Chapter 16: Science Fair

Darla took the sketchbook out of the graduate student's hands very gently.

She looked at the intern by the water fountain for a long time.

"She was twenty-three," she said. "And she was already doing his digging."

"She was good at it," said the graduate student.

"Sugar, she's going to regret being good at it."

Darla wrote it down on a legal pad, every word, and had her sign the bottom.

Then she sent all eight women home with sandwiches.

For ten days, nothing happened.

No motions. No posts. Kerri's new lawyer filed one dry letter and went quiet.

Darla said that meant somebody in Norfolk was reading my sketchbooks and losing sleep.

I let myself have the ten days.

I did wire work at Ike's kitchen table. A fraud sentencing in Alexandria from a TV feed. A senator's hearing.

I fixed the drip in my sink with a YouTube video and a wrench Nettie supervised me with.

I learned that Ike makes pancakes shaped like states, and only Virginia comes out right.

On Thursday night, the elementary school gym smelled like floor wax and baking soda.

There were forty-one tables. Nineteen volcanoes.

Nettie's table was in the back corner.

She'd made a poster with a bar graph of how many people walk past a bail bonds office at night, by hour.

The peak was 1 a.m. on Fridays.

Under the graph, in her best printing: SOMETIMES THE BORING CAMERA IS THE IMPORTANT ONE.

Ike stood beside it in a clean flannel shirt, holding a bunch of grocery store daisies.

He'd ironed the shirt. You could tell because it had creases where flannel doesn't have creases.

"You look nice," I said.

"I look like I'm going to court."

"You look like a man who ironed."

He handed me one daisy out of the bunch without looking at me.

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