Gentlemen (16 page)

It took me forever to get to sleep that night. That's not all that unusual for me, but that night, in particular, it was like, Why bother? It really seemed like they could come for me anytime, banging on the door in the middle of the night, just like in the movies. I just stayed there under the covers, overheated and stewing in my own juices, turning it over in my head a thousand times.

Here's the thing, straight up: I'd done nothing. Nothing useful, anyway. That was good and that was bad. I mean, if someone was going to call me on it, I'd say, “What? I didn't do anything!” And if someone was going to accuse me, they'd be like, “He didn't do anything.”

And both sides would be right. I hadn't so much as touched Haberman. Well, I had, but that was just to check his pulse. Also, and I think you could argue this part forever,
but I'm pretty sure I stopped Bones from going back in for round two.

On the other hand, I hadn't done anything to stop him during round one. I mean, not jumping in on a beating you could sort of see. A guy could get hurt that way. I'd yelled out, but I'd yelled the wrong thing. I should've yelled “Stop,” to get myself on the record as being against what was happening, instead of “Bones,” which only got me on the record as knowing his frickin' nickname. I mean, at least I could've said something useful like “not on the head,” but I didn't even do that.

Mixer didn't do anything, either. I'm not pointing fingers, but for a second I thought maybe I could claim peer pressure's what turned me into such a lump. At the school, they were always talking about “the adverse effects of peer pressure” and stuff like that. But I realized pretty quick that peer pressure is not a topic you ought to be raising when it was your idea to go there in the first place. I mean, what was I supposed to say, “But, Your Honor, it was just supposed to be a shakedown.”

It's like, damned if you do, damned if you don't. The fact remained that I'd done nothing, and it all sort of branched out from there. I thought of him lying there on the floor, his cheek streaked with nose blood and me working hard to find a pulse. What if he died?

If he bought it after I stood around watching, I'd be charged with that, with letting it happen. I thought about it, and the mistakes we made hit me one at a time. It was like a
line of people waiting their turn to hit me in the gut with a baseball bat. There'd be tire tracks in the yard from where Bones'd pulled off to the side so the truck would be tougher to spot. Tracks from tires so old the police'd know they came from a truck that didn't see much road. That'd mean a truck kept in a garage or a barn.

And my frickin' fishing gear was in that truck, those night crawlers dying in there slow.

And there'd be footprints. There'd be two pairs of tracks from where Mixer and Bones waited in the soft dirt along the house. And inside, I'd wiped down everything we touched—at least I think I did—but it's not like I wiped my feet on that stupid mat before I went in. And I'd touched him, checked for a pulse. I didn't think they could get prints off a man's neck, but I didn't know for sure.

And all this applied if he lived and had the memory of what happened knocked out of his head. All of it except maybe the fingerprints-on-the-neck thing. But that was stupid anyway: Amnesia was for the movies. Relying on it in real life was like relying on magic elves or something.

But if he didn't die, and he didn't forget, well, then what was taking him so long? I looked over at my alarm clock. He'd be at the hospital by now, all cleaned up and asleep in his little white bed. He would've already told them everything he knew: the who, what, why, and they'd already know the where. He probably would've said what'd happened to him
when he called for the ambulance. Dialing 911 was really one-stop shopping when it came to stuff like that.

Back at the house we'd thought maybe he wouldn't tell because he'd be afraid of us, but really, fear was a better reason to tell the cops than not to. And so it was back to waiting for that knock on the door, wondering if I'd even have time to get dressed before they hauled me off. Wondering what my mom would think, would she even be surprised?

I must've dozed off for a bit, because I woke up with a start at around four. There was a thought in my head, and it was so clear and up-front that it was like the thought is what woke me up, like it just wouldn't let me ignore it anymore. I guess it was two thoughts really, but they were all tangled together. One: I should call the cops, just tell them what happened, how I hadn't meant it, how it was all Bones. Because, two: Friendships end. It happens every day.

It seemed so obvious, but I knew better. I'd had all kinds of crazy thoughts in the middle of the night, lying there bleary-eyed and fuzzy-minded. I once had myself half convinced that I could move the alarm clock with my mind. So I tried to calm down and untangle it all, just to see if it really made sense. After a few minutes, I knew that it might've, but that it definitely wasn't as clear-cut as it'd seemed when I woke up.

