#Clara Appleby

[iamwhelmed]

Win One, Have Two: Chapter 13

Okay, it has been 9 long months and I haven’t updated. For that, oh my god I am so, so sorry. I knew I was feeling uninspired but that’s really no excuse! It’s okay, it’s summer now, so I can focus a little more on writing. Hopefully you guys still have interest ^^’ Anyway,

Here it is on AO3

It'd taken them the better half of thirty minutes to collect what they'd need for what Miss Rose was referring to, for the moment, as a "field trip"- no parental release forms necessary because, as she'd made abundantly clear, "I am the only adult you need to be worried about". Except for Crawford, who spent the fifteen minutes it took everyone else to get ready standing outside smoking a cigar with an unbothered look on his face. Clara was the first of the three students done, and waited next to Crawford with her messenger bag full of supplies slung over her shoulders. She looked to him, and he lazily glanced at her from the side.

"You know smoking is horrible for your lungs, right?"

"If anything's gonna take me out 'for my livin' does, I'm gonna die a happy man knowin' it was my vice."

Clara's lips pursed into a straight line.

The front door creaked open; Hardy stepped out first, unzipping his backpack to slip the dagger through its army green folds. Isaac was right behind him, arching an eyebrow at the very functioning door that he, quite frankly, was surprised was still on its hinges after last night. He frowned and grabbed Hardy's wrist, twisting it around to look at his watch. Hardy remained unbothered, trapping his bag between his legs as he used his other hand to close the zipper the rest of the way, concealing the dagger safe and sound in a multitude of pockets. Isaac huffed through his nose- 5am. Correction, then; the attack happened *earlier this morning. Adrenaline and the primal need to not get his head torn clean off of his shoulders had kept his sleep-addled brain at bay, but now that it had time to process that the world had settled again, it was urging him to rest.

There was a hand at his shoulder. Isaac jumped, but he saw the streak of purple in raven hair and found the nerves of his brain settling. It was just Miss Rose. She caught his gaze and gave him a small smile, soft, though he could tell she was strung a little higher than usual. She brushed by him and turned only to lock the door behind her. "Is everyone ready to go?"

"Yeah," Isaac watched as Hardy slipped his bag onto his shoulders. "So, how exactly are we planning on finding our friendly neighborhood home invaders?"

Rose smiled, this time more like she usually did, bright and reassuring. "Same way I look for spectral artifacts! I let Magnus lead the way!"

Isaac raised an eyebrow, and god help him, he swore the top half of his face was going to get stuck that way someday. "Magnus?"

Crawford took another puff, rounding his lips so that the smoke took on a circular shape. Miss Rose waved it away and gave him a look- the kind wives give their husbands over shoes left at the front door- and he grimaced, but dropped the cigar and put it out with his heel anyway. "Well, don't keep 'em waitin', Rose." Clara moved closer to Isaac and Hardy, eager to get a look. Isaac glanced at her and Hardy, and the looks of curiosity so plainly painting their crinkled noses and furrowed brows. Must be new to them, too.

Rose rolled her shoulders in a semi-committal, but ultimately nonchalant shrug. "Yeah, yeah. I'm just not looking forward to the lecture I'm gonna get." She reached into her back pocket and procured what appeared to be a compass. Small, silver, sat perfectly in the palm of her hand, like it was sculpted especially for her. Her eyes fluttered shut, and Isaac could tell from the small rim of purple aflame under her eyelashes that she'd connected with her spirit.

"What is it this time, Mari?"

Rose opened her eyes, finding beady black staring into the abyss that was her soul- or, rather… maybe staring into the abyss that was her curious nature. It made her good at artifact hunting, maybe not the best spectral partner, though. "Okay, okay. I deserve that. But it's important this time!"

Magnus turned and flew a few feet away, back of his body (a long eel-like tail covered in fur) brushing vaguely against her nose. He looked a lot like a basset hound, one that a particularly squealing-prone Sherlock Holmes fan had dressed in a deerstalker and matching coat for a cute scrapbook. She remembered meeting him the first time, back when she was still greener to the spectral world.

Before she knew that spirits were typically averse to hugs and scritches, no matter how much they looked like a good boy.

Magnus huffed from his throat, gave her a look that only an elderly butler with far too much experience and Magnus himself could level her with. The expectant kind. The kind that dared her to make her case. "So you're admitting you were using me for fun before?"

She abided. "Well no, that stuff was important too, but this is…"

Magnus sighed, the sign he gave her, every single time, to signal he was acquiesce. "What do you need?"

Right, down to business, then. She sobered and stripped her hand of her black glove, holding it out for Magnus to sniff. "There should be a saliva sample on this glove. Can you track it for me?"

He hovered closer, inching his wet nose toward the glove. He sniffed once, then twice, and nodded. He registered the smell, compared it to the large database of scents and stenches he'd picked up on in his near-infinite lifetime. She watched him in silence, but took the moment to slip her glove back on. If she knew Magnus, which she did, then he'd give her a destination, maybe a word for warning. He took a few moments, then did something she hadn't seen him do before. He paused. "This could lead you into Consortium territory, you know…"

"What?" She would have hid the trepidation in her voice, but Magnus had known her too many years for her to play anything cool ever, not that she ever got it by him before. She had a feeling he was a little more a detective than he'd like to admit. Magnus glanced at her with droopy eyes, big ears flopping as he floated in place, like there was an undercurrent breeze that blew from below. "Why?"

"The scent you're handing me matches somebody long lost to the Consortium, I'm afraid. One Catriona Barrett." Rose glanced down at her hand, squeezed her fist around the glove that still had traces of saliva on it. "Disappeared after the Consortium eliminated her lover, which I'm sure you know was a spirit by the name of Emmerich."

"That doesn't make sense. The dagger is perfectly capable of killing humans, but it's just as capable of killing spirits. What would she want with it?"

"A conundrum not meant for me to solve, I'm afraid." Magnus hummed floated away from her, cracking only an eye open to glance at her. He must have seen her frown, because he sighed and momentarily moved closer to her, moved around her in a circle so that his tail could brush up against her cheek and make her nose wiggle. "We were lucky that the dagger was within Cousinhood territory, but you know I'll be leading you-"

"- All over god's creation. Yeah, I know." She smiled his way, gave him a scratch under his chin either to calm herself down or to annoy Magnus. She had no plans to ponder which it was. He glared at her, unamused as always, as he faded from her sight. "I'm afraid that's a risk we're going to have to take."

The compass hovered in mid-air, faintly radiating with the same purple that surrounded herself and Magnus. As the last of Magnus's spirit world faded from view, the compass itself pulsed, like a heartbeat. She held out her hand and waited for it to fall into her palm, cold detailed silver against the fabric of her glove. The pulsing became faster, a more constant stream of vibration until it was buzzing in her hand, meaning Magnus had decided precisely what direction to go in. She nodded south and said "Let's go."

Clara, Hardy, and Isaac glanced to Crawford, who only tipped his hat as confirmation before following closely behind Rose. Hardy exhaled, shoulders slouching as air deflated him like an old balloon. "This should be fun…"

He trudged after Rose and Crawford, Isaac and Clara close behind.

She walked beside Isaac, but he felt her eyes watching him as though they were on his back. He tensed up. "You know, if we pass your hometown…"

He grimaced. "I wouldn't say a word."

He hurried hurried to catch up with Hardy, ignoring the set of eyes that were now definitely watching his retreating frame.

Sewing, as any 18th century woman would tell you, is the cornerstone of femininity. Women practiced the art often, and with the persistence of anybody who had to live their entire life without video games or sports. Sewing also, as any of these 18th century woman would tell you, is a real pain.

Isabel pricked herself for the third- or fourth- time, tried once more to stitch the two pieces of cloth together, and instead decided she'd had quite enough of whatever purgatory she'd found herself stuck in. Sleeping Beauty only had to get pricked ONCE to fall asleep, she'd say that she more than earned a nap. "This is so-!" She flicked her tired wrist around, trying to find the right word. How to best describe the ludicrousness of her current task without lowballing her grievances or insulting her teacher. Ah, yes. That's the right word. "Stupid! This is so stupid! How is sitting here sewing going to save anyone?"

Dimitri glanced up from his sewing job, cool eyebrow raised. Zarei, too, glanced up from her task, reading a book which, comparatively, was a favorable task to whatever this nonsense was. Zarei herself looked bored, but not surprised. She'd most likely been anticipating Isabel's outburst, as was customary once every class. Not every period, no, every class that Isabel had to be subjected to some of the most boring, menial tasks she'd ever had to do for a grade. Zarei's class. "Isabel," Zarei started, and she could already hear the routine disinterest. "In a life or death situation, you may have to temporarily sew and dress or cauterize a wound." She adjusted her glasses and mumbled, in equal irritation, "they wouldn't let me have fire in the classroom, so this will have to do."

"This is a waste of our time!"

Dimitri, as chill as always, lifted one hand, a motion he seemed to carry out every time she had these routine outbursts, as though she was a wild spirit and needed to be tamed and reined in. "Isabel-"

"No! I'm sick of this! The traitor who released those monsters is still out there and we have no idea who they are or what they want!"

Zarei seemed unperturbed, though she shut her book with one snap and set it off to the side of her desk. "Isabel-"

"What are we sitting here sewing for? We're just wasting time-!"

"Isabel!"

She choked, instinctually stepping back as Zarei's hands slammed upon the instructor's desk. This… this was not part of the routine, but she supposed her outburst had been more emotionally-charged than her others had been. Zarei usually took her complaints in stride, even snarked about setting up a suggestions box for Isabel to leave comments in (that way she could dispose of them easier). This time, though, Zarei looked her dead in the eye, unblinking, unmoving. Isabel looked to her left where Dimitri sat at his desk, found his hand still raised cautiously, though it'd moved some to avoid her flaring aura.

Fine.

She growled to herself, sliding back down into her seat, but unwilling to continue stitching. Instead she glared at the two bits of cloth and used the needle to take small jabs at her desk. Zarei wouldn't say anything, would probably just be happy she wasn't complaining. She'd just have to deal with her restlessly squirming in her seat until class was over in another handful of minutes. God, she hoped Max was having a better time.

The gym was larger than the auditorium their Training 101 class typically monopolized. Once the bell had rung and all the class had been seated, when Spender announced that they'd all be transferring to the gym for the day, Max had almost felt the collective sigh of relief that hung like the usual unease in the atmosphere. He glanced at Collin, who had taken to walking the very thin line between the waking world and the unconscious one with his chin rested in his hand, eyes slowly inching shut before they popped open again after a restless three seconds of shut-eye. Johnny sat at his other side, practically bouncing up and down in his seat. Probably the least claustrophobic the psychopath has felt in weeks.

Spender stood at the bottom of the bleachers, raising his hands in a sad attempt to get his large, voluble class to more of a hushed whisper. Because Spender was a quiet man naturally, and passive normally, his voice was lost in the sea of early-morning chit-chat, the kind that was kept in-check by smaller class periods. Max watched with varying degrees of amusement as Spender circulated through every trick in the book to get a bunch of confused, aggravated, loquacious middle-schoolers to shut their overused traps. He first tried to clear his throat. When that didn't work, he tried to drop his teacher's guidebook on the gym floor- when that was stifled and dulled in the vastness of the gym walls, he resorted to yelling at the top of his lungs. That still didn't work, and Max could see the man struggling to figure out how else to reign in a hundred or so students. His calloused hands were clawing at his face, eyes visibly heavy with exhaustion, even behind his shades. When all hope seemed to be lost, Coach Oop set one heavy hand on Spender's shoulder, gave him a pitying look, and got the attention of every student the way only a gym coach knew how- screaming and just being louder than the normal teacher.

Chatter seemed to fade almost instantly, and Spender shot Coach Oop a grateful look.

He cleared his throat as Oop retreated to his office. "Class, today we are going to begin working the physical aspects of your new abilities, rather than your minds." Max could practically feel Johnny vibrating in the seat next to him. He shot the red-head an eye that he ignored entirely. "Now, I've always been more focused on the intellectual end of training-"

"Couldn't tell!"

Spender picked Max out in the crowd immediately, glared at him, and received nothing but a grin in response. "... So I've asked an old master of mine to stand in for me." An elderly man stepped forward, huge and terrifying for being gray in the face. "This is Master Guerra. Say hello, class."

"Hello, Master Guerra…." Roughly a quarter of the class even bothered, and those that did were unenthusiastic at best and downright resentful at worst, clearly not knowing what was ahead of them. Max swallowed hard; he'd heard stories from Ed about Isabel's grandfather, stories that Isabel had commented "didn't even graze the bottom" of just how tough Master Guerra could be. And that was on his granddaughter… what would he be like with kids he had no attachment to? Max felt his spine shiver preemptively at the possibilities. Collin leaned over, now much more awake than he had been two minutes prior, and whispered.

"Hey, is that Isabel's dad or something?"

Max cupped a hand over one side of his mouth so Collin could hear him better. "Grandpa, actually. And probably the embodiment of abuse of power…"

Master Guerra's eyes roamed the crowd, but there was something about his gaze that felt like he was simultaneously singling out every single child in the bleachers. Max had the crazy theory that it was because he was, in actuality, seeing every one of them, judging them, assessing them, what they could do. He clearly didn't like what he was seeing, because he took a step forward and his eyes were no less calculating. "Spineless, each and every one of you. Hardly spectrals, hardly able at all. If you want to be worth anything, you will do as I say, and you will do it the first time!"

The class, silent before, fell deathly mute.

Spender stepped forward, chuckling with a nervous edge as he set one unsure hand on Guerra's shoulder- er, tried to. He decided against it last moment. "Master, these children still hardly understand the concept of tools, perhaps you should tone it down just a little-?"

"You asked for my help. This is what you receive."

"Ah."

Isaac cringed. The little cabin he'd taken shelter in was just as creepy and run-down as when he'd last seen it. Creepier, in fact, now that he'd bled all over its floors.

Crawford stopped at the front door and puffed on the last bit of his cigar. Rose passed him by and reached for the handle, eyes on the compass in her hand. "Should I do it?"

Rose shook her head. "Don't waste the energy yet, Crawford. We know the story here pretty well already." She pressed the door open with a sickeningly loud creak, a sound that made Isaac shudder. "Catriona left this place in a hurry in the dead of night. If we want Magnus to keep her scent, we've gotta find something that will lead us to where she went next."

The group pushed on. Crawford went first, one arm protectively extended in front of Rose, other hand cocked with one of his guns. Rose glanced around, looking for anything that may emit a trace of Catriona's aura, careful to let Crawford open doors. The place should have been abandoned, but the odds of Consortium pawns and antagonistic spirits were a possibility she was unwilling to overlook. Clara clung to one of Hardy's sleeves. They were switching off who was looking out in which direction, leaving Isaac to keep his eyes straight ahead. More of a challenge than it may seem, with the cabin's darkness spanning well past Rose and Crawford. He tried to keep in pace with them, but his legs were shaking and he wasn't sure if it was because he was three different kinds of dead the last time he was here, or if the draft of the run-down walls was getting to him.

Clara edged closer to Isaac, willing herself to feel calmer with somebody on either side of her. "There's so much blood, everywhere…" Her breath hitched and trembled with every word, hot breath running down his neck. Miss Rose looked back and found his eyes. He frowned and glanced away. They made it to the end of the hallway, what Isaac remembered as the bedroom he'd taken residence of that night. He was right; Rose raised the compass and the light of her aura illuminated the very edge of the bedpost, rotting and covered in, what Isaac assumed was probably, more of his dried-up blood.

Hardy's foot made contact with something at his feet, and he leaned forward to pick it up. "Oh hey, a diary!" He said one second. "Ah!" He said the next.

Clara glanced over Hardy's shoulder to see the page he'd opened up to by chance, and stifled the scream she instinctually reacted with behind her interwoven fingers. The page was yellow with age and slick with dust from infrequent use, though it had clearly been handled somewhat recently, the way fingerprints edged the pages. The page Hardy had opened up to, the one Isaac now glanced over Clara's shoulder to see, was covered in nothing but pen- and a lot of it. Frantic. Some unlegible. Dark and as black as a widow drenched in the blackest of inks. Words scribbled next to sketches of spirits, of auras and eyes that seemed to watch from behind the safety of the page.

Why can't he see them

I'm not crazy

Help

Hardy screamed and accidentally tossed the book a foot in the air, only to start juggling it with unsteady hands the moment it came back down, whimpering the whole time. Isaac snorted and held out his hand so Hardy could pass it to him- and he did, by using one juggling hand to smack the book mid-air in Isaac's general direction. Isaac caught the diary by the spine in his open palm, flipping it back open with relative ease. "This is her's?"

Just as soon as he opened it, a gloved hand snatched it from him. Miss Rose grinned and raised to compass to the diary, humming at the confirming buzz of her tool. "This is the next piece in Catriona's puzzle, kiddies!"

Kid after kid lined up in parallel with the bullseyes across the gymnasium floor, each new frontrunner as confused as the last. Guerra and Spender stood to the side, eyeing individual auras as they hit or missed the targets- and they rarely hit. Guerra was grimacing, looking every bit terrifying as Spender felt. He kept switching from watching the students to watching his master, frequent enough to keep an eye on his reactions, but not frequent enough for Guerra (hopefully) to notice.

Max was third in one of the first lines. All the better, in his opinion, for getting this over with as fast as possible. He aimed at the target a few feet away, concentrated. He'd had so much on his mind lately. Isabel, Spender, Ed…. His eyes narrowed as blue crossed his vague vision- the kid next to him, but it was enough. He took one quick breath and took his shot. Black gas, perfectly rounded, perfectly paced, hit the bullseye head-on, nearly knocking it over in a clash of red and white against a crawling web of black that descended over it.

Spender's eyes widened, a small smile inching across his face. He'd been worried that all of the attention he'd had to put into training these classes had denied his original students somehow of the attention he felt was vital to truly learning to hone their new powers, but if Max's spectral shot was any indication-!

"Don't get so excited." Guerra was watching the children still, but Spender could feel the disappointment in him radiating from his drilled eyes. He pretended not to notice. "Spectral shots are child's play. That your student is capable of such a feat places him on par with Isabel at five years of age."

The next group of students stepped up. Max met Collin's eyes on his way back to the bleachers.

Collin looked panicked, gesturing to the targets, then gesturing back to the hands Max was well aware would be unable to conjure up any aura at all, let alone get a spectral shot off. Max winced and shrugged at him. Can't help ya there, man.

Collin got up to the bat and mimed for dear life, found other kids doing the same thing. Each pointed and breathed and stood there waiting for auras that never built and shots that never burned through the distance. They turned to each other, confused, some agitated, some lackadaisical about the whole thing.

Guerra turned to Spender with a glare in his eye, and all he could do was smile nervously and swallow the fear gnawing at his throat like acid.

Nature walks were run-of-the-mill for Master Hashimoto's dojo. Ed never quite got the importance of them, and when he asked for clarification the answer was always "something-something peace" or "something-something tranquility".

Aka, "Something-something Ed isn't interested."

But alas, they were required. Every student in the dojo would wake up at roughly 5am, clothe themselves, then walk a mile-long hike through the woods before they could all return home to feast upon the breakfast Hashimoto no doubt would have laid out for them when they got back. As beautiful as the scenery was this time of year, Ed was far more interested in getting back so he could settle the uncomfortable tugging and gurgling of his stomach.

The start of the day was always the hardest. He knew this. And like always, he'd get through it. That didn't mean he felt like trekking up a mountain of flowers today, though.

He sighed and carried onward, barley giving the beautiful red roses he passed a sidelong glance. Well, he almost didn't. The vibrant red caught his eye, and he fell a few steps behind admiring the way the morning dew dripped from the soft petals.

Red was supposed to be the color of aggression, of hunger and anger and danger, but it was also adventure, passion…

Love.

A laugh he knew better than his own crossed his mind's ear, and he almost hated the way he instantly drew the connections to tan skin and red, so much red. Ed shook his head clear and turned away, transitioning into a light jog to catch up to the rest of his peers. This was crazy, he was being crazy. What that girl said meant nothing. What Dimitri said meant nothing, just people being people and misunderstanding his relationship with Isabel. They were like siblings! She was his best friend! He shook his head clear with finality.

He caught up with the rest of the group with ease, not that it was difficult. It seemed like he was the only one eager to get back to food, because his peers had taken a decidedly slower pace. He'd lightly jogged like an old man who'd just watched his small weiner dog steal his slipper, and still, he'd managed to catch up in about thirty seconds. Ed huffed, shoulders slumping in the way that usually got him a fist upside the head from Guerra and a small scolding from Spender.

"Guys, look! He's letting me feed him!"

One of the other students had paused to bend down a few feet in front of him. A quick side-step confirmed that she'd palmed a nut from the ground, and that a small squirrel had taken interest in it. A few other students coo'ed and some bemoaned not having their phone to take a picture. Ed felt himself smiling despite his grouchy mood. The squirrel was, after all, pushing the boundaries of cute. Big beady eyes, tail twitching, head tilting as it tried to communicate with his fellow student in a language it didn't know she didn't understand. Part of his heart, which he found had somewhat frozen over the last few weeks, melted on the spot. She opened up her palm, and the squirrel readily sprinted for it, pausing on her fingers to test the nut and see that it was real. Chestnut brown fur, spots of darker hair that looked black in the early morning sunrise-

-- brown eyes under long lashes, squinting with mirth as he made her laugh, his favorite sound in this world and the next.

Ed froze mid-thought, eyes widening so much he thought they would fall out of the sockets. He'd done it again, the same thing he'd been doing the past- how long had it been? Too long! Too long for this to still be a problem! Ed took several deep breaths, one hand pressed to his chest as he hyper-ventilated, or something close to it. He was just tired, that's all. He was busy a lot of the day training to become a man worthy...of… his mind trailed off again, and Ed felt his hands tearing his hair straight off of his head before he even registered the deep-seeded hand that felt like it was tugging twenty different chords of his heart.

I do not like Isabel! I do not like Isabel! I do not like Isabel!

"Get out of my head!"

There was a silence around him, and he couldn't help but think that it was a little odd, considering all the cute-animal-fawning that'd been happening a few seconds ago. He opened his eyes, which had been screwed shut in his agony, to find his entire class staring at him. Even the squirrel, which had been so content with its nut before, had turned its curious eyes on him as if waiting for an explanation. Ed blinked. "I yearn for the sweet embracing heat of my gaming console."

His peers seemed to shrug it off, nod, mumble "yeah, yeah that sounds about right".

[letterboxd-loggd]

As the Earth Turns (1934) Alfred E. Green

May 19th 2020

[chiseler]

Wynne Gibson

It’s easy to typecast Pre-Code Paramount as the realm of the shimmering elsewhere, Continental or exotic, of Lubitsch and von Sternberg. But this was the studio saved by Bowery goddess Mae West; the home of George Raft and Sylvia Sidney, where George Bancroft came just before Tallulah Bankhead in Photoplay’s “Addresses of the Stars.” Paramount produced its own Noo Yawk fables, in the direct lineage of O. Henry, with their share—especially in B features—of snappy dialogue and sharp-focused settings.

A heroine of this Paramount-on-the-subway was Wynne Gibson, who came from Broadway to Hollywood as a pert, sensible redhead (the brains of a sister act comprising Helen Kane and herself in Nothing But the Truth; a smart office manager in Children of Pleasure) and was quickly transformed to a peroxided moll.

Her quintessential role in this genre was the Sadie Thompson-styled hooker in an episode (directed, with typical zest for sleaze, by Stephen Roberts) of If I Had a Million: she takes the most luxurious hotel room in town to sleep in—alone. Her reaction to the bedroom (tiptoeing through the soft carpet, hurling the bed’s second pillow into a closet and locking it in, lovingly centering the remaining single pillow, cautiously stroking the silken sheets) is an exercise in acting. Her eager stripping-off of the tawdry come-hither lingerie that has been her stock in trade is an exercise in having one’s cake and eating it too. Other incarnations were the impassive pussycat providing Guy Kibbee with an alibi in the form of an unbroken cigar ash in City Streets, George Raft’s no-class ex-girlfriend in Night After Night, and the tootsie blackmailing Phillips Holmes in Two Kinds of Women.

Paramount rewarded her with what was supposed to be a plum: The Strange Case of Clara Deane, a weepie in the Madelon Claudel style featuring Pat O’Brien (!) as the louse-husband because of whom she is railroaded to a decade in the penitentiary and Frances Dee as the child who never knows the heroine’s sacrifice.   I Give My Love, a couple years later, featured John Darrow as the louse-husband because of whom she is railroaded to a decade in the penitentiary and Eric Linden as the child who never knows the heroine’s sacrifice.  Except Paul Lukas tells him.

