Chapter 11
NOVA
The gate was halfway up when I got there, which told me everything I needed to know about how long he’d already been inside.
I ducked under and stepped into the space without announcing myself, letting the quiet settle around me before I said anything.
The front windows pulled the morning in at an angle that made the dust visible in the air.
The place didn’t feel unfinished. It felt like it had been worked on without stopping, which was not the same thing.
Deion was at the counter with a screwdriver in his hand, focused on a hinge that had already been tightened enough to hold.
“You do know you’re allowed to leave here,” I said.
Deion didn’t look up right away. He gave the screw one more turn, then set the tool down before glancing over his shoulder.
“I did leave,” he said. “Came back.”
“That doesn’t count.”
He almost smiled at that, but it didn’t fully land. His attention moved past me for a second, checking our surroundings the way he always did, like he was keeping track of everything at once.
“You’re early,” he added.
“You were vague,” I said, setting my tote down and stepping further in. “You said you needed help. You did not say you were building an entire infrastructure by yourself.”
That was when I saw the black milk crates.
They lined the side wall in uneven stacks, with some of the vinyl inside sealed, others opened and previously loved.
There were records leaning against one another outside of a few of them, like he had started organizing and then stopped to fix something else.
Curiosity got the best of me and I walked straight toward them.
“This is not ‘a few records,’” I said, crouching and pulling the nearest crate into the light. “This is a new level of commitment for the cause.”
“It’s inventory,” he replied, coming around the counter.
“It’s… D, this is not what I expected at all,” I said, flipping through the first row, checking sleeves, condition, pressings without thinking about it. “But right now it’s sitting here waiting for someone to take it seriously.”
He leaned his hip against the counter, watching me work through the stack.
“So what do we do?” he asked.
“We?”
“I can’t do this without you, Nov. I hope you know that.”
“Well… if that’s the case, then we don’t rush it,” I said. “We build something people can move through without feeling lost.”
I pulled a few records and set them in a loose pile on the floor, grouping by instinct, testing the flow before I committed to anything.
“You mentioned a listening station before. Right?” I asked.
“Two, actually,” he said.
“Good. Then we give people a way to linger.”
I stood, scanning the room again, and that’s when the wall caught me. It wasn’t just comics.
Two panels vividly painted on an accent wall broke the pattern.
It was layered with color and line that refused to sit quietly.
The first carried a figure that looked like it was still deciding how much of itself to reveal.
The second leaned brighter, more certain, work that came from someone who understood restraint.
I stepped closer.
“You didn’t mention this,” I said, glancing back at him.
“Didn’t think it needed explaining,” Deion answered.
“Who did them?”
“One of my students.”
I looked at him again then back at the piece.
“You paid him?”
“I asked him what he needed,” he said. “Then I paid him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Terrell.”
I said it once under my breath, feeling like I’d heard him mention that name before, then turned back to the wall, taking it in again with more attention.
“He knows what he’s doing,” I said.
“He does.”
Before I could say anything else, the gate shifted behind us with a sound that didn’t belong to either of us.
Deion straightened immediately.
“We’re not open—” he started, but the rest of it softened when he saw who it was.
“Mr. Hill?”
The boy stood just inside the entrance, one hand still on the metal like he hadn’t fully committed to being there. Backpack on one shoulder, eyes moving once through the room before settling on Deion.
“You’re not supposed to be here today,” Deion said, his voice quieter now, not correcting so much as placing the moment.
“I know,” the boy said. “I wasn’t trying to… I just needed to find you.”
There was something in the way he said it that shifted the room. Deion took a step toward him, not rushing, just closing the distance enough to meet him where he was.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
The boy hesitated, then adjusted his grip on the strap of his bag.
“They called my mom yesterday,” he said. “About my grades.”
Deion nodded once. “Which class?”
“Math… and science.” He glanced down, then back up. “They said if it doesn’t change, they’re going to move me.”
“Move you where?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“Different track,” he said finally. “They said it’ll be better for me.”
