Shelter Read online

  My phone buzzed again. Ema: GET! OUT!

  Part of me wanted to stay. Part of me wanted to fling open that basement door and take my chances. But another part of me--maybe the part of me that was millions of years old, the animal part, the primordial part that still relied on survival instinct--pulled up. The primordial animal looked at that glowing door and sensed danger behind it.

  Serious danger.

  I moved back to the front of the house. I turned the knob, opened the door, and ran.

  chapter 4

  I MET UP WITH EMA three blocks away.

  "That," she said, cracking a smile for the first time since I'd known her, "was awesome."

  "Yeah," I said. "I guess."

  "So where do you want to break into next?"

  "Funny." And then I couldn't help but smile.

  "What?" she said.

  I started laughing.

  "What?"

  "You," I said. "Selling Girl Scout cookies."

  She laughed too. The sound was melodious. "What, you don't buy me as a Girl Scout?"

  I just looked at her--in the black clothes, with the black nail polish and silver studs in her eyebrow. "Yeah, nice uniform."

  "Maybe I'm the goth Girl Scout." She lifted up her cell phone to show me. "Oh, I typed in the license plate number of that black car. I don't know what you can do with it, but I figured what the heck."

  I had an idea about that. "Can you text it to me?"

  Ema nodded, typed a little, hit Send. "So what are you going to do now?" she asked.

  I shrugged. What could I do? I couldn't call the police. What would I tell them? A man in a dark suit walked into a garage? For all I knew he lived there. And how would I explain to the police my being inside the house in the first place?

  I told her about the photograph, the butterfly emblem, and the light in the basement. When I finished, Ema said, "Whoa."

  "You say that a lot."

  "What?"

  " 'Whoa,'" I said.

  "Actually, I don't. But hanging around you, well, it seems awfully apropos."

  I checked the time on my cell phone. It was time to meet Spoon so we could break into the main office. If I made it through today without going to jail, it would be a miracle.

  "I have to go," I said.

  "Thanks for the adventure."

  "Thanks for being the lookout."

  "Mickey?"

  I turned and looked at her.

  "What are you going to do about Bat Lady?"

  "I don't know," I said. "What can I do?"

  "She told you your dad is alive."

  "Yeah, so?"

  "We can't just let that go."

  "We?"

  Ema blinked and looked away. There were tears in her eyes.

  "You okay?" I asked.

  "Her saying that to you," Ema said. "It's so mean. We should egg her house--except then it would look and smell better." She wiped her face with the tattooed forearm. "I better go."

  Ema started walking away.

  "Wait, where do you live?" I asked. "Do you need me to walk you home?"

  She frowned. "Are you for real? Walk me home? Yeah, right."

  She hurried her step and vanished around the corner. I thought about chasing after her, but she'd dig into me about the fat girl needing protection and I didn't have time for that. Spoon was waiting for me.

  I jogged back to the school and found him alone in the parking lot. I pushed away all images of the Bat Lady and her house. I was still riding the adrenaline wave--might as well see where it led me. Spoon was sitting on the hood of a car.

  "Hey, Spoon."

  "Guess what?" He jumped down from the hood. "Beyonce's favorite makeup is mascara, but she's allergic to perfume."

  He waited expectantly for me to reply.

  "Uh, interesting," I said.

  "I know, right?"

  I should have nicknamed him Random instead of Spoon.

  Spoon led the way toward the side door of the school. Using the card in his hand, he swiped it through the magnetic reader. There was a click, and the door opened. We entered.

  There is no place more hollow, more soulless, than a school at night. The building had been created for life, for constant motion, for students rushing back and forth, some confident, most scared, all trying to figure out their place in the world. Take that away and you might as well have a body drained of all its blood.

  Our footsteps in the long corridors echoed so loudly I wondered if our shoes were amped up. We headed for the main office without speaking. When we reached the glass door, Spoon had the key at the ready.

  "If my dad finds out," Spoon whispered, "well, no revival of Guys and Dolls for me."

