The Fat Boy Chronicles (5 page)

I shook my head. “I don't know. Now this seems crazy.”

“We've got to go through with it, Jimmy. We could catch the killer and get the boyfriend off the hook,” Paul told me.

“What if he starts shooting or something?”

“For what, because his latte is too hot? He'll just leave if Starr doesn't show up. And we won't be there if you chicken out.”

I thought about it and decided we could end up famous. Maybe I'd even be popular for a change. “Okay, I'm in.”

Thursday, 10–12

Please Don't Read This Page

Paul is such a doofus. He almost got us killed today. In case you really are reading this, if you tell anybody about what happened, you will be the cause of my death.

You may have noticed I was not paying attention like I usually do. All I could think of all day was the big meeting with the killer. The guy e–mailed Starr that he would be wearing a Sea World baseball hat. That should have been clue number one. I mean, would a murderer wear a hat with Shamu on it?

Anyway, after school, Paul and I rode our bikes to the Barnes and Noble where Starbucks is—we got there half an hour early, so we could sit in the back. We took some homework and bought drinks so it would look like we were really doing something. Our plan was to wait for him to order coffee. We figured he'd drink his coffee and wait; then when no one showed up, he'd leave. That's when we'd take his cup and give it to the police to see if his fingerprints matched those from the murder scene. Paul brought his dad's digital camera. I'd stand near the guy and Paul would act like he was taking my picture, but really take his. We were ready.

Here's what actually happened. We parked our bikes out front in case we had to make a quick getaway. I ordered an iced caramel
macchiato and Paul got a white chocolate mocha. We sat way in the back so we could watch the door without being noticed. Paul about drove me crazy fooling with the camera. The flash kept going off and the people trying to read and talk got mad at us. After about a half hour, a few girls walked in, giggling. They looked like some of my sister's friends, but I couldn't be sure. Then some guys came in, but none had on the right hat. I was so busy looking at their hats I didn't realize that one of the guys was Danny Miller. I started to get nervous. Really nervous.

“Calm down, dude,” Paul said. “He's not wearing the hat, is he?”

Then we saw it. A hat with a big Sea World logo on it. Some guy from school. The one my sister has a big crush on. Then I saw my sister peeking in the window. She waited a few seconds, and then she opened the door and walked in.

“Oh, crap!” I whispered loudly. “It's Jessica. Let's get out of here.” I spun around in my chair before she saw me.

“There's only one way out, nitwit, and that's through the front door.”

My sister and her friends were looking around for a place to sit. “Quick, let's hide in the bathroom,” I said. We grabbed our books and drinks and, keeping our heads down, snaked our way to the back of the bookstore.

“This sucks,” said Paul after he was safe inside his stall. “Why can't we hide in the books somewhere? Or hang out in the music section until they leave?”

“No way. I don't want to take any chances. I'm staying right here— behind a locked door. Man, my head's buzzing from the caffeine.”

“Quit complaining. Don't you understand the deep pile of crap we're in? Ha, get it? Deep crap we're in? Man, what are you doing over there? It's smells like elephant farts.”

“They're not as bad as my grandpa's. They're sick.”

“Never heard of anyone inheriting farts.”

“Hey, what if one of them crawls underneath the door?”

“Why would anyone do that? Like, ‘Hey, I think I'll crawl under the door to see who's in there. Might be fun to see some dude squatting on porcelain.' Get real, man.”

Then a toilet flushed. “Paul,” I whispered. “I hope that was you.”

“Don't worry, I was just testing the equipment. There's nothing else to do in here.”

Paul kept sneaking out to see if my sister and her friends had left yet, but it seemed they weren't in a hurry to go anywhere. My sister wanted revenge in a big way, and she was willing to wait for it.

“What if she stays here until they close,” Paul said. “We can't stay in here forever.”

“There's no way we can let my sister see us together. She'll know we did it. Then my life is as good as over. If she finds out, I'll have to run away.”

