Cheating for the Chicken Man (14 page)

Kate's day of homework was interrupted only when her mother gave her the food list and asked her to go to the grocery store with Aunt Helen because something had come up for Jess's mom. Once again, Kate didn't see anyone else her age with a list and her own cart at the store. At least she knew the aisles by heart and could do it quickly: produce first, then tuna and canned goods, then cereal, then dish detergent, then cat and dog food, then milk and bread.

In the meat section, she paused. Her friends always thought it was strange that Kate and her family raised chickens but if they wanted to eat one, they had to buy it at the grocery store. No one understood how they didn't actually own the chickens they raised. She held a package of chicken breasts in her hand, noticing how pink and plump the meat, how it glistened underneath the plastic wrap. What did J.T. say? Burst blood vessels? Chicken was on the list, but Kate set the package back and
decided that for one meal this week, they could do soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches.

All day the text message from Curtis followed her. In late afternoon, she closed the door to her bedroom again. No thoughts of Curtis in here, she told herself. Grabbing her school journal from the nightstand, she plopped onto her bed and leaned against her pillows.

What my room says about
me:

You can tell th
e minute you walk in
to my room that I lo
ve pandas because on
the wall over my de
sk is a poster of th
e panda named Tai Sh
an who was born at t
he National Zoo in W
ashington, DC. Tai S
han means “peaceful
mountain.” After Tai
Shan was born, we c
hecked the zoo's Gia
nt PandaCam every da
y. We watched Tai Sh
an grow from the siz
e of a butter stick
to a toddler panda w
ho curled up in a bu
cket for a nap and p
layed with a soccer
ball.

Kate stopped writing. Thoughts of Tai Shan didn't end happily, because the panda cub belonged to China, which took him back a few years later. Kate had cried watching his plane leave on the evening news.

She didn't understand why the Chinese cared so much about pandas but didn't seem to care about what was happening to the elephants. Kate had read an article online and seen a special program on television that said the Chinese love for ivory statues and trinkets was one of biggest reasons so many elephants were being killed—so their tusks could be sold on a black market. Sometimes whole herds of elephants were wiped out so poachers could hack off their tusks. Just thinking about it made Kate's eyes go bleary with tears. Someday, she was going to help stop this. It was the reason she was taking Chinese
in high school. Someone needed to explain it to them! Someday she would have a job in which she could help protect beautiful and endangered animals like elephants and pandas.
Somed
ay
.

Kate wiped at her eyes. She didn't write this down, but she had often wondered if her love for animals wasn't because of the tortured feelings she had about what her family did for a living. She knew she was “conflicted.” Her third-grade Sunday school teacher had told her so when Kate blurted out in class once how she hated the way her family made its living.

Below the panda poster was a sparkly frame holding a photograph of Jess and Kate, each carrying a candle, the night they were inducted into the Junior National Honor Society. Kate knew if anyone ever found out about the cheating, she'd be asked to leave the honor group.

The other framed photo on Kate's bureau was of J.T. and his friends Brady and Digger. They were eight or nine years old and stood by the steam locomotive they rode for Brady's birthday. The boys were laughing and had their arms around one another's shoulders; Digger was making rabbit ears behind J.T.'s head. The world was wide open. Not so long ago, those boys had had dreams, too. . . .

Kate pulled out her cell phone:
U
stop u know what ha
ppens.

SPECIAL DELIVERY

K
ate! Wake up!” A hand shook Kate's shoulder. Was it the middle of the night? Kate blinked her eyes open in the dim light.

“I didn't mean to scare you,” her mother whispered.

“Mom!” Kate pushed herself up on one elbow. “What is it?”

“I'm not sure,” she said. “I walked out to get the morning paper.”

Kate sat all the way up. “You walked all the way down the driveway?”

“Shhhh!” Her mother was not smiling. “Yes. I did.”

“But, Mom, that's great!”

Her mother was shaking her head. “No, because I saw that someone has smashed down our mailbox. It's on the side of the road!”

“They did?”

Her mother leaned closer. “There was chicken manure and feathers stuffed in the box.”

Kate gasped and put a hand up to her mouth.

“They left this note,” her mother said, handing Kate a piece of paper.

The note, written in black marker, read
Special Delivery for the Chicken Man,
aka the Baby Killer
.

Kate was horrified. Chicken Man was bad enough, but
Baby K
iller
?

“Do you know what this means?” Kate's mother asked, her frightened eyes glued to Kate's.

