MCSKSG twenty-one
I think things are starting to get disjointed and choppy and I'm losing scene economy big time, BUUUUT I AM NOT SURE I CARE (yet). 4,582 words.
Lydia called, just like she said she would, but we ended up arranging a meeting in person instead of discussing it over the phone. That was fine with me, because I didn't want to stick around for dinner with Mom and Para.
Which Mom was not happy about, but she relented after I told her I was meeting with Lydia. I don't even know why Mom seemed to like her so much - they'd only met once. Not that I was complaining.
We met at the usual spot. Lydia was already there, lounging on the bench with her elbows propped up the backrest and a cigarette in her mouth. Somehow I'd managed to forget that she was a smoker. She put it out as I walked up.
"Don't look now," she said, pointing behind me, "but you got company, Kitten."
I looked back over my shoulder.
Jonesy.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded, turning to glare at him.
He stopped running and faced me - or, well, he doubled over to catch his breath first, and then he faced me. His green-haired flunkie came walking up behind him, looking completely unfazed and not the least bit out of breath.
"Don't give me any lip, kid," he said, pointing in a way which I think was meant to be threatening, but it lost some of the effect when he had his other hand braced against his leg and was still panting.
The creepy assistant smiled at me. I took a step away from her and toward Lydia.
Jonesy straightened, adjusting his fedora. "I'm not here to talk to you anyway, kid, though you can bet your mangy black tail we're gonna have some words later."
Mangy? I'd show him mangy, that damn--
"Aww, he's so cute with his ears pinned back like an angry kitty."
That creepy assistant killed my outrage real fast.
Jonesy held a hand out, motioning her back (even though she hadn't moved), and faced Lydia. He pulled an envelope out of his coat and handed it to her. "Here."
She leaned forward to take it. "Cool." Standing to shove the letter into her back pocket, she said, "That's all, right?"
He nodded. Then he turned to me, narrowed his eyes, and pointed again. "Don't think I've forgotten about you, Whiskers."
Of all the--! I snarled at him, which maybe made me seem more like an angry cat than I wanted to in the face of an insult like that, but it got him to recoil from me and that was satisfying enough to make up for it.
He shot me a suspicious glare (from a safe distance, of course). "I knew from the moment I met him this kid was trouble," he muttered. "Sooner or later--"
"Jaaaaayne," the assistant called out, "you're narrating again!"
"...Hmph." He glanced at her, then shot me one last look (complete with the "I got my eyes on you" point), and turned to leave.
"Man," Lydia remarked. "He's really got it out for you, huh?"
"That's guy's crazy," was all I said.
"He's the fun kind of crazy." She turned to me and pulled out that envelope, holding it up with a wink. "And the useful kind."
I didn't really care how useful whatever was in that envelope would be, not if it was coming from him.
"Aww, Kitten, it's okay." She leaned over and ruffled my hair. I ducked away from her, reaching up to comb my fingers through it. "Rough day?" she asked.
I shot her a look, firstly because I was still mad about Jonesy, and secondly because I don't know why she asked that when it was obvious that was what I was mad about.
She stepped back, hands up in surrender. "Forget I asked."
I didn't say anything else. I took a seat on the bench and waited for her to say whatever she had to say.
Reclaiming her previous spot, she slouched against the back of the bench and held up the envelope, eyeing it. "I told Jonesy about us."
I stared at her.
"Don't give me that look. He got kidnapped by Kafra, by one of us. I had to set him straight, you know? Tell him we weren't with that crazy Knight skank. Don't worry, I didn't tell him who anybody was - just me."
All I gave in response was an annoyed grunt. Lydia going and telling Jonesy she was a Seductionist didn't surprise me, considering how quickly she'd revealed herself to me right after the first time we'd met, but it was still aggravating because it was Jonesy.
She feigned ignorance. "Anyway, I had to get him to stop chasing us somehow. And he's agreed to dig up any information he can about Kafra." She indicated the envelope. "That's what this is."
I didn't really care. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, chin in my hands, and looked out at the park.
Only to be knocked out of it by a punch to the shoulder. "Quit being so surly!"
"Ow!"
"And quit giving me that look!" she chided. "You needed that!"
"No I didn't!"
"You're talking now, aren't you?"
"You didn't have to hit me to get me to talk!"
"Don't let Jonesy get under your skin like that," she said, totally ignoring the current subject. "He just thinks you're some punk Rose because he doesn't know you. If he knew you, he'd know you're the coolest cat in Pront."
Even if I wanted to stay mad, well, sometimes Lydia could say the right thing, even if that thing was totally ridiculous and cheesy. I sighed.
"What's wrong, anyway? I thought you'd be all sunshine and rainbows after totally thrashing that bitch. Which, by the way, was excellent."
Hunching over again into the position she'd punched me out of, I muttered, "Real life."
"What, your girlfriend dump you?" She paused, reconsidered. "Do you even have a girlfriend?"
"I almost did, I guess." Which was a weird thing to realize, that the date with Lacy had gone well enough to lead to something if Esperanza hadn't interfered.
That cleared everything up, apparently. "Ohhhh. Don't be too down about it. She doesn't know what she's missing."
"It's not...that."
"No?" she questioned.
