Just Another Mediocre Fanfic Writer

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Across the country, another family’s evening unfolded much differently.

A crooked little house sat at the end of a modest, but neatly-kept yard - windows glowing orange in that odd way that seemed even more inviting when the air was cold enough to sting. The heater clicked and sighed in the hallway like an old man with arthritis. The kitchen window rattled whenever the wind shoved too hard against the frame. The faint murmur of overlapping voices from the living room told Dorothea that whatever its occupants had finally settled on watching had been abandoned in favour of their own conversation - their laughter layering over the quiet music she had wafting through the kitchen as she chopped onions.

Outside, the sky had gone dark too early - the entire world taking on that familiar autumnal cold. Not pretty cold either. Not Christmas-card cold. November in their part of New Hampshire was mostly damp leaves plastered to the driveway, bare trees scratching at a grey sky, and thin, mean rain that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be rain or not yet. The porch light caught the wet shine of Dorothea’s car in the driveway, flecked with mud from the road - Miles’ Jeep still nowhere to be seen.

Inside, though, the kitchen was warm. Messy, but warm.

A pot of chilli simmered on the stove. Royce’s backpack had been abandoned under the table, bound to cause someone to trip at least once before dinner was ready. Bentley’s sketchbook lay open beside a half-finished algebra worksheet. Pairs of boots and well-worn sneakers sat in a crooked line by the back door, only about half of them on the mat where they should have been. Vivien’s purple coat hung from one of the pegs in the adjoining mud room, because she had arrived forty minutes earlier, declared the house warmer than hers, and settled in like she paid utilities.

“Vivien?” Dorothea called out.

“Yeah?” came the brunette’s slightly wary reply.

“Are you planning on staying for dinner?” she continued, a fond smile drifting onto her face as she heard the muffled laughter of her two youngest sons.

“If I’m allowed to,” Vivien said, appearing in the doorway to the kitchen with one of Dorothea’s homemade quilts wrapped around her shoulders, and a hopeful grin stretching her cheeks.

Dorothea just chuckled and returned to stirring the pot. “Of course you’re allowed. I just wanted to check how many bowls I needed to set out.”

Vivien shuffled over to her, fuzzy socks and quilt dragging along the floor like a cape, and wrapped her arms around Dorothea’s waist. She tucked her head against the woman’s shoulder, and murmured into it, “Thanks, Mom.”

Dorothea stilled for a moment, moved again by the nickname, even after all this time. Her fond, teasing grin soon moved back into place though. “Don’t let your mother hear you calling me that; I don’t want that woman on my case as well as yours.”

“I don’t know, I think you could take her,” Vivien said, with a lazy chuckle of her own as she sprawled herself across the cushioned window seat in the kitchen, wrapping herself up in the quilt like a little patchwork burrito.

“Oh, I see how it is. You’re ditching me for Mom now?” Royce asked, smirking from the kitchen doorway, laptop in hand, as he raised his eye teasingly at his girlfriend.

“It’s warmer in here,” Vivien defended, pulling the quilt even closer around her chin. “And it doesn’t smell like Bentley’s gym socks.”

Royce was already laughing as he perched himself at the kitchen table with his laptop, recalling Bentley and Vivien’s sibling-like bickering from the car ride home.

Bentley wasn’t as entertained by the point of contention being brought up again though. “Oh my god, I put them in the laundry basket as soon as we got back. What more do you want me to do?” he asked, wandering into the kitchen himself, hair smushed on one side from where he’d been laid across the sofa.

“Burn them?” Vivien offered through a teasing grin.

Bentley rolled his eyes with dramatic effect, whilst Royce continued laughing, smiling across at Vivien like this was the best thing that had happened to him all week.

The back door swung open before any of them got the chance to say anything more on the matter. Miles came in through it carrying a brown paper bag, bringing a gust of icy air with him, smelling like rain, motor oil, and the musty stench of the garage.

“Door,” Dorothea said automatically.

Miles kicked it shut behind him with his heel, sighing like someone who had been told the same thing every single time he came through that door, and no longer needed to be told, but had been anyway. “Hi Mom, love you too.”

“I was getting to that,” Dorothea acknowledged with an amused smirk.

“Right,” Miles said, voice dripping with sarcasm as he shrugged his coat off and slung it on an already occupied hook by the door. It landed half-on, half-off, sliding until it was only clinging on by one sleeve.

Dorothea looked at it.

Miles looked at her.

He reached back without a word and hung it properly.

“Thank you,” Dorothea’s smile broadened into one of deep satisfaction.

“You’re welcome,” Miles huffed, as though it had taken great effort. But his fond, lopsided grin made its first appearance of the night anyway as he set the paper bag down on the counter.

“Hey, Miles,” Vivien greeted, sticking a hand out from the top of her quilt cocoon to give him a wave.

“Hey, Viv,” he said, chuckling at her set up as he moved to glance over Royce’s shoulder. “You doing homework or pretending to do homework?”

“I’m doing homework, actually,” Royce retorted, eyes not leaving his laptop screen. “Unlike some of us,” he added, dragging them away long enough to shoot Bentley a pointed look.

“I’m still gathering the strength to work on mine,” Bentley defended around a yawn from where he stood, leaning against the doorframe.

“You’ve been gathering strength for the last hour,” Royce snorted.

“Well algebra uses a lot of brain muscles - I’ve got to give them time to warm up,” Bentley explained, prompting further laughter from Royce, Vivien, and even Miles, who crossed the kitchen to him.

Miles pointed towards where the worksheet sat, untouched once it left his backpack. “Table. Five minutes. I’ll help after I wash up.”

Bentley rolled his eyes and sighed like a petulant child, but collapsed onto the nearest chair with a shy, grateful smile for his older brother anyway.

Dorothea watched Miles at the sink, rolling up his sleeves and scrubbing grease from his hands with the orange mechanic’s soap he kept in its own little dish on the windowsill, because he’d given up on pretending ordinary soap was good enough for the job long ago.

His shoulders were tight. He always got tight through the shoulders after a long day at the shop, like he carried the whole garage home with him. He had left before seven that morning, worked a full shift, stopped by the store for milk and bread and cereal because Dorothea had forgotten, and apparently still planned to help Bentley with algebra, check Royce’s essay, and look at the weird sound Vivien’s car had been making every time she started it, if their extended family’s group chat was to be believed.

He was twenty years old.

Sometimes if she let herself think too directly about that, Dorothea felt something in her chest go tender and furious at the same time.

“You’re late,” she murmured, trying to let Royce, Vivien and Bentley continue their own conversation on the other side of the kitchen.

Miles looked across at her, lathering suds over his forearms. “The Subaru I was working on wouldn’t start after its oil change, and then I got held up on the cereal aisle trying to decide which one looked the least depressing, but also wasn’t just ninety percent marshmallows.”

“I thought I told you about working overtime,” Dorothea started to gently chastise.

“It wasn’t real overtime - the lady needed her car to go pick up her kids, I wasn’t going to just abandon it ‘cause my shift was over,” Miles rationalised. “Don’t get all stress-y about it; it was my choice.”

Dorothea sighed to herself and turned her attention back to the pot on the stove. Well, partly. “Did you eat lunch today?”

Miles didn’t turn around, water splashing against the weathered ceramic. “Yeah.”

“What did you have?”

“Food.”

“Miles,” Dorothea warned.

He glanced over his shoulder at her as he grabbed for a hand towel. “A sandwich.”

“From the vending machine?” she asked through a flat, knowing frown.

“It’s just more time-efficient,” he tried to reason, but Dorothea was already letting out a disappointed huff.

Vivien wrinkled her nose across the room. “Eww, those sandwiches are so gross.”

“They’re fine - it’s food. It just needs to keep me alive, it doesn’t need to be gourmet,” Miles defended further.

“I think trusting those sandwiches will keep you alive is more of a gamble than you realise,” Royce smirked, clicking aimlessly on his trackpad.

“Yeah, that vending machine looks like it’s been there since the 80s. I would not be trusting it to keep anything safely refrigerated,” Bentley laughed. “Unless you want to spend the rest of the week camped out in the bathroom.”

Miles flicked water at him from the sink, making him flinch away, but laugh harder.

Dorothea raised her knife in Miles’ direction, offering a warning: “If you want to start the water fight, you can clean up the water fight.”

“They started it,” Miles tried, gesturing to his trio of real, and honorary, siblings - but he was grinning despite himself.

“Yeah, over a vending machine sandwich - we had just cause,” Vivien said, matching her faux older brother’s playful grin.

“You all done lecturing me now?” he turned around to ask the room, setting the towel back on the countertop.

“No, sit down. Eat something before dinner,” Dorothea instructed, motherly instincts kicking into full force.

Miles fondly rolled his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“I never said you weren’t,” she countered. “I just don’t trust the nutritional value of this mysterious vending machine sandwich.”

Miles rolled his eyes again, even more dramatically when he knew she was watching with that small, amused smile of hers. Then, when she had turned it back to her chopping board, he reached around her to grab a carrot stick.

She slapped the back of his hand with the flat of the knife.

“What? What’s more nutritional than a carrot?” Miles protested.

“Plenty of things. Go wash yourself an apple or something.”

“Mom,” he groaned.

“Don’t ‘Mom’ me. That’s for the chilli.”

Vivien once again raised her hand from the quilt, wearing her playful grin again. “Can I ‘Mom’ you?”

Dorothea turned, pointing at her with the knife next, her own grin threatening to blow her cover. “Don’t distract me with being sweet, Vivi.”

Vivien just giggled, pulling the blanket tighter under her chin as she watched Miles reach behind his mother and snatch the carrot from the cutting board anyway.

She didn’t notice at first, but she did hear the crunch.

She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose, but Miles could hear the smile in her voice. “I raised wolves.”

“Efficient wolves,” Miles grinned, tapping the carrot stick on the chopping board beside her knife before taking another bite.

“He’s more like a raccoon if you think about it,” Bentley thought aloud. “Stealing food, eating garbage-”

Miles grabbed him around the neck as he passed, pulling him into a loose headlock and ruffling a hand through his hair.

Bentley yelped through a laugh, weakly shoving at him. “Get off, you smell like gross tires.”

“Good, we’ll use that stink to finish your math paper quicker,” Miles chuckled.

“How is that supposed to help me concentrate?”

“Oh, it’s not gonna help you concentrate - but it might motivate you to finish quicker,” he clarified with a smirk, releasing his little brother only to give his armpit a test sniff. “No showering until homework’s done.”

“Why must the rest of us suffer because Beemer keeps procrastinating?” Vivien groaned, with a theatrical fake-faint against the window frame.

“No one’s keeping you here, freeloader,” Miles teased, setting all four of them laughing and bickering all over again.

Dorothea let the noise happen around her for a moment.

That was what the house was most evenings: noise and heat and people moving through one another’s space without asking because there was not much space to begin with. The kitchen was too narrow if everyone stood at once. The table was nicked and worn at the edges. The couch in the living room sagged in the middle because all three boys had used it as a trampoline at some point and denied it in variably convincing ways. Family photos crowded the walls, all in mismatched frames, some knocked crooked and left that way because Bentley thought it looked more ‘lived-in’.

It was not polished. It was not quiet. It was home.

And Miles, as usual, moved through it like he had a mental to-do list running behind his eyes.

Check on Royce. Tease Bentley out of a bad mood. Make sure Vivien feels included. Keep his mother from carrying too many grocery bags at once. Fix the car. Work extra hours. Save for school. Don’t complain. Don’t make anything harder.

Dorothea stirred the chilli and watched Bentley flick through his sketchbook to show Miles the latest thing he’d been working on.

She cleared her throat to get his attention. “Make sure you rest after dinner. You can check Vivien’s car tomorrow.”

Miles didn’t miss a beat. “It’s making a noise.”

“It’s been making a noise for two weeks-”

“Exactly.”

“-So it can make a noise for one more night,” Dorothea calmly rationalised, undeterred by the interruption.

“Not if it’s the belt,” he tried to argue.

“Miles,” Dorothea warned again.

He looked up, sensing her change in tone.

There it was again. That mild, easy expression of his. The one that made it impossible to accuse him of suffering because he genuinely didn’t seem to think he was.

“What?” he asked, voice quietening a little as he stepped closer to his mother.

Dorothea sighed and lowered her spoon. “You worked all day.”

“So did you, and you’re still making dinner for us all,” he reasoned.

“Yes, but I’m not twenty years old and trying to save every spare dollar I have for college.”

Royce and Bentley didn’t stop their conversation, but they did exchange a look across the kitchen table.

Miles’ expression barely shifted, but Dorothea knew him. She knew the little defensive twitch of his eyebrow, and the flicker of discomfort in his eyes when attention started to settle too tenderly on him.

“I’m not saving every spare dollar,” he tried.

Dorothea lifted one eyebrow a centimetre out of line.

“I bought coffee last week - on my own,” he attempted to justify further, knowing his Dunkin runs with his brothers and Vivien wouldn’t be seen as anything out of the ordinary.

“From where?”

“The gas station.”

Royce snorted into his fist, poorly covering a laugh.

“That is so tragic,” Vivien mused from the window seat.

Miles just pointed at her. “Help your boyfriend with his essay.”

Vivian smirked around a lovingly wicked laugh. “Speaking of boyfriends - you found any girls willing to make you one yet? Or are we still in the ‘figuring out how to talk to the opposite sex’ phase?”

Miles flipped her off before his mother could catch him, which just made Vivien giggle harder.

Dorothea moved the pot off the burner and turned fully towards her oldest son, taking his forearms in her hands. “I mean it. No car tonight.”

“It’ll take ten minutes.”

“It never takes ten minutes when you get that toolbox out,” Dorothea sighed.

“It might,” he tried.

“It won’t.”

Miles leaned his hips back against the counter. “Viv needs her car.”

“And you need a night where you eat dinner, sit down, and don’t fix anything that has wheels, pipes, hinges, batteries, or feelings,” Dorothea countered. “I’ll drive Vivien back home tonight, and give her a ride to and from school tomorrow. She can survive one day without vehicle-based independence.”

Bentley raised his hand at the table. “Does that mean algebra’s off the table?”

“When’s it due?” she checked.

“Tomorrow,” he admitted with a sheepish smile.

Dorothea sighed. “Then no, algebra is unfortunately exempt.”

Miles smiled, Dorothea did not. When he realised, his own soon faded. “Mom.”

She hated how gently he said it - like she was the one who needed comforting, even though she was the mother.

“You always do this,” she quietly sighed.

The air shifted between them. Not dramatically; the Murphy house didn’t really do dramatic silence. Someone always sneezed, or a floorboard creaked, or the heater complained.

“Do what?” he asked.

“Take on one more thing.”

He huffed faintly. “It’s not a ‘thing’, it’s a car.”

“It’s never just a car, Miles,” Dorothea said, her frustration softened by her sympathy. “It’s the car, and Bentley’s homework, and Royce’s forms for AP classes, and picking up extra shifts, and saying yes every time someone needs something. It’s spending so much time watching everyone else that you never leave yourself time to figure out what you want until after the rest of us are settled.”

Miles looked uncomfortable now.

Good, Dorothea thought. A little uncomfortable might help him see sense.

“I know what I want,” he said.

“Do you?” she gently challenged.

He looked at her more directly then, steady and a little stubborn. “Yeah.”

Dorothea folded her arms over the front of her sweater, waiting.

Miles glanced toward his brothers, then Vivien, then back to his mother. “This,’ he said simply.

The answer hurt because he meant it.

He shrugged one shoulder, like it wasn’t a confession. Like it didn’t expose every tender place in him.

“You guys are my life,” he continued. “That’s not sad to me - I love it.”

Dorothea’s throat tightened.

“I like helping Bentley with homework,” he carried on, despite Bentley shooting him a skeptical look. “Most of the time,” he corrected with a smirk. “I like making sure Royce doesn’t get too prose-y in his history essays. I like being able to fix your car so you don’t have to pay someone else too much to do it badly. I like going on midnight snack runs with Ethan so he doesn’t end up buying every bag of Takis Target sells. I like when Viv comes over and eats half our food and insults how I make my coffee.”

“It is bad coffee,” Vivien murmured.

“It’s coffee - it’s not creamer with a side of coffee, which is how you take it,” Miles teased. But when his attention moved back to his mother, his smile softened into something more honest. “I like being here - in this house, with all of us together. I like taking care of people I love. That’s not me missing my life.”

Dorothea took a step closer. He could smell her perfume, and the good fabric softener she liked, and that unnamable scent moms always had that made you want to curl into their arms like a newborn again.

“I know,” she said. “I know it makes you happy. That’s part of what worries me.”

Miles frowned, but she continued anyway.

“Because you’ll make a whole life out of being useful if no one stops you,” she said. “And you are so much more than useful.”

His face changed. It was only a tiny twitch, but she saw it.

Feeling him start to shrink under the sincerity, Dorothea let her expression soften into that fond, teasing smile that seemed to be her default around her sons. “You’re not just some spare tire we keep in the trunk until someone needs you,” she said. “You’re my son.”

“Mom-”

“No, come on, let me say it,” she chuckled, cutting off his bashful complaints. “I’m incredibly proud of the way you love us - of the way you love everyone you keep close. I am. You’re kind, and steady, and more patient than you give yourself credit for, and your brothers are better people because they have you. So am I.”.

Miles dropped his gaze to the floor, but she reached out and turned him back to face her by the elbow.

“But I don’t want you to wake up one day and realise everyone else got to move because you were standing still, holding the door open for them,” she finished.

The sentence landed between them and stayed there; Miles had no idea what to do with it. So he was thankful when Bentley, who he’d forgotten could even have been listening at all, piped up from the kitchen table.

“I can fail algebra alone sometimes,” he offered with a lopsided smile, spinning a pencil between his fingers. “Or get August to come over more to help.”

“If you stop distracting me from finishing this essay, I could help you, you know?” Royce said, biting back a laugh as he looked across at his younger brother.

“Yeah, but you’re so fun to distract,” Bentley laughed, rolling his pencil across the table until it bumped against the side of Royce’s hand.

Without even looking, Royce rolled it back - entertaining Bentley like an eager puppy.

Vivien shifted into a more upright position in her window seat, and met Miles with another teasing grin. “Unfortunately I think I’ve still gotta insult your coffee; it’s like a reflex reaction at this point. But Mom’s right, the car can wait.”

Miles laughed under his breath, grateful the mood in the room had lightened in a matter of moments at the hands of his family.

But as Royce and Bentley fell back into conversation again, Dorothea bumped his arm with hers.

“I’m serious, Miles.”

“I know,” he said.

“College isn’t selfish.”

“I know.”

“Leaving, eventually, if you need to, isn’t selfish.”

His jaw shifted at that one, suddenly dropping his gaze, and the fond amusement from it. Maybe that one had hit a little too hard.

Dorothea saw it and wished that she could take the words back, and make him ten years old again. Small enough to fit under her arm and tuck against her side on the couch. Young enough that keeping him close was as easy as breathing, and didn’t feel like something she might someday have to choose not to do.

Miles nudged himself closer until their arms were pressed together, standing side-by-side. “I’m not going anywhere,” he told her, managing to lift the corners of his lips again. “Not tomorrow, anyway. Or this week.”

Dorothea fondly rolled her eyes. “That is not what I meant.”

“I know,” Miles conceded with a soft chuckle, taking his own turn to lazily cross his arms over his chest.

“And?” she tried to prompt.

Miles huffed in resignation, but Dorothea still saw his mouth twitch. “And I won’t look at Viv’s car tonight.”

“Good - but that was not the whole point of this conversation.”

“It was part of it.”

“A very small part.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not relevant; lots of machines need small parts to run,” Miles reasoned, a grin desperate to jump onto his face.

Dorothea sighed and fondly shook her head. “You are impossible sometimes, do you know that?” she asked him, swiping a dish towel from the counter and lightly whacking him in the centre of the chest with it. “I thought you were the moment they laid you on my chest and you looked like a little, wrinkled old man with a weird shaped head - and somehow, twenty years later, nothing has changed.”

“Yeah, he’s still got the old man wrinkles and weird head and everything,” Vivien chimed in from the safety of her window nook. Or, what she thought was the safety of her window nook. Because it was soon proven otherwise when Miles lunged for her, grabbed the cushion from behind her back, and stuffed it over her face - muffling her laughter, but doing nothing to silence the rest of his family’s.

Before Vivien could wrap herself into a pretzel trying to hook her leg around Miles’ neck though, Dorothea set down a stack of bowls and announced, “Alright, alright, if we can get through dinner without murdering anyone - that would be fantastic. And it would be even better, if one of you wonderful children could help me set the table.”

Miles stood to attention and saluted with two fingers. “Yes, ma’am.”

She caught his arm before he could open the utensil drawer though. “Just promise me one thing, okay?” For a moment she saw worry flash in his eyes, but it disappeared as soon as she flashed him a playful smile. “No more vending machine sandwiches.”

Miles just chuckled and grabbed a handful of spoons. “You know I refuse to make promises I can’t keep.”

“Miles,” Dorothea sighed.

“The turkey ones have lettuce and tomato now.”

“That sounds worse,” Royce said as Vivien, hair now wild and cheeks red with breathless laughter, made exaggerated gagging noises over his shoulder.

Miles furrowed a brow as he looked around at all of them. “You know, for people who have never set foot in that garage, you sure do have a lot of opinions on how I spend my lunch break there.”

Dorothea ladled chilli into bowls and felt the warmth of the room settle back around them with the effortless swell of conversation rising once more.

Outside, the rain ticked steadily against the windows, cold and dark and endless. Inside, Royce complained that Bentley took too much grated cheese. Bentley claimed he needed it if he wanted his brain to function enough to get through an algebra paper. Vivien stole half of the bread roll Miles had just grabbed from the plate in the centre of the table and called it taxation. Miles rebutted that he’d have to invoice her.

Dorothea smiled as she set a bowl down in front of him, and reached over to smooth a stray piece of hair off his forehead, the way she had when he was little and feverish and convinced he didn’t need to rest. Miles endured it with theatrical suffering, but went back to lovingly antagonising Vivien about her reaction to some stupid celebrity gossip she’d insisted on texting her sister about like it was second-nature to him.

For a moment, the worry in her chest loosened just enough to let the warmth in. Miles was still here. Still hers. Still laughing at the table in a house that was held together solely by noise, stubborn love, and decades worth of junk shoved in drawers that held too many memories to throw out.

She wanted more for him. She always would. But for that November night, with rain at the windows and all of them crowded around the table, Dorothea let herself have this. Her boys. Her almost-daughter. Her home. And Miles, sitting down at last, eating while the people he loved argued loudly around him.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Martha did not sleep that night - not really.

Carrie finally cried herself unconscious somewhere around midnight, curled up on the mattress in her childhood bedroom with Juliet tucked next to her because she hadn’t wanted to be alone, and Juliet hadn’t been prepared to leave her side. When Martha looked in on them at two in the morning, Carrie’s face was still swollen from crying. Her mouth was slightly parted, breath uneven. Juliet lay facing her, awake enough to meet Martha’s eyes in the dim light.

“I’ve got her,” she whispered.

Martha merely nodded, unable to speak. Instead, she softly closed the door and went downstairs.

The house was too quiet. Big houses always were. But this quiet was different; it was stifling - it made her restless.

That sentiment must have been shared, because as she stepped into the kitchen she found her husband sat at the kitchen island, with his hands wrapped around a mug of stone cold coffee he hadn’t touched.

Martha stopped in the doorway when she saw him. But he must have sensed her presence, because he looked up anyway.

For a moment, neither of them managed words.

Then, Martha felt herself moving. She crossed to the island and sat beside him, finally letting herself shake.

Brett soundlessly pulled her into his arms - holding her like he had every time she had needed him since they first admitted they loved each other.

“She’s twenty years old,” Martha breathed into his chest.

“I know,” he sighed helplessly.

“She’s twenty, Brett.”

“I know.”

“They’re already writing about her like she’s a lesson to learn from. A scandal. An object, not a person. They’re saying she should have known. That she was too clingy, or too perfect, or too fake, or too much,” she pulled back, voice shaking with fury. “They don’t know a thing about her.”

Brett’s face tightened. “No, they don’t.”

“They don’t know how she loves. They don’t know what she gave him. They don’t know how scared she is all the time that if she stops being impressive for five seconds, everyone will leave.”

Brett’s gaze moved to the hall, to the staircase.

Martha’s eyes followed his.

Their daughter was upstairs in the bedroom where she had once practiced award speeches into a hairbrush to an audience of dolls, and taped audition sides to her closet doors so she could go over them when she was getting dressed. The bedroom where she had learned to properly look after her curls. The bedroom she kept returning to whenever the world around her felt like it was pressing in too close.

But it wasn’t stopping now. That’s what Martha saw.

There were no clean edges, no actual boundaries anymore. No place where fame ended and Carrie began. It had leaked into every part of her life. Her heartbreak was trending. Her humiliation had metrics. A girl with a ring light and a thirst for attention could turn Carrie’s private devastation into a livestream topic and watch the numbers climb in real time with glee.

And people would clap. They would comment. They would speculate about whether Carrie had been good enough, pretty enough, interesting enough, sexual enough, relaxed enough, famous enough to keep a man who had chosen, over and over again, not to be kept.

Something cold and certain settled in Martha’s chest.

“This life is going to eat her alive,” she murmured.

Brett looked at her.

“Not tonight,” she quickly added. “I don’t mean tonight. I just mean this whole…thing. This machine. It keeps asking her to be more than a person, and then punishing her when she acts like one - when she breaks like one.”

Brett went quiet.

Martha brushed under one eye. “She’s so good at it. That’s the awful part. She’s so talented, and she loves acting, and she loves music, and when she’s happy in it, she just comes alive. I don’t want to take that from her.”

“No one’s saying that you should,” Brett softly supplied.

“But I don’t know how to keep protecting her from everything else - the ugly parts.”

Brett reached for her hand. “Maybe we don’t protect her from all of it.”

Martha shook her head. “I’m her mother. That’s my job.”

“Your job is to love her,” Brett gently reminded her, holding her fingers tightly in his. “Through the hard parts - not around them. Especially when you can’t do anything to stop them from happening.”

Martha closed her eyes, feeling more tears start to burn behind her eyelids.

Upstairs, something creaked. Maybe Tanner shifting in his sleep, or going in to check on his sister. Maybe Juliet getting up for water. Maybe Carrie waking and remembering.

Martha’s heart pulled hard in her chest and she screwed her eyes tighter.

“I hate him,” she whispered.

Brett’s thumb moved in slow strokes over her wedding ring. “Me too.”

“I trusted him.”

“We all did.”

“He sat here, in this house. He called me Martha like he was already family. He helped with the dishes. He asked me for that lemon chicken recipe because he knew Carrie liked it.” Her voice broke. “He knew us.”

Brett’s jaw tightened. “Yeah, he did.”

“He knew her.”

That was the unforgivable part.

Eric had not betrayed an image, or an idea. He had betrayed Carrie as she really was: messy, dramatic, funny, insecure, generous, too loving, too easily wounded, brave in ways she never gave herself credit for. He had been allowed past the dazzling armour, and had still chosen to humiliate her in front of the world.

Martha couldn’t make sense of that. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

Brett held her hand until the skating eased.

On the counter between them, Martha’s phone lit up again with another alert.

She turned it facedown without reading. For once, she didn’t care what the world was saying. The world could wait; her daughter was upstairs: brokenhearted, embarrassed, barely even two decades old.

Sitting there, Martha understood with a clarity that frightened her that loving Carrie might mean more than helping her survive the life she had built for herself. It might mean, someday, helping her find somewhere outside of it. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere ordinary enough to remind her that she was a person before she was a headline.

But that wasn’t for tonight.

Tonight, Martha stood, wiped her face, and went to rifle through cabinets, sifting through boxes of teabags like they had personally offended her.

“What are you doing?” Brett asked.

“She’ll wake up soon,” Martha sighed. “Her throat will hurt.”

Brett looked at her with aching tenderness as she opened another cupboard and pulled down Carrie’s favourite mug. It was pearl pink with tiny princess motifs. She’d bought it on a trip to Disneyland when she was ten and had treasured it since. A silly, ordinary thing from before the world had learned how to take pieces of her daughter and sell them back for entertainment, and profit.

Martha held it carefully between both hands until she could no longer see Princess Aurora’s tiara through her tears.

Brett’s hands found her shoulders, then his lips found her temple. He pressed a kiss there. “She’ll be okay,” he promised, although his voice was thick. “And so will you. We all will.”

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

For a while, Caroline Cole’s life was exactly as beautiful as everyone thought it was. It wasn’t perfect; perfect was for perfume campaigns that had been airbrushed within an inch of their life, and movie posters that had gone through thirty rounds of edits, and final shots where every curl, fold of fabric, and fleck of dust had to be managed with the meticulous precision of a sniper.

But it was beautiful. Warm. Full. The kind of life that made her believe that she had finally grown into the version of herself that everyone watching from behind screens had been waiting for her to become. And that morning felt like no exception.

She woke to sunlight spilling across rumpled sheets and spotless wooden floorboards, and the warm, heavy weight of Eric Brennan’s arm around her waist. For a few seconds after her eyes cracked open, she didn’t move. She just let the smile bloom across her face - slow and mesmerising, like when the barista would pour the espresso shot into her iced honey blend oat milk vanilla latte.

She liked the almost-waking part best; before her phone had started buzzing, before anyone needed her to be somewhere, or be someone - before the rest of her life came rushing back to her. In those first few moments, everything was simple. Warm sheets. Eric’s slow breaths against the back of her neck. The faraway hum of early traffic. The smell of his expensive shampoo mixing with the faint waft of the coffee his fancy espresso machine had been set up the night before to start brewing at seven am.

It was ridiculously over the top, but Carrie loved it. She loved that he’d thought to buy it because he knew she hated days when she had to be up early and didn’t have time to make her own coffee before she left because it made her grouchy. She loved the luxury that they both knew there would be caffeine available before either of them had to speak. She also loved that from where she was lying she could see one of his balled socks sticking out from under the dresser because Eric, despite being adored by millions and styled to a frankly unreasonable degree most days, was incapable of getting both socks into a hamper on the first try.

She loved him.

That was the easiest thing in her life.

Carrie carefully shifted from her side onto her back, and stared up at the shadows stretching across the ceiling. Eric made a low, sleepy grunt of protest and tightened his arm around her before his eyes even opened.

“Don’t,” he mumbled.

Carrie bit back a smile. “I didn’t even do anything.”

“You were thinking about getting up,” he mumbled again.

“How could you possibly know that?” she asked, amusement starting to curl the corners of her lips.

“I could hear the glitter starting to move around in there,” he replied, nudging his nose against the side of her head.

“What glitter?” Carrie sleepily snorted.

“Don’t play dumb, blondie,” he laughed, tucking himself even closer to her but still keeping his eyes closed, as though he could convince himself he wasn’t actually awake yet.

“So what? I have glitter in my brain now?”

“Mhm. It moves your thoughts around on a little water wheel,” he continued to tease through more tired mumbles. Shifting into a whisper as he pressed his head back deeper into the pillow beside her ear he added, “And it’s noisy, so stop thinking and come back to sleep.”

“It sounds more messy than anything,” Carrie countered.

”No, it’s well-contained,” Eric replied, seemingly confident in his theory. His voice was low and soft enough to make the hairs at the back of her neck ripple as his fingers brush the skin of her torso. “It’s what makes you sparkle from the inside out.”

Carrie’s heart did a ridiculous, giddy little flutter as she tried to turn her head and hide her smile in the pillow. But Eric caught it anyway. He always did.

His eyes opened halfway - dark and tired and soft in a way that the cameras never got to see. His smile, albeit also smushed against a pillow, was doughy and helpless. His light, tawny brown hair, streaked with honey blonde highlights, had dried awkwardly after his shower the night before - with a piece near the crown sticking up in a stubborn tuft that looked like it had been spun from gold in the sunlight.

Carrie, looking at him, felt a sudden rush of affection so strong it almost made her angry. It was unfair, really. No one should be allowed to be that handsome with pillow creases on their cheek and sleep gunk in the corner of their eye.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he lazily chuckled.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re about to make fun of me.”

Carrie let out a quiet gasp of mock abhorrence. “I would never.”

“Oh you absolutely would.”

Carrie reached her fingers out and tried to comb the section of hair into submission. It sprung back up immediately. She had to bite the inside of her cheek. But a delighted little gasp slipped out anyway. “It’s got a mind of its own.”

“Mmm, clearly it’s been spending too much time around yours,” he retaliated, catching her wrist and pressing a kiss to the inside of it.

“Good, then it should be getting its own personality too,” Carrie laughed, quiet and sleepy. Eric’s face changed when he heard it. Not in any dramatic way, or a way that he was able to choose. His whole expression just seemed to warm.

That happened a lot. It was one of the things that people went insane over online. The clips of them during interviews on press tours where Eric watched her talk with that helpless, gone-soft look on his face - or photos from red carpets where Carrie would be waving at fans and Eric would only be looking at her. The behind-the-scenes clips that would circulate on TikTok where she would say something offhand and stupid and they would both fold in half laughing because in that moment the joke got to be theirs before everyone else’s.

Everyone noticed those tiny things, and then became obsessed with them. Power couple. ‘It’ couple. Proof that love wasn’t dead. Proof that celebrities could feel love after all. Proof that two former teen stars could grow up, become beautiful, become respected, become serious to the rest of the world, and yet still look at each other like they were passing love notes in class.

Carrie tried not to read too much of what people said. She failed constantly; every sweet comment gave her a dopamine hit so strong she knew she’d need a lot of therapy whenever they stopped. But they weren’t showing any signs of slowing any time soon - so she read on, with far more conviction than she ever had any book that her on-set tutor had ever thrust under her nose. People saying their love story was as cinematic as their characters’. People saying they had the kind of relationship people dreamed about. People saying they were meant for each other. People fancasting them in every movie under the sun. People feeding Eric’s fantasy of Carrie one day being his Bond girl. People clamouring for Carrie to be cast as a Disney princess with Eric as her prince.

They had met two years ago on the set of Verona Nights: a neon lit, modern city-landscaped retelling of Romeo and Juliet where, naturally, they played the leads. It had ridiculous costumes, captivating choreography, a far too well-thought-out jukebox musical soundtrack, and a surprisingly dedicated fanbase if the views of the clips on Youtube were anything to go by. It was absolutely insane in almost every way, and yet there was something magic about it that just made it work. Not just work, became an absolute hit. Some claimed it was the director’s vision. Others said it was the chemistry between its stars; a love story so powerful it followed them off-screen. People lurked in the comments to accuse them of just being one big PR stunt. But Carrie simply didn’t care; she knew what they had was real.

It wasn’t manufactured. It wasn’t some studio trick the casting directors could force with the right lighting and choreography and score. It was Eric making her laugh whilst they stood bundled in huge black coats during ten-hour night shoots. Or bringing her tea from craft services when her voice started to shake from repeating her monologue scenes for a million different camera angles.

It was Eric hanging back after an early meeting with the marketing team about putting forward a ‘certain image’ when it came time to run press for the movie - using their shared background as childhood stars, single relationship statuses, and already established fan bases, to push a narrative that ‘gave the audience something to believe in beyond the script’. He’d stopped her before she could leave and uttered a quiet, “For the record, I think that whole thing was absolutely fucking insane.”

Carrie had laughed, partly out of genuine amusement, and partly out of relief that she wasn’t the only one who’d left feeling that way.

Although after a pause, he caught her attention again and they both stilled. His gaze flicked over her for a moment before he pulled a smile up with his eyes - something shy and careful hidden behind a sudden flash of confidence. “But I do want to take you to dinner, which doesn’t really help my argument.”

Of course they had gone to dinner. Of course they had started to look for one another across soundstages, or during costume touch-ups. And of course he had kissed her in a quiet corner between takes, where a rain machine had soaked them both down to the skin, where their teeth had chattered through euphoric grins, and where his hand had shook slightly at her jaw in a way she had found so sweet she had stared at her ceiling and thought about it until three in the morning that same night.

When the movie came out the public devoured them. They had combined fan accounts tracking their every public move. There were hours upon hours of edits on TikTok and Instagram, using clips from the press tour even more frequently than the movie sometimes. There were interviews and talk show offers where questions started to get far too comfortable the longer time went on.

But Carrie and Eric were seasoned professionals when it came to weathering the media circus, despite still being teenagers at the time. So they never let it phase them. Sure, it was a lot. And sometimes the endless commentary could take its toll. But they had found something solid in one another. A real relationship - the kind people in their circles didn’t always manage well because everything had to be scheduled around filming, rehearsals, travel, interviews, fittings, events, and the exhausting labour of still appearing spontaneous through a camera lens, no matter how purposefully positioned. Something they could always come back to when the rough seas of fame reared its ugly head: something that led them home.

And Carrie treasured every sacred moment - still, 2 years on.

A yawn broke through Eric’s grin, and brought her attention back to him. “You working today?” he asked.

“Not really. Pilates first, then I’m meeting Juliet after. Camille said something about a fitting, but I think that’s being rearranged, and I think she wants to call me about that podcast thing again even though I keep saying no.”

Eric’s hand drifted under the sheet to settle over her hip. Not suggestive, just there. The kind of touch that had become so familiar, so reassuring, that it just felt like it was an extension of her own body.

“Well tell Camille I said podcasts are where attention spans go to die,” Eric grumbled, again trying to settle even closer to her body.

“You were on one last week,” Carrie chuckled.

“And it nearly killed me.”

“You say that but you’re the one that talked solidly for ninety minutes.”

“Exactly - ninety minutes of my life I’ll never get back,” he huffed. “So if you need back-up, tell Camille I have first-hand experience and the battle scars to prove it.”

Carrie grinned, helplessly. Eric’s eyes drifted to her mouth.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“No, what?” she pressed.

“Just…” he shrugged as much as he could lying down, hand drifting up to lazily play with the end of one of her curls. “You look like you’re happy.”

Carrie blinked. Then she could feel herself start to blush, suddenly embarrassed by how easily that had touched her. “I’m allowed to be happy.”

“I know.” Eric’s hand slipped back down to cup the base of her spine as his smile deepened again. “I just like it.”

Carrie had to look away that time, overcome and girlishly shy in a way that only Eric could make her feel anymore. Which was, objectively, ridiculous. She had kissed him at premieres in front of fifty flashing cameras. She had woken up in his bed more times than she could count. She had told him things she had not even found language for until they were already halfway out of her mouth. And yet still, his moments of tenderness could knock her sideways with the force of a bulldozer.

He leaned in and kissed her shoulder, slow and reverent.

Carrie’s eyelids slipped closed.

“Stay here,” he murmured against her smooth, tanned, vanilla and coconut scented skin.

“I can’t,” she sighed, apologetic around the beginnings of a smile.

“You can.”

“You know I can’t.”

“I know you can; you have free will.”

“No, what I have is a life; one that unfortunately takes place outside of this room.”

“Cancel it.”

“If I cancelled my plans with Juliet she would break into your apartment and drag me out of bed by the ankle before I could even get dressed.”

Eric thought about that for a moment before a smirk sprung to his face with a chuckle. “Hot.”

Carrie reached for the spare pillow with a scoff before smacking him over the head with it.

Eric laughed into the white cotton, catching it against his chest, before dragging her back against him. For a minute they fought lazily under the sheets, limbs tangled around one another, and breathless from laughing more than effort. Eventually, Eric pinned her arms down, pillow caught between them, and rested his forehead against hers. Carrie was grinning at him, and he was looking back at her as though he couldn’t quite believe he got to be the reason.

“God, I love you,” he breathed. So easily. So naturally.

Not for the cameras. Not in an anniversary caption. Not into a reporter’s microphone. Not in front of a late night talk show audience. Not after a fight, or as reassurance, or because Carrie had said it first and he felt obligated to agree.

Just because it was morning, and she was there, and he got to witness it.

Every bone in Carrie’s body went soft - like her ribcage might cave in with the weight of the feeling that settled in her chest.

“I love you too,” she whispered.

Eric kissed her then, lips pressing into her helpless smile with the careful control of someone that understood every inch of them - every inch of her.

For a while there was nothing else in the world except that. The feeling. The warmth. The belonging.

Until Carrie mumbled into his teeth, “I do actually have to go to pilates though.”

Begrudgingly, Eric pulled away and chuckled. “You’re getting too hard to manipulate.”

Carrie giggled and raked her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, gently pulling his head back down to her again as something wicked flashed behind her eyes. “I brought the matching lilac set to wear,” she softly sing-songed.

Eric shot up like a sprinter at the sound of a starting pistol. “Then what are we still doing here?” he demanded, throwing the sheets off them and stumbling off the edge of the mattress. “We’ve got to get you dressed!”

Carrie let her head tip back against the pillow, laughter bubbling up freely and effortlessly as Eric fired her bra across the room at her like a slingshot, from the spot they’d abandoned it the night before. Joy as abundant as the air filling her lungs. Everything as ridiculously beautiful as it should be.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Carrie was still laughing when she left Eric’s apartment twenty six minutes later, which was deeply inconvenient and entirely his fault, because he kept making a spectacle of every little thing she did. By the time she finally made it to the elevator, he had kissed her three more times, stolen another laugh, and made one more attempt to get her to stay by wrapping his arms around her waist and digging his heels into the floor.

“You’re just jealous because I can hold a plank longer than you,” she’d teasingly huffed.

Eric, mortified, had released her in an instant. “That was one time!”

“Aww, and it’s still bothering you to this day,” she giggled, reaching up to ruffle a hand through his still-messy hair.

He rolled his eyes and lovingly pushed her through the open elevator doors. “Fine - ditch me to go play on your fancy stretching machines. See if I care.”

Carrie just giggled as he stood there, leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded, smile lazy and helpless. “I love you.”

“I love you more.”

“You wish,” she scoffed.

“I do!” he insisted.

Carrie’s giggles returned as she pressed a kiss into her hand and released it towards the closing elevator doors. Eric caught it and pressed it dramatically to his chest, pretending it had hit him with such force it knocked him backwards through his apartment door again.

Carrie’s laughter has followed her all the way down to the parking garage. And as she walked, with her oversized sunglasses atop her head and gym bag hooked over one shoulder, she felt that buoyant, fizzing kind of happiness she was always slightly embarrassed by pulsing beneath the surface of her skin. The kind that made her want to skip all the way to her car, which she would not do, because she was twenty years old and had been secretly photographed enough times to understand the dangers of expressing anything too vividly in public.

Still, it leaked out of her.

A little in the way she had smiled at the doorman when she left. A little in the way she waved at a woman going back to her car, who had clearly recognised her but was pretending very hard not to. A little in the way she let her car roll out into the early November sun and did not immediately start thinking about the fifteen different things that could go wrong before lunch.

Los Angeles in November was one of Carrie’s favourite lies. The rest of the country was talking about sweaters and snow boots and cold mornings - or snuggling under blankets in front of roaring fireplaces with steaming mugs of something laced with cinnamon. Meanwhile, the air outside Eric’s building was bright and dry, the palm trees looked absurdly pleased with themselves, and Carrie was wearing a matching pilates set under an unzipped hoodie because weather in Southern California simply had no interest in behaving seasonally.

She drove to pilates with the windows cracked and her playlist turned up, singing half under her breath and half with her whole chest whenever traffic gave her the illusion of privacy. Her voice felt good that morning - strong, clear. It had the kind of ease she trusted before a recording session or an audition, before she had to hand it over to someone else to pick apart. But for once, she wasn’t thinking about who wanted what from her. She was just thinking that she hoped Juliet had saved them the good reformers by the window.

By the time she pulled into the parking lot, a text notification was sitting proudly atop her lockscreen: a silly picture of her and Eric in the bathroom before the last premiere they’d attended arm in arm.

Eric: You forgot your scrunchie

A photo loaded beneath it: Eric standing in front of the bathroom mirror, toothbrush stuck in the corner of his mouth, wearing Carrie’s pink satin scrunchie around the wrist of the hand holding his phone like a bracelet. The tuft of hair at the top of his head still sticking up like a parrot’s plumage.

Carrie bit down on a smile so hard it hurt.

Carrie: Keep it. It suits you.

Eric: Thank you. I feel pretty

Carrie: You ARE pretty!! 😍😍😍

Eric: Say more

Carrie laughed under her breath as she hauled her gym back across from the passenger seat.

Carrie: Can’t. I have fancy stretching machines waiting for me 🙄

Eric: Coward

But the next message appeared before she could even finish fondly rolling her eyes, let alone think about replying.

Eric: I love you. Have a good day. Tell Juliet I’m not as scared of her as she thinks.

A beat passed as Carrie huffed another laugh to herself. Then yet another message came through.

Eric: That was a lie. Don’t tell her that. I’m not prepared to deal with the consequences.

Carrie: Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me, you big baby. Love you most! 💖

Carrie’s chest warmed so intensely she had to set the phone face-down in her lap for a second.

It was embarrassing how easy it was. How easily he could reach across the whole city and touch some soft, hidden part of her that made her go weak at the knees.

She had spent most of her life surrounded by people who wanted access to some version of her. Directors wanted the performance. Reporters wanted something they could quote. Fans wanted proof that she was what they hoped she was. Casting directors wanted her to be familiar enough to sell tickets and new enough to still feel exciting. Even people who already knew her wanted her to fit back into the neat collage of moments they’d already collected from screens, and built their perception of her personality around.

But Eric made her feel seen in a way that still startled her. Not always perfectly; he could still be moody when he was tired. He could disappear into his head during intense press runs. He could sometimes get defensive if she pushed too hard about what was bothering him and he didn’t want to talk about it. But then he’d reappear with surprise flowers for her or her mom, with a hand at the small of her back, with some stupid little private joke that cracked the day open. He didn’t look at her like she was a project or a headline or a calculated risk.

He looked at her like she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

And Carrie, who had never been as casual about love as she pretended to be, believed him completely.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

To Carrie’s delight, Juliet had in fact saved them their favourite reformer machines. Although by now, Carrie had learned better than to underestimate the lengths Juliet Harmon would go to in order to make her happy. That didn’t stop Juliet from greeting her with a quietly smug grin as she crossed the room though.

“You know, I almost got into a fist fight with a forty-year-old nutritionist to keep that open for you,” she dryly teased, lounging back on the piece of equipment as though it had been set beside a pool for her to tan on.

“And I am now forever in your debt because of that,” Carrie said, setting her baby pink Owala down beside her own machine and dropping into a dramatic courtesy before her. “My hero.”

“A simple ‘thank you’ would have been fine,” Juliet said, rolling her eyes but giggling at Carrie’s antics anyway.

“You look nice today,” Carrie went on to compliment, eyes warm and fond as she noted Juliet’s own matching, pastel gym set, and tried to tame her unruly curls with a hair tie.

“Flattery over athletic wear? At this hour?” Juliet asked with a knowing, raised eyebrow. “Lover boy has clearly put you in an insufferably good mood this morning.”

Carrie, trying not to get her nail snagged in her curls, felt her face melt into a helpless, red-cheeked smile before she could stop it.

“Ha!” Juliet pointed triumphantly. “See? That. Disgusting.”

“I am allowed to be happy,” Carrie defended, cheeks still pink as she turned to the mirror and tried to tuck any stray strands into place.

“You absolutely are,” Juliet agreed with another teasing grin. “And I am allowed to be nauseated by it.”

“You’re just jealous,” Carrie scoffed, with her own spark of teasing delight igniting behind her pupils.

“Of Eric?”

Carrie wiggled her eyebrows, but Juliet rolled her eyes so hard it almost sent her over the end of the reformer. “Please,” she snorted. “I had you first.”

Carrie laughed with her whole chest then - bright and unguarded. “And you’re stuck with me forever!” she gleefully decreed, leaning down, sandwiching the blonde’s face between her hands, and pressing a loud, lingering kiss to her cheek.

Juliet accepted it with the resigned dignity of someone who had been kissed on the cheek by Caroline Cole approximately nine million times, and had secretly loved every single one. Because, yes, she was stuck with her, and willingly so.

They had been like that forever. Not just for the famous parts. Not just for the glossy, exciting parts. Not just for the red carpets, exclusive parties, and Instagram followers. Actual forever.

Well, since the first day of preschool anyway.

Carrie still remembered the day in fragments: her sparkly pink shoes, her soft yellow dress, her little backpack with stars on it, and a matching hair clip wedged into her curls. A bright carpet made up of coloured squares. The smell of glue sticks mixing with fruit snacks and disinfectant. The air filled with the raucous babbling of tiny humans. And Martha Cole crouching in front of her, brushing tears from her cheeks and promising she’d be back after snack time.

Carrie had cried like she was being sent to sea.

Not quiet tears, either. Full-body devastation; Carrie had never been known for her subtlety. She cried until her face was red and snot had smeared far enough to mix with the tears - dramatic, hiccuping, world-ending sobs that had made at least two other children turn and stare long after Martha had finally pried Carrie’s fingers from her sleeve.

Tanner, traitor that he was, had abandoned her within thirty seconds. A boy with light-up sneakers had walked past with a bucket of blocks that he had then sat on the rug and proceeded to start construction with - and that was all it took to snatch his attention away from his sister’s abandonment crisis.

So that had been it: Carrie had been left bawling by the coat pegs, still clutching her little backpack like it might be able to save her from this hellhole. But then a little girl had approached her: cautious frown, round cheeks, overall dress decorated with embroidered strawberries, matching red shoes with tiny bows on them, and another red bow securing her neat, blonde ponytail.

“It’s ok; she’ll come back,” Juliet had solemnly reassured, approaching Carrie with the wariness of a wildlife photographer stalking an endangered species.

Carrie, stunned into silence, just stared at her, as though she was seeing another human being for the first time ever. Martha, who had been watching through the window in the door, would later report that Carrie had never stopped crying so abruptly for anything in her life.

“Right after snack, like she said; mine always does,” Juliet went on, inching a little closer.

Carrie’s lip wobbled as her gaze drifted to her brother, toddling around with an armful of wooden blocks already. “But Tan-Tan left too.”

Juliet followed her gaze and her eyebrows furrowed. “Boys do that,” she said with a disgruntled seriousness far beyond her years. It was soon replaced by a hopeful, almost shy, smile as she inched closer still though. “But not me! You can be my friend if you want.”

Carrie, wide-eyed and wary, sniffled again, but no further tears fell. “…Really?”

“Yeah. My dad told me I needed to make a friend today and not just play by myself, and you look like you need one - so I can be it,” Juliet brightly offered, before thrusting two dolls under Carrie’s nose. “Do you want to be the princess or the mermaid? I don’t mind which one you pick as long as you don’t get your sad on them.”

Carrie looked from Juliet to the dolls and back again - too many thoughts racing through one tiny head. But before she could second-guess it, Carrie reached for the mermaid doll and slowly pulled it towards her.

Juliet’s grin broke wider as she took her now free arm and linked it with Carrie’s, dragging her towards an abandoned dollhouse. “Great, let’s start!”

Carrie had spared her twin one last glance over her shoulder, before letting her attention be absorbed by the overly practical blonde. Juliet, of course, noticed, and leant closer, to let Carrie in on the first of many sacred secrets of hers. “Don’t worry, boys leave, but I’ll stay. I promise.”

And she had - through everything. She stayed through scraped knees, losing baby teeth, ballet recitals, weekly sleepovers, first auditions, family dinners, painfully awkward middle school dances, and, obviously, the startling rise to fame. Even when half the girls at school wanted to be Carrie’s friend, and half of them wanted to punish her for being liked - Juliet stayed. When kids repeated things they heard adults say at home that were far too old for their mouths and far too sharp for Carrie’s skin - Juliet stayed. When kids only tried to sit with her at lunch when they knew people were looking, or begged her to record videos for distant cousins, or repeated jokes from interviews back to her like they actually knew her - Juliet stayed, and proved what it took to be a real friend.

Juliet was the one who knew Carrie had a months-long phase when she was five where she would only wear plastic princess dress-up shoes; and the order in which she likes to be comforted when she was upset; and how she used to reenact scenes from Disney movies to crowds of stuffed animals arranged around the end of her bed; and how Tanner could get away with almost anything if he managed to make her laugh before she could get properly mad. Juliet never wavered, and she never changed. She just absorbed the changes as though the only impact was the fact that their friendship had grown stronger. She still complained about homework, she still stole french fries from her plate, and she still told her when her eyeliner looked insane. But she also helped fix her makeup in the bathroom after all the whispering in the halls started to feel like too much, and took her out to the mall to help distract her every time she missed out on a callback, and sat in the quiet with her on days when it felt like everyone was asking something of her and demanded nothing but a hand to hold and a half of her cookie.

She was the best friend Carrie could have had throughout all this insanity. And Carrie wouldn’t be where she was without her by her side - which played a large part in Carrie’s decision to appoint her as her personal stylist; that way they got to hang out and talk about clothes everyday, and consider it real work. Genius.

All Juliet did when Carrie surfaced for air was scrunch her face though. “You’re sweaty,” she complained.

“We haven’t even started yet,” Carrie retorted through a chuckle of disbelief.

“Exactly, which is what’s making me concerned about where it came from,” Juliet fired back, prompting another gasp of horror and amusement from Carrie that she knew was bound to launch a whole new, entirely ridiculous story.

But the instructor called them to begin before she had the chance to respond, which was probably for the best, because left unsupervised, the pair could turn one single insult into a twenty minute bit, and then wonder why their plans for the day had been completely derailed.

That didn’t stop them from sharing one last, knowing, horribly suppressed giggle though.

Pilates was, in theory, about controlled movements, and breathing through your core, and lengthening and strengthening, and several other wellness-adjacent words that Carrie nodded along to whenever someone explained them to her. In practice, it was forty five minutes of Juliet making intense eye contact with her in the mirror, executing every move with insulting precision, and stifling laughter every time Carrie fought not to make ugly faces and tiny, pained grunts every time the instructor said something deranged like, “Tiny pulses, ladies.”

