You Can Run (8 page)

My father turned to me. “What's going on with your mother?”

“Nothing as far as I know,” I said. I tried to sound as if I meant it. My mother would never have forgiven me if I'd told him about her and Ted's little break from each other. “Long day, I guess.”

My father stared up at the house. “I know she doesn't like you to talk about her with me,” he said. “But if something's wrong, if she needs help, anything, tell her. . . .” He stopped and turned to me. “Tell her she can count on me. No strings attached. Okay, Robbie?”

I told him okay. He stood in the driveway a little longer, leaning toward the house like a flower leaning toward the sun. Then he got back in the car, revved the engine, and backed down the driveway.

S
ome days I go with the flow. Don't fight it. Let it happen. Whatever.

Other days I have a plan. Goals. Today was one of those days. Today I was going to do the favor that I had promised my father. I was going to find out what, if anything, Kenny Merchant knew about Trisha Carnegie. Specifically, I was going to find out if he knew where she was or why she had run away. My father was most interested in the former. I wanted the answer to the latter because, no matter what my father had said, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was the one who had pushed her into running.

The way I had it mapped out, it would go something like this: “Hi, Kenny, Trisha's in my history class. We were doing a project together and, well, we had a little misunderstanding. I need to talk to her. It's important. So do you have any idea where I could find her?” And he would say . . . well, I wasn't sure what he would say. But I was hoping it would be something helpful.

The way it actually happened:

“Robyn, you couldn't have grabbed us some seats?” Morgan said. She came toward me carrying a tray loaded with a bowl of vegetarian chili, a slice of whole grain bread, a bottle of apple juice, and her wallet. I was standing just inside the cafeteria door, where I had been looking for Kenny Merchant. I'd spotted him too. He was in the food line, three people away from the cash register.

“Here, hold this for a minute, will you?” Morgan said. She thrust the tray at me, picked up her wallet, and tucked it into the mini-backpack she uses as a purse. “See if you can spot a couple of empty chairs,” she said, pulling out a mirror. Kenny was one person away from the register. Morgan looked into the mirror and made a face. “A zit,” she said. “I can't believe it. I cleanse every morning and every night, and I'm getting a zit.” Kenny was paying for a plastic-wrapped submarine sandwich. He moved past the register and looped around, heading back toward the door.

“Morgan—”

“How come I never see you with a zit?” she said. She made it sound like I had made a pact with the devil.

“Morgan, here, take this,” I said. I shoved the tray at her and turned away without checking to see if she had a grip on it. I heard a gasp and then a crash. Morgan cursed and called my name. But I was already out of the cafeteria, running after Kenny.

He wasn't especially tall for a guy, but he had a long stride. He was halfway down the hall before I caught sight of him again. He was gone altogether by the time I reached the spot where I had seen him.

“You! Hunter,” someone called. Mr. Dormer, one of the vice principals. “No running in the hall.”

I skidded to a halt, muttered an apology, and started speed walking.

By the time I'd got to the exit door at the end of the hall, Kenny had vanished. I scanned the schoolyard. There were kids dotted and knotted all over it, but none of them was Kenny. I'd almost had him back in the cafeteria. Now, because he wasn't in any of my classes, I was unlikely to run into him during the afternoon. I could try to catch him after school, but there were half a dozen exits from the building and I had no idea which one he would use.

Then fortune smiled on me.

As I turned to go back inside, I spotted him. He was at the top of the bleachers that ran along one side of the athletic field.

I crossed the field and started to make my way to where he sat working his way through his cafeteria sandwich. He heard me coming and looked down at me as I climbed toward him. I smiled, to show that I was friendly and to put him in a relaxed mood. He stared back at me and took another bite of his sandwich. He chewed with his mouth partly open.

When I got close enough, I said, “Hi.”

He didn't answer.

“My name is Robyn,” I said.

He gave me a so-what look and bit off another chunk of sandwich. He didn't say anything.

“I've been looking for Trisha Carnegie,” I said. “She's in my history class. We were working on a project together and, well, we had this little problem.” I smiled again. “I was wondering if you knew how I could get in touch with her.”

Kenny wrapped up what remained of his sandwich and shoved it into his jacket pocket. Then he got up and started down the bleachers to the athletic field. He didn't look at me and he didn't answer.

“Hey!” I said. I chased after him. “Hey, wait a minute.” But he didn't wait for even a second. He strode back into the school. I scurried after him—no way was I going to let him treat me like I didn't exist. I was going to follow him until he said something—anything—to me.

He disappeared through a door halfway down the hall. I was close behind him, my hand out to push the door open and go after him. But I dropped my hand back to my side when I read the words on the door:
Boys' Locker Room
. I backed up a few paces and waited. I must have stood there for nearly ten minutes before two thoughts occurred to me: one, if a guy like Kenny Merchant didn't want to talk, he wouldn't, even if it meant he missed all of his classes for the rest of the day; and, two, there was another door in and out of the boys' locker room, the door to the gym. I checked it out. Kenny wasn't there. He was probably long gone.

 

. . .

“So let me get this straight,” Morgan said when I caught up with her in the second floor girls' washroom. She was working hard, but without much success, to get a vegetarian chili stain out of her khaki pants. “You dumped my tray on me so you could go chasing after Kenny Merchant?” She rubbed at the stain with a wad of wet soapy paper towel.

“I needed to ask him something,” I said.

