Here, I will be sharing my first novel as a serial, posting the next chapter every weekday. It will soon be available in full as a free download!
He was putting on his shoes when his phone rang. He could let it go to voicemail again. He set it on the counter and let it bleat while he peered into the barren freezer and pulled out the last frozen burrito. He dumped it in his backpack.
She was waiting. He had already indulged himself in ignoring her last two attempts. He picked up the phone.
“Hey, Mama.”
“How’s it going, honey?”
“I’m just leaving for work, actually.” He checked his watch. Twenty minutes till nine. He pinched the phone between his ear and his neck and picked up his bike from where it leaned against the wall.
“Dad and I were hoping to catch you before you went in. Seems like we don’t hear from you otherwise.”
“Sorry about that,” he muttered as he unlocked the door, “it’s been busy.” He began wheeling the bike down the dingy hall to the stairwell. He heaved the bike off the floor, rested the seat against his shoulder, and started down.
“Do you like your co-workers? Everybody nice?”
“Yeah, they’re fine.” He glanced at his watch again and quickened his pace down the steps, trying not to huff into the receiver.
“You sound out of breath. Haven’t you been going to that little gym in the basement?” The gym was a repurposed utility closet with a few pairs of mismatched free weights and a decrepit treadmill.
“Haven’t had a lot of time,” he lied.
“Busy bee,” said Mom. There was a long silence on the other end as he opened the door and stepped into the warm morning. The September air was yellow and fragrant. “Oh, Casper,” she finally groaned. “Was it really so impossible to have gotten a job close by? You had to move three hundred miles away? Into a whole different state?”
“It’s not about that, Mom. This was—,”
“A great opportunity. I know that. I just—,” she stopped, and he heard Dad in the background. “Don’t worry, Dirk. I won’t say anything about that.” Dad spoke again. “I’m on the phone, dear,” she whispered fiercely. “Casper, I only thought once you finished that internship you would come home.”
“Mom, I never said that.” He checked his watch a third time. “Ah, geez, I’ve really got to go—,”
“Madison is so expensive and you’re in that dinky apartment! You know I don’t like that neighborhood. And your landlord smokes. Where is he from again? Russia?” Hector was from Chicago. “I thought you’d want to be closer to home for your niece.” Mikayla had been born when he was finishing his master’s, and he had interacted with her for four minutes in her entire life. “And you know all those churches out there are so liberal. Don’t you remember Abigail Rice? Such a nice girl. She’s back from school and she sings on the worship team now. You know her dad works at the college. Maybe he could help you get a job.”
“Mom,” he groaned as he jabbed the kickstand with his foot, which didn’t budge. He couldn’t count how many times she’d taken that tack. There was forever a congregant from Mount of Mercy Community Church popping out of the woodwork who could offer him a ticket back home to his twin bed on Peeler Road. He reached down and pried up the rusted kickstand, then mounted the bike. He grasped the phone in his hand, put it on speakerphone, and glided into the street.
He heard Dad say something else.
“Oh, Dirk!” Mom sputtered back. “I said maybe he could get Casper a job. No, he is not! Ed Rice is not a librarian. He teaches statistics, doesn’t he? Or geometry. It doesn’t matter. Honey,” she spoke again into the receiver, “you should give him a call. I’m sure he knows someone in the science department who could get you an interview.”
“Mom, there’s nothing for me to do there. I’m not a professor, and they don’t do research. They don’t even have a program in my field.” Not to mention the prospect of working side by side with leftover goons from his high school made him sick. He stopped where the street intersected with a busy thoroughfare. The bike lane was open, and the light ahead was green. He inched forward into the street.
“What about at the Kleen-Sol plant over in Fattsburg? They have great benefits. And they’re always looking for engineers.”
“Mom!” He clenched the brakes in his fists and the bike screeched still. A bell trilled behind him and he stepped his bike toward the curb to let the other cyclist pass. He took a deep breath and prepared himself to explain it again. “Ma, what we do at Carver is biomedicalengineering. Kleen-Sol is chemical. I don’t know the first thing about formulating toilet cleaner.” It wasn’t that Mom didn’t understand the difference. Rather, she viewed the various disciplines within the engineering field as having incremental levels of difficulty — the highest being anything to do with NASA, and the lowest being whatever he did that had taken him out of Iowa. It was merely a matter of self-determination.
