EVAN. TIME FOR MORE DRAMA.

“Okay!” Ryan said, his enthusiasm undaunted by Evan’s recommendation to daunt it. “So, there are two broad categories of the PH: Primary Hypothesis Dominant, or Pee Aitch Dee for short, and Primary Hypothesis Passive, or Pee Aitch Pee. So the P.H.D. is—”

“I’m missing something,” Megan said, the words seeming to bubble through a thick, pure layer of frustration. “How do you know these theories if no one was talking to you, again?” The crowd around them was relatively subdued, so it wasn’t difficult for Evan to notice that somewhere nearby, probably on campus, it sounded like there was another large crowd forming or approaching, judging by the texture of the excited chattering that was starting to echo from somewhere.

Ryan pursed his lips again for a moment and then said, “We said we overheard them. Megs, we already had a conversation this morning about my excellent hearing, and if you’ll recall, I found our school work lacking in interest and challenge when we were in elementary school. That problem hasn’t gone away. If anything, as I’ve aged and my brain has continued to develop, said problem has gotten worse, so I’d think you’d be able to figure out that I haven’t had a lot to keep me occupied at school for the past three years besides eavesdropping on the conversations of those around me.” Then, with a grin, he said, “And people loooove to gossip about us within earshot!”

As Megan moaned “Noooo,” Nisha exclaimed “WHAT?!” with all apparent sincerity in the surprise and outrage she displayed.

“Us being me and him and Ange,” Ryan said, very quickly, as Katier took a deep, declarative breath.

With that breath, Katier said, “Powers Above, Nisha! Are you that bloody naive, seriously? You’re last year’s ninth grade tourney Freeweight territory champion. You know what kinda animals people can be when they’re gossiping!”

Evan said, “Ryan! Megan is learning all this right now. I know you’ve been convinced for three years that she knew about everything that was going on and was just cowed into accepting it or whatever, but that’s not the case, and you’ve known that long enough to maybe not berate her for not following along as well as you might be able to in her place.” Evan thought for a moment, then, understating his point, said, “Not everyone can both eavesdrop and provide running commentary on said eavesdropping at the same time like you can, remember.”

Ryan winced and adopted a thoughtful expression.

Evan noted that the crowd noises he’d started to hear earlier were still building, and definitely coming from deeper into the school’s campus. It seemed like the Vocational building on the left was probably between them and whatever was going on.

Nisha, grimacing, raised her hands up near her face, fingers crooked in frustration, and said to Katier, “I know that it wasn’t realistic to expect no one to talk about them at all, but that WAS what our intention was. People sure as SHIT weren’t supposed to be BULLYING them!”

“Oh!” Ryan said loudly. “Not that much was outright bullying. Only like…” He trailed off as even Megan, finally, looked at him, while Katier and Nisha stared at him with expressions of utter bewilderment. After a moment Katier opened her mouth to say something, but Ryan cut her off. “Only twenty-three percent of the people, rounded down, who did it seemed like they were getting any sort of malicious enjoyment out of it. Sorry for the pause, math.

“And you know, Evan, you’re right,” Ryan continued, “Megs, I’m sorry about my word and tone choices earlier, both were uncalled for. The whole school, SOMEHOW, AMAZINGLY kept this whole thing from you—I mean you were the shitting manager for the tourney team in eighth grade, so really all three of the middle schools kept it from you, except for that one slip—and in addition to Evan’s point about my capacity for following a conversation, it’s a fact that strong negative emotions, particularly strong shock, can sometimes inhibit information retention in short-term memory, and this is all admittedly pretty unusual.

Ryan took a deep breath and continued. “Also, Ev, good reminder that I am, in fact, thanks to being one of the Exiles, kinda under-socialized, and that no one in this school’s really going to be in my league anyway[1], so if I’m going to rejoin society—and at this point I am for sure, there’s no stopping me, I’ll just go blab dirt I’ve overheard on Lauren and you lot to, like, Wintre Ion and Delara and all them all if Lauren tries, Nisha, don’t EVEN bother—I’m going to need to remember that my preferred conversational style may be a bit much for some folks[2], and also that I’ve been graced with remarkable emotional stability and resilience compared to the average teenager, so I will need to exercise some patience and perhaps extra politeness in my future interactions with others, since everyone’s adolescent hormones and feelings and shit are going to be impacting their judgment and decision making.” He beamed at Evan, then spread it around a bit for all the girls.

