How could she remember their names? She didn't visit all that often, and her last visit had been over a year ago. “I'm sure traveling to southern Ohio to do genealogy on my family will sound even more appealing to them.” Now he did make a face.
“Come on,” Linda pleaded. “We'll have fun. We'll stay at a hotel with a pool. You guys can eat junk food and stay up late. My treat.” They both knew the entire dialogue was just a formality, a ritual they had to go through. He had never been able to say no to her.
“Call your friends now,” Linda said, pushing back her plate. “I'd like to be on our way by ten.”
“You want to leave now?” Becka shook her head. “Then Jack can't go with you. He has to go to school.”
“He does?” Aunt Linda looked nonplussed, as if the idea of school being in session had never occurred to her. “How inconvenient. I wanted to go to the courthouse today. I don't think they're open on the weekend.” She spooned three or four teaspoons of sugar into her tea, and stirred. “Never mind,” she declared suddenly. “We'll go after school. It's all settled. Jack—ask the boys about it this morning.”
To Jack's surprise, Will seemed up for a road trip. For one thing, Will's parents were having six yards of leaf humus mulch delivered that afternoon. It seemed like a good weekend to get out of town. But Linda Downey's involvement was the deciding factor. Will was ordinarily shy around girls, but he was absolutely tongue-tied around Linda. “You know your aunt is gorgeous, Jack,” he'd once said solemnly, almost apologetically. And Jack had to admit, she was.
Jack and Will lingered in the foyer by the school office, hoping Fitch would make an appearance before the last bell rang.
Penworthy was at his usual post by the front door. He was deep in conversation with a man Jack had never seen before. The man was dressed all in black, and towered over Penworthy.
“Hey! You! Swift!”
Jack pivoted to see Garrett Lobeck emerging from the principal's office, flanked by his friends, Jay Harkness and Bruce Leonard. Probably serving detention before school. Any one of them were bigger than two of Jack.
Lobeck kept coming until he was heavily into Jack's personal space. “We need to talk about that scumbag play you made yesterday,” Lobeck said. Only, it sounded more like “thumbag” and “yethterday” because Lobeck's lips were swollen to twice their usual size.
“Look,” said Jack. “I took a goal shot. That's all. It's not my fault if you got in the way. Get over it.”
“I'm going to hurt you, Jack, and that's a promise. You'll just have to wonder when.” Lobeck attempted a sneer, but gave it up. Apparently too painful. Leonard and Harkness were grinning, though. Lobeck was playing to his audience. He had to do something, after all. The soccer story would be all over school by day's end, what with Garrett walking around with the evidence displayed all over his face.
Jack couldn't say what made him do it. Some sort of death wish, probably. He leaned in so he was inches from Lobeck's face. He was as tall as Lobeck, if not so big around. “Fine. You do that,” Jack said, smiling pleasantly. “Next time, I'll break your nose, and there goes the modeling career.”
Lobeck squinted at Jack as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. He extended a hand with the apparent intention of grabbing Jack's shirtfront. Then seemed to think better of it and flipped him the finger instead.
“MISTER LOBECK!”
They all jumped.
It was Penworthy, accompanied by the tall stranger Jack had noticed earlier.
Penworthy stuffed a detention slip into Lobeck's hand. “Mr. Lobeck, it seems you have not spent enough time in detention this week. You of all people should know that obscene hand gestures are expressly forbidden on school property.”
Lobeck vibrated like a boiler about to blow. When he finally got his mouth working, he let go a string of obscenities. Penworthy just kept peeling off the detention slips until Lobeck ran dry.
“Uh, Mr. Penworthy,” said Will, obviously wary of getting in the way of flying detentions. “We were just heading to homeroom.” Lobeck and his friends seemed anxious to leave also.
Jack looked up to see the stranger staring at him. Against his will, Jack found himself rooted to the spot, staring back. The man had high cheekbones and chiseled, aristocratic features that were marred only by a somewhat overlarge nose. His complexion had the pale cast of a scholar or someone whose skin doesn't react to the sun. Startling green eyes were sheltered under brows unusually heavy and black for someone of such fair complexion. Jack had a quick impression of a searing intelligence, of physical power, and then Penworthy broke in.
“Before you go, gentlemen, I'd like you to meet Mr. Leander Hastings, our new assistant principal,” he said briskly. “He's replacing Mr. Brumfield.” He put a hand on each boys shoulder in turn. “Mr. Lobeck. Mr. Harkness. Mr. Leonard. Mr. Childers. Mr. Swift.” Hastings's gaze swept briefly over each of them. “Mr. Hastings will head our student discipline team, and will be in charge of enforcing the attendance policy.”
