Snitch (24 page)

“
HE STOOD ME UP
”

“
No s###????????
”

“
No shit!!!
”

“
Sucks.
Sorry. Meet me 2morow usual place?
”

“

”

“
Gotta
go.
H8
lgebra
<3 U!
”

“
<3 u 2
”

I turned off the phone and texted Johnny just to be sure. Fifteen minutes and no answer later I said some really choice curse words, brushed my teeth
,
and rolled into bed. Johnny had never acted like this before. I didn’t know how to feel: pissed or scared.

Pissed or scared. I didn’t know which one to pick, but I was leaning towards pissed.

Coach still needed help and my plan was to make him think I was a great guy he could count on, so I admit it
:
I sucked up to him a little and promised to help with his end
-
of
-
the
-
year equipment inventory. I let myself into the locker room and buried myself in the corner counting practice jerseys.

My brain hadn’t blocked out the welcoming smell of the locker room yet, and it was weird to think I actually liked it. After all
,
the smell of hundreds of sweaty guys combined with their lockers stuffed with dirty uniforms shouldn’t be something I craved, but I couldn’t help it. I
t was also the smell of games,
excitement
,
and friendship. I took one more breath and realized my brain had already begun to
di
s
miss
the odor.

I couldn’t turn on the lights because
I
need
ed
a key to do that, but three emergency lights illuminated the locker room to a quiet dusk and by positioning myself on the hard floor under one of them I could see well enough.
I sat w
ith my back against the brick wall, separating the colors and marking what I counted on paper. After this I would move into the weight room where the real inventory would begin.

Jerseys were easy. So far I had twenty-seven yellow and nineteen green, most of them ripped and stained. I didn’t care how many more were in the pile; I was more concerned about how Coach was planning to get the stink out of them because I figured I would be wearing them next season. I was contemplating throwing away a yellow jersey with both shoulders ripped out when I heard the voices.

“Get in here. We’ve got to talk. Sit down and listen!”

There were sounds, shuffling and bumping.
Bodies settling on the wooden benches between the lockers a few rows from where I sat.

“We can’t change it, it’s done! But we can
control it.”

The voice was desperate, but familiar. My brain searched the sound and patterns of it. Seth. It was definitely Seth.

“No one but the three of us knows anything. ANYTHING! So all we have to do
is
shut up
and
keep it that way!”

“I don’t know if I can,” a voice rasped. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

I knew that voice too, I knew it. I closed my eyes
,
trying to place it, but couldn’t.

“Look, we are each other’s alibis. I was with you guys; you were with me. We weren’t even near the place. Then we went home. We were in bed. We weren’t even there!”

“But we were…we left…”

“Shut the hell up!” Seth ordered. “We were NOT there!”

“We should have stopped…” a voice stammered.

My breath caught, frozen half in and half outside of me, my lungs no longer aware of how to breathe; I knew that voice as well as I knew my own. Whatever they were talking about
,
this is what had been bothering Johnny; this was the thing that had stolen the life from his eyes.

“Did you fix POS?”

“I put
Bondo
over the holes,” Wes answered. “There were lots of holes.”

“Use some white spray paint. Put it all over so it looks like you were just trying to make the truck look better.”

“Okay.”

The discussion got muffled here, but Johnny’s “We should have gone back,” was loud and clear.

“Would you shut up with that?”

“He’s waking up you know...”

“Yeah,” Seth’s voice was raspy, nervous. “And that’s all he’s doing. He doesn’t remember a thing.”

“What if he does?” Wes asked.

“He won’t.”

“What if he…”

The morning bell made me jump like a
stupid
horror movie. Only this was real. Seth’s voic
e grew insistent
.

“
Go to class—every
day. ACT NORMAL. If you don’t act normal, you’re go
ing to
blow the whole thing.”

There were more sounds,
footsteps and thumps, as they stood up to leave
the locker room.

“And another thing you better think about,” Seth warned, his voice low and threatening. “We were all there. That means one of us is as guilty as the rest of us. We’re in this together, and you better remember that.”

The door slammed leaving me sitting alone.
And suddenly, I knew!
I shook so hard, I barely made it to the toilet where I threw up the cereal Mom had insisted I eat that morning. I wiped my mouth with the nasty, yellow jersey I had found so revolting just a few minutes ago. It didn’t matter now.

That morning I did something I had never done before: I walked out of school. It was easier than I thought; I simply
strode down the main hallway, past the office, and
out the double doors and all the way home. I guess it took over an hour, but my brain was racing so fast I couldn’t be sure.

I had three texts from Liz, all saying
,
“
Where RU?
”

My fingers responded
a lie
:
“
Home. Sick.
”
My phone dinged a reply, but I never looked. I couldn’t.

