Fall from Grace (13 page)

THE SCHOOL WAS
empty.

There were eight people in his economics class, thirteen in history, seven in Spanish, and an impressive twenty-one in English, but that included three juniors who got a pass from study hall to come in and watch the second half of
Shakespeare in Love
.

The last day before a five-day break.

Most of the missing were off on family getaways, beaching out and tanning up or hitting the slopes to nail a boneless McTwist or some other snowboard trick they would go on about for months. The rest of the students had either convinced their parents that nothing important would happen in school that day, which was the
truth, or that the administration decided to close school a day early, which was true enough.

By unspoken agreement, those left behind conspired to do as little as possible. Students went to class, teachers took attendance, and neither group did anything to upset the balance. On Monday the truce would be over and it would be back to normal, but nobody was thinking that far ahead.

It was an A day on the rotating schedule. It had been an A day on Monday, too, and it would be an A day again when they started back up after Thanksgiving, more evidence that they were simply marking time until the others returned.

Sawyer swung by his locker to drop off the
Norton Anthology of American Literature
he didn't need for English and pick up the calculator and notebook he wouldn't need for math. Walking around school with nothing in his hands would have only reminded him that there was no reason to be there. There wasn't, but carrying something made it easier to deal with. He was making the switch when Renée walked up.

“Surprised to see you here,” she said.

“Where else am I going to be?”

“I don't know, maybe at home, pining away for Zoë.”

“Pining away?”

“It was in the movie we watched in trig.”

“Have you heard from her?”

“Please. She texts every five minutes—having a margarita, lounging by the pool, talking to some hot college guys, going clubbing, doing shots,” she said, changing her voice to let him know she found the messages oh-so whatever.

Zoë had texted him, too; quick little “miss-you”s with frowny faces, updates about the heat and wind and a few about how her parents wouldn't let her out of their sight, blaming it all on somebody named Van der Sloot. And he had texted back with required “miss-you”s of his own, avoiding any lies. Well, big ones, anyway.

“She's going to be there the whole week. Do you know how tan she's going to be?”

“Go to a tanning booth.”

“It's not the same,” Renée said, and then without pausing, “I saw you on the road yesterday.”

She didn't have to say the rest. She had seen him driving around with a girl in the car that wasn't Zoë. Why else would she have brought it up? There was nothing
mean in the way she said it, she wasn't accusing him of anything, not threatening to tell Zoë or plotting with him to keep it a secret, she was just putting it out there, making a simple observation, like telling him that the sky was blue, no judging at all.

Right.

“It was that Grace girl, the Westie, wasn't it?”

He bumped his locker door with a bang and Renée smiled.

“I work with her grandfather. He asked me to give her a ride after school.”

“Don't worry, I won't tell Zoë,” she said, and Sawyer knew then that she already had.

 

Mr. Young was standing in the front of the class, remote in hand, ready to start
Good Will Hunting
, when Sawyer walked into the room. He knew he wasn't late, but the way Mr. Young was looking at him it was obvious something was up.

“Sawyer?” Mr. Young picked a paper off his desk, skimmed it, and looked back. “What are you doing here?”

“It's an A day, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is, but didn't the guidance office tell you?” He brought the paper over and handed it to Sawyer. “You're not in this class anymore.”

Sawyer knew the rest. But he listened anyway, eyes on the paper, not reading.

“Ms. Coville sent me that email this morning. I would've thought you'd know all about it.”

“Yeah. I do. I guess I just forgot.”

Mr. Young sighed and shrugged, both more than the moment required. “She explained how you want to focus on your
other
classes. But you know, Sawyer, you were really turning things around in
this
class. Look at that last test. You aced it.” He took the paper back, folding it in half and stuffing it in his shirt pocket. “But I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.”

Sawyer said nothing, and when Mr. Young told him he was supposed to go to the guidance office so they could put him in a study hall, he nodded, headed down the hall, and out the side door to the parking lot.

“GO AHEAD,” GRACE
said, “slide it in.”

Sawyer hesitated. “It's going to be tight.”

“Just shove it in, it'll fit. Trust me, I've done this plenty of times.”

He took a deep breath, shifted his position, and pushed.

