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Chapter Text

Aubrey is no stranger to detention. She thinks she might’ve been born to be in detention, actually. Even as a bright-eyed little girl who cried when the teacher flipped her behavior card from green to yellow, she’d watched made-for-TV high school movies with a hungry fascination. All the characters would meet in a grungy classroom after the first day, framed for a variety of crimes they didn’t commit, and then the teacher would fall asleep, and if Aubrey hadn’t already known her best friends, this would be exactly how she wanted to meet them. It was perfect. Kel could be the dumb jock, and Sunny could be the weird art kid, and Basil could be the nerd who got shoved into lockers. Aubrey would be the bad boy, who was mean and rude and funny, except during the scene where he got locked in the closet with the pretty girl, and she asked him why he acted like that, and he shrugged and gave a vague nonanswer about a father who was too strict, or a mother who didn’t care. Aubrey would watch curled up against the arm of the couch while Mom smoked in the kitchen, both of them ignoring the crashing and yelling from the bathroom while Dad fixed the sink, simultaneously managing to break it more than it’d ever been broken, and she’d think, yes. She’d think, he’s just like me.

And then, obviously, Mari would be the pretty girl.

All to say, it makes sense she would end up here. Having spent so many hours in the designated detention classroom that she practically has an assigned seat. Which is the one near the far wall, by the crack between the white-painted bricks that has actually grown an entire two feet longer, over the past four years. It stretches from the corner of the window she can’t really see through, from this angle. Just a sliver of sky and parking lot.

Today, Aubrey’s crime is supply closet graffiti. She has no defense, besides that nobody ever even goes into that supply closet, and that she actually graffitied it like, last month? She doesn’t remember. She definitely did do it, though. Because real detention is not movie-detention, where every protagonist was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the teachers never have the decency to fall asleep.

This teacher, in particular, takes her job as detention-supervisor much too seriously. Aubrey’s had her before. Never for class— she only teaches Hyperadvanced Mathematics for Kids With A Future, or whatever the fuck. But she carries that energy everywhere, evident in her old, severe face. She greets each loser who opens the door with a professional nod, and a refined “Good afternoon. Please take a seat.” Aubrey chokes down groan after groan.

Luckily there are only three other people in detention. Brad from fourth period, and two sophomores Aubrey has seen in the halls, but doesn’t know. They take their aimless, sporadic seats around the classroom. Aubrey can’t say yet, but she suspects they aren’t open to an incredible and life-changing bonding experience this afternoon. 

She leans back in her seat, sighing through her nose. Just because she’s used to this doesn’t make it interesting. She knows how it goes. The clock will officially strike 4:30, and the teacher will clear her throat and say that their hour starts now, and then she’ll grade papers and Aubrey will pretend to work on homework. Fun stuff. Filmworthy. 

The clock strikes 4:30. The teacher clears her throat and says, “Your hour begins now.” Aubrey leans to the side and reaches down into her bag, for some loose sheets of notebook paper. 

But the teacher’s still talking. “If you would all wait a moment.” She holds up a hand. “We’ve decided—”

Aubrey doesn’t get to know what she’s decided just yet. There’s a soft, convenient knocking on the classroom door, and she cuts herself off, one sharp eye twitching. “Come in.”

The knob turns, and the door inches open. Aubrey cranes her neck to see who’s on the other side. Whoever it is doesn’t make it easy. They hunch their shoulders and hide behind their hair and seem to flinch away from their own arms and oh god, Aubrey knows exactly who it is.

She can’t help but watch, horrified, as Basil enters the room. Her room, because she feels suddenly protective of it. What is he doing here? What is he doing here? 

“Ah,” says the instructor. “I was wondering about our last guest. Glad you could finally make it.”

“Um.” Basil fiddles with a buckle on his messenger bag. “Sorry,” he says, little more than a whisper. “I wasn’t sure— I’ve never been—”

“Take your seat.” She makes a harsh pen mark on a paper lying on the desk. Which is pretty bitchy, considering that it’s 4:31, but Basil’s face crumples, and he says “okay,” in a terrible, squeaking voice, and he is a pathetic wet tissue of a person and Aubrey is not going to defend him for another second. He glances around the classroom.

Inevitably, he meets her eyes. She raises a challenging eyebrow at him, and he actually, genuinely flinches. He turns away and stumbles into the nearest seat, the one right next to the door. Aubrey narrows her eyes at his back, his curving shoulders and tangled hair. And he’s just so unassuming, isn’t he? Meek and mild because every part of him that isn’t a soft spoken lie is disgusting, and he knows it. 

He usually avoids her. He’s very good at it, even if Aubrey can pick him out of a crowd in an instant, lock on to his timid movements with sighthound-accuracy. But he always manages to hide himself in other people. Concealed in the crowds of their mandatory senior class meetings, camouflaged in black during funeral services. He cowered behind Aubrey’s shoulder, when they were kids, and cowered behind Sunny’s, when they were more-than-kids. And he did that so well, he even did it unconscious.

Don’t blame him, Sunny said, and it was probably more than he’d said in years, and possibly more than he’d said in his entire life. He was just trying to protect me. He was just — scared.

His voice echoed, and Aubrey thought, okay, who wasn’t? Who wouldn’t have been? His voice echoed in the empty hospital room like there was a second, ghostly voice underneath it. A sickly patch of scarlet-red began to fade through the gauze over his eye, while he spoke. 

Aubrey doesn’t know a lot. But she knows some simple truths. She knows that there are good people, and bad people. She knows that if Basil ever meant to protect Sunny, he failed. He failed more than should’ve been possible. Broke more than had ever been broken. 

She wonders what he did, this time. Probably nothing so serious as corpse defilement, but who knows? Maybe he ran over another student in the parking lot, or stabbed someone in the middle of class, and the universe looked down at him and thought aw, but he looks so sad, he must’ve been so scared, and let him off with a slap on the wrist. Again.

“Alright,” says the instructor. “Now that everyone is here, I can give you your assignments.”

Assignments. Awesome. Because as it turns out, there’s been a recent pattern of vandalism and destruction of school property at Faraway High, and some administrator or other went to a conference or something, and has decided to shift the school’s default method of punishment from “sitting in a room for an hour”, to “tangible reparative efforts.” Which means that Brad has to put the boy’s bathroom stall doors back on their hinges, and the sophomores have to take inventory of all the LED lightbulbs they didn’t smash against the wall behind the dumpsters, and Aubrey has to clean her graffiti. 

“And you,” the instructor says, looming over Basil’s desk. “There’s nothing listed for you.” She huffs, and raises her eyes to the other students, and Aubrey realizes what’s going to happen a split-second before it does. “You’ll help Miss Aubrey.”

Basil nods, because he’s a fucking doormat. But Aubrey guesses she doesn’t say anything, either.

Being shut in a supply closet with Basil is— well, it’s bad. But not as bad as it could be, because at least for the first twenty minutes, he doesn’t talk. The singular yellow lightbulb flickers above them, and they dip ragged sponges into a bucket of graying water the custodian handed to them (handed to Basil, whose arms shook so badly Aubrey had to steal it away before he dropped it) and ignore each other. Aubrey scrubs at the “A” of her name. Basil scrubs at the “y.” They make very little progress, because Aubrey doesn’t skimp out on her spray paint.

