The Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander [76]
“I don’t believe you,” he said, but he was no longer smiling.
“No? Your address is 1808 Academy Road South. Your dog is a pit bull with a pink camouflage collar. Your office is in a shed in your backyard, and you have a pretty remarkable bobblehead doll collection. My friends will use a bolt cutter to break into your shack. They’ll use sleeping pills to disarm your dog. Oh, and they better find my Emergency and Game Funds, too, because I want those back.”
Staples shook his head. He looked a little shocked and maybe a little scared, but also very, very angry. He rubbed his left eye and then balled his hand into a fist. His knuckles turned white as snow.
“But I don’t have your stupid little Funds. How could I have stolen them? I don’t even know where they are,” he snarled.
“I know, but your snitch does.” I turned to Fred. His eyes went wide.
I continued. “Fred knew where I hid my Funds and he told you where they were. Then breaking into my room Thursday afternoon probably wasn’t all that hard, was it, Barry? Considering that you found my window open? I still can’t believe that Fred has been working for you all this time.” I looked down at him in the chair.
Fred looked away quickly.
“I know it was you, Fred. You broke my heart.”
He looked at his feet. I could tell he was ashamed of himself. He shook his head and whined, “He made me do it, Mac!”
“Whatever, Fred. It doesn’t matter now.” I looked back at Staples. “You see, I found a Nintendo DS inside your desk, Staples, when I broke into your shed on Saturday. It struck me as odd that you would be into the DS, being that most of its games are for little kids. So I powered it up and found something pretty shocking: messages from Fred in the in-box. All the time I’d thought Fred had been playing games on his DS, he was really taking notes with the stylus and sending them to you.
“I also found a few records in the file cabinets detailing who is still on your payroll, and sure enough Fred is listed. And Vince isn’t. Up to that point I really had thought that Vince was the snitch and had stolen the Funds. I really had believed that Fred was innocent and had been telling the truth about everything and that I was ruined. It had all added up. It had all made such perfect sense. And that’s because that’s what you had wanted me to think all along, isn’t it, Staples? You’re clever, I have to admit that. You staged everything to make me think Vince stole the Funds and was the snitch.”
Staples just stared at me and didn’t say anything.
Sure, I was happy when I found out I was wrong, that my best friend hadn’t stabbed me in the back. But the news had also hit me like a three-ton semitruck going one hundred miles per hour. Because it meant I had questioned my best friend’s loyalty in the worst way imaginable. And thinking back to everything I’d said to him, no wonder he was so angry he could barely even talk or deny my accusations. I’d acted like a true jerk not to trust him or even give him the chance to explain.
Which made it extra hard to go visit him on Sunday morning to try and apologize. When I got to his trailer and his mom answered the door, the first things I saw on her face were relief and then a smile.
“Christian, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I don’t know what happened between you guys on Thursday, and it’s none of my business, but he’s barely even left his room since then. He hasn’t changed, showered, anything. I can barely even get him to eat.”
I hadn’t thought I could feel much worse up to that point but I had been wrong. I wanted