Kate took her hand from her mouth and started to move her head back and forth. “No—”

“Kate, what's going on?”

Kate's eyes moved away from her mother's. Her head stopped moving.

“Chicken Man,” her mother said. “Isn't that what the boy in middle school called J.T.?”

Kate couldn't deny it. She nodded.

“Is this the same boy, then?”

“I don't know,” Kate said, unsure how to answer. She met her mother's eyes again. “Maybe.”

“There's something you're not telling me.”

The pain on her mother's face was clear. It was a bad situation, no question about it. But Kate was glad to see that her mother cared.

“Is it Curtis Jenkins?”

Her mother had remembered his name!

Kate swallowed hard. She didn't want her mother to get depressed again. “It's probably just kids fooling around,” she hastened to say. “Really, Mom, you shouldn't worry.” She pushed her covers aside. “I'll go clean it up now so he won't see.”

“We'll both go,” her mother said.

Pulling a sweatshirt on over her pajamas, Kate stepped into flip-flops and followed her mother downstairs. It was not yet seven o'clock, and everyone else was sleeping. At the back
kitchen door, both Tucker and Jingles squeezed through and rushed ahead of them. Outside, the sky was clear; it promised to be a sunny, crisp day. Hundreds of geese were already eating in the nearby cornfields.

“Get a garbage bag and a shovel from the garage,” Kate's mother directed her. “I'll get some work gloves and a hammer.”

They must have looked odd, Kate thought, as they set off down the driveway, Kate in pajamas, Mom still in a robe, her long hair gathered into a loose braid, and the dog trotting alongside them.

When they got to the mailbox, Kate pulled on the work gloves and, with her mother holding the garbage bag open, kneeled to scoop up handfuls of chicken manure and feathers.

Sickenin
g
 . . .
despicable
 . . .
hateful
. These were some of the words that came to mind as Kate worked. Had Curtis driven over during the night and smashed it down? With what? A baseball bat? A sledgehammer? It seemed like a cruel and violent thing to do.

While Kate tied up the garbage bag, her mother dug out the old posthole. It took some effort, but the two of them managed to get the post back in and the mailbox up. Kate shoveled in dirt around the base and stomped on it. The mailbox still had a big dent, but at least it could hold mail.

“I'll ask Uncle Ray to get a new one at the hardware store,” Kate's mother said. “Maybe he can put it up sometime this week.”

“We'll definitely need a new one.”

“We won't say anything to your brother,” Mom added.

“No,” Kate agreed. “We won't say anything.”

*

As far as she could tell, J.T. never did find out about the mailbox, but the episode was far from over. The next day at school, Kate was summoned to the office at the end of second period. She was surprised to see her mother standing at the front counter. She wore a green corduroy skirt, one she used to wear to church, a freshly pressed blouse, and a shawl. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and she clutched her big black pocketbook, the one that looked like a saddlebag.

“Mom, what are you doing here?”

“I came to talk with Mr. Roberts.”

“The assistant principal?”

“Yes.” Kate's mother motioned for Kate to follow. “Let's go out into the hall.”

Kate looked around. What was going on?

In the hall, Mom led her toward the front doors and then stepped to one side. “We had a talk, in Mr. Roberts's office. I told him what happened to our mailbox. I showed him the note. I said we knew who did it.” Her eyes began filling with tears.

“Mom?” Kate touched her mother's arm.

“Mr. Roberts says there is nothing school can do about it. They can't do anything about an incident that happens off school grounds.”

Kate nodded, although she already knew this.

“At least now the principal's office is on notice to keep a lookout for Curtis doing something here,” her mother said.

“Wow, Mom. I didn't think you'd actually come to school.”

“I want to help him, Kate.”

“I know you do. I do, too!”

Her mother shook her head. She rummaged in her giant purse for a tissue. “I've been an awful mother. That poor boy has needed my help for so long, and I've let him down. I've been so neglectful. So wrong.”

“He knows you love him, Mom,” Kate said, trying to comfort her.

“I don't know what to do,” she said, dabbing at her eyes.

Outside, a white taxicab was pulling up to the curb.

“Oh, gosh. That's for me,” Kate's mother said, sniffing, balling up the tissue. “I need to get home. We'll talk again later, okay? We'll think of something, Kate. There has to be a way we can help him.”