A teacher stops by to check on them once fifteen minutes have passed. Then she leaves, and Aubrey wonders if she should’ve asked about getting clean water, because theirs is so opaque by now that she can’t see her hand or her sponge beneath it. So she’s distracted, thinking of that, and Basil must be distracted, too, because while she’s still staring at the gray void obscuring her forearm, he reaches over and wrings his sponge all over her rolled-up jacket sleeve.

After nearly two entire years of silence, the first words exchanged between them are: “Damn it! Are you serious?” Which feels right. 

And the second words are: “I— I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to— I’m sorry.”

And that feels right, too. Aubrey jumps up off her knees and snatches the sponge from him. She drops it into the water with hers, grabs the bucket by its handle. “Whatever,” she says. “It’s fine. I’m gonna go ask where we can get more water.”

“Um.” Now he’s standing, too. “There’s a boy’s bathroom. Down the hall.” He nods towards the door, like Aubrey might’ve forgotten where the hallway is. “It’s close. I can just— I’ll get it.”

“You could’ve said that before,” she tells him. But there are a lot of things he could’ve said, before. She puts her other hand on the doorknob. “Come on.”

“I said I’d—”

“You won’t,” Aubrey says. “You’ll make it three steps outside, and break both your arms, and then probably fall into the bucket and drown, somehow.”

He blinks at her, and gives her a strange, amused smile that she doesn’t really like. “...If you say so.”

She opens the door and walks out. She’s not going to ask. He follows her, and the hall is empty and quiet, and okay, maybe she is going to ask. 

It’s easier when she doesn’t have to look at him. “What the hell do you mean, if you say so?”

“Just. Um.” He huffs, lightly, in a way that sounds too much like laughter. “Nothing. I just… thought you hated me. M-more than that.”

Which part of her weird little fantasy where he breaks his bones and dies could possibly make him say that? Is what Aubrey thinks, before remembering she’s talking to the guy who hangs his friends from tree branches out of love. “I do,” she says.

And Basil responds, “Okay.” And, “It’s on your left. You’re about to walk past it.”

Aubrey stops. Water sloshes over the lip of the bucket and splashes onto the floor. She glances at the propped-open men’s bathroom door, and holds the bucket out for Basil, over the spill. She hopes he slips in it. 

He does not. Wordlessly, he takes the handle with both hands, and disappears through the doorway. 

In his absence, Aubrey quietly seethes. Because of course Basil lives in this made-up alternate reality where everything is okay, and no-one has ever had a bad thought about him. He’s too soft-hearted to live anywhere else. He cries when he gets hurt and startles at loud noises and bites his nails when strangers talk to him. And perhaps he’s grown up and grown out of these habits, but his cuticles are still too pink and chewed-up for Aubrey to believe it.

She leans against the wall by the doorway and listens. She can hear the echo of dirty water hitting the sinkbowl and trickling through the pipes. She can see it, too, can feel it in her fingers still curled to the shape of the toothbrush handle, the pinch of a thumb nail scraped harshly enough to break apart marker ink, but softly enough to leave photo ink intact. Water ran gray from the bristles that cleaned Mari’s face, that swept shadows from across her eyes. Aubrey left the sink on while she worked. The pipes her father broke leaked through the counter underneath. 

“Is your mom or your dad blonde?” Aubrey remembers asking, back when she still watched high school movies. 

She remembers that Basil had to think, for a second. His bitten fingers sifted through mulch piles hidden in the caverns of the playground. Their classmates ran above them, shoe soles making oblong shadows in what tiny, interlocking diamonds of sunlight made their way down here. Yelling and laughter echoed.

Quietness didn’t come naturally to Aubrey. But loudness never, ever came to Basil, and he was her best friend, so she could compromise a little. 

“Um,” he whispered. “Neither of them?”

“Then why does your hair look like that?” Aubrey probably didn’t need to point. Basil’s eyes widened, at the sudden movement of her hand.

“I d-don’t know. I’m sorry.” He shrugged. “What about you? Which one of your parents has black hair?”

“My dad,” Aubrey answered. “But his is shorter than mine.”

Basil laughed. She always felt proud, to make him laugh. “Well, duh. He’s a boy.”

“You’re a boy, too. And your hair is longer than Gina’s.” Gina was a girl in their class whose bowl cut made her head look like a circle.

He frowned. “Yeah. My, uh, my grandma keeps forgetting to take me to get it cut.” He looked to the side, at the angular dips of the playground stairs descending over their heads. “Can I— can I tell you a secret?”

Aubrey nodded. Aubrey wasn’t sure anyone had ever told her a secret before. But she knew this was very important.

“Sometimes,” he said, so softly she had to lean in closer, to hear him. His eyes darted all around them. He hugged his knees. “Sometimes I think— I think it might be nice, to have hair like yours. I wouldn’t even mind if it was long. I could— I’d figure out how to braid it.” He finished speaking, and hid his face in his crossed arms. 

That was a good secret. This was why Aubrey liked Basil, because even if he was quiet he would still say weird things like this. Things other people never thought about.

“You can figure out how to braid mine, if you want,” she said. “I never learned.”

His eyes rose to meet hers. They shined in the broken-up light. “Really?”

“Really,” she said, and moved to sit in front of him. 

Beside the bathroom door, she listens to the running water, and finds that she’s taken the rough, bleach-damaged ends of her bright pink hair between her fingers. She’s twisting them around her index and middle like a figure eight. Or a snake, with eye-searing, unnatural scales to ward off predators. Touch me and you’ll die. 

She might be thinking of frogs. Snakes don’t have predators.

The water squeals off. Then Aubrey hears a much louder, stranger squealing noise, and the water… turns back on, maybe? The pipes are still creaking, and there’s definitely a water-like sound. A small, muted yelp echoes into the hallway. Something thunks onto the floor. Damn it. She lets go of her hair. 

She’s not going to call out for him, but it doesn’t matter, because he calls out for her. “Um? Aubrey?” His voice still gets that ridiculous, high-pitched strain, when he panics.

“You dropped it.”

“N-not exactly,” he says. Getting higher, now. “Would you mind— can you come in here?”

She’d rather not. She’d rather disappear and let him suffer for a while. But Basil is terrified of her, so if he’s asking, he must really need help. She gets over herself and walks into the boy’s bathroom. 

The sight that greets her is an interesting one. It’s pretty funny. Basil stands at the second sink from the door, clutching a silver object in one hand, his other pressed to the side of the faucet, where a handle should be. Their bucket sits at his feet, upright and mostly-full. He must’ve dropped it straight down. Good on him. 

He turns to her, eyes wide, and water drips down his face. Is he crying? No, he’s not, because there’s also a spray of water across the front of his t-shirt, and the mirror, and the grungy offwhite tiles set into the wall. 

Aubrey raises her eyebrows. “Wow.”

“I was just— I did it, and then I was trying— trying to turn the sink off and it? Broke?” He offers her the silver object in his hand, which is in fact a singular, unattached sink handle.

She takes it from him and sets it on a different sink. Now empty, his hand flies to join the other, beside the faucet. Water trickles through the gaps of his fingers.

“What the hell?” Aubrey approaches, angling her head. “Why does the pipe even go like that?”

“I don’t—” He starts. His voice breaks. “Do you really think I know anything about plumbing, Aubrey?”

She moves the bucket out of the way with her foot, and puts a hand on the remaining handle. “Okay, calm down,” she says. “Here, just let go of it, but stay right there.”

He looks down, frowning. “...Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll count to three.”

He nods and adjusts his fingers. Aubrey says, “One, two, three.”

On three, Basil takes his hands away, and stays still. A geyser of sink water hits him right in the face.

