Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steph walked into her second-period bio class two minutes after the bell rang. That had to be a record—usually she showed up when class was already in full swing, taking whichever empty seat was farthest from the front. With those few extra minutes, she should have had more luck—maybe even snagged the chair with the broken desk in the back left corner, where if you fell asleep, it’d just look like you were hunched over your notes—but it seemed like everybody else had come on time, for once. The back row was full already. So was the row after that, and after that. In fact, it seemed that the only seat left that Steph could see was in the front row, almost squarely in the center, and right next to Grace Fucking Chasity.

So that was great.

“Passing period is over, find your seats!” Miss Mulberry shouted, shooting a pointed look Steph’s way. Steph didn’t bother hiding her scowl as she trudged to her seat in the spotlight. She dropped her bag by her side, digging around in the mess of papers until she found a beat-up notebook and a pencil. She was about to tear a page out (better to at least pretend to be taking notes, if she had to be in the front of the class) when Miss Mulberry spoke up again.

“Alright, class, pop quiz! I hope you’ve been hitting the books, Miss Lauter.” 

Shit. Steph had not, in fact, been hitting the books. Nor had she been exactly paying attention in class. Biology was boring as shit, it was filled with a bunch of Latin-sounding words she didn’t understand, and Miss Mulberry’s squeaky voice made her want to rip her ears off. It also probably didn’t help that she had slept maybe three hours last night. In her defense, someone was being wrong on the internet! She couldn’t just let them keep being wrong! It was her moral duty as an upstanding citizen to correct their trash opinions about which dog breeds were dangerous! The answer was none, by the way. All dogs are good dogs. 

Something nudged Steph in the shoulder. She jumped a little in her seat, then turned to see Grace holding out a stack of papers. Sighing, she took one and passed the rest of them along before turning back to her own sheet. 

The quiz was only one page (thank G-d), with a blank diagram of a cell and a few short-answer questions on the front and a list of multiple-choice ones on the back. Easy, right? Everyone else was already writing, heads hunched over their desks. Steph did the same, eyes scanning the diagram. To be honest, it looked like a blob. None of the shapes floating in the pool of grey printer ink meant anything to her. She remembered that meme, “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell”, or whatever, but that didn’t tell her anything about what it looked like. Useless. Maybe the multiple-choice questions would be easier? She flipped the page over and scanned them, only to be met by a bunch of words she couldn’t remember and had maybe never seen before. She doubted the short-answer questions would be any easier.

Steph flipped back to the front of the page and wrote Stephanie Lauter in smooth, perfectly even letters at the top of the page. 

She flipped the back over to the multiple-choice questions, which still looked like another language to her. She couldn’t even pick out which of the answers were obviously wrong, which was how she usually bungled her way through these sorts of things. 

She drew a Bernese mountain dog in the top-right corner of her quiz.

Dammit. Steph’s throat tightened, and her blood rushed in her ears, adding to the dull buzz of exhaustion in her brain. She wasn’t just going to get a shitty grade, she realized. She was going to fail. And her dad was going to find out eventually, and with election season just around the corner he’d throw an even bigger fit than usual, and it’d be worse if she hid it, and—

No. Steph swallowed back the lump in her throat. Failing this test was simply not an option. Not when there were other, smarter students sitting close by. Miss Mulberry was sitting at her desk texting (what a hypocrite), so all she had to worry about was someone ratting her out. Without lifting her head, Steph glanced to her right. Grace was still plugging away at her test next to her, already on the second side. Her arm blocked Steph’s view of her answers, but if she was distracted—Steph looked to her left. The guy on her other side was tall and narrow, bent almost in half over his desk. That, plus his large, crooked nose and long, greasy-looking black hair reminded her a little bit of a vulture, if vultures also wore glasses and bow ties. She knew this guy—Pete, she was, like, ninety percent sure—and he raised his hand every single fucking time a teacher asked a question. He might not be willing to help her cheat, but if he was, he’d definitely give her the right answers. And he was absolutely a better shot than Grace Chasity. 

Steph took a deep, calming breath that didn’t do a lot to actually make her less nervous. C’mon, Steph, she told herself. Time to turn on that good ol’ Lauter cunning.

“Hey. Hey, geek!” she hissed, keeping her voice down so anyone who happened to overhear would think she was just muttering to herself.

Out of the corner of her eye, Steph saw said geek fully turn to look at her. “Me?” he said way too loudly. 

Steph winced, glancing around, but it didn’t seem like anyone had noticed. Or if they had, they didn’t give two shits about it, which was all that really mattered. “Your name’s Peter, right?”

“Yeah?” Oh sick, she had gotten his name right! He did seem a little terrified of her, though, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, his hunched posture turning tense. He fiddled with his pencil, wiggling it back and forth between his fingers. That wouldn’t do. Fear could work on nerds, but she was in a pretty vulnerable position right now. No need to scare him off, or G-d forbid, make him turn her in. “Hi, Pete,” she said, turning towards him and putting on a soft, hopefully disarming smile. “We’ve been in classes together for a long time, haven’t we?”

Pete’s eyes widened for a split second, before he directed his attention back to his test. “Well—since the first grade.”

Steph huffed out a quiet laugh. It was supposed to be comforting, but probably sounded more nervous. Oh well. “Yeah, and I’m just realizing I’ve never introduced myself,” she said. “I’m Stephanie.”

“…Lauter, the mayor’s daughter, yeah, I know,” Pete said incredulously. 

“Yeah, but my friends call me Steph,” she said, emphasizing the word by leaning towards him a little. “We’re friends, aren’t we, Pete?”

Pete’s eyes flicked back and forth, one second on his test, one second at her. His brow creased with confusion. So he hadn’t caught on to what she wanted, then. “…I dunno, are we?”

“Well, I wouldn’t advertise it to the whole school or anything,” Steph said hastily. She checked the room again, then turned her attention back to Pete. She placed a hand on his shoulder to create feelings of closeness and solidarity as she went in for the kill. “But, uh… but there’s an unspoken bond between us. We’re classmates, comrades, we’re Nighthawks! And we don’t leave anyone behind.”

“I got left behind this morning,” Pete said. “Bus driver’s a fuckin’ asshole.”

“Yeah! We succeed together, or we fail together,” Steph said. Wait, that didn’t mesh at all with what he just said—oh well, too late to walk it back now. She put on her most pathetic and resigned (and yet dignified!) expression and finished the gambit. “And I won’t mince words… I’m gonna fail this test, Peter.” She turned to look him dead in the eyes. “Unless you help me cheat.”

Pete jumped in his seat like she’d tazed him or something. “Cheat?” he yelped.

Steph ducked down like a soldier in the trenches, pretending to write. Half the class was goofing off and chatting by now, their quizzes complete, thankfully providing cover for Pete’s little fuckup, but that meant she was already losing time she needed to copy the test. “C’mon, just finish your exam, pass it to me, and I’ll put my name on it!” Steph could feel the desperation leaking into her voice, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that. It was hard enough trying to get her breathing under control and not panic. “I’ll give you mine. You can take the test all over again, doesn’t that sound fun?” 

Pete was gripping his pencil so hard Steph worried it might snap. He grit his teeth, waggling his head like he was having a conversation with himself. Steph could feel her smile getting more and more desperate. How hard could it be to just make up his fucking mind? “Well, yeah, but won’t we get in trouble?”

She fixed him with her best puppy-dog eyes. “Please, Pete? Don’t you wanna help me out?” 

The thing was—Steph knew it wasn’t her best effort. The energy was gone from her voice, the smile had slipped off her face, and altogether she sounded kinda pathetic—not like she was requesting a favor, but like she was begging for help. And yet, almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, something in Pete’s expression changed, the tightness around his jaw relaxing. “Oh, alright,” he said, and passed his test over to her. Holy shit! Steph couldn’t believe her good luck!

“Cheater!” cried a familiarly shrill voice.

And now she couldn’t believe her bad luck, either.

“Oh, G-d. Butt out, Chastity!” Steph groaned, drawing the attention of everyone who hadn’t already heard Grace. In fact, it seemed like Miss Mulberry was the only one who was unaware of her outburst. Steph’s face burned, and as Grace moved to stand, she grabbed her wrist, hard, mentally begging her not to move. 

“Grace, just be cool,” Pete begged.

Grace sneered, wrenching her hand out of Steph’s grip. “Never,” she scoffed. Raising her hand like a proud flagpole, Grace lifted her chin and proclaimed for the whole class to hear, “Miss Mulberry? They’re cheating!”

Miss Mulberry tucked her phone away in a flash, her head snapping up to take in Steph and Pete’s guilty faces. She cursed herself for not hiding it better, but what was the use? Grace had seen them, and she still had Pete’s completed test on her desk. “Peter! Stephanie! Principal’s office, now!” Miss Mulberry cried. Well, at least she didn’t have to finish class. Steph stood up and headed for the hallway, already planning how she would explain this to her dad. Not even halfway into class, and she was already so fuckin’ dead.

Chapter Text

“Grace Chasity! That little snitch—man, I hate that nerdy prude!” Steph growled to herself. She stomped down the hall, too angry to drag out the walk from her classroom to the principal’s office like she usually would. Her shoes slapped loudly on the scuffed linoleum floor. Good. She hoped she disturbed every single class in this stupid school. She hoped nobody could concentrate and everybody failed their tests and then it wouldn’t really matter that she’d tried to cheat, because everybody else in the whole school failed too. 

“Oh G-d, I am dead, I am so dead,” Pete muttered, and Steph instinctively turned towards his voice, slowing down for him to catch up, since he was walking a few paces behind her. Steph felt like shit, but somehow, he looked like he was doing even worse—his head on a swivel every time they passed a closed door or hallway like he was worried a tiger was gonna leap out and maul him, his hands flexing at his sides so hard she could see the tendons through his skin, hell, a nervous sweat was even building on his forehead. Poor guy. A hot girl had talked to him for the first time in his whole high school career, and now he had been caught helping her cheat, probably also for the first time. It’d be a lot for anybody.

“What’s the matter? This your first academic misconduct? Don’t sweat it, it’s two hours detention, tops,” Steph said. She was trying to be comforting, but her voice came out sharp with her leftover anger at Grace.

“I’m not worried about the principal, I’m worried about what the popular kids are gonna do when they find out I was talking to you!” Pete snapped back. “I don’t need this kind of attention!” 

They stopped outside the principal’s office, and he looked down the hallway both ways. Wait, was he making sure nobody saw him with Steph and… assumed anything? Okay, wow, fucking presumptuous. “Okay,” Steph scoffed. “So, you don’t want to be bullied.” 

“No,” Pete said. “I want to be invisible.” 

He gestured at his very visible body. She gave him a once-over. Yeah, good luck with that. Now that he was standing, it was clear how tall (and honestly kinda broad-shouldered) he was—the kind of build where slouching and curling up on himself only drew attention to how small he wasn’t. “Then why do you come to public school dressed in suspenders and a fuckin’ bow tie?” she asked.

“Because bow ties are high class,” Pete said. He glanced down the hall again, then stepped closer, leaning in conspiratorially. “D’you remember Travis Coulson?”

“Oh, yeah, that really poor kid. Didn’t he and his family starve to death?” Steph said.

“No!” Pete said, gesturing wildly. “And they weren’t poor! He wore a dirty shirt once, and he got bullied so bad that his parents had to transfer him to Sycamore!”

“Sycamore?” Steph snarked. “I’d rather starve to death.”

Pete ignored her. “And these suspenders are to hold my pants up. One time—Brad Callahan pantsed me in the sixth grade, right in front of Sara Zimmerman. Then she started this rumor—"

“Oh my G-d!” Steph blurted, delighted. “You’re Micro-Peter!” 

“Oh G-d.”

“You’re, like, famous!” Pete, if it was possible, folded in on himself even more, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. His whole face went red when he was embarrassed—and he seemed pretty embarrassed now. Understandably. Steph forced herself to calm down a little, putting on a slightly more serious face. “Can I ask about it?”

“It’s not actually a micropenis!” Pete snapped. “I was a kid! It’s grown since then!”

“Well, there goes your claim to fame,” Steph said. 

“This outfit is a tapestry of my trauma. It is designed to provoke as little teasing as possible!” Pete said. 

He stepped away, pointedly looking over his shoulder, obviously trying to signal that this conversation was over. But for some reason not even Steph herself knew, she found herself reaching over to him, hooking a finger around one suspender, just under his chest, and drawing it back. “Anyone ever do this?” She let it snap back against him with a pleasingly musical twang. 

Pete grunted, flinching a half second after it hit him, like he’d forgotten to or something. “Every damn day,” he said, rubbing his chest where the metal clamp had hit him. “My titties are tenderized. But it’s better than getting saddled with another humiliating nickname. I have a real name. Peter Spankoffski.” He held up a hand, moving it like he was blocking out the words in the air. Steph raised an eyebrow. “…It’s Polish.”

Steph bit back another laugh. Suddenly, she realized that she wasn’t actually angry more. Or nervous, or panicking. Sure, it was still a dick move for Grace to call her out, and her dad was still gonna be furious, but just a few minutes of talking to Peter Spankoffski had melted all that away. She was feeling… good. “I didn’t know you were funny,” she said, offhandedly. Like it was no big deal.

Pete’s posture relaxed the tiniest amount, and he stood up just a bit straighter. “Neither did I,” he said. His eyes swept over her face, soft but still analytical. Still a little bit suspicious of her.

“…I like funny guys,” Steph added.

Before Pete could respond, or even really get over his shock enough to react, the school bell rang. Instantly, his body tightened up again, his head ducking. “Oh, shit!” Pete said. “Shit, shit, shit! I can’t let him see me talking to you! He’s creamed nerds for less!” Pete spun on his heel and fully sprinted down the hall, vanishing around a corner as students started to trickle out of their classrooms.

“What? Who has? Spankoffski, who are you running from?” Steph called after him, but he was already gone. “Huh,” she said, letting her arms drop back to her sides. Maybe he was just running from the principal’s office so he wouldn’t have to sit through a lecture on academic honesty. That wasn’t a terrible idea, Steph thought, and as the halls filled with students, she vanished into the crowd too.

Chapter Text

“I’m home!” 

Steph let the front door slam behind her, just in case anyone hadn’t heard her shouting. Immediately, a light flicked on in the kitchen, and the click of rapidly approaching heels sounded, followed shortly by the woman they belonged to. Miss Tessburger’s face was twisted into her usual grimace that was somehow frantic, angry, and disgusted at the same time, but her hair and red skirt suit were flawless. “Ugh, Stephanie! I’ve had three staffers trying to get a hold of you all day! Why weren’t you answering?” 

“I was at school.” Steph dropped her backpack and walked past her, leaving her dad’s secretary to scramble to pick it up. She literally never asked her to do that—she’d be perfectly fine just letting it sit on the floor—but the woman was so neurotic she couldn’t leave it alone.

Miss Tessburger scoffed. She clipped after Steph, her voice getting more and more frantic the longer she ignored her. “This is politics, Stephanie, learn to multitask. Have you even seen the new polls? Your father is down. We’re within the margin of error, and you’re doing everything you can to fuck things up!” She took a long but shallow-sounding breath, her voice returning to some semblance of calm. “It’s like you don’t care about this campaign at all.”

Steph gave her the unfriendliest smile she could muster. “Wow, Miss Tessburger, it is like that, isn’t it?”

“Well, well. If it’s not my October surprise.” 

Steph squeezed her eyes shut. The annoyance she’d felt at Miss Tessburger’s nagging drained out of her, leaving nothing but the hole where it used to be in its place. Shoulders slouched, she reluctantly turned around to face her father. Mayor Solomon Lauter stared down at her, a lit cigar clutched loosely between two of his fingers, his face as infuriatingly neutral as always. She tried to match it, setting her mouth in a straight line and looking up at him with feigned disinterest, but she couldn’t help but feel like a petulant teen. Somehow, it never held as much power when she did it.

Her father strode around the kitchen in a way that was somehow both aimless and purposeful. “Stephanie, next time you’re going to cheat, do it like a Lauter, and don’t get caught,” he said, settling himself backwards on one of the chairs by the island. Even slouched over (if it was her, he’d call it unladylike) he was still bigger than her.

“I wouldn’t have gotten caught if it weren’t for that nerdy prude—“

“Stephanie, please, I’d like to have an intelligent conversation with you. In other words, shut up.”

“Yeah, shut up,” Miss Tessburger echoed. She sounded like a sophomore cheerleader. The kind that always hung around the older girls and agreed with everything they said.

“You. Out,” Solomon snapped, waving a dismissive hand at her. Miss Tessburger scurried away like a frightened little dog. “Stephanie, do you have any idea what’s coming up in a mere matter of weeks?”

It was actually more like months, but Steph knew better than to argue. She stared out the window at the house across the street. The paint was the same shade of beige she imagined the wood underneath was. When her dad didn’t answer his own question after a few seconds, Steph hazarded a guess. “The elect—”

“The election,” he interrupted. Steph barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I had to personally call your principal this afternoon. Do you know they wanted to suspend you? Imagine how that would have reflected on me—the mayor’s daughter, a deviant. A flunky.” Her dad spat the words out like rotten food, his face creasing with disgust. Steph looked away. Not because it made her stomach twist to hear that that was what people thought of her—she couldn’t give less of a shit what her dad thought—but she didn’t owe him her attention, either. She never even asked him to call the principal. “We came to an arrangement,” he continued. “They’re not going to punish you, but I am. You will raise your grades, or else. ”

“‘Or else’?” Steph parroted. Despite herself, she spun around to face him, her eyes scanning his face for any more clarity on the sudden darkness in his voice, but he was as blank and expressionless as usual. “How ominous. What are you gonna do, ground me? Like I won’t just sneak out? Face it, old man, there’s nothing you can threaten me with,” she taunted.

It should have made him mad. She was being a little brat, after all. But instead of crumpling with rage, her father’s mouth twitched almost involuntarily into a smile. “Oh, really?” he said, and Steph’s stomach dropped at the sickly-sweet superiority in his voice. “Miss Tessburger—“

Solomon lazily extended one hand, the fingers uncurling one by one. Miss Tessburger strode back into the room, proudly clutching a phone. Her dad’s smile got sickeningly wider as she placed it into his outstretched hand, turning into something almost genuine as Steph stiffened.

“Hey, that looks like my—” she patted her pockets—empty. Shit, right, Miss Tessburger had made her put her phone in her backpack when she’d gotten into the car, and then she’d taken her backpack, and now he had her—“phone!” 

“It is,” her dad said, turning the phone around in his hand, inspecting it from all angles. Like it was a chunk of metal and plastic and not basically her whole life. Steph darted towards him before stopping herself—what was she gonna do, snatch it back? G-d, she hoped she remembered to put it in do not disturb mode. Or maybe she had put it on for detention and then forgotten to turn it back off? The screen still looked black, but maybe that was just because no one was texting her. What would happen when they did? If her dad saw the way she talked to her friends—about school, about boys, about him —she’d be dead. 

“Uh—be careful with that, Dad,” Steph said, holding out one hand like she was trying to calm a wild beast. Her breath was coming out shaky and audible, her heart pounding too loudly to hear herself think, so dignity was a no-go. Might as well go for distraction instead. “Please, Daddy?” she simpered.

Solomon’s brow lowered, and for a second Steph thought she had successfully distracted him, and he was going to go on one of his don’t-you-use-that-kind-of-language-around-your-father-and-don’t-think-I-don’t-know- what-daddy-means-to-you-teens tirades, but he quickly got over his anger. “I’ll be careful with it,” he said, strolling around the kitchen island and placing it down on the counter—face up or face down? Steph couldn’t tell. “I’ll carefully smash it with this hammer.” He bent down, picking something up from behind the island and holding it up where Steph could see and what the fuck. What the fuck, he actually had a hammer? Nobody hammered shit in this house, where the fuck did he get a hammer, why the fuck did he have a hammer? 

Steph’s stomach lurched. “You wouldn’t!” Her dad just chuckled as her voice pitched higher and higher, tears starting to sting her eyes. If he broke her phone—she wouldn’t be able to talk to Brenda and Stacy while she was at home, she wouldn’t hear about all the hot new parties so she wouldn’t be able to go, hell, she probably wouldn’t even be allowed to leave the house now that her dad couldn’t reach her whenever he wanted—“Not even you would do something that evil! You know all my pictures are on there!” 

“I’ve found a weak spot, haven’t I?” Her father taunted. “Your whole generation’s in thrall to these fucking boxes. Little app junkies.” He took one long look at the (thankfully still blank) screen, then carelessly dropped the phone on the counter. They locked eyes. There was no sympathy in his gaze, no genuine care for her wellbeing. If he had any of that, she’d be safe in her room, bitching to Brenda and Stacy about being caught. Instead, she was about to have her whole social life stripped away. “I’m going to free you of it, Stephanie.”

“No!” 

Solomon raised the hammer above his head. The cruel hooks on the back gleamed sharply in the dim kitchen light. It seemed to fall in slow motion, plummeting like a meteor towards her phone. Steph knew her dad; he didn’t pull punches. In less than a second, he was going to pulverize everything under that hammer—her photos, her notes, her messages to her friends, everything. And the worst part was, no one would even care. If her dad had done this to any other person—threatened them, destroyed their property—everyone would know he was a bastard. But if he did it to his spoiled bitch of a daughter? That was just keeping his brat in line. 

Maybe that was why, at the last second, Steph threw her body across the island, putting her left hand on top of her phone just as the hammer came down.

For a moment, Steph couldn’t feel the pain. Just an intense force on the back of her hand, and the feeling of something bending, then giving way inside the flesh. Then, it flooded with a powerful, pulsing warmth, like holding your hand up to a candle flame. But the candle was burning behind her skin, getting hotter and hotter and she couldn’t pull away, until the heat grew into a full-blown fire, a burning, throbbing fire that arced down her fingers and dripped hotly from a circular cut on the back of her hand. She went to grab her phone, but when she tried to close her fingers around it waves of fresh pain poured in. All she could do was stagger back, cradling her maimed hand to her chest and trying to catch the blood before it dripped on the floor.

Her dad dropped the hammer on the island with a clatter that made Steph flinch. “Shit,” he muttered, running his hands over his too-short-to-be-ruined hair. “Stephanie, why the fuck would you put your hand between —G-d!” He hissed through his teeth, looking up like someone might answer him, then looked back at Steph. Abruptly, she realized she was crying, the tears that had welled up when he brought out the hammer spilling uncontrollably down her face like two hot rivers. Pathetic, involuntary whimpers slipped out from her lips, her throat tightening until it hurt almost as bad as her hand. She cowered, trying to hide the miserable sight from his view, but instead of chewing her out more, her dad’s face… softened. 

“Oh, Stephanie,” he sighed, walking around the island towards her with his arms outstretched. “It’s okay. It’s okay—Miss Tessburger, bring the car around!” Miss Tessburger, who’d been frozen in shock, abruptly shook her hair out, walking swiftly towards the garage as if on autopilot. “Stephanie, can you make a fist for me?” he asked, and Steph tried. She managed to get her fingers into a claw shape before the pain became unbearable.

“Sorry,” she choked out.

“It’s okay, Stephanie,” her dad said, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. With the other, he picked up her injured hand, inspecting the dark purple already starting to bloom under her skin. “We’re going to the hospital, we’re going to fix that right up.” 

Her head was pounding so bad, all Steph could do was nod, leaning forward to rest her head against her dad’s shoulder. Her tears and snot soaked into the detergent-scented fabric of his shirt and waistcoat, making a gross wet patch under her face. But he didn’t even pull away. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her in closer instead, his grip firm without hurting or restraining. Steph wrapped her good arm around his back too, her injured hand tucked safely between their bodies. She buried her face into him, and her dad ducked his head to press a kiss to the top of her head. “It’s okay, Stephanie,” he said, his voice quiet as he gently rubbed her back. “I know it was an accident. You’re gonna be alright.”

Steph just sobbed.

Chapter Text

Steph sat in the plasticky emergency room armchair, staring down at her hand. It looked bad. Her fingers were frozen stiff into an awkward clawed position, there was a dark red C of blood where the metal hammer head had torn through her skin, and the flesh around it was a swollen, angry, throbbing red. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, though. The horrible pulsing burn had cooled to a dull throbbing, only shooting pain up her arm when she moved her hand, and she could have thoughts besides “ouch it hurts” now. Mostly, they were about how fucking stupid she’d been. What had she been thinking? That it wouldn’t hurt? That her dad would stop himself before he hit her? Nobody’s reflexes were that good. She should have tried to divert his arm instead.

Her dad had let her sob herself out on his shoulder in the backseat of the car before subtly slipping her some tissues to mop up the blood and tears and snot from her hand and face. She hadn’t managed to get it all off. There was a rusty brown stain on her hand, her eyes still felt itchy and gross, and her makeup was definitely running.But this was the emergency room, so if anyone wanted to judge her for it, they were kinda the asshole there. 

A door on the opposite wall opened, and a short, sweet-faced nurse with a red ponytail poked her head out. “Stephanie Lauter?” she called.

“Here,” Steph said, like the nurse was taking roll call or something. She stood up from her chair, cradling her injured hand in her good one, trying to keep it in the mostly comfortable position it had been in on her lap. She didn’t entirely succeed—a sharp ache pulsed through her as it shifted, and she hissed through her teeth.

Her dad stood with her. “Do you want me to come in with you, Stephanie?”

“Uh—“ Steph glanced between him and the nurse. Was that allowed? Wasn’t there supposed to be some patient confidentiality rule against other people being in the room with you? But, then again, he was her dad, and he seemed pretty worried about her—this was the most he’d looked at her in weeks. “Yeah, sure.”

Her father nodded, and they both walked over to the nurse’s room. She stopped them at the door. “Oh! Excuse me, Stephanie, are you a minor?” 

“No, I’m eighteen,” Steph said.

The nurse turned to Solomon. “Then I’m afraid you can’t come in, sir.”

“But she’s my daughter,” he said.

“I know, sir, but since she is an adult I need to speak to her alone. You can visit her as soon as we’ve determined what level of treatment is needed.” The nurse smiled apologetically. Solomon did not return it. 

“I understand,” he sighed. “I’ll wait outside, then.” He gave Steph one last pat on the shoulder, then stepped away, letting the nurse lead Steph into her office.

The nurse closed the door behind them with a quiet click, ushering Steph and into a chair that was almost identical to the ones outside. She carefully settled her injured hand on the desk. “Can I take a look at that?” the nurse asked.

Steph’s brow furrowed. She was literally the nurse. What was she going to do, say no? “Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, you can call me Becky,” the nurse said. “If you’d like.” 

Steph had no idea how this woman had more energy than her. Weren’t nurses supposed to be tired all the time? “Okay.” 

The nurse—Becky—looked over Steph’s hand. “Can you tell me how this happened?” she asked. 

“I broke my hand,” Steph said. “I got hit by a hammer.”

“And how did you get hit by a hammer?”

Steph ducked her head. “I put my hand under it while my dad was hammering,” she muttered. 

To her credit, Becky kept a straight face—she’d probably had people coming in with much dumber injuries. “Well, it looks like a pretty bad blow,” she said. “We’ll have to do an X-ray to see if it needs surgery. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay overnight in the hospital either way.” 

Steph wrinkled her nose. “Great.” She moved to stand, trying to cradle her hand, but—

“Oh, wait one second, please!” Becky said. “I still need to notify the technicians. Also, one last question—did your father hit your hand on purpose?”

Steph’s ribs tightened. What the hell? Her dad would never hit her. She’d just made a mistake, was all. “No? I literally just said I put my hand under the hammer,” she scoffed. 

Becky’s gaze lingered on her face just a half a second after she finished speaking, something a little more serious, a little more probing in her eyes. Steph sneered and looked away. “Alright. It’s just hospital procedure.”

“Well, does the hospital have any more questions? My hand hurts pretty bad,” Steph snapped.

“Nope. You can head out, someone from radiology will come and get you!” And just like that Becky’s smile was back and brighter than ever. 

Steph hauled herself out of the too-low chair and stepped back into the waiting room. Her dad was lingering outside the door, flipping his car keys around in his hands. He turned to face her when she stepped up to him. “Ah. Hello.”

“Hey,” Steph said. “She says I’m gonna have to stay overnight.”

Her dad made a face. “Ah, well,” he said. “I’ll have Miss Tessburger pack you an overnight bag. Any requests?”

Steph tried not to let her disappointment show. Jeez, you woulda thought that breaking her hand would at least earn her a visit in the hospital. “Any chance I can get my phone?” she asked. “Wait, it’s not broken, is it?”

“No, Stephanie, it’s not broken,” her father sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “You protected it very well with your own hand.”

“Sorry.”

“But no, you may not have your phone,” her father said. Steph made an offended little noise. “Smartphones are for smart girls, not dumb-dumbs. Besides, I promised your principal that I would dole out a punishment equivalent to suspension, and I’ve decided to confiscate it until you raise your grades to at least a C.”

“What?” Steph yelped. “With my average? That’ll take at least the rest of the year! And I’d have to get perfect grades!”

“Fine, then, until you earn at least a C on a test. A real test, not a pop quiz,” her father said. “Right. I have to leave now. Don’t get caught next time. Sleep well.” He patted her shoulder, pulling her into one last one-armed hug. 

And then he left.

The X-ray confirmed that Steph’s hand was, in fact, broken. Badly enough that she was scheduled for surgery first thing the next morning to put it back together. For now, though, she was put up in a hospital bed with her hand in a temporary brace, a needle dripping painkillers into her system, and a textbook in her lap (because, oh yeah, Miss Tessburger thought it was absolutely vital that she be able to do her homework in the fucking hospital). As usual, studying was not going too hot for her. The drugs and dim hospital lights probably weren’t helping, but honestly, she couldn’t get much worse at biology than she usually was. Her eyes slid over the page without picking up on any of the words, her mind filling with fluff. But she needed to at least try, or she might as well wave goodbye to her phone forever. 

Steph looked up when the door opened, Becky letting herself in. “Hey, Stephanie,” she said. “Just checking in before the end of my rounds. Is there anything you need?”

“Can I have something to eat? Please?” Steph had grabbed a protein bar from a vending machine after detention, but now it was solidly evening, and she hadn’t had dinner. 

Becky shot her a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, I can’t. Your stomach has to be empty for the surgery, or it just won’t be safe.”

“Ehhh,” Steph sighed, letting her head fall back against the pillow. She drummed her fingers on her textbook. If it wasn't already impossible to study, being hungry would be the nail in the coffin. 

“But hey, if it makes you feel any better—“ Becky stepped closer, leaning in conspiratorially. “You do know what they say about hospital food, right? I’m doing you a favor by not giving you any. Just terrible.”

Steph snorted. “Yeah, true,” she said. “…I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier, by the way.”

Becky tilted her head. “You yelled at me? When?”

“Never mind,” Steph said hastily. 

Becky smiled. “Goodnight, Stephanie.”

“Wait—“ Steph reached out a hand. “What time am I getting out of the hospital tomorrow?”

“Early afternoon?” Becky shrugged. “We need to make sure all the anesthetic is out of your system before we can release you.”

“So I’ll miss school? Neat,” Steph said. Wait a second—she was supposed to be raising her grades. Shit! “Uh, actually, is there any chance I could make a call? I need to ask someone to take notes for me, and I don’t have my phone.”

“Yeah, you should...“ Becky fussed with the table next to her bed, pulling out a landline phone from one of the drawers and placing it on top. “Here we go. Every room has one.”

“Oh.” Steph blinked. It occurred to her that she didn’t actually have any of her friends’ numbers memorized. She normally had her contacts list for that, but without her phone… “Uh, I hate to ask for another thing, but do you know if there’s, like, a phone book here?”

That was how Steph ended up using a phone book for the first time. She spent a while just flipping around aimlessly, not really sure of how to find anything. It wasn’t, as she had assumed, just a list of everyone in Hatchetfield and their phone numbers. There were, like, businesses and shit in there. It didn’t help that she didn’t exactly know how to call. Her first thoughts were Brenda and Stacy, obviously, until she remembered they were barely in any classes together. Also, she’d seen Stacy’s notebook—it was one hundred percent doodles—and Brenda seemed to learn based entirely on vibes. So they probably weren’t the best choice, no matter how much she loved them. But then who else could she ask? She was popular, sure, but she didn’t actually have any friends besides them. 

Although. She had said otherwise this morning, right?

Steph finally found the section for private citizens in the phone book. She flipped through the pages until she found the name she was looking for. There were two Spankoffskis listed, neither of whom were Pete, but, like, they had to know him. No way in hell were there three completely unrelated Spankoffskis in Hatchetfield. Steph picked one of them at random—Mr. Theodore Spankoffski—and plugged his number into the phone at her side. 

Steph got her answer before the second ring. “H’llo?” said a rough, bleary voice.

“Is this Theodore Spankoffski?” Steph asked.

“No, this is Ted,” he scoffed. Literally just a nickname for Theodore, but okay. “Why the fuck are you calling me on a landline? Oh, shit, wait. Are you that Greenpeace girl? Because I know I said I would donate, but that was just because that really hot barista was watching. I’m not actually gonna give you anything.”

“No, this is—“

“Unless you’re calling because you wanna hook up, because I am down for that if you promise not to talk about the environment and shit—”

“Do you know Peter Spankoffski?” Steph interrupted.

Ted paused. “Yeah, of course I do. He’s my brother.”

“Oh, awesome! Give me his number,” Steph commanded.

The sound Ted made at that could only be described as a gasp of pure delight. Steph hadn’t heard a person’s tone change so fast since the last time her dad dragged her to the Honey Festival. “Oh ho ho ho!” Ted said. “Hell yeah, he reeled you in, did he? About time some babes started getting good taste! D’ya have something to write it down on?”

“Yeah, one second.” Steph leaned down, plucking a pen out of her backpack. She closed the phone book, then pulled her biology textbook into her lap. “Okay, go.”

Ted rattled off a number. Steph wrote it at the top of the page, above a diagram of some brain cells. “Okay, you got all that?” he asked.

“Yup. Thanks, man,” Steph said.

“No problem. Go get him—“ 

Steph hung up without listening to the rest of the sentence. Man, she couldn’t believe that was Pete’s brother. He sounded like his polar opposite. Hopefully Ted had given her the right number—he’d seemed pretty stoked that she wanted to talk to Pete at all, but he also seemed like a bit of a douchebag. Scratch that, like a huge douchebag. 

Well, there was only really one way to find out if she had the right number. Steph dialed, holding the phone to her ear. It rang once. Twice. Three times—

Chapter Text

Detention was, honestly, not as bad as Pete had expected. He’d pictured a gritty basement room with flickering lights and poor ventilation, packed with troublemakers who doubtless wouldn’t take kindly to a geek in their midst. Instead, he just had to report to a normal classroom after school let out, and none of the other students looked particularly terrifying. He supposed that made sense—Max never got punished for beating him up or cursing him out in the hallways, so why would there be anyone actually dangerous? Miss Mulberry even let them do homework, which, to be honest, is what he would have been doing anyway. 

And Steph was in detention, too. He tried not to look up when she walked in, a few minutes late as usual. Like she’d said, no need to broadcast to the whole school that she’d talked to him. Except then she waved to him and took the seat right in front of him, even though there were plenty of open spots. So maybe “we’re friends, aren’t we, Pete” hadn’t just been a nice thing to say to get on his good side (as if she wasn’t firmly there already). Maybe it had a kernel of truth to it. It was a good thing he had a lot of work to do, or he might have ended up staring at her beautiful brown hair flowing down her back, her leg splayed out into the aisle between desks, the curve of her apple cheek resting in her hand as she stared out the window. 

Not that he wasn’t doing that anyway, but, you know. It was better to keep it limited. 

“Detention’s over, you can all go home,” Miss Mulberry called. Wow, that felt like way less than two hours. The other students shoved their books and papers into their backpacks, hurrying to leave their confinement—including Steph. He started as she stood up, then hastily glanced down at his desk, trying to look like he’d been doing that the entire time. 

As she turned to leave, she gave him a little wave. “Bye, Pete.”

“What—oh! Uh, bye Steph!” She turned away with a flick of her hair and sauntered out, hopefully too fast to see the doubtlessly stupid expression Pete made when she talked to him (again!!). He must have sat there for a good thirty seconds before he got his wits about him enough to head off to the library. Up until very recently, he’d thought that “having a spring in your step” was just an expression. Well, now he knew better. 

Pete swung into the school library like he owned the place, finding Ruth and Richie at their usual table near the back and dropping into his seat. “Hey, fellas! Ready to make like Newton and get this physics project in motion?” he said, perhaps a bit too loudly for a library.

Richie looked up from his notebook, a blank, almost disgusted look on his face. It occurred to Pete that he and Ruth might have started without him. “What?” 

“Y’know, like, Newton’s law of motion, like, physics,” Pete said lamely. He could feel the humor leaching out of the joke as he spoke, but he couldn’t stop talking. The words just kind of kept happening.

“This project’s on thermodynamics,” Richie said. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Okay,” Pete sighed. “It’s just a little joke. I’ve got it on good authority that I’m actually pretty funny.” Embarrassed at being called out as he was, Pete still felt a bit of pride slip into his voice. G-d. Steph had really said that he was funny, not the jokes people made about him! Him! 

“Funny looking, maybe.” Richie grinned, and Pete couldn’t help but smile back. “Seriously, though, what’s with the dad jokes? Do you have something you need to tell us, perhaps?”

“I’m just trying out a new thing, okay?” Pete said. “Being cool. Y’know, faking it ‘till you make it and all that.”

Richie raised an eyebrow. “At the library? Who are you trying to impress, Ruth?”

“Yeah,” Ruth laughed, slapping her thighs. “You don’t even need to try with me, Pete!” Her hands balled into fists in her lap, the stretchy fabric of her leggings pulling taut. “I just want someone to touch me. Anyone, please!” 

“Jesus, calm down, Ruth!” Pete looked around to make sure nobody had heard her. Thankfully, the library was abandoned by everyone except other nerds, but they still got a few weird looks. 

“I know what this is about,” Richie proclaimed abruptly. “Somebody walks to the office with Stephanie Lauter and suddenly he’s Stefan Urquelle! Well, don’t get your hopes up, Pete. She was just using you to cheat on a test.” 

“What was it like when she touched your arm?” Ruth said. “Did you come.”

“Ruth! Quit it!” Pete yelped. Out of everyone in the school, Pete would have expected Ruth to have the most encyclopedic understanding of sex, so why did she keep asking these things?

“I need to know!” Ruth cried.

“We just had a nice talk! She’s cool!” 

“We know she’s cool, Peter! You’re not!” Richie said. “You and Steph—it’s a fantasy, like a boy and his anime love pillows. It’s a beautiful dream, but I’ll never hold the real Rei and Asuka in my arms…” 

Richie trailed off, gazing wistfully into the middle distance. Pete decided not to remind him that there was no real Rei or Asuka. But also, as harsh as he was, Richie was right. Even though there was a real Steph, any feelings he might have for her were as irrelevant as Richie’s passion for anime girls. Sure, Steph had been nice, but that was more to do with her personality than his. She stood up to her popular peers all the time—not because she was best friends with everyone they bullied, but just because she was a cool, badass person who was so unafraid of social repercussions that other students didn’t even try to take her down. And sure, it made his heart pound and his stomach twist, but that didn’t mean she felt anything about him. If anything, she was probably just sorry that she got him in trouble. Richie was doing him a favor, reminding him of that. The lower he kept his hopes, the less it would hurt when that turned out to be true. 

Except that a few hours later, Pete’s phone buzzed in his pocket. 

“Pete! Silence your cell phone in the library!” Ruth scolded, as if she wasn’t frequently louder than his ringtone. 

“Sorry!” Pete said. That was weird—he usually didn’t need to keep his phone silenced at all. There were only four people who ever called him—Richie, Ruth, and his parents. Two of them were with him right now, and if his parents needed him to stay with Ted tonight, he would have heard from his brother first—and Ted texted. Pete walked a little bit aways from the table and checked the caller ID, only to be faced with an unknown number. Logically, he knew it was probably just a telemarketer, but still—he never got calls like this. Curiosity got the better of him and he picked up. “Hello?”

