RYAN. PAST TIME TO BE IN THE CLASSROOM.

“Seriously though, who gives a shit who he is?” Evan said, a single breath after the doors closed behind them.

Ryan sighed. More of this. “Are you kidding me? You were just all ‘You didn’t know’ and ‘Sure you will’ but now this? What do you even mean?”

Their first class, Comp Tech—Computational Technologies on the registrar junk, but Ryan’d never heard anyone say anything but ‘Comp Tech’ out loud—was down the hall and around the corner, and Ryan started walking that way, forcing Evan to keep pace.

“I mean—” Evan said, then paused as a frustrated look passed over his face. “We spent a lot of time on the Gramyre kid when, as you pointed out, we probably should have been talking about the subject at hand.”

“Uh-huh,” Ryan said. “I mean, Megan didn’t know about him. Seemed only polite to explain, to the best of my ability, what was going on with the weird parade. Boys don’t normally lead parades through campus, even on the first day of school. Did you really expect everyone to just ignore that?”

“We just—We didn’t need—” Evan continued with his frustrated face. “I don’t know, just the bloody way she asked the question.”

“Ahh,” Ryan said. He grinned insincerely. “Are we jealous?”

Evan gave Ryan an unamused stare. “No, we are not jealous. I’m not into Megan, nor will I ever be. It’s just she was literally in the middle of finding out about, about, about our whole scene! She really needed to take a break to ask about a boy?”

“I mean, she probably needed to take a break for literally anything,” Ryan pointed out. “So that she could have a break. I’d think you could figure that out, since you kept admonishing me not to be so flippant about things because you were worried it would be hard on her. We were kinda exposing the fact that almost her entire friend group and most of the rest of the school were lying to her, if only by omission, for all of middle school.”

Evan paused, his hand on the handle of the door to the classroom and said, “She’s trying to get us to accept her apology. She didn’t need or deserve a break. There was no point in making things harder on her, but—”

“Stay cool, boy,” Ryan said. “Don’t take out the fact that you know I’m right about Gramyre—which is why you always get cranky but never actually argue with me when I bring him up—on Megan, of all people. Besides, that thing with his eyes was interesting, and that was as much as anything a good reason to explain things right then. Open the door.”

“You really saw that too?” Evan said, his expression already back to cranky, and stood there glaring at nothing.

“Yeah! Pretty neat,” Ryan said.

“Easy for you to say,” Evan said.

“Don’t get hot,” Ryan said. “Man, you got some high times ahead. Some girls will totally dig those gray eyes of yours, even if you can’t see them from a magical distance away, and I clearly can’t tell you enough that if you would just go show off at Thrushbeard’s—”

Evan interrupted him, as he so often, so rudely did. “Ryan, stop quoting ancient musical theater lyrics at me. And I know you’ve got a hankering to show off, yourself, since you set them up—” Evan cut himself off at Ryan’s warning glare, and continued, “But I have been whispered about behind hands and propped up binders for three goddamn years. Maybe we could just, like, chill and not be the center of atten—”

“Phwepphh!” Ryan phwepphed, the burst of air blowing his lips out like a duck’s bill briefly, and amusingly made them flap a bit. He enjoyed that. “If you want to be friends with Megan again you’re still going to be the center of attention. Even more so! She was one of the most popular girls in our middle school class, just like she was in grade school, and I doubt that’s going to change now.”

Evan tried to say something but Ryan raised his voice and kept going. “Only we’re adults now, and people are going to pay attention to who she’s hanging out with, so you’re not going to be able to just fart around in the corner with me like we did all of fourth, fifth, and sixth years. And besides, I keep fucking telling you that you’re fooling yourself if you think you’re actually going to use that hunting license and not attract attention. You need to attract attention to find someone to go with in the first place! And you won’t be able to find a fireteam, you insist. So why not the new Light Bearer? Everyone else around here expects showboating solo patrols from Light Bearers, but a kid from the east coast is going to be way more—”

Evan cut him off again. “If you’d just hurry up and—”

“Evan!” Ryan snapped, dropping all the nonsense from his tone. Evan knew better. “Not okay. We’re talking about you achieving your hunting goals as soon as possible, not that.”

“Hey,” said a girl Ryan didn’t immediately recognize[1], with turquoise hair and a cool, light brown complexion who’d been standing patiently behind them for an impressive amount of time (probably because she’d found their conversation eavesdrop-worthy and had thus been willing to wait). “Do you guys wanna go through the door before the bopping bell rings or what?”

[1] He had a lot on his mind at the moment.

