“You got a lot of stuff today.” His disinterested tone indicated that he was just making polite conversation.
“Things I might need.”
Coach nodded, and the two sat for a while, watching the activity on the basketball court. A kid smaller than any of the others darted into the traffic under the hoop, snagging the loose ball mid-dribble and getting seriously underfoot as he tried for a lay-up—and almost made it. It failed, but Coach tipped his head. “Any idea who that is?”
“Stevie Garcia. Sixth grade.”
Coach hid his surprise at getting a reply. “Well, if I’m coaching next year, he might be worth recruiting.”
“He’d be good at the three.”
Coach’s eyes wavered, but he forced them to stay on the sixth-grader—and after a minute, despite his preoccupation, he could see what Brendan meant. Little Stevie was quick, aggressive, and short enough to get in the way a lot. Players good at getting fouled could rack up the free throws.
Like Brendan.
Coach couldn’t stand it any longer. He swung one leg back over the bench to straddle it, looking directly at his star player for the first time. Brendan had his chin on the bulging pack, his arms snug around it. His eyes were on the players.
“Are you okay?” Coach blurted out—then kicked himself. But incredibly, the question didn’t send the boy into instant and supercilious retreat. If anything, it…good Lord: could that have been the start of a smile? The boy’s gaze flickered toward him, then returned to the court.
“I guess.”
“Brendan, is there anything I can do?”
The dark eyes snapped back to him, wary now. “What do you mean?”
You could just ask Brendan…
Afraid that his words might rupture this faint contact, but knowing he was committed, Coach pressed on. “Couple weeks ago in practice, I noticed this fellow in the stands. That day the kid threw the water bottle onto the court? I thought you looked”—don’t use the word frightened—“startled. Like maybe you thought he was going to…Anyway, who is he?”
Brendan frowned. “You mean Ray? My uncle?”
“Your uncle? Why—” Coach couldn’t come up with an end to that question, but Brendan gave him an answer anyway.
“Yeah, he’s my mom’s brother. Why?”
“I was…”—not concerned—“curious. He seems to watch you, during practice, but I’ve never seen you talk to him. And he leaves the minute practice is over.”
“That’s because of the court order. He’s not supposed to come near me.”
Oh, jeez: I was right. Coach took a moment to be sure his voice was calm before speaking. “Why is that?”
Brendan looked back at the basketball game. “Mostly because my stepfather hates him. When Mom died, Uncle Ray tried to get me to go live with him instead.”
Coach could hear the effort it took the boy to sound casual. “I’m sorry, Brendan. About your mother. I didn’t know you’d lost her.”
The shrug again. “Couple years ago.”
“That’s hard. My mother died when I was twenty, and it was still hard.”
“Yeah, well. They say she committed suicide.”
Coach reared back, stunned—but the boy’s face warned that too much sympathy would end the session. “I’m very sorry. But your uncle: was wanting you to go live with him enough to get a restraining order?”
“My father convinced the judge that Ray was a bad influence.”
“You don’t think he is?”
The dark eyes sought Coach out, with some message too deep to read. “No.”
“But that day with the water bottle. You seemed to think that he was the one who’d thrown the thing.”
“Ray? No! But my father—my stepfather, he…has a way of finding things out. Every time Ray shows up, I expect to see Sir—my stepfather—up behind him in the stands. Stupid, but still.” He did give Coach a smile then, but there was queasiness in it. The sort of expression shared by two men who had walked through some deep shit together. The boy was telling the truth—as he saw it, at least.
“Your uncle.” Coach retrieved his lunch things from the table. “You think I might meet him, one of these days?”
That funny half smile, again, as the boy’s fingers played with a lump in the black nylon. “Yeah. I think you probably will.”
“I hope you know that I’m, well, here. If you need to talk.”
“Yeah. Sure. Thanks.”
“I mean it.” But Coach saw that Brendan was drifting away, as surely as if he saw the cut rope floating free. The boy’s eyes had focused on the far side of the baseball diamond, where Linda McDonald was finishing up her customary brisk lunchtime walk around the school.
So Coach wasn’t surprised when Brendan got to his feet and, with a mumble that passed for a farewell, swung his pack over his shoulder and slouched off. Although if Brendan wasn’t careful, his path was going to intersect with that of the principal.
All in all, Coach thought, the conversation had been a relief. Not only had the boy emerged a fraction from his shell, but the man in the stands did not sound like a pedophile. Good to know that the boy had not been flirting—and yet, Coach still felt obscurely troubled, as he watched his player retreat. He couldn’t shake the niggling suspicion that he had missed some vital part of the boy’s message.
12:04
Dr. Henry
An idea—planted by Gordon Kendrick, in ground fertile by the morning’s session with Nick Clarkson—had begun to push at the corner of Cass Henry’s mind. The office she usually used had a couple of teachers in it, eating their lunch, so she kept opening doors until she found an empty space to spread out her notes. Elbows on the table, she stared down at her cheat-sheet page of names:
GUADALUPE STAFF:
Linda McDonald—principal, caring, smart. Listens.