“They make air fresheners too! And those scrubby pads.” The traffic light ahead turned yellow, then red. He sighed and settled into the seat. He could hear Dad again. “Your dad says he wishes I wouldn’t say things like that and he says not to quit your job. I never said he should quit his job, Dirk!”
“I really have to go, Ma.”
“Wait! You haven’t told me anything more about your co-workers. How many of you are there again?”
“In the division? Hundreds.”
“No, your office, or lab or whatever.”
“There’s me, Eric, Pavel, Jin, and Tricia.”
“Isn’t there another guy in there? You said he’s named after a president or something. Jefferson?”
“Nobody named Jefferson.”
“Well, is Tricia nice?”
“She’s married.”
“Fine, Dirk!” she snapped at Dad. “Your dad says to leave you alone. I love you, honey.”
“You too, Mama. Bye.” He glanced behind him and glided back into the bike lane. The traffic was stifling, but he was one of the many who took advantage of the wide, clearly marked bike lanes which criss-crossed the entire metropolis, allowing him to get anywhere in the city without a car. Back at home, everyone was compelled to drive at least twenty-five miles to get to a decent grocery store. Nobody biked in Grover, except for a few crazies who ate sprouts and tempeh for breakfast.
Ahead of him, he could see the gleaming windows of Carver & Carver looming above the street. He leapt off his bike, guided it into the rack, and fixed it in place with a couple of bungee cords. His battered Huffy looked sheepish next to the glossier models. He’d have to do something about that. It was bad enough knowing he was the token rube on his own in the big city, without it being so painfully evident to everyone else.
He fished his ID out of his backpack and strode toward the sliding glass doors.
Kleen-Sol, he scoffed.
—
The morning meeting started at 9:30. Besides his coworkers from the lab, there were other engineers circled around the table from other labs in the division. Almost everyone had thoughts about tweaks which could be made to the next test. In aggregate, they were all part of a larger project which involved developing a better process for 3-D printing bone and cartilage. They had been working on the same project for nearly two months, and Casper’s lab was responsible for developing a new cartridge for the ceramic printing material. They were under a deadline, and the division heads wanted a completed schematic by the end of the quarter.
The results of the last test had been less than conclusive, and Jin reminded the room that he had predicted as much. He had been there fifteen years, and never missed an opportunity to remind them. He said they should tear the whole thing down to the studs and rework it. Pavel pushed back. Tricia rolled her eyes and checked her phone. Casper and Eric had done the Carver internship together, and as the newest to the team, were expected to sit quietly and listen.
Jin was dreaming. Reworking the entire project was going to take another eight weeks, perhaps longer. During the summer of the internship, he and Eric had done little else but check data and compile results. It had been painful, but admittedly, an effective initiation. He knew the project inside and out. There was nothing wrong with the scope or the plan, as Jin kept suggesting. Casper had noticed weeks ago that they kept neglecting to fix an obvious design flaw in their adjustments. One small, inexpensive change. One day he might have the guts to say something.
Across the table, Reagan sat forward and tapped her lips with her pen. Her earrings dangled as she glanced down at her notes. Then she looked up and watched while Jin finished a hasty diagram on the whiteboard. He drew arrows pointing in opposite directions, circled three points, and slashed an X on either side of the sketch. He stepped back to present it to the room, tapping the marker against his thumb. People murmured in reply as they glanced at the whiteboard. Casper studied the diagram.
“Eric,” he whispered, “didn’t we try that already?” Eric shrugged. Casper flipped through the report he and Eric had compiled. “Yeah, we kept getting that error. Remember?” He held up the page and pointed to a spreadsheet.
“They’ll figure it out,” Eric mumbled. Casper leaned forward and tapped Tricia with his pen. She finished sending a text, then glanced up at him languidly.
