No Saving Throw

by Kristin McFarland

  I took a seat toward the center, and the others arrayed themselves around me like I was chairman of the board. My hands trembled, but I kept my voice and face calm. “Thanks for meeting me so early on a Monday,” I said.

  “We understand it’s been a difficult weekend,” Vanessa said. She smiled warmly, surprising me. I would have pegged her as the sternest one of the bunch, but she seemed strangely supportive. “We’ve all been praying for you and for that boy’s family.”

  Oh. One of those. That explained the friendliness. “Thanks. Uh, well, I wanted to talk to you about my application. It’s been brought to my attention that it may not be in my—or even the program’s—best interest if I continued.”

  I couldn’t read Vanessa’s expression. The woman from the EDC nodded as if she agreed with me. She exchanged a look with Donald, whose gaze I avoided. I sighed inwardly at that. I’d hoped for more support—and I’d hoped that more of the committee would have been able to make it.

  I launched into my carefully prepared speech. “I wanted to talk to you before I made any decisions. I understand the concerns, but I want to keep my name in the grant pool. This project is very important to me, and I think it’s in the building’s best interest. Additionally, I think receiving this grant would help the building as a whole—not just my store—recover from this weekend’s tragedy. Positive action, and action so beneficial for the community, would help us to shine in a retail market that’s struggling, even when customers aren’t spooked.” I took a deep breath. “I also feel like dropping out of the grant process would seem like an admission of guilt—or worse, like my store and I are being punished for events beyond my control. I know there are rumors about the investigation, but I assure you, I believe in the innocence of my shop’s community.” I met Vanessa’s eyes. “We need this vote of confidence.”

  A little line appeared between her brows as she considered what I’d said. “Well . . .” she said, drawing out the word. “We haven’t announced our finalists yet, but we have been discussing this issue over the weekend.”

  Uh-oh. I didn’t like how that sounded. I rushed ahead. “You should know, the community has rallied around us. Our customers have shown nothing but kindness and affection for us, and even those most impacted by Wes’s death have shown tremendous loyalty. People want to help. We’re thinking of having a memorial for Wes, and I think that will help to alleviate some of the concerns.”

  “It’s not the death itself that concerns us,” the woman from the EDC said. “It’s the suspicion around some of the other young people associated with your store.”

  “There’s been no arrest,” Vanessa said. I shot her a grateful smile.

  “No, but it’s still horrifying. The idea that these kids may have . . .” the commissioner trailed off, shaking her head. Apparently the end of her sentence was too horrible to speak. I knew what she thought, though: violent game, violent kids. Fictional vampires, delusional vampire wannabes. My heart sank, but the stereotype was all too familiar. She continued. “And now the vandalism at the store of one of the other contestants—even if you didn’t do it, Miss Sinclair,” she said, noting my indignation, “it reflects very poorly on the sportsmanship of your employees. You may not have known about it, and maybe it didn’t relate to this competition, but it looks like a shameful attempt to intimidate one of your competitors. I’m not accusing you, but associations will be made whether anyone says the words or not.”

  “I’m asking for the benefit of the doubt,” I said. “They’re innocent until proven guilty. And either way, it’s nothing to do with the store.”

  The woman glowered at me. She should have been wearing a monocle and twirling a Bond-villain mustache. “As much as you might wish it otherwise, Miss Sinclair, everything that happens to its patrons has to do with the store . . . and the building that houses it.”

  I glanced at Donald. He shifted in his chair, miserable. This was too much for him, would be too much for any landlord. As president of the Chamber of Commerce, Donald was acutely aware of his prominence in the community. And if Ten Again’s troubles reflected on his building, that in turn reflected on him, and the Chamber, and on up the chain of association. White Lake was a veritable fun house of distorted reflections, and public perception was as gullible as any eight-year-old at the carnival.

  I might as well have worn a red shirt: I was doomed.

  “What do you think, Mr. Wolcott?” Vanessa asked.

  Donald clasped his hands on the table, then straightened his fingers and refolded them, over and over. I almost pitied him. “Autumn knows my opinion on it.”