Yeah, friendships ended, but there was a fine line between moving on and cutting out when things got tough. Ditching
a friend…it just sounded bad. It seemed like the guy walking away was always the dick. And even a dick with a good excuse is still a dick. I'd always thought I could trust Bones before, and now I wasn't sure. But I was the one thinking about turning him in, so really, who couldn't trust who?

The sleep was coming back and it was hard to focus my thoughts. I tried again. It's like they say, your girlfriend cheats on you with your best friend, dump the girl. Of course, that's a pretty easy thing to say when you don't have a girlfriend. And Bones wasn't my best friend, either. But the general idea still seemed to apply: You can let a lot go, if a guy's your friend. It's supposed to mean something.

Bones hadn't stuck to the plan and he'd screwed us over, but it wasn't all that different from the stuff he'd been pulling for years. Yeah, it was more serious, and it was a teacher this time. But I hadn't walked away before, and it's not like I hadn't had plenty of warning.

As for calling the cops, well, it seemed like I'd missed that boat. It wasn't so much that I should do it now as that I should've done it then. If I'd done it right away, if I'd snuck upstairs to Haberman's room and hit 911, for the cops and the ambulance, too, then maybe we could've sold Bones up the river, made it a solo trip for him. But then I was right back to the thing about sticking by your friends, and that branched off into the friendships end thing. I remembered Throckmorton sitting across from me, his face impossible to read. I just didn't know, and it didn't matter anyway, because
what did I do instead of dialing 911? I wiped our prints off the furniture and stood there watching the guy bleed.

But maybe it wasn't too late. I tried to pull it all apart and piece it back together, but I was so tired. Words floated into my head, just pieces of a sentence: “with painful concentration he looked around…the floor…everywhere…trying to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything…” At first I couldn't remember where I'd heard it, but then I remembered. I hadn't heard those words at all. I'd read them.

The night was quiet outside, just the spring sounds of insects and wind. I looked over at my alarm clock, and I knew the light would be creeping into the room soon, and not long after that, I'd have to get up and go to school. I couldn't afford not to go, just in case. It'd be Monday morning, and we'd have Yanoff for English. That's how it would all start. The alarm clock would have to tell me when. I fell back asleep.

Mixer wasn't on the bus, and I was thinking, Man, I hope he isn't ditching. That'd really look suspicious. A few stops later, Natalie got on the bus. It was the first time I'd seen her since the house in the woods. I sunk down in my seat as she walked by. I was surprised I could feel worse about myself than I already did. I thought for sure I'd bottomed out. She didn't look at me, but then she never did. Well, almost never.

Without Mixer there, I had a long bus ride by myself to think about things. Maybe he figured we were going to get hauled off today anyway, and decided to get hauled off from home instead of getting dragged out of class by the cops. That wasn't a bad call, and I wondered if the driver'd let me off at the next stop, like if I said I'd forgotten something or had to puke. Probably not, I decided, and a move like that would be a whole new level of suspicious.

I rode it out, and it turned out Mixer was in school, anyway. His dad'd given him a lift. We met up at our lockers but didn't say much more than “hey” to each other. I always felt sort of underwater after not sleeping much; everything was slower, and that included my mouth. He looked bad and I probably looked worse. It felt like I was behind enemy lines and under fire. Just turning corners in the hallway seemed dangerous. Seeing Mixer felt like that scene in the war movies, where the guy jumps into a foxhole and his buddy's already in there, reloading.

We passed Bones on the way to homeroom—his homeroom was at the other end of the same hallway. He looked like death, and that seemed kind of appropriate. With him, it wasn't like seeing a war buddy, but it wasn't like seeing an enemy, either. We all held our fire. We talked a little but broke it off after ten or fifteen seconds. The stuff we had to talk about had to be whispered, and at that point, it seemed pretty dumb for the three of us to be out in the open, huddled together and whispering. I just told him I needed my fishing gear back, and he just told me he'd get it. I said tonight, and he said no problem.

After the door closed on homeroom and the final bell went off, I sat at my desk thinking, Is this where it's going to happen? Is that door going to be opened by the kind of men who don't care much about hall passes or final bells, Throckmorton with that big gun on his hip or Staties in their dark
Empire Strikes Back
-looking uniforms?

