Xavier sauntered over with a fresh carton of eggs, his loping basketball-player walk making him look even more pleased with himself. He pointed to the mason jar they kept on Wes’s desk. “Pay up, Chef G.”
Wes pulled his wallet from his back pocket and tugged a dollar from it. He dropped the bill in, adding to the pile. When the kids cursed in class, he made them put in an IOU to do a chore in the classroom, but he held himself to that standard, too. Instead of chores, he put money into the jar to be used to get extras for the class.
Wes went back to the stove and scraped the mess out of the pan and into the trash. Everything smelled of burnt sugar, and the bread looked fossilized. “Okay, everyone. Today’s lesson is how not to make French toast.”
A few of them snickered.
“You nailed that lesson, dude,” Steven said from his spot at one of the tables in the front of the room where he’d been flipping through an old copy of The Joy of Cooking to find some new recipes they could riff on. The class had decided that they should make something for a local fair to earn a little money and wanted to do something traditional with a twist, which was Steven’s specialty.
But Steven flipping through the book was what had Wes distracted in the first place.
“Sorry, guys,” Wes said, rinsing out the pan. “That’s why it’s important not to take your eyes off quick-cooking things. That was my fault.” He nodded at Xavier. “Go ahead and crack a few more eggs and add some milk and the spices. We have enough time to try
again. Maybe you should take over this time, Lola. Show us how it’s done.”
A beaming smile broke out on her round face. “On it. I’ve been making this for my little brothers for years. Watch how it’s done, people.”
Lola waved the kids over to the main counter while Xavier whisked the eggs. Wes headed over to Steven and grabbed a chair, spinning it backward to straddle it. Steven looked up from the cookbook and tugged down the sleeve of his oversized sweatshirt.
“Any luck?” Wes asked.
He shrugged. “Not yet. Who the hell eats snails?”
“I don’t think escargot would be a big seller at the fair.” Wes nodded at the arm Steven had covered up. He’d seen the bandage poking through at the wrist when he’d been flipping pages. “What happened to your arm?”
Steven’s gaze slid away, and he shifted in his chair. “It’s nothing.”
Nothing. Right. Wes had heard that before—said that before. The kids that ended up at the Brant Street Youth Program came from all kinds of complicated situations. Injuries from fights weren’t out of the ordinary. But Wes also had to be on the lookout for more serious things, things caused by the adults in their lives. Wes had met Steven’s father, a local cop, a couple of times and had gotten that prickly feeling at the back of his neck at the way the man had looked at and spoken to his son. That survival instinct of Wes’s had picked up a whiff of a certain type of malevolence.
Wes had been in that situation once upon a time. His father hadn’t been around much because he was busy running his drug business, but when he was home, he was usually angry. He used to put out cigarettes on Wes’s arm when he was pissed and knock him around even when he wasn’t. Until Wes had gotten big enough to fight back, he’d become a master of hiding the marks so he wouldn’t get looks from teachers or social workers. But now he knew the tricks and could spot them. Like the fact that Steven was wearing a thick, blue Texas Rangers sweatshirt on a warm spring day.
“That looks like a pretty big bandage to be nothing,” Wes said.
Steven grimaced. “It was stupid. I’m fine.”
“What was stupid?” Wes tried to keep his tone casual. “Did something happen at home?”
Steven closed the cookbook and fiddled with a ripped corner of the worn dust jacket. “My friend got a new dog, and the dumb-ass thing bit me.”
Wes stiffened, the answer like a sucker punch. “A dog?”
“Yeah. Thing nearly ripped my arm off. Had to get a few stitches. Then I had to hear it from my old man about how expensive emergency room visits are. Fun weekend.”
A dog bite. Wes didn’t want his mind to go there, didn’t want to think it. But he got a flash of someone running away. White kid. Dark hair under a ball cap.
A cold feeling crept through him. “When did it happen?”
“Friday. It’s getting better, though. I’ll live.”
Shit.
“Chef G,” Lola called out. “Come check this out. Xavier cut out shapes in the French toast. Looks fancy.”
Wes glanced back at the eager faces of his students, thoughts running through his head too quickly. Just because Steven had a dog bite didn’t mean anything. Wes couldn’t—wouldn’t—jump to conclusions. But as he headed to the front of the class to check on the students’ work, a cloak of dread wrapped around him, turning his skin clammy.
Even if it turned out not to be Steven, Wes knew there was no getting out of the next thing.
And it was the very last thing he wanted to do.