Cheating for the Chicken Man

by Priscilla Cummings

  J.T. didn’t move.

  “Whatcha doin’?” Kate asked.

  “Nothin’ much,” J.T. said.

  He was still breathing hard. Kate could smell his sweat.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “For a run.”

  She wanted to ask why but didn’t want to seem pushy. She climbed up onto the gas tank and sat beside him.

  After a long moment, J.T. said, “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t here anymore.”

  “Don’t say that!” Kate exclaimed, nudging him with her elbow. “Things will get better!” She was desperate to say something encouraging, but at a loss as to what it might be. “Just focus on doing well in school, J.T.”

  Her brother ran a hand across his mouth, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Remember that day we were watching TV and they interviewed that homeless girl?” she asked him. “She lived in a car with her parents and brushed her teeth at the gas station? Remember how she won a science competition at her school and got a college scholarship? She said that despite how bad everything gets, you have to stay focused. You can’t give up hope.”

  J.T. finally turned to face her. “Yeah, well I’m trying to do good, Kate, but I can’t get traction. How can I make a new start with Curtis dragging me down?”

  “Did something else happen?”

  He shook his head slightly. “Just little stuff.”

  “That’s why you need to tell someone, J.T. Tell them what Curtis is doing, so they’ll make him stop!”

  “But they can’t stop him, Kate! If I complain, everything gets worse. Plus I don’t want to be seen by everybody as the victim. It’s bad enough the way people see me. I don’t want to be pitied and hated both.”

  “No one hates you, J.T.,” Kate declared.

  “Of course they do!”

  “Well, you’re wrong!” Kate insisted, although she didn’t mean to raise her voice.

  “Yeah! Probably I’m wrong, Kate,” J.T. snapped sarcastically. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” He slid off the tank.

  Kate didn’t respond. She knew he was referring to his decision to help sabotage the red kayak which caused the death of a little boy and landed J.T. in juvenile detention. Biggest mistake he’d ever made in his life. No question about it. The tragic loss of Benjamin DiAngelo and her brother’s conviction for second-degree murder was always going to be a cloud over his life—over all their lives, including her own. Kate knew people looked at her differently. Not long after J.T. left, she was at the 7-Eleven picking out a Snapple, when she heard a boy in the pretzel aisle behind her, whisper to a friend, “That girl? Her brother was one of the kids who killed the little boy.” When she closed the cooler door, the kids took off.

  When J.T. started walking back toward the house with Tucker at his heels, Kate didn’t try to stop him. Watching him go, she wondered if she was always going to be that girl, the brother of that boy.

  Sometimes Kate got angry because it was so unfair. But she could never figure out who to blame. Whose fault was it? Would time make it go away? The passage of time? If so, then how long would it take for people to forget?

  Or forgive?

  Even after the screen door slammed shut up at the house, Kate stood in the dark, listening to the crickets. How was this all going to end? As bad as it was for her, it had to be ten times worse for J.T.

  Maybe it was her imagination, but it seemed like the insects’ noise grew louder, and louder still, until it was almost deafening and Kate had to cover her ears.

  ~10~

  IMPOSSIBLE

  Kate, listen to me!” Jess demanded. She turned on the bus seat to face Kate.

  “I’m sorry. What?” Kate asked.

  “Just tell me. Do you want to go to the pep rally after school?”

  “The pep rally,” Kate repeated.

  “The pep rally for the first football game! Kate! Come on. Just answer me yes or no. Olivia keeps asking me, but I don’t want to go if you’re not going.”

  Kate finally focused on her friend’s pained expression. Did Jess have mascara on her eyelashes?

  “You’re like a space cadet, Kate! I mean, why wouldn’t you want to go? It’s our first pep rally! There’s no field hockey practice. It’ll be fun!”

  Kate turned away. Jess was changing. Was it Olivia?

  “Kate?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Kate said.

  Jess sighed and fell back against the seat. “Well, let me know by noon, okay? I need to call my mom and ask her if she can come get us.”

  “Okay.”

  Jess turned to look out the window then, and the girls didn’t talk anymore all the way to school. Kate didn’t mean to ignore Jess or put her off. She certainly didn’t want to hurt her feelings—or worse yet, lose her as a friend, but it was impossible to focus on a pep rally when she was wondering if today was the day she’d be called down to the office for her bullying report. Would they talk to her alone? With J.T.? With both boys? Would someone call her mother? If they needed her mother to go to the school, would she be able to leave the house?

  Even in biology lab, where Mr. Rutkowski was reading off names and assigning lab partners for the semester, Kate was only half tuned in.

  “What’s your last name again?”

  Kate looked up at the boy standing beside her at the lab table. The boy with dark curly hair who had shown her the page number on the first day of school. He seemed really nice, and now she was noticing that he had soft brown eyes and cute dimples in his cheeks.

  “Did you say Taylor?” he asked.

  “No, Tyler,” Kate replied. She spelled it for him. “And your name again? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch everything.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. It’s Marc—with a c,” he said, pointing at her notes when she wrote it as Mark. “Last name is Connors.”

  “Were you at Corsica Middle last year?” Kate asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m new this year. I moved here from Oregon.”