“Tricia, tell Jin we already tried it that way. Three weeks ago.” He held the page toward her.
“Who cares?” she hissed, brushing away the report and picking up her phone. “This meeting is already taking forever.” Pavel was absorbed in listening to one of the engineers. Next to Pavel, Reagan was busily rifling through the report. She kept glancing up at the board, then down at the page, with a confused look on her face. He saw her look to Pavel, whose back was turned, then across to Tricia, who was scrolling.
Reagan pressed her lips and waited while the engineer who was speaking finished his point. Casper noticed that she had a dimple in her left cheek.
“Jin?” Her voice was quiet, but everyone turned to face her. Her face flushed pink and she looked down at the report again, her brow furrowed. “I might be wrong, but I think we might have done something similar already.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jin.
“Um, I just had it,” she said, flipping through the pages. “Sorry,” she murmured, as she searched.
“The table is on page fifteen,” said Casper. She glanced up at him. He swallowed. He heard pages turning and fingers tapping screens. “Figure 3.1.” She nodded and repaid him with a grateful glimmer in her green eyes. Leaf green.
“No,” Jin insisted, after consulting the report. “This wouldn’t be the same schematic.”
“But it’s close, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes, and it kept throwing the same error every time,” said Casper. “If you look at the fourth column, you’ll see it.”
“Right,” she said. “I’m thinking if we made a small alteration—,” she hesitated and looked at Casper for help. He instantly forgot everything he had ever learned.
“Just show me what you mean,” said Jin, offering her the marker.
“Are you sure?” She searched the room briefly, then sighed, tucked a strand of golden red hair behind her ear, and stood. She stepped up to the board and carefully rubbed away part of the sketch with her finger. She picked up a red marker and drew two parallel lines in the empty space. Brilliant, he thought. Beautiful.
Jin crossed his arms and peered at the drawing. One of the engineers stood up and approached the board. He asked how much it would alter the rest of the schematic, prompting Reagan and Jin to return to the board, dueling markers in hand, while everyone else bent over their phones and computers.
When the meeting ended and people began to file out, he waited while she quickly stacked the report between her computer and phone, and picked up her pen and highlighter. When the room was empty except for the two of them, he cleared his throat. She strode toward the door.
“Nice save back there,” he said too loudly. She started and turned to look at him. “I mean, preventing us from repeating the same mistake.” She gave him a demure chuckle.
“Well, thanks for the back up.”
“Anytime.” She pressed her lips in a polite smile, nodded, and made for the door. “Reagan.” He forced himself to walk slowly as he approached. “Are you—I mean, would you—”
He stopped.
She had glanced down at her phone, which had started buzzing.
“Sorry,” she said, peering at the screen. “I need to take this.” She turned toward the wall and pressed a finger against her other ear as she answered the call. “Dad? Everything okay?”
He waved, which she didn’t see, then turned and headed for the lab.
—
When she entered the office, he furtively glanced up from his computer. There was no sign of worry or concern on her face. Everything must be okay with Dad. That was the third time they had spoken, the two of them alone, since he started at Carver full-time. There were plenty of group discussions, which felt a bit more insulated, but he both craved and cowered from the moments when she seemed to notice his existence apart from anyone else.
He hated how his cheeks always turned bright pink, as if he had run up eight flights of stairs. His ears burned, and his throat tensed, all the potential clever remarks fleeing his mind when he most needed them.
He looked up to see her studying her computer screen while she played with her necklace. It was a simple gold chain with a some kind of locket, a small gold shape fluttering by her throat. He couldn’t tell what it was. Who am I kidding?
She was a mystery. She scarcely spoke to anyone, and she seemed to make every effort to remain unobtrusive. But she couldn’t help it. Her mere presence exuded warmth and brilliance, and he couldn’t fathom why she seemed intent on concealing it.
“Hey, man. Take a look at this.” Eric stood next to him, displaying a tablet screen with something related to the work they were supposed to be doing. He blinked away from Reagan and peered at the screen, forcing himself back down to earth.
©2024-2025 Katie Bertola. All rights reserved.
Katie Bertola 