his knees in the dirt; he was definitely crying.
So I just walked to the car and got in without another word.
Mom peeled out of the lot much too fast. (Hadn’t she seen the three police cars?) She made an illegal U-turn on Maguire Road. Then she took a quick left and a right, and we were on the Florida Turnpike, heading north.
She did not speak for quite a while, but when she did, she really let loose. “They were all getting arrested, right? For drugs, right? This is who you want to spend Thanksgiving with? This is who you want to ride around the country with?”
“The cops just want to talk to Warren.”
“About drugs?”
“No,” I lied. “About criminal mischief.”
“What?”
“Warren, Jimmy, Arthur—they’re not bad people, Mom. You should give them a chance.”
That shut her up for a while. A short while. Soon she was back to haranguing me about the Food Giant, and personal responsibility, and the evil of lying, and the corrupting influence of Aunt Robin’s side of the family.
When I could finally speak again, which was near the Georgia border, I asked her a question that had been on my mind for many miles. “How can you drive like this without stopping?”
She blinked rapidly. Then she said, “What do you mean? I did stop. I stopped last night.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Never mind where. We’re talking about you now, not me.”
And we did talk about me, off and on, for twelve more hours, over three more states, until we finally pulled into the carport behind our house.
It was mind-numbing. And horrible. And I felt so bad for the guys I had left behind.
Things had been going so well. Then everything fell apart.
Damn Boy Scouts.
December
Mom and Dad grounded me for two weeks. That made very little difference in my life, since I hardly do anything but go to school and work, and I was still allowed to do those things. I was not, however, allowed to call Arthur or to contact him in any way. Questions about the Florida trip were eating me up, but I couldn’t get any answers. Arthur had not shown up for school on Monday. He had not shown up on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, either. So all I could do was wait.
Mom and Dad were barely speaking to me, but it seemed like Lilly was going out of her way to. She never came right out and said it, but I think she actually respected what I’d done. (Or did she just appreciate someone else getting in trouble for a change?)
Before school, while I was messing with the N64, she came into the parlor and stood behind me. She asked, “Can you help me find something on the computer?”
“Sure,” I replied, figuring it was another weird sex website she’d heard about, but I was wrong. As I slid over to the Gateway, she said, “Is there a job you can do that helps drug addicts?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I think that’s what social workers do. Ben’s always saying he got diagnosed by a social worker.”
I searched the Internet for “social work careers.” That pulled up several sites, and I clicked on three of them. Lilly read the information over my shoulder. Each time she asked, somewhat disappointed, “Is there another one?”
By the end of the third site, she sounded totally discouraged. “They all say ‘bachelor’s degree.’ What does that mean?”
“Four years of college.”
Lilly shook her head. “No. No way. I’m not doing that.”
She started to leave, but I said, “Wait a minute. Let me type in ‘drug counselor.’ A site titled “Substance- Abuse Counselor” popped up, so I clicked on it. Lilly leaned over my shoulder and read along with me. The very first line, under “Education,” said “high school degree.”
I slid out of the chair. “Here. I’ll let you read this.”
Lilly took my place in front of the Gateway. When Mom called her for the ride to school, she was still reading.
I waited outside Mr. Proctor’s class, like I had for five days, watching for Arthur’s approach. When I finally saw him, I waved happily, but he walked right past me without a word. I turned and followed him inside, slipping into the next desk. I hadn’t gotten one syllable out before he growled at me, “I’m not ready to talk about it yet!”
Mrs. Cantwell hurried into the room, causing everyone to quiet down and face forward. She announced, “Mr. Proctor has called in sick today. I am in the process of getting a sub to cover this class. Until then, is there some work you could do?”
She swiveled and looked at the whiteboard. It had the word
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What page would that start on?”
Jenny thumbed through her vocab book. She replied, “Forty-two.”
Mrs. Cantwell picked up a marker from the desk and printed Page 42 under
Most kids put their heads down.
Arthur slapped my arm with the back of his hand. He pointed to two desks near the window and commanded, “Over there.”
I followed him to the more secluded area. I guess he was ready to talk about it, because he plunged right in. “This is for your ears only. Understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Here’s what happened after you pulled away.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. Then he started talking, as if reading from a play script: “You pulled away. The police dog started going nuts around the truck, barking and scratching at the door like he’d found something. The sheriff lady told Warren, ‘You can open up the truck right now, or I can send for a search warrant. It’ll be here inside of an hour.’
“Warren told her, ‘Go ahead. Send for a search warrant, because I’m not letting you look in my truck.’
“So all three cops and the cop dog stayed right where they were, glaring at us. The sheriff lady walked over and asked me about you. She said, ‘Where’s that other boy?’
“I didn’t know what to say, so I played dumb. I said, ‘Who?’
“Warren jumped in. He told her, ‘That other boy wasn’t with us. I think he was a Boy Scout.’ ”
I laughed in spite of myself, though none of this was funny.
Arthur frowned and continued. “So for the next hour, we had three cop cars on our lot with their lights flashing, and three cops, and a freaked-out German shepherd. How many people do you figure bought Christmas trees from us?”
“None?”
