Pale: 1.6 - Lucy

Lucy

Lucy paused at the foot of her front steps.  Each step had a potted plant at the end, half of which were just sprouting new green.  Her mom’s car was in the driveway, which wasn’t always a certainty.

Pulling her sleeve over her hand, she wiped at her face.  Fingers plucked at her hair, fixing it where it’d be lopsided from being crushed.

She was hoping that every interview wasn’t that intense.

She rocked forward, almost taking a step, then stopping herself before her foot rose from the ground.  The entire way from Verona’s house, she’d felt like she wanted to cry.  It wasn’t that she was sad, or that she could say for sure what made her upset, but she’d held herself together for the interview with John, she’d talked to the goblins, had dropped off Avery and then Verona, and… then she’d lost most of her reason to hold herself together.

Most.  She couldn’t walk in her front door crying or having just cried.  She couldn’t have a neighbor or someone look out a window and see her walking down through the maze of shitty houses with shitty gardens, having a stress cry.

She couldn’t walk into her house and start crying either.  Her mom would demand to know what was going on.

She’d almost died.  Or- Or she’d really thought she was going to die.  How was she supposed to deal with the feeling that had left her with?  Like… it wasn’t a lump in her throat.  It was bigger, and she couldn’t swallow it, couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t digest it, couldn’t throw it up.  Crying might help but wouldn’t fix it.  Breaking down and throwing things and screaming might be a big enough action to match the big feeling that was sitting with her, but it might not.

And breaking down and screaming would diminish her.  Worse, it wouldn’t make sense.  It would be reacting to something that she couldn’t process by being random, flailing.  She’d done it before and she regretted it.

She pressed her hands over her eyes, head turning upward, like she could somehow, at least, seal them, and keep herself from crying.  At least until she was out of her mom’s sight.

I almost died, she thought.

She could at least give that heavy feeling a shape.  It was still hard to bring herself to actually walk up to the door.

Get through the bit with mom without crying, I’ll treat myself to something.

She lifted one sneaker off the brick path leading up to the front steps, and took the stairs two at a time, letting herself in.

“Lucy?” her mom called from the other room.

“That was a long walk.”

“Swung by Verona’s,” Lucy answered.  She had.  Was her voice too monotone?

Her mom was in the living room, sitting on the couch, the coffee table in front of her, loaded down with papers.  She was still wearing nurse scrubs.

Lucy walked into the living room, approaching the coffee table.  The papers were all from the same company, with a really artificial looking header, swoopy and colorful, the company’s brand name printed in white next to a medical cross.  It was her mom’s latest job, which was mostly better than the last one.  She’d heard mom explaining it to Alison, their neighbor and her mom’s friend.  She traveled around to different houses, sometimes in nearby areas like Swanson, and taught old people how to take the company’s drug, the side effects.  Each client had a different schedule, and they had to be monitored for the first six applications or whatever.  It meant her mom was gone at completely random times.  Sometimes before school, sometimes when Lucy went to bed.

“Did you get snacks?”

“Didn’t go into the store.  We uh-” Lucy paused for a second to mentally fact check.  “-Mostly talked and walked, I guess.”

“I was hoping I could get a bit of whatever snack you grabbed.  Especially if there’s any caffeine in it.  I’m so sick of coffee.”

“Sorry.  I was thinking I’d get a snack, but…” Lucky thought.  “Do we still have hot chocolate in the cabinet?”

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had that.  Is that going to make it too hard for you to sleep tonight?”

“I-” Lucy stopped herself before the hitch in her voice actually reached her words.  Dangerous, when her voice might have cracked.  “-really wanted a hot chocolate.  I’ll manage.”

She went to the kitchen, turned on the oven ring, filled a pan with a couple cups of water, and set it on the ring. Once it was at a near boil, she poured some into a bowl, set another bowl inside, and put a good amount of cacao oil in the small bowl to warm.

With the rest of the water, she whisked in a bit of cocoa powder while it heated up, crushing the lumps.  Then the milk.  She emptied three mugs worth in.  Last was the chocolate.  Some cooking chocolate was in the cabinet, a little white at the edges from age and lack of use.  She crushed it and whisked it in.

It’d take a few minutes, she knew.

Looking at the creamy mixture made the feelings well up again.  Like she could freak out right here.  She distracted herself with the whisking, periodically pacing, roaming the kitchen.

There were a lot of envelopes from the local hospital.  Her mom was applying again, it seemed.  There was supposedly a shortage of doctors and nurses, especially in places out in the middle of nowhere, like Kennet.

But that had been true the last time her mom had been applying.

Her current thing was better than her stint as a homecare nurse.  That had been last year, and she’d been gone every night and most mornings, always trying to time it so she left right after Lucy was in bed, and right after she’d gotten Lucy to school.  She’d seen her mom change over the months, becoming more washed out, more frustrated with the little things.

Verona had said that every adult she knew was unhappy and Verona knew Lucy’s mom.  She wasn’t wrong.  Things were a bit better for her mom now, but this drug injection thing wasn’t what she wanted to do.

The chocolate in the milk and cocoa had melted enough that it had smoothed out.  She carefully portioned it out into two mugs, got the whipping cream from the fridge, and portioned it out, giving each mug a swirl.

She considered her next steps.  Oil, hot chocolate, her mom’s hot chocolate… she dug into the lower drawers to find a rigid plastic silly-straw, which took the contents of whatever was sucked down on a course shaped like a peace sign.  It had been long enough since it had been used that it was a bit sticky and dusty, so she rinsed it off, before making her way back to her mom, carefully holding the bowl of warm oil, two mugs, and straw, her backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Oh, where did you even find that?” her mom said, taking her mug.  “You shouldn’t use a straw when drinking something hot.  You’ll burn your mouth more easily.”

“I was going to do my hair, because I was outside a lot this weekend.  I thought it’d be easier with the straw.”

