Nowhere to Turn (2 page)

Right.

“I guess you don't want to talk about it,” Morgan said a little later at the library.

“You guess right,” I said. I looked at the computer screen and jotted down the call number of a book for our project.

“I wonder what kind of trouble Nick is in,” Morgan said. She was sitting at the workstation next to mine and was supposed to be doing the same thing I was doing. But as far as I could tell, she hadn't even started searching the library catalog. “Do you think it's serious?”

I'd been wondering about that, too, ever since we'd left the restaurant. Beej's news had thrown me. Nick, in trouble—again—after all the progress he'd made? He had served time in both closed custody (where they lock the doors and don't let you out, just like prison) and open custody (where they let you out for specific purposes, such as going to school). But he had been getting his life back together. Before he vanished, he'd started going to school again and had been washing dishes part-time at La Folie. My dad had let him have an apartment on the second floor of his building. And I'd been crazy about him . . .

But that was then. I told myself over and over that he wasn't my problem anymore.

“The AV department is on the fifth floor,” Morgan said. “We could take a break and watch that DVD.”

“First of all,” I said, “how can we take a break when we haven't done any work yet? Second, we don't have the DVD. I left it at the restaurant.”

Morgan dipped into her backpack. “Ta-da!” she said, waving the DVD case. “Come on. Want to take a look?”

“What I want, Morgan, is to get this assignment done. It counts for 20 percent of our final grade, and I don't particularly want to have to work on it over March break.”

“But Nick—”

“Why are you so interested in Nick all of a sudden?” I spoke louder than I had intended, and the librarian at the information desk gave me a sharp look.

“You don't even like him,” I whispered. “You're the one who kept telling me to forget about him.”

“I just thought—”

I snatched the DVD out of her hand and tossed it into the trash. It landed with a satisfying thud.

“There,” I said. “Now can we get to work?”

We spent the next several hours gathering information for our project.

“If we get together again tomorrow and really focus, we can probably finish an outline,” I said.

Morgan quietly agreed. She was being uncharacteristically subdued.

“Okay, I'm sorry I snapped at you,' I said.

“It's not your fault. You have unresolved issues with Nick.”

“Trust me. They're resolved.”

Morgan gave me a look that told me she didn't believe that for a second.

“Ben and Billy will be here soon,” she said. “I'm going to freshen up. Coming?”

I shook my head. “I'll wait for you here.”

While Morgan was gone, I couldn't help but think about Nick. If he had sent Beej to find me, then whatever mess he had landed himself in had to be big. But how was that my problem? Nick wasn't part of my life. He wasn't my boyfriend anymore. Ben was. Nick was nothing.

The elevator doors opened at the far end of the cavernous main floor of the library. A janitor trundled out his cleaning cart, beginning a circuit of the area, ducking down to scoop up trash and recycling bins and dump their contents into his cart. In a couple of minutes Nick's DVD would be history. I wouldn't have to think about it ever again.

I placed all the books Morgan and I had used in the middle of the table so that they could be reshelved. Then I heard the click of wheels. Behind me, the janitor bent down and picked up the trash bin closest to the computers where Morgan and I had been working earlier.

“Wait!” I cried.

The janitor turned to look at me. So did almost everyone else in the vicinity. I ran over to the cleaning cart.

“I threw something away by accident,” I said and thrust my hand into the basket, which fortunately, contained nothing gross. The janitor didn't say a word. He tipped the rest of the contents into a container on his cart, replaced the liner, and moved on. When I turned to retrieve my backpack, Morgan was grinning at me through a fresh application of lipstick. To her credit, she said nothing.

We ended up going to Ben's house, where Billy and Morgan got to see Ben's brand-new baby half sister for the first time. Billy was mesmerized. He was also in awe of the ease with which Ben lifted her from her basket and held her in the crook of his arm. Billy's sister was expecting her first baby. Maybe Billy was trying to imagine himself in the role of doting uncle.

We ordered pizza (vegan, otherwise Billy wouldn't touch it) and watched a movie before Ben drove us all home. He dropped Billy off first, then Morgan, and finally pulled up in front of my father's building.

“You were pretty quiet tonight,” he said. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything's fine,” I said. But the truth was that I couldn't have told him a thing about the movie we'd spent two hours watching. “Morgan and I were assigned a big project that we want to finish before March break, which means we're going to have to work on it all day tomorrow.”

“I know that feeling,” Ben said sympathetically. He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I'll call you tomorrow and see how you're doing,” he said, and kissed me again.

It was silent in my dad's loft when I got upstairs. His keys were on the counter in the kitchen and his coat was on a hanger. He must have made an early night of it.

I dug the DVD out of my backpack; popped it into our DVD player, taking care to keep the volume low; and pulled a chair up close.

