In the Middle Gray

by Valerie Hunter

Valerie Hunter is a high school English teacher as well as a graduate student at Vermont College of Fine Arts’ Writing for Children and Young Adults program. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies including Real Girls Don’t Rust, Cleavage: Real Fiction for Real Girls, One Thousand Words for War, Brave New Girls, and (Re)Sisters.

Cal had walked with Reg to town on three August tenths in a row, but this was the first time he felt nervous.

He tried to hide it. Reg never looked nervous at all, with her chin held high and her shoulders squared. Then again, Reg had nothing to worry about.

His older sister was the most brilliant tinker Cal knew, and also the most enterprising. Three years ago, when Reg was barely ten but already able to make or fix anything, a neighbor hired her to go to Hartland and pretend to be his son and take the exam to get into the Mechanical Institute in the States. Reg had passed both the written and practical tests with flying colors, and every year after that, she’d been hired by someone else and had been just as successful, getting paid more each year.

This year, now that Cal was ten, she’d gotten him hired, as well. Cal knew he wasn’t nearly as brilliant as Reg, but she’d been convinced he was ready. “You’re up against amateurs who’ve never seen real competition and rich kids who see this as their ticket out of the Territories but who can’t tell a flit sprocket from a tomb wheel. You’ll have no difficulty getting Winston Kearns in.”

Winston Kearns was the boy Cal had been hired to be. Winston had tried to get in himself last year, when he was eleven, and failed.

Reg prepared Cal for the written test, quizzing him on questions until he had them memorized. They were mostly common sense.

Reg designed the practical component for him, too: a contraption that measured and poured flour very precisely. Cal thought it was stupid— it took at least as long as it would for a person to do the same task, if not longer— but Reg said it was exactly the type of machine the competition judges liked. So Cal built it to Reg’s specifications, and it worked well, even if it was stupid.

The competition had been three weeks ago. Cal knew he’d done well on the written test, and his machine had worked just fine and hadn’t looked any more pointless than most of the other gadgets there. But he’d fumbled and flustered his way through the interview even though he’d known all the answers, and he’d been clumsy disassembling and reassembling the machine.

Now he and Reg were walking to town to get the newspaper that printed the list of who had been accepted to the Institute, and despite Reg's reassurances that Winston Kearns’ name would be there, Cal wasn’t sure.

“I don't know why you're so worried,” Reg said for the hundredth time. “You were taught by the best—me. Next year you can take over my business altogether, and I can get in as myself.”

Reg would be thirteen next year, the oldest age the Institute accepted. It made Cal happy to think of her going, but he didn’t like thinking about pretending to be someone else again. The whole idea of getting someone else into the Institute muddled his head. Lying and cheating were wrong, and what Reg and he were doing seemed like both. Yet here were adults hiring them to do it, and their own parents allowing it like it was nothing at all.

When Cal mentioned this to Reg, she snorted. “Are you five years old? Haven’t you figured out that’s the way of things in the Territories? If you’re not willing to lie and cheat a little, you’ll never get anywhere.”

When Cal just looked at her, not really sure what she meant but unwilling to ask, Reg’s expression softened. “The Institute accepts anyone from the States without even a test. It’s only in the Territories that they have these silly competitions, because they think we’re backwards riff-raff who shouldn’t be allowed to go east unless we’re something truly special.”

“But that’s not fair,” Cal blurted out.

“Obviously! So what’s wrong with cheating a system that’s already unfair?”

He didn’t answer because he didn’t have an answer. He knew it wasn’t right, the people of the Territories always being treated like second-class citizens, but Ma was fond of saying two wrongs didn’t make a right.

So he asked Ma about it. She didn’t snort at him. Instead she looked thoughtful.

“It doesn’t entirely sit right with me, either,” she said finally. “But sometimes things aren’t as black and white as we’d like them to be. Maybe we just have to get used to living in the middle gray.”

Cal pictured a great rolling fog. It was easy to be confused in a fog like that.

“Anyhow,” Ma said, “I trust you and Reg to make your own decisions on the matter.”

