Page 6 of Dropping the Ball

As if starting with Chinese by myself on the first day isn’t bad enough, Drake Braverman walks in.

I slouch, hoping there’s a new kid coming between A-r-m and B-r-a, but the teacher points him to the seat behind me.

“It’s Chinese, not death row,” Drake says as he passes me. “Smile, Kaitlyn.”

I do not smile.

I survive the day. If people are gossiping about me, they keep it low-key.

Only a hundred seventy-nine days to go.

Chapter Four

Kaitlyn

I trail after Madisonand Micah, annoyed with myself for doing it, like they’re equals and I’m the tagalong. Micah is my age,myformer classmate. Why do I feel like a little kid?

He stops at a table for eight and says, “What do you think about this one?”

Madison’s happy gasp is her answer as she trails a finger over its edge, but I take a minute to walk the table’s perimeter as Micah describes it.

“It’s made from a conference table from an office building teardown, but I upgraded the top.”

“What is it?” Madison asks, running her hand over the shiny surface. It’s a creamy tone with a swirling design of amber bits running through it, but the pattern feels controlled and organic all at once, and I’m trying to think of what it reminds me of.

“This is recycled glass tile in resin,” he says. “The tile is from an executive washroom in the same building. I had it in my workshop for a few months until I saw a murmuration of starlings, and then I figured out what to do with it.”

That’s it. All of a sudden, I see it, how each piece of amber glass is like an individual bird in a flock, but as a whole, they’re moving as one in the hypnotic, fluid curves of a murmuration when hundreds, even thousands, of starlings swoop and swirl through the sky.

In a word, it’s gorgeous, and I want it.

But I don’t want it to be from Micah Croft.

“Glorious.” That’s Madison’s word for it. “I didn’t see this last time I was here.”

“I turn over a lot of pieces now that I have the showroom,” he says. “As soon as one sells, I move in the next one.”

I survey the surrounding pieces more carefully. A mid-century style credenza. A rustic farmhouse coffee table. An ultramodern accent cabinet. “You made all of this?”

“Yeah. Started as a side hustle in college and turned into therapy.” He shrugs. “I only work with recovered construction material, which is why the styles differ. I’m not in control of what I’ll be able to salvage. Each piece has to make its own sense, so they’re not cohesive. But when someone has the eye . . .”

He doesn’t have to finish that sentence with the wordsunlike you. I can hear them as if he yelled them, and I try not to flush.

He’s calling me out for my dig about a “different direction” and “fancy IKEA,” but I’ve learned a survival tactic to fight a blush: turn the embarrassment into anger. That’s one of Dad’s lessons.Never stay on defense.

Except I like to keep my emotions in a specific range, so I default to irritation over anger. Anger is messy, and I am never messy.

I pull one of my hands out of my pockets and tap the tabletop, like I’m checking its soundness, the click of my red fingernail satisfying in the relative quiet of the store. “Not bad for scavenging.”

“Salvaging,” Micah says, like I don’t know the right term.

I chose “scavenge” on purpose. “Right, salvage. Like junk cars people can donate.”

“I don’t think those cars are worth twelve thousand dollars,” Madison says, examining the price tag hanging near her corner.

She knows cost isn’t an issue, and I’m sure that would cover the price of a single chair at my parents’ dining table, but it does tell me that Micah’s pieces are in demand. Not a surprise since I wanted this piece desperately the second I saw it. But he won’t get the satisfaction of knowing it. I steal Micah Croft’s most defining gesture and shrug. “I’ll take it.”

Madison does a shimmy. I think it’s supposed to be a happy dance, but she probably can’t get her midsection in motion without knocking herself over like an unbalanced washing machine. “Good choice, Katie-Kat. I’ll be able to pull together such a pretty dining room around this.”

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