Chapter 30: The Steve Jobs Maneuver
North Shore High School. The Auditorium. Morning of Regional Finals.
Karen Smith had come to watch Glee practice because Rachel Berry had personally invited her, which Karen had experienced as a genuine honor because Rachel Berry did not casually invite people to things and Karen was aware of this.
She'd also brought Karen — this Karen, Karen Jackson from three blocks away — because Owen was coming and Karen Jackson went where Owen went with a frequency that had become its own kind of pattern.
They were in the fifth row.
The lights went down. New Directions took the stage.
Karen Jackson had a water bottle. She was mid-sip when the choreography opened up and Quinn Fabray turned to face the audience at center stage, arms out, voice up, and her silhouette in the stage light making a very specific statement.
Karen Jackson sprayed water.
It went on Will Schuester's left shoulder.
Will Schuester, to his enormous credit, simply turned, put one finger to his lips, and turned back to the stage.
Karen mouthed sorry at his back six times.
Owen, two seats over, was already reaching for the notepad in his jacket pocket.
Karen snatched it first.
IS THAT— she wrote, in letters that conveyed extreme volume without making any sound.
Owen took the pad. Yes.
Karen took it back. SINCE WHEN.
About four months.
Karen pressed her lips together and looked at the stage with the focused intensity of someone doing math she hadn't expected to do today.
She wrote: It's not yours is it.
Owen took the pad. No.
How are you sure.
Owen looked at her. Then reached into his interior jacket pocket and produced a sealed envelope with the practiced ease of someone who kept an envelope in their interior jacket pocket as a matter of routine.
He handed it to her.
Karen looked at the envelope. Looked at him. Opened it.
Inside was a single document — formal letterhead, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, dated four months prior. A doctor's assessment, precise and clear, covering a specific medical conclusion with the thorough language of someone who had been asked to be thorough.
Karen read it.
Read it again.
Looked at Owen.
Owen sat with the expression of a man who had made peace with a piece of information and was, if anything, slightly philosophical about it.
Karen wrote: You carry this with you.
Owen took the pad. It's a practical document.
You carry a medical document in your jacket pocket to parties.
And to Math Olympiad regionals, apparently.
Karen stared at him. Then looked at the ceiling briefly. Then back at him.
Why, she wrote.
Owen considered how to answer this. Then:
Steve Jobs, before Apple went public, denied paternity of his daughter Lisa for years. Repeatedly claimed he was medically unable to have children. The court eventually ordered a paternity test. He later had three more kids.
Karen read this. Looked at Owen. Read it again.
You are using Steve Jobs as a role model for this.
I'm learning from his instinct, not his specific method. His document was fictional. Mine is real. Which makes it better.
Owen.
Yes.
That is the most unhinged thing anyone has ever handed me in an auditorium.
Owen took the pad. The System— he started writing, then crossed it out. The logic is sound. If a situation arises—
Like the one on stage.
—the documentation preemptively resolves any ambiguity. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody is confused. Everything is clear.
Karen looked at the stage. At Quinn Fabray, who was hitting a note that the auditorium was not entirely prepared for. At the boy at the center mic — Finn Hudson, open-faced, completely present, completely unaware.
She wrote: Does Finn know.
No.
Who actually—
Owen pointed, barely, toward the back of the formation. Noah Puckerman, dark-haired, moving with the easy confidence of someone who was aware he was good-looking and had no particular feelings about it.
Karen looked at him. Then at Finn. Then at Quinn.
She wrote: They're best friends.
Yes.
And Quinn is the abstinence club president.
Also yes.
Karen sat back. Looked at the stage for a long moment.
Then she wrote, slowly and carefully:
Noah Puckerman is going to be a father.
Yes.
And Finn Hudson thinks he is.
Yes.
Because Quinn told him they conceived in a hot tub.
Owen took the pad. How did you know that part.
Karen gave him a look that said I listen to things people say and retain them, which was a significant underestimation of her actual capacity for ambient information gathering.
She wrote: And you knew all of this.
Some of it's observable. Some of it I heard.
From who.
Various people.
Karen looked at him with the expression she occasionally deployed — the one that suggested she was smarter than the room generally gave her credit for, and was choosing, in this moment, not to push.
She wrote: Is this why you carry the document.
It's preventive.
It's insane.
It's practical.
Owen Carter, you are the strangest person I have ever met.
You know a lot of strange people.
That's true, she conceded.
On stage, New Directions hit the final chorus together — twelve voices finding the same place at the same moment, which was what all those rehearsals were actually for. Will Schuester, beside them in the aisle, made a small involuntary sound of relief.
The song ended.
The auditorium applauded.
Karen put the document back in the envelope, handed it to Owen, and watched him return it to his jacket pocket with the matter-of-fact efficiency of a person pocketing their keys.
"You know," she murmured, low enough for just him, as the lights came up slightly for the break between numbers, "most guys carry their wallet and their phone."
"I carry those too," Owen said.
"And a hospital document."
"It's a practical document," he said again.
Karen looked at him.
"For what it's worth," she said, "Quinn Fabray is not going to have an easy year."
"No," Owen agreed. "She's not."
"And Finn—" Karen stopped. Watched the boy on stage, who was talking to Rachel Berry with the unconscious ease of someone who didn't know his life was about to reorganize. "He's going to be really hurt."
"Yes."
"Can anything be done about it?"
Owen thought about the Glee timeline — the full arc, the season's worth of events, the ways things resolved and the ways they didn't.
"It works itself out," he said. "Eventually."
Karen looked at him. "You know that too."
"I have a sense of it."
She was quiet for a moment.
"The document thing," she said, "is still genuinely bizarre."
"I know."
"I'm not going to tell anyone."
"I know that too."
Karen tucked her water bottle back into her bag and straightened in her seat for the next number.
"Owen," she said.
"Yeah."
"You're a lot."
"I've been told."
"I mean it as a compliment," she said. "Mostly."
The lights went down again. New Directions regrouped on stage for the next song.
Owen settled back in his seat, jacket pocket properly weighted, afternoon competition a few hours away, the particular situation of Quinn Fabray and Finn Hudson and Noah Pucker man proceeding exactly as it was going to proceed regardless of what anyone in the fifth row knew about it.
Some timelines ran on their own rails.
You watched. You didn't interfere. You made sure your own situation was documented.
Practical, Owen thought.
On stage, Rachel Berry stepped up to the mic.
Thank you for reading!
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