"Anyway, I was afraid to tell them where I was after Ames's office. I told them I was alone."
"Where were you?" I asked.
"With Ali. We were out in the woods."
I thought of Leandra's little spiel about them hooking up in the woods. Bo's eyes got kind of far off and concerned, but I wouldn't say he looked all proud, like he had scored.
"I been trying to get her to tell me about what's been going on with Albert," he went on. "She never wanted to say that part. But we'd go out there walking and she'd dump a whole lot of stuff on me that had been bothering her. I figure, so what if she don't make it to cheerleading? Bunch of stuck-up PMS babes. It ain't like they're gonna do anything for her. They ain't gonna hear this kind of shit very well."
"Yeah," I agreed. Their imaginations couldn't fathom anything beyond Ali doing the nasty out there.
"Anyway, I was scared to tell Ames I was with Ali. It seemed like if he was trying to pin Creed on me, he might end up dragging her in and pinning it on her, too, if he found out I was with her. So when I said I was alone, the cops asked to search my locker. I said, 'Bite me. You can search my locker from now till doomsday, fools.' I totally forgot about the goddamn disk. Now they have the computer disk and a bunch of my other stuff. Any minute now they're gonna stick the disk in some hard drive and see what's on it. They're gonna see that Creed's suicide note was in my possession. You think they're gonna believe our story? No way, man. They're gonna think I had that note all along. I wrote it, killed him, sent it from the library to cover my ass, the whole insane thing."
I stood there dumbfounded, trying to think if I ever heard a worse bad-luck story in my life. "Basically, me and my friends did something worse than what you and Ali did," I muttered. "We broke in electronically, and you just ... put it on a disk. Holy shit."
"You seen the note?" he asked.
I nodded. "Yeah. We hacked in. It's weird, but Alex said there was no longer a copy in the library's outbox."
He laughed. "Yeah. It's on Ali's disk. So how did you bums—"
"Ames's copy. The recipient's mailbox."
He looked at me with huge eyes. "Oh my god. You guys can dream up thieving that would never cross my mind. And to think I'm the one with the reputation. Sweet Jesus."
It seemed weird that we were just more sophisticated about our thieving.
"How could they think anyone else could write that note?" I asked. "Chris is in honors. It's kind of a flowery, well-spelled note. Don't you think they'll realize that?"
I was trying to find a nice way to say that no boon could have written that note. He didn't seem too bothered by my meaning. He shrugged, dragging hard on the cigarette.
"If they knew about me and Ali, they might say Ali wrote it. She's in honors, and she's known him her whole life. See, that's another reason I don't want people knowing about Ali and me right now."
"But since she's in honors and she's known as a good kid, maybe she would make them believe you," I argued.
"She's just the girl I'm fucking right now, that's how they'll see her. It'll look bad for her, rather than good for me. Especially after she's been down with so many guys. That sort of thing don't look so good. You want to know what's the funniest thing?"
"What?"
"I ain't been with Ali. Not even one time." He must have noticed my look of total disbelief, because he laughed. "Truth. I ain't playing with you."
"Well ... why's she with everybody but—" I stumbled.
"But not me?" He flicked the cigarette butt into the gutter and exhaled a huge blast of smoke. "I got this thirteen-year-old sister, Darla. Something's up with her—I don't know what—but she turned thirteen and I couldn't keep her off her back to save my life. I threatened her; I told her I'd beat the shit out of her next time I caught her with some boon. One day I pinned her neck to the wall. She'd been with Billy Everett, Dallas's little brother. He's already got one kid, and he's only thirteen. I said to her, 'Darla, why you so determined to make yourself a mama?' You know what she says to me? She says, 'I just like to feel crazy.' I wasn't thinking, you know. I told her, 'I'll show you crazy,' and almost knocked her head clear through the refrigerator. But later I got to thinking, what does she mean by 'I just like to feel crazy'? I don't know, man. I don't understand it. But some girls just like to be wicked on themselves. Makes them feel alive or something, to hear people laughing at them, hear these guys all passing around the gory details. When I first started hearing about Ali in the locker room and all—it was before I ever talked to her. But I remember thinking, Damn, she sounds like Darla."
