Paranoid Park (13 page)

“So have you bought Jennifer anything yet?” Rachel asked me. Macy had gone to the bathroom.

“Uh. No,” I said. “Not yet.”

She saw that I was looking outside. She looked, too, and saw Paisley and the guy with the dog. “Isn’t it weird how kids like that live downtown? On the street?”

I nodded.

“I heard that there’s more homeless teenagers in Portland than in any other city.”

“Yeah?”

“Look at that girl,” said Rachel. “She’s probably younger than us. And she smokes. And dresses like that. Her parents probably hate her.”

I turned away from the window. “So when are you going to give Dustin the board?” I asked.

“This weekend,” said Rachel. “He’ll be so psyched. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a nice board.”

I dropped Rachel off first. She got the board out of the backseat and skipped up her driveway with it. I felt this weird tingling in my heart. I had helped someone. I had done something worthwhile. It felt pretty good.

I drove Macy toward our street. We drove in silence. It started to rain, and I put on my windshield wipers.

“Can I ask you something?” asked Macy.

I didn’t answer.

“You seem really weird lately,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I mean, your family stuff. That must be doing something to you. Don’t you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“You seem so stressed. And when you’re not freaking out, you have this look in your eyes. Like you’re a thousand miles away.”

I stared straight ahead. “Maybe it is my family stuff.”

“Is it something about Jennifer?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, to be honest with you.”

“You’re not mad at
me
for some reason?”

“You?” I said. “No. Not at all.”

“I don’t have a crush on you anymore. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I know.”

“And I’m sorry, if I embarrassed you back then.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

We drove.

“The whole thing with Jennifer ...” she continued. “I have to say. That seems weird. She doesn’t seem like your type. Like, I understand about Elizabeth and Christian, and how the other girls want skater boyfriends. But you and Jennifer. That just seems ...”

“I know. I agree.”

“Really? You don’t really like her?”

“I like her. I mean, we had fun last summer. It’s just like ... she’s just decided we should be together. She didn’t let things develop naturally.”

“That’s it, isn’t it? She’s forcing things-”

“No, that’s not it. To be honest.”

“Really. What is it?”

I turned into our housing development. Windermeyer Terrace, it was called. Her house came up first. I pulled up to the curb in front of her house.

“It’s just stuff that happened,” I said.

“What stuff?” she asked, watching me. She meant it. She wanted to know.

“Just some things that happened,” I said, quietly. “I can’t really talk about it.”

Something in my voice stunned her into silence. She could feel the weight of it now. She was shocked by the weight of it.

She blinked and stared at the dashboard. “Oh,” she said. “It must be pretty bad.”

“It’s just one of those things.”

She looked at me then. “Can I help you somehow?”

“I already feel a lot better,” I managed to say. “Just saying anything at all.”

“It must be bad.”

“It’s probably not what you think,” I said. But then an alarm in my brain went off. I couldn’t say any more about it. In fact, I may have already said too much. “It’s really just stupid,” I lied. “I mean, you know how it is. Sometimes you get all bent over nothing.” I looked out my side window. “It’s really nothing at all.”

Macy didn’t say anything.

“I gotta go,” I said. “I gotta give my mom her car back.”

Macy opened the door and got out. I pulled away and turned into my own driveway, six houses away.

Two days later, I was sitting in math class when an announcement came over the intercom.

“Would the following people come to the principal’s office....” said the voice. I was one of the people. The others were Jared Fitch, Christian Barlow, Paul Auster, and a couple of the other known skaters.

I got up and walked to the front of the class. Everyone was, like, wow, all the cool skater guys are going to the principal’s office.

I didn’t feel very cool. I was scared to death. My legs felt like they might buckle at any moment.

I tried to clear my head as I walked the empty hallway. Behind me, Christian came out of biology. I waited for him. It reassured me to see him. He was one of the most popular boys at our school. Nothing bad could happen to him.

“What is this about?” he said when he saw me.

“Who knows.”

“Probably going to complain about skating behind the cafeteria again,” he said.

We walked together in silence to the principal’s office. One of the other skaters appeared, a guy named Cal (for “California”) who had also been summoned. He was very worried. He didn’t do well with teachers, or authority, or anything, really.

We all went into the office. Mrs. Adams seemed a little on edge. The whole office seemed a little amped somehow. This wasn’t a good sign. Jared came in. The other guys dribbled in. Paul Auster was chewing gum and was told to spit it out and got in an argument with Mrs. Adams. But something was up, something bigger than gum or skating behind the cafeteria.