A couple other kids, a boy and a girl, stood behind Turquoise[1]—both kids who’d been in computer classes with Ryan and Evan, and who had always treated them as Exiles, even when others in the classes had broken rank.[2] They were standing still, eyes wide and frightened, as if they were hoping they blended into the lockers on the wall behind them rather than have Ryan or Evan notice them.

[1] Ryan would need to look her up online with his phone real quick once they’d found a bench so he could mentally refer to her by name. Also, he wanted to look up the etymology of the word Turquoise, he should know that.

[2] Including Mercy Seerson, who’d been head and shoulders more popular than anyone else in that computer class, who continued to be so far as Ryan could tell, and whose rank breaking hadn’t ultimately mattered, because Angie and Evan had still refused to capitalize on it. Welp, their stubbornness had paid off, and they’d finally gotten what they’d wanted, which was Megan crawling back with apologies dripping from her lips, and it’d been way more dramatic than either one of them had wanted or been prepared for. Fools. Speaking of which, Mercy should be in this class. Ryan made a note to look for her when Evan finally opened the door.

Evan’s whole face and several blotches on his neck flushed dark red, and he yanked the door open so hard he almost lost balance, which Ryan found hilarious, because he was normally quite coordinated.[1] Ryan supposed he could have warned Evan that standing there with his hand on the handle while he quibbled was drawing attention to himself in exactly the way he didn’t want, but it served the boy right for not just opening the door when Ryan had told him to.

[1] For a teenager. Came from the combat training. Particularly since he did it all solo these days. He’d started to take a lot of care in paying attention to exactly what he was doing with his body all the time, to make up for not having his sister or father around to point out his mistakes anymore.

Turquoise glanced Evan up and down as she walked by, including some eye contact, and twitched one eyebrow up a fraction. “Yeh, his eyes okay,” she said with a glance at Ryan[1], and then she looked back at Evan and said, “That’s a bigger gun than most people carry, I’ll grant you, but it’s no hunting revolver.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

[1] Her eyes, Ryan noted, were a turquoise of the exact same hue, but slightly lower saturation and brightness, as her hair, and her identity clicked in Ryan’s head. Another thing he should have figured out immediately—what an embarrassing morning he was having. At least no one knew. Well, no need to look her up now. Just the word turquoise.

Evan, who seemed flustered by so much eye contact from this stranger[1], reflexively shot back, “Yeah, ‘cause I want to lug a full hunting revolver around all day, in daylight, at school. That’ll make everyone feel comfortable.”

[1] Ryan wondered if Evan recognized her—Ryan was pretty sure they’d met before, a long time ago, though Ryan had never met her.

“Whoa. Snippy,” Turquoise[1] said, raising an eyebrow. “I was just saying. Figured I could comment since you forced us to listen to your conversation for half an hour.”

[1] Her real name, if Ryan was correct, was still Turquoise, just in a different language, so fuck it, he found it funnier to think of her as Turquoise.

Evan’s eyes glanced down in shame, his face reflushing. “Apologies. It’s been a morning.”

Now it was Turquoise’s turn to look surprised. “Huh!” she said, then, “Apology accepted.” She flashed them a smile before walking into the classroom.

Ryan gave Evan a few moments to collect himself, then they both turned their heads in unison and fixed their gaze on the scaredokids. “After you,” they said in unison, with their best Exiled smiles. The pair made undignified whimpering noises and scampered past into the room as well. Ryan and Evan followed.

Taking up a quarter of the central tower’s ground floor[1], the computer workshop was filled with workbenches that were too tall for Ryan and too short for Evan, with two tall stools per bench that probably would not help matters much. Maybe three-fifths of the workbenches had occupants already, making for some twenty odd students. Because it was a class full of nerds, most of the benches closest to the front of the room and the teacher’s desk were already taken. Mercy, Ryan noted, was not yet there. A shame. Ryan wanted to ask her about calling Lauren a bitch. She’d not shared that fact with them. Ryan hoped she was still in the class.

[1] More like a fifth, but the last fifth was taken up by the central stairwell, with each of the workshops taking up a quarter of the circular tower floor around the stairwell.

Since Mercy wasn’t there, Ryan felt totally comfortable saying, sotto voice, “We’re the coolest nerds in here, we can sit in the back.” Evan, his face still kind of red, nodded. They walked several rows over to the bench behind Filbert and Marco, who said, “Hey, guys,” more or less in unison.

“Yo,” Ryan and Evan said, also more or less in unison, in return, as Ryan put his messenger bag down next to said bench. Evan shrugged his backbag off and plopped it up on the empty workbench. “Still baggin’[1] pretty hard there, Marco,” Ryan appended.

