Fat School Confidential (29 page)

    “
Yeah,” she replied, barely tilting her head towards them.

    “
You want me to tell them anything?”

    “
No.”

   
Wendy glanced at me, whispering. “Let’s go. Now.”

   
I gave Carlos one last nod, more out of wanting to be rid of him than out of any admiration for the bastard. Windows rolling up, we parted ways. I headed south on Golden State. Carlos hung a yoo-ee and headed back to A.O.S., I supposed.

   
Stretching, Wendy started to laugh.

    “
Carlos’s such a fucker.”

    “
So’s Mario,” I replied.

    “
Yeah, but Mario doesn’t know any better.”

    “
You mean, he’s his bitch?”

    “
Yeah. Exactly.”

   
I paused, mentally loading a come back line.

    “
Yeah. With matching tattoos too,” I said, alluding to the virtually identical barbed wire patterns on their arms. Wendy tried to stifle a laugh, but managed a snicker. Try as she might, Wendy was in over her head on this adventure, and she knew it.

   
Was Carlos and Mario’s drive-by a precursor of things to come? Did they come on their own, or did Tom Eccleston or Bill put them up to it? Either way, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one fucking bit.

   
Then I remembered I had to get blankets for Wendy. I didn’t want to backtrack it past school to the Selma Walmart. I was nuts. That wasn’t debatable. I just wasn’t that nuts.

   
Instead, I continued south, to the only other place open in the area—the Hughes supermarket in Kingsburg. I felt odd and awkward. Home was a mere few blocks away. I thought of the times I would shop there for my family. When we’d shop as a family.

   
Wendy waited in the car while I looked for smokes and blankets for her. Nearly deserted, the market seemed quiet.

   
Finding a couple black fleece blankets, not to mention Wendy’s precious Marlboros, I made my purchases. I had but a few bucks on me, and my checking account had maybe twenty and change. I wrote a check, adding another forty dollars to the amount for some coveted and much needed cash back.  I had about half a tank of gas in the car, and forty bucks should get us to L.A., I surmised.

   
As I got into the Element, there was a call on my cell. “Under Pressure” blared loud and clear. The display showed a familiar number—Bill’s. I let it ring through. Grabbing a blanket, Wendy eyeballed the phone.

    “
Who is it?” she asked.

    “
Bill.”

    “
Fuck. What does he want?”

   
Raising my eyebrows in resignation, I turned to her. She was in no laughing mood.

    “
Can’t we just drive?” she asked.

    “
We can…” I wanted to say more, but I couldn’t. Words—if that’s what they were—trailed off from me. What the fuck did Bill want anyway? I wanted to check the message but that could wait. I drove away from Hughes, away from what was familiar to me. Away from what was familiar to Ellie. To Bobby.

   
Bobby.

   
What was I ever going to tell him? My little boy. Did he have the slightest inkling what his Papa was up to? Doubtful. Mama didn’t have an idea either.

   
The phone rang again. It was Ellie. I didn’t pick up.

    “
I’m gonna check the messages before we go any further,” I said. Wendy let out a sigh.

    “
Okay. Where?”

    “
I know a place.”

   
The phone kept ringing. I should have switched the ringer to vibrate. Instead, Queen had to add music to my misery. I got onto the freeway going south, stayed on for all of a mile and a half, and then got off. On the south end of Kingsburg, there was a rest stop. I pulled into a parking space—one that didn’t have a street lamp blazing down on us. Reclining her seat all the way back, Wendy curled up under her blankets. I turned off the ringer on my cell and checked the voicemail. Despite the repeat calls from Bill, there were only the two messages:

    “
Hi Joe. This is Bill. Could you please give me a call? Thanks.”

    “
Joseph. What’s happening? Please call me. Bill and Daniel called me. Where are you? Please call me.”

   
The short message from Bill wasn’t alarming to me. The tone of Ellie’s voice was. She sounded worried. Worried in a way that gave me more than pause. I wanted to come home. But how? Especially now that Bill and Daniel called her. They must have told her everything. And, given that Daniel was a lawyer, he must have been less than tactful in his language. I should have been the one to tell her—before it came to this.

   
In quick succession, there were two more calls. Again, I let them ring through. I checked the messages. The first one was from Daniel. He didn’t sound as short and sweet as Bill had.

    “
Joe. Daniel Abrams. You need to call me. We need to make sure Wendy’s all right.”

   
What did Bill tell Daniel? What did Tom Eccleston tell Bill? What did res staff tell anyone? That I kidnapped Wendy? Of course she was all right. She was scared shitless, but she was all right.

   
I just sat there, staring at the caller ID of the next call. It was unfamiliar to me: a six-one-eight area code.

   
Six. One. Eight.

   
Then I remembered. When Wendy called me over the Holidays, she called me from that prefix. I checked the message. It was her mom.

    “
Yes, Mr. Rourke, this is Candace Barts, Wendy’s mom. I don’t know what you are thinking, or Wendy is thinking, but I need to speak with her…”

   
The message went on and on. I didn’t bother to listen to the rest—at least past the part where she mentioned that she was going to be “pressing charges.”

   
There were more phone calls. From Wendy’s sisters. From Bill again. From Daniel. And Ellie. I didn’t want to return any of their phone calls, let alone listen to their messages. What would I tell them? What could I tell them?

