The Old Wheel, page 19
part #2 of The Adventures of Holloway Holmes Series
“If that’s all—” Dad began.
“We talked to Rowe,” Rivera said. “Do you want to reconsider what you told us?”
In the silence, the wind howled up the canyon.
“I want to talk to them alone,” I said without looking at Dad.
It took him a moment. “What?”
I stared at my hands.
“No,” Dad said.
I leaned forward, rubbing my knees.
“Absolutely not,” Dad said. “This is serious, Jack. In fact, I think we should have a lawyer—”
“Fine.” The laugh escaped me like the words had: the sense of something forcing its way free, whether I liked it or not. “Dawson wanted me to—” For a dizzying moment, I almost said suck his cock. It would have been like falling, to say something like that out loud. “—to do stuff.” I cleared my throat. “Sex stuff.” As soon as I heard it, I knew how it made me sound: like a child.
“Did you want to?” Yazzie asked.
“Hold on,” Dad said.
I pushed my hair back.
“Jack,” Yazzie said.
“Hold on,” Dad said again, more loudly this time. “What are you saying? He wanted you to do stuff?” His voice got louder. “What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Moreno,” Rivera said.
“No, I didn’t want to.” I was scrubbing my knees now. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was—something was wrong with me.”
“Did Dawson give you something?”
I remembered the shot that someone had pressed on me while we’d been toking, and my head came up too quickly. I tried to say, “No,” but I saw it in Rivera’s eyes.
“We’re going to need a sample, Jack,” Rivera said.
“Rowe and H stopped him,” I said, dropping my eyes to the floor between my feet. “Nothing happened.”
“We’re still going to need a sample.” Yazzie’s voice was kind as she added, “I’m sorry, Jack.”
My vision blurred, and I breathed through my mouth and blinked rapidly.
“I don’t understand what’s going on.” Dad rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “He gave you something? He wanted you to do something? Why would he—” He shut his mouth so hard that his teeth clicked. And then, in a different voice, he said, “We want a lawyer.”
“Mr. Moreno—”
“No, this conversation is over. If you think Jack did something to that boy, if you think what happened was—was revenge, or some kind of terrible accident—”
“We don’t think Jack did this,” Rivera said. “But we’re pursuing all lines of inquiry.”
“What about that boy, Aston? He was right there, wasn’t he? Jack said he looked like he’d been in a fight.”
“Mr. Moreno—”
“Or what about that truck?” Dad said. “Somebody shot at them yesterday, right? Did you even think about that guy?”
Yazzie and Rivera shared a look, but before I could process it, Rivera turned his attention to me. His voice was different when he said, “Jack, I need you to do your best to remember: was Holloway Holmes with you the whole time?”
I didn’t understand the question at first. “What?”
“Holloway,” Yazzie said. “After he and Rowe found you, did he leave you alone? Even if it was only for a short time?”
I remembered waking. I remembered his coat under my head, and then sleeping again. Had he been with me? I thought so, because when I woke the next time, my head had been pillowed on his stomach. But—
My head snapped up. Rivera’s dark eyes were waiting for me.
“H didn’t do this.”
“Answer the question, please,” Yazzie said.
“You’re crazy if you think he did this. He couldn’t do something like this. He wouldn’t.”
“He’s an incredibly dangerous young man,” Rivera said. “You know that better than we do, I think. He’s attached to you. He’s protective.”
“What does that mean?” Dad asked. “What do you think you’re saying?”
“I was there that night,” Rivera said in a low voice. “I saw what he did.”
What he did was save my life, I wanted to say. What he did was stop Aston and Burrows from murdering me. All I could get out was “H wouldn’t do something like this.”
But I remembered the boy named Nick at Hewdenhouse, and Holmes saying, I did something precipitous. And I remembered Holmes’s anger when he’d caught me in Aston’s room, the tundra of expression on his face. Are you frightened, Jack? Are you scared of me?
I shook the thoughts off, set my jaw, and met Rivera’s gaze. “H didn’t do this. And if you think he could, you’re out of your mind.”
“Do you know where Holloway might be?”
“What do you mean?”
“You understood the question.”
“He’s missing? You can’t find him?”
“Jack,” Yazzie said, “why don’t you make a list of all the places Holloway might be?”
Round and round we went like that. It was hard, keeping the story straight, making sure I didn’t say anything about Paxton, or about the blackmail, or about everything else that led in a scarlet thread back to me and my never-ending stupidity. And it was harder because I kept thinking about Rivera saying, He’s attached to you. He’s protective. And Holmes, his voice detached in the way I had come to recognize as the sound of him hurting the most, I did something precipitous.
The sun was coming up by the time Rivera and Yazzie left—and yes, with a sample. Bundled in their coats, their faces unreadable, they both looked tired, beaten down by the long, frustrating night. Rivera’s last glance at me was considering and, to my surprise, on the verge of compassionate. Then Dad shut the door, and I couldn’t decide if I’d imagined it.
The three-quarters fridge chugged, filling the air with that faint, burnt smell. Light came in low and oblique, dusting everything with silver. There hadn’t been much black left in Dad’s stubble, but it looked totally gray now. He had lines I’d never seen before.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He rubbed his eyes again.