Cal wasn’t sure he had made the decision, though. Reg had made it for him. The fog continued to swirl around him, even now as they walked to town. Maybe it would clear if Winston Kearns’ name was on the list.

When they got to town, Reg bought a copy of the Prairie Sentinel. Just like every year, she waited until they were back out on the prairie to look at it, but this time she passed it to Cal rather than opening it herself.

Cal turned to page eight. Twenty names. Albert Brunner, the boy Reg had pretended to be, was right at the top.

Cal read the list three times. Winston Kearns’ name was not there.

The fog thickened until the entire world felt gray. He’d failed.

No one said much after. Not Reg. Not Ma or Pa or his little sister Agatha. Cal didn’t even hear from Winston Kearns’ father, since Reg took care of that correspondence.

He wished someone would say something, but maybe, like him, they didn’t know what to say.

Reg kept working with him in their workshop in the barn like nothing was different. In October, she shoved a newspaper at him. “Look.”

Cal had been avoiding newspapers since August, but he took it and looked where she pointed. The article was about a clock being installed in Boston near the Mechanical Institute. The senior students had designed it, creating different figures to emerge at each hour.

The article wasn’t long enough to excite Cal’s imagination. “Maybe you’ll get to see it when you go to the Institute,” he said.

“Never mind that. Let’s build a clock like that ourselves.”

“Us?” Was she pure crazy?

“Not an enormous public clock, but a little one. You’re good with miniatures, and I’m good with plans. I bet we can do it.”

“What about your entry for the competition?” Reg usually spent months planning and building her new invention. Last year she’d started even earlier, since they had both his and hers to work on. “Or is this going to be your entry?”

“I’ve got plenty of time to think about the competition,” Reg said. “This is just for us.”

So Reg made the plans, and Cal helped with everything else—cleaning and fixing an old mantel clock and building the frame to go around it with twelve doors and twelve little rooms inside to hold the figures. He came up with the figures himself, fashioning them from tin, painting on the tiny details, and then rigging them up with the mechanisms he and Reg designed to make them move.

Every day the hour between the end of school and the beginning of their chores was filled with their clock, and Cal remembered just how satisfying Reg’s projects were. When he was working on the clock, he didn’t think about failing or whether or not he’d be hired for the competition again or anything else that troubled him the rest of the time. He just focused on the task in front of him, and if something didn’t work the first time, well, he just kept trying till it did.

When the weather got cold, they moved from their workshop to the house, and even though Ma complained about the mess, she marveled at those tiny figures in a way that made Cal feel proud. Even Agatha, who previously thought all of Reg’s and Cal’s work to be dirty and boring, watched him paint and offered opinions on color choices.

The article about the clock in Boston hadn’t said what the figures were, so Cal made up his own, everything from a queen and a knight to a farmer and a steam locomotive engineer. He tried to give the queen Reg’s fierce expression, but in the end she just had beady eyes and a bit of a frown as she thumped her staff emphatically.

“You could have picked one theme and stuck to it,” Reg said as they worked at attaching the figures.

Cal shrugged. He liked the randomness of the figures. It was their clock, after all.

When they finished, Reg showed it off to the whole family, nudging the hour hand forward so they could see all twelve figures in quick succession. Cal watched with wonder, as though he hadn’t helped make it.

Afterwards, Reg hung it in their workshop. “Because it’s ours, and we should never forget how good we are at tinkering,” she said, and Cal nodded even though he knew he wasn’t half the tinker she was.

All right, time to apply ourselves,” said Reg, like the clock hadn't been work. Well, maybe it hadn't been; it had been fun. “This is the year we get Winston Kearns into the Institute.”

Time seemed to stutter a moment, and Cal had to swallow a few times before he could speak. “They've hired me again?”

Reg avoided his eyes. “They've hired me.”

No. No, that was all wrong. This was the last year Reg was eligible to get into the Institute. This was the year she was supposed to be herself.

He tried to say that, but the words wouldn’t come out right. “But you... what...? You can't...”