I had thought I was prepared for what I was about to see, but when Nick's face appeared on the screen, I knew I was wrong.

CHAPTER
TWO

N

ick's thick black hair was longer than it had been the last time I'd seen him. He looked thinner too and tired, as if he hadn't slept in days. The hairline scar that ran from the bridge of his nose to the bottom of his right ear stood out against his pale skin. He was sitting in an armchair in a brightly lit room. His first words were “What's the point? They caught me with some of the stuff on me. They have the crowbar. I'm screwed.

“They say they'll make a deal with me if I tell them what I did with the rest of it. But they're going to lock me up, Beej. With all the trouble I've been in, they're going to lock me up for sure.”

“That's why you should make a record of what happened,” Beej said.

“What's the point?” Nick said again. I moved a hand toward the screen to touch his face, then pulled it back when I realized what I was doing.

“The cops make a record of everything,” Beej said. “You should make a record too while everything's fresh in your mind. It always helps to talk things out.”

Nick shook his head.

“Okay,” Beej said. “So maybe I'll get into Sundance with my documentary about Nick D'Angelo and his many brushes with the law.”

If she was trying to lighten his mood, it didn't work. Nick sank back in his chair and stared close-mouthed into the camera. He hadn't sent Beej to deliver the DVD to me. He hadn't even wanted her to make it.

“Did you do it?” Beej said.

Nick stared sullenly at the camera and didn't answer.

“Why don't you start by telling what happened to Mr. Schuster?” Beej said.

Nick and I had met Mort Schuster last summer. I had been volunteering at an animal shelter, and Nick was in a special anger management program there. The program was supposed to teach him and some other kids patience and self-control by training them to work with dogs that had behavior problems of their own. The human participants learned how to control their frustration by helping the canine participants overcome their problems so that they could be adopted rather than put down. Nick had trained a big black beast named Orion. When the program ended, Schuster, a volunteer at the shelter, adopted Orion. Then, because Mr. Schuster wasn't able to walk long distances and because he had grown fond of Nick, he hired Nick as a dog walker.

“You already know what happened,” Nick said.

“Humor me,” Beej said, her patience wearing thin.

Nick stared at the camera again. “I got back to the house after walking Orion and found Mr. Schuster lying on the floor. He couldn't move. I called 9-1-1. They took him to the hospital.”

“Did Mr. Schuster say anything to you before they took him away?”

“Dog,” Nick said. “He said, ‘Dog.' It was the only word he said.”

“He wanted you to look after Orion for him, right?” Beej said.

Nick shrugged. “I guess.”

“Then what happened?”

“This is a waste of time.”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

Nick scowled at the camera. Beej held it steady on him until he spoke again.

“Mr. Schuster's family showed up at the house the next night—his son and daughter-in-law and their kids.” He shook his head. “I wasn't expecting that. Orion was sleeping in his room. I was on the couch.”

“You were staying at Mr. Schuster's?” Beej said.

“While he was in the hospital, yeah,” Nick said. “I figured he'd appreciate it if I looked after Orion. But his family acted like I was there to rob the place. The son, Elliot, started yelling at me. He wanted to know who I was and what I was doing in his dad's house. I was pretty sure he was going to call the cops. I thought his wife would say something, but she didn't. She just stood there and let Elliot give me the third degree.”

“What did you tell him?”

Nick didn't answer.

Beej sighed. “Okay. And then what happened?”

“It was crazy. Elliot was quizzing me, Orion was barking up in his room, and then Claudia—that's the wife—decided to go upstairs. If I'd known what she was going to do, I would have stopped her. She heard Orion barking. She must have been able to tell which room he was in. She should have known better, but she barged into his room. Then we heard her scream, and Elliot charged up the stairs. I'm not sure what happened, except that Orion bit her. At least, that's what she said.

“It wasn't serious. There was no blood or anything. Knowing Orion, it was more like a nip. He probably thought she was an intruder. He only ever met her that one time. And it didn't help that she got so worked up.” He shook his head again. “I tried to get everyone to calm down, but every time Orion moved, Claudia freaked out, and that got Orion going all over again. Every time I gave the command and got him to be quiet, she'd start in, screaming at me to keep the dog away from her. And then he'd start barking again. It was a vicious circle.”

He sounded exasperated. “They're terrified of him. Finally, Claudia started screaming at Elliot to call Animal Control. She said she didn't care what Mr. Schuster said about Orion—”

“What did Mr. Schuster say?” Beej said.

“That he's a good dog. That there was no reason to be afraid of him. He said that all the time, you know, because he's so big and has such a deep bark. Claudia said it was obvious he was a vicious dog. She said he should be put down.”