"I can't believe you got the cops called to the store while all my men were outside! You think it's easy making a getaway that quick? He just couldn't have had a normal party, could he? We could've had some food and put on some music, but no."

"Doesn't it look pretty in the snow?" Sylvia murmured, ignoring Marion. With fond eyes she took in the campus which had become such a regular sight in her life this past year at Peppermint Plains Community College.

Her eyes traversed the rolling, soft mounds upon which multitudes of the student body passed to and fro, lively in the new semester. In such large bunches the individual people within became faceless— it was impossible to single out and truly observe any one face, yet Sylvia wanted to love them all. Each and everyone one of them, she thought, were all deserving of understanding, and she lamented the fact that she couldn’t possibly have the time to understand all of them.

It was for this reason she placed significant expectations in the meteoric rise their band was now experiencing, clinging onto the desperate hope that through it her specter of love might be more easily distributed to all.

Sylvia sighed. She could not put it off forever.

“Are you ready?” asked Aster.

"Yeah," she replied warmly, smiling radiantly upon her best friend.

Aster was surprisingly eager to see what the school had to offer, and had been brimming with questions about it since they arrived, especially on the point of Sylvia's clubs. Sylvia was more than happy to act as tour guide, brimming with happiness, seeing how no one had ever really cared about her passions like this before.

That's what made Aster so great, Sylvia thought. There was so much to the girl which fascinated her. She was more tough and cold than anyone she had ever encountered, yet in that brash, naked display of thorns, Sylvia found true sincerity.

Her aloofness, rather than putting Sylvia off, only strengthened her maternal instincts in the face of how transparent a defense mechanism it was. She saw her pains daily, particularly those of her severe social anxiety.

“How are the songs going?!” she peeped as she began to lead them along, noticing that Aster was falling into a glum look.

Aster was startled by the abrupt peep, and turned away.

“Okay,” she mumbled quietly and simply.

“Marcy said the guys said you were up all night! You even told them to—”

She leaned towards Aster's bushy head, smiling a huge grin, and cupped a hand against her ear.

“—freak off.”

Aster flashed red.

It was this very reaction which Sylvia had become adept at handling.

Distract her from her sadness.

“Come on, don't just stand there like a couple of weirdos!” Sylvia exclaimed, seeing that Marion and Marcy had remained in the center of the courtyard.

“Huh?!” Marion bleated. “They're going to be here soon!”

“Yeah, and you look scared to death! You can't be looking like that when they show up. Come on, just take a load off for a sec!”

“Sylvia, this is serious—”

“Yeah, and I have some business to attend to at the admin building first. So are you coming or are you gonna stand there like a square?!”

Marion grit his teeth, insulted.

“Marcy, keep watch!” he commanded, walking off red-faced. “We have no time for messing around,” he grumbled, catching up.

“I must say, I do understand the gravity of the situation!” Sylvia quipped in a sarcastic, haughty voice.

“Don't talk like Floyd.”

The group proceeded along the main trail of the college, which bisected two large buildings and a small thicket of beautiful pines which beautified the lawn around each.

On each side they were flanked by ogling students— who either recognized the band, or were in an innately curious mood owing to the force of leather-clad men which surrounded the circumference of the school.

Aster was cowering under their gaze, Sylvia noticed.

“So, there's the cafeteria, and here—” Sylvia said, leading them off a side path obscured by pine. “Is the library!”

Aster's eyes went wide, as though she were marveling at the very sight of everything.

“And what's that building?” Aster asked meekly, pointing to a large, globe shaped building, which sat next to the library.

“That's the theater!” she chirped. “I tried to get us a show there, but they said the insurance didn't cover it.”

A small laugh escaped from Aster.

Sylvia smirked.

“Have you gone to college, Aster?”

Aster received her question with what looked like significant surprise.

She attempted to stutter out an answer, but seemed completely lost for what she wanted to say.

Sylvia had noticed Aster's strange reactions to certain questions, but always felt it too improper to push them when she always looked so uncomfortable and nervous because of them. It only served to increase the mystery of Aster, not a single question Sylvia had relating to whom had been solved— except for that tidbit she had shined a light on last Christmas Eve.

It's a place where the only way you can live is by making sure others can't.

What horrible place had she come from?

Sylvia worried about that point quite often. She worried that Aster's immutable silence on facts about her life was the result of trauma.

There was no more horrid a conception in existence, Sylvia believed, than the thought of Aster abused. Thus, she never pushed her to explain herself. If Aster wanted to open up, it would be her decision in her own time.

“Does each building have its own class?” Aster murmured.

They were rounding a curve which hugged the windows of the science block. Through them people could be seen frenetically moving about as class began, some were staring out back at them.

"Well, it's just like any other school," Marion answered with confusion. "And by that I mean it's a load of horse crap."

Sylvia looked back with a fierce glare.

"Marcy goes to school... here!"

