Caught up in circles. Confusion is nothing new.
Chapter 4. Time After Time
I was late getting to lunch. Mrs. Sloan had me stay to help clean up after our Chemistry lab. Probably this was because I’d not listened closely enough to her instructions at the beginning of class. My test tube had exploded - with a surprisingly soft pop - since I hadn’t removed the stopper before heating it. Unfortunately, the result of this was some truly smelly ick spattered on Jenny Ratner’s pretty, butter yellow blouse and I’m fairly certain she’s planning some kind of righteous retribution for my crime, so I have that to look forward to.
Honey, Di, and Jim were already well into their meals by the time I claimed my seat. “Where’s Mart?” I asked, looking around for my missing twin.
“Haven’t seen him since this morning,” Di replied with a shrug. Honey and Jim looked equally clueless.
“Huh. Maybe he’s cornered Marv Easton somewhere. Who, by the way, was hanging around on campus after hours yesterday and straight up lied to us about it. He said he was working on a history project, but we know that’s not true. He was definitely up to something. Maybe Mart can drag it out of him.” I ended my quick Marvin update on that optimistic note and opened my bag to pull out my mystery lunch. My Thermos, I discovered, did not hold my usual drink. Instead, Brian had filled it with leftover vegetable-beef soup that was still pleasantly hot. I also had crackers and a baggie with cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks. At the bottom of the bag, I found a spoon wrapped in a paper napkin, and, more importantly, a quarter. I grinned as I removed it and set it on the table. Leave it to my darling brother. Milk money. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the lunch line was still long enough that it was worth waiting another five minutes or so before joining it.
“Did he talk to Brian?” Di asked. “What did he have to say?”
“We both did,” I replied with a short nod. “And he said he was nowhere near the storeroom yesterday.”
“So, someone was deliberately lying and not just offering a witness statement,” Jim mused quietly.
I frowned at his words. “Just ‘someone’? So, you don’t know who, then?”
“All I know is that a couple of guys came to the office to report seeing him. Principal Stratton didn’t say who they were and I knew better than to ask.”
“Sorry, Trix,” Honey added. “That seems like a bit of a dead end for now.”
“Hmm. Maybe. Maybe not. If we can find out who else was in the office at the time, we might have a friend or acquaintance who could spill the beans for us.”
“Oh, my… wow. Who is that with Mart?” Di suddenly asked, eyes wide as she stared at some point over my shoulder.
I had to assume it wasn’t Marv by her reaction, so I turned around to see. I’m sure the dumbfounded look on my face at that point was quite comical to anyone who might have observed it. My brother had just walked through the open double doors at the front end of the cafeteria with Danny Zuko at his side and they were clearly in conversation together.
We weren’t the only ones watching them. The dull roar of hundreds of kids talking at once that usually indicated lunch was in full swing had dropped considerably and nearly every head was turned. Mart waved a hand in our direction and Zuko gave a single nod as he followed my brother over to our table.
“Friends. Sis. This is Dan Mangan,” Mart announced. “He just moved here from Houston.”
“I prefer Danny Zuko,” I said matter-of-factly, naturally garnering me strange looks from everyone within earshot.
Dan regarded me with a stony expression I certainly deserved, but I returned it with my best, full-on, mega-watt Belden smile - not my usual smirk - as if nothing made me happier than seeing him standing there. Let him try to work that out.
“Hello, Dan,” Honey said sweetly, demonstrating yet again why almost no one even knows her real name is Madeleine. “It’s nice to meet you.” If anyone bothered to give me a nickname beyond Trixie, it probably wouldn’t be one that could be uttered in polite company.
“Dan’s in several of my classes,” Mart explained, with one last “What the heck?” look in my direction. “So I’ve been asked to show him around. Dan, this is Honey Wheeler, Diana Lynch, Jim Frayne, and… my sister, Trixie.”
I could tell he only just barely stopped himself from adding some qualifier like “nutso” or “lunatic” along with the information that we were related.
