Found

CHAPTER 34

I came home exhausted.

I figured that I would text Ema and start filling her in on my encounter with Dylan Shaykes, but as soon as my head hit the pillow, I started drifting off. It could wait, I thought. In fact, it would probably be better to go over this with her face-to-face.

I fell into a deep sleep.

When I walked to school Monday, I took a slightly different route to avoid the Bat Lady’s house. I was not sure why I did that. Or maybe I knew but I didn’t want to think about it.

In the past I had thought about all the children who were rescued in that house. Now, for the first time, I started thinking about one specific boy who ended up dying trapped in a room. I hated Luther. I hated what he did to me and my family. One day, I hoped to meet up with him and exact justice.

But part of me now understood. Part of me wondered what it must have been like to be locked in a room, watching the only person you love die-and there is nothing you can do about it.

Bat Lady had explained it to me right at the beginning. The good guys don’t always win. We rescue as many as we can. There is an old Arab expression that when one person dies, an entire universe dies. The opposite is true too. If you save a life, even one, you save a universe.

But you can’t save them all.

I was about three blocks from the school when I heard the car. It was a red sports car. Troy was driving. He pulled up alongside me and said, “Want a ride?”

“Sure.”

I slid low into the passenger seat. The car sat way down. It felt like my butt was practically on the road. Troy shifted into gear and we shot away. “I thought a lot about what we talked about,” Troy said. “About Buck.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And?”

“I’m trying to think how to say this.” He put his hand through his thick mane of hair, keeping his eyes focused on the road. “Part of the reason I gave you a hard time when you first showed up has to do with your uncle. Myron and my old man don’t get along.”

“So I gathered. Do you know why?”

Troy shook his head. “It dates back to high school. My dad was the senior captain on the basketball team when Myron was a sophomore.”

Neither one of us had to say just like us because we were both thinking it.

“So what happened?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“No idea,” I said.

“Yet they still hate each other all these years later,” Troy said.

“Yeah.”

“Mickey?”

“What?”

“I don’t want that to be our fate,” Troy said.

I wanted to say something like me neither or it won’t be, but it all sounded so stupid in my head. I let it pass. I watched Troy driving. He had been looking troubled a lot lately but not like this.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

His jaw clenched as though he was willing himself not to say anything.

“Troy, if you want me to help you…”

He turned the wheel sharply to the left and then slowed to a stop. We were still a block away from school. “Buck has been my best friend since we were six-since we had Mr. Ronkowitz in first grade.” He stopped the car and turned to me. “Do you have any friends like that, Mickey?”

I felt a deep pang in my chest. “No,” I said. “No one.”

“You and Ema. You’re tight, right?”

“Right.”

“Imagine if you’d been that way since you were six. I mean, I’m not saying friends have to know each other a long time. But since we were six. You get what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” I said.

Troy closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. “Buck was taking steroids.”

For a moment we just sat there, two guys in a car parked on a side street, not saying a word. We let the revelation hang between us. Finally I asked, “When did he start?”

“I don’t know. Last spring.”

“He just admitted it?”

“Not at first. I asked him about it, though. I could see he was getting bigger. He said I should do them too. I said I didn’t need to. Then after you showed up, he started pushing me a little harder. He started saying that I’d always been the leading scorer, but if I didn’t get a lot better, you’d take over. Stuff like that. He started getting angrier too. Roid rage, I think they call it, right?”

Roid rage, I knew, was one of the many side effects of steroids. You start losing your temper easily. You grow dark and violent and even suicidal.

Troy shook his head again. “I should have stopped him. I mean, I saw the changes but I didn’t do anything, you know? And then… then I saw the changes in how Buck was with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“My dad once told me that relationships are never fifty-fifty. He said the key was to understand that. Sometimes it’s ninety-ten, sometimes ten-ninety. But if you’re thinking it’s always fifty-fifty, you’re going to get yourself in trouble.”

“Okay.”

“With Buck and me, look, I was the leader, he was the follower. That’s just the way it was. I didn’t think anything of it. But the last few weeks, it was, like, suddenly that bugged him.”

