CHAPTER 17
In Which a Bad Dad Joke is Bemoaned
EVAN. BEFORE SCHOOL.
Behind the three of them the kitchen door opened, and California said, “Morning. Any y’all checked those potaaaaw-toes?” She yawned in the middle of trying to say “potatoes.”
“Oh shit, sorry,” Evan said, hopping up and hustling around to the stove. He grabbed a flipper[1] and started stirring. He felt weird. This thing with how lovely Megan was, how they hadn’t realized it, confused him. It seemed unnatural—supernatural. It didn’t make sense without some sort of mystical cause. Did it have something to do with the bell thing? They’d seen her before that, though, that didn’t make sense...
[1] Evan was opposed to the word spatula, as it was used to describe what were two distinct things, in his mind. The flipper was for flipping stuff over or otherwise stirring it around. The scraper was for mixing batter or whatever and scraping it into something else. Two totally distinct things.
As if summoned by the thought, the doorbell rang. Behind him, Cali said, “The fuck?”
At the same time, Ryan said, “I’ll catch the taters, December. Get the door.”
Evan turned around to find Cali, wearing a light silky robe and some Rabite slippers, staring at Ryan questioningly, and Ryan returning the look with a quite mild one of his own.
Evan asked, “We’re just doing our months as nicknames again now, huh?”
“You jumped right to calling me ‘‘Ril’ last night,” Angie pointed out.
“I was out-of-my-mind exhausted last night,” Evan said as he put down the tongs and started heading toward the door, “And it seemed like the thing to do—” Cali was looking at him with an impatient expression, so he stopped talking just in time and instead said, “Cali, it’s gonna be Chris.”
Cali’s eyes widened. “Now we just have Light Bearers showing up at our door at all hours of the night and morning! This is our life all of a sudden,” she said, before yawning again and wandering back out of the kitchen with the cup of coffee she’d just snagged. A moment later the stairs up started creaking as she began to climb.
Evan walked past the stairs, up the short, narrow hallway to the front door. He opened it. Standing there with a pleasant, low-key excited expression on his face was Chris Gramyre. He wore some sort of gray designer shirt with the buttons off center and not totally vertical, with a sort of folded down section at the collar, exposing the contrast between the smokey exterior and the pale green-and-white checkered lining. It looked real sharp and real expensive. His jeans were also expensive, enough so that it was clear at a glance, which meant they were really expensive.
“Hey guy, how you feeling?” Chris asked with good cheer.
“Tired,” Evan replied, quieter than he meant to. “Thank you for saving my life last night.”
Chris blinked in mild surprise. “Of course, Evan. No one deserves to be slain by a Beast,” he said, his tone a blend of earnestness and solemnity.
Evan appreciated it anyway. “Come on in,” he replied, then yawned as Chris did so. “Sorry again about dragging you out and keeping you out so late,” he continued once he was done with the yawn.
Chris shrugged, his good cheer back in full force as he followed Evan down the hallway. “Nothing you need to apologize for. All in all I kinda had fun. You did all the hard work killing the Beast, and if anything, I was relieved to get that call. I’d just been sitting at home trying to figure out why I said such a dumb thing to Megan right before going home for the day. It was like the last thing I said to her.”
Evan slowed, looked over his shoulder at Chris with a quizzical expression. “And it was?” he inquired.
“Oh,” Chris said, sounding embarrassed. “I was telling her she should bring music for this afternoon, and she replied with ‘You got it, boss.’ And the fucking stupid thing my brain decided my mouth should say in response to that was, ‘Don’t call me boss, don’t call me chief, don’t call me late for dinner.’ That’s like a dad joke that even most dads would think was weak. A bad dad joke. Why did I make a bad dad joke?”
Chris said that last with such a genuinely haunted note in his voice, so sincere and yet so ridiculous coming from him, that Evan couldn’t help a bemused chuckle as he replied, “I really don’t know, man. Why did you say that?”
If Chris was bothered by Evan’s laughter, he didn’t show any sign. “I don’t know,” he said, with a tone of utmost despair. He shook his head, and then said, perfectly cheerfully, “So anyway, you got my mind off that, at least. Shall we?”
Evan started moving again, laughing more. “Well, you’re welcome, I guess?”
“Yeah, thanks! I slept great once I got to bed, didn’t obsess at all. I probably woulda been up all night fretting otherwise,” Chris said as they reached the kitchen. Ryan and Angie both were watching them as they came in, Angie from her stool and Ryan over scrambling the eggs. “I mean, I’m worried again, now that we’re talking about it.”
