School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,79

she said, her eyes practically rolling back in her head. “Is that food?”

Jackson grinned. “Uhm, sure. How about… here.” He pulled out the chicken pesto he’d meant for himself and the chips and soda, setting them up on her desk with plenty of napkins. “You sit down and eat, and I’ll pin up the rest of these posters, and you can answer my questions. How’s that sound for a bargain?”

Her eyes, which had sort of been lost in the folds of her eyelids, grew wide and limpid. They were a sweet brown. “That sounds like you, sir, are an angel from heaven. I forgot to eat and I didn’t remember until right now.”

He figured. And after that morning, facing the realities of getting Tage’s family back, he was still a little queasy. The heat didn’t help.

She sat down and dug into the windfall, and Jackson got started pushing pins. After a few minutes during which Mrs. Eccleston ate like she’d forgotten what food even was, she finally wiped her mouth, took a drink of soda, and sat back.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I just jumped a stranger for food. That’s so embarrassing.”

Jackson laughed and squared up another poster, this one featuring the title The Cost of War, with a list of everything from economic impact to the cost of the truth to social impact.

“No worries. I’m here to do two things. One of them is nice—Nate Klein says hello, and I imagine Ty Townsend would too, but I haven’t talked to him yet.”

“Oh, that’s wonder—” Jackson heard the exact moment what he was really saying seeped in. “—ful,” she finished weakly. “So, are you Ty’s lawyer? I heard it through the grapevine that he was getting a good one.”

“I’m the PI who works for the good lawyer,” Jackson clarified, making sure the top of the poster was straight before sliding his hands down the front and pinning it from the bottom. “And we think Ty got a raw deal. In fact,” he said, pinning first one tack and then the other, “we think he got set up.”

“Oh thank God.” He straightened to find Mrs. Eccleston taking a heavy swig from his root beer. “That kid has so much promise. I couldn’t believe that he’d do something stupid—like getting caught with drugs—right before he was about to leave for school. His dad died when he was practically a baby, you know. His mom is just the nicest person. She started volunteering when his sister was going here. I….” She took another chug of the soda, then paused ruminatively. “You just worry about kids sometimes. But that kid I never worried about.” She grimaced. “I worried about No Neck—I mean James—though.”

He watched as she deflated where she sat, and his heart gave a little wrench. Ty Townsend and Tage Dobrevk were getting all the attention now because there was still time to save them. But James Cosgrove had been a victim too, and he seemed to have been forgotten.

“Why would you worry about James?” he asked. “He was going to college as well, right?”

She grimaced. “Yeah, but his heart wasn’t in it. I don’t know his family situation, but I know his original name wasn’t Cosgrove.”

Jackson frowned. “What was it?”

She frowned. “Something long and Slavic. I’m sorry. I’m pretty good at pronouncing names when I see them, but once they’re out of sight? Not so much. But this school is about fifteen percent second-generation Russian immigrants and about thirty percent third- and fourth-generation Mexican immigrants.”

“African American?”

“Around twenty percent. There’s this terrible, terrible tension between the kids of color and the Russian immigrants. All sorts of hidden resentments. On both sides.”

“I bet the Russian kids don’t get told to go home, do they?” Jackson said grimly.

“No, they do not.” Poor Mrs. Eccleston—she looked so defeated. “And when we can teach one of those kids to really open up? To love all his classmates, all his teammates, the same? That’s a big deal.”

“Was James like that?” Nate had said something like this, that he wasn’t always the most sensitive of guys, but he’d tried hard to fix that and to do the right thing.

“He was.” Mrs. Eccleston’s voice grew thick. “It’s so unfair. James started out sort of this big bruiser who had no plans to go to college. He told me when he was a freshman that his family didn’t see any need for it. His oldest sister was already going, and he just didn’t have the brains. Me, his math teacher, his history