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"Where are we going?" asks Keefe. His father's legs are long, but Keefe doesn't mind running. His energy feels endless. He's happy to get out of their quiet, cavernous house.
"To meet a friend."
"I don't have friends."
"Well, I found you one."
Keefe decides, there and then, that he will not like whichever friend his father has chosen for him. They're probably boring and serious and will tell him to be quiet when he laughs. He scowls at the ground until they reach the Leapmaster. His father holds his arm tight as they disappear.
They arrive at a house Keefe has never seen before. It's beautiful, all lush field and serene lake. He walks through a massive, glowing gate, fingers trailing over the metal bars until his father tells him to keep his hands to himself. He shoves his fists in the pockets of his pants, following his father to the main door of the house.
It opens when they approach. A tall man smiles at them. "Hello, Lord Sencen. And... you must be Keefe."
Keefe nods shyly. "Yeah."
The tall man's face softens. "I'm Alden. This is my son, Fitz."
A kid peeks out from behind the door, dark hair flopping in his face. He looks, first, at Cassius, then at Cassius' grip on Keefe's shoulder. He's painfully diplomatic as he says, "It's nice to meet you, Lord Sencen."
"Hello."
Keefe isn't prepared when Fitz finally looks at him. Alden had eyes that same shade of Vacker teal, but it looks different on Fitz. Brighter. Deeper.
He forgets why he was supposed to hate this kid. "Hi."
Fitz smiles. "Hi. My brother just made mallowmelt. Do you want some?"
So, whatever. Now Keefe's over at Everglen every couple days. His father is immeasurably smug every time Keefe returns to Candleshade, but there's a hint of pride in his gaze.
"I'm glad you listened to me," he'd told Keefe, when they returned from that very first meeting. "I only want the best for you."
Keefe had nodded, chest warm. He forgot why he was mad at his father before. "I know."
Being at Everglen is so different from anything Keefe's experienced before. It's massive, but his voice doesn't echo emptily when he speaks. It has a normal amount of floors. The kitchen always smells incredible.
"What's this?" asks Keefe, once, as he's being led to yet another room he's never been in before. This wall decoration doesn't look like the others, just a canvas messily swirled with bright pink.
"Oh, I made that!" Biana says. "I was, like, five. But Mom loves it."
Keefe thinks about his drawings left on the floor. How he's taken to hiding the stack of them behind his bed. "That's cool."
"Hurry up, guys!" Fitz calls. They spend the next three hours busy with a potion-making kit Alden had got them from Atlantis. By the end of it, Fitz's hair is bright pink, Biana's five inches taller, and Keefe's voice is shrill as a whistle.
He didn't realize he could laugh so hard. It scares him at first, when his stomach starts to hurt.
Biana brings her best friend, Maruca, around all the time too, and they'll disappear into her room. When Keefe and Fitz get bored, they plot pranks. The first time Biana opens her headband drawer to get a poof of green dust in her face, she screams so loud that Keefe and Fitz can hear it from the front yard. They look at each other, then begin to sprint.
Keefe's getting used to the ache of laughing.
One day, Fitz says, "I'm not gonna be here tomorrow."
"Why?"
"My dad wants to go somewhere with me."
"Oh." Keefe is pretty sure his father hates going places with him. It's always be quiet and follow me. "Where?"
Fitz looks away. "It's a secret. Sorry."
Keefe doesn't mind, even if his curiosity itches at him when he sees Fitz a few days later. But it's all normal. Fitz doesn't mention anything about where he'd gone. They play Splotching and Keefe wins, delighted as blue goo drips off Fitz's hair.
Fitz and Biana are always bouncing around the house, and Della yells at them to be careful, except she's smiling, leaning her head on Alden's shoulder. She hugs her children every time they come close, and they squirm away after a few moments. When she hugs Keefe for the first time, he stands, stiff as ice, until she lets go. But it feels good. He wants to do it more.
That evening, his mother comes home rubbing her forehead. She sees him sitting at the bottom of the stairs, waiting. "Do you need anything?"
He shakes his head and gets up. His mother watches him approach. When he tries to hug her, they can both feel how unnatural it is. Keefe has no practice. He doesn't know what to do with his head, doesn't know how to fall into his mother's steady hold.
She gently pushes him away. "We don't need to do that."
