High and Dry (25 page)

She didn't sound sincere—she sounded like she'd been caught. I couldn't process that information because I had to finish what I'd started with BM before I could handle any other problems in my life. I inserted the flash drive into her laptop.

It was blank.

No dated folders to click on, nothing.

The entire drive had been wiped clean.

“He … he erased it,” I said, feeling my legs bend like broken stilts. There was nothing to do but slide to the floor.

Jonathan's eyes filled with water and spilled over. “I heard you the other day. I heard you talking. You said Mr. Donovan would get
fired. But if he gets fired, there won't be any debate team, and then I won't have a group and no one will protect me. I don't want to end up like Ryder.” Fat tears rolled down his cheek, gathering speed as he closed his eyes against the pain. “I needed to know there was a place for me, a place I would belong.”

THE OTHER TRUTH ABOUT RYDER

MONDAY AFTERNOON, I SAT IN HISTORY CLASS, MY USUAL
seat, right by the window. It had only been a week since Bridget hired me to find the flash drive, but I felt years older.

The morning's
Palm Valley Register
included a splashy article about Griffin's arrest. He'd been caught red-handed by Deputy Thompson, trying to offload cocaine and LSD under the 14 Freeway Saturday evening. He remained in the sheriff's custody, as did Steve from Agua Dulce—though on lesser charges, since Steve hadn't actually reached for his wallet at the time of the bust.

Mr. Donovan and I pretended we'd never spoken two words to each other. When I reached under my desk on the off chance there might be an envelope full of trouble there, the way there had been last Monday, I discovered two hundred-dollar bills and a Post-it note taped to the bottom instead. I carefully unpeeled them. “For Maria Salvador,” the Post-it read. “More when I can get it.”

I almost laughed. Two hundred dollars would cover about fifteen minutes of her hospital stay. I had the urge to stand up in front of him and the whole class and tear the bills in half. Two hundred
wasn't worth a damn, not when we'd almost had seven thousand. Almost this, almost that. Almost was worse than nothing. I didn't know how I could possibly face BM after e-mailing him the bad news yesterday.

Ellie was suffering through chemistry in the classroom right behind mine. She and I had plans to hang out after school, since I obviously wouldn't be going to soccer practice, and I wanted to be thrilled about it—I knew I should be thrilled about it—but I was still fixating on the MECA acceptance letter she'd swept off her desk the other night.

The past week had taken a toll on me, and the toll got more expensive as the hour wore on. When the bell rang, I hobbled toward the door, the last to leave. Or so I thought. I'd forgotten one of my notebooks, so I doubled back and saw something peculiar: Josh, unlocking the window, exactly the way I used to.

Ellie and I went out for coffee. Ironically, we chose Café Kismet. All the holiday decorations were gone and it seemed different from last time. Even so, I made sure we didn't sit at the same table as before. She apologized a thousand times about Jonathan. I let her, and I bought her a peppermint drink and we split a chocolate croissant.

People saw us; waved and smiled. It was nice. It was better than nice. I existed again, I was solid and sober, and Ellie was my girlfriend. For the whole afternoon, I let myself believe in the fantasy. I sank right down into it like a soft downy bed and the
promise of ten-hour sleep. I let myself believe next year would be more of the same, being sweet and easy and good with each other.

After coffee we went to the mall for more hand-holding, and we kissed for a long time in my car before she walked into her house. After dinner I told my parents there was a soccer meeting to discuss strategy for the next few games, and when it got dark, I headed back to school. They thought I was a team player.
Even injured, he's one of the gang.

Could I really fault Jonathan for erasing the drive, if he thought there were only two options available to him: join debate or turn into Ryder?

It was time to see what it was Ryder had turned into.

I waited outside the history classroom in the dark. I watched as Ryder strolled over and swung up onto the window ledge and heaved open the window to crawl inside.

And then I followed him.

But he wasn't there.

He had vanished.

