"How are things going at school?" Dad asks after minutes of silence only broken by chewing noises over a breakfast table that is unpractically bigger than what we used to have.
I…
I look at him.
He's trying to smile, white teeth gleaming like the tiles beneath the cupboard behind him, as he makes an effort to seem… approachable? I think?
And a part of me wants to lash out. Another wants to tell him about yesterday. Another wants to desperately hide from him anything that could go back to the PRT.
And another…
"Well, you know, the murders at least are a bit more cultured than in Winslow," I say with a careless shrug before taking a sip of my orange juice.
Damn it, Taylor.
"Do they count as extra credit?" he shoots back, forcing a surprised snort out of me.
And he looks…
Happy. Relieved. There's a slow smile spreading on his lips at this very brief connection, this something that Audrey, Noah, and even Emma (the brunette, not the redhead—I need a blonde one to complete the set) could have achieved effortlessly.
He makes me feel guilty, which in turn makes me feel angry, which makes it [kinda] hard to keep the light mood going and not throw something in his face that will wipe the smile right off.
"I mean, if artistic, gruesome killings count as academic achievements? I sorely missed on the chance to improve my grades back in Brockton," I finally answer him.
The smile grows brittle but doesn't disappear entirely, so I guess I just achieved a happy medium that leaves neither my destructive nor constructive urges satisfied.
Great. Is this what being an adult feels like? Because I certainly could do with some Peter Panning, if that's the case.
I mean, fairies do tend to be vicious little monsters. Wonderful backup. I may even be able to control a swarm of them.
…
The internet must never learn of this.
"Well, I'm sure your grades will—" he starts to say.
"I'm sure my grades are the [least] of our concerns right now."
"Taylor, I—"
"No. [No]. You are with the PRT right as a parahuman serial killer decides to take vengeance on a town with a dark secret. Do you know who tends to hide dark secrets? [The police]. Or the mayor, or the PRT. You're a target, Dad, even if only by adjacency."
"You don't need to worry about me—"
I slam my fist on the table.
And looking straight into my father's green, wide, surprised eyes, I [glare].
"I think we both know how things go in this family when we stop worrying about one another."
He gapes at me, his mouth slack, lips trembling.
And I get up from the table, things I want to throw at him on the tip of my tongue, pushing up my throat, crawling behind my eyes.
So much. There's just so much I want to say.
And so, I don't say a single thing.
***
I walk to school, Dad still too meek to offer me a ride when he sees me go out the door with my backpack.
And I…
I want to crack a quip about the green army still ambushing me from every corner. About how unnatural it is for the air to be this devoid of the comforting smells of rotten wood, cars that should've passed on to a better life decades ago, and finely aged street urine.
I want to dive into myself and let the bitter snark flow out, a wall between me and the world. I want to complain about how unfairly attractive everyone in here is, about how the local flora outnumbers humans in a way I've never seen outside a barely remembered summer camp that feels more and more like something that should have included a machete-wielding psychopath with every passing day, about how each and every one of my new acquaintances is somehow more mentally disturbed than people who attended Winslow and were thus expected to have some kind of mental damage.
Heck, I even want to think about Noah and Greg meeting and the universe imploding.
… This feels like the kind of thing that was forbidden in PHO.
But, really, after this little mental workout? After wandering down this road with so few cars, so many houses with picket fences, and so many varied arthropods to traumatize people with?
OK, I was going to say that I didn't feel like snarking, but that's obviously untrue, and I only lie to myself when I can plausibly get away with it.
So, the actual truth is that I [do] feel like snarking, because that's a coping mechanism about as healthy as I can conceivably come up with as long as I'm not willing to go Carrie on the next Winslow alumni gathering. And, fun as it is to think about Sophia discovering what a botfly is, I'm kinda preoccupied with more urgent matters.
Such as the killer reaching out to me.
I suppress a shudder that has very little to do with the Sun being set on demonstrating just how useless a deodorant stick is in the face of Florida's climate, and… I think.
Or, well, I think I do. Which involves thinking, so I really hope I am thinking, in one way or another.
I think?
OK, that's been stretched for long enough. So, Taylor, take a deep breath of allegedly pure air and go over what you know, what you suspect, and your options without using the verb 'think.'