“Yeah,” Dan muttered. “Sure.” He looked around and, spotting the table where The Cure superfans like Lester Mundy and Ruthie Kettner gathered, strolled off with a “Later” tossed in my brother’s general direction.
“Oh,” Di said, blinking. I think she was a little taken aback. Usually once guys enter her orbit, they don’t immediately leave again unless forced to do so.
Mart plopped down next to me and poked me in the shoulder. “You wanna explain what just happened there?” he asked. “Because I know Moms taught you better than that.”
I feigned innocence. “What do you mean?”
“Danny Zuko? Did you just accuse the poor guy of looking like one of the main characters of Grease?”
“Are you going to sit there and tell me he doesn’t?” I demanded. “For real?”
Mart gave a quick tug to my ponytail. “Says the girl who is one poodle skirt shy of looking like Sandy today?”
“Oh, ha, ha. Very funny. I saw Zuko – Dan – in the office this morning and he seemed less than friendly is all. He was there with Mr. Maypenny. Are they related?”
Mart twisted around so he was sitting properly at the table and unfolded his lunch sack. “Honestly, he didn’t say much of anything at all, so I don’t know. I did most of the talking. But give him a break, huh? Neither of us have ever had to do the new kid in school routine and I’m sure it’s not easy.”
“It’s not, Trixie,” Jim told me with a small frown and I nodded without speaking. Jim had been orphaned a few years before and the series of events that eventually brought him to Bowdon were no secret but not often discussed. He’d spent a few months living on the streets in Austin after escaping an abusive stepfather and it had taken him some time to adjust and learn to trust his new adoptive family and friends. Honestly, sometimes I forget all about his history. He fits in so well, it feels like he’s always been one of us.
Di’s attention was still on Dan. I glanced over and saw he’d apparently introduced himself to the Goths and had either been invited to join them or he’d taken a spot at their table regardless. “Coming here from Houston must be a bit of a culture shock,” Di murmured. “From the fourth largest city in the country to Bowdon, home to less than 20,000 people? Yikes.”
I felt another twinge of guilt. She was right. They were right. I really hadn’t given Zuko – Dan – much of a chance. Put yourself in his combat boots, I thought. Imagine being dropped in a different school that wasn’t anything like you’ve ever known, where you knew absolutely no one and how well would you do? To make matters worse, I think a lot of my snap judgment of him came from his leather jacket. All right, so he looked like Danny Zuko. Or an extra from West Side Story. What would strangers think about me, if my clothing was all they had to go by? Today, I’d probably do all right in their eyes, all done up in my school spirit glory, but there were lots of days where I was a rumpled mess and probably left a less-than-favorable impression.
“It was my intention to ask him if he wanted to go with us to the game tonight,” Mart said slowly as he regarded me uncertainly. I wasn’t entirely sure what his unspoken question was. Was he asking me if I agreed? If I thought it was a good idea? If I could be trusted to behave?
“That would be nice of you,” Honey told him. “Especially if he is staying with Mr. Maypenny. It would be no problem for us to swing by and pick him up.”
“Okay. I’ll see what he says.”
“I have some other news,” Jim announced as he gathered up the remains of his lunch.
I was super glad for the change in topic and regarded him eagerly. “Oh, yeah?”
“We had an emergency Honor Society meeting this morning and decided that we have to operate under the assumption that we may never get the missing books back. That being the case, we wanted to come up with some way of raising funds fast to purchase replacements.”
“And you have an idea?” Honey prompted curiously.
“We do. We want to add a float to the Homecoming parade and a booth to the carnival. The float will be for general publicity, encouraging people to make monetary donations to an account I’m sure I can get Dad to set up at the bank, and the booth will be both a game people can play for a dollar a turn and a spot to drop off any new donations. I feel like we already cleaned the whole town out of books the first time around, but someone might still have something they’re willing to give, especially when the news hits about the theft.”
Honey beamed at her brother. “Those are fantastic ideas! What can we do to help?”
“First and foremost, we need all hands on deck to build the float. We don’t have a lot of time for that, obviously, and we haven’t even come up with a design yet. Second, we need volunteers for the game booth.”