“That's it,” she said. “A little to the left. Down. That's it.”

Sawyer tightened his grip, then pulled on the wire coat hanger. The crash bar clicked down and the narrow space between the doors widened as Grace pulled on the outside handle.

“Ta-da,” she said, applauding. “With a little practice you could turn pro.”

Sawyer stood up, the hook end of the straightened
hanger slipping off the crash bar. “They teach you this at West?”

“Had to teach myself. Lost my keys one too many times. But it comes in handy.”

“I can bet.”

“The one at the library was even easier than this.” She let the door swing closed, locking them outside. She ran her finger down the gap between the two glass doors. “It was twice as wide as this. I could get my pinky in there. They really need to renovate that place.”

“Leave a note when you bring the painting back.”

“Please. They haven't even noticed it yet. I mean, come on, folks, help a girl out here.”

Sawyer wiggled the hook of the coat hanger back between the doors. “The museum is going to have newer doors. What if there's no gap?”

“There's
always
a gap, you just have to make it bigger.”

“Dynamite?”

“Sneaker.” She grabbed hold of the left handle, then swung a leg up, bracing her foot against the handle on the right side door. She leaned back and pushed out with her leg. The gap widened. She took the hanger from him and worked it into position, popping the door open. It took less than five seconds. “At one with
the force am I, young Skywalker.”

“It's kinda risky,” he said. “You might not weigh enough to get the museum doors apart.”

“I'll take that as a compliment. And you're not an actuary yet so no lectures on risk.”

“Change of plans,” he said, enjoying the thought. “I'm not cut out for the wild life of an insurance actuary.”

“Party
animals
. That's the word on the street. Stick with something simple.”

“Like art theft?”

“I was going to say underwater welding. Besides, the way you work that coat hanger, you'd starve.”

“Yeah, you wish.”

“No, I wish you were faster, that's what I wish. If you were any slower you'd be
part
of the door.”

“Thirty seconds. That's all it'll take.”

“I'm sorry, did you say thirty
minutes
? That's more your speed.”

“Thirty seconds,” Sawyer said, snatching the hanger, smiling his best shark grin.

Grace took out her phone and thumbed the stopwatch app. “Okay, Houdini, thirty seconds.”

“Hold on. What's the bet?”

She held up her phone, showing all zeros on the counter. “Loser picks the next movie.”

“That's not fair. You
like
picking out movies.”

“True,” she said. “But I don't like losing.”

TUESDAY NIGHT WAS
a blur, a marathon of online games and text messages that ended when he heard his parents getting ready for work Wednesday morning.

He headed to the gym for the first time in months. The place was filled with retirees doing ten-pound curls and stay-at-home moms sweating up the leg machines. It wasn't a good workout, but it helped him burn off some of the frustration he hadn't noticed he felt.

Back at home, shaved, showered, and dressed, Sawyer poured a bowl of cereal and scrolled through the texts from the night before.

The first dozen had come one right after the other, all of them focused on the facts—
who was she, where were you going, what did she say, what did you do, how long
were you there
. Spread out over the next hour were accusations disguised as questions—
what did I tell you about her, how come you keep running into her, why would you talk to her, doesn't she know you have a girlfriend
. After midnight, they started to change. The spelling and grammar got sloppy, even for Zoë, and he could read the slur in her voice that told him she was at a club—
how cld u do this too me, I dont need u, shes a BITCH, ur an asshole
. He'd gotten a text at one thirty—
DONOT TALK TO THAT BITCH AGAIN!!!
—and another around two—
I HATE U
—then the phone went quiet. It had been close to five in morning, when he was about to crack the prestige level on
Black Ops
, when the texts started back up—
I get mad cuz ur not with me, guys here are such LOSERS, I want to walk on the beach with you, I don't like rum, wish you were here, miss you, don't talk to her again
.

Zoë hadn't broken up with him, but he knew now that it was only a matter of time before it was over.

And when that time came, he knew that he'd be the one to end it.

There were no new texts. If she was sleeping it off, then he wouldn't hear from her again till late afternoon at the earliest. That gave him hours.