Reg raised her eyebrows. “Sure I can. I've done it for the past three years, haven't I? And I can pass for a thirteen-year-old boy for another few years after this, at least. Think of the money I'll make!”

The money she would have been happy to have him earn, if he’d been able to. This was his fault.

“You should enter for yourself,” he insisted. “Let me be Winston Kearns.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he felt foolish. He hadn’t been good enough last year, and now it was too late.

“You need another year apprenticing with me,” Reg said. “We'll hire you out again next year. Now let's go. I've got a plan for a mechanical churn...”

Ma tried to talk her out of it at supper. “You're being short-sighted, Regina. Think of the money you'll make down the road with a proper education. We can get by fine without your money, right, John?”

“Yes,” Pa said, his tone neutral.

“But an education is no guarantee,” Reg argued. “How many people around here would be looking to hire a mechanical engineer? They’d think me too posh. And in the States, even with an education they might still think I'm some know-nothing girl from the Territories. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush—I can keep making money this way for a few more years, and once I'm grown I can get all sorts of jobs as a tinker.”

Cal waited for Ma to keep arguing, to tell Reg she shouldn't do it. But Ma just frowned. “If you're sure...”

“I am,” Reg said. “There’s nothing more to say about it.”

Cal thought there was, but he couldn’t seem to find the words.

They set to work on the churn, even though Cal hated every moment of it. It made a clattery racket that gave him a headache, even though Reg kept trying to make it quieter.

“Anyhow, it works. That's all that matters. The judges won't care about the noise.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Those judges don't care a whit about how good a mechanic you are or what wonderful things you can make. All they care about is that you come with something practical and that you sound smart when you explain it.”

He had failed miserably at that, at sounding posh and polished. He’d practiced everything else, but he hadn’t been able to practice not being nervous.

“That's why there's no sense in my attending the Institute,” Reg went on, cranking her wrench so hard that Cal was afraid she might break the churn handle. “Who wants to go to a school where they expect everyone to be automatons? Where they don’t want creative mechanics?”

“They let their senior students make that clock,” Cal said.

Reg frowned. “The Institute would never let the likes of you or me in with our clock, no matter how splendid. And it is splendid, no doubt about that. So why should I want to go there and stop making splendid things of my own?”

Her expression was so fierce that Cal had to look away. In that moment he knew just how badly she wanted to go. Not because she wanted to stop making splendid things, but because she wanted to keep making them, to make them even better, and deep down she knew the Institute might actually be a place where she could do that, even if she was trying really hard to convince herself it wasn’t.

The plan sprouted in Cal’s mind at that moment, and it grew as crazily as a weed. He had to get her in. His job this year was to be Regina Robbins.

He tried to uproot this idea. He wasn’t a girl. He didn’t have an invention, and it was less than a month till the competition. He could hardly build something wonderful in that time, especially without Reg seeing. He would need a parent to accompany him to the competition, and Pa would think the idea pure nonsense. And even if he managed to do all that, the fact remained that he was the same tongue-tied simpleton as last year.

It was a horrible idea, an impossible idea, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He was the reason Reg wasn’t trying to get into the Institute, so he had to be the one to do it for her.

One problem at a time. If he needed to look like a girl, he would need a girl’s help. The only girls he knew well enough to trust with a secret like this were his sisters, and he couldn’t very well tell Reg. It would have to be Agatha.

His younger sister was tricky. She liked to tattle, but it also puffed her up to be trusted. If she thought she was the only one he trusted enough to tell, she might feel too honored to tattle.

He grabbed her after supper that evening. “I need your help,” he said, both because he knew it would make her feel important and because it was true.

Agatha smiled. “With what?”

“It’s a secret. I’m trusting you, all right?”

She nodded, her smile growing.

He’d thought this next part over carefully. Agatha and Reg didn’t get on. They were too different—Reg with her gears and clutter and Agatha all neat and proper—but they were also similar. They were both stubborn, and they both liked having their own way. Agatha enjoyed getting Reg in trouble whenever she could because Reg was always nasty to Agatha. Or maybe Reg was always nasty to Agatha because Agatha was always tattling on Reg. Cal couldn’t quite tell.

