Chapter 7
FINN
The Ferrari looks deeply wrong in the Mattichogue High faculty lot—a peacock parked at a bake sale—and for once I see it as the rest of the town must. I try to be chivalrous and jog around to meet Darcy before she can climb out of the passenger seat, but she practically vaults out of the car on her own.
This morning has been a revelation so far. An all-male tango class I didn't hate, an ex-linebacker who fixed my posture, and a disapproving schoolteacher who reluctantly led me through eight bars of music then handed me back like an overdue library book.
"Feels weird parking next to the principal’s car," I say as we cross the lot, because the silence has weight and I'm constitutionally opposed to carrying it.
"Not to me. I park here every day. You know, because this is literally my job."
"Right." I look up at the red brick building where I logged four years of strategic clowning. "I forget sometimes that not everyone left Mattichogue."
"Some of us found purpose here instead of running away."
The jab lands clean, right through the ribs. "Is that what you think I did? Run away?"
"Didn't you?" She turns, chin up, her hazel eyes bright with the fight. "The second graduation was over, the golden Bardot boy couldn't get out of Mattichogue fast enough."
She's not wrong about the speed. She's just wrong about the direction.
You can't run away from a place that doesn’t have a need for you.
You can only run toward somewhere that hasn't already decided you were unwanted.
None of which I say out loud, mainly because the drama room door bursts open and Annie Felder comes out like a cyclone.
"Finally! The kids are about to mutiny if we don't get these sets built today."
Saved by the bell. Story of my entire academic career.
Annie's classroom is ordered chaos—paintbrushes soaking in jars, fabric pinned to bulletin boards, set sketches taped to the whiteboard. A dozen students look up as we enter, boredom converting to curiosity at roughly the speed of gossip.
"Everyone, this is Mr. Bardot," Annie announces with game-show flair. "He's graciously volunteered to help with our set construction today."
Volunteered. Sure. The same way Evan volunteered for that leg cast.
Annie makes quick introductions and I nod to the group of students.
"Happy to help," I say. "What are we building?"
A senior with opinions written all over him steps up with a sketch. Ryan, by the name on his binder. "It's supposed to be a forest clearing with an ancient stone archway. But we've been struggling with the arch structure."
I study the drawing. It's ambitious in the way that only high school theater is ambitious. Which is to say, zero budget, total conviction. "This is for...?"
"A Midsummer Night's Dream," supplies a girl with paint on her sleeve. "I'm playing Titania."
"Nice." I cross to the materials piled in the corner. Plywood, PVC, a tool collection that's seen some things. "Have you considered using a geodesic support structure? It'll be stronger and require less material."
Twelve blank looks. One of them is Darcy's, except hers is doing something underneath, and I want very badly to know what.
"Forget I said that." I kneel and pick up a length of pipe, because working hands solve what vocabulary starts. "Ryan, hold this end. Zoe, grab that plywood sheet. See how this joint works? Now if we add support here..."
"Oh!" Ryan's eyes light up. "Like a triangle pattern?"
"Exactly. Nature's strongest shape. Here, try cutting this angle."
And just like that, I'm in my element. This is what I do, minus the lawyers. Take a thing that wants to fall down and argue it into standing up. Ryan saws like the saw insulted his family, so I reset his grip and slow him down. Two more kids crowd in with questions about measurements.
Somewhere behind me, I can feel Darcy leaning against Annie's desk, watching all of it—watching me—and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't building this arch for an audience of one.
There's a kid at the edge of all of it. Dark hair, hoodie, close enough to be near the work and far enough not to be asked anything. He's been orbiting for twenty minutes without landing.
I know that species of quiet. I ran the opposite play, made noise so nobody would look at me too closely, but it's the same game with the board flipped. We were both hiding. Mine just had better marketing.
"Ms. Gable?" the kid says, barely above a whisper. "Should we start painting the base pieces?"
"Hold off on paint for now," I say, looking up. "Let's get the structure solid first." Then, because Darcy's watching and her face is a test I haven't been given the rubric for, I add, "Unless your taskmaster has other ideas?"
"By all means." She waves a hand. "Continue engineering."
An hour later, the archway has bones, and the kids who started wary are crowding in like it's a pit crew. Even the quiet one, Joshua, has edged inside the perimeter, watching my hands like there's going to be a quiz later.
"See?" I hold out the power drill to him. "Try it yourself. Just keep steady pressure."
His hands shake a little. Everything in me wants to grab the drill and fix it—the way everyone always grabbed the page and read it for me—and I know exactly how that feels from the receiving end, so I keep my hands in my pockets and talk him through it instead.
Bit seated. Steady. Let the tool do the work.
The pieces join clean. The smile that crosses his face is small and real and worth more than the arch.
