by Tami Hoag
“Lola!” Jaime called, waving, her attention on a couple of kids milling around the park’s ornate gazebo—a slender girl with a long dark ponytail, bouncing a soccer ball on one knee, then the other, and a russet-haired boy sitting on the gazebo steps. A second boy rode a dirt bike back and forth in little half circles behind the girl, as if corralling her in place. “Lola!”
The girl with the soccer ball looked their way and flashed a wave and a big sunny smile. “Hey, Mrs. Blynn!”
“Lola and Nora are best friends,” Jaime explained as they approached the gazebo. “Lola Troiano. Her mom’s an attorney—Jessica Troiano. Maybe you know her? Anyway, Lola was out here yesterday. Maybe she saw something.”
“And the boys?” Annie asked.
“That’s Dean Florette on the bike. I don’t know the other boy. He must be new.”
“Hey, Lola, this is Detective Broussard from the Sheriff’s Office,” Jaime said as they walked up on the group. “She has a few questions for you.”
Lola’s brown eyes widened. She clutched her soccer ball close. “For me?”
“Ha-ha, Lola!” crowed the boy on the dirt bike, his greasy black hair falling in his eyes. “You’re under arrest for being an ugly butt-face!”
Lola rolled her eyes. “She’s probably here to arrest you, Dean. It should be against the law to be as dumb as you are.”
“You’re Dean Florette?” Annie asked in the voice of authority. “I’ll have some questions for you as well, young man.”
The smirk fell off Dean Florette’s round face, his small eyes narrowing. Lola Troiano stuck out her tongue at him and turned back around, her ponytail swinging.
“Lola, Mrs. Blynn tells me you’re friends with Nora Florette,” Annie began. “You heard about what happened last night, right? To KJ Gauthier?”
Tears sprang instantly to Lola Troiano’s eyes. “Mr. Blakely told us. It’s so terrible! Why would anybody do such a thing?”
“It’s my job to find out,” Annie said. “Have you spoken to Nora today?”
“No, ma’am. She was absent today.” The girl’s eyes widened suddenly in horror. “You don’t think Nora did it, do you? She wouldn’t!”
Annie held up her hands to stem the tide of preteen hysteria. “No, no, I don’t think Nora did it. I’m on my way to ask her the same questions I’m going to ask you. I’m just wondering if she might have said anything to you that could point us in a direction. You haven’t talked to her on the phone or texted since you saw her yesterday?”
“No, ma’am. Nora doesn’t have a cell phone. She was saving up for one, but someone stole her money,” she said, shooting another nasty look at Dean.
The boy sent the look right back at her, rising up off his bike seat and farting loudly for emphasis.
“Dean Florette!” Jaime snapped in teacher mode. “Have some respect!”
He looked right at her, bug-eyed, and belched.
Choosing to ignore his nonsense, Annie pressed on. “So, you guys were hanging out here yesterday after school. Did you notice any strangers hanging around?”
“Yeah,” Dean answered, snickering, pointing at the boy on the gazebo steps. “Spicer. He’s strange. He’s the strangest thing for miles!”
As Dean Florette laughed loudly at his own joke, the Spicer boy’s face went as red as his hair.
“Did you see anyone?” Annie asked him directly.
“No, ma’am,” the boy mumbled, his head ducked down like a whipped dog. He squirmed under the sudden attention. All skinny arms and legs, he tried to fold himself up and make himself smaller as he sat there on the steps.
“What’s your name?” Annie asked.
“Cameron Spicer,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact as if it might hurt.
The name meant nothing to her. She knew no Spicers, not that it mattered. She dug her cardholder out of her hip pocket, pulled a business card, and held it out to him. “Here, take this.”
He accepted the card reluctantly, like he thought it might be some kind of trick or that he might suffer for having accepted it. Probably the latter, Annie thought. He had the demeanor of a natural target for his crueler peers, that no matter what he did, he would be ridiculed for it. There was no right answer for kids like Cameron.
