Found (7 page)

Brandon caught up
to me when I reached the door. “Cold,” he said.

“It’s like sixty degrees out,” I said.

“Ha, ha. I meant the way you just dissed Troy.”

“You’re joking, right? You were there when he whipped the ball at my face. How long ago was that? Oh, that’s right. Last practice.”

“He was jealous. He explained that to you. Don’t you get that at all? You’ve spent your life traveling around. You don’t know what it’s like when you’re in a town like this. Things are just expected of you. And for Troy, well, he’s been the best basketball player in town. His dad’s the chief of police. He had this great girlfriend—and yeah, yeah, I know, you didn’t take her away—but suddenly someone comes in and threatens everything he’s worked for. Don’t you have any compassion at all?”

I thought about that. “He was mean to my friends.”

“Because they’re an extension of you.”

Again with the justifying. “And seriously, Brandon, what can I do anyway? His dad should help him.”

“Troy’s dad can’t help.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Brandon said, “his dad doesn’t believe him.”

That surprised me. “What?”

“That’s right. Even his own father has abandoned him on this. He thinks his son cheated. Chief Taylor wants to see if Troy can get back on the team in other ways, you know, come clean, say it’s a first offense. But Troy doesn’t want that. He wants his name cleared. He wants the truth to come out.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“There’s something else you should consider too,” Brandon said.

“What?”

“Your teammates, like it or not, think you had something to do with Troy’s suspension.”

“But even Troy said he knew I had nothing to do with it.”

“And maybe he’ll tell the other guys that. Or maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll wonder why you rejected his peace offering and slapped his hand away. Maybe he’ll start to think the rest of the guys are right about you.”

I said nothing.

“You see what I’m saying?”

“I think so. It sounds like blackmail. Help Troy or look like the guy who set him up.”

“That’s putting it too strongly,” Brandon said. “More like, help Troy and look like the kind of teammate other guys want to play with. Look like the kind of teammate other guys respect and look up to and want to be around. Look like the kind of teammate who stands up for his captain, even when it’s hard.”

“Wow,” I said.

“What?”

“No wonder you’re always elected class president.”

Brandon smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. “Help him, Mickey. Help yourself. Help your team.”

And because I’m a complete idiot, I told him that I would.

Ema did not
take it well.

“Are you out of your mind?” Ema asked.

We were entering the lobby of the hospital, heading up to Spoon’s room.

“If you’d just listen a second—”

“Oh, I heard you. You want to help Troy Taylor! Troy Freakin’ Taylor!” She spread her arms. “What, are there no serial killers who need our help?”

“Forget it. I’ll do it on my own, okay?”

“No, not okay. We work together. That’s part of this. And we have more pressing problems, thank you very much.”

“You mean your”—I tried to say it without sounding sarcastic—“boyfriend?”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

Like I said, I tried.

“It’d be a waste of time anyway,” Ema said.

“Why?”

“Because you know Troy’s guilty.”

“A lot of people don’t think so.”

“Like who? Brandon? Look, Brandon is a nice guy, but he’s always been under Troy’s spell.”

“I may need to do it,” I said.

“Need?”

“To help me.”

“Help you how?”

“To help get my teammates to see me in a new light.”

She blinked. “Are you serious?”

“They hate me, Ema. All of them.”

“And you think helping Troy will do what exactly? Make all the jocks think you’re cool?”

“No,” I said.

“Because if you want to be cool, your best bet is to jettison the uncool people around you.”

“Will you stop it?”

We got into the elevator.

“I still don’t understand,” Ema said. “What do you want out of this?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, tried again. There was no point. She wouldn’t understand. “Do you get what basketball means to me?”

Ema met my gaze and moved closer. I felt something warm pass over me. “Yes, of course.”

“You can’t be an outsider on a team,” I said. “You can’t be the loner sitting at a table in the corner.”

“You mean like I do?”

“No, I mean like
we
do. Basketball is a team sport. That’s the beauty of it. I want to be a part of that. It’s why I wanted my parents to settle in one place. So I could play on a real team. So I could know what that’s like—being part of a team and all that goes along with it.”

I stopped because the emotion came suddenly. Suppose I hadn’t wanted that. Suppose I had just kept my mouth shut. Would my dad be alive (or with me)? Would my mom have stayed off drugs?

Had my desire to be part of a real team destroyed everything?

