“It’s funny,” Randal said. Anette laughed, and he continued. “You know me, but you’re such a rule-follower.”

  “I wasn’t always. Barry, you’re out of time.” I pressed pause on the remote mid-kickoff—he’d turned the game back on—and the deep, soothing narrator’s voice cut off.

  The man’s eyes narrowed under his baseball cap. “We’re all out of time. Turn it back on.”

  I didn’t. And I didn’t make another drink for either Anette or Randal. Neither of them asked for one, either. Their eyes were on Barry, not me, not even as I pulled the most expensive bottle of whiskey off the shelf and held it in his direction. “Come on. Tell us your story. It’ll be easy and quick, and it won’t matter in twenty minutes.”

  “Death washes away all sins,” Anette said knowingly.

  He wavered. I saw it.

  The baseball cap came off, and Barry scratched his thin hair as he tried not to look at the bottle. Then he nodded. “Fine. But I’ll make it quick. You don’t need to know everything.”

  “Just the most important thing,” I said. “I want to know why you’re here, right now.”

  -Barry-

  Barry was just a kid when he figured it all out.

  He couldn’t explain it, and when he tried, his parents told him to keep it to himself. That it’d just get him in trouble. That people killed people over stuff like that.

  But it was simple. The better baseball team won, and he knew which team was better. He could figure it out from baseball cards. The answers were all printed there. He could practically play the game before it ever happened.

  It wasn’t perfect. There were always rookies and injuries, and players changed from year to year, but he figured he was right in his predictions more often than the guys on TV. And when he was wrong, there was always a reason. If a team pulled a pitcher early, or a sprained ankle took a player off the field mid-base run, that wasn’t Barry’s fault. That was a flaw in the game, not in his ability to understand it.

  The gambling didn’t start until later.

  And it didn’t take long for Barry to win millions.

  “Barry, this is bullshit!”

  “Barry, this is bullshit!”

  I’d been thinking it. Something about Barry’s story felt unlikely. But I hadn’t wanted to say anything. Just getting him to talk about anything that wasn’t football was a massive victory.

  Anette, apparently, had no such worries. Either that or she’d had enough to drink that she didn’t care. “I’ve seen this movie. The math whiz starts robbing casinos blind by counting cards, and then everything goes wrong. The kid gets caught, the casinos try to break his legs, the end. Your story’s possible, but I’m calling bullshit.”

  “How do you figure?” Barry asked, glaring. “This is my story, not yours.”

  “Because I dated a statistician for the Mets after I got out of jail. He told me how many stats he’s responsible for analyzing before every match-up, and the teams’ managers already know exactly how to pitch each player’s every at-bat, where to put outfielders to catch every ball, and which pitches are coming at every pitch count for every player. The game’s solved, but you’d need more than baseball cards to do it—a lot more.”

  “Yeah, I’m not buying this,” Randal interrupted. “I’m not anywhere near drunk enough to buy this. If you won millions legally, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Anette bristled. “Is that supposed to be—“

  Barry cut her off. “I’m not a liar. And I’m not going to sit here and be called one. Turn the game back on.”

  I breathed in. Then I let it out slowly and pulled out the remote.

  Anette held up a hand. “Wait. This is bullshit, too. Randal and I bare our souls, but Barry gets to lie and throw a temper tantrum? I don’t have to put up with this crap. I’m out.”

  She stood up, and my mind raced as I watched her head for the door to the Cornerstone. She passed the Pabst Blue Ribbon sign, then stepped out into the hall. And before I knew it, the door was opening.

  “Wait.”

  I couldn’t explain why I said it. I definitely didn’t expect it to work, and I didn’t have a follow-up plan for when Anette stopped and turned, eyes blazing and wet at the same time. She was hurting, and I felt for her, but I needed her here.

  I had a sudden, stupid idea.

  “Do you want to hear my story, Anette? It’s not a good one, and there’s not much drama, but I can tell you exactly why I’m here.”

  She stood there, halfway out the door, purse hanging from her shoulder. Without the game, the silence was deafening. There wasn’t a single siren outside, and the cars had either stopped, been abandoned, or moved on. I couldn’t tell which. It didn’t matter.

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  We balanced on a knife’s edge for a few seconds, and I pulled a fresh glass out and filled it with the cheap light beer I’d been nursing. “I’ll tell you. Just sit down.”

  The door shut, jingling the bells on its handle as it did, and she walked back. She didn’t sit down, though. She leaned against the jukebox—which, thankfully, didn’t start blasting ‘Closing Time’ across the Cornerstone. “Alright, shoot.”

  -Me-

  I was fourteen, and I sat in the back of a cop car, wearing cuffs.

  “You said there wasn’t going to be much drama.”

  “I lied.”

  The police sirens and fire trucks were almost deafening, and I needed to wipe smoke out of my eyes but couldn’t reach them. They hadn’t put the cuffs on too tightly—I hadn’t exactly resisted arrest—but police cuffs weren’t designed to give much flexibility, and I was definitely guilty. Not of what they thought, but definitely, one hundred percent guilty. They’d caught me red-handed and coughing smoke.

  The shed was burned down. Gone. Kaput. And I’d started the fire. Not on purpose, though, and not for the reasons cops usually think when a shed in the middle of nowhere burns down and they can smell chemicals in the air. I hadn’t been cooking drugs or anything.

