CHAPTER 58

 

Dad and I come out of the interview room after I tell a detective everything I told my parents.

When we get to the hallway, we practically bump into Schuyler. He’s in handcuffs. Two cops are guiding him by his elbows.

“What’d you tell these guys?” he asks, sounding mad.

“The truth,” I say.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, Jacky.”

“Really? What about stealing Vinnie’s money?”

“Jacky?” says Dad, shaking his head. “You two don’t need to be talking to each other right now.”

“Or ever!” I say, because I’m madder at Schuyler than he is at me. He made me turn into a rat fink. He made me turn him in.

Schuyler shakes his head and shoots me a nasty look as they lead him into the interview room.

“You want to sit in on this, Mac?” asks a detective.

“Yes, sir.” Dad turns to me. “Wait for me out front, okay?”

I nod. “Yes, sir.”

I head into the small waiting room. One of the scoop-bottomed plastic seats is already taken.

By Ms. O’Mara.

And for the first time since we met all those months ago in detention hall, she isn’t exactly thrilled to see me.

I don’t know what to say. So I try to break the ice with a line from our show. “‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.’”

“There’s no moonlight, Jacky,” says Ms. O’Mara, even though, come on, she is playing Titania. “The clouds blocked it all out tonight. The same way they, apparently, blocked out your brain. What were you thinking?”

“That Schuyler needs to give my boss back his money box.”

“He didn’t take it.”

“Oh, really? Then why did he have that Mr. Spock five-dollar bill?”

“You mean like this one?” she snaps open her pocketbook (which is what we used to call a purse) and shows me a defaced Lincoln. “Or this one?” She shows me another.

“Wh-wh-where…”

“At the grocery store. And the gas station. This one”—out comes a third Spock-Lincoln—“came from Latoya Sherron because I lent her five bucks last week when she wanted to go grab a coffee. These things are all over Seaside Heights. So when the police are done interrogating Schuyler, they can come after me and Latoya.”

“Wh-wh-what about the W-W-Walkman?”

“Mine,” says Ms. O’Mara. “I let him borrow it. That was my Paula Abdul tape.”

Now that I think about it, I guess not many college professors at Princeton are all that into pop songs like “Rush Rush” or “The Promise of a New Day.”

“Jacky?” says Ms. O’Mara.

“Y-y-yes?”

“Slow down. Give your mouth a chance to catch up with your brain.”

I nod. Ms. O’Mara is the one who helped me conquer my stutter, back when we were doing You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and I had to enter a public speaking competition. Since she’s still trying to help me, I realize that she doesn’t totally hate me, even though she probably should.

I’m about to ask about my last shred of evidence, the graffiti, when the dispatcher behind the desk takes a call.

“Seaside Heights Police… Yes, ma’am.… On your wall? Red spray paint. And you saw the perpetrator? Which way did he run?… Okay. I’m sending out a car.… No, ma’am. I don’t think the boy meant anything personal by it. Fat Guts is just what this kid tags every time he grabs a can of red spray paint.”

I look at Ms. O’Mara.

Oops.

Schuyler didn’t do the Shakespearean-insult graffiti, either. Unless, of course, he just slipped out of the interview room while we weren’t looking so he could spray Fat Guts on someone else’s wall.

He’s not a criminal. He’s just a high school kid who can’t catch a break.

Especially that summer, when I made the biggest mistake of my whole, entire life.

I made the police arrest an innocent kid.