Lucy was acutely aware of the fact that she was being watched. Crossing from her front door to the car that Mia’s mom had parked on the side of the road, she knew her mom was watching her from behind, possibly Verona was too, and then there was the loaded-for-bear minivan with stickers and peering faces in the window. Mia’s mom and Mia Campbell-St. James in the passenger seat, Amadeus Kent, Emerson Peart, and Xavier Cope.
And, of course, there was Wallace Davis, who the others were saying something to.
There was a feeling that tended to hit her heavy on the first days of a new semester at school, or when the spotlight was on her, like when they’d been in sixth grade and they’d had to get into groups and make up anti-drug puppet shows for the third graders. An insistent, aggressive impression that people were making a ‘one of these is not like the others’ joke at her expense.
Not helped by the fact that people had, when she’d been younger and the filters hadn’t been there. Not helped by the fact that, if the individual was mostly innocent, the group gave away the sentiment by collectively watching her more than they watched others, looking away like they’d been caught mid-thought when she made eye contact.
Wallace was struggling to figure out how to open the side door of the van, and she didn’t want him to hurt his arms, because she knew that he had that genetic thing Jeremy had mentioned, and that would be a horrible way to start out the date. She slowed her approach to give him time.
It was hard to shake the fact that it was her being put on the spot, that when those eyes were on her and that sentiment singled her out, it was never a good thing. Logan picking her to have a fight with. The bully at the lake those years ago, who’d shoved her into the water over and over again.
She’d rated last in the Class_RankR app.
She wasn’t bulletproof right now. She was wearing her hair in a style she wasn’t used to and it tickled her neck, and it looked a little wet. She was wearing a dress that fit loosely, fabric light enough to move when the wind hit it. She was standing in front of her house and it felt like her house was being judged as much as she was.
Wallace got the door open, and then stepped outside, standing off to the side of the door, like he was holding it open for her or letting her in. She approached, smiling at him. He was flushed, wearing the same shirt with the silver-y repeating pattern he’d worn to the party, except with shorts this time, hair styled with one errant spike sticking up at the wrong diagonal, that she wanted to poke into alignment with the others.
“Hey,” he said, a little red in the face. “Door’s tricky.”
“No stress,” she told him, crossing the gap. On impulse, she gave him a quick hug. His shirt was soft, except for the graphic part, and his body was bony, and the smell of his hair product was thick in her nostrils, and it was a smell she could bear to smell again.
“Hugs already?” Emerson jeered.
“Shhhhh,” Mia’s mom said.
Lucy stepped back, and Wallace was more red in the face and that was contagious, and for a second Lucy felt like her heart was connected directly to her face, pushing all the blood there in a rush, joining together with that thrill of being someone who warranted someone else getting flushed.
“Sorry,” she said, quiet. “Thanks for putting up with all of this. My mom, you know.”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” he replied. “Moms. It’s cool, it makes some things easier.”
It makes some things harder too. People were watching her, judging her. “Yeah.”
“Glad you’re here,” he said. “It would’ve been the worst thing ever if you’d never stepped outside. Just you looking out the window and here I am, feeling like a goofus.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know! Yeah. But I would’ve died on the spot.”
“I think if I did something like that to you, you should murder me before you go spontaneously dying of embarrassment.”
“Good to know.”
“Can I-?” Lucy motioned toward the open door.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Oh my god, Wallace,” Mia said. “Tell her she looks nice, already.”
“You- uh, you look great,” Wallace said.
“You too,” Lucy told him, a smile finding its way to her face without her putting it there on purpose. Even if he’d been asked to give her a compliment, it was still nice to hear. “I like that shirt.”
“Oh, cool.”
She climbed into one of the middle seats, with Wallace climbing in after her. He used his foot to push the door closed, leaning into her, and she was aware of that contact. The way the van was constructed, the back row had three seats, which were occupied by Xavier, Emerson, and Amadeus, and the middle row had two narrow seats, leaving room at the side for people to pass through to get to the door. It meant when Wallace sat down he sat with his arm resting alongside hers.
She smoothed out her skirt in her lap, then looked up, and saw Mia’s mom looking at her in the rear-view mirror.
“Thanks for giving us a ride, Mrs. Campbell-St. James,” Lucy said.
“My pleasure, and it’s just Mrs. Campbell.”
“Lucy doesn’t care about that,” Mia said, groaning.
“I’m just saying. Where am I driving you all?”
“Do we want to do ice cream, movie, dinner, or dinner, ice cream, movie?” Mia asked, turning around.
“Don’t really care,” Amadeus said. “I’m up for anything.”
“I dunno, do you have any preference?” Wallace asked Lucy.
“I need to know where I’m driving you,” Mia’s mom said.
“Dinner, ice cream, movie,” Lucy said, just to get things moving.
“Thank you.”
The van started moving and nobody really talked, which made the pressure that much worse.
That feeling that all attention was on her. She knew, objectively, that it probably wasn’t, but it was the kind of thing that wasn’t always logical. She couldn’t be on guard one moment and then relaxed the next. She felt like she had to put on a good show, because she wasn’t just here to try out going on a date with a boy, she was also, in this subtle, crushing way, also a stand in for her family, as if one mistake here would count against Booker and her mom, in the eyes of Mia’s mom and the popular kids who had so much influence.
In the same way that she was a stand-in for every black person out there. She was the odd one out, plain as day in a way that she knew it, she believed they knew it, or they were thinking it or it was an unconscious thing. If she said something dumb here, it was hard to shake that feeling that for this group of kids, it’d be something they took forward that’d make the lives of every other black person they interacted with harder, just a little bit. It was stupid and it was frustrating and it was a thing. She’d talked to Dr. Mona about it and a part of her wished she hadn’t because the talking had made it more real.
Mia’s mom made an attempt. “So, this is nice.”
“Oh my god, Mom,” Mia said.
“It was nice of you to pull things together and arrange this, Lucy,” Mia’s mom said. Her gaze went to the rear-view mirror, reflected eye contact made with Lucy. “What have you been up to this summer? Have you been around?”
Okay, she’d braced for this, she’d prepped answers. “Verona, Avery and me went to a summer camp type thing. Almost a summer school-”
“Ugh,” Emerson groaned.
