RYAN. TUESDAY. LUNCH TIME!

The bells rang for lunch, and their first real Physical Science class was over. Ryan had spent the whole time planning a program in his head and watching his classmates’ varying levels of attentiveness.

Some of his classmates had been doing something similar. Yvette Karga, a punkishly dressed young lady whose mother was a Light Bearer and whose older sister was also a Light Bearer, had more attention for their classmates than for the teacher. He and she had exchanged several looks, which had communicated to Ryan that Yvette thought she was very cool.

Now, as folks packed up, Ryan asked Angie, “How you doing?”

“I’m dying,” Angie said. “I’m so hungry and so tired. I wish I had first lunch.”

“My sympathies. If you had first lunch, you’d be dying by end of school,” he replied.

Angie sighed. “That’s probably true. Regardless, I’m ready for lunch.”

“Luckily it’s lunch time.”

“No shit.”

They finished packing up and left the classroom, merging into the babbling brook of students flowing out of the building and toward the lunch hall. The first lunch kids were already in their own fourth period class, so everyone was either headed toward the lunch hall or off campus.

They were a quarter of the way or so to the lunch hall when a goat appeared nearby in the middle of the quad, near a group of students chatting in a circle. One moment there was no goat, the next moment a goat was standing there. Students all around immediately screamed, or yelled, “Fuck!” or “Shit!” or, in one particularly vulgar case, “Bloody puke!”

Ryan said, “Fuck!” himself as everyone scattered, putting distance between themselves and the goat. He and Angie started double timing it toward the lunch hall.

Thankfully, the goat started trotting away from Angie and Ryan, toward the group that’d been chatting in the quad. That group double scattered, each running away from each other and the goat. The goat quickly proved to be following one of the boys, who started yelling, “No no no no no!” as he picked up the pace.

“Fuck man, a case of goat this early in the year,” Ryan said as they slowed to their normal pace. “That bodes not well.”

“Not ideal,” Angie replied, and yawned. “At least it ran away from us. It would have sucked if one of us had it and had to quarantine, or pay for an elixir. Though, doesn’t it normally spread only through touching the goat or kissing someone before symptoms start showing?”

“Some sort of fluid exchange, yeah,” Ryan replied. “And even if you touch the goat, if you’re careful about touching your face and clean yourself promptly you can avoid catching it, like most diseases.”

Inside the lunch hall, once they navigated through the crowds, they found Megan sitting at their table from the day before. She quickly tried to stop looking kind of sad and kind of angry upon seeing them.

MEGAN. TUESDAY. LUNCH TIME.

After the bell, Chris told Megan that he wanted to get some introductions in, and that he’d meet them in the lunchroom. Megan forced herself not to be disappointed—it was one walk to the lunch building without him, it meant nothing—and went on ahead.

No one tried to talk to her, or managed to let her overhear their impolite statements about her, or otherwise bother her, on the way to the lunch hall. When she stepped through the doors into the room, however, a large, well-muscled boy with skin darker and cooler than his sister Lauren’s stood leaning against the wall nearby, his thick, bare, muscular arms crossed and one foot up on the wall. When he saw her, he relaxed from that pose and stepped up to her.

Derrek Bakili—sophomore, brother to Lauren, and Light Bearer—was a big guy, taller than Evan and broader than Chris; unsurprising, as his weapon of choice was a heavy mace. He wore casual clothes, black jeans and a white t-shirt, but all his clothing was clearly high quality. The jeans were probably thirty-five or forty finches, hand sewn by expert tailors. He wore a beautiful leather gunbelt with a semi-auto pistol of some sort in the holster. Hanging from his belt was his mace, the stainless steel head gleaming in fluorescent lights.

Where Lauren had sunset skin and twilight eyes, Derrek had amber sunset eyes and twilight skin. His hair, coiled, cut into a line-up, was just as black as Lauren’s or Chris’s. Between that and a broad, open face, full lips, and strong features all around produced a serious hunk, and until the day before, Megan had nursed an unrequited crush on him. Now, seeing him made her heart rate go up due to resurgent anger, instead.

“Hey Megan,” Derrek said. “Can we talk for a second?”

Megan considered. She left him hanging for a bit after she decided, too. Then she sighed and said, “Fine. Go ahead.” She stared at him as coldly as she could manage.

“Okay,” Derrek said, clearly thrown off by her behavior. “I guess I owe you an apology. I got a straight, intelligible answer out of my sister eventually.” He paused and then, his expression carefully neutral, said, “She cried all evening. I think a big chunk of the night, too.”

“I don’t care,” Megan said, her voice low. “She should be crying. She should spend a lot longer than one evening crying over her bad decisions. And you owe me several apologies. Did you turn me down because of it?”

Derrek looked thrown again. After a moment of silence, he said, “Well, I wasn’t lying about not dating my sister’s friends. It was something I decided I didn’t want to do the first time one of them came on to me. I think it would make things weird.” He shrugged uneasily. “I can’t say I wouldn’t have been more tempted without that whole… situation, though.”

“My friends’ ‘exile,’ you mean? That thing your sister did to three kids who were and are my friends?”

