by Dave Connis
Praise for
The Temptation of Adam
“An honest, emotional, funny, romantic, dark, hopeful, musical gem of a novel. I know that’s a lot of adjectives, but it’d be a disservice to leave any out.”
—Adi Alsaid, author of Let’s Get Lost and Never Always Sometimes
“The Temptation of Adam is the sort of novel you finish and immediately wish you could read again for the first time. It’s profound without being preachy, funny without pandering, and thoughtful in a way that few debut novels manage. Dave Connis is a writer to watch.”
—Bryan Bliss, author of Meet Me Here
On the surface, The Temptation of Adam is the story of a teenaged boy with *teenage-boy* problems, but the true brilliance of this novel lies in the way it uses heartache, humor, and music to reveal LOVE as both Healer-of-Wounds and Kick-in-the-Pants toward greatness. Highly recommend.”
—Nic Stone, author of Dear Martin
“Dave Connis’s The Temptation of Adam confronts a difficult topic with honesty, humor, and heart. The friendships and love that form amongst the misfit cast of teens trying to overcome addiction are an important reminder of our power to destroy or give hope to those tangled in our messy lives.”
—Randy Ribay, author of An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes
Copyright © 2017 by Dave Connis
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Sammy Yuen
Interior design by Joshua Barnaby
Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0730-6
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0732-0
Printed in the United States of America
To Asa. You’re always enough.
OUR FIVE O’CLOCK APPOINTMENT
I sit outside of the principal’s office awaiting the guillotine of high school justice.
My phone buzzes and I pull it out of my pocket. It’s Addy.
Dad just told me you’re in trouble at school?
I groan and collapse my head into my hands. My sister would be in town when something like this happens to me. The only person who actually matters is about to find out I’m getting expelled. How charming of you, Life.
I guess.
You guess you’re in trouble? What happened?
I’ll tell you later @ Pritchett’s.
Will you actually tell me or is this one of your famous avoidance techniques?
Bryonie Welch walks by the office. Her curly blond hair bounces a bit as she stops in front of the door. I don’t feel very plucky, so I just watch her as she flips me off, slides a note beneath the door, and keeps walking. I stare at the note for a little while before picking it up.
Dear Adam Hawthorne,
This is your first warning.
Sincerely,
The Anti-Adam Order
There’s an order out for my destruction?
Well, don’t the giggles abound.
I am now super pissed. The evils unleashed upon me were calculated and formulated?
I cuss, shoot out of my chair, and storm toward Principal Johnson’s door. I have evidence of a conspiring enemy; I’m prepared to restate my case and secure an acquittal. I raise a fist, ready to pound down the door, but I hear Mrs. Johnson say, “That may be true, but it’s a miracle that Miss Howard’s parents aren’t going to press charges.”
I pause and press my ear against the door.
“Tracy,” Mr. Crotcher says, “I’m begging you to accept this proposal. Please.”
Awesome. Mr. Cratcher—I call him Mr. Crotcher—is the last person I want bargaining for my soul. Mr. Crotcher is Bothell High’s bio/chem teacher and a friend of my family’s. What was left of my family, anyway. He’s been waiting for this day since I started high school, the day he could exact his chem-tastic revenge. This revenge covered a multitude of grievances because Mr. Crotcher and I went back.
Way back.
Back before The Woman left my dad. Addy had been in one of his advanced chem classes when his wife, Gabby, passed away. Despite a few faults, Addy is the best of the Hawthornes. Better than me. Better than my dad. Better than The Woman by miles. Because Addy is who she is, she invited the newly widowed Mr. Crotcher over to dinner every Tuesday night.
Our rivalry started my second year of middle school, the first dinner night he attended. A song came on through the radio in the kitchen. I loved the song so I tapped my fork to the beat on my plate—and he told me to stop. I didn’t even know the guy, and there he was telling me not to do stuff. In my own house. I decided I didn’t like him, and he’s been Mr. Crotcher ever since.
On the first day of high school, I was accidentally late to his class because I got lost and wound up in the wrong wing. When I finally found the classroom, he assumed I was just a miscreant and pulled me aside to give me a “you have so much potential” speech laden with mysticism and quotable one-liners about humanity. At the time, The Woman had just left my dad, so Crotcher’s “potential” bucket’a’bull pissed me off. It was like he’d judged me to be one of those chronically late kids who needed a mentor as soon as he’d seen me tap my fork on my plate. So, after that, I felt the need to make being late for his classes a thing forever more.
It turned into some sort of unspoken war.
Instead of curing my tardiness by reporting me to a school authority like any other teacher would, he just made frequent calls to my dad to inform him of my shortcomings. This was a major oversight for Mr. Crotcher because, even though he knew a ton of formulas, he didn’t know the fundamental formula for my dad:
THE GREG HAWTHORNE FORMULA OF LESS THAN
Greg’s care for Adam < Greg’s care for getting The Woman back
“This is an incredible offense, Colin,” Mrs. Johnson is saying. “We could permanently expel him for this.”