These lugubrious roles were not for Wynne Gibson. It wasn’t the maternal emotion she lacked, it was the resignation. She radiated an impatient resilience, from her pug nose to her capable, freckled arms to her neatly tripping feet: a snappish decency vibrating to set things to rights. Her first success at Paramount, Ladies of the Big House, captured this quality as her relationship to Sylvia Sidney shifted from jealous rivalry to protectiveness. She was the cut-to-the-chase blonde who solved The Crosby Case, took down a mob boss in Emergency Call, deployed a blackjack in The Captain Hates the Sea, and sat on Eddie Lowe’s hat as a dainty come-on in The Devil Is Driving.

Her finest outings in this vein are two starring roles: Aggie Appleby, Maker of Men and Lady and Gent. In each, she transforms the lives of two men. If you’re having uneasy intimations of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, breathe easy. She changes them because she needs them to change: her tough, pragmatic nudging is toward security, respectability, a safe home in a shaky world. Female but unfeminine, she wipes her hands on her décolleté, charges though a gentleman’s apartment in a black lace teddy as though she were in a locker room, and, as a daffodil who entertains in her own speakeasy, faces down bootleggers with “Why don’t you incorporate, you talk so big?”

As the 1930s wore on, roles became fewer, less prestigious, and more routine, although she did get to whack Jack La Rue with a frying pan in Forgotten Girls and mother Ann Dvorak, as yet another unknowing child, in Café Hostess. With Beverly Roberts, who would be her lifelong companion (perhaps drawn together by the shared ordeal of making a supremely undistinguished 1938 Joe E. Brown feature), Wynne Gibson turned back to the theater, as an agent, producer, and board member of Actors’ Equity. I’m imagining her with those gams on her desk and the cigar from City Streets.

by Phoebe Green

[neitherlandslibrary]

Happy International Women’s Day

to all the female-identifying people! 

As we could not put everyone on the gifset, we also want to shout out to all the woman inside and outside the show

Character in the show: Callie, Camille, Carol, Cindy Gaines, Copy Girl, Crying Woman, Dr. Jennifer London, Dragon, Emily Greenstreet, Etta, Eve, Female Professor, Fray, Genji, Gretchen, Harriet, Healer Faye, Hedge #1,  Homicide Detective  #1, Irene McAllistair, Iris, Kimber D'Antoni, Kira, Lia, Librarian Rona, Mackenzie, Old Woman, Orgy Girl #1, Orgy Girl #2, Phyllis, Prof. Pearl Sunderland, Poppy, Professor Bigby, Psychic Girl #2, Rainbow Girl, Receptionist, Sam Cunningham, Shelia, Stone Queen, Sylvia, The Prophet, The White Lady, Whitley, Young Hedge, AD, Arielle, Arleen, Ashley the Bookie, Baba Yaga (and the girl she posess), Beatrice McAllister,Beatrix, Becky, Dana, Doctor Meers, Dr. Higgins, Evelyn,Fairy Queen, Fillorian Mother, Goldie, Hanna, Harriet, Healer Tara, Heloise,Homeless Lady, Jane Chatwin,Marina Andrieski,Mellony, Napster, Natural Student #1,Nurse#1, Nurse#2, Persephone, Physical Kid #1, Poppy, Professor Lipson, Prudence Plover, Quentin's Mother, Rhona, Scared Woman 36,Shara,Shoshana, Silver, Skye, Sonia 36, Spectre, Stephanie Quinn, Stephanie's Friend, Suzie, TV Crew, Victoria, Water Dragon,Zal, Zelda and all uncredited characters!

off cameras woman : Adela Baborova, Aeryn Gray, Alexandra Rojek, Allison Gordin, Alma Kuttruff, Alyssa Jacobson, Amber Crombach, Amber Waters, Ana Lossada, Ana Lossada, Angie Kennedy, Anna Register, Annalese Tilling, Anne Grennan, Ashley Biggs, Ashley Mason, Athena Wong,Audrey Himmer-Jude, Aylwin Fernando, Barbara Jansen, Beth Williams, Blair Richmond, Blythe Bickham, Breanna Watkins, Bree Brincat, Briana Skye, Brittney Diez, Caitlin Groves, Candice Harvey, Cara Doell, Carmen Lavender, Carole Appleby, Caroline Milliard, Carolyn McCauley, Carolyn Williams,Carrie Audino ,Cassandra Parigian, Cathy Darby, Chere Theriot, Cherie Bessette, Cherie Smid, Cheryl Callihoo, Christina Nakhvat, Clara George, Clarinda Wong, Coreen Mayrs, Crystal Mudry, Danielle White, Debbie Douglas, Deborah Burns, Deborah Burns, Deneen McArthur, Denya McLean-Adhya, Desiree J. Cadena, Donna Stocker, Elie Smolkin, Elizabeth Rainey, Elle Lipson, Emily Nomland, Emily Upham, Emily Weston, Emmanuelle Charlier, Errin Clutton, Eunice Yeung, Eva Abramycheva, Gilda Longoria, Ginge Cox, Grace Delahanty, Heike Brandstatter, Helen Geier, Irina Berdyanskaya, Irwin Figuera, Janene Carleton, Janet D. Munro, Janice MacIsaac,Janice Williams, Jayne Dancose, Jenni Macdonald, Jennifer Gilevich, Jennifer Kaminski, Jennifer Machnee, Jennifer Nelson, Jesse Toves, Jessica Goodwin, Jessica Williams, Juli Van Brown, Julia Holt, June E. Watson, Justin Coulter, Kai Lesack, Kara Bowman, Karen Lorena Parker, Karina Partington, Karley Stroscher, Karly Paranich, Kate Marshall, katerina Motylova, Kathie Singh, Katie Letien,  Katrissa 'Kat' Peterson, Kelli Dunsmore, Kendelle Elliott, Kristy Jelinek, Kyla Rose Tremblay, Kyle Landry, Laura Dickinson, Laura Schiff, Lauren Aspden, Lauren Beason, Laurie Lieser, Leslie Cairns, Lisa Blaxley, Lisa Chandler, Lisa Godwin, Lisa Pouliot, Lisa Pouliot, Lisle Fehlauer, Liz Goldwyn, Lucie Elwes, Luisa Abuchaibe, Lyne Talbot, Lynn Werner, Madeline Jensen, Madison Mah, Madison Penland, Magali Guidasci, Maisie Lucas, Margot Ready, Maria Gleeson, Marie Marolle, Marijke Richman, Martha Dietsche, Mary Hubert, Meghan Kelly, Michelle Kabatoff, Michelle Kee, Michelle Yu, Miluette Nalin, Mimi Dejene, Nadia Alaskari, Natasha Wehn, Nicole Bivens, Nina Göldner, Patricia Jagger, Patti Henderson, Paula Antil, Polina Nikolai, Pricilla Rodgers,Priya Ayengar, Rachel O'Toole,Rita K. Sanders, Rudy Jones, Sam Ochotta, Sarah McLauchlan, Sera Gamble, Shae Salmon, Shae Salmon, Shailey Horton, Shannon Courte, Shannon Kohli, Shannon McArthur, Sharon Dever, Shelly Goldsack, Shelly Shaw, Sina Nazarian, Sondra Durkse, Sonia V. Torres, Sophia Delgiglio, Stephane Bourgeault, Stephanie Plett, Sue Blainey, Sumner Boissiere III, Sunil Pant, Taja Perkins, Tamara Daroshin, Teresa Brauer, Tracey McLean,Tracie Hansen, Tracie Leaphart, Tracy Craigen, Vanja Cernjul, Wendy Foster, Wendy Snowdon, Wendy Talley 

(Source IMDB) 

[breaniebree]

List of ASC Original Characters

Question from fanfiction.net from DetroitNate -- Thanks for this story, it is one of my top five hands down. Also, I agree with you about blvnk, that has always been how I've seen Harry and Ginny. Thanks for a refresher course on Zee's parents sometimes it is difficult to remember who is who, which brings up another questionis there somewhere that I could see a list of your OCs, kind of like your brief explanation of Misha and Sorcha? Either thanks for the story it continues to be wonderful.

Thank you!  I do have a lot of original people I have introduced, in passing or to give characters to them.  I literally have an entire document saved ASC Character Lists to help me keep track.  I will post it here the way I have it written.  It’s a LONG LIST!  Most may have just been mentioned, but it helps me keep track in case I have to go back and like oh right, that person did this!

Zahira Zelena Zacarias (Zee) - 9th April, 1964:

Zee’s family is as follows:

The Jacksons:

Colten (Muggle) and Florence (Pureblood witch) Jackson, Grandma and Grandpa

Daughter Magnolia Jackson Zacarias (deceased) married to Michael (Misha) Zacarias with one daughter: Zahira Zelena Zacarias

The Zacarias’:

Ivan and Anya Zacarias Baba & Deda (Muggles - Ivan was the soldier in WWII with the motorbike) 

1. Michael (Misha) m. Magnolia Jackson Zacarias (d) m. Sorcha Brown Zacarias, Papa and Grandmama

(a) Zahira Zelena Zacarias

2. Olga Zacarias Petrov m. Dimtri Petrov

(a) Mikhail Petrov m. Ana Ivanov

(i) Yuri Petrov

(b) Mila Petrov Sokolov m. Nicholas Sokolov

(i) Nastasia Sokolov

(ii) Dinara Sokolov

3. Sasha Zacarias Blok m. Yerik Blok

(a) Tanya Blok Fedorov m. Alek Fedorov

(i) Eva and Irina (twin girls identical)

(b) Tatiana Blok eng. Iosif Kuznetsov

The Browns:

Callum and Fiona Brown

Brian Brown m. Jocasta Fitzgibbons

(a) Dougal Brown m. Ellen Smith

(i) Jenny Brown

(ii) Ian Brown

Sorcha Brown m. Misha Zacarias

(a) Zahira Zelena Zacarias

The Weasley family tree

Arthur’s parents — Septimus and Cedrella nee Black Weasley

Bilius Weasley m. Lucretia NLN

(a) Septimus Weasley eng. Bianca Sousa

(b) Gaius Weasley m. Jillian Kinders 

(c) Marcus Weasley

(d) Tiberius Weasley

Alphard Weasley m. Maureen NLN

(a) Caradoc Weasley m. Holly Gibbons

(i) Jeffrey Weasley

(b) Valerius Weasley

(c) Gabriel Weasley eng. Susan Appleby

(d) Maximus Weasley

(e) Marius Weasley

Arthur Weasley m. Molly Prewett

(a) William Arthur Weasley

(b) Charles Septimus Weasley

(c) Percival Ignatius Weasley

(d) Frederick Fabian Weasley

(e) George Gideon Weasley

(f) Ronald Bilius Weasley

(g) Ginevra Molly Weasley

Althea & Xander Papakonstantinou:

(a) Niko Alexander & Nilo Alexander Papakonstantinou

(b) Phoenix Nikolas Papakonstantinou

(c) Basil Kai and Bryony Iliana Papakonstantinou

(d) Calla Gallina Papakonstantinou

Apollo & Medea Castellanos 

(a) Daphne Grace Castellanos

(b) Circe Althea Castellanos

(c) Cassandra Medea Castellanos  

WIZENGAMOT COUNCIL MEMBERS:

Lady Lucrectia Dettweiler

Lord Marcus Bulstrode

Lord Tiberius Ogden

Lord Aaron Mackelbee

CWM Norton

CWM Anderson

CWM Himmler

WOLVES:

Adrian Roberts (Alpha of Southwestern England)

Echo Simpson (Alpha of Northwestern England)

Ethan Simpson (son of Echo)

Maia Roberts (wife of Adrian)

Hawk Roberts

Emily Roberts

Nikita Roberts

Odin Roberts

Rafe Roberts

Clara Roberts (deceased)

Conan NLN

Volk NLN

Ivory NLN

Cami NLN

Daimon NLN (Alpha of Southeastern in England)

Rune NLN (Alpha of Northeastern in England)

Romeo NLN

Summer NLN

Other Random Mentioned Characters:

George & Margaret Morrison - Sirius’ next door neighbours (Zee’s cottage)

Persephone - name of Sirius’ owl

Greta Catchlove - Sirius’ ex in school

Glenda Chittock - Sirius’ ex in school

Sarah Anderson - Sirius’ ex in school

Darcy Floras - Wizengamot Administrative Office

Professor Dragomir - Durmstrang Dark Arts professor (Althea’s old prof & confidant)

Robyn NLN - ex lover of Remus

Annalise Zuszack Davies - ex lover of Sirius

Veronica Riley - ex lover of Remus, Accidental Magical Reversal Squad

Persephone NLN - bridesmaid at Althea’s wedding, ex lover of Sirius

Connor McGee - Tonks’ ex boyfriend

Amanda NLN- ex lover of Remus

Carolos Santorini - head of dragon reserve in Sicily

Sareena Sahadi, curse breaker in Roman catacombs 

Jonathon Pepper - Tonks’ ex boyfriend and lover

Jennifer Berry - real estate agent who sold Zee her cottage, ex lover of Sirius

Phillipe Montgomery - professor on werewolf mythology

Ava Montgomery - wife of Phillippe Montgomery and werewolf

Ferryweather - ex member of Hogwarts Board of Governors (who Sirius replaces)

Tripp Forrester - Agent of the DRCMC

Brandon NLN - 7th year Hufflepuff student in Harry’s second year

Will Matthews - Seamus’ first boyfriend

Maggie Cumberland - woman who speaks and outs Lockhart on stealing memories

Na’eemah Hickey - Egyptian Mind Healer who helps Ginny

Mary Raffigan - historian in the Department of History; professor of History of Magic at Hogwarts

Agent Minnow - Being Division of DRCMC

Kata Novak - Croatian pureblood kidnapped by DE’s

Harley Mills - Harry’s ex girlfriend

Tucker - ranch hand on Colt and Flo’s ranch

Calvin - ranch hand on Colt and Flo’s ranch

Trotsky NFN - dragon handler on Romanian reserve

Aims NFN - dragon handler on Romanian reserve

Santana NFN - dragon handler on Romanian reserve

Juliette Léandre - Département de Coopération Magique Internationale 

Madame Simone Richelieu - President of the Ministère des Affaires Magiques del la France

Jericho Jones - International Confederation of Wizards

Katherine Thomas - International Magical Office of Law

LiMei Lee - Ambassador to Hong Kong Mófǎ bù

Liam O’Kelly - journalist for Irish Prophet

Leonoardo Fanucci - Rome’s famous fashion designer

Dimo Radkov - best friend of Viktor Krum

Andrei Ankov - best friend of Viktor Krum

Professor Penkov - Durmstrang history professor

Iglika Krum - Viktor’s younger sister

Desislava Krum - Viktor’s younger sister

Boyana Krum - Viktor’s mother

Kosta Krum - Viktor’s father

Danny Evangeline - editor of the Daily Prophet

Princess Sapphira - Mermaid from Greece

Agent Barrow NFN - beast division of DRCMC

Elizabeth Walters - werewolf support services

King Taliesin of the Fae

William Clovenfield of the Vampire Confederacy of Europe

Henry Jacks, personal assistant of Ludo Bagman

Dobson NFN, DRCMC

Tripp Forrester, Agent of DRCMC

Bura Visnjic - magical creature reserve near Fiordland National Park in New Zealand

Abioye NLN - magizoologist from the reserve

Zhang NFN - magizoologist from the reserve

Henry Richardson - Head of the Department of Education

Dmitri Horvat - Balkan Auror, friend of Dumbledore

Miranda Jameson - Head of the Department of Magical Cooperation

Board of Governors:

Sirius Black

Lucius Malfoy - ARRESTED - replaced with Richard Macmillan

Marcus Bulstrode - ARRESTED - replaced with Charlotte Ogden

Julius Abbot

John Matthias

Josephine Fawley

Bernice Caulder

Octavius Greengrass

Augusta Longbottom

Castor Parkinson

Elphias Doge

Lucretia Dettweiler

Crann Bethadh Cabinet (Tree of Life Cabinet aka CBC):

Amelia Bones (Minister)

Albus Dumbledore (ICW rep)

Zahira Zacarias (DRCMC rep)

Walter Barrow (DRCMC rep)

Adrian Roberts (Wolf rep)

Echo Simpson (Wolf rep)

Rune Rogers (Wolf rep)

Daimon Adams (Wolf rep)

William Clovenfield (Vampire rep)

Alice Langdon (Vampire rep)

Jericho Jones (ICW rep)

Katherine Thomas (magical law rep)

King Taliesan (Fae rep)

Brigit (Fae rep)

Colleen Sanders (Veela rep)

Aurors:

Hugh Arnett A3

Natalie Atwell A3

Gregson NFN - deceased

Bishop NFN - deceased

Lewis NFN - deceased

Davis NFN - deceased

Jane NFN - A2

Campbell NFN - A2

Leonard NFN - A2

Higgins NFN - A1, Tonks’ partner

Hogwarts Students in Harry’s Year:

Gryffindor Girls - Sophie Roper, Natalia Monroe

Slytherin Girls - Ophelia Rowle

Students in Ginny’s year:

Gryffindor Girls - Maisie Wendall, Imogen Landers, Katherine Joy Alcott (KJ), Freya Sloane

Gryffindor Boys - David Gunderson 

Hufflepuff Girls - Edith Carlyle, Francesca Wood (Oliver’s cousin)

Ravenclaw Girls - Chloe Cunningham, Morag Campbell, Dinah Fox, Bettina Addersworth

Third Year Students in 1995:

Hufflepuff - Mr NFN Donovan, Miss NFN Payne

Ravenclaw - Mr NFN Sahni, Miss NFN Jameson

New Students 1995-1996 school year:

Slytherin Boys - Julian Norton

Slytherin Girls - Mila St James - half-vampire, Ciara Casey - half-fae

Ravenclaw Girls - Sari Danson - wolf

Gryffindor Boys - Maximus O’Ryan - wolf, Jack Wolf - wolf 

Hufflepuff Girls - Tara Brady - half-fae

Bellarosa Zabini Husbands:

Signore Antonio Zabini, Baron of Sardinia

Siegneur Tristian Beauchamp, Comte de Marseille

Lord Stephen Barkley, Earl of Suffolk

Sir David Sanders

Lord Jason Stanford, Earl of Kent

Hope this helps!  

[unsafecove]

002 for your favourite c22 ship and 003 for Danby and Captain Black

002 | Send me a ship and I will tell you: Haveapple | i have two favorites, but i will go with this one :]

When I started shipping them: i had always kind of shipped them, i thought the dynamic was funny. the fact they’re both the most hated suck-ups <33

My thoughts: theyre just a married couple. you cant tell me otherwise

What makes me happy about them: there isn’t much to really go off of from catch-22 unfortunately :( the way theyre mainly talked about together is very nice. like how they both keep a gun on them, both in the same plane- once appleby talks w yoyo havermeyer is there- yk. all that jazz!

What makes me sad about them: nothing in particular.. ?

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: there’s literally only like. one haveapple fic and that’s max’s LOL and that fic is perfect to me sorry !

Things I look for in fanfic: LITERALLY ANYTHING i can read everything as long as its my babygirls fr , doesnt even matter how you portray them

My wishlist: anything 😭

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: i think havermeyer and captain black would be interesting, or mcwatt even though i dont ship them at all. im not sure if i have any names in mind for appleby..

My happily ever after for them: theyre a married couple in the south ❤️

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you: Danby

How I feel about this character: to be completely honest, i did not care for him at first! but after watching the movie and having some rereads i began to really enjoy him more, it feels empty without this nervous lil silly guy during briefings.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: im pretty open to every ship ever, but maybe chaplain..? and possibly crackship w daneeka

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: i dont really think i have one that’s different from friendship

My unpopular opinion about this character: what is even an unpopular opinion for this guy?? idk. um. he should be liked more i guess

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i wish we got to know more about him, i feel like he had some potential. him just being used for the ending was kinda unexpected but i enjoyed it otherwise.

Favorite friendship for this character: also chaplain, and major major. i feel like they would make a great friend group trio

My crossover ship: do people even do this w c22..?

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you: Captain Black

How I feel about this character: i hatelove the guy, if i met this guy irl i would hate his guts but as a character? i love him

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: havermeyer , corporal snark , dobbs (i think it would be interesting) , and corporal kolodny

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: i guess the shit he did to mess w nately by sleeping w clara was mean, but it was entertaining to read. in a ‘what the hell’ way. if this counts as what u meant

My unpopular opinion about this character: i would love to see him in a adaptation

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i kinda wish he did more silly weird ass shit than him fucking clara and the loyalty oaths, or maybe an interaction w captain black and major major themselves.

Favorite friendship for this character: is there anyone in the book who even is his friend? idk, i guess the ones i mentioned for ships

My crossover ship: n/a !

[elcinelateleymickyandonie]

Filmografía

Millones de Brewster (1914) como la Sra. Dan De Mille

La mente maestra (1914) como Milwaukee Sadie

El único hijo (1914) como la Sra. Brainerd

El hombre de la caja (1914) como Mrs. Chadwick

Ready Money (1914) como la Sra. Tyler

Rose of the Rancho (1914) como Señora Castro Kenton / Madre de Juanita

Los hipócritas (1915) como señora (sin acreditar)

La chica del ganso (1915) como Irma

After Five (1915) como la Sra. Russell - Tía Diddy

La hija del fabricante de alfombras (1915) como la Sra. Van Buren

La candidata a la reforma (1915) como Mrs.Haggerty

La pequeña iglesia a la vuelta de la esquina (1923) como Mujer ansiosa en el desastre de la mina (sin acreditar)

Tom Sawyer (1930) como Widow Douglas

Fighting Caravans (1931) como Pioneer Woman (sin acreditar)

Huckleberry Finn (1931) como Widow Douglas

Damas de la casa grande (1931) como Mrs.Turner

No One Man (1932) como paciente (sin acreditar)

Young America (1932) como maestra de escuela (sin acreditar)

El extraño caso de Clara Deane (1932) como la esposa de Mortimer (sin acreditar)

Back Street (1932) como la Sra. Adolph Schmidt

Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932) como la tía de Alice (sin acreditar)

Sábado caliente (1932) como Mrs Ida Brock

Las mujeres no lo dirán (1932) como Mrs.Walter Robinson

Air Hostess (1933) como Ma Kearns

El pasado de Mary Holmes (1933)

Child of Manhattan (1933) como la Sra. McGonegle

Asesinatos en el zoológico (1933) como Banquet Guest (sin acreditar)

Bondage (1933) como la Sra. Elizabeth Wharton

The Girl in 419 (1933) como Nurse Esmond (sin acreditar)

Llamada de emergencia (1933) como Jefe de enfermería Brown (sin acreditar)

Jennie Gerhardt (1933) como pensionista (sin acreditar)

Bed of Roses (1933) como la Sra. Webster - Jefe de la matrona de la prisión (sin acreditar)

Antes del amanecer (1933) como la Sra. Marble

No podía soportarlo (1933) como la Sra. Case

Un domingo por la tarde (1933) como Mrs.Lind

Ann Vickers (1933) como la Sra. Gage (sin acreditar)

Aggie Appleby, Maker of Men (1933) como la Sra. Spence - Landlady (sin acreditar)

Solo ayer (1933) como la Sra. Lane

Diseño para vivir (1933) como Ama de llaves de Curtis

Roman Scandals (1933) como propietaria del balneario roman.

[iamwhelmed]

Home: A Win One, Have Two Playlist

Because I knew I’d miss an update eventually, I prepared this in advance! Sorry about the inconvenience guys! ^^’ Here’s a few songs that apply to the second fic in The Monster Trilogy! It’s up to interpretation how, of course ;D Have an awesome day!

Rose sighed, and uncrossed her arms, entire body slackening though she was still somewhat on guard. He could sense it in her, feel how tightly-wound she was. Over him. He didn’t understand it, he wasn’t sure he could. Not over him, not because of him. He’d done nothing but hurt everyone he’d ever cared about, everybody that might have cared about him too if he wasn’t so useless. People might have wanted him. And for some reason, Miss Rose did. Hardy did. Clara did. Crawford might’ve. He wasn’t used to it, and he still wasn’t sure he trusted it, though he trusted them. Maybe it was himself he didn’t trust; that might have been a fair assessment.

Rose’s voice was gentle, and stern, and just the right amount of chummy. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s you and me against the world now,whether you walk out that door or not.”

