Chapter Text
“You can have the car back,” her mother says, “when we’ve confirmed, independently, that you’ve actually signed up for and are participating in, an extracurricular activity. At the end of the semester.”
Clarke bats her eyes, making them big and almost teary, her face pouty. “Dad, I--”
Her father averts his gaze, one hand outstretched, dramatic. “Look away, demon! Lest I be tempted by your visage.”
Clarke drops the act. “You’re a dork.” She turns to her mother. “And you’re a witch.”
Her mother, in the kitchen, passes her hand across the motion sensor that causes the cauldron full of candy to blare out a tinny witch’s cackle. “Tis the season.”
“I hate you both. I hope I get kidnapped by a pervert on the city bus. You’ll never get over the death of your only child.” Clarke stabs into what’s left of her chicken thigh. “You’ll visit my empty grave every year but it won’t matter. Your marriage will disintegrate. You’ll lose the house. All because you wanted to punch up my college application.”
Her father stands, kissing her on the temple as he passes. “Go for the groin, honey. We believe in you.”
++
Clarke cuts first period in protest. Then she pays Raven twenty dollars for a blank excused absence note in a panic.
“Nerd,” Raven says, and rips it off the pad she keeps in her backpack, with the rest of the contraband. “Anything else I can get you?”
“I need a list of clubs on campus. Do you know what sports are in season?”
“Field hockey and swim tryouts passed. Next up is soccer, basketball.”
“Ugh,” Clarke mutters. “Club list?”
Raven rubs her thumb and pointer finger together. Clarke sighs. She finds a five dollar bill in her jeans pocket and thrusts it at her. Raven hands her a piece of paper. “It’s in the back of the planner, idiot.”
++
“Photography,” Clarke says, at lunch. “I could do that. Every Tuesday at lunch? No problem.”
“Niylah’s in photography,” Octavia informs her, during the five second break she and Lincoln take before they go back to making out.
“Fuck,” Clarke mutters. She scans the list. Future Business Leaders of America, Mock Trial, Model UN--“what the fuck is a rotary?”
No answer. Octavia won’t be good for a comment for another two minutes, minimum.
Paranormal Encounters, Clarke reads. She taps her finger against it.
++
Clarke didn’t even know the school had a basement.
“Hello? I’m looking for uh. The club meeting?”
A girl appears at the foot of the stairs, glaring. “This is a closed meeting. Members only.”
Clarke lets the door shut behind her, the fluorescent bulbs flickering. “Right. I’m… trying to join?”
The girl pauses. She thinks. “No.” She turns and walks away.
Clarke sputters. She clatters down the rest of the steps. “Hey! Why--woah.” It’s one large room, cluttered with filing cabinets and shelves and old equipment, science and sports and stacks of books. “Are we even allowed down here?”
“I am.” The girl is hunched over a table in the corner, where a tiny workspace has been erected, the tabletop littered with electronic equipment. There’s even a desktop computer humming away.
“I guess you’re Lexa. Unless the rest of the club is hiding in the sewers.”
Lexa tosses her a look. “There’s no sewer access at the school, that’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” Clarke says, “That’s ridiculous.” An idea strikes her and she ventures forward. “Hey. I need my name to be on a club roster and from the look of things, you could use another member, but neither of us actually want me to participate. I think there’s a symbiotic relationship to be found here.”
“Parasitic.”
“What?”
Lexa turns, tapping away at the keyboard. “You want me tell everyone you’re in the club, that you’re participating. Falsify official documents--”
Clarke scoffs. “The rosters are turned in on wide ruled paper, it’s hardly notarized--”
“All the work is on me. The gain on you. That makes it parasitic.”
“I’m Clarke.”
Lexa actually looks up. “What?”
“I’m Clarke Griffin.”
“I don’t care.”
“Wow,” Clarke says, dry. “I’m shocked you aren’t besieged by potential members.”
“I don’t have time for you,” Lexa informs her. “I have a large operation coming up. I’ve sunk two years into it.”
“Right,” Clarke agrees, pushing the subject. “So you probably need… tech support?”
Lexa shoots her a look.
“Manual labor,” Clarke amends. “I pick things up and put them down?”
Lexa taps her nails on the tabletop.
Clarke presses the advantage. “For this one operation. No questions, no snitching. You tell me what to do and I do it, and you leave my name on the list for the semester.”
Lexa’s eyes narrow. “And why would there need to be a stipulation about snitching.”
“Lexa,” Clarke sighs. “I may not be the former leader of the model UN, but even I know whatever someone is getting up to in a darkened publically funded basement can’t be any good.”
“You know who I am.” Lexa’s tone is surprised, almost more curious than suspicious.
Clarke shrugs. “Not that big a school. Why’d you quit, anyway? Last I heard on the announcements was that you had more trophies than the school could fit into the case.”
Lexa closes a black case with a snap. “No questions,” she reminds Clarke. “I’ll deliver the amended member list to the office after fifth period. We meet everyday at lunch. Except Thursdays.”
