Chapter Six

It was shouting. It was faces looming. It was Chaz bellowing and grabbing Jacob from my arms. It was the hallway suddenly being filled with people. It was Matt and Paddy worming their way in, trailed by the other kids from the van. It was the look on their faces: a combination of fear and menace for Paddy as he stared at Jacob; it was fear and what looked a lot like shame on Matt’s. It was my legs giving way so that I ended up on the floor, lost in the vortex of legs milling around me.

I think I blacked out, just for a second. I had no memory of moving, but suddenly Jacob and I were in what I guessed was the first-aid room. Chaz was there, too, alternating between yelling on his cellphone to Luce and lambasting the principal, who looked like he was being confronted by a rabid dog. His stuttered apologies and protestations that this sort of thing had never happened before only made Chaz wilder. The word “police” peppered Chaz’s ranting and caused the principal to go even paler. Chaz got closer and closer to him, invading his space until the principal was flinching. I thought Chaz was going to hit him.

Jacob was curled into a ball on a cot, a blanket draped over his body, while a teacher worked on loosening the knots in his clothes. He was still muttering to himself. I was sitting on a chair, straining to pick out words, to hear Jon’s name, but most of the words were not English. I rested my head on my hands, stared down at the floor, fighting a building wave of nausea. The floor was some kind of tile made to look like pebbles. I focused on the pattern but it was no use; it swirled round like a whirlpool. A flood of acid vomit poured out of my mouth. It didn’t stop until I had nothing left to bring up, but my body kept trying.

I heard Chaz yell, “Where is that bloody ambulance? You did call one, didn’t you?”

I felt weak, my sides still heaving. The shouting was making me feel sick again.

Fragments of sounds and images penetrated. The ambulance was on its way; they’d called it for Jacob already, but perhaps I’d better go to the emergency room, too. A guy in a suit burst into the room and immediately started talking animatedly to Chaz. I caught the words “head office” and figured he was here to take over, maybe to pressure the school to find out exactly what had happened.

It was then, just as I threw up again, that paramedics rushed in. Hands lifted up my head. A girl worked on Jacob. A gurney held the door open. Faces peered in.

“We’ll take them in to check them out.” The voice was calm, soothing amid all the bluster. “The little one could have hypothermia. The big guy, who knows. Have their parents been contacted?”

“They are both from Medlar House, the group home. I’m one of the social workers there,” Chaz said, not yelling now. He sounded worried. “I’ll come with them.”

The paramedic who’d been looking me over squatted down next to me. “Can you walk, big guy?”

I didn’t want to risk opening my mouth, so I just nodded. He held out a hand to help me up, which I ignored until I stood up and the room started to spin around. He steadied me, then called for Chaz and the principal to help me stay on my feet while he helped his partner load Jacob on the gurney.

The crowd parted silently as our sad little procession made its way out to the ambulance. My head was throbbing and my stomach roiled, so it was a relief to lie flat on the cot in the ambulance. They’d tried to uncurl Jacob when they moved him but without any luck. He lay with his face to the wall, his back curved into a bow. His muttering had stopped and the silence was good. I didn’t want to hear his voice or any others.

There was a flurry of chatter just before we left.

“What about the others? What should I do about the other kids?” The principal’s voice was high-pitched and panicky.

In contrast, Chaz’s was a low growl. The anger was still there, but controlled now. He gestured to the suited stranger with a broad sweep of his hand. “My boss is here. He’ll take charge and get them home. You did a shit job looking after Jacob when he was supposedly in your care, so I wouldn’t trust my kids to you.”

The principal looked as if he was going to say something in return, but Chaz was already getting into the back of the ambulance. Chaz’s boss glared at the principal, too.

I don’t like hospitals. I don’t like doctors. You’re smart enough to know why. If I’d felt sick before, the high-pitched, screeching siren of the ambulance made it worse. I could feel beads of sweat on my face. It helped if I shut my eyes.

There’s little point in describing in detail what happened when we reached McMaster Hospital—all standard stuff, except for no waiting around. We were rushed straight into the ER, put into adjoining rooms. Chaz did his best, bopping between them until I growled at him to stay with Jacob.

The doctor who examined me was good. He looked me in the eyes, didn’t let his gaze slide away from my ruin of a face and then sneak looks back, like you would with the car crash you pass at the side of a road. Nothing major wrong with me, maybe a bit of shock. He was all for sending me out to the waiting room until Chaz and Jacob were done, but I told him no. I was waiting with Chaz. He didn’t argue. Wise man.

