Burning Blue (4 page)

While Nicole was getting her brain tweaked by Schmidt, I was off to grab coffee. I dropped my long board and slalomed fast-forming puddles to the Starbucks next to the tire center. When the hydraulic lifts let the cars down, the air escaping from the pistons sounded like screams of people being crushed. This kept the Starbucks nice and empty. Sometimes I asked the girl behind the counter for help with my phone. I holstered what was to all appearances flip-style junk. In public, I pretended I didn’t know how to use it. Nobody suspects you for a hacker when you can’t figure out how to send a text from your eight-year-old Nokia. “How do I get to menu again?”

“Oh my god, if you weren’t almost cute I would totally smack you.” She grabbed my phone and started pressing buttons. “No rejoinder to my ‘almost cute,’ huh? You look like a vampire.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“I like long hair on guys. What kind of product are you using?”

“Grease.”

“Brand?”

“The kind that comes from washing your hair only every other shower.”

“That’s gross but also slightly hot.” She was ready to key a message into my phone. “Who’s the target?”

“Father. Message is whatever.”

“Whatever comes to my mind?”

“Just ‘whatever.’” He’d left me a voicemail to tell me he might not be home until late, unusually considerate of him.

The girl slid a black coffee to me. “You’re coming here two years now, right?”

“I guess.”

“And I slip you a free Grande whenever the manager isn’t around.”

“Are you telling me you want me to pay for all those coffees now?”

“I’m telling you that you never once thought to ask my
name
.”

Actually, I’d thought about it since the first time I saw her. She was exceedingly cute. Sadly, she was too short. Not too short for most people but too short for a Lurch like me. I wasn’t even sure I was done growing at six three, and given the way this girl’s body was banged out double-D, she was likely done at five feet even. Plus we sort of looked the same, dark hair, eyes. We’d look goofy, like I was holding hands with my little cousin instead of my girlfriend or whatever. More than that, what if I had a seizure in front of her and wet myself? I didn’t want to start something that was headed for disaster. “Can I borrow a to-go lid?”

“You mean can you
have
one.” She slapped the lid on. “You probably should know my name if we’re gonna go to the rave together.”

“I thought raving was declared dorky before the end of last century.”

“At my friend’s house. Her parents are away this weekend. You can drive, okay? My car is literally falling apart.”

“Duct tape holding up the bumpers?”

“What bumpers?”

“Civic, right?”

“How’d you know?”

Secondhand Civics were ubiquitous in New Jersey. You couldn’t go two blocks without passing one sputtering along in the slow lane. “I don’t have a car,” I said.

“Fine, you, me, my half a Civic. If the car breaks down,
I’ll
get out and push.”

Last thing I needed was a retro rave, flashing lights, drunk Goths slamming into me, somebody slipping an e-ball into my Coke, setting off god knows what kind of chemical reaction in my already messed-up brain. And anyway this girl was no raver, hair pulled back into a simple ponytail, barely any makeup, certainly no piercings I could see. She had Catholic school written all over her. I couldn’t imagine her in anything other than a Starbucks getup or a plaid skirt. “I’m not really into parties,” I said.

“Ouch. Flat-out rejected by boy without a car.”

“It’s just not my thing, raving.”

“I so believe you with your black army jacket, black jeans, black high-tops.”

I started feeling bad for saying no. “Look, my name’s Jay.”

“I know,” she said.

My slightly greasy, vampiric hair stood up a little.

“Hello, your phone?” she said. “The time you asked me to email a picture to your Hotmail? JayNaz666? Who even uses Hotmail anymore?” She put out her hand. “I’m officially introducing myself to you. Cherry DiBenneditto. For real is Cherisse. Which do you prefer?”

“Both.”

“Okay, so forget the rave. How about a slasher flick?”

“Why after all this time are you asking me out?”

“You look really different today,” she said.

This was a lie. I always looked exactly the same—same clothes, hair, expression, midway between bored and aggrieved. “In what way?”

“I don’t know. You look lit up. You smell different too.”

I’d run out of deodorant that morning and had to snake some of my dad’s. He was into that all-natural, fruit-based crap, because the regular kind, with zinc or aluminum or whatever in it, gives you Alzheimer’s, I forget why. The natural crap only makes you smell like you’re cooking up a banana in your armpit. I thought it was rank, but apparently she was into that kind of thing. “Cherry?”

