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cheelduh · 3 years

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How to get your crush to walk you to the nurse’s office (Highschool AU)

This is part 3, but it can be read alone!

Pairing: Childe x fem!reader

Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of a monster schlong, and unedited.

Parts: 1 2

Synopsis: Childe offers Lisa a shady deal to yet again sit next to you. However, all his efforts are in vain after he makes a complete fool out of himself by tripping over literally nothing because of a stupid cold. Maybe getting a cold isn’t so bad if he gets to be escorted to the nurse’s office by none other than yourself.

Note: Pure unedited crack luvs. Can’t wait for Childe rerun tmr I hope I get the ginger and the emo nun! 🥲💖

The eyes on you are suffocating, to say the least, enough for you to consider peeling a layer of your own skin off just to breathe. Every now and then, you get a teasing glance from a classmate, and you're sure you'll be an entire puddle of guts on your desk before home room even gets a chance to begin.

There's no doubt it's Signora that spread the news of your date yesterday as a means to some sick revenge. Knowing this was going to happen, you packed some salt in your backpack to cancel out all her evil. Now all you need is a chance to knuckle ball it in her face.

Fingers crossed, you pray to the archons that Childe didn't slip anything about your...brick slip yesterday. It's a good thing you weren't in a school uniform yesterday because that would've been the end of your high school life right there.

Thinking back to it, you collapse into your open hands. How could you have beaten a bunch up losers up...risking your flawless reputation for a sadistic ginger with an affinity for chaos? And worst of all, why did you care about them shit talking him in the first place?

"You okay dear? Something you want to tell me?" Lisa feigns concern, already knowing why.

With a sigh, you blink an eye open through the gap in your fingers. "Doing just fine."

"Oh it couldn't have been that bad." Her eyes shine in mischief. "I bet Childe was a real gentleman."

"He sure was." Kaeya pipes up from the back, leaning in to show you the image on his phone. It's a picture Childe took of you absolutely oblitering an ice cream cone.

You groan and slump deeper into your chair from embarrassment as Kaeya and Lisa engage in chatter, mostly revolving around your date.

Ignoring them completely, you start to ponder about Childe. Where is he? You were sure he'd be here bright and early to reminisce on your eventful date yesterday, which mostly consisted of a competition of who could win the most stall games at a local festival.

Maybe he'd even tease you about the Monoceros Caeli keychain attached to your phone. The very one he'd won for you, and the reason that started the competition in the first place.

Your cheeks warm when you fidget with said keychain, and you can't tell if the fast pace of your heart is because you're nervous to see him or because of the biology quiz you have second period.

So wrapped up in all these foreign emotions, you fail to notice the shadow that looms over you, a glittery finger guard tapping at your desk.

The student council President, Ningguang, plops down a stack of budget files on your desk during homeroom. She's gives you a light smile, and you know what's coming when you meet her alluring gaze.

"Be a dear Y/N," Ningguang smiles, tight lipped, all pretty with her hair pinned back to crown her face. "Even with all hands on deck, i'm afraid the student council's efforts will not come to ripeness concerning all of this paperwork."

This isn't the first time you've done her a favour by becoming the president's personal accountant, and it definitely isn't going to be the last.

Ningguang is powerful, with wit like no other, and you want to be able to call in a chit when the time comes.

"Of course," You reply with a smile that rivals her own. "I'll have them done by the end of the day."

"Excellent. I knew I could count on you, Y/N." She departs elegantly, probably opting to sit next to Beidou and bicker.

You're halfway on the third sheet for total income, a minute before class starts, when you're interrupted. Childe stumbles through the door quite noisily, a shitstain of a grin plastered on his face that is directed at you.

You sigh and shake your head as he approaches you. Thankfully the seat next to you is occupied by—

Shit! Where's Lisa?

Across the classroom, Lisa gives you a thumbs up with a bar of vending machine chocolate in her hand. You should've known she'd betray you yet again.

Childe slides in smoothly after bumping fists with Kaeya, and he falls short of containing his giddy nature.

"Hi Y/N." There's something weird about him today, because you're sure you haven't seen his cheeks so flushed ever. His eyes land on your phone, which is splayed on the desk, and the keychain widens his grin.

You snatch your phone and hide it in the middles of your thighs, but the damage is already done. The urge to shrink against the wall has never been as strong as it is in this moment.

"Hi." It's a miracle you haven't combusted on the spot. Is it usually this awkward? Everything went so fine yesterday, so why can't you ease into it today?

He takes that as a go ahead and instantly reaches for your hand on the table, but you retract at the speed of light.

"Don't even think about it." You're ready to connect the tip of your trainers to his bleached asshole, nose crinkled at his behaviour.

Kaeya whistles lowly, leaning forward for the HD show that is your life.

Childe's smile is sheepish as he's scratching the back of his head. "So we're not on that stage yet huh? I seriously thought you had a change of heart after you beat up those high schoolers for m—"

You muffle his statement with a hand on his mouth, and send a pointed glare to Kaeya. "You didn't hear shit."

The Captain of the skating team nods innocently, and salutes. "Yes boss."

Returning your gaze to Childe, who looks like he's having the time of his life with your small hand on his mouth, you narrow your eyes. "Stop trying to spread rumours."

He can only hum in reply, but you feel a weird pressure on your palm and—

The smug asshole kisses your palm.

You pull back your hand and wipe at your pants, full of disbelief. "Did you just??? Did you just? Kiss my hand???" Mouth twisted, you have no idea what to think.

Childe's throws his head back, and his laugh rings in your ears. You hate yourself for wavering slightly at the sound before smacking his arm. His laughs turn into coughs, probably because he may have swallowed his saliva down the wrong pipe. Charming.

Where the fuck is Zhongli? It's already been five minutes too long into homeroom.

Rolling your eyes, you opt to continue and scribble down budget numbers and add sums up or whatever you were doing earlier after Childe pipes down, choosing to admire you quietly by leaning his weight on one arm. It's enough to make you squirm, face flushed.

"Can you not?" Clicking your tongue in disapproval, you don't look up as you speak.

"If you give me a kiss, then maybe." Childe's cheeky, ridiculously so, and he points a finger at his cheek.

"I don't negotiate with terrorists." You deadpan, fingers itching to choke something or rather...someone.

Childe pouts, and then his eyes close for a second, almost as if he's exhausted when he gives you a sort of smile. With how he's leaning in so close, you can easily spot the swelling in his eyes and the paleness of his face.

For the first time today, there's no bite in your tone when you ask with a slightly raised brow. "Are you okay Childe?"

"Yeah!" He's quick to answer ecstatically, snapping out of his tired haze by straightening himself up. "Better more than ever now that I've seen you, girlie."

You blush madly, the compliment enough for you to drop your pen on the ground. It rolls over beyond your reach.

"I'll get that." Childe jumps out of his chair and you're unable to stop him as he goes to go fetch your pen like the chivalrous idiot he is. There's a slight pause in his movement, his body taking longer to process the messages his brain is sending.

He recovers from the muddle in his cognition by shaking his head, and casually goes to pick up the pen, then ends the move by falling over backwards in unconsciousness.

"Childe!" You lunge for him, managing to catch him a second prior to his ass hitting the floor with the help of Kaeya, who somehow looks like he's expected this outcome from the very start.

The entire classroom clamps up and turns to look for the root of all the commotion.

"Don't just sit there and watch!" You hiss angrily, waving them off. "Someone get Zhongli!"

Aether doesn't need to be told twice as Venti and him race down the hall together. Venti probably just to use this opportunity of sudden chaos to skip homeroom.

"Looks like a fever." The Captain accesses the situation as a small crowd forms around you two. "There's no way he didn't feel it in the morning."

"The absolute idiot." You groan at his words. "Of course he'd try to have a pissing match with a cold."

"I'm still here you know." Childe slurs, leaning into you for warmth, chest rising and falling softly. "Just a...a little sleepy. Am I dreaming angel?"

You roll your eyes, but don't make any moves to lean away from his touch. "Anyone got a water bottle?" Curling your hands around his shoulder, you shift your gaze towards the crowd.

Somebody passes you an emerald green water bottle with dandelion charms that clink against the hard plastic handle from a nearby desk. It screams stupid, but you don't have time to judge the owner.

Opening it up hastily, you're about to let Childe take a sip until it's snatched away from you at the speed of light.

"Hey what gives!" You call out to Kaeya, who inspects the bottle closely with his one eye. He then nods in affirmation as if his suspicions are confirmed.

"I wouldn't recommend it." Is all he says when he motions for you to take a whiff, which you do so reluctantly, eyes closed.

The scent hits you all it once. It's watered down vodka, except without the watering down. Tears form from the intensity.

"The goddamn bard." You choke out, and it earns you a drained chuckle from the ginger that has his head situated on your forearm.

He has half the mind to nuzzle in further, but the position is convenient enough for you to crush his skull if you wish to do so. So he refrains, albeit reluctantly.

Zhongli manages to make it in less than two minutes, sipping on a cup of steaming tea as he breaks apart the crowd to crouch down. "Is everything alright? I came as soon as I could after I made this tea. I assumed it was just another prank."

Everyone in the room shakes their head incredulously.

"Unfortunately it isn't a prank. Childe fainted briefly." You tell him politely despite the urgency, since you're whipped for all your teachers.

"I didn't faint!" Childe groans, exasperated. "Got a little dizzy s'all."

"Yeah," Kaeya cuts in to summarize the situation. "I'll be happy to take him to the nurses office with Y/N—"

Zhongli clears his throat. "You won't be going anywhere Mr.Alberich. I'm sure you have five overdue assignments in my class. Y/N here can walk him just fine." He then attempts to wink at Childe secretly like the wingman he is, but everyone in the classroom and their grandma notices.

The facepalm you do is not enough to render you brain dead.

Pinching the bridge of your nose, you sigh for the nth time today, and it's only eight thirty in the morning. "No worries, Lisa can help—"

"Sorry cutie. I'm manifesting for the biology quiz." Lisa deflects, lighting three candles on her desk unceremoniously with her eyes closed.

You don't understand why no one has confiscated her box of matches yet. This entire school is a law suit waiting to happen.

You succumb to the team effort everyone is trying so hard to display. "I guess I can go." The hall pass is already written, signed, and neatly folded into the chest pocket of your uniform. "How did you even..."

You don't even get a chance to finish before both you and Childe are whisked away to the outside of the classroom, the door shutting behind you with a slam. Your ears perk up at the sound of a lock clicking in place.

"Looks like you're stuck with me." The smug bastard still has the audacity to beam even when he's pale in the face. "Might have to hold my arm. If I fall and crack my skull—that wouldn't look too good on your record." He makes grabby hands, like a toddler.

The smile you give is unnerving, and with the speed of a snail, you manage to loop in your arm with Childe's. "Another word and let's move on to how your hospital record is going to have more than just a cracked skull."

"If you'd nurse me back to health, it'll all be worth it." The quip he sends without a beat lacks its usual goof, but it does manage to get some sort of reaction out of you.

"Whatever. Let's just get this over with."

—

Childe's busy thumbing at his phone while you pace at the foot of the bed, arms crossed with a frown etched on your features. You hope you don't look too worried, don't want to give him the wrong idea.

"Can we just get this over with?" He wails uncharacteristically from his spot on the white sheeted bed after ruling out everything he wanted to do on his phone. His hair is tousled more than usual, as a by-product of his constant restlessness.

"Shut up." You answer monotonously, arms crossed as you lean against the wall. "Let her finish her tiktok."

Barbara—the daughter of the school nurse, has her phone on the window, lip syncing and dancing to some music on beat as she films a tiktok with the utmost of important.

It's concerning that her father isn't here to tend to your needs, but apparently he's in the middle of a meeting with principle Varka. Said meeting had been going on for the past few months, but this school is devoid of logic anyways so nobody really questions anything.

"I'm literally dying here."

"Archons you're such a baby," Shaking your head, you approach his bed with a newfound annoyance. "Barbara has to create a tiktok at least once every twenty four hours or her fan club goes feral and..."

"Tries to jump off the roof as the ultimate sacrifice to her majesty." Childe sighs, and for the first time you sense his irritation. "Got it."

Just in time, Barbara finishes her cute little dance and comes over to where Childe is laying.

Childe doesn't miss the way your scowl has dissipated, and you give Barbara your undivided attention, hearts in your eyes from all the adoration. He has half the mind to call you out on it, no doubt a little jealous over how the young highschool idol can get you to show more emotion than him.

"I'm so sorry! I started those tiktoks out of mild interest but now I have an obligation to my fans." The younger apologizes profusely, getting to work almost immediately.

"No worries." Childe starts, staying still as the blonde examines him. "I'm sure it's nothing too serious. Y/N here is being dramatic, she probably just wants to spend some alone time with me."

You inhale sharply, turn to Barbara, and ask. "If I jumped out of the window right now from this floor, would it be a quick and easy death?"

The younger girl's eyes widen, and Childe stifles his snort.

"Kidding." You raise your hands up to cease her worries, and then motion towards him. "Common cold?"

"Yes," Barbara moves on and writes down something on a slip. "We'll just keep him here until his parents can pick him up."

"My parents can't pick me up." He asserts in a casual tone. "Don't call them."

"We still have to call them. If they don't come, you're to stay in this bed all day." She hands you the note, which is a viable excuse for all the classes he'll miss today. "Give this to his homeroom teacher. You'd also better get to class, your hall pass is about to expire."

"Hold up." You remark, barely paying attention to the note that you've shoved down your pocket. "I'm not leaving him here alone." There's no room for argument, your decision is firmly stated.

