Pale: 3.3 - Avery

Avery

Kerry’s cackle rang through the house.

“Avery, last warning!  Countermeasures have been deployed!”

Avery lay in bed, face mashed into the pillow, her arms sticking out over the top end of the bed.  She’d slept, which might have been inevitable, but the sleep hadn’t even touched the bone-deep exhaustion she felt, and it hadn’t brought her closer to a mental or emotional normal.

Countermeasures were usually stuff like having Kerry jump on Declan until he got out of bed, or, on weekends, threatening to let Kerry boot up Declan’s game and play with the save files.  For Sheridan, dad would use the smart-house speakers to play songs from the 80s and would turn up the volume.  The songs would play until Sheridan was out of the house, even if she was quick to get out of bed.

Avery wasn’t usually one to sleep in, so they hadn’t worked out a specific punishment for her.  She kind of didn’t want to give them the opportunity to work it out, but she also didn’t want to move.

“Who’s in there?” Kerry asked.

“Sheridan,” Declan answered.

“Can I go in next?  I-”

“But I want-” Kerry lowered her voice.  She was out in the hallway, and Avery couldn’t hear her from here. “-bucket.”

“I’ll allow it,” Declan said.

Kerry cackled.  “Sheridan!  Sheridan!”

“Leave me alone!  I’ve got time!”  Sheridan’s voice was muffled by the door.

“The ten minute timer is up!” Declan complained.  “I’ll let it go if you let her in.  This’ll be good.”

Avery couldn’t hear the conversation that followed, but the door opened, and the tub started running.

Avery could hear plastic bang against the side of the tub.

She made herself rise and get out of bed, grabbing the black rope from the space between the mattress and the frame of the bunk bed.  It was coarse, with strands pricking and rubbing at her hand as she gripped it, balling it up so she could kind of hide it in her fist.

“You filled it too much,” Declan said.

“Shh!”  Kerry had reached the ladder of the bunk bed.  The bucket clunked and sloshed audibly as she worked her way up the ladder, apparently setting the bucket down on each rung.

Kerry’s approach would have been annoying on any other day, but right now, it was a time pressure, it was just a bit of dread, and Avery didn’t have the tolerance for dread right now.  More than anything, that was what got her to lift her head from the pillow.

Avery got moving, as much as she didn’t want to.  She grabbed the side of the bed, then hopped down to the ground from her bunk, nearly colliding with Declan, who was there as an observer.

“Awww!” Kerry complained.

Declan pushed Avery while she was still recovering from the landing, and she bumped into Sheridan’s bed.  He hurried back to the ‘line’ for the bathroom, and immediately began banging on the door.

Kerry, meanwhile, was perched on the angled ladder, a partially full four-gallon bucket on the rung by her head.  She didn’t seem able to get down with the ease that she’d gotten up.

“Don’t soak my bed,” Avery warned.

Kerry got a mischievous look on her face, like she wanted to do it more, now.

Avery considered for a moment, then stepped up onto Kerry’s bedside table.  With some exertion, she lifted up her mattress until it sat at a forty-five degree angle against the wall.

Then she left it, taking a spot in the line to the bathroom, where she could kind of see her bed through the door.

“I’m next,” Declan said.

The bucket clunked as Kerry climbed a rung higher.  The mattress bounced as Kerry reached past the bucket and tried to get the mattress to lie flat.

She could be heard audibly grunting as she lifted the bucket.

There was a crash and splash as the bucket hit the bedroom floor.

“Oh no!” Kerry could be heard.

Sheridan left the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and followed by a choking amount of scents and chemicals.

“Geez, you took forever,” Declan said.

“Says the boy who takes thirty-five minute showers.”

Sheridan passed them.  Avery reached over and tapped Declan’s shoulder.

“What?  I get the bathroom, I was waiting-”

He turned to look at her, and she could feel the rope expand in her hand, the fibers pulling away, poking at her palm, entangling her fingers.  She whipped the end forward.

A fraction of a second passed where it felt like there was no air resistance, no air, no ground under her feet.

Then more humid air, heavy with everything Sheridan had used for her shower and facial cleansing.  The tiles were clammy under Avery’s bare feet.  The rope calmed down in her hand, going smooth as Declan set his eyes on her.

“What?  How?  You sneaky b-!”

She slammed the door in Declan’s face.