Lucy considered.  She had been bracing herself, telling herself she only had to look normal for a few minutes.  She’d distracted herself with the making of the hot chocolate, but…

“Come on,” her mom said, rising to her feet.

“Don’t you have work to do?”

“Just trying to figure out my schedule for next week.  What I don’t do today, I can do tomorrow.  Let me take that.”

She gave her mom the bowl.

Lucy’s room had two walls covered in art from CDs and subscription boxes.  Her brother had been subcribed to one service that sent music samples, promotional materials, and the rare ticket from new artists and whatever every month, and he hadn’t canceled it after he’d moved out.  She’d convinced her mom to keep paying when it had lapsed, because she’d gotten into it.  Less that she loved music and more that it reminded her of her brother.

The other two walls were mostly empty.  There was a cot folded up in the corner, for when Verona stayed over, a bookshelf with mostly graphic novels, and a desk with a mirror built in, a few minor cosmetics, some wide-tooth combs, and homework she hadn’t one hundred percent finished.

She sat down at the desk, mug in front of her.  Her mom put the bowl down, and undid the ponytail, before starting to quadrant off her hair.

It was nice, and it was nice in a way that weakened her defenses.  Made her feel like she might do the crying thing.  She focused on the hot chocolate, eyes down on the homework.  She took a sip, put it down, picked up her pen and penciled in an answer.

Her mom’s hands rested on her shoulders as she leaned over to look at the answer.  Rather than comment on the homework, she said, “You’re tense.”

“Mm.”  Almost always.  But especially after I almost died.

“Don’t want to say why?”

“Not sure what I’d say.”

“Okay then.  How’s Verona?” her mom asked.  “Don’t let me interrupt you, if you want to do homework.”

“I don’t, and it’s mostly done.  Um, Verona…”

Lucy thought of Verona, a knife pressed against her lips.  The look on Verona’s face, like she didn’t even really care.  When had Verona stopped being the person she knew and understood?

Scratch that.  She’d never entirely understood Verona, but… she definitely didn’t understand this Verona, who seemed to be so full of the idea of everything about spirits and practice and everything else that it had pushed out parts that Lucy recognized.

“She’s always a bit weird.  Weirder now.  I think her dad is getting to her.”

“Should I say hi to him?  I could find an excuse, maybe give him a nudge if he needs one.”

“I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing you could nudge about.  More like they aren’t even related, and they’re stuck in the same house.”

“Mmm.  Hard to disagree.  Does she take after her mom?”

“You’ve met her mom.”

“But I don’t know her.”

Her mom’s hands were gentle, working through a few tangles and knots.  Lucy’s hair was in four simple braids now, each sticking out a bit from her head.

“I look like a derp.”

“You’re a beautiful girl, Lucille, and that’s not my mom bias talking.”

“Really, no.  All my friends remark on it, okay?”

Lucy shrugged.  She didn’t think she looked bad, but she wasn’t remark-worthy either.

“And just so we don’t get distracted from the topic, you know Verona can come over whenever.  The house feels empty with Booker gone.  It’s nice hearing voices in the other room.”

“How’s Avery?”  Lucy’s mom hand-massaged the oil into Lucy’s hair.  “It’s easy to forget you’re a trio now.”

She could imagine Avery, standing in the dark, barely visible, while Verona had a knife to her face and Lucy had a gun to her chin.

They’d strongarmed Avery into this, a bit.  That point when they’d been walking up to the clearing, and Avery had wanted to go.  Would Avery have wanted to do this without that push she’d given her?

The Others had said there was a kind of responsibility when they brought someone into this world.  It felt to Lucy like that was the case.  That she’d brought Avery into that Other world, at least a bit, with that push.

“She’s cool.”  Not answering the question, but a technical truth.  Lucy sipped more of her hot chocolate.

Things continued for a bit, her mom massaging the oil into her hair near the roots.

Lucy penned another answer.

“Reasons for Canadian confederation,” her mom observed, leaning forward.

“Come on.  You’re almost done.”

Lucy, her head rocking a bit with the movements of her mom’s hands through her hair, penned down an answer.  Threat of American invasion.

“Trade.  Hudson’s Bay Company couldn’t use the rivers for the ongoing fur trade, they wanted a railway…”

“It’s been a long time, and my mind is fried.”

“So you don’t know.”

Lucy penned it down.  She reached for her hot chocolate, but didn’t pick it up, only holding the handle.  “Any luck with the hospital applications?”

“A few positions were open.  We’ll see.”

“If you don’t get it, and if your current thing doesn’t work out, is there a chance we’d have to move?  There might be openings at other hospitals in other towns, right?”

“Don’t worry about that.  I don’t want to separate you from your best friend.  From your friends, still have to remind myself you’re a trio.  I will figure it out, Lucy.  It’s not something you need to worry about.”

“But what if I want to worry about it?  Like, you deserve the job.  You’re a good nurse, the people who you used to work with at the other hospital said so.  You know your stuff, I know you study.”

“Really, Lucy, don’t worry.  We’ll be fine.”

Lucy made herself shut up by picking up her mug and sipping from it.

Her mom used a paper towel to hold her mug and also drink from it.

“I want to know, if there’s an explanation.”

“And I want you to let me handle my stuff, while you focus on handling Lucy stuff, okay?  As a teenager your job is to do your homework, do the occasional chore-”

“More than occasional.”

“-and if you can figure out who you are and where you want to go in life before you need to make decisions about University, then that’s a bonus.”

Lucy thought back to that dark house.  How cool to the touch John Stiles’ hand had been, the metal of the gun even colder.

Why was it, she found herself wondering, that whenever she got a glimpse behind the curtain, it was so very dark out there?  Seeing her mom with that same look in her eyes as John Stiles.  Seeing the blood, the swords.

