Not So Different

37. 'Fury, Signifying Nothing'

— 'Jane, do you need an attorney? I don't do criminal work but I'll get you somebody. Don't say anything to anybody until we get over there.'

Is that the only reason she can imagine why I would be calling her office? Jane wondered. Or does she say that to all the girls? 'No, Mrs Morgendorffer, I was calling about Sonny.' And if that's the way you react when you think I'm the one who's in trouble, then when you find out it's your own child I think he can count on the legal back-up he needs.

— 'Sonny? What's happened to Sonny? Where is he? And where are you?'

'As far as I know, he's got a shift at his job at that pet shop in the mall, and nothing's happened to him yet. He probably doesn't know what's going on. But I'm at school, and I've just been interviewed by the police—about Sonny.'

— 'You were interviewed about Sonny?'

'They wouldn't tell me what it was about.' Jane hesitated for a moment. She knew what she had to tell Sonny's mother, but she hoped she wasn't going to be pressed for details. 'It wasn't too hard to get a rough idea of what they were getting at, though. Something to do with sexual harassment, or something like that.'

— 'The police think Sonny's been sexually harassing you? What on earth would make them think something like that?'

'I don't know. But it's not just me. They're interviewing other girls, too.'

— 'They shouldn't be interviewing minors without their parents present!'

'They're not. Well, not exactly. They rang my house, but they couldn't get anybody to answer the phone. So they had the school counsellor sit in on my interview as an "appropriate adult" or something, which itself is a joke, frankly.'

Helen interrupted. 'Is that the same one that said Sonny had low self-esteem when he started at Lawndale High?'

'Yes, which should tell you something. Sonny doesn't have low self-esteem, he has low esteem for everybody else. But it didn't matter so much because I had enough sense myself to know what to say and what not to say. The thing is, they're interviewing Brittany Taylor now, and her so-called appropriate adult is her stepmother, Ashley Amber.'

Helen interrupted again. 'Is that the woman who was partnered with Brittany in that mother-daughter fashion show fundraiser?'

'I guess so. I wasn't there.'

— 'Is she—well—as her appearance suggests?'

'You mean dim? Well, Brittany certainly is, and that's the problem. I know that Sonny has no interest of any kind in her, and she's not the type to say anything against him out of malice, but she might say something that sounds damaging just because she completely fails to understand, and Ashley Amber might try to keep Brittany out of trouble but not Sonny. Plus, I don't know which other girls they may go on to interview. The whole thing's so crazy, anything's possible. That's why I thought you should know about it.'

— 'Thank you, Jane. You were absolutely right. I'll be coming to the school as fast as possible. But what about Sonny?'

'If you're coming here, I was thinking I could head over to the mall to let Sonny know what's going on.'

— 'Oh, would you? Well, before I leave here I'll call Jake to see whether he can go over there too. Thanks again, Jane. Must rush.'

But when Jane got to the pet shop, Jake wasn't there and neither was Sonny. When she went inside and asked for Sonny, she was told that he had been taken away by agents from the Fish and Wildlife Service (the Fish and Wildlife Service? Jane had never even heard of them), and that his father had gone with him. The man in the pet shop obviously didn't like being visited by the Fish and Wildlife Service and seemed to hold Sonny responsible in some way. Jane tried ringing the Morgendorffers' again, but only Quinn was there and she didn't know anything about what had been going on. Jane asked her to let her family know that Jane had called and to ask them to call back if they could.

But Jane heard nothing more that evening, or the next morning, and Sonny did not appear at school that day. All she could do was look around for Quinn. Before Jane could find her, she heard wild rumours about how Sonny had been arrested, how his locker had been searched, and how Federal agents were investigating the case, but nobody knew what it was really all about. Naturally some people suspected drugs were involved, and some were talking about school shootings and bombings (a couple were saying they'd always known Sonny was the type), and there were even a few weird theories about links with organised crime (some people had jumped from the sexual harassment idea to mobsters kidnapping girls to enslave them for prostitution), but Jane knew better than to believe the sort of things her schoolmates believed. Of course there were a few more reasonable people about, like Jodie and Mack, but they were as much in the dark as Jane, and had the sense not to make wild guesses.

