“Sorry—Gecko. What are your thoughts on joining our little group?”
“I’m not crazy just because I got arrested,” Gecko tells her.
Her brow clouds. “We do not use that word in this room. We’re all here because the court felt—”
“Get real, Doc,” Terence interrupts. “There’s no way these cornballs ever saw the inside of a courtroom.” He indicates the bestudded Casey. “Unless rivet-girl set off a metal detector somewhere.”
“It wasn’t the court, it was my truant officer,” Casey replies coldly. “What’s it to you? And Drew’s a hacker. And Victoria’s a klepto. Big whoop. At least we’re not gangbangers like you.”
Terence grins dangerously. He’s always had more success as a thief and a B and E artist than as a tough guy. But it never hurts to pad your rep, even with losers like this bunch. “So what if I am?”
“Let’s step back a moment,” the therapist advises. “We want honesty, but we also have to respect one another.”
“I’m not a hacker,” Drew says into the silence that follows. “I just downloaded music off the Internet.”
“No fooling.” Arjay is interested. “I heard you could get in trouble for that, but I didn’t think it ever really happened.”
“The record companies sued me for copyright infringement, but they weren’t interested in money. They just wanted to make an example of somebody. So they gave me a choice—pay them seventy-five thousand dollars or go into counseling.”
Terence laughs out loud. “That’s got to be the dumbest thing I ever heard! What did you download, man? I hope you’re going through all this hassle for something decent.”
“It was the Alan Parsons Project.”
“The what?”
“They were big in the seventies,” Drew explains. “It wasn’t even for me. My brother made me download it for him.”
In the entire hour of nonstop talking, it’s the one comment that rings even the slightest bell with Gecko. He doesn’t know much about falling satellites, but a kid who’s in trouble for what his brother forced him to do—he can relate to that.
Given the chance, he knows he would switch places with Drew Roddenbury in a heartbeat. Then again, the way Gecko’s life has been going, he’d probably be willing to switch places with anybody at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The band room is empty except for a lone figure on the front row of risers, hunched over an acoustic guitar. The opening notes of “Stairway to Heaven” fill the space. His calloused fingers move fluidly over the strings and frets by muscle memory.
Sure, it’s a cliché—a teenager teaching himself guitar via Led Zeppelin’s signature anthem. But during those fourteen horrible months behind bars, it was no cliché. At Remsenville, he played the song so many times, the guards called him Zep. During that endless night, music was the only thing that stood between Arjay and the void. He does not consider it an exaggeration to say “Stairway to Heaven” saved his life.
That and a rap sheet that says I killed a guy with one punch….
Muscle memory deserts him, and he blows a chord as the image appears, unbidden, in his mind’s eye.
Adam Hoffman. Quarterback. World-class idiot—
The tears come unexpectedly, and he blinks them back.
The Hawthorne Hawks couldn’t handle the fact that the 260-pound freshman had no interest in trying out for football. It started with ribbing—weeks of it—and gradually turned ugly. Mob mentality—a team is a natural mob, trained to convert spirit into physical power. Anybody could see it was destined to come to a flash point. And it did—not at school, but on the way home, cutting through Cresthaven Park.
Badly outnumbered, Arjay fought back. He wasn’t gunning for Adam; he wasn’t gunning for anybody—although Adam was the loudest and most obnoxious. As a forest of arms grabbed him, Arjay balled a fist and let it fly. The impact was solid, but not overwhelming. Through the mass of bodies, he saw Adam topple.
Then…another crunch.
The trajectory of the quarterback’s head changed suddenly. Adam dropped from view, revealing the statue—the gray stone hoof of Garibaldi’s horse, stained red with blood.
Self-defense, a freak accident—was anything ever so obvious? But at the trial, the prosecution painted a very different picture. One by one, the Hawks took the stand, fearfully describing a high school murderer, an unstable fourteen-year-old in a strongman’s body, with lethal weapons for arms.
A beloved local athlete brutally killed in front of his teammates and friends. The community must be protected from this monster….
