Chapter 1: Gazing
The garage door was a mouth, hanging open on rusted hinges, breathing out the smell of old oil and damp concrete. Sen stood in its throat, the handle of his suitcase digging into his palm. His parents’ sedan was already a dust cloud on the county road, the sound of its engine replaced by the low buzz of a single fluorescent bulb overhead.
Inside, the chaos was meticulous. Engine parts sat in rusty rows like dinosaur bones. A wobbly workbench was buried under blueprints stained with coffee rings and greasy thumbprints. And in the center of it all, a figure hunched over the exposed heart of a motorcycle, shoulders broad under a faded denim shirt.
“Gimme a second, just gotta torque this down,” the voice rumbled, not turning around.
Sen watched, his sharp brown eyes taking in the careful, deliberate turns of the wrench. He’d forgotten how quiet Harris could be while working, a kind of focused silence that felt heavier than noise.
The wrench clanked onto metal. Harris straightened, turning, wiping his hands on a rag that didn’t stand a chance. His bald head gleamed under the light, his salt-and-pepper beard thick and full. But it was the eyes that Sen remembered—warm, knowing, and currently crinkled at the corners.
“Sen,” Harris said, and the word was a full sentence. Welcome. I see you. What a mess.
“Hey, Harris.”
“Suitcase. Summer. Sent for discipline.” Harris’s smile was a quick, dry thing. “Your dad was real colorful on the phone. ‘Academic malpractice.’ Sounded like a political scandal.”
Sen’s knuckles went white on the suitcase handle. He could hear his father’s voice, tight with a disappointment that felt like cold water in the chest. We didn’t raise a cheater. We raised a thinker. The shame was a physical taste, metallic and sour.
“I, uh… yeah.” It was all he could manage.
Harris just nodded, as if cheating on finals and torpedoing your future was a Tuesday. He dropped the rag onto the workbench. “Leave that here for now. C’mon. Let’s get you inside before Lisa drinks all the decent coffee.”
The house was an extension of the garage—lived-in, comfortable, slightly worn at the edges. The air smelled of lemon polish and something baking. Harris led him through a small living room dominated by a sagging leather sofa and bookshelves stuffed with auto manuals and well-thumbed paperbacks.
“Your room’s upstairs, end of the hall. Bathroom’s across from it. Lisa’s is next door. Try not to get them mixed up, she’s territorial about her cave.” Harris opened the fridge, pulled out two cans of soda, and handed one to Sen. The can was blissfully cold. “Rules are simple. You help me in the garage three days a week. You keep your space tidy. You don’t treat my home like a hotel. And if you keep your nose clean, you won’t have to stay here longer than you need to. Not until you can retake the exam in August.”
Harris paused for a moment as he was reminded of something, or rather, someone else. “And, for both your sakes, not to drive each other completely insane.”
A floorboard creaked overhead. They both looked up at the ceiling.
“Speak of the devil,” Harris murmured, just as feet appeared on the stairs.
Sen remembered Lisa as a skinny kid with braces and a riot of orange curls, always trailing after them building fortresses out of couch cushions. The person who descended the stairs was a stranger.
The curls were still there, but long, messy, and dyed ink-black at the ends. They framed a pale, fine-boned face dotted with faint freckles. Her eyes were the color of a winter sea, and just as distant. She wore a flannel shirt three sizes too big over a faded band t-shirt, and ripped jeans hugged her slender frame. She moved with a deliberate slowness, a performance of utter uninterest.
“Lisa,” Harris said, his voice softening in a way that made Sen feel like an intruder. “Look who summer dumped on us.”
Her eyes flicked to Sen. Held for less than a second. No recognition, no smile. “Hmm.”
“Sen’s gonna be in the guest room. Be a pal and show him where the extra blankets are?”
“They’re in the hall closet,” she said, not moving. Her voice was low, a little rough, like she didn’t use it much.
“Lisa.”
A nearly imperceptible sigh escaped her. She padded past them, not looking at Sen. “C’mon then.”
He shot a glance at Harris, who gave him an encouraging nod that felt a lot like being pushed off a cliff. He followed her up the stairs, the old wood groaning under his feet. The hallway was dim, lined with framed photographs—a younger, smiling Harris with a beautiful, dark-haired woman Sen vaguely remembered as Penelope. Lisa as a gap-toothed child. The air up here was still, and it smelled faintly of dust and the powdery sweetness of Lisa’s perfume.
She stopped at a door at the end of the hall, pushing it open. The room was small, simple: a bed frame with a bare mattress, a plain dresser, a window looking out over the back field. It was utterly empty, a blank page.
“Here,” she said.
“Thanks,” Sen said, setting his suitcase down with a thump. He grasped for something, anything, to say. “It’s, um. Good to see you. You look… different.”
“It’s been seven years. People change.” She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. The posture was a fortress wall.
“Right. Yeah. Listen, I know this is weird. Me being here. I just… I want you to know I’m not going to be a pain. I’ll stay out of your way.”
“Good.”
“And if you ever wanted to, you know, hang out or something—”
“I don’t.”
The rejection was swift, clean, and absolute. It left a sting. He’d been prepared for awkwardness, not for this glacial indifference.
“Okay. Sure. Understood.”
She pushed off the doorframe and walked across the hall, opening a linen closet. She pulled out a stack of sheets, a thin blanket, a pillow. She dumped them unceremoniously onto the bare mattress. A small cloud of dust motes danced in the slanting light from the window.
“That’s the basics. You want more pillows, or a better blanket, you can figure it out. Towels are downstairs. Wi-Fi password is ‘Penelope1969’ all one word, capital P.” She finally looked directly at him, and her gaze was so flat it was like looking at polished stone. “My dad thinks you’re some kind of fixer-upper project. And he thinks I’m a project too. He’s hoping we’ll… I don’t know, bond or whatever.”
Sen said nothing.
“I’m not a project. And I don’t need a friend.” She gave a small, hollow laugh that held no warmth. “So just… do your time. Don’t try to fix me. Don’t try to talk to me about deep stuff. We’re not going to be sharing secrets late at night. Got it?”
He just nodded, his throat tight.
“Good.” She turned and walked back to her own door, next to his. She paused, her hand on the knob. “One more thing. I play guitar. Sometimes late. Don’t knock.”
She went inside and closed the door. Not a slam, just a soft, definitive click of the latch engaging.
Sen stood alone in the empty room, the pile of bedding beside him. The silence in the hallway was complete, broken only by the faint, distant sound of Harris clanging something in the garage below. He looked at the blank walls, the bare mattress, the closed door beside his own.
He’d come here feeling like a failure. Now, he just felt invisible. It was, he decided, not an improvement.
From behind Lisa’s door, a single, resonant chord echoed on an acoustic guitar. It was a dark, minor sound, reverberating through the wall. Then, nothing but silence again. Sen sat down on the edge of the bare mattress, the springs creaking under his weight, and stared at his suitcase, full of study guides for a life that currently felt a million miles away.