“Are you getting a migraine?” I asked.
“What they said about you, about that party—” He stopped himself. “I am so disappointed in you. I don’t even want to look at you.” But he dropped his hands anyway. “Go. Get out of here.”
“Dad, it was a party. You said you wanted me to go—” I stopped at the look on his face. It was the way he looked at strangers. “I mean, something terrible happened. It’s not like I knew—”
“Stop talking. Did you even think about what this might do to us? Drugs, Jack. What the hell were you thinking? Going down into the tunnels, getting drunk, passing out, that’s bad enough. But what if Headmaster Cluff orders a drug test? If they search the cottage, are they going to find something?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I cannot believe you. We’d be out on our asses, Jack. I cannot fucking believe you.” Dad shook his head and took a deep breath. His voice was buckled down when he added, “Go to your room.”
I opened my mouth. The look on his face made me close it again, and I turned for the hall.
“You’re grounded. You don’t leave this house until I say you can.”
It was everything. The way my body felt after the shit Dawson had given me—not to mention the shit I’d loaded up on myself. The long, disorienting hours in the tunnels. The feel of Dawson’s hands on my waistband. My head in Holmes’s lap. Paxton saying, How about a kiss? Not knowing where Holmes had gone, or where Ariana was, or if they were ok. Finding Dawson. The way Dad had said, What are you saying? What are you talking about? Like the closest I’d ever come to the truth was incomprehensible to him.
“Sure,” I said as I started down the hall. “Until you need me to run an errand, or pick up your meds, or help you dig a trench, or clean the west-side bathrooms because you can’t get there today, or buy groceries, or do one of those task-app jobs so we can pick up an extra forty bucks. I guess I’ll be in my room until the next time I have to carry your fucking water.”
“Hey,” Dad said.
A ringing noise filled my ears; I wondered if I’d blown an eardrum at Wintersmash.
“Get back here,” Dad said.
I kept walking.
“Get your ass back here and say that to my face.”
Outside, the rhythmic steps of joggers came on the asphalt, and someone laughed—the sound startling and clear in the morning stillness.
Dad started after me.
I didn’t run; I was proud of that. But I did slam the door, and I was less proud of that. I pushed my chair under the handle and threw myself on the bed.
A moment later, the door rocked open and caught on the chair.
“Open this door!”
I rolled onto my side, back to the door.
He slapped the door. “Jack!”
I pulled the pillow over my head.
He slapped it three more times—three hard, staccato beats, and in between, his breaths sounded like explosions. Then his steps hammered toward the front of the cottage, and a moment later, the door crashed shut.
Drawing the pillow tighter around my head, I held on as long as I could. Then I started to cry.
Chapter 17
Migas
When I woke up, the light was different, and someone was knocking at the front door.
I rolled out of bed. I was still in my flannel and jeans and, yes, somehow, one Cortez—the other had been kicked off mid-sleep, and a quick scan didn’t locate it. My mouth tasted like dick, and not in the good way, and my head was pounding. For about twenty seconds, I stood there and thought about collapsing onto the bed again.
But the knocking continued.
When I got to the front door, Ariana was there. She had showered and changed and, presumably, slept, and in a hoodie and yoga pants, she looked the way she did most Saturday mornings. If it still was Saturday morning.
“Is it Saturday morning?” I croaked.
“Barely,” she said. She gave me a once over, and then she smiled, and I had no idea what to make of that smile. “Rough night?”
“You have no idea. Ariana, about last night, I’m really sorry—hey, come in—” And I shifted to make room. “I’m really sorry—”
She stepped inside, eased the door shut behind her, and said over me, “Jack, your dad called me because he was worried. Actually, he sounded pretty upset.”
“My dad called you?”
“So, you officially have permission to take me to get migas. Only I’m driving, so I’ll be taking you.”
“How did he get your number?”
“Go get ready.” She smiled that totally incomprehensible smile as she sat and folded her legs under her. “And for once in your life, don’t take forever.”
I brushed my teeth. I did a quick underarm scrub and applied fresh deodorant. I looked in the mirror and despaired.
“Don’t start with your hair, or we won’t get there in time for migas,” Ariana called from the living room.
I gave it a quick try. And then just a little more. And then I thought maybe, if I was quick, there was time for a shower, and I could start on my hair from scratch.
“Time’s up,” Ariana called.
One more quick fix. Ok. Two.
Then, before I left the bathroom, I texted Holmes. Ok, a series of texts:
Are you ok?
Call me.
Please.
I’m lowkey freaking out.
Then I paused, telling myself I might stop there and then trying to figure out who I was kidding. The last message said: I’m worried about you.
“Is this how men feel when they pick up their dates?” Ariana asked as I reached the living room.
I gave up on the remaining Cortez and pulled on my Stan Smiths. “Is there a right way to answer that?”
“No,” she said with that bright smile.
