CHAPTER 59

 

I decide to walk home. Alone.

Dad needs to stay at the police station to see if he can “repair the damage” I’ve done.

“We put an innocent boy in handcuffs, Jacky,” he says. “At two o’clock in the morning. We dragged him out of bed and hauled him into the station!”

Long story short, this isn’t going to look particularly great on Dad’s job application for a permanent gig on the force: Experience: Writing up parking tickets and arresting the wrong children at 2 a.m.

I reach the boardwalk and gaze up at my old friend the Ferris wheel. Somehow, life seemed a whole lot simpler last Labor Day, when all I had to do was figure out how to scale the giant wheel’s girders like a circular set of monkey bars.

“Why so g-g-glum, Jacky Ha-Ha?” sneers a voice behind me.

It’s Ringworm.

“There’s a phone booth right over there,” I tell him. “I know the number for nine-one-one. My dad’s on the force this summer and—”

“Whoa,” says Ringworm, holding up both his hands. “Chill, girl. Chill. I mean you no harm. Tonight’s a night for celebrating.”

I study his hands. They’re smeared with something red and blotchy.

“Haven’t you heard the news?” he says. “Toxic Trash is gonna be in the Battle of the Bands! We scored the entry fee.” He pulls a thick wad of cash out of his jeans. “Check it out. That’s more money than we need! We’re going to be rock stars and ain’t nobody ever gonna call me ‘fat guts’ again like your dipstick boyfriend, Schuyler.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say, annoyed that everybody seems to think I need one.

“I just happened to see him riding in the back of a police car. What’d he get busted for, huh? Graffiti? Stealing? Ha-ha, what a loser!”

I stare at him suspiciously. He seems to know an awful lot about the trouble that Schuyler was accused of.

“Come on,” says Ringworm. “I’m on my way to Bob’s house. Come celebrate with us. It’s par-tay time.” He peels a five-dollar bill off his money roll. “We can pick up some cheese fries on the way.”

“Where? Everything on the boardwalk is closed. It’s three o’clock in the morning!”

“Too true. So celebrate tomorrow, Jacky Ha-Ha. Buy yourself the j-j-jumbo box with extra ch-ch-cheese and think about m-m-me.”

He hands me the five-dollar bill.

I take it, just to make the skeevy guy go away so I can think.

And I’m figuring you already guessed the rest. When I flip the bill over, I notice that Abraham Lincoln has been rubber-stamped into Mr. Spock. And that red, splotchy stuff on Ringworm’s hands? Up close, I can tell: It’s sticky red spray paint. Because Ringworm is a sloppy graffiti artist who picked up on Schuyler’s “fat guts” Shakespearean insult and turned it into his signature tag to help me frame the wrong guy.

Putting the suspicion on Schuyler was Ringworm’s plan all along. And I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. I’m thinking about calling Dad and handing him another collar.

But what if I’m wrong? What if Ringworm got his five-dollar bill at the grocery store just like Ms. O’Mara did? What if his super-weird hobby is spray-painting red flames on skateboard decks in the middle of the night?

Trust me: When you’ve just made the biggest mistake of your whole, entire life, you’re not super-eager to make the exact same one again.

I’m pretty sure Ringworm and maybe Bob are the real criminals wreaking havoc up and down the boardwalk.

But I need more proof.

And I’m going to need help getting it.