One Way (6 page)

“I didn't care what she did,” Logan says. “Why should I? So if you turned her into a vegetable because you thought she and I were getting it on, you're even more of an idiot than I thought.” And there is that smirk again.

I don't know what gets to me more—his attitude, his calling Stassi a vegetable like he doesn't care at all, or his calling me an idiot. I'm not proud of what I do next, but I do it anyway. I hit him. In the face. With my fist. I bet he's not proud of what he does either. He screams the minute he sees blood running down his chin.

“You broke my nose,” he shouts at me. “You broke my nose!”

His parents come running. I want to take off, but his dad grabs me. I wriggle free. I run home. I don't know why I think I'll be safe once I get there, because I'm not. Two cops show up an hour later— and my dad answers the door. They arrest me for assault. I have to go down to the police station. My dad calls Howard Grossman and tells me to keep my mouth shut until he and my dad get there.

“I mean it, Kenzie. Not a word. You got that?”

I say I do.

My dad and Mr. Grossman show up after the cops put me in a room for questioning.

“Did you say anything to them?” Mr. Grossman asks.

I shake my head.

“You sure? Nothing at all?”

“Nothing.” I don't see what difference it would have made if I had said something. This time I know I'm in the wrong. I knew it when I was doing it. Whatever happens, I'm going to deserve it—this time.

“You want to tell me what happened?” Mr. Grossman asks.

I look at my dad. He's going to get mad when he hears.

“Does
he
have to be here?” I ask Mr. Grossman. “I mean, you're
m
y lawyer, right?”

“That's right,” Mr. Grossman says. He turns to my dad. “If he wants to speak to me alone, he has that right, Dave.”

My dad stares at me.

“You have something to hide, son?”

“I just want to do this myself,” I tell him. “With my lawyer.”

“Who I'm paying for,” my dad says.

“You want me to pay for him?” I say angrily. “Fine. I will.”

“Whoa now,” Mr. Grossman says. His voice is soft. “Sometimes a boy needs to speak to someone, uh, objective.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Objective.” As in, someone who won't yell at me and ask me what on earth I was thinking.

“Fine.” My dad stands up. He walks out of the small room and slams the door behind him. And he tells
me
all the time to stop acting like a kid!

Mr. Grossman doesn't comment. He takes out his writing pad and his fountain pen.

“Now, Kenzie,” he says. “What happened?”

I tell him the whole story. I tell him I know I shouldn't have punched Logan but, really, he asked for it. Well, okay, so he didn't
actually
ask for it. But he should have known better than to say what he said. Plus, I'm pretty sure he's the one who ratted me out to the cops for something I didn't even do.

Mr. Grossman puts down his pen.

“Is that why you went over there? Because you think Logan McCann is the eyewitness who says you swerved into Stassi on purpose?”

“Well, yeah.” Then I think about what he just said. “What do you mean, I
think
he's the eyewitness? He is, isn't he?”

Mr. Grossman shakes his head.

“All you've succeeded in doing is making the eyewitness statement more plausible. It's clear you were jealous of Logan. It's clear you were angry when you thought that he and Stassi were, uh, an item. It gives you an even stronger motive. So do us all a favor, will you, Kenzie? Stay put, keep your mouth shut and let me see what I can do about getting you out of this mess.”

“Who
is
the eyewitness?”

“Uh-uh,” Mr. Grossman says. “Look at what you did when you thought it was Logan.”

“I promise I won't do anything. I just want to know.”

“I'm not going to discuss it, Kenzie.” He stands up. “You stay put. I'm going to talk to those detectives and explain to them what happened. Okay?”

He leaves the room, and my dad comes in.

“Well?” he says, dropping down into a chair opposite me. “Did you tell all your secrets to Howard?”

“I don't have any secrets, Dad.” I have a thought. “Dad, you know I'd never hurt Stassi on purpose, right?”

“I'd like to think you wouldn't, son. But after what that girl told the police, it's going to be a hard sell.”

Girl? It was a girl? What girl?

