Truth and Lies (2 page)

“It's okay,” I said, jumping up, showing some early morning energy that I didn't feel. “I'll get it.”

“You've got five minutes,” Riel said. He grabbed his mug of coffee and left the kitchen. Going to pack his briefcase, I figured. Going to make sure it contained his lesson plans and the papers he had marked and whatever diabolical assignment he was going to spring on his students next. “Five minutes and we're out of here. Got it?”

“Got it.”

I waited until I was alone in the kitchen. Then I dumped the toast into the garbage can and poured my milk down the sink. My stomach felt as raw as my knuckles. Anything I ate was sure to come right back up again.
I should have stayed put last night
, I thought.
The way things worked out, I just should have stayed put
.

Anyone who hadn't heard about Robbie Ducharme when they arrived at school knew about him by the time the homeroom bell rang. While I was rooting around in my locker, I heard the buzz of Robbie's name up and down the corridor.
Did you hear about the Ducharme kid? He was kicked to death
. Some kids sounded like they couldn't believe it. Others sounded like they didn't really care. Me? I had problems of my own, like,
Where is my history textbook?

I emptied the top shelf of my locker, textbook by binder by notebook. My history book wasn't there. It wasn't in the heap of stuff on the bottom of the locker either, although, hey, I did find my calculator, which would at least get Mr. Tran off my back. But my history book? Not there. I was pretty sure it wasn't at home either. Well, look on the bright side. I wasn't in Riel's history class anymore. They made me transfer out when he became my foster parent. If I'd still been in his class, I'd be in for trouble for sure because Riel was the kind of teacher who
always
noticed when kids didn't come prepared. He noticed because he
always
checked. And whenever he found kids who had come to class without their textbooks, he gave them extra assignments. He always said, “Maybe that will help you to come prepared next time.”

My new teacher, Mr. Danos, wasn't such a stickler. But—and this is what always scared me, no matter
whose class I was in—if Mr. Danos and Riel got talking in the staff lounge at lunch, and if Mr. Danos happened to mention that I had come to class without my textbook, Riel would make a mental note of that. And later, maybe over supper or maybe when I was cleaning up afterward, I'd get the lecture.
You should always be prepared, Mike. You should look after your things. You should take school seriously. You have to be responsible, Mike
. And he'd make me tear apart my room until I either found the book or proved that I had exhausted all possibilities. Then he'd make me promise to tear apart my locker the next day. And if I did that and still didn't produce the book,
blam
, I'd be hit with another lecture.
Your textbooks are your responsibility, Mike. They're expensive, you know. I hope you're not expecting me to pay for it
. And then, inevitably,
Have you been giving out your locker combination again, Mike? I thought we covered that. I thought we agreed that wouldn't happen anymore
. Jeez, Riel. He
told
you what to do, then he said,
That's what we agreed, right?
, like life in his house was one big happy democracy, like he wasn't really 100 percent in charge of what happened. I had to get my hands on that book by the end of the day or else. And I had just one more idea where it might be.

I slammed my locker shut and headed for homeroom. Robbie Ducharme's name was in the air all around me. I bet Robbie had never been noticed so much. For the whole day his name was whispered, spoken, exclaimed in hallways, in bathrooms and out in the schoolyard.
Did you hear what happened to Robbie Ducharme? Why would
anyone do such a thing?
Why would anyone bother? The guy was a nobody. A nothing. Less than that—a negative number.

The cops came around. They stayed in the office, mostly. Probably asking about Robbie—who did he hang with? Did he have any troubles with anyone? Was he a scrapper? Later, I figured, they'd want to start talking to Robbie's teachers and to kids who had maybe known Robbie.

Mr. Tran, my math teacher, normally couldn't stand still for five seconds because he was always so jazzed about math, like all that stuff he was scribbling on the chalkboard added up to the secret of the universe. But today Mr. Tran was sitting at his desk, as hard and fixed as his chair. The only way you could tell he was breathing was that every now and again his chest would heave, like he was gasping for air. When the bell rang at the beginning of class, he got up and started to write on the board—another formula, every day one more useless line of code to learn. His usually square, careful writing got faster and wilder and scribblier and then, as he was drawing a line, slashing at the board to do it, the chalk snapped. Mr. Tran wheeled around, raised his hand, and threw the half piece of chalk that he was still holding. Threw it hard, so that Trevor Black, who sat near the back of the room and who hated math, had to duck. The chalk whizzed over his head and struck the back wall. Mr. Tran stared at the whitish spot where it had made contact. Stared, then turned and stalked from the room. Jeez.

At lunchtime I scoured the cafeteria for Vin. I found Sal instead. Vin Taglia is my best friend. I've hung out with him since kindergarten. Sal San Miguel is a newer friend, but solid just the same. When a guy has two friends like that, he hardly needs anything else.

