The Quick Fix

by Jack D. Ferraiolo

  Susan Myers approached me. “Vinny wants to talk to you.”

  “Yeah, I heard. I’ve got someplace to be right now.”

  She pulled a squirt gun on me, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “Yeah, that’s not going to work,” I said. “You need me for something or you would’ve let little Miss Jenny pop me just now. She blew the bluff and trashed your leverage.”

  Susan sighed and put her squirt gun away. Then she whistled, and the two hulking eighth graders who grabbed me on Monday appeared out of nowhere. “She didn’t trash all of my leverage.”

  “Touché,” I said. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather walk than be carried.”

  “Follow me,” she said, and flashed me what appeared to be a genuine smile. She glanced at Jenny, who was a few paces ahead of us, then looked back at me and rolled her eyes. “Amateur,” she said.

  I grinned. Jenny might never get all the comeuppance she deserved—at least not in any obvious way—but it looked like she hadn’t gained anyone’s respect. She wasn’t about to make people forget about her sister.

  We walked over to a janitor’s closet. Jenny was standing like a sentinel outside, trying not to make eye contact with me. It was obvious that Ricky had had a little talk with her. Susan motioned for me to go in. I nodded to her. “You better keep an eye on that one,” I said, pointing to Jenny. “She’s ‘dangerous.’”

  Susan and Ricky both snickered. I was pretty sure I could hear Jenny’s teeth grinding.

  I walked into the closet. Vinny was sitting in a chair, surrounded by the same enormous goons as before.

  “You’re doing a great job with Jenny,” I said. “It only took two more of your ‘employees’ to help her do a simple job correctly.”

  One of Vinny’s guards stepped forward and sucker punched me in the gut. I felt like I was going to throw up my last four meals. I staggered backward, until my back hit the door.

  “That’s for being a hypocrite,” Vinny said. “You had the simple job of dropping off a duffel bag in a locker, and you managed to screw that up.”

  “Yeah, like it wasn’t the blackmailer who tipped off Katie and the Thompsons,” I said sarcastically. “You’d have to be stupid to think that first drop-off was anything other than a setup, and I know you’re not stupid. So I have to think you were just looking for an excuse to have me punched in the stomach.”

  “I don’t need an excuse.”

  “You do now. The next kid that tries gets his hand broken.”

  “You still have a job to do.”

  “The hell I do.”

  “You botched up the first time, so now you get to do it again,” he said.

  A tall, thin kid standing behind Vinny held an envelope out to me. I glared at Vinny. “Take the envelope, Matthew,” he said.

  “I don’t take orders from—”

  “Take it!” he yelled. “Take it or I’ll have them staple it to your chest.”

  Five of the goons moved toward me in unison. I grabbed the envelope out of the skinny kid’s hand. There was another ransom note inside. It was a photocopy. I skimmed it. Another drop. 6:55 tomorrow morning. Same place: locker 416. I put the note back in the envelope.

  “Okay,” I said, “so now the only thing left between us, Vinny, is for you to tell me what was in the photo.”

  Vinny flinched. I had surprised him. “None of your business,” he said, recovering quickly.

  “Sure it is. You made it my business. Now tell me.”

  He stood up. His hands tightened into fists. “You don’t give me orders!”

  “Tell me.”

  He punched me in the face. It wasn’t the hardest punch I’d ever gotten, but I’d never mistake it for a kiss on the cheek. His guards took a step closer to us, but they looked unsure about what to do.

  “Wow,” I said, rubbing my jaw. “Those gym classes are really paying off for you. Feel better now?”

  Vinny was breathing hard and massaging the knuckles on his hand. He looked confused, as if he was unsure of where he was and why his knuckles hurt.

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “You know what happened to me,” he said. “You know why I do this.”

  “You don’t have to anymore. You’ve proved your point.”

  His eyes were set and stony.

  “But it’s not really about that anymore, is it?” I asked. “It’s something different now. The bullied has become the bully.”

