The Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander [59]
“I should have been there!” Vince said.
“If you’d have been there, then you would have just gotten beat up, too. You really think you could have taken them all out on your own? The guy who avoids confrontations like they’re the plague?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything for second and then said, “Yeah. Of course.”
I almost laughed.
“Mac, you know what this means then, right?” he said.
“That we’ve been double-crossed. Again,” I said.
“We have a traitor amongst us,” he said. “It’s like Benedict Arnold all over again.”
“Who?”
“Never mind,” Vince said. “Look, we need to figure out who it is. For Justin to know about this plan . . . it would have to be one of us. Someone actually involved with the plan sold us out. We’ve been had, Mac.”
“You know, they’re all going to think it’s you, Vince. I mean, they just got wasted and you conveniently missed the whole thing just after getting caught stealing money. It looks pretty suspicious.”
Vince’s face turned red and he looked away.
We both sat in silence as I started pacing my room.
“This is just like Pearl Harbor. If only we’d listened to the warnings!” Vince said.
“What? Pearl Harbor? Vince, stop talking like a freaking historian and come up with an actual idea that will help us!” Vince had never in my life annoyed me so much.
“Sorry, Mac, I’m trying,” he said.
“Whatever,” I said.
We sat uncomfortably in an awkward silence for a while, as if we were both wearing itchy wool bodysuits in one-hundred-degree weather. I didn’t feel like I really had anything more I wanted to say to Vince right then, but then I remembered what kind of mess he had to go home to and I decided to send him off feeling a little better.
“Okay, Mr. Chicago Cub, here’s a real test for you: Who was the first Cub to win a Cy Young?” I said, tossing him a floater.
“Fergie Jenkins,” Vince said. After a pause he added, “I’m sorry, Mac.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” I said.
He nodded and left.
• • •
“Someone snitched,” I said calmly. “We’ve been two-timed. Backstabbed. Double-crossed. Ratted out. Sold up the river. We’re not moving forward until we find out who it is.”
We were all sitting in the East Wing boys’ bathroom: Fred, Joe, Vince, the three bullies, and I. It was Wednesday, the day after the ambush. I had just finished explaining to Fred what had happened to our plan, how it had been turned upside down.
“But who?” Fred nearly screeched.
A silence followed as we all looked at one another. Nobody flinched. It seemed like nobody breathed. It was kind of like a seven-way staring contest. I looked at Great White the most. He looked really angry. He was staring at Vince. Nubby was also glaring at Vince. In fact, everybody seemed to be staring at Vince.
I myself was feeling pretty conflicted about Vince. Up to now most of the evidence did seem to point at him. And while I remained convinced he’d never do something like this to me, if you’d told me two days ago that he would steal money from me, I’d have slapped you in the face with a spiral-bound notebook and called you a dirty liar. So anything was possible.
“Look,” I said, breaking the silence, “we can’t just sit here accusing each other. I need some time to think, so let’s just plan on meeting here again tomorrow at morning recess, okay?”
Everybody was pretty quiet. Finally Nubby said, “Okay.”
“Just use your day off to relax, all right?” I said to everybody.
With that, the three bullies left the bathroom. I asked Joe, Vince, and Fred to stay for a moment.
“I want to call a private meeting just for us,” I said to them, “but it’s not safe here. We’re already going to my house right after school to help my dad clean off the graffiti, so we’ll hold our meeting after we’re done.”
“I just need to call my mom and let her know that I’ll be home a little later than usual,” Fred said.
Fred had been there the day I told Joe and Vince about the graffiti and my dad’s offer.