Diary of a Witness (16 page)

January 9
th

First thing this morning, there was Will. Standing at my door. Like his whereabouts hadn’t been unknown for two days. Like he hadn’t just scared the living crap out of me.

I invited him into my room while my mom got ready for work.

“How did it go?” I asked.

He looked at me like I was speaking some foreign language. “How did what go?”

“The visit. You went to see your dad.”

I thought I saw something flit through his eyes, but his face stayed calm. Like a mask. Like a carved mask. Like it looked after Lisa Muller called him a loser loud
enough for everybody to hear. “Not worth talking about,” he said.

“I just got worried because—”

“Drop it,” he said. “Talk about something else.”

“Um. Okay. Did you see Rusty outside?”

“No. Why would I see Rusty outside?”

“Yesterday he was outside all day. That’s why I couldn’t come over and see if you were home.”

“Well, don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got my pepper spray.”

I heard my mom open the front door. I heard her call to me to have a nice day at school. When I heard her car start up in the driveway, I sat Will down on the end of my bed for that serious talk.

“You have to promise me nobody will get hurt,” I said.

“Does that count pepper spray in the eyes?”

“No, I mean hurt, like …”

“Look, I know what you’re thinking. But it’s talk, okay? It’s just talk. You stress too much. Don’t worry about it.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah. Come on. Bring your old jacket. We’re going.”

I broke the big rule on the way to school. I kept looking over my shoulder. I couldn’t find enough excuses to casually look around. And I kept thinking I felt them back there, just about to slam into my back. Like when you’re walking blindfolded, or with your eyes closed. If you think about a low-hanging tree branch, you just have to stop, or
open your eyes. You keep feeling like it’s right there, right about to smack you.

But it wasn’t. There was nothing there.

After school we went back to Will’s house and got my jacket. And he walked me home. It was raining, a gray, drizzly kind of rain. Just enough to make you feel miserable if you have to walk in it.

We were coming around the corner from his street onto the main drag. I didn’t even have to look over my shoulder. We just turned the corner and there they were. All five of them.

Just as I was wondering how confident he felt about taking on five guys with nothing but pepper spray, Will said, “Ernie, run!”

And we both took off, back down his street.

But I only ran about thirty steps before I started slowing down. See, people don’t get it. I just can’t do what they can do. Like if I went up to Will and put a hundred-pound backpack on his back and then yelled, Run! He’d look at me like, You’re kidding, right?

Then again, at a time like that, what else do you do?

I could hear their sneakers pounding on the pavement behind me. Getting closer and closer. And breathing was getting harder and harder. And I had a stitch in my side.

Will looked back and saw I was dropping behind. He
ran back and got me and hauled me along by the arm, which didn’t help as much as you would think. He looked behind us and then down to his house, and we both knew we would never make it. And it was all my fault. I was going to get us both killed.

Will made a sharp right and pulled us down the driveway of a total stranger’s house. We cut through the backyard. But I’m not sure how good an idea that was, because at the back of the yard was a chain-link fence. And to me that spelled a big dead end. But Will just kept pulling us toward it. I had no idea why. When we hit the fence, Will scrambled over it like it was hardly even there. He stopped and looked back at me, and we both knew how over it was. It’s like he didn’t get it until just that second. That five-foot fence might just as well have been a sixty-foot greased brick wall with razor wire on top. For me, anyway.

That’s when they caught me.

It all happened fast from this point on.

I ended up on the ground, but I’m not even sure how. And while I was rolling around on the ground, trying to get up, I felt the jacket go. It just got pulled right off me. There was nothing I could do. The ground was wet and muddy, and my jeans and shirt were getting soaked through, and it was cold. Without my jacket it was cold.

Then I heard Will yell out loud, really howl, and I knew somebody had hurt him bad.

That’s when we got the good news. A grown-up voice. It said, “Hey! What the hell are you boys doing?”

All five jocks jumped over the fence and ran.

I sat up and looked around.

First I saw the five jocks running through the backyard on the other side of the fence. One of them had my jacket in his hand, flapping out behind him, and I could see the whole side of it had gotten soaked in the mud.

