Dead Ends (13 page)

No, you're not my dad.

“Maybe you
should
talk to her about this.”

I shook off Vinnie's hand. “Okay. Thanks.”

He stood up, folding his dishrag. “Well, you boys want a couple slices? On the house, anything you want.”

“We're not hungry,” I said.

I stood up from the table and glanced down for a second at Vinnie's boots next to my own matching pair.
Same size.

I spun and headed for the exit without another word. A bell jangled loudly over the door as I pushed it open. Faintly, over the racket of the bell, I heard Billy's voice behind me.

“Can I have pepperoni?”

• • • X • • •

I waited until we were back on the bus to lay into Billy.

His face was a mess of tomato sauce as he crammed two slices of pizza, stacked on top of each other, into his mouth.

“This is your fault,” I said.

Directly across the aisle from me, Billy lowered the pizza sandwich, but his mouth stayed open. I could see half a slice of mashed-up pepperoni on his tongue and a string of cheese stuck to his lower lip.

I sneered at the disgusting sight, letting it fuel my words. “Making me look at that stupid yearbook—making me go to that restaurant—”

“I didn't make you—”

“Making me get caught up for a second—making me think I might want to look for … for …” My voice cracked, and I balled my hands into fists. I was almost
willing
my palms to itch. Then, at least, I would know I was angry. But my hands were calm. Not even a tingle. The emotions clutching my chest
and stomach were something much more frightening, more powerful, than rage. I didn't trust myself to say anything else, so I stayed silent and kept my fists clenched, hoping they would make Billy think I was mad and nothing more.

“I'm sorry Vinnie's not your dad,” Billy said.

I turned away from him, toward the bus window, and squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could close them as tight as I could close my fists.

“I don't care,” I said.

We swayed back and forth a little with the motion of the bus.

“We can find some of the other—” Billy started, but I held up a hand.

“I don't want to see that yearbook ever again.” I looked hard at Billy so he would know I was serious. “I mean it. If you put that thing in my face again, I
will
kick your ass.”

“Okay.”

“This is why I didn't want to go looking for anything in the first place. Every road is a dead end or a disappointment or a waste of time!”

“
Okay
.”

“You can't find someone who doesn't want to be found!”

Billy fell silent at that.

Shit.

“I didn't mean
your
dad,” I said. “That's different. I'm sure
he
wants to be found.”

Billy nodded and dropped his uneaten pizza crusts into the brown paper bag they'd come in. He fished a used napkin from
the bottom of the bag and cleaned off his face, avoiding my eyes.

I pointed at Billy's backpack, where I knew the yearbook was hiding. “Just get rid of it.”

I made Billy open his backpack Tuesday morning to verify the yearbook was inside, on its way back to the library.

“I told you,” he said, zipping the bag and hefting it off the garden's brick pathway. “I'm taking it back. Even though Miss Tanner said I could keep it as long as I want.”

“Who's Miss Tanner?”

“The librarian.”

I thought for a minute. “The tall, skinny one?”

“Yeah.”

“She's kind of hot. Nice ass.”

“Ew.”

“What? You don't think she has a hot ass?” I gave him a little push down the path. “C'mon, Billy D. Admit it. You only go to the library to check out Miss Tanner's ass. Or are you a boob guy?”

Billy shushed me, his eyes darting around as if the flowers could hear us. He looked almost as freaked out as when I'd explained why Beaverlick was such a funny name.

“Oh yeah.” I laughed. “Billy D.'s a breast man. You like 'em real big and squishy, huh? Like water balloons—firm on the outside but all—”

“Gross!”

I turned to walk backward in front of Billy as we left the garden. “What's the deal? You never kissed a girl?”

Normally I'd ask a guy if he'd done a hell of a lot more than that, but I figured Billy might be behind this particular curve.

“I kissed a girl!” Billy said, but the red that filled his cheeks gave him away.

“I thought you said you were a good liar.” I winked.

