Chapter Text
Noel taps his feet on the grass irritably.
"It's like you don't even take this seriously," Ocean continues insisting. "You know how important this is!"
"I know exactly how important this is," Noel counters. "Do you know how insane you sound?"
"We wouldn't even technically be doing anything wrong!"
Noel looks over Ocean’s head and sees Constance approaching. She always hangs out with Ocean in the lunch hour, that’s been a fact of life for about as long as Noel can remember, so he was expecting her to come at some point. Running a bit late, it seems, but she’s here now, right in the middle of the goddamned lecture. Noel tries to feel some relief at the idea that, finally, someone sensible is going to be here to back him up in this argument.
Oh, who is he kidding?
“Look, Noel, this is just the best way to help our choir. If we don’t do something, we’re going to lose a huge opportunity here.”
“You’re completely jumping to conclusions, are you kidding? He’s a troubled kid, Ocean.”
“He’s a liability.”
“What are you guys talking about?” asks Constance.
Ocean jolts, like she knows she’s doing something wrong. “Oh! Hi, Connie,” she babbles in ridiculous shock, somehow having not noticed her best friend coming, and she immediately plasters on a friendly smile and turns her whole body toward Constance, seeming very excited and wholesome. Noel, subtly, throws up his hands in frustration. “There you are! I didn’t have time to tell you on the way to school this morning, but I think I’ve decided on a colour palette for our college dorm - pink and green! It’s, like, classic preppy with some appreciation for nature - and I’ve done some research on color theory, and I really think it would help encourage us to-”
“Yeah,” interrupts Constance. “Sounds great.” Her eyes flick down to her shoes, then back up to her friend. “What were, what were you two talking about just now?”
“Ah.” Ocean grimaces. “Father Marcus caught Misha trying to sneak his mobile phone into Nationals.”
Ocean is usually a big fan of calling everything by its full name, but there’s no need to use a full name for Nationals. The Canadian school choir competition just last week that, against all odds, the St. Cassian’s Chamber Choir won. The next step is a flight down to a festival in the States, to see how they can do at an International level - and Ocean has made it very clear how she wants to do.
“Trying to sneak it on-stage,” she clarifies. "Now, Father Marcus just confiscated it himself instead of telling the officials. But if the officials had known, it would have been an instant disqualification.”
"But it wasn’t,” snaps Noel. “because the officials didn’t know.”
“What did he even need his phone for?” asks Constance, nervously.
Ocean, dramatically, crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. “What does Misha ever need his phone for? Natalia.”
Natalia Bolinska. Misha’s online girlfriend. And over the last two weeks, essentially the only thing that anyone ever talks about in relation to Misha. All conversations manage to circle back to her, somehow, as though Misha isn't his own person outside of her. “I mean, it might have been important,” protests Noel. “Like, hello? She’s visiting him now? A trip to Canada is a big thing to plan, maybe he really needed to text her about it right then-”
“You are determined to defend him,” interrupts Ocean. “No matter what he does. It’s ridiculous.” Noel clicks his tongue in offense to that, but he can’t find anything to say. Constance stays very quiet. “It doesn’t matter what excuse he might have had. He’s jeopardizing everything we’ve worked for.”
Constance’s weight shifts from foot to foot and she looks back up at Ocean. “So what are you going to do about it?” she asks, cautiously.
Ocean’s voice drops to a sort of conspiratorial whisper. “He can’t get us disqualified at the festival if he never gets on the plane.” Constance’s eyes widen, and Noel throws up his hands in frustration. "We all know he's the angriest boy in town. We all know he’s gotten into a lot of fights. Now, if one person upsets him, and keeps going until he snaps? They just both get detention. But if a whole group of people - like, say, a choir - coordinated to push his buttons at just the right time?” She grins. “We’d all seem innocent, like we just did one little thing by accident, and he’d seem like he’s attacking us for no reason. So he gets suspended instead of detention, and suspended means no excursions and definitely no international trips.”
The group turns very, very quiet, and Noel’s eyes instinctively dart toward the outer fence of the school. Misha’s been hanging out there, ever since the school fixed the broken gate he was using to sneak out during school hours. He texts his girlfriend non-stop, talks to her through the fence when she’s able to meet up with him in person. Luckily, he seems to have not heard them.
Constance gulps. “So, you want to… freeze him out?”
Ocean makes a so-so gesture. “I guess you could describe it like that.” Noel makes eye contact with Constance and frantically gestures at Ocean, a sort of are you seeing this? movement of his hands. “Look, I get it, it feels harsh, but this is internationals. What else can we do?”
