Fall Out – 14.3
Author: Wildbow

Fall Out – 14.3 | Pale

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Verona rubbed her palm in a circular motion, as if she could somehow straighten out something that had nothing to do with the bones or muscle.  The thumb had a tendency now to cross her hand, moving toward the pinky, the hand folding in the middle, and first thing in the morning, while running warm water over her sore hand in the shower, it had gone too far or something, producing a minutes-long hand cramp that had brought her to tears.

Then the doctor.

Verona hurried across the school grounds, hoping to get to class before things started up again.  Students were dawdling, talking in groups, and kids were screaming as they tore around the schoolyard.  They got to hang back, but Verona had the added hassle of needing to figure out where she was going.  She was already the odd one out, and arriving late would only compound that.

She passed through the haze of cigarette smoke and she let herself in.

The place to start would be her old classroom.  The school was L-shaped and the short arm of it was the combined high school and middle school, with a library closer to the core.  The longer length of it incorporated the office, nurse’s office, and all that junk, with the crook of the L holding the two gymnasiums and change rooms.

Here, at least, she’d be in the right ballpark, age-wise.  She hurried up the stairs to the second floor, dodging some more younger kids that were heading down the stairs so fast that they almost fell.

She pressed her hand flat against the lockers and trailed it beside her as she approached the class, again in some vain, stupid attempt to get it to lay flat, as if something would pop or straighten out and be normal.  Many of the lockers were open and unclaimed.

There were about ten students in the class.  Some ate, some boys and one girl were roughhousing, and three girls she didn’t know, about her age, were sitting at or around desks toward the back corner of the classroom.  They all looked up at her as she entered, then went back to what they were doing.

One of the three girls was sitting backwards in a chair, leaning into the backrest, hands on a desk, while the second girl sat on desk and hands both, pinning them down.  The third girl had hair dyed dark blue and heavy eyeliner, and a straightened-out paperclip she was holding up, blood and black ink dried in rivulets down the length of the paperclip, hands, wrists, all the way down to her elbows.  She held a lighter to it.

Girl one’s jeans were unbuttoned and folded down and girl three started stabbing her at the base of the spine with the paper clip, just above where a wadding of paper towels had been stuffed in between butt and jeans to absorb the blood and ink.  Stab, pour a dribble of ink, stab-

Verona walked over to get a closer look.

Girl one groaned and her right leg did a stompy-sort of jitter, suggesting no anesthetic or painkillers were involved.  Her arm jerked but the hand being pinned down meant she couldn’t move it or reach back.

“You can quit any time,” girl two said.

“Just get her to hurry up!  And keep the depth consistent!  I think you’re stabbing my spine!”

“Geeez,” Verona remarked.

“Spectating costs, new girl,” the girl with the paperclip said.  It looked like a broken razor, and she was having trouble maintaining a grip on it, because it was slick with blood.  “You’ll make my hands shake, leaning over my shoulder.”

On the far end of the classroom, a guy shoved another guy.  He crashed past two chairs and a desk.  A whole group laughed at the spectacle of it.

“And that fighting doesn’t?” Verona asked.

The girl sitting on the desk didn’t look away from the window as she said, “that’s been going on for days.”  She shifted her weight to keep the girl in the chair pinned in place.

“Didn’t school start only today?”

“Gotta get in early, claim territory, y’know?”

“I could pay you with much-needed art advice.  Is that a hot dog or a really shitty butterfly?” Verona asked.

“The hell!?  Fuck you, Mallory!” Girl one protested.  “You said you’d do a good job!”

“Whiner, I’m trying my best, I’ve gotta learn somehow,” Mallory said.  “I think I’m getting the ink where we want it.  I hope.”

“You think?  You hope?” the girl asked asked.  “You asshole!”

“Can you not agitate Sloane?” the girl sitting on the desk asked.  “She’s so whiny.”

“Ow, that was my spine!” Sloane complained.  “That got a freaking nerve!”

“That is going to be one really awful tattoo,” Verona told her.

Mallory held out the paper clip,clamped between bent finger and thumb, as if she was prepared to stab Verona with it.

“Fuck!” Sloane cried out.  “I don’t want a shitty tattoo!  Stop!  Stop poking me with that if it sucks!”

“It sucks pretty bad,” Verona said.

“Stop stop stop!” the girl struggled, wriggling enough it wasn’t possible to continue.

“Is your thing being an annoying bystander and screwing with my business?  Fuck off,” Mallory told her.

“I saw a video once, about how to make a tattoo gun in prison.  I tried making one out of an electric toothbrush,” Verona remarked.  I was too chicken to use it, even as a test.

“Good for you,” Mallory said, annoyed and not really paying attention.

“I could bring it,” Verona told Mallory, adjusting her tone to add a bit of charm.  “Maybe tomorrow?  For a price, mmm?  Interested?”

Mallory looked sideways at her.  Interested.

“She is!” Sloane called out, still with hands pinned.  She looked elated, looking between them.  “Mal will use that thing, it’s gotta be better, right?”

Aaaand sold.  She could see it.

“Big currencies right now are cigarettes for the older teens, and toilet paper,” Mallory told Verona, wiping at her hands with a napkin with a fast food logo on it.  Blood remained in the creases.

“Toilet paper?”

“Not many stores open.  Some of the Stuck-Arounds decided to raid the ones that were open for the T.P., corner the market.  First thing this morning, kids started raiding the washrooms here to sell, the vice principal took the toilet paper away and she’s handing it out on demand, in exchange for getting people to follow her rules.”

“Oh yeah?  Nice scam.  Are the Stuck-Arounds Others?”

Mallory’s eyebrows went up, confusion clear on her face.  “Huh?”

Verona tried to think of how to phrase it, with how wiggly things got here.  “Are they Others?  Monsters?”

“Oh?  Yeah.  But there are monsters everywhere.  Some of the guys in this room, probs.”

“Fuck off, Mal!” a guy called out.

Mallory held the sharpened paper clip she’d just wiped mostly clean and pointed it at the guys who were roughhousing.

“Oh, I don’t mean dangerous or horrible people.  I mean… I hate to call them this, but monsters?  We call them Others.  I think you’re a bit Other?  I’m not actually sure where that line gets drawn for you guys.”

“Are Others cool?” Sloane asked.  She was still in the chair, still pinned down, still bleeding where the paperclip had stabbed too deep.

“I sure like a lot of the Others I’ve met.”

“Sweet.”

Mallory frowned.  “Huh.  Monsters, then?  We’ve seen those too.  Fangs and claws?”

“Sometimes.”

“Yeah, well, the Stuck-Arounds aren’t those.  They’re the big gang of people too old for high school, too young to have a gig.”

“Young enough to be dumb, old enough to be a special kind of mean,” the girl sitting on Sloane’s hands said, sounding bored.

The twenty-somethings.  Like Avery’s brother Rowan was before he left for Thunder Bay.  They were a gang on this side of Kennet, Verona supposed.

“Wish I’d thought of it before those losers,” Mal said, surly.  “I wonder what else we could steal and corner the market on.”

“Sounds like they had a good plan,” Verona said.  “Tricky to execute though.”

“Yep.”  The girl sitting on Sloane’s hands examined her nails.  “You need numbers, and you need to have the ability to-”

One of the boys screamed as his arm was twisted behind his back.  As a ‘joke’ another guy kicked it while it was about as far as it could twist.  The scream intensified.

“-hold what you take,” she finished, not looking up and barely pausing in her sentence, more interested in the back of her hand and her nails than the chaos across the room.

“I’ll see what I can scrounge up,” Mallory said.  “Just tell me which of the two you want.  And your thing has gotta work.”

“Information,” Verona replied.

“Can I get up?” Sloane asked.  “Can you get off my hands?  They’ve fallen asleep.”

“When I feel like it,” girl two said.

“A lot’s gonna depend on the kind of info you need,” Mallory told Verona.

“For right now, I just want to know if anyone’s around that doesn’t belong.”

Mallory pointed at Verona, paused, then reconsidered. “Was going to say you, but… I can see it.”

“Yeah?”

“Almost.  Really hard to figure you out,” Mallory said, studying Verona more closely now.  “Using that language about monsters and Others, talking like you have access to supplies the rest of us don’t.  I don’t get your angle.”

“I’m a practitioner.”

“Okay, I’ll rephrase all that stuff I just said.  You talk funny and you call yourself something random that make me want to punch you and call you a weenie.”

“What’s a practitioner?” Sloane asked.

Verona shrugged a bit.  “A witch.  And don’t punch people that call themselves practitioners.  They might curse you or sic an Other on you.”

Mallory looked Verona up and down.  “Yeah?  Okay.  Sure.”

That easy, huh?

“People that don’t belong…” Mallory mused aloud.  “What if I want more than the homemade tattoo gun for that info?”

“I know someone,” a guy said.  “Someone that doesn’t fit.”

Verona turned.

His black hair was greasy and needed cutting, and his shirt and jeans obviously unwashed, and he had a sheen of sweat from the roughhousing, but it kinda worked for him.  “Brennan.”

“Verona.”

“What’ll you give me?” he asked.  He smiled, like he thought he was cute enough to make the go-to answer obvious.  Which he was.

He just oozed that way too stereotypical, bad boy charm, and he just oozed complicated.

Everyone in this new underbelly of Kennet oozed complicated in some way.  Drama bombs and people who didn’t have their shit together, and people with no restraint.

Verona allowed herself a smirk, and was about to reply when Mallory cut in.

“I was negotiating, Bren.”

“Any business needs competition, Mal.  Hey, new girl, what are you giving Mallory for the info?”

“I’m Verona.  And it’s a janky tattoo gun.”

“Gimme, and I’ll maybe tell you-”

“The grade one substitute teacher!” Mallory cut in.  “I know who he’s thinking about, it’s the sub.  People were talking.”

“Fuck!” Brennan swore.

“Gotta give her that one, Brennan,” Verona said.  “Sorry bud.”

“Fuck!  Fuck you,” he told Mallory.  “Now neither of us get shit, you know that right?  You gotta have the payment in hand first.  She’ll stiff you.”

“No intention of stiffing,” Verona pointed out.

“I’m pretty good at enforcing payment,” Mallory told him.  She smiled.  “Not my problem if it means I can beat you to it.”

“Fuck you,” he said, before stomping off.

