ANGIE. AFTER SIXTH PERIOD.
When the bell rang, Angie looked brightly at Aubrey and said, “I’ve got PE next. What about you?”
Aubrey had been in the process of putting her hood back up, and now she froze halfway through, regarding Angie with a wary expression. After a moment, she said, “Enchanting One,” and finished pulling up the hood.
“Hey, cool!” Angie said, smiling. “I’m in Pre-Enchanting first period even though I should have gotten into Enchanting One, since my mom’s an enchanter and I’ve literally enchanted literally hundreds of times. But those questions about the Steiner-Roi theorems messed me up, since they’re, you know, wrong, so I didn’t know anything about them. But if you need any help with actual practical work, hit me up.”
It was hard to tell in the shadow of the hood, but a corner of Aubrey’s mouth might have turned upward. “I’m pretty good at enchanting too, actually. I think I’ll be okay.” She stood and hoisted up her bag. She was quite a bit taller than Angie—maybe not quite as tall as Chris, but close. She wore a long, loose, multilayered black skirt that hid the shape of her lower half pretty effectively. “I knew the Steiner-Roi theorems, but answering those felt like pulling a tooth. I’m sorry.”
“Well, we can still talk shop, probably,” Angie said, glancing down at her own shorts and tank top, following. “So what’s with the hood, and the long sleeves? Seems a little hot for the weather.”
Aubrey glanced over her shoulder at Angie, slowed for a moment as she stepped out into the hall. She said, “Look, Angie, you seem nice. I’m not… not really good at, um, people, though. That’s what’s with the hood. If you wear a hood up and keep your head down, the people around here take the hint. Usually.”
Angie nodded, disappointed and a little embarrassed. “And you want me to take the hint. Okay. I gotcha. Um. Have a good class I guess.”
The corner of Aubrey’s mouth curled up again. “Thanks. See you tomorrow, I suppose.”
“Seems likely,” Angie said, giving her one last smile before the other girl was off skulking through the halls and crowds of other students to the stairs. Angie watched her disappear down them, then headed toward the stairs herself.
She hit the bottom of the stairs just as Katie Kay was rushing by, heading toward the exit to the building. A glance to her right, the direction they’d been coming from, showed her Evan and Ryan standing near the door to their Japanese class talking. The boys both looked annoyed.
Katie paused on seeing Angie. There were tears in her eyes, and she seemed obviously overwrought in some manner, but she tried to plaster a smile on her face, and said, “Angie!” she said. “How are you?”
Angie blinked. “Katie,” she said in reply. “You are aware that it’s been three years since you’ve said a single word to me, right?”
“I’m so sorry,” Katie said, not sounding that sorry. “I really am. Please, those boys won’t see reason. I’m totally assfucked if—”
“Hateful stars, really? Assfucked?” Angie snapped. “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with ‘dead?!’ Which is what you are to me.”
“I’m seriously dead if I can’t get Lauren and Megan to forgive me, but I know you’ll help me, Angie, I know it! Evan and Ryan were being—”
“I hope you get fast-acting cancer and then when you’re almost dead and in terrible pain, you get terribly and painfully devoured by a dragon,” Angie said. “Go fuck yourself with a fork.”
“You’ll puking pay,” Katie hissed, any pretense evaporating. “You’ll all shitting pay.” Then she stormed past Angie.
Angie looked after her, and shrugged.
A moment later the boys joined her. “Sorry,” Evan said. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted us to interrupt, and I know Katie didn’t, because she’d just talked to us.”
“It’s fine,” Angie said. She continued, looking at Ryan. “We better get going, we need to get changed for PE.”
“Mehh,” Ryan said, making a face. “Catch you after school, Evan.”
“Sure,” Evan said. “I’m back in the Science building, so I can walk with you like two thirds of the way there.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Fair enough,” Ryan said, and started walking. Angie and Evan followed.
“How’d you not realize that?” Evan asked, giving Ryan a dubious look.
“I’ve, like, got shit on my mind right now, Evan,” Ryan said, frowning back, as they pushed through the doors onto the campus. “I’ve been thinking, things are going to get super Flames of Love[1] up in here with Chris. Megan better lock him down if she wants him. She has an obvious advantage, but still.”