“But more… eclectic? They gave options most mornings and afternoons, for which classes or events you wanted to go to. There was swordfighting, presentations from this one guy who made it pretty big by making these obscure online things-”
“Who?” Amadeus asked, interested.
“Uhhh, Raymond Sunshine?”
“Never heard of him,” Amadeus said, pulling out his phone.
“I kinda figured. Like I said, obscure.”
“He’s not even showing up on Wooble, unless he’s one of these random Go Foto Yourself accounts.”
“What else?” Wallace asked. “Swordfighting sounds cool.”
“Could you beat us in a swordfight?” Xavier asked.
“I- probably?”
“I bet you couldn’t,” Xavier said.
“Okay?” Lucy asked. “You’re allowed to have that opinion.”
“I want to hear more about this camp,” Wallace said.
She looked at him and was once again conspicuously aware that they were shoulder to shoulder with the proximity of their two seats. The information fled her brain for a second. “Um. There was a thing from this one guy who talked a lot, he traveled the world and he went to these locations with lost tribes and at least one weird, isolated sub-community that formed in a city.”
“That sounds so interesting,” Mia’s mom said. “Can I go?”
“Mom, ugh.”
“Lucy and Avery helped me make my earring,” Lucy said.
Which prompted others to make her twist around and show them, and she had to turn almost a hundred and eighty degrees because Wallace was to her left and the earring was on her right ear.
“What about you guys?” Lucy asked. She had more things to mention but maybe that could come up again later.
“We had a Canada Day thing where there was a waterslide on the hill-” Wallace said.
“I heard about that. Verona was talking to Jeremy.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Are Jeremy and Verona a thing?” Emerson asked, from the back.
“A dating thing? No, not really,” Lucy said.
“No?” Wallace asked, surprised. “Because the way Jeremy made it sound…”
“That’s the sort of thing I think we should mostly leave alone, let them figure it out. Give them the occasional reality check.”
“Right. I guess that’s why they’re not coming?”
“Right,” Lucy echoed Wallace.
“Huh. Anyway, what was I talking about?”
“The Canada day celebration?” Emerson asked.
“Yeahhh. It was pretty intense, sliding down to this ramp and then you’d land in this big inflatable pool. Until some jackass hurt themselves and they had to stop.”
“Cool.”
Lucy remembered Booker talking about coming back to town and there not being much to talk about. She wondered if this was like that.
“I’m going to drop you guys off here, because parking gets questionable further up,” Mia’s mom said. “Most of the places to eat are around here.”
“Thanks, that’s perfect,” Mia said.
“Keep us updated if you go anywhere that isn’t here, ice cream, or the movies. I want exact locations and no delays!”
They got out of the car, and the conversation kind of stalled as a result. They picked a burger place to eat at, stood in line where it was awkward to talk about a lot of stuff with strangers right in front of them and behind them, and then took food to a booth with nobody immediately around them.
Except then they were eating, and conversation didn’t go anywhere.
Amadeus sat across from Lucy and to her left. Amadeus had been one of the first boys she’d noticed when she’d started noticing boys. When puberty had started kicking in, it had been meaner to the boys than the girls, with about half of them nosediving into this awkward, sweatier, mis-proportioned middle phase, a bunch more easing into it, like Wallace who maybe had some pimples sometimes and had his awkwardness, but yeah. And then Amadeus was like bam, dimple in his chin, he was pretty as boys went, no obvious awkwardness or lumpiness, no major weirdness. He’d hit his starting growth spurt, got all new clothes, and yeah. He tended to wear an expression of disinterest that she’d learned was like her own ‘resting frowny face’, because he was really passionate about stuff. He’d come first or second in the app and she was so not surprised.
Amadeus was friends with most of the guys in class, helped by the fact he threw big birthday parties and stuff every year and invited his entire class every time, and his family had all the consoles going back to the 70s and made his own computers and stuff. It made pretty much every guy want to go over or hang out, and he often let them, because he had something new to show them. Which was part of why when she’d asked Wallace who he could invite, it had been Amadeus.
Amadeus was dating Mia, kind of, and Mia knew Lucy from the end-of-school party and apparently Lucy joining in had counted for a lot, they’d had a brief group text and it had happened this way. This was the group that was around and free and comfortable going on a date.
Mia hadn’t dressed up much, but she’d done up her eyes with heavy makeup. Even without that makeup, Mia tended to look like the sort of actress who’d play the oddball, intense, sometimes goth weirdo protagonist girl in movies, who was slender and feminine enough that it shone through, even when they wore overalls, an oversized shirt, and a pixie cut. Except she’d also hit her early growth spurt and she looked more like sixteen than thirteen, and she wasn’t dressing down. She dressed pretty close to Lucy’s standard of bulletproof. Queen bee, one of the top dancers, got good grades, was nice to nearly everyone.
Xavier walked that line between the awkward guys and like, Amadeus and George. He wore a black tee with a golden symbol on it that might have been from a game, and long pants, and he looked a little hot, like he’d picked the wrong clothes for a summer day, going for style over sense. She didn’t know Xavier much. He’d rated high in the app, but he’d always been a face that was nice to look at but who had blended into the blob of boys when she’d hung around mostly with girls in her class, or just with Verona, and then hadn’t distinguished himself a ton from the crowd since.
And then there was Emerson, who was very blonde, pretty, a dancer, and… basic? Was that unfair? Lucy had gone to school with everyone here from the beginning, and Emerson had been very into ballet until it got too hard, had been into dolls, had her period where she got a golden retriever and was super into dogs for a while, then lost interest, and so on. Was currently a Dancer, as in a member of the clique, but wasn’t the best dancer despite the hours put into it, and was also a gymnast, and was really good at that, but not enough for, like, national level stuff. Lucy couldn’t shake the fact that in her implement ritual, Emerson had been a jerk.
“What happened with the bag thing?” Mia asked.
“The bag thing?”
“At the school party?”
“You were looking for someone,” Xavier said.
“Yeah,” Lucy said. “Uhhh, Verona’s bag got stolen, Jeremy was helpful-”
“My man,” Wallace said.
“-and we tracked it down. Ran into that thing with that guy appearing out of nowhere? The dancer?”
“The stripper!” Mia exclaimed. “I wish I saw that!”
“Who was the culprit?” Xavier asked.
“I don’t want to say. They’ve made it up to us since.”