“Since when do you even know Kenny Merchant?” she said. She was scrubbing so hard that the paper towel began to disintegrate.“The guy's so weird. He and Trisha are the king and queen of bizarre. I saw them together one time, sitting on the floor.” She stopped scouring the stain and looked thoughtful for a moment. “You think I should have mentioned that to your dad when he asked me about Trisha?”

“You talked to my father?” I said. “How come you didn't tell me?”

“He was here yesterday, asking people about Trisha and who she hung out with. How come you didn't tell me that he's looking for her?”

I apologized and filled her in on Trisha and her stepfather.

“So you think I should tell him about Kenny?” Morgan said when I had finished.

“He already knows,” I said. “He tried to talk to Kenny.”

“Tried to?” She frowned. Then she grinned at me, her eyes sparkling. “That's why you went after Kenny. You're working for your dad, aren't you?” she said. “You're spying for him.”

“I'm not
spying
,” I said. “And I'm not working for him. I just said I'd ask around, that's all.”

“You think Kenny knows where Trisha is?”

“I don't know.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Not one word.”

 

. . .

One thing about going out with—well, maybe going out with—a guy who's in open custody is that you always know where he's supposed to be. Whenever Nick leaves Somerset, he has to carry a pass that's signed by Somerset's director. He has a pass that gives him permission to go to school. On Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, it says he has to be back at Somerset one hour after school is over to do homework and chores and to take part in group sessions. On Wednesday afternoons and evenings, he has a job delivering community newspapers door to door. He gets a pass that says he has to phone Somerset when he gets to the place where he picks up the newspapers, he has to call again a couple of hours later, and he has to be back at Somerset by his eight o'clock curfew. He gets another pass on Saturdays so that he can go to his second job, which is walking two, sometimes three, dogs, including a massive beast named Orion. He got hired for that after all the time he spent sort-of volunteering at the animal shelter. And now, because he's been doing so well, he can usually get a pass for a couple of hours on Sunday—if he has all his homework and his chores done. Sometimes we get together. And every Tuesday, he gets a pass so that he can have dinner with his aunt. Nick doesn't have any parents. He's going to live with his aunt after he's released.

This was Tuesday and because I was worried about him, I took the bus over to his aunt's house after school. On the way, I thought about how he had acted the last time I saw him. Something was wrong. But was it something with me? Was something else bothering Nick?

I stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes after I got off the bus and thought about what I would say.“Hi, Nick. How ya doin', Nick? So, Nick, are we going out or what?”

Right.

If ever there was a question that was guaranteed to send a guy running in the opposite direction, that was it. According to Morgan, guys were commitment phobes. If you wanted to find out what they were thinking about your relationship, you had to be careful not to scare them, which meant you had to be indirect. So I stopped at a store on my way to his aunt's house and bought the latest issue of
Dogs Today
. Nick loves dogs. He planned to get one after he settled in with his aunt. I decided to tell him that I'd seen the magazine and thought he'd like to read it. I'd see where things went from there.

I was halfway up the sagging porch steps when I heard a crash, followed by what sounded like something shattering. Then I heard a voice—an angry male voice— say, “Now look what you've done.”

I hesitated.

“Pick that up before your aunt gets back,” the same male voice said. It was deep and husky, a smoker's voice.

I heard another sharp sound—not a crash, not something breaking, but more like a smack or a slap.

“Hey!” the husky voice said. “Where do you think you're going?”

I stepped back from the door at precisely the moment it exploded open. Nick burst out onto the porch. He looked at me, but in a funny way, like he didn't really see me.

“Hey!” the voice said again. The door opened again and a man stepped out. He was big and was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. He made a grab for Nick, but pulled back when he saw me.

“What do you want?” he said. He kept his eyes hard on me, like he was daring me to blink or look away. I don't know all the reasons why, but right away, I didn't like the guy.

“I'm a friend of Nick's,” I said.

Nick was shaking his head at me. What? I wasn't his friend? No, that wasn't it. He was shaking his head as if he didn't want me to say anything at all.

The man stepped out onto the porch. He was as tall as my father, but a lot bulkier. He looked like he'd make a good bouncer or maybe a champion WWE wrestler. He gave me a thorough once-over.

“Sorry, but Nick can't come out to play,” he said. He made the word
play
sound like the last thing you'd want your children to be doing.“He's got some business inside.”

I glanced at Nick. He was cradling his left arm as he glowered at the big man. Then he turned his back on the man and started down the porch steps. The man reached for him, shoving me aside. He grabbed Nick by the left arm. Nick let out a yowl.

“Inside,” the man said. “Now.”

“You're hurting him,” I said.

The man hung onto Nick but turned his attention to me.

“Run along, sweetheart,” he said, “before—”

That's as far as he got before Nick twisted away from him. Nick grabbed my hand and pulled me down the porch steps two at a time. He pelted down the street, dragging me along with him, running so fast for so long that I thought my lungs would burst. He kept running until we reached a park that ran along the bank of a river that meandered through the city. He pulled me down into the park, away from the streets and the cars. He didn't stop running until the sounds of traffic had disappeared.

“Nick, I need to catch my breath,” I said, gasping. I run a couple of times a week, but I'm not a sprinter. I pulled my hand out of his and bent over, breathing hard, my heart pounding. I stumbled over to a bench facing the river and dropped down onto it. “Who was that guy?” I said. “What's going on?”

Nick stood in front of me, his chest heaving, his face pinched and gray. He was holding his left arm in his right hand again.