“Hey, is this Peter Spankoffski?” said a person who was very much not a telemarketer. 

“Yeah?” The call was coming in pretty low quality, static buzzing in the background, but it sounded like a girl. Another student, probably. He couldn’t hear any muffled laughter in the background, so that was nice. But surely it wasn’t—

“Hi, Pete. It’s Steph, from class?” 

Holy shit. Pete grinned despite himself. Steph, from class—as if she needed to remind him who she was. As if anyone would forget her talking to them. “Oh, uh, yeah, S-Stephanie Lauter, I know,” Pete stammered.

Back at the work table, Richie nearly fell out of his chair. “Nani?”

“Oh, come on. I told you you could call me Steph, remember?”

“Right, right. Sorry. Steph.” Pete squeezed his hand into a tight fist, feeling the tension all the way up his arm before releasing it. Wow. Her friends called her Steph—people who knew her so well, talked about her so much that three syllables was just too much. Which now included him, apparently. “Uh, what’s—what’s happening, what’s going on?”

“Pete, you’re never gonna believe this. Guess where I am,” Steph said. 

“Uh—“ Pete felt a tug on the hem of his shirt. He looked down to see Ruth and Richie creeping up to him, clawing at his clothes and subtly trapping him in place. Don’t, he mouthed. “I don’t… know?”

“What is she saying,” Ruth said, her voice becoming nearly hysterical. “What the fuck is she saying?” She firmly grabbed his pec, like she was attempting to climb his body to get to his phone. Pete brushed her hand away.

“Yeah, I’m actually in the hospital right now,” Steph said casually. 

Pete nearly dropped his phone. “What?” 

“Don’t flip out, Spankoffski, it’s nothing serious.” 

“Wh—you can’t just get to drop ‘I’m in the hospital’ and expect me not to be worried!” he protested. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Just got into a little accident,” Steph said. He could practically hear her waving him off. “But I can’t come to school tomorrow. And, uh… my dad took my phone away, and I’m never gonna get it back unless I pick up my grades.”

“Wait, for real? Right after you got into an accident?” Pete almost added “what a dick move” before biting down hard on the words. The last thing he needed to do was insult his crush’s father to her face. Or, rather, to her phone.

“I know, right?” Steph said. “But he promised to discipline me, or something. So I wouldn’t get suspended. Anyway, I know this might seem kinda presumptuous, seeing as I literally just got you in trouble, but I was wondering if you could, y’know… take notes for me and bring them to my house on Saturday?”

Pete stood there for a second, dumbfounded, his stomach swooping like he was on a rollercoaster from the sheer emotional whiplash. First Steph had called him from the hospital (and why him? Why not any of her real friends?) and now she was inviting him over? He was trying to keep his expectations low, he really was, but she was using the same enticing tone as when she asked him to help her cheat—casually inviting, and just a little nervous. And that had gone well. Really well. Sure, they’d been caught, but by Grace, not Max, and more importantly Steph had called him funny afterwards. Shit, maybe she actually liked spending time with him. “You want me to come to your house?” he said.

“Oh my G-d! Oh my G-d!” Richie shouted, nearly collapsing to the ground. With his firm grip on Pete’s shirt, he nearly took him with him.

“Could you hold on—could you hold on for a second, Steph?” Pete said. He covered his phone’s microphone and turned to Ruth and Richie, reasserting his balance. “What is wrong with you people? I’m trying to talk to Steph here, do you want her to think I’m insane? Stop climbing me, Ruth!” Ruth didn’t let go of him, but she did quiet down. At least she was eavesdropping less intrusively now. He uncovered the microphone. “Sorry. Continue.”

“I mean, it doesn’t have to be at my house,” Steph said. “We could meet at the library or something, but my dad and his stupid assistant are gonna be gone most of the day, and I can’t drive like this, and I study in my room most of the time anyway, so…”

Was this flirting. Was this flirting? “Yeah, no, your place is good,” he said weakly. 

Steph sighed into the receiver. “Thanks so much, Pete,” she said. The smile in her voice made his knees go weak. “I’d ask one of my friends to do it, but I’m actually the smart one in the group, if you can believe it.”

“I mean, yeah, I can,” Pete said. 

“Huh?”

“I can believe you’re the smart one.” He’d seen a lot of Steph in class—in the least creepy way possible, they just happened to share a lot of classes and she kind of demanded attention in any room she was in, or maybe just his attention specifically, but anyway—when she did speak up to ask a question, she was always really insightful, picking at something Pete never would have considered without her input. Even if her questions didn’t necessarily always have anything to do with what the class was on. 

“Uh, okay?” Steph snickered. “Look, we have bio, math, and history together, right?”

“Yep, those are—we definitely have those classes together.”

“Great, so just bring me the notes for those! Uh, probably after noon—I sleep in real late on weekends. And I live in Pinebrook, on Elm Way about two houses past Cottage Street. It’s the big ugly glass box, you can’t miss it.” 

“Right,” Pete said. Pinebrook, Elm Way and Cottage Street—he could remember that. He had to. “Cool. Excellent, even. I’ll see you on Saturday, then.”

“See you on Saturday,” Steph laughed, sounding enormously entertained by the very idea. “Oh, and—Pete?”

“Yeah?”

Steph’s voice got a little softer, a little more sincere. “Thanks for helping me. Really.”

“It’s not a problem.” Pete said. “Bye, Steph.”

“Bye, Pete.”

The call ended.

“What the fuck was that?” Ruth screamed, falling prostrate on the floor. Beside her, Richie bunny-hopped up and down, turning in a tight circle as he did. A group of students at a nearby table shot them a collective dirty look, then stood up and left.

“I don’t know!” Pete whisper-yelled. He staggered back to his chair, collapsing into it and taking a few deep breaths. His heart was pounding, his nails tapping on the dented wood of their own accord. “I’m calling the council to order. You heard that, right?”

“Every word,” Ruth practically moaned. She collapsed into the seat next to him, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead in a parody of a faint. “She said her dad wasn’t home, Pete! The implied second half of that sentence is ‘so you can come over and fuck me’!”

Pete quickly pushed down a mental image that he absolutely could not entertain at 8PM in a public library. “That’s obviously not what she meant! She just wanted me to take notes for her!”

“Oh really, Pete? Is it? Is it obvious?” Richie said. “Because what I heard was Stephanie Lauter calling you completely out of the blue to invite you over to her house.”

“Yeah, to deliver her notes!”

“You both have school email addresses. If that was really what she wanted, she would have asked you to send them that way.” Richie fell into his chair, sighing. “You lucky son of a bitch!”

“What the hell, Richie,” Pete said. “You’re supposed to be the voice of reason here! You literally just told me not to get my hopes up!”

“That was before she asked you to come over to her house! This is not a drill, Pete!” Richie grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. 

“Come on! A naughty schoolgirl wants you to help her study? G-d, they don’t call it a cram session for nothing!” Ruth added. “Watch some porn, you’ll see!”

“Wh—Ruth, she’s injured! She literally called me from the hospital!” Pete sputtered. 

Ruth raised her eyebrows and smirked. “You ever heard that song ‘Sexual Healing’?”

Pete groaned, putting his head down on the table. His face felt like it had quit its job to take up its true dream of being a furnace. The cool wood soothed it a little, but not nearly enough. “Stop being gross, both of you! I had a good day today, okay? A cool, popular girl told me I was funny!” Pete said. “Can’t we just leave it on a high note? You’re telling me I gotta be funny again? I didn’t do it on purpose the first time!”

“Then maybe you’ll be funny by accident again,” Ruth shrugged. “I dunno. It worked pretty well.”

“Look, Pete,” Richie said. “If it turns out we’re wrong, the worst that could happen is that she just takes the notes and tells you to leave. Which is embarrassing, sure, but at least nobody will be around to see it. You’ll just get to go back to the status quo of just never fucking talking to her.”

“I mean,” Pete said. “Unless I show up and her house is packed with popular people waiting to humiliate me.” Unless Max was there. 

Richie raised an eyebrow. “Peter, you do not get to wax poetic about how Steph is ‘different’ from all the other popular girls and then worry about her acting just like them.”

“True, true.” Steph didn’t do that sort of thing. She didn’t punch down on nerds just to keep herself off Max’s radar. If it had been Richie or Ruth, he probably would have told them there was nothing to worry about (and then promptly died of envy, but still). So why was he trying to talk himself out of it now that he had a chance to see Steph where he didn’t need to worry about being punished for it? “You guys are right. I have to do this.”

Ruth snorted. “Good, ‘cause you already agreed to help her. She needs you, Pete! Like Princess Leia!”

“Really, Ruth? A Star Wars reference? Need I remind you why Attack on Titan is superior in every way—“

As his friends argued, Pete tried to breathe. Despite everything, all his interactions with Steph had been pretty much positive so far. He’d absolutely stumbled over himself the entire time, but she didn’t seem to care. She thought he was funny. All he had to do was… keep doing that. 

No pressure.

Chapter Text

Pete stared out the grimy, water-stained window of his brother’s ancient car, watching the neighborhood outside transition from bland but ultimately sensible looking houses to increasingly complicated, misshapen McMansions. They weren’t even close to Elm Way yet, the winding streets pockmarked with cul-de-sacs turning what would have been a short journey into a much longer one, and Pete was already intimidated. He picked up the papers in his lap, tapped them back into a neat, straight pile, and placed them back in his lap before he could contaminate them with his sweaty hands.

“So,” Ted said. His eyes were fixed on the road, but Pete could just feel his attention on him. “I know you said you didn’t want any of my advice—“

“And I still don’t,” Pete said.

“—But! We Spankoffskis have a bit of a track record with the ladies, if you know what I'm saying, and I don’t want you fucking that up by being a little virgin dork.” Ted grinned maniacally at him, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel with excitement.

Pete squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s not like that, Ted.“

“Not with that attitude, it’s not!” Ted scoffed. “Look, you gotta be more confident than that. Or at least act like you’re confident. Chicks dig guys who know that they’re hot!”

Pete raised his eyebrows, shooting Ted the most incredulous look he could muster. Based on plenty of experience, both his own and watching Ted hit on absolutely anyone who would listen, he was pretty sure that only worked with guys who actually were hot. From anyone else, it would probably just be annoying. “Okay, dude.” 

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ted said. “But every single person on this planet comes from a long, long lineage of fuckable people. Even the ugly ones! So clearly there’s something more to attractiveness than looks!”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

Ted sputtered with indignation. Pete turned back towards the window, grinning. “Wh—excuse you! I am a peak specimen of the male figure! I could pull a different bitch every night if I wanted!”

“Yeah, but could you keep her for longer than that?”

“Oh, fuck you!” 

Pete cackled, flicking his hands. “Look, I’m just saying!” 

“Uh, yeah? What are you ‘just saying’?”

“That if the goal is to make someone actually like you—“

“Oh, so you actually like her, do you?”

Pete groaned. “You are the fucking worst! I just need to deliver some notes! I’m not trying to, like—this isn’t a date or anything!”

“See, this is what I’m saying!” Ted said. “You’re writing it off, bro! Have a little confidence! Maybe it’s not a date, but come on, at least try to lay some fucking groundwork! Or at the very least, don’t screw yourself over by telling the world you’re not hot. Let her decide that for herself.”

“Wow. You have so much faith in me.”

“I meant let her decide if you’re hot, not if you’re not! Asshole!” Ted slowed down. “Okay, here’s Elm Way. Where am I parking?”

Pete looked out the windshield. Most of the houses in this area were amalgamations of beige paint and faux wood siding, but one stood out. It looked like a bunch of glass and stone boxes stacked on top of each other in the middle of a sterile, manicured lawn. “Oh, she was right. That is ugly.”

“That the one?” Ted pointed to the glass house.

“Yep.”

Ted abruptly swerved the car over to the wrong side of the street, pulling up along the left side. “Thanks for the ride,” Pete said.

“Hey, no problem,” Ted said. “Go get ‘er, tiger.”

Pete rolled his eyes. He made sure he had all of Steph’s notes together before opening the car door, stepping out, and walking around to the sidewalk.

“Oh, by the way!” Ted shouted, rolling down the window. “I’m going grocery shopping, see you in two hours.”

“What?” Pete yelled, but Ted was already pulling away, speeding off down the meandering roads far too quickly for a residential street. He watched the car skid away, ancient engine sputtering, arms open in a baffled gesture. “Okay?” he called out to nobody. Then, he turned towards Steph’s house and started up the long pathway to the front door, muttering to himself the whole way. “Just gonna fuckin’ leave me here, you fuckin’ asshole? Great. See if I care. I’ll just walk home in the cold, no big deal.” 

Steph’s house didn’t have a porch or even an awning—just a couple of concrete steps leading to a heavy-looking black door. Pete climbed them, holding his notes flat against his chest so they wouldn’t get crumpled. He raised one hand to the doorbell—and froze. Pete’s hand dropped heavily back to his side. He could feel his heart pounding against his ribs. See, Pete liked himself. Ostensibly. He knew he was smart, and he tried to be nice, and apparently he was funny. He had two best friends, and he was one of the few people his brother listened to, when he listened to anyone at all. But just because Pete thought he was a pretty cool guy didn’t mean anyone else agreed, and oh boy, was he aware of that. 

But that was a useless train of thought, wasn’t it? Steph had invited him over, after all. And if even Richie thought that meant more than that she wanted him to bring her notes, Pete was willing to suspend his disbelief and think so too. Maybe Ted wasn’t entirely full of shit. Maybe acting like he thought he had a right to be here would make Steph like him more. And a person who had a right to be here would ring the doorbell and—

Pete noticed he was flicking his wrist and snapping his fingers at his side, and even though there was nothing wrong with that, he felt like maybe he should take care of it before he totally freaked out around Steph. He rocked on his heels, letting the movement in his hand extend to his entire arm until his heart rate slowed again, at least some of the nervous energy shaken out of his system. Then, before he could find another reason to delay, he rang the bell. Whatever else he needed to do, surely he could think of before Steph opened the—

Steph opened the door immediately. “Hey.”

“Ah! Jesus Christ!” Pete yelped, staggering backward. His foot slipped off the edge of the step, notes fluttering to the ground as his arms flailed. 

“Shit—“ Steph lunged forward, grabbing a handful of his shirt. Thankfully, he hadn’t fallen back far enough to drag her down with her. She pulled him back into balance with a flex of her bicep, his chest nearly bumping into hers. She was dressed more casually than she usually was at school—which he supposed made sense, it was the weekend—in a pair of gray sweatpants and a band t-shirt that was probably meant to be loose but wasn’t. Her hair looked different too, the smooth waves she usually had replaced by something a little frizzier, more voluminous. And she had a thick white cast on the hand that wasn’t currently just sort of holding onto his shirt, stopping far enough below the elbow that she could still bend it. “You okay there, Spankoffski?”

“Yep! All good, totally okay and all that.” He almost asked if she was, too, before remembering that that was pretty inappropriate. He'd been—well, not worried, but maybe curious, or concerned, that was a better word, ever since she'd said she was calling him from the hospital. He'd been picturing black eyes and broken teeth against his will—compared to that, a small cast was pretty tame. “Uh—I dropped the notes—“

“Oh, sorry.” Steph released him, taking a small step back. Pete ran his hand over his chest a couple times to smooth it down, trying not to tap his fingers over his skin. “Didn’t mean to scare you there.”

“No, it’s okay—I’m just a little jumpy. Like, in general.“ Pete hastened back down the stairs, scooping up the scattered notes. Thankfully, there was no landscaping around Steph’s house—no thorny flowers or exposed soil to ruin the pages, just neatly clipped grass. He stacked them back together against his chest, then climbed back up the stairs. “Okay! Take two.”

Steph gave him a lopsided, closed-lipped smile, her arms crossed over her chest. “Take two,” she repeated. “You wanna come inside?”

“Oh! Yeah, sure.” Steph took one big step backwards into the house, then spun on her heel and walked inside. Pete followed. The inside of Steph’s house was just as massive as the exterior; the entryway, living room, kitchen, and dining room all combined into the same undifferentiated space. Bare lightbulbs hung from the high ceilings, glinting off the pale wood floors and metal fixtures. It kinda reminded him of a warehouse. “Is this a shoes on or a shoes off kinda house?” he asked. 

Steph shrugged. “Do whatever you want,” she called over her shoulder. “Miss Tessburger wears her shoes inside, but my dad and I take them off.” Pete toed off his shoes. He shut the door behind him and followed Steph deeper into the house, to a part of the floor that was nebulously between the living room and kitchen. He had never considered himself agoraphobic, but something about the wide open space made him feel exposed. Or maybe that was just that he was there alone with Steph. 

“I have the notes,” he told her as she hoisted herself onto an uncomfortable-looking metal barstool by the kitchen island. 

“Great, so put ‘em here,” she said, patting the black stone countertop. For lack of anything else to do, Pete sat on the stool next to her. He fanned the notes out in front of them like cards, even though there were only three sheets. Steph leaned over to inspect them, coincidentally putting her closer to Pete. Her hair brushed his arm. “Ooh, swanky.”

“Swanky?” he repeated. That was perhaps the last word Pete would ever think of to describe school notes.

“Yeah, I mean, like, you’ve got them all sorted out and everything.” Steph pointed to the different sections on the history sheet—general notes, summary, and important people, places, and dates, all highlighted and color coded for easy reference (and yes, maybe Pete hadn’t used the highlighters on his own notes. Maybe he had tried to make them extra nice for Steph. So sue him). “Damn. How do you decide what to write?”

Pete looked up at her. She was intoxicatingly close to him, her leg almost touching his, so he shifted over to the far side of his seat. Even if, logically, there was no way Max could find out, it was still always safer to keep his distance. “What do you mean, how do I decide?” he asked, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the pages.

“Like, everything here is really—not short, but like, tight, y’know?” Steph said. “Like, there’s nothing here that’s clearly off topic, even though Mr. Warren goes off on tangents so often you can’t tell what the lesson is even about. How can you know what to write down?”

“Wh—I don’t?” Pete said. “These aren’t the notes I took, like, during class. I just write down literally everything and then go back over them and clean them up.”

Steph grinned. “Aw, for me?”

Pete blushed. “Well, yeah, but I also just do that for my own notes. It’s a good way to go over them and make sure I understand.”

“Huh!” Steph said. “I would’ve thought you wouldn’t need to do that.”

“What, make sure I understood everything?”

“Well—yeah. You’re so smart, I figured…” 

Steph trailed off, a weird look on her face. She didn’t seem sad, necessarily, but her smile had dulled a little, not quite reaching her eyes. Pete almost put a hand on her shoulder before he caught himself. “Steph, I’m smart because I go over this stuff a lot. I wasn’t, like, born knowing what RNA is. Once I’m done with school, I’ll probably forget most of it, same as everyone else.”

Steph raised an eyebrow, the corner of her lip turning up just slightly. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“Well, maybe not bio and math,” he admitted. “But definitely history. There’s no rules to learn, it’s just people doing stuff.”

Steph abruptly snorted, doubling over and clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the cutest little squeaky giggles Pete had ever heard. “It is just people doing stuff!” she said. Pete squeezed his hand so tight it hurt. Holy shit, Ruth was right! He had been funny again by accident! “So, um, if even smart guys like you need to go over shit to remember it, then I definitely need that. Would you mind, like, going through these with me? Since I missed class and everything.”

“Yeah, definitely!” he said. “I mean, definitely not. I wouldn’t mind helping.”

Steph nodded. “Sweet. I’m gonna go get my textbooks real quick—“ she slid off her stool and walked towards the stairs. Once he was pretty sure she wouldn’t look back, Pete put his head down, shaking his hands out. How the hell was he going to replicate that?

Two hours later, Pete was startled out of his concentration by a ping from his phone. They’d gone through just about everything there was to go through after the first half hour, and Steph had transitioned to doing her own work, Pete only speaking up to answer her questions and walk her through the harder problems. He was pretty sure these worksheets were due a week ago, but that was none of his business. He grabbed his phone, checking the notification. “Oh, shit.”

Steph looked up. “Hm?”

“My brother’s here.”

Steph blinked. “Oh—so, does that mean you have to go now?”

“Pretty soon, yeah.” He’d been a little zoned out watching her work. Once again, it hadn’t felt like two hours—maybe it was a good thing Ted had come to collect him.

Steph cocked her head at his phone. “What time is it?”

“Bit after two thirty.”

Steph looked at the half-finished math problems in front of her, almost offended. “Did I just spend fucking two hours doing homework?”

Pete shrugged, unable to tell if the way her face scrunched up was good, bad, or something else. “I mean, yeah.”

“G-d, I feel like such a nerd. You’re rubbing off on me, Spankoffski,” she smirked. G-d, I wish, said a voice in the back of his head. He told it to shut up. “But you still haven’t shown me how to make your swanky notes. D’you think we could study together again Monday after school?”

“Uh—“ Pete’s overheated brain struggled to recall his schedule. He was usually studying with Richie and Ruth after school, so—“I don’t know? I’ll have to ask my friends.”

“Cool. Well, I don’t have my phone, so just tell me whether you can or not in history?”

“Will do,” Pete said quickly. Too quickly, because a second later he remembered Max took history. “Actually—could I just give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down? That way it’ll be less obvious that we’re studying together. And we should meet in the Hatchetfield Public Library, not the school library. If I can come.”

Steph shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you in class, then?” 

“See you in class.” Pete slid out of his chair, quickly turning away so she couldn’t see him grin like a dork. He calmly walked to the door, put on his shoes (he crushed the backs under his heels, no time to get them on correctly) and let himself out.

And then he screamed quietly into his hands, because Steph wanted to spend more time with him! He practically sprinted to his brother’s car, throwing himself into the passenger’s seat. “Whoa-ho-ho!” Ted said as he buckled himself in, then flapped his hands so hard he almost hit himself in the face. “Someone had a good time.”

“Shut the fuck up, Ted,” Pete said. As elated as he was, he was also fucking exhausted from keeping still for so long, and he had no patience for anyone, but especially not Ted. “We just studied. She asked me to help her again on Monday.”

“Well? What did you say?”

“I said I’d have to check with my friends.”

“Good. Let her think you’re a hot commodity, it’ll make her even more desperate for it.”

Pete punched Ted in the shoulder. Maybe not the wisest move while he was driving, but he couldn’t resist it. “Shut up! I do actually need to ask Richie and Ruth!” 

“Eh, whatever. It’ll work on her anyway.”

Pete pointedly ignored him. He pulled out his phone again and texted his friends.

You: hey is it okay if I bail on studying Monday and go help Steph again

Ruth’s reply was almost instant.

Awooga: FUCKING OBVIOUSLY DUDE

Awooga: BAIL ON US AS MUCH AS YOU WANT GO GET SOME

You: calm down ruth

Awooga: I AM CALM

Awooga: im just excited 4 u

Awooga: what can a bitch not be acceded for her friend

Awooga: *excited

Awooga: so did u hit it

You: no??? We were just studying

You: u sound like my brother

Awooga: :P

A few minutes later, Richie came online.

Just a normal man: hi im here whats going on

Just a normal man: you can absolutely bai; on Monday

You: literally nothing

Just a normal man: *bhail

Just a normal man: FCUK *bail

Awooga: lmaoooo

Just a normal man: I give up 

You: ruth convinced herself I banged steph or something

Just a normal man: Pete u were n there for 2 hours. it does not take that long to give someone 3 sheets of paper

You: she also asked me to explain some of the content

You: hence why were studying again on mon

Awooga: I can’t believe u say shit like hence in the gc

Awooga: this is why it took u 18 years to get bitches

Just a normal man: what did I TELL u

You: ??

Just a normal man: I TOLD u she didn’t just want notes

You: WE DIDNT DO ANYTHING

Just a normal man: U SPENT TWO HOURS TOGETHET

Just a normal man: THATS NOT NOTHING

Just a normal man: but yes please ditch us for Stephanie

Just a normal man: also

Just a normal man: I told u so

You: >:|

Just a normal man: :)

Chapter Text

Steph carefully threaded her way through the packed cafeteria, her lunch tray half-balanced on her cast. She had never paid this much attention to her steps before. Being popular earned her enough clout that people tended to keep a respectful distance unless they wanted to talk to her, but clearly, it wasn’t far enough. Every student that sprinted by or gestured too widely near her made her start, gripping the edge of her tray with her good hand so hard that her fingers started to hurt. Why did school suddenly seem so much more chaotic the moment she was down a working arm?

Eventually, though, she made it to the back of the cafeteria, where the popular seniors had essentially blocked off a chunk of tables for their own exclusive use—and by extension, to her two best friends. Or, well, more accurately, her only two friends. Even though they were cheerleaders, Brenda and Stacy were stuck on the same only-popular-by-association rung of the school hierarchy that Steph was—Brenda because she was “too bossy” and Stacy because she was “kinda off-putting”. Neither of which were true, by the way—Brenda was exactly the right amount of bossy, way better than the pushovers who just did whatever Max thought was cool, and Stacy was a fucking pleasure to be around, thank you very much. Steph would take quality over quantity any day, and besides, the three of them got invited to all the best parties just fine.

“Hey guys. Long time, no see,” Steph joked as she slid into her usual seat around their table.

“Oh my G-d, Steph!” Immediately, Stacy’s arms were around her, hauling her in for an awkward sideways hug. “I missed you so much you don’t even know!”

Steph couldn’t resist the massive smile that bloomed on her face. Just like that, a weight she didn’t know she was carrying was lifted—here, she was still cool, hot, likable. “Stace, it’s been three days.”

“Yeah, three shitty, terrible days!” Stacy scoffed. She released Steph from her death grip, bouncing a little in her seat. “I cannot believe your dad took your phone away.”

“Yeah, me neither. I’ve had to go on Twitter on my laptop like some kind of wild animal,” Steph said.

Stacy gave her an appropriate look of disgust. “Ew.”

“Right after you broke your arm, though? That’s cold,” Brenda said. 

“Fuckin’ tell me about it, right?” Steph picked up her orange, clawing the skin open and starting to pick off bits of peel. “My hand, though,” she added after a second. “Not my arm.”

“Still a dick move,” Brenda shrugged. “So, uh, how did you break it, anyway?”

Steph knew that someone would ask the question eventually. Brenda and Stacy technically already had, when she emailed them to tell them why she wasn’t responding to her texts. And this time, she couldn’t just pretend they hadn’t mentioned it. “Well, if you must know,” she sighed, keeping her eyes on her lunch tray, “I was attacked by timberwolves.”

Stacy gasped with the appropriate amount of horror. “No!”

“It’s true,” Steph said. “I was walking home from detention, and I took a shortcut through the Witchwood. It got dark, and a pack of them cornered me. Thankfully, I managed to fight them off with my backpack, but not before one of them grabbed my hand in its jaws and crushed it!” She paused for a second, taking in Brenda’s curious gaze, Stacy’s rapt attention, before delivering the punchline—“And then they yelled ‘go Sycamore!’ and ran back to their shitty school.”

The tension broke. Stacy snorted into her protein shake. “Fuck those guys,” Brenda said.

“Yeah,” Steph said. “ Fuck ‘em.” 

The whole story was a lie. And moreover, it was an obvious lie—both of her friends knew she got driven home every day, that there was no shortcut to her house through the Witchwood, that nobody from any school would dare to fuck with the mayor’s daughter. But it did its job, letting her bond with them over the injury while also clearly signaling that she didn’t want to talk about it. 

“Oh! That reminds me!” Stacy ducked under the table, rustling in her backpack a little before pulling out her pencil case. “When you said you broke your hand, I went out and bought—“ she rummaged around—“these!” Stacy brandished a handful of multicolored sharpies, grinning widely. “So people can sign your cast! I figured most people wouldn’t have any markers, ‘cause, y’know, it’s high school.”

Steph grinned. “Aw, Stace,” she said, leaning forward to butt her head against her shoulder like a cat to disguise the sappiness of her smile. 

“Ooh, is that a gold marker?” Brenda asked. “I want that one!”

By the time Steph reaches her last class of the day, her cast has been signed by:

• Stacy (pink, right over where her hand got broken)
• Brenda (gold, across her entire forearm, in swoopy cursive like she was signing an autograph)
• Grace (blue, small on the wrist, given along with a promise to pray for Steph’s swift recovery)
• Jason (also blue, on the top of her forearm, along with a surprisingly good drawing of Zeke the Fightin’ Nighthawk)
• Rose (red, near the top of her cast—hopefully they won’t saw through it when it comes off and Steph can keep it. That’s basically an autograph from the guitarist of Needy Beast, right?)
• Kyle (also red, squeezed in after Brenda’s name)
• And Hannah (black, on the bottom of her cast and so small she could barely read it).

Steph had to tell her Timberwolves story a couple more times. She knew rumors would spread—it was Hatchetfield High, of course they would—but at least nobody would get any information out of her. Every bit of gossip about her cast and her mysterious absence would be equally bullshit. Steph was enjoying the attention, though, even if she did have to shoo off a few overly curious people once class actually started. She was trying to pay attention now, thanks. She needed to write down everything if she was gonna make swanky notes. 

Well. She also needed one more thing, or rather, one other person. 

Steph actually didn’t turn up late to history class, for once, but she waited for everyone else to file in before her. She needed to be able to catch his eye to know if she was gonna go to the library today. Or, well—she was gonna have to go to the library either way. She had already asked Miss Tessburger to pick her up there at 5PM (not having a phone sucked ass), but at least she’d have some confidence that she wouldn’t be just sitting there waiting like some kind of loser. 

Steph strode into the room, her gaze sweeping over the rows of chairs. She immediately found a good, empty seat near the back, but that wasn’t really what she was looking for. Her eyes settled on Peter, sitting rather predictably in the front row, dressed in the same crisp white shirt and suspenders he’d been in the other two times she’d paid him any attention. His eyes didn’t come up to meet hers, but for just a second, his hand curled into a thumbs up. Steph couldn’t explain the strong feeling of relief that rushed through her at that, why she had a bit more of a spring in her step as she made her way to the back of the classroom. What, like he would have ditched her after he already went way further out of his way to bring her notes?

But still. It was cool that she wouldn’t be studying alone.

Chapter Text

The Hatchetfield Public Library was a lot smaller than Steph remembered. Which she guessed made sense—the last time she was here, she was… nine? Ten? Back then, the ceilings had looked impossibly tall, like the palaces in the beat-up fairytale remix chapter books she liked to check out. Now, she realized, the ceilings were no higher than those in her own house, buzzing fluorescent lights spilling their artificial glow onto stained carpets. Besides that, and the sound of the doors swinging closed behind her, the library was quiet. The only other people she could see were an aggressively emo person sitting behind the front desk and an elderly man browsing the newspaper rack.

Steph almost walked towards the kids’ section before realizing Pete definitely wouldn’t be there. But where did people study? She barely knew her way around Hatchetfield High’s school library, much less a building she hadn’t been in for nearly a decade. After taking a look around that was more of a formality than an actual attempt to locate Pete, she walked to the front desk. “Hey, have you seen—“ she started, then cut herself off. What did she call Pete? “Study partner” sounded too formal, “friend” too close. “—Uh, a guy in, like, suspenders and a bow tie? He’s really tall. Kinda looks like he got stretched out in a taffy puller.”

The person at the front desk raised an eyebrow. “You mean Peter?”

“Ah,” Steph said, feeling heat begin to flush her face. Obviously he would have been to the fucking library before. “Yes. I did.”

“Study area is upstairs. Try in the back.”

“Thank you,” Steph said, and hurried away.

The library’s grand, spiraling, totally out of place staircase was visible from anywhere on the first floor—so at least Steph didn’t have to embarrass herself by asking where that was, too. She took the steps two at a time. The upper level was brighter, sunlight streaming in through huge windows, uninterrupted by the shade of trees or other buildings. Shelves of academic-looking books stood in neat, waist-high rows, and, as the librarian had said, wooden desks and chairs lined the back wall. It didn’t take her long to spot Pete, slouching but alert in a chair squeezed between a table and the corner of the room. She felt his eyes meet hers, even from across the wide floor, before he turned to stare out the window, resting his head in his hand. He didn’t look back at her until she was standing right in front of him.

He’d already laid out his own study materials—notes, textbook, pencils, blank paper—neatly on the table in front of him, with the precision of someone who did the exact same thing every time they studied. It reminded Steph of Stacy a little—not that Stacy would be caught dead studying, obviously—she just liked to arrange her lunch in the same way and eat it in the same order every day (protein shake, banana, green juice, granola bar, if you were wondering). “Hey, Steph. You came,” he said, his voice cracking a little on her name.

“Yeah, sorry, I had to walk,” Steph said. She didn’t mention that she also got lost without her phone for directions and had to ask a random passer-by where the library was. She dropped her backpack next to the desk with a thump, then dropped herself into the unoccupied chair across from him. 

“Oh,” Pete said. “You know there’s a bus that goes from school to here pretty directly, right?”

Steph did not know that. Steph had never taken the bus once in her life. “Sure,” she said bluntly. Pete averted his eyes. He picked up a pencil, then put it down again. Steph remembered belatedly that she probably sounded mean, and it was a bad idea to piss off the guy who was gonna help her pass her next test. “But, uh—one sec, let me get out my notes—“

Steph ducked under the table to dig in her backpack. It took her a while to find her notes in the absolute mess of papers she’d jammed in there, but she came up with them eventually. She placed them on the table in front of her, smoothing the folded-over edges until they mostly lay flat, and now Pete’s expression was less upset, more “I’m trying not to judge you, but holy shit ”. Steph wasn’t sure which was worse. “I know, I know,” she said. “But it’s what’s on the inside that counts, right?”

Pete wiped some of the obvious disdain off his face. “Right, right,” he said. “So, uh, what do you want to start with?”

“I was hoping we could do bio,” Steph said. “Like, go over the vocabulary and shit? I figured I won’t get anywhere on the real test if I don’t know what any of the words… actually mean.” 

Pete nodded. “That makes sense. Here, one sec—“ he flipped through his textbook. “There’s a vocabulary list in the chapter summary, we could start with that. Maybe I could, like, read the vocabulary items off the list, and we can come up with definitions together?”

“Sure, man. You’re the boss,” Steph shrugged. 

Pete stood his book upright. Steph reached back into her backpack for a blank sheet of paper in a pencil. As she rooted around, her hand closed on Stacy’s sharpies, bundled together with a spare hair tie. “Oh, shit, I can’t believe I forgot.”

“Huh?” 

Steph sat back up, spreading her supplies on the table. “Stacy brought some markers so people could sign my cast. Do you wanna?”

“Wh—you want me to?”

“Yeah, man, I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t.” Steph snorted at Pete’s shocked, deer-in-the-headlights expression. “I mean, like, you don’t have to.”

“No, I mean—“ Pete grit his teeth. “I really appreciate it, but it’s probably not a great idea for me to write my name on you where you can’t really cover it up or take it off?”

“What, because it’d be so embarrassing if people found out you were hanging out with Steph Lauter?” Steph teased.

“No no no, nothing like that—it’s just, if Max saw—“ Pete cut himself off, tapping his fingers on the table. “But I appreciate the offer.”

Steph shrugged. “Okay,” she said, dropping the markers back into her backpack. “Alright, bring on the words. Let’s see if I hit a record number of questions answered wrong.”

“Okay,” Pete said. “Uh, you know it’s totally okay if you mess up on these, right? It’s just practice.”

“Yeah, dude,” Steph said. “Probably better, actually. The embarrassment will make it stick in my head better when you tell me the right answer. Now start reading.”

Pete looked like he wanted to say something more, but apparently that wasn’t as important as heeding her wishes. “Okay. Uh, genotype?” he read off.

Steph grimaced. She’d heard that one before. Maybe. “The type… of gene?”

“I mean, kinda?” Pete said. “It’s, like, the literal genetic information an organism has.”

“Right, so not what I said at all.”

“I mean—“ Pete broke off. “Yeah? But looking at the individual parts of the words is a good way to figure things out if you don’t know!”

Steph squeezed her eyes shut tight. He was trying to be nice. She should be nice back. But it was obvious how stupid she was, just from one easy vocabulary word—I mean, who needs to pick a word apart and guess when they learned it on the first day of class? She fought back the rising urge to snap at him. Instead, she wrote down the definition. “Next one?”

“Phenotype?”

No fucking clue. Anger rose in Steph’s throat. “The, uh… is it the genes a creature doesn’t have? Like, if the genotype is the recessive trait, the phenotype is the dominant one?” Pete’s face said everything. “I got it wrong, didn’t I.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “The phenotype is the way a gene gets expressed—makes itself physical.”

Steph squeezed her pencil so hard that the wood bit into her hand. “Right,” she sighed. She wrote that one down too. She could feel her brain shutting down, like it did in class, when she just knew she wouldn’t get anything, so what was the point of wasting energy on it. If she couldn’t understand now, one on one, how could she ever hope to pass her next test? She forced her attention back to Pete, back to her notes, back to the real world. Embarrassing as it was, she needed to make sure she understood this. “So, like, the difference is that, like, a dog with just one gene for a disease would have a totally healthy phenotype, but an unhealthy genotype? And if the breeders aren’t careful, or if they care about the dogs’ appearance more than their quality of life, they might cross two dogs with an unhealthy genotype, and some of their puppies could have the unhealthy phenotype, too?”

Pete blinked at her. “Yeah, no, that’s exactly right,” he said, the look of surprise slowly being overtaken by a smile. He held out one hand, leaning over the table a little bit.

Steph stared at him blankly. “What?”

“C’mon, don’t leave me hanging!” he said, then quickly added, “unless you want to.”

Oh, it was a high five. Steph stood up a little in her chair and smacked his hand, the crisp sound echoing through the otherwise silent library. Pete sat back down in his chair, his posture just a little more relaxed than before. “Man, are you even sure you need my help?” he chuckled. “You seem to have this shit down pretty solid.”

It was a joke. It was obviously a joke, he was even laughing when he said it, but something in Steph’s chest still squeezed a little at the compliment, her earlier frustration converting easily into giddiness. “What? No I don’t, dude, you told me what they were.”

“Yeah, but you connected them to an example,” Pete countered. “That’s a really good way to remember stuff—linking it to something you’re already familiar with. You like dogs?”

“Yeah?” Steph ducked her head. It was stupid and childish, but she did remember things a lot better when they had to do with dogs.

“Awesome!” Pete said, with way too much enthusiasm (and yet, he sounded totally sincere). “Maybe we can come up with examples like that for all the vocab, then!”

“Look, dude, you don’t have to act like it’s impressive, or anything,” Steph laughed. It came out a lot more flustered than she intended. “It’s not like I learned that shit, I just saw it online somewhere and remembered it so I can win arguments.” 

Pete raised an eyebrow. “Steph, what do you think learning is?”

“Well, don’t ask me, you’re the nerd here!” Steph looked at the ceiling, the table, out the window—anywhere but Pete’s face. He was looking at her with a kind of obliging fondness, but not like her dad did when she made a fool of herself and he had to pretend she wasn’t embarrassing him. Instead, it was like he had no idea she was stupid at all. Like the very idea of her being stupid was ridiculous. Like he’d known all along that she would get it right, eventually. She didn’t fucking like it. She felt like a piece of paper that had been bent back and forth too many times. If Pete wanted to, he could have ripped her right in half. All he would have had to do was take it back.  

But he didn’t. “I mean, yeah,” he said. “But you’re not—you’re smarter than you think you are, Steph.”

Her chest did the thing where it felt like her ribs were crushing her lungs again. Even worse, Steph could have sworn she actually blushed. 

G-d dammit.

They went through the rest of the vocabulary like that—Steph throwing out wild guesses, Pete pushing her in the right direction, and always giving her a high five when they reached the correct answer together—even though it was usually him doing most of the work. It must have been impossibly boring, just going over stuff he probably knew by heart already while she stumbled through it blindly, but his cheerful expression never faltered. How did he fucking do it? Even with all of his patience, Steph was reaching the end of hers. Maybe Pete thought tutoring her would get him some kind of clout—but no, wouldn’t he have wanted to sign her cast, then? Or for them to study in the school library, where everyone could see her spending time with him? He was being way too secretive about them for that to be the answer. So then what did he want? Money? He’d never asked, and she’d never offered. Maybe it was just to stroke his ego—showing off how smart he was by forcing some knowledge through her thick skull. But helping her through the most basic definitions over and over couldn’t be that rewarding, right?