Mallory said something under her breath.  The girl sitting on the desk lightly kicked her.  Mallory smirked.

“I might buy other info!” Verona called out to Brennan.  “Find me!  Any strays, any weirdness or danger that goes beyond…”

She saw the blood on one of the desks from the more violent roughhousing.

“…whatever is normal here.”

He waved dismissively at her, which she took as acknowledgement.

“You were saying, Mallory?” Verona asked.  “Teacher?”

“Call me Mal.  Grade one, around the bend-” Mal said.  “She should be in class.”

“I know my way around,” Verona said.  She clicked her tongue.  “I will make an effort to be in touch, Mal.”

“You’d better.  Fuck, I believe you less now,” Mal said.  She stood up and Verona could see that she’d used various methods to tattoo her stomach and legs.  They were absolutely terrible doodles with inconsistent, wobbly lines, bits where the ink didn’t even set, and places where the ink had… what was the term?  Blown out?  Her fingers had cuts with ink in them, but that didn’t look intentional.  It looked like her tools were crap.  Lots of box cutter blades and razors she’d snapped in two and haphazardly applied tape to, more paperclips of varying size, all apparently filed to points.

“Off!  Off!” Sloane complained.  The girl sitting on the desk leaned over, freeing her hands.  Sloane stood, very obviously wobbly, and plucked at the paper towels that were sticking up from the back of her jeans.  “Aaahhh, pins and needles.  Aaaaugh, that one grazed my back.”

“Pay,” Mal told the girl.

“You didn’t finish!  Or do a good job!”

“Pay or else.”

“Fuck off.”

Mallory grabbed for Sloane, and Sloane fended off that first grab.  The two started scrapping.  In the midst of that, Mallory wrestled with the girl for a second, and got her in a position where she could slap her hand, hard, against the one-winged butterfly that had been haphazardly poked into into skin, leaving flesh raw and maybe even tattered in places.

The girl’s legs went out from under her in the shock and pain, and she collapsed.

Mallory rifled her pockets, slapping the ‘tattoo’ again when the girl started fighting her.  She picked out some cigarettes and cash, threw the rest in the girl’s face, and then stood straight.  “Got blood on my hands again.”

She went to kick the girl in the same spot and Verona hurried to stick her leg out, blocking Mallory’s foot.

“You wanna fight?” Mal asked.

“No, but don’t take that as weakness.  I am literally capable of setting you on fire,” Verona told her.  “She’s down.  Leave it.  As one artist to… an aspiring artist-”

Mallory gave her a dirty look.

“-don’t fuck up your canvas.  Even for half-done work.”

Mal looked down at the girl, considering.

“Yyyyyeah, so anyway,” Verona replied.  “Gonna go find that teacher.  You guys have fun.”

She gave the wrestling boys some distance, and she still had to skip a few steps to the right to avoid them as one charged a girl who was part of the brawling, knocking her to the ground.  The girl gave him a wedgie in return

Verona left the room.  Verona’s hand twanged with pain, and she did the circular rubbing as soon as she was clear of people.

Mallory hurried to follow Verona out the door.  To not show any weakness, Verona let go of her hand.

“You’re coming?”

“Gotta get to know you, figure out where you live and shit, so I can extract payment later.”

“Are those boys just… always fighting?”

“Sometimes they nap, or eat.  Or make bad passes at girls.  Mostly fighting.  Gotta burn through the excess testosterone somehow, you know?  Or their balls inflate and turn blue.”

“I am at least ninety nine percent sure that isn’t true.”

“So hey-”  Mallory hurried forward, so she could get in front of Verona and face her.  “Balls aside, can you get me other stuff?”

“Depends.  What do you need?”

“Ink.”

“I have got a buttload of ink.  That’s doable.”

“Needles?  Blades?” Mallory asked, eager.

“Are you going to hurt people with them?”

“Only to get better at this tattoo thing.  Really need to have a gig, you know?  If you want to survive, yeah?  I don’t think a lot of these guys get that.”

Verona looked down at a pair of boys who were curled up by a locker, one sitting practically in the other’s lap.  They were making out, with pretty heavy touchy-feely stuff, fingers in hair, ignoring the rest of the world as kids ran by with scissors.

“Good for them,” Verona told Mal.

“Meh.  Don’t care ether way.”

“World needs more love, less fighting.  If the inflating balls thing is right, that’s a way better way for a guy to get himself sorted, y’know?”

“I guess.”

One of them gave her a thumbs up.  He’d apparently heard.  She returned it, smiling.

“I’ve got needles and blades,” Verona told Mal.

“We can do business, then.”

“No classes yet?” Verona asked Mal, pointing at empty classrooms and spaces being used for storage.

“Not yet.  I’m not sure what that’s going to look like,” Mal said.  “Vice principal’s training the faculty.”

“Okay, so… let’s make a deal.  I’m running the risk of getting redundant info, but I’ll see about getting you some ink,” Verona said.  “If you give me the rundown.  Answer my questions, tell me who or what to watch out for.  I saw the creepy trenchcoat mouse outside.  There’s apparently the Stuck-Arounds…”

“I think the mouse is harmless-”

“I think it hurt my retinas.”

“Okay, well, yeah.  Big one is the Stuck-Arounds.  Those guys and girls are either dead to the world or ready to burn everything down to get back to that place where they’re dead to the world.  Uhhh… respect the vice principal.  She’s got sway over some of the gangs.  There’s some scarier gangs downtown.  You don’t want to go downtown.”

“Suck it!  Suckle it!” a girl crowed, loud enough that Mal stopped talking.  Verona identified the direction of the sound and found a crowd in the girl’s bathroom.  The door had been ripped off, and there was a mixed crowd inside, jeering as two girls fought like their lives were on the line.  Verona poked her head in to see the bigger girl forcing the smaller girl’s mouth toward the seatless and stained rim of the toilet.  “What do you call a toilet curbstomp?”

“Fuck you, Narcissa!”  the smaller girl protested.  Her hands were occupied holding onto the broken stall partition and Narcissa’s wrist, and the lines in her neck stood out from the strain of holding her face away from the toilet, while Narcissa leaned into her.

“A toilet curbstomp is justice, honey!  You don’t look at my man.  Any girl who even glances his way is getting a beatdown, that’s my rule!  Suckle.  The.  Rim!  Then, while you’re doing that, I’ll break your whore jaw off!”

An older teenage guy who was watching the event from within the crowd in the girls bathroom chuckled, pleased with himself.

The girl who was almost kissing the rim kicked, knocking Narcissa’s feet out from under her, helped by the fact a sink behind the crowd was overflowing and the floor had a shallow puddle reaching across it.  Narcissa caught the stall door, stopping herself, but the other girl hauled violently downward on her hair,  slamming Narcissa’s face into and through part of the toilet.  Pieces of seat clattered across the floor.  Narcissa lay there, limp, water mixing with blood as it sloshed out of the broken toilet bowl.

“Is she dead?” Verona called out.  She turned to Mal.  “Are you guys hardier?”

“I dunno,” Mal said.  “What the fuck am I supposed to compare against?”

“I fucking wish this bitch was dead.  She’s still breathing,” the smaller girl said, picking herself up, nearly slipping on the wet floor.  She strode through the crowd, grabbed the guy by the collar, and pulled him down to a height where he could kiss her.  She held him like that for a second, making eye contact.

“You didn’t actually put your mouth on-”

The girl shook her head.

He closed the rest of the distance, kissing and embracing her.

She carried him or he carried her or some combination of the two got them into the unoccupied stall next to the stall with the limp body bleeding inside it.  The door slammed closed behind them, and their shoes squeaked for traction on wet floor.

Verona frowned, not exactly sure what she should do.  She started to walk in, trying to check if the girl was alive or unconscious, drowning face down in the toilet or bleeding out with sharp ceramic or whatever pressed against her face.  The small crowd exited, the fight over, a tide she wasn’t big enough to fight past.

Mal tugged on the back of Verona’s collar, pulling her out of the way- just in time, because someone was ready to shove her to get her out of the way.

Two of the stragglers carried the near-unconscious girl out.  She coughed, her mangled face bleeding openly down one leg of one girl’s jeans.

“So…” Verona said, turning away.  She blinked a few times, processing.

“So,” Mal replied.  Mal’s eyes dropped.

Verona was rubbing her hand unconsciously.  She put it in her pocket, flattening it out by pressing it against her thigh.  Which was useless.  It hadn’t helped that morning, when it had cramped.

She didn’t want Mallory to see too much of that, because so much of what was going on in this side of Kennet exploited weaknesses, exploited vulnerabilities.  If she showed any, that could matter down the line.

“Bit of a weird out-of-nowhere question, I know, but are you like… newborn?” Verona asked.

“Huh?”

“Do you have an existence before Kennet?”

“Ohhh.  Me?  I guess.  I’ve been places, you know?  Surviving.  I was too young to remember, then I was here.  But there are definitely new people.  Mostly they go with the flow.  And then there’s people who… you know they’re from outside.  They’re pulled here, maybe they filter through society at a downward angle instead of filtering straight.  That doesn’t make sense.  It’s dumb.”

“Nah.  Not that dumb.  So there’s people… kinda appeared.  Haven’t really carved out a niche?”

“Or found a gig, niche, style.  I dunno.  How do people show up in other places?  Where you’re from?”

“Pregnancy and they get born there, or they move in.”

“Can you verify that for everyone?” Mal asked.  “Did you see everyone getting born?”

“No.  But-”

“But wait, let me finish.  You didn’t see them getting born, but you assume they were born, right?  Most of them?”

“Pretty much all.  Others excepted.”

“Sure.  I can assume or pretend most people here were born too.  Easy.  I assume I was born too, but I definitely don’t remember that.  Do you?  Remember being born?”

“No.  I knew a guy that did, though.  And he got born a lot.”

“That seems like a chore.”

“It was,” Verona said, with decided emphasis on the ‘was’.

“So… does it really complicate things compared to here?  Pretending or assuming I was born, pretend-assuming the same for others”

Verona debated arguing but she decided she’d rather get more important info first.  “Okay, but then there’s ones like you… maybe you half-existed somewhere, filtered out, filtered back in?”

“Who the fuck knows?” Mal asked.  “Time and place get fuzzy when you’re trying to get through the days.”

