Snitch (26 page)

I grabbed
my trusty
bike from the garage and hit the road heading for Wes’s farm. It was a long ride and a total waste of time: POS was gone, and Wes was gone. Next I tried to find Seth’s house
,
but having never been there before I only had some vague directions to go by and I never found it. Johnny’s house was lit but two police cars were in the driveway, so without even giving myself a chance to be scared, I threw my bike down on the dewy grass and snuck to the open front window. Mr. and Mrs. Palmer were seated
nervously
on the couch and one of the cops was taking notes on a little pad.

My heart
began
beating so hard, it was hard to hear over the
whoosh
of blood it pumped, but I caught
hasn’t come home
…whoosh, whoosh…
not like him
...whoosh, whoosh and
so worried
.

One of the cops with a deep bass voice louder than my whooshes said, “He’s probably out with some girl,” which let me know they were clueless about Brian Weston. That part was good; Johnny was safe for now.

I crouched down and scuttled crab-like until I reached my bike. It wasn’t until a few blocks later before
the scr
apes I had reopened calmed down
and
my heart stopped sounding like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story,
that
I was able to think. Johnny was probably with Seth and Wes somewhere.
Probably planning things.
I would find him tomorrow and ask him point blank if the horrible thing I thought was true really happened.

I biked home in the dark thinking about what I had done the last few days. When I was a kid I had dreamed of being a spy, doing all the detective work, sneaking and pretending that went with the job. Here I was doing it, but it wasn’t exciting at all. It left me exhausted, guilty, and most of all, scared shitless. Hoping my sheer exhaustion would overcome my fear and allow me to sleep
tonight,
I lifted the fake
hide-a-key
rock from Mom’s flower bed and
opened
the front door lock, easily slipping into the front hall.

My foot had just hit the first step when a voice quietly directed, “Come into the living room, Andrew. We need to talk.
”

It was my father
,
sitting in the dark, waiting for me.

Dad snapped on a small table light, his speech low and measured.

“Your mother is asleep; this is between us. It’s now three o’clock and you have been missing for several hours. What’s going on? Have you been drinking? Is it the girl?”

I shook my head. How could I tell Dad something I could hardly admit to myself?

“You better say something. Otherwise I’m going to think the worst.”

In movies people always think of the best things to say; in real life you can’t think of anything until about two hours and 100 head replays later.

Dad studied my face. “Is it bad?”

I nodded; I could do that much.

“Are you in danger?”

He sighed with relief as I shook my head side to side.

“Is anyone else?”

I froze.
Maybe.
But
—
from the police
?
W
as that danger?
From the guilt?
It was eating me up; what would it do to Johnny? What about Wes?
And Seth?
I didn’t really like Seth, but this? I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

Dad brought me back to reality. “Andrew. Listen to me. Do
you
need help?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “But I can’t tell you. Not yet. Not ‘till I know.”

I felt hysteria trying to rise again as the words
a
ttempted
m
urder
flew through my brain like ghosts that wouldn’t go away. I squeezed my eyes shut and saw the words fall and
float like
a monstrous screen saver, weaving and dancing and taunting and teasing. Dad held me in his arms because I began uncontrollably, hopelessly weeping for the second time that day.

“I’ll tell you,” I said gaining control. “I will. But let me talk to…someone first….just to be sure. I have to be sure.”

Dad grabbed my shoulders roughly, squaring his face with mine.

“Listen to me
,
S
on
. I hate to be on the outside of this
,
because all I can do is
imagine
. And what I imagine is probably worse than what is going on, but I’m willing to do that if you need me to. Just promise me you aren’t in danger, because there’s one thing you need to know: if someone has done something and you were there, the law calls you an accomplice. That means you are as guilty as the person who committed the crime.”

I shook my head.

“I’m not,” I said, but I wondered if just knowing about something made you guilty. “I’m not an accomplice,” I convinced myself.

Dad visibly relaxed.

“Promise me you will tell me what is going on once you get it all figured out. And if it gets too big, or you just don’t want to face whatever this is all alone, remember I’m just down the hall from you only two doors away. I don’t care what time it is; just knock on my door.
But no more sneaking off.
No more lying. I will give you the space and the support you need. All you need to do is ask.”

I wiped my eyes and sat back. “Thanks Dad. Thanks for trusting me.”

“I’ll come home early from work
tomorrow
. I’ll be close by. I’ve raised you to have morals and integrity. I have to trust you will use those guidelines in times of trouble.” Dad said this out loud, but I could tell he was really talking to himself.  

***

When I woke up the next morning the sun was in the wrong place
,
which I soon attributed to the fact that it was 10:30. A note on the kitchen table told me to get myself to school
when I woke up,
and an accompanying letter read
Please excuse Andy’s tardiness. He was ill this
morning.
Dad’s scrawl was across the bottom of it making it official and me even guiltier for the forgery I already had tucked away deep in my backpack.

