Chapter 26: Honest
Friday afternoon. The Math Olympiad room.
"Find a three-digit odd number where the sum of the digits is twelve, all three digits are distinct, and the difference between the first and second digit equals the difference between the second and third."
Owen waited.
"Joanna?"
No response.
"Joanna."
She blinked, came back. "Sorry. What was the question?"
Owen repeated it. Joanna looked at the scratch pad in front of her — she'd been staring at it without writing anything for approximately four minutes, which was not her usual pattern.
She ran the calculation quickly, wrote three numbers, crossed out two. "741."
"Correct." Owen looked at her. "But you used twice the time you'd have in a competition. If someone else gets there first, being right doesn't help you."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"What's going on?"
She shook her head. "Nothing. I'll be sharper next week."
Owen let it go for now.
He checked his watch and clapped once. "Okay. That's it for today. Good week, everyone. State qualifier is next Saturday — rest this weekend, but don't go completely offline."
Marcus was already closing his notebook. Kevin had the look of a man who had been thinking about Friday evening since approximately Wednesday.
"Captain." Kevin leaned forward with the specific energy of someone who had been building to this. "Regina George is throwing a party tonight. Like, a real party — her parents' house, the whole thing." He paused. "We need you to get us in."
The other two male members nodded with the sincerity of people endorsing a policy position.
"I'm sitting this one out," Owen said.
"What."
"Lisa's had some thoughts about my social schedule. I've been keeping a lower profile."
Kevin looked at him with the expression of a man whose entire Friday evening plan had just been restructured. "Owen. Owen. We are seven days from the state qualifier. Morale is a real factor. Team cohesion—"
"You're not a sports psychologist, Kevin."
"I've read articles."
Marcus, to his credit, stayed out of it and appeared to be studying the ceiling.
Owen looked around the table. Three sets of genuinely hopeful eyes. The state qualifier was a week away. They'd been putting in solid practice hours.
He exhaled. "Fine. I'll get you in the door. After that you're on your own. And if anyone shows up to next Saturday's qualifier operating at less than full capacity, I will personally restructure the lineup."
"Understood. One hundred percent."
"Seven o'clock. Front entrance. Don't be late and don't embarrass yourselves on the way there."
They left with the specific energy of people who had just received good news.
Joanna was still at the table, collecting her things slowly.
Owen sat back down across from her.
"Something's been off since Wednesday," he said. "What happened at lunch with the Plastics?"
Joanna stacked her notebooks with the careful precision of someone deciding how much to say. Then she looked at him directly. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah."
"Regina said you two had a relationship. That you used to drive around at night, that she called you — a specific nickname." She paused. "Is that true?"
Owen was quiet for a moment. Then: "We had an arrangement. It wasn't a relationship in any conventional sense. She called it what she wanted to call it."
"Was it real to her?"
"I think parts of it were," Owen said honestly. "Which I should have been clearer about. I wasn't as careful as I should have been."
Joanna absorbed this. "So the stories — all of them — they're accurate?"
"Mostly."
She looked at him steadily. "Why are you telling me this instead of a more comfortable version?"
"Because you'd figure out the comfortable version was wrong within about a week," Owen said. "You're not someone I can manage the information flow with. And I don't want to."
Joanna was quiet for a moment.
"That's either very respectful or very calculating," she said.
"Probably both," Owen said. "I'm working on the ratio."
She almost smiled. "What do you actually want? In the long run. Not from the social situation — from your life."
Owen leaned back. "Mathematics. Theoretical physics, maybe. Something foundational. I want to build things that outlast me." He paused. "The rest of it — the reputation, the situation with various people over the past few months — that's been a detour. Not the destination."
Joanna looked at him with the clear, assessing gaze he'd come to recognize as her default when she was thinking seriously about something.
"Mathematicians are often solitary," she said. "My mother's colleagues — the really serious ones — have very narrow lives outside the work."
"I know."
"Is that what you want?"
"I want the work," Owen said. "The rest — I'm still figuring out what fits and what doesn't." He looked at her. "What about you? You've spent your life in research stations and academic environments. Your parents are brilliant. What do you actually want?"
Joanna thought about this with the seriousness it deserved. "I want to understand things. Large things — systems, patterns, the mechanics underneath what's visible. Biology is the surface. I think I want to go further underneath." She paused. "I haven't decided what that means yet."
"You will," Owen said.
"Yes," she agreed, without false modesty. "I will."
