“If you change your mind about anything, you can call me,” he said.
I tucked the card into my pocket and followed Billy out into the parking lot. He had a beat-up old Toyota that needed serious bodywork. When I got close to it I saw that Dan was already in the passenger seat. Lew was in back.
“You brought them with you?” I said. It was bad enough that I got hauled out of school by the cops. Did the whole world have to know about it?
“I told Gus I was too shook up to drive,” Billy said, grinning. Gus was his boss. “Lew offered to help out. We ran into Dan. Besides, they’re my best friends, and they’re practically second uncles to you,” Billy said. That was true. “And they’re supporting me during this stressful time.”
He opened the door and got in. I waited until the passenger door finally opened and Dan got out. He was shaking his head.
“Jeez, Mike,” he said. “Busted? You actually got busted?” He slid into the backseat while I got in front with Billy. As I was buckling my seatbelt, Billy cuffed the back of my head. Hard.
“Hey!” I said.
“Stealing from a bakery truck!” Billy said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Yeah, Mikey, you’re gonna get pinched, make it for something important at least,” Dan said.
“I mean, going down for cupcakes!” Lew said.
He and Dan laughed. I was glad they found it so funny. Billy didn’t, though.
“Nancy’d freak out if she knew,” he said. He batted me on the back of the head again. “And if you don’t want to give up your friends, don’t say ‘we’ to the cops.” He shook his head. “We did this, we did that,” he said, mimicking me. “You got any brains in there at all, Mikey?”
He was still shaking his head as he turned the key in the ignition.
“What’s going to happen now, Billy?” I asked as we drove home.
“You’ll have to go to court,” he said. “We should probably talk to a lawyer before you do. You should be okay, though. You’ve never been in trouble before. Well, except for that bike thing.”
Jen’s dad’s bike. Jen thinks he pushed so hard on that because he’s a lawyer. “It’s the way he is,” she said.
Jen’s dad said he was in a coffee shop on the other side of Danforth at the time. He said he saw me remove the lock. He claimed I must have swiped the duplicate key from his house, which was the big reason I wasn’t allowed to go there anymore. But he couldn’t prove anything. And I hadn’t done anything. Okay, so that included not trying to stop the guys from taking the bike. Maybe I should have chased them. Maybe I would have, too, if Jen’s dad didn’t always look at me the way most people look at garbage men in July—with their noses all wrinkled in disgust.
“Worst case, you’ll probably get community service,” Bill said. “But that’s this time, Mikey. You do something stupid like this again and nobody’s going give you a break. You understand?”
I nodded.
“What about V— ”
Billy smacked me on the back of the head a third time. It didn’t hurt, though. He was just trying to make a point. “Don’t tell me anything more about it, okay, Mike?” he said. “If you don’t tell me anything, I don’t have to lie to anyone. As far as I know, you and maybe a friend of yours snatched some cakes from a truck—a stupid prank—and you’re sorry and you’ve promised me you’re never going to do anything like that again. Right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Remember, you want to get along in the world, Mikey,” Dan said, “you got to keep your nose clean.”
“You listen to him,” Billy said. “He makes sense.”
I was supposed to report for work at Mr. Scorza’s store that afternoon at four o’clock, but I didn’t feel like going. So I hung out a couple of blocks from the place and waited until I saw another guy who worked there. Steve didn’t go to the same school as me, but we talked sometimes at work and he was okay. I called him over and asked him to tell Mr. Scorza that I was sick.
“You don’t look sick,” Steve said.
“Just tell him, okay?” I said. “You ever need anything from me, just ask.”
He nodded, but he had this look in his eyes, like, what kind of coward would ask someone else to lie for him? The perfect end to a perfect day.
