On the Other Side of the Bridge (7 page)

Back then, Lonnie had a crush on her, and he thought she liked him, too. But in elementary school, he was too embarrassed to admit that he was interested in girls, so he shied away whenever she tried to talk to him.

Now, Yvette was easily the hottest girl at Wyatt Middle School. Only this time, she was the one who avoided Lonnie. He couldn't blame her, really. Why would she bother to pay attention to him when she had so many guys hitting on her? Maybe he'd tell her he had seen Mr. Treviño. He figured she might enjoy hearing that bit of news.

Yvette was standing by the window chatting with Megan Patterson and Lisa Yarbrough. Lonnie waited nearby for an opening. When the girls noticed him, they stopped talking. Unfortunately, all he managed to say to Yvette was, “Hey, you'll never guess who I ran into at the grocery store the other day,” when the bell rang, and everyone took their seats. Mr. Arrington entered the classroom, reached inside his costume box and pulled out a long, priest's robe and a wooden cross.

After class, Lonnie tried to catch up with Yvette, but she disappeared into a crowd of students before he could reach her.

He headed to Mrs. Ridley's for math, a class he absolutely hated. They had been studying how to multiply and divide fractions, something Lonnie still couldn't
figure out how to do. As it was, he could barely multiply and divide whole numbers.

Next was science, with probably the oldest living teacher in the world, Mr. Malone, a frail man with a gaunt face and a bony body. The kids joked that Mr. Malone taught science with his identical twin brother, the life-size skeleton he kept in his room. Lonnie's mind drifted as Mr. Malone, in a quivery voice, rattled off something about ecosystems.

By lunchtime, Lonnie's brain felt like mush. After he bought his food, he looked around for a place to sit and noticed a bunch of kids huddled around Slurpee.

“It was freaking awesome!” he heard Slurpee tell the guys. “The guard pulls out his gun and fires at me. Bam! But I duck. Then I shoot back with both fingers. Pow! Pow!” Slurpee demonstrated how he did it, which made the guys burst with laughter.

José Castillo called Lonnie over. “Did the guard really shoot at you guys?”

Lonnie sat his tray down at their table and glowered at Slurpee. “Nobody shot at us,” he said.

“The guard didn't shoot at them,” Slurpee told the guys, holding onto his fantasy. “He shot at me. Lonnie and Axel had their heads covered up, so they couldn't hear or see nothing. But that bullet flew right by my ear.”

Lonnie realized he used to tell crazy stories like that when he was little, but he was seven years old at the time, not fourteen.

Axel entered the cafeteria. When José saw him, he motioned for him to join them.

“Did the security guard at the paper company really shoot at you guys when you broke into the warehouse
yesterday?” José asked. “'Cause that's what Slurpee's saying, but Lonnie says he didn't.”

Axel's face grew chalky, and he stared at Lonnie, speechless.

“Herman's just messing with you,” Lonnie said, referring to Slurpee by his real name. After what his mother had told him, he thought it would be best if they ditched the Slurpee nickname. “We went to the paper company to look for comic books and stuff, but a guard chased us out of there. That's all that happened.” Lonnie gave Herman a dead-level stare, letting him know he wasn't going to back him up. “Let's go out in the hallway real quick,” he told him and Axel. “I need to talk to you about something.”

By calling them away, Lonnie was certain the guys at the table suspected there might be some truth to Herman's story, but he couldn't worry about it. Outside the cafeteria, he shared what his mother had said with them.

“From now on, you can't let anybody call you Slurpee,” he told Herman. “And you can't tell anybody else about what happened at the warehouse.”

“But everybody already knows,” he said.

“Well, tell them you made it up. Tell them you were just kidding.”

Axel groaned. “Man, I wish we'd never gone to the paper company. If the police find out we broke into the place, we could all end up with criminal records. I probably won't even get to go to college.”

“Chill out, Torres,” Lonnie said. “It's over, okay? As long as Slurpee … I mean, Herman stops talking about it, everybody will forget about it in a day or two.”

They went back inside the cafeteria and ate their food. Before long, the bell rang, and it was time for fourth period.