“Every day?”
“Except Thursdays.”
Clarke sputters, following Lexa back into one of the aisles. “What! That’s insane, you can’t--”
Lexa whirls, stepping close, and Clarke’s words die in her throat. Lexa is taller than her, just by a few inches, and her frame is slighter, but she feels bigger. She looms. The shelves cast shadows across her face and leave her lips in stark relief, the flex of her jaw starkly illuminated. Clarke makes a strangled noise.
“Halloween is in a twelve days. Can you handle ten lunches sacrificed, in exchange for whatever your parents have taken away?”
“How--how did you--”
Lexa scoffs. “Please. Are you in or are you out?”
“In,” Clarke says, and then, ridiculously, sticks her hand between them to be shaken.
Lexa looks at it. She looks at Clarke. “Every day except Thursdays,” she reminds her, and turns away.
++
Clarke harasses the office administrators until the assistant principal emerges to scrawl a note that she’s officially a club member, slap a stamp on it, and tell her to go away. She buys Octavia a chocolate malt cup at the convenience store across the street and uses it as a bribe for a ride home.
She decorates the note with glitter glue pens and the stickers her mother always has in her pockets because she forgets to take them out before she goes home, from shifts on pediatrics. Leaves it prominently displayed on the fridge before raiding last night’s leftovers for a snack.
++
“Lexa,” she announces, bursting dramatically through the basement door and stomping her way down the stairs. “I’m in a good fucking mood today.”
Lexa is sitting on a stool, pouring over what looks like blueprints of the city. She looks up at Clarke’s arrival. “You came.”
Clarke frowns. “There’s no need to sound so surprised.”
Lexa shrugs. “Come here and look at this.” She shuffles the papers, tucking away the one she was looking at to pull up a series of photographs. “Do you know this house?”
Clarke peers at the first picture, Lexa’s finger tapping against it. “Everyone knows that house. Creepy.”
“Mm,” Lexa agrees. She produces another photograph. “Five years ago, on Halloween, Jack Julius shot his wife and two daughters to death before committing suicide.”
“Everyone knows,” Clarke repeats, rolling her eyes. “You wanna run up to the door and touch it for five seconds to prove you’re not a scaredy cat? Because some of us completed that in middle school.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going inside the house.”
Clarke thinks about it. She shrugs. “Halloween night? Sounds fun, I guess. Classic.”
“I’ve been planning this for a long time,” Lexa informs her, shuffling through her papers and tracing things with her fingertip while she explains her plan. “Halloween is on a Friday this year. I’m going in Thursday, through the kitchen door, here. Setting up in the bedrooms, the living room--” she taps each room as she lists it, the floorplan to the house stretched out in front of her. “I don’t have enough equipment to do every room, so I’m focusing on where the murders actually happened. Master bedroom, kid’s room, living room.”
Clarke pokes at a mess of wires on the workbench behind her, spinning on the second stool. “What’s all this?”
Lexa bats at her hands. “Don’t touch that, I can’t afford to replace it on short notice.”
Clarke shifts her nosiness to the notebooks beside the tools, wires, and various blinky bits of electronics. The pages are worn, hand drawn sketches and schematics. “You built all of this?”
“Some. Mostly modifications.” Lexa points at the far wall. “I bribed the AV club and the props manager of the theater program for storage crates, padding, the dolly. I need you to wrap each item on the list and put it in the correct box. Cut into the foam to make room.” She rips four sheets of paper out of the notebook and passes them over. “The list, the schematic of how each should be packed and where.”
“That’s it?”
Lexa has turned to the computer, doublechecking a spreadsheet against yet another list in her notebook. “You ask for manual labor, you receive manual labor.”
“I didn’t ask,” Clarke mutters, but she sighs and starts to try and decipher Lexa’s neat but incredibly detailed instructions.
The bell rings before she’s gotten through just three items. “Fuck,” she says, swinging her bookbag over her shoulder. “Are you sure we can finish everything in time?”
Lexa packs up her own things. “The first ten or so are time intensive, the rest will go quickly.” She stops. “Did you eat?”
Clarke has one foot on the first stair. “What?”
“Did you eat before you came?”
“I forgot,” Clarke admits. “I didn’t want to be late on my first day.”
“Hm,” is all Lexa has to say. She lets Clarke leave in front of her and locks the door behind them. “You should hurry. Physics is on the other side of campus.”
“Right,” Clarke agrees. “Where are you headed?”
“Econ.”
They fall into step with each other, the rest of the kids swirling around them, towards their own classes. “Why do you even have a key to the basement? I can’t believe they’re letting students in there unsupervised.”
“Mr. G loaned me the key,” Lexa says. “He’s a family friend. That and an academic career of building trust with authority figures… it’s enough.” She turns down a hallway and into a classroom without another word.
“Oookay,” Clarke says to herself. “Bye then.”
++
On the second day, Lexa buys her a veggie wrap. It’s waiting, neatly sliced in half on a paper plate, next to the list and the instructions. An apple, already cut up, is arranged around it. “Oh,” Clarke says. “Thank you?”