He began hammering the door, shouting, but she’d locked it.  The light switch was on the outside, by the door, with a fifteen minute timer for the ventilation fan above.  Sheridan had taken longer than the fifteen minutes they were allowed, which meant the fan had been stopped long before she’d wrapped up her shower.  Now the bathroom was foggy and Declan was mashing the light switch and fan on and off, in between his pounding on the door.

Avery did a five-minute washing-up.

“The floor’s all wet!” Sheridan shouted.  “I just stepped on broken plastic!”

Kerry’s response was indistinct.

“It was my turn!” Declan hollered.  The lights went in and out.

She was free and clear of the Path.  Life went on as normal.  Yet she couldn’t shake a general feeling of dread.  It had been so intense, so nasty, that she felt like she was still there.  As if some small part of her was more willing to believe she was still there, but so mentally worn down that she’d descended into this, a fantasy of life as usual.

Teeth brushed, hair combed.

Declan pounded on the door up until she opened it.

“I’ll get you for that,” Declan said, with all the intensity a preteen boy could muster.

On any other day, it would have been the background noise at her house.

Today, her heart felt… not heavy.  Heavy was the wrong word.

Her heart felt tired, in the same sort of way that if her body was that tired, she’d barely be able to stay upright.  His words drove that feeling home.

Kerry was crying, Sheridan was grumbling, and the bedroom floor was soaked with a massive puddle nobody had cleaned up, and some fragments of the bucket.

Avery used her toes to pick a piece of laundry out of the basket by the door and kicked it around the floor to get the worst of the puddle.  She went to get dressed, and where she might have normally picked a cool shirt and shorts that weren’t too wrinkled, she felt unsure now.

Like she was supposed to do something different, reach for something, make decisions that could somehow shake that heart-tired feeling or put her time on the Trail further behind her.

“Mom has a plate of breakfast cooling on the table!  Someone needs to come down and claim it!” Dad called up.

Avery pulled on a white tee with an orange and purple graffiti scribble across the front and around one sleeve, and dark purple jersey-cloth shorts with a Vikare swoop on the side.  Ankle high socks, white running shoes, hair in ponytail, and she was good to go.  She was downstairs before Sheridan was.

“I’ve got to stop by Carl’s to get the folding table for Kerry’s event next weekend,” Dad said, opening a cupboard to get a glass.  Avery ducked under his arm and into the kitchen proper.  “I’ll need the station wagon for that.”

“How long will that take?” Mom asked.

“Not long.  Fifteen minutes?  Work’s been keeping me late with the FISCA reporting.  PA gets behind, they take forever to get it to us, we have to do it before the day’s over, Anya’s away on maternity…”

“You did mention that.  When will you get out?”

“Can I take the Ion?” Rowan asked, as he munched on bacon.

“We’re figuring that out.  I should wrap up at five thirty?  Six?  Then let’s guess fifteen minutes there and back.  Then we’re at six thirty.  Then I can cook a quick dinner, but we don’t have food.”

Avery navigated around her mom, as her mom went from the fridge, where some post-its were stuck, to the calendar on the wall.  She grabbed the fruit punch.

Kerry came down from upstairs, crying.  Dad swept her up into his arms.

Mom answered, “Sheridan wants more driving lessons, so I can have her drive me to the grocery store and back.  Then you cook, I can run to see Karen B for that informal meeting about Declan’s file and the ADHD testing.  Dad’s appointment for his meds re-up conflicts with that.”

“What’s wrong, hon?” Dad asked Kerry.  “We don’t want him crapping-”

He covered Kerry’s ears.

“-blood again, yeah.”

“Eating,” Rowan said, putting down his bacon.

It felt like a dream.  Fatigue, and that way that dreams were laid out, like everything tied back to reality in ways that only seemed familiar or sensible in retrospect.

The line about blood.  About crap.  Declan’s groundless threat.

“I broke the bucket and Sheridan yelled at me,” Kerry complained, around her tears.

“You can take the Ion if you’re willing to run by the pharmacy with Grumble.  And fill up the tank,” Mom said.  “Or you can give Sheridan a driving lesson.”

“Oh my god, pharmacy, please.”

“There’s so much catching up to do after I’ve been away, oh my god.”

Avery claimed a plate of cooling food, and picked some grapes and a cranberry muffin from the fruit bowl and cooling rack.

Her dad touched her head as she passed by.  “Did Kerry soak you?”

