Hit and Run (9 page)

“It was stupid,” I said. “I don't even know why I did it.”

Jen's green eyes widened in surprise.

“You mean, it's
true
?” she said. It took a moment for her astonishment to sink in. Jen had thought I was innocent. Maybe she'd even argued the point with her mother. And now here I was telling her the opposite. “You really stole from that truck?”

I had been embarrassed when the two cops took me out of the school and I saw kids watching at the windows. I felt stupid when Billy showed up, all mad because he had to take time off work on my account. But now I was ashamed of myself. I knew Jen spent a lot of time trying to convince her parents that I was okay. I could imagine her doing the innocent-until-proven-guilty thing with them at the dinner table last night. So I told her that I
had tossed my box a block from the truck.

“You shouldn't have taken it in the first place,” she said. She looked and sounded exactly like her mother. But she was right, that was the thing. I didn't argue with her. I agreed with her. She liked that.

“So, what's going to happen?” she said. She started walking slowly and waited for me to fall into step beside her.

I told her about my court date and about what Billy had said. I didn't tell her how it had all started—how Vin and Sal had just been trying to cheer me up about good old Patrick. I didn't tell her, either, that Vin and Sal had been in on it with me and that I had refused to give them up. I didn't think she'd find that as admirable as Billy had.

I spotted Vin almost as soon as I got to school. He was at one end of the parking lot, leaning against a lamppost. He must have been looking for me, because he immediately shoved himself off the post and started toward me. When Jen saw him coming, she said, “See you later.” Her voice wasn't exactly ringing with anticipation, and I started to think about Patrick again. I don't know what she had thought of him on Saturday night when she'd been entertaining him, but I'd have bet a month's wages that he was looking pretty good to her right now. I bet he'd never done anything as stupid as getting arrested for stealing cupcakes. Bet he never would, either.

Vin came up to me, but he didn't talk to me. He didn't even stop walking when he got close. Instead he acted like a spy or an undercover cop. He walked right
by me, and as he passed I heard him say, “Backstage after homeroom.”

I didn't ask what the matter was. I didn't have to. After ten years, Vin's paranoid mind was no mystery to me. I figured he was afraid the cops were watching, which didn't make much sense to me. Sure, the bakery company was going to press charges, but we had stolen pastries, not money or audio equipment. Still, maybe if Vin was the one who had been nailed and I was the one who was worried about what the cops thought or what they had found out, I would have acted the same way. So I didn't talk back to him. Didn't even look at him. I just met him backstage like he asked.

The place was deserted. The auditorium is used for public meetings, concerts, the annual school play, and assemblies. The rest of the time, it fills up with dust.

“What'd you tell them?” Vin asked after he checked to make sure there was no one around. He didn't ask me how it had gone or what had happened. He didn't even ask what the cops were going to do to me.

“Nothing,” I said.

“How come they knew to arrest you?”

“Someone saw me. Whoever it was knew my name, where I live, and what school I go to—the cop who arrested me called it a positive identification.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And they know it was me. They know I wasn't alone. But they don't know who was with me.”

“No one saw me?”

I noticed that he said
me
, not
me and Sal
. Guess it was every man for himself now.

“If they did, they must not have recognized you.”

From the look on his face, you'd have thought Vin had just scored big-time with that girl who looked like a model.

“And you didn't tell them anything?” he asked.

“Jeez, thanks a lot!”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, just asking, that's all. So now what?”

I filled him in. I felt like I'd told the story a hundred times already.

“And you're not going to give us up?”

“All the stuff you've done, Vin, have I ever given you up?”

Vin slapped me on the back. “You're okay, Mike.”

I kept my mouth shut. Maybe the cop was right. Maybe I was an idiot to be taking all the blame for something that I hadn't done alone. But what was the point of Vin and Sal getting busted with me? It wasn't going to teach them anything they didn't already know. And it wasn't going to change the fact that I had been caught more or less red-handed.

Everyone knew what had happened, which meant that I got the full eyeball treatment all day. Everybody had to look at the no-brains who'd put his personal freedom on
the line for a carton of cupcakes. A couple of guys kidded me about it. None of my teachers said anything, but the ones who had already pegged me as a loser seemed to be congratulating themselves for their character-judging skills, while the few who had been willing to believe I wasn't all bad just shook their heads and looked at me with disappointment in their eyes.

Riel didn't say or do anything. He glanced at me when he passed me in the hall that morning, but that was it. I breathed a sigh of relief when he was out of sight. I guess because now I knew he used to be a cop, I thought he was going to chew me out. Turns out he didn't care one way or the other.

That afternoon I headed for work. I was even looking forward to it. It would be a nice change from school, where the major topic of conversation was how stupid I had been.

Melissa, one of the cashiers, smiled at me when I came through the door. Eileen, who was old enough to be my grandmother, said, “Hey, Mike. Hope you're feeling better.” I told her I was, then coughed to prove that I really had been sick. I headed to the back of the store to pick up my apron—we all had to wear green aprons with the store logo and our name badge on them. On the way down the cereal and baking goods aisle, Mr. Johnson, the assistant manager, stopped me.

“Mr. Scorza wants to see you,” he said.

My stomach did a backflip. I knew Mr. Scorza liked me. I also knew that he had been operating this store
for longer than I had been alive. He knew all the other storeowners on this part of Danforth. I remembered what Constable Carlson had said—I had been positively identified by a local shopkeeper. With my luck, it would turn out to be a friend of Mr. Scorza's.

