In some ways, Sarah’s garden felt like what I imagined the inside of an egg to feel like.

Of course, eggs aren’t furnished with tables or wicker chairs, nor are they brimming with plants, and the comparison falls apart completely if you put it under any kind of scrutiny really. Nevertheless, it gave me distinctly egg-like vibes.

It reminded me of when I was a kid and looking through the inside of a traffic cone.

There was a prevailing sense of being somewhere I shouldn’t be. Seeing something that most people wouldn’t. Like clipping through a model in a game and seeing textures wrapped over hollow skeletons, I felt like I was catching a glimpse of what lay under the raw functionality of things.

Prickles danced along my neck, like I was being watched from all angles.

Sarah, on her part, seemed quite at home.

Green eyes glittered at me from across the table.

“Hey, before we start,” I said. “Can we turn on the lights? It’s kinda dark in here.”

“No lights, sorry,” said Sarah. “Some of my plants are…sensitive.”

I shrugged.

“Sure, whatever.”

I figured, you know, being plants, they would probably do well with light. But I was well aware I knew very little about plants.

For all I knew, Sarah was working with some kind of fungus that only grew in a cave or something else that made sense. No one would deal with something so inconvenient unless it made some kind of internal sense.

The way I saw it, people had their fixed way and manner of doing things. All the more so when it was a place of their own. You might not know why there were three mismatched socks scattered at the foot of your friend’s bed, but by golly they were there for a reason.

You moved against that kind of thing at your own peril.

Sarah’s darkness was just another version of strange sock placement. And if I found it inconvenient, well, it was her space at the end of the day.

“What was it you wanted to ask anyways?” Sarah asked.

I considered how I might go forward.

Somehow coming right out and saying, ‘Claire’s maid and I are surveilling everyone involved with Deck in order to make a predictive model that would make a stalker blush’ didn’t feel like the right course of action.

“I’m involved with a project of a kind,” I began.

That seemed safe enough.

“And it sorta requires, I dunno, figuring out where Deck is going to be at a given moment. Like, in a predictive way. I thought about it on my own for a bit, then figured, hey I bet my good friend Sarah could probably help me with this.”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed.

“What the heck kind of ‘project’ requires that kind of info?” She asked.

I thought fast.

“Campus insurance,” I said. “The Hielgard powers-that-be have noticed our dear Deck’s proclivity towards chaos. So they’ve tasked me with figuring out just what they might need to offset the crazy nonsense Deck might get to.”

“Insurance.”

“Yeah, you know. They’ve had problem children before, rich people school and all. All they want is a clearer picture of what to expect and when.”

I grinned sheepishly.

“I got stuck with the task cause, I’m familiar with him and everything. But you know, it’s Deck. I’ve been having trouble nailing him down.”

Sarah’s eyes didn’t blink. I could tell even without seeing her face, that she was frowning.

“You’re lying.” she said.

I starred back at her.

Honestly? I felt a bit peeved. It was like this world was allergic to semi-plausible explanations. To be fair, Sarah had been weirdly keen and observant whenever I did literally anything suspicious around her. But still. It was unsuccessful to the point where I couldn’t help but feel like an Aesop was being forced upon me.

I made a mental note.

Probably don’t lie to Sarah.

I considered my options.

For all intents and purposes, it kinda felt like Sarah was a walking truth-o-meter. Lying was a no go. But now that I thought about it, was there even a real reason to keep everything secret to begin with? Sure, secrecy was implicit, but I was never given explicit instruction to keep things under wraps. What was the point of the cloak and dagger stuff if it just got in the way?

Besides, if there really was some murderer waiting for me in the wings, what better way to make things harder than to drag everything into the light?

I decided to switch tracks.

“Okay,” I said to Sarah. “You’re right. I was lying. It’s not campus insurance. I only said that because the truth is even more ridiculous.”

“Hero,” said Sarah dryly. “We’re sitting in the dark in a snowglobe garden in the middle of a filthy rich school. Just try me.”

I shrugged.

“You ready?” I asked. “Here goes.”

I took a breath.

