Page 13 of I Will Ruin You

One girl, whose dad managed a Home Depot, put a hundred-dollar gift card into my hand.

“I can’t take that,” I said.

“He said you have to.”

A grade nine boy handed me a pastry box tied up with string. “Cupcakes,” he said.

A tenth-grade student in a wheelchair rolled herself up to me, took my hand in both of hers, and squeezed it. “My parents love you,” she said, her voice breaking.

I leaned over and gave her a hug.

I felt I needed to say something to the assembled crowd. I raised my hands, palms down, signaling everyone to hush.

“Look, um, this is all very kind of you. I think...” I stopped, needing another second to pull myself together. I continued, “I think everyone here, all of you, deserve a lot of credit. The love in this school, it... it doesn’t matter what comes our way... the way we feel about each other, that will always get us through the good times and the bad.”

One kid shouted, “You’re a badass, Mr. B.!”

I smiled, shrugged. “What happened Monday... will be with us a long time. Forever, for me, I guess. What I want to say is, I wish things had gone differently. I wish... I wish I could have helped Mark LeDrew. I feel like I failed him.”

Someone said, “You didn’t fail us.”

“Okay, well,” I said, forcing a smile, “we should all get to class. And I need to find a drinkable cup of coffee.”

As the kids and most of the teachers drifted away, two staff members stayed. The first was Sally Berwick. She’d no doubt been told that Mark LeDrew had her on his mental list. She put her arms around me and began to weep.

“It’s okay,” I said, patting her back. “It’s okay.”

Her body trembled. She hung on for about twenty seconds, stepped back, wiped the tears from her eyes, and, looking slightly embarrassed, whispered, “Sorry.” With that, she went off to class, leaving just one staff member who wanted to say something.

Herb Willow.

Round-shouldered, balding, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses hanging off the end of his nose, he stepped forward and extended a hand. No hugs from Herb, but that was okay. A handshake would suffice.

I took his clammy hand into mine, and he gripped it hard. Locked onto it so that he could pull me in close to him. He put his mouth close to my ear and whispered.

“I know you told the cops it was all my fault, you motherfucker. Don’t think for a minute that I’m going to forget that.”

Six

Billy Finster was in the garage out back of his house, tinkering with the blue 1980 Camaro, the front end precariously propped up on jacks so he could work on the engine from the underside if he needed to, not that he would have had a clue what to do once he got down there. The car had been sitting this way, front end up, ass end down, for the better part of two years, ever since he bought it off a guy in Stamford for three grand. Dude had said it needed a “bit of work,” which turned out to mean doesn’t run worth a shit. But Billy’d always loved that vintage of Camaro, and figured, even though he didn’t know the first thing about car repair, he could learn a few of the fundamentals and get the thing running one of these days.

And to that end, he had invested a fair chunk of change in recent weeks. A carpenter was only as good as his tools, right? Well, the same maxim surely had to apply to people who refurbished classic vehicles. So Billy had bought a high-torque pneumatic wrench, an air hammer, a wide variety of ratchets and extenders, specialty tools to check a car’s suspension and front-end alignment, buffers and polishers, even some new shelving. Lots of stuff. Lucy had said it was like buying a high-end computer for a horse. It could be the best one on the market, but the horse was never, ever going to be able to do so much as check its email.

Pissed Billy off when she talked that way.

She’d popped into the garage to tell him she was going in for an afternoon shift at the Bridgeport hospital cafeteria where she worked. She usually had Friday off but someone had booked off sick and she was going to cover. An entire shift of overtime.

“I’m off,” she said.

“Get some beer and some Dorito things.”

“I’m not going to the fucking grocery store. I’m going to work.”

“On your way back,” he said. “And not some cheap-ass beer. Good stuff. We’ve got the money.”

“You’ve got the money,” she said.

Jesus, this again, he thought. Lucy was as bad as Stuart, wanting him to share the wealth. What did they think this was? Socialism? Billy dug a couple of twenties from his pocket and slapped them into her open palm. She turned and headed for her car.