  Vinny glared at me. “This is it, Matthew … your last case,” he said. “I bet you didn’t think this day would come, but I assure you, it’s here.”

  “You’re a fortune-teller now?”

  “I’m not telling your future,” he said, “I’m making it.” Vinny looked at the skinny kid behind him. The kid grabbed a duffel bag and handed it to me.

  “You screwed up,” Vinny said, “and I can’t let a thing like that go unpunished. Plus, quite frankly, I’m sick of you … you and your smug, superior attitude.”

  “Look who’s talking,” I said.

  “I think it’s time you had a view of the Outs from the inside, Matthew. Maybe you’ll learn that you should’ve been taking it seriously all along. So, do the job right this time and you’ll only get splashed.”

  “Your pep talks need a little work,” I said.

  “Do it wrong or don’t do it at all, and … well, you remember Triple D?”

  I did. Triple D stood for Dirty Diaper Dexter, one of the first kids Vinny ever put in the Outs. The whole school had found Triple D slumped over one of the bike racks, wearing nothing but a diaper, the front of which was soaked with yellow liquid; the back was smeared with … well, use your imagination. I heard through a reliable source that it was actually chocolate, but no one cared enough to set the record straight. He was so far in the Outs, he was the guy other kids in the Outs knocked around when they wanted someone to bully.

  “Go ahead, Matthew,” Vinny snarled. “Say something smart.”

  I opened the bag. It was the same as before: four boxes of candy and a large stack of cash. I smiled. “I don’t have to, do I? The smell of flop sweat speaks for itself.”

  I opened the door and walked out. No one followed me. Susan was still standing outside the door, but Ricky and Jenny were gone. “How’d it go?” she asked, as if I was coming from somewhere normal, like taking a quiz.

  “Not bad. Could’ve been worse.”

  “Still might be.”

  “Sure … but I doubt it. Might want to get your résumé together,” I said. “I have a feeling you’ll be looking for work soon.”

  “I’ve already got a couple of things lined up,” she said, “but thanks for the advice.” I gave her a puzzled look, but all she did was smile at me. “See you around, Stevens.” She turned away. As far as she was concerned, our conversation was over.

  It was a long walk back to my locker to grab my first-period books. I was a little shaky. I had never seen Vinny that panicky before. The good news was that he was distracted, which might make him sloppy. The bad news was that he seemed determined to put me in the Outs, and sloppy or not, he had the means to get it done. I had one day to find some wiggle room. And I still had to talk to Jimmy Mac.

  rest of my morning was filled with classes I couldn’t get out of. As soon as the lunch bell rang, I went to the cafeteria to grab lunch before heading over to Jimmy’s office. I was halfway through my hot dog when I spotted Nicole Finnegan, a.k.a. the former Nikki Fingers, sitting at a table by herself, mumbling into her sandwich. Someone was walking toward her. It was Katie Kondo. She may have been in the Outs, too, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. She looked the same, dressed the same, had the same almost-a-scowl expression on her face. The Outs was like an invisible symbol hanging over her head. Every kid in school knew it was there, but Katie would be damned if she would give in to it. She stood across from Nicole and asked her a question.

  Nicole looked up slowly, as if she were expecting someone to hit her with
a pie. When she saw Katie, her expression changed from fear to confusion. There was Katie Kondo, former chief of the hall monitors, former scourge of the underworld, the girl who would not rest until she brought Nikki down, asking Nicole for permission to sit across from her. Nicole nodded yes.

  Katie sat down. Her facial expression wasn’t exactly friendly, but it wasn’t hostile, either. There was a look that I had never seen on her face before: empathy. They ate in silence, but something changed in Nicole, almost instantaneously. She still looked disheveled … but now she looked a little less disoriented, as if Katie’s presence had made her a little less crazy somehow. Her whole body seemed to relax.

  Randy Sloan, one of the least-funny class clowns in history, approached their table. He made some remark that I couldn’t hear, but I knew it wasn’t funny. Of course, Randy started laughing hysterically. The two tables nearby started laughing, too. Randy beamed like the gap-toothed idiot that he was. One problem: Katie and Nicole didn’t react.