Mr. Crotcher sighs. “That’s not what he needs. I know him. I know his father. Approve this. Call West Seattle High if you desire some success stories from some of my other mentees.”
Why does Mr. Crotcher always think he knows what I need? What about my fork tapping made him think he knew the ins and outs of the Adam Hawthorne blueprint? Was it possible that he was the leader of the Anti-Adam Order? Maybe he led the AAO in discussions on how to screw me over while dissecting cats in class.
“This is a cycle, Mrs. Johnson,” Mr. Crotcher says, “and I’m sure I can help.”
Silence.
Finally, Mrs. Johnson sighs. “Okay.”
“You’ll let me do this program?”
“Yes, but he’ll still have a eighty-day suspension. At the end of that period, we’ll assess the situation again. If your program doesn’t work, we may have to take further action.”
“Thank you, Tracy.”
“I’ll let you handle it from here,” M
rs. Johnson says. “I’ve got enough to worry about as it is.”
I walk back to my seat, pissed, and pull out my phone. This whole situation makes me think too much, so I calm myself by skimming through an expertly curated porn playlist I have saved for later tonight. There’s no thought involved in that.
A minute or so later, Mrs. Johnson’s office door swings open. I click off my phone as Mr. Crotcher pushes a wad of papers toward my face.
“I’ve called your dad and updated him on your current situation.”
“You sure he listened?”
“Read over this.” He holds out the paperwork. “This is your situation report and discipline outline.”
I take them with an aggressive snatch.
“Bring this home and have your dad sign it. If he wants to request a hearing for you, he needs to do it by tomorrow morning. However, to be candid, the evidence is so stacked against you it would be a waste of everyone’s time if he did.”
This crack about “evidence” is the biggest joke someone could’ve made. There was no evidence. I almost don’t care if I get expelled. I’m an academic anomaly, a sultan of study poised for slaying the entry-level job world with my eventual overpriced college degree. I could find another school.
“You have an eighty-day suspension,” he says, “and we will meet every day of it at five a.m. Then, every Monday and Friday at seven thirty p.m., you will meet with what I call a Transparency Forum, a group of guys who get together and talk about what’s happening in their lives.” He pauses to give me the chance to add something, but when he realizes my lips are zipped—nay, glued, nay, welded together—he continues. “Also, every Thursday night, you will attend a public addiction group based on AA’s twelve-step program with your Transparency Forum.”
“Why do I have to go to an addiction group? That’s a bucket’a’bull. I’m not addicted to anything.”
“Sure you are,” he says, his voice laced with annoying calmness.
“No. I’m not. You know nothing about me.”
“I know you have porn waiting for you tonight. I know your social activity has declined to a halt over the last year. I know you sit alone at Pritchett’s. I know neither your father nor your sister know anything about what’s going on with you.”
“You’ve only seen me at Pritchett’s once.”
“Perhaps, but seeing you once at Pritchett’s has no bearing on my seeing you. I’ve been around a while, Adam. The look of a human searching for something they can’t find is as evident as where the sun shines.”
“So you’re stalking me?”
He smiles, taps the papers in my hand, and turns to leave. “Make sure you have your dad sign those papers. Bring them with you tomorrow to our five o’clock appointment.”
WALK AWAY
Settlers of Catan.
I was always red. The Woman was always blue. Addy and Dad never cared what color they were, which was probably why they always won. Settlers was the go-to family board game. You traded resources to build cities and roads. You got points for building specific things or hitting certain achievements like having the longest road.
The Woman and I never won. No matter how hard I tried to come up with new strategies, Addy always got the longest road or dad always magically figured out how to upgrade all his settlements to cities without anyone noticing.
One night, we were playing and I felt something nudge my hand under the table. I looked up from my deck, and dad was whisper-singing, “You can’t always get what you want, but I can get you what you need.” I grabbed the thing nudging my hand—two ore cards. I hadn’t gotten any since the beginning of the game, and I could literally do nothing except sit and complain about the inefficiencies of the Catan economy. For the rest of the game, he slipped me ore cards and I avoided stealing any of his routes.
He won because I let his territorial expansion go unchallenged, and then we fake fought the rest of the night and Addy was cry-laughing and The Woman was, too, and … I say all this because Mr. Crotcher said he told my dad what happened at school, and I’m certain it won’t matter. There was a point in time, the ore-card-sliding, fake-fighting time where it mattered, but Settlers was now just a dusty box in the corner of the dining room. I barely get slid a “good morning” over the table these days. I figure I’ll go home and, as ususal, nothing will happen, and after I ride out the tortures Mr. Crotcher has for me, things will go back to where they were.
I walk outside. Stupid papers still in hand. What do you do when you’re expelled from school and have nothing to do? Go to Pritchett’s—home of the best milkshake this side of that one chick’s yard, possibly in America—and sit. Definitely not go home.
