At home, I was totally freaked to see a police car in front of my house. My parents' cars weren't there, so I figured they weren't home yet. I didn't look at the cop sitting in the car as I walked past him and up to my front door. As I was putting the key into the lock, I heard him get out of the car and walk my way.
“Are you Colin? Colin Reed?”
I turned slowly around. “Yes.”
“Can I ask you some questions? I guess you heard about what happened to Jerome Jeffreys.”
I nodded.
“Are your parents home?”
“No,” I said.
“You want to wait until they get here?”
“No,” I said. “Come on in.”
We sat down at the kitchen table. “Listen,” he said. “You aren't in trouble. This isn't about you. We're just trying to piece things together to find out who was out to get Jerome.”
“But why ask me? I wasn't exactly close to him.”
“I'm sure you weren't. All we know is that someone saw you with Jerome in Fielder Park last week. That's all. Someone gave us your name. So here I am.”
“We were just talking.”
“Fine. But can you give us anything to go on? Any reason why someone would try to kill Jerome.”
I took a deep breath. “Jerome sold drugs,” I said. “Weed and other stuff. I don't know what.” I paused and looked at him. He didn't seem surprised. “And he had weapons. Knives, pellet guns, I think. Maybe more. He was selling weapons to students, I think. Supposedly for self-defense.”
“You buy any of those weapons from him? I hear you've had some of your own rough times at school.”
He'd probably spoken to Miller. Maybe it was Miller who had steered him my way. Miller who believed I'd at least tell what I knew about Jerome.
“No,” I said. “I never bought any weapons from him. He offered though.”
“You buy anything else from him?”
“No,” I said.
“Okay, so he had the drugs and weapons,” he said. “But why was someone so intent on shooting him that they would waltz into your school in the middle of the day and blast away?”
“Jerome was new this year. I can't say this for a fact, but there was already someone in our school selling weed and stuff. Maybe more than one person. But when Jerome came to the school, he was tromping into someone else's territory.”
“Do you know who that someone is?” he asked.
“No, I don't.” I shrugged. “But I don't think it would be that hard to find out.”
“That's the funny part, Colin. You'd think that'd be as plain as day. But it isn't. We ask a lot of questions and don't get many answers. Makes our job a whole lot harder. But, hey, thanks for speaking with me. Here's my card. If you can tell me anything else, let me know.”
He got up from the table and headed for the door. I felt good about what I'd had to offer, even though it wasn't much. Before he left the kitchen, though, he turned. “Colin, I wasn't going to say this, but I have to get it off my chest. If you had gone to one of your teachers or come to us and told us what you did just now, my guess is that Jerome would not be dead. Sometimes silence kills.”
I watched as he turned away and walked out the door.
School was canceled for two days as the police searched all the lockers. Once they'd found the weapons in Jerome's locker, Miller asked the cops to scour every square inch of the school. They found more, and it was all over the news. The city was shocked. Parents couldn't seem to understand how it had become so easy for teenagers to get their hands on not just knives, pepper spray and pellet guns, but real guns as well. It was even harder for them to imagine why so many kids, even the good kids, felt they needed these weapons in or out of school.
When we returned to classes that Wednesday, police watched us as we entered the building. They'd also installed two metal detectors we had to walk through as we entered. It was like getting on an airplane. Everything about school now seemed charged with a nervous fear.
Emily wasn't in class, and she wasn't replying to my emails or calls. I went to her house, but her mother wouldn't let me see her. She somehow knew that the police had come to my house. A lot of people knew. Someone in my neighborhood had spread that one. And so people thought I might be involved in whatever Jerome had been doing. But while I was standing there getting the cold shoulder from Emily's mother, Emily came to the door. When she hugged me, her mother backed off and left us alone. Emily led me inside. We sat down in the living room. “I don't think I can go back,” she said. “It's not just Jerome. You've heard the news. You know what they found. How could that be our school? My parents are thinking of letting me sit out the rest of the year and maybe go to private school to finish my last two years.”
“Emily, come on. Come back. I miss you.” I meant it. With all the crap happening around me, I felt more alone than ever. I had always told myself that I didn't need anyone, that I was good on my own. But I felt different now. Emily was one of the few people on the planet that I felt understood me. Maybe the only person at school I felt truly connected to. And maybe my feelings were stronger than that. I think I had been covering up what I really felt about her. I knew that now.
I think she was shocked to hear me say I missed her. She smiled the sweetest smile I'd ever seen. “Really?”
“Really,” I said. “Come back. I'll be there for you.”
“Not yet,” she said.
“But you'll talk to me on the phone, right?”
“Sure. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been ignoring you.”
“That's okay. It's been a confusing time,” I said. “For all of us.”
Two weeks went by, and Jerome's killer had still not been found. Police said they had leads, but that was all. Everyone at school was paranoid. Teachers were really shaken. When any little confrontation occurred, the ever-present hallway cops were right on it. I think, for me, the most unnerving part was that the cops wore bulletproof vests. It was as if they were expecting Jerome's killer, or someone equally violent, to show up any day.
Attendance was way down. Many parents were keeping their kids home. My mother suggested that to me. But I said no way. It was a funny thing. I'd never really liked school. I disliked the social games, found many of my classes boring and couldn't wait for my high school sentence to be over. But it was different now. I wasn't going to let this thing with Jerome, and the fear it created, stop me from getting an education. I know how lame that sounds, but in some strange way it was true.
Jerome's killer finally turned himself in three weeks after the murder. His name was James Gleason. He was nineteen and not in school. He'd been in lots of trouble before, and he'd been dealing drugs on the street and outside our school. And then Jerome moved into his territory. Gleason was charged with first-degree murder. It was all anyone wanted to talk about in school.