Derrek sighed. “I tried to stay out of my sister’s business. And in my defense, you made it very easy for her. Everyone did. It shouldn’t have worked.”

“No shit,” Megan bit out. “It shouldn’t have worked because someone should have told me about it. Anyone. I didn’t know. How did I make it easy on her?”

“You didn’t know anything at all,” Derrek said. “You could have checked up on how your friends were doing, even if, as I’m assuming, you thought they hated you. You didn’t.”

This hit Megan hard. She’d grappled with that the day before; she thought she’d gotten over it. But he was right.

Suddenly trying not to cry, Megan said, “Give me your apology and be done with it, Derrek. You’re doing a terrible job so far.”

Derrek looked away, down at the floor to his left. “I probably should not have stayed out of her business on this one. She would have been miserable to live with afterward, but I should have told you, or convinced her not to do it, or to stop doing it. Or something.”

Megan regarded him for a long, silent moment. “She would not have been miserable to live with. I would have made sure of that, if you told me.”

Derrek’s eyes went wide, perhaps at her tone of voice, perhaps at her claim. He did not address it, though, and just said, “Well, I couldn’t have known that. But even without that, I should have risked it. I hope you’ll find it in you to at least accept my apology, if not forgive me.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“You will not be forgiven anytime soon, Derrek Bakili,” Megan said coldly. “Yeah, you fucking should have done something. Now your sister is in a hole she dug herself, and there’s a pile of dirt on the honor of your house. I assume your parents haven’t heard?”

“My parents will be more concerned about our reputation than our honor,” Derrek said, in no way happily. “If they find out.”

Megan pursed her lips. “Well, I don’t expect they will. I imagine no adult found out, because an adult would have done something about it.”

“You hope,” Derrek said quietly. “But they might not have been able to stop it. Only you finding out could really have ended it. What would the other kids do, talk to your friends because adults said it was bad not to?”

That was a super valid point. “I don’t know!” Megan said, tears starting to leak from her eyes. “I have to imagine if adults knew, it would have gotten back to me. Somehow. I’m done here, Derrek.” Derrek grimaced as she started walking away, but he didn’t attempt to stop her.

Another Bakili hovered near the table the Nineteens had been at the day before. Lauren, Megan could see as she got near, had been crying a lot, not just the evening before but that day as well. “Megan,” Lauren said, her voice croaky. “Can I talk—”

“No, Lauren,” Megan said. “You can finish sending me the godsdamned written explanation I messaged you yesterday evening asking for. I don’t want to hear another word out of your gods forsaken mouth until you’ve told me in detail the reasoning behind your decisions and why exactly you thought what you did was an okay thing to do. Now. Fuck. Off.” Lauren’s face crumpled and she fucked right off, scurrying away in a manner Megan wouldn’t have even imagined she was capable of two days before.

Megan sat at what she already thought of as their table and pulled herself together just in time for Ryan and Angie to walk up. “Hey, February, you doing okay?” Ryan asked.

“I’m okay, October,” Megan said, after a deep breath. “We’ll see about when December gets here, though.”

“Oh?” Ryan asked. “Now what?”

“His... father died?” Megan said, drooping her head.

“That explains a lot,” Angie said, sounding satisfied. “I said that if you’d heard, you would have surfaced from your bullshit at least long enough to say something to him. Yeah, remember the Winter Solstice Breach in eighth grade?”

“Sweet Illuminator,” Megan said, whispering. “That’s awful.” She looked up at the two of them, tears blurring her vision now. “I’m so awful.”

“Don’t make this about you again,” Ryan said, firmly, giving her a stern frown.

Megan winced. “You think… do you think Evan will be mad that I didn’t know?”

“What did I just say about making this about you?” Megan winced again, and Ryan continued, “I wouldn’t even bring it up right now if I were you. How’d you find out?”

“Um. Did he tell you about, uh, Lauren?” Megan didn’t want to be the one to explain that.

“He briefed us, yeh,” Angie said. She smiled at Megan and then yawned. “It sounded like a righteous take down. You catch some of it? He didn’t mention you being there.”

“Yeah,” Megan said. “I think he missed me in the crowd. Do you think that’s something I should bring up?”

“Hell yeah, if he or I don’t first,” Ryan said. “I wanna hear about it in more detail. And Chris needs filling in. Hi Evan!”

Megan looked up in time to see Evan collapse onto his chair with a groan and immediately lean over and thunk his head onto the table. “So tired. I want to rest with my eyes closed for half this lunch period, so you’re welcome to go introduce people to Chris or whatever, Megan. Sorry. I’ll be totally chill tomorrow, I’m just toasted today.”

“Maybe if someone—” Megan bit her tongue. She’d just pissed him off, and—she realized that Angie had said the same thing she had, and now was saying, “Hadn’t gone out wandering around last night, we might not be in this situation, you and I, Evan. I and you, sleepless in Seattle. Only not a non-romantic romance. I’m okay with closed-eye resty time, though.” Angie closed her eyes as she finished, and just sort of slumped there.

Megan giggled. Angie opened one eye a crack and managed to glare at Megan like that. “Don’t you laugh at me. You didn’t have to sit around wondering if dipfuck here was getting or had been eaten by a Beast for over an hour last night. Then waiting for him to get home so I could yell at him.”