“Hey, Steph?”

“Mm?”

“You said you needed to leave at five, right?”

“Shit.” Steph’s hand flew to her pocket. She panicked for a second when she didn’t feel her phone, then remembered—right. Her dad fucking took it. “Is it five already?”

“Not quite, but we should probably wrap up anyway,” Pete said. “Two hours is a long time to work without any breaks. You did great, but, y’know, next time, if you need one, you should say it.”

Steph cocked her head. “Next time.”

Pete’s face flushed. “I mean, uh—I checked with my friends, I could study with you on Wednesday too. If you want—no pressure, obviously.”

“‘No pressure’? Dude, you’re the one saving my ass from yet another failing grade,” Steph snorted. 

“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m saving your ass,” Pete said. “Just, y’know, giving you a little nudge. You’re a really fast learner.”

Steph raised an eyebrow. “Really?” 

It was supposed to come out sarcastic and cynical. Instead, she sounded way too hopeful. “Yeah, really!” Pete said. “I mean, we basically went over a whole unit in two hours. At this rate, you’ll be ready for the test in no time!”

He was doing it again. Pete had to be torturing her on purpose, right? Compliments were supposed to make you feel good, not all—weird! And vulnerable! And yet when Steph looked at him—his wide, honest smile, his posture so much more relaxed then when they’d started, his dark eyes shining—she couldn’t see a hint of deception. And Steph refused to believe that Peter Spankoffski was somehow pulling one over on her so well that she couldn’t even recognize the lie. So how was he deluding himself into thinking she was anywhere near smart? Were those glasses of his secretly rose-colored?

Steph shoved her supplies back into her backpack, slinging it over her shoulder as she stood. “Well, I think I need all the help I can get,” she said, “So I’ll see you Wednesday. We could make it regular, Mondays and Wednesdays, if you want?”

“Sure!” Pete’s whole body perked up at the prospect. “I’ll see you then!” 

Fuckin’ nerd, Steph thought affectionately. Who the hell got so excited to read some textbooks? But then again, she was reaping the benefits of his enthusiasm—and maybe she was just a little bit excited to see him again, too. To be around someone who didn’t take it for granted that she was an idiot. “See you then,” she said, and headed off towards the stairs. As she climbed down, she cast a glance over at Pete out of the corner of her eye. He was still at the desk in the corner, books and papers spread out in front of him, but he wasn’t looking at them. His gaze followed her until she got too low to see.

Huh.

Steph stepped out of the library to see her dad’s sleek black car parked directly in front. She opened the passenger side door and slid in. The clock on the dashboard said 5:04. “You’re late,” Miss Tessburger snipped.

The lightheartedness from earlier turned to sand in her chest. “Well excuse me,” Steph said, rolling her eyes. “It’s almost like my dad took away the thing I use to tell the time.”

“For goodness sakes, Stephanie, learn to read a clock!” Miss Tessburger scoffed. “Ugh—next time just be more considerate, okay?”

“Oh, uh, speaking of next time, I’m gonna study again on Wednesday,” Steph said. “Mondays and Wednesdays. At the public library.”

Miss Tessburger just sighed dramatically. 

As the car wove its way through the streets of Hatchetfield, Steph leaned her head against the cold window, watching her own face reflected in the darkening glass. She thought back to just a few minutes earlier, trying to capture the happiness she’d felt with Pete again, but it seemed like Miss Tessburger had done a good enough job of crushing that. It was so weird. Being called smart felt… well, uncomfortable, and way too intense, but it felt good. Even if she knew it wasn’t true. But why had Pete showered her in praise like that? And more importantly, how could she make sure he kept doing it? It certainly wasn’t anything she was doing. Even when she had been a total bitch to him, he hadn’t snapped at her or changed his mind about helping. He’d just smiled and patiently talked her through the problem, reaching across for a high five every time she worked it out…

Holy shit.

It was so obvious—the soft, fond way he looked at her, the way he found little excuses to touch her, the compliments that were way out of proportion but still sincere, spending so much time and effort just to make her happy—Pete was crazy about her. He was hopelessly, desperately, obviously attracted to her. She couldn’t find his ulterior motive because helping her study—just being around her at all, really—was the ulterior motive! Steph snickered to herself a little, her reflection flashing a sharp smile in the window. She could work with that. She could definitely work with that.

“What are you laughing about, Stephanie?” Miss Tessburger asked.

“Nothing!” Steph forced the grin off her face, but she was still smiling inside. Now that she knew why Pete was so dead set on helping her, she could go back on Wednesday and kill two birds with one stone—study for her test and get her fix for her newfound addiction to being called smart. She didn’t even care if it wasn’t true, as long as Pete was willing to say it. She was gonna wring that geek dry.

Chapter Text

Studying with Steph was going great, honestly. Despite her protests that she wasn’t that smart, she’d picked up on everything remarkably quickly—honestly, probably faster than Pete had when he’d first learned it ages ago. They’d worked through the entire unit in just four sessions together, plus however much work she was doing without him (which, if he believed her scoffing, was nothing—but he wasn’t sure he believed her). She was smiling more, too, which he took as the real marker of his success. Hell, if he was willing to pat himself on the back a little, he’d even go so far as to say that she was coming to kinda enjoy studying with him.

There was just one little snag.

Pete would never blame Steph for it, obviously. Blame wasn’t even a good word for it, since there was nothing wrong with what she was doing. She could dress however she wanted, and clothes weren’t inherently sexual, and she was wearing it for herself, not for other people to look at, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. No, he blamed the ineffable forces of the universe for the way Steph always happened to want to wear the tightest pants and the skimpiest little shirts he’d ever seen in his entire life exclusively on the days when he was forced into close contact with her for two hours straight. And it really was just on Mondays and Wednesdays. Pete saw Steph every day—not in a weird way, they just shared a lot of classes!—and even though she was no Grace Chasity, her usual brand of rebellion fell more in the realm of self-ripped jeans and home-made crop tops than showing a ton of skin. She was certainly showing a lot of skin now, though. And more than just skin. Like perhaps the most perfect rack anyone had ever been blessed with in all of human history. 

What? Pete wasn’t his brother, but he still had eyes.

G-d. He had never been great at making eye contact. He was making so much eye contact lately. Or, at the very least, not-cleavage contact.

Steph dropped her bag and plonked down in the chair across from him, flashing him a sweet, eye-crinkling smile (G-d, that was so endearing). Today’s outfit was a pair of vaguely athletic-looking shorts and a pale yellow tank top, stretched to max capacity. No jacket, though. He wondered if she was cold. “Hey!” she said, leaning over sideways to root around in her backpack. 

“Hey!” Hopefully his own sappy smile didn’t seem too out of place next to hers. “Good news—Miss Mulberry let me snag a copy of a test she used last year. It’s not exactly the same stuff we’ve been studying, but I added some new questions and took out the ones that definitely won’t be on the test.”

Steph straightened back up, grimacing as she placed her pencil case on the table. “Ah. So I guess I really can’t chicken out of this, if you went to all that trouble.”

Pete waved her off. “It wasn’t all that trouble,” he said. “But, I mean, you still probably shouldn’t chicken out. You’ll do the test, it’ll go well, and then you’ll feel better about the real test! Practicing was a really good idea.”

Steph looked away, swallowing a smile. “Yeah, sure.” That was another thing—she got, like, really flustered whenever he complimented her. Even if it was just a little thing, like telling her she did a good job on a practice question, she would try to brush it off, then not-so-subtly bring up another thing to be proud of. It made him feel things, and sure, maybe he was a little more liberal with his praise than he would be with Ruth and Richie. But only because Steph needed it! He might have been the first person to notice she was smart in a long, long time.

“I’m serious!” Pete protested. “Look—is there anything you want to go over before you start, or do you wanna save it for after?”

“After,” Steph decided. “That way I’ll know what I actually don’t know, instead of just what I think I don’t know.”

“Good call.” Pete pulled the practice test out of his folder and passed it to her. “I’ll put a timer on for an hour, then we can check it over together.”

Steph took the test, giving him a wry smile in return. “Alright. Wish me luck.”

“You won’t need it,” Pete said. “But—good luck.”

Steph rolled her eyes, ducked her head, and got to work. 

Ostensibly, Pete was supposed to be working on his own homework while Steph did her practice test. Ostensibly. In reality, he was terribly distracted, looking up from his book more frequently than he was actually reading it. He’d half expected that hanging out with Steph more frequently would make his crush less intense—reframe her in his mind from some untouchable platonic ideal to a normal person that he maybe had a chance of being friends with. And it had gotten easier, a little—the nerves had mostly faded, his stomach only fluttering when she touched him or smiled at him or waved at him from across the library floor, breaking into a jog just to get to him faster. 

Okay, so maybe the crush hadn’t actually gotten better. So sue him. It also didn’t help that Steph, the normal person, was just as special as the Steph in his head. Even more so, actually. She was so… worth getting to know. 

Across the table, Steph raised her pencil to her wine-red mouth, her brow furrowing in frustration. The metal band poked just a little between her lips, pulling at the lower one as she thought (G-d, Pete never thought he’d be jealous of a fucking pencil). Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “Pete,” she said.

“Yes,” he responded.

“So, I know I’m not supposed to ask questions, but—“ She broke off, grimacing. 

Pete smiled, hopefully encouragingly. “Go ahead.”

Steph sighed. “I can’t fucking get question, uh, fourteen,” she said. 

She turned the paper around. Pete leaned over to read it. “Oh, yeah, that one’s super confusing,” he said. “I don’t know why she phrased it like that, she could have just—“

“Uh—it’s not the phrasing,” Steph said. “I understand the question just fine. It’s the answers that are giving me trouble. I narrowed it down to A and C, ‘cause obviously you can’t have a carrier with only one X chromosome, but, y’know, it’s just a fifty-fifty shot from there.”

Pete shrugged. “Hey, better than twenty five percent.”

Steph raised her eyebrows. “So, what, I should just guess?”

“If you really don’t know, yeah,” Pete said. “I mean, if you have the time you could draw up a chart, but if you don’t, narrowing it down and guessing is the best option.”

“Wow,” Steph drawled. “Are you encouraging me to slack off, Spankoffski?”

“It’s not slacking off, it’s strategic! They teach you to do that shit for the SAT!”

“Damn, for real?” Steph nodded, impressed at herself. “And to think I was doing that shit just because I didn’t know the answer. I guess I actually am a genius.”

Even Pete could tell she was being sarcastic, the half-curl of her lip and the roll of her eyes inviting him to tell her no, she obviously wasn’t. Instead, he leaned across the table and held up his hand for a high five. “Hell yeah, you are!” he said. 

Steph’s expression wavered for a second before she reached out and tapped his hand weakly. “Yeah, sure,” she said. She didn’t believe him yet, but she would. Once she got that test back, she would. “How much time do I have left?”

Pete checked his phone. “A bit more than twenty minutes.”

“Shit.” Steph buried her face in her test again, her hair falling over her face, and Pete went back to pretending to read.

A while later, the timer went off. Pete fumbled to turn it off. “Well, I finished all the problems,” Steph said. “No time to check them over, though.”

Pete shrugged. “Eh. The real test will be longer anyway. And you can always skip hard questions and come back to them at the end. Want me to look at it now?”

Steph handed her test over. “What, like they’ll get easier if you wait?”

“I mean, sometimes, yeah. Sometimes Miss Mulberry fucks up and puts the answer to an earlier question, or, like, a clue of how to solve it in another one.” Pete flipped through the packet, skimming through. He didn’t need to check the answer sheet—the correct and incorrect ones stood out against each other as clearly as black against white.  “But, yeah. I’ll get this back to you in a second.”

“Sweet.” 

Steph turned to look out the window, and Pete got to work. Grabbing a blue pen (he’d heard red pen seemed unnecessarily harsh), he marked down the number of points each answer had earned. He… there were a lot of wrong answers to mark down. He probably should have predicted that Steph wouldn’t do great—after all, it wasn’t even two weeks ago that she was trying to copy his test—but still, she was only scraping seventy percent, and that was on the easier questions. Pete chewed his lip. It was a good thing he’d had so much practice keeping a straight face lately. Hopefully he wouldn’t fuck it up by speaking.

Across from him, Steph fidgeted, clearly tired of waiting. “So? What did I get?”

Pete finished adding up the points, then slid the test across the table to Steph. “Forty four out of fifty nine. But most of the points you lost weren’t from a wrong answer, just incomplete—“

“Holy shit?”  Steph picked up the practice test gingerly, staring at it like it was a precious lost relic. “I thought I was gonna totally fail this thing!”

“Wh—yeah!” Pete blinked rapidly, quickly rebooting his mindset. Of course. A forty four out of fifty nine would be devastating for him, but—well, he didn’t know what Steph’s test scores were before they started studying together, not exactly. But if her jokes about “going from As to Ds in middle school” were at all accurate, this was a massive improvement. Like, an entire letter jump improvement. “Steph, this is awesome!” Pete said, pride bubbling up in his chest until he couldn’t help but beam at her. He hid his hands under the table, dancing his fingers up and down his legs. “I’m so proud of you.”

For once, Steph didn’t try to brush off his compliment. She beamed, radiant and unashamed, her cheeks flushing with joy. “Wait, wait,” she said. “Let me have your phone, I want to calculate my grade.”

Pete unlocked his phone and handed it over. Steph snatched it, tapping out the numbers with shaking hands. “Seventy four… almost seventy five percent…” she muttered giddily, “Which is… a C! That’s what I need to get my phone back!” She looked back up at Pete with dark, shining eyes and grabbed his still-outstretched hand. “Holy shit. Thank you so much, seriously.”

Her grip was surprisingly strong, but not painful. Her hand was a little cold, and very soft, except for the skin around her fingers where she’d bitten her nails. She was holding his hand, and it felt like someone was pressing a live wire to the back of Pete’s neck, filling his entire body with an intense energy that couldn’t be released. “Uh—yeah, um, no—absolutely no problem,” Pete stammered. 

“Your hand’s really fuckin’ soft, dude, you know that?” Steph brushed her thumb over his knuckles, and the last of Pete’s higher brain functions went off on vacation. She was holding his hand, and she was—stroking? Caressing it? “Do you, like, have a skincare routine or something? My skin gets super fucked up in the winter.”

“Uh—“ It took Pete a solid two seconds to process Steph’s question, and another to remember he had to answer it. “I mean—I don’t think so? I mostly just don’t do a lot of—a lot of physical, like, manual labor, or go outside that much.” 

“Ah, I see. These are the soft, supple hands of a scholar,” Steph said loftily. 

“I mean, your skin is—your hands are pretty soft, too.” 

Pete realized a moment later what a stalkerish thing to say that was. He probably shouldn’t be staring at their clasped hands, right? That was weird. That was a weird thing to do. He looked up. Steph’s eyes flicked up at the same time, her sweet smile dulling as she made eye contact. He must look pretty stupid right now. “Oh—you want your phone back. Obviously.” She huffed a laugh, then dropped his hand (no!) and put his phone back in his palm. “I promise I didn’t text your mom something stupid.”

“Ah, thanks,” Pete said. “For the phone and for—uh—never mind.”

“Right—uh, so, now that you’ve graded my test, maybe we can go over the stuff I got wrong a bit? I don’t wanna risk losing too many points on Friday,” Steph said. She cocked her head expectantly, eyes sparkling with an eagerness to learn that had only grown since their first session. Pete’s heart could melt.

“Oh—yeah, good idea,” he said. He flipped open the test packet, putting it between them. Steph’s hand joined his on the paper. It would be so nice to hold it again, but Steph probably needed her hand free to work. “So, what do you want to start with?”

Chapter Text

“Alright, class! Pencils down!” 

Steph, not wanting to be accused of cheating (again), dropped her pencil. It rolled off her desk and onto the floor with a clatter. Dammit. “Everyone pass your tests to the front of the room, and then you can leave ten minutes early,” Miss Mulberry said. 

A few students whooped, but Steph couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm. She was much too preoccupied with her own nerves. She passed her test packet to the student in front of her, picked up her pencil and bag, and started out. Pete was still in his seat at the front of the room, head down, messing with his backpack. She didn’t acknowledge him, like he’d asked. Unlike her practice test, she hadn’t been allowed to sit near him—which, like, fair, she had tried to cheat off of him, but she was still mad about it—and it turned out, it was a lot harder to focus without him there for moral support. At least she had managed to write something for all of the questions, but she hadn’t had enough time to check over all her answers, and she’d forgotten some of Pete’s tips. Maybe the fact that she was worrying over not being able to check her answers meant she was doing way better on this test than she’d ever done before—but good enough for a C? G-d, she hoped so. She hoped this would be her last weekend stuck at home with nothing to do besides raid the pantry and beg Miss Tessburger to drive her somewhere, anywhere, even just to the park, as long as it wasn’t this stupid empty house. She hoped she wouldn’t let Pete down too badly.

Steph walked purposefully down the mostly-empty hallways, coming to a halt outside of Brenda and Stacy’s English class—but of course they weren’t out yet. They didn’t get out of class early, because they didn’t have a huge end-of-unit test. She fiddled with the straps of her backpack, conscious of every breath, every heartbeat. Her stomach felt sour. Had she guessed right on that color blindness question? Maybe she should have checked that one over instead of her essay question again. And what if she’d misread the instructions? G-d, why did nobody tell her caring about your grades was, like, stressful?

Finally, though, the bell rang. Steph flattened herself against the wall as students poured into the hall, scanning the stream for her friends. It was a good thing Brenda was so tall—she caught sight of her as soon as she stepped out. Steph grabbed her arm and pulled her over to the side. Stacy followed her, pulled behind like a magnet.

“Why are we—oh hey Steph!” she said, chipper as ever. 

“Hey,” Steph said. Her voice sounded totally sapped of energy—which she supposed she was. She hadn’t worked her brain this hard in… ever. 

Brenda pulled Steph into a hug. Steph buried her face in her shoulder as best she could before she made herself pull away, keeping her hands on Brenda’s upper arms. “So?” Brenda prompted. “How’d it go?”

“I have no fucking clue,” Steph said miserably. The hall cleared, and the three of them started towards their lockers. “I dunno—like, obviously, I was way more prepared this time. I should have been more confident, but I wasn’t, and now I actually want to do well, so I was also stressed! Ugh. Once you know shit, all the shit you don’t know stands out way more.”

Brenda patted her back. Stacy hummed sympathetically. “I mean, you got a C on that practice test, right? So you probably did fine with this one,” Stacy said.

“Yeah, but what if it was a fluke? I mean, what if—what if my tutor made it easier to make me feel better?”

“I mean, why would they do that, though,” Brenda said. “‘Cause it wouldn’t make you feel better when you failed the real one.” 

Steph’s stomach churned, images of her dad’s furious face flashing in her mind. “Oh, G-d. Don’t even say that.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Brenda said. They arrived at their lockers. Steph didn’t have anything to grab, but she stood with her friends as they retrieved their backpacks, bouncing anxiously on her heels.

Brenda looked at her from the sides of her eyes. “So,” she said, faux-casually. “Do you want some gossip to keep your mind off it?”

“Please,” Steph said immediately. She needed to think about anything other than that test. Thank G-d Brenda knew exactly what to do.

“Well.” Brenda swung her backpack onto her shoulder, turning to face Steph. She pursed her lips, stifling a smile—clearly she’d been wanting to tell her all day. “You’ll never fuckin’ guess what I saw before fifth period.”

“I mean, no, I probably won’t,” Steph said. They walked towards the parking lot, younger students clearing a path for the seniors. 

“Okay, so, Stace and I were by the vending machines, getting a couple of drinks, as you do. And you know the vending machines are by Grace Chasity’s locker.”

“Yeah?”

“So, we see her getting her books out, and of fucking course Max Jägerman is there. Like he was fuckin’ waiting around the corner or something waiting for her, I dunno. Like a creep. But he asks to carry her books. And she says yes.”

Steph was so surprised, she almost stopped walking in the middle of the hall. “Wait, for real?”

Brenda nodded solemnly. “For real.”

Steph narrowed her eyes. “Okay, but like, what was her tone? Did she do it willingly, or did it seem kinda…?”

“She seemed pretty willing to me,” Stacy butted in. “We followed her. He just carried her books to class and left. She thanked him after.”

“ And she was smiling,” Brenda added.

“Huh,” Steph said. “What do you think changed?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she’s been rejecting him since prom last year. Why would she just take him up on it now?”

“I dunno,” Brenda shrugged. “Maybe she just got tired of rejecting him and just gave in.”

“Nuh uh. No way. Grace doesn’t just give in, or she might be normal by now,” Steph said. “So either Max must have gotten less annoying—to her, I mean—or she changed her mind, for some reason.”

“Maybe she’s gonna have sex with him so she can force him to marry her,” Stacy suggested.

Brenda snorted. “G-d. Imagine wanting to marry Max Jägerman.”

They pushed open the school doors and walked out into the parking lot. Steph tilted her head up, breathing in the chilly autumn air. Warm sunlight cut through the sky, washing the artificial lights of Hatchetfield High off her skin, and she felt a bit of the tension leave her body. After all, worrying about her grade all weekend wouldn’t raise it. She might as well relax while she waited. 

Steph spotted her dad’s sleek black car lingering in the pickup line. Never a moment of rest with these people. “Sorry, guys,” she said, turning to her friends. “I gotta go home—“

“Ohmygawd. Look look look—“ Stacy suddenly grabbed Steph’s arm, pulling her and Brenda behind a row of parked cars. The black car honked loudly, only serving to draw attention away from the three girls.

Steph instinctively ducked down, hiding herself from whatever was on the other side of the lot. “What—“ 

Stacy pointed. Steph followed her direction, peering between cars until she saw what she was pointing at. Grace and Max were out standing by Max’s truck, Max leaning with one hand on the hood as he spoke and Grace standing a chaste five or six feet away, listening. She didn’t seem uncomfortable. There were plenty of opportunities to run, and she wasn’t taking them. She even offered Max a brief, tight-lipped smile as he said something that was obviously supposed to be a joke. 

Brenda leaned in, whispering in her ear. “Can you tell what they’re saying?”

“No, they’re too far away.” Steph turned her attention back to the scene. Grace was talking now, Max listening with rapt attention—or at least pretending to. He kept nodding and furrowing his brow like Steph did when she didn’t understand what was going on in class. Finally, though, Grace finished speaking. Max gave her a nod and a thumbs up, calling something out after her as she turned and walked calmly away. As she vanished into the crowd of departing students, Max pumped his fist, dancing in place a little.

Stacy turned to her friends, hands flapping. “Did you see that? She—well, I dunno what she wants, but she was being nice to Max!”

“I dunno. That smile looked pretty strained.” Steph scanned the crowd for a sign of Grace, or for her dad’s comically pastel pink car. She found neither. “She can’t actually like him, right? She’s gotta be planning something. I just hope she’s not making a mistake.”

Brenda scoffed. “Girl, why do you care? You hate Grace’s guts.”

“Yeah, but like, I don’t want her to get hurt.”

“Oh, please. As if Grace wouldn’t chop someone to pieces for trying to hold her hand.”

Steph nodded. She wouldn’t put it past her—despite being a Christian, Grace wasn’t the type to turn the other cheek. And Max did seem to treat her with a respect he didn’t even give the other jocks… “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said. “If anything, I should feel sorry for Max.”

The car honked again, several times in a row, before laying on for a good few seconds. Steph winced. “Sorry guys, I really gotta go.” 

Stacy pouted. “Okay, well, as soon as you get your phone back you have to tell us, okay?”

“Yeah, I was going to!” Steph straightened up, walking slowly towards the car—just enough to calm Miss Tessburger’s tits and get her to stop honking so damn much. “Don’t do anything fun this weekend without me, okay? If everything goes right, I’ll get it back Monday afternoon.”

Brenda smiled. “Fingers crossed!”

Stacy nodded her head solemnly. “After all that studying you did, you deserve a good grade.”

Steph smiled bashfully. “Aw, thanks St—“ 

The car honked again. Steph squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh my G-d, I’m fucking coming!”

Chapter Text

When Steph walked into the girls’ bathroom that morning, she expected to see Brenda and Stacy. They always met up to do their makeup here, Monday to Friday. Yeah, the lighting wasn’t the best, but Brenda always came to school early because her parents were busy, the only buses from Stacy’s apartment were super early or super late, and Steph just wanted to spend as little time as possible in her house. And after a torturous weekend stuck with only Miss Tessburger and her dad for company, seeing her friends again was like finding water in the desert.

What she didn’t expect to see was Kyle. He was sitting on the gross tile floor with his back to the wall, slouched a little to avoid hitting his head on the sink. Brenda was sitting across from him, blocking the narrow path between the sinks and the stalls. She held his hand in both of hers, palm up, looking intently at his wrist. Stacy was at one of the mirrors, putting on lip gloss like this was a completely normal situation.

Brenda looked up as the door swung closed. “Hey Steph,” she greeted casually.

“Hi, Steph!” Kyle said, flashing her a happy-go-lucky smile and a thumbs up with the hand Brenda wasn’t holding. He flicked his eyes over to her, but he didn’t turn his head—couldn’t bear to turn away from Brenda, she supposed.

“Hey,” Steph said. Her eyes swept the room, as if she might find some kind of explanation for the scene before her. She did not. “Why’s Kyle in the girls’ bathroom?”

“Don’t worry, he has permission,” Brenda said.

“From who?”

“Me, bitch. Can I borrow your concealer?”

Steph pulled her makeup bag out of her backpack, digging around for the product. Her bag being just as disorganized as her backpack, and one of her hands being in a big, clunky cast, it took her a good ten seconds. Eventually, though, she found her bottle of concealer and handed it to Brenda. She swatched it on Kyle’s wrist, then nodded sagely. “Close enough!” 

“Okay, well—“ Steph stepped over their clasped hands and stood next to Stacy, peering at her face in the mirror. She’d tried to go to sleep at a decent time last night, but there were still shadows under her eyes from staying up until three in the morning on Saturday. “I’m gonna do my makeup, so, like, I’m gonna need that back eventually.” She turned to Stacy. “Hi. Hello.”

“Good morning, Steph,” Stacy said distractedly, not even looking away from her own reflection.

Steph patted a layer of foundation onto her face, leaning towards the high windows to try to see how she looked in natural light. “So, like, did Kyle decide to become a beauty guru or some—“

Steph glanced over at the two of them and stopped. She hadn’t seen it when she’d walked in, because Kyle hadn’t been facing towards her—but there was a huge welt on his cheek, just under his eye, red-pink against his tannish skin. Kyle smiled apologetically, his grin a little hampered by the swelling. “Got brained pretty hard by a football during weekend practice,” he said. “It looks a lot worse than it is, I promise.”

“Kyle, over here,” Brenda said, lightly patting his uninjured cheek. Kyle immediately turned back to her. She didn’t take her hand off, letting him lean into her palm as she started to carefully dab Steph’s concealer over his bruise. His face scrunched up a bit. “You’ll tell me if it hurts, right?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Kyle said, his face relaxing into a sappy smile. “Just a little cold ’n’ weird.”

Steph caught Stacy’s gaze in the mirror and raised her eyebrows. Stacy raised her eyebrows right back. 

A few moments later, Brenda tapped Steph’s leg. “Here you go,” she said, passing her concealer back. 

“Thanks,” said Steph.

Kyle stood up, inspecting himself in the mirror. He prodded carefully at the patch of concealer. “Thanks for all the help, Brenda,” he said bashfully. He literally rubbed the back of his neck like a cartoon character, or something. “I don’t know a ton about makeup and stuff, but you’re, like, so good at it. Can’t see it at all!”

“Wait, don’t mess with it!” Brenda said, quickly digging in her own bag. “I gotta put the setting powder on—“ She pulled out the brush, carefully dusting it over Kyle’s cheek. She was standing so close their bodies were almost fully pressed together—probably not the most effective position for applying makeup, but definitely good for flirting. G-d, they were so stupidly in love with each other. 

“Okay, there you go,” Brenda said, stepping back to survey her handiwork with her hands on Kyle’s shoulders. 

“Thanks,” Kyle said again. Steph’s concealer was probably a little darker than his skin, but his face was so red you would never be able to tell. 

Brenda drummed her fingers on his biceps, fluttering her eyelashes and tilting her head to the side. “So, uh, real quick, before you go, could I ask you a question?”

A hopeful little smile spread across Kyle’s face. “Sure. Uh, shoot.”

Brenda’s body language didn’t change much—if you didn’t know her, you might not have noticed it. But Steph caught the steely flash in her eyes, the way she commanded Kyle to keep looking at her. Even though she wasn’t on the receiving end this time, it was still a little scary. “Why’re you still friends with him?”

“Uh—“ Kyle froze. “Y’know, I really shouldn’t be in here, girl’s bathroom and all—” he stammered out. “I should better leave before I—“

The door swung open dramatically. “Get in trouble?” Grace finished.

Beside her, Stacy scowled at a second change to her morning routine. Kyle almost looked relieved, until he recognized who had just walked in. “Oh, no. Not you.”

“Grace, can we not do this?” Brenda sighed. “There’s actually—this is serious!”

“A serious violation of the rules, maybe,” Grace huffed. She pulled a pack of pink detention slips out of her pocket, ripping one off and slapping it into Kyle’s hand. Then, as a second thought, she gave one to Brenda too.

Steph bristled, words spilling out before she could think about them. “Hey!" she snapped. "What, is it against the rules for a girl to be in the girls’ bathroom?”

Grace turned her cold glare on Steph. “I’m not giving her detention for being in the bathroom, I’m giving her detention for participating in hanky-panky! You should feel lucky I’m not giving you detention too.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules,” Stacy said sharply. “You’re not supposed to give people detention if they didn’t do anything wrong. They could make you not a hall monitor for that.”

“Didn’t do anything wrong?” Grace scoffed. “You’re putting all of your souls in danger by carelessly allowing a man to trespass in a place where girls should be safe from sexual temptation.”

Steph suddenly had to lean on the sink, clapping a hand over her mouth to avoid laughing too hard. “What, did you think Kyle was gonna do all of us in the five minutes before class started?” Brenda said. She put her hand back on Kyle’s shoulder. “I’unno, seems like a tall order. You think you could do it?”

“Uh—“ Kyle’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he finally came up with a response. A tricksy grin spread across his face. “I mean, uh, Grace, how do you know we didn’t already do that? We could’ve been here all morning, for all you know.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re too late, and we’re all going to hell!” Steph said.

Grace made a sound like a boiling tea kettle, her face going just as hot. “Get out! Now!”

“I would, but you’re standing in front of the door!” Kyle yelled. 

Grace stomped further into the bathroom, keeping her suspicious gaze on Kyle the whole time. He jostled her with his shoulder as he walked by, opening the door. “Thanks, Brenda.”

“You’re—“ 

“Do not speak to him!” Grace demanded. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to use the sink for its intended purpose, not as a site of vanity.”

Brenda caught Steph’s eye and made a face that was somehow exasperated, amused, and deeply baffled at the same time. “Okay, well, I’m going to class. And I’m throwing this stupid slip out, because I didn’t break the rules.” She spun on her heel and walked out. Stacy practically ran after her. Leaving Steph alone in the bathroom with Grace? Oh hell no. She could finish doing her makeup during passing period. Maybe she’d even get to class early today.

Chapter Text

Miss Mulberry handed their tests back at the end of class on Monday. Pete could’ve sworn he saw her grading the last few while they were watching a video, but he appreciated that she got their grades to them as quickly as possible. Not that he was worried about his grades—he flipped open his packet to see a big red A on the last page, just like he expected—but he figured Steph would be nervous about it. He hoped—he was sure she was just as glad with her grade as he was. 

She had to be. They’d worked so hard.

Steph was still at her desk when Pete got up from his seat, but he didn’t dare look for long enough to gauge her reaction. Not when someone might realize that was what he was doing. Even if Max wasn’t in this class, there were plenty of people who were—plenty of people who might notice, and think it was worth mentioning to him that some nerd was staring at the mayor’s daughter for longer than he had the right to, and—and needed to be put in his place. So he’d just watch for Ruth and Richie’s reactions instead, which he was going to do anyway.

Richie smirked at his test before sliding it into his folder and walking to where Pete was waiting at the door. “So how’d you do?”

“Same as you, by the looks of it,” Pete said. “Except, y’know, I actually studied.”

“Oh, please. You could have aced this test in your sleep. You only studied because—“ One of the football players shouldered past them on the way out the door, and Richie, thankfully, remembered caution existed, cutting himself off before he could incriminate Pete.

Ruth popped up next to them. “Because you’re such a fuckin’ nerd,” she finished.

“We’re all fucking nerds, Ruth,” Richie pointed out.

Ruth’s gaze got distant for a second. “Maybe you are. I wish I was fuckin’.”

“Well, anyway,” Pete said awkwardly. “How’d you do, Ruth?”

“Ugh, terribly. I barely scraped an A minus.”

The three of them watched the steady flow of students leaving the classroom. Pete had figured almost enough of them were gone that it was safe to go when a hand slammed into the wall right next to him. “Hey, nerds!” 

Pete flinched hard, instinctually curling in on himself, blocking the attacker to give Ruth and Richie a chance to slip out the door. Then his brain caught up to his ears. The voice and the hand belonged, not to one of the many people who wanted to harm him, but to someone he knew. Steph. She looked almost as startled as he did, a flicker of something like embarrassment crossing her face before it settled back into careful neutrality. She removed her arm from the wall, straightening up and hiding it behind her back with her broken hand. “Uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you there.”

“It’s all good,” Pete said weakly. Try telling his heart that, though. Nobody had told it that he didn’t need to be absolutely booking it right now. “Is this… what’s going on?”

“I need to talk to you,” Steph said with a voice as blank as her face. She shot a pointed look at Richie and Ruth before glancing back to him. “Alone.” 

Pete turned to his friends. Ruth was practically vibrating in place, her eyes wide and her mouth open. Richie just looked mildly impressed. “Uh,” he said. “Guys, is that alr—“

“Of course it’s alright!” Ruth yelled. She grabbed Richie’s hand in a vice grip and practically dragged him out the door. As they left, she gave Pete a thumbs up with her free hand and mouthed, good luck!

Stop that, Pete mouthed back. 

The door closed with a click, leaving Steph and Pete alone in the empty biology classroom. “So, uh,” Pete said, turning back to Steph. “What did you want to—“

He paused as he realized that once again, Steph’s entire demeanor had changed in an instant. Her casual posture was replaced by a kind of shaky tension Pete recognized from when he was trying not to happy stim. Her expression of stony nonchalance was now a sweet, nervous little smile, her eyes bright and intent. “Check it out,” she said, her voice thick with restrained excitement, and thrust her test packet into his chest.

“Wait, you passed the test?” Pete grabbed the crumpled papers, quickly leafing through them. He’d been worried when Steph had approached with such a grave demeanor, and not just because he’d thought she was someone else coming to kick his ass. Because if she’d passed, wouldn’t she have been, y’know, happy about it? But this was much more like what he’d been expecting.

“With flying colors,” Steph said, tossing her hair and looking away, faux-modest. She wiggled her shoulders in anticipation as Pete reached the last page.

“A… C plus? Steph, that’s amazing!” Steph hopped with excitement as he handed her the test back—literally jumping for joy, G-d that was cute. “Seriously, a whole third of a grade over your goal? I’m so proud of you.”

Pete felt a little dumb as the praise slipped out—for some reason, it felt different to say it when they were left behind in an empty classroom together than in the open space of the public library—but Steph still smiled and looked away, the same as she always did. “Yeah, well, I couldn’t have done it without you,” she said. “All your help these past two weeks—I mean, if you think about it, this is really your C plus.”

She extended the paper back to him, smirking playfully. Pete gently pushed it away. “Aw, Steph,” he said. “You can keep it. It’d really bring down my GPA.” He realized a second too late how rude that sounded—pointing out that the grade she was so proud of was low to him? What was he thinking? “Besides, I barely even did anything,” he hastily corrected. “You’re really smart—I think all you needed was a push to get started.”

Steph’s smile softened a little before dropping entirely. “Yeah, well,” she said, the energy draining from her voice. Shit, shit, shit, what had he said wrong? Steph loved it when he told her she was smart, what was different now? “I mean, I still really appreciate your help. And I know I only asked because I needed a good grade to get my phone back, but, uh. Do you think we could maybe… keep studying together?” She shrugged, like it didn’t matter, but her voice kept pitching up higher and higher, and she wouldn’t look at him. Pete cocked his head, trying and failing to glean anything from her expression besides, weirdly, nervousness. Apparently, he hesitated too long. “If it’s not too much trouble, I mean!” Steph hastily added. “You’ve probably got better things to do. Watching Doctor Who or doing fuckin’ experiments or whatever nerds do. It’s just that studying alone is super boring, and I don’t want my dad to take away my phone again, and—“

“No no no, I’ll do it!” Pete said hastily. His hands flicked uncontrollably, like he was trying to brush away Steph’s fears. 

“Are you sure?” Steph said, so quickly she tripped over her own words a bit. “Because you don’t have to, I mean, you said it yourself, I barely needed your help—“

“No, no, I want to!” Pete said. “I want to. I also like studying with you—’cause we’re friends, remember? I know you said I’m not supposed to tell everyone in school about it, but—“

Steph cut off Pete’s lame attempt at a joke as she practically threw herself at him. She squeezed his waist chokingly tight, tucking her head into his shoulder, and his heart started pounding again—but this time, not from fear. His body locked up like a malfunctioning machine, brain working overtime and yet barely able to process the situation. Steph was touching him, her whole body warm and pressed up against his, her generous curves squished up against his torso. Her hair smelled like herbal tea and a forest after a rainstorm. Not that he was sniffing her hair on purpose or anything! It was just—just kind of hard not to smell it a little in this position! 

It felt good. Dangerously good. So good, in fact, that he needed to put a stop to it as quickly as humanly possible.

Pete stepped back, wiggling his shoulders a little to extricate himself from Steph’s grip. He could still feel Steph’s breath on his neck, and looking wasn’t much better than feeling, so he imagined what Ted would say in this situation—come on, little bro! She already wants to spend time with you, so take advantage! Invite her to your place, you can’t fuck her in the library! The mental image of Ted encouraging him to be a sleazeball killed any hint of the heat sparking in his gut. Crisis averted—or, he thought so, until he saw Steph’s face fall a bit. “Sorry, just got—“ she coughed. “Anyway. I can’t come study today, I already told—I gotta get home to show my dad my grade. Get my phone back and stuff. But I’ll see you Wednesday?”

“Yeah, absolutely. Wednesday,” Pete repeated dumbly. “Sorry, I just—really sudden touch like that, it’s not—”

The school bell rang. “Oh, shit,” Steph sighed. “I’m gonna be late for class again—but thank you!” and she darted out of the classroom, patting his upper arm as she went past him. Pete stood there a moment longer, shocked. Then he remembered he, too, had a class to get to. At least the hallways would be relatively empty.

Pete practically floated through third period. He didn’t think he heard two words the teacher said, which would definitely come back to bite him later, but he could hardly care. It wasn’t a class he shared with Steph anyway (and thank G-d for that, or he really wouldn’t have been able to keep it together), so he could just revise it later on his own. For now, he just wanted to live in the moment when Steph asked him if they could spend more time together. It was only when he had to focus on the challenge of retrieving his lunch from his locker without being shoved in it that he drifted out of his trance and back into the real world. But for one short hour, it was like he went to a school where people—not just his best friends, but people in general—liked him. 

Pete found Ruth and Richie in the library at lunch, setting his bag on the study table as he sat beside them. “What the fuck happened in there?” Ruth whisper-yelled immediately. “Did you make out?”

“What, not even a hello?” Pete pretended to busy himself with opening his chocolate milk. It was an unconvincing performance, and he succeeded in his task far too quickly for it to be effective. 

“Hello. Did you make out with Stephanie Lauter?” Ruth demanded.

