Paul Griffin - Burning Blue

“And what exactly are you expecting me to show you?”

“You’ve already shown it. Your vulnerability.”

Another siren. A police car flew into the parking lot to meet the security guards escorting this idiot from my year, Dennis Biers. I remembered him from freshman fall, class clown wannabe, emphasis on wannabe. He was exactly the type to pull the alarm.

My phone pinged with a hit on the number trace. “You know Brittany Keyes?”

“She’s on the tennis team,” Nicole said.

“She’s the one who sent you the text.”

“No, it was Chrissie.”

“Vratos?”

“She used Brit’s phone. When we were at matches, we watched each other’s racquet bags. You’d come back to check your phone and find a WTF text from somebody. You’d check your Sent folder and see you’d just zipped the dude an invitation to give him a blow job. Then you’d hear Chrissie cracking up.” Nicole scanned the yard. The teachers were waving everybody back inside. “There.” Nicole pointed to the B-wing entrance. Chrissie was waving to us.

Schmidt’s door opened. “Wait, Jay, we’re not on today. Did you get my email?”

“Just keeping my friend here company.”

“We’re quite the gentleman, aren’t we?”

“We try,” I said.

“I’ll see you after, okay?” Nicole said as she went in.

I texted Angela to see where she was on our suspect list, particularly Chrissie Vratos. Angela had stayed home sick, apparently something she did at least five days a month, the maximum number of days you can be out before they make you repeat the semester. She got back to me with: Chrissie V very dirty girl.

Dirty hands?I texted back.

Dirty mind. No connection to Recluse. Yet. Will keep digging.

I headed off to grab a candy bar from my locker, a bottom row job. The thickening puddle at the foot of it suggested at least five guys had urinated into it. A mosquito circled. Somebody had stuck gum in my padlock keyhole.

“Tough luck, Spaceman,” Kerns’s little brother said. He took a break from stuffing books into his own locker to take a picture of me. “I guess that’s why they tell us to use a combo lock, d’oh.”

“Except people keep the combo in their phones,” I said. “Phones get hacked. Can you imagine if somebody knew your combo was 36-24-36?”

“Spaceman?”

“Douche bag?”

“You have no idea what’s coming.” He slammed his locker and stormed off.

I hadn’t actually hacked his phone. The genius had written the numbers on a piece of tape and hung it in plain view-where else-inside his locker.

I went to the office and asked the secretary for a paper clip.

“Gummed again?” she said, handing it to me.

I stopped off in the bathroom, slicked the clip with soap, headed back to my locker and dug at the gum. Somebody tapped my shoulder and said, “You bone her yet?”

I turned around, into the nozzle of a Volta-Shock bottle pointed at my eyes.

I fell to the floor and clawed my eyes. “Please,” I said. “No more.”

“It’s water, idiot,” Rick Kerns said. He sucked the squirt bottle and spit the water at me. “That’s for snaking Dave’s girl, bitch. What’s it like, getting blown by Half Face?”

I drove him into a wall of lockers. I headlocked him and didn’t let go. I picked him up and swung him feet-over-head, over my shoulder, and I body slammed him to the polished stone floor, and even then I didn’t let him out of the headlock. He tried to poke my eyes, but I had seen him do that in matches back in freshman year, and I grabbed his hand and bent it back. I heard a pop and a crack. He would have screamed, except he had no air in him. All he could do was grunt. He clawed my arm, gasping. His head was bright red. His boys drop-kicked me. “Dude, let go, man!”

“You’re crushing his throat, Jay! Stop! ”

A voice cut through all the screaming. She didn’t even yell. “Mr. Nazzaro,” Mrs. Marks said. “Let go.”

I got in one last shot, a right cross to Rick Kerns’s thick-boned head.

“Brush your hair back,” Marks said. “So I can see your eyes.”

“He squirted-”

“I know what he did.” She looked to the cop texting in the corner of her office. Back to me: “I called your father. He’s not picking up, work, cell, home-”

“He’s traveling.”

“What’s your mother’s-”

“She’s really traveling, if you recall.”

Marks squinted and checked my file. She was midway into realizing my mother was dead when the cop said, “Okay, so I just heard from Kerns’s mother. They’re at the ER, waiting to see what they say about the hand. The family elects not to press charges at this time. You’re still good, Nazzaro? You don’t want to file an assault complaint?”

“No.”

“You sure you don’t need medical attention, Jay?” Mrs. Marks said.

My hand was stiff from cracking Kerns’s skull, but I’d made my fist really tight, so I knew I didn’t break anything. The kicks to my back didn’t break any ribs, I was positive. I’d broken one before, when I fell off my skateboard a few years before, and that felt like somebody had a blowtorch to my gut. But here in Marks’s office, I was more than fine, still throbbing with adrenaline. “Actually, Mrs. Marks, I feel great.”

“That’s terrific, Jay. Enjoy your suspension.”

My locker had been cleaned up, the outside at least. I didn’t have much in there anyway, textbooks I had PDFs of, a sweatshirt, half a box of Clif Bars. I tossed it all and went into the bathroom to wash my hands. The door banged open. By the time I turned, Dave Bendix was up in my face. He was furious, flexed in his wrestling singlet, that dark glint in his eyes. “I’m gonna kill him, Jay. Please, you have to believe me, I didn’t put him up to that. I heard they were going to hit you, but I didn’t know when or where. I was down in Coach’s office, telling him about the rumor, when they got you.”

“Not your fault,” I said.

“Feels like it is. Are you okay? Did they-”

“I’m fine. Seriously.”

“Look, I know about you and Nicole.”

“Dave, nothing happened, I swear.”

“Jay, calm down, okay? Even if something did happen-”

“It didn’t. Whatever Rick said is a lie, flat out.”

“You think I listen to him? Nic told me. She thinks you’re awesome. Look, I know you guys are just friends, okay? Relax. I’m happy you’re keeping an eye on her while she and I are. . whatever we are, taking a break, I guess. You’re like the one dude I can actually trust.” He leaned back against the sink, rubbing his eyes. He looked pretty wrecked. “This whole thing is so messed up. How is it that one minute everything is perfect, and the next it’s just not. Like, flat gone. I can’t sleep, you know? Trying to figure out who would do this to her. Why? You know?”

We locked bagged eyes for a second. I didn’t have any answers for him. His eyes ticked to the wall clock. “I gotta get back to practice. This scout dude from Harvard came down from Cambridge, unannounced, to watch me work out. My father’s out there too. I feel like I’m gonna crack, man. If I don’t get in there, my life is over.”

“You’re gonna get in.”

“Jay, I’m not kidding. It has to be Harvard. My father’ll disown me otherwise. He’s told me I’m on my own if I don’t get in. At the same time, it’s like he wants me to fail, the way he cranks up the pressure. He knew the Harvard dude was coming, and he didn’t even tell me. He-” Dave Bendix burst into tears, just for the length of a breath. “Shit.” He took a second to get himself together. He sighed and forced a smile. “I hear you met Emma. Doesn’t she just kill you?” He gently clapped my shoulder. “You coming back? To the team, I mean. We need you. I hear you rocked Rick pretty good.”