Pale: 1.8 - Verona

Verona

The lawnmower roared, loud enough that she couldn’t really listen to music.  She pushed, working it over the part of the lawn where there had once been a tree.  The stump had rotted away, but there was still a hump where it had been.  As the mower’s wheel rolled over it, the blades bit into the dirt, spitting it out the vent at the side.

The handle was broken and didn’t lower all the way, so it came up to Verona’s neck rather than her chest.  She had to lift and wrestle to get it past the tricky bit.

Which was a lot of wrestling when the mower weighed seventy pounds and she weighed eighty two.  Head down, arms up, using the full strength of her arms, midsection and legs to force the wheel up.

It rolled down that slight slope, the cord pulled, and the extension cord unplugged from the mower.

She was glad she was already using the Sight, because she would have sworn something was messing with her at that point.

Pulling off her sweater, wearing a sleeveless black tee beneath, she stalked her way over the lawn, which looked like spiders had gotten to it, matting it down in cobwebs.  Around the corner to where the extension cord had gotten caught at the short stone wall that bounded the garden, and tugged on the cord, pulling it over the wall instead of against the corner of it.

The Sight at least kept things interesting.  Most things were beneath a layer.  She was still working out what it meant, but for the time being, it was a really cool filter to cast over the world.  Like everything from the trees to her house to the garden were snakes that had shed their skin but not yet wriggled free of it.

The garden was moist, and that moisture had frozen over, a foggy, icy film that made it like a pool of darkness, just barely clouded over.  In that darkness, she could make out a thing that was like a rabbit, flayed, face pressed against the film of ice.

She bent down as she walked past it, reaching for it to tap the ice.  It pulled away, leaving only the moist dirt, so dark it could have been a hole.

Avery and Lucy had confirmed they had the same issue.  It was hard to interact with most things that they saw with the Sight, because it tended to go more normal as they got closer to it.

She plugged the end of the extension cord back into the mower, then pulled back on the part of the handle that started it up again.  Each patch of grass had to be gone over twice; forward, then back.  Three steps forward, two steps back.  There were patches and points in time when it seemed like the grass wouldn’t cut at all, even with two passes of the mower.

Twice, there were branches that had fallen from the neighbor’s tree that she had to pick up, each branch wreathed in pale, loose bark, the broken off ends red and ragged.  Two more times, she just ran over branches, letting the blades chew them up.

She fantasized about using the mower to cut a giant circle in the lawn.  Inside that circle, she could mow a triangle, and underline it.  Could she feed a giant fire rune with the power from the extension cord?  Did that work?

She supposed that at that point, there wasn’t much difference between that and cutting the end of the extension cord and using the frayed wire to start a fire.  But if she did the rune, wouldn’t there be a giant plume of fire?

She would love a giant plume of fire right now.

Her Sight revealed the bugs and small rodents that fled from the noise and chaos of the stupid frigging mower.  You don’t need to run, little guys.  This monster is slow.

Three steps forward, two steps back.

Across the street and halfway down the block, she could see Wallace from her class, out on the driveway with his parents.  It looked like he was bringing in groceries.  She tried not to look like she was looking at him, and tried to not look super lame while struggling with the mower.  She’d only just brought it from one corner of the lawn to the other.  One row out of…

She turned it around, and as she did, the extension cord was pulled back because it was connected to the handle.  It draped itself nicely at the edge of the unmowed grass she had been intending to cut.

Verona stopped, grabbed the cord, whipped it to get it to re-drape itself along the dark, spiderwebby lawn, re-plugged it in because the pulling had unplugged it again, and took a second to try and knot the extension cord around the handle, so it would stop pulling out of the shorter cord with the socket embedded in it.

She hoped Wallace wouldn’t wave or call out to her or anything.  At a distance, he was a smudge, with near-white hair, a dark jacket, and dark pants.  He’d see a smudge with sweat and grime probably visible at a distance, hair all messed up.

He looked at her, but then he grabbed the bags from the back, sticking his arms through bags so he was carrying at least four plastic bags on each arm.

She really hoped he wasn’t trying to impress her.  She really hoped he wasn’t the guy who had given her a like on the stupid app.  For that matter, she hoped Jeremy wasn’t either.  She never should have voted for either, but now that she had, one of them had voted for her and knew she’d voted for them and ugh.

It wasn’t that she didn’t think they were okay looking.  They were.  When class had been slow and a teacher was droning on, spending twenty minutes badly explaining something that was spelled out very simply, clearly, and succinctly in the textbook, she’d let her mind wander, and sometimes it had wandered in the direction of the boys.

Like, she kind of wished she could approach a boy and ask him straight-up if they’d kiss her, no strings attached, so it meant nothing.  When she imagined that, she sometimes thought of Jeremy or Wallace.

Well, George too.  If she had to pick a face she liked, she’d pick George, but a lot of girls liked George and that meant hassle, and hassle was the opposite of the point.  Killed the appeal a lot.

She kept pushing the mower.  Three steps forward, two steps back.  There were parts of the lawn that animals had gotten at, where the wheels got trapped, which meant the pushing was hard.

Wallace stepped back outside.  Again, she hoped he wouldn’t wave or do anything.  She watched as he got more groceries, while she pushed the mower.  Halfway through the second row of maybe sixteen rows.

The second trip was less bags, but they seemed heavier.  Again, he carried them all in one go.  Wallace’s mom touched Wallace’s head with a bit of tenderness as she passed him, then got a case of bottled water out of the back.  His mom didn’t carry much, but Verona knew she had some nerve problem and had a tough time with it.  Wallace had mentioned it in passing at this stupid home-ec thing they’d had to do before school, once.  That he was worried he’d get the same thing when he grew up.