Kerry cried harder and louder, as if great injustices had been done to her.

“You have to pick up Kerry from school, too,” Mom said.  “Three thirty.”

“So wait, I’ve got to pick her up and deal with her from the time school ends, then Grumble’s appointment is…?”

“Six.  It won’t take long, but we have to make that appointment.  It’s his health on the line.”

“But I have to pick him up and bring him there.  That doesn’t leave me a lot of freedom, does it?  What’s the point of having a car if you’re making me do this stuff?  I thought it was supposed to give me freedom?” Rowan complained.

“You have a two hour window of freedom in the middle there.  Just make sure you hand Kerry off to dad, me, or Sheridan before you go do anything.”

“Sheridan’s useless.”

“Don’t talk about your sister that way.”

Avery sat down at the table.  From where she sat, she could see Grumble in his armchair in the living room, watching the morning news.  Occasionally he would make inarticulate noises of protest, or lift his hands to emote his frustrations.

Avery ate.  Fruit salad, some grapes.

Finger-sized sausages sweated, browned on four sides.

She felt a mess of conflicting feelings she couldn’t put her finger on.  Thoughts of the Wolf chewing on and swallowing what Miss had later told her was her exit from the Path.  The very real thought that she might be eaten alive.  The feelings of regret about Snowdrop, and that idea of sacrificing a living, thinking animal as a casual part of her plan.

Just the idea of meat and fluids and fat made her stomach tense.

She picked up the muffin and ate that instead.

She took her plate back to the kitchen, setting it down by the sink.

“Please tell me you’re not becoming a vegetarian,” Sheridan said.  “Don’t make things in this house more complicated.”

“Just didn’t feel like it,” Avery said.

“Eating when you’re hungry is a good policy, but remember to get your protein.  You need that for all the sports stuff,” Rowan told her.

“Yeah,” Avery replied.  “Gonna go bike to school.”

“I’m off too.  I’ll pick you up after school, okay, Kerry?” Rowan asked.  “Don’t take the bus.”

Avery grabbed a thermos and filled it with milk, then brought it with her.

The bench in the front hall was a deacon’s bench, and the bench could lift up to put stuff inside.  Usually their bags were all stowed on the bench, if they weren’t up in their rooms, but someone had gone digging for something, judging by the way there was a raincoat or something stuck out the side, keeping the bench from closing all the way.

“Declan!  You have two minutes!  You’re going to have to eat in the car.”

“He’s taking another forty-five minute shower,” Sheridan said.

“No he’s not.  I will turn the water off in the basement if he tries,” Dad replied.

Avery had to look for her bag.  Living room, between one of the lounge chairs and the door.  She sighed, putting the thermos inside, then zipping it up.

“Depraved indifference!”

The words were rough, loud, and accompanied by airborne flecks of spit.

Avery backed up, and collided with the book cabinet, which had glass doors, and dishes on the top shelf.  It rattled, and something clattered violently inside.

The only sounds were from Grumble’s news program, where something about politicians was playing out.  There was the sound of a door closing upstairs as Declan hurried through the rest of his morning routine.

Mom, Sheridan, and Rowan were in the front hallway, just to the side, looking at her.  Dad and Kerry were at the door that led from the living room to the dining room.

Grumble, in his chair, twisted around as best as he could, looking at her.

She looked scared and he looked so hurt by that fear.

She needed to say something and she had no idea what to say.

Dad reached down and turned the TV off.  Grumble looked away from her, and at Dad instead.

“Overreact much?” Sheridan asked.

And then people started talking again.  A jumble.  If you’re going to get this worked up over the news then- -are you okay?  did you hurt yourself?- -what happened to Avery?- -gonna sit outside-

This was reality.  She’d been feeling like she needed to wake up from that sensation, like the memory was real and this was the dream pulling on that reality, and she’d broken through.

She felt awful, as a consequence.  Seeing Grumble head toward the backyard to go sit outside.

Avery grabbed her bag and ducked past people and out the door, muttering a quick, “Sorry,” without a specific target.  It wasn’t a lie, even if she wasn’t sure who she was addressing, or what specifically she was sorry about.

Her bike was between their garage and the neighbor’s garage, collecting some spiderwebs.

She was biking away before her mom had even made it down the front steps.

