Blank Confession (9 page)

“Hey,” I said, stepping in front of him.

Trey stopped, which was good, since he outweighed me by more than most people weigh, period.

“What's happening?” I said, offering him a fist bump.

Trey frowned at my clenched hand, reached out one of his own paws, and clasped my fist. My hand completely disappeared, and I thought,
Uh-oh.
But instead of crushing my hand to jelly, Trey simply gave it a soft squeeze like a gorilla testing the ripeness of a banana, then he let go and walked around me.

“Trey, wait.”

He didn't stop, but he slowed down. I ran to catch up to him.

“Trey, I have to ask you something.”

“What?” he said.

“What happened to Shayne?”

Trey stopped. “What makes you think something happened?” he said.

“He's not in school.”

“So?”

“Also, Jon said something.”

“He did? What did he say?”

“He asked me if I'd seen Shayne, and then he laughed.”

“Why don't you ask
him
?” The left side of his upper lip lifted—a look of disgust, but I couldn't tell if he was disgusted at me for being so gutless, or if it was something else.

I said, “Because every time I try to talk to Jon, he figures out a way to make me regret it.”

Trey snorted. Or maybe it was a laugh. Or a sneeze.

“He shouldn't even be here,” he said.

“Who?”

“Your friend. Shayne.”

“Why?”

“Because he's trouble.” Trey looked up. Kyle Ness was coming toward us. In a low voice, Trey said, “But that thing he did? Flipping me? That was cool.”

Then Kyle was within earshot, Trey's face settled into its standard belligerent mask, and I
escabullirse
d.

By Friday I wasn't so much worried about Shayne as I was mad at him for disappearing. And I was thinking about how I was going to come up with the money to pay Jon next Wednesday. I could sell a bunch of my suits back to Thriftway. Mrs. Jerdes would probably pay me only
about five bucks each. Or she might refuse to buy them at all, since the market for bar mitzvah suits was limited. I reviewed all my other sources of income. I had a box of comic books, but they weren't worth more than five or ten dollars total. Mrs. Garcia would pay me something …maybe she needed some help with her yard. I could sell my bike, which I hardly ever rode anymore. I could probably come up with a hundred by Wednesday, but then what? What about the next week?

I considered other strategies: running away, faking an illness, getting myself thrown in jail …my options were limited. I even thought about doing as Mémé had suggested and going to the authorities. What then? A slap on the wrist for Jon, at best, and then one day I would find myself in a painful and dark place, and realize that Jon had shoved my head up my butt.

I got home from school feeling bleak. The house smelled of tomato sauce. That meant pasta. I plunked down on the sofa and stared across the room at a painting of several people standing on a beach looking out over the ocean. Mémé had bought the painting in Haiti and given it to Mom and Dad as a wedding present. I wanted to be inside that painting right then, feeling warm sand between my toes, hearing the sound of waves rolling up the beach, smelling the salty, weedy, fishy scent of the Caribbean. Not that I'd ever been there. All I smelled at the moment was tomato sauce.

I heard voices coming from out back. I got up and looked outside. Shayne and Marie were out on the patio talking and drinking orange sodas. I felt a tiny surge of
hope, but it lasted only a second because I remembered I was mad at him. I went out to join them.

“Hey,” I said, making sure not to sound as if I was glad to see him.

Shayne smiled. Marie scowled. Barkie, who was sleeping at Shayne's feet, looked up and yipped. I sat down on the chaise.

“You weren't at school all week,” I said. I meant it as a simple observation, but it came out whiny.

“I was under the weather,” Shayne said. That sounded like something my dad would say.

“What does that
mean?
” I asked. “Under the
weather?
What weather?”

Marie rolled her eyes. “Mikey, why don't you grow up?” I realized then that I was even madder than I'd thought. Mad at Shayne for disappearing, mad at Marie for being Marie, mad at both of them for being there in the backyard together without me.

“Grow up yourself,” I said. Brilliant repartee.