A doctor and a nurse were working on Jacob. The nurse was cleaning him up, gently removing mud from his hair, cleaning up the abrasions on his legs and arms. The bastards must have dragged him along the ground after they’d stripped and hog-tied him. Somehow, she’d straightened him out from his curled-up ball. He lay on the bed in the position I knew so well, flat on his back, arms by his sides. The only difference from his nighttime posture was the shivering that shook his body nonstop. His eyes were open and staring straight up at the ceiling, but I would have wagered big bucks that he wasn’t there. It was weird. He’d shut down. Chaz knew it, too, because when the doctor tried to get Jacob to do some dumbass test, counting backward in twos, he told him not to waste his breath, that Jacob rarely spoke. I think that clinched it for the doctor: he was going to keep Jacob in the hospital for observation. If I’d been him, I would have, too. If your patient didn’t talk, didn’t answer questions, how could you assess them unless you just watched over them? Before he left to arrange a bed for Jacob in the kids’ ward, he told Chaz that he thought Jacob would be okay. He was bruised, but nothing was broken. Someone had used him as a punching bag either before or after they’d tied him up. He had probably been out there a couple of hours; he was suffering from mild hypothermia. The hospital staff would observe him overnight to ascertain if he had a head injury.

“Ah, shit, Mike, who could do such a thing?” Chaz looked close to tears. “Jacob’s a little strange, but for Christ’s sake, he’s harmless. It would be like kicking a puppy.”

I didn’t say anything. There was no point. I knew that Paddy was behind this, but I had no proof, and I doubted that Jacob would say anything. I’d get him, though. Get him later, when he thought he was safe and had gotten away with it.

I realized that Chaz was looking at me hopefully. “Could be anyone,” I muttered. “Jacob’s an equal-opportunity target.”

Chaz took one of Jacob’s hands and began gently rubbing it. “I knew school wasn’t easy for him, that he probably got picked on, but he never complained, and nothing this bad has ever happened before. By law, I have to send him . . .” His voice trailed off.

“He hides.” I surprised myself by speaking. “He has a bolt-hole somewhere out on the field where he goes when he’s not in class. If I noticed that, other kids would have, too. It would be easy to corner him there, with no one around to see or stop them. That’s where I looked for him. He was under the bleachers.” I didn’t mention what else I had experienced under there. No one would believe me.

Chaz was shaking his head at that thought when the doctor came back, followed by an orderly. “Mr. Mazzone, they’re ready for him on the third floor, if you want to go up and get him settled. You can, of course, stay with him. There’s a couch in his room.” He hesitated, looking in my direction but not looking at me directly. “But . . .” He didn’t need to say any more.

“One of my coworkers, Lucy Evans, will be here shortly.” I don’t think I’d ever heard Chaz sound so formal. “She’ll stay with Jacob. Mike and I will head back to Medlar House once she gets here.” He motioned to me to follow him. The doctor looked like he wanted to nix this, but I glared balefully at him. He didn’t say anything, which was good.

When I got to the kids’ ward, I almost wished that the doctor had been more assertive. I stayed in the play area near the elevators while Chaz did the necessary. Little kids stare, and they say exactly what pops into their heads; they have no filters.

“What’s wrong with that boy’s face? Why is it all twisted? It looks like it’s owie.” This was from a kid who looked about four, and was so frail that you could almost see through him, so thin that you felt that if it wasn’t for the metal IV pole attached to his arm he might float up into the air and drift away. His mother shushed him, trying not to look at me.

The kid was still staring.

“I had an accident.” I spared him the smile.

He looked like he wanted to ask more, but his mother, in a voice that was too cheery and too loud, suggested that they go and see if the foosball table was free now. He followed her down the corridor, his head craned around on the fragile stalk of his neck to watch me.

“Mike, where are they?” Luce flew out of the elevator, her face flushed with the cold. “Are you all right?” She leaned in to hug me. I couldn’t help it; I stepped back and her arms closed on empty air. I don’t do hugs.

“In there.” I pointed to the swing doors that led to the ward. I thought that she’d go inside straight away, but she stayed for a moment, looking at me.

“What?” It sounded ruder, more aggressive than I meant it to.

“You didn’t answer me.” She smiled and I remembered then why the kids all liked her. When she was talking to you, you felt that you were the only person who mattered to her.

“Yeah, I did.”

She still didn’t move, and her smile grew broader. “Yeah, you did, but only one of my questions. How are you? Chaz said that you got sick, too.”

“I just puked, is all. I’m okay now. They said it was probably shock.”