   
Tossing and turning and clearly not able to sleep, Wendy must have noticed my look of panic setting in.

    “
What’s going on?”

    “
Daniel Abrams called, that’s what’s going on.”

    “
No shit. What did he want?” Wendy knew of Daniel, though she never met him formally.

    “
He wanted to know if you’re all right.”

    “
Like he fucking cares.” Why wouldn’t I be?”

    “
Think of it. Female student leaving a boarding school with her teacher—“

   
Sitting up, Wendy cut me off with, “I’m an adult. I can do whatever I want.”

    “
I know you can, Wendy. But that’s not how they see it… By the way, your mom called too.”

    “
Fuck!”

   
I let Wendy listen to her mom’s and her sisters’ messages. In those few minutes, Wendy went through a barrage of emotions: Anger, sadness, rage, even glee. She settled for the blues in the end—and not the musical kind.

    “
Listen. We’re not going anywhere. Not now, at least. We need to settle all this before we go to L.A.”

    “
But how?” Wendy asked, a little warble in her voice. Was she about to cry?

    “
Try to get some sleep. I’ll make a few calls.”

    “
Don’t call my mom,” Wendy warned, reclining back in her seat.

    “
Are you kidding?”

    “
Well, don’t. She knows how to get what she wants.”

   
That sounded familiar.

   
Wendy curled up on her side and began to doze off. I couldn’t help but study her face. I brushed her hair back. She didn’t react. She must have been more tired than she looked. Maybe she was still awake, but too frightened of the whole situation—and of me. Or maybe she didn’t mind.

    
She was pretty all right. Gorgeous. But I couldn’t help but see what she really was: A girl. Not a woman, like Ellie, but someone who was still finding herself in the world. Why she picked me to help her on her journey, I would never know. She looked so vulnerable lying there, next to me. Her toughness was an obvious veneer she projected, no doubt a reflection of her own hard-as-nails mother.

   
I sat there, staring at her. Thinking of a possible life together, but nothing seemed to add up. The grand adventure

of Joe and Wendy—Moby and Matilda—had stalled at a rest stop less than ten miles south of the starting line.

   
I thought of all those phone calls, and the respective voicemail messages that needed to be listened to. But instead of checking each and every one, I called Ellie first.

   
It was a little past Four A.M. Friday, February Sixteenth.

   
I stood out in the cold of the rest stop. A breeze whipped the branches of the nearby trees into a low, but audible whistle.

    “
Where are you?” Ellie asked. From the sound of her breathing and her sniffles, I could tell she’d been crying. I wanted to comfort her, to tell her that I’d be home soon. But I felt trapped, and more than a little detached.

    “
I’m near.”

    “
Can you come home?”

    “
No. Not yet.”

    “
Is she there?”

    “
No.”

    “
Where is she?”

    “
She’s in a motel.”

   
There was a pause. And then, “Did she invite you in?”

   
She wanted to ask if I’d slept with Wendy, but this was her way of going about it.

    “
No. Nothing.”

    “
Did you pay for the motel?”

   
She should have known full well I didn’t have enough money to do so. But that didn’t stop me from continuing to lie to her.

    “
No. Her mom paid for it.”

    “
Then why can’t you come home?”

    “
I’ll call you in a couple hours. I can’t right now.”

    “
Oh,” was Ellie’s only reply. She probably didn’t believe my motel story, but I was sticking with it just the same.

   
Instead of returning Daniel’s or Bill’s calls, I called one of my best and only friends in the whole wide world, Roy Munke. Buddies since our halcyon days at Cal Arts, we made art together, wrote together, smoked weed together, and dreamed grand dreams together. A terminal pothead with occasional forays into forgetfulness, he was someone I could count on—especially in times like these.

    “
Hey, Joe. What’s up?” Roy answered. Night owl that he was, it was no surprise he took the call.

    “
Too much, Roy… I might need a place to crash,” I said, hinting of more to the story.

    “
Cool. You coming down, I take it?”

    “
Yeah… but I won’t be alone.”

   
Roy laughed as only he can—full bodied—a pirate’s laugh.

    “
I take it Ellie and your son won’t be on this trip,” he said, still laughing. Roy never saw me as a total philanderer, but he did know of my less than professional relationship with that teacher years before. Given the tone of my voice, it was easy for him to connect the dots.

    “
No, they won’t,” I replied.

    “
That’s cool. Have an ETA?”

    “
No. Sometime later today. I’ll call ya.”

    “
Sounds good. Sounds good,” Roy replied. I could tell he was curious of my passenger, but I had to end the call. This was no time to have a sit down.

   
I tried to sleep, but between the deluge of phone calls, the anxiety over watching over Wendy’s “well-being” and my own restlessness, I must have napped for all of an hour.

   
Whatever happened to the plan? Wendy and I had spent so much time talking about L.A. and her hopes and dreams and likes and dislikes that I thought we’d wait till spring break at least. Had I waited till then, or better yet—when Wendy graduated, I could have taken time off and snuck away, dropping her off at that college in L.A. we had discussed. I could have shown her the sights of my town. I could have gotten myself home with my family and job intact. But all that was changed, thanks to the actions of an impulsive teenager and a middle-aged free spirit.