But here's the thing. Gleason turned himself in. No one had come forward to suggest he might have been the shooter in the school that day, and it was obvious that some students had seen him in the hall. Someone would have known who he was. Even after Jerome was shot, no one spoke up about this dangerous guy who obviously wanted to wipe out the competition. Now everybody just kept saying how happy they were that he was caught and this whole thing was over.
In my head, it wasn't over. I kept thinking that if we weren't watching out for each other, even the Jeromes of the world, then something like this would just happen again. But I kept it to myself. I especially didn't say it to Emily. She had returned to school right after Gleason's confession. She, like everyone, was breathing a sigh of relief. But not me. The police were now absent from the hallways, but no one was planning on removing the metal detectors.
I kept mostly to myself except for the time I spent with Emily. She was back in school now and things there had settled down quite a bit. I wasn't the only one wishing this school year was over and this was all behind us. But I kept my head down and made a point of not getting involved in anyone's business.
That was until it became painfully obvious to me that someone had decided to pick up where Gleason and Jerome had left off. There was a vacuum to be filled. Jacob was a friend of Liam and Craig's. (Surprise, surprise.) He'd dropped out of school awhile back, missed a year, but then dropped back in, so he was older than most kids in our class. Emily told me that she heard he was selling weed.
But there was more to it than that. I heard he was also selling crystal meth and crack. Some kids said he'd been dealing on the street while he was out of school, that he'd been working with whoever had been supplying Jerome. Others said he'd been with Gleason's supplier.
I wasn't gullible enough to believe everything people said, but I kept an eye on Jacob, and I could see that he had his own little posse of wannabes, including Liam and Craig, who trekked off with him after school. It wasn't too difficult to watch a couple of deals go down.
“What if I just confront him?” I asked Emily. “Just tell him flat-out that he's got to quit or I'll snitch.”
Emily looked frightened. “You can't do that. It doesn't work that way. You'll get hurt.”
“But this is the loop. What if it plays out the same way again? Besides, I'm hearing stories about some kids getting pretty wasted and downright sick on some of the meth he's dealing. It's all bad news as far as I can see.”
“Can't you just leave it alone?”
“No,” I said. “I can't. That's what I did before.”
I thought Emily was going to get mad at me. She looked scared. “Tell Miller. Just tell him what you know and walk away from it.”
She was right. I would have preferred the confrontation with Jacob. I really would. But I'd settle for this. Cowardly, but better than nothing. Miller would listen to me this time.
I waited until school was over. I told Emily to head home and not wait for me. When the halls were empty, I knocked on Mr. Miller's door.
“It's open.”
I walked in. He seemed surprised to see me. “Colin, come in.”
I told him what I knew. Or thought I knew. “Look,” I said, “I know Jacob's involved in something. Like Jerome was. I don't know the whole story, and I don't believe half of what other kids say, but the rat in me says I need to do this.”
Miller looked puzzled. “How come we don't know more about this?”
“'Cause what's going down is mostly off school grounds. But he's here every day and making contacts. It's a problem that won't go away.”
Mr. Miller ran his hand across his forehead. “I can't afford to ignore what you're telling me.”
“No, you can't.”
“If we go after Jacob, is he going to know that it was you who put us on his trail?”
“Probably. That's my rep. And if he can't figure it out, I'm sure Liam will give him a good hint.”
“Is that what this is about? You still trying to get even with Liam and Craig?”
“No way,” I said, feeling ticked off at Miller again. It was like he still didn't trust me.
He nodded. “Okay, I'll follow up on this. We're pretty tight with the police these days, as you might expect. We'll see what they have to say about Jacob. But, Colin, I have to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Back before Jerome got shot, someone saw you with him in the park. It was just a person living near there. Someone had made an anonymous phone call to the police saying you were seen buying drugs from Jerome. Is that true?”
My eyes went a little blurry then. It totally caught me off guard. But if I wanted him to believe me, I knew I couldn't bullshit him. He'd see right through it. “No,” I said. “He offered me some, but I didn't take it.”
What he said next shocked me. “Thanks for being honest with me, Colin. And thanks for coming by.”
Mr. Miller wasn't quite as discreet as I thought he'd be when it came to looking into Jacob's activities. When the time came for the police to question him at school, he was clean. Not only had he stopped dealing (at least temporarily), but his teachers had nothing bad to say about him or his work. He had cleaned up his act.
But Liam had probably told him that I was the one who had ratted on him. I knew this because a pair of new Photoshopped images of me appeared on GoofFace. Not the real me, of course. And these were pretty disgusting. I didn't think that was all there was to it though. I knew there'd be more than that.
But I wasn't expecting what happened next.
I met Emily outside school one morning a few days after Jacob was questioned by the police.
“It's Amanda,” she said. “More of those pictures surfaced on the Internet. She tried to kill herself with pills and booze. She's in the hospital.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“I think so,” Emily said. “But why is this happening?”
“It's Liam trying to get back at me for squealing on Jacob.”
“I can't believe she tried to kill herself,” Emily said.
“Maybe the pictures are their way of trying to get to me,” I said. “I'm sorry. I didn't think they'd go back to such sick stuff. They haven't tried to get to you?”
“No photos,” she said. “But I've had a couple of emails.”
“I'm sorry. Maybe you shouldn't be hanging out with me.”
“Colin, you're the best thing that ever happened to me. But I'm scared.”
“I'm going to bypass Miller and go to the cops. I can at least file a complaint about what they're doing to me. I'll tell them about Amanda and let them look into it.”
“If you do that, everyone will know.”
“I don't care,” I said angrily.
“I'll go with you,” Emily said.