Ed turned to him, head tilted, like a dog trying to understand. “You seem really worried” Max gestured pointedly, disbelievingly, irritably, at the blood-covered bathroom, and Ed continued on unperturbed “-- more worried than any of us. Like, way more worried. I mean, we’re all scared pantsless, but not like…” he gestured to Max with as much obnoxious energy as Max had used “you are.”

Max frowned, and took a moment to think about it all. The constant worrying, the fear he couldn’t explain, the fact that he kept thinking about the same moment, the moment where it all came crashing down, where everything started, this entire mess. He couldn’t escape it. It always came back, always was in the back of his mind, sitting there waiting for his train of thought to lead him right to it. It’d been bothering him longer than Isaac had been missing, and there was only one explanation for it. “I never got a chance to talk to him about it.” Ed said nothing, but he didn’t move either, so he was listening, probably “Our fight. We didn’t get to talk about it.” That’s what scared him, the guilt weighing down on his shoulders. If Isaac wasn’t okay, if something happened to him, if he died out here…

He didn’t want to think about it.

Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift (cover by Tiffany Alvord and Megan Nicole)

I remember tears streaming down your face When I said, "I'll never let you go." When all those shadows almost killed your light I remember you said, "Don't leave me here alone," But all that's dead and gone and passed tonight

Just close your eyes The sun is going down You'll be alright No one can hurt you now Come morning light You and I'll be safe and sound

Home by Ella Eyre

Yeah I'm cold Everything seems to be fine On the surface I look good But I don't feel the same inside Something's wrong And I know you can tell But I never have to say Cause you know me too well

No need to worry There's no urgency here I'm all good I'll be on my way And I'm too proud to say I need Anyone else but me Then I'm right back on my street

And I find myself at home No, never be scared Home's where my family's at I'm home No, I'll never look back Hold on to what I have I'm not afraid to use the phone Cause I don't have to be alone

Remember When by Avril Lavigne

...You know my feelings It never crossed my mind That there would be a time For us to say goodbye What a big surprise...

...I remember when it was together till the end Now I'm alone again Where do I begin? I cried a little bit You died a little bit Please say there's no regrets And say you won't forget...

That was then Now it's the end I'm not coming back I can't pretend Remember When

These feelings I can't shake no more These feelings are running out the door I can feel it falling down And I'm not coming back around These feelings I can't take no more This emptiness in the bottom drawer It's getting harder to pretend And I'm not coming back around again

Home by Daughtry

Well I'm going home, Back to the place where I belong, And where your love has always been enough for me. I'm not running from. No, I think you got me all wrong. I don't regret this life I chose for me. But these places and these faces are getting old, So I'm going home....

...I've not always been the best man or friend for you. But your love remains true. And I don't know why. You always seem to give me another try.

They Just Don't Know You by Little Mix

Talk is cheap and rumors spread but they go with the wind It's not about she said he said 'cause I know where it ends I know the real truth And the real truth is you

It's funny 'cause at times it feels like us against the world They treat you like a criminal but I'll still be your girl I'd ride or die with you Walk the line if you asked me to

So oh oh Tell me, tell me you won't break my heart You won't tear my world apart That you'll be there when I need 'Cause I wanna tell them

They just don't know you

People Like Us by Kelly Clarkson

And hey, yeah I know what you're going through Don't let it get the best of you, you'll make it out alive Oh, people like us we've gotta stick together Keep your head up, nothing lasts forever Here's to the damned to the lost and forgotten It's hard to get high when you're living on the bottom

Stay by Zedd (feat. Alessia Cara)

Waiting for the time to pass you by Hope the winds of change will change your mind I could give a thousand reasons why And I know you, and you've got to

Make it on your own, but we don't have to grow up We can stay forever young Living on my sofa, drinking rum and cola Underneath the rising sun I could give a thousand reasons why But you're going, and you know that All you have to do is stay a minute...

...Won't admit what I already know I've never been the best at letting go I don't wanna spend the night alone Guess I need you, and I need to

Make it on my own, but I don't wanna grow up We can stay forever young

Stand By You by Rachel Platten

Hands, put your empty hands in mine And scars, show me all the scars you hide And hey, if your wings are broken Please take mine so yours can open too 'Cause I'm gonna stand by you Oh, tears make kaleidoscopes in your eyes And hurt, I know you're hurting, but so am I And love, if your wings are broken Borrow mine so yours can open too 'Cause I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we're breaking down, we can find a way to break through Even if we can't find heaven, I'll walk through hell with you Love, you're not alone, 'cause I'm gonna stand by you

Drops of Jupiter by Train

...Tell me, did you fall from a shooting star One without a permanent scar And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?

Now that she's back from that soul vacation Tracing her way through the constellation, hey, hey She checks out Mozart while she does tae-bo Reminds me that there's room to grow, hey, hey, yeah

Now that she's back in the atmosphere I'm afraid that she might think of me as Plain ol' Jane, told a story about a man who is too afraid to fly so he never did land

Payphone by Maroon 5

Now baby dont hang up So I can tell you what you need to know Baby im begging just please dont go So I can tell you what you need to know

We Don't Talk Anymore by Charlie Puth and Selena Gomez

I just heard you found the one you've been looking You've been looking for I wish I would have known that wasn't me Cause even after all this time I still wonder Why I can't move on...

...I just hope you're lying next to somebody Who knows how to love you like me There must be a good reason that you're gone Every now and then I think you Might want me to come show up at your door But I'm just too afraid that I'll be wrong

Everybody Hurts by Avril Lavigne

Don't know, don't know if I can do this on my own Why do you have to leave, me It seems, I'm losing something deep inside of me Hold on, onto me...

...It feels like nothing really matters anymore When you're gone I can't breathe And I know you never meant to make me feel this way This can't be happening...

...So many questions so much on my mind So many answers I can't find I wish I could turn back the time I want to...

...Everybody hurts Everybody screams Everybody feels this way Its okay La di da di da It's okay

Already Gone by Kelly Clarkson

Remember all the things we wanted Now all our memories, they're haunted We were always meant to say goodbye Even without fists held high, yeah Never would have worked out right, yeah We were never meant for do or die

I didn't want us to burn out I didn't come here to hurt you now I can't stop...

...Looking at you makes it harder But I know that you'll find another That doesn't always make you wanna cry Started with a perfect kiss Then we could feel the poison set in Perfect couldn't keep this love alive

You know that I love you so I love you enough to let you go

Fix You by Coldplay

When the tears come streaming down your face When you lose something you can't replace When you love someone but it goes to waste Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home And ignite your bones And I will try to fix you

High up above or down below When you're too in love to let it go If you never try you'll never know Just what you're worth

Where is My Mind by Yoav and Emily Browning

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground Try this trick and spin it, yeah Your head will collapse But there's nothing in it And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind

Little Do You Know by Alex and Sierra

Little do you know How I’m breaking while you fall asleep Little do you know I’m still haunted by the memory Little do you know I’m trying to pick myself from piece by piece Little do you know I need a little more time...

...I’ll wait, I’ll wait I love you like you've never felt the pain, I’ll wait I promise you don’t have to be afraid, I’ll wait The love you see right here stays so lay your head on me

Tell Me You Love Me by Demi Lovato

Oh no, here we go again Fighting over what I said I'm sorry, yeah I’m sorry Bad at love, no, I'm not good at this But I can't say I’m innocent Not hardly, but I'm sorry

And all my friends, they know and it's true I don't know who I am without you I got it bad, baby Got it bad...

...And I hope I never see the day That you move on and be happy without me Without me What’s my hand without your heart to hold? I don’t know what I'm living for If I’m living without you...

...Oh, tell me you love me I need someone on days like this, I do On days like this

[omradio]

Un temblor sacude el paraíso

Un temblor sacude el paraíso

Desde Londres ¿Se viene el Panama Papers de 2017? En la prensa británica muchos piensan que sí y en los bufetes de abogados del “Magic Offshore Circle” – Círculo mágico offshore– hay claras señales de pánico. Appleby, la firma más importante de este círculo que opera en paraísos fiscales de la Corona británica y otras jurisdicciones con secreto bancario, admitió en un comunicado que sufrió un…

[iamwhelmed]

Win One, Have Two: Chapter 8

Hey guys! Just a quick note to let you know that school has started up again for me, and so has an increased workload. I’m concerned about how I’m going to manage my time, but I care a whole lot about this fanfic, and I want you guys to know that, even if I have to skip an update or two until next break, I’m going to do my very best to keep the chapters coming!

On AO3

On Fanfiction.net

“Come on, Red. Give me something to work with, here.”

Isaac bit down on both his lips, a nervous tick, one Hardy picked up on. He was watching him from across the training mat, legs bent, hands at the defensive, and if the grin itching to grow on his face got any bigger, Isaac might have felt somewhat unsettled-- ya know, unless he could use his powers, which he wasn’t about to, especially when this sparring match was going unsupervised.

He’d woken that morning to Hardy shoving his face into the smooth fabric of his nighty, nose jabbing into his stomach uncomfortably close to his belly-button, and an empty space where Clara usually laid at his other side. Her imprint was there, but the arm she’d usually taken governance of was free and belonging entirely to him for the morning. He’d roused Hardy from his beauty sleep and they’d wandered around for a bit, aimlessly. Miss Rose, her mug of coffee, and her cryptic-looking book of the day were also missing from her usual spot at the kitchen counter, and Crawford had locked himself in the library (actually, it might have been an office? Which was worse. He couldn’t tell with the mess of books and loose leaf papers everywhere). The dojo was theirs for the time being, and after they’d scarfed down whatever they could find in the pantry (Hardy took to a package of mini cookies, and Isaac found some rice cakes), Hardy had all but gripped him by the scruff of his shirt and tugged him to the designated sparring floor.

“Just show me what you’ve got!”

“You don’t wanna see what I’ve got.”

Hardy’s demeanor shifted, relaxed, smirk shifting to a toothed purr. His eyebrows raised and fell. “Oh yes I do.”

What? They were talking about sparring, right? Why did he-- oh. His cheeks flushed. “S-sh-shut up! Don’t s-say things like that! Wh-what are you even--?”

“Well maybe I’d shut up if you’d squared up!”

Isaac closed his eyes, stood silent and still and simply breathed. He’d seen Isabel do it in the past, a few times, when a mission got tough, when she had to focus on her drive and not her bloodlust. He took that memory, let it flash before his closed eyes like a guide. He could see her body freeze, tense, fists clench as her aura crackled between the gaps in her fingers. Like fire, like flame, it’d consumed her hands, her arms, acting less like the colorful gas it was, more like a spirit at the edge of unbridled power. He opened his eyes.

Hardy was smiling, like a friend, like they weren’t getting ready to duke it out, then tensed as he had before, clenched hands raised in the defensive. “Now we’re talking. Hit me.” His deep emerald aura circled around his shoulders, but it wasn’t concentrated, not that way Isaac’s was.

He leapt at Hardy, one fist raised, let a small surge of energy collect at the flat of his fist. He was fast-- Hardy was just faster. Isaac blinked and he was gone. Wait, what? His punch fell limp through the air, hit nothing where he should have hit something. His brain didn’t catch up until a small tap to the back of his head sent him stumbling a few feet forward. Isaac squeaked, and twisted around on his heel, shifting his other foot to catch his fall. He raised one hand to his head and set his eyes on Hardy, who was snickering at him from where he’d once stood, hands in his pockets. He looked innocent. “Hey! Was that really necessary?”

“What? It was a love tap!” Hardy winked.

Isaac bit down on what would have probably been an undignified sound, pink cheeks flaring red. “It was an insult to injury!”

Hardy shrugged, then raised one hand to wave him closer. Once more.

Isaac took the invitation and lunged again. This time, he’d focus on watching Hardy, not hitting him. He readied his fist as before, steadying the stream of lightning itching at the tips of his curled fingers. He threw the punch, Hardy ducked, but this time Isaac was prepared to follow. “Gotcha!” He grinned, following Hardy’s step to the side with his other fist-- might not have been quite as powered as the fake-out, but still enough to land a good hit.

Hardy gripped that fist in one hand.

Isaac’s eyes widened, and he raised his knee to Hardy’s side, only to find himself latched on both sides of his body. Their noses brushed. Hardy was grinning at him, wincing all the same, but grinning. Too close, too close, too close--! Isaac, calm down. He’s having a hard time holding you, right? You can break out of this. “Hey, Red.”

“Stop” Isaac’s nose twitched “calling me that!”

“Would you prefer Strawberry?”

“Shut up!”

His other fist wasn’t powered up anymore, wasn’t cracking with electricity, but his aura still collected there, still flared, and Hardy only had two hands-- he just needed to swing. He took his other hand and aimed for the stomach. Don’t dodge! Isaac kept his eyes on Hardy, squinting but never blinking as his other fist came upon its target. Hardy blinked and looked down, not soon enough, and hissed when Isaac’s punch landed-- but he could have been more hurt. I’m weaker for some reason. Why? Their eyes met, and before Isaac knew it, his back was to the floor, and Hardy had a knee at his chest, towering over him. “I’m impressed you managed to land a hit on me.” Isaac tried to move his wrists, but found both pinned by Hardy’s hands. All at once, he was reminded that a fist-fight with Hardy was probably the equivalent of a fist-fight with Ed-- he had more raw power, but they were trained, molded. He was somehow still learning. “You use electricity, huh? That’s pretty cool.”

“Hardy,” he cringed at the strain in his voice. “You’re a- a jerk. H-has anyone… told you that?”

He chuckled. “All the time.”

Then he paused, brows furrowed, and glanced down at his knee, still lodged into Isaac’s abdomen. “Hey, dude?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you… like, in pain?”

“A great amount, yes.”

“Ah.”

The color drained from Hardy’s face, once wide-toothed, playful grin falling. He moved his leg. Isaac glanced down, trying to see exactly what had caused such a sudden change-- well, blood would certainly do that.

Oh. Oh crap. Blood!

Isaac gaped, body freezing as deep red soaked his shirt, seeping through the seams, dieing the blue stripes an even deeper purple. Hardy’s knee was covered in it, bend of his jeans soaked. Of course he’d been feeling weak earlier… he still hadn’t healed completely. Hardy screeched and jumped up, hands at either side of his head, apologizing and apologizing, eyes wide, moving as if his body had frozen and was thawing under the heat of panic. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I completely forgot about your stitches! Ah!”

Isaac would have sat up, would have told him that, while he was annoyed, he didn’t blame him for forgetting, but his abdomen felt like it was tearing itself apart, which it literally, probably, was. He grunted and raised both arms to cover it, stop the bleeding. It wasn’t as bad as it was when it was fresh, but it sure hurt plenty, more likes a dull knife dragging across his open wound and less like a chainsaw just there all the time.

“What’s all of this racket?”

“Crawford!” Hardy was practically leaping up and down in his frenzy. “I-Isaac! Help Isaac! I didn’t realize--!”

There was a heavy, gruff sigh, and then heavier footsteps against the polished wood of the living room, then the sound of sticky steps as Crawford stepped onto the mat. Isaac yelped as he was hoisted-- yes, hoisted-- over a very broad shoulder, right where the wound was. “Ow!”

“Stop complainin’ or I’ll give you somethin’ to complain about.”

Isaac’s face continued to contort following every degree of pain he was feeling, but he fell silent, crossing his arms indignantly, painfully-- honestly it wasn’t worth the effort, but he did it anyway. Crawford took to the staircase, stopping only to give Hardy a look. What look? Isaac didn’t know. He couldn’t very well see, but Hardy definitely knew the look, and was scared of the look, and snapped into gear with almost military-like rigidness. “Y’lall need to be more careful next time, ya hear me?”

“Yes! Yes sir!”

Crawford was surprisingly good with his hands, for a man of his size and-- Isaac glanced at the size of his bicep-- clear strength. But he handled Isaac’s stitches with kit hands, and on top of it, had him patched up in seconds.  For as painful an injury as it was, for as painful as it was to be reopened, Isaac had been anticipating fix-up to be more straining. Well, that wasn’t to say there was no pain involved, and Crawford had to threaten him a good handful of times, with all the twitching and hissing and jumping he was doing, but it was still not as bad as he’d been expecting it to be. He turned his eyes to the glass-doored cabinet, where Crawford was busying himself scrummaging through the collection of first-aid products. “Clara made a few mistakes the last time she changed your bandages. She used t’ make ‘em too tight, now they’re too dang loose.”

Isaac glanced down at his wound, now open to the world with his blood-soaked shirt discarded somewhere to the side. The stitches were swollen, two lumps of flesh sewn together across the length of his abdomen. It made him uncomfortable looking at it, but morbid curiosity took precedence over disgust. He raised one finger to the blue string weaving in and out of his skin like a hemline, wincing when the feather touch stung.

“Well don’t touch ‘em, ya idiot.”

Isaac smiled awkwardly, apologetically, and Crawford waved him off as he approached the bed, bandages in one hand. “Lift.” Isaac raised his arms, and Crawford bent forward to run the gauze of the wound. It was definitely tighter than when Clara did it, and more uncomfortable, but he could breath, so he wouldn’t complain.

“Where are Miss Rose and Clara?”

“Out picking herbs. I’m gonna teach Clara how t’ make some temp’rary remedies.”

“Wait, you’re the medic?” Crawford cocked an eyebrow, and Isaac laughed-- another nervous tick. “I mean, I guess I just assumed--”

“-- it was Rose? I get that, what with all that nurture bull she pushes,” Crawford tightened the last round of the gauze, reaching to the side for some tape to hold it in place. “But you’d be wrong. She’s a bookworm, not much’ve a field operative.”

“And you are?”

He tapped the scar over his eye, straight down the top lid to the bottom, almost the length of his nose. “One ‘f the best.”

Isaac frowned, reaching up to touch the bandage over his right eye, fingers brushing the edge at the side of his ear. Crawford pulled away and got to cleaning up the mess of the bloodied bandages that’d been tossed to the floor in haste. He was so tense all the time, so on-guard, at least he looked like it. In his time at the boarding school, he’d felt he’d gotten to know everyone, at least to a reasonable degree. He trusted them not to slaughter him in his sleep, and he ate dinner every night with little to no intrusive thoughts about the possibility of the poison and its potential mask as the onion powder dusted over his plate. But Crawford-- Crawford was still a mystery. He kept to himself, kept away from the kids, and scarcely interacted with even Miss Rose. The few times he’d seen him around the school, Crawford was either brooding over a beer in the library (office), preparing dinner with a knife far too sharp to not incite just a bit of fear, or scowling at the occasional sparring match, when Miss Rose had to take a call and wasn’t available. “I just didn’t expect the guy who looks like he stepped straight out of an Old Wild West movie to be the team medic.”

“I learned outta necessity.” Crawford tossed the bloodied bandages in the trash, then twisted the sink on and got to washing his hands, pumping the soap twice.

Isaac frowned. “You’ve been through a lot, huh?”

“You will too, by the time the world’s through with ya.” Isaac turned to the floor, eyeing his hands, running along every scratch, every bite mark, every bit of dry skin that was healing. He’d seen more war, more pain and more power than he’d ever witnessed before in the month he’d been away from home. The spirits in Mayview, they were tame for the most part. Things were quiet. Sure, there was the occasional problem child, but outside the barrier, things were so much worse. He’d been attacked in his sleep by a creature that could shapeshift from one huge claw to a drooling eye with a mouth. He’d seen spirits three times his size swallowed whole and digested like bite-size chocolate bars. And then the monsters-- the one that took that gash out of his stomach, left him bleeding in a city park, nearly made him blind in one eye… he grimaced.

Then, there was a hand at his head, ruffling the spike and mussing his hair until he looked like an unkempt toddler. He blinked, and Crawford was giving him an old-fashioned, country-man grin, having somehow lit a cigar in the time Isaac had been contemplating that sting of fear in his chest. “Just do yourself a favor…” Isaac’s brows furrowed. Crawford’s grin widened. “Make sure the world ain’t done with ya today, or the next if ya can help it!”

He’d lost track of time, lost track of how long he’d been there. A week? He’d stopped counting after Day 14. His wounds were healing… somewhat. His stitches had started to look less like two conjoined clumps and more like blended skin with the tattoo of a string running along pale white. He’d still have to resist pulling on it sometimes, and when he didn’t, Clara would hit him for it. His eye was still bandaged, but Crawford said he’d be clear to remove it in the next week. His food poisoning had long since passed, and he was enjoying the benefit of eating actual meals again-- his muscles and bones had been fading, but he was as healthy and thick at the waistline as he used to be. It helped that Crawford was a good cook.

Miss Rose had trained him a few times, one-on-one; after the sparring incident with Hardy, and a good scolding (complete with parental pointing finger), she elected herself as his partner instead (“Since you kids don’t know how to hold back, yet…”). She was an odd woman, spent most of her time with them instead of musing over spectral artifacts, which was, as he’d understood it, her actual job. Instead, when the three of them managed to wake up in the morning, and somehow manage to carry themselves out of bed after that, Miss Rose was always waiting with some kind of activity for the day-- cryptic-ancient-language translation, spectral shot practice, backyard track running, sprinting, and hurdling, to name a few. And at the end of each day, she’d ride them to brush their teeth and wash their faces. Isaac objected to this the first night, after all, he and Clara were thirteen, and Hardy was sixteen, surely they could manage so much on their own. Miss Rose then gestured avidly to Hardy, and informed him that she’d once thought that, too. With a smile, of course, but Hardy still grew red at his nose and swatted at her.

Hardy was a huge flirt, quick to tease him and poke him and squeeze him half to death if he so happened to feel like it, but he was cool, and nice, and he’d apologized profusely for breaking his wound open. When they were bored, with little else to do, they’d often times lay around on the living room couch, Isaac watching the latest episode of the animes he’d come to miss dearly in his time as a runaway-- felt weird to think that, to acknowledge that was truly what he was, that he matched its definition-- and Hardy lounging back with his feet in Isaac’s lap and his head in Clara’s lap (assuming she didn’t have medical training to attend to) with a magazine in his hands. Not surprisingly, those car-themed magazines had belonged to him.

Clara was a little more like Miss Rose, but not quite. She was headstrong and nosy like their mentor, but she was also bubbly, and a tad ditzy-- she was smart, and just as Hardy was, touchy-feely. When they hung around together, when Hardy was off doing something probably stupid and dangerous, like seeing how many times he could ride the rail down the spiral staircase, he and Clara found time to lay around on their phones together in their joint bedroom. He’d scroll through some fanart and she’d ask him about the show. He’d go for tens or twenties of minutes, just talking avidly about his favorite shows, about the K-Dramas he’d gotten himself invested in somehow. She’d nod along, ask him to repeat names and characters, show her pictures, show her clips. In turn, he’d ask her about her interests, and oddly enough-- she loved superheroes. She had a few favorites, but they were kind of unknown, heroes he’d never really heard of before, but he never told her that. She’d site her favorite comic issues and hand him some of the volumes she owned, stacked not neatly, but organized, on a bookshelf on the wall opposing the bed. She’d watch him read the first few pages until, inevitably, they’d hear a:

THUMP. “Ow!”

Followed by Crawford yelling or Miss Rose nagging. Then, it was usually dinner time.

He liked it. He liked the flow he was in. He like the people around him. He was happy here. But, as he’d always remind himself-- he didn’t leave Mayview to be happy. He was on a mission, he had a purpose. This was a punishment, and as it was he shouldn’t have dwindled there as long as he already had. There were spirits to help, ghosts to cheer up-- he cringed… monsters to take down. There wasn’t a night that went by that he didn’t dream about it, that he didn’t see the way Spender’s face dropped, or the clench of Dimitri’s teeth, or the uncharacteristic frown on Ed’s lips. He heard Isabel yelling at him, knew everything she was saying was right-- about him being a traitor, about him being hopeless, about the fact that he should have been in that cell with them, that he’d nearly gotten them all killed or worse. He deserved to be an outcast. He deserved to be shunned and cast away. He deserved to meet the bloody end of a monster’s claw.

And then he’d feel Max.

He’d feel his finger jabbing at his chest, smell the metal on him and the rust and the hydrogen peroxide below his band-aids. He’d see his narrowed eyes, the danger in them, the anger and hatred and disgust-- everything he knew he’d practically asked for.

“I’ve never cared less about a person in my life. You think you can read me the way everyone else can read you? We’re not even friends.” Isaac cringed every time. “We never were.”

He was there to suffer. He was there to spend however long he lived pushing himself to the very limit, to make up for all the pain and fear he’d caused. Because even if the club didn’t care about him… he wanted what was best for them.