“Claire’s maid and I are surveilling everyone involved with Deck in order to make a predictive model that would make a stalker blush,” I said. “We’ve got most of it down, but Deck kinda defies prediction. He’s all over the place and we can’t get a read on him. So, like I said earlier, I figured you were the best bet for finding a pattern in his madness.”

Sarah didn’t stop me to say I was lying.

I watched as the green eyes blinked. Then blinked again.

“Surveilling?” Sarah absorbed this, then rallied with a speed that only made sense to people who were overexposed to Deck. “Is that why there’s been all those drones following me everywhere?”

It was my turn to blink.

“Ah. You noticed them then?”

“Why do you think this garden looks the way it does?” Sarah asked. “They’re not exactly subtle. All the buzz buzzing and hovering is driving me crazy. Can you get them to stop?”

“I’m not in charge of the drones,” I said. “Different department.”

Sarah glared.

“I’ll pass the word along.” I said. “I don’t think it was working super well anyways. And if they’re being noticed, I’m sure we’ll switch to something less obtrusive.”

“Fantastic.”

“Look, the way I understand it, it’s all mostly a means to an end. I think if we get a better idea of how to deal with Deck, the surveillance stuff will probably stop. If you want your privacy back, I’d guess it’s probably in your best interests to help me out.”

There was the sound as Sarah got up. She moved over to one of the gaps artfully blocked by a flowerpot and adjusted it for better coverage.

“Can you guarantee it?” She asked me. There was a weird intensity in her voice. “Can you guarantee that I won’t be surveilled if I help you now? Not just the drones, but whatever else you’re using too.”

Could I? I wasn’t sure if the maid was willing to take cues from me. I supposed it depended on how useful she thought I was.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t have much say in the matter. Maybe? If I come back with something useful.”

Her back was to me, but she was close enough to one of the gaps in the vines, that I could see loose light silhouette her head and arms.

“Say you’ll try as hard as you can to push for it,” she said. “Do that—guarantee my privacy, and I’ll help you with whatever you need with Deck.”

The pronouncement hung heavy in the air.

“Privacy is that important to you huh?” I laughed awkwardly. “What, are you an alien or something?”

Her eyes shimmered as she turned back to face me.

“Are you?” she asked.

That was a puzzler. I wondered if being shunted from a different reality counted. I wondered if it would flag as a truth or a lie. I didn’t know if it was wise to answer. Having a Sarah that thought I was crazy probably wouldn’t help things much.

Before I could answer, she continued.

“We all have their secrets, Hero.” Sarah said. “Being friends doesn’t mean we tell each other the truth all the time. Only that we do whenever we can.”

I nodded slowly. I could get behind that.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do it then. Do whatever I can to guarantee your privacy.”

I watched as her silhouette drew itself up, then nodded with satisfaction. What tension there was seemed to get sucked right out of the air. When Sarah moved back to seat herself on the chair, she seemed considerably more normal.

For the first time, I kinda felt like we were real friends.

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“Why did you want my help anyways?” Sarah asked. “What could I possibly know about Deck that you don’t?”

I blinked. I wasn’t totally sure how to answer that question.

“I mean,” I gestured vaguely. “You’re more...interested in him than I am, I think.”

The air around me stilled. Suddenly I felt like it was several degrees colder.

“What do you mean?” asked Sarah carefully.

I got the sense I was treading on thin ice.

“Uh, only that you’re around him a lot.” I laughed as naturally as I could manage. “More chances to notice things I guess.”

If that flagged as a lie, Sarah didn’t mention it.

“Look, I just want to know how you track him down,” I continued. “Whenever Deck goes on his crazy business, you always manage to know where he is. You know, when you’re not already by his side, I mean.”

There was a pause.

“I’m not always by his side.” said Sarah. “He’s not here right now, is he?”

I blinked.

“No, you’re totally right. You have your club stuff and Deck does whatever Deck does in his free time and work outs and stuff, so you aren’t beside him all the time to the point where it’d be weird,” I said. “But generally—”

“We’re friends. Of course we’re together a lot.” Sarah’s voice adopted a tone of painfully forced casualness. “And besides, he goes looking for me too you know. You make it sound like it’s all one sided.”

