The shadows we hide

by Angy98

Summary:

Gabriel De Angelis is a brilliant college freshman, and his parents couldn’t be more proud of him; his room is always tidy and his clothes ironed, he’s dating a beautiful girl named Micaela, he’s always gotten top grades in every class… In short, he’s the complete opposite of his older brother Raphael, who, after having drug problems as a teenager, cut all ties with his family.
Albeit a little lonely, the first months of Gabriel’s college life go smoothly. Until the day he gets paired with a student named Isabel Maxwell for an assignment.
Isabel - or rather ‘Bel’, as they want to be called - is a troublesome punk musician who always has a snarky comment ready on the tip of their tongue. And yet, Gabriel can't help but feel fascinated by them.

And as the perfect life he has always lived turns out to be nothing more than a facade, Gabriel’s mind floods with questions: does he really want to follow his father’s footsteps as a lawyer like his family expects of him? Is it too late to mend his relationship with Raphael? Who are the mysterious members of the band ‘The Outcasts’, the four students who hide their identities behind demon masks? And why is Bel so angry at the rest of the world around them?

Chapter 1: Off to a rocky start

“Listen up!
This is the story on how we lived,
the glory of what we did.
It started when we were kids
with music up in our heads.”
('Living on a High Wire' - Lemonade Mouth)

Underneath the last lights of a sun that had already started to set, two young fellows were walking hand in hand along the pathways that ran across the large courtyard that connected the buildings of the dorms and of the various departments of the campus; “I wish you were there too, Micky.” A brown-haired young man in a light gray coat and a lilac scarf spoke, his every word accompanied by a little cloud of steam generated by the contrast between the warmth of his breath and the cold winter air. “I mean, I like this course; the topics of the lectures are always interesting, and Professor Morrison is always very nice to us… but I’m a little worried about this final assignment we’ll have to do. I never liked having to work in groups to do research or presentations.”
“Is it today you’re going to find out who Mrs. Morrison paired up each of you with, right?” His companion, a brunette girl dressed in pastel beige tones from her hat to her low-heeled boots, asked him, looking up at him.
“Yeah. She said she would be letting us know who we were assigned to in this afternoon’s lecture. Had you and I been in the same class, at least we could have had a chance to end up being paired to one another. Maybe, for the first time, studying in groups could have been a positive experience.” The young man said, giving her a small soft smile, which she immediately returned. “And then, it could have finally given us an occasion to spend some more time together. You and I attend different majors, with different subjects and timetables, and between our respective homework and all the added commitments you have with your club, we can rarely find time to see each other and spend some time together during the weekdays!”
“I also wish we could have shared at least this course.” The girl replied. “But after all, this is the thing with elective courses; you couldn’t expect me to choose a subject that I wasn’t interested in taking. Just like I didn’t force you to join me in the one I chose.”
“Yeah, you’re right…” The other said quietly, looking down at his feet.

“Micaela, Gabriel!” A voice called, catching both students’ attention. A girl was walking towards their direction in a pathway perpendicular to theirs, waving at them from a distance. Micaela returned the girl’s greeting by waving in turn and giving her a friendly smile. Then, after passing the intersection of the pathways, the girl continued on her way towards the direction they had just come from.
But before Gabriel and Micaela would resume their walk, their attention was caught by a flier pinned to the noticeboard placed by the corner of the small crossroad; the flier in question, sporting bright colors on a dark base and even louder fonts for the text, clashed greatly against the clean white paper and the tidy little fonts used for the rest of the things that were hung on the board.
What immediately caught Gabriel’s eyes were the words ‘The Outcasts’, printed out in bold black letters and outlined by uneven chunks of white that made him think of those ransom messages that criminals sent out in movies. Right underneath those two words, there was a black and white photo of four musicians wearing grotesque demon masks, each of them portrayed while playing their instrument. Lastly, in the lower part of the flier, there was a date and a time, presumably the occasion on which the mysterious band would have played, and the name of a pub inside campus property.
“Ugh, them again!” Micaela rolled her eyes.
Gabriel turned to look at her. “Do you know who these guys are?” He asked his girlfriend, his eyebrows raising in surprise.

The four ‘demons’ staring back at them from the flier were the members of a rock band, Micaela explained; “No one seems to know who they are, but they’re most likely all students of this college. And every now and then, fliers like this one pop up in all of the most frequented spots on campus to advertise an upcoming show of theirs.” The Outcasts had been around since the beginning of the school year, Micaela went on, and Gabriel couldn’t help but wonder how on Earth he had never noticed anything about that whole thing. Not that he was ever particularly interested in the social life of the campus, but still… If all of The Outcasts’ fliers were as eye-catching as the one he was currently looking at, he must have been really blind not to notice them!
Micaela tilted her head, and an amused smile formed on her lips. “How are you always so clueless, my dear?” The girl lovingly mocked her boyfriend. “But to be fair, even though they recently stopped making covers and started playing their own music, they are still rather underground.” She then said, shrugging as she crossed her arms over her ivory white coat.
“Wow! You really seem to know a lot about these ‘Outcasts’!” Gabriel commented. “You never told me you went to hear them play.”
“Oh Goodness gracious, no! I’ve never!” Micaela exclaimed, laughing at what her boyfriend had just suggested. “Why would I even want to? I mean, look at them!” The girl gestured towards the photograph on the flier. “Just by seeing those disturbing masks and all of those spikes on their clothes, I can already tell that they must play some horrible kind of noisy rock. Or even worse, metal!” Micaela scoffed. “No, what I know about them only comes from what I’ve heard people say around campus!”
Gabriel nodded slowly, taking in everything his girlfriend had just told him.
“We’d better get going.” Micaela said, glancing at the time on the screen of her smartwatch. “Our afternoon lectures are about to start!”

Gabriel and Micaela walked for a bit longer together down the semi-deserted pathways. Then, when the moment came for the couple to part ways, Micaela gave her boyfriend a kiss on his cheek, before turning away to head towards her department’s building.

. . .

Gabriel walked into the building where Mrs. Morrison’s lectures were held, and up the stairs towards the professor’s classroom.
A small crowd of students, Gabriel’s classmates for that course, had gathered in front of the corkboard that displayed any notice related to the courses held in that floor’s classrooms. ‘That one must be the famous list,’ Gabriel thought with a grimace. Regardless of who his partner would have ended up being, he already had a feeling he wasn't going to like studying with someone who was still a stranger to him.
Gabriel stepped closer to the corkboard, and began to look through the column of names until he found his own; ‘De Angelis, Gabriel,’ the sixth row of the list read. ‘Here we go,’ the young man thought, following the horizontal line with his gaze to look for the name of his future study partner.
Gabriel’s brow furrowed. ‘Maxwell, Isabel’. He had no idea who that was.

But to be completely honest, Gabriel couldn’t have matched a face to most of the other names written on that list either. He was already well over halfway through the course, and the number of students in his group was relatively small compared to how crowded college classrooms could get, but it was still a lot of people to remember the faces and names and information of, and remembering names was notoriously never his forte. And then, he hadn’t really paid that much attention to most of his classmates.

The young man turned towards the rest of the people that were still standing around him in the corridor. “Does anyone know who Isabel Maxwell is?” He asked, glancing around.
“Isn’t that the weird girl who always sits in the back of the class?” One of the students wondered, turning to look at a second boy standing next to him.
“Yeah, the ugly one who always dresses in black!” The other replied with a smirk, making a circular motion to point at his own face. “How did you not see her, dude?”
“Hey! Cut it, guys. There’s no need to be so mean!” A girl stepped in, scolding her classmates. Then, she turned to Gabriel. “I don't think Isabel defines themselves a girl; I saw that they have a pin with their pronouns on their backpack.” The girl explained. “Anyway, they’re very easy to spot: short black hair, blue eyes, they always dress in dark colors and… Oh! Look, they’re right over there!” The girl then said, pointing to somewhere behind Gabriel’s back.
Gabriel turned around to follow his classmate’s gaze; not far from where he was standing, there was a short person with messy black hair, wearing an oversized dark gray hoodie over equally baggy trousers and a backpack covered in pins, who was talking to a taller red-haired girl, probably a friend.
“Thank you so much,” Gabriel said, turning back towards his classmate.
“Of course!”

As he walked closer to the two students, Gabriel could start to distinguish more accurately the various shapes of the pins on Isabel’s backpack - except for a white round pin that read the words ‘They/them’ and an obnoxious patch shaped like a goat’s head with the writing ‘Satan respects pronouns’ underneath it, most were dark-colored buttons with unfamiliar logos on them - as well as the features of the red-haired girl, who he had a better vision of since she was facing his direction.
For that same reason, the girl was the first to notice him walking closer to her and her friend. Her light-colored irises, of a peculiar shade between blue and green, moved up from her friend and onto him, following him carefully as he approached.
“Hello, um… Isabel Maxwell, right?” Gabriel greeted, placing his hand on the aforementioned’s shoulder to get their attention.

Saying that the young man was surprised by what he saw when Isabel finally turned around to face him would have been quite the understatement; a good portion of their face was scattered with more or less wide patches of what seemed to be damaged skin, carved like lunar craters in their flesh or sticking out in relief from the rest of the skin that surrounded it. The largest cluster of patches bridged over Isabel’s nose, covering almost the entirety of it, and then descended and branched both horizontally above their upper lip and vertically to the left of the mouth. The part of the lip touched by the edge of the patch looked mildly more swollen than the other.
Another large patch of damaged skin, then, peeked out from underneath Isabel’s bangs and spread down the right side of their forehead, stopping right above the eye.
Set in the center of such an ungraceful face, right under a pair of slightly-too-thick eyebrows, were Isabel’s light blue eyes - eyes that, now that Gabriel noticed, were shooting him a glare as cold as the color of their irises.
Isabel crossed their arms over their chest, and Gabriel suddenly became all too aware of his body, and of the way his lips had unconsciously curled up in a disgusted grimace at the sight of the imperfections that marred their face.

“I- My name is Gabriel De Angelis.” The young man introduced himself, correcting his facial expression into the most genuine and convincing smile he could muster. “I’m your partner for Professor Morrison’s assignment.”
But no matter how good Gabriel thought they were, his attempts to be cordial to his new study partner came a little too late; not only Isabel still had that glare on their face, but now the red-haired girl was grumpy at him too for having bothered her friend.
“Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that, yankee.” Isabel spoke, spite coating their voice. “After this little introduction of yours, I’m just as thrilled to work with you as you are. As soon as class starts, I’m going to ask Mrs. Morrison to switch partners for the assignment.”
“Wait, there is no need to-”
“What’s your department?”
Gabriel blinked, taken aback. “What?”
“What degree are you studying for?” Isabel reworded their question, rolling their eyes impatiently.
“Oh. Law.”
“Then you’re coming with me. You’re most likely going to end up manipulating people as a job, no? It should be no problem for you to convince Professor Morrison to split us up now.”

And with that, Isabel moved to walk towards the classroom, bumping into Gabriel’s arm as they walked past him. Gabriel glanced once again at their friend, the red-haired girl, who was still looking at him in disapproval. Then, he sighed and turned around.
What a way to start that study partnership of theirs - the young man thought, shaking his head as he followed Isabel into Mrs. Morrison’s class.

Notes:

The goat-shaped 'Satan respects pronouns' patch is a real thing, by the way. You can find it on @abprallenuk 's profile on Instagram.

Chapter 2: Devilish tunes

“With wax wings on my back
I’ll reach for that height.
If you want to stop me, try again,
try cutting my head off because
I’m out of my mind
but I'm different from them.”
(Translated from ‘Zitti e buoni’ - Måneskin)

“Absolutely not.” Professor Alexandra Morrison replied categorically. “If I were to allow you to change partners for this project and your classmates noticed it, they could come and ask me to change theirs too, and trying to find a perfect match for everybody would become a never ending issue.” The teacher, a middle-aged lady with blonde hair and thick glasses framing her dark eyes, went on. “This group is made up of students from at least five different majors; most of you have likely never even met before the start of the course. It's a perfect opportunity to make new friends outside your usual circles.”
“But, professor…!” Isabel tried to object, but it was all in vain.
“Both of you are grown adults attending higher education.” The teacher went on, patiently resuming her explanation. “And as such, I expect you’ll be able to put aside at least momentarily whatever reason brought you here to me now and dedicate yourselves to your studies. End of the question.”

Irritated by this refusal from the professor, Isabel was the first to take their leave, turning away from the woman without even saying a word to go and take a seat at the back of the classroom.
Gabriel was about to excuse himself as well when Mrs. Morrison stopped him; “May I have a word with you, dear?”
“Of course, professor.” Gabriel promptly replied. “What’s the matter?”
Mrs. Morrison glanced briefly towards Isabel, finding them sitting all slouched in their chair with a deep frown on their face and their arms crossed over their chest. “Some of my colleagues have told me about Miss Maxwell before. I’ve been told that she… well, that they are a difficult student. They seem to have a hard time making friends, and keeping up with classes too.” The woman told Gabriel.
“I'm sorry to hear that.” The young man replied, not quite sure of where the conversation was heading to.
“You look like you’re a good kid, aren’t you?” Mrs. Morrison went on. “Would you mind keeping an eye on Isabel, maybe give them a little nudge to stay on the right path?”
Gabriel hesitated; he really wasn’t fond of the idea of being forced to hang out with someone that clearly didn’t want to have him around. But at the same time, how could he go against a request made by his teacher? Wasn’t he always raised by his parents to be respectful of the authority of the people above him?
And so, although begrudgingly, he nodded.

- - - - -

Gabriel glanced briefly down at the blinking page marker on the blank document he had opened on his laptop in front of him, then back up at Isabel.
On his insistence, after the end of Mrs. Morrison’s class, the two of them had arranged to meet the following afternoon at the cafe, notoriously the favorite place for students of all departments to hang out and study together, to start working on their assignment. The first thing on the to-do list was to brainstorm a possible topic to structure the project around.

But they hadn’t really made much progress so far; ever since they ordered their drinks, a plain espresso for Gabriel and a sugary coffee-based beverage for Isabel, his study partner had been sitting in silence with the hood of their black hoodie lifted up on their head and their gaze glued to their phone, intently scrolling through content, only pausing every now and then to take a sip from the tall drink that the waitress had brought them. To be honest, Gabriel had his mind elsewhere too; as he looked at them, the young man couldn't help but wonder once again the cause of their peculiar appearance. Was it the result of some sort of ailment? Or maybe a rare genetic condition they were born with, like the young kid protagonist of a movie that he’d watched a while ago? The uneven patches on Isabel’s skin also extended to a good part of their neck, peeking out from underneath the dark fabric of their hoodie. And yet, on their hands and on what little could be seen of their forearms, there wasn't any.
“Could you stop staring at me like I’m a monkey in a zoo cage?” Isabel eventually spoke, breaking the uncomfortable silence the two of them had been sitting in for Heaven knows how long. Even if they still weren’t peeling their gaze from the screen of their phone, the tone of their voice alone was enough to tell they were annoyed.
“Sorry.” Embarrassed for being caught red-handed, Gabriel immediately looked away from his study partner and down on the first thing he could find. “It’s just that I can’t help but notice… you know…”

Now Isabel finally looked up at him, and Gabriel braced himself to be hit by the new gust of glacial wind that their blue eyes were once again loaded with. “My face. I know.” Isabel drily finished the sentence for him. “You already let me know so politely the first time around, didn’t you?”
Gabriel’s gaze moved back up towards them. “I'm so sorry for the way I behaved yesterday.” The young man said. “I didn't mean to…”
“… be so rude to someone you don’t even know?” Isabel suggested.
Gabriel nodded. “If I may ask… what happened to you?”
“And why would I want to tell you?” Isabel asked in reply, raising their eyebrows. “So that you can pity me? I don't owe anyone explanations about my personal stuff, nor do I want the sympathy of people who would otherwise feel entitled to insult me without a second thought like you did yesterday!” They went on, leaning forward on the table towards their companion. “Christine Anderson from our class, for example. I only really spoke to her once, and she certainly didn’t need any explanations from me to decide not to look at me in disgust while she spoke to me. Because she is a good person, unlike some other classmates of mine.”
“I didn't mean to-”
“Or do you want to know because, if I tell you that it’s not something I was born with - that is something that came out later in my life - you can console yourself at the thought that I used to look less ugly than this?”
Gabriel frowned. “Leave me the chance to speak, will you?” The young man raised his voice, irritated by all the anger in Isabel’s. Seeing that he had attracted more than a few glances upon himself from the other customers of the bar, the boy sighed. “Like I said, I'm sorry for how I behaved towards you. I really am!” The young man then said, in a quieter tone. “I don't... I don't know what got into me yesterday, but I certainly didn’t want to start a war with you. I was rude, it's true, and I apologize for it.”

Isabel held Gabriel’s gaze for a few seconds. Then: “We’d better start thinking about this damned assignment.” They said, slightly less harshly than before. Putting their phone aside in the corner of the table, then, Isabel pulled out a black spiral notebook from their equally as black tote bag, and opened it in front of themselves. “The sooner we’ll get rid of this research, the sooner each of us can go back on their own way.”
And then, they added under their breath, whatever topic they would have chosen to work on for their assignment, it surely couldn’t be any worse than the conversation they just had.

. . .

Gabriel was on his way back to his dorm, walking swiftly down the streets eager to get back inside and away from the chilly evening air, when he felt his phone buzz in his coat’s pocket. It was with relief that the young man read that the person calling him was saved under the name ‘Micky’.
“How’s your afternoon going?” Micaela’s voice asked him from the other end of the call.
Gabriel sighed, turning to look back in the direction he was coming from even though the bar by then was well out of sight. “Not that well, to be honest.” The young man commented; he and his study partner had barely managed to find a topic for their project that was fine for both of them. All of the actual research had yet to be done. “Hey, I was thinking… Would you like to hang out at my place tonight?” The young man then asked his girlfriend, a smile coming back on his lips. “We could get some takeaway food, watch something to get our minds off of school for a while.”
Micaela sighed. “I wish I could.” She then said tiredly. “Planning and organizing last week's fundraising kept me so busy that I fell behind on my Comparative Politics assignments; the professor wants each of us to hand in a draft of our final essay tomorrow, and I'm still at sea with mine. The girls organized a study session this evening to work on our essays together.”
“I see.” Gabriel replied, trying to hide the sting of disappointment he was feeling. “I wish you the best of luck for your study session, then. Knowing you, I'm sure you'll catch up in no time!" He then reassured his girlfriend.
“Thank you, darling.” Micaela replied, the smile she must have had on her lips showing in her voice.
And with that, the two of them hung up the phone call.

As he walked, Gabriel found himself once again in front of the noticeboard. The flier that advertised the upcoming concert of The Outcasts had been torn; all that was left of it was small pieces of paper that got stuck underneath the pins it was hung with. But someone in the band must have noticed and taken action, for another copy had promptly been pinned in a different part of the noticeboard.
The young man’s eyes fell on the date and time written at the bottom of the flier; wednesday… The concert was going to take place that very evening, then! He never liked rock music, nor did he like the demon masks that the band members depicted on the flier wore... But maybe, going out for a walk and watching their performance for a while might have turned out to be a better option than spending the whole evening in his room by himself. It was settled: one song, maybe even two if the music wasn’t as bad as he assumed it was going to be, and then he would head back to his room in time for his daily video call with his parents.

- - - - -

Gabriel came to a stop right in front of the pub’s hefty wooden doors. Muffled music could be heard coming from inside the building, and it was already enough to make him start to regret having gone there in the first place. But he had already walked all the way there from his dorm in the sharp cold of the night, and stepping inside to take a look would have at least given a purpose to such an inconvenient trip.
And so, the young man pushed the door open, immediately grimacing at just how much louder the noises that were welcoming him in got; the sound of guitars and drums coming from the next room mixed with a cacophony of voices of students talking to one another and laughing together. The place was a lot more crowded than what he expected - and than what he would have liked, for that matter. But still, determined to see with his own eyes the mysterious band, Gabriel walked over to the counter to order something to drink. Once he was served his glass of beer, the allowance ticket to ensure a stay inside the pub, the young man took a deep breath to give himself courage and headed towards the other room.
And if he thought that the entrance area had been bad, boy was that second room worse; the already small space was packed to the point where Gabriel had to make his way through the crowd by physically pushing himself past people. Eventually, he found a spot that, while keeping a fair distance from the low wooden platform that served as a stage, allowed him a decent view of the band.

Seen in person, The Outcasts’ demon masks were even more unsettling than in photos. Three of the four musicians wore full-face identical ones, with a bright red base color, sharp teeth painted in white where their actual mouths would have been, and long curved horns attached to the upper edge of the mask. The mask of the fourth member, the singer and second guitarist of the band, although identical in design, was shorter than the others’, and covered from the forehead down to the nose but left the rest of the face bare.
The drummer was surely a girl; the v-neck long sleeved shirt she was wearing, that well adhered to her body’s shapes, left little doubt about it. As she moved her head, then, swaying to the rhythm of the music she was playing, Gabriel could see a messy bun peeking out from behind her head. She had red hair - or maybe brown, he couldn’t tell exactly in the dim lighting of the pub. The singer, on the other hand, judging by the voice and the shape of his face, seemed to be a boy. And so was the band’s keyboard player, tall and skinny and with an unruly mop of very light blond hair that flared out in any direction.
About the last member of the band, the dark-haired guitarist, however, Gabriel wasn’t really sure. But judging by their height and thin build, they were probably a girl. The only thing he could tell for sure about them was that they appeared to be the most energetic one of the group; they walked back and forth on the little wooden stage, interacting with the singer and singing along with him solely through body language. Those two were the true center of the show, while their friends, due to the fact that their instruments didn’t allow them as much movement, remained in the background, moving their heads and upper bodies to the rhythm.

As for the actual music that The Outcasts were playing, Gabriel certainly couldn't say he was enjoying it as much as the rest of the students crowding the room, who were dancing and bobbing their heads to the rhythm.
With an aggressive rhythm and lyrics full of cuss words, the song that the four musicians were performing spoke of juvenile rebellion, and of misunderstood souls that refused to conform to the society around them. Yet, there was something special about that song - or rather, about the voice that was singing the lyrics. It was a peculiar sensation that Gabriel had started to feel from the very moment he set foot inside the pub; he was surrounded by strangers in a place he had never been, and yet he couldn’t help but feel a sense of familiarity.

Such a feeling only grew stronger when, once the song came to a close, earning a round of applause from the small audience, the singer took a moment to introduce the band’s next piece, an original song titled ‘Hellfire’.
Gabriel grimaced at the loud guitar riff that filled the air to open the new song, followed in tail by the first beats of the drums.

‘The devil will have no mercy
when I’ll tell him your name.
He'll leave you burning, burning, burning,
the way you sent my soul up in flames.’

. . .

When even that second song was over, having come to the definitive conclusion that rock wasn't his type of music, Gabriel pushed his way back towards the entrance area of the pub. Before exiting the place, the young man returned his glass of beer to the counter, earning himself a weird look from the bartender for having left it untouched.
The first breath of cold air Gabriel took as he set foot outside the pub, out in the vast open outside without the unpleasant feeling of constantly having strangers’ arms and bodies pressing against his own, felt incredibly relieving.

And while he walked back in the silence of the night with his scarf pulled up to his nose, the young man couldn’t shake away that peculiar sensation that the mysterious masked singer had left on him; he had already heard his voice before, he was sure of it.
But where?

Chapter 3: Truce

“I've been there, I survived,
so just take my advice:
hang in there, baby, things are crazy
but I know your future’s bright!”
(‘Hang in there baby’ - Bridgit Mendler)

“You know, I still can’t believe you actually went!” Micaela exclaimed. “Well?” The girl then asked, leaning forward closer to Gabriel. “Tell me, how was it?”
“Loud and noisy, just like you said it would be.” The other replied, making a grimace as he thought back to the uptempo rhythms that The Outcasts were playing the previous evening. “But at the same time, I can’t really say it was that horrible. Musically speaking, it seemed they knew what they were doing.” He went on. Then, he lowered his gaze to the food tray in front of him.
“Are you alright?” Micaela asked him, noticing a change in her boyfriend’s mood.
“It’s… it’s just a weird feeling I got last night at the pub.” Gabriel confessed, shaking his head. “I felt like I knew who the singer was. Like I had known him for a lifetime.”

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but… Did you say you know who the singer of The Outcasts is?” An unfamiliar voice asked from behind him. Turning around, Gabriel and Micaela were met by a girl sitting at the table next to theirs; a few red streaks illuminated her wavy black hair and matched the color of the vintage dress she was wearing. In front of her, next to her food tray, was a camera case.
“Well, it's hard to tell, considering that he wears a mask that covers half of his face…” Gabriel answered the girl's question. “I’ve been thinking about it all morning, trying to pay attention to everyone’s voices in class, but no one sounded like him. Or looked like him, for that matter." Even in the dim lighting of the pub, in fact, Gabriel was able to tell that the singer had flaming red dyed hair. A peculiar trait that none of his classmates bore. "Maybe it was just a random sensation, nothing more.”
“I see.” The raven-haired girl nodded, disappointment evident in her eyes. “However, if you were to find out anything about his identity, I would like to know.” She then said, and took a small piece of paper out of her bag to then hand it to Gabriel. It was a sort of business card, displaying the logo of their university and two different email addresses.
Micaela leaned closer to her boyfriend to get a better look at the card. “Excuse me, who are you, exactly?” The girl inquired, looking up at the mysterious stranger with a raised eyebrow.
“Sharon Xander.” The other introduced herself, smiling confidently. “Co-director and columnist of our campus’ official blog. Me and my partner Freddy Farlaine are trying to find out who the mysterious Outcasts are.” She then explained. “So, like I said, if either of you finds out anything new about them, I would really appreciate it if you would share your discoveries with me. You know where to find me.”

Gabriel and Micaela watched Sharon as she gathered her things from the table. “Who does she think she is?” Micaela commented with a snarky smile, once Sharon was out of earshot. “She’s still only a student and she already made herself business cards!”
“Yeah…” Gabriel replied, shaking his head with a smile, putting Sharon's card away in the pocket of his trousers.