Lexa shrugs. She turns around in her chair, shoulders hunched up. They don’t speak again until the bell rings.
++
“This is not what your father and I meant,” Abby says, ambushing Clarke in the middle of meatloaf. She places the club roster on the table. “And why did the registrar talk about you in that tone?”
Clarke opens her mouth, showing the half-chewed food. She swallows while her mother is grimacing. “You said join an extracurricular. You didn’t say it had to be boring.”
“It was implied,” her mother snaps, and then: “They’re not all boring. I was in Future Physicians for America, and it was fun! We dissected a cat.”
Her father gives Abby a second helping of mashed potatoes. “I’m not sure you’re making the point you think you are, honey.”
“Gross,” Clarke agrees. “I’m in a club obsessed with an actual serial killer and your club sounds creepier.”
“You have to have gaps between each murder to be considered a serial killer.”
Clarke turns to her father. “You’re going to end up on the news.”
“I think it’s cute.” Jake kisses Abby on the temple. “Tell me you’ll smother me in my sleep if I don’t do the dishes tonight.”
Her mother eats a green bean. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d poison you slowly, over time. Make sure it doesn’t show up in the toxicology reports.” Her father wiggles his eyebrows and leans in for a kiss.
Clarke sighs.
++
On the third day, Lexa tells Clarke her mother is right.
“I’ve seen him classified as a spree killer, but a more accurate label would be a family annihilator. To be a spree killer, you--”
“Sorry,” Clarke says, cutting her off. “But if we’re going to be friends you can’t ever agree with my mother. Think of it as a rule, you like those.”
“Clarke,” Lexa says patiently, “I’m currently planning to break into private property and trespass overnight, with illegal and unstable equipment.”
Clarke looks at the piece of electronics she’s holding in alarm. “Unstable?”
The bell rings. Lexa picks up her bookbag. “And we’re not friends.”
++
“Raven’s parents are out of town,” Octavia tells her, pitched low under the rumble of the video. At her desk, their english teacher taps away at her phone, attention completely diverted. “She wants us there at seven to help set up. Bring liquor and wear something slutty.”
Clarke doodles in the margins of her empty video review. “I always do.”
++
“What do you think?” Clarke asks Lexa on the fourth day. “Slutty cop or slutty doctor?”
“Slutty suffragette,” Lexa suggests. “Really let that feminism hit home.”
Clarke flips her the bird. She’s working on cords and cables now, winding them carefully up into neat coils and securing them with twist-ties, nibbling at the turkey sandwich Lexa had provided. “You only need me after school Thursday, right? Nothing on Friday?”
“Right,” Lexa agrees. “But Thursday night, not just after school. I have to get the car.”
Clarke furrows her brow. “But… the school will be closed then.”
Lexa waves a hand dismissively. “Minor obstacle.”
“Minor--it’s felony burglary!”
Lexa scoffs. “Don’t be dramatic Clarke, it’s not a felony.” She comes to check Clarke’s work. “Good. You’ll be done tomorrow, I think.” She taps one of the coils. “Redo this one? It needs to be a tighter curl.”
Clarke sighs. She undoes the tie and starts again.
++
On the fifth day, Clarke is bored as fuck. “Tell me about why you’re into ghosts.”
Lexa has been testing video cameras for almost twenty minutes, and she doesn’t bother looking up. “Because they haven’t been proven.”
“So you… quit the model UN and moved to the basement.”
Lexa turns on her stool. “Why do you want to know?”
“Well, I am sort of… an accomplice. And technically, part of the club.” Clarke fiddles with the handle of a storage case.
Lexa stares at her.
“Fine, I’m nosy as hell. Will you tell me or not?”
“Not,” Lexa says, and that effectively ends the conversation.
++
On the sixth day, Clarke is finished. Lexa double checks her work, then triple checks. “Good enough,” she pronounces. “You can go.”
“Oh. Okay.” Clarke lingers by the table. “What’re you doing?”
Lexa sighs, dropping her notebook. “Nothing. Everything is ready.” She scowls.
Clarke fidgets. “Do you wanna cut next period and go get pancakes? There’s an iHop down the street.”
Lexa stares at her. “I have perfect attendance.”
“That’s an even better reason to cut, are you kidding me? No one should graduate with perfect attendance.”
Lexa wavers. “I… shouldn’t.”
“Right,” Clarke says, “which is why you should. Call it a practice run for the breaking and entering, the trespassing, the et cetera.”
Lexa opens her laptop. “Go away, Clarke.”
++
On the seventh day, Clarke skips the first half of the day, arriving to the basement during the lunch period. “I come bearing pancakes,” she announces.
Lexa sighs.
“Think of it this way,” Clarke says, starting to clear a space on the table as Lexa dives to rescue her papers and tools from Clarke’s sweeping arm. “I’m going to be an accomplice to your stuff, and by eating these, you’re an accomplice to me skipping class. Quid pro quo.”
