The Quick Fix

by Jack D. Ferraiolo

  Paulie, the tough, old ex-Navy guy behind the counter, gave us the once-over when we came in. At some point in time, everyone had decided that Paulie’s general bad attitude was part of his charm. However, that just pissed him off even more. The only person in town who he didn’t spit venom at was my mom.

  “Hey, Kathy,” he said. “What’s cookin’, good-lookin’?”

  “Same old, same old, Paulie.”

  “Ain’t that the truth. What’ll you have?”

  “Hmm.” My mom always does that. She takes her time trying to decide what she’s going to order, and then she always orders the same exact thing.

  I was a little restless, so I blurted out, “She’ll have a cheesesteak with onions and mushrooms, and I’ll have the chicken Parm.”

  Paulie looked at me like he wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge my existence, let alone take my order. Finally, he said, “I wasn’t talkin’ to you, kid.”

  “He’s right, though,” my mom said. “That’s what I want.”

  Paulie nodded at her. “No problem.” Then he turned to me and gave me a dirty look. “Whatsa matter, kid, huh? You in a rush? You got someplace better to be?”

  Before I could answer, he turned away and started cooking. In Paulie’s eyes, if you’re not ordering too slowly, you’re ordering too quickly.

  My mom sat down at a table. I tried to sit next to her, but I was way too wound up. My foot started tapping a rhythm that any thrash metal drummer would have envied. I stood up to look out the window and started rocking back and forth on my heels.

  “Is there some invisible dance contest going on that I don’t know about?” my mom asked.

  “Huh?”

  She gave me a funny look but didn’t say anything else.

  “Order up!” Paulie yelled as he placed a white bag on the counter. My mom stood up and walked over to pay. “We had some extra chicken fingers, so I threw those in,” he said as she handed him the money.

  “Paulie …”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” he said, and he gave her a look that said the discussion was over.

  My mom looked at the floor, then looked back at him. Her eyes were a little watery. “Thank you.”

  He nodded. I thought I saw a little moisture in his eyes, too … but he turned away before I could confirm it.

  My mom grabbed the bag, then took my arm and walked me out. The air was cool, especially after the warmth of Lucy’s.

  “Brrr,” she said. “I’m not sure we can eat out here tonight.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I said, and it wasn’t.

  “I know a place we can go,” she said, as if she hadn’t even heard me. There was a mischievous grin on her face.

  Just past the downtown area, where the number of shops shrunk down to a trickle, there was an old lighthouse. It was no longer operational, but it was still in good shape. We walked down the path that led to it. There was a small door on the side. It was locked with an ancient-looking combination lock.

  “Watch out for me,” my mom said, then started fiddling with the lock.

  “What are you—?” I started to say, then turned my back to her and stood lookout. I tried to look casual, but it’s hard to look casual when you’re breaking into a lighthouse with your mom. Lucky for us, there didn’t seem to be anyone else walking around.

  I heard the click of the lock, and my mom opened the door, then walked inside. She ducked down a little to keep from hitting her head. “Come on,” she said in a loud whisper. I followed her in.

  It was pitch-black. My mom opened her cell phone. In the dim glow, I could see metal stairs winding up to the top. She started climbing. I followed.

  It was a long climb. When we got to the top, we were standing on a small platform. A ladder was bolted to one of the walls, leading up to the ceiling. My mom climbed up. When she got to the top, she put her hand on the ceiling and pushed. A trap door opened. She climbed through. Once again, I followed.

  We were at the top of the lighthouse. It had been restored, but the inside still wasn’t anything fancy. The people who restored it had gone for historical accuracy instead of comfort. But it was possible to see the whole city on one side and the river on the other.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think you’re a bad example for me. Isn’t this breaking and entering?”

  She smiled at me. “I used to come up here all the time with your father, when we were—” She stopped. “When we just wanted to get away from the rest of the world.”

  “How did you find out about it?”

  “Your father. He knew the family who owned it. There was only a select group of people who knew the combination to that lock downstairs, and your father was one of them.”

  “And he passed it to you?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Something like that.”

  We unwrapped our sandwiches and started eating. After a couple of bites, my mom put her sandwich down. “Feel a little better?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Sorry. I was a little keyed up.”

  “Anything you can talk about … you know, before our big talk tomorrow night?”

  “Why aren’t we just having our talk tonight?” I asked.

  She smiled. “You know when you eat the last cookie out of the bag, but you didn’t know before you ate it that it was the last cookie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know how you feel funky, because if you had known it was the last cookie, you would have prepared yourself a little better for it. Maybe enjoyed it a little more?”

  I smiled.

  “That’s what tonight is,” she said. “I don’t know how you’re going to react to what I tell you, and I have no idea how I’m going to react to what you tell me. I just wanted one more night of, well … this … before our whole relationship changes.”

  “You really think it will?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Neither of us does.”

  “So, hope for the best but prepare for the worst,” I said.

  Mom took a huge bite of her sandwich and nodded.

  “Great,” I said. “I hope I didn’t inherit your table manners.”