Her eyes were open, and she opened them again, to view the world in dark watercolors.  The yellow of the oil in the bowl in front of her was surprising in how bright it was.  She looked up to see herself in the mirror, and there were angles where she could see herself wearing the fox mask.  Sometimes the mask was a stark white, barely resembling a fox.  Other times it was like Avery had carved it, painted a rosy color, but with real fox eyes.  Another time, it was almost a real fox’s face, but with her eyes.  Her hair was highlighted with enough pink that it didn’t look real.

She could see her mother dip fingers into the bright yellow oil, then run those fingers through her hair.  The pink almost flared, as the oil set in.

Third quadrant done.  The hair that had just been oiled was bound into a tight coil.

Onto the last quadrant.  Braid undone.  Her mom leaned over to put the elastic that had held the braid together on the desk, sipping from her own mug of hot chocolate.

With the change in posture and the bending over, Lucy could see her mom’s reflection in the mirror.  A sword, short and rusty, with a broken tip and a sash-like rag tied to the handle at her back, was stuck through her upper body.  Penetrating her heart, the blade sticking out her front.

Lucy shut her eyes at the sight of it, and for a second, her head trembled in a way that her mom would have noticed if she wasn’t preoccupied.  Lucy clasped her hands in her lap, eyes still shut.

“Falling asleep on me?” her mom asked.

With her eyes closed, she couldn’t be sure that she had actually turned off the Sight.  And there was no way she wanted to risk opening her eyes and seeing that sword sticking through her mom again.

“I’m tired,” she said, and that admission almost made her break.

She kept her eyes closed and drank the rest of her hot chocolate.  The chocolate had settled in the bottom as a delicious sludge.

The last quadrant of hair was bound up, and her mother stepped out of the room.

Lucy let herself open her eyes.  She shut off the Sight.

Her mother returned with freshly washed hands, a towel, and a silk scarf.  She wrapped up Lucy’s head in the towel, then secured it with the scarf, which she knotted at Lucy’s forehead.

“This was nice, I don’t get the chance to do it myself,” her mother said.  Her mother’s hair was cut close to her scalp.

“Lucky,” Lucy said, smiling.

“I wish you smiled more.  You used to be so warm and happy.”

I used to be more of a softball than Avery or Pamela O’Neill.

“Maybe I’ll work on it.”

Her mother kissed her on the forehead.  “Homework, then bed.”

“I usually finish my homework in class, before it starts.”

“If you think you can.  I trust you.”

Lucy stood from the chair.  She handed her mom some of the things, like the elastics, the bowl, and the paper towels with oil, hot chocolate and whipping cream on them, but when it proved too much for one trip, she followed her mom out, carrying the rest.

Halfway back to the kitchen, she said, “I love you, mom.”

“Wow.  It’s been a little while since you’ve said anything like that.”

“I really do love you.  You’re great.  Thank you for doing my hair.”

She felt so awkward saying it, especially now that it had been pointed out.  But after what had almost happened earlier… she felt like she needed to say it.  Just in case.

“My genuine pleasure.  I love you so much my heart hurts, you know that, right?”

Lucy glanced at her mother’s heart, where the sword had been, looked away.

That hadn’t been for or about her.

Her mom dropped stuff off at the sink, rinsing some, then headed back to the coffee table and couch to resume working.  Lucy rinsed one bowl, and while she rinsed, turned her head back to the pile of envelopes from the hospital on the kitchen counter.

She looked with the Sight.

Dark stains discolored the paper, like watercolor or mold.  She couldn’t say for sure if there was more of it there than there was elsewhere.  Every time she felt like she could decide for sure, she noticed more untouched space or noticed more staining.  Tricks of the eyes.

She shut that eye, leaving her ordinary eyes open, and washed her hands before heading back to her room, turning off some of the lights as she went.  She sorted out her homework, then collapsed into her bed.  The taste of the hot chocolate and warm feeling of a moment with her mom sat high and thick in her lower throat and upper chest, kind of like heartburn.  The big ball of emotion from earlier was still there, and it was like it wasn’t letting the rest of it by.

She stripped out of her sweatshirt and changed her pants out for some pyjama shorts, then collapsed onto her bed, one hand keeping the scarf in position around her hair.

The red of the clock seemed so bright in the gloom, penetrating her awareness to inform her it was ten oh seven at night.

At ten thirty, she turned over onto her side, reached down for her bag, fished out her notebook, and turned her bedside light onto its dimmest setting.  She pored over her notes.

The moment she’d heard Charles talk about practitioners who dealt in war, she’d been intrigued.  Now… she wasn’t sure.

She penned down some more questions she wanted to ask, then connected them with lines.  Who fit best?  Who should she ask?

It was clear now that they were out of their depth.  They needed the means to defend themselves, and she didn’t want to trust something like John Stiles to appear and protect her if she had the option of protecting herself.

Guilherme?  The warrior faerie that John liked?  She was leery, because of how everyone else had acted about faerie.

None of the others seemed to really be about self defense.  Edith, maybe, if she wanted to work with fire.

The problem was that she couldn’t trust any of them until she knew for sure which ones she could distrust.  A lot of the questions and details were things she could posit to Miss, but Miss seemed to be actively untrustworthy, hiding, staying quiet, controlling when she wasn’t quiet.

At eleven fourteen, she heard her mom quietly go to bed.  She remembered that she’d told herself she would let herself cry if she needed to after she was out of the way of her mom, but even with that heavy, awful feeling that seemed to have swelled inside her until it felt like something should have broken, she couldn’t bring herself to.

At eleven fifty five, she realized this was going to be a long night.  The frustration at her inability to sleep began to make it harder to go to sleep.

She mused for a bit on various insults she would level at some of the people in her life who had really pissed her off, using the goblin magic and the rule of three.  Sling some bottom-tier curses out there to some specific people.

