#oh fitz

    With Keefe safely in the closet, I almost let myself exhale. 

    And then I see the damage he did to my room in his short time out here. 

    Even after I’ve fixed the dresser he managed to completely empty. 

   Well, everything’s a wrinkled mess, but at least it’s in there. 

    Someone knocks at my door, and my blood runs cold. “Hey, Fitz.”

    I curse under my breath, and open the door, knowing she’s going to know everything in a matter of seconds. 

    “How are you doing?” Biana asks, leaning against the door frame. 

    I refuse to give her an answer. Why can’t people let me relax for half a second?

    “Someone’s grumpy today. Got it. I’ll leave you alone.”

    She actually leaves me alone, closing the door behind her and everything. For the first time ever. 

    I flop backward in my bed, staring at the glowing stars on my ceiling that were put up there when I was six and have yet to come down. 

    I sigh. 

    “You know, this is the exact reason I don’t let you out. Because now I have to worry about cleaning up my room because someone decided to be a five-year-old gremlin because he needs more notebooks to draw in the dark when he has a perfectly capable Imparter.”

    Keefe bumps the door with his knee. At least that’s what I’m hoping it is. It’s a new sound, so I haven’t quite figured out what it means yet. 

    “Need I remind you that this was your idea?” Most of the time, that’s what he wants, so it’s not a bad guess. 

    He bumps the door again with his knee, lower to the ground this time though.

    Apparently I’m still missing his message, because crinkles some paper, and I notice he slipped a note under the door.

    What can’t be expressed by beating the crap out of my poor closet door?

    It says, You forgot to make sure Biana left.

    “What are you talking about? Well, I guess writing would be more accurate. But either way, I literally saw her leave.”

    Preposition, the tiny, annoying part of my brain reminds me. 

    Keefe slips another note, this one crammed in a corner, so it takes a second to decode. 

    Trust the Empath. 

    “Biana, are you in here? Or is Keefe just messing with me? And if you’re just going to stay invisible to spite me, I will remind you that I have glitter and that won’t vanish immediately. I remember that game of Base Quest where we found that out.”

    Biana weighs her options and blinks into sight, sitting on one of my dressers in the darkest corner of my room, ankles crossed like she’s trying to appear more innocent than she is. 

     I curse. 

    “I was suspicious, okay? You don’t spend this much time in your room. Well, ever since you stopped staring at your ceiling because of Sophie, at least,” Biana explains. 

    I know Keefe’s going to annoy me until I release him from his closet, so I dismantle my barricade again and open up the door. 

    Crawling out like he hasn’t seen the sun in days, even though he was just in my room, Keefe waves at Biana, smiling like an idiot. 

    “I thought you’d been kidnapped.”

    He’s totally like, “I’m locked in a literal closet. Was I not kidnapped?”

    I know this without even looking at him. 

    “That was the idea.”

    Biana curses. “That changes things.”

    I clarify, “That was his idea.”

    Keefe’s pouting behind me. I don’t even need to confirm this with evidence.

    Yeah, I’m going to throw you under the bus. It’s been a long six days, mate.

    “Why...why didn’t you at least tell me?” Biana asks, her focus on Keefe, hands on her hips.

    “From a statistical standpoint, the fewer people that are involved, the safer the secret is. The only reason he involved me is because he needed a closet. And before you start asking why he isn’t living in your closet instead, he spent a summer in my closet in Level Three, so we’ve dealt with this before. Although he was less annoying and several inches shorter back then.”

    “I hate to burst your bubble, but--who am I kidding? I love bursting your bubble. I found out about that the first weekend after midterms. I told Mum and Dad, and they agreed they wanted to give him a nice summer. 

    I make a displeased noise, or I imagine I do. 

    “Let me help,” Biana pleads. “I can sneak him food easier than you can.”

    On the one hand, I can’t wait to get rid of him. On the other hand, I’m really worried this is going to set off a chain of dominoes ending in the Neverseen knowing where he is. 