There was humming, soft, sweet, and yet it wasn’t shy. Isaac paused, peeking around the corner. On the other side of the open door, Clara swayed around the room, folding their freshly-cleaned bedsheets with a lack of grace, and she made it look fun. She was certainly the source of the humming, if the music blaring from her small radio was any indication. He took a moment to process the soft rhythm, the fuzziness of the sound, then felt like a total idiot for not having recognized it sooner. Once Upon a Dream. A took a cautious step into the room, careful not to scare her, because he had a feeling a scared Clara was not a fun Clara to deal with, and he still didn’t know what powers she did or did not have. He coughed into his hand, figuring that was polite and unshocking as any greeting could be, and she turned to him, surprised.

Then, a moment later, she grinned at him, and gripped him by the wrists.

He inhaled sharply and she swung him around in a tight circle, and when he opened his eyes, only then realizing they’d been shut, she’d wrapped two ends of the bedsheet around his throat, like a cape. “Wait--! What--?” She ignored him and his unvoiced question, and instead took to setting one his hands at her waist, then took his other hand in the one she hadn’t set at his shoulder. It was like this that they began to sway.

“I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream~!”

“Wait, why are you leading?”

“Because you obviously don’t know how!”

He snorted, then laughed, and that laugh grew even louder, more obnoxious, and Clara danced him around the bedroom. One moment, they were at a corner near the windowseat and the parted curtains, and the next they were adjacent, by the door to the small bathroom the three of them begrudgingly shared. She was quick, and through all of his laughter, it was hard to keep up. He tried to breath, had to struggle to get a word out. “H-hey, I s-still have stitches, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, and they’re pretty much healed, hush.”

The song carried on, and so did they, twisting and turning around the room, ends of the bedsheet flying with every to and fro, with every step they’d take. Clara fell into a fit of giggles not long after he’d stopped, and then he was right back where he was before, breathless.

The next note, Clara let go of his hand, and for a moment he thought the song was over. But the next, his hand was in another, more callous. He jumped back as Hardy took Clara’s place, gratuitously. He took one look at Isaac’s cape and smiled. “Fancy meeting you here, Prince…?”

“You know my name, you dork.”

“That’s an awfully long name, my lord.”

Isaac groaned and Hardy took the lead where Clara left it, moving faster, but rougher, across the bedroom floor. “Why am I always the one being lead?”

“Because you don’t know how to lead.”

“Where did you learn ballroom dancing?”

“Well,” Hardy snickered. “Maybe I don’t know ballroom dancing--” With a flick of his wrist, Isaac twirled to the side, only one hand latched dangerously to Hardy’s. “--But I know the tango!”

Isaac shook his head clear, laughing to himself.

Max. He had to blink thrice. When he opened his eyes, for a moment, just one fantastic, single moment, it was his hand he was holding. He could feel the tips of his fingers brushing like love against the palm of his hand, touch the square of his wrist. The face, oh he missed that face-- the downturn of his cap and the upturn of his lip when he smiled, when he was happy. He was momentarily breathless, watching the world around him spin as Max tugged him in, caught him in a turn, took him closer-- he could have memorized that pale blue in his eyes.

And then his outstretched hands fell to Hardy’s chest, and he was lost again.

Hardy took one look at him and snorted. “What, did I spin you too hard?”

Isaac batted his eyes-- er, tried to clear his head. “Wh-what? No, why’d you ask?” He took a step back, retracting his hands slowly, so no feelings were hurt. That was unreal. He almost felt stupid, guilty, like he’d been fooled twice and went back for a third round. But he hadn’t. There was nothing there but a memory, or some rose-colored version of it, anyway. He just couldn’t seem to shake how naive, how silly he felt. He must have been-- silly, that is. He was dwindling where he shouldn’t have been.

“You’re red, like, super red, man.”

Clara tittered and pressed a finger to his cheek, which he swatted away with one hand, two when she pressed harder. “You’re so cute! You look like ya ate a handful of beets!”

“Maybe I did!”

“I certainly hope not, we need those for dinner tonight. Otherwise we’d have to use you. Chop you up and throw you in some stew, how’s that sound.”

“Awful.”

“Yeah, well so does eating a handful of raw beets, but apparently you did that.”

The cafe was perfect for a writer, really, so it wasn’t a wonder how Suzy found it. Quaint little place atop a small body of water outside the patio. The tables were small, and round, and metal with a clear glass piece set perfectly within its melded edges. Condensation had begun to leave a small circle of wet around the bottom of his cup, filled halfway with iced tea before a waiter came over and refilled him for him. He was mostly done with his cinnamon roll, but Suzy was yet to touch her salad; this was funny, funny as in odd, considering it’d been her idea to come to her favorite little cafe.

She sat across from him, elbows on the table as she stabbed at salad with her fork. She’d been quiet, for a while now, and it wasn’t just for the duration of their meal. She’d been this way, or the opposite end (louder, more rambunctious, bossier than usual), for a good month now, or a little over. Collin scowled, leaning back in his chair because he knew some explanation was coming, probably. Sure enough, she turned her gaze to him, big eyes looking tired, and dull. Not her, not like her at all. Her lips parted, and he fixed his attention on her-- she had to have his full attention. Anything less, and he’d be sorry. He was sure of it. This was Suzy.

“Hey, Collin?”

“Hmm?” It was coming, the big reveal, the reason she’d been even bossier than normal--

“It’s been two weeks.” She frowned, and looked back to her salad, stabbing, perhaps with more vehemence, at a cherry tomato that’d earlier escaped the wrath of her fork’s pointed ends. “They still haven’t found him.”

Collin sighed. Guess he’d underestimated her tendency to project. Well, if nobody else is gonna sit her down and ask, guess it’s up to me… per usual. He leaned forward, crossing his arms over the table. With one hand, he set his plate and cup to the side. “Hey, Suzy? Ya wanna just tell me what’s actually bothering you?”

She blinked, and for a moment, when their eyes met, she looked scared. But in the next she had covered it up with that look of hers-- the nasty one, the one that scared anybody but him, him and Dimitri. He had a feeling that the salad would have cowered, had it been sentient. “That is what’s bothering me!”

“I mean, yeah, it’s one thing, but it’s not what’s bothering you the most.”

Her hand paused amidst the brutal stabbing of a helpless carrot, coming to a rest at the side of the plate. She was silent again, and that always unnerved him, more than anything. He kept an eye on her, watched the way her hair fell into her face, how she didn’t reach up to fold it behind her ear like always. She looked to him, and frowned, and set both her hands in her lap. The tips of her ears turned red, and though her face read serious, it wasn’t intentionally threatening. In fact, she looked almost… Collin leaned further in. “You are never to repeat what I’m about to say to anybody, do you understand me?”

He raised one hand. “Journalist’s integrity.” Suzy’s cheek blew up. He smiled. “My honor.”

The red of her ears spread to her nose, but she snorted, and smiled, and he knew he’d given her reassurance. Soon enough, she sobered up, she frowned again, and her eyes fell to the hands she’d clasped together in her lap. “It’s Dimitri. I… miss him.” He hummed, brows furrowing, but he nodded for her to go on. “Ever since we found out he was a spectral, it just feels like,” she grew quiet. “It just feels like we never really knew him, you know? Like our entire” she waved one hand around, realized she was stalling, and set it back in her lap “thing was a lie.”

He squinted. “Our friendship?”

“Yeah!”

Collin sighed, and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Oh, Suzy.”

“I mean, the proof is in the pudding! He’s out having adventures with the activity club all the time now!” Her hands parted to wave around frantically; he might have been embarassed had he not been so used to being publicly humiliated-- by Suzy. “He never drops by alone, ya know? It’s like, I don’t know. It’s like he never really let us get to know him to begin with so,” her eyes grew dim again, fingers clutching and kneading one napkin that lay unused between them. “So how could I expect him to, ya know… remember us?”

Perhaps he was momentarily delirious, or maybe she’d simply driven him insane. He’d even entertained the idea that somebody slipped something into his always-dutifully-full iced tea when he wasn’t looking. Whatever happened, it was a lapse in sanity, and he’d do well to avoid another such situation.

He reached over and took her hand in his own, in surprise, she dropped the napkin. Her wide blue eyes were on him, watching him, he felt it, he knew it, so he glanced away, coughed into his free hand. Mayview wasn’t supposed to be getting hotter, was it? They were riding the tail end of fall! How funny that, right then, he felt he needed a fan. “You’re overthinking it.”

“Huh?” Her voice was so small right then, so innocent-sounding, so unlike her. It made his entire body shiver.

“Spectral or no, Dimitri is Dimitri. I’m sure he’s just spending some time catching up with them, so don’t worry about it, okay?”

Why would he even say that. He had no clue. He’d thought the same thing, wondered how Dimitri was doing, how he was doing-- if he planned on ever coming back. They ran into each other often enough, but Isabel (and sometimes Max) were always close behind, like a clique. Suzy was right, he hardly ever came around anymore. Lunchtime (with Isabel and Max) was about the extent of their interactions. Who was he to tell her what was going on in Dimitri Danger’s head? Nobody! Nobody knew! The guy was a legend wrapped up in mystery, all laced together with a pretty bow tied in cryptic knots. He was lying to her! Straight up deceiving her! And for what?

Suzy squeezed his hand, then pulled back, setting the backs of her wrists at the edge of the table, fingers curling in. He hesitated to move his own, fingers twitching, then hiding in his palm.

“If that were true, wouldn’t he… try to stop by the clubroom once in awhile?”

What was he supposed to say? He agreed with her. She was right. For once in Suzy’s life, she was right, logic exceeded stubbornness, and it couldn’t have chosen a worse time.

He fell silent, words left him. All he could do was sit there and mourn with her.

Evening had fallen over the boarding school before he knew it, and sometimes, evenings meant laying back on the windowseat, feet splayed over Clara’s lap while Hardy’s head leaned against the side of his leg. He could hardly read a word of the book Miss Rose lent him (about mediums, mainly, and some other basics he hadn’t caught onto before) in the light of the setting sun, but it was relaxing-- he could fall asleep under an orange hue forever. Clara was taking a quiz, one of the bad ones from the preteen magazines she kept asking Miss Rose for when she went food-shopping. Hardy well--

Isaac winced as the bulky end of the yo-yo came around to smack him in the face. He hissed and glared over the side at Hardy, who was waving an apology and giving him the best sorry-looking face he could probably muster.

Yes. He was too content.

He had to remind himself-- he didn’t deserve this, he didn’t deserve this. And nobody around him knew what he had done. Sometimes he thought about telling them, and that daydream brought him fear, fear and somehow relief. He could never really understand that part. Maybe it was the burden of keeping a secret, not that he’d been trying, things just happened. Something told him that wasn’t it, though. Maybe he wanted to be outcased, punished, kicked out on the street like he’d planned all along.

He knew he deserved it.

But at the same time, why’d he have to tell them when he could just leave? What good would it do? They’d know they’d nursed a traitor back to health. They’d know they’d saved a person who should have been wiped from the world because he couldn’t tend to his own wounds-- natural selection. No, there really wasn’t a reason to tell them, no reason to burden them with that guilt. He’d just have to wait until his wounds were healed, sneak away in the dark. Teenagers did it all the time in the movies, how bad could it be?

“Ah! Hardy!”

“Sorry!” Clara raised her foot where his yo-yo had nailed her, right at the ball, and gave him a swift, scolding kick to the head. “Ow!”

“Don’t be sorry. Be better!”

“Okay, okay!”

Isaac exhaled through his nose and smiled. Well, maybe I’ll stick around a little longer.

Three knocks, solid and authoritative, came from the front door. Each of them perked up, heads twisting to the bedroom door, which sat ajar. Clara readjusted her glasses. “Well, that’s odd. Nobody visits us unless they’re, ya know, Cousinhood, and we have a secret knock.”

“Well,” Hardy shrugged, sticking his yo-yo in the back pocket of his jeans. “They might be new?”

No, I doubt it. If they’re as secretive as the Consortium was… Isaac frowned and leaned behind Clara, reaching to move the blinds she’d been snuggling under so he could see. “Hey! What the--?”

“Sorry.”

Just a little bit further, a little further, until-- there! He pressed his face to the class, hoping to catch a glimpse of the front door. Who could it be? Some guy who got lost in the woods, maybe? An angry squirrel throwing nuts? He finally got the right angle, could finally see just who was, quite angrily, pounding on the front door to what should have been a small private boarding school.

He wasn’t expecting to see Mister Spender.

He gasped and fell backwards, sliding from the windowseat with no grace. Hardy and Clara watched him with mild interest, mild concern, and he scurried away from the window, climbing to the bedroom door on all fours. Crap, crap, crap, crap! How? How was he here? He did he find him? No, calm down, Isaac. Maybe he’s not here for you. Maybe this is something entirely different. Still. There was a chance, a chance Mister Spender could see him, that he’d want to drag him home-- but he couldn’t go yet. He had to hide.

He came to sit at the top of the staircase, back pressed to the wall just before the second floor ended and the walk to the first floor began. Hopefully Mister Spender couldn’t see the top of the staircase from the front door…

“Isaac?”

“AH!”

He jumped, then covered his mouth with both hands. Clara tilted her head at him, and Hardy moved closer. They’d taken to huddling beside him, pressing their hands to the wall to keep them steady in their crouched positions. Hardy’s nose brushed his hands where they covered his big, unhelpful mouth, so he inched back. “What’s going on?”

He gestured for them to be quiet, and lay low, so they copied him and took to wall-clinging. Isaac glanced around the corner to find see Miss Rose looking out through the peephole, where she undoubtedly was seeing his old history teacher. Isaac swallowed hard. “That guy knocking on the door is Mister Spender, somebody from the Consortium!”

“And why is that a problem?” Clara kept her voice low, even if she didn’t understand, and right then, he couldn’t have been more thankful.

“Because,” he squeezed his hands tight and grinded his teeth. “If he sees me, if Miss Rose tells him I’m here, he’s gonna take me back to Mayview, and--and--!” From down below, he could hear the sound of the door opening, and the high-pitch of a woman’s greeting voice.

To say Rose was surprised to see a Consortium agent behind the door was inaccurate. To say she was surprised to see one so soon, on the other hand…

With the way the kid had been talking, for how long he’d been away from home with no Consortium interference, she hadn’t anticipated a visit for another five months, a year if she was pushing it. For a moment she doubted he was one, an agent. After all, they were in a home in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere, perhaps he’d gotten himself lost and was in need of assistance? Well, it hadn’t happened before, but there was a first time for everything.

She glanced him over again; no, this man was different. He was nervous, lips drawn between his teeth, not relieved, not smiling to find someone else. His clothes were too clean, shirt too tucked in the waist of his pants, shoes and pants unmuddied from the slip and fall terrain. No, he’d entered the woods and known exactly where he was going.

Rose cocked an eyebrow, set her hands at her hips, like he was an old friend, like she didn’t know why he was here. “Hello!”

He was glaring at her, but she could tell he was keeping himself level, struggling to, anyway. She could expect a civil conversation, but beneath that was an anger, a righteous anger she’d known scarcely. She straightened up; it was unsettling, but she was no wallflower.

He took a deep breath, but she watched his fists clench at his sides. “Good evening, my name is Richard Spender.” He either didn’t think the Cousinhood knew who he was, or was playing dumb to avoid immediate conflict. She knew who him by name, but by name alone. He was Mayview’s Defender, its own stubborn hero. Anything else, well, anyone in her line of friends had yet to meet him. As always, she’d be the first, she might have felt honored had she taken a moment to let that sink in. Something was important enough that the legend had come to her directly, important enough he’d willingly left his beloved city. Perhaps this visit wasn’t what she thought it’d be. He paused a moment, probably just nervous. Rose didn’t blame him, relations were tight. She crossed her arms, showed him she was listening, so he continued. “A few months ago, one of my students went missing.”

His students? I don’t recall Richard Spender being named a spectral master. Oh. Oh, of course. That made so much sense! That’s why Isaac knew him by name! That’s why he was here, personally. Her eyes widened, but she rid her face of it. Letting an opposing agent read you, it was a mistake, one she couldn’t help but notice he was still making. Either way, the focus of the visit was exactly what she thought it would be.

“My, how unfortunate.”

His eyes narrowed behind his shades, and she gave him a smile. “Yes… you see, the authorities tracked him to the Michitan City area, where he left a trail.” Yeah. Of blood. “But soon after, he somehow disappeared.”

“Get to the point. We both know there’s something you’re not saying.”

Spender blinked, seemingly taken aback. He was an odd man; for someone with so much power, he was gentle, and came off weak. He recovered in a moment, shook himself straight, and she watched him grow stiffer than before. “My… colleagues and I, we traced him to Catriona Barrett’s old residence, which I am aware was confiscated after your people recovered an artifact on the premises.” She straightened up, well aware of where this was going. “If my assumptions are correct, and my student wandered onto Cousinhood property…”

“You think we have your kid.”

His voice lowered, dangerously; the real Richard Spender stood before her. “And he needs to come back home.”

[iamwhelmed]

Win One, Have Two: Chapter 6

*rubbing hands together* Oh boy, I’ve been waiting for this one for awhile. If you’ve read some of my other fanfic, you might be familiar with the OCs introduced in this chapter ;) (I’ve been waiting for FOREVER to say that!) Anyway, hope you guys enjoy! Thanks for reading!

On AO3

On Fanfiction.net

“You’re insane!” Spender sighed. As a friend of Mina Zarei’s, for most of his life, he’d expected her to, well, “go off” on him, and he’d known what he was getting himself into when he called her and asked to meet immediately. That didn’t necessarily make handling her any easier. “Taking the train out of Mayview right now? It could take weeks to find your student! Maybe months!” She paced in circles around the street corner they’d met at, waving her arms around as she spoke. “And even if it doesn’t, I could manage all of two trips passed the barrier! A third trip if we’re feeling unimaginably lucky! And there are other agents, of much higher priority, that need to enter and exit this town!”

“I’m well aware. I’ll return the children home once the weekend is over. Should we not find Isaac by then, I’ll continue searching on my own. My mission is to save him, we can wait to find a way to bring him home.”

Zarei fell silent beside him. He exhaled and watched the cold of the air turn his breath to a white, rounded cloud, then tugged his scarf over his mouth. The temperature was beginning to drop in their neck of the woods, and it only worried him more. Bleeding? Wounded? And freezing? How could I let this happen…

“Fine. I will offer my assistance this once, and just this once.” Zarei scoffed and mumbled something under her breath, expression of disbelief along with some choice curse words, he thought he might have overheard. “You’d do well to keep in mind that Isaac O’Connor left Mayview of his own volition, Richard. He wasn’t kidnapped.”

His eye twitched. “He couldn’t have gotten outside the city alone.” He turned his sharp eyes on her, and she squinted back at him. “For all we know, somebody else left the note.”

Her eyes widened, and her jaw dropped before it became firm, teeth grinding together. “You-- I know you are not insinuating--!”

“You just seem awfully intent on keeping me behind this barrier! Why would you have reason to be so darn difficult if you weren’t the one who aided in his escape!”

She leveled him with a glare, nose scrunching, corner of her lip curling like it was shriveling. Her aura swayed over her head, over her shoulders, but he remained unyielding, yellow creeping off of his skin. She seemed to think about something, he saw the thought process bubbling by like boiling water, before it evaporated, along with her aura. Her hands fell limp at her sides, and she shook her head. “I’m merely keeping our runaway in mind. That boy is no weakling, and he doesn’t want to be found. Experience or not, you’ll gain injury bringing him home.”

Spender deflated. His aura dissipated, and the tenseness, like bricks, over his shoulders crumbled away, along with the anger, the suspicion. He frowned at her, brows furrowing. “I’m sorry. I should have known you were only worried for my safety.”

She scoffed, and he couldn’t tell if the blush of her skin was a result of the cold air, or the natural wall of his old friend Mina Zarei. “Who says I was worried? You’re merely a patient, and it is my professional code to prevent and repair any harm that may come to you.” She sighed, and shrugged that conversation off. “You don’t need to apologize.Your paternal instincts have rushed you into a blind panic.” Spender hoped Zarei gave his colored skin the same cold-air excuse he’d given her, but he knew he felt heat rising to his face.

“Wh-what? Whatever do you mean?”

Zarei chuckled, readjusting her scarf so that it covered more than just the skin of her lower collarbone. She was smiling at him, sardonically, and that always meant trouble for him. “You’ve never been one to take a job leasuriley. Your intentions were never those of a mentor.”

He winced, and tugged at the collar of his heavy jacket.

Isaac stirred at the sunlight spilling in between two semi-closed curtains.

He should have had a headache, or at least a sore spot at the back of his skull, what with the blow to the head and all, but it was resting against what felt like a fluffy feathered pillow-- like the one he had at home. His eyes, that had been squinting at the light of the window beside the bed he laid upon, opened fully. Home? He couldn’t have been home? I’ve gotta--! He tried to raise one hand to his head, and found his mind was far more awake than his body; his fingers twitched, but his arm wouldn’t move. The near-constant nausea he’d been experiencing was but an extremely unpleasant memory, and the damp bandages that’d covered his body were completely dry, or maybe they were brand new? How long had he been out?

Isaac took a deep breath and urged his body to sit up. To his relief, it listened, and with will alone, he pressed the palms of his hands to the bed and raised his chest from the mattress.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

He jumped, falling back against the bed with a yelp. He nibbled on the inside of his bottom lip, turning his head cautiously to the door at his right. A girl stood at the threshold, leaning against the wooden paneling as she tapped the butt-end of her pencil against a clipboard. His first thought was that she was a nurse, and that he was in a hospital of some sort-- but that didn’t fit. She wasn’t in the normal nurse scrubs, she wore no gloves, and he was sure the pleated skirt she was wearing wasn’t hospital-safe-attire. The biggest giveaway, more than her casual state of dress, was her age; she couldn’t have been any older than him, actually.

Her eyes drifted from the board to him, almost teasingly, if he was reading her smile correctly. “You had three different infections in your abdomen, arm, and eye, not to mention food poisoning, and you were halfway to death’s door when we found you. Blood loss and all that…” She set the board on the desk at the side of the door in stride, and approached him like he was an old friend, not a stranger. He instinctively curled up, pulling his body away from that side of the bed. She took a small pen out of her pocket, twirling it between her fingers before flicking on the light at the end. She held it over his eye, which he was just noticing was unbandaged, and he shut it. “Ah, ah! Don’t do that. I need to see. Open.” He didn’t know why, but he listened, and she took his chin in her free fingers and pulled the light back, and then pressed it closer. “You nearly lost your eye, ya know. Be thankful ya didn’t, you were awfully close to it.”

He resisted the urge to blow a raspberry at her. “Who are you?”

Satisfied with whatever it was she saw, she tucked the pen away. “Oh, whoops. Yeah, guess I should have said something earlier. Sorry, dramatic effect and all.” She gave him a smile, less teasing and more friendly. She smiled at him the way someone would had they been assigned partners for a science project, the way someone would smile if they were being introduced by a mutual friend. She held out a hand to him, nails suspiciously manicured for somebody who treated wounds… assuming she was, actually, responsible for his care. When he hesitated to respond, she reached out and took his hand in her own and shook it. “I’m Clara Appleby. Fellow spectral and nurse-in-training!”

Wait. Fellow spectral?

Isaac snatched his hand away, heart plummeting in his chest like she’d tied an anchor to it in a sea of- of-- fear, panic, paranoia. “Wait, how did you--? Does that mean you’re going to--?”

“Confine you to the bed for a few day’s rest?” She shrugged. “Whatever is best for your wounds which, by the way, are now wrapped correctly.”

He swallowed hard. Did that mean the woman from before was an agent of whatever secret gathering Spender had been a part of? Was she sent to capture and return him? No. It had to have been a coincidence. There’s no way I’m important enough for that…

“Was there” he leaned up a little further, enough to draw Clara’s eye, but not enough to warrant a scolding finger in his face. “Was there a woman involved? A woman who-- who found me? I remember--”

Clara was nodding before he could even finish, cupping one hand over her mouth.

“MISS ROSE!”

“-- a woman?”

His hands were on his ears even as the last words left him, and soon after, the booming sound of footsteps came clamoring to the door. Then she was there, bending over the doorway, heaving, the last face he remembered. Her leather jacket was falling off her shoulders, leaving one string of her purple tank up and one falling down the side of her arm. She had one hand on the hinge of the door and the other on her bare knee, and she looked exacerbated. “Clara, don’t you do that unless it’s an emergency!”

