CHAPTER 10
In Which Evan is Furious
EVAN. AFTER THE LAST BELL.
The last bell rang and the first day ended, sending teenagers spilling out into the September sun. Some started straggling off toward their respective trolley lines, but many more chose to stay and mill around campus to debrief the day with their friends. The freshman class, in particular, remained in large numbers, as this marked the first time that truly all of them could take advantage of being firstagers, and the accompanying loosening of curfews and new privileges which accompanied that.
Evan’s phone beeped nearly as soon as he got outside. Angie’s text said, Meet us by the beech in the east quad. Should get Chris, ax him bout huntin. Evan smiled, but also had to acknowledge and let pass a flash of annoyance at the facts that, A, Megan hadn’t yet given them Chris’s number, and B, Angie apparently expected him to just break into the undoubtedly huge group of people surrounding Chris and bug him about hunting, rather than bring it up with her and Ryan there to help him make his case when he was good and ready.
Chris wasn’t exactly hard to find. Evan just had to find the biggest clump of people around, which happened to be over at the corner of the Social Studies building. A good thirty people, maybe more, were all crowded around in a circle.
He glanced over at what he thought was the beech tree as he walked over—there were only a few trees in the quad, and one of them was a young oak tree, so it wasn’t that one. He did not see Ryan or Angie there yet.
Sure enough, once he got close enough to the crowd he could hear Chris’s voice, muffled and indistinct. He couldn’t see the Light Bearer through the crowd, but he was definitely in there. Evan wandered up to the back edge of the crowd and stood on his toes. Able to peer over the heads of a lot of his peers, Evan could see Chris in the center, speaking and gesticulating enthusiastically, part of a small circle of guys. Those guys were some of the Olympians.
At one point, ‘the Olympians’ had been the name of Brandon Chase-Xavier’s[1] party (and tourney lance), the most popular boys at Asphodel. In Evan’s mind, the Olympians had possessed the stupidest name of any party in Asphodel Middle School. Sure, they were in a vaguely Greek themed district and school. But all of the schools were named after either portions of Hades’s underworld, or in the case of Arcadia, Persephone’s surface summer home. No Olympus in sight. Were they rich and handsome and athletic, from well connected families? Yes. They had also been in middle school. And now that they were high school freshfolk[2], it was extra ridiculous. You couldn’t name your crew after gods if you were freshmen.
[1] Lauren’s sometimes boyfriend. Evan could never keep track even while school was on, let alone after an entire summer. It’s not like he was about to follow them online. That was Ryan’s job.
[2] To be fair, they might have realized how ridiculous that was and changed to a new party name over the summer. Again, Evan did not keep track of that sort of thing.
Evan could hear Chris speaking, and see him too, if he stayed up on his toes. He was currently saying, “I spring forward, dive rolling just to cover ground, and end the dive up on one knee as I thrust my blade up through the Mother’s thorax. You wouldn’t believe the stench!”
Evan mmhmmed. Telling his tale again, it seemed. Made sense. An appreciative murmur was passing through the crowd, so it was to Evan’s surprise when Chris immediately glanced straight at him, straight into his eyes, then widened his eyes and slightly reverse nodded his head in a manner that clearly conveyed the statement, ‘Oh, hey man.’
Evan blinked and rocked back on his heels. He stepped a couple yards away from the crowd and stood on one foot. Guy had good ears, he supposed.
Evan had just switched feet when the crowd started clapping, then started breaking up. After a minute or so, it was just Chris left with the Olympians. It was all of them except for Brandon himself. However, before Evan even was able to determine whether their presence would pose a problem, Chris seemed to have made his goodbyes and slipped out of the group, heading toward Evan. Eyes followed him, of course, both those of the Olympians and of others still hanging around.
“Hey man,” Chris said as he approached, an easy grin on his face, sincerity in his voice. “How’s it going?”
“You know. School’s over,” Evan said, unsure what the other boy was looking for in a response.
“Absolutely true,” Chris said with a nod, as if the exchange had been anything more profound than the statement of facts that it was. “Where you guys meeting? You guys have plans for the afternoon?”
Evan shrugged. “Uh, first question is under the beech in the east quad. By which I mean, that tree right there. I think.” He waved at the tree he thought it was. Chris nodded.
“Second question: I don’t know. Our usual MO is to bum around until someone suggests doing something everyone’s into. Usually none of us has a suggestion and I end up going shooting, if I have any ammo from my survivor’s stipend left for the week, and then we play video games.” Chris looked curious at the mention of a survivor’s stipend, but didn’t say anything, and Evan didn’t want to talk about his dead family members.
