Page 12 of Dropping the Ball

I don’t know if he’s feeling the ninety-degree heat like I am, but he appears cool and collected, offering a smile as we meet up at the warehouse door.

“Good to see you, ladies,” he says. “Has Madison told you what to expect?”

I nod. “I’ve seen the plans.”

He laughs as I cast a skeptical look at the industrial gray paint on the windowless door. “Not a visualizer? Isn’t that what you said, Madison?”

“Yeah,” Madison agrees. “Don’t take it personally if she’s not catching the vision yet.”

Micah’s easy smile doesn’t waver at all as he punches in a code on the door’s electric key pad, then swings it open and waves us ahead of him. “We’ll jump right into the event space.”

We walk into a big, concrete box. It takes me two seconds to take it all in. Concrete floor. Aluminum walls. No shelves. Nothing to break up the grayness but support poles painted in safety orange.

Madison and Micah watch me, expectant looks on their faces.

“Madi, I know we’re saving on hotel costs, but . . .” I trail off, glancing around again. It’s an empty Armstrong Industries warehouse. I knew it had been leased for a few years by a company that manufactured roofing shingles, but it’s been vacant since the spring. Open industrial ceiling, exposed beams, rows and rows of fluorescent lights. “Free might be too expensive for this place.”

Madison throws one arm around my shoulder and stretches the other one wide. “It helps if you think of it as a blank canvas, not an empty warehouse. Micah will explain.”

“I’ve been dying to know how an architect gets pulled into decorating for a gala,” I say.

“Because your sister is a genius,” he says, laidback as ever.

“And what are Armstrongs good at if not exploiting people’s talents for cheap labor,” she adds.

“Madison!” We can both have a dark sense of humor, but it seems incredibly insensitive to joke about exploiting Micah—especiallyin front of him.

But Micah laughs. “Let’s look at this from the center of the room, and I’ll paint a picture for you.”

I’d dressed for battle today, wearing four-inch heels so I could chip away at his height advantage, and my shoes tap-tap-tap with a slight echo in the cavernous space as I follow him across the concrete floor.

“Did Madison show you her inspiration?” he asks, sliding his phone from his pocket.

“Church gym glow ups,” I say.

“Basically,” Madison says. “You know how wedding planners can make them over with tulle and lighting? I was pricing out hotel ballrooms, and every time I found myself getting furious that hotels will force you to use all their vendors and charge five times as much as things cost, I would think about those churchreceptions. I knew we had a big square space, so I started asking around.”

I smile, knowing how Madison gets once she’s set on a course of action. “What exactly were you asking around for? How did we get from wedding planner to architect?”

“People won’t cough up money for church gym tickets. Definitely not warehouse tickets. We needed something buzzworthy. I watched a documentary about art installations, and it all clicked,” she says. “I contacted the city arts council about locals who specialize in large-scale art installations. Then I emailed them and requested proposals, and Micah submitted his.”

“Art installations?” I tilt my head, studying him. I can’t decide if this fits with my high school image of him. “You didn’t take art at Hillview.” We weren’t in every class together, but the Hillview upper school wasn’t that big. Most of us knew each other’s schedules without trying.

“My uncle chose my electives,” Micah said. “He didn’t want to pay for art, so I learned from this guy at my community center and took classes in college.”

I’d known two of his cousins at Hillview, but Micah hadn’t lived with them, so what did his uncle paying have to do with anything? Micah was a Croft. The Crofts had money.

As if sensing my confusion, he meets my eyes, and his hold a challenge. “I told you, Katie. There’s a lot you didn’t know about me in high school.”

“Kaitlyn,” I correct him. In college, friends had started calling me Katie, and now Madison does too sometimes. But at work, I’m Kaitlyn.

“Right.” His smile fades. “Kaitlyn.”

“When did you do art installations?” I press. Is Madison sure he has the experience to do something on the scale it will take to impress Austin’s wealthiest residents?

My phone vibrates, and I ignore it, but Madison says, “I sent you a text so you can see it.”

It’s a picture of an outdoor tunnel running the length of a city block. It’s formed by brightly colored arches in painted shades of blue, yellow, and orange. Origami birds hang from wires across the top and down the sides, forming the tunnel. They’re arranged in a wave of color, a full rainbow gradient that makes the whole thing look like it’s undulating.

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