Truth and Lies (20 page)

Sal's dad had pushed me aside as he rushed up to the driver, swinging his hammer. He was a lot shorter than me; his head barely cleared my shoulder. But, man, was he strong!

The driver let out a shout, and for one horrible moment I thought that maybe Sal's dad had hit him with the hammer. But, as far as I could tell, he hadn't. As far as I could tell, he had shoved the driver, just like he had shoved me. Now he was standing over the driver, shaking his hammer at him and saying something in Spanish.

“Juan,” a voice—Sergeant O'Connell's voice—was saying. “Juan San Miguel, do you hear me?”

At the mention of his name, Sal's dad half-turned. One of his hands gripped the streetcar driver's arm. The other gripped the hammer. He pulled the driver up out of his seat and pushed him down the aisle toward the rest of the passengers.

I glanced out the window of the streetcar. A crowd had gathered now—people from the neighborhood, people from school, Sal. I spotted Sal making his way through the crowd toward the police, trying to get to Sergeant O'Connell. He must have heard his father's name over the loudspeaker. A cop tried to hold him back,
but Sal started talking fast. Whatever he was saying got the cop's attention. The cop led him through to where Sergeant O'Connell was standing. Sal started talking to the sergeant, straining toward him as if that would help to make his point. Then Sergeant O'Connell was talking to Sal and Sal was nodding. I'd never seen Sal look more serious. He was staring up at the big police officer. His attention seemed to be 100 percent focused on whatever the sergeant was saying to him. Sergeant O'Connell handed him the microphone.

Sal started talking. In Spanish.

Sal's dad turned toward the window.

The driver started to get up from the seat where he was sitting, but one of the women—not one of the ones who had been crying, but another one—laid a hand on his arm. She didn't say a word. She just shook her head and then nodded toward the window. The driver settled back into his seat.

Sal kept talking, fast, in Spanish. I didn't understand a single word he said. Sal's dad seemed to be listening, but he was still gripping the hammer and holding it high. From the tone of his voice, I guessed that Sal was pleading with his father—
Let the driver open the doors, let the passengers get out
.

Sal's dad stood where he was.

I saw Sergeant O'Connell take the microphone back from Sal.

“Mr. San Miguel,” he said. “Juan. Whatever the problem is, I'm sure we can work it out.”

He held the microphone out to Sal, who spoke again in Spanish. Translating, I guessed. I glanced at the driver and wondered what he had told the transit authorities. I wondered if he'd said that Sal's dad had a hammer or if he'd just said that he was armed. When I glanced back out the window, I saw that it had started to rain. I also saw that Sergeant O'Connell wasn't holding the microphone up anymore. Instead, he was talking to a couple of other cops. Sal was shaking his head. He looked upset. Something was happening—or was about to happen. Something bad.

“Mr. San Miguel,” I said. I kept my voice low, spoke softly so that I wouldn't startle him or upset him. “Hey, Mr. San Miguel, remember me?” I don't know how he wouldn't remember me—I stopped by Sal's house almost every day. Sal and I had been hanging out together for a couple of years now. But I didn't know much about what was wrong with Sal's dad. “It's me,” I said. “Mike. Sal's friend. Remember?”

Sal's dad looked at me like I was some new species of Martian who had just landed.

“Mr. San Miguel,” I said, “I see Sal out there. Do you see him?” Sal's dad was staring at me. “He's right out there,” I said, pointing to where Sal was standing. “See him? He's right there, and he needs to talk to you. He looks like whatever he wants to tell you is pretty important. Maybe you should let him come inside, Mr. San Miguel,” I said. “What do you say?”

Sal's dad looked out the window. So did I. More
cops had joined the huddle. They looked deadly serious. They weren't going to rush the streetcar, were they? They couldn't possibly be planning to shoot—could they? The cops had been called twice to Sal's house in the past couple of weeks. Both times it was because Sal's dad had been threatening someone—first with a weed whacker, then with hedge clippers. Just ordinary stuff that most people had around the house, like most people had hammers. Ordinary stuff that could be used as weapons. And when they were used as weapons, the cops got upset. They'd arrested Sal's dad when he refused to put down the hedge clippers. What would they do to him now that he was holding people hostage on a streetcar, threatening them with a hammer?

I started down the aisle toward Sal's dad. My side felt like it was on fire.

“Hey, Mr. San Miguel,” I said. I smiled at him. “Sal's out there and he needs to talk to you real bad. Maybe he's hurt. Maybe something's wrong with Sal, Mr. San Miguel. Don't you think we should find out?”

The hand holding the hammer relaxed a little as Sal's dad peered out the window, looking for Sal.

I held my breath and said a little prayer as I reached out and grabbed the hammer from his hand. This time when the driver tried to get up out of his seat, no one tried to stop him. He grabbed Sal's dad from behind and held him tight. Sal's dad struggled.

“The door,” the driver said. He told me how to open it. I ran back up the aisle, still carrying the hammer, and
followed the driver's instructions. And then there were cops everywhere.

It was pouring outside now. The crowd had retreated. All the people who were left—and I was surprised how many there were—were jammed together under store awnings or in bus shelters or under the overhang of the school.

Cops surrounded Sal's dad and put handcuffs on him. Other cops checked to see if the passengers were okay and took down their names, addresses and phone numbers. Then the passengers were allowed to leave. One of them, an old man, didn't want to get off. He had to get home, he kept telling the cop who was trying to get him to leave. The cop had to promise that someone would drive him home. The cops talked to me too. The driver kept telling them how I had talked to the crazy man, how I had taken the hammer away from him.

“He's not crazy,” I said. “He's just sick, that's all.”

