Swallowing Stones (13 page)

Joe had seen him, too. He crushed the beer can with his foot and kicked it into the bushes. “I’ll call you later,” he told Michael, heading toward the sidewalk. Then he cocked his head in the direction of Doug Boyle. “Well, move it, man. You just going to stand there?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Haven’t you seen enough of the Hangman for one night?”

t
he next morning Joe went to the police station to file a report. Michael did not go with him because he had to be at work by nine. But Joe told him later that afternoon, as they stood in the parking lot at the community pool, that he’d taken care of everything. He had even removed the CD player from the car the night before and hidden it in an old trunk in the attic in case the police wanted to inspect his Mustang.

“Oh, yeah, and I threw in about how they took all my CDs.” Joe leaned back against his car and folded his arms.

Michael stood in the parking lot, still in his bathing trunks, a towel hanging around his neck like a yoke. “So now what?” He had the feeling they had left something undone. Something that would lead the police right to them.

Joe climbed into the front seat of his car and rolled down the window. “Now all I have to do is answer the questions when the cops come to my house.”

And the police did come. They showed up that same evening. After they left, Joe drove over to Michael’s house. He was so hyper. Michael thought he’d have to tie him down. “I’m revved, man,” Joe told him, hopping back and forth like a
prizefighter. “Lying to cops has got to be one of the best natural highs in the world.”

They were standing on the MacKenzies’ front lawn. Michael glanced back at his house. Most of the windows were wide open. “Why don’t you just shout it a little louder in case the people over on the next block didn’t hear?”

Joe’s shoulders fell forward in an awkward slump. He stopped bouncing and stared at Michael. “Is this the face of gratitude?”

Michael headed for the sidewalk, then took off in the direction of the Little League field, which was three blocks away. Joe ran to catch up. “Nobody heard,” he said. “And even if they did, they wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

Michael stuffed his hands in the pockets of his cutoffs. His body was thrust forward, as if he were about to lunge off a diving board. He kept walking, although he had no idea where he was going.

“Man, you are
really
getting paranoid,” Joe said, panting with the effort to keep up.

“What did the cops ask you?” Michael said, changing the subject.

“Probably the same stuff they asked you. They wanted to know if we had any handguns or rifles in the house.” Joe laughed. “My old man said nobody in his family had any guns. Said he wouldn’t have them in the house. He nearly went ballistic when the Hangman asked about the rifle I’d borrowed from you.” Joe held up his index finger. “Wait. Make that ‘allegedly’ borrowed.”

“What’d you tell them?” Michael was walking even faster now.

Joe pressed his palm on Michael’s shoulder, trying to
make him slow his pace. “Just like we planned. I told them neither of us ever had a chance to try the rifle out before it got stolen. I told them the last person who fired it was probably your grandfather.”

They had come as far as the Little League field. For a few minutes the two of them watched the game in silence. Michael wondered if Joe remembered the year they had played for the Briarwood Bobcats and had an undefeated season. Together, on the same team—as they had constantly reminded each other for years afterward—they were unbeatable.

Michael rested his hands on the metal rail at the top of the chain-link fence and looked on as a boy hit a ground ball to center field, then took off into the wind, spraying dust from the heels of his sneakers. For one anguished moment Michael wanted to be that boy. He would have given anything to trade places with him. That boy had nothing more on his mind than whether or not he would make it to first base.

Joe threw his weight against the fence, rattling the metal links. “I’m telling you, it went fine.”

“They got him,” Michael said, still staring out at the field.

“What?”

“The kid. They nailed him sliding into first.”

m
ichael had not been to Amy’s house since he had broken up with Darcy. So when he did show up, five nights later, he was surprised to find Amy sitting on the front steps, her face blotchy and tearstained. When she saw him coming, she stood up so quickly that she almost lost her balance, then stumbled inside, closing the door behind her. Michael froze at the end of the driveway, unsure what to do next.

