B00B9FX0MA EBOK (22 page)

The tools have taken over.

That was the observation Cole
Redeker
made as his bus sputtered through an early November slush to the front entrance of Springfield High School.

It was the sight of the new BMW in the student parking lot that cinched it. The driver and his passenger bounced out in sync, their Axe Dark Temptation body spray unfurling around them like fallout. Cole was well acquainted with these guys: Greg Truffle and Scott Dare. This particular subset of soccer player was so devoted to the kicking of balls that they were compelled to play year-round, indoors and out, home and away, in cleats or barefoot, dividing their remaining hours between the popping of collars and the buying of braided belts. Cole had frittered away the summers of his junior high years on the fringe of this duo of mom-anointed “nice boys,” manning the midfield and dabbling in the
preppier
arts, a fact that his friend and personal provocateur Gavin would never let him forget.

Back then, Cole’s mom had signed him up for the summer league in the dual hope that he’d spend less time in the kitchen experimenting with pie crust recipes and expand his social circle beyond Gavin, who at thirteen had already begun to exhibit certain qualities guidance counselors deemed indicative of the “pre-slacker.” Chief among them: Playing bass in a terrible jam band. Nothing raises the hackles of the PTA crowd higher than a Grateful Dead cover.

Gavin was honored by her disapproval and upped the ante every chance he got, purposely leaving behind hacky sacks at Cole’s house for her to luck upon.

“Thanks, Mrs. R!” he said when she offered one up, asking if it was his. “I was wondering where I’d left that. Can’t seem to focus these days. Do I smell brownies?”

But social engineering was not Mrs.
Redeker’s
forte. Cole and Gavin’s friendship blossomed, as did her son’s interest in (and knack for) the culinary arts. She willingly submitted whenever he presented her with a new baked confection, and learned to tolerate Gavin, if barely. “Only because I haven’t rubbed off on you,” he complained. “Yet.” Despite Gavin’s best efforts at corruption, Cole still scored straight As, still headlined the debate team, still sat first chair sax, still trained seeing-eye dogs, still turned water into wine . . .

“If preparing to get into college were a profession, you’d be CEO.”

“It
is
a profession,” was Cole’s doleful response. His parents had assembled a war council to shepherd him into an Ivy League institution of their choosing: an SAT tutor, a private admissions counselor, and a doctoral candidate hired to edit his college essays. “By the time I get accepted, they won’t have any money left to pay tuition.” Which had a great deal to do with the reason he rode a bus to school instead of cruising up in his own BMW, or perhaps more realistically, a Kia.

A tasteful, nondescript Kia that would get the job done and never, ever draw attention to his connections and wealth, which wasn’t a problem, anyway, because he lacked both.

But not for long
, he daydreamed. And with good reason. Cole
Redeker
did not have his own credit card, but he did have ambition to spare and, more important, the tools to achieve it: brains and patience. Expertly wielded, they would win him acceptance to a top-tier school, and after that, a six-figure salary and all the time in the world to dabble in his chef’s kitchen. To hell with BMW. He’d have a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, and an Alfa Romeo
—
the more vowels the better. But stepping off the bus that cold Monday morning, forced to take an undignified leap over a puddle of sludge in front of which he was sure the driver deliberately parked, he was confronted with the BMW — and its flawless German engineering,
moonroof
, and leather interior. Suddenly Cole felt that his strategy to bide his time for the benefit of his future was doing his present a grave injustice.

Whose parents go out and buy their son a brand-new BMW in the middle of the winter (in a recession!) for no good reason except maybe to rub it into the faces of people whose parents can’t?

Tools’, that’s whose.

Gavin’s two favorite phrases:

1. It’ll be fun. I promise!

2. Told you so.

Cole was fond of neither. The first was usually what Gavin trotted out to tempt

Cole into aiding in some mischievous, vaguely criminal act. The second was how Gavin invariably greeted him the day after Cole declined to take part and the deed was done. Often Gavin displayed proof that the so-called fun was had. Examples included: a neck brace, shaved eyebrows, or the dental impression of an alpaca on his butt. Sometimes, however, Gavin’s wordplay surprised Cole. Sometimes he switched it up.

