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“Hey, guys.” The glow of the vending machine is casting Kristen in a flickering, sickly white light as she leans her chin onto Fig’s shoulder, peering into the glass. “If I get a string cheese and you get crackers, we can make crackers and cheese for dinner!”
“Woah, yeah,” Fig says, “Let’s do it. Also Gilear has a ton of yogurt.”
Riz nods dutifully beside them, squinting into the machine and then moving to punch in the alphanumeric code for crackers. “I’ll eat the expired stuff,” he notes, turning to Fig with a smile, “I don’t care.”
Kristen grins ear to ear. “Cooking!”
It’s her first week in Strongtower, sleeping shoulder to shoulder with Fig on Gilear’s pull out couch. Her duffel bag is still shoved into the corner of the room, unpacked and facing backwards to hide the Camp Husk logo on the front—but there is something like a suggestion of normalcy, creeping up her spine as she unlocks the door to the apartment on the first try. Standing here in the ground floor hallway collecting snacks—well, dinner— with Riz and Fig is the first time she can put a name to it, equal parts relief, joy, and unease simmering low in her stomach.
She chalks it up to hunger. They get their ingredients and go, Kristen counting her remaining coins carefully. Unless she gets a job, that number isn’t going to go up anytime soon. No more weekly allowance, and also no more hot, buttery corn served with dinner—but she has cheese and crackers and she has people that love her, so she doesn’t care. She shoves her dwindling net worth into the rainbow sock she decided was essential in making the journey from her parent’s house (even though she lost its pair three years ago, origin of her then-confusing juvenile devastation becoming more and more evident with each passing day) and wills herself to focus on the distant sound of her friends pondering over if pressing every elevator button would bring them to a secret floor or just break the elevator.
(Kristen’s pretty sure it would just break the elevator, seeing as it was already out of order earlier this week. She never saw any maintenance workers, but it was fixed by her third day, anyway. Riz warned her not to hold her breath.)
They construct their cheese and crackers as if they were artisan sandwiches, dipping the edges into only slightly sour-smelling yogurt. There’s no corn-shaped prongs, and there’s no tray of butter indented into the shape of a smile (God’s smile, her dad used to say), and there’s no grace uttered before they promptly stuff their faces—there’s none of that, nothing Kristen’s heart has grown around. There’s a gas station receipt with a concerningly red stain on it on the coffee table, and a cramp in her calf from sitting on the scratchy carpet with her legs folded into themselves, and a distinct chill in the air because Gilear still hasn’t turned the heat on yet. But also there’s Fig, and there’s Riz, and there is a goddamn sandwich that Kristen put together with her own two hands, and it tastes fucking amazing.
And that might be enough.
*
“Riz, should we set up our parents?” Fig says it in a scandalized sort of way, near-whisper still echoing in the roomy space of the mail room, scuffed off-white linoleum and floor to ceiling rows of mail slots.
Riz is reaching into one of them, bent over awkwardly with the little square door open and a keychain hanging out of it as he turns to Fig with an open-mouthed delight on his face. “That would be awesome.”
“We could like—we could invite you guys over for dinner, or you could invite us over for dinner, and we could like. I don’t know, I’ll make sure he wears a shirt without holes in it.”
“Perfect. We can get high-end takeout, too.” Riz smiles, locking the mailbox and leafing through the stack in his hand, sorting it into two separate piles then holding one out to Kristen. “Flyers,” he says.
“Aw, nice.”
They never had flyers at the Applebee’s residence; Kristen’s parents always claimed they were secular propaganda and stuck signs to their mailbox refusing their delivery. They said, we have all the coupons we need for the Helioic grocery store in the church newsletter, Kristen. So maybe it’s a novelty—a lot of this is still a novelty, mail room and different sets of keys and elevators and all that—when Riz and Fig find flyers in their mailboxes every other day. She likes to look at them, artifacts from a mundanity she was never afforded. So far she hasn’t been able to find any of the propaganda her parents promised would lie inside—unless bananas being on sale counts as heresy.
Riz had watched her with a confused sort of fondness, not entirely unlike the way one might look at a zoo animal trying to figure out the enrichment maze leading to their dinner, when she had first grabbed the newspapery flyer from his hands, all bright colours and bold text advertising Elmville’s best steals. Since then, he’d handed them off to her each time without her having to ask, and watched her leaf through the pages with a level of amusement she was only a little bit embarrassed by.
“I think—” Fig laughs, “I think they—eh.”
“You sound so confident.”
“It’s not—it’s Gilear I’m worried about.”
Kristen snorts and cuts in with, “It’s Gilear we’re all worried about.” Riz gives her an appreciative exhale and she continues, “Last night we came home from Crom’s and we heard the water going so we were like, ‘oh, cool, Gilear’s in the shower’. But then it was twenty minutes later and it was still going so we were like, ‘huh, guess he got in just as we came home’. But then it was twenty minutes after that and we were like, ‘okay, something’s wrong’.”
Riz raises an eyebrow. “I assume something was indeed wrong?” A beat, and then he adds, “As things often are with Gilear?”
Fig nods gravely. “I knocked and he didn’t answer so I went in, like—” She holds her hand up in front of her face, loosely shielding her eyes— “and he was just, he was just—” She cuts herself off with a sad little laugh, halfway to a sob. “He was just lying in the tub, and his eyes were closed? So I thought he was like, dead or something, so I was like, ‘Dad! Are you okay!?” and he woke up and he was like—” Fig clears her throat, holding up a finger in wait as she falls into what is an honestly not bad Gilear impression. “Ah, daughter, yes, I—I’m afraid I slipped in the shower while attempting to apply my, my balding shampoo. You see it’s, it has a very low viscosity so it sort of just, fell out of my hands and as I bent over to collect it from the shower floor I, I fell victim to its power and found myself, ah, knocked prone.” She is near hysterics now, crouched down to the floor of the mail room as she struggles to continue. “And then he— it was quite painful, as you might imagine, so I lay there recovering for just a moment, but then it was really nice actually so I gave myself another moment and then I suppose I must have fallen asleep, because here I am now, still unshampooed, telling you this tale of defeat.”
Kristen shakes her head. “He was lying there for at least forty minutes.”
“Yeah, I could feel it in the air, the water was like, ice cold. Not one drop of steam on the mirror.”