Her house had a view of the water, with a slope down to the bank with the little flat, sharp-cornered slate rocks.  Where weeds could grow, they grew in massive clumps.  She headed that way, instead of straight to school.  She wanted to pedal hard and move fast, and if she headed straight to school, then the ride would be over before she got anywhere.

Snowdrop sat on the bank, by the weeds.  Avery coasted to a stop.

As she got closer, she saw that Cherrypop was sitting next to Snowdrop, hidden in the shadows of one bush.  She was banging two of the slate-like rocks together without rhythm.

“Hey, Snow.  Hi Cherry”

No cars or anyone really seemed to take notice of the kid.  Nobody gave her weird looks for stopping to talk to Snowdrop either.

“Doing okay?” Avery asked.

“Weather’s awful,” Snowdrop said, looking skyward.  “Company sucks.”

It was slightly overcast, a few droplets falling down here and there.  Warm but not the spike of heat from last week.

“Sucks to be you,” Cherrypop cackled.

Avery pulled her bag around and pulled out the thermos.  She held it out.  “Milk?”

Snowdrop rose to her feet.  She was wearing her ‘opossum’ jacket with the button eyes and the actual teeth sticking through the edge, and a long-sleeved shirt that read ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAA’.

“I hate milk more than anything,” Snowdrop said.

“Yeah!” Cherrypop exclaimed.  “Drink it!  Make her chug it!  Make her barf!  Bloorgh!”

Snowdrop took the thermos, undid the top, and drank.

“Chug, chug, chug!” Cherrypop chanted.

“She doesn’t get how you work, huh?”

Snowdrop gulped, lowering the thermos just long enough to say, “she does.  She’s smart,” and then resumed drinking, both hands on the thermos, eyes closed.

“I was thinking I could set aside a corner of the garage for you, if you wanted to camp out there,” Avery said.

Didn’t matter that much?  Okay.

“Chug, chug!” Cherrypop clacked the rocks together with each utterance.

Snowdrop finished, grunting.

Cherrypop cackled maniacally.  Snowdrop sighed heavily, and Avery felt a bit like her heart was less tired, seeing her little friend content.

“I was going to say you could bring the thermos to me later, when we touch base, but I guess I can take that now and rinse it out.”

“What are you doing today?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop shrugged.  “Stay active, run around.”

“Hang with us!” Cherry piped up, climbing up the side of Snowdrop.  “We’ll show you the ropes.”

“Yeah, I’ll hang out with them for the whole day,” Snowdrop said.

“Want to meet up later?  I don’t know what Lucy and Verona are doing, but we might hit the convenience store.  Do you like chocolate milk?”

“That sounds gagworthy.”

“Make her drink it allll!” Cherrypop cried out.  “Force it down her throat!”

“Oh no,” Snowdrop said, monotone.  “Don’t.”

“I’m going to go steal some!” Cherrypop declared, before running off, ducking into deeper grass.

“You’re horrible,” Snowdrop said.

Cherry cackled from the weeds and grass, strands moving as she pushed through them, heading off toward the bridge with the convenience store on the west side.

Avery leaned over her handlebars.  She felt like if she was in bed, she could fall asleep in a minute.  A few droplets found her arms and the back of her neck.

“You going to get lost, now?” Snowdrop asked.

Avery winced a bit at the wording.  “Gotta go to school.  I sorta hoped to see you and check if you were okay.  I was a bit tuned out last night.”

“Ok.”  Avery nodded a bit.  “Want a ride to nowhere in particular?  Or do you want to stay and see what Cherrypop scrounges up?”

Avery extended a hand.  Snowdrop sat on the little guard that extended from the back of the seat, and hugged Avery’s bag.

She had to cross at a crosswalk, so she stopped there.  “I don’t know what kind of routine you want to fall into, or if it would be an imposition, but if you wanted to help out-”

“-How sneaky are you?”

“Do you think you could keep an eye on some of the locals without tipping them off?  If the goblins are hanging around, they might leak word, so don’t tell me-”

The light changed and Avery resumed biking.  Snowdrop squeezed the bag tighter.

“-Don’t tell me you’ll do it if you think you might get caught.”

“I won’t do it, then,” Snowdrop said.

“Stuff the goblins said about Matthew and Edith and their schedule around the time of the Beast dying… do you think you could keep an eye on them?  See what they do, if there’s anything weird, then tell me or one of the other two girls?  I’ll pay you in milk.”