Aubrey takes a step back, and watches him stumble. He makes a strangled noise, and his hands come up to his face, and he coughs. His shirt is soaked. He nearly trips backwards over a paper towel somebody left on the floor, but finds his footing. The broken pipe gushes onto the walls. Basil unsticks his wet hair from his forehead, and rubs at his eyes. He coughs again.

“Uh,” he manages, blinking. “It didn’t work.”

“It did.” Aubrey crosses her arms. Her wet sleeve seeps onto her skin. “Now we’re even.”

“I…” He drips from his chin and his fingertips and everywhere, sort of. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, despite. “Okay. Right.” There’s that laughing tone again, which Aubrey hates. But more than she hates it, she hates that it can still make her feel proud.

Basil continues, “But— uh. What are we, like, actually going to do about the sink, though?”

She shrugs. “You can figure that out during tomorrow’s detention,” she says, and takes the bucket back to the supply closet. 

It gets a little easier. Cleaning the graffiti, that is. Now that Basil’s already covered in water, he doesn’t care as much about getting it everywhere, and actually makes some significant progress on the end of her name. By the time forty-five minutes have passed, the “e” and “y” are gone, along with most of the “r.” It doesn’t seem like they’ll be out of here within the hour, though. Especially with Aubrey’s “a” still halfway up.

“I sort of feel bad,” Basil says. “It looks nice. Y-your art.”

“It’s not art. It’s just my name.”

“Yeah, but. The way you wrote it. And the colors, I guess.” He clears his throat. “I like the, um— angel wings, on the sides.”

“Uh-huh.” Aubrey sits back on her heels. She puts her sponge in the water and picks at her fingernails. 

“If you… have somewhere to be, I can just do the rest myself. I don’t mind. I’m not— in a rush to get home.”

He’s really trying. He’s trying so hard it’s kind of embarrassing, and Aubrey a little bit wants to beat him up. “Polly won’t worry about you?”

“Wh—” He turns from the door and stares at her, eyebrows drawn together. “Sorry, you wouldn’t… Polly quit. She’s been gone for, uh, a year and a half, now.”

“What?” Heat flashes in the back of Aubrey’s throat. “She just left?”

He nods. “I mean, yeah. I almost murdered someone and tried to kill myself. So. That was— above her pay grade, I think.”

It surprises Aubrey, how plainly he says it. But that’s all. It surprises her. 

“Anyways,” he continues. “No-one’s waiting on me. If any teachers stop by I can just tell them you’re in the bathroom, or getting more supplies, or something.”

She shouldn’t leave him here. But she does want to go, and she doesn’t actually care if she gets in trouble because she’ll just end up back in detention somehow, and it’s Basil, who left everyone and ruined everything, and lied and lied and lied, and no matter how nice he is, or how much he acts like Aubrey’s oldest friend, she can never forget that.

She stands. “Okay,” she says. “Sure. I’ve cleaned enough graffiti in my life.”

“You have?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Yours.”

And he has the audacity, for a few seconds, to look confused. He tilts his head up to Aubrey and says, “You mean—?” And pauses, bites his lip. “Th- that wasn’t…”

Aubrey’s throat burns again, and it must show on her face, too, because he shuts up. Whatever he was going to say, he decides not to, his lips thinning into a hard, resolute line. “Right.” He swipes some damp hair from his eyes with the back of his hand, and moves away from the door so she can get out. “We’re just— getting even.”

Aubrey’s pretty sure that’s impossible. It’s a nice thought, and she’s going to leave it at that, but then she’s still there in the supply closet, and she’s asking, “How’d you even get detention, Basil?”

He shrugs, not looking up. “I got caught skipping class,” he says. “A teacher needed to use the empty classroom I chose. It probably should’ve happened sooner.”

It makes sense that he would end up here like that. Basil’s not innocent. But if anyone was ever in the wrong place at the wrong time, it was him.

There’s this Bible story Aubrey hates, where God tells a father to murder his own son. The lord demands a mountaintop sacrifice for some unknowable lordly reason, so Abraham hangs his head like a stupid dog and leads his even stupider son to the peak. All for a ‘just kidding!” All for a loyalty test. 

If this is the version of God her pastor is referring to, when he tells the congregation to be godly, Aubrey would be the best Christian in the world. Her life has been one long string of loyalty tests, all of them easier than kill your son for me, and all of which everyone around her has failed, anyway. 

But she has to believe this isn’t the version of God they’re supposed to worship. Because if God can say kill your son, and then praise you for almost doing it, who’s to say Aubrey’s dad wasn't just following orders? Abraham’s son must’ve been scared, too. He must’ve looked into his father’s eyes after, and not seen the same father. Or looked into God’s eyes, and not seen the same God. Didn’t that mean anything? 

Aubrey’s version of God, the one she imagines when she clasps her hands and bows her head, the one she imagines when the preacher talks about finding the unloved and healing the brokenhearted, is much kinder. Aubrey’s version of God has long dark hair and black eyes that shine when she’s playing a trick on you. But the tricks are never cruel. They’re things that make you feel like you’ve been in on it all along. A gospel of shared secrets.

There are lots of parts from the Bible like this one. Parts Aubrey isn’t sure how to believe in. Like this weekend, the priest reads that passage about turning the other cheek. If someone hurts you, you’re supposed to let them hurt you again. God is good and he loves you, but he also seems to really like it when you get hurt.

“God rebukes the phrase: ‘an eye for an eye,’” says the preacher. Sometimes he’ll say certain words with certain emphasis, like Aubrey might’ve forgotten what rebukes means, and remembering will spark such a grand epiphany that she’ll drop everything and run off and join a convent.

So, okay. Don’t stab out people’s eyes, even if they stab yours. Also, turn the other cheek. By extension, if someone does get one of your eyes, you should go ahead and offer them the other, too. Well, damn. Sunny’s going to hell. 

…That’s not really news. But who knows? If God’s down with killing sons, maybe killing sisters is fine, too. Maybe it evens out. If you mean to do it the whole way up the mountain, and then you don’t, you’re forgiven. If you don’t mean to do it the whole way up the stairs, and then you do, you’re forgiven.

It can’t work like that. Everything Aubrey’s ever done wrong, she’s done in a fit of delirious rage. She never means it. But it’s not so simple as separating sin from sinner. Aubrey’s anger is a part of her, as much as God’s glory was a part of Jesus, as much as Abraham’s submission to fate became a part of Isaac. 

When Basil taps her shoulder in the school hallway the following Wednesday, she almost gives him a black eye. It’s only by the grace of her personal God, who looks just like their shared, dead friend, that she doesn’t.

He flinches anyway. Probably he could see the instinctive, aggressive twitch in her arm. Probably he knows it’s not worth it to turn his other cheek, at this point. He stands next to her at her locker after the third-period bell has rung, and most other students have left for class. He’s holding a piece of paper. 

For the first half of this week, he had mercifully gone back to being invisible. Ignoring what glimpses she caught of him was an easy habit to fall back into, even if last Friday’s brief lapse into the familiarity of their murdered friendship had somehow felt even easier. Either way, she never expected him to approach her. Never in the last six years has she expected him to approach her. 

“What do you want?” she asks. “I’m waiting for someone.”

“Right,” he says. “Okay, uh, can I ask you about this?” He holds out his paper. 

Aubrey wonders what would happen if she said no. She takes it from him— a crumpled, folded rectangle of notebook paper— and opens it. There’s an address written on the inside. It looks familiar, but Faraway Town is about two square feet, total, so every address kind of looks familiar. 