  “Oregon,” Kate repeated. “Wow. That’s pretty far away.”

  Suddenly, the intercom blinked and the office secretary’s voice came on.

  Kate froze, knowing the call would be for her. In slow motion, she closed her notebook and clicked her pen shut.

  The secretary’s voice was shrill: “I’m sorry for the interruption, Mr. Rutkowski, but could you please send Marc Connors to the office for dismissal?”

  Surprised, Kate looked at Marc.

  He arched his eyebrows and grinned. “That would be me. Gotta go.” He leaned toward Kate. “Take good notes, okay? Maybe we can get together and go over stuff later this week.”

  Kate nodded numbly. “Sure.” She watched Marc from Oregon slide his book off the desk and leave the room.

  The day dragged on after that. Kate never was called to the office. The only exciting thing happened in the afternoon, when Curtis Jenkins showed up in Kate’s Creative Writing class.

  Stunned, she watched in disbelief as Mr. Ellison gave Curtis a syllabus and spoke quietly to him before indicating an empty desk up front. Curtis may have seen her on his way to sit down, but how would she know? She had covered her mouth and turned completely away.

  Mr. Ellison wrote a phrase on the board: My reason for being here. Then he ordered the students to take out their journals and start writing.

  Heads bent and pens and pencils moved across paper. Kate had to pull herself together and write, too. She reconsidered the phrase, my reason for being here, and wondered if Mr. Ellison meant the reason for being in his class, or if he was after a more cosmic meaning, such as the reason for life itself. Kate had always wanted to be a writer ever since she was about five years old, when she was folding paper to make little books. She’d start with that.

  “Mr. Jenkins, you’re not writing,” Mr. Ellison obs
erved.

  Kate glanced over.

  “No, sir,” Curtis answered. He was stretched back in his chair, his long legs protruding into the aisle, but he straightened up some as he spoke. “Only reason I’m here is ’cause they didn’t have no place else for me to go. Period. End of story.”

  A few kids chuckled.

  Kate rolled her eyes.

  “Well, there you go, Mr. Jenkins,” the writing teacher replied. “Where there is an end, there is almost always a whole new beginning.” He handed Curtis a piece of paper. “Write about your new beginning and what you’re thinking.”

  *

  By the afternoon, Kate had totally forgotten about the pep rally. Upset about finding Curtis in her class and frustrated that there had been no action on her report, she practically ran to the bus after school. Only then did she realize she had never even given an answer to Jess. She covered her face with one hand and sank back against the seat.

  J.T. had skipped the pep rally, too. But Kate didn’t see the bruise on his face until they both got home.

  “What’s that?” she asked, horrified by the puffy black and blue skin halfway closing his left eye.

  “I fell in gym,” he mumbled, turning away.

  Kate didn’t believe him. Not for a second. It didn’t look like the kind of injury you’d get playing soccer.

  *

  The next day, a Saturday, Kate learned the truth about the bruise. In the backseat of her grandmother’s car, she was plugged into her phone listening to music when a text came.

  Jess: Hey. What are you doing?

  It didn’t sound like Jess was mad. Amazing. She was an amazing friend.

  Kate: Errands with my grandma.

  Jess: Missed you last night at the football game.

  Kate: Sorry I never got back to you.

  Jess: No worries.

  Kate: Was the game fun?

  Jess: Crazy. Some kids got in trouble for drinking.

  Kate: Yikes.

  Jess: Hope J.T.’s okay. I heard he got stuffed into a gym locker yesterday.

  Kate’s hands went limp.

  *

  In Chestertown, Kate’s grandmother parked the car on the street in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts. J.T.’s probation officer had her office above the doughnut shop.

  “I want a honey dip!” Kerry called out.

  While Kerry and her grandmother went to get drinks and doughnuts to pass the time, Kate went upstairs with J.T. She had waited for her brother once before at Miss Hatcher’s office, and she knew that when the waiting room was quiet you could hear through the walls.

  Kate was glad to see that no one else was there. As soon as J.T. went into Miss Hatcher’s office and closed the door behind him, Kate pulled her earphones out and wrapped them around her phone.

  “So what happened to your eye?” Miss Hatcher asked.

  Kate leaned forward from her seat on the couch to listen.

  “I fell playing soccer in gym,” J.T. replied, but so softly that Kate could barely hear him.

  Miss Hatcher didn’t argue, and there was a pause. She didn’t believe him either, Kate thought.

  “J.T., tell me. How are things going at school?”

  Kate stood and tiptoed to the door so she could hear better. She hoped this wasn’t wrong. She was only eavesdropping to make sure that J.T. leveled with Miss Hatcher—so he could get the help he needed. If Miss Hatcher knew the truth, maybe she could step in and talk with the principal. Maybe she could even get him transferred to another school.

  “Things at school are great,” J.T. said.

  Astonished, Kate let her mouth fall open.

  “I’m really involved in this science project,” he continued with what Kate thought was faked enthusiasm. “What I’m planning to do is test samples of chicken manure to see what the birds are eating.”

  He was changing the subject!

  “And why would that be important, J.T.?” she asked.

