The Big Splash (12 page)

We used to play-fight like this all the time when we were friends, but things never escalated past the “tap and laugh” phase. Kev always held back because I was much smaller than him. At the moment though, playtime was over. There was a really good chance that I was about to get pummeled.

That's when an orange sash caught my eye. A hall monitor was standing there, watching. I was a little relieved—I might get in trouble, but at least I'd still be alive. I waited for the monitor to break us up. Nothing happened. I looked at the monitor more closely. It was Jenny's friend Mel. She was standing in front of the crowd, a little too close to the action, her eyes focused on Kevin's face.

My mind started racing. What was she doing? Why wasn't she breaking up the fight?

Kevin popped me in the chin, reminding me that I had bigger things to worry about at the moment. I wobbled on my feet. Before Kevin got a chance to put me down, a voice intervened from the back of the crowd.

“Break it up! Break it up!” It was Gerry Tinsdale, a seventh-grade hall monitor. Everyone scattered as he walked over, like a flock of birds looking for a new feeder. Mel had melted into the crowd.

Gerry was a runt of a kid. Kevin could have broken him in two, used half of him as a toothpick, and put the other half in his pocket for later. But what Gerry lacked in size he made up for in authority. Break Gerry, and you'd have to answer to Katie Kondo, hall monitor chief. Nobody, not even Kevin, wanted to do that.

“What the hell's going on here?” Gerry demanded in a voice toughened by the sash he wore.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Yeah, nothing,” Kevin repeated.

“Nothing, huh? Carling, you've got a little …” Gerry tapped the corner of his mouth.

Kevin wiped the blood away. “That's weird,” he said. “Where'd that come from?”

“Maybe from the fight you two cupcakes were having?” Gerry offered.

“Fight?” Kevin said, with all the innocence of a kid caught with an atlas during a geography test. “Us?”

“No, no, no,” I said. “You've got it all wrong.”

“We were practicing something for—”

“English class,” I said. Kevin looked at me and smiled, then closed his eyes and shook his head slowly back and forth. I smiled back. I couldn't help it. It was a horrible cover story. We'd always had an easy camaraderie. It had never gone away, no matter how many times we'd tried to kill it.

“Cute story, but I'm not here 'cause of your little game of patty-cake. Katie wants to talk to you,” Gerry said, pointing at me.

“Me?” I asked. “How come?”

“You'll have to ask her.”

“Well, listen, I would love to shoot the breeze with her, but I've got a test in English.”

“It'll keep. Let's go. Get to class, Carling.”

“Yes, sir!” Kevin said, giving a mock salute. “We'll continue our conversation later, Matt.” As he walked away, he shot me a smile that was equal parts amusement and malice.

“C'mon, Stevens,” Gerry said. “You don't want to keep Katie waiting.”

“How do you know what I want?”

“Call it a hunch.”

Katie Kondo was the first seventh grader in the history of Franklin Middle School to ever make hall monitor chief, and she didn't get there by being sweet. She was tough, relentless, and built like a cement wall. You couldn't bribe her. You couldn't threaten her. She had the principal's ear and the weight of the school behind her. If you were guilty, she wouldn't stop until she made you pay. She did everything by the rules, and had no patience for those who couldn't or wouldn't. Consequently, she wasn't my biggest fan.

“Sit down, Stevens,” she said as I entered her office. Gerry went behind the desk and whispered something in her ear. “Tell her I want to see her,” she responded through gritted teeth. Gerry nodded his head and hustled out of there, like a bobble-head with a jet pack.

“Matt Stevens,” Katie said, as if I were a disease that had killed a loved one.

“You know, you're keeping me from a English te—”

“What do you know about Joey Renoni?” she asked, interrupting me.

“Well, he has a lovely singing voice …”

“You're not funny, Matt.”

“That's your opinion. Why do you want to know?”

“That's on a need-to-know basis.”

“I was just about to tell you the same thing.”

“Except you don't have the authority to back it up.
I
do. How'd you like detention with Mrs. Macready?”

Mrs. Macready was an ancient teacher who probably taught kids on the
Mayflower.
She put her detention charges to work as if it
were
the 1600s, washing walls and cleaning bathrooms with toothbrushes.

“Detention? On what charge?”

“Withholding information.”

“What information?” I asked.

“You tell me.”

“You're bluffing.”

“Am I? What do you know about Joey Renoni?” she asked again.

“Who says I know anything?”

“Joey's mom chewed out the principal yesterday for half an hour,” she said.

“Actually, it was more like ten minutes.”

“Somewhere in the middle, Joey mentioned your name. Now why would he do that?”

“He probably wanted me to get his homework for him while he's absent.”

“Hardly. Joey's not absent. He's relocating.”

I flinched in surprise. Not a lot, but enough.

“Something wrong, Stevens?”

“Yes. He and I were very close.” I sniffled as if I were holding back tears. “I'm going to miss him.”

“That's very touching. What happened to Joey?”

“No idea. Why didn't you ask him?”

“I did. He wouldn't answer.”

“But he said my name.”

“He said he was talking to you. The next thing he knew, two guys dragged him off. He says he didn't see their faces.”

