by James Howe
35
ON THE WAY, he passed the field where Corrie and her friends were playing football.
“Corrie!” he called out.
“Sebastian, what are you doing here?” Corrie called time out, and ran to the spot where Sebastian stood straddling his bicycle.
“Just out for a ride,” said Sebastian. “How’s the game?”
“Great,” Corrie said, catching her breath. “Guess what? I have the best news.”
“They’re letting you on the team?”
“Better. They’re letting me start a new team, an official school team.”
“Like the Panthers?”
“Yep. If you can’t join them, beat them. We’re the Pembroke Pandas, the first official middle school all-girl football team in the state of Connecticut.”
“Hey,” said Sebastian. “That’s all right. I’m impressed.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I am. When did you become official?” “Today. Mr. Hogan got the go-ahead from the coach and the school superintendent. We probably would have known yesterday, but Mr. Turman was out sick, remember? No gym classes.”
“That’s right,” said Sebastian, his mind suddenly on something else. “No gym classes. I’ve gotta go, Corrie.”
“Don’t you want to stay and watch us play?”
“Another time. I have the feeling I’ll have lots of chances. And if you need a head cheerleader, I’m your man.”
“Thanks,” Corrie said, with a laugh.
That is, Sebastian thought, as he pedaled away, if I’m not kicked out of school first.
36
SEBASTIAN DROPPED his bike at the same spot he usually did when he came here, by the rusting wrought-iron fence that had once been the gateway to what must have been a large and impressive estate. The house, stone like Budge Daniel’s and many of the others along Route 7, had burned to the ground years earlier, leaving only a shell. The remaining stones and charred beams were wrapped in vines, buried in leaves and weeds and shadows.
Sebastian made his way through the woods as silently as possible, afraid, almost, to disturb the ghosts that inhabited the place. He was eager to get to the high-backed stone bench, set away from the house in what had probably been a garden, where he often came to sit and think and be alone. Something wasn’t right, he kept telling himself. There were pieces that didn’t fit the puzzle, and the ones that did, fit too easily. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes to six. His program would be on the air in a little over an hour. What if he’d been wrong?
Looking up from his watch, he stopped himself short. Someone was sitting on his bench. He couldn’t make out who it was; nor, apparently, could the person see him clearly. But when they spoke, they recognized each other at once.
“Biker, is that you?” said the figure on the bench.
“Harley?”
“Sebastian?”
“Harley, what are you doing here? Everybody’s looking for you. The police—”
“The police?” Harley jumped up as Sebastian walked quickly and noisily toward him, forsaking now the ghosts for the living.
“Yeah,” said Sebastian. He brought himself to a halt several yards away from where Harley stood, his eyes wide and staring like a frightened deer’s. “They said you confessed.”
“Who said so?” Harley asked, not moving.
“Your sister.”
“My sister? Which one?”
“I don’t know, Harley. I just heard—”
“Geez,” said Harley, dropping back down onto the bench. “It must have been Suzanne.” His clothes, the plaid button-down shirt and khaki chinos, were wrinkled and dirty, the Hush Puppies coated with mud. Sebastian noticed that Harley had stacked his school books at one end of the bench; he wondered if they were serving as a pillow.
“Aren’t you cold out here?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m cold,” Harley said bitterly. He lay back and closed his eyes, taking himself somewhere Sebastian couldn’t follow. After a time, he said, “Biker was supposed to be bringing me some stuff, a jacket, some stuff. I thought you were him. He ain’t coming.”
“Did you sleep here last night?”
“Over there,” said Harley, with a slight nod to a nearby storage shed.
“It must have been real cold then,” Sebastian said.
“It was all right.”
“Are you running away?”
Harley’s eyes popped open. “You my social worker or something?”
“No, but I saw her. She’s really worried.”
“Is that why you came here, Sebastian?”
“No. I didn’t know you were here. I didn’t think anybody knew about this place but me.”
