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The weeks have flown swiftly by since Hunter signed up for Penstagram.
It’s ideal for his latest mission, deep cover at Hexside. He is to track the activities of the Owl Lady’s human and her posse of miscreants. He works within that job description, although Belos might be less than pleased to learn what kind activities he and Willow have been tracking.
Hunter has lost sleep, whittled away nights scaling the ever-growing mountain of new photos and videos that rushes through his feed. It’s been worth it. He’s seen more people his age in a day than he had in some months, heard them speak and mastered their strange vernacular.
A little yawning is worth a lot of knowledge, even if it does nothing for his complexion. It's not like the bags under his eyes are going to get bigger. He tracks them like the tides. It’s an experiment on one of the few things he can control. With the four hours of sleep he nets each night, they’re going nowhere fast.
Square-cropped images of beautiful people and creatures infinite-scroll past Hunter’s eyes at the swipe of a thumb. He knows his brain craves this digital sugar, even if the words for why linger off his tongue. His neurons salivate for the next drop of dopamine just offscreen.
A woman with emerald-tinted sunglasses smirks into the camera. Four triangular lenses pinch away from her face, covering at least as many eyes. Her smug expression says she knows that she’s hot, she knows Hunter is looking at her, and she wants him to stay fixated on her alone. Each of the snakes in her writhing hair wears sunglasses that match her face. Each snake adopts a miniature version of her mien, tessellating aloof but inviting assurance.
Vocal fry sizzles in her throat, or maybe it’s just acid. “I have been so much more confident since I got my teeth sharpened. I just think, anyone who doesn’t have this, why do you even bother opening your mouth? It costs just snails a day with InvisaSlime, the leading tooth dissolution paste. Use code GORGON15 for 15 percent off, and let them know that Stheno sss-sent you.”
Hunter is hooked. Stheno’s split tongue runs along the jagged edges of startlingly bright teeth, flickering suggestively in a way that both titillates and shames him. The tension between the two propels his mind forward like wind in a sail.
The sea of his thoughts is not vast. He thinks about the video all day, clearing his mind only for flyer derby practice. As per tradition, Willow asks for a kiss after everyone else has gone inside. He gives it to her every time, dutifully. His cover is so deep, so complete, and so warm in his chest.
He washes up, scrubbing his hands with spiders for the Department of Disease-recommended twenty seconds. As the suds swirl the drain, old thoughts return like a new moon. He gets the backs of his hands and the sides of his fingers and sneers at himself. In his mouth are plain, flat, ever so slightly tea-yellowed teeth. The best part of his smile is the tooth he doesn’t have. His teeth are not sharp. They are no threat.
“Well that’s disappointing.”
He recalls Stheno and her arousing fright. Compared to her, he has nothing to offer but an unthreatening pout. The only thing they have in common is their pallor and the fact they have faces.
For years and years, any compliment he received addressed his authority, his ability, his adjacency to the emperor. He knows most grew from a substrate of ass-kissing or fear, but that doesn’t matter if what’s being said is true. He is a mighty and ruthless executor of the Emperor’s will and people should say it.
Even as a flyer derby player, the praise he earns lies in a narrow band around his determination and his skill. He’s never heard anything positive about his appearance. Belos goes out of his way to send the opposite message. Hunter always has the same haircut, always has the same clothes, as if his uncle grades him on his ability to be cookie-cut. A mold that doesn’t fit is a prison.
So Hunter has a soft and unprotected underbelly vulnerable to the likes of gorgons. When hidden behind a mask or paint and a uniform, it matters less, but he himself is visible now and that matters. It makes sense to him. Stheno is right. Having a face anchored by a mouth full of fangs or saw-sharp teeth would make him look older, more respectable, more dignified. They might even be an asset in flyer derby, if a smirk could make opponents flinch. Without them, he is deficient in so many ways.
Hunter blanks out at the mirror while these thoughts evaporate, condense, and precipitate in his head. The twenty seconds of handwashing have stretched into minutes, probably.