- - - - -

“What’s that?” Isabel asked, their gaze shifting between the paper bag Gabriel was holding up for them to take and the proud grin on his face.
The two of them had scheduled to meet again on friday afternoon. And this time, Gabriel had come prepared: “It’s a peace offering,” the young man said. “To make it up to you for what happened tuesday.”
Isabel cautiously reached for the paper bag. Upon opening it, they found that it contained a muffin with chocolate chips scattered on its surface. But when they put their hand inside to grab the small dessert… “Hey, uhm. Before you actually eat it,” Gabriel stepped in, “I have to give you a little heads up; this is a regular muffin. I don't know if you have allergies or intolerances to what's in it.”
“I see. You’re putting yourself on the safe side so that if something happens it’s going to legally be my fault, huh?” Isabel replied, looking back up at him. “Damn. Look at you, already behaving like an actual lawyer!”
“I wasn't trying to…” Gabriel began to say. But unable to complete his sentence in frustration at how Isabel had misinterpreted yet another attempt of his to make things better between them, the young man rolled his eyes instead.
“I'm joking, dumbass!” Isabel said, and the corner of their lips curved up in the slightest hint of an amused smile. Despite the fact that they were actively mocking him, it was the first time Gabriel saw an expression that wasn’t a frown on his partner’s face. So, he took it as a confirmation that his attempt to establish a truce had been successful.

Isabel’s gaze and attention shifted back on the content of the paper bag in their hands. “You're lucky; allergies are the one problem I don't have.” They went on. “But in case I do have an allergy that I’m not yet aware of and I'm about to die, I'll write you a text on how you warned me, so that you can show it to the judge when they charge you for murder, okay?” Isabel took their phone from the pocket of their puffy winter jacket. “Oh, wait, I don't have your phone number. Right. I'll send you an email, then.”
It was true, Gabriel realized: they didn’t have each other’s phone numbers. And since they were working on a joint assignment, it would have been more convenient for them to.

After exchanging numbers, the two of them continued on their way, alternating small talks and moments of silence in which Isabel was eating their muffin or checking their phone. ‘If we really have to study together, I have no intention to do it at the cafe’ - Isabel had told him after their first meeting - ‘I can't focus with all of that chattering, and as much as I like the stuff that they sell there, I don't have money to keep spending on coffee and sweets.’ And so, they had suggested that they’d go study at their place. To be precise, they had instructed him to meet them halfway, outside the library where they had to return a book.
It wasn't long before they motioned for him to stop in front of a gate with chipped paint. Isabel’s key clicked in the lock, and the gate opened with an eerie creak. The entire house seemed to be as beaten up as its gate, Gabriel thought, glancing around as he followed Isabel to the entrance door. The owners of the building definitely hadn’t given it enough care.

Once inside, Isabel guided him towards the kitchen, where a tall, tired-looking blond boy was sitting at the table, surrounded by a pile of books and stationery. “Josh,” Isabel called for him. “Can you go study somewhere else? I need the table to work on a project with him.” They said, pointing to Gabriel.
“As you can see, I’m here to study as well.” Josh objected, gesturing towards his textbooks.
“But you can do it in your room.”
“So can you. I got here first, so the table is mine.”
A deep frown formed on Isabel’s face, and Gabriel felt relieved at the thought that, for once, he wasn’t the one receiving their sharp glares.

“Bel!” Josh called, once his roommate was already back in the corridor.
“What?” Isabel turned back towards him.
“The notes from the class you skipped today.” Josh said, lifting up a small stack of paper sheets that he kept next to him amongst the rest of his books. “By the way, Mr. Curtis wants you to know that if you miss another class you will not be admitted to his exam.” The boy added while Isabel fetched their notes.
“Whatever…” They replied, rolling their eyes, before turning away to leave the kitchen.
Hearing their voices coming from the corridor, a second roommate, a dark-skinned boy with a toothbrush in his mouth and a comb stuck in his improbably-shaped curls, peeked his head out of the bathroom. The boy mumbled a few words, still with the toothbrush in his mouth, and then held out his hand towards Gabriel.
“This is Eric.” Isabel explained, noticing their classmate’s hesitation. Gabriel nodded, proceeding to introduce himself to the other boy and shake his hand. “Eric is getting ready to go out with a girl!” Isabel then added with a little knowing smile.
“Oh!” Gabriel let out, smiling in turn. “Good luck for your date, then!” He said to Eric. The other, in response, nodded his head as a ‘thank you’, and then disappeared back into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Gabriel followed Isabel up the stairs that led to the second bathroom and the remaining two bedrooms of the house.
Just before they reached their destination, however, a girl with wavy auburn hair that reached her waist peeked out from the door next to the one Isabel was about to open. A large number of freckles covered every visible part of the girl’s skin, from her face down to her shoulders and chest. Upon noticing the presence of a guest, the girl’s face immediately brightened: “Oh, hi there!” She greeted, leaning against the door frame. “My name is Azzy, but you can call me whenever you want!” She introduced herself, winking at Gabriel with a smile on her red-tinted lips.
Gabriel took a couple moments to carefully formulate a reply to such a friendly introduction - if ‘friendly’ was even the right term to use, considering the flirty look in Azzy’s emerald eyes. “Nice to meet you.” The young man said, shaking the hand she was holding out for him. “Uhm… I don’t know if you meant it that way, but I already have a girlfriend.” Gabriel then specified, just in case.
“Eh. It was worth a shot.” Azzy shrugged, her smile still refusing to leave her lips although altered by a veil of disappointment. “I hope we can still become friends, though.” The girl offered.
Next to them, Isabel had been listening through their entire exchange with a mildly cringed expression on their face. “Can you wait for me in my room?” They asked Gabriel. “I need a private word with Azzy.”
“Of course.”

. . .
Gabriel stood in the center of the room, mindlessly looking around himself as he waited for his study partner. The space, already small in itself, was made even narrower by the arrangement of the old-fashioned furniture with which the landlords had furnished the rooms of their young tenants, and by the mess of clothes and personal items that Isabel had filled it with.
The bed, whose spartan structure didn’t even feature a headboard, was positioned in the corner of the room opposite to the door. Right above it, on the side where the headboard should have been, there was a flag, with four different colored stripes in shades of yellow, white, purple and black. On the other wall touched by the bed, Isabel had taped a series of instant photographs; some of them showed them hanging out with the red-haired girl he had met that day outside class, in some other they were with the roommates he was just introduced to, and there were a few photos featuring a couple of other boys he’d never seen.
Gabriel’s gaze was caught by a photo in particular, that portrayed Isabel and Azzy at a Halloween party; Azzy, smiling all cheerfully at the camera, was dressed up as a demon, with a provocative, fiery red dress and papier-mâché curved horns glued on a hairband. Isabel, on the other hand, was dressed up as a zombie, with fake blood scattered across their face, hair deliberately worn even more disheveled than usual, and ripped-up clothes. The costume was completed by an in-character grimace.
Scattered along the free spaces of the other walls, then, there were some posters of movies and musical artists. Much to Gabriel’s surprise, among all those foreign names he had never heard of, he was able to spot an all too familiar set of masks.
At that moment, Isabel walked into the room, closing the door behind them.

“I didn't know you weren’t English.” Gabriel commented nonchalantly as they gathered their pc from their desk. “I would have never been able to tell from your accent, at least.”
Isabel turned towards him. “What are you talking about?” They asked him, with a completely baffled look in their blue eyes.
Gabriel pointed to the colorful flag hung above the bed. “I’m not very good at flags, but you have fair skin, and you don’t look Asian, so… Maybe it’s some country near Russia?”
His partner blinked, remaining silent for a few moments. Then: “Are you being for real?”
“Why? Did I say something wrong?”
“Oh my, you’re one of those cishets, aren’t you?” Isabel said, an amused, genuine smile growing on their lips. “That is my pride flag! You know, those things that queer people like me wave around at parades demonstrating for our rights?”
Gabriel let out a small ‘oh’ that made Isabel snicker. He did, in fact, not know. But how was he supposed to? His parents never brought him to that sort of parades!

Isabel walked over to their bed, plopping down on it to sit cross-legged on the duvet, still smiling from the conversation the two of them had just had.
Gabriel hesitated, unsure about what to do; Isabel hadn’t told him specifically where to sit, but sensing that the empty half of the bed next to them was not an option, the young man sat down at their desk’s chair and took his laptop out of his backpack. “I saw your photos.” The young man said, trying to start conversation. “Is that red-haired girl that appears in some of them the same person you were talking to on tuesday?”
“Yeah. That’s my friend Debbie.” Isabel replied, their eyes still locked on the screen of their pc. “It’s still loading. It’s going to take a while.” They warned, referring to the device. “This damned thing is getting slower and slower by the day…”
“I also saw that you're a fan of The Outcasts.” Gabriel said.
“What?” Isabel looked up at him, staring at him with wide eyes. They must have not been expecting that topic to be brought up. Gabriel pointed to the band’s poster on the wall behind him.
“Oh! Yeah, I am.” Isabel replied, nodding. “That one is the poster of their very first performance.”
October 7th - the date written at the bottom of the flier red. Micaela was right, then; The Outcasts had really been around since the beginning of the academic year!

“I went to hear them play, the other day.” Gabriel said.
“Oh?” Isabel replied, surprised by those words. “I didn't think you were the type to listen to rock music!”
“I'm not.” The other admitted. “I mostly went to hear them because someone had told me about them, and I was curious to see for myself.” The young man then told his study pal about how, even though he only stayed for two songs, it was enough for him to say that The Outcasts seemed like an interesting band. Especially the guitarist, and the incredible energy they showed while they played.
Isabel sat up straighter, giving Gabriel a small smile. “Oh, yeah, they really move a lot. But no one can stop the music when it flows through someone’s body. And I think their energy is very rock ‘n’ roll of them!”
But maybe, the masked guitarist should have started being a little more careful. One time, Isabel said, The Outcasts gave their small audience a real show; as they walked across the stage, the guitarist tripped over the cable of the singer's microphone and fell to the floor. The customers of the pub where they were playing obviously got worried, but the guitarist immediately got up, laughing at their little gaffe and the band resumed playing.
“Wow!” Gabriel exclaimed, after listening to his study partner's story. “You go to hear them often, then!”
“I don't miss a concert!” Isabel said, smiling proudly. Then, after a couple of moments of silence: “Come on, now.” Isabel spoke again, still smiling. “Let’s work on this stupid assignment.”

. . .

Later that afternoon, as he made his way back to his dorm from Isabel's house, Gabriel checked his phone for the first time since the start of their study session. It looked like he had gathered a good number of unread messages on his phone, throughout that time; some were from Micaela, one from his mother, a good dozen from the group chat that some of his classmates had forced him to join… And lastly, at the bottom of the list of notifications, there was also an unread message from ‘Isabel M’, sent earlier that afternoon.
‘I, Isabel Maxwell, was informed by Gabriel De Angelis that the muffin he gave me could have contained allergens. It's not his fault if I tragically died from an allergic reaction.' - the text read, and Gabriel couldn’t help a smile as he rolled his eyes.

Chapter 4: Polar opposites

“I like the crowd rock, rock-rock-rocking it loud.
You like the sound of hush, hush -
Hey! Keep it down!”
(‘It’s me, it’s you’ - Ross Lynch)

The following tuesday, Isabel and Gabriel turned in their assignment, placing a printed copy of their essay in the pile of their classmates’ assignments that sat on the teacher’s desk.
Much to the whole class’ surprise, Professor Morrison announced that, once each of them would have received her email with the necessary corrections on their essays, for the final exam each pair was asked to build a presentation based on their work, to be held in front of the whole class.
The students’ reactions to this announcement varied from unimpressed shrugs to a small chorus of complaints that rose from quite a few people in the class. Gabriel threw his head back, staring at the ceiling for a few moments. The idea of putting something as important as the grade of a university exam at risk by entrusting half of it to the level of responsibility and hard work of another person did not sit right with him at all. Not that Isabel had shown themselves to be that much uncooperative during that first part of their partnership, but his grade should have only been the direct result of his own skill and commitment.
Speaking of Isabel… Gabriel turned around towards the corner of the classroom where his study partner was sitting. Isabel seemed to have taken Mrs. Morrison's announcement quite badly; they remained for a few moments with their face hidden in their hands, only to then cross their arms on their chest, visibly upset.

. . .
When the class was dismissed, Gabriel hurried after Isabel, joining them in the hallway. “Hey, I couldn't help but notice your reaction to Mrs. Morrison’s announcement, earlier.” The young man said to his study partner. “If you’re scared about having to speak in public, you don’t have to worry: I can hold the speech of the presentation for you. You’ll only have to stand there next to me and change the slides.”
“Yeah, and that's exactly the problem...” Isabel said under their breath, keeping their hands closed tightly around the straps of their backpack.

Continuing to walk side by side, the two students left the building together. “Hey, Isa…” Gabriel began to say, but his words quickly came to a halt. “Can I call you Isa?”
“Bel.”
Ouch. Isabel was adding that last part of their name back to the shortened version. This could only mean one thing: “It’s too soon for friendly nicknames. Got it.” Gabriel quickly said, raising his hands in surrender.
“No, I mean…” Isabel shook their head. “When shortening my name, do it by saying Bel. I don't want people to call me Isa - or Izzy, for that matter.”
“Oh. But why not?”
“Because Isa, or any of its variations, sounds too girly, and I don't feel right when people call me that.”
“But doesn't Belle sound feminine as well? Like the princess from that fairytale?”
“That is written with two l's and a final e, while I always meant my chosen nickname to be just ‘Bel’.” Isabel objected, and Gabriel, although still not quite convinced by that explanation, nodded in reply. “Also, please, do not aggravate my gender dysphoria, thank you!”

A moment went by, then another. Then: “What's that?” Gabriel asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“What's what?”
“The thing you just said. The gender…”
“Dysphoria.” Isabel finished for him, having noticed him struggle with the word. “It's a feeling of discomfort that I get when I think of myself as a girl, or when people refer to me as such, and it’s what makes me say I’m not one of them.”
“So… you think of yourself as a boy, then?”
Isabel’s features scrunched up in a pensive expression as they took a moment to reflect on the question. “No, I wouldn’t say that.” They answered. “It’s something in between, like I’m both a boy and a girl at the same time, or maybe neither of the two.”
Gabriel nodded once again, remaining in focused silence as he ruminated on Isabel’s explanation. It all sounded so strange to him; he had never met a ‘non-girl’ girl before. His family was always pretty traditional, when it came to that sort of thing; none of his relatives ever got married to someone of the same sex, nor had anyone ever declared that they belonged to a gender different from the one they were born with. If anything, a few of his relatives frowned upon the people who did.
Not even among his classmates in high school had Gabriel come across queer people, or at least none that was openly stating or behaving like they were. But obviously, a university campus was a much larger reality, in which there were students coming from various different neighboring cities and towns, and from all sorts of life paths. “Sorry if I’m asking you all of these things, but this is all new to me.” Gabriel apologized. He couldn’t help but feel a little bit embarrassed by his inexperience.
“You’re good, don’t worry.” Isabel reassured him. “It’s actually better when people ask, rather than when they don’t ask and still think they know best. But anyway. What were you going to say?”

Gabriel blinked. Good question; what was he about to say, before that change of topic? After a short while, however, his eyes lit up in remembrance: “Oh!” The young man exclaimed. “Since it looks like we’ll have to keep studying together for a while longer… I was thinking that maybe we could as well use this chance to get to know each other better.”
Isabel shrugged. “Sure, I guess.” They simply replied. “Look, I’m waiting for Debbie to get out of class and join me. There are some places we have to go together. But you and I can hang out for a bit until she gets here.” Isabel then suggested.
“Sounds good to me.” Gabriel replied, offering his companion a smile.
“So… What would you like to know, exactly?” Isabel asked, still looking a bit baffled by the interest he had shown in getting acquainted. And to be completely fair, how could Gabriel blame them? In any other circumstances, especially considering the rocky start of their partnership, he wouldn’t have thought of getting to know Isabel either. But earlier that afternoon, as her students were leaving the classroom, Mrs. Morrison had given him a peculiar glance. She was still expecting him to keep an eye on his study partner, to at least try and figure out what was causing their disinterest in the classes they were attending, and Gabriel didn’t want to let her down.

“I don't know... What major are you studying for, for example?” He asked.
“Economics.”
“Really?” Gabriel’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “I wouldn’t have guessed it. You don’t look like the type to study Economics.”
“Why? Is there a specific way Economics students should look like?” Isabel asked, frowning in confusion.
“I don’t really know. It’s just…” Gabriel began to reply. ‘I could see you being an art student. I’ve never seen an accountant or a bank officer wearing spiked collars or fishnet gloves’ - he wanted to say, but he had half a feeling that Isabel would have had something to object about such a comment. They always seemed to have something to argue. So: “It’s just a feeling, that’s it.” Gabriel simply said.
Isabel let out a hum. “Well, let me tell you: you look exactly like someone who studies Law.” They said.

By then, the two students had reached an area with benches lined along the pathway. The trees lined behind the benches, now leafless, in warmer seasons offered some pleasant relief from the sun, making it the kind of calm, quiet ambience in which students of the various departments loved to hang out to have a break, on days not as cold and cloudy as that one.
“What about your personal interests?” Gabriel asked his companion, once they took their seat in one of the wooden benches. “What kind of music do you like, for example?”
“Well first of all, rock. Nirvana, Guns and Roses, Linkin Park, Icon for Hire...”
“… and The Outcasts, of course.” Gabriel interjected, smiling proudly to his study partner for having proven he remembered what they had mentioned in their previous meetings.
“And The Outcasts, yes.” Isabel repeated, with a nod of their head. “But I like alternative music in general; I also listen to a few goth and metal subgenres, even if it’s not my main thing. Artists like Korn, Mötley Crüe…”
“I see.” Gabriel replied, partly disappointed by the fact that Isabel’s list of preferences only included genres and artists he knew nothing about, hence not offering a common ground to start a conversation from. “I’m more into classical music. Chopin, Mozart, Verdi... It’s an interest that my mother passed on to me since I was a kid. For the rest, I don’t mind jazz, but rock is just too noisy and loud, for me.” Gabriel told his companion, shaking his head to underline the unpleasant feeling he’d just described.
“How can rock be any louder or ‘noisier’ than symphonies that were designed to be played by large orchestras with trumpets and percussions?” Isabel asked, perplexed by his reasoning.
“I don't know, but for me it just is.” Gabriel replied. “Looks like we don't have much in common when it comes to music, huh?”
“Yeah…”
“What kind of movies do you like to watch?” Gabriel asked, switching topic in hope to find a possible common ground at least when it came to that. But instead…
“Definitely horror ones!” Isabel replied without missing a beat. “Vampires, creepy murderous dolls, nuns… You name it!” Gabriel, unsure of how to reply, simply nodded. “Except for mummies. I really don’t like those.” Isabel then added.
“How comes?”
Isabel shrugged. “I just… don’t. They make me uncomfortable.”
“You’re lucky.” Gabriel replied with a shrug. “At least it’s just one type of monster. I’d get uncomfortable watching every sort of horror movie.” Although he didn’t really have a favorite film genre, the young man then told Isabel, he generally liked musicals. ‘The Sound of Music’, for example - the dvd copy his family owned was played so many times that he could repeat entire chunks of the dialogues by heart. ‘The Sound of Music’ had always been his mother’s favorite movie, Gabriel explained, and she liked to put it on time and again.

. . .
“One time I was told that, whenever names contain ‘el’ or ‘al’, it means that they refer to God in some way. So I took the liberty of doing some research on yours.” Gabriel said at some point, in the middle of their small talk. “Did you know that your name means ‘pledged to God’?” The young man asked, very proud of his discovery.
“Oh, is that so?” Isabel replied, their lips curving in a mocking smile. “Well, in that case, my parents couldn’t be more wrong when they chose it.” They commented.
“You’re… not a religious person?” Gabriel asked, even if it wasn’t hard to guess what the answer to that question was.
“Me? A religious person?” Isabel repeated. Their half-smile grew wider, eventually breaking into a laugh. “If only I could, I would ask to get unbaptized - that’s how much of a religious person I am!” They said, looking deeply into Gabriel’s eyes.
The seriousness with which Isabel had said such a horrible thing was truly perturbing. “What happened to you to make you say that?” Gabriel asked his study pal, shocked by the defiant tone in their voice.
“Way too many things.” Isabel replied, shaking their head. “My mother still goes to church regularly to pray. But I no longer buy into the lie that whoever is up there wants nothing but the best for you.”
“I'm sorry to hear you have such a difficult relationship with God.” Gabriel said, genuinely feeling for his companion. “In my family, faith has always been a very important aspect of our life. Both of my parents have always been devout, and they raised me and my brother to be respectful of God’s will ever since we were young kids. Well, ever since we were born, actually, by calling us Raphael and Gabriel.”
“Like the archangels.”
“Exactly!”

“So, you have a brother?” Isabel asked. “Is he older or younger than you?”
“Older. He's twenty-four now.”
“And is he also on his path to becoming a lawyer?”
Gabe chuckled, looking down at his feet. “Oh, no! Raphael would never!” He said, smiling at the mental image of his brother - with his long curly hair flowing down past his shoulders and the trademark ripped jeans he wore all throughout his teenage years - in a suit and tie delivering a closing statement in a courtroom. But all of a sudden, the laughter in his eyes faded, replaced by nostalgia. “To be honest, I have no idea what he’s up to now.” Gabriel said, his voice growing quieter. “We haven’t spoken to each other in years. I don't even know if he’s doing well…”
“That's sad to hear.” Isabel said in reply. “I don't have siblings, so I can't fully relate to your situation, but it’s always such a sad thing when people stop talking to each other. When you’re left forever with that sense of mourning for someone who is still alive…”
Gabriel was struck by such a deep reflection. He had never really thought of it that way, that the heartbreak and the bitterness of broken friendships or siblinghoods could be compared to actual grief. But Isabel’s words also struck him for another reason; it was a very specific comparison. They knew what they were talking about. “Have you lost a friend too?” Gabriel asked them.
Isabel held his gaze in silence for a couple moments. “Yes and no. I know what grief feels like, but the ghost that haunts me no longer has legs to walk around the streets.” They then answered, looking away.
A couple long moments passed, enough for Gabriel to acknowledge that Isabel wasn’t going to add anything else. The young man hesitated; on one hand, he would have wanted to know more, but on the other, it was clear from the way their blue eyes had clouded that the loss they had just mentioned was something that affected them deeply, and he didn't want to force them into unpleasant conversations.

But while Gabriel was still trying to figure out what to do or say, Isabel spoke again: “My father. Cancer took him away when I was ten years old.” They said. “Nine when he started chemo. It wasn’t a nice thing to witness him go through, trust me.”
“I can imagine… Especially for a kid as young as you were!” Gabriel said, saddened by what he had just been told. “You guys were very close?”
Isabel nodded. “He was the one who instilled in me my passion for music. Dad was a metalhead at heart, but he loved music as a whole. He’d spent hours talking to me about the origins of the various musical genres, and about the lives of the greatest musicians in history, and I loved listening to him. He was quite knowledgeable even on the technical side of music, too. He was the one who taught me how to read music sheets. When my mother caught us listening to his records together, she always scolded him; I was way too young to listen to that type of lyrics, she said. But we still did…” Isabel told Gabriel, a nostalgic smile appeared on their lips as their mind retraced such fond memories. “When I turned fourteen, my mother came to me with a box. It was full of dad’s records and his t-shirts of his favorite bands. Luckily, she never had the strength to get rid of them. I’m sure my dad and I would have gotten along so well now…”
“I'm sorry for your loss.” Gabriel commented, saddened.
Isabel shrugged. “Life sucks, for some people more than others.” They replied. “You asked me why I stopped believing in God, no? Well, I’m pretty sure any faith I had was destroyed the year my father died. And the rest of my life did nothing but to confirm that I was right.”

The air between them had become as heavy and somber as the dark gray clouds that covered the sky above their heads, bringing further darkness to a late afternoon that had already passed sunset. “I guess that, at least, when the people you’re grieving are still alive, there’s always the hope that things might change. That you’ll meet up again with that person, talk everything out with your hearts on your sleeves…” Isabel said, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. “Maybe one day things between you and your brother will get better.” They suggested, looking up at Gabriel with a small, hopeful smile.
“I hope so too.” The other replied, reciprocating his friend’s expression.

“Bel!” Someone called at that moment, catching both students’ attention. Turning around towards the direction the voice was coming from, Gabriel found a now very familiar red-haired girl standing several steps away from the bench where he and Isabel were sitting, waving at them - or rather, waving at her friend. Debbie’s ginger hair contrasted with the bright shade of turquoise of the coat she was wearing, making her stand out even more from the grayed out colors of their surroundings.
Isabel raised their hand to wave back. Standing up from the bench, then, they flung their backpack on their shoulders. “I have to go.” They announced. “I’ll text you later to plan our next meeting. See you!”
“Of course. See you.” Gabriel echoed with a nod.

Notes:

Errata corrige for chapter two: The instrument that the singer of The Outcasts plays is meant to be a bass, and not a ‘second guitar’ like I wrote in the band's description in chapter 2. I wasn’t too familiar with the difference between the two instruments, but now I’ve come to find out how important an instrument bass is in bands - especially rock ones like our Outcasts - and fixed the story accordingly.

Chapter 5: Sharon is on the case

"There is something going on,
get to the bottom of it.
Tell me who’s responsible,
tell me: who dun-dun-dun it?”
(‘Whodunit’ - Adam Hicks, Coco Jones)

As he patiently waited in line, Gabriel let his gaze wander around; the shelves aligned along the walls of the small stationery store were covered with school supplies of every shape and color, enough to keep his gaze busy while the shopkeeper, an older man with a graying beard and mustaches, printed the last bunch of copies for the girl in line before him. Considering it was a late thursday morning, the place was rather busy. But then again, with the first exam session of the academic year inching closer and closer, it was more than natural for students to start rounding up their lecture notes.
Once the girl paid for her copies and left, Gabriel, relieved to see that it was finally his turn, walked over to the store’s counter. “Hi.” Gabriel greeted the man with a nod of his head. “I'm here to pick up some copies. I came here earlier this morning, but your assistant was too busy and told me to leave him the files and come back later.”
“Of course.” The man behind the counter nodded, with a friendly smile. “What name did you leave for it?”
“De Angelis. I am also collecting the ones under the name Goodwill.” Gabriel answered. “It’s my girlfriend.”
The shopkeeper turned around to look for the photocopies in question amongst the pile of things stacked up behind the counter, and Gabriel let his gaze wander around one more time.