“About what?” Angie asked too casually.
“Oh. You know,” Chris said, a light flush touching his cheeks, “Just something embarrassing I said to Megan that I was telling Evan about. I just re-lived it once, you know?”
Angie scrunched up her nose in displeasure. Ryan looked devastated.
“Evan can fill you in later,” Chris said, a gracious gesture considering how embarrassed he still looked. “I just don’t want to be around.”
“Fine,” Angie said with a pout.
Ryan shook his head and sighed. “Quite rude. Anyway, if it’s not super apparent,” Ryan said, turning back to the stove, “We haven’t quite gotten to breakfast, Ser Gramyre. I hope you’ll indulge us for a bit.”
“Sure, if you don’t mind trying to be quick,” Chris said, wandering over to one end of the kitchen island, leaning there and looking around with curiosity. “I’d hate for her to leave before we get there.”
Evan glanced to the clock on the stove. “It’s six fifty seven. You gave us like forty minutes from your text. I think we’ll be fine.”
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
Chris shrugged, then sniffed afterward. “Smells good,” he said. “Hash and eggs? No bacon?”
All three of them turned and stared at him expressionlessly.
Chris’s cheeks turned red. “That was a real shitty thing to ask, huh?” he asked.
“Bacon is a weekend treat, at best,” Ryan said as he again turned back to the stove, sounding a little sad. “It’s definitely not something we get to have on a Tuesday.”
Angie sighed wistfully. “If only,” she murmured. Evan nodded in agreement.
“I apologize,” Chris said, still looking embarrassed. “I guess I assumed ‘cause you have that Information Phone?”
“Which I worked very hard to afford over the last year,” Ryan said, his tone a bit testy. Evan snorted. Angie snorted at the same time. They blinked at each other and laughed.
Chris regarded them both with bemusement, while Ryan gave them an annoyed look.
“Um,” Chris said. “Is that so? Doing what, if you don’t mind me asking? Just, uh, helping with the harvest? Do you hunt too?”
“No,” Ryan said, in his irritated-but-pretending-he-wasn’t voice. “I’ve been learning some coding, and making a little cash that way.”
“Ah, coding! Of course,” Chris said, looking interested. “Like that link thing, and your magnifier app. That’s cool! Did you need the phone for that? I mean, you clearly needed a phone for those apps.”
“It definitely helps,” Ryan said, his tone wry and dry.
“What kind of coding? You said you’re not selling them on the app store, did you do something for pay? How do you find coding gigs as a firstager? Your guardians help with that?” Chris asked, watching Ryan’s back as Ryan did cooking.
Evan exchanged a glance with Angie, who also seemed to be amused. “Lots of questions,” Angie remarked.
“I mean, I don’t really know that much about y’all,” Chris said, in the tone of someone trying not to sound like he was pointing out something obvious. “We only hung out for most of lunch yesterday, and I spent most of it talking about myself. I knew something had made your day less than ideal, but I had no clue that y’all had been on the outs with Megan for years up until yesterday fucking morning.” As he talked, Ryan apportioned out plates of food.
At that moment, Cali appeared in the doorway to the kitchen wearing real clothes, and immediately froze, staring at Chris with wide eyes. Ryan finished the last plate, and Evan hopped off his stool and went to grab them.
Chris looked at Cali and said, “Hi there. You must be Evan’s sister.” Evan grabbed two plates of food. Ryan tapped the fullest one and pointed to Angie. It had nearly twice as much as the other three, which made sense, with her having called that storm owl the night before. She would eat a lot.
“Yeah,” Cali said. Evan headed back around the kitchen island to where they were sitting. Cali continued, “So, are you and your sister fae nobility in bad disguises or what?” Evan, who had just delivered the plates to Angie and his own spot, busted out laughing, as did Angie. Ryan grabbed the other two plates while smirking.
Chris began laughing too. “That’s what Angie and your brother both said when I met each of them!” He shook his head, still chuckling. “You guys are something else!”
Angie got her giggling under control and said, not that loudly, “Oh thank the spirits I’m starving,” in one long rush of breath. She dug in.
Cali left the doorway and started edging around the room, keeping her eyes on Chris like he was some sort of wild animal.
“Um, you okay?” Chris asked, noticing the behavior.
Cali said, “You’re intimidating and kind of overwhelming. And I’ve only ever met one Light Bearer before.”
