Fake ID Page 2

  He got twitchy. “Sure. Okay.”

  I probably should’ve left then. It would’ve been better for me in the long run. But where was I supposed to go? My next class? Next fight? Or the next town? I’d been doing that for three years. I was sick of next. “Let me think about it. I’m still getting used to things around here.”

  Eli’s expression didn’t brighten, but shifted to an I’ve-heard-that-one-before kind of bland.

  “It’s cool, man.” His focus shifted to his glowing laptop screen. “I’ve got some important stuff to work on, so . . .”

  I looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the document header. “What’s Whispertown?”

  Eli snapped the laptop shut. “That’s staff business.”

  “Of which I’m not a part.”

  “I just mean it’s boring. Really boring.”

  “It’s not a good idea to tell your recruits how dull the work is.”

  “Fine, not boring.”

  “Let me see.” I moved in closer.

  Eli leaned forward, curling his arm around the computer the way smart kids hunch over test papers to ward off cheaters.

  “Bro, chill. I’m not going to take your stuff.”

  He relaxed. Or tried to look like he was relaxing. “I know, I just . . . I lied, okay?”

  “Depends on what you lied about.”

  “Whispertown isn’t boring at all. It’s pretty big-time.”

  Sure it was. The prom theme, or the title of the school musical. “So if I sign up as part of your staff, then I get full access. Is that how it is?”

  “Don’t take it the wrong way. I can’t show Whispertown to anyone until I’m absolutely sure. I’m almost there, too. I just need to confirm some things. Okay?”

  He’d misunderstood my last question, at least the feelings behind it. I wasn’t mad. Who understood secrets better than me? But he really didn’t want me to walk away from this newspaper thing. I saw an opportunity. “The whole secret-story angle . . . that’s how you sell a job. Makes it sound cool.”

  “So you’re in?”

  I raised my hand. “Didn’t say that.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do I get to play with any of the equipment? Like this camera?”

  I reached for it hesitantly, gauging his reaction. He looked horrified, like I was reaching for his thigh, but fought his reluctance. “Sure,” he said, too loudly. “It’s really the school’s anyway. I just keep it most of the time.”

  I picked it up, even though I knew he didn’t want me touching it. After his heart attack over his precious story, I figured he wouldn’t risk scaring me off over the camera, too. I’d been counting on it.

  “This is sweet.” Pretending to scan the room, I stopped with the lens on Eli. “Don’t move.”

  “Oh, I get it. Revenge for the shot I took in the gym.”

  Not exactly.

  The camera was in review mode. I clicked through the last few images. Me in a fight. Me walking into the locker room. Me talking to that girl. I paused on that for half a second too long.

  “Do you know how to work it?” Eli asked.

  “I got it.” I deleted all the pictures of me before taking a quick shot of him. Bertram applauded in my head.

  Eli asked, “How’s it look?”

  I turned the camera off. “I don’t think I’ll be shooting models in the Caribbean anytime soon.”

  The bell rang, signaling the end of the period.

  Eli gathered his laptop and camera as I stepped into the hall.

  “You sure you aren’t mad about Whispertown?” he asked.

  I couldn’t have cared less about Whispertown. Not at the time. “I’m sure.”

  “As far as joining the paper . . . ? I could really use the help.”

  “I’ll think about it. Seriously.”

  Students trickled into, then flooded, the corridor beyond the lonely hall where the J-Room was located. Eli said some more stuff about the paper but I didn’t hear because I spotted Reya walking with friends, laughing, her hair bouncing like in those shampoo commercials. Again, I thought of those movies with the slo-mo and cheesy music.

  It was insane. Bumping into that girl had copped me a beating during my first hour at Stepton High. Yet I was still drinking the Kool-Aid.

  She stopped laughing when she looked my way. I smiled. Smooth. She grimaced, raised her fist, and extended her middle finger slowly.

  Ever see somebody—like actually caught them in the moment—when they planted one foot into a steaming pile of fresh dog crap? Then you might be able to picture the look on Reya’s face.

