Breaking Rules (19 page)

And those were only the first
four results to pop up. The next few pages of results were littered with articles just like those, stories that praised Gabe for all the wonderful things he’d done during his short reign as the ‘angel among men.’ And most of the stories included a great picture of him posing with Lashell or some of the blue-shirt volunteers at various locations.

The longer I searched, the harder it became for me to ignore just how much everyone loved Gabe; there
wasn’t a single bit of negative light shed on him anywhere.

When I sat staring at the screen, watching the cursor blink in the Google search bar, I vividly remembered the look on Gabe
’s face as we sat at Shae’s and he’d asked
how many bad yearbook pictures did you dig up
? And then the genius idea hit me.

I
f I wanted to find something on his past, I needed to stop searching his present. I needed to set my search back a few years.

Gabriel Raddick + Desden High School + yearbook

After scrolling past a few familiar article headlines, I found a link to the Desden High School yearbook directory. Clicking a few years back, I scrolled through hundreds of rows of black and white senior pictures. When I finally landed amongst the R’s, I stopped breathlessly as I read—
Not Pictured: Gabriel Raddick
. I went back another year, and I still couldn’t find anything. With no luck from his senior or junior years, I searched the year prior, and that’s when I hit the jackpot. The first of the R’s, and there he was—the tenth grade version of Gabe.

His
long, blond hair was a mop-top mess, haphazardly disheveled and falling just below his ears. His bony face was mostly hidden behind large, thick-framed glasses, and the dark circles under his eyes made him look as though he’d gone weeks without sleep. He didn’t smile, nor did he frown. Gabe was expressionless, and his pale eyes were hollow and void of any emotion. He looked empty, drained. Awful.

If I thought Gabe looked
homeless the first time I met him on Highway 6, then I didn’t even know how to describe the image in front of me. This person, this younger version of Gabe… it was someone I would’ve never known.

If I
’d met this guy five years ago, back when the photograph was taken, I would never believe that he’d grow up to be the man he’d become, and I suddenly understood Jones’s shock. It was like looking at a complete stranger.

T
he more I studied the picture, the more I wanted to know about the boy looking back at me. I already knew how his life would pan out. I’d seen it in person; I’d read the articles. His future was destined to blossom into something beautiful and amazing. If that sophomore student only knew what he would make of himself, he might not have looked so lost and lonely. But what I really wanted to know, what my heart ached to learn, was what in the world happened to him to cause him to be so shut off, so distant, so broken. I could see it in his stare. Gabe had been lonely once, too, and that picture captured the loneliness.

That look, that desperate hopelessness in his
eyes, that was the same look he’d had out there on the street just a few hours ago.

It wasn
’t until I looked at the clock a while later that I realized I sat staring at the picture of Gabe for a long time—an hour, in fact, and it was already time to crash for the night. No longer anxious to look at another article, photo, or reminder of Gabe, I shut my laptop, set it aside, and dropped my head on my pillow.

All I
wanted was to find something, just one thing that would help me understand him, but I hadn’t found anything useful. In fact, after all the articles I’d read and the pictures I’d found—especially his yearbook photo—I found myself asking more questions and feeling more anxious to learn all the things about Gabe that he obviously didn’t want to share.

I closed my eyes and prayed for a dreamless sleep.

But I tossed and turned all night. All I could see was him.

“All right, let me have it!” I said eager to hear Georgia’s thoughts on the piece I’d written. “What did you think? It was good, right?”

I stood in front of
her desk, watching as she looked up at me with a broken stare. She let go of a long breath, and then she turned to the stack of papers next to her, pulled a sheet of paper from the middle, and passed it over to me.

“We can’t print this,” she said, tapping a finger on the page. “Journalism is supposed to be honest and objective, and your goal here
was to do nothing but tell the story.”

“That’s what I did,” I said, picking it up to reread the article I’d
poured my heart and soul into. “It’s a good piece.”

“Sure, it’s great,” she said, shrugging. “And if we were
trying to publish a story that captured the angelic essence of Gabriel Raddick, then I’d print your article today. But you were assigned to write a story about the program. You were supposed to get information from Gabe, to snag a few quotes for your article. But what you’ve written, no. That’s not objective journalism. Your perspective is skewed, and that won’t fly in this newsroom.”

She slid her rolling chair across the floor and stopped at the desk behind her. She plucked a folder from the large pile
of clutter growing on the back counter, and then she wheeled over to the desk in front of me. She opened the folder, retrieved a group of 8x10 glossy photos, and passed them over.

“I sent Santiago out to get some candid shots of the group in action this week,” she said. “
He came back with the proofs, and I think we can both agree that there’s a distinctive pattern.”

I flipped through the photographs, one by one, and it
only took a single moment to see the pattern she was referring to.

In every photograph of Gabe, I was there, too.

