Mrs. Alvarez gave him a look. "No, baby," she said softly. "It's not."
Outside, Tyler had seen it, too. Of course he had. By lunchtime, he was already showing it to anyone who would watch, leaning against his truck, phone in hand, replaying the clip over and over.
"Look at this," he said to one of his friends. "Man really thinks he's somebody now."
The boy next to him laughed. "People in the comments going crazy," he said. "Saying he's some kind of genius."
Tyler rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right."
But something in his tone didn't match the words, because deep down he had seen it: the way Malik moved, the way he knew exactly what he was doing. And that bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
So he did what people like him always did when something didn't fit: he twisted it. He opened the video again, this time adding a caption before posting it to his own page:
Kid got lucky fixing one thing. Y'all acting like he built the car.
He hit upload, then smirked. "Let's see how long that genius thing lasts."
By the afternoon, the comments started changing. Not all at once, but enough: some people laughed, some doubted, some said it had to be staged, that no kid from a place like that could really understand a car like that. The internet didn't just build people up; it tore them down faster.
Malik felt it before he fully understood it: the looks, the whispers, the way people who had never spoken to him before suddenly had opinions about who he was.
He stood outside the kitchen that evening, watching the sun dip lower, the sky turning a soft orange behind the trees.
Lisa stepped out beside him. "You okay?" she asked.
Malik nodded. "Yeah."
She studied him. "You don't look okay."
He hesitated, then pulled the card from his pocket: William Harrington. The name felt heavier now.
"He came back," Malik said.
Lisa's eyes shifted to the card. "The man from the car?"
Malik nodded.
"What did he want?"
Malik looked out at the road. "To understand," he said.
Lisa was quiet for a moment. Then she spoke softly. "Be careful with people who want to understand you," she said. "Sometimes they don't mean it the way you think."
Malik frowned slightly. "What do you mean?"