CHAPTER FIVE
I always feel like the only white guy in Harlem when I head north behind the Carrot Common. The houses are a lot bigger there than they are where I live. Most of them have been restored or renovated, and all of them are well maintained. No paint peeling around the windows. No iffy patches of shingles on the roof. No moss growing in the gutters. No weeds sprouting in the lawns. No lawns at all in front of some of those places, just gardens full of flowers and shrubs and miniature trees trimmed into perfect little balls. The cars are as upscale as the houses—Jeeps and Beemers and Lexuses. It’s not just that, though, that makes me feel like I don’t belong. It’s also the way the people look. The women’s hair is always neatly trimmed. Everyone’s jeans—kids’ and adults’—are freshly washed and pressed. Their sneakers are always the latest styles and the best brands—Adidas, Nikes, Reeboks. Sure, they all talk a line about how a lot of stuff was made by ten-year-olds in Bangladesh or India. I bet half their kids had even done projects on the evils of child labor. But drop a bundle on shoes some poor kid had slaved to make? No problem.
The day after I got busted, I walked along the tree-canopied streets, conscious of the nicks in the sneakers I had bought at Payless. My jeans were frayed at the cuffs and the denim was thin in places. Any day now the fabric would rip and my knees would show through. Nobody stopped and stared at me, though. Nobody seemed to be wondering, What’s he doing here? But I sure felt it. Around me—money. In the pockets of my worn-out jeans—no money.
A couple of blocks north of Danforth, I hung a left. A block later, a right. I slowed my pace and hung back at the corner of a hedge, just out of sight of the biggest house on the street. I could have looked at that house forever. It was five times the size of our place and was built of gray stone. It had a tower in one corner, and I knew from all the time that I had stared through the windows that the tower room—the library, Jen called it—was filled with bookshelves and books. The house also had a games room—they really called it that—with a regulation-sized pool table, a pinball machine, a Ping-Pong table, and an oak card table with special chairs. Her mom played bridge. Her dad had monthly poker nights with a bunch of other lawyers. A satellite dish sat on the tile roof. Two BMWs sat in the driveway, keeping an SUV company.
I watched the house while doing my best not to be spotted. I knew guys who came up here sometimes to swipe bikes—expensive bikes—that kids sometimes left unguarded and unlocked on porches or in open garages. I knew other guys who talked about getting into the houses themselves, but that’s all it was, talk, because most of the places were on security systems. I sure would have liked to get inside some of those places, though, just to see what they kept in there. Check out the big-screen TVs and the bathrooms that were as big as most of the living rooms on my street. Check out the real live Martha Stewart décor, too, just for laughs. Maybe even see a nanny or a cleaning lady at work.
I saw a flash—sunlight reflected off glass so clean that it looked like it wasn’t even there. The front door opened, and a man stepped out. He was wearing a gray business suit and clutching a briefcase. He stood on his stone stoop, surveying the neighborhood. I ducked to avoid being spotted. Why didn’t he just climb into his black Beemer and go? What was he waiting for? Then a woman came out and handed him a package. He planted a kiss on her cheek—it didn’t look very loving, if you ask me. The woman went back inside. I checked my watch.
I pressed a little closer to the hedge, turned my back to the street and ducked down—the old tie-the-shoelace trick—when I heard the Beemer’s engine purr.
“You there!” said a sharp voice behind me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
If I closed my eyes, I could imagine J
en’s mother. But it wasn’t Jen’s mother who had said that. It was Jen, kidding around. That meant she wasn’t mad at me, which put me in a better mood.
“Ha, ha!” I said. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her on the mouth. She giggled halfway through the kiss, which most guys wouldn’t have appreciated, but I took it as another good sign. Then she pulled away and glanced nervously back at the house.
“Mom’s home,” she said. “She’s heard the whole story.”
I wanted to ask how she had heard, but figured the message had probably been passed through the mom network and not through Jen. Jen never mentioned me to her parents—out of sight, out of mind.
“It was stupid,” I said. “I don’t even know why I did it.”
Jen’s green eyes widened in surprise.
“You mean, it’s true?” she said. It took a moment for her astonishment to sink in. Jen had thought I was innocent. Maybe she’d even argued the point with her mother. And now here I was telling her the opposite. “You really stole from that truck?”
