Ten

JASON

Free period. In the library. A bunch of library books spread out around the table in front of me. Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either, but for once I was enjoying doing research.

The irony. If only my dad realized that it wasn’t all his lectures but his colossal eff-up that finally inspired me to sit in the library and do research. That and Dianne. I’d looked into it and there was no case for the kitchen staff. If the school was in this kind of deep financial doo-doo, even the union couldn’t help Dianne.

Thankfully there was a Plan A. Apparently there were some serious errors going on in 1983 with the Roosevelt dimes—no mint marks, two years running. Another option was the Lincoln double ear, a penny where the Lincoln head had an extra lobe due to a two-timing die strike. Pretty hot, but it was only worth $250, and that was for the very best examples. A 1950 S over D dime could fetch $500 and up. There was a Wisconsin state quarter with a misplaced leaf (it could be either high or low, according to The Frohman’s Field Guide to Coin Collecting). Certified, perfect-condition versions went for $1,500. Not bad.

Still, we had to think bigger if we wanted to do this right. An error coin to end all error coins. Someone had to have made a mistake that brought in the megabucks.

An error coin. I had to admit, Dakota’s idea was kinda brilliant. I wish I’d been smart enough to think of it myself.

Of course, now she was calling all the meetings, taking notes in code on her phone, and checking in on everyone’s progress through regular texts. So far, we knew that Alice was going to go into the Mint as a tourist over the weekend to plant her hacking device in a low-visibility outlet—a utility closet or a corner somewhere. At home, she would run commands from her computer and analyze the system’s weak points. Once I had the right design picked out and completed, she’d tunnel through the Mint system firewall, scan the design in, and basically trick the system into making our coins on a predetermined date. That part was well figured out, but we’d have to do some more recon to determine when and how to get into the building to pick up our stash.

And then I had to come up with a way to fence our counterfeit goods. Alice insisted that we had to slowly trickle them into the market—that selling them all at once would diminish their value. I said I would work on it, and I planned to, just as soon as I got the design squared away. I didn’t have the best criminal connections—I really only knew a few weed dealers, but I figured someone would know someone who knew someone. After we fenced the coins, we’d donate the money back through an anonymous Annual Fund contribution. People made anonymous donations all the time.

Dakota had even given our mission a name: Operation EagleFly, after the Mint mascot. She said all criminal plots needed a name. Whatever. It was annoying, but I was willing to put up with Dakota in all her Dakota-ness if it meant we could really do this thing.

Still, I could tell Alice was more than a little bugged out by Dakota’s presence on the team. She seemed to have some kind of beef with Dakota that I didn’t get. And Benny was Benny—he never seemed to show much emotion, so his opinion on the matter was anyone’s guess. He annoyed me too, sometimes. Everyone listened to him whenever he decided to open his mouth, like what he had to say was automatically going to be deep or smart. I got the feeling he thought he was better than the rest of us, like growing up in the hood made him more real or something. But we needed him to make the access IDs for us and to help us get a vehicle to make this work.

No one said we all had to be best friends. We just had to get this done.

Hands waved in front of my eyes. “You’re working?”

My startle reflex had me slamming the book shut with a bang, almost capturing a set of fingers in the process. Zack’s fingers, it turned out.

“Yo. You could have amputated me there.”

“Sorry,” I said, all flustered. “Yeah. Just something for Design.”

“Didn’t you guys already have that project last week?”

He was keeping track of my assignments now? “We did,” I said defensively. “But I’m doing something for extra credit.”

He jumped up and jogged over to the window, then walked back with a lazy smile on his face, his dark hair flopping over his eyes.

“What was that?”

“Had to make sure the sky wasn’t falling,” Zack said.

“I have been known to do a little homework from time to time, you know.” For some reason I felt myself getting worked up, even though it was defending a flat-out lie. I wasn’t doing an extra credit project, and Zack knew it.

