EVAN. HEADING TO SCHOOL TIME.

Evan Cadell’s stupid, ancient phone buzzed. He’d put it on silent already, but he wasn’t sure you could turn off the vibrate. He’d certainly get an Information Phone[1] for his birthday, if not sooner, he knew that, but that wasn’t until December and he was still annoyed pretty much any time he had to deal with the thing.

[1] InPhone is the official nickname. Usually actually called an IPhone because InPhone (like Info? Infone?) seemed like a good idea on paper and Pear bought it from the branding firm but it’s actually kinda hard to say and be understood, and the public hates it.

He was walking toward Persephone High, or rather, toward the trolley stop nearest to the school, where he was supposed to meet Ryan and Angie. He pulled out his phone to see which of the four people who could possibly be texting him had texted him. Surprising him not at all, it turned out to be the most likely and frequent candidate, Ryan. Surprising him more than he would have believed he could be surprised, it said, I think Angie’s talking to Megan.

Evan stopped walking as the world whirled around him, leaving him a tad dizzy. After taking a few deep breaths, Evan keyed the numbers on his phone, cycling through the letters as fast as he could to ask Whz, hitting send before he realized he’d cycled past the letter ‘y.’

Almost instantly, Ryan’s reply came. It read: Because she’s been stopped outside Megan’s house for like five minutes.

Evan replied, Okay?

Ryan’s reply read, Just, like, prep your brain for a flipped out Angie. Or maybe a conversation with Megan.

Evan stared at the message. “Shit,” he said. “That’s.... Shit.”

MEGAN. BEFORE SCHOOL.

“Ahh…” Megan said. “Sh-sure? I mean. I’m. What? I might prefer the confrontation?”

“No,” Angie said. “You won’t.”

Megan decided she should wait for a moment and consider that rather than babbling further. She didn’t know how to handle this. What shouldn’t she know? What would have happened if she’d known it? What was going on?!

“And if they do confront you, I’m leaving them to it and going to school,” Angie said, turning so that she was actually facing up the avenue in the direction they needed to go. “If I get into it, I’m not going to be able to get through the school day, and it’s our first fuuucking day of hiiigh school, Megan.”

Angie sucked in air and heaved a sigh. “If you don’t know—unless you’ve changed more than I can imagine—you won’t be able to get through either once you find out. And if you—” Her voice caught in her throat for a moment, as she continued facing away from Megan, looking up the avenue. “If you do know, then you’ve already changed more than I can imagine.” That couldn’t have sounded more like an accusation. She started walking.

Megan hesitated for a moment, uncertain, then moved her dumb stubby legs and tried to keep pace with Angie. For most of the rest of the block they walked in silence, then Angie said, “You might want to say something.”

After too long a pause, Megan managed to say, “I don’t—I’m totally thrown. I’m not sure what to say.”

“Join the party,” Angie said. For another five paces there was silence, and then she continued, “I can’t think of anything either, not that won’t lead us back to me not getting through the day because I’m too upset.” She stopped, spun toward Megan and exclaimed, “Powers, Megan! The first day of high school?” while throwing up her palms.

“I’m sorry,” Megan said, flinching away, dropping her gaze as they faced each other again. “I just…”

Angie said, “You knew that if I didn’t go out of my way I’d walk right by your place. That the only other path for me that made sense was to walk east to the tracked lane. But why would I want to get buzzed by trolleys?” A moment of silence—Megan heard children shouting the next lane over, shrill and excited. “Were you going to run back inside if I told you to piss off?” Her voice was tight.

Megan, barely, nodded.

“Did you wait until we were all fifteen, right next to your home, because you were afraid I’d hurt you?”[1] Angie asked.

[1] Up through the age of fourteen, violence between children is, while deeply frowned upon and always punished, accepted as inevitable. However, spontaneous violence between adults, including firstagers, is strictly verboten, and for firstagers will result in the revocation of their probationary adult status for one year. For fullage adults, any sort of violence outside of an official duel results in house arrest and unenviable, potentially dangerous work assignments (usually sewer maintenance, sewers being a pretty easy place for Beasts to infiltrate) or outright exile from the city-state.