  He looked back at me. I guess I should have given him an out here. But I didn't. Maybe because I was that desperate. Or maybe because I don't like Guys and Dolls. He turned the key, and we stepped into the office. The front desk was tall enough so you could lean on it. Three school secretaries sat there. Going behind the desk was, of course, strictly offlimits, so I confess that I got a thrill when we did just that.

  Spoon took out a penlight. "It's darker in there. We can't turn on any lights, okay?"

  I nodded.

  We stopped at a door that read GUIDANCE. I always found that term wonderfully vague. The dictionary definition of the word is "advice or information aimed at resolving a problem." In short, an attempt to help. But to us students, the word--this office--is far more frightening. It conjures up our college prospects, growing older, getting a real job--our future.

  Guidance seemed more like a term for cutting us loose.

  Spoon fished out another key and opened the door. The school, I knew, had twelve guidance counselors. Each had a small private office within this larger office. Most of the doors were unlocked. We entered the first private office. It belonged to a young guidance counselor named Ms. Korty. Like most people, she had left her computer on for the night, settling for "standby" mode.

  Spoon handed me the penlight and nodded for me to go ahead. I sat at her desk and started typing. As soon as I hit the keys, the following prompt popped up: USER NAME:

  PASSWORD:

  Damn! I hit the return key several times. Nothing. I sighed and looked back at Spoon. "Do you have a clue?"

  "The user name is easy," Spoon said. "It's just her e-mail. Janice Korty, so it's JKorty at the school dot e-d-u."

  "And the password?"

  Spoon pushed the glasses up his nose. "That's going to be a problem."

  I tried to think. "How about paper files?"

  "They're kept off-site. And if Ashley is a new student, she probably doesn't even have one yet."

  I sat back, defeated. Then I let myself think about Ashley. My shoulders relaxed. I thought about the way she nervously played with a loose thread on her sweater. I thought about the way she smelled like wildflowers and when I kissed her, she tasted gently like berries. I know how corny this sounds, but I could kiss her all day and never get bored. Barf, right? I thought of the way she would look at me sometimes, like I was the only person in the universe, and then I thought that this girl, the one who looked at me like that, had just vanished without a good-bye.

  It made no sense.

  I had to think harder. Ms. Korty was young--the youngest guidance counselor at the school. Something about that triggered a thought. I turned to Spoon. "Who are some of the oldest guidance counselors?"

  "Oldest? You mean, like age?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Humor me."

  "Mr. Betz," Spoon said without hesitation. "He's so old he teaches a class on Shakespeare because he knew him personally."

  I had seen Mr. Betz in the corridors. He used a walking stick and wore a bow tie. I thought about it--he could definitely be my man. "Which office is his?"

  "Why?"

  "Just show me, okay?"

  When we got back into the hallway, Spoon pointed to the office in the far corner. As we headed toward it, I peered quickl
y into each office we passed, glancing at the computer monitors for Post-it Notes. No luck. Mr. Betz's desk had antique-globe bookends and a matching pen holder with his name engraved on it. There was an old Swingline stapler and several Lucite awards.

  I sat at his desk and turned on the computer. The same prompt came up: USER NAME:

  PASSWORD:

  Spoon looked at me and shrugged. "What did you expect?"

  Exactly this. I opened the drawer on the right. Pens, pencils, paper clips, a box of matches, a pipe. I moved to the middle drawer. I looked inside, smiled, and said, "Bingo."

  "Huh?"

  While it never pays to generalize, those who appear not to be the most computer literate often rely on keeping old-fashioned notes so that they don't forget stuff like user names and passwords. There, on a classic three-by-five index card, Mr. Betz had written the following:

  GLOBETHEATRE1599

  If that wasn't a password . . .

  Spoon said, "Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was originally built in 1599. It was destroyed by fire on June 29, 1613, and rebuilt in 1614 and closed in 1642. A modern reconstruction of it was opened in 1997."

  Terrific. Mr. Betz's first name was Richard. I typed in the RBetz user name and typed GLOBETHEATRE1599 in as the password. I hit the return button and waited. A little hourglass spun for a second before a screen came up: WELCOME, RICHARD!