Mrs. Fowler, her grade two teacher, who had berated her in front of the class because she kept writing her nines like they appeared in the textbook, with curved tails.  Nothing really said to Logan who had writing so indecipherable the letters looked like wingdings, or to Melissa, who took similar, intentional liberties with her ones, sevens, and zeroes.  Lucy just hadn’t known better, and she’d gone home crying that day.  Mrs. Fowler hadn’t let up either.

She remembered reading in a book once that growing old was like being a baby again.  Being in diapers, having trouble walking, sometimes even having trouble speaking.  She wished there was a good word or thing to say to Mrs. Fowler that would make her like that.  Old and helpless and totally alone, singled out and going back to her bed in the old folks home, crying.  She hated that woman.  Lucy had never really loved school again after that.

There was Logan who had proclaimed in fifth grade that boys were stronger than girls, and when she’d offered to fight him, had agreed.  While he hadn’t trounced her -it had been a really sad fight on both sides, really, with other kids cheering them on, more pulling on hair and clothes than actually fighting- he’d turned around and told a teacher she’d bullied him.

That would’ve been after.  After Paul.

She put Paul out of mind.  He was after.  He was last.

Logan needed to be marked out as the stain he was.  Gross and sweaty and embarrassing.

There was the boy at the lake, when she’d gone vacationing with her family.  That had been so long ago she couldn’t remember for sure if Doug was his real name in her memories or a name she’d stuck with him.  He’d made fun of her watercap and pushed her into the water, and then didn’t let her out, pushing her down and in every time she tried to slosh through and get by.  Booker had come by and Doug had fled, and she just… she remembered being so indignant, shaking from it and from the cold of being wet.

She hoped he got a disease that made him have to crap in a bag for the rest of his life.

She was working herself up, her mind going in circles, sometimes going back to the same curses and curse ideas.

If she had the power to apply curses, could she do something that would satisfy?  Because everything that came to mind was like a story that hadn’t been finished yet.  It felt wrong that there was no final chapter, no moral to the story except that things and people sucked sometimes.

When they’d had to pee in cups for a health test in school, Kirsten had spilled her cup, splashing Lucy’s leg and sneakers.  She hadn’t apologized and had made insinuations about Lucy smelling like pee, later.  She remembered scrubbing at her shoe and leg and feeling so gross.  Just a small curse for something like that, right?  Like a recurring ulcer on Kirsten’s peehole so she’d writhe in pain when she peed and end up on the bathroom floor, still peeing.  Once or twice a year, maybe, until she did something to make up for it.

Eve had borrowed a graphic novel that she’d bought and got signed while in Thunder Bay to do some city shopping, and had never returned it, but… Eve had been held back a grade.  She’d bug Eve about it when she ran into her again, but she had mercy.  No curse, imagined or otherwise.  That was a shitty enough thing to have to deal with, without cursing her with a propensity for papercuts and sharp bits of food between her teeth.

The curses that she imagined weren’t like the ones that the goblin’s trick would let her apply, but… it was satisfying.  It got her worked up to imagine the events all over again, but… the lack of fairness in it all ate at her.  The heaviness of the emotion that was sitting with her wasn’t one singular event.

When she ran out of new, inventive swears and people she had a grudge at, she looked at the clock.  Twelve thirty five.

She got her phone and fiddled around with it, watching some of the recommended videos, revisiting the app to check that the class’s votes hadn’t come out yet… not that it mattered.  She put on some music, put her earbuds in, and lay with her face smushed into her pillow, arms out to the sides.

She was exhausted and she felt like sleep was never going to come.

And they think the Hungry Choir is scarier.

They act more scared of the Faerie.

Have to take this seriously.  Have to get Verona to take this seriously.

Avery, at least, I can trust.  She’s a ditz sometimes but she’s cool.

She found and put on a video by Mr. Lai.  One of the kids in school had found his channel when he’d left his computer unlocked, and spread it around.  A lot of people had been laughing, because Mr. Lai was this short, super-clean cut teacher who’d been born in China, and his channel had a ton of videos where he was dressed like a lumberjack and building a cabin from scratch, somewhere up north.

But like… it was actually kind of cool.  That single-minded focus.  The skills involved.  It was neat to see someone into that, and it kind of reminded her of some of her memories of sleepovers with Verona, when Verona was super into something obscure or weird, like a craft project.  Those had been some of the best weekends, really, because that kind of steady enthusiasm was infectious.  A part of her still hoped this practice stuff could be more like that.

Mr. Lai’s accent was pretty tough, but if she didn’t really listen, like she wasn’t really listening now, then it just became a steady, pleasant noise, sometimes over the sound of saws and hammers.  He kind of put her to sleep, like he had last year, but that was a plus right now.  And watching like this gave him some views.  Win-win, wasn’t it?  He might not be super thrilled to know students were falling asleep to the sound of his voice, but… whatever.  Win-win.

She hit the like button and lay there, trying to let her mind wander and picture what he was putting together from the sounds of his voice, even if she couldn’t always catch the words.

She heard a thumping noise, and picked up the phone with the video still playing, her eyes still closed and face still pressing into the pillow, and blindly thumbed at the screen until she could rewind the video a few steps.

The video went back, then continued toward the point where it had been when she’d heard the thump.

There were more thumps, dull and hollow, at a point in the video where she definitely hadn’t heard anything.  She paused it and pulled out her earbuds.  She flopped over onto her back, looking toward the door, the closet, the cot in the corner.

The time on the clock changed to gibberish, then flickered.

She could hear it.  Scrabbling and thumping, elsewhere in the house, rapid, almost like a lunch table worth of hands drumming at a table in anticipation of pizza.

Except… there was nobody.  The house was dark and quiet.  The only light was from her alarm clock and phone.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

Something in the house creaked and banged.  It wasn’t a door.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

A face appeared at her doorway.  Pale, framed by long, dark hair.

