The Big Splash (13 page)

She ignored me. “Tell me what's going on. Kevin's been out of his mind since what happened to Nikki.” She said the name as if it tasted horrible in her mouth.

“You don't want to know.”

“Don't tell me what I want or don't want.” She tensed her jaw like a boxer ready for the fight to start.

“Go ask your brother. Ask him about the Hyena.”

“Joey Renoni? What about him?”

“It was Kevin who had him fitted for a diaper.”

It took a moment to sink in. “I don't believe you,” she said.

“You don't have to. Ask him. Find out for yourself.”

I could tell from her face that she wouldn't need to ask. She knew what her brother was capable of. “He still likes Nikki,” was all she could manage. “She's a monster, and he still likes her.”

“She's not a monster anymore.”

“She'll always be a monster.”

“By that definition, so will Kevin.”

She sighed and bowed her head as if she couldn't carry the weight of that fact. Kevin and Nikki were in the same business; to love one but hate the other was crazy. “Matt, I'm sorry … I—” The bell rang, disrupting her train of thought. She raised her head and looked at me with moist eyes. When the bell stopped ringing, she paused, unsure if she could pick up where she left off.

“What?” I prodded gently. “C'mon Liz. We go way back. If you need to get something off your chest, you can trust me.”

She sniffed back some tears and let out a deep sigh. She reached out and touched my arm. Both of us felt the spark. “I—”

Just then, Jenny Finnegan bounded over and wrapped her arms around me. “Matt! You're okay!”

Liz pulled her hand away and closed her mouth before any other words could escape. Jenny let go of me long enough to notice Liz standing there. “Oh. Liz. I … I'm sorry. I didn't see you.”

“S'okay,” she said, barely above a whisper, “I have to get to class.”

“Liz,” I said, a plaintive note in my voice.

“We'll talk later. We won't have a choice.” I was confused, but she just turned and walked to her class.

“I'm sorry, Matt,” Jenny said. “I was just so worried about you. I mean, Kevin is huge. When I think of what he could have done to you …” She and her ponytail shook at the thought.

“It's all right. He and I have been playing this game for quite a while, and nobody's gotten hurt yet.”

“There's always a first time.”

“Not always,” I said.

“I wish you didn't have to take so many chances,” she said.

“It's part of my job.”

“The job I gave you.”

“You and Vinny.”

She winced, as if she didn't like being reminded that Vinny existed. “Quit,” she said.

“What?”

“Quit. Right now. Just forget about it. In a lot of ways, Nicole deserved what she got. I love her, but …” It was as if she couldn't think of a good way to end that thought. “If something happened to you, I wouldn't … I just …”

“It wouldn't be your fault,” I said, finishing the thought for her. “It would be mine. It would mean I got careless.”

“But …”

“I'm not quitting, Jenny. I couldn't, even if I wanted to. It's part of what makes me so charming. Plus, I have to make sure I give you your money's worth.”

“But I haven't paid you yet.”

“Oh. Well, forget it, then. I quit.”

She smiled in a way that mixed sadness and gratitude.
“I'm glad I hired you,” she said, then kissed me on the cheek, lingering a little. The faint smell of strawberry lip gloss tickled my nose. She pulled a piece of purple stationery out of her bag and wrote down her name and phone number. I smiled. The purple paper had a picture of a horse at the top. “If you need to talk,” she said as she placed the paper in my hand. Then she gave me that same half-sad, half-grateful smile, and walked away.

I watched her leave, not sure of what I was feeling. The bell rang. I hustled to English, where we were studying
Romeo and Juliet.
It was a powerful reminder that not every story has a happy ending.

lunch, I grabbed a quick sandwich, then headed down to Jimmy Mac's. His office was just a small room off the gymnasium. It used to be a closet for gym equipment, but a couple of years ago the school board approved money for a new outdoor storage structure. They moved all the gym stuff out and Jimmy moved in. It was a small room made smaller by the stacks of old newspapers around the room, as if Jimmy had started to build a maze but gave up before finishing. It was the perfect room to cure someone's claustrophobia.

When I walked in, Mac was in the process of making a
bad situation worse. He was moving stacks of papers around without really having a place to put them, like trying to dig a hole in the snow in the middle of an avalanche.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking for the picture. What do you think?”

I couldn't answer that question, so I let it go. “I thought you were going to ask around,” I said.

“I did. Nothing. Every kid who was in that issue cut their story out, then trashed the rest.”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, that makes sense. So you think you've got one lying around here?”

“Maybe. When I got this office, I brought over some of my stuff from Ellie, to remind me of my roots, you know? I could swear there was a copy in one of those boxes …,” he said.

“Practically at your fingertips …”

“What's that?”

“Nothing. Keep looking.”

I wondered for a second if the fire inspector knew about this room.

“Hold on a second!” I heard him exclaim in a voice muffled by the mountains of paper between him and me. “Wait … wait … got it!”

Mac stumbled out from behind a stack and managed to knock over two piles of newspapers. He was clutching a file folder packed beyond capacity. It was labeled
The Elementary Times.
When he opened it, the papers inside fell to the ground, adding to the mess.