“What makes you think I did?” I asked.

“Stop playing with me, Matt, and answer my questions!” She slammed her open palm on the table. She was serious. If I didn't give her something, she'd eat me for lunch and not leave room for dessert.

“I know why, not who,” I said. “Word got around that it was Joey who popped Nikki.”

She looked surprised. “Where'd that come from?”

“You're kidding, right? There were forty kids there when Nikki went down. A few of them heard Joey's giggle flee the scene.”

“He didn't do it,” she said, so matter-of-factly that it jolted me more than the whole palm-smacking-the-table routine.

“How do you know?”

“The Nikki hit went down around ten after three, right?”

“Right.”

“Joey was in here from three to three thirty. Gerry hauled him in for pitching pennies on the side of the building.”

If there were any lingering doubts about Joey's innocence, they were gone now.

“Who fingered Joey to you?” Katie asked.

“Not saying. My source came forward in spite of himself.”

“It could have been an act. He could have been put up to it.”

I thought back to my conversation with Steven Beckett, and how hard it was for him to give me what he knew. If he was faking, he deserved an award. “You could be right,” I said, “but I doubt it. It seems more likely that whoever did the hit does a fairly good Joey Renoni impression.”

She considered it for a second, then gave a slight nod.
“I'll respect the privacy of your source. Just follow up with him.” I bristled at her giving me orders, but decided to let it slide. As it was, I was skating on ice as thin as cheesecloth. She looked at me crossly. “I still think you know who did Joey.”

“Sorry. No idea. But if I find out, you'll be the first person I tell,” I said, squeezing the sincerity out of me like the last bit of toothpaste in the tube.

She scowled at me. “Get out of here. You're late for class.” She didn't say it, but I knew she'd be watching me.

As I left Katie's office, Mel brushed past me on her way in. It was in that moment that I remembered why she had looked so familiar to me. We had gone to Ellie together. She was Katie's little sister.

“Hey, Mel,” I said.

She shot me a look like she wanted to dance a jig on my gravesite. Before I had a chance to say anything else, she was inside Katie's office, shutting the door behind her. I hung around outside for a minute, just to satisfy my curiosity. Katie helped me by yelling.

“You're a monitor, for Chrissakes! You're supposed to break up fights, not watch them!”

There was some softer conversation that I couldn't
make out, then more of Katie's yelling. “I don't care what you want! Don't think I don't know what's going on, Melanie. Stay the hell away from Carling. Otherwise, I'm going to Dad, and you'll be off to St. Jude's, got it?” St. Jude's was an all-girls school across town, supposedly with yardstick-wielding nuns the size of steamrollers.

“I told you, I don't care! Don't let it happen again!” Katie yelled. “Now get out of my sight.”

I took off. Last thing I wanted was to get caught eavesdropping on a Kondo family conversation. Plus, I had all the info I needed. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why Katie's knickers were in a twist: Her little sister had a crush on Kevin. That would explain the less-than-pleasant look Mel threw my way; I had punched her Prince Charming in the nose. It was kind of funny when I thought about it, the chief's little sister in love with Vinny's right-hand man. It had all the makings of a tragic romance novel, with the added benefit of driving Katie crazy.

had been a busy morning, and I hadn't even gone to a class yet. I lay low in the hallways until first period was over, then hustled back to my locker. I pulled the surfer girl figurine out of my pocket. I'd been carrying it around for three days. I'd also been yelled at, hauled in, and knocked around, and every one of my leads had dried up and blown away. So much for good luck.

“I'm going to try this on my own for a little while,” I said as I put her on the locker shelf.

Her smile seemed to say, “Suit yourself.”

Just then, Mac came running up to me, nearly out of breath. “Matt … Matt …”

“Take it easy,” I said.

“Matt …”

“We've established who I am. Now take a deep breath before you give yourself a heart attack.”

He took my advice, then broke the bad news. “My folks threw everything out.”

“No.”

“Yeah. They cleaned the garage a couple of months ago. Tossed all my archives.”

I looked at the surfer girl. She smiled as if to say, “Told you so.”

“Shut up,” I said as I closed my locker door. I looked at Mac to see if he had heard me, but he was in his own world.

“Five years of work, gone. I mean some of it, especially the early stuff, wasn't worth keeping, but some of the later stuff, when I started finding my voice, getting into a groove …”

“Who else would have that issue of the paper?”

“I don't know. Could be anyone that was in Ellie at that time. People save all sorts of stuff.”

“What other stories ran that week?”

“Oh, geez, Matt … that was, like, two years ago.”

“Well, think. Whoever else had a story in that paper might have saved it, or had a parent who did.”

“Makes sense. You want me to ask around?”

“You want the story?”

“I'll ask around,” he said. “Come by my office during lunch.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, but he was already gone, weaving through the crowd. I took two steps before Liz Carling stopped me. At this rate, it was going to take me five years to get to class.

“I'm sorry about the whole phone thing last night,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Aren't you going to say you're sorry, too?”

“Don't push it, Liz.” It pained me to see the hurt expression on her face, but I had run out of patience for the Carling family. “Don't you have to get to class or something?”