Truth and Lies (8 page)

I froze. I kept the phone pressed to my ear and my back turned to the opening in case she doubled back the way she had come. Seconds slipped by. When I had counted out enough of them to make a minute, I turned. There was no sign of Jen. I dropped the receiver into its cradle and stepped out of the slot. She was gone.

She was always gone.

As I walked across the viaduct now, I had a picture of her in my mind—Jen, framed in profile in the front passenger-side window of her dad's BMW. Jen staring
straight ahead, not smiling.

Jen with something serious on her mind.

Just like me.

“What goes on in your head, Mike?” Riel said. He was at the door when I pushed it open and he started in on me right away with his questions:
Do you have any idea what time it is? Did you forget that you're supposed to be grounded? You were supposed to go to work, go to the library, then come right home and do your chores—does that ring a bell, Mike?
And now this: “What goes on in your head, Mike?”

The same stuff as goes on in anyone else's head—jeez, what did he think? Why did adults even bother asking questions like that? Probably because they always came off looking superior. Because questions like that were impossible to answer. Questions like that left kids with nothing to do but shrug and look stupid.

“Did you think you could just breeze in here any old time and there'd be no consequences?” Riel said. He was angry. I could see that by the pinched look around his eyes and by how tight his lips were, even when he was
shooting off question after question. But he wasn't yelling. With Riel, the angrier he got, the quieter he talked.

“I got fired,” I said.

His eyes widened a little. He hadn't been expecting that, and it was always nice to see Riel—a smart guy who knew he was a smart guy—get caught off guard and have to rethink things a little. Which was part of the reason I said it. I also said it because maybe Riel would think getting fired was the reason I'd been gone so long and because maybe if he calmed down enough to hear the whole story, he'd cut me a little slack. I said it, too, because I still couldn't believe it. And I said it so I'd have something else to think about besides that picture of Jen, framed in the window of her dad's Beemer. Something besides that whole thing with Jen.

“Fired?” Riel said. His lips weren't so tight anymore either. “What happened?”

What happened?
Not,
What did you do?
Or,
How did you manage to screw up again?
Just when you thought you had him figured out—Mr. Rigid, Mr. Model Foster Parent, Mr. Strict Disciplinarian—Riel could still hand you a surprise.

I told him the whole story. He flinched when I mentioned Vin's name. Riel didn't have the highest opinion of Vin, mainly because the biggest trouble I ever got in, I'd got in because of Vin. But he didn't say anything. He didn't interrupt while I explained that Vin hadn't done anything, that, as far as I could tell, none of the kids had done anything until after Mr. Kiros started in on them.

“So, basically,” Riel said when I finished, “he fired you because he was mad at some other kids, because Vin is your friend, and because he thought you were stealing from him?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Basically.”

Riel nodded. He chewed over the information some more. “Well,” he said, “it sounds to me as if he was totally unjustified in what he did. If you want to, you can try to fight him on it. Try to get your job back.”

Having a job was important to Riel. So was standing up for yourself. I knew that. But Mr. Kiros was pretty hard to take at the best of times. Forcing him to give me back my job wasn't going to improve the situation.

“Maybe I should just get another job,” I said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. My resume is still on the computer. I can hand it out tomorrow after school.” I hesitated. “I guess I won't be able to use Mr. Kiros's name, though.” I'd been hoping for a good reference from the candy store job—if there was one thing I needed, it was a good reference. But it didn't look like that was going to happen.

“Guess not,” Riel said. “Sorry it turned out that way, Mike.” He glanced at his watch. “You still have time to clean your bathroom before supper,” he said. “You can do the kitchen floor tomorrow.”

Right
, I thought.
Along with all the other stuff
.

“Looks like the cops caught a break,” Riel said Monday morning. He was sitting at the kitchen table, freshly showered, his hair still damp, drinking coffee. He smiled up at me like he hadn't turned me into Cinderella for the weekend—
scrub the floor, clean out the garage, bag the garbage
—like maybe we were even best friends.

“What do you mean?” I said. I was at the fridge, trying to decide between no-sugar-added orange juice and organic milk.

“The Robbie Ducharme case,” Riel said.

I finally chose the orange juice. I reached for a glass from the cupboard.

“You mean, they know who did it?”

Riel shook his head. “Doesn't say. But someone—a girl, apparently—went by the park that night. She saw kids coming out of the park.”

Somehow I lost my grip on the juice jug. It hit the floor and bounced up again, slopping orange juice everywhere. Riel looked at it, then at me, and started to get up.

“It's okay,” I said. “I'll get it.” After all, it wasn't like I didn't know where the mop was. Besides, I needed the distraction. While I mopped, I said, “Kids? You mean this girl doesn't know them?”

“Paper doesn't say. It just says she saw kids.”

“Doesn't sound like much of a break,” I said.

“It's progress. It's been nearly a week, and all that time, no one saw anything. Now we have someone who definitely saw kids.”

We?
Riel had quit being a cop a few years ago, but he still got all wound up when there were articles in the paper about cops or about major cases. Sometimes, if you ask me, it seemed that maybe Riel regretted his decision. But if he did, he sure wasn't sharing that information with me.