Still, pilates was one of the few things Carrie did that was only partly about work. Yes, technically, it helped keep her strong and camera-ready, because Camille, her manager, told her “long lines photograph well” - whatever that’s supposed to mean. But Carrie also liked the precision of it, and how it gave her mind and body something to focus on besides what people were saying about her on the other side of a screen.

That didn’t stop her from ending class with flyaway curls frizzing around her temples, pleasantly shaky muscles, and a sheen of sweat soaking through the carefully selected lilac workout set though. Juliet, on the other hand, looked as effortlessly serene as ever.

“How do you do that?” Carrie demanded as they wandered back to the locker room to change.

“Do what?” Juliet replied.

“Not sweat.”

“I did sweat,” she insisted, grabbing Carrie’s hand. “Here, feel my neck.”

After a moment of relinquishing control, Carrie pulled her fingers back. “That’s like you got misted,” she retorted, before gesturing back to herself. “I look like I got locked in a sauna.”

Juliet giggled before she could stop herself. “Well maybe your body’s just got a lot of toxins it’s gotta sweat out,” she teased.

Carrie just levelled her with a disgruntled, deadpan stare. They stopped for a beat outside their usual lockers, before Carrie opened hers, snatched up a towel and a shower cap, and left her (just giggling harder) with: “I’m taking a shower.”

Once Carrie had returned, skin suitably cooled and buffed with fancy body wash, Juliet knelt on the bench behind her before she could finish getting changed, trying to tame her frizzing curls into something presentable - taking up her favourite hobby of playing with Carrie’s hair without even having to be asked.

“Hold still,” Juliet said, eyebrows scrunched in concentration as she hooked her ring finger under a new section of hair.

“I am holding still,” Carrie protested, wincing when a shorter strand was tugged harder than expected.

“No, you’re breathing.”

Carrie blinked at Juliet’s reflection in the huge mirror in front of them. “Would you rather I drop dead?”

Juliet didn’t break her concentration for a second, but she at least considered the suggestion before responding. “Hmm, preferably not. But if you are gonna breathe, just try not to do it with your whole body.”

“And the gossip sites say I’m demanding,” Carrie said with a teasing eye roll at her own expense.

Juliet’s fingers worked with delicate precision as the pair fell into a comfortable silence, twisting a small portion of Carrie’s unruly curls into a neat little braid at her temple, which she tied off with a tiny clear elastic.

“There,” she said, smiling down at her latest masterpiece, victorious. “Cute.”

Carrie leaned closer to the mirror, turning her face slightly to admire her best friend’s handiwork. The braid tucked back one wild section of curls, making the rest of her mane look deliberately untamed, instead of having simply been attacked by an overly warm workout studio and the static electricity her reformer had generated. A smile unfurled across her face as she took in her appearance. “I like it.”

“I know, I’m great, aren’t I?” Juliet smugly giggled.

“You are,” Carrie agreed, her smile only warming with sincerity as Juliet’s hands came to settle at her shoulders.

Her hands stayed there for a moment - only a brief one - but enough for Juliet’s expression to soften into something tender and fond. Juliet didn’t always do tender and fond; that was usually Carrie’s overly-emotional department. She cared, of course she did, she just tended to express it in a cleaner, more efficient way. So, naturally, Carrie’s eyebrows drew inwards.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Juliet insisted, doughy smile remaining.

“No, what is it?” Carrie pushed.

Juliet just shrugged and let out another breathy laugh. “You just look happy, that’s all. It’s nice.”

“Everyone keeps saying that,” Carrie sighed, hoping she could hide the flush of her cheeks behind a tiny eye roll.

“Because you do,” Juliet said, squeezing her shoulders a little tighter to help emphasise it.

“Yeah, and it’s embarrassing.”

“What? Being happy?” Juliet snorted.

“Being obvious,” Carrie corrected, eyebrows pulling inwards again.

Juliet bit down on a smile as she met Carrie’s eyes in the mirror. “Care, you have never been mysterious a day in your life. How are you getting self-conscious about it now?”

Carrie’s jaw dropped, affronted. “That is so rude, and so not true.”

Juliet’s laughter just grew brighter though as she recounted, “Does the time you were crushing on Jordan Wright in fifth grade, and decided to write his name in glitter gel pen down your arm like a tattoo, ring any bells?”

Carrie’s mouth snapped shut. “That was private.”

“Sure it was,” Juliet wickedly conceded. “Is that why you insisted on rolling your sleeves up to your shoulders too?”

Carrie leaned back against Juliet’s chest and just groaned in defeat. Her best friend’s laughter filled the room then, only stopping when Juliet came to rest her chin atop Carrie’s head, mumbling a further teasing: “Not your finest attempt at starting a fashion trend.” Carrie huffed a soft laugh of her own then, finally accepting the humour in the memory as Juliet’s thumb rubbed featherlight circles over her shoulder blade. “You’re allowed to be happy, you know? Even if you do so very loudly; that’s not a bad thing,” Juliet continued, voice going soft and sincere in the way that completely undid every piece of metaphorical armour Carrie could have donned.

“I am happy,” she admitted.

Juliet’s smile warmed further. “Good.”

“I think it’s freaking me out a bit,” she added. “You know, that everything’s just…getting better.”

“That’s normal,” Juliet chuckled.

“Is it?”

“For you it is,” she snorted. Carrie quirked her eyebrow at her in the mirror, and Juliet’s reflection lifted her hands in surrender. “I say that with love.”

Carrie laughed properly that time, and took the opportunity of Juliet having her arms raised to spin around on the bench and loop her own arms around her waist, letting her head fall against her stomach. Juliet’s hand immediately went to the back of her head, making Carrie relax even further into her touch.

“You’re being very clingy for someone so happy,” Juliet teased again, lazily weaving her fingers through her curls again.

“Shhh, just receive the affection,” Carrie protested - words partly muffled by sky blue lycra. “Let me have this.”

“I am receiving. I am just also narrating,” Juliet corrected, before leaning down and pressing a kiss to the top of Carrie’s head. “Stay happy, and stay being obvious about it,” she murmured into her hair, breathing in the freesia and argon oil scents of her hair products. “I don’t ever want you to change; you’re perfect just as you are.”

Carrie closed her eyes, and for a few seconds, she let herself believe it without argument.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Leaving the pilates studio, both girls agreed, with absolute conviction, that they deserved smoothies - continuing their self-care morning with pretty fruit blends and an entirely unnecessary number of add-ins the guy behind the counter charmed them into including. For the health benefits. Obviously.

They drank half of them in the car on the way back to the Cole house, complaining about the price while taking enormous sips and deciding aloud that the collagen, spirulina, bee pollen, sea moss, and whatever else the smoothie guy had suggested, were probably rebuilding them on a cellular level.

“I feel like I’m drinking one of those homemade face masks they have at the farmers market,” Juliet said, but took another sip anyway.

“Well it did say it was supposed to be good for your skin,” Carrie thought aloud from behind the wheel.

“Then I suppose it’s delivering on its promise,” Juliet giggled as Carrie pulled into her family’s winding, gated driveway.

By the time they sauntered into the house, they had matching cups in hand, sunglasses pushed onto their heads, and the loose, bright energy of girls who had exercised just enough to feel virtuous and spent just enough money on unnecessary beverages afterwards to feel thoroughly ridiculous.

Carrie dropped her keys into the little dish by the entry way and called out, “Mom?”

“I’m in the office, just give me a minute,” came Martha’s reply from somewhere deeper in the house.

“Dad?”

“He’s at that plant store he likes,” a voice called from the kitchen, partially muffled, but very much not belonging to her mother.

Carrie and Juliet wandered into said kitchen and found the owner of the voice, and the reason why it sounded so garbled. Tanner was slumped at one of the island bar stools with his laptop open and what looked like half a banana stuffed in his mouth, if the peeled other half in his hand was anything to go by. His hair was damp, like he had showered recently and then immediately ruined it by lying down - no doubt getting back from the gym and immediately napping in for twenty minutes like he always did. He looked up as the girls walked in, squinted at them, and then at their drinks. “Ew.”

“Good morning to you too,” Carrie scoffed through an eye roll - but her twin brother’s eyes stayed fixed on her drink.

“What the hell is that?”

Carrie lifted her cup higher, out of his reach. “It’s a smoothie.”

“It looks like you mixed swamp water in it,” Tanner wrinkled his nose at the blue-green swirl twisting through the creamy blend of yellow and white, and shuddered at the little flecks suspended throughout that looked like tiny ants.

“It has adaptogens,” Carrie defended.

Tanner just stared blankly at her. “That is not a real thing.”

“Uh, yes it is.”

“Fine, then what are they?”

“Mateo said they help your body adapt to stress.”

Tanner glanced at her over the top of his laptop screen, one eyebrow inching towards his hairline. “You had one of those things before today?”

“We get them at least like once a week,” Juliet chimed in, stirring her own pink and purple mixture with the end of her paper straw.

Tanner’s gaze fell on his sister again as he snorted out a laugh and returned his focus to his internet browser. “They’re clearly not working then.”

“Excuse you,” Carrie, affronted, scoffed as she set her smoothie down on the counter. “I am excellent at adapting in stressful situations.”

“Depends what you mean by ‘adapting’,” Tanner chuckled, grabbing the smoothie from under his sister’s nose and leaning over to sniff it. “If it means crying on the phone to mom and then buying new shoes afterwards because you ‘survived’ then sure, you’re very well-adapted.”

Juliet snorted out a laugh despite herself, and although Carrie was scowling, her eyes sparkled with that same amusement they always did around her twin brother. Like Juliet, Tanner had stuck by Carrie throughout all the insanity of her life in the spotlight. He didn’t always have a choice, because blood and the history of sharing a womb had dictated this unspoken rule about a bond for life - but their actions spoke the rule into existence.

Sure, he was her favourite person to torment, and she was his. But he was also the person who forced a boy in eighth grade to delete a photo he’d taken of Carrie bending over to tie her shoe. And the one who had finally gotten a girl in ninth grade to shut up by loudly announcing that asking how much money Carrie made was “seriously fucking embarrassing” - even if the cursing landed him a seat in detention. And within the same week, telling a guy who accused Carrie of only getting jobs because she was ‘bangable’ that, after looking him up and down, “that explains why you’re unemployed then”. Juliet had laughed so hard she snorted water out her nose, but Carrie, still slightly red-faced, fought much harder to suppress her delight in front of her peers for the sake of ‘maintaining her image’, as Camille had instructed her.

The school had called Martha that time. She’d been very stern in the principal’s office, but had taken them both through the drive-thru on the way home and had told Tanner, without taking her eyes off the road, “Next time, try not to dismantle them so thoroughly in the earshot of a teacher. Take it somewhere like behind the football field.”

Tanner had never looked prouder.

That was the thing about Tanner. He could make fun of Carrie until she threatened actual violence. He had spent years stealing her Halloween candy, mocking her selfie angles, and fighting her to be Player 1 every time they played a video game (despite being seventeen minutes younger and therefore the universe-appointed Player 2) because she ‘took too long to select the menu options’. But if anyone else aimed for the soft parts, Tanner moved before Carrie even realised she needed defending. He’d been like that forever. Her built-in enemy, and her first hero. Her first audience, and her first heckler. Her other half - woven into the fabric of Carrie’s life so deeply they couldn’t have been separated even if they’d had wanted to.

And now, he was sat in their parents’ kitchen, poking at a chunk of poorly blended pineapple in her smoothie with the straw.

“Give it back,” Carrie sighed, leaning over to reach for it.

He just ducked out of the way. “I’m investigating.”

“Tanner,” she protested, but he’d already taken a sip.

For one second, his face did nothing. Then every part of it changed. His eyes squeezed shut, his shoulders bunched under his ears, and his mouth twisted so sharply that Carrie’s delighted laughter filled the kitchen before he had even swallowed - which looked like it may not even be possible for a second.

“Oh my god,” he coughed, shoving the plastic cup back towards his sister like it had burned him. “That’s disgusting. It tastes like lawn clippings and air freshener.

“You are so dramatic,” Carrie laughed, rolling her eyes as Tanner tried to wipe the residue from his tongue with one of the napkins the smoothie cups had come wrapped in.

“Why does it taste like that?” he demanded.

“It’s got chlorophyll in it.”

“Why? You’re not a fucking plant,” he exclaimed, staring at her, horrified.

Carrie just smirked, still thoroughly amused by the reaction. “It’s good for inflammation,” she coolly explained around another sip.

“Good, my taste buds are gonna need that after the assault they just suffered,” he mumbled around another bite of banana he seemed to be using as a chaser.

“I’m just impressed you knew what chlorophyll was,” Juliet chimed in with a teasing smirk of her own - having been orbiting Tanner’s existence for long enough now that she was basically family to him too.

“Don’t you look so smug, yours doesn’t look any better,” he said, gesturing with his mostly empty banana peel at her smoothie cup.

“It’s supposed to look like a sunrise,” Juliet defended, raising her own cup to marvel at the faint swirls of orange mixing with the pinks and purples and reds.

“And taste like ass?” Tanner offered, holding out a hand expectantly.

“You have a lot of experience with what that tastes like?” Juliet shot back, smirk widening as she set the plastic cup in his hand.

Tanner levelled her with a frown over Carrie’s cackles, but took a sip anyway. His eyebrows shot up to the ceiling and he almost choked on what little liquid he had in his mouth. “What the hell,” he spluttered, eyes beginning to water. “Why is it spicy?”

“It’s not spicy,” Juliet chuckled, taking the smoothie back before he spilled the whole thing.

“My throat’s burning!”

“That’s the ginger.”

Tanner just shook his head and stuffed the remainder of the banana in his mouth. “You guys are so fucking weird,” he muttered, which just made the girls laugh harder.

Carrie and Juliet continued babbling about smoothie ingredients around the kitchen island whilst Tanner continued mindlessly scrolling, and munching through his mouthful of banana. But just as he leaned forwards to toss the leftover peel into his dad’s countertop compost prep bin, he caught sight of Carrie again, and narrowed his eyes.

Sensing her brother’s gaze, Carrie stopped mid-sentence. “What?”

He pointed at the side of her head.

Carrie’s fingers flew to the braid tucked behind her ear, where Tanner’s eyes had landed. She hadn’t even thought about it; Juliet was always practicing random little styles on her - it wasn’t anything new. Once, when they were kids, Juliet had spent almost an entire sleepover splitting Carrie’s curls into several tiny braids because she wanted to see if it would make her look like a mermaid by morning.

It had not.

It had made her look like she’d stuck her finger into an electrical outlet.

“What?” Carrie repeated.

“What have you done to your hair?” he asked.

“Jules did it after pilates,” Carrie replied, defensively placing her palm over the braid. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

The corner of Tanner’s lips twitched into a smirk. “You look like a show pony.”

Carrie gasped. “I do not.” But Juliet’s giggles were already betraying her.

“The creator disagrees,” Tanner teased, smirk growing more with every second.

Carrie turned to Juliet for some sort of support, but Juliet just continued to laugh, and run a finger gently over the edge of the braid. “Maybe it is sort of giving pony vibes,” she fondly conceded. “A very prestigious pony,” she added in an attempt to soften the blow.

It didn’t work. “You’re supposed to defend me.”

“I am,” Juliet promised through another giggle. “Show ponies are expensive, and very well looked after.”

“And temperamental,” Tanner chimed in. “You’d make a perfect one.”

Carrie grabbed a pretzel from the open bag on the counter and threw it at his head. Tanner reached his hand up without even taking his eyes away from his laptop, and caught it without even flinching, which was thoroughly inconvenient because it just made him look even more smug.

Juliet leaned closer to Carrie, and said under her breath, “I hate it when he does that.”

“He knows,” Carrie groaned, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms in defeat.

“It’s why I do it,” Tanner chuckled to himself, proudly popping the pretzel into his mouth.

Before Carrie could launch another verbal attack on her brother, their father wandered through the door carrying a stack of mail, with Cooper, their family’s golden retriever (and the physical embodiment of Brett’s shadow) trailing after him - until Cooper got distracted by his freshly filled water bowl, and abandoned him completely.

Brett looked up from the handful of envelopes at the sound of his children’s voices. He glanced between them both with a fond smile, before his gaze stuttered, and stopped on Carrie - or rather, her braid. He looked at Tanner. Then he looked at Juliet. Then he looked back at Carrie.

Smile shrinking into something attempting composure, and yet letting a teasing spark slip through anyway, he pretended to busy himself with sorting through the mail and asked her brightly, “What’s on the agenda for today, ladies? Dressage practice?”

Carrie’s mouth fell open. Tanner folded over his laptop, laughing so hard he almost tipped his stool sideways. Juliet had to slap a hand to her own mouth to hold back the guffaw that almost flew out like a reflex.

“Dad!” Carrie protested, tripping her head back in defeated betrayal.

Brett, poorly stifling a chuckle of his own, simply raised his hands. “I’m just trying to stay in the loop, sweetheart. Nobody in this house tells me anything until it’s already happened - and then before I know it, there’s a horse in the driveway that I’m then expected to deal with.”

“Don’t worry, Dad; we’ve got the horse covered,” Tanner grinned. “It’s not in the driveway.”

“There is no horse,” a disgruntled Carrie argued.

“No, not in the driveway anyway; I’m looking right at her here in my kitchen,” Brett fired back with a wit so quick Carrie almost forgot to be mad at him. Over Tanner and Juliet’s steadily growing laughter, Brett set the mail down and softened his teasing grin ever so slightly as he approached his deeply offended daughter. He rested his huge hands on her shoulders and gently tilted her from side to side, admiring her like a prize-winning watermelon at a county fair. “Very well-maintained mane, nice shiny coat, pretty face,” he narrated, reaching up and cupping both cheeks with one hand before pulling her face closer to his and deciding with the utmost certainty, “She’s a keeper.”

Carrie wriggled out of his grasp, offering an eye roll and a sarcastic reply of, “How kind.” She tried to glare at her dad, but his face was too pleased with itself, and before she knew it, a quiet laugh of her own had slipped out to join her brother’s and Juliet’s.

Brett leaned closer to inspect the braid again, then turned to their guest (who could barely still be considered that considering how much time she spent at their house). “Is this your doing, Juliet?”

Eyes brightening, delighted, she asked, “How did you know?”

“Because I spent a large portion of your childhood sitting on the floor surrounded by My Little Ponies - and every time I picked one up to play with, you’d already given it a fancy hairdo,” Brett chuckled.

“You did make an excellent Rainbow Dash, Mr Cole,” Juliet acknowledged with a fond, nostalgic giggle.

“Why thank you,” Brett said, dropping into a bow, which just made the trio laugh more. “Even if I did step on the purple comb?”

Both Carrie and Juliet gasped at the introduction of another memory.

“Aww, Julie, you cried so hard,” Carrie said, eyes shining with something caught between adorable amusement and heartache.

“I was five,” came Juliet’s justification.

“You held that grudge over me until Thanksgiving,” Brett recounted.

“It was an important comb.”

“It was the size of my thumb, and it came with a plastic horse.”

“It came with Rarity,” Juliet corrected immediately.

Brett looked at Carrie then, fond grin only widening. “See? This is exactly the kind of passion that explains the detail in that braid.”

Carrie was laughing now. Fully. Helplessly. Her stomach shook, her cheeks hurt, the sound peeled from her in breathless bursts that made her father look profoundly satisfied with the chaos he’d created.

Martha’s voice trailed in from the hallway at exactly the right, or wrong, time - still on a work call from the sounds of things.

“Oh Jen, I made the most amazing risotto the other night. Let me just check what recipe book I used because I’m almost certain I could increase the quantities and make it to serve-”

Martha stopped in the doorway, eyebrows furrowed as she took in the scene.

Her husband, failing to look nonchalant, sifting through the mail. Tanner halfway off his stool. Carrie and Juliet doubled over, gripping the counter. Two rainbow-coloured smoothies sweating rings onto the marble near the sink. Cooper lapping up water and thumping his tail so aggressively against the cabinet he almost knocked a precariously placed cereal box onto the floor.

Martha sighed into her phone, “Hang on, Jen. I’ll find it and call you back.”

The second she hung up the call, Brett fixed her with a thoroughly entertained grin. “Martha, dear. Did you know our daughter had taken up equestrian arts as a new hobby?”

Carrie lifted her eyes to the ceiling and made a groan of protest around her laughter.

Martha gaze found Carrie’s braid, then returned to her husband’s face. For a moment, she did not crack. That was one of her many gifts: she could stare down celebrities, florists, caterers, talent agents, food vendors, teachers, and her own ridiculous husband with an expression of holy composure.

Knowing he had to try harder, Brett added a bold, “I was just wondering where you thought it would be best to clear some space in the yard for jumps.”

Martha’s mouth twitched as she pocketed her phone. “Down by the south border might be nice - looking out over the hills,” she coolly replied, slipping into playing along with an ease that could only come from over twenty years of marriage.

“Don’t encourage him, Mom,” Carrie lightly scolded.

“I’m not encouraging anything,” Martha replied.

“You laughed.”

“As did you.”

“But you don’t normally think he’s funny,” Carrie protested.

Martha looked at her husband, a knowing smile unfurling across her face as she held his gaze. “I think he’s relentless,” she corrected.

Brett extended a hand towards her, as though presenting evidence. “Which just so happens to be the foundation of our marriage.”

Martha walked over and kissed him on the cheek, with the casual ease of a woman who had loved him long enough to be deeply unimpressed and still completely fond. “Unfortunately.”

Brett caught her by the waist before she could move past him to look for her cookbook, and kissed her properly. Not dramatically. Not like they were proving anything. Just a small, warm kitchen kiss in the middle of a weekday, surrounded by their kids, and Juliet, and two overpriced smoothies. Martha’s hand settled briefly on Brett’s chest as she laughed against his mouth, and Carrie watched them with a familiar, private ache of affection.

Her parents had been together so long that their love had become part of the house itself - although now a much larger house than their first had been.

It lived in the way Brett brought Martha coffee before she asked. In the way Martha knew which of Brett’s jokes were about to turn into bits, and braced herself. In the way they still touched in passing - hands finding shoulders, backs, wrists, palms - grounding themselves every time. In the way they could bicker over work or schedules or laundry or who was making dinner or who was supposed to have paid that bill, and then end up sharing strawberries over the sink twenty minutes later like nothing in the world could truly move them from one another.

Carrie had grown up inside that kind of love. She counted herself incredibly lucky, but it had spoiled her terribly. She knew that.

It was probably why, when Eric looked at her like she was the only person in the room, some deep and childish part of her thought: yes - there it is, that’s what love is supposed to feel like. And more importantly, she’d seen love last - that was what she believed in so intensely: that love was something that could outlast it all if you nurtured it.

Martha’s face softened when she pulled back and noticed Carrie watching, because Martha noticed everything.

“What?” Carrie asked, shyly defensive again.

“Nothing,” Martha promised, stepping towards her and fondly tucking a curl behind her ear, careful not to disturb Juliet’s braid. “I’m just admiring my beautiful daughter.”

“Even if she does look like a fancy horse,” Tanner snorted through another handful of pretzels.

Martha did not look away from Carrie - her eyes just warmed with pride. “She looks happy - that’s what she looks like.”

Carrie’s own smile softened in return; somehow it hit harder coming from her mom. “I am.”

Martha squeezed her shoulder, before Juliet chimed in, raising her smoothie into her line of sight. “Also cellularly optimised.”

“What could possibly be doing that in a smoothie?” Brett asked, swiping Carrie’s from where she’d abandoned it on the island.

“Spirulina, chia, collagen, ginger, maca root, bee pollen - I think there was something called blue majik,” Carrie listed off, amusing even herself with the absurdity of the ingredients.

“Oh yeah? So what, if I drink this am I gonna become twenty five years old again?” Brett teasingly retorted, swirling the thick liquid around with the straw.

“I hope not, I don’t think I’d survive you in your twenties again,” Martha snorted.

“What’s the point of adding in all that junk then?” Brett went on to ask.

“Benefits,” Juliet shrugged.

“What kind of benefits?” Brett asked.

“All of them,” Carrie said, earnest despite her eyes sparkling with mischief as her dad took a far too enthusiastic sip. He stalled the moment the flavour hit his taste buds - pausing for a second, briefly considering his options, before swallowing with the careful bravery of a man choosing not to disrespect his daughter’s life choices right in front of her.

Everyone else in the kitchen was fighting back laughter as he set the cup back on the countertop. Slowly.

“Well?” Carrie offered, not even trying to hide her expectant smirk.

Brett pressed a thumb and forefinger to his eyes as he selected his words. “It tastes,” he said hesitantly. “Like a banana threw up on a cactus.”

Tanner lost it. Juliet almost choked on a mouthful of her own smoothie. Even Martha pressed a hand to her mouth, shoulders shaking.

“It does not,” Carrie insisted, feigning offence around her own giggles.

Brett raised his eyebrows to the ceiling as he tapped his tongue to his teeth, trying to analyse the experience further. “Why is it so gritty?”

“That’s the chia seeds,” Juliet supplied.

“Ahh, of course. I should’ve known it was seeds,” Brett said. “The texture really adds to the psychological torture aspect.”

“You two are such babies,” Carrie managed with a loving eye roll. “It tastes normal.”

“Normal to you, and normal to the rest of us, are two entirely different concepts, Care,” Tanner scoffed, setting his dad and sister off laughing even harder.

Martha looked around her kitchen then, and something in her expression changed. Not sad. Not wistful. Just full.

Her children were both there. Juliet was there, as much a daughter of the house as anyone without the last name Cole could be. Brett was making everyone laugh. Carrie was laughing back - bright and open and unguarded - her whole face lit from within. For once, no one needed her to perform anything. No one had a camera. No one wanted a quote. No one was asking if her relationship was real or what it was like to grow up in the spotlight or whether she felt pressure about transitioning into more mature roles.

She was just being Carrie - laughing in the kitchen with a stupid little braid in her hair.

Martha stepped closer and smoothed a hand over the back of Carrie’s head.

Carrie leaned into it automatically. She always did.

“Careful, don’t mess up her mane,” Brett teased - unfortunately only half distracted by Cooper now scrabbling at his feet, already craving attention again in the form of ear scratches, which he was more than happy to supply.

Carrie didn’t even make an attempt to retaliate this time; she just watched more of the chaos unfurl around her, relishing in how easy everything felt.

Not effortless, exactly. Carrie’s life had never been effortless, no matter how carefully people tried to edit it into something glossy and smooth. There meetings and fittings and calls about ‘press strategies’ that she had absolutely no interest in. There were paparazzi outside restaurants and fans who still demanded kindness on days when kindness felt like it took every last part of her to muster. There were articles dissecting her clothes, her face, her body, her choices, her relationships, her friendships, her every attempt to grow up without disappointing people who would have preferred her to stay frozen at sixteen.

But beneath that, holding everything steady, was this.

Juliet stealing sips of her smoothie in the car despite pretending hers tasted better. Tanner snacking on pretzels and insulting her hair. Brett turning one good joke into seven, and Martha pretending to be exhausted by him, then kissing him anyway. Martha’s hand in Carrie’s curls. Eric’s texts lighting up her phone screen: sweet and stupid and full of everything she loved about him.

Carrie’s life was big - ridiculously big. But somehow, the five of them managed to hold it up for her.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Eric had called her that evening - not for long; he had an evening press shoot across the city. But he still sat on FaceTime with her despite the shitty wifi in whatever hotel his manager had put him up in for the night. Face freezing and pixelating at unflattering angles that made Carrie laugh until he threatened to hang-up.

Unfortunately, he was busy too; that was the price they paid as two rising stars riding the same strange wave, with careers expanding in every direction possible. Movie offers. Press events. Contract meetings. Brand deals he pretended to find embarrassing while secretly enjoying the free clothes. People were always speculating what he’d do next: arguing over whether he’d cash in on another musical or something else family-friendly-adjacent, or if he’d go more rogue with something more hard-hitting to prove he had range - if they even thought he was capable of that.

Carrie teased him for pretending not to care. Eric steadfastly claimed he didn’t. But of course he did; Eric always cared what people thought about him.

“How was your day?” she asked, lying on her stomach in bed, chin propped on one hand.

“Long. Boring. Everyone asked about you.”

“Good things?” a hopeful Carrie prompted.

Eric fondly rolled his eyes. “Unfortunately.”

Carrie laughed into her pillow.

“It’s deeply inconvenient, actually - I think people like talking about you more than they like talking about me,” Eric continued to tease.

“Doesn’t sound very inconvenient to me,” Carrie smirked.

“It’s only inconvenient because it makes me miss you,” Eric grinned.

Carrie smiled back so hard it hurt.

His hotel didn’t look as fancy as the usual ones he got put in - the white wall was too bare and the lamp beside him was too plain. He looked tired, but beautiful. He always did. His hair was damp from a shower, his sweatshirt collar stretched slightly on one side, his face softer than the version the public got.

“I miss you too,” Carrie softly replied - before adding a more teasing, “Even if I did only see you this morning.”

“I don’t care; it’s still too long,” Eric sleepily sulked, although his helpless smile remained. A yawn broke through his heart-eyed glaze though, bringing forth the sleepy inner workings of his brain. “You know I love you, right?”

Carrie almost laughed at the absurdity. “Of course I do.”

His grin broadened. “Good.”

“I love you too.”

This time his grin twisted into something smug. “I know.”

Carrie rolled her eyes this time. “Don’t ruin it.”

Eric just laughed. “You like it when I’m smug.”

“No, I tolerate it when you’re smug because you’re so handsome,” Carrie corrected.

“And charming,” Eric cheekily added.

“And humble,” Carrie fired back, laughing through the lie.

She smiled into the side of her pillow for another second, heart full and brain growing sleepy. But when she beat Eric to the next yawn, and missed him glancing at something over the top of his phone screen, he butted in before she could even close her mouth.

“I’d better let you get some sleep,” he mumbled through a tired smile. “Text me before you drop your phone on your face?”

Carrie giggled quietly to herself, grin softening again. “Always.”

When they finally hung up, Carrie just lay in bed for a second with the phone still clutched to her chest, staring at the ceiling.

She felt loved.

Not just publicly adored; that was different. Adoration was bright and unstable and full of conditions nobody admitted out loud. Love was warmer, messier, quieter. It was Juliet still knowing exactly how Carrie liked her coffee after eighteen years. It was Tanner keeping mental notes of every person who had ever made Carrie feel small. It was Martha touching her hair when she walked by. It was Brett bringing her water and making terrible jokes and calling her ridiculous nicknames when she needed to stop being Caroline Cole for a minute.

And it was Eric. Eric knowing her in the way she had wanted to be known. Eric loving her with the full, impossible conviction of someone who had seen her up close and stayed.

Carrie fell asleep smiling that night - like some cliché heroine in a romcom.

The next morning, she woke up looking just as pleased with herself, with that same lovestruck grin stuck to her face. That’s how Martha, wandering in with a laundry basket balanced on her hip, found her: sprawled across her bed, one foot stuck out from under the blanket, hair fanned in a halo over her satin pillowcase, grinning at her phone like an idiot.

“Oh good, you’re up,” Martha greeted, as warm and familiar as the comforter Carrie looked like she was being swallowed by. “Morning, sweetheart.”

“Morning, mom,” Carrie replied with a stretch that looked like it involved every muscle in her body, grin only widening at the sight of her mother. “You sleep ok?”

“I did, thank you. Did you?” Martha asked - tone starting innocent but slowly slipping into that knowingly teasing lilt. “Once Eric finally let you off the phone.”

Carrie sat upright with a frown. “This house is huge, you cannot possibly have heard us.”

“I didn’t hear you,” Martha chuckled, reaching out and cupping Carrie’s chin - giving it a gentle squeeze and adding, “I just know your lovesick princess face.”

“I do not have a ‘lovesick princess’ face,” Carrie protested.

“You do; I’m looking right at it,” Martha chuckled. “And don’t even try to deny it because I know all your faces; I made them. I have the stretch marks to prove it.”

“I know, and I never hear the end of it,” Carrie said through a playful eye roll.

“Well if you ever get pregnant with twins, I’m sure you will also complain to everyone within a fifty mile radius about them,” Martha laughed, lifting an abandoned sundress off the back of the chair by Carrie’s vanity and dumping it into the laundry basket.

“Twins? Absolutely not,” Carrie scoffed. “You’re not even getting one grandbaby from this body.”

“You keep telling yourself that, dear,” Martha said, smiling to herself as she busied herself gathering more clothes.

“I’m serious - this body is built for dance calls and pilates and sunbathing - it is not built for growing and pushing out a baby.”

“I don’t know, you sure did love your little baby dolls when you were growing up,” Martha fondly recalled.

“Well that was before I found out that in order to get one, I would have to have it exit through my vagina,” Carrie deadpanned, which made Martha guffaw.

“You never know, your baby might decide they need to come out the sunroof.”

“Like that’s any better! I don’t want to be sliced open!”

Martha’s chuckles eventually died down as she set the laundry basket by the foot of the bed, and came around to perch beside Carrie on it. “Alright, whatever you say. No grandbabies for me. I’ll just have to baby you for the rest of my life,” she conceded with an exaggerated sigh.

“Like you wouldn’t do that anyway,” Carrie said with another loving eye roll at her mom’s expense.

“I would, you know I would,” she chuckled again, reaching out to smooth a hand over Carrie’s hair again - the motion gentle and absent. “My funny girl.”

Carrie, blissful, let her eyelids slip closed.

When she was little, she used to climb into her parents’ bed after nightmares and press her face into her mother’s shoulder, convinced that nothing truly terrible could reach her there. As she grew up, the terrors changed shape. Bad reviews. Mean comments. Cancelled plans. Comments about her body. Casting rejections. Awkward interviews. Photos taken at bad angles and circulated like proof of a crime. Martha couldn’t stop any of it, no matter how much she wanted to, but Carrie still found herself drifting back to her when the world around her became too loud.

Martha had always been her safest place - her lighthouse through every storm. Even when she was annoying and overly motherly. Especially then.

“Are you happy, sweetie?” she asked quietly.

Carrie opened her eyes, a little caught off guard. The question should have been easy. It was easy. Still, something about the cautiousness of it made something in her chest ache.

“Yeah.”

Martha’s smile softened in a way that made her look younger and sadder and relived all at once.

Carrie’s brows furrowed warily. “Why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“All…sentimental-y,” Carrie briefly floundered.

Martha laughed softly. “I’m just glad.”

“That I’m happy?”

“Yes, is that not allowed?” she continued to chuckle.

Carrie watched her for a second - that same, tiny ache of suspicion tugging at something in her chest. “You do like Eric, right?”

“I do.”

”You’d tell me if you didn’t?”

“Carrie-”

Carrie narrowed her eyes. “Would you?”

Martha just shot her a look. “Have you met me?”

Carrie considered this for a few moments, then with a sleepy blink conceded. “Good point.”

Martha leaned closer whilst Carrie inspected a pull in the stitching of her comforter. “I think he loves you.”

Carrie’s eyes flicked back to her, filled with all the hope that had stolen the air from her lungs.

Martha smiled at the sight of it. “And, I think you love him.”

Carrie was helpless to resist the dreamy grin that drifted back onto her face. “I do.”

Martha chuckled, gently squeezing her knee. “I know - it’s very sweet.”

Carrie flopped back onto her pillows, arm thrown over her face. “This is humiliating.”

“What? Being loved?”

“Being perceived by my mom whilst being loved,” she clarified.

Martha laughed and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “My poor girl. Whatever will you do?”

Carrie caught her wrist before she could go back for the laundry basket.

Martha looked down at their hands.

For a second, Carrie didn’t know what she wanted. Only that she wanted to keep her there a little longer. To hold on to the moment - the morning light, the laundry, the way her mother’s hands felt in her hair, the warmth in her own chest.

“I love you, mom,” Carrie said, voice soft and still laced with the thickness of sleep.

Martha’s eyes melted instantly. “I love you more than anything,” she promised.

“Even more than your event binders?” Carrie asked through a new, teasing grin.

Martha raised back to her full height, pretending to consider.

Carrie gasped, mouth dropping open in offence.

Martha grinned back and poked her side. “Yes, even more than my event binders.”

Carrie gasped again - this time delighted. “Wow.”

“I know. Huge. Don’t let it go to your head,” Martha chuckled, hefting the laundry basket back onto her hip. “I’ll be making breakfast in ten if you’ve not got other plans.”

“No plan on Earth tops breakfast with my mom,” Carrie grinned into the side of her pillow.

Martha fondly rolled her eyes as she left - sensing some of the humour in her daughter’s tone. But the truth laced beneath still made her heart go mushy.

Carrie lay there for a moment longer once the room was her own again, smiling up at the ceiling.

Everything was good - her career, her family, her best friend, her boyfriend… The whole world, for once, seemed to be opening for her instead of asking for something from her.

She knew enough not to trust perfection. But beauty? Beauty she could believe in. And this felt beautiful.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Later that morning, Juliet came over again - because it was usually rarer to see her and Carrie separate than it was so see them together.

She found her curly-haired companion curled up at one end of the sofa in the den, script open in her lap and phone in her hand - half-reading and half-scrolling through fan edits she would deny watching if anyone asked. Tanner was sprawled across the neighbouring sofa - mouth open, leg hanging off the edge, totally dead to the world. He’d come back from a run, stolen another banana and one of Carrie’s hoodies from the clean laundry pile, and then told her it looked better on him anyway - which, naturally sparked a ten minute argument that Martha eventually ended by threatening to donate every single hoodie in the house to charity. And as much as Carrie loved a good charity gala, she was unreasonably attached to her After Ever After cast hoodie - so the argument died a quick death.

Juliet glanced at Tanner, then at Carrie. “Is he dead?” she stage-whispered.

Carrie didn’t even bother to look up. “Unfortunately not.”

Tanner’s hand lifted from behind his head just enough to flip her off.

“Fascinating - it lives,” Juliet gasped, drawing a giggle from Carrie’s lips as she sunk onto the couch cushion beside her. She set her phone down and reached for a loose section of hair head Carrie’s temple with practised ease.

Carrie leaned into her touch without a second thought. That was just how they worked now; Juliet didn’t ask anymore, and Carrie didn’t need her to. Her fingers moved through Carrie’s hair, gentle and familiar, separating a small piece and beginning to braid again.

“What’s that you’re reading?” she asked, somehow both nonchalant and nosy all at once.

“A new script Camille sent,” Carrie explained - perhaps deliberately vague.

“Any good?”

Carrie paused, still avoiding eye contact. “…Maybe.”

“That means yes,” Juliet translated.

“It means maybe,” Carrie doubled-down.

“No, it means yes, but you’re afraid to let yourself like it in case it doesn’t happen.”

Carrie turned her head, finally letting her eyes meet Juliet’s around the strands of hair suspended between her fingers. “Can you stop knowing me for like five minutes?”

Juliet bit back a smug smile. “No.”

Carrie scowled. “Rude.”

“Isn’t that why you hired me? Because I know how your brain works better than you do?” Juliet snorted. “It’s contractual.”

“No, she ‘hired’ you so that you didn’t get a normal 9-5 like the rest of us, because if you did then she’d have no one to go and get her nails done with at 2:30pm on a random Tuesday afternoon,” Tanner mumbled through his sleepy post-nap haze.

Carrie grinned proudly before Juliet’s suppressed giggles. “I’m very business-minded,” she claimed, which just made Juliet laugh harder. “Plus, you pick out some very pretty outfits for me to wear.”

“Some?” Juliet scoffed.

“All,” Carrie adjusted, reaching out a hand to rest on Juliet’s knee. “All the outfits you pick out for me are very pretty.”

“That’s more like it,” Juliet chuckled, tying off her latest braided design with a tiny clear elastic from her purse.

“Aww, look at that - you look like you’re getting ready to win your very first blue ribbon,” Tanner called from the adjoining sofa once he caught sight of the hairstyle - the teasing slipping back into his tone effortlessly.

“And you look like you fell asleep in a lost-and-found bin,” Carrie retorted.

Tanner looked down at the stolen hoodie, faded gym shorts, and mismatched socks. “It’s not my fault it’s laundry day.”

“It’s only eleven-thirty, how do you already need a nap?” Juliet asked incredulously, leaning back to cross-examine him as though she was his second sister.

“The weight of being the second-best sibling is just too exhausting,” Carrie deadpanned, but Tanner just ignored her, and the twitching corner of Juliet’s lips.

“I was not just ‘napping’,” he clarified with an exaggerated yawn and stretch. “I’m pretty sure I astral projected for part of it.”

Carrie just rolled her eyes. “Dad’s genes are too strong in you.”

Tanner grinned to himself. “Aww, thanks, Care.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“I’m taking it as one.”

Juliet, quietly giggling at the twins’ bickering, just leaned down and rested her head on Carrie’s shoulder. Carrie turned, distracted enough from her brother to forget the urge to roll her eyes again, and pressed a quick, fond kiss to the top of Juliet’s head without even thinking. Her nose scrunched when her lips came away tasting like hair product though.

Juliet just laughed harder. “That’s what you get when you ambush me with affection.”

“You taste like heat protectant spray.”

“And not like a cupcake? How tragic,” Juliet teased, bumping their shoulders together as Carrie reached for her iced coffee to reset her tastebuds.

Tanner, observing from across the room, pointed between them. “See? This is the kind of bullshit that made people at school think you were secretly dating.”

Carrie set her iced coffee back down, then reached up and looped her arms around Juliet’s neck, pulling her closer until their cheeks were squished together. “Maybe we are,” she replied, adopting Juliet’s stage-whisper from earlier.

“I think Eric would take issue with that,” Juliet pointed out, with a sideways glance since Carrie’s embrace gave her no chance of moving her head any time soon.

Carrie smiled to herself and finally released her hold. “Valid point.”

“Even you being with your old boyfriends didn’t stop people making weird rumours though,” Tanner mumbled, shuffling to find a more comfortable spot on the couch. “Freaks.”

“It did really bug you,” Juliet recalled - mostly because Carrie had already left school by that point because her filming schedules had become too busy to keep up with both - instead being shoved into lessons with an on-set tutor whenever she had breaks in her filming schedule.

“I just hated when people who barely knew you would act like you weren’t…” he floundered for a second as he looked at his sister. “You. It was fucking gross - they deserved everything they got.”

Something in Carrie’s chest tightened, overwhelmed by affection and irritation in equal measure. She finally averted her eyes with a grouchy, “You’re so annoying when you do that.”

His mouth twitched triumphantly. “You’re welcome.”

Carrie’s exterior softened as the affection swelled to consume the frustration. “Love you,” she mumbled, almost shyly.

Tanner wrinkled his nose. “Eww.”

“Say it back,” Carrie insisted - trying to assert her big sister authority - all seventeen minutes of it.

“No.”

“Tanner.”

He sighed like she was asking for a kidney, then flatly replied, “Love you too.”

Carrie was the one to smile triumphantly now.

But Tanner was quick to try to shut it down. “Don’t make it all tender and weird.”

“You started it, defending my honour,” Carrie smugly pointed out.

Tanner scoffed. “Yeah well you won’t catch me doing it any more if this is how I’m rewarded.”

Carrie, clearly dissatisfied, leaned across the space between their two sofas, and kicked his thigh with her foot. Tanner grabbed her ankle and held it hostage with an almost wicked grin. Carrie shrieked, but Juliet, laughing again, grabbed her around the waist before she could slide right off the side of the couch.

By the time Brett passed the door to the den, Tanner had both of Carrie’s ankles pinned to his chest, Carrie had reached for a throw pillow she was trying to hit him over the head with, the script she’d been reading had slipped onto the floor in a crumpled heap, and Juliet was giggling too hard to be able to contribute anything useful to the siblings’ wrestling match. Evidently, nothing had changed their dynamic since they were seven.

Brett stepped into the room, assessed the scene, and sighed. “Do I need to involve your mother?”

“No, I’ve got it,” Carrie wheezed, digging one of her heels into Tanner’s torso so hard he finally released it - only to grab for it again a second later, making her let out a frustrated grunt.

Brett bent down to inspect the braid at the side of Carrie’s temple again and smirked to himself. “Maybe calling animal control might be a better option.”

Tanner started laughing so hard he dropped both of Carrie’s ankles, which sent her sliding down until her butt landed on the floor with a soft thud. But by the time she tried to find it in her to frown, her dad’s smile, and the sound of Juliet and Tanner’s laughter, had her giggling before she could stop herself.

And for a while, that easy bliss was all there was.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Lunch unfolded throughout the house in its usual chaos - Martha testing out new recipes for clients, Tanner taking a plate and still constructing a monstrous sandwich anyway, Brett feeding scraps to Cooper despite Martha scolding him that it encouraged bad behaviour, Brett arguing that Cooper is such a good boy he isn’t capable of bad behaviour, and Martha eventually giving up when Cooper started licking Brett’s face so lovingly he couldn’t have eaten the rest of his lunch even if he’d tried. Carrie sat perched at the island beside Juliet, listening to all of it unfold with her attention, and helpless smile, fixed on her glowing phone screen.

Eric had sent her a photo. Not of himself, of the coffee machine at his apartment, and a PR package of fancy espresso pods sat beside it - all three variants set out in a row like they were on trial.

Eric: Emergency. Coffee’s evolving and I’m being used to endorse it. Which one of these looks safest to you?

Carrie’s grin widened immediately.

Carrie: I’d go with the gold one; gold usually means it’s the most impressive, or the marketing team is trying to make you think it is

Eric: I knew you’d pick the gold one ahaha

Carrie: Am I really that predictable?

Eric: Possibly

Eric: Or I just know you too well ❤️

Carrie: Probably both 😂💖

Carrie managed another bite of pasta salad, then another message appeared.

Eric: You home tonight? I’m missing you

Carrie: Yeah, I’m at my parents’ place until dinner. My mom’s planning a new tasting menu again so the whole house smells like a fancy restaurant 🤤

Eric: If I manage to escape my meeting before sunset PLEASE get her to save me a plate 🙏

Eric: Fuck I’m going to be thinking about her cooking all afternoon now

Carrie: And there I was thinking you were asking because you wanted to see me 🙄😂

Eric: I was planning on saving you for dessert 😎

Carrie pressed a hand to her mouth, unsure whether she was trying to stifle a laugh or hide her grin. The blush across her cheeks must have been more obvious than she’d intended though, because Martha paused in front of her on her way to the oven, a knowing smile starting to pull at the corners of her lips. “Eric?”

Carrie looked up, grinning even wider. “Yeah.”

Martha’s smile softened as she slid the oven door open.

Carrie’s attention was soon stolen back by his next text bubble appearing though.

Eric: Come on, of course I want to see you. You know I love you ❤️

Carrie pressed her lips together before they split into another helpless smile.

Carrie: I love you too 💖

She meant it with her whole body. That was the thing: there was no hesitation with her. No carefulness. No corner of herself held back in case she needed it later.

Caroline Cole, for all her vanity and drama and defensiveness, did not love in elegant portions. She loved like she was throwing a door off its hinges. Like a song that had been turned up loud enough to rattle your ear drums. Like a tornado ripping a roof off a house and whipping it across a whole neighbourhood.

She loved Juliet that way. She loved Tanner that way. She loved her parents that way. And she loved Eric that way too. Completely. Ridiculously. Without any armour. Just honest, true love.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

The afternoon still held that same, beautiful, golden quality.

That was the cruelest part.

She had nowhere to be for the whole day - that alone felt luxurious. And so, after lunch, she retreated to her room with Juliet - flopping down onto her childhood bed as though they were eleven years old at a sleepover again.

They talked about nothing for twenty minutes. Then about everything. A dress Carrie was considering for an upcoming event - and what Juliet would pair it with. Whether Juliet should cut bangs again. What they’d name their dogs if they owned any. Whether Eric would ever learn not to leave his dishes in the sink. Whether Carrie’s next role needed to scare her a little.

“Absolutely,” Juliet said, rifling through a tiny drawer of earrings from Carrie’s jewellery box, trying to pair them up, because the disorganised chaos was making her break out in a sweat. “You thrive when you’re scared.”

“I definitely do not,” Carrie protested, very much against the concept.

“Oh come on, you know what I mean,” Juliet tried. “You get all bright and intense when you care about something enough to panic - and then you lock in so hard you make the director to send you flowers.”

Carrie frowned, again frustrated by how well she could be perceived. “That is a terrible analysis of my process.”

“Terribly accurate?” Juliet smirked.

Carrie looked up at the script she’d been flicking through again, from where she was laid on her back across her bed, then dropped it and rolled onto her side to look at her best friend properly. “Do you think I could do it?”

Juliet’s expression softened, the teasing falling away in an instant as she set the drawer of earrings aside. “Yes,” she replied, without a moment’s hesitation.

That was Juliet. Blunt when Carrie was spiralling and needed grounding. Ridiculously protective when Carrie was suffocating under the weight of the weirdest parts of her job. Certain when Carrie could not be about herself.

Carrie let that sit for a moment, then rolled onto her back again, suddenly too overwhelmed to look Juliet in the eye as she conceded, “Alright, I’ll think about it.”

Juliet smiled to herself, triumphant beneath the age-old teasing that slipped out first, “Not too hard; wouldn’t want you pulling something.”

Carrie reached out to shove her knee, but caught herself laughing anyway.

For a while, the house stayed just like that: effortless and easy and comfortable. Juliet eventually left to go see her dad, so Carrie drifted down to the den. She turned on one of the old baking shows she used to watch with her mom, snuggling down on the sofa with an overly fluffy blanket, the comfort of nostalgia and warmth of Californian sunlight spilling through the window to help drown the noise of thoughts about work from her brain. Martha laughed at something Brett said. Tanner shouted that someone had moved his keys. The baker on the screen spouted some nonsense about buttercream consistency she was barely paying attention to. Juliet’s braid still sat tucked behind her ear. Eric’s last heart sat in her messages app, ordinary and sweet.

She found herself reaching for her phone before she even finished the thought - some stupid, childish part of her wanting to go back and look at it again. But before she could even check her lockscreen, Juliet’s name and contact picture filled the screen: a photo of the pair of them in matching ballet outfits at age seven, with missing front teeth and identical leotards.

It started buzzing in her hand, so she brought it to her ear and answered it with a smile still in her voice. “Are you calling to tell me that you’ve finally reached a verdict on whether the silver shoes made the dress look slutty or not?”

“Care, don’t look at your phone.”

Juliet’s voice crackled through the other line so abruptly it was as if she hadn’t even heard Carrie speak. She sounded breathless. If Carrie listened hard enough she could have heard her car key clicking into the ignition, and the engine rumbling to life.

Carrie’s smile faded. Something heavy and cold settled in her stomach, like a rock dropped in a pond. “What?”

“Please,” Juliet pleaded. “Just - don’t look at anything yet.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so,” Juliet pressed. “Have you seen any notifications?”

Carrie sat up slowly, the blanket slipping from her shoulder. “What notifications?”

Juliet didn’t give her the reply she wanted. “Just promise me you won’t look until I get there. I’m on my way back over there now.”

Carrie’s hand went cold around the phone. And against all her better judgement, and Juliet’s clear instructions, she prised it from her ear and swiped up to shift the call from filling her screen to sitting somewhere in the background. And suddenly her home screen was spitting up so many notifications she feared it may overheat - or perhaps explode. The number above her messages app started climbing up through the double digits. Emails poured in with names attached she could only catch for split seconds at a time: her publicist, her manager, a news outlet, her publicist again, another news outlet, her publicist again. The Instagram logo popped up and disappeared at the top of her screen so rapidly it became a blur of pink, orange and purple. More and more notifications flooded her screen from every app she had ever regretted downloading.

“Jules,” Carrie’s voice came out tiny, the clenching of her chest trapping the words as they tried to escape. “What’s happening?”

“Please, just wait for me to get there so we can look together,” Juliet begged, voice distant and tinny since Carrie had not had the foresight to change her to speaker mode.

And she wouldn’t get the chance to once the next notification dropped onto her home screen and stole every piece of attention she had.

LANA MONROE CLAIMS ERIC BRENNAN CHEATED ON CAROLINE COLE - “I HAVE RECEIPTS”

Carrie stared at it.

For one very strange second, she felt nothing at all. Her body simply paused.

The baking show cut to someone crying over a collapsed cake, the aforementioned buttercream leaking over the edges of the stand like spilled paint. The air conditioning vent clicked and hummed. Somewhere outside, one of the neighbours’ gardeners started up a leaf blower. The world around her continued in its blunt, ordinary way, like it had just split open beneath her feet.

A small, disbelieving laugh broke out of her. Her thumb hovered over the screen.

“Fuck, Carrie,” Juliet breathlessly swore. For a second Carrie didn’t know whether it was her own heart hammering in her ears, or Juliet’s. “Please just give me two minutes, I’m pulling back into your neighbourhood now. Don’t read any more.”

Too late.

The news article brought up a video that began without sound at first, cut in favour of keeping the call live. Even when Juliet wasn’t there in person she still found ways to try to protect her. Lana Monroe filled the screen, glossy mahogany hair pulled over one shoulder, lip gloss catching the glare of the ring light, eyes bright with the kind of excitement people got when they knew the internet was about to hand them attention by the fistful.

Carrie knew who she was.

Everyone knew who she was, if they spent even five minutes online. Lana was one of those influencers who seemed to exist across every platform at once - makeup line collaborations with Sephora, airport outfit videos, brand trips to Bali, podcast appearances where she said things like “I’m just trying to live my truth” while carefully stepping over other people’s social wreckage. Carrie had seen her at industry parties and events once or twice - always flirty, always loud, always nice to Carrie in a way that felt a little too polished to be real.