When the seven of us were assembled, Mrs. Adams led us behind the counter and down the little hall. We passed the principal’s office and arrived at a small conference room none of us had ever seen before. Inside, a man stood at a round table. He smiled at us pleasantly. He wore a sports coat and slacks. He had thick black hair, a thick neck, a thick head. In front of him was a briefcase and one of those little notebooks like reporters use. There was something hard in his face, though, something that gave me a chill down to my toes.

When we were all inside the room, he directed us to sit around the table. We each found a chair and sat.

Mrs. Adams told him he could have us as long as he wanted. He smiled and thanked her.

He closed the door and introduced himself. His name was Detective Matthew Brady. We could call him Matt. He was here investigating a murder that occurred downtown near a skatepark. The police department wanted to make some contacts within the skate community, in hopes of solving the case. He was visiting various high schools in the area and talking to skateboarders who might be able to help.

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t do anything. It was easy, with the other people there, to just sit and do nothing. Paul Auster looked guilty. So did Cal. Cal’s face turned red.

“So first, let’s go around and do names.”

We did that. People told their names. People were scared, you could see it in their faces. You could hear it in their voices.

“So what exactly are you accusing us of?” said Paul, out of the blue.

“Nothing,” said Detective Brady. “Nothing at all. None of you are suspects. What we’re trying to do is get a better understanding of the skateboarding community.”

“It’s not a community,” said Paul, irritably. “It’s not like we know each other.”

I was shocked he was talking like that to a police detective. He would make himself a suspect.

“No, I understand that,” said Brady. “Let me give you the background. We have a possible murder situation. The deceased was found on train tracks, just outside the central train yard downtown. Now the train that was involved in the incident, before it gets to the yard, passes near the Eastside Skatepark.”

“Paranoid
Park,” said Paul. “Nobody calls it Eastside.”

“Exactly,” said the detective. “We think it’s possible that if this was a murder, someone from Paranoid Park could be involved. The problem is, as we have discovered, Paranoid Park is a unique place. There’s a very diverse group of people there, some of whom are hard to track down. So we’re trying to talk to people like you guys, to see if we can better understand what goes on there.”

“You want names,” said Paul Auster.

I couldn’t believe he said that. Neither could Christian Barlow, who said, “Bro, he didn’t say that, chill out.”

“Well,” said Detective Brady, “I might need names at some point. But what I need first is some background.... All right, who here has been to Eastside-or, I mean,
Paranoid—
Park?”

At first I was afraid to raise my hand. But all around me, hands went up. Mine went up, too, slowly, cautiously.

“Great,” said Detective Brady. “You all have. That’s just what I was hoping for.”

It was like a class, like a small AP class where everyone has to talk and the teacher expects you to have an opinion. Detective Brady did that on purpose, I suspected.

Actually, the situation was easy for me. I was one of the lesser skaters in the room, so it was totally natural for me to keep quiet. I sat, strangely calm, and watched the other guys talk about the various skateparks, the difference between “Streeters” and “Preps,” etc. I tried to speak every once in a while. I would attempt to agree with something, and someone else would interrupt me. I managed somehow to believe the “part” I was playing: the clueless new guy who wanted to help, but didn’t know much. It made perfect sense that I would mostly listen.

Then Detective Brady got more specific. Was anyone at Paranoid at any time during the weekend of September sixteenth and seventeenth?

Now, no hands went up. I looked over at Jared. He tentatively raised his hand.

“Yes, Jared?”

“We ...” He pointed across the table at me. “We went, like, a week or two before that. During the day.”

“What day?”

“I don’t remember. Tuesday, maybe,” said Jared. He was a little scared now. You could hear it in his voice. “And actually, we planned to go that weekend, but we didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you?” said the detective. Suddenly he focused on me. He wanted me to talk.

“Uh ...” I stammered. “Well, we ... Jared ... wanted to go down to Oregon State.”

“So you did that instead?”

“I did,” said Jared. “I went by myself. He stayed here.”

“So
you
went to Paranoid?” said the detective, turning back to me.

I felt my face turn red. “No ...” I said. “I ... didn’t want to go by myself.”

“What did you do instead?”

“I ... drove around for a while. And then I went home—”

“Paranoid isn’t a place you want to go by yourself,” interrupted Cal. “It’s kinda dangerous.”

“I go by myself,” said Paul, defiantly. “People only mess with you there if you mess with them.”

“I’m just saying,” sputtered Cal. “It has a
reputation.”

“Were
you
there that weekend?” the detective asked Paul.