Childe hypes you up in his weakened state, disoriented. "You tell em girlie."

"He won't be alone." Barbara flashes you a reassuring smile. "I'll be monitoring him until his parents get here."

"No, no, you don't understand." You argue, inquiring all the doubts you have. "He's gonna try to pull some shit and I'll have to be here to stop him."

"Ease up babe." Childe tries to calm you down, despite the giddiness in his chest at the realization that you want to take care of him.

His subconscious begs him to let you stay, to let himself be doted and cared for the way he's always wanted you to, but he knows he can't let you skip class. Not when you've worked so hard and come so far. "I'll be okay for a few. You can go back to class and then visit me during break."

You bite your lips, head jumbled with all the different possibilities of how shit can hit the fan. "I can't! What if Signora shows up? She'll poison you in this weakened state to get back at me for trying to exorcise her." The hesitation in your features gives away everything.

Childe's eye twitches at the thought of Signora out of all people getting the best out of him, and also the absolute audacity you have to be calling him weak. Clearly all his efforts towards the little shows of dominance (e.g. Shoving Pallad against a locker, spraying a hefty amount of cologne on, being an asshole in general, etc.) have not bore fruit.

"You tried to exorcise her?" Barbara gasps, momentarily reminding the two of you that she's still present.

"Her evil has no bounds." Your expression is hard to read, dead serious. "I do not regret my attempt at cancelling Satan's hell spawn."

Childe himself has been cancelled hundreds of times over the span of highschool because of all his problematic traits (e.g calling Venti a twink) and it is not a pleasant experience.

Though it does give him a sense of comfort, knowing that arrogant bitch Signora is finally getting what's coming to her, even if she is one of his friends.

Serves her right for trying to Pavlov her stupid Chihuahua into biting the closest human being just by the snap of her manicured finger. As if it's persistent yapping and tendency to run in front of cars isn't enough torture to deal with on a daily basis.

Childe's yanked out of his thoughts rather forcefully at the sound of the door opening abruptly, the handle crashing into the wall, shocking Barbara's attempts to reassure you.

He knows who it is because of his top tier gaydar, dreading what's to come.

Scaramouche is a morose son of a bitch with a mean streak that hasn't been broken since he was an itty bitty shit in the fourth grade.

"I can't believe you let yourself get sick!" The navy haired boy exclaims in disbelief, doubling over with tears, clapping his hands to add on some extra effects. "Natural selection finally decided to stop pussy footing around your primate-looking ass."

You press your lips together. "Isn't he supposed to be your best friend?"

Scaramouche sputters violently, using the wall as leverage to hold himself up. "You told her I'm your best friend? Oh fuck. Oh this is good. What else did you tell her huh? That you have a monster cock?"

"First of all, you make me reconsider my opinion on the death penalty, dickhead."

Barbara is mortified. Childe continues on anyways.

"—and I do have a monster cock. But why are you so interested in my monster cock huh?"

Scaramouche scrunches his face up in disgust, amusement nothing but a distant memory. "You don't have a monster cock you plebe."

Childe has an awfully scandalized expression on his face, but smoothly enough it transitions into an unsettling grin that you're all too familiar with. "You didn't deny not being interested in my monster cock though."

It's your turn to be mortified, shaking your head at the banter that goes on back and forth.

"How did you even know he was in here? We aren't even in the same class."

Scaramouche raises a brow as if you're some sort of toddler that's babbling out a mixture of Cheerios and spit, maybe a few digested strawberries here and there. He waves his phone in front of you, "posted it on his story."

"What the—give me that!" You snatch his phone right up, staring at the screen in bewilderment.

There's a video of you doing trick shots with your tech deck on the ledge of a nearby window with a pressed expression while waiting for Barbara to finish up, captioned with: "In the nurses office rn pray for me 🙏, there's this cute girl in front of me should I ask her out?"

You check the poll and ninety five percent say yes. Scaramouche voted no. You have mixed feelings.

Shaking your head, you give Childe, who's unable to sit still, a look of pure exasperation.

Scaramouche claws his phone back from you rather harshly, the bells on his hat jingling, making it hard for you to take him seriously when he sneers your way.

"You should be thankful you're the lover of my comrade." He shivers slightly at the word comrade. "or I would have obliterated you on the spot for that little stunt."

Childe doesn't even pretend to look fazed at the older's threat when he says "as if I'd allow a kumquat headass like you to touch my girl."

You and Barbara hastily jump in to stop the bloodbath that is seconds from happening. "No!"

Luckily, no limbs are teared apart.

#genshin impact #genshin impact oneshot #kaeya alberich #childe #childe x reader #fanfic #genshin oneshot #genshin tartagalia #tartagila #aether #venti genshin impact #genshin impact venti #kaeya genshin impact

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scratchpapermouse · 7 years

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come out

words: 19 251 (yeah sorry)

summary: Violet is lonely and desperate for a change, but it means breaking down all the walls she’s spent a decade building. With her older brother - and only friend - halfway around the world, she has to take this task on for herself. But once she pushes herself to make friends, Anthea, Hana, and Leilani show her that they can help her learn to open up. She doesn’t have to be alone.

intro: My first attempt at this got too long, so I’ll give you the important stuff. This was inspired by the flor album come out. you’re hiding. It’s a very good album and it makes me feel a lot. Originally my plan was for a short story, which this kind of is, but I realised that to tell the story I really wanted to, I needed a novel. So I’m working on that, already, too. For my full intro, click here (it’s only like three paragraphs, I just didn’t want this preview to get too long on the dash).

“Damn it, Petunia,” Violet sighed, running her fingers through her cat’s long tortoiseshell fur. The slender creature didn’t respond, sleeping soundly in Violet’s lap, still purring softly.

Violet was lonely, and restless. The feeling had been building for years, despite her valiant attempts at ignoring it. She felt as if she couldn’t sit still, mentally – she couldn’t focus, couldn’t keep track of the time, couldn’t remember everything she had to do. She spent too much of her time alone. She wasn’t really sure why it was that she hadn’t connected properly with anyone in so long.

Well, she liked to tell herself she wasn’t sure. Now that she was thinking about it, she begrudgingly admitted that she knew exactly why: she closed herself off. She was shy, anxious, avoidant. Childhood misfortune followed by five years of homeschooling (which her parents really couldn’t have known was going to cause such problems in the long run) had resulted in a girl who didn’t know how to make friends any more even if she wanted to. And for several years she didn’t really – it seemed easier to stay private, to keep herself pulled in where she couldn’t be hurt.

But she had been alone for a long time now. Once, she could ignore it more easily – when her brother was home. Now she was really alone.

Most days it didn’t feel like a problem she could tackle. It was too much, too big. There was nothing to be done about it now, so she just lost herself in books, in television shows, in music, in podcasts. She did her homework and she looked after her cat and cooked and cleaned and made occasional, uncertain forays into creative ventures. But some days, when her parents were both at work and she was left alone with herself and no immediate distractions, she found herself wishing for things to be different.

And finally, one afternoon, nestled in the corner of her bed with Petunia asleep in her lap, she realized she couldn’t live this way forever. She had been at school all day, the first day of her last year, and felt more alone there than she ever had. Changing things was hard, but she knew that when she made a commitment to herself – a real one that she really, really cared about – she could usually keep it. And the way things were going now she could only ever fall further into herself. She would be eighteen in just over four months. She had to break herself out of the pattern before she trapped herself completely.

She ran a hand back through her dark hair, sighing again. It wouldn’t be easy. She knew herself, knew she would want to give up sometimes. But… “Something’s gotta give,” she murmured.

It had been several days since Violet had promised her sleeping cat that she was going to make a change, but she was still desperately searching for a reason, an opportunity. She wasn’t really sure yet exactly what the big change would be, only that she had to find something, and she spent her days searching her environment for any kind of inspiration. Of course, the natural assumption was that she would just have to push herself to be more social, to connect with people somehow. But it had been so long and she had no idea how or where to start.

Something finally came to her in the back of the library during lunch. Normally she ate in a quiet corner of the cafeteria and then just sat at her table, people-watching with her headphones on, but that day she’d wolfed down her meal and headed into the library to catch up on a chapter of reading she’d forgotten about. Not a good start to the semester. She glanced up from her history textbook when someone flopped into the armchair opposite her, three graphic novels tucked under her arm and another already open in her other hand.

Violet recognized the girl. They’d had a handful of classes together. Anthea, her name was. She was generally quiet, but she didn’t seem private like Violet was – she was always relaxed. She exuded a sense of easy confidence all the time, always dressed in bomber jackets and overalls or graphic tees and joggers, and her hair seemed to be a new bright colour every month. It was vivid purple now, gathered up in a high messy ponytail, long bangs falling around her light brown face. Her black backpack was covered in patches, buttons, and pins, a trans pride flag proudly displayed in the centre.

Violet watched for a moment as Anthea slowly turned the pages of her comic, either unaware or uncaring that she was being observed. She had always seemed so cool, and on the handful of occasions that Violet had heard her speak, she had come across as intelligent and insightful. She slurped idly at her cheap cafeteria slushie, turning in the chair and throwing her legs over the arm.

Thinking about her promise to Petunia, Violet held her breath for a second, psyching herself up. Then, “I like your shirt,” she blurted. “Also I think you’re interesting and – and I’d love to get to know you better.”

Anthea glanced up, dark eyebrows slightly raised in surprise and curiosity. “Yeah?” she answered. “Thanks. It’s Violet, right?” Violet nodded. “Ace. You usually in the library at lunch, Violet?”

Violet shook her head. “Only once in a while... Normally I sit in the corner of the cafeteria, by the vending machines.”

“Good to know,” Anthea said with a nod. “Cool if I come sit with you tomorrow, then?”

Violet blinked, a little surprised by herself and a little surprised by Anthea’s response, and then nodded. “Yeah, that’d be cool,” she said more quietly, her burst of courage waning. But Anthea just smiled, gave her a thumbs up, and returned her attention to her comic.

Violet spent a full day wondering if she’d made the right decision. It wasn’t exactly that she regretted speaking to Anthea – she still thought the other girl was probably very cool – but she couldn’t help second-guessing herself. She hadn’t really made a new friend in years, at least not in any capacity beyond ‘someone safe to work on group projects with in class.’ What if it didn’t work? What if Anthea didn’t like her after they’d talked a bit? What if she didn’t know how to carry a conversation? She could scarcely remember the last time she’d interacted with a stranger on this level; it was hard to believe that she’d be able to handle it.

“I’m a mess,” she informed Petunia, lifting the cat up and looking her in the face.

The next day she forced herself into the cafeteria, clutching her lunch bag and willing herself not to chicken out. She scanned the room, didn’t see Anthea anywhere, and made her way to her usual spot. Sitting down and pulling out her sandwich, she found her leg bouncing hard.

She tried to focus on her food while she waited, resisting the temptation to put her headphones on. Halfway through her sandwich, she glanced up in surprise as Anthea dropped into the seat next to her, holding a greasy slice of cafeteria pizza, two doughy chocolate chip cookies, and a bottle of root beer. “’Sup?” she greeted.

“Oh!” Violet answered, slightly startled. “Hi.”

Anthea looked at her sideways, one corner of her mouth quirking upwards in amusement. “How ya doin’?”

“Um, pretty good, I guess,” Violet responded, suddenly fumbling over her words. “You?”

“I’m good,” Anthea said, still smiling. It was clear that she could tell Violet was feeling awkward, but she didn’t seem to mind. “Been working all morning on a paper for Ms. Archer. Boring, but not hard.”

“Oh,” Violet said with a nod, thankful she could recognize a lead when it was offered. She took a second to recall what classes Ms. Archer taught, then made an educated guess. “For… anthro, then? What are you writing on?”

“Mhm,” Anthea confirmed. “I’m doing witchcraft.” She wagged her fingers. “Pretty open-ended, that, so I’ve got a lot of options. I wanted to write on gender, but Archer said that was ‘more controversial than appropriate for our class.’” She punctuated with air quotes, rolling her eyes.

Violet laughed slightly. “That sounds like her. I had history with her last year.”

“She’s so boring, right?” Anthea said emphatically. “Like… lady, please, it’s the 21st century.”

“Not in history, it wasn’t,” Violet pointed out with another small laugh. “I’m not sure we even made it to the 20th in that course.”

Anthea snorted. “Which class was that? West and the world?”

“Yeah,” Violet said. “Also known as ‘the Medici class.’ That was most of what we talked about.”

“Awful,” Anthea said sympathetically. “I understand the importance of studying history, but also… it blows, man.”

“You’re not kidding.” Violet smiled, looking back down at her sandwich.

Anthea took advantage of the pause to tear into her pizza, wiping her oily fingers fruitlessly on the thin, cheap brown paper towel that passed for a napkin. “So,” she started. “Are you into video games at all?”

“Well… a little bit,” Violet said slowly. “But I’m not very good at them.”

“Being good at video games is overrated,” Anthea told her with a shrug. She leaned back in her seat slightly, wiping her hands again. “You ever go up to Jennings’ room at lunch?”

Violet shook her head, unsure of the connection. “No, why?”

“Oh,” Anthea explained, “there’s a TV up there with a GameCube hooked up and Super Smash Bros running, like, all day every day. Usually busiest at lunch, obviously, and mostly guys, but I go up to play sometimes, if you’re interested.”