  “And what is that?” Vanessa asked.

  “I, erm,” he paused, cleared his throat. “I think it would be better for everyone involved if she withdrew from the competition.”

  There it was. I heaved a sigh but fixed my face into a mask of neutrality. Dismissed before I could even play. Vanessa sat back in her chair, looking unsurprised but oddly disappointed. She nodded. “I had a feeling you might say that.” She looked at me. “Without the consent of the building owner, you would not be able to make any of the changes your plan describes.”

  “Are you withdrawing your consent, Donald?” I glanced up at him sideways.

  He did not meet my gaze. “You know I hate to do it.”

  I nodded. He probably did, if only because confrontation made him gassy. My throat felt thick. I swallowed, but the lump moved to my stomach where it lay like cold iron, weighting me to this grim reality. “I understand,” I said. I didn’t.

  “I’m sorry, Autumn,” Vanessa said. Her eyes told me she meant it.

  I smiled weakly. “No, I do understand. And there’s always next year, right?” If they got the money again. And if my store survived the next year. I stood. “I want to thank you all for your support so far. This has been an educational project, and I hope someday to put everything I’ve learned to good use.”

  I shook their hands in turn and let myself out, my eyes burning. I would not cry, would not, not until I reached the safety of my office. I blinked rapidly as the elevator carried me down, slunk by the front desk, avoiding Alice’s questions, and flung open the doors onto the sidewalk. The cold air hit my face like a slap. I gasped, taking my first free breath since I’d walked into City Hall.

  My heels rapped a slow cadence on the sidewalk as I made my walk of shame back to the store. My heart hurt. I wanted that grant. It hadn’t sunk in just how much I’d wanted it, and not just for myself—for the building, for the environment, and most of all, for my store. If I legitimized myself, just a little, by LARPing the grown-up and heading up this project, that would make my store look amazing. It would show that grown-up gamers weren’t just stunted adults with Peter Pan complexes: no, we were intelligent, contributing members of our communities who were willing to work for the future, preserving the world and the environment for later generations. I knew it was true, but it seemed like most of the world—including, too often, my own parents—didn’t.

  For a minute there, it had seemed like I could do it, like I could belong to both worlds. I could be myself and the person my three parents wanted me to be; I could be a geek and a popular kid; I could be a progressive and at the same time preserve one of the world’s greatest traditions. I could satisfy everyone who looked at me and wanted to see more than they did. I could make a difference, for myself and for my community.

  But now, slacker Autumn was back where she started, and nothing was enough.

  Thoroughly sorry for myself by then, I wiped at one persistent tear that had escaped from my lids. The dirty cotton clouds spat snowy rain at me as I made my way back to the store. I felt like I’d been battling upstream for Ten Again my whole life: when I graduated from business school and told my mom—my real mom, not my stepmom—that I wanted to move back to White Lake and open a game store, she’d done everything she could, short of staging an intervention, to stop me. My dad had asked for a formal ten-year business plan bef
ore agreeing to cosign a small business loan with me. No one had fully supported me but Jordan.

  But I’d gotten it all started, anyway.

  I slid to a halt on the slushy sidewalk, stumbling like a poorly trained snowtrooper as I realized something. Never before had I let someone tell me what I could or could not do. This was the first time in my entire career that I’d let others’ doubts shape my perception of myself. I’d let them put me in a box, tell me I was just a geek, just a store owner, just a businesswoman. What did I know about green technology? Or helping the environment? Or solving murders? But the truth was, even if I didn’t know something outright, I had the wits and the enterprise to go and learn and do and make things happen. I’d proved that time and again in my life. The drive and logic and dedication and wits that got me where I am, that helped me start my business and get my feet under me, those qualities were what qualified me to go for these goals. And that didn’t just apply to me. Every gamer in my community had to be smart, decisive, and creative. That’s what mattered: those core things, not the way the world viewed our decisions.