There was a sliver of light emanating from the supply closet, so I hobbled toward it and opened the door. Inside, one of the cheap portable shelves had been rolled aside to reveal a second door, which led into the chemistry lab closet; the classrooms were tied together like adjacent hotel suites. On one of the rearranged shelves, hidden behind a stack of books, was a metal container, which had recently been opened. I looked inside; it was empty.

It made sense now. How Ryder had found me in the chem lab closet during Friday's game, with Steve and his thugs. At the time, it felt like Ryder had appeared out of nowhere, which I chalked up to my blackouts and pain, but he'd really found us by walking through the history classroom, which was open for the debate team's use. He'd entered the lab through the supply closet—and had been doing so for months. With my help. Unlocking the history window had nothing to do with Mr. Donovan, or history class. It was always about the chemistry lab. If I'd been taking chemistry last period, he could've skipped a step and gone through
that
window instead.

Ryder faced away from me, iPod buds in his ears, hunched over one of the black lab tables, intent on his work.

“Hey!” I yelled.

He whirled around and pulled his earbuds out, nearly tripping over his backpack. “Jesus, you scared me. What are you doing here?”

On the desk were trays and blotting paper, a bag of sugar cubes, and a couple of droppers. Spread out in front of him, in a straight line, were about twenty orange Tic Tacs. He had lined up the sugar cubes beside them. Each Tic Tac represented an order to fill. I figured it was a way to help him count, make sure he had the correct number of hits each week as the orders fluctuated.

Ryder was using the chem lab as a place to store, measure, and bag LSD. He'd never be found with drugs on him or at his mother's trailer because he hid them right at school, in a locked metal container under a mound of unused textbooks. And then he came here at night to assemble them into tabs or sugar cubes.

“Griffin's done, man,” he crowed. “We did it.”

Ryder pulled me in for a hug, but I stepped away.

“If Griffin's done, why are you here? Why are you doing this?”

He shrugged. “Griffin's drugs were ass. Mine are pure Orange Sunshine. I've never pushed them on anyone, and I only sell to people who know what they're getting into. What happened with Salvador … I tried to stop them.”

I was horrified. “I've been helping you. I've been leaving the window unlocked. I've been helping you and I didn't even know it.”

Ryder rolled his eyes. “It had nothing to do with you.”

“There's a girl in a coma because of us! Don't you care?”

“I didn't sell to her. I would
never
dose someone against her will,” he said forcefully.

“The amount of things you'd ‘never do' could fill a fucking Tweet.”

“Trust me, getting rid of Griffin just made this town a whole lot safer.”

“Why, because of the strychnine? I looked that up. Nobody laces LSD with strychnine; it's an urban legend cops and teachers tell kids to scare them. Deputy Thompson probably even believes it. I did, too.”

“Look who has a Wiki app on his phone,” Ryder said sarcastically.

“You didn't want Griffin in jail so he'd
stop
,” I realized. “You wanted Griffin in jail so you could take over.”

I clenched my key chain in my fist, about to crush it. I knew it'd leave an imprint in my palm.

Ryder half smiled. He looked almost pleased I'd figured it out; that he would get credit from someone for having masterminded the coup. “I cut out the middle man, too,” he said. “Nailing Steve was a bonus. Now I control all the guys who worked for him.”

“No more Steve, no more Griffin,” I reiterated slowly. “It's all you now. Why did you have me throw the game? I bet there wasn't even any money at stake.”

“There was a shit-ton of money at stake. Steve was done with dealing, he wanted out by the summer. It meant nothing to him. It was a lark, it was ski-trip money; he didn't
need
the money—not the way I needed it. He wanted to play soccer for some school in the Midwest, wanted a good showing at the game on Friday. I told him I'd guarantee him the win if he handed over his list of buyers and dealers to me after graduation. I figured I'd take over after he left for college.”

“But then you got impatient, didn't want to wait that long.”

“I was pissed at him for busting up your foot.”

“Yeah, right. You don't give a crap about that. You wanted Griffin and Steve out of the way, and now they are.”

