Free Payback Time by Carl Deuker Page B

quickly, and then stuffed it into a backpack.
    When the warning bell rang, I headed off to AP English. I'd had Mr. Kelly before, so there was nothing surprising. In fact, there was nothing surprising in any of my morning classes. I got the books, got the syllabi, and heard the same warnings about keeping up with the work.
One more year,
I thought,
and I'm out of here.
The only good thing was watching kids sneak-read the
Lincoln Light.
Alyssa had been right; it was the sports page that most people turned to.
    Finally it was lunch. I headed to the commons, where I bought a small deli sandwich and a vanilla yogurt. Then I looked around for someplace to sit.
    For the three years I'd been at Lincoln, I'd eaten in an alcove around the corner from the main room. Other guys ate there, too. Toby, who was a chess genius; Lars, who played the flute; Michael, who was deep into alternate reality games. I suppose they were my friends, though it was only at lunch that we were together.
    Out of habit, I started for the alcove, but then I stopped. I was a senior now, not a freshman, and I was trying to make myself into a different person. I spotted a nearly empty table toward the center of the cafeteria and plunked myself down.
    Within minutes, kids sat down around me. They nodded and I nodded back. Once in a while someone asked me something. No big conversation or anything, just the usual:
What do your classes look like, Mitch?
I answered, asked the same question of them, they answered, and it was okay.
    About ten minutes before fifth period started, I spotted Kimi standing by the juice machine frantically motioning for me to join her. "See you around," I said to the kids at the table. Then I bussed my tray and walked over to her.
    "Did you see the newspaper?" I said when I'd reached her. "Your pictures came out great. Everybody was looking at them."
    "Yeah, yeah. I saw them. Look, Mitch—way in the back corner. That's Angel, isn't it?"
    I followed Kimi's eyes. "That's him."
    "Do you see who he's with? They're all the druggies."
    About twenty-five kids were in the corner where Angel was eating. There had always been twenty-five there, from day one of my freshman year. The only two I knew were Laurie Walloch and Lynn Anderson. In grade school both of them had been seminormal, but by middle school they started getting into purple hair, body piercings, tattoos, drugs, alcohol, and more drugs.
    Kimi and I pretended to talk, but really we took turns checking out the action at Laurie and Lynn's table. I figured that if Angel really was an undercover cop, he'd strike up a conversation with one of the druggies near him, but he kept his head down and his mouth shut. Finally he got up, dumped his trash, and headed out the back door into the courtyard.
    Kimi watched him leave, and then turned to me. "If you wanted to buy drugs, where would you go?"
    "What?" I said, startled by the question.
    "There must be some street corner or park where dealers hang out, don't you think?"
    "Yeah, probably. Why?"
    "Because if Angel starts hanging out at one of those places, that would be more evidence that he's an undercover cop. You see what I mean?"
    I nodded. "Yeah, I do. And I know somebody who can answer your question."
    ***
    Austin Goldman and I had gone to elementary school together, and he was one of the guys who'd sat down at the lunch table with me. Goldman's father was a public defender, which meant he had to handle drug cases.
    The afternoon classes were just like the morning ones. When the final bell rang, I hustled out of class so I could get to the front steps of Lincoln before many kids had left. I wasn't there long when Austin pushed the door open and started down the stairs.
    "Austin," I called, waving to him. "You got a minute?"
    His eyebrows went up in surprise, but he came over. "What's up, Mitch?"
    "This is going to sound strange, but if a guy was going to score some drugs, where would he go?"
    He lowered his voice and looked around. "Mitch,