Truth and Lies (14 page)

She grabbed her backpack by the loop at the top of it and fled for the door. She didn't even stop to sling a strap over her shoulder. I heard her footsteps running down the corridor.

Riel was home when I got back from school. I didn't see him, but I heard him in the kitchen, talking on the phone.

“I don't know,” he was saying. “I don't think it's a good idea to leave him to his own devices right now.”

Him
. He meant me. He was talking about me.

“I don't know,” Riel said again. Then, “Yeah, maybe. Yeah.” Silence. “Okay. Later, then.”

The telephone handset clunked down onto the cradle. I headed for the stairs, fast. I didn't want to face him. I was halfway to the top when he called me.

I forced a smile onto my face to try to hide what I was feeling. It wasn't so much that I was scared as that I was, well,
uncertain
, I guess. When Riel had agreed to take me in, we'd had an understanding. I understood that he was going to be strict, but I also understood that was because he had this idea that I could turn out all right if I took school seriously, got a job, and started to think about my future. And he understood that just because I'd had problems in the past, that didn't mean my
life was over. At least, that's what he told me he understood. I wondered if he was still operating on that basis, or if he'd done a serious rethink of where he thought I was headed.

I turned around to face him.

“You have any plans for tonight?” Riel said. He was dressed completely in black, his favorite color. It made him look even taller than he was, and scarier.

I shrugged. The dance was tonight, the one Sal had bugged me to buy a ticket for. But I didn't feel like going, and it was a safe bet that Sal had other things besides dancing on his mind. If this were an ordinary Friday night, I probably would have done something with Vin. But Vin had his new interests and new friends. So, no, I didn't have any plans.

“I was thinking of taking Susan out for dinner,” Riel said. “Can I trust you to stay here and stay out of trouble?”

I'd heard the question before. Almost every time Riel went out with Susan, he asked it. Usually he was smiling when he said it, kidding me a little, for sure never giving me the impression that he had any reservations about going out and leaving me alone. Usually. Tonight, though, he wasn't smiling. His eyes were fixed fast on me. Tonight he seemed to want something more than a simple yes. A blood oath, maybe.

“Yeah,” I said. “I was just going to watch TV.”

“Not planning to go out?”

I shook my head. Firmly. Without a second's hesitation. Because I knew that was what he wanted.

“I might be back late,” Riel said. “I'll check in with you, okay?”

Meaning, I'll check
on
you.

“No problem,” I said.

I waited all weekend for the phone to ring or for the big knock to come on the door. I don't know why, but I was sure it was going to happen. Probably because I thought I deserved it after all the lies I had told. I got the shakes every time I heard the phone ring. A couple of times I had trouble catching my breath.

But the cops didn't call. They didn't come to the house either, sirens blaring, to slap the cuffs on me and haul me off to jail. In fact, nothing at all happened. And no news is good news, right? That's what my mom used to say. Mostly she'd say it when she had gone to an interview for a new job and was waiting to see if they'd call her and say, “Congratulations, Ms. McGill, you're hired!” Her thinking was, sure, they hadn't said yes, but they hadn't said no either, so maybe they were still considering her.

So, if I wanted to, I could take the same positive view of things. I could tell myself that the reason I was still at liberty was that they hadn't been able to find anything against me. The reason I wasn't locked up somewhere was that I was in the clear. I could tell myself, never mind David Milgaard, Donald Marshall, and Rubin
Carter, the cops never got it wrong. Or, at least, they wouldn't get it wrong in my case. In fact, that
is
what I told myself. I even tried to believe it.

Riel was standing in the hall near my locker after school on Monday. His expression was grim.

“Get your stuff,” he said. “We need to talk.”

“Is something wrong?” I said. Yeah, give me a gold shield and call me detective. Like it took more than three brain cells in total to figure out the answer to that question. If Riel was waiting for me at my locker—something he had never, ever done before—then something was wrong. Very wrong.

“Just get your stuff, Mike.”

I was sure Riel being here and being in such a sour mood had something to do with the cops. But I didn't ask because there were a lot of kids in the hall, stashing books in their lockers and stuffing notebooks and binders into their backpacks. So I did the same thing. I shoved the books I didn't need up onto the top shelf of my locker and crammed the books I did need into my backpack. When I turned around, shouldering my load—
Don't make a paperback textbook when you can add a few pounds to the daily load by slapping hard covers on them, right?
—I saw Cat a couple of lockers down, watching me. Riel didn't seem to notice. He nudged me to get me moving.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“Later,” Riel said. It was all he said. He walked to the stairs and went down them quickly, checking every few steps to make sure that I was with him. If I was a pace or two behind, he looked impatient. Well, tough. If he wanted me to power on the speed, then the least he could do was tell me what the problem was.

