CHAPTER 2: IN WHICH COFFEE IS SPILLED
EVAN. TIME TO KEEP MOVING. MOVING ON. LAST DANCE WITH MARY JANE—
No texts to update him arrived before Evan started to share the streets with other teens on the way to their school. In fact, none arrived before he reached the trolley stop he’d planned on waiting for Ryan and Angie at, though he now felt unsure whether to do that or keep walking.
First, though, other kids started to appear on the same street he walked.
Most didn’t acknowledge him, for a relative value of most. Some were older than him, juniors and seniors also headed to Persephone High. They noticed him not at all. Some were younger, headed toward the nearest middle school, Asphodel, the one he’d attended, the one his sister attended still. The youngest of these didn’t take any note of him either.
Why would they? They didn’t know him, and he didn’t know them.
But others were people his age, or a year younger or older. Those he’d attended Asphodel with.
Two girls stopped dead as they approached an intersection when they saw him cross it, not moving again while still in his peripheral vision. He knew their faces—they were in ninth grade, top dogs at Asphodel for the year before they found themselves facing down freshfolk year at their chosen high school, as Evan did now.
Two boys and a girl—one’d been in math and common-tongue classes with him, the others in different science classes—fell silent as his longer legs and quicker pace carried him by them, and slowed their pace until he was well ahead. Probably. Evan did not bother to look back.
A boy and a girl holding hands walked with two boys, also holding hands, four abreast, blocking a significant portion of the way. Evan approached, slowed, walked behind them for a bit, and considered trying to get around, but other people were going the other direction. “Pardon me,” he said.
“Oh, sor—EEP!” the girl said, the EEP in response to seeing Evan’s face and accompanied by her lurching into her boyfriend to get out of Evan’s way, while the other couple literally jumped in near unison the other direction, alarm on their faces. He recognized at least one as a sophomore—he couldn’t be sure about the others without Ryan around to ask.
“Sorry,” Evan said, and walked past them.
It mostly wasn’t that dramatic. Side-long glances. Quick, uncomfortable aversions of the eyes when they saw his face and recognized him. A hush falling over a conversation for a moment as he was noticed—and who was to say whether the conversation was about the same thing as before when it started again.
Evan’d kinda hoped they’d have all outgrown it by now, but even the sophomores were still at it. If anything it was worse than normal—perhaps because they hadn’t seen him for a while? He’d grown three centimeters over the summer, and he had a new gun belt. Not that the gun belt was relevant in any way to their reactions, but perhaps the gun, a 10.8mm magnum revolver[1] he wore on it had something to do with it. It was obviously and significantly heavier than the non-magnum nine millimeter semi-automatics and non-magnum revolvers that most firstage students carried.
[1] Still a sidearm weight handgun—he would need his heavier pistol to hunt, but it’s not like he would be hunting during the day at school.
Now, though, he stood at the trolley stop nearest the high school, as more teenagers poured out of the trolley that’d just arrived. Now, Evan saw, ahead of him, a head topped by bright scarlet, one by nearly white, and one by a great gleaming pile of silver-gold blonde, all approaching down the street a couple blocks away, and he had no idea what was about to happen.
MEGAN. TIME TO MEET EVAN.
They walked in silence for a bit after Angie stopped giggling. Megan thought about Ryan’s bet.
Naturally, there were other people on the street, by now—adults on their way to work or whatever, of course, but also many other high schoolers, leaving early-ish to have more time to catch up with friends. After all, many had, like Megan, been gone for part or all of the summer. It was a nice neighborhood, after all.
Naturally, some of these teens looked at her, Angie, and Ryan.
Angie wasn’t, like, wrong. Megan knew her hair was ridiculous. She could braid it at night or something instead, but then it’d just be the best kind of wavy (according to Lauren and her other friends), or she could brush it out so that it was straight, but then it’d be down past her knees.[1] Its color brought her attention regardless, whether the sun bleached silver-gold-blonde of summer, or the deep gleaming gold-blonde of winter. And she loved this style—the wide, beautiful, looping curls tumbling down her back made her feel like she was an animated character, an anime idol singer or a Dorsney princess. And it’s not like the hair was the only attention getting aspect of Megan’s person, for better and for worse.
[1] Megan’s hair grew faster than anyone she knew—except, perhaps, Angie’s.
So Megan was used to quick looks, side-long glances, outright stares, and the occasional interruption as she went about her business. But they—the three of them—were getting looked at a lot, even by Megan’s standards. And all by other teens. All by other teens close to her age—many people she knew. And they frequently looked shocked before they glanced away in reaction to her looking back.
“So why am I going to figure It out so quickly?” Megan asked, her stomach flip-flopping in an unacceptable manner. “Why would you make that bet?”
“Oh,” Ryan said, his face brightening and his voice cheery, “Well, if you show up at school with us, judging by what I know about you and who you spend your time with and the way people in our class feel about you based on what they say on the interweb and what I’ve overheard the past three years, I’d say you will be asked about it, with a great deal of incredulity, probably in under a minute from the time we reach campus, by someone who is or wants to be a friend of yours and is more curious and brave than sensible.” Ryan glanced at Angie, whose face had readopted the same coldness that came over her when It came up. “At which point I trust Angie will take her leave of us.”
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“Yes,” Angie said.
Her chest feeling tight, Megan asked, “If this is really going to be too upsetting for Angie to discuss, what… um, what are the chances it won’t be for me?” As soon as she said it she remembered Angie had already said it would be. You won’t be able to get through either once you find out.
