Bo let AJ use his MacBook anytime he wanted, but AJ had tried that, and ended up being stalked by the Avalon police. Here at school, he was probably just as easily tracked, but he felt somehow less exposed.
This afternoon he ducked into the computer lab, only to find every terminal busy with kids wearing headsets and acting all studious, even though most of them were probably playing games or trying to get past the school’s firewalls into chat rooms. Some girl was hogging his favorite computer, the one in the carrel on the end, surrounded like a three-sided fortress. The girl was pudgy and had frizzy hair. She was in the eighth grade, and her name was Chelsea Nash. He recognized her because she helped out around Dr. Shepherd’s veterinary hospital. AJ had seen her hosing down the dog runs, working around the barn, wheeling barrows of horse manure to a big steaming pile that rose out of the snow like Mount Vesuvius built of turds.
She was friends with Max Bellamy, Mrs. Bellamy-Shepherd’s son. Here was something AJ had noticed about being in a town this small. Everybody was connected to everybody else, eventually.
Not AJ. He didn’t belong here. Didn’t want to belong. What was the point? If he started feeling too much at home here, he might lose sight of the fact that his mother was far away and in danger of never seeing him again. That was the scariest part of all. He was already losing little bits and pieces of her and had to work to bring her back into focus. He shut his eyes, trying to picture her hand, tucking a curl of hair behind her ear and the flash of her eyes as she smiled at him. He listened deep in his mind for her voice, calling his name. The need to be with his mom was like the need to breathe, and his chest felt tight all the time, his stomach in knots.
He decided to kill time by getting his homework out of the way. He had Spanish, which was a no-brainer for him, and English vocabulary, which, unfortunately, wasn’t. The teacher had this word-of-the-day thing going, and she believed the way to learn a word was to study its roots and put it to use. Today’s word was churlish. The root word was churl. According to the textbook, churlish meant rude and boorish, having a bad disposition; surly. Its root came from an old word for peasant. The rude and boorish type. AJ wasn’t quite sure what boorish meant, so he looked that up, too. “Ill-mannered, coarse and contemptible in behavior or appearance…”
He drummed his pencil on the edge of the table, trying to decide how to use the word in a sentence. The churlish boy was sick of waiting around for his turn on the computer, he thought. He got up and paced restlessly. Being ignored by the other kids made him feel churlish.
Lately, AJ was learning a lot of big words, like detention. Deportation. Expulsion.
“You waiting for this computer?” asked Chelsea Nash, taking off her headset. “You’re circling like a buzzard. I can’t stand that. Pisses me off.”
She had a way with words, that was for sure. He indicated the sign that noted a thirty-minute time limit on the terminal.
“Whatever,” she said, gathering up her backpack. “I missed the bus today, so I had to call my grandfather to pick me up. I think he forgot.”
AJ shrugged. “Call him again.”
“My grandparents won’t let me have a cell phone,” she said. “They won’t even have Internet in the house. Pisses me off.”
AJ handed over his mobile phone. “You can borrow mine.” Ever since the New York incident, Bo made him carry a cell phone wherever he went.
“Thanks.” She made the call, and sure enough, her grandfather had forgotten. She exhaled an exasperated breath as she handed back the phone. “Now it’ll take him like an hour to get here, because he drives really slow. Especially when the roads are bad. We had another six inches of snow on Lakeshore Road last night.”
She sure did talk a lot, AJ observed as he took his seat. She acted as though she’d known him forever.
“I’m Chelsea, by the way,” the girl said.
“I know. I mean, I’ve seen you at the animal hospital,” said AJ.
“Oh. You know Dr. Shepherd?”
“Mrs. Bellamy-Shepherd is doing some legal work for my dad.” AJ hoped she didn’t get too nosy.
“Who’s your dad?”
Great. She was going to be nosy.
“His name’s Bo Crutcher.” More and more, it was starting to feel normal, calling Bo his dad. Anyway, that was the simplest explanation, so he stuck with it.
“Oh! I love Bo Crutcher!” Her face lit up and she looked almost pretty, in a chubby way. “I mean, he’s a really good guy. He’s always helping out with fund-raisers and stuff, on account of he’s semifamous.”
Only in a town like this would a guy like Bo be considered semifamous. Of course, if he really did make it with the Yankees, he’d be legitimately famous. “What do you mean, helping?”
“Like last year at the Wildlife Shelter Auction, he donated private baseball coaching to the highest bidder, and people went crazy, bidding on it. And when his band won the battle of the bands the other day, it was a benefit for juvenile diabetes. That kind of thing. Everybody thinks your dad is a totally good guy,” Chelsea concluded. “So did you move here to live with him for good?”
“No,” AJ said swiftly. “Just until…just for a while.”
“Yeah, trust me, I know what ‘a while’ means. My parents left me with my grandparents for ‘a
