League of Strays (15 page)

He pretended to be offended. “Oh, so now you’re a partner, huh?” He sent me a lopsided smile of gratitude. Even so, I knew my help was about as effective as a Band-Aid on a broken leg.

MONDAY MORNING, MOM DECIDED TO STRENGTHEN OUR
mother-daughter bond over a bowl of Cheerios.

“I know this was a rough move for you, Charlotte. I’m so happy you’ve adjusted to school.” The smile didn’t mask the concern in her eyes.

I looked down at the cut-up chunks of banana floating on top of my cereal. I hated bananas in Cheerios. Always had. Why didn’t she know this?

“You can talk to me about anything,” she said.

My mother was like the dishtowel in her hand, ready to soak up the details of my life. I wanted to talk to someone who would listen, but I wasn’t
that
desperate.

“Mom, you need to get a life,” I snapped.

Pure meanness didn’t make me feel better. I wished I could take the words back. She swooped down on my half-eaten bowl of cereal and headed for the kitchen before I could apologize.

I picked up my instrument. “Everything’s great, Mom. You don’t have to worry.”

I waited for her usual good-bye, with a perky “Have a nice day!” at the end, but all I heard was the rumble of the dishwasher.

My mother seemed to annoy me more every day, but it wasn’t fair to react the way I had. Kade was right about my parents; they were too involved in my life. I hoped Mom would loosen her grip on me so I wouldn’t have to shake her off.

In English, Mr. Holmquist pounced on me the nanosecond my eyes glazed over.
I’m a senior
, I wanted to say.
Go pick on a freshman for chrissakes
. Instead, I asked, “Um, what was the question again?”

“Would you please explain what the broken rose in chapter seven means?” he asked, tacking on a tired sigh.

Nothing, I thought. The author was describing her favorite flower as a kid, but meanwhile, in schools across America, people were finding the demise of communism in a bent stem.

I didn’t think the answer would suffice, so I just blinked.

Mr. Holmquist turned his back to the class and scrawled the next day’s homework on the whiteboard. I laid my head on my arms and watched the clock, desperate for the ten-minute break between classes when I’d see my friends. We’d devised a secret language that worked almost as well as talking.

A head scratch meant “What’s up?”

A touch to the neck: “All’s cool.”

A hand on the hip: “Something or someone sucks.”

When I saw Kade before last period, he’d added a new one:
Two fingers to the lips with a wink. My heart banged against my chest like a caged gorilla.

I watched as he walked away, his back straight, stride determined. Richie came out of a classroom and joined up with him. They walked side by side, arms brushing together, hips bumping as they jostled through the crowd. I wanted to be Richie just then, walking casually with Kade through the hallways of Kennedy.

One of Lawrence’s friends, who I recognized from the post office parking lot, strode in their direction, eyeing Richie coldly. Richie swerved at the last minute to avoid a collision, but the guy also swerved—driving Richie into the chairs outside the counseling office.

Heads twisted around at the noise. I looked at Kade, who stood placidly beside the behemoth football player. Slowly, he drew his hand out of his pocket. His fist popped out, hitting the guy in the thigh. The football player yelped like a dog who’d had his paw stepped on. Kade retracted his hand, and I spotted the tiny stub of a pencil. He covered the tip with his thumb and kept on walking. The guy pirouetted on the ball of his foot to see who’d stabbed him, but Kade was already gone. And so was Richie.

I pushed through the crowd, trying to find them. When I crossed to the wing where Kade had his next class, I saw Richie wave and bound up the stairs. Kade was halfway down the hall, almost at his classroom, when Mr. Reid passed by me. He slowed about ten feet behind Kade and kept that distance.

Without warning, Kade turned around, planting his feet
shoulder-width apart. He stood in the middle of the bustling hallway and glowered at the principal. They squared off like gunslingers from the Old West. I hugged my viola to my chest as if I expected a blast to reverberate through the hallway.

But then Mr. Reid broke the stare. He turned and started walking back in my direction. Still frozen, I looked down the hall at Kade, who spun around and picked up his pace until he curved around the corner, out of sight. Mr. Reid looked me in the eye, nodding once as he moved past.

I was heading to my own class when the two officers from the assembly strutted toward me. My stomach dropped like an elevator in a bad movie. What if they’d found evidence, like a fingerprint on the handle of the storage-room door? No, we’d worn gloves. I didn’t need to worry. Kade was always prepared.

I dove face-first into the water fountain, then wiped the water off my forehead and fell in step behind them as they headed up the stairs. A mass of kids coming down parted to the side.

The policemen were heading toward the art room. I was pretty sure that Richie had pottery and sculpture class this period.

It was over, I knew it. One by one, they’d collect all of us. The sound of the crowd dulled, replaced by the roar of a waterfall in my ears. I bent over, my head below my heart, and stayed there until the dizziness passed.

I couldn’t believe my luck when they veered into the shop room. Kids swarmed the area like bees at a picnic. We didn’t have to wait long. The door flung open and the crowd hopped out of the way as Mark Lawrence stumbled out.

“This is bullshit,” Lawrence protested.

With the tip of his club, the buff cop—I think Mr. Reid had said his name was Officer Henderson—prodded Mark down the hallway. I was watching them go, trying to make sense of it all, when the other cop, Officer Price, stepped in front of me. “Let’s go, miss. Show’s over.”

I lowered my eyes and hustled in the opposite direction.

Had Dave ratted on Mark after all? I couldn’t believe he’d break the jock code of silence, especially after all this time.

