Final Assignment: A Promise Falls Novella by Linwood Barclay Page B

it in for him,’ his mother said quickly.
    ‘Why would that be?’
    Now it was her turn to shrug. ‘I just don’t know.’
    ‘Have you been in trouble before this?’ I asked Chandler.
    ‘Um,’ he said.
    ‘Nothing serious,’ Greta Carson said.
    ‘What happened?’ I asked.
    Chandler grimaced. ‘It really wasn’t that big a deal. Everything’s fine now. We get along and everything.’
    I looked at the two of them, waited.
    ‘Okay, so what happened,’ Chandler said, ‘was me and my friend Mike, we kind of made fun of a guy.’
    ‘It was harmless,’ his mother said. ‘A prank.’
    ‘Mike Vaughn?’ I asked. It was my late wife Donna’s friend Suzanne Vaughn who had referred Greta Carson to me. I knew she had a son named Michael.
    ‘Yes, that’s right. Suzanne’s boy,’ Greta said. ‘We’ve been friends with Suzanne and Elliot for years, and Chandler and Michael have grown up together.’
    ‘So what was this prank that you and Mike cooked up?’ I asked Chandler.
    ‘So there’s this guy named Joel Blakelock, and he’s kind of, you know, everybody knows he’s kind of gay, which is fine, right? But there was this thing at school, and he was around back, by the parking lot, and he was sort of making out with some other guy, and me and Mike, well, Mike, he got out his phone and he took a picture of them. You couldn’t see the other guy, but you could tell that it was Joel, and we sort of put it out there.’
    ‘Out there?’ I said.
    ‘Like, we posted it. And then everyone else posted it. And Joel got really upset because he kind of thought it was an invasion of privacy and—’
    ‘They were right out in the open,’ Greta Carson said.
    I gave her a look that said,
Please.
    ‘Go on,’ I said to Chandler.
    ‘Yeah, like he got pretty upset about it, and somebody said he actually was going to kill himself over it but I don’t think that’s true, and Mike and me got in trouble and got suspended for a few days, but then things, like I said, settled down. I’m even sort of like friends with Joel now. Not in a
gay
way, of course.’ He flushed. ‘But like friends in other ways.’
    ‘This happened since you’ve been at Promise Falls High?’ I asked. Chandler nodded. ‘And why did you leave the private school?’
    ‘Oh, that,’ Chandler said.
    ‘The school failed to meet Chandler’s academic needs,’ his mother said. ‘So we moved him out.’
    ‘We?’
    ‘My husband Malcolm and I.’
    ‘Where is Mr Carson?’ I asked.
    ‘He’s at work.’
    ‘What’s he do?’
    ‘He’s a financial consultant,’ she said. ‘He used to teach business, but then he actually got into it. Those who can
do
, you know.’
    ‘Does he know you called me?’
    She swallowed. ‘I’ll be bringing him up to speed soon enough. And I hardly need my husband’s permission to engage someone’s services. That’s a very sexist attitude.’
    ‘My apologies if that’s how it came across,’ I said. I needed to get things back on track. ‘What did you mean, the school did not meet Chandler’s academic needs?’
    ‘They weren’t challenging him enough, and as a result, his grades suffered.’
    Back to Chandler. ‘You were failing and they dropped you?’
    ‘Kinda,’ he said.
    ‘That’s not how I would characterize it,’ his mother said. ‘So, regrettably, we had to move Chandler to the school in our neighborhood. I think that’s why the teachers are against him, that he came from a private school. There’s a kind of reverse snobbery going on, if you ask me.’
    ‘I see,’ I said. I put my hands on my knees, getting into position to stand and walk out of here. But I at least had to ask. ‘Just how were you thinking that I might be able to help?’
    ‘I want you to get those school officials to change their minds and end this suspension, drop their demands that Chandler see someone for this ridiculous psychiatric help, and apologize.’
    I shook my head. ‘You’ve got the wrong guy. If anything,