Evan chewed on his lip a little, considering, then added, “Though if Megan and you join us, that might change things. Maybe you guys know fun things to do.” He frowned now, looking down at the ground, still nibbling. “She still hasn’t given us your number.”
Chris laughed. “Shit, yeah, okay. She managed to get her phone taken away. She gave me your numbers, though.” He dug out his shiny IPhone and his fingers flickered across the phone’s face. He grinned at Evan and continued, “She’s probably getting it right now, so keep an eye out for her.”
A mere moment later, Evan’s decidedly not-shiny not-IPhone buzzed. He dug it out and slid it open. The text from Chris, which included Megan, Angie, and Ryan in the recipients, read, Sup this is Chris, I gotta get some stuff from my locker, meet you at the beech.
“And I’m off to do that!” Chris said as he started walking. “I’ll catch—”
“Hey! Uh, sorry,” Evan said before he could get too far. “Quick question. Other than on your journey here, you ever gone out with gunners before?”
“Uh.” Chris froze for like a quarter second, his eyes wide, then he waved a hand and shook his head. “Aw, nah, never really before. Gramyres hunt alone. You know how it is.”
And he was off, weaving through the milling students of the east quad up to the Sci-Math building.
Evan looked after him for a moment, nodding. Then he sighed and looked around to see if Angie and Ryan were visible anywhere yet, only to find Megan emerging out of the crowd behind him, no more than three meters away.
With Beth walking next to her.
MEGAN. LAST BELL.
“Beth, you wanna walk to the office with me? I kinda got my phone taken away in Life Science trying to send Chris’s number to Angie and the boys,” Megan said after class, only a little bit pink.
“My gods, Megan, really?” Beth said, overly incredulous.
“Yes really,” Megan said. “Don’t make me feel bad about it.”
“Sorry!” Beth eeped. “I didn’t mean to.”
Megan shouldered her bag and they headed out the door. Neither said anything until they were outside and halfway to the office, not that it was that far.
Finally, “Will you tell me how you met Chris?” Beth said timidly. Then, less timid and more hushed and awed, she said, “I heard a rumor that something literally magical happened when you met him.”
“It did,” Megan said, wondering how that had started getting around. “It was wild. So I was confronting Lauren and Kay, and Kay and I were yelling at each other. Kay tried to claim she was my best friend, like that’s something you can decide for someone else. Totally unhinged.”
“Powers, Kay,” Beth said, shaking her head. “She’s… I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to her.”
“Me neither,” Megan said glumly. “She was always kinda selfish, but this is all beyond what I imagined she was capable of.”
“Lauren and Nisha, too,” Beth said. “I was so shocked. I think I stayed shocked until today. Maybe I’m still shocked.”
Megan nodded, having no response to that. “Then Chris interrupted. He told Katie he’d never have guessed she’d yell at someone in public and gave me a way out of the situation. Then we talked some. It turned out that we had the same class, so we started heading to class, and for some reason it came up that his birthday is June nineteenth.”
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“Oh my goshes!” Beth said wide-eyed. “Like, two months after Angie!?” Count on Beth to immediately recognize why that was important.
Megan nodded. “So like a fool I blurted out that he was our fifth, and then I had to explain our birthday thing, which was pretty fucking embarrassing, even though he was pretty chill about it. But as we talked about it, our bell charms started, like, glowing. Right after we noticed, they flashed real bright, and afterward they’d turned into real bells.” She shook the charm around her neck. It chimed gently, a high, lovely little sound. “And I felt amazing. Like everything was right in the world for the first time ever. Like some essential part of me was missing, and I’d just found it.”
“Wow…” Beth said, wide eyed. “That’s so wild! So he decided to have lunch with you guys?”
“Well, he’d already—I don’t know if you heard—he’d already gotten, like, magpie auguries this morning, and Angie did too, and they talked about it a little. So he was already kinda prepared for weirdness, I guess.”
With eyes like saucers, Beth said, “That’s so wild!”
“I know, right?” Megan shook her head. “And he’d met Evan too, so that was enough to make him want to eat with us, I guess, in between that and everything else.”
They reached the office at this point, and Megan went inside to get her phone while Beth waited in the hall. It only took a couple of minutes. Megan discovered she had a text from Angie: Meet us by the beech in the east quad, we’ll all hang out.
“Angie and them want me to meet under a tree in the east quad,” Megan said. “Walk over with me?”
“Sure!” Beth said, smiling. The smile collapsed into a somber, thoughtful expression, and she asked, “Were you going to try and talk to Lauren more?”
