Con Academy

by Joe Schreiber

  “Many of our alumni have already made some extremely generous pledges,” she says, “including one special pledge from a very special individual that we all know very well.” Turning to the stands, she flicks the hair from her eyes. “Brandt Rush has graciously volunteered to donate fifty thousand dollars.”

  Applause. Cheers.

  I turn to stare at Andrea again.

  Just in time to see her lean in toward me to whisper in my ear.

  “Game over, Shea,” she murmurs, still smiling. “You lose.”

  Twenty-Five

  “WHOA,” THE TWENTY-SOMETHING GUY BEHIND THE monitor says admiringly. It’s Iron Mike Mullen, one of the smalltimers that Uncle Roy brought up from Boston. The screen in front of him reads: Connaughton Alumni for Ebeye. “These people already have their own website.”

  I don’t say anything. I’ve got my books spread out on the floor of our rented office space in Lowell, and for some reason that even I don’t understand, I’m trying to study for a U.S. Diplomacy midterm while everybody else scrambles to find a way to salvage the con. Roy’s sitting in the corner, stewing in a robust marinade of his own silence. He’s got a good reason for being furious with me. I wasn’t up-front with him about my bet with Andrea, and now, within a week, we’re going to lose everything.

  “Why can’t we just go ahead with the scam?” Dad asks him.

  “Because she’ll tip off the mark,” Roy says abruptly. “Haven’t you been paying attention?” He swivels to glare at me. “That was the deal, wasn’t it, William? The part that you didn’t feel compelled to tell us? First one to fifty thousand wins? If she gets the Rush kid to pay out first, she ruins it for us.”

  “So what?” Dad shrugs and glances at Rhonda, who’s sitting across from him, painting her fingernails. “So we take the girl out of the equation.”

  “Take her out . . . ?” I look at him. “Wait a second, what are you talking about? You can’t—”

  “Look,” Dad says. “Let’s get something straight. I know you have a soft spot for this girl, but I’m not allowing your little high school crush ruin our shot at two million bucks. If you think I’m going to let that happen, you’re reading all the wrong books.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with—”

  “I don’t care. I’m just saying, we take care of her.”

  Uncle Roy gets up and walks over to Dad. “What are you saying?”

  “We send her packing,” Dad says. “This is our deal. She wants to keep trying to fleece these millionaires for some made-up charity for a bunch of orphans, then that’s her thing, but we’re going to finish this.”

  “She’ll tip off Brandt.”

  Dad shakes her head. “Then we don’t give her that chance. We shut her down. Hard.”

  I stand up. “No.”

  “No?” He’s getting that look now, darkness gathering across his face, falling over his eyes like the shadow of an object dropping fast. Seeing him like this gives me a bright coppery taste in my mouth that I associate with early childhood, the old familiar panic of powerlessness.

  “Nobody’s getting hurt,” I say. “This isn’t that kind of deal.”

  Dad moves right up close to me and stands directly in front of my face. Whiskey fumes stream invisibly from his nostrils. Everybody else in the office has stopped what he’s doing to watch us. When Dad speaks, the words are little more than a snarl.

  “Listen to me, junior. I taught you everything you know about the long con. We’re all here because of what you promised us.”

  “No,” I say, “you’re here because you’re a drunk and you’re too irresponsible to make it on your own. I didn’t want you here. Ever since you showed up, all you’ve done is ruin everything.”

  “Easy, boy.” Dad’s voice is ominously quiet. “Don’t say things that you’re gonna regret when we get back home to Trenton.”

  “I’m never going back to Trenton,” I say, and for a long second, the words just hang there.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” My heart is pounding and I force myself to stand my ground. “I can fix this situation myself. I worked too hard to get where I am now. This is my life. I’m not going back.”

  Dad shoves me backwards. I don’t see it coming, and the thrust propels me into an empty desk, where I whack my skull on the arm of a chair before hitting the ground. I start to shake off the pain, but Dad is lunging again, landing on top of me with his fist cocked back, and it’s only because of Uncle Roy pulling him off that I don’t catch his knuckles across the bridge of my nose.

