EVAN. TIME TO DEAL WITH KATIER.
Evan glanced at Megan as she stepped back to join the group of them and said, pitched low enough he hoped the approaching Katier wouldn’t hear, “For the record, Megan, it wasn’t Beth who made me angry yesterday.”
“I know,” Megan replied, her response even softer. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re fine,” Evan said, with perhaps a touch of impatience. “Can you make sure Beth knows, though? I don’t know if I’ll be able to… to do that today, and I don’t want her going around thinking everything last night was her fault.”
Katier clearly heard the end of that as she reached a reasonable conversational distance from them, but she waited a moment for Evan to finish, and then when he looked at her she said, “Sweet Illuminator, you guys just passed such a big test, you don’t even know!” with a cheerful smile. “I’m so glad too, because I’m not, like, literally dying to talk about the two of you going out hunting last night, but I do really really really wanna talk about it!” She gave Evan another look that had a lot going on, but seemed quite positive, and Evan felt his face getting warm. “What, you got so angry you just had to shoot a Beast?” She arched an eyebrow at him.
Evan tried to put on an Exiled chill, but he felt like it didn’t quite work while he was blushing. “No,” he said, as coldly as he could.
This did not seem to put Katier off.
“And you got yourself hurt, huh?” Katier said, raking her gaze over Evan again. “You look fine enough.” She grinned and giggled and glanced at Megan and said, “So to speak.”
“Katie,” Megan said quietly. “What are you doing?”
Katier made a tiny whimpering noise that Evan barely caught, and her smile became a lot more strained. “I’m trying to talk with your new friends, Megan! Or, um, old friends. I, uh, I was hoping you were all in a better mood, all showing up together like this? And I mean yesterday you seemed like you were in a better mood in Algebra, you know, with Chris around. Hi Chris.” Katier grinned anxiously.
Chris, his expression carefully neutral, said, “Hello, Katie,” with a reserved energy quite unlike his normal enthusiastic air.
“Heh,” Katier said. “Listen. I just really want to—”
“Don’t say apologize,” Angie said. Everyone looked at her. “You get one chance with me, Ryuyama, and I’m not in an accepting mood, and probably won’t be for a while. So you might want to save that apology for when I am. Can’t speak for Ryan and Evan, though.”
“How will I know—” Katier started whimpering.
“That’s a great question to which I don’t have an answer,” Angie said. “Ask Megan, probably.”
Katier looked at Megan.
“I need space right now, Katie,” Megan said with sorrow in her voice. “I don’t know when I’ll be ready to talk to you again. Let alone Nisha or Lauren. Tell Lauren she better respond to my message promptly after school.”
“We’re not talking,” Katier said. “I spent hours convincing Beth that she hadn’t ruined your, you know, reunion and that she wasn’t the one who made Evan so angry he stomped off, which at the time I had no idea—I just heard you, so I know it’s true now, but Beth was just so inconsolable at the idea that she might have ruined things and made you mad or made Evan so mad he never talked to her again, which I didn’t really think would happen but I—” Katier cut herself off. “I’m mad at Lauren. This is her fault. Kay’s fault too, the lying puke, but none of this would have happened if Lauren had just listened to me, one of her oldest friends, instead her new boyfriend and the girl she’d just met.”
“Fair enough,” Megan said with a sigh. “Katie…”
“I’ll go,” Katier said miserably. “Just please, real quick, either of you…?” She trailed off, pleading eyes aimed at Evan and Ryan. Evan didn’t know what she wanted. Was she asking if he wanted an apology now? Evan thought he heard Ryan’s mouth open, but he didn’t saying anything, so Evan glanced at him. He was already looking at Evan with a mild, pleasant expression Evan didn’t trust even a little.
Katier seemed to have perked up a little, and focused on Evan. Ryan must have mouthed something. “Evan?” she asked, still not an actual question he could answer.
“Ryuyama,” Evan said, “I had a big day yesterday, and I don’t have a lot of emotional bandwidth at the best of times. Possibly because no one talked to me for three years.” She winced, leaving her face crumpled and miserable again afterward, whatever relief Ryan had offered gone. “I was up late, and I’m tired. I don’t know what you want. I don’t know you. I don’t have any reason to care about an apology from you, at least not until Megan gives me one.” Well, she was gorgeous, but other than that...
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He was about to say more, but Katier said, “So I can make it up to you! Somehow. Please…?” She looked more miserable now than after Megan or Angie told her to go away.
“Leave me alone,” Evan said. “At least until Megan’s willing to talk to you again.” She just looked so miserable. “Or, if you really think what you have to say is worthwhile for me to hear—and you better be right—try next week, maybe.”
Katier made a little huffing sound of frustration and disappointment, but still seemed a touch relieved as she said, “Okay,” and immediately turned and left.
