Truth and Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

to the phone on the wall beside the door. She was going to call the office. Well, let her. I grabbed my backpack and hurried after Sal.
    I heard Ms. Stephenson call my name. I knew her next move would be to report Sal and me both to theoffice, but I didn’t care. I paused in the hall for a moment and listened. I heard footsteps, faint, fading, off to the right. I headed for them and rounded the corner just in time to see a door ease shut at the far end of the hall. Sal was half a block up the street by the time I pushed my way out into the morning sun.
    â€œSal!” I shouted. “Hey, wait up!”
    He didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down. I had to really pump it to catch up with him.
    â€œHey, Sal!”
    Sal kept pounding up the hill. He didn’t glance over his shoulder, didn’t give any sign at all that he had heard me. I had to grab his arm to get his attention. He shook me off like he was shaking off a bad smell.
    â€œHey, what’s the matter with you?” I said. I was breathing hard now, trying to keep up with Sal as he motored up the hill. “Sal, hey!”
    He kept ahead of me, his back to me, still pumping away so that it took a while for me to realize that his shoulders were shaking.
    â€œJeez, Sal—”
    â€œLeave me alone,” he said.
    I picked up my pace and passed in front of him. He turned his head away, but not before I got a good look.
    â€œYou been crying?” I said. If I’d thought for half a second, I would have kept my mouth shut and saved him the embarrassment. But I was so surprised. Tear streaks were pretty much the last thing I’d expected to see on his face.
    â€œI told you, leave me alone,” he said. He spun around and shoved me, catching me off guard. He hit me hard on the chest and sent me flying backward so suddenly that I lost my balance.
    My hands flew out to try to break my landing. They hit the sidewalk at the same time as my butt. My tail-bone jarred against the concrete. The palms of my hands burned as they slid along the rough surface. I sat on the sidewalk, stunned at how hard he had shoved me, stunned that he had shoved me at all. I held out my hands and looked at them. The skin was scraped right off in places and grit was hammered into the wounds. It stung so bad that my eyes started to water, but there was no way
I
was going to cry, not with Sal standing right there.
    He stared down at me. Then he reached out and took me by one wrist and hauled me to my feet. He didn’t say anything. We walked up the hill side by side and kept going until we hit Danforth. I nodded toward the doughnut shop on the corner.
    Sal shook his head. “It’s on Carl’s list.”
    Carl was the hall monitor at school. He was a retired firefighter and a nice enough guy if you weren’t cutting class and he wasn’t out checking all the regular places kids went when they were supposed to be sitting at a desk in math or French or history.
    â€œNo one’s home at my—” I’d been going to say, at my house. But it wasn’t my house. “At Riel’s.”
    Sal nodded. He didn’t say anything on the way and I didn’t push him. When we got there, we didn’t go inside.Instead we circled around the house and sat on the back porch. For five minutes, maybe ten, Sal was quiet. Then he said, “The cops were at my house last night.” His voice sounded funny, kind of high and trembling. “It’s my dad.”
    Sal’s dad had been in prison in Guatemala, where Sal’s family is from. Sal said he had never been the same afterward. He’d been a university professor back home, but the only job he’d been able to get in Canada was office cleaner. He worked nights at a downtown office building, emptying other people’s garbage, cleaning other people’s toilets, dusting other people’s desks. Sal said he hated it—it made him depressed.
    â€œHe’s