“Well, I don’t know how much help I could be with the float design,” I said, “but I’m there for building it. And I’m sure my dad would be happy to work with yours for the bank account. I can work the booth, too, though in that case, Mart would probably make a much better carnival barker than I ever could.…”
Jim smiled warmly at me and I was conscious of the hope that maybe I’d redeemed myself at least a little after the Zuko – darnit, Dan! – thing.
The rest of the school day went by in a blur. I saw Dan once in the hallway and tried to offer him a genuine smile and greeting, but he brushed by me like I wasn’t even there. I reasoned I couldn’t expect much more than that and I had my work cut out for me if I was ever going to truly befriend him.
I saw Mart between sixth and seventh and he told me Dan had declined the offer to join us, along with some crack about football being a lame game only rich kids play and care about. I could tell Mart was struggling to maintain his “Give the guy a chance!” attitude where Dan was concerned. I sympathized with my brother, even though it didn’t make a whole lot of sense on my part. It wasn’t that I cared that much about football myself, but the implied insult still rankled. It was clear I wasn’t the only one being a bit judgmental today. I decided to distract Mart with a different puzzle to worry over. I explained what I learned that morning about where the spare keys were kept in the school admin office and asked him to think about the who, when, and how of someone removing them unnoticed, so we could possibly start constructing a list of suspects.
When the last bell finally rang, the halls quickly filled with students all buzzing about the upcoming game.
“Did you get a chance to talk to Marv?” I demanded as soon as I found my brother at his locker.
He was carefully sliding his Algebra 2 book in between two binders and he only glanced at me briefly before returning his attention to his task. “Nope. He’s out today.”
“Really? He sure didn’t look sick yesterday afternoon.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t come down with something last night or this morning,” Mart pointed out. “Or maybe he had another reason to be absent.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Let’s go find Di. It won’t be a Bowdon Bulldog victory if I don’t have ‘BHS' painted on my face.” As I turned, I was almost run over by a kid bopping along to whatever he was listening to on his Walkman. I decided his sheepish grin was apology enough and stepped back out of his way, gallantly waving him on.
Di didn’t have much time to talk when we found her in the gym. Even though she was dressed exactly the same as roughly twenty other girls, she was as easy to spot now as she was at any other time. I don’t know if it’s her perfect posture, slightly above-average height, or just the way she commands the room, but if you’re looking for Diana Lynch, even in a crowd, you’ll have no trouble locating her.
“So, I got a moment to pester Tad and see if he knew anything from his brother,” she told me as she used black eyeliner to trace around the outer edges of the blue letters on my cheek.
“What’d he have to say?” I asked through clenched teeth and nearly closed lips, trying not to move in any way that would mess up her efforts.
“Not a lot. I was right. Spider never discusses cases with him. Privacy concerns or whatever. But he did tell me he overheard his brother on the phone with Sergeant Molinson, saying something about rare books and O’Neil’s Bookstore. That’s got to be important somehow, right?”
I agreed with her. It definitely seemed like something important. I just wasn’t sure in what way yet. Why mention O'Neil's unless there was some connection of some kind?
Di stood back to study her work. She reached out and tilted my head up, then nodded in satisfaction. “You’re good to go.” She glanced over to where Honey and Mart were waiting for me. “Did your brother ask Dan about the game tonight?”
“Yeah. But apparently Dan thinks football is a rich kid sport and beneath cool kids like him.”
“He actually said that?” Di asked in disbelief. “I know he’s from the city, but Houston is still a part of Texas, after all. Doesn’t he know criticizing the great game of football is pretty much blasphemy in our state?”
I had to laugh at that. “Them’s certainly fightin’ words, ma’am.”
“I guess he’ll learn soon enough,” Di said with a small shrug. “I still have to pack my stuff, so I better run. See you tonight!”
At home, Mart and I had an early dinner with our family. We were about halfway though our fried chicken, coleslaw, green beans, and biscuits when a thought occurred to me. “Moms? Did Brian tell you Regan stopped by to see you yesterday?”
