Picture This (3 page)

Then, on the way back to the Ashdales' house, I ran into Tilo, one of my old friends. Well, I
sort of
ran into him.

Tilo was racing down the street toward me, and no wonder. He was being chased by three guys. I recognized who they were—they were all members of the Nine-Eights, real tough guys who got their name from the address of the high-rise where the original members had lived. They were rivals of the gang I used to hang around with, even though I wasn't a member. Tilo ran right past me and ducked into an alley. He looked scared. I didn't even think about what I was doing—I pretended I didn't know him and, when the Nine-Eights ran by, I stuck out my foot and tripped the first guy. He fell flat on his face. The second guy didn't react fast enough, and he fell on the first guy. The third guy almost went down—but at the last minute, he jumped over his buddies and spun around to look at me. The fierce look on his face told me that he had changed targets. He didn't care about Tilo anymore. He wanted me.

I took off.

I didn't look back, but I heard feet pounding the cement behind me.

I raced for a main street. There would be a lot of people out there. I would be safer—maybe.

A hand hooked my shoulder. I tried to shake it off. A second hand hooked my other shoulder. Before I knew it, I had been jerked off my feet and was lying on my back on the sidewalk. The guy who had been chasing me threw himself onto me, but I twisted out of his way. He landed on the cement. I tried to get up. He grabbed my leg and pulled me down again. I kicked him with my free foot. I must have made serious contact, because he howled in pain. I scrambled to my feet and starting running again, but with a limp this time. I'd really banged up my knee on that last fall.

I reached the main street just in time to see a bus lumbering to a stop on the other side of the street. I dashed through traffic to reach it. By then it was pulling away from the curb, and the guy who had been chasing me was stopping cars as he darted across the street to get to me. I hammered on the bus door. The driver finally opened it. I jumped on. The doors swooshed shut, and the bus started to move. The guy who had been chasing me pounded his fists on the door, but the bus had picked up speed. It was too late to stop. I looked out through the glass in the door at his snarling face. He stared back at me and held up his hand, making a gesture as if he were shooting me. I dropped a ticket into the fare box and found a seat near the back of the bus, where I looked out the window again. The guy was still looking at the bus. He was giving it the finger.

I thought about that guy all night after the break-in at the Ashdales. Those Nine-Eight guys are tough. They play for keeps. And they don't let anyone get away with disrespecting them or butting into their business, like I had done. What if they'd caught up with Tilo, if not that day, then some other time? What if they'd pressured him to tell where I was living? Did Tilo even know? I couldn't remember if I had told him or not. What if I had? Would he have told those guys? Or would he have kept his mouth shut? After all, I had done my best to help him out. But maybe he didn't know that. He'd disappeared into an alley before I stuck out my foot. He hadn't seen me trip up those guys.

Thinking about the Nine-Eights was enough to make me check out the street before I left for the youth center the next morning. It was enough to make me look over my shoulder the whole way there. I thought about all the other kids who were involved in programs at the youth center. Had any of them been involved with the Nine-Eights? Did any of them still know Nine-Eight members? If anyone asked them about me, would they tell? Would some Nine-Eights be waiting for me when I got to the youth center? Or would they jump me on my way home? I started to wish I'd never gone to visit Mrs. Girardi.

Nobody followed me to the youth center. No one was waiting for me there either. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I looked around the place and saw the same old people who had been there all summer. Then DeVon waved me over.

“Hey, Ethan,” he said, “someone came by looking for you yesterday.”

I gulped. My worst nightmare was coming true. I tried to hide what I was feeling, but it was hard, because I was shaking all over.

Chapter Five

“Who was it?” I asked DeVon.

“A cop.”

I almost laughed out loud.

“A cop?” I said.

“Yeah.”

Not a Nine-Eight. A cop. Cops I could handle, especially now.

“What did he want?”

“He was asking about you—you know, how long you've been in the program, how long some of the counselors here have known you, whether you were still involved with any gangs, stuff like that.”

It sounded like Officer Firelli hadn't given up believing that I was somehow behind what had happened at the Ashdales' house yesterday.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“What could I tell him?” DeVon said. “I haven't known you that long, so I had to make up all kinds of bull about you—you know, how you show up every day on time, how you've been taking the program seriously, how you've changed the way you look at some things, how your pictures are among the best in the program.” He grinned at me. Everything he'd told Firelli was true—well, except for the last part.

“What do you mean,
among
the best?” I said. “I thought I
was
the best.”

“I also told him how modest and unassuming you were,” DeVon said. Then he got serious. “Is there anything going on that I should know about, Ethan?”

“What do you mean?”

“Cops don't come around asking about kids unless
something
is happening.”

“My house was broken into yesterday,” I said. “It was probably about that.”

“He didn't ask about anything like that,” DeVon said. “He just asked about you, and I told him what I know—the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much. But he was really interested in the Picture This program. He asked me what it was all about. He asked me about the projects kids were working on. He wanted to see some of the pictures they'd taken—especially yours.”

I could imagine Firelli being curious about what kind of pictures I had taken. He probably thought they would be weird and morbid.

“Did you show him?”

“How could I?” DeVon said. “I had to tell him that as long as you've been in the program, you've never backed up a single photo, even though I nag you and nag you. You're going to be sorry, Ethan. All you have to do is drop that camera or lose it, and all the work you've done will be gone forever.”

“I don't want anyone looking at my stuff,” I said.

“So put a password on it. I'm not kidding, Ethan. You don't want to lose everything, do you?”

“I'll think about it,” I said. “First I want to look at what I have and work out how I want to present it.”

“Suit yourself,” DeVon said.

I was glad that I hadn't backed up my pictures onto the youth center computer. I was proud of the pictures I had taken, but I didn't want Officer Firelli looking at them, especially without my permission.

