“You know what's the last thing I want to do?” I asked, hurrying down the hall.

At my side, Antoinette said behind her handheld compact mirror, “Go to class?”

“Damn straight.”

We'd stayed up way too late last night discussing the letter and Sylvain's story, so we woke up with minutes to get out the door. Antoinette was doing her makeup as we walked. I’d thrown my hair into a ponytail and nearly walked out the door with my blouse on inside out before Antoinette stopped me. My mind was still on the weird mess we were in, but I wasn’t sure what I could do about it. Sylvain was Antoinette’s domain. My ‘cousin’ was mine.

“If I were you,” Antoinette had said last night, “I’d never change my name back. I’d never go home. Maybe you don’t remember her, but Past You certainly earned the right to be free of this idiocy.”

Yeah, I agreed with that. It felt like I was getting caught up in some plot that was left on the cutting room floor of the game dev office.

We ran along the path that connected the dorm building to the magic & sciences class building, ducking our heads against the falling snow. There hadn’t been a day since the fashion show where the snow fell all gently and sparkly and romantically like in the game graphics. More lies!!

Once inside, we joined the flow of students hustling from one class to another in a wave of white collared shirts and green accented uniform skirts.

“Thank god, we aren’t late,” I sighed.

“Why were you so worried?”

“I’m not really in the right state to handle a teacher telling me off.”

“Please, ignore them, that’s what I–”

Antoinette snapped her compact shut and stopped walking. Her blue eyes followed a blonde woman–Cecile–down the hall.

“Antoinette, we’ve got to go,” I insisted.

“One moment.” She turned and followed Lou’s sister. I didn’t have a good feeling about that, and I especially didn’t have a good feeling about how I apparently couldn’t trust her around other women. The villainess thing was a lot less cute in person.

Cecile jerked to a halt when Antoinette called her name. Antoinette easily crossed the river of students to get right up in Cecile’s face, and I had just barely skittered to her side when she said, “You handle the mail for our floor, correct?”

It totally wasn’t an earnest question, but Cecile answered like it was. “Yes, absolutely!”

“So it was you who took a letter from someone looking for Chloe.”

Cecile’s white-blonde eyebrows screwed up before realization hit. “Well, yes, but that kind of thing happens more than you’d think. It’s a huge school. People are always trying to–”

“Clarify this for me.”

I started, “Antoinette–”

“You told an absolute stranger–a man, at that–Chloe’s name and where to find her? Did it not cross your mind that that could put her in danger?”

Cecile held her ground. “He seemed nice. And what with whatever happened in Altolia, I figured he must have been a journalist or a witness. I swear, it’s not uncommon.”

“All I’m hearing is that you’re not denying it.”

I said, “It was just a mistake.” I set a hand on Antoinette’s arm. She looked down at me.

“A mistake that’s gotten you–could have gotten you in serious trouble.”

Not gonna lie, it was pretty flattering to have her defend me, but Antoinette mercilessly shoved Cecile into a lake once. It was time to go.

Cecile asked, “Wait, did something happen?”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“No, it’s okay,” I lied. “Though it wasn’t cool of you, Cecile. That guy? He wasn’t nice. Let me know if he comes around again. And please don’t tell him anything else?”

Cecile said, now seeming thrown off-kilter, “Alright. I’m sorry.”

Once we’d gone our separate ways, I poked Antoinette in the shoulder. “‘Clarify this for me.’ You’re so intense, you know that?”

“It’s an intense situation. And I don’t like it!” She announced that with a sudden, almost petulant anger. It reminded me of how she got at the Samhain Formal, like she was struggling to put her own feelings into words and had to settle for the simplest ones. “I don’t like any of it.”

“Hey, neither do I.”

“I wish our biggest problems were classes.”

“Mood.”

“What?”

“I mean, I wish that was our biggest problem too. And the year-end project…and the dance...”

“Ugh.” She rubbed her temple. “The winter dance. Good grief. I do not want to be in another gossiping crowd for a long while.”

“Have you talked to your old friends at all?”

“No.”

“...Have you let them talk to you?”

“Of course not, what do you think I am? A masochist?”

“You know, you might solve your own problems if you didn’t try to fight everyone all the time…”

Antoinette sniffed. “You won’t be saying that once I get face to face with whoever is stalking us.”

I enjoyed the mental image of her brandishing a sword to defend poor little damsel-ified me. Then we were interrupted by Remi sweeping in out of nowhere.

“Who’s earned Miss Delphine’s wrath this time?” he asked.

“Only the usual suspects.”

I was kinda amazed by how easily they fell in step–acknowledgement, proximity, and then somehow she’d taken his arm and he’d kissed her cheek and the entire hallway turned to look at us. People always glanced at Antoinette–duh, she was beautiful and scary, the best combination–and I’d more or less gotten used to eyes stuck to our backs as we walked around campus or the town. This was different. Their attention was charged, new, full of people waiting for something juicy to report on to their friends.

Antoinette resolutely kept her gaze ahead of her like nothing was happening. I was nerdily third-wheeling the hottest cheerleader in school and the state-championship-bound quarterback.

“Hey,” I said to Remi, totally innocently, “apparently you’re gonna meet Georges Delphine, right? When’s that happening? Soon?”

Antoinette answered, “Next week.”

Remi nodded. “Sylvain suggested we test-run the intelligence potions this weekend, and I’d rather have days off in case there’s a repeat of what happened to Lou and I last time.”

“Aren’t you kinda scared?”

“Nah. Sylvain’s been a total control freak about it, so there probably won’t be any mistakes.”

“I mean about meeting her dad! You’ve got to make a really good impression. Seriously, how many guys do you think are knocking on her door? So, what’s your plan to really stand out?”

Antoinette scoffed. “He stands out because I actually chose him.”

“He still needs a plan!”

Remi squinted at me, pretending to be suspicious. “You almost sound excited that heartless old Georges might hate me.”

“What? Noooo–”

“Nothing about this”–Antoinette pointed between her and Remi–“excites her.”

I opened my mouth. And shut it. Okay, she wasn’t wrong, but I felt weird that she’d noticed.

Antoinette fake-lamented, “She hasn’t even congratulated me.”

Why would I congratulate you on something fake!! I kept that to myself, because it sure felt like everyone we passed was listening in.

(I allowed myself just one itty bitty crumb of self-pity: Why would I congratulate you on something that erased our kiss!! Arghhh.)

“Don’t bother her,” Remi said, casually moving a stray lock of Antoinette’s hair behind her shoulder. “She’s new to planet earth. She doesn’t know the etiquette for congratulating best friends on–”

And that was all I heard. My brain blanked out. Not because of Marie, but because Remi had called us best friends, and that wasn’t even the point of his sentence, so he hadn’t even thought about it before saying it.

“Best friends?” Antoinette and I exclaimed at the exact same moment.

He lifted his hands in a “don’t shoot” gesture. “I mean, I figured? Why else would you have been so worried about messing with Chloe’s feelings? Isn’t that a girl thing? Not wanting the friend to feel replaced by a guy?”

I stared at her. We’d reached the door to my classroom–some irrelevant magic theory class. We all stopped. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t want your feelings to be hurt. I felt sorry. I don’t know why. Clearly you have bigger things to worry about,” she grumbled.

I didn’t want your feelings to be hurt. Antoinette had technically begun courting Remi before I blew our kiss from the universe. If she’d said that to him, the words would have stayed, even if her reasoning didn’t.

“See,” Remi said, ruffling her hair, “the Delphines have hearts after all.”

“Okay, enough! Both of you, go to class!” she snapped, and gave me a little harmless push to the classroom door. I floated all the way to my desk.