  She smiled with a mouth full of steak sandwich. “You see a table around here?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of battle you want to win on a technicality.”

  “Forget everything I just said,” she said. “I’m not going to miss this at all.”

  We ate in silence for a bit, soaking in the quiet and the beauty of the view. The sun had already gone down, but the clouds on the horizon were still backlit with a few lingering rays.

  “So, I got really angry today,” I said.

  “What about?”

  “Someone at school, someone who used to be very important to me, accused me of something.”

  “Something bad?”

  “Not in the traditional, criminal sense,” I said. “More like I was doing something for all the wrong reasons.”

  “Was what she said true?”

  “I didn’t say it was a ‘she.’”

  “Call it a hunch,” my mom said. “Well, was it true?”

  I thought about it. Did I say yes to Vinny because I wanted the money? Honestly? Of course. Someone waves forty bucks in your face, the list of reasons to say no gets shorter and much more specific.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But it wasn’t the only reason.”

  “Of course not. There are very few things in life we do for only one reason. Usually, there are three or four. And some of them we’d be hard-pressed to cop to, even to ourselves.”

  “She made me out to be a complete jerk.”

  My mom shrugged. “It’s a good thing she’s no longer important to you.”

  “Yeah … you and I both know that’s not true.”

  She nodded. “Listen, Matt, you have to spend years developing your moral compass, and then years more trusting that you did the right thing by following it. And you have to remember that it’s your moral co
mpass, not anyone else’s. Others might never understand why you did what you did—and that will matter to you especially if they’re the people you care about—but you have to know that you are doing the right thing for yourself. So that even if it all goes wrong, you’ll know that you couldn’t have made another choice.”

  “But what if I’m doing stuff for all the wrong reasons?”

  “Really?” she asked. “All the wrong reasons? I doubt all your reasons for doing something are wrong. Maybe some are on the selfish side, but I know you. I’ll tell you this, if you wait until your intentions are one hundred percent pure before you do something, you’ll never do anything. You just have to believe that you’re doing the right thing for mostly the right reasons. That’s usually the best you can do.”

  “Speaking from experience?” I asked.

  She smiled. “What do you think?”

  “I think you should remember that speech when we talk tomorrow night.”

  “Hell no!” she said, then laughed. “That speech applies to you and other people, not me. I’m your mother, so I have the right to be as irrational as I want.”

  “That hardly seems fair.”

  “Sorry, kid. Them’s the rules.”

  “One more question,” I said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Can we stay up here for a while longer?”

  She leaned over and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “As long as you’d like.”

  We sat and ate the rest of our sandwiches as the lights from the city turned the water into a sparkling gown.

  woke up the next morning at 6:15. I was still tired but feeling better than I had a right to. If I managed to get through the day without landing in the Outs, I’d get to come home and find out just how messed up my family life really was. Oh, and I’d also get to tell Mom about all the stuff that went on at school, which probably meant that she was going to blow the whistle on everyone, practically guaranteeing me a spot in the Outs.

  And yet, despite all of this, I felt pretty good. Maybe last night with my mom, even though it might be the last of its kind, was what I needed to gain a little clarity.

  When I walked into the kitchen, there was a note on the counter. “See you tonight. Can’t wait to tell my story! (Sarcasm, in case ya didn’t know …) Love ya, Mom.” I made a cup of hot cocoa to try to wake myself up a little, then went down to my office.

  I looked at the copy of the blackmailer’s note Vinny had given to me and compared it with the piece of paper I found in the box, the one with the letter/number series that matched the one the police had found in my father’s car. Just from the samples in front of me, the handwriting looked completely different. Not that that meant anything. The handwriting on the letter looked like the writer had tried to disguise his or her real handwriting. It was sloppy—in a calculated way. By comparison, the letters and numbers on the slip of paper were written neatly, as if that writer wanted to make sure no one misread any of the characters.

  I picked up the box with the carved top. I checked the inside for the seventy-fifth time; it was still empty. I put it down. It had no more secrets to tell.

  I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I pulled last year’s yearbook out from a stack of books near my desk, hoping for a little bit of historical context. I flipped through it until I found the cheerleader page. I looked at the girls’ faces, bright and happy. There was Gretchen, her grin hinting at the malevolence that would later prove her undoing. There was Melissa, her expression bright and innocent, as if she didn’t know how to play the game yet and was just happy to be there.

  And then there was Cynthia. She was pretty in this picture—really pretty—but her beauty was more subdued, not as fierce as I knew it. Something inside of me skipped to a weird rhythm just thinking about her. Cynthia was the girl who defied all my expectations; the girl who made me think of cheerleaders as something more than just mindless robots concerned about their status and not other people’s feelings.

  I looked at Melissa again. She hadn’t been dating Will at the time of the photo. She was just another sixth grader, happy to have made the squad, to have found a place where she belonged, where she was accepted. She had slipped into an identity early and knew exactly where it was going to take her over the next three years, and possibly beyond. She had no idea how wrong she was.