"Okay," he says.
A few days later, Della tries to hug him again. He steps away and smiles. "We don't need to do that."
All the Vackers love each other, that much is instantly clear to Keefe, but Fitz idolizes Alvar. He launches himself at Alvar whenever Alvar comes home from work, spun around in a hug before he drops to the floor. His eyes are big and wide, always following where Alvar goes. When Alvar goes into Alden's office for a chat, Fitz makes Keefe hide by the doorway with him, trying and failing to eavesdrop.
Keefe obliges, but he's a little intimidated by Alvar, though he keeps that to himself. He just watches, observes. Alvar being around makes it glaringly obvious that Keefe is the extra piece, the intruder to the perfect Vacker family. When the sick feeling creeps up, Keefe leaves early, claiming his father wants him home.
"You're always welcome to stay, though. You know that, right?" Della asks him.
Keefe nods, but he knows not to believe her. He has to save the best version of himself for the Vackers: happy, agreeable, confident. He can't let them to see the headache he really is.
"Ugh, I just wanna manifest already."
Keefe nods, hanging upside down from a squishy chair. "I know. Just wait till we get to Foxfire, it'll happen then."
"Alvar manifested when he was fourteen," muses Fitz. "That's gonna take forever."
"Some people manifest earlier, though. That could be you."
Fitz shakes his head. "Not Telepaths. Telepaths are usually late."
"You think you're a Telepath?"
"I want to be." Fitz goes momentarily starry-eyed. "Like my dad."
"My father's an Empath. He writes books about it."
"Would you wanna be an Empath?"
Keefe rolls to the ground, going right side up to think about that. Cassius always says he wants Keefe to be an Empath. But Keefe's beginning to believe he doesn't want to be anything like his father.
"I think being a Conjurer like my mother would be cool. Or a Froster."
"Imagine you just could just freeze me in a block of ice," laughs Fitz. "Or we could fill my bedroom with snow."
When Keefe goes to Foxfire, he's a year younger than all the other kids, and he feels completely out of place. But he has Fitz. Even when Fitz disappears for trips with his dad, Keefe finds comfort in knowing he'll be back soon, he'll sit with Keefe at lunch, he'll invite Keefe back to Everglen after school.
Cassius checks his work every night. Circles the parts he thinks Keefe needs to work on. There are many circles, all the time, but Keefe just hunches his shoulders and rewrites that paragraph, reworks this problem. It's fine. Alden is tough on Fitz too, always has him immediately make up the work he misses from their trips, even when Fitz complains.
"Can I see your essay for Multispeciesial Studies?" Keefe asks one day. He'd totally forgotten about it, and prays he can scramble something together during morning orientation.
"Sure," says Fitz, handing it over without looking up from his book.
Keefe looks at the paper. He sees tiny notes and marks all over it, circles and underlines and stars. "What do the stars mean?"
"Oh," says Fitz. "Those are just the parts Dad really liked. He's super into troll studies, knows all about them, so I asked him to look over it."
"Oh. Okay."
Keefe wonders what it would take to earn a star from his father. He ends up turning his essay in late, and his father is unhappy with him, but no more than he usually is.
At the end of the year, they announce the top students. It's a ceremony with all parents present. Gisela and Cassius flank Keefe, their postures enviably straight.
"For Level 1, congratulations to..."
Keefe tries not to hope, but he feels his stomach clench anyway. Deep down, he knows that if Dame Alina called his name right now, he would jump to his feet, practically run to the front. He hates the weakness of wanting.
"Fitzroy Avery Vacker!"
Keefe's hands immediately cup his mouth, screaming in congratulations louder than the rest of the crowd. Fitz stands up and beams as he accepts the honor.
It doesn't matter that Keefe's name is called second. Cassius's jaw grows tenser with every passing second of the rest of the ceremony, and Keefe dreads when it'll finally release, so he drags his goodbyes out as long as he can.
"I knew it'd be you, bro," he says, grinning at Fitz. "What are you guys doing to celebrate?"
"Mom made Ripplefluffs!" Biana answers. She's affixed herself to Fitz's leg. Della and Alden stand close, Alvar keeps his hand on Fitz's shoulder. "Wanna come?"