At that moment, the bell above the door of the shop rang, signaling the entrance of a new customer. It was a girl with unmistakable black hair adorned with bright red streaks, even if Gabriel couldn’t quite remember her name. The girl walked over to the counter. “Excuse me, I’m only here to ask a quick little question.” She spoke to the shopkeeper, and Gabriel couldn’t help but get a little annoyed at that interruption; did that girl have to come in right when it was finally his turn?
But then, the girl - really, what was her name? Sandra? Sally? Yes, it must have been something like that - unrolled the sheet of paper she had brought with her, laying it out on the counter. It was one of those fliers that advertised The Outcasts’ musical evenings, and its corners were torn as if the poster was ripped from the pins it was hung with. “Did you happen to print posters like this one?” The girl asked the shopkeeper. After studying the flier for a few seconds, the man nodded in reply.
The girl smiled, quite satisfied by that positive answer. “By chance, do you know who brought you the document to print? Did they leave a name for the order, maybe?”
The shopkeeper shook his head. “It was a boy, that’s for sure. But he didn’t need to leave a name to come back later; very few people came here that day, so I printed his fliers right away.”
The dark-haired girl’s satisfied smile faltered. “I see. Can you tell me what he looked like? Was he, maybe, tall and blonde?”
The copy shop’s owner huffed out a breath. “Well, dozens and dozens of you kids walk into this shop every day…” The man replied. “But I think he was, yes.”
“Thank you very much for the help.” The girl replied, before rolling the flier back up and heading towards the exit of the shop.

The shopkeeper now was free to turn his attention back to Gabriel, and in a matter of a few moments the man finally placed a small stack of papers in front of him.
Gabriel hastily dug up some coins from his pocket. Once he got his change, the young man hurried out of the store. Luckily, the raven-haired girl was still nearby, standing there as she talked on her phone. When Gabriel stopped in front of her, the girl gave a quick ‘Hold on, I'll call you back in a minute’ to the person on the other end, and then hung up the call.
“Hey! You’re the girl I talked to last week in the cafeteria, right?” Gabriel said. “Your name is… Sandra, if I’m not mistaken?”
“Sharon.” The other corrected him. “But yes, it was me. Did you come looking for me because you have some new information to give me?”
“Sadly, I don’t.” Gabe admits, briefly lowering his head. “But I saw you earlier in the copy store, and I couldn't help but hear what you and the shopkeeper said to each other.” The young man then said, pointing to the rolled up flier that Sharon was holding under her arm.
The other nodded. “I’ve been visiting each single copy store we have nearby, both inside and outside campus’ grounds, to find the one that printed these. And after all of these efforts to find out what copy store The Outcasts use, it didn’t even result in any new information!” Sharon complained, rolling her eyes. “Like, I’ve already done all of this before! Up until a while ago the band used to have their fliers done by the copy shop near Chemistry’s building, but the owner there was only able to tell me that who ordered the copies was a blond boy. Which we know is the keyboard player. But it’s frustrating to go from store to store all over again, and still not be able to get an actual name!”
“Why is it so important to you to find out who they are?” Gabriel asked her, genuinely perplexed by the amount of dedication Sharon was putting in her investigation.
“I'm studying to become a journalist.” The girl replied. “Journalism is a very competitive work field, you know? It’s never too early to start training to find possible scoops. And believe me, the identities of our dear Outcasts are definitely the hottest mystery within our campus’ grounds!” Sahron then explained. “I absolutely must be the first to get to the bottom of this.”
Gabriel nodded. “Good luck with your investigation, then!”

Gabriel was about to leave when Sahron called for him: “Wait, I almost forgot!” The girl exclaimed. “There’s a forum corner, on the official blog’s page. Me and Freddy opened up a chat where people from all departments can write their suggestions about who each member of the band could be.” Sharon explained. “If you think you know someone of the right height or hair color, feel free to leave us a comment as well! I periodically update the spreadsheet at the top of the forum with the new names that get brought up to our attention.”

- - - - -

As Gabriel came to find out, Sharon wasn’t exaggerating in saying that The Outcasts were one of the most discussed topics by the fellow students of their institute: after the quality - or rather, the lack of - of the food served in the cafeteria and the complaints about the malfunctioning of the heating system in the northern dorm building, comments and theories about the possible identities of the members of the mysterious band were the topic Gabriel heard the most often about, inside and outside classrooms and common rooms.

Yet, not all his classmates seemed to be obsessed by the mysterious band; the boy living in the room right next to Gabriel’s, a guy named Alphonse Sanders who people often called ‘Sandy’ after his last name, for example, didn’t seem to care much about it.
Although Gabriel never really understood when exactly people stop being simple acquaintances and start to become actual friends, he always considered Alphonse to be the latter. Ever since Gabriel had moved into the dormitory’s building at the beginning of the academic year, the two of them had happened to meet each other in the corridor quite a few times, eventually bonding over small talk and complaints about their courses or the daily misadventures of their lives as college students. Then, eventually, their conversations expanded on sports and on their political views of the world, offering them more common grounds to get closer.
And so, when the two of them had met once again the previous monday, Gabriel had talked to Alphonse about the rumors that he had heard about The Outcasts. Alphonse had waved the question away with a wave of his hand, and had advised him to dedicate his attention to the upcoming exam session. Since Alphonse was in Gabriel’s same department, he had reminded him of the date of the Constitutional Law exam, which was going to be held on the tenth of February. However, the first voice marked on Gabriel’s digital calendar, even closer in time, was actually the presentation for Professor Morrison, which he and Isabel were going to hold the following tuesday.

. . .

At nine-forty p.m. on a wednesday night, Gabriel sat alone in his dorm room. The small desk in front of him was scattered in textbooks, notes and all kinds of stationery items. Taking a brief pause from his study session, the young man checked his phone, briefly glancing at the notifications on the screen.
When he acknowledged the time, Gabriel’s eyes clouded; The Outcasts’ new musical night at the pub had already started, by that time. While it was true that he didn’t like the music that the band played, a part of him would have wanted to hear the mysterious singer's voice again, to refresh the memories he had of it from that first evening. Perhaps, hearing his voice again would have helped him finally remembering where on Earth he knew it from, silencing once and for all the bug that had been pestering his mind for over a week.

Suddenly, Alphonse’s words from their meeting two days prior echoed once again in his mind, overshadowing his thoughts. Gabriel sighed, shifting back his attention on the words printed and underlined on the pages of the book in front of him. Sandy was right: the success of his career as a college student was way more important than an irrational feeling.

Chapter 6: The prom queen and the hall monitor

“It’s a long way up but a short way down.
I’ve gotta make it out somehow…
I’m just a college kid now.”
(‘College kid’ - Children of Indigo)

“Bel!” Gabriel greeted his friend, who had just joined him in the hallway outside Mrs. Morrison’s classroom. “Hi, how are you-” But the young man’s words trailed out upon noticing the face mask that Isabel was wearing, rigorously as black as the rest of their outfit, that covered from their nose down to their chin. “What’s the mask for?”
“Quite an unfortunate time to get a cold, huh?” Isabel replied, with the robotic tone of someone who had already repeated that answer quite a few times over. “I couldn’t skip the exam, but I didn’t want to spread the germs to our classmates.”
How odd - Gabriel couldn’t help but wonder; when the two of them had met the day prior for one last rehearsal of their presentation, Isabel didn’t really show any sign of having a cold. It must have broken out overnight.

In any case, those were the exact words that Isabel then proceeded to repeat to Mrs. Morrison a few minutes later, loud enough for their classmates to hear as well so that there wouldn’t be the need for more questions of that sort.
After sitting through a few presentations from the other pairs of students, Isabel and Gabriel’s turn came to be called by the teacher to talk to their classmates about their own assignment. The two students positioned themselves at the sides of the projector’s screen, and Gabriel began to present their work, fluent and confident in his speech thanks to the amount of times he had rehearsed it throughout the previous days.
Next to him, Isabel dutifully changed the presentation’s slides according to the keywords the two of them had rehearsed. Relieved to see that everything was going for the best, Gabriel briefly turned towards his study partner, giving them a smile of reassurement.

. . .

“We did amazing!” Isabel commented enthusiastically as the two of them exited the classroom.
“We sure did!” Gabriel replied with a smile, just as happy for the result of their exam. In spite of his initial fears, in fact, their joint efforts had granted them a very positive reward; a grade that wasn’t going to impact his GPA negatively, and the satisfaction of placing among the three pairs of students that scored the highest marks. And while Gabriel did nudge his partner every now and then to make sure they would have been well prepared for the exam, Isabel had proven themselves to be more cooperative than what he had hoped. “And you even managed to overcome your fear of speaking in front of the rest of the class!” Gabriel then said, giving his friend a gentle nudge with his elbow. As Gabriel held his speech, in fact, Isabel seemed to regain their courage little by little, until they eventually came to interrupt their partner, stepping in to continue the speech the two of them had prepared for their presentation.
“Yeah…” Isabel replied. When they took their mask off, folding it and putting it in their dark gray jeans’ pocket, Gabriel was able to see that they were smiling too. “This course was such an unexpected blessing; with a grade as good as what we got today to level out, I won’t have to worry if the rest of the exams of this session won’t go that well!”

At that moment, two young men from their class joined them in the hallway. “Hey, you! The mask was a good idea! About time you found a way to cover all of that stuff!” One of them said to Isabel, making a circular motion towards their face.
“It’s a shame you didn’t start to wear it sooner!” The other boy added, with a smirk on his lips. “You should have started doing it right from the first day!” High-fiving each other, then, the two young men started laughing at their own cruel words.
Gabriel frowned. It was Derek and Jacob, the same two guys who had done nothing but talk to each other while he and Isabel were presenting their work. And theirs wasn’t the only presentation that Derek and Jacob interrupted; Professor Morrison had to admonish them to be quiet multiple times throughout the entire duration of the exam. And now that he thought about it…

“Isn't that the weird girl who always sits in the back of the class?”
“Yeah, the ugly one who always dresses in black! How did you not see her, dude?”

Yes. It was the two of them again! But before Gabriel had the chance to open his mouth to defend his friend…
“Oh, is that so?” Isabel spoke without hesitation, their brows arching into a frown. “Because to me the real shame is that your parents didn’t decide to do something else, the night you were conceived!” They said, holding the gaze of the boy that had spoken last.
Derek and Jacob exchanged an unimpressed look. “Well, at least I didn’t come out looking like an ugly duckling!” Jacob said, before he and his friend turned around to leave.

Gabriel stood there silently, watching as Isabel took a couple of deep breaths to calm themselves down. Then, his friend proceeded to fix the jet-black locks of their bangs, pressing it down on their forehead for a better coverage of the patch of damaged skin that peeked through from underneath it, and then pulled up the hood of the pile jacket they were wearing.
Gabriel felt his heart ache for them. The fierce, undaunted attitude that Isabel showed with Jacob and Derek had now deflated, and even if they were keeping their head lowered, Gabriel could still see the saddened look that had formed on his friend’s face. How had he not realized sooner that every single time he’d seen them, Isabel was always trying their hardest to hide from everyone else’s eyes?
“Bel…” Gabriel began to say, but Isabel raised a hand to halt him.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll just go home by myself today.” They said, hardly even turning to look at him. “I need to be alone for a bit.”

And so, Gabriel could only stand there, watching Isabel as they walked away.

- - - - -

‘How are you doing?’ Gabriel texted Isabel later that evening, while he waited in his room for Micaela to join him to spend the evening together. After that first message that Isabel had sent him about the muffin he bought for them and the allergens it could possibly have contained, their chat had grown considerably longer, alternating between strictly school-related exchanges about the presentation they were preparing, and more casual texts like that one meme that Isabel sent him to laugh once again at the gaffe he had made about the flag in their room.
After a few moments, the round little icon next to Isabel’s name in the app changed color, signaling that they were now online. ‘Hey. I'm doing okay, dw.’ They replied.
‘Are you sure? You seemed pretty upset today, after what happened outside class.’ Gabriel asked. Three dots appeared on Isabel’s side of the screen, waving up and down for a while, only to then disappear without producing any actual new messages. It looked like Isabel was upset, after all. ‘How long has this been going on?’ Gabriel typed, to then press send.
‘If you’re talking about Jacob and that other idiot he has for a friend, then it’s been since the first lecture of our course.’ Isabel wrote. ‘At least I don’t share any other classes with them.’
Now it was Gabriel’s turn to take his time to let the three dots float up and down on the screen, as he pondered his next reply; something about the wording that Isabel chose for their messages told him that, unfortunately, Derek and Jacob weren't the first bullies to ever pick on them. But while Gabriel searched for the right words, another text from Isabel appeared on the screen to confirm his suspicions: ‘But I've also met several other jerks like them. People have been making fun of the way I look ever since my face got screwed up like this.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. How long has it been going on for, then?’ Gabriel asked them. ‘Was it something that happened when you were young?’
A few moments passed. Then: ‘No. It’s more recent than that.’ Isabel wrote, followed in tail by a: ‘Look, I'm trying to get my mind off of things. I don't really wanna talk about it, rn.’

. . .

“Lizzie, you’re such a liar!”
Micaela’s amused voice brought Gabriel back to reality, pulling him out of the thoughts he hadn’t even realized he had gotten lost into. The young man blinked a couple of times, finding himself in front of a scene playing on his laptop’s screen, in which a brunette woman was speaking rather animatedly to her friend sitting on the sofa in front of her. “How can she say something like that after what she did behind David’s back?” Micaela went on, shifting position to look up at him. The two were snuggled up together in the single bed in Gabriel’s dorm room, watching an episode of a sitcom that Micaela had picked out for them to watch.
“Yeah…” Gabriel replied half-heartedly, coming to the realization that he hadn’t heard a single word of what the two women on the screen were saying to each other. “What a liar…”
Micaela looked at him in silence for a moment. “Why the long face, dear?” She asked. “Aren't you happy with how your exam went today?”
“Yeah, I…” Gabriel began to say. After a sigh, he proceeded to tell her about the episode of bullying he had witnessed earlier that afternoon, of which his new friend Isabel was the victim.

Throughout his high school years, Gabriel had the luck to never actually witness bullying the way it was usually portrayed in movies and tv shows - where tall, muscular boys steal lunch from their helpless victims, or big fights break out in the school yard. But while there were never any major episodes that caused the institute to make the front page of the local newspapers, it would have been naive to claim that the students who attended it were all friendly and respectful to one another, as the principal liked to repeat; Gabriel himself, if he thought about it in retrospect, could say that he came out of four years of cold shouldering.
Although he always considered himself to be respectful of everyone, striving to be always well-mannered and kind like his parents had raised him to be, his classmates must have evidently not liked him; in the span of four years of high school, he could count on his fingers the times in which someone had invited him to take part in their after-school activities. Maybe the other kids were envious of his impeccable grades, or maybe what didn’t work in his favor was the fact that for a long time he served as a hall monitor, and that most of his classmates were unruly kids who liked to be loud and make a mess around.
But whatever was the real reason behind his difficulties in making friends, the fact was that throughout his teenage years, Gabriel was almost always left alone in the background.

For the most part, he didn’t mind being on his own. It wasn’t like he didn’t know how to have fun by himself; books were always amazing companions, for example. And then, what if his classmates did invite him to join them? He was never the type to get blackout drunk like his peers liked to do, nor did he like the idea of going to parties where people did nothing but rub up against each other surrounded by music so loud that it even drowned out their own voices!
But Gabriel couldn't deny that every now and then, as he looked back on his teenage years, he felt like he’d missed something important. Especially whenever his girlfriend told him about all the small great adventures she had gone on with her two best friends Ursula and Sarah, and about the funny memories the three of them had made together.
Just like she was now in college, Micaela was one of the most popular and envied girls in the high school she attended. She told him that in her senior year she was elected queen of her school’s dance, and she showed him photos of herself posing proudly with her tiara.
Micaela had always distinguished herself when it came to charity - the very topic that gave them the chance to meet in front of a fundraising booth during the events that were organized for the start of the academic year. Just like him, Micaela had always had top grades in every subject, and both of her parents were really lovely people. After years of feeling left out by people he couldn’t resonate with, Gabriel finally felt he had found someone exactly like him.

A veil of sadness spread over Micaela’s delicate features. “It’s so sad that you had to witness something like that.” The girl said. “We never expect this sort of thing to happen to someone we personally know, and yet…”
Silence fell between Gabriel and Micaela. Even the jovial chatting of the protagonists of the sitcom they were watching had been long paused. “Since we’re talking about this Isabel…” Micaela spoke again after a few moments. “You’ve been mentioning her quite a bit, these past few weeks.”
“Well, it’s only natural, isn’t it? We’ve spent a few afternoons together to prepare our presentation.” Gabriel replied. “By the way, Isabel wants to be called ‘they’, and not ‘she’.”
Micaela frowned in confusion. “She’s one of those people, then? Ugh, I never understood that sort of thing…” She then commented, shaking her head.
“I don’t really understand it either.” Gabriel admitted, with a shrug. “But it’s what Bel wants to be called, and I’m not going to give them another reason to get mad at me by disrespecting their choice.”
“Well, this just proves my point; you’ve told me so much about Isabel, that I can’t help but feel like I’m already friends with her too.” Micaela said. “And yet, I haven’t even had the chance to meet her in person yet!”
“If you want, I can ask them if they would like to hang out with us sometime.”
Micaela’s lips curved up in a smile. “That would be wonderful.”

Chapter 7: Lawful good

“Oh, no, did I get too close?
“Oh, did I almost see
what's really on the inside?”
(‘Unconditionally’ - Katy Perry)

The noise produced by his phone buzzing against the wooden surface of his desk caught Gabriel’s attention, causing his gaze to finally peel away for the first time in who knows how long from the pages and pages of underlined notes in front of him. Much to his surprise, glancing at the device’s screen, Gabriel was met by Isabel’s name.
He was never sure about what degree of friendship had formed between them; after all, up until that moment, the one reason that had led them to see each other again in person had always been necessity; first there was their joint presentation, then there was Micaela wanting for all three of them to hang out together… And Gabriel wasn’t sure what would have happened now that he and Isabel had run out of official reasons to hang out. They were two people with practically opposite interets, and with very little common ground to get their conversations to keep flowing. Were their texts going to become more and more scarce over time, until the day they wouldn’t have no longer arrived at all?
It was a perfectly logical possibility, and yet, the idea of that newfound friendship fading out as fast as it started actually saddened him.

“Hey. How’s this friday night treating you?” Isabel’s voice greeted him from the other end of the phone, as soon as he picked up the call.
Gabriel drew in a long breath. “It could go better…” He replied, his voice betraying the tiredness he was feeling from his study session, that by now had already lasted something over two straight hours.
“You’re getting bored too, huh?” Isabel wondered. “Stupid exam session… Two of my friends ditched me to spend the evening studying; one of them in her room and the other holed up in a chemistry lab. I tried asking my other friend what he was up to, but he’s busy hanging out with someone else already. I can’t even count on my roommates tonight; Azzy is on a date with her latest fling, Josh is working his shift as a bouncer for a nightclub downtown, and Eric is locked in his room playing some online games. He strictly forbids anyone from even walking in, when he does. So… he’s out too.” Isabel said. Then, after finishing their list: “Say, would you like to hang out?” They asked.
“I can’t. I’m studying as well.” Gabriel said, begrudgingly turning down his friend’s offer. “If you’re looking for something to do, why don’t you try to study as well, just like the rest of us are doing?” Gabriel asked them, having heard them huff out in annoyance. “You have an upcoming exam too, this monday, remember?”
“I do, yeah. But math equations are the last thing I want to think about on a friday night.” Isabel replied. “But anyway, I got it. You’re busy as well. I’m assuming your lovely little girlfriend is there with you to help you study?”
Gabriel rolled his eyes at the tone that Isabel was using to talk about Micaela.

The three of them had met the day before, in a small cafe on the outskirts of campus’ grounds. Although Gabriel by then had come to the conclusion that making a good impression on Isabel right at first sight was probably an impossible task for anyone, Gabriel had seen Micaela’s affable self in action several times, and he was sure that things would have gone for the best. But unfortunately, Micaela had started out with a terrible mistake; “Oh my! Gabriel wasn’t joking; you really do have a unique look to yourself!” She said in surprise as soon as Isabel joined them at their table. “Poor thing! What happened to your skin, if I may ask?”
Needless to say, Isabel wasn’t happy with such a straightforward question. Since Micaela had mentioned him, their gaze shifted briefly to Gabriel, then back to the girl sitting in front of them. “Something deeply personal that I don't really want to discuss with a complete stranger I just met, sorry.” Isabel simply replied, causing Micaela to realize that, after all, the two of them hadn’t properly introduced each other yet.
The rest of the afternoon went by relatively smoothly, and the three of them exchanged some small talk about their respective majors and other school-related topics, with Micaela asking Gabriel and Isabel about the elective course they had attended and about the topic they had built their presentation on, but in spite of Micaela’s efforts to be friendly, a somewhat tense air had lingered on their heads all throughout their meeting; it was clear that Isabel had already decided they didn’t like their new acquaintance. But there was something off in Micaela’s own demeanor as well, Gabriel couldn’t help but notice, as though she wasn’t too happy to be hanging out with Isabel either.
Maybe Micaela didn’t have the best morning at school, and it was affecting her mood. If that was true - Gabriel thought - poor Micky had to try and make a good impression on one of the most fussy people he’d ever met right when she wasn’t in her best shape.

“No, Micky is not here.” Gabriel said, correcting his friend’s supposition. “She’s at a party organized by her club.”
“Oh. Why aren’t you with her, then?”
“I’m not exactly what people call ‘a party animal’.” Gabriel answered. “And then, I have an exam in just five days, and I already know it’s going to be a tough one; it’s a lot of information to remember, and the professor is very demanding of us.”
On the other end of the call, Isabel hummed. “I see. Well, I think I just got an idea about what I’ll do to spend the evening.”

. . .

Around fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on Gabriel’s door.
“Bel!” Gabriel exclaimed upon opening it, surprised to find his friend in front of him. “What are you doing here?”
“I'm keeping you some company.” Isabel simply stated with a light shrug, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Debbie doesn't want to have anyone around when she’s studying, but you didn’t say anything specific about that. So I figured that, if this really has to be a boring friday night, at least I could spend it being bored with someone.” They then explained.
Gabriel stood there motionless for a moment, taken aback. Needing silence in order to concentrate, he usually preferred to study on his own as well. But there had been occasions in which he and Micaela had spent the afternoon together, each working on their own homework side by side. So, Gabriel figured, as long as Isabel would have been keeping him company in silence, it could have worked. And then, they had walked all the way from their house in the chill of the evening just to hang out - he just couldn’t send them away like that!

“Nice room!” Isabel commented, taking a look around as Gabriel stepped aside to let them in. Just by a first general glance, it was clear that Gabriel's room was larger than the one Isabel had rented; the clean, modern cut of the well-worn furniture that all the dormitory’s rooms were furnished with, along with the light color of the varnish, certainly contributed to the illusion of a larger space. “You should decorate it a bit, though.” Isabel went on after a few moments. “It’s almost like you only moved here yesterday, instead of four months ago.” Aside from the temporary chaos of books and stationery in which Gabriel’s desk currently versed, in fact, the rest of the room was in immaculate order; there wasn't any piece of clothing laying around outside of the wardrobe, the books on the shelves of the bookcase were tidily organized by height… Gabriel hadn’t even hung anything on the little corkboard next to his desk, nor on the few empty nails scattered across the walls of the room.
Isabel walked over to their friend’s bed, flopping down on the perfectly smoothed out blankets. Gabriel tried his best not to appear visibly annoyed by the fact that Isabel was creasing his made bed, and turned towards his desk to sit once again down in front of it. Isabel leaned over to pick up the framed picture that Gabriel kept on his nightstand, one of the few visible signs that someone was actually living inside the room. “So… How long have you and Micaela been together?” They asked, their gaze locked on the photograph.
“We’ve known each other since the beginning of this school year, and we started going out shortly after.”
“I see. Is it something serious?”
“I like to think it is, yes.” Gabriel replied. “I know her parents, and she met mine, and my family thinks she’s an amazing girl.”
Isabel nodded with a hum, and set the frame back down on the nightstand.

. . .
“What are you studying, exactly?” Isabel asked after a while, and Gabriel’s brows furrowed in annoyance at that new interruption.
“Constitutional Law.” The young man replied laconically, eager to focus once again on his lecture notes. But instead…
“What is it about?”
“It’s about the structure of our Constitution, and about what the different sections of our government do and what powers they hold.” Gabriel answered, still not looking up from the pages in front of him.
Isabel raised their eyebrows. “It sounds like boring stuff…” They commented, and Gabriel couldn't help but think ‘it is’, although he eventually opted not to say anything at all. “Why did you choose to major in Law, out of all things?” Isabel inquired. “I mean, having to endure all of those years of school, the boring subjects… And then there’s all the added months of the internship you’ll have to do before you start working, too!”
Gabriel sighed. “I’m well aware that the road ahead of me is long.” The young man replied. “But at least, I’ll have a guaranteed future career at the end of it; there’s a fairly wide range of jobs that you can pursue if you have a degree in Law.” Gabriel explained. “My family is kind of hoping I’ll choose to become an actual lawyer, though; my father is a lawyer himself, and he has always openly wished for at least one of his sons to work with him in his firm.”

