The Old Wheel, page 6
part #2 of The Adventures of Holloway Holmes Series
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” I turned in place taking in the room. “See, ordinarily, you’d be in class right now, not getting your ass bred.”
Dawson growled and shifted forward on the bed. I couldn’t see Holmes, but he must have done something because Dawson shrank back into place. Paxton tried to hide a smile by scratching his chin.
“The whole point was to take a good look, see if we could figure out what was going on, if you’d left anything incriminating.”
“Incriminating? Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Any blackmail notes you hadn’t delivered yet—that’d make my life nice and easy.”
“I don’t have anything to do with that, so you can leave. Get out.” Like he was choking on it, he added, “Please?”
The short exchange had given me a chance to take in the room: the single bed raised on cinderblocks, with its gray comforter and white sheets bunched at the foot; a poster from what I guessed was a graphic novel—something called Preacher, and it did look pretty badass; the window frosted over, milky with sunlight; the closet door open so that the mirror faced the bed. So they could watch themselves, I realized with some significant yuck. The closet itself held a single pair of khakis and a few button-downs. Unlike Aston’s, there was no clutter of designer jackets and, more important for a boy, sneakers. I crossed to the dresser and opened drawers.
“Hey!” Dawson shouted, and bed springs made their metallic sounds. Then Dawson let out a frightened cry.
“Holloway, stop terrorizing him,” Paxton said.
A handful of Volcom t-shirts. A pair of jeans from a brand I didn’t recognize. A Vineyard Vines sweatshirt. Nothing cheap, sure. But a lot of empty drawer space as well.
I checked Holmes, who still hadn’t moved—what was he doing to terrify Dawson? Maybe he’d show me sometime if I asked—and got down on the floor. The carpet was rough against my cheek.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Paxton said. “Help him get his pants off, Holloway. Pretty boy, hips up a little. You’ll enjoy it more.”
I gave him the middle finger without looking up, and Paxton laughed.
Then I spotted them: indentations in the carpet, like Holmes had noticed in Aston’s room. Only these weren’t indentations from rearranging the furniture. This was something that was gone. A TV stand, I guessed. With its own PS5, or whatever the hell Dawson’s parents had bought him.
Getting to my feet, I brushed myself off. Holmes’s face looked more composed, and he gave a decisive nod.
“Seriously?” I asked. “You already figured it out?”
“I did need the extra time while you examined everything,” he said in an apologetic tone.
“Fuck me. This is so fucking unfair.”
“Ok, you looked around,” Dawson said. His shoulders curved, and he pulled the towel tighter. “Can you go now?”
“Sure,” I said. “As soon as you tell us how long someone has been blackmailing you.”
Chapter 7
A Fight with a Bush
Paxton broke the silence. “Blackmailing Dawson? For what?”
“Silence,” Holmes said.
“For having sex? With me?” Paxton put his arms behind his head. He had nice biceps, great pits, serratus muscles so defined you could play a chord on them. With a laugh, he said, “People should be paying us to watch.”
“Yes, you’d love that,” Holmes snapped, and the venom was so hot and raw that I looked over at him. The flush was back, and my Holmes—the icy, controlled Holmes—had vanished again. “I told you to be silent.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the problem, innit, because—”
“Shut up,” I told Paxton. “You’re egging him on. I don’t know why, but my best guess is that you’re trying to keep him worked up so he won’t look too closely at whatever you’re trying to hide. If I have to, I’ll take you out of here and keep you somewhere else while H finishes up with Dawson.”
Paxton offered me a broad, slanted smile, and I thought on the Great British Baking Show, somebody would have called him cheeky. On Peaky Blinders, they would have said cheeky bastard. “Go on, luv. Give it a try.”
“No one’s blackmailing me,” Dawson said, his voice wound tight. “So, both of you fuck off—”
“You sold all your clothes. Some of it to those online places that resell designer stuff, but a lot of it on eBay or KSL, I bet. Same thing with the TV, whatever gaming system you had, the TV stand itself. Trust me, I know what it looks like when you’ve gone through everything you own, trying to figure out how much you can get for it.”