But both his sisters got along with him, and right now that was all that mattered.

“I got hired to get someone into the Institute. A girl.”

Agatha’s eyes got wider, and then they narrowed. “A girl? Why didn’t they hire Reg?”

“She was already hired.”

Agatha continued to look at him. Cal waited for her to ask why anyone would hire the likes of him, but maybe she was too nice to say that. Instead she said, “Reg doesn’t know?”

He nodded.

“Who arranged it?”

“I did. On the sly.”

Agatha’s eyebrows knit together. She knew as well as Cal did that he was not a sneaky person.

“I want to prove Reg wrong,” he blurted out. “That I can do this as well as she can. But on the off chance I don’t get in… I don’t want her to know I failed again.”

These half-truths seemed to make sense to Agatha, just like he figured they would. “How can I help?” she asked.

“Can you help me be a convincing girl?” he asked.

All the skepticism cleared from Agatha’s face. “Of course.”

Agatha proved an excellent ally. She borrowed one of Ma’s old dresses for him, and even though he felt ridiculous in it and Agatha giggled as soon as she saw him, she managed to keep a straight face after that. She also found Reg’s braid of hair that Ma had kept when Reg cut it off before that first competition. Cal and Reg had nearly the same shade of hair, and after a lot of hair pins stabbing his scalp, Agatha managed to get it attached.

“Do I look convincing?” Cal asked.

“Maybe… Get up and walk.”

Cal walked across his bedroom.

“Why are you walking like a baby who’s just learned how?” Agatha asked.

“I don’t want to get my legs tangled in the skirt,” he admitted.

Agatha snorted. “That’s not going to happen. Walk like a normal person.”

He did, and sure enough he didn’t trip. “Better?” he asked.

She nodded. At her direction, he also practiced sitting down and getting up. He wondered if Reg had felt this strange the first time she’d pretended to be a boy. He bet not. Reg always seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

“Now introduce yourself as whoever it is you’re supposed to be,” Agatha said.

His mind searched wildly for a name as he stood up and squared his shoulders like Reg. “Hello, I’m Alice Anderson,” he said, trying to make his voice higher.

Agatha snorted again. “Girls don’t talk like that. And they don’t stand with their shoulders like that, either.”

“Reg does,” he pointed out.

Agatha narrowed her eyes, and for a moment he thought she’d guessed it was Reg he was trying to be. But all she said was, “Reg doesn’t count.”

“How should I sound?”

“Just talk normally.”

So they practiced until bedtime, when he was allowed to be himself again and go to sleep.

Next Cal needed a gadget to bring. There wasn’t enough time to make something complicated, something worthy of being entered under Reg’s name.

It would have to be the clock.

The idea came to him almost immediately, but he pushed it aside. Reg said the judges would never appreciate the clock, that it was just for themselves. Taking it out of the barn would be all wrong. Reg would never approve.

But Reg wouldn’t approve of any part of his plan. And Reg’s whole argument against the Institute was that she didn’t want to attend a school that wouldn’t accept their clock. If he could get her in using the clock, well, that would prove her wrong.

He felt like he was in Ma’s middle gray again, choked by a dense fog. But the clock was the only option he had, so it would have to do.

He needed to practice disassembling and reassembling it, which was a problem because Reg was in the barn whenever he was. Of course he knew how to take the clock apart and put it together; after all, he’d helped build it. But he’d known what he was doing with the gadget last year, too, and that hadn’t kept him from looking like a fumbling fool at the competition. This time he wanted to practice till his hands knew exactly what to do without even having to think about it, because his head would probably be in a muddle.

The only time he had a moment in the barn alone was when he milked the cows morning and night, so he did that quickly and then popped out and put back in one of the clock’s twelve figures, each of which had its own unique little mechanism. It didn’t seem like enough practice, so he started getting up and sneaking out to the barn after everyone had gone to sleep, taking apart the whole clock, gears, figures, and all, and then putting it back together by lantern light.

Reg noticed. Not the clock, but him, how tired he was. She glared at him with her sharp eyes.