Violet wrung her hands in the hem of her shirt for a moment, hesitating. She had committed to doing more things, talking to more people, trying to get to know Anthea if she could. The last time she’d played Smash was years ago, with her cousins, but…

Anthea seemed to sense her nerves. “You don’t have to play,” she said. “Just come up and watch. Lots of people do. You can cheer me on! Jack Davies hates that I beat him every time, and he hates it even more when people are rooting for me.” She grinned crookedly.

Violet couldn’t help cracking a smile at that. “That guy is kind of a dick,” she admitted. She bit her lip, then said, “Yeah, that might be fun.”

“Cool.” Anthea reached for her pizza again, waving at Violet’s sandwich with her other hand. “You wanna finish eating and then head upstairs and see who’s playing today?”

“Sure,” Violet answered. She glanced down at the table while chewing the last few bites of her food, only to look up again at the sound of crinkling paper. Anthea was eating one of her cookies and pushing the other across the table towards her, on top of its paper bag. “Oh,” Violet said with surprise. “Thank you.” She took it a little uncertainly, but Anthea smiled, so she smiled back.

Fifteen minutes later, Violet was seated on a table next to a friendly blonde named Kim, watching Anthea hand Jack Davies - and two other players, better sports the both of them - their asses on a silver platter. After three rounds, Anthea surrendered her controller, satisfied that her Smash itch was scratched, and waved Violet back out of the room with her.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say ‘eat my shorts’ in real life,” Violet commented as they left.

Anthea grinned, wagging her eyebrows. “I like to mix things up. It's a very fun phrase.”

“I guess I can’t disagree,” Violet laughed.

Anthea glanced at a clock on the wall as they walked down the hallway. “Class pretty soon.”

“Oh, yeah,” Violet answered, mildly surprised. “Lunch usually seems… longer than that.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” Anthea said with a shrug. “You wanna hang out again tomorrow?”

Violet slowed in her pace for a fraction of a second, taken aback by how smoothly things were going. “I… yeah, that’d be cool.”

“What’s the hesitation?” Anthea asked with a gentle smile.

“I’m just… I dunno.” Violet rubbed her arm, looking at the floor as she thought. “I guess I haven’t done it in a long time, but I thought I remembered making friends being trickier than this.”

Anthea grinned again. “Oh, no, you remembered right. I’m just magic, is all.” Violet glanced up briefly and laughed at Anthea’s silly expression and waggling fingers. “The trick is that I’m very cool, and you’re also cool, in what I suspect is a pretty compatible fashion. Just a little shy. Which is why I want to learn something about you tomorrow.”

“What?” Violet asked, raising her eyebrows.

“I don’t mind taking the lead,” Anthea told her. “But friendship goes two ways. Today you learned a bit about me, and tomorrow I want to learn about you. Prepare some material.” She winked as they reached an intersection in the hallway. “I gotta go this way. See you tomorrow?”

“Um- yeah. Yeah, okay,” Violet told her, still processing.

“How’s the day?” Anthea asked as she dropped into the seat next to Violet’s.

“Not so bad,” Violet told her. She looked down at her hands, awkward and anxious, and Anthea dove into her cafeteria poutine. Clearly she was hungry.

Anthea was quiet for a few seconds while she ate. Then, wiping her mouth with another cheap napkin, she said, “Hey, how about those digits, huh?”

It took Violet a second to realize what she meant. “Oh. Yeah, okay.” Hoping that a request to exchange numbers was a good thing, she pulled her phone out and slid it across the table towards the other girl just as Anthea passed her own over. They were both silent for a moment as they added their names to each other’s contacts.

“Not much of a phone person, huh?” Anthea asked as she passed Violet’s phone back. She met Violet’s uncertain gaze and explained, “Not very many contacts in your list there.”

“Oh, that, yeah,” Violet mumbled, nodding. “Yeah, I mostly have it for keeping track of my parents, who both work shifts, and my brother, who’s away for a while. I use it more for games and music and podcasts than talking to anyone.”

“Fair enough,” Anthea said. “What’s your favourite phone game?”

Violet paused, then confessed, “I’m a sucker for match-threes. I can’t help it.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Anthea said with a smile. “What about the music and podcasts? What do you listen to?”

“Um…” Violet opened her podcast app and scrolled through it, as if having the answer in front of her would make it easier to say aloud. Why did she suddenly completely lack confidence in her taste? “Mostly fictional podcasts. I like a good story.” She turned her screen towards Anthea, who leaned closer to look, wiping a finger off so she could scroll the list quickly.

“Cool,” Anthea said, her smile as genuine as always. “I’ve been meaning to get more into podcasts for a while. Maybe I’ll check some of these out.”

“And music… I dunno,” Violet said, switching apps. “Kind of whatever I stumble into, I guess. I used to just listen to whatever my brother liked. Since he left it’s been pretty haphazard.”

Anthea looked at Violet’s face for a moment, then shrugged. “You do you, man. Good taste is fake. Everyone likes trash.” She said it so nonchalantly that Violet couldn’t help giggling.

“That makes me feel a little better,” she said quietly.

“Good,” Anthea told her with a grin. She chewed another mouthful of her lunch, then pointed out, “You can ask questions, too, if you want. This can be back and forth if that’s easier for you.”

Violet chewed her lip for a second, no idea where to start. “Do you read a lot of comics?” she asked hesitantly. “Like you were the other day in the library?”

“Too many,” Anthea admitted. “It’s a nigh unmanageable hobby. The problem is that as soon as you get into anything mainstream, it crosses over with approximately 8000 other things immediately, and you want to read those, too. I try to stick with stuff that stands alone when I can, indie stuff especially, but I’m way too easy to suck in.” She saw Violet smiling. “What about you, you a comics person?”

“Not a lot,” Violet responded. “I follow a handful of webcomics, but I never really got into the printed medium very much.”

“Well, we can fix that,” Anthea teased. “I’ve got myself a pretty big library. I’m sure I can find you something to get addicted to.” Violet laughed again.

Slowly, with some back-and-forth questioning, Anthea managed to pull Violet out of her shell a little. She started with easy things, favourites, waiting patiently for an answer and then giving one in return when Violet asked. Favourite books, favourite movies, favourite colours, favourite classes. Then she pushed just a little further, into other topics: did you grow up around here? Which middle school did you go to? Any clue what you’ll be doing next year?

On some level Violet realized what Anthea was doing, but she was pleasantly surprised to discover that it wasn’t that hard to manage. She was nervous about her responses, initially, but Anthea made it quite clear that she wasn’t judging. And she wasn’t digging for anything too difficult to share, at this point. Plus, Violet discovered, it was fun to learn more about Anthea, too, and fun to talk about the interests they had in common.

“I do have one other question,” Anthea said near the end of the lunch period, gesturing towards Violet with her plastic fork. “And it’s cool if you don’t want to answer. But I’m just curious. What made you talk to me in the library the other day?”

For the first time in a few minutes, Violet hesitated. Somehow she felt a bit embarrassed to share her big plan – it felt silly. But it had also led her into this apparently successful beginning of a friendship, and she was trying to be more open. “I…” She trailed off, took another breath, tried again. “I just… felt like I needed to make a change. I haven’t had any real friends in a long time and I didn’t want to live that way forever.”

Anthea took the answer in stride, nodding. “That’s fair, man.”

“And I’ve admired you for a while,” Violet revealed, surprising herself a bit. “You’ve always seemed really cool to me. So when the opportunity presented itself, I figured I shouldn’t waste it.”

Anthea smiled. “Hey, works for me,” she said. “For the record, you seem pretty cool too. I think this is gonna work out for us.”

Violet and Anthea continued to spend their lunches together, slowly getting to know each other better, mostly through Anthea’s ceaseless and patient efforts. Most days they sat in the cafeteria, but there was one day that Violet followed Anthea up to the computer lab again. Watching the scowl on Jack Davies’ face deepen as Violet and the others cheered Anthea on was almost as fun as watching the game itself.

“How’d you get so good at this?” Violet asked.

Anthea glanced at her over her shoulder. “I have five brothers,” she explained. “We played Smash constantly as kids, and frankly we still do a fair amount. Somehow Dad convinced us that fighting each other in a video game was better than scuffling for real, and eventually it was all any of us ever wanted to do.”

About a week and a half after they first sat together, Violet and Anthea emerged from the washroom around the beginning of their lunch period and looked across the hallway. There was a lounge of sorts there, really just a small handful of benches clustered in a nook created where two halls met at right angles, and usually there was no one there. Today, however, a dark-haired girl was curled up in the very corner, her legs tucked up under her on the seat and a book clutched in her hands.

Anthea dipped her head down briefly, peering at the book, then glanced over at Violet. “Did you notice what she’s reading?” she asked softly.

Violet shook her head, then took a closer look at the book’s cover and smiled. It was The Phantom Tollbooth – a book that she and Anthea had just been talking about the other day. They’d both loved it when they were younger.

“Hey,” Anthea called across the hall, voice friendly. She tucked her hands in her pockets and smiled as the girl looked up in surprise, eyes wide behind her round wire glasses. “How’s the book?”

“Oh!” the girl said. She glanced down at the page, smiling a little sheepishly. “It’s lovely, I like it very much.” She spoke with a little bit of an accent – Violet wasn’t sure exactly what it was, hardly confident in her ability to distinguish one from the next, but she could tell it was East Asian of some variety.

Anthea started to stroll casually towards the girl, and Violet followed, uncertain. “Vi and I were just talking about that book recently. Childhood favourite for both of us. Have you read it before?”

“Not in English,” the girl said, shaking her head. She turned the book over, putting it down with the pages against her lap so as not to lose her spot. “I read it in Japanese a few years ago.”

“Oh, cool. I wonder how well all the wordplay translates.” Anthea sat down on the bench next to the other girl’s, and Violet sat down next to her. “I’m Anthea, by the way. This is Violet.”

“Hana,” the girl introduced herself, offering her hand. Anthea shook it, looking a little charmed; Violet did the same afterwards, still slightly puzzled by the interaction, but doing her best to be friendly. “Hana Enomoto.”

“You just moved around here like last year, right?” Anthea asked. “I think I’ve seen you around.”

Hana nodded. “It’s been about eight months. My parents and I moved from Japan, so I’m still adjusting.” She pushed her glasses up a little, clearly feeling a bit shy.

“That’s a long way,” Anthea said with a nod. “I’ve always thought it would be cool to go to Japan. I admit that that started with my requisite middle school anime phase, but I’ve outgrown that for the most part. I like to imagine I’ve come past all the really cringey parts of it, anyway.” She cracked a grin, and Hana laughed softly.

“I don’t think I ever had an anime phase,” Violet commented quietly. She frowned, thinking. “Not really, at least. I think I saw bits and pieces of some of the ones that were on TV a lot, but I didn’t get really into any of them.”

“Oh, man,” Anthea said with a good-natured eyeroll. “I am gonna have to do something about that. You can’t get away without having watched at least a few key classics.”

“Oh dear,” Violet responded with a deeper frown. Anthea snorted and looked back at Hana.

“So what’re you doing sitting here by yourself anyway?” she asked. “You here to read, or reading ‘cause you’re here?”

Hana smiled sheepishly again. “I haven’t made very many friends since I moved,” she admitted. “I usually read during lunches. It’s a good way to practice my English skills… I prefer the library but there’s a ninth grade class viewing a presentation in there today, so it’s a bit loud.”

Anthea nodded, understanding. “Makes sense. Have you eaten yet?”

“Ah, no,” Hana confessed, glancing at her backpack on the bench next to her. “I was distracted with my book.”

“Well, Violet and I are headed to our usual spot in the cafeteria,” Anthea told her. “You wanna come sit with us?”

Hana blinked in surprise. “You want me to join you?” she asked, uncertain.

“Yeah, sure,” Anthea said with a reassuring nod, glancing at Violet. Violet, still a little taken aback by all of this, quickly nodded in confirmation. Anthea looked back at the other girl. “We already know we have a book in common, and frankly I don’t think anyone who enjoys The Phantom Tollbooth can possibly be all bad, so why not?” Her smile, as always, was broad and genuine and welcoming. Violet wondered at Anthea’s seemingly magical ability to make anyone feel at ease.

Hana looked down at the book in her lap for a moment, then nodded and moved a bookmark from its holding place in the early pages into her open page, tucking the book into her backpack. “Okay, sure,” she said, smiling shyly.

“Cool,” Anthea said, getting to her feet. The three of them headed down the hall and around a corner through the open cafeteria doors.

They sat in Violet’s spot at one end of the long room, which had become Anthea’s regular table by now as well. Anthea dropped her bag and then disappeared for a moment to the far end of the cafeteria to slip into the smaller room where food was sold – as far as Violet could tell, she never packed lunch. Violet, a little awkward, quietly unpacked her sandwich; across the table, Hana reached into her backpack and produced what turned out to be a cutely-packed bento box with sushi and rice.

“That looks yummy,” Violet commented, immediately asking herself whether anyone her age used the word ‘yummy’ any more. How come things only sounded stupid after she said them out loud?

Hana glanced up and grinned. “My mother loved to pack up my lunches when I was a child, and she hasn’t grown out of it, I suppose,” she explained. “It’s fun for her. Which is fine with me, since my lunches are much less pretty when I pack them myself.”

“It is adorable,” Anthea agreed, dropping back into her chair next to Violet’s with a greasy pizza slice and a coke. Violet had teased her about the fact that she didn’t seem to buy much from the cafeteria aside from pizza and poutine, but Anthea always countered that there wasn’t much else sold at the school that was worth eating. “I wouldn’t half mind having someone to pack me cute little meals like that.”