  No, I couldn’t upgrade Donald’s building without his consent. And the grant money was the Economic Development Commission’s to distribute as they saw fit. But I needed to run my store and support my community in whatever way I saw fit. That was my responsibility, and no one else’s.

  I would do everything I could to protect the kids who visited my store. There were more important things than letting some petty little bureaucrats pat me on the head and tell me I was doing good things for the team. They were not my team. Their opinion did not matter. I had to look out for the best interests of my community, my gamers, and my employees, and while the grant was the best way to do that, I’d been willing to pursue it. But now that people were using it as an excuse to judge me, to judge the kids in my store, well, it damn well wasn’t worth the effort, whatever anyone on the City Council said.

  I started walking again, the tears dried on my face. I had work to do. I needed to focus on keeping my store afloat and my customers feeling safe and happy. And there was no way they could feel safe until we knew who had killed Wes, and why.

  10

  I KNEW THREE THINGS. Firstly, a gamer had died. Secondly, suspicion had landed squarely on his fellow gamers. Thirdly, someone wanted to scare or look like they had scared Meghan. I could guess at a few other things: whoever had done it was connected to me, the store, or the grant. I was the only common denominator. Maybe Meghan had killed Wes for witnessing her fight with Craig. Maybe Cody had killed Wes and was trying to make the store look bad because things hadn’t gone his way. Or maybe, worst of all, Paige and Nick had killed Wes and then blackmailed Meghan to keep silent after she heard their fight.

  I needed to talk to Meghan, but after she’d found that gory little diorama on her doorstep, I doubted she would have anything to do with me. Maybe if she knew I was no longer her competitor she’d be more willing to have a conversation. I wanted to believe the murder had something to do with the grant, I really did. Unfortunately, Wes himself had no connection—other than me—to the process. But unless he had managed to witness some secret dealings of the City Council in Independence Square between eight fifteen and eight thirty, the only additional possible connection to the grant was Meghan.

  It still didn’t add up—a portion of the evening was missing, for everyone involved. Paige and Nick could vouch only for each other. The same was true for Craig and Meghan. Donald had left the building but had seen nothing, heard no one—and he’d left after a mysterious errand to the basement. No one knew where Cody had gotten to after Max had seen him in the lobby. The Independence building wasn’t that big. The odds had to be down near zero that someone we didn’t know had killed Wes. The simplest explanation was the most likely, right? I may not actually be a Sherlock, but I knew that much. That pointed to Nick and Paige, but I wasn’t quite ready to give them up for lost.

  I redirected my steps from my own store to the building’s front door. I needed to talk to Meghan, and that meant cornering her at Chic. I didn’t know her hours, but I knew Monday was very often a delivery and inventory day for retail stores. She might just be there, recovering from the weekend. I ducked under the awning, pulled open the door, and strode into Independence Square Mall’s main lobby.

  At ten thirty on a Monday, it wasn’t crowded. The fountain was operating again, so a steady splashing echoed from the exposed brick walls. One of the part-time security guys sat at Max’s desk. He nodded to me as I crossed the lobby and headed down the hallway for Meghan’s store. There were few customers here this early, but I saw an elderly woman browsing in the gift shop, and a young woman with a baby strapped to her chest waited outside the old-fashioned barber’s shop. I caught a glimpse of a man in the chair chatting with the elderly barber. It looked like a scene from a nostalgic TV show, like the Independence Square Mall was the set of some old-timey comedy. Any minute now, a kitten would get stuck in a tree, and there’d be a comedic misunderstanding about who would save it.

  Maybe people were right, and Ten Again didn’t fit in here. I tried to quell the thought, but no matter what I did, it kept recurring. Donald worried about how we affected his image, and I worried that gamers weren’t welcome here. I wasn’t ready to give up, not yet, but it seemed like the deck was stacked against me, and the dealer wanted me out.

  The little bell on the door to Chic tinkled as I pushed my way in. It was not a clothing store in which I would have chosen to shop. Instead of colorful piles of clothing, it had sleek wooden fixtures, silver trim, and stark, recessed lighting. Few sizes were displayed, and even the headless mannequin standing beside the door, creepy as a Doctor Who prop, seemed judgmental.

