Along with the letter he’d enclosed a brief medical history from his side of the family so J’Quarius would have it for his doctors, a player photo from his college football days, and a smaller sealed envelope the size of a thank you card with the name J’Quarius written in cursive across the front of it.
Weinstien was frozen to his stool with his mouth agape. The feelings of utter shock from the day Melvin had died came coursing back through him, sending chills throughout his body. At the time, he’d taken Melvin’s suicide more as an admission of guilt than anything. Now the guilt was all on him.
If he’d gotten this letter five years earlier, around the time it had been mailed, he probably would have added it to Melvin’s closed file, blocked it from his mind and gone on with another typically hectic day. And he still wasn’t entirely convinced that Melvin was innocent. But after spending the last several months leading up to his retirement, with little to do but reflect, experiencing a gradual shift from self-congratulation for his successes to self-flagellation for never really making a difference, he couldn’t produce a defensible way to ignore this.
Leaning over in the direction of a man seated next to him intently watching the NBA playoffs on the TV above the bar, he casually asked, “Have you heard of this J’Quarius Jones kid?”
“Yeah. Sounds like he’s the real deal. Rumor has it he’s going to play in Moscow next year for over 20 million bucks,” the man said without taking his eyes off the TV.
“He’s in Moscow?” Weinstien asked disappointedly.
“Not yet. His last AAU game is tomorrow in Cleveland. I think they scheduled it on an off day for the playoffs on purpose — probably more people want to watch him than the NBA right now.”
Weinstien threw a couple bucks on the bar, ditched the nearly full cup of coffee, rushed back to his office, haphazardly threw all the remaining papers into boxes, and piled the boxes up just inside his front door. After three breakneck round-trips home, he was done.
He forced himself to log a couple hours of sleep before getting back in his car. On his way out of town he made a brief stop at Kinko’s, swung through the McDonald’s drive-thru for a large coffee, and at 4:15 AM started the 8-hour trip to Cleveland.
Sara jumped as the sudden blast of a car horn shrieked through the Ewings’ great room, nearly causing her to spill her tea.
Ryan raced through from the kitchen, grabbing his backpack off the floor. “See you tomorrow,” he yelled on his way to the front door. Out in the driveway, his friend Jasper was waiting in the new Prius he’d gotten for his sixteenth birthday.
“Do you have your phone?” Sara asked, rushing over to intercept him.
“Yes!” he huffed indignantly keeping his hand on the front door without turning around to face her.
“And it’s on?”
“Yes.” His shoulders slumped. The same routine every time.
“And it’s charged?”
“Yes!”
Finally satisfied, Sara rocked up onto her tiptoes and gave him a kiss on the top of his head, which she could still just reach. “Bye. Have a good time.”
Ryan enjoyed significantly more independence than the average twelve-year-old. Having just completed his sophomore year, he was at least three years younger than anyone else in his class, and with the free-form curriculum at his school, he was actually taking most of his classes with even older kids.
There were certainly disadvantages to being the youngest kid in his grade, but the biggest advantage, from his perspective, was having friends who could drive. His parents didn’t share his point of view, but, conceding that he had virtually no opportunity to make friends his own age, they had reluctantly granted him permission to ride along with a select group of boys whose families they knew well on the condition that he keep his phone on him at all times.
His parents were then able not only to track his location continually with the GPS function on his phone, but also to call at random times, just to make sure he was ok. It really was more out of worry than lack of trust, and Ryan knew it. But he still resented it.
To become eligible for the privilege of spending the night at his friend Jasper’s house, he’d woken up that morning at six and started his day by running four miles in just under 30 minutes. He then came home for a shower and breakfast, practiced Japanese for an hour with his tutor in Kyoto on Skype, moved on to piano for another hour, and then spent the remainder of the morning re-evaluating his small but growing stock portfolio in the online trading account his dad had set him up with a few months earlier. After lunch, he’d powered through what was supposed to be two hours of homework in twenty minutes, thus completing his school-, parent- and Avillage-directed activities and leaving himself free to spend the balance of the weekend as he pleased.
He opened the passenger door of his friend’s Prius and hopped in. The plan for the day, as he’d described it to his parents, was that he’d be going over to Jasper’s house to work on a school project, maybe see a movie if they finished early, and then spend the night there. But his actual plans were very different.
“Hey, Jasper. Thanks for picking me up. And thanks for agreeing to do this. I owe you big time.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Jasper snapped as if he resented the comment, but he couldn’t help but follow it up with, “So, did you start that project for Mr. Gilliam’s class?”
“It’s done,” Ryan said, patting his backpack.
Jasper laughed involuntarily, shaking his head with an incredulous smile. “How in the world did you finish that so fast?”
“It wasn’t that hard. I’ll show you tonight,” Ryan said matter-of-factly. “Can I see your phone?”
Jasper handed it over. Ryan popped the backs off of both his phone and Jasper’s, switched out the SIM cards, and then gave his phone to Jasper.
“You can answer this if it rings. It’ll work just like your phone, but please stay at your house. My parents can track the location of my device — not my SIM card. If they’re looking, and my phone’s not at your house, I’m screwed.”
“So, what if your parents call your phone?” Jasper asked, not following him at all. He and Ryan were friends, but intellectual equals they were not. “And what the hell is a SIM card?”
“It’s a subscriber identity module… card. Kind of redundant. Anyway, it’s what makes this mass-produced phone yours. It pretty much ties your phone number and personal account info to your device.
“And now I’ve got my SIM card in your phone, so if my parents call my phone, I would just answer your phone, which I’ll have with me,” Ryan said, opening the door as Jasper rolled to a stop at the street corner adjacent to the easternmost Cleveland RTA station. “Look, I doubt my parents are watching me that closely, but if you don’t mind, just stop through the nearest fast-food joint to here on your way home, so it looks like we had a reason for going this way.”
“Dude, you’re paranoid,” Jasper needled with a grin.
“Come on. I’m just trying to cover all my bases. I’m up against a one strike and you’re out policy,” Ryan said nervously. “Now hurry up, so it doesn’t look like we stopped for an inordinately long time. I’ll see you right back here at eight.”
Ryan slammed the door shut, as Jasper over-acted a suspicious glance to both rearview mirrors, sunk down in his seat, pulled the bill of his cap down and sped away. Ryan shook his head and allowed himself a quick chuckle as he sidled down the hill to the station.
Just before Dinosaurs and Aliens had been taken offline for good, Ryan and Dillon had planned this day for their meeting.