EVAN. BETWEEN THIRD AND FOURTH.
“Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Ryan exclaimed. “His birthday! It’s June nineteenth! Two months behind Angie!”
They all paused for a moment, considering that. “And that matters to the birds?” Evan asked dubiously.
“It matters to Megan,” Angie said. “You know that.”
“It used to matter to Megan when we were kids,” Evan corrected. “You have no idea whether she gives a shit now.”
“What else happened? What else happened?!” Ryan said, literally jumping up and down.
“Oh chill,” Angie said. “Next, they insulted me some, and then Gramyre showed up with his procession and two of the magpies flew over to him, while the two left behind shut up and stared at me, again. They did it for nineteen seconds.”
“Huh…” Evan said.
“So definitely an augury again,” Ryan said. “They just won’t do that normally. Joy!”
“Joy?” Evan said.
“Two for joy. Megan’s back,” Angie said, with the hint of a smile. “If not that, then something else is going to go well. Chris’s first augury happened at the same time, and was also joy, if you’re following along.”
“Yeah, yeah!” Ryan said, thinking. “And then?”
“The magpies were vulgar once more, and then another joined the two in front of Gramyre, and did it again. For nineteen seconds. I counted.”
“Hmm…” Evan said. Auguries normally only needed to be thirteen seconds, right?
“Girl…” Ryan said. “Gotta be Megs, right?”
“That’s what I thought. If it’s about his birthday. If he likes blonde hair she’s probably pretty enough for him,” Angie said. “I was worried he would think it was me. He talked to me afterward, trying to figure out what was up. I didn’t end up really explaining our birthday thing, but I did tell him I wasn’t his girl and that he should talk to my friend first. Didn’t have time to explain in a way that made sense anyway. I told him to tell her his birthday when he found her.”
MEGAN. SACRED SHIT WTF OMG BBQ ADFJKSFDSJKEICN [1]
[1] A textual representation of where Megan’s brain is at, following the revelation of Chris’s birthdate.
“Yeah! Uh, interrobang...?” Chris said, giving her ground by a step and a significant amount of side eye, as he was still facing fully forward and had stepped directly sideways, his movements like a dancer’s. Or a swordsman’s.
Megan was completely stunned. A little corner of her mind started to point out their birthday thing was childish and stupid. It had worked on Ryan in third grade because he was a loner with no friends, but they were fifteen now, and this beautiful outgoing Light Bearer wasn’t going to care about their weird birthday thing.
The rest of her brain was screaming “ONE OF US! ONE OF US!”
“You’re our fifth!” her mouth blurted, and she immediately felt dumb. Not the way to approach this. She shouldn’t even be talking about it, it was so stupid.
“Uh, okay?” Chris’s voice was deceptively mild as he turned to face her, rotating his body while keeping his gaze fixed on her.
Megan felt her face get hot. “Sorry. It’s weird, it’s nothing.”
Chris blinked. Tilted his head slightly to one side, like an intrigued cat. “No, go on. I’m your fifth what now?”
Megan kind of wanted to die. This was so embarrassing! Why’d she have to say that? “Um. So… Some of my… most important friends are… well. We met because of our birthdays, because I was a little weirdo when I was a kid.”
“Okay?” Chris said. He sounded surprised, but Megan couldn’t guess why.
She just went on. “And it’s just that our birthdays are each two months apart, more or less, on the nineteenth. I’m born on February nineteenth. And, um, my friend Angie was—”
“Angie McMillen?” Chris said, almost too casually.
Megan blinked. “Um, yeah? You met her?” In her peripheral vision, light glinted off Chris’s bell charm, catching her eye for a moment.
He gave a little half-chuckle. “Yeah, we had an… interesting encounter. Go on.”
What did that mean? “She was born on April nineteenth, two months behind me. And then my friend Evan—
“Evan Cadell?” Chris interrupted again. Less casually this time. More focused.
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“Um. Yes, actually. Um, why?” Chris’s bell charm seemed to be reflecting a bright light. It was kinda distracting. Megan tried to keep her focus on his face.
“We had a nice convo, and he mentioned a friend named Megan,” Chris said, glancing down away from her face. Was he checking out her boobs? He hadn’t really done that so far. Not that Megan’s chest was anything to write home about.
“Oh,” Megan said. “Well, he was born on December nineteenth, two months ahead of me. Angie and I decided to be friends with him in kindergarten when we found out. And our friend Ryan was born on October nineteenth, four months ahead of me—we adopted him in third grade when we found out.”
“And I’m two months after Angie,” Chris said, slowly nodding his head, though his eyes kept flicking back to her chest. “What a funny coincidence.” He had a small crease between his brows.
“Obviously that doesn’t mean you have to be friends with us, it was just a weird thing I did as a kid—” Chris’s bell charm was really bright. And Megan realized that they were both standing in the shade—it shouldn’t have been reflecting the sun like that. She finally looked at it properly, and realized that it was actually glowing with an almost silvery light.
