Under the Bridge (18 page)

Every bone in my body screamed to hand the pistol over to my dad the next morning, but I didn’t. He’d flip out, pry the truth out of me, and go on a rampage, and I didn’t want that. My dad might be a tough son of a bitch, but he couldn’t stop a bullet. Neither could I, though, and my mind was blank about what to do
.

There was no way I could give it to Mom, either. I knew her well enough that I knew the first thing she’d do would be the right thing. She’d call the police. I thought again about Ms. Potter. It’s not the rules you follow, it’s how you follow the rules. Right isn’t always right, and for Indy’s sake, I had to figure this out before I spilled the beans.

I stuffed it in my pack before I left for school. Dad didn’t say a word when I left, and Mom was already in the salon for one of her early birds. No sweat off my back. I didn’t feel like talking anyway. I felt like dissolving into nothing. Just like Sid had after Cutter died.

I knew Angie and her friends hung out in the student parking lot under the freeway before school, and that was where I went. She wasn’t there, but three of her friends were. I’d gone to junior high with one of the guys, Pauly Higgins, and we’d gotten along well enough. He’d skated until he got into the Goth scene, and we’d drifted apart. The guy was as demented as he looked, but cool, and he always wore the long black overcoat, chains, makeup, and dyed black hair that made them who they were. “Hey, Paul.”

He nodded, his eyes heavy with black eyeliner. “ ’Sup, Tate.”

“Looking for Angie.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “She doesn’t come around much anymore.”

“Where does she live?”

“Thirteenth and Bernard. Green-and-white house on the corner.” He eyed me. “Looking for your brother?”

I nodded. Word spread quickly.

“I’ve seen him.”

“Where?”

“Rave down on Second last night. You know the warehouse?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s one there almost every night now.” He shook his head, pausing. “He’s hanging with that skinhead, you know.” He eyed me. “The skinhead has his tag on Angie, so be careful.”

“Yeah.”

He stared at me, the black eyeliner making the almond-shaped orbs look ominous. “Guy is bad news.”

I nodded.

He stepped away from his friends, motioning me away. We walked, and he lit a smoke. “Listen, Tate, I’m not the one to be telling you this because I like my dope as much as the next guy, but I always liked you.” He exhaled. “Your bro is dealing heavy at the raves. Not the light shit, either.”

“I know.”

He nodded. “Knew it wasn’t your crew’s bag. Thought I’d let you know.”

“Thanks.”

“No sweat, Tate. Indy was always cool.”

As I turned away, he called to me again. I looked at him. “Yeah?”

Pauly frowned. “He’s using, too.”

Piper sat on the grass near the east entrance to the school when I got there, and I gave him some skin. We had a few minutes before class started. “What’s up?”

He shook his head. “Old man went on a binge last night, dude. I swear when that guy starts on the booze, the world is going to pay.”

Piper’s dad was the worst kind of drunk. “You sleep in the garage again?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Had to padlock the damn door from
the inside this time. He was falling all over himself banging on it.” He paused. Piper’s dad wasn’t a topic he spoke of often. “Indy back at school today?”

I shrugged.
He’s using
. “I don’t know if they’ll even let him back in now.”

Piper smiled. “Funny thing. I saw Will this morning hanging around the park. Like he was looking for somebody or something.”

I shrugged again. “Huh.”

Piper studied me. “Looked like a truck hit the side of his face.”

“Wow.”

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He deflated, slumping his shoulders. “Crap, Tate.”

I looked off, down Under the Bridge. “Tell me something I don’t know, Piper.”

“How’d it happen?”

I told him, adding what I’d seen in the apartment.

He grunted. “The gun.” I nodded.

“Not your run-of-the-mill scum, huh?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What’d you do with the gun?”

“I have it.”

His eyebrows popped up. “With you? Like, here?”

I nodded.

He looked around. “Not a good situation.”

“I couldn’t leave it home. I know Mom searches our room, and
Playboy
s and grass are different than a pistol.”

“Dude, bringing a gun to school is, like, a capital offense now. They’ll fry you.”

I shrugged. “If I threw it away, a kid could find it.”

Piper looked at me. “You’re going to do something stupid, aren’t you?”

I shrugged again. We’d known each other too long. “I’m not going to do anything unless Will does. I never wanted a problem in the first place.”

“Listen, Tater, you know I hate Big Brother as much as the next normal-thinking person, but maybe you should think about going to the detectives. If he can get one gun, he can get another.”

“Yeah, then they’ll bust Indy for dealing, and you know that if Will or his uncle did kill that dude, they’ll come after me for snitching them out. No way. This is street, and you should know that.”

He stood. “I think you should go to the pigs.”

“You going to say anything?”

He shook his head. “No, but I think you should.”

By third period the gun in my pack felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, and I’d been looking over my shoulder every five seconds in the halls.
Jumpy
wasn’t the word, and I spent the whole hour wondering what I should do with it.

When class let out for lunch, I walked to the student office. The lady behind the counter didn’t look up. I cleared my throat. A paper taped on the counter read
YOUR MISTAKE IS NOT MY PROBLEM
. She kept her eyes down, writing in a ledger. “Yes?”

“Is Ms. Potter available?”

She looked up, irritated at the interruption, then frowned. “Did you have a teacher’s note or an appointment?”

