Driving home in Patti’s car, I’m still picking bits of leaves off my shirt. Waiting at a red light, I flip open my phone wondering if the Bat Signal idea will work. I guess we’ll find out since it isn’t a question of if Scott will try something, but when. When will he have an opportunity? How will he get Danny or Bruce alone? I don’t have any answers yet, but if I try and think like Scott, maybe I’ll see his plans ahead of time. Scott’s closer to thinking like Crud Bucket than I want to admit, and that scares me. As for my own plan to stop him . . . well ... I can’t really say I have one yet.

A scrap of leaf falls out of my hair and rests on my nose. I wipe it off, thinking back on my last handspring in the raked pile. It felt good, sparked the only decent idea I’ve had yet. Maybe I need to go back and practice that trick for a few more hours until I come up with an actual plan. Or maybe I need to hit the weight room to clear my head and give myself some more ideas. I can sneak through the janitor’s entrance. I’d have the whole place to myself on a Sunday afternoon.

Red and blue lights start flashing just past the intersection, breaking my concentration. I’m holding out hope they’re for someone else, but the siren lets out two short squawks and the cruiser slides up close enough to almost bump me.

This is bad. I still don’t have my license. Patti’s going to kill me. Gotta get out of here!

I stomp on the gas.

Patti’s car doesn’t like that idea one bit. Unlike Scott’s Camaro, her car jerks and snorts and then sputters and there’s no way I’m outrunning a cop car. I got no choice but to brake and pull over to the side of the road. As I turn off the car, I try thinking of a good excuse for why I don’t have a license. I’m also trying to figure out why he’s pulling me over. I didn’t run the light. I wasn’t speeding.

A sharp rap on the driver’s window jolts me from my thoughts. The nightstick hits hard enough I expect the glass to spiderweb. I roll down the window, afraid to look at the officer. I keep my face aimed at the road and, in side glances, take in the blue uniform from chest to belt. No head. No knees. Mostly belly, badge, and the gun butt that one hand rests on while the other grips the nightstick.

“Kurt Brodsky,” the voice says. Not friendly, not mean, more like a vice principal taking roll in detention. Not sure how he knows my name.

“Step out of the car,” the officer tells me. He hasn’t asked for my license yet. That’s good. I think. I get out of the car, and as I straighten up, the squat officer with a bristly flattop and Oakley wraparound glasses prods my shoulder with the stick. “Go ahead and turn around, put your hands on the roof of the car and spread your legs.”

“Huh?”

“Do as you’re told,” he says, assuming my confusion is defiance. Maybe I’d be better off if he did just ask for my license. I turn and put my hands on the rust-pocked car top. “Spread your legs. Wider. Wider. That’s it.”

Over my shoulder, I hear cars slowing as they pass us, trying to take in my bust for ... what? I duck my head down, not wanting anyone to recognize me. The officer’s hands quickly pat up the insides and outsides of my ankles, knees, thighs, and crotch then jump along my belly, armpits, and arms. I think he’s done, so I take my hands off the car.

“Don’t move, you hear me? Do not move. Hands back up on the car. Keep those legs spread.” This time the solid end of his baton pokes into my lower back and then the thing whacks the insides of my knees to spread them wider. I move my feet farther apart. The baton swings up between my legs, tags me in the ’nads, tags me hard enough that I instinctively jump from the sharp pain and my hands come down to cup my nuts protectively. The sharp bite flowers into nausea.

“I said, don’t move. You deaf, too?” A hand shoves me up against the car.

What the ...

“Put your hands behind your back. Now!” I uncup myself. My chest is pressing against the roof of the car and I’m off balance. I offer him my hands behind my back, feel hard steel clasp first my right wrist and then my left wrist. The handcuffs click down until they’re gnawing at my bone and that’s when I break into a sweat.

“Whu-whu-what did I do?”

The officer doesn’t answer, just grabs my right elbow and tugs backward so I’m no longer leaning chest-first against Patti’s car. Still using my elbow to steer, he pivots me, then pokes his nightstick into my lower back, prodding me toward his cruiser.

