Archive of Our Own

Fig is helping Gilear decide if his jug of milk—essential for his nightly 8:00pm bowl of shredded wheat—has gone bad when Riz pulls Kristen aside and whispers, “I think Gilear has been replaced by a clone.”

Kristen lets her gaze slide, casually, across the room, and sizes him up. He doesn’t look notably different than how he normally does: sad, stained, and a little wet. “You think so?”

Riz nods. “Something about him is different. I don’t know what it is yet but I think I’m close to figuring it out. I started a board last night.”

Kristen hums. Between this, the missing girls, and the whole vulture thing, that’s three boards Riz has going right now. And those are just the ones Kristen knows about. She looks at Riz, now, and gives him a once over. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm. Okay.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just—oh my god, is he throwing up?”

“I guess the milk wasn’t good.”

“But he—he drank it anyway?”

Riz narrows his eyes. “I guess it really is the real Gilear.”

*

Kristen and Fig are standing in front of unit 304, waiting patiently. 

“Should we knock again?” Fig whispers.

Kristen hums. “They might not be home?” she offers. 

“But Riz said he was free tonight.”

“Yeah, but maybe his mom, like—”

As if summoned by the mention of her not-name, the door opens and Sklonda appears in front of them, halfway to relieved smile forming on her otherwise weary face. “Oh, hey girls. What’s up?”

“We’d like to invite Riz over for a sleepover,” Kristen says sweetly.

“And,” Fig adds, a touch more scheming than sweet, “we need all your blankets.”

All of Sklonda’s blankets, all of Riz’s blankets, and all of the blankets in unit 306 turns out to be more than enough for a fort. There are some… structural issues, on account of it being built by teenagers who know nothing about architecture other than the fact that two wrapping paper tubes is not a large enough amount of wrapping paper tubes to prop up three layers of hand crocheted blankets. Or, maybe, hand crocheted blankets may not be the best material for ceilings.

(Riz’s grandmother on Sklonda’s side is, apparently, prolific in her crochet exploits. The blankets, an explosion of different colours and patterns, layer over both the floor and, more precariously, the ceiling of the fort.)

One more quick trip over to Riz’s and another set of smiles flashed at Sklonda later and they’re in business, arms full of wrapping paper tubes and chip clips to attach the sheets to them. Kristen is pretty sure that Riz’s strange, highly specific, and perfect little genius is never ending. She wouldn’t call herself a genius, but she does contribute some sort of stale sour licorice she found dumpster diving at the grocery store last weekend. She doesn’t think about how it’s Bucky’s favourite. 

After an hour or so—probably it would have been less if Fig hadn’t stopped them every 5 minutes to take selfies about it—the structure is complete. It sprawls over the entirety of the living room, sheets and blankets and pillows draped in perfect, cozy harmony. There are tunnels leading out of the main sitting area that lead to the rest of the apartment, and one of them traps Gilear in his room or forces him to crawl out to the bathroom. Which, of course, he does, with either great or little dignity. Kristen can never quite tell which. At some point string lights got involved, which set the fort alight in a warm, yellowish glow that feels, along with the softness of everything Kristen can touch around her, like a massive hug. She rubs her hands along one of Fig’s fluffy pillows—pink and heart shaped, a relic of old—back and forth until the hum in her chest quiets a little bit. 

“Hey, you guys wanna watch a movie?”

“Yeah, but the TV is outside of the fort, Fig.”

The three of them look to the TV—indeed outside the fort—all at the same time like a trio of cartoon characters, blinking with blank faces. “Oh,” Fig says, sighing quietly. “Time for renovations?”

Kristen imagines herself with a hard hat and tool belt. Riz starts moving his hands in the air like he’s rearranging the blankets in his mind. “Got it,” he says, and with that they’re up and at it again, trying to figure out how to include the TV without sending it collapsing onto the floor of the fort. 

They never do end up watching the movie, instead opting to spend the night burning their tongues on citric acid and rearranging the fort to optimize it for long-term use (I don’t do homework ‘cause I’m too cool, but you guys can have a working corner over there). 

In the middle of the night, piled together on the pullout couch, they wake up with wrapping paper tubes and sheets piled on top of them. Riz sits up sleepily and groans, “Anyone know mage hand?”

“We should’ve invited Adaine.”

“Yeah, she would have loved this.”

“And she has mage hand.”

“And she has mage hand.”

A beat of silence, and then Riz, “Do you think she’d be mad if we called her?”

Kristen scoffs. She doesn’t even need to look at her watch to know the answer. “Uh, yeah, dude.”

Another beat, and then, “Okay, but should we—”

Kristen is already smiling. “We should.”

*

When Kristen cries— really cries—she has to be strategic about it. Back ho—back at her parents’ house, she had a room and a door and a Helio-given fear of anyone finding out she’s experienced a negative emotion and consequently punishing her for it.

Here at Strongtower she still has one of those things, and it isn’t a room or a door. 

She knows that Gilear and Fig aren’t going to get mad at her, but it’s like her body has some sort of spell or magical effect on it that will only allow her to physically let it rip when she’s alone. ‘Cause sure—she’ll tear up here or there when Sklonda kisses Riz on the head before they all go off to school, or she’ll let out a few tears when she gets really fucked up and hurt in battle, but there’s something that stops her from really letting herself cry—chest heaving, snot mixing in with trails of tears, unable to stop the sobs from tearing up her throat—until she’s alone.

At Strongtower, she ends up having to schedule it. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so sad—Kristen is pretty sure this is the sole thing in her life she is able to keep track of and plan for; otherwise she’s all missed assignments and forgotten tests and Wait that was today? She’s sitting at lunch when she decides it is funny, just for now. It’s just the Luxury Lads and Adaine (an honourary Luxury Lad, anyway), Gorgug and Fabian off prepping for an Owlbears game that was supposedly happening after school, which was supposedly one that Kristen had agreed to attend with everyone else. Which is fine, because it’s not like she has anyone waiting for her to come home from school on time. 

Then she decides that this week’s cry can’t wait until Saturday and slips away to go lock herself in the bathroom for the rest of lunch period. When she finally makes it to third period, one lesser restoration on her puffy eyes later, Kristen decides that maybe it’s really not funny at all, now or later.

Saturday still rolls around and she still finds herself nearly alone in the apartment, as planned. Gilear is out at some all-day self-confidence workshop Fig signed him up for, and Fig herself is going meet some girl she’s been going on dates with. Even Riz and Sklonda are out of the building, too, on a weekend trip to see family in Bastion City. 

