Fall from Grace (7 page)

“KNOCK, KNOCK,” SAWYER'S
father said, rapping a knuckle on the door as he pushed it open. If it had been closed all the way his father would've waited until Sawyer said come in. He'd been a teenager once so he knew better. But the rule was if the door was open a crack, it might as well have been open all the way, so knocking and coming in at the same time was cool.

Sawyer was at his desk, computer screen dark, phone off, textbook open, calculator fired up, and eyes glazed over. It wasn't sticking, but not from a lack of effort. He looked up from his all-wrong equations.

“Don't forget, set your alarm early. St. Mary's starts serving at five.”

Sawyer slumped down against the back of the chair,
turned his head up to the ceiling and closed his eyes. He
had
forgotten. He sighed and mumbled something that he didn't want to say out loud.

“You made a commitment, Sawyer. You know how I feel about that.”

No, he didn't. When it came to commitments, his father was all over the place, honoring some—like the one to his golf league—as if his life depended on it, ignoring others—like his promise to help with the landscaping at the church—as if someone else had said it. But when it came to commitments his father made for him—like working the soup kitchen at St. Mary's two days a week and every holiday—Sawyer knew exactly how his father felt. And Sawyer knew what he wanted to say about that commitment and the coming four twenty wake-up. Instead he said, “Who would want soup at five in the morning?”

“Very funny. You know it's not soup. But even if it was, these people don't have jobs, some don't have
anything
. Don't they at least deserve a good, hot breakfast?”

Yeah, of course they did. Stupid question. But if they didn't have jobs, couldn't they eat a little later? It wasn't like they were going to be late for work. Sawyer went
over to his bed, resetting the alarm since he knew his father would stand there till he did.

“You're not working on precalculus, are you?”

“There's a big test Thursday.” He double-checked the alarm. Four-frickin'-twenty a.m. Damn.

His father gave a you-don't-get-it headshake combined with a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-this-kid eye roll. “You're already accepted. You don't have to worry about this class.”

“I know, it's just that some of the other schools I'm looking at require an extra year of math and—”

“Sawyer, why are you wasting your time looking at other schools? You're in at Wembly, I told you that.”

“They were on my list and I wanted to see if I could get accepted. Some of them offer decent scholarships.”

The long sigh. “I'm sure you'd get in, son. You're a bright guy and you've got a lot on your transcript. But there's no sense spending time filling out applications for schools you're not going to go to even if they
do
accept you. And what are you going to get for a scholarship? Two grand a year? That won't cover anything. And there's application fees, too. What, like, fifty bucks a pop?”

“Something like that.”

“That's a lot of money to be expecting us to pay just so you can see if you would have made it in.”

“I was going to pay for them myself,” Sawyer said, though he had expected his parents to pay.

“At minimum wage? You'd use your whole paycheck applying to two schools.”

His father was wrong. He didn't make that much, not this time of the year, anyway.

“You've already been accepted to Wembly. Focus on your other classes, finish strong there. And talk to your counselors about dropping precalc. If they give you any grief let me know. One call and I'll get it taken care of.”

Sawyer sat back down at his desk. The papers in front of him were covered with numbers and symbols and equations he only half understood, the answers on his homework assignment guesses at best. His schedule would be easy without it, and he wouldn't have that daily headache that came every time Mr. Young started talking.

If he went to Wembly, he wouldn't have to worry about precalc.

And since he'd be staying here in town, he could keep his job at Mike's Ice Cream.

And since he'd be living at home, in the same room
he'd been in since he was five, he wouldn't have to deal with wild all-night dorm parties he'd heard so much about.

And since Zoë was going to Wembly too, they wouldn't have to break up, he wouldn't have to deal with that whole dating hassle or worry about meeting girls or finding a new girlfriend or several girlfriends, girls from other towns, other states, maybe even other countries, girls to hang out with, watch movies with, fool around and stuff with. Yes sir, with Zoë right there with him—reminding him what to do and what not to do, keeping an eye on him all the time, letting everybody know that they were dating,
dating since tenth grade
—he wouldn't have to worry about any of that. He wouldn't have—

“Earth to Sawyer,” his father said, laughing as he said it. “I sure hope you don't space out like that when you're driving.”

“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about what you said.”

“Nothing to think about. Just let me know if you need me to call. Now get some sleep. Five o'clock comes early, and you gave your word.”

GOD, HE HATED
these stupid quizzes.

The questions were ridiculous, the answers made no sense, and you couldn't fail if you wanted to. Yet somehow he kept picking the wrong answer.

“Question six. Which best describes your relationship: (a) a glass of water, (b) a book, (c) an umbrella, or (d) ice cream?”

See?

“Do I get a hint?”

Zoë thought it over as she flipped to the back of the
Cosmo
to peek at the answers. “Okay. What do you think of when you think of water?”

“Wet?”

“No. What color is it?”

“There is no color.”

“So what color is that?”

“I don't know what—”

“‘Choosing water means that you value the
transparency
of your relationship,'” she read. “‘You and your lover hide nothing from each other and, like the elemental simplicity of water, you need add nothing to it to make it complete. It is pure and timeless in nature and like the natural world it requires' blah, blah, blah…anyway, it goes on like that. Too Mother Earthy for me. You didn't pick that one, did you?”