“Your, um, friend? Gave it to me?” Basil’s saying. 

Aubrey’s eyes narrow. “Which friend?”

“Mikhael.” He looks aside. “I borrowed a textbook from his sister a few weeks ago, and earlier I saw him and asked if I could give it back, and he, uh, gave me that note? And told me to go to that address at nine P.M. on Friday? And that seemed, um. Wrong.”

“So you’re asking me.”

He nods. He cringes. “Sorry. I can go, if you want. I just couldn’t think of who else might know. Sorry.”

Aubrey really is going to hit him. She passes back his note. “He’s throwing a party that day, with one of his other friends. He hasn’t shut up about it for like two weeks. It’s going to be terrible.”

Basil’s eyebrows furrow. He squints at the address. “Is he… inviting me?”

“Not really. Not if he wasn’t bragging about it to you,” Aubrey says. “He’s probably trying to prank you, I guess. Like, you’ll walk in with your dorky little textbook, and there’ll be a bucket of water balanced on the door, or he’ll tar and feather you, or something. I don’t know.”

This doesn’t seem to clear anything up for him. “Why? Does Mikhael not like me?”

Okay, now he’s asking too many questions. She shrugs, folding her arms. “You’re an easy target.” But he knows that.

“...Right.” Basil slips the note into his pocket. He glances at something past Aubrey’s shoulder, and his eyes widen, a little. His next words come out in a rush. “Well, thanks for the heads up. I should probably—”

Too late, Aubrey hears footsteps behind her. An arm drops around her shoulders. 

“Is this guy bothering you, queen?” Kim is suddenly beside her, suddenly staring down Basil with the heat of a thousand suns. Which is, coincidentally, about the same amount of suns it’d take to match the heat in Aubrey’s face, because why would she say that, that is so embarrassing. Aubrey fights the urge to cover her eyes with her hand and pretend not to be associated, and barely wins.

Thankfully, Basil decides to answer, and embarrasses himself much more. “W-we were just talking,” he says, already panicking. 

“Just talking,” Kim repeats, with a loud huff. “About what?”

Aubrey decides to step in. “Mikhael’s stupid party. It’s not important.”

“Ew.” Kim makes a face. She jerks her head in Basil’s direction. “He’s that desperate?”

“No.” Aubrey’s jaw tenses. “No, he’s like, trying to do some dumb scheme against him. Like he’s the mean girl in a high school movie, or whatever. It’s stupid. I’m telling Basil not to get involved.”

Kim’s whole face lights up, and that can’t be good. “Ah,” she says. “His theory.” 

And Aubrey does cover her eyes, now. She can’t help it. “Don’t,” she says.

“I didn’t,” Kim counters, and drums her fingers on Aubrey’s shoulder a moment, before taking her arm away entirely. She stands straight, turning halfway from Aubrey and beginning to wander back the way she came. “Anyway. Just letting you know I’m ready to go when you are. He’s not gonna narc, is he?”

“Nope,” Aubrey says automatically. Because Basil also skipped class three days ago, and he’s a little bitch, and would probably turn into sand if Aubrey breathed on him wrong. 

“Good.” She points two fingers at her own eyes, then flicks her wrist around, and jabs them at Basil. He blinks. “Alright, see you in a minute,” Kim says, and walks off. 

And maybe she walks off a little quickly. Maybe sometimes she becomes a little fragile around Aubrey, too, or at least around Aubrey and any of her old friends. Kim doesn’t crumble, but she moves sharper and faster, because she knows how Aubrey gets, and has known since forever, but especially since the week after Basil and Sunny put each other in the hospital, when she finally managed to catch Aubrey alone, walking back from the graveyard she’d been visiting twice a day. Three times, some days.

Kim pulled her into the shade of some roadside trees. She didn’t even say anything funny or stupid, couldn’t even afford Aubrey the usual cover of her false bravado. She asked, “What happened?” and she asked it with a hand on Aubrey’s arm and eyes far too unguarded, far too concerned for someone who didn’t know anything at all, and always made sure to lower her voice the few times she ever said Mari’s name. And that had never bothered Aubrey before, but then it did. Before, maybe Mari had wanted to leave the world quietly. But then she didn’t. Then, suddenly, she hadn’t wanted to leave at all, and every whispered prayer was an injustice. 

When Aubrey yelled at Kim, she flinched. And when she pushed her, she took two steps back, but didn’t fall. She didn’t cry, either, because she was tougher than Aubrey, whose toughness was nothing but a band-aid on an open wound. 

Sometimes she still feels that two-steps-worth of distance between them. As much as Kim has never asked again, Aubrey has never told her. 

“Can I ask,” Basil says, “—about any of that?”

Aubrey glares. “What do you think?”

“Okay,” he says, and doesn’t leave. 

And now he’s staring at Aubrey with his big watery baby eyes, and he’s going to be even more late for class, and she groans and rests her forehead in one hand and says, “You know how Mikhael is. About girls.”

“...I think so.”

“Well, he’s had this dumbass theory for like, multiple years at this point, which he thinks Kim hasn’t told me about for some reason.” Secondhand embarrassment reaches all the way from whichever classroom Mikhael’s sitting in right now, to grab at Aubrey’s throat. “He thinks—” She grimaces. “He thinks that when you and Sunny almost killed each other, you were fighting over me. Like in the fucking medieval times, or something.”

If she wanted Basil to stop staring at her, it doesn’t work. He stares harder than ever. He says, “What.”

“It’s so stupid. I had to tell you, because it’s so stupid it’d probably kill me from the inside out, if I didn’t. I feel my brain cells dying every time I think about it.”

Basil stares a little more. Then he smiles. “Oh my god.” And he laughs, out loud, just barely managing a “that’s awful,” in the breaths between. 

He has to cover his mouth. Okay, wow, he’s really laughing at this. Like, maybe too much. He’s tearing up.

It’s a little mortifying, because what if someone hears. Also, though, Aubrey’s proud again, and comforted. It’s so ridiculous. It makes her so angry, that anyone could reduce one of the worst things that ever happened to a love triangle b-plot. But what could she possibly do with that anger, besides let it go?

“That’s… wow,” Basil says, recovering. “That’s funny.”

“You think so?”

He tilts his head. “So I guess he wants Sunny to win? If he’s going to tar and feather me, I mean.”

“Oh, gross. I hope not.” Aubrey feels her face scrunch. Basil raises his eyebrows, and his head tilts the other way, and she’s not really sure how to interpret that. “I think he’s just trying to defend my honor, or some bullshit.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Shut up,” Aubrey says, and he does. “Go to class already. And stay home on Friday.”

Basil remembers himself, and looks over his shoulder. “Right. Okay,” he says. “Um, I hope you still have fun this weekend. Let— let me know if you feel like bringing any textbooks with you.”

“I won’t.” With that, she turns from him, and goes to find Kim.

Friday comes around, and sure enough, Aubrey still doesn’t feel like carrying a textbook to the party. She barely even feels like carrying herself there, but school ends, and the sun sets, and it’s nine P.M. and Kim knocks on her front door. So she kind of has to. She passes her mom in the living room without a word, and without a glance. She kicks aside the empty fast food containers in her way, and doesn’t bother to lock the door behind her, and ventures out into the night.