  Roy’s old, but he’s tough. He tosses Dad aside like a sack of dirty laundry. Dad starts to stand up, and Roy fixes him with a look that says: Try it.

  “You come at me like that again, Roy,” Dad says in a low voice, “you better bring a gun.”

  “Shut your cake hole,” Uncle Roy says. “Nobody’s doing anything with guns.” He pronounces that last word with the disdain of a man who regards such things as the last resort of the desperate and incompetent, guys too knuckleheaded to handle themselves any other way. Pausing to collect himself, Roy tucks in his shirt, pulls out a comb, and runs it through his hair. “Okay, now, listen. Everybody just breathe. We all know the situation isn’t optimal. That doesn’t mean it’s hopeless.” He points at me. “William, your dad’s right about one thing. You got us into this, you’re going to get us out.”

  “Damn straight,” Dad says.

  Roy holds up a hand. “Today’s Monday. Now, my understanding is that the Rush kid isn’t writing his fifty-grand check for the orphans of Ebeye until Saturday, am I right?”

  I nod. “That’s right.”

  “So all we have to do is get him back here in this office, cash in hand, sometime before then.”

  “He wants another ten-thousand-dollar trial run,” I say.

  Uncle Roy shakes his head. “That’s impossible—we’re out of time. You need to convince him that if he’s going to take down McDonald, then he needs to place that big bet before Saturday.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Hey, you’re a smart kid,” Uncle Roy says cheerfully, gesturing at the textbooks and notes I’ve got scattered around the floor. “You’ll figure something out.”

  Twenty-Six

  I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING FEELING EXHAUSTED. I DIDN’T sleep well at all—I know it’s my imagination, but I swear I can feel Dr. Melville’s counterfeit Bible tucked under my box spring like some fractured fairy tale version of the princess and the pea. Imaginary or not, the lump wouldn’t bother me so much if it didn’t remind me of Gatsby, who I haven’t heard from since the lacrosse game. Meanwhile, it’s seven a.m., and I’ve got a U.S. Diplomacy midterm in an hour that I couldn’t feel less prepared for. I grab a coffee from the Starbucks in the arts center, take a big gulp of French roast, and head off to class.

  The exam goes even worse than I had feared. From the moment I look down at the essay question on Wilson’s Fourteen Points, my mind goes blank. People around me are already scribbling fiercely, the room full of the sound of scratching pencils, while I spend an hour staring at the empty page, wondering how on earth I ever thought I could fit in here.

  With five minutes left on the clock, I toss the blue book onto the teacher’s desk and walk out the door.

  I’m sitting in the dining hall, staring out the window, when Gatsby takes a seat next to me.

  “Will, we need to talk.”

  “Look,” I say, “it’s okay. You don’t need to say anything.”

  “Just let me explain, okay?”

  I look at her and nod.

  “I’ve never been invited to Homecoming before,” Gatsby says. “When you invited me, I was really excited. I had been hoping you’d ask me.”

  “So . . . ?”

  She closes her eyes, opens them again. “There was this boy back on the Vineyard. His name was Del James. He was a baseball player, and I had this huge crush on him. We had this middle school Valentine’s Day dance, and he

invited me. At first I couldn’t believe it—it seemed too good to be true. My friends all told me that I had to say yes.”

  I don’t say anything. I can already see where this is going and I don’t want to hear it, but it’s too late.

  “I got a new dress and new shoes,” Gatsby says, “and my dad paid for me to get my hair done at this fancy salon in Boston. I remember looking in the mirror and feeling so grown up.” She stops and swallows and looks up at me. “But when I got to the dance, Del just looked at me and started laughing. He told me he’d only done it on a dare. His friends had bet him that he wouldn’t ask out the ugliest girl in the class. They all thought it was hilarious. The worst part—” Gatsby stops and takes in a little breath. “He convinced my own friends to encourage me to go. Everybody was in on it except for me.”