I blinked again. I could see what was happening.

“Okay.” I said. “Sure.”

“Friends look for each other all the time,” she went on. “You went to look for me today, and I’ll probably look for you later. Deck might look for you, you might look for Deck. It’s all normal friends stuff.”

I declined to mention that Sarah and I were supposed to be friends too, but she had never gone looking for me that I was aware of.

I tried for course correction.

“You’re— you’re around him a non-suspicious amount,” I tried, attempting to calm the waters. “I just want to know how you manage to find him when you do.”

I hesitated, then pressed on.

“Which is absolutely a totally normal amount of time.”

There was a longer pause this time. Time enough for me to feel awkward and wish there was music playing in the background or something.

Then came a rustle that was unmistakably Sarah putting her head in her hands.

“Oh god, is it really that obvious?”

It was like steering a horse determined to drown itself.

“Sarah,” I said, before Sarah could dig herself further into a self inflicted grave .“All I want to know is how you go about looking for him. Honestly. That’s it.”

Sarah groaned.

It seemed that Sarah had decided the time for plausible deniability was over.

“Oh come on!” I said, despite myself. “What happened to friends tell the truth to each other whenever they can?”

“Not about this!” She hissed.

“It was obvious! And we had to talk about it anyways!”

Sarah was giving me a look. Despite the darkness of the room, despite my total lack of visual acuity, I could tell she was giving me a look. It was that kind of look.

“Okay, not obvious. I’m pretty sure Deck is going to be clueless whatever clues come his way. But we did still have to talk about it.”

“Why in the world would we have to talk about it?”

“Because— because— ” I reached out for the words.

“Look Sarah. If Deck was a normal boy, I’d just pretend I was the one in love with him. I’d roleplay as a little lovebird and remember his schedule, figure out his route between class and maybe do something cute like go a little out of my way to catch glimpses of him between periods. Every Deck detail I found out about him I’d scour into my brain and hoard it away in my mental scrapbook like a little treasure.”

“What are you even sayinggg.”

Waves of secondhand embarrassment radiated off of Sarah’s hunched over form.

“But that’s not enough for Deck!” I said. “He’s crazy! Deck isn’t a normal boy. Deck doesn’t take the same route to classes every day. Some days Deck decides he’d rather be riding a unicycle on the school roof, or arranging an impromptu cookout on the roof, or even drawing a mural on the roof.”

“He does like the roof,” muttered Sarah into her hands.

“What you possess is some ability or logic that transcends a normal girl in love. You— you have some way or method of actually predicting his madness. You find him. Against all odds, you do. With consistency.”

I leveled an accusatory finger. Even if I couldn’t see, I was getting the sense that the darkness wasn’t as big a debuff for Sarah anyways.

“I can’t model him properly. I can’t predict random mutant bees. You can. I saw the stalker drone notes. You were the first one on the scene. That was no coincidence.”

I was breathing heavily.

Sarah raised up her head to look at me. Her green eyes were opened wide.

“Look, whatever real love—“ I began.

“Oh my god, don’t say love.”

“Whatever weird affection you have for him, I can’t model it properly with my normal hypothesizing. So you have to tell me. How do you do it? What goes through your head?”

Sarah put said head back on the table and covered it with her arms.

“We have a bond,” Sarah muttered. “A special connection.”

“Yes, I know.” I said. “I just spent a lot of time establishing this.”

“No.” She sounded frustrated. “It’s different than what you’re imagining. I can’t—it’s hard to talk about. Just give me a second.”

I waited.

If regaining composure had a sound, it could be played on the instrument called Sarah taking a good long breath to steady herself.

“You want to figure out a way to find out what Deck’s gonna do in a way that’s predictive,” she said to herself. “Not find him after the fact.”

“Right,” I said. “I need to be able to guess where he’s gonna be, before it happens.”

Sarah nodded to herself.

“You could…just ask him what he’s planning on doing later?”

“I don’t think even Deck knows what he’s going to do the next second much less a week or month out.” I said. “And besides, that’s not what you do, is it?” I pressed. “You must have tricks, heuristics, something. Like I dunno, maybe days when Deck eats cheese he tends to go due north.”