“We’re losing,” his lawyer told the Morans, urging Arjay to take a plea.
The man might as well have been speaking Swahili. Why would Arjay plead guilty when he was innocent? Wasn’t that just plain wrong? The whole point of a trial was supposed to be getting to the truth. How could he lie?
Arjay wasn’t a straight-A student or a Big Man on Campus, but he had complete confidence in his own judgment. Nobody could make him go out for a sport if he had no interest in it, just as no one could make him smoke or drink beer or shoplift or whatever the fashion of the nanosecond happened to be. And nobody was going to make him confess to murder when that wasn’t what happened.
“We could get this kicked down to juvenile court,” the lawyer argued. “As it stands, the prosecution wants to push for adult time.”
The first mention of those fateful words: adult time.
If we knew then what we know now…
But would it have made any difference? He never would have copped when he was innocent. It went against the very core of his character.
By the end of the trial, his mom and dad looked like survivors from a besieged city—emaciated and drawn, haunted eyes peering from deep discolored trenches. The guilty verdict was almost a mercy for his parents, declawing their worst fears by realizing them. Anyway, there wasn’t much mourning left in them by then.
And now? Sure, Mom and Dad are thrilled that he’s out, but in a way, this is even harder on them. They can’t call or e-mail or even write letters. For the next six months he might as well be dead.
Yesterday, he scribbled Doing fine—don’t worry on a postcard of the Empire State Building and addressed it home. But he didn’t have the courage to mail it. What if the Juvenile Corrections people were monitoring the Morans’ mailbox? He’s being paranoid, but fourteen months in Remsenville will make you that way. Absolutely nothing must jeopardize this chance to get his life back.
When the second guitar joins in, the counterpoint is so perfect that it takes a moment to process the fact that somebody else is in the room. A teacher stands in front of the risers, jamming with him. Arjay watches the man’s fingers, fascinated. He’s making it up as he goes along, yet it’s all within the chord progression of “Stairway to Heaven,” so the chaos sounds somehow right—a solo that pushes the envelope, but never goes too far.
Arjay launches into an ad-lib of his own, and the teacher retreats to the original. Now it’s Arjay’s turn to experiment, the pick just a blur in his hand.
They swing into the electric portion, the two guitarists strumming furiously in perfect unison. With a mischievous grin, the teacher increases the tempo, but Arjay catches up and powers ahead. The song falls apart there, degenerating into a blizzard of windmilling arms, and laughter.
The feeling is so alien that Arjay has to dig deep into memory to recognize it. He’s having fun. He can’t remember the last time.
The man puts down his guitar and holds out his hand. “Mr. Cantor, music teacher. Haven’t seen you around here before.”
Arjay shakes it. “I just registered last week. Arjay Moran.”
“You’re not in any of my classes. Where’d you learn to play like that?”
“I’m…self-taught.”
“I’ve got a stage band here at Walker,” Mr. Cantor tells him. “We do jazz, funk, a little bit of rock. I’ve been covering the guitar parts until we find a student, but you’d b
e a natural. We practice after school three days a week.”
After school. There is no after school for Arjay; his free time consists of the fifteen-minute window between dismissal and the moment he officially becomes a fleeing felon. Not much of an opportunity for extracurricular activities.
Mr. Cantor reads the disappointment on his face. “Let me guess—after-school job, right?”
“Something like that.”
“Any wiggle room on the hours?”
Arjay shakes his head sadly. Getting out of Remsenville was an advance on all the wiggle room he can ever expect in this life.
“Too bad,” the music teacher says. “Well, Arjay, if your schedule opens up, you know where to find me. Good jamming with you.”
Good. The word falls pathetically short of describing it. Playing alongside Mr. Cantor, Arjay felt like a human being again. At Remsenville, they treated him like a dangerous animal, but it isn’t until now that he realizes how much he himself started to believe he was one.
“Same here. Thanks, Mr. Cantor.”