“So why are you here?”
Sebastian, tired of standing, hunkered down onto his haunches. “I had some thinking to do,” he said. “I come here to think sometimes.”
“Me too,” said Harley. “I guess we just never did our thinking at the same time. So what did you come here to think about?”
“The stuff that’s been happening at school.”
“The puking?”
“The poisoning,” said Sebastian. “Did you do it, Harley?”
Harley looked at Sebastian as if he were the biggest fool God ever made. “If they say I did, then I guess I did.”
“You didn’t do it,” Sebastian said, as much to himself as Harley. “So why did you confess?”
Harley closed his eyes again and waited a long time to answer. “I didn’t confess,” he said.
“But your sister—”
“Suzanne’s a jerk. I told her what I just told you. It doesn’t matter if I did it or not, everybody’s going to think I did. So I may as well take the blame.”
“But that isn’t what you’re doing,” said Sebastian. “You’re running away.”
“Yeah, well, I learned good.” For a time, the crickets made the only conversation. Then, Harley spoke softly. “My mom, she run away a long time ago. I never seen her since I was six. And my dad, well, he’s just always running away. The difference is he comes back.”
“Were you planning to come back?”
“I don’t know. What have I got to come back to?”
“Your sisters,” said Sebastian. “Your dad. Your friends.”
“Right. Now you really sound like my social worker.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just—”
“She says, that social worker, she says if my dad don’t get his act together and stop his drinking and all that, if he don’t stop his running away whenever he’s got problems, she’s going to have to put us all in foster homes. It’s happened before, it won’t be the first time. But she says it might be the last.”
Sebastian opened his mouth, but said nothing. He wasn’t sure what there was to say. Besides, it seemed as if Harley had more of a need to talk all of a sudden than to listen.
“My dad, he joined the AA over the summer and me, I got into the creative arts program at the center. It was pretty dumb, but I did it because the Solomon lady said I should. And I believed her. Stupid. She said I’d make new friends. Well, she was right about that. That’s where I hooked up with Biker and Breeze. Like I said: Stupid.
“When school started, she told me I should be a volunteer. Try helping, she said, instead of hurting. So I went to work in the cafeteria. I figured I could save up my lunch money for Christmas. But, hey, I might not even have a family by Christmas, you know?”
Harley’s voice grew even quieter; Sebastian found himself straining to hear each word.
“That Solomon, she told me I’m too smart to throw myself away. That’s what she says I’m doing, throwing myself away. She says I’m only thirteen, I got a whole life ahead of me. She says, everybody makes mistakes. She says, you make a mistake on the blackboard, what do you do? You erase it and try again. I say to her, sometimes somebody writes on the blackboard with a magic marker, just to be mean, and everybody sees it and nobody can erase it away. It’s always there, and always wil
l be the rest of your life.”
“Come on,” Sebastian said. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Harley. Everybody makes mistakes.”
Harley started to laugh. “What kind of mistakes do you make?” he said. “You put on a sweater that don’t match your shirt and have to live with it the rest of the day? Give me a break. You’re popular, Sebastian. You don’t know what it’s like to be on the outside.”
“It seems to me,” said Sebastian, “that Jason and Brad wanted to be your friends just because you were on the outside. They wanted to be like you.”
Harley opened his eyes slowly. They were red around the rims. “Yeah,” he said, “well, you want a surprise? I want to be like them. But it don’t work that way. They came here before, ‘cause they know I hang out here sometimes, and they told me they can’t be Devil Riders no more. I said, why? They said their moms told ‘em they couldn’t. I said, go home to your mommies then. But bring me a coat, some stuff. I’m cold out here. They ain’t coming back, you know why? Not because their moms told them they couldn’t. That’s bull. They ain’t coming back because being my friend means trouble now. They liked looking tough, but they’re not so good at being tough. They haven’t had the practice, like me.