Riz huffs a pained sort of laugh and puts his hands on his hips. “Y’know, guys, I don’t know if you’re really selling the whole let Gilear date my mom thing.”
“Oh, now it’s let Gilear date your mom? What if I’m apprehensive about letting your mom date Gilear?”
“Are you?” Fig doesn’t answer, scoffing noiselessly and raising her chin up slightly as she refuses to meet his gaze. Riz deadpans, “Yeah, thought so.”
“Yeah, your mom’s hot, Riz.”
He turns to look at Kristen flatly and she raises her hands up in defense. “Listen, I’m not—I mean I would, but she’s kinda way too old for me and I have a feeling she isn’t really part of the cougar crowd anyway—”
“No! Stop! Horrible!” he yells, holding his hands over his ears as he brushes past the both of them to make way out into the main hallway, calling, “You’re both horrible!” over his shoulder before he deserts them in the mail room.
Kristen smiles. “Love you too, buddy!”
*
It’s nearly a month after Kristen got kicked out that her parents reach out. It’s just a one sentence text message, but it’s enough that she spends five whole minutes staring at it, frozen.
I’m sure the community would appreciate your presence in Church on Sunday in the wake of our recent loss.
It’s definitely pointed, on several different levels, but that barely registers above the shock of seeing it. Kristen doesn’t realize she’s crying until Fig walks in and asks her what’s wrong. It’s confusing to feel sad about it—she wants to feel angry, she wants to text them back and say fuck you, everything you taught me is a lie, but her hands are frozen in the living room, unable to conjure any sort of movement. Fig offers to beat them up but Kristen shakes her head because that’s not what she wants, despite everything.
Deep inside, there’s a tiny part of her that wants this to mean that everything’s okay, everything’s going to be normal again, and she doesn’t have to know the things she knows. Her parents could still love her and her god could still be good and she wouldn’t have to feel like her own stomach is eating itself from the inside out. Deep inside, there’s a tiny part of her that wants that—but there’s a bigger part that knows she can’t have it, even if it were real.
She ends up going, anyway.
She doesn’t text her mom back, but she sits in the pew her family normally occupies when the service starts that Sunday morning. She doesn’t know what to expect when they come in, but it certainly isn’t her mom saying, “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses. Your room is ready back at home, Kristen. If you’ve decided you’re done straying from your path.”
She sits there woodenly and lets the sermon beat her into the pew, not hearing a word of it. She’s not sure why she thought this was a good idea—the only good that’s here is the excited look on her brothers’ faces when they lean over to wave to her. What, was everything suddenly going to be fine once everyone had a couple weeks off from each other? Her parents obviously haven’t changed their stance, and neither has Kristen—and neither has the fucking church—so what’s there even to be done?
She’s not going to be able to take communion when they bring it out. There’s no way she can bring herself to do it. The world narrows around her and her mouth fills with saliva as she slips her crystal out of her pocket, swiping to the group prayer chain and blindly texting, it’s bad, help. She’d told the group she was doing this on lunch at Friday, so she only hopes—doesn’t bother praying—someone remembers and makes the connection, and figures out something to get her out of here. Distantly, she knows she could just get up and leave, but it feels like someone has cast hold person on her, or as if she’s an extension of the pew itself, held squarely to the floor of the church by the weight of her family sitting there, cold and statuesque.
A moment later, a message from Fabian comes through. Five minutes. say you have to go to the bathroom. She slides the crystal back into her pocket, ignoring her mother’s curt exhale and counting to sixty, then starting over again, and again, and again until five minutes have passed and her lips are whispering, “I’m going to use the restroom.” After that she’s standing, movements stilted and unnatural, and the door of the church is approaching, her hand reaching out to push it open and slip through, end of the sermon fading into a static-filled oblivion.
She nearly falls down the stairs to the sidewalk, but when she does finally make it out in one piece she sees Fabian hovering nervously by his motorcycle, still running. “Hey,” he says, a little out of breath as he turns to meet her gaze, the image of him studying her going in and out of focus.
She tries a Hi but it comes out more like Hhhhhhhh so Fabian just walks over, collects her in his arms, then puts a helmet on her head and places her on the back of the bike. She holds onto him tightly, numbly watching his grip on the handlebars as they tear out of the parking lot. At one point she notices herself shaking, probably not from the chill of the wind. Hopefully, the helmet and the roar of the engine are enough to drown out whatever sounds she’s making to go along with the tremors, starting deep in her chest and shivering out of her mouth like some terrible secret. If it’s not, Fabian does not say anything to indicate so.
“Where do you want to go?” he asks gently once they’re at a stoplight.
“I don’t know,” she answers honestly.
“That’s okay.”
Somehow, coming out of Fabian’s mouth, she believes it.
*
Adaine brings herself and her cool magic jacket to Strongtower one day after school to test one of Riz’s theories. Unlike some of his proposed experiments, she is also excited about this one, which results in the four of them in the hallway with the vending machine (dubbed Luxury lane by Fig, of course) bouncing eagerly on the balls of their feet.
The theory is this: Adaine’s jacket can produce anything up to a value of ten gold pieces, and as long as the item is under that threshold of value and not alive, there seems to be no limit to how many of that item they can produce. The vending machine accepts gold pieces. With the powers of Adaine’s jacket, they should, by transitive property, be able to purchase unlimited snacks.
At least until the vending machine runs out.
The light is still flickering as Adaine reaches into her pockets, frowning in concentration until she gasps, pulling out a palm’s worth of gold pieces in each hand. “Nice!” she says, holding them out for Fig to pluck, slotting them into the vending machine with an excited little wiggle.
“Adaine, whaddya want?”
“Oh, god, lemme see.” She squints through the glass, frowning as the flickering of the light intensifies. “Man, someone’s really gotta fix that. Uh, chocolate mints, I guess?”
“You got it.”
They raid the machine until it’s appropriately sparse, taking care to leave enough spoils for, a) their next return should it fall before the machine gets restocked (Riz says it shouldn’t be longer than a couple weeks, but Kristen is skeptical—in all her time both visiting and living here, she’s never seen anyone who works here, let alone doing maintenance on anything) or, b) anyone else who lives inside this building. Which, come to think of it, Kristen hasn’t really seen many other residents in her now extended time here.
