Chapter 10

  Agency

  It was a little past six when Alaric started down the broad stone steps toward the faculty lot. Evening had now settled over the campus and the last of the day’s urgency lay in contesting traffic on the commute home.

  “Professor Parks—if you have a moment.”

  ‘Of course. There’s always someone.’

  Alaric let out a controlled breath and slowed, pausing just long enough to assemble the expression he wore for colleagues. Then he turned.

  “Yes?”

  Mr. Graves was descending the steps with the careful confidence of a man who never hurried unless it served him. His tie was loosened a fraction; his face wore that practiced sincerity people mistook for candor.

  “I apologize for stopping you like this,” Graves said, and it sounded almost true. “Today has been… something of a whirlwind.”

  “That it has,” Alaric agreed. “A first faculty meeting without disaster is an achievement in its own right.”

  Graves gave a soft chuckle—polite, controlled. “Very true.”

  Alaric inclined his head. “What can I do for you, John?”

  Graves did not waste time on weather or pleasantries. “Well, I’m interested in a prospective student which has drawn Mr. Harrow’s attention. A Russian boy living in Alaska.”

  Alaric held Graves’s gaze as though the question were merely administrative. “Okay, I may have to direct you to admissions on this then. I do understand that Mr. Harrow submitted a recruitment update from his latest tour. Though that is as much as I know.”

  He kept his voice even, his cards close. If Graves was fishing, Alaric would not be the one to hand him the hook, nor would he be the fish to bite. Not when it comes to the cast which he must protect.

  Graves nodded, as if the answer confirmed something he already knew. “Ah, well then. I will speak plainly.” He smiled tightly and then spoke, “We need this student on our campus, Alan.”

  “From what I’ve heard,” Graves dropped the smile and continued, “this boy isn’t simply gifted—he’s exceptionally talented and useful. We’re still under capacity as is and a prospect like him would be a boon.”

  “A boon,” Alaric echoed mildly. “I do not disagree with that logic, but what, exactly, has our Director of Guild Relations heard?”

  The title was not quite an accusation, but it most certainly carried the weight of one. Graves’s position at the Institute was a peculiar one: part bridge, yet also part filter and part auctioneer. The Institute’s stated purpose was to develop talent; and the reality of guilds is that they exist to absorb that talent. Somewhere between those two aims, a great deal of language was invented to make the transaction sound more like mentorship.

  Graves spread his hands in a small, conciliatory gesture. “Only what comes through the proper channels. A number of reports, and word from the northern chain routes. Lunarchain heard we were looking into their northern chain routes, and some individuals within their ranks were able to pinpoint activity based around a young boy who has aided them repeatedly. Supposedly he’s mechanically inclined—exceptional, even. Quick in a crisis. He’s credited with preventing several losses at sea for them. Saved vessels that should have gone down.”

  “I see,” Alaric said. “I hadn’t made that connection.” A clean lie, delivered with the ease of habit.

  Though, it seems Graves must have hopped on the trail as soon as Elias requested all those reports from some weeks past, but why is he approaching him now?

  Graves studied him for a moment—just long enough to suggest he might have heard the falseness but decided it wasn’t worth naming. “Field experience has a way of accelerating talent. Students like that don’t merely test well—they set a precedent. Which makes them… attractive. LunarChain is quite keen on mechanical expertise as of late, same with Aegis Works.”

  “Ah, of course. Well, it is also true that Elias tends to develop attachments to ‘attractive’ prospects,” Alaric said, allowing himself the smallest hint of amusement. “I imagine he’ll pursue this one vigorously.”

  “That’s precisely my concern,” Graves replied, holding his smile and there it was: the true purpose, slipping out from behind the professionalism. “Not that he’ll pursue him; just… that he may mishandle it. We don’t want to jeopardize any interest with—”

  “Pressure,” Alaric supplied.

  Graves’s held his tongue, as if conceding the word cost him something. “Missteps, actually. Wrong incentives at the wrong time can end poorly.”

  Alaric almost laughed. This conversation was near comical now. This was almost as bad as when the St. Claires were recruited. Truthfully he had nothing to do with recruitment. Alaric’s role was that of a professor, nothing more.

