It turns out I’m right.
Chapter Seven
How I find out I’m right is this: I’m at home alone. My mom is on the evening shift. She works in the kitchen at one of those chain restaurants. I don’t have a father. Well, I do, somewhere. But he left my mom when I was two years old and has never been back in touch. I don’t remember him.
So I’m at home with a plate of warmed-up macaroni casserole on my lap that I haven’t even touched, and I’m watching the local news. I’m just about thinking that JD is right, maybe the cops are on the case but no one else is, when up pops a picture of the guy that died. It hangs there, a little behind and just to the right of the guy who’s reading the news. The guy reading says that the police are looking for a male between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one who was seen in the vicinity of the shooting. They give this description of the male suspect: medium build, sandy-colored hair, wearing blue jeans and a blue shirt. I feel like I’m going to throw up, even though I haven’t eaten a bite since breakfast. The announcer says if anyone has any information, they should call the police or Crime Stoppers.
I’m still staring at the TV half an hour later when someone hammers on the apartment door. The warmed-up macaroni casserole is cold. I’m waiting for a loud voice to say, “Police. Open up.”
Instead what I hear is “Hey, Q, it’s me.”
JD.
I want him to go away. I don’t want to see him ever again.
He says, “I know you’re in there. I can hear the TV.”
I get up and shut off the TV. I put the plate of cold macaroni casserole in the kitchen. I open the apartment door.
“I figured maybe you could use some company,” JD says. He inspects me. “You saw the news, right?”
“Yes,” I say, and my voice doesn’t sound right. It’s high, like a girl’s. “I saw it. Did you? Did you hear—”
JD puts a finger to his lips to silence me. He pushes me inside the apartment. Before he comes in, he looks up and down the hall. Then he closes the door behind him and moves me along into the living room.
“You really have to calm down,” he says. It’s practically the only thing he says to me anymore. “You keep panicking and yelling like that, you might as well turn yourself in.”
“Turn myself in?” I say. “I’m not the one who shot the guy.”
JD’s voice is soft and low. “What I mean is, you keep yelling like that, maybe one of your neighbors will get the wrong idea.”
“But you heard what they said on the news. They’re looking for a guy who looks just like me.”
JD shakes his head. “They’re looking for a medium-build guy with sandy hair who was wearing jeans and a blue shirt. Do you have any idea how many people in a city this size fit that description?”
“But what if whoever saw that much got a good look at me? What if he can identify me?”
“If he could identify you,” JD says, “the cops would be here already and they wouldn’t have to put that description out to the media.”
That makes sense. Then I remember something. “What about my clothes? Are they still in your dryer?”
JD shakes his head again. “I took care of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Those CSI guys on TV, they can find all kinds of things you’d never even know were there. So I took our clothes and I burned them.”
This surprises me and, to be honest, scares me a little. It makes me think that maybe JD isn’t as calm as he looks. Maybe he’s worried too.
“When did you do that?” I say.
“This afternoon, after school.”
“Where?” I say.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” JD says. “Just some place out of the way.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. And I made sure that the fire burned everything. Then I shoveled up all the ashes and buried them in another place away from where I made the fire. Nobody’s ever going to find those clothes, believe me.”
I start to relax.
“They didn’t even mention the bikes,” JD says. “They’re looking for a guy who was on foot. For all we know, whoever the police have as a witness didn’t even see you. Maybe they saw some other sandy-haired guy in jeans nearby. Seriously, Q, take a look around our school sometime. See how many people fit that general description.”
I decide he’s right. We sit down on the couch and JD reaches for the remote. He turns on the TV and we watch a couple of shows together. Then we go into the bathroom and smoke up. By the time he leaves at midnight, I am one hundred percent relaxed. I shove the macaroni casserole into the microwave, nuke it and eat the whole thing. Right afterward, I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open. I stagger into bed with my clothes still on and fall asleep. The last thought I have is, It’s going to be okay.
It isn’t.
Chapter Eight
My mother is up early the next morning, which surprises me. Usually when she works late, she sleeps late.
“I have a doctor’s appointment,” she says, looking through from the kitchen at the TV in the living room. She’s watching one of those breakfast television shows, the ones that give you news and weather, but also give you cooking tips, decorating tips and interviews with celebrities.
“A doctor’s appointment?“ I say. I wonder if I should be worried.
My mother tells me right away, “It’s nothing. Just a routine checkup.” She drinks down the last of her coffee and puts the mug in the sink. She is wiping her hands on a clean dishtowel when there’s a newsbreak. A reporter is standing outside a police station. There’s a plainclothes cop with him who turns out to be a homicide detective. He tells the reporter that the person they’re looking for in relation to the shooting in an alley was probably riding a bicycle.
“Isn’t that terrible,” my mother says. She looks right at me. “I heard it was a kid who did it. Someone close to your age. Why do you suppose a kid would shoot someone like that?”
I don’t answer, which is okay. She isn’t really expecting an answer. I keep looking at the TV. The reporter asks about violent crime in the city and talks about all the people who have been shot lately. He asks the homicide detective why there is so much gun crime. My mother grabs her purse and kisses me on the cheek.
