Adam’s momentum is building. He’s trending all over Nixon. He’s so damn close to winning, and now he has to press pause.
So he searches for a way to keep himself in the game.
Stay relevant.
Win.
He racks his brain and comes up with nothing, until—
(a week before exams start)
—he figures it out.
173.
Physics class.
Powers—
(remember him?)
—is promising his exam will Kick. Your. Ass.
Everyone’s terrified.
Even Sara Bryant.
“I can’t afford to flunk this exam,” she tells Adam. “My dad’s going to cut off my credit card. I’m so fucked, Adam.”
Adam looks at her. “Maybe I can un-fuck you.”
Sara makes a face.
“You know what I mean,” Adam says. “Maybe I can make this test easier.”
“How?” Sara says. “It’s not like you can write the thing for me.”
“No,” Adam says, “but maybe I can work a little Pizza Man magic.”
174.
“A hundred bucks to anyone who can get me Mr. Powers’s physics exam,” Adam tells his team.
(His team being:
Wayne,
Devon,
Lisa.)
His team stares at him. “Are you serious?”
Adam pulls a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet. “Plus half of whatever we can get for it on the open market,” he tells them. “Who’s in?”
“You’re out of your mind,” Lisa says.
“So you’re not interested?” Adam says.
“I didn’t say that,” Lisa says. “I want two hundred bucks.”
“Two hundred’s more like it,” Wayne says. “This is risky.”
“Two hundred bucks,” Adam tells them. “And I need it this week.”
175.
A couple nights later, Wayne calls. “I have an idea.”
“What about Lisa and Devon?” Adam asks.
“They’re out,” Wayne says. “They think it’s impossible. I think they’re wrong.”
“So do it,” Adam tells him. “Test out your theory.”
“I need help,” Wayne says. “If I’m right about this, you won’t just get the physics exam. You’ll get every exam in the school.”
“Holy shit,” Adam says. “Really?”
“Really,” Wayne says. He explains his idea. It’s decent. It’s insane. It’s risky as hell, but it’s definitely workable.
And it will make the Pizza Man a legend at Nixon if Adam can pull it off.
A god.
Adam won’t ever have to hustle again. No more homework, no booze, no fake IDs. Just coasting on that Pizza Man reputation. That Hall of Fame status.
“I’ll help you,” he tells Wayne. “But we’d better do it quick.”
176.
Later that night, Adam meets Wayne in the empty parking lot outside Nixon. Wayne shows up in all black, like a cat burglar. “That’s not suspicious at all,” Adam tells him.
“I don’t want to get seen,” Wayne says, pulling a dark ski mask over his face. He hands another to Adam.
Adam points to the school. Every light in the building is burning. “You should have worn white,” Adam says.
There was a basketball game in the gym earlier. The gym doors are still unlocked. Adam and Wayne slip inside.
The gym is way dark. It’s like walking in space. They cling to the walls until they reach the far side, the door into the school. Inch it open and peer out.
The hallway is lit up bright, but it’s empty. Somewhere in the distance, a radio is playing classic rock. Adam looks at Wayne. “Where now?”
“Janitor’s office,” Wayne says. In the light he looks pale, terrified. Like he’s going to wet himself, or have second thoughts, or both. Adam figures he can’t blame him. His heart’s pounding, too.
Adam stands watch while Wayne ducks into the janitor’s office. Pictures the janitor coming around the corner, finding them both. Freaks himself right out.
After an eternity, Wayne comes out with a key ring. Grins at Adam. “Knew it was in here.”
Adam looks at him.
Wayne shrugs. “I saw that old janitor, Hawksley, doing something in here when I was walking past. He had a spare key ring on the wall.”
“Okay,” Adam says. “So what now?”
Wayne grins. “I’ve been shadowing Powers,” he says. “Trying to figure out where he’s stashing the exam. Finally figured it out.”
“Yeah,” Adam says. “Go on.”
“I tailed him to the administrative office,” Wayne says. “Turns out he locks up the exams in a little side room by the secretaries. They all stash exams there, every teacher in the school.”
Adam looks at him. Looks down the empty hall toward the administrative office. Imagines walking out with every exam in the school. If he can somehow get them photocopied, he’ll have it fucking made.
“Okay,” he tells Wayne. “Get us into the office.”
177.
(In the back of his mind, Adam’s already thinking this is a bullshit idea.
He’s already regretting even bringing Wayne here.
There are two, maybe three janitors in the building. Any one of them could make Adam and Wayne at any moment.
There’s a stack of exams in the administrative office, but even if Adam takes them, the teachers are going to notice, right?
I mean, nobody’s going to not notice a bunch of missing exams.
So.
It’s a stupid plan to begin with.
The whole idea is stupid.
Adam knows he should just turn around and walk out, abort the whole thing. Let Sara Bryant fail her exam.
Let Sara Bryant’s dad cut up her credit card.
Hell, it’s not Adam’s concern.
Adam knows this.
But.
What if he can photocopy that physics exam somehow? Would be the biggest win of his life. The biggest win in school history.
Would be god mode times infinity.
So Adam follows Wayne down the hall to the administrative office. Adam knows it’s a bad idea.
