I hot-tailed it out of the school lot and parked around the back of the shop. The moment I cut the engine, the back door swung open and the troublesome duo emerged.
“Speak of the devils.” I laid an arm out the window, taking off my sunglasses. They strode over and leaned against my car. Race stuck his head through my
window and I leaned away. “What’s up?” he asked, breath indicating that he’d had tacos for lunch.
I wrinkled my nose. “You in my face for a reason?”
“No. Not really.” He shook his hair from his face, getting it in my face instead. “Except, um—”
“Your dad’s new employee needs to go.” Preston shoved Race over and poked his blonde head in.
“Ok.” I hesitated to ask. There was something urgent about his words, like there was more to it than the fact they didn’t like Hayden. “Not that I’m arguing, but what kind of evidence am I supposed to use to support that?”
“His records. Joe got a hold of his previous employer this morning.” Race’s voice lowered. “Do you know why he lost his last job?”
“… No.” My adrenaline surged. I’d secretly been wondering about his records.
The boys exchanged looks. “Supposedly the kid used to work for a motorcycle shop in Arizona,” Preston began. “He and another employee were given lock-up duty one night because his boss had to leave early.”
“Boss came back the next morning,” Race continued. “The shop was ripped to shreds, and the other employee…” He swallowed, then drug his finger along his neck and made a gross, authentic slicing sound. “Dead.”
The hairs on my arms and neck were standing straight up. My empty stomach knotted so tight, I was nauseous. Dead. I’d always hated that word, but now I had yet another reason to despise it. Really? Hayden?
A murderer?
The fear must’ve been clear on my face because the boys were nodding. “Believe it,” Race said.
“It’s all on the records. The kid’s not only bad news… he’s a felon,” Preston added.
“Oh my God.” I leaned back in my seat. My worry meshed with a sudden burst of ferocity. I couldn’t believe Dad had waited until after he’d hired him to have a background check done! What the heck kind of a boss was he becoming? “Why the hell didn’t either of you tell me this sooner?!”
“We just found out this morning,” Race retorted.
“Joe’s in the office. Cory’s not here at the second.”
I felt my voice thinning. I cleared my throat. “So he doesn’t know yet?”
They shook their heads. “We told Joe to call his cell, but he says he wants him to see it in person.” Race shifted uneasily. “Your dad will fire him, right? I mean, I really don’t want to be working alongside a psychopath.”
“I—” I stopped. “I sure to heaven hope so… if that’s the case.” Dad would surely see my point now. This was the one time I really needed him to listen and he hadn’t. “I need to see these records. Now.”
Grabbing my purse, I threw my door open before their heads were removed from the window. The boys toppled over each other on the pavement as I raced for the back door.
Inside, I found Greg and Joe at dad’s desk in the office. “Rosalia.” Joe straightened up as he saw me. The color in his face was moving towards a shallow shade of green. “We need to talk.”
“I know. The messengers attacked my car.” I fell into a seat in front of the desk. “So what’s the story? What’s going on here?”
Joe glanced between me and the papers in his hands. He knew this information was probably confidential, but besides the fact the boys had clearly eavesdropped, I shared genes with the boss. It was my right to know.
And he knew it. So he said, “Well. This Hayden O’Conner kid was involved in what sounds like a break-in and a murder. I called the shop in Arizona where he worked. I got a hold of the boss. He told me that the morning after he left the two boys to lock-up duty, he found the shop torn to bits, four windows broken,”—he swallowed hard—“And one employee… dead.”
I rubbed my forehead, hating that the boys hadn’t been lying even a little. I didn’t want to, but I asked, “What else?”
“It’s very strange.” Joe’s expression was perplexed. “The blood they found on the floors and windows of the shop did not belong to the young man who’d been murdered and found behind the counter. Instead, the blood samples from the scene were matched up with Hayden’s. What’s weirder is that the boss said Hayden appeared briefly the next morning for questioning and he had barely a few scratches. They couldn’t understand it.”
