GRAYSON

I LAY ON MY BED, STARING AT THE ACNE‑VULGARIS ceiling and attempting to send telepathic messages to Wren, since I was banned from all technical/electronic devices. This was a new one for Pop. Even when I was expelled, he’d let me keep my cell phone. I felt like I was under house arrest.

Not that I would have called Luke or Andy, but I kept wondering what sort of story they’d told about last night. Did Detective Preisano go back to Luke with my term‑paper explanation? Did Luke deny it? When all was said and done, I felt like I’d put a pretty positive spin on it. And if Luke and Andy were smart, they’d just go along for the ride.

But Luke was vindictive and smart.

And Andy . . . well, just, shit.

My stomach lurched with a weird twinge of hunger or anxiety; I couldn’t tell the difference. I hadn’t eaten a thing since lunch the day before. Had it only been the day before? A school day? Friday. Christ, it felt like I’d lived a week in one night. I folded my head into a pillow burrito, rolled to my side, and groaned. When I let go to breathe, Pop was standing in the doorway. I sat upright. He looked like he wanted to smile, but it passed. He had two mugs, and he handed me one. Black coffee. I leaned against my headboard. Pop sat in my desk chair, placing his mug in the space my laptop usually occupied before he had confiscated it.

“Last night was not my proudest moment,” he said.

“Not mine either, Pop,” I said, sitting up and putting the mug on my side table. “I’m sorry.”

“I just thought we were past all this, Grayson. You seemed to be gettin’ on again, things looking up in school and with Wren. What happened? Why would you even think about writing those term papers? That’s all this is about–you were telling the truth last night, right?”

More or less, or less .

“Yes, Pop. It was dumb. I’m done with the term‑paper thing.”

“Good.”

“Does Mom know?” I asked.

“A week and a half before Christmas, ya think I’m gonna saddle her with this shit? Nah, it can wait,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “You know, maybe we don’t need to tell her at all. As long as we’re handling it.”

Pop deciding not to tell my mother something? That was new. “I say we let this one slide.”

We sat for a few minutes in thick, thoughtful silence. Pop leaned on his elbow against my desk.

“Have I let too many things slide?” he asked.

“What?”

“You think any of this would have happened if you went to live with her?”

“Pop, what are you getting at?”

“Grayson, I’ll admit I was happy you chose to live with me. I’m not sure if it had to do with feeling like I’d won something over your mother or the fact that I’d have you with me. Both, I guess. I never doubted I could take care of you, or us, but sometimes I wonder if you might have been better off in Connecticut.”

“Don’t say that. I could have gotten into trouble anywhere. Could have been worse.”

“Could have been better.”

“It is what it is,” I answered. “I didn’t start my term‑paper business because of something you or Mom did or didn’t do. And last night . . . that was just . . . me, Luke and Andy being idiots. All of this is my fault. Me.”

“You will pay for that window. You. Luke. Andy,” he said, lifting his coffee mug at me for emphasis. “You have to do the right thing.”

“Of course.”

Tiff knocked on the doorjamb. “Luke’s at the door.”

“What part of grounded are you not getting?” he asked me.

“I didn’t call him.”

“I invited him in, but he said he can’t stay. Blake, I think you should let the boys talk.”

My father stopped midsip. “So that’s it, we’re playing good cop, bad cop now.”

Tiffany clucked her tongue. “I’ll tell Luke you’ll be down in a minute, Grayson.”

Pop sighed and took a slug of coffee.

“When you’re done with Luke, take a shower. You look like a greaseball,” he said, standing up and tousling my hair. “And leave that screw out of your eyebrow; you look better without it.”

“Sure, Pop.”

I waited until he left the room to get up. What could Luke possibly want? As I pulled a fresh T‑shirt over my head, I thought of at least one thing: the necklace. I grabbed it out of my desk drawer, where it had been since the day Wren gave it back to me. Whether he really wanted it or not, Luke was getting the last lingering trace of a past I wanted to forget. I tossed my jacket on and went outside.

Luke was on the porch, hands in his pockets, waiting. When he turned around, I saw the damage I’d inflicted. It looked like he’d smeared a deep‑purple shade of eye black from the corner of his right eye to the outside of his cheek. I thought for sure that when I saw him again I’d want to finish what we’d started, but I felt strangely calm. His face split into a grin. And for some reason we cracked up, laughing for a long minute.

“I did that?” I asked, inspecting his injuries. He had another bruise on his cheek and a cut on his bottom lip.

“I got three inches and twenty pounds on my old man. Think he’s going to mess with me these days?”

I crossed my arms and leaned against the porch railing. “You’re not in trouble?”

“With him? Nah, I think he got off on going to the police station. Gives him something to complain about on his next corporate golf outing. Term papers? Nice spin, Barrett.”

“I thought so. You went along with it, then?”

He hunched his shoulders, squinted up at the sun. “I didn’t want to . . . I was going to take us down, you know . . . big, fiery exit and all that, then I thought, what’s the point? I got in, Barrett. Princeton. Early action. Got my letter yesterday.”