Sarah shook her head again.

“I can’t teach you the way I do it.” Sarah said. “It’s—I’m trying to think about the kind of thing you mean.”

Sarah considered in silence.

“Big events,” she said at last. “You want to look at big events. It doesn’t work all the time, but I think that’s a good starting point for you to consider.”

“Big…events?”

I frowned. It wasn’t exactly gonna win prizes for non-vagueness.

Sarah nodded seriously.

“Stuff…happens around Deck,” she said. “We both know it’s true. He’s like an event magnet, a chaos maker, whatever you wanna call it.”

We both nodded in harmony. It was nice that we both understood that it was happening and didn’t have to dance around the whole ‘I know it sounds crazy’ prelude.

Then I frowned.

“Wait, but that’s the issue right? My whole problem is he does all this random stuff that’s impossible to predict.”

Sarah shook her head.

“You’re only thinking about it wrong,” she said. “All that Deck stuff doesn’t always happen the same way. After a while, you start to notice there’s more to it. More than one way to look at it.”

She reached out and held my wrist in her hands.

Sarah turned my wrist so my palm was facing down. “Big events happen around Deck.” She turned my palm to face the other way. “Deck is attracted to big events.”

She looked at me earnestly.

“Don’t you see? It’s two sides of the same coin. Both happen. They’re similar, but different.”

I felt my brow furrow as I tried to absorb the nuance.

“So you’re saying, sometimes, I dunno, Deck induces big events to happen, but other times, he’s just attracted to big events?”

“Yes, exactly.” I felt her finger poke my palm. “And it’s this side—the attracted to big events half— that you can plan around.”

“Big holiday festivals, huge celebratory parades, graduations, giant pizza cooking contest, harvest parties, New Years fireworks, whatever. If something big is coming up and you know its already in the cards, you can bet Deck is going to be somewhere in the middle of it on the day of.”

Sarah’s hands receded, leaving me staring at my palm.

“So if you want to predict Deck, if you want a better picture of where he’s likely to be, that’s your guiding star. Look at whatever big event calendar you can get your hands on and mark the important days.” She said. “You can be sure Deck’s gonna be there. Sure as pie.”

The inklings of a plan began to swirl in my head.

“I think I get it, Sarah.” I said. I nodded to myself, then again with more finality. “Yeah, thanks, I think that’s all I need.”

I rose from the chair to go.

There was planning to be done.

“Really?” Sarah sounded surprised. “Well, if you’re sure. Here, let me guide you to the entrance.”

She did.

“I’ll let you know how things go on the canceling surveillance front,” I told Sarah as she opened the door.

But Sarah wasn’t looking at me. She was looking out towards the blinding light of the outside world, a confused look on her face.

I saw two things resolve as my eyes adjusted and I squinted through the brightness beyond the door.

First was Deck, racing full tilt, an expression of utmost concentration on his face.

Second was a drone trying its best to get away.

Deck drew back his arm and loosed. A pebble whizzed straight through one of the drone’s central propellers.

It began to spin out of the sky, sagging sadly through the air on three propellers.

Then it swerved, hurtling directly at our heads.

Here it was, I thought, as time slowed down and the drone filled my vision. I was going to be done in by another vehicle.

Again.

Something tugged harshly at my arm. Sarah pulled me down and the drone zigged distressingly fast right past us and into the dark depths of Sarah’s garden.

Before we could react, Deck crashed into us, his momentum carrying us the rest of the way inside.

The door shut. There was the sound of some automatic lock clicking into place.

“What the hell?” I muttered from the floor.

“Deck what are you doing?” Sarah shouted.

There was the sound of crashing and stuff falling as Deck’s voice called out in good spirits.

“Sorry guys! I’ve been chasing that drone for miles. Damn thing nearly lost me when it went into the greenhouses, but I managed to get dab some honey on it and used some nifty little tracker bees.” Something expensive sounding broke. “Oh oops,” said Deck. “Hey can we turn on the lights?”

“There are no lights in here!” Sarah shouted. “Some of my plants are sensitive!”