“Greg and Scott are idiots? Told you so.”

This was not one of those times.

They were on their way to Mr.
Drick’s
honors history, a rare shared class and Gavin’s sole academic interest.

“Don’t act like this is news,” said Gavin. “You know what those two are like. Remember how you used to be Greg’s ‘friend’? Look at how that turned out. Look at your miserable excuse for a life now —”

“I’m aware, thanks,” Cole said sharply. He needed no reminder of the humiliation he suffered at Greg’s hands. He wore it like a noose.

“Just making sure,” said Gavin. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you’re only moping or if that’s the new you.”

Cole was too distracted to respond. Ambling down the hall ahead of them was Greg, arm slung over the shoulders of his girlfriend, Winnie. The couple lingered outside Mr.
Drick’s
room to punish unwitting bystanders with a kiss. Gavin told him to look away. “Why torture yourself?”

“I’m not tortured,” Cole answered stiffly. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Cole had many talents. Lying was not among them.

“How evolved of you,” Gavin drawled. “Because watching those two dock between classes bothers me into a boil. And I’m not even her ex-boyfriend. Greg didn’t steal her from me. He stole her from you.”

History passed in a tide of dates and facts, none of which sank in on Cole. His mind was on his personal history, which happened to be seated two desks up and one row over.

Winnie. Concert choir soloist, all-county tennis, animal shelter volunteer.

Winnie. Whose long auburn hair draped across her back in thick vines and hadn’t been cut since last year, when Cole suggested she continue to let it grow. “Think of the points you’ll score with admissions officers when you finally donate it to Locks Of Love,” he advised.

Winnie. Known once as Cole’s first kiss, now as his chief competition for valedictorian and forevermore as his faithless, backstabbing ex-girlfriend.

Winnie. Or, as Gavin dubbed her in the
postbreakup
era: Whinny. Cole tried to get across that homonym humor worked only written, not spoken, but it didn’t matter to Gavin. “It only needs to be funny to me,” he explained.

It wasn’t funny to Cole. Nothing about Winnie was funny. Not since the eve of the SATs, when the school’s underground newspaper broke the story that she’d dumped him
—
before she’d dumped him. At the time of the article’s publication he dismissed it as preposterous and went so far as to e-mail the reporter his demand for a retraction. The response he got from the mysterious gossip columnist
[email protected]
read:

I stand by my story. And I stand by you. You deserve better. Chin up, Cole. WW

Still, Cole wrote it off. “Psychological warfare,” he told Gavin. “Whoever started this rumor wants to knock me off my game before the test. It’s a joke.” He wasn’t laughing when Winnie cut him loose two hours later at the exam site. She scurried away from him and right over to Greg, who awaited her with open arms and #2s. Every analogy in the exam Cole suffered through read
You are to Winnie as warden is to escapee.

Winnie. The source of the dark circles under his eyes, the reason his experimental
Fluffernutter
soufflé declined to rise, and the cause of his dangerous flirtation with an A-minus average.

That flirtation had become a full-blown affair. As class drew to a close, Mr.
Drick
relinquished their graded essays, along with a helping of dandruff. Cole’s essay was branded with a big red B. Cole was aghast. To him, B stood for “Better up your game or it’s a safety school for you, bub.”

“You’re slipping, bro,” Gavin hooted after class. “Keep this up and Whinny will grab the top spot out from under you.”

“I’d like to see her try,” Cole snapped, stifling the dread that she was nipping at his heels — and what his parents would do if they found out. “She’d have to tear herself away from Greg long enough to bank some study hours first.”

“You do nothing
but
study. And cook. How’s that working out for you?”

“And how did you do?” The only subject Gavin liked better than history and Cole’s shortcomings was Gavin himself.

“
Dunno
,” he breezed. “I picked up someone else’s essay instead. Guess who got an A+?” He spotted Greg exiting the classroom, looking around, and proceeded to read aloud: ‘A comparison between American and international serial killers reveals several notable differences.’ I wonder what those are. Do you think he’s about to tell us?” Alerted, Greg made a beeline for the twosome. Winnie followed, leashed, as Gavin continued his dramatic reading.