I leaned back, slouching against the wooden slats. "No. I mean, it was going really well...until..." I didn't even know how to phrase this. I wasn't going to be able to make Lydia understand just how bad the situation was without starting from the beginning, was I?
"Until...?" she prompted, leaning in toward me.
"Um." How should I even say this? "There's...this girl, that I used to really like. I mean, really like, but she never even noticed me. But I started hanging out with her best friend, who's really nice and...and I guess I started liking her, more."
"So did the first girl notice and get jealous or something?"
"No, she..." I stopped, narrowing my eyes at the ground for a second before I continued. "She turned out...to be the Knight."
A pause. "Oh, Kitten..."
I didn't really want that serious response, so I just kept talking to keep Lydia from saying anything else. "And I called her out, on what she did, but I guess...she didn't like that very much, you know, being told she's a terrible person, so she lied to Lacy about something really stupid to make her hate me." I paused for a second, but Lydia didn't speak again. "And I'm really...pissed off about it, because Lacy doesn't deserve to get dragged into our fight, and I just want Esperanza to leave me alone and stop trying to ruin my life."
Lydia reached out, put an arm around my shoulders, and pulled me close to her. I didn't try to pull away or anything, but I don't know if I really wanted to be there right then. "The thing about people is they don't ever like to think that they're wrong."
"That's what Rayu said, too."
"Rayu?" she asked.
I wrapped my arms around myself, leaning against her shoulder. "My dad, I guess."
"You guess?"
"Well. My dad was just this guy who sent me letters all the time, and Rayu--" ...Rayu was the guy who sent me those letters. That should've been obvious, but I didn't realize it until just then. That was...that was huge. I was going to go re-read those letters when I got home. "...He was a friend. And. I only found out a couple days ago."
"I see," she said. "That's rough."
"Yeah," I agreed.
"You want some advice, Kitten?"
She was going to give it anyway, so I just said, "Sure."
"Esperwhatsis is a huge bitch and she just wants you gone so she doesn't have to own up to what she did. And if Lacy is the kind of girl who can stay friends with someone like that, then she isn't the kind of girl you want."
"That doesn't help," I muttered. It wasn't advice, it was an interpretation of the situation and one I didn't like. I didn't really care if Lacy was still friends with Esperanza. I just wanted her not to hate me because her friend told her to.
"Just hang back and wait, Kitten. Either she'll realize something's up with her friend, or she'll drop you for good, and either way you win. And, now that the bitch doesn't have her belt anymore, she probably won't sound nearly as convincing. So just give it some time, see how things work out."
"I guess." I couldn't let it stand at that, though. Not after I'd gone and made the threat. I had to follow through on it before I could sit back and wait for things to work out.
"Oh, yeah." Sudden change of topic incoming. I pulled away from her, sitting up and looking to her. "Judgey came and took the belt last night. Also said that something big was happening in a couple weeks and we needed to be ready."
"The WNC?" I asked. That whole previous conversation didn't matter anymore. I shoved it in a drawer and forgot about it; this was Seductionist stuff, not real life drama.
"I'm pretty sure. Which means we gotta be there."
Or maybe it was real life drama, because Esperanza had been my only way to get a ticket to the event. "I can't go," I realized.
"Ninja's still got spare tickets. He's competing."
...That's right. I remembered that now. Esperanza had asked us to go in the first place because Orion Black had spare tickets of his own.
"You guys know each other, right? See if you can ask him tomorrow."
"Okay." Yeah, I could do that. Go up to Orion Black and ask him for a ticket to the WNC. No problem. Nope. Easy.
"I'm taking the train up to Glast, if you wanna come with me."
"Maybe." I was going to need Mom's permission to go, first, and even if she liked Lydia, I didn't know if that was going to be good enough supervision for Mom to let me go with her.
I had a lot to ask Mom about, it seemed. Maybe I shouldn't have skipped out on dinner. I glanced at my watch. If I left now, could I make it home before she got done cooking?
"I should go," I said, standing.
"Gonna be late for dinner?"
I stared at her.
She smiled, waving me off. "Go. I'll keep you posted on the Kafs, and you let me know what's up on your end. See you later, Kitten."
* * *
I was, unfortunately, a little late for dinner. But Mom was impressed enough that I'd tried to make it back on time that I ended up earning her favour for it anyway. A net win, even if I did have to deal with her and Para all evening.
I managed to pull her aside later, while Para was busy with the dishes, to ask her for a favour. See, I couldn't let the situation with Esperanza sit, now that she'd blatantly ignored my threat and shown no signs of complying. Since she obviously didn't believe me, I needed to prove my threats weren't idle ones.
So I pulled my mom aside and asked, "Can you give somebody a warning for me?"
"Oh?" I didn't like the way her eyes lit up. Did she see this as winning, me asking for favours - asking her to use the business to my own advantage? I had to resort to that. It was all I had.
I told her that somebody was trying to turn Lacy against me, and bringing "that cute Lacy girl" into it got her to agree to put some pressure on Esperanza without me even needing to elaborate on it.
Well, except for the part where she said, "But this means you're spending Saturday at the warehouse after your test."
I gave her that, "Aw, come on," look, the one every mother knows by heart, but to no avail.
"Fair's fair, Guido. You ask me for a favour, you have to earn it."
I sighed. I knew it'd be worth it, so in the end I agreed to it and she agreed to send one of the boys over to issue a warning.