“Wasn’t it Melissa?” Mia asked, at the same time Emerson said, “Hailey was in the middle of that, screw Hailey.”
“Are you in the loop?” Wallace asked Lucy. “With the Hailey thing?”
“I got the gist of things.”
Emerson didn’t care, and launched right into her version of events. “Hailey went into the woods with George despite a gentle-ladies agreement about communicating with the group before dating, to make sure there’s no hard feelings and not blowing up the Dancers. Which was mostly formality to cover a few situations, like how Sharon really liked George and Hailey knew it. And look what happened? Went into the woods to smoke pot with George and smoke his pipe, if you know what I mean-”
“I don’t think that’s how you say it,” Xavier said.
“I don’t want to talk bad about George while he’s not around,” Amadeus said.
“You’re supposed to be taking me on this date so don’t get on my case,” Emerson said, to Xavier, and then she pointed at Amadeus, “And I’m talking about Hailey, not George.”
“You’re talking about him too.”
“Well, you’re biased.”
“Uh, yeah?” Amadeus replied, looking bewildered.
Emerson shrugged that off and went on, “Anyway, Hailey was sleazy and so she blew up the Dancers, and we’re barely recovering.”
“It’s been tough,” Mia said. “Losing our best flyer when Melissa practically snapped her foot off, and then Hailey… getting dropped from the team. I’m with Amadeus, I don’t want to badmouth.”
“It’s juicy,” Emerson said.
“It’s sordid,” Mia said, like she really liked the word and she’d been keeping it in her back pocket for a while.
“Then call me little miss sordid,” Emerson said. “Put that on a t-shirt, give it to me, to wear, and then tell me what the heck sordid means.”
“In that order,” Mia said.
“Heck yeah.”
“You follow all of this?” Wallace asked.
“Some,” Lucy told him. “You?”
“Yeah. Kind of have to, I guess. Um, changing topics-”
“Please.”
“Your summer camp sounded cool. Is there any chance I could get in next year?”
“There was a lot of drama, a bit of a civil war, and I don’t think we can get back in next year,” Lucy told him. “We sorta kinda cheated the rules to get in and then got in trouble for it. It’s normally pretty selective.”
“Darn.”
“Drama?” Emerson asked.
“I like some of the class ideas, but isn’t it still summer school?” Xavier asked, ignoring his date.
“It kinda is. Some of it was pretty groan-worthy,” Lucy said. “Um, but you know, hanging out with my two best friends, little bit of swimming, you guys had your ramp but we had a rickety wooden bridge we could jump off of, into the river.”
“How tall?” Wallace asked.
“Tall. Like, twenty feet or so?”
“Whoo,” Mia said.
“I got pictures,” Lucy said. “Give me a bit…”
Browsing, she found a bunch of stuff to get rid of, and moved those to an archive folder to retrieve later.
“Another minute,” she said, as she realized there were Others in the background of some pics, and some questionable weapons.
“Whatcha hiding?” Amadeus asked her.
“Organizing,” she said.
“I’m so mad at Hailey,” Emerson said. “Melissa too, but that’s because Melissa’s a butthead.”
“Let it go for today,” Mia told her.
Lucy showed Wallace first, because of course. The bridge, them on the shore, pre-Liberty.
“You jumped off of that?”
“Yeah,” Lucy said.
“I thought you were exaggerating.”
She shook her head. Her hair tickled the back of her neck.
“Show, show,” Xavier said, leaning into Wallace. “Lucy in a swimsuit, see?”
“Uh yeah,” Wallace said, giving Lucy a worried look.
“Don’t make me regret showing you guys,” Lucy told him.
My punishment for not being bulletproof. I thought this outfit was okay, but the pictures…
“Swim cap? Seriously?” Xavier asked. Amadeus rose from his seat to come around and look over Wallace’s shoulder.
“Seriously,” Lucy told him, testy now.
She’d had a long talk with Dr. Mona first thing today, and they’d gone over things, like what to expect and Lucy wasn’t entirely positive that the talk about expectations and stuff had helped, exactly. She was thinking a lot about how conspicuous she was, even now, she was thinking about how bulletproof she wasn’t, and about the pressures. About feeling more like a representative than a person who could just go on a regular old date for the sake of the date itself.
She’d resolved to give one pass to each of the others. Because there would be comments, and there would be stuff, but she didn’t want to blow everything up for an honest mistake.
On a level, she wondered if talking about it had made it all fresh and alive in her mind, and if her brain had grabbed all that ammunition to arm itself. If coming into this with strategy was why it was harder to relax.
“Does this little kid have tattoos?”
“Oh, that’s Sol. Yeah.”
“This guy has a rat on his shoulder,” Wallace said.
“Dreg, pretty cool. I meant to remove pics like that one.”
“So you were hiding stuff,” Xavier accused.
“Didn’t say I wasn’t. I was hiding stuff by organizing it.”
“Find it, find it,” Xavier pressed. “Find the hidden pics.”
Wallace wriggled to avoid Xavier’s clutches and with Xavier jostling him, clapped the phone down a little harder than necessary onto the table, before sliding it to Lucy. Fight-induced clumsiness aside, it was a good one on Wallace’s part. “Thank you, Wallace.”
“Wallace is such a heavy name. Have you considered being a Wally?” Emerson asked.
“Never once in my life,” Wallace said.
“Waldo?”
“I still want to look at those photos, but with Xavier being a pain- ow!”
“Don’t bother the other people eating,” Amadeus said.
“Maybe another time,” Lucy told Wallace.
She wanted to fall into the date, like if she was tired and wanted to fall asleep. To let things wash over her, to get into the flow of things, let it be unconscious, and put all that conscious overthinking out of mind. As much as it was helpful to have others around to give cues and as much as it was nice that if they found kernels of things to speak about the group could pick it up, it made it so much harder to fall into the date than if it were just her and Wallace. So many subjects, like Jeremy and Verona, were off limits as long as they could be fodder for the rumor mill. Stuff she could have talked about with him but not as part of this group.
“How are you guys feeling about ice cream?” Wallace asked.
“Sounds good,” Lucy said.
“Let me get the tray-”
“You don’t have to.”
“It’s cool.”
“I’ll take his lead,” Amadeus said.
Which became the boys taking the trays away while Lucy, Emerson, and Mia got sorted. Lucy wiped the table free of salt and fry bits with a stray napkin.
