Free Gentlemen by Michael Northrop

ask me about mine, because she’d probably worked too hard, and I probably hadn’t worked hard enough, and that was just the way it was. Plus, I just wasn’t that kid, the one who talked about classes and grades, the one whose mom was hoping he’d become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. My mom was just hoping I’d graduate, and if it looked at any point like I might not, she trusted me to tell her.
    When we finished up, we each took our own plate into the kitchen. She ate a grand total of one slice, so even though I ate a lot, there was still some left over. I figured I’d have oneslice later for a snack and another one for breakfast. Cold pizza was one of my favorite things in the world. Cold pizza and I don’t know what else. It’s kind of weird to think about your absolute favorite things. Summer vacation and my friends, I guess. I liked beer, but to be honest, I was still kind of getting used to the taste. Sleeping in was good. My mom.
    The Descent came on cable at ten. It’s a pretty good horror flick, plus it’s basically all hot chicks, so it’s kind of like the perfect movie, if you think about it. I sat there eating cold pizza and watching these creepy crawlers chase after the chicks in the dark. It was a pretty good night, all in all. The one thing I didn’t do was read any of that book.

6
    â€œNo doubt you are all well into the book by now,” Haberman said, meaning the opposite. “What do you think of the opening? Action-packed, wouldn’t you say?”
    He either meant that it really was action-packed or that it really wasn’t. He wasn’t asking anyone in particular, and no one particularly felt like answering. Tommy’s desk was empty again today, but it almost seemed less strange. He hadn’t been home the night before, a fact I knew because his mom was still working the phones this morning, even though I’d already told her I didn’t know anything more than she did.
    This time my mom picked up. It was the first she’d heard of it, and sure enough, she freaked out. She caught that from Tommy’s mom, like the mom flu, which was so contagious it could be caught over the phone. Moms got hysterical easyabout their little baby birds. She asked me if I knew where he was, knew anything at all. When I said nuh-uh, she pulled back and stared me in the eyes, giving me that don’t-you-lie-to-me look. But I really didn’t know anything, and she must’ve seen that, because she just let me go without another word.
    When Tommy didn’t show up in homeroom, we figured we knew the deal. The longer he was gone, the clearer it got. He’d hit the road, gone to crash somewhere with someone. It was a family thing now, and his family was eight kinds of messed up. The family he lived with day to day, I mean. Tommy had this endless list of aunts and uncles and cousins and everything else. There were Dawsons all over the place in this part of the state, coming out of the woodwork, and Tommy seemed to get along with every one of them except the ones he lived with.
    So we thought we knew, and that was when Haberman kind of climbed into our heads. He almost always paced when he talked to the class, and he was doing that again, but instead of just looking at people at random or scoping out any stray noise, I swear he was looking at me. Over and over again as he talked, and I think he was looking at Mixer, too, and maybe Bones. And then there was what he was saying. “By now you all know of Raskolnikov’s crime. How does that rhyme go: Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks?”
    I hadn’t heard that one before, but I knew that LizzieBorden was like a historical figure, like Jack the Ripper, so I figured this Raskolnikov guy had offed his mom with an ax, too. I sort of noted that down because it’s the kind of thing Haberman would put on a test.
    â€œAnd it’s causing him quite a headache,