“It’s okay,” said Harley, sitting up. “I don’t need them. And I don’t need no social worker. And I don’t need you here, Sebastian, with that dopey look on your face.”
“I guess I’m feeling sorry for you,” said Sebastian.
Harley’s body tightened up. “Don’t. Just get out of here and leave me alone.”
“But—”
“Sorry if you needed the place to do some thinking, but I got here first.”
Sebastian stood and rubbed the back of his aching knees. “Are you still going to run away?”
“Sure.”
“But why?”
“You’re really dumb, Sebastian.”
“But if you didn’t do it—”
“Who said I didn’t do it?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Will it make you feel better if you get a real confession out of me? Okay. I confess.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I confess. I did it. Why not? I hate everybody in that stinking, rotten school. They’ve always treated me like a piece of cow dung they couldn’t get off their shoes. So I finally got even. I’m glad I did it, and I’m glad I told you. But, hey, if you’re thinking of running back and telling the police where to look, forget it. I’ll be long gone by the time they get here.”
Feeling there was nothing left to be said, Sebastian removed his jacket and tossed it to Harley. It landed at his feet.
“Hey!” Harley called, as Sebastian started back through the woods.
“Keep it,” Sebastian called back over his shoulder. “It’s supposed to get a lot colder tonight.”
He made it to Corrie’s house in under ten minutes. Waiting at the door, he checked his watch. Six-twenty-five.
“Well, Sebastian,” said Corrie’s father, letting him in. “Mrs. Wingate told me you called.”
“Reverend Wingate, do you remember that time I asked you about people hurting each other?”
“I do.”
“You said you’d give it thought, and we could talk about it again some time.”
“I have given it thought,” Reverend Wingate said. “And dinner won’t be ready for awhile yet. Shall we talk now?”
“I’d like that,” said Sebastian.
37
THE DOOR SLAMMED. His feet pounded the stairs. “Is that you, Sebastian?” his grandmother called. The moment he reached his bedroom, he yanked the newspaper out of his pocket and looked at it again. It was all so clear. Why hadn’t he seen it? He pulled a sweatshirt over his head, and shoved the paper back into place.
Down the stairs. Into the kitchen. Call David.
There was no answer. “He still isn’t home,” Sebastian said.
“Why, it’s almost seven,” said his grandmother. “Shall we listen to your program together?”
“I can’t this time, Gram. Sorry.”
“Your parents should be home shortly,” his grandmother called after him. “Dinner will be at seven-thirty. I’ve made one of your—”
“I’ll be back soon.” The door slammed. His feet pounded the sidewalk. He glanced at his watch. Five to seven. Hurry. It’s the beginning of the show he has to hear. It’s the conviction without trial. That’s the thing. Hurry.
He reached the front door at exactly one minute to seven. The refrain from the 1812 hadn’t finished when the door swung open.
“Barth!”
“Hi, Milo. We don’t have time to talk. There’s something I want you to hear. Do you have a radio in your room?”
“Of course. Several. The best reception is on the one I built when I was six. However—”
“Great. Let’s go.”
“But I’m eating dinner.”
“Later, Milo. This is important.”
“Milo, who is it?” Mrs. Groot’s voice entered the room like an angry bee. “If that’s Brian Hansen, you just tell him—”
“It’s Barth, Mom.”
“Oh, hello, Sebastian.” The bee found honey. “Won’t you join us for dinner?”
Sebastian didn’t reply. He hadn’t heard. He had pushed Milo up the stairs and gotten him to turn on the radio just in time to hear, “Hello again. I’m Sebastian Barth. And this is ‘Small Talk.’”
“You want me to hear your show, Barth? Why?”
“I figured you deserved to, Milo. You were such an important part in helping me get my story. Listen.”
Milo sat on the edge of his bed. Sebastian leaned against a dresser.