Keefe steps back, keeps staring at them. He's never been part of something so picture perfect. He's pretty sure he'd ruin it just by proximity, but the Vackers haven't caught on to that part of him yet. Their faces remain open, welcoming.
Again, the weakness, lingering sour on his tongue.
"I--"
"Unfortunately, we must be going home." Cassius's presence is ice to Keefe's lungs. "Thank you for the invitation."
"Are you sure?" Della asks.
Keefe nods.
At Candleshade, Keefe fidgets with his family crest, pinning and unpinning it from his cape.
His mother says, "You did good. Focus on your Ability Detecting classes. Especially the Empathy ones."
Keefe smiles. "I'm getting close. My Mentor said I'll probably manifest something next year."
His mother almost smiles at him. Keefe feels a flash of excitement. He'd never wanted to be an Empath before, but maybe it would be fun.
"Keefe," his father says, suddenly. He's been so quiet that Keefe almost jumps out of his skin. "The Vacker boy is smart."
Keefe doesn't know how to respond. "Yeah, he is."
"Polite. Hard-working. Respectable," his father continues. "Lord Vacker raised a good son. A winner."
Keefe stares at him, silent for once in his life. He knows, already, how the rest of this conversation will go, how it will escalate to an argument, how nothing will ever change. He knows what's cycling through his father's head every time he looks at his son, intensifying with every disappointment.
Where did you go wrong?
That school break, it feels like his parents are always gone. Keefe doesn't know where his father disappears, but his mother shuts herself on a floor high up, emerges occasionally and asks if Keefe wants to go to Atlantis with her. Otherwise, nothing.
So he goes to Everglen. At first, it's just supposed to be every few days. He goes home smiling and as he slips into bed, he promises himself that tomorrow he will find something else to do, somewhere else to go. But he wakes to empty silence, so unbearable that he begins to craft an excuse to visit Everglen that day as well.
The Vackers are delighted to have him. He becomes included in Della's scoldings, has to help clean up the game room, is over for family meals enough that he grows taller than Biana, finally. Della gives him seconds and thirds and dessert without him having to ask, like she can tell he's a little bit starved for something he can't find at home.
Alvar begins to spin him around when he arrives home, right after Fitz and Biana's turns. Alden ruffles his hair and pats his back. It's casual, the way the Vackers touch each other, lean into each other's space without worry. Fitz lays his legs on top of Keefe's when they're sitting together, and Keefe is too scared to budge, even when his feet fall numb. He doesn't want to risk it all ending, doesn't want to be punished by the affection stopping.
"Fitz isn't here today!" Biana announces one day, when he arrives at Everglen's doors.
"Oh, that's okay." He hesitates. "When will he be back?"
"I don't know."
"Okay. Um, bye Biana." He turns to leave.
"Oh, Keefe!" Della exclaims, rushing to the door. "Good, you're here. Would you want to help me with the garden?"
Keefe's eyes widen. "Really?"
"The gnomes are off this week, and I just don't feel like plucking all these weeds out myself. Give me a hand, okay?"
"Sure."
"Can I come?" asks Biana.
"I asked you before and you said no," says Della, raising an eyebrow.
"That was before!"
"Clean your room first."
Biana stomps off and Keefe hides his smile. He can't wait to make fun of her later, mimic her massive eye roll. For now, he follows Della to the side of the house. They spend the next couple hours weeding Della's garden.
She laughs at his stupid jokes and praises him with an abundance that feels disingenuous, but he doesn't care. He soaks it all up. Gisela doesn't like gardening, so he'd never known it was so fun.
When they're done, Della insists he stay for dinner. Then Biana drags him off to play with dolls. Then they get a surprise treat of mallowmelt. Every time Keefe begins to say he should leave, Della finds a new way to keep him at Everglen, until even she can't deny it's getting pretty late.
"Come back tomorrow, okay?" she says, as she packs him some extra mallowmelt to take home. He's already excited for the next day's breakfast.
"Why? Will Fitz be back?"
"No, but I'll need some help reorganizing the art studio."
"You have an art studio?" He can't help how his voice pitches, mouth lifting at the edges. He hasn't gotten new art supplies in so long, not since his father told him he must be the top student next year. "Can I see it?"
"Tomorrow," Della promises him. "If you want, you can also use the studio. I know you'll get bored doing chores with me every day Fitz is gone."
Keefe throws himself into Della's arms.