“No,” Merit said, jaw tight. “We need to go. Now.”
“He’s going to say… he’s going to tell. We might as well get help,” whispered Creed. “Oh God, I might go to jail. I turned eighteen last week.”
Merit shook his head and went over to pick up the baseball bat from where I’d dropped it on the ground. “What are you doing?” I asked, trembling hard. I clasped my hands together and they still wouldn’t stop shaking.
He raised the bat and brought it down on Peter’s head. Creed and I stared, too stunned to do anything. Merit breathed hard and fast as he turned toward us, shoulders heaving with his breaths.
“Merit!” Creed whispered.
“Now he won’t tell anyone anything!” Merit yelled.
“We fucking killed a guy,” Creed sobbed out.
“He’s not dead,” I murmured while watching Peter’s back rise and fall with his breaths, but I grabbed Creed’s arm and Merit took the other one. We ran the same direction the other boys had gone, and Merit took the bat with him.
Later that night, Creed heard from Mirabelle Scalise, who heard from Jordan Platt, that one of Peter’s friends had taken him to the hospital. The next day at graduation the police talked to everyone, but no one who’d been in the dugout wanted to get into trouble.
Everyonelied.
“No, I never saw a thing,” I said.
“Merit walked me home after dinner at Casey’s house. His sisters and Mom made us a graduation buffet for a late lunch. It was really nice.” Creed smiled at the officer, and I was relieved to see that he looked normal. Not a single thing about him appeared guilty.
“Yep, my boyfriend and I don’t fight.” Merit looped his arm around Creed’s shoulders, and I could see the cops’ attitudes toward the two of them shifting. The cop who had written down our names and phone numbers actually crossed something out in his notebook. Merit knew people, and he could lie any time of the day or night, but we’d both been worried about Creed. Seemed the cops didn’t think two gay guys could hurt anyone. And I had my parents and sisters as an air-tight alibi for all three of us.
Peter’s friends said the same thing. They’d all miraculously been home, even though half of them probably hadn’t seen their parents during daylight hours in years. They were the same assholes, with nothing to do, who hung around outside the 7-Eleven all the time. The guy who’d taken Peter to the hospital just happened to stumble by him bleeding in the dugout. It was a miracle.
And all of the parents shook their heads after the cops left.
“Why they dragged that mess here, I’ll never know,” my mother grumbled while my sisters lined Creed and Merit and me up to take more graduation pictures near the sign for our high school. And it wasn’t until I walked through the doorway of my first college class that fall that I felt like we’d really gotten away with something.
And we had.
And it wasn’t right, but I didn’t want to go to prison, either. And after all, Peter had started it.
7
Angel
The weird rubbery smell of the cast plaster burned my nose, and I sneezed, feeling silly.
“Aw, you’re like a little mouse.” The nurse, Mindy, was just finishing up my cast. When she leaned closer to my wrist, she grinned and blew at a strand of her pink hair that slipped down in front of her face.
“I like your color,” I said to her, finally relaxing a bit now that my wrist was immobilized and not in as much pain. She reached into the pocket of her scrubs and pulled out a few stickers.
“Oh, I’m not a kid,” I mumbled.
She shook her head. “Aren’t we all kids at heart?”
My fingers wiggled around the strip of the cast that ran between my thumb and forefinger on my left hand. Ididwant a sticker. She gave me a knowing nod and held my choices up in front of her. Prince Zuko fromAvatarwas one of the characters. Excitement bubbled in me. I pointed at him because he was an all-time favorite of mine, and she peeled the sticker off the shiny backing. I felt ridiculously happy as she carefully put him on my cast, centered on the back of my hand.
“Good choice. I knew you’d like the stickers because you’re not boring.” She pointed at my hair. “I love your color, too! It’s fun.”
After Mindy threw away the sticker trash, she rearranged my cast on a pillow at my side. “You’re going to want to sleep that way,” she said, poking at the pillow. “So, if you sleep with someone, you’re going to have to make sure your arm isn’t near them or it’s bound to end in you waking up a million times a night. No fun at all.”
“Okay.”
She lifted her hands and stretched the kinks out of her back with an “oh” and then scooped up a couple of pieces of paper from the small countertop at her back. She gave me a strangely perky wince as she handed the papers to me. I stared at the top page and groaned internally when I read Hand Therapy Department on the heading.