He said no, of course not, wondering if it was accurate to call them lovers.

“Now the next one, a book, that's easy.” She flicked her wrist and the magazine flipped back to where her thumb marked the answers. “Yeah, like I figured. ‘As the pages tell the story, so do your actions move the plot of your relationship along…' They use that answer in every quiz. Which one do you think we're like?”

He considered the remaining choices. “An umbrella?”

“An umbrella?
Seriously,
Sawyer? An
umbrella
?”

It was wrong—obviously—but he felt he had to defend his choice. “It keeps you protected when things are bad…”

Zoë shook her head, amazed at his ignorance. “‘An
umbrella relationship is disposable and one-sided, based on fulfilling short-term, self-centered needs.'” She looked over at him, her eyes narrowing. “You don't think I'm self-centered, do you?”

“Yeah, right,” he said, playing it off the way he always played it off whenever she said stuff like that. You don't go out with somebody for two years without learning a few things. “That's why I was going to say that we're like ice cream.”

“I
knew
you'd say that,” she said, giddy-happy, snuggling in closer, as close as she would on the couch with her parents ten quick steps away. “That's what
I
picked too.” She flipped and read. “‘Ice-cream couples are wild and spontaneous, dishing out the fun when they are with friends but happiest when they get to melt alone together.' Aww. That's
so
us.”

That wasn't what Sawyer thought. What came to him were words like
cold
and
headaches
and
sticky
, and how ice cream made him think of work, of the boring hours that dragged by and how sometimes he thought he'd be stuck behind that counter for the rest of his life and how that made him want to quit right there but knew he couldn't because that would disappoint his parents.
That's what he thought of when he thought of ice cream.

What he said was, “Yeah, it
is
us.”

Then Zoë said how she didn't want ice cream but could really go for a Popsicle now, and for a second Sawyer thought she was hinting at something else he had seen in the magazine, something really wild, but no, she wanted a Popsicle, so the ice-cream couple headed upstairs to the fridge and spent a spontaneous dinner hour watching TV with her parents.

IT WAS THE
Xbox that got him thinking.

Everything was going like it always went—jumping in on a mission, moving through the warehouse or the factory or the palace, popping the enemy, supporting his teammates, getting killed, reviving, pushing on to the next level. Then there it was, this tiny speck of an idea, a ridiculous, sleep-deprived half thought that should have faded to nothing, that wouldn't stop growing, that wouldn't be ignored, and the more he tried to ignore it the more it pushed its way in, taking over, until it was all he could think about.

Life was a game.

He was Player One.

But someone else was working the controls.

Of course it was stupid. It was the kind of idea that made perfect sense when you were stoned or that came to you in the dark at three in the morning, like atoms being planets or Nostradamus being God, the kind of idea that evaporated in sunlight, that you wouldn't admit you had, not even to yourself. But when he was killed for the fifth time and finally logged out, there it was, stuck in the back of his mind, somewhere between precalc and college.

 

Sawyer didn't see her when he pulled into the parking lot of the 7-Eleven.

She said she'd be waiting out front, but it was a cold and dark mid-November night, and he knew she wouldn't be standing around outside. He was about to turn off his car when he spotted her coming out carrying two large Slurpees. He leaned over and unlocked the door, and she slid in, handing him one of the massive cups.

“Hope you like purple,” Grace said, and balanced the second cup between her knees as she buckled her seatbelt.

“After green, blue, brown, and red it's my favorite.”

“Thought so,” she said, then looked over at him with an embarrassed smile. “Thanks for this.”

“No problem,” he said. “I was doing nothing anyway.”

It was almost true. He had been working on precalculus—
again
—when she called, so it was like doing nothing since that's about what he got out of it. He didn't recognize the phone number and was going to ignore it, but on the sixth ring something clicked and he remembered.

She said hello, was he busy, could he do her a favor, could he give her a lift home, was he sure it wasn't too late.

It was ten forty on a school night and that meant he'd have to make up a decent story—
That new guy from school, the one with the neck brace? He got a flat in his church parking lot and he asked if I could help him out
—but he'd be there.

“I suppose you're wondering what a nice girl like me is doing in a parking lot in this part of town.”

“Didn't cross my mind,” he said, wondering what she was doing in a parking lot in this part of town. “Where to?”

“My house. You know the west side, where the Kmart is? Head that way.” She took a long, brain-freezing sip of her drink, then said, “This is why I hate going out.”

“Going out where?”

“It's not the where that's the problem. It's the who.”

“You were on a
date
?”

“Try not to sound so surprised. Yes, I was on a
date
, as you call it. Probably the last one ever.”

“For you or him?”

“Me, naturally. He'll get plenty. Until he starts getting all grabby. But then most girls probably like that stuff so, yeah, he'll still get plenty of dates.”

Sawyer glanced over. “He didn't try anything, to like, you know—”

“Of course he did, Sherlock, but his mom taught him that no means no so he stopped. Too bad she didn't teach him that no also means drive the girl home.”

