Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Archie
I do my first solo gig since Leo left on a Saturday.
I don’t need someone to be my legs because the walking boot means I can actually move now. Granted, I’m clunking around the room like a pirate with a peg leg, but fortunately, that works for today’s theme.
I don’t have a sidekick. It’s just me, a bag of props, and a room full of kids who’ve never known a version of Captain Giggles that came with backup.
It’s fine. I was doing this alone for a year before Leo showed up in hooves and a grumpy attitude. I can do this alone now.
So I conduct the “Who believes in magic?” call and response, and twenty-four children scream “We do!” and I don’t point at anyone afterward to say “I’m the proof” in that flat, long-suffering voice that somehow made the children laugh harder than any joke I’ve ever written.
During my magic show, I reach sideways for a prop without looking, the way I’ve done dozens of times, and my hand closes on air.
I’m used to Leo having the prop ready, held out at exactly the right angle, his face conveying that he considers the entire enterprise beneath his dignity while his hands tell a completely different story.
I grab the prop myself. It takes four extra seconds. Nobody notices except me.
But the hollow feeling inside me grows.
After the party, I pack up my props in the hallway. On my way out, the birthday girl tells me I’m the best magician she’s ever seen, and I choose to believe her because she’s five and five-year-olds don’t lie about these things.
In an Uber on the way home, my phone is in my hand before I’ve made a conscious decision to get it out of my pocket.
I scroll through my contact list and hover over Leo’s name.
I want to tell him about the kid who asked if pirates have dental plans.
He’d do that thing where his mouth twitches, but he refuses to commit to a full smile.
But I honestly don’t think I can handle a reminder that Leo exists out there in this world and is continuing on without me.
That evening, Jaymee drags me to a pub quiz. Apparently, her solution to my moping is to surround me with cheap wine, obscure trivia, and Londoners who take general knowledge extremely seriously.
I end up wedged into a corner booth with Jaymee, Billy, and Jaymee’s cousin Dan and his girlfriend Priya, who has already corrected Billy twice on his pronunciation of “quinoa.”
Our team name is Questionable Intentions, which I’m unreasonably proud of.
“Right,” Dan says, pushing his glasses back onto his face. “I’ve got sports covered. Priya’s got science. Billy’s on entertainment. Jaymee’s on music. Archie, what about you? What do you do for a job?”
“I’m a children’s entertainer and dog walker,” I say.
“So you can do…what? Arts and crafts?”
He grins as he says it. He’s friendly enough. But there’s a flicker of something underneath, the assumption that the children’s entertainer with the walking boot is here to make up numbers.
Three months ago, I would have leaned into it, maybe made a joke about my specialist subject being balloon animals and let everyone laugh.
But something has shifted inside me since Leo left. Something I can’t quite unshift.
You are not too much.
His note. Tucked into my sock drawer like a grenade with nice handwriting.
I’ve read it so many times that the paper has gone soft at the creases. If it were a library book, I’d owe fees.
“I’ll take whatever’s left over,” I say.
Dan’s eyebrows rise.
I hold back for the first few rounds. I really do.
I only wait until no one else knows the answer, then I suggest an answer like I’m not completely confident it’s correct.
But in round four, the quizmaster asks which nineteenth-century surgeon performed the only operation in history with a three hundred percent mortality rate—killing the patient, the assistant, and a spectator—and the table goes silent. Priya shrugs.
“Robert Liston,” I say. “1847. He amputated the leg in under two and a half minutes, but he was so fast that he slashed through his assistant’s fingers and caught a spectator’s coat with the blade. The patient and the assistant died of gangrene. The spectator dropped dead of shock.”
The silence at our table is different now. Shit. I got a bit carried away there.
“How do you know that?” Jaymee asks.
I shrug. “It’s the kind of story that sticks in your brain.”
But at the end of the round, there’s a random bonus question.
“How many people need to be in a room for there to be a greater than fifty percent chance that two of them share the same birthday?”
“I think it’s one hundred and eighty-three?” Priya says. “Roughly half of three hundred and sixty-five?”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.
“It’s twenty-three,” I say.
Billy laughs. “Twenty-three? In what universe is it twenty-three?”
“No offense, mate, but she’s a science teacher, so I think we’re going to go with her on this one,” Dan says.
I lean back. “Fair enough.”
“Hang on a sec,” Jaymee says. She looks at me curiously. “Archie, what makes you say it’s twenty-three?”