There was a picture of him and Lashell talking up on the stage in the auditorium, and I recognized the image quite well. It was the first day of the program, the Saturday afternoon just after I’d hit him with my car. He was still scruffy and dirty, but he wore a smile. Over in the corner of the photograph, Carla and Fletcher were leaning over a notebook, deep in conversation. I wasn’t focused on them or anything happening in our group. I was turned around in my seat, watching Gabe and Lashell, eavesdropping on a conversation I had no right to listen in on.

The second picture was taken shortly after Gabe sat down with
my team. While I was looking at Carla, my face all twisted and distorted, Gabe was staring at me. His elbow was propped on his leg, his head was resting in his hand, and he just studied me, as though he couldn’t believe I was getting worked up over whatever it was we were talking about in that moment. There was an intensity to his stare that was almost frightening.

He knows you.

I could hear Bailey’s voice ringing through my ears.

It means he likes you, Mandy
. He knows you.

I knew that now, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew me so well because of how closely he’d watched me.
He’d already confessed to it once before. He said he could recognize my gestures, and he knew I’d been tense. But that was
after
we called our truce and started over. If this photograph was any indication, then it meant that Gabe really had been studying me all along, from the very beginning. That probably explained how he’d been able to tell me and my sister apart at first glance.

He knew me.

“Mandy?”

“Hmm?”
I said, looking up from the photographs.

“
There are a dozen more just like those,” she said. “We have more from the orientation and from the car wash. And don’t forget I sit in the same cafeteria with you. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes.”

“What are talking about?”

“I know it’s only a school paper,” she continued. “And I understand that we don’t have to abide by all the journalism codes here the way they do out in the real world, but I take this job seriously; it’s my passion. When I go in for my college interview in the spring, I want to be able to tell the university that I have run this school paper as honestly as I could with integrity and dignity.”

I nodded.

“I can’t do that if I let you publish this article,” she said. “The writing is great; it’s snappy, and it’s entertaining. But you’re too close to the subject. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Raddick, and it’s none of my business, but I can’t let you write anything else about the program from here on out. It wouldn’t be fair to our readers.”

I nodded again, and then I managed to find my voice.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.” I wadded the article into a ball and tossed it in the trashcan next to her desk. Georgia’s eyes trailed over to the garbage before she looked back to me. “I can ask someone else to cover the story—”

“Don’t bother,” she said, picking up a piece of paper. “We’re just going to run the story
Mary Chris covered on the transportation changes. I’ll take care of the Raddick story myself, and we’ll get it in for the next issue.”

“I’m really sorry
.”

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “These t
hings happen. There’s always a Plan B.” A small smile pulled at her lips, and she leaned a little closer. “Now,” she said, taking an imaginary hat off of her head. “The editor cap is off. I know I said it’s none of my business, but I’m curious. What’s going on with you and Raddick? Everyone’s been talking.”

“What do you mean?” I asked,
frozen.

“You guys have been working very closely,” she said. “And we all saw you together in the lunch room on Monday. You can’t tell me you don’t see the way he looks at you.”

“Um… no, I mean… Gabe is just… Gabe.”

“Oh, don’t give me that,” she smiled. “I know we’re not friends, per
se, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you happy. You smile around him, and I don’t think anyone at this school has
ever
seen you smile. We thought it was like a medical impossibility for you or something.”

“
I smile,” I argued. “I smile all the time.”

“Mandy,” she said, looking at me from the top
s of her eyes. “Seriously. What’s going on?”

“I like him,” I said, finally admitting the words out loud for the first time. I barely recognized my voice as I heard that one simple truth slip off my lips. “I like Gabe… a lot. And you were right; I probably shouldn’t have written that article. I’m not unbiased or objective by any means. He’s amazing, and part of me wants nothing more than to shout it to the world so that everyone knows.”

Georgia
’s lips curved into the silliest of grins.

“I’ve got to get to homeroom,” I said,
backing away slowly. I stumbled away from the desk, completely unaware of my legs. I wanted to hate how easily even
thoughts
of Gabe could make me weak at the knees, but I couldn’t muster the slightest bit of resentment. I imagined I looked like Bambi trying to walk for the first time, and something about the way my skin tingled left me feeling a little woozy.
Gabe
left me feeling a little woozy. “Let me know if you have anything else for me. I’d be happy to make it up to you.”

She nodded once, and just as I reached my hand for the doorknob, she cleared her throat.
I turned back to her, and she stood behind her desk.

“
You know,” she said, and I tilted my head at her gentle tone, “I like this side of you—this smiling person, this new girl that you’ve become. I like it a lot.”

“Yeah, me
, too,” I said, returning her smile. “I’ll see you around, Georgia.”

“Mandy,” she said, just as I turned away again. “Have lunch with us today, okay?
”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling an even bigger smile stretch across my face. “Yeah, okay. That sounds great. I’ll see you at lunch then.”