On his way to Progressive Reading, Lonnie thought about what excuse he would give Ms. Kowalski for why he hadn't completed his book project. He considered turning in what he had done so far, but decided that if he showed her the silly book cover he had drawn, he might make things worse.

After school, he found his mother sitting in the kitchen alone, staring at the wall, her face somber. He dropped his backpack on a chair and greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.

“Lonnie, sit down,” she said. “We need to talk about something very important.”

He was expecting this. Ms. Kowalski had told him she was going to notify his parents about his missing work. He took a seat and braced himself for the bawling out that was coming.

“I received an email from your reading teacher this afternoon,” his mother said.

Lonnie hung his head and stared at the table top. “Yeah, I know.”

“Why did you tell me that you had finished your project when you knew you hadn't?” she demanded to know.

Refusing to meet her eyes, he shrugged. “I did most of it. Really. And I was going to do the rest of it before class, but time got away from me.”

“Ms. Kowalski said that she's deducting ten points from your final grade for each day your project is late. Ten points, Lonnie! Ten points!”

“Mom, I'm going to turn it in tomorrow,” he said, finally looking at her. “I promise. I've got some other homework to do, but I'll start—”

“That's not all.” She paused and took a deep breath. Her face looked troubled, as if Lonnie's book project was the least of her concerns. He thought she was going to tell him that a friend or family member had died. Or maybe she was going to rag on his dad because he still hadn't found a job.

“I had lunch with Otis Barnaby today,” she said. “Lonnie, he wasn't mistaken about what he heard when those kids broke into the warehouse. One boy did call another one Slurpee.” She took another long breath, as if talking to him was exhausting her. “Otis also gave me a description of the clothes the three boys were wearing.”

Lonnie tried not to show fear, but his insides melted, and he felt as if he might wet his pants. His mother rose from the table and went to the utility room. She returned, holding Lonnie's green polo shirt and blue jeans.

“Are these the clothes you had on yesterday?”

L
ONNIE HAD MIXED FEELINGS
about telling lies. He knew it was wrong to do it. The Bible said he wasn't supposed to lie. On the other hand, lying had helped him get out of some tough spots. When his mother refused to listen to reason after he pleaded with her not to make him go to church, he decided to take matters into his own hands. People might say that by his leading his mother to think he was in church instead of at Catfish Creek, he was lying. But at least it helped preserve the peace at home. He also knew his mother would jump all over him if she learned that he hadn't finished his book project, so he told her he'd done it. That little fib didn't turn out too well, but it was fixable. He could still turn in his project, even if it meant that Ms. Kowalski would take ten points off his final grade.

But if he ever considered getting righteous and truthful, now wasn't the time to start. There was no way he could convince his mother that, yes, he had gone inside the warehouse, but no, he hadn't vandalized it. Too much damage had been done to the place. Plus, the Marsville police had gotten involved.

Lonnie took the green polo shirt from his mother and studied it, furrowing his brows, as if he was thinking hard. “No,” he said. “Yesterday, I wore a blue polo shirt. I wore
this one to church Sunday. I was going to wear the blue one to church, but it was kind of wrinkled, and I didn't want to ask you to iron it for me, so I wore this green one.” Steeling his nerves, he asked, “Why do you want to know what I had on yesterday? Do you think I was one of those kids who broke into the paper company?”

Unfazed, his mother eyed him skeptically. “If you didn't wear this green shirt yesterday, why was it sitting on top of your dirty clothes hamper instead of the blue one?”

Good question. Still, Lonnie didn't let it rattle him. “Oh, well, you see, all my clothes were on the floor, and I knew you were going to do the laundry today, so I picked them up and threw them in the hamper.” Shrugging innocently, he added, “I guess my green shirt just ended up on top.”

His mother wasn't a cop, but she had been trained to be one, and most times, she could sniff out a lie. “Lonnie, I want you to be truthful with me. Where did you go yesterday?”

