Pass/Fail (2012)

by David Wellington

  PASS/FAIL

  a novel by

  David Wellington

  Text copyright © 2012 David Wellington

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  About the Author

  More Books by David Wellington

  A Sample From Rivals

  Chapter One

  JM

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  JM

  Jake McCartney ran a finger across the row of initials on the underside of his bedside table. They had been carved into the wood, gouged into it, then gone over with a sharpie marker. The letters were very small, and toward the back of the table where he would never have seen them if he hadn’t dropped his pencil and had to get down underneath the table to fish it out. His own initials, repeated seven times—when had he done that? He couldn’t remember it. He’d had the table since he was little, though, since before he could remember much. He smiled to himself, picked up the pencil, and started to climb back out from underneath.

  That was when the car hit the house.

  Jake smacked his head on the edge of the table, an impact that made his ears ring—or maybe that was just the sound of metal crumpling, of the house shaking down to its foundations. He jumped up to his feet and ran out into the hall to see his Mom leaning out of her own doorway, asking what had happened. “Earthquake?” she asked, looking terrified.

  Jake shook his head and hurried down the stairs. It was just after seven o’clock on the last day of summer before his senior year of high school.

  At the front door his father tried to grab his arm. Jake pushed past, shrugging an apology, and leaned out into the porch. Flames leapt up from the ornamental nopal cacti at the side of the house and he jumped back in a hurry. “Kiddo,” Dad shouted, “get back inside!” but Jake had seen something through the flames and he rushed out into the evening air. There was a car wedged into the side of the house, a bright red SUV with its front end smashed into the brick wall. Fire swarmed across its bent hood and had engulfed one of the tires, which melted and spat gouts of burning rubber. In the distance Jake heard a siren and knew the fire department was on its way. So far the flames hadn’t spread to the wood trim on the side of the house—maybe it would be okay. Maybe he should go back in—

  A hand smashed against the driver’s side window, from the inside. The interior of the car was filled with dark smoke and Jake couldn’t really see inside but the hand—the palm smearing across the glass, the fingers scratching wildly—the hand fell away, almost as abruptly as he’d seen it appear. There was somebody in there.

  “Jake! No, Jake,” Dad shouted from the doorway. “Wait for the firemen!”

  Jake wondered what he was talking about until he looked down and saw that he was running toward the car. He hadn’t even thought about what he was doing. He looked up at the houses around him, the white and yellow and light blue houses that looked exactly like his own. Lights were coming on in the windows. People were crowding out onto their porches to see what happened next. Nobody was moving to help him. They were just watching.

  Maybe they hadn’t seen the hand. Maybe nobody had seen it but Jake. “There’s somebody inside,” he shouted, but no one else moved.

  As he got close to the car the heat grew intense and smoke bit into his nose, into the roof of his mouth. He coughed and threw an arm up to cover his face as best he could. He reached for the handle of the car door and nearly burned his hand—it was hot enough to raise blisters. He pulled down the sleeve of his hoodie and covered his hand with it as best he could and tried again, but the handle didn’t move. Either the door was locked or—no—it was wedged shut, he could see where the mangled front end was holding it closed. He tried kicking at a flap of metal that held it shut and his shoe caught on fire. He stamped it out on the ground.

  Coughing into his sleeve he looked around for anything he could use as a pry bar. The best he could find was a garden rake leaning up against the side of the house. It would have to do—he ran back to the car, to try to lever open the door, but just as he arrived the burning tire exploded in a rush of super-heated air that spattered him with flaming rubber. He beat at his chest and arms with his sleeves until he was no more than smoldering, then returned to the door with the rake. There was one piece of the wheel cowling that looked like it was pinning the door—if he could just shift it a little—the rake’s handle cracked in his hands but he kept heaving, kept pushing as the heat of the fire seared his exposed face. He could feel his eyebrows curling up, could smell nothing but burning gasoline but then—then—the cowling bent back, away from the door. Jake threw the rake away and grabbed at the door handle, ignoring the heat that seared his hand.

  The car door flew open and thick oily smoke washed over him, blinding him, choking him. He pushed forward through it and reached inside the car. He couldn’t see a thing but his hands found something soft and yielding—and lifeless. Maybe he was too late. Maybe the car’s driver was dead but. But it didn’t matter. You couldn’t leave even a dead person to burn up inside the car like that, would you? He tugged and pulled and when the body resisted him he finally realized it might still be strapped in with a seat belt. Still not daring to breathe in he reached around and found the release button, then hauled the body out of the car and ran down the driveway to the street, away from the smoke and the flames.

