Shelter (Book One): A Mickey Bolitar Novel

THE NEXT MORNING, I called my mother at the Coddington Institute. The operator said, “Please hold.”

There were two rings and then the phone was picked up. “Mickey?”

It wasn’t my mother. It was the rehab’s director, Christine Shippee. “I want to talk to my mother.”

“And I want to take a shower with Brad Pitt,” she said. “Sorry, I told you, no contact.”

“You can’t just cut her off from me.”

“Uh, yeah, Mickey, I can. Speaking of which, we need to talk. Do you know what an enabler is?”

Again with that question. “I didn’t give her the drugs.”

“No, but you’re being a candy ass about this. You need to be tougher on her.”

“You don’t know what she’s been through.”

“Sure I do,” she said as though stifling a yawn. “Her husband died. Her only son is growing up. She has no prospects. She is scared and lonely and depressed. What, you think your mother’s the only one in here with a sob story?”

“Your sympathy,” I said, “is overwhelming. No wonder the patients love you.”

“I was one of them, Mickey. A manipulative addict. I know how it works. Come by next week and we’ll talk more. In the meantime, get to school.”

She hung up.

At school, most of the morning was taken up with an assembly program. I don’t really remember much of what was being said. Two local politicians tried to “relate” to us, which made for serious condescension and boredom. I spent the time glancing around the room and locking eyes with Rachel.

When lunchtime came, I sat at what was fast becoming our usual table with Ema. Spoon was nowhere to be found. Ema and I tried, for once, to talk about the new movie releases or what music we liked or what TV shows were our favorites—but we kept steering back to the Holocaust and a heroic girl named Lizzy Sobek.

At one point I looked across the room and spotted Troy and Buck. Not surprisingly they smirked at me. Troy had a cocky I-know-something-you-don’t-know look on his face and then he started flapping his arms like wings and making an eek-eek noise.

“A bat,” Ema finally said.

“As in Bat Lady.”

“Man, he’s clever.”

I guessed that his father had told him about my arrest near Bat Lady’s house and this was his subtle way of communicating this to us. I responded by pantomiming a yawn. Troy glared when I did that, and then he used his finger to cut across his neck, the international dumbwad sign for, yup, “You’re a dead man.”

Not worth it. I turned away.

“Do you know where Spoon is?” I asked Ema.

I had caught her mid-chew, so she gestured behind her. Spoon was hurrying over to the table—sprinting really—with an open laptop in his arms. Ms. Owens blocked his path and said, “Walk, don’t run.”

Spoon nodded and apologized. When he reached us, he was wide-eyed and out of breath. “Shocking,” Spoon said.

“What?”

Spoon put the laptop on the table. “Oh boy, you are so going to want to see this.”

“What is it?” I asked.

He frowned. “Didn’t you ask me to check the surveillance video of Ashley’s locker?”

“Right.”

“Well, I’ve been going through it since last night. You are not going to believe what I found.”

The bell rang. Everyone started for the door, except for the three of us. Spoon sat down in front of the laptop. I pushed my chair over so I was on his immediate right. Ema did likewise so she was on his left.

“Okay,” he started, “so I was doing what you asked—checking the video, right? I started with that hooligan breaking into the locker, and then I traveled back from there until I found the last time that Ashley’s locker was open.”

He stopped, pushed up his glasses.

“And?” I said.

“Watch.”

Spoon was about to hit the computer key when Ms. Owens cleared her throat in dramatic fashion.

“The bell rang,” she said in a clipped voice.

“We’ll be just a minute,” I said.

Ms. Owens didn’t like that response. “We don’t operate on your time, Mr. Bolitar. The bell has sounded. That means you leave the room. You aren’t special.”

Was she kidding me?

I tried an old standard: “It’s schoolwork.”

“I don’t care if it is a cure for cancer,” Ms. Owens said—and on that, I believed her. She slammed the laptop closed, making Spoon gasp out loud. “You had all lunch period to discuss this matter. Move along now or you’ll all be in detention.”

“You assaulted my laptop,” Spoon said.

“Excuse me?”

“You assaulted my battery or whatever they call it.”

“Are you challenging my authority, young man?”