It’s… fine. The party’s fine. It’s the way most parties are, where she thinks about half the people there are convincing themselves to have fun more than they’re actually having fun, for the sake of being able to say they had a good time, afterwards. She has a few drinks and mostly talks to Kim and her other friends. She does not dance. She watches muted commercials on the living room T.V., one of the only light sources in the whole house. She’s not sure whose house it is. Mikhael’s friend’s, whose name she might’ve remembered about an hour ago. She finds Mikhael himself by accident, while looking for the bathroom, and stands in the doorway of whatever bedroom it actually is, watching him for a minute while he attempts to balance a large bucket against the doorframe. It tips, and some dark liquid that might be paint or ink, and could reasonably be tar, spills onto his shoulder. 

She reaches the two hour mark feeling pretty bored and worse-for-wear. She teeters on the edge of the couch cushion, tempted by brain fog and the call of genetics to simply sink backwards and stop moving for a while. There’s a lively conversation happening on the arm of the couch, where Kim’s sitting, and a second, livelier conversation happening on the couch’s other half. Words trickle into Aubrey’s ears.

She hears someone suggest they play a game, and sits up, alert. She hears a handful of suggestions, in response, and stands. She is absolutely not going to put her mouth on any of these people.

Her hand finds Kim’s shoulder. Kim turns, glasses reflecting an infomercial about a miniature grill. Aubrey says, “This is lame. You wanna go?”

Kim says, “yeah,” because she’d never say otherwise. Sometimes, Aubrey isn’t sure if she actually likes Kim, or if she only likes that Kim does whatever she wants, and stays with her even if she might rather be somewhere else. 

But that’s stupid. Of course she likes Kim. She likes the way she throws herself onto her feet and loudly instructs the people she’d been talking with to fuck off. She likes the way her fingers loop easily into the plastic packaging of a six-pack someone left on the kitchen counter as the two of them pass through, the way she snags it away and lets it hang by her side like it was always meant to be there. And she likes the way that, when they make it out the door and it shuts behind them, Kim’s other arm circles around her waist. This happens, sometimes, when they’re alone, or she’s had too much to drink, and especially when both those things are true.

Kim holds her and guides her out from under the little overhang above the door, into a light mist of rain that Aubrey takes a second to register. And the rumbling noises she’s been hearing over the past hour might not be part of the music.

“So,” Kim says, leading them down the street, swaying more than seems usual. ”Where to?”

“Your house?” Aubrey asks.

She frowns. “No, not tonight. Vance is working the night shift, so he’s not there to cover for us. Or to open the window.” She squints up into the rain and fog. Bright lightning pulsates in the heart of far-off clouds. Maybe the storm will miss them.

Aubrey likes that Kim doesn’t even ask if they can go to her house, instead. She likes when people know not to even suggest that Aubrey came from somewhere, that she’s anything more than the present moment.

“Damn.” Kim takes her glasses off, holds them by one side, and wipes them clumsily down the front of her sweatshirt. “I wish they made such a thing as chill parents. Should we find an awning somewhere?”

“An awning,” Aubrey says. 

“You’re the one who wanted to leave.” Kim shrugs. “And unless you know an adult who doesn’t care that it’s late, and’s gonna let us drink in their house, that’s all we’ve got.”

From the floating haze of Aubrey’s brain, into the floating haze of the approaching rainstorm, an idea emerges. Because, no, Aubrey obviously doesn’t know any adults like that.

Except, technically.

The first thing Basil says to her, when he opens the door and sees her standing there, is: “Are you drunk.” It’s not even really a question.

Kim stands behind her, clinging to her shoulders. “You’re not supposed to ask women about that,” she says, loud enough to rupture an eardrum. 

“Uh.” Basil squints. He twists the hem of his too-big t-shirt around his fingers. He’s wearing that, and flannel pajama pants. Aubrey wonders exactly how late it is. “Isn’t that…?”

She stops wondering. Or gives up. She points at him. “You were born on February the eighteenth.”

“...Yes.”

She looks at Kim, still pointing. “Adult.”

Kim’s grin could cut steel. “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.” And to Basil, she says, “Let us into your house.”

“Um.” He turns to Aubrey, and gives her that look that means: What do I do here?

She remembers. It’s been a while since she’s seen it. “It’s gonna rain. The party's stupid, and Kim stole their drinks,” she explains. “Your house was the only place I could think of.” 

Basil scratches the back of his neck, and looks at his welcome mat. “I-I don’t know. You might— wish you hadn’t, later.”

“I’m not that drunk,” Aubrey says, at the same time Kim says, “Dude, you’re making it sound like you guys are about to hook up.”

Basil’s expression veers into absolute horror. He covers his mouth with a short, affronted gasp, like a high-society british lady. Aubrey jams her elbow backwards into Kim’s ribcage.

“Ow! What? I’m just saying! I’m just saying.”

“This is the last straw,” Aubrey says. “Mikhael’s out of the fucking group. He’s poisoning your mind.”

“I’m just saying!” Kim holds both her hands up, pleading. Rain makes dark spots on her sleeves, and glitters off of the beer cans.

“O— Okay.” Basil’s more-or-less recovered. He wrings his hands together in front of his chest. “Just come in before you hurt yourselves.” He backs up, holding the door open for them with his shoulder.

So they walk in. It looks exactly the same. Shelves upon shelves of flowers, everything green and beige and yellow. It looks exactly like Aubrey’s dad’s car just left the driveway while she watched through the front window, and she tugged her shoes on as soon as it disappeared and ran over here as fast as she could. And Basil’s grandma would answer the door, and even usually remember her name. She would call for him and then he’d be there, clutching her skirt and smiling when he saw Aubrey. Smiling soft and whispering “hi,” taking her hand and leading her inside, to sit on the carpet. The sunlight seemed so much brighter here. Aubrey would breathe in the clean, floral air, and breathe out into a house that had never seen yelling. A bloodless house, where Basil’s grandma sat silently on the couch and watched him teach Aubrey how to make friendship bracelets, his tiny killer’s hands tying knot after knot.

Because Basil’s house was always so empty, he had to fill it with something. Anything. He filled it with Aubrey, who was too loud and opinionated, so much she must’ve bruised the walls and scarred the floors. He filled it with flowers, so many it could’ve been a second graveyard. He filled it with a guilt so much bigger than himself, a series of terrible things that couldn’t possibly fit inside his body. They made the air heavier, made Aubrey’s throat constrict on the other side of his door the only time she’d come back here before, even if she hadn’t yet understood why.

Of course, she thought she knew. She’d been so scared that night, that they might wake up, and he’d be gone. She didn’t say it. She was even more scared that it would’ve been her fault. 

But no. Instead she woke up to a house that’d finally been stained, bedroom door cracked open, Sunny wounded and blood rivering across his pallid cheek, and it was so much more blood than he’d drawn from Aubrey, two days before. Basil's hands that once tied ribbons in her hair were dark and shining with it. Kel and Hero rushed to Sunny’s side, and Kel took his shoulders and Hero touched his face and yelled out into the hallway, call someone. And in the seconds before anybody really noticed Basil or the still-dripping shears in his hands, he lifted his head and stared at Aubrey. Half-awake. Eyes like mirrors. What do we do, here?

Aubrey didn’t know, and she still doesn’t, and if she ever figures it out she’s not going to tell him. She walks into his house and it looks the same, though maybe not as haunted as it should be. What did she expect? Mari decoratively strung up on the ceiling fan? Mari nailed to a miniature metal crucifix on the wall? After all, she did die twice. Once by her own hand and once by the hand of another, whose living room Aubrey is standing in, watching Kim awkwardly pass him a beer and saying, “You don’t have to take that.”

