Kurt was losing it. The fear had started creeping in when Charlie made that cryptic statement in the hallway: How would you feel? If someone posted something secret about you? The way he said it.… The way he’d looked at Kurt.…
What had he meant? What did he know?
After the fight with Charlie he’d gone to the old playground on Mockingbird, far from school, far from Tim, far from his father. He did his thinking there.
When the bell for fifth period rang, he was back on campus, waiting for Caitlyn outside her classroom. They went to the parking lot to sit in his car.
“There’s something I have to tell you.” He was normally so strong. Scary, even. The biggest and baddest. But right now, Caitlyn thought, he seemed scared. Broken. She thought of something Kurt had told her once, offhandedly—what his dad said when Kurt was little about what he’d do if he found out one of his sons was gay. It was a chilling comment, proof that even now the sunlight hadn’t reached as far as people believed. But Kurt had relayed the story almost jokingly, like, Can you believe he said that? Good thing he doesn’t have to worry about that! Yet the way Kurt had paused after telling her the story, in the dark one night, she’d known. On some level she’d always known.
Now he said, “It might come out anyway. So I want you to hear it from me.”
Caitlyn realized she actually liked him in this moment. He was a better person, a little scared. She’d always wanted Tim, but Tim chose Mary, and Kurt was number two. You took what you got.
“It’s okay.” She took his hand. “I know.”
“Know what?” Then he let go. “You do?” He nodded, as if that made sense. Of course she knew. “You won’t tell anyone? If it doesn’t come out.”
“No. I don’t think that would benefit either of us.”
He nodded again. He rubbed a calloused large hand over his face, stopping to squeeze his temples, where his head was pounding.
“Still,” she said gently, unusual for Caitlyn, “it might be time to see other people.” She gave him a rueful smile. “It’s not you, it’s me.”
Alex watched the 3-D printer dance in the air.
It was beautiful. Hypnotic.
The nozzle laid drips of material like toothpaste onto the heated bed, building 3-D objects one 2-D plane at a time.
It was like watching someone make a sculpture, but instead of carving it down from a brick of rock, it was being built up from nothing. This was creation!
The hand of the sculptor was replaced by the mindless nozzle, moving gracefully through space, blind and dumb to what it was making, guided by one simple command: here, not here; here, not here. And from that, you could build anything.
Alex had been staring at the bobbing head moving like a snake for so long he’d forgotten where he was or how long he’d been there.
As it finished each piece of the guts of his device, he placed them together, using the screws and pins he’d also printed. He had turned the Tech Lab into a one-stop death shop.
While the snake hose moved, and the printer licked its filthy tongue, the Game showed him verses and images, biblical and local mixed together.
And the LORD said, kill them all without pity or compassion. Slaughter old men, young men and maidens, women and children.
It was like watching God’s finger lay dots of fury, one real-life pixel at a time.