“Are you going to kiss her?”
“I dunno. If she wants me to.”
“They’ve already kissed, Xavier. End of year party?”
“That doesn’t really count, does it?”
“Counted to her enough she asked you out on a date. Are you going to let her take the lead on everything?”
Lucy frowned a bit, glancing over. Don’t spoil it. Don’t push.
This was another problem with groups.
“Wallace seems great,” Mia said, disturbing Lucy from her eavesdropping. “I went on my first date when I was eleven. The guy spun this stool in front of the counter at the place we were at, and it broke, stool top came unscrewed and fell off or something. I cringe every time I think about it. Wallace is doing well for a first date. Staying cool, that”s the big thing.”
“Is it a first?” Emerson asked.
“He told my mom when we picked him up.”
“Yeah, he’s neat,” Lucy said.
Mia looked at her, inquisitive. “You get a look on your face that makes me wonder if you’re in love.”
“What?” Lucy asked, genuinely surprised. “What?”
“It’s too soon to be in love,” Emerson said.
“I have to agree with her,” Lucy said.
“Have to?”
“Love can catch you all at once.”
“Stop. Stop stop stop,” Lucy urged. “Come on.”
She got her little bag and carried the napkin she’d just used to the trash.
“…open air, with perspex panels, I made the face plate out of fiberglass, sanded it myself.”
“That’s crazy,” Wallace said.
“Did you get Amadeus talking about computers again?”
“Computer builds. You can sell some of this stuff.”
“Man, money, right?” Lucy asked. “I was helping Verona with some projects and it’s so hard to pay for things sometimes.”
“Too young to work, too old to get a bit of spending money from your super cool grandma.”
“My grandma’s okay,” Lucy said, thinking of Barbie and Ran. Her dad’s parents. “Sends a letter every year.”
“Do you celebrate Christmas?” Xavier asked. “Or what’s that holiday? Starts with a K, I think.”
“I keep thinking quaalude,” Mia said. “Sorry, is it okay that we’re asking?”
“It’s fair to ask,” Emerson said.
Lucy stood by, feeling awkward. She glanced at Wallace, but she couldn’t read him. Frig. She’d promised herself a long time ago that she’d be upfront. Why was it so hard now? “Are you thinking of Kwanzaa?”
“Yes. That’s it. I don’t know what it is, but that’s it,” Xavier said.
“We celebrate Christmas,” Lucy replied. Does that count as a strike? “And as far as I know, you can celebrate both Kwanzaa and Christmas.”
“Today I learned,” Xavier said.
“Why are you only asking me that?” Lucy asked.
“I kinda know Amadeus and Wallace, and Mia and Emerson, I assumed,” Xavier said.
“We love Christmas,” Emerson said, hugging Xavier’s arm. “And I love ice cream. Can we get our ice cream?”
“I was going to ask,” Xavier said, “can you even eat ice cream, Wallace?”
“Uhh, there’s a Sherbet with less lactose. It’s usually okay.”
“Do you want to not?” Lucy asked, as she pushed the door open. “We could go to the movie, instead.”
“Maybe, if that’s-”
“I want ice cream. I got my hopes up, don’t let me down,” Emerson said.
The group. Ugh.
“Okay,” Lucy said. “Let’s go… you can go get ice cream. I’m pretty much full and there are snacks at the theater, I think, Wallace isn’t keen, Mia, Amadeus?”
“Could go either way.”
“You guys get your ice cream, or tell Emerson and Xavier what you want, and we’ll go to the theater. We’ll double check the times and get tickets, meet up, then we watch.”
“Sure,” Mia said. She looked at Emerson. “Yeah?”
“We’re supposed to be a group,” Emerson protested.
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Mia told her.
They left the Burger Bin and they went the same way at first, but Emerson and Xavier trailed behind.
“She’s so pushy sometimes.”
“Lucy?”
“In the car and just now.”
“I think she doesn’t want to spend forever debating stuff, so she comes up with a plan.”
“It’d be nice to have more of a say.”
“You okay to go with them?” Mia murmured the question to Amadeus. “That way we’re still kind of a group, and parents don’t have to worry about us getting pregnant if we spend five minutes alone together as a couple.”
Lucy laughed at the abruptness of that mental image.
“You like that, huh?” Mia asked. “Poor Wallace is so flustered.”
“I’m not that flustered,” Wallace defended himself. “I don’t know what to say.”
Amadeus laid a hand on Wallace’s shoulder. “Say you solemnly swear-”
“That you’re not going to get our friend here pregnant,” Mia cut in.
“-that you’ll take longer than five minutes,” Amadeus finished.
Now Wallace was flustered. “We’re not- that’s not.”
“Ignore them,” Lucy said.
“We did the-” Wallace started, and stopped as he made eye contact with Lucy. “-at the party.”
“Yeah,” Lucy said.
“But that’s it.”
“Of course that’s it, you’re on a first date. We’re kidding, kidding. Hey, Amadeus, you good to go with that group?”
“Yeah.”
I hate groups, Lucy thought.
Mia and Amadeus were technically in the half of their class last year that was in grade 10, but the lines were blurry and even though teachers were supposed to give grade-appropriate work to different halves of the class, it usually ended up muddled. Lucy tended to forget that stuff until moments like this, where she realized the two were just that little bit more mature. At least as far as the organizing and sorting out groups went.
Not so much with that other part of the conversation.
“Thanks for not making a big deal over the ice cream thing,” Wallace murmured to her. “Or the five minute thing.”
“They’re being dumb, and ice cream isn’t a big deal. Except why didn’t you say something when I asked you out?”
“Because I wanted to say yes before I wanted to say bluhhh, I’m lactose intolerant like a loser.”
“You’re not,” she told him, “and I’m glad you wanted to say yes that badly.”
“For sure,” he replied, a little red in the face again.
They walked close enough that the backs of their hands touched twice. On the third touch Lucy felt Wallace reach around and take her hand.
“So cute,” Emerson cooed. “They’re holding hands.”
Wallace started to let go, until Lucy grabbed his hand harder.
“Ease up, Emerson.”
“I’ll be happier when I have ice cream. Off we go.”
“Coming with,” Amadeus said.
“Uggh. Third wheel.”
“Vroom vroom vroom,” Amadeus said, deadpan.