Keeping up his deception, he answered, “Um, I spent most of the day here at the house reading my book. I did go out for a little while to see Axel 'cause I wanted him to help me with my project. See, Axel's already read
The Dumfrees Move In
. That's the book I have to read for my class. The story's about this family that lives in Phoenix and Mr. Dumfree's been transferred by his company to Los Angeles, but their house …” He paused. “Anyway, Axel said he'd help me with my project.”

“And you still couldn't get it done on time?” she scoffed.

“It's just that we started playing with Axel's video games and stuff,” Lonnie said, trying to look guilty. “I guess it just got late. After that, I came home.”

“Did you and Axel go anywhere?” she persisted.

Lonnie faked a laugh. “Mom, are you kidding? You know Axel's parents. They never let him out of their sight. Remember? They wouldn't let him go to the mall with me even after you talked to them and said you'd take us. No, we just hung out at his house. You can call his mom and ask her if you don't believe me.”

He knew she wouldn't call. His mother didn't care for Axel's parents. Lonnie had heard her refer to them as pseudo-intellectual snobs. He wasn't sure what that meant, but he didn't think she was paying them a compliment.

“No, that's fine,” she said, although Lonnie had a feeling she wasn't thoroughly convinced. She took his polo shirt and jeans back to the utility room and crammed them into the clothes washer.

“Where's Dad?” Lonnie asked, wondering if she had shared her suspicions with him.

“Who knows?” she said with a roll of her eyes.

She washed her hands in the kitchen sink. Then she took out a package of ground beef, a carton of eggs, an onion and a bottle of ketchup from the fridge, items she had picked up at the grocery store that her husband had neglected to buy the day before.

Feeling satisfied that he had gotten away with his fat lie, Lonnie grabbed an apple from the fruit dish.

“Don't snack too much,” his mother said. “Dinner will be ready in about an hour.”

“What are we having?”

“Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and green beans.”

“M-m-m. I love your meatloaf,” Lonnie said. In a way, his praising his mother's meatloaf was his reward to her for believing his story.

He started to leave when his mother stunned him with another shocker. “Listen, Otis is pretty sure that the boys who broke into the warehouse are students from your school. He told me that the big kid, the one called Slurpee, looked old enough to be in high school. But Madison is a little too far from the warehouse, so Otis is sticking with his hunch that the vandals are Wyatt Middle School students. Anyway, he's thinking about going to your school tomorrow to talk to your principal. Otis wants to look through yearbook photos to see if he can identify this Slurpee kid. If he can, maybe the boy will lead him to the others who vandalized the warehouse with him.”

Lonnie's knees buckled, and this time he did pee in his pants a little.

They were done for. If Mr. Barnaby showed up at his school, it would take him only minutes before he recognized Herman Gilmore from his yearbook photo. And shortly after that, Lonnie and Axel would be called out of their classrooms to go to the office, where Herman would be sitting with Dr. Lambert, the principal, and Mr. Barnaby, spilling his guts. The second they walked inside the office, Herman would point to them and say, “Yeah, those are the guys who were with me at the warehouse.”

Lonnie tried calling Axel, but his cell phone went to automatic voice mail. Didn't he ever charge that thing? He tried Axel's house phone and Daisy picked up.

“Hey, Daisy,” Lonnie said, “put Axel on the phone for me, would you?”

He heard a muffled voice in the background to which Daisy replied, “It's
el vago
!”

God, he hated that name.

Axel's mom took the phone. “I'm sorry, Lonnie, but Axel can't talk to you right now. He's got a lot of homework. Would you like to leave him a message?”

Yeah, tell him that the cops are gonna arrest him at school tomorrow for breaking into the Martex warehouse. They're gonna lock him up in jail, and he won't get to go to college 'cause you're gonna kill him
.

“No, just tell him to call me as soon as he gets a chance,” Lonnie said.

After he hung up, he let himself drop on his bed. How was he going to get out of this? What lie could he possibly come up with to convince his parents and Mr. Barnaby that he hadn't been at the warehouse? He racked his brain for answers but found none. Even if he denied the whole thing and claimed that Herman was making it up, he knew Axel would cave in and start blubbering like an idiot. He'd tell the whole world that they had gone inside the warehouse.