The Big Splash (8 page)

Before I could start my apology, Jenny Finnegan walked over and slapped me across the face. The slap looked dramatic, but there wasn't much behind it. “You jerk!” she yelled, then turned and noticed Liz. “Hi, Lizzie.”

“Hey, Jenny. You cut in line.”

“Sorry.”

“No problem. I'll get him next time. See you around, Matt,” Liz said and walked away.

“What the hell was that?” I yelled at Jenny while trying to rub her fingerprints off my face.

“You're working for Vinny?” she yelled back. I looked
down the hallway to see if Liz had heard, but thankfully, she was already out of earshot.

“Not that it's any of your business,” I said, “but, yes.”

She went to slap me again, but I saw it coming and grabbed her wrist. “Let me go!” she screamed, making us look like a married couple on a daytime talk show. Kids stopped what they were doing and watched. I heard the deep voice of a teacher coming around the corner. I pulled Jenny close to me. There was a yellow ribbon holding her ponytail. She was still clutching her horse-covered notebook. I could smell her soap. It was the same kind Nicole used.

“Pipe down or we're both going to end up in detention.”

Mr. Rudolph, an eighth-grade History teacher, turned the corner and walked past us. I pretended that Jenny and I were having a casual conversation. “So you like horses, huh?” I asked and willed her to play along. Either she didn't pick up on my cues, or she didn't want to. She just stared at me with a weird mixture of anger and excitement on her face, as if she had never been this close to a boy before and wasn't sure if she liked it. Lucky for us, Mr. Rudolph must
have had something on his mind, because he passed by without giving us a second look. When he was out of sight, I let Jenny go.

“I was going to tell you,” I said.

“When?”

“Later today. Give me a break, will ya? I only just got here.”

“It's all Vinny's fault.”

“What is? The Nikki hit?

She nodded yes, her long ponytail bobbing up and down.

“And what, Nikki's the innocent lamb? Please. You may want to buy that bull because she's your sister, but don't try selling it to me.”

Jenny started to say something, but stopped. Her gaze dropped from my face.

“Look,” I said, regaining my composure. “As far as I can tell, Vinny didn't have anything to do with it.”

“But I hired you first!” There was a little whine to her voice that was starting to get on my nerves.

“Technically, Vinny hired me first. Look, I don't want to take money from both of you for the same job, and quite frankly, I think he has more to give.”

“I don't care what he has. She's my sister. I want to know who did it.”

“You'll know, but for free. Not a bad deal.”

“But Vinny will know first, and then he'll get to the kid, like he gets to everything else in this school. Like he got to you.”

I was sick of being reminded of how I sold out to Vinny. I grabbed Jenny and pulled her close. “Listen, sister. You want the trigger, you work that out with Vinny. I'm sure he wouldn't mind sharing a piece of him. Me? I don't care what happens to him. How could I with all you sharks after him? If I had any conscience left, I wouldn't find him at all, because if I think about it too hard, that's the only chance this kid's got.” I let go of her. She looked at me like she wanted to scratch her initials into my face. Then her anger broke, and her regular, innocent expression came back.

“I'm sorry,” she said, “I was up all night with Nicole, and I guess I'm a little edgy.”

“Yeah, you and me both.”

She paused. “I'm not a shark. The only reason I want to know is because Nicole is my sister. I don't want to … you know …”

“Put the hit kid in the Outs? He may end up there anyway, no matter what you want or don't want.”

Jenny nodded slowly then tried to smile, but her mouth wouldn't let her. She clutched her notebook tighter, as if it gave her comfort. “I don't want him to go … there. I'll admit that the other day I did … but not now. If someone were to put him there now, I would feel horrible.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted it! I wished for it!”

“So what? Wishes hardly ever come true,” I said. Without any warning, my dad's face popped into my head, as if to prove my point. I pushed him out as quickly as I could and tried to focus on the task at hand, but my expression must have given me away.

“Are you okay, Matt?” Despite what Jenny was going through, she was still concerned for me. My opinion of her rose a few notches.

“I'm fine. Listen, when you wished for that, you were upset. Your sister was just put in the Outs. Give yourself a break.”

She nodded as if she agreed with me, but I could tell by her expression that if the hit kid ended up in the Outs, she would always feel a little responsible.

I noticed for the first time that she was wearing a light blue cardigan; it made her eyes look bluer than a cloudless October sky. My initial evaluation of her looks wasn't quite accurate. She was more than just cute; she was beautiful, with a much softer touch than her sister.

“Just so you know,” I said, “Vinny hired me to get this.” I took the surfer girl out of my pocket. “But only if your sister was willing to give it up.”

She gasped a little. “May I … hold it?” I put the figurine in her outstretched hand. “Nicole never let me touch it,” she said, her voice tinged with a mixture of awe and bitterness. “She used to say that it only had so much good luck and she needed every drop. Kind of funny that she got hit as soon as she handed it to you.”

“Yeah. What were you two arguing about, right before she got hit?”

“Vinny had come up to me at my locker that morning, to welcome me to school,” Jenny said, still focusing on the surfer girl. “He was different than I expected.”

“You'd never met him before?”

