Truth and Lies

by Norah McClintock

  We sat on the back porch for a little longer. Then we walked over to Coxwell and had lunch at McDonald’s.

  “You want to go back to school?” I asked when we’d finished.

  Sal shook his head. “I can get my mom to write me a note, say I was sick. What about you?” he said. “You gonna get into trouble with Riel?”

  I said no, mostly so Sal wouldn’t feel bad. Riel would probably hear that I had walked out in the middle of English class. He’d be mad. I’d have to tell him something. But what?

  “I better go back to school,” I said.

  Sal didn’t try to talk me out of it the way Vin would have if he and I had left school in the middle of the morning.

  I was tagged by the hall monitor the minute I pushed open the door into school.

  “Returning to the scene of the crime, huh, Mike?” Carl said. He shook his head, as if I were an arsonist who had come back to watch the fire I had set. Whatever.

  He escorted me to the office—where I had been planning to go anyway. I knew Ms. Stephenson had reported me. I wasn’t dumb enough to think I could sneak back into school and nothing was going to happen.

  Mr. Gianneris gave me a detention, which he agreed to let me serve during lunch on Monday so that it wouldn’t interfere with my job. Mr. Gianneris was a lot like Riel that way. To him a job was a VERY BIG DEAL. He wasn’t going to mess it up for me if he could avoid it.

  For once Mrs. Kiros showed up on time to relieve me. I slung my backpack over one shoulder and headed home, cutting through a parking lot north of Danforth, then crossing the street. You could go for blocks from parking lot to parking lot in this neighborhood. As I moved from one to the other, I had to cross an alley lined on both sides with garages. As I glanced up it, I was startled to see Vin with a group of kids. I automatically raised a hand to wave, then caught myself and shoved my hand into my pocket. Vin hadn’t seen me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. He didn’t call me much anymore. Okay, so he didn’t call me at all anymore. That bothered me—a lot. But there was nothing I could do about it. Then, just as I was wishing I was hanging with Vin and wishing at the same time that I could slip by unnoticed, he called to me.

  “Mikey!”

  I turned around and did my best to look surprised—Whoa, what are you doing here?

  Vin broke away from the rest of the gang, seven or eight of them, and came smiling toward me.

  “Hey, where you going?” he asked. “Come on, you want to hang out with us?”

  I had to get home. Riel was expecting me. If ever I couldn’t get home on time, I was supposed to call. But I didn’t have a cell phone. Riel wouldn’t let me waste—his word, not mine—my money on one. So if I had to make a call, I’d have to find a pay phone down on Danforth.

  “Hey, come on,” Vin said. He threw an arm around my shoulder like he was my best pal, just like the good old days, and led me up the alley to where the rest of the gang was.

  “I am not!” someone wailed. A girl. A little on the plump side. Not exactly pretty and wearing a lot of makeup to try to cover the fact. Orange hair. Tight jeans. One pierced eyebrow. Nose stud. Runny nose, swiped with the back of her hand. Downturned mouth. Smeared red lipstick.

  “It’s not a big deal,” another girl said. Cat.

  “But it’s not true,” the first girl said.

  “If it isn’t true, then why did he say it?” Cat asked. “Why would a nonentity like Bradley Tattersall tell all his loser friends in the—what is it, the science club?—why would he tell them that you watched a movie with him in his basement, on his couch, if it wasn’t true?”

  “He has a kid sister,” the girl said. I couldn’t remember her name. Louise? No, that wasn’t right. Lu-something. Lucy. Yeah, that was it. Her name was Lucy. She was a year behind me in school. “I babysit her sometimes,” Lucy said. “I was babysitting and Brad came home before his mom did, that’s all.”

  “Brad?” Cat made the name sound like honey or sweetheart.

  “His sister and I were downstairs watching Muppets in Outer Space,” Lucy said. “He sat down on the couch I was on. That’s all.”

  “Oooooh,” a guy said, his voice high, imitating a girl’s. The guy’s name was Sly, a cool enough name until you remembered that it was short for Sylvester. Sly, another friend of A. J.’s.