As if on cue, Dean Florette spoke up. “Now you can be a snitch, Spice Girl! Houma Homo.”
Annie wheeled in his direction. “That’s enough out of you, mister.”
Still young enough to be momentarily intimidated by authority, the boy’s expression sobered as Annie walked up to him with her hands jammed on her hips. He was about the same size as her, she thought, and he was still more little boy than young man. Soon he would be bigger and stronger, and full of hormones and idiotic machismo, and she wouldn’t be able to easily intimidate him with a look or a curt word.
“I’m about to go and speak with your mother,” she said. “Do you think she wants to hear about your bad behavior from a sheriff’s detective? Hmmm?”
He dropped his head in surrender. “No.”
“No, what?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Good answer,” Annie said. “And I do not want to hear one word from anyone about you mouthing off and being a bully. Do you understand me?”
His breath hitched a little as he inhaled. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Now here,” she said in a gentler voice, holding a business card out to him. “You take this card, because one of these days that mouth of yours is gonna get your butt in a world of hurt, and you’re gonna need someone on your side. You call me when that happens. I guarantee you’ll like me a lot better as your friend than as your enemy.”
He gave her a suspicious look from the corner of his eye, peering at her through ragged strands of hair that needed to be cut. Finally, he reached out, took the card, and shoved it into the front pocket of his jeans.
“If any of you think of anything from yesterday that stands out at all as troubling or just out of the ordinary, I want you to call me,” Annie said as she handed a card to Lola. “If you saw anyone that seemed out of place, or if you remember hearing anyone say something that struck you as odd, just call me and say, ‘Hey, Detective Broussard, I just remembered something.’
“That’s not being a snitch,” she assured them. “You’re not gonna get anyone in trouble. Part of my job is just to make a clear picture of everything that happened yesterday, and one small piece of information—even if it seems like it couldn’t possibly matter—might help make that picture complete. That’s how crimes get solved.”
NINETEEN
Cameron watched the sheriff’s detective and the teacher walk back toward the elementary school, feeling weirdly detached, as if he was watching a scene from a movie.
If only that was true, he thought as the sheriff’s detective got in an SUV and drove away. If only he was a character in a movie and this wasn’t his real life.
His heart was pounding from having to talk to the detective. What if she recognized his name? What if she told the sheriff she’d spoken to him? He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be at football practice, only he had quit football.
His mother had taken pity on him and let him quit more than a week ago, but she had yet to tell Kelvin. He wasn’t going to be happy about it. They had already had a million arguments about Cameron just wanting to quit the team. Kelvin raging about pride and character building and “sticking it out.” His mother arguing that it was dangerous and took Cameron away from his studies, and shouldn’t it be enough that he was an excellent student? Kelvin had won every argument so far by declaring that he was right and that was the end of it.
Cameron was stuck in between them, not wanting to let either of them down. What if he disappointed Kelvin so badly he decided not to marry Cameron’s mom? She had suggested that could happen. She said most men didn’t want some other man’s kid. Th
ey were so lucky to have Kelvin.
But he was going to find out sooner or later that Cameron had left the football team, and then the explosion was going to come. They would probably get thrown out of their house, and his mom would have to get a job, and it would be all Cameron’s fault. Every time he made a mistake these were the thoughts that went through his head, and no matter how hard he tried not to, he kept making mistakes. Kelvin seemed to constantly find fault with everything he did. Cameron knew for a fact that Kelvin would have been happy to send him away to some horrible military school. His mother had yet to give in.
Cameron held himself tense all day every day, waiting for the reckoning. It was only a matter of time. The anxiety made him feel ill. It churned his stomach and gave him headaches—signs of weakness, to Kelvin’s way of thinking. Why couldn’t he buck up and “be a man”?
Maybe he wasn’t a man. Maybe he would never be a man by Kelvin’s way of thinking. Every time Cameron thought that, he felt smaller and smaller, and weaker and weaker.