Kristen’s laying on the couch, one leg propped up on the backrest and peaking out of the blanket covering the rest of her. Fig is flitting around the apartment, going back and forth from room to room as she gets ready to leave for the afternoon. Kristen blankly watches as she travels from Gilear’s room to the bathroom to the kitchen then back to Gilear’s room again, accompanied by the sound of sliding closet doors and running water and backpacks zipping. Kristen kind of wishes she would stay home and they could spend the day being lazy together, like they used to, but Fig has been less interested in that, lately. A part of Kristen thinks maybe Fig has just been less interested in her, lately. And seeing as laying on the couch is kind of the only activity Kristen has in her to do, lately, she’s not sure why Fig would be. 

“Bye, love you!” Fig calls out just in time for Kristen to tune back into reality and hear it, followed by the jingling of her keys as she opens the door to the apartment. 

Kristen manages a confused-sounding, “Bye!” right as the door closes behind Fig again, and then she is left to track her dazed feelings to the sound of the door locking and leaving her finally alone. 

After a second or two, she bursts into tears.

It almost scares her, how she fully cannot stop it, but the fear is distant and hard to reach, buffeted by a thick, all-consuming sadness. She’s inside of it, small and helpless and alone. The apartment is a one-bed but it feels huge in this moment, cavernous around the hard pit of her living room solitude. When she lived with her family—another thought, past tense, terrible—there was scarcely an empty house, always someone running or humming or praying downstairs, a low-toned constant. At times it could be suffocating— is suffocating, Kristen reminds herself—but this is somehow worse, all the air sucked out of the room when Fig left her, alone. 

She’s just always going to be alone. 

She doubles over with the pain of it, sobs turning into full body convulsions as she gasps for air. She’s vaguely aware that she’s wailing, but she knows that there is not a thing she could do to stop herself. It’s out of her hands, now, out of anyone’s hands—seemingly like everything else in her life—so she just lets it happen to her, helpless.

(Seemingly like everything else in her life.)

In the seventh grade, Kristen had her first panic attack. She doesn’t remember why, or really how it even started, but she remembers her mom grabbing her arm, hauling her up off the floor, and saying, If you don’t smarten up right now I am taking you straight to St. Owen’s. The threat of hospitalization for—what, crying and breathing really fast?—was enough to send her into even more of a tailspin, headache blooming as she shook her head back and forth, no no no I’m okay I promise I’m sorry. It was a small mercy that the night had ended in her bedroom and not in the hospital, but at least if she had been put in the hospital she wouldn’t have had to spend the night awake, knees pulled to her chest, holding her breath as she strained to listen to every movement of the house until, inevitably—

“Sorry, I forgot my—Kristen?”

Kristen’s breath freezes in her throat mid-sob, the choked off sound of it echoing throughout the apartment as Fig stands in the door, arms hanging limp at her sides. They stare at each other, equally terrified, and Kristen feels another blossom of guilt, curdled, pushing out against her ribs. 

“I’m sorry—”

“Hey,” Fig cuts her off, letting her backpack drop from her shoulders and kicking the door shut behind her as she crosses the room with no hesitation. “It’s okay,” she says as she climbs over the side of the couch and plants herself beside Kristen, wrapping her arms around her and squeezing tight. “It’s okay,” she repeats, lips moving against Kristen’s hair. 

Kristen melts into Fig’s embrace, tangling her own arms wherever she can fit them and feeling her body start to shake again, shaking Fig along with her. She tries holding her breath but she can’t, can’t stop it.

“Sorry,” she tries again, “I’m sorry, sorry, I’m—”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Fig soothes, “I’m here. You can—it’s okay, just let it out. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

And she really does, so Kristen just lets it all happen to her, maybe not quite so helpless. Fig rubs a soft hand over her back and lets her sob, stream of consciousness into her shoulder, other hand in her hair. Kristen’s not sure how long they stay there, but Fig stays there, and doesn’t leave, and when the tears have stopped running quite so frantically—both of their faces wet—Fig gives her another squeeze and a kiss on the forehead and sends her to shower. And when Kristen emerges from the steamy haze, wrapped in a fresh pair of pajamas, Fig has a pair of grilled cheeses and two bowls of tomato soup waiting on a tray for them at the couch, pulled out into the bed, with the DVD menu of Ocean’s Eleven on a quiet loop on the TV. 

After the food is cleared away, when they’re under the blankets, Kristen leans her head onto Fig’s shoulder, and Fig lets her, and it all feels a little less insurmountable.

*

It’s a Wednesday like any other when another bit is born. 

They’ve missed the bus due to one of Fig’s “outfit malfunctions”, which is what she calls it when Gilear makes chili the night before and spends his entire unwaking hours farting inside his room, so she can’t make it to their shared closet without nearly suffocating. So, the three of them end up walking to school—Sklonda already at work and Gilear taken out of commission due to the aforementioned farting—with Fig in one of Kristen’s hoodies, the sweatpants she slept in, and platform boots. 

Riz is annoyed they have to walk in the cold, so he speeds ahead of the girls, but that only makes him slip and slide on the ice—dress shoes—and it just makes them laugh, which in turn only gets him more worked up. Kristen can feel it coming to a head a minute or two into the walk when he finally hits the ground, delayed oof falling out of his mouth as he leans back onto his backpack, admitting defeat. 

He groans, turns his head, then says, with a laugh, “Hey. Anyone wan—hah, anyone want a snack?” Kristen follows the nod of his chin to a crushed packet of unsalted saltines on the ground beside him. 

Fig plays along immediately. “Mmm, I’m still full from breakfast, but—Kristen?”

She smiles against a frigid blast of wind, not quite as cold in this moment. “Oh, I couldn’t. Riz, you go for it.”

“Ha,” he moans, still lying on the ground, “I think I’m good, guys. Help?” He raises his arms out like a zombie and waits for Kristen and Fig to pull him to standing, all three of them unsteady on the ice. 

It’s about five more minutes until they make it to the part of town where they actually salt the sidewalks—another thing on the list of small little pinpricks in the back of Kristen’s neck, reminding her of her parents—but they manage not to have any more spills in that time. They do manage, however, a record number of bits.

“Hey, anyone need an extra pair of gym shorts?”

“Oh look, another snack. Guys?”