  Tiny, hot needles pricked my cheeks and forehead. I was glad Eli’s hall was deserted. I couldn’t tell if my embarrassment was noticeable or not. At least here, he’d be the only one to see, and he’d already seen me look worse.

  When I turned from Reya, I found Eli flipping double birds in her direction.

  He waved both middle fingers in a rhythmic taunt. I looked to Reya, then back to Eli, then back to Reya, and understood her obscene gesture was never meant for me.

  Reya flicked her palm in a talk-to-the-hand motion before she proceeded to the next class.

  Eli shrugged, double-checked the J-Room lock, then said, “The office gave me a copy of your schedule. I can show you where your next class is.”

  “Dude, what was that?”

  He shrugged. “Just how me and my sister say XOXO.”

  CHAPTER 3

  HE MAY HAVE BEEN THE NEWSPAPER nerd, but I felt like the reporter the way I chased him down with a hundred questions. “‘Trouble in a training bra’ is your sister?”

  “I didn’t tell you that?”

  “No, you didn’t tell me that. Is she older or younger?”

  “Physically, she’s older by ten months—my parents were freaks—but mentally she’s still in diapers.” He stopped at a classroom where a couple of students sprinted in just as the bell rang. “This is you. Don’t worry about being late. You’ve got your hall pass. It’s good all day.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Come by the J-Room after school?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Then, “I mean no.” Mom wanted me home right after school for some kind of, I don’t know, conference call. Attendance mandatory.

  Shadows crossed Eli’s face. That same twitchiness from before.

  I said, “I’ll come by tomorrow. For sure.”

  He nodded, two quick, jerky motions. “Okay.”

  It would have to be. Maybe I owed him for the locker room save, but I wasn’t about to piss off Mom.

  When she’s mad, Zach Lynch and his crew had nothing on her.

  Rest of the day = status quo.

  “We have a new student, class. Would you like to stand up and tell us about yourself?” some teacher would say, like I had a choice.

  This was my favorite part of the new school experience, because it gave all your classmates a chance to size you up and decide how much of a threat you were. Totally fun. In Opposite World.

  The first couple of times I had to do it, I was still in middle school, so the backlash was minimal. There’s very little at stake with seventh and eighth graders.

  Last year was my first high school experience as the New Kid in Idaho. The cliques had been established, the social hierarchy set. In comes me, fresh off a growth spurt, too skinny to threaten the farm boy football players, but an instant enemy of the garbage varsity basketball team. Obviously, the tall, black guy had come to take somebody’s starting spot.

  In all fairness to their stereotype, I probably could’ve.

  What they didn’t realize was being a b-ball star went against the whole “stay low-key” thing. I never planned to try out. Not that it mattered once their girlfriends noticed me.

  Like I said, this was the varsity team. Juniors and seniors. I was a freshman, but still of instant interest to their women. The New Kid always is as long as he’s not butt ugly. No ego or anything.

  Things went south fast for me
in Boise. Not first-day-fast like here, though.

  I introduced myself as Nick Pearson, gave my cover, hit the replay button. While the reception wasn’t exactly warm—my history teacher dozed off while I was talking—there was no further violence that day. Final bell rang at two thirty. One hour until the call.

  I learned to avoid buses a few years back, after an altercation in San Diego. So I rode a Huffy ten-speed to school. If I stepped on it, I could make it home in five minutes. I didn’t do that. I wasn’t going to be late—Mom’s wrath and all—but there was no point in being early. There’d still be plenty of boxes to unpack and tension to ignore whenever I got there.

  My house was east of Stepton High. I went west, tried to pretend I was riding for the fresh air like I did in Texas, but couldn’t pull it off. There was a chemical plant on the edge of town, its thick stacks sticking up over the trees like a giant chain-smoker’s cigarettes. They pumped storm clouds and gave the air a scent you could taste. I kept thinking I now knew what it’d be like to lick a matchbook.