* * *
I stayed up half the night re-reading all of my dad's letters. He'd started sending them as soon as I was old enough to read, and I'd always kept them in a box under my bed, organized by postage date. Even in our haste to leave Payon, that box had been the one thing I made sure not to forget. So it was a simple thing to pull that box out and read through my history, letter by letter, start to finish.
It was a less simple thing to see every letter in its new context, to put Rayu in place of the mysterious Rose penning these grand adventures. Knowing it was Rayu, I had to wonder how much of these letters was true, and how much was him just being Rayu. Some of them had pictures to prove it - not here, all the pictures had been taken out and given various places of honour among the rest of my things - but most of them didn't.
Rick was real. He showed up in the pictures a lot. I guess Rayu was always the one behind the camera. The trips themselves had to be real. Unless Rayu was just using his friend's adventures as inspiration for his own and didn't actually go on them at all... But I didn't want to believe that. He spent weeks away from the bar fairly often. Maybe his last trip to Geffen had been more of the same. Maybe that would have turned into a letter too if he hadn't revealed himself before then.
Maybe Rayu really was just using our letters as his way to connect with me when he couldn't face-to-face. I wanted that, desperately. I wanted it all to be real. For this to be the side of Rayu that didn't lie every other word.
It would be easy enough to tell, wouldn't it? Rayu could never keep his lies straight. All I'd have to do was ask about the stuff in his letters and see what he said.
Tomorrow was a Wednesday, when Chris and I usually went over to the bar after school, so I'd see then.
* * *
The next dilemma I had to tackle was getting access to the WNC. This was actually a problem in several parts. One, I needed a ticket; I'd have to talk to Orion Black at school for that. Two, I needed Mom's permission. That was going to be the hardest part, because she wasn't going to let me go by myself, and I doubted she'd let me go with, say, Chris's family (I didn't even know if he planned to still take Esperanza's offer or not, so I couldn't rely on him anyway). If she wouldn't come with me (and I really didn't want her to), then I needed...my other parent. She'd probably be perfectly happy with Para, but: Three, it was Rayu I was going to ask, and if she tried to refuse, I could guilt her to death for it. But I had to get Rayu to agree, first.
The first step was the tickets, and it was the hardest. Harder than talking to my mom about something I knew she'd want to refuse. Even if we were comrades now, some kind of cool with each other, that guy was still intimidating as hell, and a kid like me couldn't just go up to a kid like him to chat. God, no. That was like walking into a wolf's den. I had to try to catch him alone, or between classes, or somewhere he wouldn't be surrounded by his flunkies. Not knowing his schedule, that was kind of difficult.
I got lucky. Or, unlucky. I almost literally ran into him again on my way back from lunch.
"You gotta start watching where you're going, bro," Orion Black said. "That's the fourth time."
I sighed.
"How's that Nightmare?"
Was he...was he making conversation? I stared dumbly for a minute before I stammered out, "It's, uh, it's fine. Hey, um."
"Hm?" He raised an eyebrow, typical cool guy style.
Which was intimidating. I started staring at the buttons on his shirt so I wouldn't have to look him in the face. "Lydia said...to ask you about WNC tickets."
"Oh, yeah. I got two left. You need 'em both?"
He was being awfully generous. I felt greedy asking for both, but if I wanted Rayu to come, I'd probably need to have a ticket secured for him. "I...might," I answered, hesitant.
"Alright, just let me know." He left with a cool, offhand wave, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
And then realized I still had to get to class.
* * *
Rayu was at the counter when we got there, mixing a drink. He glanced up, gave us a nod, and continued working. It was normal. It felt no different from any other time we'd walked in after school to sit at the bar and talk to him. This huge revelation that changed everything - it hadn't changed anything.
Chris leaned on the bar and watched Rayu and then looked at me. "Man, it's obvious now. I don't know why we never noticed it before."
"Notice what," I asked, half-heartedly because I knew what he was going to say.
"You guys have the same colour hair, the same colour fur, you even--"
"Hey boys," came Rayu's incredibly welcome interruption. "What's up?"
"I oughtta sock you again, that's what."
"Chris," I said, "shut up."
Even Rayu took a step back. He exchanged a glance with Chris. "Might wanna do what he says."
Chris folded his arms and frowned at me. "What's with you?"
Plenty. Too much to be putting up with his idiocy right now. "I know how I feel about it, okay? I don't need you telling me how I should feel."
"I'm not--"
Rayu leaned in toward him, conspiratorially. "Pst, Chris - the correct answer is an apology."
"You're the one who should be apologizing, you--"
"He already did." It wasn't a shout, but I did raise my voice. It was enough to get Chris to shut up, at least. "You don't know what we talked about, okay? He's my dad, not yours. I'm not angry, so quit being angry on my behalf!"
Rayu stepped back, leaving the argument between me and Chris.
"Whoa, hey." Chris held up his hands, leaning away from me. "Alright, man, I'm sorry."
"If you're sorry then you'll stop."
"I'll stop." He turned away, folding his hands over the bar, eyes down. That was good enough for me, at least until he opened his mouth again.
Rayu didn't say anything; he had walked off to handle another customer for the moment. We stayed silent until he came back. He didn't say anything, but that was fine because I had something to ask him anyway.
