JD swears again. Then he says what I’ve been saying the whole time: “Let’s get out of here.” He swaggers up the path ahead of me to the swimming pool and disappears behind the building where the change rooms are.
I’m right behind him until the guy says to me, “You should think about your life and what you’re doing with it. When it’s all over, what do you want people to say about you? There was a guy who really accomplished something? Or there was a guy who was just taking up space?”
I stare at him. He stares right back at me. Then he turns away. What a jerk, I think. He doesn’t even know me and he’s coming on all heavy with me. I raise my hand and point at him. I make like I’m pulling the trigger of a gun. Bang, mister, I say to myself. Now who’s taking up space?
I hurry up the path to catch JD. I figure that’s the end of that. And it is. For one day.
Chapter Four
I keep stacking and arranging soup cans in the supermarket while I remember what happened the next day. I can see it like I’m watching a movie.
It goes like this: The next day, I ride over to JD’s house on my bike to get him. We’re going to hang around, you know, take it easy on a September Sunday. School has just started, and so far we don’t have much homework. So why not make the most of it, especially when it’s nice and cool—I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and JD is wearing a big, floppy, long-sleeved T-shirt that hangs down almost to his knees—but sunny and bright? Oh yeah, and I’m also hoping to catch a glimpse of Leah. I do. She takes our picture. I’m hoping maybe she’ll come out with us. She doesn’t. She’s going somewhere with one of her girlfriends.
We leave JD’s house, ride our bikes a couple of blocks, duck down an alley behind a medical building that’s closed, and smoke up. Then we argue about what to do. I want to head downtown, maybe hang out at an arcade for a while. JD wants to go to the beach, where it’s nice and relaxed. Where he says there will be girls sitting in the sun, working at keeping the color in their faces. He says he saw some girls down there the other day. Pretty girls. He says he should try to meet them. He’s really into the idea. Me, I can’t imagine being interested in anyone except Leah. But of course we end up at the beach. We lock up our bikes. We smoke up again and goof around over by the tennis courts, where three girls are sitting under a tree, talking and giggling. JD tells me those are the girls. He says he likes one of them, a redhead with green eyes.
“And I bet you’re interested in the blond,” he says to me. “The one with the brown hair, she’s a dog, huh?”
I want to tell him, no, the only girl I’m interested in is Leah, but I don’t have the nerve. I’ve seen how JD reacts to other guys who come on to Leah—he doesn’t like it. I don’t know how he’d react if I turned into one of those guys. So I just shrug and hope that’s the end of it.
It isn’t.
JD goes over to the girls. Of course he expects me to go with him. Only one of the girls, the one with the brown hair who JD thinks is ugly, pays any attention to us at first. She isn’t the best-looking girl in the world, but up close she’s not that bad looking either. Plus she has amazingly large, pale blue eyes. JD doesn’t even glance at her. He’s trying hard to get the redhead to talk to him.
“You can forget about her,” the girl with the brown hair says. “She’s got a boyfriend.”
“Yeah?” JD says. “Does her boyfriend drive a Jag?” He’s looking at the redhead when he says it.
I look at him like he’s crazy. We came here on our bikes. JD doesn’t have a car, let alone a Jag. He only has his learner’s license, which means he can’t even drive unless there’s a seriously sober licensed driver sitting right up front with him. Still, the question gets him what he wants. The redhead turns to look at him.
“You telling me you do?” she says. She has a stuck-up voice, like she’s the queen of something.
JD grins at her but doesn’t answer the question.
“You should tell your friend to back off,” the girl with the brown hair says to me. “Her boyfriend’s the jealous type. And he’s tough, if you know what I mean.”
JD is still grinning.
“Tough?” he says. He hasn’t taken his eyes off the redhead. “How tough is he? Is he as tough as this?”