Adam follows through with it anyway.)
178.
Adam and Wayne crouch in the hall across from the office. There’s a hallway running perpendicular to the hall they just snuck down. There’s a janitor at the far end of that hallway, whistling—
(off-key)
—and working a mop. Adam and Wayne watch him for a minute. Then Adam looks at Wayne. “Now or never, man.”
Wayne looks at Adam like a raccoon looks at a car on the interstate.
“Forget it,” Adam says. “Give me the keys.”
Adam takes the keys. Bolts across to the office doors and starts trying keys in the lock. The ring has about a million keys on it. Adam keeps fumbling. Finally, something fits.
Adam glances back at Wayne. Wayne nods. Adam nods. Adam turns the door handle and pushes it inward.
Immediately, something beeps inside—
(shit)
—and Adam looks up and sees a little flashing red light in the ceiling as whatever it was that beeped . . .
beeps again.
(Shit.)
Across the hall, Wayne is gesturing. Urgently. Like, Get the hell out of there frantic. Adam ducks inside the dark office and closes the door, quick. The beeping continues. It’s getting louder.
(SHIT.)
The office is dark. Adam feels his way around the secretaries’ desks to the little room where the exams are supposed to be. Jimmies the door and ducks in just as the office lights come on.
“Hello?”
Hawksley, the janitor. Adam waits in the room—
(it’s still dark, thank god)
—while Hawksley fiddles with the alarm. It stops beeping. The office is silent. Adam doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe.
“Hello?” Hawksley starts aroun
d the secretaries’ desks. He’s coming toward Adam’s little room. Adam backs into the darkness. Navigates by touch and sheer panic alone. Finds a doorknob. Turns it, slips through the doorway and back into the light. Back into Wayne.
“Holy crap.” Wayne’s hyperventilating. “Come on, man, let’s go.”
They’re standing in the main hallway. Adam’s come out a back entrance. Down the hall is the gym and the school doors and freedom.
Adam glances back into the office. Hawksley’s not in the little room yet.
And they’ve come this far.
“Wait.” Adam pulls away from Wayne and ducks back into the little room. The light from the hallway spills in, and Adam can see filing cabinets, tables, stacks of paper. He rifles through, desperate.
(Come on.)
Hawksley pushes open the door. Sees Adam. “What the hell?”
Adam finds a file folder. Mr. Powers, it reads. Final Exams—First Semester.
Adam reaches in. Grabs an exam off the top of the stack and books it for the hallway. For Wayne. For the exit.
They run.
Hawksley calls out behind them. They ignore him. Bolt down the hallway and burst out through a fire door and into the parking lot, the darkness. Keep running, until they’re off school property by a solid five blocks, ducked into an alley, hands on their knees, panting for breath.
“Did he see us?” Adam says.
“How should I know?” Wayne says. “You’re the one who had to go back there.”
“I couldn’t leave without at least trying,” Adam tells him. He brandishes the exam paper. “We’re going to be gods.”
Wayne looks up. Looks at the paper. Grins, wide, like in that instant he sees himself in the future. God status attained. Popularity. Girls. Party invites.
Everything.
Then Wayne’s smile fades. He squints at the exam paper. “Oh crap.”
Adam flips the page over. Sees why Wayne stopped smiling. Final Exam, the paper reads. Mr. Powers, Applied Science, Grade 10.
Wayne looks at Adam. “So, um,” he says, “do I still get the two hundred bucks?”
179.
Nixon is chaos. Mr. Powers looks exhausted. Wayne looks like he’s chained to a time bomb. There are cops in the vice principal’s office. It’s Nixon on lockdown.
The vice principal makes an announcement. “As you may have heard, we had an incident at Nixon last night. A student—or group of students—broke into the administrative office and stole one of next week’s exams.”
He pauses, and you can hear cheering and applause from every classroom.
“This may sound like a joke,” the VP says, “but the perpetrators will be tracked down. Justice will be served. Moreover, the exams they’ve stolen will be redesigned. They’ve jeopardized their academic careers for nothing.”
The VP urges anyone with information to step forward. Encourages the perpetrators—
(Adam and Wayne)
—to make it easy on themselves. Then he’s gone. There’s a moment of silence. Then more cheers.
“Hot damn,” someone says. “The balls on those kids.”
“Fucking celebrities,” Paul Nolan says.
“Superstars.”
“Gods.”
Sara Bryant grins at Adam. “How much would we have to pay you to swipe the physics exam, Pizza Man?”
Adam looks at her. Looks around the classroom. Knows every kid in the school would worship the ground he walks on if he copped to the break-in.
Knows it’s an automatic, first-ballot induction to the Badass Hall of Fame.
Adam wants to tell Sara how close he came. Wants to show the whole school just how badass the Pizza Man really is. But he knows he’d be expelled if word got around. He doesn’t quite have the balls to do it.
He just grins at Sara instead. “More than you’ve got, Sara,” he says. “Way more.”
180.
“Can you believe it?” Victoria asks Adam. “Who would try something that stupid?”
Adam shrugs. “I dunno, I think it’s kinda cool.”