He went online, found what he was looking for, and
downloaded it, then sent a text of his own. Less than a minute later he had a response.

It made him smile.

 

“What did you think?”

“Are you
kidding
? It was great. I can't believe I never saw it before.”

He shook his head and laughed. “What do they teach you over at West?”

It had taken him only fifty-six seconds to get the wire hanger in the gap, the hook around the crash bar, and the door at her aunt's apartment building open. And that, Grace was quick to point out, was twenty-six seconds too long. So he lost the bet and had to get the movie—and before he hit the Play button on his laptop, before he had even picked her up at the Dunkin' Donuts, he knew she'd love it.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

It was a Western and it was in color, two things she didn't expect, but it starred the main actors from
The Sting
and it had the same smartass/cool guy/way-too-smooth sense of humor. A couple of buddies on the wrong side of the law, with gunfights, explosions, and a big finish. He'd heard about it years ago, his father saying it was
his favorite movie of all time, but other than short clips between long commercial breaks on AMC, Sawyer had never seen it. His father was right, it was a good movie. Not the best ever but on the list, sure. And Sawyer was glad he had seen it with Grace.

“I like how they got away at the end,” she said, sipping her warm diet cream soda.

Sawyer turned to look at her. “
Got away?
Did I miss something?”

“When they came running out shooting,” she said, her free hand flying, an imaginary pistol picking off targets around the room.

“They were surrounded.”

She nodded, still shooting. “Yeah, but they could get away. There weren't
that
many people shooting at them.”

“It was the entire Bolivian Army.”

“Maybe,” Grace said, squinting, taking one last shot. “But they didn't show them getting killed, did they?”

“It was a freeze-frame that faded to black,” Sawyer said, using the terms he had learned from her. “I think it's pretty obvious what happened next.”

“It's open to interpretation. And I interpret it to mean that they got away.”

“I don't think that's what the director had in mind.”

She took another sip of her soda, set the can down on the floor, then punched him in the arm. “
That's
why you wanted me to see it. So I could see what happens to the wicked who are lured into a life of crime.”

“No,” he said, forcing himself not to rub his arm. “It's just a movie I like.”

“Which coincidently happens to be about two robbers who get killed.”

“By the Bolivian Army. If you were planning something in Lima I could see the connection.”

“It's a metaphor.”

“It's a movie.”

“You're trying to scare me straight.”

“I like you twisted.”

“Lima's in Peru.”

He slumped back against the couch, wondering why he couldn't stop smiling. She leaned forward to read the time in the corner of the laptop screen. “It's three twenty. What time will your parents get home?”

“Not till after five. And so what if they do?”

“Alone in the house with a girl that's not your girlfriend? A girl they never met? A Westie? How you think
that's
going to look?”

“What do I care? If I want to have a friend over to watch a movie, that's my business.”

“Ya think?”

He thought, then sighed. “No, probably not.”

“Ah, yes. The old ‘as long as you live under my roof' story. I know it well. But that's all right, you've got it good here.”

He gave her a look, one eyebrow rising on its own.

“Oh, please,” she said. “Beautiful house, sweet car, decent parents—”

“Who want to run my life.”

“That's
every
parent.” She waved it off as meaningless. “So they're a little overprotective. They'll grow out of it. Maybe. Besides, you'll be in college next year. They gotta let go by then. I think it's a law.”

He clicked his laptop shut. “I told them that I'm not going to Wembly.”

“How'd it go over?”

He shrugged.

She smiled at that. “You're taking quite a risk, bucko.”

“I've stolen an international treaty, I've used spy glasses to cheat on a test, and I've driven the getaway car for an art thief,” he said, counting them off on his
fingers. “I guess I'm ready for it.”

“What's your hottie girlfriend think about this new plan of yours?”

Sawyer shook his head, laughing to himself, wondering if everybody thought he was that whipped, and knowing they probably did. “She'll be pissed, but she'll get over it. Or not. Whatever.”

“Uh-oh, sounds like trouble in paradise. You worried she's banging some cabana boy at the beach club?”

“It's not what you're thinking.”

“Trust me,” Grace said, and smiled over the top of her cream soda can. “You've got no idea what I'm thinking.”