“True.”
I couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at my mouth at the thought. I told Clay about it—about going to Michael’s house and being with her. How I wasn’t sure how she felt about me, but I sure as hell knew how she made me feel.
And I told him about Michael coming home. Confronting me, and the things he said about Cyndra. Then the parking lot and his obsession with me showing him my scar, paying me all that money. About Michael wanting to kill my dad.
And Clay, being Clay, saw something I didn’t. Put his finger on it and pressed, like a doctor diagnosing a dislocation. Or a break.
“He wanted you to go home. Michael did that to get you pissed off. To get you to that place where you would go home and face your dad.”
It fit. Like a jigsaw piece but where you can’t see the final image. The way Michael liked to pull people’s strings. LaShonda getting my file, Dwight and the bet and the fight. Cyndra . . .
“Okay,” I said, to show that I agreed with the idea. “But why?”
Clay shook his head. “Who knows? To get you to agree to kill your dad? Or something with Cesare? So Michael can tell some story about how you and Michael fought together somewhere. Or just because. To mess with you.”
“He does that, but that’s not what this is.” Calling it on instinct, not knowledge.
Down the street, Janie walked toward us. Walking with a boy. They play-shoved each other. The way he was turning toward her, carrying her bags, like he was performing for her. Wheedling. Like he was saying Baby, please with every move.
Janie was smiling. And she looked her age, for once. Not younger, like I usually see her. Not older, like she acted around me lately.
“Something else,” I said to Clay. “I think Michael wants everyone to think I’m dealing.” I explained about Nico and Spud and the realization of how my new clothes made me look.
“Maybe he’s trying to get this Cesare guy to come after you,” Clay said.
I shrugged. We fell quiet as Janie and her friend crossed the yard.
“This is Hunter,” Janie explained. “From school.” A little breathless and not quite looking at me.
“Hunter,” I said.
“Hey. I’m Clay, that’s Jason.” Trying to hide his smile at the way I was glaring at the kid.
“Hey.” Hunter nodded at us and had the good sense not to stare at my face or into my eyes. “Want me to take these inside for you, Jane?” He gave her that all-teeth grin.
“Okay,” Janie said, smiling and, honest to God, batting her eyelashes.
They eased past us on the steps.
“Stay downstairs,” I cautioned as the screen door creaked open.
Janie rolled her eyes at me before they disappeared inside.
Clay smiled. “Leave them alone, man. You’ve got enough to deal with.”
“My thoughts exactly. Which is why I’m not leaving them alone.”
Clay laughed and went down the steps. The fading sun was stealing its light from the sky.
I followed Clay to the edge of the scrub.
“Thanks for coming by,” I said. Threw a one-armed hug on him quick, before he could react or squeeze me back.
“One more day, then I’m expecting you on the walk to school. I was late yesterday,” he said, doing a good job of pretending nonchalance at my gesture.
“Get a clock, genius.”
“You’re my clock.”
I laughed as he walked away. Inside the unit, I interrupted Janie and Hunter saying good-bye by the back door. I pretended not to see them as I got another muffin.
Janie came back into the front room smiling a little, and she looked so happy I made myself smile back and not say anything I was thinking. Except for “Be careful.”
“I like him,” she said, shining like a spotlight.
We went upstairs. She told me about Hunter, and how he’d been flirting with her at school. And I told her a little about Cyndra, and about everything that had happened with Michael after the party. Why I had come home.
She frowned and said it was time to quit the job. I told her the same thing I told Clay, that I could ride it out a little longer.
She nodded, and I could feel it—how she knew I was trying to treat her like an adult about Hunter, so she was trying not to worry about what I said I could handle. I lay back on my bed and went to sleep as Janie messed around on the laptop.
The next morning, after Janie left, I went around the partition and turned on the light on her dresser. In the mirror, my face glared out. Janie’s treatment had worked wonders, yet the eye still looked bad. But not the worst. Not undoable.
Around noon, I heard the phone ring downstairs. Heavy feet made the stairs creak. My dad didn’t knock, just pushed the door open.
“You’re going to school tomorrow, or we’ll be reported to the truant officer or that bitch social worker.” His frozen eyes surveyed my face. “Write a note. Tell them you fell out of a pickup truck. I’ll sign it.”
I didn’t say anything. He walked into the room, kicked my bed. “Hear me?”
“Yes.” I tried to sink into the mattress.
He grunted and started tossing the room. My teeth clenched as he opened drawers, turned out the pockets of clothes, flipped pillows, and shook out books.
He found the twenty I kept stashed in the room as a decoy, and pocketed it. But he didn’t find the coffee can, and he didn’t find the laptop, either.
He left.
I started to think—to worry about the money I’d left in the old gym, and also worry that one day our luck would run out and he’d find the coffee can.
Eventually I sat up. Tore a page out of a notebook and wrote the note. “To Whom it May Concern: Jason Roberts was absent because he fell out of the back of a pickup.” I carried the note downstairs. Handed a pencil to my father.