Haze (8 page)

I wiped my right arm on the wooden bench behind me, then changed my mind and decided to use the left, instead. The hand I didn't write with. I wiped it on the bench, trying to get the sweat off so I wouldn't slide off the glass.

There's a moment, before you dive into the pool. Your body is ready. You're in position, ready to dive. But there's a split second, when the starting gun sounds, when you could dive or not. A good swimmer trains past that point, so it's not a conscious thing, diving into the water. It's instinct.

I had no instinct for diving into a door.

I aimed, stretched my left arm out, made a fist and jumped.

chapter twenty

The force of my crash echoed up my arm. Glass shattered. My body slammed against the door. My left cheekbone smashed the window frame, and my arm hung through the broken window. For a split second there was no pain, no blood. Only silence, and my heartbeat in my ears.

Then I heard glass fall and felt the pain.

My knuckles throbbed. Deep cuts burned along my arm. Blood welled up, then started to pour from a gouge along the inside of my forearm. I felt dizzy. My vision narrowed. All I could see was the blood on my skin and a darkness closing in from the sides.

I swallowed. Breathed. Pushed back the darkness. I was on my knees, inside the sauna, clutching my left arm. It hurt.

I stood shakily, leaning against the door. My right hand was slippery with blood from holding my left forearm. I forced myself to let go, to reach through the broken window, to feel for the lock. Somehow, I opened the door. Cool air.

I staggered three steps, just enough to get clear of the glass. There was a first-aid kit on the wall somewhere.

I couldn't remember where. The pool deck spun.

Then Coach was there. “Bram? What—?” He was beside me, kneeling. He grabbed my arm. Something sharp cut me and I screamed. He swam back and forth in front of my eyes, like we were underwater.

“Take a deep breath. We'll get you fixed up. Bram. Bram, look at me.” He slapped my face. “Hold this.” He had a towel or something soft wrapped around my left arm.

I brought it up against my chest and held it there. Blood, water and glass were everywhere.

“You missed the artery, thank god, but you're going to need stitches,” Coach said. “And there's some glass in the wound.”

I nodded.

“Come on.” He helped me stand. “Let's get you out of here.”

Coach gave me a warm-up suit to pull on over my bathing suit and drove me to the hospital. He said the school had phoned my parents. But he would stay with me until they could get there.

We had a couple of chairs against the wall in the waiting room. There were a lot of moms there with little kids, one older woman with her arm in a sling. One man kept bending forward and groaning like his stomach hurt. Nurses storm-walked back and forth along the hallway, carrying clipboards and talking fast. And every few minutes, the loudspeaker went off. “Paging Doctor Patil to the OR, paging Doctor Patil. Housekeeping, line one. Housekeeping, line one.”

The towel was still wrapped around my arm. The bleeding seemed to have slowed down. “Feeling better?” Coach asked. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“The door got stuck,” I found myself saying.

“Stuck.” He frowned. “You and I both know that door doesn't stick. Try again.”

I looked at my feet. At the grungy floor.

“Sometimes they go too far,” he muttered. “What if I hadn't been there?”

I got called in sooner than I expected. The bleeding had pretty much stopped. The doctor sent me for an X-ray of my hand.

I had to sit in a wheelchair for the trip to radiology. Hospital policy, the nurse said. Coach pasted on a lame attempt at a smile and called me “Hot Wheels.”

“You don't have to stay,” I said. “My parents will be here soon.”

“Nonsense.” He patted me on the shoulder. “I'm here for you, Bram. You never doubt that, okay?” He insisted on walking down to radiology with me, even though the intern wouldn't let him push the chair.

Partway down a long pale-green hallway, his footsteps stopped. “Damn it,” he muttered.

I turned to see what was wrong, but he wasn't looking at me. He was looking at a well-dressed Asian couple, maybe my parents' age, walking down the hall. The woman's arm was linked through the man's. They saw Coach and froze.

“Coach Gordon,” the man said.

