Grey September faded into October. The air was cool but not quite cold, and the cloudless sky was a robin’s egg blue. Chuck, who sat under the bleachers of the football stadium, had finished building a record player and moved on to designing a hydraulic lift that could bring Monster, his 120-pound dog, into the treehouse.

He put the designs aside as Meg approached. She handed him her history test.

“Really?” he said, looking at the grade on the top. She’d gotten a D-, which was bad but technically passing. In order to graduate, she needed at least a D- in history, English, and math. “We studied for this.” He flipped the page and snorted when he saw the question at the top. “You didn’t know that Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. were different people?”

Meg shrugged, her attention focused on the bag of tobacco that she’d pulled from her backpack. “We’re not all smart like you,” she said, tapping it out. She began to roll a cigarette.

Chuck shook his head. Meg had mistaken Helen Keller for Harriet Tubman and, when asked to name three players on the underground railroad, had written, “Mura, Andrau, and Ganivet”—three musicians in the French post-punk band, Underground Railroad.

“Don’t worry about me, Chuck,” Meg said as she twisted off the end of the cigarette. A lighter appeared in her fingers; one click and the paper burst into flame. “I’m gonna be just fine.”

Chuck tossed Meg’s paper on top of his backpack. It wasn’t that Meg was dumb—she knew a lot about the things in which she was interested—but she wasn’t interested in much.

“I feel that in this day and age, if you want to be taken seriously, you need a degree,” he said, rubbing his temples. They’d had this discussion before. Several times. “It could be from anywhere. Go to Triangle Tech if you want. But go somewhere.”

“I’m going,” Meg said. “I told you. Number one choice, Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. I’ve already applied.”

A soccer ball bounced on the bleachers above them, causing Chuck to jump. He shook his head. “You’re not—”

“Stop worrying,” Meg said. She turned the cigarette around and pressed the paper against his lips. “Here,” she said, in a goofy falsetto. “A little bit of nicotine for Chuck. To calm down the nervous Chuck. There we go. Yes.”

He coughed and laughed at the same time, the smoke exploding from his mouth in one big cloud.

“I’m going to college,” she said. “As soon as you figure out how to help me cheat the SAT. If I get zero points again I swear I’ll—”

“Who’s down there?”

Chuck and Meg looked up. On the far end of the bleachers, perhaps sixty yards away, stood one of the rent-a-cops who patrolled the grounds after school.

“Your mom,” Meg said, before Chuck could answer. She tossed him the cigarette and scrambled to her feet, already swinging her backpack onto her shoulders.

“Ow,” Chuck hissed, as he bobbled the burning paper. The ember scorched his fingers. He dropped it to the ground and picked up his backpack and Meg’s paper.

“Come back here!” the rent-a-cop yelled, as he pounded wildly after Meg.

That Thursday, when Meg showed up to Chuck’s treehouse to listen to AM, by the Arctic Monkeys, he handed her a metal lockbox roughly the size of a novel.

“What’s this?” she asked.

Chuck smiled. “That,” he said, “is a lockbox that contains all the tobacco you own. I’ve hidden the key.” He poked her in the shoulder. “You said that you’d take the SAT, and if you want the key, you register. Right here, right now. There’s a test coming up in two weeks.”

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Meg sat down on the cot and put the box in her lap. “I said I’d take the SAT if you helped me cheat,” she said, as she pulled two bobby pins from her hair.

“You did say that,” Chuck said. From his desk he removed what looked like an ordinary brown leather belt, as well as a black remote shaped like an egg. “That’s why I built you this.”

Meg looked up at him, curious.

“What’s that?” she said. “The inertia belt? Will that make me smarter so I can emerge victorious from the SAT?” She smirked, turning her attention back to the box in her lap.

Chuck punched her in the shoulder, then sat down beside her, handing her the belt.

“I like making stuff,” he said, gesturing to the tools hanging from the pegboards on the treehouse walls. “You know, my record player. That replica Dream mask with the glowing red eyes. Remember that? Remember how I told you I was learning about circuits and electronics? Well, I made this. I even named it: I call it the Easy-A.”

Meg raised an eyebrow. “That’s a terrible name,” she said.

“Let me explain.” He turned the belt to face her. “You’ll notice these pads on the inside: they transmit electrical impulses. We both go in to take the test and I’ll… what are you doing?”