  I turned onto streets without checking signs, and tailed cars that had interesting license plates through a business district that I should’ve called something else. Half the establishments had soapy windows with faded For Lease signs wedged in the frames. Veering into residential territory, I came across a lot of lawns gone wild where rusted chain-link fences had the task of keeping the vegetation contained to the deserted properties.

  In the occupied homes, more than a few yards were brown, the grass dying beneath tireless cars and sagging, rain-filled wading pools. As I coasted down one street, a front door burst open, rattling against the home’s outer wall. An oily-haired woman exited with a baby on her hip and a toddler by the hand. She cursed into the doorway while backing into the yard.

  A dirtier man in a yellowed T-shirt staggered into the daylight carrying a half-empty forty-ounce beer bottle. He cursed back, threw the bottle. It thudded off the grassless lawn but didn’t break, missing her legs just barely.

  My new cell vibrated in my back pocket. I grabbed it, checked the caller ID even though I knew it could be only one of two people.

  I held my handlebars with one hand as I pedaled by the angry couple. A police cruiser rounded the corner with its flashers on, stopping near the title fight. From the corner of my eye, I saw the dirty man jump off the porch, retrieve his forty, then smash it on the hood of the cop’s car, still not breaking the invincible bottle. What the hell?

  Then the whole scene was gone. Or I was, cruising east.

  My phone kept shaking. For the briefest moment, I thought, Don’t answer, keep riding.

  Of course it was stupid. A kid on a bike. Thirty bucks in his pocket. No contacts. That would last about as long as it took to eat two pizzas and a value meal. It was still tempting. I hit Talk.

  “You forget the time?” said the man who had me contemplating how far I could make my short money stretch. The man responsible for getting us stuck in this crappy town where drunk a-holes threw bottles at women, children, and cops. The man who’d ruined the lives of his family in a way that was almost awe inspiring.

  Through gritted teeth, I said, “I’m on my way, Dad.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I DROPPED MY BIKE IN THE front yard and entered the modest, two-story home of the Pearsons. It was a cottage-style house, sky blue, and looked like every other house in the neighborhood, as if it was trying harder to blend than we were.

  The front door swung open. My mom waited at the threshold, the lines in her forehead and around her mouth cutting deep. “I wasn’t sure you’d make it, Steven.”

  “Nick, Mom. Steven was the last name.”

  She blinked rapidly and brought a hand to her forehead. “God, you’re right.”

  I kissed her on the cheek. “It’s a lot to keep track of.”

  “Too much.”

  I peeled off my jacket in the foyer, my eyes watering from a chemical smell stronger than the Stepton air. Bleach. My nose burned from the scent as I scoped the den, where boxes were stacked high this morning. Now, no cardboard. Only dust-free furniture and shiny wood floors.

  “All this today?”

  Mom brushed past me. “It’s not like I had anything more pressing to do.”

  “My room, too?” I asked, hopeful.

  “Hardly. You’ll be busy tonight.”

  I followed her into the kitchen. “What’s the deal with this phone call?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re going to be late.”

  The microwave clock said 3:29. Heavy footfalls thudded over my head, then on the stairs.

  Mom said, “Here he comes.”

  Dad strolled in, a half-eaten apple in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. Casual. He didn’t act like a man whose life and the lives of his family hung in the balance. He never did. That was the problem.

  He paused for a second and locked gazes with Mom. Her eyes narrowed to near slits and I recognized the aftermath of some epic argument. So she hadn’t spent the whole day cleaning.

  Three thirty. I snatched the slip from Dad’s hand, interrupting the stare down. He turned his anger vision on me, his watch-yourself-boy look.

  The paper held a special toll-free number and passcode. Mom activated the speakerphone and I dialed. A series of beeps sounded while we were connected. The microwave clock stared at us: 3:31.

  Dad finished his apple and began digging through the fridge with all the concern of someone calling to check movie times.

  The line went silent until a familiar voice broke in. “A bit late, aren’t we?”

  No one said anything. Mom and Dad were back in their staring contest.

  I said, “What’s up, Bertram.”