The door opened, but it was just Max. He was late and rattling off excuses. That just seemed pathetic to me, arguing over that kind of trouble. Take your frickin' demerits and sit down, jackass. Some of us have real problems and don't want to hear it. The bell rang and released us. Monday schedule, first-period Spanish, which was just like insult to injury. Mixer and I went our separate ways where the hall turned off at the library. I looked out the front windows for cruisers. There weren't any, but that wasn't much comfort, because I knew those things swooped in fast.

I was stupider than usual in Spanish. Ms. Chaney was saying the phrases as she wrote them on the board, and it just sounded like nonsense syllables, like a big baby babbling. About the only words I caught were
el
and
la.
Fifteen minutes to go, first period, and the phone on Chaney's desk started ringing. Aw, Christ, I thought.
Hasta la vista,
everyone.

Chaney put down her chalk and walked over to her phone. It was one of those big, blocky phones that no one has at home anymore. On TV, they are always red and patched straight through to the White House or the Bat Cave or someplace like that. In real life, they are tan and sit in between stacks of paper on teachers' desks or in hospitals maybe.

She picked up the phone and listened to a short message without changing her expression. I had already closed my notebook and begun stacking my books when she called my name. “Miguelito, they'd like to see you in
la oficina,
” she said, mixing in enough English so that she wouldn't have to repeat herself.

My heart didn't skip a beat and the world didn't stop spinning. It felt like I was rolling down an assembly line, like this was the next stop. If I was an action figure, this would be where the lady put my arms on. The next stop, they'd remove my head. I didn't want to hold things up, so I picked up my stuff and headed toward the door.

“
Si,
Señora Chaney,” I said.

The hall was empty. There was no one waiting to meet me, and if they were going to slap the cuffs on me, they were going to do it in
la oficina.
That kind of pissed me off. They just expected me to walk myself into custody. But it was true, and they must've known that. I didn't have many other options: no car, no place to go. I had no real desire to run off and live on a heating grate on the street somewhere, not to avoid my share of an assault rap, anyhow. And if it was more than that, they definitely would've come for me. I didn't want to be a killer—or even a part-killer—so in a way, I was kind of relieved. But mainly it just sucked. Jail or juvie: I'd heard there wasn't much difference. Either way, it'd be bad.

I started walking. I was going slow, because I figured the least I could do was make them wait. I looked out the second-floor windows as I went. I had a good view of the front parking lot from there, but I couldn't make out any cruisers or sheriff's department cars. I figured maybe they'd parked out back.

I guess this makes me a juvenile delinquent, I was thinking as I started down the north stairwell. A lot of people
considered me one anyway, but I figured this'd make it official. Mixer and Bones were waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. They knew I'd come this way. They'd come from shop, and Mixer still had red lines around his eyes from the safety goggles.

“Two more steps if you're screwed,” he said.

I took the last two steps and I was.

“Hey,” said Bones, once I was next to them. “We've got to square up what we're going to say.”

That seemed like a good idea.

“I've been thinking about that,” he said, and his voice was a strong, hissy whisper.

That made one of us. In all the time I'd spent beating this thing to death in my head—probably a bad choice of words there—I hadn't once thought about what to do if it came down to this. Down to us telling our version of the story. I'd just sort of assumed that they'd either come for us or they wouldn't, and if they did, they'd just sort of decide what to do with us. I'd just fast-forwarded to the jailhouse door slamming shut in front of me.

But of course there was more to it than that: statements, maybe a trial, that kind of stuff. We had to soften it up some, make Haberman look worse and us look better. We should've gotten right to it. Instead, Bones and Mixer started arguing.

“Yeah, I'll bet you have,” said Mixer.

“What d'you mean by that, Malloy?”

“Nothing. As long as your plan doesn't include saying that anyone other than you swung that club.”

“Shut the hell up!” said Bones. “Don't say club.”

“Like they won't be able to figure that out.”

“It's the difference between assault and assault with a deadly weapon.”

“That thing's only deadly if you're a fish,” I said.

I was hoping more than saying, but I was trying to get between them and get us talking about what we needed to be talking about. This all sounded a little familiar, all this back and forth, and I realized that this was in that book, too. The dude keeps running over the same territory from different directions. What if I do this? What if I don't? What if they think this? What if they think that?