In the end it was Quinn who found Jane first, bringing a message from Sonny. He was hoping Jane could meet him after school at the pizza place. Jane nodded. It didn't seem like a good idea to try to talk everything out with Quinn, but Jane had to ask her whether Sonny was all right.

'I think so', said Quinn. 'It's hard to tell with him, you know?'

'How about you?' said Jane. 'And your parents?'

'We're all coping, I guess. Maybe it's better if you talk with Sonny.'

Jane nodded again. But it was hard to wait.

When she finally met Sonny at the pizza place, he didn't look much different from normal. But then, he seldom looked much different from normal. She didn't want to push, so she decided to listen and not talk and to watch him closely. She knew him well enough to read his expression better than most people could.

Once they'd greeted each other, got their pizza, and seated themselves, the next thing he did was to thank her for calling his mother.

'It meant that she was at the school to witness the inter-agency taskforce searching my locker.'

'Inter-agency taskf—?' Jane caught herself and stopped mid-question. Listen, not talk.

Sonny continued unmoved. 'Fish and Wildlife, DEA, ATF, and the Secret Service.'

'Secret S—?' It wasn't fair. How could she not react when the story was as wild as this?

'At least nobody's accused me of plotting to assassinate the President', Sonny said, reading her mind. 'The Secret Service started out as a bureau in the Treasury Department to catch counterfeiters, and that's still one of their jobs, even if it's not the one that everybody thinks of in connection with them. Apparently there have been a few counterfeit notes detected circulating in Lawndale, and that's probably the hook that whoever started all this used to hang everything else on. ATF would have been brought in by the possibility of illegal firearms and explosives—you know how many people have been just waiting for me to shoot up the school—although for all I know there are allegations involving alcohol and tobacco as well. DEA, you can guess. And if I were involved in breaches of Federal law at my job, that could bring in the jurisdiction of the Fish and Wildlife Service. All of these agencies have received some sort of information from somewhere implicating me in something. I still don't know what exactly.' He took another bite of pizza. 'Plus, of course, there were the ordinary cops interviewing you, and Brittany, Jodie, and Andrea, and Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany, and I don't know which other girls. Half the ones in the school, possibly. But I gather you figured out what that part of the investigation was about.'

Jane nodded and let Sonny carry on.

'Luckily there's a first-rate firm of private investigators that's worked for Vitale, Davis, Horowitz, Riordan, Schrecter, Schrecter, and Schrecter before, and my mom was able to get them on the case straight away. So we should know more soon. Obviously somebody's out to get me, but if we're looking for a suspect the pool of people who don't like me is too big to work with. We need some other sort of lead. In the meantime, it's going to be weird while the rumours are going around, but those police officers and special agents and what-have-you will find out pretty quickly that there's no evidence to back up any of the allegations. Whoever did this was pretty dim about it, luckily. They would have done better to stick with just the school shooting angle, which a lot of people would have given a lot more credence. This way, the investigators are going to start looking at each other and thinking that one single eleventh-grader couldn't be implicated in all these different things and that there must be something else going on here. Probably they'll take a little longer than I did to figure out that there's a crank with a grudge behind this just because they're not as used as I am to people always having something against me for no good reason.'

Jane sat back and chewed another mouthful of pizza while she thought, still studying Sonny's face. 'This is more than somebody who doesn't like you. This is a major crank with a major grudge. It bothers you that you can't figure out who it could be.'

'I have to face facts.' Sonny's face moved only microscopically, but Jane could tell that this was his equivalent of a normal face falling. 'I'm not a private investigator, and until the people who are come up with more information, there's nothing else I can do. I just hope they're as good at their job as Mom says.'

Jane still didn't want to push, so she changed the direction of the conversation. 'You could probably do with the warning that there are some absolutely crazy stories going round the school. Are you coming back there? I think you should be prepared if you are.'

'Oh, I'll be back at school. And having people believe weird things about me isn't wholly new territory for me. I don't know whether you remember, but you said it best yourself: "Takes a licking, keeps on ticking". That's Sonny Morgendorffer.'

'Uh-huh. And how's your family taking it?'