I’m standing a little behind him when he says this, mostly because I want to be out of there. I don’t want to talk to the stuck-up redhead with a tough jealous boyfriend. I don’t want to try to get her icy blond friend to say a word. And I am one hundred percent not interested in the girl with the brown hair. JD reaches behind him, up under his big T-shirt. Because of where I’m standing, I see what he’s doing. He’s getting ready to pull something out from underneath. I do a major double-take when I see what it is. I tell myself it can’t be real. But you never know with JD. So I grab the arm that’s reaching behind him and pull him away from the girls. “Are you crazy?” I say.
“What?” he says. He is annoyed with me, like I’ve just ruined his big chance with the redhead.
I hear a car horn honk up at the road. The three girls turn. The redhead waves to someone in a black Mustang with tinted windows.
“Her boyfriend,” the girl with the brown hair says. The three of them waggle their butts as they walk toward the car. JD stares at the redhead and shakes his head.
“Is that for real?” I ask him.
“Is what for real?”
“You know,” I say. I drop my voice to a whisper. “That gun you have stuck in the back of your pants.”
JD smiles at me. “Yeah, it’s for real.”
I have a million questions: Where did you get it? Why did you get it? Why are you carrying it around like that? Why would you want to show it to a bunch of girls? What if they decided to call the cops? There’s no way that gun is legal.
JD says, “Relax. That redhead, she would never call the cops.”
“How do you know that?” I say.
“I know who she is. I know who her boyfriend is. She’s one of those girls who likes guys with muscle cars and tinted windows, probably with the bass cranked up.”
I still can’t believe what I’ve seen.
“You got a gun so you could impress a girl?” I say. “Geez, she wouldn’t even talk to you.”
JD keeps right on smiling. “Maybe I lost the battle,” he says, “but I’m going to win the war.”
Right.
Chapter Five
I’m in the grocery store, stacking soup cans, and I’m thinking, Best friend or not, I should never have hooked up with JD again.
He got into some trouble last year. JD is like that, always into something. He always has some weed, and everyone knows you can buy it off him. But this last time, JD really laid into a guy. He says it was because of what the guy said about Leah. But he hurt the guy pretty bad. The cops got involved. In the end, JD’s father got him off by agreeing to send JD to a special camp over the summer. JD says it was like a prison camp. The counselors yell at you all day. You have to get up at six in the morning, and you’re always doing something—hiking for days at a time, going on long canoe trips, always something physical so that you collapse at the end of the day. And it doesn’t matter what the weather is, either. If you go on a weeklong hike and it rains every day, too bad for you.
When JD got back, he was tanned and a lot stronger than he used to be. He acts differently now too, but probably not in the way the camp hoped he would. He has more confidence. He knows more people. He’s told me about some of the guys he met at the camp. Boy, I bet he hasn’t told his dad about those guys. Some of them sound scary. I shouldn’t have hooked up with him again.
But he called me when he got back.
And I was hoping to get with Leah, who was also away at camp all summer, but not the same kind of camp. She had a job as a counselor at a kids’ camp up in cottage country.
So when he called and asked me to come over so we could catch up, I said, “Sure.” But I should have said no. I should have stayed away from him. Then it never would h
ave happened.
The worst thing is, it was my fault.
What happened: After the girls pile into the black Mustang with the tinted windows, JD and I get on our bikes and ride through the park. I can tell he’s antsy, probably because he didn’t get what he wanted. He didn’t get the redhead. I try to get his mind off the girl. I say we should get something to eat. He’s not interested. We keep riding until finally we’re out of the park that runs along the beach. We turn and ride north and find ourselves close to another park that’s more or less in our neighborhood. This is the park with the swings we were on the day before. I’m really hungry now. Partly it’s because of all the weed and partly it’s because by now it’s three o’clock in the afternoon. We’ve been riding all day. The only thing in my stomach is a bowl of cold cereal, and it’s probably not there anymore because I ate it hours ago.