“I’m off at nine tonight. I’ll leave supper for you,” she says.
Someone knocks at the door and I hear my mother greet JD. She leaves and he comes in, backpack over one shoulder, just as the police show what they call a composite sketch of the suspect. I stare at it and really relax for the first time since it happened. If you ask me, the guy in the sketch doesn’t look anything like me. Grinning, I glance at JD.
“You were right,” I say. “Whoever they have as a witness didn’t see two guys, just one. For sure he didn’t see me—or you. Either that or they have a police artist who flunked out of art school.”
JD stares at me. He has a funny expression on his face.
“Are you okay?” I say.
He nods. “Can I use your bathroom?”
While he’s in there, I pour myself a big bowl of cereal and eat the whole thing. I make myself a peanut butter and honey sandwich and eat that, washing it down with a glass of milk. I feel great. The face on that drawing doesn’t look like me at all. I feel like dancing. If Leah was here, I’d grab her and swing her around. Who knows, maybe I’d even kiss her.
JD comes into the kitchen and says, “We better get a move on.”
“No problem,” I say.
I’m practically walking on air all the way to school. Sure, I’m sorry about the guy who got killed. But I wasn’t the one carrying the gun. I didn’t do anything. Only now I don’t have to try to explain that to the police. I don’t have to explain anything to anybody. I don’t have to rat out JD, which I have the feeling he wouldn’t take very well, if you know what I mean. All I have to do is try to forget about the whole thing.
“What is it?” I say.
“Open it,” she says.
I do and find a picture of JD and me with our bikes. It’s the picture Leah took Sunday morning. It’s the last thing I want to be reminded of. But she’s standing there waiting for my reaction, so I tell her, It’s great, thanks, Leah.
She frowns. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”
“Sure, I do,” I say. Then I tell her the truth. “I was hoping it would be the picture JD took. The one of you and me.”
Her cheeks turn pink. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
She looks at me in a way she’s never done before, and all of a sudden I wish we weren’t in French class. I wish we were somewhere alone together.
After she takes her place, I fold the picture of JD and me and tuck it into my wallet.
Just before French class ends, there’s an announcement to the whole school over the PA system—special assembly after lunch. Students whose last names start with the letters A to L report to the auditorium at one o’clock. Students whose last names start with M to Z report at one thirty. The vice-principal who makes the announcement doesn’t say what the special assembly is all about.
JD and I are both M-Z, so we report to the auditorium from English class (the only class we’re in together) at one thirty. Kids from the one o’clock assembly are making their way back to class. JD snags one of them, a kid he knows, and asks him what the assembly is about.
“Some guy who got shot,” the kid says. “The cops think maybe it was a kid from this school that did it.”
There it is again—that freezing hot feeling. Plus I feel like I want to throw up.
JD gives me a little push to get me moving down the hall toward the auditorium. We take a seat in the back. The vice-principal is on the stage telling everyone, Settle down, come on, people, we don’t have all day. When it’s finally quiet, he introduces a man in a sharp-looking suit. I recognize him. He’s the homicide cop that was on the breakfast television show. He tells us his name—Detective Brian Tanner. He says he is working on the murder of Richard Braithwaite, who was shot in an alley only a few blocks from where we are sitting right now. He says Mr. Braithwaite—the whole rest of the time he talks about him, he calls him mister—came to this country from Trinidad with not much more than a dime in his pocket. He says Mr. Braithwaite worked hard at a lot of different jobs before he was able to buy himself a truck, and that he was well-known on construction sites for his food—especially Caribbean food—and for his sense of humor. I glance at JD. It’s news to us that the guy even had a sense of humor.
The homicide cop tells us that Mr. Braithwaite coached soccer for a local league. He also volunteered at a breakfast club at one of the elementary schools in the neighborhood, and he spent every Sunday afternoon at a nursing home, playing piano for the old people. Oh yeah, he was also a volunteer dog walker for the humane society. The guy was a real saint. The homicide cop tells us the guy’s funeral was that morning and the church was packed to overflowing with kids, their parents, teachers and old people. Everybody loved Mr. Braithwaite.
Then the cop tells us that he needs help if the police are going to catch whoever shot Mr. Braithwaite. He says there are a couple of witnesses. I try hard not to show anything on my face and even harder not to look at JD. A couple of witnesses? Last I heard, there was only one.
The cop says that they have reason to believe that whoever did it was a high school student who probably lives in the area. He nods to the vice-principal, who flips a switch. The composite of the suspect appears on a screen over their heads. I relax a little. It still doesn’t look like me. It looks even less like JD.
The cop tells us that if any of us know anything, anything at all, we should tell the police. He says maybe we’ve heard something. Or maybe we’ve noticed a friend or an acquaintance is acting differently. He says it’s hard to hide something like killing someone. He says he knows there are people who know something, and all he wants is for those people to come forward. He says it’s the least we could do for a man like Mr. Braithwaite, who spent his life giving so much to the community, who started off from such humble beginnings and who accomplished so much. He thanks us for our time and we are dismissed. JD and I split up. We have different classes—he has math, which I’ve already had. I have geography.