They sat there for a moment in the quiet of the empty classroom — the sounds of the school's end-of-week activity filtering in from the hallway, the afternoon light going flat and gray through the windows.
"For what it's worth," Owen said, "what Regina told you was strategic. It was meant to establish a boundary using a relationship that wasn't quite what she described."
"I know," Joanna said. "I noticed."
"It didn't work."
"No," Joanna agreed. "It didn't." She picked up her bag. "She's smart, though. I'm not dismissing her."
"Don't," Owen said. "She's genuinely smart. Just — operating with a different set of priorities."
Joanna stood. "Are you actually going to this party tonight?"
"I told them I'd get them through the door."
"And then?"
"And then I'm going home." He stood, picked up his bag. "Lisa is right about the social schedule. I've been letting it run too wide."
Joanna looked at him for a moment with the expression she occasionally wore that made Owen feel like she was reading something slightly below the surface of what was visible.
"Okay," she said.
They walked out.
Seven o'clock. The George residence.
The house was not what the word house typically conveyed. A circular drive. Stone columns at the entrance. A fountain that was running despite the October cold, which was either a statement or an oversight. Catering staff at the door with clipboards.
Kevin saw the clipboard and went slightly pale. "I didn't know there'd be a list."
"There's always a list at a George party," Owen said. "Stand behind me."
He looked through the glass sidelight into the entrance hall, spotted a familiar blonde figure in the middle distance, and raised his hand.
Karen Smith — genuinely delighted to be at a party, genuinely delighted to see anyone she recognized, moving through the room with the warm unfocused happiness of someone who was just glad to be included — looked up, saw Owen, and made her way to the door with the uncomplicated enthusiasm that was her most consistent quality.
"Owen!" She pushed the door open herself, to the mild surprise of the catering staff. "You came! Come in, come in—"
"These are friends of mine," Owen said, gesturing behind him. "Is there room?"
"Of course!" Karen waved them all in with the generous authority of someone who was not technically authorized to do this but was doing it anyway with such warmth that no one was going to stop her. "The more the better, that's what I always say."
Kevin and the others filed through with the hushed reverence of people entering somewhere they hadn't expected to be admitted.
Karen took Owen's arm with her usual breezy familiarity. "I'm so glad you came. Regina said you weren't coming."
"I'm not staying," Owen said. "Just dropping these three off."
Karen's face did something that was half disappointment and half the resigned acceptance of someone who had learned to adjust expectations. "Oh. Okay." She brightened immediately. "Well, at least you're here now. Come say hi to everyone—"
"Karen." Owen gently extracted his arm. "Have a good night. Look after them a little — especially Kevin, he's going to make bad decisions and he needs a referee."
Kevin, overhearing, looked offended and then thoughtful.
Karen giggled. "I will." She looked at Owen with the specific warmth she directed at him that was completely uncalculated and always had been. "You're really leaving?"
"I am."
"Okay." She waved. "Bye, Owen."
He turned at the door. The party was already reorganizing itself around the new arrivals — Marcus was scanning the room with the professional assessment of a man with a plan, Kevin had already pivoted toward a conversation he'd clearly been hoping to have, and the other two had located the food.
Fine.
Owen walked back down the stone steps into the cold October night, got on his bike, and rode home.
The Samson house was quiet. Lisa was in the living room with a manuscript and a cup of tea. Jack was watching the news.
Owen came in, hung up his jacket, and went to the kitchen for water.
"Home early," Lisa said, without looking up from her pages.
"I told you I wasn't staying."
"Mm." She turned a page. "How was the practice session today?"
"Good. Joanna's strong. She'll be ready for the qualifier."
Lisa set the manuscript on her knee and looked at him over the top of it. "How is she settling in?"
"Better than most people would," Owen said. "She's — she adapts fast. She reads situations well."
Lisa studied him for a moment with the particular attention she occasionally deployed. "She's a good person, Owen."
"I know."
"Don't make it complicated."
"I'm not making anything complicated," Owen said.
Lisa picked up her manuscript again. "Good."
Owen took his water upstairs.
He sat at his desk, opened his notebook, and looked at the problem he'd been circling for three days — a number theory question from an old Olympiad archive that hadn't given up its elegant path yet.
He picked up his pen.
Outside, Chicago was doing what it did on Friday nights in October — loud at the edges, quiet in the middle, the lake wind coming in from the east with its particular lack of apology.
He worked until midnight.
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