“Mr. Tam,” Coach said. He bent his head to them. His hands were clasped together in front of him, like at a funeral, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

The woman's eyes skated over me. She was very thin.

The man rubbed her back. “We've just been visiting the Blackburns,” he said. His voice was even, but his eyes bored into Coach. The Blackburns were Abby and Jeremy's parents. I leaned forward.

“I didn't realize you knew each other,” Coach said.

“Jeremy is a good boy,” the woman said. “He's kept in touch—” She didn't so much finish her sentence as lose her voice midway.

Her husband wrapped his arm around her. He nodded to Coach without speaking, and the two of them drifted away. We made it the rest of the way to the radiology waiting room.

Coach sat down beside me. He kept clearing his throat and rubbing his right knee. “Didn't realize they knew each other,” he mumbled.

“Coach, were those Marcus Tam's parents?” I asked.

He blinked and looked at me as if he had forgotten I was there. “How do you know about Marcus?”

“It was in the news,” I pointed out. Something kept me from admitting Jeremy had told me the story.

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat again. “Yeah, of course it was. I tell you, Bram, that was a real tragedy. That boy had potential.”

And parents. Somehow I had never thought about him having parents. “It was alcohol poisoning, right?” I asked.

He nodded and wiped his palm over his face. “There's not a day goes by I don't wonder what might have happened if I'd been at that party.”

The lie felt like a splash of cold water. I grabbed the arms of my wheelchair. He had lied, right to my face. So what else was a lie?

I wanted to talk to Abby. We needed to decide what to do with the photo.

Coach was still talking. “You know how kids are though. They do their own thing, don't want an old coot like me hanging around. Still, I wish one of them had told me what they were planning.”

His voice trailed off, but he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.

“I don't think kids usually invite teachers to parties,” I said.

“No,” he said, rubbing his knee again. “No, I guess you're right.”

Mom appeared soon after that. Her forehead was creased. Storrs was over an hour away, and she hated highway driving. I stood and hugged her. She felt smaller than when I'd last seen her, but she smelled the same. It made me want to hold her tighter.

She thanked Coach for taking care of me.

“Not at all, Mrs. Walters, not at all,” he said. “We're like family at Strathmore.” He patted me on the shoulder.

I wondered what the Tams thought about the Strathmore family. It hadn't helped Marcus much.

chapter twenty-one

It was midafternoon by the time I went out for a late lunch with Mom and reassured her that I was fine and, no, I didn't know why the sauna door stuck. And, yes, I'd never go into the sauna again. After she finished giving Coach and the headmaster a piece of her mind, there was only an hour left of class. The sauna was off-limits to everyone, pending a safety inspection and new glass.

Mom kissed me goodbye. I had gym, and the headmaster had suggested I take a study period instead. So I grabbed a few books and headed to the library. I set myself up in a back corner and opened my science textbook, but I couldn't concentrate.

There was no way the sauna was an accident. I gave up studying and headed to the newspaper archives. I found all the articles I could from three years ago, when Marcus had died.

It made for interesting reading. Not so much the headlines themselves, although the press had Marcus as a tragic victim one day and a reckless partier the next. It was more how suddenly the headlines disappeared. There was talk of a lawsuit against the school and a police investigation. Some big-shot lawyer was called in as a consultant to the school, and then…nothing.

Nothing at all.

I put the papers away and returned to my science textbook. The diagram swam in front of my eyes, colored lines and labels swirling and making no sense.

None of this made any sense.

Coach had helped me when I was hurt.

Coach had been at the party. He had lied about it.

Jeremy was going to tell the truth about Coach being at the party. Someone had tried to kill Jeremy.

Someone with a green car. Nate's father had a green car. Nate had access to it. But Nate hadn't even been on the team the year Marcus died.

If Coach had nothing to do with what happened to Jeremy, was it right to ruin his career over something that happened years ago? Better to find out who was really behind the attack on Jeremy. One of the Sharks? Nate? Steven? Or just some stranger? Maybe the police would find the guy. Maybe this whole thing would go away.