Carrie tapped on the video and it opened in TikTok with the sound blaring. Lana was mid-sentence.

“-and honestly, I wasn’t gonna say anything, because I know how you guys can get. And, like I’ve said before, as much as I love sharing stuff with you all on here, I don’t owe anyone access to my private life. But I’m not about to sit here and hold my tongue while his team tries to make me look delusional. ‘Cause, baby, I have screenshots. I have hotel dates. I have call stamps. I have the Cartier bracelet he sent me from his shoot in Montreal.”

Carrie’s throat closed. Her own Cartier bracelet sat in the top drawer of her dresser - still in the box he gave her it in - still with the handwritten note tucked inside the lid.

Carrie didn’t remember opening the comments tab, but suddenly text was filling her screen - one after another

not the cartier bracelet 💀

What the helllll

CARRIE BABE STAND UP

Where did all this come from???

I knew he gave cheater vibes

MEN 🤮

Lana smirked on the screen, as though she already knew the revenue from this video would set her up for months. “And before anyone says I’m lying - let’s be so serious. I do not need the attention. And I do not need the money his lawyers offered to buy my silence. Bribery is not cute on anyone.”

Carrie’s hand began to shake and her head started to pound.

She barely heard Juliet barging into the house, or Martha’s confused, alarmed greeting of: “Did you forget something, sweetheart?”

Lana leaned closer to the camera, lowering her voice into something conspiratorial and gleeful.

“And because I know everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Oh my God, what about Caroline?’ and ‘I thought he had a girlfriend’. For the record, I asked him and was like ‘I thought you were with her’ and he said, and I quote, ‘it’s complicated, baby’.”

Carrie stopped breathing, but her thumb scrolled through more comments anyway.

It’s complicated always means - I’m a liar. Do better, girl.

men are so EMBARRASSING 🤧

not caroline cole catching strays on a random thursday omggg

Please don’t tell me Carrie’s finding out with the rest of us 😭

Juliet burst into the den - wide-eyed and hair already slipping from her previously perfect blonde ponytail.

She took one look at Carrie’s face and lunged for the phone.

Carrie jerked it away on instinct. “No.”

“Hand it over.”

“No.”

“Carrie.”

“I need to know what’s going on.”

“Okay, but you do not need to find it out from her,” Juliet insisted.

But Carrie had already seen a comment thread Lana had left - screenshot after screenshot, photos, dates. Eric’s name saved in Lana’s phone with a stupid little flaming heart emoji beside it. A hotel hallway selfie where only the edge of Eric’s jacket was visible - but Carrie knew that jacket. She had bought him that jacket for his birthday. A screenshot of a message that read: Miss your mouth. Another that said: She’s asleep. Call me.

Carrie let out a sound no louder than a breath, but Juliet’s face crumpled in sympathy anyway.

Martha stepped into the doorway behind her, her own phone now in her hand, expression shifting from confusion to dread in the space of a heartbeat.

“What is it? What’s going on?” she asked.

But Carrie couldn’t speak. Juliet just looked at her, horrified.

For one second, as Martha tried to make sense of their expressions, all she could see was Carrie at seven years old, crying because a casting director had told her she was too “spirited” for a cereal commercial and asking all the way home if spirited meant bad. Carrie at thirteen, refusing to cry after a producer told her she needed to “watch the baby fat” before the next season started - and failing anyway. Carrie at sixteen, smiling through a late-night interview where three grown men joked about her dating life as if she were not still a child.

And now, Carrie at twenty, shattered by whatever was unfolding on her phone screen.

Martha strode to the couch and sat beside her daughter, one hand going immediately to the back of her head, trying to pull her gaze from her phone. “Baby? Talk to me.”

Carrie’s eyes stayed fixed on the screen.

Another notification stacked at the top of her screen: a news article with a new headline.

ERIC BRENNAN CHEATING SCANDAL WIDENS: MULTIPLE WOMEN NAMED

An almost soundless gasp slipped from Carrie’s lips. But she tapped it before Juliet could snatch her hand back.

The article was a live one, and it kept updating as Carrie read and re-read it for minutes that stretched on like hours - paragraphs appearing as though it was alive and starving hungry, expanding like a teenage boy during a growth spurt. Lana Monroe, influencer. Talia Rhodes, an up-and-coming model who was part of Victoria’s Secret’s latest campaign. Kaia Lennox, a supporting actress from the indie thriller he’d shot the previous winter. And Marisol Vega.

Carrie’s heart did something awful. Not stopped, exactly. Worse. It seemed to fold in on itself.

Marisol Vega.

Juliet read the name at the same time she did. “Oh, Carrie,” she whispered.

Martha’s hand stilled in Carrie’s hair.

Carrie read it again, because surely the letters would rearrange themselves into something else. Someone else. Another Marisol. Another name altogether. A rumour. A blind item they were trying and failing to dissect.

But beneath the name was a photo from the Verona Nights premiere.

Carrie stood there in pale blue and gold - dress dreamy and ethereal and romantic, as all her looks had been during that press tour to keep up with her character’s theme - smiling brightly with Eric’s arm around her waist. Marisol stood on Eric’s other side, all smooth dark hair, velvet-red dress, flawless bone structure, rich tanned skin, laughing at something just out of frame. Carrie remembered that night. She remembered Marisol fixing the back of her dress in the bathroom. She remembered Marisol telling her she looked beautiful when Carrie had admitted, in a whisper she had hated herself for, that she felt like a little girl playing dress-up beside her.

And she remembered Eric later, kissing along her jawline in the car ride back to the hotel and telling her she was ridiculous.

‘You’re the most beautiful person in any room you walk into.’

She had believed him. She had believed him with every bone in her body. And he was probably already thinking about what Marisol would look like as he slipped that red dress off her.

Carrie’s stomach rolled.

She stood too quickly and swayed, foot catching in the long-abandoned blanket.

Martha caught her arm. “Carrie-”

“I’m gonna throw up,” she mumbled.

Juliet moved like her shadow, guiding her towards the downstairs bathroom when her legs felt like they could betray her at any moment. Carrie barely made it to the toilet before her body emptied.

There wasn’t much in her stomach. Coffee. Then pasta salad from lunch. Then it just became bile and strings of saliva.

But it didn’t matter when nothing else was coming up. Carrie retched until her throat burned and her eyes streamed tracks through her makeup and her stomach muscles ached from over-exertion. Juliet knelt beside her on the tile, holding her hair back with one hand and rubbing between her shoulder blades with the other.

“I’m here,” she kept murmuring. “I’ve got you, Care. I’ve got you. Deep breath.”

Carrie clutched the toilet seat, trembling so hard her teeth chattered, cold sweat broken across her skin. Martha’s voice drifted in from the hallway, seemingly on the phone from the way she sounded. Not panicked - controlled. Terrifyingly controlled.

“Nina, I need you to tell me exactly what you know, and I need you to tell me now.”

Carrie squeezed her eyes shut.

Juliet flushed the toilet, then reached for a washcloth, wetting it with cool water at the sink. She crouched in front of Carrie and pressed it gently against her mouth, then folded it and smoothed it across her forehead.

Carrie stared past her at the grout between the bathroom tiles.

“Marisol,” she said, barely a whisper.

Juliet’s face twisted. “I know.”

“She was my friend,” Carrie continued, voice cracking on the last word.

“I know.”

“No, she was-” Carrie’s voice broke hard enough to scrape. She gasped in a breath. “I told him.”

Juliet stilled.

Carrie finally managed to look at her, and the tears came so suddenly there was no way for her to escape them.

“I told him I felt stupid around her,” she blubbered. “I told him I hated how insecure I got around her because she’s so beautiful and so effortless and everybody looks at her like…” She found herself fighting for a breath. The heel of her hand pressed into her chest as she tried to force herself to swallow. “I told him. And he still-”

She couldn’t bring herself to finish.

Juliet pulled her into her arms right there on the bathroom floor - beside the wooden toilet paper holder and the terracotta plant pot by the sink.

Carrie collapsed against her. Not gracefully. Not prettily. Not like actresses who cried in close-ups with one perfect tear sliding down a powdered cheek. She completely broke open. A raw, gutted sound tore out of her so hard it hurt.

Juliet held her tighter, cheek pressed to Carrie’s curls, whispering things Carrie couldn’t hear half of over the rush of blood in her ears.

At some point Martha appeared in the doorway again, stalled by what she was met with. The sight of her daughter on the bathroom floor, sobbing into Juliet’s shoulder, did something visible to her.

Carrie even saw it through the hazy blur her afternoon had become.

A mother’s face. Not shocked anymore - changed. As if something had just crossed a line Martha could never take back.

She padded inside and lowered herself carefully onto the floor in front of them both. She reached out and took Carrie’s hands in her own, skin soft with age and her plethora of hand creams.

Carrie grabbed onto her like she was still a little girl.

“Mom,” Carrie whispered, lip trembling.

That broke Martha. Only for a second. But her eyes still filled, and a lump rose at the back of her throat. Still, when she finally spoke, her voice was steady enough for Carrie to keep clinging to.

“I’m here, baby. I’m here.”

Carrie folded into her mother’s arms without hesitation. “He lied,” she wept into the thin cashmere of her sweater. “He lied to me every day.”

“I know,” she breathed into her hair, rocking her gently, suddenly finding the rhythm again from when she was an infant.

“He’d go to them, and then come home to me - as if nothing happened.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

“He let me talk about her,” Carrie said, words tumbling not, ugly and breathless. “He let me talk about Marisol like I was crazy for feeling insecure, and he was sleeping with her the whole time.”

Martha’s fingers tightened around the back of her shoulder.

Juliet made a scoff of disgust behind her, still close enough for her knee to be pressed against Carrie’s calf.

Eventually, Carrie pulled back, wiping uselessly across her face with the heel of her hand. “How many times did he do it?”

Martha looked to Juliet. But she just shook her head - helpless.

“We don’t know all the details yet, baby. We may never know,” Martha said gently, bringing Carrie’s attention back to her.

“From what’s out so far,” Juliet began slowly, arm reaching out to rest on Carrie’s thigh. “It doesn’t look like it was just a one-time thing… with any of them.”

Carrie just stared at her.

Juliet’s eyes shone with unshed tears, but her jaw was set like she was holding herself together through sheer rage as she consulted her phone. “From what Lana posted, it was multiple times with her. Over months. Talia’s stuff is still unclear - but it seemed to start around the time he did that shoot with Calvin Klein, and go from there. Kaia was just during his time filming in Vancouver. And Marisol…”

Carrie’s skin prickled as Juliet’s voice trailed off. “What?”

Juliet looked miserable as she continued to scroll.

Martha softly cut in. “Carrie, you don’t need to know every detail right now.”

“Yes, I do,” she insisted, unable to draw her eyes away from Juliet.

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do, Mom.”

”Baby, just let yourself-”

“I need to know what everyone else knows!” Carrie burst out, frantic tears starting to slip from the corners of her eyes again.

And there it was - the worst part of it, or one of the worst parts. The part that made the whole thing feel less like heartbreak and more like being stripped naked and shoved in front of a crowd. Carrie was not simply finding out her boyfriend was a cheater. She was finding out her boyfriend was a cheater alongside millions of strangers who were already clipping, commenting, laughing, theorising, pitying, celebrating, feeding.

They had descended on the story like hungry wolves. They were eating her alive.

Martha looked towards the den, where Carrie’s phone, abandoned on the hardwood floor, buzzed and buzzed and buzzed, like it would never stop. Then, she took a breath, and reached for Carrie’s face with both hands. “Listen to me.”

Carrie shook her head, crying harder again now.

“Caroline. Look at me.”

She did. Because it was Martha. Because even at twenty years old, even with the whole internet turning the most humiliating thing to ever happen to her into their new mid-week source of entertainment, her mother’s voice could still cut through the noise.

And because it still sometimes scared her when she used her full name.

“You do not have to torture yourself with this because other people are revelling in it.”

Carrie’s breath hitched, wet snot pooling on her top lip.

“You do not need to know every detail before you’re allowed to process this. You do not need to stay informed to be dignified. You do not need to punish yourself so nobody else can do it first.”

Carrie’s face crumpled.

Martha’s thumbs brushed tears away before they could finish falling.

“Forget everyone else. You are my daughter before you are anyone’s headline.”

Carrie folded forward into her mother’s arms again. Martha held her as she cried, Juliet inching close enough to keep one hand on Carrie’s back. The three of them stayed there until Carrie’s sobs lost their shape and became exhausted, shuddering breaths.

By then, Brett had come home. Carrie heard his voice first, low and alarmed in the hallway, then Tanner’s, sharper than usual.

“What happened?”

Martha said something Carrie couldn’t make out over the thudding in her ears. She heard Tanner swear though. She also heard her father fall silent. That was how she knew it was bad.

Brett didn’t come barging in. He had always been good about that, about not making a room smaller when Carrie was already overwhelmed. Instead, he appeared in the doorway and crouched there, one massive hand braced against the frame, eyes fixed on her face.

The look in them nearly undid her all over again - even when she felt as though she’d cried her body dry.

“Oh, Squidge,” he sighed.

That nickname still found her after all these years. Carrie had not been Squidge where anyone outside her family could hear it since she was old enough to beg him to stop. Brett himself rarely even felt the need to pull it out anymore, not even for prime teasing purposes. But now, sitting on the bathroom floor with her hair a mess and mascara streaked beneath her eyes, she wanted nothing more than to be small enough for the nickname to make sense again.

She reached for him, and he gathered her into his arms like it didn’t matter that she was now a grown woman. Like it didn’t matter that her limbs were too long, or that the tile was hard under his knees. Carrie clung to him and cried into his shirt, and Brett held the back of her head the same way Martha had, his face turned down into her hair like she was still the little toddler he’d cradle until she slept.

“I’ve got you,” he said. “You’re okay, I’ve got you.”

Tanner hovered in the doorway behind him, face pale and expression furious in a way Carrie had only seen a handful of times in her life. Usually Tanner’s anger came quick and hot and funny, all sharp comments and exaggerated threats. This was different. Quieter. Seething. It made him look older for a change.

Juliet pushed herself to her feet and crossed to him.

He watched her approach and saw her eyes dart to the den - his own followed as he asked, “Is her phone in there?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I’m taking it,” he decided, already stepping out into the hall.

Carrie lifted her head from Brett’s chest, breathless and panicked. “No.”

Tanner looked back at her. Her voice sounded as wrecked as she looked. For once, he didn’t tease. He just set his jaw. “I don’t care; you can hate me tomorrow. I’m taking it.”

Carrie opened her mouth to argue, but her breath caught, and Brett shushed her back into his embrace, tightening his hold on her and murmuring for her to let them handle what they could.

Juliet touched Tanner’s shoulder before he could stray too far. “Give it to me. I’ll deal with the notifications.”

Tanner nodded, somewhat reluctantly, and disappeared to retrieve the phone.

Martha stood slowly, one hand pressed to the counter around the sink as though she needed the support. Then she stepped around her husband and her daughter, and followed Tanner into the hall.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

By seven o’clock, the house had become a command center. Not for Carrie - around Carrie. That distinction mattered.

Carrie’s manager, Camille, had called three times. Carrie’s publicist, Nina, who Martha had already spoken to earlier, called another five. Eric had tried to call her twenty seven separate times before Tanner finally snatched the phone and blocked the number with a cold efficiency that made Juliet squeeze Carrie’s knee, and whisper through a forced smile, “Remind me to never piss him off.”

Tanner had not reciprocated the smile. “I think this is beyond being pissed off,” he huffed.

Juliet’s own smile drooped slightly in sympathy - her own rage having to be smothered with every bit of strength she had to stop her from busting a hole in the side of the house and walking straight to Eric’s house to rip his stupid, handsome head off his shoulders.

Carrie sat cross-legged in the middle of the couch in one of Brett’s old college sweatshirts, because it was soft and huge and Carrie had started shaking and hadn’t been able to stop. Her phone was gone, and so was her laptop. The television was off. Martha had closed the curtains even though it was still light outside, making the room as small and homely and protected as she could.

Brett sat beside his daughter, one hand resting on her ankle as though he could anchor her there. Every so often, his thumb moved back and forth over the bone there, a tiny repetitive motion he probably didn’t realise he was doing, but was grounding him anyway.

Juliet sat on Carrie’s other side, turned half toward her with her knees tucked beneath her, answering only the necessary texts from Carrie’s phone and muttering murderously under her breath whenever something new appeared.

Tanner paced - he hadn’t sat still for longer than ten seconds since he had found out.

Martha stood by the fireplace, which she couldn’t remember ever needing to light, phone pressed to her ear, eyes fixed on nothing.

“No, Nina,” she said, voice calm and yet somehow sharp enough to be lethal. “Carrie is not making a statement tonight.”

There was a pause, filled only by the faraway babbling nonsense on the other end of the line.

“I don’t care what his team is preparing.”

Another pause.

“I said no, Nina. She does not need to ‘get ahead of it’. She is not some brand emergency. She is a twenty-year-old woman whose boyfriend just publicly humiliated her.”

Carrie’s eyes lifted to her mother. Something inside her twisted.

Martha listened to Nina speak, eyes slipping closed as her patience ebbed further.

“I understand that,” she sighed. “I’ve been around this world for a long time. I understand how fast this moves. I understand that silence leaves room for speculation. But I also understand that my daughter has been crying and throwing up for four hours, so unless you plan to come over here yourself to hold her hair back for her, you and your statement can wait.”

Juliet’s gaze snapped to her, eyes shining with pride. Tanner momentarily stopped pacing. Brett’s hand tightened lightly around Carrie’s ankle. Carrie tried to say something, but no sound came out.

Martha looked over at her anyway. Her expression softened reflexively. Then she let out a slow, shaking breath and turned her head, trying to stay focused - trying not to let her fury erupt. “Fine, Nina. If you really feel you have to, you can draft something and send it to me. But Carrie will not be reading anything tonight. Are we clear?”

Nina must have protested in some way, babbling senselessly through the speaker as Martha set her jaw.

A scoff slipped past her lips before she could stop it, cutting Nina off before she could finish her thought. “If anyone from his side tries to frame this as a mutual breakup, I will personally make sure every news outlet in this town knows exactly how mutual four separate affairs were.”

Tanner’s eyes darted to Carrie and Juliet on the sofa, widening further with each word that left his mother’s mouth. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

Juliet’s grin returned for real this time. “I love your mom,” she whispered back.

Carrie let out a sound that was almost a laugh and almost another sob - caught between gratitude that her mom was so ruthlessly fighting her corner, and grief that she was having to in the first place.

Martha eventually hung up the call without so much as a goodbye. For a moment, she just stood there with the phone in her hand, shoulders climbing to her ears, jaw clenched in a scowl.

Then she looked at Carrie, and all the fight drained from her face.

She crossed the room, and sat on the coffee table in front of her, close enough that their knees were almost touching.

“Sweetheart,” she began, gently.

Carrie shook her head. “I don’t want to do a statement.”

“You don’t have to,” Martha promised.

“They’re going to make me,” Carrie argued, tears already starting to well in her eyes again.

“No,” Martha insisted, firmly enough to get Carrie to stop resisting and listen to her properly. She took her daughter’s hands in her own again. “No one is making you do anything right now - you’re not performing your own heartbreak for public approval.”

Carrie’s face crumpled. “That’s all this is now though.”

“No,” Martha tried.

“Yes, it is,” Carrie insisted, voice cracking as soon as she tried to raise it. “It’s content. For everyone. Lana’s already been on live talking about my whole relationship like it’s another one of her stupid storytimes. People are already making jokes. Or edits - trying to find clues - or mourning something they didn’t even understand half of.”

“Yeah, they’re assholes,” Tanner cut in.

“They’re everyone,” Carrie miserably reiterated.

“No,” Brett stepped in, surprising Carrie so much she actually turned to look at him. He leaned forwards, forearms on his knees, eyes tired and kind and full of a hurt Carrie knew was for her. “They’re just a very loud minority - that’s a different thing.”

Juliet set her phone face-down, and laid a hand softly on her thigh. “Most of the people who love you just don’t know what to say yet,” she added. “That doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

Carrie swallowed and wiped under her eyes again - marking the cuff of Brett’s old sweatshirt with streaks of mascara. “I can’t believe how stupid I look.”

“You don’t look stupid,” Tanner said, pausing his pacing again.

“Yes I do.”

“Eric’s the one who looks fucking stupid.”

“Yeah, like previously unknown to humankind levels of stupid,” Juliet chipped in, voice sharpening as her own frustration started to rise. “He’s the one that cheated - with four girls who all apparently had the combined common sense of a gas station tuna sandwich.”

Despite everything, the corner of Carrie’s lip twitched, even if only a fraction.

Tanner let out his own soft snort. “That was good,” he acknowledged.

Juliet’s face didn’t change. “I wasn’t joking.”

“That makes it even better,” Brett agreed, giving Carrie’s ankle another squeeze.

But it just seemed to draw fresh tears to her eyes. “Marisol isn’t stupid,” she quietly admitted, lip trembling through her frown.

The room quietened.

That name sat differently from the rest. Lana was embarrassing. Talia was gross in that sleazy, predictable way. Kaia was painful in a distant, movie-set way that felt familiar enough to imagine the logistics and torture herself with them. But Marisol was a blade stuck between her ribs.

Marisol had hugged her. Marisol had texted her after the Eric rumours and blind-items had first started months ago, back when they had been vague enough to dismiss as gossip.

‘People are so bored, babe. Don’t let it get to you. You’re too special for that.’

Carrie had thanked her. She had thanked her.

Juliet’s hand found her knee again. “I never liked her anyway,” she said simply.

Carrie looked over and found her face flushed with anger, eyes starting to glisten in that way that told her she was fighting to keep her voice even. A scoff broke out through her composure anyway.

“No, screw it. I don’t want to be the bigger person. I hate her. I fucking hate her. I’m allowed. You can be sad and complicated and whatever else you need to be, you can even still speak to her if you want, but I don’t care; I’m allowed to hate her for you. And I really, really do right now.”

Carrie let out a wet, broken little laugh. “You’re such a loyal psycho.”

“Correction, I’m your loyal psycho,” Juliet grinned, gaining another tiny laugh from Carrie as she bent and let her head fall against her shoulder.

Martha sent her a grateful smile, relief steadily loosening her frame again.

Tanner dropped down onto the rug beside the coffee table - legs stretched out in front of him, but bent enough to still rest his forearms over. He took a breath and levelled Carrie with a stare. “Okay, I’m gonna say something now, and you’re not allowed to get mad.”

Carrie’s eyebrows drew together. “That sentence has never worked.”

“I know, but I’m gonna say it anyway.”

“Tanner,” she tried to protest - but the words had already left his mouth.

“He didn’t deserve you.”

Carrie shut her eyes.

“I know that just sounds like the kind of bullshit people say when they don’t know what else to say, but I mean it. He didn’t.” His choice got rougher, and he looked down at his hands like he hated that everyone could hear it. “He came into our house. He ate Mom’s food. He watched Dad’s favourite movies with him. He let me teach him the stupid fucking shortcuts on Mario Kart, and then acted like he figured them out himself.”

“He did do that,” Brett murmured around a humourless laugh.

Tanner was undeterred by the interruption. “He let you love him, and he knew what that meant to you. He knew you don’t do love halfway. He knew how scared you were of being made to look stupid. He knew how you felt about Marisol. He knew all of it, and he did it anyway.”

Carrie’s eyes stayed close, but tears still dampened her lashes.

Tanner’s jaw worked as he watched her. “So no. You don’t look stupid. And neither does he - not really. He just looks like a heartless dick.”

Carrie blinked the mist from her eyes just enough to stare at her twin.

Her younger brother, by seventeen minutes, as she had reminded him approximately nine thousand times over the years. The person who had, in theory, known her the longest. Before the fame. Before the cameras. Before Eric. Before the plot points in her life had become something strangers could make trend.

He looked angry enough to shake. For her.

Her composure broke again and she reached for him - like she had when she was six and had fallen off her bike, splitting her chin open in the process and then crying too hard to stand on her own - or like when she was barely a year old and had developed a habit of empathy crying whenever he announced he was upset and her tiny brain thought she could comfort him.

Tanner moved without question, crawling close enough for her to wrap both arms around his shoulders. He hugged her back hard, as though he was trying to draw all the hurt right out of her body.

Still, he couldn’t let the moment of sincerity go on for too long.

“Don’t get any snot on my shirt,” he muttered into her hair.

Carrie choked on a laugh and sobbed anyway.

Juliet produced a tissue and held it out to the pair, biting back a laugh. “Too late.”

Tanner rolled his eyes with dramatic emphasis, “Great.” But his arms tightened anyway.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Everything felt like it might have been dying down by the time dinner was over. No new information had surfaced for at least an hour. Carrie had managed to steady her breathing enough to let food pass down her throat without anyone worrying she might choke on it. Conversation treaded carefully around the topic at the forefront of everyone’s minds, but managed to flow naturally enough to keep them at least somewhat distracted. It didn’t quite feel normal - but it at least crept towards it.

Everyone had drifted back to the living room after the dishes had been dried and put away. Brett aimlessly flicked through channels and streaming service menus - trying and failing to find something that could take their minds off everything. Tanner sat on the floor, rolling a tennis ball back and forth for Cooper to lazily bat with his paw, eyes fixed on nothing at all. Juliet had insisted on staying, even offering to sleep over if Carrie didn’t want to be alone, but for now she just had Carrie’s hand in her lap - painting her nails a delicate, sheer pink to try to keep both of their hands from reaching for their phones.

Then Martha’s phone rang.

She sighed before she even looked at it, having already lost any remaining patience she had for Carrie’s publicist somewhere between the third and fourth call that afternoon. And now, apparently, she had come back for more. She tapped the screen and lifted it to her ear without even looking, stepping into the room with a mug of tea she had read was supposed to help calm her nerves. She thought now more than ever that whoever had sprawled that across the box had clearly never had to deal with a daughter like Carrie.

“Hello?”

But the voice that met her on the other end almost sent the mug clattering to the floor.

“Martha? Martha! Please- please don’t hang up. Just- fuck, no wait, sorry. I’m sorry. Just- please just let me talk to her. I need to talk to her. I need to-”

Martha’s whole body went still. Everyone’s eyes were on her; even though his voice was faint, they all recognised it in an instant.

Any of the warmth they’d tried to fill the room with, drained out in an instant.

Martha slowly moved the phone away from her ear, Eric’s voice still quietly rattling through the speaker, looking at it as though she half-expected him to come crawling out of it. He sure sounded desperate enough to.

She turned back to the others, expression pinched with guilt and despair. “I didn’t… I didn’t think to look. I didn’t think it would be…” She couldn’t even bring herself to say his name.

Carrie just stared at the phone. For a fleeting moment, against all logic, everything in her reached for him. That was the part she would hate herself for later: the stupid, desperate part that wanted to hear his voice. Wanted him to explain. Wanted him to say it wasn’t true, or it wasn’t like that, or Lana was lying, or Marisol had somehow been a misunderstanding, or the dates were wrong, or the world had invented the entire scandal out of nothing.

Part of her wanted him. Still. After everything.

Juliet must have seen it on her face, because her expression twisted into this awful, forlorn sympathy.

“Care, you don’t have to speak to him,” she said gently, as though approaching a spooked animal. “Not tonight, not ever if that’s what you want.”

“I can just hang up, sweetheart,” Martha added, looking as though she was already gearing up to apologise. “He wouldn’t even know you were here.”

Carrie shook her head, tears already clinging to her lashes again. “I want to talk to him.”

Tanner’s whole body stiffened as he whipped around to face her. “No, Care, come on-”

Carrie frowned, cutting him off before he could judge her life choices further. “Don’t.”

“No, he doesn’t get to-”

“Tanner,” Brett jumped in, voice warning and low enough to shut him up.

Martha cautiously stepped towards the couch, leaving the phone, call still active, on the mantle, bending down to look at her daughter more clearly before she spoke. “Don’t feel you have to do this just because he called. Forget about him, forget about how he sounds. What do you want to do right now? What feels right?”

Carrie took in a shuddering breath, gaze repeatedly drifting to the phone no matter how much she tried to keep it fixed on her mother. “I think I need to talk to him.”

Martha’s breath hitched. Brett’s hand stilled on her ankle. Tanner swallowed so loudly she heard it, then pushed to his feet and walked into the kitchen - Cooper trailing after him.

“Tanner-” Brett tried again.

“I don’t want to hear his voice,” he curtly explained, clearly biting down on the harsher expansion sitting behind his tongue.

Brett looked like he almost started to go after him, but settled further back on the sofa with a sigh - evidently thinking better of it once he saw Martha approaching with her phone.

Juliet, for a second, looked like she was going to physically stop Carrie from taking it.

But suddenly, the phone was in Carrie’s hand, and she was lifting it to her ear.

“-can’t have her thinking-”

“Eric?”

Eric’s erratic rambling stopped so abruptly she thought the call may have dropped. But his voice, breathy and reckless, returned almost immediately. “Carrie?”

Hearing his voice broke something fresh in her. She pressed the phone screen to her skin and closed her eyes.

He sounded wrecked.

Good, she thought. Then she hated herself for still caring.

“Carrie, baby, please don’t hang up,” he went on to plead.

She couldn’t have moved to hang up had she tried. She couldn’t even speak; her throat locked around every possible word.

Eric rushed to fill the silence. “I know how this looks.”

Juliet’s face went sharp with disbelief beside her.

Eric kept going; unable to stop now that he’d been given the chance to start. “And I fucked up. I know I fucked up. Majorly. But Lana is making it sound - she’s twisting things. She’s making it into this whole thing, and it wasn’t-”

Carrie finally found her voice - cracked and raw as it was. “Wasn’t what?”

Eric stopped.

Carrie stared at nothing as she supplied: “Wasn’t four girls?”

Silence. Silence that answered far too much.

Carrie waited him out, and eventually, he answered. “It wasn’t like that.”

Juliet mouthed ‘Oh my God.’

Carrie’s other hand shook so hard Brett gently reached out to wrap his fingers around her wrist to steady it.

“Was it four?”

Eric let out a long, heavy exhale. “Carrie-”

“Were there more?”

“No, that’s… That was all of them,” he admitted, sounding more like a disobedient child than an adulterer.

Carrie curled her head forwards, like she’d been punched in the chest and was trying to use the rest of her body as a shield.

Martha moved closer, but did not touch her.

Carrie’s voice came out almost calm as she pressed onwards. “How many times?”

Another pause.

“I-”

“How many times did it happen?”

“…I don’t know.”

Carrie’s laugh came out once, hoarse and abrupt. “You don’t know?”

“It’s not like I kept count,” Eric scrambled to justify, if it could even still be considered that.

“Oh my god,” Carrie breathed, almost smiling in disbelief.

“It wasn’t like that with any of them - it wasn’t like a relationship,” he tried.

“You’re in a relationship, Eric,” Carrie came back with. “That’s supposed to mean something.”

“It does. Of course it does,” he insisted, before he felt himself slipping beneath the surface again. “They don’t mean anything to me. They’re nothing. You know you’re the most important thing in my life. Come on, Carrie, you have to know that.”

“Then why would you do it?” she asked, tears starting to leak from the corners of her eyes.

“Because I’m a fucking idiot - clearly. And they would come onto me, and things would start getting intense, and then I’d panic, and I never knew how to-”

“How to what?” she demanded. “Keep your pants on?”

Whatever Eric had thought to say died on his lips; even he couldn’t deny that she’d nailed him with that one.

Martha’s face went white with anger. Brett’s gaze was locked onto a knot in one of the floorboards.

“Carrie,” Eric cautiously continued, having dusted himself off enough to want to try again.

But Carrie was ready to flatten him with another blow. “And what about Marisol? Did she mean nothing too?”

Eric’s breath caught.

That was all the confirmation she needed.

Eric spoke slowly then, as though he was choosing his words very carefully. “That was…complicated.”

Carrie went very still. “Complicated,” she repeated, testing the word in her mouth.

“She was there, she was a friend, and then things between us got weird, and I was lonely-”

“You were lonely?”

Eric knew immediately he’d picked the wrong word. “I know that sounds bad.”

“No,” Carrie said, voice shaking now. “That sounds perfect.”

“Carrie, please. Just hear me out-”

“I told you about her.”

Eric stalled again, the memory returning and souring the sentence in his mouth. “I know.”

“I told you how she made me feel. How I felt ugly next to her-”

“But you’re not ugly.”

Carrie flinched, but he continued anyway, oblivious on the other end of the line.

“You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I tell you every time I see you. You know that. You have to know that.”

“No, I don’t,” Carrie said, her voice breaking into a whisper. “Because you told me that, and then you slept with her anyway.”

There it was. The thing at the center of all this. Not the headlines, or Lana’s livestream, or the number of girls, or the number of times he’d fallen into someone else’s bed.

That.

The fact that he’d taken something fragile she’d trusted him with, and he’d used it to slice right through her.

Eric sniffed through the speaker - either crying for real, or trying to sound like he was. Carrie couldn’t tell anymore, and that broke her too: the realisation that she didn’t even trust the shape of his pain anymore.

“Please, Carrie,” he breathed, voice thick and laboured. “I love you.”

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. Not even air.

So he said it again, harder. As though that could make her believe it again. “I love you. I love you so much. You know I do. I know I messed up, but please, please don’t let them make this worse than it is. This is ours to fix. This is between us.”

Carrie’s face lifted and the room came swimming back to her. Juliet’s tearful, furious face. Brett’s hand still steadying her wrist. Martha standing in front of her like she was ready to step between her daughter and the entire world if she required that of her. The curtains drawn. The abandoned mug of tea. The nail polish bottle on the table. Tanner mumbling to Cooper in the kitchen because he couldn’t bear to watch her get hurt again.

Between us.

“No,” she said. “You made sure it wasn’t.”

Eric went quiet.

Her voice faltered again, but she kept going.

“You did that. Not Lana leaking it. Not the people in the comments. Not your team. Not mine. You. Every time you lied. Every time you came home to me after being with them. Every time you made me feel crazy for worrying. Every time you kissed me with someone else still on you.”

Eric made a small, wounded sound. “Carrie, baby-”

“I loved you,” she said, cutting him off before she could lose her nerve.

It was the first time she had used the past tense. She felt it land with a heavy thud. So did he.

”No,” Eric said, breath quickening as his panic started to rise again. “No, don’t say that.”

Tears started to spill more freely down her cheeks now. “I loved you so much.”

“Carrie, please. We can still-”

“We can’t.”

“No. Baby, please. I’ll drive back tonight. I’ll come over. We can talk. I’ll explain everything.”

“There’s nothing left to explain.”

“That’s not true,” he insisted, practically grovelling. “You’re my whole world, Carrie. Every version of the future I have imagined, you’re with me in it. Always. There’s no one else that even compares.”

And that was the awful thing: she knew part of him still believed that. Because she believed it too; that it all really had been real.

How could she not? Carrie had brought his mother flowers. He had spent the Fourth of July with her family, and worn a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt because he knew it would make her dad happy. They had done award-show carpets and talk-show sofas together, sure. But they had also gone grocery shopping at eleven at night in sweatpants and fuzzy socks, and argued about cereal and whether they should get the crunchy or smooth peanut butter. They had sat on her parents’ floor eating Thai food from takeout boxes after a fundraiser event because Carrie’s heels had made her feet bleed, talking about how they’d decorate their own place one day, despite having already been looking at listings in the car ride home. He had driven across town at midnight once because Carrie had cried on the phone once about an audition callback she had wanted desperately, and still hadn’t booked, and had stayed with her until she fell asleep with her head in his lap.

He really had loved her.

The thought went cold as it moved through her - bitter and sharp against the love from those around her.

“And yet, that still wasn’t enough to stop you fucking four other girls.”

Carrie’s eyes found her mother’s, somehow full of both fury and hurt at the same time. Martha nodded once. Just once.

And that summoned all the courage Carrie needed for her final blow. “We’re over, Eric.”

She ended the call before he could even breathe.

The silence that followed was deafening. Everyone’s eyes were on her, yet she didn’t know where to look.

Eventually, Juliet moved into her eyeline, shaking from the effort of trying to keep her anger contained. Her voice came out thick when she finally spoke. “I’m going to kill him.”

A wet, shocked laugh broke out of Carrie, before she collapsed into Juliet’s arms, and let everything pour out of her all over again.

Juliet let out a small, wet laugh of her own as she pressed Carrie’s body to her own. “I don’t know how yet, but I’m going to take great delight planning it out,” she murmured into her curls. “Something really awful. Ideally involving his dick.

“Or is stupid fucking sports car,” Martha muttered. “Reverse it over his smug little face.”

“Martha!” came Brett’s shocked chuckle. For someone who usually scolded her children’s cursing, she had exercised her own right to free speech with very passionate emphasis.

“Oh please,” she sighed, somehow managing to smile for her husband despite her quiet, seething anger - helped greatly by the soft chuckles of her offspring as further reaction to her outburst. “He deserves it: the cursing and the death by Aston Martin.”

Carrie, although grateful for her family trying to soften the blow around her, still had no idea what to say. She didn’t think the words existed to explain how she felt.

So she said nothing. She just let herself be held as the night drew on around her.

Bradley Ross - age 16 - June 1981 - failed runaway - roving officers tracked down his car in a diner parking lot

Nicole Barrett - age 11 - October 1979 - kidnapped by father and stepmother - tipped off by neighbours hearing yelling in the night

Meghan Burgess - age 14 - February 1978 - suspected homicide - found body 9 days later with blunt force trauma to the head by the quarry

Drew Pruitt - age 8 - April 1976 - still missing - wandered off during family reunion and was never found

Colin James - age 16 - November 1975 - suspected suicide - car found at the bottom of Lovers’ Lake with body still inside

Katie Weaver - age 9 - August 1973 - returned safe - lost playing in the woods with cousins, but found by search party the next day

A fist propped up Butchy’s pounding skull as he scanned the scrawled notes from his morning’s research attempt for the hundredth time - as though this time it might finally spark a new idea. But no matter how hard he stared at the smudgy letters, nothing came. Huffing in defeat, he drummed his pen against the notebook page and pondered his next steps. Did he break out a fresh stack of case files to sift through? Hoping that some poor soul’s run-in with the law could serve him a perfect solution. Or did he re-read the same ones? In case he’d missed a morsel of information they could use? They both sounded as hopeless as each other, but he couldn’t just sit there, wasting even more time than he already had. Dropping his pen in favour of his mug, he took a swig of the cold, bitter coffee that he’d abandoned after picking up Katie’s file, and winced. Spurred on, he pushed himself back from his desk, stretched the crick out of his neck, and then got up for a refill.

Butchy didn’t utter a word as he passed through the main office to pour a fresh cup of coffee, and he didn’t register a single word that was said around him either - mind far too preoccupied with thoughts of his own to focus on any others. He stopped in the records room on his way back to his desk, setting his mug atop the filing cabinet he was planning to select his next subject from. But as he was rifling through the manila folders, he realised he hadn’t been as inconspicuous as he’d hoped.

“Whatcha looking for?”

His head twitched in the direction of the door, but when he saw who’d spoken, he wished he hadn’t. The grating drawl should have really been a giveaway.

“I thought you were just working through ‘em backwards,” Jennifer continued through a fire engine red smirk.

“I got bored,” Butchy flatly replied, gaze dropping back to the plastic dividers as he continued sifting through them. “Thought I’d spice things up a bit.”

Snorting a breathy chuckle through her nose, Jennifer leant against the doorframe and crossed her arms as another heat-fried strand of mahogany hair fell from its overly teased updo. “Which means…?”

Inwardly sighing at her persistence, Butchy, still furiously avoiding eye contact, explained, “I’m going over types of case instead - you know, to help find patterns in how they’re managed.”

The pause that followed made Butchy stiffen, doubt suddenly creeping into his mind over how suspicious this could sound. But either Jennifer was as gullible as she looked, or his commitment to the statement had been enough to convince her.

Or maybe she just didn’t care about her job enough to care that police records could be being tampered with. “Huh…okay.”

Butchy silently hoped that now she’d be satisfied with her snooping, and that she’d go and pester other people with her presence. But alas, at the top edge of his vision he watched her drift over to the filing cabinet, and drape herself over the opposite side of the open drawer rung.

“What sorta things are you looking for then?” she asked, chewing her words around a wad of peppermint gum as she lifted various files out to inspect. “Insurance fraudsters? Armed robberies? Axe murderers?”

Missing the wickedly mischievous glint in the girl’s eye, Butchy shot back a deadpan: “Missing kids.”

“Christ,” Jennifer scoffed, the amusement dropping from her face in an instant. “That’s not at all creepy:”

Ignoring her judgy side-eye, Butchy’s retort was resolute. “Actually, I thought it was one of the more important ones to cover, so it’d be a good one to prioritise,” he bit back, before levelling her with a testing, ghost of a smile. “The more we know about these things the better, right?”

Jennifer’s glossy, red smirk crawled its way back to her face, as it always seemed to when she pushed the new recruit’s buttons like this. But this time was different, there was an intrigue there - something that had sparked her interest in what he’d said. Or at least it had prompted a memory. And with that, came a sudden urge to get involved.

“Well, if you wanna know about missing kids then you’d better start with the holy grail,” she began, tottering over to a neighbouring filing cabinet. The drawer opened with a clunk, and her manicured talons swept over the folders with practiced ease, before plucking one out and holding it aloft like a winning lottery ticket.

Butchy squinted to read the name on the front: Will Byers.

”The place went nuts when he was found again after all that shit with the state troopers supposedly finding his body at the quarry,” Jennifer continued. Even the heavy black eyeshadow smudged around her eyes couldn’t hide the excitement glittering in them. “The chief shut it all down real fast though, so it’s probably simpler than it seems, but he was never the same after they closed it. I don’t know if it’s just from the stress of the whole media frenzy it caused, or the kid’s crazy mom giving him PTSD, but it definitely changed him,” she went on to explain, eyebrows furrowing slightly as she rattled on. But as she lazily held out the file, and their gaze met again, her smirk returned. “So maybe, uh… read with caution.”

Butchy couldn’t believe that he hadn’t thought to go searching the case out himself yet; like Jennifer had said, it was a very prominent one - and with it all happening less than a year ago, it could give him some pretty accurate, up-to-date information. He wasn’t even frustrated that she’d beaten him to it - if anything he was grateful to her. But he was more so just confused; how could such a huge case slip his mind? He’d been wracking his brain for hours. Either all this stress had fried it, or something in there was trying to keep it from him - perhaps too scared about what clues the contents may hold.

“You were working here when it happened?” he went on to ask.

“Just started,” she explained through a dry smile. “Fucking crazy first week, huh?”

Although Butchy didn’t reciprocate her snorted, wheeze of a laugh, he did finally take the folder from her. Before he even thought about opening it though, something took him by surprise. “Why’s it so thin?”

“Beats me - I’d have figured that thing would look like a dictionary with all the shit that went down,” Jennifer replied, straightening up as she suggested, “Maybe they didn’t want a paper trail.”

“You can’t just get rid of official documents for a major case,” Butchy retorted.

The judginess of his tone lit a fire under the brash brunette though, because in an instant her plucked brows furrowed. “Give it back then, let me see,” she snapped, snatching the folder from his fingertips and stepping away before he could argue further. All it took was a couple of seconds scanning the cover, and ignoring the new recruit’s bleated disputes, before she found what she was looking for. “There you go,” she proudly announced, spinning around on her scuffed stilettos and thrusting the folder back under the boy’s nose. Pointing a burgundy claw to a small orange sticker in the corner, she went on to explain, “This is just a skeleton version. The rest of the notes must be kept somewhere else. Hop’s office would be my best guess.”

Wrinkling his nose at the disappointing discovery, Butchy asked, “So what use is this to me?”

“I don’t know,” Jennifer snorted. “But good luck getting your hands on the real deal if it is in his office; that place is like Alcatraz.”

Butchy rolled his eyes and let out a huff of defeat. These notes would be…a start. But he doubted there was much more than a summary page in there based on how light it felt. The revelation perfectly reflected how he viewed his unplanned accomplice: helpful at first glance, and then thoroughly frustrating. Ready to mull over his next options, he tried to close out their conversation. “Well, thanks for the tip,” he half-heartedly mumbled.

“Any time, sweet cheeks.”

After standing and flicking through the handful of pages in the folder though, Butchy realised he’d never heard the clack of her heels disappearing down the hall. And the air in the room still felt…thick.

Glancing up, to his dismay, he locked onto her saccharine smirk, and his stomach turned. “…Can I help you?” What more could she possibly want from him that would warrant this senseless loitering at such a critical moment?

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she sing-songed like a children’s TV host. Before he had the chance to question her further though, she waved her left hand under his nose, blocking his view of the case file and wiggling her fingers so that the elongated ‘diamond’ caught the fluorescent light.

It was far from blinding him, but Butchy still squinted at the ring. “Was I supposed to notice that on my own?” he flatly asked, arching an eyebrow.

Jennifer’s satisfied smirk slipped from her face at his lack of enthusiasm. “A simple ‘congratulations’ would be fine,” she bit back through a huff.

“Congrats.”

Butchy shut the filing cabinet drawer between them and lifted the folder up to block his unwanted guest, and her gaudy engagement ring, from view. Before he could start to flick through it though, that grating voice blessed his ears again.

“Pete said it cost him three months worth of paychecks,” she cooed, holding the gem up to the light to admire it for the thousandth time.

The faintest smirk of his own tugged at his lips behind the safety of camel coloured card. “Bet his accountant thought that was a smart investment.”

“Yeah, well, he said I’m worth it,” Jennifer giddily grinned - either ignoring the sarcasm in Butchy’s tone, or missing it entirely.

“Three paychecks? That’s it?” Butchy snorted before he could stop himself, comments absent-minded since his brain was already busy skimming the cover page. “He’s wanting to spend the rest of his life with you and all you’re worth is three paychecks - that he hasn’t already wasted on cigarettes and booze?”

Jennifer bristled at the accusation, but quickly hardened her exterior - grateful for once that the new recruit was too engrossed in his reading to notice the crack in her armour. Trying to regain her control over the situation, she bandaged the wound the all-too-true comment left behind with a devilish smirk, and looked up at Butchy through clumpy, batted lashes. “What? You think I’m worth more?”

Butchy’s hand stilled as it moved to turn the page. He glanced up, ready to question her through a pair of furrowed brows, but immediately regretted it when he saw her expression. Dropping his gaze the second it landed on the lioness, sizing up her next meal, he swallowed. Hard. “…I think he should if he’s wanting to walk you down the aisle,” came his calculated reply - voice steady despite his heart rate doubling.

“Aww come on, Bandoni,” Jennifer pouted - syrupy brown eyes now twinkling with amusement rather than hunger. “Gimme a number.”

“No.”

“Coward,” she frowned as he moved to step around her. But she used a quick sidestep and a neighbouring filing cabinet to block his escape route.

This time he had no choice but to meet her gaze again, frustration seeping into his disgruntled scowl. “I’ve got work to get back to,” he sighed.

“Yeah, ‘cause you seemed in a real hurry to get back to your desk when I walked in here,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. Stepping back, she opened up the path to the door, but not without crossing her arms across her leopard-print blouse and challenging, “Fine, what should he think I’m worth? If he’s such a lousy boyfriend.”

Butchy grabbed the opportunity to leave with both hands, marching past the trashy brunette with an inward sigh of relief. But he couldn’t help himself from muttering a last-ditched dig on his way past. “Every fucking penny he owns.”

“…Is that what your little girlfriend is worth?”

Butchy stopped dead in his tracks. A sense of unease rippled over his skin, making his hairs stand on end. And the feeling only deepened when he glanced back to see her murderous smirk had returned.

“My what?” he replied, attempting nonchalance despite the tightness in his tone.

“Your girlfriend,” Jennifer simpered, relishing in his discomfort.

“How did you-?”

“Oh come on, did you really think I wasn’t gonna snoop around your office?” she cut off his stammering with another scoffed remark and arch of her brow. Leaning against the nearest filing cabinet with the grace of a wasted bachelorette, she went on, “She’s that perky brunette hugging you in that picture on your desk. Isn’t she?”

With a new defensiveness layering over his irritation, Butchy asked, “And what does she have to do with any of this?” The thought of Jennifer having anything to say about Mick made his fists clench even tighter around the paperwork now at his side. If she didn’t watch her tone though, there wouldn’t be much left to read of it by the time he got back to his desk.

“Nothing,” she coolly replied - smirk not budging. “I just like…picking your brains.”

Butchy just rolled his eyes. “Well can you quit it? I’m busy.”

As could be expected though, Jennifer took no notice of his request - or his second attempt to walk away from the conversation. “I didn’t pin you as the type to go for someone so…clean cut.”

Butchy’s movements slowed as her words hit him. He had the perfect opportunity to make a break for the door, and slam it in her face, and yet he stayed. Hating himself for lingering, he prayed he'd masked his curiosity with irritation. “Why’s that?”

“You just look like you’d prefer something a little…” Sauntering over to face him again, she set her left hand, and its gaudy ring, on the wall behind his head - trapping him in place before she purred: “…rough around the edges.”

Butchy’s expression just hardened. “Stop it,” he muttered, voice low - warning.

Jennifer took no heed though. If anything, his dismissal just stoked her fire. “What? You too scared to try?” she teasingly taunted. Lowering her voice to match his, she whispered, “Worried you might discover something about yourself you didn’t wanna know?”

“Why are you doing this?” Butchy bit back - confused by not only why he was the unlucky target of her flirting, but also why she’d be making such advances after gloating about her engagement. Again, trying to steer back what little control he had over the conversation before she got the wrong idea.

“I got bored - thought I’d spice things up a bit,” she replied - flipping Butchy’s statement from earlier back on him with a challenging eyebrow raise.

Butchy had more fighting spirit than she gave him credit for though. “Bored of paperwork? Or bored of your fiance? Not that you care enough to call him that,” he shot back. Straightening his posture, and squaring his shoulders, he leaned in closer to offer some sage advice. “I’d take a hard look at your own relationship before you start picking apart mine.”

Jennifer held his gaze for one, brutally silent second, before scoffing and shaking her head. “You’re so easy to tease.”

Butchy knew he’d rattled her though; there was a new unease about that nasal laugh, and the confidence had been sapped out of her smirk. Snatching it for himself, he levelled her with a smug smile of his own. “My pleasure,” he grinned. But he snapped out of it with a deadpan frown, and a blunt: “Now go find someone else to try to bang.”

As Butchy dodged around her though, Jennifer let out an indignant squeak. “Is that any way to talk to a married woman?” Correcting herself as she fidgeted with her ring, she added, “Well, soon-to-be-married.”

Butchy laughed softly to himself. “I’d say I look forward to seeing the photos but, uh…” he trailed off, pausing only to glance at the cheap gem, then back up to Jennifer, with a smug, yet unsympathetic, “I won’t hold my breath.”

It was Jennifer’s turn to laugh to herself then, as she watched the young man walk away again. Although her laugh was mainly out of disbelief, there was an element of pride there that she couldn’t deny - or perhaps that was arousal. “Your girl’s one lucky lady, Bandoni. I can’t remember the last time I had a guy turn me down like that,” she admitted, as that hungry smirk curled at her lips one last time. “Good thing I like it when they play hard to get.”

As committed as ever, Butchy just scoffed again and kept on walking out the door. “Yeah?” he rhetorised with a quirk of his eyebrow. “Keep trying - see where that gets you,” he finished, calling after her down the hall as he finally made it to his office door. Slamming it before she could slink in after him, and rake her tacky nails over all his belongings again, he finally let himself take a breath. Shutting any secondhand guilt out, alongside any lingering thoughts of the seductive secretary and her ridiculous advances, Butchy collapsed back into his creaky desk chair. He dropped his prize for enduring such torture onto the tabletop and quickly flicked to the first page again, before running a hand through his hair and starting to read.

At least he had something new now to distract himself with - something he hoped would give him a lead for the next steps in their investigation. The Will Byers case was the perfect starting point; he went missing in the woods on his way home, and was found safe and sound within a week. Granted, there were town-wide search parties, and state troopers involved - but still, it gave him hope. And after such a fruitless search the day before, he needed that hope. He just had to pray now that he could find some new information that hadn’t been released to the public in these notes - a way to look at this whole thing from a different perspective.

Stopping after every few lines to ruminate - to wrack his brains for new ideas - Butchy slumped back in his chair and pressed his fist into his temple, as though that would force his brain to work faster. As he did though, his tired eyes drifted to the chipped, black picture frame on his desk. It was small, and unassuming, but it housed that very picture that had now been tainted by Jennifer’s lustful gaze. The sight of Mick, and her innocent, besotted grin shot a pang of regret through his gut. Even if he never acted on Jennifer’s advances, their existence alone made him feel rotten. And keeping them from her, although he felt was for her own good, was only tainting his conscience further.

Still, he had more pressing matters to deal with than when Jennifer would next find the chance to pounce - or how he’d react. He had to come up with a plan - and he had to find that plan amongst the bones of this case file, which he would come to discover was a lot easier said than done…

There had been rain overnight. Perhaps the forecast had decided to mirror the Murphy family’s mood. Or maybe it was a dreary omen of what was to come. Reasonings aside, the rain had left the sidewalks littered with puddles, and turned the piles of leaves in the gutters to mulch. Royce and Vivien’s sneakers slapped the cracked paving slabs of Buryvale, leaving fading, wet footprints behind as they retraced Bentley’s supposed last steps. It wasn’t quite dark enough for flashlights yet, but they kept one firm in their grasp anyway - one Royce had grabbed from their junk drawer, and one Vivien had taken from her garage - almost as though it would help them channel their inner detectives, as they scanned their surroundings for clues.