He stared up at the sky. Overhead the bats performed their nightly maneuvers, filling their bellies with mosquitoes while negotiating sharp turns and somehow never colliding with each other. Humans, he thought, would probably never learn the art of avoiding collision. Somehow, when people came together, there was always wreckage of some kind left behind. People were messy that way.

It crossed his mind that maybe Amy had found out about his role in the Ward accident, but he knew better. His gut told him her behavior had something to do with Darcy and her friends. He felt this as surely as he had felt Darcy’s bite on his hand, although it had been a few days since they had broken up and only the sickly yellow of a faded bruise still tainted his skin.

Michael took a cautious step toward the house. Then another. He couldn’t just turn and walk away, leaving more wreckage in his wake. When Amy didn’t answer the door, he wedged himself between the junipers in front of the house and called to her through the open window. The sharp needles from the evergreens left tiny red welts on his skin. But he would not leave until he found out what had happened. He shouted that he would sit on her front stairs for the entire night if he had to.

When the door finally opened, it was Pappy who stood in front of him.

“My granddaughter doesn’t want to see you.” Pappy’s voice sounded raspier than usual. His milky blue eyes seemed far away. Having dutifully delivered the message, he started to close the door.

“What did I do?” Michael asked. “Did she tell you?”

Pappy shook his head. “She’s not talking.” He tipped forward
on the balls of his feet, his forehead almost touching the screen, and whispered, “But you hurt her bad, son. Whatever it was you did.”

“Tell her I’m not leaving till I see her.” Michael knew he sounded desperate, but he didn’t care.

Pappy turned around and mumbled something. Then he walked away, leaving the door open. Michael was tempted to step inside, but he knew he wasn’t welcome, so he stayed put. He could hear the soft rumblings of their voices coming from the living room. Then Amy was there, standing on the other side of the screen door. Her face was not as splotchy as earlier. She pressed the fingertips of one hand against the screen. She did not invite him in.

Michael was aware that more than a screen door stood between them. He wanted nothing more than to be inside, sitting beside her on the overstuffed couch. Suddenly the thought of losing this tiny sanctuary was just too much to swallow. He had to make at least one thing right in his life. He placed his hand against the screen so that his fingers touched hers. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he said.

Amy jerked her hand away, the reflex action of someone who has just burned her fingers on a hot stove. “Go home, Michael,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse.

“Amy, whatever it is, let’s talk about it.”

She had taken a step back, and her hand was on the edge of the door. He could tell she was getting ready to shut him out. “Amy,” he said, “does this have anything to do with Darcy?”

The tears that welled up in her eyes told him that it did. “Look,” he said, “I can explain.”

But Amy only shook her head. “I can’t talk about this now. Please go home.” And when she shut the door, it was not with a slam but with the heavy clunk of something ending.

a
few days later Michael learned from Steven Chang, who had learned from his girlfriend, Allison—because this was how they all stumbled upon some of the more painful truths in their lives, truths mouthed like verbal chain letters—that Darcy and her friends had been to Amy’s house right before Michael showed up.

It was a sticky Saturday afternoon, and the pool, as always on weekends, was crowded. Steven and Allison were there with a group of friends, but Darcy had not come to the pool since the night she had broken up with Michael. As he was punching quarters into the soda machine during his break, Michael saw Steven coming toward him.

“Allison told me what happened,” he said.

A can of root beer thumped into the tray. Michael popped open the metal tab. “Yeah? And what’s that?”

“I mean about you and Darcy breaking up.”

Michael merely nodded and took a sip of the soda. “It happens,” he said, because he did not want to talk about Darcy.

Steven dropped a few coins into the machine and lifted a can of soda from the tray. “It was rotten what they did, though.”

Michael stood perfectly still. He was afraid that if he said the wrong thing, he might never learn the truth. He stared into Steven’s dark eyes. Steven’s lips parted slowly.

“Oh, man, you didn’t know, did you?” He flung his hands outward, sending a stream of ginger ale onto the pavement. “I thought you knew.” He turned to go. “Allison’s going to kill me.”

