The Quick Fix

by Jack D. Ferraiolo

  “So I just have to sit here and watch this happen?”

  I nodded. “But there is one thing you can do for me.”

  “Anything.”

  “Things are going to change for me tomorrow, and not for the better.”

  “Matt—”

  “It’s okay. I’ve made my peace with it. In fact, in some ways it might actually be a good thing.”

  “In what way?”

  “It can’t go on like this forever. I’m sick to death of it. Too many kids I know—good kids—have gotten hurt,” I said. “I didn’t realize it until the other day, but there’s a delicate balance to the Outs, and it may be reaching its tipping point.”

  “And you think you might be the difference?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know about that. But I might be able to give it a shove in the right direction.”

  “What do you need me to do?” she asked.

  “If it happens, treat me the same. Don’t pity me. Don’t ask me how it’s going. And don’t suggest things I can do to make it better.”

  “Okay.” She nodded, then looked at the clock. It was a little after six. “So … uh … weren’t we supposed to start at nine? Don’t you think you jumped the gun a little?” There was a small smile on her face, but she looked worried.

  “I got a little anxious,” I said. I pulled the photocopy I had gotten from the library out of my back pocket. I made sure the picture on it was facing up, then placed it on the counter next to my mom. “I found something.”

  She gasped, short and sharp. She dropped the mug she was holding; it shattered on the tiles, splashing coffee on the floor in an amoeba-type shape. She didn’t seem to notice. Her breath was coming in jagged gasps.

  The picture was sixteen years old, based on the date of the newspaper. I didn’t know the specific local event that it was from. It didn’t say. It must have been some kind of party. My father was wearing a tuxedo. He was sitting, smiling at the camera. I had seen photos of him with a sincere smile; this wasn’t it. Sitting on his lap was Roberta Carling, Kevin and Liz’s mom; although she wasn’t Mrs. Carling at the time. She was still Roberta Santini. Sitting next to my dad, and also wearing a tuxedo, was Albert Carling. My mom was sitting on his lap. Her smile looked as forced as my dad’s. The caption read THE SANTINI SISTERS AND THEIR MEN. ROBERTA AND HER FIANCÉ, JAMES STEVENS; KATHERINE AND HER FIANCÉ, ALBERT CARLING.

  There were so many things about the photo that hurt, I didn’t know which to focus on. It was like getting attacked by a swarm of bees and trying to identify which one had the sharpest stinger.

  “Where did you—?” she started to ask. “How—?”

  “The library,” I said. “As to how, there was a clue, a series of letters and numbers written on a piece of paper. They found it in the glove compartment of Dad’s car.”

  “I remember,” she whispered.

  “I’ve spent the past few years trying to figure out what they meant. Today, I finally did. They led me to that.” I pointed at the picture. It was still on the counter. My mom hadn’t touched it.

  She was crying pretty steadily now. My eyes were starting to tear up, too, but I couldn’t lose it yet. There were things I needed to know. “You and Mrs. Carling are sisters,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “You were engaged to Mr. Carling, and Dad was engaged to your sister.”

  She nodded again.

  “And somewhere along the line, you and Dad jilted them and ran off together.”

  She let out a sob.

  “So, he’s my uncle, she’s my aunt, and Kevin and Liz are my cousins.”

  She nodded again.

  “And Santini’s is partially yours.”

  She shook her head. “No. My dad—”

  “My grandfather.”

  “Your … grandfather left the restaurant to Roberta when your father and I ran off.”

  “You left town?”

  “We went to New York. Your father tried to make it as a musician. He was good, and he was starting to make headway when I got pregnant with you. But trying to make it as a musician in New York with a pregnant wife at home and no support is an uphill climb.”

  “So he quit, and you came back here?”

  “We thought that maybe things had died down enough—”

  “Or your pregnancy might soften your family up a bit.”