She hadn’t known what to say, but Jeremy had said some reassuring things, and she’d been kind of impressed that he hadn’t been stunned into silence like she had.  That this dorky guy who’d gotten paint on Katie’s clothes in grade one could actually be cool.  That Wallace could sound like he cared about his mom, and talk about her like Lucy talked about her mom.  She’d put Wallace into a mental bucket back in grade two or so, back one time when he’d worn a short sleeved shirt under a sweater and the bottom of the short sleeved shirt had stuck out like a dress.  After that day in home ec, she’d had to adjust where they sat in her head.

Which was part of why her head went to them when she thought of things like asking them about kissing.  Or like… if she approached him or Jeremy, and offered to let him put his hand up her shirt, in exchange for him taking off his pants and letting her examine, poke at his bits a few times, and ask maybe fifty questions.  She’d even worked up a script of bases to cover, ground rules, and the questions she’d ask if she could.  Like how there’d be no strings attached.

But there would be.  She could imagine they’d say yes because guys were curious, too, right?  They’d probably be decent because they weren’t shitty people.  If it was just that probably, with a chance they’d blab about it to their guy friends, maybe she’d even go forward with it, just to fill in those blanks in her understanding about the other half of the human race.  But… no.

No, there was no way that she could trust them to make it a one time thing followed by them treating her exactly the same after.  They’d want to go on dates to go grab ice cream or something, or exchange things on Valentines day, or they’d want to sit and cuddle like Avery talked about wanting to do.

She couldn’t imagine many things more boring than that.  More obligations, more people nagging at her about things she should be doing.  Chocolates on certain days, anniversaries, and having to date every few days or feelings would be hurt.  And for what?  To build what?  The literal only adults she even kind of knew who weren’t alone, divorced, abusive, unhappy, or widowed were Avery’s parents, and she couldn’t be positive that they weren’t staying together because a divorce with five kids would be a nightmare.

Wallace stepped outside yet again.  She really hoped he wouldn’t wave.  That he wouldn’t walk over, and offer to help.  That would be awkward.  Nice, and very like him, but awkward.

He shut the back of the car.  To Verona’s sight, it shed a wave of ‘skin’ with the impact.  Then he went inside, closing the front door of the house after him.

She felt weirdly disappointed that he hadn’t come over.

The stupid app had confused things, made things awkward, and had everyone thinking about things in the worst, most boring ways.  It had hurt Lucy so badly, Verona knew that, and she had no idea what to say like she’d had no idea what to say when Wallace had said he might one day end up having to use a cane, or even sometimes a wheelchair, or he might go temporarily or permanently blind, or have seizures, because that was the sort of thing his mom faced.

Lucy’s hurt was different than that, but it was still real.  Avery’s hurt was closer to Wallace’s.  More of a dread.  It sucked and Verona didn’t know what to say and it was all because of that stupid app.  That stupid-

The lawnmower reached the other side of the awkward bit of lawn where the stump had been, and got stuck again.

She wrestled with the mower’s handle, full-bodied fighting it for a good ten seconds to get it over and past the hump.  It reached the other side, then rolled over and down from the side of the lawn to the too-dark driveway, where it stirred the film like plastic sheeting that covered the drive.

-Stupid frigging fucking piece of technology!

She was sweaty, the dust and grass kicked up by the mower was sticking to the sweat, and her hair was probably sticking up in five places.  She turned the mower around, and the act of turning it around pulled on the extension cord, pulling it into the mower’s path.

She gave serious consideration to running over the extension cord.  She would have to figure out what to say that wasn’t technically a lie, but… nah.  There was a chance she’d electrocute herself and she didn’t want to die.

Getting the mower up the slight slope at the edge of the lawn took some effort, and she had to do it three times to get the grass mowed near the hump.

The rest of the lawn wasn’t quite as bad as the first part.  The occasional branch.  The occasional hole where an animal had made its burrow and nature had partially reclaimed the hole.  She could see bones and the meaty faces within the holes, peering up as she passed by.

“Sorry little spirits or whatever,” she murmured, as she pushed the mower.  “Sorta gotta do this.”

It took fifteen runs of the lawnmower, rather than sixteen, but toward the end she was eager enough to be done that she was kind of bullshitting her way through it.  The gravely run-off from the road kind of meant there wasn’t much grass at the end of the lawn, anyway.  Each run had been three steps forward, two step back, in that effort to chop down those tufts that seemed to stubbornly stick up after.

She pushed the mower into the garage, then gathered up the extension cord, now muddy with grass clinging to it.

Job done.  She surveyed it, looked back at the mower, looked back at the lawn, and then marched into the house.

She exited the house, feather in hand, and stalked her way into the garage before flicking on the light.  She sat on her heels, and looked at the mower, wiping away the grass that had gotten stuck to the label on front.  She had to squint and strain her eyes a bit to make out the words through the film.  That was something she’d have to get used to, see if she could train in her Self and Sight.

She pressed the pen to the edge of the word, and saw the first letter slip in, as if drunk by the pen.  Then another…

She pulled back, then tapped the pen.  Each tap brought the letters out, putting them back where they should be.

With a leftwards stroke, she could drink up a whole word at once.  With a rightward stroke, she could put it down.

With her Sight, it became apparent that doing this tended to tangle up the fine threads that seemed to connect everything, like the threads were attached to the letters and by moving the letters around, they got stuck to her.

