Shiny Happy People
Chess
The way I see it, the world never gets better than six people squished around a comfy couch, each armed with a shared craft project and the attention of every other nerd in the room.
The annex living room was not designed for this many people originally, but we make it work.
I’m on the center cushion, my left side pressed against Dolly’s and my right against Fitz, who claims more space than anyone else.
Felix sits beyond Fitz, his leg thrown over the armrest and one foot braced on the coffee table as if he’s prepared to launch himself at a moment’s notice.
Across from us, Aubrey occupies the enormous chair built for a dragon, his legs extended in a line that would have tripped me a hundred times already if I wasn’t used to navigating hazards.
Renard perches in his special chair as if it’s a throne, and he’s the indolent ruler looking down on his subjects.
Our TV is on, but nobody’s watching. It’s playing a show we’ve seen, but repetition of previously seen things is comforting to us all.
The volume is low and mostly adds background noise to the sound of six pairs of knitting needles—and one crochet hook, if we’re being technical—clacking or clicking at wildly different speeds.
My beef bourguignon dinner went over so well that even Felix had a second bowl.
Everyone changed into soft clothes the minute the dishes were done; now it’s all joggers, tees, and tanks, with bare feet resting on every available surface.
Fitz keeps using his toes to accidentally kick Dolly’s foot, which is objectively adorable because she never calls him on it, just nudges him back in this half-distracted, half-conspiratorial way that’s their secret handshake.
I love how perfectly she complements all of us in different ways that actually helped my misfit family find their peace with the past.
Renard starts the first round of commentary, and he delivers his statement with the resigned elegance of a man who’s taught long enough to forget what functional schools look like.
“I despair of my students,” he says, not looking up from the tidy line of charcoal yarn he’s building into what will almost certainly be a scarf that could double as a mummy wrap.
“They cannot, for the life of them, contextualize a text. They recite the précis,* they summarize, but no one has an idea about the world around the words.”
“Agreed,” says Aubrey, his eyes locked on the chunky moss-green rectangle growing slowly in his lap.
“This week, the library’s been full of undergrads who think research means typing the book title into a search bar and skimming the first blasted AI-assisted bullshit result.
I caught one of them notating such incorrect information while writing an essay on Enlightenment intellectuals that it made my teeth ache. ”
Felix snorts, which means he’s listening, but his phone is in one hand and the other is holding a cable-knit swatch that’s already so stressed from bad tension and dropped stitches that I want to rescue it.
He’s not even pretending to follow the pattern; mostly he pokes the needle through, yanks, and then glares at the resulting knot like it personally insulted him.
His contribution to the conversation is the vibe of someone quietly furious about a completely separate topic, which I know from context is the Zhenga/Leonidas committee business.
Meanwhile, his twin is working on what I can only call an interpretive color work pattern, the original chart abandoned long ago in favor of chaos.
He’s also the next to take Renard’s bait and reply.
“At least your students show up, bro. Do you know what it’s like to teach an intro CS class where half the kids don’t know what a variable is?
And the other half think they’re the next Leif Erikson because they made a Prednet-certified blog for their dad’s business last summer? ”
“Oh, we do,” I say fondly, “because we read your emails at breakfast. Every single time you crash out about your new students, you blind copy everyone in the annex.”
Fitz jabs the air with a knitting needle.
“Because no one else will validate my rage! I mean, you’ve seen the assignments.
We handpicked this curriculum, and it’s like most of them are allergic to thinking for themselves.
No one gets it, except—” He turns to the left, and every other head in the room follows.
“—Dolly. Who, for the record, mastered the entire first section in an afternoon and she isn’t even in my fucking classes! ”
I glance at my angel out of the corner of my eye.
She’s hunched over her own crochet—a blanket in beautifully coordinating pastels—and she’s working like she’s trying to outrun the rest of us.
Her face is a shade past pink, which on her is not an unusual state, but this is deep enough to make her ears look magenta.
She makes a vague, dismissive sound, but Fitz doubles down.
Only our mate would take on even more work—that isn’t even required—on top of her challenging schedule simply to make one of us happy.