Alpeana, peering in from the upper corner of the door, face at a diagonal.  The face rotated two-hundred and seventy degrees.

“Is this a threat?” Lucy asked.

Alpeana lunged, crawling across the ceiling with rapid movements.  Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump-

Crawling across the ceiling to a point directly over Lucy’s bed in about a third of the time it would take Lucy to walk from her doorway to her bedside table.

She hung there, suspended, fingers straining, curved backwards as fingertips seemed to dig into the ceiling itself.  Her head twisted, rotating, like she was trying to get a better view.

Show no fear.  Give her nothing.

Never show weakness.  It’s never worth it.

Lucy remained stock still, watching.

Alpeana’s mouth yawned open, and black fluid oozed out, multi-layered, thick with debris that could have been anything, but with shapes like rotted leaves turned black by a winter spent under the snow, or the stringy guck pulled out of drains.

Her hair turned liquid, doing something similar, just in much greater quantities.  Drainstuff, rot, mold, mixed with liquid as thick and black as oil, refusing to flow straight down so much as it stuck to itself.

“I had a bad night.  I’m not in the mood for this,” Lucy said.  As the stuff reached down from the ceiling and toward her head, she grabbed a spare pillow and held it up in the way.  “You’re not allowed to hurt me, by the deals made.”

The stuff touched her sheets, just over her chest.  Heavy, soaking in and pressing down.

It touched her pillow, that she held up as a shield and barrier to keep it away from her face.  Strings, rivulets, and clumps oozed down around the edges, sides, and more of it piled on top, making the pillow difficult to hold up, even with both hands.

“You’re not winning any points with me, Alpeana.”

Is this her acting on instinct?

A white shape pressed into the curtain of black stuff that draped down from the pillow’s edges.  It took Lucy a second to realize it was a face, poking through, with eyes as dark as anything.

“Ye’re due a nightmare, lassie,” the Mare said, her voice young, but thick with a Scottish burr.

“No thanks,” Lucy answered.  The stream from above had eased up.  The curtain of dark liquid had pooled around her, soaking into her sheets and pillow, but now that what was coming from above wasn’t so thick, she could see that what had piled up on her stomach and chest was the rough silhouette of a person.  Alpeana’s face lifted up to find a home roughly where the head should be.

“Yeh,” Alpeana said.  “Tha’s wha’ I thought.  I’ll spare ye that.”

“Can’t go and say ye won’ have a bad dream now, but it won’ be a fancy Mare dream like ye might be havin’ if ye were’n protected.  I’m suppose ta pass on a message.”

“Pass it,” Lucy said.  In her efforts to keep from freaking out, she was holding her head so rigid that her chin was rising by fractions.  Her breath came in small intervals, with the weight on her chest.

“Miss wants ta talk.  Get an update on yer findin’s and all tha’.”

“Miss is a suspect.  I mean no offense, but… we’re not at her beck and call.  If there’s any oversight, I think it’d have to be from the Alabaster, Sable, and Aurum, and I’m not even sure about that.”

“No.  Sorry.  I’ll discuss with the others, though.  We may want to talk to her anyway, but it shouldn’t be like that, us answering to her and filling her in on everything.”

Alpeana leaned forward, darkness pressing in close to Lucy’s head.  Then she scampered up the wall, then to the ceiling.  As she pulled away, the rags and dark strands of her hair pulled up the stains and dark gloop that she had left behind her, leaving the bed and everything pristine.

“Alpeana,” Lucy called up.

The girl, already at the door to the bedroom, turned around, then sat down, positioned upside-down, bare legs and dirty toenails visible.  She idly pushed at the door, which was right by her head, and it opened further, creaking.

“What would you have done if I’d been asleep?”

“Ah, I’d have left ye be, like I did the other two.”

Alpeana flipped over, climbed over the top of the doorframe, and disappeared out into the dark hallway.  Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

Lucy remained where she was, her phone still glowing with the video paused on it, the alarm clock reading two fifteen in the morning.

Her heart pounded, each of the beats heavy enough that they jarred her vision.  After two minutes of it, it hadn’t eased up, and she felt nauseous.

Her eyes remained open for most of the time until it was three twenty, when she finally eased down, pulled the covers around her, and let herself close her eyes.

She didn’t look at the clock, but it was probably closer to four thirty when she finally slept.

Lucy stood by the fence by the school, watching the students approaching, and the long, long, long line of cars on the road.  The school had been set in an area without a lot else nearby, possibly with plans to expand or use the space nearby for more fields or whatever, and that opportunity had never been capitalized on.  The building was boring and the area around it was just as bad, with tall grass cut short so kids didn’t get ticks, some trees, and not much else.  Some kids were cutting across that area.

There was one road that people could take to get to the school and it tended to be clogged.  Half the kids took the stubby half-size school buses that cars couldn’t legally drive past, the other half that didn’t walk it got driven in, their parents parking somewhere along the road to drop them off, then pulling out to cut off or clog up traffic.

Add in the kids who walked or even ran across the road when traffic was at a near-standstill, the kids who biked and cut off everyone, and it made for a lot of stupidity.  A lot of parents dropped their kids a five or ten minute walk away from the school to avoid the whole thing.  Lucy’s mom had offered the option of getting a ride annoyingly early or making her own way, and Lucy had taken the former.  She’d done it enough times before that she knew how this whole setup tended to evolve.  The jams, the kids getting dropped off, the dynamics.

Today it was a little worse, because she’d slept like crap and she was grumpy.

Verona’s dad, in contrast to Lucy’s mom… Lucy recognized the beat up old Corolla.  Inching along, fighting with traffic.  Verona didn’t talk to her dad, her head down as she played with her phone or read.  Maybe one day out of the week, Lucy would see the two of them talking.

The Kellys had parked at the end of the road, and the kids were unloading.  Lucy watched Sheridan get out, followed by Declan and little Kerry Kelly.

