Chapter 3: The First Investment
The encounter with Eleanor left Elias feeling both electrified and unsettled. Her question—*"Since when do you care?"*—echoed in his mind. Words were cheap. He had proven he could be different in a single moment, but to win her trust, he needed to be consistent. He needed to build a new reality around them, and that required a foundation.
He needed capital.
The bell for lunch was a Pavlovian release he had long forgotten. He bypassed the cacophony of the cafeteria and headed for the library, a sanctuary of relative quiet and, more importantly, internet access. The librarian, Mrs. Gable, peered at him over her half-moon glasses with mild surprise. Eli Thorne was not a regular.
He found a secluded terminal, the monitor glowing with the warm, phosphorescent light of a dying technological age. The dial-up connection whined and screeched its familiar song. Each second of waiting was an eternity. Finally, he was in.
His fingers flew across the keyboard. He wasn't looking for stocks or sports scores. Not yet. That would require money he didn't have. His target was information itself, a very specific piece of it.
In his previous life, a classmate, Leo Lasky, had been a quiet legend in their senior year. He'd spent the summer obsessively buying and hoarding boxes of a soon-to-be-discontinued trading card game, *Mythic Quest*. In October, a popular cartoon based on the game would launch, creating a frenzy that would see the value of those early-edition cards skyrocket. Leo, the accidental speculator, would sell his hoard for over twenty thousand dollars—a mythical sum for a teenager.
Elias needed that seed capital. It was the first, crucial step toward building a future that could protect and provide for Eleanor.
He found Leo not in the loud, crowded sections of the school, but in the far corner of the arts wing, tucked away in a pottery studio. The air was thick with the smell of wet clay and glaze. Leo, a lanky boy with glasses and intense focus, was meticulously carving an intricate dragon into a clay pot.
"Lasky," Elias said, his voice calm, cutting through the boy's concentration.
Leo jumped, nearly ruining his dragon's wing. He looked up, blinking in confusion. "Thorne? What are you doing here?"
Elias didn't smile. He got straight to the point. "I hear you have a lot of *Mythic Quest* cards."
Leo's wariness was palpable. "So?"
"I want to make you an offer. For all of them."
Leo let out a short, incredulous laugh. "Why? You don't strike me as the gaming type. And they're not for sale. I'm collecting the full set."
"You have seventeen sealed boxes in your closet and three binders of rare foils," Elias stated, the facts delivered with a chilling certainty. He'd made it his business to know this in his first timeline. "I'll give you five hundred dollars for everything. Cash. Today."
Leo's jaw went slack. Five hundred dollars was an unimaginable amount for a stack of cardboard. It was concert tickets, a new stereo, freedom. His eyes darted between Elias's unwavering gaze and his half-finished dragon. The greed and confusion were at war on his face.
"Why?" Leo repeated, his voice weaker this time.
"That's my business. Do we have a deal?"
The transaction was swift and silent. After school, Elias met Leo in the empty parking lot. He handed over the cash—his entire savings from two summers of mowing lawns. In return, Leo, looking slightly dazed, handed over two heavy grocery bags filled with pristine boxes of cards. It felt absurd. It felt like a king trading his crown for beans.
But Elias knew. He was holding the beans that would grow a beanstalk to a future with Eleanor.
As he loaded the bags into his beat-up hatchback, a voice cut through the afternoon air.
"Selling your soul, Lasky?"
Elias turned. Jason Miller was leaning against his own shiny new Jeep, arms crossed, a smirk plastered on his face. He'd clearly seen the whole thing.
"What's your angle, Thorne?" Jason asked, his tone light but his eyes sharp. "Trying to relive your childhood?"
Elias closed the car door with a solid thud. He met Jason's gaze, not with the anger of a teenager, but with a flat, assessing look.
"It's an investment, Miller," Elias said, his voice low and even. "Something you'd know about if you ever used your head for more than a helmet rack."
Jason's smirk vanished. The insult was too precise, too adult. It didn't sound like a teenage jab; it sounded like a verdict.
Before Jason could form a retorted, Elias turned and walked away, not toward the student lot exit, but toward the bleachers by the football field. He knew, with an unshakable certainty, where he would find her.
Eleanor was there, just as he knew she would be, a book open on her lap, using the last of the afternoon light to read. She looked up as he approached, her expression unreadable.
He didn't say anything. He simply sat down a respectful distance away, looking out at the empty field. The confrontation with Jason still hummed in the air around him.
After a long moment, she closed her book. "You're different," she said, her voice soft but direct.
He glanced at her. The sun caught the auburn in her hair, setting it on fire. "People change."
"Not that fast," she countered. "Not unless something happens."
Elias looked down at his hands—the young, unmarked hands of a boy holding the future in two grocery bags in his car. He then looked back at Eleanor, meeting her searching, intelligent gaze.
"Something did," he admitted, the truth a carefully measured fragment in a sea of lies. "And I'm trying to build something better."
He saw the curiosity warring with her caution. She didn't smile, but she didn't look away either. It wasn't a victory, but it was a foothold. The first move in the market had been made. The first, fragile connection had been acknowledged. The game, on all fronts, was truly underway.