"Yeah, well he's got brains, and— and it's better if he's off the street! I just think you could get all the education you need working— you know, and honest day's type stuff."

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"We don't all wanna be muscle-heads like you," Sylvia raspberried.

"I am the tough guy," Marion blushed, trying to hide his arms within his jacket.

They had come to stop at a building of cinder block construction, decorated with flags of various nations. A look of pure glee crept into Sylvia's face, animating her rosy cheeks into plump expressions of true jubilation.

"This is where I spend all my time outside the shop!" Sylvia announced, motioning with her arms out spread. “The Friends for A Peaceful Earth Club!”

She smiled as Aster smiled, and her heart radiated with bountiful joy.

“Ah! It looks like Randall's in!” she cried, seeing her classmate inside.

She swung the door open and poked her peppermint bow in.

There he was as always, his button-nose and dark eyes locked in that usual look of deep introspection.

His eye was caught by the bounce of Sylvia's bow, upon which he looked up and relaxed his eyes.

"Was not expecting you this early," Randall greeted warmly.

"I could say the same!" Sylvia chirped.

Marion and Aster had come up behind her, the latter hiding herself behind Sylvia.

"Randall, I'd like you to meet my bandmates, Aster and Marion!"

“Hey,” Marion greeted simply.

Aster would not move.

The trick was to always get the other person to talk first.

“She's the one who writes our songs!” Sylvia explained proudly, pointing to scarlet-faced Aster as she stepped aside.

"Aster?" Randall said with playful awe, looking at the girl who seemed to shrink under his very gaze. "Sylvia practically never stops talking about you! I honestly thought you didn't exist!"

“I showed you a picture of us!” Sylvia retorted.

Aster turned away, her blush darkening.

“It's nice to finally meet you!”

A silence set upon the room.

Aster at last stammered in a quiet voice. “Nice to meet you.”

It seemed like only yesterday that Sylvia had told him about the Love You Forevers.

“Watch, you're going to end up being a big star and have no time for us anymore,” he had joked.

Sylvia had laughed at the time, never believing in a million years that anything would ever come of it.

Not because she didn't believe in Aster, of course, but more because she didn't believe in herself. She was just some silly, simple girl, playing guitar to support her friend.

It was here, at Peppermint Plains Community College, where she was really, truly aiming towards what she believed in.

It was here, every single day after classes where she would meet with Randall and the rest of the club to go over speeches, read new theses, and discuss how they could make the world a much better place.

And now she was here to tell him that she was in fact becoming a big star.

Her heart ached.

“I was just going through the preparations for a talk that centers around the ethical and moral obligations of the common people, the hoi polloi, insofar as being a catalyst for the liberation of worker's rights and their ultimate self-determination.” Randall gave matter-of-factly, shuffling the papers.

“The what?” cried Marion.

“Randall is a smarty-pants. What matters is that it helps people not lose their jobs!”

Marion had become preoccupied by a pair of farming implements lying in the corner.

“Are you still struggling with it?” asked Sylvia, walking over to the desk.

Randall nodded, looking troubled. “The meeting is tomorrow but my points are all over the place. Hey— could you please put that down?” Randall said to Marion, swinging a rusted sickle.

Sylvia, a bright idea flashing into her head, clasped her hands together and smiled.

“That's it! We have Aster and Marion— why don't you read it for them as practice? Maybe it could help you order your talking points!”

“A fantastic idea!” clamored Randall, rising.

“Randall's one problem is that he uses too many big words, and doesn't know when to stop talking,” Sylvia whispered to Aster.

Randall, with a quick and measured step, brought himself and the papers over to a podium that was against the back wall of the room.

Marion, disciplined and instantly disinterested, took a seat and fell into it.

“Is it just you two?” Aster asked quietly.

“No! There's a whole bunch of us!” Sylvia exclaimed.

Reaching around, she grabbed a photograph from the table.

“Randall, Ben, Millie, Thomas. We have a whole group!”

Aster took the photo and looked upon it with great interest.

The image stirred something in Sylvia, a warmth nestled inside her, a nervous jittering.

She thought back to the day she had joined this club— the same day Randall had, as a matter of fact.

It was named simply the Political Science club— it was her idea to rename it to “The Friends for A Peaceful Earth Club.”

Everywhere she looked, she realized, she could see pieces of herself strewn about the room.

From her little handmade knick-knacks which ornamented the desk, to the photo of her, Randall, and the group taped to the wall, to the ticket to the Savoy Ballroom which she had brought to shove in Randall's face, her experiences colored the room.

There was a catch in her throat and a sting in her eyes.

Do not cry, she thought. Crying in front of Aster is absolutely forbidden!

“Ahem,” Randall began, clearing his throat and shuffling the papers.