  “It didn’t,” she said. “My father wanted to talk to me, I think, but Roberta made him choose between us. She wanted me to suffer. She and Albert had found some sort of relationship. I’m not sure either of them would call it love, but it was something.”

  “So that’s why Mr. Carling is so hard on you.”

  She wiped her eyes with her hands, then took a deep breath. “He’s not,” she said. “It’s all an act. If it weren’t for Albert, we wouldn’t be making it.”

  I was confused, and then another seemingly random piece clicked into place. “He owns this building, doesn’t he? He’s ‘Big A.’”

  “Big A?”

  “The phone,” I said. “In my office. Sometimes it rings, and when I pick it up, some guy on the other line asks for ‘Big A.’ When I try to take a message, he hangs up.”

  “Yeah, Albert owns this place. He doesn’t want to take rent from us, but I make him. He gave me the job at the restaurant, over Roberta’s objections, and always gives me first pick of holiday shifts. If someone calls in sick, he calls me first.”

  “But he acts mean to you because that’s easier to explain—to his wife, to anyone that may know the story … to me.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Plus, I think Roberta really likes the idea of having me as her lowly employee … able to rub my nose in the dirt with the snap of her fingers.”

  “Does he still love you?”

  She paused. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you love him?”

  She paused. “I don’t know.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So what about Dad? What happened to him?’

  A hardness crept across her face. Tears still fell, but they seemed like remnants of her feelings from a couple of minutes ago. “I don’t know.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No,” she said. “If I did, that’s not something I’d keep from you.”

  “You have an idea, though.”

  She looked down at her hands, but there was nothing in them or on them to fidget with.

  “When we came back, all he talked about was leaving again. The more we stayed, the more he realized that leaving wasn’t going to be easy. And everyone that we knew …” She wiped her mouth with her hand. “No one wanted to talk to us. Our old friends, our families … no one. We even got some threats.”

  “What?”

  “The police checked them out,” she said. “They turned out to be nothing. Just some idiots sticking their noses where they didn’t belong.”

  “So, someone could have driven him off. Or hurt him, or …”

  “Yes. Or he could have just run off,” she said, in a way that made it clear which possibility she believed. “Here’s the thing, Matt, and it took me a really long time to make peace with this: If someone did hurt him, or worse, there’s nothing I can do about it. The only thing I can do is take care of you the best I can. That’s it. I can’t save him, or”—she took a deep, shuddery breath—“or bring him back, if that’s the case. I can’t even ‘find justice for him,’ which always looks so easy in movies or on TV. I can’t do anything like that. The best I can do is try to take care of you. Do you understand?”

  My jaw tightened. I did, but I didn’t.

  “That’s only because you’re wired differently,” my mom said, as if she had snatched my last thought out of the air. “Do you at least understand that?”

  I nodded slowly. I licked my lips and forced myself to ask the last question I had left. “And if he left on his own?”

  “Then screw him,” my mom said, the color rising in her cheeks. “Let him stay lost.”

&nbs
p; She stepped close to me and grabbed me by the shoulders. Her face was inches from mine. The tears were gone, her eyes suddenly clear and bright … and hard as granite. “Your dad loved you—I’m sure he still does—but here’s the thing … no one—NO ONE—could drive me away from you,” she said. “You got that? It’s not possible. If someone even tried, they’d quickly wish they hadn’t.”

  “You’re small, but you pack a wallop,” I said.

  “When it counts … yeah. And kiddo, nothing counts more to me than you.”

  She grabbed my head and planted a hard kiss on my cheek, then pulled me in for a hug … the big kind that has a little rocking-back-and-forth to it. She took a deep, sniffly breath, then pulled back and held me by the shoulders again. “You okay?”

  “In some ways, yeah. In other ways … I’m not sure,” I said. “I still have my whole case thing to worry about, so that’s at least a little bit of a distraction.”

  “And when that’s done?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll have a mental breakdown. But that might happen anyway when I get put in the Outs.”

