“I heard someone mention it, you know, like a rumor.” She smiled at me again, looking all innocent. “Which you just confirmed.” When I didn’t say anything right away, she said, “It doesn’t bother me that you’ve been in trouble with the police, if that’s what you’re worried about. If it bothered me, I wouldn’t have invited you over.”
“I’m not worried,” I said. “I don’t care.” It wasn’t 100 percent true, but what was I supposed to do? Whine about it?
“So? What’d you do?” Her eyes had a gleam to them. Maybe she was one of those girls who got off on tough guys. Maybe I was the closest she had ever come to a real criminal. Maybe she liked that. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it though. “Come on, McGill, you can tell me.”
“I stole something.”
“Money?”
“Jeez, no.”
She seemed disappointed. “What, then? Jewelry?” She looked closely at me and shook her head. “CDs? Oh, I know.” Her eyes flashed. “Stereo equipment!”
“I’d rather not say,” I said, mainly because what I had stolen was a box of cupcakes off the back of a bakery truck. I had the feeling that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
She shrugged. “I also heard about your uncle,” she said. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“What he did.” She recited a bunch of facts about what had happened to Billy.
“Where’d you hear that?” I said. I couldn’t imagine a bunch of rich girls sitting around talking about my uncle.
She just shrugged again. “So, is it true?”
She didn’t have the whole story, but she hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true, either, so I said, “Yeah.”
“Cool,” she said.
“Cool?” She was cute—no, make that beautiful. Up close, she was as pretty as any model in any fashion magazine. But she was also kind of weird. “You said you needed to talk to me about something.”
“Right.” She pulled her legs up onto the bed and sat there cross-legged. “I was thinking about that guy you said was interested in me. Mr. Henderson? I was thinking I’d like to know more about him.”
“Yeah?”
“You know, since he’s so interested in me and since he went through my stuff, I thought maybe you should find out more about him for me. I’d like to know what kind of a guy would do something like that.”
She thought I should find out more about him? “Why don’t you just call the police?”
“And tell them what?”
“That you caught him going through your stuff.”
“But I didn’t. I caught you going through my stuff.”
I looked at her.
“I guess I could tell them that,” she said. “And I guess since you’re at the community center on a community service order, they’d probably have to tell the director of the community center. And then—how does it work?” She looked at me, like she was trying to figure it out, like she didn’t already know exactly what would happen. “She’d have to tell your probation officer or whatever it’s called, wouldn’t she?”
“It’s called youth worker,” I said.
“Right,” she said, nodding. “She’d have to tell your youth worker. And I’m just guessing, but I bet the news wouldn’t go down too well, huh? A guy doing a community service order because he’s a thief and he’s found stealing a hundred dollars out of a girl’s wallet.”
“Hey!” I said. I stood up fast. What was going on here? “I never stole anything from you.”
“Gosh,” she said, “then how come I had a hundred dollars in my wallet before I saw you go into it and it was all gone after you ran away?”
Now she was confusing me. “I didn’t run away.”
“Did I mention that my dad has a lot of lawyer friends? A lot of prosecuting attorney friends too.” She reached over, opened a drawer in her bedside table and pulled out something in a Ziploc baggie. A shiny black wallet. Her wallet. What was it doing in a plastic baggie?
“Right after I caught you,” she said, “I put it in here so that nothing would get smudged. You know what I mean, McGill?”
Jeez. I knew exactly what she meant. What was with her?
“You were fingerprinted, right?” she said. “When they arrest you for stealing, they fingerprint you. Right?”
“What are you doing? Blackmailing me?” Why would she even bother? “You don’t even know me.”
“You shouldn’t touch other people’s stuff, McGill. It can get you in trouble. You’re lucky I decided to check you out before I reported you.”
I had to remind myself that she was my age because, boy, she acted like someone a whole lot older. And a whole lot more calculating.
“That’s it. I’m outta here.”
“With my diamond earrings?” she said. She dangled something from one hand—something that glinted.
“Jeez, no,” I said. What was happening?
“Come on, McGill.” She flashed a sweet smile. “I’m not asking you to do anything you haven’t done maybe a hundred times before. I just want you to check out the guy for me. I want to know who he is and what he wants with me. Then I want to find a way to teach him a lesson. You want to help me, don’t you?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “If you don’t want to help me, the least you could do is help yourself. I’ll give you the wallet when it’s over. You can wipe it clean yourself. You can burn it if you want to, I don’t care.”
“You’re not what I thought,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I thought you’d be different too. I thought you wouldn’t be such a wuss.” She dangled her diamond earrings again. “What do you say?”
I passed through the gate and heard it click shut behind me. I turned to look back at the house—enormous, sturdy, the windows gleaming as if they’d all just been washed, the whole place filled with expensive stuff, the kind of stuff I wished I had—well, some of it. And inside, Emily, who had everything and, you know what, who didn’t seem all that much happier than me. Who was pretty and rich and just like Rebecca said—not nice. Emily seemed to be enjoying having me in a spot, maybe even more than she enjoyed all that stuff she had.