“Hmm? Yes, dear. He did.”
“Oh.” I stared at my mother. Surely, she knew me well enough…
“It doesn’t concern you,” she continued, in that “And that’s final” voice that all mothers seem to develop after they have kids.
Right. So she did know me well enough. And she wasn’t going to tell me anything more about it. I had a hard time coming up with a single thing that would prompt Regan to seek out my mother for advice. Don’t get me wrong. Moms is no dummy and I go to her for advice myself all the time, but what did a twenty-something single, childless groom and a forty-something, mother-of-four hospital employee have in common? Regan certainly wasn’t coming to her about the horses, so what else could there be that he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to the Wheelers or maybe their estate manager about?
A troublesome idea worked its way into my head. Even though she wasn’t a nurse or doctor and her job entailed going through the paperwork and admitting patients to the ER, my mother’s position meant she had access to more medical knowledge than the average person. Was Regan sick? Did he have some illness or disease, like cancer?
I really hoped not. Regan was by far the grouchiest guy in the under-thirty set I knew, though to be fair, I actually knew very few of them who weren’t still in high school. Despite that, though, I liked him and I didn’t want to think he could be seriously ill.
I was so lost in my glum thoughts, I didn’t realize at first that Mart had said my name, apparently more than once. I shook my head slightly to clear it and regarded him expectantly.
“You done?” he asked me. “We should leave soon so we can pick up Honey and Jim.”
“Oh, yeah. Okay.” I gathered my dishes and carried them to the sink. The nice thing about having Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner was the quick clean-up. I rinsed my plate, glass, and fork and put them in the dishwasher then ran upstairs to my room to grab my jacket. Less than ten minutes later, we were in the station wagon with Mart slowly backing us down the drive.
Although Jim and Honey have their own cars, it had become a tradition for us to take the wagon to all the games. That was mostly because we were a lot less concerned with its appearance than they were with their much newer, high-end automobiles. Before dinner, Mart and I had painted pawprints and a few Panther taunts on the windows and I’d tied blue and white ribbons to the antenna.
Jim and Honey were waiting for us out past the massive gate that blocked the entrance to the Wheeler estate. They clambered into the back seat, and we were off. I decided to do my best to set aside the jumble of crazy thoughts in my head – Who stole the books and why? What was Dan Mangan’s relationship to Mr. Maypenny and why had he moved here? What was wrong with Regan? - and enjoy the evening.
The football stadium is at the south end of town. And it is a stadium. I’ve been told by more than one person that in places other than the great state of Texas, high school football games are played right on the school campuses, where our teams merely practice. I can’t really imagine it, but everyone says everything is just bigger in Texas and I guess this falls right in line with that. There was a line of buses across one end of the parking lot. Some of them were ours. The players, the marching band, the cheerleaders, the drill team, and the rest all ride to the games from the school together. The other buses belonged to the Leland Panthers. They had banners across them proclaiming their confidence that they were going to send us running with our tails tucked or leave us cowering in the doghouse. I grinned at that. They wished!
We planted ourselves about halfway up the first level of seating and as close to the 50-yard line as we could get. I waved to Brian as I saw him leading Bobby and Terry to a row with some available seats down and a little left of us. The boys were carrying trays of nachos and drinks. I assumed that meant they both did well on their spelling tests.
By kickoff, the stadium on our home team side was packed and the away team had brought a considerable crowd of fans as well. The first two quarters of the game went well for us, although things were not as one-sided as I think most of us had anticipated. Still, we were up by a touchdown and field goal at the end of the second. During halftime, while most folks hurried off to take a bathroom break and make a snack run, we stayed put. This was Diana’s time to shine as she marched out onto the field with her fellow Lady Dogs and we cheered for her even louder than we did the team.
The final score of the game was Bulldogs 42, Panthers 28. We piled into the wagon, still whooping and cheering, with Honey noisily clanging her cowbell, and drove over to Pappy’s for the obligatory after-game celebration.
