thought briefly about giving Marcus a raise.
Nah.
Instead I went into my bedroom and pulled the flowers out of their cloudy water. I started yanking off all of the brown and shriveled parts, but that took too long because carnations have a lot of petals. I finally just grabbed a pair of scissors and hacked off any chunk of flower that seemed old. They didn’t exactly look as good as new when I finished, but I was okay with that.
I paused at the kitchen counter to write Mom a note. She always had me do that, even though n
ine times out of ten I got back to the apartment before she did. Beside the notepad was a stack of unopened mail. I quickly glanced through it and stopped at an envelope with the bold, red words “Past Due” stamped right on the front.
I ripped the envelope open and scanned through the contents. It was the electric bill. Last month’s electric bill for thirty-eight bucks. And it was weeks overdue.
I felt a black hole growing in my stomach. How could Mom not mention this to me? First the apartment, now the electricity. I couldn’t decide which would be worse: not having a working TV, or not having an apartment to put it in.
Things had to be pretty bad if she couldn’t pay a thirty-eight-dollar bill. I knew what I had to do. I charged back to my room and pulled that amount from the stash in my sock drawer. I crammed the money and the bill into the pristine white envelope with the little cellophane window. I slapped a stamp onto it on my way down the apartment stairs and then dropped it into the mailbox. And I hoped our lights would still work when I came home.
Chapter 13
Within twenty minutes of the mysterious phone call, I was on my bike heading toward Bluejacket Road. Most kids on the west side of town cruised down that road at least three or four times a month during the summer. Bluejacket led to the widest and deepest part of the river, where rope swings hung from the sycamores like tinsel at Christmas. More broken arms and busted lips probably happened at that stretch of river than on any other body of water in the state.
I passed Root’s Nursery and Farmer’s Market not long after leaving town. Apples and walnuts spilled out of barrels in front of the store. A short while later I could see the two farms up ahead on the right. The first was a small dairy farm. Every kid in town visited that farm in the third grade, which made it seem friendly and wholesome. But the smell along that stretch of road was wicked enough to bring down a grown rhinoceros.
As I got closer, I began to take deep breaths, until just at the right moment I sucked in a lungful of air and pedaled triple-time for the next intersection. I was quick on my bike but even so, I had to start letting the air hiss out on the final stretch so my lungs didn’t explode. I’ve never actually seen anyone pass out while riding through there, but some kids with smaller lungs swear that their hair comes out curlier on the other side.
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