The next day at school was very awkward to begin with for Joe. He arrived at morning recess with a note from Biff to say that he had been absent for personal reasons. Students who had been in his class when the car exploded regarded him cautiously. AJ didn’t quite know what to do or say around him. Joe realized this might make information gathering really difficult, so he attempted to nip it all in the bud. Before the bell for the first period after recess, he drew AJ aside.

‘Listen man. Sorry about the dramatics yesterday. I went through a bad time last year and it sort of brought all the memories back.’

AJ took a deep drag of his cigarette and regarded Joe sympathetically.

‘Must have been a pretty bad time’, he commented.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Joe, ‘but I don’t wanna talk any more about it okay? It’s like what happened to my parents. I just wanna get on with things.’

‘Won’t get no argument about that from me,’ agreed AJ. ‘Life can serve up some pretty bad stuff sometimes, and you can spend too much time thinkin’ about it, wondering whether it’s your fault or not. I don’t reckon bad stuff is anyone’s fault. It just happens and then you should move on.’ He held out his hand for Joe to shake.

‘Subject closed. Let’s get on with life and the living,’ AJ stated with a grim smile. Joe met AJ’s eyes as he shook his hand. It occurred to Joe that AJ had made more sense than any counselor who had attempted to help him over the previous year!

‘Now what’s the deal about the explosion?’ asked Joe, looking around to gauge whether their conversation could be overheard. AJ dropped the remains of his cigarette and extinguished it with his heel.

‘Well, the weirdest stuff went down this morning. The cops have started to interview everyone one by one. A lot of the guys I hang around with got spoken to first. You know. We make a bit of trouble so they just assume we’re totally bad news! Anyway, after he comes back from being interviewed, Ben gets hauled out of class by Darcy personally! He was gone for like half an hour and then comes back, shaking like a leaf! He reckons Darcy went sick at him and wanted to know which idiots had ruined everything by blowing up a teacher! Ben said he was acting like a crazy man. And then, while Ben was still in his office, David bursts in to Darcy’s office without knocking and Darcy screams at him for being seen speaking to him! It totally freaked Ben out.’

Joe rubbed his chin thoughtfully. It made sense that a DP sent to clean up the crime in the school would freak out if such a serious crime occurred, but why target Ben, and why go psycho at David, a perfect student in every respect, for coming to see him?’

‘Unless David is a little too perfect!" said Joe out aloud.

‘What?’ asked AJ, perplexed.

Joe took a gamble.

‘What do you know about David?’ he asked AJ quietly.

‘Nerd,’ stated AJ. ‘Never used to be. But he’s become the biggest crawler to the teachers over the last half year.’

Very interesting, thought Joe Hardy. Very interesting indeed.