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“I’m school security.” The short man standing next to my window showed me a small badge. “Cars aren’t allowed to park here. If you don’t move the car at once, I’ll call the police.”

  I reached into my side pocket, took out my wallet, and opened it so he could see my badge. “I am the police,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  Good response.

  I had made an appointment to see the Johnson boy’s principal that afternoon, and after parking the car where the security man pointed, I followed him up to her first-floor office.

  “Just how serious is this, sir?” Sylvia Grosnickle, the principal of Highland, settled behind her desk. An intense, balding man she had introduced me to as Kevin’s gym teacher and soccer coach was in the office with us.

  “We’re still looking into it,” I said. “Right now, it looks like a thirteen-year-old—maybe two thirteen-year-olds—simply made a few bad decisions. With luck, we can end up giving everybody a lecture and chalking the whole thing up to experience.”

  “And without luck?” The principal’s concern was evident.

  “Nobody was actually injured and the damage to the car and the light pole was slight, so it looks good,” I said. “Right now we just have the field officer’s notes and no official charges. What’s Kevin like?”

  “Quite bright.” Miss Grosnickle picked up a chart from her desk. “He tests very well and performs in the upper fifteen to twenty percent of his class. I think he could do better, but he is thirteen.”

  “You wouldn’t call him a troublemaker, then?”

  “Not at all,” she answered. “I like him.”

  I was relieved to hear that. “No problem on the field?” I asked the coach.

  “Kevin’s okay,” he said. “Edgy, but okay.”

  “Edgy?”

  “He’s fast enough and he knows the game—you can rely on him to hold his own, usually,” Hill said. “But sometimes he’ll walk out on the field and his game goes up a notch. You watch him and he’s two inches from a yellow card all the time, but he makes things happen.”

  “Yellow card?”

  “When a player makes a minor infraction, he gets a yellow card, a warning,” the coach said. “If he makes a major infraction, he gets a red card and he’s out of the game. When Kevin loses his temper, he’s moving better and he’s coming on like he’s supposed to.”

  “You like him?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Coach Hill said. “I do.”

  “How about the McNamara girl? How does she do?”

  “She’s a middle grade student,” the principal said. “Very polite.”

  I thanked the coach and the principal and headed back to my car. Kevin was still a mystery to me. At the juvenile hall he was scared, like he should have been, but every once in a while I could see a flash of anger surface. I believed the principal and the coach when they said they liked him, though. That was a good sign.

  I hadn’t learned anything really special, just that Kevin hadn’t been in any serious trouble in school before, and that he was a pretty good soccer player who reacted to things differently if he lost his temper. I wondered if that night he had somehow lost his temper and done something really stupid.

  Chapter 04

  All morning in school I felt eyes looking at me. Whenever I turned to look at someone who I felt was staring, we’d make eye contact for a brief second before they turned away quickly.

  It reminded me of three years ago when my dad died and people looked at me like I was the one who had died. Except this time it was different. I didn’t really mind the attention. I didn’t think kids would mess around with me.

  “Everybody’s talking about it,” my friend Shawn said before taking a last bite out of his sandwich. We were sitting in the cafeteria at lunchtime.

  “Everyone has been looking at me weird in the hallways, like I’m an alien or something,” I said.

  “Well, not many kids get sent to jail around here.” One of his dreadlocks fell over his eye. He was opening a bag of potato chips. “So what happened?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” I felt bad not telling Shawn. We’d been friends ever since we were five years old and on the same peewee soccer team at the YMCA.

  I put my pizza down. Since I’d been arrested, I’d lost my appetite.

  “You going to get to play with us in the State Cup?” Shawn asked.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen Coach Hill yet, but he’s gonna be really mad. He’s always talking about how soccer is all about character, and he’s not going to like my character right now.”

  I changed the subject. “You liking our chances this season, Shawn?”

  “I do, but we need to work as a team more. I mean, the other day during practice, Ricky was just dribbling through kids, doing all this fancy footwork and laughing. But when it gets to November, that’s not going to work against any good teams and nobody is gonna be laughing. Everyone is just trying to make themselves look good, but our team isn’t. You know what I’m saying?”

  I nodded, not really listening.

  It was good that Christy and I had different lunch periods. I didn’t want to see her. I’d deleted the text messages she’d sent me since my arrest. She said her dad didn’t want us to talk anymore.

  I was glad when it was finally ninth period, even though math class seemed to take forever. I was tired of polynomials and other stuff that would be useless in life. Math had the ability to slow time. The clock always slowed to a crawl in ninth period, the last period of the day.

  Mr. Allen, my math teacher, was thin, old, and bony. I could almost see right through him, like he was transparent. He had a ring of white hair that went around the side of his head and eyes that were constantly watching you. I heard he was the veteran of some war—probably World War I.

  Highland Middle School had been built back in 1922. It looked kind of like a castle on the outside, but new on the inside. It had heating but no air-conditioning, and teachers wouldn’t turn on the fans because they would just blow your papers around.

  “Kevin, will you kindly share your thoughts on this problem?” Mr. Allen asked.

