“Your mom is going to throw a fit.”
“My mom doesn’t have to know.”
I picked up the route map where Jeremy left off, plotting bus stops and transfer points between bites of my sandwich.
“Nearly,” Jeremy said after a few quiet minutes.
“What?” I asked. “Do I have jelly on my chin?”
He was quiet for a minute and then reached inside his backpack. When his hand emerged, he was holding a photograph. “Remember when I took my dad’s poker money and paid your rent? When I went back to return the cash, I found something. I wasn’t sure if I should show you. I didn’t want to make you sad.”
He set the photo down in front of me. A group of men stood arm in arm in front of a banner. It read Belle Green Poker Club.
I recognized my father immediately. It was like catching my reflection in a mirror. His eyes, his nose and cheeks and smile, were mine. Warmer than his sterile face on his driver’s license photo, it was like he was looking at me. I touched the glossy surface, memories of him coming back in a rush.
His arm was thrown over the shoulder of one of his teammates. As if reading my mind, Jeremy reached over my shoulder to point them out. “That’s Vince’s dad. And the one to Mr. DiMorello’s left is my dad. The short one is Eric Miller’s dad. And the one on the end is Emily Reinnert’s dad, I think. I’m not sure who this one is,” he said, pointing to the man my father had his arm around. The man’s face was partially torn away.
“It was stuck to the back of another photo. I had to pull them apart, and tore a piece. I’m sorry.” He shrugged.
“Are you kidding? This is amazing, Jeremy.” I threw both arms around his shoulders before I realized what I’d done.
Jeremy’s shock hit my skin first. Then his pain. It was physical. He sucked in a breath and winced. His arms remained rigid at his sides.
I shut my eyes, wanting to cry for him.
“He caught you returning the poker money, didn’t he?” I whispered without letting go.
Jeremy slowly lifted his arms and wrapped them around me, his emotions distilling into something tender and confused. “It’s okay. The look on your face when you saw that picture made it all worth it.”
A throat cleared behind me. Jeremy and I pulled apart and Anh set her bag down on the table, covering our maps. “Am I interrupting something?” she asked. Jeremy glanced guiltily at the folder Anh carried under her arm. She set it on the table. It was a summer internship application. To Syracuse.
We all took turns staring at one another through an uncomfortably long silence.
“You’re not interrupting anything,” I told her. “I was just leaving.”
13
Later that afternoon, Posie Washington looked at her watch and shrugged. A damp breeze turned the leaves upside down, revealing their bright undersides and blowing debris over the sidewalk. I tried not to stare at the remnants of yellow tape that tumbled along with them. Four days had passed since Marcia’s murder. That’s what the police were calling it. The police tape had been cut from the gym doors, and it was no longer cordoned off as a crime scene, but the details of the ongoing investigation were quiet.
We both stared at the storm clouds, neither of us mentioning the subject that hung over West River like a pall. “Twenty after four,” she said apologetically, rubbing her coffee-milk arms.
“No worries, my next student is late anyway.”
An older model minivan turned into the school parking lot and pulled to the curb. Posie’s little brothers and sisters were wreaking havoc in the backseats and her Mom’s tired face smiled through the window.
Posie was the oldest of five children, and would be the first to go to college. And at the rate she was going, she’d be the youngest student at West River ever to graduate. She’d skipped ahead two years, and was a gawky and slight fourteen-year-old junior. She didn’t really need the tutoring, but Posie had spent every Tuesday afternoon with me since the beginning of the year. It couldn’t have been easy for her to make friends, and as she sailed through her lessons each week, I suspected she needed the companionship more than the mentoring.
Posie’s little brother made blowfish lips against the glass and I smiled, resisting the urge to make a funny face back. Must be nice, coming home to a house full of giggles.
Posie climbed into the passenger seat, reaching over to wrap her arms around her mother’s neck. She waved with a sad smile, and watched me disappear in her rear-view mirror, as if maybe it was really me who needed the companionship after all.
The minivan rolled out of the lot, and thunder rumbled in the distance.