(“They see you,” Riz tells her when she mentions it one day, “I don’t know why you think no one else lives here. Belintha in 210 asked me who you were just yesterday.” “I don’t know, I never see anyone. Maybe the building is haunted and you’re just seeing ghosts.” “Well yeah, definitely, but I think that’s unrelated.”)
When Riz and Fig have ventured upstairs to look for a bag to carry up their collective haul, Adaine quietly conjures another few handfuls of gold pieces and drops them into Kristen’s sock, shushing her protests with a shake of the head and a wink—which, what does that mean?
Dinner is really good that night.
*
The pet oyster becomes a problem about as quick as Kristen had anticipated it would. Riz comments on it one afternoon when Fig is off at band practice, nearly turning and walking right back out the door to Gilear’s apartment. His face scrunches up in disgust when he spots the cup—an off-puttingly milky sort of opacity, deep purple-grey of the very dead oyster suctioned to the inside of the glass—and he turns to Gilear, accusing.
“You’re just gonna let that live here? In your apartment that you—presumably, that you pay for?”
Gilear blinks slowly, sighs slower. “Yes, Riz, I do pay for my own living area, but thank you for insinuating that I am incapable of even that.”
Riz bulldozes right past the sadness of that acknowledgement and hits him again. “So you’re just fine with that in your own living area, then?”
Gilear looks over at the cup, shrugging weakly. “I don’t see how it’s causing any harm.”
Riz’s eyes widen, his eyebrows receding into his hairline. “You don’t—I’m about to start taking poison damage from the smell, Gilear.”
He blinks again, frowning slightly at the cup before he turns back to Riz, opening his mouth to speak and then closing it again. He tilts his head before finally arriving at whatever point, sighing once more. “Ah, yes. Evidently my sinus infection has not cleared up on its own and I have lost my sense of smell.”
Kristen, who has been content to just sit back and silently watch this interaction as it played out, finally speaks. “Your sinus infection? Gilear, did you go to the doctor? Those don’t, they don’t clear up on their own. You have to take antibiotics.”
“Yes, well, I was prescribed antibiotics, but apparently the, the virile, robust range of bacteria residing within my sinuses have developed a resistance to the medicine I was given and the insurance I am afforded by my position as a Lunch Lad at the Aguefort Adventuring Academy does not cover any other kind.”
“Gross,” Riz mutters.
“Sad,” Kristen offers.
“It’s probably fine.”
“It’s probably not, Gilear.”
Riz shakes his head violently. “That’s—that’s so sad, and I’m sorry, not my problem.” He spares Gilear one last try at a sympathetic look and turns to Kristen, one hand on the doorknob. “C’mon, we’re going to my place.”
Gilear looks to her for some sort of lifeline but she can only give him an awkward smile as she stands from the couch and shuffles guiltily over to Riz, squeaking out a “Bye!” as they shut the door behind them.
Riz’s apartment is a little bigger than Gilear’s—actually meant for two people—but not by much. Edgar is roaming feely; he and Riz have an agreement about not getting into anything that will kill him, apparently. Riz’s set-up with his case files and his board has been shoved into the back of the main room, looking uncharacteristically untouched. Kristen lets her eyes float over it, but doesn’t say anything. There’s a bit of guilt to the thought, but it’s evident that they’ve all sort of taken a break from the case. Or, rather, there haven’t really been any new developments with the case. Probably a bit of both, but Riz especially seems a little better for it—healthier, happier, more social, less obsessed—so she doesn’t mention it as they settle into the couch, Riz leaning down to scoop Edgar up from the floor.
“I think we might have to pull the whole it ran away thing and just flush it,” he says, getting back to business.
“The what?”
He gives her a look. “Y’know, when your mom tells you your dog ran away but really it just died?”
She blanches as her childhood cat comes to mind. “That’s—you—” Hm. “I had a cat named Sparky that ran away when I was little. Do you think that’s—?”
“Oh, Kristen.”
A nervous, hysterical hiccup of a sob/laugh escapes her. “Do you ever just realize you have so much more trauma in your childhood than you thought you did?” She’s mostly talking about the Helio thing, but the Sparky revelation certainly isn’t helping.
Riz gives her the world’s most awkward smile. “Do you wanna hold Edgar?”
“Yes please.”
(Fig gets home before they can sneak back in and flush the poor dead thing, so they make up an excuse about practicing for Riz’s rogue exam and forget all about the original mission when Fig suggests they try rappelling down from the roof.
In the end, there’s only two broken bones, and Kristen heals them right away, anyway.)
*
Solstice comes around sooner than Kristen thought it would, time rumbling forward as she and her friends make their way through the semester. She ends the term with surprisingly good marks, all adventures and home life turmoil considered. They all do well, actually, and as the group makes their way out on the last day of term, they are met with a not insignificant amount of high fives and well wishes, classmates asking them to hit them up if they know of any good parties over the break.
“Are we… are we popular, now?”
“I was always popular, Gorgug,” Fabian answers. “But yes?” Even he seems perplexed by the influx of people wanting to talk to them. The news of their rumble at the Durinson Mithral Factory had made its rounds at the time, but it seems like that combined with the clout of being top students—which, at this school, is actually cool—has elevated them to Minor Somebodies, even as freshmen.
Gorgug lets out a contented, “Huh,” then turns to Kristen. “Do you know of any good parties over the break?”
“Fig and I were thinking of hosting a rager at our place in Strongtower.” It slips out before she has the time to really think about it, and Kristen’s eyes dart over to Fig to see if she noticed—and she is met with a warm smile and an assuring nod. Kristen smiles. Our place.
“Cool. I can—yeah, I would probably fit in pretty well at a rager.”
“Cool.” Kristen has never been to a rager, but she’s pretty sure it’s not what they’re going to have judging by the way Fig had talked around it, backtracking her suggestion by saying they should have, like, an anti-party. Since they were cool now, nobody else at the school was cool enough to come to their party other than the six of them, apparently. Kristen’s pretty sure Fig just wanted it to be them in the first place, anyway, but she still calls it a rager all the same.
A couple minutes later they all begin to split off, Fabian heading for his house as Fig, Riz, and Adaine go to Strongtower—Fig begged to do Adaine’s makeup for the party—and Kristen with Gorgug, heading to the Thistlespring tree. She’d volunteered to go straight there with him from school to help set up for the Solstice party his parents were hosting for the six of them and the parents that weren’t crazy or evil or both—she’s still not sure where her parents lie on that scale, but she knows it’s not good, but she doesn’t feel bad for feeling sad about it, and she doesn’t feel bad for not feeling sad about them not being invited. Jawbone has all but literally hypnotized her with the phrase It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling, and she’s started to believe it.