[1] Colloquial expression/long-used slang (think “cool” old) for the common practice of people who are uncomfortable with their bodies or with other people looking at their bodies choosing to wear loose, form obscuring clothing so that, well, their bodies were not easy to discern. (Cf. Robing, which is the version of this performed by sorcerers and wizards, and likely the origin of societal acceptance for bagging in the first place.) Baggin’ is particularly common among kids in the throes of puberty. The generally accepted polite response to bagging is gentle ribbing, mostly in the vein of “trying not to make the rest of the boys/girls jealous?” for those who seem to be open to it, and a general avoidance of the subject for anyone who reacts to initial ribbing sensitively. Joking about someone you don’t know well baggin’ because of a potentially “bad” body is super offensive and might land you in a duel. Baggin’ as a broadly adopted general fashion trend tends to come and go in waves, much like jean-waist-height or funny looking boots.

“Oh, piss off,” Marco said, picking at his baggy tee shirt. “I grew half a decimeter and lost weight. Thanks for noticing.”

“Hard to notice with you baggin’ like that, dude,” Ryan replied.

Marco continued, “I’m not baggin’, I just haven’t got any new clothes yet, because shopping’s the worst.”

“I mean, now’s the time to do it, man,” Evan said, giving Marco a dubious look. “At least there’s back-to-school sales and shit.”

“Yeah,” Marco replied glumly.

“I keep telling you I’ll help,” Filbert said. Filbert’s problems (and he had many, or he and Marco probably would not be on speaking terms with the Exiles in the first place) did not include an inability to dress himself, for all he had not lost weight like his companion.

“You just want to try and see my butt,” Marco replied.

“Well, yes,” Filbert responded. “But in my defense, ideally, I’d like to see everyone’s butt.”

“Okay, you’re still doing that,” Evan said, sounding like he’d suppressed a sigh.

Filbert pouted. “What do you mean by that?”

“Probably that you were more fun to hang out with when you were a weird prude instead of a weird talking-about-everyone’s-butts-all-the-time guy,” Marco said in the tone of voice of someone who is glad someone finally brought the subject up so that he doesn’t have to. “Sex ed was good to get but I wish they hadn’t given it to you.”

“You don’t mean that,” Filbert said, waggling his eyebrows wildly and suggestively at Marco.

Marco’s bronze cheeks got rosy and he looked away. “Dude, come on, not around other people.”

“Ooooh, I sense a scandal!” Ryan said, jumping over to their bench, putting his elbows on it and cupping his face in his hands. “You guys hook up finally?”

“Don’t be loud about that!” Marco said, giving Ryan a dirty look. “That’s personal.” He lowered his voice. “But yes, finally. Gods.”

“Good job. We told you you’d get through to him before too long,” Evan said behind Ryan, and as normal for this sort of situation, keeping all but the barest hint of smugness out of his tone, which was something Ryan really needed to study to emulate. Ryan had many sundry talents, but he still did need work on natural voice tone modulation.[1] People could find him smug even when he didn’t mean to be.[2]

[1] Which is to say controlling the tone of his voice as it came out, rather than using technology to change the tone of his voice, which now that he thought about it was also something that might be worth working on. For reasons. Maybe less so that they were probably no longer Exiled, but even still.

[2] This was rare. He mostly had every right to be smug, he believed.

“Easy for you to say,” Marco said. “It had been way ‘too long’ already by the time I decided to ask you guys. Tell Angie thanks.”

“We will neither of us remember to do that,” Ryan said. “Tell her yourself, if you actually want it to happen.”

“Hold up. I was a project?” Filbert said, looking delighted.

“Only because you were being so godsdamned dense about things,” Evan said, which effectively took the air nozzle out of Filbert’s inflating ego.

“Right, thanks,” Filbert said. “Anyway. Um, that was a pretty weird crowd all standing around just south of campus, huh?”

“Not the Light Bearer’s parade,” Marco added. “The one that didn’t move for a while. We couldn’t really get through to see what was happening.”

“Uh huh,” Evan said, in a tone of voice that more effectively conveyed “I think that’s a lie” than saying the words would have, and much more deniably. “It was pretty weird.”

“Ask the questions you want to know the answers to, my dudes,” Ryan said, smarmily.

Marco and Filbert exchanged an unhappy look, and then Filbert said, “So, you going—” and then the bell began to ring

BRONG

BRONG

BRONG

BRONG

BABONG

indicating that it was time for class to truly begin.