“Woah, hot ticket, we’ve got a shoelace.”

“Riz, look, it’s a notebook. For your clues?”

It’s cold as all fuck, but it’s all smiles as they walk on through Elmville. Kristen supposes they have Gilear and his chili (all things considered, actually pretty good) to thank for this new pastime. It might be a little lame, but while Riz and Fig riff off each other Kristen tries to brainstorm random shit she’s seen at school that she could incorporate into the bit. She wants this to continue. She wants this to continue, goofy smiles and backwards walking and little wonders. She starts writing a list on her crystal of all their treasures just so she can remember—remember them, remember this, that things can be good even when they’re bad, that— 

“Shit, you guys?”

Riz and Fig, giddily crouched by an empty disposable coffee cup, look up. “Yeah?”

Kristen smiles. “We are like, so late for school.”

*

Sklonda gets a day off on the weekend and offers to take them out. It’s the luxury lads plus Adaine, the three girls all piled into the backseat with Riz up in the front.

“I’ve never been to the beach in the winter before,” Kristen admits, narrowly avoiding Adaine’s butt as she buckles in her seatbelt. “We’re not, like—” She pauses, trying to think of a way to say Riz, you better not be polar dip people. She doesn’t think Riz and Sklonda are polar dip people, but. “I don’t have a swimsuit,” she tries. 

“We’re not—Kristen, I’m not bringing you kids to the beach in the middle of January to go get hypothermia.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

Sklonda shakes her head. “You kids are funny.”

Kristen spends most of the ride preening at that, and when they get there Sklonda keeps her promise. They all stay bundled up in their coats—Kristen in Gilear’s, a patchwork of varying stains collected over the front of it—and waddle over to the part of the shoreline that turns into rocks, Riz immediately digging his hands into the ground and hoisting up an armful.

“You girls know how to skip rocks?”

“Yes,” Fig says just as Adaine says, “No.” A beat later, Fig hangs her head and says, “...No.”

Kristen technically knows how to skip rocks. She’s a camp girl, for Helio’s sake, she knows how to skip rocks. Does that mean she can skip rocks? Now that’s an entirely different question, one she actually doesn’t need to answer, thank you very much. What are you, a cop?

Wait, Kristen thinks, Sklonda is a cop.

“Also no,” she sighs. 

Riz draws back his wrist then lets it rip, stone leaving his hand and skipping one, two, three, four, five times over the surface of the water. “Ugh,” he says, “Warmup.”

Sklonda teaches them to skip rocks, but that is secondary, in Kristen’s mind, to her introducing them to the concept of Picking Up Ice And Smashing It On The Ground. Additionally, there’s Picking Up Ice and Throwing It Like A Frisbee Against A Tree, and Picking Up Ice and Launching It Into The Sea Like A Quarterback. Kristen really likes those ones. The cold feels sharp and real against her skin, almost painful, but soberingly there that it nearly takes the breath out of her when she first smashes it against the cold, hardened ground. She’s never been to a rage room but she imagines this is a little bit like that, and she immediately and intimately gets why they’re so popular.

Adaine messages her on the way back to the car and says, Can we team up to make Fig sit in the middle this time because she’s the smallest? 

Kristen looks back to Fig, Riz, and Sklonda, weighing down their pockets with rocks of different shapes and sizes, then looks to Adaine and finds she’s already smiling. I think that can be arranged.

Fig agrees to sit on the middle on the condition that she can cuddle with both Adaine and Kristen, which she somehow manages while still buckled in. Kristen spends a minute or two letting her mind darken about it all—how free Fig is, how she wants what she wants without anyone’s approval, how she is so good at asking for it and taking it when it comes—but then she shakes it off—literally shaking her head, jostling Fig’s own, perched on Kristen’s shoulder. She flexes her hands, imagining a plaque of ice breaking beneath them.

Then Fig shifts, nuzzling closer, and grabs Kristen’s hand. This time, the ice melts instead. 

*

When Fig texted and asked for help setting world record from the comfort of their own home, Kristen didn’t think it was going to involve this many tennis balls. 

“Where?” she asks.

“Rec centre dumpster,” Fig explains.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, maybe they’re defective or something? I guess we’ll find out.”

“No, I mean, why do we need… approximately three hundred tennis balls?” Kristen has no idea if that’s anywhere close to the actual amount—low dex is naturally followed by poor spatial reasoning skills, but Kristen’s also not good at math, so.

So: “This better not involve math.”

Fig tilts her head, pursing her lips. “Does counting count as math?”

“Less than other math. So what are we doing?”

What they’re doing is sitting on the couch and throwing tennis balls at the wall between theirs and Riz’s apartments to see how many it takes for him to come over and say something, in order to set the world record for either most or least tennis balls thrown at a wall before the person in the neighbouring apartment does something about it.

It’s pretty groundbreaking stuff, as far as tennis-ball-themed-world-records go. As far as Luxury Lads activities, though, it’s closer to run-of-the-mill. Garden variety activity, if you will. But Kristen and Fig still will, happy to be in the garden of their combination couch and bed (currently bed mode, as it’s a Sunday, which is the Lord’s day of rest; a Helioic holdover that Fig was more than happy to oblige) and lobbing possibly defective tennis balls at the wall around the corner from the kitchen while shouting their count together.

It’s not really like church, but it’s not not like church, either. There’s the rhythm of the balls hitting the wall then bouncing on the ground, which is sort of like a song. There’s the weird chanting, both in unison and in a call-and-response sort of setup, as Fig and Kristen call out the number of tennis balls thrown. When they take a break for crackers it’s even sort of like communion. And when Riz barges in, arms in the air and yelling What the fuck are you guys doing? as he parts the sea of tennis balls, Kristen can reason that it’s like Helio, both coming back from the dead and parting the red (fluorescent yellow) sea. A two for one deal, plus they get Riz, so it’s more like a three for one deal. 

“How many fucking tennis balls is this?” he screeches, incredulous, as he kicks them up, sending a whole section of the floor pinballing off each other. 

“Like three hundred,” Kristen says at the same time as Fig says, “I think we got to sixty-eight? Oh my god, wait!” She leans back over the couch and digs into her backpack for one more, chucking it just over Riz’s head then lifting her arms up triumphantly and announcing, “Sixty-nine!”
Kristen and Riz nod in unison. “Nice.”

*

“Touch—touch elbows? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I just thought since, you know, you don’t really like—”

“Kristen Applebees, shut your fucking mouth and hold my hand right now.”

