EVAN. TIME FOR IT TO ALL COME OUT.[1]

[1] As it might in the wash.

Megan visibly trembled as she spoke—it sounded like she was speaking through her teeth too, but Evan couldn’t be sure. But as she said, “Nisha, are you about to tell me that my oldest friends are called the Asphodel Exiles when people gossip about them at other middle schools, and that you and Lauren lied to my face about it a year and a half ago?” her whole frame shook, enough so that her preposterous pile of hair rustled despite the lack of any breeze at the moment.

“Hey yeah, check it out!” Katie “Katier” Ryuyama said to Nisha Twighs, mock brightly. “Not close to angry, jenn-you-wine-lee angry! Never would have thought I’d see the day Megan would get so angry she couldn’t hide it! Except wait, sorry, that’s a lie: I would have thought maybe it might happen on this day, specifically, and said so too. The day she found out about the Exiles? This ring any bells, Nisha?” By the end her tone of voice made Evan think of Ginny, how annoyed she’d get when he and Cali[1] would keep pestering each other after she’d told them not to repeatedly.

[1] California Cadell. Age 13. She’s not Evan’s little sister. Evan is her older brother.

Boy, having Megan show up sure made Virginia and her absence harder to bury than normal.

“Um. Yes?” Nisha Twighs responded, probably to Megan, maybe to both of them at the same time, with that question-like upturn of the voice that people would sometimes use when they wanted to neither answer truthfully nor own the answer they gave but had to do both.

After a long moment in which the murmuring of the crowd around them was not at all loud but still somehow deafening, Megan growled, “Explain.”

“Alright, pause it,” Angie snapped from next to Evan’s shoulder. “I can’t be here for this.”

Nisha looked at Angie with hazy, panicked relief and Katier looked at her with an expression of obvious sympathy as Angie turned to face Evan and Ryan and said, “I’ll see you guys in the classes we share later. Ryan, if Megan manages to stick around after this try and get her contact info for me.” She met Evan’s eyes and raised one eyebrow slightly. “Ev, you good here?”

Evan nodded without needing to think about it, a rarity, particularly when faced with a situation like this. “Yeah, I need to hear this,” he said, for all that his heart was pounding, had been since Lauren had first approached after the coffee explosion. He’d have been happy to not have to deal with a whole series of emotionally fraught social encounters first thing on the first day of high school, but he had to know how Megan reacted to all this shit. It’d been so long. He couldn’t just hear about it from Ryan later.

Angie turned and stepped to where she could face Megan, putting her back to Nisha and Katier. “Megan, I hope I’ll see you later, if you can keep it together enough to stick through the day. Let Ryan and Evan know what classes and lunch and stuff you have, would you?”

Megan gave one sharp nod. Evan wondered if her eyes were open, what her expression was right now. As Angie turned and strode past Nisha and Katier, who flinched away from her, Evan considered stepping forward to try and see Megan’s face. But he didn’t want to get closer to Megan’s other friends.

In middle school, Evan had almost never actually directly looked at most of the popular kids that Megan spent time with—Lauren Bakili, Queen Bee of Asphodel (or of their year, at least)—Beth Mishra and Katie Königsmann, who’d also been his and Angie’s friends, to a greater or lesser extent, at one point—or these two—from a distance of less than ten meters or so. He’d always averted his eyes, finding something else to look at whenever he’d been required to pass them in the halls[1] or whatever. Somehow, he’d never had a class with any of them but the Katies, and when he’d been in Pacific Northwest History with Katier in eighth grade, he’d kept up that careful act of not looking at her, not acknowledging her existence, the entire time.[2]

[1] An infrequent occurrence in any event. Evan, Ryan, and Angie had concluded Lauren’s party were somehow tracking their whereabouts and avoiding them to keep Megan and Beth from seeing them.

[2] This hadn’t been too hard, because in said history class they’d had a left-to-right alpha-by-surname seating assignment the whole time, so Ryuyama had been across the class from Cadell and further toward the back of the classroom besides.

It wasn’t a fear thing. Evan had always thought of it as a tit-for-tat reaction.[1]

[1] It might have been a fear thing, but Evan refused to consciously acknowledge it as such.

Which was all to say that the last few minutes, as they’d had their oh-so-fun conversation with Megan, was the first time Evan had spent any amount of time looking at either girl, and he found them equally intimidating in different ways.