I had been embarrassed when the two cops took me out of the school and I saw kids watching at the windows. I felt stupid when Billy showed up, all mad because he had to take time off work on my account. But now I was ashamed of myself. I knew Jen spent a lot of time trying to convince her parents that I was okay. I could imagine her doing the innocent-until-proven-guilty thing with them at the dinner table last night. So I told her that I had tossed my box a block from the truck.
“You shouldn’t have taken it in the first place,” she said. She looked and sounded exactly like her mother. But she was right, that was the thing. I didn’t argue with her. I agreed with her. She liked that.
“So, what’s going to happen?” she said. She started walking slowly and waited for me to fall into step beside her.
I told her about my court date and about what Billy had said. I didn’t tell her how it had all started—how Vin and Sal had just been trying to cheer me up about good old Patrick. I didn’t tell her, either, that Vin and Sal had been in on it with me and that I had refused to give them up. I didn’t think she’d find that as admirable as Billy had.
I spotted Vin almost as soon as I got to school. He was at one end of the parking lot, leaning against a lamppost. He must have been looking for me, because he immediately shoved himself off the post and started toward me. When Jen saw him coming, she said, “See you later.” Her voice wasn’t exactly ringing with anticipation, and I started to think about Patrick again. I don’t know what she had thought of him on Saturday night when she’d been entertaining him, but I’d have bet a month’s wages that he was looking pretty good to her right now. I bet he’d never done anything as stupid as getting arrested for stealing cupcakes. Bet he never would, either.
Vin came up to me, but he didn’t talk to me. He didn’t even stop walking when he got close. Instead he acted like a spy or an undercover cop. He walked right by me, and as he passed I heard him say, “Backstage after homeroom.”
I didn’t ask what the matter was. I didn’t have to. After ten years, Vin’s paranoid mind was no mystery to me. I figured he was afraid the cops were watching, which didn’t make much sense to me. Sure, the bakery company was going to press charges, but we had stolen pastries, not money or audio equipment. Still, maybe if Vin was the one who had been nailed and I was the one who was worried about what the cops thought or what they had found out, I would have acted the same way. So I didn’t talk back to him. Didn’t even look at him. I just met him backstage like he asked.
The place was deserted. The auditorium is used for public meetings, concerts, the annual school play, and assemblies. The rest of the time, it fills up with dust.
“What’d you tell them?” Vin asked after he checked to make sure there was no one around. He didn’t ask me how it had gone or what had happened. He didn’t even ask what the cops were going to do to me.
“Nothing,” I said.
“How come they knew to arrest you?”
“Someone saw me. Whoever it was knew my name, where I live, and what school I go to—the cop who arrested me called it a positive identification.”
“Yeah, and?”
“And they know it was me. They know I wasn’t alone. But they don’t know who was with me.”
“No one saw me?”
I noticed that he said me, not me and Sal. Guess it was every man for himself now.
“If they did, they must not have recognized you.”
From the look on his face, you’d have thought Vin had just scored big-time with that girl who looked like a model.
“And you didn’t tell them anything?” he asked.
“Jeez, thanks a lot!”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, just asking, that’s all. So now what?”
I filled him in. I felt like I’d told the story a hundred times already.
“And you’re not going to give us up?”
“All the stuff you’ve done, Vin, have I ever given you up?”
Vin slapped me on the back. “You’re okay, Mike.”
I kept my mouth shut. Maybe the cop was right. Maybe I was an idiot to be taking all the blame for something that I hadn’t done alone. But what was the point of Vin and Sal getting busted with me? It wasn’t going to teach them anything they didn’t already know. And it wasn’t going to change the fact that I had been caught more or less red-handed.
Everyone knew what had happened, which meant that I got the full eyeball treatment all day. Everybody had to look at the no-brains who’d put his personal freedom on the line for a carton of cupcakes. A couple of guys kidded me about it. None of my teachers said anything, but the ones who had already pegged me as a loser seemed to be congratulating themselves for their character-judging skills, while the few who had been willing to believe I wasn’t all bad just shook their heads and looked at me with disappointment in their eyes.