Clara shrugged. “Hey, new kid woke up! Said he wanted to see you.” She gave him another wave and parted through the door, the woman-- Miss Rose-- sliding in as she slid out.

Things were silent for a moment, and Isaac took that time to observe his surroundings, since this was, decidedly, not his bedroom (thank goodness). The walls were olive green, very different from the pale blue of his wallpaper. The room was small, and only fit the bed he was in, a glass-door cabinet-- filled with varying medicines, bandages, ointments…) at the foot of it, and a desk to the side, but it was homey, comfortable. He would have taken a glance out the window, but that would have required sitting up more, and he had a feeling, if the dull pain in his stomach was any indication, that to do so would mean a world of pain.

The woman-- again, Miss Rose, he probably should remember that-- looked to him, crossing her arms casually across her chest, using a hand to brush a strand of raven silk out of her face. “So, how ya feeling, kid? Isaac, right? I’ve seen you on the news--”

“You work for the people Spender works for, don’t you?”

Miss Rose seemed startled, she blinked, then snorted. “Richard Spender? No. Gross. Actually, I’m with a group called the Cousinhood. Heard of ‘em?”

“No…” Isaac turned away from her, setting one hand in his lap, at legs that still felt so tired and so weak, and the other at his wrist. “What’s the difference?”

“Well,” she came over to sit at the foot of his bed, crossing her legs, though her body was twisted to face him. “The people you’re talking about are the Consortium.” She set one hand at his leg, just above his foot, and he moved like she’d burnt him. He expected a look, a change in expression-- irritation? Disappointment maybe? She only smiled and retracted her hand. “Anyway, the people I work for don’t usually… like those people. But we coexist most of the time.”

Okay, so if she doesn’t have a reason to know who I am, then--? “How did you know I was a spectral?”

“I saw your aura when those police cars passed by.”

Oh. Isaac bit down on both his lips, red tingeing his cheeks. Miss Rose chuckled, and whatever embarassment he felt before skyrocketed well passed acceptable levels. He hated being in the activity club because of this exact feeling. Seemed he couldn’t escape it. Still, even if he didn’t end up in a hospital, or at home, surrounded by cops and paparazzi, he’d still be found, and by a spectral no less. The situation was just as bad as it had been before, except he’d been presumably stitched up, so physically, he supposed he was in a better position than he might have been before. “So, are you taking me back to Mayview?” He might have had a chance if he had to fight, at least a better one than he would have had fighting her earlier. He balled his hands into fists, legs tensing under the covers; he had to be ready to move.

Miss Rose hummed, placing one contemplative finger under her chin. “Well, that’s probably a good idea, as not taking you back may just add fuel to fire with the whole unspoken war we’ve got going on,” Isaac grimaced and shut his eyes tightly, he’d have to fight her “-- but who the heck cares? I mean, you ended up here for a reason, didn’t ya?” Wait, what? He turned his wide eyes on her, and when she reached out to pat his head with a smile, he let her. Her touch was soft, kind, warm like a mother’s. He’d forgotten what that felt like, to feel a hand that gentle on his head. His nose twitched, and Miss Rose tittered to herself. “Well, I should go help Crawford with dinner. He gets so pouty when he has to do it all himself. Come join us when you’re ready! I’ve got some people I want you to meet.”

He wasn’t wearing the jeans, shirt, or jacket he had been the day he left Mayview (for good reason, probably, they were covered in blood and worse), and when he glanced down at the blue button-up nightshirt and pants, it was odd to think about complete strangers undressing and dressing him-- even weirder to think about a girl doing it, if Clara had any part in piecing him back together. He’d stayed in bed for another hour or so, just laying there, resting. He wondered if they’d found his cellphone in his back pocket, and if they had a charger for it at all. It was silly, but some part of him still felt the urge to check the web for the latest episodes of an anime or two he’d picked up the weeks before he’d taken off. He’d missed an entire month of episodes, after all. Something cool might have happened.

It was the smell of dinner that gave him the will to get out of bed. He smelled pepper, and garlic, and cheese, surprisingly, thankfully, no meat. He didn’t know how to politely decline after all these strangers had done for him, turning his nose up at hospitality might have been hard. His stomach was growling at him, at he was reminded that he still hadn’t eaten anything for two days, let alone how long he might have been out. For all he knew, it’d been far longer than just two days. “Okay, c’mon Isaac, you can do this.” He took a few deep breaths, then pushed himself up off the bed. His abdomen was screaming at him, dull pain becoming heavy. He fought against it, squeezing his eyes shut as he pulled up, pulled forward. Eventually he came to a seated position, legs hanging over the side of the bed. There were slippers he hadn’t noticed before, and he gratefully placed each foot in either one.

He left the room and looked to both sides, finding that, to the right, there was more of a hallway to explore, one door across the hall from him, one to his right, and then another diagonal to that room at the very end of the hall. To his left was a twisting staircase and, if his nose was correct, that was the way to the kitchen. He placed one hand on the wall and took careful steps toward the stairs, taking in the decoration around him. The walls were a mustard yellow, but the paneling was wooden and white and polished. There were no pictures or paintings to speak of, but there was a coffee table with a neat vase, filled with a single lily, jutting out the top, alongside a picture frame of what appeared to be Miss Rose-- younger, his age. She was grinning to the camera with her arm around a tan boy, who seemed less than pleased to be snapping a picture. Between them, there was a smaller girl, still his age, but she seemed to-herself, bookish maybe. Wide-rimmed, rounded glasses did that to a person. It was the only picture in his line of sight.

He carried on down the stairs, hand clenching the railing so tight, he thought his nails might draw lines in the paint. Each step was slow, and scary, and quite a few times his body spazzed and his grip on the railing lessened. He paused, and took another breath, and continued. One foot after the other, until eventually he came to set a foot on the deep brown wood of what appeared to be the living room. A lime green couch sat before a stone-adorned fireplace, a small TV hanging upon the wall. There was a yellow carpet set below, and over it was another coffee table. This one was covered in neatly-placed remotes, some more pictures, which appeared to be of Clara and another kid, little older than them. There were two or three there, standing in frames beside a pile of teen magazines and, Isaac squinted, magazines with cars on the front? Huh. Behind the couch was a wide open floor with a large mat thrown down, probably for sparring, considering the spectral thing and all. And beyond that matt was the front door. He turned his head; the garlic and pepper and salt smell was wafting from the room to his right.

He pressed on to the kitchen, still careful, though he’d forgone his hold on the wall. The first thing he saw was a sliding glass door, leading to a wide open, grassy field on the other side of the room, and the rectangular dining table nestled between the open kitchen and that door. Clara was sitting at the very end of the table, legs crossed, as she occupied herself in deep conversation with-- whoever that was, the weird beanie-wearing kid sitting across from her. Closest to Isaac were the counters, fridge, and literal cowboy standing there piling a mixture from a bowl into hollowed red and green peppers. Isaac closed his eyes, pinched the back of his hand, and opened them again; nope, cowboy was still there, large hat, guns at either hip, large buckle, boots and all.

That was when Clara noticed him, and she briefly jumped out of her conversation to lean forward and greet him. “Hey! Miss Rose gave you the clear to get out of bed, huh? Get over here!”

Isaac glanced from Clara, to the cowboy, and sighed because somehow the weirdness of Mayview had followed him.

He padded across the tile floor to the table, and the stranger wearing the beanie twisted around in his seat, one arm slung over the back of the chair. His eyes were dark brown, the darkest Isaac had ever seen, and he had a smug, cheerful grin on his face when he offered him a hand. “Isaac, right? Hardy Deering.”

Isaac raised a hand, hesitantly, then went ahead and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Hardy, I guess.”

“Oh uh,” Hardy’s grin turned sheepish, and he tugged at the bottom of his beanie. “Deering.”

“Hardy.”

He turned and gave Clara a glare. She only grinned and reached over to pat the chair next to her. “Come sit by me!” Isaac turned to give the odd cowboy another glance before slowly carrying himself over to the seat. Hardy turned back around to face them, and Isaac took another second to glance around the room.

“So, um, what is this place?”

“One of the Cousinhood’s bases” Hardy shrugged “but to the rest of the world, we’re a small, independent boarding school.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow. “Wait, what? Why a boarding school?”

Clara leaned forward, setting her chin in her cupped hands. Isaac had her full attention, and he wasn’t 100% sure how to feel about that. He never had anybody’s full attention, let alone a stranger’s. Hardy seemed more casual, chiller maybe. More like Max. “I mean, if you were a normal person, and you didn’t know about all this spectral stuff” she waved her hand in a circular motion “wouldn’t you find it a little creepy that there’s a fully grown woman lugging around a bunch of kids she clearly has no relation to? It was either boarding school or orphanage.”

“And, if she finds a kid with abilities,” Hardy was toying with a pair of headphones, which were tangled around his neck like a necklace, fingers spinning one bud around and around. “Parents rarely want to relinquish all rights just ‘cause some lady wants their kid. Legal system doesn’t take too kindly to kidnap, so…”

“The Consortium has one, too.”

“The Consortium?” Wasn’t that the secret agency Mister Spender worked for? “Are you talking about the Activity Club?”

“Yeah! So you do know it!” Clara pointed at the cowboy with her thumb “When Miss Rose and Crawford heard about it, they figured they’d level the playing field and start collecting spectral kids, ya know?”

Hardy mumbled under his breath. “Start teachin’ ‘em young.”

“Wait,” Isaac glanced between the two, “So they’re basically grooming you guys to become Cousinhood agents? That’s-- something about that seems wrong!”

Clara looked to the ceiling, head bouncing back and forth as she weighed what he said with what she knew. “Yeah, but that’s why the Consortium does it, too.”

That’s not--! Isaac went to retort, but found that he really didn’t have anything to say. He didn’t know anything about the Consortium, and that was their fault anyway. Who was he to jump to their defense? Who was he even trying to defend? Spender? Well, I guess it’s my fault they were keeping information from me, anyway. It’s not my place to judge. I don’t even know who came up with the club idea. Sounds like it’s a new thing? He placed his hands on the table, moving to stand up. “I’m going to go to the bathro--” It happened fast, faster than he could catch. He felt something drift between his thighs, and when he glanced down, he found a steak knife, protruding out of the chair between his legs-- it’d barely missed. Isaac squeaked, and made a move to jump out of the way of any other sharp kitchenware flying his way, raising his forearms over either side of his head.

“You’re gonna sit your butt back down.” His eyes met the cowboy’s, and he was unsettled to see the sharp eyes of fatal intent staring back at him. He readjusted his hat, and gestured pointedly at the seat. “Dinner’s ready.”

Isaac alternated his gaze from the knife, to the man, then reached down and grabbed the handle of the knife, pulling it out with a little bit of force, before plopping back down into the seat. Content with that, the man returned to slipping on oven mitts before bending down to open the oven. Isaac only watched, mildly horrified, as a complete stranger, who only seconds ago played target practice with his limbs, pulled stuffed peppers from the oven and gave them a hearty sniff before setting them atop the counter to serve. Hardy leaned over, whispering to Isaac indiscreetly.

“You should see what he does when you don’t clear off the table.”

Miss Rose chose that moment to enter the room, running a towel over her head. She glanced over to Isaac, giving him a small, warm smile, and a wave in greeting. When she noticed the stuffed peppers were done, and the cowboy was using a spatula to place them on plates, she grinned from ear to ear and set the towel around her neck. “Smells delicious! Let’s eat!”

“Are you sure you packed everything?”

Max groaned, doing his best to stuff the already towering mountain of shirts and jeans and metal into his backpack. “Yes, Dad. I’m sure.” He’d noticed, with some curiosity and some irritation, that his father, in all his good intentions, had become much more accustomed to being a dad than he had in all of Max’s twelve years of life. In fact, he dared say he’d become too accustomed-- almost Helicopter Dad accustomed. It was almost like the monster attack on the school had changed him, freaked him out so much that he felt Max had to be in his line of sight 24/7, and though Max appreciated the overwhelming love and responsibility that radiated off his dad constantly now, he couldn’t help but be concerned his dear father was taking things a little too far.

“Your toothbrush?”

“Yes.”

“Your charger?”

“Yes.”

“Your--?”

“Dad, look, I’m packed! I promise!” Max sighed, slipping his arm through the sleeve of his bag, tugging the strap over his shoulder. His eyes met the anxious, dread-filled pair of his father, and it took everything in him to glance away, to not agree to stay home. This was too important. Isaac was in trouble, bad trouble, the kind he’d stayed up at night thinking about. “You should” he tugged the other strap over his arm “trust Mister Spender more. He’s been doing this a long time.”

“Max,” His dad came up behind, somehow managing to stuff his clothes and toiletries, which were still pouring over the side, into the bag, dragging the zipper up to secure the mess that was sure to spring on Max later, like a jack-in-the-box, when he readied himself for bed that night. “As much as I’d like to believe that this Mister Spender is a- a master jedi or something, I just” he set his hands on Max’s shoulders and turned him around so they were face-to-face, and Max wondered if he knew he was giving him the parental equivalent of puppy-dog eyes. “I just don’t know if I can trust this man yet.”

“Dad, I’ll be fine. We’re just going to look for Isaac!”

“And Isaac has weather powers, right?” Zoey came around the corner, holding a can of generic soda, popping it open with her thumb and pointer finger. “What if he tries to fry you?”

Max frowned and closed his eyes.

“We’re not even friends. We never were.”

He’d said it one second, and the next, Isaac’s fist, and Isabel’s hand, were taking up his entire vision. He blinked, and Isaac’s eyes met his. He could see the anger, the rage-- he watched it all fade away, like somebody had taken a needle to a balloon and watched the air drift out and deflate. Anger turned to guilt, and rage turned to horror. Isaac went from an unstoppable force of judgement and nature to a fragile, trembling boy. Right in front of his eyes.

Max opened his eyes. “Isaac wouldn’t do that.” Never again.

Twenty minutes later, after his dad had just about exhausted all of his probing questions (and Max’s patience), he’d walked his son out to the car. Max tilted his cap and said goodbye, walking around the front of the car to open the passenger door and climb in. Spender rolled down the window and greeted Dad Puckett with an awkward grin. Puckett smiled and said hello, just as awkwardly.

Spender went in for a handshake, Puckett went for a high-five. They both noticed, and slowly tried to transition into what the other was doing. Spender raised his hand vertically and Puckett moved to set his hand horizontally, and their hands just brushed each other. They pulled back, chuckling even though neither found the situation at all humorous. They both read the other’s mind and went in for a fist-bump-- only to miss by an inch. At that point, they both gave up the pleasantries and shied away.

“Max!” Ed called up to the front seat from the middle of the backseat, smushed between Dimitri and Isabel. “Dimitri is touching me! I wanna switch seats!”

Dimitri raised an eyebrow, turning from the window to his peer. “You’re the one with a finger in my personal bubble. ‘Sides it doesn’t work that way.”

Max leaned further back into the front passenger seat, slumping down for good measure. “I’m sitting as far away from you all as possible. I don’t want to risk your uncoolness slipping off on me.”

Dad Puckett smiled at his son, then exhaled heavily. “Mister Spender. I’m hoping Max will return in one piece.”

The gawky smile on Spender’s face fell to a frown, and he nodded to confirm he’d heard the word of a concerned parent. It was, after all, his job as a teacher. “I promise you, I will never intentionally put your son in danger.”

Dad Puckett laughed under his breath, raising a hand to run through the hair that was loose from his messy ponytail. “I don’t want promises you won’t put him in danger, I want your word you’ll keep him out of it, too.”

Spender blinked, and before he could process what Puckett had said, he was pulling away from the window. Silently, unsurely, Spender rolled the window back up, then lifted his foot from the brake. The car started with no problem, and drove away, leaving only Dad Puckett standing behind, watching as his son drove off.

“Stop the car!” Ed was in the middle of a fit, throwing his arms around the car in screaming like a child-- probably because it was making Isabel laugh, though Max and Spender were more or less feeling grinded by the noise. “I have to pee! I have to pee!” Isabel was cackling, holding her sides and bending over, and Ed was almost intentionally throwing his fists, softly, in her direction. She batted him off, but that made it all the more difficult to keep her giggles in check. Dimitri was unfazed, if he noticed Ed’s fake tantrum at all with his headphones on.

Spender groaned, fingers tapping rhythmically on the steering wheel. “Ed, please. We just left Mayview thirty minutes ago. It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

Ed paused in his fit, setting his hands at his knees. “Okay, but no, seriously, I really need to pee.”

Spender slammed his forehead against the wheel, then looked back at the road. It took them a minute, maybe a minute thirty-seconds, but they came across a convenience store, empty and unburdened by cars and people, aside from a single truck pulled up near the employee entrance, and a police car parked by the front doors. He pulled into the spot furthest from the door, then gestured for everyone to get out. “Don’t take too long, children. Isaac is waiting for us!”

The convenience store was no more impressive than any that might have been found in Mayview-- even less impressive than the one Max lived in, actually. His convenience store had an entire upper floor with a sweet family room pit. Good luck topping that… not that there would have been much point in a convenience store being so impressive. People would stop by regardless. THe group parted, Ed to the bathrooms, Isabel to the slushy machine, Dimitri and Spender to the rows and rows of snacks, and Max, well, he wandered around near the front where the candy was. The two cops, who more than likely belonged to the car parked out front, didn’t appear to be checking out anything, and the cashier seemed a little more than concerned with whatever conversation the three of them were holding. Max, doing his best spy impression, moved his attention on the candy further back, inching his way to the candy at the front of the small aisle.

“That boy that came in a week ago, the one you called in?” Max’s ear perked. “We have reason to believe it was Isaac O’Connor.”

The cashier gasped, raising one hand to her lips, looking between the two officers with wide eyes. “Oh no, you’re kidding me… oh crap! I should have kept a better eye on him! I thought he looked suspicious but--!”

The other officer, who was taller and broader in the shoulders than the other, set a comforting hand at her shoulder. “Would you tell us what happened? We’re hoping you could give us some clues.”

“Well, nothing I haven’t already told the police! He came in near the end of my shift, and he went to the bathroom. I don’t think he came out, I didn’t see him anyway, but he was in there for a long time, and I didn’t really notice ‘til I heard him screaming.” There, her voice started to crack, her eyes started to water, and she did her best to hold them back, shaking her head and using the sides of her fingers to wipe away the salt gathering. “It was… it was the worst thing I’d ever heard. You know, you hear somebody scream like that in a movie, it’s scary, ya know, but-- but hearing somebody, hearing somebody scream like that in person…”

Max grimaced. Probably too much to hope he just ate something bad…

He made his way over to the salted snacks aisle, as fast as he could without looking suspicious-- for what? He wasn’t sure, but the whole spectral thing had him on guard, and none of them needed any extra attention. Spender had just taken a bag of chips off the rack when Max set a hand at his arm. Spender turned to look at him. “Oh, Max! Have you picked out something? This weekend is on me--”

“It’s Isaac.” He pointed, subtly, to the front counter, and Spender followed his line of sight. “He was here. She saw him. She…” he swallowed. Just thinking about it was hard. The imagination was almost always worse than the reality, but he wasn’t so sure at this point. “She heard him screaming. Bloody murder. Like h- he was being attacked or--!”

“It’s worse than I thought.” Spender frowned, and Max was sure he’d crushed the bag of chips in his clenched hand. “We need to move quicker.

Ed stepped out of the bathroom, wiping his wet hands on the sides of his jeans. Isabel came to his side, doing her best to stick a top on her already-overfilled slushy without making a mess for the one employee on the clock. She looked up at him, and he gestured to the bathroom stiffly. “I think that is the creepiest public restroom I have ever used, and I am including the one I used in that haunted house when I was five and a ghoul jumped out at me mid-flush.”

Isabel smiled at him, and sure she laughed, but it was forced, he could tell; he always could tell. He stepped closer to her, and held the cup still as she wrestled with the top. After a moment she got it on, and she thanked him, but that still wasn’t it. “So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong or do I have to start a tickle fight with you in public?” She blinked, and he narrowed his eyes. “Don’t test me, Isabel. I will do it.”

AGain, she laughed, but the usual charm wasn’t there. She frowned at him, then at the floor, fingers tapping along her large styrofoam cup. “Hey, Ed? Are you worried about Isaac?”

He frowned back at her, and tilted his head. “Of course I am!”

That must not have been the answer she was looking for, because she turned her head away, and didn’t bother to part the hair that’d fallen into her face. Ed took a step forward, setting a gentle hand at her arm, just below her shoulder. “Izzy, what’s wrong?”

“It’s just--” she paused, then turned to look at him, annoyance, annoyance at somebody and he wasn’t sure who, twinkling in the iris of her eye. “I’m not! I’m not worried about Isaac! Whenever I think about him, I ju- just feel numb! So what, he came back for us? Well, he was the reason we were in a cell to begin with!” Her voice was raised dangerously high, but not high enough he was super worried about it. A convenience store had to be one of the least embarrassing places to be a public disturbance, and the place least likely to have people take you seriously. Their conversation was likely falling on deaf ears. “I’m still mad at him! Even if he is in danger, is it really our problem? He left on his own!”

“Is that what this is really about?” She huffed and pouted up at him, and he tilted his head. “Because maybe, you’re covering up what you’re really feeling with what you’re used to feeling. Maybe you’re so worried about him, that you can’t help but repress it because you don’t know how else to handle it? You know, a defense mechanism.” Isabel stared at him, wide-eyed for a moment. Her lips parted, but she had nothing to say, and her mind was reeling behind her eyes, her expressive eyes where he could always tell what was running through her head. Then she set her slushy aside, on the sidebar where people usually added milk and sugar to their coffee, and leaped into his arms, squeezing him around the neck.

He started, falling back a step before catching her, hands set unsurely just below her shoulders. Something was different this time, and he couldn’t, for the life of him, piece together why it was that Isabel felt perfectly molded against him, why the tug of her arms around his neck were electric and intoxicating all at once, or why the hair that’d flown in his face, because she’d held him so suddenly, felt as soft as a steady stream of water against his nose. She balled her hands in fists at his back, and pulled him even closer. “I-Izzy!”

“Ed, thank you.”

His heart flipped, and he wasn’t sure his eyes could be any wider. He eventually figured out that his hands should have been at her waist, and he set them there accordingly. Before long, before it got weird, she pulled away, but not too far. She giggled and pressed a finger to his nose. “What’re you blushing for?”

“I-I’m not!” He said, as he started blushing even more.

[iamwhelmed]

Guess who’s back, back again~

[iamwhelmed]

Hardy and Clara

Here’s a little one-shot, primarily about how Hardy and Clara feel in regards to Isaac and about themselves and each-other! ^_^

Warnings: Alcohol mention and language.

“You watch, Red. I’m gonna get that shot and, when I do, I’ll do a little dance for ya!”

“Deering, seriously.” Isaac laughed and smacked Hardy’s arm. “Quit it.”

“Yeah, Hardy.” Clara snickered and munched on the little square of caramel she’d tossed in her purse for the daily moments where she craved something sweet. The wrapper crumbled in her hand as she dropped it into her purse, savoring the first precious seconds of sugary goodness that ran along her tongue like a caramel river. “Isaac’s got a boyfriend, now. Wouldn’t want to make him jealous, would you?”

He reached up and rubbed at his fully-healed eye, wincing as if he could still feel the bruise Maxwell Puckett had left him once upon a time. “Eh, you’re probably right.”

“Max wouldn’t punch you again” Isaac grabbed Hardy’s wrist and forced in back down to his side, eyes narrowing skeptically “because he was jealous. We all know you’re not serious.”

Hardy snickered. “Who says I’m not?”

“Deering…”

They bickered like that a lot, especially now that not all of Isaac’s time was devoted to them. He had the activity club (and his protective boyfriend) to care about, after all. Sometimes Clara missed it, the days when it was just Isaac and Hardy and she’d walk them through maps opened in new tabs while she listened to music in another. Nowadays it was less Isaac and Hardy and more Hardy and the activity club, if they so desired her services. She would have been lying if she said she wasn’t a little jealous. No, it wasn’t like Isaac neglected them- that was crazy. Isaac was a member of their trio just as much as he was a member of the activity club and he went out of his way to remind them of that.

She guessed she just missed being his priority? That sounded horrible.

Clara would have liked to drag him out to more parties. She and Hardy had made valid attempts since, but Isaac just wouldn’t take. She liked Max, but the boy was clearly the reason why Isaac wasn’t letting loose anymore. He’d freaked out when they first met him, when he’d first heard that Isaac had a little too much the night before. The protectiveness was out of nothing but concern and love, but she personally thought he had to turn that leash a little loose. It would probably change when the rest of the club joined them in high school, but she wasn’t having a good time waiting until then.