Shayne said, “I should have called you, but my cell broke.”

“You couldn't use another phone?” I hated the way my voice came out.

He looked straight into my eyes and said, “I'm sorry, Mike.”

Not everyone knows how to apologize. Most people are flat-out terrible at it. But coming from Shayne, that simple, plain, direct statement—“I'm sorry”—was pure gold. Just like
that
, I wasn't mad anymore.

“Were you sick?” I asked.

“I had a little accident. No big deal.”

Marie had this little smile on her face like she gets when she knows something I don't.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing much. How about you? What happened with Jon on Wednesday?”

“You mean, did I pay him?”

“Yeah.”

I spread my arms. “I'm here, aren't I? No missing limbs, no ugly bruises, not deceased. Of course I paid him.”

Shayne said, “Oh. Okay.” But it wasn't okay at all. I could see he was disappointed in me, I guess because I didn't stand up to Jon and let him smash my face in. He said, “Marie and I were just talking about the fountain your dad wants to build.”

Fountain?
How were we all of a sudden talking about a
fountain?

“Where that big stump is,” Shayne said. “He wants to dig up the stump and put a fountain there. An eight-foot stone basin with a single jet coming up in the center and a couple of spotlights for at night. But I was telling him about this fountain I saw in Texas with five copper goldfish all around the rim shooting water out of their mouths and different-colored spotlights on each one so it looked like they were each spouting a different color of water. It was really cool. More complicated to build, but your dad knows his stuff. I told him I'd help him.”

I stared at him as if he had sprouted pink antlers. I said, “Are you kidding me? A
fountain?
Did you have a stroke or something?”

“I think it would be amazing.”

“Amazingly
lame,
” I said.

“Shut
up,
Mikey,” Marie said.

“Shut up yourself.”

Shayne looked from me to her and back again. He stood up, wincing a little. “I gotta go. See you later.” He walked off.

“Call me!” I said as he rounded the corner of the house—and then I felt really stupid.
Call me?
What was I, a girl begging for a date? I looked at Marie. She was laughing silently.

“Shut
up,
” I said.

Then I asked her if she knew what had happened to him.

She made me wait a good ten seconds before she answered.

“He's been in the hospital,” she said.

“You ever tase anybody?” Shayne asked.

Rawls shook his head. Stun guns were available to all officers on the force, but he'd never carried one himself. It felt too much like cheating. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a good cop could keep the peace simply by talking. The cops who carried stunners, in his opinion, were all too quick to tase any drunk or druggie who got a little belligerent.

“You ever
been
tased?” Shayne asked.

“No, but I've seen it. It looks really unpleasant.”

The kid's eyes lost focus for a moment. Rawls wondered what he was seeing.

“It's not so bad,” Shayne said. “At first you don't know what's going on—like the electricity scrambles your brain. Your arms and legs go all limp and spazzy, and it hurts, but it doesn't last long.”

“Who tased you?”

“After I dropped Mikey off that day, I stopped off at the Pump and Munch up on Freeman Street. You know how they got motorcycle parking around the side? I just went in to grab a soda. Anyway, I came out of the store around the side of the building and there was this guy sitting on
a chopped Harley right next to my bike. An older guy, like in his thirties. He had one of those haircuts where it's shaved on the sides, but long on top and tied back in a skinny braid going halfway down his back. Looked like he had a long-tailed rat sitting on his head.”

Rawls agreed. “World's ugliest hairstyle,” he said.

“The guy was looking at my bike. He said, ‘This your German piece a crap?'

“I told him it was my piece of crap. He looked past me and I turned to see Jon and his guys standing there. Jon had this thing in his hand. I didn't know what it was at first, and when I figured it out, I wasn't quick enough. Next thing I knew I was flopping around on the ground.

“Like I said, the getting tased part wasn't so bad—I probably could have got back up in a minute or so—but Jon and Kyle started kicking me. I didn't even try to fight back.” He looked up at Rawls. “They say it's hard to hurt somebody who isn't fighting back. Most guys don't have it in them. That's why they say if you're taking a beating and there's no way to win, you should just curl up and do nothing.”