“You don’t—”

“Hold my hand.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay, sorry for—sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. For any of it.”

“I just, I know it’s annoying to like. Be asked for reassurance all the time, and all that. I don’t want, I don’t want to be more annoying than I already am. Or make you have to like, do anything, anything more than you’re already doing. ‘Cause you already have to deal with me, like, so much, and I know it’s a lot.” I know I’m a lot, she doesn’t say. She doesn’t think she has to. She doesn’t think she’s always been, either. She used to be good, easy. Used to say the right thing. She doesn’t know how to get back to that, or if she can, because she used to tackle hug people she barely knew and now she’s here shaking in the movie theatre after seeing a Mean Dad yell at his kid on screen and she’s afraid to ask her friend if they can touch elbows about it. 

Fabian squeezes her hand and looks at her. “Kristen, you are—”

“Kid, fucking shut up, would you?” 

“I shall do no such thing,” Fabian suddenly shouts— shouts— whipping back in his seat and earning a scowl from the shusher, a grimace from Kristen, and a groan from the rest of the theatre. 

“Here we fucking go,” someone says.

“Some of us are trying to watch the movie,” the shusher—some sorcerer-looking guy with a sports hoodie and a paltry chinstrap of facial hair—spits, leaning forward to get up in Fabian’s face.

“Well try harder,” Fabian suggests, “you must not be that good at it, you could use the practice.” Kristen snorts. It’s not his best work, but it does bring a semi-smile to her face. He continues bickering, all the while wildly gesticulating with the hand that’s held in Kristen’s, causing a do-the-wave-esque series of moves from the pair of them, Kristen’s shoulder nearly popping out of its socket several times.

Probably too many minutes later, Fabian is making a face and dragging them both out of the theatre. He does not let go of her hand until they make it to his motorcycle way in the back of the parking lot (less chance some idiot will hit and scratch it, apparently).

“Sorry for ruining the movie,” Kristen says, a little sheepishly, physically incapable of not apologizing even though she knows she’s going to be immediately chastised for it.

“The movie ruined itself,” Fabian says instead, “why did we pick that one again?”

“The girl was hot in that one TV show.”

He nods sagely, sighs into his helmet. “Yes, yes she was.” Then, “Wanna come back to my place and marathon it? Cathilda’s making ribs.”

The next day finds them back at school and very tired from staying up past three. At lunch, somewhere in the cafeteria a door slams shut and Kristen flinches at the sound. Fabian slides a little closer and presses their elbows together. 

*

The girls are sat in a row at Gilear’s kitchen counter, tallest to shortest (Adaine, Kristen, Fig—no matter how much Fig likes to claim that she’s the same height as Kristen; it’s flip flops versus platform boots) with a small fortune of printer paper and a small not fortune of old markers spread out in front of them. 

It was established long ago—approximately three months, no small measure of time in the scale of how long the bad kids have known each other, which somehow isn’t forever—that Adaine has the second nicest handwriting of the group. It was the better part of a Saturday in October when they figured out the rankings: Fabian was in first, which was surprising when they found out but makes total sense now with all his calligraphy practice; then Adaine in second—nearly third with Gorgug, Kristen, and Riz’s mutinous protests that her elven flourishes made it actually harder to read—and Kristen shortly after in actual third place. Gorgug was fourth, with deeply average teenage boy handwriting. Fig came fifth if she was using her new, more punk handwriting, but fourth if you count her popular girl script, bubbly and uniform. She doesn’t, though, because that Fig was dead and gone, buried with my cheer uniform in my mom’s backyard. And that derailed the conversation for half an hour and very nearly inspired a trip to the Faeth home to dig up the relic of Fig’s past, but it was very narrowly avoided when Riz finally wrote them a completely indecipherable sample of his own handwriting, landing him firmly in sixth place. 

All of this is to say that when the girls decide to write and mail Sklonda a thank you note, it’s Adaine that does the writing. Fig dictates because she’s a songwriter and therefore, of course, the most wordsmithy of them. Kristen doesn’t feel all that useful when she realizes those are the main two jobs and that she also can’t draw—and that it probably would be weird to use her one talent of bracelet making to give their friend’s mom a friendship bracelet—but Fig and Adaine insist that as Sklonda’s favourite of the group, her role is absolutely imperative, here. 

She’s not all that sure that that’s true, but Kristen will take what she can get. And she will, as per Adaine’s request, call out when Fig’s getting too angsty teenage songwriter with it. 

What they end up with is something like this:

Dear Sklonda,

What’s good? We wanted to write you to thank you very much for taking us and Riz to the beach last weekend. It was life-changing very nice to spend time with you and we appreciate you using your day off to take us out. We really enjoyed learning how to skip rocks except for Kristen who was really only into smashing ice and learning that the beach is not just a summer place. Riz should feel lucky that he has such a seriously hot awesome mom. 

From, Adaine, Fig, and Kristen

When they’re finished—after heavy edits, about eight pieces of crumpled up paper, and three dead markers—Kristen uses a forgotten second skill and origamis them an envelope from scratch. The three of them address it then decorate the everliving fuck out of the front—a (hopefully) endearingly mismatched collection of anarchy and punk symbology, wizard runes, and unicorns and rainbows. 

It looks, all told, kind of shitty, but in the way that a child’s afternoon sketching session might be shitty. Technically, sure, but emotionally? Well, they’re not Sklonda’s kids, so jury’s still out on if it will spark anything worthwhile in that department, but if anything it will at the very least be confusing, and probably funny. 

*

Sometimes, Fig will actually practice playing her guitar. Her guitar guitar, acoustic, the one that was Gilear’s once upon a time and at one point made its way into Fig’s possession, back when her parents were together and she wrote—confessed to Kristen in a whisper once in a two-person game of truth or dare— indie pop songs. What she plays at night, alight only by the lamp on the table beside the couch with Mildred the whale nestled into the hip of her old ratty sweatpants, sounds a little like what Kristen imagines those early songs are like: soft strumming, quiet vocalizations that don’t follow any particular rhyme or pattern, Fig laid back on the couch with her eyes closed as she plays. 