It was almost midnight by the time I climbed wearily into bed that night and I would just like to say that I’d done a credible job with my goal to focus on the game and my friends and having a good time. I mean, I’d only thought about the missing books and Dan and Regan maybe one or… thirteen or so times, and for me? That was probably a record.
Honey, Di, and Jim were already well into their meals by the time I claimed my seat. “Where’s Mart?” I asked, looking around for my missing twin.
“Haven’t seen him since this morning,” Di replied with a shrug. Honey and Jim looked equally clueless.
“Huh. Maybe he’s cornered Marv Easton somewhere. Who, by the way, was hanging around on campus after hours yesterday and straight up lied to us about it. He said he was working on a history project, but we know that’s not true. He was definitely up to something. Maybe Mart can drag it out of him.” I ended my quick Marvin update on that optimistic note and opened my bag to pull out my mystery lunch. My Thermos, I discovered, did not hold my usual drink. Instead, Brian had filled it with leftover vegetable-beef soup that was still pleasantly hot. I also had crackers and a baggie with cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks. At the bottom of the bag, I found a spoon wrapped in a paper napkin, and, more importantly, a quarter. I grinned as I removed it and set it on the table. Leave it to my darling brother. Milk money. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the lunch line was still long enough that it was worth waiting another five minutes or so before joining it.
“Did he talk to Brian?” Di asked. “What did he have to say?”
“We both did,” I replied with a short nod. “And he said he was nowhere near the storeroom yesterday.”
“So, someone was deliberately lying and not just offering a witness statement,” Jim mused quietly.
I frowned at his words. “Just ‘someone’? So, you don’t know who, then?”
“All I know is that a couple of guys came to the office to report seeing him. Principal Stratton didn’t say who they were and I knew better than to ask.”
“Sorry, Trix,” Honey added. “That seems like a bit of a dead end for now.”
“Hmm. Maybe. Maybe not. If we can find out who else was in the office at the time, we might have a friend or acquaintance who could spill the beans for us.”
“Oh, my… wow. Who is that with Mart?” Di suddenly asked, eyes wide as she stared at some point over my shoulder.
I had to assume it wasn’t Marv by her reaction, so I turned around to see. I’m sure the dumbfounded look on my face at that point was quite comical to anyone who might have observed it. My brother had just walked through the open double doors at the front end of the cafeteria with Danny Zuko at his side and they were clearly in conversation together.
We weren’t the only ones watching them. The dull roar of hundreds of kids talking at once that usually indicated lunch was in full swing had dropped considerably and nearly every head was turned. Mart waved a hand in our direction and Zuko gave a single nod as he followed my brother over to our table.
“Friends. Sis. This is Dan Mangan,” Mart announced. “He just moved here from Houston.”
“I prefer Danny Zuko,” I said matter-of-factly, naturally garnering me strange looks from everyone within earshot.
Dan regarded me with a stony expression I certainly deserved, but I returned it with my best, full-on, mega-watt Belden smile - not my usual smirk - as if nothing made me happier than seeing him standing there. Let him try to work that out.
“Hello, Dan,” Honey said sweetly, demonstrating yet again why almost no one even knows her real name is Madeleine. “It’s nice to meet you.” If anyone bothered to give me a nickname beyond Trixie, it probably wouldn’t be one that could be uttered in polite company.
“Dan’s in several of my classes,” Mart explained, with one last “What the heck?” look in my direction. “So I’ve been asked to show him around. Dan, this is Honey Wheeler, Diana Lynch, Jim Frayne, and… my sister, Trixie.”
I could tell he only just barely stopped himself from adding some qualifier like “nutso” or “lunatic” along with the information that we were related.
“Yeah,” Dan muttered. “Sure.” He looked around and, spotting the table where The Cure superfans like Lester Mundy and Ruthie Kettner gathered, strolled off with a “Later” tossed in my brother’s general direction.
“Oh,” Di said, blinking. I think she was a little taken aback. Usually once guys enter her orbit, they don’t immediately leave again unless forced to do so.
