Truth and Lies

by Norah McClintock

  “I said he was in my math class. I said he wasn’t my friend, though.”

  “You also said you never talked to him. Is that true, Mike?”

  I swallowed hard. I didn’t dare look at Riel now. Why was he asking me this? What did he know?

  “Mike? Is it true you never talked to Robbie Ducharme?”

  I took a deep breath. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t lie anymore. But telling the truth wasn’t going to help me either. It wasn’t going to help because it wasn’t 100 percent true that I had never exchanged a word with Robbie Ducharme. It wasn’t 100 percent true, either, that Robbie Ducharme was just a big empty zero to me, the way I’d let Riel think. It wasn’t 100 percent true that I didn’t know anything or care anything about Robbie. That is, it hadn’t been 100 percent true recently. But it had more or less described my feelings about Robbie right up until what had happened to Billy. Then, for some reason that I still didn’t understand, Robbie Ducharme had actually decided to talk to me. And what he’d said was something that I hadn’t wanted to hear.

  I had been walking down the hall at school one day. This was back when I was living in temporary foster care, back when Riel was still being checked out. Robbie and I had probably passed each other in the hall a thousand times. Probably most of those times we hadn’t even noticed each other. For sure we had never spoken to each other. It was after school. The halls were quiet. Some of them were deserted. I had stayed back in music—the one subject I liked—to help Mr. Korchak do his weekly tidy-up. I stayed at school as late as I could in those days. The temporary foster care was okay. The woman, Mrs. Walsh, was nice enough, but she was in charge of three other kids, all of them younger than me. One was a girl who cried pretty much every night. The other two were nine-year-old twins who kicked anyone who came near them. They were in therapy, Mrs. Walsh said. She was sure they’d be fine, she said. She was also sure that Teresa, the girl who cried all the time, would eventually find something to smile about. If I’d pressed her for an opinion—which I hadn’t—Mrs. Walsh probably would have told me that she was sure I’d be fine too.

  “Life throws us a curve every now and then,” she’d said to me when I first arrived at her place. “But in my experience, if you hang in there, she’ll throw some right over the plate too, and if you’re ready, you’ll hit a few home runs.”

  She was nice enough. I guess she meant well too, but, boy, she’d have had to be a million times nicer to make me want to race back to her place the minute the final bell rang to get kicked in both shins at the same time by the terror twins while I listened to Teresa cry.

  I had finished in the music room and was heading for my locker when I saw Robbie Ducharme coming toward me. Great big zero math-brainer Robbie Ducharme. Only instead of passing by with his mouth shut like he usually did, Robbie stopped in front of me. He glanced up and down the hall, maybe to make sure we were alone, that it was just the two of us. Then he stood there with his mouth hanging open, like he was breathing through it, until he got on my nerves, which didn’t take long.

  “What’s your problem?” I said.

  And Robbie—I still couldn’t believe that he’d actually said it or that he’d even thought he had the right to say it, that he thought it was any of his business—Robbie said, “I wouldn’t cry for someone who did what your uncle did.”

  I stared at Robbie’s eyes, big and blue and blurry behind the lenses of his glasses. I looked at his heavy, doughy body. He was the kind of guy who spent all of his spare time in front of a computer or a math book, not outside kicking a ball around or rollerblading or playing a little pickup softball.

  “Who you cry over says everything,” Robbie said.

  What did he mean by that? And why was he talking about crying? Sure, I had cried at Billy’s funeral. So what? Even after what he had done, he was still my uncle. He’d looked after me. Well, sort of. And, okay, there was that time a while back when a couple of guys had given me a hard time over Billy. I’d hit one of them and he’d hit me back and, yeah, maybe I’d cried—a little—and had been embarrassed because there was a whole crowd of people watching. But so what? What did that have to do with Robbie Ducharme? What did he even know about me? What did he know about Billy except what he might have read in the paper or seen on TV—or heard about at school? Sure, everybody had talked about it after it had happened, but nobody except Vin and Sal had known Billy. No one had known what he was really like.

