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THE KEY

Seth’s phone rang early the next morning. It was Max; he’d left Seth a gift in his front yard. Seth walked out to find the bottles of chemicals sitting in a pile on his lawn. Panicked, he scooped them up and took them into the back, where he grabbed a shovel and started digging a hole.

His mother stepped out back and caught Seth in the act of burying the evidence.

"You know I have to tell the school now, right?" she said.

Seth was brought into the principal's office and interrogated, but he refused to name Max. One by one, the other Meridian High geeks were dragged in by the school's uniformed security officer for questioning, some in handcuffs. When it was John's turn, he spilled the beans. The school called the police, who found a telltale yellow iodine stain in the back of Max's Nissan.

The chemical theft was taken very seriously in Meridian. Max was expelled from school and prosecuted as a juvenile. He pleaded guilty to malicious injury to property, first-degree burglary, and grand theft, and spent two weeks at an in-care facility under psychiatric evaluation, where the staff diagnosed him as bipolar. His final sentence was probation. His mother sent him to Boise to live with his father and attend Bishop Kelly, the only Catholic high school in the state.

Max's first criminal conviction was a minor one. But the impulsiveness and mischievousness that spawned it ran deep in Max's personality. And he was destined to hold a lot more master keys.