That doesn’t make it any easier, though, and even as she’s listening to Gorgug’s parents sing them festive non-denominational winter holiday music, she finds herself dreading having to go through the motions of Solstice without her parents or the church. Growing up through a childhood steeped in ritual makes change more difficult than most things, and Kristen is rapidly nearing her threshold for firsts this semester.
It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling. She feels like she’s intruding in Gorgug’s tree; holidays were always a strictly family-only event, much too serious for measly friends, nothing versus the shining throne of family. But she also feels—is starting to feel—like maybe family doesn’t mean what she thought it did, and she has as much right to be here, cutting up fruit and figuring out seating, as anyone else.
Digby and Wilma certainly make her feel like it, and of course there’s Gorgug, a constant balm of a presence no matter where they are. By his side, whether it’s fighting skeletons or arranging snack platters, she feels safe.
That’s not something she can say for anyone she’s related to by blood, at least not now.
(That’s maybe not entirely true; she misses her brothers like a long, hollow drone in her chest, aching and filled with worry. She wishes they could be here tonight.)
The party is a lively, heart-gripping success. It’s nothing she’s used to but it’s everything she’s wanted, all her friends by her side the entire night. The vibe is different than what she’s grown used to at Strongtower, but it’s just as welcoming, that same early, carefully excited sort of trepidation striking her chest, like, Could this be home?
She’s pretty sure nearly every single adult in the tree pulls her aside at one point to tell her that she’s always welcome to stay at their house, whenever she wants. They each say it in that tone that tells her they know, if not everything then all the important parts, and she tears up every time it happens.
They’re more than a little tipsy when they get back, but a later sober Kristen will defend her level of excitement at seeing an actual, real live building maintenance worker knelt down in front of the vending machine unscrewing that godforsaken faulty light bulb.
“It’s a Solstice miracle!” she cries, throwing her hands up in the air and realizing a beat too late that the sound her shoulder made was actually Riz letting out a disgruntled Ow, his hand linked with her own ripped up into the air in her excitement. “Oh, sorry buddy,” she says, giggling before she turns back to the vending machine. “Are you real? Did Helio send you?”
Adaine breathes out something between a sigh and a laugh. “Oh, Kristen.”
“Or Sol, maybe?”
“I’m sorry Jerry, you don’t—you don’t have to answer that. And you can be whatever god you want,” Riz assures.
(A side conversation, whispered by Fig and Kristen over Riz’s head:
“Jerry?”
“There weren’t any gods named Jerry in my book Fabian gave me.”
“Fabian’s so nice.”
“Yeah. Do you think Jerry is Gorgug’s dad? Is that why Riz knows him? Are Riz and Gorgug brothers?”
“I think Riz knows him ‘cause Riz has lived here his whole life, Kristen.”
“Naaaaaah. Someone’s gotta tell Gorgug his dad is either Jerry or dead.”)
The man, Jerry, probably not Gorgug’s dad but maybe so, gives them a concerned look. “You kids okay?”
“I think god hates me,” Kristen blurts out. “Unless—unless he sent you, then I know he loves me still and wants me to have good. Good machine lights.”
“Thank you for the good machine lights,” Fig yells, winking clumsily.
“It doesn’t really affect me that much because I don’t actually live here, but yes, thank you also,” Adaine adds.
Jerry smiles, pained, and gives a little nod. “No problem, ladies. And I’m—” He turns his gaze, addressing Kristen specifically. “I’m not much of a religious guy myself, but I’m pretty sure that for god, specifically Sol, loving people unconditionally is his, like, whole kinda deal. You’re gonna be alright, kid.” Kristen bursts into tears and he inhales sharply. “You, uh, you guys better get yourselves up to bed, now. It’s pretty late, and...” He trails off, grimacing at Kristen’s ugly sobbing.
Kristen blurrily registers Riz nodding like he’s got it all covered, and then he’s ushering Kristen and the girls toward the elevator and calling back over his shoulder, “Keep it cool, Jerry!”
She falls asleep almost immediately upon hitting the foam padding of the pullout couch, and as she drifts off curled into Fig curled into Adaine, she thinks that it wasn’t such a bad Solstice after all.
*
It doesn’t happen often, but Kristen finds herself without Fig or Riz in Strongtower on a bright Thursday afternoon, in the lull between Solstice and the new year. Fig is out somewhere with Gortholax and Riz and Sklonda are off visiting Riz’s dad. Gilear is home, but Kristen doesn’t feel like making that an established duo for fear of both emotional assimilation and social reprimand, so she tells him she’s going for a walk and slips into the hallway, the rest of the day hers.
She doesn’t really feel like going out in the cold, especially if no one’s around to distract her from the bite, so she keeps her walk indoors, roaming the halls of Strongtower and seeing what they have to offer. She climbs the stairwell up to the roof first, heading right back down when she sees the foot and a half of snow she’d have to traipse through to get to any sort of view. The mail room is old hat at this point and she feels creepy just walking up and down the halls outside people’s (“people’s”, allegedly) apartments, so she heads down to the first floor to see what else she can find.
The vending machine is stocked full again so she stops to grab a pack of those gross little raisins for Gilear and continues on her way, trying random door handles as she goes. Most of them are locked and the ones that aren’t are places she’s been, like the laundry room or the garbage room or the entrance to the parking lot. But then she gets to the back stairwell and thinks, well we don’t go in the basement much, do we?
She discovers there’s a reason for that.
The first thing she notices is the smell. It’s overpowering, acerbic, the air so palpably chlorinated she can pretty much taste it. It’s so strong that she thinks chemical spill before she thinks pool, but once she gets there she is very much there, on all levels except physical.
(The thing is this: the first time Kristen stepped foot in this building, long before she began living in it, she’d asked Riz if it had a pool. He’d cringed, replied, “Haunted,” and moved on. She’d been deeply invested at the time, but as the school year wore on and the case got more tangled, she eventually forgot about it—until a couple weeks ago when she saw a poster for synchro tryouts at school. But when she’d asked again, Riz had given her the same answer again—corroborated by Fig’s grave addendum of, “And not in the fun way,” and that was that.)