Of course, in the book, there's just the one guy keeping the secret. But there were three of us here now. In a way that was better, because we weren't alone with it. We could talk it out and plan. But in another way, it was worse, because it was three times the mouths to keep shut. I mean, the Russian dude had to sort of argue with himself, but we could argue with each other. And it's just simple math. More people knew, and if enough people know something, it's not really a secret anymore.

One guy or three, it all amounted to the same thing: freaking out about getting caught. I mean, the title of the book is
Crime and Punishment,
and that could end up working
for us, too. Right now, we were hovering somewhere over the “and.” If we didn't want to take that next step, we needed to get our story straight.

“No, seriously,” Bones was saying. “I looked it up.”

“What,” said Mixer, “on the Internet?”

“Yeah.”

“You dumbass, they can trace that.”

“What?”

And that was as far as we'd gotten—debating whether or not to mention a club that Haberman and any decent doctor in the world would know we used—when Trever walked by the stairwell.

“There you three are,” he said, stopping and turning toward us.

Mixer's eyes got huge and Bones's knees bent down, as if he was going to make a break for it. I went light-headed but stayed on my feet. Trever took it all in but didn't respond. I guess he was used to scaring kids.

“They want to see you three in the office,” he said. He was wearing a blue suit with white stripes that you'd miss if you didn't look close. He looked like a politician. The office was back in the direction he'd been coming from. I wondered if they'd sent him out to round us up. Strange that the cops would send the assistant principal out to bring us back. Maybe they did it because he knew what we looked like and where shop and Spanish were. Or maybe they hadn't sent him.

He went on: “I might as well spare you the trip, though.”

“What's up, Mr. Trever?” said Mixer. I was glad he spoke up, because I didn't trust my voice right then.

“Archie just wanted to let you know”—Archie was Principal Throckmarten—“that they found your friend.”

“Where did they find him?” I said after a few long seconds. The way he said “found him,” I thought maybe he meant his body, and maybe I was right after all.

“The McDonald's,” said Trever.

“In North Cambria?” said Bones.

“That's the one,” said Trever.

I knew there were no shallow graves at the McDonald's and that Tommy was fine. I wasn't all that surprised. As soon as we knew that Haberman hadn't done anything to him, I knew Tommy was liable to come waltzing back, no warning, just like he left. But the timing on this one was a real kick in the balls. Would one day earlier have frickin' killed him?

“What was he having?” I said, trying to sound like I thought it was funny now.

“I don't know,” said Trever. He let out a little laugh. “None of that stuff's good for you, though.”

I exhaled and shook my head. I felt a lot of things and one of them was incredibly, record-settingly stupid. We didn't need the assistant principal to tell us we were wrong, but it really drove the point home when he did. I looked at Mixer and Bones. Their faces were crash sites of different expressions—relieved, hurt, embarrassed—the gears grinding away in their heads.

“Well, that's good then,” Bones managed.

“Yeah, some pretty easy police work. Some troopers were waiting in the drive-thru and they saw him walking across the parking lot. He told them he was on his way home anyway.”

“Man,” said Mixer.

“Well,” I said. “Where was he?”

“Not sure,” said Trever. “But apparently they had a hard time recognizing him from his photo. Seems he's made some changes.”

“What kind of changes?” I said.

“Sorry,” said Trever, “that's all I know. Anyway, you three can go back to class now. I'll let Archie know I caught up with you.”

We were in more of a mood to stay and talk about all this, and he must've been used to that, too, because he stood there until I started up the stairs and Mixer and Bones headed back toward shop.

“That's a relief, huh?” said Chaney when I walked back into Spanish. Whoever called must've told her about Tommy turning up. She said it without any Spanish at all, not teacher to student, just person to person, and I guess that surprised me.

“Yeah,” I said, returning to my seat.

The blackboard was full of new sentences. I sat there picking out the words I knew and basically just trying to piece my nerves back together. I felt like they'd gone to hang me and the rope broke. Now I was just waiting to be strung up again. But the last few minutes of class just rolled slowly by. The
next thing that rang wasn't the phone, it was the bell. I gathered up my stuff and headed to English.

Tommy was alive, I thought, walking alone through the busy hallway. Was Haberman?

“Mr. Haberman is incommunicado this morning,” said Ms. Yanoff, once we were all seated. “So once again, the powers that be have seen fit to provide me with a day's wages.”

English teachers, where did they get them?