Beast(50)

“Dylan,” JP says. “I’m on your side. I’m being legit—I don’t think you and Jamie are weird or anything. Quit being so embarrassed. Let me get Bryce and Ethan to come back to school, I’ll talk to them. No one will bother either of you ever again.”

“Then do it. If you’re such a good guy, what are you waiting for?”

JP draws a huge breath. “Adam Michaels. I need you back. He never paid up.”

“No.”

“But this is what we do, Dylan. I make the deals, you get the money. This is our thing.”

“Not anymore. How about you call Bryce and Ethan and get them to leave her alone right now because that is what sane normal people do.”

“I know and I will, as soon as you visit Adam Michaels.”

“My days of beating people up for you are over. I did it to make you happy. Don’t you get how screwed up that is? I’m done. Like, over and out forever, done.”

“Bryce and Ethan are out there.”

His face blurs and we’re two feet shorter. He’s covered in freckles and I’m not covered in hair. We’re in the fourth grade and he’s got this amazing new Hot Wheels to trade if I only go stand outside on a ninety-five-degree day and save him a tire swing until he can get to the park. He doesn’t show up when he says he’s gonna, and I get a sunburn.

We’re slightly taller, shaggier, starting seventh grade, and fitting all these new teeth of ours into retainers and braces. He’s telling everyone at camp how cool I am and I feel so good, I never notice that I’m the one pushing aside little kids because he asked me to get him the last granola bars on the table.

We’re taller. But really, I’m taller. We’re only freshmen and I’m taller than everyone else, including all the sophomores, juniors, and seniors. I can’t fit at the tables, the desks; nothing fits. Except when I’m around JP. I know what to do, where to go, how to be. He jumped right into the high school flow without a single hiccup, turned around, and said, “Follow me.” So I did. I did everything he ever asked as long as there was a place where I fit.

“JP…” I look at him. Maybe for the first time. “Have you ever been my friend?”

“Dylan, we’ve been friends since we were practically babies.”

Except I’m not talking about how long we’ve known each other.

JP brings out his phone. “One text and these two idiots are back at school and no one from St. Lawrence ever bothers Jamie for the rest of forever. Do we have a deal or not?”

“What is wrong with you?” I lunge for the phone, desperate to do it myself. “She’s a person, not some pawn in your stupid game.”

“I have no choice!” He slides the phone down inside his front pocket, where I’m definitely not going. “Adam Michaels has missed every deadline to pay me back. He’s up to three hundred and fifty dollars.”

“So what? Why do you need this so bad?”

“It’s all I have! This is what I do; this is my thing.”

“This is how *s are born.”

“Shut up. I run this school. I’m the guy in charge, not you. This is what I control.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“I can’t let everyone see I let Adam Michaels slide. This is not some Robin Hood situation here. There are at least two other kids who owe me that much or more. If they see I can’t collect, then I’m out like over a thousand dollars,” he says.

“How can you say you’re all supportive of me and Jamie with a straight face and then blackmail me into beating someone up?”

“I’m a businessman.”

“You’re a back-alley loan shark.”

“Take the deal.”

I scowl at the wall just behind his head. Notches and dings line up inside these faded rusty bricks, and I’m listening so hard for their stories of how they got there because I can’t believe what I’m hearing in real life.

“Dylan, take the deal,” he says. “My dad…I haven’t seen him in almost two months. He’s gone.”

That sucks, but I knew that. His dad still wires him money whenever JP asks him. “Sorry about your dad.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“How about you help keep a fellow human being safe.”

He shakes his head and sucks in air like I’m asking him to dig another Panama Canal. “I can’t. I just can’t. Adam Michaels needs to pay up.”

“You’d rather throw Jamie to the wolves?”

“I…I need Adam Michaels. And if Ethan and Bryce aren’t the ones who find Jamie, it’ll really suck when someone else does.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

He stares at the closed door down the hall instead of me. “She’s a real nice girl too.”

“You frigging piece of shit. You win.” I leave the hallway on my crutches. He goes one way, I go another. The bell hasn’t rung yet; Adam Michaels and I can go outside and be back in class in like five minutes.

I round the corner of the senior wing and there he is, collecting his books like a good little student. I button up my school jacket because blood on a white shirt is always a pain to get out. “You,” I say.