I looked outside and saw Sal standing in the rain. Finally the cops let me leave. I stepped down out of the streetcar and into the rain, scanning the crowd. I saw Vin and Cat, huddled together near the school. I saw Rebecca with the red hair. I saw A. J. and his friends. And coming toward me, I saw Riel, his face a mixture of astonishment and worry and relief.

“You okay?” he said when he reached me. He didn't seem to notice that he was getting drenched. We both were.

“You kidding?” said a voice behind me. The driver's voice. “He took the weapon away from the guy.”

Riel looked at me more closely now. “You okay?” he said again.

I nodded. As Riel led me back toward the school, I felt the watch in my pocket. Robbie Ducharme's watch.

The cops wanted to talk to me. Reporters had shown up and found out what I had done, and they wanted to talk to me too. People on the street and kids from school had found out, and they all pressed in close around me, which is scarier than you'd think. Crowds had never bothered me before, but now I found myself thinking about what would happen to me if everyone came at me at the same time from all directions.

Riel put a hand on my shoulder and led me through the crowd into the school and then into the staff lounge. Ms. Rather was standing at the door. Riel went over to speak with her. The next thing I knew, she was clearing everyone out of the room.

The teachers all had lockers. Riel went to his, opened it, and pulled out a T-shirt and a sweatshirt. He tossed the sweatshirt to me.

“You're wet,” he said. “Go dry off and put this on. As
soon as you talk to the police, I'll take you home.”

I went into one of the bathrooms and pulled off my wet shirt. I dried my skin and my hair as best as I could with paper towel, then pulled on Riel's sweatshirt. When I opened the bathroom door to go back out, I saw Riel getting ready to pull on the T-shirt. I stared at him. I realized I'd never seen him without a shirt on, but that wasn't why I was staring. I was staring because of the scar on Riel's chest. It was big and ragged and angry-looking. Billy had told me that Riel had been shot and his partner had been killed. That's why he wasn't a cop anymore. But Billy had never said where Riel had been shot. Maybe he didn't know. And Riel never said anything about it.

Riel looked at me looking at his scar, then he pulled the T-shirt down over it. He went to the door of the teachers' lounge and let two cops in. One of them was Sergeant O'Connell.

“Hello, Mike,” he said. He smiled. His tone was friendly. It was the first time in a long time that a cop had been friendly to me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “How's Mr. San Miguel?” I asked.

“He's not hurt,” the sergeant said. “But he's ill. We've taken him to the hospital to make sure he gets looked after.”

I wondered how Sal was and whether anyone had told Mrs. San Miguel yet.

“That was very brave, what you did,” the sergeant said. “In a situation like that, there's always the risk that
someone could get hurt.”

“Mr. San Miguel wouldn't hurt anyone,” I said. “He was a professor back home in Guatemala. He taught poetry.”

This seemed to surprise Sergeant O'Connell. “It would be helpful, Mike,” he said, “if you can tell me everything you can remember about what happened after you got on the streetcar. Think you could do that?”

“Helpful to who?” I asked. Riel frowned at the question, but he didn't say anything. “I'll tell you anyway,” I said to Sergeant O'Connell. “I'm just wondering, that's all.” Would anything I said hurt Sal's dad?

“That's okay,” Sergeant O'Connell said. “Nobody was hurt, and that's good. It would be helpful to everyone, including Mr. San Miguel, if we know exactly what happened. You know he needs help, right, Mike?”

Yeah, I knew. I sat down on one of the sofas in the lounge and told Sergeant O'Connell everything I could remember. The cop with him wrote down everything I said.

“Is that it?” Riel said when I had finished.

Sergeant O'Connell nodded.

By then I was shivering. I had on Riel's dry sweatshirt, but my pants had got wet and they were making me cold.

“Come on, Mike,” Riel said. He led me out of the room, through the rush of reporters and TV cameras, and down to the staff parking area. The reporters followed, but Riel kept a hand on my shoulder and wouldn't
let them get to me. He helped me get into the car and then he got in himself. The reporters crowded around, but that didn't stop Riel. He inched the car forward.

As soon as I got home I knew that something was wrong in my room. It wasn't messy—well, it wasn't any messier than usual—but I could tell that someone had been in it.

“They were here with a warrant,” Riel said. “Rhona was with them.”

Oh
.

“They searched your locker at school too,” Riel said. Then he added, “How come you were on that streetcar at two o'clock in the afternoon, Mike? You were supposed to be in history class.”

I had promised myself that I wouldn't lie to Riel anymore. And I had meant it—at the time.

“I just couldn't take it,” I said. “All those questions from the cops. People thinking I did something when I didn't.” I made myself look directly into Riel's eyes. “Sometimes I hate being at that school, you know? Everybody there thinks I'm screwed up, that I'm some kind of hopeless case, you know?”

“You can't control what people think, Mike,” Riel said. “You can only lead your life right. Put on some dry clothes. I'm going to take a shower.”

When I was alone in my room, I took off my wet clothes and pulled on some dry jeans and one of my own sweatshirts. Before I put my wet things in the hamper in my bathroom, I pulled the watch out of my pocket
and looked at it again. Robbie's watch. It had been in my locker. I glanced around the room. In the end, I stashed the watch in the toe of an old sneaker in my closet. The cops had already searched the place. I didn't think there was much chance they'd search it again.

I called Sal's house maybe twenty, twenty-five times that night. Each time, the line was busy. Sal's family had an answering machine, but they didn't have call answer.

“Think I could go over there?” I asked Riel after supper.

“I think you should stay here and do your homework,” Riel said.

“Yeah, but Sal—”

“Sal's probably got enough to think about for one day. Let him focus on his mom and dad. Maybe you could leave a little early tomorrow for school, stop by his house.”