The second thing she notices is the complete change in colour scheme, as if the rest of the building got renovated in the early 90s but this floor was left behind in 1973, all brown carpet and brown walls, subtle textured patterns that could be just as easily mistaken for an intentional design or a result of miscare.
The third thing she notices, which is maybe the most disconcerting, is that the layout of the basement seems to be completely different in structure than the rest of the building, which follows the same basic hallway scheme from the bottom up. This is something else entirely, one long hallway already disproportionate and just off, something in her bones suggesting a distinct wrongness with it all . Kristen shivers. When she turns to face the stairwell once more she half expects it to have disappeared but it’s there still, looking out of place and distinctly less threatening than anything else in her line of sight.
Obviously, she’s gonna go find the pool.
It is with a numb, giggly sort of indifference that Kristen strays from the stairwell, fluorescent beacon of safety left behind—fourth thing, she realizes, is that the lighting down here is different too, much more yellow-toned than the cold buzzing wash she’s come to familiarize herself with. She finds its absence deeply jarring, the incandescent warmth not the least bit inviting as she slowly advances down the hall, silent save for the soft pad of her footsteps. The carpet is more plush than she would have expected, and she has to actively suppress the image of it swallowing her up at the ankles, some sort of illusory thing fading away to reveal that the Strongtower Luxury Apartments are actually built upon a foundation of quicksand, hungry to consume anyone or anything that dares venture into its decidedly ungroovy jaws.
It’s the pool that’s haunted, she tells herself. They didn’t say anything about the basement itself. The fact that that simple affirmation is enough to calm her makes Kristen wonder if maybe her self-preservation skills are not entirely all there. That, coupled with the fact that she keeps going, meandering down the long corridor—no doorways in sight, just peeling wallpaper and uneven dips in the carpet—until she comes to a sharp turn, no other way to go but to the right or back where she came. She goes right, following the smell of chlorine as it gets stronger and stronger.
Eventually, she comes to a fork of sorts, and chooses to turn right again, into a section of hallway where the carpet turns to tile, damp with lone strands of hair in a variety of colours plastered over the floor like cracks. It looks like every public pool change room she’s ever been in, so she knows she’s going the right way. A few more turns later and she’s standing in front of a set of double doors with frosted windows showing off remnants of letters that might have once read, SWIMMING POOL.
“Nice,” she mutters under her breath, only slightly unnerved at the way it seems to bounce off the walls as if she already was in the pool. She takes in the rest of her surroundings before heading in—on either side of the hall ending in the doors to the pool there is a change room, not segregated by gender but by some other symbol she can’t decipher. The lock looks broken clean off on the door to her left, but when she presses her hand gingerly to the surface it doesn’t budge.
“Okay,” she says again, quieter this time, and turns her attention back to the doors to the pool. Maybe they’ll be locked and/or unmovable, too, and all this buildup will have been for nothing. That would be disappointing—she really wants to be able to prove Riz and Fig wrong, to have something to show for the day’s adventures.
She steps forward and pushes the doors open.
It isn’t visibly haunted, but it is visibly disgusting, nearly—no, not nearly, totally— its own ecosystem with a thick layer of algae hanging onto the surface of the water, mold clinging to the tiling of the floor and walls as a backdrop for a mass of stringy black growths unlike anything Kristen has ever seen before. It doesn’t look natural but it has to be, doesn’t make sense not to be, and she finds her mouth hanging open as she takes it all in, dozens of bizarre and horrible details all fighting for her attention at once. There is absolutely no way any sort of maintenance crew has stepped foot in this room in years— decades, probably—and she shivers at the detached recollection of the damp hair on the floor of the hallway.
The far wall is mostly window, though there is not an ounce of recognition sparking within her as she squints at the scene on the other side of the glass—which, by the way, is showing floor-to-ceiling outside, even though this is a basement—cloudy and heavily obscured with a film of dust. At least she hopes it’s dust.
She doesn’t dare take a step into the room but she ventures to crane her neck, catching sight of a tiny patch of water that isn’t covered in algae—like a tiny window, though it doesn’t show her much, the water murky and rancid-looking. The air is humid, much like a regular indoor pool would be, but the stench of chlorine is completely absent. There is a distinct alive ness to the room despite the fact that everything is completely still, as stagnant as the breath caught in her throat, terrified.
It doesn’t seem like there are any ghosts, but it is absolutely, positively haunted.
“Okay,” she mutters again, her own voice coming at her sideways, and as she turns to leave a throbbing headache begins to pulsate over her left temple, as if trying to pull her back in. For a split second she thinks, Maybe I should go back, it’s kind of rude to just come stare and then leave— but then she gasps and rips herself back, slamming the doors shut with a pained, “No!” She cradles her forehead in one palm and wraps her other arm around her stomach as she strides out, ignoring the change rooms and the hair and the tile, shoes sinking an appropriate amount into the carpet.
When she has the courage to look up again she is met with the glorious sight of the stairwell. She chooses to ignore the fact that it was definitely not here when she came down and runs up it, bursting through the heavy metal door on the first floor landing and falling out onto the concrete of the parking lot.
The pool is haunted, and not in a fun way.
She collects herself from the ground and takes the long way out of the garage back to the front entrance of the building, mind completely empty as she rides the elevator to the third floor and stumbles into the apartment, ripping the carton of raisins out of her pocket and whipping it at Gilear as if he were a skeeball game and she was playing the forbidden way.
It’s only when she’s calmed down, Gilear long since finished chewing his raisins one-by-one, that Kristen is lying on the couch with one leg hanging off, and the wondering thought enters her mind: where was the chlorine smell coming from if it wasn’t coming from the pool?
*
On New Year’s they have a predictably exclusive rager, the six of them in Gilear’s apartment eating takeout and drinking whatever alcohol they could manage to produce which, all told, is not that much. None of it has any typical rager characteristics—if Kristen had to categorize it to anyone other than Fig, she would say they’re just hanging out, which is kind of its own marvel in a quiet, realizing way. This school year has been crazy for a number of reasons, and because of that, a lot of their hangouts of all six of them have been underscored with a greater purpose or task to them. But this is just spending time together to spend time together—to celebrate, sure, but that isn’t a clue or an assignment or an adventure. That’s just… it’s just friendship, and when Kristen looks across the room to see Fig’s smile plastered wide and bright on her face, eyes just a hint glassy if the light catches them right, she knows that she’s not the only one that feels it, that knows it.