  “Gatsby,” I say, and my mouth feels as dry as sand, “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” she says, “it’s not your fault. As I was getting ready the other night, I just kept thinking, What if it happens again?” She reaches over and touches my hand. “But you’re different, Will. I see that.”

  I can’t look at her.

  “I know how well things are going for you,” she says. “With Rush making that donation to your orphanage, and all the increased awareness that’s going on about the situation in Ebeye, you’ve got to be so excited.”

  “It’s not that big a deal.”

  “Yes it is.” She holds up her hand to stop me from interrupting. “Will, look at me. You’ve seen poverty and privation that none of us can imagine. You grew up in the poorest area of the Pacific, and your parents literally gave their lives to serve others. You’ve got every right to be bitter and discouraged, but instead you’re decent and optimistic and fair. When I think about it, you’re the perfect antidote to the Brandt Rushes of the world.”

  “Yeah,” I mumble. “It’s great.”

  “It is,” she says. “And okay, I know Andrea’s the one who initiated the fundraiser, and it’s exactly the sort of project that she’d undertake just to pad her college application, but with the money that’s coming in to help your island—”

  “It’s not my island.”

  “Well, yes, obviously it’s not your island, but it is your home. You grew up there, and—”

  “You’re not listening to me,” I say, a lot more sharply than I had intended. “It’s not my home.”

  Across the table, Gatsby regards me peculiarly. “What are you saying?”

  The silence between us stretches out for an unreal amount of time. Far off, I hear the clink of silverware and ice. Deep inside, I can already feel something rising into my throat. It’s sharp and angular and unpleasant, and that’s when I realize that it’s the truth. A cowardly voice pipes up from inside me.

  If you tell her this, you’ll ruin everything.

  Too late for that now.

  “What if I told you”—I take in a breath and let it out, making myself look her in the eye—“that I wasn’t really from some island in the Pacific?”

  And everything stops. Gatsby blinks and shakes her head a little. “What?”

  “What if I told you that I’m really just a kid from New Jersey, and this whole thing about my parents being missionaries and dying in a plane crash was just a story that I made up so that I could go to school here?”

  “I don’t understand.” Now Gatsby’s just staring at me. “You’re saying you’re not from the Marshall Islands?”

  “I’m from Trenton, New Jersey. My real name is Billy Humbert. This is the third school that I’ve sneaked into in two years.”

  “You’re from . . . New Jersey,” she repeats slowly, like she’s just trying to get the facts straight in her own mind. “How did you . . .”

  “I forged my transcripts. Faked my letters of recommendation. Hacked into the school’s database and gave myself a whole new history.” I pause. “Gatsby, look, I know it was wrong. I never wanted to lie to you about all of this, I swear.”

  She’s already pushing herself back, standing up, leaving her tray on the table. She doesn’t say anything. The look on her face is the worst part. The way that she just keeps staring at me.

  “Gatsby, wait.”

  But she’s walking away. I go after her, following her out of the dining hall. “I can explain everything,” I say, but that’s just another lie, because no amount of explanation is going to excuse what I did or help her understand why, and it’s far too late anyway.

  Running around the corner, I almost collide with George the Kant-reading security guard.

  “Shea,” he says. “Come with me.”

  “Not right now.”

  “Right now.” He reaches down and takes hold of my arm. “Dr. Melville wants to talk to you. He says it’s important.”

  Twenty-Seven

  I’D NEVER BEEN UP TO THE PRESIDENT’S OFFICE. THE OUTER reception area is a large, two-hundred-year-old drawing room on the third floor of Connaughton’s administration building. It’s absolutely silent up here and smells so much like old money that you’d almost expect the hallway to be wallpapered with it. Rich brocade carpeting covers the hardwood floors, and stained-glass windows on both walls depict the illustrious history of the school from 1866 onward. When George leads me down the length of the room, I see Dr. Melville’s secretary glance up and nod.

  “He’s inside,” she says. “Go on in.”