The words didn’t carry belief. They carried repetition. Deion’s expression didn’t change, but something in his posture did.
“Better how?” he asked.
“They said smaller classes… more support.”
“And you think that’s what this is?” Deion said.
The boy shook his head quickly in a way that was barely noticeable.
“No.”
Deion let those words exist out there for a moment, then glanced toward the back of the space.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing. “Let’s take a look and see what’s going on.”
The boy followed him without another word. I watched them go toward a far corner of the room, the shift from doorway to table happening quietly, like this was something that had happened before in other rooms, under different lights.
Deion pulled a chair out at one of the tables in the back and motioned for him to sit. The boy set his bag down this time, unzipping it halfway, papers already loose inside.
“What did they give you?” I overheard Deion ask, taking a seat across from him.
The boy slid a worksheet over, then another.
“I don’t get where I fell off,” he said. “I was keeping up before.”
Deion looked through the pages, scanning each one without rushing.
“You didn’t fall off,” he said after a moment. “You missed a step and nobody stopped to make sure you caught it.”
Deion reached into his own bag and pulled out his laptop, setting it on the table and opening it.
“Let me check the portal,” he said. “We’re not guessing.”
I had gone back to the crates, but I wasn’t really working. I was listening. The low murmur of their voices carried just enough. Deion walked him through it, steady, asking questions that didn’t sound like tests. When the boy hesitated, he didn’t fill the silence. He let him think.
“Show me how you got there,” Deion said at one point.
The boy tried, stumbled halfway through, then stopped.
“I knew it earlier,” he said, frustrated now. “I just—”
“You still know it,” Deion replied. “You just rushed past it.”
He turned the paper slightly, angling it back toward him.
“Start here,” he said. “Take your time.”
I stood there for a second, then set the record I was holding back into the crate and walked over just enough to catch Deion’s eye.
“I’ve got this,” I said quietly. “Go.”
He looked at me for a beat, like he was measuring whether I meant it.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I added.
That was enough. He nodded once and turned back to the table, fully this time. I picked up my tote.
“I’m going to grab food for the three of us,” I said, more to the room than to him. “Text me if either of you think of anything else I should bring back while I’m gone.”
“Thanks, Nov,” Deion said, already back in it.
Outside, I walked two blocks over and ordered enough for three without asking what they wanted. By the time I came back, the gate was fully up and the room felt more settled.
Terrell had his notebook open now, pencil moving with more confidence than when I’d left. Deion sat across from him, one arm resting on the table, the other pointing to something on the page.
“…you see how that carries through?” he was saying. “You don’t have to redo everything. Just fix where it shifted.”
Terrell nodded, then glanced up when he saw me. I held up the bag.
“Lunch,” I said.
He gave a small nod, something like relief passing through his face before he looked back down at his work. We ate at the same table, the papers pushed slightly to the side but not cleared away.
“What made you come today?” I asked Terrell after a while.
He shrugged, picking at the edge of his sandwich.
“Mr. H said his door is always open for us,” he said. “I kinda hoped he meant the door here, too.”
After a minute, he looked at Deion.
“They really going to move me?” he asked.
Deion took a second before answering.
“From what I see, they’re talking about it,” he said. “But they don’t get the final say on who you are.”
The boy looked at him, searching for something in that.
“What do I have to do?” he asked.
“We get your grades up where they need to be,” Deion said. “We show them what they’re not seeing.”
“And if they still don’t see it?”
Deion leaned back slightly, not breaking eye contact.
“Then we keep working anyway,” he said. “You don’t wait on somebody else to decide what you’re capable of.”
I watched the two of them for a second, then looked around the space again. What he was building wasn’t just something people walked into. It was something they carried out.
I picked up a record from the stack beside me and slid it into a new section, adjusting the flow without thinking about it.
“All right,” I said, more to myself than to them. “We’re going to need a better system than this.”
Deion glanced over, a quiet acknowledgment in it.
“Do what you do,” he said.
So I did