“No!” Pete said. He gave the room a cursory look around, just to be safe—they weren’t the only people in the library, but he was fairly certain that neither P.J. Johnson nor Mr. Gray the librarian would tell Max he’d talked to Steph, so he continued. “She just wanted to show me her grade—which, by the way, was pret-ty awesome—and then she asked if we could keep studying together, which, obviously yes.” He shrugged, unpacking the individual parts of his sandwich and beginning to put it together. He didn’t let himself look up at his friends’ faces—scanning for signs of them buying the lie of omission would only make it more obvious. “It was just a normal conversation, and I guess she didn’t want anyone listening in on it.”

Richie raised an eyebrow. “Are you kidding me, Peter? She fucking kabedoned you. Do you have any idea what that means?”

“It means when you put your hand on the wall next to someone, right?” he guessed.

“It means she wants to bang you!” Ruth blurted.

“It means that Steph is a secret weeb!” Richie said at the exact same time. The two of them looked at each other. “Well, that too,” he said. “Look, if Steph wanted to talk to you alone just to ask you if you could hang out more, that does imply a closer relationship than study partners. Doesn’t it?”

“I mean, yeah, closer than study partners, but not necessarily romantic,” Pete said, more to himself than to Ruth and Richie. “Steph and I are just friends. Which is really cool, still, but, y’know, nothing more.”

Ruth scoffed. “Wait, since when are you and Steph friends?” 

“What? You were just saying that she clearly wanted to—“ Pete stopped himself, looking around once more. “ Fuck me!” he finished, his voice significantly quieter.

“Yeah? So?”

“Well, if she did—and I’m not saying she does—it’s not gonna be for my looks.”

“Why not? You’re hot. She’s hot. We’re all hot. It’s just that the rest of the school arbitrarily decided being smart isn’t sexy.”

“I still think Steph is a closet weeb,” Richie mused. “Do you think if I got her to start an anime club, people would actually join?”

Chapter Text

Well, that was embarrassing. 

Steph jogged down the mostly-empty hallway, like if she ran fast enough she could leave whatever had compelled her to hug Pete behind. The next period was gym, which was all the way across the building. At this point, there was no way she would get there on time no matter how fast she walked. The only reason she wasn’t ditching it entirely was that it was one of the few classes she shared with Brenda and Stacy, and honestly? A little fresh air might take her mind off how thoroughly she’d made a fool of herself. Diving for a hug like a little kid demanding to be congratulated for correctly identifying that the cow goes moo. 

But even the itch of shame couldn’t eclipse the warm, fluffy feeling of pride fluttering like a candle flame in her chest. A C plus. A whole third of a grade above her goal! It was the highest grade she’d gotten since elementary school, and maybe she should have felt bad that she had let herself slack off for years when she was perfectly capable of getting good grades—but she just couldn’t. Maybe, if she kept improving at this rate, she’d even get an A before she graduated.

Steph didn’t bother changing for gym. She was already going to be in trouble for being late, and it wasn’t like she was going to work up a sweat when she couldn’t even participate. She just walked onto the field, adding herself to the students lined up for whatever the hell they were going to be playing today.

“Good morning, Stephanie,” Ms. Lin, the gym teacher, said when she finally reached her. “I see you finally decided to show up.”

“I had to run across campus,” Steph explained. “I have a doctor’s note, you know. And also, a huge, obvious cast? It’d probably be way easier if I could just go to the library instead of having to check in with you just to sit out.”

“I’m sure you’d love it if no one made sure you were coming to class,” said Ms. Lin. Steph wondered if it was in the job description for gym teachers to be a huge bitches. “Go sit on the bleachers. And remember, I’ve got my eye on you.” 

Steph flipped her off behind her back, then walked to the bleachers, sitting down as half the students spread out on the field, the other half grabbing metal bats—ah, softball. It was a good day to have a broken hand. She untied her flannel from around her waist, shrugging it on before the cold October air could chill her to the bone. Soon, she’d need to put the crop tops away and start wearing—the horror!—actual shirts. At least she didn’t have to worry about dressing sexy on Mondays and Wednesdays anymore. Or, really, she knew she hadn’t needed to in the first place, because for some reason, that wasn’t what Pete was interested in. She’d told him they were friends, and he’d believed her. She might have made up a little story in her head about him being obsessed with her to cover it up, but really, Pete was just a good person who had helped her, expecting nothing in return except her company. Which was good for him, because that was all he was gonna get.

Her dad would be so proud of her.

There was a cold pit forming in Steph’s stomach, so she shut down that line of thought right there. So she and Pete were friends, huh? Then she’d just start acting like one. It had worked when Brenda had decided that she and Stacy were going to be best friends, so there was no reason it wouldn’t work on him too.

With that plan in mind, Steph leaned back against the bleachers, watching Brenda and Stacy intentionally strike out. She waved lazily as they jogged over, patting the bleachers next to her. Before they were in range to see her clearly, she came up with the funniest idea, quickly fashioning her face into a somber expression. “Hey, guys,” she said. “Bad news.”

“Oh no, what happened?” Stacy said, dropping down beside her with a clank. “They stopped making that perfume you like? Fleetwood Mac all died?”

“What?” Steph said, so baffled she almost forgot about her joke. “No! Also, how would I know any of that without a phone?”

Stacy shrugged. “I ‘unno. You might have just gotten a bad feeling?”

“So what’s actually going on,” Brenda said, taking a seat on Stacy’s other side.

Thank you, Brenda. Steph affected her sad face again, looking down. “I got my test back. I, uh. I didn’t get a C.”

“No!” Stacy yelled. 

“What?” Brenda gasped. “But you studied so hard!”

Steph’s stomach twisted—the joke was funny as an idea, but actually hearing her friends upset didn’t make her feel great. “Yeah, I know,” she said, pulling the test out of her backpack. “I worked really hard, but I got a C plus instead.”

Stacy blinked, taking the packet from her and squinting at it. “What,” she said.

“Steph, you asshole!” Brenda lightly punched her shoulder, but she was smiling. “We were, like, seriously worried about you!”

“I know! I felt so bad as soon as I said it!” Steph wailed. She pulled both of them into a hug, unintentionally squishing Stacy between herself and Brenda. “But I will get my phone back, and we will gossip about everything this weekend, okay? I promise.”

“Okay. Just don’t do that again,” Brenda said. “I’m really happy for you, Steph.”

“Oh, I get it now!” Stacy said suddenly. “So, like, you said you didn’t get a C, and we thought that meant you got lower, but actually you got higher!”

“Yeah!” Steph said. “G-d. I’m, like—my heart is fluttering. I feel like I just pounded five espressos, or, like, I could do anything? Like, it wasn’t easy at all but my brain is a hundred percent going ‘that was easy, we can do anything now’.”

“Well, don’t get addicted, ‘cause if you wanna keep getting good grades, you’re gonna have to keep studying,” Stacy said.

Steph waved her off. “That’s not a problem. Pete said we could keep studying together.”

“Who?” Brenda said.

Oh, right. She hadn’t actually told them his name yet. Steph raised an eyebrow, masking her embarrassment at her slip up. “The nerd I’m studying with, Brenda.”

“Okay, yeah, I got that. I just don’t know who that is.”

“Peter? Spankoffski? He’s the guy I cheated off—or tried to cheat off on that pop quiz.”

Brenda’s brow furrowed. “…The fucking bowtie kid?”

“Oh, you’ll be totally okay then,” Stacy said. “He looks super duper smart. You’re gonna ace everything.”

“Thanks, I—“

“Brenda! Stacy!” Ms. Lin was furiously waving them over from the field. “What are you doing, it’s a new inning! Get back here!”

“Oh, shit—“ The two of them leapt up, Stacy shoving Steph’s paper back into her chest. “We’ll see you later! Text when you get your phone back!”

“I will!” Steph called. She couldn’t wait to hang out with them again. Just think—in only a few hours, she’d have her phone, and everything would be back to normal.

Five hours later, sitting in her room waiting for her dad to get home, Steph’s mood was… significantly less light.

The thing was. She had no reason to be nervous. Her dad had said she could have her phone back if she got at least a C, and she got an even higher grade than that. She’d done everything she could to succeed, and she had succeeded. So why was her stomach churning like it was trying to digest itself? She’d been staring at her shitty notes from class and a blank piece of paper for what felt like hours, trying to will herself into rewriting them—but it turned out that was pretty hard to do without Pete or Spotify to distract her and also while she was worrying that her dad might just… go back on his agreement. Which he wouldn’t, obviously, but if he did there wouldn’t be shit she could do about it. She’d asked Miss Tessburger—apparently he’d stuck her phone in the wall safe like a paranoid weirdo. Well, paranoid if you ignored that she had definitely tried to steal it back. Wait, what if he found out she’d tried to steal it back and decided she didn’t deserve a phone anymore?

Downstairs, the garage door growled open. If Steph had been anxious before—oh boy. An icicle shot through her guts, her back and neck tensing on instinct, her brain completely fogging up. Now, when she looked at the page of notes in front of her, she didn’t just not know how to make them neater—she couldn’t even read the words, her eyes passing over pencil squiggles without registering any meaning. 

The downstairs door opened, then slammed shut.

Steph forced herself to breathe. She literally had nothing to be afraid of. She’d gotten the grade, so she’d get her phone back, unless her dad went back on his promise or found out she’d been trying to steal it back. Clearly, the best thing to do was get it over with as quickly as possible. Steph stood up before she could talk herself out of it, grabbing her test packet out of her backpack. She checked herself in the mirror before she went downstairs—yup, still hot, but more importantly she didn’t look totally freaked out. Steph took another deep breath, then let her face completely relax into its usual bitchy expression. Perfect. Her dad would have no idea.

Steph threw open her door and climbed noisily down the stairs, tucking her test behind her back. “Hey, dad!” she called across the cavernous space of the living area. “Guess what?”

Her dad didn’t even look up from his phone. “My, my, someone’s down early. To what do I owe the pleasure?” he drawled.

“That’s not a very good guess.” Steph reached the ground floor, then flounced towards the kitchen. 

“Stephanie, can’t this wait for dinner? I’m very busy.”

“Yeah. He’s very busy,” Miss Tessburger said, casting her a disdainful look as she bustled up the stairs.

“Okay, yeah, I just thought this would—“

“Stephanie, I don’t have time for this,” her dad sighed. “You never come down to greet me; you practically have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of your room just to come down for dinner. Why start now?”

“Fine. It’s whatever,” Steph sighed. Her insides were still twisting themselves up into knots, but her breathing had calmed down. In fact, she was downright sedate. She didn’t care any more than he did. She turned around, careful to keep her test concealed, and stormed away.

“How eloquent,” her dad called after her.

“I said, whatever.”

“That means well-spoken.”

“I know! G-d!” Steph stomped all the way up the stairs. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t get her phone back right this second. It didn’t even matter that she didn’t actually know what eloquent meant. She’d just come back down for dinner, and then she’d tell him.

What had to be less than half an hour later, Miss Tessburger hammered on her door. “Stephanie! Get down here, it’s dinner time already!”

“Fine, I’m coming!” 

Steph flopped out of bed (she’d given up on trying to fix up her notes without Pete, at least for tonight) and slowly went down the stairs. Her dad didn’t deserve her haste anyway. When she got to the dining room, he was already sitting at the head of the table, glowering like he’d been waiting for hours instead of, like, three minutes. There was a grocery store pizza and salad at her designated spot—next to her dad, at a ninety degree angle, facing the window, leaving the rest of the long table completely empty. Miss Tessburger didn’t get to eat with them, even though she was definitely the one who put the pizzas in the oven, which didn’t seem very fair. Not that Steph was just dying to spend more time with her, or any time at all, really.

Steph sat down, placing her test packet on the chair next to her. “So you’re not busy now, I assume?”

“Ha, ha. Very funny, Stephanie.” Her dad took a bite of his own pizza—with a fucking fork, the lunatic. Steph followed his lead, starting in on her own dinner the proper way. For a few wonderful minutes, they were totally silent, until—“well?”

“Well what,” Steph said. 

“You seemed very eager to talk earlier. Aren’t you going to ask about my day?”

Steph sighed heavily. “How was your day, dad,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Her father smiled tightly. “Ah, so she can be taught. See, you can socialize without a screen in your face.” 

Jesus Christ, it was bad enough listening to him talk—did he need to delay even more? “Oh, my G-d, are you going to tell me or not?”

Her father then launched into a tirade about how the barista at the coffee shop he went to refused to sing for him, even though he had tipped her, and really it’s like these local businesses aren’t even trying to stand out and compete against massive chains and how is Hatchetfield going to draw tourists now. Steph mostly tuned him out, eating as fast as she could and only paying attention enough to notice when he stopped talking. 

Eventually, though, he left enough of a gap between inane rambles for Steph to get a word in. “So,” she said. “We got our bio tests back today.”

“Oh, did you?” her dad asked mildly, as if he had forgotten the significance.

“Yup. Read it and weep.” 

Steph passed her test over to her dad, grinning despite the nervous flutter kicking back up in her chest. “Oh dear,” he said. “Well, I hope I won’t have to weep. But let me see that—“

Her dad snatched up the test. He flipped through it rapidly, only pausing once he reached the last page. He squinted. He flipped back through the packet, this time actually reading it. G-d, he must have been reading each individual question and answer, with how long he was taking.

Steph kept her hopeful smile plastered on. “So? Did I do good, or what?”

“Do well,” her father corrected, handing the test back to Steph. “But it does appear that you actually got a C plus. Good job.”

“Wait, really?” Steph literally jumped in her seat, a jolt going through her body as her heart, for some reason, started pounding even harder.

“Yes, really,” he drawled, and maybe there was a hint of fondness in the subdued smile he threw at her. “I must admit, I thought it would take much longer for you to improve your grades. I’m pleased to see that you took it seriously.”

Steph squirmed a little, staring down at her C plus. With her dad’s approval, the excitement of getting a good grade surged back fresh, and she just couldn’t stay still. When he didn’t say anything more for a few moments, she prompted, “so, does that mean I get my phone back, then?”

“Yes, it means you get your phone back,” her dad chuckled. “I did say you had to get at least a C, and… that you did! And without being caught, either!”

Steph blinked, the fluttery excitement in her chest turning sour. “…What?”

Her father stood up, pushing his chair back from the table. “Now, let me get that for you.”

“Hey, wait, wait, wait.” Steph got up too, following close on his heels like a herding dog. “I didn’t—Dad! I didn’t cheat!” Her father didn’t respond—just continued walking, up the stairs and towards his office. Steph huffed behind him. “What, you think I would have cheated just to get a C plus? I would have given myself an A! I studied!”

“Yes, you’re very clever,” her father said distractedly. He went into his office, and Steph tried to muscle inside after him. “Stephanie, you know you’re not allowed in my office.”

“But my phone—“

“I will get it for you,” he said calmly, and slammed the door in her face.

Steph stomped her foot and screamed under her breath like a bratty toddler, staring at the door like it would cause it to buckle and let her in. That fucking bastard. She hated him. She hated his gross little smile that never showed any teeth. She hated his sharp generic suits that he wore even to dinner with his daughter. She hated that he complimented her like he was giving a bad dog a treat. Like he was surprised to have a reason to. 

But the hot, angry pressure behind her eyes reminded her that more than that, she hated herself for thinking for even a second that he would have actually been proud of her shitty grade.

The door clicked, then opened. Her dad held out her phone. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” Steph said. If she could spit poison, she would have. She snatched her phone and stomped back to her room, slamming the door as loudly as she could and throwing herself face down onto her bed. She didn’t let herself lay there for long. As soft and comforting as her quilt was, dangerous things could happen if she rolled up in it and let herself wallow in her own misery. 

Instead, Steph rolled over and clicked her phone on. The screen lit up—correct time, correct lock screen, and when she manually typed her password in it wasn’t changed, thank G-d. She had a few notifs from WhatsApp—probably Stace and Brenda wanting to know if she’d gotten it back already—and a few more from Twitter. She was itching to check it after talking to her dad—itching for a fight she could win—but a different notif caught her eye. A single text on the Messages app.

Her friends didn’t text her on Messages. 

Steph opened the app. The message was from an unknown number—always a great sign—and didn’t have any words. Just a single vertical video with a black thumbnail. Even fucking better. Steph rolled over the possibilities for what it might be in her mind. A wrong number was always possible, but—nope, that was a Michigan area code, so probably not. It couldn’t have been blackmail—she’d been fucking grounded all week. What were they going to do, film her sneaking chips from the cupboard? It could always be some idiot wanting to get on the football team sending her a dick pic as part of some bizarre hazing ritual, except for the fact that it had been sent at five thirty in the morning last Saturday. Too early to be up already, but way too late to have stayed up for it, even on the weekend. It was just a really, really weird message.

Against her better judgment, Steph played the video.

The screen stayed black for a bit, but as she turned up the sound, it became clear it wasn’t just a video of nothing. Steph could hear wind, the crunching of leaves, the hiss of insects—the sounds of the Witchwood forest. A second later, the video cleared as the camera pulled away from the close-up tree bark that had been blocking it, just barely peeking around the tree at… Max Jagerman.

Huh.

“Grace?” he called out, his head whipping around, but he didn’t turn enough to see whoever was filming him. “Grace! Where’d you go? I just wanted to pick flowers with you, not, like, whatever you were thinking!” He paused, back to the camera, speaking so quietly Steph almost couldn’t hear. “Oh, shit, is it not allowed to pick flowers with someone before—“

“Maxxie!” drawled a high, feminine voice. Not Grace’s. 

Max jumped, spinning around so fast he almost fell over. “Hello?” he called, his voice quivering, his shoulders hunched.

“Maxxie,” called another voice.

“Maxxie, we’re coming for you!”

The three voices called Max’s name over and over again. “Who the fuck are you?” he yelled, stooping to grab a damp stick from the forest floor. It broke in his hand, and he dropped it, disgusted.

“We are the ghosts of perverts past!” one of the voices said, and finally, the three speakers stepped out. They were probably around Max’s age, dressed in garish neon camp shirts splattered with equally garish fake blood. Two of them, the girl and one of the boys, had their faces painted gray, their eyes staring lifelessly ahead, additional fake gore dripping from their mouths and clotting their hair. The other boy (at least, Steph assumed it was a boy—his shirt was blue, and they appeared to be color-coded) had his shirt very clearly pulled up over his head, red smeared around the neck hole to give the appearance of a bloody stump. 

From the comfort of Steph’s room, it didn’t look very convincing—more goofy than scary. But to Max, deep in the Witchwood with the sun just starting to go down, it was terrifying. 

“Oh, shit,” he said. “Oh, shit, it’s fucking ghosts! I knew you fuckers were real!” Steph stifled a snort. What, some people came out claiming to be ghosts and he just believed them? Like, she knew Max wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but this was on another level. It was good to know she wasn’t the dumbest bitch at Hatchetfield High.

“We are real,” groaned the boy with the bloody hair. “And we are—uh, fuckers!”

“Our souls are doomed to walk the earth for all eternity because we gave in to our carnal impulses!” the girl said.

“So be careful when you’re walking in the woods with a girl,” said the headless boy. “Get too handsy, and you might just end up like us!”

Their acting was corny as hell, but once again, Max took it completely seriously. “Oh, shit!” he wailed. “I don’t wanna be a ghost!” He was trembling so hard the shitty camera picked it up from ten feet away, his body hunched over as he backed away from the three assailants. His back hit a tree, and Steph saw genuine fear cross his face as he realized he couldn’t flee any further—not without exposing his back. Someone behind the camera snickered cruelly, and it zoomed in on the wet stain growing on his crotch. Steph wasn’t laughing anymore, though. Sure, she hated Max, thought he needed to be taken down a peg—but terrible person or not, she couldn’t look at a person thinking he was going to die and not feel a little bit bad.

The three “ghosts” staggered forward, and Max straightened up. “No…I won’t let you take me!” he yelled, and suddenly hit the headless boy in the chest. Or, what would have been his chest if he hadn’t pulled his shirt up over his head. He staggered backwards, screams muffled as he fell over backwards. 

“Noah! Oh, criminy,” said the person behind the camera—Grace. Of fucking course. The video shook, flashing green and gray and brown before it shut off entirely.

Steph navigated to her group chat with Brenda and Stacy.

You: heyyyyy guess who got her phone back

Brenda 💖 : OMG HI

Stace 💘 : is it u

You: yeah baby im backkkkkkk

You: my bitch dad said I cheated but he gave me my phone anyway 🖤

Brenda 💖 : booooo funkt hat guy

Brenda 💖 : *fuck that guy

You: I mean tbf I def have cheated before

Stace 💘 : 😢 im glad I got ur phone tho

You: but like

You: cmon

You: I wouldn’t cheat just to get a C plus

Brenda 💖 : realllllll

Brenda 💖 : srsly I think he’s just doing it to make u feel like shit

You: ikr

You: also

You: did u guys get like. A weird text w a video of max getting jumped by ghosts in the woods

Stace 💘 : o ya lol

Stace 💘 : grace sent it to everyone in the school

Stace 💘 : sorry we didn’t tell u earlier 

You: its chill

You: but also like 

You: what

You: why

Brenda 💖 : probably thought it’d scare him straight

Brenda 💖 : or at least get him to pick another girl to harass

Brenda 💖 : since nothing else worked

You: its such a lame prank tho

Brenda 💖 : 🤷

You: I hope that dude he punched is ok

Stace 💘 : oh yea he took one for the team

Brenda 💖 : he should get a Purple Heart for helping take down max

Stace 💘 : also since ur here now

Stace 💘 : help me pick my hoco dress

Stace 💘 : blue.img

Stace 💘 : green.img

Brenda 💖 : oh blue 100%

You: yeah blue

You: its so flouncy

Stace 💘 : not green? Not even a little

You: I mean blue is very much your color

Brenda 💖 : ok if ur gonna choose green anyway why are u asking us 

Stace 💘 : I don’t knowwwwwwww 

Stace 💘 : its just like

Stace 💘 : once u said it I was like but wait.....green.......

You: so wear the green then

Brenda 💖 : yea I mean im wearing blue so either well match or well have like a red green blue thing going on

Brenda 💖 : it’ll be good

Stace 💘 : ok then im gonna wear the green dress ❤️❤️❤️

Stace 💘 : thanks guys ❤️❤️❤️

Steph sighed. She felt… better, sure. But even talking to her friends couldn’t entirely stomp out the sick, pathetic feeling in her stomach. She left Brenda and Stacy talking about homecoming dresses and shoes, and opened Twitter.

Chapter Text

Pete wasn’t being careful. That was why it happened. Even though they’d only been studying together for a couple of weeks, he was used to spending Monday and Wednesday afternoons with Steph by now. He’d walked halfway to the bus stop on auto pilot before remembering oh, yeah, right, she couldn’t come today. Sure, he could still study in the public library if he really wanted to, but he’d be wasting the time spent getting over there. Besides, as underfunded as it was, he liked the school library. He liked how labyrinthine it was, easy to find a secluded corner where all the sounds of the outside world were muffled by a few rows of shelves, where you could lose yourself in study for hours. Also, there was a vending machine right outside, and even though you weren’t technically supposed to bring food in after school hours, nobody really cared if he snuck a pack of M&Ms. 

It was easier to get to the library by crossing over the lawn, rather than going back into the school building itself, so Pete set out in that direction. That was his first mistake.

His second mistake was texting Ruth. In his defense, she texted him first.

Ruth: wish me luck bitch

Ruth: im about 2 put the moves on Caitlynn after rehearsal

Pete texted her back as he walked. At the very least, he had the good sense to stick to the walls of the school, not get too close to the fields where the cheerleaders were practicing—and the mascot. Hi, Richie.

You: arent u supposed to be running lights

Ruth: I can multitask :P

Ruth: besides ms mulberry stops every five minutes to give notes anyway

You: ok

You: well good luck

Ruth: thank uuuu

You: so what’s the plan

Ruth: im gonna find her after rehearsal and be like. wow miss mulberry sure does give unspecific feedback huh

Ruth: and then listen to her complain

Ruth: bitches love it when u let them complain

You: that’s true

You: but how is that putting the moves on her

You: seems like a normal convo

Ruth: o ye of little faith

Ruth: im laying a foundation upon which the moves can be built

Ruth: (took ur advice)

You: yayyyyy :)

At some point, Pete had stopped texting while walking and started just texting, and that was his third mistake. There wasn’t a crowd to blend into, so standing still made him stand out. Made it look like he thought he had a right to be here. Made it so that Max, who was hanging around cheer practice, could remember he existed.

Pete didn’t hear the footsteps, but he felt the heavy hand clap on his shoulder like the closing of an iron collar around his neck. Fear shot through him like a railroad spike, penetrating from that too-firm, too-strong touch on his shoulder all the way into his heart, his lungs, his stomach. He couldn’t move. His hand trembled millimeters above the screen of his phone. His knees buckled under the weight. His back hunched automatically—be small, be unimportant, be afraid, and maybe that’ll be enough. Maybe he won’t have to make you so. 

“Hey bitch!” Max spat, and Pete couldn’t see him—didn’t dare turn around to look—but he felt his breath on his ear, creeping down his neck like a horrible venomous insect. “The fuck are you doing creeping around cheer practice? I thought I told you to keep your needle dick far the fuck away from this side of the school.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Pete muttered almost inaudibly. He was trying to breathe, but his lungs weren’t filling up all the way. He gulped down air in massive swallows, but his head wasn’t clearing. He knows. That was all he could think. Heknowsheknowsheknows. He wasn’t careful enough and Max saw him with Steph and now he’s gonna. Oh G-d. Blood rushed in his ears, his body begging him to move, but Pete was paralyzed. Running away only invited the chase.

The grip on his shoulder grew stronger, then suddenly yanked, spinning Pete around to face Max. For a split second, their eyes met—blue so pale it was almost white, cold as ice and shadowy with hate—before the sheer discomfort of being seen forced his gaze to the ground. His eyes fell on his phone, and finally he could move—just enough to turn it off and tuck it into his pocket before Max could go after Ruth, too. It wasn’t her fault he’d been stupid, talking to Steph outside of a fucking glass door and letting her hold him, touch him, not shoving her off and keeping far far away where it was safe. He’d forgotten what happened if—

“Hey,” Max said, with the quietness of someone who didn’t need to be loud to be heard and duly listened to. “I’m fucking talking to you, bitch. Speak.”

“I—I wasn’t,” Pete mumbled out. Max’s grip got stronger, fingers digging into the meat of his shoulder—no no idiot you never tell him he’s wrong—“I mean. I wasn’t trying to creep around, I was just walking, I, I—“ Pete cut himself off with a swallow. 

“Well shit, if he was just walking and not spying on the cheerleaders, maybe we should leave him alone.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jason!” Max roared. He let Pete go, practically throwing him backwards and sending him stumbling for balance as he wheeled around. Oh. Jason and Kyle were there too, standing behind Max like terracotta soldiers preemptively guarding Pete’s tomb. Pete took a quiet step back, rubbing his shoulder. “Did I ask for your fucking input? Idiot?”

Kyle cringed. Jason just looked confused. “I mean, no, but if you were mad about—“

“It doesn’t matter!” Max snapped. Pete took another step, then another, then turned and fully started running. “I don’t care if he—hey! Get back here, bitch!”

Shit. Pete thought he would have at least another few seconds of a head start, but now that he was already sprinting he couldn’t go back. Running away invited the chase. The slapping of shoes against concrete rang in Pete’s ears, discordant against the rush of his heartbeat. But he had gotten very good at running, and he was past the edge of the building before he could even process where he was going. All he needed to know was that Max was behind him. There were voices to his left; he turned right. The sharp turn nearly sent him sprawling, torso bent double over awkwardly long legs. Max was yelling something and it was closer, but how close? And what was he saying? Pete couldn’t understand anything over the rush of his thumping heart. He turned again at random. Maybe it would slow Max down too.

Bad move. Pete loped to a halt, his stomach dropping into the center of the earth as he finally, finally looked at where he was going. There was no passage between buildings, no patch of sky at the end. Just a flat brick wall flanked by rusty green dumpsters. He’d run into the little alley carved between the art and shop classes where teachers dumped the trash that was too big for the bins. 

A dead end. 

“There you are!” Max was doubled over in the exit to the alley, panting, but standing in the way of Pete’s only hope of escape anyway. “ Fast little fucker, aren’t ya? Maybe if you joined the track team and got some pussy, you wouldn’t be such a little bitch. But your chode probably wouldn’t reach all the way inside, would it?” Max’s voice echoed down the short alley, and Pete’s mind blanked. He bolted up the stairs, rattling the handle to—to one of the rooms, he didn’t know. It didn’t turn. He tried the other one anyway. And as he floundered, Max kept sauntering down that alley, baring his teeth like a cat who’d just spotted a mouse in a trap. 

“What’s wrong, pimple-dick?” Max jeered, entirely too close. “Are you fucking scared?” Pete jumped, nearly falling off the crumbling concrete steps as he whirled around. The weight of his backpack nearly toppled him over—better to shrug it off, drop it as subtly as he could next to the steps, so Max wouldn’t get the idea to destroy his books, too. Max stormed up the stairs to meet him, and Pete pressed himself flat up against the metal door. He couldn’t have his back to Max, he just—he just couldn’t. But the landing wasn’t big enough for two people, barely big enough for one person, really, so he ended up having his front to him instead, Max on his tiptoes so that they were eye to eye. His chest and face were barely an inch away from Pete’s. If he so much as brushed him, even by accident—

Pete’s stomach tensed, a queasy, panicky feeling rising in his throat. At least there was no one around to see it.

“I said,” Max growled. Pete could feel the gatorade-soured breath on his face. “Are you scared.”

Pete almost responded. He almost did. But the words stuck in his throat, held back by survival instincts honed from nine years of avoiding Max’s anger. It was like the cops—anything you say can and will be held against you, so better not to say anything at all. Besides, nothing he could say would erase the fact that Max had seen him breaking the cardinal rule of Hatchetfield High and talking to Stephanie Lauter.

“Are you fucking scared!” 

Max’s fist slammed into the door, inches away from Pete’s head. The metal rattled, the sound piercing his skull like a drill and G-d, he just wanted it to be over already. “Yes, yes, I’m scared, I’m scared,” he babbled, eyes squeezed shut, hands instinctively coming up to cover his ears. Max caught them before he could, his grip painfully tight on his wrists.

“Fucking good,” Max growled, and threw him down the stairs. 

Well. Not down the stairs. Off the stairs, sideways onto the gritty, cigarette-butt-studded sidewalk. Pete’s shoulder hit the ground a split second before the rest of him. It didn’t even hurt at first. Just white hot, spreading from his upper arm to his back and fingertips like molten glass. Then the rest of him collided with the floor, the blow softened just enough to let his brain process the pain. Sharp agony coursed through his hip as it hit the hard ground. Gravel and sand scraped his cheek as his head bounced off the concrete. His glasses skittered off some few feet away. A twofold fogginess filled his head; he was dizzy, thick wads of cotton filling his pounding head, and he couldn’t fucking see. He’d fucked up. He’d fucked up big time. He should’ve kept quiet, or—or at least thought before he’d said anything, or better yet, been more careful in the first place. Kept to his territory. Payed more attention to his surroundings. Stayed away from Steph. Pete curled in on himself, tucking his knees up to his chest and lacing his hands over his neck. Awaiting his fate.

He heard Max’s feet hit the ground as he leapt off the stairs, pacing around him like a hyena around a carcass. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said in a voice that dripped with satisfaction. “You thought you could stand up to me, bitch? Step on my turf? I’m own this fucking school! I’m your G-d! You don’t exist if I don’t let you!”

“I know. I know,” Pete panted. His shoulder was starting to throb, crushed under the weight of his body, but he didn’t dare move. 

“Do you? Do you fucking know? Because it seems like you’ve been acting pretty fucking confident! Pretty fucking sure of yourself!” A foot landed on Pete’s shoulder, and he stifled a yelp. It wasn’t even really hard enough to hurt—hey, at least it was his uninjured one, right?—but it was enough to roll him over onto his back. Pete scrambled, trying to protect his vitals, but Max planted his muddy shoe on his chest, cold and crushing. He couldn’t breathe. He could draw breath, sure, but it wasn’t going anywhere. The sky was a mockingly blue strip between towering walls of brick, Max’s blurry form darkening the view like a hateful cloud. 

“I’m sorry,” Pete rasped. “I didn’t mean to—“

“Shut the fuck up, nerd!” Max leaned more of his weight on Pete’s chest, and now he actually couldn’t breathe, his ribs starting to burn under the pressure. He pawed uselessly at Max’s ankle like a sick man, his eyes squeezing closed like if he couldn’t see anything, it didn’t exist. “‘Sorry’ doesn’t mean I have to forgive you! I learned that at an anti-bullying assembly, dumbass!” The shoe ground roughly into his chest. “I don’t care what you saw. I don’t rule this school because I’m strong and hot and not scared of anything! I’m just better than you, period. And no amount of fake-ass ghosts are gonna change that.”

The foot lifted, and somewhere, under layers of fear and humiliation and pure animal pain, Pete’s brain registered what Max had said. Fake-ass ghosts—the video. The one Grace had texted to everybody. That was what he was mad about. He had no idea he was breaking the rules—he had no idea Steph was breaking the rules. Max was just mad and needed a punching bag.

It was so normal, Pete was almost relieved.

Then Max’s foot came down again. 

Addled as he was, Pete’s reflexes were still good enough to dodge. He flinched just in time, and the kick landed on his hip, not his crotch. It still hurt. It still sent sparks of pain flashing white behind his eyes, clear and sharp against his blurry vision. But it could have been a lot worse. It could always be worse. Pete rolled over, curling up into a fetal position and firmly covering his mouth. The last thing he needed right now was for anyone to hear him screaming.

A few minutes later—or maybe a few hours, it was hard to tell when you were trying to be anywhere except in your body—Max got bored of him. Pete heard his heavy footsteps stalking out of the alley, growing quieter and quieter until they were drowned out by the rush of blood in his ears and his own ragged breathing. Oh. Was he crying? Pete waited a few more seconds, just to be safe, then gingerly unwrapped a hand from around his torso and touched his face. No, not yet. He was lying on the ground like a discarded cigarette butt, covered in grit and ash and G-d knows what else, his shoulders, back, and most of all his legs tight with pain from an ass-kicking more literal than most, but he wasn’t crying.

Yay.

Pete sat up, wincing as he put weight on brand-new bruises. Shit, how was he gonna hide that? Even if no one could see the injuries, everyone would notice the awkward way he walked and sat. He’d look like a freak. Not that he didn’t look like a freak the rest of the time, but now he wouldn’t be able to ignore it like he always did. He’d feel his freakishness every time he pressed on it. For a moment, he was tempted to feel it a little longer—sit on the ground and wait for the feelings to disappear. But the longer he waited there, the more opportunity there was for someone to see him broken on the ground, so Pete looked for his glasses instead. The blurry world made his head spin, so he kept his eyes closed as he groped, fingers scrabbling over the weeds and rough concrete. Eventually he found them, filthy and discarded, behind the rusty green dumpster. How fitting. They weren’t broken, though, the filth of the alley easily wiped off on his shirt sleeve. His phone wasn’t either—he’d landed on the side it wasn’t on. Pete would take that as a small victory. It wasn’t like he was going to get a bigger one any time soon.

Pete crawled forward a bit, sitting against the rough brick wall—behind the stairs, where nobody passing by could see him and realize what had happened. He opened up his Messages app.

You: ted

You: it happened again

You: I can’t take the bus can you come get me

He hadn’t expected Ted to respond so quickly—he was at work, after all—but a typing bubble appeared almost instantly.

Bother: omw now

Bother: where should I be

You: around the back pls

You: ill come meet you

Bother: alright

Bother: ill be there in 15 min

Bother: do u need me to call u

You: omg no nothing like that

You: im fine I promise 

You: he just roughed me up a little

You: didn’t even break anything

Bother: fucker

Bother: don’t scare me like that

You: sorry

Bother: im gonna drive slow on purpose now

Bother: asshole

You: can I stay at your apartment if I need tho

Bother: yeah ovbs

With a ride secured, Pete opened up the family groupchat.

You: Ted is it ok if I stay over at urs tonight

Teddy Bear: fine by me if its fine by the parental unit

Momma Bear: you can if you want but I’m pretty sure you’ll want to be home tonight….

You: oh rlly?

Momma Bear: I shan’t say more…….

Papa Bear: momma’s being cryptic again

Papa Bear: she’s making something special that you’ll really like

Momma Bear: JOE

Momma Bear: BETRAYER

Papa Bear: I didn’t tell him what it was!

Pete got a notification from outside the chat.

Bother: moms making something special 👀

You: DONT TEXT AND DRIVE

Bother: how badly do u need to stay

Bother: calm down im at a red light

You: probably not badly?

Despite Pete’s admonishment, Ted texted the family chat a moment later.

Teddy Bear: can I drop in

Momma Bear: ofc sweetie you’re always welcome

Momma Bear: bring your brother with you

Momma Bear: do not let him escape again

You: ???

Momma Bear: just an exaggeration sweetie 🤗

Momma Bear: since you run away to your brother’s so often

Pete closed the messaging app, a tremendous weight settling on his shoulders. He knew there was no actual anger behind his mom’s words, but there was truth to them. He’d been spending more and more time at Ted’s apartment since—since Max had been spending more and more time giving him things to hide from them. Going to Ted’s apartment first would at least give him time to assess and maybe cover some of the damage, but the throbbing in his cheek told him it wouldn’t be easy. And that wasn’t even considering showering, or sitting down, or any friendly pats on his bruised shoulder. But refusing to come home just because he “fell” or “had a rough day” would seem even more suspicious.

G-d. And none of this would be happening if he had just paid attention.

Pete was halfway through his fourth game of Tetris (he’d read somewhere that was supposed to help you stop imagining it over and over again afterwards) when he got the text from Ted.

Bother: im here

Pete tucked his phone into his pocket and shouldered his backpack. He peered out of the alley, checking for any wayward smoke club members that might see him before making the dash from the school buildings, across the lawn to the street where Ted’s car was idling.

He let himself into the passenger seat, throwing his backpack into the back. Ted peeled away almost before Pete was fully inside the car. “Thanks,” he said shortly, clicking his seatbelt into place.

“Yeah, you’d better thank me,” Ted scoffed. “I was chatting with Charlotte when you texted me. I had to run out of there without an explanation, I looked like a total spaz.”

See, that was the great thing about Ted. No matter how pathetic Pete felt, he was never as cringe as his brother. “Why were you checking your phone while you were talking to Charlotte?”

“Not important. Just be grateful I came to get your sorry ass.”

Pete huffed. He thought about telling Ted he should let Charlotte know he left to save his little brother’s ass—it’d make him sound sensitive, or at least like less of a douchebag. But he could already hear his response—hey, don’t tell me what to do! Who’s the Casanova here, you or me?—and so he decided not to. “I already said thank you, asshole.”

“Whatever.” Ted drove a while in silence, eventually taking a sharp turn onto a road choked with identical gray apartment buildings. “I gotta go back to work after this, or my boss will get pissed at me.”

“Mm.” The car stopped in the middle of the road. Pete reached back, pulling his backpack into his lap. “I’ll see you after, then.” He opened the door, letting himself out onto the street, then slammed it behind him. He didn’t bother putting his backpack on, fumbling with the zipper to the front pouch as he walked to the door and pulling out his key ring. Bigger key for the front door—elevator up to floor number four, hope nobody else gets in with him—smaller key for Ted’s apartment, and then he was home. Alone.

Pete went to his—well, technically it was the guest room, but the only guests besides Ted usually slept in his bed, so it might as well have been Pete’s. He only stopped long enough to toss his backpack onto his bed before heading into the bathroom and locking the door. He switched on the flickering fluorescent light and took a good look at himself in the floor-length mirror Ted had leaned sloppily against the wall. Predictably, he looked like a mess. Mud and sand stuck to his sleeve, his pant leg, his face. His hair was no longer neatly pushed back, but falling in his face, parted awkwardly far to one side. He ran his fingers through it, grit falling out onto the bath mat as he did. The one silver lining was that his face didn’t look terrible. His shoulder had taken most of the fall, so the main injury was from resting his face on the rough concrete. Once he brushed away the dirt, all that was left was a patch where the skin was rubbed raw, and a few flecks of blood. If he cleaned that up, washed his hair, and washed his clothes, his parents might not even notice. He went to unfasten his suspenders—

He paused.