“Hm.  And then, third group, there’s people who- I guess they might be the outsiders in reality, and they become non-outsiders here?  We call them innocents, but that might be generous.”

“Sure.  Like there’s guys who just sorta wandered in, saw people fighting in the street, or there was a shady bar and people doing mystery drugs in the alley and they were like, ‘I’m home!’.  Or they didn’t care.”

“Or life kicked their asses enough they can’t tell the difference between this and reality.”

“Fuck you,” Mal retorted, unexpectedly hostile.  “This is real.”

“Uhhhh… I guess that’s fair,” Verona replied.

“It’s real fucking fair.”

Verona put her hands up in surrender.

Mal gave her a dark, annoyed look, then relented, and reached over to push the hands down.  “Don’t do that.  It’s a sign of weakness, some people will use that against you.”

“Right.”

Like I thought.

They walked down the hallway, Verona with her hands in her pockets.

“You want to know about the people who ended up here, right?” Mal asked.

“Yyyyyes,” Verona hedged, drawing out the word.  “But now I’m sorta wondering… where’s the line now?  Because it’s not just as easy as finding the outsiders in the mix, right?  I’ve gotta find people who filtered in down here but don’t belong?”

Mal nodded.

Verona thought for a second, before voicing thoughts aloud, “yeah.  Like… I guess my line is who ended up here that’s capable of living here, who’ll maybe lose their innocence but they’ll be fine, maybe eventually indistinguishable from the natural-born residents of this… this Kennet, I guess.”

She dropped her voice toward the end as they navigated past a group who were apparently comatose.  Maybe napping.  The conversation paused for a second.

Undercity?  Inversion?

Mal shrugged.

“And who’s going to get eaten alive?  Because I have a responsibility to those people.”

“I don’t think the substitute teacher belongs.  I think she’s going to get eaten alive.”

“Okay, then I definitely want to check on her.  Let’s keep moving in that direction.  Maybe a jog?  Ugh.”

“Ugh,” Mallory replied.  “No.  Running gets you blindsided.  Walk with purpose like you know where you’re going.  Con them into thinking you might be on a mission from someone with muscle.”

“Speaking my language.  Except I’m my own muscle, mostly.  But okay, uh, who else?  Besides the substitute teacher?”

Mal shrugged.  “Obvious ones?  Seedy video store guy,  edge of downtown, I think he’s an outsider.  The mouse with the trenchcoat-”

“Would rather just not ever remember that exists again,” Verona admitted.

“-might actually be some screwed up human from outside who turned up and then got weirder.  I really don’t have anything to compare to, you know.  I mentioned that.”

“You did,’ Verona confirmed.

“Going by gut feeling.  Who feels like they have more going on than all of this?  Besides you, I guess.”

“You’re putting me in that bucket, huh?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’m not here to stay, I don’t think.”

“Hm,” Mallory said, and for a second it looked like she wanted to say something, then decided not to.

Verona looked inside classrooms they passed.  Many were empty, or being used as storage.  “Not many students.”

“Some of us came early to establish territory against the gangs, make our faces known… get in on the business.”

“Stealing the T.P., right.”

“And my craft,” Mal said.

“My friend said a third of the people who were going to turn up at school didn’t.”

“Here?  Because it’s way less than that.”

“At a school related to this school, I guess I’d say,” Verona said.  She noted a spray-painted wang that extended along about thirty lockers, about as wide as her arm.  They caught up to the kid who was still working on it.  “Love it.  Nice steady hand, guy, straight lines.”

“Thanks!” the little kid piped up.  He had flecks of spray in his hair and on his skin.  His hands were covered in orange spray paint.

“Here, someone was saying only a third of the students really turned up,” Mal told Verona.

“Iiiiiinteresting,” Verona replied, looking around.

So we lost a third and a third have shown up here?

They weren’t one to one replicas or evil twins, but she was left to wonder if Noah or Ian from last year’s classes had been among those that bailed.  Were those guys making out in the corridor a loose analogue to one or both of those guys?  Was Mal an analogue to someone who would’ve attended?

Was there an Avery?

The library’s lights were off as they passed.  There were kids crowded around in the dark, sitting on shelves without books on them, watching a gory movie on a television.

Mallory elbowed Verona.  “Kay, since we’re getting close?  There’s primo info you’ll want to know, but I need something to guarantee you won’t renege.”

“I’m a practitioner.”

“Still makes me want to punch you, that word.”

“And that means I can’t lie without serious consequences.  My oaths are binding.  Promises are promises.”

“You could be lying when you say that.”

“Nope, because I can’t lie.”

Mal frowned at her.

Verona grinned her best Cheshire Cat grin.

“Oh, gross, is that a rat?  Mouse?” Mal said, pointing.

Verona looked and immediately realized it wasn’t a rat or a mouse.

“Heyyyyy!” Verona cheered.  “Hey little guy!”

Peckersnot used crumpled paper to partially shield himself as he came running down the hallway, sticking to the very edges of the hall where floor curved up to meet locker.

She scooped him up, keeping the paper around him.  “You came!”

He peeped, then sneezed, pulled on his cheek, and gestured incoherently, excited.

“Cheek pull is Tash- she’s here!?  She came?  That’s fantastic.”

Peckersnot nodded, then pointed down the hall toward the main school entrance where the kindergarten class was.

“Gonna go meet up with my friend,” Verona said, starting to walk.  “You can come with, meet her.  She’s cool.”

“Uhhh,” Mal said, as Verona moved closer to the door.  “I know you’ve got your cool little monster buddy saying she’s there, but…”

“But?” Verona asked.

“But I was going to say before.  There are gangs in the school and the kindergarteners are not my first choice of gangs to cross.”

“No shit?” Verona asked, a smile creeping across her face.  “I love that.”

“You’ll love it less when they stab you.  Or bite.  Vice principal established a quick alliance with them, right away.  They’re her bottom tier enforcers and errand runners, paid in T.P., cigarettes, and vending machine candy.”

“She’s one of the bosses, then?”

“Yeah.  Don’t go that way.”

Peckersnot sniffled, rubbing at his nose with open hands to try to wipe the snot away, but mostly he succeeded in getting snot all over his hands, wrists, and arms.  Verona crumpled up the paper around him to catch the worst of it and keep him from transferring it from his little hands to her.   She winced at the awkward movement of stretching out her left hand.  “Library.  There’s an exit if we cut through.”

“You do know your way around,” Mal said.

“I know the layout,” Verona said.  “Been going to a school very like this one for a while.”

“Huh.”

Verona held a finger to her lips, gesturing to Mallory, then did the same for Peckersnot.  He clamped both hands over his beak.

She opened the library door, and it was dark, illuminated only by the crimson on the screen.  The library smelled like smoke of two varieties.  Cigarettes were one.

They edged around the crowd, and Verona saw one five year old that apparently wasn’t part of the prison gang, so tense he was barely in contact with the ground he was sitting on, leaning forward with fingertips for balance, mouth open in awe.

She prodded his stomach with the toe of her shoe, and he yelped, which made others react, in a chain reaction.  Verona hurried on her way, suppressing laughter, pointing at the kid.

They liked the movie enough they didn’t give chase.

They had to go through the stacks of magazines, and a lot of them were filled with stuff students had done themselves.  A scrapbook style ‘magazine’ with modeling style photos stapled to the cover, notebooks with titles written on the cover in crayon.

A guy stood up as Verona approached, and he was big, heavyset, with a sullen face.

He jerked a thumb toward the stacks behind him.  In the dark, some teenagers were sitting and smoking, guys with arms around girls, having whispered and close conversations in the dark and heavy haze.

He motioned between himself and her, expression slack-jawed.

“Got somewhere to be, can’t hang out, but thanks for asking,” Verona told him.

He sat himself down near the entrance to the stacks, digging in a pocket for a pen.

The outside was bright as she opened the side door to the library.  She squinted.  It took them out onto the landing that branched off to the front door, kindergarten playground, and the main, much larger play area and sports fields.

Some kindergarteners near the front door stood up.  They were smeared in fingerpaint and carried broken-off chair legs and a meterstick that had been filed down to a point.  They didn’t pursue as Verona and Mal headed down the stairs into the main playground, Peckersnot’s tiny hand sticking out of crumpled paper to point the way.

The smell of paint lured Verona’s nose, and the rest of her followed, turning.

The big boring brick wall of the school she had grown up attending was bordered in graffiti, especially at the lower portion.  And a sixteen or seventeen year old guy with a mess of jump ropes and wires tied around him was being raised and lowered by a team of kids on the roof, while he painted a huge mural, of a burning book dissolving into silhouettes of a crowd, of a crying face, and trees without leaves.  It wasn’t perfect and if she’d done it she would’ve done something more focused but just the fact it was happening at all…

“Fuck,” Verona breathed, as she took it in.

“What?” Mal asked, quiet.

“I might kind of love it here,” Verona whispered.

“Has its ups and downs, you know?  Up, boys.  Down, creepy trenchcoat mouse.  Up, do what you want.  Down, might get stabbed, or get forced to suck on a toilet, or fed dog food.”

“Dang.  See, back where I come from, I’ve got a friend boy, but I definitely don’t get to do what I want, and I deal with creeps and get almost stabbed a lot.  I’ve got best friends, though.”

Peckersnot made a squeaky, unintelligible exclamation.

“And snot-nosed little artist friends.”

Peckersnot pointed.

“Aaaand a best friend who came here, heyyy!”

Tashlit wore a hoodie, hood up, hands in her pocket.  She stood a little straighter as Verona approached, picking up speed as Verona hugged her.

She hugged Verona back.

“Oh man, Tash.  You’re up there for my favorite people to get a hug from,” Verona said, squeezing.  She could feel the squish of loose flesh beneath the sweatshirt.  “And ascending.”

Tashlit nodded as they ended the hug.  Peckersnot gasped as he’d been squished between them.  He adjusted the crumpled paper around himself, leaving wet handprints on the paper as he moved it.

“Tashlit, meet Mallory, Mal for short, I guess?  Mal, Tashlit.”

“I like your eyes,” Mallory said.

Tashlit winked using the eyes on the left side of her body.  Which was mostly covered up, but face, left hand, and left ankle, anyway.

“Okay, that’s a thing you gotta do again,” Verona told her.  “I like that.  I’m so glad you came!  Backup!”

