Chapter 6 #2
“Pepper-sprayed him,” Thomas interrupts.
Her cheeks flush. “Yes. Exactly. We seem to keep different hours.” Her gaze momentarily shifts to me before turning back toward the others.
The grin Sawyer directs at me is evidence enough that I’m wearing my feelings on my sleeve. I’ll be hearing about that later, for sure.
“So tell us, what brought you to Stormwatch Landing?” Linda asks. “You both moved here recently, right?”
At her question, the light in Katelyn’s eyes fades just a bit. “We’ve been trying to find a place to call home for quite some time.” She wraps an arm around Thomas, who, for the first time since they arrived, keeps his eyes downcast, his mood falling just a bit.
“You’ve moved around a lot? That must have been hard,” Anastasia offers.
“It has been,” Katelyn replies. “But as long as we have each other, that’s all that matters.”
Thomas smiles up at his mom, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. There’s pain there, too—and it hurts me to see it.
“I love that.” Linda’s own smile is a bit softer now, and I imagine it’s because she’s likely picking up on the tension rolling off the two guests in waves.
Secrets buried don’t just linger silently; they fester, and when they become large enough, tendrils of that darkness find their way out one way or another.
And that’s exactly what’s happening here.
Whatever Katelyn is avoiding—it’s big. Unfortunately, if there’s one thing I know well, it’s that the past has a way of catching up with you. One way or another.
“Mr. Holt! You’re back!” Three teens rush forward to greet me at the door.
Jeremy Stewart, a seventeen-year-old who’s been hanging around the community center since he was thirteen, is the first to reach the door.
Followed closely by Jonathan Davidson, his best friend, and Derek Charleston, one of our newer teens.
He and his family had just moved here the week before I ended up nearly bleeding to death.
“Hey, guys. I’m not officially back, so shh.” I put my finger to my lips and move into the center. The pain in my side is certainly agitating today, but staring at the four walls of my apartment was just too much. Besides, the doctor only said no heavy lifting.
Walking is good for you, right?
“Should you be on your feet?” Jeremy asks, cocking his head to the side.
“As long as I don’t lift anything, I’m fine.” I head through the lobby and offer a wave toward Susie Marquez, our secretary. She’s on the phone, but she offers a smile and a wave back.
“How are you feeling?” Jonathan questions.
“I heard you got pepper sprayed when you got home!” Derek adds.
Chuckling, I head down the hall toward my office. After unlocking the door, I push it open and take a seat—carefully—behind my desk. This place has been my second home since I took the job six years ago after moving here to be close to the rest of my team.
Since then, I’ve re-vamped the entire program and turned the dying community center into a thriving outreach program.
Being away from it these past few weeks has been harder than I was prepared for.
“Word travels fast, huh? Well, I did get pepper-sprayed,” I tell the three boys as they all take seats in my office. Jeremy and Jonathan both sit across from me, while Derek plops down on the couch near the door. “My neighbor thought I was breaking into my own apartment.”
“Seriously?”
I nod. “To be fair, she thought I was dead.”
“Dead?” Jeremy says, his tone shocked. “Why did she think you were dead?”
“The doctors told her I was. It’s complicated.” I lean forward on my desk to alleviate some of the strain on my side. “How have things been here? Everyone staying out of trouble?”
Jonathan shares a look with Jeremy, and Derek pales slightly behind them.
“What’s going on?”
“Kyle hasn’t been in since you’ve been gone,” Jonathan says. “We tried to get him to come to group, but he blew it off. We haven’t seen him at school, either.”
Kyle Harding. My chest aches for a new reason.
He’s been the one I was really worried about in my absence.
He’d been a fresh face around here, brought in by our gaming competition three months ago.
His home life is less than stellar, given his father’s abandonment last year and his sister’s ongoing medical needs.
He’s been struggling with anger issues and alcohol consumption.
A habit he picked up from his biological father before the man decided his daughter was more trouble than she was worth—his exact words to her mother—and bailed. Kyle’s mom has been doing her best to manage everything, but reaching Kyle has been a struggle.
Which is where I came in. And I’d been close, too. I was finally getting him to open up.
“I’ll reach out to him. Thanks for the heads-up.”
“You won’t tell him it was us?” Derek asks.
“Of course not. But telling me someone is struggling is a good thing. He could be in very real trouble.”
Derek nods.
