“Medium-sized, dark-colored dog,” his uncle said. “And where exactly were you at the time?”
“In the backyard.”
“Did anyone come out to investigate?”
“Maybe,” Dooley said. “I didn’t stick around to find out.”
“You didn’t see anyone?”
Dooley shook his head.
“That doesn’t mean no one saw you,” his uncle said. “Tell me exactly what time this happened.”
Dooley told him as close as he could remember.
“Did Graff ask you where you were that night?”
Dooley nodded.
“And?”
“And what?”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. Annette said not to answer.”
“Well, if he gets around to asking you again, tell him what you just told me,” his uncle said.
“What for?” Dooley said. “He won’t believe me.” Especially if he asked Dooley what he’d been doing up there in the first place. Double-especially if Dooley told him. “Besides, no one saw me.”
“Just do it, Ryan. Be straight with the man. In the meantime, I’ll look into it. That dog belongs to someone. Maybe someone will remember it barking when you say it did. It’s something,” his uncle said. He looked less worried now and more focused, which unsettled Dooley. The last thing he wanted to believe was that he needed an alibi for the night Mark Everley died.
He should have expected it, but he didn’t. He made his way to school, wishing he could drink something or swallow something that would make him numb all over and knowing, instead, that if he was going to make it, he was going to have to get used to feelings like the ones that were eating at him now, feelings of shame and dread. He told himself he didn’t care, that he’d made a career out of not caring, but the truth was that he hadn’t cared before because before he had novocained himself into a state of insensibility. Now he was clean and sober and, in his opinion, a pretty good argument for why booze worked, why pills worked, and why drugs worked.
So off to school—which he tolerated but did not enjoy—where he was still a freak, just like he’d been at every school he had ever attended and, boy, there had been a lot of them. Lorraine had moved around a lot, mostly getting kicked out of places because she never paid the rent on time or because of the men who went in and out of the place all night every night, or the so-called boyfriends who were assholes and who, to a man, drank too much or smoked too much. He’d seen it change, too, from poor little Ryan, he’s falling behind, he looks like he hasn’t had a home-cooked meal in weeks (try ever), he’s wearing sneakers in the bitter cold and slush of January and February, by March his sneakers are falling apart, his reading skills are below grade average, his homework is mostly never done… to, that Ryan, he doesn’t care, he never bothers to do his homework, he doesn’t even take his textbooks home, his grades are abysmal, what’s a kid with such poor reading, writing, and math skills even doing in junior high… to, Ryan Dooley, hard case, one more incident like that, mister, and you’re out of here, do you understand me, one more tardy, one more assignment not completed, one more incident of swearing at a teacher, one more fight in the school yard, don’t even think about it, Dooley, or I’ll have the cops here so fast it will make your head spin…
To now, when vice principals like Rektor went out of their way to let Dooley know they had his number, they knew exactly the kind of person he was and they made sure he knew that he was there by their sufferance only (you know what that means, Ryan, or do you want me to spell it out for you?); when teachers, the old burned-out ones, the new inexperienced ones, the female ones, never called on him, never expected anything from him, never even looked at him except for times like now, when kids were dead and cops had been called and lawyers summoned and paid for and everyone knew—believed—wasn’t surprised by the fact—that Ryan Dooley was at the center of it all.
That much he expected.
But he didn’t expect what actually happened, which was that Beth was standing in front of his school, her head moving this way and that, looking for something. Looking for someone. Looking for Dooley, it turned out, because the minute she spotted him, boom, she was like a sprinter coming off her blocks, hurtling herself at him like he was the finish line and there was a medal waiting for her when she crossed it. Her eyes burned with—name that emotion—anger? Stronger. Rage? Fury? More personal. Hatred? Yeah, that was it. Pure and very personal hatred. She thrust her hands out in front of her like weapons and kept coming, kept coming, until, umph, her palms slammed into Dooley’s chest and, what do you know, she wasn’t big, but, boy, she made an impact. Dooley staggered backward.