“Are you ill?”

“No,” he said, stifling a yawn.

“What’s the matter, then? You look dreadful!”

“I’m fine,” he mumbled.

“You’re really not,” she said, but to his relief she didn’t say anything else.

Ma noticed, too, and dosed him with her foul castor oil. He told himself it was worth it even though it made him want to puke.

He knew he was going to have to tell his parents. He’d need Pa to take him to the competition and swear he was Reg to the person who did the signing in. Parents had to show their Territorial identification cards, too.

Somehow, though, telling Pa what he was doing seemed a bigger obstacle than convincing Agatha to help him or learning to walk in a dress or knowing every last detail of the clock. Because if Pa said no—and that was a very real possibility—that would be it. Reg would never get into the Institute, and it would be all Cal’s fault.

Cal knew Pa loved them and wanted what was best for them. Pa had been the one to set up their barn stall workshop. He always appreciated Cal’s and Reg’s help with the farm machinery, readily admitting he didn’t know the first thing about fixing a mechanical thresher or a steam combine.

Cal got the feeling, though, that Pa had the same mistrust of gadgetry that many of their neighbors had, and that while he may have been glad for their help, he really didn’t see it as a job, not one Reg should go to school for. It seemed like Pa might prefer Reg to stick around and keep bringing in money rather than going off and doing something he didn’t understand.

But Cal also knew that Pa could sometimes be made to change his mind. Cal had seen Ma do this with Pa, and he’d even see Reg do it a time or two, but he’d never been brave enough to try it himself. He’d always figured Pa was bound to know best because Pa was grown and Cal wasn’t. Thinking otherwise made Cal feel funny, like the earth was a little less solid beneath his feet.

Three days before the competition, when they were alone in the cornfield, Cal finally asked Pa, “Could you take me to Hartland on Monday?”

Pa’s eyes seemed to bore right into Cal. “Why?”

Cal took a deep breath. “For Reg. I want to get her into the Institute. She’s going to pretend to be Winston Kearns, so I’m going to pretend to be her.”

Pa’s eyebrows rose. “This is Reg’s plan?”

“No, sir. She doesn’t know.”

“But Reg said she doesn’t want to go.”

“I think she’s only saying that. We can do all right without the money she brings in, can’t we?”

Pa nodded. “Truth be told, your ma and I held onto most of that money. Figured we’d save it for Reg’s dowry. It could do just as well for her education. But are you sure about her feelings on this?”

“She was set on going last year, before I failed. So it’s my fault. I need to make this right.”

Pa gave him another piercing look. “Who’s to say you won’t fail again?”

The words threatened to bowl him over, but Cal stood firm. “I might, but I have to try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

It was one of Ma’s expressions, and Pa smiled slightly. “What does your ma think about this?”

“I didn’t tell her yet,” he said. It dawned on him that he could have—Ma was more likely to be on Cal’s side, and she could have convinced Pa—but it wouldn’t have been right. He needed to convince Pa himself.

Pa stood there awhile longer looking at Cal. An appraising look. “All right,” he said finally. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

The final days before the competition flew. Cal told Ma the plan, and he practiced explaining the clock, taking it apart, and acting like Reg, all while holding tight to the secret. Now that Reg was the only one not to know, it seemed even harder to keep quiet.

On Monday morning, after Mr. Kearns had left with Reg, Cal got into the dress and had Agatha pin on the braid. She was quiet and seemed extra jabby with the pins. “It’s Reg you’re pretending to be, isn’t it?” she finally said.

He turned to look at her, and nearly got stuck in the eye. Agatha scowled, and Cal tried to find the words to explain himself.

“Turn around. I’m not done,” Agatha said. Once he did, she added, “You could’ve told me.”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d want to help if you knew it was Reg,” he mumbled.

Agatha paused. “Do you really think I’m that mean?”

“No,” he said honestly.

She jammed in one last pin. “Besides, if Reg goes to the Institute, I’ll have my own room.” She smiled at Cal. “Get her in!”

