#ratgrundlr

So, fifteen minutes later all the Rat Grinders gathered in Ivy's living room. The seating arrangement was painfully boring in Ivy's opinion—Lucy and Kipperlilly huddled together because apparently being murdered wasn't enough for Lucy to get over her crush. Whatever. Ivy wasn't jealous. Mary Ann sat on the floor, her Quokki Pet in her hand. Ruben sat next to Buddy on the couch that wasn't occupied by the world's most toxic lesbian situtationship.

Oisin, like always, stood next to Ivy in front of the TV. “You might be wondering why we gathered you guys here today.” He said,

“Not really. I figured we were just doing movie night.” Mary Ann said.

“You underestimate us, Skuttle. We're doing something so much better.” Ivy said.

Kipperlilly looked away from Lucy's eyes for the first time since they arrived and said, “Please explain how this is an urgent party meeting.”

“Maybe I'm taking a page from your playbook and I'm here to murder you all.”

Only Lucy laughed.

Truthfully, Ivy had spent far too much time getting this all together. “Oisin, please start the slideshow.”

The TV flickered on, and the other Rat Grinders saw the title screen for the first time.

“Which of the Rat Grinders has the Hottest Dad?” Ivy read out the title, using a pointer to emphasize each word. “Next slide.” She ushered Oisin on before the words could truly set in, but she saw Kipperlilly sat up a little bit straighter and tense up.

He clicked to the next slide. All chaos broke out then.

Kipperlilly lunged forward, or would've if she hadn't been tangled up with Lucy in the moment before. They both fell to the floor, the all too common sound of one of Lucy's joints popping out of place echoing in the room when she fit the hardwood flooring.

Normally, that would've stopped Kipperlilly, made her dawn over Lucy until she was sure Lucy wasn't about to drop dead. Again. But rage shined behind her eyes as she tried to get out of Lucy's grasp.

On the screen, the second slide was proudly displayed—a collage of photos of Kipperlilly's dad with a text banner reading And Why is it Kip's Dad centered across it.

“My dad is not fucking hot! Stop calling my dad hot!”

Ivy looked down at Kipperlilly and burst into laughter at the sight.

“No, Ivy's right. Your dad is hot.” Mary Ann added.

Kipperlilly's own spring break had been eventful—Porter's knife against her throat while she knelt in front of an alter to another long dead god. She'd had help coming back, but at the end of the day, it'd been her that welcomed in the rage that burned within her chest. Soon she'd bring back a god herself. Soon she'd kill that god and christen Porter the new ruler of her domain.

“You could always talk to her.” Lucy said from her place at Kipperlilly's side.

She kicked Lucy under the table. Her glare remained glued to Kristen Applebees. “Please explain to me why I would ever talk to Kristen Appleebees.”

“Well, you have been staring at her for a while.”

From across the table, Ivy snorted. “Pretty sure she's calling you gay, Kip.”

“If any of you are deluded enough to think that I have any sort of attraction to Kristen fucking Appleebees I suggest you go talk to Jawbone before you hurt yourself.” For the first time since lunch started, Kipperlilly turned away from Kristen Appleebees.

“I believe you, Lilly, don't worry.” Lucy said, and Kipperlilly focused her glare on Lucy.

Lucy pressed her hand to her mouth, poorly suppressing a laugh. “What? Why are you glaring at me now?”

“Really Kipperlilly, you need to learn about to talk to the girls you like without pulling their pigtails. We aren't in middle school anymore.” Oisin added.

***

Kipperlilly glared at Kristen Applebees from across the room. Another Seacaster party raged around her. Music thrummed from the speakers. The scents of milk and vodka and sweat mixed into a truly horrible combination. And the body heat of a hundred or so teenagers crammed into one house left Kipperlilly coated in a thin layer of sweat.

Not very becoming of a presidential candidate. Not that anyone could see Kipperlilly's anyway. She'd kept up invisibility since she slipped into the party, easy to keep tabs on her opponent then. She watched Kristen Applebees with the intensity of the sun that her the unnamed goddess of rage once ruled over.

