I had gone back to the crates, but I wasn’t really working. I was listening. The low murmur of their voices carried just enough. Deion walked him through it, steady, asking questions that didn’t sound like tests. When the boy hesitated, he didn’t fill the silence. He let him think.
“Show me how you got there,” Deion said at one point.
The boy tried, stumbled halfway through, then stopped.
“I knew it earlier,” he said, frustrated now. “I just—”
“You still know it,” Deion replied. “You just rushed past it.”
He turned the paper slightly, angling it back toward him.
“Start here,” he said. “Take your time.”
I stood there for a second, then set the record I was holding back into the crate and walked over just enough to catch Deion’s eye.
“I’ve got this,” I said quietly. “Go.”
He looked at me for a beat, like he was measuring whether I meant it.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I added.
That was enough. He nodded once and turned back to the table, fully this time. I picked up my tote.
“I’m going to grab food for the three of us,” I said, more to the room than to him. “Text me if either of you think of anything else I should bring back while I’m gone.”
“Thanks, Nov,” Deion said, already back in it.
Outside, I walked two blocks over and ordered enough for three without asking what they wanted. By the time I came back, the gate was fully up and the room felt more settled.
Terrell had his notebook open now, pencil moving with more confidence than when I’d left. Deion sat across from him, one arm resting on the table, the other pointing to something on the page.
“…you see how that carries through?” he was saying. “You don’t have to redo everything. Just fix where it shifted.”
Terrell nodded, then glanced up when he saw me. I held up the bag.
“Lunch,” I said.
He gave a small nod, something like relief passing through his face before he looked back down at his work. We ate at the same table, the papers pushed slightly to the side but not cleared away.
“What made you come today?” I asked Terrell after a while.
He shrugged, picking at the edge of his sandwich.
“Mr. H said his door is always open for us,” he said. “I kinda hoped he meant the door here, too.”
After a minute, he looked at Deion.
“They really going to move me?” he asked.
Deion took a second before answering.
“From what I see, they’re talking about it,” he said. “But they don’t get the final say on who you are.”
The boy looked at him, searching for something in that.
“What do I have to do?” he asked.
“We get your grades up where they need to be,” Deion said. “We show them what they’re not seeing.”