One corner of Isabel’s lips curled up in a grimace. “I hate lawyers…” They said. “If you can afford to buy yourself a good one, then you’re good to go. But if you can’t, then you might as well give up any hope of getting justice at all. That’s why so many people result in taking things into their own hands, after getting nothing out of the whole legal system.” Isabel went on, each word coated in spite. “And then, they are people who don’t give a damn about others; they’re all ready to latch onto the most stupid technicalities, taking even the most insignificant word that someone says just to turn it against them!”
Feeling personally attacked by Isabel’s venomous accusations, Gabriel finally turned towards them. “You’re saying some really drastic things, you know? My father is not a heartless shark, for one. And many of his friends in the law scene aren’t either. In fact, I could tell you about plenty of instances in which each one of them successfully helped clients who were in desperate conditions, and with very little proof in their favor.” Gabriel said to his friend, countering their attack. “So, how can you be so convinced of the mean things you’re saying? Have you ever even met a lawyer in person, before deciding you hated them all?”
“I have, yes.” Isabel hissed. “To be exact, the only time I had the displeasure of having to go to a courtroom, I met two lawyers. One of them was an idiot, and the other an asshole.”
“You went to court?” Gabriel repeated. “And what crime did you get arrested for, exactly?” The young man joked, his lips curving up in a playful grin.
“Ha ha. Very funny, Gabe.” Isabel replied with an unamused glare, crossing their arms over their chest. “I was there to testify.”
Gabriel’s amused smile faded from his lips; bearing witness in a court was no joke. “For prosecution or for defense?” He asked, curious to learn more about it.
“For prosecution. And the defense attorney was a real jerk to me, in the cross-examination.” Isabel said, matter-of-factly.

Gabriel pressed his lips together, nodding slowly. “I can imagine,” the young man said. “Unfortunately, it is part of their job to plant doubts around anything that prosecution’s witnesses.” He’d had the opportunity to see defense attorneys in action on the occasions when, back when he was still a young boy, his father took him and his brother to court with him to show them what his job was like. But while it’s true that the objective of a cross-examination is to question and seed doubts, Gabriel also knew that some attorneys didn’t have the best attitude while performing it. “What case were you testifying for, by the way?” Gabriel asked his friend. “Was it a criminal or a civil trial? Did they end up convicting the person who was accused?”
“You ask too many questions, Gabe.” Isabel replied. “Aren’t you supposed to be studying for your exam?” They then asked, nodding towards the pile of books and notes stacked on Gabriel’s desk. The young man turned to glance briefly at the stack of textbooks, his posture deflating at the reminder of how much text he had yet to fully understand and memorize. “If you want to talk so badly,” Isabel went on, “why don’t you repeat to me the things you’re studying?”
Gabriel seemed to ponder the offer for a couple moments. Then: “Didn’t you just say you hate lawyers?” He asked.
“Yes.” Isabel replied, finally uncrossing their arms. “But I don’t necessarily hate everything that revolves around them. I’ve never met someone who studies law, and it’s a chance for me to get an insight about the procedures and the tactics that they use to manipulate people, as unfair as it is.” They explained. “And then, I’m bored.”

Chapter 8: Dreamless nights

“I know I’m not easy.
My star sign is bad bitch
with a fragile ascendant.
Who breaks pays for the damage.”
(Translated from ‘Io, me ed altri guai’ - Rose Villain)

Having not been able to go out on that friday, Gabriel and Isabel decided to meet on the following sunday afternoon to spend some time together; a small movie theater not far from their campus was playing a collection of old Alfred Hitchcock movies for a limited time, and Isabel had insisted that, even if he didn’t like the genre, there were some old classics that he just couldn’t go his whole life without watching. And so, although reluctantly, Gabriel had agreed.
Just as expected, he didn’t like one bit of the movie that Isabel had taken him to see - the world-famous ‘Psycho’ that everyone kept referring to. But on more than one occasion throughout the movie, rather than on the film itself, Gabriel found himself focusing on Isabel instead, who was sitting in the chair to his right with their eyes glued to the screen; on the palm of his friend’s left hand, with which they were holding the bucket of popcorn they had bought before the movie began, there was a noticeable, squared white band-aid.
As they made their way back home from the movie theater, the two friends commented on the movie they had just watched, and Isabel tenaciously defended Hitchcock from every criticism that Gabriel presented towards his work. “You know, I think I really needed this.” Isabel said at some point, huffing out a breath with a smile on their lips as they put their hands in their pockets. “I had a pretty awful morning, and luckily I was able to take my mind off of it for a bit.”
Gabriel nodded. “Is the band-aid on your hand part of said awful morning?” The young man asked, pointing towards Isabel’s now hidden hand.

The smile on his friend’s face disappeared as quickly as it had formed. “Yeah… I got a cut while I was preparing something for myself in the kitchen.”
“Did you have it checked by the nurse?” Gabriel asked. “One should never underestimate the risk of infection, even in small cuts! Especially if they happen in the kitchen, with all the bacteria that may be hiding in raw meat and things like that!”
“Yeah don't worry, mom, I had it checked.” Isabel replied, with the dismissive tone of a child answering a parent’s questions.
Gabriel rolled his eyes at that nickname. “Anyway… I didn’t think you were someone who likes to experiment in the kitchen! What were you cooking, if I may ask?”
“I'm not. But, sadly, people can’t survive on canned food alone.” Isabel replied. For some reason that Gabriel couldn’t quite pinpoint, they sounded once again annoyed. It must have been really unhealthy, living with all of that anger, Gabriel wondered to himself. “You’re right, we can’t. Did you make yourself pasta? Or some kind of meat…?”
“Will you stop asking questions?” Isabel suddenly snapped, stopping in their tracks. The sudden harshness in their voice left Gabriel dumbfounded. “There was nothing, because I wasn’t cooking. There: I confessed! Are you happy now?”
“Hey, wait, I wasn’t-”
“This morning I was with Debbie in her room. We tried to summon a demon. Her room is bigger than mine, all dorm rooms are, that’s why we were at her place; we needed enough space to trace the pentagram on the floor - and then, everyone in my house is always so loud, and we needed silence to focus on the ritual. I cut myself on purpose, to get the drop of blood we needed for it, but unfortunately the RA of Deb’s floor came in and interrupted us, forcing us to dismantle everything! This is how it went!”

To say that Gabriel was shocked by what his friend had just told him was an understatement. “You two were lucky that it happened!” He exclaimed, in disbelief.
“And this is exactly why I wasn’t going to tell you.” Isabel replied, rolling their eyes. “You’re Catholic, I’m not. If I don’t go around criticizing you and your beliefs, you should do the same with me. So please keep your thoughts to yourself about things that don’t even concern you; it’s not like you’re going to Hell because I tried to summon a demon.”
“What was on your mind?” Gabriel went on without batting an eye. “ These kinds of things shouldn’t be taken lightly! The powers of evil must be fought and rejected, and not… summoned as if it were a horror movie!”
“Oh, but I’m not taking any of this lightly.” Isabel countered. “I knew exactly what I was doing; I’ve been researching, and sometimes even practicing, the occult for years now. Debbie simply offered to help me, but she knew what she was getting into as well. And if we tried to summon a demon, it was because we had something deadly important to ask, and not to make a scene ‘like in horror movies’ like you think.” They explained. “And we would have made it, hadn’t it been for that damned RA!”
“But what could possibly be so important as to sacrifice your soul to the devil in order to obtain it?”
The fierce look in Isabel’s eyes faded, replaced by a more somber emotion. “It’s none of your business. But there are some things that only creatures as powerful as them can do.” They said, and the firmness in their voice made it clear that they wouldn't have added any further explanations.

- - - - -

On wednesday, February 10th, Gabriel walked out of the Law department building with a big smile on his face. He gave his friend Alphonse a pat on the shoulder, and the two young men congratulated each other once again on their respective successful grades before parting ways. Feeling his stomach growl, Gabriel suddenly realized that it was already lunch time, and that Micaela was probably waiting for him in the cafeteria to eat together like they always did.
As he walked swiftly along the square that connected the two central avenues of the campus, Gabriel noticed Isabel sitting on one of the benches in the corner of the square eating a sad-looking sandwich.

“Bel!” He called for them, as soon as he was close enough.
Isabel looked up from their phone’s screen. “Hey!” They greeted back, their face brightening upon recognizing their friend’s. “How’s it going? Have you taken your exam yet?”
“I have! I’m just coming out of it.” Gabriel replied, beaming. “I got a nice A!”
The way he had proudly puffed out his chest made Isabel chuckle. “I wasn’t expecting any less from a nerd like you!” They commented.
“What about you? Any news about the results of your math exam from the other day?” Gabriel asked, sitting down on the bench right next to them.
“Yeah, the grades came out this morning.” Isabel replied, and by the way the laughter in their eyes quickly died out, Gabriel could already tell it hadn’t gone well. In fact: “I flunked it.” His friend went on. “Not that I was really expecting anything different; I’ve never been good at math.”
“I’m sorry to hear that…” Gabriel commented, lowering his shoulders.
“Don’t be.” Isabel waved a hand to shoo the topic away. “It’s not like I care about this stupid major anyway. I didn’t choose to attend this school; it’s my mother who forced me to, and I hate it when people choose for me.”
‘Oh wow’ - Gabriel thought. Being forced to attend a major you didn’t choose had to be a really awful feeling! “What would you have wanted to do, then?” The young man asked his friend.

Isabel stared at him in silence for a while, pondering their answer. Then: “I don’t know.” They answered, shaking their head slowly. “Back when I was in high school I didn’t really care much about studying, either. The subjects were all equally boring, to me, and me and my friends had plenty of better, more interesting things to do. When I had to enroll here, I ended up picking Economics because it was the least awful option; it requires way less years of study than Medicine or Law, at least. I’m not creative enough for an Art major, definitely not smart enough for Engineering, History is way too boring, and as for Chemistry… I didn’t like the idea of having to deal with any of the substances that they use in their labs. I still don’t.”
“But you must have some dreams, right?” Gabriel asked, surprised by the apathy his friend had shown towards all the subjects they had listed. “Something you want to become in your future?”
“I don't have a future.” Isabel answered, their ice blue eyes darkened by a gaze as somber as Gabriel had never seen on their face. “The degree that my mother hopes I will get here - if I actually manage to get one, that is - will only be a piece of paper to wipe my butt with.”
Inside, Gabriel rolled his eyes at such vulgar words. And if Isabel was trying to provoke him by saying that education gets you nowhere in life, he had heard too many people say it in his life and had more than a few objections to it…!

But before Gabriel could open his mouth to defend his position, Isabel went on: “I liked to mess around, when I was in high school.” They said. When they were still a minor, Isabel then proceeded to tell him, they didn’t really always behave their best; there were a few instances of neighbors calling the cops on them and their friends for being too loud and ill-mouthed while they were drunk… A fight at school with one of their classmates... A few acts of vandalism - like spray-painting tags on walls, which they were luckily never caught for, or the time they pierced the tires of their openly transphobic history teacher’s car…
And lastly, in the days when they skipped school to hang out with their friends, there were even a few occasions in which they tried shoplifting in the stores their friend group used to go to. It started out as a dare from a friend, to prove to him they had the guts to risk it, but they ended up liking the thrill so much that they decided to try again. And again. Until the day Isabel was actually caught red-handed and forced to hand over the stolen goods. The shop owner called their mother, who hurried to the place and made a huge scene right in front of everyone who was there that day, and the whole ordeal ended up with Isabel getting banned from the store. And since they lived in a relatively small town where everyone still knew everyone else’s business, word had spread like wildfire about their reputation of troublesome kid.
“No one would trust me enough to hire me to work for them.” Isabel said, shrugging. “Not that it would really make any difference, since there’s also this problem…” They then added, pointing to their own face. “I don’t think I would ever be comfortable working in a place where people would stare at me for the whole time.”
Gabriel nodded slowly, very surprised and vaguely unsettled to hear such a list of shenanigans.

“I haven’t been able to do anything since I got these.” Isabel vented, in annoyance. “If back in my teens I used to catch people’s attention just with the way I dress, things have gotten even worse after I got these. I have too remarkable a face now, whether we’re talking about security cameras if I were to do anything wrong, or about people’s attention in general.”
Whatever had happened to them, it had happened pretty recently, then - Gabriel thought, as he nodded once again. The nature of the event itself still remained an unveiled mystery, but by then he had surrendered to the idea that it was something that Isabel would have told him only when they would have been ready to; for the time being, he could only stick to the new information they were choosing to tell him. Yet, there was something odd about the words Isabel was using; they were talking about their teenage years as if it was a lifetime ago. “What do you mean ‘back in your teens’?” Gabriel hence asked them. “You’re a college freshman, I assumed you were eighteen like the rest of us?”
“I’m twenty-one.” Isabel replied. “Three months short of twenty-two, to be exact.”
“And you’re still a college freshman at twenty-one?” Gabriel exclaimed in surprise.
“Okay, so… first I was held back a year in high school...” Isabel said, holding up a finger. “Then, well… let’s say I took a couple of sabbatical years. Like I told you, it was my mother who forced me to enroll in college. She got tired of having me at home all day…” They concluded their explanation, holding up two more fingers.

After a few moments of silence, Gabriel sighed. “How do our conversations always end like this?” He wondered, throwing his arms up in the air.
“Like what?”
“We always end up talking about things that kill the mood, or that make us sad…”
Isabel shrugged. “For me it doesn't change much; it’s all things I think about on a daily basis anyway.”
“Or we straight up end up fighting, like we did last friday when we were talking about lawyers!” Gabriel went on.
“No. Ours aren’t fights.” Isabel corrected him. “If they were, if we truly did fight all the time, we wouldn’t keep wanting to be around each other, like you did today when you decided to sit down next to me. And it would be a shame, cause I kinda like to have you around.” They explained, smiling up at him. “Ours are debates, and I never really had anyone to debate with… All the friends I’ve had around me share my same opinions on stuff, and it’s amazing, sure, but it can also get kind of boring after a while. There’s nothing like a good debate to keep you stimulated, you know?”
Gabriel blinked. Oh. He had never thought of it that way. “Hey, uhm… There is something I wanted to ask you…” The young man spoke again after a couple moments, reassured by Isabel’s words. “Would you like to go see The Outcasts together, tonight?” Gabriel proposed to his friend. “I wanted to ask you last week, too, but then unfortunately there was all that happened with Derek and Jacob the day before, and then the gig ended up getting canceled altogether due to the awful weather of those days… ”
“Yeah, I doubt that with the downpour that happened that afternoon even a single person set foot out of their room that evening…”
“So, what do you say about tonight? I mean, you told me yourself; you've never missed one of their shows. And maybe, listening to some music could help cheer you up for your exam’s results.”
“I…” Isabel hesitated. “Sure, why not.” They then nodded, their lips curving up in a lopsided smile.

. . .

All throughout that afternoon, Isabel’s words echoed back and forth inside Gabriel’s mind; especially what they had said about not having a favorite subject.
But what was his favorite subject? - Gabriel asked himself, his brows furrowing as his mind traced back along all the school years of his life, all the way back to elementary school, scanning the memories he had of the various subjects, and of the teachers who taught them. Of course, subjects like math and history were always more appealing to him than art or English... but to say that he liked to study those topics and to actually consider making them his college degree and future career were two entirely different things!
Isabel had ended up picking Economics as the ‘least awful option’, like they had said themselves, not knowing what path they wanted to follow. Gabriel, on the other hand, grew up having as much as two paths before him; becoming a lawyer like his father Matthew, hence turning the De Angelis law firm into a family business, or starting a career in the GreenLife company, specialized in the production of furnishing accessories made from recycled materials, and then maybe one day ranking up to take the place of his mother Francesca and become the new CEO.

But whenever in his high school days he tried picturing himself in either role, Gabriel was never really able to see himself doing exclusively office work; at least, lawyers could alternate their desk work with the thrilling experience of standing up for their clients in courtrooms. When the time came for Gabriel to choose what college to enroll in, his father was more than happy to hear that he wanted to pursue a Law major. His uncles and cousins were too, and Gabriel had felt reassured by all of their smiles and their words of encouragement.
And then, as he lied there fully clothed on his bed staring at the ceiling of his room, a terrible thought creeped into his mind: could it really be just that? Had he chosen his major just to make his family happy, terrified of ending up like his brother who, ever since he distanced himself from his family six years ago, had been constantly criticized behind his back from all of their relatives at every single family gathering?
Gabriel sighed. Maybe going out that night to go see The Outcasts play would have been good for him - at least to take his mind away from all of those strange thoughts.

Speaking of The Outcasts…
He hadn’t checked the spreadsheet on the school’s blog in a few days now, he realized as he grabbed his phone and opened a new Internet tab. Perhaps some new possible names for the singer had been added to the list during that span of time.
Gabriel scanned the list of names once again but, much to his disappointment, to no use; Freddy and Sharon had organized their website very cleverly, even indicating in brackets the major each student was attending next to their names, but unfortunately there was no one from his own department, and he didn't know many people outside of the crowded Law classrooms.
Suddenly, a notification signaling a new incoming message appeared on the screen: “I won’t be able to make it to the pub tonight, sorry.”

Chapter 9: The Outcasts

“Can you listen?
Cause I’ve been trying to make you notice
what it would mean to me
to feel like somebody.”
(‘Somebody’ - Lemonade Mouth)

Gabriel heard a knock on his bedroom door. The young man’s brows furrowed, as he wondered who it could be; he didn’t really get that many visits, and the knocks were quite more resolute than the ones Alphonse used to make the times he stopped by to say hello. But now that he thought about it, there was someone who had visited him recently with a similar kind of knock…
When he got up and opened the door, Gabriel found himself in front of Isabel. “It's nice to see you're still alive.” Isabel greeted him. “I was starting to get worried, considering how you haven’t answered my calls and texts in two whole days!”
“I didn’t reply because I had nothing to say to you.” Gabriel replied, frowning.
“Did something happen?”
“You should be the one to tell me what happened.”
Isabel raised their eyebrows. “Oh wow. Looks like you’re really mad at me, huh?” They asked. “Come on, stop acting like a stereotypical woman on her period and tell me what’s wrong!”
“What’s wrong is that I just wanted to have a nice wednesday, a day to celebrate the A I took in the morning. And instead, first I got my girlfriend getting mad at me because I was late for my lunch with her at the cafeteria, then I got a full afternoon of weird thoughts about the major I thought I was a hundred percent sure of, and lastly, I got your message.” Gabriel explained. “It was sad to hear that you weren’t feeling well, and that you had to miss the new gig of The Outcasts because of a stomach ache. ‘Damn! They had to get ill today of all days?’ I thought to myself. But that was nowhere nearly as sad as what I felt when I rang your house’s doorbell and Josh came to answer, saying that he was very surprised by the fact that I had come to keep you some company, since you weren’t even home.”

Isabel looked very surprised by his words. “Gabe, I’m sorry, I… I had no idea you would go as far as to bother coming over to my place!” They said, with a rather apologetic look on their face.
“Me not going to your house wouldn’t have made it any more okay to lie your way out of our meeting.” Gabriel went on, the frown on his face remaining unmoved. “I had to reschedule my time with Micaela, in order to go out with you, and she really wasn’t happy about it. And then I came to find out that it was all for nothing. If you didn’t want to go to the pub with me, if you wanted to go on your own, you could have just been honest about it.”
“It’s not that I didn’t want to go with you. I…” Isabel began to say. But then, realizing that they were still standing on the doorway, potentially exposed to the prying ears of the other residents living in the rooms along the corridor, Isabel looked around. “I can't tell you right now.”
“Why not?”
“This is not the place to talk. These rooms have walls thinner than cardboard.” Isabel said, in a lower voice. “I will send you a message with an address; meet me there this afternoon at four-thirty.”
“So that I’ll go, you won’t, and I’ll be left standing there like an idiot?” Gabriel asked, glaring at his friend.
Isabel rolled their eyes. “I'll be there. You have to trust me on this one, Gabe.”

- - - - -

Following the indications on his phone, Gabriel found himself in front of a small but elegant-looking house in a quiet, peaceful street just outside of the campus’ territory.
In their message, Isabel had explained that the house was inhabited by ‘a friend of a friend’ named Ezra Fell, and by his roommate Muriel. But there was no need for Gabriel to check the names on the house’s doorbell plate to make sure he had gotten to the right place, because Isabel was already there, waiting for him with a guitar case behind their shoulders. “I apologize for not being honest with you, the other day, Gabe.” They said, with an awkward half-smile on her lips. “I swear, I wasn’t doing it out of malice; I was only trying to protect my secret.”
“You’re in the band!” Gabriel exclaimed in surprise at that revelation.
Isabel nodded. “You're looking at the one and only guitarist of The Outcasts!” They then said, their smile growing wider and prouder on their lips.
“I cannot believe it!” Their friend said, shaking his head in disbelief. “This means that, every time we talked about The Outcasts these past few weeks…?”
“...I was also talking about myself, yes.” Isabel finished for him, clearly amused by the surreal situation.
“So that’s why you’ve always talked so passionately about them!” Gabriel commented, smiling in turn as he shook his head once more.
“Well, duh!” Isabel replied, rolling their eyes with a chuckle. “Were you expecting me to talk trash about the very same band I founded?”

“Buckle up, because you’re not only getting me, today: you’re getting the full tour.” Isabel announced, gesturing for Gabriel to follow them as they walked over towards the house’s garage. “But before I let you in to meet the rest of the band, there is one thing you have to promise me.” Isabel warned: “What you will see here today must absolutely remain a secret, is that clear?”
Gabriel nodded firmly. “It’s a promise!” The young man said, with one hand to his chest and the other raised in the air.
Reassured by that promise, Isabel nodded. Then, they knocked on the garage door, with a series of hits that followed a precise rhythm. Mere moments later, the garage’s shutter door began to lift, and Gabriel found himself in front of a tall boy with dark brown eyes framed by a set of dark circles right underneath them and, more remarkably, with an unmistakable mop of very light blond hair that flared out in every direction. The blond boy studied Gabriel for a couple of moments. “Who’s this guy?” He then asked Isabel, turning towards them. “I thought we agreed not to bring anyone else here.”
“He’s a friend, we can trust him.” Isabel replied, as they walked inside the garage, shortly followed by an hesitant Gabriel. “This is Harry La Vista, Chemistry freshman but most importantly our amazing keyboard player. Harry, he’s Gabriel De Angelis and we were in the same class for a while.” They then said, introducing the two boys to each other.

As Gabriel’s gaze wandered further into the room, then, it was met by the very familiar features of a girl with ginger hair, who was sitting on the stool behind her drum kit ready to start playing. Under the garage’s lighting, the peculiar aquamarine hue of her eyes had taken on a more defined shade of blue. “You!” Gabriel exclaimed, pointing his finger towards her.
“Me.” The other simply said, with a shrug.
“I know who you are,” Gabriel said, walking over to her. “You’re Bel’s friend! Debbie, right?”
“Deborah.” The other corrected him. “My friends call me Debbie, but you have yet to earn it.” Then, pointing a drumstick menacingly towards him: “You proved yourself to be a stinky one when you insulted Bel right in front of me that first day outside class, you know?” The girl went on. “I’ve been keeping a close eye on you ever since, and when I couldn’t be there, I’ve had Bel telling me all the details of your meetings. You have to be very careful about how you behave around them; we’re dating, and I won’t let anyone be mean towards the people I love. Got it?”
“You and Bel are dating?” Gabriel repeated, ignoring the threatening tone in Debbie’s voice to focus on the unexpected new information.
“No we’re not.” Isabel answered for Debbie, smiling fondly at her for a moment. “Deb is only trying to look out for me. She’s a bit like a guard dog that barks to scare away any possible ill-intentioned guy who dares to get close to me. Not that there’s any need for her to, right, Deb?” They explained, eyeing their friend. “It’s not like people want to get close to me anyway…” That last part came out more as a grumble that Isabel made to themselves under their breath, and Gabriel didn’t know how else to reply other than with a perplexed nod.

“Where’s Crowley?” Isabel then asked, spreading her arms wide as they looked around.
“He’s getting something to eat.” Harry answered. “And he better hurry; I'm starving.”
“Dude, I can’t believe you became such a nerd that you even skipped lunch to finish preparing for your exam! And on a saturday, too!” Debbie mocked her friend. “Who are you, and what did you do to our Harry?”
“Wait until you meet the living nightmare that is my lab professor and then we’ll talk about it…” Harry replied, unphased by Debbie’s joke. “Today was the last deadline to turn in the final reports of our experiments for monday’s exam.”
“How about we warm up a bit until Crowley gets here?” Isabel suggested, picking their guitar up from its case. After wearing the strap over their head - the same rusty orange strap worn by the mysterious masked guitarist that Gabriel saw that wednesday evening a few weeks prior - they proceeded to play a few chords. “What songs did you hear, that time you came to see us play?” They asked looking back up at Gabriel, who was still staring at them dumbfounded.
“This is incredible! You… all of you…!” The young man exclaimed, still stunned by the secrets he had just been let in on. “The- the song, right. Uhm… It was about revenge, if I recall it correctly.” Gabriel then said, realizing that his friend was still waiting for him to answer their question. “It said something about someone evil that should have been burning in Hell.”
Isabel nodded. “Ah, it’s ‘Hellfire’, then!” They commented with a smile. “One of our most inspired pieces, if I can say it myself.”
Hearing those words, Debbie turned to look at her friend with an unspoken question in her eyes. Something that Isabel seemed to catch immediately, for they replied to it with a light shake of their head before positioning their hands on the guitar for the first chord.

To make up for the absence of their friend Crowley, Harry took it upon himself to sing the lyrics. The blond young man surely had a different voice than the band’s designated singer’s - a bit deeper and somewhat out of tune, perhaps, but not unpleasant to listen to. And just like that first night at the pub, Isabel let loose and moved around the room, interacting with Harry through body language. But this time, now that he had a chance to see their face unmasked, Gabriel could see that they were actually singing along, mouthing each word without making any sound.
Isabel was a sight to behold, completely one with the music they were playing even down to their facial expressions; in the more intense parts of the song, where the lyrics and the rhythm became more pressing, Isabel seemed to get as angry as the narrating voice of the song was.
Without the background noises of the pub and the uncomfortable feeling of having strangers pressed up against his side, Gabriel was now free to listen more attentively to the piece, which allowed him to realize how extremely precise the song’s imagery really was, with its lyrics that spoke of men who behaved like devils, and who were then wished to get what they deserved in the afterlife. Something in the anger with which the verses were sung by Harry and imitated by Isabel made Gabriel reflect on the fact that, in order for it to sound so realistic, it was likely something that whoever wrote the lyrics had experienced firsthand and then poured into the verses.