“Really?” Deck sounded puzzled. “Huh. You’d think plants would do well with light.”

There was another crash. The buzzing of the drone was still in desperate motion.

I tried to get up, but something promptly collided with sending me back down again.

“Sorry Hero,” called out Deck. “I’m assuming that’s you Hero!”

I grunted and lay back on the ground, crawling towards what I hoped was under the table. Something fell and rolled against my fingers.

It was chaos. Pure chaos.

“Gotcha!” shouted out Deck.

“Oomph,” said Sarah.

There was the sound of a thud.

“Hero!” called out Deck. “I think I dropped my flashlight when I bumped into you before. Can you find it?”

I found the tube that had fell near me and fingered the little on button on one of the ends.

A cone of light flashed out, revealing Deck straddling Sarah on the floor.

It was a picture that could have been taken out of literally hundreds of harem gag mangas.

Well, it could have been if not for the drone sandwiched between them.

I shuffled over.

“Why…didn’t you just use the flashlight to begin with?” I asked.

Deck gave me a look as he moved gingerly off of Sarah. If her face was redder than normal where she lay on the floor, I thought it best not to mention it.

“There’s cameras on that drone,” said Deck. “If I could see, then the drone could see too.”

“Ah yes,” I said. “Of course.”

“And now—“ Deck took the drone and placed on the table at the center of the room.

“Speak!” demanded Deck. “Plausible deniability won’t save you now. I know for a fact this model of drone has a speaker. I looked it up when I caught a glimpse of you days ago.”

The drone said nothing.

“I also know how to track down the owner from the serial number and registry,” Deck went on. “And if that fails, a couple of my buds over at the Computer Enthusiast Club can help me break you open and trace your signal back to wherever you’re watching from!”

The drone said nothing, but it did so with a nervous energy.

“Reveal yourself now or get more people involved.” Deck leaned over, giving the drone a pat. “Your choice, drone.”

“Oh my god. Why is this happening,” buzzed out the maid’s voice.

“Ha!” Deck crowed in triumph.

Sarah rose gingerly to her feet.

“Why—why is Claire’s voice coming out of the drone?” she asked.

“That’s not Claire,” I said. “That’s—“

The maid I’ve been working with that’s been stalking you guys with drones.

It wasn’t much better, but I didn’t feel like I could come right out and say it.

“No, that’s Claire,” said Sarah. Her voice carried the same conviction she had when calling me a liar. “She’s doing a pretty good job of changing her voice around, but I can tell.”

I froze.

The drone said nothing.

It just sat there, suspiciously. One of the propellers swirled guiltily.

Could it be true? What would even be the point— What?

“So it’s corruption, Miss Student Council President?” said Deck. “And you told me you weren’t threatened.”

Deck put fists to his hips.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Deck clearly enunciated each ‘Ha’, satisfaction ringing out with each syllable. “And here I thought such methods were beneath you.”

The drone said nothing.

Instead, an acrid hissing filled the air.

Deck moved quickly, but it was too late. The smelly heat and sparks coming from the drone were too intense.

“An acid based self destruct,” Deck said, shaking his head sadly. “It’s the cyanide pill of drones.”

The three of us stared as we watched the ambient light from the decaying drone spark up the air around us.

Sarah looked resigned. I imagine I looked shellshocked. Deck was smiling.

“Cool garden, by the way,” he said, looking around at the vines. Some were drooping sadly from being tugged around during the chase. All the flower buds were open, as if stuck in expressions of slack-jawed shock. “Real neat.”

Sarah didn’t respond. She just watched as the acid dripped through her table and onto the dirt floor.

I could not imagine what thoughts were going through her head.

In truth, I was thinking of something else as I watched that same mess of smoldering drone parts melting in an acid pool.

This was a palm down event.

This was what happened when Deck was left to his own devices and spawned events of his own. Utter chaos.

I thought back to what Sarah had said. About how Deck could be predicted if there were big events on the horizon.

As the last of the drone fizzed away, I watched as Deck set to work using whatever momentum guided his boundless energy to look up how to deal with acid.

The answer was simple enough.

If Deck was attracted to big events…

Then, well, I’d just have to go set some up for him.