Her eyes lingered on the sliver of exposed skin where Kristen's tracksuit jacket had slipped off her shoulder, the purple of the sports bra stark against her skin. She blinked, focused back on Kristen Appleebees in the abstract, and not the reality of her across the room.

In the month or so since the start of the school year, Kristen Appleebees's hair had grown a bit more unkempt than it already was. Her bangs were long enough to get into her eyes, and she raised a hand to tuck a few of the worst offenders behind her ear. Kipperlilly's heart rate spiked. It was so horribly presidential, she thought.

She leaned closer to Adaine, whispered something in her ear, but as she leaned closer, some of that horrible milk and vodka combination sloshed out of the red plastic cup and onto her hand. Kristen raised her hand to her mouth and licked the split drink off her hand before it dripped onto the floor. Kipperlilly blinked again.

Kristen Applebees walked away from Adaine then, waved as she walked towards the kitchen.

Kipperlilly pushed herself off the wall and followed. She re-upped her invisibility, just in case. In that moment, in that horribly inopportune moment, Lucy Frostblade haunted Kipperlilly.

You could talk to her. Lucy's words from last spring rattled around in her skull as she followed the path Kristen Appleebees took. She remembered Lucy's hidden laugh, rage bubbled within her chest.

If she saw a flash of blue in the corner of her eye,startled so abruptly that her invisibility dropped, and then realized it was nothing more than a painting of the Hangman on the sea, that was her business

“Didn't take you for the sort to admire art.”

At the sound of Kristen Appleebees's voice, rage grounded Kipperlilly back in Seacaster Manor. “I highly doubt you understand the nuances of admiring art.”

Kristen opened her mouth, shut it as quickly as she opened it, and then downed the rest of her drink. “Fuck it, do you want to make out?”

Kipperlilly clenched her fists, turned to glare at Kristen. Her eyes caught on her lips. “If you tell anyone about this I will bury you, Applebees.”

The first time Kipperlilly got a burn was back in middle school. Some time as she passed from elementary to middle school, her hair gained a slight wave to it. No one had ever said anything about it, no even noticed other than Lucy. But Kipperlilly did, stared in the mirror and felt some sliver of her control slip out of her grasp.

The burn itself was small and on the side of her finger where her hand slipped while straightener her hair one morning. But the pain itself felt overwhelming for a moment, a burst of intense pain that startled her more than she would admit to anyone who asked.

When Kipperlilly Coppkettle came back to life, she felt the lava around her still. It was gone, she knew, and she didn't even have any burns to prove it happened. Her body had been remade from scratch, bones and blood and organs and skin rebuilt from nothing. There was a moment where the world felt too much for her, light too bright and her own emotions too much for a brain that was rewriting neural connections as she stood there.

But she got her wits about her enough to hide before any of the other Rat Grinders saw her, before the Bad Kids saw her, before Lucy Frostblade saw her.

Kipperlilly accepted that she would never see Lucy again the year before. She stood over Lucy's corpse, retrieved her crossbow bolts and Ivy's arrows, and then watched as Porter carved the rune into her chest. Everyone else left while Kipperlilly waited for Lucy to come back. Something in her broke in that moment, some part of her so sure in the one fundamental truth of her world: Lucy Frostblade loved her just the same as Kipperlilly Copperkettle loved her.

Unseasonable snow started to fall around her, melted on her skin the moment it landed on her.

Anger bubbled between her skin. With each beat of her heart the rage only grew and grew. It made it easy enough to ignore the sorrow that nestled behind her ribs.

But in the present, while Lucy Frostblade stood breathing and moving and alive for the first time in over a year, Kipperlilly was too tired for the rage to sink it's teeth back into her throat. She reached for it still, came up empty. After a year of rage burning and burning and burning, she was lost without it.

After everyone left, and Kipperlilly was left alone, she stumbled home. Or to her parent's house. It'd hadn't been home for a while but there wasn't anywhere else for her to go—not Ruben's place, not the school, not to Lucy's side. She broke into the house.

Her bed room was the exact same as it had been before spring break in sophomore year except for the dust that had settled. She curled up in her childhood bed, ignored the way her skin crawled, and slept.