"Hey, Rayu?"
"What's up?" he responded.
"If...I had tickets to the WNC, would you take me?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"Mom won't let me go unless..."
"Ah, right. I'm surprised, though. I didn't think you were a fan."
"I'm not, I just--"
Chris, again, just had to voice his opinion. "He just wants to go because Esperanza is competing."
I choked up. I have never in my life wanted so badly to hit somebody. He didn't know, I told myself. He didn't know, you never told him, of course he's going to say something like that. I latched on to the edge of the bar, glaring down at the wood, to keep myself from turning around and punching Chris off his stool.
"I'm sure that's not why," Rayu said, and for a second I was afraid he'd say something I didn't want him to. But I shouldn't have worried at all; Rayu smoothed it over perfectly, classic Rayu style. "Glast Heim is an archeologist's paradise. I think the WNC is just an excuse."
I looked up to see him glance at me.
"Am I right?" he asked, with a knowing sort of arch to his brow. I understood what he was doing, and he expected me to.
I nodded.
"Tell you what, Guido. I just came back from Glast Heim, actually--"
"I thought you went to Geffen!" Chris interrupted.
"--because a friend of mine is on a dig out there right now."
A friend on a dig. That clicked right away. "Rick?" I asked.
He smiled. "I asked him if I could bring my son along on our next trip. That was supposed to be your birthday gift, but I didn't quite have the chance to mention it on your birthday."
My jaw dropped. There were a number of factors: him calling me his son, for one thing, and the fact that my birthday gift was getting to go on an archeological dig with my dad and his best friend. That meant getting to meet Rick, and getting to see what didn't make it into my dad's letters, and getting to see real archeology firsthand.
"So if you want to head up to GH over Spring Break, I would gladly take you, with or without a WNC ticket."
I started to say something, but swallowed it and revised. I settled on, "I...would like that."
* * *
Rayu agreed to talk to Mom about it for me, for which I was thankful. I didn't want to deal with her myself. I didn't want to have to pull the guilt trip on her, I'd rather let him do it for me.
Since I didn't have to worry about that, I could concentrate on the important thing: this was exciting. Really exciting. I didn't even want to go to the WNC, I just had to because of Seductionist stuff. But now I had my own reason to be in GH for something I wanted to be there for, and that was awesome, even if I still had to show up at the WNC to figure out what was going on with Kafra.
The first thing I did when I got home was call Lydia to let her know that I could get a ticket from Orion Black and that I was definitely going to be able to come. (Even if I didn't have a definite yes on that yet, I knew I'd be able to get it one way or another.)
I felt like all my worries had disappeared. Everything was working out fine. WNC, the Kafra situation, the issues with Mom, all that had been seen to and all that was left to worry about was Esperanza, and even that was getting handled at Mom's earliest convenience. I finally felt like things were looking up.
That feeling lasted about long enough for one really good night's sleep. Thursday morning, the first thing that happened as soon as I got to school was Esperanza practically abducting me to get me away from the crowd at the front of the school. She threw me up against the brick wall at the side of the building and accused, "You nearly killed my lunatic!"
I stared at her dumbly for a minute before I realized what was going on. The warning I'd asked Mom to deliver for me. I quickly regathered my wits, pulling away from the wall and from her. "I didn't do anything," I said.
"Bullshit! One of your mom's goons poisoned my lunatic!"
"You did that to yourself," I replied.
The rage on her face fell to incredulous dismay. Maybe she hadn't seen enough movies to know how this kind of thing worked. I, on the other hand, had firsthand experience.
"I'm pretty sure I told you to stop lying to Lacy about me, and to tell her that you were lying in the first place. I even gave you a few days because I was giving you the benefit of the doubt! But no. Every time I talked to her this week, she--"
"That's not fair!"
I was trying to be slick, handle it the same way Giovanni would handle it, but that pissed me off. "Not fair?!" I shouted. "Fuck you, Esperanza! Fuck you. You know what's not fair? I liked a girl who was actually interested in me, and then her best friend decided to break us up because she got pissed off at me for daring to tell her that what she did was rape. That's not fair. I have been more than fair to you. I don't even care what you do, as long as you leave me alone. But this thing with Lacy? That's not leaving me alone. I gave you a chance, and you blew it. I told you you'd regret it if you kept fucking with me. Well guess what? You kept fucking with me. I hope you realize I'm not making idle threats now. I hope you realize that I can fucking ruin you if you don't fucking stop."
She recoiled, staring wide-eyed at me.
"That thing with your lunatic? That was a warning. So maybe you might want to consider telling your friend the truth and letting her make her own decisions, or next time it'll be more than just a warning."
"I can tell the cops, you know," she said.
"Do it! Do it, Esperanza! I'll charge you! I'll tell them who kidnapped Jonesy! I have witnesses, all you have is one high schooler making threats. So get the cops involved. I don't. Care." I did care. I cared because if she did try to go to the cops with it, my mom was going to have to handle it, and I didn't want her to have to handle it. I didn't want her to have to know about any of this. But if it came to that, then oh well.
She took a step back, shoulders stiff, and I think she was holding herself back from crying, even though she looked pretty mad.
"You have until Monday," I told her, which was a completely arbitrary day, but it was the first thing that came to mind. I didn't add anything to that. I left it there. And I left her there, because I had a class to get to, and I had nothing else to say to her.