“That’s a must,” Snowdrop said.

“You’ll let me know if you need anything to be more comfortable?”

“And if the goblins end up being too much.  They seem to gravitate towards you.”

“Right,” Avery said.  “I gotta say, it’s nice knowing there’s someone besides Lucy and Verona that I can trust.”

She rode into the dip that let her coast toward the hill that led up to the school, then began pedaling hard.  It felt good, feet going down, flying forward.

“This is nice.  Having company for a bike ride.  I wish it was the weekend, so I could just go biking, running, or playing with the rope all day.  Hanging out with you and my friends…”

The next part took more exertion.  The ground was spare grass and dirt, with a lot of hidden ditches.  Only a few kids were actually biking across it on their way to school.

It took actual effort to get up the last bit to the parking lot.  She saw Ms. Hardy, but steered clear, avoiding a car as she navigated her way to the line of racked-up bikes.  It was slow going at points.

Some of the youngest kids were glancing at her passenger, but others didn’t care.  Her classmates in particular.

Verona and Lucy caught up to her as she arrived.

“You have company,” Verona said.

“She went quiet.  Snowdrop?”

“She conked out,” Verona said.

“Can you keep her from falling off my bike while I get up?” Avery asked.

Verona did.  Lucy had to tug to get Snowdrop to let go of Avery’s bag.

Snowdrop roused as Avery climbed off the bike, pushing it into the rack.

“I’m tired too,” Avery said.  “Slept all night and I feel like I didn’t get a wink.”

“Bad dreams?” Lucy asked.

“Some.  Alpy said she’d keep the worst of them away, but she couldn’t stop them all.  I want to get out and do stuff, and now we’ve gotta sit through class.”

“That’s how I feel for most days at school,” Verona said.  “I feel like I’d learn more if I could sit down and draw, or paint, or read, than if I had to sit in class and wait for the teacher to say the same things three times because she has to make sure the dumbest kids get it.”

“With some of the grades you get, you could be mistaken for one of those dumb students,” Lucy said.

“With your face, you could… I don’t have any good one-liners.  Why does the day start so freaking early?” Verona complained.  “It doesn’t feel like we had a weekend, even.”

“I don’t want to draw or write or anything like that.  I want to do stuff.  It feels like school’s the opposite of that.  Stuck in one place, waiting.”  Avery locked up her bike.

“We are so on the same page about that last part,” Verona said.

Avery put her hands under Snowdrop’s armpits, with Lucy helping, and lowered the girl to the ground.

“I’m fully awake!” Snowdrop protested, eyes half-lidded.  “The milk didn’t make me drowsy!”

“I was wondering,” Lucy said.  “Since possums are nocturnal.”

“You don’t have to do that stuff I asked about,” Avery said.  “If you’re tired, sleep.  If you’re hungry, go find food, or find us at lunch.”

“I won’t do it!” Snowdrop took on a belligerent tone.

It felt weird, talking to Snowdrop with kids milling around.

“I’ve gotta go to class.  Here,” Avery said.  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the rope.  She pressed it into Snowdrop’s hand.  “In case the goblins pester you and you need to slip away.”

Snowdrop hugged the rope to her chest.  She leaned her head against the side of the bike, her hair drooping into the gears.

“Be careful.  I was experimenting yesterday.  It tells you if you’re being observed, but it seems to be worse with strong and hostile connections.  And if you’re seen when you try to use it, you pretty much always fall down.”

“That makes zero sense,” Snowdrop said, holding the rope out a bit so she could look down at it.

“And don’t try to move too far in one go.  Again, you’ll fall.”

“How badly did you get hurt yesterday, practicing?” Lucy asked.

“Palms and knees, a little bit,” Avery said, showing Lucy.  The heels of her hand were a bit roughed up.  Her knees were worse but the shorts were just long enough it wasn’t too obvious.

“Price for everything, huh?” Verona asked, quiet.

“With the Path especially.  Cool toys and perks, but…” Avery trailed off.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “I’d understand if you never wanted to do something like that again.  I’d thank you, if you never wanted to do something like that again.”

I don’t know, Avery thought.  She really didn’t.  Would she rule out the Paths forevermore?  They were scary, the Wolf was scary.  She felt dread in the pit of her stomach just thinking about what had happened and how it could have ended up.

She wasn’t sure about the ‘but’, yet.  But there was one.