  I look at George for some hint of what I’m walking into, although I suppose I already know. George, for his part, shows me no glimpse of what’s going on behind those pale blue, philosophy-reading eyes.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Without a word, George opens the door and I step through it.

  The inner office smells like pipe tobacco, rich and faintly cherry-scented. Its walls are lined with bookshelves, row upon row of dusty leather-bound hardcovers, the complete works of Shakespeare to John Updike to whatever guys such as Dr. Melville read when they’ve exhausted the classics. Off to my right, a fire roars in a huge fieldstone hearth, with Dr. Melville’s dog, Chaucer, sprawled on the rug in front of it, paws twitching from the depths of some rabbit-chasing dream.

  “Mr. Humbert,” Dr. Melville says. “That is your real name, isn’t it?” He’s seated behind a varnished oak slab of a desk that looks only slightly smaller than the state of Rhode Island, his broad shoulders and imperious head backlighted by the open window behind him. He points to a chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Sit.”

  “Sir—” I begin, because it seems like a decent place to start.

  Dr. Melville holds up one hand. “Not a word. Not unless you have an attorney present. I assure you, you’re going to need one.”

  I don’t say anything. I just look over at Dr. Melville’s dog stretched in front of the fire, dozing without the slightest notion of what’s going on. Right now I’d happily trade places with him and spend the rest of my life at the end of a leash.

  “After what happened on Saturday,” Dr. Melville says, nodding at a stack of documents piled on his desk, “I started to look more closely at your transcripts. And your letters of recommendation. And your life. I’m sure you won’t be surprised by the ease with which your web of lies began to unravel.”

  I don’t say anything. I’ve been instructed to stay quiet and I’m determined to follow orders, at least in this one small aspect.

  “What you’ve done here at Connaughton over the past weeks,” Dr. Melville says, “is an embarrassment to yourself, to the board of directors, and to the reputation of this school. In my wildest dreams I can’t imagine the circumstances under which you thought this was a good idea.” He rises to his feet so fast that he sends his swivel chair rolling backwards, and it’s the first time that I see just how angry he is. “Are you delusional? Do you have any idea the magnitude and implications of what you’ve done?”

  I open my mouth and close it again, then reconsider. He seems to really want an answer. “Sir, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry. How wonderful.” Dr. Melville glares at me thunderously from across the desk. “Thank you for that. You’ve humiliated me and left a permanent stain on the reputation of one of the finest preparatory schools in the country, and you’re sorry.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “The police are on their way.” He drops back into the chair and plants his elbows on the desk. “They’ll be here in fifteen minutes. I’ve arranged for them to meet you outside the front gates, which is a small mercy, sparing us the additional indignity of seeing a Connaughton student led away in handcuffs.” He looks at his watch. “I recommend that you spend the intervening time getting your things together.”

  “Sir . . .”

  “Just out of my own morbid curiosity,” he says, “exactly how long did you expect to keep up this charade? Obviously long enough to swindle our alumni into funding this fictitious orphanage of yours. Are you aware that they’ve already donated more than eighty thousand dollars to your so-called charity? Eighty thousand, with no sign of slowing down. Tell me, did you plan on running off with the money yourself or splitting it with Ms. Dufresne?”

  Andrea—I hadn’t even thought about her. Suddenly my tongue feels like it’s glued to the roof of my mouth. This is my opportunity to rat her out, to expose her for the fraud that she is, and we’ll both be thrown out of Connaughton. All I have to do is tell the truth and she’s as dead as I am.

  “Sir, Andrea Dufresne . . .” I swallow, looking down at the floor and back up at him. “She had nothing to do with it. She thinks I was telling the truth. This is all my fault.”

  Dr. Melville stares at me for a long moment, as if he doesn’t know what to do with this information. Then he points to the door. Over on the rug before the fire, I see Chaucer lift his head ever so slightly as I pass, one eyebrow cocked to make sure he’s not missing anything, before dropping his head back down and returning to doggy dreamland.

  “Pack your bags, Mr. Humbert. Get out of my sight.”

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