Tashlit clenched a fist, flexing.

“You good to go in the school?  Maybe some dangerous kindergarteners, but we can cut around that part of things.”

Tashlit gestured drawing a halo shape above her head, before pulling her hood down a bit.

“Iiiii- yes,” Verona replied.  “Some innocents around.  But we’ll be careful.  Can I like, pledge to own some of that, if it gets sketchy?”

Tashlit shrugged.

“Okay, well, I cordially invite you to join me on this little adventure.  You, Peck, Mal if she wants to come, and me, rescuing a substitute teacher who ended up at the school on the shadow-side of Kennet.”

Tashlit nodded.

They walked and Mal did tag along.  They headed back the way they’d come, but not to the library, exactly.  Tashlit, looked over, then pointed surreptitiously at Verona’s hand.

“Someone told you?  It’s okay,” Verona told her, quiet.  “Doc gave me exercises.  Meds.  I like thinking of it as a cat claw.”

Tashlit made a prayer gesture, then pointed.

“I don’t think that helps, Tash,” Verona whispered.  “Mystical.”

Tashlit nodded.  Lower eyelids raised a fraction all across the parts of her Verona could see.  Sympathetic.

Tashlit nudged Verona and gestured.  Claw-scary, head tap, chest thump.

“The vice principal is the big threat on campus, apparently, but there’s also the Stuck-Arounds, they’re not in the school, are they?”

“They’re like roving raiders.  Sometimes, I bet.  Depends what they think they can get away with,” Mal said.

“Who else?”

“Right now?  We don’t know.  Some people are taking over classes, toughest person in a room trying to claim the classroom as their territory.  Arrived early with gangs, picking fights, establishing their pecking orders…”

Verona nodded.

“But when the vice principal makes her move, who knows?  We’re expecting the new teachers to come in any time, start running the classes.  Might get brutal.”

“Hmm.”

They avoided the front door and walked around to the side entrance, about halfway up the long arm of the ‘L’ shape, which put them near the office.

“Early moves still, first afternoon of the first day of school,” Mallory said.

Tashlit nodded.  She bapped Verona’s shoulder with a hand to get her attention, then gestured, indicating writing, then banging a hammer…

“Laws?”

Tashlit made a so-so gesture, and swung an arm wide, indicating… everything.

“Hey Mallory, any idea if there are any rules about how… all of this works?”

Tashlit nodded, leaning into Verona a bit as Verona asked.

“Again, I don’t-”

“You don’t have a point of reference,” Verona talked over Mal as Mal said, “-have anything to compare to.”

Tashlit nodded.

“Nothing I’ve noticed,” Verona told Tashlit.

Tashlit nodded, then tapped her wrist.

“In time?  You think it’ll happen?”

Tashlit shrugged.

“Could happen,” Verona said.  “Gotcha.”

They re-entered the school, using another of the entrances.  The office was to the left, but the interior was dark.  Two unconscious kids lay in the hallway, a third sitting with her arms around her legs, looking a bit dazed.

“You guys okay?” Verona asked, looking at the girl who was just sitting there.

“Sure,” the girl on the floor said.  “I’m super high right now.  Your friend there is a little much for me right now.”

Tashlit’s eyes flicked closed in a blink, the simultaneous closing of all those eyes producing a faint wet sound like a camera shutter.

“Hey, Tash, how is being at school?” Verona asked.  “Kinda cool?”

Tashlit nodded and shrugged.

“Cool,” Verona murmured.  She looked toward the end of the hall, the very top end of the ‘L’.  “If they haven’t moved the class since I was in the early grades, then the first grade class would be-”

“Hey,” someone called out.

Verona turned to look the other direction, away from the classes and toward the kindergarten, gym, and library.  A group of older teenagers were standing there, with two brightly painted five or six year olds behind them.

“Vice principal wants to talk.”

“There’s someone I want to check on-”

“You don’t get a choice about this.  It’s her school.”

“Can I send someone to go handle something while I-”

“No.  All of you.”

“What do you think?” Verona asked Tashlit.

Tashlit made a slight curtsy gesture, before putting her fingers up near her forehead.  At first, the four raised fingers made Verona think ‘four-head’, but then she realized the intention was a crown.

“Bit of a Lord situation, huh?  Okay.  After this, we want to check on a first grade teacher who doesn’t belong and is probably having a hard time, make sure she’s okay.”

“Don’t care.  Come,” the vice principal’s enforcer told Verona.

Verona nodded.  As she walked by an upended trash can, she threw the ball of crumpled paper onto the side of it.  It landed between the can and the wall.

As they headed into the side hallway that led to the showers, vending machines, combination cafeteria-gym and the big gym, Verona glanced back.  She saw Peckersnot sneaking down the hallway, shrouded in the crumpled paper, heading for the stairs.

She met Tashlit’s eyes, which was easy, and Tashlit nodded.

Best we can do for now.

They didn’t actually enter the gym, but instead headed out to the back parking lot.  A bunch of cars had been arranged into a blockade, and within that blockade was one of the larger gathering of students Verona had seen yet.  They ranged through all ages, but the very youngest and very oldest were prominent.

And the Vice Principal was there.  Verona found herself putting more emphasis on that title, seeing her in person, framed by a crowd of teenagers and kids who probably wouldn’t flinch at seeing someone get a beating.  Maybe even at murder.  The Vice Principal was about seven or eight years old, wearing a fairy costume, and bearing a sash with her self-appointed title on it.  She held an oversized wand with a star on the end, and she stood on the back of a four hundred pound man with a cage around his head, a chain leading from inside the cage to her hand.  The other teachers were similar, though not of the same body type, and the Vice Principal’s retinue consisted of the kids and teens of varying ages who used them as chairs to sit on or had them standing while sitting on their shoulders.

Each kid with a ride had a different sash or nametag.  A boy with a tie and ‘treasurer’ on a nametag and ‘maths’ on a sash, an older teenage girl with a bored look on her face, sitting on some skinny dude with an oversized cage on his head, with one leg folded over the other, her sash reading ‘school nurse’.  There was a younger kid with an oversized apron on, the tag reading ‘shop’, and a kid who looked barely out of kindergarten with ‘bio’ on his sash.

“They have a monster,” Mallory whispered, as they walked closer.  The Vice Principal beckoned with her hand, bidding them to move faster.  “Fangs and claws.”

Verona saw, as the Other raised his head.  It snorted, sniffed, then prowled closer, before breaking into a loping, awkward run.

Verona stepped forward, and staggered back a step as Squeak hurled himself at her, crashing into the ground at her feet, rolling onto his back, rubbing his face against her front.

“Heyyyy, Squeak, my man,” Verona greeted him, giving him a vigorous rub.  “Gentle soul.”

“The fuck?” Freak raised her voice, before stomping over.  She had a sash that read ‘guidance’.  “Oh.  You.”

“Heya Freak.  You’re here.”

“Status, respect, food, chance to cave in the occasional face.  Only bad part is I’ve got that loser coming along for it.”

Verona rubbed the patchy fur at Squeak’s chest.  His head lolled one way and the other in delight.

“You know them?” the Vice Principal asked.

“What’d you do?” Freak asked, quiet.

“I asked you a question, Freak.”

“Just showed up,” Verona replied.  “Asking around.”

“Because if you did something and I back you up, they’re going to get on my case and I’m going to have to do some murderin’,” Freak told Verona, quiet.

“I don’t think I did anything, and try to avoid the murdering.  I know the rules and expectations are different here, but… yeah.”

“Freak, last warning,” the Vice Principal called out.

Freak’s eyes narrowed.

“I know them,” Freak said, without taking her eyes off Verona.

“Your call then.  Do you vouch or do we draw straws to decide which staff member deals with her?”

Freak seemed to consider.  Squeak moaned, which got him a hard look from the little girl with flowers in her hair.

“I vouch,” Freak declared.  Under her breath, she said, “Don’t fucking make me regret this.  Come on, Squeak, you’re getting your stink on her.”

Squeak moaned, made apologetic sounds, and loped off.  Verona leaned forward to extend the shoulder rub a bit.

“I was told you were asking around.  Looking for someone?”

“Any people fitting a category.  People who don’t belong,” Verona told her.

“Are you messing with me?” the girl in the fairy costume asked.  “Do you think you’re in charge?  Or that I’m not?”

“Hey, you’re in charge of the school, but I’ve got a job that covers all of Kennet.  Means I have a responsibility to find the stragglers and… the white sheep in with the black, I guess.  Innocents who wandered in who need out.  I’ve had this job longer than you’ve had yours.”

“But I’ve got this job now,” the little girl said.  She used her wand to strike the cage around her steed’s head, making it ring and jangle in an obnoxiously loud way.  He swayed, moving his head to try to escape it.  At a prodding from her wand, she goaded him to crawl closer to Verona.

Tashlit took a step forward.  With that, a bunch of people tensed.

“It’s cool,” Verona said.

A third of Tashlit’s eyes looked at Verona, the framing of lid and eye making her reluctance clear.

The Vice Principal went on, “I’ve got one of the biggest gangs in town, a small army, I’ve got supplies, I’ve got strong people behind me.  I say this school is mine, and anything inside this school is mine, and my gang, my supplies, my pets, they all say so too.”

A few faces in the crowd nodded.

Verona glanced at Freak, trying to read Freak’s posture and mood.  Which wasn’t a strength of hers.

Can I beat her in a fight if it comes to that?  Verona wondered.

“She’s cool.  She’s a friend,” Freak said, sounding sullen.  Her thumb turned, indicating the Vice Principal.

Made a friend, Freak? Verona thought.

“Is she?” the Vice Principal asked.  The thumb disappeared.

And the V.P. thinks Freak is talking about me.

Freak went on, “Verona here is strong.  If I’m the guidance counselor, then my counsel is you want her as an ally.”

The girl in the fairy costume turned to look at Freak.  “I’m the strongest person in this school.  By the end of the day I’ll own the school and the surrounding area.  I can’t have someone going around doing stuff behind my back.”

“Remember that show we were watching last night?  Sentai Elite?  She could be your Sentai Wood B.  She could be your- the other show,” Freak said.  “Sweet Mask.”

The principal flounced a bit as she turned, an act that made the man she was standing on wince as she stomped on his kidney.