Flapjack perches on the faucet and whistles at him to stop wasting water.
Hunter twists the tap until the drips taper off. The tip of his tongue travels along the indents of his molars, feeling for something that isn’t there.
Flapjack hovers in front of the mirror, tweeting and trilling.
Wrinkles grow and shift on Hunter’s forehead.
“Is my grasp of Palisman getting rusty?”
He cups his hands so Flapjack can land, then strokes his keel with a caring thumb.
“No? You really did say if my tongue was a worm, you would eat it? That’s nice coming from a bird. Thank you.”
Flapjack nibbles at Hunter’s collar.
“You want in? Silly.”
He shakes his head but still undoes another button. Flapjack cuddles in, nestled between the fabric and Hunter’s neck.
Hunter takes a selfie with Flapjack and sends it to Willow. I’LL see you soon., but lOok. ImportAnt. He follows up with a blushing kissing face emoji.
*
“Can you believe Principal Bump made an announcement to tell us not to do the fire bucket challenge?” Luz says around mouthfuls of pink slime sandwich.
“It's not the first time.” Willow says. “The Parent-Creature Association had a fit over Swat a Bug Demon Day, which turned out to be nothing.”
“Where are you seeing these things?” Hunter asks, trying to convey more intrigued and less clueless.
“Penstagram trends. It’s a lot of vanity.” Gus says, running a cool hand through his hair. “But hey, if you got it, flaunt it.”
“They’re not all bad.” Willow swats at air. “Remember that lip-sync of Singein’ in the Rain that everyone was doing? And my rec league derby team once did a dance to the Bonesborough theme song.”
Luz goes wide-eyed. “This town has a theme song? That I haven’t heard?”
“It’s not that exciting.” Willow says. “We’ve always had an anthem, but they hired a consultant to call it something else. Something about making civic engagement more hip and happening with the youth.”
Hunter knows all this. He’s been humming the Bonesborough town ditty since before he could read. He sat through the months of planning meetings that organized the campaign to make the Emperor’s Coven more appealing to kids ages six to eleven.
“Well huh, looks like it worked.” Hunter splits the halves of a Goreo cookie and scrapes off the blood frosting. He wads the frosting into a ball and swallows it without chewing. The sides of the cookie are offerings for Flapjack, who pecks them into manageable pieces. “And that worked too. Red food for the red bird, huh?”
Gus twirls a hand. “I’m personally a fan of cosmenstagram. I was kinda Pensta-famous for my human ear makeup. It was just illusion magic, but isn’t all makeup, really?”
Willow is unamused. “Gus, that was just a couple months ago, when Luz showed up. She was here for that.”
Luz doesn’t mind. “Remember the double-pupil look? That was pretty neat, as someone who only has one pupil in each eye.”
Hunter blinks his single-pupiled eyes, privy to yet another way his body has been found lacking.
Gus traces a diagonal across his face. “Belos face makeup is big right now, since the Coven Day reveal.”
“What, people want to look like that?” Hunter rolls out a thunderclap of a laugh so loud and sudden it startles Flapjack before realizing it shows too much teeth. He shields the world from the sight of his mediocrity with the back of his hand. “What about this?”
He opens Penstagram and shows a still from Stheno’s video in an arc around the table.
“Ooh, she’s stylish.” Luz says. “She looks like she could tear my head clean off— and I would like it.”
“Yeah?” Hunter notes the approval.
“I like her vibe,” Gus nods. “Green’s not really my color, but I’d steal her look.”
“Hm,” Willow grumbles. “This seems like a lot of effort for something that could mess up how you eat.”
“Humans do something like that for years for the sake of vanity,” Luz offers. “Want a conventionally attractive smile? Then say goodbye to popcorn!”
“That’s right, face wires!” Gus says, “I read about them in Tween Boss magazine.”
“Do they need all the popcorn to feed the tooth-straightening beast?” Hunter deduces.