  “So, a nice little two-for-one deal.”

  I nodded with mock enthusiasm. “Crazy, now at half the price!”

  She laughed, then grabbed both my cheeks and pinched. “How’d you get so funny, huh?”

  “Ow! All right, I’m done.” I moved my face away from her pincers. “I think I need a pizza or three,” I said, and held up a twenty.

  My mom shook her head, but I could tell she was impressed. “I think I chose the wrong profession,” she said.

  I smiled. “Yeah … me too.”

  our discussion, we both felt drained but wired, so we zoned out to a movie. The next thing we knew, it was six A.M., and we were waking up to the TV blaring some infomercial about the life-altering power of a vegetable chopper. We peeled ourselves off the couch and started our morning routine.

  I was still getting ready when Mom headed for the exit. I met her at the door. She wrapped me in a huge hug, and although she was small, I swear she had the strength of a hundred moms.

  She leaned back and grabbed me by the shoulders and held me at arm’s length. She had a sly smile on her face and a mischievous gleam in her eye. “You give ’em hell,” she said.

  I smiled back at her. My heart raced. It’s amazing what a few words of support can do.

  She gave me a kiss on the forehead, then left. I watched her car back out of the driveway, and wondered how different the world would look the next time I saw her.

  The phone in my office started ringing, so I ran down to get it.

  “Hello?”

  “Matt? It’s Jimmy.”

  “Hey. Listen, Mac, I’m sorry about yesterday, and about dragging you into this mess … and a lot of other things.”

  “Be sorry for the other things, but not for getting me involved in this case … because you didn’t. If there’s a story, I’m there … Get me?”

  “Yeah, I got you.”

  “Listen,” he said, “I wasn’t calling to be a guest star in some Hallmark special. Someone dropped something off at my house last night. Want to guess what?”

  “A baby unicorn?”

  “Nope. More interesting than that.”

  He told me what it was, and he was right … it was pretty interesting.

  “So, what do you think I should do?” he asked.

  “Sell some papers,” I said.

  I could practically feel his smile beaming over the phone line.

  I checked the clock on the wall. “I have to go,” I said. “See you in a few?”

  “Will you?”

  “Call it wishful thinking.”

  “Is there any way I can help?” he asked.

  “No. Just get those papers out, so if I do go in the Outs, I know I’ll have some company.”

  I hung up the phone, grabbed all the clues that pertained to the case, and shoved them in my backpack. I grabbed the duffel bag that Vinny had given me yesterday. I even grabbed the wood box. I really didn’t want a souvenir from the case that put me in the Outs. Let the blackmailer have it.

  When I walked out the office door, I saw what I expected to see: Cynthia, standing there waiting for me.

  “Oh. What a surprise.”

  “Can I walk with you?” she asked.

  “I don’t think I can stop you,” I said.

  She smiled. “No, I suppose you can’t.”

  We walked two blocks without talking. I could feel her sneak peeks at me, but I didn’t return any.

  “Do you know how you’re going to handle this?” she asked when we were half a block from school.

  “I’m going to follow directions and hope for the best. Never know who might show up, though.”

  “Who? You mean the blackmailer?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Matt? Do you know who it is?”

  “We’re here,” I said.

  The school was large and imposing no matter what time of day it was. Looking at it always filled me with such mixed feelings. It was the main source of thrills and dread in every student’s life. We never wanted to be there, but we didn’t want to not be there and miss something. Our day could go from super great to really horrible in the twitch of a finger, and living constantly on that edge made it hard to breathe sometimes … but it was also exhilarating.

  I started up the steps. Cynthia just stood there and watched me.

  “Come on if you’re coming,” I said without breaking stride. I heard her follow behind me.

  The halls were empty, except for the early morning light, which was dusty and had the faint smell of pencil lead and glue. I walked up the stairs to the second floor. Cynthia kept pace.