[1] A reality dating show in which an unattached Light Bearer, sometimes an up-and-comer and sometimes an already successful one, dates seven people to whom they are attracted to simultaneously over a number of weeks, typically fourteen. While dating, they travel on an airship together from town to town, city to city, or City-State to City-State, highlighting local places of interest in their dates. The show spends about half its time on the relationships between the star and the contestants, and the rest on the relationships between the contestants.
The contestants alike are typically drawn from interesting candidates—Light Bearers, other types of Beast hunters, actors, sports stars, mages, sorcerers, summoners, and so on. While there is the occasional duel between contestants who can’t resolve differences, for the most part the show focuses on more pleasant interactions, giving the viewers a lot of insight into the personalities of the cast members. After giving the star and the contestants seven weeks to get to know each other, one contestant starts getting eliminated per week. Arguments between fans of different cast members are known to grow fierce on the interwebs.
Angie said, “I do not think Flames of Love is actually going to be applicable to a regular high school relationship, Ryan. Chris seems decisive and this isn’t a game.”
“You never know,” Ryan replied, but thankfully did not pursue the subject further. Instead he said, “Regardless, girls are going to make plays. I’d be curious to know Chris’s thoughts.”
“You think Megan likes Chris, huh?” Evan said, not sounding entirely thrilled.
“Come on dude, you saw what she was like at lunch. Evan, this is such a great opportunity for you,” Ryan said, thankfully keeping his voice to a reasonable level as they entered the stream of students walking with purpose around campus. “I don’t know why you don’t seem happier. Megan’s back. We got a new party member, and he’s one who you could form an actual hunting party with, no waiting required. If you’d asked, you’d already have plans to hunt this week. And he seems fun to hang with, besides.”
“A great opportunity to get endlessly asked about him, you mean,” Evan said, his tone morose. “Fuck, it’s already started, and we have one more period today. Let alone the weeks and months of school ahead of us. As if it wasn’t going to be bad enough with the Exile ending.”
“Come on, Evan,” Angie said, clapping him on the back. He seemed tense. “With any luck our rep will keep a lot of the riff-raff away. But we’re going to be dealing with plenty of popular people and the subject of a variety of gossip if we want to be friends with Megan, so it’s not like you wouldn’t be dealing with stuff like this anyway.”
“I guess,” Evan said dubiously. “It’s just a lot. Most people haven’t even started to try and talk to me yet, but I can see that they want to. If we’re not scary for too long, they will, and we can’t pull off scary hanging out with Megan. Gods.”
Angie said, “For what it’s worth, I think Beth still likes us. She keeps smiling at me.”
“I mean, you don’t have to talk to them,” Ryan said more or less at the same time, replying to Evan. “You just have to accept that people will think you’re a jerk.”
“Well,” Evan said, “Unlike you, I don’t really see any reason to be mean to people I don’t know deserve it. Beth, for instance, who also stopped talking to us for three years and has not apologized like Megan has, might deserve it. But I need to be pleasant with non-Asphodel students, which is hard when I don’t know anything really about Chris and that’s all they’ve cared about so far.”
“He told us a fucking hunting story, man,” Ryan said. “We know he’s a scion of the Providence Gramyres, we know he’s from the city-state of Raleigh, we know both his parents are Light Bearers, we know he has a sister named Cat who is also a Light Bearer, and we know he made the trip by train. That’ll be plenty of gossip for anyone who asks.” They had reached the fork in the path, north of the tower, where they needed to part ways.
“That’s my point though,” Evan said as they paused to listen to him. “I do not like being talked to only because people want to know about him. I think that sucks.”
“If you think what they’re doing sucks, just be mean!” Ryan said. “Fuck man, I don’t know what to tell you. You want the world to change, but the world don’t change on command.” He paused. “Unless you can do magic, then it kinda does. But there’s no magic that can change humankind’s fundamental nature. Anyway, we’re going to be late as shit if we don’t get a move on.”
“Bleh. Okay. See you after,” Evan said, and went striding down the path, moving much faster without having to keep pace with Ryan and Angie.
“You were uncharacteristically quiet just now,” Ryan said as they started walking again. “Seemed like you would have had advice for him. You usually do.”
“You fucking talked over me,” Angie said, cross. “If you wanted to take the fucking lead, who was I to argue?”
Ryan winced. “Sorry?” he said, in a higher pitched voice than normal.
“You should be,” she said. She couldn’t stay that angry at him though, and flashed him a smile. He smiled back, and they went to face PE together.