“She picked up the new OS in, like, two days, and then figured out my bug with the virtual server before I did. None of my idiotic future computer geniuses have done anything similar, even in the higher-level classes. It’s so disappointing; I can’t even pick one to pass on my criminally good hacking skills to because they aren’t worthy. ”
Renard sees our mate’s flush and adds, “She also absorbed my notes on the botany project outside faster than any first-year student I’ve had in years. I have colleagues in Paris who would be jealous, ma petite.”
Now Aubrey weighs in, putting down his knitting and folding his arms. “She did the same in the archives, you know. After a single lesson, she catalogued the entire section for the vault cross-references and fixed errors left by three generations of library techs. That was at Apex when she was a freshman, you know.”
Dolly shrinks down further, clutching her knitting to her chest like a shield.
I see every muscle in her neck tensing, but the wave of praise isn’t over yet—Felix finally looks up from his phone, eyes soft in a way that is almost alarming coming from him.
“You know she learned to read a cable chart in under an hour? I had to have Chess drill it into me for a week, and she got it just by looking.”
It’s my turn, and I can’t not add to the pile. “She had my beurre blanc technique down on the second try. That’s a hard sauce, and she didn’t even ask for measurements. She just did it.”
The room is quiet now, a heavy silence that isn’t uncomfortable but feels like it could tip into awkward if anyone breathed wrong.
Dolly’s face is pink enough to match the yarn in her hands, and for a beat I worry she’ll retreat, make an excuse to leave, but she drops the blanket in her lap and looks up.
Her eyes flick from one of us to the next, measuring, as if she’s expecting a punchline and wants to brace for it.
Finally, she sighs and says, “It’s not that I’m a genius.
I had a lot of time as a kid and teen. Lucille kept me isolated, and the Heathers were picked to keep me busy, not happy.
Todd was—” She stops, grimaces, and then starts again.
“Most of the time, the house was a performance or a minefield. When it was empty, or when I needed to avoid being pulled into something bad, I just… learned things. I read. I danced in my room until I learned the moves. I wrote music. I taught myself stuff off the internet. It wasn’t talent; it was just survival.
And I still like learning because it’s one of the few things Lucille didn’t wreck for me. ”
I want to say something to lighten the mood, but Fitz beats me to it. “I’ve always said nerdy girls are sexy AF and lookie here…. There you are, Baby Girl. Smart, kind, accepting, and a total smokeshow. We’re the luckiest assholes on the fucking planet, dudes.”
“You’re not assholes!” she protests and then gives him a tiny grin. “Stubborn idiots sometimes, maybe…”
There’s a ripple of laughter, gentle but real, and the weight in the air evaporates like someone cracked a window. Renard grunts, “We are all capable of being idiots. It is only fair that we take turns, so it doesn’t overwhelm you, petite lapin.”
Felix leans back, cracking his neck with a series of pops. “I can’t argue with that, broody man. I took way too long to get what Fitz figured out before our mate was even going to school here.”
“I suppose I did as well,” mutters Aubrey, who goes back to his moss-green square, but there’s a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. “But I am older than any of you and quite set in my ways, so it is not surprising.”
Dolly peeks at us, her embarrassment faded to a fond annoyance. She says, “You all need to stop making a big deal out of me, or I’m going to make you listen to my old piano compositions or read my oldest lyrics out loud. I promise they’re terrible.”
“I’m game,” says Fitz immediately. “I’d love to see what young, damaged bunny girls write when they’re composing away their emo phase.”
“Bite me,” she shoots back, and then—like she can’t help it—she adds, “But maybe someday, okay?”
It’s that last bit that does me in. I take a second to freeze-frame the moment.
We’re six damaged weirdos chatting about our relationship with the TV mumbling in the background, and everyone is working to keep our hands busy.
This is the best kind of night, I think.
It’s when no one needs to hide what they are and stays in your heart, even when the next disaster is always around the corner.
A beat passes, and then Fitz leans his leg against Dolly’s in this casual way, like he’s holding her down so she can’t float off into space. She doesn’t move away as we go back to our knitting, and the click of needles is the only sound for a minute.