[1] “I wouldn’t go that far,” Evan said, pitched (as well as he could) only for Ryan and Megan. Ryan ignored him.

[2] “You mean how you run your mouth enough to embarrass a goblin?” Evan asked, pitched (as well as he could) only for Ryan and Megan. Ryan ignored him.

Katier and Nisha were both staring wide-eyed and open mouthed at Ryan at this point.

Nisha wore an expression that Evan imagined he himself might wear if, out of nowhere and with no provocation, a stranger walked up to him and used some sort of device or magic to blow a puff of air directly into his face. She spoke first, murmuring, as if to herself, “My, he does go on though.”

Katier’s expression was more wide-eyed and slack-jawed—her mouth wasn’t gaping open or anything, it was more like she’d started to speak[1] and just had forgotten that’d been the plan. At this point, she did finish making a word. “Whoa. Um. Boy! You seem like you’ll be a lot to deal with.” She looked at Evan. “Is he always like this?”

[1] Likely true—in the misty depths of the past before Ryan started talking, Evan could vaguely recall that Nisha had most recently spoken to Katier.

Evan shrugged. “I mean, it’s not every day that the weird social isolation we’ve experienced for a fifth of our human lives collapses in upon itself because the circumstances surrounding it abruptly change, but he’s not not always like this. This is just kinda the peak of the curve.” Ryan gave him a less than amused look, but Evan ignored him.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Katier gave Evan a look he found hard to read, other than she was clearly considering something. “You’re kinda brainy too, huh?” she said, and the tone she used seemed a lot more... admiring? than how she’d sounded talking about Ryan the moment before, a fact which Evan wasn’t sure how to parse. “I suppose you’d have to be, to enjoy hanging out with him for long.”

Ryan frowned at Katier now. “Are you sure you want to start trying to actively insult me already?” he asked.

Katier made an apologetic face and said, “I mean, I just implied that you’re brainy? You have great breath control? Are you considering auditioning for any plays this year? I bet you’d kill in a fiendish role, particularly one with a lot of monologues! Richard the Third or his demon, maybe?”

“Uh. Thanks? I guess?” Ryan said, clearly unconvinced this was meant to be complimentary. Then he snapped his finger and pointed at Katier and said, “Though that’s a great segue back to the various theories surrounding the three of us and why you guys did this dumb piss to us, as we are in general the villains in these stories, and one of the Popular Ridiculous Niche theories that people like to share but don’t really believe are true but like to pretend like they believe they’re true or at least like they believe they could be true, you never know—”

More or less all at the same time:

Evan said, “I’m getting some pronoun confusion here, buddy.”

Nisha said, “Whoa, hold up?”

Katier said, “Wait, you gotta explain how only twenty-three percent of people who—”

Megan said, “Stop. Please.” Everyone stopped talking and looked at her. As they did, that crowd noise Evan had noticed earlier got super noticeable, due to the fact that a bunch of people resembling a disorganized parade were moving into view from behind the Vocational building, into the space between Evan’s group and the Tower. Evan was still standing a touch behind Megan, leaving him looking forward at Katier and Nisha more or less, too, as well as past them—well positioned to see this madness.

“Ryan,” Megan said, “Thank you for the apology, that was sweet of you. I appreciate you taking a moment to think about how I might be feeling right now, even if Evan had to prompt you. I would also like to know what you think so many of these people were doing, if not bullying you.”

Before Ryan could start explaining that, Megan continued, turning her head and looking at Evan sidelong as she said, “Evan, thanks for prompting Ryan to say that—it sounded like now was probably a good time for him to have some of those thoughts, before he unleashes himself on the rest of the school. But, um, you can just go ahead and let Ryan be Ryan now. You don’t need to chastise him for my sake.”

She laughed, though it was a hundred percent straight cacao sort of a laugh. “I’m finding it weirdly comforting, actually. Like, all this… all this happened, and Angie has short hair and has for years and I never even realized it, and she’s so hard, and you’re taller than ever and have your license and are….” She struggled for a moment and seemed to give up[1], then she went on to say, “But even in the midst of all this, Ryan is totally still… Ryan. More so than ever.” Not a lot of points for clarity, but she’d had an intense morning. Evan doubted he’d have done better. Describing Ryan was hard.