She considered that for a moment.

Probably, she guessed, there was something like the Others had talked about at the Awakening ritual.  Responsibility.

If she caused trouble this way, it might tie back to her.  If she messed with practices, then she probably owned that mess.

That was her best guess, anyway.

She would have to experiment more.  And in the pursuit of experimentation…

Verona fiddled for a minute, the point of the feather pen scraping against plastic.

“I’m going to give you a name,” she murmured.  “So this doesn’t qualify as a lie…”

She stood up and stood back, arms folded, being careful not to touch her arm with the point of the quill.  There were still three letters in it, and she wasn’t sure if it would get applied as a tattoo.

She pushed the lawnmower into the corner, newly christened ‘WARMED COW SHIT’, disposed of the three spare letters on the label for the weed whacker, and closed the garage up.

If her dad asked, she’d say she changed the label to match the name she’d given it.  Which was true.  More likely, he’d never look and it would eventually break down enough to go into the trash.

It still made her feel better.

She stepped back inside, and rinsed off, tossing her clothes into the laundry hamper.  The water in the shower was visually interesting, like it all had a super-thin sheet of foggy ice over it, but it wasn’t that cold.  The dust on the towel seemed to be magnified, stretched out into cobwebs, and the back wall of her closet had more film, barely-visible figures pressing against the film, red and wet.

She reached for one, and it pulled away violently enough that the film sucked back against the hard wall behind it, clinging to the dark wood grain.  Her hand dropped down, landing on an old shirt.

She didn’t have many sweaters or anything, so she grabbed a hooded sweater with a black hood and a grey body from last year.  It had a corset-like lace at the ‘v’ of the collar, with leather thong threaded through, dangling down.  The fit was annoyingly clingy to her body, but it was the best option for something long-sleeved that wasn’t dirty.  She stuck her feather up the sleeve, post-its in the front pocket, and a pen in the pants pocket of her other jeans.

The house felt less confining, with the Sight giving everything a creepy filter over top of it.  She made her way down to the kitchen, idly wondering if the other girls felt as comfortable with it as she felt with hers.  Avery had been using hers a lot.  Was it always like that?

She grabbed a handful of chocolate chips from the cabinet with the stuff for baking, and was scrounging for more things to snack on when her dad came in.  She grabbed more chocolate chips, and turned around to look.

“When you’re doing the lawn, you need to bring the mower across horizontally and vertically, or you need to layer the strips so the part that’s under the wheel for one pass is directly under the mower for the next,” he said, as he pulled off his shoes.

She chewed on chocolate chips.

“Have you done the backyard?”

She shook her head, still chewing.

She gave him something between a shrug and a nod.

He groaned, long and loud, as he entered the kitchen, leaned against the counter next to her, and lifted up one foot to rub at it.

When he was done, he put out a hand.

She hesitated, then held out hers, releasing her grip on the fistful of chips just enough to deposit a single chocolate chip into his palm.

“I did buy those you know,” he said.  “With my money, from one of my two jobs.”

She gave him a second chocolate chip, then dumped the rest into her mouth.  The points of the chips jabbed at her gums and the roof of her mouth, but she would’ve done it again.

He groaned as he stood up straight, no longer leaning against the counter, leaned past her, and grabbed the bag of chips.  He was tall enough and big enough around the middle that she was almost crushed against the counter by him.  She ducked her head under his arm and crossed to the other corner of the kitchen.  She settled in there, leaning against the broom closet.

“You look so much like your mother sometimes,” he said.  “She used to be so beautiful.”

“I used to be thin, if you’d believe it.  I had muscles.”

“That’s not a new top, is it?”

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked, smiling like he was being funny.

She finished chewing, her hand held out in front of her, still covered in traces of melted chocolate.  “No.  It’s old, from last year.  I didn’t have anything else.”

“Do you need new clothes?”

She considered for a moment.  Her pants had been digging into her lower stomach while she was sitting in class.

“Guess I might,” she said.  “Can I order them online?”

“You don’t want to go shopping, go to a fitting room?”

“You can send stuff back.  There’s more options.  Can I have your credit card?  You can say how much I can spend.”

“Can you wait another week?  Your mother’s taking her time with her child support payment, and our household here is a few thousand dollars in debt after paying for the roof last fall.”

“And I’ll put the credit card information in,” he said, with an expression like he was being funny or trying to catch her in a bit of mischief.

“Okay.”  She licked at her hand, to get the traces of chocolate.

“How are you doing today?” he asked.

Her eyebrows went up.  “Okay.”

“Just okay?  Can I get more than one word out of you?”

“Most of the day was good, interesting.  Classes were fine.  Friends are okay, I think.  Avery did great at basketball during gym.  Mr. Lai’s class got twice as bearable ever since we found out he was a secret lumberjack-carpenter, and Ms. Hardy’s class is fun because a student I know has a crush on her, and it’s funny.”

“I’m still paying attention.  It’s just easier if there’s… more going on, I guess?  Sometimes.  There’s this app thing going around at school.  Popularity thing, kind of.  A lot of kids were pretty unhappy about it.  Lucy and Avery were among them.  Really sucked, and distracting in a bad way.”

Man, Lucy would be upset if she heard Verona talking about the app.

“Ah, that�s too bad.  At my work, there’s a clique of younger workers… you remember what I told you about the batch of interns that we brought in last year?”

“I remember.”  Yep.  Didn’t matter that I brought the app up.