  “Well,” Alaric said, “if you are at all worried about jeopardizing his acceptance, you should be speaking with admissions. Should that prove unsatisfactory… President Fields. Elias will do what Elias does. The administration sets his boundaries after all.”

  Graves’s eyes sharpened, eyebrows raised, pleased and irritated at once. “You’re suggesting I lobby? That I cannot do.”

  “I’m suggesting,” Alaric corrected gently, “that if you want him here, you should take to proper channels. I cannot do anything for you.”

  For a moment Graves said nothing. A passing car’s headlights swept across the lot, briefly bleaching the lines of their faces. When the light moved on, Graves looked faintly amused.

  “I wouldn’t dream of trying to influence the administration to my will,” Graves said, voice smooth as glass. “My role is simply to aid in creating opportunities for all students. Even prospects. I know Fields trusts you, Alan. She respects your opinion.”

  It was a safe sentence. The intent clear: ‘Please help me.’

  Alaric inclined his head anyway. “I will mention it to her. I too am here to teach. Can’t teach without students in the chairs.”

  Graves offered a pleasant smile that never reached his eyes. “I won’t keep you, Professor. I do appreciate that we are both in agreement. Thank you for your time. Have a good evening.”

  “You as well, John,” Alaric replied, and watched Graves turn back toward the building, retreating into the bright, sanctioned space.

  Alaric continued to his car. He opened the door, slid into the driver’s seat, and sealed off the outside world with a firm thud.

  He sat there for a moment, placing his briefcase beside him on the passenger seat, unmoving.

  Recruiters. All he could think about was how he’s surrounded by overachievers. Graves was watching the cast well beyond his expectations. ‘Opportunities’ he said. Well… it had been inevitable. A cast like this—talented, volatile, half-formed in their current state—it would draw attention the way blood draws sharks.

  Once the Institute was fully underway, Graves would be in his element. Making his and Jesse’s work that much more complicated. Selling futures in clean paragraphs to those who see students as investments.

  From an educator’s perspective, it was obscene. The focus always drifted from the required work to the outcomes. Shiny contracts that filled students pockets and brought notoriety.

  After all, who would say no to security? Money buys it. Fame maintains it… or does it?

  Alaric exhaled slowly and rubbed his eyes.