Lydia called, just like she said she would, but we ended up arranging a meeting in person instead of discussing it over the phone. That was fine with me, because I didn't want to stick around for dinner with Mom and Para.
Which Mom was not happy about, but she relented after I told her I was meeting with Lydia. I don't even know why Mom seemed to like her so much - they'd only met once. Not that I was complaining.
We met at the usual spot. Lydia was already there, lounging on the bench with her elbows propped up the backrest and a cigarette in her mouth. Somehow I'd managed to forget that she was a smoker. She put it out as I walked up.
"Don't look now," she said, pointing behind me, "but you got company, Kitten."
I looked back over my shoulder.
Jonesy.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded, turning to glare at him.
He stopped running and faced me - or, well, he doubled over to catch his breath first, and then he faced me. His green-haired flunkie came walking up behind him, looking completely unfazed and not the least bit out of breath.
"Don't give me any lip, kid," he said, pointing in a way which I think was meant to be threatening, but it lost some of the effect when he had his other hand braced against his leg and was still panting.
The creepy assistant smiled at me. I took a step away from her and toward Lydia.
Jonesy straightened, adjusting his fedora. "I'm not here to talk to you anyway, kid, though you can bet your mangy black tail we're gonna have some words later."
Mangy? I'd show him mangy, that damn--
"Aww, he's so cute with his ears pinned back like an angry kitty."
That creepy assistant killed my outrage real fast.
Jonesy held a hand out, motioning her back (even though she hadn't moved), and faced Lydia. He pulled an envelope out of his coat and handed it to her. "Here."
She leaned forward to take it. "Cool." Standing to shove the letter into her back pocket, she said, "That's all, right?"
He nodded. Then he turned to me, narrowed his eyes, and pointed again. "Don't think I've forgotten about you, Whiskers."
Of all the--! I snarled at him, which maybe made me seem more like an angry cat than I wanted to in the face of an insult like that, but it got him to recoil from me and that was satisfying enough to make up for it.
He shot me a suspicious glare (from a safe distance, of course). "I knew from the moment I met him this kid was trouble," he muttered. "Sooner or later--"
"Jaaaaayne," the assistant called out, "you're narrating again!"
"...Hmph." He glanced at her, then shot me one last look (complete with the "I got my eyes on you" point), and turned to leave.
"Man," Lydia remarked. "He's really got it out for you, huh?"
"That's guy's crazy," was all I said.
"He's the fun kind of crazy." She turned to me and pulled out that envelope, holding it up with a wink. "And the useful kind."
I didn't really care how useful whatever was in that envelope would be, not if it was coming from him.
"Aww, Kitten, it's okay." She leaned over and ruffled my hair. I ducked away from her, reaching up to comb my fingers through it. "Rough day?" she asked.
I shot her a look, firstly because I was still mad about Jonesy, and secondly because I don't know why she asked that when it was obvious that was what I was mad about.
She stepped back, hands up in surrender. "Forget I asked."
I didn't say anything else. I took a seat on the bench and waited for her to say whatever she had to say.
Reclaiming her previous spot, she slouched against the back of the bench and held up the envelope, eyeing it. "I told Jonesy about us."
I stared at her.
"Don't give me that look. He got kidnapped by Kafra, by one of us. I had to set him straight, you know? Tell him we weren't with that crazy Knight skank. Don't worry, I didn't tell him who anybody was - just me."
All I gave in response was an annoyed grunt. Lydia going and telling Jonesy she was a Seductionist didn't surprise me, considering how quickly she'd revealed herself to me right after the first time we'd met, but it was still aggravating because it was Jonesy.
She feigned ignorance. "Anyway, I had to get him to stop chasing us somehow. And he's agreed to dig up any information he can about Kafra." She indicated the envelope. "That's what this is."
I didn't really care. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, chin in my hands, and looked out at the park.
Only to be knocked out of it by a punch to the shoulder. "Quit being so surly!"
"Ow!"
"And quit giving me that look!" she chided. "You needed that!"
"No I didn't!"
"You're talking now, aren't you?"
"You didn't have to hit me to get me to talk!"
"Don't let Jonesy get under your skin like that," she said, totally ignoring the current subject. "He just thinks you're some punk Rose because he doesn't know you. If he knew you, he'd know you're the coolest cat in Pront."
Even if I wanted to stay mad, well, sometimes Lydia could say the right thing, even if that thing was totally ridiculous and cheesy. I sighed.
"What's wrong, anyway? I thought you'd be all sunshine and rainbows after totally thrashing that bitch. Which, by the way, was excellent."
Hunching over again into the position she'd punched me out of, I muttered, "Real life."
"What, your girlfriend dump you?" She paused, reconsidered. "Do you even have a girlfriend?"
"I almost did, I guess." Which was a weird thing to realize, that the date with Lacy had gone well enough to lead to something if Esperanza hadn't interfered.
That cleared everything up, apparently. "Ohhhh. Don't be too down about it. She doesn't know what she's missing."
"It's not...that."
"No?" she questioned.
I leaned back, slouching against the wooden slats. "No. I mean, it was going really well...until..." I didn't even know how to phrase this. I wasn't going to be able to make Lydia understand just how bad the situation was without starting from the beginning, was I?