  “Nicholas.”

  Ugh. Really? “Nick’s fine.”

  “Deputy Marshal,” Mom said, relenting as Dad went shoulder deep into the fridge again, “what’s this call about? I thought we were supposed to avoid contact unless it’s an emergency.”

  “That’s kind of what this is, I’m afraid. After all the chances your family has been given, and blown, I need to stress that this is the last relocation we’re offering. One more slipup, and you’ll be expelled from the Program. No more federal protection. Considering the enemies you’ve made, I think that’s a worst-case scenario. Am I wrong?”

  He wasn’t.

  For us, home is not where we decide to hang our hats. It’s where WitSec tells us to hang our hats.

  WitSec, short for the Witness Security Program. More commonly known as Witness Protection. Our federal sponsors for the last four years.

  Bertram said, “James, do you hear me?”

  Dad emerged from the fridge with a slice of roast beef and provolone cheese folded together. He bit into his snack, made a show of not responding to his newly assigned government name. A “slave name,” he liked to say.

  “James, are you there?” Bertram asked, a strained note in his voice. “Nicholas, is your father there? Everyone should be present for this call.”

  “He’s here.”

  Dad kept right on chewing slowly, with a lot of lip, like a camel. Mom hugged herself and shook her head, too used to his stubbornness. When he finished, he reached for the fridge again. I rammed the door with my shoulder as he cracked the seal, rocking the appliance.

  Dad rolled his eyes, spoke. “This is Robert Bordeaux.”

  “Not anymore,” countered Bertram. “You haven’t been that man for a long time. Let’s see, you were Stuart Petrie of Boise, Idaho, until you started a gambling parlor in your garage, garnering the attention of the local news. You were Jerry Epps of Addison, Texas, until an identity theft scam was traced back to you. And”—papers shuffled on Bertram’s side—“ah, this is my favorite. You were Randall Bell of San Diego, California, until you attempted to extort ‘protection’ money from the neighborhood trash collectors. Quite the résumé, huh, James?”

  Dad’s jaw flexed. Criminals don’t like hearing lists of their past transgressions. Particularly t
he ones that got them caught. “I’m here, Bertram. What do you want?”

  “It’s not about what I want. It’s about what the government wants—what you promised but have yet to deliver. Testimony that can put your old boss, Kreso, away.”

  Kreso Maric, the gangster who used to pay Dad to count his dirty money. Until Dad snitched, and Kreso pulled a vanishing act. Now Bertram treated Kreso like the boogeyman, invoking his name whenever he wanted to scare Dad into submission. It might work one day.

  Dad said, “I can’t testify if you can’t catch him. It’s not my fault he fell off the face of the earth.”

  “The government has spent a lot of money protecting you and your family over the last four years, James. We’d like to see a return on that investment. But we are willing to cut our losses if you continue to be a problem. I could read you some information on what life is like for an unprotected federal witness. It’s a short paragraph.”

  Dad’s face twitched like something was alive and burrowing under his skin. His mouth opened to say something most likely stupid, but snapped shut like for once he knew better than to push.

  Bertram continued, “Supervision will be more stringent this time. We’ll be doing a call like this once a week so I can gauge your acclimation.”

  “Once a week?” Mom said. “We don’t have a say in that? We’ve always been told minimal contact is best.”

  She was right. We were supposed to be normal. Calling your U.S. Marshal didn’t sound like the average “family night.”

  Bertram said, “I need to determine if this arrangement is working. If it isn’t, you will not be allowed to suckle on the teat of Joe and Mary Taxpayer any longer.”

  Teat?

  “Nicholas, you first. Tell me about your day at school.”

  I told him. I told him how great it was and how I made lots of friends. My mom went next with a too-cheery voice, recapping a day of joy and wonder. Then Dad. A family of liars doing what we do best.

  After the call, I left my parents to get on to Round 2. I wasn’t halfway up the stairs before Mom struck, a blame jab. “We have to check in once a week like little kids at camp. Are you satisfied?”