“… a situation that had the school administration and the Board of Health baffled until today,” Sebastian’s voice was saying through the radio speaker. “Was it a flu epidemic, as was first believed? Or, if it was food poisoning, was it accidental or deliberate?
“While the administration and the Board of Health charted their course on bureaucratic waters—”
“Nice turn of phrase,” said Milo.
“That’s David’s,” Sebastian said. “He’s good at that sort of thing.”
“… with the help of fellow students, Milo Groot and David Lepinsky, and this is what I’ve learned: A toxic combination of natural herbs and plants was introduced into the food by an eighth-grade student, Edward Davidson. Davidson, who had been working as a volunteer in the cafeteria, has confessed to the crime, although his motive and his present whereabouts are unknown. It is unlikely that Dorothy Swille, cafeteria manager, was aware of what Davidson, known in the school as ‘Harley,’ was doing. Still, though she is essentially blameless, she must share the responsibility. So, it would seem, must the school principal, Eugene Hogan, who denied there was a problem until seventy-seven children were stricken down, one of whom, Justin Greer, is still in the hospital.”
“That’s telling it like it is,” Milo said. His cheeks were flushed with excitement.
“I thought you’d like it,” said Sebastian, clicking off the radio.
“Wait, I want to hear the rest.”
“Oh, I just went on and on like that,” Sebastian said. “I was really hot. But you get the idea. I held Harley responsible, and Miss Swille, and the school administration. I even went on to point a finger at the Board of Health. It’s amazing what you can do when you’re convinced you’re telling the truth. I blamed just about everybody. Everybody, that is, but the one person who really deserved it.”
Milo gave Sebastian an odd look, but said nothing.
“How did Fritzie die, Milo?”
“What?”
Sebastian nodded toward a cage where several mice competed for the use of an exercise wheel. “Fritzie,” he said, “your favorite mouse. How did she die?”
“What are you getting at, Barth? I don’t know how she died. Old age, I suppose.”
“You know, Milo, David asked me once what you saw in mice. I couldn�
��t answer him, but now I think I can. Every inch of this room is a laboratory. You don’t just keep mice as pets, you experiment with them. Isn’t that box over there a maze?”
Milo shrugged. “So?”
“I was just wondering if Fritzie died from one of your experiments.”
“You’ve been watching too much television. I don’t know the point of all this, and I don’t see what it has to do with your radio show or with the poisoning at school.”
“It has everything to do with both of them, Milo, and you know it. You’re bright, maybe you’re even a genius like the sign on your door says. But could you really have figured out so quickly what it took the Board of Health almost two days to discover?”
“Why not? They had to sort through all those different foods, after all. I had the actual toxic agents. You gave them to me.”
“After you left them in the school kitchen. Apple seeds, anyone could get a hold of those. English ivy, it’s all over the place, including the border along your front walk. And elderberry trees, well, Milo, you yourself said they’re popular in this area, although not quite as popular as you might like to think. You have a nice one out back. Isn’t that where your mom gets the berries for her jam?”
“Please, Barth,” Milo said, standing. “Your defective detective work is beginning to bore me. Anyone could have figured out how to put those ingredients together. Anyone could have found them if, as we both agree, they are so plentiful.”
“Not everyone has your imagination or your gift for research and experimentation.”
“So I killed my favorite mouse in the name of science?”
“I didn’t say you killed her on purpose. Sometimes, experiments go wrong. And I didn’t say you did anything in the name of science. No, what you did, you did for revenge.”
“Revenge? For what?”
“For all the times Harley humiliated you, especially that time at the awards assembly last spring. For all the times the rest of the kids laughed at you. For all the times you’ve felt like an outsider.”
Milo’s head jerked back slightly, as if he’d been slapped. “I haven’t just felt like an outsider, Barth. I am an outsider. You don’t know what that’s like. You’re popular. You don’t know how much it hurts, knowing that no one likes you, knowing that your only friend is someone you don’t even like, but whose friendship you tolerate because it’s all you can get.”