  It was a girl. A girl about his own age. She was wearing a thin dress and a denim jacket that was scorched all down one side. Her face was very pale and his stomach started to turn. She had to be dead. Smoke inhalation. It killed you long before you could burn to death, he knew. A small mercy.

  His eyes went wide as her mouth sagged open and a thin plume of black smoke leaked out from between her lips. Then she started coughing spasmodically, her body heaving with the effort of getting the smoke out of her lungs. He rolled her over on her side and turned away as she threw up, over and over.

  A fire truck arrived while he was holding her, and then an ambulance. The girl was taken away, still unconscious, while paramedics looked at the burns on his face and hands. “You got lucky,” t
hey said. “This won’t even leave a scar.”

  “What about her?” he asked. “Is she going to be okay?”

  The paramedics looked at each other and shrugged. That was all the information he got about her. He didn’t know her name. He had no idea why she had driven her SUV into the side of his house. He didn’t know if she would live through the night.

  There must have been more to that night. He thought afterwards that he spoke to the police, and surely he must have spoken with his parents. He couldn’t remember those things, though, when he thought back to the events of that night. He couldn’t remember anything after he spoke with the paramedics, until he woke up in his own bed the next morning, a little stiff, a little sore, very tired. He looked over at his alarm clock the second before it began to shriek at him. Six thirty—time to get ready for school.

  He could hear his Dad in the shower down the hall. He could smell his Mom’s coffee brewing down in the kitchen. Just like any other day. He rolled out of bed, pulled on a clean t-shirt, and headed for the door of his room. That was when he noticed the one thing different about this morning.

  Someone had slid a pale blue envelope under his door while he slept. It was sealed shut and there was nothing written on the outside. He had no idea who might have sent it, but he tore it open anyway and pulled out its sole content, a single strip of thick white paper, with exactly one word printed on it:

  PASS

  Chapter Two

  “I’m so glad you’re back. Summer always sucks without you here,” Jake said, pulling Cody into a half hug. It was the first day of school, and the two of them had found each other in the hallway before classes started.

  “Fags,” a fat boy in a black t-shirt said, pushing past.

  Jake and Cody pulled apart instantly, then shook their heads and leaned back into the hug. They touched shoulders, then pulled away and slapped each other on the arm. “And you’re not going to believe what happened last night—”

  Cody did believe it, of course. He was Jake’s best friend, had been since middle school. Even if Cody had to go to Florida every summer to live with his grandmother, they’d never grown apart or lost touch. The two of them might have been brothers—people had made that mistake before. They both had the same hairline, the same color eyes, exactly the same color. Jake had always thought it meant he and Cody were destined to be friends by some higher power.

  Not that he would ever have said such a thing aloud.

  Cody adjusted the thick glasses that were the most prominent feature of his face. “This girl,” he said, when he’d heard the whole story, “the one you saved.”

  “Yeah?” Jake asked. He slung his books from one arm to the other and ducked around three members of the wrestling team, who were swaggering down the middle of the hallway refusing to get out of anyone’s way.

  “Was she hot? Because I’m thinking you could get massive hero credits here.”

  Jake shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess. But what about the envelope, and the PASS?”

  “No clue. I was on a plane coming home when all this happened. Homeroom is with Mr. Schneider this time, right? He’s pretty cool, I had him Freshman year and he used to let us—”

  Jake stopped in mid-stride. Something was wrong here. “You believe my whole story, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean, you heard it all? And yet the only thing you’re thinking about is what homeroom we got?”

  “Bell’s going to ring in a minute.” Cody’s eyebrows drew together just over the top of his thick glasses. “Look, Jake, it sounds like you had a real shock. I mean, that kind of thing just doesn’t happen everyday. But you can’t let it get to you.”

  Jake rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “I can’t? Listen, doesn’t it seem weird—I mean, in this town, where nothing ever happens—there weren’t any reporters. There’s nothing in the paper about a car crashing into a house and setting it on fire. Nothing! Everybody is acting like it didn’t happen. The biggest, most death-defying thing that ever happened to me and it’s not worth talking about? I know it really happened. My hand still really hurts where I burned it on the door handle. But everybody acts like it was a dream. This girl just disappears, I have no idea who she is or if she survived or what, and now—”

  “Jake!” Cody shouted. “Do me a favor, man.”

  “Like what?”

  Cody grabbed Jake’s arms just above the elbows. “Focus.”

  It took a while but eventually Jake’s mouth turned up in a grin. “Yeah,” he said. Then—“Yeah. Okay. You’re right. I was starting to sound paranoid there.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Jake nodded. “I guess it was just kind of scary. You know?”

