William let out a small breath, something close to a laugh, but not quite. "You always this hard to talk to?"
Malik looked at him for a second. "You always ask questions you don't want answers to?"
That caught William off guard. Not the words—the calm behind them. For a moment, something shifted in his expression: something softer, less controlled. Then it was gone.
"I want to see where you work," William said.
Malik hesitated. "It's just a shed," he said.
"I'd still like to see it."
Malik looked past him toward the road, where a few people were still watching from a distance. Then back at William. "Follow me," he said.
The shed sat behind the trailer, leaning slightly to one side like it had given up trying to stand straight years ago. The metal walls were patched with mismatched pieces, and a blue tarp covered a section of the roof that had long since rusted through.
William stopped at the doorway for a moment. He didn't step inside, because what he saw didn't match the outside.
The interior was small, but it was organized carefully, intentionally: shelves lined the walls holding jars filled with sorted bolts, screws, and wires, every piece labeled with tape and handwritten notes; tools hung from nails, worn but clean; on the back wall, drawn in pencil, were diagrams—engines, circuits, systems—sketched with a precision that felt almost impossible for someone who had never been taught.
William stepped in slowly. "What is all this?" he asked.
"My stuff," Malik said.
William walked closer to the wall, studying the drawings. "These are accurate," he said quietly.
Malik shrugged. "I just draw what I see."
"And you see all this? How?"
Malik pointed to a stack of old books on a shelf. "From those," he said. "And whatever I can find online when the library Wi-Fi works."
William picked up one of the books; the cover was worn, edges taped together: Auto Repair Basics. He flipped through it, noticing the notes scribbled in the margins. "You taught yourself all this?" he asked.
Malik nodded. There was no pride in it, just fact.
William set the book down slowly, because now it made even less sense. "You shouldn't be able to do this," he said under his breath.
Malik looked at him. "I didn't know that," he said. "So I did it anyway."
The words landed harder than anything else that day. William turned slightly, taking in the entire space again. And then he saw it: on a small wooden table in the corner sat a half-built device—wires running from a cracked solar panel into a small motor connected to a battery that looked like it had been salvaged from an old truck.
"What is that?" William asked.
Malik walked over. "Charging system," he said. "Keeps Mr. Jenkins's truck battery alive. He don't drive much."