Archive of Our Own

“Okay,” Ryland said, clicking to the next slide. The image zoomed in on the crab’s carapace. He leaned forward from where he was sitting on the edge of his desk. “Look at that. Do you guys see it?”

A second of silence passed before a voice piped up from the middle rows. “It’s a face.”

“Yep. It’s a face.” Ryland said, pointing a finger at the screen. “What kind of face?” 

Leo knit his brows in concentration. “Like a—one of those Japanese warriors? The ones with the katanas.” 

“A samurai,” Ryland said with a nod. “Yeah. Samurai crab.” He pointed at the image again. “So, how does a samurai end up on the back of a crab? Did someone paint it on there?” 

A few students laughed. A warm feeling flared up in his chest. His stupid, traitorous chest. He was supposed to be mad at them. He had literally spent the first ten minutes of class explaining why we do not jam erasers into the wall vents. 

“No way,” said a girl in the second row. Yolanda, who had not yet in six weeks failed to have an opinion. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t. So what actually happened?” 

He walked a slow circle around his desk to give them a second to think. Above him, the solar system hung from the ceiling tiles. Currently, he only had Saturn, Jupiter, and the Sun up there, all represented by lumpy, colorful spheres of styrofoam and paint. The rest of the planets were still missing. They finished one per Friday because Ryland had learned the hard way that trying to teach actual science at the end of the week was a suicide mission.

He stopped at the side of the projector screen, stepping out of the beam of light. 

“The fishermen,” he said, tapping the image of the shell. “Here’s the question. You’re a fisherman. You pull up a crab. It’s got an angry human face staring back at you. Are you eating it?”

Several shaking heads.

“No, no, no. Of course not. So—” he tossed an imaginary object into the air, “—you throw it back. And the crab that got thrown back survived. And its kids survived. And their kids survived. And every generation, the crabs that looked a little more like a face got thrown back, and the ones that didn’t—” he drew a finger across his throat. A kid in the back row made a sound of distress. “—gone. Soup. And that decision, made thousands and thousands of times, across hundreds of years, made that.” He pointed at the slide. “A samurai, on a crab.”

“That’s called artificial selection,” he continued. “Humans choosing which things survive.” He went back to his desk. “And if humans can do it by accident, just because we are too freaked out to eat a crab with a face on it—” the same kids laughed again, “—then nature can do it too. Nature’s been at it for billions of years.” 

He clicked forward. An image of a golden ear of corn appeared on the screen. Someone in the back whispered ‘yummy!’ and Ryland had to fight to keep a straight face. 

“Let’s look at another example,” he said, clicking the remote again. A picture of teosinte appeared next to the corn, looking scraggly and unimpressive. “Ten thousand years ago, modern corn did not exist. That weed on the left did.” He pointed a finger at the screen. “That is the ancestor of corn. And it looks awful.” 

The kids stared at the screen in various states of confusion. 

“We made corn,” he explained, stepping closer to the board. “Thousands of generations of farmers saved the biggest, best seeds, over and over, until we produced something so different from the original that it cannot—” he paused, “—survive without us. At all. If humans disappeared tomorrow, corn would go extinct right along with us.”

“Aw, shit. I love corn.”

Ryland turned. Jodie was staring at her notebook with a horrified look, clearly realizing she’d said that out loud. 

The class erupted into snickers. Ryland didn’t join in, choosing instead to look at her over the top of his glasses with an unimpressed stare. He glanced down at her desk, watching her slide her forearm over the page to block his view. He had spent the last six weeks trying to sneak a look at whatever she was doing back there, but she was too fast. All he knew for sure was that it had almost nothing to do with science. 

“So do I,” Ryland said. “But you can’t say the ’s’ word in here.”

“You said fuck last Tuesday.”

Ryland clutched his chest like he’d been shot. “Hey! I said fudge. And I’m an adult.”

“That’s so unfair.”

“Life’s not fair,” he shrugged. “Super not fair. But here’s the thing—” He grinned and slapped the spacebar with his whole palm like he was hitting a buzzer on a game show. 

Jodie slouched lower in her seat, grumbling something he couldn’t catch. He watched the new image load with a smile.

“Nature plays favorites,” he said, pointing at the corn. “Kind of like we do with corn. The trees, the grass in the park, your ability to see and talk and hear—all of it comes from natural selection. And natural selection isn’t fair.” 

He leaned against the edge of his desk. “It doesn’t care about the crab or the corn… or us. It doesn’t have a goal. Think of it like a giant game of shape-sorting. The environment changes shape, and the things that survive are just the ones that happen to slide right through the slot.”

Ryland looked around and saw that most of them were taking notes. Jodie was the only exception. She had stopped writing altogether and was staring at the screen, looking like she was chewing on a really difficult problem. 

“Oh, um, this is what we’re covering this week,” Ryland added, watching them work. “The corn stuff won’t be on the test.”

Almost every single pen in the room dropped down to the desks at the exact same moment.

Ryland huffed a laugh. “Yeah, so… we’ll be doing artificial selection, and then the big boss, natural selection.” He glanced around the room. “You guys good? Any comments before I set you free?”

A couple heads shook. In the third row, Marco frowned, processing the information with painful seriousness. 

“So we’re just the crabs that didn’t get eaten,” Marco said, without putting his hand up. 

“Essentially, yes,” Ryland replied, not bothering to correct him. 

Marco considered this, staring blankly at the screen. “That’s kind of sad.” 

“It’s also pretty cool if you think about it,” Ryland said. “Every single thing alive right now comes from a long line of things that just refused to die for billions of years. Every single one of your ancestors managed to hang on long enough to have kids. You’re all basically the result of a massive streak of good luck.”

Marco tilted his head, apparently satisfied with that answer. Ryland waited a moment, then glanced up at the ceiling. The Sun turned in a slow circle, caught in a stray breeze. 

“Alright,” he said, clicking off the projector. “That’s enough science. Get out.”

The room dissolved into a scramble for the door, backpacks swinging and chairs scraping back against the floor. Someone’s water bottle hit the ground, rolling all the way under a desk as the kids hurried to clear out. 

Ryland dropped into his desk chair, pulling the stack of today’s worksheets toward him. He sorted them into a faded green folder, tapping the edges against the wood to square up the pile. A couple of them yelled out a goodbye on their way into the hallway, and he offered a vague wave in return before glancing up over the edge of his glasses. 

“Jodie.” 

She stopped right at the threshold. A few of her classmates glanced back before disappearing into the hallway. She turned, her notebook pressed tight to her chest like a shield. Ryland went back to shuffling his papers, keeping her waiting until the door finally thudded shut. 

“So… what about that essay you were due to hand in last week?” Ryland asked, his eyes still on the folder as he squared up the final stack of papers. 

When he didn’t get an immediate answer, he looked up. Jodie was fidgeting with the edge of her notebook, her eyes fixed very seriously on his desk calendar.

“I forgot it at home,” she said, quietly.

“You’ve been forgetting it at home for a while now,” he said, trying for a light smile to get her to look at him. “Come on, I’d appreciate a more creative excuse than that. Tell me a dog ate it. Tell me it was sucked into a black hole. Give me something fun to work with.” 