“I tried to protect you,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You weren't supposed to get hurt.”

“You were just protecting yourself. You used me because you knew I still feel like I owe you.”

Ryder's face transformed into a mask of rage. “You
do
owe me.”

“Little League was six years ago!” I cried.

His mask cracked, revealing genuine confusion. “Little League?
Who the fuck said anything about Little League? What are you talking about?”

“When you threw the bat for me, got me into soccer, made sure I had friends going into seventh grade.”

He looked really uncomfortable. “You think I did that for you? I was bored with baseball and I hated Coach Tierson. I just wanted to mess with him.”

“You did it to help me. You threw away a real shot at baseball to help me.”

Ryder shook his head, refused to look me in the eyes. “Nobody has a friend like that,” he said. “Nobody has a friend that good.”

But
I
had. I know I had. It was Ryder who didn't have a friend like that.

Not a single friend good enough to risk his own neck to help him freshman year. I'd abandoned him. I'd stuck to the soccer team; I'd let him drown, let him get picked off by the bullies and the druggies, with only his brother to save him. Which was worse than not being saved at all.

“Then why did you think I owed you?” I asked.

“My mom's painkillers are what started this. After we had to move, after she got beat up on the job and my dad went to prison defending her, she got hooked on pills and Griffin started skimming off the top and selling them. It wasn't long before he graduated into harder stuff.”

“You said you never blamed me for your family's shit.”

“I didn't. I don't. I'm just telling you cause and effect. Do we have a problem?” he said, indicating the miniature assembly line behind him.

“No.”

“Are you going to tell anyone about this?”

“How can I, without implicating myself?” I pointed out.

“You can't. You're part of it. Every payoff proves it.”

Maybe he had bought my silence, but not with money. He'd bought it on the baseball field six years ago, and the price was high, higher than I could've imagined. And now we didn't even have that.

“I warned you,” Ryder said. “I told you to let it go. I did warn you.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Old habit. Like smoking.”

If Ryder and I hadn't become friends, what would my life in Palm Valley have been like? Would I have been a pariah going into seventh grade, as I'd always feared, or would people have forgotten about the events of the summer? Could I have owned up to my sci-fi leanings, or would that have been social suicide?

Who was I at Palm Valley High if not a beckham?

“It was Josh who framed me,” I said quietly. “He's the one who drove Salvador to the hospital in my car.”

“He wanted you out of Friday's game. He figured you'd be so distracted by the sheriff's department, or drinking so much, that Coach would have to bench you.”

“And now he's the one unlocking the window for you.”

“He proved himself by throwing the game after you got sent out,” Ryder said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, well, good for him. He's a better version of me than I am.”

Josh hadn't wanted me out of the game so he could play; he'd wanted me out of the game so he could cheat. He'd been on Ryder's payroll all along, same as me.

“He didn't trust you to get the job done. He didn't think you'd screw over Patrick and the rest of the guys like that. To be honest, neither did I,” Ryder said.

I felt like throwing up, so I turned around to leave the way I'd come in. “You take care, now. Don't forget to lock up when you're done,” I muttered.

“Charlie, come on.”

I whirled around, giving in to my fury for a split-second. “What?”

“I think you were grateful the rest of that summer, maybe even the rest of junior high. But I think part of you was furious that I had to step in and save you. That you were too much of a pussy to stand up to Coach yourself.”

“Sure, why not,” I said, pushing down every ounce of emotion I possessed. I wouldn't freak out in front of him. I wouldn't point out that the last person to call me a pussy had been Coach Tierson himself. “If it makes you feel better.”

“And you were more than happy to take my money these last few months. Don't act you like didn't benefit.”

“I'm not acting. This is me, not acting. This is me, walking away. Can I walk away now? With my one good foot?”

I calmly hobbled through the chem lab closet door and back into the history classroom.

My veins filled up with ice, hardening inside my skin, like glass IV tubes I could never pull out and never shatter, and I made a vow I would never be played by anyone again.