“I’m not going to school right now.”
“You are if you want me to keep helping you.”
Eli stared at her.
Raina did not blink.
“What did he do?” he asked again.
She picked up her coffee.
“You’ll get the truth. Not today.”
He hated the answer.
He believed it anyway.
That was new.
The question followed Eli for eleven days.
It did not behave like ordinary curiosity. It did not rise and fall depending on what else demanded his attention. It occupied a fixed location somewhere beneath his sternum, warm and dense, a coal that had not decided whether to cool or ignite.
He kept working.
That helped.
The compound gave him something his house rarely did anymore: sequences that made sense. A bucket became clean bikes. Loose parts became labeled bins. A malfunction became symptoms, then inspection, then cause. Work moved in lines. People might be complicated, but tasks could still be completed.
He arrived every morning at five-thirty. Raina had quietly arranged for someone to pick him up on the coldest days, though Eli protested the first time Doyle stopped beside him two blocks from his house in an old pickup and told him to get in.
“I can walk.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because walking and freezing are two separate activities. Get in.”
Eli got in.
At school, the contrast became almost painful. In the work bay, Boon could put five components on a table, and Eli saw the relationship among them before anyone finished explaining it. In science class, the same kind of relationship buried inside two pages of printed instructions turned into a wall.
He began carrying the diagrams Boon made for him in a folder between classes. He did not show them to teachers. He was not ready to explain why motorcycle parts were helping him understand energy systems better than the textbook.
On the eleventh afternoon, he was in the work bay testing a carburetor assembly while Boon watched from nearby. Boon’s style of teaching had settled into a pattern. He demonstrated once if necessary. Then he stood close enough to prevent disaster but far enough to allow mistakes.
Raina appeared in the doorway holding her phone.
The expression on her face was the one Eli had learned to recognize as two-track thinking: one part receiving information, another already planning what to do about it.
“That was your school.”
Eli set down the tool.
“They called you?”
“You put the compound down as your alternate emergency contact two weeks ago.”
He had forgotten about that.
“I should’ve asked.”
“Yes.”
“Are you mad?”
“No.”
That answer was worse somehow.
“What happened?”
“The principal wants a meeting tomorrow at nine.”
Eli’s stomach tightened.
“Why?”
“You’ve missed forty-seven days since September.”
He looked away.
“Some were before I started coming here.”
“I know.”
“And some were because I was working.”
“I know that, too.”
“I needed the money.”
“I know.”
Raina stepped into the bay.
“She also mentioned failed assignments. Three written assessments. Incomplete work in English, history, and science.”
Eli put both hands on the bench.
“Most of it’s written.”
Boon spoke from behind him.
“It’s not that he doesn’t understand.”