“Well, let’s see,” deadpans Noel. “We could let it go because it’s high school choir and it’s not that big of a deal.” Ocean’s eyes widen in clear offense; Noel ignores this, just keeps listing his suggestions. “We could talk to him instead of going behind his back like this. We could, I don’t know, just sing like a fucking team and win?” Ocean raises her eyebrows as though he’s just suggested something blatantly ridiculous. “It’s worked so far!”
“Everything works until it doesn’t,” she says venomously. “Connie. Bestie. Are you with me here?”
Noel continues to gesture to Ocean, to silently ask if Constance is even seeing this shit, but really, the fight is lost now and he knows it. Constance Blackwood, the nicest girl in town, is not going to take a stance against her best friend, not in public. The choir isn’t that big, and Noel’s really not sure how everyone else would respond to this plan, or if Ocean ever plans on telling them the full story at all. Constance’s vote means something here, and, well, Noel’s already witnessed the college dorm colors be decided on her behalf.
Constance takes a deep breath. “It… it doesn’t feel right,” she finally says.
Ocean opens her mouth to say something but Noel cuts her off, throwing up his hands in frustration. “That’s because it’s fucking bullshit!” he insists, and then he gives up on this argument and he turns to leave.
He storms past Misha on his way out. Misha must hear his footsteps through the headphones, because he looks up, and Noel quickly tries to hide his rage. He offers Misha a small, friendly wave.
Misha waves back a bit, and then focuses back on his phone.
Noel continues storming off.
It’s a St. Cassian’s Chamber Choir tradition to party before competitions.
There’s a field on the edge of Uranium City, a park where the porta-potties are permanent fixtures. In the fall, it’s where the lousy traveling fair sets up, but right now it’s Spring and the field is fair game. There’s a portable table set up with drinks and cups, and Constance takes it upon herself to pour for everyone. The tradition is for everyone to come to the parties - even Ricky, who spends the whole time sitting under a tree with his handheld game console, and Misha, who nobody trusts not to bring drugs, and Ocean, who still believes underage drinking is a real crime and who always goes to the table with her nose turned up to get a glass of apple juice.
“This stuff is way too sweet,” she complains. “It’s, like, diabetes in a cup.”
She laughs a laugh that might be nervous, might be mean-spirited, might be earnest. Constance stares at her, trying to figure out which one it is.
“Hey,” says Ocean. “Connie. Head up.” Constance jolts, forcing her head upwards. “Oh! You’re wearing the red dress.”
Constance is, in fact, wearing the red dress. It’s the only one she has in that particular shade. The fabric is thick, and the sleeves go all the way to the first knuckle of her thumbs, but the neckline plunges just a little further than she’s usually comfortable with. Ocean is wearing a floral dress, matched with a plain jacket and tights that seems overkill for this time of year, even in Canada.
“I thought you weren’t going to wear the red dress,” Ocean explains.
“You wanted me to.”
“Hm. Maybe we should have… gotten together to get ready. Then we could have chosen together.” She takes another sip of her juice with an exaggerated gag. “Who is that girl?”
Her eyes are resting on the brown-haired girl across the field. Leather jacket, plaid skirt, hair in braids wound around the crown of her head. Uranium City is a small town, the St. Cassian’s Chamber Choir even smaller, and it’s not difficult to spot someone who isn’t normally at these parties.
The girl is engaged in idle conversation with Noel. They’re comparing nail polish.
“I think it’s Natalia,” answers Constance.
Misha sees Noel and Talya talking from across the field. “Yo!” He grins at them as he approaches, slapping Noel on the back in a sort of imitation of a bro hug and then leaning in to kiss Talya. “Good to see my homie and my shawty getting along, yo.”
“Your friend is pretty dope,” Talya admits.
“Sorry the party is so lame. Who wants more drinks?” They both raise their hands. “Yo, Poet, you like gin, yeah?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Alright. And Talya, I will get nothing but the best for you!”
He goes off in search of booze and Talya, with one eyebrow raised, softly asks, “Poet?”
Constance and Ocean watch as Misha pours the drinks. Ocean’s eyes scan the whole party. There’s Corey belching out a crude rendition of one of the choir’s songs, Astrid casually mingling with a drink in her hand, Penny telling some long and convoluted story. And then, right in front of her, Constance in the red dress. Her hair is all jet black, and there’s a bit of lipstick - not too red, just to match the dress.
Ocean’s lips are pursed.
“I can never get the idea behind these parties,” she mutters, as Misha goes back with the drinks, and as Constance refills hers. “We all just stand around in the sun and drink? Is that good for our voices?”
“I mean… a little fun every now and then won’t hurt anyone, right?” Constance shrugs, nervously. “The flight isn’t until next week.”