Sawyer nodded. Guys like that gave every guy a bad name. But he
did
stop so maybe he wasn't a total jerk. “First time you went out with him?”

She laughed, and just like that, the tension in the air was broken, gone. “I don't get a lot of second dates. I
want
them, but I don't get them. It seems I'm
difficult
to get along with.”

“Because you won't…” He let it trail off, not sure what it was she wouldn't do.

“That's part of it, yeah. But mostly guys say that I'm
hard to talk to. Go left here, it's quicker,” she said, pointing.

Sawyer flicked on his directional.

Hard to talk to?

She had to be kidding.

She was the
easiest
person to talk to.

Sawyer turned left. He knew the main roads on the west side but that was it. He assumed she knew where she was taking him. They drove a mile in silence, then Sawyer said, “When I was in middle school, I couldn't talk to girls. I mean, yeah, I could
talk
, but I couldn't sit there and have a conversation, you know what I mean? I wouldn't know what to say, I'd mumble something, then I'd start to sweat—it really sucked.”

Where in the hell did that come from?
he thought.

“That's every guy in middle school,” she said. “If they say it wasn't them, they're liars. But then most guys are liars, so there you go.”

“Nice. I give you a ride and you call me a liar.”

“
Most
guys, Sherlock,
most
guys. You're not most guys. If you were, I wouldn't have called you.”

“You could have called one of your friends.”

“I thought I did.”

“You know what I mean. A girl friend.”

“Like my BFF or something? Yeah, don't have many of those, either.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I'm not. They'd only want something from me when I'm famous.”

“Or rich.”

“Right. Rich and famous. You wait, then they'll be sorry.”

What was it that Sandra's friend at West said about Grace? That she was a loser with no friends? Somebody even the geeks ignored? That was one way of looking at it.

“So, what were you doing when I called? You weren't with your girlfriend, were you? Hate to mess that up.”

“No, I was studying for a test. Precalc.” He shook his head. “I don't know why I bother.”

“Yes, you do. You need it to get into college. Oh, don't look surprised, it's obvious. Why
else
would anybody take it? It's part of a big government plan to keep math teachers employed. You don't want them rioting in the streets, do you?”

“Maybe. Will the police need to use clubs and tear gas on them?”

“Ooh, I like the way you think. Veer to the right at
the light,” she said, motioning with her straw. “I thought it was all decided that you were going to Wembly?”

“That's the plan for now.”

“Sounds like you have other ideas.”

Sawyer sipped his drink. “I
had
other ideas, but they all involved me passing precalc, and that means passing the test, and that ain't happening, so…”

“Turn right at the stop sign. When's the test?”

“Thursday.”

“I'm down with all things calculi. Come over to my aunt's place tomorrow around three. I'll have you ready in an hour.”

He laughed. “An hour? What good is that?”

“Trust me. Besides, I owe you for the ride.”

“You don't owe me anything.”

“I know, but it's the kind of thing you're supposed to say. This is the street.”

He'd never been in this neighborhood before, but it was what everybody thought of when they said “west side.” Tiny dirt lawns with tiny dirty houses, boxes with two windows to a side and door in the front. Baby-Boomer tracks—that's what his history teacher had called them—built after World War II or Vietnam or some other war for all the veterans coming home,
eager to get married and start pumping out kids. It would have been crowded with two people, yet every house seemed to have four cars in a driveway meant for one.

He wanted to ask, but then he didn't want to know.

“Pull up anywhere.”

“Which one's your house?”

“None of these. I'll cut through a few yards and go in through the back porch.”

“You sure? I don't mind—”

“I start coming in the front door after all these years, it'll just feel strange.”

Sawyer eased over to the curb and put the car in park.

“Sorry your date turned out so shitty.”

“Eh. No big deal. Besides, it ended up okay.”

Great.
Now
what? He didn't want to kiss her and he knew she didn't want to be kissed. It wasn't like that. It
should've
been, she was cute and he was a guy and they were alone in a dark car in a dark neighborhood, but it wasn't like that. He was glad it was that way, but he wasn't in a rush to see her go.

“Later.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to open the door.

“Wait a second. Can I ask you a question?”

“This isn't going to get weird, is it? Because I already had enough weird for one night.”

“Say you were dating somebody—”

“It's a stretch, but go on.”

“Would you want your relationship to be—”

“Now it's a
relationship
? Boy, that moved along fast.”

He sighed a fake sigh. “Can I just ask the damn question?”

“Sorry. Go on. Would I want my relationship to be…?”

“To be more like an umbrella or more like ice cream?”

She blinked.
“What?”

“More like an umbrella or more like ice cream. Which one?”

“Is this one of those bad SAT questions?”

“It's from some magazine.
Cosmopolitan
.”

“
Cosmo
, huh?”

“It's Zoë's. She likes to—”

“Spare me the details. What are my choices again?”

“An umbrella or ice cream.”

“That's easy. An umbrella. Can I go now?” She opened the door and the light went on.

“Hold on. Why an umbrella?”

She got out and held the door open, leaning into the light.

“If you've got two people and one umbrella, you have to stick close together if you want it to work.”

The door swung closed, the light went out, and before his eyes adjusted, she was gone.