  Jesus Christ, Barry. I was fourteen. How many fourteen-year-old drug kingpins do you know?

  I’d been doing chemistry. Not the math-heavy chemistry Mr. Sakton kept trying to teach us at school, but real chemistry. Mixing two things together to see what’d happen. I did it in the shed because Dad didn’t care what I did out there as long as I wore the army surplus gas mask and some rubber kitchen gloves. He’d even helped me clear it out so I had some workspace since he didn’t want the bathroom tub getting all stained and disgusting. He’d been so supportive of me the whole time. And I’d burned his shed down in thanks.

  Aluminum and chlorine didn’t mix well.

  The firefighters were all wearing full suits and masks, and I couldn’t help but cough in the back of the car, but they’d checked me over before they’d cuffed me. According to them, I’d be fine. I wasn’t so sure. Dad didn’t care what I did out there, but I’d promised Mom I’d keep things safe, and that had clearly been a lie.

  Worse, Mr. Sakton was going to kill me. “What did I tell you? Always understand the math before you play with chemicals,” he’d say. He’d drag me in front of the class and give a lecture as if it was my fault.

  I mean, it was, but that wasn’t the point.

  One of the cops kept talking to my mom and dad. I couldn’t hear them since the door was shut and I couldn’t roll down the window, but everyone looked pretty pissed—Mom especially. She kept pointing at the car and yelling—her face looked like a tomato. The cop would listen, write on a notepad, and then look back at me. That happened three or four times while firefighters ran past with hoses and axes. The third time, I couldn’t help but flinch.

  I spent almost an hour in the back of the cop car before Dad and the cop came over. The door opened, and Dad cleared his throat. “Good news, Morgan. They didn’t find any signs of drugs, and I convinced them that you’re not cooking meth or anything. You’re just a dumbass kid with a college-level chemical set.”

  “So, can I go?”

  Something flashed across Dad’s face. Worry. That wasn’t a good sign; Dad was never worried. “That’s the bad news. They still want to talk to you at the station. I’ve got your uncle on the way, and he’ll act as a lawyer for you, but don’t say anything until he gets there. They’re not arresting you—“

  “I’ve got cuffs on, Dad!”

  “—but they need to take this seriously since that fire could easily have spread out of our yard.” Dad smiled sadly. “Sorry, kid. You messed up on this one, and you’re past the age where there are consequences.”

  He waved, and I couldn’t wave back as the cop shut the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. I was fourteen years old.

  “That was…that was draining,” I said.

  The rest of the Cornerstone felt way too empty. It was usually half-full; the boss always said half-full was the right amount of activity. Too much more, and it’d feel crowded. Too much less, and customers wouldn’t want to come in. Half-full was the right amount for me.

  Anette had abandoned the jukebox and rejoined us at the bar. I started working on a negroni, another Sex on the Beach, and a whiskey on the rocks. For me, not for Barry. Screw Barry. He didn’t deserve a drink if he couldn’t tell a simple little story about himself without making some shit up.

  Besides, I needed it to chase the cheap light beer.

  “So, did you go to jail?” Barry asked. “You definitely went to jail.”

  “No. I told you earlier that I'd never been jailed. I was telling the truth. Dad was the property owner, and he and Mom didn’t want to press charges. I spent a couple of hours sweating at the police station until my uncle picked me up. They did make me pay for the shed, though. I had to get a summer job mowing lawns and all that stuff. And I couldn’t do home chemistry anymore.”

  “Good for you. Trust me, ‘Martha-Steward-ass prison’ or not, jail sucks.” Anette grabbed her drink, and I picked up the whiskey. Before Barry could say anything, I turned the glass back and downed it in one long, burning gulp. It hurt, and my eyes watered. I wasn’t much for hard liquor, but sometimes, it was the only remedy.

  Then I talked over Barry as he sputtered. “I’d been a chemistry lover since I was a kid. High school chemistry was too mathy, but I had high hopes that Mr. Sakton was lying when he said college chem was more of the same. I had to know all the formulas at some point, right?”

  Randal slurped on his Sex on the Beach’s straw.

  I closed my eyes.

  “Wrong.”

  -Me-

  General education classes all sucked, college was expensive, and looking at the three ‘Cs’ and a ‘D’ on my transcript, I couldn’t help but think about all the money I’d tossed away. Worse, the ‘D’ was in Basic Chem. There was no way they’d let me keep my scholarships, and Mom and Dad didn’t have the savings to pay for school. If I wanted access to the labs so I could do real chemistry, I needed a job.

  But I had school every day, and I couldn’t see myself working the graveyard at a hotel. That worked for my roommates, but they were both the kinds of people who enjoyed silence and being alone. I needed a little more than that, and I knew it. So, after some thought, I got together a list of my needs.

  First, the afternoon to evening shift. Ideally, I’d be done by midnight and wouldn’t have to start until after four. That’d give me time for homework and sleep without messing with my class schedule too much.

  Second, it had to be close to the apartment. I could take the bus to college, but I couldn’t get home at midnight. They stopped running before then, and I didn’t want to walk in the dark—especially not during a Jersey winter.

  And third, if I could swing it, I wanted something that involved chemistry. Or at least, something like it. If I could actually mix the chemicals, that’d be ideal. If not, I’d settle for something similar.

  The bar downstairs wasn’t exactly my first pick. But the ‘Help Wanted’ sign caught my eye, and I grabbed an application on the way by.