Lonnie knows there’s something wrong. He got to the bus stop before I did yesterday morning, and when he saw me limping toward him, the first words out of his mouth were “What’s eating you?”
“I hurt my leg,” I said.
“That I can see.”
“I pulled my hamstring.”
“Your what?”
“It’s a leg muscle. I pulled it.”
“How’d you do that?”
“Racing Beverly,” I said.
“Did you beat her this time?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I beat her by a lot.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Lonnie said.
“I guess.”
“Now you want to tell me what’s eating you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s eating you, and it ain’t your hamstring.”
I glanced behind Lonnie at the rest of the guys. They were yakking it up, razzing one another, paying no attention to the two of us. Quentin was sitting in his wheelchair, between Shlomo and Howie, giving as good as he got.
I looked Lonnie straight in the eye. “You’ve got to keep it a secret, all right?”
“How long have we known each other?”
“Yeah, but this is different.…”
“C’mon, Jules,” he said. “You’re hurting my feelings even saying that. You know I can keep a secret. You could stick bamboo shoots under my nails, and I wouldn’t say a thing.”
“Beverly’s my girlfriend.”
“When did that happen?”
“Right after I raced her.”
“Did you kiss her?”
“Three times,” I said. “Don’t say anything to the guys!”
“Bamboo shoots under the nails, remember?”
“Because I don’t think Howie’s going to be too happy about it,” I said.
“He’ll get over it,” Lonnie said. “But he won’t hear about it from me.”
“It feels good to tell someone.”
Neither of us spoke for the next couple of seconds.
Then Lonnie said, “Now you want to tell me what’s really eating you?”
“I just did.”
“All right,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready to tell me, I’m all ears.”
It was between third and fourth periods, as I pushed open the door to the stairwell, that I heard footsteps rush up behind me. “Wait up, Twerski!”
I turned around. “What do you want, Devlin?”
“Just to talk for a minute.”
I sighed. “I’m running late.”
“Did you hurt your leg? I saw you limping.”
“I pulled my hamstring.”
“Ouch!” he said. But his eyes were blank. He had no idea what I was talking about.
“The nurse told me I just have to rest it for a week.”
“That’s good news then, right?”
“I guess.”
“The thing is, I got something I want to say to you.”
“Does it have to be right now?” I asked.
“I was talking to my brother Duane about the thing that happened—he works the Music Express at Adventurers Inn. You met him last year when you showed up with that girl Jillian.”
“I remember, Devlin. Can you get to the point?”
“I just … I didn’t know your friend was sick with cancer,” he said. “I mean, I kind of figured it out when the wig came off. Except I didn’t figure it out quick enough. The thing is, I shouldn’t have done what I did. With the wig, I mean. I shouldn’t have grabbed it and thrown it. He can’t help it that he’s got cancer.”
“Who said he does?”
“Duane said a bald kid in a wheelchair equals cancer.”
“Well, that’s Duane’s opinion,” I said.
“They have parties for ’em when the park’s closed. He gives ’em free rides because … well, you know.”
“Quentin is sick,” I said. “But he’s going to be okay. He’s going to be just fine. You can ask Miss Medina if you don’t believe me. He doesn’t even need the wheelchair. His dad makes him use it.”
“The thing is, I wouldn’t have teased him so bad if I knew. I mean, I got an aunt who died last year.… I saw your friend getting in and out of the chair, and it looked kind of funny, and I just didn’t know.”
“I’m sure he understands,” I said.
“Tell him I’m sorry, would you?”
I turned and started toward the stairs, but he caught me by the shoulder.
“What do you want, Devlin?”
“I just didn’t get it. You know?”
I was tempted to ask him about the painting, about whether he’d scratched my initials into it. But I didn’t since I wanted the conversation to end. Besides, it didn’t matter who’d done what at that point. What mattered was that Principal Salvatore thought I’d scratched up the painting, so I had to write a two-hundred-word essay.
Even so, it was pretty decent of Devlin to say that stuff. I’ve had a full day to think it over, and I could’ve at least shaken his hand. I should’ve shaken his hand. I should’ve let him off the hook. I mean, he was trying to do the right thing. Even if he was trying to do the right thing only because he was feeling guilty and low, it was still the right thing. You can’t expect a guy to be better than he is.
What I don’t get is why Rabbi Salzberg expects me to be better than I am. There’s no reason I should know what I know. There’s no reason he should’ve told me. Why couldn’t he keep it to himself? It’s too much to carry around.
It’s like I had a life, and maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for me, and now my life is knowing what I know. I wake up knowing it, and I walk around knowing it, and I go to sleep knowing it. I even dream about it, but in a backward way. I go to sleep knowing it, but then I wake up, and I realize Quentin’s going to be all right—except I only woke up in my dream, and then I wake up again, for real, and I know the truth again, and it weighs down on me like it did the moment I first found out.
But the worst part of it is I can’t look Quentin in the eye. If Rabbi Salzberg told me because he thought I’d spend more time with Quentin, or he thought I’d be thankful for the time we had left, he couldn’t have been more wrong. I can hardly bear to look at the guy. There, I said it! I love him, I really and truly love him, but I can hardly bear to look at him. The sight of him in that wheelchair … it makes me sick, knowing what I know, knowing he’s not going to be all right, knowing he’s never—
But what’s the point of talking about it?