“You know the only thing better than a tried and trusted friend that’s by your side no matter what?  Random ass stranger who shows up out of nowhere, saves your ass, and demolishes your enemies,” Freak exclaimed, getting excited.  “That’s her!  That can be her!”

“Her?”

“I am talking full on aerial bombardment shit.  Illusions, monsters, crazy-ass transformations.  And magic aerial bombardments.  Whenever she feels like it!” Freak exclaimed, excited.  The excitement was contagious enough that Squeak perked up, making noises, and Freak shoved him about ten feet away from her, the crowd swiftly parting to get clear as Squeak hit the wall and bounced off, collapsing.

“I’m not convinced,” the Vice Principal said.

“I can do all of those things.  I’m not positive I will,” Verona said.  She looked at the man that had the cage around his head, features obscured within, head bowed or weighed down, shuffling uncomfortably as the Vice Principal shifted her footing.

“Reluctant hero.  That’s perfect!” Freak exclaimed.

The Vice Principal, despite herself, was nodding along a little.  She startled a little as Freak leaped up onto the man’s back and jostled her in her excitement.  That alone did a lot to break the cultivated composure.

“That’s really super cool,” the Vice Principal confessed.  “But Sweet Mask has a cool mask.”

“I’ve got a mask,” Verona said.

She reached into the front portion of her bag, where there was a separate space, just thick enough for important papers and handouts.  She pulled out the three pieces of her mask.  She raised them to her face and held them together.

They came apart as she relaxed the tension.  The fit between two pieces was so perfect that they stuck together for an extra second or two, giving her a moment of fleeting hope.  She held them clumped together in front of her chest.

Felt bad, showing something vulnerable to a crowd of hostile strangers.

“Why is it broken?” the Vice Principal asked.

“I guess it’s still broken because I haven’t fixed what I need to fix.  Or figured out what I need to figure out.”

“You need to get on that,” the Vice Principal told her.

“What I need,” Verona said, and the note of freedom and fun that had run through so much of her visit to this school had faltered a bit, leaving her colder and more serious than before, “is to do my job.  I protect Kennet, I protect Kennet’s people and Others, that includes you guys, and right now you’ve got a teacher who is probably having the worst day of her life, I’m going to go get her, assuming she’s still there, and I’m going to get her out of here.”

“We’ll consult.  Freak?  Watch her.  Don’t mess with me on this.”

Freak shook her head, hopping down from the man’s back.

He crawled on hands and knees to the huddle with the other kids with the self-proclaimed staff roles.

“It’s cool you made a friend,” Verona told Freak.

“Mm.  Better than this stinking loser who follows me everywhere and drools on everything,” Freak said, indicating Squeak.

Freak clamped hands around mouth in a vain effort to stop the drooling from the elongated snout.

“That man she’s riding on?”

“The previous vice principal.”

“I’m not super okay with that treatment.  My partners would hate it too.”

Mallory commented, “Veep came in with a plan.  Delinquent kids?  Capital punishment-”

“Corporal?” Verona corrected.

“That too. Three strikes, school assembly, you in front of everyone.  You’d have to do a big speech, saying how sorry you were, what you did wrong, all that, then…” Mallory drew a line across her throat, making a choked sound.  “If you do a bad job of the speech, stutter, hesitate, they’d draw it out.”

“Holy crap,” Verona said.

“Chance you survive, if you have friends and those friends join the truancy squad or one of the other groups.  Hunt students who missed class.  You can buy someone’s survival with a few weeks of that.  Or like, save a friend from the late punishment.”

“What’s the late punishment?”

“It was going to be losing a foot.  Really nice we got someone like her.  Still don’t want to cross her, y’know.”

Verona nodded slowly.

“The other teachers were all cackling along with it, we heard, we saw.  They posted stuff up on the walls.  Burned all the books, plans for school uniforms with ties tight enough to make it hard to breathe.  Dreams of turning us into a personal army, literally beating us into shape, conformity…”

“Right,” Verona said.

Tashlit tapped Verona’s arm, then gestured.  Claw, fierce, clutching motion at heart, hunched over, then thumped her chest once and put her hand up near her brow, fingers raised.

Fivehead?  Four-head? Verona thought, looking at the fingers.  Crown.  Mean, evil, danger…

“People in power are evil?”

Tashlit made a gesture, then the motion for ‘small’.

“Some people in power are evil?”

Tashlit repeated the gestures for fierce and dangerous, then twisted skin over her heart, clutching it into a tight bundle.

“Twisted and very evil.”

Tashlit pointed down.

“Here.  In a place like this, people in power can be true evil, really twisted.”

Tashlit nodded.

“Huh.  I imagine anyone could, right?”

Tashlit made a lazy waving hand gesture, shrugging, then a firmer ‘crown’ motion.

“Yeah.  Much more common for the ones in charge, I guess.  Something to watch for.”

Tashlit made a cradling gesture, touched her heart, then held up a few fingers.

“Gotcha,” Verona replied.  She sighed, and saw a confused Mallory.  “Tashlit’s brother.  He was a crime boss in a place like this.  A… very dangerous one, I guess?”

Tashlit nodded, then pointed at the principal, twisting over her heart.

“And a twisted one.”

“Badass,” Freak commented.

Verona looked around, taking in the scene.  The V.P. and her ‘staff’ were having a chat, others were hanging out.  Someone was drawing on the side of a car.

“Feels a bit like I imagined High School would be when I was little,” Verona told Tashlit.  “Being defiant, breaking rules.”

Tashlit gestured.

“Yeah, the drinking, smoking.”

Tashlit wagged a finger.

“I know.  I know you don’t want me to smoke,” Verona told her.  “I like so much of this, though.  Creativity run rampant.  Screw the rules!”

Tashlit bapped her arm to get her attention, because Verona was taking in the wildly varying, often messy fashion and the art being produced.  A girl was drawing on a guy’s bare back.  Tashlit bapped a second time, making sure she had Verona’s attention, then gestured.  So-so, scary, the crown, so-so again.

“Yeah,” Verona replied.  “Depends who is in charge, huh?  This would be way different if the original V.P. was in charge.  Hey Freak, why is it V.P. if there’s no P.?”

“Was that way to start,” Freak answered.  “And we kept it like that because vice is cool.”

“Right, okay,” Verona replied, frowning a bit.  She had a working theory now.

Tashlit nudged her, and Verona leaned into Tashlit to look.

Gashwad, crawling out from beneath a car, with Cherrypop on his head, gripping his hair.  He had a bag slung around his back.

“Gashwad!” Verona called out.

He looked surprised, beady eyes widening.  Meanwhile, Cherrypop thrust both her hands into the air and nearly lost her grip- not helped by the fact she hadn’t let go of one of the fistfuls of Gashwad’s hair, pulling it out by the root.  He shook his head and nearly threw her free.

Verona and Tashlit extended their hands skyward in answer.  “Cherry!”

Cherrypop broke into an excited ramble, but was too far away to hear.  Gashwad walked with one hand and two feet, the other hand holding the bag.

“You’re here!  I got rocks for sale, they’re cool rocks, have you heard from Snowdrop?”

“Selling shivs.  Cigarettes or ass paper,” Gashwad told Verona.  He reached into the bag, laying four goblin-crafted shivs on the ground.  He paused, then picked out one jagged one with a black brush handle and held it out for Freak.  “Free shiv for a goblin friend.”

“Don’t need it,” Freak told him.

“Free shiv for a goblin friend,” he said, to Verona.

“Heyyy, thanks.”

“I got cool rocks but they’re not free!  I got throwing rocks and skipping rocks!”

“Cherry, Avery sent two Snowdrop vids.  I’m supposed to show you later, okay?”

Cherry thrust her hands over her head again, smiling wide.

“This dum-dum was sitting on a rock waitin’,” Gashwad said.  “Toadswallow said I had to do something with her.”

“She’s gonna come back in two years!”

“She’s going to come back before then, Cherry,” Verona told her.

“Yus.  That too.  Gonna wait.”

“Gonna starve if you don’t get up.”

“Gotta turn my brain off.  Makes time go faster.  Passing out makes time go faster,” Cherry said, rocking side to side atop Gashwad’s head, holding onto hair for steadiness, until Gashwad reached up to make her stop.

Tashlit reached forward, rubbing thumb against fingertips.

“I think Tashlit wants to know your price for a rock,” Verona said.

“Oh!  Depends!  I’m not good at numbers.”

Tashlit pointed at Gashwad, then made a chopping gesture.

“What’s Gashwad’s cut?”

“Gashwad brought me so he gets half.  And he’s carrying my stuff, so he gets half for that too.  And he’s puttin’ up with me, so he gets another half.”

“A hundred and fifty percent cut?” Verona asked.

“She agreed,” Gashwad grumbled.

“She’s not good at numbers, apparently,” Verona said.  “What if all three halves were the same half, hm?”

Gashwad narrowed his eyes.

“While we’re on the topic of this business arrangement… did you actually get permission from Toadswallow to-”

Gashwad snatched the shiv he’d given her out of her hand.  “No free shiv anymore.”

“Seriously, Gash?  I can’t think of much that’s going to make Toadswallow as mad as edging into his plan.”

“Good,” Gashwad said, smiling a mean sort of smile, fangs showing.  “If he wants me to stop, he’ll have to fight me.”

“Knowing Toadswallow, he’ll find another way.”

He spat on the ground, then began to move on.  He stopped in front of Mallory.  “Shiv?”

“Wait.  I’m makin’ a sale!” Cherrypop exclaimed.  She hurried to practically throw herself into the bag of knives.

“Hit me up,” Mallory said, holding up two cigarettes.

“I like the fried egg,” he said, pointing.

“That’s a sun,” Mallory replied, defensive.  She took the offered shiv and stuck it into her shoe.

Cherrypop floundered, tiny clawed finger and toetips poking and tearing through plastic as she climbed her way up.  She emerged, triumphant and bleeding badly, holding a rock over her head.

Tashlit leaned forward, picking it out of Cherry’s hands, but that sudden motion made some of the guards who’d escorted them to this lot react, stepping forward with their improvised weapons.  They stopped as Tashlit backed off and sat back down.

Tashlit gestured between Verona and the mournful looking, blood-streaked Cherrypop with head and arms sticking out the top of the shopping bag.  Tashlit tapped her wrist.

“She can pay you after!” Verona called out.

“I made a sale, aaa!”

