PART I

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It isn't the horrible thing he's done that bothers Abel, nor that he knows exactly why he did it, nor even that what began as the perfect plan frayed to tatters even before Mrs. Heizer chirped her whistle to end the last recess of the school year. No, what bothers Abel is that fate must always be so cruel.

Most of the last hour not spent watching the girl beside him on the bench or figuring what to tell his momma he has given over to this notion: how it is that things never seem to work out for him the way he envisions. That he now understands he was warned early this morning to simply leave Chris alone provides little comfort. But it's true — Abel was warned. The morning train had seventy-six cars. Seventy-six is an even number, which usually means good. But seven and six add to thirteen, and thirteen is the unluckiest number of all.

What makes things worse is that the bench Mrs. Heizer has left him upon is dangerous. The wood is too unforgiving for his back and hips. Sharp edges wait on all sides like traps rigged to spring. The carpet is too far from the seat to offer cushion should Abel fall. He wants to tell someone about this, Miss Ellie or the girl beside him. Wants to warn that making him sit here like a criminal may well end in disaster. But Miss Ellie is huddled with the four teachers who have gathered around her desk, and the girl has scooted all the way to the other end of the bench, leaving him alone. No one would hear him over the ringing phones and high chatter and distant yawps of children. They are happy sounds — the noise of things ending, if only for a little while.

The glass door beside him swings open. A scent like flowers follows another teacher who joins the little crowd on the other side of the counter. No student is supposed to go back there, though sometimes Miss Ellie lets Abel sit at her desk when there's no one around to tell. Abel watches her now, the way Miss Ellie's eyes smile even bigger than her lips and how her blond hair sparkles when the sunlight catches it through the window behind her. He's pretty sure he loves her. Once, Abel did a trick so good that Miss Ellie's face turned the color of a rose and she laid her hand on his knee for six whole Mississippis. That had been a good day, even though Abel had gotten hurt again.

The girl beside him won't act like he's here. She was already waiting on the bench when Mrs. Heizer brought Abel in, and she scooched over like what was wrong with him could catch. Abel thinks she's a third grader, then amends that when he spots the report card jacket on her lap — fourth grader now.

Shouting from the office down the hall. Abel leans his head forward some to see, though not so far as to risk a toppling. Principal Rexrode's door is still shut. He sighs and scratches at the cast on his right arm.

Abel's own report card is back at his desk, though the golden apple sticker for A/B honor roll (barely, he concedes — this time there were a whole lot more B-minuses than A-pluses) won't do much for his cause now. Nor will asserting that at least part of the reason for doing what he did can be laid at Mrs. Heizer's feet. Then again, she could have scrawled You suck eggs, Abel Shifflett instead of Enjoy middle school, Abel! and things still could have turned out this way. Abel still would have given Chris the present that morning, and Chris still would have squatted behind the monkey bars and blown through his pants a few hours later. Mrs. Heizer still would have seen it, and Abel would still be on this wood bench in the office where all the current delinquents / future convicts sat and waited.

He leans toward the girl, making sure not to bump his cast, and says, "What you in for?"

She keeps her head steady and pointed forward, then tugs at the left side of her hair — long and the color of garden dirt, utterly beautiful — and moves it over her eye.

Normally that response would signal the end of things. Yet if Abel has learned nothing else this day (other than never to carry out a plan, even a perfect one, when the morning train promises ill luck), it is that the last day of school provides a unique opportunity to do those things one would otherwise never attempt.

"You hear what happened?" He cocks his thumb, the good one, down the hall to where the shouts are coming from. "All that's 'cause a what I did."

The girl doesn't look his way — won't — but whispers, "Leave me alone," in an angry voice that sounds anything but a third (fourth) grader's. She scoots even more, stopping only when her body meets the armrest. Even more hair covers her face now, though Abel can see she is pretty in a way that will one day place her far from his grasp. Chris Jones says the only sort of woman Abel will ever marry is someone like the lunch lady, who has a lazy eye and four black hairs growing from a mud-colored mole on her forehead. The girl is wearing blue jeans that look new and tennis shoes that lie flat on the carpet. Abel looks down at his own shoes, a ratty pair of knock-offs his momma plucked from the bargain bin last summer. They dangle far above the carpet like dead things. He scoots down until his toes touch the floor, wincing as the wood cuts into his back and neck. His arm is itching bad now. Just below the elbow, where Dumb Willie wrote WILE in scrawling orange letters.

"Hey."

No response.

"Hey, you got a pencil?"

"Go way."

"I can't. I got in trouble. You hear what I did?" He reaches into his pocket and then out with a motion quicker than required, given the girl isn't paying attention. "You got a pencil?" he says again. "I'll pay you for it."

He makes the switch and lifts his left hand out to her, thumb up and palm out, the nickel hidden in the fleshy part of his thumb and forefinger. Holds it there until she peers from between the strands of hair to see Abel's fingers empty. He flicks his hand outward, throwing the nickel forward and snatching it from the empty air. Her full lips part as her eyes widen in a moment of glory, bringing a smile to Abel's face before it begins to fade as the girl's gaze drifts from his hand to the rest of him — the mop of blond hair that cannot manage to hide his broad forehead; eyes dull at the irises with whites not the color of milk but a pale blue; the stained, brittle teeth; one shoulder wedged higher than the other, giving the appearance of a boy forever locked in a confused half shrug; the compact, dwarfish body. The last bell of the year sounds through speakers already gathering dust in hallways and classrooms, but to Abel it is more than a notice of freedom. It's the alarm going off in the girl's mind as she registers the ugly truth of the ruined boy beside her.

Abel's sleights of hand have seen him through his six years of schooling, won him three Mattingly Elementary School talent shows, and produced no small measure of oohs and aahs from classmates enchanted by his ability to produce something from nothing. But those tricks have never bought him their love. Love is a magic too powerful for even Abel to master.

The girl leaps up and shoots for the door, scurrying to safety just ahead of the teachers filing out, and all Abel can manage is to remain half-prone with his feet on the floor and a nickel in his hand as the school empties for summer. Behind the wooden door down the hallway, the yelling continues. The words aren't from Principal Rexrode, which...