  “What locker was it again?” she asked, but it sounded forced and unnatural. I smiled at her, but didn’t answer.

  When we got to locker 416, Will was leaning against it.

  “Will,” I said.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked. He looked at Cynthia. “And what’s she doing here?”

  “Couldn’t be helped,” I said. “She has a stake in this, too.”

  “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “You’ll see,” I said. “But first things first.” I pulled the manila envelope out of my bag and held it up.

  His eyes went wide. A couple of beads of sweat formed on his forehead. “What—?”

  “Go ahead. Take a look,” I said, holding out the envelope to him. “It might jog your memory.”

  “Where did you get that?” His eyes kept darting from the envelope to me, and back to the envelope. He licked his lips four times in a row. Other than that, he was hiding his anxiety well.

  “The envelope?” I asked. “A basic office supply store.”

  His mouth tightened into a grimace. “No. The— Whatever’s inside.”

  “You still haven’t checked it,” I said, practically pushing it into his chest. “I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding. You know: I’m talking about one thing, and you think I’m talking about something else. Then our whole lives become like a bad sitcom.”

  “I—” he said, then stopped. He turned his head away from me.

  I pulled the photo out of the envelope and held it up. Cynthia took a long look and gasped. I thought Will was going to grab it and crumple it up, but instead he just stood there, looking panicked. His head jerked around, scanning the hallway. Cynthia and I were the only witnesses.

  I understood why he was so tense. The picture was grainy, but there was no mistaking what was going on. Two boys were standing in a locker room. One was obviously Will, even though his face wasn’t clear. His size, posture, and the big number 4 on his official Franklin Middle School basketball jersey gave it away. The other kid in the picture was Vinny Biggs. Will was holding his hand out to Vinny; Vinny was about to put something in that empty hand. Even with the graininess, you could tell it was a wad of cash.

  Will stared down at his shoes. “I made that mistake a long time ago.�
�

  “Yeah, I know. The date stamp in the bottom right corner tells me that. You want to know what else that date stamp tells me? It tells me that this picture was taken the day of the Carver game. You know, the game that Pete supposedly threw.”

  “Date could be faked,” Will mumbled.

  “Yeah, it could be. One look at you tells me it wasn’t, though.”

  Will continued to stare at his shoes. He looked miserable.

  “Pete forgot to take his phone out of his shorts,” he said. “He ran back to put it in his locker. On the way, he saw me talking to Vinny and decided to take a picture of us. Why? I’m not even sure he knows.”

  “So Pete tried to win that game on his own,” I said. “That’s why he wouldn’t pass to you. He knew he would probably lose anyway, but he figured he’d go down swinging. Ironically, it was his fight that made it look like he was the one tanking … and that played right into your hands, didn’t it?”

  Will bowed his head.

  “And you let him take the blame,” I said.

  “He wanted to take it. He offered,” he said. “I didn’t want to throw my whole life away just because I needed a little cash. Pete already had a Pixy Stix addiction. He was bound to mess up sooner or later. Why do you think he kept this a secret for so long?”

  “Because he didn’t want to rat out his friend. And he didn’t think anyone would believe him, picture or no picture.”

  “It was more than that! Honest! The pressure was getting to him. He didn’t want to play basketball anymore. All he wanted to do was get Stixed all the time.”

  “So instead of getting him help, you turned him into the most hated kid in school. Pete was drowning in a sea of sugar, and you tossed him an iron doughnut.”

  “Neither one of us realized how bad it would get for him!”

  I swallowed my anger. “You know what?” I said. “I don’t even care. What’s done is done, right?”

  The weakness and desperation drained from his face, replaced by suspicion … and familiarity. “Right,” he said cautiously.

  “Past is past,” I said. “Let’s talk about the future.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, the future—more specifically, my future—looks like it’s going to be unpleasant,” I said, “and I think it’s my responsibility to myself to cushion the fall a bit. Don’t you?”