“I didn’t mean to make fun,” Megan said, “It was just—close-eye resty time was funny.”

“See October,” Angie said, closing her eyes again, “I’m hilarious. February things so.”

“Things so?” Ryan asked. “Hey June.”

“Shut up,” Angie said, while Chris, actively yawning, sat down.“I’m tired and mouth words hard. Thinks so.”

“I hear that,” Chris said. “I had to cut things short with introductions on the way here, I couldn’t do the speaking good. After food will be fun.” He yawned several times throughout the full statement. “Is everyone as tired as me?”

“I’m fine,” Ryan said. “I was only a bit short of what I really need.”

“That’s wild, dude,” Chris said, goggling at him. “Really?”

“No,” Angie said with her eyes closed. “He sleeps like twenty hours every other Sunday.”

“Nonsense,” Ryan said, looking disapprovingly at Angie, who did not care because her eyes were closed. “Sixteen, at the most. I’m usually up in the middle, too, to be social with all you day cats.”

“No such thing! Cats are nocturnal! Crime doesn’t pay!” Evan said through the table. Megan giggled again.

Chris yawned. Angie yawned. Evan sat up, yawned, then put his face back down.

“Okay,” Chris said, trying not to look sleepy. It was pretty cute. “On the agenda is after school and Evan’s encounter, if he cares to share.”

“You see that?” Evan said. “I thought you’d be slower and miss it, but I didn’t look for you afterward.”

“You thought right,” Chris said. “Megan saw some though, and mentioned it to me.”

“Ah,” Evan said, still through the table. “Megan, you mad about me chewing out Lauren?”

Megan had to take a second before swinging at that curveball. “What? No? No, I just… Ryan said not to bring it up....”

“Oh,” Evan said, raising his head and looking at her finally, if blearily. “Uh. What now?”

“Your... your father—”

“Oh,” Evan said. “You didn’t know?” Megan shook her head. Evan nodded. “Good. I would have had to be mad at you again if you had known and still hadn’t said anything to us.”

“Sure,” Megan said, nodding. “If I’d somehow found out before, and not… yeah.” She nodded. Foolish to have been worried.

“Yeah,” Evan nodded, and promptly put his head back down.

“Probably should eat, Ev,” Ryan said.

“Yeah,” Angie said, yawning. “We better go get food.”

“I brought my lunch again,” Chris said, pulling out another bento box—a different one than the day before, but just as beautiful. “I’ll guard the table.”

They scattered to collect food. They all got back to the table at nearly the same time.

Evan, yawning, was last to sit back down. “So, what about after school? I don’t know about, um, the music...”

“Agree!” Chris said. “I don’t know what I was thinking last night. I’m tired and you guys seem more so. Except for Ryan. We can do music tomorrow. I hope you don’t mind the raincheck, Megan.” He gave her an easy smile, then spoiled it by yawning again. “Godsdamn but I can’t stop yawning, guys,” he said plaintively, which provoked laughter from the other Nineteens.

“No, it’s okay,” Megan said. “None of you will be any fun if you’re all falling asleep on the couch.”

“Agreed,” Chris said. “I am barely any fun as it is.”

“Whaaat?!” Megan said. “Interrobang?!”

Chris laughed, and then said, “I mean, I dunno. I led with music because that’s all I got? I train a lot. Like, a lot. I did train after school yesterday, for real, since I didn’t do anything before school, and PE and Advanced Tourney are only an hour and forty on their own, and aren’t that applicable to fighting actual Beasts. I should really do so today too, even though I’m exhausted.

“So I mean, while I train, I can listen to music. When it’s not with other people, I can even listen to the music I want to listen to. And it is alone, a lot of time. Standard exercises and sword forms with evasion and all that. I can condition and solo train for a couple of hours a day on my own before it gets a little silly. I still need to train with others, but that’s largely what Advanced Tourney is for these days. Even if it tends to be a little, you know, people-focused compared to proper hunter’s training. I’ll be hitting the local Gauntlets soon, we read that this area has strong ones. Uh. I’m talking a lot, aren’t I?”

“You didn’t finish your thought,” Ryan said. “About music.”

“Oh right!” Chris said, laughing. “I’m tired. Lost where I was going. So I don’t have a ton of time to get into whatever other things. I’m mostly into music, a lot of which most people haven’t heard of which makes me sound like a real indie nerd. Other than music, I’m kind of boring and without other interests or anything else to talk about, except for the hunting tales. That’s why I like to ask people about themselves. Speaking of which?” He looked around the table. “I talked all lunch yesterday, seemed like. Mind if I get to know you guys a little better?”

“Sure!” Ryan said. “We’re the Exiles. Nobody’s talked to us for three years, so we’re also very boring. Megan?”

“Nooo,” Chris said, smiling. “You can’t get out of things that easily! Come on, I thought you liked talking. You’re the exposition!”

“I am, but right now Evan should be talking,” Ryan said.

Evan stopped chewing and looked at Ryan with over-the-top alarm. “Wut,” he said through a mouthful of chips.