“Don’t take too long!” Mia called after them, as they took another crosswalk.
Wallace’s hand was warm and walking together, arms touching, hands clasped, was pretty much what Lucy had hoped for out of this. It was weird, zig-zagging from stress, from anxiety, even feeling a tiny bit like there was some grand responsibility on her shoulder, to making a big deal out of holding hands.
The comment about Christmas and feeling singled out had jarred her out of stuff, and this pulled her in, and Mia jarred her out by being here as their unofficial third wheel, a slightly older girl hanging out as they tried to enjoy the moment together.
Lucy could feel herself yearning for a point a little further on, where this wasn’t a stress. Where she’d had conversations with Wallace and made sure she didn’t have to be on guard with him. If he got it, if he understood why this was a kind of work for her, if she didn’t have to educate him.
It would be nice to enjoy this but instead this just felt like a few isolated good moments in the middle of a lot of stress, wariness, and figuring people out. A prelude for the future. Maybe.
Her phone buzzed. She had to fish in the little handbag Verona had packed to get it.
She opened the message, then stared at it.
There was a follow-up shortly into the staring session.
Alexander.
Now Charles, now… so many others. There were so many complications.
She held the phone at her side and stared out over toward broader Kennet, toward ski-hills that shimmered slightly with summer heat.
“You okay?” Wallace asked.
“You’ve got, uh…” He used two fingers and pinched his eyebrows down and together. “Something happen?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Sometimes you look like you’re concerned about everything…”
“An awful lot of things are concerning,” Lucy said.
“Wise words,” Mia chimed in. “So true.”
Lucy smiled. “Concerning in a not-jokey way.”
“Other times you look okay, and you smile or you’re not smiling with your mouth, but your eyes…”
“That’s what I was noticing,” Mia said. “Earlier, when I mentioned-”
Lucy turned her head to the right and gave Mia her best withering stare.
“I’ll… trail a few feet behind and enjoy this breeze. You carry on.”
“Verona’s mentioned that,” Lucy said.
“Seems like whatever that text was, you went in the opposite direction from smiling eyes or smiling mouth. What is it?”
Lucy checked her phone again, and it vibrated in her hand as a message came in, followed by others in the same chain.
Avery:
on it! you keep doing your thing, lucy. don’t sweat it! enjoy your time with Wallace!!
for crushes & blushes & love requitted
for the xs and os at the end of love letters!
I am all the way on it so you stay put and enjoy yourself or I’ll be MAD!
She put the phone away.
Avery would probably be more upset if Lucy had to bail now than Lucy would.
It was a bit of a walk down by the water to get to the Catholic school. It was ironic that the movie theater in Kennet was closed for so much of the year, but the Catholic school was an option. During the summer days, senior students in school uniforms managed the two auditoriums, turning them into an impromptu movie theater to raise funds. There was a dinky little concession stand, the theater itself had an inexpensive sound system, and the projector wasn’t all that.
At the same time, it was air conditioned, it was convenient, tickets to crappy movies were three dollars and fifty cents, and a combination of a movie ticket with small popcorn and a can of soda was five dollars total. Some younger kids would spend a portion of their summers here, depending on what was on the screen. Ones that had finished watching their movies were outside, waiting for parents, running around the… moat, Lucy decided to call it, that surrounded St. Victor’s. Waterless at the moment, it was more of a broad, shallow L-shaped ditch around the side of the school that caught runoff and redirected it toward a storm drain.
She texted her mom to let her know she’d arrived.
The idea that things were dissolving into chaos out there dogged Lucy. Would there be fighting? Who was participating?
It felt like the phone in her pocket was getting heavier, like it might burn her hand if she grabbed it. No curse, just sentiment.
They paid for their tickets and snacks, then sat at the back. The theater was mostly empty. She had to make a conscious effort not to check her phone. Not to be rude.
Maybe this was the worst of both worlds.
Would someone crash into the midst of this? Would Wye Belanger start spying?
She wanted to say stuff to Wallace, but Mia was there. She wanted to hold his hands, but they’d carried stuff here and that meant not holding hands, and then their hands had remained separate, even though they’d sat next to one another. Cup holders and the drinks they’d socked in there meant that any meeting of hands couldn’t be casual.
She was on a date and that was great, it was a bit of a rush on its own, but then Wallace was proving to be the most decent and soft spoken person in their group of six, currently a group of three, and she liked that. She wanted to… reach out. To say stuff and test the waters, to maybe embarrass herself without doing it in front of others. She wanted so much, yet the majority of that ‘so much‘ was little things.
She was in the middle of a war unfolding within a war. Maricica. It had to be Maricica. Old allies would become enemies, potentially, and old enemies would become immediate problems. America, and Wye, and even Musser…
Two very different realities that made her wish she could grab some glamour, split herself in two and somehow deal with both at the same time.
Not that easy.
She wanted to talk to Verona about this but Verona didn’t get it, Verona was… running in the opposite direction from this. Verona was so very different from her and in this specific circumstance that talk would be a fight, or a frustration.
She wanted to talk to Avery about it, but Avery was struggling in her own way. Avery was alone and it felt a bit like anything Lucy said on the subject of girlfriends and boyfriends and balancing the crisis that was so tied into the magic with the mundane would be… harmful? As enthusiastic as Avery was about wanting to vicariously enjoy stuff and be a champion of crushes and blushes and requited love and whatever else, that had to suck? There was also this feeling she had, where she was suspicious that if Avery was going to find love, it would be through the magic. Like she could go somewhere, and it’d happen. Or maybe Liberty, but she was even more reluctant to push for that particular pairing than she was with Verona and Jeremy.
She wanted to talk to Dr. Mona about it but she felt like talking about the little things that were so important in this would mean talking about the big picture and right now she was burned out on thinking about that. Maybe if she told Dr. Mona that, but…
She wanted to talk to her mom about it, but the big part of what she’d want to talk about was her inability to tell her mom the magic stuff.
She wanted to tell Wallace but what the heck would Wallace know about it?
“Sorry,” Wallace whispered. “I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s okay. Me either. But this is nice, in its way.”
“Okay. I hope whatever it was on your phone isn’t a big issue.”
“Crap I’ll have to deal with later. I’m trying not to think about it.”
Five questions passed through her head, as she tried to distract herself and turn her focus to Wallace, but none were great questions.