  Lucy’s cheeks turned as red as her smeary lipstick.

  “He sat on the other end of the couch from me,” she said. “His mom came home, like, twenty minutes later. I left. That’s all.”

  Cat’s smile was wide and sympathetic.

  “You’ve got it bad, girl,” she said. “Admit it. But, hey, if you want to hang out with the Bradley Tattersalls of the world, that’s your right, right?”

  “And if we don’t want to hang with someone who hangs with Bradley Tattersall, that’s our right, too, right?” Sly said.

  Cat tilted her head to one side as she thought this over.

  “I guess,” she said at last.

  “In that case,” Sly said, “I choose no.” He turned to the guy next to him. A guy named Paul. “What about you?”

  Paul shrugged. “Why would it matter to me who she hangs out with?” he said. But he didn’t say it in a nice way, as if it was Lucy’s life and Lucy’s choice and everyone should leave her alone. Instead it came out like he didn’t care and didn’t see any reason why he should because who was she, anyway? Nobody important. Nobody who mattered. He turned and walked down the alley. Sly followed him. So did the rest of the kids, all except Cat, who hung back a little with Lucy.

  “It’s not true,” Lucy said again. Her voice was trembling now.

  “What’s not true?” Cat said. “It’s not true that you hung out in Bradley’s basement with him? You just said you did.”

  “But not the way you’re making it sound.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cat said. She flashed a smile that had nothing to do with being happy. “Nobody cares, Lucy. Nobody really cares what you do.” Then she turned away, her long, thin legs carrying her over to Vin. She looped her arm through one of his, glancing at me, but barely.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’re outta here.”

  Vin beamed. He stood taller now that Cat was attached to him.

  “Come on, Mike,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I can’t. I have to get home.”

  Cat rolled her eyes. “Come on, Vinnie,” she said.

  Vinnie?

  Vin slapped me on the back. “See you around,” he said. He strutted away, arm in arm with Cat.

  I looked back up the alley at Lucy, all alone now, sniffling, her face smeared with tears. It’s not my problem, I told myself. I didn’t even know her. Not really.

  I turned to cross the street and saw a girl standing on the sidewalk, so still that it looked like she wasn’t even breathing. She had a big fat beagle on a leash. Her eyes skipped from me to Vin and Cat walking up the alley, and then back to me again. She looked at me like I was something she might have to pick up with the plastic bag she had knotted to the beagle’s leash.

  It’s not my problem, I wanted to tell her. I didn’t even know this Lucy kid—and I wasn’t the one who made her cry. But I didn’t know this new girl, either. I told myself that I didn’t care what she thought. Why should I?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Susan—Dr. Thomas—was in the living room when I got home. She was sliding a CD into Riel’s CD player. I smiled when I saw her, and not just because I like her. Mostly I was thinking, whew! If she was there, Riel would be in a good mood. Riel in a good mood was a good thing. A safe thing. I realized later that I should have known better. Sure, Susan smiled right back at me. But then her eyes skipped from me to the stairs, where a moment later Riel appeared, freshly shaved and changed out of the jeans and T-shirt he had worn to school, looking more formal now in charcoal slacks and a dark shirt. He was also wearing his teacher expression—or maybe it was his cop expression—stern, verging on angry.

  “You want to tell me why y
ou cut classes today?” he said.

  I glanced at Susan, who shrugged. She was always nice to me, but she never interfered when Riel was doing his foster-parent thing. She probably thought it was none of her business. I wasn’t clear on her relationship with Riel. Most of the time they just seemed like good friends. But occasionally Riel would look at Susan or Susan would look at Riel and I’d think that maybe there was something more to it.

  “I’m waiting for an answer,” Riel said. He was at the bottom of the stairs now, arms crossed over his chest. Teacher, cop, foster-parent—he had it all nailed down with that one sharp look on his face, that one stiff way of standing.

  “Sal wasn’t feeling well,” I said.

  “Then Sal should have gone home.”

  “He did.”

  “Uh-huh.” Riel’s arms were still crossed over his chest. He was waiting for something, but I had no idea what it was.