“That you were the leader?”

“Right. I think it was the steroids. Buck started directing his anger toward me too.”

I thought about that for a few moments. “Buck wanted you to take steroids too.”

“Yes.”

“Was he upset when you didn’t?”

“Yeah. I mean, he said something like, you think you’re too good for them or something. I don’t remember his exact words.”

“So how was Buck getting the steroids?” I asked.

Troy closed his eyes and said, “Oh man.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to say.”

“Troy, I’m trying to help here.”

“It stays between us, right?”

“Where did he get them?”

Troy’s eyes opened. He turned toward me and looked me straight in the eye. “His brother.”

I think I gasped out loud. “Randy?”

Troy nodded. “He deals out of his father’s gym. A lot of people know that.”

“But Randy has a huge career ahead of him. Why would he risk that?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“How do you think he got that huge career? Do you know how many athletes do it-pro, college, and yeah, even high school? It’s practically an epidemic. Some get caught, but most of the time they know how to cycle or take some kind of masking agent. Everyone is looking for an edge, Mickey. The other guy is doing it, so they do it. The other guy is going to get that college scholarship, so you do it so you can even the score. After a while, they don’t even see it as cheating. They see it as leveling the playing field.”

I swallowed. “Is that how you felt, Troy?”

“What?” He put his hand against his chest. “No. Look, I’m telling you the reality. Truth is, I don’t need it. I’m a point guard. My game is more finesse. But I get it. Don’t you?”

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t cheat.”

“Really? I’ve seen how much you love basketball. Suppose everyone else was taking a pill that made them bigger and stronger and you got left behind. You got cut from the team. You weren’t any good. And the only reason is, they were taking this pill and you weren’t. Are you saying you would never, ever take it? That you’d just settle for getting cut and watching others take your spot?”

I shifted in the seat. “That’s not the reality.”

“But that’s how some guys start to see it,” Troy said. “You’re a special talent. You don’t have to worry about that. Or maybe, look, maybe I’m trying to justify what a friend did. I don’t know.”

I tried to let all of this sink in. According to Troy, Randy Schultz dealt steroids. Was that true? How could I check on that?

Uncle Myron might know.

I thought now to the tense scene I’d witnessed a week ago at Schultz’s gym. What was going on between Uncle Myron and Randy? What help did he and his dad want from him that, as a lawyer, Myron couldn’t share with me?

“There’s something else,” Troy said.

I waited.

“I didn’t think much of it before all this happened and even after, I mean, whatever I was saying, Buck is still my best friend. I wouldn’t believe…”

“Wouldn’t believe what?”

“Do you know the shed behind the town circle?”

Kasselton had a town circle. On one side of it was the high school. On the other was a bunch of municipal buildings and the YMCA. “No, not really.”

“It’s behind town hall, near the Y.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, a few days before they ran the tests, I was supposed to meet Buck at the circle. We were going to take a couple of laps.”

The circle was exactly half a mile in circumference. It was a popular jogging spot.

“I got there early,” Troy said, “and I spotted something weird.”

“What?”

“I saw Randy and Buck going into that shed.”

I was getting confused. “The one behind town hall?”

“Right.”

“What kind of shed is this?”

“Well, that’s just it. I looked it up. The property is owned by Schultz’s gym.”

“So it’s theirs?”

“I guess. So I followed them to it. When they saw me, they freaked out.”

“Freaked out how?”

“They pulled down the shades and came out and acted like it was nothing. But I saw something.”

“What?”

Troy took his time. Then at last he said, “Test tubes.”

I tried to make that compute. It wouldn’t. “Did you ask Buck about them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I figured… well, I figured that they had something to do with the steroids. You know. Like it was his supply hut or something.”

“You don’t think that anymore?”

“I don’t know. But that was the last time Buck and I talked. Nothing was ever the same. Now he’s gone, and I got thrown off the team. So now I’m thinking about what you said. I’m thinking about that shed. And I’m thinking there’s some secret in there that could give us all our answers.”