I hesitate.
You’re not too much.
“Because you’re not calculating the odds of someone sharing your birthday.
You’re calculating the odds of any two people in the room sharing any birthday.
With twenty-three people, there are two hundred and fifty-three possible pairs.
And so you work out the probability that none of those two hundred and fifty-three pairs match, which means multiplying three hundred and sixty-four over three hundred and sixty-five by three hundred and sixty-three over three hundred and sixty-five and so on until it crosses the fifty percent threshold at twenty-three. ”
Dan still has a big grin on his face like it’s all a massive joke. Jaymee is side-eyeing me with a weird expression.
“Actually, he might be right,” Priya says. “That logic checks out, I think.” She gives me a puzzled look.
“So we’re going with Archie’s answer?” There’s still skepticism in Dan’s voice.
Jaymee flicks a glance at me. “If you’re certain, Archie?”
“Yeah, I am.”
We hand in our answer sheet, and while we’re waiting for it to be checked, Priya gets out her phone.
“He’s definitely right,” she says. “The answer is twenty-three.”
Dan gives me a strange look. “Are you one of those weird people who understands math intuitively? Like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting?”
I glance sideways at the empty space beside me in the booth, and for a half-second, I expect to see Leo there, fighting a smile, ready to say something dry about my brain being put to its highest possible use in a pub in Peckham.
The space is empty. Obviously.
I take a long sip of my pint. But then I answer Dan.
“Ah, I actually have a PhD in applied mathematics,” I say.
Dan chuckles. “Sure you have. Is it a PhD from the back of a cereal box?”
“No, it came from Oxford, actually.”
Dan continues to laugh. “Right.”
But Jaymee’s not laughing. Instead, she’s looking at me like she’s having a lightbulb moment. Like I’ve just provided the piece of a puzzle she didn’t realize she was solving.
“Are you serious?” Jaymee asks. “You have a PhD?”
Now is probably not the time to mention that I have two of them.
I meet her gaze. “Yeah, I’m serious.”
“You said you came over here to study. I didn’t realize it was for a PhD,” Jaymee says.
“It turns out I’m full of surprises,” I reply.
Priya’s still on her phone. “Is your full name Archibald?”
Oh god, the powers of Google strike again.
“Um…yeah.”
“Not only does he have a PhD in mathematics, but when he graduated, he got the top award for a PhD that Oxford gives out.”
“Mate,” Dan says. “What the actual fuck?”
Unsurprisingly, no one questions my answers for the remainder of the quiz. We end up winning.
Jaymee’s shaking her head. “For a year, you’ve heard me moaning about losing every week to that team from the accountancy firm, and you’ve never volunteered to come help despite the fact that you know pretty much everything.”
“Not everything. I’m weak on K-pop discography.”
“Archie Mansley. I’m going to kill you.”
“Is it too much?” I ask, and I hate how small my voice sounds. “Is it weird?”
Jaymee’s expression shifts instantly. The outrage softens into something else.
“Archie. It’s incredible. Why would you think—”
She stops. I can see her rewinding through our year of friendship, reassessing. All the times I deflected a question with a joke. All the times I played dumb. The careful, systematic way I’ve curated exactly which version of myself my friends get to see.
“Oh, Archie,” she says quietly. And there’s so much packed into those two words that I have to look away.
Billy claps me on the shoulder hard enough to rearrange my skeleton. “Mate, this is brilliant. We’re going to destroy everyone from now on.”
And something loosens inside my chest. The thing I’ve been bracing for—the pulling back, the discomfort, the subtle recalibration that happens when people realize you’re not what they thought—doesn’t come.
Billy’s just excited about winning. Jaymee’s reassessing, but not retreating.
Dan is looking at me like I’ve transformed from a novelty act into a secret weapon.
Nobody is asking me to be less.
It’s just past eleven, and the pub is emptying out around us. Dan and Priya left twenty minutes ago. Billy’s gone to the bar for a final round. Jaymee’s mid-sentence about something to do with her sister’s upcoming wedding, when my phone buzzes.
My heart lurches at the idea that it could be from Leo. My stupid, treacherous heart has done this every time my phone goes off. Pavlov’s dog had more dignity.
But when I look at my phone, the name on the screen makes my stomach drop through the floor.
Vaughn.
I stare at it. Jaymee is still talking, but I can’t hear a word she’s saying.