“You could do it yourself, you know,” Violet pointed out, a hint of a smile on her face. She wasn’t used to ribbing anyone aside from her brother, but Anthea made it easy, and she was getting a little more comfortable with it. Anthea never got offended, and never pushed back too hard.

“Nahhh, can’t be assed,” Anthea said with a grin. “And Dad’s too busy to make lunches for anyone… and it’s not like any of my brothers are going to do it for me. I pretty much fend for myself for meals, except dinner.”

It took no time at all for Anthea to start directing questions at Hana, giving Violet an outside view of her fascinating ability to draw people out of their shells. They learned quite a lot – Hana was a bit shy, but not quite as reluctant to share as Violet knew she was herself. Hana’s parents were florists, and they’d bought the little flower shop on the corner of Main and Oak. She spent a lot of her time in the store, cleaning and working at the cash register. Her mom was teaching her how to arrange flowers as well, which she enjoyed, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to go into the business. She really enjoyed science and was thinking of maybe going into chemistry. When Anthea pointed out that university applications were open soon, Hana told them she was fairly certain she would take a year off between high school and university, to work and figure out what she wanted to pursue.

Eventually they had to part ways for the day and head to class, but Anthea invited Hana to come sit with them again anytime she liked. She turned a corner away from them, and Violet and Anthea headed up the stairs towards their lockers.

“She seems really sweet,” Anthea commented, smiling.

“She does,” Violet answered. She looked over her shoulder at her friend’s face. “It, um… it threw me off a little, though, you just… jumping into that conversation with her, and then inviting her to sit with us. It wasn’t a bad thing,” she clarified quickly. “Just unexpected. I didn’t… think you started conversations like that very often. I don’t know.”

Anthea laughed slightly. “You’re not wrong,” she said. “I don’t usually do that, but I’m perfectly capable of it. But you told me you wanted to make more friends, and I want to help out. I know it was a little difficult for you to talk to me the first time. Figured I could at least help you get your foot in the door. Plus, I mean, she was reading our old favourite.”

Violet paused at the top of the stairs, turning to look at Anthea in surprise. Anthea tipped her head sideways, still smiling, waiting curiously to hear what was on Violet’s mind. “You don’t… I mean, you don’t have to take that on,” Violet said after a moment, not sure how to feel. She was a little embarrassed once again of her personal mission; she was also a little startled to be receiving help. It had been so long since she had a close friendship, she realized, that she didn’t know what the reasonable boundaries or expectations were.

“Yeah, but I want to,” Anthea told her, mildly amused. She reached for Violet’s hand and gave it a quick, friendly squeeze. “We’re friends, dude, I think that’s pretty solid by now. And if you want more friends, I’m happy to help you find them. Besides, it’s been a minute since I had a tight group of my own. No complaints if I manage to make some new friends for myself in the process.”

Violet fidgeted with the lunch bag in her hand for a moment, trying to process that. “Thank you,” she said after a moment, earnestly. “It… means a lot.”

“It’s what I do,” Anthea said with a wink. Then she started to turn. “I gotta get moving. See you tomorrow?”

“For sure,” Violet told her with a nod. She turned and headed in the opposite direction, towards her locker. Glancing down and stretching her fingers, she thought about how casually Anthea had taken her hand. She hadn’t been touched much in a long time, she realised. She was used to her cat, and sometimes hugs from her parents if she happened to be nearby when they headed out the door for work, or on special occasions. She hugged her Nana, she supposed, and then two kisses, one on each cheek, but that was such a formality. Since her brother left she hadn’t touched people very often, though, and it was strange to be touched again – but pleasant. She liked it.

Hana sat with them again the next day, a bit uncertainly at first, and when Anthea said something funny they discovered how delightful her laugh was. She giggled uncontrollably for a minute or two, and Anthea and Violet couldn’t help laughing as well; it was infectious. In the following days she continued to join them, so they talked more and asked more questions and, mostly, chatted about books they loved. Anthea got talking again one afternoon about making Violet watch some anime, and Hana offered up a few suggestions.

“We should have a marathon,” she joked.

“That’s an excellent idea,” Anthea said, pointing at her. “I’m going to make this happen, one way or another.”

Violet bit her tongue for a second, but it was something she’d been considering and she knew an opportunity when she saw one. “Do you guys actually want to hang out not-here sometime?” she asked, a little suddenly. She didn’t really know what hanging out entailed – she hadn’t seen friends outside of school since Barbies and candy bracelets were the go-to entertainment – but she’d been feeling like it was time to push onward to that next step.

“I’d like that,” Hana said, smiling brightly. She tucked her hair behind her ear, looking shy again. “I don’t think I can have friends over though. Our apartment is very small and my mother is self-conscious about it.”

“Yeah, I’m definitely down,” Anthea agreed. “I’m not a great host right now either though, the cats have fleas. But as soon as that’s taken care of, I can have people around again. As long as you’re willing to contend with up to eight assorted family members potentially being in the house with us.”

Violet considered for a second. She knew that she had the space to have friends over, and there was no reason not to really, but she wasn’t sure if she was ready for that. Fumbling briefly, she suggested, “We could just walk down to the park after school sometime.” She hadn’t thought very far ahead on this idea, she realised; where they would hang out that wasn’t at school hadn’t occurred to her.

“Hey, no complaints about that,” Anthea said. “We can get food on the way and everything. Plus, the weather’s great lately.”

“I’m free all the time,” Hana said. “I don’t do much after school most days except go to the store, and if I called my mother to let her know what I was doing, she probably wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m pretty free too. Dad basically gave up on keeping track of all of us, like, five years ago. Also,” Anthea pointed out, “I have coupons for the ice cream place that expire really soon, and I wouldn’t mind sharing.”

Violet glanced between her friends for a moment, thinking. She wasn’t great at spontaneous, last-minute plans, but then, there was no good reason not to. And she was pushing herself now. That was the whole point. “Are you free today? It’s really nice out.”

“For sure,” Anthea said. She glanced across at Hana, who nodded.

“Yes, I’d like that!” she agreed.

“Okay,” Violet said. “So… meet outside the front doors at the end of the day?”

“Deal,” Anthea confirmed with a nod.

After school the three of them gathered outside and wandered their way down the road towards the park, detouring into the plaza a block before their destination to get food. After a moment’s deliberation they stepped into a Tim Hortons, and a few minutes later they headed for the park, snacks in hand.

The picnic tables at the park were clustered in and around an open pavilion near the little skate park. Hana asked to sit in the sun, so they took a table that had been pushed out of the pavilion into the empty space next to it. Sitting down to eat, their attention was soon drawn to the skaters dipping up and down through the simple, heavily graffitied concrete basin that passed for a skate park in their small town. Chatting idly about classes and people and life in general, the three girls munched on donuts and watched in mild amusement as a guy on rollerblades tried desperately to follow his skateboarding friend’s lead.

As the skaters took their turns zooming through the bowl and shouting their approval or taunts at one another, one in particular started to stand out. Ripped jeans, red flannel, and long brown hair flowing out from under a black helmet, she was the only girl in the park by the looks of it – at least the only one skating. A few more girls clustered around the edges, presumably friends or girlfriends of the other skaters. She received a lot of ribbing from her peers – ranging from friendly to somewhat less so – but she was clearly quite skilled. To combat the teasing of the other skaters, Anthea started to cheer when the girl pulled off a good trick; after a minute or two, Violet and Hana started to join in, if a bit more quietly.

After about half an hour the girl stepped away from the bowl to sit down on a stone bench, pulling off her helmet and running her hand back through her hair. She took a sip of water from a bottle on the bench and leaned back for a moment.

“Hey!” Anthea shouted, hands cupped around her mouth. “You’re super cool!”

The girl glanced over, smile dazzling white in her tanned brown face. She gave a thumbs up. “Thanks!”

“We’ve been admiring you for a while,” Anthea called. “You’re clearly the best skater here!”

“Boo!” answered one of the guys still at the edge of the bowl, tossing a quick scowl in Anthea’s direction. The girl laughed and got to her feet, shouldering a ragged messenger bag and picking up her board in one hand and her helmet and water bottle in the other. She approached the table with a grin.

“I appreciate that,” she said as she drew near. “It’s nice to see more girls around here. Can get to be a bit of a sausage fest in there. Any of you skate?”

Violet and Hana exchanged glances and shook their heads. Anthea just shrugged. “I used to longboard around a lot, but I haven’t touched it much since I got my truck. Hardly the same, though.”

“That’s cool,” the girl said with a shrug. “I just like to have other girls around at all, even if only to watch.” She winked as she sat down next to Anthea, facing the other two.

“Wait, you have a truck?” Violet asked, looking at Anthea in surprise.

“Hm?” Anthea raised her eyebrows. “Oh, yeah. I left it in the school parking lot, I’ll go back for it whenever we’re done here. I inherited it from my Nona when she got her license taken away. None of my brothers were in a position to take it, so I won out by default.”

“Nice,” the girl said, smiling that bright smile again. “I’m Leilani, by the way.”

“Anthea.” She pushed a box across the table towards the newcomer. “Timbit?”

Leilani’s face lit up. “Yes, please,” she said, helping herself. She glanced across the table at the other two.

“I’m Hana,” Hana provided with her usual shy smile.

Violet introduced herself quietly, with a small wave. “Violet.”

“Rad,” Leilani said around a mouthful. “How is everybody on this fine afternoon?”

“Pretty damn good, I think,” Anthea answered. “The sun is amazing.”

“You’re not wrong,” Leilani agreed.

“I’m afraid I’m going to burn,” Violet admitted. She’d taken her zippered sweatshirt off because of the heat, but hung it around her shoulders to protect her arms, and she adjusted it now as it slipped away from her left side a little.

“God, you’re pale,” Anthea teased. “How do you live like that?”

“And this is me with a bit of colour still left over from the summer,” Violet pointed out, holding one arm out to show the very slight tan she could still claim. Now that gardening season was mostly past, what little colour she had was fading.

“You call that colour?” Hana asked, eyebrows raised. She scooted closer and held out an arm next to Violet’s, turning it over to compare the pale underside to Violet’s tan. Hana was still darker. Snorting with laughter, Anthea and Leilani held out their arms as well, Anthea’s ashy olive and Leilani’s a rich brown. Violet was the palest member of the group by several shades. For a moment everyone’s hands were bumping together and Violet thought again about contact, about how much she suddenly liked to touch people.

“Anthea, I’ve been meaning to ask where your skin tone comes from,” Violet said, hiding her arm under her hoodie again. “If that’s like, an okay question to ask?”

“Yeah, it’s cool,” Anthea said with a laugh. “My dad’s Greek, so he’s already kind of olive, and my mom was Nigerian.”

“I never knew that!” Hana exclaimed. “Thea, you have such an interesting family.”

“Not that interesting,” Anthea teased, grinning. “Just big, mixed, and noisy.”

After that afternoon Leilani pretty smoothly inserted herself into their group. It turned out that she had the same lunch period the rest of them did; she just tended to eat outside. Now she came in to sit with the other three in the cafeteria most days, or sometimes they’d go out to sit in the bleachers with her when it was sunny.

Anthea asked one day who Leilani had been hanging out with before them – she seemed to make the transition so seamlessly, but surely she’d had other friends. She admitted that she’d spent most of her high school career with the other skaters, even though most of them were guys and several were less than welcoming. She’d gotten tired lately, she admitted, of her female company being almost exclusive to other skaters’ girlfriends. The concept of new girls to hang out with had really appealed to her of late, and these three had happened to walk through her life at just the right time.

“Skaters have this reputation for being so chill,” she said with a shrug. “And in this town, we all know exactly why they’re so chill... But it really doesn’t matter how high they are – it’s mostly guys and, like always, they get kind of gross in large groups like that. Very masculine, very straight… I mean, some of them are actually cool and I’m sure I’ll still hang with them, plus the like two other girl skaters I know, but I’m kind of bored with the whole sexist group dynamic they’ve got going on.”

The more the four of them hung out – mostly at lunch, still, but with walks into town or the park once or twice a week now – the more Violet found herself admiring how open the others were, especially Leilani. She was an open book; she kept nothing secret, no matter how people around her felt about it. She told people what she thought so candidly, was so public about everything she was. The most obvious example was the pride flag bandana she wore somewhere on her person almost daily, but there were a lot of other things as well. She held no opinions back.

She touched a lot, too. Anthea wasn’t shy about touch, and Hana touched hands a lot – it seemed to just be a natural part of her body language – but Leilani always seemed to be in contact with someone. She’d sit tight against somebody’s side without a second thought, touch arms and shoulders in greeting or to get someone’s attention, gesture by touching people directly. She fixed messy hair or crooked collars without hesitation. Violet found herself starting to crave more contact as she grew used to it, just as she seemed to want to know more about all of her friends the more she learned. She didn’t fully understand that, but it seemed to make sense.

She was wondering how to advance her newfound friendships another step further, beyond their little park trips, when the opportunity simply unfolded in front of her. It was Leilani that brought it up.

“Hey, I wanna have one last bonfire before my dad covers up the pit and stores the wood in the barn for the winter,” she said one day. “Do you guys wanna come around on Friday night and hang out for a few hours?”

“Hell yeah,” Anthea agreed immediately. “I love a good fire.”

“Can we roast marshmallows?” Hana asked, her eyes lighting up.

“Totally,” Leilani said with a nod. “You can roast as many as you can eat.”

“Be careful,” Violet pointed out as Hana’s smile grew. “That girl has a wicked sweet tooth. ‘As many marshmallows as she can eat’ might be a pretty tall order.”

“Last fire of the season,” Leilani pointed out with a grin and a shrug. “I’m willing to give it a shot.”

