Fall from Grace (2 page)

AS SOON AS
he opened his locker, Sawyer knew someone had gone through it.

Things had been rearranged, not a lot but enough to notice—notebooks that he always kept on the floor were on the shelf, the paperbacks were lined up by size, his spare hoodie moved from the right hook to the left, the magnetic mirror moved halfway down the inside of the door.

The first person that came to mind was Zoë.

Two years ago, before they started enforcing the no-sharing-lockers rule, she had used his locker as a dumping ground for the things she didn't want to carry or as overflow storage when her locker was too trashed
to cram in any more. But that all changed after the knife incident at West High, and now the administration viewed using someone else's locker as a Homeland Security violation. Besides, his locker wasn't anywhere near Zoë's classes and she had enough trouble remembering her own combination, let alone his. And if for some reason she
had
gone through his locker, she would never have left it so neat.

There was always the chance that it had been security guards looking for drugs. They'd never checked lockers before, but that didn't mean they couldn't start. Not that they would have found anything—not that they'd even think of him as the type of kid to bring drugs to school—but as he tried to figure out who'd been in his locker, the security guards were an option.

Then he saw the paper bag in the back corner. It was the same size bag you'd get if you bought a liter of Mountain Dew, and even with the top of the bag scrunched closed, he knew there was a bottle inside. He also knew he hadn't put it there.

Sawyer knelt down and moved in closer. He made a show of moving some books around, flipping through binders for a paper he was wasn't looking for, and when
there was a lull in traffic, he reached into the top of the bag and felt the pointed teeth of a bottle cap.

Someone had left him a beer.

If Dillon had been in town and if they were still close, Sawyer would have assumed it was him. But since Dillon wasn't in town and they weren't close, Sawyer kept thinking. If he felt the tapered neck of a wine cooler or the smooth metal sides of a Bacardi O twist-off, he would have thought Zoë. But it was beer, and beer wasn't Zoë. It could have been a setup, the kind of prank assholes did to get somebody suspended, putting alcohol into someone's locker and tipping off the administration. He'd never heard of it happening at East, but he could be the first.

Crouched in tight, Sawyer inched the dark brown bottle from the bag.

Duvel Belgian golden ale.

Taped to the back of the bottle was a note:

Sawyer moved quick, putting the bottle back in the bag, laying the bag on its side, then stacking books around it to keep it hidden.

It would be hours before he'd have a chance to sneak it into his backpack and out of the school, and he knew he'd be sweating the entire time. He never did anything wrong, and it would be just his luck to get busted the very first time. What the hell was this girl Grace thinking? And how'd she get in his locker in the first place, or even known where his locker was? And what was she doing at East?

He moved the mirror back in place, and when he saw himself smiling he had to admit that, okay, okay, it
was
funny.

Stupid funny.

Just like at the MUN event.

She was right, he had been bored and he hadn't cared about the treaty and helping her steal it did make the day go by faster. It was stupid and immature and uncalled for and disrespectful and all that.

But it was fun.

His parents wouldn't think so, and Zoë would've gone ballistic if she knew he had spent the day conspiring with
a Westie girl no matter
how
they met, but his parents didn't have to know and maybe he didn't have to tell Zoë everything.

As he closed his locker and headed to English class—late for the first time all year—Sawyer wondered what else Grace did for fun.

TWO WEEKS LATER,
there she was again.

He was working the Sunday afternoon shift at Mike's Ice Cream, and if it were summer or if the sun had been out, it would have been busy, but nobody thinks
ice cream
when it's cold and wet and gray. Five, six customers since the shift started and there'd be maybe that many more before it was over. For the hundredth time he wiped down the spotless counter and tried to tune out the satellite radio permanently set to the '50s channel.

His father was in the same golf league as the owner, which is why Sawyer got the job and why he had to keep it. There were times, though, more now that the weather was crap and the four hours felt like four hundred, when
he wondered what it would be like to quit and find a job on his own, something he actually enjoyed doing or that was at least a challenge. Then he'd think about what his parents would say and that would be the end of that.

He had finished with the counter and had moved on to the metal sink by the register where they kept the ice cream scoops when the reindeer bells on the back of the door rang and she walked in. The combat boots, the bright purple jacket zippered up tight against the red scarf, the two white wires leading out from under the black knit cap, that was all different, but the way he was pulled in by her eyes was the same.

He rearranged the scoops in the sink, careful not to let her catch him looking. He knew she knew, but that's the game and how it's played. And she played her part. He watched her reflection in the cooler window as she stuffed the hat in her pocket and pushed her hair behind her ears. An earbud dropped free and she left it dangling as she walked to the counter. He looked up and gave her the do-I-know-this-girl head tilt, followed by a hey-it's-you-again smile, trying to act like he wasn't acting.

She smiled too, with him or at him, he wasn't sure.

“The ice cream man,” she said, leaning up against the counter. “Are all your flavors guaranteed to satisfy?”