She didn’t make eye contact, just shifted her weight from foot to foot.

Ryland let out a quiet sigh. He really didn’t want to be the bad guy, but she was the only student in the class sitting at a D-minus. He suspected she just wasn’t interested in science, which he couldn’t personally relate to, but that wasn’t her problem. He wasn’t going to fail her over it. He just needed her to hand in something, if only so he could stop hounding her. 

“If you need an extension, just ask for one,” he said. “I don’t want to nag you about this every day, okay?”

Jodie looked up at that.

“Do you need one?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “Please.”

“Okay. Friday morning at homeroom, but that’s the absolute limit,” Ryland said, sliding the folder into his bag. He hesitated, then sort of shrugged. “And if you still haven’t finished it, just... hand in whatever. Draw a dinosaur and label the parts. I don’t know. At this point, I’ll take it.”

Jodie let out a small, relieved laugh.

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

She turned toward the door, ready to escape.

“And Jodie?” Ryland called out.

She turned all the way around, a little jump in it.

Ryland pointed a warning finger at her. “No swearing in my classroom.”

“Fudge,” she said. “Okay.” 

Ryland smiled as she slipped out into the hallway.

The same waitress at Murphy’s had taken their order every Thursday for a month now, and this week she’d remembered his Guinness without being told. She hadn’t remembered Marissa’s order, so there was a brief back-and-forth about the steak while she stared off into space, desperately trying to pretend she wasn’t part of the conversation. Ryland hadn’t commented on it. He was saving it for later, just so he could make fun of her. 

He was halfway through his ribeye when Marissa’s phone buzzed against the dark wood of the table. She checked the screen, flipped it face-down with a sharp clack, and said, “Kevin’s been texting me.” 

Ryland’s silver fork hovered halfway to his mouth. He looked up. “Kevin Kevin?” 

“Do we know another Kevin?”

He set the fork down, the metal clinking against his plate. “What does he want?” 

“He got promoted,” she said, in a tone that conveyed exactly how impressed she was by this. “And he wanted to let me know he’s up for a visiting investigator spot at Caltech. Apparently, if I want to give things another shot, he could potentially make it work.”

“He led with the promotion?” Ryland tried to swallow a laugh.

“Yup.”

“How romantic.”

“He sent flowers, too.” She picked up her pint, the condensation dripping onto the cardboard coaster. “Poppies. Huge bouquet of them, just sitting on my doorstep.” 

“Aren’t you—”

“—allergic, yeah, which I told him like a thousand times when we were together. But even if I wasn’t, poppies? Seriously? If you’re trying to win a woman back, at least buy roses or something.” 

“To be fair, academia doesn’t pay well.” 

“That is the most charitable thing you have ever said about Kevin.”

“I’m in a generous mood.” He picked his fork back up, dragging a piece of steak through the remaining sauce on his plate. “You’re not actually considering it, right?”

“God, no.” She set her pint down with a thud. “Besides, I’ve been talking to someone at work.” 

“At the DOE? Who’s the lucky guy?” 

She smiled into her beer. “His name is Mark.”

Ryland put his fork down again. “Come on.”

She laughed, loud enough to draw a brief glance from the next table. “I’m kidding. It’s Daniel.” 

Ryland watched her for a second, chewing. “Y’know,” he said, pointing his fork at her. “Have you ever thought about maybe staying single for longer than a week?” 

Marissa didn’t miss a beat. “Have you ever thought about dating someone, like, ever?” 

Ryland blinked, his mouth dropping open slightly. He held her gaze for a second, then slowly lowered his fork back to his plate, clearing his throat. “I walked right into that one.”

Marissa took a slow sip of her beer, looking very satisfied with herself. “Oh, by the way—did you know they’re engaged?” 

Ryland looked up. “Who?”

“Linda and Mark. They’re engaged.”

“But they’ve only been together like—”

“Four years?”

He stared down at his half-eaten steak. “Huh.” 

“Yeah,” Marissa said, her tone perfectly flat, giving him absolutely nothing to work with. “You didn’t get an invitation then?” 

“No—” he replied, shifting back in his chair as he felt the trap snapping shut. “Have you?” 

“Yeah.” She took a slow sip. “Wanna be my plus one?” 

“No. No—are you kidding?” 

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not showing up as the pathetic ex who got dumped and never got over it.”

“But you did get over it.”

“She doesn’t know that.”

“So tell her.”

“Right, at her wedding,” he said. “And you make the jokes about me not being over her anyway, so the general takeaway seems to be that I’m not, which is not—” he stopped. “Those jokes aren’t fuc—funny, by the way.”

Marissa watched him over her glass, entirely unphased by the spark of temper. “Calm down, cowboy.”

“I’m calm.”

“You almost cursed.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Barely.” She smiled. “Anyway, I think you should go.” She must have seen something on his face, because she quickly defended her point. “Not for Linda—she’s marrying someone else, that ship has sailed and sunk. Do it because a lot of your old friends are going to be there, and you never see them anymore. You need to get out of your cave.”

“I see you a few times a week.”

“I’m your only friend, Ryland.” She looked at her beer when she said it. “I love you, but that’s a little sad.”

He moved some mash around his plate. “Maybe,” he replied. “I don’t know. It might not make—” God, he didn’t want to talk about this with Marissa. “—it’s just, I probably shouldn’t, like, be investing in all that right now anyway.” 

She frowned. “Why not?”

“Well, because… you never know, right?” Ryland picked at the edge of his napkin. “I might not… be here that long.” 

Marissa stopped with her glass halfway to her mouth. She set it back down, her face going completely blank for a second before she looked up at him.

“Do you have somewhere else to be?”

“No, it’s just—well, Dr. Anderson called,” he said. The admission felt horrible. Same guilty weight as years ago, when he’d confessed to texting Linda during a party. In his defense, he’d been high. “He just… I think he was just checking in. To see how I was doing.”

“That was—” She hunted for a word that wasn’t an insult, before forcing it past her teeth. “—nice of him.” 

Ryland didn’t blame her for the struggle. In his considerable experience with the man back in grad school, nice and Dr. Anderson did not belong in the same language, let alone the same sentence. He had been a brutal thesis supervisor, not a mentor. And yet, out of everyone from his old life, he had been the only one who had actually reached out.

“So,” Marissa said, dropping her hands in defeat. “What did he say?” 

“Um, not a lot. He just… he asked how I was,” he said, staring down at his fork. “And then… I don’t know, he mentioned that if I wasn’t happy with the teaching here, he could maybe… pull some strings? Get me in at another university. He said he’d give me a shout if something opened up.” 

She watched him for a moment. “And what did you say?”

“I—I told him I’d think about it,” he confessed. “If… if something came up.” 

“Okay.” Marissa picked her fork, turned it over in her fingers, and then set it down in the exact same spot. Ryland tracked the movement. “Is that what you want to do?” 

“I—I don’t know.”

“Yes you do.”

