The Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander [77]
“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” I said, walking past Vince’s mom.
I went to his room and saw that the sign I’d given him for his birthday was no longer hanging on his door. Really, would there ever be an end to just how low I could feel?
I knocked. Nothing.
I knocked again. Again, nothing.
I slowly opened the door and poked my head inside. What I saw, I will never forget, though I wish I could. Vince was lying on his bed wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing on Thursday when we had our fight. His face was the color of cigarette smoke or one of George Romero’s zombies. His eyes were vacant and he lay motionless, and for just a second I thought I was looking at an actual zombie. Which was fine, because you can add getting my brains eaten to the list of things I deserved right then.
But then he saw me and spoke.
“What are you doing here?” he said so quietly it was nearly a whisper. “Get out. Don’t ever come back.”
“I know. I am the worst friend you could have. I should have at least talked to you before jumping to conclusions. All I want is fifteen minutes to try and make things better. After that I’ll leave, I’ll give you my three Ryne Sandberg rookie cards, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll even finally try eating waffles with hand lotion for syrup like your grandma sometimes tries to feed us.”
He glanced at me and looked away. But he did sit up and I thought that a little color might have returned to his face. He nodded at me to continue. Like a true friend would.
“First, Vince, I’m sorry I believed that you could have done that to me. It was ridiculous of me to think that, and you have a right to be mad. But just at least try to imagine how it looked from my standpoint. Please. Before this you’d never lied to me before. And then within days of each other I find out that you lied to me about your grandma’s birthday, you’ve been stealing money from our business, and you accepted a payment from Staples. Then my Funds go missing on the one day you happen to miss school for the first time in years?”
“Our Funds.”
“What?”
“You said ‘my Funds,’ but they were our Funds,” Vince said, still not looking at me.
“Yeah,” I said. “They were.”
“You’re right. I can see how that probably looked bad,” Vince said. “But still . . .”
“I know, Vince. I should have trusted you above all else. That’s why our business succeeded in the first place. I remembered that when I was thinking about how it was your idea for me to first hire Tyrell back during the Graffiti Ninja debacle. I remembered that it was all you who got this business started in the first place. It was your idea from the start because you recognized what we could do together even as kindergartners. And I should have remembered those things when it mattered most, but I didn’t. And I can’t really forgive myself for that.
“This whole thing had me feeling paranoid. I just didn’t trust anybody anymore, not even myself. And I guess sometimes I lost sight of the fact that this business has always been about you and me, not the money at all. It has never mattered how much money we made, not even for a Cubs World Series game. But I’m not going to make those mistakes again. You’re probably the funniest, most trustworthy kid I’ve ever met. I can’t believe I ignored that fact even for a day, or an hour, or a second.”
Vince sighed. “I’m sorry, too. This whole thing wasn’t all your fault. I mean, I stole money from you. That’s about as honest as telling a chimp that having thumbs on your feet makes up for having to wear a diaper.”
I let out a laugh in spite of the mood. “Your grandma?”
“No,” Vince said, shaking his head slowly. “My mom.”
“Oh,” I said, and stopped smiling. I remembered then that