Mart plopped down next to me and poked me in the shoulder. “You wanna explain what just happened there?” he asked. “Because I know Moms taught you better than that.”
I feigned innocence. “What do you mean?”
“Danny Zuko? Did you just accuse the poor guy of looking like one of the main characters of Grease?”
“Are you going to sit there and tell me he doesn’t?” I demanded. “For real?”
Mart gave a quick tug to my ponytail. “Says the girl who is one poodle skirt shy of looking like Sandy today?”
“Oh, ha, ha. Very funny. I saw Zuko – Dan – in the office this morning and he seemed less than friendly is all. He was there with Mr. Maypenny. Are they related?”
Mart twisted around so he was sitting properly at the table and unfolded his lunch sack. “Honestly, he didn’t say much of anything at all, so I don’t know. I did most of the talking. But give him a break, huh? Neither of us have ever had to do the new kid in school routine and I’m sure it’s not easy.”
“It’s not, Trixie,” Jim told me with a small frown and I nodded without speaking. Jim had been orphaned a few years before and the series of events that eventually brought him to Bowdon were no secret but not often discussed. He’d spent a few months living on the streets in Austin after escaping an abusive stepfather and it had taken him some time to adjust and learn to trust his new adoptive family and friends. Honestly, sometimes I forget all about his history. He fits in so well, it feels like he’s always been one of us.
Di’s attention was still on Dan. I glanced over and saw he’d apparently introduced himself to the Goths and had either been invited to join them or he’d taken a spot at their table regardless. “Coming here from Houston must be a bit of a culture shock,” Di murmured. “From the fourth largest city in the country to Bowdon, home to less than 20,000 people? Yikes.”
I felt another twinge of guilt. She was right. They were right. I really hadn’t given Zuko – Dan – much of a chance. Put yourself in his combat boots, I thought. Imagine being dropped in a different school that wasn’t anything like you’ve ever known, where you knew absolutely no one and how well would you do? To make matters worse, I think a lot of my snap judgment of him came from his leather jacket. All right, so he looked like Danny Zuko. Or an extra from West Side Story. What would strangers think about me, if my clothing was all they had to go by? Today, I’d probably do all right in their eyes, all done up in my school spirit glory, but there were lots of days where I was a rumpled mess and probably left a less-than-favorable impression.
“It was my intention to ask him if he wanted to go with us to the game tonight,” Mart said slowly as he regarded me uncertainly. I wasn’t entirely sure what his unspoken question was. Was he asking me if I agreed? If I thought it was a good idea? If I could be trusted to behave?
“That would be nice of you,” Honey told him. “Especially if he is staying with Mr. Maypenny. It would be no problem for us to swing by and pick him up.”
“Okay. I’ll see what he says.”
“I have some other news,” Jim announced as he gathered up the remains of his lunch.
I was super glad for the change in topic and regarded him eagerly. “Oh, yeah?”
“We had an emergency Honor Society meeting this morning and decided that we have to operate under the assumption that we may never get the missing books back. That being the case, we wanted to come up with some way of raising funds fast to purchase replacements.”
“And you have an idea?” Honey prompted curiously.
“We do. We want to add a float to the Homecoming parade and a booth to the carnival. The float will be for general publicity, encouraging people to make monetary donations to an account I’m sure I can get Dad to set up at the bank, and the booth will be both a game people can play for a dollar a turn and a spot to drop off any new donations. I feel like we already cleaned the whole town out of books the first time around, but someone might still have something they’re willing to give, especially when the news hits about the theft.”
Honey beamed at her brother. “Those are fantastic ideas! What can we do to help?”
“First and foremost, we need all hands on deck to build the float. We don’t have a lot of time for that, obviously, and we haven’t even come up with a design yet. Second, we need volunteers for the game booth.”
“Well, I don’t know how much help I could be with the float design,” I said, “but I’m there for building it. And I’m sure my dad would be happy to work with yours for the bank account. I can work the booth, too, though in that case, Mart would probably make a much better carnival barker than I ever could.…”
Jim smiled warmly at me and I was conscious of the hope that maybe I’d redeemed myself at least a little after the Zuko – darnit, Dan! – thing.