“Hey, Genevieve,” I say, patting my black 1990s Buick Riviera on the rear passenger’s side window, which is proudly hand-crafted entirely out of duct tape. I may feel like utter hell, but Genny has only ever been the best, and she deserves all the love I can muster.
Inside, I settle into my seat and try to forget about everything by turning the radio on. Top 40 comes through the speakers. I frown and hit preset button number one. The sound of my daily enlightenment washes me away in a wonderful wave of perfect, publicly funded noise.
Marry me, NPR.
At a stoplight, in the middle of NPR’s All Things Considered, I pull out my phone and do some searching and favoriting of some more porn videos to watch later on. A few seconds later, the driver behind me honks his horn, and I look up to see the light’s turned green. I favorite two more videos before putting my foot on the gas pedal. The Hyundai driver honks again and speeds around me, nearly hitting my front bumper when he swerves back into the lane. I watch him disappear before returning to my screen to favorite one more video before I turn into the parking lot of Pritchett’s.
I walk inside, find my booth, and for the next three hours I sit and work through two baskets of waffle fries covered in cheese and gravy and a milkshake. I look for more porn videos. I ignore calls from my dad. It’s a great afternoon.
At around 7:30, Addy walks into Pritchett’s. It’s weird to see her here. She hasn’t been in here since she moved to Portland with The Woman two years ago. That and she randomly showed up last night. I’m not complaining. Addy might be the only person I ever want to be around. Still, seeing her here is weird. Like, brings me back to the old days where I almost think things could be whole again.
Hahahaha. Right.
She showed up last night at ass o’clock, so I hugged her and went to bed, but today, after we hug and she slides into the booth, I finally get a chance to look at her. In the light, I notice her usually short blond hair has gotten even shorter, stops-right-above-her-ear, bangs-almost-hang-in-her-eyes short. She’s wearing a gray long-sleeved shirt that says Coalweather Construction.
I point at it. “They’re giving you fancy gear now, huh?”
“A perk of moving up to project lead,” she says. “Now I get to build houses and boss people around.”
“The fact that you like both of those things so much is weird.” I smile then reach for a fry. “No one believes me when I tell them my older sister’s a construction worker.”
She waves a hand. “Please, lil’ bro, like you’ve talked to anyone since the divorce.”
I roll my eyes. “A—don’t call me ‘lil’ bro.’ B—I talk to Myself all the time, and he gets me. He gets me so much I might ask him out on a date.”
Addy goes to respond, but her phone rings. Jefe/Boss flashes her screen. She mouths, “Gotta take this,” then stands and starts talking about roof trusses. She steps outside, which I take as an opportunity to make my final porn selections.
I finish a black cherry and toffee shake as I look out the front window to see if Addy’s showing any signs of getting off the phone, but almost five minutes later, she’s still outside.
Behind me, a familiar voice requests a booth for four. I look up from my table, and, sure enough, there’s Mr. Crotcher by the host podium, flanked by a trio of high school kids. This must
be my future, and it’s comprised of a sixty-six-year-old man and a random group of teenagers. I know I shouldn’t stare this long, but it doesn’t help that one of the guys practically has an arm made out of spiky bracelets.
I’m about to go back to my playlist when Mr. Crotcher looks up. I think our eyes meet, so I look back at my table, cursing under my breath. A few tense seconds pass, and just when I think he might not have seen me, I hear, “Hey, Adam.”
I don’t look up. “Hi.”
This is what he says: “I know it’s before your given start date, but would you like to join the boys and me tonight? Get a head start? Meet everyone? We’re going over a book on addiction. The discussion should be wonderful.”
This is what I hear: “Would you like to start your misery earlier than when I’m forcing you to?”
I shake my head. “No, thanks.”
He casts a glance at my phone and sees a screen filled with the thumbnails of my porn playlist. “You sure?”
I slide my phone in my pocket. “Yeah. I’m really sure.”
Addy finally comes back in. She’s walking toward me. Now, I really want Mr. Crotcher to leave. I don’t want her to hear anything he has to say, and I don’t want her to see him and start talking.
“That’s fine,” he says. “Look, Adam, I know your mother leaving has hurt you deeply—”
“My sister is here,” I say, pointing to her. “We’re supposed to be hanging out.”
Mr. Crotcher looks at her, smiles, waves, then turns back to me, taps a knuckle on the counter, and walks back to his table.
I cuss him out under my breath as Addy stops to hug him at his table with the other guys. They chat for a few minutes, and then she slides back into our booth.
“Aw, it was so nice to see him. I miss him. He’s so smart. I don’t have an elderly soul guide in Portland.”
“Shouldn’t have moved, I guess.”
She rolls her eyes. “You and you—”
I stop listening when this girl walks past the booth. No. She’s more than a girl. She’s a mountain in the morning sun. A forest of trees in a northern fall. I swear she’s the subject of every Michael Bublé song. Ever. A puff of tight, chocolate brown curls with a yellow hairband holding it back. The cutest nose ever put on a human.