He pulled a fresh cigarette out of his jacket pocket and stared, like he couldn't decide whether to light it or not. Finally he stuck it behind his ear. "I could have Ali five minutes from now, don't think I couldn't. I just don't want her taking out her problems on me, using me because she's messed up. That ain't what I want from her. You know what I'm saying?"
"Yeah," I said, though my head felt empty. These were deep, dark problems, and I didn't have anything to say back. But I was getting the message about one thing. Bo Richardson had a good-guy streak that was just as wide as, probably wider than, his bad-guy streak. I didn't know too many guys who wouldn't jump on AH if they had the chance, and why she was doing it wouldn't create the least problem for them. I bet he looked out for the younger kids at home, too, because of the way he treated Greg and sounded off at his own sister.
I sighed and watched the Creeds' house, and it was starting to strike me, the greatness of the person Mrs. Creed was trying to hang. So many people would suffer if she hung Bo. I thought of her up there in her neatly trimmed house with the matching bedrooms, screwing up two more kids. With all the people depending on Bo, she might as well just screw up the whole town. It seemed so completely unfair. I wanted to puke.
"Okay," I muttered. "We've got to get that diary. We need a plan."
"Like what?" For somebody so streetwise in some ways, Bo was incredibly stupid in others. Me think up a plan, yeah right, because I watched Alex hack into a mailbox. But then something clicked in my brain.
"Here's a plan. I saw it in an old Hitchcock movie once. This guy and his girlfriend wanted to search a killer's apartment, but the killer was in there. So the guy calls the killer on the phone. He tells him to come to this certain bar and to bring cash. The killer leaves the apartment, all scared that somebody's on to him. The girl swings across and searches the guy's apartment while he's going to the bar to be blackmailed. Of course, there was nobody at the bar when he got there. But it gave them enough time to search."
My eyes went to Richardson, who was staring at me in disbelief. "Goddamn, you are cool. Ali was right about you—"
I was not cool, I was pissing myself. But I knew I couldn't cope with it if I just let this thing come down on Bo.
"I'll do the break-in," he offered. "That's a higher offense if we get caught. I already got some other stuff with the cops, so it don't matter. But I promise I won't get caught this time. You make the call."
I turned slowly to go back into Ali's, wondering how he could make that promise when he'd been caught twenty other times. He grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me in the direction of the street. "Phone booth, asshole. They can trace those calls."
"Oh yeah," I muttered, and when I grinned, the corners of my mouth were shaking. He must have noticed, because he looked sympathetic and swatted my hair absently.
"Look, just be cool. Think of what you're going to say. As soon as they leave, I'll break in. I'll be in and out so fast, those little kids won't even have time to jump out of bed."
I turned numbly and started walking the three blocks to where I knew the nearest phone booth was, and tried not to think about what we were about to do. There was no point in making myself crazy over it. I tried to focus on what I would say. How I would disguise my voice. It was hard, like trying to turn into somebody else.
The nearest pay phone was at the ball field, hooked onto the side of the refreshment stand, which
was dark and deserted, and had been since summer. I didn't know the Creeds' phone number and had to dial Information for it. My fingers were shaking totally, but it was an easy number—too easy to forget. Standing there in the darkness of the wide-open field, I could hear the wind whip up, making these whoosh! noises that made me feel alone. The two streetlights, about a hundred yards off, looked like spotlights on a vacant stage. I could feel the hair on my arms rising, and I turned slowly away from the street lamps, searching through the blackness. That feeling I'd gotten in my basement was with me again. That feeling like somebody was watching me.
Somebody with ten thousand eyes. Watching me, patiently watching me. It's Creed, dead but still living somehow, crawling the woods with some army of Lenapes, to get me to do his bidding. Nobody's holding him for ransom. He's holding me. He's dead ... He wants revenge...
