One Good Punch by Rich Wallace Page A

he says.
    “Thanks,” I say, but I’m squirming and looking toward the street.
    “I hope it can continue,” he says. He squeezes my arm. “Don’t be a martyr.”
    “Right,” I say. “I’ll see ya.”
    I walk a few blocks and sit on a bench at the courthouse square, staring up at the ancient Electric City neon sign atop a nearby building. I feel numb, like maybe this isn’t really happening. But it is.
    I reach into my pocket for my cell phone and punch in Shelly’s number.
    “Where’ve you been?” she asks instead of saying hello. “I tried calling you a million times.”
    “I shut off my phone. You heard what happened?”
    “Duh. Of course I heard. Where are you?”
    “Downtown.”
    “Are you all right?”
    “Yeah.”
    I fill her in on the suspension and the pressure and all that. I hate talking on the phone, though, so I tell her I’ll come get her. “Your mom hear about this?” I ask.
    “Yeah. But she also heard you got set up.”
    “I didn’t get set up.”
    “You know what I mean,” she says. “It’s not what it looks like.”
    “Why does everybody think that?”
    “I guess they just can’t believe you’d be guilty.”
    “I guess I can’t believe it myself.”
    She opens her front door before I’m up the walk. She must have been watching for me.
    We walk up the hill and right back toward the courthouse. After we turn the corner, she stops and puts her hand on the back of my neck. It’s still cold out; she’s wearing big blue mittens, and the warmth she generates is both internal and external. Very soothing.
    “This has to be killing you,” she says. “I know you want to protect Joey, but look what you’re letting happen to you.”
    “How do you know it’s Joey?”
    “Come on,” she says, touching my face. “It’s
so
obvious to anybody who knows you guys.”
    “That he sells drugs?”
    “Doesn’t he?”
    I start walking again. “He did me a favor. He
screwed up
the favor big-time. But I asked him to get me the dope. He was dumb enough to put it in my locker, but it was my stuff. Or it was about to be, anyway.”
    We take a seat on the same bench where we made out one time, and she leans tight against me, gripping my hand. I let out my breath and we just sit there, and I start to relax just a little bit again. I appreciate her being here; it makes me feel like I’m not totally alone with this problem. Not much she can do to resolve it, but it helps to have somebody actually listen.
    “You can’t let yourself get expelled,” she says.
    “Dealers get jail time,” I say.
    “You’re not a dealer.”
    “I didn’t say I was. What they want from me is a statement about who
is.
I don’t even know if Joey’s been dealing. I just know he knows where to get it.”
    “Everybody in school knows places where they can get it, don’t they?”
    I shrug. “Probably. But Joey’s very small-time. Like I said, he was just doing me a favor.”
    We’re quiet for several minutes. She’s caressing my fingers.
    “Shit,” I say softly.
    “What?”
    “Nothing. Just this whole thing sucks. I shouldn’t be in this much trouble, but if I get myself out of it, then Joey gets way more trouble than he deserves.”
    “But you can’t take the blame for everything,” she says. “You don’t graduate, you don’t go to college, your reputation goes to hell. You have to think about all that.”
    I laugh, even though this isn’t funny. “I got sent home from work, too, you know. This all gets reported in the paper. They’ll probably fire me.”
    A police car drives by, and I hunch down a little, even though we’ve got every right to be here. But I feel watched, and I know that everywhere I go now, I’ll feel like people are suspicious of me.
    “When I was twelve, me and Joey went into a convenience store and stole about six candy bars,” I say. “Joey’s got this crappy old pair of shorts on, and on the way out, the bars slip through a hole in his pocket and land on the