By the time I got there, all the excitement was over. The cop cars had driven off. The hauling company had brought the dumpster, and it was full of ruined carpets, curtains, books, furniture.
Jewel Gomez’s house, flooded out. Someone broke in while they were away for the weekend, stopped up the sinks and tubs and both her toilets, started the water.
“No sign of forced entry,” I overheard a neighbor say.
Jewel wasn’t home, and she didn’t answer when I called her. I sent a text—Hope you’re doing okay, let me know if you need anything—complete with a GIF of a corgi puppy cuddle pile.
She sent me a thank you–themed GIF. We giffed back and forth for a while.
Next morning, the high school hallway was all grief and anger and betrayal. When I looked through the lens, everything was green and brown. Great slimy bubbles hung in the air around Jewel, splattering and popping. She stood beside her locker, pretending to look at something on her phone. I kept my camera aimed at her, but I did not take a picture. Her unhappiness was palpable, so much so that snapping the shutter would have felt exploitative. The stink of garbage filled the high school hallway.
“Hey,” I said, stepping closer.
“Ash, hey,” she said. She was dressed all in shades of blue, the better to blend in with the walls of Hudson High. The better to make herself invisible.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“You feeling okay? If you want to skip school, go up to Crossgates Mall or something, I got you.”
She laughed.
It was a joke, after all. Super-religious Jewel never broke a rule.
“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do. I can’t imagine how scary it must be, to have something like that happen.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“I wouldn’t be,” I said. “It’s okay to not be fine.”
She nodded. “I feel . . .” And she took a long time but I didn’t try to nudge her along. “I feel like I’ll never feel safe in that house again.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I get that.”
Betrayal, I thought. That’s what I was seeing in the air around her. How did I know? How could I tell the difference between guilt and betrayal? I wasn’t sure. But since that day along the tracks with Solomon, when I’d held his trained penny in my hand, my understanding of the things I could see had gotten sharper. Stronger. Like I could read them now in a way I couldn’t before.
“Do the cops have any theories about who did it?”
She rolled her eyes. “No,” she said. “And they don’t care.”
Betrayal. Jewel feels betrayed by someone—maybe someone here. “And you? Do you have any theories?”
“My books all got ruined,” she said, her eyes on fire. I knew how much her books mattered to her. She spent a lot of money on them. Bought new ones every week. Posted pictures of them online. Made memes out of her favorite quotes. She had a blog and everything.
“That sucks.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t understand. They should have been fine. My house flooded, but the water didn’t rise very high. Someone took all the books off my bookshelves, and put them on the floor.”
“Shit,” I said, and then apologized for the profanity.
She nodded. “Whoever did this? They knew us. Knew me.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Yet. But when I find out? I’m going to punish them.” She didn’t curse, but the anger in her voice was just as frightening as a swear word would have been.
Shouts, from down the hall. Loud laughter. Which is when we all learned why the stink of garbage was so strong. Someone had taken all the trash bags out of the dumpsters behind the school, and ripped them open and dumped their contents in every classroom.
It pretty much scrapped first period, as everyone was busy cleaning up and wondering at what kind of vengeance the administration would rain down on us.
All day long, I looked for whoever wrecked Jewel’s house. Watched faces, with and without my camera. I saw an awful lot of ultramarine tendrils. I knew without question what they symbolized. Guilt. But the thing is, guilt about what? Checking out those websites your parents told you were off-limits? Sneaking around behind your girlfriend’s back? Or breaking and entering and destruction of property? One guilt looked like any other.
I even had some of my own. Because Jewel hadn’t been on Sheffield’s radar, before the two of us confronted him in the hallway together. Had I brought this on her?
That’s when I noticed Bobby Eckels. Football player; second string, I thought. Even with the naked eye, you could see that he was twitchy. Through the lens the darkness I saw around him was fresher, rawer. When he caught me staring, his lips peeled back almost involuntarily into a snarl.
The football team . . . Sheffield.
That was when the idea popped into my head fully formed.
Maybe that was my photo project.
Maybe that was the Truth with a capital T that I could uncover.
The people doing these things. The monsters among us.
After school, I sidled up to Sheffield.
“Ash,” he said, sliding his headphones down around his neck. They were oversize, ostentatious. Expensive.
“Word is, when it comes to the football team, you kinda run the show.”
He smiled. His button nose wrinkled. “Those guys are my friends,” he said. “They could have cut me out when I hurt my knee and couldn’t play anymore, but they let me keep on tagging along.”
“People say you do a lot more than tag along.”
He shrugged. “Coach Barrett lets me help with strategy sometimes. Lets me come to games. He says we’re a lot alike, him and me. Survivors. Why the interest?”
You and Connor’s dad are not “survivors,” I thought, but didn’t say it. “I have this photo project. I’d like to take pictures of the team,” I said.
Sheffield nodded, tilted his head to the side like it deserved careful consideration. Didn’t answer right away.
Look at his face and you’d see an angel. I knew there was more behind his perfect facade.
“There’s a party,” he said. “Most of the guys will be there. Come hang out with us, and we can talk about it.”
I frowned. “Can’t I just come to the next practice? Or a game? When everyone’s together?”
“You’re asking for a lot,” he said. “I’m happy to help you out, but I can’t just make people trust you.”
I thought of Bobby, flinching. Furious with me for daring to make eye contact.
“Fine,” I said.
“I’ll text you the information. Give me your number.” He leaned closer when he said it, made his smile slimier.
The idea of him having my number made me instantly queasy.
“DM me,” I said. “I follow you on—”
“Your number,” he said. “That way I can call you, if I need to.”
“Fine,” I said, and gave it to him.
Later, I reached into my pocket to pull out my phone, and almost burned myself on something.
Solomon’s trained penny. It was hot, way hotter than it should have been just from sitting in my pocket.
I held it, and I could see him. Not like some blinding vision or waking dream— This was so clear it could have been a memory, except I was pretty sure I had never seen it before. A shabby little hut under a very big bridge. Solomon, staring into my eyes.
I headed for the classroom where he was supposed to be. Of course he wasn’t there—but Mr. Taglia was, speaking to the teacher. I waited in the doorway.
“You’re looking for him too,” Taglia said to me, on his way out.
“Yeah. Is this about Child Protective Services?”
He frowned, and rubbed his beard. “They sent someone. She’s in my office now. And that’s the last step, before they send the police to do what they call a ‘wellness check.’ So if you see him, or talk to him, you have to get him to come in and meet with a caseworker. You know how cops are, in this town. And if Solomon gets an attitude with them . . .”
Mr. Taglia didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to. I could think up plenty of nightmare worst-case scenarios on my own.
I pinched Solomon’s trained penny between my fingers, felt its sharp edges cut.
Calm down, Ash. You know how this goes. He is not your responsibility. There’s nothing you can do to help him.
Except, I didn’t buy that.
I couldn’t. He was broken, but I had to believe that he could be fixed. And I had to believe that there was something I could do to help him. Even if it was something that would make him hate me forever.