“Oh, man,” he said, crouching down to pick them up.

I crouched down with him and started sifting. Looking through those newspapers was like pressing fast forward on the development of Jimmy's life. You could tell the firstgrade ones with a glance, their crude writing and pictures glaring back at you like art from a refrigerator door. The papers stopped at third grade; fourth and fifth weren't there. Jimmy Mac noticed it, too. “Fifth's not here?” he asked. “Oh, man …” We both stared at the piles of papers scattered around us. Trying to find the photo in that mess was going to be like trying to find a grain of salt on a sandy beach.

“I'll come back later,” I said, standing up.

“Yeah. I'll need a few minutes.” Another pile of papers fell over, as if on cue.

“Or a few days,” I said. “You know, you should really get—”

“A filing cabinet. Yeah, I know, I know …” Jimmy disappeared behind a couple of stacks, shuffling sounds the only evidence that he was still in the room. I left just as the bell rang.

As I walked to class, I passed Mel in the hallway. She looked stiff and unnatural in her monitor sash. She saw me coming and scowled. Usually, I'd let it go, but right now wasn't usually. “Hey!” I shouted. She came to an abrupt stop, then took a couple of shuffling steps forward, as if she wasn't sure I was talking to her. I wanted to make her sure. “Melanie. You're Katie's sister, right?”

“Yeah?” she said, turning toward me. On her list of things to do in life, it looked like talking to me was right below being eaten by sharks.

“Well, listen, if you're mad at me because of that fight with Kevin—”

Some air escaped through her clenched teeth, loud enough to cut me off. She sounded like an overheated radiator trying to let off some steam before it exploded. When she spoke, each word dripped with hatred: “Don't … talk … to … me!” The last word came out like an angry shriek. Kids in the hallway stopped to see what was going on. Melanie didn't wait for my reaction;
she just turned and stomped off. I was probably off her Christmas card list.

After Algebra, I went to the hall pay phone and called Joey to see if I could get some info about that photo. I hung up when the Renoni family answering machine picked up. I was barely prepared to talk to Joey; I had no idea what to say to Joey's answering machine. As I let go of the receiver, a hand the size of a canned ham grabbed my wrist and turned me around. The other ham hand grabbed the front of my shirt, making me glad I didn't have any chest hair yet. The enormous kid attached to those hands lifted me off the ground, slamming my back into the wall. It was one of Vinny's bodyguards.

“Hello, Matthew,” Vinny said, walking up beside me. I was able to look down on him since my feet were dangling a foot off the floor.

“Hello, Vincent. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I was just telling Andrew here how coincidental it was that we should run across you on the phone, since that's precisely why I wanted to speak with you.”

“I'm assuming this Neanderthal is Andrew.”

Andrew shook me a couple of times to assure me that he was.

“Andrew here suggested smashing your head against this wall to teach you a lesson about proper phone etiquette,” Vinny said. “Insult him again, and I'll take his suggestion.”

“Fine. You proved your point.”

“I'm not sure I have yet. There are certain aspects of my business that I would rather not discuss over the phone. A smart kid like you should be able to figure out what those things are. If you can't, Andrew here can help you. Any time, any place. Are we clear?”

“Crystal. Now put me down.”

Andrew looked at Vinny, who gave him a subtle nod. Andrew put me back on the ground. I smoothed out the front of my shirt, rubbing a spot on my shoulder that was going to be sore later. I shot Andrew a dirty look. He snickered.

“Now,” Vinny said, “I believe you had a question about hall passes?”

“Maybe.”

Vinny laughed. “Yes, well, I personally don't have any experience with them—”

“No, of course not.”

“But a friend of mine has. Last year, this friend of
mine used to get things like that from an eighth-grade boy, I believe his name was Charlie something. Anyway, when Charlie graduated, it left a sizable hole in my friend's business.”

“Couldn't Charlie do them from high school?”

“Apparently not. Charlie made it clear that he didn't have time for things like that anymore.”

“Makes you wonder what goes on in high school.”

“Indeed. Anyway, a couple of days later, someone got in touch with my friend about providing such a service.”

“How?”

“Anonymous note left in his locker. There was an offer and a set of explicit instructions.”

“Does he still have that note?” I asked.

“He doesn't keep things like that.”

“Not even for his scrapbook?”

“Anyway, the note instructed him to leave money on the top shelf of his locker at the start of the day. Then take all the books he needed until after lunch and lock the locker as he normally would. He couldn't go back to his locker until after lunch. If he did, the deal was off.”

“And your friend trusted this person?”

“Of course not. But my friend doesn't keep anything
in his locker other than his school books. It's the first place they check.”

“Who's ‘they'—the principal or the FBI?”

He ignored the question. “And he figured, what the heck? He can try it once, just to see what happens. He can always find out later who's behind it if he wants.”

“Right.”

“So, he leaves the money, locks his locker, then spends the day B.A.U.”

“B.A.U.?”

“Business as usual. When he goes back to his locker, the money is gone. In its place, an envelope. In the envelope, a stack of hall passes.”

“How many?”