“I know that’s what you want, Mickey,” Ema said in the softest voice. “I get that. But helping Troy Taylor—”

“Will show everyone that I’m willing to do
anything
to be a good teammate.”

Ema shook her head, but she didn’t argue.

We reached the door to Spoon’s hospital room. No one was around, so I knocked lightly and pushed it open. I heard Spoon’s voice:

“Did you know that ants stretch when they wake up in the morning?”

I smiled. Ah, Spoon.

“Oh, and I mean ant like the insect. Not aunts like my aunt Tessie. She never stretches.”

I wondered what nurse or doctor he was regaling with his random facts, but when I saw who it was, I pulled up short.

It was Rachel.

Spoon smiled at us from the bed. “Great,” he said. “We’re all here.”

Rachel greeted Ema with a brief hug but only nodded at me and turned away. Ema looked at me, puzzled. Rachel was usually much friendlier with me, but of course, Ema didn’t know about our last conversation, when I told her the truth about her mother’s death.

“Four of us,” Spoon said. “Do you know that the number four is considered unlucky in many East Asian cultures? That’s because the word for four sounds like the word for death.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Spooky, right?”

Ema sighed and said, “Did you find anything about Jared Lowell?”

Before he could answer, the door behind us opened. A nurse in pink hospital scrubs stepped into the room. She did not look pleased to see us. “What is this?”

Spoon spread his arms. “My posse.”

“Your what?”

“My posse. These are my peeps, my crew, my homies—”

“Are they immediate family?”

“More than immediate family,” Spoon said. “They’re my posse, my peeps, my crew, my—”

The nurse was having none of it. “You’re only allowed one non-family visitor at a time, Arthur. You know that.”

Spoon frowned. “But I had two here yesterday.”

“Then someone was breaking the rules. I need two of you to leave this room immediately.”

We all looked at one another, not sure what to do. Spoon took care of it.

“I will talk to all three of you separately, but—and I hope you lovely ladies don’t consider this in any way to be sexist—Mickey and I first need to have a man-to-man talk.”

He winked at me. I tried not to frown. Ema did not look pleased. I got that. She was the one most interested in finding Jared Lowell.

“I can wait,” I said. “You and Ema can go first.”

Spoon shook his head. “Man to man. It’s important.”

He looked at me hard, trying to send a message. I noticed now that the call button was near his right hand. I wondered whether he had pressed it—whether that was the reason why the nurse had suddenly appeared.

The nurse clapped her hands. “Okay, ladies, you heard the man. Let’s leave them alone for their
bro
talk.” She gestured toward the door, escorting Ema and Rachel out into the corridor.

Spoon and I were alone.

“Did you call for the nurse?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to show you what I found before we tell Ema.”

“Why? He’s a fake, right? Jared Lowell.”

“No. Her boyfriend, Jared, is very much real. Maybe too real.”

“What do you mean?”

Spoon pressed the button next to his bed so that he could sit more upright. “Jared Lowell’s residence is in Massachusetts, a small place called Adiona Island.”

“Lie Number One,” I said.

“What?”

“He told Ema that he lives in Connecticut.”

“Well, he does. Sorta. That’s why I used the word
residence.
Jared Lowell actually lives at the Farnsworth School, a fancy-shmancy prep school in Connecticut. All boys. They have to wear a jacket and tie every day. Could you imagine? That would put a crimp in my fashion statements, I think. I’m normally known in school as a pretty natty dresser, right?”

“Natty?”

“Sharp. I’m a sharp dresser, don’t you think?”

To keep Spoon on track, I said, “I do.”

“Anyway, Jared Lowell is seventeen years old and a senior. He does indeed have a Facebook page, but he almost never used it—not until recently anyway. After he, uh, disappeared or whatever, he took down almost all the photographs on his page. You know this already, right?”

“I guess,” I said.

“So have you seen any pictures of him?” Spoon asked.

“Just the profile picture.”

“So you probably don’t know that he’s tall.”

I didn’t see the relevance. “Okay.”

Spoon looked me in the eye. “He’s six-four.”

My height. “Okay,” I said again.

“Or that he plays basketball. In fact, he’s the leading scorer for his high school team, averaging nineteen points per game.”

I nodded and said, “Okay.”

“Or that his father’s dead, so he only has his mother.”

I stopped saying okay.