It’s nothing like the chaos of the “concert” she and Gorgug played for the bad kids in Gorgug’s garage last month, all bouncing on the balls of her feet and screaming and thrashing in the meantime. And it’s not like that Fig isn’t Fig—it was, and it is—but this Fig is Fig too, just a different one, one Kristen doesn’t get to see that much. It feels like a secret, curled up on the couch watching her like this. Kristen’s been let in on her fair share of secrets—camp gossip and crushes, her brothers’ benign confessions, mutually sworn to secrecy from their parents—but this one feels different. Sacred, somehow.

Her eyelids droop, heavy with sleep. She feels safe. 

*

Fig’s voice is incredulous as she emerges from the bathroom of their apartment, lit only from behind on an otherwise nondescript Friday night. “What? What is happening here?”

Kristen tries and fails to hold back her giggles, shaking the rickety frame of the pull-out couch with the effort of it. Riz shakes in front of her, both their stances—laying on their sides, back leg crossed over front, one arm propping up their head and the other perched on their hip—holding strong through commitment to the bit and nothing else.

“We’re waiting on your bed in the dark for you,” Riz explains, explaining nothing. 

(What’s happening here is this: it’s Strongtower movie night, and Fig had to pee because she won the ginger ale contest—even though the ginger ale contest was conceived specifically to get Riz to drink something other than coffee—so Kristen and Riz were left unattended in the dark of the apartment for one minute and twenty three seconds. 

About four seconds into that time, Riz turned to Kristen and said, “Let’s do something stupid.”)

Which, as we now all know, has led us here, with them waiting on Fig’s bed in the dark for her.

“Okay, well, there better be room for me,” Fig says, evidently deciding to take all of it at face value as she plops herself down beside them, mirroring the pose perfectly with a satisfied huff. Kristen watches her bangs—finally starting to grow back after she’d cut them in the bathroom sink last month—float up and fall back down in the pale glow of the TV. 

“Do you guys want stuffed animals?” Fig asks, holding Mildred to her chest. 

“Yes,” Kristen says immediately, Riz echoing her a second later, a little quieter. Another second later they’re getting soft shapes thrown at them, dug out from where they live in Fig’s corner of the bed, jammed between the cushion and the armrest.

“Kristen, you get Rebecca,” she says, reaching over Riz to pat it gently on the head, “‘cause she’s magical. And Riz—” she pauses to move Mildred to give the stuffed bunny in Riz’s hand a kiss, “—you get Mint Bunny ‘cause she’s the softest thing I own.”

Riz looks touched about that, hugging the bunny closer, but the bliss only lasts a second because then his face is scrunching up like he’s trying to figure out a clue. “Why doesn’t Mint Bunny have a proper name like Rebecca or Mildred?”

Fig sighs, as if expecting this line of questioning. Slightly ashamed, slightly disappointed. “I tried to give her a name, but nothing stuck. I was calling her Mint Bunny as a placeholder but then that sort of just stuck, so.” 

Riz mulls it over, humming thoughtfully. Kristen’s mouth is halfway to offering to switch when he decides that’s an acceptable explanation, hugging it closer again. “I do like how soft she is,” he says. 

“She is so soft.”

“Can I feel how soft?”

“Yeah.”

As they all take turns petting Mint Bunny, Fig’s laptop whirs softly in the background from where it’s connected to the TV. It can still make it to their favourite (super legal) movie website and manage an HDMI cable, but it can’t do much more than that. It was busted up even before that time Fig accidentally used it as a shield when Riz’s knife-throwing lesson for Adaine and Fabian went wrong, covered in homemade stickers and athletic tape with drawings from the bad kids, plus all the stickers from the oranges Gorgug brought to school and split with everyone. When Fabian first saw her pull it out, his first time at Strongtower—back when he was slightly less sensitive to the fact that not everyone in the world was rich—he’d laughed out loud. 

“What is that?” he’d asked.

Fig didn’t miss a beat. “It’s my laptop!”

“No, that is a—a fossil.”

“A fossil that works.”

“It’s old,” he countered, a certain known twinge to his voice that elicited a certain known twinge in Kristen’s stomach. Shame was not unfamiliar to her—usually it was on her knees in a dusty room full of hurt, but she could work with knees to her chest poking out of faded, threadbare jeans that did not come pre-ripped. 

But then Fig just raised an eyebrow, smiled. Exhaled a laugh, as if Fabian was the one missing the joke. “Yeah, but it’s punk.”

Kristen smiles at the sentiment now, and then the screen of the TV goes dark as the laptop goes into sleep mode, as if prompted by the memory of it. There’s nothing left on the screen but a message telling them there’s no input from HDMI 2, white text on a dark blue box. The room darkens significantly. Further than what it takes to crane their heads and see what’s going on, springs creaking beneath them, no one moves.

Fig doesn’t pull herself up to lean over and run a hand over the keyboard of her laptop and bring back the comments section of the youtube video they’d finished watching half an hour ago. Riz doesn’t dig for the remote lost between the cushions to switch the input and put on the news at the lowest volume, like Kristen now knows he does when he’s having trouble sleeping. And Kristen doesn’t reach back to flip on the lamp sitting crookedly on the side table, even if it would make it easier for her to see the way Fig’s nose scrunches up at Riz’s impression of the last video they watched. 

A while later, Riz asks the ceiling a question. “You guys ever think about—about what happens after school? When we’re not at Aguefort and we’re not at Strongtower and it’s all—do you think we’ll still be friends?” 

“Well duh,” Fig says, rolling on her side to look at him, “who else are Gorgug and I gonna give all our VIP tickets to?”

There’s a shine in his eyes and a thickness in his voice when he says, a little too matter-of-factly, “That’s not a very good business model. You’re supposed to sell those for money.”

“Bad kids don’t have to pay,” she decides, “and luxury lads super don’t have to pay.”

Kristen smiles, then gives in to the small, sad voice in her head. The dream they’re in right now doesn’t last forever. “Well what about when we’re not luxury lads anymore?”

“Easy. I’ll live on my tour bus—”

“Even when you’re not on tour?”

“—mmmmm. Maybe. We’ll see. Maybe Gorgug and I will buy a mansion with all our rockstar money. And you and Riz can be roommates in like, Bastion City, solving mysteries and stuff.”

“Wait, wait.” Riz begins to laugh, not making any sound, shaking the entire couch along with him. “Are we not allowed to live in the rockstar mansion? Did we not make the cut?”

“Yeah,” Kristen chimes, “it’s a mansion. There are enough rooms.”

“I didn’t know if you guys would want to! I didn’t wanna be—you guys, I know I don’t talk about it a lot, but I am really emotionally guarded and I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve very oft—hey!”