  Hearing my name, I panicked and turned to the kid next to me for help.

  “We’re on num—”

  “There is still a minute left in the period, Mr. Johnson. If you cut short every period by a minute, do you know how many minutes you’d waste in an entire school year?” he said, spewing out saliva while he spoke. I turned away to avoid it, which only made Mr. Allen madder.

  The bell rang, and I was saved from another one of his boring lectures about how in his day, things were so much tougher and how kids these days have no discipline.

  I wasn’t a troublemaker, but I wasn’t a suck-up, either. Ms. Grosnickle and I had had a few “conferences,” as she liked to call them. She told my mom I had to watch my temper. I wondered if I was going to get called into her office because of the arrest. I hoped not.

  I zigzagged around kids through the overcrowded hallways, bumping fists with my friends.

  “What’s up, Kev?” my friend Rich said as he slapped me five and walked by.

  I don’t know why some people ask what’s up and then don’t stick around for an answer.

  Through the crowd, I thought I heard a voice call, “Kevin, wait up!” I wasn’t sure, as the loud noises of the hallway made it difficult for conversation. I turned around. Calvin Anderson, my best friend, was behind me. He quickly gave me a playful dead arm.

  “Hey,” I yelled.

  “When did you get out? Heard some stuff happened.”

  “Yeah, let’s get out of here first.”

  We walked down the stairs and toward the exit, talking about what had happened at school the day I was gone.

  Some of the really popular kids were hanging around near the front door. I don’t really get popularity, because most kids who are popular are mean, and the rest of the kids don’t even like them.

  We burst out of the door. The fresh air felt good ag
ainst my face.

  The two of us walked home after school every day.

  “What happened, man? People are saying a whole bunch of stuff and I don’t know what to believe. You want to tell me about it?”

  I sighed and looked in the other direction.

  “Or not,” Cal said as he looked at my expression.

  “Listen, everyone’s been looking at me weird and I just want to talk about something else, okay?” I said. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, I just don’t want to tell you now.”

  “I didn’t think you’d steal a car, Kev,” Cal said. “What’s gonna happen to you now?”

  “I didn’t really do anything terrible,” I said. “Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Cal hadn’t pushed it, even though I knew he really cared about me. Good.

  “You’re coming to practice tonight, right?”

  “Yep, I’m looking forward to it. Might help clear my mind and stuff,” I said.

  “All right, I’ll see you later,” he said.

  Our team, the Highland Raiders, had practice four nights a week and a game or a tournament on the weekend. It got cold playing at night later in the season, and the sun was almost down when I got to practice.

  Cal, Shawn, and Ty, who was our center midfielder, were already there, practicing free kicks on Nick, our goalie, while a few of the kids were joking around on the sideline getting their shin guards on. I knew they’d be talking about the first State Cup game, which was going to be held the next week. I hoped they wouldn’t be talking about me.

  Most of the kids on the Highland school team also played on the Highland club team that Coach Hill had formed. Our team chemistry wasn’t spectacular, with friends hanging out with friends more than acting as teammates. Kids would side with their friends in the group if there was a disagreement.

  Coach Hill pulled up in his car, and we helped him carry the equipment to the field. He wasn’t an easy person to like, but he was a good coach. Physically he was tough on us, and mentally he was even tougher. He’d make us run through cones during the winter until we threw up, which I did more than once.

  He was always telling us, “You’re not supposed to like me. I’m your coach. Sure, I want you to do well. Yeah, I care about you, but I don’t want to be friends with you. I have enough friends already.”

  As I was helping him set things up on the field, Coach pulled me aside. “Look, Kevin, I don’t know what you did, or why you did it, but I do know that I’m not going to tolerate that sort of behavior. You’re on thin ice with me, so step lightly. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Coach.” That could have been worse, I thought. He didn’t say I couldn’t play.

  Coach blew his whistle and had us gather around. He started talking about our preparation for the State Cup, and I zoned out.

  “Kevin, eye contact is not an option. It’s mandatory.” Coach gave me the eye and I thought he was going to get mad, but he didn’t. Police sirens sounded in the distance, and a few kids instantly looked in my direction. That pissed me off.

  “I think we can go pretty far this year as a team, but our midfield needs to get their act together. We can’t just have good defense and forwards, ’cause the ball can’t just magically go from one end to the other without going through the midfield.”

  Coach Hill had played professionally but had suffered a career-ending injury. He didn’t like to talk about it, though. I wondered if it was hard, watching us play, while he walked with a limp. I heard he had been in a car accident. Now he was heavy, mostly bald, and wore a small goatee that made him look more like a pro wrestler than a soccer player.

  We split our team up and played an eight-against-eight game at practices. We always started practice with one drill that Coach Hill thought was key. It was a mix of conditioning and dribbling. This was the part of the practice where guys regularly puked.

  “You know what?” Coach Hill said after we completed the drill and guys were huffing and puffing on the ground. “I think we need to do that drill again. I didn’t like the enthusiasm,” he said, chuckling.