“Did you notice that Jared kinda looks like you?”

“He doesn’t look like me,” I said.

“He’s more pretty-boy. You’re more what the ladies would call rugged. But, yeah, Mickey, there are similarities. Lots of them.”

“So what’s your point, Spoon?”

“No point. I just find it interesting that Ema fell for a guy who could be, well, you.”

I said nothing.

“Mickey?”

“What do you want me to say here, Spoon? We’re both tall and play basketball. I don’t attend a fancy-shmancy private school. I’m only a sophomore, not a senior. I don’t live with my mother—she’s in rehab, remember?”

Spoon nodded. “That’s all true.”

“And this is still feeling like a catfish to me. You were able to independently confirm that Jared Lowell is real?”

“Yes. There are articles on his ball playing, complete with photographs and statistics. He’s real.”

“I’m still thinking this is a catfish,” I said. “All the stuff you said, okay, there are similarities. So someone—maybe Troy or Buck or some other toad—found this guy online and made up a fake Facebook page—”

“No,” Spoon said.

“How’s that?”

“The Facebook page has existed for four years. It’s a little hard to explain, but the original setup ISP originated on Adiona Island—where he lives. He also used it. Not a lot. He isn’t a big Facebook guy. But it was in use and the posts are obviously not fake.”

“So Jared Lowell is real?”

“Yes.”

“And his Facebook page is his?”

“Yes.”

I pointed my palms to the sky. “So where is he now?”

“Normally I would say there is no big mystery.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there are no articles or indications that he’s missing. I assume he’s at school. If he was hurt or vanished, I think there would be something online, don’t you?”

“I do,” I said.

“All we know for certain is that he’s not currently using his Facebook page and has stopped communicating with Ema. Normally I would say that this doesn’t concern us. For whatever reason, he decided that Ema wasn’t for him and, well, was less than a gentleman about informing her.”

“Normally.”

“Right.”

“So why isn’t this ‘normally’?”

“Because nothing about us is normal, Mickey,” Spoon said. “You know that.”

I did.

“And while many photographs were taken down from his Facebook page, only one has been added since he stopped talking to Ema.”

I nodded. “The Abeona butterfly.”

“Right.”

I sighed. “So we need to see this through.”

“Right again. Unless.”

“Unless what?”

“We have our enemies, don’t we, Mickey?”

I thought about the sandy-haired paramedic with the green eyes. He had taken my father away from the car accident. He had set Bat Lady’s house—Abeona’s headquarters—on fire while I was inside.

“We do,” I said.

“He could be another. Jared Lowell. This could be a setup.”

Spoon could be right. But it gave me another idea. “Do you remember this?”

I handed him the old black-and-white photograph. The man dressed in the Nazi uniform was, I’d been told at first, the Butcher of Lodz, a monstrous war criminal who had killed hundreds, maybe thousands, during World War II. But it wasn’t. At least not entirely.

The face belonged to the paramedic with the sandy hair and green eyes.

For a long time, I had been bewildered by this—how could a Nazi from World War II have been the paramedic who wheeled away my dad? But sometimes the simplest answer is so close to us, we can’t see.

The paramedic’s face had been Photoshopped onto the Butcher of Lodz’s body by the Bat Lady.

I still had no idea who he was.

“Sure,” Spoon said. “What about it?”

I put my finger right on the picture’s face. “You know he’s not really the Butcher of Lodz, right?”

“Right.”

“Is there any way you can figure out who he really is?”

Spoon studied the picture. He started to nod slowly. “I think maybe I can. Let me work on it, okay?”

“Okay.”

Spoon put the photograph in the drawer next to his bed. “You better let Ema in now. What do you think I should tell her?”

“The truth,” I said.

I looked down at him, in that bed, paralyzed below the waist. I was blocking on that. It was the only way to stay upright. But suddenly I felt the tears building again. Spoon looked up at me and then turned away.

“Arthur?” I said.

“Don’t call me that,” he said.

“Spoon?”

“What?”

I swallowed. “How are you? Really.”

He gave me the big smile. “Terrific!”

I just looked at him and waited. The smile faded away.

“To tell the truth,” Spoon said, “I’m a little scared.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I get that.”

Silence.

“Mickey?”

“Yeah?”

“After I talk to the girls, do you think you can hang in my room for a while?”

I managed not to cry. “For as long as you’d like.”