“I'll back everything up as soon as I have all the shots I need,” I said. “I promise.”

DeVon sighed. “Promises, promises,” he said. “If I had a nickel for every promise that was ever made to me…” He didn't finish his sentence. He didn't have to. I'd heard it dozens of times before. DeVon would be a millionaire.

Sara came up to me after that. She's so small and innocent-looking that it was hard to imagine how she ended up in the program.

“That cop looked at my pictures,” she said. “He asked me about you.”

“Yeah?” I liked Sara. If I had more nerve, I would have asked her out. “What did you say?”

“A cop asks questions? What do you think I said?”

I had no idea. That was part of the problem. If I knew how she felt about me, maybe I could decide whether to ask her out.

“I said all good stuff, of course,” she said. “How you're serious about the program. How you take your camera everywhere in case you see something you want to shoot. How you're into running.” She smiled. “How I see you running in the cemetery ravine every Sunday morning.”

“You do?” That was news to me. I had never seen her.

“Yeah,” she said. “And how sometimes you stop dead in your tracks, take out your camera and take a picture.” She smiled again. “Like I said, all good stuff.”

I smiled back at her. Maybe I would ask her out. It looked like she might say yes.

Mrs. Ashdale called my name as soon I let myself into the house late that afternoon. I found her sitting in her reading chair in the living room. Mrs. Ashdale was always reading, and I don't mean lightweight stuff. She always had a couple of books on the go. Usually they were big fat books with hard covers on topics like history or politics or psychology or the environment. She was the smartest woman I had ever met. But she wasn't reading when I went to see what she wanted. She was sitting quietly in her chair with her hands in her lap. Something was wrong.

“Officer Firelli came by this afternoon,” she said.

Boy, that cop sure got around.

“What did he want?” I said. “Did he find out anything about who trashed the house?”

Mrs. Ashdale didn't say anything for a few seconds. She just looked at me, like she was wondering about something. But what?

“He said he talked to some people he knew in your old neighborhood,” she said at last. “Ethan, is there anything you want to tell me?”

What was she talking about?

“About what?” I said.

She sighed. I knew by then that this wasn't a good sign.

“He told me that he had it on good authority that you were in some kind of fight a few weeks ago. He said it involved a gang. Is that true?”

I knew Officer Firelli always thought the worst of me. He didn't like me. Well, guess what? I didn't like him either.

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Sit down, Ethan,” Mrs. Ashdale said.

I sat.

“What happened?” she said. “Why didn't you tell Bill or me about it?”

“Because I didn't think it was important,” I said. “It was just one of those things.”

I told her exactly what had happened. She listened without interrupting. When I had finished, she said, “I can understand why you wanted to help your friend. But it sounds like that boy who chased you was really angry. Do you think he would come looking for you? Do you think he would try to get even for what you did?”

I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to tell her it was no big deal, because I didn't want her to worry—not about me. I liked Mrs. Ashdale. I also didn't want anything to happen that might make the Ashdales decide that they didn't want to be my foster parents anymore. But I couldn't lie to her, not now, not after what Officer Firelli had told her.

“I don't know,” I said. It was the truth. “Those guys have a reputation, you know?”

She nodded.

“But I went over it and over it, and I'm pretty sure I didn't tell anyone I used to hang around with that I'm living here now. And I did what everyone told me to do—I put all that stuff behind me. I only went back there to see Mrs. Girardi.”

“I'm going to have to tell Bill about this,” she said.

That made me feel sick inside. Was she mad at me? Was she going to try to get rid of me?

“We want you to be safe, Ethan. You've been doing well since you've been living here, and Mrs. Girardi told us that she thinks you're a good boy.”

“You talked to Mrs. Girardi about me?” She had never mentioned that.

“Of course, we did.” She didn't sound mad at all. “She was sad that she had to let you go. She wanted us to promise that we'd take good care of you. But that's not easy to do if you don't tell us everything. You understand that, don't you?”

I nodded. I was ashamed that I hadn't told her right away about the Nine-Eights.

“If you see any of those boys, you're to tell Bill or me right away. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“And there's nothing else you want to tell me?”

I shook my head. Now she knew it all.

I hoped that I would never see a Nine-Eight again. But hoping for something doesn't make it true.

Chapter Six

“Don't forget tomorrow,” Mrs. Ashdale said after supper that night.

“Tomorrow?” I said.

“Check the fridge.”

I went to the big calendar on the fridge, and there it was.
Ethan,
Dr. Finstead, 11:00
am
.
Ethan and
Anna, Eaton Centre, lunch
. I groaned. Dr. Finstead was a dentist. When I lived with my dad, I never went to the dentist. The first thing Mrs. Girardi had done when I went to live with her was make an appointment. It turned out I had a lot of cavities. It took three visits to get them all filled. That's when I decided that I didn't like going to the dentist. I hated the sound the drill made. I also hated the smell that filled the air when the dentist was drilling my teeth. It made me sick to my stomach. But Mrs. Ashdale was even more fanatical about dentists than Mrs. Girardi had been. Her rule was that all of us had to go twice a year for a checkup and cleaning. She was also very big on flossing.

So I went to the dentist. The dental hygienist scraped the plaque from my teeth. Next, she cleaned them with a little machine that made a high-pitched sound. Then she polished them. By the time she had finished, I was rinsing blood out of my mouth. But my teeth felt terrific. I couldn't stop running my tongue over them.

Then the dentist checked me out. I held my breath as she poked and prodded to see if I had any cavities.

“You're all good, Ethan,” she said finally. She sent me on my way with a new toothbrush, a little container of dental floss and a follow-up appointment in another six months.