(Gordon Kendrick, Linda’s husband—school volunteer. British, 70s.)
“Tío” (Jaime Rivera Cruz)—school janitor, hired October. What was he before??
She added a note at the bottom about one of the day’s speakers—Thomas Atcheson—Brendan’s father, biggest Name in San Felipe: problem for B?—then laid the page aside. The next sheet held a roughly sketched flowchart of circles, arrows, and question marks, mostly describing the holes in her knowledge—visual thinking at its most chaotic. But as she stared down at the scribbles and notes, she felt the beat of an elevated pulse.
Holes.
What if…What if those mystifying gaps were in fact a single hole? What if—
She pulled out a blank sheet and redid the flowchart around one central element instead of a lot of smaller ones. It made no sense, and yet it made everything fall into place.
The missing element was Bee Cuomo.
Bee was a child oblivious to social expectations. An eleven-year-old who was extraordinarily—alarmingly—deaf to criticism, blind to the subtle and inexorable cues under which middle school society functioned. She’d dressed like a child, and seemed unaware that there was a wall between the grades. She would start conversations with sixth-grade losers and eighth-grade jocks alike. She’d ask the most popular girl in school where she got her hair cut (and what’s more, get an answer). Bee would share her lunch with a kid whose breath could melt plastic.
Eleven months ago, high school student Gloria Rivas had been murdered. Her grieving parents had taken Gloria’s younger sister, Sofia, out of school for the remainder of the year, fearing Guadalupe’s rivalries and factions. But when classes started up again in late August, Sofia returned to school in the company of her loyal friend and surrogate sister, Mina Santos.
The girls were met by a welcoming committee bullied into place by the brand-new sixth-grade student Bee Cuomo: admiring Sofia’s hair, showing her a photo of a new puppy, eating lunch with her.
Grieving Sofia had managed to slip back into Guadalupe with barely a splash. And so far (touch wood) the truce between the Rivas/Alvarez factions was holding.
Convert that
flowchart into a Venn diagram, and quirky little Bee Cuomo occupied the shaded area in the middle of various sub-groups: sixth-grade outsiders and eighth-grade athletes; English speakers and newly arrived Mexican immigrants; the family of a murder victim and relatives of the accused killer—God knew who else. Bee Cuomo, eleven-year-old Switzerland.
Even more extraordinary: when the child vanished, the relationship structures built around her did not collapse. The improbable friendship between Nick Clarkson and the Sofia-and-Mina sisterhood was clearly still functioning. Carlos Garcia, friend and supporter of the witness to the murder, walked the halls unscathed. (So far.)
Or was she using the wrong analogy here? Maybe Bee was neither neutral territory on which the factions could meet, nor a bridge for communication. Perhaps the child had been something more along the lines of a catalyst. Something that permanently changed the original.
Nick Clarkson was not the boy he’d been the summer before. Guadalupe itself was not the same school. And although much of that was due to the incredibly hard work of Linda and her staff, wasn’t some of it—perhaps just a touch—due to the presence of a fey little girl who didn’t realize that she wasn’t supposed to walk up to a pair of bristling older boys and ask one of them a question?
Cass Henry had been a family therapist for half her life, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d found herself this puzzled, this challenged, this…
Exhilarated.
12:19
Brendan
You gotta do it, Brendan ordered as he walked across the grounds in the direction the principal was headed. You said you would. You sent Jock the text. And that letter and disc—sure, you think Sir never gets home early, but how do you know? He might go home for lunch every day. And man, you’d be so completely and utterly fucked if you went home and there he was…
Quit screwing around. You’ve been planning this for weeks—months, really. All you need to do is light the fuse. Just go stand in front of the principal and deliver that little speech you know by heart. Give her what you’ve got in the pack.
12:20
Mina
When Mr. Kendrick left to help set up in the cafeteria, Mina was alone at the picnic table. She’d go back to Sofia in a minute, but it was actually nice to be by herself for two minutes. A bunch of younger boys had started a game under the new net. She glanced around for the teachers, thinking she might sneak out her phone and send Mâmân the noontime text—and who did she see but Brendan, marching across the tarmac straight toward her. Mina’s heart gave a little skip. He looked like he had something in mind. Like maybe coming up and grabbing her by the shoulders. Or something.
Then his path began to veer, and she realized he wasn’t looking at her—wasn’t looking at anything, really. If her pulse hadn’t still been thumping—if she’d taken one second to think about it—she’d have shut her mouth and let him march right on by while she sat there hoping nobody noticed how her cheeks were burning.
Instead, she spoke up.
“Hey, Brendan.” At her words, he jerked to a halt. “Oh, hey, sorry—you’re going somewhere. Never mind.”
His eyes came to a focus on her. “Um, yeah—no, that’s fine. I just was, you know.”
“Busy, yeah. It can wait, don’t worry.”
He shot a quick glance down in the direction of the road—no, he’d been headed for the principal—but then those dark eyes of his were looking at her, and at the conspicuously empty table where she sat.