Billy harrumphed and crossed his arms.

“Hey, it's no big deal,” I said. “We just gotta hang out with some girls.”

“Seely's a girl,” Billy said, a little too hopefully.

“Not Seely,” I said, a little too forcefully.

We locked eyes for a minute, both stopping in midstride down a grassy slope.

“You like her,” Billy said.

“I don't like anybody.”

“She likes you.”

My stomach did a strange flip-flop, and I coughed to cover it up, as if Billy could hear it. “Would it bother you?” I asked.

“What?”

“Would it bother you if Seely and I liked each other?”

Billy adjusted the straps of his backpack. “I know she doesn't like me,” he whispered.

That wasn't an answer. I waited.

Finally, Billy let out a dramatic sigh and started walking again. “Okay, it wouldn't bother me.”

“Good.” I smiled, falling into step beside him. “Because I know some other girls you might like.”

Billy looked up, listening.

“I have to think about it a bit,” I said. “Sara's usually down to hang, but she's kind of an airhead.” I flipped through my mental black book. “Annie is nice—to everyone—
real
nice. But she's always with Marjorie. And Marjorie Benson can't close her legs.”

Talking about girls carried us all the way to school.

Billy asked me a thousand questions.
How do you know if a girl likes you? Where do you go on dates? When do you hold her hand?
I told him: if she laughs a lot, bowling, and hand-holding is for pussies.

He asked me how I knew girls who didn't go to Mark Twain High, and I sugarcoated the details about most of the girls I knew getting kicked
out
of Twain. He asked me if I'd had sex with any girls, and I answered honestly that I hadn't—but I'd been pretty close. He asked me if
he
should have sex with girls, and I pretended I didn't hear him.

At the edge of the baseball fields, before we went our separate ways, I punched Billy lightly on the arm. “You taking notes on all this? There's a pop quiz on the way home.”

Billy slapped my punch away. “I don't need a quiz.”

I dodged the slap and gave Billy a shove that knocked him sideways a few steps. “We'll see about that.”

“Stop that!” a voice called out.

A teacher I didn't recognize was marching across the parking lot. She had daggers in her eyes, and they were aimed at me.

“Stop what?”

“I saw that.” She reached us and put a hand on Billy's arm. “Did he hurt you?”

Billy pulled away from her touch. “He can't hurt me.”

“We were just messing around,” I said.

The teacher glared at me for a split second, then looked back at Billy. “It's okay. He can't do anything to you. You can tell—”

“Dane Washington doesn't hit retards.” Billy crossed his arms, proud that he had settled it.

I closed my eyes. “Billy, that's probably not the best—”

“Oh honey, you are
not
a … people shouldn't even use that word.” She looked at me with venom but kept talking to Billy. “And people who do are not your friends.”

“He
is
my friend,” Billy insisted. “We were just messing around, like he said. He walks me to school and tells me about girls and teaches me to fi—”

I cleared my throat to shut him up.

“We're going to be late for class,” I said.

The teacher checked her watch and studied us both for another second. “Messing around. Fine. But not so rough,” she said to me before clacking away in her high heels.

I stared at her back as she retreated. I wanted to believe it was me she was judging—that she looked at me and saw a
hoodlum. But I knew it was more likely she looked at Billy and saw a victim.

That realization put me in a mood that lasted all morning.

• • • X • • •

I was still on edge when Billy plopped a tray down next to mine at lunchtime.

“Mrs. Pruitt has the flu,” he announced.

“So?”

“So she doesn't need my help today, and Mr. Bell said I should eat lunch in the cafeteria.”

“Then go eat in the cafeteria,” I said through forkfuls of mac 'n' cheese. I wanted to be alone, and if Billy would disappear, I would practically get my wish. I hadn't seen Jake or Marjorie since the abandoned fight with Mark, and the only other person on the patio today was minding his own business at the other end of our table, scribbling in a notebook.

Billy ignored me and dragged the atlas out of his backpack.