“Uh, no. But it’s sort of important.”

“She’s busy. You’ll have to make an appointment.”

“Ma’am, it’s really sort of important that I see her—”

“I said you’ll need to make an appointment. Ms. Potter isn’t on call for every student who wants to see her.” She went back to writing in her ledger.

I sighed. It was like every school in the world hired people who considered anybody under twenty years old to be some sort of subhuman organism. “She’s a counselor.”

“And …?”

“Well, her job is to see students who want to see her. That’s what a counselor does.”

She looked up, thin-lipped and irritated that I was interrupting her job, which apparently was being the most miserable old lady in the world. “Make … an … appointment,” she said before looking down at her papers.

Something in me popped, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream my head off. I was trying to do the right thing, but of course you can’t do the right thing unless you do it the right way. I tapped the counter. She looked up. I stared
at her. “Screw … you,” I said, then walked to Ms. Potter’s door and went inside.

She looked up when I came in. “Tate?”

I set my bag down, plopping in a chair across from her. “Yeah, I know. I don’t have an appointment. Ms. Tightass out there let me know.”

She groaned. “Not another f-bomb, I hope?”

“Nothing she didn’t need.”

Just then, her phone rang, and I could hear the lady out in the office squawking into the receiver. Ms. Potter smirked, then sighed. “I’ll deal with it, Irene. Thank you. It won’t happen again.” Then she hung up, looking at me. “Tate, there’s only so much I can do to help you. You have to help yourself, and doing these things doesn’t help.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I know. As long as I do it your way, we’re all good, right?”

She blinked. “What does that mean?”

I looked around, not interested in discussing why this sucked so much. “So, when we’re talking, is there some sort of confidentiality thing that says you can’t tell other people what we talk about?”

She eyed me. “Yes. Everything you say to me is confidential. Unless I believe you or another person is in danger, being abused, or otherwise being harmed. Or if you tell me that a crime has occurred.”

“So basically, we should talk about the weather,” I said, laughing with contempt.

She studied me. “What’s going on?”

I looked at her. “I’m pissed, that’s what’s going on.” I shook my head. “I’ve got a huge problem and I don’t know what to do, and honestly, I’m in over my head, because I don’t have anywhere to go.”

She nodded. “And that makes you mad. I can understand that.”

“No, you don’t understand anything. You make me mad. This school makes me mad, because you’re full of shit.”

“Why?”

I frowned. “Your entire job supposedly exists to help us, but you set the whole system up to nail us, and it’s bullshit.” I clenched my teeth. “Unless you have some kid who needs a schedule change or lost a fucking library book, you’re useless.”

She swallowed, then cleared her throat. “What happened, Tate? Tell me.”

I shook my head. “You expect me to tell you anything? You’re here for this
school
, not the people in it. Just like that crack in the office.”

She was flustered, and I almost felt bad for her. But it was the truth. I had a gun in my backpack, and I knew what would happen if I gave it to her, because according to this school, doing the right thing was the wrong thing. She looked at her desk, contemplating something I didn’t know. “Tate, that’s not true.”

I smiled, sitting back in the chair. “I can prove it is true.”

She looked at me. “Okay. Tell me.”

“Okay, then. Let’s just say there was this student. You knew him well enough, and you knew he was going through
some crap. Sort of an on-the-edge kid who’s trying to do things right. Well, one day this kid, he comes into your office. He’s pretty shaken up, and he doesn’t know what to do because some bad stuff happened. So you ask him what’s wrong. He tells you a banger has been hassling him pretty bad. Turns out the banger pulls a gun on the kid, and the kid gets the gun away from him. Now, the kid can’t give it to his parents or the police because of other stuff, but he knows the right thing to do is get it safe, you know? He doesn’t want to dump it because somebody might find it and hurt somebody, right? So he comes in your office, tells you the story that he found it and wants to do the right thing by turning it over.” I looked at her. “What would you do if that happened, Ms. Potter?”

A long silence passed. Then she spoke. “Well, I would have to call the police.”

I nodded. “I know that. But what would happen to the kid for doing the right thing?”

She pursed her lips. “He would be arrested and charged with being in possession of a weapon and bringing it onto school grounds.”

“And expelled, right?”

She swallowed, nodding. “He would be expelled.”

I stood, grabbing my pack. “You told me there’s always different ways to do things right, Ms. Potter. You’re a liar. There’s only your way, and that’s not right,” I said, stepping to the door. “See ya.”

She looked at my pack. “There are other ways,” she said quickly.

I looked at her.

She cleared her throat, then grabbed her purse. “Would you like to take a walk with me, Tate? Off school grounds?”

I studied her, wondering if she’d gone insane. “Sure.”

So we walked. We walked through the halls and out a side door. She said nothing, but she was breathing heavier than our little stroll would dictate. I could tell she was nervous as we hit the sidewalk. We waited at the corner signal for a moment, standing as traffic passed, and then walked across the street when the light turned green. I smiled. “Nice weather, huh?”

She let out a stuttering laugh, gesturing to a bus-stop bench. “Let’s sit.”

We did.

She put her hands on her thighs. “We’re off school grounds. I have no knowledge of what is in your backpack, I have not seen a weapon on school grounds, and you have not told me you are in possession of one.”