But Zack didn’t know that I’d gotten that A on the coin drawing, or that it had kinda made my day. My month, really. I couldn’t believe it—people liked Rankin’s class because Rankin was cool, but everyone knew he never gave As. I looked at that red letter over and over, and I could almost imagine, for a minute, what it would be like to actually work hard and get good grades, like, as a regular routine. Of course, the reality was that it was never gonna happen. It was only because I needed an excuse not to visit my dad again that I’d even bothered to finish and turn in the assignment.

“Not in public, though. And not with, like, books.” Zack slumped down in a chair across from me. “Did you get the space yet?” A few days before, he’d emailed me a link to a place and asked me to drop off a deposit for $500 to reserve it, which of course I’d ignored. I still had no way of coming up with the cash, which to them was one week’s allowance, but for me might as well have been $2 million. I figured if I ignored their request long enough, they’d eventually forget. That was the way things always went with Mixed Metaphors. We were dysfunctional, yeah, but it worked for us.

“Haven’t had time,” I said. “But we can still meet in the basement today, right?”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “Naw, dude, that’s why I came. The guys said they’re boycotting until you get us the new space.”

“Boycotting? Come on. And by ‘the guys,’ you basically mean Chaddie, right?”

“Max, too. He doesn’t like practicing at home. He said his mom’s on his case about it. I don’t know. Maybe they’re right.”

“Chaddie’s always losing it about something. So why can’t he figure it out?”

“Because you said you’d do it. We’ll pay you back, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s a great space, the only one in a ten-mile radius. But if you don’t get that check in by tomorrow at nine am, we’ll lose it.”

There was no money to front. But of course Zack, whose parents were both surgeons, wouldn’t get that. He would always have someone to help him out, no matter how bad he messed up. It was easy to be laid back when you had a trust fund.

“I’m really busy. I can’t do everything myself,” I said, too embarrassed to admit that I had no money. “Can you do it?”

“I’m busy. Family stuff.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Whatever, maybe we can just get the Uh-Ums to play in our place. They’d probably be better than us anyway.”

“We can’t do that.” There was no way in hell I was going to let the Uh-Ums take our gig. They barely knew three chords, let alone anything about real music. The only reason they were popular around school was because their singer was Allison Stadtler, and she was hot.

We needed to practice. We only had a month left until prom.

The thing was, I was busy. I’d promised the others I’d scope out Rankin’s office tomorrow morning to try to find the temporary ID he’d used at the Mint. Benny said he could make a copy of it for us to use when we wanted to go pick up the coins. I had planned to do it before Rankin got to school, so I really didn’t have time to go to the practice space.

“They’re not so bad. They said I could jam with them. Chaddie, too.”

“Why were they asking you? They know you’re in a band,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “They play reggae.” Which was ridiculous in and of itself.

“They said they like my style. I guess they heard Chaddie complaining and they thought we were breaking up after everything, losing our space . . .”

“What?” Now he’d gone and dropped the bomb. I didn’t care about Chaddie, but I couldn’t lose Zack to those idiots. I felt myself scrambling. I had to stop this. “We’re not breaking up. Look. The reason I haven’t gotten the space is I’m broke. It wasn’t just the school. My dad lost everything.” I hadn’t wanted to admit that to anyone, especially since all this time I’d worked so hard to seem like a real Friendian. Now Zack knew the truth, and he saw how upset I was. I almost felt like crying.

“Oh,” he said.

“Hey. Don’t tell anyone that, okay? It’s just between you and me?”

“Right on,” he said, his tone so even that he could have been responding to a Happy Mondays song or the pattern of light on the ceiling. Right on was his go-to motto, and he used it way too often. I wished for once he could act like something actually mattered. “Hey, you could borrow it from someone, right?”

I glanced up, hopeful. “Are you offering?”

“Me? Remember what happened the last time I lent you money? For the Florida trip? A year ago?”

Shoot. “I’m still good for that, man. Just not . . . now.”

“I can ask the guys, if you want.”

“Don’t!” I yelped. I knew he’d have to explain it to them, and I didn’t want him to do that. It occurred to me then that there was a reason they wanted me to front the money: No one trusted me with their share. “No worries. It’s cool. I’ll think of something. Just don’t join that band, okay?”

He shrugged. “I have to consider my options, dude.”