I pointed at it. “What are you doing?”

“I'm trying to solve this clue,” he said. “
What's need—what's needed
—”

“Put it away. It's not cool to be geeking out over a bunch of maps at lunch.”

Billy huffed at the interruption and started again, reading even more slowly.
“What's needed for a doo—a doo—for a duel.”

“If you don't put that thing away, all we're going to need for a duel are my fists and your face.”

I didn't know if it was leftover rage from the teacher that
morning or the shame of Billy catching me eating alone that had me so irritated, but I was not in the mood for chatting. I was in the mood for hitting. …

Which is probably why I ended up in the disciplinary office not fifteen minutes later, sitting next to a kid with a bloody nose.

The guy had it coming, of course, but that wouldn't matter to the warden.

Billy had started babbling about the clue, and I'd let my eyes drift away—toward the kid with the sketch pad. I could tell the ugly cartoon face he was drawing was Billy D., even before he added the gapped teeth and tiny protruding tongue.

My elbow had connected with his nose faster than he could glance up. Nobody even saw me swing, except Billy. They just saw the aftermath with the blood and all the crybabying from the cartoonist.

Within seconds, some cafeteria cop had the three of us marching down the hall to let the warden sort it out.

Now we were parked in his office, waiting while he fussed with some paperwork and checked voice mails. I could see Mrs. Pruitt's absence did not improve the warden's mood. Not that my timing mattered. Good mood or bad, the warden would know just what to do with me. This was strike seven. Seven and you're out. The only card I had to play—the ace up my sleeve—was Billy. He was there, and he would back me up—assuming he caught on fast enough.

“It was an accident,” I blurted.

The warden slammed down his stack of papers and finally fixed his full attention on us.

“An accident?” he asked, but his question was drowned out by the nasally shout of the guy with the bloody nose.

“Bullshit!”

Except he had so much tissue stuffed up his nose it sounded more like “Billshid.”

He pointed a finger at me. “Thad kid hid me in the doze.”

The warden fixed a glare on the boy. “Watch your language in my office, please.” His eyes flicked back to me. “How do you accidentally break a nose?”

I had to fight to keep from rolling my eyes. I seriously doubted the kid's nose was broken. “I was telling my friend Billy D. here a story,” I said. “And I was gesturing with my arms.” I demonstrated an exaggerated sweep of one arm, and the bloodied boy flinched as my hand came close to his face again. “And whaddaya know, but I
accidentally
hit this guy in the face.”

I gave the warden a smug smile. Really, I was helping us both out. Keeping me in school kept the warden in the principal's good graces. All he had to do was confirm it with Billy, and we'd all be on our way back to class. Well, maybe not the kid with the crushed nose. He'd probably have to go to the nurse's office—or the hospital. After the picture he'd drawn of Billy, I really didn't care.

As expected, the warden swiveled his chair slightly to face Billy. “It was an accident?”

Billy squirmed in his seat.

The warden sensed Billy's hesitation and made his voice sharp. “Because you know I have every reason to suspect that is
not
how it happened—”

“No, id's nod,” the sketch artist protested.

“It
is
,” I insisted. “Right, Billy D.?”

My eyes bored a hole in the side of Billy's head, willing him to look at me, but he only stared at his hands.

“Billy D.?” the warden prompted.

Billy rocked back and forth in his chair.

“
Tell
him,” I said in a low, fierce voice.

Billy looked up finally, and his voice was small and miserable when he said, “I don't feel good.”

“Do you need to see the nurse?” the warden asked.

“Uh,
I
deed to see the durse,” the other boy snuffled.

The warden and I smacked the boy with equally vicious stares, then turned our attention back to Billy, who cowered.

“I just don't feel good,” he repeated.

“Okay, Billy, why don't you wait outside?”

I started to protest, but Billy was already scrambling for the door and the warden was already moving on.

“Dane, given your track record and the severity of the damage inflicted, I'm inclined to disbelieve this was an accident.”