CHAPTER 11

In Which Food is Wasted

RYAN. FOOD TIME.

Ryan somehow managed to be the one to have to find a table. Which was fine. He just wasn’t always easy to see. But he tapped his phone after he put his tray down on the table, sending them a message so they at least knew he’d found one.

Not that he didn’t have eyes on them both. Megan had gotten waylaid by Aliyah Duniac and her girlfriend Coralie, while Angie had gotten stuck in a ridiculous line. Angie wasn’t the only kid rewarding themself with a cinnamon roll for getting through the first day. But Angie reached the front of the line by the time Megan broke away, and Megan’s line wasn’t short either.

Angie sat down next to him, setting her three cinnamon rolls down, then reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. “That line was ridonkulous,” she said.

“Sure was,” Ryan said, giving her a smirk as he did so, before he turned his eyes back to Megan. “Funny thing, first day of school.”

“Oh, butts to you,” Angie replied, wrinkling her nose at him, then took her first small, neat bite of cinnamon roll.

“Butts are widely considered a positive and desired attribute these days,” Ryan commented. Megan was looking at her phone as she stood in line. “Many people would be appreciative to be wished butts.” Looked like Aliyah and Coralie were having a not-super-fun conversation in the wake of whatever went down with Megan.

“Okay,” Angie said, narrowing her eyes, then spent a second chewing. After swallowing, she said, “Ugly butts to you! Butts so ugly that it would be impolite to describe or comment upon them!” Ryan noted several kids from Comp Tech walking through the crowd.

“I’m wounded, Matchstick,” he said, grinning at Angie. “I thought you cared for me! Such a dark curse you’d inflict upon the object of your affections!” Ryan continued to match his attention toward Angie with an awareness of who was around them, noting members of a half dozen different parties from Asphodel in their vicinity. His finger idly traced and tapped around on the screen of his phone, half hidden behind his ramen bowl. Ryan wanted to keep tabs on anything interesting happening.

“Farts to you,” Angie said, scowling back. She shoved a larger piece of pastry in her mouth. “A single gross stinky fart, when no one else’s around,” she said after chewing and swallowing. Not that Angie wasn’t interesting. She was always interesting. It was why he was drawn to her, why he’d taken the offer to join them in the first place, back in third grade.

“All solo farts are proud farts, and should be,” Ryan replied, aiming for a reverent tone. “It’s much easier to try and sneak them out when no one might hear them.”

“You are vile,” Angie said. She’d been a lot more bashful back then, but he liked her just as much if not more now. They’d had to grow up a lot, and maybe they were all a bit harder than they were as kids, but life was hard, and this Angie wasn’t going to roll over and take it.

“I’m fifteen,” Ryan said, trying not to full on smirk and only sort of succeeding. “And I certainly didn’t say that I actually sneak ‘em at all regularly. I simply said it was objectively easier to do so. It takes less effort than getting up and going somewhere private. And that I’m proud when I fart alone, because I’m not farting around other people.”

Angie was silent for approximately twenty seconds. “I suppose that’s all fair,” she said, nodding with a concessive expression. “And I suppose I’m the one who brought up farts in the first place. I can’t get mad at you for that. I apologize for calling you vile.” She took another bite.

“Apology accepted,” Ryan replied, letting a little something genuine weave its way into his tone. “Hey Megs,” he added, as Megan plopped down with a vada pav and a mango lassi thirty or so seconds later. The old nicknames felt good to say. He winked at Angie just before Megan looked back up at him from settling in.

Angie winked back and echoed him. “Hey, Megs.”

Megan smiled at them, but there was distress in her eyes. “Hey guys.”

“Looked like you had some words over there,” Ryan observed.

“What now?” Angie asked, glancing at him.

“Yeah,” Megan said, her voice small.

Ryan replied to Angie, “Megan ran into Aliyah Duniac and her current flame and had a short conversation that looked tense. I can imagine what it was about. Wanna confirm?”

“Angie doesn’t want to talk about it,” Megan said in confirmation.

Angie pursed her lips, and then sighed. “Without Chris here… I guess we should probably talk about it some. I don’t know what you know now. Dunno what you covered this morning.”

