EVAN. TIME TO BE CONFUSED.

Chris blinked at him, looked similarly confused. “Yeah, smoking hot!” he said, with feeling, as he led the way onto the car. They found themselves alone at that late hour, which was unsurprising. “Enchanting. Gorgeous. Radiant. It’s dizzying. My head’s been spinning all day. She’s amazing,” he continued as they grabbed the nearest seats. Then, quieter, almost to himself, and in a tone with more than a little awe in it, he added, “And that ass though!”

As they settled into their seats and the doors closed, Chris continued in a more normal voice, “If I were in your shoes and had an old friend who hurt me like that and then she tried to make amends without warning and she’d gotten super hot in the meantime, and then some other dude I didn’t know had shown up the same day and then suddenly she was paying attention to him instead, I’d be confused and angry and do something dumb to catch her attention too.” He paused, frowning at the back of the seat in front of him. “Hmm. I’m kind of the asshole in this situation, aren’t I?”

Evan had only been half paying attention. His other half was actually thinking about what Megan actually looked like now, independent of her... Meganosity. It wasn’t like she was actually their estranged sister—it just felt like it. As he thought, the train left the station, the noise it made so much more noticeable with the car so empty.

And as he thought, the realization of how beautiful Megan was struck Evan like a bolt of lightning. After over two years of barely having contact with her, the knowledge emerged in his mind as if he’d struck a match and lit a candle in a dark room in a strange house, revealing its contents to him for the first time. It was a bizarre sensation, and he kind of felt dizzy again. “Oh. Fuck. You’re right,” he said. He didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it earlier in the day when she’d first shown up. It felt weird, like something was wrong with his brain.

It wasn’t like he didn’t notice pretty girls in general. He didn’t do anything about noticing, but he noticed. He absolutely should have noticed Megan, but it was only now, in hindsight, thinking about it, that he registered Megan’s breathtaking beauty.

Chris looked back to him again, frowning. “Well, you don’t have to just flat out agree with me. I didn’t know you had all his history and drama with her, or even that you were into her at all. You didn’t show it.”

“No no no no no, no no no,” Evan said, shaking his head, emphatic. “I was not, I’m not…” He paused, briefly, struggling to find his words. “Sorry, I’m really tired.”

“Sure,” Chris said, still frowning at him. “Pain and blood loss and head trauma and drinking a healing potion and being awake into the Moon’s Watch will do that to a person.” He tapped his temple with a finger, two quick flicks.

Evan took a long moment to formulate his thoughts. “I’m not into Megan.” He looked at Chris, right into his crazy, ridiculous eyes, to emphasize the next bit. “Megan’s just… Megan to me. She’s like my sister. I was saying that you’re right that she’s gorgeous now. I hadn’t realized it until you pointed it out.”

Chris stared back at him with an expression that could be fairly described as flabbergasted. “You hadn’t realized it? She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met! How could you not have realized it?” The train pulled into the next stop, the rhythm of acceleration and deceleration, momentum and inertia nearly as familiar to Evan as breathing.

Evan frowned at Chris. “Megan’s my oldest friend. Or she ties with Angie, at least. I don’t really remember life before I knew her—she features as much in my memories of childhood as my sisters. I’d be as weirded out by kissing her as I would by kissing Cali.” He paused. “I looked at her and just saw my friend Megan, somehow. I mean, my friend who hurt me terribly by cutting me out of her life for three years, but still. She was always cuter than the rest of us. It just… didn’t occur to me, I guess.” Evan glanced toward the window, feeling something akin to embarrassment at the fact of not recognizing Megan’s attractiveness. Maybe it was that she wiped off her makeup? No, she looked amazing without it….

“That’s wild, guy. I can hardly keep my eyes off her,” Chris replied, slowly shaking his head as Evan looked back. “She wasn’t even wearing makeup. And then that crazy thing with our bells happened, and…” He trailed off.

Evan looked at the other boy. Really looked at him. Chris’s eyes were on the seat ahead of him again, unfocused. Evan glanced at the seat himself—someone had written “I think dogs should vote” on the back with some sort of orange paint marker.

“Yeah,” Evan said, at a loss. “Sure. The bell thing, where I sneezed.” The train started up again. This jump would be a little longer. Not that he didn’t believe them about it, it just… hadn’t impacted him all that much.

“No, seriously!” Chris turned his head and looked at Evan, his strange eyes solemn and sincere. Deliberative. “Okay, so,” he continued. “I was given Dyrnwyn by a dragon.”

Now Evan blinked, stared at Chris in surprise. “R-really?” he said, after a moment. “That’s fucking wild.”

“It was pretty fucking wild,” Chris said, matter of factly. “And I saw more of them on the way to the sword. And even compared to that, the bell thing with Megan this morning was… was shivers.”

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Evan just continued to stare at him. “Shivers?” he prompted after a long, confused moment.

Chris blinked back. “Like, like shivers. Like, gives you shivers, like it was mystical. Like…” and now his eyes unfocused again, “Truly magical.”

Evan nodded slowly. After another few seconds, he said, “I... do.. not think we say that ‘round here.”

Chris quirked his lips. “You don’t call magic shit ‘shivers’ up here? Dang.” He paused, shook his head a little. “That’s silly.”

Despite himself, Evan laughed. “Sure! I suppose it is silly that we don’t refer to the supernatural as ‘shivers.’”