No Avery, which meant…  Lucy turned, sticking her toe into the criss-crossing wire of the fence and hopping up to get a better look past the fence and to the point beyond the schoolyard.  She was pretty sure she saw Avery back there, biking across the uneven field.

She turned, walking down the sidewalk, against the current of students, to get closer to where it looked like Verona would get out.

Rather than pull over, Mr. Hayward stopped in the road and Verona scrambled out, bag hugged to her front, slamming the door behind.  Lucy raised a hand in a wave, and Mr. Hayward gave her a wave back.

“Don’t draw attention to him,” Verona said.  “It’s embarrassing.”

“He’s not that bad.”

“My dad got anal last night.  Avery got in trouble, too, for being out past curfew.”

“I saw the messages when I woke up this morning.”

“Did you draw the connection breaker when we went to John’s house?” Verona asked.

“Nah.  Told my mom I was going out for a walk and that I’d hang with you, said I’d try to be back before curfew.”

“I think Ave and I got slapped down for using it too much.  Extra and unwanted parental attention.”

“Just annoying.  Have to get the details from Avery,” Verona said.

“Speaking of.  I wanted to talk with you guys.  Want to head over and see if we can’t catch Avery and chat for a min before we go inside?”

They had to take a roundabout route to get through the gate and then around to the side of the school, while Avery biked over.

“Your siblings got a ride, Avery!” Verona called out.  “What are you, the red headed stepchild?”

“Ha.  Ha.  I’d rather do this…” Avery panted.  The grass was not good for riding on, even with her mountain bike.  “…Than subject myself to the back seat.”

“How much trouble did you get in?” Lucy asked.

“My parents aren’t really good at laying down punishments, and even when they do stick to it, I usually get it easy because I don’t cause much trouble,” Avery said.  “But I’ll have to watch out for that.”

“We have to watch out for other things,” Lucy said.  “I think we’re being monitored.”

“Monitored?” Avery asked.

“Toadswallow was right there, wasn’t he?” Lucy asked.  “He was in the bush, keeping tabs on us.  And Charles… they brought him along when we went camping?”

“Yeah, but… what’s weird about that?” Avery asked.

“The entire time, I was thinking, alright, well, he can lie, so we have to be careful.  Can’t listen too carefully.  They might have brought him along to slip us a key piece of misinformation.  Every time he said something, I was kind of going through it in my head, wondering if it was the trap he was trying to slip us.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “Same, kinda.”

“And… that’s not the full story.  What if they brought him along because he could hurt us?  Like, if we immediately set out on a direction that they weren’t comfortable with.”

“That’s a little paranoid,” Avery said.  “He seemed kind of shocked that we were kids.”

“Teenagers.  What if he was shocked that we were teenagers because he made a deal before he showed up, that he’d go along on any road trips and put an end to the new practitioners if they turned out to be trouble?  Like… he gives off creepo vibes, but that’d give most people pause, wouldn’t it?”

“Can’t really blame them,” Verona said.  “Like John said, a practitioner can enslave with words.  We can curse with words.  They have a lot at stake.”

“Uh, sure,” Lucy said.  “Maybe.  But… so do we, right?  You do get that?”

“I get it,” Verona answered.

“Alpeana showed up in my room in the middle of the night.  She said she stopped by to see you two, too.  So you know, like… I assume your houses are locked up, but she’s showing up while you’re asleep.  Let that sit with you for a second.”

“Was she nice?” Avery asked.

“She was… Scottish, I think?  Didn’t expect that.  I think she said she spared me from an especially bad dream.”

“It was a pretty creepy visit, Ave.  She had a message from Miss, but… it’s pretty obvious they’re keeping a close eye on everything we do.”

“Like I said, it’s understandable,” Verona said.

“It’s understandable, but… are there any Others that could turn up at the school?”

“Hungry Choir?  Maybe?” Avery suggested.  “I’ve been trying to train my Sight, ever since we first went camping, and I probably have a long way to go, but I don’t see anything.”

“Training is a good idea,” Lucy mused.  “Okay.  This might have to be our place to compare notes and discuss.  It might be too much civilization or too many people for the goblins, I don’t know who else would show.  We’ll watch out, maybe head out to the field or meet somewhere private between classes, compare notes and come up with plans.  That way they can’t anticipate us too much.”

The other two glanced at each other.

“Sure.”  Verona shrugged.  “I’m happy to talk more about this stuff.”

“No objection,” Avery said.

“Thank you,” Lucy said.  She meant it.  She’d been prepared for a fight, or for resistance to the more aggressive precautions.  The last few attempts had been debates.  “Keep an eye out, and we should start thinking about what we do to protect ourselves.  If someone like Alpeana can decide whether we do or don’t get nightmares, can she do other stuff to our dreams?  Where else are we weak?”

“Stiles really spooked you last night, huh?” Avery asked.

“That’s not it.  It’s a small part of it.”

“I want you to be safe,” Verona said.  She looked at Avery.  “Both of you.”

“Uh, all three of us, Verona,” Lucy said.

“I want all three of us to be safe, intact, sane, whatever,” Verona rolled her eyes as she said it.

They made their way into the building through the side door.  There were some students around, but they seemed caught up in conversation.

“I still don’t know how you were able to stay so calm after having a knife in your face,” Lucy said.

Verona laughed as she retorted, “You had a gun in yours.”

Lucy smiled for Verona’s benefit, but she really didn’t feel like smiling.  That heavy feeling was there.

“Hey!” A voice, male.  It was Jeremy, from their class.  He jogged up a couple stairs.  “What game?”

“What game were you playing?”

“It was real,” Verona said.

“Ha ha.  Seriously, though.”

“Totally real,” Verona said, again, a half-smile on her face.  Then she jogged up the stairs.

Lucy looked back at Jeremy and shrugged, before following, Avery right behind her.