“Marissa—”

“You do, though. I think you know exactly what you want. You just—you don’t want to say it because then you’d have to figure out why you want it.” She locked her eyes on him. “Do you really wanna go back there?” 

Ryland stared at a golden, plastic lucky cat on the bar, its mechanical arm waving at him in a cheap, endless loop.

“No,” he said, though even as the word left his mouth, he couldn’t find the conviction to back it up. “I don’t know. This is comfortable. This is… okay.” 

“Okay,” Marissa repeated with a laugh, but she didn’t find it funny at all. 

“It is not?”

“I didn’t say anything,” she replied. 

“You did the face,” he said, pointing a finger at his own cheeks.

“I have many faces, Ryland, you’re going to have to be more specific.” She sounded very tired. “I just think it’s interesting, that’s all. That Anderson calls and suddenly you’re maybe not staying.”

“That’s not—it’s not because of the call. I’ve been thinking about it anyway.”

“About leaving.”

“About my life!” he snapped. The table next to them turned to look, forcing his voice down into a harsh whisper. “About what comes next. This was always—” he stopped, sliding his glass slightly to the left for no reason. “I have a one-year contract.” 

“I know you have a one-year contract.”

“So.”

“So,” she agreed, in a tone that agreed with nothing. She was quiet for a moment, and he thought maybe they were done with it, and then she said, “Do you remember calling me from that conference in Vancouver? What has it been, five years since then?”

“Six,” Ryland muttered. “It was six—”

“Six years,” Marissa cut him off, not letting him finish. “Since Halverson gave that big presentation taking credit for your work. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what you said?”

“I—”

“Because I remember,” she said. “I remember that call, and the one after that. I remember picking you up from your apartment when you hadn’t stepped foot outside in six days.” 

“I never asked for your help,” he snapped.

“No!” Marissa dropped her hands, her voice rising to match his. “You didn’t ask! Because you never do! What was I supposed to do? Leave you there? I was scared, Ryland.”

Ryland stayed quiet. He couldn’t say anything to that.

“And I’m not saying academia is the devil,” she continued. “I’m saying it made you miserable for years. And now Anderson calls, and suddenly this—” she gestured vaguely at the table, the room, apparently his entire current existence “—is just okay.” 

“I didn’t say just okay.”

“You said comfortable.”

“Comfortable is good.”

“Comfortable is good,” she repeated, slamming the words back at him. “Ryland. Come on.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t want you to say anything! I’m not testing you!” A woman at the bar turned to look. Marissa didn’t see her. “I just—I can’t keep being the one who—” She stopped, taking a sharp breath, and began aggressively tearing a piece of bread apart. 

“I want you to think about what you actually want, because it sure as hell isn’t that job. Is it a prestige thing? Because I never thought it was, for you, but—”

“It’s not about—it’s not prestige.”

“But then what?” Her voice cracked.

Marissa fell silent. To avoid her eyes, Ryland turned toward the window. Outside, Gough Street was going gold in the last of the evening light. The light poured through the glass, thick and blinding, painting the table and their faces in a brilliant gold. Ryland looked at it for a moment and said nothing.

He remembered the apartment completely dark at three in the afternoon, the floor covered in trash, and the realization that he hadn’t eaten anything but saltine crackers in four days because leaving the bedroom felt like trying to lift a car. He remembered the look on her face when she finally used her spare key to get in, the way she had practically forced the glass of water into his hand, and the terrifying certainty that if she hadn’t turned up, he would have just kept lying there in the dark. 

“It’s just not worth it,” she said at last. “I’m not doing that again, Ryland. I can’t.” 

“Yeah,” he whispered. “I know.” 

He knew she was right. He knew it in his bones, and yet here they were. 

She studied his face for another second, then stabbed her fork into her own plate, abandoning the fight before they both crossed a line. She nudged his plate closer to him. “Eat your dinner. It’s getting cold.”

Marco had been spinning for a full minute now, arms stretched out at his sides, head tilted back, while Leo counted under his breath from his desk like this was an official event with record-setting conditions. Ryland had spotted them forty-five seconds ago and decided to let it play out. Marco wasn’t hurting anyone, and Ryland had a stack of forms that weren’t going to sign themselves. However, the kid was starting to lean dangerously to the left, and it was getting a tiny bit concerning. 

“Marco,” he said, without looking up.

Marco kept spinning.

“Marco.”

“I’m testing something.”

Ryland turned a page. “The limits of human balance?”

“The limits of human endurance,” Marco said, with a seriousness that didn’t fit his age, or what he was doing, at all.

“Well, let me know when you find them. Preferably before you throw up on my floor.”

“I’m not going to throw up!”

“I hope you’re right about that.” Ryland initialled the bottom of the form and moved it to the done pile. “For both our sakes.”

Marco made a face at that. Ryland decided to ignore it. There were ten of them in the room so far, about as good as it got before the Friday morning bell. The rest were just talking, which was honestly all he could ask for at eight in the morning.

A form appeared at the edge of his desk. He looked up. Sofia stood there, looking like she was delivering bad news.

“Permission slip,” she said. “For the museum thing.”

“Isn’t the museum thing in December?”

“Mrs. Ochoa said to hand them in now.”

“She’s very organised,” Ryland sighed, taking the form. “Thank you, Sofia.”

Sofia returned to her seat. Ryland added the form to a different pile, which was the pile for things that were someone else’s problem until December.

The door slammed open. He briefly considered doing one of those stupid breathing exercises Marissa kept sending him articles about, because if one more person slammed a door today, he was going to end up in the nurse’s office himself.

He closed his eyes. “Please don’t slam the door.” 

“I forgot my Spanish homework.” It was Tyler, slightly out of breath, backpack half on.

“That does seem unfortunate.”

“Mr. Flores is going to kill me.”

“Probably not.”

“Mr. Grace.” Tyler appeared at the side of his desk, radiating urgency. “Please don’t tell him.”

Ryland looked up. “Tell him what?”

“That I forgot it.”

Right. Because obviously Mr. Grace and Mr. Flores were best buddies who gossiped about missing homework over coffee. These kids really thought he was an asshole. 

“Relax, your secret is safe with me. Go do your homework.” Ryland leaned back, his voice dropping as a headache started to bloom behind his eyes. “Just try to keep it down, yeah?”

Tyler dropped into his seat and unzipped his bag like his life depended on it. Ryland watched him for a second, then looked across the room to where Yolanda was sitting with a book open, unbothered by the general chaos surrounding her. He felt a small gratitude for Yolanda that he would never, ever say out loud. If all twenty-three of them were like Marco, he would have quit by week two. Maybe week three, but only out of stubbornness. 

“My vision’s still spinning,” Marco announced to no one in particular.

Ryland rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “Well, that’s what happens when you spin in circles. Go see the nurse if you feel sick.” 

“It’ll stop.”

“Okay. Let me know if it doesn’t.” 

Marco squinted at his desk as if it had moved slightly to the left. Leo patted him on the back like a proud coach.

The door opened at a normal speed this time. Ryland glanced up. “Morning.”