Once the band finished playing ‘Hellfire’, Isabel chose another song from the band’s originals to continue the rehearsals. “You’re such a show-off!” Debbie told her friend with a laugh as they kept playing. “You only picked this one because you have a solo in it!”
In response, Isabel walked up to her and stuck their tongue out before walking away towards Harry once again. Without the precious contribution of the bass, the sound of the music that The Outcasts were playing had a completely different feeling to it, but it was clear that the three friends were having the time of their life playing together.

. . .

After a while, someone knocked on the garage door with the same series of rhythmic knocks that Isabel had used. “This must be Crowley with my pizza!” Harry exclaimed, quickly getting up from his stool to go and open the shutter.
Lifting up bar after bar, the shutter began to reveal the shape of a rather tall and skinny young man, entirely dressed in black clothing, from a pair of black studded boots, to ripped-up jeans adorned with chains, and all the way up to a leather jacket and a set of bracelets around his wrists. Behind his shoulders, the young man carried a musical instrument case very similar to Isabel’s. Delighted by the sight of his much desired food, Harry took the box of pizza from his friend’s hands without even realizing that, as soon as the shutter had lifted high enough for him to see who was inside the garage, the other had frozen in place - completely motionless, to the point of not even lowering his arms after the box was removed from his hands.
‘This isn’t possible!’ Gabriel thought, remaining speechless.
Every aspect of the young man in front of him was new and different, from his flaming red hair worn short on one side and chin-length on the other, to the style of his clothes, up to the color on his cheeks - far more healthier than what he remembered it to be the last time the two of them had seen each other six years prior. But the bone structure and the nose were still there, and even though Crowley’s amber eyes were hidden by the dark lenses of the sunglasses he was wearing, Gabriel would have recognized that face anywhere.

“You!” Gabriel exclaimed, his eyes wide in surprise, taking a few steps towards him. “What are you doing here?”
“You guys already know each other?” Isabel asked, their brow furrowing in confusion.
“Of course we do!” Gabriel answered, his gaze locked on Crowley. “He’s my brother!”
“Crowley is what, now?” Isabel exclaimed, their gaze shifting from Gabriel to a now clearly uncomfortable Crowley. “You’re telling me that, all this time, you’ve always had a brother?” They asked him. “And when were you thinking of telling me?”
“Raphael! I can’t believe it, it’s really you!” Gabriel spoke, so entranced by the vision of the ghost standing in front of him that he could barely hear Isabel’s words. Goodness gracious, that’s why the singer’s voice sounded so familiar to him! “Wha- what are you doing here? Do you study here as well?”
“Raphael?” Debbie repeated in confusion, drawing everyone’s attention to her. “No, his… name is Anthony. Are you sure you’re not mistaking Crowley for someone else?” Debbie asked Gabriel.
Isabel turned back towards Crowley, somehow even more mad at him than what they had been up to that point. “Wait a second! You even lied about your own name, then!” They exclaimed. “Is there a single thing that’s true among everything you’ve told me since we’ve known each other?”

Adding to Isabel’s angered accusations, then, an increasing amount of questions began to arise from Gabriel, and from Harry and Debbie too, until Crowley, feeling cornered by his friends, decided that the best way out of the situation was to simply turn around and leave the garage.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going? Crowley!” Isabel shouted after him, but the other didn’t turn back. So, the young guitarist hastily unbuckled the strap and set down their instrument, hurrying after their friend.
Being left alone in the garage, Harry, Gabriel and Debbie exchanged very perplexed glances, each of them looking for answers that the others didn’t have either.
“Hey, guys. Is everything okay?” A different voice spoke, catching everyone’s attention. A boy with a head of curly blond hair was standing on the doorway that connected the garage to the rest of the house. “I heard shouts and I came to check if…” Ezra’s words trailed out upon noticing that two of the band’s members were missing from the room, and that in their place there was Gabriel.
“Hey, Ez.” Debbie was the first to speak. “Say, did you know that your boyfriend apparently has a secret double life with an entirely different name?”

Chapter 10: Raphael is dead and buried

Notes:

[From this chapter on, the story’s rating changes to ‘T’. Crowley’s past - which I already mentioned in the whole fic’s summary - is only the first of a few more delicate topics that the story will feature.]

“This is the story of another wasted life,
of a sad son who just ran away from home.
He grew up too fast
after a burned childhood.”
(Translated from ‘Autodistruttivo’ - La Sad)

‘Have you heard anything from him yet?’ This was the content of Gabriel’s latest message in their chat.
‘No. Still nothing.’ Isabel replied, adding an eyeroll emoji. ‘And he’s not answering Deb or Harry’s texts either.’
After one more failed attempt to call their friend, Isabel sat down on their bed, huffing out in annoyance as they glanced at the growing number of unanswered calls written in brackets next to Crowley’s name in the call log. Crowley had been keeping his radio silence for days on end now, even forcing the band to cancel that week’s wednesday night at the pub, and Isabel was starting to get impatient. ‘You’re just like your brother, you know?’ They texted Crowley, who had also disabled read receipts from all of his texting and social apps. ‘Instead of facing your responsibilities and expressing your feelings properly, the only thing you guys are capable of is to vanish into thin air!’
Isabel got up again, dropping their phone on the bed, to pace back and forth across their bedroom. What on earth was behind Crowley’s refusal to come forth to them or to any of his friends to explain his truth? What could have possibly led him to go as far as to change his name - or at least, to introduce himself to his friends with a false one? Were they eventually going to discover that their first real friend was wanted by the police for murder or something like that?

Struck by an idea, Isabel stopped their walking in circles; even if there was no way for them to get answers from Crowley himself, there was someone else they could turn to.
Picking their cellphone up again, Isabel sent a new text, this time to the younger De Angelis brother. ‘Tell me, Gabe: why did you and Crowley stop talking to each other, exactly?’
In Gabriel’s side of the chat, three suspension dots started floating up and down, continuing their dance for quite a while as the boy wrote and likely edited his reply. Isabel waited, absentmindedly running their index finger up and down along the edge of the uneven patch of skin that extended from the bridge of their nose down their cheek. When the three dots finally produced a message, Isabel immediately read what Gabriel wrote.

Not long after that, two other notifications appeared on the screen of Isabel’s phone, this time signaling new messages from Crowley, who was finally breaking the silence to rectify Isabel’s first message - since, according to him, he and his younger brother had absolutely nothing in common - and then, in a second message, to invite them to meet him that evening with the aim of finally telling them the whole truth, and to answer any question they might have had.

- - - - -

Upon arriving in front of the building where Crowley’s apartment was located, Isabel found their friend sitting on the steps in front of the building’s entrance. Crowley looked up at them without saying a word, merely nodding his head to the side to invite them to sit next to him. When Isabel did so, Crowley took something out of the inside pocket of his jacket and placed it in his friend’s hand.
“What’s this?” The other asked, turning the small object in their hands to better observe it in the scarce light provided by the street lamps in the night. It was a bronze coin - or maybe a medal, given its larger dimensions - that bore the number ‘4’ engraved in its surface, surrounded by a motivational quote about how it’s never too late in life to start over again.
“It’s a ‘sobriety coin’. It’s meant both to celebrate and to remind me of how long I’ve been staying clean for.” Crowley explained.
“You were a drug addict?” Isabel asked, nodding slowly.
Crowley studied them for a moment, his brows furrowed. “You don’t seem surprised to hear that.”
“Your brother had mentioned something about it.” Isabel replied. In response, their friend rolled his eyes. “But… he also said that he has no idea why you started to take drugs.” Isabel went on cautiously after a couple moments.
Crowley huffed out a breath. “Of course he doesn’t. The perfect child was too busy pleasing mommy and daddy to notice what was happening around him!” The young man spit out bitterly.
“Tell me, what happened?” Isabel asked, reaching out to gently place a hand on their friend’s arm.

“My parents never understood me.” Crowley began to explain after a sigh. “They’re the kind of people that prioritize appearances above everything else. The kind of parents who, if you don’t get the highest grade in a test, are only capable of asking you why you didn’t do as good as your peers. They expected me to become the perfect son they always wanted; traditionally masculine, a boy who would never dare to do things like wearing girls’ clothes or painting his nails with markers at school. A son who would graduate with top grades from high school, then would go to college, and that would then become a squared lawyer like his father is. They wanted their son to be straight, tidy, full of friends… the kind of son who would never cause a scandal that could ruin the family’s reputation in front of neighbors and friends. All things I was never able to give them.”
Because of all the things he couldn’t be, young Raphael began to accumulate pent-up pressures pretty early on in his life; first when he started falling behind in math in elementary school... Then when, instead of picking up football or any other ‘traditionally masculine’ hobby, he became passionate about gardening... Then, between the end of middle school and his first year of high-school, Raphael came to understand that he didn’t fully feel like a boy, and with that knowledge also came the devastating feeling of realizing that the only thing he could ever do to be more of a girl was to grow his hair longer - something that, of course, had sparked yet another fight with his parents. “You can understand it better than anyone else, Bel, what it feels like to be trapped in a body you’re not comfortable in while everyone around you only keeps reminding you of the cage you’re in, telling you you’ll never be able to get out of it.” Crowley said to his friend.
Isabel nodded, saddened by those words. It was not the first time that Crowley told them about the conservative and transphobic family he had to grow up in, and unfortunately, their life hadn’t been exempt from that sort of issue either.

“As I kept thinking about it, I realized that what I truly needed was to get out, to look for people outside of my family who would actually allow me to be myself.” Crowley went on. “I started sneaking out more and more often to hang out with some friends I knew from school. They offered me a way to take my mind off of things for a while; magical substances that could alleviate all of my problems and frustrations.” But it didn’t take long for those occasional escapes to degenerate into a full-blown addiction that began to take an increasing toll on his health, until the fateful day in which his younger brother, who was only twelve years old at the time, found him lying unconscious on the floor of his bedroom.
The mental image of a preteen Gabriel knelt down next to his brother, probably panicking at the thought he might have been dead, was like a punch in the guts for Isabel. It was far too close to the memories they had of the worst stages of their father’s disease, in the last months before he came to pass. Poor Gabriel… It must have been such a traumatic experience for him.
Isabel pulled their jacket tighter around their body; all of a sudden, that windy mid February evening was starting to feel even colder. Lost in their thoughts, Isabel barely heard the part of the story in which, when Crowley was rushed to the hospital, the doctors luckily managed to save him from that almost fatal overdose.

“As soon as I was discharged from the hospital, my family locked me into a rehab clinic and threw the key away.” Crowley went on, proceeding along the tale of his troubled journey. “They didn’t even bother to show up once for a visit…” That sense of abandonment had ended up having a major impact on his sobriety, Crowley then explained; his first relapse, a few months after first setting foot inside the clinic, was the direct consequence of the negative feelings caused by his family’s behavior towards him. “One day I looked out of my room’s window and I saw him, you know? Gabriel. He was standing just outside of the property’s gate.” Crowley told his friend. “I couldn’t believe my eyes; maybe my family did care about me, after all! But you know what Gabriel did? He stood there thinking about it for a while, and then he turned away and left. It must have been too shameful for the perfect son to be seen walking in a rehab clinic to visit someone!”
“I’m really sorry you felt so lonely…” Isabel replied. “But from what I could see, whenever Gabriel talked about you, he seemed genuinely sad that his relationship with you had to end like this.”
Crowley shook his head firmly. “Gabriel is no different from the rest of the family. My parents didn’t even have to brainwash him, since he was cut from their same cloth!”

Then, the young man proceeded to share with his friend some details and tales about his life in the rehab center, and about his companions in misfortune - people of all ages and ethnicities, each with their own inner monsters that had led them to end up there in that clinic.
Among those foreign, sometimes diffident faces, there was a middle-aged man named Anthony. It was Anthony who first approached him, sitting next to him and asking him what had led him to fall down the addiction rabbit hole at such a young age. As the months passed and the unlikely pair of friends shared more and more to each other about their respective lives, Anthony, an unemployed science teacher whose drinking habits had cost him his job, passed on to young Raphael his passion for the cosmos, teaching him how to recognize various different constellations. In hindsight, Crowley was quite sure that Anthony had made up his fair share of the shapes he showed him - the young man said to his friend Isabel, smiling at the memories. But that man was still undeniably a good soul who was passionate about his job, and the only person at the rehab clinic to try and show him some human warmth outside of the nurses.
Once he completed the rehabilitation program, in order to help him reintegrate into society, the clinic’s staff directed him to his current employer, an open-minded old gardener who believed in the power of giving people second chances. Little by little, Crowley learned to find a new daily life, in the studio apartment he rented and surrounded by his beloved plants, and a state of mental and inner balance that had allowed him to remain clean in spite of the negative feelings he still occasionally got from his family’s abandonment. The name Raphael by then had begun to hold too much of a weight on him, becoming an anchor that reminded him of his unhealthy past, and so he reinvented himself as a brand new person, starting to introduce himself as Anthony as a homage to his friend.
Furthermore, now that he was far from the judgments of his family, Crowley was more free to focus on his gender identity - first by figuring out that what better represented his experience was the term ‘genderfluid’, and then allowing himself a more authentic expression of himself through his appearance and his clothes.

“I’m sorry I never told you anything.” Crowley apologized. “You’ve always been honest with me about your family’s problems and about all the things that happened to you, and I should have done the same.”
“When last saturday I heard Gabe call you Raphael, saying that you were his brother… It felt like a betrayal to me; you’d suddenly become a stranger I knew nothing of, instead of the first person I felt I could trust when I started to leave my house again after… well… you know.” Isabel admitted. “But now that I know what’s behind it, now that I know everything you’ve been through, I understand that I’ve been too hard on you. I know on my own skin what it means, wanting to leave the past behind to introduce yourself to the world as a brand new person, detached from everything you have suffered.” They went on, keeping their knees pulled close to their chest. After all, it took months before nineteen-year-old Isabel finally felt ready to speak about the dreadful events they had just faced with someone who wasn’t their therapist. “I should have given you your time.”
The two friends fell silent for a while, staring at the deserted road in front of them. Isabel huffed out a chuckle. “You and I sure have been through a lot, huh?” They wondered, turning their head to look up at Crowley.
A smile returned on the young man’s own lips. “There’s a reason we decided to call ourselves Outcasts.” He replied. Then, he reached out to put his arm around his friend’s shoulders in a half-hug that Isabel immediately returned, leaning against him.

Chapter 11: The devil who smiled like an angel

“Wear your memory like a stain,
can’t erase or numb the pain
here to stay with me forever.”
(‘Ghost of you’ - Selena Gomez)

Ever since the day he discovered that his brother was still alive and in good health - and that, apparently, the two of them were even living in the same city - all that Gabriel had been wishing for was just a chance to talk to him. But not knowing Raphael’s current address, nor a phone number or any other means he could contact him by, Gabriel could only keep himself updated through Isabel. When they finally managed to hear from their friend after more than a week of silence, however, Isabel told Gabriel that, at least for the time being, Crowley had no intention of waking up old ghosts.
Luckily, to distract himself from such a sad family situation, Gabriel could count on all of the studying he needed to do in view of the rest of the session’s exams, which for the most part was done with Micaela’s precious help. But there were also a few joint study sessions with Isabel, who, in the meantime, had come to discover that the Principles of Economics course - to which exam they had been miraculously admitted to by Professor Curtis in spite of their numerous absences - was quite more interesting than what they’d initially thought.
As February inched to a close, then, an unexpected invitation arrived from Isabel themselves: their mother wanted both of them to have dinner at her house on the evening of February 26th, to celebrate the overall positive outcome of the first exams of Isabel’s universitarian career. “I mean, I know it’s a stupid thing to celebrate, especially considering that I flunked one of them, but my mother cares about it, so…” They had added almost shyly after delivering their announcement. “… feel free to come to our place, if you want.”

And so, on that late February friday evening, the two friends rented their ride through a car-sharing network, and headed south towards Isabel’s hometown.

- - - - -

The impression Gabriel got of Mrs. Jessica Maxwell right from the moment she came to open the door was that she was not at all the heartless mother that Isabel made her out to be. Mrs. Maxwell had the same light blue eyes as her child, and a warm, kind smile that resembled very closely the ones Isabel wore ever so rarely in their most positive days.
Unlike her child, however, Jessica Maxwell had dark blonde hair, worn past shoulder length in a tidy hairstyle. As Gabriel very soon came to learn, in fact, Isabel had inherited their jet-black locks of hair from their late father Alan; a few of the framed family photos that adorned the walls of the house showed a child Isabel with their parents, always smiling from ear to ear to the camera.

After dinner, Isabel immediately stood up from the table and left the room, disappearing somewhere. Gabriel, unsure what to do especially given the way his friend had fled from their duties, offered to help Mrs. Maxwell tidy up.
“Thank you for your help,” Mrs. Maxwell thanked Gabriel after one last trip to the kitchen. “You seem to be a very good kid. I’m so happy that my Bel is finally dating someone with a good head on his shoulders!” The woman then said, smiling.
“Excuse me?” Gabriel asked, taken aback by those words.
“Well, I mean… The two of you seem to get along so well that I thought…” Mrs. Maxwell said, her voice growing more hesitant with each word.
“Oh! No, Bel and I are not dating!” Gabriel was quick to rectify, in embarrassment. “We’re just friends, I’m already dating someone else.”
“I see. Well, in any case, thank you for the help you gave them with school.” Mrs. Maxwell said with a smile, changing the subject to overcome that impasse. “Bel can be quite difficult to deal with, if they decide they don’t like something or someone. Thank you for sticking by their side and encouraging them to carry out your presentation. When they told me about the grade the two of you took for your work, I almost didn’t believe it!”
Gabriel nodded slowly. Yes, the presentation. He certainly couldn’t tell Mrs. Maxwell the truth - that his efforts to make sure Isabel would be well prepared were mostly coming from his own fear of getting a bad grade. So, instead, he chose to answer with: “Of course. Actually, it was nice working together.” Which was still a very truthful statement.

Isabel’s mother, who clearly had a lot on her mind but no one to vent their thoughts and worries to, proceeded to tell Gabriel about how, after her husband’s death, she had lost any control over her child.
It all started when, a few months after their father came to pass, eleven-year-old Isabel hesitantly confessed to their mother what they considered to be their important secret; the doubts they had begun to feel about their gender identity, and the consistent feeling of not being a girl. But Mrs. Maxwell, as a result of a more or less conscious fear of the changes that came with having a child who didn’t identify neither as a girl nor as a boy, wasn’t able to give Isabel the acceptance and support they needed, blaming their confusion on the grief they were still feeling for their father’s loss.
Feeling betrayed by the only parent figure they had left, Isabel had shut themselves off from their mother, keeping for themselves any details about all of the most important tweenage milestones they were conquering, from new friendships at school, to any fight or disagreement with their peers, and even to possible first crushes on boys. All that poor Jessica could do was to watch her child grow and change from the sidelines, as Isabel experimented with music genres, haircuts, and clothing styles in search of anything that would finally make them feel comfortable despite the dysphoria they felt towards their body.
The strained relationship between mother and child eventually began to heal, once Mrs. Maxwell began publicly referring to Isabel with the pronouns and nickname they had chosen, proving their intention to respect and love her child for everything they were and thus finally earning their forgiveness, but their lives didn’t get any easier. Influenced by the wrong companies they surrounded themselves with - a bunch of complicated older teenagers who felt constantly misunderstood and out of place like they did - Isabel started behaving like a hooligan, committing a series of infractions that on more than one occasion earned them a trip straight to the police station. And each time, Mrs. Maxwell had to rush over to apologize profusely for her child’s behaviour, pay whatever fine she had to, and drag Isabel back to their house.

To further aggravate such an already difficult situation, lastly, right when Isabel finally graduated from high school and was supposed to start focusing on what path to follow in their life, came the aggression.
“An aggression?” Gabriel repeated in surprise, stepping in for the first time in Mrs. Maxwell’s speech. “What- when did that happen? And… who?”
“It’s been two and a half years now. My poor child…” Mrs. Maxwell shook her head. “I thought Bel had already told you about it?” She then wondered. When the young man in front of her shook his head, confusion obvious in his eyes, the woman sighed.

. . .

Hearing footsteps coming from behind them, Isabel, who was sitting on one of the two plastic chairs in the little square of grass on the back of the house for a smoke, turned around to look at the boy who was approaching them. “Hey, about time!” Isabel greeted Gabriel, a smile forming on their lips. “Did my mother force you to wash all the dishes for her?” They joked.
But Gabriel didn’t say anything in reply. Instead, he kept staring at his friend in silence for several long moments, his gaze tracing once again the edges of those patches of damaged skin scattered on their face and neck.
“Is everything okay?” Isabel asked him, the cheerfulness in their eyes replaced by a more serious look.
“Your mother told me what happened.” Gabriel answered quietly. The young man took a slow step closer to the plastic chair next to Isabel’s, flopping down to sit in it.

Isabel rolled their eyes. Their mother always talked too much. After taking another drag, Isabel tossed their cigarette to the ground and put it out by crushing it under the thick sole of one of their boots. “What did she say, exactly?”
“She told me what was the cause of these.” Gabriel replied, reaching his hand out towards Isabel’s face with the intention of gently pushing back one of the locks of jet black hair that framed it, his gaze locked on the big patch of damaged skin that spread across their left cheek. But right when Gabriel’s fingertips were about to brush against his friend’s skin, Isabel hastily raised a hand to move his own away: “Stop right there!” They exclaimed, their ice blue eyes lighting up with a flame of something between anger and fear. “I don’t want anyone to touch my scars!”
That single word broke something between them, causing Gabriel to freeze with his hand still in mid air, and perhaps even stopping the flow time itself for a few moments. There it was. For the first time, one of them was using the right word to address those marks.
Gabriel slowly lowered his hand, his heart aching at the way Isabel was now acting like a wounded animal that hissed at whoever dared to approach it. “Who is the monster that did this to you?” The young man asked.

Isabel took a long moment before replying. Then: “His name is Lucio Torres,” they said.
“That Lucio Torres?” Gabriel echoed, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise at the mention of such a notorious last name. “The son of Mauricio Torres the drug trafficker?”
“Yes. Him.” Isabel replied, looking away at the fence on the opposite side of the little backyard. “Lucio and I were together for about a year. I had barely just turned eighteen when I met him. And before you even dare to think such a thing, he wasn’t just ‘a bad boy I picked just to get on my mother’s nerves’, as people have already disgustingly suggested in the past!” Isabel warned sternly. “No, I was truly in love with him, with all my soul. That’s why after barely a month of dating I had already packed my bags to go and live at his place.”
“You moved in with someone you only knew for a month?” Gabriel exclaimed in surprise, almost scandalized by his friend’s impulsivity.
“It felt like the best decision I’d ever taken, back then.” Isabel replied, raising their shoulders. “Lucio was five years older than me, and he seemed so mature, already living on his own while I couldn’t wait to leave my mother’s place. I was such a fool… But on the other hand, I’d never had a boyfriend before him. I’d never had someone who was interested in me. Someone who would make me feel pretty, and wanted, and important as he did.” Isabel went on, laughing at themselves with a sad smile. “When we’re kids, everyone keeps filling our heads with all that bullshit about eternal love leading to a ‘happily ever after’, and I was convinced I’d found mine with Lucio.”
In the beginning, in fact, everything was wonderful - each day the two lovers spent together was full of sweet words, and gifts, and gestures like writing each other’s names with markers on walls. Don’t all toxic relationships start with loving partners and rose-colored afternoons? - Isabel wondered to themselves. But as time went on, Lucio began to show his true colors, proving himself to be a jealous and possessive boyfriend who, in the last months of his and Isabel’s relationship, had come to demand to have the final say over every little thing his partner did. And when Isabel realized just how hot tempered and violent Lucio could really be in his worst days, they took the much suffered decision to leave him for good.

“One night, a few days after I broke up with Lucio and moved back to my house, I was walking home alone from a party. A girl I used to know had convinced me to go out; she insisted that a night out would have helped me to take my mind off the breakup.” Isabel went on with their tale. “At some point as I walked, I heard Lucio’s voice calling my name. I really didn’t feel like talking to him, but I still turned around towards him to see what he wanted... I barely had the time to see him, to see that it was him, and next thing I knew was the feeling of having been pushed face-first into the scorching flames of Hell.”
Isabel brought their legs closer to their chest, hugging their knees. “The rest is all blurry. I only know I woke up in a hospital room; my mother was sitting in a chair next to my bed, and there was also a guy I’d never seen before. He looked scared to death, but also relieved by the fact that I was awake.” They went on. “He told me that he was down that same street with some friends, and when he heard screaming he came running to see what was happening. He told me about how he guided me to his car and rushed me to the ER. I think it was only then that I fully realized that everything was still hurting; my face, my neck… the sensation was dulled by the medications, but the burning was still there. I got scared as I began to understand what might have happened. And then the doctor came in with his verdict.” Now Isabel finally looked back up at Gabriel, who had been listening with wide eyes the whole time, disconcerted by what he was being told. “Chemical burns.” They announced, a crack in their voice betraying tears that hadn’t yet reached their eyes. “Lucio threw fucking acid at me!”

For days and days, until the burns began to heal, Isabel could barely breathe. Anything else, from eating to talking and even to crying for everything they were going through, required the involvement of too many facial muscles that would end up pulling on their skin.
Once Isabel began to feel better physically, their mother pressed charge against Lucio Torres for the aggression. But the humiliation of having to leave the privacy of their home to testify in a courtroom full of people in a time when their skin still looked reasonably worse than it did now, along with the pain and anger Isabel felt upon seeing their ex-boyfriend once again from the defendant’s table, were all endured in vain; Lucio belonged to a powerful criminal family, and he was able to afford a far better lawyer than the one who represented mother and child Maxwell. “That asshole of a lawyer that the Torreses hired used my own testimony against me; if I was really in such a state of shock and confusion that I didn’t even recognize the guy who took me to the hospital, then how could I be sure that it was his client the person who attacked me?” Isabel said, mimicking the lawyer’s words in a spiteful tone.
Gabriel thought back to that night in his room, when the two of them had fought about lawyers; the anger that Isabel had always shown towards them was far more understandable now. “But I know what I saw, before everything happened!” His friend went on. “And I know that it couldn’t be anyone else but Lucio. He was the only one who could have had a motive to hurt me like that; ‘If I can't have you, nobody else will.’ This is what he told me the day I left him. And he personally made sure that not only would no other boy like me ever again, but that people would look at me in disgust and make fun of me for my appearance everywhere I’d go.”