    “Just don’t tell anyone. Don’t. Tell. Anyone. Do you understand me? Don’t trust anyone.”

    “Stars, you sound like Dex.”

    Keefe might be trying to warn her about how we don’t talk about Dex here. I can sense there’s a disturbance behind me. But for all I know, he’s tearing up my room again. 

    Biana doesn’t care, instead asking Keefe, “How’ve you been, Lord Hunkyhair?”

    I glance at him, and watch him gesture at the closet and then his hair.”

    “I know, right? Living both literally and metaphorically in a closet. That takes skills. I can fix that hair for you. It won’t end up pink, I promise.”

    He holds up an entire rainbow of notebooks.

    “Fine. I won’t dye your hair. It’s only temporary, you know.”

    I can feel him staring daggers without even looking. 

    Biana leads him out of my room and into her bathroom for a makeover, leaving me to my own thoughts.

    My thoughts are not a place I want to be right now. 

    I’m tempted to just distract myself with something, but I know this might be the only free time I get for a while, so I should at least do something productive that I’d be afraid to do if Keefe were in here. 

    I rub my temples, feeling a headache coming on. 

    Prepos--nope!

    I can’t keep all of these thoughts and feelings stuck in my head, otherwise Keefe’s going to keep getting blasted with wave after wave of them. 

    I shuffle around, looking through the notebooks I donated to Keefe, trying to find a blank page. Of course, there isn’t one.

    Imparter it is, I guess. Dex’d figure out how to write stuff down on his. It can’t be that hard. 

    On the bright side, I can break an Imparter so much faster than I can get rid of paper. 

    I manage to not break everything and open up Google Docs. 

    Staring down that stark, blank white piece of paper makes me want to close it and do something else. 

    My intros for school are always weak, but I’ve almost gotten it down to a science. 

    Hook, book, bridge, thesis. 

    How hard can that be when you don’t have a book? 

    Answer: very. Go write a book and use that as your book. It’s faster. 

    Another thing. Formal voice isn’t going to be a thing here. It’s going to be a rant, which is not typically considered formal writing. 

    Who cares? It won’t be graded. Just write. 

    Emotions can be challenging to navigate, especially when you’re a teenager that’s part of a rebel organization dealing with another rebel organization run by your best friend’s mom that also includes your older brother that you wish you could forget about all the while not being able to unhear prepositions because of a certain redheaded Disney nerd. But, hey, what do I know? In the story, “Sorry, this is the only way I know how to do intros,” by Whoknows Whotheauthoris, somewhere my brain got a little messed up. I believe that writing all of this down will help me make sense of it all, because I don’t have enough space in my head for all of this at once. 

    First, the anger. I always start with anger. The reason why is a question for another time. I’m mostly angry with Keefe right now, but that’s just because he’s what we call a wanker and knows exactly how to push my buttons. I am also angry with Biana because she can find out anything about anyone and sometimes I just want a little privacy, okay? Then I’m a little angry with Dex because of reasons which I choose not to write down. Additionally, I’m just perpetually angry at Alvar because he’s one bloody traitor if there ever was one. Finally, I’m also kind of angry with myself for reasons I don’t want to admit. 

    I stop for a second, considering. 

    You know what? If my soul is going to be poured out onto paper, or whatever this would be called, I might as well say. I really want to go and beg Dex to listen to me and explain how I made a giant mistake, but I’m sure he hates me now, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it this time. I had my chance. Besides, there are so many other things I have to worry about, it’s not a viable option for me. 

    I see the preposition, but decide to leave it. Dex is the only one that truly cares, and I’ll be Exiled before I let him, or anyone else, but him in particular, read this. 

    Next, we might as well cover exactly why it isn’t a viable option for me. It boils down to this: I’m a Vacker. And there’s nothing I can do to change that. We don’t have Bad Matches. Yet there’s still a tiny voice in the back of my mind trying to persuade me to tell society to go--.

    Yeah, if this is discovered, that’s not exactly the best sentence I could include.