  Meghan wasn’t at the counter. One of her employees, a young woman with sleek black hair, came toward me. “Excuse me, ma’am, but you shouldn’t be here,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” I stopped beside the mannequin. “You’re kicking me out?”

  The girl stopped about ten feet from me, one hand on her cocked hip. She held a cordless phone in her hand. “That’s right. I have strict orders from Ms. Kountz to keep you out.”

  I held up my hands like the cops had a gun trained on me. “I just want to talk to her—”

  “She’s not here, and, no, I won’t take a message. She has nothing to say to you. The police told her not to talk to you, and we’re all supposed to report any suspicious visitors.”

  Well, that was too much. I dropped my hands to my hips. “I’m not a ‘suspicious visitor,’ I know Meghan, and I work in the building—”

  “I know who you are, and you’re definitely not supposed to be here. Now, please leave, before I call security.”

  “What, you’re going to call the part-time rent-a-cop? He just saw me, he knows I’m not a vandal.”

  The girl pressed a button on the phone and lifted it to her ear. “Hello, security?”

  “Fine, fine!” I took a step back, then another. The girl hung up the phone, looking smug, and I would have bet good money that she never even dialed. “What’s Meghan trying to hide, anyway?” I snapped.

  The girl’s face reddened. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” She started pressing buttons on the phone, and I beat a hasty exit, letting the door slam behind me.

  That was odd. I got that Meghan didn’t want me around, but I was surprised she’d ordered her employees to shoot me on sight. Maybe she was hiding something, though I couldn’t imagine what. I wondered if the girl knew anything about Meghan’s arguments with Craig—not that I would be able to get close enough to her to ask any questions.

  Freaking small towns. No one trusted anyone enough to just casually open up to a stranger. No matter who you talked to, they knew someone you knew or who knew you. My reputation always preceded me, for better or worse. And in this case, every roll for reputation had a minus-four penalty.

  I made my way back toward the lobby, planning to see if Meghan’s e
mployee really had called the security desk. If a janitor hadn’t come out of the stairwell at the exact moment I passed by, I never would have heard Paige’s voice, thick with tears, ringing in the empty stairwell.

  I stopped and turned on the spot, startling the janitor. I smiled at him as I pushed by him and kept the door from falling shut. I held it open just wide enough to squeeze through and darted inside.

  “I don’t want to do this,” Paige said below me.

  “You know what will happen if we don’t. He saw us—he saw the blood.” I sucked in my breath, shocked. Something told me they weren’t playing a scene now. Nick continued, his voice unmistakable. “He knows. It’s enough to land us in jail.”

  “I don’t think he does know—and even if he does, he doesn’t know what happened.”

  “He wasn’t dead, Nick,” Paige gasped. “Maybe if we had done something else—”

  “Shh,” Nick said. “You can’t go down that road. For now, we just need to be very careful and do what he says.”

  “What if they arrest us? They think it’s us. We shouldn’t have called Autumn, and if they knew we were here now, we’d be in even bigger trouble. Maybe we should tell her—” I flinched at my own name, but they were speaking so rapidly I had no time to react.

  “That’s a bad idea. We don’t want to get her in trouble, too.”

  “What do you think he knows?” Paige whispered.

  “Too much. If Autumn knew, though, she would have done something by now.”

  “If we came forward, maybe he would go to jail.”

  “For what? He didn’t do it. We know he didn’t, because he was there—”

  “Ugh, fine. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I could picture Paige throwing up her hands. “I wish we’d never gotten involved in this.”

  They began to move up the stairs. I didn’t know if I wanted them to see me, to know I’d overheard their strange conversation. I hardly even knew what I’d heard, and I needed time to process it before I could feel ready to confront them. I leapt up a few stairs, moving with exaggerated care, like a cross between a ninja and a mime, placing my feet so my shoes wouldn’t make noise on the ancient flooring. It figured that the one time I managed to be stealthy, no one was there to witness it—though I supposed that was the point.