  Still, I was prepared to walk right past Robbie Ducharme, no harm done. I was prepared to mind my own business even if Robbie couldn’t do the same. But Robbie wouldn’t let me. He grabbed me and said, “If your mother had seen you, what would she think?”

  That was when I shoved him. Hard. As hard as I could. The idea—I thought about it later, a lot—wasn’t so much to hurt Robbie as it was to get him as far away from me as possible. I didn’t punch him. I didn’t swing and connect with his belly or his chubby face. I just shoved him. Was it my fault that he couldn’t control his own body, that he was probably the most uncoordinated guy on the planet? Was it my fault that he couldn’t do what any two-year-old could do, which is regain his balance and stay upright?

  Robbie staggered backward. Then it looked to me like his feet got tangled up in each other, because the next moment he wasn’t staggering. Instead he was falling. His hands flew out to each side to try to grab onto something, but there was nothing to grab. He hit the floor butt-first. Then his back made contact. Then his head whacked the ground. It bounced up again, like a basketball, hung a little above the floor for a split second, then slammed back down. I heard a crack, an oomph, a groan. Robbie didn’t move.

  I didn’t move either. I stood exactly where I had been standing when I had shoved him, and I thought one thing and one thing only: Jeez, I hope he’s not dead. Because that could happen, right? A guy takes a bad fall or whacks his head hard enough, and that’s all she wrote.

  I stared at Robbie, who looked like a big chunky mannequin lying there on the floor. Then I noticed that his chest was rising and falling. That meant he was breathing. That was a good thing. Then his eyes opened. One of his hands came up to his face to adjust his glasses, which had been knocked sideways when he fell. I thought about helping him up, but I couldn’t make myself touch him. Also, I didn’t want to make a move until I had scoped out the situation.

  Robbie’s legs twitched. He groped the floor with his hands and maneuvered himself into a sitting position. He was sniffling. I peered at him. Wouldn’t you know it? Robbie Ducharme was crying.

  “Nice,” said a voice somewhere behind me. I spun to face a girl whose locker was in the same bank as mine. I didn’t know much about her then except that the kids all called her Cat. That’s what she reminded me of. A sleek, satisfied cat, purring away. She was standing in the hall with a bunch of her friends, and they were all looking at Robbie. I wondered when they’d arrived and how much they had seen.

  “Nice going,” Cat said. “Beating up on the fat kid with glasses. Classy move.” As far as I could tell, she wasn’t being sarcastic.

  I turned and walked down the hall, forcing myself to move slowly, not to run, no way was I going to run.

  I spent the whole of the following day convinced that I was going to be called down to the office and suspended or expelled or worse. Maybe Mr. Gianneris would call it assault and maybe he’d call the cops on me. But absolutely nothing happened. Robbie must have decided—finally—to keep his mouth shut. Cat must have decided not to say anything either. The same with her friends. I tried to forget the whole thing. I mean, I knew I hadn’t been trying to hurt Robbie. But to anyone watching, it was what Cat said, me beating up on the fat kid with glasses. So I never said anything about it to anyone, not even Vin. But somebody had sure said something recently. And I’d have bet my life that they’d said it to good old Jonesy.

  “Well?” Detective Jones said now. “Is it true, Mike? Is it true that you never talked to Robbie Ducharme?”

  I shook my head
. I didn’t look at Riel, but I sure imagined the look on his face.

  “Did you talk to Robbie about six weeks ago, Mike?” Detective Jones said.

  I swallowed hard. No matter what I said now, they were going to think I’d been lying before. They were going to think I’d been trying to hide something. They all were—even Riel.

  “It’s no big deal,” I said.

  “What’s no big deal?” Detective Jones said.

  “He—Robbie—he made a crack about my uncle.”

  “And that made you angry, didn’t it, Mike?” Detective Jones said. “Did it make you want to get even with Robbie?”

  Rhona Katz put a hand on my arm. “You don’t have to answer,” she said.

  Sure, I could have kept quiet. Taken the fifth if we’d had a fifth for me to take. I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me. That would make me look great.