Nisha stood maybe half a decimeter shorter than Evan, at most, and probably out-weighed him just with her muscle mass. And it’s not like Evan was totally scrawny—in fact he was quite fit, as he had to be to get licensed to hunt. But shooting the hunting revolvers which were Evan’s chosen weapon was one thing—the head of the battle-hammer he could just glimpse peeking out from where it was buried in Nisha’s hair (as a result of being strapped to her back) required so much more muscle to swing around effectively.

Evan hadn’t messed with melee weapons since the lantern hadn’t lit when he’d lifted it on his eleventh birthday, leaving his older sister to continue to be the only Light Bearer of their line, so he hoped he never ended up having to duel Nisha at any point. Every time Nisha had come down on someone for disrespecting any of her friends in middle school, she’d always forced all three contests rather than settling for the comp contest[1], to the bruised regret of those who she’d challenged for the insult, or “insult,” whichever the individual case might have been.

[1] Compromise contest. Per the Fredonic Constitution, the challenged party in a duel gets to choose the form a duel will take, the contest. The most common contest is still hand-to-hand weapon combat—essentially a tourney match—followed closely by cooking, then gunfighting, then cleaning—typically a bathroom or kitchen—close in third and fourth, with footraces, drinking contests, and weight-lifting contests distant fifth, sixth, and seventh, before the field shatters into a million different hobbies and pursuits.

If the challenger is handily beaten, indicating that the challenged party chose a contest they were exceptionally strong in or at least knew they could beat their challenger, the challenger may demand to expand the duel to two out of three contests, of which they can choose one of the contests. The final contest is chosen by the disputants’ seconds in conjunction with the duel’s arbiter, and is generally one in which the disputants are closely matched.

As time went on, most duels came to be settled simply with the compromise contest, skipping the potential for people to choose, intentionally or otherwise, contests in which they could easily embarrass a party they offended enough to challenge them to a duel in the first place. Of course, it’s always possible to demand a full three contests, which is what Nisha loved to do.

With her stardom on the tourney field, attractive square jawed face, strong features and frame, impressive chest[1] (even when downplayed by her current vest plus tunic outfit), and dark, flashing eyes, Nisha stood squarely in the center of the warrior archetype of Fredonic beauty, though Evan’s knowledge of her strict attraction to women meant that didn’t really mean much to him. Nisha’s title of tourney champ and role of Lauren’s enforcer made her plenty imposing enough.

[1] From the perspective of a fifteen-year-old boy comparing a fifteen-year-old girl to other girls of a similar age.

The same couldn’t be said of Katier.

Katier was, at least, not physically imposing. Quite the opposite: for all of middle school, she’d been known for being one of the smallest girls in their class, though it was possible that with the addition of other middle schools and her apparent growth over the summer, that might not be the case anymore.[1] Her face was rounded, rather egg-shaped, with a more sharply-defined chin and less-sharply defined but still defined cheekbones—combined with her size, she should have seemed younger than she was, childish, cute at absolute most.

[1] Ryan would know specific statistics if they were on the interweb or otherwise public. Evan sure didn’t. She still wasn’t exactly large by any definition of the word.

Instead, with her golden eyes, highlighted with a coppery eyeshadow, her wine-red lipstick, her fancy blue dress with the little epaulets and the flared skirt, her rich brown hair in an elaborate bun up on top of her head, and her too-large-for-her-frame fashion revolver her the sleek leather shoulder holster, Evan might have thought Katier a junior or a senior if he hadn’t already known full well who she was. Like, to a lesser extent, Nisha and Megan, Katier seemed elegant and sophisticated, much more so than Evan and his friends. Like an actual adult, like firstagers were supposed to be.[1]

[1] The inherent irony of being a non-Light-Bearing firstager in the modern era who already had his Beast-hunting license but otherwise felt immature was lost on Evan, I fear.

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Of course, Evan’s perception of Katier as having greater maturity may have been helped by the fact that he found her utterly gorgeous. More lovely than, well, anyone Evan really had any experience conversing with since hitting adolescence. Not that, as the direction of this conversation was about to reveal to poor Megan, Evan had much experience conversing with anyone at all for the past three years. So the comparison was not, perhaps, as revealing as it might have been about someone else.

Regardless—and while he would have preferred rather fewer intense conversations first thing on a school day—if he had to be talking to these two girls, Evan was almost glad for the emotional stakes of the situation. A casual conversation with a more neutral setup with pretty girls who weren’t largely responsible for ruining his life would have actually left him feeling more uncertain and anxious than this, he was pretty sure.

He still felt completely discombobulated. Megan’s return was throwing him so much.

“Nisha,” Megan said, her voice quiet, and trembling nearly as much as the rest of her, “Could you please explain what it means that my old friends are called the Asphodel Exiles?”