“Maybe Butchy wasn’t so full of shit after all,” Vivien conceded with a weak laugh, breaking the silence that had fallen over them before it could get even more awkward. “There really doesn’t look like there’s anything out here.”

“We can’t give up yet,” Royce insisted, desperation already edging into his tone. “We’ve barely been out an hour.”

“I’m not saying we should give up,” Vivien clarified, reaching up to push her bangs away from her eyes. “I just think we might have to change tactics. Like what if he went home the other route? Through Oak Ridge?”

Royce sighed. “It’s worth a try, I guess,” he conceded, although he wasn’t convinced. Whilst part of being out there, searching for evidence, was cathartic, it also made the whole thing all the more real. He was looking so hard for traces of his brother that his eyes were starting to burn. And yet the thought of actually finding something made his stomach flip. After all, that ‘something’ they may or may not find could give him the answers to a question he still didn’t dare ask.

He wanted more than anything to find Bentley - he knew that. But what he really wanted was to find him safe, and unharmed. And if they managed to find anything along these routes that indicated otherwise, that dream of his would slip further and further out of reach.

“Or…” Vivien trailed off - pensive in her own regard as her ivy gaze honed in on a trampled thicket of bushes at the edge of the treeline over Royce’s shoulder. “Maybe we take a detour through the woods.”

Before she could second-guess her instincts, she cut across Royce’s path and stepped off the concrete, letting her rubber treads squelch through sodden grass and more rotting leaves. Spurred on by the promise of more information, she tightened her grip on the flashlight at her side, jaw set with determination. But just before she could reach out to rifle through the sparse, leafy branches, a set of footsteps caught up to her, and a hand tugged on her jacket sleeve.

“Viv, Benny would never go in those woods alone,” Royce panted, chest heaving with exertion, and trepidation at what could lie beyond those trees, whether related to his brother or not. “Especially not at night.”

“I know,” she agreed, before adding, with a fleeting glance over her shoulder. “But maybe he didn’t have a choice…” A lump caught in her throat when she tried to continue, as the reality of what she was implying caught up to her. But as her eyes landed on the mangled bush branches again, she gathered what was left of her nerve and turned back to Royce. “Listen, I don’t like to think of him being scared, or being in trouble, either. But if we want to find him, we have to consider every possibility.”

Royce’s chest was still struggling to fall steady as he listened to her, and his hammering heart was in no more of a rush to settle. But the aching of his ribs wasn’t enough to distract him from their goal. “I know,” he finally admitted, swallowing thickly as he offered a small nod of reluctant confirmation.

The pair held one another’s gaze for a beat, as well as a breath they didn’t realise was trapped in their throats until a cold breeze whipped through the bare branches around them, jolting them out of their thoughts. Vivien moved first, gingerly stepping over the mass of broken twigs and dead leaves that had been trodden into the mud by this potential runaway. Royce followed close behind, eyes fixed firmly on the burgundy corduroy covering her back until his legs felt as though they’d stopped shaking.

The woods were both dense and sparse at the same time. With it being fall there was very little in the way of foliage, at least not above the ground anyways But the sheer number of trees, and how little natural light their web of spindly branches filtered through to the forest floor, made it feel suffocating, even in the great outdoors. Looking for clues helped distract Royce from his surroundings, and the incessant chittering of birds too stubborn to fly south for the winter. But his unease can’t have been masked that convincingly, because it wasn’t long before Vivien fell into stride beside him, and inched closer as she asked a tentative: “You okay?”

“Mhm,” Royce murmured. But the way he was fidgeting with the buttons of his flashlight, and fiercely avoiding eye contact told a different story.

Vivien noticed, of course she did, but she didn’t say anything. She just watched the way his shoulders rose to his ears, and the death grip he had on that flashlight whiten his knuckles further - suddenly a lot more focused on that than looking for clues. When she next spoke, her tone was soft; a stark contrast to the decrepit woodland around her. “You don’t have to pretend, you know?”

“What do you mean?” Royce asked, gaze still scanning over nearby trees.

“You’re allowed to be freaking out right now,” she said, hoping she could offer some sort of reassurance. She wanted to do something - and she almost did - bump his arm, link it with hers, god forbid even hold his hand. But just as her free hand twitched into action a branch creaking somewhere overhead stole her attention, and suddenly her nerve was gone. It plunged them into silence once more - but it was fragile, as the woods around them seemed so determined to keep breaking it. Vivien trudged on, letting her gaze drift across scratched, peeling bark as more of Royce’s quietness seeped through her skin - gnawing away at her mind until a confession of her own slipped into the greying evening air. “I know I am. So…”

A small huff, not quite a laugh, more just an acknowledgement, took over the silence as Vivien’s sentence died at her lips. But it was at least enough to loosen the tightness in her chest.

“Sorry,” Royce muttered, scuffing his sneaker through more auburn leaves.

“For what?”

“Dragging you into this,” he sighed.

Vivien frowned, offended by the very idea. “You didn’t drag me into anything,” she corrected. “Not only did I volunteer myself for this, I came up with the whole damn plan. Remember?”

“I guess,” Royce conceded - a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. Although it was gone just as quickly as it arrived. “But this whole thing is…a lot. And you shouldn’t have to-”

“Neither of us should be having to do this,” she cut in, somewhat forceful with her words, and yet still trying to be gentle - acutely aware of how much more delicate he’d been lately. “But I can’t just sit around when I know he could be out here. So whether you’d have been game or not, I’d still have hauled ass across town to look for him. He’s not blood, but he’s still my family.”

They shared a look - a silent acknowledgement that she was right, or an acceptance of their situation, no matter how dismal - albeit brief. Royce let his gaze drift first. Vivien could tell he was distracted, that his mind was preoccupied, but she couldn’t really blame him for that. A quiet fell over them again as they trudged through more soggy foliage. Royce’s steps were slow, almost begrudging - but Vivien’s had more purpose. Her Converse squelched through slick mud, snapped already broken twigs, and dodged damp tree roots, marring the path with their bulbous tendrils, turning it into more of an obstacle course than a search party.

Once more, the silence started to wear Vivien down. It made her antsy - especially around Royce, when conversation usually came so easily to her. So as her eyes roamed across mossy logs, and mud-marbled puddles, she started trying to string together her next talking point - hopefully something more reassuring than last time, if she could figure out how to not make it sound so stupid. Her inner monologue came screeching to a halt though when she caught a flash of colour between a bush’s branches a few paces ahead.

She stopped so abruptly that Royce, who hadn’t bothered to check where they were going, crashed into her from behind. He murmured his apologies, but Vivien was still frozen in place, like the sight had bolted her to the forest floor.

“What are you doing?” Royce asked - finally looking at her face again, even if only to search for an answer.

Vivien’s gaze didn’t shift though - fixated on that bedraggled bush like a lioness waiting to pounce. “Look,” she said, slowly lifting her flashlight to point to it.

Royce followed her eyeline but couldn’t make anything out at first; it just looked like every other bush they’d passed. But then he inched closer to her, and squinted over her shoulder - and all of a sudden the half-assed rainbow rushed into focus, and his heart leapt into his throat.

Snagged across thorny branches were fraying strands of embroidery floss - coloured like those packets of crayons you got at chain restaurants: red, blue, green, and yellow. They were tightly braided together at one end, whilst the other was shredded to nothing but fluff - each strand curling into wispy tendrils.

Vivien dared to step forwards first, then bent down to inspect the item more closely - peering at it through glass beginning to fog from her intense focus. The knotting style looked familiar, painfully familiar. “Doesn’t Kona make stuff like this?”

Royce didn’t have it in him to move any closer, but he didn’t need to; he knew immediately. The colours of the thread were darkened with rainwater, and looked almost grey in the fading daylight - but he recognised them in an instant. “Yeah, that’s his keychain,” he confirmed, swallowing with such difficulty he couldn’t believe any sound actually came out the next time he tried to speak. “Well… was his keychain.”

Vivien wove her fingers between the branches to attempt to retrieve what was left of the it, only wincing once when a particularly sharp thorn pierced her skin. But the thread was caught fast on a twig, and the harder she tried to pull it, the tighter it seemed to wind itself. “Royce, hold the flashlight steady for a second,” she instructed, craning her neck to try to see what she needed to do to free the cotton.

But Royce remained frozen in place - half staring into space, half transfixed by the bush and its contents.

“Royce,” she prompted more forcefully.

That snapped him out of his stupour. Even though she hadn’t turned around, he could hear the furrowed brows and slight frown in her voice, and he jerked the flashlight beam upwards, as though in reflex.

Although it revealed how badly his hands were shaking, Vivien used the extra light to her advantage, and did manage to work the keychain free in the end. She turned the sodden cotton over in her palm - limp and filthy, like a dead fish. But the severed ends were where her attention held the longest; this hadn’t simply just fallen off his backpack. And judging by the state of the cotton, the strands had snapped rather quickly.

“No.”

Royce’s voice sounded tiny - barely even a breath. He just stared, like his brain couldn’t process what was happening, or didn’t want to.

Vivien’s lips twitched to speak again, but her attention was stolen by something soggy and harvest gold between the dull, brown leaves at her feet. She crouched down this time, sneakers sliding a few centimetres in the wet mud until they found purchase. After pushing twigs and leaves aside, she plucked a scrap of mustard yellow nylon free. Holding it up to investigate further, both her and Royce soon came to realise what it was, and why they recognised it so quickly: it was a torn scrap of Bentley’s backpack - part of the front pocket by the looks of things. But whilst the zipper usually housed the same keychain they’d just found part of, the other half was missing.

A lump rose in Vivien’s throat as her fingers traced the jagged, fraying edges of the fabric. “Jesus,” she breathed, mostly to herself. “It ripped clean off.”

Her attention soon returned to the bush and the scattered foliage beneath it though, because something iridescent caught her eye. It hung from branch to branch like string, and dripped down onto the leaves below. There wasn’t a lot of it - enough for her to have missed it at first - but the flashlight made it almost look like it was glowing, despite its bizarre cloudiness. It kind of looked like snot, or some weird mucous. She’d never seen anything like it before. Out of nothing but morbid curiosity, she reached out her fingers and ran them through the strange, slimy film. “What the-”

But before she could explore further, the flashlight abruptly swung away and a small, strangled noise rose from behind her - as though Royce had a fist around his throat. She whirled around - weird sparkly slime momentarily forgotten - but found that the only danger he was in was generated by his own body. He stood, hyperventilating and shaking his head - muttering to himself over and over - clamping his eyelids together, as though he could shut out the rest of the world. “No, no, no- he was- We said he’d be fine- Miles said… Oh my god- No- He’s-”

Vivien shoved the scraps of clues into her jacket pocket and scrambled over to him, hurriedly laying a hand on his shoulder and starting with: “Hey, hey, we still don’t know what this means yet.” She tried to get him to look at her, but that felt like another battle in itself. Attempting to sound hopeful, despite the own dread churning away in her stomach, she rationalised further, “All this shows is that he came this way - so if we follow this-”

“No, Viv,” Royce snapped, louder than either of them anticipated. “This shows something bad happened - that he was in trouble!”

Birds overhead scattered with distant squawks at the disturbance. Royce’s agonised gaze finally met Vivien’s - although hers was laced with a quieter unease, as though she knew she had to tread carefully, but she didn’t know where to step next.

“…Okay, so maybe he was just getting away from the trouble-”

Royce let out a frustrated huff that cut her off. “Stop bullshitting - I know what this means! And stop trying to find some clever solution that’ll make this all go away; it’s not gonna work.”

Vivien had never known Royce to start losing his rag like this, and to say she wasn’t unnerved would be a lie. She fought to keep her voice steady, because she knew that if he didn’t calm down soon she’d start to lose it too. “Royce, that’s not what I’m-”

“No, ‘cause you’re really just doing all this to prove a point to Butchy, aren’t you?” Royce shot back, the malicious undertone out of place against the distress pooling in his irises.

Vivien’s chest burned with indignation as her fist closed around the soggy cotton in her pocket - trying to use that to ground her, and reassure her mind of its true intentions. She started to feel the thumping of her heartbeat in her palms, her wrists, her calves - her whole body - as she listened to his bitter spouting.

“You want to prove that you could do what he couldn’t - that you ‘figured it out’ before anyone else. But this isn’t some game to just win or lose! Benny’s… Benny’s life could be on the line-”

“Do you seriously think that after all we’ve been through together, that I wouldn’t care about that?” Vivien asked, her own irises swirling with a mixture of hurt and offence. But even through the nettled threat of tears, her composure held steadfast, as did her determination. “Because I know you know damn well that’s not true.”

Royce made no effort to argue with her, but he’d already torn his gaze away, and seemed determined to look anywhere but her. Shaking his head and turning, he dragged a hand through his curls so hard his fingers snagged in them. He suddenly seemed fascinated by the forest floor, muttering to himself again, as though trying to drown out the world around him. “He shouldn’t have- …I shouldn’t have left him.”

The words landed between them with a thud - only partly muffled by the rain-slicked leaves.

Vivien set her jaw. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Regardless of whether Royce heard her or not, his resentful muttering continued. “I should have been there. I should have made sure he got home okay- I should have stayed home, with him - instead of-”

“Instead of what?” Vivien challenged, steadily building a further wall of defence. But she didn’t need him to answer her; she knew what he meant - she just wanted to make sure he did too.

Royce looked at her then, as though he’d just remembered he wasn’t alone, thanks to her comment temporarily derailing his train of thought. But he managed to continue, despite the shaking of his voice. “If I’d have been home I could have heard something. Or maybe if he hadn’t been alone this wouldn’t have…” He trailed off, still struggling to organise his jumbled thoughts into viable sentences. “We’ve never had a problem getting home before, when it’s the two of us. If I’d have just been there… If I hadn’t-”

“Hadn’t what?” Vivien challenged again, tone as blunt as a butter knife - which it felt as though was being driven through her chest. “Hadn’t gone to the movies with me?”

Royce blinked - brows furrowed as he tried in vain to clear enough space for her words to get through to his brain.

But she was talking again all too quickly - too quick for him to react anyway. “That’s what you meant, wasn’t it?” she dryly offered, almost vicious with her defence. “That this is all my fault?”

Royce huffed out of frustration - but whether it was aimed at Vivien or the situation itself was unclear. “That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you were thinking,” she bit back. “That I shouldn’t have suggested it, or I should have let him tag along too-”

“Well if he hadn’t had to go home alone then we wouldn’t be out here right now,” Royce came back with a retaliation of his own. “But you didn’t even think about him when you brought it up-”

That accusation had Vivien’s vision flashing the same scarlet as the scraps of cotton hidden in her fist. “Woah, woah, woah - hold on. You weren’t thinking about him either; you didn’t mention him once-”

“You didn’t give me the chance to.”

Vivien scoffed in affronted disbelief. “I asked you if you wanted to go see a movie, Royce. I didn’t drag you there at gunpoint,” she said, still hardly able to believe what she was hearing from someone she’d always had such a deep level of trust and respect for. “You can’t just turn this back on me to help ease your guilty conscience.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Royce tried.

“Really? ‘Cause it sure sounds like it to me,” she spat, disgust written all over her face.

Realising that this conversation was veering sharply off-track, with nothing but his own inner turmoil to blame, Royce’s trembling fingers moved up to smooth out his curls, and the situation, again. “Listen, Viv, I’m not trying to blame you-”

“Could have fooled me,” she bitterly scoffed.

But now it was Royce’s turn to pinch his eyebrows in frustration. “Stop being like that.”

“Stop being like what?” Vivien retaliated. “You’re the one that started all this pointing fingers crap.”

“That’s just how you interpreted it,” he sighed, wishing that he could rewind to the moment they set foot in these woods, so that he could have a complete do-over. And so that Vivien would stop looking at him like that.

“No - I know that’s what you meant; you’re just too much of a coward to say it. So stop trying to tell me I’m wrong,” she said, irises burning with betrayal so fiercely that her tear ducts sprang into action to extinguish them. The tears blurred Royce’s pinched expression, but never fell past her lashes; she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. “You don’t get to stand there and make me feel like garbage just because you’re upset.”

“I’m not trying to-”

“Well you are!”

Her rising frustration had her voice rising in turn, but all it did was make the silence they were then plunged into so much starker. As her vision came back to her, she saw Royce’s own eyes turning glassy, and his lip starting to quiver - as though he had no idea what to say next, and was too scared to try. Or, he was about to burst into tears, with the heaving of his chest only adding to that suspicion. He looked younger than thirteen in that moment - smaller, quieter.

Vivien hated that part of her still wanted to reach for him - comfort him despite how deeply she was hurting herself. But she was too angry, too raw. Grounding herself by closing her fist tighter around the sodden keychain, letting the cool rainwater seep into her palm, she set her jaw and took a step forwards. “You wanna be mad? Fine. Be mad. Be scared. Do whatever it is you need to do to help you get through this. But do not stand there and tell me that taking you to see a movie made your brother go missing.”

Royce swallowed thickly. He looked at her with that same, helpless, wounded frown - but couldn’t bring himself to do anything more. His mouth opened for a second, then shut again.

No words came out, but Vivien took that as her answer anyway.

“That’s what I thought,” she muttered, holding onto his gaze for a split second longer, then turning on her heels and trudging back the way they came.

“No wait. Viv, please.”

Her movement must have sparked something in him, because suddenly his ability to speak returned, and a clammy hand grabbed for her shoulder.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” she huffed, frowning at the treeline ahead as she kept walking, firmly avoiding his gaze.

“You don’t have to. But just listen, please,” he pleaded. And although she showed no signs of stopping, he took her silence as permission. “You can be mad; you have every right to be. You can ignore me all night if it’ll help you feel better. But please don’t leave… Don’t leave me out here alone. Like you said, this whole thing was your plan. You’re the one that’s smart enough to figure this out. I’m useless - I just proved that. And I can’t… I can’t do this without you.”

Vivien’s resolve wavered for a moment; the break in his voice, the desperation in the grip on her arm. But she didn’t crumble. “Then you shouldn’t be out here,” she said - tone as chilly as the breeze whipping around them as she finally looked at him again, just long enough to tell him: “You’re clearly not ready for this. And I’m not prepared to stand here and hold your hand one second, and be your punching bag the next, until you are.”

The woods went quiet again around them - their breathing filling the space where birds and bugs seemed to have gone still.

Finally, Vivien stopped too. But only long enough to level Royce with a stare once he jogged to face her, letting her aching heart take the reins of the conversation once last time.

“I came out here because I care about Bentley, and because I want to bring him home. Contrary to what you may think. But I also came out here because I care about you. A lot. More than I think you realise…” she admitted. “But if this is what you really think of me… Then you’re on your own.”

Royce had too many answers, and yet none of them felt safe enough to say, especially with his brain failing to string together any attempt at a rational thought every time he tried. His mouth started to stumble its way through a response anyway, running away before he could catch it. “Viv, I’m not blaming any of this on you. That’d be crazy. But you’ve gotta be able to see where I’m coming from - why I regret going out that night. All this is just proof that something bad did happen to him,” he continued, gesturing to the woods around him - to the spot by the bush where they’d just been standing. “And if I’d been there to protect him…he might have been okay. None of this would be happening - we wouldn’t be feeling like this, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But I was selfish, and I wasn’t thinking about him. All I was thinking about was spending time with some girl-”

The words hit Vivien like a bullet, square in her chest. It felt as though it shattered her breastbone - turning her ribs to shrapnel, slicing away at her heart. Royce must have realised he’d slipped up again once he saw her expression change, because the rest of his sentence died on his lips, leaving him staring at her: wide-eyed and open-mouthed, like a fish plucked from a river.

“‘Some girl’?” she repeated, the words tasting like bile in her mouth. And when Royce didn’t have an immediate apology, or any sort of response at all beyond a nervous wheeze, as though caught off guard by his own words, she just shook her head and tore her gaze away. Pushing past him, she ploughed ahead once more, shouldering him with the force of a linebacker as she pushed down more disappointed tears. But she didn’t go without leaving him a final, disgusted mutter: “Go to hell, Royce.”

Royce stood in stunned silence for a few seconds - unable to focus on anything other than the wild whirring of his mind, and the now dull smarting of his shoulder. But his senses soon came back to him, and he scrambled to shout after her. “Viv! Please, you know I didn’t-”

But her corduroy jacket and hazelnut ponytail were already disappearing into the treeline, and showed no signs of stopping any time soon.

“Viv!” he tried again. But his feeble pleas were swallowed by wind moving through bare branches, and the enormity of the forest around him - which felt a whole lot denser and a whole lot darker now that he was alone, and the last of the sunlight was disappearing below the horizon line.

For a moment he thought about going back - proving himself wrong - and following along that track from the bush, to look for more clues. Maybe they really were onto something, and he’d find something bigger - something that gave them more answers than it did questions. But he took one step deeper into the woods, and the squawk of a bird overhead destroyed any of the nerve he’d tried to pluck up in one fell swoop.

He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes so hard it felt as though his eyelashes were piercing his skin. His chest felt heavy and hollow at the same time as it struggled to suck in each breath. And his whole body ached with the effort of not falling to pieces.

How did this keep happening? How did his life keep falling apart at every opportunity possible? It felt as though the universe was playing some sick joke on him. Or testing him to see how much he could take before he cracked. But as a fresh gust of wind rattled the barren branches above him, the icy blast it sent through his skeleton told him there already had to be a break in his shell somewhere.

Finally, he found the energy to move - albeit slowly. Every footstep dragged through clumps of moss and dead leaves - his path looked more like a snail had left it than a creature with two working legs. He pulled his jacket closer around him as he reached the edge of the woods, and tugged on the strings of his hoodie, trying to protect as much of his skin from the chill of the wind as possible. Ruddy-cheeked and huddling from the cold, he scanned the curbside, but found no sign of Vivien or her bike - not that he’d been expecting her, but the confirmation of her absence just stung his skin further.

Dusk was starting to creep in now - darkening the sky further. The damp in the air pressed his curls flatter to his head, and made the handlebars of his bike feel unnaturally cold. He didn’t have the energy for pedalling, so he just pushed it back down the street - tail between his legs, face burning in embarrassment, and whole body aching with defeat.

The walk back home felt longer than ever before. Every house he passed looked too normal. Every porch light, or TV screen flashing in the window, felt like a personal insult. Why did everyone else get to go on living their lives as normal, when his had been ripped to shreds and left in the gutter? Part of him almost expected Bentley to come racing around the corner on his bike - backpack bouncing and threatening to spill his coloured pencils all over the road, grin wide as he hollered about Royce being a slowpoke.

But, of course, he never came.

And as he turned onto their street, the true weight of his loneliness finally hit him. It almost brought him to his knees. It very well may have done if his bike hadn’t been there to keep him upright. Everything just felt hopeless. He’d lost Bentley. Now he’d lost Vivien. He had nowhere left to turn. Nowhere other than home, he supposed. So that’s where he went.

He just didn’t realise that someone else might have beaten him to it.

The rubber toe of Kona’s sneaker squeaked against weathered siding as she rose onto the balls of feet. Straining, she braced one hand on the window frame, and used the other to block the fading, evening sunlight from her vision as she pressed her face to smudged glass.

Beneath her, Zack, kneeling on all fours and acting as a human stepladder, let out a grunt at the shift in weight. “Kona, I’m gonna have permanent imprints of your feet in my back if you take much longer,” he hissed.

“Shut up, I’m trying to concentrate,” she bit back, digging her foot in a little harder just to prove a point.

“Well can you show a little hustle?” Zack retorted. “My spine’s gonna give out.”

August just gently rolled his eyes, watching the bickering from a safe distance given his role of ‘lookout’. He was trying his best to look casual, but nothing seemed ‘casual’ about a twelve-year-old skulking in a house’s side alley - even if he lived there, it would have been bizarre. So considering the fact that they were technically trespassing added a further layer of abnormality that he hoped wasn’t showing in his body language. He already felt overly shifty having to scan the street every thirty seconds for signs of Bentley’s brothers coming home, but the threat of nosy neighbours spying and catching them scaling the house like burglars was making him feel positively criminal.

“Yeah, come on, hurry up, Kona,” he chipped in as his heart rate picked up a touch; he could have sworn he saw a set of curtains across the road twitching. “People are gonna think we’re trying to break in if they catch us.”

“That’s why we set you up as ‘lookout’, bozo,” Kona bickered. “If you’d just do your job properly then we wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught, would we?”

“You’re one to talk about doing your job properly,” Zack huffed with an eye roll of his own. “You’re looking through a window, not building a rocket. What the hell is taking so long?”

Kona just ignored him, squinting harder to help her eyes adjust to the dimly lit bedroom - illuminated only by what was left of the sun filtering through the dense cloud layer from the evening around her. She saw Royce’s neatly made bed, and his belongings lined up along his nightstand - organised as always. Then her gaze drifted to Bentley’s side. His bed was unmade, which wasn’t atypical, rumpled clothes were spilling out of dresser drawers, a haphazard stack of comics sat at the foot of his bed, and his favourite hoodie was slung over the furthest bedpost. Nothing looked out of place, everything was just as she’d expected… Only Bentley wasn’t there.

Her puzzled frown slowly tightened.

“Well? Is he in there or not?” Zack asked, breaking her from her stupour.

Kona didn’t answer right away - taking another few seconds to scan the room again, as though she could convince herself that she’d just missed him the first time she’d looked, and that he’d been curled up in bed, surrounded by snotty tissues the whole time after all. But after another fruitless search, she finally admitted, “No, he’s not.”

August’s head whipped in her direction. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Kona bit back, although her fiery spirit was significantly dampened by her mood. “Come and take a look yourself if you don’t believe me,” she added, gesturing to the window.

But Zack had something to say about that. “Absolutely not - viewing party’s over; it feels like you’re bruising my kidneys.”

“Quit whining,” Kona muttered with a roll of her eyes, but stepped down anyway, using his shoulder for leverage.

Zack collapsed onto his side with a groan as August crossed back over to them; role of ‘lookout’ forgotten in an instant. “Well maybe he’s just in the bathroom or something?” he suggested, trying to remain optimistic despite his evident nerves.

To Kona, he just seemed in denial. “I’m telling you, Auggie - that house is totally empty. We’ve not seen any lights turning on, or heard any footsteps the entire time we’ve been looking. No one’s home.”

“But there’s nowhere else he could be,” August tried to reason - his brain felt physically incapable of processing the information being presented to him. “He’s not at All Skate with his brother, he’s not at the library, he’s not at the arcade… It doesn’t make any sense.”

“None of this makes sense,” Zack grunted as he pushed himself to his feet again. “What did Miles just say? He was running a fever?” he recalled, waiting for nods of confirmation before continuing. “But he was fine on Monday - he didn’t seem sick at all.”

“And even if he did come down with something that night, and he really is sick, then why isn’t he in bed?” Kona added.

”And if he’s not sick, then why hasn’t he been in school?” August finished, matching his puzzled frown to that of his two friends as the trio fell into an antsy silence.

There was something off about this whole thing - all of them felt it, and they hadn’t been able to shake that sense of unease all day. Hence the trip to investigate for themselves - and bring snacks and new comics if the rumours of him being ill were in fact true. Sure, Bentley missed school every now and then - just as anyone did. But there were usually at least warning signs: a stuffy nose here, a scratchy cough there. Bentley had been larger than life when they were playing D&D the other night though. And since Miles didn’t really have anyone who could stay home to keep an eye on him, it took a hell of a lot for him to agree to let him skip school.

August’s gaze fell to the decrepit leaves scattered over the lawn as he tried to make sense of it all. “Maybe Miles has taken him to the emergency room or something? And that’s why they’re not home.”

“We just talked to him at the rink though - we know he’s on his shift there,” Kona rebutted. “And there’s no way he’d have beat us back here. Plus, he doesn’t even have a car.”

August opened his mouth to argue, but quickly realised he had no valid point to make, and nothing further to suggest. He was completely flummoxed, as were his friends.

“This is so fucking weird,” Zack mused, scrubbing a despairing hand over his eyes.

“Yeah, something’s definitely not right,” Kona agreed, eyebrows knitted to match her sweater, and arms crossed over her chest. “Like you said, he was fine on Monday.”

That’s what didn’t sit right with any of them. They’d all seen him leave All Skate, exactly as he always did: laughing and joking and grinning like the idiot they all knew and loved. Sure he could be a little loud and obnoxious sometimes, but what excitable pre-teen wasn’t? He’d hailed his D&D character a hero despite his early demise, cackling into the twilight as they wove between potholes on residential streets - entirely and unapologetically himself, as always. Then, after Zack and Kona peeled off towards their own houses, he’d turned onto Buryvale and that had been it. That was the last any of them had seen of him.

“You don’t think he like…ran away, do you?” Zack dared to ask, although the thought alone felt wrong.

“Of course not, dipshit,” Kona snapped. “Ben would never do something like that. And besides, where would he even go?”

“Well where is he then?” Zack retaliated. “He can’t have just dropped off the face of the earth.”

“And if he really isn’t here, then why would Miles lie to us about it?” August added, fresh waves of anxiety lapping at the walls of his abdomen.

“I don’t know,” Kona sighed, restlessly fidgeting with a loose thread on her sweater. “None of this makes sense.”

“Do you think they’re trying to hide something from us?” Zack suggested.

“About what? Benny?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” he continued to loosely theorise. “It would explain how vague Miles was earlier.”

“Do you think something happened to him?” August asked, words coming out more of a scared croak than a genuine question.

But Kona was quick to shut him down before he started to spiral. “Oh please, we’re in Hawkins. The most boring town on earth, remember? Nothing happens here.”

Thud.

August seemed to be the only one to hear it at first, since Zack and Kona continued to dispute their best friend’s whereabouts without batting an eyelid. August’s attention was snatched in an instant though. He blindly swung his gaze around until he landed on the two, scuffed trash cans tucked against the exterior wall - one with its lid balanced at a jaunty angle, as though it had been dropped back into place in a hurry. Considering the only other things around them were a pile of unused bricks, a faulty bike pump, and a lawn littered with patches of dead grass - August felt fairly confident that the sound had to have come from the trash can. And after fixing it with a stare, that suspicion was proven correct when it emitted a softer thud, followed by the gentle rustling of old papers.

“Well he’s never said anything about having other family so-”

“Just ‘cause he’s never mentioned them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

“Okay, but why the hell would he just-?”

“Uh… Guys?” August called out, gaze still locked onto the trash can, watching it as though it might sprout legs and run away - which, based on the fact it seemed to be making noises on its own, he supposed wasn’t the most deranged idea. Once he felt their eyes fall on him, he swallowed his rising nerves and dared to announce, “I think there might be something in that trash can.”

Zack eyed him with a quirked brow. “…Dude, hate to break it to you, but he’s not hiding in there. No way Benny’s fitting in that thing,” Zack scoffed.

August turned to him, appalled. “…How stupid do you think I am?”

“Well why else would you bring it up?” Zack retorted over Kona’s raucous giggles.

“’Cause it sounds…” August started, but was cut off by another muffled, metallic thud - as though something soft, but dense was bouncing off the walls of the garbage can. It was the croaked chittering that followed that really perked his ears up though - and sent an odd shiver down his spine, as though someone was dripping ice water down the back of his shirt. “…Like that.”

“It’s probably just a raccoon or something,” Kona tried to reason, but the waver in her voice revealed her real lack of certainty. “Or someone’s pet that got lost.”

“What kind of a pet wants to live in the garbage?” Zack asked, mostly just to himself, and through a set of further furrowed brows.

“Probably one that’s seen your room, and is looking for an upgrade,” Kona quipped, smirking and earning herself an elbow to the ribs.

“Do you think we should check on it?” August mused aloud, eyes unable to move from the dented metal.

“We’re supposed to be looking for Benny,” Kona tried.

“And we will, I just-” That chirping sound returned, only louder this time. It was bordering on insect-like, which just confused the group even more. Another soft thud rose from the trash can as they stood watching it, followed by a sort of whine of defeat - as though the inhabitant had realised its efforts to escape were fruitless. “It sounds stuck,” August finished, tentatively stepping forwards.

The closer he got to the trash can, the louder the rustling, and breathy grunts became - and the harder his heart started hammering in support. He slowly reached out a hand, but before his fingers could close around the handle on the lid, a hand slapped down on his shoulder.

“Wait, wait! You can’t just open it like that. What if it like, I don’t know, attacks you?” Kona flapped.

August’s eyebrows scrunched and a new wave of apprehension crested somewhere in his chest. “I don’t know, I hadn’t really- I didn’t think that far,” he stammered.

“It sounds tiny, Kona. Stop being such a wimp and let him open it,” Zack retorted, already eagerly craning his head over August’s shoulder in anticipation of getting a look at the mystery creature.

“I am not being a wimp!” she retorted, with breathy indignation.

“Sure sounded like it to me-”

“Says the guy who still won’t go down the big ramp-”

“Oh my god, why do you bring that up every time I start-”

Another chirp rose from the trash can and the moment August heard it, his friends’ bickering became nothing more than a muffled haze. It was like someone had dropped a blanket over his head. All he could focus on was this damn trash can, and the noises it was emitting. That ice water down his back sensation returned, and his stomach clamped in on itself the longer he stared at it. But before he could second-guess himself again, and the buzzing in his head could get any louder, his fingertips closed around the scratchy metal handle, and he lifted off the lid.

Kona and Zack’s eyes were on him in an instant - almost in disbelief that he’d actually done it. August felt that himself, because before he’d even dared to look inside, he hovered the lid back over the trash can’s opening and jerked his head away - wincing and bracing for an attack that never came. After a beat or two of silence, he cautiously peeled an eye open. And once he realised there was no imminent danger after all, he slowly inched the lid out of the way, and leaned over to finally get a glimpse of the noisy inhabitant. But the sight inside left him almost speechless.

“Woah…”

Kona’s grip on his shoulder tightened as she peeked over it and dared a look of her own. Instantly regretting it, she grimaced: “Eww!”

And although Zack craned his head over the garbage can’s mouth a lot more eagerly, his reaction had the same element of disgust laced into it, albeit largely overshone by his morbid fascination. “Holy shit.”

August’s eyes narrowed as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing, but his efforts were fruitless. And all looking at it did was make that gnawing dread in the pit of his stomach grow bigger. “What the fuck is that?”

The creature - they couldn’t narrow it down to anything more specific - was curled atop a splitting black garbage bag, and a handful of crumpled, scribbled sketches of Bentley’s. It was about the size of a large hamster, but that’s where the similarities to any sort of household pet ended. Its skin was slick and leathery - almost amphibian - with the same muddy grey-green hue of old pond water. It had two stubby front legs, but its back half extended into a sort of chubby tail - kind of like a tadpole. So maybe it was some sort of amphibian after all. But why it was here, when the nearest body of natural water was miles away, was another question entirely. Its head - well, whole body really; there was little to no distinguishing between the two - was bulbous and seemed to ripple with every movement, like a worm. And its face was…well, not really there. It didn’t have any visible eyes that they could see, the front just kind of narrowed to a tiny puckered beak that opened a fraction every time it made that weird chittering noise. Judging by the state of the contents of the trash can, it seemed to be leaving a slime trail too, since Bentley’s discarded pictures looked like they’d been dipped in grease.

The inhabitant nudged at a lump in the trash bag with its…nose, they guessed, then huffed in frustration. It paused for a moment, then turned its face to the sky, and the trio of pre-teens gawping at it. Whether it had eyes or not, it seemed to realise it was being watched, because it let out an almost curious chirp and tilted its head to the side, like an inquisitive puppy.

The action had the desired effect on Zack because a smile leapt to his face as he thought aloud. “Wait, it’s kind of cute.”

“What are you talking about?” Kona retorted, clearly not sharing the sentiment. “It looks like a living booger!”

“Well, at least it seems…” August trailed off, his concern melting into a small grin as the creature crawled, in its own, awkward wobbly way, over an empty milk carton. “Friendly?”

“What? Cause it didn’t jump out and start eating your face?” Kona asked, still unimpressed by the discovery.

“Hey, little guy,” Zack started to coo, leaning even further into the garbage can and extending his hand to it. But it was a mere matter of seconds before he was being hauled back to his full height by the boy beside him.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Kona exclaimed, eyes wide with furious dismay.

Zack stared at them both in utter disbelief. “What’s the big deal? I’m helping him out; he’s clearly stuck in there.”

“With your bare hands?” August asked, more concerned than horrified, in contrast to the blonde on his left.

“Uhh…yeah?”

“Dude, we’ve got no idea what that thing is. It could be poisonous - or venomous or something.”

“Or carrying like twelve diseases,” Kona added before August could continue.

“You’re the one that claims to be the reptile expert - stop being an idiot,” he went on to scold, grabbing Zack’s hand before he could dip it into the trash can again.

Zack just rolled his eyes and wrenched his hand free though. Skulking further into the Murphys’ yard, he retaliated, addressing the duo over his shoulder. “I think you’ll find I still am the resident reptile expert, because looking at that thing, it’s clearly more amphibian than it is reptilian. I mean come on, look at its tail.” The boy bent down and plucked a stick from the foot of the old, gnarled tree in the furthest corner of the property, before joining his friends again. “And fine, since you two are such pussies, I’ll use a stick.” Once he was back at the trash can’s side, he turned to them both with a forced, sarcastic smile. “Happy now?”

“If you get your hand bitten off, don’t come to me expecting any sympathy,” Kona huffed with her own eye roll.

Zack, ignoring her, leaned into the trash can again and waved the stick in front of the creature, and when it did nothing but stare, he progressed to gently nudging its side. It shrunk back a little at first, and let out an indignant chirp, but stopped once it realised Zack was posing no threat, and started to inch closer.

“Well it’s not showing any teeth, so I guess my hand’s safe for now,” Zack snarkily announced to his friends.

“It does seem pretty…tame,” August noted, leaning in more to get a closer look now that the threat level was lowering with each second.

“Come on, buddy,” Zack tried to coax further. “I’m not gonna bite if you don’t.”

“You’re really trying to reason with a mutant tadpole?” Kona asked, with a flat, yet rhetorical intonation.

“Yes, and it’s working. Look: we’re bonding,” Zack proudly announced as the little creature waddled even closer. It stared at the stick again, and although it had almost no face to express itself, Zack could tell it was frowning. So before he could overthink it, he dropped the stick beside an empty cereal box and extended his palm. He felt his arm tense a fraction as the creature advanced again, almost regretting the decision, but when it stopped and sniffed at his skin with its seemingly non-existent nostrils, he forced himself to hold it steady. It inspected his hand a few moments more, then grunted, blowing out a tiny, cool blast of air from its…snout, he supposed; all puckered and twisted, like a flower bud still waiting to bloom. But although the outburst startled him, all it did was tickle. And once the creature realised that the hand was as friendly as the stick had been, it waddled closer still, nuzzling its slimy little head against Zack’s palm. A smile sprang to his face in an instant. “Hey, look! He likes me!”

“And you feel…okay?” August warily checked, still hung-up on the possibility of the creature’s potential deadliness.

“Never better,” Zack confirmed with a chuckle as the creature purred and snuggled in closer. “Dude, you are so cute,” he continued with more chuckles as he watched it squirm and roll around against his palm, like a puppy wanting to play.

“It is pretty cool,” August conceded, eyes shining with fascination now that his shoulders weren’t as stiff as a board. “What do you think it is?”

“No idea,” Zack confessed, moving his fingers about and watching the creature chase them like a kitten with a ball of yarn. “Like I said, it looks more amphibian than reptile, but I’ve still never seen anything like this before.”

“It just looks like a tadpole to me,” Kona piped up, ducking around her friends’ heads to get a better view for herself now that she wasn’t as concerned about any of their faces being chewed off. “I mean what else has two front legs and a fat tail like that?”

“This is way too big to just be a tadpole,” Zack clarified. “Unless the frog it’s gonna turn into is the size of a dog.”

“And even if it is a tadpole, there’s no bodies of water anywhere near here,” August added. “And there’s no way it could have travelled that far with those stubby little legs.”

The creature let out another snort, as though put out by the remark. Zack laughed and stroked its back, attempting to comfort it. “Aww it’s okay, little guy. He didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“Stop talking to it like it has feelings,” Kona mildly scolded.

“It does have feelings!” Zack insisted.

August, still deep in thought, steadily drew the conversation back on track with practised ease. “Tadpole or not, I don’t think it can have climbed in here on its own,” he mused. “I mean, you guys saw it. The lid was closed when we found it.”

“Maybe someone dumped it,” Kona suggested. “…Literally.”

“But who’d do something like that?” Zack demanded, his protectiveness for the creature shining through in his passion.

“And why would they leave it in Miles’ trash can?” August added. That was the main part of this that was stumping him. Sure, it was a pretty freak incident, and it could be nothing more. But why had this alien looking thing turned up as soon as Bentley had seemingly vanished? And why had they found it almost directly under his bedroom window? It was one hell of a coincidence if that’s all it was. But something told him that there was more to this than what they were seeing. And the longer he stared at that…thing, the deeper that feeling rooted in the pit of his stomach.

The group’s theorising ground to a halt though when the creature’s little clawed hands started scrabbling at Zack’s skin - as though attempting to climb up his arm. Although, with its slug-like form, it was never going to be able to lift itself more than a millimetre off the ground. Still, Zack didn’t like to see it struggling. “Screw how he got in here, it looks like he wants out now.”

“That’s his problem,” Kona retorted.

“No it’s not; he’s stuck,” Zack shot back, leaning in further and cupping both his hands now, forming a seat that the creature gladly crawled onto. Once he was happy it was settled, he gingerly lifted it out of the trash can and brought it up to his eye level, getting a better look at it than ever before. Completely awed, his face broke into a mystified grin. “There you go, little guy. Much less stinky up here, huh?”

“Don’t hold him too close; he might change that opinion,” Kona teasingly quipped, no longer as snippy now that the thing seemed no more harmless than a hamster.

“He’s so cool,” Zack marvelled, watching gleefully as it waddled around in his palms. It butted his thumb with its head, wagged and slapped its tail against the fingers on his other hand, and then started, to everyone’s surprise, sucking on the cuff of the flannel shirt sticking out of his jacket sleeve.

“I, uh, think he might be hungry too,” August observed with an awkward, yet amused chuckle.

“What do you think it eats?” Kona warily asked.

“I don’t know, all I’ve got in my bag is a half-eaten pack of Rolos,” Zack said, eyebrows scrunching in concern as he continued to think. “But if we bring him back to my place we could try some veggies - or my mom has some raw hamburger meat in the refrigerator if he’s a carnivore.”

“I was thinking more like grass or worms,” Kona mumbled until August cut her off.

“We’re taking it back to your house?”

“Of course we are. He bonded with me the most, and I call dibs.”

But that’s not what August was so horrified by. “Dude, it’s a wild animal. We’ve got no idea what it is, we can’t just waltz through your front door with it - your mom would flip.”

“Which is exactly why we go straight to the basement through the back,” Zack reasoned, clearly having already thought through the whole thing. “Our tortoise is hibernating in a box in the linen closet, so we can keep him in that tank - that way we don’t have to worry about him getting out.”

“Let me bring you back to the fact that it’s a wild animal,” August fired back. “We can’t just pluck it out of its natural habitat. And besides, it could be anything. We’ve got no idea what it even eats, let alone how to look after it.”

“Well I can guarantee it’s natural habitat is not a trash can,” came Zack’s deadpan rebuttal, before continuing with a more optimistic, “And we’ll figure out what he likes. It might help us to figure out what he is. We’ll swing by the library tomorrow and check out a bunch of books on amphibians, and in the meantime we’ll raid my refrigerator for snack options.”

“This is crazy,” Kona said, gently shaking her head at the pair, and the situation in general as the thing in Zack’s hands started chirping again.

”Actually, this is us potentially discovering a new species,” Zack retorted. “We could be making a huge scientific breakthrough here - we’ve gotta look after him until we know more, until we know enough to present a case to a research team anyway.”

Kona just continued to shake her head. “You’re so delusional,” she muttered.

“And you’re not getting any credit in the paper about our discovery once it’s published with that attitude,” he fired back. But his attention was snatched away from Kona’s rolling eyes when the creature in his palm began tugging even harder at his sleeve. “Alright, alright, buddy. You’re hungry, I get it,” he chuckled, before turning to August and trying to signal with his head. “Aug, can you grab the Rolos for him? I don’t wanna make him wait ‘til we get home.”

August obeyed, unzipping the front pocket of his best friend’s backpack and retrieving the half-eaten pack of chocolates, but his expression was still dubious. He broke one of the already bite-size candies into smaller chunks and tentatively dropped one in front of the creature. It did another sniff-test first, but quickly approved and unfurled the petal-like folds of its beak to eagerly snaffle up the chocolate offering. “You think your mom is seriously gonna let you keep this thing?” he asked, although by his tone he already felt as though he knew the answer.

“Hell no,” Zack confirmed. “But she never goes down to the basement unless she’s doing laundry - and I’ll just keep the tank covered with a blanket or something. She’s not gonna notice.”

“Don’t you think we should at least tell someone about it though?” August asked, trying to help the boy see sense. “Some sort of an adult?”

“So they can do what? Call animal control? Send it off to some lab?” Zack demanded. “No way! He’s our discovery - I’m not letting a bunch of people in lab coats poke and prod him in a cage like he’s some kind of freak.”

“He is some kind of freak,” Kona clarified with a deadpan emphasis that just deepened Zack’s frown.

He lifted the creature closer to his face and studied it with this look of adoration and fascination that seemed almost too raw for an eleven-year-old to be able to capture. “You’re not a freak, are you Chewie?” he rhetorically asked the slime-slicked bundle, chuckling softly again as it scoffed more chunks of Rolos each time August set them down. “You’re just a special little guy, huh?”

“You already named it?” Kona demanded in incredulous despair.

“Well duh, everyone needs a name.”

“And you decided to name it after a wookie?” August snorted, almost amused by the absurdity. “Dude, it doesn’t have a hair on its body.”

“It was mostly ‘cause of his eating habits,” Zack explained with a quick, fond glance down at the sodden edge of his cuff. “But it works for Chewbacca too; he’s from space and I wouldn’t put it past this guy to end up being some sort of alien. And they’re both best friends with the ‘lovable rogue’ of the group.”

There went Kona’s eye roll again. “Oh my god, you’re unbelievable.”

“Alright then, Chewie it is,” August conceded with a chuckle as he petted the creature’s back with his fingertips. But as the rumbling of a passing car’s engine pulled his surroundings back to him, his better judgement returned as well. “Come on, we’d better move; the longer we stay here, the more likely we are to get caught.”

“Right,” Zack agreed, before speaking more directly to his newly adopted pet. “Let’s go get your new room fixed up.’

“And, more importantly, let’s start figuring out where the hell Benny could be,” Kona added. “We can’t get side tracked by that slimy hellspawn.”

“And we won’t,” August promised, certain of one thing for the first time all day. “We just need a little time to…process everything.”

The group shared a look of silent acknowledgement, before Kona and August started walking to retrieve their bikes. Zack let Chewie finish his last chunk of chocolate before whispering reassurances to him, and tucking him into the inside pocket of his jacket, then jogging to catch up with the others. It was August that lingered the longest in the Murphys’ driveway though, eyes still fixed on Bentley’s dark, vacant bedroom window as that feeling of dread bore deeper into him. His hearing started to go fuzzy the longer he stared - like that blanket had been dropped over his head again. And then that icy chill down his back returned, intensified by a gust of wind rushing at him from behind - as though trying to propel him forwards, and off on his journey. Maybe the universe didn’t want him there - didn’t want him dwelling on it any longer than he had to. Maybe that’s why Chewie had been left in that trash can: to distract them from Bentley’s whereabouts. And maybe that’s why it sent a set of footsteps and a ticking bike chain to drag him out of his head.

“Uh…you guys okay?” Royce called out, catching the trio just before they could push off on their pedals.

They turned to him, eyes wide like kids caught stealing cookies before dinner, fixing tight, lopsided grins on their faces to try to mask the guilt. Royce’s pace slowed as he reached his driveway, eyes wary despite the faint traces of redness still clinging to the puffy lids. He prayed they couldn’t tell he’d been crying, but he also felt as though he had bigger problems to deal with first.

“Yep, all good. Just leaving. Bye!” Kona said, hurriedly flicking up her kickstand before they could be questioned further, hoping the other two would have enough sense to follow suit.

“Did you… Did you need something?” Royce cautiously stammered, mind already racing with ways he could cover all this up so that he didn’t have to suffer Butchy’s wrath again.

But to his mild surprise, they seemed to have that part covered on their own. “No, don’t sweat it, man. We were just looking for Bentley, but I think we’re gonna go check the arcade again,” Zack called back.

But when Chewie writhed in his jacket pocket, and Zack shivered in reaction, Kona felt the need to jump in again to provide a distraction. “Yeah and we’d better hurry ‘cause we don’t want to miss him again! Right, guys?”

“Right! Right! He sure does love that arcade,” Zack awkwardly chuckled, clamping his elbow tighter to his torso to hold his jacket in place and kicking off on his bike before he could risk blowing their cover even further. “Alright, see you around, man!”

“Later, Royce!” Kona chirped, furiously pedalling after Zack - so mad that once their backs were turned, she may as well have been spitting feathers at him rather than the whispered insults that came out instead.

August again hung back a beat longer though, watching Royce with a quiet concern that unnerved the older boy more than Zack and Kona’s skittish lies ever could. It’s because he knew August could understand something was wrong, that he felt that same eerie unease hanging between them, that he could see the hurt in his still-wet eyes. Because that same hurt was hiding in August’s.

“Royce,” he started, voice small as he fidgeted with the rubber of his handle bars. “Is he…”

No words came to finish the question, and yet they both still understood what he was trying to say.

Royce sucked in a slow breath and dropped his face to the cracked asphalt, unable to meet the boy’s olive gaze until he’d forced the words out. “…I think you should try the arcade again.” His chest grew tight again, like someone had placed a boulder on it. He supposed it was the weight of all this lying. He was starting to feel as though he wasn’t strong enough to handle it, not when the stakes were this high. He heaved in another, laboured breath and dragged his gaze back up to the boy in front of him, forcing out a more certain: “You never know…”

Royce didn’t know if August bought his feigned innocence, but he at least picked up on his desperation to be left alone. The shy blonde gave a small, strained nod of acknowledgement, then pushed off the pavement - his sneakers finding purchase on plastic pedals with practised ease as he followed after his friends.

August’s mind couldn’t rest the entire bike ride to Zack’s house though. He couldn’t get the image of Royce out of his head - the suppressed pain in expression, the wobble of his jaw, as though fighting back tears. Something was definitely wrong, he just didn’t know what yet. But it was already starting to feel bigger than what he could control. Fate would need to try harder if it wanted to mess with them any more than it already was though. A lot harder; August wasn’t prepared to give up on his best friend that easily. And when every instinct was telling him that something was wrong, he had no choice but to listen. He’d listen until he went deaf if it meant Bentley would be okay.

Like I said, this is very loosely inspired by my recent rewatching of the Hannah Montana movie - but has evolved to include a bunch of other ideas I’ve been wanting to shove somewhere. And this is where they’ve ended up ahaha. So if it seems a bit jumbled, it is - just not intentionally lol.

Anyway, as much as I include Carrie in my stories, I feel like it’s been a really long time since she’s actually featured as “the main character” - not since I’ve evolved her to be more of how she is now anyway. But this very much feels like her story. We start with her as a well-established actress, having had some pretty big roles throughout her teen years (very Disney channel-esque kind of pipeline), and now trying to find her feet as she moves beyond that. But when a bad case of laryngitis makes her flunk a big audition, her steadily growing ego struggles to cope. She’s always been a drama queen, but she really starts to meltdown over this - her dad tries to talk her around, to no avail, and her mom, worried sick, ends up confiding in some work colleagues: the owners of the winery she always uses for her bigger catering gigs. With her worrying that her daughter’s losing touch with reality, her colleagues reveal that they also own and run a summer camp every year over, and would be more than happy to host a celebrity counsellor to bring in new campers, and give her the chance to feel like a normal girl again. So before Carrie knows what’s hit her, she’s flown from sunny LA to New Hampshire, where the camp‘s co-head of operations: Dorothea Murphy, is there to pick her up from the airport.

Dorothea and her three sons had grown up living just down the street from George and Dawn, and had practically become a second family to them, thanks to how close of a bond the four of them had formed with their granddaughter: Vivien. And every year, when they opened up the camp, Dorothea helped the couple run the show. Miles, Royce and Bentley all obviously became counsellors like Vivien when they were old enough, and quickly roped various friends into the roles too. Over the years the group of counsellors became very tight-knit, so when Dorothea showed up with a new face, and a famous one at that, it naturally ruffled a few feathers - especially when she appointed her eldest son to be the one to show her around.

Carrie hates it at first. Sure there are people who know her and like her (Vivien, Riven, etc), who are excited just about her being there, but there are plenty who don’t take kindly to her high standards and unintentionally snobbish attitude (the usual suspects, Royce, Butchy, etc), and contribute even more to her crappy mood, thanks to the fact that her usual luxuries have quickly become a distant memory. She struggles to make any friends because everyone already seems to have preconceived notions of her, she’s hopeless when it comes to joining in with any of the activities because she’s never done anything like this before, and the lack of palm trees and over-exposure to mud makes her feel horribly homesick. So she runs to Dorothea one night begging her to take her back to the airport so she can go home; she’s just not strong enough to do this. Dorothea comforts her how she can, but tries to convince her to stick it out a little longer. And the next morning, she finds Miles to ask for his help with her again. He’s resistant at first, because he’s already done his part with showing her around, and he doesn’t want ‘babysitting her’ to ruin his summer - and finds it particularly unfair that he keeps getting singled out for this. But when Dorothea tells him she thinks it’d be good for him to get out of his comfort zone, and that Carrie clearly needs someone level-headed to steady her nearly-sinking lifeboat, unable to argue with his mother’s logic, he eventually agrees.

