“He wasn’t a black belt.”
“Whatever. The martial arts guy, right? Well, it’s like that. You laughed, and that’s part of it. There’s a rumor you brought a gun to school. That locker check? That was all because of you. Where you live. People think you deal or your parents are in prison or something. You don’t hang out, you don’t talk, and in eighth grade you punched that teacher.”
I guess when you’re a rich man’s son, you feel like you can say anything. Maybe you can. Maybe Daddy can get you all lawyered up if you go too far.
Michael held out a hand toward me. “See? Look at you! I say all this crap, and who knows what’s true and what isn’t, and you don’t say a word. You’re golden, man.”
I shrugged. What’s the point of explaining? Or the truth? People believe what they want to believe. You can’t fight it.
Cyndra frowned at me. She twisted a piece of auburn hair around a finger and yanked it. “What’s true?”
I thought about it. The laughing during the fight everyone knew about—although there were alternate versions where I spat on the idiot or had to be pulled off him.
I guess there was enough truth to all of it. Enough to make simpleminded people in need of a distraction happy. There are drug busts in Lincoln Green all the time. My dad has been to jail.
And when I punched that teacher he deserved it. And I went to juvie.
Cyndra yanked at her hair again. “Well?”
I felt my eyes go tight. My fingers curled, and I took a step forward. “Yeah, it’s all true. Does that make you happy?”
“Easy, easy, killer.” Michael walked over to me. He laid a hand on my shoulder. I slapped it away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Sorry.” Michael looked at me, and there was something strange in his eyes. Almost like he didn’t know what to do. Like he, Mr. Movie Star, was uncertain, or wanted something, or was somehow . . . hungry.
It was a stupid thought. The look was gone in an instant.
“Well, what do you say?” Michael asked.
“You still haven’t told me why.”
“For some specific people and occasions, I need your presence to project a certain image of me. That we’re friends.”
“And?”
“All you need to know is I’ll pay you fifty dollars a day. That’s just for the school stuff. Extras will be another fifty, per occasion.”
“That’s a lot of your dad’s money you’re prepared to spend,” I said.
His eyes narrowed as threads of muscle noose-tightened around them. His voice was low and intense. “Well, it’s a good thing he gives me so much, isn’t it? About the only thing he’s ever done for me, in fact.” He leaned back, but it wasn’t relaxed, more like a performance, pretending to be casual. “Something you should know about me, Jason. There are only two things that matter: what I want. And what I have to do to get it.”
I looked down. I tried not to think of the coffee can at home and its petty roll of cash. Tried not to think of The Plan—my escape with Janie—and how far we were from getting there. I tried not to think about hauling product around the building supply. I tried not to think of screaming and fists and having to sleep outside.
“All you have to do is hang around some. Try to act like you like us. You don’t even have to talk. Just hang around.”
I knew there was more to it. There had to be.
But I figured I could handle it. I thought maybe my part would be just what Michael described. Maybe it was some foolish jock-game, and I’d be the punch line. They’d pick a fight with me or want me to fight someone else. I thought: good.
And I thought that would be all it was.
“Fine.” I glanced at the clock. “A couple of things, though.”
“Okay, what?”
“I may have to turn down some of your extracurricular activities. I may not make it to school every day, and you won’t always know when that is. I won’t stick around if there’s trouble, and I won’t get caught with anything illegal. In fact, if we’re breaking any laws, you better clear it with me first, and the pay rate will be a hell of a lot higher.”
Juvenile hall was a cakewalk, but I couldn’t leave Janie again. And I couldn’t forget The Plan.
“That’s it?” Michael’s eyes were bright. He was all but rubbing his hands together.
“Yeah. And I can quit anytime, no refunds.”
“Sure, but you won’t want to quit. Easy money, baby. But I don’t pay you days you don’t show up.”
“Fine.”
We shook hands. I was afraid for a moment the fool would try to throw some sequence-shake into the number. You know, some kind of I’m-cool-you’re-cool shake. But I guess he had more sense.
In the car on the way back to Lincoln Green, I asked him why he had to take me to his house to tell me about all of it.
“Privacy.” He pulled over to the curb. The kids were still screaming. The weight set in front of our unit was unoccupied. “And so you could see that I’m not a bad guy.”
I wanted to ask him how his house was supposed to show me that.
Then I looked around and saw where I lived.
CHAPTER THREE
Janie thought I should do it. It took her a while to get there, though. She just has to talk stuff out. And if it keeps her from gnawing on her cuticles for five seconds, I guess it’s worth it.
So after about thirty minutes of us talking it out—otherwise known as me listening to her worry—she said okay.
She agreed there was more to it than I was being told, but she said, “You’re right, probably not much more.”
And we both knew the money was too good to walk away from.
She told me about something she’d read online at her school library. About this stupid pact that a bunch of girls made in some school, some junior high school, get that, that they would all get pregnant. Janie said it was proof that kids will get into stupid-ass stuff just to have some event going on. A way to pass the time. She said that Michael’s “crew” had money to burn, so they needed something else.