“Except for the no-fat ones. Nobody likes those.” He dropped a stray spoon in the sink and wiped his hands on his Mike's Ice Cream apron. “What brings you way over here?”

She took a step back and put up her hands in mock surprise. “Sorry, sheriff. Didn't know us no-account Westsiders weren't welcome in these here east parts.”

“It's lousy out there,” Sawyer said, pointing his chin toward the gray windows. “Far to go just for ice cream.”

“I didn't come all this way for the ice cream,” she said, looking at him as she said it, pausing as she leaned back in. “I came for the library.”

“They've got one on the west side. By the Kmart.”

“This one's twice the size and it's got a better law section.” She looked past him to the board that listed forty-six flavors even though they didn't carry half that many. He watched those blue eyes dart along the rows of the names and watched her lips twitch as she read. He gave her time to work her way through them all, then said, “What do you want me to make you?”

“Famous. But for now just give me a small chocolate espresso ripple.”

He wrapped a white napkin around the cone, then flipped open the curved glass case and scooped up a large serving. Bent over the tubs of ice cream, he could hear the tinny bass of her dangling earbud as she pressed against the glass. He offered sprinkles, she said no, she tried to give him a five but he wouldn't take it, telling her he was allowed to give away one free cone a day and she was it, a lie that worked for the both of them.

She tasted the ice cream. She could have done some long, slow lick thing, her tongue curling around the base of the scoop and working up slowly,
real
slowly, to the tip, all the while peeking out from under half-closed, smoky lashes, like Zoë and her friends would do when they were messing with him, acting all slutty just to get a rise out of him. But she didn't. She licked the ice cream like normal and that was it.

“Rancid,” she said, running the back of her hand across her lips.

“Oh, sorry. Here, let me give you a new one.”

“Not the ice cream. The band. It's Rancid. I saw your hand going with the beat, figured you'd want to know.”

He didn't, but was impressed she had noticed one finger that barely moved.

“This is yummy. Thanks.”

“The law stuff at the library. Is it for school?”

She shook her head and took a bite out of her ice cream, taking her time before answering. “No, something for me. Looking for loopholes.”

“You could have looked it up online.”

“I could've, but then no ice cream.”

The pause, the clever comeback—she was done talking about it and he knew that, but he couldn't stop himself. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Another pause. “Maybe. I'll let you know.”

There was nothing left to talk about but he was in no hurry to see her go. Then he remembered his locker and said, “Oh yeah. Thanks for the beer.”

“Thanks for North Dakota.”

“How'd you know which locker was mine?”

She was focused on her ice cream and he thought she didn't hear the question, but then she said, “You'd be surprised what you can find online these days. And how simple it is to guess the password for your school's database. Seriously, the mascot's name? Please.”

He was impressed. “They have the combination on there too?”

“Didn't need it.”

“How'd you get in?”

“Family secret,” she said, and winked as she said it.

Across the shop the bells jingled as a pack of Cub Scouts burst in and raced to the counter, followed by a pair of mothers who repeated ignored warnings about not running and using inside voices and not touching anything, apologizing in advance for the trouble they knew they brought with them.

Somewhere between the double-scoop cookie dough cone and the raspberry sundae, he noticed that Grace was gone.

“I'LL GIVE YOU
the same advice my father gave me.”

Sawyer looked over to where his father was standing by the sink. It was close to ten at night and his father was brewing another cup of coffee. His parents loved the stuff, some genetic mutation that must have skipped a generation. Sawyer knew what advice was coming. It was the same advice he heard any time the topic came up, his father telling him that if he found a job he loved he'd never work a day in his life. It was a good line, better than the one about hard work being its own reward or how genius was 99 percent perspiration, but Sawyer had heard them all so many times he'd forgotten what they were trying to say.

“Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life.”

“That's
so
true,” his mother said, as if hearing it for the first time. She was sitting across from Sawyer at the kitchen table, reorganizing the color-coded folders where she kept the college brochures, financial-aid forms, letters of recommendation, and drafts of admission essays. “If you love what you're doing, it's not really work.”

“Your mother's right. You never hear me complaining about my job.”

Sawyer nodded along with his mother, thinking of all the times in the past month his father had gone on about his lazy coworkers or the ridiculous paperwork or the ungrateful clients or the rip-off suppliers or the clueless regional directors or the incompetent management team that was driving the company straight into the ground.

“Oh sure, it's not the most exciting job,” his father said, waiting as the last of the coffee dripped into the pot, “but what job is? I'm sure that if I had stayed in radio or gone into landscaping with your uncle Kenny, there would have been just as many headaches.”

Twenty-five years ago his father had been a late-night
disc jockey at a small radio station that played hard rock and something called New Wave. He only did it for two years, quitting to take an entry-level position in the company he was still with, but it was surprising how often he found a way to mention he had been the guy everybody knew as the Midnight Rambler. As for Uncle Kenny, he had sold his landscaping business when Sawyer was still in grade school. He lived in Hawaii now, on one of the small islands, with a house right on the beach and a boat that he took out fishing every day.