That question felt like a gut punch, and Megan whipped her face up to look at Angie, probably showing every bit of the shock she felt. Angie didn’t wipe the fear off her own face quickly enough for Megan to miss it. “No!” Megan said, the word bursting out of her. “Never!” She paused, raised her chin slightly. “Hell, I’d deserve it if you hit me! I totally deserve it. Go ahead!”

“Oh, do shit right outside with that pissy garbage! I’m not going to hit you!” Angie said, looking appalled. Mascara dripping down her face showed that she too had begun leaking tears. “And even if I wanted to, I'd challenge you to a duel so I could do it legally.”

“That would be fine,” Megan said, her voice coming out so tremulous it was like she was trying to speak in vibrato. Being slapped or something once right then would have been okay, and felt like a worthy punishment. Megan did not want to duel anyone or be hit repeatedly in the context of one, and she sure as fuck didn’t want to hit Angie. Maybe the duel could just be one slap and Angie could be declared the winner?

“I’m not going to do that either,” Angie said, the disdainful tone appropriate and, Megan supposed, unsurprising. She unslung her backbag and pulled a couple of tissues out of it, holding one out to Megan. “Like,” Angie continued, sniffling, “You know where I live. A knock on the door? Writing a letter? A shitting message on Social?”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Megan accepted the tissue, turned away, and blew her nose.

Angie said, “My profile is open for messaging to anyone enrolled in the school district, for exactly that reason. Boys from the other middle schools who didn’t know they shouldn’t talk to me sometimes made sad attempts to flirt by complimenting my hair in my profile pic.”

Megan accepted another tissue from Angie and used it to wipe up her ruined makeup, frowning as she did so. Why shouldn’t they talk to Angie? She couldn’t make herself ask, though, and instead answered the questions in a whisper: “I couldn’t think of what to say.” She turned back to Angie. “I spent half the summer staring at blank paper or documents or text fields,” she said, soft but not quite whispering anymore. She was looking at Angie’s triskele charm, as she couldn’t make herself look at Angie’s face. “Writing and rewriting and deleting, then writing by hand, crossing out and erasing and starting over—I used a whole notebook. There was never anything I could send. That I could risk sending.”

Angie sighed, and held out another tissue, which Megan again accepted. As Megan finished wiping her face, Angie turned away, looking down the lane back the way they’d came. “I suppose I can’t fault you for that. Might have been for the best.”

Angie turned back, her own makeup wiped away, but her face more or less composed, and said, “We should get going. Ryan was going to wait for me up ahead, but if I take too long he might come along and interrupt us. He’ll be annoyed if he has to walk extra.” She started walking.

As she fell in step with her former friend, Megan said, “Oh no,” and it came out kinda sarcastic. She let out a squeak of embarrassment and slapped her hands over her mouth. She was trying to make up with them!

The corner of Angie’s mouth quirked upwards.

“I mean, um, is he, I guess, would that be. Um. Would that be that different from normal?” Megan said. “Annoyed was a pretty typical thing for Ryan to be, in my recall?”

Angie actually laughed. It wasn’t a big laugh, just a chuckle, kinda rueful, but… something. She then said, “Well, perhaps ironically, he’s gotten a lot better about that.” She did not go on.

After a few beats of her heart passed and Angie didn’t elaborate, Megan opened her mouth to ask her to, but Angie started speaking again just as Megan was about to. “How’s this going to go when we get to school, Megan? How are Lauren and your other friends going to react to you showing up with me and Ryan and Evan? What’re Beth and Katie gonna do?”

Megan didn’t respond for a moment. Then she said, “That’s a pretty good question. Lemme think.”

After a bit, Angie, sounding stunned, asked, “You haven’t—you haven’t even thought about it?!”

