Mom, Dad, and I sat in Mr. Nickles’ office. He let out a long, deep sigh.
“So…” he said.
We all stared at him expectantly.
“The lady who’ll be prosecuting the case is a real hardass. I knew that, but I thought she’d be a little more reasonable than this. She acknowledges that her job is a lot harder because she hasn’t identified any of your customers. But what she’s saying, and I’m just the messenger here, is that a jury might think your friend’s disappearance is related to the drugs.”
Dad’s eyes went wide and his face transformed into an expression of pure rage that quite honestly scared me. Mr. Nickles held up his hand, silencing Dad before he could start screaming at him.
“I would fight that. To me, it’s irrelevant. It’s not like Curtis was selling hard drugs. Still, her perspective is that he could be involved with non-law-abiding citizens, and the unsolved disappearance of his best buddy isn’t going to help his case.”
“So no plea bargain?” Mom asked.
“Oh, she offered a deal.” He let out another long sigh. “Ninety days in a juvenile detention center, followed by two years of probation.”
“Are you fucking joking?” Dad asked.
“That’s the deal I was able to make. I hoped I could do better. I tried to get it down to sixty days but she wouldn’t go for it. She thinks she’ll win.”
“And what do you think?”
“I don’t think the ‘best friend killed by drug dealers’ angle is going to fly, but I also don’t think a jury will believe that your son is innocent. I’m sorry, it’s a harsh reality, yet that’s the way it is. His incarceration would start after the new year. He’d still get to spend Christmas at home.”
“Oh, well, that’s a treat,” I said.
“Shut up,” Dad told me.
“All I can do is offer my advice,” said Mr. Nickles. “Three months sounds terrible, and let’s be honest, it is terrible, but if you’re standing in front of the judge and he sentences you to five years, you’ll wish you’d taken this deal. With good behavior, they’d probably release you before your sentence was up, instead of transferring you to a state prison when you turned eighteen.”
Mom and Dad looked absolutely shellshocked.
“You can have some time to discuss it,” Mr. Nickles said. “Not a lot of time—the deal expires today. You don’t have to decide right this minute is what I mean.”
“I’ll take the deal,” I told him, and then I began bawling.
18
Friday, December 21st. The last day of autumn.
Mr. Martin had fucked up.
If he wanted to get me off his back, his plan might have worked. Mr. Nickles could have offered me a year of probation, and it’s entirely possible that I would have thought, you know what, I need to just consider myself lucky that it wasn’t worse, suck it up, and let this whole thing go. I think Todd would have agreed that it was okay to let Mr. Martin get away with it, all things considered.
Instead, his plan worked too well. He’d deposited me firmly into the category of “What do I have to lose?”
During the drive home yesterday, I’d pretended to be contrite. Not to the point of lying and “admitting” that the marijuana was mine, but I tried to act very mature and say that I’d be on my absolute best behavior for the three months of incarceration, and then put all of this behind me. If they sent me to boarding school after my release, I’d be the best student that school had ever seen. This was the wake-up call I needed to turn my life around.
Basically, I needed Mom and Dad to feel comfortable going to work. I wanted them to know I wasn’t suicidal. I wanted them to know I wasn’t going to run away. I wanted them to think I was going to sit at home and try to enjoy my freedom before it was taken away.
When Mom suggested that maybe she should stay home, I said that it didn’t matter to me either way. No suspicious “No, no, no, you should go—I’ll be fine!”
She went to work. So did Dad.
Though I was feeling like I had nothing to lose, I knew that wasn’t actually true, and I also didn’t want to be a complete idiot. Showing up on school grounds would be disastrous. I assumed I was quite famous around there, and somebody would report me, which in turn would mean a call to my parents.
So I had to wait until school was over. Since this was a gigantic favor, I thought I needed to ask in person, not over the phone.
When I called a taxi, it was already dark. Fairbanks was down to less than four hours of daylight now.
After he picked me up, the cab driver asked why I wasn’t in school. I said that I’d been expelled. He said, bummer, and that he could relate.
He dropped me off in front of Ed Loreen’s house.
Hey, after our fight (or “fight”) he’d said that if I needed anything, to let him know. I’d see if the bully actually meant it.
I stood there, shivering in the cold, hoping the address in the phone book had been correct. A few minutes later, the bus pulled up to the end of the street, and, yes, Ed got out. There were a few other kids with him, but they’d separated from him by the time he reached his driveway.
Ed grinned. “Hey, pothead, how’s it going? Here to try to kick my ass again?”
“I could use your help.”
“Come on inside. My parents won’t be home for a couple of hours.”
We went inside his house. Ed took off his too-light-for-the-cold-weather jacket and threw it on the living room floor. “I’m not going to make you hot chocolate or anything like that, so don’t even ask.”
“So I take it you heard about what happened to me?”
“Of course I did. Everybody did. You innocent?”
“Yeah.”
“I believe you. You know why? Because I kept asking around to figure