“Oh.” Wow, that was weird. It was like some real mystery from the board game Clue… I was never very good at that game. “So what does that mean? What did Hayden say when they questioned him?”
“The guy I talked to in Arizona wouldn’t tell me all of it. Said it’s strict confidential stuff, though I don’t see how. If we’re hiring him, we have a right to know if you ask me.” Joe rolled his eyes. “Anyway, Hayden’s alibi to all this was that an intruder had broke in before they closed up. He told him to leave and—according to him—a fight broke out. The trespasser got away.”
“Hmm.” I’d never read any of this on the application I’d stolen yesterday, though I did vaguely remember him writing something about a fight. “Joe, how long ago did this happen?”
“Supposedly a few years back, but I don’t know.” He dropped the pages on the desk, like he couldn’t look at them anymore. “I don’t know what to think of this, Rose. He claims he didn’t kill his coworker and there was no evidence on the body that pointed to Hayden being the killer. Actually, the doctors were baffled because the victim hadn’t been shot or stabbed or anything. All they found was a hole in his hand like he’d stuck it in a fireplace or something. The skin was all burned and rotted and his blood just seemed to… stop.”
Greg shuddered and finally had to sit down. I watched him pull his hands through his black hair, his gaze on the floor.
Goose bumps were popping up on my arms, too. An employee that had just dropped dead? It was weird. Too weird for me. I took slight relief, however, in knowing that there was no real evidence that Hayden was the murder… of course, it didn’t sound like there was any evidence saying he wasn’t, either. It was an even scale; no weight on either side.
It took dad forever to get back. He read over the records and police reports in silence. No one spoke, but we all watched him like hawks. After a moment, he sighed, and for the first time in a long time the years seemed to catch up with him. His face turned sallow and tired, dark circles lining his eyes.
“Oh boy,” he breathed, taking a seat in his chair. “I knew this kid had gotten into some trouble, but I didn’t know how much.”
Because you didn’t do a background check first, I wanted to say. But I didn’t.
It was a long afternoon. An hour passed before dad and Joe kicked all of us “kids” out and summoned Hayden to the office for questioning. The door closed behind them, and even as Preston and Race cupped their ears against the wood to listen, they heard nothing of value. I made them go away and help Greg with the counter as the after-work rush started pouring in.
It seemed like years before the investigation was over. I was sitting on one of the quads in storage when the office door opened. Hayden exited first, though his attitude and stance didn’t look angry or offended. He seemed fine, maybe a little tense, but at least he didn’t look like he was ready to chop someone’s head off their shoulders… like mine. He looked at me as he passed, and I winced as he nearly brushed my shoulder.
I jerked around as Joe and dad appeared. “How’d it go?” I didn’t mean for it to sound like a demand, but it came out like that anyway.
The two men seemed strained, yet relieved at the same time. It was the look the kids in school had after giving an impromptu speech to the class. “Well. He didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know,” dad said as he came up and stood beside me, hand on my shoulder.
> “And he claims he didn’t do it,” Joe continued, a little solemn. “Said a man broke into the store, tried to attack him and his coworker, so he reacted defensively. He said yes, there was a big fight, but no he doesn’t know what happened to the victim or how he died. He said he doesn’t know how the boy got killed or how his hand was burnt. He was still trying to get the attacker out of the store and wasn’t paying attention to him.”
“So what are you going to do?” I scrutinized the two men. The wrong answer might cost me my sanity. They gave each other wary glances, and in dad’s eyes I caught a glimmer of sheepishness. That’s all it took for me to know what he was thinking. “Aw, dad! You’re keeping him, aren’t you?!”
“Rose, there’s no logical reason to fire him just because he got into a fight trying to defend—”
“Oh really? Then why’d he stop working there, huh?”
“Rumors. He lived in a relatively small town and gossip took over. You of all people could at least understand that bit, Rose.”
