“YOU WENT TO THE J-ROOM ON Friday night? Why?” I verbalized two of the billion questions I had. All while stepping deep into Dustin’s personal space.
He sidestepped to keep from being forced into the lake. “You need to understand,” he said, “how me and him got to that point.”
“What point?”
“We had precalc together last year, and he was acing it. Me, I struggled, and my dad can be a hard ass about stuff like that. I asked Eli if he could help me and he did. I passed that class because of him. That’s how we became friends.”
That didn’t sound like friendship. It sounded like tutoring. Maybe that’s what friendship was to this party guy, surrounding himself with people who could meet needs at convenient times.
It occurred to me that my definition of friendship might be the same.
Didn’t Eli have info I wanted? Wasn’t that what kept me coming back to the J-Room every day? My irritation toward Dustin tapered off.
Dustin continued, “Sometimes it was cool having him around. He always knew the answer to stuff. Like, if you wanted to know just what the hell a hot dog was made of, he’d tell you. You might not ever eat one again, but you learned something new.”
I agreed. “He was a Jeopardy! champion in the making.”
“I know, right? We hung at my crib a lot this past summer. Whenever it was just us, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how it is, home all day, Pops was working. Sometimes the guys would come over. Girls, too. We’ve got a pool, so people like to chill at my place.”
“Eli had a problem with that.”
“Right. Like, like”—his eyebrows rose and I just about saw a lightbulb flash over his head—“someone who played starting QB all of a sudden had to ride the bench.”
“Like someone took his spot,” I said, condensing his clunky metaphor. I wondered if Eli ever tutored him in English.
Dustin nodded bobblehead-style.
I remembered how cold Eli got when I didn’t immediately jump at the chance to be on the newspaper staff. He seemed sensitive to rejection. Needy. But I still didn’t get what any of this had to do with how him and Dustin parted ways. Or Friday night. “What happened?”
“Nothing. Not then. He still came around from time to time, but only when he was sure it would be just me and him. Truthfully, it got creepy.”
“Why?”
“Because he started to say weird stuff. Stuff about how everyone who dissed him was going to be sorry when he was some famous newscaster. He was always comparing himself to guys on CNN and PBS. I guess that’s where they were from. The only news I care about is on ESPN. He had serious delusions of grand hair.”
Delusions of—wow. “You mean grandeur. Delusions of grandeur.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
Despite Dustin being an idiot, he wasn’t far off base. Eli was sort of stuck on himself when it came to his journalism talents. He did get into that Columbia program, though. Maybe he was justified.
“I started ignoring him,” Dustin said with little pride. “He’d hit my cell and I wouldn’t pick up. If I did, I’d tell him I was busy. I never bothered to invite him to my parties because . . . he was a buzzkill. Okay? The problem was he didn’t take the hint.
“There would be nights when I’d come home and he’d be at the dinner table talking up my dad or watching a ballgame in our theater room. He was like the crazy guys in those Lifetime stalker movies.”
Again, I couldn’t deny the truth in his statements. Eli never came close to creep status with me, but I remember all too well the day he showed up at my house uninvited and got cozy. It didn’t bother me, but if he made a habit of it? I said, “Your dad was cool with him just popping up?”
“Yeah, because Eli was a computer whiz and he fixed my dad’s machine one night when it was like crapping code. Dad needed to access files for an important call. He thought Eli was his digital savior. He didn’t know what Eli really did to his computer.”
That sounded weird. “What did Eli do?”
“He installed some sort of spyware on it. Like, whatever my dad did, Eli had a way of tracking it.”
Whoa. Eli was spying on Dustin’s dad? “When did he do that?”
“A few months back. He told me, at the school Friday. That’s how we started fighting.”
I tilted my head toward him, made sure I heard him right. “You two fought?”
“It was crazy, I—”
My phone rang, interrupting.
I checked the display. It was Mom’s cell. Anyone else I might’ve ignored, but it was the first time she’d called me since we moved here. This couldn’t be about the conference call; that was over an hour away. What was this about?
“Dustin, hang on a sec.”
“What?”
“Hang on.” I pressed Talk. “Hey, Mom.”
The alarm in her voice hit me. “Tony, get home now.”
I took a step away from Dustin, afraid he might’ve heard my true name. “What’s wrong?”
In the background Dad yelled something I didn’t catch.
Mom yelled back, “I told you not to test me. Me and my son will not sit by and let your selfish schemes destroy us.”
Dad was closer, clearer. “Donna, put that suitcase down.”
Uh-oh. “I’m on my way.”
I ended the call, turned away from Dustin. “I needed to be home five minutes ago. My parents . . .”
“You’re leaving now?!” He grabbed my arm, roughly. Almost earned a right hook for it. I shook loose and faced him, aware of a sort of mild panic in his eyes. Was this about to be a thing? Seconds passed as we sized each other up.
He exhaled. Backed off. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to do that. Let me put my number in your phone. You’re going to want to hear the rest of this.”
I handed my phone over. Dustin stabbed it with his thumbs, his aggravation at being put off for later apparent. He was right; I wanted to hear the rest. But he was going to have to wait. Mom came first.
He gave my phone back and faced the lake, in his own world. I swear to God he looked like he wanted to walk into the water until he disappeared beneath it.
What in the world happened the night Eli died?
“I’ll call you tonight,” I said, more as a comforting gesture than a promise. If things had really hit the fan—and that’s what it sounded like—come nightfall, Nick Pearson might be a fading memory.