    While I’m trying to think of how to rephrase, Biana decides it’s the perfect time to start blasting some music. I almost immediately recognize it as part of Dex’s favourite playlist. I had it stuck in my head for a few days. I don’t really know if it’s his favourite anymore, but it was a couple weeks ago. 

    Probably because it was the only human music he really knew because it was Sophie’s originally and he copied it down.

    If I traded it all, if I gave it all away for one thing, just for one thing? If I sorted it out, if I knew all about this one thing, wouldn’t that be something?

    Yeah, Biana, you can stop sending those subliminal messages.

    It’s not very subliminal, if you ask me. Her persuasive message seems pretty clear.

    Oh. Stars. Did Keefe tell her? I want to think that he hasn’t but, I also have very few reasons to trust him at the moment. 

    By the end of the song, I’m left wondering, what if I told society to go--?

    The logical voice in my head cuts it off before I get a chance to fully form the thought. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t linger. 

    So I keep on writing. 

    If a Vacker were to be a part of a Bad Match, they’d likely be disowned. It hasn’t happened before, to my knowledge, but maybe someone was intentionally forgotten. Even if their parents support their decision, then someone in the family tree would obviously distance themselves from me. I mean, the hypothetical Bad Match. I’d rather not do that, but Keefe just essentially got disowned, and it didn’t exactly change much. But I’m a Vacker. The stares and whispers? I get nervous thinking about it. It might be a little bit too much for me to handle. It was more than enough when everyone was focused on Alvar. This could be less than a scandal, because treason kind of outweighs most other things, but it wouldn’t be ‘ew, there’s the traitor’s brother.’ It would be ‘ew, there’s the golden son that was given everything and still chose to be a Bad Match, and he must’ve known that going in because there’s no way two guys could be on each others’ Match Lists, so they didn’t form a connection that pushed them to stick with whatever life throws at them before they knew’.”

    Now that I see it...it’s a tad specific. But it’s not wrong!

    Third, this will almost undoubtedly make my cognatedom collapse if it hasn’t already. I can’t tell Sophie any of this! Especially after how I treated her when we were dating! I’m now aware I was very much a tosser. There are some things she’ll never get to know. 

    I hate writing conclusions almost as much as I hate introductions, but they are much less down to a science because I’ve spent all of my mental energy working on the actual content, which I believe is much more important. 

    Also I don’t know how to navigate this technology thing well enough to go back and edit without the backspace and having to completely delete the later text. There might be more paragraphs in the near future as I need to let out some more emotions, but I’ve had enough for today.

    I just want to zone out and sleep until all of my problems figure out how to solve themselves. 

    But waiting for my problems to solve themselves exceeds my patience levels. Keefe’s taken all of them plus two. 

    Speaking of Keefe, he and Biana are still blasting music, so I struggle to figure out how to send Sophie a message through my Imparter like Dex does. Hailing would be pointless. She wouldn’t be able to hear anything. 

    I know we haven’t been on the best of terms lately, and I know it’s entirely my fault, but I was wondering if we could do a couple of cognate exercises. Maybe? See if your mind will still let me in? Catch up on what’s happened since the last time we talked? 

    It goes through a few rounds of editing, I’m fully aware of the preposition, and I have to try several times to spell ‘exercises’ correctly, but I gather my courage and hit send. 

    It’s a few songs later when I get a response. 

    Yeah, sure. Sandor isn’t letting me leave the house, so feel free to pop over here whenever you’re free. 

    I read the message at least three times in an attempt to gauge the amount of passive aggression hiding in there. I find it to be zero, which is unexpected.

    I know my eardrums aren’t going to appreciate this, but I walk over to Biana’s door and knock. 

    She opens the door a crack and a wave of sound hits me. 

    “What?” she asks over the music. “Is the music too loud for your precious ears?”

    “No, well, yes, but no. I wanted to let you know that I’m heading over to Havenfield. I haven’t run away.”

   “That makes it sound like you’re running away.”