"Until...?" she prompted, leaning in toward me.
"Um." How should I even say this? "There's...this girl, that I used to really like. I mean, really like, but she never even noticed me. But I started hanging out with her best friend, who's really nice and...and I guess I started liking her, more."
"So did the first girl notice and get jealous or something?"
"No, she..." I stopped, narrowing my eyes at the ground for a second before I continued. "She turned out...to be the Knight."
A pause. "Oh, Kitten..."
I didn't really want that serious response, so I just kept talking to keep Lydia from saying anything else. "And I called her out, on what she did, but I guess...she didn't like that very much, you know, being told she's a terrible person, so she lied to Lacy about something really stupid to make her hate me." I paused for a second, but Lydia didn't speak again. "And I'm really...pissed off about it, because Lacy doesn't deserve to get dragged into our fight, and I just want Esperanza to leave me alone and stop trying to ruin my life."
Lydia reached out, put an arm around my shoulders, and pulled me close to her. I didn't try to pull away or anything, but I don't know if I really wanted to be there right then. "The thing about people is they don't ever like to think that they're wrong."
"That's what Rayu said, too."
"Rayu?" she asked.
I wrapped my arms around myself, leaning against her shoulder. "My dad, I guess."
"You guess?"
"Well. My dad was just this guy who sent me letters all the time, and Rayu--" ...Rayu was the guy who sent me those letters. That should've been obvious, but I didn't realize it until just then. That was...that was huge. I was going to go re-read those letters when I got home. "...He was a friend. And. I only found out a couple days ago."
"I see," she said. "That's rough."
"Yeah," I agreed.
"You want some advice, Kitten?"
She was going to give it anyway, so I just said, "Sure."
"Esperwhatsis is a huge bitch and she just wants you gone so she doesn't have to own up to what she did. And if Lacy is the kind of girl who can stay friends with someone like that, then she isn't the kind of girl you want."
"That doesn't help," I muttered. It wasn't advice, it was an interpretation of the situation and one I didn't like. I didn't really care if Lacy was still friends with Esperanza. I just wanted her not to hate me because her friend told her to.
"Just hang back and wait, Kitten. Either she'll realize something's up with her friend, or she'll drop you for good, and either way you win. And, now that the bitch doesn't have her belt anymore, she probably won't sound nearly as convincing. So just give it some time, see how things work out."
"I guess." I couldn't let it stand at that, though. Not after I'd gone and made the threat. I had to follow through on it before I could sit back and wait for things to work out.
"Oh, yeah." Sudden change of topic incoming. I pulled away from her, sitting up and looking to her. "Judgey came and took the belt last night. Also said that something big was happening in a couple weeks and we needed to be ready."
"The WNC?" I asked. That whole previous conversation didn't matter anymore. I shoved it in a drawer and forgot about it; this was Seductionist stuff, not real life drama.
"I'm pretty sure. Which means we gotta be there."
Or maybe it was real life drama, because Esperanza had been my only way to get a ticket to the event. "I can't go," I realized.
"Ninja's still got spare tickets. He's competing."
...That's right. I remembered that now. Esperanza had asked us to go in the first place because Orion Black had spare tickets of his own.
"You guys know each other, right? See if you can ask him tomorrow."
"Okay." Yeah, I could do that. Go up to Orion Black and ask him for a ticket to the WNC. No problem. Nope. Easy.
"I'm taking the train up to Glast, if you wanna come with me."
"Maybe." I was going to need Mom's permission to go, first, and even if she liked Lydia, I didn't know if that was going to be good enough supervision for Mom to let me go with her.
I had a lot to ask Mom about, it seemed. Maybe I shouldn't have skipped out on dinner. I glanced at my watch. If I left now, could I make it home before she got done cooking?
"I should go," I said, standing.
"Gonna be late for dinner?"
I stared at her.
She smiled, waving me off. "Go. I'll keep you posted on the Kafs, and you let me know what's up on your end. See you later, Kitten."
* * *
I was, unfortunately, a little late for dinner. But Mom was impressed enough that I'd tried to make it back on time that I ended up earning her favour for it anyway. A net win, even if I did have to deal with her and Para all evening.
I managed to pull her aside later, while Para was busy with the dishes, to ask her for a favour. See, I couldn't let the situation with Esperanza sit, now that she'd blatantly ignored my threat and shown no signs of complying. Since she obviously didn't believe me, I needed to prove my threats weren't idle ones.
So I pulled my mom aside and asked, "Can you give somebody a warning for me?"
"Oh?" I didn't like the way her eyes lit up. Did she see this as winning, me asking for favours - asking her to use the business to my own advantage? I had to resort to that. It was all I had.
I told her that somebody was trying to turn Lacy against me, and bringing "that cute Lacy girl" into it got her to agree to put some pressure on Esperanza without me even needing to elaborate on it.
Well, except for the part where she said, "But this means you're spending Saturday at the warehouse after your test."
I gave her that, "Aw, come on," look, the one every mother knows by heart, but to no avail.
"Fair's fair, Guido. You ask me for a favour, you have to earn it."
I sighed. I knew it'd be worth it, so in the end I agreed to it and she agreed to send one of the boys over to issue a warning.