“No,” Megan said, her mind mostly on Lauren and the others now. “Not really. I was so worried about you guys and how you might react and how to not fuck this up that I didn’t really consider what they’d think.”

“Oh.” Angie sounded stunned.

They walked a half minute or so in silence.

“How?” Angie asked, her tone wondering. “How could you not? I—there’s no way I couldn’t.”

“Oh, I’m so good at not thinking about things now,” Megan said. She realized she sounded kind of dismissive and flippant, which wasn’t how she meant to sound, but trying to apologize for it seemed like a weird thing to do, so she just went on, saying, “Confused! I think they’ll mostly just be confused? I don’t think Lauren in particular will care beyond, you know, the weirdness that we went to the same middle school and never talked, that’ll confuse her, but she’ll probably get it quick once I explain. It’ll probably throw Beth the most, she took—” Megan’s throat caught, forcing her to try again. “She took it almost as hard as me. I probably should have talked to her about this, but… I dunno. I had to focus on you guys.”

Angie’s mouth hung open again. After a moment, she tried to speak. Megan wasn’t sure anyone had ever genuinely spluttered in her presence before, but that seemed like the best way to describe Angie’s reaction, before she even managed any words. “Are you sh—are you kid—?!” She snapped her mouth closed and sucked in a swift breath through her nose.

“You really don’t know,” she said, and her voice was harsh. “Megan. Lauren will care.”

Megan wilted a touch. “Um, I know it seems like she would be a judgy person, being from such a prominent family and all, and I’ll admit she can be a touch uptight sometimes, but I think she’ll warm up quickly once I’ve managed to explain the situation. That’ll, um, that’ll be challenging and embarrassing for me, but… you guys can help, probably! And Beth will too, once she’s past the initial surprise. I’m sure. We’ve not—um, not talked much, at all, about the old days, but I’m sure she misses you guys too.”

“Megan,” Angie said. She was looking at Megan with a cold expression unlike anything Megan could remember her wearing when they were kids. “Lauren will care.”

Megan chewed on that for a moment, in a mental, metaphorical way, and found she did not care for the similarly metaphorical taste.

EVAN. TIME TO TEXT.

What’s Lauren gonna do if we show up with Megan? It took Evan a long time to boop the whole message out on the stupid numpad for his stupid antique flip phone.[1]

[1] Lots of people still had flip phones. It was fine. It just felt like an antique next to Ryan’s new hotness, or even Angie’s old hotness, and cycling through letters took so long.

Ryan’s reply took maybe two dozen seconds to arrive. Maybe. Dumb jerk. Smart money’s on a spit take if we can time it right.

No more than ten seconds later, another message arrived which said, Should be doable. Her and her friends’ profiles indicate they’ve gotten real into fancy coffees now that we’re firstagers. I bet they’ll have some. Five Tweeties[1] Lauren Bakili does a spit take?

[1] Nickname for a Golden Finch (Gf), a unit of currency with purchasing power roughly equivalent in value to ten United States dollars. Other units of currency include the Copper Turkeys (Ct) (Gobblers), worth approximately one dollar, Silver Eagles (Se) (Eggs), with a purchasing power of more or less around one hundred dollars, and Platinum Thunderbirds (Pt) (I mean, what do you think?), worth about 1000 dollars. Each type of coin also has associated ‘bits’, quartered versions of the coins with a quarter of the value.

Note, if you will, the price differential between the Silver Eagles and Gold Finches. This is important. Not directly to the story just at the moment, but just so you don’t get confused. If you’re used to standard fantasy currencies or real world economics, you might expect those metals to have a value relationship inverse to that. They do not.

Eventually, Evan managed to doot out, Don’t be dumb, that’s as much as the big bet. Who you think wins?

Me of course. That’s why I made the bet.

Evan rolled his eyes. They still talking? he replied.

She’s been moving. Hard to say—oh. Yeah. I can hear them.

Evan stared at that for a minute, sent back Send who won, then got walking again. He had people to meet.