He takes it, anyway, holding it in both hands. He stares between the two of them and says, “Do you guys. Uh, want anything to drink? Water?”

Kim frowns. “Why are you the lamest person ever.” She makes her way over to his couch and flops down right in the middle. 

“I’m? Just trying to be nice?”

“Well, stop,” Kim says. Aubrey moves to sit next to her. 

Basil stands in front of them, in the center of the rug, still clutching his beer can like it’s a microphone and he’s about to give a speech. A rush of rain hits the roof.

He hesitates before them, and eventually says, “So.” And clears his throat. “The party was bad.”

“Of course it was,” Aubrey says. Next to her Kim nods, and leans against her shoulder, fumbling with the plastic on her six-pack. “It’s a high school party. They suck.”

“Why’d you go, then?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Felt like I should.” Aubrey usually trusts her feelings. “I guess there’s not that many left, before everyone leaves.”

“Well, college parties are probably better, anyway. That’s, like, what they say.” His finger plucks at the tab on his can. 

“They can keep saying it. I’m not gonna find out.” 

Basil pauses for a moment, then nods. “Yeah. Me neither.”

“Because you’re going to be a shut-in? Or because you’re not going?”

He smiles, eyes lowering. “Both, I guess.”

“Ah, fuck you guys.” Kim cracks open her can. “If my parents had zero expectations for me, I’d be unstoppable. Cheers.” She downs about half of it in one go.

Aubrey and Basil share a look, while she’s distracted, and it’s a look that somehow feels okay. Because it all somehow does feel okay. Aubrey’s anger has never been so absent that she actively notices it missing, but she does now. It’s probably definitely to do with the alcohol, or the rain outside, or the fact that Kim is here. Whenever she imagined having another conversation with Basil, or being in his house again, certainly Kim had never been there. Sometimes, Aubrey isn’t sure if she likes Kim, because she never accounts for her or expects her. But she’s always there. Aubrey always likes her to be there. 

Basil sits about a foot away from the couch, facing them. He opens the can Kim gave him too slowly, and takes small, polite sips that do not help, because he’s a loser who never goes to parties and has a tolerance of negative five, or however that’s measured. Aubrey watches his shoulders untense and his eyelids droop, and it only takes fifteen or twenty minutes for him to stop fidgeting, and to start laughing at all the parts of Kim’s long complaint about their history teacher (apparently they have the same history teacher) that aren’t really funny.

After those twenty minutes, though, Aubrey’s eyes become less discerning. She blinks, and finds that she’s no longer very concerned with what Basil is doing, or how much time has passed. Wind and rain shake the world outside but everything’s okay, here, and whatever Kim’s saying actually is pretty funny, when she stops thinking so much about it. 

At some point, the T.V. comes on, and Kim asks Basil if he has any kind of gaming system and he says, “Well, clearly not” and gestures at his T.V. stand, which is filled with books, and it’s the meanest thing Aubrey’s seen him do in like five years. She laughs, and doesn’t stop, and he smiles and says, “Oh! Hold on.” He wanders to his room and brings back an old and severely scratched-up disk, which he explains is a football simulator Kel left at his house after one of his birthdays, and refused to take back. 

“Will that work?” he asks Kim, with a sweet, awful smile, because he knows exactly what a little shit he is. 

Kim cackles. Aubrey stands and takes the disk and asks if it’s maybe something they could sneak into Kel’s mailbox, so Basil could finally get rid of it, and he says no, he kind of likes it now. He’s kind of attached to it, even if he can’t ever use it or understand it, even if he doesn’t like football, he likes that he can try to take care of it even after somebody abandoned it. 

He pauses for a moment, thumbing over the scratches. Then he tosses it onto the side table, and falls onto the couch, and asks Aubrey if he can braid her hair. 

Aubrey doesn’t feel herself say the word yes, but soon enough she’s sitting on the floor, her back against his knees, and his fingers are in her hair again. Knuckles to her scalp. He tugs a little harder than he used to. 

Kim’s talking, head-in-hand, elbow balancing on the armrest. From down here, the yellow-golden living room lights halo around her hair, catching in strands curled by the rain. Her eyes look brighter, sharper. Aubrey stares for too long a time. She stares until Kim’s phone rings in her pocket, cutting her off halfway through her sentence. 

She takes it out and flips it open, holds it to her ear and says a couple words into it. Like, “yeah,” and “uh-huh,” and “sorry.” And, “we’re at Basil’s house. Y’know, the weird psycho kid Aubrey hates? No, the other one. Without the knife. Yeah.” Finally, she says, “Sure, just a second,” and snaps the phone closed, storing it in her pocket again. She sighs.

“I thought I was an adult?” Basil says.

“Only when it’s convenient.” Kim waves a hand in the air. “Vance got home. He wants me to come back,” she says, and with another sigh, stands. “Guess he’s worried or something. I dunno. I should’ve told him I left.” She looks to the window, considering. 

It's still raining, but maybe not as hard. “Do you want me to walk with you?” Aubrey asks.

“Nah. I’ll make it.” She pushes her glasses up on her nose. “Basil’s not finished with your hair, either.”

“It’s true,” he says. His hands have only just relocated to the left side of her head, after asking her for a hair tie a few minutes ago. 

“I’ll be fine,” Kim says. “Vance’s waiting for me.” She runs a hand across her head, and blinks a couple times, readying herself. It’s only when she makes it to the door that she speaks again. “Cool hanging out with you guys, though. I’ll see you around.” She opens it. “Don’t kill each other.” 

She pulls the door closed behind her, and it clicks into place. And she’s gone, and they’re alone. Aubrey lets her gaze stagnate on the T.V. without really watching it. Basil presses on her temple, gently, with the side of his hand, and she angles her head to give him better reach. Leaves and flower petals shiver under the soft assault of the ceiling fan. 

Basil speaks, half-mumbling. “Have Kim and Vance always been close like that?”

“Mm-hm,” Aubrey hums. “As long as I’ve been friends with them.”

“That’s nice.” His hand is above her ear, now. “I feel like I remember her being sort of mean to him in kindergarten. Like, he’d try to take care of her, or protect her and stuff, and she’d just shove him off.”

Now that he says it… Aubrey feels the corners of her mouth turn up. The girl sitting on the edge of the mulch pit at recess, slapping away the hands of an older boy as he tried to bandage her knees, that had been Kim, hadn’t it?

Basil continues, “It used to make me sad, I think.” He nears the base of her skull. “I wanted a sibling so badly when I was younger. Or I just… wanted someone to be there. I don’t know. I would just get really jealous that she could be annoyed.”

Aubrey starts to nod, but that might mess him up, so instead she says, “Yeah. I think I used to feel like that, too.” She knows, now, to be glad it never happened. A sibling would’ve only been another target for her parents, another version of herself failed by the same world. 

They stay in silence for a minute, while Basil finishes braiding. He loops her hair around his finger, at her neck, and stretches a second elastic around, to hold it. He doesn’t say anything. He lays the pigtail over her shoulder, and backs away, giving her space to run her hands over her head. The braids are tight to her scalp, and she can tell how neat and how intricate they are, just from feeling them. He’s left the long hair underneath the ties and some strands around her face loose and unbraided, either out of tiredness, or some aesthetic choice she doesn’t understand. 

“Your hair has always been so nice,” Basil says. “And pink is good, on you. I don’t think I ever got a chance to say that.”