Kristen nearly takes an elbow to the eye before she can figure out what is actually happening, but eventually she sees Riz smacking Fig with Mint Bunny as he yells, “We want to live in the mansion with you! We know you like us! You’re allowed to want us to continue living with you!”

It takes a minute or two for the violence and the laughter to die down, both settling gently into the scarce space between their bodies. Fig, still out of breath, lets out one last sigh and says, quietly, “Well good, ‘cause I like living with you guys.”

None of them have to echo it to know they all feel the same. Kristen almost asks—gets half a breath out, even—if they’re allowed to do that. To live together, even as adults, without getting married or having kids. She always thought that that’s just what you had to do, or that once she reached a certain age she would want to do it, just like everyone else seemed to want it. 

She doesn’t ask. Right now, she doesn’t care. 

The night curls into them as they talk on, voices low and just for each other. They decide that there’s going to be a big kitchen in the mansion, so they can get better at cooking and not set everything on fire, and a comically large couch so everyone can sit on it to watch movies together. And a wizard tower, for Adaine, and either a trap door or a secret entrance to Fig’s room—she hasn’t decided yet. There will also be tunnels. Lots of tunnels.

“And it’ll be by the cemetery,” Fig says, “because that’s metal as fuck and also so Riz can go visit his dad whenever he gets tired of us.”

“That’s nice. Thanks, Fig.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“But also, do you think my only options are like, you guys or my dead dad? I have other friends, you know.”

“Name one.”

“Penny,” he says confidently.

“Name another one.”

“I don’t have to, to prove myself to you,” he says, less confidently. 

“Uh huh?”

“Yeah, I have like, so many other friends.”

Fig and Riz continue to bicker, conversation carrying itself away as Kristen sinks deeper into the couch, into Fig and Riz’s bodies strewn over hers. As a little kid, she always wished she would grow up one day and have a big family of her own in a big house that never left her feeling alone.

She’s still a kid—not so little anymore—but she knows, now, that she will.

*

One day, Riz tells Fig, Adaine, and Kristen to go ahead without him on their walk home, but he says it a little too casually to be literally anything but suspicious. 

“Why?” Kristen asks, which is much more tactful than Fig’s, “Are you working with Porter? Are you a double agent?”

“Because, no, and no.”

He is gone before anyone else can protest—fucking rogues—and the girls walk home anyway, arm in arm over the icy sidewalks. Kristen only falls three times, but since they’re all connected at the arms, they all fall three times, which means Kristen is not the loser for today’s fall count.

(If they’re only counting the walk. If they’re counting trap evasion class, then she’s screwed. But Only Gorgug was there to see that one, and he promised he wouldn’t tell anyone, so she’s probably good.)

Riz gets home an hour after they do, heading directly into the Faeth apartment instead of his own. “Adaine,” he says in lieu of a greeting, “I have a surprise for you.”

“Do you have a surprise for us, too?” Fig asks, perking up.

“Well—” Riz’s tone is not encouraging. Fig frowns. “—not really, but this surprise can be sort of for you too if you want.”

“Hey, why do I have to share my surprise now?”

Riz turns to Adaine, holding a hand over the side of his mouth while he speaks, as if it could block Kristen and Fig from hearing him. “It’s mostly for you,” he says, “and I don’t think they’re even really going to want it, anyway.”

She narrows her eyes, but doesn’t push it any further. Riz takes this as permission to click open his briefcase, the rest of the room standing around in varying levels of anticipation before he—finally and with the flourish and showmanship of someone who has not only previously taken close-up “magic” classes but recently taken close-up “magic” classes—pulls out three… little plastic things.

“What’s that?” Kristen asks at the same time as Adaine says, “Oh my god you got it.”

Riz ignores Kristen entirely and nods excitedly at Adaine, delighting in her delight. “Riz Gukgak, Private Detective and now an AV club cardholding member,” he says, excitement and coolness in his voice dipping exponentially as he gets further through the sentence.

“Oh my god,” Adaine says, “You did that for us?”

Riz nods again, this time morosely. He explains that he stayed back to go to the AV club to see if he could get a device for splitting a headphone jack so you can plug two pairs of headphones into it—the little Y-shaped thing he’s waving around now as he talks; which apparently is instrumental in him and Adaine being able to listen to their favourite podcast together—but in order to rent out equipment, he had to be a member of the club. 

“Why didn’t you just steal it?” Fig asks when he’s done recounting the tale.

Riz blinks. “Well, fuck.”

It’s late by the time they get around to actually listening to the episode together, Kristen and Fig accepting Riz’s only half-serious invitation to give it a try, but then immediately derailing the conversation to talk about what they wanted for dinner. Then after dinner is a requisite Paddington 2 viewing, and then after Paddington 2, Riz (after wiping his tears and blowing his nose) finally goes back into his briefcase and pulls out his little splitter device things, popping one into the other and the whole contraption into his crystal. 

It’s kind of Hydra situation, but it works.

“You know I heard that Aguefort used to make seniors fight a hydra for their year-end project,” Adaine says matter-of-factly. 

“Wait,” Kristen says, “are we gonna have to kill a hydra? I don’t know how to kill a hydra.”

“Don’t worry, it’s easy,” Riz says.

Fig snorts. “I think it’s kind of famously not easy, actually,” she says, then adding, “I mean like, obviously we could do it. But I think for other people it wouldn’t be easy.”

“How would we do it?” Kristen asks, earning three different responses, immediately and all at the exact same time—

Riz: “Stab in the heart.”

Fig: “Fuckin’, bass riff.” 

Adaine: “Cut off the heads and then cauterize the wound, that’s—you guys, that’s literally the story. It tells you what to do.”

Fig hmmfs. “I write my own story.” 

“Okay, well how about we listen to this story because it is already—” Adaine checks her crystal, grimacing as she announces, “Nine forty-five, and these episodes are an hour long.” She says it in that tone of voice that makes Kristen think that Adaine thinks everyone is about to like, agree with her about how late it will be when they finish, even though no one is agreeing at all.

Fig pats her on the cheek. “Oh, Adaine. The night is young.”

“It’s really not.”

