All Good Children - Catherine Austen [85]
“You need to eat, man. Come on. We have to get help.”
There’s a knock at the trailer door.
I scream. Dallas snickers. He peeks out from behind his shield. “Maybe we can hide him.” He points at Mr. Graham— face down on the trailer floor, huge and immobile, his legs and arms splayed, covering half the open ground between us and the door—and he starts to laugh, big and goofy, from the gut. He swats at the air, hunches over the debris around him, gasps for breath.
I get up and walk to the door.
“Who is it?” Dallas calls out in a girlish voice; then he laughs hysterically, listing to one side and kicking his feet. His face pulls into a grimace as he runs out of breath. His mouth gapes, but he’s silent except for his heels banging the floor and his laughter clicking quietly in the back of his throat.
“It’s Coach Emery! Open up!”
I obey. The coach glares from the trailer steps. “Why is this door closed?”
“Mr. Graham closed it.”
“Mr. Graham? What on earth was—?” He walks inside and falls silent. He stares at the principal, sprawled on the floor, and Dallas, curled up and quivering.
“Hey, Coach,” Dallas squeaks and heads into hysterics again, slapping his knee.
The coach rushes to Mr. Graham’s side, checks his pulse, turns him over and gasps at his bloody face.
“He hit his head,” I say. “Dallas and I were fighting and we pushed him into the wall accidentally and he fell into the bench. He’s been unconscious for a few minutes. He needs a doctor.”
Coach Emery looks up at the security camera.
“We panicked,” I say.
“What’s wrong with Richmond?”
“He’s exhausted.”
“Not treated?”
“No, sir.”
“And Mr. Graham knows that?”
“I don’t think so, sir. He knows I’m not but I don’t think he suspects Dallas isn’t.” I tell the coach what happened and how it’s conceivable that the principal’s injuries are accidental.
“You need to leave now,” he says.
I nod. “We have a plan.”
“I don’t want to know it.” The coach looks at Mr. Graham and shakes his head. “You can’t leave the country if there are charges against you.”
“It was an accident, sir.”
Dallas sighs and wipes his eyes. “I did it.”
“It was an accident,” I repeat.
The coach looks from one of us to the other. “I should never have sent you out here.”
“It’s not—”
He silences me with a hand, reassesses the situation— me, Dallas, the disabled camera, our disabled principal—and comes up with a game plan. “Can you pull yourself together?” he asks Dallas.
Dallas shakes himself like a dog and stands up, tall and vacant.
“All right,” the coach says. “You and I will go into the school and get security.”
“No. We have to get out of here,” I say. “We have a plan.”
“Shut up, Connors,” Coach Emery says. “This is the plan. You’re leaving tonight.”
“I’m not going without Dallas.”
“He’ll meet up with you.”
“He won’t. I’m taking him now or he’ll chicken out.”
Coach Emery swears. “All right. Both of you go then. I’ll get Mr. Graham to a hospital. I’ll say I walked in and saw you two fighting and you accidentally knocked him into the bench.” He looks at Dallas. “I’ll tell your father you went somewhere. Where would you go if you were treated?”
He shrugs. “The library, maybe. Or Christmas shopping.”
“That’ll do for an hour or two. But where would you go for the next few years? Do you have any friends in other cities? Anything you ever wanted to do, like join the military?”
Dallas shrugs.
“If you disappear tonight, your father will go straight to the Connors,” the coach says. “He’ll go wherever they go and take you back unless he has another trail to follow.”
“I guess I always wanted to be an actor,” Dallas says.
Coach Emery nods. “Good. Write your parents to say you’re going to California to work in the trade that best suits your skills. Then get rid of your RIG so they can’t trace you. And find a way not to be there when they come knocking on Connors’s door.” He looks at Mr. Graham. “How long has he been unconscious?”
“Several minutes,” I say. “We didn’t mean to hurt him, sir.”
“I did,