He went to make sure the front door was locked. It was, but just to be safe, he slid the chain lock into place, too.

And then he took off his clothes. 

Pete tossed his clothes into the washing machine, checking each article for bloodstains—he’d learned the hard way you needed to rinse those with cold water before you washed them. But they were clear, so he put them in to wash while he showered. 

Then came the hard part. 

Pete stepped back into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. Even though he couldn’t see his reflection yet, the mirror accosted him as soon as he walked in. Pete turned on the shower to warm up, carefully keeping his gaze away from his reflection. He knew what he’d see. But eventually, he would need to take stock of the damage. 

Steeling himself, Pete stepped in front of the mirror and looked himself over. It was too soon for bruises to have formed, but pink-red blotches covered his body. His back and thighs were so densely spotted that he couldn’t make out individual bruises, his shoulder was fucked up, and of course there was the mark where Max had stepped on him, proud and brazen in the center of his chest. But within seconds, Pete found his attention wandering to…other things. A nose bent out of shape from being broken too many times. A too-long neck that was already showing stubble, even though his face stubbornly refused to grow it. Thin, awkwardly muscular arms that didn’t match his unathletic legs and doughy middle. Not to mention the elephant in the room. The elephant shrew in the room, more like. Ha. He looked like the poster boy for incel nerds everywhere—the kind of person it would be a service to society to beat up.

There was a reason these kinds of things happened, after all.

Pete set his glasses on the sink and stepped into the shower. The water was scalding on his skin, and maybe he could pretend it was just the rising steam making his eyes so wet and burning hot. Pete leaned his arm on the cold tile, then leaned his head on his arm. The water soaked into his hair first, carrying dirt and cigarette ashes in grayish rivulets down his back, over his forming bruises, and finally down the drain. Even alone in his brother’s apartment, behind two locked doors, it took a good few minutes for the tears to flow.

Chapter Text

By the time Pete got out of the shower, he felt slightly less shitty. By the time he was dried off and sitting in his pajamas while he waited for his clothes to dry, he could even call his mental state not shitty at all. Like, it wasn’t good, but he could think about something other than the feeling of the cold, wet ground against his face as Max’s foot hit him over and over and over again. And his body didn’t ache too badly. At this point, he’d have to take that as a win. Pete unlocked his phone, ready to distract himself with videos of people performing chemical reactions in their backyards. Instead, he was greeted by no less than twelve new text notifications. He opened them up.

Ruth: I mean ur right its not like I can just lead with hey do u wanna bone

Ruth: bc that clearly doesn’t work

Ruth: I mean if it did it would a worked on u

Ruth: sorry that was weird

Ruth: Pete

Ruth: Pete

Ruth: peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeete

Ruth: peteeeeeeeeeeee

Ruth: ok we’re having a break im gonna go talk to her wish me luck

Ruth: I didn’t 😔

Ruth: it’s bc u didn’t wish me luck

Ruth: whatever ill just text Richie instead

Pete sighed. He pulled up his loose pajama shirt, snapping a picture of the bruise on his chest before texting back.

You: I wasn’t ignoring u

You: I was busy

You: maxshandiwork.img

Ruth: hubba hubba 👀

You: 😑

Ruth: also F

Ruth: do u wanna talk about it

You: I mean what is there 2 say

Ruth: truuuuuuuu

Ruth: max gonna max

You: he fucking stepped on me 😔

Ruth: kinky

You: RUTH.

Ruth: he should try writing fanfiction instead of doing that

He put his phone in do not disturb mode.

Hours later, Pete was zoned out watching a video of some guy extracting the blue from his jeans on his phone. Suddenly, he was jolted out of his peace by the sound of his big brother kicking the absolute shit out of the front door. “Pete!” Ted yelled. “What the fuck did you do? Why can’t I open the door?”

“Oh my G-d, I’m coming!” Pete shouted back. He paused the video and got up, jogging to the door. The chain lock was still in place, and Ted was on the other side, shaking the door back and forth like he thought it might simply not be locked anymore if he did it enough. “Ted!” Pete grabbed the doorknob, trying to shut the door, but Ted just shoved right back. “Ted! You need to close the door before I can unlock it!”

“Ugh, fine!” 

Ted let Pete close the door. He slid the chain lock, then opened the door. “Hello,” Pete said.

“Hi,” Ted said. He let himself in, shutting the door and throwing his coat on the ground instead of on the coat hook inches away. “Why the hell did you lock the front door like that?”

“Why the hell didn’t you lock the front door?” Pete rebutted, even though it made no sense. Ted just gave him an incredulous look. “Okay, fine, whatever. I didn’t want—look, I was feeling a little…weird. ‘Cause I just got my ass kicked. So sue me.”

“Mm,” Ted said. “When was the last time you ate?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“You skipped your snack, didn’t you.”

Come to think of it, he had. He had banked on getting something at Beanie’s or the vending machine, neither of which he reached. “Yeah, because I was busy getting my ass kicked.”

“Dude, go get a piece of chocolate or something,” Ted sighed. “C’mon. You’re not gonna be able to lie to Mom and Dad like this.”

“Ughhhhhhh,” Pete groaned dramatically, before stomping back to the guest room and retrieving the grocery bag full of discount candy he had stashed under his bed. He rustled around in the mostly-empty bags (good thing Halloween was coming up—he’d need more soon) until he found a Twix bar. He unwrapped it, stuck it in his mouth like a cigar, and walked back into the living room to flip Ted off with both hands. “Are you happy now?”

“Very.” 

Pete wolfed down his candy bar with as much dignity as he could muster. Regretfully, he did actually feel a lot better, a cloud he hasn’t even noticed lifting from his thoughts. He had been kind of a dick to Ted, huh—though admittedly not more so than he had been right back. Also, fuck was he hungry. “So, when are we going to Mom and Dad’s?”

Ted raised an eyebrow. “Once you put on some real clothes.” 

“Oh, yeah, right.” Pete sheepishly went to the dryer. It was a couple minutes short of being done, but it probably wouldn’t make a huge difference, so he took his clothes out anyway. For a minute, he just stood there, burying his face in the pile of warm, clean fabric, breathing in that fresh laundry smell. 

Then, of course, Ted had to ruin it. “Wait, did you use my detergent?”

Pete rolled his eyes. “No, obviously I brought my own.”

“Freeloader,” Ted grumbled. You literally have clean clothes here.”

“It’d look suspicious if I came home in an entirely new outfit!” 

“The fuck do you mean? All your outfits look identical, you fucking cartoon character!”

Actually, maybe Pete wouldn’t apologize to Ted.

Pete changed in the bathroom, then checked his face in the mirror. It really wasn’t so bad, just a little red. He held a cold, wet towel to it to make the inflammation go down, grabbed his backpack, and drove home with Ted.

Fifteen minutes later, they parked in the driveway behind their mom’s freshly mud-splattered truck in the still-open garage. Ted knocked on the front door while Pete slipped through the garage, toeing off his shoes and sneaking upstairs to his room. The sounds of his parents greeting Ted drifted up the hallway, all the warmer for the fact that he hadn’t come over in months. He stowed his backpack in his room, then went back downstairs.

His parents were facing away from the staircase, still talking to Ted, so he snuck up behind them. “Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad.”

His dad jumped, then turned around. “Whoa there, kiddo! You’d better learn CPR if you’re gonna try to give me a heart attack like that!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Pete snorted. “Will you accept a hug of sincere apology?”

His dad pretended to think. “You drive a hard bargain…but I suppose.” His dad went in for his usual crushing bear hug, arms up high to account for his son’s greater height. Pete took the initiative, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and forcing him to deflect to his waist. He still caught a sore spot on his ribs, but not bad enough to flinch at—and his dad would have no idea he was trying to hide anything. 

Pete didn’t manage to dodge his mom, but she didn’t hug as hard as his dad, so it was fine. She was still in her work clothes, an apron tied over her ranger uniform. For a moment, he just rested his face on the shoulder of her khaki shirt, pretending that he could tell her and she wouldn’t try to have Max expelled or buried alive in the woods somewhere—just give him a hug and not tell him anything about how he should feel about it. She still smelled a bit like the forest.

“We should probably eat now,” his mom said, tapping Pete’s shoulder. He stepped away, following Ted’s lead into the kitchen. A sheet pan of garlic bread sat on the counter, and a still-steaming pot rested on the stove, wafting the smell of garlic and fresh olive oil—Mom’s famous vegetable soup. Pete darted over, stealing a spoonful even as his glasses fogged up. 

“Couldn’t wait, could ya?” his dad teased, coming up behind him and putting a hand on his shoulder (the good one, thankfully).

“See? Aren’t you glad you came home?” his mom added.

“I wasn’t trying to avoid you,” Pete said, even if he technically had been. “But yes, I am glad. Thank you.”

“Okay, let’s hustle here,” Ted said, like some kind of football coach. “I am fucking starving over here!”

“Don’t swear around your little brother,” his dad said.

“Yeah, Ted,” Pete grinned. “Don’t fucking swear around me.”

Ted flipped him off. 

Pete got to lay low for the first part of dinner. Ted hadn’t been over in months, so he got most of the attention, talking about his efforts to organize a company poker night while Pete subtly stole the last piece of garlic bread. His dad, however, evidently decided that the best time to include him in the conversation was immediately after Pete took a bite.

“So, Peter! I heard you got your test back today!”

“Mm! Mhm,” Pete said, frantically trying to chew and swallow as fast as possible.

“So, what’d you get? C’mon, brag at us.”

“An A. Big shocker, I know.” He grinned to himself, then added, “Steph got a C plus.”

His dad raised his eyebrows, smirking. “Oh, she did, did she?”

Pete wrinkled his nose, already regretting bringing it up. Across the table, Ted stifled a laugh. “…Yes?”

“She must be very grateful for all your help.”

“Dad…” Pete put his face in his hands. 

“I’m just saying! You’d better be careful not to break that girl’s heart!” His dad raised his hands defensively. Ted wheezed like a broken squeaky toy, nearly going facedown in his bowl from sheer mirth. Pete glared at him. How dare he encourage this.

“I’m not going to break her heart," he explained, “because she doesn’t like me that way, Dad. We’re just friends.”

“For now!” he countered. ”I know you don’t take the Spankoffski Charm seriously, but it’s real! It’s measurable! I mean, how else do you explain your mother agreeing to marry me?”

His mom chose that point to jump in. “To be fair, when you asked me, we had already been dating for several years.”

“That is true!” his dad said. “But! Why do you think she started dating me in the first place? I mean, a gorgeous woman like her, and so much smarter and braver than me, too? The only explanation is magic!” He smiled sappily at Pete’s mom. 

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Excuse me! You did not listen to me talk about dissecting bird intestines for G-d knows how many hours to claim that I fell in love with you because of magic. I was new in town and you were nice! It’s perfectly explicable!”

“Okay, I’m gonna go finish my homework now,” Pete said, already standing up from the table and clearing his dishes.

Back in the safety of his room, Pete pulled out his homework, then immediately checked his phone (what? If he didn’t, he’d just be distracted! It was a good study habit). Predictably, he had a few more texts from Ruth.

Ruth: I mean that’s what I do

Ruth: AND you get to pretend to be in Star Wars

Thankfully, it didn’t look like she had freaked out like last time. Pete texted back—

You: sorry I dipped out

You: I just couldn’t talk abt it

Ruth: np np

Ruth: I had to do more light cues anyway lol

You: did u talk to Caitlyn tho

Ruth: I mean technically

Ruth: I did speak to her

Ruth: she just didn’t hear me

You: ??

Ruth: I was very quiet and scared 😔

Ruth: luke an injured mouse

Ruth: when will somebody pick me up and tenderly nurse me back to health smh

You: one day…

Ruth: why do I gotta be proactive 

Ruth: Ew

When Ruth didn’t message him again, Pete turned his attention back to his homework. He felt a little bad he hadn’t started earlier, but realistically, he wouldn’t have been able to focus. Now that he’d had time to calm down and get food, he breezed through his work in a couple of hours. Really, it wasn’t any longer than he would have spent if he had gone to study with Steph instead of—

As if on cue, Pete’s phone pinged.

Unknown Number: heyyyyyyyy guess who got her phone back

Unknown Number: (it’s Steph)

Pete stared at the messages until his screen went black from inactivity, and then stared at his inactive phone some more. He should text back, he knew. It would be easy—just congratulate her or something so she knew he received the text. But even the thought of turning his phone back on made his stomach swim with nausea. The thing was, he didn’t actually know why she was texting him. Did she want to celebrate her victory with him? She’d already told him about her grade at school. Pete replayed their meeting after class over and over in his head (G-d, it felt so far away now) but what was it that she said? “This is really your C plus”. 

So was she texting him because she felt like she had to? Without seeing her face, Pete had no way of knowing. Scratch that—even if he could see her, and hear her tone, he was never very good at puzzling that kind of thing out. What if Steph had only been pretending to like him this entire time? If she thought he was the only reason she was getting good grades, she’d probably put up with a lot of shit—even him telling her they were friends. Steph wasn’t the type to just go along with whatever someone else said, but it made more sense than someone like her seeing any kind of value in an ugly, pervy weirdo like him. 

G-d. Why had he said that? Sure, Steph had said it first, but even if she was being serious—even if she did see something likable in him, specifically, and wasn’t just a generally sweet person—it wasn’t safe to have that kind of a relationship with her. He’d thought—if Max actually had seen them together—it was just too dangerous. Max could kill him for that. Or worse. And it wouldn’t just be Pete, too. Steph wouldn’t know to tell Max she had nothing to do with it, lie and say Pete had forced her hand, she was just using him for grades—and Max would exploit the vulnerability of someone who hadn’t been on his bad side before. He’d been downright irresponsible, and he couldn’t—it couldn’t happen to Steph. It might be too late for his friends, and it was definitely too late for him, but he could still stop it from happening to her.

He couldn’t bring himself to block her number. But even though Pete’s phone pinged a few more times that night, he didn’t dare check it.

Chapter Text

Steph slouched in her seat, staring at the monitor of the ancient desktop in front of her without seeing anything that was actually on the screen. Why Hatchetfield High had a computer skills class (and why they taught it on machines at LEAST a decade out of date) was beyond her. Everything was on phones nowadays anyway. She didn’t need to know how to…fucking what, Google things effectively? You literally just typed it into the search bar. And if you couldn’t find good sources that way, you did the Wikipedia trick and just cited the article’s bibliography like you actually read all those books. Anyway, she’d done four of the exercises in their packet before getting bored, which, to be fair, was more than she usually would have tried. Those were the easy ones anyway—the ones about putting quotes around a phrase you wanted to find and using a minus sign to exclude results. It did help her find some shit about animal rescues that didn’t involve PETA, so that was nice. She could put it to work the next time that bitch Melissa went on another dog-hating rant. Maybe she’d even finish her work towards the end of class, but there was no way the packet would take an hour to complete, so she was taking a little break now. 

Steph looked around the room. Mr. Bishop was on the other side of the room, pointing out something on another student’s screen. Beside her, Brenda and Stacy were blatantly playing Fireboy and Watergirl. Well, if they could get away with that, she could get away with this; Steph slipped her phone out of her pocket. She held it under the table, opening her Messages app. She had no new notifications, so she knew that Pete still hadn’t texted her back, but maybe there would be a new read receipt? She read over her old messages—

You: heyyyyyyyy guess who got her phone back

You: (it’s Steph)

You: this is Pete right?

You: hey Pete I got my phone back so we can text now!!

You: shit it was the right number

You: sorry

You: oh wait ur probably asleep lmao

You: well anyway now that we’re friends do u wanna do literally anything other than study together eventually?

You: like orbs I wanna keep studying but like we could hang out and like watch a movie or sth

You: *ovbs

You: idk what y like to do so

You: gm

You: see u in class :)

Just like when she’d checked that morning, the first two messages were marked as read. The rest were not. Which was so weird, because Pete did not seem like the type to just let notifications chill out on his phone. Wouldn’t that be distracting? It’d bug the hell out of Steph, but maybe Pete was just built different. Or maybe he just went to bed really early last night and woke up too late to check his phone before class, and then didn’t check his phone at all once he got to school, not even during passing period, because he was just that much of a nerd. Or maybe he was just really busy, and he had meant to respond but just forgot to, and he’d get back to her any second now.

Of course, there was always the chance he was ignoring her on purpose.

“Are you okay?” Steph jumped a little, quickly shutting off her phone. Stacy was staring at her with wide blue eyes, her head tilted a little to the side.

“Yeah,” Steph said shortly. “I’m good.”

“Who were you texting?”

Ah, dammit. She’d seen, then. Brenda leaned forward, taking out an AirPod and tuning into the conversation. “It’s nothing,” Steph shrugged. “Just—I sent Pete some messages when I got my phone back. And a couple more this morning. He said we were friends yesterday, but he never responded. Yet,” she tacked on, as an afterthought. “He hasn’t responded yet. It’s no big deal. I have Trig next, I’ll ask him then.”

Brenda squinted at Steph’s face, then looked at Stacy, then back at Steph. “Really?” she said. “You’re, like, one of the hottest girls in the school. And he still ghosted you? Girl, that must be so embarrassing for you.”

Steph raised her eyebrows. “Not helping, Brenda.”

“Sorry,” Brenda said unapologetically. 

“If he’s trying to mess with you, he’s crazy,” Stacy said. “He’s lucky you even talked to him in the first place. Either he’s a jerk and you shouldn’t be talking to him anyway, or he isn’t trying to ignore you at all.”

Steph nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m gonna go talk to him, and if he’s playing anything it’s just not worth it.”

“It’s not worth it!” Stacy mimicked.

A throat cleared behind them. “Hello, girls,” said Mr. Bishop. 

“Sorry Mr. Bishop,” Stacy said. Steph just ducked her head down into her packet and pretended she had been working the entire time. 

Mr. Bishop sighed. “I know you probably already know everything I’m teaching, but can you please at least pretend to pay attention? Like, come on. Just keep the assignment page open. I don’t—I can’t do this.” 

Stacy gave him a thumbs up. Mr. Bishop let out a distressingly heavy sigh, then wandered off. Brenda pulled a face. “That guy is, like, not okay, right?”

“Yeah, ‘cause we’re like, only four years younger than him. Nobody gives him any respect. Of course he’s not okay,” Steph said.

“Mm, yikes. Okay, when you say it like that I do feel kinda bad for slacking off.” 

Despite this, Brenda then immediately went back to playing flash games. Steph looked back at her worksheet. It hadn’t taken her long to do the first four questions, and she had… some time left for the rest of them. She supposed she could finish her classwork. Just this once.

Twenty minutes later, the bell rang. Steph muscled through the other students as they took their time to pack up, shoving her worksheet into a stunned Mr. Bishop’s chest and practically sprinting out the door. In every class they had together, Pete was always at his desk before anyone else, so if she got there early, she could catch him alone and ask him why the hell he wasn’t texting her back. The halls were almost empty, so Steph could easily dodge the other students as she made her way to her Trigonometry classroom, skidding to a halt outside the door. She peeked in through the window. Lights off; seats empty. Perfect. Steph let herself in, closing the door behind her. She took a seat in the front row where she could easily watch the other students enter (and, coincidentally, near where Pete often sat), took out her notebook, and waited.

…And waited.

The five minute passing period had never gone so slowly. Steph’s whole body perked up when the door opened, but it wasn’t Pete who walked in. Just one of the other nerds, a girl in a pastel sweater who seemed to make an effort not to look at Steph, keeping her head down and walking quickly to the chair on the other end of the front row. Steph reciprocated her disinterest, keeping her eyes fixed on the door. After the first girl, more students came trickling in—first one or two at a time, then in crowds. Several people gawked at her—Stephanie Lauter, sitting in the front of the class? By choice?—but she just kept watching. She saw that insanely curly-haired girl and the boy with faded blue hair (Ruth and Richie, unless she’d seen Pete hanging out with people he never bothered to mention), but Pete himself? Nowhere to be found. And when Ms. Santana started the lesson, there was an empty seat in the front row. 

After that, Steph had less mental space to worry. She wasn’t the kind of person who could take notes and understand everything without giving it her full attention, so there was none left over to constantly glance at the door, hoping Pete would turn up late for once. Was he sick or something? Too sick to even pick up his phone? He seemed fine yesterday. Although he had acted a little weird when she’d hugged him—oh G-d. What if she was sick?

“Stephanie? Stephanie!” Steph snapped out of her worry, suddenly realizing that Ms. Santana had been calling her name. 

“What?” she said bluntly. 

“I asked if you knew how to complete step four on the board.” A couple of her classmates giggled, and Ms. Santana at least had the compassion to look a little remorseful. She’d probably figured she would be paying attention, since she was in the front row, huh?

“Uh…” Steph quickly read over the problem that she’d been completely zoned out of. Oh—step four was to make the sound wave on the board lower in pitch. She checked her notes—“You have to change the frequency…I mean, the period. So if you want to make it twice as wide, you have to divide it by zero point five.”

“Correct! Now, if you instead wanted to change the amplitude…”

Steph slumped back in her chair, letting the tension out of her shoulders. Maybe her classmates were still snickering at her for stumbling over her words, but if they were, she couldn’t hear them. She was just relieved she’d gotten it right. Oh my G-d, she’d gotten it right! That, like, never happened! She stifled a grin, then went back to taking notes. She needed to remember this for later.

At the end of class, Steph packed up her bag and left the classroom. She leaned against the wall just outside the door, watching the students flowing out like a hawk watching mice. Eventually, she spotted her prey—Ruth and Richie, engaged in a passionate and extremely quiet debate about some show she’d never watched. It would have been great if she had been actually hunting them, but considering she wanted their attention, it was deeply unfortunate. “Hey!” she called, reaching out towards them noncommittally without actually trying to stop them. They did not notice. “Uh…Ruth? Richie?” she tried.

Richie stopped in his tracks. Ruth squeaked, whirling around. “You know our names?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Steph scoffed, even though she hadn’t been sure she’d gotten it right until they’d reacted. Ruth grinned manically, raising her eyebrows. Richie, looking much less impressed, crossed his arms. “Pete talks about you all the time. Where is he?”

“Did you two, like, make out?” Ruth blurted, practically salivating.

Steph’s entire brain skidded to a halt. She blinked slowly, half hoping that when she opened her eyes she would wake up in bed and realize the whole day was a dream. But alas, that did not happen. “What?”

“Y’know, when—when you were in the classroom…” Ruth, seeming to realize how inappropriate her question had been, trailed off, taking a step to hide behind Richie’s taller frame.

“No, we did not make out, ” Steph said. G-d, why was she even entertaining this? She lunged forward, grabbing the collar of Richie’s oversized Hawaiian shirt and pulling him down to her level.

“Aah! She’s touching me!” Richie yelled, making no effort to get away. 

“Lucky!” Ruth whined.

“This is why people don’t talk to you!” Steph snapped. “Where’s Pete? Why wasn’t he in class? Is he sick?”

A long pause.

“Yes,” said Richie.

“No,” said Ruth at the same time. 

“You’ve really got to work on lying,” said Richie.

Steph practically growled. “Listen up,” she said, getting her face so close to Richie’s that their foreheads were almost touching. “You know where Pete is, and you’re going to take me to him, alright? I just wanna talk.”

“I’m not going to do that!” Richie said. “I mean, what kind of a friend do you take me for—“

“I’ll give you a hundred dollars,” Steph said. “Each.”

“Deal.”

After Steph had gone to her locker to retrieve the cash (her last two hundreds, taped up behind a Fleetwood Mac poster with her driver’s license—it was a lot to blow at once, but her birthday was coming up, so she’d have more soon), Ruth and Richie took her into the library. It did make her feel a little stupid. Of course Pete would be hiding there. But that feeling quickly melted away as they took her from the wide open main study space into the shelves. They weren’t put together in normal rows—they were almost arranged in a labyrinth pattern, forming narrow halls between them that twisted and turned for no apparent reason. Steph spotted more than a couple dead ends as Ruth and Richie strode confidently down the passages. How was anyone supposed to find actual books in here? No wonder everyone in this school was so dumb.

After walking for what felt like way longer than their shitty underfunded library should be able to accommodate for, the bookshelves finally spat them out into, for lack of a better term, a clearing. A few tables and chairs sat on the dingy, brownish-yellow carpet. Pete was slumped over a book at one of them. He looked up when they walked in. Immediately, he locked eyes with Steph, his mouth dropping open in shock. He looked between Ruth and Richie a few times, speechless, before finally saying, “What the fuck, guys. I gave you one job.”

“She really wanted to see you, though,” Ruth said.

“Also she offered us a hundred dollars each,” said Richie. 

Pete put his head in his hands. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

Steph cringed. Her stomach hurt somewhere deep down. Of course this had been a bad idea. When someone didn’t respond to your texts, that meant they didn’t want to see you. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “I just—I wanted to make sure you weren’t sick. Or something. I’ll go now—“

“Steph—“ Pete looked around the study space, then got up, shoving his chair back and jogging a few steps over to her. He crossed his arms—not assertively, but like he was trying to hide himself. “Look, I’m not—I’m not mad at you, and I’m not sick. Sorry, I should have told you instead of just ghosting, but we can’t—“ he took a deep breath, somehow slouching even further. “We can’t study together anymore. I’m sorry.”

“What? But you just said we were friends!” Steph said, her voice filling up the quiet library. She snapped her mouth shut, trying to ignore the aching behind her eyes. 

“No no no—“ Pete’s hands flexed and unflexed rapidly. “I don’t—it’s not that I don’t want to spend time with you! It’s just not safe. For either of us! I’m just—I’m not allowed to talk to you.”

Oh, shit. She hadn’t even thought of that. “Look, I’m not allowed to talk to you either,” Steph said. “Or, I wouldn’t be, if I told my dad. But it’s okay! You can just say you’re not helping me anymore, and—“

“What?” Pete said. “Steph, I wasn’t—I was talking about Max Jägerman.”

“Oh.” Obviously—Pete was way too much of a goody-two-shoes to get in trouble with his parents, and way too smart to get caught even if he did. Pete’s fingers danced across his skin, moving from his chest to his neck to his cheekbone. To a patch of skin that was redder, rawer than the rest of it. Oh. Steph’s stomach sank, and something compelled her to reach out and touch his face, brush her fingers over that patch. Pete didn’t flinch away. Instead, he just sort of…slumped. His head bowed. His back hunched. His ears went red with embarrassment, and he averted his eyes. It would have been kinda cute if he didn't look so sad. 

“Now kiss,” Ruth whispered.

Pete squeezed his eyes shut. “Ruth, not now.”

Steph let her hand drop from his face—really, why had she been touching him like that in the first place?—and stepped back. “Did he do it because of me?” she asked.

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Pete said hastily. “He didn’t catch us, so you don’t need to worry about anything. But if he did, it wouldn’t just be me, y’know?”

“What, like, he’d be mad at Ruth and Richie?”

“No, Steph. He’d be mad at you.”

“Oh, well that’s no big deal,” Steph scoffed. “My dad’s the mayor. He can get Max off my back like—” she snapped her fingers—”that.” 

“Yeah, but would he?” Richie interjected. Steph turned to glare at him. “I’m just saying, he hasn’t done anything about him so far, and Max’s put several kids in the hospital. Football’s just too important to this town for him to jeopardize the team.”

“Were any of them his kid?” Steph snapped. 

Richie rolled his eyes. “No. Sorry.”

Steph turned back to Pete, huffing. Richie didn’t know shit. The one benefit of being Mayor Lauter’s kid was that he wouldn’t let anyone else bother her. He wanted the exclusive right to it, she guessed. “Look, I get it. You’re worried that if Max finds out about us, he’ll make my life hell, and so then you’ll be in trouble and I won’t want to hang out with you anymore. But that’s not gonna happen. Max won’t find out about us, because I’ll be more careful. I’ll pretend you don’t exist while we’re in school, I’ll make sure nobody sees me going to the library, hell, I’ll even pretend to still be bad at everything if that’s what it takes to stay your friend. And if Max does find out about us, I’m not gonna stop hanging out with you just because he tells me to, because I’m great at lying and Max is as dumb as a bag of rocks. You don’t have to worry about me. Worry about yourself if you want, but not about me.”

Pete blinked. He opened and closed his mouth a few times. “Uh…is this…are you not mad at me for ghosting you?”

Steph considered. “I was mad about that,” she said. “But mostly just—look, I like hanging out with you. Can I keep hanging out with you?”

“Yeah. Definitely,” Pete said. “But you gotta promise me something.”

“Okay?”

“You have to promise you’ll be careful not to let anybody find out about us,” Pete said. “And you have to promise that if Max sees us together, or if anyone else sees us and tells him, you’ll pretend like you don’t like me. You just needed someone to study with.”

It was so weird—Steph was great at lying, but the thought of lying about that made her feel…weird. “Deal,” she said anyway. She didn’t think Pete was gonna go back on this, and, well, she did still need his help. “And, to keep that promise, I will text my friends and tell them not to tell anybody that I’m studying with you.”

“You told your friends about studying with me?” 

Pete seemed less pissed off about that than she’d anticipated—in fact, he even seemed a little impressed. But better to be safe than sorry. “Don’t worry, just two of them, and not very often. One sec—“ She pulled out her phone and opened her groupchat.

You: hey did any of u tell anyone I was studying w Pepe

You: Pete*

Stace 💘 : no why would we do that lol

Brenda 💖 : rnt you supposed to be in class

You: study hall btiches

You: rnt YOU supposed to be in class

Brenda 💖 : touche

Brenda 💖 : and no

You: good keep it that way

Brenda 💖 : ok lol

Stace 💘 : 👍

Stace 💘 : why tho

Stace 💘 : is it bc he ghosted u :(

“There! Sweared ‘em to secrecy,” Steph said, tucking her phone away and grinning at Pete. He gave her a pained-looking thumbs up. “So, we still on for Wednesday?”

“Absolutely,” Pete said.

Ruth sidled up next to her. “Hey, y’know, if you wanna study more, Pete, Richie, and I study together every Tuesday and Friday,” she said. “You’re, like, totally invited if you want.”

“Okay,” Steph said immediately. 

“Oh,” Ruth said. “Wait, that worked? Sweet.”

“I mean, as long as it’s okay with the guys,” Steph quickly added. Why had that worked? It’d be an excuse to be out of the house, sure, but…yeah, she probably just wanted to be out of the house.

“Fine by me,” Pete said.

Richie shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”

“I can’t come today,” Steph said. “Or this Friday, because of the game. But next Tuesday sound good?” The three of them made sounds of agreement, looking as surprised as Steph was. “Great! Now, somebody help me get out of here, because I do not remember how I came in.”

As Richie showed Steph the way out of those confusing, fluorescent-lit shelves, her phone pinged.

Pete 💚 : gm!

Pete 💚 : still technically morning

Pete 💚 : see u in class :)

Steph grinned wider than she had any right to as she put her phone away.

Chapter Text

The final bell rang, and students flooded into the hallway, eager to escape the confines of Hatchetfield High. Pete was too, but he was walking with a little more trepidation than the stampeding mass—and not just because he was significantly more likely to be trampled than the popular kids. The problem was the bus stop. He and Steph both took the bus to the library, and even though they ignored each other on the ride there, people might start to wonder why they kept taking the same bus at the same time to the same stop—especially since Steph had never taken the bus in her life until they started studying together. Just because nobody had gotten suspicious yet didn’t mean it was safe. He’d have to find another way for one of them to get to the library, and soon. 

Behind him, Ruth and Richie were continuing the debate they’d been having all day. “It’s not just the size,” Richie was saying. “Because, like, you could fuck, I don’t know, a kaiju, and that would be legit, even if it melted your dick off. It’s the disjointedness. If you fuck—I dunno, the Clivesdale post office, you’re not fucking Clivesdale, you’re just fucking one building. Even if you fucked every building sequentially, it wouldn’t be the same as fucking the entire municipality at once.”

“Okay, well, what if you fucked the land it was on instead? That’s pretty… jointed.”
“Yeah, but you’d get dirt in your penis.”

“Strap-ons exist, idiot.”

“You guys are missing the point,” Pete said, mostly just to stir the pot. “When we say ‘fuck Clivesdale’, we aren’t beefing with a physical location. It’s the spirit of the town. If you want to fuck Clivesdale, you have to target its…Clivesdaleyness.”

“Okay? And how do we do that, genius?” said Ruth.

“Maybe the mayor,” Richie suggested.

Pete wrinkled his nose. “ Not the mayor,” he said. “It wouldn’t be a real person, unless maybe it was the founder? It’d be, like, the personification of Clivesdale.”

Ruth nodded sagely. “The chemist himself. Or herself!”

“Not them self? That’s transphobic,” Richie said.

“I don’t think Clivesdale is cool enough to name their sports team after a nonbinary person.”

“Guys, guys, guys, hold up.” Pete halted, holding out his hands to keep his friends from bumping into the people in front of them. The crowd had gotten denser, even considering the rush to leave the school. Instead of trying to squeeze out the doors to the street, people were standing around. Not talking. Not getting things out of their locker. But…watching. Listening to something. Pete quickly realized what it was when he spotted, above the heads of his classmates, a sign. He couldn’t read all of it, just the word “homecoming”—with the O censored. The sign came down hard, and a loud whack echoed through the hall, followed by a brief ripple of quickly suppressed laughter. 

There was only one person who could be hit in the middle of the hallway and not be laughed at.

“No!” Grace’s shrill voice carried all the way to the back of the crowd. “I don’t care how many times you ask, I’m not going to homeco—to the dance with you! Fornication set to secular music is not my idea of a good time in the first place, but with you? That’d be the only way to make it worse. You could have taken the hint back in the Witchwood.” 

Pete stiffened. His legs bent in preparation to run, the hairs on the back of his neck raising at Grace’s brash voice. It was like she didn’t know Max could crush her like a soda can. Not that he would—for some reason, Grace was immune to at least his physical aggression—but he could picture the scene all too vividly. How much taller Max felt when he got close. The ugly curl of his lip when he didn’t get the reaction he wanted. The sea of people just looking, too scared to do anything, or maybe not even wanting to as long as it wasn’t happening to someone they knew. Well, he was one of them this time. Sorry, Grace. You’d do the same for me.

“C’mon, Chas-ti-ty!” Max drawled, his voice dripping with anything but sweetness. “I can be a gentleman! We can leave room for Jesus!”

“Well, excuse me if I don’t exactly believe you!”

Pete couldn’t take it anymore. He knew it wouldn’t come, but his body was still bracing for the sharp smack of fist on flesh, the yelp stifled by its own unexpectedness, the thud of a surprised body hitting the floor, and then… Pete backed up on instinct. Ruth and Richie did too, taking a few tentative steps before turning and sprinting down the hall. They stopped around the corner, Pete throwing a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t being followed. Which they weren’t, obviously—Grace hitting Max with her anti-homecoming sign was much more interesting than whatever three random nerds had to offer. 

They slowed to a walk. Although Pete was pretty sure they were safe—for now, at least, he’d need to be careful until the dance was over, at least—his heart was still thudding so hard he could feel it in his throat. His back hurt; it took a second to realize he was bent nearly double. He straightened up, forcing down a few deep breaths. His hand went to his bruised chest subconsciously. 

Beside him, Richie gave him a once-over out of the corner of his eye, then casually looked away. “Y’know, sometimes I wonder if Grace really is protected by G-d,” he said. “I mean, there’s no rational explanation for how she can get away with making fun of him like that. It’s gotta be supernatural.”

“Or he has a humiliation fetish,” Ruth supplied.

“Even so, Grace gets away with a lot more than anyone else, so there’s gotta be something about her,” Richie said. “…Do you think if I wore a cross, it’d ward him off like a vampire? I’d have the power of G-d and anime on my side…”

That made Pete snort-laugh, more from surprise than amusement. “You’re Jewish, though.”

“Yeah, but we’re talking about the guy who thought I grew a dick and balls the moment I came out as trans. Forgive me for not overestimating his intelligence.”

“Yeah, also Grace wears a cross and Max seems more attracted to her for it,” Ruth said. 

Richie wrinkled his nose. “Back to the drawing board, then.”

They reached the back door of the school, pushing it open and strolling out onto the field. “I gotta get to cheer practice,” Richie said. “Sayonara, bitches.”

“Oh, shit,” Ruth said, stopping in her tracks. “I walked right past the theater. See ya—“ She turned around and ran back into the school, leaving Pete to walk to the bus alone. 

He walked to his usual seat in the back corner, trying and failing not to scan the rows for Steph. This bus was emptier than the one that left immediately after school, and he didn’t see her. Which was a good thing, he reminded himself. He didn’t want to be seen with her, no matter how much the fact that she was his friend made him want to strut like a bird of paradise, remember? Still, he should probably tell her he was gonna be a little later than usual. In case she was waiting and worried. Pete sat down in the back row, pressing his back into the metal wall of the bus. The hard cushions made the fresh bruises on his legs ache, but at least nobody else was in the back row to see him wince.

You: gonna be a bit late, sorry

Pete angled his phone in towards his body, glancing around to make sure no one was watching his screen, until Steph responded.

Study Buddy: wow late 2 the library

Study Buddy: its like u don’t even care about learning…..

Study Buddy: gonna study while ur on ur way and when u get there ILL tutor U

Study Buddy: gonna steal ur job motherufkcer

Pete almost smiled, but he was too exhausted to really feel much. Even his anxiety over what Max would do to him and his friends in retribution for Grace’s rejection felt muted, a heavy weight over his whole body instead of an acute pain. Good thing it didn’t come across over text.  

You: id like to see u try

Study Buddy: lmaooooo

You: no srsly

You: do it

You: tell me smth from one of ur other classes 

Study Buddy: lol ok 

Study Buddy: ill conjugate some verbs at u when u get there

You: nice

Pete put his phone away and shut his eyes, wishing he had brought earplugs. The normally soothing rumble of the bus was making him want to tear his skin off. Eventually, though, it rolled to a stop on Main Street, brakes sighing like an old dog. He got off with a few other students and walked deeper into town, past the library and towards—well, not his favorite coffee shop, but certainly the most affordable one. 

Unfortunately, Beanie’s was also the most crowded coffee shop for that very reason. Even on a Wednesday afternoon, the line was almost as long as the floor, and at least half the tables were packed with students who weren’t lame enough to get deposed on sight but also weren’t cool enough for Starbucks, moms with toddlers and grocery bags, or depressed businessmen who needed something to make it through the last two hours of the day. Not his brother, though. Usually, the threat of seeing Ted embarrassing himself in front of his favorite out-of-his-league barista was enough to make him brave an empty stomach until dinner, but today he almost missed his presence. It might make him cringe hard enough that he forgot about everything else.

As it stood, he was offered no such reprieve, so he got in line. The people ahead of him chattered, baristas shouted orders and broke into song with various degrees of enthusiasm, coffee machines hissed and squealed. Other guests crowded in next to him as more customers entered, and even though they weren’t technically touching him he could feel their presence squirming under his skin, making his clothes lie all-too-noticeably on his body. Pete flinched with every step. By the time he was one person away from the counter, on top of being anxious, he also hated every single person in the universe, but especially the ones in this coffee shop. 

“Yeah, I’ll have a venti caramel latte with a pump of hazelnut, caramel on the sides, double whipped cream, and cookie crumbles. And quick, I’m in a hurry,” said the man in front of him. Amazing, Pete thought, glaring at the back of his stupid tan trenchcoat. They will never find the body.

“Do you mean large? Starbucks is across the street,” the barista said, clearly cutting the word “idiot” from the end of her sentence. Oh, great. She was the one who hated him. Pete should have just sucked it up and gone hungry.

“I don’t care. Just make the drink.” 

The annoying man paid, then finally moved out of the way. Pete stepped up to the counter, tapping his hand on the outside of his thighs, unable to drop the grimace from his face. The barista looked at him with exhausted eyes. “What do you want,” she snapped.