“Yeah, that’s how we do it in the Triangle,” Chris said, nonchalantly. “So… I want to come around to… to the Exile again, if you don’t mind. I’m still having a hard time with it.”

“Sure,” Evan said. “It’s nearly as fucking wild as dragons. I don’t want to talk that much more about it, but if you have high level questions, shoot. Ryan can dig into details with you.”

“Okay. Sure. Hmm,” Chris said, and thought for a minute.

“I mean,” he said, “Just what the fuck? Everyone went along with this for three years? Including you guys? Did you ever confront… anyone? About this?”

Evan stayed silent for a bit.

“No,” he said at last. “We did not. We were twelve, and heartbroken, and wallflowers. I mean, Ryan wasn’t, but Ryan has never not been a challenge for most people.” Chris snorted. “We tried to keep him in line. We knew Megan was heartbroken, and the…. it happened gradually. We barely noticed at first, because, like I said, we were heartbroken wallflowers, and our focus wasn’t really on socializing. In fact, I was fucking sick of people who barely knew me treating me to empty apologies, so at first it was a relief, before we realized… what was going on.

“We were scared, then. I was one of the taller kids around in seventh grade, was always big for my age until I wasn’t, but Angie and Ryan were minute. We didn’t know why it was happening, what we’d done wrong. We hadn’t heard from, or even really seen, Megan for weeks. We knew she was hanging out with Lauren Bakili, her and Beth and Katie—Kay I mean, that’s a new nickname from middle school because she was hanging out with Ryuyama, too. I’m still getting used to it.

“We didn’t know if the silence was related at first. After a time, people started gossipping about us within earshot. Saying all kinds of crazy bullshit about what we did to Megan. At that point we figured Kay was spitting venom about us.”

“The fuck even?” Chris pondered that for a bit. “You still didn’t… confront them? The gossips? Kay? Lauren? Megan?”

Evan shook his head. “No. We were scared. We didn’t want to make things worse by making a scene. And more importantly, we didn’t know if Megan… knew. If she for some reason wanted it, or was allowing it, or didn’t want it but couldn’t stand up to Lauren, or didn’t know. Our friendship was in a quantum superposition, and we were too afraid to find out which way it would go.”

Chris looked puzzled. “Come again?”

Evan tried, “We had a Schrodinger’s friendship, and we didn’t want to chance that it was dead.”

Chris nodded in relieved understanding.

“Angie and I decided pretty early that Megan had to come to us. We would give her until she was ready, even if that was never.”

“Sure,” Chris said. “I get that, I suppose. Okay. I still don’t… What the fuck is Kay’s deal, though? Why did she do you like this? Why did Lauren go along with it?”

Evan thought a little bit. “So me and Angie were Megan’s best friends. But even in kindergarten, we spent a lot of time with Katie—Kay, I mean. And then both Kay and Beth starting in first grade, and then Kay and Beth and a girl named Tammy Whiteshrine starting in second.

“Kay’s deal is that she’s terrible. She’s never satisfied, and her parents are awful. I never once saw them express any kindness toward anyone but Megan, ever. Including Kay. For all that I saw them, which wasn’t much. Her daughter’s closest friends, and never once a smile for any of us but Megan. Because let me tell you, not a lot of people wanted to be friends with her.”

“Huh. Does Megan’s father really put pressure on her to be friends with his boss’s daughter?” Chris sounded like he was considering punching someone.

Evan immediately shook his head. “No, that’s the thing. It all came from Megan. She appreciated Katie’s dad for giving her father such a good job—I don’t know whether he had much to do with it, but we were kids.

“More than that, though, Megan wanted to help everyone be a better person. And her biggest project was Katie. Kay.”

Evan shrugged. “So for a long time, while Megan usually set the agenda, we did a lot of what Katie—Kay—wanted to do, the three of us little wallflowers—me and Angie and Beth, not Ryan—going along with whatever game or other nonsense she wanted because Megan went along. Often it was something self-aggrandizing. And if we expressed disinterest or displeasure, Kay would pitch a fit.” Evan realized he could refer to her by her first initial, like he was unwilling to dignify her with a name. That would get the nickname into his bleary head.

“It all changed in third grade, when Ryan joined our class. Despite being weird and hostile for a while, he put up with us until he was our friend. What he never put up with was Kay’s bullshit, and once he started resisting, the rest of us did too. It became a matter of Megan mediating between Kay and the rest of us whenever we played with her.” Evan fell silent, not sure what else to say.

After a bit, Chris said, “Hmm. And she thinks she was Megan’s best friend. So when she got the opportunity, she started lying about you to anyone who would listen. Lauren, for instance. Surely...”

“I assume she lied her pants off to get Lauren to pull the trigger. Dunno for sure, but seems like a safe assumption. We’re quite sure she was the source of many of the nasty rumors about us, which means among other things, she didn’t even obey Lauren’s stricture not to talk about us with anyone. Not that many people did.”

“Shit,” Chris said. “I can’t believe people gossiped about you where you could hear them!”

“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. Can we stop talking about it for now? It makes me feel bad. Ryan will be happy to go on about it for ages, I’m sure.”

Chris stayed silent for a bit, and then said, “Sorry man. Didn’t mean to bum you out."

Evan shrugged.