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Chapter Four: The Secret
“Fuck his stupid threats,” Ethan said softly over the lunch table. “He can't do anything while we're here. Let's go talk to Reed. Reed'll call the police and Winchester'll be arrested by the end of the day.”
His lips drawn tight, Chance shook his head. “He was in my house last night! That motherfucker is crazy. If you tell Reed before you have any evidence, he'll just let him go, and then he's in your house. Choking you with a pair of Jack's drawers from 1985.”
Ethan snorted in spite of himself. “That's really not funny.”
“Afternoon, boys.”
They both jumped. Winchester was at their table.
“Ethan, if you want to swing by my room during study hall, we can finish up what we worked on yesterday.”
He slipped a note onto Ethan's tray with a saccharin smile and walked out of the cafeteria.
Chance watched to make sure he was out of earshot, then laughed haughtily. “There's your proof. Now we can go to Reed.”
Ethan unfolded the note. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “It's an excuse to get out of study hall.”
Ethan considered not handing over his excuse, but halfway through the period, the phone on the teacher's desk rang.
“Yes?” she answered, “Alright, I'll send him down.”
Ethan cringed as she called him up to the front.
“Mr. Winchester needs you,” she said, signing a hall-pass.
Nodding, Ethan took it numbly and headed out the door. He wondered if he could get away with hiding out in the bathroom. Probably not. Winchester would call again, and Ethan would get called down to Reed's office. He passed the computer lab and remembered something. One of the texts last night had told him to check his email. There wasn't a class in the lab, and the door was open, so he stepped inside. Winchester could wait a couple of minutes. He logged on, then went to a website that allowed him to bypass the filtering software and access his email. Sure enough, the same address had sent him an email, the subject line an ominous smile.
Ethan,
I found these great pictures. I think Laura will LOVE them. They just say so much about who you really are!
Attached were about twenty images. Jack and Ethan snuggled on the couch at the lake house, holding hands on the porch, kissing in front of the fire – every single intimate moment they had shared that summer. Then, another picture. A close-up. Ethan was on his back, Jack on top of him, both shirtless and wet, Jack's mouth clamped over the boy's. Ethan knew this was when Jack had given him CPR, but it definitely didn't look that innocent in the picture.
Sighing disgustedly, he logged off and left the lab. Winchester would be calling the study hall for him any second.
Ethan followed, silently wondering if he should have had Chance wait for him and get Reed if something went wrong. He sat down in front of the desk, crossing him arms and legs mutinously.
Winchester threaded a hand through his greasy ponytail and coughed. “Um...this is a little bit awkward for me,” he smiled. “Did you...say something...about me? To Jack?”
“What?”
“Well, he's not answering my calls. I've called quite a few times and haven't been able to reach him, which is unusual – he's normally very good about getting back to me. So I thought you might have said something about yesterday. You know, I didn't mean to upset you, I just—”
“He hasn't answered mine, either.”
Twiddling his thumbs under the desk, Winchester regarded him suspiciously. “Not at all? He hasn't even called your cell phone?”
“Mom took it.”
“I'm sorry,” Winchester fake-cringed. “School policy. I'll give her a call and see what I can do to get it back for you. But there's one more thing....Could you maybe talk to Jack for me when you get the chance? Since he's not answering my calls, I thought you might be able to clear up our little misunderstanding.”
Laughing, and with no intention of helping David and Jack mend their friendship, Ethan said, “If I can reach him, he'll be in touch.”
Chance tipped onto the back legs of his chair, pretending to diligently study the text while cradling his cell phone between the pages. He still half-listened, though, to the other kids – mostly seniors – in his AP Lit class carefully bullshitting their responses.
“People who abuse the privileges God gives them will have them taken away,” an empty-headed 4.0 spouted. “It's like in Dante's Inferno.”
Mr. Hubbard frowned. “Mm-hm...but how did they abuse their senses?”
Another kid from across the room jumped in too enthusiastically. “Maybe it's not that at all! Maybe it's about the relationship between the two of them. Lucky is being abused, but has no voice to object, and Pozzo is blind to how bad he's treating Lucky.”
“Great!”
“Wrong,” Chance cut in. “Becket was an absurdist.”
Hubbard stared at him, waiting for a little more explanation. But Chance was his star student. Never studied, barely read the books, but that was because he had already read most of them for fun. Instead of pouring over the assigned reading or doing practice AP essays in study hall, he was usually thumbing through a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Jungle Book, or Lolita. Anything but Jane Austen. He chose to take this particular lit class because Hubbard was the only teacher who dared to make his students even touch things like The Epic of Gilgamesh, Dante's Inferno, Plato's Republic, and even though Chance preferred something a little less old and crusty, it was better than the English 11 kids waxing philosophical about Harry Potter.
But Waiting for Godot was one of his favorites this year, and he had not only read the play at least twice before in his lifetime, but had seen it live with his dad while visiting his grandparents in Portland. He knew a little bit about the playwright himself from the program notes.
“Absurdists believe that there's meaning in the universe, but it's so illogical to our minds that we can't find it, and wouldn't be able to understand it if we did. So nothing means anything – at least not anything we're supposed to understand.”
Leaning back against his desk, Hubbard laughed. “And if you can write a decent-length essay saying nothing but that, you're pretty much guaranteed a nine!” Then he turned to the rest of the class. “You guys have great ideas. I don't think there's a single one of you that won't get at least a three or four on the exam as a whole. Alright, that's it for today.”
Chance closed his book and, hiding his phone up his sleeve until he was out of Hubbard's line of sight, went out into the hallway. As soon as he could, he checked his messages. He had gotten a few more from Winchester, but a new one popped up just as the bell rang.
Chance,
It's so cute when you show off how smart you are. Why don't you do that around Ethan? He likes smart. Tell him your secret, or I will. ;)
“Fuck you,” Chance growled under his breath. It was his last class. He just needed to find Ethan and get out of there.
“Huh?”
“When I was little, my mama sent me to the Boys' and Girls' club. My dad sent me to Junior Achievement. When I was in J.A., I was the smartest kid there. When I was in Boys' and Girls', I was in more trouble than anybody else. I went to a private prep school K through 8, but all my friends who weren't in J.A. with me lived in the projects.”
Ethan blinked. “Cool. You're, like, a chameleon or something. When you're older, you can go to big cities on business trips and talk your way out of getting mugged on the subway. Didn't I kinda already know that?”
“I'm not—hold on.”
Chance's phone was vibrating. He checked it.
Nice try, but that's not what I meant. He'll get his phone back tonight. You have until 10:00. Then I'll tell him for you. He won't like hearing it from me.
Slamming his phone shut, Chance immediately spun around in his seat and looked for Winchester.
“What?” asked Ethan. “Did he send another one? What does it say?”
Chance shook his head. Winchester was standing closer to the school, and as soon as he spotted Chance's car, he gave a jovial little wave. “Nothing...It's really...personal. Alright?”
“Sure.”