Riel didn’t say or do anything. He glanced at me when he passed me in the hall that morning, but that was it. I breathed a sigh of relief when he was out of sight. I guess because now I knew he used to be a cop, I thought he was going to chew me out. Turns out he didn’t care one way or the other.
That afternoon I headed for work. I was even looking forward to it. It would be a nice change from school, where the major topic of conversation was how stupid I had been.
Melissa, one of the cashiers, smiled at me when I came through the door. Eileen, who was old enough to be my grandmother, said, “Hey, Mike. Hope you’re feeling better.” I told her I was, then coughed to prove that I really had been sick. I headed to the back of the store to pick up my apron—we all had to wear green aprons with the store logo and our name badge on them. On the way down the cereal and baking goods aisle, Mr. Johnson, the assistant manager, stopped me.
“Mr. Scorza wants to see you,” he said.
My stomach did a backflip. I knew Mr. Scorza liked me. I also knew that he had been operating this store for longer than I had been alive. He knew all the other storeowners on this part of Danforth. I remembered what Constable Carlson had said—I had been positively identified by a local shopkeeper. With my luck, it would turn out to be a friend of Mr. Scorza’s.
I went to the front of the store and knocked on the door to Mr. Scorza’s office.
“Come in,” he said, his muffled voice deep and ominous, like the rumble of an avalanche.
I opened the door and made my way up the little flight of stairs about as enthusiastically as most people would navigate through a minefield. Over the piles of boxes at the top of the stairs I saw Mr. Scorza’s face. He looked at me and nodded, but he didn’t smile.
“You wanted to see me, Mr. Scorza?”
“Come in and sit down, Michael,” he said.
Sit down? Mr. Scorza’s office was so crowded that the only chair in it was the one behind his desk, and the only person who got to sit in that was Mr. Scorza. But as I got closer, I saw that he had crammed another chair into the tiny patch of uncluttered floor space in fr
ont of his desk.
“I’m going to come right to the point,” Mr. Scorza said. I could feel sweat under my arms. My palms were damp. Good news never followed an introduction like that. “It was a hard thing to have to do, Michael,” he said. “A very hard thing. But what choice does a man have? You see something happen, you can’t pretend you didn’t see it. A person breaks the law and you see him and you say nothing, that’s the same as breaking the law yourself.”
I had grabbed a slice of pizza in the school cafeteria for lunch and had washed it down with a can of Coke. That was hours ago. It should have settled by now. But as I sat on that rickety chair listening to Mr. Scorza, I was pretty sure it was going to come up again. Up and all over my shoes.
“I believe in leading an honest life,” Mr. Scorza said. “I believe in obeying the law. I believe in doing the right thing. So on Monday night, Michael, when I saw you steal things from that truck and then run away, what could I do?” He looked right at me. “I called the police.”
Mr. Scorza had turned me in.
“I always trusted you, Michael,” he said. “It never occurred to me not to trust you. Maybe this is because of what happened to your poor mother. You’ll excuse me if I say that your uncle does not have the same character as his sister. So maybe part of the fault is his. But you’re fifteen years old, Michael. Almost a man. And that wasn’t your uncle out on the street on Monday night. That was you. You and your friends. So you have to take responsibility for what you did.”
I thought about telling him I had already confessed. But I didn’t because the truth was that I had confessed only after I had been positively identified—by Mr. Scorza.
“You have to pay the price for what you did,” he said. “Deciding on that price is mostly out of my hands. It’s up to a judge to decide how you should be punished for what you did.”
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Scorza,” I said. I was sorry that I had done it, I was sorry that he had seen it, I was sorry that he had called the cops. I don’t mean I wished he hadn’t called them, either. I was just sorry that I had made him do it. He looked almost more upset than me.
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