The Fake Out by Sharon M. Peterson
TWENTY-SEVEN
May I use your phone? I want to call God because an angel fell from Heaven.
—ELIZABETH F.
The following Monday, I was fighting with one of the computers that had been giving me fits for days. Yet another thing I needed to replace at the library. If Peter had anything to do with it, I might as well invest in some stone tablets and a chisel because that was about all I could afford.
“Please don’t tell me we got another virus.” I pounded on a couple of keys hoping something would happen. It did not.
“I could help you with that,” said a voice behind me.
I jumped in my seat. Standing behind me, I found a young kid, maybe seventeen, wearing khaki pants with creases down each leg and a button-down shirt that was tucked in. His dark hair was neatly parted and combed. A pair of round wire-framed glasses rested on his nose.
“Who are you?” I asked, standing.
“I’m sorry if I startled you, ma’am.” He held out a hand. “I’m Aidan Bustos. Mr. Stone said I was to report to the library today.”
Tentatively, I held out my hand to shake. “Right. You would be the kid who is here doing community service hours.”
With an almost inaudible sigh, he dropped his eyes and stared at the floor. He wasn’t quite as tall as me, and he was thin in that way teenage boys often are. “Yes, ma’am, that would be me.”
I kind of felt sorry for the kid, to be honest. He didn’t seem like he had it in him to do anything that would get him in trouble with the law.
I took a step back from the computer. “Do you think you really can fix this thing?”
“Absolutely.” He was already pulling out the chair and settling in. “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll get this all straightened out for you, ma’am.”
“Have at it. But if you call me ma’am one more time, we are gonna have problems. Mae is fine.”
He grinned up at me, and I caught a glimpse of a crooked tooth, which made him look like a little kid instead of the almost grown man he was. “Yes, ma— I mean, Mae.”
I’m not saying I trusted the kid, but he spent the rest of the afternoon doing exactly what I told him to do and doing it well. After fixing the computer (take that, blue screen of death), I showed him around the library, and he picked up on it pretty quickly. In short, Aidan Bustos was not what I expected at all.
By 4:30 p.m., and maybe for the first time in months, I was all caught up. Everything was where it needed to be. I was just waiting for the end of the day. So, I told Aidan he could work on homework, if he had any, for the next thirty minutes until we closed.
I answered a few emails, and when I walked by him next, I saw him bent over a calculus book. “That looks heavy-duty.”
He blushed. “I’m pretty good at math. It’s my favorite subject.”
“No kidding.”
I sat down across from him at the table and folded my arms. “What kind of grades do you get, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Aidan set his pencil down and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms in the same way I had. A spark of interest flashed in his eyes. “I was on track to be valedictorian at my old school.”
“What happened?”
“I did something I wasn’t supposed to do. But I’m not sorry I did it.” He looked me dead in the eye when he said it, too. I liked this kid.
I shook my head slowly. “I won’t ask you for specifics. But I will ask if you got in trouble because someone got hurt.”
Aidan picked up his pencil and started writing again. “Nobody got injured, if that’s what you’re asking. But the right people got what they deserved.”
I know I said I wouldn’t ask him what he had done, but the question was still on the tip of my tongue. And I probably would have asked him point-blank except that was when my cell phone dinged with a notification.
My heart did this silly little half-beat it did these days whenever I heard that notification. Because that notification almost always meant I’d gotten a text from Chris. I liked getting texts from Chris.
I was kind of disgusted with myself.
But it wasn’t from Chris. It was from Piper, his publicist. And it was one sentence:
We need to talk.