The rest of the school day went by in a blur. I saw Dan once in the hallway and tried to offer him a genuine smile and greeting, but he brushed by me like I wasn’t even there. I reasoned I couldn’t expect much more than that and I had my work cut out for me if I was ever going to truly befriend him.
I saw Mart between sixth and seventh and he told me Dan had declined the offer to join us, along with some crack about football being a lame game only rich kids play and care about. I could tell Mart was struggling to maintain his “Give the guy a chance!” attitude where Dan was concerned. I sympathized with my brother, even though it didn’t make a whole lot of sense on my part. It wasn’t that I cared that much about football myself, but the implied insult still rankled. It was clear I wasn’t the only one being a bit judgmental today. I decided to distract Mart with a different puzzle to worry over. I explained what I learned that morning about where the spare keys were kept in the school admin office and asked him to think about the who, when, and how of someone removing them unnoticed, so we could possibly start constructing a list of suspects.
When the last bell finally rang, the halls quickly filled with students all buzzing about the upcoming game.
“Did you get a chance to talk to Marv?” I demanded as soon as I found my brother at his locker.
He was carefully sliding his Algebra 2 book in between two binders and he only glanced at me briefly before returning his attention to his task. “Nope. He’s out today.”
“Really? He sure didn’t look sick yesterday afternoon.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t come down with something last night or this morning,” Mart pointed out. “Or maybe he had another reason to be absent.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Let’s go find Di. It won’t be a Bowdon Bulldog victory if I don’t have ‘BHS' painted on my face.” As I turned, I was almost run over by a kid bopping along to whatever he was listening to on his Walkman. I decided his sheepish grin was apology enough and stepped back out of his way, gallantly waving him on.
Di didn’t have much time to talk when we found her in the gym. Even though she was dressed exactly the same as roughly twenty other girls, she was as easy to spot now as she was at any other time. I don’t know if it’s her perfect posture, slightly above-average height, or just the way she commands the room, but if you’re looking for Diana Lynch, even in a crowd, you’ll have no trouble locating her.
“So, I got a moment to pester Tad and see if he knew anything from his brother,” she told me as she used black eyeliner to trace around the outer edges of the blue letters on my cheek.
“What’d he have to say?” I asked through clenched teeth and nearly closed lips, trying not to move in any way that would mess up her efforts.
“Not a lot. I was right. Spider never discusses cases with him. Privacy concerns or whatever. But he did tell me he overheard his brother on the phone with Sergeant Molinson, saying something about rare books and O’Neil’s Bookstore. That’s got to be important somehow, right?”
I agreed with her. It definitely seemed like something important. I just wasn’t sure in what way yet. Why mention O'Neil's unless there was some connection of some kind?
Di stood back to study her work. She reached out and tilted my head up, then nodded in satisfaction. “You’re good to go.” She glanced over to where Honey and Mart were waiting for me. “Did your brother ask Dan about the game tonight?”
“Yeah. But apparently Dan thinks football is a rich kid sport and beneath cool kids like him.”
“He actually said that?” Di asked in disbelief. “I know he’s from the city, but Houston is still a part of Texas, after all. Doesn’t he know criticizing the great game of football is pretty much blasphemy in our state?”
I had to laugh at that. “Them’s certainly fightin’ words, ma’am.”
“I guess he’ll learn soon enough,” Di said with a small shrug. “I still have to pack my stuff, so I better run. See you tonight!”
At home, Mart and I had an early dinner with our family. We were about halfway though our fried chicken, coleslaw, green beans, and biscuits when a thought occurred to me. “Moms? Did Brian tell you Regan stopped by to see you yesterday?”
“Hmm? Yes, dear. He did.”
“Oh.” I stared at my mother. Surely, she knew me well enough…
“It doesn’t concern you,” she continued, in that “And that’s final” voice that all mothers seem to develop after they have kids.