Kate hugged her mother and watched her walk out to the cab. It was
hu
ge
that her mother had called a taxi and come all the way to school. Kate hadn't even known there were taxicabs available out in the country! Where had it come from? Chestertown? Easton? It must have cost a lot of money. Money they didn't have. But Grandma wasn't here, and she knew Mom didn't want to ask anyone else to drive her.

As she stood at the window watching her mother, Kate's heart broke and her own eyes misted over. Once again, she thought back to the day they had buried her father, how J.T. had been on the knoll with his trumpet, and nobody ever found out about it. And the first paper she'd written for Curtis? Mr. Ellison had never caught on. So it was possible, after all. You
coul
d
keep a secret if you were careful.

Standing at the window watching the taxi drive off, Kate took a deep breath. There was only one way she could think of to help J.T. and her mother. She needed to research and write
a paper on the Nile River's role in early civilization. Two pages. Doublespaced. Due tomorrow.

BACKSPIN

T
hey agreed to meet before school at the water fountain on the second floor. That end of the building, near the chemistry labs, didn't have lockers or homerooms. Neither Curtis nor Kate thought anyone would see them there.

Curtis was waiting. He leaned against the wall, but straightened up when he saw her.

“Here,” she said, thrusting forward the paper she'd written on the Nile River.

“Thanks,” he muttered, quickly folding the paper and slipping it inside the math book in his hands.

Wasn't he even going to look at it? To be sure it was two pages? Or that it had a separate cover sheet with his name on it as he'd requested in a subsequent text?

“That's it,” Kate declared. “No more.” She turned to go.

“Wait,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you something. For our Creative Writing class—”

Kate swung all the way around. “No!”

Curtis threw up his hands. “I'm not asking you to write it!”

Kate stared at him.

“I just wondered, can you help me get
started
with it?”

“What? The describe-your-room piece?”

Curtis nodded.

Too bad he was such a creep, Kate thought. With a haircut, he could actually be sort of cute.

“Look,” he said, opening his hands. “I just don't know where to start.”

Kate glanced at her watch. They had ten minutes before first period. She could ignore him. Just turn and go, which was what she wanted to do. Or she could stay for five minutes and be nice. Maybe some of her nice would wear off on him.

“Like, how do you do it?” he asked again.

Was this for real? Kate wasn't sure. “Just dive into it,” she said with a slight shrug, still unsure of his motive. “Try something, and if that doesn't work, try something else.”

Curtis stared at her expectantly.

“Like, where
is
your room?” she suggested. “Do you share it with—”

“It's in the basement,” Curtis told her.

“The basement,” Kate repeated.

“Yeah. I have the basement to myself.”

“Okay. Well, is it nice and cozy down there?”

Curtis smirked. “It's really damp, for one thing.”

“Eww,” Kate sympathized, although she couldn't care less if Curtis Jenkins was uncomfortable in his own bedroom.

“No, I like it! I mean it's damp, but it's also cool—as in
not
hot
—and I hate being hot. So all the time I hear the sump pump running 'cause the groundwater, it comes in through a pipe in the walls and gets pumped back out into the yard. We're on a really low piece of land, so it's, like, running all the time.”

“That must be pretty annoying,” Kate said.

“Actually, I kind of like it,” Curtis said. “It drowns out
everything going on upstairs. You know, like the TV blasting away and my mother yelling at her boyfriend.”

Curtis laughed, but Kate didn't think it was funny. She couldn't imagine what it must be like having a mother with a boyfriend, never mind a mother who
yelled
at her boyfriend. Kate's parents had had disagreements, but she could think of only a couple times when they'd actually raised their voices at each other.

There was a lull in their conversation, and Curtis kicked at the floor with the toe of one sneaker.

“Write down what you just told me, Curtis. ‘I sleep in a damp, cold basement, but I like it'—and then explain why.”

“Okay!” His eyebrows arched. “I'll try that. I will.”

What in the world was happening? Kate wondered. “You may want to include some other details,” she added. “Like what does it smell like in the basement? Is it messy? Do you have a TV down there?”

“No TV,” Curtis jumped in to say. “But there's a pool table! Yeah! My brother, Justin, and me, we played a lot of pool. He taught me how to backspin the ball. Do you know what that is?”

Kate shook her head.

“That's when you hit the cue ball with the cue stick at the base of the ball. It makes the ball move forward, but when it hits another ball, it suddenly reverses direction and comes back.”

“It hits and then comes back?” Kate asked.

“Yeah. It's really amazing!”

“Interesting,” she said, thinking to herself that the whole meeting with Curtis was like a giant backspin. What was it with him?

