Page 81 of For Your Own Good

He can’t talk, can’t explain, can’t tell his side of the story. Can’t even text Lucas because she took his phone. Sometimes, it sucks having a mom who’s a lawyer.

Dad is yelling before he’s even out of the car, but Mom puts the kibosh on that.

“Inside,” she says.

Once in the house, Zach is sent to his room. No phone, no laptop, no tablet. No way to communicate with anyone. He can’t even talk to his parents. Not until his new lawyer arrives.

Until then, he lies on his bed, staring at the ceiling, knowing everything has changed. One moment, one error in judgment, has altered the course of his life.

Dad was right. Maybe he always has been. Maybe all his Ward-isms aren’t as stupid as Zach believed them to be.

Zach hasn’t even graduated from high school, and he already wants a do-over.

50

AFTER SCHOOL, TEDDYsits in his classroom for a long time, waiting for everyone to clear out. He never did get to speak to the headmaster. The best he could do was file a formal incident report and send it to Ms.Marsha, who has yet to respond.

Teddy works, or pretends to, but all he thinks about is his plaque.

And Joe. And the dumpster.

He always knew there was something he didn’t like about Joe. He’s been around too long. Knows too much, sees too much. Like the dumpster. He’s even worse than Ms.Marsha, and she knows just about everything.

Teddy made the right choice setting Joe up. If Joe had never caught Teddy rooting through it, things might’ve turned out differently.

Teddy wonders if his plaque is in the dumpster, if Joe had actually put it there. Part of him thinks it’s ridiculous to go outside and search through it. The other part of him knows that he has to. When he finally gets up andheads outside, a light snow has started to fall. It’s dusk, making everything look grey. Appropriate, given Teddy’s mood.

He slips. Curses. Gets up off the ground, wiping snow and dirt from his slacks.

When he lifts the top of the dumpster, the snow on top falls backward, landing near his feet. He stomps it off. Curses again.

All of his cursing is directed at Joe.

He moves a crate in front of the dumpster and climbs up. The stench is almost unbearable, just as it was last time, but Teddy searches through it anyway. A few times, he retches. A few times, he climbs down to rest a moment. It takes longer than he remembers from before. Darkness falls, leaving Teddy with just the security lights. His hands start to go numb, even with the gloves. Still, he goes through every inch of that dumpster.

No plaque.

EZEKIEL T. FISHERis a huge man. Or at least he seems that way to Zach, who looks up at him from the couch. His new lawyer reminds him of a football player wearing a suit.

Zach still hasn’t said a word, but at least he’s allowed to hear what his own lawyer has to say.

It’s dark outside, long after dinner, though Zach never ate anything. He stayed in his room until he was told to come downstairs, and now his stomach is rumbling. The last thing he ate was a protein bar several hours ago.

“I spoke to the DA.” Ezekiel stands by the fireplace, a cup of coffee in one hand. He’s flanked by Mom and Dad, who aren’t sitting down, either. Zach is, and he feels like a small child looking up at all the adults. “A guard told them everything, even showed them calls on her phone that came from Zach,” Ezekiel says.

Kay. She must have been caught. Otherwise, none of this makes sense. They’d had a good thing going. For a while, anyway.

“But as we suspected,” Ezekiel continues, “this has nothing to do with the bribery.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Mom says.

“But why—”

Zach is cut off by Mom, who raises her hand to shut him up.

“They want to know why Zach had to see Courtney so badly,” she says to Ezekiel. “Why he was willing to pay a guard to see her.”

Ezekiel nods, his big head moving as slow as a snail. “Exactly. And it goes beyond that. To be honest, I can’t blame them. The timing is... suspicious, to say the least.”