“Jay?”

“I can’t.”

“That’ll be four ninety-five for the Grande. I’m kidding. Sort of. You may go now.”

“Thank you.” I backed out of Starbucks, nodding thanks, and I backed into this old dude. He rapped my shin with his four-pronged cane. I grabbed a newspaper from the garbage and read as I walked back to the Hollows, my board tucked into my backpack straps. Six weeks after it happened, the attack on Nicole Castro was still fresh news, at least locally. The headline story of the page five updates section of the Brandywine Vine said students were still being questioned, but no new leads. I couldn’t get it out of my mind, what Nicole said to Dave Bendix in Schmidt’s waiting room: “I can’t do that.” He wanted her to lie about something, I was pretty sure. And he was definitely desperate.

About twenty minutes into the half-hour session was when Schmidt always asked: “Are you taking your medication?”

“Mostly.”

She nodded and frowned, a popular combination with her. “We know what happens, right, when we don’t take it? Do we need help being reminded about this?”

We.
“Nah, we, I can handle it. I’ll put a beep into my phone.”

“Which is exactly what we said last time.”

“I couldn’t figure out how to do it.”

“Give me your phone,” she said.

I did, and she put the beep in there for me.

“So
that’s
how you . . . Cool, thanks, Mrs. Schmidt.”

“It would be Ms. if it weren’t
Doctor
.” She took a break from the nodding but kept on frowning. “Any thoughts about rejoining wrestling?”

“Yeah, no, I’m not. It’s too much. PSATs coming up.” Like I’d even cracked the book. That stupid vocabulary builder download? I need to know that
ramify
and
bifurcate
are synonyms, if they even are?

“How we doing on the college planning? Any schools jumping out at us?”

Accruing half a million dollars in high-interest loan debt for an engineering degree I can steal online?
No.
“Taking my time looking, enjoying the information-gathering process, you know.”

“Jay, we need to develop
interests
.”

“I know we do. And I appreciate the time you’ve taken to try to help us in that regard. I’m grateful. Really.” Really I just didn’t want my father to kick my ass for not showing up to therapy.

And then it came, the question that wasn’t a
we
but a
you
: “What do you want to do? With your life, I mean.”

“Dedicate myself to bringing the drinking age down to twelve.”

“We’re very distracted today. C’mon, Jay, what’s up? And no BS, I’ll be able to tell. You’re a very bad liar.”

Actually, I was a very good liar. But I was looking at Schmidt’s hands, really wrinkled, chipped cheap nail polish. I felt sorry for her for a second, so sorry I felt compelled to tell her the truth. “What’s on my mind, Doctor, is why haven’t the cops caught the punk who messed up Nicole Castro?”

She nodded like a bobblehead doll. “I hear you, Jay. It’s very difficult to figure out why someone would do such a horrible thing. It wasn’t traumatizing to Nicole alone but to all of us. We have this burning desire to
know,
to
help
. At the same time, we need to leave the crime-solving to the detectives, don’t we?”

“But what if they don’t nab him before he gets her again?”

Schmidt leaned back in her chair. “Now, why would you say that, Jay? According to the investigators, it’s highly unlikely the attacker will try for another strike, not with all the scrutiny. And even if that were to happen, we’re nearly assured the perpetrator won’t go after Nicole. The damage is done. The attacker’s goal was met. The operating thesis is that this was a one-time event.”

“The operating thesis. That’s pretty funny.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it
funny.
Look, nearly all of the case studies show that acid throwers are not serial actors. They more often than not know their victims or imagine they have some sort of relationship with them. They feel the target has forsaken or wronged them in some way, and they’re almost always motivated by revenge. Once they get their payback, they’re done.”

“Until the next time he remembers what made him mad in the first place.”

“How do you know it’s a man?”

“Excuse me?”

“Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe the attacker is a woman? For instance, somebody insanely jealous of Nicole?”

I’d never really looked into Schmidt’s eyes before that. They were this stunning gray, so light the irises almost blended in with the sclera. My eyes went to the windowsill just behind her, one of those picture frame digital clocks. An old black-and-white snapshot, a baby in a swing, wide angle, nobody else in the picture. The readout went from 4:59 to 5:00. Without looking at the clock, never letting her eyes drift from mine, Schmidt said, “I guess that’s all the time we have today.”

Somebody jealous of Nicole, huh? Way to narrow it down,
Doctor
.

