The Domino Effect by Andrew Cotto Page B

was talking this morning about what they did to you, and how they were going to find out who stole their shoes, by any means necessary. Those were his exact words. By any means necessary.”
    “Oh, boy,” I laughed, and rolled my eyes. “Don’t worry about those guys, Bren.”
    “I do worry,” she said, taking my arm. “I just came from the mail room and they put those awful signs back up. This time in color.”
    “Wow,” I cracked. “Color copies — what a time to be alive.”
    She smacked me on the arm and then balled the mittens on her hips. She looked so gorgeous and ripe I could have bitten her like a peach. I swear. “OK, you’re right,” I said. “Let’s go to the LA building where it’s safe. It can be, like, our hideout or something.”
    “Sorry,” she said. “I’m busy this afternoon.”
    “Busy with what?”
    “Well, that meeting about college really got me thinking about sending out a few more applications.” She said it all perky and pleased with herself.
    “I thought you were set on Connecticut,” I said. She’d been talking about the University of Connecticut, her home state school, since we’d been together.
    “I am,” she insisted. “But a few more applications couldn’t hurt.”
    I couldn’t argue with that logic.
    “And what about you, Mister?” she said, laying an open palm on my chest. “You haven’t done any yet, far as I know.”
    “I know. I know,” I said. “I will. I will.”
    “When?” she asked with some doubt. “Thanksgiving is next week, and that’s the deadline for at least getting started, you know?”
    “Hey, I was in there, too, Bren. I heard the guy.”
    “So… ” She posed, with her hands on her hips again. “Come with me to the guidance office and pick up some applications or, at least, make an appointment with Mr. Dawkins.”
    “Who?”
    “Mr. Dawkins,” she said. “The guidance counselor, Danny, from the meeting you were just in.” She didn’t actually say ‘duh,’ but the way she spoke and the look on her face had ‘duh’ all over it.
    “I’ll go,” I said. “I promise. Just not right now, ‘cause I got something else to do.”
    “Fine,” she said, and reached out to pinch my mouth together before walking away. She killed me, that Brenda.
    I watched her go, her knees kind-of-knocking, and her butt kind of bouncing and her head held up high. She passed under the Arch and out of sight. Campus was quiet at this in-between hour of the afternoon, so nobody saw me follow Brenda toward the Arch, and nobody saw me slip into the empty mail room, where I tore down all those WANTED posters, just like I had before.

Chapter 7
     
    I felt kind of jealous when the guys in the dorm talked of homecomings over Thanksgiving with their families, old friends, and local girls. The best I could hope for was to be left alone, for the most part, until it was time to go back to school. That was until I made a plan.
    I took the bus from Hamdenville to the city and got to Queens late Wednesday night. We spent Thursday out in Long Island at my mother’s cousin’s house, where I shot baskets in their driveway most of the day, while her kids, younger than me, messed around on their rollerblades playing hockey. Mom was working Friday, and Pop had a football game at the high school he taught at in Brooklyn, with his marching band performing at halftime. He asked me to come with him about a hundred times, and I could tell he wasn’t just being polite, but I had all day Friday set aside for a phone call.
    “Hello,” a man’s voice answered. It sounded like he didn’t like talking on the phone. I thought for a second about hanging up, trying again later in the day, but it had already taken me half an hour to get up the nerve to dial Brenda’s number. The paper she’d written it on was getting crumpled and soggy. I hadn’t called a girl on the phone since Genie Martini, the summer before 9 th grade, and even then I’d tried to wait until her