“Wow! You’re right! I didn’t kill Aspen!” Dyllan’s spoke with a feigned cheerfulness, his tone loaded with enough sarcasm to cause a local shortage. “I just made him so miserable that he considered death a preferable alternative to my torment!” He threw his arms up into the air, and shouted with a quivering fury that was on the border of collapsing into sorrow. “BECAUSE THAT’S SO MUCH BETTER.”

“Oh for…” A cool restlessness stirred in Andie chest, and color returned to her eyes. “You were TEN YEARS OLD, and your dad had just DIED! No, not just died - your dad was fucking KILLED! You had the maturity and emotional capacity of a goddamn gerbil, how the hell were you supposed to process something like that!?”

“That doesn’t make what I did okay!”

“It. Doesn’t. Have. To.” Andie spoke with her own words, but was starting to feel the weight of her ego’s emotions behind them. “You were at school. There were teachers. There were adults who were being paid to protect kids like Aspen and Cedric. If they were doing anything that came close to even resembling their jobs they would’ve known about what what was happening. Parents should have been called and meetings held well before the first punch was thrown.”

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“That doesn’t change anything!” Dyllan clenched his fists as tightly as he could. His face twisted into a feral snarl as his voice lowered to a burning calm. “What I did was unforgivable.”

“Then why -” Color flushed throughout Andie’s body as her ego reclaimed control. “- did your hypocritical ass -” She marched forward and grabbed Dyllan’s shadow by the collar. “- forgive Aspen for doing the same damn thing!?”

“I haven’t forgiven Aspen for a goddamn thing.”

“Bull.” Andie pulled Dyllan’s shadow in close and stared him right in the eye. “Shit.”