I yanked on my hair. It was no use in even arguing; I wasn’t going to get my way. They believed whatever pity-party had come out of Hayden’s mouth, and even while I was the daughter of the shop—ranking second highest, most respected opinion besides assistant manager—it was clear the decision to keep him didn’t include my vote… even if this was the one time I truly felt my word mattered for the well-fair of both the business and the people in it.
*
I let all my anger out over Myspace that night. After emailing friends who were online, I even posted a rant for all of them to comment on. They all wrote replies, seeming happy to back me up. At least I have their support, I thought with a scowl. I went back and forth between the bulletin and my inbox.
I was about to log off when a sudden thought popped into my head. Scrolling up, I typed in the search bar. The screen processed, then gave me near a hundred results for the name. I rolled through the first page, not seeing him. I scrolled through the second page. Nope. Half way down the third set of results I found a thumbnail of his picture.
“Hayden,” I whispered. My heart rate picked up the speed as I clicked on his user name, Hayd.I.am. Dumb name. I’m not sure what he was going for there, but boys rarely made sense to me.
He didn’t have his profile on private. The first thing I saw was a picture of him in his usual, only he was wearing a black hat and T-shirt with white curly designs linked through skulls. He was sitting in a window sill, his pale eyes fixed on the camera like he could see me through the screen. Black and silver lightning streaking his profile page. All the text boxes were outlined in silver and shaded with a grey fog. His About Me section wasn’t very lengthy.
Name’s Hayden. I live in Cali with some friends. I don’t think there’s anything else you need to know about me, except that if you’re nice, I’ll play nice. If you’re a jerk or a bee-yotch… hey, it’s your life. Risk it as you will.
My skin rippled in goose bumps. If you’re a jerk or a bee-yotch. As much as I hated to admit it, I was hoping I wasn’t on his jerk or bee-yotch list. Hey, it’s your life. Risk it as you will. That sounded like a threat to me.
I was almost considering sending him an email, apologizing for the other day when I offended him. Whether it was my conscience or my ego that stopped me, I couldn’t be sure, but I avoided the send message button.
His friends list was near the bottom of the page. It was sort of surprising to me that he had only a few friends—all of which had their tiny photos displayed. The first was a picture of the curly haired blonde that had bought stuff from dad. I clicked on his user name, King of Kahlúa.
The page appeared (his wasn’t private either) with his featured picture of him with his shirt off, six-pack visible as he leaned on a porch rail. There was a huge bottle of Kahlúa attached to his mouth. I should’ve known. The funny thing was, I pictured Hayden the one with alcohol in his hands, not this guy. No, this boy had looked too classy when he’d come to the shop, too well behaved to consider much other than the occasional glass of wine. I almost contemplated this being the same person, because King of Kahlúa here looked like he was ready for an allnighter at the Viper and Vixen.
The next boy on Hayden’s list was unsurprisingly the flawless black-haired kid with the skinny jeans. His screen name was Hawk_man. Don’t know why. At least his photo didn’t have him attached to any kind of alcohol container. However, the blonde girl in the bikini with her face pressed against his thigh disturbed me. What a crude pose.
“Drake.” I read the first line of his profile absentmindedly. I figured that was who he was. The blonde had to have been Lea then, the name I’d found on Hayden’s references, though I still felt that name was sort of gender-exclusive.
I spent a good hour snooping through the rest of Hayden’s friends, his comments, and even his photos. By the end of sixty minutes, I’d learned his list was made up of Lea and Drake, then three girls—one of which was very sleazy looking—and a man and a woman who I think, judging by their comments, must’ve been relatives. Probably mom and dad, though they looked nothing like him. Maybe aunt and uncle? In his photos section, there were only a handful of pictures to root through. The first was his default, the one of him in the window. The second one displayed him with his hat off standing with the fridge open, and the last one…
He was standing in a dim alley way in nothing but his hat and his baggy jeans. Back arched almost like a cat, he knelt in a crouched position. There were strange shadows over his back. His knuckles pressed against the ground, like he was getting ready to spring on someone, eat them alive. What really got me were his eyes, how they were silver and sort of shiny—no blue. Some girls might have found this shot seductive, completely sexy.