Cal had forgotten just how many people came to the competition. Hartland’s main street was packed with people, and he tried not to think about the likelihood of his failure.

He reached the registration desk, placing the clock down carefully as he signed Reg’s name and Pa vouched for him. The man behind the desk told him where to go to for the written test, and Pa squeezed Cal’s shoulder before he left in a way that made Cal feel a little more confident.

He’d been nervous he’d be in the same room as Reg, but he was in a small room with only girls. Did they get a different test? A harder one, because the Institute thought a girl would have to be truly exceptional in order to deserve a place there? Or easier, because they thought girls were capable of less to begin with and were therefore impressed if a girl exceeded these low expectations?

He hoped it was neither. He wanted to be judged—he wanted Reg to be judged—as any other tinker.

They were given tests and told to begin. It didn’t seem any different than the one he’d taken last year. He knew most of the answers because Reg had taught him.

Afterwards they were sent to another room, still all the girls together. Everyone looked calm. Maybe they were hiding their nerves, like he was, or maybe they were just naturally confident, like Reg.

He wondered how many of them would end up getting in, and then he shut that thought away and eyed their inventions. Many of the girls had all manner of big, brassy contraptions with them, the purposes of which Cal couldn’t guess. All practical and impressive, surely. A wave of doubt crashed over him—the clock was nothing special, he’d be laughed out of the room—but he took a deep breath and tried to shut that thought away, too.

The girls were called individually to another room, alphabetically, so Cal knew he’d be toward the end. None of the girls returned. There must be another exit from the room they were being called into, but as girl after girl disappeared, he couldn’t help feeling there was some kind of dragon in there eating each of them in turn.

When there were only two others left, the man at the door called, “Regina Robbins.”

Cal marched into the room, his chin up. Reg wouldn’t be scared of any dragon.

The room was tiny. Sure enough there was another door at the opposite side and no dragon, just a table with four chairs and a woman and two men, all frowning.

Cal sat, putting the clock in front of him.

“What’s this?” asked one of the men.

“A clock I made,” he said.

“A clock?” said the woman, her voice dripping scorn.

Something inside Cal began to shrivel, but when he opened his mouth it was Reg’s voice that came out, bold as brass. “A clock,” he repeated. “Like the one the senior students at the Institute made. There’s a figure for each hour.”

“Let’s see,” said the second man.

He wound the clock, and then pushed the minute hand ahead to the next hour, over and over, so they could see all twelve figures.

He couldn’t tell if they were impressed or not, but Reg wouldn’t care, so Cal tried not to, either. One of the men jotted something down in a ledger.

“All right,” the man said. “Let’s see its guts.”

Cal grinned, because it sounded like something Reg would say. He began to disassemble the clock while they fired questions at him, all the same questions as last year, all the same questions he’d practiced. He stumbled over a few of his answers, but he kept going. More importantly, he kept his hands steady as he showed off the inner workings of all those tiny figures and then put them back together again.

He had no sooner breathed a very tiny sigh of relief when the woman said, “Tell us, Miss Robbins— how will you benefit from attending the Mechanical Institute?”

Cal fumbled the screwdriver in his hand. It was hardly the most difficult question he’d been asked, but it was the only one he hadn’t been prepared for. Maybe it was new this year, or maybe they only asked it to girls, or—

“Miss Robbins?” the woman prompted.

A dozen answers rolled through his head, all of them about what a wonderful opportunity it would be, but when he opened his mouth he said, “Truth be told, you can accept me or not. Even if I don’t end up going to your posh school, I’m still a mechanic, and I’ll still go on tinkering. It would be nice to learn things official-like, but if you don’t end up taking me, that’s your own loss. Because I’m a fine mechanic.”

Somewhere deep inside, Cal cringed a little, but he smiled Reg’s fierce smile and didn’t let it waver, even when no one smiled back.

“Thank you. You’re dismissed,” the woman said, and Cal strode out of the room.

Out in the crowded hall, he faltered. What had he done? Hadn’t Reg herself said that the judges didn’t want anyone’s true self, just automatons? Here he’d gone and ruined everything.

