The Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander [54]
“Are you serious?” he asked.
“Unless you want to tell me why you’ve been padding numbers so you can pad your own wallet?”
Vince looked at Fred and Joe and then back at me with a helpless look on his face. I probably should have made sure we would be alone to confront him like this; it would have been the professional thing to do, but right at that moment I didn’t really care.
Vince dug the key out of his pocket and handed it to me without saying anything. No explanation. I suddenly felt like I had just eaten at a seafood buffet that had been sitting out in the hot sun for eight hours. I would wait until later to grill Vince about why he would do such a thing, and why he’d possibly lied to me about his grandma’s birthday party being that evening, and what the real reason was he was bailing on us. We had bigger things to take care of just then, like finalizing our plan to take out Justin after school.
“Shall we get down to business, then?” I asked. “Unless of course anybody has any lame jokes they’d like to tell?” I glared at Vince.
He looked away as if he’d just found something really fascinating on the wall that needed his full attention.
Vince didn’t talk much the rest of the meeting. Every time I looked at him, he looked away, or put his head down, or rubbed his face. Good. I hoped he felt slimy like a chunk of boiled cabbage. And I was glad he wasn’t going to be at the Shed after school. I didn’t really want him there anymore anyway. Not if I couldn’t trust him. Just thinking that made me want to puke all over my desk.
Chapter 18
I had a hard time thinking about anything but Vince later that day when I met up with Joe, Nubby, Kitten, and Great White outside the Shed. It was thirty minutes before the scheduled meeting with Justin. I tried to put Vince out of my mind. Our plan was dangerous and needed my full attention.
The playground and football field had been deserted since 3:25. Nobody would see what was about to go down. Kids usually cleared out pretty quickly after school and who could blame them? I certainly wasn’t going to complain—my plan didn’t exactly call for an audience.
I unlocked the Shed with the key I’d snagged from the janitor earlier that day and ushered the bullies inside.
“Blimey, it’s bloody hot in here,” Great White whined as they squeezed inside.
“I know. It’ll just be twenty minutes, okay?” I said.
“Oh, bollocks to this,” he said irritably.
Kitten and Nubby also looked uncomfortable, but they didn’t say anything. In fact, I saw Kitten eyeing the tools on the wall like a little kid might the shelves at Toys “R” Us.
I just shrugged and said, “Remember, the signal is ‘blue jay.’”
“Just get on with it already,” Great White said.
“Okay, see you soon,” I said with a grin, and shut the door.
I walked back to the top of the hill overlooking the football field and waited. After about fifteen minutes I saw Justin walking toward the Shed from the far end of the field. There was somebody with him, but I couldn’t tell who it was. It looked like I was outnumbered, but Justin didn’t know that I had a crew hidden inside the Shed waiting for my signal.
That’s why I was surprised to feel so nervous. I was nervous. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this kind of anxiety. It must have been way back when I was seven or eight and about to ride my first roller coaster.
Suddenly I really wished that Vince was with me right then, despite everything that had happened that morning. But there wasn’t really much I could do about that anymore. So I took a deep breath and trotted down the slope. I slowed at the bottom and walked across the football field to meet up with one of the school’s meanest kids. We converged on the Shed at the same time. I nodded. He nodded back. We were about ten feet away from each other, right near the Shed’s entrance.
Justin wore really baggy jean shorts with the waist sagging down to his thighs so his boxers showed. I always think it’s lame when kids wear their pants so low. It makes them look really