“I don’t think that’s quite right,” Lexa mutters, but she takes the styrofoam container Clarke passes over.
“I looked you up,” Clarke says, squeezing syrup out of the little packet before passing it to Lexa. “I mean, I checked old yearbooks. You never said you’re an athlete.”
“You never said you’re an artist.” Lexa smirks at Clarke’s surprise. “You think you’re the only one with a yearbook? It’s included in the student body fee. Everyone gets one.”
“Your stats are impressive.” Clarke stuffs a bite in her mouth. “I assume. They didn’t actually include them.”
Lexa applies syrup to her pancakes. “They only collect statistics for the boys teams. Are you applying to art schools?”
Clarke drags her fork through the syrups, the butter all melted and runny. “Maybe. I don’t know. What about you?”
“Forensics and criminal justice. I’ve already sent in the applications.”
“Did you include this club in the extracurriculars?”
Lexa cuts her a look. “Of course not. And neither should you, whatever agreement you have with your parents aside.”
“My mom wants me to go to medical school. It’s why I did AP Bio as a freshman.” Clarke makes a face. “I smelled like formaldehyde for winter formal.”
“I’m going to join the FBI,” Lexa says. It’s the first time she’s ever volunteered anything, so Clarke gives her last of the strawberry topping.
++
On the eighth day, Clarke has lunch with Octavia. She bribes Raven with a cupcake to get Lexa’s number and texts her every iteration of the ghost emoji she can get her hands on.
Just before the bell rings, her phone buzzes: a tiny pancake emoji. Clarke saves it as the icon for Lexa’s number.
++
“So,” Clarke says on the ninth day, flopping next to Lexa on the empty stool that she suspects but can’t confirm Lexa procured just for her. Lexa, she notices, is eating pancakes. “What did you do yesterday on the secret no Clarke day?”
“Experience peace and quiet.”
Clarke leans her chin on Lexa’s arm and makes big sad eyes. “That hurts my delicate feelings.”
Lexa’s lips twitch up. “You’ll live.” She shoves Clarke’s head off, but gently. “You don’t have to stick around today. Just show up at my house tomorrow, around nine.”
Clarke shrugs. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You certainly are,” Lexa mutters. She taps her fingers on the table. Everything has been cleaned and tidied and packed away, and there’s clearly nothing to distract herself with.
“Feeling antsy?”
Lexa shrugs.
“Hey,” Clarke says. “Tell me about the house? The case?”
Lexa tosses her a frown. “Why? No.”
“C’mon. It’ll help you be prepared, and I’m curious on what I’ve been working on.”
Lexa regards her for a moment. “Alright. Hold on.” She crosses to a filing cabinet, fishing out a large accordion folder. “I have slides but the projector bulb is blown out.” They bend over the file together, Lexa pulling out papers and pictures and laying them out. “This is Jonathan ‘Jack’ Julius. Graduated from this high school ten years ago. Married Kathy Gurol three months later, their first daughter, Kelly, born five months after that.”
“Oops,” Clarke says. “I guess they didn’t pay close attention to human sexuality and development.” The unit consists of one video, made in the late seventies, about periods and wet dreams and the importance of deodorant.
Lexa snorts in agreement. She retrieves another photograph. “This is the house after they bought it cheap from Kelly’s father.”
Clarke touches it. “Wow. I forgot what it used to look like.” It’s shocking--Clarke knows the house, everyone knows the house, but the picture looks… like a normal house. Flowers in the front yard, trimmed grass lawn, pretty blue paint with white accents. “Geez. That’s sad as fuck.”
“Not as sad as this.” Lexa draws her attention to another photo. It’s a kindergarten class photo. “That’s Kelly, in the red dress. Picture day was a week before she was murdered.”
Clarke touches the tiny face with her fingertip. Kelly’s got dark hair, plaited, chubby baby cheeks. She’s wearing long socks and shoes with a buckle. Clarke had a pair that looked just like that. She knows because her kindergarten picture, with that same black board and white lettering spelling out the grade and the name of the teacher, the kids in the same poses, is still on the mantle at home. “Oh.”
Lexa hands her another picture. Kelly sitting on a couch with floral fabric, an infant swaddled in her lap. “Grace-Lynn Julius. Just home from the hospital for a month. Kathy was still on maternity leave when…”
“Jesus,” Clarke mutters.
“Everyone knows the story,” Lexa says. The next few papers are copies of newspaper articles, online blogs, snapshots of local news outlets. “Jack had a lot of debt. Couldn’t keep down a job that wasn’t part time and minimum wage. Ended up at the restaurant Kathy’s family owned because no one else would keep him on. Even so, wasn’t enough. They were going to lose the car, the house. Couldn’t pay off the hospital bills from the second delivery--Grace was premature and required an extra week of care.”
“He could have done something else. Anything else.”
Lexa takes the pictures out of her hands. “Of course, Clarke. I’m not making excuses. I’m just telling you the story.”
“Right,” Clarke mutters. “Sorry, I know.”