Jodie came in with her backpack on her front, already unzipping it as she approached his desk. She pulled out two folded pages from between the covers of her notebook and set them down in front of him.

“The essay,” she said.

“Oh, thank you,” Ryland said. “Right on time.” 

Jodie hesitated as if she was about to leave, then paused. “Oh. And—”

She opened her notebook again, flipped to a page, and tore one out before handing it over as well.

He took it, a little puzzled, and turned it around.

It was a drawing of a dinosaur. A diplodocus, drawn horizontally across the page, standing in a shallow lake with its feet half-submerged, mountains sketched faintly in the background. Ryland knew absolutely nothing about drawing and had no artistic talent to speak of, a fact several people had confirmed over the years, thank you very much. But he could tell that this was pretty impressive for a kid her age. The fact that she had made it specifically for him was not, of course, clouding his judgment in the slightest. 

“Oh.” He turned the page in his hands again, as if that might magically turn it into something else. “A dinosaur,” he said, and you could hear the smile.

Jodie smiled a little. “I was hoping it might count for extra credit or something. My average is pretty bad.”

He let out a short laugh. “I might actually have to consider that. This is really good, Jodie.”

She looked down at the edge of his desk, hesitating for a second as if she wasn’t sure what to say, before offering a quiet, “Thanks.”

Ryland looked from the drawing up to her face, his eyes dropping to the book tucked under her arm. “Is that what you’re always doing in there? During class?”

Her head came up immediately. “I always pay attention, though. I’m not just—” she flipped to a page and held it toward him, a bit defensively. It was covered in small squiggles, looping lines, tiny animals in the margins. “I just doodle when I’m listening. It helps me focus.”

“I know you pay attention,” he said, practically whispering, like she was a deer that might spook. “I wasn’t telling you off.”

She hesitated, then lowered the notebook slightly. “Oh.” 

“I was just curious,” he added, and immediately wanted to kick himself.

She looked down at the notebook, then back at him, and said, “Do you want to see some of them?”

A ridiculous wave of victory flared up in his chest. He forced himself to play it cool.

“Yeah,” he said, already reaching to clear a space on his desk. “Yeah, show me.”

She set it on the edge and turned a few pages. They were mostly animals and landscapes, some in pencil, some with colour, all of them in the same style as the Diplodocus. A fox lying in long grass. A coastal cliff from above. A pencil sketch of the samurai crab from his slides, the grooves on its shell a small, angry face.

Ryland looked up from the pages to her face. She looked tense all of a sudden, her fingers tight against the cardboard cover, and it occurred to him that she might not have shown these to anyone else.

“Has anyone from the art department seen this?” 

She shook her head.

“You should show it to them,” He tapped the fox. “Mrs. Ochoa went to RISD, I think. Rhode Island School of Design. That’s a serious art school. She’d have useful things to say about these.”

Jodie looked uncertain. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

He watched her face, trying to read it. “Do you want to be an artist? When you’re, you know. Grown up.”

“I’m already grown up,” she said, with the complete seriousness of a twelve-year-old.

“Right, sorry. When you’re grown up grown up.”

She considered this. “Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

“Then you should show them to Mrs. Ochoa,” he said. “See what she thinks. Seriously, these are great. Trust me, I failed art at your age, so I know what the bad stuff looks like.”

That got a small laugh out of her. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe. Thank you, Mr. Grace.” 

He picked up the Diplodocus and set it carefully to one side of his desk. “Thank you for the essay. And for this. I’ll take care of the dinosaur.”

Jodie smiled and went to her seat by the window. Ryland looked at the drawing for a long second, his thumb catching the ragged edge where she had torn it from her notebook, then glanced at the bottom corner of his screen, where the clock read eight-twelve with three minutes to spare before the bell. He carefully propped the Diplodocus against his pencil holder, adjusting it until the little dinosaur stood upright to guard his desk, before finally pulling up the attendance app. 

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s settle down.”

Nobody settled down. Leo was giving what appeared to be a medical update on Marco’s vertigo to anyone within earshot. 

“Guys.”

He waited another two seconds, realized it wasn’t happening, and just looked down at his screen. “Anne,” he called out to the wall of noise. Anne was currently throwing a crumpled piece of paper at Tyler. “Great, Anne is here,” Ryland muttered, clicking the box. 

The hill on Divisadero was trying to kill him. It did this every day, and every day Ryland told himself he was going to find a different route home. He never did, because he was stubborn and the descent on the other side was worth it. His shirt was sticking to his back, and the city spread out below him in the afternoon light, the bay flat and silver in the distance. He was too out of breath to properly appreciate any of it. 

He had grown up about four miles from here, on a street he occasionally biked past without meaning to. His parents had brought him to the bay on weekends when he was small, his father pointing out the bridges, the islands, the fog. He didn’t remember any of it, really. What he had was a photograph, himself at maybe eighteen months on the sand at Crissy Field, socks on, because apparently he had cried the instant his bare feet touched the sand.

Ryland coasted down the other side of the hill. There were surfers out past the break, small dark shapes against the silver of the water. He had lived in California his entire life, but he had never fit the golden, sun-bleached beach boy stereotype. In fact, the only time he had ever even thought about surfing was in ninth grade, in science class. He didn’t care about the sport, and he wasn’t trying to be cool, it was entirely the fault of his teacher, Mr. Pyles. Mr. Pyles had been a marine biologist who spent most Mondays sunburnt, and he clearly preferred students who also surfed, or swam, or did anything involving coordination and sunlight. As far as Ryland was concerned, he had been disqualified on both counts. He had been a pale, anxious kid who asked too many questions and surfed nothing. 

He had hated that teacher. He had cried about him more than once, something that fourteen-year-old Ryland had considered deeply humiliating. His grades in the class had dropped by November and never recovered. After that, it had become difficult to shake the suspicion that Mr. Pyles might have been right about him.

And now here he was, a researcher without a job who had ended up in front of a classroom because the alternative was not eating, which was, he had to admit, exactly the kind of thing Mr. Pyles had probably also told himself. The universe had a deranged sense of humor. 

He turned onto Fell, the park opening up on his left, and tried very hard not to think about his childhood. It was difficult, because that was the problem with San Francisco. He had a history with every street. He was grateful Marissa had gotten him out here, truly, he was aware that without her he would probably still be in his Seattle apartment doing something inadvisable with a nine-dollar bottle of vodka. It was just that it was occasionally difficult to bike home without thinking about the people who were no longer around to see it, and if he started crying his glasses were going to fog up and he was going to ride straight into traffic, and that would be a very undignified way to end the Grace lineage.

He stopped at the corner store on Gough, the one with the cat that lived by the door. He had been buying it tuna cans for three weeks despite the sign that said please do not feed the cat. The cat was in its usual spot, fat and gray. He did not know the cat’s sex, which meant he could not assign it a name with any confidence, which was probably for the best, because if he named it he would almost certainly become attached to it, and if he became attached to it he would probably take it home, and he was fairly sure it already belonged to someone, which would make that whole chain of events technically kidnapping. Ryland waved at it in greeting, but the cat did not acknowledge him.

