35. Vincent

THIRTY-FIVE

"This isn't good."

Geoff paces the conference room. There's no soft entry this Monday morning. No coffee and cronuts. Kent texted Shreya yesterday before five a.m., and the rest of the day unfolded in a blur. By mid-morning, after scrambling to figure out next steps, I sent Kent home. Sweetums needed to be fed, and I needed to focus. As the process wasn't finished and it was already Sunday, Geoff called for a postmortem Monday morning—mortem as in death. Post as in after. After death. Clearly, taking my eye off the prize, I made a careless, stupid error. And once again, Geoff needs to fix my fuck-up.

Greater than. Less than. Taught to most first graders, I should know these symbols. And I do. Usually. Mostly. Children need to know which one is which. I remember sitting in Mrs. Willow's class. Her hair pulled into a neat bun. "Imagine it's an alligator's mouth. The hungry alligator wants more, so that's greater." But in my seven-year-old brain, when a gator turns around, he's still hungry. But that's less. The symbol doesn't change. The direction does. To this day, as a forty-year-old grown man, I'm still confused. I misread the error message. It was greater than 500 gigs. Not less than. I should have selected yes. Turn compression on. This is a disaster. My disaster.

"Greater than 500 gigs," Geoff says. "There's no compression. The data set is too large."

"Okay, what does this mean for performance?" Shreya guzzles her coffee. "How bad is it?"

Kent sits in a chair at the end of the long conference-room table. Quiet. His face pained and searching.

"The data loaded. The system works," Geoff begins. Kent's eyes widen, a glimmer of hope sparkling.

"But …" Shreya says.

"But, the load times." Geoff shakes his head. "The system isn't really viable this way. Because the data wasn't compressed," he says, glancing my way, "load times will be exorbitant."

"How long?" I ask, my stomach still unable to hold down much since yesterday.

"Login screens, two to three minutes; individual student pages, one to two; whole class entry, at least four. Maybe longer."

"What does this all mean?" Kent asks, scratching at his temple.

"The data's all there." Shreya taps her keyboard. "Technically, we could go live."

"But," Geoff continues, "it will take so long for screens to load that nobody can use it functionally."

"Teachers won't sit and wait that long for screens to load," Shreya says. "Nobody would."

"So what do we do?" Kent asks. "How do we fix this?"

"Start over," Shreya says.

Geoff nods his head.

"Start over?" Kent asks, rubbing his eyes. "But the school board meeting is Thursday. I'm supposed to report out on next steps."

"If we restart it now," Geoff says, "it should be done by …"

"Wednesday," Shreya finishes. "Afternoon. If we're lucky."

"And this time, compress the database." Geoff gives me a pointed stare.

"Okay, that's what we do then. What do you need from me?" Kent asks.

"Communicate with teachers," Shreya says. "Let them know there was an issue. Leave it at that. In the meantime, I'll run some data analysis tests on the live data behind the scenes. It's an opportunity to check it." Shreya pokes at her laptop, opening windows and swiping them to corners of the screen. "Hopefully, we'll be up and running with the optimized system by Wednesday evening. Thursday morning at the latest. We'll let them know. For now, continue using GradePlus."

Kent stands and heads to his office. Shreya and Geoff huddle around their computers, talking, tapping, and taking action to restart the conversion go-live process. My body aches from the lack of sleep and the general malaise of defeat. This is it. There's no way I'm keeping my job after another misstep. I'm unsteady and dizzy as I stumble out of the conference room.

Kent's at Helen's desk. Her head is down, pen to pad, taking notes as he speaks. I wander past them into Kent's office and collapse into a chair around his table. My heart, still beating faster than normal, seems to have migrated to my throat. The throbbing makes it difficult to swallow. I'm not sure if it's worth me even staying. Should I give Geoff my resignation and go home? Take a long, hot shower and lose myself in LEGO. Kent's got to be furious. Or at least disappointed. Embarrassed. I retrieve a napkin from my bag, clutch it in my fist, and wait for the tears behind my eyelids to emerge, but they don't.

The door clicks, and Kent stands above me. I shake my head and stare at his feet. Lowering himself to a kneel, Kent's face comes into view, and my eyes close.

"Vincent. Look at me."

"Kent. I'm sorry. I know it's over."

"The implementation?"

"No. Us." The toast I choked down this morning creeps up, and I'm not sure I can hold it in. Naturally, I had to do something that would only further highlight what a disaster I am to Kent.

My eyes search his face for clues. There's no hint of a smile and the coolness he's exhibiting frightens me. My stomach swirls, and all I can think is that vomiting in front of Kent right now would be the feather in the shitstorm of a hat I'm wearing. Lightheadedness takes hold of me, and my cheeks grow cold as the blood drains from my face.

"Vincent Manda. You're not getting rid of me that easily. You made a mistake." Kent wobbles before regaining his balance. "And my clumsiness was at least part of the reason. This isn't the end of the world. We're only losing a few days. It will be fine."