Spoon opened his mouth to say more, so I kicked him just hard enough to get him to close it again. I stood, pulling Spoon along with me. The three of us left the cafeteria. In the corridor we quickly discussed what classes we had next. I had English. Spoon had study hall. Ema had “PE, which I’m going to cut anyway.”

Spoon rushed us over to a janitor’s closet on the lower level. We huddled around the laptop again. Spoon hit the start key and said, “Watch.”

And there it was.

Ashley’s locker. Spoon had it cued up right where it needed to be—right as the locker was being unlocked. We all watched in silence while the locker was cleaned out, all the possessions dumped into a backpack.

My jaw dropped open.

“I knew it!” Ema said. “I warned you, didn’t I?”

It wasn’t Ashley clearing out the locker. It wasn’t Antoine or Buddy Ray or his big bouncer Derrick. The person who opened up the locker with the combination and cleaned it out was none other than Rachel Caldwell.

First, there was confusion, but that almost immediately gave way to anger.

I was furious. I was beyond furious. I not only felt betrayed, but I felt like the dumbest sort of sap. We get mad at those who hurt or deceive us—we get even madder when they make us feel like fools.

Right now I felt like a great big sucker.

Rachel Caldwell had batted her big blue eyes at me, and I fell for it.

Grab your thesaurus, boys and girls. Sap. Loser. Sucker. Fool. Me!

I played back Rachel’s every smile, every coy look, every little laugh.

Phony. All so phony. How had I fallen for her act?

Ema could not have looked more pleased. “I told you that we couldn’t trust her.”

I said nothing.

Spoon pushed his glasses up. “Whatever you saw on this video doesn’t change the main fact.”

“What fact is that?” Ema asked.

“That Rachel Caldwell is a first-class, teeth-melting, jawdropping, knee-knocking hottie.”

Ema rolled her eyes.

The late bell rang. It was time to move. We broke up, Spoon and I going to our respective classes, Ema going . . . wherever it was she was going. I had Mr. Lampf for English. I sat in the back and opened up my notebook, but I can’t tell you anything else about the class. I was still consumed by fury. Finally, after some time had passed, I allowed the obvious, more important question to break through my cloud of anger: What could Rachel Caldwell possibly have to do with all this?

I trotted out about a million different scenarios, but none of them made any sense. Logic wasn’t working for me, so I let the rage back in. The rage was good right now. The rage reminded me that Rachel Caldwell was in this very building at this very moment. The rage reminded me that I could confront her and then I would find it all out.

When the bell rang, I hurried toward the door. I knew that Rachel had math with Mrs. Cannon right now. I knew that because, well, I just did. Mrs. Cannon’s class was only halfway down this same corridor. I often caught glimpses of her in the hallway between this class and the next. Sue me, I looked, okay?

I headed into the corridor and turned right.

There she was. Rachel was turning away from me, her hair seeming to move in perfect slow motion, like in a shampoo ad. I rushed after her, swimming through the throngs of fellow students. She was about to turn the corner when I reached her. I put my hand on her shoulder, maybe a little too roughly. She turned, startled, but when she saw it was me, her face broke into a gorgeous, gut-punching smile.

“Hey, Mickey!” she said as if she couldn’t be happier to see me.

Someone should give this girl an Oscar.

“Where’s Ashley?”

The smile fell off Rachel’s face like an anvil. She tried to get it back, but now it only stayed on in flickers. “What do you mean?”

“You opened her locker, and you took everything out of it. Why?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Boy, how did I not see through her before? She wasn’t even a convincing liar.

“I saw you,” I said.

“That’s impossible.”

“On the surveillance camera. I saw you open Ashley’s locker and clear it out.”

Her eyes shot to the right, then to the left. “I have to go to class.”

Rachel started away from me. Working more on instinct than reason, I reached out and grabbed her arm, holding her in place.

“Why did you lie to me?”

“Let go of me.”

“Where’s Ashley?”

“Mickey, you’re hurting me!”

I let go then. She pulled her arm back and rubbed where I’d grabbed near the elbow. People walked past us, whispering.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her.

“I have to get to class.”

She started to walk away.

“I’m not going to let this go, Rachel.”

She stopped and looked at me again. “I can explain.”

“I’m listening.”

“Meet me after school. Alone. No Ema or Spoon. I’ll tell you everything.”

And then she was off again.