“I don't care what she thinks she saw,” I say to my dad. “She's wrong.” I wait a moment. “Has Mr. Grossman talked to her? Do you know who she is, Dad?”

My dad shakes his head. “He won't tell me anything.”

“Then how do you know it was a girl?”

“Ted Czernak told me.”

I shake my head.

“He's the accountant at work,” my dad says, shaking his head like I'm slow-witted. “I talk about him all the time, Kenzie. He said he heard it was one of Stassi's friends who talked to the cops.”

“Which friend?”

“He doesn't know. But if you ask me, any friend of the girl you broke up with is going to have a definite bias. But I bet you anything the Mikalchuks believe every word.”

I don't bother to correct my dad about Stassi's last name. Instead I think, It has to be Lacie. Lacie is the one who told the police I did it on purpose. “Dad—”

The door opens, and Mr. Grossman comes back with the two detectives. They want me to tell them exactly what happened. Mr. Grossman nods, so I tell the story again. They finally agree to let me go with a promise to appear. They also tell me to stay away from Logan McCann. I tell them that will be no problem. I can't wait to get out of there. I can't stop thinking about Lacie.

My dad takes me home. He makes sure I stay there. Mr. Grossman tells me he'll talk to me again early next week after he's had some time to sort things out. I head up to my room, but I feel like I'm going to go crazy if I don't do something.

Chapter Nine

I think hard. Lacie told the police she saw me swerve into Stassi on purpose. Why would she do that, especially when it's not true? I don't even remember seeing her on the street that day. But everything happened so fast. There was probably a lot of stuff I didn't see. A lot of people too.

My mom comes into my room.

“We have to go out, Kenzie,” she says. “Your dad has those tickets—” Tickets to see Dylan. You'd never know it to look at him, but my dad is a huge Bob Dylan fan. He sees him every time he comes through town. And these tickets are the best—my mom wangled them out of a guy she used to date who's now the program manager at an oldies radio station. They're second-row seats, if you can believe it.

“I'll be fine,” I say.

“And you'll stay put?”

“I'll stay put.” I feel lousy lying to my mom, but if I don't, she won't leave. And if she doesn't leave, I won't be able to either.

“You promise? Because your dad has his heart set on this, and once the show starts—”

“Nothing will happen, Mom. I promise.” In fact, if all goes well, I'll be back in my room in my pajamas before the show is even half over.

I wait until they leave. Then I wait some more, until I'm sure the warm-up act has left the stage and old Bob is up there doing his thing.

I don't sneak out. There's no need. I walk out like any normal person, locking the door behind me. I go directly to Lacie's house.

She isn't home. Her dad, who doesn't have a clue who I am, tells me she's at a friend's house.

“Karyn's place?” I ask.

“You must know her pretty well,” her dad says.

I thank him and make the longer trek to Karyn's place. The two of them are sitting on Karyn's porch. Karyn spots me first and nudges Lacie. They both stand up, Karyn in front and Lacie behind her.

“What do you want?” Karyn says.

“I want to talk to Lacie.”

“Yeah, well, Lacie doesn't want to talk to you.”

I look around Karyn to Lacie. “You told the cops I hit Stassi on purpose. Why did you do that?”

“Why do you think she did it?” Karyn says, like I'm some kind of idiot. “Because it's true.”

“No, it isn't.” I look at Lacie again. “I would never hurt Stassi.”

“Right,” Karyn says snidely. “So she's in the hospital because…?”

“It was an accident. I would never hurt her on purpose.” I have to move to the side a little to get a clear view of Lacie. “I don't know what you saw, but it didn't happen that way.”

“You're talking to the wrong person, Kenzie,” Lacie says in a quiet voice.

“Wrong person? What do you mean?”

Lacie looks at Karyn, who shrugs.

“Go ahead, tell him,” Karyn says. “He's going to find out anyway.”

Lacie steps out from behind her.

“I didn't see anything,” she says.

“But you—” I begin.

“Someone told me what
they
saw. But they were afraid to go to the police. So I told the cops, and they went to talk to her.”

