‘Yes, sir.’ I stuck a hand out. ‘Landon Maxfield.’

He shook my hand in a remarkably bone-crunching grip. ‘W. W. Hendrickson,’ he said, his local drawl shortening his initials to dubyah dubyah. ‘Needin’ a job, are ya? You don’t wanna work in this crap place.’ He shot a look at the manager, who reddened. ‘No offence, Billy.’

I got the feeling that Bill Zuckerman hadn’t gone by Billy in at least twenty years. He cleared his throat and struggled not to scowl, failing. ‘Uh, none taken, Mr Hendrickson.’

‘Hmph,’ Hendrickson said. ‘Come outside a minute, Landon. Talk to me.’ He motioned and I followed. ‘You work on the boat with your dad, I thought?’ We walked up to his truck and he leaned an elbow on the bed’s side.

I nodded. ‘Yes, sir. But I plan to go to college in a little over a year, and I’ll need work experience with a reference.’

‘Plan to scoot on outta town like yer dad did, do ya?’ he asked, but I couldn’t detect any malice in his tone.

‘Yes, sir. I plan to study engineering.’

His bushy brows elevated. ‘Ah, now that’s a levelheaded thing worth studyin’. I never could understand how your dad needed so much schoolin’ to study somethin’ done with smoke and mirrors.’

I pinned my lips together, knowing better than to try to explain my father’s multiple economics degrees to guys like Mr Hendrickson.

‘I’ll get to the point. I’m needin’ a new assistant. Before you jump at the opportunity, realize that you’ll probably get zapped a time or two afore you learn which wires to avoid. And I’ll be sending you into dark, hundred-and-twenty-degree attics where you’ll sweat buckets, get fibreglass in yer knees and ass, and may have the occasional critter skittering across your feet.’ He laughed, a near-silent snuffling sound through his nose. ‘I had one assistant go clean through a client’s ceilin’ because of a hissin’ possum. Landed in the middle of the livin’ room, luckily.’

Luckily? ‘Um, okay.’ I didn’t know what to say or ask.

‘Pay’s a couple bucks above minimum wage. No drinkin’, smokin’, hanky-panky with clients’ daughters – feel like I gotta mention that, you bein’ a looker like yer dad and also, I been there before.’

My face heated.

‘I assume you know all about computers and such?’ At my nod, he said, ‘Good. I could use some help with gettin’ my books on there. Come up to the twenty-first century afore it’s over. So. Whaddaya think?’

I got a job, I thought.

‘Well, Mr Maxfield. Here we are – the beginning of your senior year. I must admit, I never thought you’d make it this far.’

I stared at my principal and thought, No shit. Especially when you did everything in your power to make that true. Still, the brass balls of her to call me into her office just to say this to my face couldn’t mean anything good. She thought she was above everything and everyone, and within the confines of this school, she was right.

Nine months, I told myself. Nine months and I was out of here. I wouldn’t even pause to shake the dust off my boots.

So I said nothing. Merely returned her beady-eyed gaze with a flinty one of my own. She studied a slip of paper with my schedule printed on it. ‘I see you’ve signed up for calculus and physics.’ She glanced at me over the glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. ‘How … ambitious of you.’ Lips pressed closed, brows somewhat elevated, eyelids lowered – her entire expression displayed her scepticism that I was capable of the change I’d begun in the last few weeks of the previous year.

I wanted to flick those glasses and that condescension off her face.

Instead of responding, I repeated my mantra silently – the tenets I’d learned in my first month of martial arts, last spring: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, indomitable spirit. Often, the functions of these blurred together – because each was interwoven through the others. If I failed one, I could fail them all. What good was integrity if I had no self-control?

So there I sat, waiting for Ingram to be done with me.

She wasn’t pleased with my muteness – that much was all too apparent. Her thin lips twisted. ‘I understand one of our star students assisted you in passing your classes last spring.’

Ah. Pearl.

Aside from the day she checked me for a punctured lung, Pearl Frank and I hadn’t ever spoken outside of Melody’s presence or Can you pass this forward classroom-type chatter. I almost didn’t respond when she touched my arm in the library last spring and asked, ‘Landon, are you okay?’

With six weeks of school remaining to learn the thirty weeks of stuff I’d failed to absorb plus the new material, I was going under. But I had no desire to confess that to Melody’s best friend, who also happened to be the smartest person in my graduating class.

I blinked and rolled my shoulders, popping my neck. ‘Yeah. Fine.’ I’d been stuck in a hair-clenching position for the entire hour of study hall, staring at a section in my chemistry textbook.

Her brows creasing, she gestured at the open text. ‘Why are you looking at that? We went over Dalton’s Law last six weeks.’

I shut the book, scowling and standing. ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t get it then, I don’t get it now.’ I loosened my grimace and shrugged. ‘No big deal.’

Pearl’s gaze missed very little. ‘But you’re studying it now because …’