It’s a sure thing, now. Kristen has lost a lot this school year, but this is one thing she doesn’t have to worry about losing, too.
Fabian is complaining about his drink being warm when Gilear slips out of his room, surely on the way to the bathroom, and Kristen is pretty sure she is the only one that witnesses the full scope of the events transpiring immediately following:
Fabian: “Ugh, my drink isn’t even cold anymore.
Adaine: “Then go put some ice in it—Fig, do you guys have ice?”
Fig: “Yeah, there’s a tray in the freezer.”
Gilear: (oblivious, for now)
Fabian: “A tray? How quaint.”
Riz: “What do you have ice in?”
Fabian: “The fridge.”
Riz: “The fridge? That’s not—it would melt, Fabian. That’s how ice works.”
Fabian: “Oh, as if I know how—I’m not Basrar, Riz. The ice comes out of my fridge when Cathilda asks for it, what more do you want me to say?”
Gilear: (beginning to clue in, mounting dread)
Gorgug: “Oh, you mean like a dispenser?”
Fabian: “I don’t know. Wherever the water comes out.”
Adaine: “So like a dispenser.”
Gilear: “Oh, Fabian—”
Fabian: (opening the freezer) “Sure. Whatever. It certainly isn’t a—”
Gilear: (quietly) “Oh no.”
The back and forth quiets as Fabian stands there, one arm still propped on the freezer door, letting the mist of cold air slink out into the kitchen. Everyone sort of stops at the same time, waiting to see what’s wrong.
Gilear already knows what’s wrong.
Fig breaks the silence. “What? Dude, you’re letting all the cold out.”
“I’m sorry, Fig,” he says calmly, slowly turning to face her with a look of abject confusion on his face, “Forgive me if this is rude, but. Does poor people ice turn brown on its own or have you been drinking poisoned water for the past three months?”
She blinks, stunned and wholly confused, while Riz stands and walks over to the fridge, peering into the freezer as Fabian takes out the ice cube tray. “Woah, what the fuck,” he says, eyes snapping back up to Fig. “Your water is fucked.”
Gorgug frowns, looking at Riz. “Is your water fucked?”
“Yeah, it should all be the same source if you’re in the same building,” Adaine notes.
“No,” Fig says defensively, getting up from the couch and wrapping her flannel around herself as she goes over to inspect the tray, “Our water is perfectly, fine, right da—oh what the fuck?”
Kristen watches her look to Gilear, beyond betrayed look on her face. Gilear exhales, helpless, and puts his palms up weakly, as if he doesn’t have the energy to actually defend himself from the questioning that is sure to come. He closes his eyes, admitting defeat, and says, “I had leftover soup but there was no tupperware.”
Riz, ever the detective, ever thorough, turns his attention back to the ice tray, popping one out and sticking his tongue to it. “Yeah, that’s soup,” he announces.
Kristen can’t help but snort out a laugh, and Fabian locks eyes with her as she does it, poorly repressing his own. “You—you had—so you—oh, Gilear.” He presses his lips together into a tight frown.
“That’s fine!” Fig pleads more than says, looking between Fabian and Gilear. “That’s fine. We’ve all—we’ve all been in a situation like that,” she assures, Gilear only grimacing in response, clearly understanding that none of that is true. “You had soup! You didn’t wanna waste it, what were you supposed to do? That’s—that’s inventive. Resourceful.”
A beat, and then Adaine. “Okay, so why was it in the freezer? You don’t—I mean, I don’t generally freeze soup.”
Gilear looks miserable. Kristen can’t blame him, he is constantly getting his life choices berated by a gang of fifteen year olds. “I—” he starts, “I suppose I just, wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing, and my muscle memory decided that the freezer was the most logical place for the ice cube tray.”
“Okay, that’s fine.”
Gorgug tries his hand at encouragement this time. “Yeah, Gilear. Like Fig said, we’ve all been there,” he offers.
Fabian spins around to look at him, nearly thwacking Riz in the head with the tray in the process. “Oh, you’ve put soup in an ice cube tray then accidentally put it in the freezer before?”
Gorgug holds his gaze, but his voice is small. “...Yes. Yes I have, Fabian.” Then, to Gilear: “You’re not alone, Gilear.”
He just sighs again. “Thank you, Gorgug, but you don’t have to lie on my behalf. I—I know what I am. I know. None of us have to pretend.” He says the last part to Fig, who just pouts and does not say a word more, guilty. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to retire to the bathroom for the evening, I had a week-old burrito for dinner—”
“Did you freeze that too?”
“Fabian!”
“—and it appears it is not agreeing with my digestive system. So.” He grimaces, giving a mock bow as he moves to make his exit, just an imperceptible shift forward. “Feel free to help yourself to the soup cubes, if you so wish.” And with that he’s gone, no one making a sound for a good five seconds, long after the door to the bathroom clicks shut behind him.
It’s Riz that breaks the silence. “So we gotta try the soup cubes, right?”
They end up cracking the cubes into shot glasses, Fig heating them back into their liquid state with a quick burning hands a couple minutes before midnight. Gilear is coaxed back into the kitchen and handed one, chunky brown liquid looking absolutely unappetizing in the shot glass, tacky saying entirely unreadable in its aged state.
When the clock strikes twelve, they ring in the new year with a shot of soup that Kristen hopes can guide the months to come: hearty, warm, and just a little stupid.
*
Kristen didn’t bring a ton of clothes with her when she left her parents’ house. Sure, she’d been borrowing from Fig in the very narrow overlap of their styles, and Gorgug had donated a bunch of old t-shirts for her to swim in, and Fabian had taken her on a couple shopping days to the Elm Valley mall, his treat—but it’s still nowhere near as much as she had in her closet to begin with. So, she does laundry—first of all, end of sentence, she does laundry— and she does it more often than she would if she had all her clothes available to her.
She doesn’t mind, though, likes the rumble and the hum of the machines, likes getting to spend time in a different part of the building. She always brings her homework down with her, but she rarely gets it done as Fig and Riz usually tag along, a delightful distraction from the melancholy that usually attaches itself to the task.
Before, Kristen would often come home from school to a basket of freshly folded laundry in her room. It was something she, in hindsight, definitely took for granted. She’d roll her eyes about having to take the clothes out and hang them up, precious time wasted on stupid adult things. Her mom had special colour-coded baskets for the each of them: red for Bucky, blue for Bricker, green for Cork, and yellow for Kristen because, of course, corn.