Luke had set his sights on Princeton freshman year. It was a huge achievement. I should’ve been happy for him, but it stung. After all the crap he’d pulled, he still got what he’d wanted the most. Where was his karmic payback?

“Congrats. That’s . . . that’s awesome news, Luke,” I said. I knew I should have shaken his hand, or clapped his shoulder, or given him some gesture of bro‑love, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe this had been his sole purpose for coming here–to gloat.

“Why would I screw around with that, right?”

“Right.”

Luke gripped the railing with both hands and watched a few cars pass down the street before speaking again. “You want to hear the most messed‑up thing? Since you got kicked out of Saint Gabe’s, everything is easy. No one challenges me. Nothing drove me like competing with you.”

“Dude, c’mon, I was ranked tenth; you were always above me. No competition there.”

He laughed. “Don’t you get it? You’re my friggin’ barometer, Barrett. Not even getting into Princeton feels as good as I thought it would without you to measure it by.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I understood what Luke meant. I’d felt the same way about being in Bergen Point. The classes were fine, maybe not as specialized as what I’d been used to at Saint Gabe’s, but interesting enough. The fact that I didn’t have any close friends to challenge me in class or on the lacrosse field was what made it dull.

“Here,” I said, pulling out the necklace and offering it to Luke, “consider this your congratulations present.”

“You shouldn’t have, Barrett,” he said, taking it from me.

“What do you think you’ll get for it?”

He shrugged, studying the necklace in his open palm, as if he actually did think of it as a present. “I think I only paid, like, eighty bucks for it. It’s gold‑plated silver.”

My mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about? You gave that to me for Spiro to fence.”

He closed his fist around the necklace, wound up, and threw it toward my neighbor’s house, where it disappeared into the thick evergreen shrubs surrounding the front yard.

“Dude?”

Luke shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the railing. “I wasn’t lying when I said it was my property,” he said. “I bought it last year for Ava as a birthday present. I don’t know why . . . maybe hoping it would . . . make her . . . whatever. After that night I caught her–with you–things were never really the same. That’s why I gave it to you for Spiro. You’ve got some set giving it to Wren.”

I grimaced. “Yep, I’m living with that one every day. You know I was blitzed out of my mind that night with Ava. I never led her on. I wouldn’t have done that, you know.”

“I think that made you more of a challenge for her. Sick, right? Chick’s got some issues. Maybe that’s why I liked her so much,” he said. “But I’m done with that. Riding out senior year, clean, unattached, and getting outta here, for good.”

“So I know you didn’t come here to shoot the shit about Ava. What’s up?”

He pulled a white envelope from his pocket. “Here, for the window.”

It was filled with twenties, probably close to five hundred bucks. There was only one place this money could have come from.

“What about Amsterdam?”

“Amsterdam is over,” he said, shaking his head, laughing. “Think I want to go to a foreign country with Andy after last night? He probably pissed himself in the holding cell.”

Impossible as it seemed, I laughed. “Oh, I’d bet on that.”

“Could you picture him overseas, without his parents to bail him out? Christ. Just you know . . . pass it on for the damages. Tell the Caswells it’s all from you if you want. I don’t care.”

“What’s the catch, Luke? Are the bills marked? Am I gonna give this to Mr. Caswell, then get caught for something?”

“No, dude. No catch, just . . . time to man up a little. Have you talked to Wren?”

Luke’s voice softened when he said Wren’s name. I shook my head, ignoring the sudden jab of irrational jealousy I felt. “Not sure when I’ll be able to do that.”

“Well, that might help,” he said, nodding toward the envelope.

“Anything happen with her last night that I should know about? You know, on the ride over?”

“Nah,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets again. “I knew what she was trying to do. I didn’t screw with her . . . well, not too much. She’s pretty cool, Grayson. Genuine. Too nice for my taste but, like I said, the kind of girl to get serious about. And you should. Get serious.”

“Yeah, maybe . . . we’ll see,” I said, keeping my cards close to my chest. Luke may have appeared to be sincere about manning up, but I wasn’t going to take a chance, especially not with Wren.

“Gotta fly. Heading over to Foley’s for damage control. Wanna come?”

“You’re serious?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Can’t. I’m not sure I’m allowed to leave the house until I’m eighteen. How screwed is that?”

He stopped halfway down the stairs and looked back up.

“It would have been fucking epic, you know. Us. In Amsterdam.”

Maybe there was some parallel universe, where all of our different paths played themselves out. One where I was with the guys, experiencing the endless party we’d thought cruising the rosse buurt could be. I tried to put post–term‑paper‑pimp Grayson in that vision, the way I’d imagined myself the year before. How much I’d wanted it, that goal, the freedom, that time fooling around with my friends before getting serious. Could have been legendary, for sure, but this path I was on with Wren, uncertain as it was . . . made me feel more alive and aware, than that one ever had. That was something Luke would never understand, something he’d never be able to measure against.

I smiled. “Yeah, would have been epic.”

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 594