Last Chance (22 page)

“Why can't you just stay out of this?” he said.

“Because what Joey did is wrong. And what you're doing isn't helping him, but it is hurting you.” I stared into his eyes. “Do you really want people to think you did this?” He glared at me. “Antoine told me that Joey saved your life. Is that why you're covering for him?”

No answer. He was the most unresponsive person I had ever met. Maybe that's how he was dealing with his anger now—by trying to keep it all bottled up inside him.

I walked past him to the door and reached for the doorknob.

“My stepfather,” Nick said. “Joey's father? He was real mean.”

I turned to look at him.

“He drank. And he used to hurt my mother. One time he had a knife. He was threatening her with it. I tried to stop him. But he's a really big guy and I was just a kid. If Joey hadn't stopped him, he would have killed me for sure.” He touched the scar that ran across his cheek. “He attacked Joey instead. Joey almost died.” He looked at me. “The absolute worst they can do to me is two years. My lawyer even said so. Even two years in closed detention, that's not so bad. I'll be eighteen when I get out. The record will be sealed. Joey's twenty. He has two drunk driving arrests. They'd do a lot worse to him. They'd really mess things up for him. And the baby's due soon.”

“They're
not going to mess him up,” I said. “He's done this to himself. And he's going to let you take the blame for it.”

“I owe him.”

“You don't owe him this. Nick, if you don't tell your lawyer, I will.”

Nick sank down onto a chair. “You're a real pain, you know that?” he said.

I sat down opposite him. “What really happened that night?”

He shook his head. I waited.

“Joey showed up at the house after my aunt went to bed,” Nick started. “He snuck in. Joey can get in anywhere. He'd been drinking. Celebrating, he said. You know, my birthday. He wanted me to go with him. He said he had a surprise for me. He grabbed the rest of the cake and we went. I know it was stupid, but it was Joey.

Besides, who else was going to know?”

I nodded.

“He had a car I'd never seen before. He said he'd borrowed it, but he didn't say who from. He told me he'd just got his license back too. I asked him where we were going, but he kept saying it was a surprise.The next thing I know, we're up behind the shelter and Joey's jimmying the lock on a door to the animal wing. I tried to stop him, but he said, ‘Hey, it's your birthday. You want to see that dog, don't you? You want to introduce me to him, don't you?' He said if I wanted to, we could even take Orion with us. Then the door was open and . . . ” He shrugged and looked down at the floor.

I waited.

“He went in and I followed him,” Nick said. He sounded ashamed now. “And the next thing I know, Joey's inside the kennel and he's feeding Orion some cake. Orion gobbled it up before I could get in and stop him. I just knew it was going to make him sick.”

He glanced up at me. For the first time, he looked sorry.

“I told Joey we had to get out of there. So we took off, back to the car. And that's when he told me. The whole thing. The big surprise. The whole reason he'd showed up.” His voice was bitter. “It wasn't because it was my birthday. I don't think he even remembered that until he saw the cake my aunt had made. It was because he was in trouble again. He'd lost his job, you know, on account of they'd taken away his driver's license. He was having trouble getting hired anywhere, and he and Angie were behind on their rent.The baby is due soon and he was under so much pressure . . . He said he couldn't take it. He had a few drinks. Then he borrowed a car—he said he wanted to see me. He said it's not fair that I'm not supposed to see him. But he hit some guy, and he got scared. He said he wanted me to help him ditch the car. But mostly he wanted me to help him out of the whole thing. He said the guy walked away, but he thought someone saw him. There was a woman. He said nothing would probably ever come of it, but if it did, maybe I could do something for him. One last time, you know? I was going to say no. But he begged me. He talked about the baby. He loves Angie. He really does. And he has a line on a job.”

He sighed. “I ditched the car. I thought I wiped off all the prints. I guess I missed a couple, huh?”

I nodded. I didn't know what else to say.

“His kid deserves to have a father around,” Nick said. “Even if it's Joey. Maybe he'll straighten out. You know?”

I nodded, even though I wasn't so sure.

He leaned forward in his chair. “I don't get you,” he said.

“I don't get you, either.” Man, was that the truth.

“Are you really going to tell the cops?”

I nodded.

“I'm still going to be in trouble, you know,” he said. “For helping Joey.”

“I know.”

For a few moments, neither of us said anything. Nick looked at me, but he didn't try to argue. I started to get up. My father was probably wondering what was taking me so long. But . . .

“Can I ask you something, Nick?”

“Man, you're worse than the cops.” He gave me a wry smile. “All right. Go ahead.”

Thanks to my mother, I knew what he'd done. But I didn't know why. Suddenly it seemed important.

“What are you doing in RAD?”

He shrugged. At first I thought that was all the answer I was going to get. It wasn't.

“I kind of went crazy at school one day,” he said.

“How come?”

“He killed her,” he said. At first I didn't get it. “My stepfather. The last time he started in on my mother, he killed her. They plea-bargained it down to manslaughter. He got eight years, eligible for parole in three. Three lousy years.” His purple-blue eyes burned as he looked at me. “A couple of weeks later, I got sent down to the office, to this vice principal. He was new. It was maybe his first week there. There was this school secretary. She was always nice to me—she was nice to all the kids, it didn't matter where they came from. She told him that he should go easy on me because of what happened to my mother. The guy, the
vice principal
, had my file in his hands. I could tell he'd read it, and he'd already made up his mind about me.

You know what he said to the secretary, while I was standing right there?” I shook my head. But I had a bad feeling.