“They were brought on for full-time positions, and they’ve formed a bit of a clique within the office.  Luc loves them, he says they bring energy to the office, but I really think they bring in bitterness.  They have people they like and they don’t like, and it’s a popularity thing of its own.  They’re passive aggressive, they shut people out, me included, and they’ll make these sniping little comments… like they’re teenage girls and not twenty five year old men, you know?”

“Uh, well, in our case, we’re actually teenage girls.”

“Trust me, it’s worse when it’s grown adults acting like children.  The way they’ll leave the room when I enter, or they’ll make sure to give each other credit, but if I take four hours out of my day to write up a TARPAC report for them and help them out, I get nothing?  They’re pushing for a move to a new database format, because they learned it in school, nevermind that the existing staff have learned the ins and outs of MARCALT.  Small kinds of sabotage like that.”

“It’s a grind, going in every day.  Dealing with them.  Distracting, like you said.  I’m so tired.”

Verona paused, itching to say something sarcastic.  She shifted mental gears, wondered for a second what it’d be like in his shoes.

“Gee, I’m wondering what that’s like,” she said.  “Going in every day.”

“I’ve been in school,” he told her.  “And I’ve worked.  This is worse.  You don’t have to wonder, I can tell you exactly how.”

“It’s fine.  I can guess.”

“It’s exhausting.  You’ve got friends waiting for you at school.  I’ve got nothing.  Benjamin quit.  Julia’s dealing with her husband’s issues.  I’ve told you about those?”

“Yeah.  Sucks.  Um…”  She flailed mentally.  “I’m changing the topic, but uh, about dinner…”

“Dinner, okay,” he said.  He approached the fridge, which she was next to.  “Excuse me.”

She took two steps to the side.  He opened the fridge and freezer, the fridge door swinging into the space she’d been occupying.

“Chicken Kiev,” he said.  He held out a box of pre-frozen chicken kiev meals.  He grabbed a bag of frozen broccoli and a bag of frozen french fries.  “Sides.  Can you preheat the oven?  Set it to four hundred?”

I could go to Lucy’s, she thought, deliberately.

“I was just thinking about going to Lucy’s, actually.”

He put the things back in the freezer.  There was a pause where he stood in the doorway, his back to her.

“Is it a problem?” she asked.

“Are you being a nuisance, going over there all the time?”

“I hope not.  Can I go?”

“Yeah, go,” he said, curt.  The freezer door shut with more force than necessary.  In the gloom of her Sight, the door shed some skin, and faces with empty eye sockets retreated into the gloom beneath the freezer.  He walked out of the room, heading for upstairs.

“Are you sure?” she asked.  “You seem mad.”

“I wanted to have an actual conversation, Verona.  There are still things that need doing around the house.  But go.  It’s fine.  I won’t get in the way of your friendships.”

“We have lots of chances to talk the rest of the time, like on the way to school,” she called out.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he answered, barely audible.

He was gone, out of earshot.

She heard his bedroom door close.

The problem with having an overactive imagination was that she could immediately think of five things that were responsible for his sudden change in mood.  That he was sick, that he might lose his job, that she’d done or said something earlier, that she’d forgotten an event.  When was Father’s day?  Was that May or June?

If he was in a mood now, what happened if she left?  Would he be madder?  Or more hurt, if something was wrong and he’d been wanting to work his way to communicating it?

She chewed on her lip for a few seconds, then lurched into motion, grabbing the chocolate chip bag, tying it in a knot to seal it, and putting it away.

Maybe a year ago, she would have stewed for another twenty minutes, changed her plans to go hang with Lucy, and gone to mow the back lawn.  Trying to make him happy.  In the now, she just got her bag together, got her phone, and dialed Lucy on the way out the door, before he could emerge from his room.

None of this was anything new.  Not predictable.  Never.  But not new, either.

If she didn’t go to his room and knock to ask what was wrong, he’d emerge and tell her.  And she didn’t care.

No, that would be a lie.  She didn’t want to care.  Caring at this point was an involuntary reflex.

She had to think of him like an Other, with rules and habits she could process and work around.  Leaving now meant not falling into the trap.

She hit the ‘call’ button on her phone.

Lucy answered.  “Hey.”

“Can I come over?  My dad’s being lame again.”

“For sure.  Fair warning though, I’ll be cooking dinner.”

“Don’t say that until you taste it.”

“Haha.  See you in a little while.”

The roads were black, not grey, and the shadowy recesses and ditches off to either side of the road had more of the bloody things.  Houses were similar, with red messes against the windows.

As Verona got to Lucy’s house, she saw Lucy’s mom wearing her scrubs, loading stuff into the car.  She skipped ahead, grabbing the boxes sitting by the car, and handing them up for Lucy’s mom to put in the car.

“Thank you.  You’re a sweetheart.”

“Is it okay if I stay for dinner, Jas?”

“Anytime, Verona.  Can you do me a favor?”

“Give Lucy some extra love?  She seems low, and she wouldn’t tell me why.”

Verona swallowed, then nodded again.

“Thank you.  I don’t suppose I could ask if you know why?”

Verona looked up toward the house and the window where Lucy’s room would be.  Covered in film like soap scum.

“Don’t tell her I told you, I’m only really saying because I don’t want you to think it’s her fault or anything…”

Verona paused, trailing off.

Seeing Jasmine nod, she said, “…she said she didn’t sleep well.  Then, first thing at school this morning, there was this popularity contest type thing, um, by the students, teachers don’t know.  Parents aren’t supposed to know.”

