Period 8 - By Chris Crutcher Page 0,49
crazy brain is telling me one thing,” Paulie says.
“What’s that?”
“Arney Stack is in this somehow.”
Logs motions for them to go inside. “How so?”
They walk in and sit at the deserted counter. A young man, probably college age, runs a wet rag over it. Dim light reveals an empty room. Both order shakes; chocolate for Paulie, vanilla for Logs.
“Three different times lately he’s given me bullshit, like exactly opposite of what’s true when there was no reason for it. Like he was lying just to see if he could. When I caught him he gave me more bullshit.”
Paulie tells Logs about his conversation with Justin earlier in the day, then about how he’d asked Arney to take Mary home the night of his big screwup—no pun intended—and how Arney lied about going to meet the Thumpers. “Either he was going someplace he didn’t want me to know about or he was, like, setting me up with Mary for some stupid reason, and that seriously doesn’t make sense. He’d said he was spending time with her, but then he gives me some crap excuse why he can’t take her home.”
Logs frowns.
“I know Mary isn’t telling me everything,” Paulie says. “I’ve tried to call her on it, but she just plays dumb. She’s like this hurt little kid one minute and then like a . . . I don’t know, a fucking vampire. And I ain’t talking Twilight. I don’t know. It’s crazy; there’s no reason for anything.”
“Or one you don’t see.”
“Yeah, that. And fucking Stack has his hand in everything. He tells me it was Hannah’s idea to start hanging out with him. I can’t prove it, but no fucking way. That’s not Hannah. She might rub my face in it, letting me see her with him if he went to her, but no way she sets it up.”
The shakes are placed in front of them. “Thanks, man,” Paulie says to the kid behind the counter. “I could drink five of these a day,” he says to Logs.
Logs lays his straw on the counter and drinks directly from the glass. “Keep going.”
“Okay. Back when Mary first ‘went missing,’ Arney tells us he knows Mary better than anyone, that she’ll be back and okay, wouldn’t screw up her scholarship. When I asked her if she has any kind of relationship with him, she says, ‘Yeah, I hate his guts.’ Doesn’t go into it, like every other goddamn thing. He tells us Mary’s old man is a cool guy if you just get to know him—not scared of him at all. Turns out Mr. Wells knows him as some community service partner for Mary. Period. I mean, why’s Arney even bringing her up? Who gives a shit if he knows her better than the rest of us? He had to be wondering the same things we were wondering when she showed up missing.” He takes a sip of his shake. “I guess you can’t show up missing, but you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“Then,” says Paulie, “according to Justin and Tak, he and Hannah show up on the other side of Diamond Lake, where Justin and some of his crew were smok—studying, and goes into this rant about girls with no core. Even takes a shot at Hannah. Gets so nasty, Hannah won’t ride home with him. One of his ‘no core’ girls was Mary. Another one was Kylie.”
“No core?” Logs says.
“Yeah, like they need somebody else to tell them who they are.”
Logs sits a moment, considering. “What else?”
“I sure don’t buy his plea for world peace in P-8. Gives us all that crap about his legacy as ASB prez. ‘We gotta take care of each other.’ Then he talks this shit about Mary and Kylie. Then there’s his big business deal.”
“I guess I don’t know about that.”
“Supposedly his old man gave him a bundle to invest. Hooked him up with some business guys downtown and bankrolled him big enough to make it worth their while. Arney says his dad wants him to know how to handle real money.”
“You think that’s related?”
“I don’t know that any of this is related,” Paulie says as they head back to the car. “I just know I have the same gut feeling about all of it. Shit, it’s probably just the feeling I have about Arney since he started hanging out with Hannah.”
Logs watches Paulie struggle with it. If all this is related, there are some really loose strings.
“Anyway,” Paulie says, “stuff either makes sense or it doesn’t,