There’s a little friction between the pair at first, but as Carrie softens and brings down her walls, Miles finds himself starting to warm to her - much to the surprise/horror of his friends. Before long, he has her acting as though she’d been a counsellor for years, as though she’d never even set foot on a film set before - so much so that they both started to forget that side of her even existed. She starts to forge real friendships amongst the group: Vivien takes a real shine to her, Riven finds a big sister he never knew he needed in her, Dorothea even forms a soft spot for her dramatic flair, and Royce and Bentley, although still slightly wary, slowly realise she’s more than just her faults. But just when things were taking a turn for the better, Carrie’s manager arrives out of the blue to whisk her away for a new job opportunity, forcing her to leave before the end of the season, and before the fundraiser concert that she’d promised George and Dawn she’d participate in to boost support for the camp. So she’s left to choose what matters most to her: her career, and her future….or her heart, and her now.

I could keep rambling for forever and a day, but I feel like you’ll get the vibe from that. And you can probably tell how it would end/play out, so I won’t bore you with writing out all that too. But hopefully you can have a little bit of fun thinking over the idea yourself; that’s what I always end up doing when you make posts like this anyway lol. And I think I’ll round it off the same way you do: with some random quotes and scene snippets that have helped me solidify the idea a bit more. So enjoy!

_________

Dorothea: I know it may be more of a challenge for some of you than others, but please just try to treat her like any other normal counsellor. The last thing she needs is to be hounded in the dining hall. Are we clear?

*murmurs of varying levels of agreement/acknowledgement from the group*

Dorothea: And Miles, can you stop by the office when we’re done here? She’s gonna need a tour of the place before dinner.

Miles (mildly horrified, and over Ethan, Bentley and Royce’s snickers at his expense): Why me?

Dorothea (stern, but in a loving, almost teasing way): I’m your mother, dear. There doesn’t need to be a reason, just do as I say.

_________

Carrie (looking around the cabin room she’s been given): This is…nice. It’s, uh…real rustic.

Vivien: Well, it has been here for like 30 years - so yeah, it’s not doing too bad.

Carrie: I can’t believe they’ve got enough of these things built for everyone. Your grandparents must have sunk a hell of a lot of money into-

Miles (after side-eyeing Vivien and her stifling a laugh): Oh no, no, this isn’t your cabin. This is your room, in our cabin.

Carrie (stalling for a second): …We’re all staying in here?

Miles (chuckling): Yeah - it’s cosy.

Vivien: It’s not that crazy; there’s only eleven of us - twelve including you.

Miles: Just count yourself lucky you’ve got a room to yourself; some of us are sharing.

*Miles turns and starts walking back down the hall, leaving Carrie staring wide-eyed around her modest little bedroom*

Miles (smirking): Oh, and I hope you brought ear plugs; Ethan and I are next door and he’s a snorer.

Ethan (through the wall): And the walls are really fucking thin.

_________

Vivien: How was she during the class you led with her?

Riven (chuckling): Oh, she was great. I don’t know what Royce’s problem is. I had an awesome afternoon - she just kept cracking me up the whole time. And the girls couldn’t get enough of her - she’s probably still in the dance hall with them now actually.

Vivien: Doing what? Didn’t your class end like 45 minutes ago?

Riven: I don’t know, they just wouldn’t leave her alone.

*Carrie enters the dining hall, hair dishevelled, cupcake stickers haphazardly dotted over her t-shirt, and looking rather shell-shocked. Riven starts laughing even harder when he sees her, and Vivien can’t help but join in when she plops down into the seat opposite them*

Vivien (failing to hold back her laugh): You look like you had fun.

Riven (playfully, through his guffaws): Make any new friends?

Carrie: What the fuck is a labubu?

_________

Miles: Mom, you don’t get it. She’s hopeless.

Dorothea: You’ve got to give her a chance, baby. This is all new to her, remember?

Mile: Mom. She thought a canoe was a bird… A bird.

Dorothea (trying her best to suppress a laugh): …Then I suppose you’ll just have to show her what one is, won’t you?

_________

Butchy (passing a volleyball between his fingers): Come on, Your Highness. Are you gonna join in for once, or are you scared of a little dirt?

Carrie (scoffing): There won’t be any dirt left once I’ve wiped the floor with you, pretty boy.

*the volleyball match does in fact go ahead - but ends with them both sitting in the infirmary: Butchy with a bloody nose and being checked over by paramedics for a concussion - and Carrie almost passing out from inhaling so much nitrous oxide whilst those same paramedics try to fix her dislocated shoulder. Mick, Miles and Vivian are all justifiably horrified*

_________

Miles (leading the way to his Jeep): You any good at carrying industrial vats of ketchup?

Carrie: What are you talking about?

Miles: We’re going out for supplies - so I hope you’ve got some muscles hiding under that sweatshirt.

Carrie (stalling): What? Like, out there? Out in public?

Miles: …Yeah. What’s the issue?

Carrie: I don’t know… Won’t I get like, you know, recognised?

*Miles stops for a second then crosses over to her and pulls the sunglasses from the top of her head down onto the bridge of her nose. He then whips the faded baseball cap from his head and wedges it down over her curls, before stepping back to admire his work with a satisfied smirk*

Miles: There you go - foolproof disguise. Now come on, we’ve got errands to run.

_________

Miles (cautiously sitting down beside her): What are you doing out here by yourself?

Carrie (smiling dejectedly to herself): Contrary to popular belief, I don’t really want to spend the next two hours watching myself on a screen.

Miles: Well, it’s more of a sheet than a screen, if that helps.

*Carrie cracks a smile, but still makes no effort to move*

Miles (huddling slightly closer to her, partly for warmth, partly for reassurance): Alright… What do you wanna do instead then? I’m not in the mood for a movie either. So I’m all yours.

_________

Royce: I don’t know, she’s just…weird.

Bentley: She’s getting better though - it’s starting to feel more…normal. I guess.

Royce (mumbling): I don’t know if I’d ever use the word “normal” in any sentence about her, but sure, whatever.

Dorothea (fondly, almost teasingly): Well, she certainly seems to have taken a liking to our Miley.

*Miles lets the plastic tumbler of dirty paintbrushes he was trying to clean slip through his fingers, sending it clattering into the large, weathered enamel sink in the corner of the art studio*

Miles (suddenly blushing, albeit lightly, despite his feigned nonchalance): What are you talking about?

Dorothea (smiling knowingly): She just seems to be quite taken with you, that’s all.

Royce: She does hang around you like a bad smell.

Miles: It’s just because I’ve been helping show her the ropes.

Bentley: She’s been here over a month now - how many ropes you gotta show her?

Miles: Shut up, Ben. It’s nothing. It’s…meaningless - especially to her. Like mom said, she’s just here on a favour.

Dorothea: Mmm? You might want to check that with her; she sure does ask me a lot about you for something so…meaningless.

_________

Bentley: We were just gonna hang at the cabin and play some video games, but you’re welcome to join if you want. Mom told us we have to make an effort to include you so-

Vivien (elbowing him in the side, and hissing): I don’t think she meant for you to tell her that.

Carrie (awkwardly, cheeks pinking with embarrassment): Oh I, uh, I’m not really into video games. So don’t worry about it. Thanks though.

Bentley: No, it’s fine. We weren’t gonna play anything crazy - probably just like Mario Kart. Or maybe Mario Party - that might be more your speed? Anyone can play Mario Party; they’re just mini games.

Royce: Please tell me you’ve at least played Mario Kart. Or are you too famous for that too?

Carrie (brightening a bit): On no, I’ve played Mario Kart - I’ve played a bunch of Mario games actually. More than ever lately ‘cause I can technically count it as work now that I’m down to the final three to voice Daisy in the next Mario movie they’re making.

*Royce and Bentley both stop to look at each other, and then back to Carrie, and her hopeful, shyly optimistic smile*

Royce: …Seriously?

Carrie: Yeah, I think I’ve still got some of the tester scripts in my purse if you wanna read through them.

Bentley (eyes lighting up): Holy shit. Yes.

Vivien (bumping Royce’s arm with a smirk as they watched Bentley start babbling excitedly with Carrie): See? I told you she was awesome.

Royce: Alright, yeah… I guess that is pretty cool.

_________

Ethan (rolling up blunts on his bed): You’re not actually like getting feelings for her, are you?

Miles (staring up at their ceiling, laying back on his bed on the opposite side of the room): What? No, of course not. She’s just… I don’t know, she’s just…there.

Ethan: Whatever you say, man. But you’re starting to be all weird and spaced out again like when you started getting the hots for Natalie.

Miles (scoffing): This is nothing like that. And besides, it’s too soon to start thinking about another relationship-

Ethan: Dude, it’s been a year. That’s more than enough time.

Miles: That doesn’t just magically mean that I feel okay about it.

Ethan (smirking to himself): I don’t know, I think a nice trip on a motorboat would help you get over being dumped pretty damn fast. And Carrie’s got some fine fucking vessels to set sail on.

Miles (ears flushing scarlet in embarrassment): Ethan!

Ethan: Don’t try to deny it - I saw you looking down by the lake when she was in her bikini - and I’d know; I was looking too. Just sneak down to the boathouse and go to town on each other - you’d feel a hell of a lot better afterwards for it. You both would; she was definitely sizing up your dick in your trunks-

*Miles hears the bathroom door open, signalling Carrie was on her way back to her room, and scrambles up onto his elbow, launching a pillow at Ethan’s head to get him to stop talking*

Miles (hissing): Shut the fuck up! She’s coming back!

Ethan (rolling his eyes after launching the pillow back at him, but lowering his voice in compromise): Her hearing is not gonna change anything - it’ll just speed up the inevitable.

Miles (half-whispering due to the thin walls): And what’s that? Me strangling you in your sleep?

Ethan (smirking as he finished twisting off the end to his latest masterpiece): Nope, you two making a bunch of little Murphy-Cole babies to repopulate the dwindling camper pool.

_________

Carrie (smirking): Well, you know what they say: blondes have more fun.

Ethan: On what planet is your hair blonde?

Carrie (affronted): It’s toffee blonde.

Ethan (scoffing): Then what’s my hair? Burnt steak blonde?

_________

Riven: Do you miss it? …Your life back in California?

Carrie (pausing to think): …I miss my family, and my house…

Riven: And the jobs?

Carrie (pensively): I miss…parts of them.

Riven (gesturing to the hall, the camp, around him): What about all this? Do you think you’ll miss this when you go back?

Carrie (through a sad smile): Again, I’ll miss parts… A hell of a lot of parts though.

Riven (teasingly): I’d better be one of those parts.

Carrie (chuckling): Well, naturally.

Riven (taking on a slightly sad tone himself): Well good, because I’m really gonna miss you when you ditch me for your PA… I don’t think I quite realised how cool it’d be to have an older sister until I met you.

Carrie (touched but trying not to let it show too much, because it’s only make their inevitable goodbye harder): Yeah, well I already have a little brother, but he annoys the shit out of me sometimes, so I’d happily trade him out for a younger model.

_________

Bentley: I can’t believe that’s it. She’s just…gone.

Royce: At least we can enjoy the last few weeks of summer like normal now. We can just forget she was ever here.

Dorothea (looking cautiously over at a very pensive Miles): That might be easier said than done, mon cœur.

Miles (huffing dejectedly): Royce is right, we should just try to forget she was ever here. No point wasting our breath when she’s made her stance so clear.

Dorothea (gently - pained but trying to keep her expression steady): You don’t know her circumstances, baby.

Miles (pained in an entirely different way - but less able to mask it): I don’t need to.

*Miles storms out of the room - Dorothea sighs in temporary defeat*

Bentley (looking awkwardly between his mom and Royce): He’s got it bad again, huh?

Dorothea: Mmm. But the worst part is: I think she had it even worse for him.

_________

Miles (warily, as though he didn’t dare get any closer, in case she was just a mirage): What are you doing back here? Shouldn’t you be on some movie set by now?

Carrie (panicking, and trying a joke because the truth was too hard to admit): I, uh… I left my satin pillowcase.

Miles: You couldn’t just buy a new one?

Carrie (a lump building in the back of her throat): And I… I never got to say goodbye. And you deserve a goodbye.

Miles (pushing a similar lump down his own throat): …I’m all ears.

*Carrie opens her mouth, but no words come out - and in the end, it’s just a soft, huffed start of a sob that squeaks out*

Carrie (swallowing down the shakiness that the tears pricking her eyes were threatening): …I didn’t really come back for that.

Miles (sarcastically, although still evading a smile): You don’t say.

Carrie (shaking her head and laughing to herself, anxiety starting to ease out of her frame): Why do I lose the ability to act around you?

*Miles’ expression almost hints at a smile, but remains very guarded*

Miles: …What is it then?

Carrie: I just…

*She pauses, as though trying to choose her words. But it doesn’t take long for her emotions to get the better of her, and the dam to come crashing open*

Carrie: I missed it.

Miles: Missed what?

Carrie: Everything. The camp, the people, the freedom - the view. I just - they got me in costume and in front of those cameras and I couldn’t remember a single line because I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I just walked straight off set and called an Uber to take me to LAX. I’ve missed like a million calls from my agent and I’m pretty certain they’ll have fired me but-

Miles (eyes wide with a mix of confusion and incredulity): What are you talking about? What view could possibly have made that big of an impact on you? The one from the boathouse?

*Carrie walks over to Miles as he rambles away, and lets an almost serene smile settle on her face as she leans up to wrap her arms around his stiff shoulders, letting a soft hand trace up the back of his neck as she watched the scared, fleeting moment of hope flicker in his confused expression*

Carrie: This view.

August McNeeley was a wallflower. He’d happily join in on conversations with his friends, or those he was close to, but for the most part he was just happy to listen and observe. He tended to blend into the background, rather than make an effort to stand out - but his innate shyness meant he took comfort in that. The less he stood out, the better really. So the start to his junior year of high school quickly became a living nightmare.

Almost all the guys had a growth spurt in their sophomore year of high school - it was one of the many joys of puberty, if anything about it could be considered joyful. The squeaks in gruffer voices, the peach fuzz moustaches some tried to embrace, and the outbreak of zits that could be likened to a plague of measles - no one could escape it really. But after a summer of nightly leg cramps that were only partly worsened by his new running hobby, August returned to school looking like an entirely new person - one almost an entire foot taller than when he’d last walked the halls. For his friends, who’d spend virtually every single day with him, the change was noticeable, but less stark - after all, they’d watched it happen a lot more gradually. But for the rest of the student body, he’d left sophomore year looking like a strong gust of wind could knock him over, and he’d returned a six foot wall of muscle that looked like he could hold his own against a linebacker.

All the extra exercise he’d been doing meant his appetite had increased, so much so it almost rivalled Zack’s (much to his best friend’s delight). And despite his vegetarianism, he’d still managed to fill out to a pretty stocky build, with his shoulders broadening to match his new jawline. It was as though his features had finally decided where they wanted to sit on his face; his nose didn’t look lopsided anymore, and his eyes didn’t look too big - although the glasses he was finding himself having to wear more regularly may have contributed to that. Everything just looked like it…fit all of a sudden. And everyone noticed all at once. Everyone.

It had started with giddy giggles from girls as he passed in the hall. And then there were the whispers, saying he looked like a movie star, or a model. Or, Kona’s personal favourite: that he looked like ‘some European prince in a renaissance painting’ - courtesy of Patty Carter in their English class. He supposed it was because he wasn’t necessarily attractive in the most conventional sense - not like the jocks with their chiselled jawlines and meticulously styled hair. His sandy blonde waves were neat, but less easily tamed, and there was a softness to his somewhat clunky features that seemed to blur his imperfections. Hence why so many of his female peers had formed this bizarre fascination with him.

Days turned to weeks though and the fad didn’t blow over. In fact, the infatuation only grew stronger. Scraps of paper with compliments and phone numbers were being dropped on his desk, or shoved in his locker. Bentley couldn’t believe his friend’s luck as he thumbed through the growing collection of love notes. Zack said he’d do anything to have that many girls wanting a piece of him. August just forced a smile, but couldn’t shake the bone-deep uncomfortable feeling that shook him every time he so much as looked at one of those slips of paper. If Kona hadn’t made a point of keeping a tally of them, every single one would have ended up in the garbage.

Things took a turn when girls then started lingering by his locker - when their notes had been insufficient, they decided to take a more forward approach. A 30 second, inadvertent voice solo to what he’d thought had been an empty room to help out his band teacher before practice, had revealed his more than half-decent singing voice to Connie, the bassoonist, and Lisa, third trombone, who hadn’t left him alone since - claiming he had the ‘voice of an angel, and the face to match’. Patty Carter, again, from their English class, had been handed his creative writing poetry piece to peer-grade and had been gushing about how ‘brilliantly sensitive’ he was ever since. Renee from their history class was obsessed with his hair. Jeanette said she kept getting lost in his eyes. And Heather claimed he’d saved her life because he offered her some water when she nearly fainted during their frog dissection in biology class. Every single one, and countless others, had stood coyly by his locker between classes, batting their eyelashes until the bell rang, or plucking up the courage themselves to ask him on a date. And every single one ended the same way: with August stammering his way through a polite decline of their offer and fighting back the urge to hurl because he felt so sick with guilt.

Zack couldn’t wrap his head around the repeated rejections - and had tried to offer his own company numerous times to the heartbroken suitors, with little to no success. Kona had retaliated that August clearly wasn’t as shallow as he was. And Bentley had tried to reassure him that it was fine; he’d know when the right girl came along - all these others were just good practice for the real thing. August had agreed through a tight, half-hearted smile. But no matter how much ‘practice’ he got, the interactions with these girls never got any easier. He still wanted the ground to swallow him whole every time a date was mentioned. And every time they’d try to play with his hair, or touch his arm, it felt as though his throat was closing up. Maybe he’d have to add romance to his allergy list.

Everything rose to an ugly head one fateful Friday afternoon though. And it all started when August, trying to distract himself from more giggling sophomores, caught sight of a flyer for the track team on the extra-curriculars board. The mental peace he achieved on his morning runs was something he found himself craving more than ever lately. And since he’d started running he’d managed to work on his stamina and up his pace a decent amount - so maybe he’d be able to hold his own on the track team. Deciding to throw caution to the wind, and clinging to the hope that this might help keep him sane until all this female attention died down, August scrawled his name on the sign-up list.

What August had failed to realise though, was that the track team would not be the only ones using the sports facilities. Sure, they had the running track to themselves. But the athletics team were practicing long-jump in the sandpit, the football players were running drills on one half of the field, and the cheerleaders were planning out lifts on the other. Despite somehow managing to feel claustrophobic outdoors with all the other people around him, August’s try-out for the track team went really well. The coach was impressed with his form and pacing, especially after learning he was still so new to the sport. But August would come to find that Coach Melvin wasn’t the only one who’d taken notice of him as he was out there running laps.

“Hey!”

August froze as a silvery voice rung through the dug-out in the bleachers - echoing off the polished stone until it knocked enough sense into him to prompt him to turn around and seek out who it belonged to. Although when he saw the sleek, espresso brown ponytail, and perfectly poreless, flushed cheeks of Cindy Jenkins, the newly appointed head cheerleader, his heart stopped all over again - no matter how over-exerted it felt after those last few laps.

Closing the space between them, she went on, with a coy cluelessness, “It’s August, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” he murmured through a wary, but polite smile.

“You were great out there,” she gushed, still slightly breathless thanks to her run down the hall. “I had no idea you were such an…athlete. Coach Melvin looked real impressed.”

“Thanks,” August said before dropping his gaze to his feet - still bashful, but a little more relaxed since her compliment appeared genuine. “I only started running a few-”

“And he wasn’t the only one.”

August’s eyes snapped up to meet hers as soon as he heard the switch in her voice. That silky edge, the way her lips settled into a silly, girlish smile. The hunger in her gaze. It was happening again. She wasn’t interested in his pacing, or his lap times. She was interested in him - or the idea of him, anyway.

“I, uh, I don’t-” August awkwardly chuckled. “I don’t think I follow.”

“Oh come on, August, you don’t have to be so modest,” Cindy giggled. “I could barely keep my eyes off you out there. Hell, most of the team couldn’t either.”

A fresh sheen of sweat broke across August’s skin, matching with what was already wetting the ends of his hair, and dampening the collar of his t-shirt. “Cindy,” August timidly tried.

But she was undeterred, and completely oblivious to his change in demeanour. “And you know what’s crazy? I barely even knew who you were until a few weeks ago, but now you’re all anyone can talk about.”

“I don’t think I’d quite go that far,” August mumbled, fighting the urge to roll his eyes alongside the compulsion to crawl out of his skin.

“I’m serious, August. You’re a big deal - at least with my friends anyway,” Cindy insisted, honest despite her ulterior motives. Looping the end of her ponytail around her finger, she started to toy with it, layering a flirty smile atop her nervous body language to keep up her image of confidence. “At first, I know it’s super corny and cliche to say, but I didn’t really get it. But as more and more time goes on I just… I can’t stop thinking about you.”

There it was again. That churning of his stomach that was so strong he almost hurled on the spot. Fresh beads of nervous sweat prickled August’s skin as he swallowed a deep breath and tried to focus his mind on keeping his voice from trembling as much as his legs were. “Cindy, you said yourself, you barely know me-”

“Well why don’t we change that?” she jumped in before he could try to reason with her further - her eyes growing wider with enthusiasm with each word that left her mouth. “I usually like to swing by Sunny’s for a malt after practice if you wanna join. It might help us, you know…” she paused, eyes drifting down to take in his form before returning with a new glint in them. “…get to know each other a little better.”

August’s heart was hammering so hard he was sure that it had to be visible through his shirt; it felt like it was rattling his entire ribcage. And yet, the rest of his body was completely paralysed. He couldn’t have opened his mouth to reply even if he’d managed to find the words to say. He was trapped: physically, mentally, and socially. But Cindy’s expectant, batting eyelashes had set an ultimatum, and he had no escape.

Or so he thought.

“Man, there is no way I am passing to Hal again. The only thing that guy can catch is mono.”

“Even that’s rare; he’s gotta convince a girl to kiss him first.”

The raucous jeers of the football team joined them in the tunnel, snapping both parties back to their surroundings. And whilst the presence of the jocks could have easily added much more pressure to the situation, August found himself breathing a sigh of relief when Carter Rawlins’ voice boomed out over his boisterous teammates’.

“Hey, Cindy. You still on for Ricky’s party later?” the olive-skinned linebacker hollered, swinging his helmet at his side as he strode towards them.

Rolling her eyes at the interruption, she begrudgingly turned around to face him. “I don’t know, I guess so. Why?”

“Just checking, that’s all,” he snickered through a smug grin. “Wouldn’t want anything ruining my plans,” he added with a subtle raise of his eyebrows.

Suitably titillated, Cindy caught herself blushing at the very suggestion. But her initial romantic endeavours weren’t forgotten, and were still very much at the forefront of her mind. Hoping to convince her newly discovered, understated blond hunk to tag along to the party on her arm, she turned back to August once more, only to find the space behind her completely vacant.

The moment Cindy’s attention had been drawn to Carter, August had slunk out of sight into the locker rooms - bolting for his gym locker as fast as physically possible given the fact that his legs felt as though they were made of jello. He knew running away and leaving her hanging was wrong, but he couldn’t have stayed in that situation a moment longer. He felt like he’d been suffocating.

All he wanted to do was escape, and to feel a sense of normalcy again - away from longing stares and giddy grins. And if he managed to change and make it to the buses before the locker rooms turned into a cesspool of testosterone and cheap cologne, he might just stand a chance of that. He’d cope with stinking on the bus ride home if it meant he didn’t have to interact with any of the football players who’d descend on the showers like a plague of locusts. And besides, maybe the smell would help to deter any flocks of girls from hovering by his seat.

Sure, he knew that Cindy would likely shoot her shot with him again sooner or later, but at least now he’d have time to prepare himself for how to let her down gently first.

At least he’d hoped he would.

Freshly showered, and much clearer of mind, August thanked the local bus driver and stepped out into the early evening sunshine. Neatly laced sneakers trod over grubby asphalt as the last warmth in the early autumn air seeped into his skin. At long last, free from the smothering infatuation of high school girls, a relaxed smile settled onto his face, more than ready for a Friday night, and entire weekend, spent in nobody’s company other than his genuine friends. He didn’t have to put up any fronts, or pretend to be anyone he wasn’t for the sake of avoiding social suicide. He could just be himself. And after an especially exhausting week, the idea alone sounded too good to be true.

And maybe it was. Because after dodging a wad of still-wet gum on the sidewalk, his attention was drawn to a shrill laugh across the road, where he found that same silken ponytail from earlier. There, with a small gaggle of her cheerleader friends all hanging on her every word, was Cindy Jenkins: takeout malt cup from Sunny’s secured in her fuschia-painted fingertips.

Willing himself to develop the art of camouflage, like his neighbour’s chameleon he was so fascinated by, August quickly averted his gaze and quickened his pace. But his efforts were in vain, because before he could reach the next storefront, and dodge into the ramshackle thrift shop until the coast was clear, Cindy called out over the distant rumble of car engines, and the burbling chatter of her teammates. “August! No way!”

His stomach dropped to his feet. And a sheen of the same sweat he’d just scrubbed down the drain stippled the back of his neck. Cursing under his breath, he forced a smile and turned to greet her, just as her kitten heels finished clacking over the asphalt and she skittered to a halt in front of him.

“Decided to join me after all?” she coyly assumed, eyes glittering with excitement as she waved her branded takeout cup under his nose. Without waiting for the tall blond to reply, she grabbed his hand (whether she noticed the clamminess or not, he’d never know) and started leading him back towards the curbside. “Let’s go pick you a flavour. Don’t worry, I’ve only just picked up mine - you won’t need to buy me another, yet.”

But August set his heels and left hers skidding for purchase on the sidewalk, keeping her hand in his as he gently pulled her back towards him. “Sorry, Cindy,” he gently began, trying his best to steel his nerves and do this with enough tact to keep both of their dignities intact. He released her hand and dropped it to his side, tactfully wiping it on his shorts as he continued. “I was trying to say earlier, but I’d already said I’d meet my friends tonight-”

“It’s alright,” Cindy quickly reassured with a flippant wave of her hand, eager smile still beaming brightly between her glossy lips. “Tell ‘em they can come too. The more the merrier, right girls?” she went on to gush as her mini entourage crossed the street to join them, all murmuring and nodding their approval. Turning back to August she reached for his hand again, nothing if not persistent, and tagged on a particularly flirtatious: “Even if they’re half as handsome as you, we’ll take it.”

But August pulled his hand back before she could grab it, and stood firm in his decision. “I meant we have plans of our own,” he clarified, as that hand she kept searching for reached up to rub the nervous sweat from the back of his neck. “And I’d, uh, I’d hate to be late, so…”

Cindy’s smile faltered for the first time as she realised that this conversation wasn’t going how she’d planned. And for once, she found herself on the back foot. With the added pressure of her friends’ eyes trained on every inch of her face to watch how she’d react, she forced the smile back into place and feigned that confident nonchalance they all expected of her. “Oh, uh ok. Well, maybe some other time then?” she suggested with a hopeful, yet slightly awkward giggle. Again, before giving the boy a chance to respond, she boldly proposed, “What about tomorrow night? There’s a movie at the-”

“Cindy, look,” August cut her off before she could string out her fantasy any further. He kept his voice quiet, but earnest, and hoped that he had the guts to follow this through. “You seem like a very nice girl, really. But as you said, you barely know me. And I think if you did…this wouldn’t work like you’re wanting it to.”

Cindy’s expression cracked again as she listened to him, confusion riddling her once sure, steel grey irises. Her lips twitched senselessly, until she finally managed to utter a disbelieving: “What are you saying?”

August took a deep breath, pushed down his bone-deep discomfort, and explained, “I’m saying that you seem really sweet, but I just don’t… I don’t like you like that.”

The smile dropped from Cindy’s face altogether. August was surprised he didn’t hear it clatter on the pavement at their feet.

Disbelief clouded her already stormy eyes as she hissed, “Are you seriously turning me down right now?” Her voice was low and hushed, as though she was still pretending the interaction was only between the two of them, but the shocked, furious whispers of her friends behind her were undeniable.

“I just don’t want to lead you on,” August tried, hoping that his lopsided smile would be enough to soften the blow.

“I can’t believe this.” Evidently, it wasn’t. Cindy’s scoff of betrayal pinched her eyebrows and twisted her lips into a scowl as she demanded, “Are you trying to embarrass me or something?”

“No, of course not,” August promised, deftly trying to smooth things over.

“Well you’re doing a pretty fucking good job of it,” she spat, lightning flashing across her thunderous gaze as her friends nervously tittered over her shoulder. Her cheeks flared scarlet, proving her side of the argument correct as she felt a true sense of humiliation for the first time in her privileged life.

In that moment, seeing how hurt she genuinely looked by his rejection, August did feel bad for her. He’d been in his fair share of uncomfortable social interactions, more than ever lately, and this one was no exception. But he knew there was nothing he could do to help. And he felt certain that she’d just dismiss his offer anyway, especially given the circumstances. He was never given the opportunity to test the theory though, because the rumbling approach of a car engine stole the show.

“Hey, hey. Everything ok here ladies?” Carter Jenkins called, hopping over the side of his teammate’s convertible before he could finish parking it along the curbside further down the street. He jogged over to the group with furrowed brows, eyes fixed on the brunette in the centre and her firmly folded arms. “You alright, Cindy?” he asked more directly once he was beside her, with an almost subdued concern that felt out of place for such a typically boisterous guy.

“Not particularly,” she sneered, her murderous gaze never wavering from the blond culprit, which made Carter’s process of elimination incredibly simple.

Turning to August, who found himself once again paralysed with unease, Carter took a second to look him over, almost as though sizing him up, before taking a small, yet definitively protective, step in front of Cindy. “This guy bothering you?” he asked her, as if he was waiting for permission before taking the situation into his own hands.

“Not any more,” Cindy dejectedly muttered. “He’s made his point,” she continued through a tight-lipped frown, before turning and starting to retreat back towards the centre of town, trailing her gaggle of gossiping girl friends behind her.

But Cindy’s dismal departure only left August alone with Carter for a matter of seconds, before the other football players from the car joined him. And it took the jock even less time to start sharing his concerns with the group.

“What the hell kinda game do you think you’re playing, McNeeley?” Carter demanded, still maintaining a small element of civility in his tone despite the wild look in his eyes.

“Excuse me?” August retorted, surprising even himself that his nervousness had seemingly disappeared. Perhaps it was because as the linebacker approached, August realised he was the one looking down on him for once - even if only by an inch or two.

“You heard me,” Carter doubled down. “What’s your deal?”

“There is no ‘deal’,” August insisted, more so just confused by where the jock could be leading this than anything.

“Oh really? You’ve got half the student body throwing themselves at you and you mean to tell me you’re not interested in a single one of ‘em? Not even Cindy Jenkins?” he challenged, eyebrows raised in incredulity. And when August made no effort to correct him, he set his jaw and shook his head. “I’m not buying it.”

“Shouldn’t you be happy?” August retorted before he could second guess it, his survival instincts completely hijacking his brain. “I turned her down. She’s all yours now, isn’t that what you want?”

But that wasn’t what Carter was focusing on. “What, so you think you’re too good for her? Is that it?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Sure sounded like it to me.”

Carter inched closer to him. The voices of The Supremes from the tinny thrift store radio sounded out of place in the thick tension of the humid, evening air. A passing car slowed its pace, highschoolers in the back seat craning their necks to try to figure out what was going on. A couple in a parked sedan across the street stopped their make out session to watch the scene unfold through the windshield. And even Cindy, now half a block away, had paused at the street corner with the other girls to spectate.

Carter was the next one to speak, more so because August had nothing to say to the meathead, but also because he couldn’t bear to think of someone like August getting one over on him. “You know, most guys would kill for that kind of shot. And you just..what? Blow it off like it’s nothing?”

August’s pulse thudded in his ears - but a sense of frustration was bubbling beneath the primal fear; a frustration that Carter was creating his own narrative purely to paint him as the villain. He felt even more eyes on him, from shop windows, or overhead apartments. This wasn’t just a simple rejection anymore, this was about pride - and how, somehow, Carter had felt his had been wounded. “I didn’t blow anything off. I just told her I didn’t think it would work between us. I didn’t want her wasting her time.”

“Is that right?” Carter asked with a smirk, clearly amused.

“Well would you rather I have lead her on?” August dared to challenge. But when Carter scoffed through another incredulous smirk, August just shook his head. “I don’t get what your problem is. I don’t want to date her, and you do. Shouldn’t this be your chance to make a move?”

“What are you trying to say, McNeeley?” Carter asked, smirk warping into a glower as once again that idea of wounded pride rose to the surface in his gaze. “You think you’re better than me or something?”

“Stop putting words in my mouth,” an exasperated August sighed. “I never said that.”

“But you’re thinking it,” Carter retorted without missing a beat, the faintest hint of a cocksure smile trying to tug at the edge of his lips - as though he knew he had August ‘all figured out’.

August felt more and more of the street pressing in around him. It was pretty vacant of people, but it was like the lamp posts, and garbage bins themselves were waiting with baited breath for the next move. An all-too-familiar tightness started in his chest as he realised he was getting nowhere fast in this conversation; Carter was too riled up to see sense, and no reason he’d be able to give for his actions would ever be considered justified. So August tried the only viable option he felt he had left. He stepped back and started to inch his way further down the street, willing to lie if it meant getting himself out of this situation. “Look, Carter, I don’t want any trouble. I’m just trying to go home.”

“And I’m just trying to figure you out,” Carter shot back, again, without missing a beat.

As August stepped back, he stepped forwards - leering at him like a lion eyeing up a plump gazelle. Clearly he wasn’t prepared to back down as easily as August had hoped he would be.

“You know,” Carter continued, fists clenching and unclenching with pent-up energy. “A guy turns down Cindy Jenkins…people start wondering.”

August’s throat had never been so dry. Swallowing took such an effort it was borderline painful to keep his expression blank. “Wondering what?”

“Wondering what’s wrong with him…” Carter trailed off, voice low and eyes dark, as though his pupils were trying to bore holes through his skull - trying to figure out what was really going on in the blond’s head.

And although August knew it was impossible, the thought alone was enough to unnerve him - as was how close they seemed to be getting to uncovering the root of the problem.

“Any guy in their right mind would have said ‘yes’ to her,” Carter pressed on.

But his relentless fixation on how ‘desirable’ this girl is was becoming infuriating, and his intimidation tactics were starting to have the opposite effect on August, who, in a move so bold it even shocked himself, bit back with an exasperated: “Good, then she can go ask one of them next.”

Carter fell silent for a moment. He looked as if he couldn’t quite believe the blond had that in him. But the scoffed, humourless laugh was quick to return. “You think you’re funny, McNeeley?”

August shook his head, turning away in the hopes that it’d make his eye roll slightly less obvious. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered.

“Oh good,” Carter snickered, again moving to block his path, only this time flashing a sadistic grin. “We finally agree on something.”

August straightened up and levelled Carter’s stare. Even with his heart pounding in his chest, a deep resentment burnt alongside it; for how he looked at him, for how he spoke down to him, for how tedious his argument was becoming. And it was that same resentment that drove him to fight his corner one last time. “What is it you actually want from me?” he asked through furrowed brows. “Or are you gonna keep me here all night?”

“I want you to apologise.”

Now it was August’s turn to scoff; whether he meant to or not, he couldn’t help it. “For what? I did nothing wrong.”

Carter fell silent once more. He grit his teeth so hard you could hear them grinding over one another as he set his jaw. But that pathetic laugh of his came out in a whisper around the sides, until it broke free altogether as he shook his head in disbelief. Stepping closer still, so that August could practically taste his cheap cologne, he latched onto August’s gaze again, and uttered a quiet, yet warning: “Let’s try that again.” And then, as though projecting for the rest of the street to hear. “I want you to apologise,” he repeated, before jabbing a stubby finger in Cindy’s direction. “No one gets to humiliate her.”

Digging his heels in, physically and metaphorically, August held his ground, and pressed the rubber soles of his sneakers into the sidewalk. Sure, he was a generally quiet guy, who most would assume wouldn’t say boo to a goose, but he wasn’t a pushover; he could stand up for what he knew was right when necessary. And in that moment he felt as though he needed to remind himself of that more than ever. “No.”

Carter gave him no opportunity to explain himself - not that he’d have cared to listen. “Fine,” he huffed. And with a firm shove to the chest, he put the grip of August’s sneaker soles to the test.

The blond stumbled back a pace, but kept his footing. Although he was definitely caught off-guard - so much so it rendered him oblivious to the wave of dread that flooded his whole body when Carter took another step towards him.

“Let’s see if this’ll get the message across,” he spat.

Carter moved too quickly for August’s overly taxed mind to register. A swing started from his shoulder and ended with white light exploding across August’s vision, accompanied by a dull, wet crack. The punch was direct but sloppy, driven more by wounded pride than skill. But the blistering pain radiating from the bridge of August’s nose, drawing involuntary tears to his eyes and sending him staggering backwards, proved it still had the desired effect.

Various exclamations of surprise arose from the surrounding jocks, and the approaching clacks of heels showed that the crowd was only growing.

August felt something slick and warm start to drip over his upper lip. Wiping a shaking hand under his throbbing nose just confirmed his suspicions: blood - and a lot of it.

“Holy shit, Carter,” came the slightly muffled remark from a wary, yet impressed bystander.

But Carter didn’t react. The punch had broken something open in him - a sort of insatiable hunger. “Still think this is funny, McNeeley?”

August opened his mouth to respond but the impact had stolen his breath away. All that came out was a feeble, wet cough.

He could barely even keep his eyes focused on the linebacker with how badly they were watering. The people, the palm trees, the lamp posts; they were all blurring together - shapes and colours streaking like someone had left a painting out in the rain.

Over the blood roaring in his ears, he heard another one of the nearby jocks offer some unwanted advice. “Come on, August. Hit him back.”

Snorting out a laugh, Carter ran with the suggestion. “Yeah, hit me back.”

“What?” August spluttered, in utter disbelief, still trying to blink away the needling pain spreading from his nose. “No.”

“Come on, don’t be a pussy,” came the jeer of another audience member.

And then one more. “Kick his ass.”

But August just shook his head; despite it all, he wasn’t prepared to give in to the goading. He had his morals and he was determined to stick to them. He was finding out firsthand that violence was never the answer. And no matter how much Carter was earning the role of the punching bag, August was no fighter, and that wasn’t about to change. “I’m not-”

Carter didn’t even let him finish. He swung his fist again, this time catching the top of August’s cheekbone. The hit knocked him off balance, and the blond staggered a few paces to try to keep his footing. His vision filled with white and black splodges, pulsing in different sizes, all vying for his attention, when all he really wanted to do was make sure his sneakers were finding purchase on solid ground. But every time he looked down the pavement lurched, and he felt his stomach try to follow suit.

“Come on, McNeeley. Your move,” Carter spat, holding his arms open, as though offering a ‘free shot’. “Whatcha gonna do?”

August barely even saw his taunting chin lift though; it was getting difficult to see anything between the burning humiliation and the all-too-sudden swelling of his eye. Despite the pulsing pressure spreading across his face, August swiped under his nose again before insisting, “I’m not fighting you, man.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Carter spat, more insulted by that answer than any punch the blond could have thrown.

With his frustration swelling by the second, Carter took another step forwards and shoved August in the centre of his chest, eyes frenzied as he demanded, “Hit me back.”

“I’m not fucking touching you,” August snapped, his own frustration starting to get the better of him - that, and the steadily mounting pain was making it increasingly difficult to remain calm.

“Hit me back,” Carter repeated, taking another step closer to August - so much so that he could feel the heat of his breath against his skin.

“No,” August said, standing firm despite the smarting of his eye and the dumbfounded audience before him. “What’s that gonna achieve?”

Snorting out a huff of disappointment - either due to the lack of a worthy opponent, or the opponent’s moral compass - Carter set his jaw, and snarled, “Fine.”

The next thing August felt was a deft punch to the gut that knocked any remaining air from his lungs. The impact was so sudden it almost bent him double. But before he could heave himself back to his full height, Carter’s fist returned, this time colliding with the edge of his jaw. August’s head whipped to the side as his teeth snapped together, splitting his lip open over them. He tasted blood almost instantly - warm and metallic and all too foreign. But he didn’t have enough time to ponder the flavour profile, because the second August tried to steady himself again, the blows to the head finally got the better of him, and he hit the pavement like a sack of gravel.

The pavement slammed into his hip and shoulder as a chorus of gasps and jeers worked their way through the deafening thud of his pulse in his ears. His palms burned where he’d tried fruitlessly to catch himself. And the bridge of his nose burned anew from where, upon impact, his now horribly bent out of shape glasses had dug into the bridge of his nose.

A broad shadow loomed over him, courtesy of the early evening sun, laying low in the sky. Carter’s chest rose and fell with purpose as he closed in on him. For a moment August thought he was going to kick him - he even braced himself for it. But he just stood there, watching him, like some zoo exhibit.

A silence had fallen over them at last, the audience included. There was no longer the buzz of excitement or morbid fascination in the air. The mood had drained into something much more subdued - almost awkward.

One of the jocks, a guy from his math class by the sounds of his voice, cleared his throat. “Alright, Carter. I think he’s got it.”

Carter heaved another breath as he stared August down, paying no mind to the entire street being suspended in uncomfortable anticipation. But after seeming to consider the interjection, he finally relaxed his jaw, and his fists. “He’d better,” he muttered.

August just lay there, in a crumpled heap, trying to will his lungs to start working again. He could barely see a thing between the throbbing of his eye and the way his vision swam in the sunlight. But the sound of sneakers slapping concrete gave him the tiniest relief that the ordeal had finally ended. But when he heard the clacking of heels, his eyelids fluttered open again.

“Carter, what the-”

But Cindy’s breathless exclamation was cut off by the linebacker grabbing her forearm - stopping her, and her feeble efforts to run to the blond, in her tracks.

Pulling her closer to him, hand still wrapped around her skinny bicep, he growled, “Forget him.” It was more an order than a suggestion.

August could just about make out Cindy hovering for a moment, expression too blurry to decipher. But it didn’t take much persuading for her to be led back up the street with the rest of the crowd, a girl friend on either arm to offer flowery advice or their own, unwanted two cents.

“Yeah, forget him, Cind. You deserve so much better. I mean, how could he not like you back?”

“It’s bogus. He’s probably queer.”

As if the humiliation wasn’t already burning through every layer of muscle he had, August was about to experience it seeping into his soul. Because a set of keds soon appeared before his eyes, accompanied by a voice he didn’t recognise. Another of Cindy’s entourage, he assumed.

She bent closer to his head, and although August couldn’t focus enough to read her expression, he could hear the maliciously saccharine grin in her tone. “Good luck getting a girl to date you now.”

At first the slicing remark seemed like the only threat. But then he felt something thick and icy cold splatter against his temple. Gasps arose from the crowd of cheerleaders, and shocked exclamations of “DeeDee!” - but the giggles were quick to follow, exposing their true take on her actions. And DeeDee, he assumed, didn’t stop until she’d dumped the entirety of her vanilla milkshake over his head.

Cackling, she stood back to admire her handiwork, before holding her takeout cup aloft and proudly admitting: “Guys, I think I need a refill before we leave!”

Raucous laughter and retreating footsteps faded into the distance at last, just about breaking through the thudding of his skull. The thrift store radio still drifted through the open doorway, cars rumbled along the Main Street around the corner, and the leaves of the palm trees lining the sidewalk rustled overhead - almost as though the world had resumed normal proceedings now that the altercation was over with.

For a moment, August just lay there, wishing he could just soak into the pavement like the whipped cream slopped around his head. But as he took a laboured breath through his mouth, and heard a new set of footsteps approaching, his surroundings started to come back to him, along with the realisation that no matter how much he couldn’t face the thought of moving, he couldn’t stay there forever. His sticky, bruising face wouldn’t exactly help the surrounding businesses flourish.

With a soft groan he rolled more onto his front and tried to push himself up on his forearms. But before he could fully straighten them, the footsteps behind him started speeding up - steadily at first, and then into a sprint. And then all of a sudden, the sneakers skidded to a halt and a pair of hands were on his shoulders, and then a pair of panicked green eyes, framed with shoulder-length blonde hair, flew in front of his.

“Oh my god, August,” Kona panted, eyes darting over every inch of him in a mix of utter terror, heartache and fury that August barely had time to process before they were gone again.

Her gaze had turned to the group of football players and cheerleaders disappearing around the corner at the end of the street - and her protective instincts kicked into overdrive. Pushing off into a sprint again, she tore after them, yelling at the top of her lungs.

“Hey! Get back here you fucking cowards!” Kona’s voice cracked down the street like a starter pistol, and her feet carried her as fast as the bullet - hair flying behind her like a flag of war. “You can’t just walk away!”

But the letterman jackets and pastel skirts vanishing around the brick wall of the old shoe store proved otherwise. Her pace slowed as her chances of a confrontation slipped away. She clenched her fists so hard her knuckles turned white, and her chest heaved as she contemplated chasing after them anyway - just to try to hurt them even half as much as she was hurting right now. So she could have the satisfaction of grabbing Carter Rawlins by the collar and swinging a fist into his ugly smug face.

But then August’s face flashed through her mind again. And she breathed out a quiet, “Oh shit.”

With that, her fury relented, and her true priorities came rushing back to her. She spun on her heels and raced back to her best friend’s side, dropping to her knees with a smack that took half the skin on them with it.

By the time she reached him, her anger had curdled into something much shakier, and much more uncertain. She simply didn’t know where to start, or what to say. And all that came out in the end was a choked: “Oh, Auggie.”

He was almost to his knees now, gingerly pushing himself up on stinging palms. His arms trembled with the effort, and he let out an involuntary hiss that had Kona scrambling to his aid.

“Don’t move,” she said hurriedly, even though he already was. Her hands hovered uselessly for a moment, as though she couldn’t figure out where it wouldn’t hurt to touch. “Just - just hold still for a second.”

“It’s fine, I’ve got it,” August said, voice coming out a wet wheeze despite his conviction.

With another wince, he was able to get himself into a seated position - one where he could finally try starting to focus again. And although she was still fuzzy at the edges, August was at last able to muster a half-hearted smile for his rescuer. Traces of vanilla milkshake clung to his hair and the collar of his shirt, forging sticky rivulets across his face that mixed with the blood - both new and old. His left eye was already turning shades of maroon, with the lids forming puffy crescents that just made his vision worse. And his lip was split near the corner, so swollen it kept catching on his teeth every time he tried to move it.

Tears prickled Kona’s eyes as she took it all in - that same mix of terror, heartache and fury swelling in her chest again. “Jesus, August…they really-” She swallowed hard. “What the hell did they do?”

“Uh, taught me a lesson, I think,” August said with an almost sarcastic apathy.

Kona’s brows furrowed. “You can’t be joking around right now,” she retorted, aggrieved that he was taking this so lightly. “They could have killed you, dude,” she pressed on. But her voice started to wobble as the moment she caught his limp body hitting the pavement out of the corner of her eye started to play over and over in her mind - her prior plans to clean off the chalkboard sign at the front door of her parents’ record shop long forgotten. “I thought they did for a second.”

Seeing how torn up Kona was over this ached way worse than any of his new bruises. Nursing them could wait - he had to help her first. He reached out a grazed palm and rested it on her shoulder. “It’s alright, Kona. I’m fine.”

”You are not fine,” she sharply insisted, shrugging his hand off. “Please tell me you at least hit him back.”

August just snorted. “Does it look like I did?”

Kona let out a groan of fiery, vengeful frustration - desperate for some sense of justice. She turned her eyes to the sky, and the clouds pinking with the first hints of sunset, as though searching for answers. “Oh my god, August. Why not?” Coming up short, her gaze found his again. “You’re like a mini mountain now,” she continued, gesturing to his broad shoulders and new height. “You could have floored him.”

“‘Cause if I did then I’m no better than him,” August explained, voice steady as he stuck to his beliefs. Thinking back to each blow, the impact points seemed to start throbbing even harder. Gently shaking his head to rid it of the memories, he scoffed a begrudging: “Like throwing a punch is ever going to fix anything.”

As much as Kona could understand August’s rationale, and knew he was a better person for it, it didn’t stop her own fiery temper from burning with resentment, and searching for hopeless answers. “Then why didn’t you at least run?”

August just scoffed again, this time through a wry smile. “What? So they could beat my ass down the street?”

Kona’s disapproving gaze met his self-deprecating smirk, proving a tough crowd for his apathetic stab at a joke. At a loss of what to do or say next, she just found herself staring at him through pinched brows - bottom lip quivering with pent-up anger and the threat of apologetic tears.

They stayed in that silence for several seconds before Kona realised August’s level-headedness was helping him process all this a hell of a lot better than she was. And that it wasn’t lecturing he needed, it was a shoulder to lean on - and likely some ice to help with the swelling. Reaching a hand out, she pushed a sticky strand of hair away from his good eye, and trailed it down to cup his bruising cheek. The pad of her thumb stuck momentarily on the drying blood and ice cream, and she gently shook her head - in both disbelief and disapproval. “You’re an idiot,” she gently scolded, voice thick with those same apologetic tears from earlier.

Again, August managed a small chuckle. “Yeah, I’ve heard,” he conceded. But as he bashfully dropped his gaze to the pavement, the throbbing of his nose rushed back to the forefront of his mind, accompanied by dark red spots littering the pavement in front of him. Startled, August jerked his head back, only to then feel something warm and familiar dripping over his lips and chin. Swiping the back of his hand under his nostrils confirmed that it was blood again, and by the feel of things, his nose hadn’t enjoyed that change in head position. “Oh shit,” he mumbled, clumsily trying to clean himself up with the heel of his palm.

Unable to bear watching him struggle, and eyes widening at the sheer volume of blood, Kona hurriedly wrenched the patterned bandana from her hair and held it out to him. “Here, use this.”

“What? No!” August exclaimed, his own eyes widening, although this time in horror. “It’ll ruin it.”

But as Kona watched the blood start trickling down over his wrists she leant forwards and shoved it over his nose anyway. “Like I give a crap,” she huffed, deepening her lovingly disapproving frown. “We’ve gotta stop this bleeding; I’m not having you pass out on me too.”

Either Kona channelled her frustration through her fingertips or August’s nose was a lot more sensitive than she anticipated, because as soon as she put any pressure on it he let out a string of hissed “ow”s in quick succession, and wrenched the bandana out of her hand like siblings fighting over the remote.

Both eventually conceding, Kona sat back on her heels and watched as August begrudgingly held the now-crimson-smattered bandana to the base of his nose, and started to tip his head back. But it didn’t take long for Kona to jump back into action again, springing up to her knees and pushing the back of his head until he tilted it forwards. “You’ve gotta lean forwards, Aug.”

“But that made it worse,” he protested.

“I know, but if you lean back you can choke on it,” she explained. “Just keep applying that pressure and it should stop.”

“When?” came August’s half-hearted, muffled question.

“Do I look like a doctor?” Kona snarkily replied, garnering a lop-sided smile from her makeshift patient. “I don’t know. But I do know that we can’t stay out here forever,” she continued, returning to her more genuine caregiver role. “We need to get you inside; get you cleaned up a bit. Do you think you can stand?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Alright, come on. Just take it steady,” she said, shifting so that she was next to him, and tucking her arm under his - hovering in case he needed a hand. Whilst he wasn’t watching, she plucked his bent and twisted glasses from the sidewalk and pocketed them - not that they’d be making much of a difference to how much he’d be able to see with how much his eye was starting to swell.

August pushed himself off the pavement with an involuntary groan. The world tilted violently around him for a second, and he almost landed on the ground again. He leaned into Kona more than either were expecting, but she caught him with her hip. And despite staggering a little, she kept him upright, arm firmly wrapped around his waist to anchor him to her.

“You’re okay, you’re okay. I’ve got you,” she reassured, despite the hammering of her heart. She waited a beat to watch for him starting to sway again, but when he seemed to be standing firm, she gently checked, “You good?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” August mumbled through a smile mostly obscured by her bandana, still being held firm under his nostrils.

They started down the street with slow, uneven steps, carefully dodging the chalky mess of drying milkshake and blood droplets, as they lumbered towards Kona’s family’s record store. They had to stop a few times when August’s vision started to swim, or his head started spinning, but Kona never rushed him. She just murmured quiet reassurances and promises that her parents would know what to do. Or at least she hoped they did.

The acrid odour of hibiscus air freshener layered on top of decades old urinals, and the farts from years gone by still clinging to the grout between the tiles was not helping the churning of August’s stomach. And it was a far cry from the comforting smell of cardboard, vinyl and tropical fruit that the front of house of the record shop usually held. But August could understand why Mrs Birr would have wanted to hide him from the customers, even if she didn’t actually say so, and especially after he’d timidly confessed he felt like he was going to puke. And so the floor of the customer bathroom had become his sanctuary: accompanied only by the distant rumblings of Kona’s dad’s show over the speaker system, a dust bunny tucked behind the base of the toilet bowl, and a waste paper basket now overflowing with sticky, screwed up pieces of toilet paper that he’d lamely attempted to clean himself up with.

That is, until a knock sounded at the door.

“You still alive in there, Auggie?”

A smile wafted across August’s face at the sound of his best friend’s voice. Chuckling quietly to himself as he passed her now crusty bandana between his fingers, he replied, “Yep, still here.”