“I’ll get the space.” Even as I promised him, though, I knew I’d never be able to pull it off. It just wasn’t doable.

We both heard some dudes laughing then, and we looked up. Arno and Dylan were in the corner mocking us, Arno playing me with a sad look on his face. “You homos having a fight?” Dylan called out when he saw us looking.

Zack shot them a middle finger. “I guess I can’t be seen with you anymore—it’s hurting my reputation. I’m out.”

He was joking, so I forced a laugh. “See ya, sucker,” I said.

I watched him go, feeling uneasy. Without Mixed Metaphors, I had nothing.

Well, maybe not nothing. There was Operation EagleFly to think about. At least with that crew, I had an important role to play. If you have what it takes to be a leader, I heard my dad saying.

When Zack was gone, I opened up the book again.

There it was. The answer.

The 2009 American Samoa quarter.

For one thing, the date was perfect, fitting Alice and Dakota’s stipulation for a recent example, so the metals would match what the Mint uses now. Close enough that an expert wouldn’t be able to tell our version from the real error coin.

The error was doable, too. A missing motto: “Samoa, God is First.” They were now selling for $205,000 per. I got out my phone and did a quick calculation. That meant we’d only need two hundred and forty-three coins or so. A quick job, timewise. And that was only—I did some more figuring on my phone—six rolls of quarters, which would weigh three pounds. I could fit that shiz in my shoes if I had to.

“Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner,” I murmured.

I took the page over to the photocopier and set it down on the glass top. The light of the machine flashed as it scanned the image, and I felt a wave of excitement. I’d take this home and start on the rendering right away. If it was anything like my medal drawing, it would be a piece of cake.

I carefully set the still-warm copied page inside of my history notebook and put them both in my bag. As I walked out through the library’s double doors, I was almost tempted to sing out loud. For once I was going to get something done and see it through to the end. Something big. Something that really mattered.

The next morning I got to school earlier than I ever had before, which was made even harder by the fact that I had to bike the whole way. My mom had finally bitten the bullet and sold her car, so these days she was driving my Jetta.

When I got to the end of HF’s winding driveway, my face was burning from the wind but I felt good—better than I’d felt since the whole thing with my dad had gone down. The school was mostly empty, and the plan was still ticking along like clockwork.

My dad was one of the few people to ever show up this early. He said it was so he could read the paper in peace and quiet, but now I had to wonder if it was so he could do more shady stuff with no one looking over his shoulder. Whatever. He was still waiting to post bail. Every time I saw my mom sitting up at the kitchen table with a mug of tea and a stack of bills, I wanted to kill him. And then there was the night I heard her yelling at him over the phone. “How am I supposed to do this on my own, Jim? How could you put us through all of this?”

Well, I was going to get the school’s money back and fix his gigantic mistake.

I walked through the main halls of the Upper School and down the breezeway to the Arts Center. All of the classrooms were still dark, and the only light was the early morning sun streaming through the skylights.

Outside Rankin’s classroom, I slipped my hand into my pocket and pulled out the school’s master key. I’d been carrying my own copy for years, ever since I’d swiped it from my dad and made a copy at the local hardware store. It came in handy for borrowing band equipment and pulling pranks.

The master key fit so easily in the art room lock that I was almost embarrassed.

The door creaked open and the room—all of Rankin’s gallery posters, our half-finished projects, and the giant Day of the Dead skeleton we’d built out of recycled soda cans last semester—was cast in shadow, all spooky-like.

The door to Rankin’s office was closed, of course, but my master fit that lock too. With a slight click, the handle released.

Not wanting to turn the light on just in case, I inched tentatively forward until my eyes got used to the darkness and I could make out the shape of his desk, chair, and computer.

On the computer was a screensaver—a photo of Rankin with his wife, a pretty brunette with a pixie haircut, and his little baby daughter in a striped dress. They were all grinning at the camera looking happy and carefree. I moused the computer out of its sleep, and it opened right up to his desktop. Hadn’t the guy ever heard of a security code?

He’d left his internet browser open to a job search site. So he’d been looking for a new teaching position. I felt guilt twist in my gut like a knife blade.