'Well, Quinn's always seen me as a weirdness magnet, and she's pretty much dismissed this as weird rather than scary because I'm not letting it scare me. But I can still see that she's on my side, and that's actually kind of nice, although I haven't got around to telling her so. As for Mom and Dad, they can't help being a little worried, which is understandable, but they're also a lot outraged. At the same time I think somehow they like the feeling that for once we're all in this together.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Not that they ever would have wanted anything like this to happen, but now that it has there is some kind of psychological boost for them in being my champions. Mind you, as I said, I don't really need champions. The whole thing's bound to fall apart under its own weight soon, as anybody who wasn't a hopeless kook would have realised in the first place. But I guess I don't have to say that to my parents.'

Jane took a swallow of drink and leaned forward to study Sonny's face again. 'Does that mean you didn't need me to call your mom the way I did?'

Sonny chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment. 'Not … not need, I guess, but … it was ….'

Jane nodded. 'It was the thing to do, wasn't it?' It wasn't really a question. Sonny didn't say anything. He just looked at her. He wasn't saying anything because she'd said what there was to say. They finished the pizza without further conversation and then went back to Jane's house to watch interviews about alien abductions on Sick, Sad World.

The next few days at school were as weird as both Jane and Sonny had foreseen. Oddly, Jane found things more normal when she was with Sonny. People mostly avoided them, but that was what people mostly did anyway. Jodie and Mack both seemed to be making a point of speaking to them occasionally, but then again they both did that occasionally anyway and it was hard to tell whether this was different. Neither of them made any reference to the craziness.

It was when Jane was separated from Sonny by class schedules or other circumstances that the weirdness really oozed out of the walls. People, many of whom she barely knew, sidled up to her and asked her about the rumours. Did Sonny really have Mob connections? Was the FBI really after him? Had she ever heard him say anything suspicious? Was he really trying to build a bomb that could blow up the school? Was she ever scared of him? What was it like, hanging around with a wanted man?

Sometimes she started to think that it was weirder for her than it was for him, but she knew that couldn't be true, no matter how well his coping strategies worked for him. He proved her right when he told her about the weirdest thing that had happened to him. The Fashion Club had passed an official resolution of support for him. She knew she couldn't out-weird that. In any other circumstances she would have teased him about it for months.

The most normal thing that happened was that Sonny exploited the situation to get his mother to agree that he needn't go back to his job at the pet shop, or look for a replacement one. The pet shop was anyway reluctant to have Sonny back after the visit from the Fish and Wildlife Service, and Sonny's parents accepted that he'd learnt enough about the working world for the time being.

After a fortnight or so of digging, the private investigators came up with some solid leads. Sonny told Jane about a key discovery as they watched Sick, Sad World (another story about aliens, but this time the aliens were getting pizzas delivered).

'They're moderately confident that a number of the tip-offs to law enforcement originated with people connected with the Lawndale "Take Back The Night" women's self-defence group.'

'That's funny. There used to be a group like that at the school, but they couldn't find a new faculty sponsor to replace … ohh.' Jane looked sideways at Sonny.

Sonny kept looking ahead at the television. 'Exactly. At first they didn't think anything of it, but when it cropped up in their investigation repeatedly they thought it was worth mentioning in one of their reports, and when I persuaded my mother to let me take a look—well, even though I didn't know about the group once operating at the school, it wasn't hard to figure out.'

'All you had to ask yourself was "Who's a major crank with a major grudge against me who would also be connected with a women's self-defence group?" So what happens now?'

'I don't know exactly. Good private investigators usually have connections with law enforcement. And law enforcement agencies usually take a dim view of people wasting their time. Maybe they can be prompted to take steps to make their displeasure evident. Anyway, I passed on the name, and all I can do now is wait and see.'

Jane nodded, and then cocked an ear. 'In the meantime, I wonder whether those private investigators could solve the mystery of that new tune Trent's playing.'

Sonny listened for a moment too. 'What's the mystery? Trent's always playing new tunes and they're always—well—distinctive.'

'I think between just the two of us we can be honest. Mystik Spiral's songs suck. But listen again to what he's playing now.'

Sonny complied, concentrating for a minute. 'It's no worse than usual.'