Leilani’s family lived on a big property amongst the smaller local farms and ran a few greenhouses where they grew flowers year-round. While she gave them the quick tour, Hana recognized several of the plants, and later they realized that Leilani’s was one of the nurseries that Hana’s parents bought their flowers from. Out back, behind the greenhouses and the modest bungalow, there was about half an acre of open space, with a small barn looking a bit worse for wear and a large fire pit. There were already chairs clustered around it, and a big man who was clearly Leilani’s dad was knelt down next to it, starting a fire.

“Hi, girls,” he greeted with a smile as they approached. He looked at his daughter. “Got this started for you. Bucket’s next to your chair. And I brought out the cooler with some water and pop and all the s’more stuff for you. Just gonna go grab the roasting sticks and then I’ll let you ladies be. Let me know if you guys need anything, okay?”

“Sure. Thanks, Dad,” she said, offering him a fist bump as he got up and headed towards the house.

“Your father is so sweet!” Hana exclaimed when he was out of earshot.

Leilani scratched the back of her hand, offering an uncomfortable half-smile. “Yeah, he is,” she agreed.

Anthea frowned across the fire as she sat down. “What’s up?” she asked. “Seems like there’s more to it than that.”

Leilani laughed awkwardly, coming around the fire pit to park on the edge of what was clearly her favourite chair. She picked up the fire poker and jabbed it into the ground, twisting it in her hands. “Y’know, he just…” She paused, thinking, then restarted. “My mom’s been really weird since I came out. Dad’s cool about it, but the longer Mom goes without coming around, the more he tries to make up for it, I think.”

“Oh, jeez,” Violet muttered, sitting down heavily on a wooden bench next to Hana.

“It’s not a big deal?” Leilani said. “It’s just – I dunno, it’s weird. Mom hasn’t been bad, just… just weird.” She smacked the end of the poker against the ground again, clearly at a loss for a good explanation of her feelings. She glanced sideways at Anthea, hesitating, then asked, “How was it for you, when you came out?”

Anthea chewed her tongue for a second, thinking. “Not terrible,” she admitted, shrugging. “I mean… well. It was a year and change after Mom passed away, so she never knew. I think she would’ve been cool, though. My oldest brother, Nik – well, he never came out to us, strictly speaking, but he brought partners home of enough different genders that eventually we all figured it out. Dad had to explain it to Nona a couple times before she got her head around it, but it wasn’t bad other than that. I think people were surprised, but no one was upset, you know?” She fiddled with the handle of her backpack where it sat between her feet. She never seemed to part with it. “I was a little concerned that coming out as trans would be different than Nik being pan. I mean – he’d introduced us to one trans partner at that point, so I knew that my family was basically all right with the concept, but I wasn’t sure if it would be different when it was me than when it was an outsider. It turned out fine though. Everyone was good about it, and they adjusted pretty fast. Faster than I had hoped for, actually.”

“I’m glad,” Leilani said. “It’s not like… I mean, Mom just acts like it’s all gonna pass one of these days and I’ll go back to being her normal daughter.” The word seemed distasteful in her mouth. “She tries really hard to act like nothing has changed. Too hard. It comes out all fake and weird. Always telling me she loves me, but never really… talking to me properly. I don’t know how she keeps it up. And like… if Dad or my sister try to talk to her about it, she acts like she can’t even hear them.”

“I’m sorry,” Hana said, leaning forward in her seat and across the gap between the bench and Leilani’s chair to tap her on the knee in a small, comforting gesture. “That must be such a strain.”

“That isn’t fair,” Violet agreed quietly. It was only recently, since befriending Anthea and Leilani, that she felt like she was beginning to get a sense for how attitudes like Leilani’s mother’s actually worked in the real world, but it certainly didn’t sit well. Given that context, she appreciated that they trusted her with such heavy, personal feelings. There was a weight and intimacy to that that she found both humbling and moving.

Leilani shrugged again. “Like I said, it’s not that big a deal. It just makes things weird. And Dad feels guilty for it, so he’s trying to make things better by being ultra nice. I appreciate the gesture, but it’s a bit strange.”

“I hope your mom comes around,” Anthea told her.

“Me too,” Leilani agreed with a sigh.

There was only a short pause before the sound of the back door opening and closing made all four of them look up. “Sorry honey,” Leilani’s dad said as he approached. “Keahi and her friends were the last to use these, and they didn’t clean them very well at all. I did my best to clean them up before I brought them out.”

“Thanks Dad,” Leilani said, smiling at him as she stood to take the marshmallow roasters from his hand. It seemed like talking to her friends about him had softened her a little. She bounced up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and he smiled happily, ruffling her hair before turning to go back inside.

“Welcome sweetie. Remember, I’m just inside if you need anything.”

Leilani took a deep breath, as if to clear the air of the heavy conversation, and then passed the roasters around. She leaned down to the cooler to grab the marshmallows. “Anyone thirsty?”

“Can I get one of those waters?” Violet asked. Leilani tossed her a bottle, then a sleeve of graham crackers and a chocolate bar, passing another of each to Anthea.

“Let’s get going on this s’more business,” Leilani said, tearing into the marshmallow bag. “I want to see how many it takes before Hana gives up.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Anthea agreed. Hana only grinned broadly as she put a marshmallow on the end of her stick and held it out to the fire.

Violet continued to think for a moment as she carefully roasted her own marshmallow. This was a very new experience to her in many ways. The only people she’d ever sat around a fire or roasted marshmallows with were her immediate family, but tonight she found herself at a fire in a friend’s darkening backyard with three other girls she’d never spoken to only six weeks ago, talking about fairly personal subjects. And she felt good. The fire was warming her toes and her knees, and Hana pressed against her side on the small bench was warm too.

“I’ve never liked anyone,” she blurted abruptly. She glanced up after a second to meet the other three’s curious gazes. “I mean, like, I’ve never had a crush, or anything. I know it’s kind of… weird.” She bit her lip. “I’ve never told anyone that except my brother. I was worried there was something wrong, but he told me that some people are just like that.”

Anthea nodded, her smile reassuring. “Yeah, man. That’s cool.”

“Nothing wrong with you at all,” Leilani agreed. Violet looked back down into the fire, self-conscious about her sudden confession. “Hey, you mention this brother of yours every so often. What’s the deal with him?” Leilani asked. “It seems like you guys are close.”

“We are,” Violet answered slowly, pulling her marshmallow off the metal stick and fumbling with the graham crackers and piece of chocolate she’d balanced on her knee a moment before. Hana reached over to help, and Violet mumbled a thank you. “Linden’s four and half years older than me. For a long time he was really… the only friend I had. I don’t know. I just didn’t make friends easily to begin with, and then I was homeschooled for five years. He was there for me, and we were close naturally…” She took a small bite of her s’more. “He did his undergrad in engineering, and this year he’s doing his Master’s. He had a really cool opportunity come up to go to Singapore for the year, for study and this amazing internship. He left in June. It’s hard to stay in touch, because he’s super busy, plus there’s the time zone difference… but I’m proud of him.”

“That’s so neat,” Hana told her as Violet helped her with her own s’more. “I’m sure his work must be fascinating. But I can’t imagine how much you must miss him.”

Violet nodded, looking into the fire as Leilani tossed a couple more logs into it. “I’ve never really been apart for him for long before this. And now he feels… really, really far away.”

“Can’t get much further,” Anthea agreed. “When does he come home?”

“May,” Violet answered. “He might be able to come home for a couple days at Christmas, too. We’ll have to wait and see.”

“We’ll have to meet him whenever he’s here again,” Leilani said with a smile. “After all, from the sounds of it, he’s been a pretty big influence on you, and I’d like to thank anyone who made you who you are.”

Violet looked up in surprise. “I barely feel like I know who I am,” she said with unusual candidness. She bit her tongue immediately, always nervous after an admission like that.

“I think we’re starting to get a picture, though,” Anthea said, teasing a little, her grin still gentle. “It takes a while to get you out of your shell, Vi, but it’s worth the work. You’re kind, you’re clever, you’re even funny when you’re relaxed enough. I count myself lucky that you asked me to be your friend.”

Violet was caught between staring in shock and looking quickly away in embarrassment. She watched Anthea’s face for a second, then turned abruptly back to the growing bonfire. “I don’t…” But she didn’t know where the sentence was going, so she simply trailed off.

Hana bumped her shoulder against Violet’s. “I’m glad we’re friends, too,” she said. “You and Anthea made me so much happier. And then Leilani, too. I was lonely before, but now I have people to talk to and things to do and I’m excited to go to school every day.”

“Man,” Leilani piped up, “I was losing my mind before I met you guys. I seriously needed people like you. The skaters were really getting to me, but I didn’t have anyone else to hang out with. I’m super happy we met – Thea’s so cool, and Hana’s just the cutest, and Violet, you’re a great listener. You’re just… really compassionate, and accepting, and even when you’re really quiet, I can tell you’re really listening to and thinking about everything I say. That’s a real good kind of friend to have.”

Violet shook her head, astonished. Still looking into the fire, she pretended it was the flames that were making her face so warm. “I just… don’t understand,” she said slowly. “You’re all so generous and loving and expressive and I… I don’t know how to be like that. I wish I did. Where do you find that?” She glanced up, finding herself caught on Anthea’s gaze across the fire.

“It’s definitely something you have to learn,” Anthea said with a nod. “But I wouldn’t say you’re incapable of it. Once in a while I think that side of you shows through, even if you struggle a little to get there. You’ve said some really sweet things to all of us. You give some super top-notch compliments.”

“I think the three of you bring that out in me, sometimes,” Violet told her softly.

“I don’t mind being responsible for that,” Hana said, looping an arm around Violet’s shoulders.

“As someone who’s reasonably familiar with walls,” Leilani said thoughtfully, “it’s pretty clear that you’ve built yours up high over a long time. But we can see you trying to knock them down, so we’re here to help. Even if we have to disassemble them one brick at a time.”

Violet squeezed the handle of the marshmallow roaster in her hand, trying to wrap her head around everything they had said, everything that had happened in the last month and a half. Somehow, she had gone from very alone to three incredible friendships – new, but strong, caring. It was hard to make sense of. She blinked against pricking eyes, looking into the fire and willing it to dry them out. Then, noticing something, she swung her marshmallow roaster under Hana’s and pushed her away from the fire.

“You’re going to lose your marshmallow in a second,” she said quietly, smiling a bit.

“Oh!” Hana said, looking at it in surprise. “I forgot about it…”

Violet rolled over in her bed later that night, still not asleep. She couldn’t shut her brain off. She was swinging between the heart-to-heart they’d had over Leilani’s bonfire – and it had really gone everywhere, from showering each other with praise to venting all kinds of personal secrets – and how profoundly she missed her brother, who she hadn’t talked this much about in a long time, and she couldn’t settle down enough to sleep for anything.

She snaked an arm out from under the covers and turned the alarm clock on her bedside so that she could read the display. It was three in the morning. Maybe not an ideal time, but…

Shuffling out of bed and across the room, she turned on her computer, quickly lowering the brightness of the screen to keep from blinding herself. A moment later she sighed with relief. There it was: that little green dot next to her brother’s name. She hesitated only briefly before clicking.

Linden picked up quickly, his face appearing on screen and instantly calming her nerves. His dark hair was messy and she could tell he was tired, but his blue eyes were bright as ever. “You should be in bed,” he teased her, adjusting his reading glasses.

“I know,” she said softly, leaning her head against her hand, elbow on the desk. “But I couldn’t sleep, and I missed you.”

“I miss you too,” he told her, smiling. He glanced down from the camera at his tabletop. “I’m just working on some rough sketches, if you don’t mind…?”

“That’s fine,” she told him. “Any word on Christmas yet?”

“Not yet,” he said with a shake of his head. “That’s still a ways out, and I think it kind of depends on our performance. I’m pretty sure I’m in their good graces, though. I’m optimistic.”

“I can’t wait to see you,” Violet admitted tiredly. “It already feels like it’s been forever.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He brushed some eraser shavings off his paper.

“My friends want to meet you now, too,” she added.

Now he looked up again, in surprise. “Your friends?” he asked. She smiled slightly as she watched him rush to correct for his shock. “I mean, not that you can’t have friends, it’s just…”

“That I haven’t had any in a decade?” She shook her head. “I know.”

“So what…?” He looked at her for a moment, trying to formulate his question.

“I decided I really needed a change,” Violet told him. “With you gone it was harder to ignore how alone I was, and I just… I just couldn’t…” She paused, biting her lip. “I’m lost without you, you know that?”

Linden’s face softened. “I’ll be back again before you know it,” he promised. “I’m only halfway around the world, you know. That can’t keep me away from you for long.”

He was smiling, and she smiled again too.

“I’m proud of you for making friends,” he told her. “Now that you have them, the time between us will fly, you know. And I can’t wait to meet them, too, when I get home.”

“I think you’ll like them,” she said. “And they’ll like you. I don’t really… I didn’t know what I was doing, when I started this, but I think I got lucky.”

“Tell me all about them,” he said, turning back to his drawings. So she did. She gave him the details of how she met each of them; told him about Anthea, tall and creative and insightful, and Hana, small and shy but bursting with enthusiasm, and Leilani, athletic and confident and candid. She told him about their walks to the park and their visit that night to Leilani’s, their bonding session over the fire.

“I really like… having friends,” she said quietly. Her arms were folded on the desk now, her chin on top of them; she had tipped the front of her laptop down so that Linden could still see her when he glanced over at his screen. “I don’t know how to have friends, but I like it. I like getting to know them, being near them, having people around me.”