Now, she uses a perilously worn grocery bag to transport her clothes between the apartment and the laundry room. It’s kind of a fun game, betting whether or not this trip will be the one where the hole in the plastic finally sends a pair of underwear into the dark ether of the crack exposing the elevator shaft, never to be recovered. So far she’s made every voyage with no casualties, but the possibility keeps her on her toes.
Whenever she starts to miss the basket she just tunes into whatever her friends are doing, and that’s usually enough to brighten her spirits again.
Today, Fig is trying to goad Riz into eating a laundry pod. She’s not getting much success, but only in the sense that she is unable to goad him because he is already one hundred percent on board with the idea.
“Okay, so how many gold pieces would I have to give you for you to eat a laundry pod?”
Riz’s face scrunches up as if annoyed by the proposition. “None. I would do it for free, fucking look at it, Fig.” He takes one out of the bin and holds it up. “It looks delicious. This part’s grape flavoured, this part’s orange flavoured, and this is vanilla.”
Kristen tries to gauge if he’s serious or not, but she can’t crack it. “It really isn’t.”
“I’m not actually gonna eat it,” he says, almost convincingly. “I’m—I would eat it, but I’m not going to.”
“Boooooo,” Fig boos.
“I’m sorry if I don’t feel like getting poisoned right now!”
“Kristen could heal you.”
Riz puts the laundry pod back into the bin. “This is me exercising self-restraint, not me being a bitch.”
“Bitch restraint.”
“That doesn’t even make sense!”
“You don’t even make sense! I wanna see you eat it!”
“Why don’t you eat it then?”
So on and so forth, etcetera etcetera. Spirits brightened.
It wouldn’t be false to say that the laundry room has become a hangout spot, but this one is just for the three of them—the Luxury Lads; they’d waffled over a name for their trio for a couple weeks and finally come to settle on this one, the best intersection of alliteration and relevance. It’s just for the three of them with respect to the rest of their friends and also literally, they’ve never seen anyone else come in here and try to do their laundry while the three of them were taking up residence.
(It really is aiding the theory that the maintenance worker they allegedly saw on the night of their Solstice party was just a drunk hallucination—a Solstice miracle from Sol himself seems like a child’s wish, now—but Riz insists that she’s still wrong.
She tells him that it’s nearly impossible to find proof for the absence of something, and he seems to take that a little more personally than she expected, spitting that there’s always proof, you just have to look a little harder.)
It’s theirs.
*
“Okay, we need—I said I would never go back to my cheerleader roots because I’m punk now, but I’m willing to make an exception for this. This needs to be a slumber party, right now.”
Kristen is sitting on the couch, knee to knee with Riz, watching Fig bound up and start shoving the coffee table away, throwing blankets onto the ground and skidding into the kitchen to grab a couple bags of chips. She flips off the lights and throws a flashlight into the living room—narrowly missing clocking Riz in the head—then turns on the radio, tuned to a saccharine pop station, blaring some fake deep ballad that, as far as Kristen can tell, is about being sorry for cheating even though the singer is asking the person he’s singing to to get over it already.
In a tight thirty seconds the apartment is in full-blown slumber party mode, and Kristen has to admit she’s pretty impressed. But that comes second to the deep, bubbling ecstasy of being enabled in this specific way, brazenly enthusiastic and unquestioning. All she’d said about seeing Tracker at school that day was an offhand, “Yeah, and she told me, ‘Feel free to contact me’,” and both Fig and Riz were smiling in that delighted, scandalized sort of way that could mean nothing else but crush talk.
Somehow along the way Fig has changed into pajama bottoms, and when she plops down on the floor in front of the couch, hugging her now fleece-clad knees, Riz asks, “What’s the difference between a sleepover and a slumber party?”
Kristen is also a little fuzzy on that—they’ve had lots of sleepovers, but they’ve never crossed the line into a slumber party, whatever that line may be.
Fig smiles, as if she’d been expecting this. When she opens her mouth, her voice is an octave higher than normal. “Great question. A sleepover is a beautiful gathering between friends in which we stay up late, eat snacks, and try not to be the first one asleep. A slumber party is all of that but also there’s gossip.”
Kristen’s grin threatens to split her face clean in half. She never thought she’d be so excited to be the subject of gossip—in church, gossip is bad. Gossip is petty, and mean, and usually means you’ve done something worth a scandal, or a shunning, or both. But here, it’s none of that—it’s her best friends and it’s her heart beating in her chest, thump thump thump singing along to the tinny sound of distant synth.
“This is fantastic,” Riz says, and Kristen feels the warmth flare up inside of her as he turns to her and asks, “Are you—are you gonna contact her?”
Fig beams. “You have to contact her.”
“I think I might contact her?” She bursts into hysterical laughter. All of this always felt so far away, so out of reach, but it turns out it’s the easiest fucking thing in the world.
She gushes about Tracker and Fig tells them about Dr. Asha, resulting in a forty five minute baby name brainstorming session, because apparently Fig “is” “pregnant” “with twins”. Kristen thinks they need to have separate names so they feel like individual people and don’t resent their parents for treating them like a unit later, but Riz is firmly of the belief that they should have themed names, because if not then what is even the point of having twins? They don’t actually ever settle on anything, because then Kristen is asking Fig what kissing Dr. Asha is like.
“Weird,” Fig admits.
“Weird,” Kristen muses.
“Weird,” Riz echoes.
Weird, Kristen is starting to think, is just what being a teenager is like. They talk well into the night, eyes bloodshot and burning by the time the apartment begins to fill with a soft dawn light, a devastating fit of giggles emerging among them when they realize they still have to go to school in a couple hours. Breakfast is a slog and the first two periods are basically a wash, but when Kristen gets a text from Tracker during third and Fig and Riz immediately reply to her screenshot of it with a series of exclamation points and affirmations, the lack of sleep is more than worth it.
*
“Alright,” Riz says, hands on his hips, “The first thing you have to consider is your target. Barter Roe’s is always a great spot because the food is good and the workers aren’t paid enough to care if you steal.”
“Does it technically count as stealing if they’ve already thrown it out?” Kristen asks.
Fig smiles. “It never counts as stealing if you’re stealing from a corporation.”
