CHAPTER 16

In Which a Dream Comes True

Tuesday, September 8th, 1615 PR

MEGAN. MORNING.

The morning after the first day of school, Megan stepped out her front door in her cutest white cardigan and pleated skirt combo to find her friends Evan, Ryan, Angie, and Chris(!) standing in a circle (or, technically a square, she supposed) outside, under the young elm across the lane. They didn’t look up at the sound of her door, so she trip-tropped down the front stairs toward them, her heels making enough noise that they ought to have noticed—but they still didn’t look up. She click-clacked up to them, her hands clasped, feeling apprehensive for some reason.

Turned out she was right to be. Even as she ran up, they kept their bodies turned toward each other, their circle closed. Chris and Angie, closest to her, turned their heads and looked at her over their shoulders, turning their bodies only enough to not crane their necks. “What do you want?” Angie asked, her tone flat, as Evan and Ryan regarded Megan past Angie, their expressions just as flat. If not cold then certainly not warm.

Megan’s heart seemed to skip a beat, but she tried to summon up her confidence of old and play it off. “You’re my friends,” she said, attempting a casual, jokey dismissiveness, smiling in what she hoped was an arch manner. Or maybe wry? Something like that. “What do you think I want?”

“But they’re not, are they?” Chris asked, scorn in his voice, the corner of his lip drawing back in a faint, disbelieving sneer, as he turned his body sideways, his shoulders facing Angie but his head turned toward Megan. “You haven’t talked to them once in these halls,” he continued, looking around at the halls of Asphodel Middle School, which they were standing in, just outside Mst. Martina’s music room. “You turned your back on them, left them loser outcasts, right after Evan’s sister died, while you hung out with the rich, popular girls and threw yourself at Lauren’s brother.”

Megan went silent, shocked, stunned, for a long moment, staring at them all wide-eyed. No please, not—

“It, it wasn’t like that!” she said. He couldn’t think— “Derrek was just sweet and kind, and, and um, handsome, you know, it was just that. It was hopeless because he was a Light Bearer and older, so he could have a much cooler better girlfriend than me.” Chris looked skeptical. Maybe trashing herself to defend herself wasn’t really a great strategy.

And her choice of priority in what to respond to first was a bad one, she realized. “But we were going to all be friends again. We made up. We know we’ll work it out, because of the, the thing. The magic thing.”

“Right, just because you pulled some trick with our bell charms,” Chris said, rolling his eyes. “Like any two-turkey sorcerer could.”

“No, but Dr. Roi said—”

“Listen,” Chris said, “Like, thanks for the intro. These guys can hang. But you did them damn near the worst you could do to anyone, so we don’t really want to be around you. You can keep hanging out with the rich girls or whatever, it doesn’t really matter to me. You’ll find some other rich boy to latch onto.” He shook his head and exchanged a meaningful glance with Evan. “‘Bout what you’d expect from a civilian.”

“But, it’snot—I’mnotlikethat!” Megan said, not even pausing for breath. “Lauren just likes me I just had a crush on Derrek! It—” She started choking up— “It was just so hard to see them after Virginia died, and Lauren was so—was so decisive! And worked hard to distract me with happy fun things and before I knew it months had passed. And I never seemed to see them! You!”

She looked from Chris to her oldest friends, desperate. She should be addressing them directly. He was new, but they knew her. “I thought you all were avoiding me. That you were angry at me, and that you were right to be. I didn’t realize you’d been… you were being ostracized so badly for such a long time.” Megan looked away, shame overcoming her. “I didn’t know how to approach you. And I just let that indecision stretch, until I figured you must never want to see me again.”

“You weren’t wrong.” Angie spat, almost hitting Megan’s feet. “You weren’t wrong about any of that. Now git. Go be Lauren’s pet. That’s all the use there is for a little weakling like you. Not strong enough to even try and face us for three shitting years.”

“Yeah,” Evan said softly. “You wouldn’t even be able to go out with us, so why would we bother spending time with you? Even if you hadn’t cold shouldered us for three years?”

“Going out with you…?” Megan said, knowing what he meant and asking anyway, the terror that they were going to die now mixing in with the very real terror she was feeling that she would be unable to sway them, at this point. “What—?”

“Hunting, obviously,” Chris said, voice dripping with disdain. “They’re going to be my party, they’re fucking excellent.”

“Yeah,” said Steve, the rat-headed kobold, who had wandered up to them while they were talking. “Angie’s really going places.” He twitched his nose and wagged his tail in excitement. He had a big rat’s head with a pink twitching nose, which was kind of scary and kind of cute at the same time, but his tail was like a golden retriever’s, its long tawny fur making a swishing noise as it swung back and forth.