“No. My sister wouldn't let me. If you didn't already
know, Nicole is a bit of a control freak.” Jenny handed the surfer girl back to me. “When she realized she couldn't stop Vinny from talking to me, she exploded.”

“You looked like the one doing the exploding.”

Her eyes were watchful. “Nicole exploded all right, just quietly.”

“You stormed off. Why'd you come back?”

“Honestly? To yell at her some more. I don't like people telling me what to do. When I saw her on the ground, at first I …” She paused to get the words right. “I felt guilty, because I felt vindicated, like I had won the argument. She got hit because she wasn't a good person. She had no right telling me what to do.”

“Harsh.”

“I know. I wish I could say I felt something different, but I can't. We can't always help what we feel.” She looked up at me. There was an unexpected spark between us. I started to wonder if Jenny was as innocent as she looked. “So you weren't hired to distract Nicole?” she asked.

“No. I distracted her, but not on purpose.”

“I'm sorry … I don't mean to keep bringing it up, it's just … well, I didn't know what to think. All sorts of scenarios ran through my mind.” As she spoke, her
ponytail swung back and forth. “I started to think you were in on the hit, and that now you were just stringing me along, ripping me off.”

“I'd have slapped me, too.”

“Just talking to you now, I know it's not true.” She gave me a smile full of sweetness and warmth. “I'm glad it's not true.”

There was another spark. I spoke before it ignited something. “And now you get my services for free.”

“I want to pay you.”

“You don't have to. It's being taken care of.”

“I know, but I want to. Vinny takes care of everything in this school.
I
want to take care of my sister. You can still take his money. I can't pay you much, but I want to pay you something. I want to know that I at least contributed to finding out who did this.”

“I understand.”

“So, how much?”

“Let me find the perp first. Then you can pay me according to how hard you think I worked.”

Her smiled widened. “You're an unusual boy, Matt Stevens.” She kissed my cheek—the same one she had slapped earlier.

“Uhh … thanks …,” I mumbled. All of a sudden, my palms were sweaty and my tongue felt three sizes too big for my mouth. I peeled my gaze away from the floor and forced myself to look at her. She blushed deeper than I had ever seen anyone blush before.

“Jenny,” someone said, interrupting us. The voice belonged to a girl who looked familiar to me, but I couldn't place her. She was a hall monitor; that much was clear from the sash she was wearing. It looked to be the right size, but still didn't seem to fit well. “We have to get to class,” this girl said, in a way that made it clear that she didn't approve of the moment Jenny and I had just shared.

“Just a sec, Mel,” Jenny responded. “I'll see you later, Matt?”

“Sure.”

Jenny smiled, then turned to join her friend. Her ponytail bobbed jauntily as she and “Mel” walked off together. I could still feel her kiss … and her slap. I wasn't sure which left a deeper impression.

lunchtime, I still hadn't found any useful information. I decided to question some of the kids who were in the crowd when Nikki got hit. The first two I went to were Jeremy Farmer and Todd Lundgren. Last year, their friend Bobby Higgins had placed a bet on the basketball team to win, with money he didn't have. Our team lost the game—badly—and Bobby had been too broke to pay up. He tried to bargain for more time, claiming that his birthday was coming up. It was … in eight months. Vinny sent Nikki to give him an early
present. Jeremy and Todd tried to hang around with him afterward, but it was no use. Bobby was in the Outs now, and no longer the kid they had been friends with. Apparently, they still missed him, because when I asked Jeremy and Todd about Nikki, they clammed up tighter than a cheap lady's purse.

Next I went to Nancy Pilkenton. Nikki took Nancy's sister out last year. Nancy wasn't talking, either.

“I didn't get a good look at him,” she said, her mouth full of tuna sandwich.

“He walked right past you.”

“I didn't notice. I was a little busy at the time.”

“Busy yelling at Nikki.”

“That's right. What of it? She took my sister out for no reason, you know. Nikki deserved what she got.”

The smell of tuna was turning my stomach. “Your ‘innocent' sister was bullying sixth-grade girls for their lunch money.”

“What the hell do you know? Scram. Unless you want to give the kid a medal, I didn't see nothin'.”

I approached a bunch of other kids that I recognized from the scene of the crime, but like an English teacher in a room full of cheaters, I kept getting the same story.
Nobody saw anything. All of them had friends or relatives that Nikki had taken out; none of them wanted to help bring down the kid who got her. I was about to give up when the bell rang, taking the decision out of my hands. I packed up my half-eaten lunch, grabbed my books, and headed for Algebra.

As I was walking, a kid caught up to me and kept pace. His name was Steven Beckett. I knew him from class. He looked like he had something on his mind.

“Hey, Matt.”

“Steve.”

“You got a minute?”

“Maybe. Class is starting in five.”

“I know. I sit two rows behind you.”

“Right. Can you talk while we walk?”

“Yeah,” he said, then stopped walking. His mind and his mouth seemed to be on different tracks. I stopped, too. It seemed important.

“What's going on, Steve?”

“I saw who did Nikki.”

Before I could say anything, he spoke again.

“Well, I didn't see him. I heard him. As he passed by.”

“What did you hear?”

He paused. “Nikki took out my brother, you know,” he said. His shoulders sagged.