Today it was Matteo’s turn to yell at me for the second time in a week. For the past hour, he had done just that, with Willy sitting silently at the opposite end of the lawyer’s conference table. He had been scolded, too. Apparently my babysitter shouldn’t have left me alone. Groundings due all around.
“We need to get you out of here,” Matteo droned on. “Out of this city, away from all this crap you’ve got yourself caught up in.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere. This is my home.”
Matteo snickered. “Pretty soon your home is going to be an eight-by-eight cell over in New Castle. If the police don’t find some way to tie you into this mess at the house on Milburn, they’ll lump you in with Bellino and the mess he’s been building around himself. They want you off the streets and tucked away somewhere.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“They don’t care.”
Matteo slid today’sPost-Gazetteacross the table to me. A before and after picture of Stella’s house covered most of the front page. “Four dead cops in this fire, twenty-one dead the day before, including a dead detective, one who specifically painted a target on your back. They all think you’re deep in this.”
And Stella was gone, my mind whispered.Missing. Taken.Dead?Gone.
“If the police don’t put you in a box somewhere, this bullshit drinking of yours surely will,” Matteo went on. “My gut says they’re building a case, waiting for you to turn eighteen in January, then they’ll pounce. They charge you with something now and they risk you being tried as a minor. Better to take the next four months and build a solid case. That’s what I would do.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I said again.
This time, he didn’t reply.
Willy spoke next. “Penn State,” he said in a low voice.
Matteo looked up at him. “What?”
“My parents want me to go to Penn State when I graduate.”
Matteo rolled his eyes. “And like I told you, the trust will cover the cost of your tuition as long as you help get Jack in there, too. You’re doing a bang-up job of that, Mr. Trudeau. Those bloodshot eyes of his scream ‘college material.’ Nothing like a solid arrest record to seal up those entrance applications, too. Bang-up job. So proud of the both of you.”
Willy continued to stare at his hands. “We don’t have to wait until next fall. We could go now. We both have enough AP credits. We could take the GED and graduate high school early. They’re offering the SAT in Harrisburg next Thursday. I confirmed this morning. It’s tight, but we could be enrolled at Penn by spring. Fall semester already started, but I’m sure we could make spring.”
Matteo settled back in his chair and mulled this over. “That could work.”
“New friends, new environment, new challenges,” Willy went on. “He stays here and this gets worse, you know it will.”
“I’m not leaving,” I said softly.
“She blew you off, Jack. She played you, and now she’s gone,” Willy said. “Have you shown him the letter?”
Matteo narrowed his eyes. “What letter?”
I glared at Willy. He had no business bringing up the letter. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t—
“Hand it over,” Matteo said, reaching across the table.
I eyeballed him for a second, then dug the letter out of my pocket.
The scent of vanilla filled the room as he unfolded it and read aloud.
Matteo frowned when he finished. “Pip? Like that book,Oliver Twist?”
“Great Expectations,”I corrected him.
“Who is Stella?”
“Just a girl.”
Willy sighed. “Notjust a girl. A girl who seriously mind-fucked him for half his life. She lived in the house on Milburn.”