  I don’t know where, but I finally found enough courage to turn and look at Riel. The minute I did, I wished I hadn’t. The expression on his face was grim. He met my eyes but didn’t say anything. Boy, if he didn’t think it before, for sure he thought it now. He thought I’d been lying to him. He probably thought I’d started way back the morning after Robbie was killed and that I’d never stopped. Well, why not? The truth was, I had been lying. I had told Riel that I was home when really I had sneaked out of the house. I had told him I’d hurt my knuckles horsing around with Sal when that wasn’t true either. I had said I’d never spoken to Robbie Ducharme when a bunch of kids had seen me do worse. If I clammed up now, if I refused to answer, that would be it for Riel. He’d never believe me again.

  “I shoved him,” I said finally. “He made some stupid comment about my uncle and my mother, and I got mad and I shoved him. That’s all.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Riel slump in his chair.

  “And what about a week ago Monday?” Detective Jones said.

  I didn’t understand the question. Why was he asking me about a week ago Monday—exactly two weeks ago now?

  “What about it?” I said.

  “Did you talk to Robbie Ducharme a week ago Monday?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t remember even seeing Robbie a week ago Monday.

  “You didn’t talk to him outside the music room at your school?” Detective Jones said.

  “No,” I said. Where had he got that idea?

  “You’re sure?” Detective Jones continued questioning. “You didn’t see Robbie, maybe talk to him a bit? Maybe you were still mad at him for what he said about your uncle. I know how you felt about Billy, Mike. And Robbie didn’t know the whole story, did he? He didn’t understand about Billy. Look, Mike, it’s normal to get angry when somebody makes a crack about someone who’s important to you. And sometimes when that happens, you lose your temper. That’s normal too. It happens to everybody. So maybe you lost your temper, maybe you were mad at Robbie and things got out of hand. If that’s what happened, Mike, you can tell us. Is that what happened?”

  “Mike,” Rhona Katz said, “you don’t have to—”

  “I didn’t even see Robbie that Monday,” I said.

  “You’re sure about that, Mike?”

  I nodded. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t told the whole truth so far. But, jeez, I hadn’t done anything to seriously hurt Robbie Ducharme either.

  For a few seconds it was completely silent in the room. Then Detective Jones leaned forward a little. He said, “Somebody saw you with him, Mike.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I heard Riel suck in a lungful of air. I wished I could do the same, but my throat had closed up. At least, that’s what it felt like. I couldn’t breathe. Except for little flashes of light popping on and off like fireflies on a summer night, the room went dark around me. I felt a hand on my arm. Rhona Katz’s hand, not Riel’s hand.

  “Mike, are you okay?” she said. My lawyer asking me, not Riel.

  Then someone pressed a paper cup into my hand and guided the cup to my mouth. Water. The room lightened up a little, and I almost started to cry. Riel was on his feet beside me, pushing me to drink the water. I choked it down. After he checked to make sure that I had drunk it all, he crumpled the paper cup and tossed it into a wastepaper basket in the corner. He dropped a hand onto my shoulder, just for a second, and then he sat down beside me again.

  Somebody saw you with him, Mike.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “Who saw me?” But that wasn’t the right question. The right question was, How could someone have possibly seen me?

  “Suppose you tell us,” Detective London said. I smelled his onion breath again and it made my stomach churn.

  “I didn’t see Robbie a week ago Monday,” I said. I was sure of it. Well, pretty sure.

  Detective Jones watched me closely. “You’re hesitating, Mike,” he said.

  I reran the past two weeks in my head. When you watch cop shows on TV, the cop says, Mr. Brown, can you account for your movements on the night of January eighteenth? It doesn’t matter if January eighteenth was weeks ago or months ago, Mr. Brown thinks for a couple of seconds and then he says, Certainly officer. I was at the opera with my mother-in-law. Well, Mr. Brown and all those other TV suspects must have been popping the gingko pills because they had much better memories than me. Or maybe their lives were more interesting. Maybe, for them, every day wasn’t exactly the same as every other day, they didn’t all blend together so you could barely remember what day of the week it was, let alone which of thirteen hundred faces you saw at school on one particular day versus another particular day.