But somehow, it didn’t seem ruined. Somehow he thought Reg might even approve.

The weeks after the competition felt impossibly long. Cal changed his mind about whether Reg would get in every other minute till he thought he’d go crazy.

On August tenth, he and Reg walked to town to get the newspaper, Agatha tagging along. Once again, Reg waited till they were outside of town to look at the list. Cal wanted to rip it out of her hand.

Reg opened the paper, then grinned. “Winston Kearns is going to the Institute,” she said, letting the paper fall to her side.

Cal couldn’t breathe. He’d failed, and now he had to pretend everything was fine, because Reg could never know—

Agatha elbowed past him. She snatched the paper, looked at it, and then handed it back to Reg. “Did you read the whole list?”

Reg looked at her like she was crazy. “Why would I?”

“Just read it,” Agatha said, her voice as fierce as Reg’s at her fiercest.

Reg looked at the paper again, and her face went still, like it had somehow frozen. Cal felt frozen, too, because hope was rising all around him but he couldn’t quite believe it. He managed to look over Reg’s shoulder at the list, at her name on the list, Regina Robbins, really there, and surely they couldn’t take it back, couldn’t—

Reg’s head came up slowly, swiveling from Agatha to Cal. “How…?”

It was the first time he’d ever heard Reg speechless.

Agatha was all but dancing. “Cal did it! Cal was you!” Her eyes widened, and she turned to Cal. “It’s not a secret anymore, right?”

“No,” he managed to say.

“Good.” Agatha nudged Reg. “You should thank him.”

Reg still didn’t say anything. Cal wondered if she ever would. The euphoric feeling of his victory faded into a cold dread that what he’d done was all wrong.

Agatha sighed. “Can I go tell Ma and Pa?”

Neither of them said anything, so Agatha ran ahead.

“Are you mad?” Cal asked.

“No. I… How did you manage?”

He told her everything. “So it mostly wasn’t me. Pa brought me there, and Agatha made sure I looked like a girl, and it was your clock—”

“Hush!” Reg said so fiercely that Cal immediately stopped talking. “It was you. You’re the one who did it.” She didn’t sound upset. She sounded like she did when they were in the barn struggling over some mechanical problem, and she’d finally grasped it and was excited to show him.

She grabbed him in a hug so tight that he could feel just how badly she’d wanted this, how happy she was.

“Do you know why I said I didn’t want to go?” she asked, releasing him so she could look him in the eyes.

“Because I failed last year, and you wanted to keep making money. And because you thought the Institute would be an awful place that wouldn’t let you make fun things, like the clock,” he said. “I think the judges liked it, by the way.”

“Of course they did,” she said. “It’s a very impressive clock. And it’s yours as much as mine, don’t ever forget that. But the reason I didn’t want to go was because they couldn’t see the brilliance in you.”

He stared at her, not understanding.

“You still don’t get it, do you? I thought the Institute must not be worth it because you couldn’t get in, and you’re so talented, Cal. And now you’ve gone and proved it and gotten in, you’ve gotten me in, and I want to go…” She laughed, a pure whoop of joy that seemed to fly across the fields like a bird. “It’s like some kind of fairy tale.”

“I don’t think most fairy tales have gears and sprockets,” Cal said, grinning.

“Then they’re missing out,” Reg said. She grinned back at him. “Next year you can hire yourself out again, and the year after that you can get in yourself…”

Her words deflated something inside him. He toed at the dirt. When he was pretending to be Reg, he could say anything. Maybe it was time to do the same as himself.

He took a deep breath. “I’m not sure if I’ll go myself, but I don’t want to pretend to be anyone else again.”

Reg frowned at him. Cal thought she was going to erupt, but she sounded quite calm as she said, “What do you mean you’re not going yourself?”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean, Pa might not…”

“You just found a way to get me into the Institute, which was darned near impossible. I think you can find a way to convince Pa to let you go, too.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re going!” she said. “We’re going to be unstoppable there!”

He pictured it, their bright future. No fog in sight. “We will,” he agreed, and they walked home.