“Small hot chocolate,” Pete blurted. He could tell his voice was much too loud for speaking to someone a few feet away, and too flat, too, but there was nothing he could do to change that. “Please,” he added a second later. 

The barista who hated him did not seem to appreciate his addition. She rolled her eyes dramatically and said, “you have to pay if you want it,” slowly, like he was a toddler playing coffee shop instead of a whole legal adult.

Pete fumbled for his wallet and fought the urge to seize the barista and throw her through the display case of stale pastries. G-d forbid anyone sees YOU on a bad day, he thought at her. “Sorry,” he said, handing her a five dollar bill. She gave him back his change, and he dumped it in the tip jar. “If you start singing, I’m going to kill somebody.”

“Me too, kid,” said the barista. “Me too.”

Pete deliberately didn’t watch them make his hot chocolate. If someone spat in it, he didn’t want to know. What was he gonna do, ask for another one? By the time he got his drink, he was more than ready to leave the pandemonium that was a moderately full eating establishment. He pounded half the hot chocolate standing just outside the door, then drank the rest at a more leisurely pace as he walked back to the library. He tossed out the cup in the trash can by the door, then finally went upstairs to what had quickly become his and Steph’s table.

“Parle parles parle parlons parlez parlent,” Steph rattled off as he approached. She grinned. “Told you I’d conjugate verbs at you.”

Pete tried to match her energy as he took his usual seat. Hopefully Steph didn’t notice him sitting more gingerly than usual—if she paid that much attention to him anyway. The last thing he needed was for her to realize how much Max had humiliated him. “Good to see you too,” he said, thankfully managing to sound like a real human instead of an alien in a skinsuit. “I have no idea if that’s correct, by the way.”

“Yeah, you take Spanish, right?”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “I was gonna do a, like, independent Polish study, but it was too difficult, so I gave up.”

“Damn, something was too hard for Peter Spankoffski?” 

Steph smirked. For some reason, it tickled the back of his brain and made words rise in his throat before he could stop them. They spilled out of his mouth too harsh and too loud, just like at Beanie’s. “Well, I mean, it would’ve been easier if I had someone to practice with, but nobody in my family was even trying, besides, I didn’t even have a real teacher. I could pick it up again if I wanted.”

“Okay, okay,” Steph said, holding her hands up placatingly even as her eyes glowed with mirth. “I’m sorry for doubting your intellectual prowess, lord superbrain.”

Pete bit the inside of his mouth. He shouldn’t have said anything, not when he knew being overstimulated made him a dick. Unlike the people at Beanie’s, Steph didn’t know that yet. “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean—we should just get started—“ He fumbled with his bag, pulling out books before he could further embarrass himself.

When Pete looked up from under the table, Steph was still smiling, but her eyes were more focused, eyebrows raised and head tilted analytically. “Dude, are you good?”

“Fine,” Pete said instinctively. Then, before Steph even had time to react, he for some reason blurted out, “Max asked Grace to Homecoming. It was a whole thing.”

Steph’s nose scrunched with distaste. “Ugh, really? When?”

“At the end of the day. Which is why I’m late, by the way. Sorry. A lot of people were watching.”

Steph waved him off casually, even as she leaned in, staring him down intently. “It’s no big deal, I got here early anyway. But, like, what happened? Is she okay?”

Pete could never have predicted how much lighter those three words made him feel. Because is she okay? also meant yeah, I get it. Max is super dangerous. It meant even if I think Grace is a nerdy prude, I don’t think she deserves whatever Max might do to her for turning him down. Maybe it even meant are YOU okay. Pete relaxed just a little, letting himself drum his fingers on the wood of the study desk. “I mean, as far as I know, yeah,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a ton she can do now that’ll make him mad, since, y’know…”

“Since she made him piss himself in the woods?”
Pete winced. “Yeah, that. So, I guess to answer your question, physically yes? But I don’t think he’s gonna back off either. She did hit him with her sign, though.”

“Hah! Nice,” Steph said. “At least someone is standing up to him.”

“Yeah…” Pete ran a hand through his hair. “Be great if it didn’t make it harder for the rest of us, though.” Steph made a face like she was looking at a puppy that had to be put down. “Sorry, I’m being a downer. We should study.”

Steph raised her eyebrows. “Ah, right. Because nothing cheers me up like fucking sine waves.”

“I mean, you don’t have to fuck them,” Pete said. Steph snorted abruptly, putting her head down on the table. “Wait, no! Sorry, instinct.”

“What? It was funny,” Steph said. “Now c’mon, let’s make these sine waves our bitch.”

(They end up deciding that Steph should always take the earlier bus, just to be safe. Even if it’s not really her who would be put in danger.)

Chapter Text

As Steph walked into shop class, she took a deep breath and smiled. Objectively, the room didn’t smell great—like sawdust and wood glue and low expectations—but it still gave her a sense of peace and anticipation. See, this was what she loved about shop. It was an outdated parody of a class, which meant if she actually tried at it and failed, nobody would care. Even her dad wouldn’t think of calling her dumb like he would when she failed any other class, because nobody cared about shop. Not even the teacher, Mr. Houston, who gave you an A just for showing up to more than half the lessons. Steph never missed a class, though, and until she’d broken her hand she’d spent every one of them working on a project. It was the only class she’d ever gotten an A plus in.

Steph found her way to her usual seat by the windows, putting her hair up in a bun as she walked (even if she couldn’t exactly use power tools with a broken hand, safety always came first). Hannah was already sitting on their usual bench—the one by the back window, where you could get some good natural light while you worked—fiddling with her latest project. It was a perfectly cuboid wooden box that she’d been painstakingly carving a perfect, labyrinthine pattern into. Steph had no idea if it had, like, a practical purpose, but it looked cool as hell. 

Hannah looked up when Steph slid in next to her, giving her a quick nod. “Hi, Steph.”

“Hey, Hannah.” Steph gave Hannah her AirPods, then unlocked her phone and handed it over. Hannah put on the playlist she’d made on Steph’s Spotify account and went back to tracing the gouges in her cube with her fingers. 

Steph turned her attention to the door, watching other students wander in. Most people who took shop took it as a blow off class, so even though technically it was open to all grades, most of them were popular senior guys who wanted to fill an elective slot but thought home ec and drama were too girly. They gathered in packs of five or six at benches that hadn’t seen serious carpentry in decades, not even bothering to pretend to get started on their projects. Mr. Houston was the latest of all, though. It was like he thought the class started ten minutes after it actually did. “Alright, alright, settle down,” he called over the noise. “Remember, your project proposals are due by the end of the day. That does not mean by Monday morning, so if you don’t think you’ll have it done by the end of class, let me know so I can give you an extension, okay?” He shot a pointed look towards the worktable by the door, currently occupied by far more football players than it could comfortably fit. If they heard him, they didn’t show it, continuing their rowdy conversation as if nothing had happened. Mr. Houston looked around the room, sighing heavily. 

Steph raised her hand as high as she could. “Mr. Houston?”

Mr. Houston’s posture visibly improved as he caught sight of her. “Steph, yes!” he said, jogging over. “What can I help you with?”

“Oh—I was just wondering, since I finished all my measurements last class and I can’t exactly operate a saw with this—“ she held up her cast— “can I just sorta do nothing?”

“Oh, yeah, go ahead,” Mr. Houston said. He glanced around the room again, then leaned down. “You know,” he said quietly, “until you get that cast off, I could always—“

Steph waved him off. “Nah. Thanks for the offer, but I wanna do my own work. Besides, I’ve had this thing for weeks. It’s gotta be coming off soon, right?”

“Sure,” Mr. Houston said. “But until then, do whatever you want.”

Steph shot him a finger gun with her one hand that wasn’t in a cast. “You’re a real G.”

Mr. Houston pursed his lips, looking over his shoulder to where the gang of jocks were using wooden planks to catapult crumpled up paper into the garbage can on the other side of the room. “Thank you, Steph. I do not feel like a real G.”

Mr. Houston wandered away, beginning his slow patrol of the classroom. His presence spurred the students into motion about fifteen minutes after the bell, and finally, class started in earnest. Some students rummaged for their sketchpads and graph paper, others went to the bins in the back to grab wood and tools, and the whole room filled with the sound of teenagers fucking around with sharp objects. Mr. Houston had his hands full just reminding people to tie their hair up and put on safety goggles. 

Steph, for her part, was forced to sit out. She’d spent the last two-ish weeks painstakingly planning her next project (a makeup organizer with a secret compartment in the bottom, just big enough for some cards and bills). She’d traced out the pieces she’d need, measuring everything once, twice, three times, but now that all that was left was actually building the thing, she was shit outta luck. In any other class, she would be on her phone, but Hannah needed music to drown out the din of hammers and drills and saws. Shop class was loud for everyone, but it was flat-out painful for her, and Steph would never take away her music—especially since she’d been the one to offer it in the first place. What else was there to do, then? Homework, she guessed. She pulled her math worksheet out of her bag and put it on the gritty work table in front of her. Even if she couldn’t concentrate, she could at least write out the equations from the word problems. 

G-d. She was such a nerd now.

Steph was actually making progress on the first question when she noticed someone was standing next to her, and had been for some time. She looked up to see Brad Callahan looming over her, his bulky frame blocking out the overhead lights. Great. Steph had never particularly liked Brad in the first place, and she liked him even less now that she’d been reminded what he’d done to Pete, but somehow he was more popular than her, so she had to tolerate his existence. As soon as he noticed her looking at him, he arranged his face into a grin that was probably trying to be charming, but instead landed somewhere between sleazy and smug. “Hey,” he said, giving his messy blonde hair a toss that was maybe attractive to somebody.

Steph raised an eyebrow, fixing him with the iciest stare she could muster. “Can I help you?” 

“Yeah, actually,” Brad said, oblivious to (or maybe actively ignoring) her clear disdain. “You got plans for homecoming, girl?”

“I do, actually.” Steph didn’t mention that she and Stacy had agreed not to get dates for the dance, in solidarity with Brenda getting cockblocked for almost six months now. Somehow, she doubted Brad would consider those “plans”.

“Cool,” Brad said. “‘Cause I asked the rest of the team if they’d snatched you up yet, and, uh—” he popped his lips wetly, placing a hand on the desk and leaning towards her— “none of them did.”

Steph’s stomach soured uncomfortably. She ignored it. There was nothing to be afraid of. “Okay.”

“So? You wanna come to the dance with me?”

“No!” Steph said. “I literally just said I have plans. Fuck off.”

Brad’s brow wrinkled. “But I asked the whole football team—“

“Fuck. Off.”

Steph hadn’t noticed before, but the classroom was a lot quieter than usual. Students had stopped their work and conversations, blatantly turning around to watch them. Mr. Houston got up from his desk, swiftly walking over. Brad noticed too. He glanced at the staring crowds, then turned back to her, his eyes noticeably harder. Steph glared back. There was nothing to be afraid of. “Okay, but, everyone knows you go out with guys who ask you out,” he continued. “And I’m literally asking you out, so why not?”

“Okay, first of all, I only go out with guys who ask me, but I don’t go out with every guy who asks me. And I won’t go to homecoming with you because you’re not hot.”

“Oh, snap,” someone called from the other side of the room.

Brad’s lip curled. “What, so you’ll let every guy in the smoke club take you to Pasqualli’s, but you won’t even go to homecoming with me?”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Mr. Houston said, walking up behind Brad. “Brad, go back to your bench.”

Mr. Houston tried to put a hand on his shoulder, but Brad shrugged it off, his gaze fixed on Steph. “No, I want an answer. Why am I not good enough for you? It’s not like your standards are through the roof.”

“Brad, I said go back to your bench.” 

Hannah popped one AirPod out, the music bleeding into the room. “I don’t think you should talk to her like that,” she said quietly.

“Oh yeah? What are you gonna do about it, ya fuckin’ retard?”

Steph was up in a flash. Before Brad could even register that she was standing, she put her hand square in the middle of his chest and shoved. He sprawled backwards, only avoiding hitting his head on the bench behind him because Mr. Houston grabbed his shirt at the last second, dragging him awkwardly to his feet. “Ow!” he said, sounding more offended than hurt. “What the fuck was that for?”

“Do not fucking talk to me or Hannah like that!” Steph spat, her words coming out as hot as a dragon’s breath. She drew her fist back—

“Absolutely not!” Mr. Houston shouted. He got in front of Steph, blocking Brad from view. Finally, she stopped seeing red, and realized there was a third party in their argument—a very large man who was very angry at her for disrupting his class. She felt a sharp, acidic pain behind her ribcage, like the burn of overworked muscles, a sort of trembling energy filling her limbs. Fight and flight warred with each other in Steph’s mind. She chose fight before he could.

“Stay out of this, old man!” Steph barked. “If you wanted to stop a fight, you shoulda gotten here sooner.”

“Not how that works,” Mr. Houston said. “I’m sorry, but I have to give you detention.”

“What?”

“He started it!” Hannah said, pointing at Brad. “Steph didn’t even do anything, he—”

“I don’t care! We do not push people in a room full of power tools!”

“Haha, suck it,” Brad called from behind him.

Mr. Houston rounded on him. “Oh, I’m sorry. Do you think you’re not getting punished? You should be happy I’m not suspending you.” He sighed, pulling a little pink book out of his pocket. He scrawled on it for a few seconds, ripped off a slip, and slapped it into Brad’s hand. “Go to the principal’s office.”

“What about her?” Brad gestured limply at Steph.

Mr. Houston tore off another detention slip and passed it to her without writing on it. “Steph, talk to me after class,” he said. He turned back to Brad. “Now will you go?”

Brad grumbled, but did as he was told. Mr. Houston watched him stomp out the door, then scanned the rest of the room. “Can everyone at least pretend to do something? This doesn’t deserve your attention.” 

The class went conspicuously back to work, and Mr. Houston went back to his desk. “Mr. Houston—” Steph called. He didn’t seem to hear her. 

She sighed, slumping back onto her bench. She’d been so close, only to trip at the finish line. Oh well. What was one more teacher who hated her anyway? Her heartbeat began to slow to a more reasonable rhythm, but the pain in her chest didn’t go away. She could still feel it burning with each pump.

“He’s an idiot,” Hannah said beside her. “You wouldn’t have pushed Brad if he hadn’t harassed you, but he went over to you. Anybody could see that.” She glared at Mr. Houston, who was sitting at his desk and texting. 

Steph shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

Hannah scoffed. “It is!”

“No, for real, it’s fine,” Steph said. She ruffled Hannah’s hair. “I get detention all the time. Mr. Houston was just upholding a dumb rule because…because that’s what the rules are for, I guess.”

“Webby says when rules are bad, only bad people follow them.”

“Yeah, well, tell Webby to run for the school board, then. Besides,” Steph said, cheekily waving her blank detention slip at Hannah, “he forgot to write down what I actually did. They’ll probably let me go anyway.”

Hannah stared at Steph for a second, then put her AirPod back in. Heavy bass thumped, bleeding through the thin plastic so loudly that Steph could almost make out the lyrics. Hannah went back to carving delicate fractal patterns into her Cube. Steph went back to her homework.

Thirty minutes and four and a half math problems later, the bell rang. As usual, most of the other students had packed their bags long before the end of class. They hurried out of the room in a disorganized mass while Steph was still shoving her math homework into the black hole of her backpack—G-d, she should probably invest in a binder eventually, right?—leaving her in the mostly deserted room. Only Mr. Houston and Hannah remained, the latter resolutely glaring at the former as he walked over.

“Can I see your detention slip?” Mr. Houston asked. Steph handed the blank pink paper to him, and he crumpled it in his hand, tucking it into his pocket. “I’m not actually gonna give you detention,” he explained. “Just had to make it look like I was, or Brad would’ve thrown a fit. Pushing him was—well, I mean, it was dangerous, you shouldn’t do that, but in the wise words of Miss Foster here, he did start it.” He paused, glancing at Hannah. She watched him with suspicion, but the outright hostility was mostly gone. “…Do you have another class after this?”

“Does that mean you want me to leave?”

Mr. Houston nodded. “I kinda need to talk to Steph alone.”

Hannah looked at Steph. She nodded once. Hannah handed back her AirPods and phone, grabbed her backpack, and left the room. Once the door had swung closed behind her, Mr. Houston said, “uh. Anyway, no detention. Just go see the volunteer counselor at lunch, I already told him you’re gonna be there.”

“What? Come on man!” Steph huffed, hitting the table lightly with frustration. “You sure you can’t just give me detention?”

“Wh—you want detention?”

“More than I want to see some stupid counselor, yeah!” At least it was what was expected of her—what she expected of herself. If she went to detention, she was a bad kid, a rebel, as usual. If she went to the counselor, there must be something actually wrong with her. “Look, I know I shouldn’t have pushed Brad. I should have called you over, or been nicer to him, or something. I just lost control. I don’t need a counselor to tell me that.”

“Steph, look. I don’t care about you pushing Brad. But this kind of talk? I worry about it.” 

Fuck. Steph dug her nails into her palms, trying to focus on the physical pain instead of the humiliation. Less than an hour ago, Mr. Houston had been yelling at her for fucking up, and here she was, spilling her guts so fast that she didn’t even know what part of it he was mad about. “Why are you worried? I’m an adult. I can take responsibility for my own actions. I should take responsibility for myself.”

“Look, you’re one of—fuck it, you are the best student in my class this year, but whenever you come to me with a new idea, it’s like you’re sorry you’re making me teach you. I’m a teacher! That’s my job, I’m not gonna be—“ Mr. Houston took a deep breath. “I just think a counselor is gonna be more help than spending three hours in a boring classroom on the night of the big game. At least this way you can go home and change into something nicer before you go. Rep that blue and white, you know? Go Nighthawks?”

“Oh! Right, the game!” Steph mentally slapped her wrist. In her annoyance at being sent to the guidance counselor, she’d missed what a precious gift Mr. Houston had given her. If she got detention, she’d have to ask Miss Tessburger to pick her up later, and then Miss Tessburger would tell her dad, and then he’d get on her ass for it. If she did her time during lunch, he’d never have to know. “I can’t believe I forgot. Thanks, Mr. Houston.”

Mr. Houston’s shoulders sagged with obvious relief. “Okay. Glad we’re on the same page. Enjoy the game, Steph.”

“You too.” Steph grabbed her bag and got the hell out of there.

Chapter Text

You: I have to go to the fucking guidance counselor at lunch 😔

You: dont wait for me

Stace 💘 : nooooooo!

Stace 💘 : what happened?

You: brad asked me to hoco and called me a slut when I said no so I bodied him

Stace 💘 : booooooooooooo

Stace 💘 : also I never get why guys say that

Stace 💘 : how does turning him down make u a slut 

You: ikr

Stace 💘 : ur literally saying no to sex which is the opposite of what a slut would do

You: I mean. He didn’t like CALL me a slut but he said my standards weren’t ‘thru the roof’

Stace 💘 : ewwwwwww

Stace 💘 : yea u wre right to kill him

Stace 💘 : ill miss u tho :(

Brenda 💖 : sorry just saw this!!

Brenda 💖 : dw abt missing lunch ill just die of loneliness ig

Stace 💘 : HEY ill be there too 😠

Brenda 💖 : congrats on punching brad, sorry u got caught

Brenda 💖 : lol sorry Stacy I will c u at lunch

Stace 💘 : u better

Steph slipped her phone into her pocket and returned her attention to the mundanity of the real world. She’d let herself out of English a couple minutes early so she wouldn’t get stuck in the lunch line, and while the cafeteria wasn’t full yet, there were still a few students who’d beaten her to it. She’d finally reached the front of the line, though, so she grabbed a couple small, sickly looking oranges—the only remotely edible food the school cafeteria offered. If she had been eating with Brenda and Stacy, she could have probably convinced one of them to grab a bag of chips or beef jerky from the vending machines to split with her, but since she had been cruelly forbidden from hanging out with her besties, just fruit would have to do. She reached the register and displayed the oranges to the lunch lady, who raised an eyebrow. 

“That’s not a very balanced meal,” she said.

“I’m literally an adult. I can have oranges for lunch if I want to.” Steph swiped her lunch card, gathered up her bounty of fruit between her cast and her torso, and strode away before the lunch lady could lecture her any further. Shouldering through the crowds of students to get to the door, she shot one last longing look at the round table in the back of the room. Brenda and Stacy weren’t there yet, of course, but they would be, and she wouldn’t be there with them. 

Although, Steph thought as she walked down the familiar route to the administrative (and disciplinary) wing of the school, that didn’t have to be the case. She’d been kicked out of the guidance counselor’s before. Sure, when that happened, she usually also had her sentence changed to detention (or, worse, the school calling her dad), but surely she could thread the needle. Be enough of a brat that whoever volunteered in the hopes of helping a delicate troubled teen blossom into a respectable member of society threw in the towel, but not so annoying that they decided she needed a harsher punishment. She’d managed to trick Miss Tessburger that way before. Surely she could trick whatever bozo had volunteered today. 

Steph arrived at the guidance counselor’s office, tucked away in a musty hallway. She was pretty sure it used to be a storage closet, actually. She knocked on the peeling wooden door, and for a moment, nobody answered. Could she just walk away right now? Claim she had tried, but the counselor Mr. Houston had called didn’t show up? But then came the sound of footsteps, and the door swung open.

Over the course of her high school career, Steph had become very well acquainted with all the usual volunteer counselors—the slew of psych students from Hatchetfield Community College, Dan fucking Reynolds, for some reason, and once, humiliatingly, Grace Chasity’s mom—which was why she immediately knew that the scruffy, heavyset man who opened the door wasn’t one of them. That, and the fact that he smiled when he saw her. “Steph Lauter, right?” he said, grinning way more widely and sincerely than a volunteer counselor had any right to. “Mr. Houston said you would—“

“It’s Stephanie,” Steph said shortly.

The man’s smile didn’t falter. “Right, Stephanie, my bad. Wanna step inside?”

It wasn’t like she really had a choice. The counselor stepped back, and Steph walked into the office, taking the stiff plastic chair and dropping her oranges on the bare counselor’s desk. “My name’s Douglas Keane,” he said, taking a seat across from her, “but you can call me Duke, if you want.”

“Okay, Mr. Keane.” 

Steph picked at the peel of her first orange with one long, sharp nail and waited for him to respond, but Mr. Keane didn’t seem like he was in too much of a rush. He put a brown paper parcel on the desk and started unwrapping it. It was so strange—Steph could have sworn she’d seen him somewhere before. With his boyish, clean-shaven face, slightly grown-out hair, and scuffed leather jacket, Mr. Keane honestly could have fit in with the student body better than the staff (although Steph probably wouldn’t be allowed to talk to him if he was). So maybe she only thought he looked familiar. 

Mr. Keane finished unwrapping his package, revealing a tall, restaurant-perfect BLT. He looked up at Steph, still struggling to peel her orange with only one fully-functional hand. “You want help with that?”

Steph wanted to refuse just to show this guy he wasn’t her friend, but realistically, it would just be a lot more convenient to take his help. Call it manipulation or something. “Sure.”

Steph handed over the first of her oranges. Mr. Keane split it open with practiced ease, taking the peel off in one long strip and pulling the fruit into two hemispheres before giving it back to her. “Good taste,” he said. “I’m more of a mango man myself, but those are expensive.”

Steph raised an eyebrow at him. “Aren’t you going to talk to me about what happened?”

“Only if you want to,” Mr. Keane shrugged. “Nice cast. Looks like you got a lot of friends to sign it.”

Steph picked at her orange, peeling off a slice and popping it into her mouth. “Yeah, well, what can I say? I’m popular. Everyone wants that mayor’s daughter clout.” 

Mr. Keane gave her a look that was probably supposed to be empathetic. But for what? She had literally just said she was popular. “Bet you can’t wait to get it off, though,” he said, taking a bite of his sandwich.

“Yeah? Obviously,” Steph said. Boy, this guy was dull. She bit into another orange slice, sucking out the juice like a vampire.

Mr. Keane swallowed. “How’d you break your hand? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Oh, it’s not my arm, it’s my—“

Steph cut herself off. Mr. Keane just waited for her to continue, his head cocked slightly to one side. To anyone else, he would have looked like the same well-meaning, slightly stupid volunteer she’d walked into the room with, but Steph knew better. He’d known she’d broken her hand. So who told him? The most logical answer was that Mr. Houston told him, but it would be stupid to assume that. There were plenty of other ways he could have found out—ways that involved spying, or getting the information out of her fellow students. Who was this volunteer? A journalist? A cop? Why had she only just met him when she’d been in this room so many times? 

After a pause that was far too long, Mr. Keane waved one hand. “You don’t have to answer me,” he said mildly. Steph wasn’t fooled by his veneer of carelessness. He’d draw his own conclusions from her silence—conclusions far worse than the truth. He’d think something terrible, something juicy had happened, that she had something to hide. The only weapon she had to kill his assumptions was her own story. 

“Nah, it’s alright,” she said, then ate an orange piece to buy herself time to think of the lie. She couldn’t use the Timberwolves story on this guy, that was for sure. And, well, they said the best lies were close to the truth. “I got caught cheating on a test and my dad confiscated my phone. I got so pissed, I punched a wall and broke my hand.” She topped the story off with a shrug and a half smile. “Stupid of me, but, y’know, next time I’ll remember to punch a pillow instead.”

Mr. Keane nodded, grinning. His dumb smiley face was starting to get obnoxious. “Hey, don’t ever let anybody tell you not to punch a pillow. Everyone needs a constructive way to get their anger out, or they might do something they regret.”

“Hey, for your information, Brad totally had it—“ Shit. She’d done it again. How was this idiot so good at getting her to talk? 

Mr. Keane nodded, wrinkling his nose. “Yeah, Tom told me Brad had something to do with it. A lot of other kids have had problems with him too.” Wait, so Mr. Keane had been a counselor before, and Steph had just somehow never seen him? “I know I’m not supposed to advocate for punching people who annoy you, but I will say there’s worse people to hit. Still shouldn’t do it, though.”

Steph’s eyes narrowed. That she recognized as bait—Mr. Houston had clearly told Mr. Keane what had happened, and he was getting it wrong on purpose to trick her into saying what really happened. Well, two could play at that game. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time someone harasses me and my friends,” she said mildly. “So is that why I’m being punished and Brad is getting off scot free?”

Mr. Keane blinked. “Oh. I heard he was sent to the principal’s office.”

“So you do know what happened.”

“Well—yes, Mr. Houston gave me a summary.”

“So why are you asking me?”

“I figured you’d want to give your side of the story,” Mr. Keane said. 

“Well, I don’t,” Steph said shortly. 

Mr. Keane gave her an obnoxiously sympathetic look. “Stephanie, I’m not here to get you in trouble. Truth be told—yeah, Tom did tell me what happened in class, including some worrying things about your attitude towards yourself…”

Steph tuned out the rest of whatever Mr. Keane was saying. This guy wasn’t even entertaining—just weird and preachy. She scanned him for insecurities, looking for whichever one most likely to make him kick her out when she poked it. Calling him fat would be hypocritical. Calling him stupid was inaccurate. She couldn’t even claim that he didn’t really care about helping her—not because she thought he did, but because she had no real evidence besides a gut feeling. Steph chewed her lip. Most counselors had shown their cards this far into the session. She might just have to give him the silent treatment—

And then, like a gift from G-d, she remembered where she’d seen him before. She snapped her fingers. “ You’re Mr. No Bitches!”

Mr. Keane stopped mid-sentence. “What?” He didn’t even look offended by the comment—just baffled. “I—I’m sorry, I don’t follow you?”

Bingo. “Oh, it was just that you looked familiar, and I was trying to remember where I saw you before, and I just did!” Steph said flippantly, as if she hadn’t just insulted him. It always made them angrier when she didn’t know what she did wrong. “Miss Retros! You know, because you’re always hitting on Miss Retro and she turns you down every time?  And it’s like, dude, give up already! She doesn’t like you back! That’s why we call you Mr. No Bitches.”

Steph smiled innocently. Mr. Keane opened and closed his mouth a few times, the briefest flicker of genuine hurt crossing his face before vanishing. “I…wasn’t aware people called me that.”

For the most part, they didn’t—Steph had only ever heard it when she tagged along to Miss Retros with the football team after a game. It wasn’t like he was the topic of all their gossip sessions. But if he thought he was, she had a better chance of getting out of here. “It doesn’t matter. You were saying?” Steph said. 

“…Uh…y’know, I think I lost my train of thought,” Mr. Keane said sharply. “Look, Steph, if you really don’t want to tell anyone what happened from your perspective, that’s your right. I can’t say it’s a good idea, but I’m not gonna waterboard it out of you either. I’m trying to figure out what happened and how I can help you, not get you in trouble. So either we can keep talking, or we can just say you don’t want my help right now. How does that sound?”

G-d, this guy was up his own ass. She’d insulted him to his face, and he was still going on about “helping”? “If I say I don’t want any help, do I get to leave?” Steph asked.

“I don’t believe so. Technically, this is a disciplinary action.”

Steph raised an eyebrow. “Do you really wanna spend the rest of your lunch break with me?”

Mr. Keane made a strange face, his mouth set in a line but his eyes oddly soft. “How about this. I won’t bother you, and when we’re both done eating, let’s say I let you out a little early. Deal?”

“Deal,” Steph said. She still didn’t trust the guy not to trick her into spilling, though, so she decided right then and there that she wasn’t gonna say another word. She started peeling her other orange, the sound of tearing fruit the only sound breaking the silence. It was gonna be a long hour.

Chapter Text

Steph applied a thick layer of mascara to her eyelashes with a shaky hand, and then, finally, she was done. She pulled back from the mirror to inspect her final look—she’d gone for a sort of school spirit thing, with blue and silver eyeshadow, lipstick that leaned harder towards purple than red, and winged eyeliner (which was a pretty clever pun, in her opinion). She didn’t actually have any of the overpriced school jerseys or t-shirts, so she had settled for dark blue jeans, a white t-shirt with blue embroidered flowers on the pocket, and a jean jacket, loose enough to fit over her cast. She couldn’t do much about her hair, since her cast made it hard to style and harder to wash, so she settled for covering her head with a navy blue beanie. Hopefully nobody would notice how greasy it was. 

Taking one last moment to inspect herself in the mirror, Steph finally determined her look was good enough and stepped out into the hall. The house was dead silent. As always, Steph found herself stepping more quietly to match. She peered down the stairs into the bright, empty living room, listening. No signs of life—either Miss Tessburger had (finally) gone home for the night or she was up in her dad’s office. She descended the stairs, pulling her phone out of her pocket to call for an Uber as she walked to the garage door.

“And where do you think you’re going, Stephanie?”

Fuuuck. Seated on the black leather couch—the one that you couldn’t really see from the stairs—was her dad, newspaper in hand. He idly turned the page, sparing a glance up at her before returning to reading. Steph knew better than to think he was asking the question for no reason, though.

“Uh, the game? Obviously,” Steph said. The garage door was a few feet away. She could have easily walked out and left her dad on the couch, but they both knew that wasn’t an option.

Her dad gingerly folded his paper, placed it on the coffee table, and patted the shiny black cushion next to him. “Sit.”

Steph put her phone in her pocket. She walked over to the sofa and sat.

“So, I got an interesting phone call from the school today.” 

Steph’s stomach turned. She knew she should have just taken detention, or lied better in counseling. At least then she could have hidden what she did, if not that she did something. But she hasn’t, and now that idiot Mr. No Bitches must have ratted her out to her dad, like he thought it would fucking help. Steph could feel her dad’s eyes burning into her, but if she looked now she’d lose the only speck of composure she had. She folded her hands in her lap, watching herself lace and unlace her fingers. “Oh, really?” 

“Yes, really. Do you have any idea what it might have been about?”

“You’re the one who got the call. Maybe you should have listened better.”

Her dad drew in a sharp breath. Steph froze like a rabbit that had just spotted a big dog. “I’ll give you another chance, Stephanie. What do you think the school called me about?”

If Steph had known her dad would find out about the fight, she could’ve thought of a better strategy. As it stood, though, he left her all of three seconds to decide how to respond. “…I got in a fight,” she admitted. “There, you happy? Mr. Houston broke it up before anyone could get hurt anyway.”

Her dad sighed heavily. “You know what, Stephanie? I’m actually not happy,” he said. “The mayor’s daughter, punching another student in the middle of class—it’s not exactly a good look, is it?”

“You weren’t there. You don’t know what it looked like.” 

“Oh, I don’t?” her dad said. “Spin me a yarn, Stephanie. Convince me that you were in the right.”

“Okay, well, I didn’t punch him, first of all. I pushed him.”

“Oh, wow. I changed my mind, that’s much better. You only pushed him.”

Steph bit back a surge of impotent anger, rising like bile in her throat. “It wasn’t like I was starting a fight for no reason! He basically called me a slut, just ‘cause I wouldn’t go to homecoming with him!”

Her dad sighed. “Well, I hate to tell you this, Stephanie, but this is why I try to stop you from going to parties all the time.”

Steph felt tears prick her eyes. “Oh, what, so it’s my fault he was harassing me?”

Her dad sighed deeply. “Sweetie, that’s not what I meant,” he said. “C’mere.” He wrapped a bony arm around her shoulders, turning her torso towards him and pulling her in. She let herself be hugged. “Of course it wasn’t your fault that he did that,” he said, rubbing soothing circles on her back. “Brad sounds like an absolutely repulsive person to be around…but at the same time, there is a reason why he asked you and not any other girl in the school. These things happen—sad but true—which is why we need to protect ourselves.”

“I did,” Steph said in a small voice. “I only pushed him because—“

“You pushed him, and it made you look like the bad guy. And looking like the bad guy is much worse than being the bad guy.”

“Well what was I supposed to do?” Steph griped. “He came up to me, and he wouldn’t leave, and he called Hannah a—an idiot.”

Her dad pulled back from the hug, eyebrows knitting together. “Who the hell is Hannah?”

Steph felt her face heat up. “A girl in my shop class. She stood up for me—“

“And you still pushed Brad?” Steph kept her mouth shut. Her dad sighed so low it was almost a growl, slapping the coffee table hard. “Dammit, Stephanie, you were so close to coming out on top. You already had people on your side and you went and ruined it by resorting to violence. I hope this ‘Hannah’ likes you enough to make up for the esteem you lost in everyone else’s eyes.”

“Can I go to the game now?” Steph snapped. 

“Oh, no. You’re grounded.”

“What?” 

Her dad casually picked up his newspaper, opening it to the center spread. “You got into a fight at school. Therefore, you are grounded from going to the game or to homecoming,” he said, as if he was being perfectly logical. “Besides, if your altercation with Brad was any indication, it’s not like you have a date to disappoint.”

“But I promised Brenda and Stacy I would go with them!”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you got into a fight, then.”

Steph stood up, pacing the living room and pulling at her hair. How was she supposed to know that her dad would flip out and do something totally irrational? “You can’t do this to me,” she said. “I already bought the tickets!”

“Oh no,” her dad said dryly. “I guess you’ll just have to waste my money that I spent on you.”

“Well, what about the dress?”

“There will be other events to wear it at.”

Knowing her father, he probably meant one of his stupid mayoral things. Ugh. “Yeah, but wouldn’t it look weird if the mayor’s daughter didn’t come to the big game?” Steph tried. “It’ll basically be like saying I want Clivesdale to win.”

Her dad paused his reading, eyes momentarily unfocusing from the words on the paper. “Well, we wouldn’t want anyone to assume that.”

Yes! She had an in! “Right! And if they think I like Clivesdale, well, I had to get that from somewhere, right?”

Her dad’s forehead wrinkled, then relaxed. “Who would notice if you weren’t there?” he mused.

“Uh, Brenda and Stacy,” Steph said. “I always go to the games to cheer them on. Plus, I’m really popular. People would be looking out for me.”

Her dad snorted. “Do the cheerleaders need cheerleaders too nowadays?”

Steph fought the urge to roll her eyes—she couldn’t trip this close to the end. “No, Dad, I do it because they’re my friends.”

Her dad rubbed the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “Fine. You can go to the game. Not the dance, just the game. And I’m calling an Uber to pick you up as soon as it’s over, and I swear to G-d if you make me waste my money—“

But Steph was already on her way out the door. “Right, thanks Daddy!” she called over her shoulder.

“Don’t call me that!”

Steph slammed the garage door. She called an Uber, then texted her friends—

You: hey guys im gonna be a little late

You: my fucking idiot dad wanted to yell at me

Brenda 💖: boooooo

Brenda 💖: at ur dad not at u

Brenda 💖: when will u be here?

You: like 7:40?

Brenda 💖: yeesh

You: but I WILL be there

Steph put her phone away. She pressed the button on the wall to open the garage door, then ducked under it as it was opening to stand in the cool night air.

Chapter Text

Steph arrived at the edge of the football field with fifteen minutes to spare until the game started. She thanked her driver, then practically threw herself out of the car and onto the sidewalk. The big stadium lights had turned the dark, cloudy sky pale yellow, and she could already hear the roar of the excited crowd from the street. Steph briefly considered trying to hop the chain-link fence and squeeze between the bleachers to get into the stadium faster, but then decided against it. Even without a broken hand, she doubted she could haul her ass over the six-foot barrier and let herself down safely on the other side. Instead, she jogged around the field, one hand in her pocket to make sure her printed jpeg of a ticket didn’t magically disappear and her other arm across her boobs to keep them from giving her a black eye. 

Finally, she rounded the corner and found the entrance. Nobody else was in line this close to the start of the game, so she walked right up to the ticket taker, a dead-eyed teenager who she was pretty sure had never even gone to Hatchetfield High. “Hello may I see your ticket,” he said, with the cadence of someone who had repeated that phrase until it no longer sounded like language. Steph gave him her ticket. He did not even look at it. “Alright have a good time,” he said monotonously.

“Thanks, man,” Steph said, and dashed inside. 

By then, she only had about ten minutes until the start of the game. The cheer squad was already lined up along the side of the field, chanting and waving their pom-poms while Zeke the Fightin’ Nighthawk did something that was probably supposed to be cartwheels. In reality, he half-turned, then collapsed in a heap of faux-fur on the ground, clinging to his mascot head. Brenda was too absorbed in her cheer routine for Steph to catch her eye, but Stacy saw her and waved, her pom-poms rustling and flashing under the bright lights. I’ll see you after the game, Steph mouthed. She wasn’t sure if Stacy could tell what she was saying, but it didn’t really matter. Since she hadn’t managed to catch them before their pre-game crowdwork, they knew she’d be there as soon as the game ended.

Steph climbed the shaky metal staircase into the stands, muscling past her classmates and their merch-clad families. She found a seat in the center of one of the lower seats—far too low to get a good view of the game, but the perfect seat to watch the Hatchetfield High cheer squad. And the Clivesdale cheer squad across the field, she supposed. But fuck ‘em.

“Alright alright alright!” The eighties rock that had been playing on the speakers abruptly cut out, replaced by the tinny voice of whichever underclassman had volunteered to be the announcer. “It’s eight PM, you know what that means! It’s time to show those scum-sucking bastards over in Clivesdale who’s boss! Go Nighthawks!” The crowd whooped and cheered. Across the field, a few of the younger-looking Chemist cheerleaders momentarily paused their stretching, looking back and forth at each other in bewilderment. “Now, without further ado, introducing our home team, the Hatchetfield High Nighthawks!”

The stadium erupted into cheers. Confetti cannons spilled streamers of blue, white, and yellow crepe paper into the sky. A pack of massive, padded, roaring teenagers thundered onto the field, noticeably lagging behind the largest, loudest, most padded player of them all. Max (she couldn’t make out anyone’s features under their uniforms, but come on, it was obviously Max) sprinted directly to the center of the field. The bright lights shone directly on him as he flexed then tilted his head back and howled like a wolf. “Let’s go Nighthawks!” he bellowed, his voice echoing into the empty night. Steph gave the required cheer as the rest of the football team joined him. The coach jogged up to lure Max into the actual quarterback starting position.

“And, coming all the way from across the Nantucket Bridge to make our beautiful town uglier, it’s the Clivesdale Chemists!”