Her brother was smiling. “Having friends is pretty nice, in my experience,” he agreed. “I’ve always liked it.”

“How come you never really had friends over when you were home?” Violet asked. “I know you always had them, but I didn’t see them much.”

He licked his lips, considering his answer. “Home was our place,” he told her after a second. “I never wanted to ignore you when I was in the same place you were, because… well. You know. So I set home aside for just us. I could be with my other friends anywhere.”

Violet glanced down at her desk, covered in messy scratch paper. “Thank you,” she said. “For always being my best friend. And not just out of pity. I’m really lucky to have a brother like you.”

“Well, I’m not doing so bad in the sister department, either, kid.” There was a moment where they were both quiet, and then he suggested, “You remember that trail we go hiking sometimes, with the mill ruins by the waterfall? You should take them there.”

“I should?” she asked. “How come?”

Linden shrugged. “I dunno, it’s just a fun place to go with friends. I always loved taking new people out there.”

“Well, I guess I’ll see how the weather is in the next little while,” she agreed, nodding. “We might be able to get out there before it’s too cold.”

“I hope so,” he said. “I mean, maybe it’s just because I miss it out there and I want to live vicariously through you a little bit… but I do think you’ll have fun.” He was grinning. He glanced at his screen again just in time to catch her yawning. “You should get some sleep.”

“I know,” she said, a little sadly. “I just get to talk to you so rarely, and I really miss you…”

“I know. I miss you too, kiddo,” he responded, leaning towards the camera. “But like I told you, it’s not forever. I’ll be home again in no time.”

“It’s not much further,” Violet said, glancing at the map on Anthea’s phone again. She was in the passenger seat, navigating via Anthea’s phone since she had no data plan of her own. “You should be seeing the sign any second.”

“Yeah, I think that might be it up there,” Anthea said with a nod, lifting one finger off the steering wheel to point.

The truck she had inherited from her grandmother was old and beaten-up and the blue paint job was faded halfway to grey, and the inside was full of fast food bags and crumpled-up notes and cat hair, but it served well as the girls’ transportation for adventures further afield than the local park. Having a friend with both a license and a vehicle, Leilani had noted, was extremely convenient.

Anthea pulled into the parking lot of the little conservation area, hopping out of her seat while the others got themselves sorted out so that she could fetch a parking pass from the machine on the edge of the lot. When she came back to put it in her windshield, the other three were standing on the gravel, Violet swiping sunscreen onto her face to protect herself from the unseasonably warm October sun. She shrugged off her hoodie and put some on her arms as well, knowing that she may well get warm enough to remove it later in spite of the mild breeze.

“Lay on, Macduff,” Anthea told her once she put the sunscreen back away in the truck and they locked the doors.

“The Scottish Play,” Violet mumbled, briefly puzzled. Then, “Oh, right.” She had already forgotten that the others had never been here before. She glanced around the parking lot almost as if she expected something about it to have changed, then pointed at a trail entrance in the edge of the woods, a few hundred feet away. “Thataway, folks.”

The four of them headed into the woods, where the trees were close enough to form a canopy but not so dense that they entirely blocked out the sky. The colours were finally turning, a little later than expected that year, hints of green still visible in places but mostly gold and orange by now. The path wound pleasantly through the woods, leading after twenty minutes or so to an intersection with a single outhouse; another ten minutes past that they finally emerged onto an open area next to the waterfall. Where they stood, the fall was on their right and the low-flowing river eight feet below them; across from the lookout were the ruins and, beyond them, a tall overgrown rock face.

“Oh, it’s lovely!” Hana exclaimed happily, hands going quickly to her face. “Would the water be cold this time of year?”

“Probably a bit,” Violet answered. “But not too bad, I don’t think. Weather’s been warm. Plus, I left a couple towels back in the truck, just in case.”

“Do you climb down there a lot?” Leilani asked, glancing over the low stone wall around the outlook and down to the hill below. It wasn’t too steep, but it was rocky.

“I mean, Linden and I usually spend more time down here than on the path,” Violet answered. “It’s not a long hike if you stick to the trail, but it’s fun to climb around down there…” She looked across the small river below at the empty stone walls on the other side, all that remained of what had once been a functioning mill. A plaque on the rock face to their right gave a brief history of the building. Anthea glanced over the information on the sign, then looked over at the ruins as well.

“Well, let’s go have a look around,” she said, sitting down on the wall and swinging her legs over it. She started down the hill, Leilani close behind her. Violet headed after them, then glanced over her shoulder at Hana, who was perched on the wall still, looking down.

“You okay?” Violet asked.

“Yeah…” Hana looked up at her, her mouth twisted over to one side in thought. “I’m just not used to hiking or anything. I’m a little worried about the hill.”

“Oh.” Violet scratched her jaw awkwardly. She’d been clambering around places like this with her brother for as long as she could remember now, and had never thought of the hill as dangerous, though she could see now that it would look a little hazardous to someone unaccustomed to it. “The rocks are mostly pretty settled into place. It’s not too hard to keep your footing,” she said encouragingly.

Hana bit her lip. “Would you mind helping me keep my balance?” she asked, holding out a hand.

“Oh,” Violet said again, surprised. Then she stepped closer and took the outstretched hand. “Yeah, I can do that.” When she thought about it, she could remember Linden doing the same for her when she was younger, and her parents, too, back when they used to hike as a family more often. She locked her arm and let Hana lean against her nervously.

They made their way down the hill and into the river, Violet showing Hana how to pick her footing carefully and avoid slipping. When they stepped onto the rocks that stood up out of the water, Hana looked at her with a bright smile. “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” Violet said, lifting her eyebrows. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever had anyone put that kind of trust in her, and there was something strange about realizing the newness of what simultaneously felt like such a natural interaction.

Anthea and Leilani were already on the other side of the narrow river, checking out the ruins, but Hana wanted to get closer to the waterfall, so Violet stuck close to her. Now that she knew how unfamiliar Hana was with this kind of terrain, she wanted to be nearby to help if she slipped. They got right up next to the small waterfall – maybe thirty feet tall, but with a relatively low flow – and, with an encouraging nod from Violet, Hana rolled up her sleeves and stuck her hands in the water. “It is cold,” she laughed, running her fingers down the wet, mossy rock face. “It feels so neat, though.”

“Yeah. The moss was my favourite part when I was little,” Violet said, reaching out and running a finger down the slimy green surface.

“I love it,” Hana told her earnestly. She was staring up at the waterfall, hands pressed against the rock and water running over her wrists, utter joy in her eyes. Violet couldn’t help feeling glad to have been the one to bring her here.

After a few more moments, the two of them turned towards the ruined mill and picked their way across the rocks, seeking out Anthea and Leilani. Leilani was perched on top of the closest wall, munching on a granola bar; Anthea was somewhere out of sight. Violet helped Hana climb up onto the wall from the crumbled rock behind it, sat her safely next to Leilani, then walked carefully along the length of the wall, following the grunts and sounds of scraping stone that she assumed came from Anthea.

“Where’ve you gotten to?” Violet called, standing where the wall met a somewhat taller one at the corner. She leaned over, trying to figure out where she was hearing the noise from.

“Up here,” came Anthea’s voice, and Violet looked up. It took her a moment to spot the other girl. Then there she was, turquoise hair and scuffed overalls giving her away where she stood in a shallow hole in the rock face, on the far side of the river from the outlook where they’d started.

“How did you even get there?” Violet asked, smiling slightly.

“It was a little treacherous, I admit,” Anthea told her with a grin. “Worth it, though. Come on up! If you can get up onto that second wall in front of you it’s not too hard.”

Violet considered for a moment, aware that if she fell she’d probably crack her head open. But she was reasonably confident in her ability not to fall. The wall was a foot wide, and her balance was good. She’d been clambering all over these ruins and other, similar territory for as long as she could remember. In fact, she realized, she might well be better at climbing than she was at just about anything else. Then she nodded and hauled herself up onto the higher wall, holding her arms out on either side to steady herself as she walked towards Anthea.

“Hm,” Anthea said when Violet reached the corner, glancing at the gap between them. “I guess my legs are a fair bit longer than yours, huh? Okay, one second,” she said. She shimmied forward in the tiny cave and reached out a hand. “Here. If you brace against that tree and reach for me, you can get across just fine.”

Violet paused a second time. She had never even climbed up onto the high wall before; this was a little bit more dangerous than most of her attempts usually were around here. She hadn’t gone exploring very much in a long time, she realized; mostly she’d just climbed around in the familiar spots and enjoyed the views she already knew. She was a good climber, but she’d gotten comfortable with what she knew she could do and never tried anything new.

She looked at Anthea’s outstretched hand again. After a second or so, she took a deep breath and reached out.

“There we go,” Anthea said as she pulled Violet onto the ledge where she stood. “See? Told you I wouldn’t drop you.”

“No you didn’t,” Violet teased, wiping tree bark off her left hand against her jeans.

Anthea snorted. “It was implied,” she argued, laughing. “I’m your friend. You can trust me.”

Violet glanced down into the gap between the hole and the mill walls again. “Yeah. I know.”

For a few moments they stayed where they were, admiring the view. Violet liked seeing the familiar place from a brand new angle, and she couldn’t wait to come back with Linden next summer and show him the new spot they’d found. Then Leilani appeared at the same corner Violet had spotted Anthea from a few minutes ago. Seeing them, she grinned, took out her phone, and snapped a photo. “How cute,” she said, looking at the picture she’d just taken. “New lock screen. You guys coming back? I’m gonna try to catch a frog for Hana.”

“Sounds good. Be there in a minute,” Anthea called back. Leilani nodded and disappeared again; Violet stepped back out of the way so Anthea could swing herself back across the gap and then turn to offer a hand again. From there, Anthea started to go back the way she came. Emboldened by her attempts at new things, though, Violet turned to the tree next to her and tested her weight against a branch. Trees, she knew, she could handle well, so she clambered down that way and met a laughing Anthea at the base of the mill wall. By the time they reached the water again, Hana was standing and watching quietly as Leilani prowled through the marshy grass at one side of the river.

The three of them waited as still and silently as they could, and after a few more moments Leilani darted forward and grabbed at something. “Got it!” she said, turning to show off her captive. She held the frog gently, hands wrapped around his middle and holding his legs in, and he was relatively placid.

“I love him!” Hana said immediately, leaning in for a closer look. “He’s so handsome!”

“He’s big,” Anthea added with a nod, admiring the animal.

Leilani held onto the frog for a few moments so the others could get a good look, then released him back into the water, where he quickly leapt to a safe distance. Hana watched with stars in her eyes.

“Sometimes I wonder if I should go into environmental sciences instead,” she confessed. “I love being out here…”

“I think that’d be a good fit for you,” Leilani agreed. “You love animals, you love the outdoors, and you’re great at biology and stuff. It makes as much sense as me going into software, anyway.”

“I didn’t know that was where you were headed,” Anthea commented with interest. “Although I guess all the schools you said you wanted to apply to have good comp eng programs, so that follows.”

“You said you’re looking at psychology or sociology, right?” Leilani asked.

Anthea nodded. “Haven’t decided which yet, but that’s fine. I just apply for social sciences and pick a major in second year.”

Hana glanced at Violet. “What are you thinking of doing next year, Vi?” she asked.

Violet hesitated. She’d never been confident in her end goal, and this year it seemed more pressing than ever that she make a decision, but it had been the only future that made any sense at all for years. “I…” She faltered, glancing down, rubbing her arm self-consciously. “I mean, it’s only logical for me to go into English for starters,” she said slowly. “It’s not a field full of jobs, but it’s what I’m best at by far.”

“Any idea where you might head from there?” Leilani asked. She could tell there was more to the thought than that.

Violet paused again, nervous. “I don’t know for sure. I mean, I – well I’ve been thinking that I’d like to be a writer of some kind, eventually. Maybe do a Master’s in creative writing or something.” She swallowed. Her tone was growing less certain by the second. “Or journalism? I don’t know. It’s a long way out.” By the end she was very quiet, staring at the ground.

“Damn, dude, that’d be awesome,” Anthea told her. “I didn’t know you were into writing, that’s so rad. Hey, were you thinking of staying local? Because I’ve been considering minoring in cultural studies, which is an English department thing at most universities, so we could totally try to take some classes together.”

Violet glanced up in surprise, trying to gulp down a wave of anxiety. “Yeah?”

Anthea nodded vigorously. “Definitely!”

“I didn’t know that either!” Hana said excitedly. “Do you write a lot? Is there anything I could read? Only if you feel comfortable sharing! I just think that’s so cool!”

Violet blushed, glancing at the ground again. “I don’t know, maybe,” she mumbled. “I could… dig up an old essay for you, or something, probably.”

“You gotta find something to share with us, man,” Leilani agreed. “Now that I know this is a thing I’m gonna bug you about it until I get to see something.”

“Aw, don’t push her!” Hana said quickly. “Only if she’s okay with it!”

“Hey, if she wants to write, other people have to read it!” Leilani countered, laughing a little. “I wanna be first in line!”

“Excuse me,” Anthea interrupted, mockingly self-important. “I will be first in line. You can be second.”

Before that moment, no one had known about Violet’s writing except her brother, and she’d always been nervous about telling people. She still felt nervous about the prospect of showing them anything. But all three of them were so immediately supportive, and they were being so silly now, and Violet couldn’t help it: she started to laugh. Undoubtedly it was, at least in part, some kind of twisted adrenaline response, since her stomach was still tying itself into knots, but it didn’t feel all bad.

