"Look, I'm just saying," Victoria said.

"Hermanita, no," I said, shaking my head. "Not every idea is a good one. Let it go."

She folded her arms and huffed. If I was a normal heterosexual seventeen year old boy, I'd probably be thinking about her chest. Instead, I just thought it was adorable, in the manner of a puppy or a kitten or a particularly endearing ten year old.

We were at the Boardwalk, today; it was Saturday, and none of us had anything to do at this particular moment, so we met up to talk shit and amble around, which... I mean, it would've been more convenient to do that on Skype, but as much as I missed the convenience of being able to just get up and go take a piss or being able to have a conversation without needing to get dressed first, this was still kinda nice.

"You speak Spanish?" Dean asked.

"Yeah, I'm from Texas," I said, which was true, but also a lie, because that wasn't a full explanation of why I could speak Spanish. I could speak Spanish because one of my hallucinatory past lives spoke Spanish, which would be an absolutely deranged thing to say out loud.

"Huh. Y'know, Carlos- the latino guy, he eats lunch with me and Dennis-"

"I've met Carlos," I said, nodding. It'd been a week since I met Dean for the first time, and... well, why not keep eating and playing in the same spot? And by that point, the other two boys had introduced themselves. "I also know that he also speaks Spanish. He uses it to talk shit about you and Dennis in ways you can't properly understand, but which you can probably guess are insulting."

"So... are you going to tell him you speak Spanish?" Victoria asked.

"Eventually," I said. "Thing is, though... I can only tell him once."

"Oh," Victoria said. "Oh, that's- oh my god, I wish I could be there when that happens."

"Have I ever told you how glad I am to have met you?" Dean asked. "Because... you are a living cartoon character, in all the best ways."

"You're just saying that because he's a dead ringer for your imaginary boyfriend," Victoria said.

"Fuck you," Dean said, semi-affectionately.

"I'd love that, buuuuut, I've actually gotta get going," she said, checking the time. "Have fun, and if you do start kissing behind my back, all will be forgiven if I get to see pictures!"

With that, she shot straight up, then away.

"Fucking hell, that girl," Dean muttered. "What is wrong with her?"

"Parental neglect and a need for attention and approval," I said. "Also, she was a late bloomer, and now that she's hot, in her own perception, she feels the need to make up for the lost time where she was just a gangly beanpole who was still horny but also wasn't conventionally attractive, and she thinks that portraying herself as very sexually available will get her your attention and approval, which she desperately, desperately craves. But, also, it's not all performative in the sense of being insincere- she genuinely is as horny as she seems, she just plays it up because she thinks it'll get her what she wants."

Dean blinked a few times as he turned to face me.

"Uh," he began carefully.

"People aren't that hard to understand, if you care to pay attention," I said. "And... well, I suppose I've also got an unfair advantage. Don't tell anyone, but... I can read someone's entire personal history just by touching them."

Dean blinked a few times.

"...Ah," Dean said, quietly. "Well... that makes three of us, actually. You... know about Vicky, but... I'm also a cape. Gallant, to be specific. And... you?"

"I don't do cape shit," I said, shaking my head. "I've got better things to do than go out looking for trouble, busting some sixteen year old pickpocket's legs over a hundred dollars."

"That's... a pessimistic way of looking at it, but... I can't say I completely disagree with it," Dean admitted, before his phone rang. "Ah, dammit, looks like I need to go, too. Do you need a ride back, or..?"

"I'll be fine," I said, shaking my head. "Go get paid."

Dean nodded, and jogged off, answering his phone.

Leaving me... alone.

Realizing I'd just badmouthed Dean's vocation, as well as that of his girlfriend's whole family, as the second to last thing I said to him.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

...Was I still going to have a friend in him come Monday? I didn't know, and couldn't really be sure of that. We'd known each other for a week, and while he was very important to me, I couldn't assume it went both ways. He had other friends, and, uh. Wasn't as deeply unpleasant and desperate as I was.

...Fucking hell.

I sighed, and started to wander aimlessly. Well, we had been doing that already, but... I was starting up again. Had to keep moving; if I sat still for too long, I'd sink and drown.