  “I walked him home,” I said. “That’s all. I went back to school. You can ask Mr. Gianneris.”

  Riel was like a bomb—solid, motionless, but you could sense the ticking, you just knew he was going to go off, and when he did …

  “Did Sal get sick before or after you went to McDonald’s?”

  Oh. I reran the walk to McDonald’s, my mind working like a camera, panning and scanning faces on the sidewalk, faces in store windows, faces at McDonald’s. I couldn’t remember seeing anyone I knew. But that wasn’t the right way of looking at it. The real question was, had anyone who knew Riel seen me and Sal? Riel knew a lot of people.

  “I’m going to ask you again,” Riel said. “Why did you leave school today?”

  Susan slipped out of the living room and into the kitchen, leaving us alone.

  I glanced at Riel and then looked down at the floor. I had promised Sal I wouldn’t tell anybody about his father. Anybody meant anybody.

  “Sal was having a bad day,” I said at last.

  “I don’t want to know why Sal left school,” Riel said. “I want to know why you left school.”

  “Sal’s my friend.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  How could I answer it? I had promised Sal. Besides, what difference did it make? I’d only missed two classes. Two. Not even a whole day.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You bet you are,” Riel said. “You’re grounded for the weekend.”

  “Aw, come on!”

  “You don’t cut classes as long as you’re living with me, understand, Mike?”

  Yeah, I understood. I pushed by Riel and slammed up to my room. My room—what a joke! The room that I occupied in Riel’s house.

  Grounded. It sucked. Except that I wasn’t totally grounded because I had my job—nine to one on Saturday—and Riel would rather grade papers for eternity than let me miss ten seconds of work. The best he could do was tell me, “You come straight home after work, do you hear me?”

  It was a whole day later and Riel still sounded steamed when he talked to me, even though I had only missed two classes—and one of them was music, so it wasn’t even a big deal. Mr. Gianneris had only given me a one-hour detention, which proved how minor it was. I felt like telling Riel to chill out. But Riel was the kind of guy who got more worked up when someone told him to calm down. The kind of guy who’d say, “I am calm,” yelling the words at you, his face all red like he was going to blow an artery. So I just nodded. Come straight home after work? Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.

  “And when you get home, you can clean your bathroom. And I mean really clean it this time, Mike.”

  Okay, so he was in that kind of mood. Once, when I first started living with Riel, I’d fudged a little on bathroom detail. I’d cleaned the easy stuff, the obvious stuff—a swoosh of Mr. Clean over the sink and the back of the toilet, a couple of swipes around the side of the tub. When I’d finished, the place smelled like a brigade of cleaning ladies had been through it, but I hadn’t exactly hit every nook and cranny, and I hadn’t attacked the grout work like my life depended on degumming it, the way Riel did. The way Riel went at everything. I’d been in a hurry. Vin had been waiting for me. Besides, how was I supposed to know that Riel would inspect the bathroom like he was a drill sergeant and I was a raw recruit?

  Now he wanted me to do the bathroom the hard way?

  “No problem,” I said. Taking it calm, pretending it was no sweat, I could do it blindfolded and standing on one leg. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah.”

  Of course.

  “The kitchen floor. Washed and rinsed. And tomorrow I want you to give your room a thorough going over.”

  “There’s just one thing,” I said. “I have a project due on Monday.” I’d been saving that piece of information. “I have to go to the library.”

  Right away I saw that Riel was conflicted. He wanted to tell me, No, you can’t go, you can’t go anywhere, you’re grounded. But a project? Schoolwork? That was different. It was, well, it was work.

  “What subject?”

  “History.”

  Snap went the trap, catching Riel right where he had to care. History. The subject Riel taught. I’d been in his class right up until Riel had taken me in. I knew how seriously he took history. Vin called him Cop Boy. Mister History would have been more accurate.

  “I have an essay due on World War I,” I said.

  “When was it assigned?”

  Like that made any difference to when it was due.

  “Beginning of the week,” I said. “Only it’s hard to get to the library when I have to work and have all my other homework. I was planning to go this weekend.” A reasonable excuse followed by a reasonable plan—leaving Riel no choice but to give in.