We went down the canyon in her little green Geo, and the fact that it was still in operation long after the Human Rights Commission had banned all people everywhere from driving Geos was a sign of: a) Ariana’s determination to be independent; and b) her dad’s skill as a mechanic when he wasn’t drunk or fired for being drunk. It sounded like we had a lawnmower sitting between us, and every bump shot me up from my seat and cracked my head against the roof. Normally, when Ariana drove because I couldn’t cadge or steal the truck, I bitched solidly the whole ride. Today, I kind of enjoyed it. There’s nothing like smashing your face against the window while you’ve got a hangover hammering against the inside of your skull.
El Mexsal was a strip-mall establishment, wedged between a transmission shop with a Spanish-language sign and an off-brand, Spanish-language Western Union. It was hard to see any of it, though, because of the skyscraper-sized, rotating, illuminated sign for Freedom Car Wash, which featured an abundance of stripes and stars and red, white, and blue. Inside, the tables were chipped, and the chairs were cheap and stackable—the kind with splitting vinyl seats and trapezoidal backs. Gumball machines. Toy machines, the kind that dispensed junk in little plastic balls. Pepsi coolers with bottles of Modelo on the bottom shelf. It smelled like cilantro and onion and hot pork, and ’80s Latin pop was playing in the background—not my usual, which mostly consisted of Dad’s grunge CDs, but Selena was still dope.
Ariana sat, and I got us each a Pepsi, and a waitress came. We both ordered migas. The lady had mile-high hair and looked sorry for me, which, you know, was nice. When she left, it was Selena again, interrupted only by the hiss of the bottle as I unscrewed the cap.
“You wish it was Nirvana,” Ariana said. “Don’t you?”
“It’s ok.” Then I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe ‘Lithium’ is up next.”
That made her laugh. I liked making her laugh. It was one of those things I was unexpectedly good at, like making waitresses feel bad for me, and stumbling onto dead bodies, and fucking up everything real and good in my life. My dad. Holmes. Exhibit A was currently opening her Pepsi.
She stopped, her knuckles white against the cap. “Jack, I’m sorry about last night. That must have been horrible.”
The music switched to someone I didn’t recognize.
I said, “Are you kidding me?”
“I never should have gone with Emma and Glo. If I hadn’t, I’d have been with you when—” She sounded like she was going to cry. “I hate that you were alone.”
Staring at her didn’t help me make sense of what was happening, so I said, “If anyone is going to apologize, it’s me. I can’t believe I left you alone for that whole party. That was—that was stupid, I guess. I should have been with you. I asked you to go.” Too late, I realized what I should have said first: “I wanted to be with you.”
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “And I wanted to go with Emma and Glo.” She waited, as though I might say something, and then, like someone explaining something, said, “To make you mad.”
The best I could come up with was, “Uh…”
“Well, I was still mad at you. Am still mad at you. But, like, suspended mad because this is so awful, and I can’t be mad at you while you’re going through this.”
I drank some Pepsi. It was cold and sweet, and the caffeine helped, a little, with that hammering inside my skull. “But you went to the party with me.”
“Well, yeah. Because how was I going to show you I was mad if I didn’t go? Plus, it was the rich kids, and you know I’ve always wanted to go to a party like that.” She laughed. “It was fire, actually. Even though it got weird with Emma later.”
I knew the Emma comment was the important part, but I couldn’t let go of another bit. “You went to the party because you were mad at me?”
“Yeah.”
I rubbed my face.
She laughed again. “Have you seriously never dated anyone before?”
I kept rubbing my face. Saying, Not anyone as complicated as this, but I thought I might get a Pepsi bottle in the eye if I did. “No. I mean, hooking up and stuff.”
“Ok, well, I’m mad.”
“Suspended mad.”
I got a tiny smile for that. “Suspended mad,” she said. “And I’d already done the thing where I didn’t answer your calls and texts, and that wasn’t fun anymore, so I decided to make my point in person. And I couldn’t do that if I was avoiding you, right?”
“No,” I finally said. “I guess not.”
“So, I had to go to the party. Plus, I wanted to go. Like I said.”
“Uh huh.”
In the kitchen, a cook shouted something in Spanish, and somebody shouted something back, but it all sounded good natured and relaxed and ordinary, and everything at Walker felt like something happening in another world.
“And you’re mad at me because I screwed up on Thursday.”
“Well, you screw up a lot. But yes, Thursday was the breaking point.”
I drank some more Pepsi. “Did my dad make you take me to migas so you could break up with me?”
She burst out laughing. She was still laughing when the waitress came with our food, and the laughter made the waitress smile and look at me, and for some reason, I started fumbling with my silverware and trying to tear the little paper band that kept it sealed. When I finally got it open, the waitress was laughing too, and she patted Ariana’s shoulder as she walked away.
I forked some migas. Savagely.
“No,” Ariana said when she’d finally finished. “I’m not breaking up with you. But I am—I don’t know. Worried, I guess. About you, specifically, right now. Your dad told me someone shot at you, Jack, and you—you freaked out. And then, last night, finding that boy. And I know you—you have some stuff in your past. And I’m worried, you know, that you aren’t ok, but because you are a boy, you aren’t going to talk to anyone.”
“And because I’m dumb.”
She smiled with the corner of her mouth and took my hand. “I already said you were a boy.”
