You spend the next few chimes of class dwelling on your interaction with you partners. What is wrong with you? There is nothing wrong with you; you were just upset. You remember telling yourself yesterday that you are mostly mentally healthy. You were trying to be more “open-minded.” Your don’t need to split your head open any more than it already is. You’re losing your mind as the time to deliver your dru—no, not “your drugs”. Just “the drugs.”

Yesterday, you were “mostly mentally healthy.” But today you can barely think.

Yesterday, you were not caffeinated. But you will help someone else drug themself today.

Yesterday, you were “mostly awake”. Now, you’re mostly dead because you spent the night in a sort of restless limbo state where degrading, half conscious thoughts flooded through your head like the Ila Callor river delta.

Stop. Stop. You are currently in Vivish class. You are doing very well in this class, like most of your other ones. You like learning Vovish. It’s a fun, simple language. Ma pueble nomo Tetherdown. My town is named Tetherdown. Ma ve e on agui esi nocho. I will go to the water tonight. Ma pensi oá loce.

Shut up. Your thoughts do not sound crazy. Like a bat on caff. Oh snap, we’re back to that. “That” being drugs. You are now explaining your own disjointed jokes to yourself. If you can even call them “jokes”.

You realize you’re panicking. The dragons around you are confused, both at your obvious tension and at the fact that you’re not laying in your usual spot next to your partners. You can’t lay with Dirk and Weston. You’re guilty, you’re nervous, you’re guilty… you’re nervous that your web might suspect something. The silent, attentive look Weston gives you from across the room tells you that le does suspect something.

Is your trio going to dry up because of this? Once you fall out with Weston, you’ll be detached from both Dirk and Jack, and Kayy afterward, and then… Stop. Positive thoughts. You love your web. You will not fall out, and you will persist until the natural relationship period ends and you dry up peacefully.

Or until they find out that you’re selling drugs and disown you.

No.

They wouldn’t disown you.

Who runs the business?

Your doe parent used the word “distributing”. That implies that le, like you, is the drone, and not the monarch. You would know, too, if your parents were storing drugs in your tiny home. Someone, somewhere is probably employing your parents to run orders to customers, like you are.

You stop caring. You’re never going to meet this dragon. They don’t need to steal your headspace. Neither does any sort of negative speculation about your parents’ lives. Or any thought about them at all, now that you consider it.

You batter down the silver part of your brain and get through the rest of Vivish class. The chime rings, signaling both the end of the class and the time to make your delivery.

Your panic rockets into the cloud, then plummets back down into an ocean of calm. Your burning mind cools as you stride toward the door, brushing past Weston and Dirk. Your country is called the Supervised Island of Endin, but your school has no cameras. Most places do not, because the “Supervising” refers to the rich, privileged militia the Directors employ, who do absolutely nothing until the Directors call upon them to evaporate any dissent among the citizens. The lack of actual supervision allows those such as the Misdirector to commit their “protest murders” with little repercussion.

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Random thoughts of serial killers drain out of your mind. You head through the milling crowd toward the reclusive corner indicated by your note. A dragon you know is sitting, waiting,. He gives you an amused look.

“Well,” Says Dante Burgen Top, “Drew. I am surprised, very surprised. You are the last dragon I would expect to see shipping caff.”

Avoiding his eyes, you undo your pack in silence. Dante doesn’t matter. He deserves no interaction. He does not deserve the attraction your despicable brain forms between him and Weston. You remove the packages of powder from your bag and toss them at Dante’s feet.

You retie the pack and look at Dante expectantly. With an easy, practiced movement, he pulls a voucher out of the pocket dangling from his neck and flicks it over to you. You catch it in your mouth. You drop the paper onto your talon. You pocket it and walk away.

You hate Dante. You hate your inevitable attraction to him. You hate your parents.

You hate yourself, because you feel the same pleasurable rush you

typically get when you run schemes with your friends to gain profit.

You turned down something fun today, for something that will ruin your life.

----------------------------------------

When school ends, you don’t go to the tryouts, and you don’t go swimming because the tryouts are taking place at the community pool, the only public pool in town.

Your mind’s been blank since you met with Dante. You don’t feel like doing anything. You want to lay on your cushion and do nothing. To curl up and exist until the cushion rots and you’re coated in dust.

You’re not sad. You’re not angry. You’re just… blank. Empty. The lake isn’t calm; the water’s frozen.

You circle your house twice on the slideway, not so much apprehensive of going home, but apprehensive of moving your body at all. On your third slide-by, a dragon hops onto the track and slams into you.

You’re knocked onto your side, rolling over your left wing. “Ow! Can you please…” You falter, recognizing your partner Weston beside you. Le gives you an unreadable look and says, “Drugs.”

You don’t meet ler eyes. You’re a little abacked by ler bluntness. Vivish, Weston’s native language, is a blunt and efficient language.

Le asks, “Why?”

“I feel like you know why I am selling the drugs.”

Weston jerks ler head to the right, “ Yes, I know. I mean: why did you not tell us?”

You glare down at the track. “I am doing something horrible! Why would you want to know how despicable I am?”

“Incinere. Messed up. Silver.” Weston says. “You are not silver. You are surviving.”

“You do not… You do not understand! I am going to ruin lives with the drugs I’m selling!”

“Are you making them?”

“What? No, I am not!”

“That is my point. You are a drone. Not a monarch. It is not your fault.”

“But—“

“If you were rich you would be greedy for selling. You are not rich. You are selling because you need it.”

You sigh and slump your head onto the track. The two of you pass under a bridge. You feel a little uncomfortable having Weston here without another counterpart, You feel… compressed, nearly squirming, It’s not the only reason you’re uncomfortable.

“I… I had a chance of getting my family out of our hole. I would work a few more rounds in this school, and get invited into a final school in Captal Ridges, and smuggle my family away with me.

“But if I have to keep selling caffeine—and I will— I am sunk. I will get caught and lose the respect of the Captal schools, and I will deserve it because I ruined other dragons’ lives, too.”

“As I said: You’re not a life ruiner. And if you do not want to ruin your own life, do not get caught. You are good at that.

“You are not going to tell anyone?”

“Never have. Never will. Goodbye.”

Weston rolls off the track and walks off toward the bridge you just passed. Your house is approaching, and you prepare to meet your family again.