“Come here.” Pop cocks his finger at Tony.
Everyone in the room is dead quiet as Tony takes slow stops toward our father. I squeeze my fists together, watching the fury growing on my father’s face. As Tony gets close, Pop lifts his hand and I’m sure he’s going to smack Tony on the face, but instead he reaches out and lifts the bandage off his forehead.
“Shit,” Pop mutters. “You need stitches for this, Tony. I’m taking you to the emergency room.”
“Pop, no…”
“Don’t argue with me,” he snaps. “We’re going to miss dinner to get you stitched up, and then we’re going to talk about your future. You’re going to spend the summer helping me out like Nico did last summer.”
I wince. I loved helping Pop out last summer. I don’t want Tony around, mucking it up. Or worse, showing me up.
Tony’s eyes widen. “I don’t want to fix toilets all summer! You got Nico to do your shit work for you.”
That was low. Pop did teach me how to do maintenance work in his buildings. And yeah, a fair amount of it was fixing toilets. Still. I’m not complaining.
Maybe that’s his point though.
“I don’t care what you want,” Pop hisses at him. “That’s the way it’s going to go down. Now get in the car before I finish off the job those no good kids started. Capisci?”
“Yeah, okay,” Tony mutters.
Tony and Pop go off in his car to the hospital. They don’t come back for another two hours, after everyone’s already eaten and gone home. Tony whispers to me that he got ten stitches in his forehead, like he’s proud of it. I got stitches once too, also in my forehead, after Tony threw a rock at my head.
“Maybe you can talk to him, Nico,” Pop says to me as he comes home looking ten years older than he did this morning. “He don’t listen to me. He don’t listen to nothing.”
“I’ll try,” I say obediently, although Tony don’t listen to me either.
So it’s no surprise when that night, we hear that familiar pounding on our front door. Three knocks. The cops.
I knew there was more to this story than Tony let on. If the cops are coming for him, I bet there were drugs involved. I don’t think Tony does them—at least not a lot—but I know he sells them. He thinks he’s so smart, getting extra money on the side, but look at him. I’d rather be fixing toilets.
I crawl over to the door to my room, listening in. I hear the front door cracking open. My father’s voice. Then the louder voice of the police officer:
“Angelo Moretti, we have a warrant for your arrest.”
Chapter 12
Nick
I run down the stairs just in time to see them cuffing my father’s hands behind his back. It’s something I will never forget for as long as I live.
“Nico.” My father’s voice is hoarse. “Go back to bed.”
But I’m frozen. I’m standing there in my stupid undershirt and boxer shorts and I can’t move. Even when my mother comes down into the living room, her eyes widening in horror when she sees what’s happening.
“Angelo, what’s going on?” Ma’s eyes are filling with tears. I seen my mother cry before, but it’s always hard to watch.
Ma is in her housecoat, but my father is fully dressed. He must not have gone to bed yet when the cops showed up. It looks like they let him put his shoes on before they cuffed him. I look at the clock on the wall and see it’s about one in the morning—I wonder who else in the neighborhood is still awake. Who else is gonna see Angelo Moretti get led into a cop car in handcuffs.
“Nicolas, go back to bed!” Pop snaps at me.
The cop jerks on Pop’s arm so that he nearly loses his balance. For the first time, I realize how old my father is getting. He’s in his mid-forties, but he never looked any older than when I was a little kid. But now I see all his gray hairs, the receding hairline, the bags under his eyes. My father’s old.
“Call Jack Kahn,” Pop says to my mother as the cops lead him out our front door. “Call him now, Teresa.”
Ma nods, wiping the tears flowing from her eyes. Tony hasn’t come down and I wonder if he’s even in his room at all. He probably snuck out. Maybe he assumed the police were coming for him.
For the first time in my life, I wish my brother were getting arrested.
Jessie
By second period, I already know that Nick’s father got arrested. By third period, I’d guess the entire school knows.