“What else have you been up to this summer?” she asked Wallace
“Not a lot. Some video games, some reading. Helped my mom garden.”
“Any good games or reading?”
“Do you play games?”
“No, not really.”
“Then I don’t want to bore you, reading…”
“You can talk about games. I just don’t know much. I like horror movies. Do you play horror games? Those are a thing, right?”
“You really don’t play games. Yeah, but I haven’t played anything good in a long time. I can think of one or two that are like interactive movies, but now that you’ve said that, I don’t want to tell you about that.”
“What? Why?”
“Because it’d be cool to, I dunno, show you a couple really good ones without any spoilers and see you play them. They’re good enough that I bet you’d walk away from it getting why I like video games.”
“Is that an invitation for a second date?” she asked.
There was a pause.
Crap. Had this not been super great so far? They’d barely done anything, they hadn’t even talked much, was he now in the awkward position of-
“That’s a fourth or fifth date thing. Since you’d be coming to my house and meeting with my parents.”
“I hear your mom’s nice.”
“They’re pretty good parents,” Wallace said. “But you’d be meeting my parents.”
Again, there was that feeling of being the odd one out, of wondering. But Lucy smiled, willed herself to give Wallace the benefit of a doubt, that he wasn’t the type to make the color of her skin a part of why that was such an obstacle, something to be put off.
But now it was in her head.
And she was still willing herself not to dwell on the outside world, or the forces arranging against Kennet.
She reached over, past the cup holder and cup, and found his hand, and she gave it a squeeze, holding it, even though it meant sitting at a slight angle, reaching over. It felt weirdly daring, validating that he squeezed back, that this was a them thing.
She wished that point of contact and the linked feelings were enough. She could imagine the others out there, struggling as the number of threats increased. With all the different shapes and flavors of practice she couldn’t know if enemies were at the gates right now or if weapons or summons or other threats were being pulled out.
Things were starting to build up, too intense to deal with in summation, and she hated it. Hated it was getting in the way, hated that the little things had such big things arranged against them… she worried she’d go overboard, or she’d burn through all the energy she had fuming at nothing in particular and then fall asleep partway through the movie.
Amadeus, Emerson and Xavier came back as she was digesting all of that, and something about the look in her eye seemed to maybe make Emerson decide to sit at the far end of the aisle, so that Mia and Amadeus were between Lucy and her.
“What’s your favorite horror movie?” Wallace asked.
After some more mild chatter about horror movies, video games and books, and after they talked briefly about family and got midway into the topic of music, the theater went dark. Only about fifteen seats out of a hundred were filled.
It was a crappy film from four or five years ago, opening with film footage that looked like it was from the 90s, not the ’10s, opening with shots of a savanna, and epic instrumentals. Animals raced through tall grass.
Part of going to a movie in Kennet meant accepting that there weren’t many options, but this? This was-
She paused, as the scene cut from the big title card: ‘Star of Leo’ to a family of white people gathered under a tent with khaki sides and top.
The universe had a dark sense of humor. If this could even be called funny.
Maybe better to say that the universe had a keen sense of tragedy.
A boy appeared on screen, nine or ten, shirtless with messy hair, climbing a tree. Blond, cute, and almost unrecognizable.
Gabriel. Gabriel who had been consumed by the Hungry Choir.
It was a slap in the face, almost a challenge. Like the universe was putting a blade to her throat like Guilherme had done in training sessions, and just that thought, Guilherme, one topic she’d been mentally avoiding, was enough to make her eyes water.
She watched Gabriel on screen as credits continued to roll, and the screen fritzed, a few frames skipped, to a few dismayed shouts, before it righted again.
Uncredited.
Stupid, to be nearly at a point of crying, here, for this already awful film, but the weight of everything and of Guilherme’s possible betrayal, of so many betrayals, of so many people proving they couldn’t be counted on…
She squeezed Wallace’s hand, and did her best to keep tears from springing free and messing up makeup.
She could imagine Gabe as a kid, partway around the world, shooting this movie with wooden acting, running around, experiencing new things. Playing with a lion cub, apparently.
She felt so off-balance, so out-of-kilter. Everything was messed up and then Wallace was beside her and her traitorous brain was skewing everything there too. She was way too aware of where his hand was and of his body heat, and every little movement made her think he was going to do something or get up and leave or something. Her skin felt flushed and then cold, little hairs standing on end, as if her body was trying to figure out how to deal with a boy this close.
A wet sucking noise that was picked up by her earring made her jump. She looked around, and Wallace moved his hand, thumb jutting out, pointing.
She peeked, and saw that at the end of the aisle, in the dark, nobody around them, Emerson was sitting sideways in Xavier’s lap, making out with him, tongue in his mouth.
“I guess they don’t have to be alone for five minutes to scare their parents with a pregnancy, huh?” Wallace whispered.
Lucy’s laugh caught her off guard, and then didn’t stop. She doubled over, stifling her own laugh, the tears rolling free. It made no sense and it was something she’d needed and through some combination of those two things the bits and pieces of her that had gotten more and more tightly wound over the course of the evening all came undone, leaving her helpless.
Wallace gave her a pat on the back.
Emerson and Xavier were looking at her offended, as she straightened up, sitting back against the seat, trying to manage breathing again. She wiped at two sides of her face with one hand, still holding Wallace’s hand with the other.
“I didn’t think I was that funny.”
“Wallace,” Lucy leaned in to whisper. “You’re close but that’s not how babies are made.”
And, dumb as it was, it set him off, which set her off as well. Wallace was less good at hiding his laughs, and there were a few annoyed ‘shhh’ sounds from others in the theater.
“This is such a bad movie,” Wallace told her. “Do you want to go?”
She felt like she should stay, as a matter of respect for Gabe. As if this was a sign from the universe, an order, an alignment of stars.
More likely, they showed the film with a local as one of the stars as a regular thing.
She nodded.
“We’ll be right outside,” Lucy told Mia, who had her head on Amadeus’s shoulder.
They left the film only partway through, left the school-turned-theater-for-summer, and walked out front, across the waterless moat and over to a big rock they could sit on.
John Stiles was on the far side of the street, looking both ways before crossing about fifty feet to Lucy and Wallace’s right. He whispered, trusting she’d hear.
“I won’t interfere, watch, or listen. I’m here to stand guard, to keep my oath to give you a long and full life. I’ll protect this.”