Then I turned and saw a woman running out the back door of the house, headed in our direction. Will was sitting on the grass with his hands over his eyes. I thought he was crying. I thought he was just so upset that he was sitting in the mud, sobbing.

Then I saw the little canister of pepper spray lying by his right leg, and I realized what must’ve happened. He must’ve tried to use it on one of the jocks. And gotten it turned around on him.

“You boys okay?”

The woman was helping me up. My hip was hurt from falling, but I was trying to convince her I was okay. I didn’t want more trouble. I just wanted to get to Will’s house and be safe. She tried to help Will up, but he couldn’t do it. He just sat there, huddled over, like all he could think about was the pain. Every couple of seconds a little noise would come out of him. It hurt to even watch.

“You want me to call the police? Report this?”

That got Will to his feet. “No, that’s okay,” he said.

“Thanks, though. I just live down the street. We’ll just go home now. We’re fine. We just need to go home.”

I had to lead Will all the way home. He still couldn’t hold his eyes open. He still couldn’t see.

I stood in Will’s bathroom with him, watching him lean into the sink and run water from the tap into his eyes. At least, for a split second or two at a time. When he could bring himself to open them.

“I’ll have to rat them out,” I said.

“They’ll kill you.”

“But I have to get it back. I can’t just let them keep the jacket. I can’t. I have to get it back before my mom notices it’s gone.”

“What if they’ve already ruined it? What if you get to school Monday and find it lying in little shreds in front of your locker?”

“Please don’t say that. It makes me sick to think about that.”

“Well, we have to think what to do.”

“There’s nothing to think about. I have to go to school Monday and tell the principal. She might even call the cops. They might have to look in those guys’ houses. They’re probably too smart to bring it to school.”

“You’re taking your life into your hands.”

“There’s nothing else I can do.”

He didn’t say anything more then. Just turned off the tap. I helped him find his way to the couch, and then I
brought him some ice from the freezer, wrapped in a dish towel. He pressed it onto his eyes with a little noise. One of those noises it hurts to listen to. We just sat there awhile, not saying anything.

Then Will said, “I let you down.”

“Stop it, Will.”

“I did.”

“There were five of them. What were you supposed to do?”

“I told you I’d take care of things. And I totally blew it.”

I had no idea what to say.

The only thing that could be worse than losing my jacket was if Will took it on as one more thing he’d done wrong. Another terrible thing that was all Will’s fault.

Just as I opened my mouth to try to talk him out of it, he said, “Could you go home now? No offense, but I just need to be alone right now.”

“Okay, but I just—”

He didn’t even let me finish. “Please? Don’t talk now. Just let me think about this by myself.”

I walked out and left him like that.

Nothing happened on the way home. They got what they wanted. They were done. They must’ve had enough victory for one day, even for them.

I’m writing this at bedtime. I got home before my mom. If she leaves for work before I leave for school Monday, she won’t notice I’m not wearing my jacket. But that’s just one day. That’s just Monday. After that I don’t know.

January 12
th

Monday morning, and Will didn’t come pick me up for school. I wasn’t sure whether to panic or not. I mean, after all, he only started picking me up at my house to protect the jacket. And the jacket was gone.

Then again, I should have heard something from him. Right? All weekend? I called. I messaged. I e-mailed. But it’s like Will didn’t exist. Like I might’ve just made him up.

I sat in my room, chewing my nails and the inside of my lip. Every now and then I’d press my fingers real lightly on my hip, just to feel how sore it was. Like I’d been doing all weekend. I think when other people fall, it doesn’t hurt
them so much. I guess it’s just bruised. I just keep praying it’s something that’ll get better all on its own.

I knew I had to go to school on my own. But I couldn’t leave until my mom left for work. Otherwise she’d notice the jacket was missing.

Then I heard her get into the shower, and I knew this was my chance. My big window of opportunity. On my way past the bathroom I yelled, “Bye, Mom. I’m going to school.”

I think she heard me. I heard her say something. But I don’t know what it was. I didn’t stop to listen. I just got out as fast as I could.

