Diary of a Witness (17 page)

Just before I pushed through the front row, I heard it again in my head. Uncle Max’s voice saying, “… if it turns out you didn’t do enough soon enough …”

Will was lying facedown, flat out on the concrete sidewalk in front of the school, his legs all splayed out in those weirdly baggy jeans. Two of the policemen had their guns drawn and pointed at him, even though he was down on his face and his hands were cuffed behind his back.

All these thoughts came into my head at once.

I wondered how they knew which one was Will Manson. I wondered if they called ahead to the principal and made her stand outside or look out the window and tell them which one he was.

Then I thought he looked really powerless, flat out on the ground like that. Handcuffed. And I thought how powerless was so exactly the opposite of what he wanted. I thought how he finally decided to take things into his own hands, and now he didn’t even have his own hands. I mean, he had them, but he couldn’t use them. So he might as well not have them at all.

Then I realized I was the one who took his power away. Me. His very best friend. I betrayed him. Not that I really had any choice. But still. I betrayed my best friend.

I know it sounds weird, because it was all in just that one or two seconds before he looked up at me. So it’s a lot of thinking to do in just a second or two. But it’s like all the thoughts came in flashes. They were just there, like on a screen in my brain, until something else flashed in and pushed it away. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that.

I saw the shotgun lying a few feet away, all at an angle, like someone had kicked it out of the way.

I saw two of the cops take Will by his cuffed arms and pull him to his feet.

He looked up at me.

This was one of the weirdest, most awful moments of my entire life to date. He looked right into my eyes, and I could see it hit him. I mean, it had to be me who turned him in. There was never anybody else it could have been. But I think he hadn’t really stopped to think about what happened until he looked into my eyes. He didn’t show a lot of what he was feeling, but you could see it anyway. You could see it change him. He kept a lot of it to himself, but part of it was there on his face.

They marched him by, right in front of me, and he never once took his eyes away from my eyes. I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.

It’s a terrible thing to say, but standing outside myself like that, I saw him the way he really was. It’s like I wasn’t in my actual life or the real world, so he looked like a stranger to me. Partway. Halfway. Almost not like my best friend. So I saw him more the way a stranger would. The acne scars on his jaws, and the fresh red-and-white bumps. He had one on his nose, which is always the worst place. And the way his ears stuck out, one a little more than the other. And the way his hair went wild, like somebody had turned a big wind on it. Just for a second I thought I could see how it felt to not be able to look past all that outside stuff. Then I guess I blinked or something, and he was mostly my best friend Will again.

Just as they marched him by in front of where I was standing, he said, “All you had to do was keep your mouth shut. One hour. They’d be gone. All five of them. All your problems would be over. You didn’t even have to do anything. Just do nothing, and all your problems would be over.”

He wasn’t yelling at me. Really not raising his voice at all. But there was something about the way he said it. Something that let me see how big that dangerous thing in him had gotten.

Then I wondered why it took me so long to see.

One of the cops kind of jogged his arm, half turned him away from me, like to tell him to stop talking. Which he did.

But as soon as he could turn back to me, he met my eyes again. This time I didn’t feel like I wanted to look away. You know why not? Because I wasn’t ashamed. Because I didn’t do anything wrong.

They put him in the back of the squad car, the way you see in the movies and on TV. With one hand on his head. Ducking his head down so he wouldn’t hit it when they pushed him in. They slammed the door, and he just sat there in the back, looking at me through the window.

Then I did feel bad about one thing. I felt like maybe I could have helped him more. I was his only friend. Maybe if I hadn’t pretended he wasn’t losing it. Maybe if I hadn’t pretended it would never come to this. Maybe there would’ve been something I could’ve done.

They drove him away. I watched the car until it disappeared. I watched the street where it disappeared for a while longer. Then I couldn’t stare anymore, so I kind of broke my trance and moved again.

That’s when I saw I’d been standing right next to Lisa Muller the whole time. And I didn’t even know it.

She opened her mouth to say something to me. But it seemed to take a long time. I think the world was moving a lot slower by then. I had time to think that she was going to say something hateful to me, and also that I really didn’t care. When you’ve just sent your only friend off to jail, all that other stuff is small. Nobody can make you feel much of anything else for a while.

What she said was, “Would I be dead?”

I didn’t quite get it. My brain was in a funny gear. I said, “Huh?”

“If you hadn’t told on him, would I be dead right now?”

Then I got it.

“Oh,” I said. “No.”

I turned to walk away. I thought I would just go home. I wanted to go home. But I only took a couple of steps. Then looked over my shoulder, and she was still standing there staring at me.

I said, “But your boyfriend would be. And all four of his friends.”

Then I turned to go home again, but I ran smack into a cop. Two of them were still there.

He said, “Are you the boy who phoned this in?”

I said, “Yes, sir.” Kind of quiet.

“I’d like you to come with us and answer some questions.”

Can you imagine having a cop say that to you and not feeling scared? But I didn’t feel anything. Not by then. I just said, “Am I in trouble?”

“No, you’re our hero,” he said. “You’re just not quite done yet. We just need you to give us a little more help.”

I told them everything, and you know what? It felt good.

The cop I talked to was an older guy, maybe fifty or something. Kind of big and pretty heavy in the stomach,
which made me like him a lot more. I didn’t figure he was looking down on me.

I just sat there for more than an hour and told him everything. Finally, I got to tell somebody what those guys had been putting us through. I figured the more I told the truth, the better off Will would be, because I could make this guy see how much pressure Will had been under. I told him about Will’s homelife, too. All about life in the Manson family. Because part of me thought he’d still be judging Will, because I went through all the same stuff and didn’t try to hurt anybody. But I
didn’t
go through all the same stuff. I had my mom, and Uncle Max. What did Will have?