But she still wouldn’t have traded the new for the old. When they first met, something always seemed wrong with Isaac, like he’d been struggling with himself constantly. It only got worse when they became friends. He smiled a lot with them, but there were always those little moments where she could see him out of the corner of her eye. His little grin would fall and he’d stare down at the floor, lost so deep in thought that she sometimes needed an imaginary rope to pull him back out of it. He smiled all the time, now. Those moments where he’d fade out and become nothing but middle school Isaac were gone. He’d made peace with his past and peace with his future, and that willingness to move forward just made him light up unlike anything she’d ever seen.

“Anyway” Isaac rubbed the back of his neck, eyes darting down the street to their right- the direction of Mayview Middle. “I’ve gotta run.”

“Activity club stuff?” Hardy smiled, but she could tell he missed Isaac, too. He just seemed a little leaden; he was slower with the remarks and duller on the wit.

“Sadly,” he said that, but he was smiling “but the three of us need to do something this weekend.”

“Beach?” It was her automatic suggestion. It was spring, after all.

Isaac’s eyes lit up, his already-huge smile growing enough to take up half his face. “Yeah! That sounds great! I’ll text you guys about it tonight!”

“Why don’t you ever go with him?”

Hardy brought his head up, not really making an effort to move from his lounging spot on the pool chair he’d claimed. They’d chosen to go to the public pool, not that it was open, just to hang out for a while. Neither of them had their bathing suits, so it wasn’t like they were going to swim while the chlorine was in, and that was really why the pool was closed, right? Clara lifted her phone out of her lap and crossed her legs, careful not to lose her place in the fanfiction she was reading. Hey, it wasn’t her fault they’d canceled Halfway to the Moon with a cliffhanger season finale. Hardy raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

“I asked why you never go with Isaac. Listen, you ass.”

She was expecting him to pause an actually think about it for a second, but he just shrugged and leaned back again. “Lotta’ reasons.”

“Like your infallible need to impress people you’ve just met?”

“That’s part of it.”

It never made sense to her. Hardy had a whole world opening up at his fingertips, he had a perfect way in, and he wasn’t taking it. It drove her crazy, knowing he could just run off and become this important member of a junior superhero agency or whatever, and it wasn’t even something he was considering. That wasn’t what a hero was supposed to do, or a sidekick for that matter (which was closer to what they both were). Then again, it might have just been her own jealousy talking.

“I mean,” Hardy turned his head to the side, eyes falling on the pool filled to the brim with colors. The pinks and blues and purples of the sky above them reflected in the water, rippling and waving with every pump of the filter. “Their first impression of me, it was hearing that I got Isaac plastered, you know? And then on top of it I’m not even trained enough to be impressive on the battlefield… I don’t feel like I really belong there.”

“In comparison to Isaac, you mean?”

Hardy shrugged. She got that. Isaac’s powers were really cool and he was really good at using them. It would’ve been intimidating to try and impress your friend’s friends. Ed was certainly going above and beyond at the Christmas party. Of course, that was why Hardy belted out his full-on reckless mode and went around double-teaming every damn lamp and vase in her house that wasn’t in a bedroom. Hardy was overcompensating, trying to fit in because he wanted to stay a part of Isaac’s world. Doing that every day could get a little heavy, not that she really knew.

She’d never really had trouble making friends- well, acquaintances. She was a fairly sociable person. Talking came easy to her, listening did not. People usually annoyed her when they talked. They’d mumble on about this and that. Boo hoo they were grounded, boo hoo they got suspended for destroying school property, boo hoo about things that were their own fault. Isaac didn’t really do that, not to her, anyway. He tried to avoid talking about the things that he regretted whenever possible. She only knew that because he tried not to mention the activity club to much after she’d met them. He avoided the subject like a boiling pot of lava, like if he touched it then it’d explode and reduce their friendship to nothing. The bad part was that she couldn’t even tell if it would’ve been true. He still wouldn’t talk about it. Because everything was fine now, he didn’t feel the need to dwell on it- that was what she saw in his face when he smiled.

“I don’t think I could take it.”

She glanced up from her phone again, barely even realizing she’d started reading the same paragraph thrice. Hardy had twisted so that he was watching the sky instead of the pool, his eyes baggy and tired.

“Huh?”

“Seeing Isaac with him- I don’t think I could take it.”

She blinked. “With Max?”

“Who else?” Hardy actually sat up, choosing to lean over the table with his arms folded. His beanie tilted over the side of his head, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I mean, I know Isaac loves him and all, and I think he loves Isaac too, but I just…” She watched him pound the table lightly, as though just to crush an ant he’d seen crawling along. “I just can’t help but feel like I’m better for him, you know? Like, I bring him out of his shell and I make him laugh and talking to him is just so easy and we’re kinda perfect for each-other. Then again,” he laughed and shook his head. “You know when we met Max?”

“When he gave you a shiner?”

“Yeah, remember how he said that I got Isaac drunk because I knew he’d kiss me if he was?”

“Yeah?”

Hardy sighed and set his head on the table. “He’s not completely wrong.” Clara clicked her phone off and set it on the table. He exhaled and tugged at strands of his hair. “I mean, I was already three sheets to the wind but I still kind of knew. In the back of my mind, but I knew.”

“Okay, but you were both drunk when you kissed, right? You didn’t force Isaac to drink.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know but I still feel guilty.”

“You think Isaac doesn’t know any of that? He hasn’t dropped all contact with you, has he? No, so stop it. That’s stupid. You’re being stupid.” She reached out and pulled the beanie off of his head, prompting him to glance up from the table. “If it’s any consolation, I think you’re better for Isaac too, but I’m biased.” She put his beanie on her head, pulling it down enough that it hid most of her ears. He had a much larger head than she did. Hardy gave her a small smile, reaching out and tugging the front of his hat down enough that it covered her face. “I have makeup on, you asshat.”

“It’s the end of the day, prissy bitch.”

Clara laughed and moved the hat out of her face, feeling her smile widen when he was laughing, too.

“We’re still his best friends.”

“Yep.”

“So we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

The remainder of their time was spent watching the sun fall over the horizon, the stars that came with the deep blue sky enough to keep them staring until the wee hours of the night.

[iamwhelmed]

Hey!! I really like the high school comic, and I was just wondering if there's an actor or someone who you think Clara would look like?? Just curious because I can picture stuff better with visual references.... thanks and great work!!

That’s actually a pretty good question!

Since I’m a weab just like our dear Isaac, I think it’s best to use anime characters (since that’s kind of how I envision every character I’ve made ever).

Well, I kind of imagined her to have the face shape of Touwa Erio from an anime I’ve never actually watched, but I’ve seen her come up in recommendations and everything and I just think she’s a really beautiful character, probably one of the prettiest anime characters I’ve ever seen. No doubt it has a lot to do with the gorgeous art style. (I really hope this anime isn’t nsfw, because I kinda wanna watch it but adult animes get weird as heck, guys).

However, for pretty much everything else, I picture her a lot like a black-haired Chisame Hasegawa from Negima: Master Negi Magi.

Perpetually narrowed eyes that make her look unapproachable (even though we know she’s got friendliness in abundance) behind large round black glasses. Of course, I picture her eyes a deeper brown, but still. When I think about Clara Appleby, these are the anime ladies I picture.

I hope this helps you visualize her, anon! Thank you for reading!

[iamwhelmed]

The High School Life of Isaac O’Connor

Chapter 2: Well That Escalated Quickly

The rating has officially been bumped up because I’m paranoid so it’s now rated M.

Chapter summary: Isaac has his first run-in with cursing, parties, beer, and a few other things he probably shouldn't be doing.

Warnings: Language and underage drinking

Ima go 'cause I got no

Problem with saying goodbye

Is it wrong that I'm gonna be

Having the time of my life

'Cause deep down I know

I should cry I should scream

And get down on my knees

I should say that I need you here

But I'm gonna party tonight

'Cause honestly I just don't care

-          Hot Chelle Rae “Honestly”

 “You’re blind and I never wanna talk to you again.”

“Wow, that is so prejudice of you.”

“Wow, that’s so prejudice of you- shut up.” Isaac could hear Clara rolling around in her chair over the phone, probably seconds away from falling backwards and knocking the collection of her tech off of the desk. “You’re gonna make a left and you should see a door there, or something eerily similar.”

 Isaac grimaced and padded through the soaking wet swamp that was the old abandoned retirement home. As if being in a molding building wasn’t bad enough. Now I could be walking on some widow’s husband’s ashes. Good luck explaining that to a ghost. Vines and weeds had grown between the cracks and crevices of the walls, leaving little room to see what were once painted beige rooms. The place reeked of death and feces. Basically, everything was horrible and awful and he just wanted to retrieve his grandmother’s old silver locket so he could go home. It was something his mother had always grieved losing in the retirement home’s cave-in, aside from having actually lost her mother. The sinkhole had taken enough from their family already. If Isaac could just find that locket, then maybe his poor mother would have some peace. His grandmother didn’t appear to be haunting the place, which was a huge relief to him. On one hand, he would have loved to see her and tell her about everything that’d been going on with their family. He would have loved to tell her about how Dad got a promotion and Mom got awarded for her directing job at the local theater. But, at the same time, her haunting a place so eerie he felt his skin crawl like he was covered in leeches- it wasn’t a good thought. He wouldn’t want that for his grandmother.

 Scavenging the home had always been something he’d wanted to do, but he’d had too much on his plate. Between dealing with spirits and ghosts and school, and then trying desperately to claw his way up from the position of club mascot, he hadn’t had a lot of time left to deal with his grandmother’s lost locket. Now I have time to not only find the locket, but clean it and wrap it in a pretty box before I decorate the entire Christmas tree by myself with time left over to sweep the house. Well, that was an exaggeration, but that was how absolutely free Isaac felt.

 He came across what he was assuming was the door Clara had mentioned earlier. It was covered from top to bottom in vines and molded wood. With a sigh, he conjured a small tornado in the palm of his hand. “Why are you so upset that I don’t find Troy Danger attractive? He’s average, I’m sorry!”

“Oh my god, you are so straight! Hell, I’m not even sure that’s you being a straight dude. Like, ninety percent of the population agrees he’s hot and you’re in the ten percentile.”

Isaac wasn’t about to correct her, especially since he wasn’t even sure what the hell he was yet, but the accusation still pinched his nerves. High school was the time to figure all of that stuff out, and he would. He wasn’t sure when, but he would. His entire life he’d never really questioned who he was into. Things were simple. He’d have a crush on whoever he had a crush on- he’d just never expected to actually get a crush on a guy. Let alone a guy who should have no business in my love life whatsoever. He’d just make fun of it. He’d never really mentioned it to anybody, thinking that he might have liked Max. By the time he’d figured it out, he’d already made the decision to rinse himself of the club at graduation. Actually, figuring out that he liked Max was an even bigger motivator to push the activity club as far away from him as possible. The last thing he needed to share with Max was his budding romantic interest in him. Not only would it open him up to what probably would have been a very rough and cruel rejection, but he most certainly would have gotten mocked for it by the rest of the club. Well, maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe they would have been more understanding and, you know, empathetic. Isaac just couldn’t find it in himself to imagine that. It would have felt so wildly out-of-character for them to be nice to him about something as embarrassing as a crush on Maxwell Puckett.

 Isaac breathed in and settled his hands in front of him, concentrating on the door long enough to blow it straight off its hinges. The molded wood broke off in any and all directions, leaving him with a splintered hole he could easily fit through. He’d just be left with a few splinters at the end of it. “The guy’s got abs, but his face is just so mangy.”

“What, not your type, huh?”

Clara was giggling at him over the line, but he couldn’t be bothered to answer her question. No, Troy Danger wasn’t his type. He liked the whole ‘bad boy doing stunts’ thing (which he despised about himself), but he liked a clean face. Tony Danger had a nice body, but it wasn’t enough to measure up to his manipulative personality. The guy probably had twenty illegitimate children running around. Every interview he’d ever read made the guy sound like a raging asshole.

 Isaac powered his way through the splintered hole, hissing every time his skin came into contact with some rather ragged edges. Just as he was pulling his other leg through, he managed to slip on the wet tile of the floor. His other leg made it through on his way to the ground, but not without colliding with the sharp wood of the door. Isaac grunted and took deep breathes through his nose, hands flying to the large shallow gash across his calf. Clara asked if he was okay, and he muttered reassurances through the phone that he was just fine- which was a lie, but she’d get over it. Once the pain stopped enough for him to feel up to standing, he pushed himself off the floor. He picked up the phone almost as an afterthought. “Where to next?” His voice was raspy from the pain, but it would go away eventually. We have Mom to think about, here. This locket means the world to her. He’d worry about the gash getting infected later.

“Uh, there should be a staircase to your right.”

Isaac looked to his right, where he could see the end of a staircase poking out just through an archway. The last thing he wanted to do was climb stairs with a bloodied calf, but he would just need to deal with it. I’ve had worse. He remembered the last ‘wound of the week’, when he’d been limping back home because a spirit with claws had seriously torn up his ankle, among other things. Isaac could still feel the scratch marks on his back, still sore and scabbing over. He was starting to wonder if one of these days he’d get stuck with a permanent scar. He kind of looked forward to it. Having a scar would make him look super badass, even if it hurt like a bitch when he first got it. Clara was horrified when he’d shown her the wounds the following day, and pissed when she found out he wasn’t terrified of having an ‘everlasting blemish’ on his body. I don’t think I’ve been reamed that hard since I broke a vase when I was seven. Still, it was nice having somebody overtly care whether or not he got himself maimed in the name of justice. Clara had a tendency to flip out on him when he got hurt (‘flip out’ was being gracious), and that annoyed him, but it was better than her not caring at all.

 Hiding the wounds got a lot easier when Clara started helping out. She had no problem lying to his parents for him or painting his skin with copious amounts of concealer. He’d even caught her looking up how to do stitches, which he immediately had to shut her down on because- no. When he started coming to her with larger wounds and darker bruises, she started forcing her help upon him. The only reason she was walking him through the retirement home was because she insisted on keeping an eye on him as he chanced untimely death via sinkhole. So far, he enjoyed having the company. Not to mention, having her read off directions to his grandmother’s old room was a lot easier than wandering blindly around the place for hours. Isaac approached the foot of the staircase, only to see it was just that- the foot of the staircase. There were no stairs between the second floor and the first floor. Isaac exhaled. “We’ve got a problem. The staircase is broken.”

“That shouldn’t be a huge problem. Break a hole in the ceiling or something.”

“And climb up with what? Sheer upper body strength? I don’t have a lot of that.”

He heard Clara open up what sounded like a lollipop and begin sucking on it noisily. “Okay well, you have wind powers, don’t you? Levitate with them or something.”

Isaac inhaled and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Fine.”

Levitating wasn’t something he’d ever really done. Using gusts of wind to leap fences was one thing; keeping those same gusts of wind under control long enough to get up the stairs was another thing. He supposed he could just jump, but he feared the floor would break out from under him if he landed with too much force, and then he’d really be screwed. After attaching the charm of his phone to the belt loops of his pants, Isaac focused another miniature tornado in his hands. He took deep and slow breaths as he stretched his concentration for the first time in a long time. He’d had enough control of his powers, when he wasn’t using them on a much larger scale, to get away with little to no concentration when it came time to put them to use. He was starting to worry years of no training left him at a larger disadvantage than he originally thought. “Clara?”

“Yeah?”

“If this kills me…”

“I’ll make sure you’re sent away on a boat with roses.”

Isaac snorted. He painstakingly directed his hands to the ground, swallowing when he felt his feet leave the floor. If he just focused on the wind between his fingers, if he just inched his way up the staircase, then perhaps he’d have a new ability to show off the next time his peaceful propositions didn’t work. “Thank, Clare. I appreciate that.” The process of reaching the second floor was painful, taxing on both his mind and his tensed arms. He was infinitely grateful to feel the weight of the wooden floor at the soles of his feet. Isaac would have fallen flat on his arse if he didn’t think the floor would give out under him. “I made it.” He pulled the cell phone from his belt loop, holding it in front of his face in the hopes that he still had a signal. “I made it.”

“Told ya so.” He could hear Clara clicking away from whatever tabs she’d opened up in the time he’d crossed the small molehill of a problem. “Okay, you’re super close. Your grandma’s room should have been three doors down to the right.” There was dead air for a few seconds, and Isaac took that as Clara double-checking her directions. He heard the tell-tale click-and-drag sound of a mouse against Clara’s makeshift mousepad (a small notebook she’d found at random in the girl’s bathroom). “Yep, good luck finding the locket. I can’t imagine it’ll be easy.”

“I don’t remember a lot about the rest of the home, but I remember my grandma’s room. I know right where she used to put it.”

He was surprised to see the door completely intact. Vines had claimed the door its victim, but the wood wasn’t as touched by moss as the rest of the home was. He took it as a sign of fate- proof that he’d find the locket on the other side. He reached out and tore the vines away, probably with more gusto than was needed. On the other side of the door, his grandmother’s room was largely untouched. There was a hole in her floor and in her ceiling where the fan and light used to be, and the carpet was torn and equally as moldy as the bedsheets, but it still looked the way he remembered it. The room seemed much smaller, but he’d been much younger the last time he’d set foot over the threshold. He took a few steps into the room, feet crunching the leaves that had flown in through the broken window. He, like any other child, was antsy and bored when they visited their grandmother. There wasn’t a lot to do, aside from baking and dancing with the elderly who weren’t afraid of breaking their hips. He’d complain until he was blue in the face or until his grandmother picked him up. If she was paying attention to him and playing board games with him, then he was happy. He could see his memories playing like old silent films, some of him throwing hissy fits in his diapers and others of his grandmother rocking him to sleep before his parent’s drive home. Each memory was just a special as the last, and the idea that he could share those memories with his mom again had his heart leaping for miles.

 Once he was done reminiscing, as that wasn’t what he’d nearly cut off the lower part of his leg to do, he made a beeline for the dresser. Top left drawer, hidden beneath underwear because there’d been a nurse with a case of kleptomania. Sure enough, after he’d braved the undergarments of his deceased grandmother (something he really never wanted to think about doing ever again), he found the silver locket. It shined when he held it to the setting sun outside the window, dangling from a chain at the tips of his fingers. “Found it!”

There was a sputtering on the other end of the line. “Did you seriously? Nice! Best Christmas present ever!”

He shoved the necklace into his pocket and took a step forward before he felt a shiver down his back. “Hey, Clare? Is there anyone in here with me?”

He heard Clara’s mouth pop around her lollipop. “What? I can’t see that, Isaac! I’m literally just looking at a map of the layout. We’re not there yet.”

Well, duh. Isaac shook his head and tried to wipe away the embarrassment that was ensuing from his stupidity. “Right, yeah. Okay.” Isaac smiled and scratched his nose for no other reason than it made him feel cool. “Alright, Clare. Show me the quickest way out of this place. I have a Christmas tree to decorate.”

   “I hate this.” Clara tugged at the top of the low-cut dress she was trying on, messing with ‘the girls’ so that she looked a little more like a woman. It didn’t help. Isaac watched her twirl in place in front of the body-length mirror of whatever the hell store she’d dragged him into. The bright green was obnoxious against her skin tone. Not only did it wash her out, but it fell at her waist like she had the hips of a pregnant woman.

“I do, too. Take it off. You look like Kermit’s bride.” Clara looked exaggeratedly offended.

“No need to be hurtful, god!”

“How was that hurtful? Kermit’s a great guy!”

Hardy choked on his soda, covering his mouth with one hand to keep from spitting it all over the classy dressing room floor. Clara laughed under her breath and sashayed back into the dressing room, sweeping the curtain closed behind her. Isaac watched from his seat next to Hardy on the soft bean bag chair as the green monstrosity went flying through the air.

He’d never really enjoyed going to the mall, primarily because it meant he was either with his parents or alone. Wandering around, passing stores full of people trying things on and laughing with each-other and eating together- it all made him feel lonely before. The only place he’d ever visited was the one store Max had dubbed “Weab Central”, much to Isaac’s chagrin. They had walls full of imported anime figurines and plushies and body pillows (he’d bought one, once, and he’d hid it every time one of the club members came over to pick him up). He’d wander for around two hours every time, wishing he had enough money to buy that special edition DVD set or that Naruto backpack.

Isaac glanced up at Hardy, who was splayed across the black leather couch like he owned the store. “There’s a place I wanna stop at on our way to the food court.” Not that they hadn’t already been there once that day, but Hardy seemed to have a black hole for a stomach so they were going again.

“Yeah?”

“You guys have gotta’ promise not to laugh at me, though.”

“I am making no such promise.” Clara opened the curtain, swaying her hips to see how the new dress fit. It was mistletoe red, a much better color on her. Not to mention, it was fitting for the Christmas party she was throwing- the same Christmas party she’d pretty much forced himself and Hardy into purchasing new clothes for, too. The paper bag at his side had begun cutting into the bottom of his calf where his newest wound was, so he winced and kicked it to the side as stealthily as he could. He didn’t want to draw too much attention to it. It wasn’t like it was infected or anything, and he was able to walk and run just fine. There was no reason to bother worrying them about it. It’d heal in a week and he’d forget it’d ever been bloody. Clara laughed as she came to stand in front of the mirror again, twirling on one leg before looking at herself from the side. “I’m messing with ya. Where do you wanna go?”

Isaac tugged at the collar of his shirt. “Uh…”

  “I’m regretting my oath of silence.”

Isaac rolled his eyes and grabbed Clara by the hand, tugging her into the store with him. Hardy was snickering to himself, but he was keeping his comments to himself. Usually, that would have been great, but all that meant was that Hardy was saving his quips for the right moment. “Shut up. I won’t take long.”

It was just the way it was the last time he’d been there- lines and lines of anime merchandise just waiting for him. One day, my love, one day… Chocolate bars with gummies inside, life-sized mecha guns (not useable, of course), scroll posters with his favorite characters and OTPs- Isaac was in heaven. He lifted a box of pocky to his face and frowned. A quick hand in both of his pockets reminded him that he didn’t have the money on him to buy a box, not after purchasing that vest Clara had adored on him.

“Oh my god! Oh my god, Zatch Bell! I remember Zatch Bell! Isaac, they’ve got Zatch Bell!”

Clara jumped in small excited bursts, pointing and squealing. Part of him wanted to pretend to be her exasperated older brother, just to mess with her, but he wouldn’t. She was too excited and he would have felt bad. “I thought you said you didn’t watch anime?”

“I said I don’t watch anime anymore! This is practically my childhood right here!” Isaac smiled and shook his head, setting the pocky back down.

He’d get it another time, no big deal. He was kind of just happy to be in the store again. It’d been a long time, probably the entirety of summer. He’d been so busy basking in his newfound freedom that everything else was almost on-the-side to him, like some of the things he’d enjoyed before were nothing but entrees. The start of his high school career had been the thing that kind of knocked him out of it and reminded him that he had a full life to live.

Hardy picked up the pocky he’d just set down, eyeing it with curiosity and amusement. “What is this stuff?”

Isaac ran his finger along the large yellow font on the front of the box. “Pocky.”

“And pocky is?”

“They’re stick-shaped biscuits covered in chocolate. They’re really good. Sometimes I finish off a box in seconds.”

Hardy made a low whistling sound and turned the box over to see the price. “Want me to buy these for you?”

Isaac made an undignified squealing noise, somehow on key and in tune with Clara’s (“Pucca! Isaac, look, Pucca!”). Hardy laughed and Isaac covered his mouth with his hands, a deep blush beginning to crawl from hell to his cheeks. He supposed that, even without the club, he was still prone to embarrassing himself. He wasn’t really surprised by that, it was just kind of something he remembered every once in a while. “You would do that?”

“Sure.”

“I love you.”

Hardy began walking to the counter and Isaac followed him, sticking his hands in his pockets so he could twiddle his thumbs in the fabric without his nervousness being blatant. “Is that a confession?”

“Are you really that desperate for one?”

Hardy smiled. “Kinda!”

  “This sounds like the opposite of a good idea.”

“No, dude, seriously! Junkyard rave party- my friend is hosting it. What part of that doesn’t sound fun?”

Isaac crossed his arms and shot Hardy the most skeptical look he could possibly muster. He’d learned a little from Max. It was all in the eyebrows and eyes. Cock one eyebrow, but keep the other as low as possible. Squint at the victim like he had something wrong with his sight. “Is this a friend of yours, or a friend of a friend?”

