Trent Reedy - Divided We Fall

Mr. Cretis had two rules for most of his classes. The first was safety. The second was that he would help us with nearly any project we wanted to work on as long as we kept busy and tried to figure out how to do it ourselves first. He’d taught me all sorts of different cuts, wood joints, and finishing techniques. He was a cool guy.

“Danny!” Mr. Cretis yelled.

Except when he was mad. I shut off the belt sander, checked to make sure I’d been wearing my safety goggles, and looked up at him.

“Danny, Mr. Morgan just called on the intercom. You’re supposed to go to the office.”

I frowned, wiping some powdery sawdust from the hair on my arms. Ms. Pierce, the school secretary, almost always called people to the office on the intercom. If the principal himself had called, this was serious. “Right now?” I asked.

“He said ‘immediately.’”

“Sounds like trouble, dude.” Dylan started the drill and cranked the lever to bore down into a wooden block.

I shrugged, dropped my goggles on the table, and left the shop, trying to guess what this was all about. Morgan and me had tangled before, mostly after I’d shot my mouth off at some teacher or for peeling out in the Beast in the school parking lot. But with everything that had happened this year, I hadn’t given anybody trouble here at school.

The school’s shop was down a weird little back hallway. As soon as I entered the main hall, someone slammed into me and shoved me back the way I’d come. It happened so fast, I couldn’t see who it was, but I pushed him off me and cocked my fist back, ready to go.

“Dude, chill,” Sweeney whispered, holding up his hands.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The bathroom door opened and Cal came out. “Hey, guys. What’s up?” The stench that rolled out of the bathroom after him was powerful.

I pulled my T-shirt up over my nose. “Damn it, Cal, what have you been eating ?”

“Quiet!” Sweeney hissed. “Come on, follow me.”

“I have to go to the office. Morgan called me,” I said. “What’s going on?”

Sweeney put a hand on each of our shoulders and led us back toward the shop. “I was in chorus, and you know how Mrs. Henderson hates using comms for our music, and says the glow from the screens looks bad during performances—”

“No, ’cause I’m not lame enough to take chorus,” Cal said.

“Shut the hell up!” Sweeney said. “All the girls are in chorus. How’s it lame to be getting all the girls? Anyway, Henderson tells me to go have some music copied in the office.” He stopped us outside the door to the shop, but kept looking back toward the main hall. “I get in there and there’s all these guys in dark suits. One flashed a badge, mentioned the FBI. He had a gun holstered under his jacket. They told Morgan to call you to the office.”

“Oh shit.” My stomach felt cold. “So much for things going back to normal.”

“It’s a setup, Danny,” Sweeney said. “They know.”

“Know what?” Now Cal was keeping watch down the hall.

“Later.” Sweeney pulled Cal back to us. “Right now, we gotta get out of here.”

“Maybe I should turn myself in,” I said. “Maybe I’ve been too chicken, you know. Selfish.”

“What did you do?” Cal asked.

Sweeney shot me a look like, Can I tell him? I nodded. “You have to swear you won’t tell anyone about this,” Sweeney said. “That shooting in Boise? The one that’s been all over the news? Wright was there. He was hit in the face with a rock and his gun accidentally went off.”

“Whoa,” said Cal. “Did you—”

“I don’t know,” I said, knowing what he was about to ask. “All I know is I only fired one round. Total accident.” That gave me an idea. “Maybe if I go and explain that to them, they’ll—”

“No way,” said Sweeney. “You give yourself up now, within an hour you’ll be on a flight to DC. Who knows if you’ll get a fair trial or even a trial at all? And do you even know if they’re after anyone else? What if you’re the only one they’ve identified?”

“It ain’t fair if you have to be punished and nobody else does,” Cal said.

We were wasting time. It didn’t take this long to walk from the shop to the office. They would have figured that out by now and come to check on us. “Okay, I can work out whether or not to turn myself in later. Right now, I have to get out of here. How many agents are there? Do you think I can get to the Beast?”

“We’re not taking the Beast. That gas hog will never outrun these guys. Here.” Sweeney flipped me his keys. “You’re a better driver. We’ll take the ’stang.”

“You guys aren’t coming with—”

“We’re in it together,” Sweeney said.

Cal gave me a light punch on the arm. “ ’Sides my dad, who’s always on the road, you guys are the only family I got. I’m coming with you. My dirt bike’s in the shop. We can go out through the garage door.”

“This is all kinds of jacked up,” I said.

“No shit,” Sweeney said.

We headed back into the shop. “Be cool,” I said. “Act like nothing’s up.”

Mr. Cretis looked up from the tape measure he’d taken to something Chase was working on. “Danny?”

“Oh, Mr. Morgan wanted us to move Cal’s bike.” I said quietly to Sweeney, “Get the door,” then louder to Mr. Cretis, “This will only take a second.”

“Why do the two of you need to help Cal?” said Mr. Cretis. “Eric, where are you supposed to be?”

Sweeney threw the garage door up. I let out a little breath of relief when there were no federal agents right behind it. Mr. Cretis put the tape measure down. “Danny, did you even go to the office? Mr. Morgan called down here again just now.”

Cal mounted the bike and started the engine. Sweeney climbed on behind him. That left only a very little bit of room for me. “Yeah, he probably wants us to hurry with the bike,” I said as I hopped on. Then I tapped Cal on the shoulder. “Go, dude, go!”

Cal eased the bike out through the door, then hooked a hard left and gunned it to speed down the back service road to the senior parking lot. “Damn, I forgot my helmet,” he shouted back to us.

It felt good to laugh. Helmets were the least of our problems. I kept checking all around us. A black car was parked halfway in the grass down the highway from the school. It might be trouble, might not. So far, though, we were in the clear. Cal pulled to the edge of the lot under a maple tree right next to Sweeney’s black Mustang.

I pressed the button to unlock the doors and rushed to the driver’s side. A car pulled up right behind us. If it was the FBI or whoever, they had us. I spun around to see Becca driving with JoBell in the passenger seat. They parked and stepped out of the car.

“You guys cutting class without us?” JoBell said.

“What are you two doing here?” Cal asked.

“We were volunteering over at the elementary,” said JoBell. “These cute little second graders were working on reading this story and—”

“What’s the matter?” Becca said.

I went to JoBell and kissed her, squeezing her close to me. If this went wrong, this might be the last time I could touch her. That alone was reason enough to run from these guys. “I gotta go.”

“What’s going on?” JoBell asked.

“Wright! Come on, dude!” Sweeney called from the passenger side of the Mustang.

I started toward the car, but JoBell held my hand. “Danny, you have to tell me. Please.”

The school door opened and three men in dark suits rushed out. One of them had drawn a revolver.

“We’re on the run from the FBI,” I said.

“Be serious,” said Becca.

I pointed at the federal agents, who had spotted us and were running our way. “I am serious. Bye.”