Aubrey combs her fingers through the ends, brittle and bleach-burnt. Touch me and you’ll die. Is he stupid? Doesn’t he know?

“It was Mari’s idea,” she says. “It’s for her.” It’s become something of a ritual. It takes a gentleness not native to Aubrey’s hands, to brush the bleach onto her roots, to wrap foil without crinkling it, to measure the evenness of the color by eye. 

Basil says, “I remember.” Basil says, “I— I bet she would’ve liked it.”

Aubrey laughs, but it isn’t funny. She speaks past the tension in her jaw. “You don’t get to say that.” It comes out low and simmering. “You don’t care about what she would’ve done. You didn’t.”

She expects him to apologize. Instead, he lets the quiet linger. There’s an uncomfortably long pause before he speaks again.  

“Did you ever wish that Mari was your sister?”

Aubrey stares blankly at the books on the T.V. stand. Did she? She’s not sure. She always wished that she was closer to Mari. She always wanted something from her. Maybe not to be family, because Aubrey’s family meant so little to her, and Mari…

Whatever Aubrey wanted, she wanted it the way she wanted answers from the universe. Angrily, ceaselessly, knowing that she’d never get them. There was a sacred thing hidden in that kind of one-sided desire. Call it ambition. Call it devotion. Call it faith. 

“I don’t think so,” she says, shaking her head. “What about you? Did you ever wish that Sunny was your brother?”

And he— laughs, like he didn’t just ask the same question. He laughs like Mari isn’t dead while Sunny is alive, and he won, didn’t he? He might never have protected Sunny, but at least he got to keep him. 

“Um, no,” he says. “No, I don’t— wish that.”

Aubrey scoffs. Aubrey usually wouldn’t be enough of a bitch for this, but she’s tired and angry and not completely in her right mind, and she’s enough of a bitch for anything with the right motivation. And she’s talking to Basil. Who deserves it. “Right.” The word tastes hard and bitter in her mouth. “Of course. ‘Cause you were like, in love with him, or something.”

Basil stops laughing. He goes strangely, scarily silent, his knees pulling away from Aubrey’s back, his legs curling under the couch. 

She turns to him. He’s wrapped both arms around his stomach and bowed his head. The disaster of his hair shadows his face. 

“D-don’t say that,” he says, voice breaking. “You can’t… tell anyone.”

What. What the hell. Aubrey puts a hand on the couch cushion and sits up straight and feels more sober than she’s ever felt in her whole life. “...I was joking.”

His eyes snap up, to meet hers. He blinks about a hundred times, very obviously holding back tears. “Um. Yeah.” He smiles a pitiful, twisting smile. “Clearly. M-me too. It’s only— It’s— I—” And then he breaks down, sobbing.

For a few seconds, Aubrey pretends she doesn’t know what to do. She sighs and says, “Dude, you had like one beer,” to which Basil doesn’t respond, because of the crying. So she sighs louder and moves up to sit next to him. “Okay,” she says. “Come on.” She reaches out for him, and doesn’t even make contact before he falls against her, barrelling facefirst into her shoulder. 

Her hand lags in the air behind him. She didn’t think she would ever do this again. Here he is, though, as fragile-feeling as he’s always been, gripping the back of her shirt with the strength of someone much stronger than him. She thought she’d never fall for this again, after she figured out that Basil is a liar, that he clutches deception four years too tight, like he really believes it can save anyone. She told herself she wouldn’t fall for it, because Basil is intentional, meticulous, and the things he did were not accidents. 

But he just looks so sad. 

Aubrey gives in. She hugs him, and he cries onto her sleeve, muttering that he’s sorry. He’s so sorry. He always has some god damn thing to be sorry about. 

“It’s fine,” Aubrey says. She really wants him to stop. He looks stupid when he cries, like a wet sock or an old paper towel. “Jesus, Basil, it’s okay.”

“It’s n-not,” he replies, thickly, past the side of her neck. 

“It is.” Aubrey’s not very good at arguing, despite all the practice she’s had. “I kind of don’t give a shit if you’re— what, into guys?” Into is kind of a funny word. Into in the sense that Basil also dug into Sunny’s skull that one time, because he, like, had a crush on him. She guesses. Partially. And most of the other parts are actually way more concerning. “I think— sorry— I think that doesn’t surprise me.”

He lets out one short, singular chuckle. “No, I— Y-yeah. I just…” He sniffs. “You don’t have to pretend. That it’s not weird.”

Because it is weird. Aubrey goes to church and Aubrey lives in their tiny town and she knows this is a weird, bad secret. But Basil himself is weird and bad and drowning in secrets, and she’s still here with him. 

He doesn’t wait for her answer. “I just feel like I wasn’t even supposed to exist,” he says. “Like, if people were made to be good, then I wasn’t made to be— anything. O-or else I’m just not trying hard enough.”

Aubrey pats his back like she’s petting a big scared dog that just keeps whining. And fine, okay, yes, maybe she also wants him to stop crying because it makes her feel bad when he cries, and when he says awful things about himself. Even if the awful things are a little true, and in the grand scheme of his life, and hers, and Mari’s, he probably deserves to hate himself. He probably can never try hard enough. 

“What do you want me to say to that?” No matter how Aubrey feels, she always acts mean. “Do you want me to, like, ask God about it? Because I honestly don’t think she answers that type of question.”

Basil shifts, leaning away and bringing a hand up to his eyes. “She,” he repeats, mumbling, and Aubrey realizes that is, in fact, what she said. Basil doesn’t ask for clarification. “That’s okay,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to bother her. I get the feeling she doesn’t like me that much.”

“That feeling hasn’t stopped you for the past week.”

She gets a little glimpse of his eyes, through his bangs. “Sorry,” he says. Again. “I really— d-didn’t mean to. I should’ve left you alone.”

Aubrey shrugs. “Whatever. I should’ve left you alone for four years.” She pulls back, one arm still hooked around his shoulders. “Should we call it even?”

“If you want.” His smile is nervous, twitching, like any second Aubrey might say nevermind and shove him off. “It’s not like we can do much else.”

Nothing good, anyways. Aubrey settles into the couch cushions and remembers all the times she’s fallen asleep here before, with Basil at her side. Them, and this empty house, and this emptying town they might never escape. Cautiously, Basil leans back, too. Tear tracks shine on his cheeks, and he glances at her in split-second increments, from the corner of his eye. It’s like he just skinned his knee on the playground, or a big kid stole his sidewalk chalk, and the two of them are sitting here waiting for his grandma or Mari or Hero to take care of it. To find the band-aids with the star patterns. To negotiate with the older kids or call their parents. 

It isn’t completely unlike church. The sitting and waiting to be saved. This is why Aubrey still goes, at least, and maybe one of these days someone will find her on the side of the road again, and not care if she’s good , only that she’s hurting. Aubrey remembers being friends with Basil, turning to him on the couch and saying, It’ll be okay. Or, You were so brave. It made the waiting less hopeless, less grueling, to try and save each other in the meantime. Even if it never worked.

She does miss him. Has missed him. It’s that simple. He meant to do it the whole way across the backyard, and then he did, and she misses him anyway. His head drops onto her shoulder. She doesn’t understand how he can live with himself. But she does want him to live.

Aubrey wakes up in the morning lying lengthwise on the sofa, a quilt neatly folded over her shoulders. Pale sunlight stings her eyes. She tries to comb her hair from her face, and her fingers tangle into a network of braiding. She pushes herself onto her elbows. Basil is nowhere to be seen.