“There were reports of drinking, arguments. They were supposed to attend a family gathering on Halloween, Kathy’s family. When they didn’t show to that or work the next day, her mother called. After another day, her father went to the house, found the bodies.”
Lexa hesitates. “I… have crime scene photos.”
“Pass,” Clarke says immediately. “Hard pass, I could not pass harder on that offer.”
Lexa tucks everything back into the folder. “It didn’t take long to piece it all together. Fingerprints, gun powder residue, his family didn’t even attempt to defend him. They’re buried over on Santa Clara.” She hesitates. “With my parents.”
Clarke touches her arm. “Lexa...”
“I saw the tombstones there. My uncle used to take me all the time. My sister taught me subtraction with the dates. So I looked them up, read about the case. This year, the fifth anniversary… feels like a round number.”
Clarke thinks about a very young Lexa, sitting at her parents graves and counting on her fingers all the years they lived and the years since she’s seen them. “I’m sorry. About your parents, I mean.”
“It was a long time ago.” Very slightly, Lexa leans into her touch. “My uncle has been very good to me.” She swallows, her throat working, her lashes fluttering. “It was a long time ago.” She looks down at Clarke, not moving away. “Thank you.”
She bends, a gentle inclination of her head. Her breath smells like maple syrup. Her lips move when she swallows, pursing slightly and relaxing again. Clarke, every so slightly, goes up on her toes. Her eyes close.
The bell rings.
They jump apart. Clarke can feel her face heat up, and there’s a similar flush rising high on Lexa’s cheeks. “That’s--that’s the worst story anyone has ever told me,” Clarke manages. She coughs, stepping farther away. “I wholeheartedly regret asking.”
“That’s the foundation,” Lexa says. “It’s why it’s tragic, not why it’s interesting.”
Clarke watches Lexa tuck the file back into the drawer. “So. Uh. I’ll see you tomorrow night?”
Lexa closes the drawer with a snap. “I’ll text you my address.”
++
“I’m going to Raven’s tomorrow,” she tells her parents at dinner. “Sleepover to help her get ready for the party on Friday. We’re going costume shopping after school.”
Her mother frowns. “That was a lot of information offered on your part.”
“I’ve turned over a new leaf,” Clarke says earnestly. “I think the paranormal club has really made me consider things from your point of view.”
Her mother rolls her eyes. “Keep your phone on. And make sure it’s okay with your father.”
Clarke looks at her father. He gives her a thumbs up. Her mother makes them all eat another helping of lima beans.
++
Clarke eats lunch with Octavia and Raven, because she’s a coward. “I said I’m staying at yours tonight,” she tells Raven. “Back me up if my parents check in?”
Raven fistbumps her. “You got it. Still on for the party?”
“Tits out and bottoms up,” Clarke agrees. “Hey,” she says, pitching her voice low. “You ever heard of like… people getting turned on by murder stories? Like they wouldn’t usually be into someone, but--”
Raven holds up a hand. “I’m gonna stop you there, because this is quickly veering into insight I have absolutely no interest in having.”
“Whatever,” Clarke mutters. “It was probably the pancakes, all… syrupy.”
Raven grimaces. “That’s actually somehow worse.”
++
She does go costume shopping after school, because she doesn’t actually enjoy lying to her parents and because she’s got time to kill before meeting Lexa. Halfheartedly cheers on Octavia in the dressing room and picks out something generic for herself, her mind elsewhere.
“So,” Octavia says, while they’re sitting inside a Taco Bell. “You and Lexa Woods.”
Clarke chokes on a chicken quesadilla. “Me and…. Who? Lexa? I don’t…” she gives it up. “What about us?”
“Everyone’s noticed. You’re finally gossip in a good way, not ‘kneed the substitute in the groin’ way.”
“That was cool,” Clarke protests. “They didn’t even suspend me for it.”
“He was eighty five years old, Clarke. He probably broke something falling over.”
“He had wandering hands,” Clarke says, “and I should have gotten a medal for it.”
Octavia flicks a nacho at her forehead. “Lexa Woods.”
“It’s just a club,” Clarke mutters, suddenly very concerned with tucking the chicken back into the tortilla. “She’s okay, I guess.”
“Mmhm.” Octavia scoops the chip off the table, blows on it, and eats it. “And I’m dropping you at her house, for no particular reason, except you’re also spending the night.”
“Uh,” Clarke says. “Friendship reasons?”
Octavia throws another nacho at her.
++
Clarke waves at Octavia as she drives away, then takes a deep breath. Her backpack is lumpy on her back, clean clothes and toiletries and a couple of bags of chips stuffed in, her school things left behind in the backseat of Octavia’s car.
She raps at the door, fiddling with her phone, shooting Lexa a quick text. It swings open, revealing an older girl with striking features and a glare that could cut glass. “Who’re you?”
“Clarke. I’m--is this--Lexa?”
Lexa appears over the girl’s shoulder. “Go away Anya, I told you she was coming.” She tugs at Anya’s elbow.