“She can't stay that much longer. What time do you have to be home?” Paul asked.

“Mom expects us home for dinner at 6:30.”

“What time is it now?”

“Ten after four.”

“That's just great. We only have two more hours in here.”

We were glad it wasn't that crowded—we didn't have to give up
our stalls for anybody. Danny Miller came in once, and we watched him check out his muscles through the thin opening in the door. It actually was pretty funny, and Paul and I had a good laugh about it later. Every fifteen minutes Paul would sneak out of the bathroom to see if my sister and her friends were still there. They didn't leave until twenty after six. We waited a few more minutes to make sure they were gone.

By the time I got home, it was dark and Mom was fuming. “I've been worried sick and so has Mrs. Grove. Where were you?”

“Yeah, where were you?” my sister asked, her head tilted a bit like she was already suspicious. I had to be real cool or I would end up banned from my own family.

“We rode our bikes to the mall and went to GameStop. Guess we lost track of time. Sorry, Mom.”

“Sorry? Is that all you have to say for yourself? Sorry? Didn't you know what time it was?”

“I saw a couple of bikes at Starbucks,” my sister said.

“And your point?” I said. “So, you saw a couple of bikes at Starbucks. What does that have to do with anything?” I was barely floating. And talking too much.

“Well, one looked just like yours.” She was looking at me but I didn't look back.

“Do you know how many bikes out there look like mine?”

“I think you know something, you weasel.”

“Okay, you two, that's enough,” Dad said. “Jimmy, you can forget going anywhere for two weeks. Now let's eat, we've been waiting on you long enough.”

All through dinner my sister asked me one stupid question after another. Like what kind of bike does Paul have, and how could both of us lose track of time, and why did I pick this particular day to go to the mall. She was annoying everybody at the table and Dad finally told her to leave me alone. Mom, though, kept looking back and forth between me and Jessica, like she was figuring something out. It was really eerie. Like she was using some sixth sense so she'd know exactly what was going on.

That night when I finally went to my room, I erased Starr's MySpace page.

Friday, 10–13

Please Don't Read This Page

It has been such a long week, it feels like it's been a month. Jessica's still upset, and Mom's barely speaking to me. I've pretty much stayed out of both their ways. Dad's kept himself scarce too. I've been a wreck all day with it being Friday the 13th. I've been waiting for one of my sister's friends to say something about seeing Paul and me in Starbucks. But so far, no one's said anything.

Paul's coming over tonight—it's been planned since last week, but Mom's acting funny about it. Dad's on my side. He thinks Mom's treating me unfairly. “Jimmy shouldn't be punished because Jessica's unhappy,” I heard him say to Mom. “He needs to have a life, and friends. Paul's an okay kid. You know what his home life is like, Mare.”

Mom murmured something under her breath, and Dad gave me the “it's okay” sign.

Even with the “okay” sign from Dad, I told Paul to cool it about the murder in front of my parents and Jessica. Especially Jessica. He's still obsessed with the murder though. He reads everything he can about it and watches the news all the time. Paul swears he can tell if someone is innocent or guilty by the look in their eyes. The boyfriend, Paul says, has that “they–think–I'm–guilty–but–I'minnocent” look. Paul says he knows that look, because his dad's always accusing him of things he didn't do, like smoking pot and sneaking booze.

“Okay, the Starr thing didn't work out,” Paul said. “But there has to be some way to catch the killer.”

“No way, man,” I said. “Count me out. I'm not spending another minute in a bathroom stall, unless I have to.”

“Don't worry. I found something much better. Doesn't involve anybody in our family. I found these really cool Internet sites that identify sexual predators in neighborhoods.”

“I don't believe what I'm hearing.”

“We need to check all the areas surrounding Wilmington High. It might take a while, but I think the guy must have been stalking Kimberly for a long time, so he's got to live around her neighborhood somewhere.”

“I thought you said the murderer was from Kentucky.”

“Not any more. There's too much evidence that he's from around here.”

