Between Friends (26 page)

“What’s happening for Letty at school today? She have any tests you know about or anything?” he asked.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

He nodded and took a look at his watch. “All right. I’ll look into it, but that doesn’t mean I approve of her seeing him.”

“Of course,” I said.

He sighed and gripped the arms of his chair before pushing himself up.

“I’ll go home and get ready for work and go talk to her before I head in,” he said. “I’ll check out the records, see if he’s in the system yet.”

His relief at having something concrete, something he was good at, to do, was nearly palpable. I wished for that kind of task, something I could throw my physical self into. He kissed me before striding off, leaving me to wait, and think.

Everyone turned around and looked at her when the intercom blared her name. For a second she was just happy to get out of class, but she knew they were all thinking it had to do with Seth. Everyone had been asking her where he was, and she just had to say she didn’t know.

It killed her to not have her cell phone again, though she guessed he didn’t have his either if he was in some juvenile detention center or something. But they had to at least let him make calls, right? She was thinking that maybe she would go to the school counselor’s office, but then what if they found out Seth wasn’t living at home?

Mom wouldn’t help, but maybe she could talk to Aunt Cora alone and she might do something. Even if it was just find out where he was and if he was okay. Letty had been making notes in her spiral about where they were in Venice, and his cousin’s name, and anything else she could think of so she wouldn’t forget anything, when they called her to the office.

It wasn’t until she was out the door that she got scared about why they were calling her.

The doors to the office were always propped open, so she saw the cop before he saw her. His back was to her at first, but then he turned to the side a little and she saw it was her dad. She still wasn’t used to seeing him in his uniform, and he had never, ever, not one single time, showed up at her school.

His being there made her more nervous than if it had been a whole room full of cops.

He still hadn’t seen her, and she looked toward the front doors, considering just walking right out then and running for the mall, an easy place to hide. But then she thought about what he might actually be doing there, and only one thing came to mind: Something must have happened to her mom.

She ran the last few yards, and when he saw her, he had such a weird look on his face that she thought for sure she was right.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, already in his arms.

“Hey, nothing’s wrong,” he said, but he leaned down and kissed the top of her head, and she couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. He let her go and looked at the secretary. “Is there an empty office?”

She shook her head. “No, but you can talk in the library. Letty knows where it is.”

They walked down the hall, and Letty was glad she had her biology book to press against her stomach, because she definitely felt like she was going to get sick. She wished he would just start talking instead of making her wait.

But they finally got to the library and she took him to the back, where they kept all the old computer stuff. A couple of the guys who had been at the party watched them go by. She ignored them, but her dad must have given them his cop stare or something, because they got up and left right away.

She dropped her books on the table and sat down after her dad did.

“What’s wrong?” she asked again.

He pulled his little notebook out of his shirt pocket and sat with his silver pen in his hand.

“There’s nothing wrong, really,” he said. “Nothing you need to worry about, okay?”

He gave her a hard look, like he was trying to stick
okay
in her brain. She nodded.

“Now, your mom already told me about you skipping school yesterday—”

He held his hand up as she opened her mouth to defend herself. She was glad he stopped her, because she really didn’t know what she was going to say.

“We’ll deal with that. We’ll talk about it later. I’m not happy about it, no. But your mom told me about Seth. He’s in some trouble, right? Your mom seems to feel as though he doesn’t have anyone to help him. So, as long as things aren’t out of control, I thought I’d see what I could do.”

“I—really?” she asked.

“Is this a decent guy, Letty? You need to tell me now, because if I stick my neck out and find out he’s a jerk to you or involved in something heavy, then I’m going to be pretty ticked off. I don’t want to regret this, and I don’t want you to, either.”

“No,” she said quickly. “Oh, Dad, I don’t know what’s happening.”

“All right, we’re going to figure it out. I already know what he told your mother. I want to hear about the two of you first. How long have you two been . . . together?”

She could tell it was hard for him to ask her like that. And it was definitely hard to answer, but if anyone could really help, he could. So she just told him the truth, and told him everything she knew about Seth’s dad having some guy move into the house and Seth leaving, and about him sleeping in his car, and at friends’, and in the house down the street.

“The gray and white house?” he asked. She nodded, and he sighed and rubbed his forehead really hard. “He do any damage in there? Vandalize anything, steal anything?”

“No! I mean—I don’t think so. It was just for a few days. Dad, he’s not a criminal, he’s not.”

“Technically he is, Letty. He broke into a house and squatted there. In our own neighborhood. That’s against the law, and that makes him a criminal. You should have told me.”

“You would have had him arrested. You wouldn’t have helped him. He didn’t have anywhere else to go, Dad. What was he supposed to do?”

“He could have stayed with friends—”

“He did, as long as he could. Parents don’t just let someone move in without trying to find out what’s going on.”