Anya doesn’t budge, her grip on the doorjam tightening. Her glare has gone slightly interested instead of overtly hostile. “You’re Clarke? Lexa talks about you.”
“Really? What does she say?”
“That--” Anya starts, but Lexa’s hand slaps over her mouth and she tugs Anya backwards. They tussle in the doorway for a moment, before Anya jerks free with a grin. “Okay, okay. I’m headed out anyway. Don’t wreck my car and call me once in awhile so I know you’re alive?”
“Whatever,” Lexa mutters, looking sullen. She kicks at the back of Anya’s heel and dodges the retaliatory swat. “My sister,” she tells Clarke, when Anya has rounded the corner, headed for the bus stop. “She’s agreed to let me use her car while she’s out of town for the weekend.”
“And… you talk about me?”
Lexa pinks, averting her eyes. “You’re the only other person in my club. It’s completely reasonable that you would come up in casual conversation.”
Clarke grins. “You’re cute when you’re flustered. Can I come in or what?”
“Or what,” Lexa says, but she steps back. “We should leave in about twenty minutes. Did you eat?”
Clarke fumbles at her bag. “I brought you a burrito.” She produces it, in the Taco Bell wrapping, greasy and cold.
“No,” Lexa says, and drags Clarke into the kitchen for sandwiches and fruit cups.
++
“This is not what I expected from the captain of the field hockey team,” Clarke admits, crouched in the lookout position while Lexa picks the lock on the gate to the parking lot.
“I have a 5.0 GPA,” Lexa informs her. “Don’t reduce me to my body.” While Clarke is sputtering through a response to that, she gives her wrist a last twist and the lock falls open. “I’ll back in and pop the trunk, you go get the first of the boxes from the basement.” She hands Clarke the key.
It takes about fifteen minutes to carry everything up from the basement, relock it, load the car, leave it idling across the street with the headlights turned off, and put the padlock back on the gate to the parking lot.
Lexa makes Clarke drink one of the water bottles she’d brought before she drives away. “You’re lingering after a crime,” Clarke informs her, between long draws. “It’s not the smartest thing for a criminal to do.”
“Dehydration is the real crime,” Lexa says. “And it never pays.”
Clarke watches Lexa drive; the grip of her long fingers on the wheel, the flick of her eyes in the mirror. “You were fucking with me,” she realizes. “Was… was that you flirting?”
Lexa looks sideways at her, for a long dragging moment. “Perhaps.”
“Maybe yes,” Clarke hums, “maybe no?”
Lexa smiles. “Maybe.”
Clarke settles into the passenger seat. “You should try for maybe yes sometime. Perhaps I’ll maybe back.”
Lexa hands her another bottle of water. Clarke is still giggling when they arrive.
++
Clarke looks at the house in the headlights before Lexa turns the engine off, then the dim glow of the streetlights. It looks like it could have been any other house, on a corner with a small front yard and a park just across an intersection. The house next door provides a striking contrast to its boarded up windows and decrepit roof, the overgrown yard and the rotting front porch, the dead tree and the frayed remnants of a tire swing.
“Fuck,” she mutters.
Lexa’s hand is on the gearshift, and Clarke grips her wrist, suddenly swamped with dread. Lexa turns their palms up, Clarke’s atop hers, her fingers gently curved. “Are you afraid?”
Clarke sets her shoulders. “No.” The door creaks when she shoves it open. Clarke bends over to look at Lexa, still seated. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.”
Lexa breaks in through the back door, the gate in the fence rotted through that she puts her boot through it with barely a noise. The back door is a little bit more difficult, Lexa grunting with her foot braced on the wall and both hands around a crowbar.
She pauses and wipes at her forehead. “Some help?”
Clarke shrugs. “I’m enjoying the show, to be honest.”
Lexa cuts her a look. Clarke sighs, then comes up behind Lexa, their hands wrapped around the crowbar together, Lexa’s back against Clarke’s chest. The board gives way with a crack and they tumble backwards at the sudden release of pressure, Clarke sprawled on the ground with Lexa atop her. Clarke groans. “This is not how I usually end up on my back.”
Lexa elbows her as she gets up. “Start getting the stuff out of the car.”
++
“So are you going to show me how to work this stuff?”
“It’s mostly automatic,” Lexa says, adjusting the first portable generator along the wall. “Since it’s just me, everything needs to be recording without manual input.” She points at one of the boxes. “That goes in the master bedroom. End of the hall.”
“Yeah,” Clarke says, “if you think I’m going anywhere alone in this house you’re fucking nuts.”
The house smells like mold, and wet wood, and old rotting fabrics. And dust. A fuckton of dust. Clarke sneezes sixteen times on the way to the master bedroom, and Lexa says “bless you” after each sneeze, in the split second between it and the next. “Thanks,” Clarke mutters, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Allergies.”
“This is it,” Lexa says, nudging a door open.
“Oh,” Clarke says, because the bed is still there, stripped of linens, the frame half collapsed. There’s a dark stain on the mattress she is carefully not looking at. “Right,” she mutters, quickly bending and unpacking the case. “Where do I put the blinky things?”