“Hey, uh, does your charm normally glow?” Chris asked.
Megan looked down at her own chest—her bell charm was also glowing with a light that was almost too bright to look at. She looked back up at his, similarly bright, and said, “Does yours?”
He glanced down at his own charm, and then back up at her, meeting her eyes with confusion in his gaze. He looked down again, and so did she, in time to see both bells flash a brilliant silver-white, all but blinding her.
At the same time, the strangest sensation passed through her, indescribable, like nothing she’d ever felt before. Seemingly in response, she sneezed—she heard Chris sneeze too.
And also at the same time, the school bells rang. They were late.
As her vision cleared, she found Chris staring at her, an utterly poleaxed expression on his face. Megan stared back for a moment, then went to lift her bell charm to look at it. As she lifted it, it chimed, like the small bell it was only supposed to resemble. Like it definitely did not before. Chris blinked, and went to lift his—it, too, chimed where it hadn’t before.
“What the shits?!” Chris asked.
EVAN. BEGINNING OF FOURTH PERIOD.
“I better get going,” Evan said. “See you at lunch.”
“See ya,” Ryan said as Angie said, “Later.”
“You guys gotta get it together,” Evan said as he walked to the doors to head to his history class in the Social Studies building.
“That was intentional!” Ryan called as Evan walked through the door.
Evan made his way across the quad to his History class, followed by a decreasing amount of staring and whispers. The Social Studies building was the senior lockerhall, and seniors didn’t know him from Sir George.[1]
[1] A legendary Light Bearer and knight, most famous for slaying an evil, venomous dragon in one of the climatic battles that led to the fall of demon-bound Rome.
He reached his history class and absconded safely to the back row. Three of the desks were taken back there, but there were two free on the far side, so he took the one on the end… column…? of desks.
Safely enback-deskened, Evan surveyed the room, like you do. His fellow back-deskers were two handsome, rich looking boys —one Lemuric of some sort—holding hands across the aisle, and a hot girl who was probably rich too. Ryan would undoubtedly know who they were—Evan didn’t know how Ryan kept track of all those people. Well, he did, Ryan did it by being Ryan, but Evan didn’t understand the effort.
Then, to Evan’s... not alarm, and not irritation, but a mixed up version of both… Katier Ryuyama and Beth Mishra walked into the room. They glanced around, noting the other popular kids first, and then their eyes found Evan. Katier immediately looked away, clearly blushing, while Beth met his eyes for a long moment with eyes very wide and full of… trepidation? Not fear, though. Then she gave him a timid smile, turned quickly to Katier before he could react in any way, and sat in front of her, not looking at Evan again.
The bell rang. As it did, the strangest sensation passed, for an instant, through Evan—it was like nothing he’d ever felt before. As if triggered by the weird sensation, he sneezed.
ANGIE. BEGINNING OF FOURTH PERIOD.
“That was intentional!” Ryan called as Evan disappeared through the door.
“Was it?” Angie asked, raising an eyebrow.
Ryan shrugged. “We each intentionally said the thing we did. Let’s get moving.” Angie rolled her eyes.
They got inside and went up a flight of stairs to their Physical Science class. Once they were in class, Ryan scoped their classmates while Angie found them seats. She just didn’t share Ryan’s fascination with the popular and acclaimed at the school, and couldn’t keep up with his updates since she didn’t know the people involved and she just didn’t care.
Angie was pretty sure one girl was the younger sister of one of the upperclassfolk Light Bearers, the one who dressed like a fancy lady. And two of the (former?) Olympians were in there, Brandon and Jun’s friends, though whether that was still the case remained to be seen. They still seemed to be each other’s friends. Angie didn’t care anymore, and watched Ryan instead.
At the exact same time as the bell rang, Angie felt a bizarre sensation pass over her, like nothing she’d felt before, for just a moment, and then she sneezed. Ryan sneezed at the exact same time. Their gazes whipped together, puzzled looks spreading across their features.
In the breath after the bells stopped ringing, they both hiccupped simultaneously.
“Okay? The fuck was that!?” Ryan said. “Interrobang!?”
CITY-STATE OF PHOENIX, MEXICAN TERRITORY. FREDONIAN UNION OF CITY-STATES.
THE THIRD OF FIVE LONG PERIODS.
A tallish, round faced, roundly proportioned firstage girl sat listening to a teacher talk about science. She possessed a huge mass of wild, dense orange curls, great swatches of freckles where she wasn’t sunburnt, and a glum expression on her face. As she sat there, the strangest sensation passed over her. It left behind an itchy nose, and she sneezed.
“Thank you,” she said quietly to the gesundheits that came in response.
Afterward, she felt unexpectedly better. Great, even. She really needed that sneeze, she supposed.