I know Audrey, Emma, and Noah are in on my secret, so that's an enforced circle of trust I don't have much of a say on belonging to, what with heroes being supposed to frown on murdering witnesses. Their other… friends may not be the right word. Their schoolmates are an iffier thing, but I did save Brooke's life, so I guess she may be positively predisposed toward me.
Wouldn't bet on it, though. I mean, the inference is based on humans being somewhat vulnerable to notions of fairness and moral debt, which experience has taught me is quite a stretch.
And there goes the bitterness. Really, I don't know what's happening to my naturally sunny disposition other than it refusing to come out due to the actual Sun having a non-competition clause in the land of skin cancer.
OK, back to contemplating the serial killer who has investigated my past and obviously knows what a trigger event is, but… He didn't allude to it. She? They were using a voice scrambler and showed just how easily they could set it to suit whatever they wanted, so… Yeah. It doesn't take a Thinker to realize their gender is as much of a mystery now as it was before the call.
Fantastic.
So, what did I actually learn? That they want some kind of recognition? That they want someone to understand them? That they want to send a message not only about their victims but about themselves?
And that they… They see themselves as someone who once was like a trapped—
…
Suddenly, and for some weird reason, I don't feel like following along this path of inquiry. How curious.
Also: oh, look, a distraction!
"Hi, Brooke," I say as I approach the blonde girl standing alone in the middle of the sidewalk, leaning against one of the many white fences that can be found along my path to school while staring at her phone and clearly going against that whole thing we all agreed on about her being a future target who needed to be under hot Latino guard at all times.
A terrible fate, I'm sure. Orwell tried to warn us all about a dark future where we all would be under permanent vigilance by fit men with just the right skin tone to highlight the shadowed lines between muscles and still shimmer with every highlight of a slightly ephebophilic Sun caressing sweaty, toned bodies.
"Broody!" she yells as she pushes herself off the fence.
And hugs me.
…
Look, Brooke, you can't use Noah and Audrey's pet name for me as if you just conveniently forgot my name, envelope me in sweet, tanned skin that I just now realize fits my description for Gustavo's indecently attractive body if in a way that's slightly more baffling for my newly discovered bipanicked tendencies than my already familiar attraction to the artist with a troubled past who may or not be a serial killer, and then expect me to react in any way other than by freezing while trying not to freak the fuck out. That's just not how things work, you know?
Also, that white crop top? Those hip-hugging jeans? That [jasmine perfume?] Are you [trying] to make me blush?
"Oh, wow, Emma was right," she comments as she pulls back just enough that her face is right in front of me.
I blink at her, then cock my head to the side in the universal gesture for 'I have questions, yet I find myself unable to verbalize them at this moment due to you being stupidly hot and your nipples stabbing right at me through a shirt that shouldn't be this thin unless you're trying very hard to get an unasked-for police escort.'
She snorts.
And ruffles my hair.
"Hey!"
"Oh, she speaks!"
"That was an interjection; it doesn't count!"
"That was a whole sentence; it [does]."
"Well, yes, but the point is that, when you made your first assertion, you were wrong."
Brooke blinks at me.
Then, for some unknown reason, she slowly drags her hand down her face.
"I suddenly understand why everybody is shipping you and Noah."
I blink at her.
"I don't like boats?" I finally tell her.
She groans.
"Don't… You don't know what shipping is?" she asks with more confusion than warranted.
"I have absolutely no clue. Also, 'shipping?' That thing my horrified brain is refusing to acknowledge it knew the meaning of once upon a time? It refers to fictional characters, not to real people, as much as Noah barely counts as human."
"I don't know if you're making it very hard for me to like you or quickly becoming my favorite person to rib."
"You're a stereotypically blonde, tanned, hot, popular girl, and I'm the outcast who comes in mid-term from out of state. We're fated to be bitter enemies and-slash-or get in bed together, but the last thing will only happen if I am secretly a vampire."
Oh my God.
What did I just say.
I blame Noah.
And Audrey.
Noah and Audrey. Both. At the same time. Because I'm bisexual now, so why not—
Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!
And they ship me with [Noah?!] What the actual Hell are these people on?! Even sunstroke has limits!
Hello, Lakewood? The Merchants called; they want your new supplier!
And Brooke! Stop. Giggling!
It does… [things] to your chest and mine by extension—
"Oh God, Emma was [definitely] right," she manages to say after getting her breath under control.
