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“Did they get the cops involved?” I ask immediately.
“No. The headmaster’s son was there. Security just hauled all of us into his office, and we got screamed at for an hour.”
“You’re lucky that’s all that happened,” I say. “I mean have you seriously not learned anything from Dad?”
I immediately regret my words. Jack doesn’t like me bringing up our father. He claims I’m not fair to the old man; he doesn’t know I always hold my punches.
“I learned some things,” he spits. “I’ve made thousands off these prep school idiots.”
“Well too bad neither of you learned how not to get caught,” I mutter.
Our father is currently incarcerated for running an illegal gambling operation out of the back of his bar, and for about fifteen years worth of unpaid taxes on all the money he made off it. He got ten years. It’s a sore spot, the reason Jack’s entire life in Hoboken got turned on its head. I really shouldn’t be poking the bear, but I’m beyond fed up.
“Why the fuck are you being such an asshole?”
“Why the fuck do you think?” I growl. “Let me answer for you — because the next thing you’re going to say is that the school has made a sudden decision about your arson case.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Well? Am I wrong?” I ask.
“They want me out of here by the weekend,” he admits. At least he has the decency to sound ashamed.
Well there goes any hope of Jack graduating with his class. The thought of getting him to repeat his senior year is laughable. My little brother isn’t going to get his high school diploma and, frustratingly, it happened on my watch. Were my expectations too high? No, Jack is just as smart as I was at his age. He can do anything he wants with his life. Unfortunately what he wants is to go down the same path as our loser father.
Well there’s no unfucking this mess. I massage my temple and say, as patiently as I can, “How much stuff do you have?”
“A couple suitcases,” he says. “I travel light.”
“Good. Pack up. I’m going to book you a hotel and I can have you on the first plane tomorrow.” I’m pushing down all my annoyance — at Jack, at the school, at Dad — and jumping into the persona I feel most comfortable in: the scheduler, the planner, the boss. Get him back here without a criminal charge and we can go from there.
But still Jack hesitates. “I was thinking I’d stay here through the week,” he says. “I have friends I want to say goodbye to.”
Bullshit. “You’re trying to collect on people aren’t you?”
“What?” Jack is entirely unconvincing. “I don’t?—”
“Do you think I’m an idiot, Jack?”
He drops the act. “Man, there are kids here who owe me two grand! I can’t just walk away from that.”
God, when did my little brother turn into a wannabe thug? “And what’s the plan?” I ask sarcastically. “When they can’t or won’t pull the money together you’re gonna break their kneecaps?”
“No…”
“So then what are you going to do?”
Jack’s voice is hard. “They can’t just keep what they took from me. It’s not right.”
“I don’t blame you for trying to reclaim what’s yours,” I say patiently. “But you’ll get arrested if you start going around that school trying to shake people down. Didn’t you have a plan to get it back when you started loaning it out?”
“I had a Rocco but he got expelled last month.”
Of course he did. Rocco was the guy Dad used for collecting on people who ran up debt. He was a monster of a man with a bald head the size of a watermelon and thick arms covered in prison tattoos.
“I’m just going to pretend that you didn’t have anything to do with him getting expelled,” I say with a sigh.
“I didn’t! He got expelled for punching a teacher.”