“No, no, there are no beasts, and they’re called braces. Someone reaches into your mouth and uses cement to attach stainless steel to your teeth, which stays there for months or even years. And then, tah dah!” Luz flashes her own straightened smile.
The lunch bell screams.
Hunter runs his tongue along the gap in his teeth and finds another thing about himself that needs fixing.
*
He’s been over to the Parks’ many times, first to do homework and then to “do homework.” The gauntlet of interest from Willow’s dads is especially axe-swinging today, but he endures it out of gratitude. His mission is all the better for it.
Gilbert and Harvey raised no eyebrows when his name changed from Caleb to Hunter. That burned the hours he and Willow had spent coming up with a backstory to explain it, but the ashes were shaped like relief. They said that enough of their friends had abruptly changed their names that they were used to it.
Hunter wins them over today by pouting at Willow and saying, “I don’t really have a dad, and you have two, so I think this will work out.” Harvey responds, “oh, call me Papa already.”
Even as Hunter grins in victory, even as he doesn’t really understand what Harvey means by “We can be your shared valence electrons, sure,” Stheno creeps into his mind. He covers his mouth again.
“I'll be in your room.” Hunter pushes his chair in and walks out, a chill in his wake and a tear snagged through the close atmosphere he knows he craves. Flapjack follows with only the flutter of wings as sound.
Willow and her dads exchange a triangle of glances among themselves, scattershot between worried and confused.
“Know what’s wrong with your advanced friend?” Harvey asks Willow with a look in Hunter's direction. The irony is so embedded in how they refer to him that no one blinks— in this house, Willow could make out with Hunter with the door open and get nothing but encouragement. That had happened.
“I’ll go find out, advanced Papa.” Willow shuffles down the hall to her room. Her dads rise from the table in support.
“Okay, I see. Is this pretext for avoiding the overbearing fathers?” Gilbert winks.
“She has two of them, so I think it’ll work,” Harvey cracks.
“Really, dad, I’ll take care of it. Bye.” She opens the door to Hunter lying on her bed and quickly steps through.
Gilbert hollers, “Remember to leave room for Belos!”
Hunter bolts up, startling Flapjack. “Ew, does he know how old and gross Belos is?” streaks out of his mouth before he can censor himself.
From just beyond the doorframe Gilbert quips back, “So give him lots of room!” He throws in a string of condoms in golden wrappers. They land curled on the floor like a severed tentacle.
“We will!” Willow barks back and slams the door.
Hunter slides off the bed and sits on the floor, knees pulled in. He stares at the condoms as if doing so long enough would make them burst into flames.
“Well.” His ears burn. “We won't need these, for a number of reasons.” First of all, Hunter doesn’t say, he’s not exactly sure how they work.
“My dad is so funny. It’s like he forgets I have an entire box of these from the time they learned I could shape squash and eggplant seeds into whatever I wanted.”
Hunter nods, both impressed and lacking comparison. “I’m learning a lot about your relationship with your parents today.”
“They can be a lot, but they mean well.” Willow shrugs.
“I don't think it’s a bad thing. I'd love to have someone watching out for me like that.” Hunter clears his throat. “I learned about that stuff from dusty library books. How babies are summoned, what really goes on inside us during a blood moon—”
“Just to be clear,” Willow prefaces as she folds up the condoms and shoves them into the box, “we are not learning about that today.”
“Understood.” Hunter's face blazes with awkward, a smile clawing its way out of lips he fights to keep flat.
He tucks his neck and raises his shirt collar to his nose. Flapjack warbles at him.
“Sorry,” he says through fabric.
“For what? Do you need a mint?” Willow circles a spell in the air. A mint plant on her desk extends a pluckable tendril to her hand. “Or, you have a toothbrush here. It’s not a big deal.”
“No, it’s—” Hunter opts for silence instead of trying to explain how something as trivial as a Penstagram post has sliced through his tenuous self-image. “Yeah, I’ll take the toothbrush.”