I turned again to take the long walk to the closest bus stop, and that’s when I saw him on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Neil. I looked at him. He looked right back at me. I kept walking.
A car was cruising up the street. Boy, a really cool car. A Jaguar. Vintage. It was a color they call midnight blue. Tinted windows. Low, sleek, silent. A rich man’s car. It slid up the street, heading home to some mansion or other. The guy in it had probably made a million dollars today alone. He was probably going home and was going to have his maid or his housekeeper or his wife make him a martini so he could celebrate. That’s what Jen’s dad used to do when he signed some big-deal lawyer contract, he’d kick back and have a few martinis and tell Jen and her mother all about it. Jen used to say it was like listening to a golf tournament on the radio, it was that boring.
This Jag, though, it was purring along one minute and then was stopped right there in the middle of the street the next. I couldn’t see the driver, but I saw Neil looking at the car, and I heard a man’s voice yelling something. Neil stared at the car, maybe at the driver, who must have put down the passenger-side window, otherwise how could he be yelling at Neil? Neil said something I couldn’t hear, I only saw his mouth move. Whatever he said, it got a reaction. The driver’s-side door opened and a man got out—jumped out. A big man in a leather jacket. He moved fast around the front of the car. Neil seemed to freeze when he saw him. By the time Neil decided maybe he should get out of there, the man had grabbed him and was shaking him hard. It looked like the kind of shaking that could rattle your teeth and maybe even give you whiplash. And, boy, the man was like a giant compared to Neil.
Neil looked around—there was no one else on the street, no cars, no people, nothing. Just the Jaguar sitting there and the big man shaking him and Neil saying, “Hey, hey!” like that was all he could get ou
t.
I ran across the street and grabbed the man by the arm. Underneath the leather jacket he felt like he was made of steel. There was no way I was going to make this guy let go, not by force anyway.
“Hey, mister,” I said. “Hey, you better leave him alone. Someone called the cops.”
The guy shook Neil harder and told him, “Stay away from here, you understand me? Stay away.”
“Mister.” I pulled on his arm again. “The lady across the street, she ran in to call the cops.”
The man seemed to look right through me at first. Then his eyes cleared. He focused in on me and finally nodded. He let go of Neil.
“Go on,” I said to Neil. “You better get out of here.”
Neil stared at me too. It was weird. These two guys, staring at me like they were both in some kind of dream. Then Neil turned and ran down the street, and the man got back into his Jag. I watched him drive up the street and then make a left into Emily’s driveway.
I headed down the street. Neil was standing a couple of blocks away, his hands in his jacket pockets, face hard and serious. He watched me walk toward him. I would have been willing to bet he was waiting for me. I could have crossed the street to avoid him, but what was the point? If he wanted to say something to me, he’d say it one way or the other.
What he said was, “What are you? The new boyfriend?” He said it like he’d already decided I was and he didn’t like me because of it.
“What’re you?” I said. “The old boyfriend?” Under his jacket he was wearing a uniform top and a name tag with the Blockbuster logo on it. The guy worked at Blockbuster, which meant he was not in Emily’s league.
He kept glaring at me, but he didn’t scare me. He hadn’t put up any fight at all against the guy in the Jag, so how tough could he be?
He looked me over, checked out my parka and my jeans and my sneakers. Then he said, “Well, good luck if you are, because Jim will never let you make a move.”
“Jim?”
“Emily’s father. The guy in the Jag. He’s not gonna let you get near her.”
It had all happened so fast, but now I remembered the photo in Emily’s room. James Corwin looked a whole lot bigger in real life.
“He’s not gonna let you near her,” Neil said again.
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure I want to get near her.”
He looked at me again like he was mad all over again, only this time it was because now I wasn’t interested in Emily.
“She comes across a little messed up sometimes,” he said, “but she’s not bad.”
“Really?” If he wanted to believe that, he could be my guest.
“It’s her dad. He’s one of those guys who really marks his territory, you know what I mean?”
I didn’t.
“He’s possessive,” Neil said. “Big-time. That’s how come he’s divorced. Emily’s mother couldn’t stand it. And with Emily, well, no one’s good enough for his little girl.”
“Been there,” I said, because I knew exactly what he meant. Jen’s dad had felt exactly the same way about Jen—at least, he had when I was seeing her. “Look, I’m not interested in her. And I already have a girlfriend. The girl I was with at Emily’s school the other day.”
“The redhead?”
I nodded.
He relaxed a little. “Thanks for getting him off me,” he said.
I told him it was no big deal.
“Emily really isn’t bad,” he said, “if you actually know her.”
“And you do?” I said.
“Since second grade,” he said. Then, “I have to get to work.” He jerked his head left, and I saw a Blockbuster on the corner.
I told him good luck because, boy, if he had his heart set on Emily, he was going to need a lot of it. Then, because I was wondering, I said, “Do you get free rentals?”
