Page 119 of Falling for Mr. October

“What’s up?” I ask the kid. I struggle to control my expression as I take note of a couple of scratches on his face.

He slaps a piece of paper down on the tabletop, a proud look on his face. “I made a map of the Gallagher corn maze, Mr. Chef.”

“You can call me Giovanni.”

His eyes widen. “Uh…Gio…whatever…this is for you.” He shoves it across the table toward us.

Theo pushes out his lips slightly as he examines the paper, looking it over with interest. When he glances up, he says, “This must have taken you all day, kid.”

He fusses with the bill of his hat. “I didn’t skip school or nothing like that. I left right when they let us out.”

“But you did sneak onto the Gallagher farm?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Nah, I didn’t even. The old guy who runs the cigar shop lent me his drone. I drew the map from that. It was all strictly legal.”

“He really lent it to you?” Theo says with obvious skepticism.

“He owed me a favor,” Whit clarifies. He sits up straighter in his chair. “The map’ll be a hundred bucks. I think that’s fair. And five dollars for buying into bingo.”

Theo snorts.

I have to smile. Maybe I’d put a target on my back by handing over the money for his s’mores victory, but I don’t mind. The kid’s a hustler, and he needs the money—one look at his sneakers the other day told me that.

Still…

“I’m not going to win by cheating,” I say. “I’d like to beat this maze fair and square, all the way.”

The kid looks at me like I’m a chump. “The same way you won the s’mores contest?”

“I did, kind of,” I point out.

“But I’m the one who walked away with two hundred bucks.”

“The kid has a point,” Theo says, amused.

“Hush,” O’Connor says, looking back at us with a comical frown and a finger lifted to his lips.

Theo must have muscle memory from fifth grade, because no shit, he sits back in his seat and shuts up.

“You watch, Whit,” I say, tapping the map with a finger. “I’m going to beat Mr. Mayor in the pie contest. That’s the only one I care about.”

The kid shakes his head sadly. “That tool had the corn maze made himself, Mr. Shirtless Chef, and he’s still planning on entering the contest. How is any of it fair?”

He has a point. Sometimes tests themselves are skewed to make you lose, like one of those claw machines at an arcade. Life doesn’t concern itself with fairness. It’s people who expect life to be fair.

“And you don’t think he’ll pay off the judging panel at the apple pie bake-off?” the kid adds. “The people with money to throw around have all the power. Even I know that.”

“Do we know who’s on this panel yet?” I ask, looking back and forth between Whit and Theo.

“I can find out,” Whit offers, and you know what? I truly believe he can and will.

“I’ll give you a hundred and five for that information, Whit.”

He brightens. “What about the map?”

“Sell it to someone else,” Theo says, leaning back in his chair. “I’ll bet someone really wants the prize.”

According to the message scrawled onto the town whiteboard, the prize for the maze is a pretty decent one. A thousand bucks in Apple Ridge Cash, i.e., gift certificates to every participating shop or restaurant in town, plus a gift basket from Gallagher farms.