  “I don’t know,” I said. If they asked me to swear on the Bible, that’s what I’d have to say. I don’t know. “Maybe I passed him in the hall or something.”

  “I’m not talking about passing him in the hall, Mike,” Detective Jones said. He sounded patient. “Mike, do you know Catherine Phillips?”

  Catherine Phillips? I shook my head.

  “Her friends call her Cat,” Detective Jones said.

  Oh. Cat. “Sure. I know her.”

  “What would you say, Mike, if I told you that Catherine told us that she saw you and Robbie together outside the music room after school on the Monday before Robbie was killed?” Detective Jones said.

  What?

  “It’s not true,” I said. “I wasn’t anywhere near the music room after school that day.”

  “No? Can you tell us where you were?”

  A week ago Monday? After school? Had I hooked up with Sal? I tried to remember. Yeah, that’s what I must have done. I must have hooked up with Sal. It’s what I did most days. We’d meet and we’d walk up the hill together and hang out, maybe get a Slurpee at 7–Eleven before I started work.

  “I guess I must have met my friend Sal. We walk partway home together.”

  Detective Jones glanced at Riel. They both had the same look in their eyes—disappointment—but probably not for the same reason.

  “Mike,” the detective said, “we talked to Sal, remember?”

  What did that mean? Had Sal said that he wasn’t with me after school that day? Okay, so maybe Sal’s memory was as sharp as Mr. Brown’s and mine was as dull as the rusty knife that I felt ripping into my guts.

  “Then I must have gone directly to my job,” I said.

  “Your job doesn’t start until four o’clock,” Detective Jones said. “And your former employer says you were late that day. He says you didn’t show up until much later, nearly four-thirty.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. I was never late for work. Boy, I could just imagine it. The cops go and talk to Mr. Kiros. And Mr. Kiros, who already thinks I’ve been stealing from him and letting all my friends steal from him, he tries to think back almost two whole weeks and—what do you know?—he can remember that. Yeah, now that you mention it, officer, that boy came in late that day. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d rattled on about how I was stealing him blind too. “I wasn’t late for work that day,” I said.

  D
etective Jones’s gaze was steady. “So you remember that you got to your job on time that day,” he said. “But you don’t remember that you weren’t with your friend Sal and you don’t remember where you actually were. You see the problem here, don’t you, Mike?”

  I had to fight off another panic attack. Detective Jones wasn’t understanding me. And because he wasn’t understanding, he was making it look like I was hiding something.

  “What I mean,” I said, “is that I know it’s not true that I was late for work because I was never late for work,” I said. “Mr. Kiros’s wife was late all the time. She was supposed to relieve me at six, but she never showed up on time.” I looked at Riel for confirmation. “But I was never late,” I said.

  Detective London was shaking his head. “So you’re saying Mr. Kiros is lying, is that it, Mike?”

  I nodded. He had to be.

  “Why would he do that, Mike?”

  “He doesn’t like me.”

  Detective London rolled his eyes. “What we have here, Mike, is that your friend Sal says you weren’t with him that day,” he said. “Your former boss says you showed up late for work that day. And Catherine Phillips says she saw you and Robbie Ducharme together outside the music room right after school—when you weren’t with your friend Sal and you weren’t at work and you say you can’t remember where you were. You want to know what else she says, Mike?”

  What else? What else could she possibly have said? I hadn’t been outside the music room with Robbie Ducharme a week ago Monday. So what else could she have told the cops?

  “She says she saw Robbie pass you in the hall. She says you went out of your way to bump into him. Does that sound about right, Mike? She says Robbie backed away immediately. She says it looked like he was afraid of you, on account of what happened the first time. Is that right, Mike? Was he afraid of you? Did he have a good reason to be? Because Catherine says you threatened him. She says she was afraid you were going to hurt him again.”