And that was why, for the longest time after the aggression, all that Isabel wanted was to just disappear, so that no one could see their new face. But after so many months spent seeing her child holed up in their room all day playing their electric guitar and annoying the neighbors with their loud music, only growing sadder and angrier for the mean trick that life had played on them, Mrs. Maxwell decided to try and push Isabel into going back to school, hoping it would help Isabel find newfound faith in their future and perhaps some new friends too. Mother and child fought fiercely about that decision of hers, but Mrs. Maxwell stood her ground and gave Isabel an ultimatum; if they didn’t enroll in school, she would have kicked them out of the house. And since Isabel couldn’t find a job to support themselves, they had no other option but to surrender.
“At first, I hated her for it.” Isabel said. “But hadn’t it been for her, I would have never met Deb, nor… well…”
“Crowley?” Gabriel tried to guess.
“No, Crowley and I already knew each other before I started college.” Isabel shook their head with a smile. “We met in a music store, we were looking for vinyls of the same band. We spent the rest of the day together talking about the music we like, and then we went on texting all night. We had so many things in common, including the fact that neither of us is straight and cis. There was no way we wouldn’t become best friends!” Isabel’s smile grew fonder as they thought back to the good times they had spent with their friend. “But I wouldn’t have met you.” Isabel went on after a couple moments of silence, looking Gabriel deep into his eyes. “And I wouldn’t have had my band. The Outcasts are all that I have.”
But being able to keep their current lifestyle and hang out with their friends didn’t come free, Isabel then added; the bursary that was allowing them to study in their college required them to maintain a certain GPA, and if they were to lose that financial help, their mother wouldn’t have been able to afford to pay the full tuition fee. “Looks like I’ll have to start rolling my sleeves up, huh?” Isabel said to Gabriel, giving him a half-hearted smile.

The two friends sat there in uncomfortable, heavy silence for a while, both of them staring out into the distance.
Isabel stood up, inviting Gabriel to follow them. The two friends made their way back inside the house, and went upstairs to Isabel’s room - a slightly less claustrophobic but equally chaotic version of the room they had rented on campus. Gabriel stood in the middle of the room, watching his friend as they knelt down next to their bed and pulled out a shallow, rectangular cardboard box from underneath it.
When Isabel lifted the lid of the box, Gabriel found that it contained a few pieces of clothing; a choker necklace, a t-shirt, a pair of trousers and a leather jacket, all rigorously in shades of dark gray and black like the rest of his friend’s wardrobe. But there was a detail about that choker, placed on top of the rest of the outfit, that Gabriel couldn’t fail to notice, and that caused his heart to sink in the lowest spot of his chest; a good chunk of the fabric of the necklace, as well as some bits of the neckline of the t-shirt, were damaged. Corroded. “These are the clothes I was wearing that night.” Isabel said, picking up the t-shirt from the box. “Once the trial was over and they were no longer needed as evidence, I asked the police if I could have them back. They agreed.”
“Why do you still keep them after all this time?”
Isabel kept their gaze locked on the t-shirt for a couple moments. “To remind myself of how stupid I was.” They then said, folding the t-shirt and placing it tidily back in the box.

. . .

When Gabriel returned to his dorm room later that night, after a long drive back home that he and Isabel had spent entirely in silence staring at the dark road ahead of them while the radio kept playing rock music, he was still shaken. So shaken that, after seeing the missed call notifications from his parents, he didn’t even find it in himself to call them back, or to open the various unread messages he had gathered throughout the evening.
Even as he changed into his pajamas and got ready for the night, all the terrible things that he had discovered about his poor friend kept swirling around his brain like a hurricane. All of Mrs. Maxwell’s explanations, and all the things that Isabel themselves had told him since the first day he met them, suddenly pieced back together like a puzzle, each piece tinged with new meanings in light of everything he learned that evening; ‘next thing I knew was the feeling of having been pushed face-first into the scorching flames of Hell’.
Wait a moment. The flames of Hell!
Gabriel thought back to what Isabel had said about the song ‘Hellfire’ that day when he attended the band’s rehearsals; ‘One of our most inspired pieces, if I can say it myself.’ Of course! How had he not realized it sooner? - Gabriel wondered to himself, bringing a hand to his forehead.
Isabel was the author of their band’s songs, it couldn’t be otherwise; that anger that was poured into the lyrics of ‘Hellfire’... it was an emotion so realistic because it was their own! And perhaps, that also explained that weird look that Debbie gave her friend; she was asking them if the two of them had already talked about what - or rather, who - had really inspired the song!

‘The devil will have no mercy
when I’ll tell him your name.’

And eventually, while Gabriel was lying in bed under the blankets, way too agitated to fall asleep, one more wagon connected to his train of thoughts; a never forgotten exchange he had with Isabel at the beginning of the month.

“But what could possibly be so important as to sacrifice your soul to the devil in order to obtain it?”
“It’s none of your business. But there are some things that only creatures as powerful as them can do.”

‘You weren’t trying to summon a demon to ask him to help you break havoc.’ Gabriel realized in dismay, staring at the ceiling of his room with wide open eyes. ‘You wanted to summon a demon to get justice!’
At once, a flame of an anger he had never felt in his life spread through his chest. Well, he surely wasn’t a demon. But if Isabel was willing to sacrifice their soul to the devil to see Lucio Torres finally brought to justice, then he would have tried his absolute hardest to help them!

Notes:

When I was in high school, I saw one of those 'overnight friendships' happen right in front of me. Just like Bel and Crowley's, such a beautiful bond blossomed between two queer kids - in that case, a bi girl and a gay boy.
Also, a very special shoutout to one specific 'Elementary' episode, that was very likely what decided poor Bel's backstory back when I had just started to plan this fic back in 2021.

Chapter 12: Freddy

“Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word,
and love dares you to care for
the people on the edge of the night.”
(‘Under Pressure’ - Queen)

The phone rang once. Then twice.
‘Come on, pick up. Pick up, pick up, pick up…’ Gabriel, already fully dressed to go out, thought as he waited, tapping his right foot up and down on the floor.
Another ring. Then: “Hello?” Isabel’s voice, audibly groggy from sleepiness, finally came from the other end of the call.
“Bel!” Gabriel exclaimed, happy to hear his friend’s voice. “You’re awake!”
“I am now…” The other grumbled. A few seconds of silence followed, in which Isabel probably turned towards the alarm clock on their nightstand to check the time, and then came a whine. “Why did you wake me up so early?” Isabel complained. “It’s barely eight-thirty a.m! Saturday and sunday are the only days in which I can sleep in. And last night we were up late, too!”
“I’m sorry to drag you out of your bed, but I’m sure you’ll have a chance to sleep more some other day.” Gabriel apologized. “Now go get dressed; we’ve got a bus and then a train to catch! We’ll meet at the eastern gate in… half an hour? ”
“A train? Where to go?”
“I’m taking you to meet my parents!” Gabriel exclaimed enthusiastically. “Oh! Right, I almost forgot! When choosing what to wear, please try to avoid things like spiked jewelry, and any symbol associated with demons - yes, I’m talking about that hoodie of yours that has a face of a goat surrounded by flames. And if possible, try to pick a pair of jeans that aren’t ripped up.”
“Excuse me?” Isabel exclaimed in reply to such outrageous words. “I thought you were all right, and instead you’re just like any other man out there, treating other genders as if they’re-”
“Bel, listen.” Gabriel interrupted them, before the anger in their voice could turn into a full blown eruption. “Telling people how they should dress is not something I’ve ever done to anyone, and I wouldn’t have done it now if I didn’t believe it to be of vital importance. I’m going to talk to my father about your case, and he will be more likely to help you if he takes a liking to you. And to take a liking to someone, well… my parents want things to be done their way.”
Isabel fell silent for a long moment. Then: “It’s still a dick move. See you at the gate.”

- - - - -

“Do your folks really get all dressed up just to stay home?” Isabel whispered to Gabriel as the two of them followed Mrs. Francesca down the corridor, referring to the freshly-ironed coordinated pastel blazer and trousers that the woman was wearing - completed by a pair of pearl earrings, discreet makeup and a perfectly combed head of short, curly brown hair.
“My father works from home today, so he’ll have clients coming over to his office.” Gabriel explained, amused by the fascination in his friend’s eyes as they took a good look around his house. But the style of the furniture and of the items that adorned it was quite different from their house’s, Gabriel had to admit. “And my mother is actually about to go out; she has a scheduled brunch with her company’s marketing director.”
Isabel made a wide, slow nod in reply.

Inside Matthew’s office, Isabel stood silently beside Gabriel the entire time as he spoke to his father, only intervening occasionally to provide more precise details about the accusations that their lawyer presented against Lucio Torres and about the trial.
Isabel couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable in the austere atmosphere of the room; the large bookcase filled to the brim with tomes and the big, heavy-looking wooden desk positioned in front of it well matched the appearance and role of the room’s occupant. Mr. De Angelis, whose graying hair and small eyes made him look even older than he probably was, sat in his leather chair, listening to Isabel’s case with a neutral, focused look on his face.
Matthew’s blue irises lingered on Isabel, as the man took his time to study their expressions and their stance like the good lawyer he was, but probably also scanning their overall appearance and their clothes, from the plain dark gray t-shirt with a black long-sleeved turtleneck underneath it, all the way down to their thick-soled shoes.
“I am disappointed and saddened by the things you’ve come to tell me today, my son.” Matthew finally spoke, standing up from his chair. Then, giving Gabriel a reproachful look, he went on: “Tell me: what’s the purpose of the courses that your mother and I are paying for? Are they really teaching you nothing? A person cannot be tried again for the same crime after being acquitted for it. It’s something even I have been teaching you all this time.”
All the enthusiasm and the confidence with which Gabriel had entered the room abandoned him at once. “I know, but-”
“Then you already know there is nothing I can do to help your friend.”

. . .

“Hey.” Isabel said to Gabriel, shifting in their seat on the bus to move closer to him and give him a light nudge. “I can hear the cogs in your brain whirring all the way from here. What’s on your mind?” They asked him, attempting to lighten the mood with a friendly smile.
“All the things you told me yesterday… It’s a lot to take in. I was barely able to sleep at all, last night.” Gabriel admitted. After giving up on trying to sleep, in fact, he eventually stopped rolling around and left the warmth of his blankets to sit at his desk. With his room illuminated only by the cold light emitted by the screen of his laptop, Gabriel searched online for everything he could find about the Torres trial. This provided him with a photo of Lucio’s likeness, in which the young man posed with a cocky smirk on his face next to his parents, all three of them dressed to the nines for some kind of event, and other details about what Isabel’s health conditions used to be back then.
“I could tell by the vaguely manic energy you had in your voice when you called me this morning.” Isabel chuckled. “After a sleepless night, one either passes out or gets that voice.”
Gabriel sighed. “My dad is a lawyer for criminal cases. My mom always keeps herself updated on the news. My brother and I didn’t grow up oblivious to the rest of the world around us, either: we always watched the news too, and our dad would often tell us about the cases he was working on.” The boy explained. “But I’ve never felt any of those stories as real and close to me as I did last night when you showed me that box with your old clothes. I’m talking about your story in general, not strictly about the… well, I mean…”
“The acid?” Isabel finished for him. “You can say that, it’s not a bad word!”
“I know, it’s just that…” Gabriel pressed his lips together as he looked for the right words. “… it’s something so severe to talk about. It’s almost… painful to say.”
Isabel held his gaze for a moment. “Well, don’t expect me to lie and tell you that it wasn’t. But I believe we shouldn't dance around heavy topics just because they're hard to talk about.”

Silence fell between them. The bus came to a stop, and a couple women stepped out of the vehicle, but neither Gabriel nor Isabel really paid any mind to them. “Go on,” Isabel spoke again to prod their friend, nodding their head. “Shoot your questions. I know you must have more than some.”
“That bump on your lip. Is that also due to…?” Gabriel asked, referring to the spot where one of the patches touched Isabel’s upper lip.
“You’re just not going to say that, huh?” The other wondered, shaking their head. “But anyway… The answer is: technically yes, but it was more of an adverse reaction I had to something in the medications that the doctors gave me. The human body can be such a weird, unpredictable thing, right?”
The second question that came to Gabriel’s mind, albeit unrelated to the first, was: “Why don’t you sing the songs you write for The Outcasts?”
“Knowing how to write music doesn’t automatically make you a singer.” Isabel answered with a shrug. “I got my nose fucked up, which means I got my breathing fucked up, and breathing correctly is at the very base of singing. But even if nothing had happened, Crowley has a much better voice than I do. He’s even taking singing classes to improve!”

“That’s it?” Isabel asked, when Gabriel fell once again silent.
The other shrugged. “This is all I can think about right now.”
“Wow, I should go and thank Jasmine once again for the amazing job she did, then!” Isabel said, a hint of an amused smile forming on their lips.
“Who’s Jasmine?”
“The esthetician who fixed my missing eyebrow.” Isabel explained, amused by the confusion in Gabriel’s eyes.
“Your what, now?” The young man exclaimed.
Isabel brought a hand up to their forehead, lifting their bangs so that their friend could have a better look at the patch of uneven skin that was partially hidden by their hair. A patch that, now that Gabriel was paying attention to it, covered a good half of their right eyebrow, before stopping just below it.
Oh.
“May I…?” Gabriel asked hesitantly. After being granted permission, the boy reached his hand out to his friend’s forehead, brushing his thumb across their eyebrow to find out that the central part of it was completely flat, painted onto their skin with incredible realism.
“It was pretty tough at first,” Isabel told him. “I looked for ways to hide it, but everyone I spoke to said that I had to wait at least a year; any cosmetic procedure would have required a complete healing of the tissues.” Isabel explained. “Luckily for me, at least, many people all over the world choose to wear their eyebrows shaved on purpose, especially in the kinds of alternative music subcultures I’m in. So I bit the bullet, and shaved what remained of that eyebrow and the other one as well. I’ve never been good at makeup, and doing my eyebrows every time I had to go out - not that it happened that often, but still - was a real hassle. But as soon as the year of waiting was up, I got this semi-permanent treatment that can last for months.”

As soon as Isabel stopped talking, the robotic voice of the bus’ speaker announced the name of the upcoming stop. Gabriel and Isabel exchanged a surprised look; distracted by their conversation, they had missed their stop - by at least a couple of stops, too, judging by how the bus was now almost completely empty.
Isabel fixed their bangs back into place. Then, followed in tail by Gabriel, they hurried to pick up their backpack to get ready to get off the bus.
As they walked side by side back to their campus, the two friends remained silent for a long time. “Earth to Gabriel!” Isabel called jokingly. “You’re getting lost in your thoughts again!”
“You got me!” Gabriel replied, cracking an unconvinced smile. “It’s just… We hear of so many cases of possessive men who become aggressive towards their partners, just like you told me that Lucio was with you. So many devastating stories ending in tragedy. It made me think of just how lucky you were to get out in time before things degenerated even further, and how strong you were for speaking up and suing Lucio afterward…” Then, after a moment of silence: “When last night you told me you wanted to disappear, it really hit me. I was afraid that you had tried to…”
Once again, Gabriel’s words trailed out, but it wasn’t too hard for Isabel to understand where their friend was going. “If I had tried to off myself?” They guessed. “No.” Then, stopping in their tracks, they rolled up the sleeves of their jacket and of the shirt underneath it, holding their arms out towards their friend. “Look for yourself.” They told him. “I trust you, I trust you!” Gabriel quickly replied, holding his hands up in surrender.
But Isabel insisted for him to look, and so Gabriel lowered his gaze towards his friend’s arms, briefly observing their pale but perfectly smooth skin.
“I was lucky enough to have my guitar and my music with me all throughout the healing process.” Isabel said. “Whenever I felt angry or sad, I immediately went and turned it into new songs.”
Truth be told, they then added, in addition to their music, there were online therapy sessions to learn how to control the destructive impulses they occasionally gave into: “In the last two years I’ve destroyed a good amount of stuff.” Isabel told Gabriel. “All the photos of me and Lucio, every item that he gave me or that reminded me of him… and each page of the sheets I wrote to vent my feelings, too; I crumpled them up, or tore them into a thousand pieces.” But there had also been a couple of instances in which they took their anger out on larger objects around their house, like the day they first saw the new, permanent appearance of their face in the mirror without the bandages and the medications; their reflection made them so angry that they grabbed the first object that came to hand, and threw it at the mirror, sending it into splinters.

“I’ve been angry, furious, every day of my life ever since that night. That’s true. But never at myself. And yes, I have actually thought about doing something extreme, but not the kind of extreme you’re thinking about.” Isabel said. Then, after a sigh, they continued: “When Lucio was declared not guilty, I thought about killing him with my own hands. I fantasized about how to do it in at least four different ways. But then I realized that I was scared at the mere thought of having to see him again in person, let alone actually getting close to him enough to kill him only to then have his father’s henchmen on my tail.”
“And so you resorted to the Lord of the Flies to have him do it for you.” Gabriel concluded.
Isabel nodded. “I mean, I would be fine with any demon in general, without necessarily bothering the top dogs of Hell, but… yes.” They replied with a shrug.
“There has to be something I can do to help you…!” Gabriel said quietly, with a defeated look on his face.
“You already did a lot.” Isabel reassured him. “You believed my word, when two years ago twelve people weren’t even willing to believe the evidence that was brought to them, and I really appreciate what you tried to do with your father today. I really do. It’s a lot more than what everyone else has done for me.” Isabel smiled up to their friend, and the two of them held each other’s gaze for a few moments.

. . .

‘Take a nap when you get to your room, okay?’ Isabel had instructed when they were about to part ways, with a smile that turned their words into a sort of gentle remark, rather than an actual order. ‘I’m not worth losing a night’s sleep for!’
And Gabriel did follow his friend’s advice, eventually. But not before having thought one more time through what his parents said that morning; hearing from his father that there was nothing they could do felt like a slap to his face. How could he and Isabel just expect him to sit there and accept such a verdict?
There had to be a way to finally frame Lucio Torres and give him what he deserved! He certainly didn’t need to check his Law school textbooks to know that, even if he was the son of a notorious criminal, Lucio’s infamous last name alone wasn’t enough of a reason for the police to start an investigation on him. But what if he and Isabel were to find out something about him that could incriminate him, like any kind of crime that Lucio could be currently involved in?

It was only then that Gabriel was reminded of that business card that Sharon had handed him that day at the cafeteria. Sharon had meant for that card to be a way for him to tell her who the mysterious Outcasts were. Of course, that was something Gabriel had never even considered to do, since he would never betray Isabel or their friends. But maybe Sharon and her partner Freddy could still have their chance at getting a scoop.
After hitting ‘send’ on his email for Sharon, Gabriel finally closed his eyes to try and take a break from all of the thoughts that were still swirling around his head.

- - - - -

In order to make room for himself to sit down, Freddy moved the black plastic tag that read ‘editor-in-chief’ to the corner of one of the three desks of the room where Sharon had instructed for the four of them to meet, the designated editorial office for the campus’ blog. The boy’s light-colored irises, framed by a pair of thin, dark-framed glasses, locked on Gabriel as the other began to speak.
In a way, Freddy Farlaine was both the polar opposite and the complementary half of his partner, who was sitting in her chair behind the desk right to his left. While the two friends shared a similar clothing taste, in fact, in contrast to the bright red shades of Sharon’s dress and hair streaks, Freddy was dressed entirely in neutral shades of gray and green; from a hoodie in which the two opposing black and white halves were divided diagonally by a wide sage green stripe adorned by a print of a geometric deer, down to a pair of dark gray jeans and sneakers. Even the puffy cloud of wavy hair on his head, dyed gray but with dark roots that revealed his natural color, was in tune with the rest of his outfit.
The only thing that clashed with such a curated look was a braided bracelet that the young man was wearing on his right wrist, made with threads of various shades of orange, yellow and blue separated by a thin white layer in the middle.

Immersed in the tranquility of that unusually warm first afternoon of March, Freddy and Sharon listened intently to the incredible story that Gabriel and Isabel had come to tell. Such an emotional tale, however, ended with a very surprising request: that Freddy and Sharon would help Gabriel and his poor friend investigate Lucio Torres in search of any possible illicit thing he might have been doing.
“And what would we gain from it?” Sharon asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Ronnie…” Freddy turned towards her, trying to make her reason.
“No, Freddy.” The other halted him sternly. “I’m well aware of what kind of reputation the Torres family holds, and what you two are asking us is very dangerous. We are neither professional detectives nor police officers, and I have no intention of risking - or to have Freddy risking - to get into serious trouble with those criminals just to help out two complete strangers.”
“We know that we’re asking you a lot, and of course, we always intended to give you a reward for your help.” Gabriel said. “You will have the money you might ask for.” Truth be told, he had no idea whether his parents would have accepted to pay or not, but right then and there Gabriel frankly did not care; if they weren’t going to help him that way either, then he would have personally found a way to pay Sharon and Freddy.
“No.” Isabel stepped in. “It’s not money that they’re looking for.” Then, their attention turned to Sharon. “I know what you guys want; you’re already reporters at heart, you’re looking for breaking news, and for truths to reveal. Isn’t that so? I have a scoop to offer you, if you agree to help us: an interview for your blog with the members of The Outcasts. Masks off.”
“But, Bel…!” Gabriel tried to object, surprised by what his friend had just offered, but Isabel invited him to silence with a firm glance. It was only then, as his friend went on talking about how they personally knew The Outcasts and how it wouldn’t have been a problem for them to convince them, that a seed of doubt began to spread its root inside Gabriel’s mind; Isabel was willing to put their most precious secret on the plate for a plan that might have ended up producing no new information at all.
Freddy turned to Sharon, who was pondering the offer with her head tilted to one side. “What do you say, Ronnie?”

Sharon tilted her head the other way, taking a few moments to reply as she finished weighing the pros and cons with her chin pushed forward. “I request two videos; one with The Outcasts, and one with you alone.” The girl spoke, pointing to Isabel. The other seemed to hesitate, but then dipped their head in a firm nod.
Then, after a couple moments, Sharon nodded in turn. Gabriel breathed a sigh of relief, and turned to Isabel to give them a hopeful smile. Freddy was smiling too, happy to see that his friend had decided to support their plan.
Freddy stood up from his desk. “So…” The young man spoke, clapping his hands together once. “What’s the plan, guys?”

Chapter 13: Busy hallways, busy lives

“Ring, ring goes the bell.
The cook in the lunchroom is ready to sell.
You’re lucky if you can find a seat,
you’re fortunate if you have time to eat.”
(‘School days’ - Chuck Berry)

Dressed up in a leather jacket, ripped jeans and with a pair of contact lenses to replace his glasses, Freddy was ready to start his investigation; after receiving from Isabel a list of what they knew were the hangout spots of Lucio’s circle of friends, Freddy was going to infiltrate the group in order to get as much information as possible from them about their leader.
For the rest of the team, on the other hand, the wait began.

The first days of March were hectic to say the least; the weather kept alternating between pleasant sunny skies and cold rainy days that students across all campus wished they could have spent warm and dry in the cozyness of their dorm rooms. But of course, with the new semester’s classes rolling in, everyone had their places to be.
Ever since his friend Isabel had mentioned how important it was for them to maintain a decent GPA for their scholarship, Gabriel had become determined to help them stay on track. First and foremost with math, which exam Isabel would have had to take again in the remedial session later that year, but also in general with their new courses. “You’re not my mother, so stop acting like you were!” Isabel whined, pushing him away overdramatically when he offered to help them, since math was a subject he had always been good at. “Besides, I already have someone to help me with that,” Isabel went on: “Deb will take care of it, in due time.”
“Oh. Of course.” Gabriel let out, taken aback. “ By the way, I don’t think I know what course she’s taking? I know your major, and I know Harry’s, but Deborah never told me hers.”
“Deb is studying Computer Engineering. She’s the smartest person I know; not only she’s very good at math, but at science subjects as well!” Isabel explained in reply. “Even if she’s still a freshman, she already helps a lot of students pass their exams, here at school, you know?”
“Wow!” Gabriel exclaimed, genuinely impressed. “Looks like you’re all set, then!”

Throughout their meetings and their joint study sessions, Isabel continued to show great interest in the contents of the courses Gabriel was taking, and often asked him very specific questions that he still didn’t know the answer to, and to which they would find an explanation together in the chapters of Gabriel’s textbooks.
And if Gabriel was already left surprised by his friend’s interest in the dynamics behind the legal system when they clearly didn’t think highly of its officers, now that he knew the full story behind it he couldn’t help but be even more amazed. When he voiced his incredulity to Isabel, they shrugged. In some ways, they said, they couldn’t explain it either; everyone around them had assumed that, after the aggression, they wouldn’t have wanted to even hear about certain topics anymore. But instead, as a reaction to the trauma, Isabel had started to want to know more; they had started looking online for testimonies of other victims like them, and listening to podcasts about criminal cases of all kinds, solved or not.
Their interest in the legal system had become almost a kind of mission: having failed to obtain justice themselves, Isabel had been trying their hardest to figure out how lawyers like the one that worked for the Torres family were able to screw over poor people like them and their mother so easily; what kind of technical means attorneys had in their favor, such as those trial consulting tactics that were sometimes shown in tv shows, and what the lawyer who represented them could have done better.
“You should be studying Law too,” Gabriel told his friend, unable to stop himself from wondering if he would have ever had towards his degree the same amount of dedication that Isabel was putting into their personal research. “You would easily get top grades in every exam.”
But Isabel laughed, saying that becoming a heartless shark was not something they saw for their future. “No one ever talked about becoming a shark.” Gabriel replied. “No lawyer is forced to represent criminals if they don’t want to; you could choose to spend your entire career representing only the victims or their relatives. I’m sure that anyone in the courtroom would only need one look at you to know that your clients are innocent.” The boy concluded with a smile.
Isabel seemed to consider the idea, their lips curving up in a hint of a smile as they pictured themselves in the lawyer’s shoes. But then, after a mere few moments, the glisten in their eyes faded, and they shook their head once more, saying that they didn’t really see themselves living that kind of lifestyle.