The rain was too heavy for me to skateboard. I waited under the side door awning for the storm to let up. Somebody called out, “Been looking for you, Spaceman.”

I turned to find a huge dude rolling up to me fast and flexed. His orange Volta-Shock hoodie shadowed his face. “You don’t remember me?” he said. “I’m hurt.” He pulled back his hood. It was Kerns, the dude I’d pinned two years before. His hair wasn’t dyed bloodred anymore but silver. He’d gone a little different with the Mohawk too, buzzing it close to his scalp and jagging it so it looked like a thunderbolt.

“You’re taking this Volta-Shock promotion very seriously, Rick,” I said. Everybody called him Dick behind his back, but maybe not so much lately. He’d logged much weight-banging time since I last saw him, that first semester of freshman year, when I got lucky and pasted him. No way that would happen now. He was well over two hundred pounds.

“Heard you were back,” he said with a sly smile. I had been ducking him, and he knew it. He shook my hand way too hard. “You’re still pretty tight. What are you, buck eighty? Eighty-five?”

I shrugged, wasn’t into weighing myself every two minutes. “Seventy-five or so.”

“Rick, what’s the holdup?” some other dude called from the locker room door. I recognized him as one of the meatheads who held my head under the sink water before Dave Bendix stood up for me.

The hall monitor said, “Problem, gentlemen?”

“No problem here,” Kerns said. “Right, Jay?” Kerns punched my shoulder somewhere between
See ya bud
and
I remember when you pinned me your first time on the mats and made me look like an idiot in front of my boys.
I’d have a bruise by tonight. “Good to have you back, Spaceman,” he said as he jogged toward the entrance to the indoor track.

I pressed my face to the door glass and studied the sky. It was dark except for a fast-moving band of light gray that would be overhead in a few minutes. I checked my phone for the list I’d keyed into it on my way back from Starbucks:

Mr. Sabbatini—weak maybe, teaching science to snotty kids for 30+ yrs, would he risk his pension to burn student out of jealousy?

Jealous classmate(s)—which? Basically everybody

Mr. Sager—weak maybe, same as Sabbatini, mopping up after rich kids for too many years, pension for custodial services too good to lose.

Bendix—why, though? Why?

I added Schmidt’s name. The way she leaned in close to me at the end of our session bothered me. That glimmer in her eyes as she said, “How do you know it’s not a woman?” Schmidt didn’t wear a wedding band. And that fading snapshot on her sill, the kid in the swing, the clock in the frame ticking away. The girl didn’t resemble Schmidt. Maybe a friend’s kid? Childless, single, getting on in years? Her knowledge of psychology, of what people fear, losing their beauty? I had her down as a long shot.

I rounded the corner, toward the custodian’s office. Mr. Sager’s back was to me. He was at his computer.

“Sir?” I said.

He slapped down his laptop. “You don’t have to call me sir. Mr. Sager will be just fine. You new here?”

I started to explain about home school, but then he remembered me. “The boy at the pep rally, sure. I didn’t recognize you with that hair.”

“I borrow some pliers?” I pulled my skateboard from my backpack straps and explained that my rear wheel truck was loose, a lie.

He drew a pair of pliers from his hip holster. He was in his fifties, lean, clean cut. I pegged him ex-military.

“Heard you were there when that thing went down with Nicole Castro,” I said. “Heard you saved her life.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Telling everybody to pour water on her. What did it look—”

“It was a bad burn.”

“Do you have an Allen wrench?”

“You don’t need one for that wheel truck.”

“The wheel itself. The spindle. I think it’s a five-eighths fit.”

He headed for the back. I flipped up his laptop screen. Somebody named Isabella1801 had emailed what she wanted to do with him that night. No whips or chains, but it was borderline hard-core. Sager was coming back. I closed the laptop and backed away from the desk into a bucket of water, accidentally kicking it. The bucket tipped but didn’t turn over. Some of the water sloshed onto the floor. I grabbed a rag to wipe up the puddle.

“Stop,”
Mr. Sager said. “Leave it to me.” He grabbed the rag and backed me away from the puddle. “Five-eighths,” he said, holding out the Allen wrench.

“I’ll fix it when I get home. Thanks.” I headed out.

That was good of him, not letting me mop up the mess with bare hands. I hadn’t spilled water. The label on the jug next to the bucket said
MURIATIC ACID
.