“I guess you’re right. Eugh, Misha wanted to have the party tonight. I bet it was so he could sneak that girl in.”
Constance turns to Ocean and blinks several times. “Are you jealous?”
Ocean blinks right back. “You think I’m jealous of Misha?”
“Um, no, of Natalia.”
“I know that’s what you meant. I just -” She puts down her juice, folds her arms over herself. “This was always meant to be for the choir. She doesn’t even go to our school. I wouldn’t even be doing these stupid parties if it wasn’t tradition, if he won’t stick to tradition then what is the point?” She sighs. “He’s in his final year of high school. If he was sensible he’d be focusing on his future instead of some girl.”
Constance says nothing, staring at her shoes.
“So.” Ocean clears her throat. “Pink and green, right?” Constance jolts, and then nods. “The green fits the university colors, too. So we can show some school spirit and fit with the pallette.”
“The… university colors?” asks Constance, tilting her head.
“Mm-hmm, it’s mostly green,” Ocean continues. “More of a dark green, but I was thinking we’d pair it with a lighter shade and that would make the pink less jarring. I think we’d be doing a really great thing, you know, showing our pride in USask while adding our own touch to it. I mean, it’d help inspire all the other students. Oh, I was thinking I’d want to help run uni activities early on - the workload will only get heftier, I’ll want to focus on opportunities outside of homework while I still can - and if you could help, like how you help with the extracurriculars now, I would really-”
“USask?” interrupts Constance.
She knows the term - it’s the shortening of the University of Saskatchewan. “Yes,” says Ocean, not stopping. “USask, they’ve got the dark forest green logo, you know?”
“Did you … decide we’re going to USask?”
Ocean, finally, stops talking.
“Because, like, I didn’t… realize that was the plan, I guess?” Constance’s question, accusatory at first, gives way to nervous laughter as Ocean stares at her. “I mean, um, shouldn’t that have been something we… talked about, maybe?”
She follows it up with another round of nervous laughter. Ocean starts drinking her juice in a blatant attempt to postpone responding, and Constance does the same with vodka.
“I didn’t decide,” Ocean insists. “It was, it was just - it was just the most obvious option, you know? Like, I’m open to other options, but I just think it’s really important for us to…”
Ocean has a mouth that just keeps on opening and closing. Constance has learned to fast-forward it in her mind.
By the time she gets out of the conversation she must look exhausted, because Noel, a few drinks in, elbows her in the ribs and asks if Ocean is being a real piece of work.
“You’re not better than Ocean,” she snaps, tossing her empty red plastic cup into the nearest bin.
Noel stares at her. The whole conversation seems to grind to a screeching halt. Some unspoken, universal understanding that if Constance is snapping then something must be very wrong, and Constance resents it. Resents being so utterly invisible that the second she breaks out of the one-dimensional nicest girl in town persona, the people who have known her since pre-K stare at her like she’s a stranger.
“What?” she protests, keeping her voice low. Noel blinks in confusion. “You didn’t actually think her plan was bullshit, you just didn’t want Misha kicked out of choir. If you didn’t have a crush on him you would have been first in line to get him out.”
“What? Connie, you know that’s bullshit.”
“He has a girlfriend.” She gestures frantically at Talya.
“Is it illegal to have friends now? You’re wasted.”
“Just admit that you like him-”
“What is going on?” asks Talya, approaching.
Noel jolts. “We’re talking about Ocean,” he lies, quickly. “She’s… mad about something or other.”
“Ocean is, ah… squeaky girl with red hair,” adds Misha, for context.
“She hates parties, and Misha, and me, and fun in general. So just ignore her.”
Talya, after several long moments, clears her throat. “Right.” Her eyes are narrow. “So, ah… ‘poet’? Where did this nickname come from?”
“Mm,” says Misha. “I have nicknames for all my homies.” There’s a pause. “That is only Noel, because everyone else in Canada sucks, but-”
“Rude,” deadpans Constance.
“Oh, fuck off!” snaps Noel, and the frustration is sudden enough for Constance to stumble back in shock, slightly. “You - you’ve had too much to drink, just leave us alone.”
“Calm down,” protests Talya. “She barely said anything.”
“Oh, you fuck off too.” Talya’s eyes widen. So do Misha’s. Noel hesitates, then continues, “You don’t need to add your own two cents to our conversations when you don’t even know me. Or Ocean. Both of you, you can just go have fun together, I know you’ve been aching to sneak off all night-”
“Hey,” interrupts Constance. “Don’t talk to them like that-”
“Yo, shut the fuck up, Constance!” Misha’s rage explodes outward, enough to make Constance flinch and everyone else step back, loud enough to reverberate through the park. “I don’t need you to defend me!”