“Oh, exceedingly low,” Ryan said, not without a touch of sympathy to his tone.
Megan did not want to have to explain to her parents leaving school because she got too upset. They thought she was over that. “What if… what if we, um, we didn’t show up to school together?”
Angie’s expression immediately indicated that would be a fail-state for the whole endeavor, even before Ryan said, “Oh, I mean, people you know have already noticed you with us. Hans and Aerienne have been behind us staring like we’ve all grown a second head for two or three minutes already. Do you think they wouldn’t approach you and ask if Ange and I were to walk off?”
Megan turned and looked. Sure enough, Hans Rawinis and Aerienne Ufer, who were among the better members of the Asphodel Middle School tourney team (so would probably be on the Persephone High team too) were behind them. They were currently looking up into the branches of a tree with… uncharacteristic intensity. At a bird or a squirrel? Megan did not know either to have any particular interest in small wildlife or trees.
Returning her attention to Angie and Ryan, Megan sucked air in through her nostrils, making her frustrations audible, and said, “Ryan, I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know I dunno I dunno! Stop asking me what I think! I don’t understand what’s going on, so I don’t know what to think!”
Ryan sighed. “Come on, Megs, use your head. You were smart back in the day,” he said.
“This isn’t a multiplication word problem, Ryan,” Megan said. “I’m not trying to ask about school work. Please.”
Rather than responding, Ryan said, “Oh hey, there’s Ev!” He waved with over-the-top enthusiasm.
At the end of the block ahead was another intersection[1], where they would turn north onto the avenue that led directly to Persephone High. Also on that corner there was a trolley stop. A small crowd of adults stood patiently at the stop, while a ton of teens milled around in groups and flowed northward away from the stop.
[1] As is frequently the case at the end of a block.
Megan spotted a tallish figure with short ashen-brown hair standing at the near end of the stop. He raised a hand in greeting without actually waving. Megan realized she’d stopped short upon seeing him, without meaning to, and that Angie and Ryan had stopped with her.
“Evan looks tense,” Angie said, making no indication she wanted them to keep going.
“Evan was always tense,” Megan said, with levity she didn’t feel. She waved tentatively.
He did not wave back to her, either, nor did he leave his hand up. Instead it dropped to his side as he walked toward them. Dressed similarly to Ryan, in a blue and black t-shirt, gray jeans, and dark blue Vans, he, unlike Ryan, wore a gun belt, made of black leather.
“Did Evan know I was with you?” Megan asked, a tremor she didn’t want in her voice.
While checking his phone, Ryan said, “I told him I thought you might be talking to Ange, but I failed to let him know for sure, or who won the bet, though he requested me to. He’ll be annoyed, but it seemed rude to be texting when we were having such a nice conversation for the first time in three years,” with no trace of sarcasm or irony in his voice. Three years before, that fact would have signaled intentional sarcasm or irony on his part, because at the time he’d had to work to not sound like he meant everything he said sarcastically. Megan couldn't tell if this was still the case.
“Oh,” Megan said, as they all stood there and watched Evan approach.
“We made the bet,” Ryan said, reminding Megan that she’d asked that question, “Because I was convinced you knew about everything, based on how effectively you avoided us all of middle school, and I was trying to keep Angie and Evan from getting their hopes up that anything would ever change with the situation.”
“I avoided you?” Megan’s voice came out a pitiful little squeak. “I was sure you guys were avoiding me! I thought you must have gotten charms from Angie’s mom to help you, or something!”
“Hmm,” Ryan hmmed. He and Angie exchanged a frown, though she did not speak. Megan wanted to say something more about it, but didn’t really know what, didn’t know how to process that they thought she’d been avoiding them. And they didn’t say anything more. Probably because it would spoil whatever It was. Which she was supposed to figure out.
Evan did not speak when he reached a reasonable speaking distance. He instead approached in silence until he’d reached them properly, his eyes fixed on Megan. He was much, much taller than the three of them now, probably close to eighteen decimeters, and lean. As a result, his features were both familiar and strange. He’d changed much more than either Angie or Ryan had, but Megan couldn’t have failed to recognize him as anyone but Evan—the closest thing to a brother she would ever have.
For a moment, her eyes were drawn to Evan’s hip, to the gun holstered there, a much larger revolver than either she or Angie carried, the handle inlaid with gleaming dark wood. Megan stared at it for what felt like too long, her stomach contracting, the knot that’d loosed earlier at her and Ryan’s goofy old ritual drawing tight once more.
She’d certainly never gone to any of the gunning matches, so she didn’t even know if he’d been on the team or not. But Evan’s gun looked like a serious weapon. Not like the salt-round loaded waste of metal Megan’s parents urged her to carry now. Megan didn’t know that much about guns—people knew she was actively uninterested, so they didn’t try to engage her on the subject—but she thought it could be a hunting piece.
She wrenched her eyes back up to Evan’s face. Eyes of dark gray, like an evening sky above Seattle in the winter, were locked onto her, framed by a long, narrow, high-cheek-boned face and a prominent nose.
“Hey Evan,” she said, softer and more uncertain than she meant to. His ashen-brown hair was cut shorter than Ryan’s, and was ruffled and messy, as if he’d run a hand through it at some point without really thinking about what the result of that would be. Or he just hadn’t combed it in the first place. “How are you?”