The Chemists, dressed in white uniforms with bright green squad numbers, jogged onto the field with similar bravado. The crowd erupted in boos, hisses, and shouts of rage. Steph heard someone behind her yell “fuck you, bastards! We’re gonna kill your whole families!” so loudly that their voice cracked halfway through. A few of the Clivesdale players stumbled, their steps slowing down and their heads swiveling warily. You could always tell who was new to the team by who reacted to Hatchetfield’s threats—the students who had been playing a year or more were mostly used to it.

The referee—Steph was pretty sure they drove him in from further inland just to keep parents from protesting—brought out the football for the first kickoff, and then the game was on. Steph didn’t pay a ton of attention to the game. She didn’t know a ton about football, but as far as she could tell neither of the teams were any good. Brenda had shown Steph a cheer she’d written for when the Nighthawks made a touchdown, and although she’d watched Brenda and Stacy practice it dozens of times, she didn’t see it once during the game itself. At least the Chemists also sucked ass. She didn’t see their cheer squad celebrating much either. 

The only time Steph pulled herself out of her stupor was halftime, of course. Brenda and Stacy hadn’t helped choreograph it, but they had worked hard to learn the squad’s halftime routine, and they deserved an attentive audience. Steph cheered louder for Brenda’s backflips and Stacy’s leaps than for the actual game itself. And when the lifters threw Stacy so high up she was almost at eye level with Steph, she leapt to her feet and clapped.

One of the moms sitting in front of her turned around to glare at her. “What are you doing?”

Steph rolled her eyes, slumping back into her seat. “It’s called school spirit. Ever heard of it?”

The rest of the game passed without note. Clivesdale beat out Hatchetfield by a few points (probably because they cheated). Their cheer squad did a chant about how they were going to “bury the hatchet” which Steph refused to admit was clever. And then the game was over. “And the victor is … the Clivesdale Chemists. Again,” the announcer sighed over the loudspeaker. “Remember to get your merch on the way out, if you even still want it. Why did I even volunteer for this gig? The college admissions offices aren’t gonna be impressed.”

Even as he was talking, people were starting to get up from the stands, crowding towards the exit of the stadium like cattle. Steph waited for a gap in the herd, then slotted herself in, slipping out to meet the cheerleaders as they headed to the locker room. “Brenda! Stacy! Hey!” she called, jogging up to the group. 

Her friends stopped in their tracks, breaking away from the rest of the squad and running over. ”Hey girl!” Brenda yelled, pulling her into a loving but slightly damp hug. 

“Hi,” Steph said. She rested her head on Brenda’s chest for a little while longer before pulling back. “You guys were awesome.”

“I know, right?” Stacy was literally jumping for joy, her arms drawn up close to her chest and her hair stuck to her face with sweat. “Did you see when they threw me way high?”

“Yeah, how could I miss it?” Steph gave Stacy’s shoulder a friendly shove. “I still don’t know how you don’t totally freak out.”

Stacy cocked her head. “Why would I? They have people to catch me.”

“Yeah, Steph, not everyone is scared of being on the second story,” Brenda laughed.

“Being on the second story is different from actively falling, but—” Steph shut up as her phone pinged. She’d had it on silent, so if she got the notification anyway, there was only one person it could possibly be. “Ugh, one second. My dad is bugging me,” she said, and opened up her Messages app.

Daddy 🥰: Your Uber is here

Daddy 🥰: Come home right now

You: there’s a huge crowd trying to get out

You: ill be there in a second

Daddy 🥰: As soon as you are in the car, send me a photo

You: don’t u twust me 🥺

Daddy 🥰: No, I do not “twust” you.

Daddy 🥰: We made an agreement that you would come back the moment the game ended, and it has

You: fineeeeeee just wait a sec

Steph put her phone away. “Oh, right, that reminds me. My dad says I can’t go to Homecoming. He tried to keep me from going to the game, too, but I changed his mind.”

Neither Brenda nor Stacy looked surprised. “Boo,” Brenda said. “What is it this time?”

“He got pissed that I pushed Brad.”

“What?” Stacy yelped. “But he, like, totally deserved it!”

“Yeah, that’s what I said! But he was like, ‘if you didn’t have a reputation for yourself, he wouldn’t have wanted to ask you out in the first place’. Which, like, maybe, but that doesn’t help me a lot when I do have a reputation. Whatever that means.”

Brenda huffed. “Dude, your dad’s such a fuckin’ creep,” she said. “Like, why does he care so hard about his daughter’s sex life? I wouldn’t be thinking that much about who my kid was boning. Y’know, if I had any.”

Steph rolled her eyes. “Come on, it’s not like that. He’s not jealous or anything—G-d, imagine how that would look on the polls. He’s just … he wants me to look like a good kid, at least until he gets re-elected. It’s not his fault Brad couldn’t wait another month to perv on me. Once election season dies down, he’ll be more normal, I’m sure.”

Brenda raised her eyebrows. “Sure, Steph.”

Steph’s hands clenched into fists. “What? You got something else to say about my dad?” she snapped.

“Well, it’s like, why does he care about the election more than his daughter being sexually harassed?”

“Because that’s literally his job.”

“I’m just saying, if he really cared about keeping you safe, he would have pushed Brad himself.”

Steph felt her face heat up, tears pricking at her eyes. “Oh, what, so my dad doesn’t love me because—”

“Shut up!” Stacy yelled. Steph and Brenda turned to stare at her. She stared back at them, wide-eyed, as if shocked by her own shout. “Uh. Brenda, not everyone’s dad is as cool as yours. Steph, Brenda’s only saying that stuff about your dad because she thought it’d make you feel better. Cool?”

Steph sighed, relaxing her hands. “Cool,” she said flatly, mostly because she didn’t want to keep fighting.

“Sure. Whatever,” said Brenda. “But you are at least gonna sneak out, right?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Steph snorted. “I’ll have to come late, though, ‘cause he’ll definitely be on the lookout.”

“Aww, no!” Stacy said. “Couldn’t we, like, distract him so you can sneak out?”

“It’d have to be a pretty good distraction,” Steph said. “I mean, he literally banned me from the dance today. He won’t just forget that by tomorrow.”

“Okay, so, like, what would distract him?”

“If he thought his campaign was in danger,” Steph answered instantly. “Or if he had an opportunity to boast about his campaign. Or just talk about himself at all, really.”

“Oh!” Brenda said. “I bet I could convince Ash to prank call him. He could pretend to be an interviewer and get him talking long enough for you to get out.”

Steph cocked her head. “Isn’t your brother, like, thirteen?”

“Aw, yeah, I guess,” Brenda said. “I dunno who else we could force to do it, though.”

“Oh!” Stacy said. “What about Toby?”

Steph cocked her head. “The school newspaper guy?”

“Yeah! He, like, totally has a crush on me. If I told him to prank call the mayor, he’d totally do it. I wouldn’t even have to, like, promise to do anything for him! Plus, he interviews people for the school paper all the time, so he’d be able to string him on for way longer!”

“Oh,” Steph said. “Yeah, he’d be great for it.” Stacy beamed. It did make Steph feel a little uncomfortable that Stace was so willing to manipulate some random guy’s feelings just for her, but also, who was she to judge? She had been doing the same thing to Pete, at least at first. “But what if he checked up on me later? My dad, I mean. He’d realize I wasn’t in my room.”

“So?” Brenda said. “What’s he gonna do, barge into Hoco and drag you home?”
The image of her dad doing just that flashed in Steph’s mind—her dad’s perfectly calm face as he grabbed her, the chatter of happy students suddenly quieting as they stared at her helpless form, the much harsher, better-enforced punishment he’d give her after. “Nah,” Steph said. “But, y’know, the less he knows, the less trouble I’ll be in later.”

“I don’t think even Toby could keep him distracted for the entire dance…” Stacy said.

“Oh!” Steph snapped her fingers. “I could fake sick! Like, a twenty-four-hour flu or something. That way he’d leave me alone all day, and it wouldn’t seem weird that I’m not ‘leaving my room’,” she said, winking. “And then I wouldn’t even have to wait until after the dance, because he wouldn’t want to check on me and risk getting sick this close to election day!”

“Awesome! I’ll go bug Toby,” Stacy said, and started off towards the locker rooms.

Brenda gave Steph a weird look, but didn’t object. “See you at the dance, then.”

“Yeah, see you.” 

In the time they had spent talking, the crowd at the exit had mostly cleared. Steph walked over towards the street, texting her dad on the way.

You: what’s the car look like btw

Daddy 🥰: Black Mazda, license plate starts with an F

Steph looked up. One of the few cars parked on the block fit that description, so she opened the door. “You’re an Uber driver, right?”

“Yep.”

“What’s my name?”

“Stephanie Lauter.”

She got in. As the car pulled away, Steph took a selfie with her poutiest face and sent it to her dad.

You: evidence_79_01.img

You: see I was telling the truth

You: not trying to run away or sntything

Daddy 🥰: Very good. I’ll see you at home.

Daddy 🥰: Is my name in your phone still Daddy?

You: no

Daddy 🥰: We’ll see about that.

You: im super tired gonna rest my eyes byeeeeeeeeeee

Steph wasn’t entirely lying—she was tired, even if that wasn’t why she wanted to end the conversation. She quickly changed her dad’s contact from “Daddy” to “Father”, but left the emoji, just to piss him off. Then, she put her phone in her pocket and watched the streetlights pass.

Chapter Text

Faking sick was both surprisingly easy and surprisingly fun. Steph lay in bed for an extra couple of hours, then wrapped herself in a blanket and went to go get breakfast (or, at this point, lunch). She shuffled slowly and carefully down the stairs (the trailing blanket made that part of her charade easy, at least), squinting at the bright lights and resting her head on the kitchen island the moment she sat down. “Dad, can you turn up the heat?” she called out weakly, putting just a hint of a rasp into her voice. “I’m freezing.”

“What am I, your servant?” her dad called from the sofa. “Go do it yourself.” 

“But I’m tired,” Steph whined. She actually wasn’t—between passing out pretty soon after she got home from the game and sleeping in to sell the illusion of being sick, she had slept better last night than she had all month—maybe since she first downloaded Twitter. Shit, she should have made herself stay up longer! The bags under her eyes would have really sold the lie. But there was no time to fix her error now—she’d just have to live with her current situation.

Her dad sighed. “How can you be tired? You slept in until 1PM.” 

“I dunno. I just don’t feel super good.” 

They were both silent for a while after that. She rested her head back on the cold marble countertop, wrapping her cozy blanket around herself. Eventually, she heard her dad stand up from the couch, walking up next to her. He hesitantly extended a hand towards her forehead, then evidently thought better of it and dropped it to his side. Steph internally sighed with relief. Thank G-d for her dad’s squeamishness about germs—if he’d touched her, he’d have known she was faking her fever. “Aren’t you going to have anything to eat?” he said, his voice tinged with a surprising amount of worry.

Steph’s stomach was tearing itself apart with hunger—the last time she’d eaten was dinner the previous day, and now it was well past noon. But if she were sick, she’d have no appetite, so she said, “I dunno. My stomach feels weird.”

“That’s because you didn’t eat breakfast,” her dad said. “Really, Stephanie, you ruin so many things for yourself by refusing to wake up at a reasonable time.” But he walked over to the pantry and got out a can of soup for her anyway, emptying the gloppy concentrate into a bowl and topping it with water. “If you really feel so bad, you can go to your room and lie down.”

“Mhm.” Steph slid off her stool and hobbled back up the stairs. As soon as she was out of sight, she picked up her pace, the hum of the microwave covering up her footsteps. She swaddled herself in her blankets, even though the heat was more sweltering than cozy. Once her dad was gone, she could throw the covers off again.

A few minutes later, her door creaked open again. Her dad came in, balancing a bowl of soup in his hands as he stepped over piles of discarded laundry. “Goodness, Steph. No wonder you’re sick. When was the last time you had some fresh air in here?”

“Fresh air made me sick in the first place,” Steph sniped with entirely too much energy. Her dad gave her a strange look as he set the soup bowl down on her nightstand. “I think I caught a cold at the game.”

“Well, feel better soon. You wouldn’t want to have to study at home this Monday.”

Steph felt a jolt go through her heart. For a split second—before she realized he hadn’t said anything to imply it—she thought he knew about Pete. But how could he? She’d never told him she was studying with someone, and she’d made sure that Miss Tessburger never had a reason to come inside the library and see him. Not that her dad could really object to her studying with Peter—he definitely had the best chance of helping her raise her grades, and he was much too lame to get her into any kind of trouble, especially since Pete wanted to hide their little arrangement too. And yet, somehow, Steph subconsciously knew to group her dad with Max as people who absolutely could never know who she was studying with.

Steph sat up under the guise of dragging her soup bowl towards herself. Really, she just wanted a better look at her dad’s face. “What?” she said, putting on a dazed expression. If he thought she was just confused, he’d be more likely to tell her the truth.

Her dad smiled tightly, looking at her with hard eyes. “It just seems very important to you to study at the library on Mondays and Wednesdays,” he said. “You have a perfectly good desk in your room, and you certainly have nothing better to do any other day of the week. Why limit yourself?”

“I can’t study at home.” Steph rolled her eyes. “I’d get distracted. And I can’t study every day because I’d get tired and give up. You should be grateful I even bothered.”

“Indeed,” her dad said, pensively nodding and staring off into the middle distance. “Sometimes I wonder why you do bother.”

Before Steph could ask what the fuck that meant, her dad left, shutting the door and cutting off the conversation in one slam.

Besides that little heart attack, faking sick wasn’t too bad. Steph ate her soup, then lay in bed scrolling through Twitter, then Tumblr, then Instagram, then Twitter again, which is what she probably would have done anyway. The only difference was that she couldn’t exactly sneak down for a snack when she was pretending to be sick. The soup was all she had to eat all day, and it wasn’t exactly a high-calorie food. By the time night fell, Steph couldn’t read the words on her phone screen. All she could focus on was the gnawing in her stomach. At least she could use today as proof that starving herself wouldn’t make her any skinnier. 

Steph was startled out of her haze by a message popping up at the top of her screen. 

Stace 💘 : get ready 😉

Steph reacted with a thumbs up, then silently crept out of bed. She fluffed up her blankets, curling them up so that at the briefest glance they would look like her sleeping body—and she knew the briefest glance was all her dad would take. Wouldn’t want to get sick this close to the election, after all. Steph then opened her closet, pushing aside hangers laden with flannel tops to find the clothes she’d hidden in the back last night. She grabbed a bra, her red, flouncy homecoming dress, and her shoes—a pair of white lace-up boots that were equal parts grunge and dressy. Slinging the dress and bra over her arm and clutching the shoes by the laces, she crept to the door in her socked feet. She pressed her ear to the wood, holding her breath. 

Heavy footsteps came thudding up the stairs. “No, yes, this is a good time,” her dad was saying, clearly out of breath. “I can absolutely give you an interview, just let me get to my office—” She heard a lock click, a door open, then slam. Thank G-d her dad never took calls where someone else could overhear him. It made it much easier not to be overheard by him.

Steph waited for a few more moments just to be safe, then slowly turned the doorknob and slipped out. She held her breath and padded down the hall towards the bathroom, stopping to grab her makeup bag, plus a brand-new red lipstick to match her dress. Then, she slipped down the stairs and out the front door.

The backdoor of the house hadn’t been unlocked in years, but she’d also learned years ago that walking down the street was too risky. Under the streetlights, anyone could look out their window and report her sneakery to her dad. No, it was much safer to put her shoes on at the top of the stairs, then sneak around the house, hugging the wall to keep out of sight from the second-floor windows, until she got to the shadowed backyard. There were few fences in this part of Pinebrook—nobody was letting their private-school kids or designer dogs run around wild in their perfectly manicured lawns, after all—so Steph crossed through the yard behind theirs and out onto the street. 

Brenda’s white Jeep was already idling in the street. Steph darted over and pulled the door open, throwing herself sideways into the backseat. “Hi girls!” she said.

“OMG hi!” Brenda and Stacy cried in unison, twisting around to grin at her. They were already dressed and made up for Homecoming—Brenda in a tight, metallic teal party dress with matching eyeliner, and Stacy in a poofy seafoam green dress that looked like a chopped-off ball gown.

Steph slammed the door, pulling herself into a vague sitting position. “Alright, let’s get this party started!”

As Brenda started driving towards the school, Stacy said, “don’t get the party started too early. You’re still in your pajamas.”

“Already on it,” Steph said. She ducked so that she was out of view of the windows, then stripped down. “I’ll need to do my makeup in the bathroom or something,” she said as she clipped on her bra. “Ugh, and my hair. I shoulda broken my hand a few weeks earlier, then I’d already be out of this cast.”

“Your hair looks fine,” Brenda said. “You can hardly tell you haven’t washed it!”

Steph smiled, rolling her eyes. “Thanks, Brenda,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to make it better, though. I’ve just been brushing the grease through it for, like, a month.”

“That’s what princesses did in medieval times,” Stacy said.

“Well, if it’s good enough for princesses, I guess it’ll have to be good enough for me,” Steph said. She pulled her dress over her head, wiggling in her seat as she stretched the elastic over her body. Since her dad had insisted that Miss Tessburger take her out to buy it, Steph’s homecoming dress wasn’t exactly her usual style—ruffly and relatively shapeless, with the longest skirt possible that could still be called cocktail-length—but at least her chaperone hadn’t made her get one of the awful high-necked old lady dresses. Really, she was just lucky that there wasn’t anything she couldn’t look good in. Not everyone was as pretty as she was.

A few minutes later, they rolled up outside the school gym. The boxy brick building looked as dull as ever, but bright neon lights spilled out of the small, high windows and balloon-wreathed front door. Students scurried outside, groups of friends or pairs of lovebirds rushing into the dance.

“Y’all wanna get out here?” Brenda asked. “Go do Steph’s makeup, I’ll park and meet you out front and we can go in together.”

“Sounds good to me,” Steph said. Stacy answered by stepping out of the car. Her high heels clacked on the ground. Steph made sure that her dress was covering her ass, then followed her out. “See you soon!”

Brenda accelerated away. Steph ducked her head, and she and Stacy walked away from the glowing door and around to the back of the gym—couldn’t let anybody see her without makeup. They slipped through the back door and into the girls’ locker room, which was thankfully empty.

“Gimme a second,” Steph said. She rustled around in her makeup bag, lining up her foundation, concealer, eyeliner, lipstick, mascara on the cracked, yellowed sink, and started on her routine. She watched Stacy in the mirror as she touched up her own makeup, slicking another layer of sticky gloss on her lips.

“Hey, Steph?” Stacy said eventually.

“Mhm?” Steph said.

“Do you think it’s weird that we don’t have dates for Homecoming?”

“Nope,” Steph said. She watched herself in the mirror as she brushed mascara over her lashes. 

“Oh,” said Stacy.

Steph put down her mascara wand. She watched Stacy apply another superfluous coat of gloss. “Why would it be weird?”

“Well, because all the other girls on the cheer squad got dates. And the girls’ basketball team. Or at least they tried to.”

“Not Brenda,” Steph said. “We’re going solo in solidarity with her, remember?”

“Yeah, but did you, like, want a date?”

Steph pursed her lips. She watched herself in the mirror, like she might be able to read her own expression and come up with an answer. She was tempted to say yes—after all, she’d gotten a date to every dance she’d ever been to in high school, and most of the middle school dances too. But it hadn’t exactly been a massive sacrifice to go alone with Brenda and Stacy. She hadn’t been hoping for anyone specific to ask her out, and honestly, all the guys she had gone with before had kind of been the same. A little awkward dancing, a lot of chatting and sipping spiked punch, and depending on the impression the guy made, anything from fondling to full-on sex. It was fun, sure, but go out with one jock and you’d kind of gone out with them all. Steph had had more fun dating the more alternative guys from the smoke club, but they weren’t exactly popular, so she couldn’t take them to school dances without getting weird looks. And anyone even less popular than the stoners and metalheads was so out of the question it wasn’t even funny, so— 

“Nah,” she said. “I like you and Brenda much better than any of the lame guys at this school.”

Stacy grinned, her posture visibly relaxing. “Okay, cool,” she said. She popped her lips, then wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, my lips feel so gross.” 

She grabbed a handful of paper towels. Steph snorted. “Oh no. Who could have predicted that?”

After Stacy had cleaned herself up, she and Steph snuck back out to the front of the gym. Brenda stood on the sidewalk, tapping her high heel on the ground. “Oh, there you are! I thought you were gonna take a million years,” she said. “C’mon, let’s go in, I’m dying for a drink.”

“Oh G-d, me too,” Steph sighed. And food—the moment she remembered food existed, the hunger pangs came back with full force. She grabbed Stacy and Brenda’s hands and practically dragged them inside. Thank G-d the snack table was near the front. Steph grabbed a plate and started loading it up with everything—chips, cookies, soggy fruit from the punch bowl. So what if it wasn’t the healthiest? It was better than eating nothing but a can of soup all day, especially since someone was definitely gonna offer to spike her punch sometime soon.

“Oh hey, you guys came!” Steph looked up from her plate (only with her eyes—she was still holding it close to her mouth so she could shovel food in) to see Jason jogging over to them. “We were worried you dipped! Kyle and me, I mean.” He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. Kyle was lingering a respectful distance from the snack table, but he waved at them, brightening when he saw the three girls.

Brenda peered over Jason’s shoulder and waved back at Kyle like a princess, only moving her fingers. Even across the room, Steph caught him blushing. “What about Max?” Brenda asked Jason, but she wasn’t looking at him. 

“He’s here too,” Jason said. 

“Right,” Brenda said. “Well, anyway, we had to help Steph escape the wicked wizard’s lair. But we’re here now!”

“The wicked wizard’s lair… that’s rad,” Jason mused. “Not that Steph got trapped, but like, that you helped her. The wicked wizard is her dad, right?”

“Mhm,” Steph said through a mouthful of cookies. She swallowed, then added, “Stace, tell him how you helped.”

“Oh, it was so funny. You know, like, how I used to be on the school newspaper and one of the guys totally had a crush on me? Well, we needed a distraction to get Steph out, so I went to him and I was like, ‘hey, you should totally prank call the mayor’, and he didn’t even ask questions, or complain when I told him what to do! I love being hot.”

“Guys, I think I’m gonna hit the dance floor,” Brenda said. She brushed past Stacy and Jason and walked out into the center of the gym. She wasn’t exactly walking towards Kyle, but she wasn’t walking away from him either, and she was looking at him the whole time. Kyle perked up, loping onto the floor and starting to dance as the song changed. Across the room from each other, Brenda and Kyle danced to the same beat, matching smiles growing on their faces.

Stacy pointedly turned back to Jason. “Anyway, I’m probably gonna have to listen to him talk about it later, but it’ll be okay because it’s always really funny when Mayor Lauter gets embarrassed.”

“Right…” Jason said. “I gotta… go…”

He turned around and walked swiftly back into the crowd. Stacy huffed, her face crumpling like she’d just bitten a lemon. “What’s his deal?”

“I think he was weirded out that you were so excited about manipulating the newspaper guy.”

“Why? Hot people manipulate ugly people all the time. I’m just honest about it.”

Steph shrugged. “People say they like it when people are honest, but they’re usually lying.”

“Ironic,” Stacy said. 

They were silent for a while, standing against the wall and watching their classmates dance. Then, Stacy piped up again. “Steph, can I talk to you real quick?”

“Yeah, what’s up, girl?” 

Stacy silently took Steph’s hand and led her away from the snack table towards a much less populated area of the gym. “I’m mad at Brenda.”

“Oh,” Steph said.

“She said we would go as friends, and now look at her. She left us to go dance with Kyle.”

“Eh, yeah,” Steph said with a grimace. She looked back at the dance floor. Even in a crowd, Brenda was unmistakable—not bobbing or shuffling like the other students, but swaying and swooning to the music. It almost looked choreographed. “I think she woulda gone with him if not for, you know, Max.”

“That’s not what she said, though,” Stacy pouted. 

“Yeah…” Steph scanned the crowd for Kyle. He was not nearly as good at dancing as Brenda, but once Steph caught sight of him, she couldn’t lose him. His smile was magnetic. “It is pretty rude. But you still got me, right?” 

“Yeah…” Stacy didn’t look very convinced. “Come on. Let’s go dance.”

Steph threw out her plate and followed Stacy onto the dance floor. She would have to get away with some off-beat jumping and head-bobbing, but she’d rather embarrass herself than let Stacy feel like she was abandoning her too. Still, even as they moved to the music, she couldn’t take her eyes off Brenda and Kyle. For some reason, it made her wonder what Pete was doing tonight.

Chapter Text

“Here it is, boys. Drink it in.”

Pete slid out of the passenger side door of Richie's car and into the parking lot of the Lakeside Mall. Ruth had already run out in front of the two boys, opening her arms up to the darkening sky like she had found the lost city of El Dorado instead of a dying small town mall. It was dramatic, sure, but Pete couldn't say he wasn't excited too. Most of the time, Lakeside looked like a sad, dirty concrete box, its outside rotting as the stores inside shuttered one by one, but in the evening, the windows glittered with warm golden light. And with every Hatchetfield High student with even an ounce of social clout at Homecoming, tonight, the mall would be all theirs.

Or, well, all theirs and every young family in Hatchetfield's. Good enough. 

Richie slammed the driver's side door and walked around to meet his two friends. "So, game plan. I wanna go to Hot Topic first, then we can do whatever you guys want."

"How come you get to decide where we go first?" Ruth said, a stupid little smirk creeping up her face. There was nothing argumentative in her tone—she clearly just wanted to bug Richie, and she was succeeding. 

"Because I'm the one who drove here," he huffed, crossing his arms. "Besides, I ordered a very important piece of apparel and it came in a few weeks ago. I wouldn't want to keep the store waiting any longer."

"This is about your Miku binder, isn't it?"

"Shut up."

"Anyway, after that, I wanna go to Spencer's," Ruth said. "Pete, what about you?"

Pete shrugged. He didn't have a ton of spending money like Richie did, nor was he so determined to get a second-rate sex toy that he would save up his money for months like Ruth. He would have scoped out Toy Zone for legos, but it was definitely closed by now. Even if it wasn't, Mr. Pricely would be long gone for the day, and Lex, who seemed to be the only other person who worked there, scared him.

Anyway, the biggest reason he wanted to go to the mall was to spend time with his friends—and maybe to scrounge up a hint of that classic teenage experience. The mall was the territory of the rich and athletic popular kids most days of the year, but tonight, they would stalk it like hyenas picking over a kill left behind by the lions. That would have to be good enough.

"Can we hit the food court before everything closes?” Pete asked. “I wanna get one of those stupid big cinnamon rolls and chug the icing packet."

"Dude, you're gonna kill yourself with those," Richie said.

"But I'll die doing what I love!"

"Putting white cream in your mouth?" Ruth grinned.

Pete and Richie both sighed. Pete patted Ruth on her extremely curly head. "Yes, Ruth. Exactly that."

With their plan figured out, the three of them walked across the darkened parking lot and into the wide, deserted atrium of the Lakeside mall.

Even though it was barely past 6PM, most of the stores were shuttered for the night. The first floor was only populated with crumpled receipts and dead leaves falling off the potted plants they'd introduced to "spruce up the place". The dry fountain stood under the yellowed lights like a monument to a forgotten deity. Only the chatter echoing down from the food court on the top floor reminded Pete that this mall wasn't completely dead.

Richie immediately made a beeline for the escalators. The one going up was broken (again), so he just nudged aside the caution sign and started climbing. Ruth and Pete quickly followed.

"Look at us. We're real rebels here. Climbing up the escalator," Ruth said.

Richie shushed her. "Do you want to get caught?" he hissed.

The three of them looked around the empty mall, then burst into giggles. They were so far from rebellious it wasn't even funny. If they were rebels, they'd be here when all the popular kids were, never fearing being discovered going to a lame nerd store and getting mocked for the rest of the year or simply being beaten up. If they were rebels, they might be more popular in the first place. But as it stood, the most rebellious thing Pete had done was tutor Steph in math, science, and history. It was the geekiest way to break the rules, but in a way, it was braver than when the jocks skipped class to smoke weed. They wouldn't get in trouble for their bad behavior, even if they got caught. He would.

Totally worth it, though.

The three of them arrived at Hot Topic, where a solitary employee had already begun closing up shop. She slammed her hands down on the counter when she saw Richie, before putting on an obviously fake smile. "Hi, what do you want?"

"I—uh, I ordered...something...." Richie trailed off, ducking his head and stepping behind Ruth. She didn't do anything to hide him. She was too short.

The Hot Topic worker rolled her eyes. "What's your name?"

"Richard Lipschitz—no, wait, my dad ordered it for me, so it'd be under David—"

The Hot Topic lady ducked down under the counter, pulled out a flat, plastic-wrapped shape, and slapped it on the table.

"Yes, that's the one. Thank you," Richie said timidly.

"Good. Now get out," said the woman behind the counter. 

Richie grabbed his package and fled, Pete and Ruth following shortly on his heels. Behind them, the metal shutter of the Hot Topic slammed shut.

Richie ducked behind a potted plant and ripped open his package, revealing a black binder with Hatsune Miku's face printed on it. He sighed with relief, then folded it and put it in his bulky backpack. "Safe and sound. I should have just gotten it delivered to my house, though."

"Eh, it was nice in theory," Pete said. "Y'know, if you can't go shopping at an actual Hot Topic store, you can at least go pick it up."

"Yeah, and see the forbidden fruits of anime merch that I can't buy under the light of day," Richie sighed. "Man, how the fuck does a Hot Topic stay afloat when only popular kids can go to the mall without fear of retribution?" He lowered his voice. "Do you think it's money laundering?"

"I was gonna guess the smoke club, but money laundering is way more fun," Ruth said. "Can we go to Spencer's now?"

They went to Spencer's. Ruth cackled gleefully as she wormed her way into the back where the more erotically charged gifts were, and Richie disappeared in search of anything anime-related. Pete situated himself by a shelf full of various alcohol-themed or erotically-charged card games and busied himself reading the rules printed on the back of each box. He didn't drink, and the idea of doing anything sexual in front of the kind of people who played these types of games made him shudder, but still, the picture they painted was enticing. Maybe Pete would pick up a pack once he had something interesting to share on his turn.

Someone tapped Pete's back, and he yelped. "Hey. Look at this," Ruth said.

Pete turned to face his friend. "Jesus, you scared me." Then, he caught sight of what she was holding. "What is that?"

"Alien titty pillow!" Ruth announced gleefully. She held up a pillow shaped like a pair of enormous fuzzy green boobs, complete with purple nipples. "Feel it, it's so soft!"

Pete glanced around—nobody else in the store to see—and reached out to pet the pillow. He tried not to look like he was groping it, but there was kind of no other way to do it. "I dunno, it reminds me more of the Hulk—oh my G-d, you're right, that is soft."

"Because of the purple? I see it," Ruth said. "I'm gonna get it. It's only, like, forty bucks. By the way, have you stalked Steph's Twitter yet?"

"But that's like, all your—what?" Pete's brain ground to a halt as he tried to process what Ruth had said. "No, I haven't stalked Steph, I mean, I don't even have a Twitter! Why would you even think that?" He lowered his voice, leaning in. "Am I, like, acting like a creep?"

Ruth shrugged. "Dude, I am not the best person to ask that. But no, I only thought about it because I saw a huge titty pillow, and Steph has huge titties. But have you?"

"No!"

"That's a shame. You can totally learn a lot about people by stalking their Twitter. And then you can use it to figure out what you're gonna say to them before you even talk!"

"Steph and I are already talking, though."

"There's still always more to learn! You can never be too prepared," Ruth shrugged. "Besides, she may have a tweet saying, like, 'oh, when will some nerd come and fuck me'."

"Yeah, right," Pete scoffed. "Go pay for your titty pillow."

Ruth went and paid for her titty pillow, and then the two of them hunted down Richie to drag him to Cinnabon. It was late enough that the families whose idea of a special treat was eating in the mall food court were gone, leaving only a few scattered receipts and wrappers in their place. Pete dragged an extra chair up to a table, then sat down under the fluorescent lights to enjoy his enormous cinnamon roll, with bonus icing shot.

Unfortunately, the instant he took a bite, Ruth piped up and said, "I'm just saying, if you stalk Steph's Twitter, there might be bikini pics on there."

Pete inhaled a mouthful of warm, sugary dough. He gagged, glasses fogging up with tears.

"Pete is stalking Steph's Twitter?" Richie asked. 

Pete swallowed, the cinnamon burning all the way down his throat. "No!" he said entirely too loudly. "Ruth just thinks I should, because I—"

"—Because there might be sexy pics," Ruth finished. 

"—Because I might find something to talk to her about there," Pete said through gritted teeth. "Which I don't need, because we're already friends and we already talk about stuff. Besides, everyone knows Steph only gives her handle out to super popular kids. If she let just anyone follow her, everyone in Hatchetfield would know it."

"I have Steph's Twitter," Richie piped up.

"What," Pete said.

"What?" Ruth practically shrieked.

Richie suppressed a smile. "Yep," he said. "She followed me first, actually. Or, well, she followed the Zeke the Fightin' Nighthawk account, which I took over. Close enough, though, right?"

Ruth squealed, nearly falling out of her seat. "Richie! That is so cool! I can't believe you didn't tell us! What is it?" 

"It's at N-G-R-eight—the number eight, I mean—then F-U-L dot L-I-L dot brat." 

Ruth frantically typed the handle into her phone, then forced it into Pete's hands. The screen showed a Twitter account, handle @ngr8ful.lil.brat, display name "Ur Favoritest Bitch <3". Was that a sex thing? Pete briefly wondered, before pushing the idea out of his head. Just because he had a dirty mind didn't mean everyone did. Anyway, her header was the text "Black Lives Matter" on a black background, and her icon was a low-angled selfie of Steph flipping off the camera. It would have been unflattering if it was possible to take an unflattering picture of her. 

Richie leaned over to take a closer look. "I don't know why she has her face as her icon if she's trying to keep it a secret," he said.

"So her username is just ungrateful lil brat?" Ruth said. "Do you think that's a sex thing?"

Thank you, Ruth, for asking what he could not. "I mean, probably not. Nothing else about the account is sexy," Pete pointed out. Except that it was being run by Steph, but that could hardly be helped.

"Oh well. A girl can dream," Ruth shrugged.

Pete idly scrolled down, eyes skimming over Steph's tweets. "So, how do I do this Twitter stalking thing? I assume you know more than me—" 

Pete's voice cut off as he began to process what he was reading. Sure, the first few posts were retweets of other accounts' stuff—promotions for local bands, shitposts, pictures of other peoples' dogs. The issues started when he saw the posts Steph was making for herself. Because it turned out that Steph got into a lot of Twitter fights. It seemed to be all she did. The type of person she fought didn't seem to particularly matter to her—she argued with radical feminists and incels, communists and conservatives, people who liked Steven Universe and people who hated it. Really, the only thing her interlocutors seemed to have in common was that they were more than willing to say vile things to Steph over the internet. Pete grimaced. At least she gave as good as she got?

Richie and Ruth stared at the tweets in silence, seemingly just as shocked as Pete. "Dude," Richie said, "I think your girlfriend might be cringe."

"She's not my girlfriend," Pete said weakly. "And she's not cringe! I'm...I'm sure she has her reasons." He quickly scrolled past a twitter thread where Steph and another Twitter user started out politely discussing the ethics of putting down dogs that bit and ended up threatening to cut each others' fingers off if they ever saw each other in public. "You know what, actually, maybe we shouldn't be reading this."

"Yeah," said Ruth. "This is way less cool and sexy than I imagined. Who coulda thought that someone so cool could be so lame?"

"Hey," Pete said. Ruth and Richie gave him an incredulous look. "I mean, maybe Steph isn't lame. Maybe we're just cooler than we thought." After all, if even the coolest, most confident person Pete knew fought with people on the internet about cartoons, maybe he'd just been setting the bar too high for himself. Maybe if Steph happened to glimpse a bit of what he was really like, she wouldn't hate it. Or at least she wouldn't judge.

Ruth and Richie snorted. "Yeah, right. None of us are cool," Ruth said.

Pete opened his mouth to protest, but who was he kidding? "Yeah," he admitted. "But at least I'm stupid for all of her."

Richie pretended to gag. "You've known her for, like, a month!"

Chapter Text

Pete opened his locker on Monday morning, only to be greeted by a veritable avalanche of condoms. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them were stacked knee-deep in the bottom, and the instant they weren't being contained by the door, they spilled out onto the floor and his shoes in a wave of shiny magenta foil. More of them were piled on the shelves at the top, stacked on top of one another like shards of glass at a break-in.

And all of them—all of them that were face-up, at least—had the words "slimmer fit" printed on the packet. As if that would make having a locker full of extra-small condoms any less humiliating.

Whoever had done this—and he had a good idea who—must have bought a whole box of them, then snuck into the school during Homecoming to push them one by one through the slats of his locker. He’d even taken the time to separate each one. Max had wasted all that time, effort, and money just to make him feel bad. And G-d dammit, it had worked. 

Behind him, people were starting to mutter amongst themselves. The normal sounds of foot traffic in the hallways had slowed. A suppressed giggle cut through the bustle, sharp and shrill.

Pete just kept staring downwards at the mess that was his locker. Fire burned behind his eyes, dripping down to flood the rest of his face, then his neck and chest, but he couldn't move. He couldn't do anything about it. If he cleaned up the condoms and threw them in the trash, he'd basically be silently admitting to everyone that he was a virgin loser who would never have any use for them. If he shoved them back to his locker, everyone would think he was a pervert with a tiny dick. There was no way to come out of this with his dignity intact. It was a genius prank—or it would have been, if Max had put any thought into it besides "it's funny to put micro condoms in Micropeter's locker".

Pete sighed and shut his locker door. A few of the condoms got caught in the hinge and under the door, and with a sudden wave of impotent anger he slammed it, the rubber and plastic buckling as he made the door close. 

The laughter was louder now, nobody even bothering to stifle it. Pete shouldered his backpack, taking a steadying breath before making himself turn around and walk to class. He didn't want to look up, but as he shouldered through the crowd that had gathered around his embarrassment, their faces blended into homogeneous groups, all of them watching for how he'd react.

The less popular kids—geeks and underclassmen, mostly—watched with a mix of wide-eyed horror and relief, their faces clearly spelling well, at least it wasn't me. His usual tormentors, there to see the fruits of their labor no doubt, smirked with undisguised glee and a sick, totally unearned sense of superiority. If Pete were stronger, maybe he would have held his head up higher and refused to let them put him down. But Pete wasn't strong, and no matter what Eleanor Roosevelt said, people made him feel inferior without his consent all the fuckin' time.

But worst of all, though, was the one face that stood out—the one face he still recognized, even in his haze of shame. Because Steph was there, too. Her eyes locked with his for a split second, her brows knitted with a mix of concern and confusion. But Pete couldn't look at her—not here. Not now. He slouched, tucking his body into itself until he took up the least space possible, and walked to class.

By the time he had sat down in his usual seat, Pete's phone was already buzzing.

Study Buddy: u ok?

Pete scoffed a little under his breath. How could she ask that? She’d just been there, hadn’t she? She’d seen everyone laughing at him, staring at him, judging him for someone else’s wrongdoings. Was she trying to make fun of him or something? Or maybe, for someone as perfect as her, a prank like this would be easy to laugh off. She knew her worth; she knew that the people who hated her were fundamentally wrong. Pete couldn’t say the same for himself.

Pete angled himself so that his back was to the windows and the other students couldn’t see his phone, readying a snarky response. Then, he stopped himself. If Ruth or Richie had sent this text, he would have known exactly what they meant—not a question at all, but an expression of care. Besides, it wasn’t Steph’s fault that she didn’t know what it was like to be constantly put down and humiliated by her peers. He typed a quick response instead—

You: yeah im fine

You: that sort of thing happens all the time don’t worry

Study Buddy: u syre?