He isn’t in his room or the bathroom, either. Aubrey uses the mirror to fix herself up a little before she goes outside. She walks through a living room free of empty cans and garbage and forgotten football simulator disks, and through the front door, and around to the backyard. 

Sure enough, there he is, sitting on the ground next to one of the plant shelves nearest to his house, shoving his fingers into potted dirt. He’s already changed out of his pajamas, and wears a t-shirt and shorts and those dumb-looking sandals he sometimes wears when he’s not at school. Dad sandals, Aubrey thinks, but she wouldn’t really know, would she.

Her shadow falls over his back. “Did you sleep well?” he asks, not looking up.

Aubrey lowers herself into the grass, next to him. It’s wet. Birds chirp and cars echo from the street. She gestures to the pots on the bottom shelves. “What are these?” she asks. “Or, what are they going to be, I guess.”

Basil glances over to her, wide-eyed, embarrassed. “I, um. I’m actually not sure.”

“What? Come on, man.” She elbows him, lightly. “This is one of your, like, two personality traits.”

“Hm. Yeah.” He pauses, taking his hand back and wiping it on his already-dirt-stained shorts. “I guess I’ve been neglecting these ones. I planted them a few months ago and they never grew, so I kind of forgot about them? Or gave up.”

Guess it runs in the family, Aubrey thinks, and chooses not to say.

“Uh, but then about two weeks back, that one—” He points to the pot on the very end, just as empty as the rest, besides an inch-tall, featureless sprout right in the center. “—did that. So… now I think I’ll wait and see.” He sets his hands in his lap.

Aubrey looks at the shelf, eyes the dewdrops sticking to the metal framework, to the sharp edges of the tiny spade hanging from a protruding metal bolt, on one side. “Well. Keep me posted.”

“I will,” Basil says. And then, “I thought you might’ve left already. I thought you might’ve been— angry.”

“About?” Aubrey asks. Aubrey often feels like her natural state is anger, and any reprieve from it is a stroke of luck, a temporary coincidence. Basil knows her well enough, and has been the subject of it for long enough, that he must feel it, too.

“About letting you in last night. And— about the stuff I said.”

She narrows her eyes. “You mean that you’re gay?”

“No,” he says, with the suddenness of a flinch. “Or, maybe. I don’t know.”

“I swear to God I don’t care. You defiled our friend’s corpse.”

He nods. “And I was gay while doing it. Doesn’t that make it worse?”

“What the hell are you even talking about.” Aubrey can’t help smiling, because it’s really sort of fascinating how weird he is. Who else would ever think of that? “Honestly, it makes it a little better. Maybe you and Sunny will remove yourselves from the gene pool. That’d be good. Like, for humanity.”

“He— That’s—” He sighs. “If you say so.”

“Do you want me to be angry? I can pretend to be angry.”

“Um.” His eyebrows knit. “Maybe?”

“Okay. Die, fag.”

“O-oh!” He blinks. His mouth hangs open for a second, and then he makes this ugly snorting noise, and covers it with his hand, and laughs.

“What? What’s wrong?” Aubrey asks, gleaming and prideful. 

It takes a couple seconds before he can speak again. “N-nothing. That’s— that’s exactly what I wanted. Yep.”

“You’re such a liar,” Aubrey says.

Basil hums, his smile fading just enough to be noticeable. His hand falls to the wet grass, which he twirls around his finger. If he’s going to be like that, Aubrey might as well take her braids out and let him redo them. She doesn’t though. Shortly enough, he clears his throat.

“S-Sunny,” he says, like he’s holding his breath. “I should tell you, he—” He searches the shelf in front of them, intently, like he’s making a decision. He breathes out. “He’s the one who did it.”

Aubrey hardens. “I know that.”

“No, I mean— I mean, he did do that, but he also…” Another sigh. “When we had detention together last week, you told me you cleaned the graffiti I left on our photos. But I didn’t. It wasn’t me. It was him.” He tells her straight-faced, matter-of-fact, staring ahead.

Aubrey has an instinct not to believe him. Simply because she’s known a different truth for years, and Basil is a liar. 

But never for his own sake. Sort of for his own sake, in a sad, roundabout way. He’s still not looking at her, though. 

“Oh,” she says.

“I figured… I thought he would’ve told you, when he— told you everything. But I guess not. I guess he forgot.” He rips up the grass and crushes it in his hand. “It’s fine. He isn’t… perfect.” A frown sinks into his face. 

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Aubrey says. “Y’know, he might’ve said it and I just didn’t hear him. Or I forgot. It was a long day.”

He moves the grass blades to his fingertips, and shreds them up into little pieces, like confetti. “It was,” he agrees. He seems… somewhere else, still.

“He probably said it. He really wanted us not to blame you.” She balls one fist at a time into the opposite hand, cracking her knuckles. “It pissed me off, actually.” 

“You’re trying to make me feel better,” Basil says. And so what if she is? None of this is going to change the past. If instead, Sunny had been the anchor of all her hatred, those years, it would’ve still ended the same. Mari would’ve still been dead and Basil would’ve still lied. Only Sunny would’ve stayed locked up, protected, and Aubrey’s anger might’ve torn her apart before it reached anybody else. 

It probably always had to be Basil. Her anger is a force of nature, a force of God, a destruction, and who else could’ve held it, besides him: someone already destroyed. Basil took the universe’s intention in his hands and bent and broke and mutilated it, the same mutilation it had already done to him. He looked God right in her unseeing eyes, and was somehow strong enough to look away. 

She’ll probably always hate him for looking away. Even if she knows he was only turning to the side, looking at something else.

“He called me last week,” Basil says. “Or, well, I called him in the middle of the night and then he— actually called back, for once. That morning.”

It’s one of the most pathetic things she’s ever heard. It’s been two years, she wants to say. How often did you call, and he never answered? But then, Aubrey’s been talking to a stone in the ground for many years longer, and it’s never answered, either.

Instead she asks, “What did he say?”

“Mm. Not much. You know how he is,” he says, so offputtingly sweet Aubrey could vomit. “He did ask if I wanted to visit the city, and I thought maybe… maybe I shouldn’t go alone.”

He’s looking at her now. Oh god.

“Absolutely no way,” Aubrey says. “I am not getting involved in you two’s bullshit. Especially not now.”

He goes somewhat red in the face. “It’s n-not like that. He’s not— He doesn’t even…” He shakes his head. “If he wants to see me, he’ll want to see you, too.”

“Me and what car? I’m not walking thirty minutes to that damn bus stop.”

Basil considers this. “…Kel has a car,” he says. 

Oh god. “No.”

“He got it for his birthday.”

“And have you spoken to him since then?”

“Not really. But I hadn’t spoken to you for, uh, a lot longer, and…”

“And now you’re inviting me to third wheel your weekend getaway.”

He smiles. “Not if Kel drives.”

“Oh my god, fuck off,” Aubrey says, and smiles back. 

Because Kel would say yes, and they could go, and it sounds like a terrible idea that might make everything worse, and Aubrey still kind of wants to. She puts a hand on Basil’s shoulder. The morning sun rises in the sky. He reaches up, and wraps his fingers around hers. He faces her, briefly, and she warms to see the flower tucked crookedly behind his ear. 

Aubrey knows some simple truths. She knows there are good people, and bad people, and Basil, and her. She knows everyone gets out of detention at the end of the movie, anyway, and whatever they do afterwards is up to them. 

“I’ll think about it,” she says. “For you.”