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Alright, let’s start from the beginning: you’re three years old when your parents’ marriage falls apart, six when your mother checks herself into rehab for the first time, and nine when your father breaks the custody agreement, simultaneously sending you to a boarding school in California and your mom to a psych ward after the nervous breakdown that follows. So, yeah, you were never going to be well-adjusted by any sense of the word. The world should be grateful that you became a jewel thief instead of one of those neurotic trophy wives who eventually snaps and murders her husband in cold blood. Not that you’re particularly opposed to violence, of course. You just think that there should be an element of reason behind it.
You’re not stupid. You know people see what they want to see, and you’ve gotten good at being a mirror - reflecting their desires back at them, showing them that they’re right, so right , and I think I got lost on my way to the bathroom, sir, can you help me find my teacher? And it’s not like you need money, either; Montessori schools this side of Silicon Valley don’t come cheap. You’re just - bored isn’t the right word. Antsy is more like it. Your art teacher tells your dad at the parent-teacher conference that his assistant had to schedule into his calendar that you’re full of untapped potential, and even at thirteen you think that’s bullshit, but you stifle your laugh with a beatific smile.
It’s like walking on a tightrope sometimes, subverting expectations just enough to keep the people who think they know you on their toes, and knowing when to toe the line so that you’re not shipped off to Geneva, or Vienna, or some other European city known for their finishing schools. Like acting, but more of a long-term commitment. And the thing is, really, you’re not too sure how much of it is you and how much of it is an illusion, quicksilver and melting away as soon as you’re gone, and it scares you a little, not knowing when you’re reading from a script and when it’s improv. So it’s probably safer to just not think about it. You’re genetically predisposed to dislike introspection, anyway.
And then you wake up in a helicopter with a pounding headache. And then you get to be whoever you want, forever.
You’re at water polo practice, which is less of an excuse to stare at mostly-naked teenage boys and more of one to wrestle Laura away from Otto, who she trails with big goo-goo eyes as if she’s unaware of the fact that everyone in a five-mile radius can tell she’s in love with him, and peeling an orange. You weren’t allowed oranges at home; they smell too much like your mother’s old perfume, and you only like arguments when you’re the one starting them. Laura’s pretending to watch the match, but her eyes keep sliding away from the pool and up to the ceiling, unfocused.
“I’m not that bad company, am I?” you snap, when Laura zones out for the umpteenth time and starts worrying at the cuff of her sleeve. “You don’t have to come with me, you know.”
(This is how Laura becomes your friend instead of just your roommate; you catch her looking at Otto one day, with unbridled longing, and he might be stupid but you’re not. And you know how boys work, had enough of them wrapped round your little finger back home, so you’re about 98% certain that Laura’s going to be waiting a long, long time. You think maybe you can get her to get over him before that, because at this moment in time Otto is a scrawny little asshole who talks like he’s vomited up a dictionary and gets into fights he can’t finish and sure, you can’t understand every other word Laura says, but you figure she deserves better than that . But you can’t say as much. So you tug at her arm, point at a poster, and say, “Come with?”)
Laura flushes. “I’m just distracted,” she says in that soft Scottish brogue, one you’re getting slightly better at understanding after six months stuck with her. “I’ve been feeling extra homesick lately.”
You can’t relate. You used to live in a mansion valued at over six figures, and your father paid school fees that could probably pay for most people’s houses, and all of it was so empty that when you think of home you come up blank. “What are they like?” you ask, and when Laura blinks at you in confusion, you elaborate. “Your family.”
Laura’s mother is a schoolteacher, and her dad works in IT. They have a family dog called Bella, and they’ve lived in the same sleepy Scottish village for as long as she can remember. “I used to think that I couldn’t wait to get out of there,” she says shyly, “but now I know I was wrong.”
This is where you and Laura differ - although the two of you differ on a lot of things, come to think of it. You used to dream about leaving, too. But you can’t imagine wanting to go back.
“We should go,” you say abruptly, before you do something ridiculous like cry . “Practice is over.”
You’re right, because you usually are. It doesn’t make you feel any better.
Otto always beats you in chess, but it doesn’t bug you that much. For all it’s meant to be a silent game, you always end up finding an excuse to embroil him in a heated debate about something ridiculous, or goad him into nearly, maybe, almost admitting that he thinks Laura’s cute, or something as equally incriminating. As easy as it is to get on his nerves - God, he’s high strung, always so susceptible to taking a joking comment the wrong way, and you think perhaps it’s a British thing but you’re way meaner to Nigel and he seems to get that you’re not being serious - you also think you understand him in a way you can’t quite understand Laura, who writes letters to her parents and stuffs them under her bed. Otto’s parents are presumed dead, and yours might as well be, for all the love they showed you - or lack thereof.
And there’s Wing, but you’re not sure how to be around him anymore, after Cypher, after mourning him for several days only for him to pop back up again, alive and well. The flirtatious jokes that you used to make now sit heavy on your tongue. It isn’t love, but it’s more than a casual crush, and you’re not sure how to deal with it, so you just...don’t. For all your restless, reckless antagonism, you dislike direct confrontation.