I found it scary.
I found something so scary about it, that I left his profile and signed off of Myspace altogether.
6) Complications
Chanel and I were supposed to go to the mall after school the next day, but she kept hinting at Hayden and it frustrated me. So I sort of did a naughty thing. I decided I was going to go to the mall, but I didn’t want to take Chanel. I wanted to be alone. Away. Invisible would’ve been pleasant, too, but I wasn’t counting on that one. So I pawned her off on the idea that I had a headache and was going to go home. We would go to the mall this weekend.
I snuck out of German a minute or two early while the teacher wasn’t watching. I zipped out to the parking lot and was in my car before the bell, free of my best friend and Derek and his goons.
Ellington Mall was quiet for a Thursday afternoon, bringing me a pinch of relief. Of all the malls in Los Angeles, Ellington was the newest and smallest in the area. I picked up a coffee from Seattle’s Best on the second floor, then moseyed over to the bookstore to raid the young adult section. I found what looked like a good teen fantasy, and I was out of things to read.
After check out, I found an open chair beside the first floor’s Koi pond. There, I sipped the remains of my vanilla latte and opened up my new book, trying to act unsuspicious as I sniffed the pages. I loved the smell of a new book, the aroma of ink on fresh paper. It was better than the smell of apple pie from a bakery. I was on the third page of the prologue when—
“Boo!” I jumped, the book soaring out of my hands. Snapping my head back, I met a pair of big chocolate eyes and a face twisted with a smile. “Jeez, Paul! You scared the life out of me.” I reached down to pick my book off the floor.
His hand beat me to it. “I know. I couldn’t help it.” He stood up, twisting the book around. “Oh, hey. I read this series. It’s pretty good.” I stared at the black-framed spectacles he was wearing, then slowly smiled. “You’re wearing your glasses today.”
“Yeah, well, you mistake your sister for your ex-girlfriend across the parking lot and you don’t get much of a choice after that.” He chuckled as he took a seat in the sofa opposite me. “So. What are you doing at the mall all by yourself?”
My smile turned sly. “I could ask y
ou the same question.”
“I was here for a job interview. I got a call from the manger at Dixie’s Coffee, saying to come in today.” He brushed some loose curls out of his face. “Now, back to you. You here just… shopping? Doing whatever girls do?”
“Just wanted some quiet time. I feel like I need it more and more these days.” I shrugged. “Dixie’s Coffee. Jeez, Paul, you’re probably smart enough that NASA would hire you and you’re working at a coffee house?”
His face flustered and he looked down. He was so cute when he was embarrassed. “You’re very sweet, Rose.”
“I’m being completely honest.”
“Ha, ha. Yeah, well, we’ll see what the future holds. Right now I just need enough money to get me through the next couple years of college. If that means working for a coffee house, I’m more than happy to do it.” He paused. His eyes were sparkling as he stared at me. “So what about you? Any plans after graduation in June?”
“Mm… No,” I confessed, shifting in my seat. I really didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do after the year ended. Dad had a pretty healthy college fund going for me, but I didn’t even know where I wanted to go or what I should attempt majoring in. “Truth be told, my head’s full of other things right now. I’ll probably take a year after high school and figure life out.”
Paul’s cute smile faded, a shadow crossing his face. “I read your bulletin when I got on Myspace this morning. Is it true your dad really hired some convict kid?”
I rolled my eyes, feeling my stomach tumble. I’d done so well not thinking of Hayden until now. “It’s a whole, complicated story. Supposedly he’s innocent. I don’t know what I think about that.”
Paul narrowed his eyes. “Is he really being a jerk to you?”
A Taste of Silver Page 6