The other three stopped their playful bickering to look at her, and Anthea stifled a laugh of her own. “What’s up, buddy?” she snickered.

“I’m not sure,” Violet managed to answer, shaking her head. “Just… you guys. I don’t know. I’ve never had this before.”

Anthea stepped closer and threw an arm around Violet’s shoulder, pulling her against her side. “Well, you’re stuck with us for good, now,” she teased.

The weather was finally getting cooler, but it didn’t stop the girls from going on their adventures just yet. They planned a Sunday afternoon of running around in the bigger city next to theirs, starting with Violet, Anthea, and Leilani picking Hana up from her parents’ store. The three of them stepped inside and were immediately met by dozens of beautifully collected bouquets and arrangements.

“Ah, one minute!” Hana said, glancing up from the corner where she was sweeping the floor. “I’m almost ready!”

“No rush, kid,” Leilani answered absently, pausing to smell a bouquet next to her composed largely of red, pink, and orange flowers. “My sister would love these,” she commented quietly, to no one in particular.

Violet and Anthea were distracted by the flowers as well. “These are gorgeous, Hana,” Anthea called as she walked slowly down the length of one wall, admiring one arrangement after another. “Your mom does most of the arranging, right?”

“Yes,” Hana confirmed with a nod, slipping back behind the counter. She dumped a dustpan full of fallen leaves and petals into the garbage can, stowed the broom in a narrow closet, and then reached behind herself to untie her apron. “My father used to do more of it, but my mother is better, so he mostly handles the business side. He still arranges them sometimes, when he has time. I like his. He has a different style than my mother does.”

“They’re all beautiful,” Violet told her.

“Mhm. I kind of want to buy one, but I don’t want to leave it in Thea’s truck all day,” Leilani said.

“Oh!” Hana said in surprise. “Well if you wanted, I could store it in the back room for the day, and you could take it home this evening after Anthea drops me off again,” she suggested.

“Yeah?” Leilani considered that for a moment, looking back at the bouquet in front of her. “Yeah, why not? Keahi loves hibiscus. I mean, like, really loves it. And I haven’t bought her a treat in a while.”

“That’s so sweet!” Hana exclaimed, sliding towards the cash register as Leilani brought the bouquet over to her. “You’re such a good sister, Leilani.”

“Yeah, well.” Leilani smiled. “I try.”

“If Leilani’s getting those,” Anthea said, “I’m gonna grab these for my Nona. It’s her anniversary next week; she always thinks of Papou a lot this time of year. I usually try to get her something.”

Violet smiled down at her feet for a moment. She wished she had someone to buy flowers for; the idea suddenly seemed so nice, and the arrangements in the store were all gorgeous. But neither of her parents were big flower fans, and everyone else currently in her life was in that room.

Leilani and Anthea made their purchases, and Hana stepped through the door behind the counter to stash them away. The girls heard her exchange a few words in Japanese with her mother before she returned; she left the door propped open so that her mother could watch for customers. Then she came around the counter, jacket in hand and purse on her shoulder, and said, “Let’s go!”

Packed into Anthea’s truck and singing along to pop hits on the radio, they drove twenty minutes into the city, their first stop being Leilani’s favourite fast food restaurant, which didn’t have a store in their own town. Stocked up on unhealthy snacks, they headed to a craft store so Hana could buy yarn for her crochet projects. Next door they stopped at a pet store so Anthea could pick up cat food, and Hana insisted on taking nearly thirty minutes to admire all the animals – cats in the adoption centre at the front, reptiles and fish and birds and rodents in the back. “They’re so sweet,” she lamented, hands pressed against the glass pane behind which three guinea pigs were fast asleep.

“I should probably get crickets while we’re here,” Leilani commented while they let Hana coo over the animals. “Now that I think about it, I’d be coming back for them in a few more days anyway.”

Anthea glanced over at her. “Crickets?” she asked, lifting a curious eyebrow.

“Oh, yeah,” Leilani said with a nod. “Keahi and I have a lizard. A gecko. Has that not come up before?”

“It has not!” Hana exclaimed, spinning around. “We came to your house and you didn’t show us your lizard?”

“Sorry,” Leilani laughed. “Next time, I promise.”

They ventured further into the city, heading towards the lake, making stops along the way. The major one was a large thrift store Anthea liked. She proved to have a great talent for finding things in the masses of second-hand clothes, sussing out several pieces to add to her effortlessly-cool wardrobe: relaxed jeans that fit her perfectly, printed tees in a rainbow of colours to match her ever-changing hair, and a jacket covered with cartoonish alligators. Hana had great fun trying things on and found a pink Minnie Mouse varsity jacket that she absolutely loved; Leilani bought a snapback and a new flannel shirt. Violet, eternally awkward when it came to fashion, tried a few things on but didn’t end up buying anything.

She was really trying to be engaged. After their conversation about school at the waterfall a few weeks prior, she had ended up worrying about the future and moping about missing her brother again; she felt later like she’d been a real downer on that trip. In retrospect she felt terrible about admitting to the others how anxious she was. Her loneliness, her uncertain future - those weren’t their burdens to carry; the whole point was to go out and have fun together. She felt guilty about bringing things down like she’d done, and resolved not to do it again. She wanted to be a positive presence, but now she felt a strange mix of distress and guilt that was hard to ignore.

“You’ve been quiet,” Anthea observed, throwing an arm around Violet’s shoulders as they headed back towards the truck. “Anywhere you want to go? Need anything? Hungry?”

Violet looked up at her friend with an appreciative smile. “No, I’m good.”

“You’re sure?” Anthea asked. Violet nodded. “All right, then. On to the waterfront!”

There was a park down by the lake, with a great playground and huge, ancient willow trees. The park had no beach of its own, only big rocks tumbling downward into the tide, but the girls were content enough to pick their way along the water’s edge, hopping from one rock to the next. Anthea and Leilani, already hungry again, were chowing down on hot dogs from the vendor by the gate. They walked far enough to get to the bay, where there was a bit of a beach – coarse sand and little stones. No one would want to swim there – the lake was filthy – but it was nice enough for walking around.

Leilani crouched down and scooped up a flat, smooth stone, tossing it up and down in her hand to test its weight. Then, abruptly, she turned and flung it out across the still water, arm moving in a smooth horizontal arc. The girls watched as it bounced once, twice, three times, four before finally sinking.

“Dang,” Anthea commented, impressed. “You’re not a half bad stone-skipper.”

“World champ,” Leilani joked, wagging her eyebrows.

“Oh, well, we’ll have to test that,” Anthea laughed. She set about searching for skippable stones, Leilani not far behind. Hana joined in as well, though she clearly wasn’t as practiced, as they all saw when they got to skipping. Violet stepped back, kicking stones out of a section of sand and then sitting down, resting her arms across her knees. She was happy just to watch.

Hana gave up, laughing at herself, after a few weak throws and stones that skipped only once or twice before going under. She strode back and planted herself next to Violet, leaning her head against Violet’s shoulder. Violet smiled a little.

“You’ve been quiet the last couple weeks,” Hana said softly after a few moments. “Since we went hiking, I think. Quiet, or – well, too happy, I guess. I don’t mean to pry. I just wanted to ask if you’re all right.”

Violet tensed a bit. “I’m – I’m fine,” she said stiffly.

Anthea was a few feet away searching for stones again, apparently just close enough to overhear. She looked over, dark pink ponytail bouncing behind her. “You sure?” she asked. “You’re allowed to not be, you know.”

“I’m fine,” Violet asserted again, but this time there was a slight waver in her voice.

Leilani was at the water’s edge, picking through the stones that sat in the tide. She swished her hands back and forth through the water for a moment, then came back up towards the other three. Stepping past Anthea until she stood over Violet, she began flicking the water on her hands into Violet’s face. “I’m gonna keep doing this until you’re honest with us,” she said.

“Aah! Why?” Violet cried, covering her face with her arms. Hana giggled on her shoulder.

“Because,” Leilani answered, amused. Violet felt a few drops hit her hair. “You told us you were trying to be more honest and open, and now you’re hiding.”

“I just… don’t want to bring you guys down with my own problems again,” Violet mumbled through her arms. “It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

Anthea swept her foot through the sand, clearing a spot of her own to plunk down. “Your worries, our worries, all the same thing,” she said casually. “Talk to us.”

“It’s nothing,” Violet said again, very quietly. She pulled her knees in closer, settling her chin atop them and keeping her arms around her face.

“I’m going back to the water for more,” Leilani warned.

“Agh, fine!” Violet complained, looking up. “It’s not a big deal, though. I just-” she bit down on her tongue, felt herself swallowing her own voice. Why was this so hard? “I just… I miss my brother.” She dropped her chin back onto her knees, her arms a little looser around her face now. “And I know it’s still early in the year but I’m so nervous about what happens after this. There’s… there’s so much pressure on us to know what we want and where we’re going after high school, and I don’t have a clue. So much of my certainty goes away after graduation. I don’t know…” She swallowed again, anxiety bubbling up in her throat like it always did, and she took a couple of deep breaths to force it back down. Her friends waited quietly. “I don’t know what happens after this. I don’t know if I’ll be okay. There’s no guarantee of anything.”

They were silent for a second or two, letting that settle. Hana leaned further into Violet’s shoulder, wrapping an arm gently around her back and hooking her hand against Violet’s hip. “Of course you have guarantees,” Anthea pointed out, her voice low and her smile gentle. She stretched one leg out to tap Violet’s foot with one of her scuffed sneakers as Leilani finally dropped herself to the ground as well. “You have us.”

Violet met Anthea’s eyes over the top of her folded arms, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t trust herself to.

“Things are going to be okay,” Anthea continued, “because of course they are. Believe me, Vi, most of us don’t have much figured out yet, but we’re all going to be okay. If nothing else, we’re all going to be looking out for each other, right? Plus, by the time you start school next, your brother will be home again.”

Hana hugged Violet’s side. “We are all going to graduate together,” she said. “And we are going to tackle the next part of our lives together. I don’t think I’m even going to school next year, remember? I have to decide what I want. You’re not the only one who’s uncertain.”

“Hell,” Leilani added, pushing her heel through the sand. “Even if I got into one of the further schools I’m applying to, you guys can’t get rid of me that easy. I’ll be home damn near every weekend, whether I like it or not. Keahi wouldn’t let me stay away all the time, let alone you lot.” She grinned.

Violet closed her eyes for a moment against the burning sensation that came with the realization that all of her still-new friends really were in for the long haul. None of them intended this to be a temporary friendship. She hadn’t really been convinced before. Nor had she been fully convinced that it was okay to be sad in front of them. But she was now, and they weren’t going anywhere.

“Thanks,” she breathed after a minute.

“You’re welcome,” Hana murmured back.

“What can we do to make you feel better?” Anthea asked, tapping her foot again.

Violet took another deep breath.

She had a safety net now.

Maybe things would work out in the end.

“I think you already did it,” she answered, managing to crack a smile.

That evening they went to drop Hana off first. The store was closed, but she had keys; she led them into the back room to pick up Anthea’s and Leilani’s purchases. Then she glanced across the storefront at Violet. “Hey, can you grab that bouquet there?” she asked, pointing.

“Sure,” Violet answered, picking it up. “What for?”

Hana smiled brightly. “It’s for you!” she said. Seeing Violet’s look of surprise, she giggled and added, “I saw you admiring it earlier.”

“But… you can’t just give me this,” Violet said, taken completely aback.

“Of course not. But I can buy it for you,” Hana told her. “You deserve flowers!”

Violet paused for a moment, thinking about it. She realised, of course, that it would be rude to refuse the gift, despite her embarrassment. She looked down at the bouquet, then hid her face in it, pretending to smell it deeply. In fact she was suddenly quite moved, but she didn’t want the others to see.

When she got home, she swept the junk off her bedside table and placed the flowers there, in a vase she had found in a cupboard in the basement. It was a foliage-heavy arrangement, several shades of leafy green mixed with flowers in dark blue and purple. It deserved something else, she thought.

After a moment, she figured out just the thing. She pulled an old picture frame out of a drawer and went downstairs to her dad’s computer, where the printer was. A few minutes later she returned and placed the freshly-printed photo in front of the vase and nodded to herself. It was a selfie Leilani had taken at the waterfall, her own face low in the shot and the other three laughing behind her.

Violet didn’t spend nearly as much time alone as she used to anymore. Part of her was a little addicted to the new experience of friendship, and trying to make up for years of loneliness. But she was learning to balance, too, if slowly. Many days now, even if there were no particular plans, she would lollygag around the school at the end of the day with whomever amongst the four of them wasn’t in any rush to get home. Leilani, who was the only one of them who had to take a bus, didn’t usually stay unless Anthea had time to drive her home later, and Hana’s availability depended a bit on whether her parents needed her at the store. But they puttered around outside after school for as long as the weather still allowed, and when the days got consistently cooler, they often found themselves hanging out inside the school doors or in Anthea’s truck.

Violet discovered that she was antsy, restless for something she couldn’t identify. She was still looking for peace, for purpose. Her friends – and her brother, through a small handful of scattered calls – had finally managed to mostly convince her that things were going to be all right moving forward in life, but now she was always looking for the way that it would happen. She knew that she had to bring that future to herself, and she wanted to, but she wasn’t sure yet how.

She was still anxious about wanting to write. It seemed so risky. Linden was in engineering, and he was very smart – his success was guaranteed at this point. And their parents were both in medicine. They were supportive of Violet’s decision to apply to school for the humanities, but she still worried that she was making a bad choice. What if she was never good enough?