“‘Perhaps most striking is that when selecting victims, Americans tend to adhere to far more rigid criteria than their worldwide counterparts. An American serial killer knows his victim; an international serial killer
discovers
his victim.’ What kind of messed-up mind writes about serial killers for history? Oh, hi, Greg.”

“What are you doing with my essay?”

“Just admiring the prose. Mr.
Drick
thinks it’s top-quality work. Care to let us in on your secret? I’d love to learn how you turn a phrase.”

Greg snatched his paper. “Keep your hands off my stuff.” He looked at Cole, looking at Winnie. “That goes for you, too.” Cole watched them go, wondering why Gavin bothered to get in Greg’s face.

“Because you won’t. And someone has to stop him before he wrecks the curve with his cheating.”

Cheating?

“Do you really think that essay sprang from his brain? Greg couldn’t string two sentences together with barbed wire.”

It was the widely held but never confirmed suspicion that the administration instructed Greg’s teachers to go easy on him (the smoking slackers had no opinion on the subject). Without his talented feet, the soccer program would be in tatters. Cole didn’t doubt that the faculty juked the curve in his favor, but they’d never abide out-and-out cheating.

“Winnie probably helped him,” Cole offered.

“Maybe. Or maybe she’s cheating, too.”

“Now you’re just fantasizing. And since when do you care about the curve, anyway? You don’t even want to go to college.”

Gavin kicked a loose pen down the hall. “What I want is to see justice done. Greg and Winnie committed a crime on you, my friend. They turned you into a joke. All you’ve done since then is wallow. And your cooking hasn’t been the same. Last week’s cupcakes were seriously sub-par.”

“You had three.”

“Barely! It was all I could do to lick the crusted frosting off the wrappers. You’re slipping. Actually, you’ve slipped. You are down on the ground, flailing, like a helpless, overturned bug. Keep this up and someone’s liable to squash you.”

They turned a corner. Greg and Winnie had stopped up ahead at a table where tickets to the winter formal were on sale. Cole stared.

“You’re doing it right now!” Gavin griped.

“Doing what?”

“Brooding. Either get over it and move on or don’t get over it and get back at them.”

The thought had a certain appeal. But he doubted he had the stomach for revenge. “What would I even do?”

Gavin gleamed. “I’m sure we’ll come up with something. And it’ll be fun.
I promise
.”

Somewhere nearby, someone was crying. Crying or choking on a Jolly Rancher. Cole couldn’t be sure which.

He stood up. The library was sparsely populated. Greg and Scott were the only people at the computer bank, roosting over the unit Gavin had secretly rigged to bypass the school’s content controls. Cole ditched his work and ducked into the stacks to investigate.

He paused in the dusty poetry aisle. The sound was coming from the other side of the next shelf. Nonfiction,
Aer
-Bio. Cole padded to the middle of the aisle, slipped out a volume of German verse and pretended to look captivated by the abundance of syllables as he eavesdropped. Through the cracks came the whisper-talk of a familiar voice. Winnie.

Walk away, Cole
. He edged closer to the stack, absently turning a page in the book he wasn’t looking at. Between the shelf and the top of the books he glimpsed a shifting sliver of Winnie. The swoop of her autumn-colored hair, her nubbin earlobe or the bat of an eyelash. Back when he and Winnie were together she was forever dusting her face, assuming from his constant gaze the presence of an errant lash. Even at the height of their relationship he was too shy to admit he just liked looking at her.

She wasn’t the one doing the boo-
hooing
, but there was an uncharacteristic tremor in her voice. Cole had never seen or heard Winnie cry, not even the day she tried to teach him her backhand and he accidentally backhanded her face. First she corrected his grip. Then she plugged the blood spurting Old Faithfully from her nose. She did not shed a tear when she dumped him for Greg, either. But there, deep in the library, Cole detected something she’d never made him privy to. Something like vulnerability. It unnerved him. What else was there about Winnie he didn’t know?
What else besides the fact that she DROPPED YOU do you need to know?
he could practically hear Gavin ask.