Meg had jammed the end of one bobby pin into the keyhole and was using the other to delicately probe the lock’s inner workings.

“Don’t break my lockbox,” Chuck said.

Something clicked and Meg pulled out the pins. “Don’t worry,” she said, as she opened the box. She smiled as she put the bobby pins back into her hair, then lifted a pinch of tobacco to her nose and inhaled deeply. “Is there a better smell in the world?” she said.

Chuck shook the Easy-A. “I worked hard on this,” he said. “You think it’s easy to beat this test? Or work with electricity? I shocked myself trying to—”

“Let me have a look,” Meg said, blowing a lock of hair out of her face. She put the lockbox on the cot and took the Easy-A from Chuck. “You built this?” she said, running her fingers along the inside of the belt.

“Yeah,” Chuck said. “Hold it against your waist.” She did and he pressed a button on the remote. “You should feel that on the left side,” he said. “One buzz—that means question one.”

“Oh, yes,” Meg said. She threw back her head and moaned. “Shock me again, baby.”

A blush crept up Chuck’s neck and into his cheeks. “The right side tells you the answer,” he said, quickly, as Meg grinned. He pressed another button. “You feel that?” he said. “One buzz. That’s A. Two means B. Three, C. You get it?”

Meg nodded. “This is awesome,” she said. “Like, seriously. I don’t know anyone else who could think of this. Or care about me enough to build it.”

She threw her arms around him, wrapping him in a bear hug. He felt the Easy-A hanging against his back. His face was pressed into her hair and she smelled like vanilla.

“Not a problem,” he whispered. “It was easy.”

Meg, of course, shot herself in the foot.

“Are you kidding me?” Chuck said into the phone. He’d been preparing to leave for the test center when she’d called. “What do you mean, you shot yourself in the foot?”

“I was helping my dad clean his guns,” she said. She sounded tired. “For his birthday. And one went off. It was a freak thing. He never keeps them loaded. I should’ve called you last night but I was in the hospital.”

“Oh my god,” Chuck said. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, other than the fact that I shot myself in the foot. But they gave me a bunch of Vicodin so really it isn’t so bad. Kind of nice, actually. I feel like I’m floating.” She laughed.

The Easy-A felt heavy in Chuck’s pocket. He thought of her bruises and cuts and adrenaline shot through his chest. “If your father—”

“Jesus, Chuck,” Meg said. “My father didn’t shoot me. Christ.”

Chuck felt numb. “So you’re not coming, is what you’re saying,” he said.

“Of course I’m not coming. I just had a bullet taken out of my foot.”

“Well then, I’m coming over,” Chuck said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“No, don’t do that. Don’t come over. Chuck, I’m busy. Chuck?”

Chuck had only been to Meg’s place once. She lived with her alcoholic father in the south of town, in a dilapidated trailer beside the railroad tracks. It was not a nice place, by anyone’s standards. A piece of corrugated steel hung over the door and a concrete slab served as a makeshift porch. Stray cats chased each other through the rusting shells of cars that sat on cinderblocks in the front yard.

Despite the wet weather, Chuck rode his bike across town in record time, almost causing three different car accidents in the process. When he reached the trailer, he dropped his bike into the mud and stepped up onto the concrete slab. He took a deep breath, then looked for the doorbell. There was no doorbell. He knocked.

“Come in,” he heard Meg say. He pushed open the door. To his right was Meg’s room, her father’s room, and the dirty bathroom with the leaky faucets. To his left was a dim living room and kitchen. Meg lay reclined on a ratty orange couch, her left leg swathed in bandages from foot to knee. A bowl of popcorn sat in her lap. On the far side of the room, an ancient TV played The Dark Knight.

“Hey,” Chuck said, standing in the doorway. The trailer smelled old, like his grandfather’s basement.

“Hi,” Meg said. “I told you not to come.” She held out the popcorn. “Want some?”

“Your dad home?”

“He ran out. If he, uh, if he comes back, don’t mention the bullet. He’s pretty mad at himself.”

“Okay. Can I…?” Chuck pointed to the couch.

“Sure,” Meg said, pushing some pillows onto the floor to make room for him. “I guess I could use some company.”