“Yeah, I'm lucky,” his father said. “I love my job.” He sighed a long, drawn-out sigh, topped off his coffee, and stared out the dark window to the empty backyard.

“That's why this project is perfect for you,” his mother said, tapping the Career Exploration assignment sheet. The year before, the school board had voted to make it a graduation requirement, so on top of sending out college applications, doing mandatory community service and keeping up their grades, every senior in the district was writing a 3,000-word report on the job of their dreams.

“We didn't have anything like this when we were in school,” his mother said, implying it was hundreds
and hundreds of years ago. “Back then you met with the guidance counselor once, maybe twice, and all they did was tell you to flip through a few career guides until you found something you thought you'd like. How realistic was that? I remember looking through one of those and seeing a job description for a fashion photographer and I thought, Hey, I like fashion and I like taking pictures and I have a camera—the point-and-shoot kind, not the kind you have to focus—that's what I should do. So for two months I went around taking candid pictures of my friends. I had that camera with me all the time, remember?”

“I remember,” his father said without turning from the window.

“I'd get the film developed. God, that was
so
expensive. Then I'd just give them away. Crazy. My friends thought it was great—they were getting free pictures, so of course they liked it—and they all said I had a good eye, but where was I going with that?”

Sawyer shrugged. “Is that when you decided to become a receptionist?”

“Director of Initial Customer Impressions. And no, that was after college. We were married by then and you were on the way. But I was lucky because it turned out that I had a knack for the job. You know how I like
to have things organized—”

“I know.” Sawyer said it at the same time and in the same flat way as his father.

“—and the job is really all about organization. It comes easy for me. Like your father said, it's not always fun, but it's not awful. Besides, I have to work, so there you go. And speaking of work…” She tapped the assignment sheet.

“Mom, I got over a month before this is due.”

As if on cue, his parents turned to look at each other, neither saying anything, keeping the obvious comments to themselves. Then his father turned back to the window and his mother turned back to him. “The first thing you have to do is pick a job,” she said, reading the project requirements. “That's five points right there. What have you got so far?”

Sawyer tipped open the cover of his spiral binder and glanced inside to the blank paper. “Uh. Nothing yet.”

“Nothing?”
Another parent-to-parent stare.

“I'm not sure what I want to do, and I don't want to just write anything.”

“Sawyer, you have forty days until this is due. That's not a lot of time.”

“I remember hearing you say you wanted to be an accountant,” his father said.

Sawyer thought about it. Math was not his subject. He was almost about average last year and hadn't made it above the curve since. It didn't come easy—if it came at all—and he couldn't see himself suddenly improving. And he couldn't remember ever saying anything about accounting. He shook his head. “I don't know, that doesn't sound like much fun.”

His father laughed. “It's a job, Sawyer. It's not supposed to be fun.”

“I wouldn't mind being a forensic investigator. That would be cool.”

“Like on
CSI
? Please, Sawyer, be realistic. Do you have any idea how few jobs there are in that field? You have to keep
that
in mind too.”

“Sometimes I build things. Out of wood and stuff. I made that shelf in the basement and I fixed my closet door. Maybe I should be a carpenter.”

“No, you'd hate it,” his father said. “I did it for a summer right out of high school. It was hard as hell, all day out in the sun. I hated it. No, not a carpenter.”

It was quiet for a minute, then his mother said, “Well, we can't spend all night just guessing. It's going to be due before you know it and you have plenty of
other things to worry about. We'll just put something down for now and you can start researching tomorrow and we can get this project done and out of the way. And if in the end it turns out it's not really the job you want to do, then you would have at least spent some time exploring it. Isn't that what this is all about, anyway?” His mother picked up a pen and flipped over the assignment sheet. Sawyer read along upside down as she wrote.

“Insurance actuary? I don't even know what that is.”

“I'll tell you what that is,” his father said, pointing with his coffee cup. “That's a smart call. Good money. And a lot of opportunity with health care the way it is.”

“What would I do?”

“Oh, it's
very
interesting,” his mother said. “There's a few in the office building where I work. They always seem happy. One of them even drives a Porsche.”

His father nodded. “The Boxster? Yeah, that's sweet. You've seen it, Sawyer?”

“No. Maybe. I'm not sure. Is an actuary like an insurance agent? Because I don't think I'd—”

“You couldn't miss it,” his father was saying. “Convertible. Red. Like that saltshaker.”

“That's not red,” his mother said. “That's more of a bright orange.”

“
Orange?
No, orange is that refrigerator magnet or that bit on that magazine cover. The shaker's definitely red.”

“I'm not so sure it's a convertible. Maybe it's a nine-eleven.”

Sawyer rubbed the back of his neck, a headache coming on. “Dad, do you know what an insurance actuary does?”

“More or less,” his father said, holding the saltshaker up against the magazine cover. “But I bet you'll be an expert by the time this project's done.”