Study Buddy: *sure

You: yea pretty syre lol

Study Buddy: ;P

Study Buddy: I’m just sayin

Study Buddy: if someone had stuffed a bunch of condoms in MY locker I’d be PISSED

Study Buddy: eho even does that

You: max I’m pretty sure

You: or one of his lackeys

Study Buddy: rhetorical question dude

You: oh

Study Buddy: but still are u sure ur ok

You: if I got mad every time smth like this happened I’d burn out in like a month

You: I’m fine, I swear.

Study Buddy: wow punctuated n everything

Study Buddy: that’s how I know ur serious :P

You: besides they probably blew like 200 bucks on one prank 

Study Buddy: lmao true

Study Buddy: no ur right condoms r so expensive 

You: who’s the real winner here

Pete cracked a weak smile at Steph's joke, but the happiness couldn't penetrate the feelings of gloom looming over him. Besides, more and more students were starting to trickle in, giving Pete odd looks as he stayed curled up against the window, focused on his phone. He typed out a hasty 

You: gtg, class is starting

and silenced his phone.

As Pete tucked his phone back into his pocket, Ruth darted into the classroom, uncharacteristically late. She dropped into the seat behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey," she whispered. "I took care of it, don't worry."

Pete turned around in his chair. "What?"

Ruth glanced around the room, then leaned in. "The—your locker. I cleared them out for you. Everyone already thinks I'm a perv, so..."

Pete felt tears sting at the corners of his eyes as his mood swung from intense shame to equally intense affection for his friend. "Oh," he said. "That's—thank you, Ruth. That's really kind. You didn't have to do that."

Ruth shrugged modestly. "What are friends for? Besides—" she wiggled her eyebrows— "It's free condoms. Never know when you'll need one!"

"Ah, I knew there was an ulterior motive."

"Not ulterior! Just another motive!"

"Settle down, class." Pete jumped in his seat. He hadn't even noticed the teacher come in, but there he was, staring pointedly at him and Ruth. They both muttered their apologies and returned their attention to the class that was starting.

By the time the end of the school day rolled around, Pete was feeling much better. At least the whole condom locker incident happening early in the morning gave him the whole day to get over it. Seven hours later, it was practically ancient history—just another lame attempt by the popular crowd to point out the obvious fact that he wasn't one of them.

And now, as a reward for not just giving up, ditching school, and walking directly into Lake Michigan, he got to hang out with Steph. Steph, who, by the way, he was getting better and better at talking to. Sure, he still sometimes drew up a blank on what to say to her, or had to fight off dirty thoughts, but it never stopped them from chatting mostly casually. The nervous flutter in his stomach whenever he saw her was mostly gone, replaced by a dull, comforting warmth. He still had a crush on her, for sure, but now she was also his friend—someone he could relax around, just a little, when they were studying together. He hoped she never stopped needing his help.

Pete climbed the stairs to the second floor of the library, drinking the last of his hot chocolate as he did. Technically, he wasn't supposed to have drinks besides water in the library, but he reasoned that he wasn't going to let it get anywhere the books that belonged to the town—it'd be done by the time he got to his and Steph's usual table, and he didn't want to make her wait any longer for him to finish. He took the last swig of the thick, slightly gritty dregs at the bottom of the paper to-go cup before crumpling it in his hand and dropping it into a trash can. Then, he headed for the desk where he knew Steph was waiting. 

As predicted, Steph was already at their desk. Her notes were out in front of her, but she wasn't looking at them, instead leaning back in her chair. She grinned as he approached, waving lazily. "Hey, Pete."

"Hey!" Pete broke into a half-jog, dropping into the seat across from her so fast he almost fell out of it. "Hi. I'm here."

"I can see that," Steph chuckled. "What's the rush? Did the theater kids chase you off their turf?"

"No, I'm actually on very good terms with the theater kids. One of them, at least. I just wanted—
" Pete cut himself off before saying that he just wanted to see Steph. I mean, running up to her like a dog was already weird enough. No need to make her suspicious of his intentions. "I didn't want to make you wait."

Steph smirked. "Okay," she said. "Oh! Before I forget—" She ducked down, rustling around in her backpack before resurfacing with a chocolate bar. She pressed it into his hand, and Pete, too confused to resist, took it from her. It was cookies and cream flavored, and not small either—this was a whole damn chocolate bar. As Pete stared, dumbfounded, at the gift, Steph just grinned. "Don't let anyone see that," she said. "It's contraband. No food allowed."

Pete sputtered. "Steph, why did you—I mean—how did you know this is my favorite flavor?"

"It is? Damn. Just lucky, I guess." Steph said with a shrug. She looked for all the world like she was telling the truth, but Pete couldn't be sure. He had never been the best at reading these things. "I wanted to get you something since, you know..."

"Since what?" Pete cocked his head.

Steph lowered her voice, leaning in. "Since someone filled your locker with condoms dude, don't make me say it in a library!"

"Oh, that?" Pete huffed a laugh, waving it off. "Steph, if I got a candy bar every time someone did something mean and kinda weird to me, I would die of hyperglycemia. But—uh—but thank you."

"You're welcome?" Steph laughed. "Anyway, d'you think you could help me with my trig homework? I need to make sure I'm not totally fucking everything up."

"Yes! Okay," Pete said. He tucked the gift into his backpack, then returned his attention to the worksheets and textbooks spread out on the table. "Where do you wanna start?"

Despite Steph's insistence that she needed his help, Pete's input mostly consisted of listening to her work out problems aloud. He breezed through his own work, only stopping to "uh-huh" at Steph's observations or to double check her answers against his own.

He might have started sneaking bites of the cookies and cream chocolate bar, glancing around to make sure nobody was watching him even though he and Steph were the only people in this corner of the library. Steph smirked a little at him whenever she saw him breaking off another square, like she was a demon corrupting him or something. He couldn't even be mad. It was a really cute smirk.

After a while of working in silence, Steph asked, "Well, I gotta go in, like, ten minutes, but what'd you get for question eighteen?" 

"Uh, fifty two."

"Damn, I got forty eight." 

Steph slid her papers across the desk, shifting her chair so they could both look at the problem at the same time. Pete read over her work and the pencil scribbles drawn over the diagram of the angles and side lengths they were supposed to calculate. Most of it looked fine—it was just at the very end where she'd gotten the last angle wrong, making her final answer off as well. "Oh, here's your problem. You said that angle F is sixty five degrees."

"What?" 
Steph squinted at the sheet. "But look, the part at the bottom is obviously a hundred and eighty, and I already had angles A, B, and D. I just subtracted those..."

Pete blinked. "Hold on—" he grabbed his calculator and punched a quick formula in. He hadn't even solved for B, but Steph had written down the right value. And when you added all the angles together—"yeah, no, you're right. It is sixty five. My bad."

Pete returned to his worksheet, correcting angle D and moving on to re-calculate his final answer, but he was interrupted by a high-pitched, theatrical gasp. "I'm sorry, wha t was that?" Steph said.

"What was what?" Pete said.

"Did the great Peter Spankoffski just admit that I was right and he was wrong? And copying my homework, too!"

Pete grinned, even as he cocked his head and squinted at her, trying to read her put-on tone. "Uh, yeah? I mean, it's true, so—"

Steph whooped, leaping out of her seat and beating her chest like a gorilla. "Oh! Suck it!" she said, snapping her hips forward and flicking her beautiful brown hair. "I was right! You were wrong! I'm the smartest bitch in the universe!" She continued her victory dance, something between a pelvic thrust and, weirdly, the robot. If she were anyone else, Pete would have protested the idea that she was smarter than him just because he made one mistake. But who was he to tell her not to be happy? She was clearly so proud of herself, and he was proud of her too. It was the first time she'd called herself smart without being sarcastic about it since they'd started working together. Pete wasn't about to tell her to stop making those hip movements, either. 

Abruptly, he came back to his senses. Pete forced himself to stare at his newly-corrected worksheet, drumming his fingers on the table as subtly as he could. "Yep. You're right. You're the smartest person in the entire world, and I bow to your intellectual prowess."

"Damn right I am!" Steph finally returned to her chair, picking up her worksheet and shoving it into her backpack (still no binder or folders or anything. Pete was very normal and not at all neurotic about that). "I have to go now, but I'm still studying with you tomorrow, right?

"Yep!" Pete confirmed. "This week we're all going to Richie's house since—oh, shit, is that okay? We could always just meet in the library."

"I mean, where is Richie's house? I could probably just take the bus."

Pete shook his head. "It's in Pinebrook. No buses there. Everyone's too rich. Ruth and I are gonna take Richie's car, but obviously..."

"I can't be seen with you," Steph finished. "I'll find a way to get there. I live in Pinebrook too."

"Right. I'll text you his address." 

Steph shot Pete a thumbs-up and shouldered her backpack. "See you later!"

"Can't wait," Pete said.

"Yeah, clearly you need my help."

"Hey!"

Chapter Text

You: Hey don't pick me up today

You: I'm going to Brendas ill walk home after

Miss Tessbitch: Are you kidding me Stephanie

Miss Tessbitch: Couldn't you have told me this earlier????

You: Chill out its less work for you

Miss Tessbitch: It's a seven block walk Stephanie!!!!

Miss Tessbitch: It's not safe

Miss Tessbitch: Besides you don't have permission

You: What am I gonna get robbed and murdered

You: In PINEBROOK

You: Plus I'll be home beforew dad even gets back

You: U can use the time you'd spend picking me up to get urself a lil treat

You: Take a lil break

You: What do u say

Miss Tessbitch: I will be there at school at 3 PM to pick you up.

You: Waste all the time you want ❤️

You: Heyyyyyy Brenda ur driving home after class today right

Brenda 💖 : Yea but I have west coast swing at 8 so we cant hang out tonight

You: Oh ik but can I ask u to drop me off somewhere in pinebrook

Brenda 💖: O sure

You: Great I'll meet u after class

Steph walked out of Hatchetfield High practically arm in arm with Brenda. It had finally become cold enough that Steph couldn't justify wearing her crop tops anymore, graduating to just a buttoned-up flannel. She didn't have anything under it, which was a mistake—her ample chest made it gape in the front, letting icy fingers of autumn air curl their way in and brush against her bare skin. There were some downsides to being hot, it seemed. Brenda, on the other hand, dressed in skinny jeans and an off-shoulder long-sleeve top, was unbothered. 

"Thanks for dropping me off," Steph said as they both settled into the front seats of Brenda's car. She pulled out her phone and plugged Richie's address into the maps app for directions.

"No problem," Brenda said. "So, where you going? Smoke club meeting?"

"Ha, no. I'm going to another study session," Steph said. She drew out the phrase like it was a huge bother to go, even though she didn't mind going at all. Brenda and Stacy were great, but they were busy with cheerleader stuff all the time, leaving her with nothing better to do than rot in bed and argue with salaried adults with batshit takes on Twitter. But the more time she spent studying with Pete, the more she realized that spending her time that way kinda sucked. It sucked enough that she was actually looking forward to hanging out with Pete's dweeb friends and working on her homework. Who knew that spending time with other humans could make you feel better?

Out of the corner of her eye, Steph saw Brenda raise an eyebrow. "Girl, again? You were studying with that nerd yesterday," she said.

"Yeah, well, I need all the help I can get."

"But still, now you're going to his house?"

Steph decided not to mention that this was hardly the first time she would be in a house with Pete. "His friend's house," she corrected instead. "We're all gonna study together."

"Okay," Brenda said doubtfully.

"What?"

"It's nothing."

"Look, if you get to spend a billion hours a week on dance, why shouldn't I be allowed—"

"I never said you weren't allowed! I'm just...it sounds like you're joining his friend group and stuff."

Steph sighed, flashing a soft smile at Brenda. "I'm never gonna let studying interrupt our plans. You know that."

"Yeah, I know," Brenda chuckled. "I mean, I got no problem with it. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to study. Even if, y’know, I got better things to do. But other people might have a problem with it."

"Max," Steph filled in.

"Yeah. Max."

"Well, Max isn't gonna find out."

Brenda laughed humorlessly. "You better hope not!"

"Oh, like you're one to judge," Steph said. "Sneaking around with Kyle every chance you get. We all saw you at Homecoming, it was shameless."

"Shameless?" Brenda sputtered. "Bitch, we were across the room from each other!"

"Exactly! It was completely inappropriate, what if someone had seen?"

"Eugh, you sound like Chastity." 

"No, I sound like Max."

Brenda fake-gagged, the effect undercut when she burst into giggles a second later. "But fine. I guess I can't judge you for sneaking around with Peter."

Steph started. "What? Who said anything about sneaking around with Pete?"

"You did, girl!"

"Yeah, well, like, not the same way you sneak around with Kyle!"

"I never said it was?" Brenda gave her a weird look out of the corner of her eye. 

Steph giggled awkwardly. "You kinda did. You said it without saying it."

"Whatever," Brenda shrugged. "We're almost there, right?"

"Yeah, just make a left here." Brenda made the turn, then came to a stop. "Thanks so much for dropping me off," Steph said. "And if Miss Tessburger comes by, I already left your house and am heading home."

"Yeah, yeah, I know the drill," Brenda said. "Have fun. Nerd."

Steph hopped out of Brenda's car. She checked the address one last time on her phone—yep, she was in the right place. Richie's house looked like a picture-book drawing of a well-off suburbanite's home—a squeaky-clean house with a pointed roof and a neat little garden, complete with a white picket fence. The gate was left open, so Steph walked up to the door and climbed the porch steps.

There was a car parked in the driveway, so Pete was probably already here, along with his two friends, but for some reason Steph hesitated to ring the doorbell. 

What was she afraid of? It wasn't like Steph was shy or anything. She knew she was cool. If she could earn the respect of the popular students, it shouldn't be hard to win over Pete's lame friends. Hell, based on how they'd interacted before, Steph would guess they were half starstruck already. But popularity was a job she never clocked out of, and one wrong move could shake her from that pedestal. The last thing she wanted to do was make a fool of herself in front of the least popular kids in the entire school and let them realize she was just like them. Or not—at least they got good grades.

Steph took a deep breath. Well, chickening out wouldn't make her look any better than if she made a fool of herself inside. She rang the bell.

There was a pause—only four or five seconds—before the door swung open to reveal Richie Lipschitz, staring at her with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth. Ruth and Pete were lurking behind him, peering over his shoulders from the entryway.

"Oh. Hello," Richie said. 

"I'm here to study," Steph said. When Richie didn't respond, she added, "remember?"

"Ah, yes! Of course I do. Of course I remember. Um, welcome to my humble abode." Richie shuffled backwards, his gaze dropping to the floor.

Steph took that as her cue to step inside and close the door behind her.

Richie's house had the bones of a quaint little cottage, but with the size and furnishings of her dad's modern abomination. There was a depression in the living room that was lined with couches, and in the middle, notebooks, highlighters, and textbooks were scattered, along with a decimated plate of grapes and an empty sleeve of cookies.

They'd been studying without her. Of course they had—they probably had even more work to do than she did—but it still stung, knowing they'd started without her when they knew she was coming.

Well, no use fretting over it now. Steph looked up at Richie. He was still standing in the entryway, Ruth and Pete close behind him. Totally blocking the way into the house. She waited for him to invite her in, or at least step back so she could walk past. Instead, he just shrunk back from her, like he thought she was gonna bite him. 

Pete cleared his throat. "So, um, you wanna—ready to get started?"

Thank you, Pete. Knew I could count on you.

Ruth and Richie stepped back enough for Steph to make her way into the house proper, and she strode to the conversation pit where they'd been studying with a confidence she didn't feel. She dropped her bag to the ground, then sat down next to it, pulling out her battered school supplies. There wasn't an obvious place to put them—Pete, Ruth, and Richie's materials formed a perfect equilateral triangle on the floor, with no room for her. She put herself slightly outside, next to the pile of papers she hoped belonged to Pete. 

Pete and his friends joined her shortly after, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to their materials. She ended up between Pete and Ruth, with Richie across from her. Ruth and Richie quickly pulled out worksheets and books, practically hiding behind the paper. Steph grabbed her own notebook out of her messy backpack, trying to ignore the glances they were sneaking at her over their work. 

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Pete said, "so, uh, Steph. How...how was your day?" He said it like he wasn't even sure they were words in English, and much less so that Steph would respond, eyes darting around the circle to his friends. They stared back, bewildered.

"Um—I mean, it was fine? Nothing really big happened..." She cocked her head at Pete. That day, she’d had trig, bio, and history—all classes she had with Pete. Shouldn’t he already have an idea of how her day went?

“Right,” Pete said stiffly. They went back to working in silence.

Normally, this was when Steph would be telling Pete what she was planning to work on, and what kind of help she needed from him, but like hell she was going to do that now. Not in front of these two strangers.

She set about copying down her messy class notes into neater, more legible study notes, but within minutes a familiar itch was building up under her skin. Normally, she’d scratch it with music or the sound of Pete’s voice as they talked about anything or nothing. But in Richie’s house, there was only the sound of pen on paper. Steph’s muscles tensed with something like anger as she glared down at her (still blank) clean notes sheet.

Why was she suddenly stupid again? Why wouldn't her brain just work?

"Hey, um, Steph, are you okay?"

Steph jolted upright to see Pete looking at her. He looked somehow even more uncomfortable than she was.

"What? Oh, I'm good. I just—usually when I study it's not so...quiet? Usually you're, like...talking. Or if I'm at home I have music on. Not, like, in English, so it doesn't distract me, but it just fills the...why are you looking at me like that?"

For the first time perhaps ever, Steph saw Richie sitting bolt upright. His eyes were wide, like he'd been shocked with a live wire. Even his hair looked more alert. Ruth briefly peeked up from her studying to smirk and say, "you've said his trigger phrase," before quickly hiding herself again, covering her mouth like she’d just sworn at her. 

"What?"

Richie tapped his fingers together. "What kind of music?" he asked. "I mean, in what languages? Where do you find it?"

"Um, Spotify? And mostly Spanish rap—I take French, so it doesn’t distract me. Russian and German metal. Some K-Pop too, but only because some of the cheerleaders—"

Evidently, this answer satisfied Richie. "One second," he said, then bolted off. Steph could hear his steps thundering up the stairs, then across the floor above their heads. In less than a minute, he was back, clutching a miniature speaker. "I have some music. If you would like to try. It's not in English."

"Oh! Yeah, that'd be great, thank you.
" Steph had the feeling Richie's haste had more to do with his own interests than hers, but she wasn't about to complain. Anything to break up the awkward, heavy atmosphere.

Richie plugged his phone into the speaker and tapped away at it for a few moments before putting on the last song Steph could have predicted. It was energetic and brassy, with a male lead singer with a rough, throaty voice and plenty of backup singers crooning in Japanese.

"Oh, this is pretty good," Steph said. "What's this from?"

"It's by Masayuki Suzuki," Richie said.

"Not what she asked," Pete said with a grin.

Richie sighed. "It's the opening of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War," he admitted. "It's about two people who are in love, but refuse to be the first person to admit it, so they keep trying to trick each other into confessing first in increasingly stupid ways."

"Sounds awesome," Steph said.

"It's not my—" Richie squinted at her. "It does? Are you serious?"

"Yeah. They sound toxic as hell, and I love toxic." For some reason, this made Richie, Pete, and Ruth exchange a significant glance. "Not that I'm calling you guys toxic. I mean, on the internet and stuff."

"Well, I can email you a link to my favorite...website. To watch it on," Richie said.

"You can say you pirate it, dude. I'm not a narc."

"Yeah, everyone knows Steph is, like, the coolest. She's probably done so much more crime than you, dude," Ruth said, a slightly dreamy look on her face.

"Yes! Thank you, Ruth! See, she gets it," Steph said. Ruth made a squeak, burying her now significantly redder face in her book again. 

The four of them fell back into studying (or, for Steph, fell into studying for the first time). But now, with Richie's anime playlist going, the silence didn't make Steph itch or feel out of place. It wasn't quite as comfortable as being alone with Pete, but still. She could get used to his friends.

Chapter Text

Steph was slumped against the headboard of her bed watching that anime Richie told her about when her dad barged in. (It was actually pretty good so far, for your information. Although, the website he sent her didn't have English dub, just subtitles, which meant she couldn't use her phone while she watched it. It was super annoying at first, but probably better for her concentration).

Anyway, her dad opened the door without knocking.

"What?" Steph snapped, slamming her laptop screen shut before he could catch her pirating anime.

Her dad sighed. "Believe it or not, I didn't come in here to spy on whatever teenage nonsense you're engaged in," he said. "I just wanted to tell you I'm leaving for the press conference. I won't be home at a reasonable hour, so—" He tossed her his credit card. It landed on her bed at her feet, bouncing once before settling into the comforter. "Feed yourself."

"Alright, Dad."

"I can see everything on the credit card statement, so no funny business."

"Alright, Dad." 

Steph opened her laptop, turning her head towards the screen, pretending to read some gossip article and to completely ignore her dad. She didn't press play on the episode again, not yet.

Her dad sighed, shaking his head in the corner of her vision, then left the room as disruptively as he entered it. He slammed the door behind him and stormed noisily down the stairs.

Still, Steph kept staring blankly at her screen, trying to block out all of her senses except for her hearing. After years of being left home alone while her dad went to political events (and using each evening of precious freedom to its fullest), Steph’s ears had become finely tuned to the sounds of him leaving. First came the tiny creak of the side door, followed by the jingle of keys and the click of the lock from the outside. Then, the garage door shuddered open and the car engine hummed to life. It was only after she heard the garage door close again that Steph slipped out of bed and padded softly across the floor, watching out the window as her dad's slick black BMW rolled down the winding, yellow-lit street and out of sight. 

As soon as she was certain he wouldn't suddenly reappear to recover some forgotten item, Steph threw herself back onto her bed, snagging her phone from her cluttered bedside table and messaging the groupchat.

You: My dad is out of the house for some mayor thing and he left me his credit card for food who wants miss retros

It only took a few seconds for her friends to respond.

Stace 💘 : I just had dinner 😑

Stace 💘 : but I could go for desert

Brenda 💖 : Lemme ask my parents real quick

You: Coollllllllll

Brenda 💖: ok YES i can take the car

Brenda 💖: want me to pick u up

You: yes pls 😗

Stace 💘 : ME TOO

Brenda 💖: dw ill get u too stace

Steph grinned. Thank you, Dad, for having boring political shit to do, and thank you for doing it without me! Now she could have an actually enjoyable evening. Although, it was Friday night, and most people in Hatchetfield would be having the same idea, so she should probably make sure they had a table for them first.

Miss Retro's was so retro that they didn't even have a website, so Steph quit out of her messaging app and dialed the number. It was the only number she had memorized besides her dad's. She’d been supporting local businesses while her dad was out doing mayoral shit since she was twelve.

After a few rings, someone on the other end picked up. "This is Miss Retro's Throwback Diner, how can I help you?" they said against a background of indistinct chatter.

"Hey dude. How's the diner looking, is it crowded?"

"Pretty much? We have plenty of tables open, but there's a lot of people here too. It’s kinda loud."

"Is the back booth open?"

"Yep."

"Great, can I reserve it?"

The person on the other end sighed. "We don't reserve tables here, ma'am. Just come before someone else gets it."

"I'm the mayor's daughter, though."

"Congratulations."

"So, don't I get a special reservation?"

The call ended with a click. Steph went back to the groupchat.

You: our booth is OPEN 

Stace 💘: WOOOOOOOO

With that, Steph grabbed her dad's credit card, pulled on a hoodie, and went downstairs to wait for Brenda outside. She had to go out the garage door, since she couldn't exactly leave the front door unlocked with nobody home, and she didn't have a key to the house. She'd just have to get home before her father did, and remember to lock the side door again. She quickly texted a reminder to herself. There, now she wouldn't forget. As she walked down the driveway onto the street, she wondered if her dad even really cared if she snuck out or not. Surely, if he did, he would have made it harder for her.

Brenda picked Steph up in her white Jeep a few minutes later, then drove to Stacy's apartment building. She was already waiting for them on the dark sidewalk. Stacy danced from foot to foot as the car rolled to a stop, then practically threw herself into the backseat! "Hey guys!" she shouted. "Steph, come in the back with me!"

"Alright." Steph popped out of the passenger side door and into the back. 

Stacy hugged her before she could even get her seatbelt on. "I missed you guys!"

"We were in class together four hours ago!"

"Yeah, and four hours is a long-ass time! I mean, think about doing anything for four hours. Swimming? Writing? Eating? You'd go insane!"

"You don't talk to us for, like, eight hours while you sleep," Brenda pointed out as she pulled away from the curb.

Stacy's eyes narrowed and her brow knitted as she considered this. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

A full five minutes later, Stacy stopped considering and said, "hey, you know what we haven't started yet? Planning our Halloween costumes."

"Oh, shit!" Steph smacked herself in the forehead. She'd been so caught up in trying to improve her grades that she'd kind of forgotten parties existed. Which was crazy, because the annual Halloween party would be the next big one, and it was always Steph's favorite.

On Halloween, she could actually let loose—not the kind of letting loose she normally did, the kind that involved equal part mixtures of soda and booze and making out with whichever jock was least annoying that night, but the kind that involved throwing together a trashy, cheap costume with her friends and never worrying that someone would call her out on not buying from the most trendy stores. It was a holiday about friends—strangers, even—not family, with no obligation to pose for photos with her stupid-ass dad.

Plus, October 31st was also her birthday, so any Halloween celebration would also be a celebration of her. So yeah, she wasn’t about to miss it.

"Yeah, I can't believe we left it so long either," Stacy said. "I mean, senior year Halloween is gonna be, like, the last chance we have to do a group costume! After that, we're probably not gonna celebrate together. 'Cause we'll be at college 'n shit." She pushed her lip out in a pout, but then quickly sobered up. "Which is why we need to make sure that this year's group costume is the best, most iconic one ever! We need to go down in history so everyone talks about us, like the founding of the smoke club or that time someone blew up the chemistry lab!"

Steph and Brenda intoned the required "fuck the Chemists". 

"Really, I knew we shouldn't have wasted Mean Girls on sixth grade," Brenda sighed. "That would have been a killer group costume to end our high school Halloween party career with."

"I mean, there's no reason we can't do Mean Girls again," Steph said. "We even all have boobs now."

"Yeah...I don't want to, though," Brenda said. 

"Me neither," Stacy agreed. "The whole point of Halloween is doing something you've never done before! Repeating costumes totally ruins the fun."

"Okay, so, what about, uh..." Steph tapped a nail on her tooth, trying to come up with a group of three characters they hadn't dressed up as before. Over the course of eight years of friendship, they'd done most of the iconic groups of three girls—Charlie's Angels, the Power Puff Girls, the Sanderson sisters—and the only pop culture references she could come up with that they hadn't done weren't exactly sexy Halloween costume material. Nobody wanted to see sexy Alvin and the Chipmunks, especially not Steph. "Fuck. This is harder than I thought."

"We could go as a sexy cat," Stacy said. "That's pretty iconic."

"What, all of us the same cat?"

"No, obviously. We'd go as different cats. Different colors of cat! Like, one of us could be a black cat, one of us could be a white cat, and one of us could be an orange cat!

"Aren't all orange cats male?" Steph said.

"Well, maybe that cat is trans," Brenda said. 

"So you wanna do it?" Stacy said. 

"...Let's keep our options open."

Brenda pulled into the parking lot of Miss Retros. The three of them hopped out of the car and walked across the dark asphalt towards the diner. "I don't know, guys, I kinda like the idea of us all going as one big cat," Steph joked. "One of us could be the head, one could be the paws, and one of us could be the—"

“Shh!" Brenda abruptly stopped walking, pausing just outside the door and stopping Steph and Stacy dead in their tracks. She grabbed both of them by the arm, pulling them out of the glow of the windows and into a dried-out patch of weeds and shadows next to the parking lot.

"What are you—" Steph started, but not before Brenda shushed her again. In the dark, she could barely see her friend, but she quickly realized why they’d hidden when Kyle and Jason pushed out the diner door, clutching carry-out bags.

“Look, dude, I know it blows, but at least you have plenty of time to find a new costume,” Jason was saying. 

“I just don’t get why we both couldn’t be Roman gladiators,” Kyle grumbled. “I thought of it first anyway. But whatever, I’ll just be a Frankenstein or something.”

“Hey, that’s cool too! And then we could both do each other’s make—” Jason paused and whipped his head around. Steph felt Brenda tense and freeze next to her, but Jason didn’t spend too long looking in the direction of their hiding spot. He seemed more focused on making sure nobody else was lurking in the parking lot. “We could do each other’s face paint,” he amended. “We could paint each others’ faces for it.”

Kyle chuckled. “Man, that’s not fair! You know you’re way better at that than me.”

The two boys wandered deeper into the parking lot, slamming car doors and driving off. Only then did Brenda let Steph and Stacy step back into the light. “What the heck was that for,” Stacy grumbled.

“I wasn’t emotionally prepared to talk to him!” Brenda cried. “I would have said something stupid like ‘I love you’!”

“So? Kyle would love that.”

Brenda huffed, waving Stacy off. “Let’s just go inside.”

They pushed open the door and into the inviting glow of Miss Retro's. There was something magical about the place, Steph could swear, like the door was an actual portal to a simpler time—the version of the eighties from TV shows and nostalgiacore posts on instagram.

The air was thick with the smell of fat and sugar, soft rock played from a jukebox pushed against one wall, and neon strips along the curling cast the whole diner in fairylike pink-blue-green light. Even the people eating there looked transformed, the wrinkles of stress and anger smoothed from their faces.

Miss Retro herself—or rather, Miss Holloway—stood behind the counter, plating slices of her famous pie. In all the times Steph had been there, she had never not seen her working, even during tourist season when the diner was open twenty four hours and she and her friends would drop by in the early hours of the morning. Steph wondered when she slept. 

As the door swung closed behind them, Miss Holloway looked up and waved. “Hiya, Stacy!”

“Hiya Miss Holloway!” Stacy jumped up and down, waving exuberantly back. 

Miss Holloway jerked a thumb towards the back of the diner. “Your favorite booth is open. Go get it quick.”

Stacy darted off, leaving Brenda and Steph to follow more sedately after her. They slid into their usual spots—Steph on one end of the C-shaped booth, Stacy in the middle, and Brenda across from her—and settled down. Steph grabbed a menu even though she always ordered the same thing.

“Go crazy,” she instructed her friends. “I have my dad’s credit card.”

“Finally, Mayor Lauter gives back to the people of Hatchetfield!” Brenda said.

“Try Stephanie Lauter,” Stephanie said. “He only said I should get dinner for myself, but I took some creative liberties.”

“So, we still didn’t decide what our costume should be before we got interrupted,” Stacy butted in. 

Brenda and Steph turned to her, staring blankly. “You got an idea?” Steph said. 

“What about the Totally Spies?”

“The who?” said Brenda.

“It’s this cartoon from the 2000s about spies in high school. It’s got three main girls,” Stacy shrugged.

Steph looked up the title and browsed through a few screenshots from the show. She recognized them instantly from tumblr and Twitter. "Oh, the show with all the fetishes?"

"Steph!" Stacy gasped. "You can't say—" she leaned in, lowering her voice— "'fetishes' here! It's a family establishment!"

“What? I thought you knew!”

"Hey, y'know what we haven't done yet?" Brenda butted in. Much too quickly, she added, "I can't believe I didn't think of it before."

Steph and Stacy turned to her. "What?" Steph said.

"Classic Halloween monsters," Brenda said. "It's so basic, but also, like, it's a classic for a reason?"

Stacy visibly perked up, considering the idea. "Oh, like…Godzilla?"

"I was thinking vampire, werewolf, and the bride of Frankenstein," Brenda said. "Even if they're not technically a group of three, they get put together so much that people will see the connection." 

The bride of Frankenstein, huh? Steph smirked a little, instantly clocking Brenda’s motive. "I love it!" she said. "It's crazy we haven't done, just, actual monsters before. I call bride of Frankenstein!"

"Wait—" Brenda's eyes widened. Steph barely managed to restrain her giggle. 

"Ooh, I wanna be a werewolf!" Stacy cried. "Like, a bougie purse dog werewolf—Steph, can I borrow one of your chokers?"

"Yeah, sure! Brenda, are you okay with being the vampire?"

"Uh—" Brenda's eyes darted between her two friends. 

Steph grinned—here was the trap. She knew Brenda had suggested the costume for a very specific reason, but in order to make it work, she'd need to admit it. "Or did you have another monster in mind?"

Brenda rolled her eyes, sighing as she indulged her friend. "Oh, fuck you, you know I do."

“I can’t believe you’re gonna make us all dress up just so you can match with Kyle,” Stacy said. “I mean, I still wanna do it ‘cause werewolves are cool, but it’s a lot.”

“Well, I think it’s cute,” Steph said. “A little desperate, but cute!”

Brenda groaned, burying her head in her hands. “It’s not desperate! We’d probably be wearing matching costumes if it weren’t for fucking Max.”

“Well, anyway, we need to start putting our costumes together, like, this weekend. Or next,” Stacy said. “And we need to watch the movies for our costumes, obviously. So they can be accurate.”

Steph didn’t think that their costumes would be accurate to anything. They’d be constrained by what they could find in thrift stores, and more focused on looking hot than anything. But a movie marathon with her friends sounded better than just about anything. “Obviously,” she said. “I can’t wait.”

Chapter Text

The second time Steph joined in on a group study session with Ruth and Richie, the atmosphere was decidedly less tense. There was no awkward waiting by the door when she arrived—instead, she announced her presence by letting herself into Richie's house, loudly kicking off her boots, and dropping herself into their study circle. Pete and Ruth quickly scooched aside as she sat next to them, turning their triangle into an equitable circle.

And although Steph didn't talk as much as when she and Pete studied just the two of them, she wasn't nearly as clammed up as last week. She complained about the quantity of homework she'd been assigned, laughed loudly at jokes, and demanded her fair share of snacks. 

It was exactly what Pete had hoped for when she'd suggested coming over to study with his friends. So why did something feel wrong?

"Done!" Steph shouted triumphantly, grinning at Pete and messily shoving her finished worksheet into a folder. Yesterday, Pete had cracked and brought her some "extra" organizational materials. She still kept all her notes out of order in the same binder, but it was a start, and the knowing yet soft smile she'd given him when he'd handed them over had made his heart feel like it was going to pop. 

However, he was among friends (read: people who would take any opportunity to rib the shit out of him), so he restrained the affection bucking in his veins and flashed her a subdued thumbs up. "Awesome job, Steph. You're picking up the mechanics of osmosis a lot faster than vocabulary!"

Steph glanced conspiratorially around the circle, locking eyes with Ruth and Richie. "He doesn't know I've been using our study sessions to secretly suck the brains out of him like a geeky vampire,” she said. 

Her eyes flicked to his, the corner of her mouth quirking up ever so slightly. Pete dug his nails into his palm as subtly as he could. "Not a very good secret if you're telling me.”

"Dammit! I thought I'd taken enough that you wouldn't notice!"

"I wish someone would suck my brains out," Ruth sighed.

Pete fought back a sneer. Sure, he'd thought the exact same thing when Steph had said it, but he hadn't just blurted it out for everyone to hear. 

"Anyway, onto the next layer of hell," Steph said. She shoved her folder into her backpack, then pulled out a battered book. "Yay, Great Expectations. More like 'I expect to suffer greatly while reading this'."

"I do have to say, I'm not a fan of the massive sentences," Richie said. "Do we really need them to last five lines? That's not impressive, it's just long.”

"That's what she said," Ruth said, predictably.

"That's what she said," Steph said at the same time. Her head whipped around to Ruth, and she gasped with delight. "Dude!" Steph held out her hand, and Ruth gleefully high-fived her before trapping Steph in a hand-hold. "Okay, but seriously,” Steph continued, “how am I gonna write a five page paper on this? All I really know is that Pip fuckin' sucks."

"Aw, well surely—" Pete started.

"Oh, hating a book is the best way to write an essay about it," Richie interrupted. "You just need to figure out what you hate about it, then why it's like that, and then you put in some quotes to justify your opinion, and you've got an essay."

Steph cocked her head. "Wait, for real?" 

"It's what I do, and I get straight As in English," Richie said. "Not to brag."

"Dude, you gotta show me how to do that."

As Richie threw himself into a tirade about his patented "fuck the author" essay-writing technique, Pete gave up on pretending to work on his own assignments. He threw his textbook down (which nobody noticed, much to his mixed ire and gratitude).

Steph was leaning closer to Richie as he pointed out a quote in his book, and still hadn't worked her hand out of Ruth's, and Pete shouldn't be mad about it. This was what he had wanted, right? For Steph to feel comfortable with his friends, comfortable asking for help? But deep down, Pete knew that wasn't actually what he had hoped for when she'd asked to study with him. He was supposed to be the one she went to for help. He was supposed to be the one making her laugh.

Pete shook the thought out of his head. Steph wasn't any more likely to get with Ruth or Richie than she was to get with him. Zero times any number was still zero. And besides, Richie was genuinely better at English than him—something about how becoming a translator required a firm grasp of literary devices in English as well as Japanese. Pete picked up his homework and threw himself back into his math problem set, hoping that focusing on which formula to use would make him forget the whole ordeal. 

Two hours later, after Steph had reluctantly left to walk home, Pete was still mad. He was incredibly cool about it, though. Watch how cool he was being as he shoved a chocolate-covered pretzel into his mouth—not because he was hungry, but because having his mouth full slightly lessened the urge to tilt his head back and scream like a coyote. He was so fine. 

Ruth, who had apparently not noticed any of this, nudged Pete's shoulder. "Hey, Pete. Did you see what happened with me and Steph?"

"Yep," Pete grunted.

"She held my hand! For, like, three whole minutes! I feel like I'm gonna go to heaven," Ruth sighed. She flopped backwards against one of the sofas shoved into the conversation pit, her curly red hair splaying against the cushions. "Man, I hope this wasn't the best thing that's ever gonna happen to me. I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty fucking awesome. But it’d be pretty sad if it was the most awesome thing to ever happen to me. She must use cocoa butter or something, her hand was so soft —"

"Watch out, Ruth," Richie said. "If you put holding hands on too high a pedestal, when you do eventually get a sexual partner, you'll explode."

Ruth considered. "Before or after we do it?"

"It was just hand-holding," Pete mumbled.

"Oh, like you wouldn't have killed to be in my place," Ruth said.

"Yeah, Peter. You'd better step up your game, or Ruth will steal your girlfriend," Richie said.

Ruth wiggled her eyebrows. "Ooh, yeah, Pete! I'm gonna steal your girlfriend!"

"She's not—!" Pete caught himself shouting, and forced himself to take a deep breath. "Don't joke about that, guys. You know I liked her first."

"What, so you're calling dibs on her? Like she can't pick who she wants to fuck for herself? That's pretty sexist, Pete," Ruth said. "...Kinda hot though. I'll let it slide."

"I'm not calling dibs," Pete said. "I'm just saying, you would fuck anyone, and I've had a crush on her since the sixth grade. So, in the event of a fucking miracle where Steph decides she's not hopelessly out of our league, just...don't, okay? At least let me have a shot at her first."

"Dude, whatever," Ruth shrugged. "If there's actually gonna be a fucking miracle, I'm gonna hook up with a sexy angel. One of those hot babes with eight eyes and six tongues." She paused. "Oh! I get it! A fucking miracle! Because the miracle is that we'd be fucking!"

"If you were wise like me, we wouldn't be having this problem," Richie said.

"Ah, right, I forgot all true intellectuals hump anime pillows," Pete said.

"It causes me a lot less grief than your crushes on 3D girls," Richie shrugged. "Which is saying something, since Max knows about Rei and Asuka."

Pete grimaced. It was true. Richie got more than his fair share of flick-it tickets for being a gross weeb, but if Max found out about Pete's feelings for Steph, he would literally, actually kill him. And in the impossible circumstance of Steph actually liking him back, it’d be a slow death too. Maybe 2D girls were the way to go.

"Just...don't make fun of me, okay?" Pete said. "I know it's not gonna happen, but that doesn't make the feelings go away."

"Yeah. I mean, you've been horny for her for six years, dude. It's gonna take more than a few days to get over that," Ruth said. "Like maybe a lobotomy or something."

Pete gave her a withering look. 

Ruth shrugged. "Hey, I may be horny, but at least I know what I am."