Sometimes, as they sat there side by side, Isabel would lean against Gabriel’s side and rest their head on his shoulder.
The first time it happened, that simple physical contact caused a strange warmth in Gabriel’s chest. Not knowing how else to describe it, the boy compared it to fear. Not because he was afraid of Isabel; long gone were the days where he was intimidated by their ice-cold glares. No, if anything, that kind of fear was the uncertainty of when something unexpected happens for the first time, and you don’t know how to react: none of his classmates in middle or high school - all people who, when talking to relatives and family friends, Gabriel had always referred to as ‘his friends’ - had ever involved him in physical demonstrations of affection, as much as it pained him to admit. Anything that had been happening since the start of that academic year, from Alphonse’s enthusiastic shoulder pats to the playful shoves that Isabel occasionally gave him, was new and foreign to him.
Gabriel shifted position, turning his head to look at his friend, but Isabel, whose gaze was still focused on the book in front of them, didn’t move. And so, Gabriel, memorizing the new information that, apparently, friends sometimes lean on each other’s shoulders, turned his attention back to the printed pages of the book.

- - - - -

One day, then, there was that strange encounter at the student lounge room: having spotted them from a distance, Ezra Fell walked swiftly over to the table where he and Micaela were sitting. “Oh, thank goodness I found you!” The blonde boy spoke to Gabriel with a look of deep relief on his face. Several other students around them, annoyed by the volume of Ezra’s voice, turned to look at him. One girl put a finger in front of her mouth to invite him to silence, shooting the boy a glare. Embarrassed, Ezra raised his hands in apology, and then asked Gabriel if the two of them could have a private word. Under Micaela’s perplexed gaze, Gabriel stood up, following Ezra outside in the hallway.
“Thank goodness I found you!” Ezra repeated, once he was finally free to talk. “I’ve been looking for you ever since that day at the rehearsals. I just wanted to say… Debbie wasn’t being for real that day: Crowley is not actually ‘my boyfriend’, like she said he is. It was- it was just a joke, and I never had a chance to rectify it. I mean, yes, Crowley is my friend, but…” Ezra stammered, fidgeting with his hands in obvious embarrassment. “Nothing more. I’m not gay. Not that I have anything against gay people, of course, I…” The boy took a breath in. “I should shut up, yeah.”
“Okay…?” Was all that Gabriel could think of replying, confused by the other’s rapid-fire words. What was Ezra even talking about? Having only met him once, Gabriel was barely able to recognize the other boy’s face, let alone remembering what Debbie had said about him almost a whole month prior.

“Who was that guy?” Micaela asked Gabriel when he returned to their table.
“Oh, it’s just a friend of Bel’s.”
“What did he want from you?”
“Nothing important.” Gabriel replied with a shrug. “Apparently, he really wanted me to know he’s not gay.” Then, a new thought came to his mind, making his brow furrow in puzzlement: he had never actually given any weight to Debbie’s words that afternoon, but now that he did, picturing his brother with Ezra like the girl had suggested couldn’t help but feel strange to him.
Micaela raised a questioning eyebrow. “What a weirdo…” She commented, with a shrug. But despite the lower voice volume she had been maintaining, someone from a nearby table still invited her to silence.
So, Gabriel and Micaela picked up their things, walking over to a more secluded corner of the room where they would have been able to talk about all the things that the two of them still had to take care of: they were in the middle of an election campaign, after all, and there was no time to waste. The former president of Micaela’s club, in fact, a sophomore student who was considered by all to be a very diligent young man, had to suspend his studies mid-year due to serious family problems, and left their campus to move back to his hometown. For the rest of the members of the club, that meant that the poor guy’s prestigious role of president was now vacant, and Micaela had promptly enrolled herself as a candidate for the title. Competing against her for the role, alongside a third candidate, was her friend Ursula Myers.
“I feel sorry for you and Ursula…” Gabriel had commented, the day Micaela came to tell him. “It must be awful, having to compete against your own friends.”
“There is nothing to worry about, my dear!” Micaela had reassured him, waving the issue away with a wave of her hand. “Me and Ursula are both Poli-Sci students; we’ve known right from the start that one day we’ll end up becoming political competitors in life! This election will be only a first test for our friendship, but I’m sure Ursula won’t get mad when I win.”

- - - - -

Around mid-March, finally, Sharon called Gabriel for a first update meeting.
Upon entering the school’s editorial office, Isabel and Gabriel were very surprised to find a Freddy with a visible bruise on his left cheek and an angry-looking Sharon. But what could have initially been mistaken as the result of a bad fight between the two friends, turned out to have a quite more complex explanation behind it: “I always knew that this plan was foolish and dangerous! And now look at what happened to Freddy because of you guys!” Sharon nearly shouted against her guests, pointing to her colleague.
Freddy told Gabriel and Isabel about how he managed to get close to one of Lucio’s friends - introducing himself as a penniless student who needed to scrape together some money to continue paying for his studies, who had heard from a friend of a friend that maybe he could have helped him. The guy was distrustful at first, eyeing Freddy up and down, but he eventually agreed to let him talk to his friends.
But since Freddy was the new guy in the gang, the other members had been delegating on him everything that they didn’t feel like doing; his most recent task had been to go alongside another guy to give ‘a nudge’ to some poor young man who was behind on his drug payments. But having never been in a fight before, Freddy had ended up getting hit rather than hitting. “Well, at least now we have definitive proof that I wasn’t cut for being a gangster…” Freddy shook his head tiredly.

As for possible useful findings about Lucio, unfortunately, the boy so far had very little: “The only thing I know for sure is that he always seems angry. I was told that it’s because his father refuses to give him a bigger role in the family business, for now. Since he can’t work with the big shots, he can only play boss with us and it frustrates him.” Freddy said. “But aside from that, I don’t have much. There’s no way to connect him to his father’s activities - by the way, did you guys know that even though Mauricio’s public version is that he’s been a lawful citizen since he got out of prison from that drug trafficking conviction, in reality he’s still fully into business covered by his front activity? But as I was saying… Since Lucio technically doesn’t work for his father, there’s no way to prove he’s connected to any of his activities, and as for what we handle and sell locally, he has the rest of us do everything, never getting personally involved.”
Isabel looked up at Gabriel, discouraged from hearing that there were no new developments. “Hey, we’ve barely just started!” Freddy quickly reassured them, walking closer to them to place a hand on their shoulder. “I’m sure something will come out, eventually! I’ll keep you guys updated, okay?”

Chapter 14: Bel likes a boy

“Why am I so angry in the first place?
Why am I hurting?
ما تفوقي شوية [wake up a bit],
she’s not your girlfriend!”
(‘She likes a boy’ - Nxdia)

Debbie’s duffel bag landed with a thud on the small couch in Crowley’s living room.
“How much stuff did you bring?” Isabel asked amusedly, eyeing the bag with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, you know how it goes.” Debbie replied. “Just the essentials for a sleepover that’s worthy of that name!” She announced excitedly. Then, unzipping the bag open, the girl showed her friends its contents; in addition to her personal belongings - such as her pajamas, slippers, a towel and a travel pouch - there were a couple small party games boxes and what Debbie referred to as her ‘art supplies’; a few bottles of nail polish in different colors, nail polish remover to fix any potential mistakes, but also some temporary hair dye that she wanted to try out during the night. “You could try some of it too, Crow!” Debbie said to her friend. “I don’t think you two can, though, since your hair is too dark for the dye to stick to.” She went on, this time to Gabriel and Isabel.
“No one is going to try anything.” Isabel replied sternly. “You can’t dye your hair. We have another gig next week, remember? If people at the pub see that The Outcasts’ drummer has a different hair color, and then the next day they see you in class with the exact same change, it will take them two seconds to connect you to our band!”
“Chill down, Bel! There’s nothing to worry about!” Debbie countered, rolling her eyes at that objection. “I specifically got these ones because it’s the kind of dye that washes out with one shower.” She explained, taking one of the bottles from her bag and handing it to Isabel, who immediately took to reading the label. “And even if it won’t, I wouldn’t be dying my whole head - it’d be just the tips, which I could easily hide under the rest of my hair in a bun!” Then, reaching again into her bag, Debbie pulled out one of the party games. “What do you say, guys? Shall we start with a few rounds of ‘Cards Against Humanity’?”

The four friends gathered around the small table, and Crowley began to set up the game.
Before that night, Gabriel had barely only heard of ‘Cards Against Humanity’ from his high school peers, and judging by the way everyone talked about it, he had concluded that it must have been a really fun game. Yet, that evening it didn’t take him long to realize how wrong that conclusion of his, being based on the assumption that his classmates liked the same kind of humor as his, really was. Right from the first round, in fact, he was met by a plethora of more or less explicit sexual innuendos, or gross toilet humor-based jokes, or even cards that made fun of real people. All things that he always thought it wasn’t appropriate to joke about. But there he was, now, sitting at that table with those white cards in his hands. He might have as well tried to make the most of the experience.
As Gabriel soon came to understand, in order to score good points in the game, it was very important to know the type of humor of the person that, round after round, judged the cards they were presented with. And since he still knew very little about Crowley and Debbie, Gabriel was in a position of disadvantage. But he knew Isabel, that was certain, and the rounds in which his friend served as the judge were the only points that the young man managed to collect; “It took me a while, but I finally figured you out, Belz!” Gabriel exclaimed with a smug grin as he picked back up the white card that Isabel was pushing toward him, to then place it on top of the other two cards that marked his points.
Eventually, round after round, Gabriel slowly began to familiarize with the cards, but also with the preferences of his new friends.

The next time one of the four friends picked up their phone, the group came to find out that an hour had already flown by. “Too bad Harry didn’t join us!” Isabel said, scrolling through the photos they took of some of the funniest card combinations that came out during the game. “This is one of his favorite games!”
“It’s his loss. He’s the one who decided to ditch us to hang out with Liam.” Debbie huffed. “Wait. Should we send him a selfie to show him what he’s missing out on?” The girl then suggested, with a mischievous grin.
“Who’s Liam?” Gabriel interjected.
“A classmate of Harry’s from Chemistry.” Isabel explained, turning their phone towards Gabriel to show him a photo of Harry next to a dark-skinned boy. “They’re the same kind of weirdo, it’s no wonder they became such good friends. Take the kinds of pets they have at home, for example: Harry has a frog, and Liam owns a chameleon.”
“I see.” Gabriel nodded.
“Liam is throwing a big party at his house tonight, but we’re not really that close with him and his circle of friends, so we didn’t go.” Isabel went on with their explanation. “Knowing them, I bet everyone in that house is already high or wasted drunk, or even both, by now… While we, on the other hand, don’t even have a single drop of something to drink!” They then said, turning towards Crowley.
The other raised his eyebrows. “Ah, well! Sorry if, having already had issues with drugs, I don’t want to have other temptations at hand around my house!” Crowley replied sarcastically. That comment was enough to chill the atmosphere of the room noticeably. Gabriel turned to glance at his brother, but he barely returned his gaze.
“Well…” Isabel spoke after a couple interminable moments. “Me and Deb are going out to get something to eat.”
“We are?” Debbie asked, her eyebrows raising in surprise.
“We are.” Isabel repeated, standing up. “We’ll be back in a bit. In the meantime, you guys feel free to talk things out. I’m sure you have more than a few things to sort through.” They went on, giving Crowley a pat on his shoulder. “Oh, and we’re also getting some beers. You’re more than free not to ever touch alcohol if you don’t want to, Crow. But I am still free to drink.”

. . .

“I think it’s time for you and I to have a serious talk.” Debbie said to Isabel as they walked.
“Sure, what do you want to talk about?” The other replied distractedly, as they scrolled down their phone.
“It’s Gabriel.”
“What about him?” Isabel asked, their attention now fully focused on their friend.
“Okay, first of all, what’s up with that weird nickname he called you earlier?”
Isabel huffed out a smile. “Oh, nothing. It’s just a dumb joke he made once and then decided to stick with. He said ‘you already want people to call you Bel, but you also have this weird interest in the occult,’ so he decided to add that extra z and call me Belz like…”
“Like Beelzebub the demon?” Debbie finished for them.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Debbie let the joke play out one more time inside her mind, but it still came off as unfunny. “That Gabriel is such a weird guy!” The girl commented, shaking her head.
Isabel’s amused smile softened. “He is.” They replied, looking briefly down at the ground.
That fondness in her friend’s voice and gaze sent an unpleasant ache through Debbie’s chest. The girl sighed. “I don’t know how I should feel…” She confessed, wrapping her arms around her body. “On one hand, I was afraid this day would never come, that we were going to stay in this weird limbo forever. But on the other hand, it’s only been a few months, and I’m not ready to let you go…”
“What the Hell are you talking about?” Isabel asked her, turning towards her with their brow furrowed in confusion.
Debbie’s aquamarine irises darkened.

It had indeed been way too few months, since the day the two of them casually bumped into each other - they had marked six months just five days prior, to be exact, not that Debbie was actually keeping track of their time spent together or anything.
She liked to think it was fate, what decided that she and Isabel had to be there in the same line at the same campus cafe in that early September afternoon, merely a week into the start of classes; Debbie was always destined to find herself right behind that dark-haired stranger, and to have enough time to read the writings on each one of the pins on their backpack. It was thanks to some lucky star if, when she read the words ‘Fuck the patriarchy’ written on one of the pins, Debbie felt the urge to reach out and tap on the stranger’s shoulders to get them to turn around and comment about that one ideology they had in common, because when the stranger turned around, Debbie was met by the most beautiful set of blue eyes that she had ever seen, framed by the marks of a skin condition that she wasn’t familiar with.
It was fate that, as they got to know each other better, Isabel confessed that they had been feeling as much of a misfit as what Debbie had always been throughout her life, and it was fate that Isabel was a guitarist who was thinking of starting a band, and that Debbie played drums.
To sum it up, it was a series of lucky coincidences that led the two of them to bond in the blink of an eye. ‘Right people at the right time’, the kind of incredible story that old married couples told their grandkids while holding hands; ‘When I met your grandmother, I instantly knew she was the one’.

Except that Debbie knew that, as much as she wanted it, Isabel was very likely not going to be the one for her. Because when a girl looks at a girl - or at a nonbinary fellow who was assigned female at birth, in Isabel’s specific case - and thinks she might be the one, chances are that the other will never be into girls. It was the main, if not the only, downside of being a lesbian. But there was only one way to find out whether Isabel could reciprocate her feelings. And so, one day as the two of them were lying all snuggled up on the single bed in Debbie’s dorm room flipping through some magazines - because, of course, in order to make things even harder fate had also wanted Isabel to be the type of person that got very physical with those they felt close to - Debbie took a deep breath and prepared to shoot her shot: “Bel.”
“Mh?”
“I have something important to tell you. It's something you may not want to hear, but you have to promise you won’t run away, okay?”
Isabel moved their head back to look her in her eyes, and the proximity of their faces made Debbie’s heart skip a beat once again. “What did you do? If you killed someone, I can tell you a couple good spots to hide the body. I won’t tell the cops, I promise!” They joked.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Debbie attempted a smile. “Do you remember when I told you I like girls?” She then asked. “Well, I… I've been having a crush on you for a while.”
It took a few seconds for Isabel to fully process Debbie’s words. But once they did, they sat up on the bed, moving out and away from their friend’s arms.
Just as Debbie expected and feared, Isabel only liked boys.

“I’m not blind.” Debbie said to Isabel, her arms still wrapped around her body. “I can see the way you act around Gabriel. The way you look at him, how you talk about him when he’s not around like you just did now…” She went on explaining. “And I know both of us have been waiting for the day we’ll find new people to move on with, so that things will stop being weird between us, but… Now it’s happening so fast, and it took me off guard.”
“No, I…” Isabel shook their head, their blue eyes wide open in surprise at their friend’s words. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Bel. It’s okay. Look, just pretend that I said nothing, alright?” Debbie said. “Aside from the fact that, at only eighteen, he’s already a master of dad jokes, Gabriel seems like a good guy to me. I don’t want to talk you out of a crush just because-”
“No, you don’t get it!” Isabel interrupted her. “I never said anything about both of us having to find other people! I don’t want to have a crush - not on Gabriel, nor on anyone else!” They said, their words beginning to come out faster as they grew agitated. “I won’t fall in love! Not again, not after Lucio!”
The mention of that name made the two friends fall silent. Of course, Debbie knew. Isabel had told her about that monster of an ex that they had to deal with. And now, such a difficult topic weighed once again on their heads, leaving Debbie unsure of what to say.
The sound of Isabel’s phone ringtone filled the tense air. Debbie waited in silence as Isabel listened to what the caller had to say, only to then swiftly reply that they would have been back as soon as possible. “It’s Gabriel,” Isabel told her after hanging up the call. “He’s asking if we can hurry back because he’s too uncomfortable being alone with Crowley since he refuses to talk with him. Can you believe that?”

- - - - -

About half an hour later, Isabel and Debbie were back at the apartment with a plastic bag full of beer cans, and a large paper bag containing take-out Chinese food.
Upon seeing his friends, Gabriel immediately breathed a sigh of relief. “Luckily you guys are back!” He exclaimed. “I tried to start some kind of conversation with Crowley, I really did. I asked him about how he’s doing, about his current job… but he always sounded annoyed. He shut down everything I tried to say in the least possible amount of words!” Gabriel explained, agitated. “I even tried to show interest in his houseplants, but he categorically refused to let me even get close to them!”
“I’ll see what I can do to help you guys ease up on each other,” Isabel sighed tiredly. “But right now we should eat these before they get cold.” They then said, motioning to the paper bag in their hand.

With their stomachs full of sushi and other tasty Chinese dishes, the four friends challenged each other to a ‘Mario Kart’ tournament on the old second-hand console connected to the television in Crowley’s living room.
Just like ‘Cards Against Humanity’, that videogame marked another brand new experience for Gabriel, who struggled quite a bit to learn the buttons and the game shortcuts that his friends used. For a brief moment during the tournament, as he slowly started to climb up a few positions, the young man began to feel he had some hope of improving. But right when things finally seemed to be going for the better, a fateful banana peel thrown by Debbie made him lose control of his character, sending him straight back to twelfth place.
Thanks to her ruthless approach to the game, Debbie became the undiscussed queen of the tournament. Immediately after her came Isabel, who, despite having shown a good mastery of the game tactics, didn’t stand a chance against their friend’s competitive nature. And lastly, in third and fourth place respectively, came Crowley and Gabriel due to their inexperience with the game.

Following the next point on the sleepover’s agenda, Isabel and Debbie sat down once again at the table, this time to dedicate themselves to their manicures - the first of them applying black nail polish, and the latter a silver shade. “Do you need some too?” Isabel asked Crowley, holding up the bottle of black polish towards him.
Crowley glanced briefly at his hand. “No, thanks. I did my nails the other day, and it’s still holding up fine.”
“I have a feeling I already know the answer to this question, but…” Isabel turned to Gabriel. “Do you want some?”
Gabriel studied the little bottle that Isabel was offering him, unsure of how to reply to such a simple question. Never in his life had he ever liked seeing boys wearing makeup or nail polish; just like the rest of his family, he had always thought it was of bad taste. But then he saw the way Debbie was wiping the polish off one of her nails, with the intention of applying it again more evenly, and an unprecedented thought made its way into his mind: if it really was something so easy to remove, then maybe no one would have ever found out about that little subversive act of his. So: “Alright,” the young man replied before even fully realizing it.
“What color?” Debbie asked.
“Oh, uhm… do you happen to have purple?” The other asked in reply. “It’s- it’s my favorite color.”
“Mhhh… no, sorry. I don’t like to wear purple, so I don’t have that color.” Debbie answered.
“Then I guess I’ll go with… black.” Gabriel said, pressing his lips together. When Debbie handed him the bottle of nail polish, the young man hesitantly opened the unfamiliar object.
“No, not like that!” Isabel exclaimed with an amused chuckle, when Gabriel rested a still too fully loaded brush on his nail. “You’re not supposed to have it leak on your skin too! There, let me help you!” Isabel moved their chair closer to Gabriel’s until the two of them were sitting almost shoulder to shoulder. Then, with the kind of confident brushstroke of someone who performed that type of gesture habitually, they painted an even layer of polish on Gabriel’s index nail.
The contact between their hands made Isabel’s gaze move up their friend’s face. Gabriel, who had been attentively following their movements, turned to look at them in turn: “Is everything okay?” He asked them.
Isabel shook their head, so lightly that it was almost imperceptible. “Yeah. Of course!” They replied, with a hint of a smile on their lips. Then, they looked away, devolving their attention back to the nail polish matter. But as brief as it was, that single moment still lasted long enough for Debbie to notice. And distracted as they were by their activities, neither Gabriel nor Isabel noticed the sad look in her eyes as the girl lowered her gaze back towards her own hands.

. . .

When it was time to sleep, Debbie and Isabel unrolled their sleeping bags on the living room floor. “Is there something wrong?” Isabel asked him, noticing the way Gabriel was standing there looking unsure.
“I, well… I didn’t bring a sleeping bag. I’ve never been camping, nor have I ever had any reason to spend the night away from home, so I’ve never had one.” The other confessed in embarrassment.
“I guess you’ll have to share Crowley’s bed, then.” Isabel suggested.
“Oh no.” Crowley quickly replied, shaking his head. “No, no, no, no. No one will be sharing my bed. Especially not him. Hell, he can sleep on the couch for what I care!”
“Do you really want to have your own little brother sleeping all crooked up on the couch with a mere blanket to cover him in this cold?” Isabel asked, marveling at Crowley’s hypothesis.
“He’s the one that forgot to bring a sleeping bag. So he has to face the consequences for it.” The other retorted.
“Listen. The two of you have been avoiding each other for a whole month now. I think it’s time you start acting like the adults you are and bury the hatchet at least for one night!” Isabel insisted firmly. “Otherwise, if you’re going to be so petty, then two can play this game.” They then declared, with their hands on their hips and a frown on their face. “The sleeping bag I brought with me is mine, and I won’t accept having anyone who isn’t me sleeping inside of it!”
“Same with mine.” Debbie backed her friend up.
“And I believe you don’t want to give up your own bed in order to leave it to Gabriel, hence being forced to take the couch yourself. Do you?” Isabel concluded.
Crowley’s gaze shifted from them to Debbie, and then to his brother. The young man took a deep sigh, his shoulders dropping forward in defeat.

And so, leaving Debbie and Isabel in the living room, Gabriel followed Crowley to his bedroom. “I didn’t know you had a tattoo.” The boy said, pointing to the inked snake that crawled up his brother’s bicep, peeking out from underneath the dark short-sleeved shirt he had changed into for the night.
“Yeah, I got it two years ago.” Crowley answered dryly. “Save any objections you may have to it, because they would be useless.”
“No, I… It’s-” Gabriel stammered, hurt by yet another verbal attack. “It looks cool. I mean it.”
For a brief moment, Crowley seemed to be taken aback by that compliment. “Yeah, right…” He then muttered to himself, as he laid down on his bed. Gabriel hesitantly approached the bed, lying down just as cautiously on the mattress next to his older brother.

No matter how hard he tried, Gabriel couldn’t shake away that oppressive feeling that was clutching his chest; and to think that, as children, he and Raphael were inseparable friends!
Why on Earth had they let their relationship reduce to a tense and hostile silence?
Gabriel had spent the past six years of his life fantasizing about the possible day he would have met his brother again, and all of the different questions he would have asked him on that occasion. But as the two of them laid there with their backs to one another, those six years worth of questions were all at once overshadowed by the single, most important thing Gabriel really wanted his brother to know: “Raphael… Crowley?” He finally spoke, breaking the silence. The boy shifted position, making to turn towards his brother, but the other quickly moved further away from him to make up for those few additional inches of space that Gabriel had taken up. Disheartened by that reaction, Gabriel resumed his original position. “I missed you.” The young man confessed quietly, but once again, he was only met by silence.

Notes:

About Debbie's feelings for Isabel: while I never shipped Fileflies enough to actually make my own fanworks of it, I still cherish fondly some of the fanarts that were made of them. Especially one specific minicomic made by @Thecozycryptid on instagram,which you can find here.
As a little homage to their human AU, I decided to include in my story the dynamic of the unfortunate, unrequited sapphic love that they seemed to be going for with that little comic (especially considering that they said their story would have been about IB), since they were the one artist that got the closest to make me ship it as well.
(Oh, and there's also the ‘Dagon loves to thrash people at Mario Kart’ detail from the AU's character bios.)

Chapter 15: Gabriel on the wildside

“If I sound lazy, just ignore my tone
cause I’m always gonna answer
when you call my phone
like: what’s up, danger?”
(‘What’s up danger’ - Blackway, Black Caviar)

Gabriel tapped his right foot up and down nervously on the classroom’s beat up linoleum floor; there was something odd that morning at school, he could feel it in the air all around him. But for the life of him, he couldn’t seem to figure out what it was.
The young man turned his head to his right just in time to notice the girl sitting next to him swiftly glancing away, whispering something to her friend on the other seat. She had been staring at him, Gabriel realized, exactly like another student in the row of chairs behind him had done earlier. The young man frowned in confusion. Was there something about him he wasn’t aware of? Was he wearing his jumper backwards, maybe? Did someone prank him by taping some kind of humorous sticky note to his clothes?
When the professor entered the room, the students’ chattering quickly died out as everyone prepared their laptops and notebooks for the start of the lecture. Following the example of his classmates, Gabriel turned on his own device. But as soon as he looked down at his hands on the keyboard, the young man realized in horror that his fingernails were still painted black. With everything that had happened the night before, he had ended up forgetting to remove the nail polish! And now there he was, surrounded by the inquisitive gazes of his classmates, out in broad daylight for everyone to see the results of such a terrible decision of his.
That must have been what the girls sitting next to him were whispering about.
‘Damn it,’ Gabriel thought. He had to find a way to remove that nail polish, and he had to do it as soon as possible.

. . .