“Kinda cool?” Victoria stares at him. “Adam, it’s cheating. It doesn’t accomplish anything.”
“Yeah, but it’s badass,” Adam says. “You have to admit, it’s, like, legendary.”
“What does that even mean?” Victoria shakes her head. “It’s stupid. Those kids will spend their whole lives regretting it if they get caught.”
“Or maybe they’ll be gods,” Adam says.
“To a bunch of high school kids?” Victoria says. “If that’s what you want out of your life, sure, I guess it’s all worth it. You can be a high school legend who has to pump gas because no university will take your cheating ass, but at least you’re legendary, right?”
“Anyway,” Adam says, “I doubt they’ll even get caught. I heard the janitor didn’t even see their faces.”
181.
“What do you want to be when you grow up, anyway?” Victoria asks Adam.
They’re sprawled out in her living room now, pretending to study.
(Her parents are on the morning shift, and it’s afternoon now.
Her dad’s watching TV and
her mom’s in the kitchen, and
all Adam can think about is how sexy Victoria looks in that tight shirt she’s wearing.
How much he wants to . . .
you know.)
“Have you started looking at colleges yet?” Victoria says. “I want to go to Stanford, but my dad wants me to stay close to home. He says it’s expensive, but I can probably get a scholarship or something, right?”
Adam looks at her. Adam shrugs. “I mean, I guess so,” he says.
(It’s not like Adam’s ever really thought about college before. It’s not like he ever had the grades, or the money, or the motivation.
Thanks to this homework thing, though, Adam has the grades.
(#FringeBenefitNumberOne)
He has a steady source of income.
(#FringeBenefitNumberTwo)
And hell, if college is anything like high school, maybe he can be a god there, too.
So maybe there’s something to this college idea.)
182.
“Adam?”
Adam blinks. Snaps back to reality. “Sorry?”
“What are you going to take in college?” Victoria says. “I think I want to study marine biology.”
“I don’t know,” Adam tells her. “Something that makes a lot of money.”
“Money?” Victoria frowns. “Money isn’t everything, Adam. You should do what you like.”
Easy for you to say, Adam thinks. Your dad didn’t get laid off. He shrugs. “I just want to be rich,” he says. “So I won’t be a loser.”
“You’re not a loser.” Victoria sits down beside him. Gives him a look. “You work so hard all the time, like you’re constantly trying to prove you’re somebody else.”
She kisses him. “The people who really matter don’t care how much money you have, Adam, or whether or not you have a million Facebook friends or if you’re a nerd. They just care that you’re a decent guy. That’s all I care about.”
“Yeah,” Adam says. “I guess so.”
He kisses her back. He lets her believe what she wants to believe. Deep down, though, he knows Victoria wouldn’t be so sure of herself if she’d ever been poor. If she’d ever not been popular.
If she’d ever been called . . .
a loser.
183.
Adam dreams about Rob Thigpen. Dreams about Sam.
About the accident.
A freak play in the Nixon end. Sam’s going for the puck. Some big Nixon douchebag nails him from behind, hard.
Sam hits the boards weird.
Sam never walks again.
(And Adam Higgs is consigned to loserdom.)
Adam wakes up hating Rob Thigpen.
(Hating all Thigpens.)
He’s too busy to make Rob Thigpen pay for it right now. Too focused on becoming a god.
Someday, though, Adam thinks.
Someday, Rob.
184.
Exams happen. Wayne still wanders the halls like a fugitive. Adam lies awake nights and prays Hawksley doesn’t make them.
Hawksley doesn’t. The chaos dies down. Exams begin and the whole ordeal is forgotten.
And the exams themselves?
Well.
It turns out writing an essay on The Grapes of Wrath five different ways is a pretty damn good way to learn The Grapes of Wrath. Adam knows the material. Every class. Knows it cold.
(#FringeBenefitNumberThree)
The gods, on the other hand?
No bueno.
Goes without saying. They spent half the term paying Adam to handle their courseload. How in the hell were they supposed to learn the material?
A couple weeks’ cramming can only do so much, man.
Still.
If you think that means Nixon’s A-list isn’t lining up to hire Adam back, first day of second semester, pal, you have another think coming.
185.
“Holy crap, I bombed that physics exam,” Sara Bryant tells Adam in economics, first day of classes.
(Adam switched out from art to econ before the semester. Figured he likes making money more than he likes painting sucky pictures, so . . .)
“Like, bombed it,” Sara says. “Afghanistan style. I thought my dad was going to ground me for life.”
“Crap,” Adam says. “Listen, if you think you’re better off without me this semester, I totally—”
“Are you kidding?” Sara stares at him. “Pizza Man, I need you, buddy. I need A-plusses this term, nothing lower.”
Every class. Every god. It’s the same story. A-plusses. Desperate times.
Pizza Man, we need you.
186.
Adam isn’t so sure about the A-plus idea. Every god in the school suddenly starts rolling high nineties? Somebody’s bound to get wise.
“So disguise it,” Sara Bryant tells him. “Make it untraceable. Jesus, Adam, what do we pay you for?”
How to Win at High School Page 12