I pass Nick in the hall and he’s looking down at his shoes, so I can’t manage to catch his eye. I haven’t talked to him since my audition for West Side Story a couple of weeks ago, which ended up going much better than I thought. Two days ago, I found out I got the part of Maria. Go figure.
During lunch, Nick’s father’s arrest is all anyone wants to talk about. Chrissy and me and a couple of other girls are at a table, and Chrissy is filling them in on all the details she knows. As usual, she’s got all the gossip.
“Apparently,” she says, “the police came to their house in the middle of the night. Like, two in the morning.”
“Why did they come so late?” a girl named Rachel asks.
“I heard it was because they wanted to take him by surprise,” Chrissy says authoritatively. “Also, they didn’t want him to be able to call his lawyer and get right out.”
How does she know this stuff?
“They handcuffed him and put him in a cop car,” Chrissy continues. “It was pretty hardcore.”
“Do you know what he did?” a girl named Michelle asks.
“I heard he had someone killed!” Rachel says before Chrissy can respond. “I mean, he’s in the mob. Isn’t that what they do?”
“I heard the same thing,” a girl named Lisa says excitedly. “I heard he had this hitman, and the hitman killed a guy for him.”
I don’t like the way they’re talking about Nick’s dad. And if that’s what they’re saying here, probably everyone else in school is saying the same thing. “That can’t be true,” I murmur.
“They do it all the time,” Rachel says. “It’s just this time he finally got caught.”
“Nick was working for his dad all summer,” Michelle says thoughtfully. “I wonder if Nick ever… you know, killed anyone.”
Lisa’s eyes widen. “I bet he did! I could just imagine Nick killing someone. He’s… you know, dangerous-looking.”
I feel a flash of rage. How could they talk about Nick this way? Everyone at school likes Nick. He’s a great guy.
“I know,” Rachel adds, almost reverently. “I went out with him once, and I could totally see him killing someone if he really wanted to. Like, he could do it and not even blink an eye. He’s cold.”
That’s enough. I stand up from the table, my hands shaking. “Nick did not kill anyone. He would never kill anyone. Don’t talk about him that way!”
All four girls are staring up at me with equally baffled looks. Even Chrissy, who knows Nick better than any of the other girls. They really don’t see anything wrong with talking about Nick being a murderer.
“Excuse me,” I mutter, before I can embarrass myself further. I grab my tray from the table and dump it in the trash bin. I’ve lost my appetite.
I still have over twenty minutes left in my lunch period. I should probably avoid any other kids because I’ll almost definitely have an outburst and humiliate myself further. All anyone wants to talk about today is Angelo Moretti. I’m going to go outside and get some fresh air.
I go to the back of the school, intending to sit on the steps by myself, but when I get there, I see Nick has already beat me to it. He’s sitting on the steps quietly, those dark eyes glassy and staring off into the distance. I guess he doesn’t have an appetite for lunch either. I can’t blame him.
God, Nick is so hot. Looking at him now makes me realize just how unsatisfying my two dates with Evan have been. Don’t get me wrong—Evan is fine. But there’s no spark between us. It’s like Nick ruined me for all other guys. He ruined me, and now he want
s nothing to do with me. Isn’t that always the way?
I don’t know if he wants my company, but either way, I plop down next to him. He glances at me, at least acknowledging that I exist, then goes back to staring into the distance.
A minute of silence goes by. It’s a comfortable silence. I missed the way I used to just be able to be with Nick, without ever having to say anything. It’s not like that anymore.
“Sorry about your dad,” I finally say.
Nick snorts. “What are they saying? That he offed somebody?”
“Pretty much,” I admit. I quickly add, “I don’t believe it though.”
Nick doesn’t respond to that. Instead, he surprises me by reaching out and taking my hand in his. My whole body tingles when he does it. It’s so unfair that other girls at school like Rachel get to go out with him and I can’t. I’m the only one who can’t date him, even though I’m certain I like him more than any of them do. It’s not possible for anyone to like him as much as I do.