Wordlessly, Kona pushed open the door to the bathroom and approached with a lumpy plastic bag, wrapped in a cleaning cloth, and an optimistic smile. “My mom managed to get you some ice,” she said, sinking down onto the tiled floor opposite him. “Sorry about the rag - it’s a clean one, I promise. We just didn’t have any actual towels or anything in the back.”

“It’s fine,” August chuckled, gratefully receiving the makeshift ice pack from her. “Thanks. I’ll pay her back.”

Kona just frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous - it’s the least we can do. And anyway, mom got it for free from the convenience store across the street. Mrs Diaz saw the whole thing, so she was more than happy to help,” she explained, pausing to watch August’s expression before continuing. “And she said she’d give a statement if you wanted to press charges.”

August scoffed and shook his head, gingerly placing the bag of ice up to his eye. “I appreciate the thought but there’s no way I’m getting the cops involved.”

“August, they need to be held responsible,” Kona argued - her tone more serious than what she was used to.

“I get that, but I’d rather just forget it ever happened,” August countered, letting his head fall back against the wall behind him as his eyes drifted to the water-stained ceiling. “And snitching would only aggravate them more.”

Conceding far easier than she’d anticipated, Kona dropped the idea altogether, knowing August’s point carried a lot of weight. But as she watched him half-heartedly nursing his injuries, she couldn’t help but add on a mildly teasing: “You’re gonna have a pretty hard time forgetting about it with that shiner.” And August’s soft snort of laughter only spurred her on. “You’re gonna have one hell of a black eye.”

“My mom’s gonna kill me when she sees it,” August mumbled, already cringing at the thought of the lecturing he’d be subjected to. But a silver lining soon brought a fleeting smile back to his face, “On the bright side though, it should make me seem a whole lot less desirable. We might finally see all the locker notes start to dry up.”

“Oh I don’t think they’re that easily deterred,” Kona protested, although she shared the same, knowing grin as the boy opposite her. “If anything they might think it makes you look tough.”

“I‘m about as tough as a marshmallow,” August chuckled at his own expense. “They just don’t see that part.”

As Kona’s own soft giggles settled down, she went back to quietly studying him. His gaze was tracing lazy patterns on the ceiling, but she could still see the puffy, scarlet bumps distending his skin at awkward angles, and deep crimson crusting in corners and crevices their prior, hurried clean-up efforts had missed.

She swallowed, brows pinching in worry as she cautiously asked. “Does it hurt?”

His gaze drifted to hers as he awkwardly shifted the bag of ice, smiling through the smarting pain. “Everything hurts,” he pitifully revealed, still jovial despite the situation. “Why?”

“I don’t know, you just look…crazy,” she admitted with a breathy laugh, finding any other adjective inadequate for what she was actually looking at. Leaning forwards, she reached out a careful hand, hovering as though she was too scared to touch it. “And your nose… Do you think it’s broken?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t looked yet,” he said. “Why?”

“It just looks…” Again, Kona found herself struggling to find the right word. “…Lumpy.”

August snorted. “Great, so it looks even more fucked up than normal then?”

“It has never looked ‘fucked up’, don’t say that,” Kona scolded, but the years of August’s muttered complaints about his awkward nose shape told her he’d take no notice. “And anyway, it could just be the swelling,” she added.

“I don’t know, I’ll take anything to start looking ‘ugly’ again at this point,” August muttered, mostly to himself. But still quickly changed the topic before Kona could start chastising him again. “At least it’s stopped bleeding now,” he said, absentmindedly toying with the bloodied fabric in his other hand, which prompted his next comment. “I’ll get you a new bandana.”

“I don’t want one.”

Now it was August’s turn to furrow his brows in disapproval as he looked at the tousled blonde locks tumbling freely to her collar bones, once held back by the paisley-patterned cotton in question. “It’s ruined, Kone.”

“And I’ve got like a million more,” she reasoned, reaching forward again, only this time to lay a hand on his forearm. “Stop worrying about everything else. The only thing that matters right now is making sure you’re okay.”

“And I’ve told you, I’m fine,” August replied, hoping his voice was enough reassurance since his appearance didn’t seem to be helping his cause. “I took a couple of punches - it’s not like they slit my throat. I’ll live.”

Conceding, Kona sat back again, letting her back hit the plastic-coated stall wall with a sigh. Trying not to think about how disgusting it was to be sitting on the floor of the men’s bathroom, and what could be seeping into the fabric of her shorts (even with how many times her mom sent her dad in here to clean it, there still had to be a myriad of germs clinging to the floor tiles), her mind started to wander elsewhere. And thus, the conversation took a new turn.

“How did it even start?”

“How did what start?” August asked, mind still slightly foggy from its recent bashing.

“The fight,” Kona clarified - curious, but from a place of nothing but care. “What made them start on you?”

“I guess I wounded his pride or something,” he mumbled, battling with his brain to recall the details. “Apparently turning down the girl he wants to date was the wrong thing to do,” he continued, rolling his eyes at the absurdity before muttering under his breath, “Asshole.”

Kona’s eyes widened. “Hold on. This was all over Cindy Jenkins?”

“Yeah. ‘Cause I embarrassed her, or thought I was better than him or some shit. I don’t even remember. I just know it was stupid.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Kona said, hurriedly cutting off August’s despondent rambling with a new urgency. “Cindy Jenkins asked you out? Cheerleader Cindy Jenkins?”

“Yeah…” August trailed off, surprised that she was so hooked on that one detail.

Kona’s eyes shone with amazement. “Dude, she’s like one of the prettiest girls in school - and most popular. That’s insane!”

August just rolled his eyes again though and let his head fall back against the tiled wall. “That’s one way to put it,” he mumbled.

Undeterred by his lack of interest, Kona continued to gush, “I knew girls thought you were hot but I didn’t know you were ‘Cindy Jenkins’ kind of girls hot. Holy shit.” But when August didn’t even so much as acknowledge her entertainment with his new popularity amongst the opposite sex, she posed a new question. “So what, did she ask you out on a date then?”

“Yeah, she wanted me to go see a movie with her tomorrow night, I guess,” he recalled, words dragging over his fat lower lip.

“That’s pretty bold of her - I always thought she was the ‘let the guys come to her’ type,” Kona mused, fascinated by the very idea of the interaction. “And then what? You just told her ‘no’?”

“Pretty much,” August sighed.

“But why?” Kona asked, astounded that he didn’t share her same logic. “She’s gorgeous - and insanely popular. Even if it was just one date, imagine what that could have done for you-”

“I barely know her,” August argued. “The only class we share is biology. I don’t think she’s even spoken to me before today.”

“So? That’s what dates are for: getting to know people,” Kona tried.

But August just groaned in resignation.

Kona wasn’t about to back down as quickly this time though. So, coming from a place of nothing but love, she tried to push back a little more. “Come on, August, you’ve gotta give yourself a chance. I know it’s scary putting yourself out there, especially for the first time, but it’s like jumping out a plane; once you’ve done it, that’s it, you’re out there - it’s not like you can go back. And these girls do genuinely like you, you know? So it’s not like you’d be jumping without a parachute. Everything would be fine - probably more than fine.”

“You don’t know that,” he glumly retorted.

“Of course I do,” Kona encouraged.

“No, you don’t,” August cut in before she could continue her bolstering. Sighing, his gaze drifted from hers, finding it impossible for the words to come out otherwise; at least this way he could try to trick his brain into thinking no one was listening. “I can barely speak around them, Kona. My mouth feels like I’ve swallowed a bag of cotton balls, and I start hyperventilating, and then I feel like I’m gonna hurl. And that’s just a thirty second conversation in the hall.”

“That’s just nerves,” Kona reasoned - although August knew his own mind better than she did. “And I get that, I do, but you really don’t need to be nervous. Any girl would be insanely lucky to have a guy like you as her date.”

August just shook his head though, and bitterly scoffed again. “What? Even Cindy fucking Jenkins?”

“Well duh; you’d treat her a hell of a lot better than any of those meathead football players could,” she explained - but August’s expression remained as resistant and pained as ever. She couldn’t bear to see him like this though - with that element of self-loathing underlying every word that left his lips. She cared about him far too much to let him get away with that. So she shifted until she was sat cross-legged, and tried a new angle - hoping that a more forward approach would help them gain some ground. “Come on, Auggie. You can’t just hide from this forever. Just go on one date - just to try it.”

“With some girl I barely know, who I can barely string together a sentence for?” August asked with a deadpan, sarcastic tone.

“Fine,” she conceded, although a faint smile started to tug at the corners of her lips. “Let’s get rid of that obstacle. Let’s find you a girl who you’ve known for years, who you talk to almost every day, and set you up on a date with her.”

“Who are you gonna-” But August cut himself off when his disgruntled gaze settled on her knowing, almost hopeful grin.

“…Pretty good, huh?” she chuckled, as that grin started to morph into a triumphant smirk.

But August’s expression just clouded over, and a sense of dread started to twist in the pit of his stomach. “Kona-” he started to warn, but she jumped in before he could get anything else out.

“Just hear me out; it’s the perfect solution. You get to get over your ‘first date’ jitters and see what it’s all about, and you can just relax and enjoy it because you know you’re not gonna freak out ‘cause it’s just me. It’ll just be like every other time we’ve hung out - minus the morons,” she tagged on, taking an affectionate dig towards the other half of their usual quartet, before continuing. “No expectations, no stakes. Just us.”

August supposed that Kona had paused to try to gauge his reaction, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. And when he feebly tried to get her to stop before she just made things worse, it felt like he’d swallowed a sandbox - so all that came out was a croaked: “Kona, you don’t-”

But she couldn’t seem to let go. If anything, his pleas just fuelled her more. “I just want to help you, Auggie. You just need some confidence. I’m not saying you have to like me like that, or that we have to do anything romantic - we just need to get you in that environment so you can realise it’s not as scary as you think,” she explained, before swallowing and adding a slightly more cautious: “But if anything did happen it’s not like I’d be…opposed.”

August felt his stomach try to drop out his ass. If he hadn’t been sat down he was sure it’d have hit the tiles with a wet slap. One glimpse of Kona’s hopeful smile out of the corner of his eye and he felt like his lungs were trapped in a vacuum - like the weight of her words were crushing his ribcage from the inside out. He tipped his head back in despair, as though clinging to the hope that if he didn’t actually look at her he could convince himself this wasn’t really happening. Through all this unwanted female attention, the steady reliability of Kona’s friendship had been one of the few things keeping him sane. And as if getting beaten up for it wasn’t already bad enough - the realisation that she was wrenching that anchor to normality away had tears threatening to prickle his weary green eyes.

“No, Kone,” he murmured to the ceiling, screwing his eyes shut as if that could make it all just disappear. “Please, not you too.”

“Look, I’m not gonna go around shoving love poems into your locker like some of these lunatics,” Kona began, with this odd kind of bashful ferocity that felt completely alien to both of them. “But I’m also not gonna sit here and say that I don’t think you’ve gotten hot, because that’d be a lie. Mainly though, I just see what a great guy you are, Auggie, and what a great heart you have - more than any of those other shallow bitches see anyway. And I just want you to be able to realise that you’re capable of finding love if you put yourself in the position to find it. It doesn’t matter who it’s with: me, Cindy, whoever she is…” Her rambling trailed off as her impassioned spark fizzled out, and a longing sigh slipped into its place. “I just want you to be happy.”

A loaded silence settled between them, broken only by a dripping tap and their thudding heartbeats. Kona sat, waiting for August to respond, or react - acknowledge that she’d spoken at all. And August sat, fighting to steady his breathing, praying that the next time he opened his eyes he’d be in his bed, and this whole thing would just be one, horrible dream.

But that moment never came. Instead, his blurry surroundings came back to him with that undeniably real aching from his face, and chest - and the gnawing sense that a pair of eyes were watching him.

“So…” Kona continued, gaze and tone careful as she tried to study his body language, and played with a fraying thread on one of her many friendship bracelets to stop herself from freaking out. “What do you think?”

August let out a long, deep breath as he weighed up how to respond. But amidst all the possible options, one fact always remained the same. And with a soft smile, he realised that should be where he started. “I think you’re awesome, Kona.”

“I’d have to agree,” she fired back - her playful brag working to put them both at ease again. Or so she thought. August’s steadily shifting expression told a different story though.

“But I also think you’ve worked yourself up way too much over this… And you’re not thinking straight,” he said, handling each word as delicately as if it were made of glass.

“Really? Because I think I’m thinking a lot more clearly than usual,” Kona softly bit back, standing firm in her feelings.

“You’re not,” he countered - brows pinching with worry when he watched hers knit with confusion. Taking in another slow breath, he set the bag of ice aside so that he could focus on her fully. “And yeah, you know me a hell of a lot better than those other girls - but if you knew me, like really knew me… We would not be having this conversation,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “We might not even be friends.”

Kona’s confusion just deepened as she leaned forwards, as though getting closer to him would help her understand. “What are you talking about? Of course we’d still be friends; nothing could get in the way of that,” she insisted - almost hurt that he’d think such a thing of her. “And what do you mean I don’t know you? I’ve known you since the first grade. I know your shoe size, your favourite colour, your ice cream order... I know you only make cookies when you’re trying to get on my good side, and you only make brownies when you’re trying to get on Zack’s. I know you only drink soda if it’s cola flavoured. I know you dip everything in honey mustard. I know you’re on your fifth hamster - Hermes - and he prefers his ball to his wheel. I know you tie your shoes weirdly. I know you eat a KitKat like a freak. And I know you secretly love watching trashy tv shows - especially with your sisters… What else is there to know?”

August didn’t know if he could bring himself to say it. But he knew he had to keep talking - he just had to tread very carefully. “Look, Kona. You’ve been a great friend - one I didn’t ever think I’d be lucky enough to have. I still don’t know how you put up with hanging around with three guys all the time, especially when we’re as annoying as we are, but I’m so glad you do…” he trailed off as his smile started to falter though. “But I’m not who you think I am. I’m not like the other guys at school - and I’m not like Benny and Zack. Not like you think I am.”

“August - what are you talking about?” Kona repeated, feeling as though he may as well have been trying to speak another language.

The slight undertone of concern creeping into Kona’s baffled gaze made August pause. He knew he was backing himself into a corner here, and he was running out of options for distractions. He had to face the music sooner or later. And so, after a long, trembling breath, he started to unravel his jumbled thoughts. “Do you know why it sucks so bad that all this started today because of Cindy Jenkins?”

“No…” Kona slowly admitted, already wary about the potential wild goose chase she felt she was being led into.

“Because we’re in the same biology class,” August explained.

But Kona just looked even more confused than before. “Mr Kasuba’s? August, what does that-?”

“Just- just hear me out, okay?” he stammered, hiding his shaking hands in his lap. Now that he’d strapped himself into this rollercoaster he had to ride it out - and the less obstacles in the way, the easier he hoped getting the words out would be. “You know how I always bitch to you about the cheerleaders who sit on the next bench over?”

Kona’s intrigued, yet cautious nod should have spurred him on, but it just made his next words heavier - forcing him to shove them out with everything he had. “Well, Cindy’s one of those cheerleaders… And yeah, it’s annoying when they talk over the whole class, or sit there painting their nails during the labs. But Cindy herself is…fine. She’s not the problem. It just sucks because… all he does is stare at her.”

Kona just looked at August as though he’d been dropped down from another planet - totally and utterly lost. “Who? Mr Kasuba??”

August snorted out a laugh, grateful that it managed to somewhat settle the nerves swelling in the pit of his stomach - especially considering what he was building himself up to say. He gently shook his head, then tentatively corrected her. “Cody Clark.”

Kona stalled. “Your lab partner?” she asked, confusion twisting into curiosity as she pictured the swoopy-haired brunet. His tanned skin barely broke through the mass of freckles dusting its surface, his hazel eyes held a playful sort of mischief, but his smile was always warm - inviting, almost - the kind that immediately puts you at ease. She sat behind him in her algebra class, and he seemed nice enough, but she’d never really paid him any attention. She sometimes heard him talking about the school paper, so she assumed he was part of the journalism club - but that was about as much as she knew. And as far as she knew, August didn’t have any other connections with him. So what was the big deal? “What do you mean?” she continued. “How much do you guys have to concentrate on what you’re doing to not fail?”

“It’s not about passing the class,” August sighed, letting his head fall back against the bathroom wall again as his confession came tumbling out. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her though - muddy green eyes fixing on the rusting door hinge so that he could trick himself into thinking no one was really listening. “It’s because I want him to look at me - but he can’t take his eyes off her, and her stupid, shiny hair.” The more words fell from his lips, the less control he had over them. It was as though his brain didn’t trust that it’d get the chance to release all this information again - so it was running with it - and making his mouth run alongside. “And I just- I don’t understand why. She’ll hold up the whole class with the dumbest questions, and then just skip all the work anyway. She’ll chew gum and reapply her lipgloss through the entire lesson, and then she’ll just stick it under the desk instead of putting it in the trash like everyone else because it’s ’too far’. And she can be so blunt - and sometimes just straight up mean. I mean seriously, she wouldn’t even give him the time of day if he asked her. And yet somehow, he’s still obsessed with her. And I just… I go home every night and I just want to scream into my pillow because it’s so unfair.”

Kona’s curiosity started to become more cautious as she saw the glassy sheen developing over his irises, and heard his voice start to falter with nerves. But her confusion didn’t shift - if anything, it just deepened. Sure, she could understand why all that was frustrating. But she still didn’t get why he cared in the first place. Or why he was trying to link this back to their conversation about dating. “Okay… I guess? But, Auggie, Cody Clark’s a guy…”

Those glassy irises locked onto hers with a resigned dread that she’d never seen before, sitting above a tiny, trembling smile. “Kona,” he uttered, voice barely above a whisper as he held her gaze - a silent plea for her to understand without him having to spell it out for her.

For a while Kona didn’t. She just stared at him with that same concerned bewilderment from before - totally and utterly lost. “Yeah..?”

And then suddenly it all clicked.

Her eyes widened a fraction, as though she was seeing him again for the first time. And she let out an involuntary gasp. “Oh,” she breathed - leaning back against the stall wall as the full weight of the realisation hit her. “Holy shit,” she continued, lips splitting into a soft, incredulous smile.

“Yeah, holy shit,” August muttered - once more unable to meet her gaze.

The confession plunged them into silence again - heavy with uncertainty. August could feel his heartbeat throughout his entire body - it hammered in his chest, and throbbed through his swollen eye. But he took comfort in it; at least it gave him something to focus on besides the tsunami of anxieties crashing down over him now that something he’d been trying to hide for so long was out in the open. The fact that Kona had made no effort to speak, let alone move, was not helping to put him at ease though.

He swallowed thickly, as though forcing down a bouncy ball, given the fact that the lump in his throat returned almost instantly. The back of his skull hit the wall as he tilted his gaze to the water-stained ceiling with a dull thud. He screwed his eyes shut, praying that the stinging of his eyes wouldn’t amount to anything more. He crumpled the crispy bandana in his fist, trying to hold on to something tangible to stop himself from spiralling.

And still, she didn’t say anything.

Seconds crawled by in what felt like hours, and before long, August couldn’t bear the silence any longer - he couldn’t bear being in that room, in that situation. “I, uh…” he stammered, swallowing again to try to stop his voice from shaking, still unable to look at the blonde opposite him. “I should probably- probably go-”

“No, no, no,” Kona hurriedly grabbed his arm as he made a move to get up, holding him in place and finally managing to get his eyes back on her. “What are you talking about? Stay, please,” she tacked on with a hopeful, yet flustered smile as she guided him back into place. “You’ve gotta rest,” she added as she then guided the ice bag back into his hand, and up to his eye - the whole time with him watching her like she was a bomb about to explode. But the explosion never came, she just sat back herself and started to apologise. “Sorry, I just… I was just thinking.”

“…About?” came August’s very cautious reply.

“Cody.” However, August’s guarded, pinched look of worry spurred her on to keep explaining. “I mean, sure, he’s nice enough… But come on, Auggie, he’s pretty lame.”

August’s expression jumped to one of surprise, before his eyebrows scrunched in offence. “No he’s not.”

“Yes, he is,” Kona countered. “He’s so boring. All he talks about is the fucking school paper.”

“He wants to be a journalist,” August interjected, harkening back to the fleeting moments in their biology class where they actually held a conversation.

“That doesn’t mean he has to make it his entire personality. And oh my god, have you seen the way he walks?”

“What’s wrong with the way he walks?”

“He looks like a damn sasquatch. That shuffle with his posture? He looks ridiculous!”

The more Kona fixated on Cody, and the less on August’s admission, especially when she did so with such comedic emphasis, the more the weight of it seemed to lift from his chest. And before long, he even felt a laugh slip past his lips. “Okay, yeah, I’ll give you that,” he chuckled, having to concede.

“And I’m sorry, but I just can’t get past the Tennessee accent. He just sounds like a cowboy.”

“Kona-”

“He sounds like freaking Quick Draw McGraw!”

That, and Kona’s subsequent impression of the cartoon horse, drew a full guffaw from August’s bloodied lips. His eyes crinkled and his belly rumbled with mirth instead of the crushing anxiety from before. “Holy shit, you’re right, he does,” he laughed - finally able to let go in a way he hadn’t been able to for weeks. There were no unwanted observers, no pressures to conform - it was just him and his best friend, goofing around to their hearts’ content.

Their teasing remarks and ridiculous impressions, and the accompanying giggles, started to peter out in the end though. But in a stark contrast to how he felt earlier, it left August unable to take his eyes off Kona. He just stared with this incredulous look on his face.

“What?” she eventually asked through a final breathy chuckle.

“You’re not… So, you’re like…okay about this? About…you know?” he stuttered, still not sure he was brave enough to actually say it out loud.

She shuffled closer to him, so that she could place a hand on his shoulder. And in a tone a lot gentler than her typical approach to conversations, she held his gaze and promised, “August, you are one of my best friends. All I have ever cared about, and will ever care about, is you being happy... And if this is what it takes, then I’m here for you - every step of the way.”

Still, August just stared at her. His lip quivered with uncertainty, but his deep olive irises shone with disbelief, as though he thought it was all too good to be true. But Kona’s devotion never wavered - her hand remained as steady as her gaze. “You… You really mean that?”

“Of course I mean it! Since when have I lied to you?” Kona playfully fired back.

August let out a sigh of relief that turned into more of a choked, incredulous laugh. He tipped his head back against the wall as his gaze landed on the ceiling again - only this time in a silent display of gratitude to whatever powers that be, for putting him on earth in the right time and place to be able to land Kona as a friend. Before he could stop them, thankful tears started to leak from his good eye - likely the product of what felt like a lifetime of mounting anxieties starting to melt away.

Kona was quick to jump into action though, reaching up to brush them away with the pad of her thumb and then pull him into a hug. “Oh Auggie, come on, it’s okay,” she comforted, rubbing a hand up and down his back as he collapsed into her embrace.

“I know, I know,” he murmured, blinking back any further tears as he sat back again, gently shaking his head - although he did soak up the hug for several seconds before. “It’s just - I’ve never told anyone that before. I’ve never even really…said it out loud. And I only ever pictured it going badly, so for you to be cool about it…”

“Yeah well anyone who’s not cool about it doesn’t genuinely care about you, Auggie. ‘Cause if they did, then who you choose to love wouldn’t matter. Like I said, all that matters is that you’re happy - and if anyone disagrees then you don’t need them in your life,” she told him - the ferocity in her fondness for the boy showing through in her tone.

“Thanks, Kona,” he murmured through a relieved, yet tired smile. Chuckling, almost pitifully to himself, he tagged on. “I thought I was just going crazy at first, you know? Before it all became more…real.”

Leaning back a touch, in a moment of casual spontaneity, Kona found her mouth running away from her brain - spilling thoughts she’d barely given herself a chance to process yet. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I definitely like guys, because I still think Marty Lopez is like one of the hottest guys on Earth, let alone just at our school. But then every time I see Isla Ross playing volleyball I get this weird butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling and the room starts to feel like it’s about a hundred degree in there,” she confessed, eyes glossing over as the confession spilled out of her. She stalled for a moment once she realised it was out in the open, but soon found August’s bewildered, but encouraging gaze, and her lips split into a relieved grin of her own. “And I don’t exactly know if I’ve processed what that means for me yet. But, uh, if that means you’re going crazy, then I guess we can go insane together.”

“Sounds like a plan,” August chuckled, relishing the comfort he could take from knowing they could fall back into their usual rhythm again, with no more secrets building up walls between them. Well, almost no secrets.

“Holy shit,” Kona went on to breathe, gently shaking her head as she marvelled at him, and the beautiful absurdity of the situation. “This is so wild. You’ve got practically every girl in school wanting to get in your pants, but you’re batting for the same team they are. Zack’s gonna freak when he finds out - in a good way, obviously-”

“Woah, woah, woah,” August jumped in, eyebrows suddenly pinching with worry again and panic rising in the back of his throat, stalling his words. “You’re- you’re not gonna tell him, are you?”

Kona paused, cautiously confused once more. “…Are you not gonna tell him?”

August shifted nervously - gaze dropping and then bouncing back in moments of fleeting bravery as he rubbed the back of his neck and stammered through his reasonings. “Well, I, uh, yeah…eventually, I guess. But I don’t… I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet. I mean, no offense, but I wasn’t really planning on doing this today either,” he admitted with an awkward chuckle before continuing. “I thought I’d have more chance to… I don’t know, build myself up for it.”

Trying to pull his gaze back to her in full, she nudged his thigh with the toe of her sneaker and gently reassured, “Hey, don’t sweat it. It’s cool - you’ll know when the time’s right.” Warming the air between them with a familiar grin, she then leaned forwards. “And in the meantime, the secret’s safe with me,” she promised - holding her pinky finger out until August locked his around it, her efforts to coax him into returning her smile finally proving successful. She couldn’t let them sit in the quiet comfort for too long though, almost too eager to give her next offer. “And not that I think your mom would be an asshole like this, but if you ever need a fake girlfriend to hide from the homophobes, I’m totally down.”

“Really?” came August’s snorted, almost disbelieving laugh.

”Totally,” Kona insisted. “Whatever you need me to do, I’m down.”

August’s easygoing laughter echoed off the tiled walls, relief flowing out of him like the blood he’d left at the curbside. Gratitude soaked into his bones as he settled his gaze on Kona again, thanking his lucky stars that she was treating this all so…normally. “And that’s why you’re my best friend,” he grinned.

“Well, I didn’t want to brag…” Kona trailed off, playfully hamming up her reaction to the flattery to draw another chuckle from the bruised blond’s lips. “We do need to work on raising your standards though,” she teasingly added.

“What are you talking about?” August scoffed in humoured reproach.

“Cody Clark? Seriously August?” Kona asked, eyebrow raised in friendly judgement. “You’re one of the hottest guys in school right now and the highest you can set your sights is Cody Clark?” she went on, eyebrow inching higher with each beat of emphasis. “We’ve gotta start aiming higher than that.”

August just shook his head with another laugh, although this one sounded more pitiful. “I don’t think I'll be doing any ‘aiming’; it’s not like I’ve got a potential dating pool to pick from,” he said, wincing as he readjusted the ice pack. Prickling with self-consciousness, in a moment of boldness he decided to add, “And besides, it’s not like he’s the only guy I like.”

Kona’s eyes sparkled with intrigue as she leaned forwards, resting her elbows on her knees. “Oh? There’s more?”

August let out a bashful huff of air through his nose. “There’s…a few.”

“Oh my god, spill,” Kona enthused, juniper eyes ablaze with interest.

“No,” he quickly dismissed, feigning nonchalance - although the subtle flushing of his cheeks gave him away.

“Come on, please!” she pleaded, her excitement and the novelty of the moment getting the better of her. “I never normally get to have ‘guy talk’ like this - this is so fun!” But when August’s stance showed no signs of budging, she took to prying of her own accord. “Do I know any of them? Have you got like a ‘type’? Please don’t tell me they’re all cowboy wannabes.”

August just shook his head, and sheepishly smiled. Although he did have to avert his gaze again as he quietly admitted, “You definitely know one…”

At first August didn’t think that she’d even heard him. But when he finally caught her eye again he realised that her silence was just because her mouth had dropped open in an even more intense, amazed intrigue. “Shut up,” she breathed. Then leaned in even closer to prompt: “Go on.”

August couldn’t help but laugh at the sudden flip, but again just shook his head - although this time a little more firmly; and a lot more sure of his words. “No - because that is never amounting to anything more.”

“You don’t know that,” Kona tried, still hopeful.

“No, I do, Kona,” he said, a hint of longing still creeping into his tone despite seemingly having resigned himself to his fate already. “‘Cause I know for a fact he doesn’t like me like that. And I’ve finally come to terms with it - so we’re not opening that wound back up.”

“Well who is it?”

“Ben-”

But Kona never got her answer, because the voice from the hall drew both of their heads towards the door.

“Why are you following me?” it continued - growing louder with the accompanying lumbering footsteps. “I told you I gotta pee.”

“Mrs Birr said they’re in here,” another voice joined the commotion of bodies shoving past each other down the cramped corridor, and fighting for the space in front of the door.

“In the men’s room? What are you-?”

Bentley must have come out on top of the scuffle, because he was the one that pushed through the doorway first - expression a mess of confusion until it fell on the pair huddled in the open stall. His eyebrows knitted as he looked at Kona first, but as soon as his eyes reached August they doubled in size, and his jaw hit the floor.

“Oh my god,” he breathed.

“Holy mother of christ!” came Zack’s slightly less tactful reaction as he stumbled into the bathroom and caught sight of the battered blond. His protective temper swelled in an instant - absolutely astounded judging by the look on his face. “What the fuck happened?”

August just let out a self-deprecating chuckle - having known it was only a matter of time before this was coming. “…I tripped?” he tried, still managing a stab of humour despite his situation.

Zack didn’t appreciate him trying to make light of it though. “Be so for real right now,” he deadpanned with a disapproving frown.

“Shit, are you okay?” Bentley asked - having suddenly found his voice again once the initial shock wore off. He dropped the bags of chips he’d been carrying to the floor without a second thought, and was at his side a second later, scanning over every cut and bruise as though he was trying to make sense of them - like he couldn’t quite believe they were real.

“Obviously fucking not, Ben,” Zack retorted - his protectiveness taking a more fiery path, with his temper bubbling fiercely behind his eyes. “He looks like a piece of damn roadkill.”

August snorted out another laugh. “That good, huh?” he sarcastically fired back.

But again, Zack couldn’t take any comfort in the fact August was at peace with his situation. His chest ached, burned with injustice, with pain for his friend. “Alright, start talking; I need names,” he said, fidgeting through his agitation, and pent-up rage. “Fuck whatever plans we had for tonight - I’ve got asses to beat.”

August just rolled his eyes. “Oh my god, calm down. No one’s beating anyone’s ass.”

“Oh really?” Zack challenged, taking on a sarcastic edge of his own as he crossed his arms over his heaving chest. “Did the guys who did this to you get that memo?”

“Just leave it, Zack,” August sighed, already weary of the back-and-forth, and the fighting for his honour. “They’re not worth it.”

“I’ll leave it when I’ve dug their goddamn graves and they’re paying for this down in hell,” Zack snapped back. He’d known August since they were in diapers - they were practically family. He couldn’t just stand back and let those idiots get away with this, they had to hurt as much as August was - as much as he was just looking at him. An eye for an eye - he didn’t care if it made the world blind, his best friend might as well be with how swollen his looked. “Have you seen what they’ve done to you, man?” he pressed on when August just looked at him with that same, bored apathy - as though trying to coax a reaction out of him. “Your nose is pointing in like three different directions!”

August’s eyebrows furrowed in a slight frown, clearly thinking the boy was just overreacting. But he took more notice when Bentley offered a worried, tentative: “It does look kinda crazy.”

“Well it can’t look much worse than it already did,” August huffed through another eye roll - already eagerly anticipating when he finally got to see how the least favourite feature of his face had been ruined even more.

“Shut up,” Kona scolded, kicking his thigh a little harder this time. She hated August talking down about himself. “I told you, your nose has never looked bad.

Her interjection quickly shifted Zack’s attention, and his incredulous stare, to her though. “And what the hell do you think you’re doing in the guy’s bathroom?”

Kona levelled Zack with a disapproving frown. “You really think a urinal was gonna keep me from coming in here to check on him?” she asked, eyebrow raised until he conceded with an eye roll. “And don’t bother trying to get permission to go after those guys - I’ve already been through all that and we’re stuck taking the high road.”

Zack tipped his head back to the ceiling and let out a groan that rattled his ribcage. “Aug, the high road sucks,” he whined, soon returning to his pleading. “Please just let me throw one punch - I’m sure I could break his nose back. Look how much I can bench now. Who was it?”

“Not happening,” August replied with another shake of his head.

“Ughhhhh,” Zack groaned again, his whole body slumping in frustration. “I’m not done with this,” he promised, despite momentarily admitting defeat for nature’s call. “But I do actually gotta pee, so just, uh, look away for like ten seconds.”

“Ewww, gross,” Kona grumbled, fiercely averting her gaze, eyebrows scrunched in disgust.

“Dude,” August chuckled, caught somewhere between amusement and distaste.

“It’s the fucking bathroom! I’ve gotta piss!” Zack retaliated with an almost comical, defensive astonishment. “What do you want me to do? You’re the ones who chose to hang out in here.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Kona muttered, shaking her head as August let out more incredulous chuckles.

It took Zack exactly two seconds before he started on Kona again, proving as always that he could never let anything go without a fight. “Kone-head, did you see what happened?”

Kona placed a hand beside her head, physically blocking every inch of his body from her view as she started to hear liquid splash porcelain. “I’m not talking to you while you have your dick out,” she deadpanned.

“Come on, do you at least know who did it?” Zack pressed.

But Kona had stopped listening to Zack’s venting, and his stream; far too distracted by the conversation unfolding before her.

“Here, you’re not even holding this right,” Bentley gently scolded, prising the bag of ice from August’s hand and taking over the nursing duties - eyebrows furrowing with a woeful focus. “When Royce got punched - I mean it was nowhere near as bad as this, but Miles said he had to keep the ice directly over the impact point or it wouldn’t stop the swelling.”

August huffed out a gentle snort of resignation. “Well which one do you wanna go with? There’s plenty to choose from.”

Kona sat, intently watching the interaction as it developed. But after everything she’d just heard, she felt as though she was looking at them with completely fresh eyes - August in particular. The way he immediately softened at Bentley’s touch, the ease in his body language once they were together, the quiet admiration in his eyes… But also the yearning hidden in his smile, shoved beneath the tender serenity - like he was both at peace and suppressing his turmoil with every grin.

And as they fondly bickered over the bag of ice, teasing and laughing like the best friends they were, it finally clicked into place for Kona. She caught August’s eye for a split second before it was smushed into freezing cold cloth - but that was all it took. In that one look, they both silently confirmed it.

Mick’s head was pounding. It had been for the last hour. It felt as though someone had taken the fire extinguisher off the kitchen wall and was smashing it against her skull. The worry and uncertainty about Bentley was already eating away at her, but the fact that it was twenty minutes into her shift and she was the only soul in the building was making her blood boil.

One employee had a very valid reason to be late. The other two did not. And yet there she was, manning the service counter, warming up the fryers, and controlling the crappy music system anyway. If you could consider hooking the radio up to the rink’s speakers work, that is. Yet another reason to add to the list of why she was so pissed off with a certain co-worker of hers.

As though the universe heard her internal bitching, the moment the radio switched to Raise A Little Hell, those aforementioned employees came bursting through the front doors - wearing identical dopey grins and somehow souring Mick’s mood further. The pair shared a laugh before Ethan’s eyes found hers, and greeted her with a laidback wave she did not have the energy to return. At least he had the decency to acknowledge her though; Carrie’s attention was far too occupied by a familiar jock sticking his head through the door and attempting to all but swallow her head whole. Either Carrie had chewed her way through an entire pack of gum since lunch, or Eric was too horny to taste the vomit on her breath. Regardless, the sight turned Mick’s stomach even more than usual.

By the time Carrie and Eric had stopped playing grab-ass, Ethan had sauntered his way over to Mick to jab his thumb over his shoulder and offer her a guffawed, “Yo, they were going at it out in the parking lot.”

And somehow, Mick found herself even more nauseated. “How could you possibly know that?”

Ethan just scoffed. “‘Cause his Audi was bouncing like a pogo and the windows were hella steamed up.”

“And why would you think I'd want to know that?” Mick huffed in disgust.

“I don’t know. For research?” he snickered.

But their focus was soon drawn to the bouncing golden curls and flushed cheeks darting past them with a breathless, “Hey guys.”

“You’re late,” Mick flatly pointed out. “…Again.”

“Sorry, I got…” she trailed off, eyes briefly darting back to the now vacant front door. “…held up.”

“I’ll say,” Mick scoffed with a gentle shake of her head.

“Oh come on, it’s no big deal,” Carrie said, blasé despite Mick’s cold sarcasm.

“You do realise I’ve been running this place by myself for the last twenty minutes?” she went on to ask, shooting disapproving looks to both new entrants - hoping it would prompt some genuine remorse.

Instead, Carrie’s eyes scanned the rink before settling the building’s only occupants with a quietly confident smirk. “Yeah, and you look rushed off your feet…” she trailed off as her gaze met Mick’s. The brunette’s expression soon told her she was in no mood for teasing though. So, in an effort to avoid any more of Mick’s wrath that night, Carrie tried with a cautiously optimistic: “I’ll make it up to you?”

“Oh yeah?” Mick started with a humourless chuckle. “And how do you plan on doing that?”

“Any way you want,” Carrie volleyed back, punctuating her quick wit with another smirk and a wink that felt all too personal. Even going as far as to add a quieter, more seductive, “I won’t snitch,” before pushing through the door to the break room and disappearing out of sight.

A barked laugh was the first thing to break through the buzz of uneasy static in Mick’s brain - and the following comment just furrowed her brow further. “She’s awesome,” Ethan chuckled, evidently very amused by Carrie’s teasing.

“She’s a slacker,” Mick corrected bluntly. “And you’re no better. What’s your excuse? Were you standing out there perving on them the whole time?”

“Nah, I just took a nap in my van,” Ethan replied - totally unphased by Mick’s digs, to her disappointment. Fixing her with a cheeky grin of his own, he stretched and added a comically earnest: “Need my beauty sleep.”

All it managed to raise from Mick though was an eye roll as she dug the cash drawer out of the register and slammed it down on the counter - readying herself to start on her next job of ensuring it still balanced with their total from the night before. “Just get changed and do some fucking work,” she huffed. “You’re late enough as it is.”

“Chillax, Mickie. It’s not like the phone’s ever ringing off the hook,” Ethan chuckled, grabbing a quarter from the tray and setting it off spinning along the countertop.

Mick smacked her hand down, stopping the quarter before it could skitter too far way, and bluntly saying, “You’re not on deliveries tonight.”

“What?”

“Not yet, anyway,” Mick went on to elaborate before shuffling through the compartments of coins and bills.

“Uhhh…why not?” Ethan cautiously asked.

“I need you helping with front of house ‘til Miles gets here,” she explained, focusing her gaze on the wad of dollars between her fingers to make sure her face didn’t give something away she wasn’t supposed to.

“I don’t know if he’s coming in, Mickie. He didn’t show at school today - I figured he just had some gnarly flu or something,” Ethan mused.

Mick inwardly sighed, then chose her next words carefully. “He’s still coming - he’s just got some family stuff to deal with first.”

“Oh shit, is everything ok?” Ethan asked, brows furrowed above bleary, bewildered eyes. “He didn’t mention anything yesterday about-”

“Everything’s fine - it was pretty last minute. But he’ll be here at some point,” Mick tightly replied. And for once, Ethan seemed to get the hint to not probe any further. Because the beat of silence that followed allowed Mick to then move on and clip her stack of ones back into place with a steady, “So until then, I’d really appreciate you unhooking the delivery phone, getting into uniform, and starting to check the skates.”

“Aye-aye, captain,” Ethan replied - catching the brunette’s gaze and offering what he hoped was a reassuring grin, and a clumsy salute, before stumbling his way into the break room.

It was by no means the help Mick wanted, or needed - but his willingness to try did at least make the hint of a smile tug at the corner of her lips. And in such nerve-wracking times, she had to take what victories she could - no matter how small.

Hours crawled by, and the evening shift at All Skate unfolded the same as any other. Sticky-faced kids pestered Mick every fifteen minutes for slurpees, songs clunkily clicked from one to another as Carrie mindlessly flitted between her track lists, and Ethan juggled skates and sneakers like the clown Mick often branded him as. Although, she did have to admit that he wasn’t nearly as calamitous as she’d feared he would be. After quickly removing him from all cash register duties, since his brain moved at the pace of a sloth’s, and some middle schoolers seemed hellbent on scamming them out of cash, stationing him on skate and cleaning duty seemed to have been the right call. All shoes were in the right cubbies, all the returned skates were neatly laced and ‘de-stinked’ - and although she did keep having to prompt him to clear empty tables, he went straight over every time she asked. Sure, he just shoved the dirty plastic into the wash tub and swiped any stray crumbs onto the floor with a rag, but it was enough to not set her eye twitching - yet. Even with the dragging feet and dramatic sighs, he was almost proving himself useful.

She hoped that would be the first of many positive discoveries of the night. But when her fretful clock-watching finally reached its conclusion, she realised just how naive she had been. Because this time when her head snapped to the doors, her heart skipped a beat when her gaze landed on Butchy and Miles. But it dropped when she noted their expressions, and nigh on stopped altogether when she realised they were alone.

“Anything?” she cautiously dared as the pair approached the food counter.

Miles couldn’t bring himself to even look at her, trudging past like a zombie in a trance.

Butchy at least acknowledged her, but could offer nothing more than a defeated, almost apologetic shake of his head, that stole Mick’s breath away.

Catching Miles’ arm as he rounded the serving counter, making a beeline for the break room, Mick gasped a quick breath and said, “Miles, if you don’t feel-”

But Miles just brushed her off. “I’m fine. Just give me a minute to change my shirt and I’ll be back out - where do you want me?”

But the moment his eyes met Mick’s, full of a numb, hopelessness that swallowed his entire frame, her heart cracked open all over again. “We’re good out here - promise. Take as long as you need,” she replied, her voice gentle, yet tight as she fought to keep it steady - squeezing his forearm to both reassure him and ground herself.

Miles’ nod was small, but grateful all the same. But he couldn’t bring himself to linger in the moment for long before disappearing through the swing doors - desperate for a moment alone to try to process the day’s insane events.

Turning back, Mick found Butchy now perched atop the barstool opposite her, slumping onto one elbow as he offered a sardonic: “I take it he’s not here then?”

Now it was Mick’s turn to shake her head, feeling that same sense of dread wash over her as Butchy let out a defeated groan.

Eyes closed and fingers pressed to his temple - he was so deep in thought he almost looked in pain. Unable to bear it, Mick reached across the countertop for his free hand, wove her fingers between his and took what comfort she could from the warmth that spread across their palms.

“Did you really not find anything?” she slowly went on to ask, her voice barely above a whisper. “…Nothing at all?”

A leaden sigh was drawn from Butchy’s lips as his gaze was drawn to his girlfriend’s. “We found his bike - dinged up real bad. But nothing else.”

“Well at least that’s something,” Mick said, trying her best to sound positive despite the nature of the news.

“Hardly,” came his huffed reply. Shaking his head in despair he continued with, “I just don’t get it. How does a kid just disappear over night, without a single trace? It’s like he dropped off the face of the Earth.”

“You can’t give up after only one day of looking,” Mick started.

“I’m not giving up,” Butchy jumped in. “It’s just… proving more complicated than I’d first thought. He actually is… lost.”

Eyebrows furrowing to match her boyfriend’s look of concern, Mick gently rubbed the pad of her thumb over the back of his hand. But the silence that fell over them was then broken with a hesitant, “His little friends haven’t shown up yet tonight - I guess we still haven’t totally ruled out him having stayed over with one of them.” Her nervous giggle was as half-hearted as her smile, but she tried to lighten the somber mood all the same. “Talk about an overreaction if he has.”

“If all of this turns out to just be a misunderstanding over a sleepover I’ll be making him do my yard work until he’s paid off my therapy bill,” Butchy sighed. Although, the more he pondered the possibility, the more unlikely it seemed - especially after considering the only, albeit large, clue they’d managed to find. “I don’t know why he’d ditch his bike if he was just ‘staying over with a friend’ though - or how it ended up so wrecked.”

“What had happened to his bike? Could that not give you a lead?” Mick probed, desperate for whatever information she could get to try to offer some sort of help.

“Probably easier asking what hadn’t happened to it,” Butchy scoffed. “The paintwork’s fucked, wheels are all scuffed, the chain’s snapped and something’s cracked one of the pedals.”

“…Shit,” Mick murmured.

“The road we found it on was sloped, so my guess is it was dropped and it slid back down, which would explain all the scrapes. But I’ve got no clue about the chain or the pedal - maybe he stepped on them weirdly as he was trying to ditch it? But I don’t think he’d be heavy enough to do that kind of damage. And I don’t get why he’d want to ditch the bike anyway? He loves that thing - and he’s definitely faster on that than he would be running.”

“If he was running,” Mick proposed.

“What do you mean?”

“Well we don’t know for sure he ran, right? We can’t get too sidetracked with theories that have no facts to back them up. The bike could have just been wrecked by a passing car. Who’s to say he didn’t willingly go somewhere instead? Like a friend’s house? Or maybe something happened that made him want to go stay with his uncle Tommy?”

“The uncle who lives over an hour away in the middle of the city?” Butchy challenged with a sceptical eyebrow raise. “Bentley just upped sticks in the middle of the night and hitched a ride out of town? Without saying a word to anyone about it?”

“Okay, yeah, when you say it like that it sounds pretty crazy-”

“Pretty crazy?”

“But my point still stands - we can’t let ourselves get too focused on a singular idea until we have more evidence,” Mick reasoned, standing her ground despite her boyfriend’s dismissal. “More evidence than a bike anyway.”

Biting his tongue, Butchy let his taxed mind mull over her words for a moment. And then another moment more. Steadily, a grin inched through his frown - and although it was small, it was as genuine as he could muster. “You sure you’re not the new recruit they’ve hired at the police department?” he huskily teased.

Although her smile was out of satisfaction more than anything, the hint of pride shining in her boyfriend’s eyes brought a steady blush bubbling up to the surface of her cheeks. Hopefully the ever-changing rainbow of lights overhead were enough to mask it though, as she fired back a coy, “No - unfortunately. I’m not nearly as tall, dark, or handsome… I think I have him beat in the brains department though.”

Playful flirting was one way to take their minds off the rather harrowing events of the day. But their brief moment of peace was shattered in a matter of seconds.

“Hey, lovebirds!”

Butchy all but jumped out of his skin at the exclamation, and his heart rate didn’t slow any when he whirled around in his seat to discover its source: a pint-sized bundle of energy with a penchant for wearing purple. “Jesus, kid, we’ve gotta get you a bell,” he sighed, trying to catch his breath and lighten the mood with a lop-sided smile. It wasn’t just her sudden appearance that had spooked him though (after all, that was fairly commonplace with Vivien), it was also how close he and Mick had been to getting caught talking about Bentley’s disappearance. They had to start being more careful if they wanted to keep this under wraps-

“Did you find anything about Beemer?”

Well, maybe Butchy needn’t have been so paranoid after all. That didn’t take away from how utterly floored he was by the girl’s question though - or how nonchalantly she’d said it.

Mouth agape, he looked past the urgent hopefulness hidden behind her wire frames, and straight to the boy hovering behind her - guilt wracking the face covered in a smattering of freckles and pimples, and encircled by a halo of cola-coloured ringlets.

Standing from his stool, Butchy stalked towards the boy with an urgency that had Royce cowering in his knock-off Converse.

“What was the one instruction I gave you this morning?” he hissed.

“I-”

“What part of ‘this stays between us’, didn’t you understand?” he pressed.

Royce gulped; he didn’t know whether Butchy was gearing up to rip his head off his shoulders, or swallow him whole. Voice trembling as much as his hands, Royce attempted a valiant defense, “I couldn’t lie to her.”

“I wasn’t asking you to lie,” Butchy sharply clarified. “I just told you not to talk about it.”

“Viv deserves to know,” Royce defiantly retaliated, closing the gap between them. “She’s family too.”

“That’s not relevant,” came Butchy’s clipped reply.

“How is it not relevant?” Vivien challenged, the sweetness of Royce’s defense of her soured in an instant by the older boy’s comment. “Bentley’s like a brother to me.”

A terse sigh left Butchy’s lips as he fought the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t about who cares about Bentley - it’s about keeping this small, so we can keep everyone safe,” he clarified, before turning his attention, and disapproving expression back to Royce. “Who else have you blabbed to? Half the school?”

Shocked by the callous edge to his tone, a wide-eyed Royce insisted, “No one!”

Hardened, umber irises scoured the thirteen year-old’s face, peeking from beneath furrowed brows. “…You sure?” he slowly challenged.

Royce scoffed, indignant at the very notion he’d lie at a time like this. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

“No, I don’t - not anymore,” Butchy bluntly replied, cutting the crap and demonstrating to Royce the honesty he expected from him. “I tell you to do one thing, and you directly disobey me.”

Sensing her boyfriend’s rising anger, and watching Royce’s expression shift from aggrieved to bordering on fearful dismay over his shoulder, Mick had to step in. “Come on, Butch. That’s not fair,” she said, rounding the serving counter to lay a hand on his arm. “He’s going through a lot,” she continued, gesturing to a quietly grateful Royce, before admitting a more cautious, “We all are.”

Although Butchy softened at Mick’s touch, his stern frown remained. “I know that, but we’ve got to be serious about this,” he sighed. “This isn’t some game.”

“We know that,” Vivien earnestly insisted. “Why do you think we want to help?”

Now it was Butchy’s turn to scoff, almost too eager to respond. “Absolutely not.”

Infuriated by how quickly he’d shot the idea down, Vivien shot back with an indignant, “But why not?”

Again sensing the tone of the conversation start to shift, as she watched a resentful fire burst into flame behind Vivien’s eyes, Mick stepped between the pair before things took a turn. “Look, it’s been a very long day. And as much as we all want to help find Bentley,” she started, making sure to look at each person in turn as she spoke. “The thing we need the most help with right now is processing all this.” Waiting for the trio to lay down their verbal swords and shields, she watched the tension ease out of their frames before continuing. “I found it hard enough at school today with Lela to talk with about everything - I can’t imagine putting myself in your shoes,” she said, sending Royce a sympathetic look that made Butchy’s shoulders slump a fraction more. “If Viv hadn’t pried the news out of me with her bare hands, I’m pretty sure I’d have cracked by third period.” The soft, collective snicker that rose from the pair of thirteen-year-olds gave her another moment of pause. And although her boyfriend’s expression remained a steely frown, she wasn’t deterred from finishing her scolding. “So forget the pointing fingers - we’re all on the same page now. Let’s just focus on figuring out how we’re going to get to the next one.”

Butchy’s gaze finally shifted from Vivien and Royce to Mick, face still firmly set in a scowl. But when her calm diplomacy showed no signs of wavering, despite his evident aggravation, he realised he was fighting a one-man battle - and losing. Caving with a sigh, his eyelids slid closed as he tried to compose himself. Keeping his voice as level as he could manage, he turned to Royce and Vivien once more with a warning, “If I find out you’ve told anyone else-”

“I haven’t,” an exasperated Royce insisted. “And I won’t, I swear.” Holding Butchy’s gaze for a beat, he hoped he sounded as sincere as he felt, because if not, he didn’t know how else he could prove himself to the older-brother-figure. Finally, the young man’s brows unfurled themselves, and he offered a small nod of acknowledgement, which let Royce take in a full breath again. Using that breath, and some newfound confidence thanks to Mick taking his side, he dared to ask a hopeful, “Did you find anything when you were out looking?”

“No,” Butchy sighed, somewhat bluntly.

“Nothing?” Royce stammered. “…At all?”

Butchy stalled as he took in the younger boy’s look of dismay, and his stony expression finally cracked, giving way to an apologetic sigh and a shake of his head.

With the dreaded revelation leaving Royce at a loss for words, Vivien steeled her nerves and stepped in to reply for him. “Well what’s your plan now then?” she challenged the older boy. “Where are you looking next?”

“We haven’t decided yet,” Butchy replied.

“Why not?” Vivien demanded, horrified by his lack of urgency. “Where did you look today?”

Growing nervous over how Vivien’s tone was shifting more accusatory, Mick found herself stepping in once more. “Viv-”

“We can help you rule out places Benny would never go!” she carried on, completely undeterred in her tirade against the eighteen year old.

“We’re working on it, ok?” Butchy tersely retorted, more so just to get her to stop talking before people started to stare. “As soon as we know, I’ll tell you - but only if you both promise me to stay away.”

“That’s so bullshit!” Vivien raged.

But Royce’s response was a more dignified, albeit betrayed, “Why aren’t you letting us help?”

“For the same reasons I went over earlier: the less people searching at a time, the less suspicious we look. And the less suspicious we look, the lower the likelihood of the police, or CPS getting involved. And to top it all off, the further from the potential crime scene you are, the higher the chances of you staying safe,” Butchy replied, ferocious in his protectiveness despite their protests. “So god forbid I want to make sure you two are okay.”

The statement plunged the pair of teenagers into silence. Still, Vivien didn’t seem convinced by his reasoning, or what it implied. “So what? We just have to sit around and wait for you to go out and find him?”

At last Butchy’s face split into a grin again: a smug one at that. “Bingo.”

Although the comment had Vivien seeing red, Royce’s disbelief was more desperate than indignant. “We can’t even help with the plans?”