"But, but …" I stutter.

"But nothing. When I told you I love you, I meant it. No matter what. We'll get through this." He takes my hand. "Together."

"Dr. Cutler," I say. "The board meeting. We won't be ready. You won't be ready."

My breathing becomes heavy. Tension builds in my chest as my heart begins to gallop.

"You need to breathe," Kent urges.

"I can't …" I pant, clutching my torso. "Can't get enough air."

He rubs my palm with soothing circles. "Breathe." A hand moves to my chest. "Let me be your air. Deep breaths."

I close my eyes and inhale. Slowly. I push the air out of my lips. Kent whispers, "There's my handsome boy."

A loud knock startles us and Kent rises, but before he can say anything, the door opens.

"This is bad." Shreya stands against the frame, staring at the laptop balanced on her arm.

"I know." Kent pulls out a chair for her. "It was a mistake. We lost a few days. We'll restart and go from there. I'll explain things to Dr. Cutler and the board."

"Not the database. The data …" Shreya sits and taps at her screen. "Look."

Kent and I lean over Shreya's shoulder, attempting to make sense of the tables and figures in front of us.

"These scores are too high." She points to a document with comparison figures. "This didn't happen during testing. How did these get inflated?" Shreya and I both turn toward Kent. The data extract came from him.

Kent's eyes go wide, and his shoulders make a beeline toward his ears. "I have no idea."

Shreya begins clicking, screens fly by in a blur.

"What happened?" I ask.

"Here." She clicks a few keys, and then points. "We're supposed to feed individual student data for each assessment. Hopscotch gives each one a weight and averages it. But this data export from GradePlus pulled averages." There's more typing and pointing. "And then populated those averages across each student's year to date. We're averaging averages." Shreya shakes her head, sending her top knot into a tizzy. "And it looks like we're cooking the books."

"I-I-I don't know what happened. I extracted the data file like I always do," Kent stammers. "I wouldn't even know how to do what you're saying."

Shreya clicks a few more keys and brings up the antiquated back-end settings screen for GradePlus. "We had the setting correct in GradePlus, but when you changed the criteria to pull for the entire school, it reverted to pulling averages for the export." Shreya clicks a tab near the top of her screen. "Here. Right here. Look."

"Why would it do that?" Kent asks.

"I don't know." Shreya snaps her laptop closed. "This software predates Nintendo 64. It could be a glitch, but we can't use this data. We need a new file. Stat."

"Okay, hold on." Kent's at his desk, opening his laptop.

"Let's do it together." Shreya heads to Kent's side and I take her seat.

"There. You have to click that box." She points at Kent's screen. "The system reset it after you changed the criteria." Shreya turns and the color drains from her face. "Honestly, the database issue is small potatoes compared to this. We could have gone live with the slower load times, but this impacts the integrity of the entire system. We have to reload the data. Revalidate everything. Repeat user-acceptance testing. Get final sign off from teachers. This sets us back … weeks."

"Weeks?" Kent says with a heavy sigh as Shreya pecks away at his keyboard. "We don't have weeks. We only have a few months left in the school year."

With the thumb drive containing the new export in hand, Shreya heads back to the conference room to explain the error and restart the process.

"I wasn't sure the situation could get any worse, but somehow I found a way." Kent slumps in his chair, his chin lowered to his chest.

"I messed up the database," I say.

"And I provided inaccurate data. The process would have needed to be restarted regardless. I've derailed the project completely. By weeks." Kent scrubs a hand through his beard, tugging. "I'm meeting with Francine this afternoon. I'll explain it was my fault. I mismanaged things. Didn't provide accurate data."

"But, we have a new file now." My hands rest on Kent's shoulders, attempting to pacify him.

"Not now," Kent spits. He jerks away and my fingers fall like rain. His voice trembles and my stomach ties in knots. "How did I mess this up so royally?"

I stand back, my hands stinging from his rebuff. Kent's brow beads with sweat and I eye the box of tissues on his desk.

"I'm sorry. I-I … I'll go." My gaze falls on the door, but my feet don't move.

"I just need to think." Kent's head falls into his hands. "Please. I'll figure it out."

I leave with tears stinging my eyes, and head straight for my car. My feet move under me, but I'm unaware of the ground. Something crunches underfoot, stopping me in my tracks. Glancing down, I see the culprit. Almost unrecognizable, a muddy two-by-four blue brick stares up at me. Even covered in mud and grime, it's the most perfect piece.

And then it hits me. All those first dates. All those men. It wasn't them having an issue with me. Not the napkins. Not the wiping. It was me. I was always searching for a quick escape hatch—a way to dodge potential pain. But Paris fell. The implementation failed. Kent's reaction. And I'm still here. Loving Kent Lester. And more importantly, finally loving myself. I need to find a way to fix this.