Normal life is so close he can almost touch it. But when he tries, it turns out to be just beyond his reach.
CHAPTER NINE
Terence returns again and again to the third-floor boys’ bathroom, but the cell phone salesman does not materialize. Either the merch is all gone, or the kid has found someplace else to set up shop. Or, Terence muses, Dollar Sign spends even less time in school than Terence would if he didn’t have Healy breathing down his neck.
With more than four thousand students, Walker is larger than his old school in Chicago. You can’t depend on running into somebody in the halls. He’s been keeping an eye out, both in school and during community service. The kid is nowhere to be found. Did he get busted moving the phones? Somehow, he doesn’t strike Terence as the careless type.
You’ve been wrong about people before, he reminds himself. And look how that turned out….
His reverie is interrupted when he spots a familiar razor-cut bobbing amid a sea of heads in the school foyer.
“Hey—” But he doesn’t even know the guy’s name. He wades into the jostling crowd in time to see his quarry walk out the double doors.
Terence follows, taking a moment to appreciate the strange sense of privacy that exists on the busy sidewalks of New York. So many people yet everybody minds his own business. Now that’s beauty, not some jerkwater island.
Dollar Sign is across the street now, stepping into Falafel King for lunch. What’s falafel? Do they even have it in Chicago? No, scratch that. Who cares?
Terence jaywalks and waits for the kid to emerge, munching on a pita sandwich.
Dollar Sign scans him with narrowed eyes. “Got a problem, yo?”
“Maybe I’m looking to buy a phone.”
“Ever heard of the Home Shopping Channel?”
Terence grins appreciatively. “Want to show you something.” From his pocket, he produces a video iPod, top of the line, mint condition.
“Birthday present from Grandma?” Dollar Sign asks in a bored tone.
“I’ve got a little community service gig with the B.I. D. This comes from a store by their office. Deep discount.” He regards the boy intently. “Five finger.”
“So?”
“So plenty more where this came from,” Terence goes on. “I think I might have a way in….”
The fierce eyes flash. “What are you, some kind of cop?”
Terence laughs and holds out his hand. “Terence Florian.”
“Hands to yourself, yo!” the kid snaps, and storms away.
Terence is triumphant. Only a potential conspirator avoids the appearance of conspiracy.
He follows at a distance. At last, Dollar Sign twists back into view. “Name’s DeAndre.”
Terence laughs. “Guess your mother went discount on the baby-naming book.”
DeAndre’s eyes widen in anger. For an instant, Terence is afraid he might go for his knife. All at once, the storm is over, and the kid is smiling at him. Teeth jagged, like a hammerhead shark’s.
Terence presses his advantage. “Let me paint you a picture—big display of PS-3s stacked so high they block the motion sensor. You go in through the basement, stay in the shadow of the PlayStations, you’re not even there.”
DeAndre is intrigued, but he’s also suspicious. “If you’re messing with me, dead man, you picked the wrong yo.”
Which only convinces Terence that he’s picked exactly the right yo.
Gecko swipes his lunch card and scans the crowded cafeteria. The absurdity of this daily gesture always gets to him. What does he expect to see? A table of buddies, waving and beckoning? He’s an outsider here. An outsider pretty much everywhere, he realizes. Back home, high school has started, but without him. He’s an MIA, a cautionary tale—Keep your nose clean or you’ll wind up like Gecko. As for his family, he was always sort of a stepchild there. Mom, overworked, underpaid, struggling to make ends meet. Stressing over Reuben’s life of crime left her little time to think about the other kid in the house.
His eyes fall on a familiar face—Diego from freshman chemistry, alone at a corner table.
Oh, right, like I’d be a welcome lunch guest there. The guy’ll swallow his napkin when he sees me coming.
As Gecko watches, a furtive hand snakes down to Diego’s lunch and applies a delicate flick to his plastic spoon, spraying soup in his face. When a shocked Diego wheels to investigate, an arm reaches around and dumps the contents of the tray into his lap. The freshman leaps up to confront his tormentor and finds himself face-to-chest with a tall, burly football type, Diego versus Goliath.