Right. So she did know me well enough. And she wasn’t going to tell me anything more about it. I had a hard time coming up with a single thing that would prompt Regan to seek out my mother for advice. Don’t get me wrong. Moms is no dummy and I go to her for advice myself all the time, but what did a twenty-something single, childless groom and a forty-something, mother-of-four hospital employee have in common? Regan certainly wasn’t coming to her about the horses, so what else could there be that he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to the Wheelers or maybe their estate manager about?
A troublesome idea worked its way into my head. Even though she wasn’t a nurse or doctor and her job entailed going through the paperwork and admitting patients to the ER, my mother’s position meant she had access to more medical knowledge than the average person. Was Regan sick? Did he have some illness or disease, like cancer?
I really hoped not. Regan was by far the grouchiest guy in the under-thirty set I knew, though to be fair, I actually knew very few of them who weren’t still in high school. Despite that, though, I liked him and I didn’t want to think he could be seriously ill.
I was so lost in my glum thoughts, I didn’t realize at first that Mart had said my name, apparently more than once. I shook my head slightly to clear it and regarded him expectantly.
“You done?” he asked me. “We should leave soon so we can pick up Honey and Jim.”
“Oh, yeah. Okay.” I gathered my dishes and carried them to the sink. The nice thing about having Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner was the quick clean-up. I rinsed my plate, glass, and fork and put them in the dishwasher then ran upstairs to my room to grab my jacket. Less than ten minutes later, we were in the station wagon with Mart slowly backing us down the drive.
Although Jim and Honey have their own cars, it had become a tradition for us to take the wagon to all the games. That was mostly because we were a lot less concerned with its appearance than they were with their much newer, high-end automobiles. Before dinner, Mart and I had painted pawprints and a few Panther taunts on the windows and I’d tied blue and white ribbons to the antenna.
Jim and Honey were waiting for us out past the massive gate that blocked the entrance to the Wheeler estate. They clambered into the back seat, and we were off. I decided to do my best to set aside the jumble of crazy thoughts in my head – Who stole the books and why? What was Dan Mangan’s relationship to Mr. Maypenny and why had he moved here? What was wrong with Regan? - and enjoy the evening.
The football stadium is at the south end of town. And it is a stadium. I’ve been told by more than one person that in places other than the great state of Texas, high school football games are played right on the school campuses, where our teams merely practice. I can’t really imagine it, but everyone says everything is just bigger in Texas and I guess this falls right in line with that. There was a line of buses across one end of the parking lot. Some of them were ours. The players, the marching band, the cheerleaders, the drill team, and the rest all ride to the games from the school together. The other buses belonged to the Leland Panthers. They had banners across them proclaiming their confidence that they were going to send us running with our tails tucked or leave us cowering in the doghouse. I grinned at that. They wished!
We planted ourselves about halfway up the first level of seating and as close to the 50-yard line as we could get. I waved to Brian as I saw him leading Bobby and Terry to a row with some available seats down and a little left of us. The boys were carrying trays of nachos and drinks. I assumed that meant they both did well on their spelling tests.
By kickoff, the stadium on our home team side was packed and the away team had brought a considerable crowd of fans as well. The first two quarters of the game went well for us, although things were not as one-sided as I think most of us had anticipated. Still, we were up by a touchdown and field goal at the end of the second. During halftime, while most folks hurried off to take a bathroom break and make a snack run, we stayed put. This was Diana’s time to shine as she marched out onto the field with her fellow Lady Dogs and we cheered for her even louder than we did the team.
The final score of the game was Bulldogs 42, Panthers 28. We piled into the wagon, still whooping and cheering, with Honey noisily clanging her cowbell, and drove over to Pappy’s for the obligatory after-game celebration.
It was almost midnight by the time I climbed wearily into bed that night and I would just like to say that I’d done a credible job with my goal to focus on the game and my friends and having a good time. I mean, I’d only thought about the missing books and Dan and Regan maybe one or… thirteen or so times, and for me? That was probably a record.