Marlowe
The days leading up to the vote passed in a strange, suspended agony, my whole future feeling entirely out of my own hands for the first time since I'd first picked up those scissors months ago and decided to take control of my own life by force of will alone.
I threw myself into garage work, same as always, chasing the familiar comfort of problems I actually knew how to solve — but even there, the waiting pressed at the edges of every task, impossible to fully outrun.
Nova kept me distracted as best she could, an endless stream of den gossip and terrible jokes that occasionally succeeded in pulling my mind away from the vote for a few precious minutes at a time.
"Did you hear Cricket tried to formally register a bet on the vote's outcome?" she said, grinning despite the tensio