“He said that any woman who would stay with a man who beat on her pretty much deserved whatever happened to her.”

“Oh . . . ” I tried to put myself in his place. I tried to think what I would have done.

“He said it to the secretary. Maybe he didn't mean for me to hear it. But I did.” He shook his head. “There was a janitor or plumber or something working on the overhead pipes in the office. I grabbed the first thing I saw”—a length of pipe, according to my mother—“and, well . . . ” He looked down at the ground.

“What happened to the vice principal?” I said. “I hope they at least fired him for what he said.”

He raised his head and looked at me as though I were crazy.

“You're kidding, right?” he said. “Fire a vice principal?”

“It happens,” I said.

“Yeah, well, it didn't happen to this guy.”

The man out in the hall rapped on the glass. Nick stood up and slung his backpack over one shoulder.

“I gotta go,” he said.

There was just one more thing I had to ask, one more thing I needed to know.

“When you stole the money from school, that was Joey with you, wasn't it?”

He nodded.

“Antoine said you tried to stop him from taking that money at the shelter. Were you trying to stop Joey too?”

Nick met my eyes and held them. At first he looked angry. But by the time he finally shook his head, he looked ashamed. “No,” he said. “I was there to steal the money.”

I don't know why I was so disappointed. I guess I was hoping that I'd been wrong about him all along.

“I wanted a dog so badly,” he said. “I've always wanted one. My stepdad finally said he'd let me get one if I could pay for its food. I thought maybe I could get a part-time job. Then Joey saw the posters for that pet show when he picked me up after school. He figured maybe there was an easier way to get what I needed.” He shook his head. “They told me you and your friends worked hard to raise that money.”

“They told me you blew it all at an arcade downtown.”

“Yeah.” He shook his head. “Turns out my stepdad only said I could have the dog because he never thought I'd come up with the money. When I showed him the cash, he just laughed.” The hurt was visible in his eyes, even after all this time. “Joey said we might as well have some fun.”

The man out in the hall rapped on the glass and nodded at the door.

“I better go,” Nick said. Then, as he reached for the doorknob, he said, “I'm sorry, Robyn.”

S
ix days later, it was my last day at the shelter. I had been looking over my shoulder all day. I knew, because my mother had told me, that Joey had been arrested shortly after I'd talked to Nick at the group home. I also knew that with the help of Mr. Jarvis, Kathy, and Mr. Schuster, she had succeeded in getting the charges against Nick dropped and had arranged for a meeting between Nick and the chairman of the shelter's board. Kathy thought that if the chairman had a chance to talk to Nick, he might change his mind about banishing him from the shelter. The meeting was supposed to happen today. I hoped that it would go well and that Nick would be allowed to return. But I dreaded running into him. Joey was definitely looking at some time in jail. I wondered if Nick blamed me for that. I was almost positive that if I hadn't threatened to tell, he would never have told my mother what really happened and Joey would never have been arrested.

I stayed in my broom closet of an office and kept my eyes on my computer screen all day. I didn't even go outside for lunch. Then, at four o'clock, Kathy knocked on my door and said she needed me to do one last thing for her.

“We're having a reception for some of our donors this evening,” she said. “Janet could use some help setting up. She's in the boardroom.”

So was everyone else I had gotten to know over the past month. And they all yelled, “Surprise!” when I entered the room. Kathy laughed when she saw the expression on my face.

“We wanted to thank you for all your hard work, Robyn,” she said. “Because of you, we now have an upto-date fund-raising database. I know it was tedious work, but it means a lot to us.”

Everyone smiled and clapped. Then Kathy cut pieces of chocolate cake for everyone and presented me with a gift. Everyone I had worked with over the past month told me how much they had appreciated my efforts. I felt pretty good about what I had done, even though I hadn't really wanted to be there in the first place.

I was on my way back to my office after the party to get my things when I saw Nick emerge from a meeting room. He was more dressed up than usual, in gray pants, a neatly pressed shirt, and shoes instead of sneakers, and he was almost, but not quite, smiling. Mr. Jarvis was with him. So was Orion.

I was about to duck around a corner out of sight when Nick spotted me. He said something to Mr. Jarvis, handed him Orion's leash, and started down the hall toward me. I stood where I was, too embarrassed to run away but a little afraid of what he might say to me.

What he said was “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said.

We looked at each other.

“They were going to kick me out of the program,” he said finally. “But Kathy and Mr. Jarvis convinced them to give me another chance. Mr. Schuster too. And my lawyer.”

“That's good,” I said.

His eyes held me. The way he was looking at me, like he was trying to look into me, made me want to turn and run.

“Why didn't you tell me that my lawyer is your mother?” he said.

“I thought you wouldn't talk to me if you knew.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You're probably right.” He glanced back over his shoulder at Mr. Jarvis, who was waiting for him. “So I guess she told you what happened with Joey, huh?”

I nodded. “I'm sorry,” I said.

“Me too. Angie was really upset. But I think maybe she'll give him another chance when he gets out. I sure hope he doesn't mess it up.”

“Me, too,” I said.

The silence that followed was awkward. Nick rushed to fill it.

“Mr. Jarvis and Stella say that if I work hard, Orion and I can probably graduate the program with everyone else. He's a little behind, but Mr. Schuster worked with him while I was away, so at least he hasn't forgotten everything I taught him.”

“I'm glad.”

I looked past him at Mr. Jarvis and Orion. Both were patiently watching us.

“Well, I guess I'd better go,” I said. “It's my last day here.”

“Oh?” Was I imagining it, or did he sound disappointed? “So you're out of here?”