Glancing back at Mick, Butchy let out a sigh as her expression confirmed what he already knew: these kids wouldn’t be letting up on him any time soon. But he had to find a way to get them off his back; he couldn’t risk them getting into trouble, especially when he didn’t even fully understand what that trouble was yet. Still, he could see why they wanted to be involved; their bond with Bentley was undeniable, and he knew that better than anyone. After all, he’d been calling them ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’ for years because he rarely ever saw one without the other two. Resigning himself to the fact that he’d have the pair hanging on his every word until the blond was found, Butchy changed his tactic. “Okay, fine. But like I said, we don’t have another plan yet.” He stopped to look back as he heard a door behind him open, and watched a weary Miles feign cheeriness as he sidled up to help Ethan with the skates. Sighing again, Butchy continued. “Your brother’s been through a lot today, he needs time to rest first. And the last thing he needs is you two pestering him for more information.”

Although he could see Royce’s empathy soften his defence further, Vivien was steadfast in her need to be involved. “So when are you-?”

“We’ll figure out our next steps tomorrow,” Butchy cut her off with a certainty that gave her no scope to argue further. “Just…try to take your minds off it for now.”

Vivien scoffed at the very idea, but a second voice trying to reason with her was enough to make her reconsider. “Come on, guys. You’ve been through enough today - we all have,” Mick said gently. “We don’t need bickering to make it any harder. Just take tonight to blow off some steam, and we can talk things over again in the morning.”

Vivien looked to Mick for some sort of validation for her fighting spirit, but the brunette’s tired, pleading eyes dented her armour. She’d looked up to Mick for as long as she could remember - ever since she used to visit Hawkins for family vacations and teach her how to tie ribbons in her pigtails, or how to rip an apple clean in half with her bare hands (something the pair still liked to impress their relatives with to this day). So no matter how much her instinct told her to dig her heels in and protest further, Vivien’s loyalty to the older girl’s advice made her throw down her imaginary sword in defeat. It landed with a thud on the heinously patterned carpet at Butchy’s feet, as she huffed a resigned, “Okay, fine.”

Without giving the older boy a chance to flaunt his victory, Vivien turned on her heels and began trudging over to the arcade machines, shoving her hands into her hoodie pocket and dragging her Converse with every step.

“Stay where we can keep an eye on you,” Butchy called after them, as Royce, after sparing his older brother one last longing glance, followed in her footsteps.

But Butchy just had to trust that the pair heard him, because they gave no sign of acknowledgement. In fact, Vivien seemed hellbent on ignoring his instruction, because as soon as the opportunity arose, she marched behind a Frogger machine and directly out of his sight as she huffed, “He’s so full of shit.”

“Who? Butchy?”

“No, Santa Claus,” Vivien deadpanned, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. “Yes, Butchy! Who else?”

“But what do you mean?” Royce pressed, leaning against the neighbouring Pac-Man machine. “Why’s he full of shit? He’s trying to help.”

“Why do you think?” Vivien asked, slumping down onto the stray, leather-topped stool that had been pulled in front of Frogger. “He’s lying through his teeth.”

“You think?”

“Of course he is,” she insisted - shocked Royce couldn’t see it as plainly as she did. Whilst part of her wanted to dwell on how sweet it was that he trusted the older boy so implicitly, her resentment burned brighter. “There’s no way they haven’t already thought of their next plan - he just doesn’t want us involved because he thinks we’re stupid kids.”

“He wouldn’t shut us out like that, Viv. He knows how much we care about Benny,” Royce tried to reason. “And I was part of the plan this morning - with making the phone call.”

This time Vivien’s eye roll wasn’t so easily hidden. “Yeah; saved him having to creep around a middle school looking for him himself,” she muttered, crossing her arms across her chest. “Face it, Royce. He said outright that he didn’t trust us - he just said that crap about taking a break for the night to get us off his back.”

Starting to see the sense in Vivien’s words, and the cracks in Butchy’s, Royce’s trust began to shift. “He wouldn’t do that, would he?” a disbelieving Royce mused. “Not after all that lecturing about ‘honesty’.”

“’Fraid he just did,” Vivien deadpanned once again. “Guess the lardass sat on his moral compass, huh?”

“So where does that leave us?” Royce questioned, starting to pace across the small stretch of carpet between the machines. “We just have to go about life, pretending that everything’s normal, whilst they’re out trying to fix this?”

“Yeah, that’s what they want us to do.”

“But how can they honestly think that we’d be ok with that? How could they even-?” but Royce cut himself off when he looked to Vivien for validation and found a smirk tugging at her lips. “…What’s that face for?”

“They want us to sit around and wait for the ‘big kids’ to save the day,” she started, with a smug, almost sarcastic twang. “Doesn’t mean we have to do it.”

“Viv,” Royce warningly sighed. “We can’t go against them-”

“Why not?” she jumped in. “We’ve already ‘broken their trust’ - what’s the point in trying to save face now?”

“But they’ll just block us out further,” Royce tried.

“Does that matter?” Vivien fired back. “You’re telling me they were out searching all day and couldn’t find a single clue? I don’t buy it. They clearly don’t know what they’re looking for.”

“So what are you saying?”

Vivien rose to her feet and closed the gap between them, reaching her hands out to clasp around his upper arms. “I’m saying we send in the experts.”

Grateful for the layer of fabric hiding the fact that every hair on his arms had stood on end at her contact, Royce swallowed as he took in what she’d said. “We go out and look for him?”

“Exactly,” Vivien beamed, eyes glittering with determination. “No one knows Benny better than we do. If anyone can make sense of whatever the hell happened to him, it’s going to be us.”

“I don’t know, Viv.”

“Oh come on,” she dramatically sighed. “We’re the perfect people for this. We know how his brain works, how he’d react if he was in trouble, where he’d go… We know what to look out for out there - more than that bozo apparently does anyway,” she grumpily tagged on, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder.

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to follow the same route he went missing from though? Without telling anyone?” Royce asked, nervously chewing the inside of his lip as he mulled over the concept. “I mean, what if we…?” he didn’t dare finish the thought.

Although it made her confidence waver, Vivien pushed the trepidation down - standing firm in her plan. “What other choice do we have?”

A hundred tennis matches had broken out in Royce’s brain - pros and cons of the proposition bouncing back and forth with ever-increasing speed. They ricocheted off the walls, sped past opponents completely, dropped out-of-bounds - he could barely keep up with them all. But even amidst the chaos, and the unrelenting thudding, one thought stood out: one feeling, that his heart clung to with a strength he didn’t feel as though his mind could match anymore. “…You’re right,” he slowly admitted, meeting Vivien’s gaze again with a newfound determination to rival her own. “If there’s anything left out there that could tell us where he is - how to get him home - then we’ve got to find it. No matter what.”

Pride shining behind her wire frames, Vivien’s face split back into a smile. “No matter what,” she confirmed. “We find Benny, bring him home, and show Butchy we’re not to be underestimated. Everyone wins.”

“But what if he catches us?” Royce suddenly questioned - momentarily losing his nerve again. “He’ll kill us if he finds out we’ve gone behind his back.”

Vivien dared a glance around the edge of the Frogger machine, peeking around the faded plastic to check on the older boy once more. Unsurprisingly, she found him deep in conversation with his girlfriend - recounting a story of the day’s events judging by his body language, and Mick’s pinched expression - suddenly much more willing to talk than he had been in the thirteen-year-olds’ company. Unjust frustration beginning to bubble away in her stomach again, Vivien decided with a frown, “I’m willing to take that risk.”

“Ok then,” Royce breathed, committing himself to the idea before he could second-guess it again. “So what’s our plan?”

Unlike her newfound rival, Vivien had her plan ready to go - and was more than willing to share it with her accomplice. Finding herself face to face with him once more, she leant back against the arcade cabinet and started to lay down the foundations. “We figure out our route tonight, as well as any motives that Beemer could have had. Then, we meet at the end of your street after school tomorrow and work backwards from there,” she explained. “If Officer Dickwad does actually tell us what his next plan is, we work around it. If he doesn’t… We just stay out of his way and make sure we don’t get caught.”

Although it had been thrown together in a few seconds, Royce was willing to trust it completely. He’d do anything if it meant it would get him closer to finding his brother - even if that meant enraging a newly appointed police cadet. “We leave no stone unturned,” he affirmed with a steady nod. “Not until we’ve got a lead.”

“Exactly,” Vivien said - the skipping of a beat of her heart the moment that intense gaze of his locked onto her not going unnoticed. Steadying her breath despite the fluttering in her chest, Vivien refocused her mind and settled her friend with a determined grin that was quickly reciprocated. “Come on then, Sherlock. Let’s get planning.”

“Do you really not have a new plan?” Mick leant over the serving counter to ask once the pair of thirteen-year-olds were out of earshot.

After watching the duo skulk out of view, Butchy turned back to her with a plainly obvious: “Of course I do. But they can’t know that,” he emphasised, gesturing after their recently departed guests before going on to explain. “I can’t trust Royce to keep quiet anymore, and Viv wears her heart on her sleeve like a scout badge. The more involved she gets with all this the more it’ll start to weigh on her, and she’ll turn into a walking infomercial for family trauma.” Stopping when he caught sight of his girlfriend’s worried frown, he let out a heavy sigh. “They’re still practically kids, Mickie. We’ve gotta protect them whilst we can. And if that means lying to them, then I’ll do it ‘til I’m blue in the face.”

Now it was Mick’s turn to sigh. She knew he was right; they had to do what they could to protect Vivien and Royce from this, because if it ended up being as serious as it was shaping up to be, it could leave them both with major trauma, regardless of the outcome. The thought of lying to them though, particularly Vivien, made her feel sick with guilt. For a fleeting moment she thought she’d have to go and accompany Carrie on one of her many bathroom breaks to unload the contents of her stomach. But she swallowed that instinct down for the sake of focusing on what mattered most right now. “So… the plan?” she cautiously asked.

Catching the waver in her voice, Butchy found her gaze and softened his own in sympathy. He waited a beat to check that she was okay, but when she just nodded for him to continue, he took the hint. “I don’t want to risk it looking suspicious if Miles misses another day of school - especially if they cross-check the middle school and find Benny’s not there either. So Miles is gonna go back tomorrow. I know it’ll be hard for him to focus on anything else, but it’s looking like this isn’t going to be as quick a fix as we thought, so we need to keep some sort of normalcy for him. Plus, that gives me the chance to go back to work and use the resources there.”

“But I thought you didn’t want to get the cops involved,” Mick cut in.

“I’m not getting anyone involved,” Butchy clarified. “But if they want to stick me on case files duty then I’m gonna use it to my advantage. I’ll look over every ‘missing child’ case I can get my hands on to check for patterns, or see what the process for finding them was - ‘cause clearly looking for clues alone is getting us nowhere.”

“And then?”

“I meet you guys back here and let you know what I’ve found,” he said. “If we get the chance after your shift we can go back out there - if not, we’ll plan more for the next day.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea to spend a whole day not looking for him more though?” Mick asked, nervously drumming her fingers along the skin of her crossed arms. “It’s still pretty-”

“Mickie, trust me,” Butchy said, cutting her off before her mind could wander any further down paths of other theories. “We picked those streets to pieces. If he was out there, we’d have found him. And if he’s on the move, another day of searching in the same corner of town isn’t going to make much difference; he could be anywhere now. Which is why we’ve gotta switch strategies, and focus on how to widen the search instead.”

Whilst Mick wanted to do exactly as he said, and trust him implicitly, part of her was reluctant. Her concerns were valid - taking an entire day off the search this early on just didn’t sound logical to her. She understood the importance of trying to keep this all on the ‘down low’, but that shouldn’t be hindering their chances of finding clues - or better yet, Bentley himself. And even if he wanted to stop Miles from looking suspicious for taking too many sick days from school, why not send someone else out looking instead? She could see why he wanted to keep the younger kids out of this mess, but she was perfectly capable of helping - and, although he’d never admit it, she had an eye for finer details that he lacked. Despite her desperation to play an actual role in the investigation, besides sitting and commentating from the sidelines, she knew from her boyfriend’s tone that any further debate would be fruitless though. So she bit her tongue and offered a disinclined, “Okay… Well, if there’s any way that I can help-”

As she’d expected, her suggestion was shot down before it had even finished leaving her lips.

“Just be there for Miles,” Butchy insisted. “He needs us more than ever right now,” he said, before softening his tone and trying to appeal to her sensitive side. “And you know how much you mean to him.”

Mick sighed, slightly more willing, but still frustrated. “I know, and I can do that. But I can help you too, you know.”

“I know,” Butchy said - holding Mick’s gaze for an alien, tense moment - and crumbling in seconds because of it, with an awkwardly chuckled: “I don’t know how easily I’d be able to sneak you into the office in my lunch bag though.”

Mick’s lips twitched with the very faintest hint of a smile, but her eyes remained cold under her feathered bangs. She knew he was telling her one thing and thinking another - and when their relationship had been built on such a solid foundation of trust, it hurt her all the more. No matter how she tried to look at the situation from his perspective, she couldn’t see how, if he genuinely meant what he said, she’d still be getting sidelined. Either she was weak, and needed to be protected from whatever potential dangers could be lurking out there - or she was a nuisance, and her ideas were more of a distraction than any use. He just didn’t have the balls to tell her what he really thought.

For the sake of keeping things running smoothly, and giving them the best chance of finding Bentley, she could bite her tongue for now. She could play ‘happy families’ so Butchy could stay focused on the task at hand. But she would still find a way to prove that she didn’t need to be bubble-wrapped and hidden away at the first sign of trouble, that she was just as capable as he was - in the words of good old Blondie, one way or another.

The rest of the evening at the roller rink was rather mundane, with a subdued mood blanketing a number of its occupants. Even with Ethan’s usual antics keeping Miles at least distracted enough to muster a laugh or two, by the time Carrie’s half-hearted announcement rang out over the tannoy that it was closing time, and that all skates needed to be returned to the rentals booth, the entire building seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief. The house lights came up, Carrie turned the sound system down to a whisper as she reorganised her tapes, Mick counted up the register, and Ethan was sent on dish-collecting duty again. But over the clicking of the register buttons, and the resentful thudding of plastic cups being thrown into the plastic bin, two voices managed to break through the fog clouding Miles’ brain. Eyes lifting from the skate he was relacing, they honed in on his brother and the girl he followed around like a shadow, and locked onto them with the accuracy of a sniper.

Watching as the pair wandered towards the door, his heart rate doubled in a matter of seconds. So much so, he found himself calling out to them. “Royce, are you leaving?”

Unsurprisingly, both of them turned around as a result of the outburst, wearing equally wary yet puzzled expressions.

“Yeah…it’s closing time,” the boy replied as though it was obvious, because to him it was. They were never allowed to stay after the rink closed.

“How did you guys get here?” Miles pressed on, apparently trying to channel his tension through his hands based on how tightly the skate laces were being pulled.

“Viv’s dad dropped us off,” Royce explained, with a quick glance back at the girl.

Taking her cue to add further support to the story, she continued with a nonchalant, “But we’ve got our bikes to-”

“Absolutely not,” Miles cut them both off with a firm authority that took both of them by surprise. “Butch is taking you both home, and he’s sitting with you until I get back from work,” he finished with his eyes on Royce, so he could make sure his brother was listening.

“What?”

Despite Royce and Vivien’s expressions, Miles was undeterred. “You seriously think I’m letting you out on your bikes alone after what’s happened today?” he demanded incredulously, without even giving them a chance to respond. “Not a chance.”

Growing increasingly frustrated with how he was being treated tonight, a rare bolt of defiance shot through Royce, as he insisted, “Miles, I’m not a little kid.”

“And I’m not taking any chances,” Miles retaliated, putting his foot down in a way he’d never had to before with his brothers. “It’s a ride home with Butchy or you’re grounded.”

Royce’s wide eyes locked onto Vivien’s, and in an instant he knew that they were both thinking the same thing. Besides the disbelief that Miles would even consider grounding him, they both knew that if Royce was confined to his house then their search plans were toast. So no matter how much he wanted to argue his case further, he knew he couldn’t risk missing out on the chance to go out looking for clues. Relenting, he sighed and muttered, “…Fine,” for the first time, not caring whether or not Miles noticed his eye roll.

The pair of thirteen-year-olds shuffled towards the exit, whispering furiously between themselves as they went. But Miles’ attention was snatched from Vivien’s bobbing ponytail, and Royce’s hunched shoulders, by a delicate hand landing on his own shoulder. Flinching at the touch, Miles spun around and found a timid Mick standing before him - a rag in one hand and a bottle of cleaning spray in the other.

“You can leave early, you know,” she gently offered. “I’m sure the three of us can handle closing down on our own,” she added, gesturing to their co-workers.

“I’ll be fine,” Miles said.

But the admission didn't even convince himself, let alone his best friend. “I know, but you don’t need to be,” she softly countered, sliding her hand down to squeeze his upper arm. “It’s been a slow night, we’d manage.”

“I need the money, Mick,” Miles wearily admitted. “And I already missed half a shift-”

“That’s weird, ‘cause according to the clock-in sheet you were here four minutes early,” Mick said, maintaining her cool nonchalance as she watched the realisation dawn on Miles’ face.

Mick never broke the rules, especially when it came to work shifts. This was huge, and yet such a small, simple gesture - but the impact for Miles was monumental. So much so, he felt his breath catching in his throat as he went to respond. “Mick, you don’t have to-”

“Just go, Miles,” Mick cut him off before he could protest further, offering him a warm, yet sympathetic smile as she leant back against the skate shelves. “You need the break. Go get some rest. I’ll clock you out when I leave.”

Miles felt the relief in his whole body; the physical and emotional exhaustion was bone-deep, and for a brief moment, part of that weight he perpetually carried around with him, was lifted. So grateful he was rendered almost speechless, Miles finally managed to choke a quiet, “Thanks, Mickie,” through a nod that helped to avert his now-blurry gaze.

Closing the gap between them, Mick wrapped the older boy into a hug the pair lingered in for far longer than either of them had expected - clearly both needing it more than they’d expected too. When they finally separated, she levelled him with what she hoped was a convincing smile, and mustered a somewhat jovial, “Come on, you’d better get out of here before I change my mind.” But just before Miles could turn around, a mane of manicured curls, now starting to frizz at the edges, caught her eye. And before those curls could slip into the break room, she caught their attention with a simple: “Carrie.”

The girl stopped - wary despite her visible apathy. “Yeah?”

“Miles has to leave early tonight,” Mick explained. And although she gave her colleague no chance to protest, she still checked, “You can handle cleaning everything out here if Ethan and I work on the back, right?”

Miles’ sheepish gaze found hers, but they didn’t meet - not properly. Instead, he watched Carrie look him up and down, and pause as her eyebrows furrowed. Reaching out, her palm met the swing door before her and pushed it open - eyes never leaving the brunet. “…Gladly,” she coldly uttered, before breezing out of sight.

The encounter sent a chill through Miles’ body that rooted him to the spot in disbelief. But a warm wave of confusion thawed him out enough to turn to Mick and ask: “Is she okay?” Had he missed something at school? Or the start of their shift? The last time he’d seen Carrie she was purring like a pampered house cat - and yet she’d just looked at him as though he was a piece of dogshit she’d just stepped in.

“I don’t know - just ignore her,” Mick groaned through a lengthy eye roll. Of course Carrie was finding a way to make this about her - or at least attempting to. “You don’t need to add concerning yourself with her to your plate right now,” she continued more gently. “Just get yourself home.”

“Right…” Miles agreed. And he did know that Mick was right, but a tiny voice at the back of his mind was still…curious. It wasn’t loud enough to keep him distracted for long though. “See you tomorrow,” he went on to say, wishing the girl farewell and heading into the break room himself to grab his jacket before meeting Butchy out in the parking lot.

Although the satisfaction in Mick’s smile as he departed lingered in his head, glad he had seemingly seen sense at last, when the door to the employee bathroom banged open, and that same mane of curls emerged, his resolve crumbled all over again.

Carrie wordlessly crossed the room to her locker, one space down from Miles’, and wrenched the door open so forcefully it generated a breeze that made the hairs on his arm stand on end.

Even with everything going on in his own life, Miles still couldn’t help himself from asking: “Is everything ok?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” she coolly replied, digging a pack of Tic Tacs out of her bag and tossing two back like they were pills.

The tone, the fierce avoidance of eye contact, and the stiffness of her movements told a very different story though - and felt rather pointed. But instead of probing further, Miles hoped some of his tried and true earnestness would smooth out the kinks in the bizarre interaction. “Look, I’m sorry for having to leave early but it’s just… Something’s come up and I- I’ve gotta get back home,” he admitted, hoping his voice didn’t sound as unsteady as it felt in his throat. “I know it’s a pain in the ass having to clean that rink on your own, so…thanks for taking one for the team,” he finished, sheepish smile returning to try to sweeten the deal further.

“Yeah well make the most of it, because next time I’ll think twice before trying to do you a favour.”

The slamming of Carrie’s locker was the only thing able to bring Miles back out of his stupor. But he was still too stunned to speak as she stormed past him and over to the cleaning cupboard. When his senses finally decided to return to him, he stammered an affronted: “Do me a favour?”

Carrie whipped back around to properly face him this time - the mop handle caught in her white-knuckle grasp, taking the brunt of her frustration. Studying her expression in a way he hadn’t given himself the chance to earlier, Miles skimmed over the knitted eyebrows and bitter scowl. But he got stuck at her eyes: iridescent eyeshadow starkly contrasting the dark circles peaking through her under-eye concealer, and irises glistening with the threat of exhaustion, or betrayal - or the aftermath of wrenching over a toilet bowl. And that’s where his gaze remained.

“If you wanted to eat lunch alone like a sad sack, you could have just said,” she grumpily snapped. “You didn’t have to drag me down with you.”

Miles was lost for words. And yet he found himself scrambling to respond anyway. “Carrie, I-”

“Save it,” she bluntly cut him off. “Just don’t count on me offering again, dick,” she spat, punctuating the phrase by slamming the cleaning cupboard door behind her and flouncing back out into the main hall before he could get another word in.

Resentment burned in Miles’ chest as he watched the space she’d just occupied. He had no idea if there was something more going on with her to fuel such an outburst, but regardless, that felt totally left field, even for her. How could she be so dramatic, and so unforgiving, over something as petty as a seat at lunch? And at the same time, why did the universe have to be so cruel as to pull the foundation of his family unit out from under his feet at the exact moment where his life felt like it was taking a turn for the better? In all honesty, he’d completely forgotten about his lunch plans with Carrie. But given the nature of what had overtaken his brain that day, he felt it was justified… He just had no way of explaining that to her - of making her understand why - not without risking the whole search. Part of him wanted to mourn the chance he’d so obviously just blown with her - and curse the timing of this whole gigantic mess. But he was so bone-tired he just didn’t have the energy to. Besides, as Mick had said, he had more than enough to worry about already - removing Carrie from the equation gave his weary brain more space to work towards the only thing that mattered right now: finding Bentley. It was a necessary, and inevitable sacrifice - he just had to try to convince himself that pissing her off was the most effective way of getting over her. But then again, how trivial her problems were in comparison to his own, and how sheltered she had clearly been from any trauma in her cushy, suburban life, was definitely helping him drive a wedge further between them. If she couldn’t see that something had to be wrong for him to need to leave work early, or even notice that he hadn’t shown up to school at all that day (not just their lunch ‘date’), then maybe she really was as self-centered as Butchy claimed she was. And if that was the case, then it just drove home what he’d been trying to tell himself all along - and now understood more than ever. Nothing mattered more than family. And he was going to get his back together, no matter what.

Between the lingering scent of fryer grease hanging in the air, and the musty stench of the old rag mingling with the cheap lemon surface cleaner, humming along to Olivia Newton-John was the only thing keeping Carrie from hurling all over the table she’d just wiped down. Contrary to her grimace though, she was actually finding her cleaning job quite therapeutic, despite her solidarity; the mopping and music were proving useful distractions. But the sound of the glass front doors being pushed open meant she wouldn’t be alone for much longer, and her eyes widened when she turned to discover the intruder’s identity.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, rag stilling in her hand.

“I’m giving you a ride home, remember?” came Eric’s amused reply.

“You’re ten minutes early,” she limply protested.

“And why would I want to spend those ten minutes out in my car when I could spend them in here with you?” he huskily asked through a charming grin.

Carrie’s expression melted into a soft grin of her own as he finished crossing over to her. “Oh yeah? You feeling like you wanna grab a rag and help me finish up these tables?” she coyly asked back.

“Not exactly; I think I’d get…distracted by the view,” he said, gaze drifting down to her chest, lingering there, then lifting again, now accompanied by a rogueish smirk. Before Carrie could think about rolling her eyes though, even if only playfully, he continued. “And besides, my hands are a little…full.”

Carrie hadn’t realised until that moment that he’d been keeping one of his hands behind his back - only to produce a bouquet of flowers, blooming in every shade of pink she could imagine, and bundled in white cellophane, with a rosy bow to match the glow of her cheeks. Surprise was the first thing to take over her face, but it was quickly replaced by a giddy grin as she accepted it from him.

“These are beautiful,” she breathed, marvelling at everything from the arrangement of the petals to the heady floral scent now filling her nose. “But why did you-?”

“Can’t a guy just treat his girl to some flowers anymore?” he chuckled through an eye roll of his own. “Do you always have to assume we’ve done something?”

“I never said that you’d done anything,” Carrie retorted, carefully laying the bouquet onto the table beside her. “I just wanted to know what could have prompted you to go out and buy flowers.”

“I just thought of that beautiful face of yours and couldn’t help myself,” he purred, reaching a paw-like hand out to cup the back of her head and lead her into his embrace. Carrie melted into his touch, but made no effort to respond - he could tell that she still wasn’t entirely convinced though. So he swept her up in his arms and perched her on the edge of the closest table, positioning himself between her thighs as he more gently admitted, “And, I know that you’ve not been feeling great lately. So I thought they might, I don’t know, cheer you up.”

Carrie had thought that the days of her boyfriend being thoughtful like this were long gone - at least that’s how she’d been made to feel lately. But the earnestness in those dopey, puppy-dog eyes, and the iridescent plastic rustling by her thigh, were very welcome exceptions. Warmth spread through her fingertips as they combed his uncharacteristically unkempt locks back into place. And after growing accustomed to flinching when he touched anywhere around her waist, she was relieved to feel herself instinctually lean into his embrace again as he snaked his arms around her hips.

“Thank you, baby,” she murmured, drinking in the comforting smell of spearmint and his cologne with a ditsy, besotted smile.

“Any time, beautiful,” he murmured back - all teeth and muscles as he pulled her closer and pressed his lips to hers.

And even with her empty stomach churning beneath Eric’s palms, Carrie found herself believing that he might really mean that this time.

But part of her was still holding back, and Eric felt the rigid reluctance through her lycra. Pulling back, he frowned, almost in frustration. “What?”

Carrie studied his eyes for several seconds, trying to find the answer for herself in the intoxicating familiarity of those rich, bourbon irises - searching for a sign that maybe she was just overthinking this after all. But when his gaze felt as empty as his head, she found herself murmuring an apprehensive: “Are we okay?”

An exasperated sigh slipped past Eric’s lips before he could stop it. “Would you stop sweating over everything? You’re worrying yourself sick over nothing - literally,” he said, eyebrows furrowing in annoyance as he straightened his posture - distancing himself even more. As his wave of frustration crested though, he watched the unease flicker across Carrie’s face and he folded in an instant - just as much at her mercy as he was the first day he’d realised he’d been crushing on her. Leaning back into her thighs, he cupped her cheek in his hand and fixed her with a reassuring smile. “Just relax,” he breathed, letting his fingertips glide over the almost plush, powdered surface of her skin as his grin broadened. “What could you possibly have to stress about?” Without giving her the chance to answer, he once more pressed his lips to hers - deepening the kiss with a tilt of her chin and a firm grasp of her hip. Only surfacing for air when he was satisfied that he’d triggered enough hormones to distract her from her anxieties - even if only momentarily - he finished with a final, soothing, “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

Carrie wanted to believe him more than anything - and a large part of her did. But the messiness of his meticulously styled hair, the impromptu flowers, the third scent layered on top of his usual cologne and breathmint combo that she kept getting whiffs of when they got too close… she was smitten, she wasn’t deluded. But when she looked at him - at those perfect eyes - she just saw the goofy football player, who insisted on flirting with her at every break in their practices until she agreed to go on a date with him. The same goofy football player who she was still hopelessly in love with, and was convinced was still hiding in there somewhere, under the bull-headed bravado and blatant duplicity. Naively she yearned for them to go back to just being the football player and the cheerleader - where they spoke almost entirely in compliments, and their biggest worry was deciding where to go grab food after practice. But she knew life wasn’t that simple - or that kind. She’d always liked the idea of being an actress though, so she could pretend, dressing herself with a bashful smile and fluttering her lashes through the heartache. “Well, when you put it like that…” she trailed off. Maybe, if she pretended for long enough she’d be able to convince herself that this really was okay - that he could still make her as happy as he used to - that he still felt the same way she did. “I love you.”

Eric grinned at the confession, that same playful smoulder that turned her to putty in his hands - conveniently. Opting out of verbalising his response, he instead chose to swap spit until her eyelids finally slid closed - hiding their nervous anticipation behind resigned bliss. Victorious as he felt the last of her worries leave in a warm breath that skimmed over his cheeks, he closed out their makeout session with one last peck, and stepped back to impishly chuckle, “Come on, toss me that rag. We need to get you out of here to get those puppies in some water.” Gesturing to the bouquet, he added. “I don’t think they liked riding in the passenger seat when I cut the corner of Baytree.”

Carrie let out a soft chuckle of her own as she threw him the piece of soggy cloth, sparing the flowers a glance before playfully admitting, “I did wonder if you’d sat on them before you brought them in.”

Comfortable laughter burbled between the pair, as though they were momentarily juniors again, as though nothing was wrong. Carrie, relishing the comfort of that feeling, hopped down from her table and brought the bottle of cleaning spray with her, leaving the bedraggled bouquet behind - for now.

“I still think they look better than the box of ginger tea my mom recommended,” Eric chuckled as they fell into stride beside one another. Slinging an arm around her shoulder, that quickly slid down to wrap around her waist, he went on to huskily profess, “Only the best for my girl.” His hand slid further around her middle and reflexively, Carrie sucked in a breath. But a kiss was pressed to her temple that made her pause. And rightly or wrongly, she decided to follow his advice, and let go of her worries - even those he wasn’t to blame for, not directly anyway. She didn’t know how long that would last - but if it let her hold onto this feeling of being with him, of feeling so loved, then she might as well at least try.

The Murphy house felt uncomfortably quiet as the two oldest brothers trudged through the front door. It’s not like they were expecting the third occupant to have returned, but Miles still searched all the rooms again - just to be sure. Royce kicked off his sneakers and padded down the hall, slinging his backpack at the foot of his bed with a heavy thud that finally broke the suffocating silence - at least more than Miles’ laboured breathing anyway. A tightness settled in his chest as his he took in the sight of Bentley’s ransacked bed - aching not only for his little brother to be sitting on it, poking fun at him for stuff he’d said about Vivien and worrying about Miles finding the crumbs from snaffled toaster strudels, but also for the normality that came with it. Royce had felt like an alien all day, or like a stranger was piloting his body, because his mind was too jumbled to operate it on his own. And his relationship with Miles had never felt as strained as it had that day. They hadn’t said a word to each other since they had left All Skate; they were arguing, Miles was yelling - everything just felt…wrong. And he feared that it would stay that way until that beaming grin, and mop of dark blonde hair, was staring back at him.

Sighing, Royce dragged himself to his feet again and lumbered out into the hall - hoping that if he could will himself to sleep, he might wake up to this all having been one long, awful nightmare. But before his palm could close around the cool metal handle to the bathroom door, his brother’s voice caught his attention.

“Royce.”

Numbly, he turned to Miles, who was stood at the end of the hall, panting through a guilt-ridden frown. “What?” he replied, still on-guard after how the rest of their interactions had gone that day.

“I…” But the words seemed to fall out of Miles’ head before they could be spoken, leaving the older boy gawping like a goldfish as he tried to find his voice again.

A moment of tension hung in the air between them, as though their magnetic fields were repelling one another. But just as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished - Miles’ polarity flipped and the brave front he’d tried to construct came crumbling back down. He crossed the hall to Royce and pulled his little brother to his chest, holding onto him as though he was trying to commit the tickle of every curl, and the curve of every bone, to memory - in case he woke up tomorrow morning and found that he too had been ripped from his fingertips. “I’m so sorry, RJ,” he finally choked out.

Even though the words had been muffled by faded cotton, Royce could tell from their trembling that a lump was forming at the back of his brother’s throat. It wasn’t completely alien for Miles to cry, but it still unnerved Royce every time it happened. And when he was used to Miles being so strong for him and Bentley, seeing him this fragile, this broken, hit him even harder. “It’s okay, Miley,” he quietly replied, trying to switch their roles and offer him some sort of comfort.

Sniffling, Miles pulled away just enough to look at him, and sunk down to his height. “No, it’s not okay,” he firmly argued, pupils quivering with guilt. “Nothing about this is okay, especially how I’ve acted today. I always told myself I’d never raise my voice at you or Benny.”

“Yeah but you weren’t thinking straight,” Royce tried.

“That’s not an excuse,” Miles insisted, sniffing again as a newfound determination set in. “But I’m gonna make things right, okay? I’m going to make it up to you-”

”You don’t need to,” he tried again, but Miles couldn’t be dissuaded.

“-And I’m going to find Benny,” Miles said, eyes steady behind their salty film. “I promise.”

The breath caught in Royce’s throat. He desperately wanted to believe him - believe that it could be as simple as it sounded - but part of him didn’t dare. And for the first time since that morning, Royce’s fear started to resurface. “How?” he whispered, tears beginning to brim in his own eyes.

“…I don’t know,” Miles eventually admitted, his vulnerability shining through once more before his determination took back the reins. “But I swear to you, RJ, I will do whatever it takes to bring him home. I’m not going to stop looking until he’s found - even if it nearly kills me.”

Although Royce didn’t want to linger on the thought, or the image it conjured in his mind, it brought forward a new question: one he’d previously been too scared to consider himself, let alone speak aloud. “Do you really think we’ll find him? …And he’ll be…okay?”

Even though the implication alone of Royce’s question made him want to gag, MIles focused on what his heart was telling him, and his resolution remained firm. “Yes, I do.”

“But how can you-?”

“I just- I’d just know, okay?” Miles insisted, hoping that if he gripped Royce’s forearms tight enough, and kept his gaze steady enough, he’d be able to convince him - and himself. Swallowing, he slowly eased off his vice-like grasp, and went on to reveal, “When they split us up all those years ago, I felt it when you both weren’t with me. Every day I had this…hollow feeling in my chest - like it was all just…empty. Like I was empty.”

Miles hated talking about their time in the care system - Royce knew he did - which is why he almost never dared bring it up, not that he really wanted to remember it anyway. But because of that, Royce had never heard any of this before, and so he found himself hanging on every word, with wide, expectant eyes.

“It went on for weeks - months,” Miles continued. “But it stopped the second they brought you back. And that feeling, that emptiness…” he stalled, the words almost choking him as he fought to speak them into existence - in case, once he did, they ceased to be true. “…I haven’t felt it - I don’t feel it. So he can’t be far,” he concluded with another sniffle. “He’s here somewhere, I just have to find him.”

“…I don’t think he’s hurt either,” Royce dared to agree, relieved that what he’d at first feared was just naive optimism might actually have some credibility. And although his voice sounded small, it had borrowed some of his brother’s determination. “When he broke his arm on the jungle gym, I knew something was wrong before he even tried to move,” he confessed. “It’s like you said; I felt it in my chest - this weird, uneasy feeling.”

A glassy-eyed smile unfurled across Miles’ face as he nodded in understanding. “Right.”

“But I’ve not felt anything like that today,” Royce continued, talking himself through his thought process as much as he was to Miles. “So he has to be okay, right?”

“Exactly,” Miles softly affirmed, brushing the pads of his thumbs over his little brother’s forearms - grateful that they could share this one moment of hopeful respite amidst all the chaos. “Mom always taught us to follow our hearts - so that’s what we’ll do.”

Looking up at Miles from under thick, nervously furrowed brows, Royce asked, “And that’ll lead us to Benny?”

Miles nodded without hesitation, but let out a pitiful laugh as he pondered the hopelessness of their situation longer. “I don’t quite know how yet, but it will.”

Royce found himself nodding along with his brother - clinging onto their renewed sense of hope with every ounce of strength he had left. This time it was him that initiated the hug - throwing his arms around Miles’ neck and curling into his chest like a toddler hiding from the vacuum-cleaner. He had no idea how long they stayed like that, but it was long enough for his breathing to even out again from the shaky almost-sobs. However long it was though, Miles made no effort to pull away, just holding him and rubbing his back for as long as he needed him to - until he felt ready to resurface.

When Royce did finally pull back, Miles reached up to run a hand over his curls and mustered what he hoped was a comforting smile. “Come on,” he quietly encouraged. “We’d better try to get some sleep.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to,” Royce admitted.

Letting out an empathetic sigh, Miles agreed. “I know, but we’ve gotta try.”

The brothers wished each other goodnight and started readying themselves for bed. But less than a minute after Miles had collapsed onto his mattress, he knew that sleep would never come for him if he was left alone with his thoughts. Mind still spinning furiously, he realised he needed a distraction. So he sat up, and reached for the hand-me-down Walkman Mick had given him when her parents had treated her to an upgrade. Only when he snapped it open, he realised the last cassette he’d had in there had been one he’d loaned from Ethan, and the pothead had since stolen back. Huffing, he hauled himself back to his feet and opted for getting a glass of water to distract himself instead. Slotting the Walkman into the waistband of his pajama pants, he shuffled into the kitchen, scanning the living room coffee table, and counter tops for any stray tape cases for inspiration as he went. It wasn’t until he was running the tap that he noticed the stereo on the window sill though - with the tape still popped out from when he’d stopped it in a hurry that morning.

His irises got stuck on that loopy handwriting across the front sticker - distracting his brain in a completely different way until he felt water spilling over the rim of the glass and down his hand. Scrambling to shut the tap off, he quickly dried his hand on his pants leg before snatching the tape from the stereo and clicking it into his Walkman before he could second-guess himself. He just needed some other noise to fill his head, it didn’t matter where it came from - even if it meant further complicating his feelings for the tape’s creator. Trying to shut out any thoughts of Carrie that sprung to his mind as the spokes of the cassette began to spin, Miles hooked his headphones over his ears, and let the tail end of the Queen classic it had been left on wash over him.

Inwardly sighing as images of Carrie’s teary-eyed scowl as she left the employee bathroom, or Butchy’s look of concerned dismay as he lifted Bentley’s bike out from under that car, still infiltrated his mind, Miles picked up his glass of water and crossed the kitchen once more. But he stopped when something on the refrigerator door caught his eye. Still pinned to the metal with that gaudy, UFO cereal box magnet, was Bentley’s essay from his English class. The same essay Miles had promised to read the night before - and yet had been too preoccupied with ridiculous, hormone-driven fantasies to remember - just as he’d been too preoccupied to properly check on his brothers.

That thick lump of guilt rose at the back of his throat again as he studied it. But before it could twist his stomach into further knots, he slipped it out from the magnet’s grasp and carried it back to his room. When he was finally lying in bed again - as a Crowded House song started to faintly crackle through the speakers by his ear drums - he lifted the page to his eyes and started to read - determined to keep his promise to his brother. After all, it was the least he could do for him right now.

Heroes take on many forms - firefighters, doctors, Peter Parker. Some have superhuman abilities, like those created for comic books, confined to pages of primary colours and giant speech bubbles, yet still find a way to save the world. And some save the world without any supernatural help at all - like brain surgeons, or army troops, or those strangers who know CPR. Some heroes don’t need to save the world to be considered heroes though - they just need to do something remarkable. And that is the kind of hero my hero is.

Miles almost didn’t dare read on. A knife felt as though it had wedged itself in his stomach as his eyes traced every word - and if his gut feeling proved to be correct, it would only twist the blade deeper.

My hero is my big brother, Miles. He’s everything a big brother should be: brave, and kind, and funny, and protective, but he’s also so much more. Our family became a lot more complicated after our mom died, and nothing really felt constant since. Apart from Miles. Even though he still has to do all the things a normal seventeen-year-old has to do, he’s stepped up and taken on all the responsibilities of a parent as well. He spends all his free time working so that we get an allowance like our friends do, he cooks our favourite meals when we’ve had a hard day (even if his has been harder), and he always finds a way to make sure we still get to be normal kids. It’s like he’s given up his childhood so that we can have ours. I know it’s a lot for him to deal with, anyone can see that, but he never backs down from the challenge. He does everything he can to give us a good life, even if that means making sacrifices for his own. And to me, that’s the true sign of a hero.

Miles couldn’t read any more - not because he couldn’t bring himself to, because the page had become completely obscured by tears. He dropped the sheet of paper to his chest and pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes, as though trying to push the tears back into their ducts. But a choked gasp still broke free. And just like that the dam was broken. He grabbed the nearest pillow and buried his face into it, smothering his sobs in feathers and polyester so as not to alert Royce. His whole body cried - not just his eyes - as the weight of Bentley’s words shook his whole frame, hitting even harder given the circumstances.

He wept until he passed out, sheer exhaustion finally being enough to drag him over the threshold to the land of dreams. Although Bentley’s innocently written confession had left him heartbroken, it had spurred him on even more to fix this hideous mess he’d ended up in. If Bentley had chosen to depict him as a hero, then he needed to live up to those expectations. And Bentley needed a hero more than ever right now, so he had to step up to the plate - no matter how impossible that felt.

Royce had never had an alarm clock. He was always awoken by one of his senses. Usually the squawking of birds from the nest in the tree by his window, or the thud of one of his brothers stubbing their toe on the door jamb on their way to the bathroom. Or sometimes by sunlight piercing through the crack in his curtains if the sunrise was particularly early that day. Rarely even the feeling of cotton if he had to be roused by one of his brothers swinging their pillow over his head. But almost never by a smell.

And yet, that morning, he was drawn from his slumber with the scent of bacon wafting past his nostrils. Bleary eyed, Royce rolled over to check the time - confused not only by the fact that he didn’t seem to be the first one awake for once, but also by the fact that there was already food being cooked. Good food at that. Since when did Miles splash out on bacon?

Royce wasn’t the heaviest of sleepers, but as whispers of his dream came back to him, it started to make more sense as to why he’d been so reluctant to wake from it. Magical potions, clanging swords and a certain brunette he’d spent the latter part of his evening with… Maybe if he rolled back over he could have just five more minutes-

Three lively thumps to his bedroom door told him otherwise.

“Up and at ‘em, boys,” an unseasonably chirpy Miles crowed from the hall. “I’m not letting us skip breakfast today - the eggs’ll be ready in five. So get your butts in the bathroom before I burn ‘em.”

Listening to Miles’ footsteps trail away, Royce pushed himself up on one arm, and rubbed the last of the sleep from his eyes with the other. “Has Miles been swapped with an alien or something?” he groggily mumbled to his little brother in the bed opposite him. Yawning, he swung his legs over the edge of his mattress and pushed himself to his feet, he continued with a tired chuckle, “He can barely stay awake long enough to make toast normally - let alone operate the stove.” And although he was confused by the sharp detour from normality, part of Royce just wanted to believe that Miles had hitched a ride on Cloud 9 too - and his insanely good luck with Vivien last night was extending into today, and to other people in his life.

Turning back to his brother’s bed as he started to rummage through his drawers for a matching pair of socks, Royce tried to coax a response from the blond more directly, since he was apparently still too tired to raise one of his own. “Did you know he was planning on making breakfast, Benny?” he asked with a lazy grin - partly just trying to bring him into the conversation, partly just plain curious; he had been rather distracted yesterday evening.

The subject of that distraction stole his train of thought all over again, and before he knew it, he’d selected his entire outfit for the day. And yet his little brother still hadn’t made a peep - or moved a muscle, if the bundle of blankets on his bed was anything to go by. “Come on, Ben. Your eggs are gonna be ashes at this rate,” he teased. But the joke fell on deaf ears, and the air in the room grew thick and awkward as the silence persisted.

Frowning in confusion more than anything, Royce set his clothes on the end of his bed and padded over to the bed opposite his: a mess of colourful comforters with a particular, threadbare stuffed animal poking out the top. Nudging the edge of his brother’s mattress with his knee, Royce huffed out, “Benny, come on, we’ve got school.”

Again, silence. The bedding stayed as motionless as ever.

Royce knew Bentley loved to sleep, and had always been a more reluctant riser, but this was starting to get weird. Was he deliberately ignoring him or something? Was he mad at him for leaving him to go watch that movie with Vivien? Whatever his reason, Royce wasn’t finding it funny or endearing anymore. An odd sense of unease gnawed at the back of his mind, but frustration bubbled to the surface faster. Muttering his discontent, Royce strode over to the head of his brother’s bed and grabbed a fistful of his comforter with each hand. “Ben, it’s not funny anymore. Just get-”

But as Royce wrenched the comforter back, the rest of his sentence died in his throat.

Miles couldn’t remember a time where he’d been in this good of a mood before 8am. Ever. And yet, he’d woken up with his alarm - ready to snooze like always - only for his eyes to fall on a cassette tape on his bedside table. He slammed a hand down to silence the squawking, dusty digital clock and bolted upright - scrambling out from beneath his duvet to inspect the piece of plastic again.

He hadn’t dreamt it - it was really here: smudged and slightly scratched plastic case and all. And he hasn’t been able to shake the smile from his face since. Whilst he usually had to drag himself out of bed before school, it felt like he was floating around the house that morning - fuelled by a weird sort of giddy gratification he had never experienced before. Furthering the new experiences, he threw caution to the wind and grabbed the pack of bacon he’d stashed away for their ‘special Sunday breakfast’ tradition once he made it into the kitchen, and tossed it into a frying pan without a second thought. After all, if he couldn’t capitalise on his unseasonably good mood by passing on some of that joy to his brothers, then what was the point? Besides, Royce had been on his first ever date last night. That definitely deserved a breakfast of champions.

Once the bacon was sizzling, Miles found himself inspecting the tape again - pulling it from his pocket and re-reading the loopy, handwritten cover card like it was a New York Times bestseller. And although he was still refraining from reading the tracklist on the back, his curiosity started to get the better of him. Flicking the countertop TV off, and silencing the crackly newsfeed, Miles grabbed the hand-me-down tape player from Mick and set it on the windowsill beside him. After slotting the cassette into position and hitting play, he turned back to his pan of bacon just in time to hear the opening notes of a Queen hit sputtering throughout the kitchen.

Nodding along to the song’s intro, Miles tended to the bacon - already impressed with Carrie’s first pick of a song. But when his eyes drifted back to the tape’s case, he discovered that instead of the song titles, she’d formed the tracklist out of personalised memos - with the first line reading: ‘For those times you just want to escape it all”.

His heart skipped in time with the drum beat, but his breath returned with an incredulous chuckle. All their conversations at work, the dumb end-of-shift therapy sessions, the senseless venting - she had actually been paying attention this whole time. The blasé attitude and vacant-eyed grin she usually faced him with: it was just an act. She cared. She had to. He didn’t dare think about how deeply, but the evidence was right in front of him: scrawled in black biro and echoing throughout his kitchen.

That validation, and a newfound resonance with the lyrics, spurred him on to progress to singing along to the second verse. His head still bobbed along to the drumbeat - unruly locks tickling the nape of his neck with every movement - as he continued to shuffle the bacon around the pan, stopping only to raise the handle to his mouth as a makeshift microphone. The warmth from the stovetop felt like it was spreading throughout his whole body - but the tingles in his chest gave away where the heat was really coming from.

Miles was so lost in his own little bubble of satisfaction that he didn’t even hear any footsteps approach the kitchen. It was just pure luck that, as he was chorusing a confirmatory “I don’t want to live alone”, he turned to grab a plate from the drying rack and caught sight of his younger brother in the doorway.

Miles’ face instantly split into an even wider grin - if that was even possible. “Oh good, you’re up. I was just about to come and wake you. How was the date, Romeo?” But as he set the plate down on the counter, he did a double take and his expression faltered into a puzzled frown. “Wait, why aren’t you dressed yet?”

“Where’s Benny?”

“What?” Miles chuckled, already having busied himself with shifting bacon rashers around in the pan again.

But Royce’s question remained the same. If anything, his tone just edged more insistent. “Where’s Benny?”

Miles’ confused frown returned. “What do you mean?” Before Royce got the chance to explain though, Miles continued, and let a teasing grin settle into place. “Is this some weird game you guys are setting up or something? We don’t have time for that and eggs.”

Miles’ chuckles fell on deaf ears though, because Royce remained rooted to the spot, with that sense of unease growing stronger by the second. “No, I’m serious, Miley. I don’t know where he is.”

Miles froze. The nickname, the tone of voice… It was rare to catch either of his brothers being this earnest - rare enough to get him to set down his spatula anyway.

”He’s not in your room?”

“Or the bathroom,” Royce confirmed with a shake of his head. “…I thought he’d be in here with you.”

Again Miles’ train of thought stalled. But it gave him enough pause to fully take in Royce’s appearance - everything from his bare feet to the rogue curl sticking up like an antenna. The untamed hair told him he hadn’t even thought to look in a mirror yet, and the bare feet told him he’d left his room in a hurry; Royce hated walking around the house without socks on - he always made time for socks. But what was the reason for the hurry? He couldn’t be that eager to play a dumb prank on him, right?

Confused, but determined to get to the bottom of this so they could actually finish breakfast on time today, Miles shut off the stove, and the stereo, and started trudging down the hall. A tedious sigh slipped from his lips as his heels thudded along the floorboards, at a much more begrudging pace than those he heard trailing behind him.

His fingers closed around the doorknob to his younger brothers’ room. And despite Royce’s insistence: “I told you, he’s not in there,” Miles swung the door open. Expecting a giggling Bentley to attack him with a pillow, his eyes were poised to start rolling. But when silence was the first thing to meet his ears, he turned and scanned the room - stunned to find that it was, in fact, as lifeless as Royce had tried to tell him it was.

Pushing down his creeping level of uncertainty, Miles ploughed ahead - searching the bathroom, his own bedroom, and then the living room, to no avail. His heart rate steadily rose with every empty room he came across. His palms grew sweatier each time he grabbed for a door handle, yet his mouth got drier with every exasperated huff that left it. And after wrenching open the door to the hall closet - the last possible hiding spot in their pitiful excuse of a house - to find it just as full of junk as when he last checked it, his stomach folded in on itself.

Whirling around to Royce, with an uncharacteristically stern expression, Miles finally spoke again. “Royce, if this is some bogus game you guys are playing, it’s not funny.”

Horrified at the very idea, Royce stressed, “It’s not a game, I swear!”

“Then what’s going on? Where is he?” Miles asked, frustration bubbling over as his little brother just stared back at him with that same worried look of confusion again.

“I told you, I don’t know,”

The wobble in Royce’s voice and the heaviness of the silence that swelled throughout the hallway made Miles stop again. And the longer he stood there, the deeper this new, awful sense of unease started to bore into him. His brothers were no strangers to the odd, harmless prank. But they weren’t good enough actors to pull off a stunt like this without cracking a smile - and they weren’t masochists. So Royce had to be telling the truth after all. And if that was the case, then where the hell was Bentley?

If insanity can be defined by doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, then Miles needed to be sanctioned. After snapping at Royce to get himself ready for school, despite his protests, Miles turned the house upside down - twice. He marched up and down the hall, darting in and out of rooms with a feverish urgency that stole all logic from his mind. The second Royce had thrown on the first clean clothes he could find, he rejoined the search - following his big brother like a shadow and trying to help inject some method into Miles’ madness. But after Royce peered through his grimy bedroom window for the third time, searching for any signs of footsteps amongst the dusty mud and half-dead grass in their backyard, only to be interrupted by Miles tearing every blanket, pillow and stuffed animal off Bentley’s bed, just to discover the same, threadbare fitted sheet again, he knew things were about to take a turn.

Miles stormed out into the hall, muttering incredulously to himself as he made his way back to the kitchen. “I don’t understand. You’ve been in there all night with him,” he said, turning back to Royce and throwing an arm back in the direction of their ransacked bedroom. “Where could he have gone? We’d have heard something!” he insisted, or rather tried to convince, as he continued pacing in front of the sink. But the certainty of his statement was a total antithesis to his expression - riddled with desperate denial. Whether to help gather clues, or to help his brain actually start to comprehend what was happening, Miles then turned his attention to his brother. After all, he’d already torn the house apart - Royce’s brain was the one place he hadn’t touched yet. “Did he say anything when you got back last night?”

The young brunet just shook his head. “No, he was already asleep.”

”And he was definitely asleep in bed?” Miles pressed. “You definitely saw him?”

“I- …I don’t know,” Royce stammered under his brother’s hardened gaze. “I didn’t think to check - I just thought he was asleep when I got back. I didn’t want to wake him.”

“But you did see him?” Miles asked again, fixated on this one detail.

”I don’t know, I don’t remember - it was dark and I was tired,” Royce said, frustrating himself with his inability to think more coherently. “I just got back and went straight to sleep - I wasn’t even thinking about looking for him. It just looked like he was in his bed.”

“Wait- wait, what do you mean it was dark?” Miles asked - again clinging onto just snippets of information, as though his brain was too fried to absorb sentences as a whole.

Nervous, but obliged to answer nonetheless, Royce slowly continued. “I mean it was dark - I came home and all the lights were off in the house.”