  Spoon smiled and held up a palm. I high-fived him. I clicked the link for student files and then typed in the name: Kent, Ashley. When her photograph came up--the one we'd both taken for student IDs the first day of school--I felt a hand reach into my chest and squeeze my heart.

  "Man," Spoon said, "no wonder you want to find her."

  If you were creating a graphic dictionary and needed a definition of demure, you would use her expression in this picture. She looked pretty, sure, beautiful even, but what you really felt was that she was quiet and shy and somewhat uncomfortable posing. Something about it--something about her, really--called out to me.

  Her file was brief. Her parents were listed as Patrick and Catherine Kent. Their home phone and address on Carmenta Terrace were there. I grabbed a pen from Mr. Betz's holder and found a scrap of paper.

  "Fingerprints," Spoon said, pointing to the pen. "For that matter, your fingerprints are probably on his keyboard."

  I made a face. "You think they're going to dust for prints?"

  "They might."

  "Then I choose to live dangerously," I said.

  I jotted down the address and phone. I scanned the rest of the page. It said: TRANSCRIPT PENDING. I guess that meant that they didn't have anything from her old school. There was a list of her current classes, but I already knew those. The rest of the screen was blank. I was tempted to check out my own file--just out of curiosity, I guess--but Spoon gave me a look to hurry. I carefully put the pen back in its place, pretended to wipe away all my prints, and followed Spoon out.

  Once outside I checked my phone. Another voice mail from Uncle Myron. I ignored it. Darkness had fallen now. I looked up at the stars in the ink-black sky. It was a clear night.

  "Do you know where Carmenta Terrace is?" I asked Spoon.

  "Sure. It's on my way home. Do you want me to take you?"

  I said I did. And off we went.

  Spoon was on my right, a good foot shorter than me. He watched his feet while he walked.

  "In the morning," Spoon said, "I'm making waffles."

  I smiled. "I know that one," I said.

  "You do?"

  "Donkey to Shrek."

  "You play basketball," Spoon said.

  I couldn't tell if it was a question or statement. I nodded. When you're six-four, you get used to that question.

  "Your name is Mickey Bolitar," he said.

  "Yep."

  "The name Myron Bolitar is all over the gym. He holds almost every basketball record at the school. Most points, most rebounds, most wins."

  As I knew only too well.

  "Is he your father?" Spoon asked.

  "My uncle."

  "Oh." We kept walking. "The basketball team was eighteen and five last year," Spoon said. "They lost in the state finals. The top six players are all returning. They'll be seniors this year."

  I knew all this. It was one of the reasons I, a lowly sophomore, was keeping my own game under wraps for the time being. I hadn't played in town yet, choosing instead to find more competitive pickup games in Newark.

  We passed a football practice for kids who couldn't have been older than ten. The coaches screamed like it was Division I-A. This town was big on athletics. The first week of school I asked someone how many pro athletes had come out of this high school. The answer was one: my uncle. And in truth he never really played pro basketball. He was drafted in the first round but blew out his knee in preseason. Boom, like that, his career was over. Uncle Myron never got to suit up for the Celtics. I thought about that sometimes, about what that must have been like, and I wonder if that explained the tension between him and my dad.

  But it was still Myron's fault--what happened between him and my dad. So I saw no reason to forgive.

  "It's up this way," Spoon said.

  The stone sign in front of what looked like a new development read THE PREMA ESTATES. The area reeked of new money. The streets were well lit. The lawns couldn't have been greener without using an industrial-strength spray paint. The landscaping was almost too polished, like a show that had over-rehearsed. The sprawling mansions were brick and stone, trying to look old and stately but missing.

  When we hit the top of Carmenta Terrace, I looked out at the Kents' house and felt my heart drop.

  Four police cars, all with spinning lights, were parked in front of it. Worse, there was an ambulance in the driveway. I broke into a run. Despite being a foot shorter, Spoon stayed with me stride for stride. There were police officers on the lawn. One was talking to what I assumed was a neighbor. The cop was taking notes. The front door of the Kent house was open. I could see a foyer and a big chandelier and a cop on guard.

  When we reached the curb, Spoon pulled up. I didn't stop. I ran toward the door. The cop at the door turned, startled, and yelled, "Halt."

