Харлан Кобен - Found

“And maybe he’ll tell the other guys that. Or maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll wonder why you rejected his peace offering and slapped his hand away. Maybe he’ll start to think the rest of the guys are right about you.”

I said nothing.

“You see what I’m saying?”

“I think so. It sounds like blackmail. Help Troy or look like the guy who set him up.”

“That’s putting it too strongly,” Brandon said. “More like, help Troy and look like the kind of teammate other guys want to play with. Look like the kind of teammate other guys respect and look up to and want to be around. Look like the kind of teammate who stands up for his captain, even when it’s hard.”

“Wow,” I said.

“What?”

“No wonder you’re always elected class president.”

Brandon smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. “Help him, Mickey. Help yourself. Help your team.”

And because I’m a complete idiot, I told him that I would.

Ema did not take it well.

“Are you out of your mind?” Ema asked.

We were entering the lobby of the hospital, heading up to Spoon’s room.

“If you’d just listen a second—”

“Oh, I heard you. You want to help Troy Taylor! Troy Freakin’ Taylor!” She spread her arms. “What, are there no serial killers who need our help?”

“Forget it. I’ll do it on my own, okay?”

“No, not okay. We work together. That’s part of this. And we have more pressing problems, thank you very much.”

“You mean your” — I tried to say it without sounding sarcastic — “boyfriend?”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

Like I said, I tried.

“It’d be a waste of time anyway,” Ema said.

“Why?”

“Because you know Troy’s guilty.”

“A lot of people don’t think so.”

“Like who? Brandon? Look, Brandon is a nice guy, but he’s always been under Troy’s spell.”

“I may need to do it,” I said.

“Need?”

“To help me.”

“Help you how?”

“To help get my teammates to see me in a new light.”

She blinked. “Are you serious?”

“They hate me, Ema. All of them.”

“And you think helping Troy will do what exactly? Make all the jocks think you’re cool?”

“No,” I said.

“Because if you want to be cool, your best bet is to jettison the uncool people around you.”

“Will you stop it?”

We got into the elevator.

“I still don’t understand,” Ema said. “What do you want out of this?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, tried again. There was no point. She wouldn’t understand. “Do you get what basketball means to me?”

Ema met my gaze and moved closer. I felt something warm pass over me. “Yes, of course.”

“You can’t be an outsider on a team,” I said. “You can’t be the loner sitting at a table in the corner.”

“You mean like I do?”

“No, I mean like we do. Basketball is a team sport. That’s the beauty of it. I want to be a part of that. It’s why I wanted my parents to settle in one place. So I could play on a real team. So I could know what that’s like — being part of a team and all that goes along with it.”

I stopped because the emotion came suddenly. Suppose I hadn’t wanted that. Suppose I had just kept my mouth shut. Would my dad be alive (or with me)? Would my mom have stayed off drugs?

Had my desire to be part of a real team destroyed everything?

“I know that’s what you want, Mickey,” Ema said in the softest voice. “I get that. But helping Troy Taylor—”

“Will show everyone that I’m willing to do anything to be a good teammate.”

Ema shook her head, but she didn’t argue.

We reached the door to Spoon’s hospital room. No one was around, so I knocked lightly and pushed it open. I heard Spoon’s voice:

“Did you know that ants stretch when they wake up in the morning?”

I smiled. Ah, Spoon.

“Oh, and I mean ant like the insect. Not aunts like my aunt Tessie. She never stretches.”

I wondered what nurse or doctor he was regaling with his random facts, but when I saw who it was, I pulled up short.

It was Rachel.

Spoon smiled at us from the bed. “Great,” he said. “We’re all here.”

Rachel greeted Ema with a brief hug but only nodded at me and turned away. Ema looked at me, puzzled. Rachel was usually much friendlier with me, but of course, Ema didn’t know about our last conversation, when I told her the truth about her mother’s death.

“Four of us,” Spoon said. “Do you know that the number four is considered unlucky in many East Asian cultures? That’s because the word for four sounds like the word for death.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Spooky, right?”

Ema sighed and said, “Did you find anything about Jared Lowell?”

Before he could answer, the door behind us opened. A nurse in pink hospital scrubs stepped into the room. She did not look pleased to see us. “What is this?”

Spoon spread his arms. “My posse.”

“Your what?”

“My posse. These are my peeps, my crew, my homies—”

“Are they immediate family?”

“More than immediate family,” Spoon said. “They’re my posse, my peeps, my crew, my—”

The nurse was having none of it. “You’re only allowed one non-family visitor at a time, Arthur. You know that.”

Spoon frowned. “But I had two here yesterday.”

“Then someone was breaking the rules. I need two of you to leave this room immediately.”

We all looked at one another, not sure what to do. Spoon took care of it.

“I will talk to all three of you separately, but — and I hope you lovely ladies don’t consider this in any way to be sexist — Mickey and I first need to have a man-to-man talk.”

He winked at me. I tried not to frown. Ema did not look pleased. I got that. She was the one most interested in finding Jared Lowell.

“I can wait,” I said. “You and Ema can go first.”

Spoon shook his head. “Man to man. It’s important.”

He looked at me hard, trying to send a message. I noticed now that the call button was near his right hand. I wondered whether he had pressed it — whether that was the reason why the nurse had suddenly appeared.

The nurse clapped her hands. “Okay, ladies, you heard the man. Let’s leave them alone for their bro talk.” She gestured toward the door, escorting Ema and Rachel out into the corridor.

Spoon and I were alone.

“Did you call for the nurse?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to show you what I found before we tell Ema.”

“Why? He’s a fake, right? Jared Lowell.”

“No. Her boyfriend, Jared, is very much real. Maybe too real.”

“What do you mean?”

Spoon pressed the button next to his bed so that he could sit more upright. “Jared Lowell’s residence is in Massachusetts, a small place called Adiona Island.”

“Lie Number One,” I said.

“What?”

“He told Ema that he lives in Connecticut.”

“Well, he does. Sorta. That’s why I used the word residence. Jared Lowell actually lives at the Farnsworth School, a fancy-shmancy prep school in Connecticut. All boys. They have to wear a jacket and tie every day. Could you imagine? That would put a crimp in my fashion statements, I think. I’m normally known in school as a pretty natty dresser, right?”

“Natty?”

“Sharp. I’m a sharp dresser, don’t you think?”

To keep Spoon on track, I said, “I do.”

“Anyway, Jared Lowell is seventeen years old and a senior. He does indeed have a Facebook page, but he almost never used it — not until recently anyway. After he, uh, disappeared or whatever, he took down almost all the photographs on his page. You know this already, right?”