  I stood up, still looking at the black-and-white pixels that constituted Melissa’s face. Her perfect hair was now in straggly ruins. The eyes that had been bright with excitement were now dulled with dread. Her spirit, her soul, had been snuffed out, and I was not about to let that go unpunished. I folded over the top corner of the page, then closed the yearbook and shoved it in my bag. I wanted to be able to remind myself of what was at stake.

  Before I left, I picked up the two pieces of paper on my desk, the ones that had my dad’s clue written on them. I put the original back in my desk drawer, where it belonged. I put the other one in my back pocket.

  When I got to school, the steps were filled with kids staying outside as long as possible in order to delay the inevitable.

  Going from the cold outside to the heated inside always made me feel weird, as if someone had spritzed my face with water, then held a heater directly on it. I peeled off my jacket and threw it in my locker. I almost didn’t see the cell phone sitting on my shelf.

  It was nothing too fancy; the kind they give you when you open up a new account or that a parent hands down to a kid. I handled it gently, as if it was made of paper and my hands were wet. I almost dropped it when it rang.

  I waited for the third ring before I answered. “Hello?”

  “Matt?” a voice whispered.

  “Speaking. Who’s this?”

  “I’d rather not say right now.”

  “Can you speak up?” I asked. “I can hardly hear you.”

  “If you can’t hear me,” the voice whispered, “I might as well hang up.”

  “Fine,” I said. “We’ll play it your way. What do you want?”

  “I want you to look at something for me, but I don’t want to show it to you.”

  “O-kayyy … Is this a riddle? Because I hate riddles.”

  “I know better. You didn’t think I gave you a phone just to talk to you, did you?”

  “I have no idea why you gave me a phone.”

  “You do now.” There was a click as the whisperer hung up. I looked at the display. There was only one bar of battery life left. Whatever was on this phone, I had to find it in a hurry.

  The first thing I checked was the contacts list. It was empty. I checked messages (voice and text), recent call records, mobile e-mail accounts. Nothing. Then I checked pictures. There was one. The battery life bar was blinking. I had very little time left. I selected the photo so that it filled the phone’s screen, but the picture was still too small to make out any details. All I could see was that there were two figures facing each other, as if they were talking or shaking hands.

  I turned the phone off. There was no sense staring at the picture. It wasn’t getting any clearer, and all I was doing was wasting what little battery life was left. I needed help, and at the moment, there was only one kid I trusted with something like this.

  I had seven minutes before I had to get to homeroom. I had to hustle if I was going to catch him in his office. I closed my locker door, then turned to run. Standing in front of me was Jenny Finnegan.

  “Pardon me,” I said.

  She stood there and smirked at me.

  “All right, let’s try this, then,” I said. “Get the hell out of my way.”

  “Vinny wants to talk to you.”

  I laughed. “Is this your new job? Vinny’s message girl? Refresh my memory, did Nikki ever have to do anything like this?”

  Her face tightened. “I can’t wait to see how smug you are when I put you in the Outs.”

  “You? Put me in the Outs? Ha! I’ve seen you work under pressure, sweetheart. All I need to do is say ‘Boo!’ and I’ve got you on the run.”
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br />   Her hands ducked behind her and came back out with two squirt guns … little pink numbers. I had to admit, she was pretty fast.

  “What do you have to say now, Matt? Huh? Something smart, I’m sure.”

  I laughed. “Who are you trying to fool? I hope it isn’t me. If Vinny wanted me in the Outs, he wouldn’t send you.”

  “I’ll say it was an accident.”

  “I hope one of his operatives heard that. I want Vinny to hear how stupid you think he is, that he’d fall for a lie that bad.”

  “There aren’t any operatives, sweetie. Just me and you.”

  “Oh yeah? Tell that to Ricky Ryan over there,” I said, pointing behind me. “He’s in Vinny’s crew, right? Because he’s been watching us like we’re a Vegas floor show and his girlfriend’s in the chorus.”

  Jenny was rattled. She tried to hide it, but she wasn’t good at improvisation.

  “Or Susan Myers,” I continued. “She must be really thirsty. She’s been drinking from that water fountain for the past five minutes.”

  Jenny looked over at Susan, slowly, as if she didn’t want to but had run out of the willpower to stop herself. Susan looked back at her and winked. A brief window opened, so I jumped through it. I grabbed both squirt guns and ripped them out of her hands. I threw them behind me. They clattered down the hall. One of them cracked. Water started puddling around it.

  “You want to be tough?” I asked. “You should probably be a little more focused.”

  Jenny looked like she was about to jump on me and rip my throat out with her teeth. Something behind me caught her eye. I turned to see Ricky Ryan leveling his gaze at her. His head was moving gently from side to side. Jenny backed down, but only physically. Her expression was still full of the painful possibilities she was conjuring up for me.

  “If that’s all,” I said, “I have someplace to be.”

  She didn’t say anything. Just stared at me. Ricky Ryan was still doing his headshake, but this time it seemed to be indicating a direction. He was telling Jenny to follow him.

  She pushed past me, then turned and walked backward down the hallway. She picked up the squirt gun that lay unbroken on the ground, all the while not taking her eyes off me. When she was close, Ricky took her by the arm and guided her away.