  “Well,” he murmured into the empty car, “Jesse. It appears our work is becoming complicated before it’s even had the decency to begin.”

  ~~~~

  “This looks… pretty good,” Yvette said, stepping back like an art critic evaluating a museum installation. Smiling, hands on her waist, her big green eyes shining as she looks on with pride.

  Based on her reaction, you wouldn’t think all we had accomplished was assembling a couch wrestled out of a cardboard box half an hour ago.

  I looked at it with the same cautious optimism you’d give a new pair of shoes you weren’t sure would chew your soles to death with blisters. I had to hand it to her. It was nice.

  “Yeah,” I said, and then, because I felt like I should add something, “I like it.”

  I dropped onto the cushions with an exaggerated sigh, letting my weight sink in. The fabric gave a little under me, new and clean and faintly chemical in that “freshly unboxed” way. It squeaked once when I shifted, as if it disapproved of my dramatics.

  Yvette flopped down beside me with less caution and more ownership, one leg tucked under her, phone in hand. She glanced over with a smug smile.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “You doubted me,” she said.

  “I didn’t doubt—”

  “Oh, but you did,” she insisted, pointing at my face like she could read a caption floating above my head. “The whole time we were walking around, you had that expression on your face.”

  “What expression?” I scoffed. Maybe a little too quickly. I didn’t like the idea that I was readable.

  She widened her eyes and flattened her mouth. Even just looking at her doing this made me anxious. It was uncomfortably accurate.

  I snorted despite myself. “Okay, that’s… oddly unsettling. Maybe I was a little skeptical, but it wasn’t about your taste.”

  “Oh?” Her eyebrows lifted. “Then what was it about?”

  I rolled my head back against the couch and stared up at the ceiling like the answer might be written in the drywall. “I just didn’t understand why you kept pushing for pull-out couches.”

  Yvette’s hand shot up like she was requesting permission to speak in class. “Ah.”

  I exhaled. “Sorry. Sleeper sofas.”

  “Better,” she said, satisfied—then swung her other leg up and dropped it across my lap like the final punctuation mark in an argument she’d already won.

  And I felt it, even if I didn’t react. That casual contact landed in me like a reminder: You’re filling in someone else’s life. Watch your footing. Don’t trip.

  Yvette patted the cushion twice, as if sealing the deal. “See? This complements the room. Makes it look less… sad bachelor cave.”

  “I didn’t even know I had a brand.”

  “Well, your brand is probably more ‘tasteless male chic.’” She waved at the couch, the scattered tools, the empty boxes. “This is now more… well, still ‘bachelor’, just less cave now.”

  I made a sound that might’ve been a laugh if it wasn’t partly a grimace. “Okay. Good to know.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, and she smiled like she meant it.

  For a second the room felt warmer—like the couch wasn’t the only thing we’d built.

  It was a strange experience, standing in something an entirely other person unknown to me built and lived. I was quite literally standing in their life. Doing normal things. Arguing about furniture with their friend while pretending to be them. Hearing myself laugh and realizing how it all sounded; like I was testing out how it all fit before I committed to purchasing it… wearing it.

  Same-day delivery for a full-size couch had been its own kind of surreal. I still wasn’t used to this world’s little conveniences lining up beside the bigger nightmares like they belonged together—feral monsters outside the walls, magic threaded through everything, and yet you could order furniture and have it arrive before you even had time to metabolize the fact you’d dropped a thousand dollars on it.

  Yvette checked her phone again, thumb flicking. “Aight,” she said, casual as breathing. “What’s for dinner? You got plans? If it sounds good, I’ll stick around. If not, I’m going home. My dad’s cooking actual Mexican food for once.”

  I turned my head toward her. “For once?”

  She made a face. “He gets lazy sometimes. White-people lazy. Like Mom and her ‘taco seasoning packets.’ Drives me nuts.”

  I huffed. “That is… a very specific kind of insult.”

  “It’s love,” she said. “Anyway—dinner. What’re we doing?”

  Dinner. Right. The word felt oddly loaded, like it should come with a script I didn’t have.

  I reached for my phone, buying myself a few seconds. “Uh, let me see where Alan’s at.”

  The name came out without effort. At least I wasn’t still almost calling him Alaric. That would’ve been an interesting conversation.

  I typed quickly before I could think too hard about it: Yvette came over and is sticking around for dinner. You want anything?

  I hit send and set the phone face-down on my thigh like I’d done something suspicious.

  When I looked up, Yvette had leaned in a little, head tilted, studying me with a new kind of focus.

  “Jess,” she said, drawing the word out. “Why are you and your dad on a first-name basis now?”

  I blinked, suddenly feeling like I’d stepped over the invisible line of what was normal in this life.

  “What?” I played dumb, which was stupid, because she was looking at me like she’d already circled the answer in red ink.

  “You’ve been doing it a lot,” she said. “You say Alan. Not ‘Dad.’ Not even ‘my dad.’ Just… Alan.” She squinted like she could see the gears turning behind my eyes. “And you haven’t called him dad once.”

  Heat crawled up my neck. I tried to laugh it off, because that’s what people did when they weren’t sure if they were about to get caught lying.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and hated how thin it sounded. “I guess it just… stuck lately?”