She said that last bit in a pointed way.

Jasmine folded her arms, then nodded.

“She deserves way better than what she got,” Verona said.

She could see the hurt in Jasmine’s eyes, like it was Jasmine who’d been the one to get rock bottom results, and not her daughter.

Verona braced herself, getting her mental footing.  A pang of regret for saying anything hit her.

“Thank you for telling me,” Jasmine said.

Verona relaxed a bit.  She found her breath and the words, adding, “I’m surprised she didn’t blow her top at anyone.”

“She does that sometimes.”

“She was working it out in gym class, playing by the rules, which I thought was kind of cool, except she was on the other team and her team was beating mine.”

Eyes still sad, Jasmine did smile.

“Mr. Bader was picking on her in particular.  I really thought she’d lose it, but she didn’t.”

“Is that what happened?  I got an email from Mr. Bader.  I haven’t had a chance to answer, and she didn’t explain when I asked.”

“I’m glad I told you then,” Verona said, quiet.

Jasmine approached, and put a hand on Verona’s shoulder.  With a slight pull of Verona towards her, she asked, “Can I?”

Verona nodded, and accepted the hug that followed.  Warm and comfortable, even with the plastic nametag Jasmine was wearing jabbing at her.

“Thank you for being a good friend to Lucy,” Lucy’s mom said.

“It’s hard, being a parent, and having your kids reach that age when they no longer reach out to you when they’re hurting.  Booker was kind enough to wait until he was fifteen or sixteen before he did it.  It breaks my heart that Lucy started doing it at ten.”

“I’m so glad she has you.  Be kind to her.  And if there’s anything you need, with your dad or anything else…”

“Thank you, Jasmine.”

Lucy’s mom broke the hug.  She brushed the side of Verona’s face with her hand.  “Don’t get into too much trouble.”

“If we do get into trouble, I’ll have her back.”

“Good.  And I’m running late, now.”

“Have fun,” Verona said, as she jogged over to the steps, with plants shrouded in something halfway between cobwebs and plastic wrap.  She gave Lucy’s mom a look over her shoulder, and saw an eye roll.

Yeah.  Work wasn’t fun.

She used the key Lucy’s mom had given her years ago to let herself in.

Lucy was in her room, sitting on her bed with her back to her bookshelf, legs out in front of her.  She had a pile of books and random things strewn out in front of her, along with notebooks.  She flinched as Verona knocked, covering something up, then relaxed.

“Just me,” Verona said.

She walked over to Lucy, and found a position where she could sit on the edge of the bed and hug her friend from behind.

“Your mom said to be extra nice to you.  She knows you’re in a funk.”

“Remember back when we were kids, and my parents had divorced, and we were so convinced our parents should date and marry and we could be sisters?” Verona asked.

“We were such morons,” Verona said.  “What were we thinking?”

“That it’d be cool to be sisters.”

“We’d drive each other crazy if we lived in the same house.”

“Probably.  But sisters do that.  Look at Avery and her sisters.”

“Mm, yeah,” Verona said.  She wiggled forward, and Lucy leaned forward to provide more wiggle room. Verona found a more comfortable seat behind Lucy, and looked over Lucy’s shoulder at what Lucy was doing.

“Want to see?” Lucy asked.  She had the ring and the hot lead.

“I really want to see.”

Lucy slipped on the ring, and used her thumb to hold the lead so it rested at the base of her fingers, touching the ring.

She touched a dictionary, swiping her hand to one side.  The papers scattered, folding and consolidated into a sword shape.

“That is the coolest!” Verona squeezed her friend extra tight, rocking from side to side.

Lucy speared a toy she’d placed at the edge of the bed.  The point of the rapier-like blade sank in with no resistance.

She made a motion like she was tossing the sword upward, and the papers scattered, unfolding, and landed in order, the cover landing last.  Dictionary reassembled.

Lucy repeated the process, this time with a wooden box.  The wooden parts came apart, folded, reshaped, and settled around her hand, like a pair of brass knuckles, but heavier, larger, and made of ornate wood.  A space was left out for the ring.

Cupping her hand over a can of soda, Lucy moved it slowly from one end to the other, the other hand holding the can, grip rearranging as the shape changed.

When she moved the hand with the ring away, her other hand held a small handgun in gleaming aluminum, with the same color scheme as the off-brand soda can.

“Oh man,” Verona breathed.

“Can only do guns with a few things, I think.  I haven’t had the guts to pull the trigger,” Lucy admitted.

Verona reached around Lucy, doing her best to hold Lucy’s hand and arm, joining her strength to her friend’s.  “What are we trying to shoot?”

“I don’t even know.  See the trash can by my desk?”

Verona saw it.  A metal trash can with some papers in it.

They aimed, pointing the weapon.  Lucy pulled at the trigger by the smallest increments, twisting her face away more and more as the pull increased.  Verona could feel the tension in her arm.

The shot was deafening, the can practically exploding as it seemed to rip in half, flipping end over end.  The base of the wall on the far side cracked.

“Oh man, oh, crap, let go of me, let go-!”

Worried her friend was hurt, Verona let go, letting Lucy stand.  Lucy tossed the gun away, toward the ruins of the can, and Verona had a glimpse of the weapon foaming violently, dripping soda onto Lucy’s legs and arm, and onto the film-covered bed and cobwebby floor.

The moment the weapon left Lucy’s hand, it became a can again, mostly empty.

“I’ll get a towel,” Verona said.  She’d stayed over enough times to know where the cupboard with the towels was.  She tossed Lucy a dry towel, then took another to the bathroom, wetting it under the tap.