“Exactly. Now—you have to properly time your strike.”
(They’re standing in front of a dumpster in the back lot of the grocery store, sun bleeding into the horizon in the distance. It was another pathetic Gilear-ism Kristen can’t even remember that sparked Riz offering to teach them all to dumpster dive—Adaine and Fabian had just looked at him wordlessly, a definite hard no; and Gorgug had been a firm maybe which is really just a soft no in Gorgug—so it’s just the Luxury Lads on site, standing there like a wildly out of place college tour group/heist team hybrid.)
“After sunset is the ideal time,” Riz continues, “‘cause it’s right after the bakery tosses everything that’s not ‘fresh enough’ to sell anymore but before the other departments put their actual trash in for the night. Plus, it’s very scenic.”
Kristen nods, taking it all in. “So since it’s trash, are we—we’re just allowed to do this?”
Riz hums, high pitched and thin. “Well—technically no, but—”
“Cool.” Kristen’s been on a bit of a rebellious streak lately. Maybe it’s not rebellious by anyone else’s standards—y’know, not returning pens on time, jaywalking, putting her elbows on the table at dinner—but it’s a growing thing, so naturally stealing is the next step. Why not! She’s already not going to heaven, probably. And if she does, she can just say she was trying to make the most of Helio dying for her sins.
Riz carries on, detailing the most important parts of dumpster diving as he hops up onto the dumpster itself, swinging his legs over the edge. “So ideally you’d have someone on the inside digging and collecting and someone outside to take the stuff and pack it so that you’re not wasting time afterwards when you could be getting out of there, and also to keep watch. But since you guys are learning, you can both try both and see what works best.” He smiles as Kristen and Fig titter excitedly, milk crates sitting empty at their feet. “Next, you’re gonna wanna make sure you’re wearing clothes you don’t care about—” He squints at their outfits, Kristen in old camp stuff that’s too small for her anyway and Fig drowning in one of Gilear’s more holey t-shirts, plus a pair of thick rubber gloves for each of the three of them— “so you guys are good on that. They will get soaked in garbage juice, though not as much if you do your dive at the right time, which we are.”
Kristen lets out a small woop. “Garbage juice!”
Riz smiles supportively, more a grimace than anything else, but there’s a distinct fondness hiding under there, too. “You get used to the smell. But anyway, technique. We’re here for food—don’t get distracted by stuff. You’re gonna wanna avoid produce, that usually sucks by the time they throw it out and it’s usually not packaged, either. Dairy and meat are usually a no as well, ‘cause refrigeration. You do not wanna risk making yourself sick, it’s absolutely not worth it. “
Fig clears her throat. “Do you speak from exp—”
“I speak from experience. Expired is usually fine, moldy and room temp is not. Stick to boxes, cans, bags, that kind of shit. And only take what you’re for sure gonna use, ‘cause otherwise someone else could probably use it.”
“Cool.”
Once Riz finishes his ted talk, they don their gloves and launch themselves into the mouth of the dumpster, Kristen only slightly rolling her ankle on the uneven surface within. Riz grins from his perch on the rim of the dumpster as Kristen and Fig rummage through the contents, commenting thoughtfully on each item they hold up, faces lit up like little kids on Solstice: “Mac and cheese is good, just make sure the box isn’t wet.” “Lettuce? Oh, bagged lettuce? Yeah that shit’s good, toss it here.” “I know you want to bring home something for Gilear, Fig, but I promise you do not want to give him dumpster yogurt. It’s—yeah, that’s warm. No.” “Canned ravioli fucks, that is good. Keep that.”
At one point Kristen grabs a plastic container with half a dozen muffins, tops all yellowy brown with chunks of pink berries—frankly it looks absolutely fucking delicious. “This one expired today!” she says, “So wasteful. These look perfect.”
Riz perks up, then his face drops. “Hey, is that— fuck yeah, oh my god, give me that. Yep, yep. Fuck yeah.” Kristen hands over the container and he cradles it to his chest protectively.
Fig turns from the other side of the dumpster, wavering only slightly. “Riz, you got a crush on those muffins or somethin’?”
“My—my dad used to get these for us all the time. Lemon cranberry, out of this fucking world. They usually sell out pretty quick so I’ve only seen them in here a couple of times.”
Kristen softens at the mention of Riz’s dad, something welling up from within her as she catches the slight wobble in his chin. “Hell yeah,” she says.
“Fantastic fucking work, Kristen. You’ve graduated from a beginner to an intermediate dumpster diver. Riz Gukgak certified.”
“How about me? Does this count for an upgrade?” Fig asks, holding out a full on birthday cake, somehow in perfect condition.
Riz blinks. “I mean. Fuckin’, yeah, that rules.”
“Oh my god, guys,” Kristen gasps. “You wanted to bring something home for Gilear, right? Maybe this would cheer him up from the pen in the khakis thing?”
Fig nods gravely. “Those were really his only good pants,” she mourns, taking a moment of silence and then brightening up again. “But also it says, ‘Goodbye tummy, hello Mommy’,” she reads off the cake, loopy purple script.
Kristen gasps again. “Do you think it’s one of those gender reveal cakes?”
Riz hums. “Y’know it could be like, symbolic of him accepting Kristen into his home? Like as another kid he’s gaining?”
Fig reads the cake again, then bursts into laughter. “Yeah, yeah, I think that’d be great.”
“Do you think he’s gonna cry? Like in those videos where the kids ask their parents to officially adopt them?”
“Do you want Gilear to adopt you?” Riz is skeptical, eyes widened in caution.
Kristen snorts. “Oh, god no. Can you imagine?”
“Yeah, that’d be pretty… It’d be something. I think I don’t need a dad if that dad is going to be Gilear. I’ll stick with my cool dead dad.”
“Hey!”
In the end, they tell Gilear the cake is ironic but he tears up anyway, probably for unrelated reasons. It’s still nice, the four of them, plus Sklonda, feasting on a late dinner of cake—pink on the inside, it’s a girl!—and muffins. If any of them smell like garbage, neither Gilear nor Sklonda bring it up—Sklonda out of politeness, and Gilear out of an inability to do so due to his ongoing sinus infection, of course.
It’s not the kind of dinner Kristen grew up with, but it’s the kind of dinner she’s grown used to. And now, with a film of grime over her skin, a sore ankle, and a bursting heart, she knows it’s enough.