She tried to think of some more questions. “So when you lie in bed, what else do you see besides the pool table? Pipes in the ceiling? What's on the walls?”

“My fishing rods,” he said. “I got all my fishing rods lined up on the wall. Then, on my bureau there's a picture of my brother and me when I caught that thirty-two-inch rockfish. Remember I told you about that? And there's a picture of Justin when he graduated from basic training.” He paused, and his eyes fell away from hers. “I look at that picture every night before I go to sleep.”

His brother again. There was something about his brother.

And then suddenly, Hooper Delaney was there. Silently, and without a greeting of any kind, he stood a few feet behind Curtis, like a shadow, and leaned against the wall. He was half the size of Curtis, a short, skinny kid who wore glasses and a large, dark sweatshirt with the hood up so Kate couldn't see his face very well. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, and he didn't have a backpack or anything. Kate couldn't be sure, but he seemed to be
leering
at them. Did he know what was going on? Had Curtis told him they were going to meet here?

Curtis glanced at him over his shoulder. “Hey, Hoop,” he said flatly.

Hooper didn't respond.

It was creepy, Kate thought. Hooper was really sketchy. Didn't he have anything better to do than hang out and cheer on the bully? When he started biting on a fingernail, Kate began to wonder if there was something wrong with him.

And then, the strangest thing happened: Curtis's demeanor began to change. He crossed his arms and frowned like he was
angry. “So anyway, Kate,” he said, his voice suddenly loud. “Your next assignment is for English.”

Was this a joke? Because it seemed like he was playacting. He had gone from laughing and asking for her advice to asking her to cheat again? Was he serious? Or was he showing off for Hooper? Kate was confused.

“I know you must've read
Animal Farm
in eighth grade like everyone else,” Curtis said, “so this shouldn't be too hard for you.”

He was serious. Kate started walking backward.

“But some of us dummies are just now reading that book.”

Kate turned and started running down the stairs.

“It won't be that hard! I'll text you the assignment!” Curtis called out over the second floor railing.

Kate went so fast that on the last step, she fell, scraping her knee. It wasn't a bad cut, not really, but she'd hit the edge of the step, and it drew blood, giving Kate an excuse to head for the nurse's office. When she got there, she said she'd fallen and didn't feel good. The nurse led her into the back room, where she pushed aside a curtain revealing a bed.

All morning, Kate hid out, curled up on the bed in the sickroom. She even stayed through lunch, letting the nurse bring her a tuna fish sandwich and some cold French fries on a tray. Would Jess miss her at their table?

Poor Jess, Kate thought, so innocent, chattering away on the bus that morning about the Halloween costume she was going to make, not knowing what Kate was about to do. And Kate not responding at all because she was still miffed about the
sleepover.
Kate,
did you get my text?
I'm going to be a c
upcake! I saw a pict
ure in this magazine
at the orthodontist
yesterday. It's rea
lly cool. You use, l
ike, cardboard for t
he cupcake paper, ri
ght? Then you stuff
white tights with ra
gs and loop them aro
und and around for f
rosting. And you glu
e on cut-up colored
straws for sprinkles
! Kate? Are you even
listening . . . ?

Kate put a hand over her eyes. She was going to lose her best friend in all this, too. Things were slipping away, because what about the interview with Mr. Ellison for the school newspaper?

“Excuse me, but could you get a message to one of my teachers?” Kate asked the nurse in a panic. “I'm supposed to interview him at lunch, but there's no way I can do it.” She grimaced. All those questions for nothing:
Where are you
from? Where did you
go to college? Do y
ou like to write, to
o?
She had agonized over the personal stuff, uncertain whether it was rude to ask if he was married and had a family.

“Sure,” the nurse said.

“Oh!” Kate sat up and rummaged in her backpack pulling out a roll of paper towels and a bag of beans. “Can you take these to the office, too? My lab partner, Marc Connors, needs them for lab. Mr. Rutkowski's biology class next period.”

The nurse took the items but hesitated and gave Kate a second look. Did she suspect Kate was faking it? She moaned a little and lay back down.

What about field hockey? she wondered, draping a hand over her eyes. Could she go to practice if she hadn't been in class all day?

The nurse sounded concerned. “Are your cramps usually this bad? Should I call your mother?”

Yet another lie added to her heap of lies. The pile was getting so big Kate couldn't see over the top. “No,” she replied. “My mom doesn't drive, so she can't come. I'll be okay. The Aleve will help, I know it will.”