You Can Run (6 page)

I had to wait almost fifteen minutes for a bus that was supposed to come every five minutes. Then the bus hit every red light between my school and my destination. By the time I got to Nick's school—a small, extremely alternative school above a sporting goods store in the west end—Nick's lunch period had already started.

I scouted the fast food restaurants in the vicinity and finally found Nick in the back of a taco place. He was scarfing down an order of nachos as if he hadn't eaten all day, which, knowing Nick, he probably hadn't. The way he told it, the staff at Somerset have to drag him out of bed every morning and even then it's a miracle he gets to school on time. He glanced up and saw me coming toward him, but he didn't smile. He didn't even look pleased. Instead, he reached for the hoodie on the back of his chair and he pulled it on over his T-shirt. When I reached his table, he stood up and kissed me on the cheek. I was confused, but the kiss made me feel better.

“You had me worried for a minute,” I said. “I thought you were going to run out the back door.” When he looked baffled, I explained. “As soon as you saw me, you put on your sweatshirt.”

“It's kind of chilly in here,” he said.

It wasn't.

“You want something to eat?” he said.

I didn't.

“Nick, is everything okay?”

“Sure,” he said. But instead of looking at me, he looked down at what was left of his nachos. He stared at them for a long time, as if the bits of taco chip and black olives were more fascinating than me.

“Nick?”

His head bobbed up and he smiled at me. The first time I had seen that smile, it had felt like a miracle. Most of the time, Nick looks like a tough guy, dressed all in black, tall for sixteen, and lean. When he's serious or angry, you don't doubt that he could do a lot of damage. He'd been in trouble for most of his life.

“You sure you don't want something to eat?” he said. “How about something to drink?” He jumped to his feet before I could answer.

“Nick, I—”

But he was already heading for the counter at the front of the restaurant. When he came back, he handed me a soda. I noticed he used his right hand. Nick is left-handed.

“Diet, right?” he said.

“Right.”

He sat down again, pushed aside his plate, and bent over his own drink. Beads of sweat were forming on his upper lip.

“It's warm in here, huh?” I said.

He nodded, but instead of taking off his hoodie, he stood up again.

“Come on,” he said. “I'll walk you to the bus.”

The bus? I'd only just arrived, and now it sounded like he wanted to get rid of me. I thought about Beej. He'd had his arm around her, but right after that, he had kissed me and told me that he wanted to take me out on my birthday. I thought about how he had acted when I asked him what he was doing downtown with Mr. Jarvis. What was going on?

As soon as we got outside, he peered up the street, cupping a hand over his eyes to block the glare of the autumn sun.

“I think I see your bus,” he said.

“I have plenty of time.”

“Yeah, but I gotta get back. I have to study for a test.” He started for the bus stop, then stopped and gestured to me. “Come on,” he said. “You're gonna miss it.”

I didn't. I reached the bus stop at the same time as the bus. Before I climbed in, I said,“How about Wednesday? I could come over here again. I'll get here earlier.”

Nick shook his head. “I'm busy on Wednesday,” he said. “Another time, okay?”

 

. . .

I had met Nick less than two months ago, when we were both volunteering—well, sort of volunteering—at a local animal shelter. I liked him—a lot—and sometimes I was one hundred percent positive that he liked me too. Other times, though, I wasn't so sure.

My mother represented Nick the last time he was in trouble, and she doesn't really approve of me being involved with him. It isn't that she doesn't like him. But she thinks I'd be better off with a regular guy—in other words, someone who hasn't been in juvie court half a dozen times. I think that's why I went to my father's place after school instead of my mother's.

My father was sitting in the living room when I got there. He was hunched over piles of newspaper clippings, printed documents, and handwritten notes on his coffee table. He barely looked up when I let myself in. When he did finally glance at me, he seemed distracted. “Oh, hi Robbie,” he said. “How was your day?”

“Okay, I guess.” He didn't pick up on my lack of enthusiasm, which was fine with me. I didn't much feel like talking. “I'm going to do my homework.”

I went into the bedroom that my father calls my room, but which he treats more like a guest room. People from out of town stay in it sometimes. So do old friends, clients who need a place to stay, and Vern some nights when he and my father have been working late.

I closed the door and flung myself onto the bed.
It's probably nothing
, I told myself.
Nick probably just has something on his mind. People are allowed to have things on their mind, things that they don't necessarily want to tell other people. It's no big deal.
But that wasn't true.

Every now and then, I'd catch myself daydreaming: Nick and me, walking somewhere nice, maybe strolling in one of the ravines that cut through the city, maybe even outside of the city completely. It would be spring, when the wildflowers are in bloom and you swear you can smell each blade of grass, each bud on each tree. There we'd be, just the two of us, maybe holding hands, eating a picnic lunch and talking. Yeah, I know. It sounds like a Hallmark moment. If it had been someone else's daydream, I would have laughed. But that's how he made me feel.

But what had happened earlier wasn't anything like my daydreams. Nick had acted nervous, jumping up and down, pretending he was doing things for me, when really he was just staying busy so he wouldn't have to talk to me. He hadn't been overjoyed to see me, that was for sure.

I lay on the bed, thinking about Nick instead of my homework until my stomach began to growl. I'd skipped lunch and now I was starving. I got up and went to see what my father had planned for dinner. He seemed startled to see me.

“You remembered I was here, right, Dad?”

He nodded, but I was willing to bet he hadn't.

“Aren't you hungry?” I said.

“Does your mother know you're here?”

Oops.