It’s one of the biggest battles I’ve had to overcome in this place. Most of the kids that come here have been conditioned to keep their mouths shut. I’ve had to re-train them that, when someone is a risk to themselves or someone else, you have to tell someone you trust.
I thank God every day that I am that trustworthy person for a lot of these kids.
A timer goes off on Jonathan’s phone, so he pulls it out of his pocket and turns it off. “Free period is over. Time to get back to class.”
All three boys stand, and I can’t mask the smile on my face. Even two years ago, getting these kids to go to class each day was a struggle. Now they’re setting a timer to be on time.
Pride swells in my chest. Thank You, Lord.
“You’re going to be okay?” Jeremy asks.
“I’ll be kicking your butts on the basketball court in no time.”
Jeremy snorts.
Jonathan laughs.
Derek shakes his head.
“You’ll never beat us, Mr. Holt. Even when you’re at your best,” Jeremy replies.
“Yeah, you went and got stabbed to avoid our last game,” Jonathan jokes.
I laugh, appreciating the lightness of this moment despite the dark topic. “Yeah, well, just you wait. I’ll be back and better than ever.”
As they leave, a silence settles around me, and I close my eyes.
I can still picture the day I walked into this place. The walls of this office were covered in peeling wallpaper, and the basketball hoops on the court were broken, the nets long gone.
Kids didn’t want to be seen here, so they’d go out and spend their afternoons doing whatever else felt interesting at the time. And a lot of times, those interesting things were not at all what they needed to be doing.
What I don’t think they realize, though, is how much they saved me, too.
When I moved to Stormwatch Landing, I’d been a shell. A soldier merely following orders. I hadn’t lived in a long time. These kids breathed life back into me. They gave me purpose that went beyond simply following the next set of orders.
This is my happy place.
I may lay my head to rest in my apartment, but this community center is home.
There’s a knock on my office door moments before it opens and Susie pushes it open. Her expression is grim, her eyes full of unshed tears.
“What is it?” I demand, pushing up as quickly as I can despite the agonizing pain in my side.
“I just got a call from Kyle Harding’s mother. He’s been arrested.”
“For what?”
Her face pales. “He got caught with a knife at school.”
“Thank you so much, Garrison,” Ursula Harding cries as she reaches forward to hug me.
I accept the embrace and wince silently when pain shoots through my side.
Kyle’s mother is still wearing her animal print scrubs, likely because she came straight over from Stormwatch Animal Hospital where she works as a veterinary technician.
“It’s going to be all right,” I assure her, sincerely hoping I’m right. But bringing a weapon to school? Especially in today’s world? That’s not a minor infraction.
She nods and wipes her face. Ursula has been trying so hard to support her family ever since her husband left. But life has not been kind to them, not with Kyle behaving the way he has been and her younger daughter, Pauline, in and out of the hospital.
“I know it is. I just can’t—why would he have a knife?” she asks, eyes wide. “What possible reason could he have for taking a weapon to school?”
I reach forward and pull open the door to the police station. “We’ll get to the bottom of it, okay?”
She nods and takes a deep breath.
Captain Alan Leopold steps out of his office and greets us with a strained smile. I know that if he’d been able to avoid putting Kyle in cuffs, he would have, which makes me wonder exactly what happened that caused him to actually book the teen.
More than likely, Kyle argued and resisted, giving Leopold no other choice.
“Where is Kyle?” Ursula asks, her tone shaky.
“He’s in our interrogation room.”
“Interrogation room?” she repeats, her voice cracking at the end.
I wrap an arm around her for support.
“Can I see him?”
“Of course.” He gestures toward the room, so I release her.
As soon as the door closes, I shift my attention to Leopold. “How bad?”
He runs a hand through his greying hair.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been combative with the teacher.
She tried to get him to turn in the knife, but he refused, saying that she was going to ‘kill him’ if she took it.
” Leopold lifts an evidence bag with a knife the size of my forearm in it.
That’s not a knife an average person would be carrying with him. Not unless that average person was Crocodile Dundee. I cross my arms, trying to make sense of what Leopold is telling me. “Kill him? As in the teacher was going to?”
Leopold nods. “He flipped his desk over and stormed out, but the principal managed to keep him distracted until I got there. When he saw me, he lost it.” He gestures to the bruise on his cheekbone. “Clocked me pretty good for being as young as he is.”
Assaulting an officer.
Resisting arrest.
Possession of a weapon on school property.
These are no small charges.