I went to the front of the store and knocked on the door to Mr. Scorza's office.

“Come in,” he said, his muffled voice deep and ominous, like the rumble of an avalanche.

I opened the door and made my way up the little flight of stairs about as enthusiastically as most people would navigate through a minefield. Over the piles of boxes at the top of the stairs I saw Mr. Scorza's face. He looked at me and nodded, but he didn't smile.

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Scorza?”

“Come in and sit down, Michael,” he said.

Sit down? Mr. Scorza's office was so crowded that the only chair in it was the one behind his desk, and the only person who got to sit in that was Mr. Scorza. But as I got closer, I saw that he had crammed another chair into the tiny patch of uncluttered floor space in front of his desk.

“I'm going to come right to the point,” Mr. Scorza said. I could feel sweat under my arms. My palms were damp. Good news never followed an introduction like that. “It was a hard thing to have to do, Michael,” he said. “A very hard thing. But what choice does a man have? You see something happen, you can't pretend you didn't see it. A person breaks the law and you see him
and you say nothing, that's the same as breaking the law yourself.”

I had grabbed a slice of pizza in the school cafeteria for lunch and had washed it down with a can of Coke. That was hours ago. It should have settled by now. But as I sat on that rickety chair listening to Mr. Scorza, I was pretty sure it was going to come up again. Up and all over my shoes.

“I believe in leading an honest life,” Mr. Scorza said. “I believe in obeying the law. I believe in doing the right thing. So on Monday night, Michael, when I saw you steal things from that truck and then run away, what could I do?” He looked right at me. “I called the police.”

Mr. Scorza had turned me in.

“I always trusted you, Michael,” he said. “It never occurred to me not to trust you. Maybe this is because of what happened to your poor mother. You'll excuse me if I say that your uncle does not have the same character as his sister. So maybe part of the fault is his. But you're fifteen years old, Michael. Almost a man. And that wasn't your uncle out on the street on Monday night. That was you. You and your friends. So you have to take responsibility for what you did.”

I thought about telling him I had already confessed. But I didn't because the truth was that I had confessed only after I had been positively identified—by Mr. Scorza.

“You have to pay the price for what you did,” he said. “Deciding on that price is mostly out of my hands. It's
up to a judge to decide how you should be punished for what you did.”

“I'm really sorry, Mr. Scorza,” I said. I was sorry that I had done it, I was sorry that he had seen it, I was sorry that he had called the cops. I don't mean I wished he hadn't called them, either. I was just sorry that I had made him do it. He looked almost more upset than me.

“I'm sorry, too, Michael,” he said. “But I need to know that I can trust the people I work with. I couldn't trust Thomas because he was always taking too many breaks when he should have been working hard for the money I paid him. And I can't trust a thief working for me.”

No.
I could feel my head shaking involuntarily.
Please, no, don't do this.

“I'd never steal from you, Mr. Scorza.”

He looked sternly at me. “You only steal from strangers, is that it, Michael?”

“I don't steal at all,” I said. “I mean, I just did it once, and it was stupid. I don't even know why I did it. But I swear it'll never happen again, Mr. Scorza.”

“I hope it won't, Michael,” he said. When he said that, I thought he was going to give me a second chance. “But what you did was wrong. What you did makes me wonder if I can trust you, and I don't like to work with people I have to wonder about. More importantly, I don't think it would be a good message to give you—that you can steal and not have to live with the consequences. I'm sorry, Michael, but I'm going to have to let you go.”

My eyes started to burn. I felt like a little kid, fighting back tears.

“Please, Mr. Scorza, I need this job. I
want
this job. I like working here.”

He crossed his hands over his chest.

“I have nothing more to say, Michael.”

I don't know how I got down those stairs, but I did. When I got home, Billy wasn't there. I went into the living room, flopped down on the couch, and flicked on the TV. Don't ask me what I watched. I wasn't paying attention. Then I couldn't stand it anymore, just sitting there, doing nothing. I grabbed my jacket and headed down to the park.

All the little kids had gone home, and the park was quieter than usual. I climbed to the top of the slide and sat there, my feet dangling from the platform, thinking how disappointed Mr. Scorza had looked and wondering how soon I would be able to find another job. It was already dark when I noticed a guy jogging through the park. I didn't pay any attention, though, until it was too late. Riel. In a T-shirt and sweatpants. Looking up at me.

“Don't tell me I forgot to give you homework,” he said.

I looked away from him.

“How'd it go with the police?” he said.

I shrugged. The message I was trying to convey: Go away.

“I did a little grocery shopping today,” he said. “Had a chat with a cashier named Eileen. Nice lady. You know her?”

I didn't answer.

“She told me you got fired,” he said.

Good old Eileen.

“What happened?” he said.

“I don't want to talk about it.”

He shrugged. “Don't talk, then,” he said, looking up at me. “Just listen. From what I've heard, you admitted you did it. You're going to have to go to court. You're going to have to tell the judge something. As it stands, you could be in for some trouble. You were seen with two other boys, but you won't tell the police who they are. That doesn't matter to the police, Mike. They aren't stupid. But it could matter to you and to a judge. Then there's that incident with the bike.” He knew about that, too? “If I were the judge, I might think you weren't sorry. I might want to take steps to make sure you felt sorry. And with your home life and your uncle's character—”

“What about Billy's character?” I said. Who did he think he was, criticizing Billy? “Billy looks after me.”