Sometimes—more and more—he felt like his true self was a tiny shrunken thing living inside the giant empty shell of his body, standing on a cheekbone and peering out through a giant eye socket at a world that seemed both hyper-real and surreal. He couldn’t believe that no one seemed to notice there was something really, horribly wrong with him, that he wasn’t a whole, normal person, that he was some kind of freak.
“Someone we know got murdered!” Lola said, breaking the silence. She propped her soccer ball on her hip and shook her head. “I can’t even! What if we saw something and we don’t even know it?”
“That’s stupid,” Dean declared. “How could you see something and not know that you saw it?”
“You’re stupid,” Lola said. “Cameron knows what I mean. Right, Cameron?”
Cameron shrugged, not sure what would be worse for him: pretending he knew what she was talking about or admitting he didn’t. Dean Florette was going to come down on him either way.
He wished he could just close his eyes and wake up at home, or—better yet—on a desert island somewhere. He didn’t want to be here—not here at school, not at home, not anywhere in Bayou Breaux. He hated this place, and this place hated him. No matter how hard he tried, no one here liked him. His ears were too big; his hair was too red. The kids who grew up here didn’t like him because he was new. The athletes didn’t like him because he was awkward. The average kids didn’t like him because he was too smart. The smart kids didn’t like him because they thought he was weird.
He wanted people to like him. They just didn’t. The closest he came to having friends were a couple of sixth-grade girls. The only guy who had anything to do with him was a loser who only wanted to beat the shit out of him.
Nobody liked Dean Florette, either, or he would have had something better to do with his life than hang out in the park after school, harassing kids lower on the totem pole than he was. Maybe that was what made him so mean.
“Hey, Spicer,” Dean said, rolling his bike toward the gazebo. “If the sheriff is practically your old man, how come that detective didn’t know who you are?”
Cameron got to his feet and leaned against the nearest gazebo pillar, ready to duck behind it if Dean rushed him. “I never saw her before. Why would she know me?”
“I bet the sheriff never talks about you because he doesn’t even know who you are.”
“He does so.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Am not!”
“Prove it.”
Lola rolled her eyes. “How’s he supposed to prove it, Dean? Is he gonna bring the sheriff to show-and-tell? You’re not in kindergarten anymore—although you act like it.”
“Who asked you, girl?” Dean said, reaching out with one dirty sneaker to kick at her.
Lola hopped back out of the way. “Who asked you to be alive?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Why don’t you just go crawl in a hole and rot? That’s what you smell like anyway.”
“Fuck you, Lola. Your pussy smells like roadkill.”
“You’re disgusting!” Lola snapped. “I hope that detective goes and tells your mother you’re a juvenile delinquent and you have to be sent to reform school!”
“Well, I hope you get raped and killed on your way home.”
Lola gasped aloud. “That’s horrible! You’re just hateful! Who says something like that?”
“Me! I say whatever I want, twat puddle,” Dean said with a menacing smirk. He climbed off his bike and dropped it without a care. He swaggered toward Lola, rubbing his grubby fist into the open palm of his other hand, like he was polishing it.
“I say whatever I want, and I do whatever I want,” he said. “Who’s gonna stop me? You? Spice Girl over there? You think your faggot boyfriend is gonna stop me?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Lola said, backing up.
“Because he’s a gay, cock-sucking butt monkey,” Dean said, chuckling at what he clearly thought were his clever name-calling abilities.
“Cameron, why don’t you stand up to him?” Lola asked.
Cameron wished he could. He wanted to say that he wasn’t gay. He wanted to be brave enough to stand up to Dean Florette, but he wasn’t. Even if he stood up to him today, what about tomorrow and the next day? Dean was never going to quit being stupid and mean unless he died.
“You’re such a loser, Spicer,” Dean jeered as he stalked Lola. “You should just go kill yourself and be done with it.”
“Get away from me, Dean,” Lola ordered, backing toward the gazebo. “You’re so not funny.”