She didn’t take her eyes off him as she walked over to another of the rocks that kept cars from careening into the school or the ‘moat’, sat down with his back to the rock, hands behind his head, not really looking at her.
“There’ll be trouble, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be today, so don’t worry. Raymond is getting ahead of a lot of it. You’ll have to deal with him and the people who come with him later, but there’s little you can do about that now. That’s the last I’ll say about any of that.”
Avery and presumably Verona were out there, shouldering the load so she didn’t have to. John was here, guarding her, guarding this. She could, at least right now, count on John and she could count on Wallace for little things.
She laid her head on Wallace’s shoulder, overly gentle, wary of the slightest sign he might shrug her off. Then she said, “Let me know if this is uncomfortable.”
“My shoulder’s iffy but this sort of thing won’t bother it.”
“I meant me… leaning on you, so soon after being a big dork.”
“Nah,” Wallace said. “You laughing at my joke is something I’ll proudly carry through every stressful time the next year brings.”
“Do you have those?”
“Surgery scheduled for a couple weeks after school starts,” Wallace said. “It’ll get in the way of everything. I’ve had a bunch of MRIs and CAT scans this summer, I didn’t want to talk about it in front of those guys. I didn’t want to talk about it in front of you, but…”
“I don’t mind.”
“It’s one of those things that get so big it takes over your life for a while. No time to even watch that much or play that much, and then you ask what I’ve been doing this summer and I don’t know what to say. Hospital stuff?”
“Just be honest. Don’t let me down. A bunch of people, guys, have let me down.”
“Dating, or…?”
“Nah.”
“Okay,” Wallace said.
“Sorry about the hospital thing. We should schedule something you could look forward to, maybe?” she asked, head on his shoulder. “That video game you wanted me to play? We can do that if your arms are in slings, right?”
“Probably going to be worse than a sling, but yeah.”
“Except that’s a fourth date thing, you said? I can’t remember the number.”
“Something like that. Meeting the parents.”
“So we’d have to do something like this again. Get a few dates in before then, so it’s not too much.”
He ‘hmmmmed’ a bit.
“You can say no.”
“Yes. But you keep taking the lead, so you gotta let me decide some things.”
“Does that bother you?”
“It’s… no, I guess not. Amadeus was saying I should… take the lead.”
She lifted her head up, sitting straight and facing him. “How?”
She already knew the answer. She’d cheated, eavesdropping. He touched her chin, leaned in, and then paused, “May I?”
“Yes.”
He kissed her. And it was nice, and a bit cozy, even with a backdrop of a few scandalized kids chiming in from across the lawn.
John didn’t budge an inch. He wasn’t there to comment or to watch or interfere. He was there to make sure there was room for this to happen.
“I needed that. I needed this… whole thing, even if I’ve been quiet and distracted, sorry.”
“Nah. A little bit the same here.”
“End of summer,” Lucy said.
“Two weeks after the end, but yeah.”
“I’m kinda super grounded right now, my mom’s being extra nice letting me go out, so we’ll have to cram those extra dates in after school starts, after everything. Before your thing. And if you need distractions or anything you let me know.”
“Yeah. Okay, will do. Can I ask, uh, why me?”
“Verona picked you for the app. She made a pretty good pitch. It got me looking at you.”
“I should buy her a chocolate bar.”
“Something sour or spicy, but not overly sweet.”
“I like how you’re not getting on my case about buying some other girl a present.”
“It’s a chocolate bar, not flowers, and you said you wouldn’t let me down,” Lucy said, with a slight warning tone.
“Okay, right, yeah. Yeah.”
“Then the spin the bottle thing happened where I got you three times out of four, and… if the universe is going to give me a sign, right?”
“Do you believe in that stuff?”
“Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking. We’d have to talk about that another time, later on.”
“Heavy stuff? Not for a first date?”
“Heavy stuff is a good way of putting it.”
“I guess I shouldn’t talk about my sick mom, huh? Too heavy for… this?”
“I think if that’s something really close to the surface that you want to talk about, it’s good. I don’t mind.”
“It’s not too stressful?”
“I can handle it.”
So he talked about his mom, who had M.S., among some other minor things, and the crappy genetic lottery, and how she was what his future possibly held in store for him. Then he talked about how she’d maybe die not that far into the future, and how weird it was to be trying to spend as much quality time with her as possible when Mia was snarky with her mom and Lucy was grounded.
“My dad died when I was little. I remember bits and pieces. Booker, my big brother, he found him. It really got to him for a while, in so many little ways.”
“The little ways,” Wallace echoed her. “I’ve been talking to people about how to prepare and they keep telling me the little things will catch me off guard and I’ll act weird in ways I can’t explain at the time, and… that’s scarier than any big thing.”
“Yep. Yeah. But I think Booker turned out fantastic, he’s one of my favorite people, and he might miss my dad a ton, but he’s okay. So…”
“Hope for me, maybe. So it’s Booker, am I saying that right?”
“Yeah.”
“And your mom, and you, and…?”
“And not many others. There used to be Paul but he ran out on us. Cowardly white dude.”
“Is that a thing, why’d you say it like that?”
“Because if I didn’t I’d be worried people would think it’s a black guy that ran out on us and that’s a stereotype. Gotta calculate a few steps in advance, you know? Get out ahead of those things.”
“The little things. Or not so little? I don’t want to assume.”
“Lots of little things. So many little things.”
“I think a lot about how people look at me when I have my arms in slings. They’re mostly nice about it, but sometimes they’re too nice, and kids especially…”
“I so get that, believe me.”
“I’m trying to get you. After we kissed during spin the bottle I started paying more attention to you and thinking about stuff.”
“Mr. Bader.”
“Was he-? I didn’t notice.”
“He wasn’t great.”
“Huh.”
They’d left fifteen or twenty minutes into a movie with another hour to go. They sat, they watched kids play, and they talked about everything under the sun that touched on their lives that was way too freaking heavy for a first date.
And maybe a little bit in the midst of it, John standing guard, Wallace getting a bit more of it than she thought he would, the world made a bit more sense. Everything that felt out of balance or out of place felt a little bit more in sync. If she could draw this line between the worlds and protect it… then maybe that was okay.
It got dark out, and she shivered, and he sat closer, and that was nice.