  Yvette’s expression softened, but her eyes didn’t let go. “Huh.” She chuckled, though it didn’t have the same sharpness as before. “I don’t even know if that’s weird or if it’s, like… cool. My dad would probably smack me if I tried that.”

  She said it like a joke, but it still made my chest tighten. I watched her face for a beat too long, trying to figure out what she wanted from me there. Sympathy? Agreement? The old Jesse’s reaction?

  I had no idea what the previous Jesse would’ve said. Maybe he’d have made some smart comment. Maybe he’d have laughed and moved on. Maybe he’d have known exactly which version of Yvette she was being—and what she was asking for under the joke.

  I didn’t.

  So I did the safest thing: I let my eyes drop to my phone like it was the only stable object in the room.

  It chimed, cutting through the silence like a rescue line.

  Go eat with her family. I have prep work.

  I stared at the message. I could practically hear his voice saying it—calm, clipped, like the decision was obvious and the social part of my life was just a logistical variable to solve.

  My mouth tightened.

  Go eat with her family.

  Like it was nothing. Like I wasn’t a counterfeit bill being passed hand to hand. Like I wasn’t one wrong word away from someone noticing the ink didn’t match.

  “What’s that face for?” Yvette asked, and her tone snapped back into lightness. She bumped my knee with hers. “Did he say something weird?”

  I hesitated—too long. Then I forced myself to move, to speak, to be normal.

  “He’s working late,” I said. “Prep stuff. So…”

  “So,” Yvette echoed, grinning. “No stress. Come to my place. Mexican food, baby!”

  She was already standing as she said it, like the decision had been made the moment the question existed. She reached for her coat and started gathering things with practiced speed, scooping up stray tools and nudging a box with her foot like she was clearing a path through a mess she didn’t even see as a mess.

  I stood too—slower—like my body was checking with my brain before it committed. “Is that okay?”

  Yvette froze halfway into her jacket. Then she turned and looked at me like I’d asked whether it was legal to breathe air.

  “Uh… yeah?” she said, eyebrows knitting together. “Why?”

  Because I don’t know the rules. Because I don’t know what I’m allowed to touch in a life that isn’t mine. Because I don’t know what your family thinks of me. Because I can’t remember if I’ve already done this a hundred times.

  I couldn’t say any of that. Not without the whole thing cracking open.

  So I shrugged, and it came out smaller than I wanted. “I don’t know. Just… checking.”

  Yvette scoffed, but there wasn’t cruelty in it—more like frustration at a puzzle piece that didn’t fit where it used to. “You’re such a weirdo,” she said, and the words were familiar enough to almost feel comforting. “Of course it’s okay. You practically lived with us when you and I were babies. My older siblings babysat us while our parents were out working.”

  She grabbed both our jackets and shoved mine at my chest. Then she turned toward the mountain of cardboard and plastic and kicked one of the bigger boxes with the toe of her boot.

  “Come on,” she said. “We can toss this shit out.”

  I moved because that was the only way to keep from thinking too hard about what she’d just said—you practically lived with us.

  We dragged the cardboard toward the door in awkward armfuls, bumping into each other, swearing under our breath. Yvette narrated the whole thing like it was a comedy bit. I laughed in the right places and tried not to let my mind dwell on the parts that didn’t make sense.

  On the way out, I caught my reflection in the dark window by the entryway—jacket half on, hair a little messed up, hands smudged with dust from the boxes—and for a second it looked like an actual person. Like someone who’d spent the evening building furniture with his best friend and was about to go eat dinner with her family.

  Normal.

  It hit me then. Right on the nose.

  At the bar—after I’d pushed and snapped at Alaric—he had said something about roles. How people like us were pieces placed for a purpose. Because evidently we do have a purpose here. But it made my life sound like a strategy instead of a mess.

  And standing there with a stupid coat in my hands and a stupid couch behind me, I realized the part that scared me wasn’t the idea that someone was writing this and I had no real… control, no real agency in it all.

  But I have a thought lingering now in the back of my mind. After being here now for two days. I have a home. I have a friend, whose family knows me and helped raise me. This thought turned into an idea.

  Wherever this lands… could I maybe.. stay on these pages?

  Maybe I don’t want to go back, if I even could.

  Because this—Yvette’s voice in my ear, the easy confidence, the way she acted like I belonged—it’s a life.

  Or at least the outline of one. I definitely have a lot to fill in, no doubt.

  But I feel myself reaching for it.

  If I let myself build something here—if I let myself stack small, ordinary moments until they started to resemble a home—then I wasn’t just surviving a strange world.

  I’m choosing it.

  That was the part I didn’t know how to admit, even to myself: that I didn’t only want answers. I didn’t only want to understand what I was missing.

  I wanted to earn what was in front of me.

  Yvette shouldered past me with two flattened boxes tucked under her arm. “Quit staring into the void, Jesse. Let’s go.” she said, bright and sharp.

  I blinked, and the moment passed, but it left a mark. I followed her out, stepping carefully into the hallway and for the first time since I’d been dragged into this place, the thought didn’t just terrify me.

  It tempted me.

  Because maybe the shoes I was trying to fill weren’t someone else’s.

  Maybe they are just mine now—whether I remembered walking in them or not.

  And if that was true… then wanting to deserve this wasn’t morbid. It’s just being human.