“What’s the matter, Lola?” Dean taunted, google-eyed, stretching out his hands, fingers wide. “Afraid I’m gonna touch your titties? Bwahahahaha!”
He laughed like a maniac in a cheesy movie. Dean was always groping girls. He thought it was hilarious. The girls never thought so, but that only seemed to egg him on. The less the girl liked it, the funnier Dean thought it was.
Cameron couldn’t see Lola’s face as she backed up. He couldn’t tell if she was scared or just angry. He stood frozen, not knowing what to do. If he intervened, Dean would kick his ass. If he didn’t, Lola would hate him. He was sweating and trembling, his stomach churning and cramping. He needed to go to the bathroom, even though he’d already gone, like, ten times today, the diarrhea shooting out of him like water from a fire hose.
“Don’t you come one step closer to me, Dean Florette!” Lola warned.
“Ooooh, I’m scared!” Dean mocked, creeping closer and closer. “Whatcha gonna do to me, Lola Ebola Stick It in Your Hole-a?”
“This!”
Clutching her soccer ball between both hands, she slammed it as hard as she could into Dean’s ugly face. Howling, he staggered backward, pressing his hands to his mouth and nose, trying to stem the flow of blood gushing from his face. Tears poured from his eyes.
Lola followed up by kicking him in the shin like she was kicking the winning goal in the most important championship game of her life.
“That’s what you get!” she yelled, furious.
Dean hopped on one foot and then fell to the ground. “I’m gonna kill you, you fucking bitch!” he shouted, the threat spoiled by the fact that he was crying like a big baby.
Lola stood over him, shouting down at him, “I’m going straight to the principal’s office! And that detective can lock you up for a sex predator!”
Snatching up her ball, she turned and ran for the elementary school.
Dean struggled to sit up, half crying, sputtering swear words as snot and blood ran into his open mouth. He glared at Cameron. “What are you looking at, faggot?”
Cameron didn’t bother to answer. Now was his chance. He turned and dashed across the gazebo and flung himself over the far side, falling into a bush that tore at his clothing and skin with a thousand tiny thorns as he scrambled to get up.
His sneakers pounded hard on the path—SLAP! SLAP! SLAP! His pulse was pounding in his ears—BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! His breath sawed in and out of his lungs. He sounded like Darth Vader, only he wasn’t the bad guy in this movie. The humidity made the air like thick, hot steam, choking him, smothering him, drowning him. As he fixed his gaze ahead on the path, the heat rose up in ripples off the pavement, making his vision dreamlike. Bad dream–like.
His neighborhood was just two blocks beyond the end of the path—but so was Dean’s. He went by the Florette house every day on his way to and from school. Nora and Dean had been two of the first kids he’d met after moving here. Dean had taken an instant hatred of him, tormenting him on a daily basis. That wasn’t going to get better. Not ever. It was only going to get worse.
Cameron’s stomach rolled and cramped. He worried he wouldn’t make it home in time. He had to run faster, but his legs felt huge and heavy and slow, like he was running through deep sand.
And then it was too late.
The sound didn’t penetrate the noise in his head until the threat was almost on him. A war cry, loud and blood-curdling: “FAGGOT!!!!!!”
He glanced over his shoulder just as Dean Florette rode up on him. The blood smeared all over his face made him look like he was wearing a samurai mask. His split lip and bashed nose were misshapen from swelling; his eyes squinted down to straight lines.
Cameron took in the sight in a split second, and then Dean hit him hard in the back, and he went flying. The ground rushed up at him in a blur. He landed—BAM! SLAM!—like a plane with no wheels, bouncing on the pavement, scraping his hands, his arms, his chin. His brain sloshed and banged around inside his head like Jell-O. He saw double and tasted blood.
His bowels let loose as he bounced to a stop in a heap on the walkway, the smell overwhelming him, making him gag and retch. That was all he needed—to throw up all over himself. That would just be the cherry on top of the shit sundae.