The Kennedy High rumor mill lurched into action. Sidney Bishop told Nicole Haines that Mark Lawrence had beat up his girlfriend, who was recovering at Glenwood Community Hospital with a broken hand. I prayed it was true, because that would mean our plan for Dave had nothing to do with this latest development. But on my way to English, I saw Mark’s girlfriend weeping into some guy’s chest, wholly intact.

When the final bell rang, I ran home as fast as I could. I wanted to call Zoe and Nora from the privacy of my room. To my dismay, Dad was home. Just my luck—even workaholics took a break sometimes. I gave him the obligatory peck on the cheek and turned toward the stairs.

“Charlotte, I need to ask you something.”

No, not now! I didn’t want to think about someone else’s legal problems. I had plenty of my own. Or I might soon enough.

“I have a new client from Kennedy High,” he said. “Mark Lawrence. Name ring a bell?”

I shook my head, unable to speak.

“Good,” he said. “I don’t want you hanging out with boys
like him. He’s been charged with battery against another student at Kennedy.”

“Who?” I said, too quickly. I tried again with an indifferent tone. “I mean, what other student?”

Dad peered at me over the rim of his tortoiseshell reading glasses. I took a breath, loosening my shoulders. “David something or other,” he answered.

I swallowed. “What happened?”

“I can’t discuss the case with you, but I thought you should know that I’m representing the Lawrence boy.”

“It’s going to be all over school tomorrow,” I said. “You can tell me the facts, right?”

He thought about it. “I suppose. It seems there was bad blood between them. David showed up at Mark’s house the other night. There was a struggle, and Mark put him in the hospital.”

“What did they fight about?” I asked, trying to repress the dread in my voice.

“That falls under the category of lawyer-client privacy, but I’m sure in time it will all come out.”

I thought about Dave’s parting words after he’d apologized to Richie. Something about having “business to do.”

Dad climbed the stairs, stopping beside me. I edged up a step. A deep-set wrinkle stretched across the bridge of his nose, connecting his eyebrows. I knew that look: it was an intimidating tactic my father used to pry confessions from the scum of the earth. I recognized two other techniques too: “personal-space invasion” and “calculated quiet.” My father labeled everything in an effort to educate me, but he forgot that I knew all his secrets.

I returned the silence, counting to myself in Spanish to make the time pass:
Veintisiete … veintiocho … veintinueve …

Once people started talking, the game was over, Dad had told me. Sometimes they’d sink into a pool of lies until the only way to float to the surface was to reach for the truth. “Shut up or spill it,” was what he called that one. Well, I could wait it out, force
him
to talk first.

My plan worked, and he buckled. “Are you sure you don’t know these
gentlemen
, if I may use the term loosely?”

I countered his question with one of my own. “Is he hurt? The one in the hospital, I mean.”

“Of course he’s hurt, Charlotte. He wouldn’t be in the hospital if he weren’t. In addition to his already-broken arm, he has a busted knee and three broken ribs, but he’ll live. As soon as he was conscious, he ID’d Lawrence. Other than that, he’s not talking.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“No worries. Jack’s on it.”

Jack is my father’s seventy-two-year-old assistant. He likes to pull the senility act, asking the same questions over and over until the suspect gets so annoyed that he talks just to shut Jack up. The method’s unsophisticated, but surprisingly effective.

I wanted to ask more questions, but I knew better. “Good luck with the case.” I turned my back on him and continued up the stairs.

Our joke against Dave Harper had spun out of control. I locked the bedroom door behind me and did a belly flop on the bed. Don’t cry, I told myself. It didn’t work.

Dad rapped on the door. “Charlotte?”

I sucked in a breath. He knocked louder. With a sigh, I dragged myself to the door and flipped the lock. Dad pushed it open.

“Are you involved with one of those boys?” he drilled.

“Dave’s in my English class. I don’t really know him. Not well, anyway. But I can be upset that he’s in the hospital, can’t I?”

Dad’s scowl softened. “You’ve got a good heart, Charlotte. I suppose I forget about the human element since I see this stuff every day.” He lifted a hand to my cheek, catching one of my tears on his index finger. This little bit of tenderness made me want to bawl harder.

“You know, when you were little, we used to play chess together,” he said.

I nodded, not sure where he was going with the trip down memory lane.

“You got very good very fast, and it wasn’t long before you were beating me. So we entered you in a tournament, do you remember?”

“Yes,” I said. “I lost all my games.”

“Because you didn’t want to hurt your opponents’ feelings.”

Huh, funny I didn’t remember that part. But it sounded like something I’d do.

“If the music thing doesn’t pan out, you could be a lawyer,” he said. “But you’ll have to toughen up if you want to be successful.”

He walked away, leaving me to wonder how a person could practice insensitivity. I waited until he was out of sight, then kicked the door shut.

THE GLOWING RED NUMBERS ON THE CLOCK SHIFTED FROM
11:59 to 12:00. I tried counting backward from a hundred. I even did the counting-sheep thing.

“Forget it,” I said out loud.

I should probably shrug the whole thing off. Dave was a jerk; he’d brought this on himself by bullying Richie. But still. If it hadn’t been for us, he wouldn’t be in a hospital with arm casts and leg casts and whatever it was they did for broken ribs.

I swung my feet to the floor. A pair of bloodshot eyes stared back from my mirror. I remembered reading that some of the world’s top models spread hemorrhoid cream around their sleep-deprived eyes to reduce swelling. Did Tiffany Miller dab on Preparation H after a late-night make-out session?