Chapter Text
“Kalluto, I need to speak with you,” their science teacher says.
Kalluto turns back from the classroom door to look at him. The crowd of students slowly empties, chatting amicably.
“I went to email Principal Netero about your chronic absence,” Mr. Bolognese begins. “Only to discover that your attendance record is nearly perfect. However, I seem to remember a lot of days where you were not in class. Were you or were you not in class last week when we talked about the theory of evolution?”
Well, this is unfortunate. Kalluto has been missing a lot of school to go on Troupe missions or to travel to Meteor City, and they’ve been hacking the school’s (state of the art) system to change the electronic record of their attendance. They were counting on the teachers not realizing it didn’t add up.
Before they can answer (or better yet, walk away– what is Mr. Bolognese going to do, chase them? They’d like to see him try) one of their classmates who hasn’t left yet speaks up.
“Kalluto’s so quiet, I bet you just didn’t notice him, Mr. Bolognese. He’s practically invisible.” The boy, whose name is Brian, throws a wet wipe into the green bin as though it’s a basketball hoop. He high fives his friend, who’d stayed behind with him. Brian had been asked to stay late to clean due to disrupting class. Cranberry, that’s his friend’s name, Kalluto remembers.
“Brian,” Mr. Bolognese scolds. “Don’t be rude.” He seems to be considering the validity of his argument, though. He then turns back to address Kalluto– or rather, the space Kalluto had been occupying.
“Kalluto?” he calls, maybe a little confused.
Kalluto looks up from where they’re resorting the trash Brian had disposed of improperly. Really, they hadn’t even been trying to move quietly.
Mr. Bolognese does a double take when he sees where they are. Kalluto tosses the wet wipe into the trash bin (it had been in the recycling).
“Uh… make sure you raise your hand or something when I call attendance,” Mr. Bolognese says sheepishly. “Have a good day, then.” He leaves.
Kalluto dusts their hands off.
“You’re welcome,” Brian says to them, walking over with Cranberry by his side. “I totally covered for you. You have missed a lot of class, haven’t you?”
Yes, Kalluto supposes it’s not a surprise Brian has noticed. They sit near each other.
“So, you owe me,” the boy says, grinning.
“One extant object,” Kalluto states.
“Uh, what?” Brian and Cranberry snigger at each other.
“I’ll give you one item, that really exists, somewhere in the world,” Kalluto clarifies.
“Dude, I was just thinking the answers to next week’s test or something,” Brian says. “But ‘one extant object?’” He turns to Cranberry. “What should I ask for?”
Cranberry giggles. “It can be anything, right?”
“That’s what he said. I could go for some ice cream.”
“You should say, like, a human skull, or something,” Cranberry says, still unable to stop laughing.
“That’s it, yeah. A human skull.” Brian grins triumphantly. He turns to go. “So, I’ll talk to you next week about the test answers, okay?” He looks back at where Kalluto had been standing, too slow to realize that they're already at the classroom door.
~~~
Brian pummels his pillow into a nicer shape, then flips it over to the cool side. The morning sun coming in his dorm room window must have made the room too warm. Or maybe, Brian thinks, the heat in this crappy building is acting up again.
He turns over, but as he moves his foot kicks something heavy sitting on the end of his bed.
Brian frowns, confused. He didn’t leave anything there last night.
He sits up, blinking sleep out of his eyes.
At the foot of his bed, fallen over on its side on top of his comforter, sits a grinning human skull.
Fear shoots through him, before he realizes that of course it’s fake. He throws his pillow across the room at his roommate. “Ha, ha, very funny, Cranberry,” he says.
The other boy wakes up with an angry whine, throwing the pillow to the floor.
“Some prank,” Brian says. “This thing doesn’t even look rea–”
The moment he touches it, feeling the real, weighty bone, he screams.
“What is it? What is it?” Cranberry shouts, confused.
“It’s a skull, it’s a real skull, and it’s dead, oh my god get it off get it off–” Brian presses himself back against his headboard, every cell in his body screaming at him to get as far away as possible from the real human skull that he woke up with.
Cranberry sees. “Shut up, Brian, it’s not real,”
“It is, it is,” Brian yells. He scrambles off his bed and runs over to Cranberry’s.
“This isn’t you pranking me, right?” Cranberry grumbles. “Knock it off already, I’m not scared.”
“It’s not me,” Brian insists.
Cranberry frowns. “I bet Johnny did this. He must have snuck in during the night and left it to scare us. Guess I better check my bed for rubber snakes.”
Brian can barely speak at his point, he’s honest to god crying, but he shakes his head. “The door,” he manages. “It’s locked– check! It’s locked, we locked it!”
Cranberry huffs and goes to the door of their dorm room. He checks, and the door is locked. “Dude, Johnny just locked it after himself. We must have forgotten last night.”
Brian clutches at Cranberry’s bedsheets, shaking his head as tears stream down his face.
“Dude, it’s not real,” Cranberry insists. He picks up the skull, then frowns. “Okay, well, it’s heavier than I expected, but I’m pretty sure this is plastic. It must be, like, an expensive model or something.” He turns it over. “There’s ways to tell if it’s fake though. You look up the nose, and if it’s like a coral reef in there it’s real because they can’t make that when they mold the plastic.” He peers up the nose, and swallows. Hard. “Okay, well, this is just a really, really good model, then… But you can tell if you look at the teeth, see, because a model would have perfect teeth…” He lets the skull fall open, revealing an obvious cavity.
The skull clatters to the floor, and suddenly, both boys are screaming.