“Call her and tell her I'll make sure you get home. Then we'll go downstairs and get a bite.”

I did and then we did.We were both preoccupied and at least one of us knew it. Unless someone made a stab at conversation, it was going to be a dreary dinner. So after we settled into our booth in La Folie, I said, “You were really lost in thought, Dad. Is everything okay?”

“Everything's fine,” he said.

“It's that job Vern mentioned last night, isn't it?” I said.

My father nodded. Just then, the waiter arrived with our food. Dad looked down at his plate and smiled appreciatively. La Folie is his favorite restaurant. Mine too. The food is always terrific, even when all you have is a turkey-and-tomato sandwich and an order of fries, which is what I'd ordered. The chef used thick homemade bread and real turkey—no Wonder Bread or processed turkey slices. And the fries were
frites
—thin and crispy and served with a little cup of garlic mayonnaise. It was heaven.

My father cut into a chicken breast coated with Dijon mustard and crushed pecans.

“You heard about that fire a couple of months back?” he said. “Five horses died, along with a trainer at a stable north of the city.”

“Carmine Doig's place, you mean?” I said. My father looked surprised. “I can read, Dad. It was in the paper. But I thought it was an accident.”

“That's what the fire investigator's report says.” He sounded as if he wasn't convinced.

“Did you talk to the fire investigator?” I said.

“I can't. He's dead. Suicide. They found him last Tuesday morning in his garage.”

Oh.

“I read his report, though. He didn't find any evidence of arson. He concluded that the trainer was overcome by smoke. Apparently, he had an office inside the stables. The theory is that he'd been celebrating a little too enthusiastically after a race—got overcome by smoke before he could wake up.”

The theory? It sounded as though my hunch last night had been right. “Is that what you're doing, Dad? Looking into the trainer's death?”

“Carmine Doig calls himself a businessman,” he said. “He's a developer. Made a fortune putting up office buildings north of the city. Now he's into subdivisions and horses. Racehorses. But the company he keeps. . . it's not nice, if you know what I mean.”

“So you think the trainer's death wasn't an accident?” I said.

“I don't think anything yet,” my father said. “I'm just looking into things.”

“Because someone hired you to?”

“The trainer's sister.” He took another couple of bites of chicken. “It doesn't add up,” he said. “Everybody has somebody in their life.”

Huh?

My father looked casually across the table at me.

“You know what else I did today, Robbie?”

I said I didn't.

“I went to your school. I talked to kids, teachers, the principal and the vice principals, even the school secretaries.”

I tried to look interested. I tried not to look guilty.

“And all I came up with is that one of the secretaries thinks she saw Trisha arrive at school on Wednesday morning. But she obviously didn't make it to homeroom because her homeroom teacher marked her absent. In fact, all of her teachers said she was absent that day and all of them said they had no idea why she wasn't at school. All except one.” He looked directly at me. “You want to know which one?”

He didn't have to tell me. I already knew. I looked down at what was left of my dinner. When I looked up again, I said, “Dad, I have to tell you something.”

I
blame it all on my substitute history teacher. Before Ms. Twill, my history teacher (Sixteenth Century to the Dawn of the New Millennium), had to leave town unexpectedly (and for an unspecified length of time) to care for her sick father, she assigned us our first major project of the year—an essay and presentation. Okay, fine, no problem. I've been in school long enough to know that major projects are part of the game. So I chose my topic, the Reformation, and made a note to start my research. When it turned out that Ms. Twill was going to be away for longer than anyone had expected, Ms. Lewington, her substitute, decided that we should do the assignment in pairs. She assigned partners based on who was working on what topic. I got paired with Trisha Carnegie.

“You know what that's all about, right?” Morgan had said when I told her.

“Yeah. Bad karma.”

Morgan shook her head.“Laziness,” she said.“Think about it. This way, Ms. Lewington has half the number of essays to mark and half the number of presentations to sit through.”

“The presentations have to be twice as long as Ms. Twill told us, because there are two of us,” I said.

“There you go,” Morgan said. “That way they'll take up as much class time as they originally would have, so Ms. Lewington won't have to do any extra teaching.”

Morgan had a point, but I wouldn't have cared one way or the other if I hadn't been stuck with Trisha.

At first I adopted what would universally be acknowledged as a positive attitude. I've worked with partners before. I've been stuck in groups of three or four people, each with wildly different personalities and work styles. I've also been assigned to groups in which I was the only person who did any work, which means that I've simultaneously felt the pride of getting an A+ and the bitterness of having to share that A+ with a couple or more slackers. That's the reason I prefer to fly solo rather than as part of a flock. But in this case, I decided to be a big girl and get on with it.

I maintained my resolve until it became obvious that Trisha was not only weird, she also had no interest in history (at least not between the sixteenth century and the dawn of the new millennium) and no apparent intention of doing her fair share of the work. Or any work at all.

The two-week anniversary of me being stuck with Trisha coincided exactly with the two-week anniversary of her doing absolutely nothing in the way of research on our topic. By then I'd developed what could only be described as a bad attitude, the kind that, if my mother ever got wind of it, she would have been disappointed in me as only a mother could be. But I couldn't stand it anymore. I decided to take action. I went to Ms. Lewington and told her that if it was all the same to her, I would prefer to work alone.

It wasn't all the same to her. Ms. Lewington spun it into a ”real-world learning experience” issue, as in, “In the real world, you have to work with all kinds of people”—here she paused to consult her seating plan for my name—“Robyn, is it?” Ms. Lewington said.