But…three years ago or not, Marcus's parents had lost their son. That story had gone away too. I had seen that for myself, in the library's newspapers. Didn't his family deserve some answers?

And who had locked me in the sauna? I slammed my book shut. It was nearly five o'clock—I'd been in the library for more than two hours. Droid would go into shock if he knew.

I had time to drop off my books before dinner. I headed up to my room, nodding to a group of freshmen I passed in the hall. A couple of them eyed the gauze on my arm like they were waiting for the stitches to unravel and blood to gush through. Word must have spread.

The door was partially open, and the room was dark. The glow of Droid's computer was visible from the hall. I shouldered on the light switch. “You'll wreck your eyes,” I said.

“Thanks, Mom.” Droid tapped a few keys before spinning around to face me. “So…suicide via sauna door? Very dramatic. And original.”

“Ha ha.” I dropped my books on my bed.

“Dude. I'm glad you're okay.” He looked at me seriously for a moment. “Do you think this is because of…you know?”

The bedroom door was still open. I glanced at it and nodded, putting a finger to my lips. Droid spun over and kicked the door closed like a desk-chair ninja.

“Yeah, I do,” I said, sitting down on the corner of my bed. “There were a few Sharks in the pool this morning. Not Steven, but those guys will do whatever he says.”

“Was it, you know, a warning? Or are we playing for keeps now?” His voice was light, but the frown lines across his forehead were new.

I shook my head. “I didn't wait to see if they'd come back and let me out.”

“Clearly. Because obviously, you're Superman.” There was an edge to his voice now. “Do you think maybe it's time you and Girl Sherlock told the police about the photo? I only ask because if you get yourself killed, I'll need to look for a new roommate.”

“Nobody's going to—” I was going to say kill me. But after the sauna, after what had happened to Jeremy, how could I be sure? Maybe it wasn't Coach, but somebody wanted to keep what happened to Marcus a secret. And maybe the only way to stop the insanity was to do what they were afraid of—make the photo public, no matter what happened to Coach as a result.

It was time to talk to Abby, before anything else happened.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and paced while it rang. And rang. Finally her voice mail clicked through.

I punched off my phone. So she wasn't answering—it could mean anything. It could mean she didn't have her cell phone with her…but she always had it. Her brother was in the hospital. She never let it be out of reach.

Maybe she wasn't answering because she was pissed off at me for holding her up on the photo thing.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked Droid.

Wordlessly, he handed it over. I fumbled my way through Abby's number. I was used to calling from my address book, not punching the numbers in. The first time, I got it wrong. The second time, it rang to her voice mail again.

“It's probably nothing,” Droid said. “She might be in the can.”

I nodded and sent a text, telling her to call me. But just like in the sauna, I couldn't quiet the feeling that something wasn't right.

chapter twenty-two

Droid and I were halfway downstairs on the way to dinner when Steven and Nate caught up to us. They asked if I had a minute.

“Not really,” I said. I wanted to get through dinner fast and try phoning Abby again. If I didn't hear from her tonight, I was going over to Wallingford. She had the photo, and we needed to decide what to do with it.

“It's important,” Steven said, blocking my way.

“Easy,” Nate said, putting a protective hand on my shoulder. “Bram knows what's up. He'll hear us out. Right, Bram?”

Droid and I exchanged glances. “You want me to stay?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It's okay. Save me a spot.” If I didn't show up, he'd know something was wrong.

Droid continued downstairs. Steven, Nate and I waited on the landing until everyone had gone. The landing had a stained glass window, but it was already dark outside.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “What's up?”

“You've been asking some questions lately. Hanging around with Jeremy's sister. Anything you want to tell us?” Steven asked.

“That it's none of your business who I hang out with,” I said, moving closer to the stairs.

Nate leaned against the window ledge. “Down boy,” he said. “We're here to help you. You said something about having proof that Coach was at that party. This wouldn't happen to be a photo you got from Jeremy, would it?”