“You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be,” Holmes said, his voice steadier now. “You appeared in the same blackmail pictures as Aston. Your belongings are gone, as Jack pointed out. Why drag this out?”
Paxton leaned over, hooking an arm around Dawson’s neck and pulling him close to whisper in his ear. Dawson grimaced and elbowed Paxton away, but he nodded.
“Ok,” he said stiffly. “Fine. I’m being blackmailed.”
“How did they contact you?” Holmes asked.
“They sent me something. A letter. And pictures.”
“Let’s see them.”
“They’re gone, man. I burned them.”
Holmes frowned. “That was stupid. How long has it been going on?”
“I don’t know. A month.”
Holmes didn’t look at me, but I thought he was trying to do the same thing I was: build a timeline. We’d uncovered several blackmailers at Walker in September. Those people were gone now, but Walker—an elite private school designed as a holding cell for troubled teens who also happened to have wealthy families—was a perfect spot for a blackmailer to operate. It made sense that someone else would have tried the same trick again. What I found interesting was how quickly it had happened.
“And you’ve been paying?” Holmes asked.
Dawson nodded.
“How much?”
“A thousand dollars a month.”
I frowned, and I caught Paxton staring at me, noticing the expression, before I could smooth it away. A thousand dollars a month wasn’t chump change—I mean, I couldn’t have come up with it, not unless I sold some seriously good shit. But it was a far cry from the fifty thousand that someone had demanded from Aston.
“Which you’ve chosen to raise by selling your possessions,” Holmes said. “Why didn’t you ask your parents?”
“My parents gave me a credit card,” Dawson said. “No cash advances; I tried. And big surprise, blackmailers don’t take Visa.”
Something moved outside: metal rang tinnily, and then there was a clattering thump, and a dark shape zipped past.
I spun toward the frosted glass.
“Fucking hell,” Dawson said, sitting up straight.
Paxton laughed.
When I glanced over, Holmes didn’t exactly look amused—he was still clearly thinking about committing a few murders—but a hint of something showed around his eyes. “Squirrel,” he said. “On the downspout.”
“Fuck me,” Dawson and I muttered at the same time.
“You didn’t answer my question; why wouldn’t you tell your parents the situation?”
“In the first place,” Dawson said, “because they stuck me in this shithole because they didn’t want to deal with my problems.”
“And in the second?” I asked.
Dawson gave me the side eye and flicked his chin.
“In the second place?” Holmes prompted in a hard voice.
“They would have made a big deal out of it.” Dawson’s heavy brows drew together. Each word became stiffer as he added, “They’d ask about Aston.”
My giggle was disbelief mixed with nerves. “You’re protecting him?”
“The fuck do you care?”
“Are you serious right now? You’re so worried about Aston’s reputation that you’re—you’re putting yourself through this? Why? Because you’re in love?”
Dawson lurched off the bed. He came toward me, building up speed as he came. Holmes tried to move into his path, but Dawson planted a hand on his chest and shoved him. I could have told him it wouldn’t work; Holmes turned the move to his advantage, seizing Dawson’s wrist and turning it, applying pressure. Dawson tried to turn, to shake him off, but that only made it worse. Holmes followed Dawson, increasing the pressure, so that Dawson’s change of direction ended with Dawson pressed face-first against the wall. He cried out as Holmes increased the pressure on his wrist.
Paxton inched toward the edge of the bed.
“Stay where you are, Paxton,” Holmes said without looking back at him. “Or I will let Jack deal with Dawson, and I will handle you myself.”
For a moment, Paxton stayed still. Then he said, “Gave me a bit of a stiffy, Holloway. Say it again.”
The color in Holmes’s cheeks darkened. He didn’t respond.
Dawson was panting, the sounds rapid and pained. He tried to shift away, but Holmes wouldn’t let him, and he let out a pathetic groan.
“For the record,” I said, “I could have taken him.”
