Chapter 6: Build Better

I put the phone face down on the table.

Then I picked it back up, because I couldn't stop looking.

The recovery junior leaned over my shoulder.

"Who's the guy?"

"My neighbor."

"Who's the girl?"

"My sister. Sort of."

"That's your injector," Waylon said from the end of the booth.

Everybody went quiet.

He held out his hand for the phone, and I gave it to him.

He zoomed in on the whiteboard and studied it.

"That's the motor you drew on the adviser's board in April. Same vanes. Same port. Down to the stupid little arrow."

"It's not a stupid arrow. It shows the swirl direction."

"It's a stupid arrow, and it's yours." He handed the phone back. "How'd they get it?"

So I told the whole booth.

I told them start to finish, including Lyndon carrying the box out.

The avionics senior put her taco down.

"That's theft."

"I can't prove it. They're my drawings, but I never put my name on them. I was twelve."

"So what are you going to do?" asked one of the structures sophomores.

I didn't know.

I looked at Waylon.

He was quiet so long that I thought he wasn't going to answer.

"Build a better one," he said.

"What?"

"They've got a kid's drawing. You've got the kid." He shrugged. "That motor's six years old. You've learned stuff since you were twelve, right?"

"Obviously."

"So build the one you'd draw now. Let them fly the old one."

I stared at him.

The recovery junior grinned.

"That's the nicest thing he's said all year," he told me. "Write it down."

I started the next morning.

I bought a new spiral notebook from the campus store, the same cheap green kind I used to buy at the Galveston Walgreens.

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