Megan shook her head. “Lauren can fucking wait. I might send her a message tonight. I don’t think Lauren wants to talk to me right now. Right now I just want to, to... to get to know my friends? You know? Lunch was fun, even though it’s the first day. It’s been so long, though. There’s so much I missed. And then there’s Chris!”
“Oh my goshes, yes!” Beth said, wide eyed. “It’s still so amazing to me!” She beamed at Megan. “You’re so lucky.”
“Lucky,” Megan said. “Sure.”
Beth seemed to sense she’d misspoke, and let Megan be, so they walked in silence a bit as they left the administration building and headed across campus. They’d left through the south exit because it was closer to the front office where they’d kept Megan’s phone, and Megan led them down around the south side of the tower. She paid attention, more than normal, to the way eyes followed her as she passed. It was so constant that Megan hardly paid attention to it anymore. It mostly happened behind her anyway, but being in her view didn’t stop people.
How much of that was her appearance, like she’d been assured, and how much of that was the Exile?
“I’m not actually that good looking,” Megan said, surprising herself. “Sure, I have a lot of hair, but other than that? I think people at school stare at me because they think I’m a monster because of the Exile.”
Beth sounded almost tired. “Megan, that’s not true. People stare at you out in the city, too.”
Oh, right. Megan thought for a bit, then said, “It’s just overwhelming sometimes. It makes me uncomfortable. And it’s hard to believe. I don’t look gorgeous in the mirror. I just look like myself.”
“Come on, Megan. Do we need to do this again, right now?” Beth asked.
Megan sighed. “I’m just nervous. I really want Chris to like me, but all of you all’s assurances that I’m totally hot haven’t resulted in any other boy I’ve liked wanting to date—” She stopped. Both talking and walking.
Beth lurched to a stop and turned around. “Megan?” she asked.
“Beth, do you know if, because of the Exile—”
Beth shook her head. “I don’t know anything, Megan. I haven’t really talked to anyone about it until today.”
“Okay,” Megan said, wanting to explode. “I wonder if boys didn’t want to date me because they would have to keep the Exile from me, not because I’m so hot that I’m too intimidating."
“Oh. My. Gods!” Beth said, her eyes wide, stunned. “I bet you’re right!”
“I’m going to murder Kay,” Megan said. “And maybe Lauren.”
“That’s probably a bad idea,” Beth said, looking uncomfortable. “I think I’d be sad if you were actually legally exiled.”
“You think?” Megan said with half a laugh, the humor of the phrasing cutting through her simmering anger. She needed to not take this out on Beth, or anyone else. She tried to put it out of her mind.
“Oh goshes, Meggie, don’t make fun of me,” Beth said with kicked puppy eyes. “Of course I’d be sad, I don’t know why I put it like that.”
“For understatement,” Megan said. “It’s fine, Bethie.” She smiled at her longtime friend.
She opened her mouth to say Beth, I think you should keep your distance from Angie and the boys until you apologize, when the crowd parted in front of them and Evan was suddenly only like three meters away looking right at them. Past him, she glimpsed Chris going into the freshfolk locker hall, and she felt a pang of disappointment, even though she was about to hang out with him for the rest of the afternoon.
“Oh, we just missed Chris?” Megan asked, then kicked herself that those were the first words out of her mouth.
Beth danced to a stop in front of Evan as she killed her momentum, and she said, “Oh, isn’t he amazing? You must have been so excited to eat with him!”
Evan looked at Beth in silence for a beat too long, then he looked back at Megan and gave her a weird, too-wide smile, and replied, with too much enthusiasm, “You sure did! He’ll be back soon, though!”
“O-kay.” Megan said, as the smile slipped off her face. Uh oh. She’d fucked up.
She opened her mouth to say something more, but before she could Beth leaned forward and said, “Man, did he tell a tale just now? First you guys hog him at lunch, and then Megan here gets her phone taken away, and I go with her to get it back like a silly, when I could have heard a tale!” She ended the sentence smiling cheerfully at Evan, but Megan saw the tightness around her eyes and realized Beth was panicking hard.
Evan’s smile stayed exactly the same as he looked back at Beth while she was talking. He continued smiling silently for a moment after she stopped speaking and then, while Megan’s mind was still racing, but before she could say anything, he said, “Hey Beth! You know, I’m not sure if you've realized this, but you haven’t spoken to me for close to three years!”