“Who?” Holmes asked. “Dawson or Paxton?”
“Uh, either.”
A grin exploded across Paxton’s face. Holmes’s face was completely expressionless.
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Is he that bad, bruv?” Paxton asked with a laugh.
Holmes’s mouth flattened out. “He once lost a fight with a bush.”
“I didn’t lose a fight with a bush! My shirt got caught, and—you know what? Fuck all y’all. H, let him go; I know you’re not hurting him, but he doesn’t like it, and he’s upset enough already.”
Shaking his head, Holmes released Dawson and stepped back. Dawson clutched at the towel to keep it from falling. He turned, his back to the wall, and touched the arm that Holmes had been holding—running his fingers from wrist to elbow. I watched him, and he looked at the floor and rolled one shoulder.
In a low voice, he said, “It’s not—I mean, it’s complicated, all right?”
“You mean, you’re fucking around behind his back?”
“I mean everything. His family—his fucking grandfather—and yeah, the money, all of it.” In a strange voice that I realized was pain, he laughed and said, “We never said we were exclusive.”
The furnace kicked on, stirring the air—the smell of the heating system mixing with the room’s trapped funk of sex and sweaty bodies. A draft tickled my nape. It teased a lock of Holmes’s golden hair.
“You should be talking to Emma,” Dawson said in that same crushed voice. “It’s got to be her.”
“Emma?” Holmes said.
“Emma Whiting.” When neither of us responded, Dawson said, “She and Aston used to be together.”
“And that’s why you think she’s behind this?” Holmes asked. “She feels jilted?”
“Fuck no. She’s behind this because she’s fucking psycho. Do you know she almost killed this guy at her last school? That’s why she’s here at Walker. Her boyfriend tried to break up with her—no shit, she about beat him to death. As soon as Aston learned that, he broke up with her.”
“And told everyone,” I said.
Dawson gave another of those one-shouldered shrugs.
“And him?” I asked, cocking my head at Paxton.
Rubbing his jaw, Dawson dropped his head again. “He came on to me in the bathroom. I said fuck it; I have study hall this hour.”
“Nice.”
“It’s not like—we’ve hung out a few times. I knew he was cool.”
“Now that’s sweet, innit?” Paxton pushed off the bed. “And that’s us sorted, so I’ll scarper—”
“No,” Holmes said. “You’ll come with me and answer my questions.”
Paxton stepped into a pair of khakis. He wriggled into a sweater, fixed his faux hawk in the mirror, and pulled on a pair of drivers. “You sure? You and your mate here have got a nice lead. Why don’t you track down this girl, Emma, and later, we can get a kebab or a takeaway and catch up—”
“Now, Paxton. Jack, you first, please. Dawson, I suggest you rethink some of the choices you made today. It’s obvious that you’re lying to some degree; the sooner you decide to tell us the whole truth, the sooner we’ll be able to resolve this.”
Dawson snugged the towel up an inch and nodded, refusing to look at anyone.
I stepped out into the hall, Paxton behind me, and Holmes followed. We made our way toward the stairs; the sound of video game guns came from farther down the hall, where a door stood open. It sounded like Call of Duty, which wasn’t exactly my specialty, but I’d played it enough to recognize it. My attention was still half-focused on the question, trying to decide if it really was Call of Duty, when Paxton bumped into me. I automatically adjusted my balance, distantly registering a buzz of annoyance that he couldn’t walk a straight line. Too late, I realized what was happening.
He hooked my ankle and pulled my foot out from under me. I started to fall. Holmes shouted something, and Paxton grabbed me by the collar and yanked. I flew backward and crashed into Holmes. We both went down in a tangle of limbs. Paxton’s footsteps pounded away, and a moment later, the door at the top of the stairs crashed shut behind him.