“The birds made me their queen,” Angie said, wearing a circlet made of flowers. A bunch of song birds—robins and sparrows and cardinals and chickadees and blackbirds and more—carrying a sort of robe or mantle made out of woven grass—like a bird’s nest, only fresh and not dried out—descended from the air above Angie and settled the robe around her shoulder. The birds all perched on her shoulders and head, singing while she spoke. “Now I command an army of bird spirits that will distract the Beasts for us, then Evan will shoot them and Chris will stab them. It’s foolproof.”

“And I’m working on a robot suit,” Ryan said. Megan realized he wore some sort of robotic armor. It didn’t look like a full suit so much as a set of laser tag gear. Just definitely more… robotic.

Evan held up a revolver as long as Megan’s forearm. “Now why don’t you get out of here, before I have to fire this at a tree or something to scare you off. Like a racoon.”

Megan opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say. She was amazed she wasn’t crying already; she was on the verge. And she couldn’t take her eyes off Evan’s terrifying revolver.

“Maybe you should just put her out of her misery,” Ryan said, looking gravely at Evan. Evan and Steve nodded solemnly. “She’s so fucking pathetic, thinking we’d want to be friends with her again. It’d really be a mercy. I mean, look. It doesn’t look like any of her other friends are going to want her around anyway, judging by the expressions on their faces.”

Megan spun around, and her stomach fell to find several dozen kids she knew surrounding them, all staring at Megan with disgusted looks on their faces. So many people that she wouldn’t want to think poorly of her. Among them was Beth, along with Mercy Seerson and Yvette Karga and Wintre Ion Callerui and Katier and even Tammy Whiteshrine, of all people.

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“Yeah,” Angie said behind her, a matching disgust in her voice. “Looks like they figured out you’re just a status chasing little lamb, Megs, who let her former best friends be shunned for years. Do you want Evan to just end it for you? I mean, yeah, it’s technically murder, but no one will mind. Your parents have busy lives, they’ll barely notice. You don’t even have any other friends now. No jury would convict him, really.” As she spoke, Tammy and Mercy exchanged a glance and nodded to each other, before turning around and starting to walk away. In twos and threes, the others turned away too. Megan looked at Beth pleadingly, but Beth just rolled her eyes and turned away last.

Megan noticed, as she turned to look at Angie and them again, that there were eyes gleaming in the darkened window of the computer lab, peering through, watching her, faintly glowing with an eerie green light. Clearly not human eyes, but close enough to be disturbing. Then she was distracted by the fact that Evan was already pointing that petrifying handcannon at her, and she froze in terror. “N-no…” she managed to whimper. “Please.”

“No,” Angie said, mocking. “Please.” The birds perched all over her enrobed shoulders twittered in a birdsong analog of laughter.

“It’s really for the best,” Chris said, his tone gentle, kind. “You’re such a mess. Everyone will be relieved they don’t have to deal with you anymore. And you’ll have peace. Just go claim your Sanctuary. You’ll never need to worry about Beasts or guns or friends again.”

“No,” Megan whimpered, as she watched Evan’s finger tense on the trigger. She saw the trigger give, seemed to watch in slow motion as the hammer began to fall.

MEGAN. TOO DAMN EARLY.

Megan opened her eyes with a gasp. She was of course in her bed, in her night-black bedroom. Entwined in her sheets, she lay on her back, her hips and legs twisted onto the side, her lower back aching from the weird position. “Fuck,” she said out loud.

She’d tossed and turned enough that she was thoroughly mummified in her sheets. Her hands were clenched into fists around thick bunches of her hair, thoroughly wrapped in her silvery locks, like she’d always done when she was really upset and crying as a child. She’d bunned her hair when she’d gone to bed like usual—somehow, she’d completely undone the buns and made a complete mess of her hair while she’d dreamed.

“Fuck,” she said again, feeling a spark of anger, as she tried to loosen her grip on her own hair. Her hands were so tight and cramped she found it difficult to move them right away. “That was some fucking cliche bullshit, brain.” It took her time to extract her hands from her hair fully—they continued to ache. She shook them, then set to work unwrapping herself from her sheets. It took her at least a full minute.

By the point Megan managed to fully extract herself and sit up, she looked at her alarm clock and found that it was 4:19 a.m. Angie’s birthday minute, her brain instinctively supplied—another childish thing they’d used to pay attention to that she hadn’t thought about for three years. “I don’t know what sort of omen that is,” she muttered at the clock. She felt exhausted. She’d found herself unable to stop fretting about Evan the evening before, and to make matters worse, her phone had stayed utterly silent. No calls or texts at all, not from Angie, not from Chris, not from Evan or Ryan, not even from Lauren or Beth or the Katies or anyone.