Riz corrals them all back onto the couch—bed mode—and they sit with their heads touching, bodies splayed out like some four pointed star, or a five pointed star that’s lost its head. Riz—left arm of the star—takes care of plugging all their headphones into the devices then lays back with a loud huff against the shitty old bedsprings, tapping on his crystal to get it started. Adaine titters in excitement. Apparently, they’d been listening to this podcast together weekly since, like, the third week of school, and had so much trouble syncing the timing on their individual crystals that they had to just listen to it out loud. But that meant no headphones, which meant Sklonda would get upset about spoilers, even though it was and continues to be, to Kristen’s knowledge, a non-narrative podcast. 

Which meant, a boring podcast.

“Hi,” the narrator said, “Welcome to This Solisian Life.”

*

They check the mail every day after school, and today is no different. However, it is different in that Riz is, like, really excited to do it, and in that the mail slot for unit 306 actually has a letter in it.

Fig gasps as Riz cackles quietly, rubbing his hands together and bouncing on the balls of his feet. She turns to him, letter clasped in a fist as she puts her hands on her hips. “What do you know about this?”

Riz makes a sound that vaguely approximates an I don’t know, and Fig scoffs. Kristen tries to peer at the writing on the envelope but Fig is twisting this way and that in exasperation so she really can’t do anything but wait for someone to tell her what’s going on.

“It’s addressed to me, Kristen, and Adaine,” Fig says then, holding it up to the light as if that will help her see what’s inside, as if she’s Riz with his letter they sent. And then it clicks in Kristen’s mind and— oh. 

Sklonda, probably, sent them a follow up to their thank you note. Something twinges warmly inside Kristen’s chest, making it just a little hard to breathe. Fig hands her the envelope as she keys in Adaine’s number in her crystal, letting out a Hiiiiii as Kristen is left to turn the packet over in her hands. Sklonda’s handwriting is neat and quick, no-nonsense in a thick, inky pen. It feels weirdly tangible—it is tangible, she’s literally holding it, but there’s something else about it that feels—just feels. Kristen doesn’t know how to pinpoint it, doesn’t know how to pinpoint much these days, but she likes the way it makes her feel tangible, too. 

“Can’t you just teleport?”

Adaine’s scoff comes through Fig’s crystal speaker, tinny and incredulous. “What makes you think I can teleport?”

“You’re a wizard, Adaine.”

“I’m—I’m a freshman.”

“Okay, but you’re also…” Kristen tunes out the conversation and loses herself in the warm buzz of her mind until Adaine shows up in the mailroom, letting out a low ow, c’mon man, when Riz’s yo-yo—only coming out in the most dire of boredoms—smacks her in the shin. 

“Wait, have you just been sitting here the whole time? And you—you guys seriously made me come all the way out here to open a letter?”

Riz deadpans, “What, like you were having such a great time at home?”

Adaine can’t argue with that one. She shrugs, looks off into the middle distance, sighs, and holds a hand out. “Let’s see it.”

Kristen is a beat late in realizing that she’s still the one holding it, brain catching up out of the fog when Fig plucks it from her grasp, digging a nail inside the seam and ripping it open neatly. Then, she clears her throat and begins to recite aloud.

Dear Adaine, Fig, and Kristen,

Thank you very much for your sweet note. It was great to spend time with you all at the beach as well. How about the three of you come over to our unit for dinner sometime?

From, Sklonda and Riz

“Awww,” Adaine coos at the same time as Fig urgently shouts, “We’ve been invited for dinner!”

Riz’s eyebrows drop. “You guys have had dinner with us before. This is not—this is not new.”

“But we have a formal invitation.” Fig shoves the paper in his face, as if he hadn’t sat there with his mom while she was writing it. 

Adaine hums. “I don’t know if I would call this formal.”

“It’s literally a written invitation, how is that not formal?”

“I mean, there’s no date or time or—”

“Guys, we didn’t mean to cause a debate, we literally just wanted to invite you for—”

“Formally invite us for—”

“Informally.”

The bickering continues, and Kristen feels her chest start to warm up again. This time, she can breathe just fine. 

*

Now that the pool isn’t haunted anymore, the bad kids are slightly less justified in dunking on Fabian for not inviting them over to swim, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t still do it, anyway. Now, they just do it while cannonball splashing water onto the steamed surface of the impossible windows,  slip-sliding over sweaty tile, and shivering in the elevator with towels wrapped around their shoulders, endearing themselves to the more easily charmed residents of Strongtower.

“We have a pool?” Rodalfo asks as the doors open at the first floor, cocking his head to the side as he regards them, dripping wet. When his eyes pass over Kristen, they narrow slightly.

Shit, she laments internally, still mad at me for the keyboards. 

“Yeah!” Fig says, “It was haunted before, but we adopted the spirit that was haunting it so it’s normal, now.”

“Okay,” Rodalfo says, breezing past all of that, “But I thought you said your rich friend Fabian had a pool he was totally gonna invite you to, just wait and see Rodalfo! I’ll best you yet! Your girlfriend’s parents’ pool’s deep end is gonna be way more shallow than Fabian’s!” Kristen silently presses the button to hold the elevator door open as he does, honestly, a pretty good Fig impression. 

“You know what, Dalf,” Fig says, low and bitter, “I thought he was too.”

“Mmm,” he hums, “Fake rich friend or bitch rich friend?”

“Are they really any different?” Kristen tries, propping an arm up and leaning against the wall of the elevator, trying not to look to desperate for his approval about it.

Rodalfo lifts his chin and glares at her down his nose. “Actually, they could not be further from each other, Kristen.”

“Come on,” she mutters under her breath.

Meanwhile, Fabian scoffs. “Fig and Kristen and Riz, who is this man?”

“Rodalfo,” the three of them say in unison, Riz following up with, “He works the front desk here.” Then, to Rodalfo himself, “Why’re you off the desk, anyway?”

“Bored,” he explains, finally elbowing his way in and jabbing at the button for the 5th floor, “Gonna do security rounds.”

Fabian scoffs again. “What is this, a prison?”

“I don’t think prisons have pools. Is your place a prison?”

“I literally have two pools, Fig.”

“Oh yeah? Not that I’ve ever seen!”

Once they’re off the elevator, Gorgug leans into Kristen and whispers, “That guy really doesn’t like you, does he?”

“Oh,” she sighs, “it’s a whole thing. Don’t get me started.”

*

Kristen feeds the fish, most of the time. They call it a fish even if it’s not, partly because it lives in a fish tank and partly because “the fish” is faster to say than “the eldritch entity that used to be possessing the building’s pool and now lives in our apartment”. 