Will was in his room when I got there. He didn’t even answer the door. I had to let myself in. His mom wasn’t around, either. His mom was never around. The only time I ever saw her was that night at the hospital. And I just sort of saw her hurry by. She never actually said anything to me. I wondered if she’d gone back to L.A. and left Will on his own. If she had, he wouldn’t have said anything anyway.

Will was standing in front of the mirror, looking at himself. Just standing there for the longest time. It was weird. He looked different. He was too calm. And he was wearing really baggy jeans. Nothing like he’d ever worn before. Like he took them from his father’s closet and made them fit with a tight belt.

I sat on the edge of his bed and watched him watch himself.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“That’s a strange question. We always walk to school together.”

“Not today.”

He just stood there some more. He turned sideways to the mirror and looked at himself that way, too.

I looked down at the rug by his bed, and something caught my eye. A hacksaw and some shiny metal shavings. Like he’d been sawing through metal, right there in his room. No newspapers, no drop cloth, just right on the carpet. Next to that was a thin metal tube. Well, narrow, I mean. It was made out of thick metal. I picked it up. You could tell which end had been sawed. The other end was smooth, and it had a smooth bump of metal sticking up right at the end. A little bump, like … It took me a second to think what it reminded me of.

I looked up to see him looking at me.

That’s when it hit me. Like the barrel of a gun. I looked across the room, and there was his father’s gun rack. Broken into, moved up from the basement. The two deer rifles were still there. But the shotgun was missing.

The whole thing got so clear and so real that the world backed off and started feeling like a dream. I could feel my heart pound, and everything else was far off. Like the world switched to black-and-white and static.

“Don’t follow me,” he said. “Think up a reason you’re late. Make it a good one, so they know you weren’t in on this. Give me at least an hour. Don’t be anywhere near the school for an hour.”

“You promised, Will.”

“This is the best thing for everybody. Believe me.” He patted me on the shoulder before he walked out.

Maybe I should have stopped him. Tackled him or something. Sat on him until he listened to reason. But I didn’t think he ever would. And besides, I was afraid of him. I was too scared to try to stop him myself. It had gone too far for that. It was beyond my control now. Everybody’s control.

I grabbed for the phone.

Dialed 911.

This time I was smart. I told them the exact nature of the emergency. Right away. I said, “There’s a boy named Will Manson, and he goes to the high school, and he’s on his way there now, and he has a sawed-off shotgun hidden in his jeans. And if you don’t get somebody down there to stop him, five people are going to die. I don’t know if he strapped it to his leg or what, but he’s wearing baggy jeans, and this is not a joke. He’s serious. He’s really going to do this thing.”

“Did you see the gun?” she asked. “How do you know he’s going to do this?”

“I’m his best friend,” I said.

Then I started to cry, and I hung up the phone.

I ran almost all the way to school. Kind of walking-running, walking-running. As fast as I could make myself go. I don’t know what to write about what I was thinking. Because, really, I don’t know if I was thinking anything at all. It’s like a switch in my brain was turned off. I just put all my energy into going fast.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I did have one thought. I thought about what Uncle Max said, about how I would feel if I didn’t do enough soon enough. But it was a kind of numb thought. I don’t know how else to describe it. It hit my brain and felt cold, like ice, and then I couldn’t really feel myself have the thought anymore. I kept it away by saying it wouldn’t be like that. It wouldn’t. It just couldn’t.

When I got there, I saw two police cars and a crowd of kids. It’s like nobody was going in. They were just standing there in this big, wide half circle. Nobody was saying a word, which was alien-planet weird all in itself.

I had to push my way through to the front, but it wasn’t easy. Usually I’m not good at that stuff. Usually I would stand there and say, Excuse me, or some lame thing like that. But this was not any other day. I just elbowed my way through. I remember being really aware of the sounds people made. Like a grunt, because I pushed somebody. Or a noise that wasn’t even a word, but you could sort of tell it meant,
How rude. The only real word was, “Hey.” I just kept pushing. My eyes were telling me the crowd was only about ten or a dozen kids deep, but it seemed like I just kept pushing. It seemed to go too slow. It felt like one of those dreams where the monster is after you but your feet are just so heavy. You feel like molasses, creeping along. Just when you want to go fastest, it stops working.