“What the fuck, Misha?” asks Talya, softly.
People are starting to stare, by now. The tensions are bubbling out of control, nobody knows who is on whose side or what the fight is even over, and Ricky has looked up from his game console. It’s a fucked-up spectacle of passion and rage, feelings overflowing onto the field like blood seeping through a bandage. Words are just flying across the field, other students being sucked into the argument that had nothing to do with them at first, any genuine interpersonal conflict quickly giving way to a mindless competition over who can yell the loudest.
“Somebody needs to take her wasted ass home!”
“Just admit you-”
“Hey, hey, say that again!”
“Oh, I will say it again, I will say it again because-”
“You are always fucking doing this!”
“You’re only in choir as a punishment, you shouldn’t-”
“Enough!”
Ocean isn’t loud, really, not compared to the rest of the argument. But her voice is a different quality, a little higher pitched, and when she finally pipes in so assertively it just cuts through all the overlapping yelling. The choir shuts up, sheepishly. Ocean stares at them all disapprovingly, catching her breath.
She sighs pointedly. “Alright.” She points to a corner of the field. “St. Cassian’s Chamber Choir, group meeting, now.” Constance, obediently, starts to walk toward the corner. Everyone else stays still. “Come on! I’m serious!”
Eventually, only Talya stays behind, watching the choir walk out of her earshot, waiting uneasily with a drink in her hand.
"I don't know what that was," begins Ocean, once the whole choir is within scolding distance. "But I do know that it's over." The children stare guiltily at the floor; she claps her hands once, loudly, to force their attention up. "Do I need to remind you all that it's only a weekend before we all fly to Seattle and sing as an ensemble on an international level? Because if we're going to act like this then we might as well not even bother getting on that plane! We should be learning to harmonise, both literally and figuratively - not spending all of our time starting fights and stressing about relationships!"
Mischa crosses his arms, increasingly aware that this speech is largely directed at him. It doesn’t matter whether he started the fight, or how much role he played in it. He has been the town scapegoat from the minute he got off the plane from Ukraine.
Ocean sighs again. "Okay. Here's what we're gonna do. Everybody get in a line."
Nobody moves. The choir stares at her blankly. "What is this, fucking girl scout camp?" deadpans Noel. And Misha, against his own best interests, laughs with him.
Ocean rolls her eyes. "I'm serious! All of you, get in a line." The children, after a pause, resign themselves and shuffle into some sort of formation. "Alright. Now I want each of you to go down this line and say one nice, true thing about everyone in this choir."
She’s met with blank, incredulous stares.
"I'm serious!" she insists once again. "Here, I'll - I'll go first." Ricky, who she barely knows, is on one end of the line. She put her hands on his shoulders, and he tightens his grip on the handles of his crutches. "Richard Potts, you are beautiful in the eyes of our Lord." She moves on to Noel, next to Ricky - hands on his shoulders. "Noel Gruber, you are beautiful in the eyes of our Lord."
Misha snickers. "Do you have any other material?" asks Noel.
Ocean's confidence flickers, briefly. But then a swift recovery, "Alright, then! Ricky..." She doubles back to make eye contact with him. "You have more fight in you than anyone I've ever known. I'm inspired by your determination." Ricky stares at her, blankly; she moves back onto Noel. "Noel Gruber, your smile makes me happy every time I see it." Noel, surprisingly, manages a bit of a genuine smile at that, wide-eyed. "Misha, I love that you don't care what anybody thinks. And you're so completely yourself."
"He's also deadly at beer pong," snarks Astrid.
Ocean's eyes widen. "So, go on, tell him!"
The line quickly dissolves, and the corner becomes its own microcosm of the party. The compliments aren’t given in any order, and people get skipped over and forgotten, but Misha very reluctantly tells Ocean earnestly that she has very shiny hair and that might be its own type of victory. Noel and Misha end up laughing together again. Constance greets them both with meek apologies and is waved off with a don’t-worry-about-it gesture.
After a few minutes of casual conversation, Talya gives up on waiting and re-approaches the group to mingle again. Ocean stands back and looks at her conflict resolution work proudly.
“We’ll have to go soon,” she tells Constance, casually. “It’s getting late.”
Constance checks her watch. “It’s not that late.”
“I’ve got to be up early tomorrow morning. I’ll give you a lift home and then we’ll be cool, alright?”
That last part, she realizes belatedly, isn’t entirely her choice in reality.
"Will we be cool?" she asks, nervously.
Constance hesitates for a long moment, legs shaking beneath her. "I don't know," she finally admitted half-seriously. "I mean... you haven't said anything nice about me yet."