I acquiesced to the growing feeling that this day was going to be terrible, steeled myself with a sigh
,
and jogged back upstai
rs where I threw on some clothes
and snagged my backpack. The
Healthy
Bar
I grabbed was supposed to be peanut butter and chocolate but tasted more like dry sticks and dust, so I threw it half eaten into the bushes. Who was I kidding? My body wasn’t really accepting breakfast this morning. The only thing I wanted to do was find Johnny and talk to him. I was going to end this today.

But Johnny wasn’t in school. I sat, trapped in
second
hour, listening to exam schedules with one thought on my mind: the bell was going to ring in five minutes. For the second day in a row, I was going to stroll down the hallway, walk through the double doors of this building
,
and ditch classes.

Seth stopped me on my way out. “Where’s Johnny?” he asked.

I glared at him. “I was hoping you could
tell
me
.”

Seth dropped his attitude and for a moment raw fear tore through his tough-guy demeanor. Then the old Seth returned.

“
If you see him, tell him he should be in school.” The words were a warning.

I didn’t care; my newly
-
acquired knowledge made Seth’s intimidation techniques as harmless as Sarah’s threats. “Would you just shut up?”

“What? What’s wrong? Have you been talking to Johnny?”

I turned on him, enjoying the fact I could stoke his fear.

“Of course I’ve been talking to Johnny. Why
wouldn’t
I be talking to Johnny?”

“What’s he been saying? What’s he been telling you?” Seth hesitated, gathering his courage and tried a new tactic. “Maybe he’s been talking a little
too
much.”

“Maybe you’ve been watching old mafia movies
too
much. Who do you think you are
,
t
he Godfather?
I’m not afraid of you, Seth. You’ve got nothing on me.
But you?
I know lots about you. You’re hosed, Seth. You screwed up
,
and you’re majorly hosed.”

“And I suppose you’re
go
ing to
snitch just like your little girlfriend did on
Chrissy
.
It was probably you who snitched in the first place!
”

“Snitch?
Snitch!”
My teeth lock
ed together and breath hissed.
”Seriously?
Are you going to threaten me with a Facebook page? Are you going to run into the bathroom and set the masses on me the way you set
them on Kate? Do you really think I’m scared of you, Seth? You left a man for dead
! You think all your posturing and threatening looks are going to change things?

“
You can scare Johnny and you can bully Wes because you’ve got them where you want them.
But me?
You’ve got
nothing
on me, and you
mean
nothing
to me. You’re just someone I don’t like who is the epitome of someone I never want to be. Get out of my way. I have to go find my friend.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Seth yelled.

I turned
away a
nd left Seth standing in the hallway. I left all the unsaid things
and all the unsaid threats
in search of Johnny and all the things that
needed
to be said. I never stopped for teachers who called out to me, for Liz who grabbed my arm
and begged
me to stop shutting her out, or for the secretaries in the front office who guarded the double doors
but never noticed I was leaving
.

Because
suddenly
, in that one moment, I had
finally
realized I had known where Johnny would be all along.

My feet pounded over the wooded slats unaware of the
steep d
rop-off or the
pointed
deadheads beneath them. Johnny was wearing his favorite green plaid shirt, sitting at the end of the trestle, his legs dangling over the side.

“Johnny-boy!”
I called. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I knew you would come,” he said quietly. “I’m glad. This was always our place.
”

Johnny looked over at me, tears forming in his
tired,
brown eyes. “I’m in big trouble, Andy.”

“I know,” I said quietly.

“Do you ever have a bad dream and just want to wake up, and when you do you’re so relieved? I just want to wake up. I just want this to be a dream
. B
ut it’s not.”

I sat down next to him on the
hard
rails. There was nothing to say, so I listened.

“I don’t even know how it happened. One minute we were laughing and the next was like…like a movie that is so horrible, so terrible
,
only you’re in it. You’re really in it, and you can’t get out.”

“We can get help,” I suggested quietly.

“No. There’s no help. Only a black, horrible whirlpool of stuff I can’t even think about.”

“My dad said he’d help.”

“YOU DON’T KNOW!” Johnny screamed, pounding
his fist
on a
wooden
slat next to him
with each word
.

“Johnny, listen to me.” He turne
d and I locked my eyes with his, trying to look calm, trying to be reassuring.
“I
know
. I heard you guys talking yesterday in the locker room.
I know
.”

Johnny’s eyes widened, the same O
’
s Liz wore the day before.
Funny, yesterday seemed like such a long time
ago—probably
because I’ve changed, I thought.
No one is who they used to be anymore.

“So if you know, pretty soon everyone is going to know.”

“I haven’t told anybody. I wanted to talk to you first.”

Johnny nodded. “Thanks. Thanks for that.”