Avery rubbed hood against hair, then straightened.  “You might want to go hunt down Cherry.  See if she found that milk.”

“She’s good at stealing and stuff,” Snowdrop said, sounding surly.

Then, hands at her chest, holding the rope, she ducked into the crowd, disappearing as the mob of students arriving at school blocked her from view.

“Trusting her with the rope, huh?” Lucy asked.

“As much as I’d trust you guys, I think.  She’s in our corner.”

“I pick good companions, apparently,” Verona said, as they made their way into the school.

“It’s partially built from Avery’s internal landscape,” Lucy said.  “She gets credit.”

More energized, Verona gave Lucy a push on the arm.  “No, stop, listen.  I was going somewhere with this.  Avery, listen, I picked Snowdrop, right?”

“Went cat mode, sniffed around, and found a squeaky little thing that had been abandoned by its mom.  And she’s great, right?”

“Yeah,” Avery said, raising an eyebrow.

“With this in mind, I want my instincts to be appreciated and valued when it comes to other long-term and important companions.”

“That is not a good argument for you to take Alpy,” Avery protested.

“Be careful, you don’t want to lie.”  Verona stuck her finger into Avery’s arm.

“Don’t be a pain to Avery after what happened,” Lucy told her.

“Do you know what might make me feel better?” Avery asked.  She glanced back to make sure nobody was listening in.  “Taking Alpy as my familiar.”

“Maybe you two could, I don’t know, ask her?” Lucy asked.  “Considering she’s half of the partnership?”

“Of course,” Avery said.

“We’re just messing around,” Verona said.

They got to Mr. Sitton’s class, and settled in at their desks, left of the back row, closest to the windows.  Avery set down her bag.

Gabe’s desk was almost in the opposite corner, second row in from the front, far right.  Noah sat in it, next to Ian.  Melissa had arrived early, and had changed her seat as well, sitting next to the window so she had a wall to lean her crutches against.  The big black plastic boot that secured her foot was sitting on a chair that had been pulled up next to her desk with a cushion beneath it.  Her new seat put her behind the rest of her friend group, which mostly sat at the front left.

Gabe was gone.  Melissa was hurting and might never return to the team and the dance stuff, depending on how things went with her ankle.

Pam walked in, laughing about something with Alayna and Justin.

Pam, at least, was still happy.  Still lit up the room with positive energy.

It just sucked that Avery couldn’t and shouldn’t go talk to her, that she had to stay away.

That thing this morning had put a gap between herself and her Grumble.

It made her heart tired.  She pushed her chair away from her desk, grabbed her pencil case, and headed for the door.

“Class is starting soon,” Mr. Sitton said.  He glanced at the pencil case.� “You’ll be quick?”

“She’s not feeling one hundred percent, I don’t think,” Verona said, from behind her.

He moved aside, letting her past.

Avery headed for the bathroom, and went straight to the sink.

She splashed water on her face.

She hated things like this, where there wasn’t a clear path forward.

Except… it wasn’t that.  There was an ‘obvious’ answer.  Just like there had been with the long silence, earlier in the school year.  Just talk to someone.  Be more outgoing.  Be cool.  Stand up for yourself.  Easy, right?

Just get over this uneasy feeling.  Easy, right?

In her pencil case, she had a bit of glamour.

Relax, be cool, be strong.

She rubbed her hands together with the glamour and the moisture from washing her face.

There was nobody else in the bathroom, and it helped to be authoritative.

“I survived the Wolf,” she said.  “I stayed strong.  I made it through.”

She ‘washed’ her face and hair again, using the glamour.

Guilherme had encouraged her to find the moments of strength and pride.  To mark them with ‘warpaint’, for lack of a better way of putting it.  The effect was supposed to be subtle and long-term.  Probably similar to some of those motivational speakers and how they got people to practice being mindful and crap.

She wanted and needed to find other ‘wins’.  Against the Choir.  For Gabe.  For Melissa.  For Pam.  Now for Grumble.

The door opened.  Lucy and Verona.

The two of them sidled up beside her, standing so their three faces were framed in one mirror.

Lucy spoke, “We can take a break from the practice stuff if that helps.”

“Or, other option,” Verona said, reaching past Lucy to give her shoulder a light push.  “we dive into it, keep it low key and fun, and distract ourselves thoroughly.  Totally up to you, Ave.”