“Who are
they?
” Rawls asked. “The people who say that.”

“You know. Self-defense experts. Anyway, Jon is one of those guys who
does
have it in him. If Trey hadn't pulled him off me, I think he would have kept kicking until I was dead. I spent two days in the hospital. Two broken ribs, a concussion, and a bruised kidney. I told the doctor I fell down a flight of stairs. I don't think he believed me, but that's what he wrote on my chart.”

“Why didn't you report it?”

“My word against theirs. Nothing would have happened, except maybe more of the same.”

Rawls made a note. “You say Trey Worthington intervened?”

“Yeah …well, after they'd been kicking me for a while. Look, I'm not here to make a complaint. None of that matters anymore.”

Rawls set down his notebook. “If it doesn't matter, why are you telling me about it?”

The kid didn't say anything for several heartbeats. “Okay, it matters, only not the way you think.”

“What do I think?” Rawls's stomach was growling.
Why doesn't this kid get to the point?

“You think I should get to the point,” the kid said.

Rawls blinked, taken aback by hearing his thoughts echoed.

The kid said, “The
point
is, they kicked the crap out of me, and I kind of went into this zone where even as it was happening, I was thinking that maybe beating me up would be enough for Jon, and he would leave me alone and maybe even cut Mikey a break. So I was telling myself,
Just get through this, and everything will be okay
. I was telling myself not to get mad, to let it go, to not try to get back at them.”

“You were thinking all this while they were kicking you?”

“And after. In the hospital. And I kept thinking about that rat-head guy on the Harley, just sitting there watching the whole time.”

“He wasn't involved?”

“Just watching. He was enjoying it. Almost like they were putting on a show for him.”

Rawls said, “Kid—”

“My name is Shayne.”

“
Shayne.
This story—what's left of it—are we talking another five or ten minutes, or should I order a pizza?”

The kid—
Shayne—
thought about that for what felt like a long time. Then he said, “I like pepperoni.”

“Hospital?” I said.

“Yeah,” Marie said. “You know—one of those big buildings you go to when you get hurt?”

I was not the only sarcastic person in our family.

“What hospital?”

“Saint Stephen's, I think.”

“What happened to him?”

“He got in a fight. Jon and Kyle and Trey beat him up.”

“He told you that?” I was offended on two levels. One, that Shayne hadn't told
me
, and two, that he
had
told
her
.

Marie smirked, then took pity on me and said, “Shayne didn't tell me. He said he had an accident on his bike, but I knew it wasn't true because I heard about what really happened from Kyle.”

“You knew Shayne was in the hospital and you didn't tell me?”

“Kyle just told me about it this morning. Did you know Shayne went and talked to Jon's dad last week?”

“He mentioned it.”

“That's what made Jon's dad kick him out. So Jon and Kyle and Trey decided to teach Shayne a lesson. Jon's brother was there too, over behind the Pump and Munch.
Then afterward they got scared that Shayne was going to die or something—I guess it was really bad—so nobody was saying anything. But when Shayne got released from the hospital last night, I guess Kyle decided it was okay to start bragging about it.”

“Brag about it? Brag about how it took three of them?” I gave Marie a hard look, trying to figure out what was going on in her head.

She shrugged. “I just hope he doesn't try to get back at them.”

“Shayne? What could he do?”

“I don't know, but I have a feeling he isn't going to let it go. I'm a little worried about him.” For my sister, that was a remarkably sensitive thing to say.

After phoning in the order—half pepperoni and half veggie—Rawls walked down the hall to the front desk to tell Kramoski the pizza was coming and to give him some money to pay the delivery guy.

“Let me know as soon as it gets here. And grab a slice for yourself.”

“Don't mind if I do. How's it going with that kid?” Rawls shook his head. “I got no idea. He hasn't even said who he thinks he killed.”