Although it’s well within the parameters of his mission, he feels bad for picking the option that leaves Willow by herself.
*
Thirty minutes later, it starts to feel like a big deal.
“Hunter, is everything okay in there? Do you need toilet paper?” Willow knocks on the bathroom door.
There’s only silence on the other side, then Flapjack tweets.
“Okay, don’t be naked, I’m coming in.” Willow turns the knob.
“I’m not ready, don’t—”
Unmagicked words don’t cancel physics, so the door opens before Willow can yank it back.
Hunter looks at himself in the mirror, scrutinizing his teeth, his skin, his scars, his face. His shoulders are tight. His eyes are red.
“Flapjack,” Hunter whines. “Why did you tell her to come in?”
“You were crying,” Willow mouths.
Flapjack jumps to her shoulder and whistles softly.
Hunter rubs at his eyes with balled fists. The remnants of tears spread sting like salt and glass.
Willow closes the door and turns the lock. “I’m just going to sit here.” The toilet cover is a fuzzy flower, extravagantly comfortable for a surface so rarely sat upon.
“Don’t expect a show,” Hunter mumbles.
He locates his self-loathing again. In his mind it’s always rested snug against his heart, in the empty space where others have a bile sac. The cavity has to be useful for something, after all. He imagines it dripping, making its way through every part of him.
It doesn’t work. His focus wonders. His eyes drift to the sliver of Willow’s face reflected in the corner of his view. What does she see in him? What keeps her kissing him?
Their eyes meet in the mirror. “What’s up?” Willow strains the concern from her voice, convincing neither of them.
Hunter takes a slow breath out, a stream of air catching on his lips for four counts. “A direction.”
She leans toward him and winks. “And of all the directions, why are you so down?”
This is a new one. Harvey came up with it last week. Hunter snorts as he chokes down a sob.
Willow stops herself from grabbing his hand even as her own tickles with want. She knows he doesn’t take touch well when he’s mad at the body that receives it.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He looks at his distraught face, reflected, and then at her hands, one clutching the other. “But I should.”
“Hunter, who told you your smile was bad?” Willow mitts a fist in the opposite palm. “I'll hurt them. Emotionally.”
“Wha— who told you I thought my smile was bad?”
“A little birdie told me.”
Flapjack chirps.
“Hey, you warbler, you snitch!” Hunter bristles, then calms. “Oh, I should thank you, Flap.”
Flapjack stands in Hunter’s hair and tugs on his forelock.
“Yeah, yeah, serves me right.”
”Okay,” Willow says, “I have a question about what you were talking about today at lunch. You’ve never had to deal with peer pressure before, huh. Or seen crystal ball ads that try to make you feel bad to buy something.”
Hunter shakes his head. “My uncle is strict, so I only just got a streaming scroll, from— a friend. My uncle said there was nothing good on there. But he also told me that, because I had no magic, everything would be harder for me. I thought I was supposed to be called all of those things. You know the names.”
Willow swallows. She knows.
“But it wasn’t until I met you that I realized I could do something about it.”
Hunter smiles, then doesn’t.
“Really? Because you know I— I also used to think I had to just grin and bear it. And so—”
“Grin?” Hunter squeaks, gripping the sink with both hands, slippery porcelain. “Those are my options, grin and bear it or be smiling and happy?”
“Okay, bad word choice. Let me try something different.” Willow messages him on Penstagram. Why is Caleb smiling?
Hunter knows what he’s going to see.
His smile is wide and his eyes are closed. Red Ghoul-Aid drips from his hair, his ears, his eyelashes. The memory is a tropical punch to the gut. He remembers how sticky it was on his skin, how that night he asked Darius to get him some after his uncle locked the door to his room.
He grits his teeth to not smile again.
Willow messages him again. What was it that made you smile here?
Hunter holds his scroll over his mouth. “You.”
“You liar liar, plants on fire! You told me you didn’t fall for me until you went home that night and cried about it.” Willow blushes anyway.