Inside, he picked up a couple of things he didn’t really need and one he did, and stood in line behind a man who was paying for a single banana with a card. He was thinking about what to make for dinner when his phone went off. He didn’t answer it. The man with the banana was still negotiating with the card reader. Ryland waited, paid, exchanged a couple words with the cashier about nothing in particular, and took his bag. 

Outside, he set the bag in his basket and took out his phone. He had a missed call from Dr. Anderson. 

His fingers went slick and the phone nearly slipped from his grip. He caught it against his chest, his heart giving a hard thud that felt unnecessarily loud. Ryland looked at the cat for a moment, as if it might have thoughts on the matter. It did not. It was a cat. It wound around his ankle while he stood there. 

He swallowed hard and called back. 

“Ryland.” Anderson picked up on the second ring, so Ryland supposed he had been waiting. “Is it a bad moment?”

“Yeah, sorry, I was—” he looked at the bag in his basket. The ice cream was going to melt. “I was just out. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you,” he said after a pause. “I’m calling about what we discussed a few weeks ago.” 

“Right,” Ryland said. “Yeah.” He was trying not to sound desperate. He knew he was, but the sound of it in his own voice would be unendurable. 

“Well, I’ve asked around,” Anderson said. “I have an old colleague currently in the molecular biology department at NYU. He’s seen your work and he was pretty impressed. With the work itself, I mean. Not necessarily how things ended. But he thinks you have good ideas. He’s willing to give you an interview for a position next year.” 

The line went quiet. Ryland gripped the handlebars of his bike, his mind blanking out for a second.

“Yeah,” Ryland said finally, clearing his throat. “So it would be for the molecular biology department?” 

“Yes.”

“In New York?”

“Yes, Ryland. New York.”

Ryland looked down at his sneakers, then at the cat, which had sat down by his front wheel. “So, not the xenobiology department.” 

Anderson made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Ryland, I can pull strings, but I am no miracle worker. With your reputation right now, you’re not getting a xenobiology position anywhere. This is probably the best you’re going to find. It’s a good department, it’s NYU, and it’s a fresh start.” A pause. “Most people would consider themselves lucky to get this offer.”

“Right,” Ryland said. “No, I know.”

“Are you…” Anderson trailed off, like he was tasting something unpleasant. “…liking it there?” 

Ryland swung a leg over and sat heavily on the bicycle seat, balancing with one foot on the curb. “It’s fine. It’s a good job.” 

“You complained about teaching constantly when you were here,” Anderson said. “Now you’re doing it all day, every day.” 

“Well,” Ryland said, watching the cat stretch its paws. “Kids are very different from adults. This is better.” 

Anderson let out a heavy exhale on the other end of the line. “Do you want my honest opinion?”

Ryland didn’t answer. Anderson was going to give his opinion whether he wanted to hear it or not.

“You’re throwing yourself away,” Anderson said, without a trace of malice. “You are too smart for this, Ryland. A decade of training just to teach basic biology to kids is a waste. You wanted to make an actual impact on the field.” A pause. “We both know this wasn’t your plan.”

When Ryland didn’t say anything, Anderson sighed. “This NYU position has an excellent salary and great resources,” he continued. “It gets you out of the classroom and puts you back where you belong. Back in a real lab, doing real work.”

Ryland listened in silence, pressing the plastic of the phone hard against his ear until it hurt. The worst part was that Anderson was right. He had gone into molecular biology to make an impact. Anderson knew it, and had probably recognized it before Ryland ever did. Yet he remembered Marissa making the opposite point with equal conviction.

They were both right, and Ryland wished one of them would just push him off the cliff and get it over with. 

“Ryland?” Anderson asked. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” he said, swallowing the dry taste in his mouth. “Yeah, I’m here. Thank you for doing this for me. Truly.”

“I’ve known you since you were twenty,” Anderson said, and for a moment he almost sounded like a person. “This is the least I can do.”

Ryland reached down, his fingers brushing the soft fur behind the cat’s ears to steady his hand. He didn’t buy the sudden burst of generosity. Anderson was helping because he still categorized Ryland as one of his people, a product of his lab.

“Can I think about it?”

“Of course,” Anderson said. “You have some time. Just give me a call when you have a decision.”

“I will,” Ryland said. “Thank you.”

He waited for Anderson to say goodbye before lowering the phone and slipping it back into his jacket pocket. The cat gave a small, disinterested mew, stood up, and trotted off toward the steps of a nearby brownstone. Ryland looked at his bike, then up at the steep, formidable slope of Divisadero Street, and then across the rooftops of San Francisco toward the bay. He gripped the handlebars, pushed off the curb, and began to pedal. 

He took a bite of his sandwich. It was turkey, swiss, and mustard on white bread, wrapped in aluminum foil that he had smoothed out flat on the table next to his apple.

“Still hitting the toddler menu, I see,” Flores said, dropping a heavy plastic container of leftovers onto the table. He pulled out the chair opposite to Ryland and sank into it with a groan. “No crusts today?”

Ryland chewed and swallowed. “It’s good.” He didn’t particularly care for Flores, but he was too tired to argue. He marked a C-minus at the top of a quiz and tossed it onto the pile.

“It’s mid-week, Grace. Treat yourself to some real food.” Flores cracked the lid of his container, releasing a cloud of steam. “God, is it only Wednesday? I feel like I’ve been here for a month. The Miller kid spent all of third period trying to shove an eraser up his nose.” 

Over by the counter, Ms. Keller let out a dry laugh as she waited for the coffee pot to finish dripping. She was the eighth-grade math teacher, and she had insisted Ryland call her Laura on his very first day, claiming that hearing her surname in the breakroom made her feel a hundred years old. 

“At least he’s quiet,” Laura said. “Sarah Jenkins’ mom emailed me three times before seven this morning because Sarah got a ninety-two on the algebra test. Apparently that’s not good enough for the advanced track, so now Stanford’s off the table. Life’s over at twelve, I guess.”

“Tell her to put an eraser up her nose,” Flores muttered around a mouthful of food. “That’ll lower the stakes.” 

Ryland sighed quietly to himself. If it were his classroom, he would have bumped her up and moved on. She clearly knew the material, and withholding a couple percentage points over some arbitrary rubric seemed like a massive waste of everyone’s time. 

“Did Silva come in today?” Laura asked, walking over with her mug. “I didn’t see her in the hall.”

“She’s here,” Flores said. “Saw her at her locker. Looking miserable, obviously. But honestly, the whole hallway looks like a funeral home lately. Jodie’s still walking around like a ghost, too. It’s depressing.”

Ryland’s pen paused mid-stroke. The tip left a tiny, bleeding red dot on the margin of a quiz. “Jodie? She was fine this morning.”

Flores shrugged, swallowing his food. “Well, yeah. She’s trying, I guess. But considering everything, it’s a miracle she’s even showing up.”

Ryland frowned and set his pen down on the table. “Considering what?” 

Laura stopped with her mug halfway to her mouth. She looked at Flores, then her eyes moved over to Ryland, her brow furrowing slightly.