'It's not that it's getting worse, and it's not that it's getting better, either. But it is getting more than usually … what would you call it? … help me out here, wordsmith.'

'Peppy?'

'That's it. More than usually peppy. Trent never writes peppy for Mystik Spiral.'

Sonny said, 'Hey, it's stopped.' They both looked round and a moment later they heard footsteps and then Trent appeared in the doorway. They exchanged friendly greetings as usual. Jane could see that Trent wanted Sonny to know that he wasn't paying attention to the craziness that had been going on. Then Sonny asked Trent about the song he was working on.

'It's just a song. I write songs, you know? And I gotta go now so I can practise it some more.' Trent turned to leave, then looked back over his shoulder. 'Uh, practise my, uh, same music that isn't any different from the other stuff I play.'

'See?' said Jane, when he'd left. 'There's a mystery there.'

'Well, if we can get the private investigators to sort that out, maybe they'd also look into the new weirdness with Quinn.'

'What's that?'

'Haven't you noticed anything unusual about her recently?'

'You mean the new style of outfit? The beret with the polo-neck?' Jane shrugged. 'Didn't she try out berets back when she thought she was a brain?'

'If she were going back to that phase, I'd know about it from the Fashion Club's reaction. But they had a meeting at our house just before I came over here, and she must have given them an explanation that satisfied them.'

'Suddenly it seems there's a lot of mysteries around. Do you remember all those flashlights we saw moving around in the woods that night last week when you came over here?'

'Oh, I found out the explanation for that one. Sorry, I forgot to tell you. With my being investigated by Federal agents as well as the police, Kevin decided that he and Brittany should spy on me to find out what I'm doing because he thinks I'm a menace to society and he has to save the world, or something. Mack figured that Kevin was going to try something stupid, and that he owed it to the team to stop Kevin humiliating himself. He got Jodie to tag along, so that made four flashlights. Mack and Jodie told me about it at school. They thought I might have noticed Kevin following me—which we kind of did, except we didn't know who had all the flashlights—and they wanted to reassure me that they'd put a stop to it.'

Jane got up from the bed where she'd been sitting. 'If Mack thinks it's his job to put a stop to things like that, do you think we should let him know that Kevin's probably going to do something stupid tomorrow?'

'What?'

'I don't know. He'll be awake, won't he?'

The outstanding mysteries were all resolved when Sonny came over to Jane's a few days later to watch Sick, Sad World again. The Fashion Club mystery had temporarily deepened in the meantime, with all the members coming to school in the same new outfit, their public explanation being a show of solidarity with a member with an unnamed problem. It had helped to distract attention from the continuing rumours about Sonny, but he told Jane that those were dying away anyway. 'Short attention spans are common at Lawndale High', he said. He also told her that information had been leaked to him from confidential sources in the Fashion Club, and that the mysterious problem was a pimple on Quinn's neck. Jane thought it was still a mystery that Sonny had confidential sources in the Fashion Club. She teased him about that a little, but she didn't pry seriously. He might not be showing any signs that the law enforcement investigation or the weird rumours or anything that went with them had ruffled him, but she'd be glad to put the whole affair behind them.

Serendipitously, another mystery was dissolved when they heard Trent's new song coming from the television. It was an advertising jingle for a used-car salesman. They turned up the volume to hear it better, which drew Trent into the room with a slightly hangdog confession.

'You don't have to tell me. I'm a complete sell-out. But I really needed the gig.'

Neither Jane nor Sonny felt like giving Trent a hard time about it. There'd been too much weirdness in the last few weeks to worry about a little lowering of artistic standards to meet a pressing need for cash (to be precise, twenty dollars, an hour of free studio time, and a set of brand-new tyres, but who was counting?).

When Trent had left the room, Jane said, 'So, no extra work for the private investigators after all.'

'Mom showed me their last report today. Barch has skipped town and gone underground.' He shrugged. 'So O'Neill can wallow in yearning, never knowing what might have been. And I could spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. Nothing new there.'

Some dialogue from 'Esteemsters' by Glenn Eichler, 'It Happened One Nut' by Rachel Lipman, and 'The Lawndale File' by Peter Elwell.