Free Wish You Were Dead by Todd Strasser Page A

I know what you usually wear. So?”
    “There’s this guy.…”
    Mom and Dad exchanged surprised, and not displeased, looks.
    “Do we know him?” Dad asked.
    I shook my head. “He’s new this year. And nothing’s going on, so can we please, please skip the parental interrogation?”
    Mom gestured for me to have a seat and served me a bowl of stew from a big pot on the stove. She specialized in dinners that didn’t require a lot of oversight, so that she could multitask while the food cooked. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I tried a spoonful.
    “This is delicious, Mom,” I said, then nodded at the big pot on the stove. “But why’s there so much?”
    “Comfort food for the Cunninghams,” she said. “We’ll bring it over later. I only wish there was something more we could do for them.”
    “How are they?” I asked.
    “I spoke to Paul today,” Dad said. “The police haven’t come up with anything solid, and neither has the private detective he’s hired. He sounded very low.”
    “What about the guys at the party from FCC?” I asked.
    Dad shook his head slowly. “He didn’t mention anything about that.”
    The conversation turned to preparing the Time Off for winter dry dock. Dad planned to spend a good part of the next day at the marina. I listened with one ear and tried not to watch the kitchen clock. I just wanted to get to the Safe Rides office and see Tyler.
    The office would open at eight P.M. , but I made myself wait until 8:10 before I walked in. Dave Ignatzia was sitting at the desk. I stopped and looked around.
    “Looking for Tyler?” he asked. “He called me this morning. Said something last-minute came up and he was going away for the long weekend and could I take his place?”
    It was the second night of a three-day weekend. School would be closed on Monday for a conference. The flip side of safe was boring, and you couldn’t blame anyone for wanting to get away from Soundview for a few days. And yet I felt like I’d been blindsided. I’d been so focused on sharing dispatching duties with Tyler that night that it had never occurred to me that he might back out.
    “Sorry,” Dave muttered, and I had no doubt he could read the disappointment in my face.
    “Oh, Dave, you have nothing to be sorry about.” I forced a self-conscious laugh. “It just, you know, caught me by surprise.”
    “I guess life’s full of surprises,” he said with what I suspected was half-veiled resentment.
    Inside the Safe Rides office were two old desks with phones to take the calls from kids who needed rides. Spread around the rest of the room were half a dozen mismatched chairs, as well as a small TV, DVD player, and microwave oven. I took off my jacket and scarf and hung them on a hook by the door. Dave cleaned his glasses on the tail of his shirt. For an instant, he looked a little bit like Michael J. Fox, the star of that old movie Back to the Future . Then he slid his glasses back on and his eyes became the extra large size I was used to. “You look nice tonight,” he said.
    “Why, thank you,” I said, caught off guard by the compliment.
    “Too bad for Tyler, huh?”
    I felt an inward grimace. Was it that obvious that I’d dressed up for Tyler? Would everyone who came into the office tonightimmediately guess the same thing? I sat down. “Let’s hope that’s the last surprise for tonight.”
    “He’s kind of mysterious, isn’t he?” Dave asked.
    “Tyler?” I said a bit uncomfortably. “I guess.”
    “Here’s the thing I don’t get,” Dave said. “How come people want to know more about him, and not about me?”
    “I guess because he’s new here,” I said. “People don’t know him.”
    “And you think you know me? Maybe there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
    “Isn’t that true of just about everyone?”
    “Some people get more of a chance to show who they are. Other people never get the chance.”
    We hit an awkward silence. I kept thinking about Tyler. There had