Page 71 of Lost
The moment she left the room and slipped the door closed behind her, Masters was on his feet. He had his bag in his hand and was ready to head for the door, and Lysander knew that this could be his only chance — so he took it.
“Why?” he finally asked.
Masters growled and took a step; Lysander was up in a flash, blocking his way. He held his hands up in the universal sign of surrender.
“I get it, okay?” he said. “It makes you feel good to put people down.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like?”
“I needed to make sure the heat stayed onyou, okay?” There was true anger in Masters’s eyes as he spoke. “I didn’t want people to start poking.”
“Poking at what?”
“My life.”
Silence again, in which the only sound was that of Mrs. Nielson's muffled speech from the other room.
“What happened?”
“Same thing that happened to you.” Masters met his gaze squarely. “I had a sister. She went missing. And three days later she turned up dead.”
That was the last thing Lysander had expected to hear. Did he believe it? He didn’t want to, but there was no joking in Masters’s eyes, nothing in his tone to suggest he was making some kind of cruel joke. He was gripping the strap of his bag like his life depended on it. Like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.
Lysander knew that feeling.
Masters clenched his jaw. He nodded toward the door. “Now get out of my way. I’m not sticking around for any more of this.”
Lysander stepped aside in silence. Masters bumped his shoulder only half as hard as he usual would, as if he didn’t have the energy to put in the effort anymore. Lysander turned to watch him go.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” he said as the boy passed him.
Masters was almost completely out of the room before he mumbled, “Sorry about yours, too.”
Lysander spent the remainder of fourth period pretending to care about what Mrs. Nielson was saying while he thought on what Masters had told him. He by no means forgave the guy, but he couldn’t deny that he understood. He’d have to locate Masters the next day, he decided, and tell him as much. He would keep the boy’s secret.
But it by no means made them friends.
He met Jack outside the main office when the last bell of the day finally rang and together they followed the swarm of students out onto the street. The end of the day was always a good time for them, made better by the fact that everybody was too busy racing away from the school to look at them twice. Not even Masters glanced their way as he walked towards the highway — alone for once instead of accompanied by his usual gang. For a moment Lysander considered catching up with him, but he shot the idea down quickly.
“So, you wanna talk about it?” Jack asked. “I’ve spent some time with Nielson before. I know how annoying she can be.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Lysander said. “Honestly, I expected worse. But you’ll never believe who was there with me.”
The car pulled up beside them with a squeal.
The smart move would have been to run. But when the door closest to him was flung open and he found a gun in his face, Lysander couldn’t convince his legs to work. All those years of track team practice abandoned him as he stared down the barrel of the weapon. Into the face of the man behind it.
“Afternoon, Lysander.” Alfonzo cocked the gun. “Get in the car or I’ll shoot your little friend.”
Nothing had changed about Alfonzo since the last time Lysander had seen him. He still had a bird’s nest of brown hair, narrow grey eyes, and a slightly crooked nose that had likely been broken one too many times. If anything, he was perhaps slightly tanner now, as if he’d been in California a while.
Waiting? Lysander wondered.
From the moment he had learned of his mother’s death and his sister’s disappearance, Lysander had dreamed of hunting this son of a bitch down and making him hurt. It didn’t matter what the police said, what his father believed, what the whole world insisted. To him, Alfonzo was the cause of all his misery. And now here he was, not two feet away — but the man had a gun. It just wasn’t fair. When was the universe ever going to give him a break?
He wanted to tell Jack to run. He wanted to launch himself into hurting Alfonzo without having to worry about anybody else getting hurt, and it would only be a matter of time before somebody noticed the gun and started screaming. What did it matter if he ended up injured in the process? It would be worth it, just to watch the guy bleed. But a quick glance at the car showed another two men, both masked and ready to act. They were outnumbered.