“In order to apprehend the plight of the modern laboring class, one must undertake a journey to an epoch antecedent to industrialization, wherein the indigent masses were ensnared within an intricate web of feudalistic subjugation which wielded authoritarian control over every facet of their corporeal and existential realms. By assimilating these notions of past eras and scrutinizing their resemblance to the modern capitalistic power structure, one can begin to scrutinize the strategies of the opulent elite and their calculated maneuvers. Employing an artful and cerebral construction, they deploy the instrument of propaganda as an apparatus to perpetuate their dominance. Their survival hinges upon effective indoctrination that distorts the correlation between individual yearnings and genuine human needs. However, even if one were to sever their shackles, the damage of this ceaseless struggle shall follow them through the corridors of existence ad infinitum.”

Sylvia was looking at Aster's two big, bushy brows, furled in concentration.

I want to poke them, she thought.

A loud snore erupted from Marion.

I want to kick him.

Randall's speech continued on for another ten minutes, in which he outlined the history of various labor unions, argued which schools of labor thought were best, and posited the question of whether upward mobility in modern society was a factual concept or a bourgeois illusion. He thumbed through several manifestos, demonstrated his knowledge of the world's revolutionary geography using a globe (which Aster seemed to be scrutinizing intensely, Sylvia noticed,) and showcased the tuning in to several of these revolutionary country's broadcasts via ham radio. (At which point Aster had all but stolen the radio from him.)

“You can't sound too science-y when you go up there!” Sylvia finally groaned, pointing at him. “If they don't know what you're saying, they're going to end up like Marion.”

She gestured to Marion, head slouched back, drooling.

Randall huffed, looking a little disappointed.

“What did you think, Aster?” Sylvia asked.

Aster fluttered her eyes between the two in a panic.

“It was good,” she stuttered. “I liked the revolutionary songs.”

“You did?” Randall exclaimed happily. “The Maixu People's harvest chant is sublime.”

“Was that the first one? With the minor 3rd declension in the choral part?”

Randall stared blankly. “It was the second track.”

“Oh,” Aster mumbled, embarrassed.

The excitement in her face was like heaven's wine to Sylvia.

“Well, maybe I can gut two of the paragraphs about the origins of Cherryaire's coal mine strikers—”

Her eyes drifted to the clock above Randall's head and a nervous little weight settled in her heart.

“That's a good idea!” she yelled, standing up.

Marion shook in his chair, startled.

“Sylvia, it's almost ten!” he exclaimed, wiping at his eyes.

Her eyes looked hurriedly about the room.

“Did I tell you guys? This isn't just the political science club!”

She proceeded with pitter-patters towards a box of Randall's books, and stuck her hand in.

“It's the sci-fi club, too!” she said, grinning. “Started by yours truly!” Aster's eyes widened with curiosity.

Marion began to rise.

“I'm going back to wait with Marcy, don't stay here forever. This is important.”

“And this is a ray-gun,” she peeped, pointing the metallic barrel down at Marion's frowning face. "With this we destroy the enemy."

“Well, if you need to get going— I appreciate the help,” Randall smiled.

Sylvia's heart seized.

She grasped the toy ray-gun in her hand, which fell limp with pendulum swings at her side.

“I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Well, you see,” Sylvia started, her voice breaking.

Don't cry.

“The band is getting pretty big now, and we've got a lot of stuff coming up, and—”

“Becoming a big star, huh?” smirked Randall.

Marion, by the door, had stopped. Aster looked on with sympathetic eyes.

“Yeah,” Sylvia strained, trying to choke out as much glee as she could from her words.

She forced herself to smile.

“It was already getting hard to keep up, and now we have an album coming up— Oh, and we signed a record deal! And—”

“I understand,” Randall said warmly. “You always said if you ever became rich that you would spend all the money on the poor. I know you're not one to give up on people, just because your position has changed. The club was only your first step to becoming a real great person.”

Sylvia trembled, quivered, and broke.

“Randall, you idiot!” she screamed, bursting into tears.

At once, the sheets of her heartache fell over her heaving pink cheeks as she began to hyperventilate in her hysterics.

“Randall,” she choked through her misty screen.

The warmth of arms suddenly embraced her, and she came to realize that Aster was holding on. Her sobs stuttered and trembled in her chest. Then, catapulted by the shock of Aster's embrace, they multiplied to greater fervor, growing into an unfiltered weep.

This school, her dreams, her anxiety in continuing her dreams, the wish to support Aster and never let her down, the fear of abandoning Randall— it all came cascading out of her heart and into the club.

Aster held on and hugged. She was soon joined by Randall who himself embraced the two.

Marion had become paralyzed by awkwardness but forced himself with great embarrassment to at least walk over and place a sympathetic, wordless hand on Sylvia's heaving shoulder.

The force of their bodies, the warmth of their love and souls, crystallized Sylvia's anxiety into a nervous tumult of joy.

It was true, they were becoming stars— what wouldn't be possible now?

Her heart was now full, and her lungs replete with excitement, as if aching to scream:

“Hello world, I want to help you!”