“I think that was one shot,” Lucy said.  “Spent everything.  Might be worth keeping in mind.”

“I didn’t think it’d be a legit gun!  I thought it’d fire a BB or the tab of the can or something!”

“I thought it’d need to be loaded with real ammo,” Lucy said, eyes wide.  She took the wet towel and wiped her arm and legs.  “Thank you.”

Verona eyed the towel.  “Can I have the ring and hot lead?”

Lucy pulled off the ring, handing it over.  Verona winced as she took the lead, almost dropping it.

Verona went to her bag, pulled out her cape, and put it on, draping it over her shoulders.  She slipped on the ring.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asked.

Verona gripped one part of her cloak in one hand, then held it close to herself.  She took the lead and held it as Lucy had, then ran the ring from her shoulder, all down her arm, to her hand.  She could feel it change against her skin.

She let go of the cloak, then moved her arm, reaching out.

The cloak reached out, roughly matching her arm.  The end of it formed into a claw shape, matching the positioning of her hand.  She experimented, swiping at the air, using a cloth arm that ended in a claw.  It moved violently enough that it made the whooshing noise like when she swung a tennis racket or baseball bat.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that, right?” Lucy asked.

“What?  Ridiculous why?” Verona asked.  She pulled off the ring.  She felt her cloak flutter as it returned to normal, dropping down to hang normally.

“The lead isn’t as painful to hold as it was, I think,” Verona noted.  She moved it around her palm.

“It’s cooling down as I use it more.  It heated up again when I spent thirty minutes or so talking to my mom.  I think it might have a capacity that recharges over time.”

“We shouldn’t waste it then.  We’ll need it for tomorrow night.”

“There’s other stuff we could prep,” Verona said.  “Should we call Avery over?  Would your mom mind?”

“Nah,” Lucy said.  She picked up her phone, dialing.

Verona found the metal box they’d been keeping the hot lead in, almost lost in the rumpled sheets on Lucy’s bed.

“Avery!  Want to come over?  We’re experimenting and stuff.”

There was a pause.  Verona perked her ears, trying to hear.  When she couldn’t, she drew close.

“She’s sitting down to dinner, she doesn’t think she can get away,” Lucy said.

“Avery,” Verona said.  “Put it on speakerphone?”

“Why?” Avery’s voice came through.

“I’m the only one in my room right now.”

“Then go to where your family is, and put it on speakerphone,” Lucy said.

There was rummaging, then footsteps.

“Entering the kitchen… now.”

“Avery!  Come over!” Verona called out.  “We want you here!  We miss you!”

“You’re so cool!” Lucy added her voice to Verona’s.  “It’s just not as great without you here!”

“We’re doing such neat things!  You’re really missing out!”

“Lucy’s going to cook dinner, and I want you to help!  It might be terrible, but you won’t have to watch that awful singing show!”

“We’ll watch what you want to watch!”

“Succumb to the peer pressure!”

“Guys,” Avery said.  “Okay.”

There were voices in the background.  Someone sounded like they were laughing.

“Is that a yes, you’re coming over?”

Verona smiled, seeing her friend flushed and smiling, the burdens of the day alleviated.

Verona let herself into the house.

Time to face the music? she thought.

They’d spent the evening experimenting with runes and the pen, which was so far proving to be more of a novelty than a practical tool.  They’d had to stop when Lucy’s mom had come back, at which point they’d watched a movie, the three of them on the couch with a blanket over them, Lucy’s mom in the armchair.  The movie had been Avery’s choice.

Verona locked the front door, shut off the porch light, and went upstairs.

She walked to the end of the hall.  Her Sight colored everything, with film, with deeper darknesses, with indecipherable fleshy bits pressing against the film that lined the inside of the air vent.

She knocked on her dad’s door.  There was a sound from within.

“I’m tired, Verona,” he said.  “It’s late.  Go to bed.”

“Can you get yourself to school in the morning?”

“Mrs. Ellingson might be able to pick me up.  Why?  You can’t drive me?”

“I had a hard time falling sleep, I was just falling asleep, and then you woke me up.  I’m going to sleep in a bit.  I have my part time job tomorrow night.”

“Alright,” she said.  “I’m busy tomorrow night too.”

She headed into her room, staying quiet, setting her bag down on her computer chair.

She got ready for bed, then lay down.

The good feeling of the night at Lucy’s had been replaced by something heavier.

“That would be a stabilizing form,” Edith said.

Verona sketched and scribbled madly to try to keep up with what Edith was explaining.  She’d write something tidier later.

“Stabilizing like…?” Avery asked.

“Imagine the fins on the tail of an airplane.  Training wheels on a bike.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  She began to write on the shoes she’d brought.  A battered pair of white, low-top sneakers.

“We’ve made good use of the earth and air runes.  We’ve used fire for the campfire and experimented with emergency lights,” Verona said.  “What about water?  Is it useful?”

“Not all runes are created equal.”

“But if air makes stuff lighter and earth makes it heavier, fire makes it hotter…  Water does what?  Can it make it more fluid?  Flexible?”

“She doesn’t know,” Lucy said.

“I could make assumptions,” Edith said, “But I wouldn’t want to lie.  It’s not my comfort zone.”

“Because you’re a candle spirit and water isn’t your jam,” Verona said.  “Got it.  Sorry if that line of questions was offensive.”

“No.  Not offensive,” Edith said.

Avery turned around, showing Edith her shoe.