I spotted a cafe that I remembered from a few years ago; not long after we moved up here, one of my sisters had taken me to the cafe, where I'd enjoyed some hot chocolate and lemon pound cake. It had outdoor seating that, in early April, was starting to see some use, but... well, really, it was just this one girl with freckles and light brown hair that I just knew she'd insist was 'dirty blonde' because she'd been genuinely blonde as a little kid but then it darkened as she got older.

Said girl looked up at me, smirked, and waved with her fingers. I waved back, then walked inside to get something sweet to shove in my face. Once my order was ready, I headed back outside, and the girl gestured for me to sit across the table from her.

"So... do I know you?" I asked.

"You do," the girl said. "I'm Lisa, you're very familiar with me. You're also one of the easiest to read people I've ever met- it's like you're trying to shove your every personal detail into my face."

I grunted, not really understanding what she was talking about. Still... freckles, girl named Lisa...

...I did recognize her, didn't I? Especially with how she knew stuff she reasonably shouldn't.

"There we go, now you're recognizing me," Lisa said, nodding. "Now, Stretch, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you: I kind of don't care about your weird psychosexual hallucinatory melodrama. What I need is your help with something pretty specific."

"...Which would be?" I asked. She wasn't exactly endearing herself to me here, but... for some reason, my hallucinations were fond of her, and besides, that whole 'duty of care to my fellow man' thing.

"You know all about Coil, I'm sure," Lisa said. "Y'know, the part where he's got a gun to my head to keep me doing his dirty work, and his plan to take over the city and control both its government and its criminal underworld?"

"I'm... not unfamiliar," I hedged.

"So... help me out, here?" Lisa asked, quirking an eyebrow. "If what you're telling me is correct, you've got one hell of a grab bag powerset, and you've absolutely got something that could help me out."

"I..." I frowned, trying really, really hard to glean only the most immediately relevant things from my hallucinatory memories. "...I'm not going to fight anyone. I... I would really like to avoid hurting people, if I can. But..." I finally found something, and reached into my pocket, grabbing a fob that hadn't been there two seconds ago. "...This, here, will open a portal to another reality. Friendly people, but be careful about where you go, I think most of it is running, like, a hundred times faster than our world?"

"...Well, it's something," Lisa said, accepting the fob from me. "So... what are you willing to do about Coil?"

"That's... complicated," I said.

"It really isn't," Lisa said. "Look, I know you've got a complex about the whole 'all I'm good for is hurting people' thing, but I need you to understand that your capacity for goal-directed violence is not, actually, analogous to that time you were an unpleasant sex pest in high school. That was you being an unsocialized brat who didn't know how to behave yourself. The goal-directed violence is a carefully measured and deliberate response to situations where resorting to violence is a totally reasonable thing to do."

I grimaced.

"Also, in case you haven't realized it yet? You're... what, twenty five? Thirty? Either way, high school was a long fucking time ago. Grow up."

With that, Lisa stood up, opened a big blue portal into another dimension in broad daylight, and walked through. Somehow, nobody noticed.

"...Well, she was unpleasant," I said to myself, before starting to eat my pound cake.

I mean, admittedly, she had a reason to be brusque and selfish- her life was not exactly a bed of roses, and she seemed to kinda know that I felt obligated to help people. And while, yeah, it would've been nice if she'd buttered me up a little... well, did I actually deserve that consideration? I certainly didn't need it. And, well, I gotta admit, I feel way more confident I know where I stand with someone who transparently doesn't like me, and just needs my help.

Honestly, it was a little refreshing to talk to someone who obviously disliked me, but wasn't trying to make me go away.

"Christ, I need better friends," I muttered. As much as I hadn't earned better treatment from my friends, that didn't change the fact that they sure had treated me like shit more than once before they finally threw me out. Not in ways that justified my treatment of them, nothing justified that, but... well, I guess we were all shitty teenagers, being shitty in our own ways, some of which were shittier than others.

I sighed.

Here's to an attempt at being less shitty, I guess.