“Hey,” he said.
“You lied to me,” she said. “Did you kill my brother too?” Yeah, he should have expected that.
“You had his backpack,” she said. “What did you do?
Did you steal it off his dead body?” She was hammering at him with her fists now and her voice, which normally was deep for a girl, which made it kind of sexy, was loud and screechy and attracting a lot of attention. “I asked you about it. I told you it was important to me. And you had it the whole time. You had it the whole time!”
“No, I—”
“Now the cops have it and they won’t give it back to me. They say it’s evidence. They think someone pushed Mark.”
Mr. Rektor had come out the front door and was walking toward them now, grim-faced, waving his arms as he approached to shoo staring students into the building. A woman scurried after him, her legs moving twice as fast as his, so that she looked like a little kid scrambling to keep up with her daddy. Dooley recognized her as one of the secretaries from the school office. The crowd parted to let them through and then closed up again. Hardly anyone went inside. Dooley saw Rhodes. Landers and Bracey were with him. He saw Warren, too. Geeze, Warren, who had Everley’s flash drive.
“You lied to me,” Beth said. “You killed my brother. You lied to me. You killed my brother.” She sounded as enraged by the first accusation as by the second.
Mr. Rektor laid a hand on her arm. She spun around, fists up.
“Ms Patel will take you inside, Beth,” Mr. Rektor said, his voice gentle, but phoney gentle, like it was something he’d learned in vice principal school: How to Calm Students 101. “You can phone your mother and ask her to come and pick you up. Or, if you’d prefer, Ms Patel can call you a cab.”
She didn’t want to go. She turned back to Dooley, tears burning in her eyes.
“What did you do to him?” she said. “What did you do to my brother?”
“Nothing,” Dooley said. “I didn’t even know him.”
Ms Patel took her by the arm and began to peel her gently away from the scene, the way a mother might peel a Band-aid off a small child, slowly, slowly, working hard to minimize the pain. Beth didn’t want to go, but Ms Patel urged her along. As they nudged through the crowd, Rhodes approached her. She stopped and looked up at him. Her whole body shook and her hands went up to her face to cover her eyes. Rhodes stepped closer to her and put his arms around her. He held her, rubbing her back to soothe her. It was Rhodes who walked her inside. Ms Patel seemed relieved by his intervention.
Dooley looked at Mr. Rektor, whose face was hard now. But all he said to Dooley was, “You’re going to be late for home form.”
Dooley was in history class, second period, when he heard his name over the intercom: “Ryan Dooley, report to the office.” Everyone in the class turned to look at him, Everyone watched him walk from the room.
Dooley knew why he’d been summoned even before he opened the office door because there was his uncle’s voice, barking at someone. Dooley bet it was Rektor. Ms Patel glanced up from her computer.
“Mr. Rektor’s office,” she said. She looked glad to be behind the counter, out of his reach. Dooley wondered what she knew about him and exactly what she was afraid of.
He followed the sound of his uncle’s voice, rapped on Mr. Rektor�
��s closed door, and opened it before anyone invited him in. Mr. Rektor was sitting behind his desk. Dooley’s uncle was standing in front of it, leaning over it so that his face was as close to Rektor’s as it could get, given the desk between them. Rektor had tilted his chair back a little, maybe to avoid the spit that sometimes flew out of Dooley’s uncle’s mouth when he was mad and talking loud both at the same time. Dooley could see his uncle was on a roll, talking to Rektor the way he talked to Dooley when Dooley had done something phenomenally stupid.
“So let me get this straight,” he was saying to Mr. Rektor, always Dooley’s first clue when his uncle was talking to him that he was going to lay out just how screwed up his logic was or how foolish or ill-advised his actions had been, or both. “You’re telling me that as a result of the police coming here and asking you about my nephew, you think my nephew would be more comfortable attending another school. Is that about the size of it?”