“That was before I knew— what I know. And since I know it, I’m not going to smile again.”
“Okay. I support you.”
“What?”
Willow shrugs, her warning volley fired. “Want to learn to braid hair?”
Hunter nods and follows her to her room. She sits at the foot of a full-length mirror.
“You make thirds, then just sort of, bring one of the outside ones between the other two, then bring the other one between the other two, and keep doing that until you run out of hair.”
Hunter traces the deft movements of her fingers and wishes they would touch him.
“Did your parents do this for you when you were little?” Hunter has a soft spot for the idea of other people’s childhoods.
“Yeah, back when he had more hair, Papa practiced on himself. Dad practiced on him too.”
“Okay, so it’s really bad.” Hunter unflinchingly appraises his less-than-handy handiwork. The proportions are off. One braid is by far bigger than the other two. “Let me take it out.”
“You can leave them in for now” Willow says softly as she moves them to the front. “They’re not perfect, but they were done for me by someone pretty special.”
“Well, maybe he can do better if he tries again.”
“Maybe he can.” Willow shakes her hair loose. “A growth mindset, that’s what we like to see. I won't talk this time.”
Hunter knows the threat of silence. He works diligently, parting out thirds of hair between his fingers. He’s uncomfortable with quiet when it’s offered and not demanded.
Willow knows what she’s doing. She’ll coax him to open up like some of her more stubborn flowers. She hears his intent breathing, how he scolds himself under his breath, not just for his uneven braiding. She feels bad, but some torments are self-inflicted. She can’t force him to pull his finger out of the fairy fly trap, as it were, if he wants so desperately to feel it close around him.
At last he scrunchies off his work.
“Okay, fine.” He huffs. “Having pointy teeth won't make me happy.”
Flapjack sings.
“Neither will looking like I have two pupils in each eye, or getting my hair levitated, or turning my eyebrows into little fires. I wanted to look intimidating because look, I know I’m, what did Luz call me, adorkable? But that’s just how I am.”
Willow calls for Clover, who was dozing in a little honeycomb-shaped pillow.
“Beauty is in the eye of the bee holder, and Clover is a bee, so I am the holder. Did I say that right? Yeah.” Willow traces her logic in the air. “I don’t know if you know how other people really see you.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for me. You sit here.” She scoots over to open the spot before the mirror for Hunter.
He obliges.
Flapjack joins Clover in the soft honeycomb.
“I can’t braid your hair,” she says wistfully as she runs her fingers through it. “But I can tell you—”
“I like this.” She straightens the hair over Hunter's forehead in her fingers. It crinkles immediately as it leaves her fingertips.
“I like this.” She runs a hand over the notch in his ear. He holds a shrug, ticklish.
“I like these.” She rounds the bottom of his eyebags with delicate fingertips. He can’t tell whether his eyes water because of emotion or reflex.
“I like this.” She traces the outline of the scar on his face, arcing up and down.
She lets her fingers drift down to the underside of his jaw like a trailing tear. As he giggles from the tickle, she points between his lips directly at the gap between his teeth. “And I like this. It’s a landmark when I kiss you.”
“Because I like this.” Her hands frame his shoulders and give a gentle squeeze.
She draws him into a tight embrace made crushing by weightlifting and flyer derby practice.
“I didn't know,” Hunter scrapes out.
“You didn’t know?” Willow palms her forehead. “Did you also think my dads were being literal about us being advanced friends?”
“I—” Hunter considers his mission, and how his uncle has never once asked for a report back. Everything clicks. He goes slack in Willow’s arms. He wants to hide. He wants to kiss Willow. “Just squeeze me until I pop.”
“Come again?”
Hunter pulls out his scroll to log out of Penstagram. He beams.
“I thought I would be happy with skin-piercing teeth, but I'm happy here, with rib-cracking Willow.”
She kisses him on the neck, along where the baby hairs start to grow.
Under the right circumstances, Hunter learns, crying is like smiling only wet.