  “Okay. You can go after work. But I’m trusting you, Mike. I’m trusting you to go to the library and then to come straight home and do your chores before supper. You got it?”

  Yeah, I had it.

  Vin dropped by the store while I was there and bought two packages of candy cigarettes—little sticks of white sugar with a dab of red food coloring at one end that was supposed to make them look like lit cigarettes.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I said.

  Vin grinned. “It’s a joke. Cat’s been bugging me. She doesn’t even want to be around tobacco, let alone tobacco smoke.”

  “Ha, ha,” I said and made change from the dollars Vin had handed me. This was, I realized, the first time in a long time that I had seen Vin alone, no A. J., no Cat, no pile of brand-new friends.

  Vin pulled open one of the boxes of candy cigarettes, picking at the cardboard, trying to open it without ripping it apart so that he could close it again like a real pack of cigarettes.

  “Hey, Vin?” I said.

  We used to hang out together all the time. We’d been almost inseparable since kindergarten. When my mom died, Vin was cool about it. One day we were in Vin’s backyard, shooting hoops at the b-ball net Vin’s dad had set up at one end of the tiny yard. I don’t even know exactly what triggered it. All I know is that one minute everything was cool, and the next minute I couldn’t breathe because I was sobbing so hard. Vin stood for a moment on the paving stones that filled most of the yard. Stood with the basketball in his hands. Then he let go of the ball. I watched it drop to the pavement, bounce, drop back down, bounce again, ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump. Vin wrapped his arms around me—wrapped his arms around me!—and held onto me until I stopped crying. After that, he went inside. When he came out, he had some tissues and a couple of cans of pop. We drank them and then shot hoops until it got dark. That was Vin at eleven. Vin now—well, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Vin finally got the package of candy cigarettes open. He smiled at me as he pulled a cigarette from the box and stuck it in his mouth.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “I think you look like a big baby.”

  “When do you get sprung from here, anyway?”

  “One o’clock.”

  “You want to do something?�
�� he said. “Maybe go downtown?”

  “Can’t,” I said. “Grounded.” The words came out automatically, before I realized, hey, when was the last time Vin had asked me to do something with him? And just the two of us, it sounded like.

  “All right, Mike!” Vin said. “Still a rebel. Jeez, you had me worried there for a while, living with a cop and all.” He got serious then. “He probably still knows a lot of cops, right?” he said.

  “Riel? Yeah,” I said. He didn’t make a big point of hanging out with other cops, but I knew he knew some. “Why?”

  Before he could answer, the bell above the door jangled. Three boys tumbled into the store. They looked about ten, maybe eleven years old. They fanned out through the narrow aisles, eyeing the candy, calling to each other, checking out the new stuff and the prices. The bell jangled again and two more boys came in, these two older than the first three—junior high kids, I figured. Another jangle and then there was Mr. Kiros, standing in the doorway, frowning at his customers, then frowning at me.

  “You keeping an eye on things?” Mr. Kiros asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Yes, sir!” Vin mimicked in a soft voice. Then he exploded with laughter.

  “Shut up,” I muttered.

  “Hey, hey!” Mr. Kiros said to one of the older kids. “You touch it, you buy it!”

  The kid stared at Mr. Kiros for a moment before giving him the finger and plunging his bare hand into a bin of Reese’s Pieces. Mr. Kiros charged at the kid like a rhinoceros going after a … well, whatever rhinoceroses go after. He wrenched the kid’s arm out of the bin. Reese’s Pieces sprayed out of the kid’s hand, flew across the cramped store and skittered all over the floor. The kid swore at Mr. Kiros. He and his friend slammed out of the store. Mr. Kiros turned on the three younger kids, who each had a bag in their hands and had been selecting stuff from the bins—Gummi Worms and Hot Tamales and sour keys. Mr. Kiros glowered at them. The kids hung there a moment, unsure what to do.

  Vin shook his head. “What a jerk,” he said. “I’m outta here. Catch you later, Mikey.” He was halfway out the door when Mr. Kiros grabbed him by the back of his collar.