Megan glared at her phone. It was currently plugged in, sitting on the nightstand, and playing layered cello music. She had an old off-brand smartphone. Did basic stuff like texting, but didn’t have anything cool. Couldn’t run the newest apps, only got like a fifth of the ones that IPhones got. She couldn’t even remember what the stupid thing was called anymore—the cheap branding had worn away in the first six months, over two years ago. She’d for a brief minute in algebra the day before fantasized about Chris maybe buying her a new phone as a gift, before scolding herself for being dumb and greedy and trying to pay attention to the teacher’s spiel. Before starting to daydream again a few minutes later.

She had to sit in front of him in class, there was no question. Megan was realistic. She also felt ridiculous. She’d known him for a day! She’d just never experienced anything like that moment with the bells. And he was so hot! It wasn’t fair.

She was doing her best to distract herself from the dream with this line of thought, from the silence from everyone. Megan sighed. She kinda wished they’d brought up the Exile up at lunch after all, gotten it out of the way. Though that would have been a tough sell to Angie. Still, addressing it right away might have made things go better. Maybe?

Megan sighed again. She felt so out of it. Fretting about should-have-dones wasn’t going to do her any godsdamned good, so she pushed herself out of bed, grabbed her phone to turn off the music, then stepped over to where her guitars stood on their stands. She owned a nice enough electric—all shimmery and blue-violet like her eyes—and a magnificent acoustic made of Indic rosewood—her favorite possession. The nicest thing her father had ever done for her by far was give it to her as a present for her fifteenth birthday, when she’d come of First Age. It was beautiful to look at and beautiful to hear, and the primary reason she didn’t have a better phone—it had been quite expensive.

The two guitars flanked her amp, which had been a present from Virginia when she’d been ten and the reason she’d learned to play guitar in the first place—Virginia had gotten a new amp, and for whatever reason she’d decided to offer the old one to Megan. Megan had been so excited—Virginia had thought Megan might be able to make music.

Megan flinched away from that line of thought, of Virginia, then picked up the acoustic and then sat back down on the edge of the bed, pulling the supple leather strap attached to it over her head and disastrous hair. She flexed the stiff fingers of her left hand, letting the neck rest in the crook between her thumb and forefinger, then those of her right, stretched her right arm while she was at it, and then started, slow at first, to strum the strings. She started out noodling around. After a bit she settled into a nice, soothing chord progression, and just lost herself in the act of making music for a while.

Megan loved music. She wasn’t sure that her tastes were very sophisticated. She was happy listening to almost any old thing. Her music collection, including stuff she owned on vinyl or minidisk as well as her digital collection, was extensive and eclectic, spanning many decades and most genres, though the bulk of it consisted of pop, pop-rock, folk-rock, and folky singer-songwriter types.

She loved spending hours at a time poking around on different playlists on Streamifier and Pandoron and Bandfort—her phone couldn’t run any of those services’ apps. Most of her spending money went to music. She had had an unspoken agreement with her frien—with Lauren and them—that they would cover her costs when she couldn’t afford to do a group outing, and she’d introduce them to good music she found. Sure, she was always excited when one of her friends introduced her to something new, too, but it was usually the other way around.

Megan didn’t have a favorite song, she had a favorite song of the moment. And as a result, she was uncertain what she should be bringing to the hang sesh that day after school. She didn’t want to fuck this up because she chose a song they all thought was dumb. She’d fucked up in enough other ways already that she didn’t need to add any fuel to the fire. Angie and the boys had loved music, too—they’d all gotten it from Virginia.

Megan flinched again, hurried her thoughts along. Angie and Ryan had said they’d been getting into a lot of stuff. That was pretty exciting. Chris probably wanted to find new music too. But despite what he’d said, she still couldn’t help worrying he’d respect her less if she brought something too mundane or mainstream, or something he didn’t like. And she had no idea what he might like.

Megan sighed, her fingers still picking out a quiet melody. She felt tired, but she needed to get her mind off all that stuff if she wanted to get any more sleep. She redoubled her focus on the music she was making, feeling out pleasant progressions of relaxing chords. She was getting better at improvising, but she wouldn’t say she was good at it. Still, this was something, what she was doing. It wasn’t nothing. It was kind of nice. Hopefully it wasn’t just something she’d heard elsewhere and was copying without realizing it.

After a little while longer, she brought her little fancy to an end, winding down into something that resolved well, a nice, soothing chord at the finish. Megan sighed once again, replaced her guitar on its stand, grabbed a hair brush, and crawled back under the covers. With her legs covered, she tamed her hair enough to get it back in some facsimiles of its normal buns, humming her little fancy, thinking about whether there was more to be done with it, whether there was a lyrical melody she could match with it, what words might be appropriate to the tune. Then she settled in. After a little longer, she managed to drift back off to sleep, which allowed her to catch nearly another hour and a half of sleep before her alarm went off.

She dreamed of music.