While an embarrassed grimace spread across Katier’s face, Nisha’s jaw opened and closed soundlessly in a manner that Evan would have found comical had it been someone who didn’t make him feel so nervous. As it was, she seemed to make several attempts at forming words that never got as far as activating her vocal cords, and Evan, for the first time in his life, saw sweat break out on someone’s brow in real time. It wasn’t something he’d really believed happened, but Nisha got noticeably more sweaty when asked that question.

After an uncomfortable amount of silence, Katier burst out, “Megan, that’s not fair. It’s not like she did it. It’s not our fault.”

Megan’s head turned toward Katier. “Do you want to tell me what it means then, Katie?”

Katier’s pinched her mouth closed and she shook her head with considerable violence, stopping with her eyes cast aside. “No. It’s terrible. You should make Lauren and Kay tell you.”

Stepping up next to Megan with a roll of his eyes[1], Ryan said, “Oh good gods, it just meant that no one ever, ever talked to us. Not that hard to spit out.” Nisha and Katier flinched at the sound of his voice. Or maybe just at the semantic content of his statement.

[1] Evan didn’t see him roll his eyes, they were both looking at Megan’s other friends, but when he used that tone of voice he almost always did at some point, so Evan assumed.

Megan turned her head a slight bit toward Ryan. “No one?” she trembled. “Like, at all?”

“Not unless they were forced to, for classwork,” Evan said, his own voice not coming out very loud. Katier and Nisha cringed, though, so loud enough for them to hear. “For most of the first two years,” he added. “Then a couple kids who were already on the outs with the popular crowd decided we couldn’t be that bad after listening to us fuck around in our Computer Applications course for long enough. And then Mercy Seerson more or less did the same in our Advanced Computer Apps class the first term of ninth grade.”

“But we weren’t supposed to be spoken with,” Ryan added, “And we weren’t supposed to be spoken about. We especially were not to be spoken of around you or Beth. Which was also the main point of the whole setup, or so we managed to gather eventually. To protect you and Beth from us. Why, exactly, is a question with an answer which no one who gossipped about the subject within earshot of us really ever seemed to be certain.”

“We certainly overheard some theories,” Evan said.

After a pregnant pause, Megan, her voice still tremulous, said, “Like?”

“Oh you know,” Ryan said with a casual shrug, “Just all the things you’d expect after three years of Königsmann getting to talk shit about us behind your back without any sort of response or consequence for three years.”

“How long was it? I didn’t quite catch that,” Evan asked.

“I said three years twice, huh? Touché,” Ryan replied. He paused, glancing between Katier and Nisha, who did not seem to have enjoyed the banter all that much. Both had their shame-faced attention on the ground at their feet. They likely didn’t even realize he was giving them a chance to interject.

When neither did, Ryan twitched one shoulder in a microshrug and continued, “The Primary Hypothesis (proper noun), as I like to refer to it, or the PH for short, is, of course, that we’re basic bullies who manipulated and used you, Mishra, and Königsmann all our childhoods. Somehow. For some reason. To some negative effect. Details vary, but tend to be vague.”

As Ryan took a breath to continue, Megan said, “Nisha? Is this true?” her voice hollow as well as tremulous now. Ryan frowned and thinned his lips, which, while rude and obnoxious, was certainly better than his typical reaction to being interrupted the last time they’d been speaking with Megan, so Evan supposed it was fine. Megan didn’t seem to be looking at Ryan anyway. Evan wasn’t sure if she was looking at her friends or had her eyes closed or what, but her head sure wasn’t faced toward Ryan. Evan still didn’t feel up to stepping forward to try and see.

Nisha, whose expression had lost some of the shocked bewilderment it’d contained most of the conversation and instead gained a degree of stoniness as Ryan had described the Standard Hypothesis, opened her mouth for a long moment, the shape of her lips and set of her jaw clearly conveying how frustrating she found the question. “I don’t know, Megan,” she said, her voice thick, after a moment. “People weren’t supposed to talk about them. They certainly didn’t around me.” She paused, her lips compressed, her eyes on Ryan. “I confess I don’t know much about them at all, beyond what Kay’s told me, which I’m starting to worry has been entirely lies.”

“‘People weren’t supposed to talk about them…?’” Megan echoed with evident horror.

“Yeah,” Nisha said, her gaze dropping toward the ground. “I mean, that was all accurate. We wanted to protect you, and everyone, from them. But mostly you and Beth. I just can’t speak to the rumors and gossip surrounding them. No one ever gossipped about them around me.”