“It’s a tax thing,” he says. “Jack—our lawyer—said this morning he’d be home by noon, so… it’s fine. It’s really fine.”
Except I can see from his face that it’s anything but fine.
We just sit there together for the rest of lunch period, and even a little after that—I end up being late to fifth period. Nick doesn’t budge when the bell rings though and I feel like I can’t leave him quite yet, so I stay with him longer than I should. That’s okay. It’s just school.
Chapter 13
Nick
I’m in a haze the whole day.
I miss half of fifth period math, but Mr. Leone doesn’t say anything and actually seems surprised I’m there in the first place. I begged Ma to let me stay home today, but she wanted me to go to school. “Your father would be so angry if you missed school over this,” she said. “Nothing is more important than your education.”
Yeah, some things are more important. Like not having your father locked up.
I can’t think straight. My head is all fucked up, and at one point, I go to the bathroom and lock myself in a stall for ten straight minutes, trying to get my breathing under control. Nobody says anything about my ten minute bathroom break. They’re probably scared of pissing off the son of a murderer.
Not that Pop’s a murderer. Jack says they’re trying to nail him on some tax thing. I asked him to explain it to me but he said it was complicated.
Then I started to worry that maybe Pop really did kill someone and that Jack was lying to me.
But no. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. It’s one thing to put the squeeze on a guy—it’s a whole other thing to snuff them out.
The only good thing the entire day was when Jessie came out and sat with me in the back of the school. That was nice. It made me remember when I used to walk her home every day. Before her dad decided I wasn’t good enough for her.
When I get home from school, Pop and Jack are sitting at the dining table, talking quietly. Pop is wearing a nice dress shirt but no tie, and he looks exhausted, like he didn’t sleep at all last night. The second they see me, they shut the hell up.
“Nico,” Pop says quietly. “How you doing?”
How am I doing? He’s the one who spent the night in fucking jail.
“Okay,” I say.
“Good,” Pop says.
And then we all just stare at each other. I want to know what’s going on. I know they’re not going to tell me, but I deserve to know. I’m sixteen years old. I’m old enough to drive a car and in plenty of states, I could get married. I’m not a kid.
Jack gets out of his chair and stretches. He looks almost as tired as Pop does, although he’s ten years younger so looks better after a night without sleep. He smiles at me. “Hey, Nico,” he says. “I need a break. How about you and me play some basketball outside?”
Basketball? Is he kidding me?
“No, thanks,” I say.
“Go play with him, Nico,” Pop says in that voice that means I’m not supposed to argue.
I consider telling them both to go shove it, but before I can say something dumb, Jack slings his arm around my shoulders and leads me out of the house. He leads me to the basketball hoop that Pop mounted over the garage door and picks up the ball lying abandoned in the corner. He blows some dust off it and dribbles it a few times.
I just stand there and watch him. I don’t want to play basketball.
The truth is, I feel like I might start crying.
“Aw, Nico,” Jack says when he sees my face. “Come on. Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.”
“I’m okay,” I manage. I am. I’m not going to fucking cry, that’s for sure. I haven’t cried since my pet rabbit died when I was six years old. I remember Pop looking me in the eyes and saying to me:
Men don’t cry, Nico.
It didn’t keep me from being sad over my pet dying. But it kept me from crying. I learned how to bottle it all up inside, no matter how shitty I was feeling.
“We’re going to deal with this,” Jack says to me. He puts his hand on my shoulder. Even though he’s the same size as me, his hand feels big and comforting right now. “I promise you. Your dad isn’t going back to jail. No way.”
“Jack.” I take a deep breath. “Did Pop… did he… I mean, you swear this is just a tax thing? Right?”
“Nico…”
I look him in the eyes. “Swear it.”
“I swear,” Jack says.
He sounds like he means it.
That will have to be enough.