The beat of silence that followed was so heavy it knocked all the air out of Miles’ lungs. But the room felt anything but quiet as Royce’s words managed to permeate the haze of mile-a-minute thoughts filling his head, because the second they registered, the pounding of blood in his ears became deafening. He didn’t even hear the next words that left his lips. “…Benny would never turn all the lights off himself.”

”What?” Royce breathed. The words were so quiet in comparison to the agitated ranting and raving he’d been subjected to so far that he genuinely didn’t hear them at first. But as Miles numbly repeated himself, staring straight through his little brother, Royce felt his whole body flood with an icy sense of dread. “Wait, you don’t think-?”

But Miles didn’t let him finish the thought - stumbling through his own realisation of what he’d refused to believe up until now. “So he might never have made it home last night?” His incredulous gaze found his little brother - hardly daring to give the question any credibility. But when Royce’s umber irises just quivered with wide-eyed dismay, he had to tear his gaze away. Fresh waves of dread washed over him, so rapid he felt like he was drowning. His hands rose to scratch the back of his neck and he tried to breathe out some of the rising pressure in his chest, but that could easily have just been his body’s instinct to try to swim away from it all. He just needed a minute to try to make sense of all this - for his mind to catch up with what his body was already instinctively reacting to - because in that moment they felt like two entirely separate entities. And he was stuck somewhere in the middle. “…Holy shit.”

Royce’s chest was tight - aching in a way he knew his inhaler wouldn’t even come close to fixing. Trying to be logical, trying to help his big brother calm down, Royce started thinking back over all his interactions with Bentley from the night before, and kept replaying his last moments before going to sleep - willing his brain to remember something new - something that would help to fix this. But every thought just veered off course, crashing into some horrible figment of his imagination with Bentley at its centre - how he could have spent the night cold and alone out in the woods, how he could have hurt himself and been too weak to call for help, how he could have…

Royce didn’t dare finish the thought - and yet the images kept flashing through his head. But when he turned to his big brother for some help, reassurance, anything - his look of agitated terror just unnerved him even more. The older boy couldn’t concentrate. His vision started to blur and distort at the edges, his chest felt like it was being crushed by a tyre, and he couldn’t make sense of any of his thoughts because his entire head felt like it was filled with static. Still, a meek plea from his little brother managed to fight its way through the noise.

”Miley, I’m scared.”

”You’re scared?!” Miles hissed - the short fuse on his already shot nerves, despite his better judgement, finally blowing. He never yelled at his little brothers, it just wasn’t who he was, especially after everything that had happened with their dad. But Miles didn’t feel as though he could control what his body was doing any more, let alone his emotions. And so it all came spilling out in petrified tirades and choked accusations. “How could he not-?! How could you not know if he was in there with you or not?!”

Stunned, and wounded that this was being turned back on him, Royce’s own anxiety grabbed the reins to mount an equally fiery retaliation. “How could you not know?! You always come in and check on us when you get back from work!” Desperate for Miles to turn around and do what he’d always done when anything was wrong: hug him and tell him everything was going to be ok, Royce’s eyes stung with tears as he insisted, “You’re the grown-up here - you’re supposed to know how to look after us.”

“And you’re supposed to do what I say, but that never fucking happens either. And now look where it’s left us!” Miles couldn’t be the mom-and-dad this time. He couldn’t feel any further from it - despite the custody concerns and court threats adding to the mounting mess of problems filling his brain. And after giving up what felt like his entire life to take care of his younger brothers, only for it to be thrown back in his face like this - Miles was livid. His anger wasn’t directed at Royce, but he became his verbal punching bag anyway, as he poured out his frustration with the universe, or whatever cosmic power had saddled him with this exhausting, thankless task at the tender age of seventeen. He could barely handle this parenting shit at the best of times - and now that the worst times were upon them, any sense of order he’d tried to establish was crumbling before his weary, bloodshot eyes.

He turned away and lifted his face to the water-damaged ceiling, willing the burning tears to drain back into his eyes before they broke the threshold of his lashes. He started mumbling to himself again - hoping that throwing some of his thoughts out into the open would make his brain stop feeling like it was being suffocated by his skull. But nothing felt like it was helping any more. It was like his body was shutting down. “I can’t believe this is- …All you had to do was stick to the route through the Vale… I told you so many times-“

As nonsensical as Miles’ muttering sounded, that seeming confirmation of Royce’s suspicions shot a new bolt of fear through him. “You don’t think he’s been out there all night do you?” Again, out of reflex, Royce found himself turning to his big brother for reassurance. But if anything, Miles looked like the one who needed the reassurance - if Royce had been in any sort of frame of mind to offer any. Instead he just stood there, utterly helpless, trembling like a lost child - which is exactly what he felt like - silently begging for Miles to say something that could fix this. But as torturous second after torturous second dragged by without another word, Royce’s despair drove him to action. If Bentley was out there somewhere, then standing around in their crumb-riddled kitchen wasn’t doing anything other than wasting valuable time. They had to do something. They had to get out and look further than the four walls of their house. Couldn’t Miles see that too? And if he could, why was he just standing in front of the sink like a zombie? “…Miles?” Royce tried, tentatively attempting to get his attention. But all Miles did was brace his hands on the countertop and drop his head to the floor. So, like that lost child once more, Royce tried tugging on the hem of his t-shirt, as the tentative tone quickly escalated to fraught. “Miles-”

“Royce, stop talking,” Miles quickly muttered, pressing his eyelids closed and willing the world around him to loosen its vice-like grip.

But Miles’ pleas were no match for Royce’s. “But we can’t just-”

“I feel like I’m gonna puke,” Miles managed between laboured breaths - his stomach twisting itself into knots so tight he swore he could feel the skin splitting. But Royce’s own anguish rendered him oblivious to his brother’s distress; all he could focus on was Bentley, and he didn’t understand how Miles was floundering instead of taking charge.

“Miles, we-“

And suddenly Miles erupted. The pressure to be the grown-up. The frustration with his lack of control. The debilitating guilt over not checking on Bentley sooner. The constant hammer blows to his skull. The roaring of blood in his ears. His inability to take in a full breath. Everything was too much. And he couldn’t stand it any more. He needed a break, he needed silence, he needed everything to just stop. “Royce, I said shut up!”

Wide-eyed and dejected, Royce stood stock-still - any words he could have attempted to string together dying on his tongue. But he’d have been beaten to the punch anyway, because a new voice broke through the tension blanketing the kitchen.

“Hey! Is my horn broken or something, or did you guys all just collectively decide to go deaf? Let’s show a little hustle or-” The moment Butchy sauntered into the kitchen, the cocksure grin that accompanied his grumpy teasing dropped like a lead balloon. If Royce’s tearful look of dismay wasn’t enough to knock the wind out of his sails, then the sight of Miles dry-heaving over the sink definitely was. “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded.

Unable to sense the concern in her boyfriend’s tone, Mick trailed behind him and added her own confusion to the mix. “And why was your front door unlocked?” But again, the moment she stepped in line with Butchy, her eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. “Oh, shit,” she breathed.

After a glance at Miles told Royce he was in no shape to respond, at least not coherently, he swallowed thickly and admitted, “We can’t find Benny.”

Now it was Mick and Butchy’s turn to exchange a glance, although theirs was more so that of concerned disbelief.

“Can’t ‘find’ him?” Butchy tried to clarify, not quite grasping yet what the young boy actually meant. “What do you mean ‘find’?”

“He’s not in the house,” Royce said - his throat so scratchy it felt as though the words had drawn blood.

The gravity of the situation seemed to dawn on Butchy a lot quicker, but it still took him several seconds of processing what he was hearing before he posed his next, dreaded question. “…He didn’t come home last night?”

Miles, finally back in the room long enough to catch the last question, but still too out of it to respond with words, just shook his head.

Butchy’s protective, big brotherly instincts swelled like a tsunami, and came crashing down with a fresh torrent of outrage as he turned to Miles with an accusatory: “And you didn’t think to say something until now?”

Miles’ head snapped to the older boy, a crazed look in his eyes as his outrage dwarfed Butchy’s. “Does it look like I fucking found out before now?” he hissed, having to still brace himself against the sink again so his knees didn’t give way beneath him.

Taken aback by the outburst, but not deterred, Butchy’s initial shock dissipated enough to let him push down his concerns and do what he knew Miles was in no fit state to: try to take charge.

“Alrigh, alright. Let’s just take a second to calm down-”

“Calm down?” Miles scoffed with frenzied incredulity - voice rising with each word. “Do you really think I can calm down right now?!”

“No, but we need to think about this rationally,” Butchy carefully explained, trying to acknowledge Miles’ distress, but also give their panicking some sense of direction. “We need to start going through the facts,” he continued, starting to address the room as a whole. “When was the last time we all saw him? What was he wearing? Did he leave with anyone we know?”

Mick’s concentration was split between her boyfriend and her best friend though, because the more Butchy spoke, the less control Miles seemed to have over his breathing. His eyes were screwed shut and each snatched breath rattled his whole body. And although she knew Butchy was trying to help by applying logic to the situation, Miles didn’t need logic in that moment. He needed support. And Mick couldn’t stand there watching him struggle any longer.

Cutting Butchy off with a simple hand on his arm, she gently said, “Babe, stop.” And when Butchy’s confused gaze met hers, she just redirected it to Miles, and it immediately softened.

Whilst Butchy had paused, Mick closed the space between her and Miles and placed a hand on his back. She didn’t even need to say anything, but she could feel his rigid frame relax a little from her presence alone. And in a voice much smaller and meeker than it had just sounded, Miles breathed a laboured, “I feel like I’m gonna pass out.”

Rubbing the hand on his back up and down his spine, and gripping onto his shoulder with the other, Mick leant down and softly explained, “Miles, you’re having a panic attack. It’s okay.”

“No it’s not,” he protested with a wheeze.

“It is, I promise; I get ‘em too,” Mick went on, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and keeping her voice as level as she could - almost as though trying to lull him to sleep. “I know it’s scary, but just try to focus on your breathing, yeah?”

It took far longer than he would have liked, but Mick’s coaxing did eventually help his breathing steady out again. And although Miles was relieved it no longer felt like the world was collapsing in around him, the numb ache in his chest remained. But he had a feeling that wouldn’t be shifting any time soon. Just as he was trying to blink the distorted haze from the corners of his vision though…

“Guys, are we going or not? I don’t wanna be late for homeroo-” Lela skidded to a halt as she rounded the corner into the kitchen, glossy pink lips falling open as she took in the scene before her. “Wait, is everything ok? …Where’s Bentley?”

Mick, still petting Miles like a traumatised rescue dog, felt his shoulders start to tense again at the mention of his brother's name. Before Lela could stick her foot any further into her mouth though, Mick shot her a warning look and frantically shook her head - taking any damage control measures she could whilst she had the chance.

Thanks to Mick soothing Miles back from the brink of insanity, Butchy had managed to piece together somewhat of a plan. It was loose, and less than ideal, but after Lela’s arrival prompted him to check the time, he quickly realised it would have to do. “Alright, I know this is all pretty scary, but jumping to conclusions isn’t gonna help anyone,” he began, once again addressing the whole room. “There’ll be a simple answer to all of this somewhere. I don’t know if it’s an impromptu sleepover or what, but until we figure out more, we need to make sure this stays between us,” he continued, emphasising his point, and its severity, by locking onto the gaze of each person in turn. “The last thing we need is word getting out and CPS wanting to get involved.”

The thought of that hadn’t even crossed Royce’s mind until now. “You don’t think they would, do you?” he stammered. Butchy, not wanting to raise the boy's hopes, or trouble him further, chose to remain silent. But his stoicism did nothing - so once again Royce found himself pleading with his brother for reassurance. “Miles?”

Miles pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, as though trying to shove the looming tears back into their ducts, was the only sort of response he got though - beyond a defeated scoff. And it was far from reassuring.

Snatching Royce’s attention away from the churning anxiety that had started rising into his abdomen, Butchy continued with his address. “Like I said, we’re not jumping to any conclusions, and we’re not worrying yet. But that’s why this needs to stay between us, ok?” Waiting for each person to confirm their understanding with a nod before continuing, Butchy then began to explain his plan, starting with one of its most integral participants. “Now Royce,” he said, bending down to the boy’s eye level to make sure he had his full attention. And despite the uncertainty in the thirteen year old’s gaze, he could see a glimmer of determination too. ”I need you to check if Bentley stayed over at one of his friends’ places last night once you’re at school - and to check if he’s there as normal by the time it gets to the break between second and third period. Once you know, I need you to use the pay phone to call our house, okay?” he explained, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a small handful of loose change he then pressed straight into Royce’s palm. “I’ll be waiting on the other end, so don’t worry about it ringing off and wasting the money.”

“You’re not going to work?” Mick questioned from her spot beside Miles.

”No,” he replied. But the shock in her tone pushed him to explain why - and it directed his attention to the person on her left. “Miles, let’s face it, you’re not in any state to be in school today. I’ll call in sick for us both, we’ll talk over what we can about all this, and then we’ll go out retracing his steps.”

”What about us?” Mick asked, eyes flitting from Royce to Lela before settling back on her boyfriend.

Latching onto the same dejected feeling of Miles and Butchy going off searching for Bentley without him, Royce added a hesitant: “Do I still have to go?”

As much as Butchy’s heart ached for Royce, all he could do was place a hand on his shoulder with a heavy sigh. “Yeah, bud. Like I said, you’ve gotta go check he’s not just beat you to class,” he added, trying to tack on a smile to chivvy him along. And although Royce’s expression hinted at one to match, the apprehension shone through. His attention, and lopsided grin, then turned to Mick though. “And you’ve definitely all missed the bus, so someone’s gotta be the designated driver.”

Even though she caught Butchy’s bundle of car keys and scrappy keychains with practised ease, Mick’s affronted expression remained. “You don’t want me helping you guys?”

”Of course I want you to, but we can’t all call in sick,” Butchy tried to reason. “Like I said, we don’t want to do anything that’s gonna draw suspicion.” Although he could tell Mick wasn’t exactly satisfied with his answer, he knew time was running out. So he returned his attention to the group as a whole. He’d just have to try to make it up to her later. “I know it feels like anything but a normal day, but that’s just how we’ve gotta treat it. We’ll meet back up at All Skate later… with Bentley.”

Despite the certainty in Butchy’s tone, no one dared believe him. But then again, no one dared to think otherwise.

Accepting her role with grace and gritted teeth, Mick forced a small smile. “Alright, come on. I don’t want to get my first tardy.” As she readied herself to leave though, she took a moment to offer Miles one last shoulder squeeze, reassuring: “It’ll be ok.” And although she got no verbal response, the timid, yet grateful nod from her brother figure was a good enough alternative.

Catching the brunette’s eye before she could leave, Butchy extended his own offer of gratitude with a mouthed ‘thank you’, that softened the blow of shoving her onto the ‘B team’ a little more - enough to garner a hint of a smile anyway.

Pushing her disgruntled thoughts to the back of her mind, Mick’s main focus became the reluctant thirteen year old before her as she started ushering him to the front door. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders as they fell into stride together - giving them a squeeze just as she had for his older brother as they walked. “He’ll be fine,” she comforted, hoping that her sureness was convincing enough to combat his mounting uncertainty. Whether her statement was about his big brother, or his little one though - she had no idea. She hoped to god it would apply to both - but for now, hoping was the best she could do. At least until they got more answers anyway. ”I promise.”

The plastic payphone clumsily clicked back into place and the cannonball that felt like it had been stuck in his throat dropped into his stomach. Royce’s fingers slid down the grimy, metal cord as he forced himself to swallow, dragging the foul, lingering taste of iron down his burning oesophagus. His muddy irises remained fixed on a trio across the quad though, watching every shift in expression, studying every movement. Until a pair of round, wire frames and furrowed, chestnut brows blocked the view.

“What the hell is going on?”

Royce jumped out of his skin - too on edge today for any more surprises, good or bad. “Oh my god, Viv,” he breathed.

But when he showed no signs of elaborating, Vivien’s clover eyes narrowed further. Throwing her hands out to the sides, she demanded, “What gives?”

“You just scared the crap out of me,” Royce replied, hammering heart finally starting to settle back into a normal rhythm as he dared another glance past Vivien to check on Kona, Zack and August again.

But Vivien just stepped in front of him once more - anything but satisfied with that response. “Yeah, and you’ve been freaking me out all morning,” she retorted. “You’ve barely said a word to anyone, you’ve just been walking around like a zombie.”

She wasn’t wrong; he sure felt like a zombie. But he couldn’t tell her that. Not that it mattered anyway; she was already on his case. “We’ve been in class,’ he tried to protest.

“Like that’s ever stopped us before,” Vivien scoffed, digging a wad of creased and crumpled scraps of paper out of her pocket and waving them in front of his nose. “I’ve torn up half of my notebook trying to get a conversation out of you, but you just keep stonewalling me. I may as well have actually listened to Mr Kaufman for once - at least that wouldn’t have been such a waste of time.”

The annoyance in her gaze shifting to hurt is what really got that creeping sense of guilt to start clawing at the base of Royce’s neck though. He normally told her everything, from the flavour of jelly he’d chosen for his toast to the page in his book he’d reached on his drive to school. So of course she’d have questions. He just hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be to keep the answers from her.

His expression must have changed at some point in the tormenting silence they had fallen into, because she dropped her defensiveness altogether with a frustrated sigh. Although now tinged with concern, her tone remained just as inquisitive, proving herself just as determined as ever. “Is everything ok?” she started. But when all Royce did was look over her shoulder again, her soft worry shifted, making way for a characteristic, babbled torrent of self-conscious rambling. “Is it me? Was it something I said? …Did something happen last night at the movies? Because I thought it went well, and you said you’d had a great time but it’s okay if you didn’t; I won’t take it personally-”

“No, no I did have a great time, I promise,” Royce hurriedly replied, eyes wide with horror.

“Then what’s wrong?” Vivien circled back to the question again with an exasperated huff. “Have I done something? Look, if you thought it was too much with it being just us two last night, you can just say it. We don’t have to do it again. But you don’t have to ignore me to-”

“No, it’s not about that. It’s nothing to do with you, I swear,” Royce insisted, hoping that was enough to reassure her.

Her expression said otherwise. “Then what is it?! And why am I having to be punished for it?”

The pain in her eyes, paired with that last line, finally got Royce to crumble. He’d never kept a secret from Vivien in his life, and he couldn’t bring himself to start today. Getting through the rest of the school day already felt impossible with how much was weighing on his mind, and not having anyone to talk to about it all with was slowly killing him. He needed someone to understand, to confide in. He needed Vivien.

Butchy would understand. He’d have to, because Royce had already made up his mind.

Scanning the quad once more, just in time to catch a concerned Kona seemingly searching for him amongst the sea of mingling middle schoolers, Royce sealed his fate with a huff. Grabbing Vivien by the forearms, fingertips sinking into the plush cotton of her purple hoodie, Royce ducked behind the rusted privacy screen beside the pay phone, and dragged a startled Vivien along with him.

“Ow,” she hissed as her shoulder collided with the school’s brick exterior wall. “What are you doing?” she continued, looking at Royce as though he’d sprouted another nose as she rubbed the spot that was already awaiting its bruise.

Royce looked over his shoulder, making sure no one else was around, and that they were out of sight of their peers, before fixing his gaze back on hers. “You can’t tell anyone about this, okay?” he said, with a hushed assertiveness Vivien had never heard him use before. Now it was her turn to stall - so taken aback by the new urgency in his voice that she couldn’t find the words to respond. But Royce didn’t have time to wait. “Swear to me right now.”

Confusion growing by the second, Vivien started to ask, “Why are you being so-?” But she cut herself off as a new theory came screeching to the forefront of her mind, eyes tripling in size as she blurted without thinking, “Oh my god, wait. Are you coming out to me right now?”

Royce’s train of thought didn’t just derail, it completely disappeared. And for a moment, the pair were just staring at one another in a mix of horror and utter disbelief, before Royce scrambled to set the record straight - literally. “What?! No!”

“Oh, phew, okay, just checking. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but, you know…” Vivien trailed off with an awkward chuckle Royce almost found himself sharing out of sheer incredulity. Clumsily trying to dig herself out of the hole she’d unintentionally launched them into, she started to ramble again - letting every scatterbrained query she had fill the red-faced space between them. “Well if it’s not that then what is it? And why do we have to be so secretive about it?” For a moment it looked as though Royce was about to back out, but Vivien wasn’t about to get this close and leave without her answer. “Come on. You can’t keep me in suspense here, and you know I’m not gonna shut up unless you tell me.”

Royce did know; she’d proven her determination time and time again over the course of their friendship. And as she stood there, arms crossed and an eyebrow expectantly arched past the threshold of her bangs, he realised it had led her to victory once again. He tried to steady his nerves with a long, slow breath, but the second he locked onto her gaze the truth came tumbling out. “Benny didn’t come home last night.”

The moment those words hit her ears, Vivien’s demeanour changed. “What do you mean he didn’t come home? …What happened?”

“We don’t know,” Royce tried to explain, but having to talk about it again, and seeing the worry start to pool in Vivien’s eyes, made his voice tremble like a leaf. “Butchy thought he might have spent the night with Zack or Kona, and just not thought to call, but he’s not over there with them now. And there’s definitely no sign of him back at our house, so-”

“-So he’s missing?” Vivien spluttered, as though her brain was refusing to comprehend it. Royce’s meek nod brought the gravity of the situation down to her with such force it felt as though someone had taken a mallet to her head.

Once the floodgates had been opened, everything came pouring out. Royce told her every detail he remembered from the moment he opened his eyes that morning to the moment Mick dropped him off at the curbside. And Vivien listened to every word, swallowing down each instinctive reaction, and her mounting disconcertion until she was sure he was done. At which point she could only think to offer a tentative: “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well what about Zack and Kona and August?” Vivien asked, gesturing to the group somewhere on the other side of the pay phone’s privacy screen, littered with graffiti and old, wind-weathered flyers. “Shouldn’t we tell them too?”

Royce shook his head. “Butchy said the less people that know the better.”

“But they’ll find out eventually, right?” Vivien checked, pressing on when Royce’s certainty seemed to waver. “We can’t keep this from them, Royce. They’re his best friends - they already look lost without him.”

And when Royce dared another glance over his shoulder, following Vivien’s gaze, to find the trio huddled together, talking in hushed voices of their own and taking turns to scour their surroundings, he knew she was right. But so was Butchy. And as much as his heart ached for Bentley’s friends, the repercussions Butchy had alluded to earlier put the fear of god in him. “I know, but he was saying that if too many people find out and the cops get called then they could get CPS involved, and that means-”

“-they might take you guys away,” Vivien slowly confirmed - once again finishing his thought for him, proving further just how deep their bond ran. Speaking the words for herself gave them an entirely new weight though, and as visions of what kind of a future she’d have to live in if such a thing came to fruition swam through her head, her stomach sank to her rain-splattered Converse. As she then opened her mouth to respond, only one word was able to sum up her thoughts. “…Shit.” Starting to understand now why Royce had felt so helpless, yet less easily trodden into submission, she continued. “So what can we do then?”

Royce could only shrug as another weary sigh worked its way out through his over-worked lungs. “Try to make it to the end of the day, I guess.”

“And then what?” Vivien asked, her protectiveness of the young blond drawing out her fighting spirit. “We can’t just sit around waiting for him to show up. We need to be out there looking for him.”

“I know, but Butchy’s never gonna let that slide,” Royce countered, despite agreeing with her whole-heartedly. “We’ll see what they’ve found when they get back tonight and, if they haven’t found him…” Although Royce didn’t want to give the thought any validity, still clinging onto the hope deep down that all of this was just a big misunderstanding, and that Bentley would stroll into All Skate tonight as though nothing had ever happened, he needed to prepare himself for the worst. And if they were no better off by nightfall, he knew they’d have no choice but to act, whether they had Butchy’s approval or not. “We’ll come up with a plan.”

“What if they don’t find anything? Or they don’t tell us what they’ve found though?” Vivien countered, nervously toying with the hem of her sleeve as she started to roll her eyes and mutter a disgruntled, “They’re always trying to hide their ‘grown-up’ crap from us.”

Taking on the same determined glint in his eye as the girl before him, Royce swallowed any doubts and confirmed, “Then we’ll go out and look for ourselves. There have to be clues out there somewhere - and if anyone can find them, it’ll be us; no one knows Benny like we do.”

Relieved that some of Royce’s tenacity had returned to him, a proud smile sprouted amidst the haze of concern clouding Vivien’s expression. “Exactly,” she agreed, tentatively reaching out and placing a hand on his arm. The jolt of electricity it shot through her palm the moment they made contact melted every last shred of apprehension in her body though, replacing it with a sureness that she clung to for all it was worth. “He’ll be okay - we’d know if he wasn’t.”

Appreciation quietly replaced the worry in Royce’s gaze, even if only temporarily, but it was enough to lift some of the awful weight from his mind that had been building since dawn, and the relief showed in his whole body. Emboldened by the feeling the touch to his arm gave her, Vivien watched as grateful tears started to well in his eyes and she felt her limbs moving before she could second guess herself. A single step was all it took to close the gap between them, and without skipping a beat she threw her arms around his shoulders, pulling him into an embrace.

Although the hug caught Royce off-guard, it wasn’t until he felt the gentle thudding of her heart against his chest that he realised just how much he’d needed this. Burying his head in her shoulder, he soaked in the comforting familiarity of her scent, and the softness of his favourite hoodie of hers. But more than anything, he just appreciated that it gave him a moment of peace - a moment that helped him believe that maybe everything would be okay after all. “Thanks, Viv,” he murmured, hoping that if he smushed his face into her shoulder hard enough she wouldn’t be able to catch the wobble in his voice.

Vivien wasn’t thinking about that though; she had needed the hug just as much as Royce did. But she also knew that, despite her own anxiety over the news of Bentley’s apparent disappearance, Royce needed her to be there for him. He needed her to be his rock - at least until Miles and Butchy came back to their senses anyway. And if he needed her to be there for him, then she’d do everything in her power to do that. Providing hugs hardly felt like a chore though.

The warning bell was the only thing that managed to separate them, albeit begrudgingly. Once Royce felt ready to pull away, Viviven leant back, offering a small smile with a final, reassuring shoulder rub. “Come on,” she softly coaxed. “We’d better get to geography. At least it’s not a class we need to pay attention to; I’ve watched way too many true crime shows to think about anything else right now.”

And Vivien proved herself right. Their geography teacher’s ramblings about tectonic plates drifted in one ear, and straight out the other - both far too consumed by their own thoughts to consider taking in any new ones. Vivien scribbled down notes and ideas like she was drafting a sequel to War and Peace, trying to piece together what limited information she had before starting to link them together with theory after theory. Each new addition was pressed into Royce’s open palm for approval, then passed back and forth until they’d exhausted every possible outcome. It may have just been words on a page, but it helped them feel a little bit less useless than they did whilst stuck between those four walls of pre-teen hell.

The final bell couldn’t come soon enough.

Mick had found it almost impossible to concentrate on a single one of her lessons that day. Her mind just felt too busy - explanations of standard deviations and Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter battling with fleeting thoughts of her boyfriend, and worries about the Murphy brothers. And this constant back and forth was proving exhausting; neither could have her full attention since she’d been relegated to the designated driver, rather than being able to be of any real help. So she was left half-assing her schoolwork and stressing about a problem she had no way of helping to solve. All in all, she felt like crap.

Her Fleetwood Mac album had proved a rather effective distraction between classes and throughout free period, helping to shut out some of the noise in her mind and from her overly obnoxious peers. But as she’d reunited with Lela at lunch, her Walkman had been abandoned and the conversation had soon steered its way back to the Murphys.

”I just feel awful for them,” Lela fawned, pushing open the door that led off the main thoroughfare by backing into it, so as not to let Mick out of her sight.

Narrowly avoiding being body-checked by a lanky oaf in an offensively vibrant sweater, Mick ducked through the doorway after her. Grateful to be away from the crowds, she let out a heavy sigh before agreeing. “I know - it still doesn’t feel real. Like it’s just some big misunderstanding.”

”Totally! It all just came out of nowhere too. I know they’ve struggled a lot over the past couple of years, but I felt like things were starting to look up for them again. I guess not anymore though. And oh my god, their faces this morning. I can’t even begin to imagine what they’re going through right now,” Lela went on to gush as they made their way into their favourite bathroom in the whole school: the one in the music block behind the cafeteria. With the only other doors around it leading to dusty practice rooms and an old janitor’s closet, it was rare for other students to bother venturing down there - thus making it a hidden gem, since it wasn’t overrun with giggling freshmen, or brain dead cheerleaders wanting to touch up their hair. Today proved no exception, as the girls wandered in and found the row of sinks to be vacant. Still babbling away, Lela made a beeline for the least grimy of the mirrors - the second in from the left - and slipped her compact out of the front pocket of her backpack. Popping out the miniature powder puff, she quickly checked her appearance, then started to pat the powder into her nose as she continued. “I mean, he’s not even my brother and I could honestly start crying if I think about it too hard. Well, they are like family to us, I guess - but he’s not like related by blood, you know? But even still I just- ugh, it’s horrible.”

Perching against the acrylic countertop, Mick murmured her agreements. But as Lela paused her ramblings to swap her pressed powder for a mascara wand, Mick took the moment of reprieve to relish the silence, and the way it soothed her overtaxed brain. The satisfaction she felt in the quiet made the next interruption to it so much more irritating though.

With their initial chatter having masked the noise of anyone else in the room, the girls both froze as a muffled retch rose from one of the stalls. Their wide, bewildered gazes found one another as they listened out again. And sure enough, the sound of someone gagging broke the suspense, quickly followed by a gasp and what almost sounded like a gulped, broken sob - as though the person had realised they were no longer puking in solitude, and were trying to stop.

Despite their other concerns, Lela’s good nature reigned supreme. And although Mick tried to tell her to just leave them be (after all, if they wanted to be bothered, they’d have picked a busier bathroom), the raven haired girl dismissed her with a flap of her hand. Tentatively knocking on the stall door, Lela offered a cautious, “Hey, is everything alright in there?”

A shuddered breath, magnified by the toilet bowl it was directed into, was the only response the girls thought they’d get at first. But just as Lela raised her hand to knock again, the stall’s occupant choked out, “I’m fine.”

Mick and Lela’s wide-eyed gazes found one another again, although this time their shock wasn’t over the presence of the girl in the stall. It was over who that girl was.

Instantly recognising her voice, but doubting her instincts due to how inconceivable the idea seemed, Lela tested her theory on Mick first, mouthing an incredulous, “Is that Carrie?”

That same sense of familiarity struck Mick, but she refused to believe it could be the overbearing blonde. If it was Carrie, she’d be surrounded by a gaggle of popular girl wannabes vying for her attention, fanning her with their homework sheets and bringing her water - or dragging her lunkhead boyfriend to the door so he could whisk her off to the nurse’s office. But just as she was starting to shake her head, her eyes darted to the bottom of the stall’s door, and fell on a pair of Reebok C80s crouched beside a pink and teal backpack she’d seen slung in the break room countless times.

What the hell was Carrie doing down in this dead-end corner of school? Unless she also knew this was the quietest bathroom on property, and wanted somewhere to come and puke in peace. But that still begged the question: what was the school’s ’it girl’ doing hurling into a toilet bowl? Mick knew the cafeteria food was below average, but surely it couldn’t have been that fast-acting. She’d looked completely fine when she’d seen her last - gossiping with her friends and canoodling with Eric in the hall between classes - and that was only an hour ago. How could things have taken such a turn so quickly?

Unsatisfied, and freshly concerned now that she actually knew the girl behind the voice, Lela opened her mouth to speak again. Mick mouthed frantic words of disapproval, waving her hands in front of her and pleading for them to just leave her to it. But Lela stood firm in her morals. “Are you sure you don’t need us to go get anyone? Or call the nurse-?”

“I’m good,” Carrie insisted - cutting Lela off with a desperate, yet irritable emphasis that shut her up in an instant.

Turning back to Mick, Lela, both confused and worried at the same time, mouthed again, “What should we do?”

“Just leave it,” Mick mouthed back, unnerved by the odd discovery, but desperate to avoid whatever unnecessary drama she could.

“We can’t just leave her,” Lela rebutted.

“She wants us to!”

“Just one more,” Lela tried, raising her hand to knock on the stall’s door again. But Mick grabbed it before it could make contact with the plastic-coated wooden panel, and used it to drag her out of the bathroom and back into the hall.

The moment they were on the other side of the bathroom door though, Lela turned to Mick and whispered, “What the hell was that all about?”

Leading them further down the hall, and out of earshot of the bathroom, Mick muttered, “I don’t know, but this day keeps getting weirder and weirder.”

“Do you think she’s ok?” Lela asked, sparing the restroom a glance over her shoulder. Clearly Lela’s affection for her new boyfriend’s sister ran deeper than Mick had realised, since she still seemed so hung up on wanting to check on her. That, or she was just morbidly fascinated by the scandalous discovery. “Should we call someone? Or find one of her friends? Wait, do you think she recognised our voices?”

Rolling her eyes at Lela’s persistence, and biting back a smile at how endearing her naive optimism could be, Mick tried her best to reassure her. “She’ll be fine. She probably just ate something bad, or she’s got a random stomach bug,” she theorised, before joking with a humourless snort, “Knowing her she’ll probably milk it to death and call in sick for the rest of the week.”

”Alright,” she finally conceded - finding a compromise with her conscience as she added, “I’ll remind Tanner to check on her later when I see him next.”

Managing a real chuckle this time, Mick said, “Sounds like a plan.” But as they continued walking back down the main hallway beside the cafeteria, a familiar head of golden brown appeared between the hoards of teenagers, followed by a sun-kissed arm extending a friendly wave to the pair. Smiling to herself, Mick nudged an oblivious Lela’s shoulder until she grabbed her attention. “Speak of the devil.”

The moment Lela’s eyes found Tanner’s mega-watt smile, her face split into a supersized grin of her own. And although reluctant to leave Mick’s side at first, with a little gentle coaxing Lela gave in to the magnetic pull of the promise of time spent in her crush’s company. “We’ll catch up again later though, okay? I’ll be waiting by your locker after sixth period.”

”Yes, I know,” Mick said with a giggle at the girl’s flighty behaviour. “Now go before he starts to think you’re losing interest.”

Horror flashed in Lela’s baby blue eyes for a moment before she realised Mick was just teasing, which only made the brunette want to laugh more. Grateful to have helped cheer her up, even if only marginally, Lela gave Mick one last squeeze of her hand before scuttling down the hallway after her new beau. “Try not to stress too much, yeah?”

Although Mick had nodded, that statement was a lot easier said than done with all the thoughts swirling in her head. And now, despite her best efforts to convince herself she didn’t care, she had this freaky exchange with Carrie plaguing her mind too. The logical side of her mind believed exactly what she’d told Lela: it was just a random stomach bug, or the product of a bad fish stick. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something about the vibe in that bathroom had felt off. Her naturally inquisitive streak begged her to investigate further, but her better judgement reminded her of what she really thought of the girl at the centre of all this. So she pushed the idea to the back of her mind, and reached for her headphones to help drown out any thoughts that suggested otherwise.

Once again, Stevie Nicks helped to deaden the blows of the theories hurtling around her skull, and muffle the droning voices of her peers as she trudged through the halls to her next class. Despite putting most of her energy into keeping one foot moving in front of the other, her senses were active enough to catch sight of a girl with a blonde ponytail waiting by Carrie’s locker. Hating herself for caring enough to remember which locker was hers, Mick tried to not pay her any notice. But she caught herself staring anyway. She’d seen her at All Skate plenty of times, either at the start of Carrie’s shift, or coming to meet her at the end of it - Juliet was her name, she thought. At least that’s what Carrie always squealed when she set eyes on her. Almost surprised Carrie was capable of forming a friendship real enough to warrant the look of mild concern clouding Juliet’s features as she flicked through her planner, Mick felt a fleeting urge to hang around and wait for Carrie’s return. Just to see what happened. But she quickly came back to her senses and ploughed ahead. The absence of Eric in the equation wasn’t lost on her though. And call her sadistic, but the evidence of the cracks in their picture-perfect relationship starting to bleed through into their school lives, risking jeopardising their nigh on celebrity status, was rather satisfying. Especially when she spotted him leaning against a bulletin board by the gym, hanging on a busty brunette’s every word.

And Carrie had the audacity to poke fun at her relationship with Butchy.

Smirking to herself in morbid disbelief, Mick ascended the staircase at the end of the hall. But once she reached the top, so lost in the guitar solo in Go Your Own Way she apparently lost all sense of special awareness, she almost collided with a scrawny heap of mismatched patterns and faded denim. The walking fashion faux-pas didn’t acknowledge her existence - in fact, she wasn’t convinced they’d even seen her at all. But once she clocked the headphones plugged into an almost identical, albeit scuffed and a few models older, Walkman, half-hidden by a mop of dishevelled, taupe waves, she soon pieced together why.

Although her first instinct had been to just scoff at the boy’s lack of attention and continue on her way, she found herself pausing to watch him skulk down the hall. Without Miles at his side, Ethan seemed significantly more subdued - dragging his feet with each lazy step and slouching so badly it would have given Mick’s old dance teacher an aneurysm. Mick’s first thought was that he looked lost - floating between classes without any sort of purpose, or direction. But as she reached up to adjust her headphones, and watched him stretch to do the exact same thing, it suddenly struck her that they may not have been as different as she’d always thought. The reliance on music as a distraction mechanism, the comfort they found in solidarity, the protectiveness over Miles,.. It was starting to freak her out. Their conversation from the night before still hadn’t quite sunken in yet, and with everything else now fighting for space in her brain, she didn’t think it would for a while. But it now left a huge question mark hanging over the stoner’s head, to match the rain cloud she felt like had settled over her own.

The bell, signalling the end of lunch, rang out over Christine McVie’s vocals, and broke Mick out of her stupor. Shaking her head, she carried on her way - but an odd sense of compassion lapped at the walls of her chest, and she felt an almost cosmic pull drawing her back in the brunet’s direction. Even the notion of that fleeting sensation leading to more made her quicken her pace until that metaphorical tether snapped. Unnerved, but as composed as ever, Mick quietly slunk into her seat and swapped her Walkman for her biology textbook. Grateful for the reprieve she knew she’d be giving her overtaxed mind for the next sixty minutes, Mick felt some of the tension lift from her shoulders. But she still found herself willing it to finish processing everything else she’d just seen, because she had no idea how she was supposed to face Carrie or Ethan that evening if it didn’t.

“I can’t believe I let this happen,” Miles sighed.

Russet leaves crunched beneath two pairs of well-loved sneakers, and those that didn’t skittered across the sidewalk before them. After turning the Murphys’ house inside out for a final time, Butchy and Miles had sat down and laid out every single piece of information they had available to them regarding Bentley’s potential whereabouts - everything from what time he’d left All Skate, the routes he could have taken, and any other places he could have thought to go. Once Butchy had his facts in order, he’d drawn up a plan for them, and even with Miles feeling as hollow as he did, he’d been out the front door and onto the street before Butchy had finished explaining it to him. His eyelids ached from trying to keep them open, scared that if he blinked he’d miss something - but then again, his whole body ached, so exhausted from the ordeal he felt like he was running on nothing but desperation as they trudged the streets of Hawkins, looking for clues.

As Miles led them onto the backroad he knew his brothers always liked to take, despite his best efforts to make them stick to the neighbourhood streets, he let out a frustrated huff and a remorseful, “Why didn’t I go and check on him sooner?”

Butchy let out a sigh of frustration of his own. “You can’t keep beating yourself up about it, Miles.”

“But I always go and check on them when I get back from work,” he protested, infuriated by his own carelessness.

“Well was anything different last night?” Butchy asked, trying a different tactic. “Did anything seem off when you got back?”

Images of the interior of Carrie’s car: a set of fuzzy dice, a sleepy grin, a cassette tape pressed into his palm, flashed through Miles’ head. But they vanished just as quickly as they’d appeared - batted away for the sake of more pressing matters, and to avoid any unnecessary, awkward conversations (or rather, lectures). ”No,” Miles began. “The hall light was on like normal, but Royce had to have switched that on when he got back. And I stuck my head in their room to check on them, but I thought they were both just asleep already. Royce was out like a light and Benny - well, I thought he was too; it sure looked like he was. But it must have just been his unmade bed from the morning. I didn’t think anything of it at the time though.”

“Exactly,” Butchy said. “If everything looked the same as it always did, how could you have known anything had happened? And it’s not your fault that it did. So stop trying to punish yourself for something you had no control over.Yeah, it’s a fucking awful situation to be in, but we can’t change anything now. What’s happened has happened, we just have to keep moving forwards if we ever want to make it to the other side.” Momentarily breaking his concentration, Butchy shifted his attention from searching for fresh footprints in the well-trodden earth at the mouth of the woods to the eldest of the Murphy boys. Despite his best efforts, Miles’ features were still drawn, each crevice and corner marred with guilt. Although the exterior was calmer than before, perhaps now replaced with mere despondency, he could see the same frenzied look swirling in his sapphire irises. Accepting that this may just have to be the new normal for his pseudo-brother, at least until this was all put right anyway, Butchy sighed again - this time pained and pitying. He then reached out a hand that found its home on the back of Miles’ weathered denim jacket, and offered what he hoped was a comforting smile. “He’ll turn up, Miles.”

“You don’t know that.” Miles desperately wanted to believe his older brother figure, but he also had to remind himself that the higher he raised his hopes, the further he’d have to fall if they were to come crashing down. And that felt almost as terrifying as the rest of this ordeal.

“…I know,” Butchy reluctantly conceded. But he didn’t give up altogether. “But we have to keep trying. People don’t just…disappear off the face of the earth - especially not good kids like Bentley. He will be somewhere.”

As they continued to trample the weeds poking through the cracks in the sidewalk, Miles found himself speaking again, confiding something he finally felt safe enough to share. “I know this sounds crazy, but I just… I feel like he still has to be around here somewhere.” He could feel Butchy’s eyes land on him, but the wave of judgement never came, so he let himself continue. “Back when Mom died and they split us up the first time, I felt how far I was from them. Every morning I’d wake up with this aching in my chest, like I had this magnet there that kept trying to pull me back to them… But I didn’t feel any of that this morning. I don’t know if it’s just not hit me yet, or if I’m just in denial but I just… I feel as though I’d know if he was really gone; I’d feel it.”

“Right, which is why we’ve gotta keep looking,” Butchy continued with a soft nod of acknowledgement. “Like I said, people don’t just disappear. But, people have gotten lost in the woods before, it’s not impossible. Look at that kid Will last year. I know it took them like a week, but they did find him.”

“They didn’t find the girl.”

”Who? Barbara Holland? I thought they found her car across town - they were treating her as a runaway.”

”That’s not what her parents said,” Miles huffed, as a fresh wave of despondency washed over him. Again letting his brain spout off as Butchy bent down to check under a parked car, he continued. “And what happens if the same thing happens with Bentley? What if we don’t find a trace of him anywhere in town, and he doesn’t come home?” he demanded, sweat starting to bead around his scruffy, sherpa collar as his worries mounted once more and sent him into a spiral. “There’s no way that stays under the radar for long around here. And the second anyone with authority gets wind of it, CPS will be busting down our door and dragging Uncle Tommy off to jail. Hell, I’ll probably be sent to juvie too since I was the one who he’d left in charge of us. Even if I, by some miracle, manage to avoid serving time though, I just know they’d try to separate us again. And I can’t- I can’t go through that again. I can’t let them take Royce away. I can’t lose them both.”

”And you won’t,” Butchy affirmed, his fierce, protective instincts once again racing into action as he heard the tears start to clog up Miles’ throat again. Stopping them in their tracks, he took Miles’ forearms in his hands and spoke with all the certainty he could muster, praying that there would be as much truth to them as he was claiming. “We’re not going to let that happen.”

Uncertainty wavered in Miles’ eyes, but his desperation to believe the older boy broke through with a small, yet hopeful nod of understanding.

As much as Butchy wanted to continue trying to reassure his neighbour though, his attention was snatched by a flash of silver sticking out from around the edge of a tire. Breaking into a jog, Butchy rounded the vehicle parked at the side of the road - long-since abandoned if its filthy windows, missing wing mirror, and blanket of dead leaves were anything to go by - and came face to face with a bike. It was on its side, and partly wedged under the car’s dented bumper. And after he dragged it out and lifted it upright, he found the wheel trims were scuffed, and the paintwork along the frame was scratched. “Christ, this has seen better days,” he muttered, running a finger along the gouges in the silver paint, and nudging a cracked pedal, only to discover that the bike’s chain had been broken too. Kids in town treated bikes like these like they were sports cars - so whoever this belonged to was either looking to get a new one, or had been forced to abandon it in an emergency (and would be no doubt in for a nasty surprise when they came back for it). Holding the bike up for Miles to inspect, Butchy asked. “You think this is anything?”

Back to the Future One-Shot

Ok, this is an idea I’ve been coming back to ever since I saw the Back to the Future musical last summer, and it’s by no means anything revolutionary, but I just think the concept is so fun. The main idea I had for it was one of Miles and Carrie’s kids, when they’re around the same age as Viv and Royce now (so like 16-17), winding up back in the 60s thanks to messing around in their Aunt Vivien’s workshop with the makeshift time machine she’d built out of their dad’s old yellow Jeep. With the time machine breaking upon arrival though, and current time Viv not having a clue how to fix it, or how she could have possibly ever invented such a thing, hilarity ensues as she, and a handful of others find out who this newcomer to town actually is, and try to figure out a way to get them home before they mess anything else up. Especially since their arrival happened to coincide with a fairly crucial point in their parents’ relationship, or the breakdown of it anyway… Can this teen from the 80s fit in enough to slip under the radar, whilst also helping their aunt and uncles to get their parents back together for good? …I guess we’ll never know ahaha.

Hunger Games/Catching Fire AU

Alright, this is just another example of me being self-indulgent, but it was sparked by a bunch of Catching Fire edits I kept seeing on tiktok a few months ago. And it’s just stuck with me ever since. It doesn’t fit in with the Hunger Games AUs you’ve already written because, as much as I adore them, and as perfect as I think they are, I would also love to see Carrie as a tribute. And whilst I’m not yet certain about how I’d want her original Games to pan out, I do think that there could be some fun forced-ally groupings in a sort of Catching Fire-esque story - where several different people are trying to work together to orchestrate this revolution, leading them to work with people they otherwise never would have. I feel like I’d love seeing Miles and Vivien as the tributes from one district together - with Miles volunteering in the place of Royce (who I could have seen having shared a win with Viv like in Scattered Screams). And then Butchy and Mack being the tributes from another - like with Miles, I think Mack would have volunteered in place of Mick to avoid her having to go back into the arena again. I’d love seeing Riven take on a role like Haymitch for Vivien and Miles as their mentor, and helping to arrange/strategise who would be their best bets for allies. And although he can understand certain choices - such as Mack and Butchy, their request for Kona, who due to her age compared to the other previous victors is all but totally counted out, confuses him to no end. There are some he arranges of his own accord though/without everyone else knowing - meaning that when Butchy comes face to face with Carrie, the golden girl from District 1, in the initial bloodbath at the cornucopia, and she smugly displays her token - an item he knew could only have come from Riven - before saving his life, all hell breaks loose among the group. Are they able to keep levels heads for long enough to execute their plan to destroy the arena? Again, we’ll never know - and not just because this idea is about as plot-dense as a fishing net lol. I just need to see Butchy and Carrie having bratty arguments and being put into place by Mack, and Miles and Carrie trying to hide their obvious feelings for one another/secret relationship from the rest of the group and the cameras - only to slip up and send everyone, audience included, into a frenzy. Ugh. How fun lol.

Wicked AU

Aaaaah, I love this one. It’s nothing grand, or particularly unique, but I just can’t stop listening to the Wicked soundtrack and imagining Carrie and Mick as Glinda and Elphaba respectively. I just feel like it works so well for them - the initial friction between them fits so well with how I’ve written them at the start of TMM, but then I love how close their bond becomes. Mick could make such a good Elphaba too; I thought she could initially be taking Vivien to Shiz as a prospective student - showing their familial bond by them both having this manifestation of green magic. Vivien’s is weaker, but she’s marked to have it since she has her green eyes. Both of Mick’s parents unknowingly had strong links to this type of green magic though, meaning that then when they had their daughter, she had such a strong connection it surpassed the usual visual signs of green eyes, or even green hair - instead spreading all the way across her skin. almost like a vitiligo. She inadvertently shows some of her magical abilities, gaining the attention of one of the school’s most prestigious magic teachers, Dorothea Witt-Murphy, and thus prompting her admission to the school. Although all three of Dorothea’s sons attend the school, and all three share some of Fiyero’s classic charm - it’s obviously Miles that takes on the main bulk of his role in the story - with some tweaks here and there. His relationship with Mick is never romantic, but they do form a strong friendship, and he really takes a liking to how strong her moral compass is - especially in comparison to her flighty and admittedly shallow roommate, whose powers of flirtation he has still unashamedly fallen victim to. And although Mick and Carrie’s friendship does begin to blossom, when Mick’s morality butts heads with Carrie’s yearning for mass adoration - and they’re faced with the dilemma of staying true to themselves and those they love, or achieving their dreams… they’re destined for heartache one way or another. It’s not an exact replication of Wicked, but damn do I want to write out a fun magical boarding school AU inspired by it. The songs are just brilliant for everyone - and I can’t get the idea of Carrie being Glinda out of my head. It’s just perfectttttt.

Witchy Halloween AU

Ok, this is a quicker one because I already feel as though I’ve rambled too long. But every time I listen to the Down the Witches Road cover version from episode 4 of Agatha All Along I just can’t get this concept out of my head. Again, it’s focusing on Carrie, so don’t mind my shameless obsessing. But I love the idea of her feeling like a bit of an outcast in the group now that they all have their abilities. This is set in your witchy-Halloween/Hocus Pocus AU btw lol - I don’t know if I specified that lol. I just feel like at least Vivien and the Murphys and Mick would all feel as though they deserved their powers, since they know their parents also have magical abilities - whereas with Carrie, who seemingly just got them out of nowhere, I feel like she’d kind of feel like a bit of a fraud. She’s never been one for studying either, so I feel like she’d struggle with learning spells/how to harness her powers better, so she’d feel like she wasn’t progressing as fast as the others. That is, until she discovers that magic can work through music. It’s not as well-documented though, so the others discourage her from investing too much into it - but she just takes it as them shitting on her idea and not wanting her to progress. When her friends (Juliet and Amber) reveal to her that they also have magical abilities though, they take her interest in musical magic a lot more seriously though, and put together a little witchy band to work on strengthening their powers. After convincing a guilty Mick and Viv to help them, they start to play - but when things start to spiral out of control, will Carrie know when to stop? Or will her sense of pride drive her past the point of no return?

Playhouse Playoffs AU

Not a new idea by any means, but ever since seeing Starlight Express in person (still can’t get over the fact that that actually happened tbh lol) I can’t stop thinking about our characters putting on this damn show lol. I’ve got so many little snippets of how I imagine their rehearsals going, or how the others would react to watching their friends performing it, but it’s still nowhere near enough to flesh out a full story. I can so vividly imagine Carrie performing Pumping Iron for the first time though. In my head, Riven would have wanted her to be Pearl, and would have wanted to put on a version pretty true to the original version of the show - but he’d be majorly struggling with his cast because Vivien stole so many of the available male actors for The Outsiders - meaning, he was left with an incredibly hopeless Noah trying to play Greaseball after Butchy continually refused to accept the offer of the part despite Riven’s grovelling. After yet another disastrous rehearsal Mick is observing as she figures out measurements and logistics of building the ramps/tracks for the stage (which her dad will help her then construct), and another failed phone call to Butchy pleading for his co-operation, Carrie tries her best to help Riven out (because she fears he’s on the brink of a nervous breakdown) and coach Noah a bit. Noah doesn’t seem to be having any of it though, and basically says “if it’s so easy then why don’t you do it?” So Carrie takes the bait and asks everyone to run the number again, but with her in Noah’s place. She gives the performance all the bravado and cockiness is needs, much to the delight of her castmates, who had been finding the rehearsals dismal up until then, and completely stops Riven in his tracks. And afterwards, he, Mick, Nonna, and the rest of the cast feel as though a complete shake-up of the roles is in order… Of course, i have more ideas for how other scenes could go. like Carrie trying to help Riven find his confidence singing Starlight Sequence, Mick trying to learn how to roller skate, Abby’s not so subtle obsession/girl crush on Carrie driving a lot of her portrayal of Slick, and Butchy’s reaction to seeing who took over this role that they’d insisted could “only be played by him”. But that one’s been driving me particularly insane. So at least it can live on here now, instead of in my head ahaha.

TMM

Ok, lastly, this isn’t a new idea either. But since it seems pretty unlikely now that I’ll finish/post any more of TMM, I wanted to leave a little tribute to it here. It’s a story that truly does mean so much to me, and is so well-fleshed out in my notes. I don’t think I’ve ever invested so much time/thought into the plot of a story before, so it definitely is the biggest thing i’ve tried to tackle in all my years as a writer. I just feel bad i wasn’t quicker with my writing/posting of it so that more of it could be shared. I really tried to give each character an important role, and a decent chunk of the story dedicated to them in the plot - I’ve just ended up stopping before much of it could get going :( I was so excited to get more of it out, and see how you’d react to it all. But I suppose at least since I’ve already drafted out how everything would pan out, I can just go back to my notes document for it any time I start feeling sad about it - because at least that way I can still enjoy the story without going to the effort of obsessing over making sure every word is perfect lmao. Still, I’ll never be able to listen to Dancing Queen the same again - that scene with the demogorgon could have been epic 😔✊