Lexa takes it from her, quickly. “I’ll… handle these. Just wait a second? The other bedroom, and then you can go.”
“Right,” Clarke repeats. She shifts on her feet near the door, listening to the floor creak under her weight. She can hear the wind through the leaves on the ground outside, the distant shrieking of young people partying.
“Okay,” Lexa says. “Come on.”
++
Clarke lingers by the backdoor. “You… you sure you’re okay?”
Lexa is sitting, legs crossed, against the living room wall. Everything has been set up and plugged in and is waiting to be powered on. Lexa did a test run for about fifteen minutes, to make sure everything was working and to ‘take baseline readings’. Then she clicked on a camping light, unrolled her sleeping bag, and fished out a book from her backpack.
“Consider your obligations fulfilled,” she agrees. She holds out Anya’s keys. “You’re spending the night with Octavia?”
“That was the plan,” Clarke says. She drags the toe of her sneaker through the dirt on the floor. “You sure you’re not scared?”
“I ain’t scared of no ghosts,” Lexa deadpans at her. She takes out several small tupperwares from her bag, cracking them open to reveal cut up veggies, dip, a stack of pringles, a handful of cookies. “You could stay.” She shrugs a shoulder, painfully nonchalant. “If you’d like.”
Clarke looks out the back door at Anya’s car parked across the street. “Well. If you died in here I’d probably be pegged for it, so.” She flops next to Lexa’s side. “I want cookies,” she demands, and Lexa passes them over. “What’re you reading?”
Lexa shows her. Some kind of anthology on gruesome crimes. Clarke makes a face and tucks it under the sleeping bag. “Nope.”
Lexa reaches over and brushes a crumb away from the corner of Clarke’s mouth with her thumb. “I suppose we’ll have to keep ourselves entertained some other way.”
++
“Clarke,” Lexa says, “this is ridiculous.”
“Shhh, this one is for the win.”
Lexa rolls her eyes. “I’m winning by fifty seven points.”
“Shut up,” Clarke suggests, “and open your mouth.” She lines up her shot, tossing a carrot at Lexa’s open mouth. It bounces off her cheek and Lexa catches it.
“My turn.”
Annoyingly, her light toss lands right on Clarke’s tongue, just like the seven previous times. Clarke spits it out onto the floor to be petulant, and because it makes Lexa laugh. “Okay, ringtoss is done,” Clarke mutters. “You got any apple slices left? We could drop them in your water bottle and bob for them.”
“Veto,” Lexa says. “What other games you got?”
“Uhhh,” Clarke says. “Charades?”
Lexa fishes under the sleeping bag for her book. Clarke lunges, tackling Lexa onto her back and sprawling across her torso. “Oof,” Lexa grunts, hands flailing as she topples. “Clarke--”
“Ssh,” Clarke says. “Sleep time, not murder time. Tell me a story.”
Lexa sighs. Her hand floats in the hair for a moment, uncertain, before settling carefully on Clarke’s head, her fingers gently smoothing Clarke’s hair. She starts telling Clarke about the history of seeing apparitions on the inside of closed eyelids, which is approximately five thousand times more boring than Clarke thought it would be, and she assumed it’d be boring as fuck all.
++
“Clarke,” Lexa murmurs, sleep rough and against the back of Clarke’s neck. “Wake up.”
“I’ll cut you,” Clarke mumbles. “Five more minutes.”
“You’re going to be late to school.”
Clarke’s eyes snap open. “Fuck. Fuck.” She sits up, grimacing at the taste of sleep in her mouth and the slow focusing of her eyes. “We fell asleep.”
Lexa looks apologetic, even sleep mussed and groggy as she is. “I meant to wake you. Sorry.”
“You should be,” Clarke mutters, “that was the most boring story of all time.”
“It was history,” Lexa says. She digs out a package of wet wipes and tosses them so they hit Clarke on the nose. “Take Anya’s car, pick me up tomorrow?”
Clarke scrambles to her feet, feeling grimy and gritty and achy from a night out of her own bed. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. You sure you’re gonna be okay?”
“Yes.” Lexa stands, rocking up on her toes for a full body stretch. Her back cracks and she sighs, her shirt riding up as she pops her shoulders. “Go to school, Clarke, you’re going to be late.”
++
“Hey.”
Clarke jerks back to earth. “Hey. Sorry. What?”
Raven arches an eyebrow. “You’ve been zoned out all day. And, to be honest, you smell super weird. Go use my shower and change into your costume.”
Clarke showers. She conditions twice and shaves her legs. Blowdries her hair and puts her makeup on, her cute underwear, her costume. Then she raids Raven’s pantry for snacks and Raven’s fridge for soda and gets into Anya’s car. Points it towards Lexa and drives.
++
Her heels sink into the mud of the backyard and stick there, which is odd because Clarke doesn’t remember hearing the rain last night, or any dampness on the concrete when she left. She walks in her stockings, tip toed, up to the house, yanking the door open with a jerk and poking her head inside. “Lexa?”