Being proactive was a better way to change things, right?  “The second one.  Verona’s idea.  I want to get moving, run-”

She moved, running, the rope wound around her hand so it formed a loop at the fingers and an ‘x’ at the back, before forming another loop at the wrist.  There weren’t any eyes on them in this neighborhood, owing in part to the stuff she wore.  The cape she wore around her shoulders had a connection breaking diagram written along its length.

She swung her hand as she hopped into the air.  There was that moment of nothing, then her foot landed on the top of a narrow wooden wall that bounded a property.  She wobbled a bit, made it about five steps along the top of the wooden wall before she lost her balance, and then toppled.  She punched her hand out again, off to the side.

It was easier when she used the Sight.  That nothing she skipped through was like a fog, and she could kind of see the fog.  As her hand moved, she could see shadows rolling through the haze, of buildings and poles and cars and other things.

There was an RV parked in front of a house, in the shade of some trees.  She moved her rope-hand, feeling her way through the fog for the landing point she wanted, and waited until the rope bristled before skipping ahead to the roof of the RV.

Standing amid the branches, she turned on her heel, walked back three noisy steps on the vehicle’s roof while she watched Lucy and Verona following, and reached back with the rope.  She could trust the intervening trees to block their sight, if she timed it right.  Just… there.

She pointed her hand up at an angle.

Wind whipped around her.  She swayed, nearly falling over, on the narrow platform.  There might have been enough space for her other foot if she placed both feet side by side, but she wasn’t about to move the first foot to make that space.

Avery stood on one foot on the top of a telephone pole, wires stretching out ahead of and behind her, her other leg cocked.

Snowdrop, just big enough to fit in the palm of her hand, crawled down her arm, shirt, and used the cocked leg to navigate her way down to the telephone pole itself.  She shrugged off the smaller, opossum pup guise and became a regular nine year old kid, grabbing one of the support struts of the pole with one hand and hanging from it, one hand and both feet dangling.

“This is Matthew and Edith’s place,” Avery observed.

Off to the right, Lucy and Verona arrived, flapping their wings and landing on the chimney and peak of a roof.  Lucy shrugged out of the bluejay glamour and crouched down by the chimney, holding onto the brick column for support.  Verona remained a crow.

In Matthew and Edith’s backyard, many of the Kennet Others had gathered.  Guilherme and Maricica sat at opposite ends, both wearing human guises.  John sat on the wooden stairs that led from the back porch to the lawn.  Charles was on the lawn, leaning against a fence, arms folded, perpetually scraggly, grouchy, and a bit scarier than he’d been before.  Two of the goblins were there, too.  No Toadswallow or Cherry.

“Did you say they’ve been here all day?” Lucy asked.

“Snowdrop wanted to tell us they’ve been coming and going, right?  Different Others and people at different times?”

“Nah,” Snowdrop stated.

Part of the reason Avery liked using her scarf for the diagram was that it let her have the scarf piled up around her shoulders, so the edge of the diagram was right in front of her mouth, where she could track it with a glance downward.

“Check your diagrams,” Avery said.

“Crap.  I think using glamour like that burns through the diagrams.  Only way it’s this bad this fast,” Lucy said.

She slid down the roof until she reached the overhang by the front porch, and started to climb down.

Avery hopped down to the base of the telephone pole, near the front bumper of the RV, and gave Lucy a hand.

A cat-Verona dropped down hopped down to the grass beside them, followed shortly after by Snowdrop.  Verona left the cat form, manifesting as human, sitting on the grass at the edge of some stranger’s property, in the shade of trees and the RV.

Avery dug in her bag for the carton of strawberry milk and gave it to Snowdrop.  “Who, and when?”

“That’s easy, uhhh, at first, it was a big group.”

“Consisting of?” Lucy asked.

“John, Guilherme, Alpeana, the four goblins, uhhh, the Choir, and Miss.”

Subtract those ones, then.

“Then the homeowners were the only ones gone, Charles left for a bit too.  A few regular people, not like me or that thing inside Edith, they came by.”

“Spirits passed through?” Lucy asked.

“Just a few.  They’re hanging around Kennet now.”

“They sent them away?” Verona translated.

“Makes a degree of sense.  Drawing battle lines, preparing for future confrontation.  More eyes,” Lucy said.  “Spirits are common, easy to work with, and most are dumb.”