She patted my arm, tentatively, like I might shy away. “If you say so, Mike. Make sure that Chaz keeps an eye on you, okay?” With that, she went.

A minute later, Chaz was there, looking more serious than I was used to seeing him. “Let’s go. Luce left the van in the parking lot. If they let Jacob out tomorrow, I’ll come back for them then.”

The drive back to Medlar House was silent. I think Chaz knew that he would get nothing out of me. I hunched down in my seat. I couldn’t face thinking about what I’d seen and heard under the bleachers, not yet, not until Jacob was back. It was Paddy and maybe Matt who occupied my thoughts now. I just didn’t get why they’d go after Jacob like that. What was the point? I’m no saint, but if I hurt someone it’s for a reason: to let them know that they shouldn’t mess me around; to make a point, you might say; or to put someone in their place. It’s calculated, and there is never malice involved. Jacob didn’t do anything to anyone. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered what Matt’s role had been. He hadn’t been smirking like Paddy. I could believe that it gave Paddy some sort of sick pleasure to hurt a kid who was so defenseless. He was a shit. That’s all it was. A shit who needed to be dealt with. But Matt . . .

Not surprisingly, those two were not anywhere to be seen when we finally got back to Medlar House.

Chaz had surprised me by suddenly pulling into a small strip mall about ten minutes away from the home, parking in front of a dingy-looking Chinese restaurant.

“Dinner will be done when we get back, and I don’t feel like foraging for leftovers. They’ve managed without us this long, so another hour won’t make much difference.” Chaz turned and looked at me. His face looked drawn and tired in the harsh glare of a street lamp that shone in through the van’s window. “Come in if you want; if not, tell me what you want and I’ll get it to go.”

I went in with him. Mom never had the money for us to eat in restaurants, so I always got a kick out of eating out, even at a run-down joint like this one. Chaz was a man after my own heart, and went for quantity rather than quality. He ordered enough food for a family of four, and we ate it all. I wasn’t expecting him to question me further about Jacob, and he didn’t disappoint me.

At Medlar House my least favorite social worker, Bob, was sitting in the television room. He jumped up as we came in. “Oh, you’re back.”

I had a feeling that he really wanted to add “at last” to the end of that, but thought better of it.

I slouched over to a chair and sat down heavily. I wasn’t ready to go upstairs to my room just yet.

Bob gave me a look of barely concealed dislike. I grinned back at him, a big, shit-eating grin, until he broke off eye contact and turned to Chaz.

“Yeah.” Chaz sounded as tired as I felt. “We stopped to get something to eat. I knew dinner would be over. I hope you didn’t have any problems?”

Bob said, “Well, things weren’t exactly normal, and everyone was a bit tense, but I kept it all together.” He smiled then and looked expectantly at Chaz like a dog waiting for a pat on the head.

Chaz was moving around the room restlessly. “So, no problems at all?” There was a slight hint of disbelief in his voice.

“Depends what you mean by a problem.” Bob’s laugh was too hearty for my liking. “That little kid, Adam. He came to me crying, got all hysterical about how he was frightened to be in his room. God, he’s a lot to take at the best of times, but when he’s crying . . .”

Chaz cut him off, his voice sharp. “Did you go check out his room?”

“Of course I did.” Bob bristled. “There was nothing there. His roommate was asleep. In fact, my going in woke him up. Then I had two of them to deal with.”

Shit, I had completely forgotten about Adam. I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

“So, what did you do?” Chaz was more alert now, his tiredness fading.

“Oh, I just told him to knock it off and get back into bed. If you ask me, it’s mostly attention-seeking on his part. He’s used to being the center of attention; you remember about his demented mother.”

“Geez, I guess you are just Mr. Compassion.” Chaz kept his tone light, but his disgust was obvious.

“Hey!” Bob was working himself up to be angry. “I do my best even if I’m not a saintly daddy-figure like you.”

“Ah, sorry, sorry.” Chaz waved a hand. “It’s been a long and strange day. I’m tired, and I’m sure it was probably nothing that got Adam worked up. I’ll take it from here.”

You could see that the other guy expected more, but he was shit out of luck. He hovered around for a few seconds then started to drift toward the door.

Turning to me, Chaz said, “You’d better get some rest, Mike. I’m going to write up some notes on what happened, then I’ll hit the sack, too.”

He stared hard at me then. “Are you sure you don’t have any idea who did this to Jacob?”

I shook my head. It was tempting to come clean because it meant that we would keep talking, and it had just hit me like a tidal wave that the last thing I wanted was to be alone, especially in the room that I shared with Jacob.