“Like what?”

“Like the cigarette butts we found near the murder site. And the stalking.”

“Couldn't someone from Kentucky be a stalker?”

“I thought about that, but the police said it must be someone nearby who knows her. And knows her habits,” Paul said.

“That's what I thought to begin with, then you came up with this goofy Kentucky theory.”

Paul was quiet for a second. “Yeah, well, it could still be someone from Kentucky, but we have a better chance if it's someone from around here, so I thought we'd try that first. If it doesn't work, then we'll start looking in Kentucky.”

“Or, we could play Super Smash and just let the police take care of it.”

But I knew Paul wasn't going to let it go.

Monday, 10–16

The weekend started out pretty good. We got a new dog, a golden retriever—he's only eight weeks old and is really hyper. My sister named him Taffy; it's an okay name, but I would have named him something less girlie, like Snoop Doggie or Apollo. But I got to name Nanook, our other dog, so Mom let Jessica name the new one. I think Mom's hoping the new puppy will help Jessica get over her humiliation. It seems to be working. It's hard to stay miserable around such a funny dog. You can be in the middle of playing a game with him, like tug–o–war, and he just falls asleep. He's crazy.

Paul spent the night Friday. I was worried about Mom, but she acted okay. All she did was worry about the dog chewing the furniture
and peeing on the carpet. At first Paul and I played video games. He likes Super Smash Brothers but it isn't his favorite. What he really wanted to do was talk about the murder. We stayed up till almost three surfing the web and found over two hundred sex predators in Hanover County. I couldn't believe it. We never expected to find that many—maybe one or two, but two hundred? That's pretty scary. We decided to check our streets, but didn't find anyone. It makes you realize how hard it is for the police to solve a case, with so many criminals out there. The whole thing was really discouraging. Unless the guy really screws up, it'll be a long time before he gets caught, if he ever does. Paul's not giving up though. He thinks most criminals slip up; we just have to figure out how. He hasn't been able to spy on the murder site as much as he wants because his dad's been on his case about it. His dad told him he'd “kick his ass” if he found him snooping around there anymore. Which means I'm not snooping around there either.

Saturday morning Dad took Paul home. I just sat around the rest of the day watching TV. Dad watched the baseball game—the Reds stink again. “They can't pitch or hit or run,” he said. I don't care about the game as much as I like collecting baseball cards. Soccer's better, and I've always wanted to play for the school, like Spencer does. Like that would ever happen. I played hockey when I was in fifth grade, but I wasn't fast, so the coach made me a backup goalie.

Some of the guys in my PE class are soccer players; a couple are from somewhere in South America. So far, they're a lot nicer than the football players.

Tuesday, October 17

School today was a pain. We're preparing for testing, so in English (as you know!) and math we had to review stuff we've been studying for years. If I have to cross–multiply one more time, I might puke. It's so boring and I don't know why some people never get it. I guess we all have our problems.

Mom made me turkey sandwiches for lunch but I bought pizza too. The cafeteria also has these chocolate–chip cookies that they make each day. They're soft and when they just come out of the oven, they are so good. I can eat my two and if someone doesn't want theirs, I get those too. One day last week, I put some extra cookies in my book bag for later and forgot about them. When I got home, they had soaked through and got chocolate stains all over the living room carpet where I threw my bag. Mom was so mad at me.

Thursday, October 19

Hi, Mrs. Pope. I'm in class working on my Comparison / Contrast paper. You said it was optional whether we do a Venn diagram. I'm going to write about my two neighborhoods. You said you would look it over and make comments before we hand in the final draft.

Hopewell Court vs. Chesdin Circle

The summer had finally come and you could smell the freedom in the air. It was so wonderful, yet we were moving away from 13838 Chesdin Circle.

My family had been looking at houses since January. My sister, Jessica, was in the tenth grade, and my parents decided that if we were going to move, we should move before she started another year in high school. We had some friends that moved to Hanover a few years before and they seemed to like it.