Rektor leaned back a little farther still. His voice was measured and calm when he said, “I am sure all of this is difficult enough for Ryan. I merely thought that under the circumstances he might appreciate being in a more… anonymous environment.” He smiled blandly up at Dooley’s uncle, which Dooley knew was a big mistake.
“Think again,” Dooley’s uncle said. “Ryan stays. If you or anyone else harasses him, I’ll file a complaint. I’ll sue this school, the school board, and you personally. You got that?” Rektor opened his mouth to speak. He shut it again when Dooley’s uncle went on. “I know for a fact that this is not the first time a student at this school has ever been questioned by the police. I know because I used to be a police officer and I questioned a few of them myself.” Rektor wilted a little. Dooley guessed he didn’t know that Dooley’s uncle used to be a cop. All this time he’d been thinking: dry-cleaner. How intimidated is anyone going to be by a dry-cleaner? “Questioned means just that—questioned,” his uncle said. “He hasn’t been charged with anything. He hasn’t been arrested. And even if he was, we have a principle here—innocent until proven guilty. Maybe you heard of it. So lay off.”
He backed up and for the first time seemed to notice that Dooley was in the room.
“Get back to class,” he said.
Dooley didn’t move. The truth was, he was on Rektor’s side on this one. He didn’t want to be here. He felt like a freak the way everyone was always staring at him.
“What did I just say?” his uncle barked. He scowled at Rektor as if it was his fault that Dooley wasn’t hotfooting it back to whatever class he was supposed to be in.
Rektor nodded at him: Go on, get out of here before I decide to give you a detention.
Dooley said to his uncle, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Dooley’s uncle backed away from the desk. Rektor straightened his chair and his tie. He looked relieved. Dooley’s uncle glowered at him, holding Rektor’s eyes with his own, making it clear that the only reason he was leaving was that he had said his piece. He walked out of the office without a word. Dooley chased after him. His uncle glanced at him as he strode toward the front door. He waited until he was outside the school and had checked to see that there was no one within earshot—there was no one around at all before he said to Dooley, “What’s up? You going to tell me you want to cave to that jerk-off, is that it?”
It was exactly what Dooley had been going to tell him. It always brought Dooley up short his uncle could read him that way.
“Well, forget it,” his uncle said. “You’re enrolled here. You’ve been doing the work here. You have been doing the work, haven’t you, Ryan?”
“Yeah, sure—”
“You have rights, Ryan. Pricks like Rectal would love to screw you out of them, but that’s not going to happen. You’re going to go back in there and you’re going to focus on your studies.” He poked Dooley on the chest. “You’re going to keep your nose clean.” Another poke. “You aren’t going to piss anyone off.” Another poke. Even though he had checked first to see if anyone was around, like what he had to say to Dooley was personal and private, he was shouting the words at him. “You got that? Do you, Ryan?”
Yeah, well his uncle wasn’t the only one who wasn’t pleased with how things were shaking out.
“You know what it’s like in there?” Dooley said. “They all think I’m some kind of psychopath. Everyone either hates me or is afraid of me. Even the teachers. They never give me a chance.”
His uncle shook his head.
“After what you’ve been through, Ryan, you need to make your own chances. You need to prove to people that you’ve changed.”
“I show up regular. I never skip. I do my homework, for Christ’s sake. I do it all on time—”
“Cry me a river,” his uncle said, so sarcastic that Dooley wanted to slug him. “You’ve got two ways to go, Ryan. It’s always the same two ways. You can act like a baby and have a temper tantrum because people aren’t treating you the way you think you deserve to be treated. Or you can be a man, suck it up, keep on paying your dues, keep focused on the things you can do something about—which is how you conduct your life, your life Ryan, not everyone else’s life—and forget about the stuff that’s out of your control, which is how other people choose to see you. You think of another way to handle it, you let me know. But you won’t. You know why? Because there is no other way. You can only get through this minute and the next one and the one after that. You can’t fast-forward, skip all the bullshit and the commercials, and end up with a nice, happy ending. Life isn’t like that. Life’s more like rehab, Ryan. One day at a time. I know you know what I’m talking about.”