  I did. "What happened?" I asked him.

  Spoon came up next to me. The cop frowned his disapproval with everything he had. Not just his mouth frowned. All of him joined in. He had a unibrow and Cro-Magnon forehead. They frowned too. He glared at Spoon, then turned it back at me. "And you are?"

  "I'm a friend of Ashley's," I said.

  He crossed his arms over a chest that could have doubled as a paddleball court. "Did I ask you for a list of your friends?" he said with a gigantic sigh. "Or did I ask who you are?"

  Oh boy. "My name is Mickey Bolitar."

  That got the brow up in the air. "Hold up a second. You're Myron's kid?"

  He said Myron's name like he was spitting something really foul out of his mouth. "No. His nephew. If you could just tell me--"

  "Do I look like a librarian?" he snapped.

  "Excuse me?"

  "You know. A librarian. I mean, do you think I'm here to answer your questions? Like a librarian."

  I glanced at Spoon. He shrugged. I said, "No. No, I don't think you're a librarian."

  "You being a wise guy?"

  "Me? No."

  He shook his head. "Smart mouth. Just like your uncle."

  I was tempted to tell him that I didn't like my uncle either. I figured that it would bond us, like pulling a thorn from his paw, but no matter what I felt about my uncle, I wasn't about to sell my family down the river to appease Mr. Cro-Magnon.

  Spoon said, "Officer?"

  He turned hard at him. "What?"

  "You're being rude," Spoon said.

  Oh boy.

  "What did you say to me?"

  "You're a civil servant. You're being rude."

  Cro-Magnon pushed his chest so it was right up against Spoon's face. Spoon did not step back. Cro-Magnon stared down at him and then narrow
ed his eyes. "Wait a second. I know you. You were picked up last year, weren't you? Twice."

  "And released," Spoon said. "Twice."

  "Yeah, I remember. Your father wanted to sue us for false arrest or some crap like that. You're that old janitor's kid, right?"

  "I am."

  "So," Cro-Magnon said with a sneer, "does your dad still clean toilets for a living?"

  "Sure, that's his job," Spoon said, pushing up his glasses. "Toilets, sinks, floors--whatever needs cleaning."

  The guilelessness threw him. I quickly stepped in. "Look, we aren't looking to cause any trouble. I just want to make sure my friend is okay."

  "Big hero," he said, turning back to me. I saw now that he wore a name tag--TAYLOR. "Like your uncle." Taylor made a big production of putting his hands on his hips. "Strange you two being out so late on a school night."

  I tried not to make a face. "It's eight o'clock."

  "You being a wise guy again?"

  I needed to get past this guy.

  "Maybe you two should come with me."

  "Where?" I asked.

  Taylor put his face so close to mine I could bite his nose. "How about a holding cell, smart guy? You like that idea?"

  Spoon said, "No."

  "Well, that's where you're heading if you don't start answering my questions. There's this one we got down in Newark I think will be perfect for you two. I can put you in separate cells. Adult population. One guy we have in holding right now, he's seven feet tall and got these really long fingernails because, well, he likes to scratch things."

  He grinned at us.

  Spoon swallowed hard. "You can't do that," he said.

  "Aw, you gonna cry?"

  "We're minors," Spoon said. "If you arrest us, you need to contact our parents or guardian."

  "Can't," Taylor said with a smirk. "Your daddy is too busy scrubbing toilets with his brush."

  "He doesn't use a brush," Spoon said. "He uses your mama's face."

  Oh boy.

  Something behind Taylor's eyes exploded. His face went scarlet red. I thought that maybe he was having a stroke. His hands formed fists. Spoon stood right there. He pushed his glasses back up his nose. I thought that Taylor was going to punch him. Maybe he would have, but a voice yelled, "Out of the way, coming through."

  A stretcher was heading toward us. We stepped to either side of the door. A man was on it. There were contusions on his face, but he was conscious. A few spots of blood clung to the collar of his white dress shirt. I would guess his age as early forties. Ashley's father? A woman about the same age trailed him. Her face was ghost pale. She clutched her purse as though it could offer comfort.