Mostly.
Let's just say, that whole chest-to-chest thing? It's an ongoing concern.
[Wear a bra, for fuck's sake—]
"Come on, Broody. We're gonna be late," she says.
And grabs my hand.
Then she turns around, rubbing her body all over me in the process, and pulls me toward the school. Something that, in a moment of madness, I briefly consider an escape toward a saner environment.
I'm about as ashamed of the notion as can be expected.
***
"You just [had] to do it," Emma says with what seems to be a mix between exasperation, annoyance, and resignation.
It's quite an impressive range, really. She has a future as a motivational speaker. Or, given the emotions involved, a teacher.
She at least has more experience handling the likes of Noah than most poor schmucks who would unwittingly go into the job expecting students to be sane.
"I mean… What kind of person do you think I am that I would allow my savior to go unthanked for so long?" Brooke says.
And I, still being dragged behind her, the three of us barely half a block away from the dreaded gates to education and inept psychoanalysts, dig my heels in the concrete until she stumbles and looks back at me with a raised eyebrow.
I stare at her.
She cocks her head.
I sigh.
"Brooke, [you still haven't thanked me for saving your life]."[]
She blinks.
"I haven't?" she asks, more confused than anything.
"No. You just popped up out of nowhere, harassed me about some kind of fever dream about people thinking there's something going on between Noah and me—"
"It's all over the school. It started when they saw you arrive together at my house—"
"Some terrible, [awful] fever dream that we're all going to ignore [or else], and then tried to hostilely asphyxiate me with your breasts—"
"Hostilely? As opposed to amorously—"
"I haven't seen my gratitude [anywhere]—"
"Well, the tits thing was a good hint, wasn't it? What with you being my secret vampire stalker—"
"You two are impossible," Emma, for some strange reason that points toward some concerning difficulties with socialization, interrupts us. "You should [both] get with Noah."
"Please, don't. I don't think my brain can stomach the possibility of Noah having a threesome before I do," Audrey interjects, basically melting out of the shadows with the help of her black leather jacket.
All right, fine. I knew she was there.
Leather. In this weather. If there's somebody I don't need to tag with bugs, that's Audrey. Because I know her scent, and that's not a creepy thing, much less a romantic one, and shut up, brain, or I swear they'll never find your body.
"Is anyone else about to ambush me on the way to school? Should I start carrying a mace?" I ask, not at all dramatically.
"Don't you mean carrying mace—" Brooke asks.
"I know what I said," I clarify for those who may have some learning disability to compensate the sheer unfairness of perfect, flawless skin, hair that gleams with every mote of sunlight, and other, maybe less remarkable things that keep stretching a white cropped top.
"So, does that mean you're about to go medieval on somebody's ass?" Audrey asks with a grin that does not make me think about me staring at the back of her jeans as she slowly walked away while waving over her shoulder.
…
OK, brain? Hormones? We all need to have a talk. That talk may or not involve me learning how to use a mace.
"There's absolutely no way for me to answer that question without you teasing me, is there?" I finally ask Audrey before somebody else comes up with another mortifying thing to add to the pile.
"Broody, I feel like we've known one another for far longer than we have," she says.
And Emma giggles.
Which, in turn, makes Audrey shoot her a brief side glance that has the black-haired girl's cheeks tinge with just enough color to be noticeable on her pale skin, and Brooke raises an aggressively inquiring eyebrow while Emma's eyes briefly meet those of the girl she's always been overly cautious about and deferential to before she pretends the moment hasn't happened.
And I now have two very attractive girls trying to act like their eyes meeting is not a big deal.
I turn toward Brooke, and I see [glee].
"Sooo… Did you at least kiss, or is this just all repressed sexual tension?" she says.
Both Audrey and Emma freeze, all but confirming they both know perfectly well what Brooke's talking about.
And I…
Damn it.
"Tell me you aren't being cruel on purpose," I tell her.
"What?"
"You just hurt them, Brooke. And I know you and Audrey barely know one another, but Emma's supposed to be your friend—"
"What are you even talking about, I just… Hey. Hey, I was just joking; I didn't… Emma? I…"
And Audrey runs.
Then Emma follows.
"Wait!" Brooke yells.
And I stop her.
She stumbles before looking down at my hand grabbing her arm, then she looks up into my eyes and flinches.