"Pizza's here!" Annie calls from the doorway. "Everybody wash hands first!"
The stampede is immediate. "I ordered extra," I tell Darcy quietly as they thunder past. "Teenagers and manual labor. I remember being constantly starving."
She opens her mouth, closes it, and files something away without showing me the folder. Progress, possibly. Hard to score.
Darcy and Annie slip into the hallway while the kids descend on the pizzas, and through the door's window I catch the two of them in conference, Darcy's arms crossed, eyes on the room. On me.
I straighten a stack of plywood that doesn't need straightening, and then somewhere between Zoe's costume theories and Ryan's Shakespeare puns I forget to perform at all, which has not happened in approximately a decade and should probably concern me more than it does.
I end up cross-legged on the floor with a paper plate on my lap, expensive jeans collecting sawdust, while Zoe holds court about Titania.
"The thing is," she says, gesturing with her slice, "everyone always plays her so ethereal and floaty. But she's literally the queen of the fairies. She should be powerful."
"Makes sense to me," I say. "Like in rock climbing. Looking delicate doesn't mean you're not strong."
Across the room, Joshua materializes at Darcy's elbow with a question I can't hear, except then I do hear it, because my name's in it. Something about whether Mr. Bardot could come back to help paint the arch tomorrow.
My head turns before I've authorized it.
"I'm afraid Mr. Bardot has other obligations tomorrow," Darcy says.
"But maybe next week?" the kid presses, and I am pulling for him so hard I almost say yes out loud.
"Mr. Bardot doesn't live here anymore, Joshua. He's just visiting."
It's a fact. I've said it myself twice today. Just visiting. So there's no reason it should land the way it lands, like a door I didn't know was open clicking shut. I push the feeling aside, then I make Ryan explain his worst pun again and laugh in all the right places.
The afternoon slides by in sawdust and paint fumes and the pleasure of doing work you can point at.
I keep finding excuses to pull Darcy in—paint colors, archway placement, a running commentary that earns me three reluctant laughs from her that I count like summits.
By the time the students start cleaning brushes, the arch stands on its own, and weirdly, so do I.
"You know," I tell her in a quiet moment, "I didn't expect to enjoy this."
"What, manual labor isn't your usual weekend entertainment?"
"Actually..." I drag a hand through my hair and feel paint transfer. Sure. Fine. "I forgot how good it feels to build something real. To be using my hands and doing something, inventing something. Most of my work these days is spreadsheets and investor meetings."
"Poor billionaire," she deadpans. "Trapped in your penthouse, counting all that money."
The joke is right there waiting for me. A dozen jokes are right there, and I don't reach for any of them. "You really think that's all I am?"
Her lips part for a moment, then close without speaking. I will never know what she might have said, because Annie hollers a five-minute warning and the room dissolves into cleanup chaos.
I walk Joshua through storing the materials for tomorrow's painting—specific instructions, the kind I'd have killed for at his age. Which pieces, what order, no guesswork. He listens attentively and nods, absorbing every word I say.
The kids file out in a chorus of "Thank you, Mr. Bardot!" and "This was awesome!" and one "See you next time!" that I don't correct.
Annie makes a show of checking her phone. "Would you look at the time? I should get going. Darcy, you'll lock up for me?" And then she's gone with the subtlety of a stage exit, leaving me alone with Darcy and a half-built forest.
I survey the archway, hands on my hips, ridiculously pleased with a plywood arch in a high school drama room. "You know, this wasn't what I was expecting when you won that auction."
"Let me guess." She's gathering her things, busying her hands. "You thought I'd have you cleaning chalkboard erasers all day?"
It’s an easy layup. She set the rim at regulation height and everything.
"Nah," I say, grinning now, unable to resist taking the offered shot. "I figured it’d be more like Dictionary Darcy to put me to work organizing library cards all weekend."
She doesn’t laugh. Admittedly, the joke was lame. But she only stares at me in response.
The temperature in the room drops forty degrees.
I watch the freeze come over her in real time.
Her shoulders square, her face closes like a register drawer, and the woman who led me through a tango this morning is replaced by someone issuing instructions to a contractor.
"You still have one more day of service left.
Be at the bookshop tomorrow at 7 a.m. sharp. "
"Seven? That's practically dawn on a Sunday."
"Yes, well, community service waits for no man." She heads for the door without looking back. "Not even billionaires."
"Darcy—"
"Goodnight, Finn."
I stare at her retreating back. "Wait. Don’t you want me to drive you home?"
She doesn’t answer, which is answer enough.
Her heels click away down the linoleum, each one a sentence I can't read, and then the door swings shut and I'm alone with an archway, six empty pizza boxes, and a growing ache in my chest.