“What do you mean?” Laura asked.

Ryland leaned forward, gripping the edge of the table. “What happened with Jodie?”

Laura blinked. She looked back at Flores, an uneasy sort of hesitation passing between them. “Oh. I thought admin told you. Since you have her for homeroom.”

Ryland watched her face. “Told me what, Laura?” 

“Her mom,” she said, her voice dropping into that strange tone people use for hospital waiting rooms. “She’s got cancer. Terminal, I think. She was diagnosed a couple of months ago.”

The air in the staff room suddenly felt very thick. He felt his eyelids twitch. “A couple of months?”

“I assumed you knew,” Laura said quickly, defensive now, her fingers tightening around her mug. “I only know because my sister is friends with her aunt. They didn’t notify us through the office because the family wanted to keep it quiet, but I really thought... I mean, she’s been so quiet in class. I figured you noticed.” 

“I just started here,” Ryland said. His voice sounded thin, like it was coming from someone else. “I don’t know what her normal is. How am I supposed to know she’s being quiet when she’s always been quiet?” 

“Grace, it’s fine, nobody’s blaming you,” Flores said, waving a fork. “It’s a mess. The district never handles these things properly anyway.” 

Ryland didn’t hear the rest of it. His stomach took a sudden, heavy dive that left him feeling slightly sick. He looked down at his hands, then at the half-eaten turkey sandwich sitting on its square of silver foil.

He thought about every conversation they’d had since the beginning of the year. Had she looked tired? Had there been something obvious he should have noticed? Had he made any of it worse?

“Ryland?” Flores asked. The fork stopped moving. “You okay?” 

“I’m fine,” Ryland said, though his lungs felt constricted. 

He carefully folded the silver foil over the remainder of his sandwich, pressing down the edges until the shape was neat and square. Then he pushed his chair back and stood up. 

Ryland cleared his throat, his hand lingering on the back of the chair just to keep his fingers from shaking. “I need to... I left some copies on the machine. In the main office.” 

“The bell isn’t for another twenty minutes,” Laura said, her voice laced with a gentle tone that meant she was watching him go pale.

“Right,” he said. He picked up his water bottle, dropped it, and caught it against his ribs before it could roll off the table. “Better to get ahead of it. Before the rush.”

He didn’t wait for anyone to answer. He scooped up the silver square of his sandwich, threw it in the trash on his way out, and stepped into the hallway. He walked until the voices from the staff room faded behind him, then stopped by the water fountain down the hall, leaning his weight against the cold tile. 

He took off his glasses and set them carefully on the metal border of the fountain. Bending over, he pressed the button, let the stream run cold for a second, and splashed the water directly onto his face. He straightened up, letting the droplets run down his jaw, and forced a heavy, controlled burst of air through his mouth. He put his glasses back on, adjusted the frames, and walked straight toward the lunchroom.

He spotted Jodie right away, sitting near the center of the room. It was like one of those optical illusions where the image suddenly flips and you can never unsee it. She didn’t have any food in front of her, and she wasn’t joining in on the conversation. She was just staring down at a spot on the table while her friends laughed at something on a phone. He felt incredibly stupid, because he had been worrying about her all this time and still managed to miss it.

He crossed the cafeteria and stopped at the edge of her table.

“Jodie,” he said. “Can I borrow you for a second?”

Jodie startled, her shoulders tensing as she twisted around to look up at him.

“Ooh, Jodie’s in trouble,” one of the girls at the table chanted, leaning forward with a wide grin.

“No, she’s not in trouble,” Ryland said smoothly, cutting the girl off with a brief, unsmiling glance. “I just need to ask her a quick question about a project for Mrs. Ochoa. It’ll only take a minute.”

Jodie hesitated, looking at her friends, then slid out from the bench. She followed him out into the hallway, the cafeteria doors swinging shut behind them and cutting off the noise.

“Mr. Grace?”

“Yeah?”

“What project for Mrs. Ochoa?”

Ryland rubbed the back of his neck. “Let’s walk outside for a second. Get some fresh air.” 

He pushed open the heavy bar of the exit door, leading the way out into the courtyard. It was just a big concrete square enclosed by the school buildings, empty and cold. Ryland walked over to one of the green metal benches by the empty flowerbeds and sat down. Jodie stayed standing, her sneakers scuffing against the ground. 

“There’s no project,” he said, trying for a smile that probably looked as guilty as he felt. “I just needed an excuse to get you out of there.” 

Jodie blinked. “Wait, am I in trouble? Because I know that essay was kinda bad, I just—I ran out of time and my dad was—”

“No, no, you’re not in trouble at all. It’s not about the homework.” 

Ryland leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and staring down at his own shoes, trying to figure out how to start. He couldn’t just blurt out what Laura had told him in the breakroom.

“I just wanted to check in. I know I’ve been—y’know,” he said, stopping himself. “I know I’ve been on you about the homework and the late stuff since the year started. And I realized I never actually asked how you were. If it’s... if it’s been a lot lately.” 

Jodie stood there on the pavement, her shoulders hitched up against the cold. She was watching him with total suspicion, like she was waiting for the catch. 

“I’m fine,” she said. Her voice was quiet, nearly lost in the wind. “I’m doing the work.” 

“I know you are,” Ryland said. “You’re doing a good job, Jodie. I just... I just wanted you to know that the school stuff isn’t the most important thing in the world. If you need a break, or if you just can’t get to it, you just have to tell me. Okay?” 

Jodie didn’t answer right away. She looked off toward the corner of the building. For a fraction of a second her chin trembled, a sharp, ugly movement that she instantly stopped by biting her lower lip until it went white. 

“Okay,” she whispered.

Ryland hesitated for a moment. He should have gone to the guidance counselor like a normal person, but instead he had dragged a twelve-year-old girl out into the freezing wind just to dump his own guilt all over her. If she wanted him to know, she would have said something. Now Jodie was going to be angry and humiliated, and he was going to spend the next six months being the exact same kind of teacher he had hated his entire life. He was just like Mr. Pyles. Just another bully cornering an anxious kid in public, making everything about himself and his own stupid need to feel like a good guy.

He took a slow breath, forcing the anxiety down. “I heard something today,” he said. “About your mom.”

He watched her go very still, like she had in his classroom when he asked about the notebook, except this wasn’t the same thing at all. 

“Who told you?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

“One of the teachers. She knows your family.” He paused, rubbing the back of his neck. “I only found out today.” 

Jodie said nothing. She was looking at the flowerbed.

“If I had known,” he said, looking at her. “I mean, I wouldn’t have been pushing you about the homework. Or the tests. Any of it. I’m really, really sorry, Jodie. I should have noticed that you were... I should have just asked how you were doing.”

He let out a short breath. “Just don’t worry about the assignments, okay? Forget the class. We will figure all of that out later. None of that stuff matters right now. Not one bit.”

Jodie didn’t move. She kept her eyes locked down on her shoes, her sneakers pushed together so tightly the rubber soles squished. The silence went on for three full seconds, then four, and Ryland could feel his own heart starting to work double time. 