“Hey,” I said, sliding into a chair opposite Sal. He had a slice of pepperoni pizza on a paper plate in front of him. He hadn't touched it. I had a tuna sandwich on whole grain bread, and an apple. Riel never quit.

Sal's head bobbed up. He looked like he hadn't slept since the millennium began.

“You okay?” I said.

He nodded.

“You hear about Ducharme?”

Another nod. Jeez, you want to let a guy get a word in edgewise or what?

I took my sandwich out of the bag it was in and stared at it. Then I looked at the untouched pizza on Sal's plate, glistening with delicious but 100-percent-bad-for-you grease.

“You gonna eat that?” I said at last.

Sal shoved the plate across the table.

Well, okay.

I was halfway out one of the side exits after school, not thinking about anything special except maybe getting to my after-school job on time. I'd shoved open the door
and was cruising through it and, believe me, I wasn't looking for her—why would I? In fact, I wasn't looking for anyone or anything in particular. But there she was, way over on the far side of the schoolyard. From where I was standing, if I held up a finger and positioned it so that it was right alongside her, way over there on the other side of the yard, she was tiny—no bigger than the nail on my index finger. But I spotted her right off. Even from so far away, she was achingly recognizable.

Jen.

I hadn't spoken to her since, well, since what had happened to my Uncle Billy. She'd been crying then and mostly what she had said was, “I'm so sorry.”

Sorry about Billy.

Sorry about dumping me at what was the second-worst time in my life.

Sorry that she felt guilty about what she was doing.

Sometimes I thought that was the thing that had wrung the most tears out of her—that she felt guilty because she knew what she was doing was wrong. You couldn't say you loved somebody and then, when his—
my
—whole world was falling apart, just turn and walk out of his life. And for a while, that had given me hope. Jen was a nice person, a good person, the kind of person who, when she did something wrong and knew it, would sooner or later apologize. Would repent. Maybe would take me back.

But that hadn't happened.

She didn't even go to my school anymore. She had
transferred to a private girls' school uptown. A school where everyone was on the university track. Where a huge chunk of the students won scholarships. Where the ones who didn't have cars of their own had access to cars. Where the girls all had skin like velvet and bodies as slender as models'. It was like a different planet. But sometimes she dropped back into her old orbit to see her old friends. Well, some of her old friends.

I stood outside the school, watching her. She'd started going with a guy named Patrick just before she'd stopped being with me. Patrick, who also went to a private school. But I'd heard she wasn't seeing him anymore. I'd heard she wasn't doing so well at her new school. I'd heard that she wasn't so happy there. I thought maybe that was why she came back here from time to time. I thought—okay, so I hoped—maybe there was another reason too.

She was standing with another girl who lived on her street, a snot named Ashley who had been going to private school forever. Jen was talking to a couple of girls she had been close to when she went to my school. Ashley was looking off in the distance, making it clear that not only did she not know Jen's old friends, but that she didn't
want
to know them. I waited a minute, then a minute more, wondering if Jen would turn in my direction and, if she did, if she'd see me. But she never did.

I caught up with Vin at Gerrard Square. He was perched on the fence that ran along the west side of the parking lot. There was a girl with him. Cat—short for Catherine, which she thought was cool. So did Vin. When I saw her, I hesitated. But, hey, she was just a girl, and Vin was my best friend.
Was
. Lately I wasn't sure what was past tense and what was present.

Cat spotted me first and nodded in my direction. Vin turned. His face split with a smile.

“Hey, Mikey!”

Those two words and that big Vin smile made me feel warm all over. Everything was okay. A best friend is a best friend, right? Some things never change.

I walked over to Vin. He was still smiling, but Cat's expression was cool, like one of those fashion models you see on billboards or in bus shelter ads. Distant. Thinking about something—you didn't know what it was, but you knew it was more important than what was for supper and what was due for homework the next day. Her eyes—were they really golden or did they just look that way in the sun?—focused hard on me. On my eyes, then on my hands. Vin noticed and grinned.

“What've you been up to, Mike?” he asked. “Not getting yourself into trouble, I hope.”

I couldn't help it, I felt my cheeks get warm. I shrugged and jammed my fists into the pockets of my jacket.

“It's nothing,” I said.

“Sure,” Vin said. I could tell he didn't believe me,
but for some reason he decided not to push it.

“I gotta go,” Cat said, just like that. She leaned forward and planted a kiss and some bright red lipstick on Vin's cheek. Vin looked pleased—
Check it out, Mikey
. He glanced at me, maybe wanting to see if I looked jealous, and kept on grinning as Cat twirled and danced away from him, heading up the walkway over the railroad tracks. Vin stayed on the fence, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, watching her go.