Shit!

Traffic is definitely slowing to take all this in, so I dip my chin and let my hair fall in front of my face. He pulls open the back door of his squad car.

“Get in,” he says. My heart’s racing as I enter. He grabs the top of my head and tries stuffing me into the car faster than I can dip inside. The door slams and I watch through the cage divider and the windshield as he goes back to Patti’s car and starts searching it. I have to sit forward because the cuffs dig into my wrists otherwise. I have rights, don’t I? I try remembering what they taught us in civics class but don’t know if I can ask for a lawyer yet. The officer scares me. It scares me being locked up, stuffed in a cage. Reminds me of Crud Bucket sealing me and Lamar up, telling us he could do whatever he wanted. I’m starting to have trouble breathing and I think maybe I’ll have a heart attack, the way my chest is beating in my ears. There’s no legroom in the back, and with the windows shut, I can’t get any air. There’s no air. The officer’s coming back and I want to offer him anything, tell him I’ll cooperate but just let me out of the back of the car, please.

His door opens and I inhale deeply before he gets in and slams it shut. There’s a shotgun racked in the front seat next to a computer screen. The police radio’s squelching. I can’t breathe. The officer’s writing something.

“Puh-puh-please, suh-suh-sir. I’m suh-suh-sorry.”

“You know who I am?” he asks, but he’s staring straight out his windshield, not bothering to turn around.

Who is he? I don’t know. I just know I can’t really breathe and I think my arms are going numb and I really can’t breathe.

“No, suh-suh-sir.”

“Officer Jankowski, to you. Not ‘sir’. I’m Tom’s dad and I got a problem with boys”—he hisses this last word—“like you coming into our community.”

Tom’s dad.

“Offi-suh-suh-sir—”

“Officer Jankowski!” he huffs, and swings his arm up, banging the cage divider with his fist. I flinch from the rattle, feel as weak and small as when Crud Bucket used to come into our room at night.

“You and me, we got a problem,” he says, still staring straight out his windshield. “First, you’re trash. Pure white trash that’s headed for jail one way or another and I’d be happy as hell to send you back there myself. You understand? I’m going to protect this community from a common thug goes and kills some kid at a group home. Yeah, I don’t give a rat’s ass what your excuse is, so don’t waste your breath.”

I press my cheek against the side window, hoping maybe I can get some air through the crack. My panting fogs the glass.

“Second, Tommy tells me his locker was vandalized. Tells me you were in on it, trying to spread some sick rumors about him and Scott and Mike? I don’t know what kind of crap is churning in that thug mind of yours but I won’t tolerate it. Not for one minute.”

“Wasn’t muh-muh-me.”

He bangs the cage divider again. “Don’t give me no sorry-ass excuses! This is your warning. Right here. Right now. Not you, not anyone, is going to derail my boy’s career. You so much as whisper another thing about him and I will be happy to pull you over and discover enough meth in that shitty car of yours to put you away for a long time, you understand me? For life.”

“Yesssir,” I say, closing my eyes, still pressing my cheek against the window, still trying to breathe. I’ll tell him whatever he wants to hear as long as I can get out of this cage.

“You know why I stopped you? Huh? Know why I put the cuffs on you and threw you in the back of my squad car?”

I sit, shaking, panting, unable to come up with an answer. He bangs the cage again and I flinch, then I refocus on trying to push my nose through the cold glass for more air.

“Well, do you?” he asks.

“Nuh-nuh-no, suh-suh-sir.”

“Because I can.” He chuckles. “Because I goddamn can. That’s what you need to remember. If anything happens to my boy, I will take you down in ways that will make you wish you stayed over at Lincoln.”

It’s a long time after Officer Jankowski releases me and pulls away in his squad car that my hands are steady enough to drive. So I sit in Patti’s car on the side of the road, gripping the steering wheel, wondering if maybe it wouldn’t be better to keep driving as far across the country as her old clunker will take me.