JD is waiting for me in the hall after class. We head for the main doors. As we pass the office, we see the same homicide cop. He’s talking to the vice-principal. The vice-principal hands him a book. JD and I both see what it is. It’s a yearbook. I start to get a bad feeling. Maybe the cop is going to show the yearbook to his witnesses. Maybe the witnesses will pick me out. Me, not JD.
I wait until we are far from the school and there is no one around us. Then I say to JD, “What are we going to do?”
“We’re not going to do anything,” JD says.
“But you killed that guy,” I say. I think it’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. “And they have witnesses.”
“You heard what he said,” JD says. “You saw the sketch. They’re still only looking for one person, Q, which means that their witnesses can’t be any good.”
“Maybe he didn’t tell us everything,” I say. “Cops are like that. They always keep certain information from the public. That way they can trip up the bad guys.” The bad guys—JD and me.
“You’re driving me crazy, you know that?” JD says. “You keep panicking when I tell you to stay calm. Do you see me panicking? No. I’m staying calm, even though none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you.”
“What?” I stare at him. What is he talking about? “I didn’t shoot the guy.”
“You stole that stuff. Do you know what would have happened if I’d been arrested for stealing from that truck? Do you have any idea what my father would have done to me if I’d been arrested? Do you?” His face is all red and he’s angry, but he’s talking in a raspy whisper so no one but me can hear him, even though there’s no one but me around.
“You shot a guy,” I said. “What do you think he’s going to do if he finds out about that?”
“He’s not going to find out.”
“Geez, why did you even do it?” I say. “Why did you even have a gun on you?”
He gives me a kind of blank look. Then he shakes his head. “If you ask me, all that hero stuff that they said about that guy, I bet most of it isn’t even true.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I say. “What matters is he’s dead and the cops are doing everything they can to find who did it.”
Chapter Nine
I don’t sleep well that night. I wake up the next morning feeling like I’ve pulled back-to-back all-nighters. JD comes to pick me up again. Before, it was always the other way around. Before, he always expected me to go to his house and pick him up. Now it’s like he wants to make sure he knows where I am and what I’m doing. He’s nervous, I realize, and that makes me nervous.
We get to school. The first thing we see is Detective Tanner and another plainclothes cop, probably another homicide detective. They are in the office. This time they’re talking to the principal.
An announcement comes over the pa system while we’re in homeroom. The police are going to be talking to students today. They just want to ask some questions. No one is obligated to speak to them. If you get called down to the office to speak to the police, but you don’t want to speak to them, you just have to say so. It’s your right. But the principal says he hopes everyone will cooperate because the police are just doing their job. I wonder who the police want to speak to. I wonder if I’ll be called to the office. I wonder what will happen if I say I don’t want to speak to them.
First class of the day: Nothing happens.
Second class of the day: Someone says that the police are asking to talk to boys with sandy-colored hair. Halfway through class, Jonathan Randall, who has sandy-colored hair, is asked to go to the office. When he comes back fifteen minutes later, he whispers to the kid sitting behind me, “They wanted to know where I was on Sunday afternoon when that guy got killed.”
“Where were you?” the kid next to him says.
“I was at my grandmother’s house, helping her clean up her yard. My mother was there too.”
Where was I Sunday afternoon? If they call me, what will I say?
Lunch: JD is waiting for me at my locker. He drags me into an empty classroom and shuts the door.
“Did they call you yet?” he says.
I shake my head.
“What are you going to tell them?” he says.
“I’ll say we were together,” I tell him. “We can back each other up.”
JD is shaking his head before I finish speaking. “It’s better if you don’t mention my name.”
I think, Better for who?
“So what should I tell them?”
Before JD can answer, the vice-principal opens the classroom door.
“You boys know you shouldn’t be in here,” he says to both of us. He looks at me. “Quentin, the police want to speak with you. Please report to the office.”
He stands there, holding the door open for us to leave, so I can’t talk to JD. He sticks with me all the way down to the office. Inside, there are two other guys sitting on a bench, waiting. They both have sandy-colored hair. I take a place on the bench beside them.
One by one they get called in by Detective Tanner. While the second one is inside, another couple of guys with sandy-colored hair join me on the bench. I hear the vice-principal say, “I think that’s everyone.”
Then it’s my turn. I feel myself trembling all over, but I hope it doesn’t show. I still haven’t decided what to say.
Chapter Ten
Detective Tanner introduces me to his partner, who is sitting behind a desk. On the desk is a yearbook, a piece of paper with a list of names on it and a notebook. Detective Tanner tells me to take a seat. He asks my name and if I like school. I say, “It’s okay.” He asks me what my favorite subject is. I say I don’t really have one. He asks if I play any sports. I tell him I’m not on any teams, but that, yeah, I play a little football in the park sometimes, with some guys I know. I also play a little road hockey.
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