Michael grabbed Steven by the arm. “Tell me,” he said, tightening his grip, “what they did.”

“Mike,” Steven pleaded, “drop it, okay?”

Michael kept his hand clamped on Steven’s arm. “This has to do with Amy, doesn’t it?”

Steven turned to look at Allison and their friends, sitting on the other side of the pool. “I can’t figure it out,” he said. “You had Darcy. What were you doing messing around with Amy Ruggerio?”

Michael spun Steven around so fast, he almost fell over. “There is nothing going on between me and Amy. Nothing. She’s a friend.” He dropped his hand from Steven’s arm. “I can’t believe this.”

“I guess Darcy thought she was something else,” Steven said.

“Are you going to tell me what she did, or should I go ask Allison?”

Steven shook his head. “Hey, man, don’t get pissed at me. I wasn’t in on any of this.”

Michael emptied his can of soda and tossed it in the recycling bin by the machine. “I’m waiting,” he said.

Steven took a deep breath. “They told Amy they’d found out you and the other guys on the track team had this bet going. They said you’d bragged about how you could screw around with her mind enough so that she’d do anything for you, including sleep with every guy on the team if you asked her to. They told her each person on the team put up twenty bucks saying you couldn’t do it.”

Michael stared at his friend in disbelief. “They told Amy this?”

Steven nodded.

“Why?”

“Man, are you dense,” Steven said. “Why do you think? To get even.”

“Get even for what? I didn’t do anything.”

“Darcy thinks you did. She thinks you were getting some on the side from Amy the whole time you were going out with her.”

Michael felt an anger so intense it frightened him. His hands clamped into fists. “I’ve got to get back,” he told Steven, because there was nothing else left to say.

But as he swung around, his shoulder bumped against a girl who was approaching the soda machine, almost knocking her over. Michael grabbed her arm to keep her from falling. “Sorry,” he mumbled, not really paying attention.

“It’s okay,” she told him.

Another girl stood nearby, giggling. She was extremely tall and thin with dark curly hair. Michael stared at her for a moment, trying to grasp what was happening. He had seen this girl before. She was a friend of Jenna Ward. And he knew, without even turning around to look, that the person he had almost knocked off balance was Jenna herself.

i
t had been the driest summer on record, so when the heavy rains came in mid-August, everyone said it was a blessing. People were tired of rationing water. It rained for four days straight, a pelting, pounding rain that swelled the streams and rivers, flooding backyards and carrying away lawn furniture in the dead of night. Meteorologists shrugged. They couldn’t explain it either.

Jenna lay in bed, stretching lazily, still not ready to get up, and stared up at the water stain in the corner of her room. She hated the very sight of it. It had been caused by the same leak her father had been patching the day he died. She had painted over it twice, but the stain continued to bleed through the white paint. Sometimes its blurred rust-colored outline actually seemed to be creeping slowly toward her from the corner of the room. And each morning she swore the stain had grown by at least an inch or two, although she knew this was impossible.

She glanced over at the window. Tiny rivers of rain streamed down the pane of glass. Four days of this was just too much. The first rainy day, she and Andrea had hung out at the mall with their friends. It had been fun. But by the third day they had all grown bored with the routine and with each other.

She finally dragged herself out of bed, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, ran a comb through her hair, and headed downstairs.

She was standing in the kitchen a few minutes later, buttering an English muffin, when Andrea called.

“So what’s it going to be? The mall again? Or should we just rent some good movies and pig out on junk food?”

“Neither.” Jenna stared out the window at the rain. She felt edgy. Maybe the weather was getting to her. “Let’s do something different.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know. Let’s just get on a bus and go somewhere.”

“A bus? You’re kidding. Where would we go?”

“Anywhere,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. The shore.”

n
ever in a million years had she really thought they’d do it, but two different buses and two hours later, Jenna and Andrea were walking along the beach in Spring Lake.

The rain had dwindled to a mist that clung to their hair and dampened their clothes. Andrea wasn’t exactly being a good sport about the whole thing.