Conversation petered out, but it was nice to sit, and it was good to think. About the movie, another thing that had fallen into place, a thing she had to confront.
Another ten minutes passed with light conversation before Mia’s mother came by. They waved as she got out of the car. “You’re outside!? The film should be about over.”
“They’re just finishing up, I think,” Lucy told Mia’s mother.
“I’ll go check on them, make sure they aren’t dallying- you’re alright? Are you cold? Get in the car? So I know where you are.”
They did, obliging, and the car still bore a lot of the heat from the daytime.
While Mia’s mom went inside, Lucy kissed Wallace again. “That’s for the postponed spin the bottle kiss.”
“Worth the wait.”
She snorted. As they settled in and belted up, she texted Mia to warn her her mom was out there, and then texted her own mom to let her know she’d be heading home.
She could see the messages between Verona and Avery, and it looked like a hectic back and forth and battening down of the hatches, and a communication of messages, but as John had implied, the confrontation wasn’t for tonight.
No, another confrontation needed to happen tonight.
A nightmare.
She was getting better at navigating these. Spider limbs prowled forward, and where they landed, the floorboards rotted, swelled, inflated, and burst into more spiders.
She was getting better but they were still nightmares, still horrible.
One spider was enough to make her keep a few feet of distance and this was spider-ness that was running out of control.
This was the veil, where her own fears came together to form a crossing point, a barrier she needed to push or be pushed through.
A jumpscare moment. It helped to think of it like a horror movie. The sudden lunge. She reacted, like Guilherme had taught her to.
Guilherme–
Her hand caught the spear-like spider leg, and the bristles along its length were like needles. They punched into her hand, then bulged, each bristle a little pump to push something beneath skin. She pushed the leg away.
Skin that swelled, red, bulbous, liquid shimmers at the center. Dark specks growing quickly within.
Smaller spiders boiled out of her hand, bubbles as small as pencil erasers and as big as quarters popping to reveal their inhabitants, sometimes one, sometimes many. She shook them free, wary of the spider’s continued approach, and felt some latch on, biting, doing their own pumping, spreading the effect.
She could see bone in her hand, past that which had swelled and popped. The flesh around the wounds was black with tiny legs grappling for purchase.
A hand settled on her shoulder.
She looked back and she saw Guilherme, but it was a Guilherme of a darker court, or a Guilherme of the past, who had once been a villain, because he’d tried his hand at many roles. There was nothing warm behind his eyes as he pushed her.
He pushed her, a deft and simple movement that she instinctively knew was meant for maximum harm. Pushed her into the wall of the spider’s twenty or thirty legs, so she bounced off of one and careened forward, stumbling, before she hit another. Bristles eagerly pumped more eggs into her.
She screamed, and it was an angry scream, because anger, like Dr. Mona had said, fueled. It pushed, and for right now, she had to push through.
She tore her way forward, despite the fact she couldn’t breathe and in this dream-consciousness her heart’s beat was something that she had to control as much as her breathing and she couldn’t make it beat either. So, breathless and dying inside, her mind a wild panic that pulled a lot from anger, she pushed her way through and out.
Her hand was intact. There were no spiders. She still gave herself a thorough shake.
Avery was there already. Maybe somewhere along the way, she’d picked up a perk that helped with dealing with nightmares. Maybe it was a Finder thing.
Verona appeared next. Lucy could see the door behind Verona as it swung closed. School lockers lined the hallway she’d just come from.
“Thanks for the backup,” Lucy said.
“Return the favor someday,” Avery replied, jamming her hands in her pockets.
“I would be so happy to play defense so you can have a nice date. You have no idea,” Lucy said.
“I’m glad it was nice.”
“Tell Snowdrop that if she’s faking being me so that I can run around, she can’t be that weird,” Verona told Avery. “She made Jasmine worry.”
“I will pass that on.”
“Cool.”
The location was a wooden building, squat and square, surrounded by grass… up to a point.
The plot of grass was barely bigger than a normal property in a normal neighborhood, and the house was the size of a small, one-floor home. Knick-knacks, dolls and wards littered the garden instead of flowers, many planted in the dirt.
Avery took the lead, walking down the walkway. The door wasn’t locked, and opened as she pushed.
A single room with a cot in the corner, a shelf mounted over it that anyone would bang their head into as they got up, a kitchen table, a cast iron stove that took logs to heat the place, and a small kitchen and preparation area.
At the kitchen table was a single chair, and in the chair was Charles Abrams. On seat, chair back, and the floor around him, on bed, and in the table’s edge, was broken glass. It had been melted or set into notches in the wooden table, chair, and floorboards, clustered together so there wasn’t even the space to cleanly set a toe-tip down.
A man who looked fifteen or twenty years older than he was, from the fatigue of dealing with this, metaphorically or literally.
“Sometimes there’s sound,” Charles said. “A phonograph, or radio, or television. Sometimes there’s company. Mercifully, Alexander hasn’t haunted me as much since John dealt with him.”
“Have you been dodging us, Charles?” Lucy asked. “This has been hard to arrange.”
“Not dodging. I think the universe wants to put me out of your way. Or a Faerie does.”
“We need to talk,” Avery told him.
“Yeah,” he replied, and for a moment he looked despondent. “I’m the furthest thing from an augur, you know, but even I knew this was coming.”
“Us, here?” Verona asked.
“I meant them, out there. I didn’t want it for you. But this too. I figured you’d show up at my doorstep.”
“And planned accordingly?” Verona asked. “Is this where you spring a trap on us? A magic item or something you can use while Forsworn?”
“All my traps are sprung, spent, lost, or broken. My tools and resources stolen, shattered, scattered, and emptied of power. It’s hard to hold onto things or take care of things when you’re in my position. I’ve thought a lot about what to say, and virtually every answer is a waste of your time. And mine, if that’s possible.”
“And?” Lucy asked.
“And you’re so strong. You’re scarily capable. I think everyone was caught off guard. I can’t put up a fight, I can’t escape, I have no real allies. I did it. I created the Hungry Choir using devices and resources I’d managed to hold onto, with a bit of help from the others you’ve already indicted.”
His eyes didn’t open any wider, and no emotions really crossed his face. Lucy watched him, wary, curious, as he sat in his little nightmare here.
The broken man lifted his hands, surrendering.
Next Chapter