They took three desks at the back of the room, putting their bags down.  Lucy had to remind herself to be careful, because her mask was in there.

“Guess we can’t talk about this stuff in school,” Avery said, sitting in her chair sideways, back to the wall, head leaning against the window.

“Not easily,” Lucy admitted.

There were no cliques in their class, not like there were in mom’s old movies.  Whatever there had been way back then had seemed to splinter and combine over time.  Other students made their way into the class.  The Dancers were the biggest contingent, but even they had their subdivisions and blurred lines.  They had thirty three students in their class, and ten were Dancers.  The other class in their grade had twelve.  Girls who were super into the gymnastics, dancing, and cheerleading things that were taught at the place down near the bridge.

But there were people like Melissa, who was on Avery’s soccer team, as well as being a Dancer.  As she entered the room, Verona looked at her, and Melissa pressed her hands together in a pleading gesture.  Verona shook her head, making a face.

Sharon was an arty kid, like Pamela, but also a Dancer.  Jeremy was an arty kid and a ‘nerd’, and was someone Lucy wished Verona would talk to more, because they probably had a lot in common.  Wallace was a gamer and a nerd.  And so it went.  Being a nerd didn’t mean someone wasn’t cool.  Amadeus was super into science and computers, but he was maybe the most popular guy in class… helped by the fact he was cute, with long black hair and a dimple at his chin.  George was popular, but Lucy was pretty sure he was what Lucy’s older brother had once termed a ‘pebbler’, a baby stoner who hadn’t actually gotten stoned yet.  But George was a bit of everything.

No hard cliques, no specific sections at lunch tables like that one movie from years before Lucy was born, but Avery had had a tough time, and there were reasons for that.

For one thing, the class was kind of cut in half, because they were combined grade eights and nines.  For another, when put together with the other grade nine class, they had all known each other since kindergarten.  She could count the kids who had moved away and the kids who had moved here midway through on the one hand.  The friendships had been established, and barring invitations like the one Verona kept getting, that was hard to butt into.

Three of the dancers walked in near lockstep along the back of the class, before turning down past Lucy and her group.

“Hey,” Hailey said, as they stopped, standing behind where Lucy, Avery, and Verona sat.

“Melissa really wants you to join us for dance.  She says you’re a natural.”

“I wish she could take no for an answer.”

“Really, no.  I did the one dancing thing two years ago when the instructor from Wavy Tree came to teach a gym class, and I hear about it way too often.”

“Some girls were saying you’re arrogant, and you’re looking down on us,” Mia said, accusatory.

“What?” Verona asked, shocked.  “Haha, no.  Really.”

“It’s just really not my thing.  I find it boring to do and keep doing until you get it right.  I’ve rooted for you guys when you do an event or a parade or whatever.  Just… not for me.”

“Hm.  Want us to tell her to knock it off?”

“Please.  Please, please, please.”

Lucy felt her pocket vibrate.

Before she could reach for her phone, she saw others reacting.

There was an energy to it.  The tension, the emotions.  With everything that had been going on, she felt like it was the kind of thing that someone might want to harness, or already be harnessing.

She used her Sight, looking out over the class, while she got her phone free of her pocket.

Some kids with knives in their heads or bodies.  Some kids with blood-red watercolor at their hands.

But they were ordinary students.  And the phones themselves… nothing.

She looked.  There was a notification from the app.  Class_RankR.  Their class had ranked everyone, each student picking a first and possible second person they liked.

“Huh,” Hailey said, still standing behind them.

“Hey,” Mia said.  “Go Avery.  And Verona-”

Hailey elbowed her.  “Let’s go sit.”

Lucy looked over the list.

Kids who had been out in the hall were staying out in the hall, talking and looking at the results.  Some looked into the room, and Lucy felt the gaze of more than a few people fall on her.

“Just me, huh?” Avery asked, quiet.

Lucy was already staring at the bottom, but she scrolled down a bit more, to the stats at the foot of it.

By the results, two anonymous guys were gay.  Another was bi.

One anonymous girl was a lesbian.

“There’s the other class,” Lucy said.

“Already asked, and no.  One guy, no girls,” Avery said.  Her face had fallen, and to Lucy’s Sight, she had a dark watercolor stain spreading across her chest, like a growing hole.

There were others in the room who seemed brighter, others who seemed hurt.  There were a few swords and blades represented in Lucy’s sight.

As people entered the room, murmuring, Lucy felt conspicuous, her face felt hot.

“There could be girls that haven’t figured it out yet,” Verona whispered.

“That doesn’t do me any good now, does it?  Feels lonely.”

Verona nodded.  “Yeah.  But like Lucy said, the whole thing’s stupid, right?  There’s lots of people like me who don’t really give a shit and put in whatever.  It doesn’t matter, so let’s just ignore it and wait for it to blow over.”

Verona made a hand motion Lucy couldn’t see.

“Sure,” Avery said, putting her phone away a little too quickly.

Lucy watched the room, avoiding eye contact, because everyone that was looking at her right now was thinking the same thing.

It would have been a relief at this point, she felt, if the entire stupid thing was magical.  Some kind of curse, or some kind of shitty stupid magic puzzle or whatever.  But she didn’t see anything like that.

She wondered if she could somehow see the blade that was sticking through herself, or the watercolor stains that were spreading across her, what would they look like?  How big would it be?

That heavy, overwhelming feeling that she hadn’t seemed to be able to process all last night had come with her to school today, and it had expanded by inches over the last few minutes, until it kinda hurt constantly.

She sighed, slumping down over her desk, her arms extending forward and over the other end.  Head on one arm, she looked over and murmured, “Am I ugly?”

“Avery?  Expert opinion?”

“I’m not an expert,” Avery said.  “You keep saying my taste is terrible.”

“I’ve said it maybe three times.”

“You’re pretty, Lucy.  Not my type, and I’m pretty sure you’re not gay, which makes you very not my type, but… people are dumb, I guess.”