But she could find moments of peace, she realised, even when she was alone. That was new. In the past she could almost always distract herself when she was alone, but it wasn’t until very recently that she learned to find that state of calm contentedness. And that had come from her friends too, in a roundabout way.

The three of them had, as promised, badgered Violet incessantly until she found some writing to share with them. At first it was only essays; those had marks on them to reassure her that they were good. With more pestering, she was persuaded to pull out other things – she combed through computer folders full of old projects, many of them unfinished, and eventually found a few short stories or isolated scenes that she deemed safe for sharing.

The response was enthusiastic. Anthea always read everything the second she received it, to the point that Violet wondered what she did with all her free time that she could always drop everything at a moment’s notice just to read. She exclaimed over the subtleties of Violet’s characters, the tone and diction of the prose. Leilani usually responded with “another good one – could be gayer though?” She was teasing, and if pressed further she always had plenty of praise to offer. Hana, of course, was consistently just overflowing with enthusiasm, full of questions for Violet about the world she’d designed and the characters in it. All three of them encouraged her to write more, asked questions and made suggestions that forced her to think about her ideas in ways she hadn’t before – ways that opened up new possibilities.

Violet usually didn’t write much personal work during the school year, but her friends had gotten her gears turning in all these new ways, and now she wanted to put some of her ideas down on paper – or on screen, as the case may be. And what she discovered in doing so was that when she planned out a story or a world, when she developed characters or considered possible directions for a narrative, she really was happy. It was a quiet happiness, one that she didn’t recognize at first. It felt good, though. Therapeutic. And her friends’ perspectives, she discovered, improved her writing. Her characters, her worlds, were more robust now than they had been before. Recognizing that improvement was its own source of joy.

You guys make this possible, she wrote in the email when she sent them another short piece.

Hana’s birthday was in November, and the four of them celebrated in Anthea’s basement, with cake and Studio Ghibli films and candy and an incredible menagerie of cats. As it turned out, everyone in Anthea’s family nominally had one cat of their own, though it really didn’t work out that neatly. But the animals liked the basement and loved the attention they got from the girls, so they stayed, and Hana was absolutely in heaven.

“Man, it’s been a bit since I’ve been to a good birthday party,” Leilani pointed out as Anthea switched DVDs. She bit a handful of gummy worms in half. “This is the shit I do like.”

“I haven’t been to a birthday party at all in like a hundred years,” Violet admitted. “I suddenly feel like I’ve been missing out.”

Leilani looked up from her spot on the floor, propping herself up on her elbows. “Well, it’s not like they’re all this good.”

“It’s true,” Anthea agreed, turning around and sitting down in front of the TV for a moment. “I was at this birthday party like a year ago for an old friend. Bigger than I usually care for. He has a lot of friends these days, and it got… rowdy?” She tipped her head to one side. “I don’t know. It was loud, and a few people got stupid. Some kid tried to go swimming after drinking an unwise amount of Jäger and everything was downhill from there.”

“Oh shit!” Leilani said, sitting up further. “I was at that party too! You’re right, totally too crowded. I was inside when Davis decided to try the pool, but I heard about it. Not surprising really, he’s a dumbass.”

“You’re not wrong,” Anthea snorted. “Is it true that Sarah Mertens tried to convince Caleb to make out with her?”

Leilani leaned her head back, laughing. “Yeah. God. I almost felt bad for her? Like, she had no clue.”

“Wait a second,” Violet interrupted. “Caleb? Caleb Johnson?”

“Yyyyep,” Anthea answered, giggling still. “I can’t believe…”

Hana glanced at Violet with a puzzled smile from where she was planted in one corner of the old sofa, with two cats in her lap. “I don’t think I know him,” she said.

“I don’t know him personally,” Violet answered, glancing over her shoulder to face her. “But he’s got to be a strong contender for gayest dude ever to walk the halls of our school. It’s hard to miss.”

“Oh, dear,” Hana said, hiding her laughter behind a hand. “Poor Sarah.”

“She’s just like… so, so oblivious,” Anthea explained. “I’ve never met anyone who could miss things as obvious as she does. I kind of feel worse for Caleb, he couldn’t have been comfortable with that.”

“He was not,” Leilani confirmed. “Kierstie and Jacklyn had to pull her off and like, take her to another room for a while… I ended up sitting with Caleb for most of the rest of the night as like, a solidarity thing of some kind. He was super weirded out.”

“Whose party was this?” Violet asked. She didn’t know why she was curious, because it wasn’t like it made a difference to her anyway; she couldn’t imagine the universe in which she might have been there.

“Brennan De Vries,” Anthea said. “I grew up with him. We’ve grown apart in the last couple years, but he’s still a pal when we do talk.”

“He’s a good dude,” Leilani said with a nod. “I had a lot of classes with him in grades nine and ten.”

“I think I know who that is,” Violet agreed after a moment’s thought. “Bit of a clown, right?”

“That’s him,” Anthea told her.

“It sounds like the parties you guys have had here are pretty different from the ones I was used to in Japan,” Hana observed. “But there was one year that my friends threw me a surprise party for my birthday. Kasumi and Yoko took me out for ice cream on my birthday, and then when we went back to Kasumi’s house, a whole bunch of people were waiting to surprise me. It scared me a lot at first! But it was very sweet and I had a really good time.”

“That’s awesome,” Leilani said. “We threw a surprise party for Keahi when she turned fourteen. I think she almost pissed her pants when we surprised her, but I’m pretty sure she forgave us eventually.”

“Last spring my French class had a surprise retirement party for Mme Espinoza at the end of the year,” Anthea chipped in. “We all signed a giant card and stuff. Mantej made a cake. She cried a bunch.”

Violet kneaded the hem of her sweater in her hands, staring down into her lap. This was a lot of things she hadn’t been a part of, had never heard about, couldn’t relate to whatsoever. “Sounds like fun,” she said softly.

Anthea watched her for a moment. “Sometimes. But a party like this seems like way more your speed. A handful of good friends, a bunch of food, endless cats, and a stack of movies. I don’t figure you’d be super into a shindig much bigger than this one.”

Leilani looked Violet’s way again. “Lots of ‘em suck,” she reassured her. “This kind of party is way better. Didn’t you hear me when I said this was the first good one I’d been to in a while?”

“I know,” Violet sighed. “But it’s hard not to imagine how nice it would have been to meet you guys years ago. I just… regret how much time I spent alone.” It was a thought that occurred to her every time she listened to the other three talk about things they had done: she had missed out on so much.

“I wasn’t here years ago!” Hana reminded her.

“Right. And I only learned how not to be a douche, like, a year and a half ago, maybe,” Leilani added. “I probably wouldn’t have been much fun to hang out with before now.”

Violet let out a laugh. Anthea pushed herself up and then climbed back over Violet onto the couch, lounging across it like she always did, and then started playing with Violet’s hair where she sat on the floor in front of her. “Well, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t always been exactly this cool,” she joked. “But… there’s no sense in worrying about all that now. We’re here today, and things are good.”

Violet smiled. “And they’re gonna keep being good,” she agreed, quietly. It was as much a reminder to herself as an agreement with the others.

“Don’t forget, Violet,” Hana reminded her. “We’re still super young! We’ve got lots of time to make memories together. That’s something to look forward to, right?”

Violet looked over her shoulder at the other girl again. “Yeah. Thank you, Hana.”

“Of course.”

Leilani grinned at her as she flopped back down on the floor, and Anthea hit play on the next movie.

Violet was trying hard not to look back anymore. Sometimes it was hard to avoid, but she appreciated the reminders. She was happy now. She had these friends and they weren’t going anywhere. She even had a little bit of a plan. There was a future to look forward to and it was slightly less terrifying than it used to be. Even better, there was a happy present to focus on.

The winter’s first snow had started to fall that morning, and Hana insisted on going outside at lunch to admire it for a few minutes. “It’s so cold,” Leilani complained, but she zipped up her coat and followed them out.

Hana wasn’t content to just stand outside the front door; she beckoned to the other three to follow her down to the field to see the snow on the grass. Hands crammed into their pockets, they laughed and went after her. The four of them filed down the stairs alongside the bleachers and then sat down on the bottom tier, Hana watching the gentle snowfall with stars in her eyes.

Anthea glanced over at Leilani, who had turned around to peer at a boy sitting halfway up in the stands off to their left. He was slim, wearing only a hoodie with no coat, hunched over the lunch bag in his lap. “You know him?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Leilani answered. “He’s a year younger than us, I think. I took a grade ten class last year and he was in it. Nice kid. Nervous though. Kusuma, I think his name was?”

Anthea turned to look at the boy again. “I think I’ve seen him around,” she said slowly. “He strike you as—?”

“Oh, definitely,” Leilani answered, before Anthea could even finish her question.

Her attention caught by now, Violet looked away from Hana and leaned back to get a glance at the boy past her friends. “Is he okay?” she asked. “He looks antsy.”

“Not sure,” Leilani responded slowly. “You’re not wrong, though.”

As they watched him, a pair of boys emerged onto the bleachers behind him. Violet glanced over at her friends again in time to see Anthea frown deeply. “Now them I recognize,” she commented, a deep distaste in her tone.

“Hey, Shihab,” one of the boys greeted, his voice a taunt, and Kusuma tensed up. He clutched the lunch bag in his lap. “Haven’t seen you in a few days. You been hiding from us?”

Kusuma didn’t answer at first, but then the second boy drew close and pushed his shoulder a bit. “Would you blame me?” he finally managed, high-pitched with anxiety.

“Funny you should end up in the same place we were going anyway,” pointed out the boy who had pushed him. “Hell, we might almost think you’d planned it.”

“You following us, Shihab?” the first one asked. He looked up at his friend. “Gee, buddy, maybe he likes us. I mean, we know he’s—”

Violet wasn’t sure when she’d gotten to her feet, but she recognised what was coming and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, you two wanna back off?” she shouted.

They looked over in surprise. On one side of her, Anthea and Leilani were on their feet as well, looking angry; on the other, Hana had turned to watch with concern. “You eavesdropping on our private conversation?” one of the boys called back, clearly thrown off by the interruption.

“Wouldn’t be if you didn’t broadcast all your bile so goddamn loud,” Anthea told him, arms crossed. “You wanna take that shit somewhere else? Like the sewer, maybe?”

“Listen, this isn’t your business—”

But Violet cut him off before he had a chance to finish the sentence. “You take whatever nasty thing you were about to say and you swallow it,” she warned him. Then she looked at the boy still seated below the two bullies, eyes wide. “It’s Kusuma, right? You wanna come sit with us?”

“These guys won’t bother you over here,” Leilani assured him, her fists balled.

He stayed frozen for a second or two, then got up stiffly and hopped down from one bench to the next until he reached the bottom, ten or twelve feet to their left. Violet and Anthea made room for him between them, and he came over and sat down awkwardly. Violet turned to look at the two boys again, waving them away impatiently. “Get lost,” she reminded them. Both scowling, they exchanged glances, then turned and left.

The girls sat down around Kusuma. “Hey. You okay?” Violet asked.

He nodded, clearly still wired. “Yeah. I, uh – uh, thanks.”

“Couldn’t just sit here and let it happen,” Violet told him. She glanced over his head and caught Anthea watching her with a mix of admiration and pride in her gaze.

“Those guys give you a lot of trouble?” Leilani asked, still angry. “I don’t personally love getting into fights, but I know some guys…”

“No no no,” Kusuma said quickly. “I don’t want to turn it into a whole thing. I just want to… you know… avoid them. Forever.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Hana said, reaching across Violet’s lap to touch his arm.

“Hey, you know, I know the guidance team here better than, like, probably anyone,” Anthea told him. “I know the school is generally pretty crap at dealing with this stuff, but I could get on their cases about it. I can probably get them to do just about anything if I bug ‘em long enough. We can get these guys written up, if you want.”

“It’s true,” Violet said. “She’s relentless. She can do anything. Also, you can sit with us, if you want. Long term, I mean. Those guys won’t give you near as much grief if you’re not alone. And Leilani says you’re a nice kid.”

Kusuma looked up at her in surprise. “N-no, I couldn’t, you don’t know me,” he stammered. “I don’t want to just, like, jump in here…”

“Nah, that’d be pretty much par for the course,” Anthea insisted. She smiled up at Violet again. “This is what Vi does, she just kind of collects people who don’t quite have a place somewhere else. I’m sure you’d fit right in.”

“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want,” Hana told him. “But we could have your back, at least until you figure something else out?”

“Well, I…” he glanced back and forth at their faces, Anthea and Leilani on his left, Violet and Hana on his right. Swallowing, he said, “Well, maybe just for a couple of days.”

“Whatever works for you, buddy,” Violet told him. Then she glanced back at Hana. “Have you had enough of the snow? I’m freezing.”

Hana smiled. “Yeah, we can go back in if you want.”

“Kusuma, you wanna come with us?” Leilani offered. He hesitated, then nodded, following as they got to their feet.

Anthea caught Violet at the back of the group and looped an arm through hers as they headed up the stairs and back towards the school. “You did good,” she said, smile wide.

Violet blinked. “I just… reacted,” she answered quietly. “Those guys were being assholes, and it wasn’t okay.”

“Yeah, but September Violet might not have yelled at them like that,” Anthea pointed out. “You’ve grown. I’m proud of you.”

Violet laughed softly. “Don’t worry. Ten-minutes-from-now Violet will finally register what happened and need a bit to recover.”

“That’s okay,” Anthea said. “We’ll be right there with you.”

#mine #come out #short #Violet #Anthea #Hana #Leilani

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