Gashwad went to the guards, holding up shivs.  They gave him cigarettes as payment, taking the shivs for themselves.

Verona looked at Tashlit’s stone.  It looked like a good skipping stone, with a crack running across the surface.

“That made her happy,” Verona told Tashlit.

Tashlit nodded.  She slipped the stone into a pocket.

Verona hadn’t put her mask away, and sat beside Tashlit, the pieces in her lap.  The two pieces that had stuck together before weren’t sticking now.

Tashlit gestured.  The cradling gesture, for family, but with a middle finger hidden inside the elbow.

“It’s fine,” Verona murmured.  “House on Half Street isn’t private anymore, so I can’t really hide out there as easy, and it was never exactly mine, it was Ken’s.  Kinda tempted to hang around here more.  You know, assuming the Vice Principal says it’s okay.”

Tashlit gestured.  Time into a loopy-loop, a tap against Verona’s arm, and then taking gentle hold of Verona’s top near the collarbone, twisting it over the heart.

“Maybe a bit,” Verona agreed, smoothing out her top as Tashlit let go.  “But maybe staying home would too, you know?”

Tashlit nodded.  She pressed hands together over a tilted head, then made the sign for ‘far’.  Did it again, tapped her heart.

“Yep.  Sleepover at Lucy’s is fair game,” Verona agreed.  “And a sleepover at your place would be hecking cool.  Camping a bit?  I’m down.  Just gotta find a way to explain it to my dad.”

Tashlit nodded.  She brought the index fingers of both hands into parallel, then pointed down.

“Same as here?  Oh, same as if I was going to run off and stay here for a bit.  Yeah.”

Tashlit nodded absently, like ‘I’m listening but nothing to add.’  Letting the conversation trail a bit.

Verona remained quiet enough that the comment was just for her and Tashlit.  “It’s hard asking Luce, you know?  Because the end of this summer hit her hard, I don’t want to add to that with… with crap that’s just going to be ongoing, you know?”

Verona looked out at the people.  At the ongoing art.  At the school that looked like her own but wasn’t.  A school that had probably been identical to her own after Charles set up the knot, and was swiftly changing into something very different.

“I like that it’s a place where like… you’re here.  Y’know?  There’s all this cool stuff, and people, and art, and you’re hanging out and that’s… I know I should be worried about the Vice Principal making things here harder, but it’s pretty cool.”

Tashlit gestured, drawing out a triangle, then a square, then a circle around it, expanding out.  She motioned for ‘small’ and then smeared whatever she’d just drawn out.

“Uhhhh… I’m usually pretty good at this, but I have no idea, Tashlit.”

It took a few clarifications.

“Small… home?  Small town?”

Tashlit nodded, then motioned more.

“Small small town.”

Tashlit thumped her heart.

“Oh.  You’re a girl from a very small town.”

Tashlit nodded once, tapped her heart, backhand tapped Verona’s shoulder as she moved her hand away, then did the cradle motion for family, tapped her forehead.  She paused then made a so-so gesture, before making a coin-shaped circle over her eye with index finger and thumb and bringing it close to the ground.  She made another so-so gesture.

“Me, you, your family, maybe Peckersnot maybe?”

Tashlit nodded.  She hugged herself, then gave Verona a thumbs up.

“You’re cozy?  Happy?”

So-so on the first one, but Tashlit didn’t do a follow-up gesture.

“Girl from a small town, you’ve got people that matter, that’s all you need?”

Tashlit nodded.

“You okay with Kennet right now?  Situation liveable?”

Tashlit gestured, a wide circle, indicating everything, then wiped her forehead.

“Worried about this?  This specifically?  The… new undercity?  Knotted inversion?  Whatever it is?  I’m really not certain on definitions.”

Tashlit negated, pointed down, negated.

“Not here…”

Tashlit did that wide circle gesture again.

“Worried about everything going on with Kennet.  Yeah.  Me too.”

Tashlit nodded.

Verona leaned her head into Tashlit’s shoulder and sighed.  Her hands in her lap, she massaged her palm.  It didn’t necessarily help, and the exertion would make her right hand cramp up too, eventually.

“Girls!” the Vice Principal called out.  She swatted at the cage on the ex-Vice Principal’s head, with a strike to the right to get him to steer left and a strike on the left to get him to go right.  Guiding him like that was slower than walking on her own would be, but she didn’t seem to care.

Verona wondered if she’d decided to have the ‘steed’ after hanging out with Freak and Squeak.

“If you want to get that woman out of here, that’s fine.  I hear she’s too whiny to be a good steed.”

“Yyyyeah, probably,” Verona said.  “I don’t think she deserves it either.  Bad karma.”

“Feels like trouble,” the Vice Principal told her, resting the heavy wand against her shoulder.  The star on the tip was iron, it looked like, painted bright yellow, but dinged where it had been used to smack stuff.

“That’s the bad karma.”

“If you want to do anything else in my school, you gotta ask.  Stop in before you do anything.  Bring gifts.”

Verona nodded.  She wondered how much of that policy was from the other ‘staff’.  The Vice Principal’s council.  The school nurse was an older teenager and she had a cold look that might’ve betrayed a lot more experience and intelligence than the average student had.  Maybe she’d come from another Knot or something.

Verona knew she really needed to do some research here.

“Fix that mask.  If you’re going to be my unexpected secret weapon, you gotta fit the part,” the Vice Principal told her.

“I’ll give it some thought,” Verona told her.  “Keep an eye out for more innocents?  We can work out a system to pass on word.  Let me know if you know of anyone slipping out of this side of Kennet into the… brighter side, I guess.”

The original side didn’t feel brighter, but Verona was stuck on the terminology from what she’d read.

“More visits from you means more gifts, right?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “More rapport.”

“I don’t know that word.”

“Means… connection.  Friendship, kind of.  If we talk more, there’s a higher chance I might actually stumble onto you in the middle of a losing fight and save the day.  How’s that?”

“Sweet,” the kid said, looking giddy for a second before she managed to hide it.

“What do you want for gifts?”

“Anything with zebra stripes.  And candy.  And anything with mermaids.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Get outta here, then.  I’ve gotta strap some weapons on these teachers, let the monster out of the basement, and scare the shit out of the people who think they can be gang leaders in my school, and if you’re around when we’re going door to door, we won’t hold back.”

“I’ll get to it.  Thanks for dealing fairly, Vice Principal,” Verona said.

“Yeah.  Well, Freak likes you.”

“Good to go?” Verona asked Tashlit.

Tashlit nodded.

“She stays,” the Vice Principal said, pointing her wand at Mallory.

Mallory froze.

“Knows too much.”

“You’re not going to hurt her, right?” Verona asked, stepping between the two.

“She stays, she can go free after.  And you don’t say anything about the raid later.  If you do, maybe something happens to her,” the girl in the fairy costume said.  “And you might not find me so friendly later.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” the Vice Principal told her.

Verona got her bag, tugged on Tashlit’s arm to help her get to her feet, and looked down at Mallory.

“You owe me ink, blades, and that tattoo gun.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m gonna be a tattoo artist, that’s the plan,” Mallory told her.  “But if you fuck me, I’m going to make my whole thing messing with you, instead.”

“Got it.”

“I’m gonna go sit nearer that boy with his shirt off,” Mallory said, looking at the Vice Principal.  “If that’s okay?”

“Whatever.”

Verona left Mallory to it.  Tashlit followed her out.  She waved farewell to Gashwad and Cherry.

Up to the second floor in the lower grades wing.  She checked the rooms.

There was one room, a tiny kid in a private school uniform standing over kids who sat on the floor, all of them silent and hard at work dismantling desks into component parts, the wooden legs being sharpened and smashed into stakes with handgrips.  In another room, a lone seven year old was smoking and listening to music.

In the last, the first graders were fighting, upending desks, screaming, shouting.

And a teacher in the corner of the room was slumped at her desk, face buried in the crook of her arm, a whiskey bottle in front of her, held securely at the base by the arm on the desk, other hand at the top.  A young kid was tugging on it, and she seemed dead to the world.

As Verona ventured inside, kids got in her way, lining up with obstinate looks on their faces.

As Tashlit walked up behind her, they shied back a little, but most held their ground.

“Vice Principal gave me permission.  I think I’m taking your teacher.”

They exchanged looks, and the ranks dissolved.  Nobody got in her way as she ventured carefully into the room.  Tashlit hung back.

Innocence.  Tricky.

She walked up to the teacher.  “Are you the sub?”

“I’m quitting teaching,” the woman said, face still buried in her arm.

“Are you hurt?”

The woman sat up.  No apparent injury.  But she looked visibly drunk, swaying, gaze unfocused.

“Oh boy.  You brought alcohol to school?”

“You have no idea,” the woman told Verona.

“Did you arrive drunk or… that’s a pretty big bottle, isn’t it?” Verona asked.

“I think more of your teachers drink than you realize, kid.  Especially if they have classes like this.  Worst class I’ve ever taught.”

At least five kids were screaming at the top of their lungs, three more were running around with zero regard for their own safety or the safety of others, and one boy stared up at Verona with part of a crude skull marked onto his face with what looked like crayon, the skin around the crayon a violent red from the pressure it must have taken to apply crayon that evenly to flesh.

Looking back at the woman, she could see Peckersnot’s single eye peering up from inside the woman’s bag.

“No way am I going to risk having a hangover kick in before the day begins.”

“Okay, if you’re showing up drunk that’s probably explaining how you got here.  You’re in the wrong school, I’m pretty sure,” Verona told the woman.

“Worst mistake of my life,” the sub replied.

“Come on.  Up, we’re leaving.”

It took some doing, and in the end, when the woman looked like she was going to fall asleep, Tashlit came in to provide the muscle, lifting the woman to a standing position and then supporting her as they walked.  Tashlit kept her hood pulled forward at one side.  It obscured most of her face and what would’ve been seventy-five percent of her vision, but she was covered in eyes, so that simplified things.

Peckersnot climbed into Tashlit’s sweatshirt pocket while the woman wasn’t looking.

Awkward, that innocence had to be preserved in this kind of scenario.  It was so cool that Tashlit could be around people and be herself.  Verona wanted more of that.  She wanted to see more of Tashlit.

They made their way out of the school, then down the block, toward the Arena.