Hardy rolled his eyes and tossed his head back, groan sounding uncannily similar to the mating call of a large humpback whale. Some of the tables around them went silent and looked their way, but it wasn’t like the entire food court was watching them. “Oh my god, this guy is practically family, okay? I know him, I swear.”

Clara, who was snickering into her fries, was evidently finding the situation more amusing than Isaac thought it was. He’d come to know Hardy moderately well in their time as spectral partners, and any promises the guy made were questionable at best. He could swear up and down that he personally knew the host of the ‘junkyard rave’, but Isaac wasn’t buying it. It wasn’t like he thought Hardy was being malicious or anything, it was just obvious he was lying. The ‘why’ was never clear, but the desperation behind the promises was cut and dry.  “Why do you want me to go to this thing so bad?”

“Well, you’ve never tried beer, for one.”

“And you’ve never kissed anyone.” Clara added, elbowing Isaac in the ribs. He grimaced and swatted her away.

“How would you know that?”

“Dude, come on” Hardy covered a snicker with his hand. Isaac placed his hands on his hips, feeling strangely like a mother with a child in desperate need of a time-out corner. Hardy held his hands up in mock defense “What, Red? It’s kinda obvious!”

“How? How is my love life ‘obvious’?”

“You literally push couples making out in the hallway apart.”

“That’s because they’re taking up space where people walk.”

“I once saw you sprint from across the courtyard just to put a textbook between Marley and Jared. It needs to stop.”

Isaac imitated a whale mating call, himself, finding it a fruitful exertion of his irritation.

  If he hated the concept of teenage parties, Isaac detested and loathed actually being at one. It was pretty late for a school night, the sun having gone down around an hour ago- the same time Isaac lost faith in his generation and his ‘friends’. Clara was standing atop an old wrecked car, dancing awkwardly and, in all probability, drunkenly with two other girls. She’d dragged him over to the barrels of beer some poor brewer’s kid and his friends had snagged earlier. Isaac refused to take even a sip of the sad excuse for a beverage, to which Clara shrugged and chugged down an entire cup. Hardy had wandered somewhere else early into their arrival. He’s probably just as drunk as Clara is. Oh please don’t tell me that means I’m in charge of getting these assholes home. Part of him wanted to just leave his friends to their own devices, but he was too good a person to do that. After all, what if he was Clara’s only defense against some guy too plastered to think straight? What if she was too plastered to think straight? Isaac definitely had to be the designated mature one.

What would Max be doing right now?

Isaac shrugged the thought off, but others just like it came to flood his mind. Max was probably at home, right? He probably was playing some video game or snarking at the rest of the club because he wanted to go home and their mission was taking too long. He wondered if Max would have been standing there like he was, watching his friends get shitfaced while he sat on some old mangy bus seat. He wanted to believe Max would have been doing the same thing, but he wasn’t so sure. Maybe Max would have gotten involved and had a few drinks? We’re underage, though. Drinking under twenty-one is illegal and-! Earlier that day he’d been inside of a retirement home deemed unsafe by the Mayview City Council, so being there was technically illegal too. He told himself that was different, that he had a valid reason and that fact excused the illegality of it. That’s not true, though.

“You are, by far, the stingiest motherfucker I’ve ever known.”

Isaac yelped at the feel of a cold plastic cup against the back of his bare neck. He reached up and wacked the cup away, turning to get a better look at his aggressor. “Deering!”

Hardy snickered and took another sip from his cup, bending over so that he and Isaac were on eye-level. “Would you quit being a pansy and take a stupid drink? You don’t have to be the mom friend, genius. That was the entire point of inviting you.”

“I’m not being a mom friend! I’m being-!”

“Mature? How about this- there are places in Europe that somebody can drink as soon as they’re tall enough to reach the counter. Is a ten year old more mature than you, Red?”

Isaac took a deep breath and glanced at the kegs by the makeshift table, a smashed car with what appeared to be a picnic blanket thrown haphazardly over it. Entire groups of people his age stood around, swallowing cup after cup of liquid poison like they didn’t understand the concept of mortality. Some part of him wanted to believe he was better than that- but was he really? He was the only one not having any fun. He was the only one fighting a normal high school experience just because- because why? He didn’t really have a reason.

Isaac sighed and stood up. “Alright, good for you, man!” Hardy wrapped an arm over Isaac’s shoulder and began walking him to, what Isaac thought would be, his worst decision ever.

  He was incredibly dizzy. Everything around him made sense, but at the same time it didn’t. Hardy had to repeat himself once, twice, maybe four times before Isaac understood what he was saying. His head felt like it had some weight with the touch of a feather laying precariously between his eyes, but his stomach was churning and he felt so full he didn’t know if he could ever eat again. He thought he might have danced in the middle of a mosh pit? That was odd, but everything was odd to him. He was pretty sure he’d fallen over a few times in fits of laughter he wasn’t prepared for. He couldn’t even remember what the hell he’d been laughing at.

“H-holy shit, O’Connor!” Hardy was laughing, too, on a bent and broken car right by his side. Isaac was pretty sure Hardy was three sheets to the wind, same as he was. Granted, he was also sure Hardy had more to drink. “You’re actually funny when you’re drunk!”

“Hey!” Isaac punched him in the arm, putting a little more weight into the swing than he meant to. Hardy caught him as he fell forward and pulled him back into the seat. Isaac blinked at the hand resting on his arm, almost certain there’d been more space between himself and Hardy before. He was pretty sure he was smiling. He could feel the stretch of his lips. “I’m effin’ hilarious.”

“Holy shit you’re plastered and you’re using a baby word for fuck?” Hardy threw his head back, practically howling in Isaac’s ear. Had Isaac not been downing his seventh cup, he might have cared. “You- you’re somethin’ else, Red.”

Isaac laughed and leaned his head against Hardy’s shoulder like he didn’t know what it looked like to other people. He didn’t care. He’d spent so much time worrying about the stupid club and trying to get their stupid attention and stupid Max and his stupid crush and his stupid love life and his stupid face and his stupid smile and his stupid everything! He had everything he ever wanted- friends that cared about him, the right to make his own decisions, the time to bond with his family and visit Doorman. Why he was still thinking about the stupid club and stupid Max and his stupid stupid crush, he didn’t know.

He thought Hardy might have called out to him. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d been caught completely lost in his head. Isaac glanced up from his place at Hardy’s shoulder, wincing when the lights hit his eyes just enough to remind him of the weight in his head. His vision was getting just as blurry as his mind was, wobbly and confusing. He almost felt like he was being lifted and swayed from side-to-side, but he felt the metal against his pant legs, so he must have been still. Hardy’s face was somewhere above his, but he couldn’t see him when he was moving so fast- or was he moving at all?

Hardy’s face was changing colors under the strobe lights feet above their heads, but Isaac could see how rosy his cheeks were and how green his eyes looked. He was flushed from his drinking. That had to be it. Well, maybe he was thinking something weird, but usually it was Isaac who fell victim to a legible face. Isaac felt himself fall back and he used his hands to steady himself against what was left of the car they sat on. He felt warm and cold at the same time, like he held a cup of hot chocolate to his lips in the winter freeze. It took him a few seconds to realize Hardy had kissed him, with a brain so foggy he couldn’t think straight and legs that felt distractingly heavy. Isaac let Hardy kiss him again, and he let the sleeve of his sweater fall down his arm where Hardy held him.

  It wasn’t a headache- it was a migraine. It was like all of the feathers that’d filled his head to its brim the night before were now weights and daggers behind his eyes. Isaac clenched the water bottle somebody handed him with weak but aggressive hands. He wasn’t sure where he was. He’d made it home safely, though he wasn’t entirely sure how. All he knew was that he woke up to Clara banging incessantly at his bedroom door and Hardy mumbling something about catching a quick breakfast on the way to school. It was with little fervor that Isaac arose from the bed like a zombie and hastily changed his shirt. He’d seen guys wear the same pants all the time. Whatever. Nobody would notice. He wasn’t sure even he’d noticed with the way his head was murdering him slowly and violently with wave after wave of sharp pain and nausea. “Aw, Baby’s first hangover.”

“Deering, I will kill you where you stand.”

Isaac could feel Clara’s gentle hand on the back of his neck, massaging him in pretty much the only place that didn’t hurt like hell. “Shut up and buy the water, Hardy.”

“You got a hangover too, Appleby?”

“No shit. You don’t?”

“I get them often enough it’s kind of my natural state nowadays.”

Isaac grimaced and rubbed one of his temples with his free hand. “So it’s not your fault you’re a horrible athlete?”

Hardy made some type of squeaky offended noise while Clara snorted loudly. Isaac twisted the tip off of his unpurchased - from what he gathered so far, anyway- water bottle and chugged as much as he could humanly take without drowning himself. He didn’t remember a whole hell of a lot from the night before. As far as he knew, he’d gotten a little drunk, danced for a little while (must have been funny to see), then passed out and got home somewhere between then and when he woke up. Well, he definitely remembered kissing Hardy, which would unquestionably be something he’d freak about when he didn’t wanna die anymore. Hardy hadn’t mentioned a word of it, so there was a possibility he didn’t even remember it. Isaac kind of doubted that, but eh. They’d talk about it later. It wasn’t like Hardy was completely off his radar- in fact, Isaac had caught himself staring more often than he’d ever admit, but that didn’t change the fact that he was confused. He was still trying to sort out the mess he’d been before, and kissing Hardy was either going to sort a lot of those problems out or make him an even bigger mess. Isaac paused to breath, coughing as some of the water went down the wrong hole.

“Isaac?”

He held up a single finger in an attempt to communicate “one minute I’m dying right now”. When his throat cleared up and he felt like he could breathe again, he stood up straight and shook his head to clear his senses. When the worst thing happening to his body was, once again, his violent migraine, he handed Hardy the bottle to put it on the counter to check it out. “Dude, what happened to you? You look like a freshly-killed zombie.”

Ah, right, so that was an amused newcomer- not Hardy or Clara- talking to him. Isaac shrugged and gazed up at Hardy with eyes he hoped communicated just how mad he was about getting dragged to a party. Hardy chuckled and slipped a few dollars out of his back pocket. “I didn’t know you knew the family that runs this place, babe.”

“Babe?” The voice on the other side of the counter sounded just as floored as Isaac felt. So that son of a bitch did remember! Clara’s howling laughter fell on deaf ears. Isaac smacked Hardy on the arm as hard as he possibly could, to which Hardy broke into (as far as Isaac was concerned) unsolicited laughter.

“You- that was one time! I didn’t know what I was doing!”

“Tell that to the hickey on my neck.”

“Deering!”

“Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa, Isaac gave you a-? But he’s not that cool!”

Whoever the mysterious newcomer was, they were about to get a whole lotta’ hell from a customer- and a very strongly worded letter to their manager. Isaac slammed his hands on the counter, wincing when the sound that hit his ears made his eardrums pop. He jabbed a rigid finger right into the stranger’s chest and scowled as threateningly as he could manage without locking his jaw.

When Isaac realized, through blurry dizzy vision, that he was standing face-to-face with Max, he faltered.

The same asshole he’d known five months ago, the same guy who made his heart race and his palms sweat and his stomach twirl when it wasn’t dropping like a bag of sand, stood there on the other side of the counter. He was smirking like they’d never been apart, like Isaac hadn’t left the clubroom never to return, like he was still the same smart ass and Isaac was still an easy target. Isaac swallowed and turned away so fast, he didn’t see Max’s eyes trailing his messed-up collar.

“I’m too hungover for this.” He went straight for the exit, with the intention of waiting outside until every bit of interaction with Max was taken care of and over with.

“Wait, he’s-? Isaac was-?” Isaac heard Max tumble over his words.

“Isaac, slow your ass down!” Clara called after him, but he was already way out the door, both literally and mentally.

“Well yeah, kid.” Hardy placed his money on the counter. “He wouldn’t have kissed me if he wasn’t.”

  Isaac blinked, shook his head and made sure he wasn’t still suffering a little-known symptom of a hangover, and tilted his head. “Did I do that?” Hardy blinked back at him, one eye perfectly normal while the other was an unseemly purple. His entire brain had been so foggy and it’d been thumping so painfully, he really hadn’t noticed the very-apparent black eye on their way to class. Now that it was lunch time and he didn’t feel like throwing himself out a three-story window, he was vaguely worried about Hardy’s palpable bruising. Hardy shrugged and went back to inhaling his sandwich.

“Nope.” He glared at Clara. “Don’t say a word.”

“I wasn’t!” She twirled the school’s slightly-edible spaghetti around her fork, probably for longer than she needed to. She avoided Isaac’s eyes when he glanced her way, sticking so many noodles in her mouth that she looked like a chipmunk. Isaac frowned and nudged Hardy’s elbow off the table, leaving Hardy to sputter and fumble with his sandwich before he came within centimeters of hitting the table with his face.

“O’Connor! What the hell, man?”

“Are you really doing this right now? Are you really keeping secrets from me?”

Hardy rolled his eyes and readjusted so that he was sitting closer to Isaac. “Look, I’ll tell you eventually, okay? Swear it. I just don’t want you doing anything stupid.”

Isaac opened his mouth to respond, but paused to consider what was being said. Hardy wanted to tell him- just not right away. Isaac understood that. Some things were best kept until emotions weren’t running as high, and he couldn’t exactly call himself a ball of calm at the moment. With the whole kissing Hardy thing and the hangover and running into Max for the first time in nearly half a damn year- he was fairly tense. He couldn’t blame Hardy for trying to keep the weight off his shoulders. Clara and Hardy had clearly decided it was in his best interest to hear about the story behind Hardy’s black eye when he wasn’t ready to explode in a fit of lightning, so he’d trust them. They’d never given him a reason not to, after all.

Isaac filled his mouth with pizza instead of words.

  It was ten o’clock at night. Isaac just wanted to sleep. He’d had a long Thursday night and an even longer Friday. All he wanted was to wake up to Saturday well-rested and not stressed and excited for the weekend. He couldn’t do that if Hardy’s stupid freaking ringtone didn’t keep vibrating off the nightstand. Gwen Stefani’s “Make Me Like You” might have been quiet to his parents three rooms down, but it sounded like a fire alarm to him. He’d been drifting somewhere between the soft white noise of his ceiling fan and the bliss of slumber, but now he was between falling unconscious and breaking his phone in half.

“What?” It was less of a question and more of an aggressive demand. Isaac heard Hardy’s heavy breathing on the other line, almost as though he was out of breath. Isaac sat up in bed, leaning over and switching his light on. “Deering? What’s wrong? Are you crying?”

“I- I don’t know, man. Probably.”

Isaac rubbed at his eyes and glanced around his empty room. “Do you need to sleep over?”

“P- Probably. Dude, I’m freaking out.”

“What’s wrong?”

Hardy was quiet for a few seconds, sniffling and coughing. Isaac could almost hear him shaking on the other end. There was a shiver down his spine again, but he shrugged it off. “Deering?”

“Appleby and I were- we were walking home together, right? ‘Cause she lost her ma’s bracelet at the party last night. We found it an’ everything but” Hardy sniffled again “but- O’Connor dude this- this thing flew by us and I didn’t know what happened but she’s- she’s gone! Appleby is gone, dude! I don’t know where she went! I don’t know what happened to her!”

Isaac’s heart fell straight out of his body, as though he’d never even had one to begin with. “Fucking shit!” He pressed the speaker button and threw his phone onto his bed, ripping his closet doors open and tearing off his nightshirt in record time. His pants were off and replaced with jeans, albeit with more trouble than he’d been hoping for. In seconds he was slipping on his sandals, grabbing his phone, and running faster than he thought himself capable out the door.

“O’Connor? Dude, what do we do?”

There was only one thing he could do.

“Deering, meet me at Mayview Middle. Be careful. I’ll see you there.”

[iamwhelmed]

The High School Life of Isaac O'Connor

Chapter 1: Isaac is Not a Superhero No Matter How Badly He Wants to Be

This is the story I was kinda talking about earlier? Let me know what you think. Either way, I’ve pretty much written all three chapters. :/

Story Summary: Now that he's graduated from Mayview Middle, Isaac decides it's high time he did things his own way. It's time he went solo. Yeah, maybe he's still holding a flame for Max, even though there's no way that's happening ever. Maybe he's still a little scared of being abandoned, but maybe he can trust these guys? Yeah, he'll settle for a maybe on that one. After all, who's got time to think about the Activity Club when high school is such an odd thing to navigate?

Warnings: Language, Alcohol Mention

I need respect, I need love

Nothing in between

I will not spell it out for you if you can't see

'Cause you're not worthy, you don't deserve me

And now I'm gone

-          Demi Lovato “Everything You’re Not”

Going solo was probably simultaneously one of the best and worst decisions he’d ever made.

Going solo was great because, let’s face it, he didn’t have to deal with the soul-crushing grief that came with enduring the malice of the club. He chose how to handle every spectral situation he came across- on his own with nobody jumping to using violence. He chose when he went on patrol around his school, which was significantly larger as a high school had to fit more classes and students and teachers, etc. Most of all, he got to choose who he told about being a spectral because Spender had no reign over him anymore and he could kiss his butt. Of course, that wasn’t to say Isaac had actually told anybody. After all, he would run the risk of being sent to the local asylum (which his parents had already considered for him and they didn’t need further incentive). Being a loner opened up a few doors in the ways of communication with spirits, too. Some were much more receptive to reason, having confidence in knowing he had no malign affiliations. If anything, that told Isaac his decision to step away from the activity club was a good idea. Then there was the perk that nobody could keep secrets from him if he wasn’t around to ostracize. Max could go down that road all by himself. He’d made it more than clear Isaac was superfluous in his world. That might change the deeper down the rabbit hole Max would get, but Isaac wouldn’t hold his breath.

Of course, there was a large list of reasons going solo wasn’t the grand endeavor Isaac thought it would be. He’d glorified being a hero, sure, and maybe even assumed he’d make a few friends with a few chatty spirits. More often than not, Isaac found, for every spirit that was willing to listen to him, there were three who just wanted war. Isaac found out fast that it was really freaking hard to fight three-against-one, even with his weather powers and arguably impressive fast mind. Fights that he’d usually walk away from unscathed were leaving him trudging home, covered in bruises and scratches that’d been bleeding but were closed by the time he got to his bed. The following morning he’d find patches of pinks and blues and purples all over his arms and chest and, probably, his back.

Yes, being on a team had made him stronger as an opponent, but that didn’t mean going solo was awful. That’s what he told himself when he started worrying about what the club was doing. Try as he might, he still cared about whether they were having a rough time without him, or if one of them had gotten hurt in a battle with the random spirit of the week. He worried that they were getting into fights they couldn’t win, or combat they’d been trying to avoid for whatever reason. He worried Max was growing increasingly lost every day because Isaac knew how horrible the rest of the club was about explaining anything and everything.

Isaac groaned and glanced out the window beside his bed. His blue curtains gusted in his face with every breeze that passed through his open shutters. The night wasn’t very young anymore; at least it didn’t feel like it. He’d had another one of the “battle it out” nights that he hated so much. The fight against this odd worm-fish-human compound had lasted longer than he’d been expecting it to, especially when he found out it had an entire pond-full of buddies. By the time he’d finished the fight and went to head home, he’d had to sneak in the back door because his parents would be waiting by the front door. I’ll be getting an earful in the morning. He’d opened up the window primarily because he thought that the cold wind of the rising winter season would help ease his muscles. He’d been right, kind of. His entire body ached and throbbed where he’d stacked bandages, every pulse sending a sharp pain through his veins. He vaguely wondered if he’d been poisoned. The spirits had the mouths of humans, so it didn’t seem likely, but they had the teeth of an anglerfish and the flexibility of some crude earthworm he could have found in the dirt on any given day. Panic, white hot and sweaty, choked him. If he was poisoned, where would he go? Just to a regular hospital? What if it was some type of ectoplasm thing and they wouldn’t find it in him and they’d think he was faking it? What if they asked questions about his bruises?

Isaac swallowed the lump in his throat and painstakingly twisted so that he was on his side. The wounds were probably just infected, that’s all. He’d just look it up on the internet. His rational side told him that was a stupid idea and he’d be better suited to just ask the school nurse for advice because the internet lies, but he was keen to not draw attention to the wounds he couldn’t hide under clothing or concealer. If worse came to worst, he could always return to the club with his tail between his legs. It wasn’t like he’d parted with them on bad terms. In fact, Spender had reached out to Isaac a few days before summer started to let him know his graduation didn’t mean he was graduating from the club. The conversation was awkward, consisting of nothing but him nodding to every sugar-coated deceitful anecdote Spender could think of, and Isaac walked away from it feeling a little guilty, but he’d decided months beforehand that as soon as graduation day came he was out of there. They’d probably expected him to show up in the clubroom come the first day back to school, but he’d headed as far down the hills of Mayview as he possibly could without getting completely lost. It was surprising that he hadn’t run into any of them, now that they were three months into the new school year. Mayview was a small city. They’re avoiding me. They didn’t want me around, anyway- this is just proof. The rational part of him piped up again. It was letting him know they might just figure that he wants his space, which he did. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that none of them had reached out to him. Seriously, three months. They’re not even worried about me? Maybe I got into it with a spirit I couldn’t handle? They’d probably seen him around town without his knowledge and that was why they hadn’t said anything. Because they didn’t care enough to, doi. The rational part of him didn’t have a lot to say to that, aside from what Isaac already knew:

He wasn’t doing this for their attention. He wasn’t going solo and getting into trouble that left him with battle scars every night because he wanted them to care that he’s hurt. He wasn’t doing this because he wanted to get a glimpse at a side of them that might prove all of his doubts about their relationship wrong. He wasn’t doing this to piss them off or make them as angry at him as he was with them. He wasn’t even doing it to gain the respect from them he’d pined for almost three long years. He was going solo because he’d have control over his own story. He was going solo because he’d get to decide how he handled his powers and who he fought for. Without the club, he could be the silent hero Mayview’s paranatural population didn’t know it’d needed; so it didn’t matter what the club was thinking about him. He could fake not caring until he actually didn’t care anymore, and he had hope that day was coming soon.

High school hadn’t been what he was expecting. Where the movies portrayed high school as a sexed up, drugged up, dumpster of a place to be, he wasn’t finding a lot to complain about. All of his teachers were pretty nice, and obviously used to handling freshmen. There were couples making out in the hallways, but teachers reprimanded them quickly. Three months into the year, and he hadn’t heard about a single party. People talked to each-other about getting drunk, but he’d never seen anybody swaying with the wind on campus. The hallways were crowded, but not as much as he was expecting them to be. All in all, high school wasn’t the awful experience he was imagining it to be.

 That wasn’t to say there weren’t things that bothered him. Because Mayview only had the one high school, there was a mixture of social classes that clashed almost violently on a normal basis. The kids with less money hurdled insults at the group that was visibly better-off, to which the ‘rich’ kids offered snooty if not abnormally witty remarks. The two groups went at it every morning, so much so that there were rumors about certain kids from one group dating kids from the other. With each passing day there was a growing animosity but affection to the way they mouthed off to each-other. Isaac often sat around just to keep an eye in case things escalated. More often than not he found the same old scene boring and repetitive, but that was when she wasn’t involved- Clara Appleby. She was a freshman with charcoal hair and a resting grimace somebody could see from yards away, even behind her overly large round glasses. Despite appearances, Clara was a peacemaker, although she was more aggressive about said peacemaking than Isaac hoped he’d ever be. She was a girl with no association with either group, just an observer like he was. Isaac had taken an interest in her the day things had escalated to a physical level. The guy Isaac had dubbed “Scar-face” for the clearly painted scar over his eyebrow, the ‘leader’ of one group, got into a fistfight with “Jack NICKELson” (get it, because nickels are currency), the ‘leader’ of the other group. Upon the first swing the two juniors took, they both went down on the pavement like bricks. When Isaac looked closer, he’d seen their shoelaces were tied together.

  Clara had tried to start a conversation with him on multiple different occasions, but he’d always been too flustered by the concept that somebody actually wanted to talk to him to respond meaningfully.

“What did you think of Sarah Tony’s speech last night when she won that Grammy?” Clara was bent around in her seat to talk to him, elbows resting on his desk as he scratched away at their bellwork. “It was all about climate change and I think it’s wonderful she’s using her influence to inspire that kind of movement, don’t you?”