The thing that felt best was, when I looked into the guy’s eyes, I could see that what happened to us was bad. You almost forget that. Or it’s like you don’t have a right to think it or something. They don’t give you the right to object, or think it’s a big deal. But then the cop’s eyes kind of mirror it back to you, that nobody should have to get hooked on a rusty lure or get tripped near a flight of stairs or have some goon parked outside your house so you’re afraid to go out the door. And some part of you thinks, Oh yeah. I used to know that. How did I forget that?

Then, even after I was done telling him everything I could think to tell him about Will, we talked a little more. He just talked to me for a minute, and I could tell he wasn’t really being the cop anymore, and I wasn’t really being the
boy who called 911. Not for that last minute. For that last minute it was just two people.

He gave me credit for being a real person he might want to talk to. That meant something to me.

“Off the record,” he said. “Just between you and me. Was there a split second where you considered it?”

“Considered what?” I asked. I didn’t get what he was driving at.

“Saying nothing. Letting it happen.”

“Oh. No.”

“Not even for a split second. Huh.”

“Not really, no.” In fact, until he said it, I really hadn’t considered that it was there to consider. It just never crossed my mind.

“It’s just interesting,” he said. “You don’t meet too many people who save the lives of their worst enemies.”

“Oh. Yeah. I see what you mean. That
is
weird, huh? Thanks to me, they live to torture me another day.”

“Well, maybe. Maybe not. It’ll be interesting to see. I think the big question here would be, if you save the life of your enemy, is he still your enemy?”

But I really didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know the answer to that. Then again, neither did he. And he’s a grown-up.

My mom was waiting to drive me home. I didn’t even know they’d called her. It was kind of a shock to see her there. I guess she had to take off work to come get me.

She was pretty quiet until we left the police station. All she said was, “Where’s your jacket, honey?”

I said, “Oh. I accidentally left it in my locker at school.” There was a weird pause, and then I said, “You know. Because of all the excitement.” Then I felt like I’d said too much, because I could tell she really never doubted me in the first place.

It wasn’t until we got to the car that she said it. I could feel it and smell it, and see it in there, waiting to get out. But it wasn’t until we were sitting in the car, just before she turned the ignition key, that she spit it out.

“I knew that Will Manson was no good.”

I lost it. With my own mother. In my whole life I’d never yelled at my mother. But all the stuff that’d been leaning on me for all those months came spilling out. I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“You have no right to say that!” I yelled. “You don’t know. You don’t know him. If you knew the half of what he had to go through. And even if I told you, you’d tell me you could go through all that and not do what he did. You want to say that could never happen to you. Because you want to think it never could. But you don’t really know. I mean, now—no, nothing could make you lose it like that, nothing ever will. But if you grew up like he did. You can’t know what you’d be like. You have no right to judge him. I won’t sit here and let you judge him. It’s not fair.”

Then I just stopped talking, and we listened to this
giant silence. A big rant like that leaves a big space of silence when it finally goes away. We just sat there and listened to it echo around in that little car.

I thought she was going to tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about.

“I guess you know more about him than I do,” she said. “I’m just glad you didn’t get hurt.”

“Will would never hurt me.”

She started the car and put it in reverse. Started to back out of her parking space.

“I’m proud of you for what you did today,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

Then we didn’t talk anymore for the rest of the way home.

January 13
th

I went back to school today.

When I walked down the hall for the first time, everybody turned and looked at me. It was partway like what they did with Will after Sam died, and after he tried to kill himself. Only partway not like that, because not really bad. They got quiet, and they looked at me, but it didn’t feel bad.

Still, I got to my locker as fast as I could.

I picked up the lock and tried to work my combination. But it wasn’t even a combination lock. It was the kind of lock you open with a key. So I figured I must have the wrong locker. I double-checked the numbers, but it was my locker all right. It just wasn’t my lock.

For a minute I stood there with this lock in my hand, wondering.

Somebody had cut off my lock. Or broken it off. And done something inside. And then put a new lock on.

Then I noticed something that looked like a note sticking out of one of the vents in my locker. Right at the level of my nose. I pulled it out. It wasn’t a note, though. It was an envelope.

Inside was a key.

This is when I got scared.

I started thinking what would be inside there when I opened it. I thought about snakes. Stink bombs. Paint bombs. Real bombs. I almost walked away. But I had to open it sooner or later.

I stuck the key in the lock, and it fit. I turned it, and the lock dropped open. I lifted the latch and then jumped at the sound it made. Even though it made that same sound every day.

I opened the door and jumped out of the way.

Nothing jumped out at me.

When my heart had stopped pounding some, I looked in.

Hanging on a hanger in my locker was my jacket.

It wasn’t dirty anymore. The side that had been all dragged in the mud was clean. Really clean. It was on one of those hangers from the dry cleaners. Those wire hangers covered with paper, printed with an ad for the dry cleaners.

I touched it like I didn’t believe it was really there.

I put it on.

After a while I locked up my locker again and started down the hall to my first class. And you know, I did feel like something more in that jacket. In fact, I felt like something more than I had been last time I wore it. It’s one thing to have my mom give it to me. It’s another thing to have the jocks admit I deserve to have it.

It’s like I wasn’t exactly the fat boy anymore. I still weighed as much. It just didn’t matter as much.

Maybe after school I’d try to call that cop back. Because maybe he really would be interested in the answer to the question.

When you save the life of your enemy, he’s not your enemy anymore.

Just as we’d suspected.

August 19
th

I’m up at Uncle Max’s cabin for the summer.

Uncle Max is working on a new book, so he holes up in his study all day, and then in the evening we have a fire and we get to talk.