I picked up the phone just to keep a grip on reality. Mrs. Creed needed to come out here and meet the bloody other side. I put the quarter in and said "Up yours" to my life.
A woman's voice answered the phone. I recognized her "Hello."
I made this gravelly voice and spat out a speech that sounded like and felt like somebody else. "I have some information about your son. If you want it, do not call the police. Just bring your husband and come to the ball field. Do it now."
Reality was setting in major. I was actually talking to another person who could feel hurt, feel pain, feel terror. Maybe what I was saying could kill a kid's mom. I didn't have a clue.
I stood there gripping that phone like my fingers had turned to concrete.
"Now you listen to me," she finally hissed out. "Do you know I was a pilot in the United States Navy? Did you know I have friends in very, very high places? I will hunt you down, you coward. You will wish you had never been born. Nobody rakes my Christopher. Nobody takes one of my babies and gets away with it."
He's not your baby. He's not your Christopher. He's a human being. My head banged, though I was shaking so bad my mouth wouldn't move. I wanted to reach through the phone and kill her for making me piss myself. I was—total truth—feeling warm piss run down my leg, and it was making me crazy. It came clear to me what she could do to Chris if she could make me piss my goddamn pants.
"Shut up!" I heard myself snarl through my terror. My brain jumped to that Hitchcock movie and the rest of the phone conversation with the murderer. "Bring money! Bring lots of it!"
I slammed down the phone and ran like I've never run before. In football or anything. But you can't run from your own stupidity, and as I flew into the woods, I wanted to scream at my own dumbness. I could feel all those eyes on me still, and it was like they were laughing. I tried not to think about that, to think about what went wrong with that conversation. Something was definitely not adding up, something she had said, I just couldn't think of it right then. I couldn't think of anything except ten thousand laughing eyes, and it struck me like a freight train how unfunny all this was.
"Bring money"? Torey, you didn't even give an amount. She will know you're some total moron who doesn't know shit. I took this dark trail I knew would come out behind the Wawa. I took it in less than a minute, though it was at least a quarter mile, and when the Wawa came into view I stood there huffing and shaking from head to toe. I felt cold and realized I had pissed clear through my jeans, and you could see it plain as day. "Bring money." Jesus.
I turned back into the darkness to walk the rest of the way home. There was nowhere else to go with wet jeans. This is a bad dream. I didn't just make that call. She did not threaten my life. I did not piss myself.
It was on that short walk that I realized everything that could happen. Mrs. Creed, with all her guts, would probably call the police, anyway. Or Bo would get seen by one of the little kids. Bo wasn't good with planning and might go stupidly back over to Ali's and not run off. He'd be easy to catch there. I had forgotten to wipe my fingerprints off the receiver at the ball field. That last one totally petrified me.
I walked into my house and went straight up to my room. I could feel this thing unwinding as I pulled off my jeans and threw them in the back of my closet. It was almost like I had already been caught. And even if we never got caught, I didn't see how I could walk into school and rattle on with my friends about the boons smelling bad or Creed's body being in somebody's swimming pool, like life was some goddamn joke and we had nothing to worry about. I had become a little like Ali, with the unperfect life. I had just done some sort of serious crime. I had done something the cops could be very pissed about. And here I was, the type who could never even lie without looking guilty as all hell.
Ten
I sat in the police station with my mom on one side of me and Ali on the other. I remember being glad that my dad had been working that night. You don't know how your parents are going to react to trouble if you've never been in any. My mom was totally blank as those cops took me away in the cop car. They had told me I could come down in her car, that they just wanted to question me. But I muttered, "I don't mind," because somehow the cop car seemed a better deal than having my guilt seated next to my mom in a closed-in car. I wished she would have gone ballistic, though my mom had never gone ballistic that I could remember. But I hadn't ever done anything like this before, either.
There were two other rooms in the police station, and I could hear hollering coming out of both of them.
In one Bo was saying, "You're wrong! I don't have to answer your stupid questions, and I don't have to talk to you about anything! I want a lawyer!"