“Some...” Megan said. “Probably not enough. Ryan went over the different kinds of people who gossiped about you where you could hear, but he didn’t cover the theories about you.” Megan sounded like she’d rather eat her baby teeth than talk about the theories. “Did you guys ever actually get bullied? Insulted or pushed around?”

“Only once,” Ryan said. “Chase-Xaviar, Ogden, and Valkorau[1] caught me and Evan in a relatively empty hallway and made noises about making us miserable, but Evan bloodied Ogden’s lip so fast he didn’t even see it coming. Then I made vague threats they found credible because I can be creepier than a spotless doll found in a burnt out building when I want.” Angie snickered.

[1] Megan winced, but didn’t look surprised.

“Like what?” Megan said. She sounded curious and scandalized, and did not even blink at his great goof-em-ups. No accounting for taste.

“I very calmly told them that if they continued, they’d regret messing with me more than they could possibly imagine, and then grinned at them, and they decided to leave. No one else ever messed with Evan or me again. That I know of.” He glanced at Angie.

“A few girls, pissing nobodies, did directly start talking shit to my face at one point, after school before I met up with the boys,” Angie said. “I got angrier than I’d ever been at that point in my life and got up in their faces and promised them an extensive torment by way of small animals that would in no way be magically controlled, just fed and politely asked for help. Then I explained that it would just be treated as harassment, not magical malfeasance, and that if it came to that I’d bring up the Exile. No one ever messed with me again after that.” She paused. “The worst after that point was being sidelined and ignored in group projects.”

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“I still can hardly believe you never found out,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “People must love the shit out of you, even thinking you were the Exiler.”

Megan continued looking away, shifting her attention to the sandwich in front of her. “I don’t know. I’m good at not noticing stuff, I guess.”

“You always were bad at finding stuff, I’ll grant you that,” Ryan said with a grin. “That’s pretty similar.”

Megan finally looked back up, to make a face at him, scrunching up her nose and mouth. “I’m feeling super guilty about all this and you’re making fun of me.”

Ryan let real fondness creep into his smile and his voice again, even as he said, “You know me, Megs. And don’t you deserve it?”

She sighed. “I guess I do. I have a hard time believing that was all it took.”

“To not get bullied?” Angie said, amusement in her tone, her eyes sparkling.

“Yeah,” Megan said, her voice real small again.

“We had a lot going for us,” Ryan said, shrugging and flipping out his index finger. “Many people knew we had been your friends. I’d surmise that Lauren didn’t want to actively bully us, she just didn’t want you to think about us or anyone to talk to us, and making it clear we weren’t acceptable targets would keep that sort of thing less likely.” Flip out the middle. “Also, at first, Evan’s sister had just died.” Megan flinched again at that. Just a bit. “Your encounter was months in, right Ange?” She nodded. “Same with me and Evan. No one at Asphodel was such a monster that they tried to pick on us right away, not even Chase-Xavier.

“People have never quite known how to deal with me,” Ryan continued, flipping out the ring finger. Then he flipped out the pinky. “Angie talks to critters, and is the daughter of an enchanter, so no one really knows what she’s capable of. She made it clear she would use those critters for revenge, and it’s easy for people to fear worse. Even today, people don’t necessarily trust sorcerers to obey the law.” Thumb. “Being called the Exiles probably helped, if anything.” He flipped out the index on his other hand. “Also, we try and cultivate a general don’t-fuck-with-us atmosphere in public.”

“So I’ve heard,” Megan said. “A really effective one, based on Aliyah’s girlfriend.”

“Yup!” Satisfied, Ryan stopped counting on his fingers, returning his attention to his food and slurping up a noodle, as quietly as he could. After a moment he went on. “In short, there wasn’t a social benefit in picking on us and there was a potentially significant but unknown cost for doing so, so mostly people left us alone.”

Angie’s first cinnamon roll was gone. After swallowing a bite, she said, “Evan was also a bit... prickly for a while, so even people who didn’t care about what Lauren thought gave us a wide berth, and by the time he had it together we’d already gotten good and scary.”

“So anyway, theories!” Ryan said. Angie sighed and Megan whimpered.

“You really going to go through all your nonsense?” Angie asked. Ryan just looked at her and bugged out his eyes and puffed out his cheeks. “Gods,” Angie said. “Get on with it.”