“Probably.  But for right now, you should try getting a feel for it.”

Avery nodded, and kicked off her shoes before pulling on the sneakers she’d written all over.  She began to lace them up.

“Is there a rune for light or for darkness?” Verona asked.  “I did a thing with a fire rune when we went to John’s house, it didn’t work so well.”

“I could show you darkness,” Matthew said.  He was barbecuing.  They were in his and Edith’s backyard.

“What did you do for the fire rune?” Edith asked.

“Um,” Verona said, looking between them.

“Go to Edith first,” Matthew said.

“I want to know the runes and I want Edith’s breakdown,” Verona said, eyes wide.  She looked between them, then picked up her notebook.  “Can you draw the runes, Matthew?”

She handed him her notebook and pen, then went to Edith, pulling out her post-its and pen.

“So prepared,” Avery said.

“We have to be,” Verona said.  “It’s tonight.”

“I was going to go home to grab stuff before it started.”

“Me too,” Verona admitted.  “But I like having the stuff on me.”

“I’m keeping the ring with me,” Lucy said.

Avery, all laced up, very carefully set her feet down.  She stood, then dropped into a squat, her arms out to the side for balance.  She tapped her heels together twice.

Everyone present watched, Matthew pausing in his scribbling.

Avery jumped, wind stirring and kicking up cobwebs and dust all around her feet.  She cleared a good six feet, flailed her arms around momentarily, and then landed in a crouch.

“Ow,” Avery said.  “Okay.  The air rune doesn’t soften landings much.”

“That’s cool though,” Lucy said.  “You’re not going to break your face open or snap your leg when you accidentally launch yourself?”

“Air spirits are playful and capricious,” Edith said.  “They change temperaments easily.  Giving them power helps mollify them, but be careful.”

“Alright.  This is cool though.”

“Super cool,” Verona said.

“Even with the ability to draw on the assembly of Kennet Others for power, you’ll want to be careful with how often you use that.”

“Save it for things that matter?” Lucy asked.

“It might be better to use it for things that don’t matter,” Edith said.  “They’re not above pranks, and you don’t want to fall awkwardly at a key moment.”

Avery nodded, expression serious.

Matthew had finished writing the runes.  Verona took stock of it, then immediately copied one over to her cloak.

Verona got some more notes from Edith, but as Edith went on in her explanations, she got further from the stuff that was practical for tonight.

“Um, this is really helpful,” Verona said.

“I’m glad,” Edith said.  “I really think there’s no point in arming yourself against the Choir.”

“They’re that strong?” Lucy asked.

“You’re better off standing back and watching.  Do nothing except watch.  If you’re to interfere at all, you should understand it in full, first.”

“It’s helpful, still,” Verona said.  “But I’m thinking if I’m going to swing by my place, I should do it sooner than later.  If I time it right, my dad will be at his part time job.”

“Makes sense,” Lucy said.  “I never thought you’d walk away from lessons in magic.”

“We’ll rendezvous?” Verona asked.

“Can we chat for a minute before you go?” Lucy asked.

Lucy followed Verona around the exterior of Matthew’s house, casting a look backward toward Avery, who was experimenting with the shoes.

When they were at the garage end of the driveway, Lucy stopped.

“I’m worried,” Lucy said, quiet.

“After all the people who’ve been telling us to be careful, it’s good to be worried.”

“I’m worried about you.”

Verona smiled.  “Don’t be.”

“When John had the knife to your face… you didn’t seem like you cared.  You’ve been different and I can’t put my finger on why.”

“Don’t worry.  Really.  I’m more worried about you.  I know you’ve been down, your temper gets up-”

“Don’t distract,” Lucy said.  Her expression was stern, and in Verona’s Sight, her eyes were red where they should be white, pink where the irises would normally be a hazel color.  Loose strands of pink hair that had come free of the ponytail shifted in the light breeze.

“I’m not trying to.”

“I believe you.  I still think you’re doing it.”

“Be safe.  If you get hurt because you’re not taking this seriously enough, I’m going to be so freaking mad at you.”

“I’m taking this more seriously than any of us three,” Verona said.

“Ronnie, I don’t want to call you a liar, but-”

“I am!” Verona said, intense now.

There was a rustling.  Avery had air-leaped over to a point at the side of the house where she could listen in and see.

“Charles had his life ruined by this stuff.  You know how we avoid that?  We learn it.  We don’t forget ourselves in the heat of the moment, which is something you might do.  You don’t forget key stuff at key moments, like Avery almost did the day we did the awakening.  I love you guys.  I really honestly do.  You’re great.  But I want to learn and to master this stuff because that’s how we stay on top of it.  It’s how we’re ready when the important stuff happens.”

Lucy’s hand was on Verona’s shoulder, the grip tight.

“I love you too, Ronnie.  If something happens to you, I don’t know how I’ll deal.”

“I do.  You’ll deal badly.  Which is why I’m not going to put you in that situation if I can help it, okay?”

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Lucy said.  She released Verona.

“Fingers crossed I don’t have to deal with my dad.”

“You could draw something,” Avery suggested, from the background.

She hurried off.  Back to her house.

It wasn’t a short trip, and it was a little slower than it might have been, as she opened her notebook, where Matthew had written down the runes.

She checked every page, looking over it with the Sight, searching for markings, just to be sure.

Nothing except the two things he’d written down.

She jogged the last bit of the way to her house, to make sure she had time.

She winced, seeing her dad’s car in the driveway.

She let herself in, quiet.

The Hungry Choir was supposed to come tonight.