“They’re still figuring out who’s in charge after the Miss situation,” Snowdrop told them.  “Then, uh, it was pretty neat.  Big groups stopping in.  Then another situation, not the one you just saw.”

“I may be getting a headache,” Lucy stated, rubbing at her forehead, and nearly dislodging her hat in the process.  She pulled it off and checked the diagram.  Then Verona took it and began redrawing it.

“Did they talk about the Carmine Beast?” Avery asked.

“A ton.  No mention of the new deadline or Alexander.”

“And us?” Avery asked, even though she already knew the answer.  Snowdrop had brought them here for this specific reason, but not all three of them had been gathered, so soon after school, and they hadn’t had the full picture of what the meeting might have looked like.

“I heard most of it.  You weren’t that important to the discussion,” Snowdrop told them, while looking off in the direction of the meeting.  “They trust you more now, after yesterday.  With Miss being gone, they can watch you better.  Right?”

“A bit of a shakier relationship, maybe,” Avery said.

“Could be more than a bit shakier.”  Lucy’s expression was grave.

“Having heard what we did about the practitioner-Other relationship, can’t blame them for wanting contingency plans,” Verona said.  “Sucks those plans are against us.”

“Sucks more that if the culprit really is mixed into this whole thing, this kind of dynamic makes it a lot easier for them to mess with us,” Lucy said.

“So we watch for the messing.  And we keep investigating, like we don’t know anything’s wrong?” Avery asked.  “Keep things with the locals positive?”

“I wonder if they’ll tell us they met,” Lucy said.

“I might be willing to bet they won’t,” Avery told her.

“Alpeana wasn’t part of today’s meetings, right?” Verona asked.

“Yeah, she was,” Snowdrop clarified.

“Doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Lucy said.  “She seems to sleep during the day.”

“Doesn’t mean nothing either,” Verona said.

The connection breaking diagrams were fading more, chalk flaking away in the light breeze.  They’d been bold white before and now they had almost disappeared into the dark blue fabric of her cape.

“We should go,” Avery said.  “Before they realize we were here.”

They hurried off, pulling off hats, masks, and capes, to stow in their bags.  Snowdrop helped, occasionally holding stuff so it could be organized and put away better.  They were just themselves now, walking briskly through rural streets.

“Thanks, Snowdrop.  Good work,” Lucy said.

“Nah, I’m thrilled I was able to confirm you’re all safe and there’s nothing to worry about,” Snowdrop said.

“Yeahhh…” Avery drew out the word.  “Thrilling’s a word for that.”

“We don’t know what the exact situation is,” Lucy said.  “So let’s not panic.  But we stay safe.”

“Do you want to split up, head home?  Keep a low profile?” Lucy suggested.  “I’d understand if you wanted to rest.  It’s been a long day.”

Avery thought of her Grumble.

“Want to come over?” Verona asked.

Avery must have made a face, because Verona laughed.

“Can we hang out?” Avery asked, because she’d responded to two questions with silence, and she couldn’t fall into that trap again.  “Lucy’s house or just… somewhere?  Until we have to go home?  It’s not like there’s any shortage of stuff to do.”

“Speaking my language,” Verona said.

Lucy’s earlier comment had made Avery wonder if she’d walk the path again.  That but had remained there, without a sentence to go after it.  It was scary, it was intense, it was messy.  It had pushed her to her limit and she wasn’t sure she’d go back to normal for a long time, if ever.

But… she was getting the feeling that the rest of the world was kind of like that too.  It was just also so big that she wasn’t sure she could wrap her head around it all.

That was why her heart felt so tired.  Like she was a bird that had flapped its wings as hard as it could to get through a small but intense storm, and escaped it to find there was still an ocean to fly over before she could reach dry land.

Moving forward made it easier to find more ways forward.  Doing this instead of sulking and going home helped her to find her resolution, the drive that would get her past that ocean.  She had to keep moving, keep looking.  Educating herself, getting centered and stronger.

After the uncomfortable moment with Pam, she’d found herself wanting to look into and try Guilherme’s glamour.  Because she could see ways, even if the last one had been uncomfortable.  She could see the Paths as a similar thing.

She reached down to rub Snowdrop’s hood against the kid’s hair.  The kid was finishing her milk.  The kid rolled her eyes up to look at Avery, then smiled, showing missing teeth.

Avery could see herself continuing to look for the Snowdrops that sprung up in the scary places.