Margot Cleverly's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Nine days after the wine, Hollis stopped Margot in the hallway. He held his clipboard the old way, tight against his chest. He asked if she had a minute after school. She said yes and felt the countdown snap tight in her chest. She had two benches built at the cabin and no working prototype. If he walked into the principal's office tomorrow, none of it would matter. She spent lunch thinking. A denial would not hold. A second gift would look like a bribe. She needed to give him a story he could follow to the end and find nothing. After the last bell she caught him by the staff lot. She kept her voice low, like she was ashamed. "You were right the other night," she said. "The wire isn't inventory. I've been helping a friend fix up a place he bought. Off the books. I didn't want the district asking why I was hauling supplies." Hollis's eyebrows moved. "A place." "A pub garden out past the county line. He's reopening it. I told him I'd wire the string lights along the pergola." She pulled out her phone and showed him a photo she had saved that morning, a timbered building with lanterns and flower boxes crowding the porch. "He's paying me in weekends there. That's all." "Show me," Hollis said. She had counted on that. She drove him herself, forty minutes out. The pub was real. She had eaten there once. The owner did not know her name, but the barrels and fairy lights matched her photo, and a coil of copper wire sat in her trunk as proof. She parked where Hollis could see the pergola. She waved at a man stacking crates and he waved back the way country people wave at anyone. Hollis watched for a long time. He drank a cider. He asked what she was being paid. She named a small number. He nodded. On the drive home he was quiet. Then he said, "You should have just told me." "I know." "District would've written you up for the second job. Not worth it." "I know." He got out at the staff lot and tapped the roof of her car twice. "Forget I asked." She drove straight to the cabin. The lantern was burning. A turtle sat on the low step by the door, patient as furniture, and she stepped around it. She unrolled the blueprints on the porch rail and let her hands shake for one full minute. She had bought more than a week this time. She had bought the rest of the build, if she was careful. But she had also given Hollis a place he could drive to and a friend he could ask about. If he ever went back without her, the story would fall apart in one conversation. She picked up the pencil. Six weeks. Now the real work.