  It wasn’t that they didn’t notice him. They both turned their heads to look at him, their expressions blank and bland, as if Randy had just told them that the temperature in the cafeteria was a comfortable 71 degrees. This was not the reaction that Randy was expecting, and it ticked him off. “Skanks!” he shouted.

  Katie looked at Nicole and rolled her eyes. Nicole smirked back. It was tiny, and if I hadn’t been standing there studying them, I might have missed it. It made me think about the precariously balanced set of conditions that made the Outs effective, and wonder what would happen if those conditions started to tip toward one end.

  I stopped wondering when Randy grabbed Katie’s lunch, threw it on the floor, and stepped on it. Actually, he didn’t just step on it; he ground it into the floor. Then he reached over and gave her a condescending pat on the cheek. I was out of my seat and moving.

  Before Randy could pull his hand away, Katie grabbed his wrist. In a half-heartbeat, almost every kid in the lunch room stood up and fixed a cold stare at Katie. They were united in making sure that someone in the Outs didn’t forget their place.

  Katie’s eyes went wide. She hadn’t expected this, but she was too pigheaded to back down. Randy was sneering at her. He was about to say something mean when I buried my shoulder into his stomach. “Guuuuf!” he said, as I knocked the air out of his lungs. Of all the things Randy’s ever said, “Guuuuf!” was the closest to actually being funny.

  He landed on the floor with another “Guuuuf!” I was really starting to like that sound.

  Katie leaned toward me. “I could’ve handled it,” she said quietly.

  “Shut up and sit down,” I said, just as quietly. “Slowly. Now’s not the time to make a stand.”

  She looked around the cafeteria. Every kids’ eyes were on her. She sat down, but didn’t look happy about it. Everyone else in the caf sat down, too. After a moment they went back to their business, as if they had never been interrupted.

  “You owe me,” I said, “and here’s how I want to get paid. It may not happen today, or tomorrow, or the day after that, but one day soon, I want you two to remind yourselves who you were before you were put in the Outs. And if you can’t remind yourselves, remind each other. The revolution starts with the two of you.”

  Nicole and Katie looked up at me, and for a moment I saw the girls as they were just a few short weeks ago: the brains, the ferocity. Their sly grins told me all I needed to know. I grinned back at them, then checked the clock on the wall. Ten minutes left to talk to Jimmy Mac. I gave them both a quick and casual salute, then headed for the exit.

  Jimmy Mac’s office was a small room off the gym that used to be a supply closet. There were piles of newspapers everywhere. It felt like it would be a fire hazard to just say the word “match.”

  Jimmy didn’t seem pleased to see me. “What do you want?” he said.

  “I need your help with something.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “This is important.”

  “And what? What I do isn’t important?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Yes, you did,” he said. “You’re Mr. Important Matt Stevens. Mr. Big Shot. So, am I supposed to be honored that you need my help?”

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  “What do you mean? Just because I’m not falling all over myself to do your job for you?”

  My first instinct was to grab him and slam him into one of his piles of paper. But this was Mac, the one kid in school I trusted. I took a deep breath, and told my temper to take a hike.

  “This is about Cynthia,” I asked, “isn’t it?”

  He was itching for a fight, but my change in tone took the wind out of his sails. He hid his face from me. I heard a definite sniffle.

  “You had to take her, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “I didn’t ‘take’ anyone, Mac, and you know it. I can’t control Cynthia any more than you can.”

  He sighed and looked at the floor. “I know, Matt. I know. It’s just—” He looked at me as if he wanted me to finish his sentence for him. When I didn’t, he continued. “It’s just that I’ve had a thing for her forever … I mean, who wouldn’t? And then you swoop in. How’m I supposed to compete with you?”

  “Compete with me? Mac, I’m a mess.”

  “Yeah, well, Cynthia doesn’t think so.”