We went through the front door of the school and out onto Gerrard Street. A streetcar stood at the corner, in the westbound track. Both the front and rear doors were open, which meant that it was illegal for cars to pass it. A double line of cars stretched back more than a block behind it. Ahead of it, the traffic light was green. Another streetcar jam-up, I figured. Another normal day in Toronto. It was no big deal. Nothing I would have paid attention to at all if it weren't for the fact that I saw Sal standing on the back steps of the streetcar, holding the door open.

A car behind the streetcar honked its horn. Then, like little children catching onto a fun idea, the drivers of other cars started to lean on their horns. Sal didn't move from the steps.

“What's Sal up to?” Riel said.

I shook my head and started to walk toward the streetcar. When I got closer, I heard Sal speaking to someone in Spanish. His hand was stretched out, reaching for his father, who was standing at the top of the streetcar steps. Inside, the streetcar driver was saying, “Get on or get off, it's all the same to me. But do
something so that I can get this vehicle moving.”

Sal spoke again, quietly but urgently. I saw him try to grab his father's hand. His father ducked back out of his way but didn't get off the streetcar steps.

“Look, mister, if you don't move, I'm going to have to call the cops,” the driver said.

“No,” Sal said. “No, it's okay. Don't call them. He's fine. He just can't breathe, that's all.”

“There's plenty of air outside,” the driver said.

“Maybe a window seat,” Sal said. “With the windows open.”

I glanced along the length of the streetcar. All of the window seats were taken and all of the windows were closed against the chilly air. Nobody looked like they wanted to move to make room for a man who was delaying their trip. Then someone shouted. It took a moment for me to understand that it was Sal's dad. He yelled something, and I saw him run up the aisle toward the driver. Sal jumped up into the streetcar and ran after him. I could hear him talking fast, but softly, to his dad. He caught his father by the hand and led him to the back door of the streetcar again. But once they got to the door, Sal's dad stood his ground. He jerked his hand away from Sal.

“That's it,” the driver said. He appeared at the door right behind Sal's dad. “That's it, I'm calling the cops.”

I looked back up at Sal and saw the panic in his face. After everything that had been happening, he didn't want the police anywhere near his dad.

“Just a minute, sir, if you don't mind,” said a voice behind me. Riel's voice. He was talking to the driver. “I know this man. Just give me a minute.” Then he turned to Sal and said, “Ask your father if he'd like a ride home. Tell him he can ride up front and we'll keep all the windows open.”

Sal's face flooded with gratitude when he turned to look at Riel. His expression changed, though, when he saw me.

“Ask him,” Riel said, his voice gentle and encouraging.

Sal spoke in Spanish to his father and held out his hand again. Riel stepped closer to Sal and said something I didn't understand, because it was in Spanish. I stared at him. But Sal's father came down out of the streetcar.

“Thank you,” Riel said to the streetcar driver. Then he said something else in Spanish. Sal gave me a look that said,
How come you never told me?
All I could do was shrug.

Riel's car was parked just down the street from the school, which surprised me. Most of the time he walked to school. “It's good for you,” he always said. If he drove—which he did when he had a lot of stuff to carry or when he knew he was going to have to run errands at the end of the day—he parked in the staff parking lot. I wondered why he hadn't done that today.

The first thing Riel did after he unlocked the car was roll down all the windows. Then he came around to the passenger side and opened the door for Sal's dad,
who was standing on the sidewalk. Riel looked at me like, what was I waiting for? I climbed into the backseat with Sal.

Sal told Riel his address. Riel drove to Sal's house, talking to Sal's dad in Spanish all the way. Riel did most of the talking. Except for a word here and there, the most Sal's dad did was nod. Mostly he looked straight ahead. His head was leaning toward the open window. I was worried that he was going to stick his head right out, but he didn't.

When Riel pulled up in front of Sal's house, Sal got out and opened the door for his father. Mr. San Miguel got out. If he thanked Riel for the ride, I didn't hear him. He just walked up the little path to the porch and disappeared inside. As I was getting out of the back seat to go and sit up front with Riel, Sal leaned down through the open passenger door and said, “Thanks, Mr. Riel. I was afraid the driver was going to call the cops.”

“I'm glad I could help,” Riel said. Then he said, “Is your mother holding up okay?”

Sal shrugged. “My aunt comes over a lot.”

“How about you?”

Sal looked down, away from Riel. He did the same thing whenever a girl he liked looked at him. It meant he was embarrassed.

“I'm okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

Sal glanced at me as he straightened up and turned toward his house. His eyes were all watery again. He
sucked in a deep breath, slung one strap of his backpack over his shoulder, and marched up the front path like a guy marching into battle. I guess, in a way, that that was exactly what he was doing.