Fall from Grace
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About this ebook
"I need you to steal something for me."
Grace always has a plan. There's her plan to get famous, her plan to get rich, and—above all—her plan to have fun.
Sawyer has plenty of plans, too. Plans made for him by his mother, his father, his girlfriend. Maybe they aren't his plans, but they are plans.
When Sawyer meets Grace, he wonders if he should come up with a few plans himself. Plans about what he actually wants to be, plans to speak his own mind for a change, plans to maybe help Grace with a little art theft.
Wait a minute—plans to what?
From Charles Benoit, acclaimed author of you, comes a witty and unsettling tale of two high school seniors planning the job of a lifetime.
Charles Benoit
Charles Benoit is a former high school teacher and the Edgar Award-nominated author of three adult mystery novels and the teen novel Fall From Grace. He lives in Rochester, New York.
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Book preview
Fall from Grace - Charles Benoit
CHAPTER
1
"I NEED YOU to steal something for me."
She was small, with dark hair and blue eyes that looked lit from behind, and the kind of face, the kind of tight body that kept him listening.
Get me a copy of the treaty you’re working on. The one with Iran.
He shrugged. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Don’t play dumb. I saw you sitting with the delegation at the opening ceremony. North Korea, right?
Yeah.
A pause, another shrug. I think so.
"You think so? You don’t know what country you’re with?"
I just joined Thursday.
Is that your school’s team?
She pointed across the gym to the folding table where a kid in a suit and two girls in dresses huddled around one of the laptops. The table was centered under a MODEL UNITED NATIONS banner taped to the backboard above the basketball hoop.
It’s the team I’m with, yeah.
Then you’re North Korea. So you can get it for me.
He smiled. He had to. There was something about her that made him do it. Who are you?
Grace.
She pulled on the name tag clipped to an empty belt loop of her red jeans.
I meant the country you’re with.
Belgium.
She tapped the black, yellow, and red flag printed on the school team ID as if the answer was obvious. West High School. A Westie. The other side of the proverbial tracks. The wrong side. "Where’s your ID, comrade?"
He patted his chest, then checked his pockets. I must have lost it.
Tsk-tsk. Now you won’t get to enjoy a delicious cafeteria-style box lunch.
She looked at him, her head tilted to the side a bit, her hair bouncing short of her shoulder. So maybe you’re smarter than you look.
It’s the tie. I had to wear one.
She reached up and gave it a tug. At least it’s not a clip-on.
It wasn’t, but it might as well have been. His father had tied it for him months ago and each time he wore it, he slipped it off over his head, hanging it on the hook on the back of his bedroom door, the misshapen knot pulled too tight to untangle. So, you gonna get me that treaty?
What do you need it for?
Do you really care?
I might.
You don’t. It’s a make-believe treaty written by a bunch of high school students pretending to be the ambassadors of real countries they couldn’t find on a map. Picking a theme for the senior prom has more global impact.
That wasn’t the way Mr. Jansen had explained Model United Nations, but so far it was the most accurate description he’d heard. He had joined late in the quarter, too late to know what he was supposed to be doing, but, as his mother had pointed out, not too late to add it to his college application. She said he needed an extracurricular activity, something academic, that he could list along with all the volunteer work his parents had arranged for him to do. His father would have preferred that he join Public Speaking, but that would have meant speaking in public, and as determined as they were on getting him into a good school, even his parents couldn’t get around that. That’s why they settled on MUN. He was just glad they didn’t know there was a chess club.
I’ve been to this school before,
Grace said, looking past the open gym doors and down the long corridor. There’s a photocopier in the teachers’ lounge. I’ll have it back in five minutes, tops.
If you think this whole thing is stupid—
And I do, but go on.
—why do you want the treaty?
"I don’t want it, the US team wants it. I’m cutting a little deal on the side. I get them the details of the treaty, they give me North Dakota."
Why would you want North Dakota?
It would complete the set. Look, you going to get it for me or not?
If I don’t, what happens then?
Then we both have to think of something to do to fill up the four hours before this ridiculous event is over.