“I won't be spending all my time issuing detentions.” Hastings's lips quirked, as if at a private joke. “In fact, I'll be developing programming for some of your …” he paused, trying to choose the right words. “For some of your … more gifted students.” Hastings had a presence about him that seemed inconsistent with school administration. Rather … wolflike.
“Yes, well … gifted education …” Penworthy sputtered, as if this were a complete and unwelcome surprise. “An excellent idea, assuming you have the time.”
“But of course. I'll make the time,” Hastings replied. “Nothing is more important than seizing talent where you find it and putting it to its highest use.” His gaze settled on Jack.
Jack hadn't heard that Brumfield was leaving. He wanted to ask a question about it, but couldn't. A deep chill had settled somewhere behind his breastbone, making it difficult to breathe, let alone speak. He felt a strong sense of onrushing danger. Once, when he was a child, he and Will had been playing on the railroad tracks, when he realized a train was coming. He could feel the rails vibrating through the soles of his shoes, hear the shriek of the whistle, but he couldn't move. Then Will had grabbed his arm and yanked him into the cinders beside the right-of-way.
“Uh, we have to get to homeroom before last bell,” Will said, again tugging at Jack's arm.
But Hastings was speaking again, and nobody moved. “Do you boys play soccer? Are any of you on the team?”
“We all tried out for the team this week.” Will gestured, including the other four. “We don't know yet if we made it or not.”
“Where I came from, I was the assistant coach,” Hastings said. “I mean to get involved with the program here.”
Jack had no doubt it would happen, whether Coach Slansky liked it or not.
The last bell rang, and it was as if some kind of spell had been broken. The group spun out in three different directions, Will and Jack into the tenth-grade wing, Lobeck and his friends heading into the eleventh-grade hallway, and Penworthy and Hastings back to the office.
Fitch was in Jack's calculus class, so Jack was able to ask about the road trip before lunchtime. Fitch nodded gravely, as if the prospect of traveling hundreds of miles to look at old court records about Jack's dead relatives was natural recreation. Fitch never cared much what other people thought, and he had a way of finding the interesting angle to any situation. During lunch period, he called his mother at work. She said he could go as long as it didn't cost any money.
Will had a harder time getting out of shoveling mulch. “But it will be educational,” he pleaded into the phone. “Jack's aunt is a geologist. Uh, I mean genealogist. And I'm going to write a paper about it for school,” he added. That must have been enough to clinch it, because he was smiling when he put the receiver down.
When Jack arrived home, an unfamiliar white Land Rover was parked at the end of the driveway. A surprising choice for Aunt Linda, who usually leased a sports car when she came to visit. He found Becka in the kitchen, loading sandwiches into a cooler.
“Linda is visiting with Nick,” she explained. “She said to tell you to go ahead and get packed.”
Jack's duffle sat open on his bed. Next to it was a small parcel wrapped in butcher paper with a bright blue block print design. He picked up the package and examined it curiously. It was almost weightless in his hands.
“Mercedes left that for you,” Aunt Linda said from the doorway, making him jump. “She said it might come in handy on the trip.”
How did Mercedes get involved? Were their travel plans posted on the town Web site? Or displayed on the magnetic sign in the university commons? Jack made a noise of disgust. Sometimes he hated living in a small town.
He ripped the paper away. It was a sleeveless vest, woven in a lightweight gray fiber that seemed familiar. Three silver buttons decorated the front. When Jack looked more closely, he saw they were the faces of three different bears, in silver, gold, and copper.
“Not exactly my style,” he muttered, tossing it onto the bed. “And it's not even my birthday. But tell her thanks anyway.”
What had gotten into Mercedes? She knew what kind of clothes he wore. Nothing more exotic than jeans and T-shirts. She saw him practically every day of the week.
Linda remained in the doorway, her arms folded. “Try it on,” she said. Jack looked up, startled. He wanted to argue, but knew that if Linda meant for him to put the thing on, there was no point in fighting it.
“I feel stupid,” he growled, snatching it up off the bed and pulling it on over his T-shirt. It fit perfectly. He finally realized what it reminded him of. It was made of the same yarn as the baby blanket Mercedes had made for him years ago, now packed away in a box under his bed.
“Looks good,” Linda said. She twisted a lock of her hair between her finger and thumb. There was a tension about her that he hadn't noticed in the morning. She had just come from Nick's. Could the old caretaker have said something to upset her?