Chapter 14
Jessie
I’m on my third date with Evan and I can’t wait for it to be over.
Evan drove us to a pizza place and told me grandly to get whatever I want. (Uh, pizza?) So I got a mushroom slice (okay, two slices) and while we’re waiting for the waiter to bring it out to us, I realize Evan and I have barely said a word to each other the entire meal. I don’t even know why we’re so quiet. We both go to the same school… we should have something to talk about based on that, at least. Right?
The problem might be that I can’t stop thinking about Nick. My hand still tingles when I think of him holding it. I’m beginning to realize that if I can’t be with him, I don’t want to be with anyone. Evan might be cute, but he’s not who I want to be with. He’s never going to do it for me.
I’m not sure how to break that to Evan.
The waitress drops our pizza on the table so unceremoniously that I don’t even have a chance to give her a polite “thank you.” Evan winks at me as he points to the pizza, “Whoomp! There it is!”
I can’t help but roll my eyes.
Now that Evan’s got a mouthful of pizza, he suddenly thinks of something to say. “Hey, Jess,” he says, “I heard mmm muddy mick min male.”
“Huh?” I say. It’s one of my pet peeves when people talk with a mouthful of food. If you’ve got something to say, swallow first please. Nothing is so urgent that you can’t take five seconds to swallow. The same goes for conversations while peeing in the ladies room. I don’t want to talk to anyone while pee is coming out of my body, thank you very much.
“I said…” Evan swallows and takes a gulp of his giant cola. “I heard your buddy’s Nick Moretti’s dad is in jail.”
God, is that all anyone wants to talk about these days?
I shrug. “I don’t think it’s a big deal.”
“Not a big deal?” Evan raises his eyebrows at me. “My dad has never been in jail—has yours? I mean, I think being in prison is a really big deal. And hasn’t his brother been in a jail a bunch of times?”
All true. “I think it was just minor stuff.”
Evan takes another bite of his pizza and chews thoughtfully. I cringe, waiting for him to talk with his mouth full again, but he thankfully swallows first this time. “Are you sure it’s safe for you to hang out with Nick?”
I stare at him. “Safe?”
“Well, you have to admit, he doesn’t exactly come from a good family.” Eva
n cocks his head at me. “It’s weird that you hang out with him. I mean, you’re so nice and sweet, and he’s so…”
I narrow my eyes at him. “So what?”
“You know Nick worked for his dad last summer, right?” Evan says. He’s made his way through his first slice of pizza, but he leaves the crust over like he’s a little kid. “Don’t you think he gets… involved with stuff?”
I just shake my head. “Nick said it was mostly maintenance work.”
He snorts. “Maintenance work. Yeah, right.”
I pick up my own mushroom pizza and take a bite. I’m sick of defending Nick to all these idiots. I know Nick would never do anything illegal, and that’s all that matters. I try to think of something that will successfully change the subject, although after two dates with Evan, I really don’t know what he’s interested in. Last date, we went to the movies and spent most of the time in the dark theater.
“I hear the new Nirvana album is really good,” is what I finally come up with.
Evan raises his eyebrows at me. “You like Nirvana?”
“Sure,” I say, although I couldn’t tell you the name of the newest album to save my life. “Why don’t you think I like them?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. You were humming in the car and it was all dumb, girly songs.”
I take an aggressive bite of pizza. “Dumb, girly songs?”
“You know,” he says. “Like Sheryl Crow. And Celine Dion. Or Sarah McLachlan.”
“I like other stuff,” I say defensively. Although, to be fair, I do like all those artists. A lot.
“Okay, fine,” he says. “So what’s your favorite song on Nevermind?”
“Never mind?” I ask.
Evan smirks at me. “Nevermind.”
I scratch at my chin. “Um… is that…?”
“It’s a Nirvana’s album,” Evan says. “Their sentinel album. The album that basically created the grunge alternative movement. Possibly the best album ever made.”
The Girl I Didn't Marry Page 6