The fish still enjoys Pitbull. Kristen hums along to the song playing off her crystal as she rips up the a couple pages of her school-issued agenda she has never once written in. They figured out that the fish will accept paper that’s not bus tickets—thank god, because that was getting expensive —as long as it’s listening to something from Dale. She still tries to give it bus tickets if she can, mostly if Adaine is over and has her jacket on her, but sometimes the index of Solisian Holidays will have to do. 

It’s while she’s doing this that her crystal buzzes, nearly vibrating itself off the bookshelf. She grabs it just in time for El Taxi to beep beep in her hand as she reads the preview of the notification, pins and needles in her fingertips.

mother applebees: I’m really disappointed in you. It’s surprising you would choose to be such a selfish… (unlock to view full message)

“Oh,” she says aloud, putting the crystal gently down on the bookshelf, absently turning it so the speaker pointed towards the tank. Then, she sits down—quickly, a little painfully, gravity putting in the effort today—and leans her head into one of the shelves, pressing her scalp into Gilear’s old textbooks. She inhales through her nose, exhales through her mouth, and says, “That’s nice.”

“What’s nice?” Kristen turns her head to meet the voice, belonging to none other than Gilear himself. 

Her immediate thought is, Of all the people to be home, and then her next thought is, Oh god Mom is right, I am a selfish unlock to view full message. 

“Kristen? Are you, ah, alright?”

“Yeah,” she squeaks.

Gilear raises an eyebrow. “Oh, you seriously expect me to believe, ‘Yeah!’?”

It’s so unlike him—not confident, but something closely adjacent to it—that Kristen almost, almost snaps out of it. “I mean,” she starts, voice still wobbly, “I was hoping you would? Damn, Gilear.”

He shrugs, vaguely and probably inappropriately smug about it, then comes over and sits gingerly beside her. It’s weird, but not as weird as Kristen might have thought it would be. Gilear is a man that belongs on the floor. 

“What’s bothering you?” he asks simply. In this moment, Kristen remembers that he had originally applied for the guidance counsellor job before being edged out by, as he so affectionately announced, a drug-dealing werewolf named Jawbone. 

She considers the consequences of telling Gilear Faeth about her personal problems. It’s possibly a new low, but she does already feel sort of rock bottom, here, crying onto a mustard-stained copy of Mind Over Mood and besides, he’s obviously aware of her general situation giving she is currently (and as she has been so kindly and recently reminded, indefinitely) living under his roof, so—

“My mom texted me,” she says, reaching up to grab her crystal, letting out a high pitched whine when it falls and bounces square off her head, landing on the floor between them. She nudges it toward him with her socked toes, sniffling. “I didn’t read the whole thing, but it looked, uh. Not very nice.”

He nods sadly, reaching into his shirt pocket—also mustard-stained, though likely a different brand and a different occurrence from the book by the looks of it—for his shitty dollar-store old people reading glasses and popping them on. They sit crookedly on his face, arms still bent out of shape from the time Fig used them for her Halloween costume and they all accidentally got into a battle with the old lady that lived down the street from Fabian’s house in the rich neighbourhood where all the good candy was.

(Kristen’s still not sure what her costume was, but she does remember her and Riz leading her around the whole night, arms hooked together in an unbreakable chain as Fig complained about the totally whack prescription.)

“May I?” Gilear gestures to her phone and she nods, watching him pick it up and squint, pecking at the screen with one finger like he’s a million years old instead of just a hundred. The screen lights up, reflecting off his glasses, then he squints harder, lips moving as he reads, and—“Wow, okay, excuse my language, Kristen, but your mom sucks.”

She bursts into laughter, or tears, or both. 

“Now, it says ‘unlock to view full message’, have you yet unlocked it to view the full message?”

She shakes her head, laughter fading as her eyes go wide. “I’m too scared,” she says, “Can you do it for me?”

For a second he looks scared, but then he gets a little glint in his eye, the kind only found in grown men with an inferiority complex who have just been asked for help by a teenager. Gilear nods gravely and looks her in the eye as he says, “I will read it for you, Kristen.”

“Okay.” It’s weird seeing him so serious—and so, like competent? But she’s grateful for his focus as she presses her thumb on the button to unlock her crystal, wrapping her arms back around herself and waiting while he reads the full message.

“Hmm,” he says, “Ah. Mmm—oh. Mhmm. Uh-uh.”

“Gilear.”

He looks up. “Oh, yes?”

“You’re killin’ me, man.” She exhales a nervous laugh and says, “How bad is it?”

He stares at her for a second, then asks, “Do you want me to, as they say, sugarcoat it?”

“Well, I’ve never sugarcoated anything for you.” Kristen recalls just yesterday, how his face fell when she earnestly and stupidly said, It was a great effort! after he asked her and Kristen how his take on Hot Ketchup Egg Spaghetti turned out. She figures she deserves it, at this point.

“That’s true,” he says gravely, “and I respect it, I do.” He seems pained for a moment, then reels it back in and says, still choosing his words carefully, “Your mother seems to be very upset with you for being exactly who you are.”

“Oh. I—”

“Which is a wonderful young lady that does not deserve to have her day ruined by the opinions of someone who can’t even bother to house her own daughter.”

“Oh,” she repeats, softer. 

“And also she seems like a bitch.”

“Gilear!”

“What, it’s—it seems very true, given what she wrote to you. I can’t call it like it is just because I’m also a parent?”

Kristen smiles. “I feel like maybe that makes you more qualified to call it like it is, actually.” 

He tilts his head, proud. Win for Gilear. “And I’m not saying I’m perfect, I’m sure you’re well aware of the fact that Fig and I have had our fair share of issues, and I’m not proud of that.”

“But you’re trying,” Kristen says. He looks at her like she’s just cracked it all open, and she thinks that maybe she has. “You know,” she continues, “Of all the people to be home, I’m actually glad it was you.”

This seems to affect him more than she anticipated, little wrinkle twitching on his chin like he’s trying not to cry or something. He struggles around a couple sounds before he finally gets out, “Thank you, Kristen.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Now, if I’m not treading so much on a sensitive moment, here, I do have, ah, one request.”

“Shoot.”

“Do you think we could listen to literally anything other than El Taxi?”

Kristen laughs again, no tears this time. She placates him with a, “Sure, sure,” and when she opens her crystal to switch the song, she closes her messages without even looking at them. 

*