There was a long moment of heavy silence, in which Evan could hear the murmurs and whispers from the surrounding crowd cavalcade around them, no phrase from an individual mouth quite comprehensible on its own in the general susurration. Evan began to grow concerned that Megan’s trembling might set up some sort of disruptive vibration in the concrete she was standing on that would cause it to disintegrate.[1]

[1] Evan liked to tell himself little jokes sometimes when he felt tense or uncomfortable. This was one only Ryan would have enjoyed, had he said it out loud, he was pretty sure.

“It was my intention to continue to address said rumors,” Ryan said, in the unpleasant ‘pleasant’ tone of voice that he used when he was annoyed but trying not to show it. “May I go on?”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Megan said, her voice small and plaintive.

Ryan blinked rapidly for a moment, his brow contracting. “Really? I guess we could put that off till later, but it seems relevant right now and like all the people watching us all know this, while it seems that at least two of you don’t, so…”

In what must have been the most mournful moan Megan could manage, she cried, “Noooo, you’re riiiight, I need to knoooooow!” She broke her long (except for the trembling) stillness by dropping her face into her hands and shaking her head with agitated gusto, sending waves rippling through her absurd faerie tale hair. She took several fast, deep, ragged breaths before dropping her hands to her side, balling her fists, raising her head and, with obvious effort, calming her breathing. “So, yes, Ryan, please go on,” she sounded, her voice much steadier. And angrier.

“Sure!” Ryan said, entirely too chipper. “So there are two main branches of the PH, which I liked to call Primary Hypothesis Domin—”

“Ryan,” Evan said, trying to pitch his voice so that only the addressee and maybe Megan could hear, “I know you’re excited that the dam’s finally burst, but maybe keep your keel a little more even?” Ryan turned his head and looked at Evan, and Evan, recognizing his mistake, sighed.

“Evan!” Ryan said with delighted exasperation, not modulating his volume at all, even a little. “The dam has not past-tense burst! The dam is bursting, in slow motion, as we speak! This conversation,” he went on, gesturing ostentatiously at Megan, Nisha, and Katier, “Is the first elegant arc of water spraying out of the crack that is still forming in the dam, in the aftermath of the beauty of the first, um, I guess rock or something popping out of the dam, which was everyone dropping their coffee… This metaphor has kinda gotten away from me—you and Megs[1] are the poetic ones, I do STEMM.[2] And history. And a variety of other things—I could go on. And I think I’d need to go do a little research into the actual physical process of a dam bursting before I try to elaborate more. Anyway, justice is being served! Just enjoy the conversation!”

[1] Katie’s eyes lit up and she clearly mouthed “Megs…?” with surprised delight.

[2] Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and Magic.

“I doubt Megan is enjoying the conversation very much, though,” Evan countered. “This seems maybe rough for her.”

“Oh please,” Ryan said. “Megan brought this upon herself. She also brought it upon you and Angie. Despite you both getting degrees in Stoic philosophy[1] as a reaction, and despite you personally using the opportunity to get better than any god could be with those pistols of yours—you and Angie have both been miserable for the past three years.” Katier and Nisha both looked at Evan with silver screen quality takes of surprised interest in response to that, which Evan might have found comical if the reason weren’t so dismaying.

[1] In response, Evan mouthed, “Not real, not true” at… well, anyone and everyone—he would have just directed it at the universe if it had been a private conversation—but in this moment, practically speaking, just at Nisha and Katier.

Ryan paused thoughtfully, then continued. “She brought it upon me too, I suppose, but let’s be real, no one besides you guys would have liked me in middle school anyway.”

“Not very many gods have taken up shooting,” Evan replied, trying not to sound cross. “So that’s not saying that much. Also, if you don’t tone it down, no one besides us guys is going to like you in high school, either.”

“Dude, this would all be going down very differently if you would have just shown off at all at any point in the last year and a half,” Ryan responded in turn, clearly not trying not to sound cross himself. “We would not still be ‘the Exiles’ if people knew how good you were. You’d probably have a hunting party by now, too. And anyway, considering how they’re having a meltdown over their dirty little secret being revealed to Megan, do you really think it matters whether these two like us?”

“Oh my goshes, I sure hope it does!” Katier said, with evident, genuine alarm, matching that in her and Nisha’s expressions. “It sounds like Megan definitely wants to be your friend again, and there’s not really a crime on your part to make up for, it turns out, probably, so if she’s going to be your friend I’m going to be your friend too!”

There was another beat of heavy silence. Megan then said, hollow as a tomb, “That all remains to be seen, Katie. Ryan, please continue.”