Chapter 8
Big Boy Feelings
In the first flurried minutes of chasing Paxton, I thought we still had a chance. The immediate aftermath, though, proved me wrong. Paxton was gone by the time we emerged from the building, and Holmes was so angry—with me, for letting Paxton get away, even though he was too kind to say so—that honestly it was a relief when Holmes insisted I go to class while he continued to search for Paxton. (Also, he wasn’t wrong: Dad would legit murder me if I had two tardies in one day.)
I went to third period. I ate lunch. It was the usual thing—getting as many of the chicken tenders as my tray could support without breaking, and then pretending to decide where to sit. For a guy like me, with so many options, it was tough. Should I sit with that group of kids who wanted nothing to do with me? Or should I sit with that group of kids who actively despised me? Or maybe with those kids, who were simply too embarrassed to be seen in public with me? Or, joy of joys, I could join the Boy Band and the Bloopies. Walker’s shining stars always sat at the same table: five boys, five girls, all of them beautiful and wearing designer labels and laughing and showing each other shit on their phones.
If Holmes came to the dining hall during lunch—which he only did when I could bully him into it, which, to my own credit, I was getting better at—then we sat together at the Island of Misfit Toys. That was the table in the back corner with me, Holmes, a boy in a back brace, and a pair of twin girls who groomed each other in public.
Today, I sat there alone, and I tried not to see it as a sign.
The thing about sitting on your own? You hear more of the conversations around you than you would if you were chatting with friends, or watching stuff on your phone, or thinking up yet another new, creative reason to get your only friend in the world to please for the love of God eat one chicken tender so I’d know he ate something today.
Everybody was talking about Wintersmash. If they were going. Yes, they were going; they got their invitation yesterday. No, they weren’t going because somebody was being a bitch. On and on like that. It was basically the only thing anyone talked about, I guess for good reason. We were down to the wire; Wintersmash was tomorrow. I figured my invitation had gotten lost in the mail. Maybe they’d addressed it to Abercrombie.
I limped through my three afternoon classes, managing to make a fool of myself in all three—in geometry, I kept cubing four wrong, even when Mr. Zimmerly asked me to slow down and take a breath and do it slowly; in Team Sports, I botched two sets in a row, and the third time, I got it spiked back into my face; and in Spanish, I apparently managed to say, I am pregnant, which Ms. Quezada-Loza took an obvious pleasure in explaining to the class.
When I dragged my sorry—and now, apparently, pregnant—ass out of Walker Hall, Holmes was waiting. The color in his cheeks was from the cold, I decided, and the late winter sun struck highlights in his hair. He had his hands stuffed in the pockets of his wool coat, and his face was unreadable.
“You didn’t unfriend me?” I asked when I reached him.
“What?”
“Look, I’m sorry about Paxton. I really am. I should have had my head in the game, and I royally fucked up. I get that you’re mad at me; I just want you to know I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again.”
“Jack, I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with myself. I knew Paxton would make an attempt, and I was unprepared.”
“You were unprepared because I was lying on top of you.”
“I didn’t expect you to stop Paxton. I certainly wouldn’t unfriend you because of a miscalculation or a moment of inattention. What brought this on?”
“I don’t know. You sent me away—”
“Jack.”
“I know, I know.” I squinted at him, and then I moved my head to catch his eye. After a moment, he smiled. “B-plus,” I told him. “And you’re still a dork.”
The smile snapped into a line. “You are a dork. And your shoes are untied.”
He wouldn’t let me go anywhere with them like that, so while I tied them, I asked, “Are you mad?”
“I’m furious.”
“I thought so.”
“Not with you, Jack. With myself. A Holmes is always in control; I shouldn’t have let that situation get out of hand. If I had been focused—” That choice of word, and the way his whole body tightened and he seemed to be trying not to look at me, told me what he meant: If I’d been skating on addies.
“Can you do something for me?” I asked as I stood.
He blinked. Timp’s shadows made his eyes so dark they were almost blue.
“I’ve got this friend, Holloway Holmes, and I don’t like people being unkind to him. So, maybe you could cut him some slack this time? Because he’s human, and human beings aren’t always functioning at one hundred percent precision and efficiency.”