* * *
I stayed up half the night re-reading all of my dad's letters. He'd started sending them as soon as I was old enough to read, and I'd always kept them in a box under my bed, organized by postage date. Even in our haste to leave Payon, that box had been the one thing I made sure not to forget. So it was a simple thing to pull that box out and read through my history, letter by letter, start to finish.
It was a less simple thing to see every letter in its new context, to put Rayu in place of the mysterious Rose penning these grand adventures. Knowing it was Rayu, I had to wonder how much of these letters was true, and how much was him just being Rayu. Some of them had pictures to prove it - not here, all the pictures had been taken out and given various places of honour among the rest of my things - but most of them didn't.
Rick was real. He showed up in the pictures a lot. I guess Rayu was always the one behind the camera. The trips themselves had to be real. Unless Rayu was just using his friend's adventures as inspiration for his own and didn't actually go on them at all... But I didn't want to believe that. He spent weeks away from the bar fairly often. Maybe his last trip to Geffen had been more of the same. Maybe that would have turned into a letter too if he hadn't revealed himself before then.
Maybe Rayu really was just using our letters as his way to connect with me when he couldn't face-to-face. I wanted that, desperately. I wanted it all to be real. For this to be the side of Rayu that didn't lie every other word.
It would be easy enough to tell, wouldn't it? Rayu could never keep his lies straight. All I'd have to do was ask about the stuff in his letters and see what he said.
Tomorrow was a Wednesday, when Chris and I usually went over to the bar after school, so I'd see then.
* * *
The next dilemma I had to tackle was getting access to the WNC. This was actually a problem in several parts. One, I needed a ticket; I'd have to talk to Orion Black at school for that. Two, I needed Mom's permission. That was going to be the hardest part, because she wasn't going to let me go by myself, and I doubted she'd let me go with, say, Chris's family (I didn't even know if he planned to still take Esperanza's offer or not, so I couldn't rely on him anyway). If she wouldn't come with me (and I really didn't want her to), then I needed...my other parent. She'd probably be perfectly happy with Para, but: Three, it was Rayu I was going to ask, and if she tried to refuse, I could guilt her to death for it. But I had to get Rayu to agree, first.
The first step was the tickets, and it was the hardest. Harder than talking to my mom about something I knew she'd want to refuse. Even if we were comrades now, some kind of cool with each other, that guy was still intimidating as hell, and a kid like me couldn't just go up to a kid like him to chat. God, no. That was like walking into a wolf's den. I had to try to catch him alone, or between classes, or somewhere he wouldn't be surrounded by his flunkies. Not knowing his schedule, that was kind of difficult.
I got lucky. Or, unlucky. I almost literally ran into him again on my way back from lunch.
"You gotta start watching where you're going, bro," Orion Black said. "That's the fourth time."
I sighed.
"How's that Nightmare?"
Was he...was he making conversation? I stared dumbly for a minute before I stammered out, "It's, uh, it's fine. Hey, um."
"Hm?" He raised an eyebrow, typical cool guy style.
Which was intimidating. I started staring at the buttons on his shirt so I wouldn't have to look him in the face. "Lydia said...to ask you about WNC tickets."
"Oh, yeah. I got two left. You need 'em both?"
He was being awfully generous. I felt greedy asking for both, but if I wanted Rayu to come, I'd probably need to have a ticket secured for him. "I...might," I answered, hesitant.
"Alright, just let me know." He left with a cool, offhand wave, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
And then realized I still had to get to class.
* * *
Rayu was at the counter when we got there, mixing a drink. He glanced up, gave us a nod, and continued working. It was normal. It felt no different from any other time we'd walked in after school to sit at the bar and talk to him. This huge revelation that changed everything - it hadn't changed anything.
Chris leaned on the bar and watched Rayu and then looked at me. "Man, it's obvious now. I don't know why we never noticed it before."
"Notice what," I asked, half-heartedly because I knew what he was going to say.
"You guys have the same colour hair, the same colour fur, you even--"
"Hey boys," came Rayu's incredibly welcome interruption. "What's up?"
"I oughtta sock you again, that's what."
"Chris," I said, "shut up."
Even Rayu took a step back. He exchanged a glance with Chris. "Might wanna do what he says."
Chris folded his arms and frowned at me. "What's with you?"
Plenty. Too much to be putting up with his idiocy right now. "I know how I feel about it, okay? I don't need you telling me how I should feel."
"I'm not--"
Rayu leaned in toward him, conspiratorially. "Pst, Chris - the correct answer is an apology."
"You're the one who should be apologizing, you--"
"He already did." It wasn't a shout, but I did raise my voice. It was enough to get Chris to shut up, at least. "You don't know what we talked about, okay? He's my dad, not yours. I'm not angry, so quit being angry on my behalf!"
Rayu stepped back, leaving the argument between me and Chris.
"Whoa, hey." Chris held up his hands, leaning away from me. "Alright, man, I'm sorry."
"If you're sorry then you'll stop."
"I'll stop." He turned away, folding his hands over the bar, eyes down. That was good enough for me, at least until he opened his mouth again.
Rayu didn't say anything; he had walked off to handle another customer for the moment. We stayed silent until he came back. He didn't say anything, but that was fine because I had something to ask him anyway.
"Hey, Rayu?"
"What's up?" he responded.