We’re riding along and I just happen to glance down an alley. And I just happen to see one of those canteen vans. You know, the ones that you see on the street down by city hall. The ones that show up at construction sites. You can buy coffee and pop, cookies and donuts, sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, fries. All that kind of stuff. So there’s one sitting in the alley. The rear door is open and I can see inside. My eye goes right to a rack filled with bags of potato chips. Suddenly there’s nothing in the world I want more than a bag of potato chips. Maybe two bags.
I detour into the alley and lean my bike up against a brick wall. Behind me I hear JD say, “Now what?”
I check out the alley. No one is around. None of the buildings have windows that look down into the alley. No one can see me.
I duck into the van and grab a couple of bags of potato chips. Then I see a freezer. Inside are some ice-cream bars and icecream sandwiches. I grab a handful of those.
“As long as you’re in there,” JD says, “you see anything to drink?”
I toss the chips and the ice-cream bars to him and open a cooler to get some pop. I’m jumping down out of the van with it when a door opens and a man steps into the alley. He’s wearing a shirt with the same logo on it that’s on the van, so I know the canteen van is his. I start to run, but he’s fast and he grabs me. He has a grip of iron. He isn’t about to let me go. Then I realize who it is. It’s the same guy who gave us a hard time in the park the day before. The guy who threatened to call the cops on us. At first I want to laugh. Mr. Accomplishment gives me a lecture about taking up space and it turns out his big accomplishment is running a canteen van. Like one of those girl country singers says, That don’t impress me much.
I get over wanting to laugh when I try to break free of the guy. He isn’t big but, boy, is he strong. He’s got a real good hold on me, and now he’s reaching for JD. He says, “I knew you two were trouble the first time I laid eyes on you. I’m making a citizen’s arrest.”
I remember thinking, Boy, this guy is nuts. Everyone knows it’s stupid to make a citizen’s arrest. Anything could happen. In the first place, there are two of us and only one of him—not that this is slowing him down. In the second place, it would be his word against ours and, like I said, there are two of us. Except that JD has already been in trouble before and it could go hard on him. I’m thinking that exact thought when it happens.
JD dodges the guy. I try to break free, but the guy holds tight.
I see JD back up in the alley. I think, Great, he’s going to take off and leave me in the guy’s clutches. The guy even seems ready to let JD go because he grabs me with both hands now. He looks determined. There’s no way he’s going to let me go.
Then JD says, “Hey, mister?”
The guy and I both turn our heads to look at him.
JD hasn’t taken off. He’s come back and he’s just standing there, close enough that the guy could grab him if he wanted to. He’s looking at the guy. I see him reach behind with one hand. I start to shake my head, but JD pulls out the gun and points it at the guy. The guy’s eyes bulge when he sees it. Then his mouth turns up into a grin, the same kind of superior I-know-everything-and-you-know-nothing grin that you’d expect from a vice-principal.
“What are you going to do?” he says to JD. “Shoot me?”
JD’s face changes. It gets hard. He pulls the trigger.
Chapter Six
I’m standing in the alley, frozen and burning up all at the same time. The noise from the gun is deafening. I can’t understand why there aren’t a hundred people running into the alley to see what happened.
But there aren’t.
The guy is on the ground. Blood is pooling around him. I can’t tell if he’s breathing or not.
I’m just standing there, looking at JD. I can’t believe he shot the guy. I can’t believe he did it when the guy was still holding on to me. I think, What if he missed the guy and hit me? Did he even think about that?
Then, I don’t even know how, we’re on our bikes and we’re riding down the alley. My first thought is to get out of the alley the same way we came in. But JD grabs my arm and heads off in the other direction. I follow him. I’m totally uncoordinated. It’s like I’ve just got my training wheels off and I’m not sure of my balance. But I follow him, pedaling fast. The alley joins with another alley, so we turn and ride down there. JD slows down when we get close to the end of it. He makes me slow down too. It’s torture because all I want is to get out of there as fast as possible. But I do what JD is doing. I take it easy. We ride casually out of the alley, JD in the lead. We ride leisurely down one block, then another. My heart is pounding the whole time. My legs are itching to go faster, go faster. We make another turn and JD really powers on the speed.