It was the longest speech his uncle had ever made, which was how Dooley knew that his uncle was serious about what he was saying and that he considered it vital that Dooley not walk away, that he go back in there and take whatever was coming. It was like walking into a fire so you could show everyone you were fireproof, even though you knew—and they knew—that you weren’t. What was the point?
His uncle put a hand on Dooley’s shoulder.
“I’m not saying it’s easy.” He was looking Dooley squarely in the eyes and talking softly. Dooley felt the warmth and strength of his hand. It wasn’t something he was used to. “I’m just saying it’s what you have to do. And for what it’s worth, I’ve got your back.”
Dooley was surprised to realize that it was worth more than almost anything else he could think of. His uncle nodded at him and turned to go. Dooley watched him climb into his car. As he pulled away from the curb, Dooley tracked him—and was startled to find that Beth hadn’t been picked up by her mother or tucked into a cab by Ms Patel. No, she was standing outside the eastern-most exit to the school listening intently (it looked like) to the person who was talking to her. Dooley’s heart burned when he saw who it was. Warren.
Jesus.
He watched for a moment, waiting to see if he could gauge Beth’s reaction to whatever Warren was telling her, waiting to see if Warren was going to hand over the flash drive Dooley had left with him. They didn’t part ways until the next bell rang. Warren went inside. Beth walked away. Dooley turned and looked up at the school. He didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want any more eyes on him or any more conversations dying the second he rounded a corner or stepped into a classroom. But what you want and what you get are never the same thing, are they?
Twenty-Three
Warren was waiting at Dooley’s locker after school. He looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear and then he said, “I haven’t had any luck with that thing.”
“You still have it?” Dooley said, surprised.
“Yeah,” Warren said, sounding even more surprised than Dooley. “Why? You want it back?”
“You were talking to Beth.”
Warren fixed on something behind Dooley and looked down at the ground. Dooley glanced over his shoulder. A couple of guys were coming toward them. Dooley opened his locker and jammed his homework books into his backpack. The two guys star
ed at him as they passed. Dooley stared right back, dead-eyed. The guys moved a little faster and disappeared around a corner.
“You were talking to Beth,” he said to Warren again after the guys were gone. “You know her?”
“Are you kidding?” Warren said.
“Why would I be kidding?”
“First of all,” Warren said, “do I look like the kind of guy who would know a girl who looks like that? Second, before Everley died, I never set eyes on her. She was like this big secret. The way Everley used to talk about her, I thought maybe she was like my sister, which is why I was so mad when I heard he’d given her a hard time.”
“What do you mean?” Dooley said, confused.
“Well, she doesn’t go to school here. The way I heard it, Everley told people she went to a special school.”
“She goes to a private school,” Dooley said. “It’s not that special.”
“It turns out it’s a private school,” Warren said. “But that was never what Everley said. He always said a special school. My sister goes to a special school. I thought he meant his sister did, too, you know, because she had special problems.”
Dooley remembered something Bracey had said about Beth at the party: She is definitely not as advertised.
“Why would he say something like that if it’s not true?” Dooley said.
“How would I know? I told you. The guy was a jerk. You’d have to be to lie about your sister like that.”
Dooley got the feeling that Warren never lied about his sister.
“So what were you talking to her about?” he said.
“I wanted to tell her I was sorry about Mark.”
Dooley gave him a look.
“Yeah, well, somebody loses somebody who’s close to them and a lot of times they want to talk about that person. But you know what usually happens? No one wants to say anything because they’re afraid it’s going to upset you. So everyone you know, even people you thought were your friends, they all pretend that the person never existed. They tell themselves they don’t want to upset you when the truth is they don’t want to upset themselves.”
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