She pulled off the extra stuff, set her bag down by the door, and made her way upstairs, avoiding the middle of the stairs, so they wouldn’t creak.

There were three thumps on the wall, heavy.

Her dad’s way of calling her when he didn’t want to raise his voice or get out of bed.  Supposedly because his migraines made the noise of shouting that bad.  She wasn’t sure how banging was any better.

Well, seemed he didn’t have a migraine.

She opened his door.  He was lying in bed, propped up by pillows.

“You didn’t mow the lawn,” her father said.

“Got busy,” she said.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Verona.  I need you to pull your weight.”

“You don’t try.  That’s the problem,” he said.  “Over and over again.  Your teachers say you put in the barest possible effort to get a passing grade.  You’re not dumb, but you seem to put all of your brains to figuring out ways to get out of things, or game the system, or make life as hard as possible on people like me and your teachers, who are just trying to equip you for the real world.”

“It’s just us, Verona.  Your mother left, I’ve got work, I’ve got thirty six thousand dollars of debt from just the expenses of taking care of you and the house.  She doesn’t pay support when she should.  So I work the extra hours,” he said.  “Two jobs.”

“My coworkers hate me.  My boss resents me.  I get home and I’m too tired to do anything.  And then I have to fight you every step of the way.  How many times have I asked you to do the lawn?”

“A lot, Verona.  The dishes in the sink are dirty, the laundry’s piling up- you’re wearing clothes you wore when you were ten, when you could put a load on.”

“I did put a load on.”

“Don’t argue.  Please.  I can’t do it.  I can’t put up with it.  I-”

In the light of his television, she could see the moisture in his eyes.  The tears started flowing.

“I’m so alone, Verona.  I’m trying so hard and I have nothing to show for it.  No friends, no wife- your mother gave me an STD from someone she cheated on me with and then left.  I can’t convey how alone I am.”

She remained silent, standing in the doorway.

Her father sat there on his bed, sobbing.

“Do you want to leave?  Move to Thunder Bay?” he asked, his voice tremulous.

“Do you?  Answer me!”

“Because you don’t seem to want to be here.  You don’t seem to act like you want me as a dad.  If you left to go to your mom’s right now, what do you think would happen?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I offered her dual custody and she didn’t take it.  She asked for holidays.”

“You’ve said,” Verona said, quiet.

“She hurt me so badly, leaving like she did.  She hurt us,” he said.  He hiccuped a sob.

Verona stood there, watching her dad.

She’d had a reason for not wanting to use the connection blocker.  There was the risk of the rebound, and she’d known from her father’s initial bout of silent treatment the day before that the rebound was already coming.

This… this wasn’t unusual.  This was closer to normal than not.

“Do not walk out on me.  Don’t do what she did,” he said.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I want you to listen,” he said.

I have listened, she thought.  If I do all my chores, if I do everything, if I listen to you when you want to vent… we still do this two or three times a week.

If I don’t, it’s more like five times.  And I’d rather put up with this a couple more times a week and put off having to mow the lawn with Warmed Cow Shit.

“I want you to care.”

But this had been a thing for a couple years now.  Growing in intensity if anything.

She stood in the doorway and she couldn’t bring herself to care anymore.  The silent treatments, the whiplash of the mood changes sometimes, or the passive aggressive stuff, sometimes it got through her defenses and got to her.  But this?

This was something she was used to, to the point that she wondered if hardening her heart to an outpouring of emotion like this was what made someone a sociopath… because she cared that little.

She just felt a bit of revulsion, seeing her father grab a tissue to wipe at his snotty nose.

She stared at him, and after two or three minutes, he met her eyes.  He might have even seen that revulsion before she cleared it off her face.

“Go,” he said.  “Leave me, then.”

She turned and left.  She had permission.

She went to her room, getting the rest of her stuff, including a change of clothes, to something more uniformly dark.

At her desk, she ripped off a piece of paper.

On that paper, she wrote some stuff down.  Because tonight was the Hungry Choir.

And despite promises to Lucy, there was a chance something might happen to her.

With everything gathered up, she opened her front door.

She closed the door behind her and jogged down the stairs.

She walked to the end of the driveway.

If she listened, really listened, could she hear the singing?

It was there, but she couldn’t place it.

“Thanks,” she said, not looking for Miss or trying to spot the partially hidden woman before she started walking.  “Sorry, I can’t remember if you said to only call you if we needed you.  I had a question.”

“I’m at your disposal.”

“The day you told us about the practice,” Verona said.  “Talked about awakening… do you remember that?”

“I do.  Very clearly.”

“You said there were risks.  That stuff could happen if we did it wrong.  That we could die or worse.”

“That remains true,” Miss said.  The woman walked beside Verona, at an angle where she could barely see her.  There were no obstructing objects except Verona’s own hair.

“You said that, if we pushed too hard or crossed certain lines, we might lose our humanity.”

“And that’s what sort of happened with Avery?  Her eye getting stuck?”

Verona looked out over Kennet.  The singing was growing in intensity.

“I heard that and I knew.  I don’t want to be human anymore.”

“Lucy… she made a deal, that you wouldn’t stop us from getting to a good old age, having a full life.”

“That does interfere with your wants.”

“Is there a loophole?  Is there a way past it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Can I find my own way past it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Okay.  If I could, would you stop me?”

She drew in a deep breath, blinked some moisture out of her eyes, and then sprinted, chasing the strings that tied her to Lucy and Avery.

The Hungry Choir sang and the singing reached out over Kennet.