Chief Bowen's voice came back at him. "I guess you've been in here often enough to know the law, Richardson. To get a lawyer at this point in the game, you have to pay for one. Don't forget who you are. A bigmouth with a record, with one foot in Egg Harbor and another foot on a banana peel—"
"Aw, kiss my ass."
"Don't you"—a thunder of chairs clattering made the building shake almost, and Chief Bowen's voice cut in at the end of it—"ever talk to me like that!"
Two younger officers charged out of the other room, which Mrs. Creed was in, and shot past us into the room where Bo and Chief Bowen were. Ali shot out of her seat, and I grabbed her by the back of the jeans and jerked her down beside me again. She had been crying and now added to the mess with louder sobs. I couldn't take her sobs. I shot up out of my chair toward the room with Bo, and my mother jerked me back down like I had done with Ali.
"Mom! They're beating him up!" I cried.
"No they're not. Stay calm, both of you." I looked at her sitting there tensely as the yelling and furniture clanging continued.
And from the other room, Mrs. Creed's voice blasted, "He either murdered my son or he's holding my son! If you let him go tonight, I will sue you for—"
"You're a liar!" Bo's voice thundered, and my mom reached over me and grabbed Ali, who was screeching with her head in her lap.
"How can you say they're not beating him?" I pleaded with her.
"They're yelling, mostly. They yanked him out of the chair and the chair fell over, then he kicked the chair, and then one of the other officers tripped over the chair."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"These noises are my life." She stared at the door, too calm.
"How can you let them talk to him like that?" I demanded. "They're the police! They're trashing him—"
"Torey." She cut me off and did not look thrilled. "I don't have time right now to give you a lesson in juvenile delinquency. Nobody is beating him, all right? There's just a language that these kids understand, and if you don't use it, you might as well speak French to them. They're just doing what cops do."
"Mom, just do what lawyers do. Please, do something for him," I mumbled, and I could feel myself starting to bawl.
"Would you care to tell me what happened tonight?" she snapped.
"We're ... in some trouble," I stammered.
"I wasn't born yesterday," she muttered, her jaw barely moving, like she was trying not to be overheard. "Thi
s looks like some chapter from my office files. Only problem is, my son is in it. What is going on?"
"Mom..." I heard Bo scream out the word liar again as the cops hollered for him to shut up. "Mom, please trust me. You gotta help that kid in there. He's innocent."
"Innocent of what?" Her mouth didn't move again, but the tone of her voice was totally pissed.
"Mrs. Creed wants the cops to pin Chris on him. He didn't do anything. Okay? You have to believe me and help him. He's a boon, so they're being mean to him—"
She jumped a little in her chair, to let me know I had said enough.
"Do you know anything about that kid in there, Torey?" she muttered again. "I don't care if he's from Guadalajara. They're not picking on him because of where he's from but because he's got a record as long as your arm. I have personally seen that kid in court five or six times, did you know that?"
"For what?" I asked, feeling my stomach sink through the floor.
"You name it. Breaking and entering, mostly—"
"Mom. He's stupid about it. He's not cut out to be a thief. That's why he keeps getting caught—"
She jumped around again, then cleared her throat, smiling at Chief Bowen's deputy, who went back to Mrs. Creed's little room, shouting, "Mrs. Creed, Chief Bowen says you have to calm down!"
"You are being very stupid right now, young man," my mom said. "I might be a lawyer. First, I'm your mother. As your mother I'm telling you: This is not the type of person to whom we expect you to endear yourself, considering we are paying five thousand dollars a year in property taxes to send you to Steepleton High School."
My brain leaped to Ali's house and Bo stomping up those stairs like it was nothing. I thought of him standing on the curb with me, talking about his sister Darla and Ali....He had to have so much courage just to live his life. He saved Ali. I didn't really care about the rest.
I shut my eyes tight as Chief Bowen kept nabbing at Bo. "Look, forget Egg Harbor, forget the juvenile delinquent slumber party up there. You want to go to Jamesburg, Richardson? You got one foot in real jail, mister. You have pushed us and pushed us for years—"