By the time I got home, I was starving. I made a sandwich, flipped on the little TV in the kitchen, and sat down at the kitchen table to eat. I caught a news flash during one of the advertising breaks—the police had located a bullet “in the vicinity” of the bones they had found in the woods. According to the announcer, the police “believed” the bullet “could be” associated with the bones found earlier. Details at eleven.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I couldn’t tell Rebecca about what had happened. She would be mad that I’d gone to Emily’s house in the first place. She’d also be mad that I hadn’t told her. She’d probably think it was because I was interested in Emily—which maybe I had been a little, at first. But after talking to her, after listening to what she had to say, all I wanted to do was stay away from her forever. Except that now it wasn’t safe to do that either.
I guess I could have talked to Riel about it, but I could just imagine how that would play out.
Me: There’s this girl, she’s threatening to call the cops on me and tell them I stole a hundred dollars from her wallet.
Riel: You stole a hundred dollars from a girl’s wallet?
Me: No. She just caught me going through her wallet.
Riel: You went through her wallet?
Me: I didn’t take anything.
Riel: But you went through her wallet?
Me: I just wanted to see who she was. I didn’t take anything.
Riel: You went through a girl’s wallet without her permission?
Yeah, that would be productive.
So I told the only person I could think of.
“Am I ever glad I didn’t let you set me up with her,” Sal said when I finished the story.
“What am I going to do?”
“You think she’s serious?”
I pictured Emily sitting cross-legged on her bed, dangling the Ziploc baggie containing her shiny black wallet with my fingerprints all over it. “Yeah,” I said. “She looks all sweet and innocent, you know? But she isn’t. She’s … weird. Like this is some big kick. Some kind of power trip. And you know what else? She knew about Billy.”
“I bet she’s a killer in the pool,” Sal said. “She sounds like she plays to win or she doesn’t play at all.” He gave me a sympathetic look. “Now what?”
“Now I guess I do what she wants—that way I get the wallet and get it over with.”
“You know how you’re going to do it?”
I’d given it some thought. “Check out his locker first, I guess. See what I can find out about him and take it from there.”
If I’d been talking to my (used-to-be) best friend Vin—if Vin were still around—I wouldn’t even have had to ask. Vin would have offered to help. He probably would have come up with a plan for how to do it. And Vin would have been begging to meet Emily. For Vin, the badder and weirder, the better. But Vin wasn’t around and wouldn’t be for a while.
Sal wasn’t anything like Vin. Especially now, with his dad not doing too well, with his job, with the idea he had now that he was going to go to university, he was going to get an education, he was going to make something of himself—that’s the way he put it. So Sal played it safe. He followed all the rules. He did all his work. He kept his head down. It was like he was following John Riel’s Book of Rules, chapter by chapter, line by line.
So I was surprised when he said, “Sounds like you’re going to need some help. Sounds like you need a lookout.”
At first I thought he was going to suggest someone. But he didn’t. Then I got it.
“You?” I said. I guess I sounded more surprised than I should have.
“Thanks, Sal,” Sal said. “I knew I could count on you, Sal,” Sal said. “You’re a real friend, Sal,” he said. He looked at me and shook his head.
Riel had to attend some kind of teacher meeting after school. He didn’t get home before I left for work, which was good. If he had seen me, he might have noticed how nervous I was. Boy, was I jumpy. Maybe Emily had some idea that I was a thief, that taking things and breaking into places was second nature to me. But it wasn’t. What she was asking me to do—okay, telling me—wasn’t something tha
t I did every day of the week. Or ever. Still, I had a plan.
Step one: The key. Every Wednesday night, a group of what Mr. Henderson called mobility-impaired teens came to the community center for a special swim class. Some of them also had other disabilities. All of them needed special help to get out of their wheelchairs and into the pool. Mr. Henderson always stayed in the pool area the whole time they were there, helping the two instructors and the volunteers get the kids into the pool, helping them if they needed to get out again for any reason during the class, which sometimes they did, and then helping them all get out again at the end. Mr. Henderson always wore a T-shirt and bathing suit when he helped out, a baggy pair of old trunks that looked like old-geezer Bermuda shorts.
I waited until he was busy with one of the kids. Then I walked out onto the deck.
“Mr. Henderson?”
He didn’t hear me at first. The kid he was with was big—taller than me, and heavier too. Mr. Henderson and another guy who looked like maybe he was a university student were carrying the kid down the steps in the shallow end, one of them on either side of the kid. I waited until they had lowered him into the water.
“Mr. Henderson?”
He turned and scowled at me. One thing I had learned: Mr. Henderson was a guy who didn’t like to be disturbed.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I know you’re busy. But I got locked out of the utility room on the third floor.”
“How’d you manage that?” he said. He sounded annoyed.
I shrugged and tried to look apologetic. “I had it propped open,” I said. The utility room doors were on a big spring. They closed and locked automatically unless you propped them open or wedged something in between the door and the jamb to keep them open. “I don’t know. I must have banged into it.”
Mr. Henderson looked at the big kid, who was floating on his back in the pool now. Then he looked back at me.
“I guess I could do something else,” I said. “You know, until you’re finished here.”
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