Remember When **Under MAJOR Editing**

Chapter 13

A burst of laughter from behind the paper screen made both of us jump. It was easy to forget we were in a public place, enclosed only in the illusion of privacy. Now I wondered if I'd spoken loudly enough for other diners to hear me through the thin screen.

I adjusted my position on the cushion. Dade didn't move. His body, laid back against the cushions and the wall with his broken leg straight out to one side, said relaxed. His fingers, frozen in midfidget on his good knee, said people aren't supposed to ask me that. Either that or I have just been shot through the paper screen.

He wasn't bleeding. But I began to see his point about catching a marlin and then letting it go, because honestly, what were you going to do with a marlin? He was a six-foot-two fish out of water behind a miniature dining table. Even slouched down, his shoulders were broad, his head was even with mine, and his legs took up the entire space in front of him. No wonder the wreck had broken him. If he was too big for the tatami table, he was way too big for Mike's Miata.
"They don't?" he croaked, then cleared his throat.
"Even Mckenzie and Lily don't know, and they know everything."

He laughed bitterly. "I didn't belong there, if that's what you're asking. But I learned a thing or two. If you ever want to sell crack, I can show you every possible place to hide it."

I cringed. "No, I'm asking why you went."

"I thought you knew," he said flatly.

"How would I know?"

"Your mom defended me."
The waiter came back and placed rectangular plates and small dishes in front of us. After he left, I did what Dade did, poured soy sauce into the small dish.

Dade deftly nabbed a block of raw tuna with chopsticks and held it in my direction. "Try?"

I shook my head and concentrated on balancing a piece of my roll between my chopsticks. I was not good at this. And I hated to ruin the beautiful design of the plate, perfectly matching circles of rice encasing dots of pink and green. Finally I dipped one in soy sauce, chewed it slowly and swallowed, to give myself time to think. "I didn't know my mom defended you."

"Of course she did. She's the public defender. My dad sure as hell wouldn't pay for my lawyer. He was the one who wanted me to go to juvie."
"For . . . ?" I was glad we were eating. We looked at our food instead of each other. That seemed to be key for Dade and me to have a conversation. The conversation was so charged that I couldn't taste what I ate, but that was a small price to pay for what I was dying to know.

"I went to juvie because I ran away," he said.

I thought I'd misunderstood him. "From home?" I clarified, frowning into my soy sauce.

"Yes, I ran away from home, like you do when you're six and you get mad because your dad turned off Scooby-Doo."
This story didn't make sense to me. I began to realize that Dade kept his own counsel, and that he probably viewed this terse conversation as "opening up." I would need to drag every detail out of him. "Why'd you get sent to juvie just for that?"

"My dad asked the judge to send me. You know, to straighten me out once and for all." In his bitter tone I recognized the bark of his father calling him a fag. I had lifted up a stepping- stone to find snakes teeming underneath.

"Straighten you out. What was so crooked about you?" I pictured him shoplifting, smoking pot. Someone who didn't spend a lot of time around him might suspect him of these things now, as a senior. He had that edgy personality, that cavalier expression to his eyebrows. But he would never do anything to jeopardize his chance to swim. And back in ninth grade . . . as I remembered him, he was even less likely to make juvie-worthy moves. Laughing and clueless, he hadn't yet developed the honeyed sarcasm. I remembered being floored the first time someone told me Dade Elks was in juvie, not out of school with the flu.