Gecko takes an instinctive step in his direction and freezes. What am I doing? To Diego, I’m scarier than the kid who’s picking on him.
A mean-spirited bullying half-wit is still preferable to a convicted felon. Besides, it’s not as if he and Diego are friends.
Anyway, the standoff defuses itself when Goliath is distracted by a table of cheering teammates. Gecko sets his own tray down at a spot by the window. It seems unfair that a total jerk has friends and he doesn’t. Not that Gecko isn’t grateful to be out of Atchison, but Healy’s whole setup is like a guarantee against any kind of social life.
The food at Walker is pretty decent—compared to juvie, at least—but he can never seem to work up much of an appetite. He pushes his Salisbury steak away and peers through the dirty glass at the street scene outside.
To his surprise, he finds himself looking at Terence Florian. His roommate is on the opposite sidewalk, deep in conversation with a tough-looking kid Gecko has seen around school. Gecko frowns. The problem isn’t Terence’s choice of company; it’s his location. Healy’s trio is barred from venturing off campus during school hours. With the halfway house still on probation, any violation could shut it down.
I’m not going back to jail because of that idiot!
Lunch forgotten, he’s out of the cafeteria, through the double doors, and darting past honking taxis.
Terence sees him coming. “Step off, dog. Private meeting.”
“I’m not your dog!” Gecko hisses. “You know the rules—get back inside!”
DeAndre scowls over his falafel at the newcomer. “Who’s your nanny?”
“Total stranger.” Terence rakes Gecko with a severe gaze. “Right?”
Gecko doesn’t budge. “Whatever you say—so long as you’re saying it inside.”
DeAndre takes a bite of his lunch. “I’ll give you some time to get straight with the little yo.” He begins an unhurried crossing of the street back toward school, forcing cars and buses to go around him.
Terence wheels on Gecko, furious. “You mess with my business again, I will end you!”
“You don’t have a business!” Gecko fires back under tight control. “You have school, garbage picking, and therapy! That’s your life!”
“You don’t know squat about me!” Terence seethes.
“I know everything about you, man! My brother attrac
ted puffed-up gangster wannabes like a magnet!”
“You want to waste your time being a good little worker ant, that’s your dead end. Me, I’ve got plans.”
Gecko looks him in the eye. “Not when your plans can get me locked up.”
They’re squared off, ready to do battle, when the supermarket door slides open, and Douglas Healy steps out behind two big bags of groceries.
Terence ducks into a storefront, but Gecko is fixed there like a butterfly on a pin.
“Gecko?” Plum tomatoes bounce from the bags as the group leader races up. “What are you doing, kid? You’re not supposed to be here!”
“I—I know—” It never occurs to Gecko to explain himself—that he only left to bring Terence back in. The code of no ratting may belong to the Reubens and Terences of the world, but he can’t bring himself to break it. “I messed up.”
To his surprise, Healy’s expression softens. “I did some time inside—in juvie, like you. Sometimes you need to feel the sun on your skin to remind you you’re alive.”
Gecko tries to look contrite, but all he feels is relief. This was a very close call. And with his fate tied to Terence Florian, the calls are only going to get closer.
CHAPTER TEN
Laundry night in the apartment on Ninety-seventh Street is Tuesday after community service. Arjay is carrying yet another overfilled basket to the basement washing machine when he finds his way blocked by a bag of garbage nearly as wide as the staircase. Frowning, he peers around the obstacle to find Mrs. Liebowitz backing gingerly down the steps, struggling with the awkward load.
Not my problem. The last time he tried to help this woman, she practically bit his head off.
But as he squeezes past the huge bundle onto the landing, he hesitates. The old lady can’t even see her own shoes. She’s going to fall and break her neck.
He sets down his basket and rips the big burden out of her arms. When she begins to protest, he silences her with eyes of flame.
He’s most of the way to the next landing when she bursts out with: “You’ve got a lot of nerve—”