"Let them. They… There are years of history there. They need to be alone," I tell her, not thinking about what it would be like for me to…
To have another Emma chasing me, one that was suddenly worried about me hurting, one that wanted to apologize, to make things better. One that looked at me like Emma looks at Audrey.
Damn it.
"Taylor?" Brooke asks, her voice uncertain, my name almost quivering on her lips.
I want to be angry at her. I want to lash out and let her have a taste of the pain she carelessly inflicted.
But… But I remember.
I remember pulling her away from the corpse of her lover. I remember her shock when she learned what it was that my brief teacher of literature actually did with other young women. I remember her huddled and crying on top of Gustavo's body yesterday.
And…
I want to be a hero. I always did.
But would a hero punish or help?
"I have math in the first period," I say.
"What?" she answers.
"I never liked math," I tell her with a shrug.
And then I turn around and pull her away from George Washington High School.
She… follows.
***
Minutes later, we're sitting inside a cafeteria that I would never have found on my own, which was quite embarrassing, seeing as it was me who was supposed to determinedly guide Brooke away.
Admittedly, seeing me fumble and doubt for a moment was a good way to have her recover her balance. She even threw in a couple of teasing remarks.
Because Brooke.
"Tea? I would've pegged you for an expresso girl?" she says before taking a brief lick off the glob of whipped cream atop her crime against caffeinated beverages.
See what I have to deal with?
"Funny, I would've pegged you for a homophobic, cruel bully who doesn't think about who she's hurting to get a laugh," I tell her before taking a calm sip.
She gapes at me.
Then she contorts on our shared sofa to kick my shin. Which kinda detracts from the aloof image I wanted to project.
"You are a bitch," she says.
"I know what you are, but what am I?" I eruditely riposte.
"Somebody who isn't half as clever as she thinks she is."
"By some metrics, I think you just complimented me."
"You can't have such an overinflated opinion of yourself."
"True. I saved your life, after all, so I'm definitely not that bright."
That makes her pause.
Then she… smiles.
It's a weird thing. Not the mischievous smirk she shot right before hurting both Emma and Audrey. Not the smug quirk on her lips she's been giving me since first greeting me this morning. It's actually… not subdued, not really, but…
Brittle, for a start.
"OK, I think the joke's been going on for far too long already: thank you, Taylor. Thank you for saving my life," she says.
And I stop rubbing my shin to look at her. At brown eyes that are, now that I allow myself to realize it, filled with worry and nervousness.
"You are welcome," I tell her with a shrug of my shoulders.
Then I take another slow sip of my tea as Brooke rolls those brown eyes of hers back before grunting and sinking into the plush backrest.
"You are being deliberately difficult," she says.
"Yes. Of course I am," I tell her before looking back at her as I lower my tea cup. "Because I don't know you, I don't know how to deal with you, and I think you don't know either."
"Of course I don't know how to deal with you—"
"With yourself."
"Ah."
"Yes. Ah."
Brooke manages to, somehow, take a sip of whatever it is that lies underneath the whipped cream without getting a blob of it on her nose and takes a moment to think.
"I'm… I don't know Audrey. I barely know Emma. I thought I knew Nina, and Seth, but… I really didn't, did I? So… No. I don't know how to deal with myself, Taylor, because I'm right now doubting I know who I am. I doubt Jake and Gustavo, and I grew up with them. I doubt my father, and my mother, and… Everything. Everything that was my life a couple of weeks ago until a crazed serial killer decided that I can't have that anymore. And it wasn't enough that they took them away; they had to take their memories too, the people I thought they were, so… I don't know, Taylor, or Broody, or Final Girl. I just… don't," she says.
And then she shuts up.
I look at her. At the one girl who should remind me of Emma more than anybody else in this town regardless of her name. At the popular, beautiful, charming girl who has the pulse of the school, who knows who is who, who has the eye of everybody she cares to.
At the clueless, lost girl who's still trying to act like she knows what she's doing, what she's supposed to do, and making a mess of things because she just doesn't understand anything anymore, not after she's been hurt and that effortless connection she used to have has been severed by the cruelty of another.
And…
I raise my cup in a silent toast.
"Welcome to the fucking club," I say.
And then I take a long sip of tea.
Halfway through it, Brooke toasts with her own cup and joins me in prolonged, dramatic, slightly too loud sipping.
===================
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