  “From the beginning?” I groaned.

  “No, first we’re going to do the middle, then move to the beginning and then the end,” Coach said sarcastically.

  “That’s what I thought,” I mumbled.

  “Of course from the beginning,” Coach Hill yelled. “And Kevin, you can do it twice more. Let’s go!”

  That was Coach Hill for you. I guess you had to learn not to take him personally, but it was hard.

  Coach Hill felt that most drills were a waste of time. He said the only way we were going to get better was to play games. “How do you think the guys from Latin America got good? They played in the streets with their friends every chance they got. By playing a game, you get conditioning, skills, and awareness.”

  Coach put me in at forward, and I knew he’d be keeping an eye on me. If I messed up at practice, he wouldn’t start me in the tournament.

  I remembered his words at our last practice, when I had come down the sideline and lost the ball.

  “Kevin, it does no good if you can get to the goal but can’t finish. You can dribble up to the goal all you want, but until that ball hits the back of the net, we’re not going to win games.” I knew Coach was right.

  Ricky Sorin was Coach Hill’s favorite player, and he put him in at the other forward position on our side. Ricky was full of himself and had a lot of confidence. He walked around like he was better than everyone else, strolling in late to practice and making a big deal of texting on his cell phone as if everyone in the world was trying to reach him. He got away with things that I knew the other guys on the team would have been killed for. He was good but not that good.

  Someone passed the ball to me and I wasn’t paying attention. It went between my legs. “What was that, Kevin?” Coach Hill yelled. “Get your head in the game!” That was impossible.

  Chapter 05

  The assistant DA called and said that he had spoken to McNamara and that it looked like he was going to press charges. If all McNamara needed was to get his car fixed, I knew that would have been a simple way out if Kevin’s mom had had the money to pay for it. I knew I could have probably raised the money from the guys at the precinct if it wasn’t outrageous, but I also knew that McNamara might have thought he had hit it rich.

  I called Kevin and asked him if he would meet me after school, and he said he would. I also asked Paul Gross, my partner, if he would look up McNamara to see if he had a criminal record. He wasn’t in any of the main files, but ironically, he had a mention in the tickler file on a letter I had written close to four years ago. I reread it before I left for the school.

  12TH HIGHLAND COMMAND

  EAST DISTRICT

  To: Captain Jonathan Bramwell

  From: Gerald Brown

  D/O/R August 12, 2008

  Re: Possible exploitation of workers

  Status: Cessation of ongoing investigation

  As per instructions we have terminated the investigation in the South Brunswick Park area. The investigation, involving four officers and myself, consisted mainly of interviewing, when possible, residents of the area, especially those who are recent to the community. Most of these are of Latino heritage with little or no English and might be illegal immigrants. The investigation was initiated on the suspicion that some of the new workers were being exploited by being employed at below minimum wages or were being forced to make kickback payments to an illegal agency.

  The conclusions we came to are that while there is still a possibility of exploitation, it is very difficult to determine because of the closeness of the community and the fears of deportation. We did not investigate the immigration status of people in the community because that is not our jurisdiction. But the possibility of status violations did hamper our efforts for extensive interviews. It does appear that if there are abuses in South Brunswick, they are not extensive at this time. We can’
t, without more evidence, continue to devote manpower to this task but should keep an eye out for clues that would make a more thorough investigation pertinent. We should also create a tickler file of names of recently hired workers and the firms or individuals that employ them.

  I would also like to point out the department’s lack of Spanish-speaking officers. With the population of Latinos in Highland expected to rise, it may be good thinking to recruit among the Latino community.

  The following people have been interviewed, some quite briefly, but their names should be recorded in the tickler file in case some other incident or complaint brings important information to the case.

  Patrice Carabella

  Petra Valeria Diaz

  Charles Valente

  Marta Molnar

  Adamo family

  Michael McNamara

  Cristobalina Ibarra

  Thomas Jones

  A. Muchison

  Respectfully submitted,

  Gerald Brown

  It was nothing important, and McNamara certainly didn’t look as if he was into anything illegal. But he had mentioned that Kevin had been to his house, and I thought that maybe something had happened there that got McNamara pissed off.

  When I arrived in front of the school, Kevin was wearing sweats and standing with a friend. The friend came over to the driver’s seat window.

  “You’d better cuff him,” the kid said, smiling. “He’s pretty good with his hands.”

  Kevin slid in beside me, and I waited until he fastened his seat belt before pulling away from the curb.

  “I told my wife that I wanted to talk to you, and she invited us both for some milk and cookies,” I said.

  “That’s pretty old-fashioned,” he said.

  I stopped the car and eased it over to the curb. “Look, Kevin, this case can go in a lot of—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t interrupt me!” I said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One of the things I’ve learned on this job is not to get myself involved with the people I arrest, their families, or even with the victims. The one reason—and get this straight—the only reason I’m dealing with you is that your father was something special. I wanted to ask you if anything had ever happened between you and McNamara to make him mad enough to cause you trouble down the line. But you’re getting me mad every time you open your mouth.”