Ocean laughs - as though finding it laughable that she would even need to compliment Constance, what with it being a given how valued and loved she is, and as though finding it laughable that there would be anything in Constance to compliment at all. "Well," she begins, grinning. "Let's see. Constance Blackwood. You have no fashion sense, seriously questionable taste in music, and you can’t handle yourself around alcohol. But..." Her grin fades, replaced by something more genuine. "You're the only one who's always been there for me. You're the best friend I've ever had. You know that, right?"
Constance smiles. “Yeah, I know that.”
“Alright! So. Drive home?”
She gestures toward the carpark. Constance hesitates.
“You… you go,” she tells her. “I don’t have anything on in the morning, I’ll find my own way home.”
Ocean, suddenly, frowns deeply.
“Okay,” she finally says. “If you’re sure.”
Ocean goes off to her car. Constance leans against the outer wall of the port-a-potty and talks to one of the park employees.
The morning of the flight arrives.
Ocean stays up half the night pacing, overprepared as always. Noel stares at his open bag for several moments in the morning, looking at the clothes he’s packed, never quite satisfied. Misha keeps his hands in his pockets as his adoptive parents shoo him out, and waits until he’s out of sight to move the flash from his pocket to his bag. Ricky checks and double-checks the battery on his AAC device and brings two chargers, just in case. Penny irrationally clutches her younger brother’s hand, because she had to beg and bargain for Father Marcus to bend the rules and allow him to come in the first place, and she can’t help but wonder if he’ll retract his choice at the last second.
Constance, before leaving for the airport, takes out a piece of paper from between books in her bookshelf. She unfolds it, re-reads it, even though she already knows what it is.
University of Toronto.
Early admission.
She folds it back up, puts it away, and grabs her bag to leave.
Misha’s adoptive parents, who are surprisingly loaded, have funded a private jet in exchange for their kid being out of their way for a few days. He takes full advantage of it, briefly; he sits back in his seat wearing his fake varsity jacket with some unknown Ukrainian writing embroidered on the front, and he tells people that they have to earn their seat if they want to come anywhere near him. He folds when Noel approaches, admits he was joking all along.
Ocean’s eyes widen when she sees Constance, behind her in line to board the flight. “Woah. Your hair.” It’s dyed a vibrant shade of purple. “You… didn’t tell me.”
Constance’s cheeks flush darkly. “I just… wanted to look good for the contest.”
“You should have told me,” Ocean insists, smiling as though this is some happy thing that she doesn’t know why she was excluded from.
Ocean takes the window seat. Constance, of course, sits next to her. There’s a long moment of eye contact.
“What?” asks Constance.
Ocean grins. “Remember how we had to fly in the fourth grade, and you cried the whole way?”
Constance laughs nervously, rubbing at her arm.
Ocean sighs. “Don’t tell anyone about this.” From her pocket she produces a small ziplock bag, with two pills dangling inside. “Valium,” she whispers. “I stole it from my dad. He’s got a huge stash, he won’t even notice it’s gone.”
“Holy shit,” whispers Constance.
“Yeah, I know, I’m basically the worst. But you’re my bestie.”
Constance, bravely, dry swallows the pills.
It’s just enough to relax her as the flight attendant warns them that they’re going just a little further North than expected.
Constance dreams, through a haze of valium, about a carnival.
It’s the traveling fair, she thinks, at entirely the wrong time of year. They’re set up in Uranium City in a field that stretches on and on forever. The attractions are all mediocre, equipment in some state of disrepair that leaves her wondering how the fair is even still running. She spends several minutes trying to hit a button with a hammer, with enough strength to win the grand prize, before realizing the machine must be broken.
She buys herself some cotton candy as a consolation prize. It’s pastel pink and baby blue, in a flimsy paper cone. So much sugar condensed into some brittle fluff, that could be torn apart so easily under her teeth.
Ocean takes it off her, because they’re about to go on a rollercoaster and she’ll make herself sick. Nobody even asks if she wants to go on the rollercoaster.
But she does, it turns out. There’s a moment of pure, drugged-up bliss at the apex of the loop-de-loop. She’s so relaxed, and the town looks so small from up here, and her best friend is squeezing her hand. So many memories swirl together in her head, enough to make her oddly homesick for her family - but they must be right down there, underneath the rollercoaster cart, and she can’t wait to go home to them.
The high wears off. The cart keeps falling.
Her best friend is squeezing her hand. Tight enough to make her fingers tingle a little.
Dizzy, tingling, spinning ‘round. Oh, where’s the sky and where’s the ground?
By the time she wakes up, Ocean is screaming.