He was about to say something else, something probably unhelpful, when he noticed her shoulders move. 

Ryland blinked. Her shoulders hitched again, a small, violent motion, and then again. 

He pushed himself off the metal bench and stood up. “Hey,” he said, softly now, “hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.” 

He reached out, his hand hesitating before he dropped it onto her jacket sleeve. Her arm was rigid beneath his palm, stiff as a board. She wobbled, her weight shifting unsteadily on her sneakers, and Ryland immediately started to pull his hand back. He was certain this was it, that she would bolt across the courtyard and leave him standing there alone. Instead, she took one clumsy step forward and slammed her face straight into his collarbone. 

Ryland stood entirely frozen. His arms stuck straight out at his sides like a mannequin, his breath catching in his throat. The world seemed to narrow to the sound of her uneven breathing against his shirt. She was so small. She was shaking so violently against him that he could feel the vibration through his own ribs, a terrifyingly fragile tremor that made his eyes sting.

It took him a long moment to remember how to move. Finally, he managed to fold his arms around her shoulders, pulling her in. He started rubbing small circles against her back, remembering how his mother used to do that when he woke up from a nightmare, desperately hoping he wasn’t making everything worse. 

“It’s okay,” he said again, because it was all he had. “You’re okay.”

She didn’t let herself hold onto him for long. Almost as quickly as she had moved in, she pulled back, stepping out of his reach. She looked miserable and very embarrassed, her face bright red as she furiously wiped her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her jacket, refusing to look him in the eye. 

“Sorry,” she muttered, her voice cracking. “I—I’m sorry.”

Ryland looked at her. “Why are you apologizing? There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“I’m not supposed to,” she said, her voice rising slightly with frustration as she struggled to find the words. “I’m not supposed to cry about this.”

“That’s not true,” Ryland said gently. “That’s not true, Jodie. Why would you think that?”

“Yeah, be—because I need to be brave for them,” she blurted out, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. “For my siblings. They’re little. They don’t… they don’t understand what’s happening.”

Ryland looked at her tight little fists. He felt like he was going to be sick.

He leaned down slightly, trying to meet her eyes. “You are very, very brave. And you are so strong. But what is happening to your family is incredibly unfair. There is absolutely nothing wrong with crying, or with being sad. Everybody would be sad. This is just something that makes everyone sad when it happens.” 

Jodie shook her head, a small tight motion. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

She wiped her face again. “My mom can’t see me sad. So I have to be strong,” she said. She swallowed hard, searching for the words. “That’s just... that’s how it works. It’s like what you said in class. Survival of the... the—” 

“—the fittest,” he finished.

She nodded, looking right at him. Ryland stared back, completely thrown.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, Jodie, that’s not what natural selection means. That’s not what I was trying to say in that class.”

“But the crabs without the faces died,” she argued, stubborn as ever, but her voice hitched as a fresh wave of tears spilled over.

“Yeah,” Ryland said, keeping his tone gentle. “But that was... that was because of something that had nothing to do with who they were as crabs. What is happening to your mom isn’t happening because anyone did something wrong. And it isn’t happening because you’re not being brave enough.”

His voice softened. “Bad things happen to people who don’t deserve them all the time. That’s what makes them bad things.”

Jodie looked up at him, looking completely lost. “But then what do I do?” 

Ryland’s mind went entirely blank. He had nothing for this, no words, no wisdom, nothing at all. He was the worst person in the building she could have turned to. For months he had been drowning in his own suffocating doubts, waking up in the middle of the night wondering what the hell he was even doing here, completely paralyzed by the fear that he was failing at everything. He had spent weeks desperately wanting someone to just take the wheel, to tell him what to do and how to fix it.

He let out a slow breath.

Nobody was going to do that. No one was ever going to hand him the right answer or make the choice for him. There was nothing else to do but accept it. He had to find it himself, in the dark, through the trial and error of trying to learn how to live. Which meant he couldn’t hand a perfect answer to Jodie either. There wasn’t one. Whatever choice she made to make peace with this, a regret would be waiting at the end of it anyway. But he had to say something.

“You tell her you love her,” Ryland said. His throat felt tight. He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Just… every single day, you tell her. And you spend time with her. Remember what a great mom she is.” 

He swallowed hard and looked away, because looking at her face was becoming impossible. “I’m sure she doesn’t want to see you cry. No mom wants that. But she probably knows you’re trying to be brave for her. It’s okay to show her that you’re sad. You just… you have to be there. Okay?” 

Jodie watched him, the tears spilling over her eyelashes again. “This is so unfair,” she whispered.

“I know, Jodie,” Ryland said, because he really did. “I know. I am so sorry.”

Jodie looked up at him. Before she could say anything else, the school bell rang. She jumped a little at the sound. Her eyes darted toward the heavy double doors of the school building, then back at him, looking unsure. 

“I can write you a pass,” Ryland said, his hand already digging aimlessly into his pocket for a pen he didn’t have. “For... you know, the, um, nurse’s office. If you need a couple minutes.” 

She wiped her face quickly with the back of her sleeve and said, “I’m okay,” sniffing a bit. 

He looked at her, the words stalling in his throat. He felt a sudden, ridiculous urge to tell her something profound about suffering, or the grand architecture of the universe, as if he were the sort of person who had any of that figured out. It was embarrassing. He just stood there instead, looking at her, hoping she knew she wasn’t alone in it.

Jodie shifted her weight, a little awkward under the silence. She didn’t look away, though. “I think I’m gonna go,” she said quietly. A little embarrassed, maybe.

Ryland managed a small nod. “Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. “Go on inside.” 

Jodie turned and sprinted toward the building, and Ryland watched her until she vanished through the doors. He paced several restless steps before he sank back down onto the green bench. He pulled his glasses off, his fingers shaking so badly they caught on his temple, and buried his face in his hands.

Ryland started crying before he could even take a breath. He sat there for a long time, hunched over his knees in the dark of his own palms, waiting for his lungs to start working properly again. His nose was running, the cold wind was biting the back of his neck, and he didn’t feel any better or wiser for having done it. He just felt utterly pathetic, sitting alone in a courtyard full of dead leaves, wondering how he was going to explain his bloodshot eyes to twenty-three eight graders in ten minutes. 

Mars went up on a Friday in November, looking somewhat oblong because Marco had used too much paste on the southern hemisphere. Then came Mercury, which was nothing but a gray wad of the San Francisco Chronicle held together with masking tape.

Earth took the longest. Jodie painted it while the others argued about whether the Pacific Ocean was the right shade of blue. When she held it up, the surface was lumpy and the continents were not quite right, and it was, without question, the one Ryland liked most.

The call from Anderson came on a Thursday afternoon in March. Ryland listened to the pitch while watching Tribble, the corner store cat, work his way around the rim of a tuna can. He had finally named him that morning. It ended up being a short call. 

By the final Friday of May, the ceiling was full. All eight planets turned slowly in the draft from the window, slightly lopsided, slightly wrong, orbiting each other with great triumph.