One Saturday morning, when you’re losing (again), Otto looks up at you and says, “You know, Shelby, you don’t have to try so hard all the time.”
You puff up with indignation, because you’re 78% sure this is a dig at the fact that he caught you reading a book on chess tactics last week (because you don’t mind losing, but you also don’t love it), when he continues with, “You’re allowed to feel vulnerable. Nobody expects you to be on guard 24/7.”
You think about telling him that if he can pick up on that , he certainly should be able to figure out why Laura goes so pink whenever he offhandedly mentions how pretty her eyes are (because, seriously, does he ever shut up about them?), but that’s a little mean, and he’s trying to be nice in his awkward-Otto way that allows very little room for heart-to-hearts, so.
“Ditto, my dude,” you say, face falling as he takes your queen ( goddamn ). “Ditto.”
If he looks disappointed at your response, it’s his fault for thinking you’re up to infodumping about your identity crisis at 9 o’clock in the morning.
You’re pretty sure Raven hates you.
And by pretty sure, you mean certain; she’s got a soft spot for Otto and Wing from all the shit they give her, purposefully or not, and seems to admire Laura’s ability to crack a computer by just looking at it funny and giving it a poke, but she’s always particularly harsh on you. You’re complaining about it to Wing one day, because Otto so cheated on that last training exercise and she gave him the point anyway, what gives , when he says it.
“I think you remind her a little bit of herself,” Wing says, in that mild way of his. “Or who she could’ve been.”
Look: you’re fifteen, and Raven is - you’re not sure, actually, but in her late twenties at least - and you think it’s kind of stupid that a fully grown adult is projecting her issues onto you. But you like Wing, love him, even, and you think about kissing him when you should be doing Villainy Studies homework and Political Manipulation quick quizzes, so you give him the benefit of the doubt. “Whatever,” you huff, scooch yourself onto his lap and grin when his face goes red. “I guess have to kick Malpense’s ass the old fashioned way.”
“Please don’t hurt him permanently,” Wing says, sounding a little alarmed.
As if you would. Otto might drive you crazy with his robot-boy shenanigans, but you’d no sooner genuinely cause him harm than impale yourself on one of Raven’s glowing katanas. And the thought doesn’t scare you like you think it should. You think of all the times Otto has pushed you and the others into safety so he can go face his great, ominous destiny by himself, and it feels right, natural, to want to protect him, to want to keep all four of you safe, together.
You’re not sure why Wing thinks you and Raven are similar, though. If anyone reminds you of Raven, it’s Otto.
The third time you break your Blackbox, Nero offers to send you to grief counselling. Which is stupid, because Otto’s not dead .
Lucy is.
It feels so empty in the atrium that you want to scream. Sometimes you do. And Nero gives you the number for the grief counsellor again, in between lessons with only three people when there should be thirty, and you think you could probably kill him. Who would stop you? Not Raven, who’s away on assignment; not Otto, who’s expelled; not Laura, who’s somewhere in the Arctic tundra with the blood of half their stream on her unknowing hands. Maybe Wing would, but he doesn’t seem so pacifistically-inclined nowadays, either - he gets angry, spends hours in his room at a time.
It wouldn’t change anything; it’d just make things worse. You’re not sure what kind of punishment G.L.O.V.E would inflict upon you for murdering their chairman, but it’s probably not fun. And part of you still isn’t the gratuitously-violent type. But it’d be doing something. You’re so sick of pretending that everything is normal that you draw up escape plans in your spare time.
Six months before you graduate, your mother has her third nervous breakdown, and sends out so many desperate requests for you to come and visit that it eventually lands you in Nero’s office, Raven standing by the door like an avenging angel.
You’re going to hell anyway; what do you care if you’re a terrible daughter for it? She was never anything but a terrible mother. You rebuff Nero’s relatively gentle offer to let you see her, and when Laura and the others ask you where you were, you lie and say detention.
A private little secret of yours is that you weren’t really planning on making it past eighteen. You were pretty sure that if the family penchant for addiction didn’t get you, the cops would, and you’re not really a prison kind of girl. You had it planned out for so long that it’s only when you turn nineteen that you realise it’s not going to happen.
On your twentieth birthday, you’re pretty sure your father has forgotten all about you. It feels like it should be a bigger deal than it is; Laura’s mouth twists downward when you joke about it, and so does Wing’s, and only Otto really finds it funny. Otto has express permission to laugh at you whenever he wants, because you feel a little bad about all the callous teasing you did about what was probably some prime teenage angst (the clone thing, and the computer thing, and the dead girlfriend thing, among a few others), so Wing and Laura can pull faces at you as much as they please, but you’re always going to have Otto on your side.
You love Otto the same way you love Laura, the same way you loved Lucy: a little bit romantic, a lot not. You’re not sure how to separate the four of you; there are times where you can’t tell when you end and Wing begins and so on and so forth and, the thing is, you don’t really believe in any of that hippy New-Age crap that you spouted for attention at the beginning of first year, but you also think that maybe this was meant to be. Perhaps all roads lead here, in the end.
You want a happy ending. You’re really hoping this one sticks.