Four out of every five houses were unoccupied, boarded up, with no signs of life, and only the remnants of previous owners left behind, too crummy to move and made more crummy by the passage of time and weather.

In the remaning houses were characters.  One house had bars welded around the windows, a security door, and a man peering out the window, holding a hunting rifle.  He looked terrified, but he also looked like a long-time resident.  A warmer looking house had so many mannequins inside that she couldn’t see furniture.

They passed a van with a sticker family on the back window, representing the residents of the house.

Mom, dad, four dogs, and… six rows of at least ten kids each.

All of it subtly disconcerting.

She loved it.  She really did love it.

“Hopefully it’s a little easier to find the white sheep on this side of Kennet, next time,” Verona told Tashlit.

Tashlit gestured.  Tapping her heart, then making the gesture for money or payment.

“Heart-currency?”

Tashlit nodded.

“Oh.  Connections?  Rapport.”

Tashlit nodded.

“Yeah.  It’ll get easier as I establish myself as a presence and authority, I guess.  I don’t think Lucy would be able to handle this like I can,” Verona told Tashlit.  “Like… people getting hurt?  That’s normal here?”

Tashlit nodded.

“That’s the flow of this place, right?  Things are skewed.”

Tashlit nodded again.  She had to fix her hood.

The woman they were supporting between them groaned.

“They drove her to drink.  Drink more, I guess.”

Tashlit reached left with her right hand to smooth the woman’s hair a bit.

“You’re a better person than I am, Tash.  I worry I’m becoming a jerk.  I worry I’m too okay with bad stuff.  I dunno.  I don’t want to be okay with this sort of person being a teacher.”

Tashlit shook her head, pointing at the woman, wagging a finger.

“You’re not okay with it either.  But like… you’re okay being nice to her and I’m just… this is frustrating.  I’m so frustrated with awful people, you know?”

Tashlit nodded.

“And worst of all is boring awful.  I’m so, so, so tired of boring awful.”

The Arena came into view.  It was still a distance away.  The fire had burned out, but it had left the Arena a husk.  Some wood grew out of a portion of the collapsed roof, and rubble surrounded the building that had folded in on itself.

“I like interesting people, I feel like I could hang out with Mallory and a bunch of others I saw and it’d be so nice.  I could hang out with you, here, in a way we can’t back- back home, I guess.  I like hanging out, Tash.”

Tashlit nodded.

“Mallory said sometimes people come to the undercity and maybe it’s like, they look at how different and weird it is, and they immediately go ‘I’m home!’ and I feel a bit like that,” Verona told Tashlit.  “But the idea that you’d be there and that you’re not like… I don’t want you to ever feel like you’re missing out.  I want you to experience everything cool.”

Tashlit’s hood hid her face, but Verona could see the hand that was around the woman’s shoulders, and the eyes peering past the loose skin there maintained steady eye contact.

Verona checked.  The woman was barely conscious.  She’d given up on teaching the class and had sat at her desk drinking herself into a stupor instead.

“The idea you’d get that makes me feel a lot more like I can say yeah, me too.  This is home.  It’s especially home because it could be cool for you.”

Tashlit nodded.  She put a hand to her heart, then dropped it.

“Am I being presumptuous?  Maybe you’re a small town girl, this isn’t your jam…”

Tashlit shook her head.

“Was that a-”

Tashlit gestured.

It was a messy gesture, but Verona got the gist.

“It’s your jam?  At least a bit.”

Tashlit pointed at Verona, then gave a thumbs-up.

“Open offer, Tash.  Don’t answer right away.  If you wanted to stick by me for the long term, get access to stuff you wouldn’t, there’s nothing saying the demesne thing is the big one I have to do next.  I can’t think of a place that’s mine yet… but if you wanted to be my familiar, after a bit of consideration, I’d be down.”

Tashlit nodded.

No gestures, no follow-up.

Verona took quiet note of the businesses that were open and the businesses that were shut.

They reached the Arena.  Tashlit took over the task of keeping the woman upright, and Verona got her chalk.

The ground of the parking lot was wet, but it was an inexplicable sort of wet because it hadn’t rained recently and there was no source for the water.

Verona walked slowly across the parking lot until the scene came into view.  Past the reflection, she could see the Arena as the Sable had rebuilt it.  Partially.

Broken on this side, shattered, burned, and stained with blood.

Past the reflection, it was intact enough to use for activities.

She used chalk, drawing across the water, to capture that reflection.  Drawing a square.  She added a touch of city magic, the signature-like scrawl of the cityscape of Kennet in abstract.

To get in, it was the same thing, but in reverse.

She paused.  Technically, she was communing with Lis by doing this.

She pocketed the chalk and rubbed at her palm.  She dreaded the idea of another cramp coming out of nowhere like that first one had.

And she’d done it for no good reason.  They’d been too late, they hadn’t really been in a position to act.

She reached down and touched the diagram.

“Open this door in the name of Kennet.  In accordance with my duties, I bring a citizen of Kennet back to you.”

She could say that because to end up here, the woman had to be a citizen.

The lines of the diagram started to move, the loops and angles of the cityscape signature rising up around the border.  Tashlit walked over.  The woman’s eyes were closed.

They entered the diagram, and let the glowing lines rise around them.

The world inverted around them, and the diagram acted as the only stable ground while everything else seemed to flip.

Water splashed as the chalk was consumed.

They were in the parking lot of the Arena, and the water here was from scraped-off ice that had been pushed out of the Arena and onto the edge of the lot, where it gradually melted.

They led the woman to a bench by the road, and Tashlit walked a short distance away, her back turned.

Verona gave the woman a pat on the cheek, trying to get her awake.

She gave the woman a harsher pat on the cheek.

“Mmmhh,” the woman groaned, stirring.

“Do you have a phone?  I can call a taxi or an app ride.”

“I-”  The woman frowned.  “My students stole my phone.”

“Your wallet?”

“I don’t- they stole that too,” the woman said, checking, patting herself down to double-check.  “I had-”

She realized who she was talking to, and frowned at Verona.  “How did I get here?”

“There’s a bus stop here.  We thought it was best if you weren’t drunk at the bus stop by the school.”

“The bus only comes twice a day.  Eight in the morning and eight at night.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “But… yeah.  Do you have anyone I can call?”

“My sister.”

“Okay.  You really can’t- if you drink before you even start the day’s work, you might end up in the wrong place again.”

“Yeah,” the woman said.  From the way she held herself and how still her head was and how uncertain her gaze seemed, she still had a lot in her system.

“What’s your sister’s number?”

The woman recited.  Verona dialed.  Then she communicated the short message.

She gave the woman some water, checked she was okay, then backed off as the car came.  Leaving the woman and sister to have their fraught conversation, the sister concerned, the substitute teacher hazy.

After a few minutes, and a wave from the sister, which Verona returned, the sister drove away with the tipsy substitute in the passenger seat.

“That was a task,” Verona told Tashlit.  “Innocence preserved, pretty sure, woman rescued, minus one phone and one wallet.  Job reasonably well done.”

Tashlit put up a hand and Verona gave her a high five.

Peckersnot crawled out of Tashlit’s pocket, and Tashlit handed him over.

“Hey little guy.  Thanks for watching her while we were stuck with the V.P.  I know it’s tough around innocents.”

He shook his head and held up two tiny fingers.

“Two?  Two-”

He flexed.

“You helped twice?  You helped her twice?”

He nodded.

“Saved her from kids?”

He nodded, and made some gestures she didn’t even bother trying to understand.

“Good man.  I’ll see about rewarding you later.  Thanks for backing us up.”

He flexed arms with almost no muscle on them.

With Peckersnot in the crook of one arm watching what she was doing, Verona checked her phone.  She tilted it to show him the time.

“School day is almost over.  No wonder the V.P. was in a hurry to get going.  You need backup, getting where you gotta be, Tashlit?  I know it’s awkward, getting into the middle of Kennet.”

Tashlit pointed at the water.  Across the parking lot, across a street, and down a slope.

“Cool.  See you later?  I might take you up on that sleepover.”

Tashlit reached over, and Verona wasn’t sure if she wanted a high-five, fistbump-

Tashlit hugged her instead.  Verona got Peckersnot out of the way of being squished just in time.

“Yeah,” Verona said, nodding into Tashlit’s shoulder.

Tashlit backed up a step, then gestured, each hand grabbing one wrist, before she touched her heart.

Like the gesture for friendship, hands clasped, but… more?

When Verona and Mal had been hurrying over to Tashlit, Verona had called Tashlit a best friend.

“Of course we are,” Verona said.  “I wouldn’t ask you to be my familiar if we weren’t.  Just… think about it.”

Tashlit patted her heart twice, then pointed at the water again, starting to walk.

“Have a good one.”

Verona watched to make sure Tashlit was in the clear, no bystanders suddenly turning up to get a good look at her face, no traffic on the road that stopped.

“Come on.  I’m heading toward home.  You want to come with for a bit, or you got someplace to be, little guy?” she asked.

Peckersnot mimed a yawn.

“I’ll let you go then.  Get somewhere good.  Thanks for watching the teacher.”

She took Peckersnot to the bushes at the end of the lot and let him go.

By the time she got home, she had some questions from Lucy.  She gave Lucy the short version.  That a civilian needed help.  That she’d missed the morning because of the drawback from the glamour compass, so what did it matter if she missed the afternoon too?  First days barely ever had anything important, anyway.

Yes, she promised, in response to Lucy’s annoyed messages.  She’d attend tomorrow.

She messaged Jeremy.  Checking.

You brushed me off today, he messaged her.

Not my intention, she messaged him.  Distracted.

Verona stopped, because she couldn’t type, look at her phone, walk home and think on the level she needed to think all at the same time.

She looked up at the sky.

It had been easier over there.

Is your hand okay? he asked.

She rubbed at her palm as best as she was able while holding her phone.  I’ll make it up to you, she messaged him.  Not answering the question.  We’ll hang.

He replied with a thumbs-up.

Which felt crummy on its own.

A text from Lucy followed.  Call Matthew.

Verona did.  With the phone occupying one hand, she rubbed the other against the side of her leg.

“Verona,” Matthew’s voice almost caught her by surprise.

“Lucy said to call.”

“What’s the update?”

“One innocent did get in.  Rescued.  Made a friend at the school.  Gash, Cherry, and the Freak-Squeak duo were over there.  Tash and Peck came.”