Megan closed her eyes as if that would protect her from the knowledge. “Yeah, get on with it,” she said, sounding miserable.

“Okay! Like I was saying this morning, there’s two forms of the Primary Hypothesis, the Primary Hypothesis Dominant, or Pee Aitch Dee for short, and Primary Hypothesis Passive, or Pee Aitch Pee. The PHD is that we were gaslighting bullies all along, and you never realized how terrible we were until Lauren came along and saved you.”

“Powers!” Megan whimpered.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “PHP, on the other hand, is less that we were actively mean and shitty and more that we were just a bunch of zeroes. I don’t think people liked to think that about you, though, that you’d support the Exile just because we kind of sucked.”

“I hate this,” Megan said.

“Me too!” Angie said. Megan just kept her eyes closed.

“Those are just the most common ones, of course,” Ryan continued. “So the Main Alternative Hypothesis, Em A Aitch, Mah if you’re a twit, or milliamp hour if you’re nasty, is that we were genuine friends up until the end of elementary school, and then we betrayed you terribly. Somehow. For some reason. Again, details vary, and tend toward incoherence.”

He paused a long moment with a thoughtful look on his face which forestalled anyone else from speaking, then said, “Truth be told, a healthy chunk of the communication between middle schoolers trended toward incoherence, from what I overheard in my three years of moving among them, but not of them, Gorillas in the Midst[1] style, so it’s not entirely surprising.”

[1] “Gorillas in the Midst” is a documentary about a coterie of Awakened Silverback Gorillas who successfully infiltrated a major Hollywood production studio. The gorillas learned the ins-and-outs of filmmaking and studied the workers and executives in their natural environment for a number of years. Then they wrote an extended monograph about the experience which won the Le Bon Prize for Anthropology and forced the Fredonic Academic establishment to re-evaluate their assumptions regarding the scholarly capabilities of Awakened non-Homo Sapiens primates. Finally they released the documentary about themselves, which they made, to rousing critical and commercial success. They did this all without being discovered before the release of the monograph.

This is particularly notable in that Silverback Gorillas were previously known as being among the worst of all species of primate at blending into human societies. The denouement of the documentary is the revelation that this reputation was intentionally cultivated an international (gorilla nations, admittedly, which are not large, as most gorillas do not, of course, Awaken) compact devoted to pranking humanity to get us back for developing natural language which results in us all becoming sapient and growing a soul, rather than growing a soul allowing us to become sapient and learn language, as it works for most animals. After the movie’s release many thousands of humans (and more than a few dolphins) who were, in fact, well disguised Silverback Gorillas revealed themselves.

All that said, the achievements of the film and monograph were somewhat undercut by the revelation that at least two of the gorillas involved in the documentary were in fact retired human ninja disguised as gorillas disguised as movie production workers, who were largely in it for a laugh.

“That’s probably enough,” Angie said. “I don’t need to hear you recount the various minor theories that make us out to be greater and greater monsters.”

“That, please,” Megan said. “Hearing more is just flagellating myself. I know I fucked up. I fucked up so bad.”

“Bingo,” Angie said. “Moving on. What did Aliyah say to bring this up? Also, you should eat your snack.”

Megan chuckled, a little, despite the tears still in her eyes. “Okay Mom,” she said, then picked up her vada pav and took a bite. Ryan used the opportunity to eat more ramen. When she swallowed the bite, Megan said, “It was the stuff that Aliyah’s girlfriend was saying. I suppose it all must come down to the ‘don’t-fuck-with-us’ attitude you ‘cultivated.’ She was saying stuff like she thought Evan would rather shoot people than talk to them, and that you seem like you know secrets about everyone. Ones that would ‘ruin your life’ if they got out.”

“Really?!” Ryan asked, a grin spreading across his face despite himself. “That’s so great to hear! That’s exactly what I’m going for! It’s so nice to have one’s work appreciated in one’s own lifetime!” Beside him, Angie giggled.

Megan regarded him, expressionless, for a long moment. “You know,” she said, “I think I’ve kind of sanded off your edges in my memories. Your weird, weird edges.”

“You mean the reasons I like him so much?” Angie said, her tone again amused. “That was silly of you. You’ve been hanging out with the popular kids too much, Megan.”