Once inside the house I checked for Mom. She was gone
,
which gave me the time I needed to work through the recycle bin
,
which was thankfully full. Up to then I had only listened casually to Mom and Dad’s discussions about the man lying in the road. Now I snatched the stack of newspapers up and tore through them looking for articles, notices, anything I could find. There was plenty to look at. The story had made the front page a few days in a row and the second page several others. I ripped each article out and went in search of today’s paper. Since Dad insists no one touch his paper until he is finished reading it, I couldn’t add
the article to my collection, but there it was back on the front page waiting for me to scan it.

The man’s name was Brian Weston, and Mom had had it right: he was a thirty-three year old father of three little girls
, ages
two, four
,
and five. He had been left for dead in the middle of County Road 87 with a blow to the back of the head and severe liver and kidney damage. Any of these could have easily been fatal, but in a recovery the doctors called “miraculous” he had woken up a few times and spoken to his wife.

Doctors still were unsure whether he would live or the degree of injury to his brain but were optimistic due to his emergence from the coma. It was the last line of the article that released
goose bumps
,
which climbed all over my body like vermin:
Police still do not know what happened to Mr. Weston and are asking anyone who knows anything to step forward.

My heart pounding and ears roaring, I ran upstairs and threw up again. I realized I was screaming at the toilet but I didn’t care.

“
Aww
, J
ohnny, you screwed up! What were you thinking? I’m sorry I let you hang with that guy!”

Guilt flooded over me and drowned me like a trapped animal
.
I
was the reason he was with Seth.
I
was too busy with Liz,
w
asn’t I?
At some
point, I moved to my bed and grabbed my bed pillows, punching them over and over.

“What were you thinking, Johnny? What were you doing?”
I screamed to
my
empty
bed
room.

But I knew what he had done. He had begun hanging with Seth, began doing the things Seth did. Johnny had jumped off one of those stupid bridges my parents were always warning me about. He was going to get caught
.
Brian Weston was going to wake up and talk unless he ended up brain dead or something.

Maybe he would just go brain dead
.

T
hat
was a horrible thought
—wishing
somebody would end up brain dead. But I didn’t want Johnny to go to prison.
Would
he go to prison? Would he just go to Boot Camp or
Juvie
? Would he be locked up somewhere where kids who were way more streetwise and nasty would change him in ways I didn’t even want to think about?

Could
Johnny, Seth, and Wes
get away with it? Should they get away with it? I mean, I knew, I could tell.
Of course, that would make me the biggest snitch of all—telling something I knew about my best friend.
Shit, shit, shit. I knew.
I knew.
I locked my arms across my stomach and rocked back and forth trying to slow my brain down.

The phone jangled me back to reality.

“Hello, this is Jameson High School. We are calling to inform you Andy has not been in school today.”

“I…I threw up,” I stuttered.

“Are you ill?”

“I threw up.”

“Oh
,
honey, I’m sorry. You stay home until you feel like yourself again. Just bring a note when you come back.”

“Thanks.” I grunted. I knew I was never going to feel like myself again. Everything had changed. I had changed, Johnny had changed…the world had changed and I didn’t know what to do. Now that my breathing had calmed down, I texted Liz, the only lifeline I could trust.

“
I need u.
M
home. Come.
”

“
Now?
School…
”

“
Now
plz
.
Plz
now...IMPORTANT
”

“
k
”

I don’t know how she did it but very quickly the doorbell rang. I screamed at her to come up and went back to my bed where all the
newspaper
articles were spread across it like poison. I was going to tell
Liz; I needed someone to bounce all of this off of. There had to be a way out of this, I just didn’t know what to do, and maybe Liz could help.

She stopped at my bedroom door, her eyes taking it all in.
Me
, sitting on the bed, surrounded by ragged newspaper articles, the faint smell of vomit permeating the air.

“Andy, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

I shook my head.
“Probably not.
I think I’ve been what can easily be classified as hysteri
cal for the past
several hours
.
Anyway, the toilet and pillows probably think so. What time is it? I have no idea.”

“It’s lunch. That’s how I got away. What’s going on? What is all this?” Her eyes flickered to the pillows lying on the floor haphazardly.

“Articles.
Research.
I have to be sure. I’m not sure. Not yet. But I think I am. I’m pretty sure I am.”

“
Andy,
y
ou’re not making sense. Sure of what?”

She moved to the bed and picked up “Man Found Lying in Road
–Police
Baffled.” She read it for a second and then picked up a picture of Brian Weston playing with two of his daughters.

“I know about this. Some girl coming home from the bar almost ran this guy over. He was lying in the street, but he might be okay, right?”

“Maybe,
” I hoped.

“Why do you have all this?”

I couldn’t speak.

“Do you know this guy? Do you know the girl that found him?” Liz’s eyes widened as she kneeled in front of me. “Andy, do
you
know
something about this?”