He could think of plenty of things they could do for four hours, and if he were that kind of guy, the put-it-out-there kind who was smooth with the words and fast with the ladies, they’d be off in some empty classroom, getting busy. He wasn’t, not even close, but that didn’t stop him from thinking about it. Besides, Zoë would find out for sure and she’d be pissed and she’d tell his mother because they were tight like that and then he’d hear about it from his parents, plus he’d have to see Zoë—and all of Zoë’s friends—every day in school, and he could guess what that would be like. Nope, even if he was that kind of guy it wasn’t worth it. Still, for an uncontrolled, hormone-driven second, he thought about it.
Four hours at a MUN event is a long, long time,
she said. If you don’t help get the treaty I’ll be so bored I’ll probably declare war on Luxembourg and then you’ll have that on your conscience.
He weighed the pretend global consequences before nodding. Anything for world peace. Wait here, I’ll go get it.
Hold it.
She grabbed his wrist and pulled him back, stronger than she looked. Her hand was cool and dry against his skin. You just can’t walk up and take it.
Yes I can. There’re copies on the table, I’ll get one and—
We have to have a plan first. And signals and code words and a Plan B and an escape route….
How about this for a plan? I go get it and give it to you.
Oh, come on. You’re taking all the fun out of it.
"You are bored. Okay, what’s the plan?"
The metal bleachers were pushed closed against the wall, but someone had pulled out a couple rows at the bottom where delegates from around the make-believe world had tossed their book bags and winter coats. She led him to an open section and took a seat, flipping to a blank page in a notebook that wasn’t hers.
We’ll call it Operation Trick-or-Treat.
Because you like Halloween?
No, because I like taking candy from babies.
She wrote the words at the top of the paper in blocky capital letters. She drew a quick map of the gym and the hallway. Next, we need code names. I’ll be Al’ea and you can be Bix.
Bix? What kind of name is Bix?
She looked at him, stunned by his ignorance. "Al’ea and Bix? From Reality Frat House?"
Blank stare.
"You’re kidding, right? They’re famous."
Famous for what?
For being famous, geez, what do you think? They’re on TV, that’s all they have to do.
She shook her head and mumbled as she continued to map out the room. I can’t believe you don’t know who Bix is.
How about calling me Sawyer?
"Which Sawyer? The one from Random Roommates or the one from Spring Break Survival?"
The one from East High School.
That’s your name? Sawyer?
She gave him the quick up and down. No, it doesn’t fit. Let’s go with Bix. But just for this job.
Good. It would be a pain to have to get my driver’s license changed.
She focused on the paper, drawing arrows one way, erasing them and going another, the tip of her tongue sticking out between her lips as she made the simple complex. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and waited. Nothing else to do. The North Korean team—his team—were bent over their laptops, finalizing the resolutions he wasn’t allowed to help with. Well, he could if he really wanted to, but it’s just that it’s so late in the process and the team had already done all the background work and he’d have so far to go to catch up and he could still play an important role, sure, but not with the writing or the presenting or the debates, definitely not the debates, but sorta like a goodwill ambassador, that way he could get to know how the event works so next time he can play a bigger role—well not next time, since that’s the regionals, but after that, maybe. They were sure he understood.
All right, we’re here,
Grace said, tapping two small Xs with the point of her pencil. "Here’s North Korea, and right next to it is Denmark. I’ll go to the Denmark table, and I’ll make something up about how they should join Belgium in blocking imports from countries with dictatorships. That’ll get your team all hot and bothered. Meanwhile, you come around like this, between Kuwait and Kyrgyzstan. Wait by Trinidad. When you hear me say ‘Why do you think they call them dictators,’ you grab the paper, then make your way over to Singapore and leave the paper behind those blue mats. I’ll head to Mexico. Give me the sign when you’ve planted the paper and I’ll go pick it up."
What sign is that?
"Ever see The Sting?" She held up a finger and tapped it along the side of her nose.
Another reality show?
"You don’t know The Sting? What do they teach you over at East? She shook her head some more.
I’ll pick up the paper, take it down to the teachers’ lounge, and burn a copy. It would be easier to just take a picture of it, but the US team has crappy phones so they need a hard copy. I’ll put the original back by the mats, then you put it back in the folder. Easy. She folded the paper and stuck it in her jeans, dropping the pencil in the pocket of his shirt.
Now, you ready for this?"
CHAPTER
2
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:
WELL DONE, 007.
CHEERS,
G
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.
CHAPTER
3
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