Finally we get to JD’s house, where we put our bikes in the garage. We go into the house and JD starts pulling off his clothes. At first I think he’s crazy. Then he points to my shirt. I look down. There’s blood all over it. There’s some other stuff on it too, but I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to think about it.
“We’ve got to wash these,” JD says. “We’ve got to wash everything. You’ve seen those shows on TV. They can find stuff that we can’t even see.”
They can find stuff? He means the cops can find stuff. I start to shake all over.
“Relax,” JD says. “No one saw anything. And I didn’t see anyone. Just give me your clothes.”
When I don’t move, JD comes over and starts to unbutton the denim shirt I’m wearing, like I’m a little kid and he’s my mother. I jerk away from him, mad that he’s touching me. Mad that there’s blood on my shirt. Mad that he had that stupid gun sticking in the back of his pants.
“You have to give me your clothes, Q,” he says. He’s already peeled off everything, and I mean everything. There is a stack of clean bath towels sitting on top of the dryer. He wraps one around his waist. “Come on,” he said. “We have to wash everything now.”
I take every thing off except my underwear. JD hands me a towel. He says, “Go up to my room and find us some clothes. I’ll start the washing machine.”
So I do. And while I’m getting dressed, Leah shows up. Then JD and I go into the garage and wash our bikes, just in case. And while we’re doing that, JD says, “If I get caught, they’ll lock me up. They’ll probably want to try me as an adult and try to get me an adult sentence. You too, Q. You were robbing the guy when it happened. They go hard when it’s a robbery where someone gets killed.”
We stand there for a few minutes looking at each other. We’re probably both wondering the same thing: How did a day that started off okay go so wrong?
And now here it is, the day after the guy died. I’m stocking the soup aisle in the grocery store after school, thinking, Now what?
I make a lot of mistakes. I mix the tomato-and-rice soup in with the cream of tomato. I put the celery soup with the mushroom soup because, on the label, the pictures of the bowls of celery soup and the bowls of mushroom soup look the same. I put chicken noodle with chicken and rice. It wouldn’t be such a big deal except the manager comes by and looks at what I’m
doing. Nobody likes him. People are quitting all the time, if they’re not getting fired. The main reason people quit is that it’s hard to work for someone like him. He’s the kind of guy who likes the shelves fully stocked all the time, no excuses, and the products to be straight and neat. If that means you have to work through your break or put in a little (free) time after your shift, then that’s what he expects. He looks at my work and tells me, “Do it again. And do it right this time.” He also says, “If I have to tell you a second time to do it again, you won’t be working here anymore.” See what I mean?
When I finally get off, half an hour later than I should because of the do-over, JD is waiting for me out on the sidewalk. I get that frozen-burning up feeling again.
“Geez, relax, will you?” JD says. He puts an arm around my shoulder to steer me away from the store. “You look like you’re going to jump out of your skin.” Once we’re away from the store, he lets go of me.
“What’s wrong?” I say. “What happened?”
He gives me a look. “Nothing happened. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Then why are you here?”
He laughs. “I’m glad to see you too, Q,” he says.
“I’m serious, JD. What are you doing here?”
“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” he says. “You looked so freaked out at school. You need to stay calm, Q. You can’t panic. If you panic, something bad will happen. If you stay calm, everything will be fine. Okay?”
“Did you hear anything? Was there anything on the news?”
“Nothing,” JD says. “The guy was just a guy. He wasn’t anything special. No one’s going to make a big fuss over him.”
“Yeah, but the cops are going to want to find out who did it.”
“Sure they are,” JD says. How can he be so cool about this? “But what are they going to find? No one saw anything, remember?”
But I’m thinking, Just because we didn’t see anyone, that doesn’t mean no one saw us.
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