“What was going on that was so bad?” he asked. “Did his father hit him? Was there other abuse?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “He would never take me to his house. I think he was embarrassed. I mean, I know they don’t have much money, and I didn’t want to ask and, you know, make him feel bad.”

He nodded then, like he really did get it. He made another note on his note card. “Okay, now tell me everything you remember about Venice: names, addresses, anything you can think of.”

She pulled her spiral out and pushed it across the table to him, opening it up to the page she’d been making notes on.

“Good girl,” he murmured with a funny smile, ripping it out of the notebook as he studied it and sliding the spiral back across the table to her. She told him everything she could remember, and he made notes next to hers as she talked.

When she finished, he asked, “Nothing else? Nothing you’re holding back because you think you might get in trouble? It’s not a trick question, Letty. I can’t say that I won’t get upset, even angry, but listen . . .”

He scooted his chair over next to hers and leaned toward her, placing his hands on either side of her face and making sure she was looking right at him. “Letty, no matter what has happened, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what you’ll ever do, I love you more than anything else in my life, and I always will. You know that, don’t you?”

“Dad?” she asked. It looked like he might start to cry. He was scaring her. “Are you okay?”

He tilted his head and looked up at the ceiling, taking a deep breath. “I am fine, sweetie,” he said after he looked at her again. “I just want to make sure that you know that you don’t have to do everything yourself, okay? It’s all right to let me and your mom worry about things sometimes. When you have a problem, or one of your friends needs help, you can talk to us.”

“I know,” she whispered.

He scooted back and looked away, up the hall of bookshelves. He had his chin tilted up, and he looked about a million miles away. Her mom would always tease him and say he was thinking deep thoughts. Letty didn’t know what to do, so she just stayed quiet.

He started talking again, but he didn’t look at her.

“You know, I met your mother in middle school. We were in P.E. together, and we were playing softball. I pitched her an easy hit, and she plowed it right at me, and I fell in love with her. Right then, just like that. I don’t know why her hitting that ball did it. It was a long time before she loved me back.”

He looked at her then.

“So, how much does this guy mean to you, Letty?”

She wanted to be able to act like she understood what he was saying about her mom. She did think it was really cool that they met so long ago, and that they were even together back then. But then they went and got married right out of high school. Just the thought of it all as a whole freaked her out. She loved Seth, but she didn’t look at him and see marriage and babies like her mom and dad did, not even in a house with a plane next to it.

“I think I love him, Dad, I do, but . . . I don’t want to get married or anything.”

“Well, that’s good, because when all this is over, I’m going to have to think about whether you’re going to be seeing him at all.”

She began to protest, but he held his hand up.

“Look, I want a lot of things for you, Letty. I want you to be a good student, I want you to be smart and stay out of trouble, and I want you to go to college. But I want you to enjoy your life, too. I want you to love and be loved by a good person. But I don’t want you to think that because your mother and I met and married so young that you’re supposed to do that, too, and I certainly don’t want you seeing someone who’s already in this much trouble at this age.”

“Dad, he’s just . . .” She trailed off with a sigh. “He’s my first boyfriend. I mean, aren’t you supposed to move on from them anyway? They’re your ‘first love,’ right? Like, you look back on them later.”

He laughed. “Well, yeah, only I’m still with my first love. I’m just as in love with your mother as I was when I was fourteen, no matter what problems we might be having right now. She had—she’ll tell you sometime, I guess—she had other boyfriends. And, maybe I wasn’t even her first love. I don’t know.”

He stopped talking then, but not like he wanted her to say anything, more like he was just thinking, or remembering, so she stayed quiet.

“You’re a smart kid, Letty,” he finally said, slapping his hand lightly on the table and then leaning over and kissing her cheek.

“I’m going to go see what I can do about this boy, okay? If we can help him, we will.”

She didn’t know what to say. She realized that she hardly ever said
thank you
to her parents, because she wanted to say it now, and she knew it was what she should say, but it seemed so hard. She nodded and looked down at her ballet flats.

He waited a moment and then stood up, pulling her cell from his pocket and handing it to her.

“Keep it on. If you get in trouble with anyone, you have them call me. I’ll stop in the office before I leave to make sure they know you’re allowed to accept phone calls today. Put it on vibrate and if it goes off in class, you get up and leave right away. Don’t disrupt things.”

“Okay,” she said, turning it on and clipping it to her pocket.

He hesitated for a minute as if he wanted to say something else, but then he just patted her shoulder and turned to go. She took a deep breath.

“Dad?”

He turned around.

“Thank you.”

I woke once, twice. The third time I felt like humming. Not because I felt so wonderful, I certainly did not. But there was a buzzing in my ears, in my head, a certain tone that, for some obscure reason, I wanted to match, and I began to hum. Or I thought I was humming, but when someone said my name, I opened my mouth to respond to them and never stopped humming. Or thinking I was.