“You could be a lot of people’s third choices,” Verona suggested.  Then, “You’re kind of intimidating.  Maybe that’s it.”

“I’m a bitch, you mean.  And I don’t want to be a lot of people’s third choices,” Lucy said.  “I want to be someone’s first choice.”

“Whose dumb idea was this?” Lucy asked.  “I might have a few choice words for them, said three times, nailed in.”

“Don’t say stuff like that.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Ugh.  I feel like I’d be like, twenty times more able to deal with this if I’d slept more than two and a half hours last night.”

At the far corner of the classroom, Gabe rose from his seat.  Lucy noticed primarily because of the twisted skewer of metal that her Sight put in his midsection.  As she followed him with her eyes, she saw him pick up his bag, and it was soaked with the red watercolor, impaled at the same point by three smaller blades.

She watched as he left the classroom, reaching for her phone, and flipping over to check the boys’ ranking.

She rose from her seat.  A lot of eyes followed her, as they’d followed Gabe.

“Luce?” Verona asked.

“I’m cool.  Checking on Gabe.  Something’s off.”

She went back for her bag, grabbing it as a just-in-case.

She almost missed Gabe, who was ducking into the boy’s bathroom.

With only a moment’s hesitation, she followed him in, finding him by the sink.  He was the only one in.

Gabe wore glasses and dressed like he was going to church, and aside from a sorta lame haircut and a really skinny frame, there wasn’t anything offensive or exceptional about him.  He was one of the homeschooled kids who’d come over when High School had started.  He hadn’t really come to the school with any hint of social skills, had struggled like Avery had, and instead of finding a way forward, had taken to hanging around with kids two and three years younger than him, who sometimes seemed annoyed that he kept turning up.

It kind of sucked that she was being put in the same bucket as him.

“What the-  You can’t be in here!” Gabe said.

“If I get suspended, I’ll deal.  You okay?”

“It sucks,” she said.  “What’s in your bag?”

“Your bag,” she said.  She approached him.  He backed up.

She closed the distance, grabbed him and spun him partially around.  Pulling down his backpack’s zipper, she fished inside.

He seemed more confused than defensive.

Moving a paper, she saw the blades rattle.  She pulled it out, and the red staining immediately began to fade from the fabric of his bag.

One paper, a grey-pink color, with a less than great photocopying or print job, like two things superimposed onto the same paper, with the end result being near-gibberish.

Most of it was faded and stained in a way that persisted even with her Sight removed.  Most distinct was the website at the bottom.

“Where did you get this?”

“I found it.  What the hell?  How did you know I had it?”

“Done what?  I logged in, but I didn’t sign up.  I couldn’t figure it out.  It has to be on certain nights.”

“Don’t.  You might get really badly hurt, or worse,” she said.  “When’s the next night?”

“Tomorrow night.  Why?”

“Where’d you find it?”

“In the cafeteria.  You’re not answering my questions.”

“Not really, not so far,” she said.  She left the boy’s bathroom, pausing at the door.  “I’m around if you want to talk or whatever, I guess.”

An older high schooler whistled as she left.  She rolled her eyes.  Whistles were better than the looks she’d gotten back in the classroom.

“Avery, Verona,” she whispered.  She used her sight, and reached out, finding the ribbons that seemed clearest and most inclined to drift her way.  Would that work the same way calling Miss had?

The two girls emerged from the classroom.

Lucy looked down, ready to show them the paper, and found her hand empty.  She spun around, looking with the Sight, and found the paper, folded into a square, tucked into the slats of an unused locker.

“Don’t run away,” she told the paper, unfolding it again.  She showed the others, moving to stand beside them as she pulled her phone out.

“The Hungry Choir?” Avery asked, tapping the paper.

“Sending out feelers, found Gabe, who’s vulnerable, I guess,” Lucy said.  “As the stupid app just demonstrated.”

“It’s nice to have a distraction,” Verona said.  “How did you even see this?”

“I think I can see hurt and danger,” Lucy murmured.  She punched in the website address.

Verona tried next.  She was in the middle of typing when the bell rang, signaling the start of class.

“Blocked,” Verona said.  “So is this the Hungry Choir itself, or…?”

Lucy shook her head.  “Part of it.  Like an arm or a finger, or…”

“You can’t see the connections?” Avery asked.  “More than one arm or finger, here.”

“I see…  sashes, but that’s all.”

“Bands,” Avery said, once he was past.  She turned, craning her head, looking at windows, both inside classrooms and at the end of the hallway.  “I can see stretching through the school.  This paper is tied to four things in our school.  I think there might be others, faint, that extend outside our school, maybe outside of Kennet?”

The teacher stood in the doorway, whistling sharply to get their attention.  He motioned for them to get inside the classroom.

“Lunchtime,” Lucy said.  “We need to call and talk to Miss.  I don’t like all this bloody watercolor I’m seeing in Kennet, when there wasn’t much outside of it.”

“Bloody handprints for me.”

“Meaty things pressing against the inside of the plastic sheeting,” Verona added.  “Yeah.”

They made their way into the class, past their homeroom teacher.

“Between the bloodiness and the Choir, I get the feeling there’s more going on, like maybe not having a Carmine Beast is making things worse somehow,” Lucy whispered, as she took her seat.

“Do we really want to tackle more?” Avery asked.

“If it’s tied to the Carmine, we might have to,” Lucy whispered.

Between them, Verona had the paper, which she folded into a square.  She drew out a diagram with a surprisingly circular hand-drawn circle, setting up a group of blocks pointing inward, toward the folded-up paper.

The teacher was getting the class to quiet down.

Lucy leaned over, to whisper one last time before class started, “Miss might be the person to ask, because Gabe said the next stage of the Choir thing happens tomorrow night.  We might need to get involved, or people could get hurt.”