"If...I had tickets to the WNC, would you take me?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"Mom won't let me go unless..."
"Ah, right. I'm surprised, though. I didn't think you were a fan."
"I'm not, I just--"
Chris, again, just had to voice his opinion. "He just wants to go because Esperanza is competing."
I choked up. I have never in my life wanted so badly to hit somebody. He didn't know, I told myself. He didn't know, you never told him, of course he's going to say something like that. I latched on to the edge of the bar, glaring down at the wood, to keep myself from turning around and punching Chris off his stool.
"I'm sure that's not why," Rayu said, and for a second I was afraid he'd say something I didn't want him to. But I shouldn't have worried at all; Rayu smoothed it over perfectly, classic Rayu style. "Glast Heim is an archeologist's paradise. I think the WNC is just an excuse."
I looked up to see him glance at me.
"Am I right?" he asked, with a knowing sort of arch to his brow. I understood what he was doing, and he expected me to.
I nodded.
"Tell you what, Guido. I just came back from Glast Heim, actually--"
"I thought you went to Geffen!" Chris interrupted.
"--because a friend of mine is on a dig out there right now."
A friend on a dig. That clicked right away. "Rick?" I asked.
He smiled. "I asked him if I could bring my son along on our next trip. That was supposed to be your birthday gift, but I didn't quite have the chance to mention it on your birthday."
My jaw dropped. There were a number of factors: him calling me his son, for one thing, and the fact that my birthday gift was getting to go on an archeological dig with my dad and his best friend. That meant getting to meet Rick, and getting to see what didn't make it into my dad's letters, and getting to see real archeology firsthand.
"So if you want to head up to GH over Spring Break, I would gladly take you, with or without a WNC ticket."
I started to say something, but swallowed it and revised. I settled on, "I...would like that."
* * *
Rayu agreed to talk to Mom about it for me, for which I was thankful. I didn't want to deal with her myself. I didn't want to have to pull the guilt trip on her, I'd rather let him do it for me.
Since I didn't have to worry about that, I could concentrate on the important thing: this was exciting. Really exciting. I didn't even want to go to the WNC, I just had to because of Seductionist stuff. But now I had my own reason to be in GH for something I wanted to be there for, and that was awesome, even if I still had to show up at the WNC to figure out what was going on with Kafra.
The first thing I did when I got home was call Lydia to let her know that I could get a ticket from Orion Black and that I was definitely going to be able to come. (Even if I didn't have a definite yes on that yet, I knew I'd be able to get it one way or another.)
I felt like all my worries had disappeared. Everything was working out fine. WNC, the Kafra situation, the issues with Mom, all that had been seen to and all that was left to worry about was Esperanza, and even that was getting handled at Mom's earliest convenience. I finally felt like things were looking up.
That feeling lasted about long enough for one really good night's sleep. Thursday morning, the first thing that happened as soon as I got to school was Esperanza practically abducting me to get me away from the crowd at the front of the school. She threw me up against the brick wall at the side of the building and accused, "You nearly killed my lunatic!"
I stared at her dumbly for a minute before I realized what was going on. The warning I'd asked Mom to deliver for me. I quickly regathered my wits, pulling away from the wall and from her. "I didn't do anything," I said.
"Bullshit! One of your mom's goons poisoned my lunatic!"
"You did that to yourself," I replied.
The rage on her face fell to incredulous dismay. Maybe she hadn't seen enough movies to know how this kind of thing worked. I, on the other hand, had firsthand experience.
"I'm pretty sure I told you to stop lying to Lacy about me, and to tell her that you were lying in the first place. I even gave you a few days because I was giving you the benefit of the doubt! But no. Every time I talked to her this week, she--"
"That's not fair!"
I was trying to be slick, handle it the same way Giovanni would handle it, but that pissed me off. "Not fair?!" I shouted. "Fuck you, Esperanza! Fuck you. You know what's not fair? I liked a girl who was actually interested in me, and then her best friend decided to break us up because she got pissed off at me for daring to tell her that what she did was rape. That's not fair. I have been more than fair to you. I don't even care what you do, as long as you leave me alone. But this thing with Lacy? That's not leaving me alone. I gave you a chance, and you blew it. I told you you'd regret it if you kept fucking with me. Well guess what? You kept fucking with me. I hope you realize I'm not making idle threats now. I hope you realize that I can fucking ruin you if you don't fucking stop."
She recoiled, staring wide-eyed at me.
"That thing with your lunatic? That was a warning. So maybe you might want to consider telling your friend the truth and letting her make her own decisions, or next time it'll be more than just a warning."
"I can tell the cops, you know," she said.
"Do it! Do it, Esperanza! I'll charge you! I'll tell them who kidnapped Jonesy! I have witnesses, all you have is one high schooler making threats. So get the cops involved. I don't. Care." I did care. I cared because if she did try to go to the cops with it, my mom was going to have to handle it, and I didn't want her to have to handle it. I didn't want her to have to know about any of this. But if it came to that, then oh well.
She took a step back, shoulders stiff, and I think she was holding herself back from crying, even though she looked pretty mad.
"You have until Monday," I told her, which was a completely arbitrary day, but it was the first thing that came to mind. I didn't add anything to that. I left it there. And I left her there, because I had a class to get to, and I had nothing else to say to her.