up—”
“Last night my battery was stolen,” I say. “And someone put a toy where the battery should be.”
“What?”
“When I went out this morning, my car would not start. I looked under the hood and something jumped at me. It was a jack-in-the-box someone had put where the battery should have been.”
“Just stay there and I’ll send someone over—” he says.
“I am not at home,” I say. “I am at work. My boss would be angry if I did not come on time. The car is at home.”
“I see. Where is the toy?”
“In the car,” I say. “I did not touch it. I do not like jack-in-the-box toys. I just shut the lid.” I meant
“hood,” but the wrong word came in my mouth.
“I’m not happy about this,” he says. “Someone really does not like you, Mr. Arrendale. Once is mischief, but—do you have any idea who might have done it?”
“The only person I know who has been angry with me is my boss, Mr. Crenshaw,” I say. “When I came in late, that time. He does not like autistic people. He wants us to try an experimental treatment—”
“Us?Are there other autistic people where you work?”
I realize he does not know; he did not ask about this before. “Our section is all autistic people,” I say.
“But I do not think Mr. Crenshaw would do this sort of thing. Although… he does not like it that we have special permits to drive and a separate parking lot. He thinks we should all ride the train like everyone else.”
“Hmmm. And all the attacks have been on your car.”
“Yes. But he does not know about my fencing class.” I cannot imagine Mr. Crenshaw driving around the city to find my car and then smashing the windshield.
“Anything else?Anything at all?”
I do not want to make false accusations. Making false accusations is very wrong. But I do not want my car to be damaged again. It takes my time away from other things; it messes up my schedule. And it costs money.
“There is someone at the Center, Emmy Sanderson, who thinks I should not have normal friends,” I say.
“But she does not know where the fencing group is.” I do not really think it is Emmy, but she is the one person, besides Mr. Crenshaw, who has been angry with me in the last month or so. The pattern does not really fit for her or for Mr. Crenshaw, but the pattern must be wrong, because a possible name has not come out.
“Emmy Sanderson,” he says, repeating the name. “And you don’t think she knows where the house is?”
“No.” Emmy is not my friend, but I do not believe she has done these things. Don is my friend, and I do not want to believe he has done these things.
“Isn’t it more likely someone connected to your fencing group? Is there someone you don’t get along with?”
I am sweating suddenly. “They are my friends,” I say. “Emmy says they can’t really be friends, but they are. Friends do not hurt friends.”
He grunts. I do not know what that grunt means. “There are friends and friends,” he says. “Tell me about the people in that group.”
I tell him about Tom and Lucia first and then the others; he takes down the names, asking me how to spell some of them.
“And were they all there, these last few weeks?”
“Not all every week,” I say. I tell him what I can remember, who was on a business trip and who was there. “And Don switched to a different instructor; he got upset with Tom.”
“With Tom. Not with you?”
“No.” I do not know how to say this without criticizing friends, and criticizing friends is wrong. “Don teases sometimes, but he is my friend,” I say. “He got upset with Tom because Tom told me about something Don did a long time ago and Don wanted him not to have told me.”
“Something bad?”Stacy asks.
“It was at a tournament,” I say. “Don came to me after the match and told me what I did wrong, and Tom—my instructor—told him to let me alone. Don was trying to help me, but Tom thought he wasn’t helping me. Tom said I had done better than Don had at his first tournament, and Don heard him, and then he was angry with Tom. After that he quit coming to our group.”
“Huh. Sounds more like a reason to slash your instructor’s tires. I suppose we’d better check him out, though. If you think of anything else, let