“Okay.  We’ll have to work something out, so too much of that doesn’t fall on you.”

“It was honestly okay, Matthew.  I’d actually- I think it’d be better if I handled more of it, so Lucy doesn’t have to.  I think it’d be rough on her.”

“We can adjust a bit.  I don’t want to keep secrets from her, or-”

“No, no, no.  Just… nevermind.  I just don’t want to stress her out more.”

“Alright, thanks for the update.  I’ll pass it on.”

“Matthew,” she said, before he hung up.

“Yes?”

“I noticed a pattern.  Lucy said a third of the students didn’t show up, despite being on the list.  Last minute moves, all that stuff.”

“Yeah.  She mentioned.”

“And the school on the other side of Kennet, it was… only a third of the students were there, I think.  I think one in five or so houses were occupied over there, and if I look over here…”

“You think one in five houses are empty?”

“I think it might be the same for businesses.  What we lose, they get.”

“Lucy was worried about how Lis was influencing the shrines.  She thought it’d get worse before it gets better.  If it gets better.”

“Does this get worse before it gets better?”

“I think it definitely does,” Matthew said.  “I’m not an expert.  You girls are more educated as practitioners than I am.  But I have experience living with dark reflections and dark influences.  There are two ways this can go, I’m thinking.”

“Tell me,” Verona said, head tilted to pin the phone between ear and shoulder while she rubbed at her hand.

“Way one?  We find our way to a fifty-fifty equilibrium.  Balance between the two sides.  Things balance out, new reality we gotta live with.”

“If half the students are gone, half the houses empty, half the businesses shut down…”

“Kennet’s probably screwed,” Matthew said.  “Yeah.”

“Maybe… can we find another balance?  Maybe if all the houses are full on both sides?”

“It’s a thought,” he said.

She could tell in his tone he didn’t think it was a very workable thought.

But there were possibilities.  Okay.  Things to think about and research, as she got her head around the shape of all this.

“What’s the other option?” she asked.

“Worse.  The other option is what we’ve got right now… it keeps going.  People leave, homes empty, businesses close.  Which means that more people leave, more people lose faith in Kennet, more businesses close because the lower population can’t sustain them.  The inverse side of Kennet gains what we lose…”

“The side we know disappears, pretty much, and they become a town?”

“A town that only certain people can get to, only in certain ways,” Matthew said.  “The more I think about it, the more I think it might be what Lis, Edith, Maricica and Charles want.”

“How?”

“You were there for at least three hours rescuing one person, right?”

“About.  Had to deal with the warlord in charge of the school.”

“Now imagine that for Charles’ enemies to get to him and Lis, they have to go through that.  Past three, five, six, ten different warlords, people with rules, people with demands.  And it still takes a day to get there, complicated by interruptions that could risk resetting that progress.”

“This is what Charles wants?”

“I can imagine him thinking he’s doing a twisted kind of favor for us, in exchange for sheltering him.  A slap in the face and a way of protecting us at the same time.  Which…”

“Makes sense, maybe,” Verona said.  “Lucy’s mom has work here.  I’ve got Jeremy.  I’ve got places I know… I don’t want the Kennet I know to disappear.  I don’t want cool people to move out.”

“Just… don’t panic.  This takes time.  There are things we can do, but for right now? you worked hard today, okay?  Rest.”

“But-”

“Rest, Verona.  Recuperate.  Talk to your friends.  I’ll talk to people, we’ll figure out our options.”

Verona sighed.  She stopped rubbing her hand and took hold of the phone.

She wasn’t sure what to say.

“I’ll talk to the others,” he said.

“Okay,” she replied.

He hung up.

She stood there, on the sidewalk by the river, and she couldn’t really think of why she was going to go home, but she didn’t know where else to go.

She knew she wanted to go back, but that was stupid.

With no driving desire to go home, and nowhere to go, she leaned against a light post by the road, standing over a slope that led down to the water, and she stared out over Kennet, rubbing her hand now and then.

Only a growing need to pee and a desire to not be standing here when people got out of class got her moving again.

She walked home, and the car was in the driveway.  The front door unlocked.

Her dad was in the kitchen, unloading groceries, as she walked in.  He smiled at her.

“Hi,” she said, closing the door behind her.  She put her bag down.

“How was the afternoon?”

She shrugged.

“How’s your hand?”

“Sore.  No more big hand cramps after that one.”

“Good.  I didn’t like seeing you like that,” he said.  “Scary.”

She shrugged again.

“Got some of your favorite foods.”

“Okay,” she replied.  She picked up grocery bags.

“You don’t have to-” he started.  He stopped.

She put some stuff away, sorted out the bags, and put those away.  She wiped the counter where flecks of broccoli had fallen on it.

“It’d be nice if you talked to me,” he said.  “Visit from social services next weekend, checking in.  I’d like to be able to tell them we communicated like human beings at least once.”

“I’m not sure what to say,” she told him.  “I went to the doctor.  You know that.  I went to school.  The teacher of the grade one class was drunk.”

He snorted.  “Speaking of drunk, my supervisor’s supervisor, you know the one I’m talking about, the alcoholic?”

“Yeah, I think.”

“Well, he’s gotten on Renault’s case, lately.  Shoveled all this work onto Renault’s desk, and of course Renault can’t handle it himself, so who does he dump all of it on?”

“You?”

“Me and Luis, but you know Luis is useless.  You know Luis?  You met at the Christmas party, when I had you come?”

“I- they blur together.”

“You know Luis.  He announced his wife is pregnant.  Now, that man’s useless to start with, but if you give him baby brain, drag him away for weeks as he goes on paternity leave, can you imagine?  I’ve had a headache broiling all day, started this morning, I’m not blaming you for that…”

Verona looked up at the evening sky from her backyard, rubbing at her hand.  There was a one or two second cramp in her hand, and she held it to her sternum while rubbing aggressively, before it eased up.

She’d wanted to wait until her dad wasn’t on the ground floor before checking.  She’d need a system if she did this again.

Kennet needed practitioners available at more hours than just the mid-to-late afternoon and evening, and they didn’t have Avery anymore.

Behind the garage, on a bench that her mom had put there once upon a time in the distant past, another Verona sat, looking up at her.

“Hey,” Verona said.

“Hey.”

Verona sat down on the bench beside her body double.  Far end of the backyard, behind the garage, out of sight, quiet, in the dark.  The only light was from the neighbor’s porch light.  It smelled like nature.

“Gotta improve this setup, you know?  You were cold to Jeremy,” she murmured.

The other Verona blinked.

Another her.  The books had outlined the method, the means of creating a copy of herself to serve a purpose.  Faerie used these sorts of puppets to cover their tracks.  If the glamour was good, a child could be stolen away and a double like this left in their place.  There were tells, and there were issues.  It took a skilled Fae to craft one that had rich emotions and the ability to convince even close family members.  That kind of skill tended to require more years than a human lifetime contained.

She’d managed okay.  Only the Jeremy thing had stood out.

Lucy had texted her earlier, to say Cherrypop had showed up and she’d shown Cherry the Snowdrop video.  Verona had texted back to say they should show Cherry together, next time.  Lucy had confirmed.

Verona had hoped to do that with Cherry.  Maybe that little creature’s glee could be infectious.

Being on the other side of Kennet had been exciting, interesting.  The people there were scary, unreasonable, hard to predict.  Some of the boys aggressive, others alluring.  The drama of high school amped up, the dull institution of it excised.

Before she’d left, she’d been at the doctor.  Before that, she’d had the hand cramp in the shower, leaving her doubled over.  But-

But what?  She’d expected it?  It hurt like hell, but the weird way her brain worked, she could convince herself that there were options?  It had brought her to tears but tears weren’t emotions.

Anyone else would be freaked out if their body stopped cooperating, right?

She hadn’t been.  Tired, her thoughts elsewhere, she’d felt numb in the midst of crisis.  She’d thought for a moment, on the car ride to the doctor, that it would hit her after.  That it was shock to get her through the moment and the emotions would follow.  Except they hadn’t.

Losing to Charles had rocked her in the moment.  It had left her breathless, her thoughts disorganized.  Real shock had followed.

It felt like it had never really left.  That she was still reeling, quietly, in a numb way, waiting for everything to follow.  The longer it went the more it felt like she had been fragile from everything earlier in the summer and something in her had broken in a way that hadn’t been broken before.

So she kind of avoided Lucy for now, because she didn’t want to freak her out.  And she’d dodged school.  Her conversation with Matthew had spelled out dire things for Kennet and… she functioned.  She could hang back, she’d think of stuff to do.  But as much as she recognized the crisis she didn’t feel it.

She’d reached out to Tashlit, offered the familiar bond, and maybe part of her rationale was that she wanted to spark something.  Or draw on something.  She wondered privately if Tashlit hadn’t accepted or said more because she recognized what was going on and didn’t want to say yes while Verona was messed up.  That would suck.  Or if Tashlit didn’t see it at all, in which case… it felt a bit lonely, past that numbness.

She wanted Tashlit to accept and she was super glad Tashlit hadn’t accepted at the same time.  She dreaded and hoped for the answer.

It wasn’t the answer, not the fix, she knew.

She needed to fix her mask, she needed to fix her Self.  She wanted to dive into practices she knew she shouldn’t, she wanted to go to that other half of Kennet where things were wild enough to spark something in her.  Even if Tashlit suggested it was dangerous.  She wanted to not go to boring regular school again.  She-

It felt like every road out of this had people screaming at her not to take that road, not to go that route.

For now, she’d have to go to school tomorrow, to check on Lucy, and to smooth things over with Jeremy.  Verona looked at her double.

She’d done a pretty convincing job making another Verona, considering.  No need to craft a rich tapestry of emotion if she barely felt anything herself.

Verona reached over, reached tentatively, into the other Verona’s face, and her fingers slid past skin to graze the gathered branches. that she’d put her clothes on.  Locks of hair were tied to upper branches.  Twine helped bind everything into a vaguely human shape.

She reached in, found paper, and found the twig the paper was impaled on.  The paper had her runework and notes on how to behave, where to go, what to do, fueled by glamour to point the way.

She snapped that bit of wood, freeing the paper.  In the process, she effectively released the routine, the everyday, from the peg on which it was set, and she destroyed the regular old Verona.

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