The bus would have taken an hour, but Dominic got her downtown in fifteen minutes. She jumped out while he was still parking. His car clanged in protest.
“You’re not supposed to open the door while the car is in motion,” Dominic said.
“Sorry! Tight deadline!” She had the keys out already. Her fingers shook as she fumbled with the lock. Stay calm, she told herself. Stay cool. No seizures. No panic. A quick errand.
The door jangled when she shoved it open. Normally she’d pull it shut behind her, but she left that for Dominic. She flipped the light switch to identify where the sleeping bodies were, then turned it off again when somebody groaned from the back.
She made it to the office without stepping on anyone. Gabe raised his head from his sleeping bag on the couch. “Sophie, man. What brings you in this early?”
She flashed the ID at him in the same way David had flashed it at her. Gabe was on his feet in an instant. He wore flannel pajamas; he was the only person who stayed there who actually brought pajamas as opposed to crashing in his clothes. It made a certain amount of sense, given how often he slept there. His dad didn’t give him any grief at all.
“Is that your brother’s ID? You work fast!”
Even after all these years of friendship, Sophie still loved it when she managed to impress Gabe. “Opportunity presented itself.”
“What’s the plan?”
“First we copy it.” She tossed it on the copier’s scanning bed. The machine always took forever to warm up, but this morning forever felt extra long. The copy, when it finally came through, looked decent. No glare from the glossy finish. So far, so good. Her brother’s serious face stared back at her.
“Then we laminate.” Gabe did that part. He was better with the laminating machine than she was. He put it through three times to get the right thickness, then carefully trimmed it to size. She removed the clip from the original and affixed it to the new badge.
She hadn’t realized Dominic had come in until he spoke. “What if it has a chip? I think those things have a chip.”
Sophie smiled. “Now we destroy it.”
The kitchen was next to the office. She pulled one of the smaller soup pots off the rack—they came in medium, large, and giant— and filled it with water. She held the new badge under, swirling it.
Gabe frowned. “If I had known this part, I wouldn’t have bothered with three layers of laminate.”
“It still had to be the right thickness. What else would happen to it in a washing machine?”
They took turns beating the new card until it looked like it had been through a few rinse cycles.
“Do you want to call National?” Gabe asked. “They’re going to give you a raise for this.”
Sophie glanced at her phone for the time. “You can do it. I’d better get back. I’ll leave the original with you, in case anyone snoops around my room.”
She made it back to the house an hour after she’d left. The shower was going, and David’s running shoes stood neatly by the front door. Nobody in the front room. Perfect timing. Down the basement stairs, toss the new badge into the washing machine to soak against his clothes a little longer, and then back upstairs to play the innocent.
“What’s got you out of breath?” Julie asked. She was sitting at the dining room table drinking coffee.
“Checking if David switched his laundry over. I started it for him and everything.”
“He just got back from a run, so probably not yet.”
“I noticed. No worries, except someone should tell him Saturday is my day now.”
“Why don’t you tell him?”
“Maybe I will.” Sophie poured herself a glass of water. Julie was right. She was more than breathless; her heart beat out of her chest. Relax, she told herself again. You did it. She headed to her room to wait for David’s explosion.
“Who messed with my laundry?” he shouted a few minutes later.
Sophie yelled back through her closed door in calculated indignation. “I didn’t mess with it! I started it for you. I checked the labels and everything. Try saying thank you instead.”
There was a pause, then a faint “Thank you” floated up the stairs.
She waited some more for the next part, which turned out to be a long string of curse words. “My work ID was in there! It’s ruined!”
Julie’s voice joined the conversation. “I’m sure they’ll give you a new one.”
“After one week? That’s an awful first impression.”
“Hopefully you’ve already made a good first impression and they’ll chalk this up to nerves or something. At least they’ll know you practice good hygiene. I’ve met guys who only wash their work shirts once a month.”
The conversation continued on without Sophie. She relaxed; he was annoyed, but he didn’t sound suspicious.
The feeling of having gotten away with something exhilarated her. She never got away with anything. She wasn’t even supposed to lock her bedroom door, and she’d been sixteen when she finally convinced her parents she would move out if they kept peeking in on her at night. But this? It had practically been a spy mission. Straight out of the movies, complete with subterfuge and counterfeits and a switcheroo made in the nick of time.
It wasn’t until evening that her excitement was replaced by guilt. She walked into the kitchen to find David sitting at the table with a bottle of IPA in one hand, the ruined ID badge in the other. She panicked briefly, afraid he suspected something, then noticed the glum look on his face.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.” That was true. She’d figured it would be easy enough for him to get a new ID. “Maybe it won’t be a problem.”
He flashed a thin-lipped smile in her direction. “Maybe. Maybe I’m worrying for nothing.”
“You’re good at worrying. You were, I mean.
