Story code: ST-000756
Part 2: The Way He Held It
After Wade set the old mask box back on the supply table, he kept standing there with his palms open, talking around it like the box itself was the problem. He said the lid was flimsy, the tape was old, and nobody could expect him to know which stack went where when the district kept changing things. All the while, his eyes kept going to the lower shelf, the same shelf where the mask boxes had lived for months, and every time Dana asked for a different job, he was suddenly ready to do that one instead.
I was still at the table, straightening the loose packets he had jostled out, when he reached for another box beside it. This one had the same faded print and the same softened corners. He picked it up one-handed, stopped halfway, and shifted his grip before setting it back down. It was a small move, but it was clean. No fumbling. No hesitation.
Dana noticed it too. She stopped mid-sentence with her clipboard in hand and looked at the box, then at Wade’s hands. “If you know how to handle them, just handle them,” she said.
“I know enough not to wreck them,” Wade said. “That’s not the same thing.”
Miles was moving chairs near the wings, but I could see him glancing over every time Wade touched a box. He stayed quiet, like he was trying to decide if he should keep working or watch what happened next. The stage clock kept ticking. Somebody out in the lobby laughed too loudly, and the sound bounced back through the auditorium doors. Inside the room, nobody laughed.
Dana stepped closer to the supply table and tapped the top box with two fingers. “We need the rest of these sorted and counted before the chairs are done. Old masks in one stack, tape in another, and the empty boxes collapsed.”
Wade made a face like she had handed him a puzzle instead of a routine task. “Counted?” he said. “Why are we counting old masks?”
“Because that’s what’s left,” Dana said. “And because the inventory gets checked before the room is closed.”
He gave a little shrug and looked past her shoulder toward me. “Tessa always knows where this stuff goes,” he said, like that settled it. “She can just show me.”
I kept my hands on the box and said, “You were just handling it.”
He smiled without showing teeth. “Handling it and knowing the system are different.”
Dana’s jaw tightened. She looked at the box, then at the shelf, then at Wade. “Fine,” she said. “Then we do this simple. Close your eyes.”
The room paused. Even the chair legs stopped scraping.
Wade blinked once. “What?”
“Blind test,” Dana said, flat and tired. “No looking at labels. No talking through it. If you say you don’t know these boxes, then prove you can’t tell the difference by feel alone. Sort the next three without opening your eyes.”
He let out a short laugh and lifted both hands like he was being asked something ridiculous. “That is not a real test.”
“It is right now,” Dana said.
Miles stopped in the wing opening and turned his head toward the table. I could see dust on his sleeves from the storage alcove. Wade looked from Dana to me, then down at the old mask box, and for a second he did not move at all.
Then he reached for the box, folded his fingers under the bottom seam, and lifted it with the kind of careful speed that told the whole room he already knew exactly how heavy it was supposed to feel.
He had been standing there acting lost for ten minutes, and the second Dana made him work without looking, his hands moved like they belonged to somebody else.