“You should have something to eat,” Riel said. “Have some cereal.”

By cereal, Riel didn't mean Cocoa Puffs or Count Chocula. He meant health-food-store granola. Served with yogurt. Nonfat yogurt.

“No thanks,” I said. “I'm not hungry.” Which was true, for a whole lot of reasons.

I found Sal at my locker at lunchtime, spinning the dial of my combination lock, yanking on the lock, looking confused when the lock didn't give.

“Hey,” I said. “I reformed, remember?”

In the good old days, the pre-Riel days, half the school had my locker combination. I didn't care. Heck, I
gave
it out. If people went in my locker, books went missing. Notes went missing. Assignments went missing. People took stuff. Took my stuff. Which made me a victim, right? And you never, ever blame the victim, right? In the pre-Riel days, I didn't care much about school. Billy didn't care either. Sure, he pushed me to show up. But that was because “If you don't show, I get
blamed, Mikey. That makes me look like I can't take care of you. And the minute they think that, I'm history. They'll take you away. You don't want to end up in foster care, do you, Mikey?”

No, I never wanted that. That hadn't stopped it from happening, though.

“It doesn't matter,” Sal said, releasing his hold on my lock. “I wasn't looking for anything.” He spun the dial a few more times. “Except maybe can I have my English notes back?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.” I took the lock into my hand and was surprised when Sal turned his back so that I could dial my combination in private. Jeez, Sal was a good guy. Responsible. If Riel really got to know Sal, he'd love him. “You don't have to do that,” I said.

“I don't want to be tempted.”

“Yeah, but I trust you.” And I did. It was true. I trusted Sal 100 percent. Which was funny when I thought about it. If you asked me who's your best friend, it was a no-brainer. I'd say Vin. Vin and I went all the way back to kindergarten. Only now, the way things were turning out, I wasn't so sure. But when I had changed locks, Vin had pestered me for the combination,
in case of emergency
, he said. And the next thing I knew, I was in class without a history book. Sal, though? Sal didn't even ask for the combination. I looked at his back, yanked on the lock until it gave, and thought,
Maybe Sal is my best friend now. Maybe things have shifted that much
.

“So, did you bring it?” Sal said as he turned around.

Jeez. “No, I forgot.”

“But you said you'd bring it.” Sal was looking better now. He seemed a little more back to normal, and not just because his eyes weren't all watery and bloodshot. He seemed back to normal because he was giving me a hard time for not bringing the money to buy a ticket to the school dance.

“I forgot. I'll bring it tomorrow,” I said.

“What if they sell out?”

There was a limit to how many kids could attend school dances. You had to buy a ticket, and when the tickets were all gone, you were out of luck.

“It's
Monday
,” I said. The dance wasn't until Friday.

“Tickets sold out on Monday for the last dance,” Sal said. The last dance had had an actual band instead of recorded music. I figured maybe that was why it had sold out so fast.

“It'll be fine,” I said. “I'll bring it tomorrow for sure.”

“Now,” Sal said. “You gotta get the money now.”

“But I don't have it.” Jeez, hadn't I just said that? For some reason that I didn't understand, Sal was desperate to go to this dance. He was just as desperate to drag me along with him. It had to be a girl. A girl he had it bad for but hadn't told me about yet. I tried to think of who it could be, but drew a blank.

“Fine,” I said. “This is such a big deal to you,
you
lend me ten bucks?”

“I don't have that much money,” he said.

So what was I supposed to do? If I could figure out how to pluck ten dollars out of thin air whenever I needed it, well, life would be a whole lot different, right?

“Ask Riel,” Sal said.

I shook my head. Riel was funny about money—especially about me asking for money when that was the whole point of me having a job. But it wasn't like I'd be asking him to
give
me money. It was only a loan, ten bucks. I could pay him back when I got home. And the money wasn't for anything Riel would disapprove of. It was for a school dance. School dances contribute to school spirit. School spirit is a good thing. Riel is as big on school spirit as he is on school sports.

“Okay,” I said.

“Ask him
now
.”

“O-kay,” I said.

I tried the staff lounge first. I knocked on the door and asked politely when—who else?—Ms. Stephenson answered. It just had to be Ms. Stephenson. It couldn't have been Mr. Korchak, my music teacher, who actually seemed to like me. Ms. Stephenson seemed only too happy to tell me that Riel wasn't there.

I tried Riel's classroom, but he wasn't there either, and the room was locked. I could have quit then. I'd tried, right? But Sal was going to pop an artery if I didn't produce ten bucks and buy a dance ticket by the end of the day.

Maybe Riel was outside. Riel was also very big on outside.

But, no, he wasn't there either.

Now I was really baffled. He had to be somewhere. One thing about Riel, he was 100 percent responsible. When he was supposed to be at school, he was at school. But where at school?

I tried the gym. Then the office. I peeked through the window in the door to the auditorium. I didn't see Riel, but I was willing to bet serious money that the briefcase that was sitting on the stage was his. Curious—where there's briefcase, there's teacher—I pushed open the door. The auditorium seemed deserted. I stood at the back for a moment, quiet, listening, and finally caught the hum of a voice. A masculine voice, coming from up near the stage. Riel? If so, what was he up to?