“Um,” I said. “I think I am.”
He mulled that over, considering me. “That sounds like there’s a guy in the picture already.”
There was a guy in the picture already. But it was complicated, like this whole situation.
Even so, at the thought of SmallvilleGuy, I dropped my hands from Devin’s arms.
“Stop trying to distract me,” I said, partly to change the subject and partly because I was afraid the Warheads had gone after him back there. “Did those guys do anything to you, before?”
“What do you mean?” he said. He made a mini-shrug. “I’m the king. What could they do?”
I didn’t believe him.
But cluing Devin in on my suspicions that the Warheads were involved in some sort of unsavory top-secret research and that he might be in danger of becoming the next target of their group consciousness—well, that would take a little more time than we had before first period. And a lot more evidence.
Unlike Anavi, he wasn’t volunteering any details beyond the ordinary. It was possible the Warheads were messing with me. Possible they hadn’t done anything to Devin to make him so subdued. I wanted him to open up, though.
“Why’d you make your character a fantasy guy, not a mercenary or a soldier or an alien?” I asked.
He ducked his head in—unless I was misreading him—embarrassment. The first time I’d ever seen him less than confident.
“Spill it,” I said, twisting the screws.
“I like reading that stuff, okay?” he said. “Big novels with elves and orcs and dragons . . . If you tell anyone, I’ll—”
“Sic your dragon on me? Noted. Promise I won’t tell a soul. But really, these days, isn’t it okay to just let your fantasy freak flag fly?” I stroked my chin. “Oh, wait, you already did. And you put your head on it.”
He laughed, and the remaining tension was broken, any embarrassment gone. But I stayed with him all the way to his first period study hall, only going to my own geometry class afterward.
I’d feel much better when I saw Anavi, and confirmed that she was doing all right. This time, my skill at conspiracy theorizing might be getting the best of me.
Come on, SmallvilleGuy, dig up something else on this company that I can use.
*
The morning was a long one, filled with geometry (teachers would seemingly never learn that hard-selling that we’d need a subject later in life only made it sound more like we wouldn’t) and AP lit (I considered appropriating SmallvilleGuy’s take on Macbeth, for I too liked the witches best). I got a few more thumbs-up and high fives, which I wanted to enjoy, but I hadn’t been able to find Anavi. It was possible her parents had kept her home, but the day before she’d seemed so certain that she wanted me to mention her by name.
That had been before. Before her lunchtime revelations of the desire to slaughter and lay waste to all the worlds in Worlds War Three.
Before the mid-day break, I waited by Anavi’s locker. But if she was here, then she’d gone straight to lunch, so I headed that way.
I had wanted to enter the cafeteria together, in case the Warheads tried anything. I was still in Anavi’s corner.
The Warheads might have been taken to pretentious-office-ville by Principal Rumpled Shark, but they were free now, ensconced at their usual table by the doors. Whatever wrist slapping had occurred, you’d never know it to watch them.
They wore their holosets. I figured there was no danger in crossing close by them on my search for Anavi, given that they were deep in the game.
But they began laughing as I passed, without even turning off the glowing scenes in front of them. A chill passed over me, and I felt that shove against my mind, pushing me away. But more insistent. The pressure lingered.
Not so long, but long enough to make me want to get away from them. And fast.
I sped up, almost careening through the cafeteria. I garnered some “what’s with her?” looks as I half-ran, but I ignored them and went for the back corner and Anavi’s usual table.
She was sitting there, alone, and I was surprised that Maddy and Devin weren’t with her. I’d expected them to be.
But then the two of them rose from a table along my route, and Maddy grabbed my arm. “Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?” I asked.
“Go over there,” Devin said.
He still seemed less energetic than normal. But maybe I was imagining it, seeing something that wasn’t there through the lens of my worry.
“She ran us off,” Maddy said. “She was rude about it. I even gave her a word to spell, thinking she was joking at first.”
“Let me try,” I said. “You guys stay here.”
“Your funeral,” Maddy said.
“But I was so young and full of life,” I deadpanned.
I knew the whole deal and they didn’t.
Anavi might not be up to talking to people yet. So I moved toward her slowly, concerned about full troll-slaying mode. Why would Anavi be nasty with Maddy and Devin?