Her? Another girl.

“She told them what she saw. She's the one who said she saw you hit Stassi on purpose.”

“She who?” I ask.

“Mandi.”

Sherlock Holme's idiot brother could predict where I'd go next. I go straight to Mandi's house. Her mom answers the door. She frowns when she sees me.

“Is Mandi here?”

“I don't think she wants to talk to you,” Mrs. Fuller says.

“Who is it?” Mandi calls. Before her mom can answer, Mandi bounds down the stairs. She looks uncomfortable when she sees me.

“I need to talk to you,” I say.

“I'm busy,” she says.

“Okay. I'll say it right here and now. I want—”

“Okay,” she says, cutting me off. She turns to her mom. “I won't be long.”

She comes out onto the porch and shuts the door behind her, but her mother watches through the window. Mandi nudges me off the porch and down the walk.

“What do you want?”

“Why did you tell the cop I hit Stassi on purpose?”

“Because that's what I saw.”

“It's not true.”

“I didn't want to tell them, Kenzie. I didn't want to get you in trouble. But you hurt her bad. She's never going to be the same. I couldn't keep quiet about that, could I?”

“But it's not true,” I say again.

She steps toward me.

“If you want me to, I can tell them I made a mistake,” she says. “I can say I thought it over and that it was an accident. I can say that if you want me to, Kenzie.”

It takes me a moment to realize what she means. Then I think, This can't be happening to me.

“I want you to tell the truth, Mandi,” I say. “I don't want you to make up stuff. I want you to tell them exactly what you saw.” Then I add, “Or what you didn't see.”

“I really like you, Kenzie,” she says. “I don't want you to get in trouble because of anything I say. I'd really like us to be friends, you know?”

“I'd like us to be friends too, Mandi. But that's all. Just friends. I—I like you too. But not the same way I like Stassi.”

She steps away from me.

“I know what I saw,” she says. “I really think I should tell them the truth. I'm sorry, Kenzie. If we were close, I guess things would be different. But since we're not…”

She turns and starts back up the walk.

I grab her by the arm.

Her mother opens the door.

I let Mandi go. I am not going to make the same mistake with her that I made with Logan.

Chapter Ten

I'm on the phone with T.J.

“I wish I'd been there,” he says. “I wish I'd seen the whole thing. Look, Kenz, if she can lie, I guess I can too.”

“I don't want anyone to lie,” I say. “I want everyone to tell the truth. I especially want Mandi to tell the truth.”

T.J. is telling me he always thought she was a little off when my dad appears in my room. I guess he doesn't notice I'm talking to T.J., because he says, “Do I look like I was born yesterday?”

I look at his receding hairline, his paunch and the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes.

“Not to me, you don't,” I say.

He takes the phone from my hand, proving I was wrong about him not noticing. He holds it up, his face a question mark.

“T.J.,” I tell him.

My dad holds the receiver to his ear.

“Goodbye, T.J.,” he says.

He closes my phone and tosses it on the desk.

“Irshad saw you leave the house,” he says.

Irshad Kirpal is our across-the-street neighbor.

“You
spied
on me?” I say, all indignant.

“You lied to me,” my dad says. “And to your mother. You said you wouldn't go out.”

“Dad, I—”

But it's too late. He's in full rant, telling me how I'm in enough trouble already and I don't need any more, and if I think the cops are bad, wait until I get a load of what he can be like. Telling me if I went out there and got into another fight with some other kid, he's going to come down on me like a ton of bricks. Telling me, oh, by the way, you're grounded until further notice—except for school. Telling me he hopes I'm clear on that, because if I'm not, I'm going to be sorrier than I've ever been in my life.

He slams the door on the way out.

My mother comes in ten minutes later to kiss me goodnight. She doesn't say anything, but I can tell she's disappointed. After all, she's the one I lied to. But I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that. Mostly I think about Mandi.

Grounded
turns out to mean I can't use the phone. I can't even answer it when T.J. calls the next day. My dad confiscates it and tells me he'll give it back to me when he's good and ready.