The Hand on the Wall(26)

Maris stretched out on the floor, deep in conversation with Dash. She was, Stevie noticed, fluttering her eyelashes in Kaz’s direction. Next to them was Suda from Stevie’s anatomy class, wearing a brilliant blue hijab. Mudge was also there, leaning into the corner of the room.

“This is the kind of stuff you guys do?” Hunter said, looking around at the pipes and dishes and tables. “I mean, my high school was fine, but it wasn’t like this.”

“Neither was mine,” Stevie said.

“This is your school.”

“My old one,” she said, a little more sharply than she intended. “I mean, before. I guess there was stuff, but I didn’t know about it. I didn’t . . . go to things.”

“You must have done something right,” he replied. “You ended up here.”

This was not a thought Stevie had ever assembled for herself.

When she thought of old Stevie, the one in Pittsburgh, she had two separate ideas that never met up. The first Stevie was antisocial and underachieving. She didn’t participate in any clubs, except for one semester in freshman year when she joined glee club and didn’t sing. She did not like her own voice, so she mouthed the words. She joined glee club only because of the general pressure to have something to put on an application someday. She didn’t do sports; she didn’t play an instrument. She could perhaps have joined a publication, but yearbook was about knowing people, and the magazine was about poetry, so both of those were out. She went to one meeting for the newspaper to see if that would work, but it was less about hard-hitting investigative journalism and more about going to sporting events and writing about how many balls went where and who put the balls there. No club seemed to suit her, so it was twelve weeks of pretending to sing along to a melody of Disney songs until her spirit broke and her parents gave her a long lecture about how she was letting them down. That Stevie was the worst.

And yet, there was another, bigger Stevie. This Stevie spent her time online reading everything about murder. She studied criminology textbooks. She believed, really believed, that she could solve the crime of the century. And she had.

Stevie had never put these Stevies together to assemble a portrait of herself—her choices had not been failures. They had been choices. It was all one Stevie, and that Stevie was worthwhile.

All of this information entered her head at once. Hunter was still looking at her. She became aware that her mouth was hanging open a little bit, as if this profound fusion of identities wanted to make itself known to the world for the first time. She could be like other people—like Janelle, who made things and had interests and also had a relationship with Vi that was romantic and real. Maybe Stevie could be a real person too. Maybe she could express herself and this new, fully aware Stevie could be born, right now.

“Whatever,” she heard herself saying in a low voice. “I mean, yeah.”

Maybe not.

Behind them, Germaine Batt made her silent, ever-watchful way into the room. She was wearing her semiprofessional-looking clothes again—the black pants and blazer. She had pulled her long hair into a low ponytail that hung down her back. She looked around, saw Hunter and Stevie, and sat down next to them. She had her phone out, with the recording function on.

“You going to report on this?” Stevie asked.

“No. I hate human-interest stories. You’re the nephew of that woman who died, right? You were in the fire.”

Hunter blinked in surprise.

“Oh my God,” Stevie said. “Really?”

“I was,” Hunter said.

“Would you consider being interviewed?” Germaine asked.

“I . . . guess?”

Stevie wanted to stop this slow-motion train wreck, but Janelle was stepping to the front of her machine and looked about ready to start. She was wearing her lemon-patterned dress with her hair wrapped up in a cheerful yellow scarf. She always wore her lemons for luck.

“So,” she began, “thank you for coming out to see my machine! Let me tell you about Rube Goldberg. He was an engineer who became a cartoonist . . .”

Stevie’s thoughts began to drift, following the twists and turns of the tubes and dishes and plates. They were taking an unexpected course. David was gone. David could never really be gone, because he kept coming into her mind over and over. Maybe she needed something to push him out. Was that something Hunter? Was that what people did? Got interested in someone new? She didn’t know how she and David had gotten together in the first place.

“. . . so he made a character called Professor Butts, who . . .”

It had been like magnetism. It could honestly not be explained. But once Stevie was around David, something in her became wobbly. The lines and edges blurred. Even now, she wrapped her fingers around her phone. Maybe he would call again.

“So,” Janelle said, “here’s the Danger Diner!”

She reached down and depressed the lever on the toaster. The balls began their journey around the cups and saucers and plates, down the half-pipes, over the little chef. The room responded well, with noises of appreciation and some laughs. Janelle stood to the side, her hands tightly wound together. She nodded as each part of the process functioned exactly as she had designed it, as each weight, each stack, each tube did its part. The last ball was coming to the end. The soda dispenser was triggered. The three plastic pitchers began to fill. This time, Stevie would be ready when the gun went off and the egg was shot down by a series of paintballs. She focused.