I did a search for Brad Garcia on his desktop finder until I came up with a bunch of emails. I thought maybe Garcia would’ve emailed Rankin the temp pass, but no luck. I wrote down Garcia’s email address and phone number from his email signature just in case. I could always send him an email from Rankin, requesting a visitor pass—I could make up some bullshit about wanting to take a friend back for another visit. But it would have been better to come away with the real pass Rankin had around his neck the other day.

One thing was certain: The guy was a slob. I’d never really noticed the complete avalanche of papers and crap on his desk until I started rummaging through them now, feeling around for anything that felt like a plastic-covered ID card. Where would you even keep something like that? The normal rules wouldn’t apply to Rankin, who clearly just threw everything onto the pile and hoped it wouldn’t slide off.

Elbow deep in art projects, sketchbooks, grade reports, and school policy books, I could only hear the sound of paper rustling all around me. Which is why I didn’t notice someone entering the studio until the light turned on.

I whipped my hands away from the desk, backing away as quickly as I could. There was the sound of the studio door being shut, and then the key in the office lock. Crap. Crap. Crap. It was Rankin. In the flesh.

My brain raced as I quickly ran through my options. If I ducked and hid, then I would be stuck hiding until the next time he left. That could be hours. I’d made an entire school career out of BS-ing teachers; now I had to make it count. A lifetime achievement award, if you will.

I had to face it.

Act cool, I told myself as I moved to the other side of his desk, as if I had just been waiting for him. In the dark.

“Hodges?” He flipped on the light and his face looked as startled as mine felt. He was still in his ski parka and wool cap, carrying his laptop backpack. “What the hell are you doing in my office?”

Showtime. I took in a deep breath, but I was as surprised as he was when I started to cry like a two-year-old.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice softening slightly, setting down his computer bag. “What’s up?”

He was in front of me then, leaning back against his desk. I was so tempted to just tell him everything. Confess and let him know how badly I felt. But I couldn’t. There were other people counting on me. And no way Rankin would let us go through with what we were planning.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. It was the fear, I told myself. That’s what was making me cry like this.

Another part of me wondered, though.

“What can I do for you?” His brow was furrowed in concern. There was something about his face, so genuine and surprised, that got to me.

“It’s just been hard,” I said, and that at least was true.

“I know it has. I’ve wondered how you’ve been handling all of this.”

“My dad’s in jail. My mom’s a wreck. Things here are a mess.”

He nodded. “It seems bad now, but you’ll get through this. If anyone can find their way out, you can. I have a lot of faith in you, Hodges. You’ve got a strong spirit.”

He thought so? Huh. He reached out his arms to give me a fatherly bear hug. And somehow, it wasn’t corny at all. It was solid and warm, and for a tiny second, I did feel better. And then I felt like a total asshole for giving him such a hard time all year. He was a good guy. Yeah, he pushed me, but it wasn’t just to push me, not like my dad. It was because he seemed to really think that maybe, just maybe, I was worth the effort.

“Look, I don’t like the idea of you coming into my office when I’m not here. I’m assuming you have some kind of key?”

I nodded, reluctantly.

“Hand it over.”

I did, letting it drop in his palm.

“But you can talk to me any time you need to, Jason. I’m here.”

“Thanks, Mr. Rankin. I appreciate it.”

I wiped my face and stepped out of his office, and then out of the classroom.

I was shaking all over, still totally freaked out. Had he seen what I was doing? If so, I’d be in some major shit. I liked to think Rankin was the type of guy who would’ve confronted me if he had, though maybe he just didn’t give a crap anymore, now that school was closing.

The sun was really pouring through the skylights now, super bright, white and pure. The bottom line was that I’d gotten out of there. I was free. I brushed off the feelings of guilt. We had a bigger goal in mind, and ultimately it would help Rankin as much as the rest of us.

It was only later that I realized that I’d handed over the last and best perk from my dad’s headmaster career—my special access to the school. It was like a superhero losing his powers, and I’d done it without even thinking.

Another snag for Operation EagleFly to overcome, but I had a feeling we could handle it. With this much at stake, we had no choice.