Ryland had stepped out to return a stack of empty plastic bins to the supply closet at the end of the hall, and in the four minutes he had been gone, Marco had signed his name across Leo’s sneaker with a permanent marker, and Leo had retaliated by drawing a face on the back of Marco’s neck. The rest of the room was arguing at full volume about their summer plans. He stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the scene, then decided that it was the last day of school and some things were simply beyond his control.

“Mr. Grace.” Sofia appeared at the side of his desk with a small wrapped package. “This is from me and my mom.”

“Thank you very much,” Ryland said, taking it. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“She picked it out,” Sofia said, entirely unbothered, and returned to her seat.

He put it with the others. The desk had already accumulated strange parent-mandated tokens over the course of the morning. There was a heavy ceramic mug that read World’s Okayest Teacher, another one with a periodic table on it, a generic ten-dollar Starbucks card, and a ziplock bag of homemade cookies from Tyler, who had handed it over as though settling a very serious debt. Ryland had accepted it in the same spirit. 

“Mr. Grace, what high school did you go to?" someone called from the back.

All morning, they had been pulling him into conversations that had nothing to do with class. Ryland suspected they were realizing, perhaps for the first time, that after today there was a decent chance they would never see him again. 

“One in this city,” he said. “But I don’t think it exists anymore.”

“Did you like it?”

He wanted to reply that those four years had been some of the absolute worst of his life, but sometimes honesty isn’t the best policy.

“Some of it,” he settled on.

This opened a floodgate. Half the room was going to Galileo, which caused a small celebration across the desks. Yolanda was going to a magnet school across the city. Marco was going to the same school as Leo. Ryland wished their future teachers the very best.

“And what are you doing this summer, Mr. Grace?” Anne asked, from where she was sitting cross-legged on top of her desk. Ryland had abandoned all attempts at classroom discipline twenty minutes ago, so he let it slide.

“Me?” Ryland paused, thinking. “Oh. I guess I have a wedding to attend.” 

The room immediately lost its mind.

“You’re getting married?”

“What? No.” Ryland straightened. “No, no. I’m not getting married. A friend from college is getting married. I’m a guest.” 

Unfortunately, this clarification only redirected the conversation. 

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Also no.”

“But you’re already old, Mr. Grace!” Marco shouted. “You’re gonna run out of time!”

This was apparently the funniest thing ever said by anyone in human history. Ryland stood there and waited for the hysterics to die down. 

“Tell you what,” he said, when he could finally be heard. “If I ever do get married, you’re all invited.” 

This produced a cheer that was loud enough to draw a look from whoever was passing in the hallway. Ryland felt something warm and slightly embarrassing settle in his chest and looked up at the ceiling until he trusted himself to speak again.

“Shut up, Marco, don’t be an ass,” Leo chimed in, offering him a rare, shocking shield of defense. He immediately turned his face toward the desk. “Anyways... Mr. Grace, can I have Saturn? My mom said I could hang it over my dresser if you’re just gonna throw them out.” 

Ryland shook his head, his hands resting on his hips as he looked up at the ceiling. 

“Absolutely not. How do you expect next year’s students to learn about the solar system if you’ve stolen one of the gas giants?”

“You can just make a new solar system with them,” Jodie pointed out from her desk by the window. 

“Maybe,” Ryland said. He looked around the room, taking in their familiar, messy faces. “But think about it. If you take it home, I won’t be able to tell the incoming eighth graders about the legendary class that built it.” 

The room booed in unison, but nobody asked for Saturn again.

Then, the true exodus began. When the final bell rang, he stood at the door to wave them off, watching them pour out into the hallway with their bags and their yearbooks and their summer plans. A few of them hugged him, melting away the last of his defenses and making the situation significantly harder. Tyler stopped on his way out and looked at him for a second, like he was trying to find the right words, then stuck out his hand. Ryland shook it very seriously. Tyler nodded once and left.

He stayed by the door for another minute, high-fiving the boys and waving at the girls, desperately swallowing a stubborn lump in his throat.

Eventually the noise in the hallway thinned out, leaving his classroom quiet for the first time in ten months. Jodie was still there by the window. She was taking her time with the nylon straps of her backpack, her eyes fixed on the floor, clearly waiting for the last of them to clear out.

She walked over to his desk. She didn’t have a store-bought mug or a gift card. She just reached into her bag and set a flat sheet of heavy, textured watercolor paper right in front of him.

Ryland looked at it for a long moment. Then he looked up at her.

“Jodie,” he said. His voice came out slightly wrong.

“It’s not that good,” she said immediately, which was a lie, and he thought she probably knew it.

“This is incredible.” He looked back down at it. “I mean it. This is—yeah. Woah.” He stopped, which was probably not the most articulate response, but it was what he had. “Thank you. I’m going to—I’ll take very good care of this. It’s going to be worth—I don’t know—a billion dollars someday. I feel it.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, shrugging one shoulder, suddenly looking very young and very embarrassed by her own talent. “Don’t sell it.”

“I would never,” he said. “This is going straight on the—” he stopped. He only had a fridge with a diplodocus on it, but this deserved better. “I’ll find a good spot for it.”

She adjusted her backpack strap again. “I’m, um, I got into the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. For high school.”

Ryland blinked, struck by a sudden sense of pride, a feeling he had never experienced for anyone other than himself. “You did?”

“Yeah. Mrs. Ochoa made me submit a portfolio.” She paused, her fingers digging into the straps of her bag. “The, um... the drawing I did for you. I put it in there.”

Ryland felt the sting behind his eyes get significantly worse. He looked at her, thinking of how far she had come since she first left that torn piece of paper on his desk. 

“That’s incredible, Jodie,” he said, his voice thick. “Did you tell your mom?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “She cried a lot.”

Ryland looked down at the painting on his desk and pressed his lips together hard for a second. It wasn’t difficult to imagine why she cried. He was about to do it himself. 

He managed a small nod, keeping his eyes on the paper until he was sure he could speak. “I’m really glad you got in,” he said. “You earned it.” 

Jodie shifted her weight. “I, um... well, thanks,” she said, gesturing vaguely. “For, you know.” 

The small sweep of her hand covered more or less everything, and he understood it completely.

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “You did all of it. Just… keep drawing, okay?”

“I will,” she said. She adjusted the strap of her bag one last time, then turned and walked toward the door. Right at the threshold, she paused and turned back around to look at him.

“If the art thing doesn’t work out,” she said, smiling a little, “maybe I’ll try science or something.”

Ryland let out a wet, breathless laugh. “Will you?”

“I think space stuff is cool,” she said, shrugging like it wasn’t important. “Have a good summer, Mr. Grace.”

“You too, Jodie.”

She turned and disappeared into the bright corridor, her sneakers squeaking faintly as she left.

Ryland stood alone in the empty classroom. He picked up the watercolor painting, looked at it one more time, and tucked it carefully into his bag alongside the mugs, the candle, the gift card, and Tyler’s cookies. He turned off the projector and the lights. He took one last look at the ceiling, and then he stepped out into the hallway and locked the door behind him. 

August wasn’t that far away anyway.