  “I didn’t lead her on, really. In fact, I told her I wasn’t interested.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She wants you. You’ve got everything she’s looking for,” he said, “and I’m just some pathetic little kid, too weak to be of any use to her.”

  “That’s a load of crap,” I said. “Listen, Mac, you’re the only kid in this godforsaken place that I’d trust with my life.”

  He looked surprised and pleased, in spite of himself. “You mean that?”

  “No. In fact, on the way over here, I told six other kids the exact same thing,” I said sarcastically. “Yes, of course I mean it!”

  “You know what? Look … forget it, okay? You got something you need help with, and I’m jawing on and on about my love life,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Come on,” he said. “Seriously, I feel like a fool already.”

  I nodded, but made a mental note to revisit this topic. I liked Jimmy a lot, and I didn’t want something like this to come between us. I held out the cell phone that was put in my locker. “There’s one photo on this. I need you to enlarge it.”

  He took the phone out of my hand. “Yeah, okay.”

  “It doesn’t have a lot of juice left,” I said, “and I don’t have the charger, so you’ll have to work quickly.”

  “Got it. Anything I should be looking for?”

  “From what I understand, whatever’s in that photo is going to be hard to miss. But it needs to be enlarged. The screen on the phone is too small.”

  His eyes lit up with the fire I was so familiar with. “How big we talking here?”

  “The picture or the story?” I asked.

  “Both.”

  “First, I think you better get a heavier lock for that door,” I said, and pointed toward the entrance of his office.

  “That big?” He smiled.

  “I think so, yeah. How large can you make the picture and still have it look clear?” I asked.

  He thought about it for a second. “I had a story last year about some kid skimming money off his holiday wrapping paper sales. The evidence was a photo of something else—two little kids playing in the park, I think. The kid skimming money was a tiny image in the left corner of the picture. When we blew that sucker up, it was clear as day.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Sure, yeah! Hold on … ” He pulled out a large book and started skimming through it. “Here it is … The Franklin Gazette, issue twenty-eight, page one. March of last year.”

  I suddenly felt dizzy. My vision blurred. A moment of inspiration was hitting me square between the eyes.

  “Yo
u okay, Matt?”

  “Yeah …” I shook my head and tried to regain my composure. “Yeah, I’m okay. Say that again.”

  “Say what again?”

  “Wait, hold on … do you have a pen?”

  “Yeah. Here.”

  I took the pen, then reached into my back pocket and pulled out the little piece of paper. “Now, say that again.”

  “What?”

  “The issue … of the newspaper … that the photo was in.”

  “Ohhhh! One of the March issues, the date was—”

  “No, not the date. Say it like you said it before. Exactly like you said it before.”

  I must’ve looked pretty crazed, because Jimmy gave me a look. I couldn’t tell if he was scared for me, or of me.

  “The Franklin Gazette, issue twenty-eight, page one.”

  As he spoke, I wrote it down.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Does this look right to you?” I showed him the piece of paper that I’d just written on. At the top was my father’s clue: TMS136P15. Right below it was what Jimmy Mac had just told me: TFG28P1.

  “Yeah,” he said, but he looked confused. “What’s that top one?”

  I took a deep breath. My hand was shaking. “I think I’m about to find out.”

  public library was pretty empty at that time of day. Just a few older people sitting in the quiet room across from the main desk, reading newspapers, and a couple of moms with toddlers in the children’s room. The man behind the desk eyed me suspiciously. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asked.

  “School project,” I said, putting on the most innocent face I could manage under the circumstances.

  He studied me for a moment, but he looked more amused than annoyed. “If you say so,” he said.

  I put the piece of paper on the desk and tapped it. “TMS,” I said. “Is there a newspaper or magazine that has a title—”

  “With words beginning with the letters T, M, and S?” he asked. “Let’s find out. Follow me.”

  He walked out from behind the desk and headed for a doorway to the right, into a large room with about twelve rows of metal racks. Each rack was full of cardboard boxes, stacked high; each of the boxes was filled with newspapers.