The house is dark and yawning open, silent except for the odd slow creak.
Clarke slips inside. The door shuts behind her and she waits, blinking rapidly, for her eyes to adjust. She can see Lexa’s bag on the kitchen counter, and as she creeps through the living room, the sleeping bag where they spent the night, Lexa’s backpack against the wall. “Lexa?”
She walks down the hall, stopping to peek into the bathroom. The master bedroom is empty and unchanged, except for Lexa’s footprints left in the dust and Clarke’s as she wanders. She turns to go back down the hall and--
And it’s crazy, it is. Clarke knows about the brain and the ways it can be tricked and she understands how flickers of light and moving shapes can--she gets it. But she thinks, for a second, there’s a girl with pigtails and a red dress and buckle shoes standing in the doorway with big sad eyes and a teddy bear dangling from one hand and the red ugly mangled mess of what’s left of her chest.
Then Lexa’s hand closes around her wrist. “Clarke?” she asks, confused, and Clarke blacks out.
++
She wakes up on the sleeping bag. Lexa is leaning over her, worried. The living room looks brighter, louder, the hum of the portable generators and the light whirring of Lexa’s equipment, the brightness of her laptop and the camping lights. “Easy,” Lexa says, helping her sit up and lean against the wall. “Drink this.” She holds the water bottle to Clarke’s lips, a plastic straw sticking out.
“More water,” Clarke grumbles. “And no swooning jokes. Your stupid ghost stories got into my head.”
“Hmm,” Lexa says, suspiciously neutral. Clarke narrows her eyes.
“Spill.”
“A huge spike,” Lexa says, so fast she must have been dying to let it out. “On every machine. I knew it. I knew it.” She pulls her laptop into her lap, the jagged line graphs displayed.
“Why?” Clarke asks. “And I mean this, yeah but. But I want to know why?”
Lexa tears her eyes away from her readings. “And if I tell you?”
“I’ll tell you. What I saw.”
Lexa considers her offer. She nods, once. “Drink the water.” She waits until Clarke sips again before continuing. “This tragedy, Clarke. It happened five years ago. We were both old enough to remember it. This house is on a nice street in a nice neighborhood. The family was picture perfect, whitebread, well connected. But everyone just--forgot. This happened five years ago, Clarke, and everyone acts like it was five hundred. No one cares. No one remembers. They just boarded it up and flipped the swingset across the street to face the other way.”
Clarke touches her, gentle. “You care.”
“Yes,” Lexa murmurs. She’s looking at Clarke’s fingers on her wrist. “I care.”
Clarke tells her. Lexa is quiet for a long time. Then she smiles, the biggest smile Clarke’s ever seen on her, even with her eyes wet and her breathing shuddery.
++
Lexa shows her each piece of equipment. Tells her where she got the parts and how long it’s taken her to build it and how Anya threatened to make her a ghost if she even thought about dipping into her college fund. All the crap jobs Lexa picked up around the neighborhood and all the times she burned all the hair off her arms soldering things together.
There’s a minor wire short in something and Lexa shows Clarke how to fix it, her long fingers around the handles of a pair of pliers, then around Clarke’s hands, guiding her. The wire sparks, the machine hums. Lexa smiles.
Clarke is easing her hands out, reaching for the plastic casing to snap back into place. Lexa stays very close. “I like your costume.”
Clarke looks down at herself. She flushes. “I brought snacks,” she says. “Those soft cookies with the frosting? And coke. The drink, not the drug.”
“Mhhm,” Lexa agrees. She noses behind Clarke’s ear. “I googled party games on my phone after you left. In case you came back.”
Clarke lays a hand on Lexa’s waist, tugging her closer. “If you say murder mystery I’m leaving.”
“No promises,” Lexa says. “You knew what you were getting into.” She kisses Clarke, careful and easy and so so gentle.
When it breaks Clarke is breathing harder, her hand on the small of Lexa’s back. “I nominate myself Vice President,” she pants, and drags Lexa to the sleeping bag.
++
“Clarke,” her mother says at dinner. “The school called about you cutting first period on Thursday.”
“Overslept,” Clarke says. “Sorry.”
“Of course,” her mother says, nodding. In hindsight, that should have been Clarke’s first warning.
“How was the party?” Her father asks. “I’m surprised to see you back before the weekend’s over.
Clarke shrugs. “Sunday’s a school night. You know how responsible and academically oriented I am.”
Her father winks. “Good job kiddo.”
“Clarke,” her mother says. “The police called about you trespassing at the old Julius house on Friday.”
“Uhhh,” Clarke says. “I’m gay?”
“That’s nice,” her mother says. “You’re grounded forever.”
Her father winks at her again. “We’re selling the car for scrap. No sleepovers until you graduate college.”
++
Anya buys a motorcycle and gives her car to Lexa. Clarke rides shotgun; holds the EMF meter in one hand and Lexa’s hand in the other.