  “I can imagine. But I can think of something scarier.” Cody looked over his shoulder. “There’s a very hot girl standing behind you. And I am willing to bet pretty good money that she’s the same one you pulled out of that car.”

  Jake frowned. “How can you know that?”

  “Because part of her hair is burned off. And because she’s staring at the back of your head as if she’s waiting for you to turn around.”

  Jake turned, and there she was.

  He’d never seen her before the previous night. But he guessed she had to be a student at the school—maybe she’d transferred in. She was carrying a backpack with one strap over her shoulder, the other hanging loose.

  She was beautiful, even though a chunk of hair was missing from one side of her face, and there was a patch of red skin behind her ear where she must have been burned. Her eyes were a deep, tranquil blue. Looking at them made Jake feel—

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said back, too fast and too loud. He looked down at his shoes, then, thinking he’d made a mistake, back up at her face. She was looking at his shoes.

  His shoes were not that interesting.

  “Listen,” he said, “are you okay? That was a bad crash. And the fire—”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “They kept me up pretty late at the hospital monitoring my breathing, but then they said I didn’t even get a day off from school.”

  “That sucks!” Jake laughed.

  “Yeah,” she agreed.

  They nodded and smiled at each other for a while.

  “I don’t know what else to say,” she said, with a noise that could have been a laugh but didn’t quite make the cut.

  “No, I—I guess—no. I’m not very good at talking to girls. Not much practice,” he said, trying to explain. He would do anything to explain.

  She nodded without looking up. “Here’s some advice,” she said. “The best way to get a girl to talk to you, is to not tell her you’re no good at talking to girls. It makes us wonder what’s wrong with you.” Then she walked past him, as if she were going to her own homeroom, and that was it.

  He turned to one side and made a fist, thinking he would hit a locker hard enough, to make a sound loud enough, to deaden the roaring of the blood in his ears. He didn’t do it, though, because after a second she turned to look at him again. “Oh,” she said. “I thought of one thing to say, though.”

  “Yeah?” he asked.

  “Thank you,” she told him, and then disappeared around a corner of the hall.

  Chapter Three

  Jake never made it to homeroom that morning.

  Mr. Schneider met him at the door and told him instead to go see the guidance counselor. He gave Jake a hall pass to get there. Fulton High School was built on the plan of a wide rectangle of corridors surrounded by classrooms, one half of which faced the road into town and beyond that, the football stadium and the ball fields. The other half faced an enclosed gymnasium, an assembly hall that many people thought resembled a flying saucer in shape (it had been added in the 1960s by an architect who wished to break up the school’s otherwise entirely right angles), and a long thin extension called the teacher’s wing, devoid of classrooms and used mostly as administrative offices and teacher’s lounges.
The guidance office was at the far end of this wing, where a broad picture window looked out over an expanse of open Arizona desert and, in the far distance, a line of jagged mountains looming on the horizon.

  It took approximately ten minutes for Jake to walk from one end of the school to the other, but he did not see another human being in the hallways the entire time. This seemed odd, when he thought about it later, but not too odd—classes were in session, the vast majority of the schoool’s population busy either lecturing or being lectured too. Without a hall pass, no one was allowed in the hallways. Jake had such a pass but there was no one to show it to.

  He reached the end of the teacher’s wing and stood before the door marked Guidance in gold letters. Flyers and memos advertising college preparatory tutors and career aptitude testing covered most of the upper, glass portion of the door so that Jake could not see what lay in wait for him inside. He knocked, and when he was bid to enter, he did so.

  The room was just big enough to contain one large desk, currently covered in papers and files, and two chairs. Behind the desk sat Mr. Zuraw, who Jake had seen only once before standing in the background at a school-wide assembly, at the end of Jake’s freshman year. Mr. Zuraw had been introduced to the students as the newest member of the faculty without further explanation. Jake remembered his face only because of the way he had walked to the front of the stage, studied the student body with a cold and calculating expression as if sizing up their college potential en masse, and the strode off the stage even while the Principal was still talking. As if he hadn’t seen any reason to bother even with respectful silence, based on what he’d seen.

  Mr. Zuraw’s expression hadn’t changed much. He had frizzy grey hair, the color of new iron, that stuck out slightly from either side of his head and went thin at the top. His lips were almost colorless. He wore a three piece suit—not a sweater vest and tie, not a buttoned-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, like most teachers at Fulton. He wore a three piece navy blue serge suit that made him look like a businessman. The collar was buttoned very tightly around his throat. He also wore a pair of thin, black leather gloves, which made him look like he had some place to go and only had a few seconds to waste on this appointment.