Beth, who had opened her mouth already in preparation to reply to whatever Evan’s reply was going to be, let it hang open for a second and then swiveled to face Megan. “I’m gonna go,” she said, a suddenly brittle smile still plastered on her face and hurt in her eyes, before spinning on her heels and walking away.
“Beth! Wait!” Megan called after her, to the expected amount of avail. She looked after Beth for a moment to see if it looked like she would turn around, then glared at Evan. “Really, December?”
Any trace of a smile, forced or otherwise, disappeared from Evan. He regarded her, expression stony, for a moment, and then said, “Fuck this.” Then he also turned and walked south toward the edge of campus, which was the opposite direction of the east quad, where the text from Angie said to meet.
“Evan! Wait!” Megan cried. He was already ten feet away from her as she jolted into motion, and she had to trot to catch up with him. His legs were so long now! As she caught up with him she said, “Sorry, please, Evan!”
Not looking at her, staring straight ahead as he walked, he said, “You haven’t earned the right to call me that again. Not yet. And certainly not as an admonishment, in defense of Beth.” He ducked between a small tree next to the walk and a clump of teens standing around talking, the path not large enough for them both to fit through at once, so she had to pause for a moment and then follow him. Every head turned as they passed, too. Perfect.
As soon as Megan caught up to him enough to say something again, but before she could, Evan snapped to a stop and spun toward her. “Beth isn’t the one who apologized to me this morning!” he said, glaring at her. “Don’t expect me to make nice with other people because you want to mend bridges. They have their own bridges to mend! Besides, I said the exact same fucking thing to you this morning as I just said to Beth. So again: Fuck. This.”
And then he was moving again, leaving her behind, striding down the lane away from school. Groups of kids standing around chatting around the edge of campus all turned their heads and watched him as he went, then most of them glanced over in her direction, before almost immediately turning back to each other upon noticing her notice them.
Megan stood there at the edge of campus, watching Evan recede, quietly saying, “Shit. Shiiiiiit. Shit?” She tried a different tone with each repetition, just to see what felt best. None of them felt great.
“Shit?” Chris’s voice asked conversationally beside her.
She jumped. “Salt and silver! Don’t scare me like that!” she said, putting a hand on his arm. It was quite muscular. She rested it there just a little too long before she realized it, and pulled it away quickly.
“Sorry,” he said, sincerely. “Though I don’t know what I would have done differently. So what’s up with Evan? I think I’ve gathered that Beth Mishra is your friend, and I saw her walking by looking upset as I was leaving the locker hall, and neither of you were at the tree, so I wandered this way and spotted you over here.”
“Um,” Megan said, in dismay. She had no idea how to explain this without getting into the Exile.
Her phone played a tinkling bell, and then another in rapid succession as she got two texts in a row. Chris’s phone played a little musical sting she recognized as the treasure box opening melody from the Legend of Zelda.
On Megan’s phone, the first text was from Evan. I need space to process today. As she read, Chris chuckled at something.
The second was a group message from Angie, in reply to the one Chris had sent a few minutes before, and was probably what Chris laughed at. Hey we’re at the beech, the water’s great. Where you all at? Chris was already responding.
A moment later a text arrived from Chris, which read, Hey my dad wants me home for an extra weapons practice. It happens. I’ll maybe catch y’all tomorrow. Megan looked up at Chris, and he was smiling a little apologetically at her.
“Sorry,” he said. “It seems to me like your guys’ rough morning might not be entirely resolved, and I think maybe I need to stay out of it until you’ve worked it out a little more. You should go meet Ryan and Angie. And see what you can do.”
Megan stared at him. Then, slowly, she nodded. “See what I can do.” She paused, nibbled at her lower lip, and said, “Okay. See you tomorrow?”
Chris pointed at her and said, “Of course! Don’t be ridiculous. Tomorrow we all get a hang on after school. We are talking music: bring your best stuff, and tell the others.”
She stared at him, a smile spreading across her face. “Yeah. Okay. Of course.”
“And your actual best stuff, by which I mean your favorite stuff,” Chris went on, quite earnestly. “No guilt over liking something you think people will think is uncool, no trying to pick something you think other people think is cool. Bring your best stuff.”
Megan laughed, delighted. “You got it, boss.”
“Don’t call me boss, don’t call me chief, don’t call me late for dinner,” Chris said. “Tomorrow.” And he, in turn, was off, strolling down the lane toward the trolley.
Megan snorted, just a small one that she hoped he didn’t hear, as she watched him leave. He was kind of a dork. She turned and made her way through the loose crowd to the east quad and the tree. As she went, she pulled her phone back out and sent Evan a text.
I’m so, so sorry. I had no right.