[1] A tiny voice in the back of Evan’s head—so small it was less a voice and more the suggestion, the possibility of a voice, the sort of underthought that, even living as one of the Exiles, Evan normally had no problem drowning out with music and gunfire and Ryan’s yammering and video games and the interweb and books—suggested “broken” as the word she ought to have used.

“You’re very welcome,” Ryan said, as if it should have been obvious to everyone that she would find his antics and blather comforting, rather than a reason to reconsider this reconciliation. “Soooo I seem to have a whole list of things I need to cover now, but, uh...” He peered past Nisha and Katier at the strange procession in the background.

“I’m… glad you find him comforting?” Katier said to Megan, looking dubious despite clearly trying to look understanding and supportive instead. Evan didn’t know her well, but she seemed quite expressive. “Um,” she started, then frowned, then glanced over her shoulder. “Fuck, that’s distracting. What in the World Between is happening?”

“Yeah,” Megan said, nodding, as she peered that way too. “What is even going on over there?” With the relieved expressions of people who’d been wanting to see what the commotion they could hear was about but didn’t feel like it would be acceptable to take their attention off their conversational partners, Nisha looked over her shoulder and Katier turned fully around to check it out as well.

“Yeeeaaaah,” Ryan drawled. “I mean if I’m going to be going over the two types of gossips and their motivations as well as their theories regarding the Exiles, I’m starting to worry about having time to do so before this whole school thing pops off. But. Whatever…that… is, it’s too… odd…” He trailed off again, frowning.

Evan personally felt like the coterie of subjects at hand ought to have been more than enough to keep everyone’s full, undivided attention, regardless of whatever distractions might be around at the moment. But even as a child Evan had never really been in sync with most of his peers. When they’d first met in third grade, Evan had found Ryan’s company to be a relief, in that the tiny boy seemed to immediately understand Evan better than anyone beside Angie, Megan, and his sisters, and nearly as well as them. But even as… inscrutable and challenging as most people who didn’t know Ryan found him to be, he still often seemed to react to things more like the other kids than Evan did. The literally life changing exchange they were in the middle of, Evan thought, was probably more important than whatever weird procession was happening over there. It was probably something they could investigate later, after the fact.

But since everyone else, even Ryan[1], seemed to think taking a break to do some rubbernecking of their own was a great idea, he supposed he ought to do as the Romans did and be terrible. So he took a look too. Besides, he’d been half watching anyway, since he was already facing that direction.

[1] Semi-consciously, Evan was aware he was not being fair, and that Ryan wasn’t reacting to this like a normal rubbernecker. Ryan was reacting to it like Ryan, which was to say, like someone who was almost entirely driven by his obsessive desire to know everything, or at least to know as much as possible about every situation at all times.

It might not have been perfect, but ‘procession’ seemed like the right word to Evan. A strange one, to be sure. It’d taken him a bit to work out as he also listened to the conversation happening, but there appeared to be three people walking very slowly at the head of what seemed to be two lines with over five people, but probably not more than ten, per line, before they disintegrated into a much more disorganized mob.

At the front, the head of each line flanked the boy in the middle, and their attention, as well as that of at least three people behind them in each line, was fully fixed on that boy while he gestured and spoke, his crow-feather-black hair shining in the morning sunlight that bathed the path between the Tower and the two buildings flanking it. As Evan, Megan, and the others in their conversation all shifted their attention fully to this spectacle, he seemed to finish talking, and, along with the boy on the far side of him, turned his attention to the girl on the near side as she, presumably, spoke.

It was the damnedest thing. It should have been utterly, completely impossible at this distance—with most people, you could hardly see the color of their eyes at all unless you were uncomfortably close to them—but Evan got the distinct impression of green eyes from the crow-haired boy for the moments he looked at that girl. As Evan considered this unexpected, borderline psychotic sense impression, and as the boy turned his head away from them and toward the boy on his far side, Megan said, “Who is that boy?”

She said it in a tone of voice that was nakedly awe-struck enough that Evan found it… kinda irksome, given the circumstances.