  Miss Hatcher was falling for it! Angry, Kate lifted her fist to knock on the door.

  “You may not know this, but in the past, some growers have actually put arsenic in their chicken feed,” J.T. said.

  Kate stopped herself from knocking in order to listen.

  “They’re not supposed to put that stuff in the feed anymore, but I thought I’d do this study on it to check and see, because if there’s still arsenic getting fed to chickens, it can affect people who eat their meat.”

  “Is that so?” Miss Hatcher asked. “Arsenic in chicken feed? Why would anyone do that, J.T.?”

  Kate brought her hand down. That was what she was wondering, too.

  “Here’s the thing,” J.T. said, sounding very sure of himself. “The arsenic doesn’t kill the chickens, but it kills this bug in the chicken’s gut. So the chickens grow faster. The arsenic is still in their bodies, though. And if it is, it could be in the meat you buy at the store or eat in a restaurant. And that kind of arsenic can cause cancer in people.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “The other thing,” J.T. continued, “is that the arsenic makes blood vessels burst in the chicken, which makes their meat look pink and plump. People see it at the grocery store, and they think, wow, this meat is nice and healthy. They don’t know it’s burst blood vessels.”

  “What in the world got you started on this?” Miss Hatcher asked, and there was a leathery squeak, like she either leaned back or sat up in her chair.

  A long pause. “My father,” J.T. finally told her.

  It became quiet on the other side of the wall.

  “You must miss your dad,” Miss Hatcher sympathized.

  “I do,” J.T. said. “I wish my dad was here.” When his voice grew high and tight, like he was trying hard not to cry, Kate’s eyes blurred with tears, too.

  “I never got a chance to say good-bye to him,” J.T. said.

  Another squeak and footsteps told Kate Miss Hatcher had gotten up. Maybe she was handing her brother a tissue. Or putting her arm around his shoulders.

  Quickly, Kate wiped at her eyes with the edge of one hand and tiptoed back to the couch where she sat, unwrapping and plugging her earphones back in so they wouldn’t think she’d overheard.

  *

  At home that night, after everyone else had gone to bed, J.T. took off on his bicycle in the dark. From her bedroom window, Kate watched him leave, then, worried, went outside to sit on the porch, where she waited nearly an hour for his return. She watched as he walked his bike into one of the tractor sheds and noticed that as he got close to the house, he pushed a small bag into his pocket.

  “Where did you go?” she asked, walking the short distance to meet him and trying to sound casual.

  Still breathing a bit heavily, J.T. settled his hands on his hips. “Just for a ride,” he said. “To clear my head.”

  Uncertain of what to think or do, Kate turned and walked back up the porch steps with J.T. Was there something new to worry about? What if that little bag he’d shoved in his pocket was drugs? She’d seen a boy with a bag of something green on the school bus once. Even if it had turned out to be just oregano—a big joke—some people had thought it was real marijuana. It was in a little plastic bag like the one she’d seen in J.T.’s hand.

  “I know how you got the bruise,” she declared, desperate to say or do something that would stop her brother from getting into trouble.

  J.T. paused at the front door and turned around.

  “I’m going to the office,” she blurted. “I’m going to report Curtis!”

  He shook his head. “No you’re not.”

  “Well, maybe I already have!”

  J.T.’s voice stayed calm. “I know you have. I got called down to the guidance office because of that form you filled out.”

  “So what happened?” she demanded. />
  “Nothing happened.”

  “What do you mean, nothing happened? Is Curtis in trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I denied it!” J.T. proclaimed.

  Kate was flabbergasted. “You denied it? You told them none of that happened?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “Then I’ll take them that banner and show them myself!”

  “What banner?” he challenged.

  “The banner Curtis strung up!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  Kate ran ahead of him into the house and dashed upstairs to her room where she had left her backpack on the floor by her desk. Kneeling, she zipped it open and riffled through it. But the folded banner was gone. When she turned, she saw that J.T. had followed her into the room and closed the door.

  “You took it!” she accused, jumping to her feet.

  J.T. put his hands on her shoulders. “You need to butt out, Kate. Let me handle this!”

  “But I can’t—”

  “That’s it, Kate!” J.T. cut her off. “Stay out of it!”

  When he walked back out, he closed the door so hard, Kate’s grandmother called out from her bedroom, “Hey! Who’s slamming doors?”

  *

  Stay out of it. The words echoed in her head. But how could Kate stay out of it when J.T.’s world was disintegrating before her eyes?

  At lunch on Monday, Kate and Jess watched as Curtis and Hooper stole all the extra chairs at the small table where J.T. sat so no one else could sit with him even if they had wanted. At field hockey practice, Kate struggled not to cry when she heard that in J.T.’s study hall, kids were clucking like chickens.

  That night when Kate went looking for J.T., she found him sitting outside his bedroom window on the roof. Kate crawled out and sat down beside him. The shingles were still warm from the hot day, and above them, the endless night sky was speckled by a million pinpricks of light.

  “Hey,” she said softly.

  But J.T. had shut down and didn’t answer. Her brother was probably the tallest kid in his class, but that night he seemed small sitting hunched over with his knees drawn up and his face hidden in his folded arms.