I was actually incredibly impressed. I didn’t think a lot of Sarah Tony before, considering a lot of her work is auto-tuned and I don’t really listen to that stuff, but I really like her. Any artist willing to put their fame to good use is an example we should all follow. “It was fine, I guess.” Isaac felt his cheeks heat up. Of course he had an opinion on the speech, why couldn’t he just say that? “Sarah Tony is cool.” Well, that was insightful. Clara pursed her lips and tapped her jaw where her fingers rested, but otherwise didn’t seem too put-off by his lackluster response. He had to come up with something better to say. She was the first person to try to be his friend in an incredibly long time so messing up was absolutely not an option.

“So…”

“Do you like anime?”

Clara’s eye widened, but not in the ‘wow yeah I love anime how did you know’ way. It was in more of a ‘what the hell is anime’ way that he knew so upsettingly well. Isaac felt whatever hope he’d had for a friend fall deep into the pits of his stomach. Not to mention that probably sounded incredibly racist, considering she’s Asian. If he could just walk away, dig himself a grave deep enough to burn inside the Earth’s core and die there, that would have been great. Class was about to start, though, and he actually liked taking math with Mister Carver. “Uh, when I was ten, maybe. You’re still into that stuff?”

Isaac had retraced the number 4 about fifty times, each line darker than the last. “Maybe.”

“Okay, I don’t know if you and I are on the level that I can tease you for that yet, so I won’t.”

Isaac broke the tip of the pencil. He coughed on the thick smell of lead coming in wafts off of his paper, and maybe on the realization that Clara recognized there was a thing called ‘boundaries’. He’d so been expecting another cruel whip at his hobbies like he would have gotten from Max or a snicker like he would have gotten from Ed. Whatever he was expecting- it wasn’t that. His coughing jerked his body just enough to remind him that he was covered in black and blue bruises. He hid the jolts of pain behind the very fake sound of clearing his throat. Clara tilted her head down at his broken pencil, pulling the one she had tucked by her ear out and handing it to him. “Good job, Hulk. What’s next, your desk?”

Against all odds, the awkwardness of the conversation was slipping away, and Isaac was chuckling at a joke at his expense. “Who keeps a pencil behind their ear, anymore? Are you eighty?”

Clara snickered and wiggled her fingers around in front of his face, unbearably impersonating twilight zone sound effects. “Maybe I am! Who’s to say, hm?”

Isaac brushed her hands away and gave her his best awed expression. “Old Lady Appleby! Your complexion is magnificent!” Clara laughed, and for a few seconds he could see the wheels turning in her head as she searched for a response. There was a beat of silence, and it was eerily similar to the awkwardness he’d felt earlier, but the ball was in her court- not his. It was kind of refreshing, being teased and enjoying it.

  Four months into the school year and Clara was quickly becoming the best friend he’d ever had. She laughed at his jokes- and at him. That was okay, though, because he got to laugh at her, too. She snored while she slept in class. She once checked out a book and never returned it to the library. She got sent to the principal’s office because she stuck gum in the teacher’s hair when she was nine. If he was embarrassed about watching anime, she was embarrassed about watching soap operas because the guys were hot. Clara was as imperfect as he was and she was perfectly fine with letting him see her be imperfect. That was why, and he knew it was crazy, he was very seriously debating telling her about spectrals- namely that he was one.

 He didn’t know why he was so spooked about it. It wasn’t like he couldn’t play it all off as a joke if she didn’t believe him. If she was skeptical but willing to listen, then he’d just conjure a small rainbow. He wasn’t worried she’d tell anybody (because nobody would believe her). Every scenario he ran through his head had a backup plan, but he was still incredibly nervous about it. Maybe he was worried she’d be scared of him? Play it off as a joke, then. Say you’re just a magician and it was a magic trick. Even with his safety nets in place, he couldn’t help but hate the idea of her rejecting it all; he couldn’t stand the thought of her rejecting him. She was probably going to need some time to think, and that was understandable, but what if she never stopped thinking? What if she kept her distance from him and avoided him? Even if that stuff didn’t happen and he managed to play it off like some golden magic trick, would he be able to handle lying to her? Would he be able to handle knowing every day that she’d be terrified of him if he hadn’t lied at the last second?

Isaac closed his locker and exhaled, slamming his head against the closed door.

“You okay there, Red? You’re lookin’ a little pale, even for a ginger.”

That was a voice he was very familiar with: Hardy Deering, a junior. He was probably the cockiest jock to have ever walked the Mayview High gym, which was funny considering he was objectively terrible at any and all sports. Isaac shared PE with the guy and often observed him showing off with a basketball. Well, it was less observation and more first-person experience. Hardy would toss the ball in the air just to catch it when it fell, because he sure as heck couldn’t twirl it on the tips of his fingers. Isaac still shivered when he remembered Hardy giving him a wink before he completely missed the shot. He played football, but the coach had him on the benches near constantly. When the class played volleyball, he repeatedly hit the ball into the net if not straight into the ground- on his side of the net. Aside from that, he wasn’t an awful guy. Hardy flirted a lot, but he wasn’t a jerk about it, so it wasn’t something to be paid a lot of attention to. Isaac twisted around so he was leaning against the wall of lockers, blowing an imaginary piece of hair out of his face. “I’m fine, Deering. Why are you asking?” He didn’t usually refer to people by their last names, primarily because he felt that would clue people into his weaboo status like a giant red arrow, but Hardy never called anybody by their first name. Isaac would just ignore the ‘Red’ nickname. Hopefully he’d never use it again.

“O’Connor, right?”

“Yeah?” Isaac raised an eyebrow, more curious than anything.

Hardy tugged at the rim of his beanie, giving the appearance that his normally-sized forehead was much smaller than it really was. His tousled hair fell far past the ends of his hat, down to his shoulders. It really completed the whole baggy-pants “rulz suk” look he had going. The longer they stayed silent, locked in some sort of glaring contest, the more Isaac was crawling under his skin. The fingers on his books clenched enough for him to feel the beginnings of a paper cut. His other hand clenched the strap of his backpack with enough force for his knuckles to turn white. “So, I heard some rumors from some of the freshmen I’ve taken under my wing.”

“Okay, and I’m assuming those rumors have something to do with me?”

“Yeah, they do” Hardy shrugged. “Wanna know what I heard?”

“Not really, no.”

If there was one thing he didn’t need, it was to be involved in some half-baked high school scandal. He was happy for the first time in a very long time, and no stupid rumor about him hooking up with some sophomore nobody likes was going to ruin that. Isaac pushed off of the lockers, turning on the tips of his toes to head for the staircase. He wasn’t expecting Hardy to corner him against the locker with two slams to either side of his body. Isaac gulped and glanced from the hands beside his shoulders to the junior trapping him. “I heard that you talk to thin air, like you’re speaking to ghosts or something.” And what, he’s gonna beat me up for it? I didn’t peg him the type. Great, Isaac, you’re a horrible judge of character. Fantastic. Exactly what you need on top of all the other daily stresses.

Isaac wanted to tell him to shove off, maybe use some colorful language now that he was a young adult, but nothing was louder in his mind than the primal instinct of self-preservation. He stayed silent, gulping and staring Hardy down from his place a few inches below him. “Well, is it true? Do you talk to ghosts?”

Isaac shifted uncomfortably, eyes casted down at their shoes. “I, uh…”

“Look,” Hardy readjusted so that he and Isaac were on eye level “do you see spirits or what, ‘cause if you do then that means I’m not friggin’ crazy.”

That wasn’t what Isaac expected to hear.

It hadn’t occurred to him that there were spectrals out there the club didn’t know about- kids who didn’t explode when they got their powers, or maybe kids who did, so they kept it quiet. Looking at Hardy then, he wasn’t nearly as menacing. In fact, the guy looked akin to a nervous wreck, a small bead of sweat falling down the side of his face- more than anything Isaac had seen him sweat during a game- not that he went to his games. Hardy’s green eyes darted back and forth as he awaited Isaac’s reply. It was kind of amusing, actually, having such an ego-maniac at his mercy.

Isaac reached up to one of Hardy’s wrists and gave the skin a small, but noticeable, shock. Hardy yelped and pulled that hand away, shaking it and glancing between the tingling skin and Isaac. His lips parted to say something, but he resigned to merely pointing at his hand in a silent question. Did I do that? Yes, I did. The medium gave him the most wicked smile he could and shrugged, crossing his arms in a manner he presumed was cool while he held his books. Hardy stood there, eyes switching from his hand to Isaac, Isaac to his hand, and the cycle repeated until the obvious clicked in his mind.

Isaac was anticipating some joyous ‘woots’ or enthusiastic leaping, maybe even a bone-crushing hug. After all, Isaac knew what it was like to finally find somebody like him, and he was kind of starting to feel it all over again. Hardy would be the first spectral he’d met outside of the activity club- somebody he could talk to about spirits and somebody to depend on in the heat of battle. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go crawling back to the club when he needed help? Maybe he could teach Hardy and they could learn the secrets of the spectral world together?

Hardy smiled when the reality set in, a wide toothy grin stretching across his face the longer he stared at Isaac. The medium was almost proud of himself, making another person so happy. It was even better that it was just because he existed in Hardy’s universe. “There’s probably a lot you don’t know. There’s a lot that I don’t know, too, but I think we can figure that stuff out together, if it’s cool with you?”

Things turned topsy-turvy fast, much faster than Isaac could handle. Hardy cupped Isaac’s face in his hands, large happy grin turning almost mischievous. Isaac’s heart leaped in his throat, hands clenching and uncleaning in rhythm at his books and bag. Hardy didn’t seem to notice how nervous Isaac was and, if he did, he presumably enjoyed the power of it. His Cheshire grin sent chills down Isaac’s spine the larger it grew.  “An excuse to see more of you? I’ll buy it.” Isaac struggled to think of something cool or witty to say- something to rip the power right out of Hardy’s arrogant hands. All that came to mind were some quotes about the importance of teamwork from some animes he hadn’t watched in six years.

Hardy’s breath was hot on the medium’s face. As badly as Isaac wanted to knee the guy, Hardy was harmless. More than that, he was not worth breaking his vow of peace for. Hardy’s thumb grazed Isaac’s lips as he pulled away, fast enough Isaac didn’t register the missing body heat until the jock was already a couple feet away. In seconds he was running backwards down the hall, waving at Isaac jovially as though they’d just exchanged pie recipes like sweet little old ladies. “Catch you later, O’Connor! I’ll find ya when I need ya!”

Isaac watched him go, fingers touching where Hardy’s thumb met his lips. Slowly, he sank to his butt, staring vacantly out the windows.

  Clara had been staring at him for a full five minutes. Isaac was sure of it. He sat there with a rain cloud in one hand and a miniature hailstorm in the other. Her eyes were reading blank, but the rest of her face said that she was riddled with curiosity and fascination. She hadn’t doubted him when he said he had powers, but she wasn’t completely sold to the idea, either. She asked for proof, and he’d provided it just as he had planned to. So far, things had gone exactly as planned, except now was the true moment of truth- the hard part. Clara blinked and readjusted her glasses so they weren’t falling off her face. “Well, if that isn’t the weirdest thing to happen in Mayview, yet.”

“So, you believe me?”

“Assuming there aren’t any mirrors or cameras hidden in this dark dirt path that I didn’t know about, sure.”

Clara took her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose, lips in a twisted frown. Isaac was a ball of nervous energy, his heart bouncing in his ribcage like some kind of crazed loony tune character. He was sure they’d have seen it attempt to jump out of his chest, provided he’d had elastic powers. Maybe he should have waited a few more months. This was a lot of pressure to put on somebody he’d been talking to all of October and November. By the way, Clara, you made friends with a freaky medium who has weather powers- hooray! As much as he’d hated himself for it, that was pretty much what he’d managed to stutter through anxious gulps of air. When she finally put her glasses back on, Clara seemed stoic about the entire situation. He wasn’t sure if she was internally screaming at the top of her lungs or if she genuinely was that calm. “Who else knows about this?”

“Uh,” was it a good idea to tell her about the activity club? Telling her about his powers was up to him, but outing the club without their permission? Was it a good idea to tell her about Hardy? Isaac cringed at the name, a shiver running down his spine at the memory of his thumb tracing his lip. He could still feel it on his skin and it freaked him out. Isaac hid the chill with a hand scratching the back of his neck. “Uh, well…”

“Scratch that- tell me you don’t have one.”

“Have one what?”

Clara rolled her eyes and slapped his arm like he should have known exactly what she was talking about because ‘GOD Isaac you’re SO STUPID’. She waited patiently for him to hiss in pain, but it didn’t come. She frowned at him, but he just shrugged. He’d had a lot worse hit him harder in the last six months, not that she would know that. “Come on, you know.”

“What? A superhero name? I’m not a-!”

“No, idiot! Well, yes that too, but I’m talking about a techy! A sidekick from the sidelines! Somebody who helps you escape the abandoned building with a detailed map of the layout! That sort of thing!”

Isaac arched an eyebrow. Clara exhaled and stomped around in a circle, flipping the bottom of his sweater instead of smacking him a second time. “Isaac, I wanna be the Felicity to your Green Arrow. The Sisco to your Flash. Get it?”

“I’m ninety percent sure you have no tech experience, like, at all.”

“I can learn. Books exist for a reason.”

Isaac massaged his temples and turned around, continuing on the trail that would eventually lead home. “I knew I would have a headache, but not this kind. Not for this reason.”

Clara was right behind him, falling naturally into the same step on their way down the path.

  “Oh, my god, Clara what is this?”

“A thermal sensor. It helps me see the ghosts you’re seeing. Well, see their heat, anyway.”

Isaac timidly handled the oddly-shaped camera-looking device in the palms of his hands. He wasn’t sure if it was expensive tech, but he didn’t want to find out. He wanted to tell Clara he wasn’t sure that was how any of it worked, that ghosts wouldn’t necessarily show up on a glorified mood ring. He wanted to tell her that he’s not sure she can really help him do his job, if that’s what he was calling it. While he appreciated all of her support, there wasn’t a lot a normal person could do. He was starting to think that was another reason why Spender’s mysterious superiors always said “don’t tell anybody about being a spectral”. Maybe it wasn’t too late to tell her he was just a magician?

Isaac opened his mouth, but the words died in his chest before they could reach his tongue. Clara had set up a system for herself. He could see tabs of detailed maps of Mayview’s many small patches of forests, floor plans for buildings he knew were near cemeteries. She was working hard and it was to make him feel supported. He’d been asking for a friend like her his entire life, then fate hands her to him and he’s going to lie just to get her to calm down? He couldn’t do that.

“Clara?”

She paused in the middle of a very long-winded rant about books she’d read and hadn’t entirely understood, concepts she was sure she could pick up over time, and looked at him. Her lips stayed parted, as though she was prepared to continue talking when he was done with what he had to say. She was excited and, as great as that was, he had to slow the tracks a bit. “Maybe we should just start with you knowing about this for a bit?” Isaac gestured to the set-up he could already tell was going to be more complicated than either of them could understand “Instead of jumping straight into whatever this is?”

Clara blinked, looking at Isaac with an unreadable expression. He could match a lot of emotions to the way her eyebrows furrowed, and her lips thinned. More than anything, he was sure he saw embarrassment. “I- oh yeah, of course. I got really carried away. I do that sometimes! I’m really sorry.”

“Clara, it’s okay, really!”

“No, it’s not! I didn’t even ask! Oh my god, this is way too much.”

“For right now, maybe!”

He placed his hands on her shoulders and shook her lightly, squeezing where she was tense. Clara’s feet shuffled against the floor, eyes scanning the laces of her shoes. “Look, just let this grow on its own, you know? Here, I’ll take the thermal sensor and I’ll see if you can see the spirits and ghosts with it and stuff. Does that sound okay?”

Clara nodded, meeting Isaac’s careful gaze with an optimistic one. “Alright, yeah. That sounds like a good idea.”

  It was early in the morning on a Friday, the day that nobody wants to put up with anything because they are within inches of the sweet weekend escape. Isaac was at his usual spot, leaning against a pillar just close enough to the bickering of the social classes to hear them without being obvious. Clara sat beside him on the ground, scratching down some last-minute homework answers before the bell rang to report to their individual living nightmares. The two sat in comfortable silence, enjoying the breeze that swept the walls of the courtyard. Isaac was looking forward to the winter and all that came with it: snowmen, warm fires, tea with a book and a blanket, snowball fights…

 He remembered last winter, the first time Max was experiencing cold without the comfort of the city. They’d all poked fun at him for shivering under two jackets and a sweater, his teeth chattering so loud they could hear it from a foot away. Isaac told him it would be a good idea to switch his cap for something warmer, like a beanie, but he’d rejected the idea vehemently. It was Ed who broached the subject of a snowball fight- well; he tossed a snowball that hit Max square in the face, if that was what broaching meant. Isabel was too busy hunched over laughing to notice Max reaching down to gather snow. Isaac remembered watching the batter with complacency as Isabel got a scoopful of snow shoved down the back of her jacket. She’d screeched and struggled to get the white fluff out of her clothes, all the while screaming that Ed should have been the one to fall victim to Max’s heinous act. Ed was readying another snowball when one of Isaac’s hit him in the side, knocking him off of his balance and sending him face-first into the snow. Isaac had rarely felt as proud as he did, then. Max had patted him on the back, sarcastically hailing Isaac as his ‘hero’ for avenging him. The attention had been welcome if not desired. Isaac had been too busy soaking up the recognition to notice Isabel rolling a rather large snowball, roughly the size of her torso, with the anticipation of smacking him in the face with it. The excessively large snowball nailed Isaac in the chest and he fell backwards under the force of it. Max had reached out to help him, but retracted his hands at the last second because he was laughing so hard his sides hurt. The four had gotten into the biggest snowball fight Isaac had ever had, splitting into unclear teams with no rules and no signs of cover in sight. It was one of Isaac’s more treasured memories, one of the few times attending Mayview Middle was ‘fun’. The four of them not only missed the tardy bell, but all of first period and some of second.

 He pondered vaguely on what winter would be like now that he hadn’t seen them in half a year. He missed them and he knew it, but it wasn’t enough to make him fold on his resolve. Isaac turned his attention to Clara, who was banging her head repeatedly against the sides of her notebook as she struggled with her homework. Clara seems like the type to have a snowball fight. A snowball fight with Clara could be fun. The yearning he’d been feeling eased up, but it was far from disappearing. Memories of the activity club that didn’t make him want to tear his hair out were becoming increasingly common and he hated it. There weren’t enough of them to make him change his mind, darn it! His guilt was getting to him and it was ridiculous. Being a part of the activity club had regularly drained him, left him feeling empty and angry and helpless. They lowered his self-esteem. They made him regret ever learning about spectrals, which sucked because he loved his powers. Cutting the club out of his daily routine was just a part of him growing stronger. Maybe he’d yearn for their company every now and again, but quitting the club was ultimately the best thing he could have done for himself.

 He must have been lost in that train of thought for a long time, because the hand that was waving in front of his face started snapping. Isaac swallowed and glanced up to see Hardy standing there, an eyebrow cocked and the traces of a sneaky grin tugging at his lips. “What’s got you so down, Red?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine, whatever. You’re such a buzzkill for a guy with an Irish lineage.”

Isaac blanched. “How did you know I’m Irish?”

“Your last name is O’Connor- ‘ts pretty damn Irish.” Hardy glanced at Clara, who was looking between the two of them with a question at the tip of her tongue. She’d probably said something about not knowing he knew Hardy Deering, but Isaac hadn’t heard it if she had. Isaac watched Hardy with crossed arms and a grimace that he was sure made his lips look unappealing, not that he thought Hardy was genuinely interested in him or anything. “Listen, dude,” Hardy gripped the sleeve of Isaac’s shirt, sending a jolt of energy through Isaac’s body that made his face heat up so much he couldn’t even feel the cold pre-winter air “can I talk to you alone?” Isaac thought about saying no. He thought about telling Hardy that Clara knew about spectrals, but when he looked at Hardy- genuinely looked at him- the guy was in a nervous sweat. He kept shifting like somebody was watching them, throwing glances over his shoulder, and worrying his lower lip. His eyes were wide with fright Isaac couldn’t understand, but he was willing to try.

  “What’s this about, Deering?”

“I saw something last night, man.” Hardy was pacing back and forth in the empty hallway, running his hands through the locks of hair that weren’t hidden under his huge black beanie. Isaac watched him with what felt like curiosity and concern. He didn’t think much of it. It was in his nature to love humanity and care about other people. It was in his nature to want to help. Hardy definitely looked like he needed it. He was shaking under his clothes. Isaac chose not to say anything about it since there was no reason to embarrass the guy. All it would do was make Hardy distrustful of him, and he was just about done dealing with not being trusted. “I was just listening to my music, ya know? I plugged my headphones in and it was almost like time stopped or something!” Oh. “There was this creature just, like, staring at me. I don’t know if it was a spirit or what, but it looked like a dog and it had these huge-ass megaphone ears and holy shit, dude I’m freaking out!”

“Calm down, it’s perfectly normal. Everything’s alright, you just met the spirit in your tool is all.” Hardy dropped all of his weight against the lockers across from Isaac, running his hands over his face as he recollected all the air he lost panicking.

“Wanna tell me what a tool is?”

Isaac smiled and pushed away from his spot against the wall, laying a cautious (friendly) hand on Hardy’s shoulder. “Here, let me start by saying we are called spectrals and you and I are not the only ones.”

  “Okay, try it again.”

Deep emerald spectral energy- almost Ed’s color, but deeper. It was comparing the grass in spring to an old oak tree. Isaac found himself staring at Hardy’s eyes when his energy flared- it was the same color. Often he shook it off and pretended that he hadn’t just been staring deeply into the arrogant jerk’s eyes, because romance was far from his intention. It wasn’t even in the ballpark.

Hardy’s already unusually stern expression became focused, determined, as he twirled his tool (a pair of white headphones) around the tips of his fingers. With a huff of hot air and a lash of the chords so fast it sounded like a whip, Isaac could almost see the soundwave echo through the air before it went crashing into the decoy wooden person Isaac had constructed last minute. Where before, each limb fell individually, there was a clean cut right down the middle of the dummy. Isaac watched with curious eyes as the top half came sliding to the ground, leaving the bottom half unevenly stacked atop Isaac’s eighth grade text books. It soon fell to its side, succumbing to gravity. “That was pretty impressive, Deering!”

Isaac breathed into his hands, warming them up as best he could without gloves. It’s not like it was that cold outside, yet; he just kept getting chills for some reason.

Hardy popped his headphones into his cell, smirking at Isaac from underneath his beanie. “I’m just an impressive person.”

Isaac rolled his eyes and handed Hardy his book-bag, nodding to the exit of the abandoned parking lot they’d stumbled upon. Well, stumbled upon wasn’t so much the truth as they’d spent an entire weekend looking for one. It was just that the forest was a hotspot for paranatural activity, so not actually hitting anything would have been hard. It wasn’t like Mayview had plenty of large, grassy open fields- the city was pretty much nothing much copious hills. The next best thing had to be an empty parking lot. Hardy didn’t seem to mind, but he also didn’t seem to mind being trained by somebody with little more idea than he had himself.

Isaac wasn’t exactly sure what to do. It wasn’t like he’d ever had proper training, himself. How was he supposed to teach a new spectral much of anything? That was the problem- he wasn’t. Eventually, he’d have to tell Hardy about the dojo and about the club and about what he’d done-!

Hardy would abandon him, too.

Having Clara around was great, really great, but she wasn’t a spectral. She could only help him up off the ground and dust him off. She couldn’t see the things he’d seen or fight by his side or joke with him about particularly unsettling spirits. Her understanding of his world could only go so far- Hardy was different. Sure, he told Hardy about how there were other spectrals in the world and that everything he was experiencing was perfectly normal, but what if Hardy started asking other questions? What if he asked if Isaac knew other spectrals? What if he decided Isaac wasn’t good enough anymore?

“Hey, Red! Let me walk ya home.” Hardy wrapped an arm around Isaac’s tense shoulders and pulled him toward the exit. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. How about I show you my favorite place?”

Isaac fought the smile that was urging him to giggle like a schoolgirl- which he was not, darn it. He was a macho teenage boy bursting with testosterone. “Are you asking me out?”

Hardy shrugged, and something told Isaac it was an excuse to brush their shoulders together. “Well I’m not not asking you out.”

Isaac snorted and elbowed his friend in the chest, not very hard, just enough to set him straight. “Only if you’re paying.”

He took a few paced steps to get ahead of Hardy, snickering when he heard “Well that’s kinda what date implies!”