Chris, whom Evan had told about their dead Light Bearer sister the night before, wisely chose not to remark on that. “Well, my sister’s your age, at your school, I think, and she’s a Light Bearer,” he said instead, pleasant and friendly as you please. “You might say hi to her today. Then you’d have met three.”
“She’s too gorgeous and scary. I couldn’t possibly,” Cali said, shaking her head.
Chris looked mildly confused at that. “Well,” he said after a few moments, “I think she’d appreciate it. I think she felt a little unwelcome yesterday. Sounded like it from how she was talking, anyway.”
“Well, she wasn’t exactly welcoming herself,” Cali said, reaching her stool with her plate. Her tone was more awed than frightened, though she kept eyeing Chris warily. “She started the morning by stone cold walking away from a conversation with the Sixteenth Street Six, like, right in the middle of one of Zuny Ameliaster’s sentences, and I heard she tore Rylan Osterly and Glammer Callerui a new one for being like ‘the eighth…’ Group of people? In a row? To do something that wasn’t exactly clear, at least to hear Mikey Azshara relay what they said.”
Chris heaved a sigh.
“Cali,” Angie said, after swallowing a bite, “As you pointed out, you’re a teenager. You don’t have to stare at him like he’s a Beast on a leash.”
“I guess that’s true,” Cali said. “He does maybe seem nicer than his sister.”
“He’s been nothing but nice to us,” Angie said, laying a hand on Cali’s shoulder, before looking back at Chris.
Chris was rubbing the bridge of his nose. After a moment, he said, “I was given to understand that the people who talked to her, and this is a quote, ‘kinda sucked,’ and were mostly girls. And that the few boys she spoke to, quoting again, ‘really sucked.’ She was a little less clear about how she’d responded to those who ‘sucked.’” He sighed again. “Same as in Raleigh, it turns out.”
“By lunchtime she wasn’t smiling anymore,” Cali said, her voice softer, a somber expression on her face. “That morning she would smile at people, and they would go talk to her, and she’d stop smiling after a bit. She stopped smiling at anyone by lunch. Would just stare down anyone who approached.”
“You seem to have paid pretty close attention to her,” Chris said, his eyes focused on Cali across the kitchen island’s bar.
“She’s so lithe, and so pretty. And so lithe,” Cali responded with a wistful sigh, her eyes a little glassy.
“Maybe you could point out to her which boys are actually decent,” Chris said, giving Cali a smile. He then turned and looked at Ryan.
“To get back to the previous topic,” Ryan said, “If you must know, I have found a little work as an interweb security consultant.” He rose, his plate cleared. “Eat your breakfast before it gets cold, Cali.”
At more or less the same time, Cali muttered, “I get the feeling you’re telling me she’s not into girls. Le sigh.” She started eating.
“You eat too fast,” Angie said to Ryan. She still had about two thirds of what she’d started with, which meant she’d eaten like three-quarters as much as Ryan already.
“I was hungry,” Ryan said, “And Chris wants to catch Megan,” he continued, tipping his head toward Chris as he rinsed off his plate. “So we should move.”
“Blech,” Angie said, wrinkling her nose. “I hate scarfing my food.” She took another bite. “You still need to chew better,” she said at Ryan while chewing.
“We’ll wait,” Evan said, and took one of the last bites off his own plate. He chewed, swallowed, and said, “Don’t talk with your mouth full, you’ll choke.” Angie stuck her tongue out at him, which was gross because she still had food in her mouth.
“That’s cool,” Chris said back to Ryan, the general disarray seeming to roll off his back. “Did you develop that app for that?”
“No, that was a personal project,” Ryan said with a smirk. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must gather my things, finish my face, and find some shoes.” He sort of waggled one besocked foot up in the air, then strolled out of the room.
About the same time, Evan finished up and went to rinse his own plate. As he did, Chris said behind him, “I get the feeling Ryan keeps his cards close to the chest, huh?”
While Evan put his stuff in the dishwasher, Angie laughed in response and said, “Yeah, you could say that. You might want to ease up on the prying a little. I know we’ve got a magic birthday bond and all, and you did us a serious favor last night, but even so we’ve known you about eighteen hours.”
Chris’s face colored a little again, which made him look much younger. “Aw, that was prying? My apologies. Usually people are way more inclined to tell me about themselves, that’s all. I suppose if he doesn’t want to tell me about it I better respect that.”
“Good plan,” Cali said. She then went back to eating, her eyes focused on nothing in particular.
“I’ma go get my stuff together,” Evan said, then headed toward his room.