Chapter 5

Taking his attorney’s excellent advice, Mike decided to pull the trigger on a decision he’d been putting off for months and finally move his CNC mill and lathe, along with his pneumatic press and metal bending brake, out of the garage and into their new permanent home in the basement of Leavitt Hall. He’d been reluctant to do it before now because it was such a large investment of time and energy. He had planned to lease himself a proper workshop in a light industrial park once he’d gotten himself fully settled into his new Appalachian life, only he’d never found the time to actually do any searching for said workshop. Recent events, however, compelled him in this new direction, and he looked forward to finally getting his prized machines up and running again after collecting dust for so long.

Using the promise of all-you-can-eat pizza as a lure, Mike convinced Theresa and Marcus to meet at his house at eight in the morning to lend him a hand, along with his sixty-something year old neighbor, Gary, who happily volunteered to help when he saw Mike pull up in the rented box truck, but who ended up mostly supervising and barking unhelpful instructions while the other three huffed and puffed and strained to move thousands of pounds of precision cast iron machining equipment up the truck’s shallow ramp using a pallet jack, a come-along winch, and lots of sweat, tears, and busted knuckles.

Mike had reached out to Davey Baden as well, but his texts had gone unanswered and his phone calls went straight to voicemail. When Marcus told him that he’d seen Davey talking to Anne-Marie after school on Friday, Mike got a pretty clear picture of why he’d been ghosted. He resolved not to dwell on it, though, and instead focused his full attention on getting the move done as quickly as possible.

Even though the machines were already palletized from their previous move from California, it still took two hours to load them and all the ancillary tooling into the truck and strap down the load. After Mike thanked Gary for his invaluable assistance, Marcus and Theresa followed him to Scirewood to help him unload. More than ever, he was thankful for the roll up door and small dock high loading bay, which would make unloading the truck a relative breeze, eliminating the need to traverse janky ramps and inclines.

It was the first time Theresa had ever stepped foot inside Mike’s lab, though she’d heard plenty about it from some of the students who took his robotics and engineering courses. The way they’d spoken of it, she expected nothing less than a Wonka factory, but to her untrained eyes it seemed little more than a high-tech junk shop, poorly lit and a little grungy. Marcus, on the other hand, spent plenty of time in the fun dungeon, either as an assistant teaching girls the fundamentals of machine learning programming, or simply to avail himself of Mike’s 3D printers and laser cutter for a variety of small DIY projects and home repairs.

Despite how crowded the space appeared at first glance, it was in fact quite spacious. The main part of the lab was a large open room directly beneath Leavitt Hall’s main entryway and the teacher’s lounge, with tools and supplies surrounding a pair of large assembly tables. Two anterooms on either side extended toward the building’s wings, which were currently being used to store a multitude of student projects and raw materials. The three of them made short work of clearing one of the rooms by moving everything into the other, then began to fill the now empty space with Mike’s formidable machinery.

Midway through the unloading process, a young delivery driver arrived with two large pizzas, and the three hard workers paused for a well-deserved break to recharge their batteries. By unspoken agreement, Marcus took one of the pizzas for himself while Mike and Theresa ate from the other.

Marcus was a bit of a sweaty mess. He’d soaked through his XXL t-shirt, which now clung to his large, soft body in ways that made him self-conscious and uncomfortable. Although it wasn’t particularly warm in the basement, rivulets of sweat still glided down his temples to curl underneath his full cheeks, and his glasses refused to stay atop his sweaty nose, so that each time he had to readjust them he left behind greasy smudges on the frame and lens.

“Hey, Mike?” he said shortly after finishing his third slice. He was an enthusiastic eater. The type who breathed heavily through his nostrils when he chewed. “Are we friends?”

Mike tilted his head and gave him a quizzical look. “I’d like to think so. Why, what’s up?”

He could tell something bothered the big man, and he could guess what it was. Marcus briefly contemplated a fourth slice, but held off, instead clasping his hands together in his lap while he collected his thoughts.

“Those things people are saying about you ... they’re not true, are they?”

Still working on his first slice, Mike paused and then set it down on the box lid. He wiped his fingers and lips with a blue shop towel and regarded the sweaty young man.

“I don’t know what people are saying about me, Marcus, but if it’s what I think you’re talking about, then the answer is no. They’re not true.”

Just to hear the words come out of Mike’s mouth seemed to bring Marcus a small measure of relief. He plucked at his shirt to pull it away from his round belly and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“Why are they coming after you then?” he asked, sounding embarrassed for the question.

Mike sighed and shook his head. “I honestly don’t know, buddy. I wish I did.”

Marcus stared down at his feet and nodded his head. Then he looked up at Mike with a sad expression.

“I’m sorry this is happening to you, man. It really sucks.”

Mike chuckled softly and returned a grateful smile. “Yeah, it really does.”

Theresa put her hand on his and gave it a gentle squeeze. He was grateful to both of them for their company and support, and he was especially glad he’d taken Melvin’s advice to spend more time in the lab. His workshop had always been a safe space, where he felt the most at ease. A Zen garden of meditation and contemplation, where he could tune out the rest of the world and lose himself in a project for hours, or even days at a time.

He decided right then that he would spend the rest of the day wiring in his machines and tinkering on Razor’s Edge. Maybe he’d even work through the night, the way that he used to when the shop needed to meet a particularly tight production schedule.

Still holding on to Theresa’s hand, Mike picked up his slice and took a large bite. “Let’s finish eating. We’ve still got some work to do.”

The position of Academic Director at Scirewood Academy came with many perks, the best of which was exclusive use of the large, two-story house that sat atop the promontory near the campus entrance. Linda Bryson had seen the large box truck roll past her driveway as she stood in the kitchen, then back up to the rear of Leavitt Hall, followed closely by Marcus Bingham’s Tacoma and Theresa Stafford’s CX-5.

Although she had expressly forbidden Mike from bringing anyone else into the basement with him, the school’s spineless attorney, Georgette, had advised her against interfering or following through with her earlier threats, unless a student was directly involved. In fact, Linda had already sent out a bulletin to all the girls in Overton House, informing them that Mr. Messina’s so-called lab was strictly off limits, and promising to deal swift punishment to any who disobeyed.

Linda had wanted the wording of the bulletin to be far stronger. An explicit warning that Mr. Messina was a child sexual predator who posed a serious and dangerous threat, but the cowardly attorney had strenuously advised her against it, expressing her opinion that sending such a notice to the students could potentially open up the school to a libel claim, not to mention scaring the shit out of parents enough to yank their daughters from the school. She also warned that failing to curtail the rumors being spread around campus could be grounds for a slander lawsuit as well.

What the fuck was she supposed to do? Tell grown adults they weren’t allowed to openly discuss topics of grave concern to them all? To hell with that, she told the attorney. If they needed to share information in order to feel safe, then she wasn’t going to stop them. Imagine her surprise when the chickenshit attorney disagreed.