Before any of them said anything, as they stood watching Katier walk away, the first bell rang.
“Aw nerts,” Angie said, as they all started heading toward school again.
“Nerts?” Chris asked, at the same time that Megan said, “I forgot about nerts!” She sounded delighted. Then her face fell just as swiftly as it had lit up—undoubtedly because “nerts” was something Ginny had said all the time. Where Ginny had picked it up, Evan didn’t know.
Angie, who seemed to have noticed Megan’s fallen expression, smiled at Chris awkwardly and said, “Ah, just some nonsense? I’ll fill you in later?”
“Okay!” Chris said, looking in the rest of the group’s direction as they walked. “Well, what are y’all’s first classes? I’ve got normal PE first.” Megan looked a little more cheery on hearing that. “Then Advanced Tourney, which will be good, because honestly I’m still adapting to dropping the brand from my style and any chance...” He trailed off. “But now’s not the time for that, it’s not that long till class, and I just asked you guys a question!”
“You certainly did. Ev’ ‘n’ I have Comp Tech first,” Ryan said. Evan knew that’s what Ryan said because Evan knew how Ryan talked, but it sounded a lot more like “Evan I have Comp Tech first.”
“Pardon?” Chris asked.
Ryan stared at him for a beat, and then said, “Ah, I see the problem. Enunciation. I said ‘Ev ‘n’ I have,’ which I now see is problematic even when enunciated more clearly. Did you think I was calling you Evan or did you just hear a confused muddle?”
“I discounted you mistaking me for him pretty fast, so I was wondering if you’d just dropped a word or what. I see,” Chris said. “Great conversation, this. Please go on.”
“We have Comp Tech. What else do you want? It was supposed to be a twofer one deal where you didn’t need to ask Evan what he had, but you’ve messed that up by making me repeat myself.”
“I mean, you’re the one who replied all weird,” Chris said.
“Fair enough!” Ryan replied.
“I have Pre-Enchanting,” Angie said.
“You sound so thrilled about it, too!” Chris said.
“Tone it down a notch man,” Angie said, and Chris made an apologetic face. “I was hoping to test into Enchanting One, I said that earlier.”
“Bummer. Do you know what your problem was?” Chris asked.
“I sure as shit do,” Angie all but snarled. “They went way deeper into theory than I expected for a class called Pre-Enchanting. Like, I’m better at practicum anyway, but some of the theory questions were worded in ways that didn’t make sense unless, I have to presume, you’d studied specifically from the curriculum that the test came from. And several were about a theory that was proven wrong. I don’t want to get into it.”
Angie continued, gesturing jaggedly as she talked. “And they had a history section that stupidly, uselessly wanted specific names and dates and shit, like who the fuck even cares. Favoring rote memorization of non-practical information is the mark of a pedantic, petty mind, and I’m annoyed this course is apparently going to focus on this shit. Like, one fucking question wanted to know the seven most significant library burnings of the middle ages, and I’m like, ‘Bro, this is not a settled question in the field! Short of using chronomancy, which almost no one can do, there’s not really even a way we could possibly know that! We don’t know half of what half those libraries housed when they burnt, just what the survivors thought was there!’”
As Angie spoke, Chris nodded along, looking increasingly lost as she went on. They reached campus as she finished darkly with, “My mum wrote them quite a letter about all that. It was absolutely ridiculous,” as they slowed to a stop in the intersection between the Life Skills hall, the Social Studies hall, and the Tower.
“Ah,” Chris said. “That’s… yeah, that sucks. For sure.”
“The teacher for the course is cool, at least,” Angie said, heaving a sigh. “She didn’t seem thrilled about the curriculum either, the way she was talking yesterday.” Another pause. “That of course means we’re all in here,” she finished with a wave at the Tower.
“I have Choir,” Megan said, seeming subdued.
Glancing at his phone, Ryan said, “We got like five minutes. Catch yaz later.”
“Yaz?” Chris asked, in the tone of one not sure they want to know.
“Plural of ya,” Ryan replied. “Now that we’re not personas non grata, I think we could get it going.”
“I uh…” Chris said. “It doesn’t exactly…”
“‘Catch yaz later,’” Megan said. “I’m not sure either.”
“You could just say ‘y’all,’” Chris said. “That’s a perfectly functional construction.”
“Okay, Carolina,” Ryan said sarcastically. “That won’t sound weird in our dialect at all.”
“We should go!” Megan said, half laughing, taking Chris by the arm and tugging at him and giving Ryan an exasperated look. “Now’s not the time to discuss word choice and weird slang!”
“Yeah yeah,” Ryan said. “Laters.”
“Laters,” the rest of them echoed, and Evan, Ryan, and Angie entered the Tower.