She felt the color begin to creep into her face. Brendan looked like a young Jake Gyllenhaal. And really, not all that much younger.
He slung his pack onto the table with a thump. “Nah, no rush. What’s up?”
“Um, you know about computers, right?”
“Sure.”
“You know Nick Clarkson? How he started that hashtag against Bee Cuomo’s father?”
“I’ve seen it.” He climbed onto the bench across from her. Their feet were nearly touching—close enough to give both her parents heart attacks.
“Yeah, I don’t know that much about it either, but I know a couple people who are really into it, and I wondered if maybe they could get into trouble? If they’re not careful. I mean, Nick’s a nice enough kid and I think he’s right that the police can’t do anything, but…” Stop blabbering, Mina! “Anyway, do you know how hard it would be for someone to find out who’s posting the things?”
Brendan asked her some questions, most of which Mina couldn’t answer, and started talking about IP addresses and anonymity and how difficult it was to hide things from law enforcement, but how there were services that offered anonymity, and—
Actually, he lost her about two minutes in, but she’d have been happy to sit and listen to him all day. Until she realized that people were starting to head back toward the classrooms—there went Coach Gilbert—and if she didn’t get a move on, she really would have to risk texting her mother out in the open, to get the midday check-in sent before the bell rang.
Brendan seemed to realize it at the same time, and dropped his hand to the strap of his pack. She hastened to tell him thanks, and that she’d see him around (in the cafeteria in about ten minutes, in fact, although she didn’t want him to think she was keeping track or anything). He sort of ducked his head, as adorable as a girl could want, and slung his pack across his shoulder to continue down A Quad in the wake of the principal.
She’d had Brendan Atcheson all to herself for nearly ten minutes. Even if they confiscated her phone for a month, it was worth it.
12:21
Olivia
Olivia was taking another turn along the fence-line. She’d spotted the Clarion reporter parked along the side road, eyeing the kids on the playing field—until Sergeant Mendez appeared in all her uniformed glory. The reporter started her car and pulled away in a hurry.
Olivia was walking along the creek, where the chatter of squirrels was nearly as loud as the distant shriek of kids, when she got a call on her cell.
“Hey, Torres. What’s up?”
“I just heard back from the dealership. They found the car Cuomo’s been driving, parked in their back lot.”
“The blue one?”
“Yeah. But he’s not there. Nobody’s sure where he is, and he’s not answering his cell. They’re checking to see if there’s another car missing, he trades off sometimes without telling anyone, but it means they have to compare the keys to what’s on the lot, so it’ll be a while. You want us there, at Guadalupe?”
“Not sure it’d do any good until we know what he’s driving. He’s probably just in a bar somewhere. No, take another pass by, let it go at that. I’m finished with my session so I’m walking the grounds now, and it’s quiet. Well, not quiet, but you know what I mean. Any word from the Alvarez trial?”
“The kid’s going to be called tomorrow.”
“Danny Escobedo? Okay, I’ll talk to his mom tonight. Anything else?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, bye.” Olivia ended the call, and studied the phone in her hand. Cuomo was probably in a bar somewhere, courting a DUI, working himself up to a fistfight. He’d show up with a hangover and a broken nose. Unless he picked on someone who’d been to the same martial arts classes the principal’s husband had. (Did a person really pick up that practiced a move in martial arts?)
She sifted through the phone for the list of contacts that Linda had given her, entered Gordon’s number into the text function, and sent him a brief message. Then she settled her duty belt and continued on her way.
12:22
Nineteen minutes away from Guadalupe Middle School, the air coming through the white van’s window ruffled the driver’s hair and carried the smell of trees. Douglas fir and pine grew along this section of road, although after a minute the smell changed to horses, and a muck-filled corral came briefly into view.
A blue jay screamed. A few hundred yards later, a squirrel performed its balancing act on the wire crossing the road.
T
he driver had never felt so alive.
12:30
Gordon
Gordon had felt his phone vibrate against his leg when he was walking down B Quad, and checked to see who it was from. Sergeant Mendez. But he’d always felt that using a cellphone in front of the students was a bit like ordering a beer at an AA dinner, so he waited until he was inside the cafeteria to open the phone properly.
Hi Gordon, Olivia Mendez here. Could we have a talk sometime soon?
A minute went by before Gordon realized that he was surrounded by the racket of Tío folding the tables up against the walls and the speaker banging through the cafeteria’s back doors with armloads of equipment. He woke up his phone again, and picked out a reply:
Sure, happy to meet, maybe not today…
He slipped the phone in his pocket and went to help the physical therapist. And when they’d finished and the PT went to move his car out of the access road, Gordon helped Tío fold the last of the tables.
But all the while he was thinking, Why the hell didn’t I just allow that drunken lout Cuomo to jab his finger under Linda’s nose? It’s not like Mendez would have let the guy actually hit her.
12:37
Linda
There’d only been three days that Linda had missed her lunchtime circuit of Guadalupe since school began in August, and today was not one of them. Her brisk ten-minute walk functioned as a reset for body and spirit, clearing her mind and her lungs for the rest of the day.