“Oh my God,” she said, and now she felt like the jerk.
“He told me all about it. He said it was the most terrifying night of his life!” Jesse cried, his voice in splinters. “They lost everything, including the store his father had spent a lifetime building! And guess what kind of store it was? A pharmacy!”
“Jesus.”
“And we had to go and fucking spray-paint all over the store he built here! I am such an asshole!”
He didn’t apologize for the language, and Markie made no comment about it as she watched him pull the dog closer, its wide, pink tongue lapping across his eyes over and over as his rib cage jumped up and down with his sobs. Finally, his body stilled and the pink tongue moved to his neck. He cleared his throat and spoke in a voice he struggled to keep from breaking.
“Mrs. Levin told me that when the police called them last night, they both drove straight over to look, and for the entire ride over, they held each other’s hands and cried. She said when Mr. Levin saw the store all covered with paint, the whole thing came back to him so loudly he actually covered his ears. He could hear it like it was happening again, right there—rocks going through windows, and people crying and yelling in the streets.
“And he could see it, too—old men getting beaten up right in front of everyone, his sister crying, his parents shouting at them to hurry up and pack, they were leaving right away—” Jesse’s voice cracked, and his whole body shook. He sniffed, dragged an arm across his nose, and tried to compose himself.
“He set it up inside to look just like his dad’s. The pharmacy, I mean. His parents never saw it. They never made it out. Only he and his sister did, and before he left, he promised his dad he’d do this—set up another store, make it look exactly the same. Carry on what his dad had started. Mrs. Levin told me she’s known all along that he’s more proud of the store than he was when their kids were born. And it’s never bothered her, because the kids were for the two of them, but the store was for”—his voice broke again—“everyone who came before them.”
He rolled onto his back and raised his right arm high into the air before bringing it down fast, slamming his hand on the floor. It made a loud thwomp! on the area rug, and Markie gasped—if he had done that on the wood floor, he surely would have broken bones. Before she could ask if he was okay, he rolled back onto his side and shoved his face into Angel’s fur again. The dog wagged her tail and licked the top of his head as he howled into her chest.
It was shameful, what Jesse and his friends had done to Mr. Levin’s store, what they had put that lovely old couple through. But as she watched her son crying into his dog’s fur, she felt no shame. Jesse had sucked all of that emotion from the air inside the bungalow, leaving none for her to grab on to. Instead, she felt sadness that this sensitive boy felt lost enough, insecure enough in his new friendships, desperate enough to do whatever it took to cling to them, that he had allowed himself to go along with something that was anathema to the person he really was.
After what felt to Markie like an hour, he finally stopped crying, sniffed, and rolled onto his back again, folding an arm behind his head and looking at Markie with swollen, bloodshot eyes.
“I have an idea about a punishment. It’s not purely grounding, though, so I don’t know what you’ll say.”
“Try me,” she said.
“I thought I could get a job and give the money I earn to Mr. Levin. The police said some of the guys are going to have to pay something to him anyway. But I don’t know if it’ll be enough to cover all the damages. Mr. Levin told me he paid two of his employees a thousand dollars to go down there in the middle of the night and cover it up, so by the time anyone came in early today, it would look like it always did.”
So, Markie thought, Mrs. Saint had been lying after all. Frédéric couldn’t have seen the graffiti when he went for the paper that morning. Jesse went on.
“He probably could’ve gotten it fixed for a lot cheaper, but he had them paint the entire outside instead of just covering the graffiti. He didn’t want people to look at the store and see something had been covered up. He didn’t want people to guess at what someone might’ve written—”
“Oh my God! Did they write—?” Markie started, her chest suddenly filled with ice.
“No!” Jesse shot up from the floor onto his knees. “None of us even knew their . . . background. The guys were just being idiots, doing their usual tags, nothing to do with the Levins at all. And I would never! Do you think I would—?”
“No,” she said. “But I didn’t know about the others.”
“They wouldn’t, either,” he said, still on his knees. “Anyway, I don’t know if the money will cover all of that. And even if it does, I want to pay him back, too.” He looked up at her, his eyes pleading. “When I’m not working I’d be at home, grounded. I should be grounded—I want to be. I’m just asking to be ungrounded for, like, a few hours a day, a few days a week, until I’ve given him the thousand dollars. And in exchange for being let out for work, I’ll be grounded for the whole time it takes me to pay him, even if that’s a longer time than you would’ve said.”
“It’ll take you a long time to earn that much money on your own,” Markie said. “Months. Do you think the other guys will want to pitch in? The ones who don’t end up with restitution orders, I mean? Trevor?”
He twisted his lips. “Doubt it.”
“Do you want to ask?”
“Nah. Pretty sure they’ll think it’s a stupid idea.”
She pressed her top two teeth hard against her bottom lip. And this doesn’t make you reconsider whether these are kids you want to be friends with? But she said nothing. Push too hard to get kids out of your child’s life, and he’ll only pull even harder to keep them in it.
“So are you saying yes?” he asked.
“I want to hear what the judge says first,” Markie said. “It’s not a given he’ll let you off completely, and he might have something in mind of his own.”
“Trevor’s dad talked to a lawyer,” Jesse said. “He said he’s, like, ninety-nine percent sure we’re going to be fine.” He started to smile, but then he seemed to think better of it. “I mean if the judge lets us off easy.”
“Grounded,” Markie said, “except for going to and from work. And before your grounding is over, we’re going to have a long discussion about how much time you’ll be spending with those older boys. The ones who led the entire operation.”
Jesse snapped his head up, his mouth open, ready to protest. He seemed to talk himself out of this, too, and instead he said quietly, “They’re not bad guys, Mom.”
“Still.”
He turned away from her, and she could see the muscles in his jaw working as he struggled to control his emotions. “They’re also my ride to school and back. Not to mention the only people I really know at school. And Trevor’s still going to be with them all the time, so if I can’t be around them—”