“I’m sorry, honey, Bel is not here.” Azzy told Gabriel when she came to open the door. “They’re still busy with their morning lectures.”
The young man’s posture deflated. And to think that he had just crossed half campus to get there, keeping his hands shoved in his pockets the whole time for fear of being seen by even more people.
“Tell me, why were you looking for them? Maybe it’s something I can help you with.” Azzy offered, noticing the evident disappointment on his face. Without saying a word, Gabriel lifted his hands up for Azzy to see. “Wow, nice manicure!” The girl commented with a smile, apparently unable to realize the entity of the catastrophe she was being shown. “It’s the first time I see you with polish. I have to say, I think it suits you!”
“No it doesn’t.” Gabriel replied. “And I need to get it removed as soon as possible, but I don’t own anything to do it!”

Azzy motioned for him to follow her inside the house, leading him upstairs. “Weird… It should have been here…” The girl said, staring at an empty spot inside the bathroom cabinet that was small enough to fit a bottle. Then, remembering that she had taken the acetone to her room earlier that morning with the intention of using it, Azzy invited Gabriel to follow her once again, this time towards her room.
“Forgive the mess, but with all the stuff I have yet to do for my courses, I’m barely even finding the time to eat!” The girl apologized as she headed straight for her desk, which was currently submerged in a scattered mess of pieces of paper, fabric scraps and spools of colorful threads. Glancing around, Gabriel had the chance to see that the entire room was in an equally chaotic state: Azzy’s bed was covered by large paper patterns for what appeared to be the parts of a dress, each sheet pinned to a layer of electric blue fabric underneath it, and there were empty take-away food packages resting on the floor next to the nightstand.
“This was such a dumb idea…” Gabriel grumbled to himself as Azzy fumbled around. “I should never have agreed to trying on this stupid nail polish!”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself; we are supposed to be experimenting, darling!” The other said, turning towards him with a small bottle of clear liquid in her hand. “Otherwise, how would we ever know what is or isn’t for us?”
“I… get that, to some extent.” Gabriel replied. “When it comes to things like sports or music, then sure. I mean, Bel has been trying to introduce me to alternative music, and to Hitchcock movies. There is no harm in that. But when it comes to these kinds of things… I don’t want people to think that I’m gay, or that I’ll suddenly start dressing like a woman, just for the sake of an ‘experiment’!”
Azzy remained speechless for a long moment. “Darling, no, that’s not how things work! Those are only assumptions that people have been trying to make us believe, but clothing and colors have nothing to do with anyone’s gender identity; wearing nail polish, or bags, or even skirts once wouldn’t make you any less of a man - just like wearing a suit and a tie doesn’t take away from a girl’s womanhood! The same thing goes with sexuality: how can people out there really believe that, say, liking a certain color has anything to do with liking men over women?” The girl wondered, rolling her eyes. “If you really want to find yourself, you have to go out there and experiment as much as you want. You don’t like the result? You won’t do that again. You do like the result, but you’re afraid people won’t like you for who you truly are? It would only be their loss.”

Azzy took a couple moments to give Gabriel the time to process her words. Then, devolving her attention back to the one item that had first given the two of them the chance to meet, she handed him the bottle of nail polish remover and a few cotton pads. But right when Gabriel was about to grab them, Azzy drew her hand back. “The only one who can decide if you’re supposed to keep nail polish on is you.” The girl told him, kindly but firmly at the same time. “You and no one else. Got it?”
When Gabriel nodded his head in reply, Azzy’s lips curved once again up in her usual friendly smile. “Good,” the girl said, handing him the much-desired bottle of nail polish remover.

. . .

“What is that?” Those were the first words that Micaela said to him when he joined her at the cafeteria. “Are those… nail polish smudges, there on your nails?” She continued, her voice rising in surprise.
“Shhh! Keep your voice down! Do you want the entire cafeteria to hear you?” Gabriel whispered, glancing around to make sure no one had actually paid attention to her words. The boy sighed. “I thought I had gotten rid of this damned thing…” He grumbled to himself, glancing at his fingers; despite his efforts to take the black tint off, in fact, some areas around his nails, as well as some small spots on the nails themselves, were left stained, and were now testifying against the crime he had tried to hide.
“Since when do you wear nail polish?” Micaela inquired. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve been a pansy all along or something?”
“What? No!” Gabriel exclaimed. “When I was with Bel and their friends last night, they asked me if I wanted to try too. They were all wearing it, and I just… said yes. I don’t know why I did, but that’s it. It was only a spur of the moment kind of thing.”
“Oh, so if they had told you to jump off a cliff you would have done that as a ‘spur of the moment’ too?” Micaela objected, crossing her arms over her chest.
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Don’t act like you were my mother. You know I wouldn’t have.” He replied. “Look, just forget about it, okay? It was a one time thing, and I’ve already removed it. See?”
Micaela hummed, still unconvinced by his explanation. “I’ll take your word for it. But you’d better not wear that again,” she said. “I don’t like effeminate boys.”

- - - - -

Ten days after the first update, on the third sunday of March Freddy Farlaine called once again Gabriel and his friend, asking them to join him and Sharon in a cafe downtown.
When Gabriel arrived, Isabel was already standing at the crossroad where the two of them had planned to meet, talking animatedly on the phone; Gabriel saw them put a hand to their forehead, and shake their head worriedly as they spoke. After a few moments, however, Isabel’s expression changed; now they were talking to their caller with a more determined look on their face, although they were still visibly agitated. By then, Gabriel had gotten close enough to his friend to actually hear bits of what they were saying: “... and if I won’t act on it for long enough, then it will go away, eventually. Right?” But as soon as Isabel noticed Gabriel’s presence, they turned to look at him wide-eyed like a deer caught in a car’s headlights, and quickly hung up the phone.
“Is there something wrong?” Gabriel asked them.
“No.” Isabel answered almost too quickly. “Absolutely not, why would you think that?”
“You seemed pretty worried, on the phone.”
“Everything’s fine, really.” Isabel walked past Gabriel to prevent him from asking them any more questions.
“Are you sure?” Gabriel insisted, hurriedly walking after them to catch up. Isabel was shorter than him, but they could be really fast if they wanted to. “Because if there’s something wrong, you know you can tell me-”
“You don’t have to know every single thing that happens in my life, you know?” Isabel cut him off. “Now stop interrogating me like you were the police.”
Gabriel was at a loss of words. It had been such a long time since Isabel had last treated him so coldly. Hadn’t the two of them reached a point where they could rely on each other for advice, or for support in case of hardships? Then why was Isabel suddenly shutting him out so harshly?

. . .

“So, Freddy, how are things going?” Gabriel asked the other young man after a handshake, sitting down in front of him at their table. “I thought Sharon would have been joining us as well?” He then wondered, glancing at the empty chair next to Freddy.
“She eventually told me she didn’t feel like coming.” The other replied, crossing his arms over his chest as his gaze followed Gabriel’s towards Sharon’s vacant seat. “You see, Ronnie… She really doesn’t like what we’re doing. She’s worried about me, even though I keep telling her there is no reason for her to be. I mean, I think I’m handling it great: other than the fact that the boys keep calling me ‘Bambi,’ they’ve been warming up to me.”
“Bambi?” Gabriel echoed in confusion.
“Yeah, well, I made the mistake of wearing my deer hoodie in front of them once, and since I’m the youngest and the least muscular of the group, they decided to give me this new nickname.” Freddy explained. “But now, back to us. I apologize for not mentioning it last time, but it didn’t seem like a big deal to me back then. Lucio has a new partner, a girl named Eve. Sometimes he brings her along to hang out with us guys.” Freddy told his guests. “Well, Eve has always had something off about her, ever since I first saw her. She’s a beautiful girl, don’t get me wrong, but she’s always so reserved; she rarely ever talks, always sitting in silence next to her boyfriend, and more than once she gave me the impression of being a sad girl overall.”
Isabel took a deep breath, visibly upset by such news. “And you think it could be due to how Lucio is treating her when they’re at home?” They concluded for him.
“That’s just an hypothesis of mine. I mean, she could as well be going through a difficult time for unrelated reasons I know nothing about…” Freddy answered. “... but I found it strange that, when I tried to have some small talk with her - you know, at least to introduce myself - her lovely boyfriend immediately stepped in to warn me that I should stay away from her.”
When Gabriel saw Isabel nod slowly, he couldn’t help but wonder if they too used to be ordered to keep quiet and not speak to any of their ex-boyfriend’s friends. The mere thought of it ignited a new flame of anger in his chest against Lucio Torres.
“Try and find out anything you can about this Eve,” Isabel said to Freddy. “If she’s suffering because of their relationship - and I’m almost sure she is - I have to try and save her from that asshole’s claws!”
Freddy nodded somberly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

- - - - -

When the results of the elections came in, Micaela was elated to find out that the majorities of the votes were hers.
After Ursula briefly congratulated her on her victory, Micaela spent the rest of her first day as president celebrating with her friends and her boyfriend all the wonderful opportunities that her new position would have opened for her, but without forgetting the duties that being in charge was going to entail; before leaving for his hometown, their former president had briefly talked to the rest of the group about the tight schedule of events he was planning to organize for the upcoming semester, and even though it seemed a good schedule overall, Micaela had to admit that she didn’t exactly agree with a couple of the points. But now that she was the one in charge, suggesting a few alternative guidelines to her fellow members surely wouldn't have been an issue.
But before getting down to the nitty-gritty of the organization of the various activities, there were plenty of other things to be taken care of; first and foremost, the club needed some new advertising. By then, it had already been a good while since the club’s social media channels had published any new posts with the aim of attracting other students to their initiatives. And so, with the aid of the club’s designated graphic designer, Micaela shaped a new poster that would have been spread both online and on paper. The new fliers featured the club’s name and their main objectives for the school year, along with a catchy slogan and a portrait where the new president smiled confidently at the readers.
Followed in tail by Gabriel, then, Micaela proceeded to personally spread them around campus. “I don’t understand. You could have had anyone else from your group do this for you.” Gabriel tried to object, handing her another flier from the stack in his hands. “Wouldn’t have it been easier if, say, each of you only had to hang a few?”
“It would have.” Micaela admitted, pressing a pin into the corkboard. “But I’ve just barely been elected, I can’t already have people to do stuff for me. There will be time for that, but right now I have to take things upon me for a while.” She explained.
Then, the girl took a step back, admiring her work; the color scheme of her flier looked so much more clean and pleasant than the one on the eyesore of a poster she’d just covered. The school had already seen plenty of advertising from those four weirdos with their ugly demon masks; having a few less wouldn’t have hurt anyone.

The next morning, as the two of them walked past one of the notice boards on their way to classes, Gabriel and Micaela found that new posters of The Outcasts had been put up in a different spot of the board, and that a small note that read ‘Freedom of speech says that we can all coexist on this board, Micaela!’ had been taped on the girl’s flier.
“Is there something wrong?” Gabriel asked his girlfriend when he saw her angrily tear the little note to pieces.
“What’s wrong is that they’re not allowed to hang those!” Micaela replied, turning sharply towards him. “They can’t come and preach to me about freedom of speech, if I got the permission from the rector to hang my fliers and they didn’t!”

- - - - -

As it turned out, it wouldn’t have been the last time Gabriel would have had to do with the school’s notice boards. Merely a few days after he helped Micaela with her advertising campaign, in fact, the ringtone of his cellphone awakened Gabriel from his sleep in the middle of the night. The young man rubbed his eyes, reaching for his phone on the nightstand. Gabriel was surprised to say the least to see the name and the time written on the screen: if Isabel was calling him at two in the morning, something serious must have happened, he worried, quickly sliding on the green icon to answer the call.
“Sorry for the late hour, but there is something important I’d need your help with.” Isabel spoke from the other end. “I need someone to help me spread my fliers around campus.”
“Fliers?” Gabriel echoes in confusion. “What fliers?”
“My band’s, obviously!” Isabel replied impatiently. “Usually, I can count on Deb or Harry to do our routes; one of us puts up the fliers, and the other keeps their eyes open to make sure the night guard doesn’t catch us. But unfortunately, this time Debbie is stuck in bed with a bad flu, and Harry just ditched me out of the blue!” They explained. “The hangover he got himself will be nothing compared to what I’ll do to him when I get my hands on him!”
Gabriel sat up on his bed. “And so you’re asking me to be your lookout for tonight?” He asked his friend, having understood where they were heading.
“Yes.” Isabel replied quietly.
“But you don’t have the authorization to hang them!” Gabriel exclaimed. “We’d be breaking the school’s regulations!”
“I know I’m asking you a lot, but you’re the only other person I trust enough to ask this to.”
Gabriel fell silent, unsure of what to say. Breaking the law, no matter how light the infraction could look like, could have never ended well. But eventually, the mention of just how much Isabel trusted him, along with the urgency in their voice, prevailed over his rational side.
“Fine. See you in ten minutes.” Gabriel said against any better judgment as he rose up to his feet.

When Gabriel came out of his dorm, he found Isabel already waiting for him not far from the entrance of the building. The young man was barely able to notice them in the dim lighting; the dark clothing that his friend was wearing helped them greatly to blend in with the darkness of the night, making their face disappear almost entirely underneath their jet black hair and that same black face mask that Gabriel had already seen them wearing the day of their exam. On Isabel’s shoulder, then, was a beat up crossbody bag from which several rolled-up fliers peeked out. “I have a face too recognizable even when it comes to security cameras, remember?” Isabel explained, when the young man tried to comment something about their secret mission outfit. “You, on the other hand, aren’t covered up enough,” they then pointed out, eyeing up and down what Gabriel had chosen to wear; gray sweatpants, and a hoodie of the same color. Maybe it wasn’t what Isabel expected, but they had instructed for casual, comfortable dark clothing, and those were the only pieces of clothing he had in his closet that would check all those boxes. “But it’ll have to do; you’re already out here, and we have limited time. Now come on, follow me!”
And so, the two friends began their route around campus. “I can’t believe I agreed to this…” Gabriel complained at some point as he carefully followed his friend, who had been guiding him through the buildings of the various departments. “We’re definitely going to get busted!” He went on, trying to keep his voice as low as he could.
“Don’t jinx it!” Isabel replied. “I’ve been doing this for months, and I’ve never been caught. I know this school like the back of my hand.” And while those reassuring words weren’t enough to ease Gabriel’s worries, the young man had to acknowledge that his friend surely wasn’t joking about that latter part; they were completely at ease, moving furtively through the night like a stray cat, each time choosing the less well-lit pathways that almost certainly fell outside the range of the cameras that were scattered around the institute’s grounds.

“Good.” Isabel said, placing a pin in the last corner of another flier. “Just three more to go and we’ll be back in our rooms before the break of dawn.” They announced, quickly putting away the little box of pins back into their bag, ready to head off to their next destination.
But the two friends didn’t have the time to walk past another building before a loud “Hey, you!” came from somewhere in the distance, making both Isabel and Gabriel freeze. “I see you, over there!” The unfamiliar voice went on.
“Fuck.” Isabel muttered, glancing briefly at the round white beam of the guard’s flashlight that was moving towards them.
Isabel and Gabriel began to run, making a turn toward a lateral pathway. But the guard, who was in a far better shape than either of them, quickly began to catch up. Fear began to seep in Gabriel’s mind: they wouldn’t have been able to lose the guard, he realized. They were going to get caught, and that infraction would have become the first stain on his otherwise immaculate criminal record. But if that was truly the case, there was still something he could do.
After rounding another corner, Gabriel stopped running at once. “We have to keep going! What are you doing?” Isabel exclaimed in surprise, their hurried steps coming to an abrupt stop when they felt their friend tugging at their crossbody bag.
“I’m giving you the chance to flee.” Gabriel said firmly, refusing to let go of the bag despite his friend’s resistance.
“What…? But- why?” Isabel asked, surprised and confused by such a decision.
“Because I know how much this means to you. No one has to find out who The Outcasts are, remember?” Gabriel answered. ‘At least not until Sharon does. Otherwise, without her scoop, she will no longer want to help us’ - the boy thought to himself. After another brief moment of hesitation, Isabel finally let go of their bag.
And so, shrouded in their dark hoodie, Isabel disappeared into the darkness, right before the night guard turned the corner, shining the beam of his flashlight on Gabriel.

Notes:

I believe I never really specified it but, unlike most of her fellow students, Azzy is not based on any canon ‘Good Omens’ character. She’s actually one of the three OCs I had made for this fandom; the original Azzy I came up with in 2019 was a demon (that’s why her human counterpart lives with three other demons-turned-humans) and, while she already bore this name, this time it was short for Asmodeus, the princess of Lust.
And if you look veeeery close, there is a little nod to Azzy’s original demonic self in chapter three! ;)

Chapter 16: Eve

Notes:

Just as a heads up: just like chapters 10 and 11, this chapter is about more delicate topics as well (in this case, two people treated equally as badly by their former - or current, in Eve's case - romantic partner)

“I look at you and I see myself
and I know you better than anyone else.
I have the same faucet in my eyes,
so your tears are mine.”
(‘Crybaby’ - Melanie Martinez)

Having received directions from the girl at the front desk, Isabel and Freddy began their walk down the hospital’s hallways.
Earlier that day, Freddy had called Isabel on their phone, but before the young man could even tell them why he was calling, the worry in his voice was enough to give Isabel an idea of the possible reason: something had happened to Eve, and the two of them could only hope it wasn’t anything too severe.
The two friends walked past a young man with a leg in a cast who struggled up to a standing position from one of the chairs in the waiting room, and a woman by his side who handed him his crutches. Isabel watched them for a moment, before swiftly turning away. They never liked hospitals. Ever since they were a child, they only had dreadful memories of that environment - from all the times they followed their father in and out of the hospital for his chemo sessions, to the time they’d woken up in the ER with bandages all over their face and neck. And that day, seeing the various patients of the hospital, each with their own small or big misfortunes, did nothing but contribute to that feeling of unease that had been weighing on their chest since they first set foot in the building.

“Hey! I can’t believe it, look who we have here!” A man’s voice suddenly spoke, snapping them out of their thoughts. Turning towards the direction the voice was coming from, Isabel found a man in a white lab coat looking at them. “Isabel, if I remember correctly, right?” The man said, stopping a few steps away from them and Freddy.
In recognizing the familiar appearance of that doctor, Isabel’s face lit up, although not with the same friendly smile that the man was giving them. “Dr. Moss!” Isabel greeted back. “What are you doing here?”
“I transferred here last year; doctors go where patients need them the most, and in this case, the hospital was in need of staff, and help was brought in from nearby cities.” The other replied. “Look at you! I have to say, you look far better than the last time I saw you.” Dr. Moss then said, holding his hands up on either side of Isabel’s face but without actually touching them, having sensed from the tension in his young patient’s demeanor that they wouldn’t have liked it. “You’re still following the treatments I prescribed you, right? It’s important to take care of our skin - and not only for people with special cases like yours!”
Isabel’s only reply was a small nod. Freddy’s puzzled gaze shifted back and forth between his friend and the doctor. “Right.” Isabel said, realizing that Freddy probably had no idea who that old acquaintance of theirs was. “Freddy, this is Doctor Moss. You could say he quite literally saved my face, that night almost three years ago.” Isabel said to their friend. “Or at least, he did what he could.”
“This girl right here really gave me a scare, you know?” The doctor commented, adding to Isabel’s explanation. Then, turning back to the latter: “You were my first - and so far only - case of acid attack. An awful story, really… You’d expect this kind of thing to happen in big cities like London, and not in small provincial towns like the area where you lived, and where I used to work at the time!”
“This kind of thing happens wherever there’s someone messed up enough to make it happen.” Isabel corrected him. “I think I’m living proof of that.”
The doctor nodded slowly. “By the way, I think I recall your mother was talking about pressing charges against the culprit. Were you guys able to get him convicted?”
Isabel’s eyes darkened. “No. We didn’t.” They answered matter-of-factly. ‘And that’s why today we’re here, to see how much more hurt he’s caused in the meantime,’ they thought to themselves.

Before leaving, Dr. Moss renewed his recommendations to Isabel regarding the skincare treatments they still had to follow, as the skin is an organ in constant evolution, and, if properly tended to, the appearance of their scars still had room for changing and improving, even if they were now almost three years old.
Now once again alone, Freddy and Isabel resumed their path, glancing at the numbers on the tags next to each room in search of the one that hosted poor Eve. Once they were in front of the second to last door in the corridor, Freddy motioned for Isabel to stop. Then, he knocked gently on the door. “Who is it?” A feeble feminine voice asked from inside the room.
“It’s Freddy,” the young man answered, but there were no further replies. Freddy turned briefly back to Isabel, then pushed the door open.
Isabel was the first to step inside, entering the room with slow and hesitant steps. In front of them, laying on the bed with the backrest lifted up to a seated position, was a rather young girl with chocolate skin and a cascade of dark curls. Evelyne Bennett - or simply ‘Eve,’ as Isabel had always known her from Freddy’s updates - looked rather miserable, with her dark brown eyes still reddened from recent tears, a collar around her neck to hold her head in place, and one arm in a cast.

As soon as she saw Freddy walk into the room, Eve sat up. “Oh, Freddy!” She exclaimed, relieved to see the boy’s familiar face. Freddy walked over to the bed, leaning down to hug her, and Eve clung to him with her good arm for a few moments. “Who... who are you?” The girl then asked, turning to look at Isabel with wide, alarmed eyes.
“My name is Bel, I’m a friend of Freddy’s.” Isabel answered. “When he told me about what happened to you - that you were taken to the hospital after tripping and falling down the stairs - I asked him to bring me along to pay you a visit.”
Eve seemed to ease up a little at Isabel’s explanation. The girl’s lips curved up into a smile, one that her visitors couldn’t help but perceive as forced. “Yeah, it was… it was such a stupid accident. I’m such a klutz, sometimes!” The girl said. But Isabel and Freddy exchanged an unconvinced look.
“Eve. I hope you don’t mind me being so straightforward with you, but…” Isabel spoke. “Freddy told me about you, and about the people you hang out with, and it looks like you and I have some mutual acquaintances. Your boyfriend, for example: I know that it’s Lucio Torres, and that there’s quite a reputation around his last name. Well… Freddy told me that on more than one occasion he saw Lucio get angry at you in front of his friends.”
Having understood what the other was heading, Eve tried to shake her head. But the collar around her neck prevented her from doing so, making the movement come out as awkward and stiff. “No, It’s- it’s not what it looks like!” Eve was quick to rectify. “Luz had nothing to do with it! I- I simply tripped, that’s all. It was an accident!”
Isabel looked at her in silence for a moment. Eve looked so young, and fragile, and scared. It was history repeating itself, and it hurt like a stab.

“Eve.” Isabel firmly called the other’s name. “I know Lucio far too well. Him and I were together for a whole year, a few years ago. Look at me, Eve.” They said - words that they would never have thought could be uttered again by them out of all people, they who had spent the past couple years doing everything they could to hide away from people’s judging gazes. But it was of vital importance for Eve to understand. “I’ve experienced on my own skin what he’s capable of. That’s why when Freddy told me you ended up in the hospital I came to you as soon as I could. I was naive, back then, and I had no idea what kind of jerk I was dealing with, but now that I know, I don’t want anyone else to go through the same kind of pain.”
Eve took some time to study Isabel and their words, trying to understand their meaning. Then, something in her mind finally seemed to click: “No! This can’t-” The girl stuttered, her voice cracking. “This can’t be true!” But when she saw Freddy nod grimly, Eve broke down into tears.

- - - - - -

The little bell above the cafe’s door rang, signaling the entrance of a new customer. Hoping it might be his friend, who had texted him earlier that afternoon asking him to meet them, Gabriel moved his gaze towards the door. And sure enough, it was Isabel’s thin figure who was entering the cafe, with a gloomy look in their eyes that they kept locked on the floor in front of them.
With slow steps, Isabel walked over to Gabriel’s table, sitting down in the chair across from him. “You look awful!” Gabriel pointed out to his friend, worried by their long face. “Is it because of Eve? Your text said you and Freddy went to visit her at the hospital. How is she? I hope it’s nothing too bad!”
Isabel said nothing for a long moment, keeping their gaze down on the table. “She has a cast around an arm and a neck brace, but thankfully it looks like there’s no concussion or other severe issues of that sort.” They then answered. “But I think that, rather than physically, she’s hurting because she finally realized what an asshole of a boyfriend she has by her side.”
Gabriel nodded slowly. “Was he the one to hurt her?”
“It took Eve a while to tell me the truth, but she eventually came to admit that the two of them were at his house and they were arguing. She turned around and made to leave, walking down the first steps of the stairs, but Lucio suddenly pulled her back to stop her, making her lose her balance and fall.” Isabel explained. “She insisted it was only an accident, and I might believe her about this one specific case. But the problem is that she admitted that there have been other such ‘accidents’ where Lucio ended up hitting her during a fight. And yet, you should have seen how strongly she defended him at first, insisting on how he’d always swore those episodes would never happen again. Love can turn people into such fools… Eve just wouldn’t surrender to the evidence in front of her nose.”

After the waitress came to take their orders, Isabel told Gabriel about how they asked Freddy to leave the room to allow them to have a private heart-to-heart with Eve. The girl asked them all sorts of questions about them and their own relationship with Lucio, and Isabel patiently answered each of those questions with the pure, unadulterated truth. Poor Eve was obviously shocked by everything she was just told - how her boyfriend, who she only considered to be capable of accidental outbursts of anger due to his hot temper, could conceive and carry out an act of revenge so cruel and premeditated. At some point as they talked, Eve had asked permission to move closer, brushing her shaking hand against the damaged patches of skin on Isabel’s face.
They both cried, and tried to comfort each other as best they could. “It’s been so long since I last cried about this whole thing…” Isabel confessed, embarrassed to realize that simply thinking back to that afternoon was enough to make their eyes water once again. “I absolutely have to stop by Ezra’s to strum a bit to try and calm myself down, before I go back to my house tonight.” They said, bringing the back of their hand close to their eyes. “But at least, I have one piece of good news: Eve finally decided to leave her boyfriend.” Isabel then announced, regaining their composure and sitting up straighter to dissemble that moment of vulnerability.
It wasn’t hard to imagine that Eve’s decision was going to make Lucio furious, Isabel added, shaking their head. But in order to protect Eve from possible revenges like the one that was reserved for them, Eve, Freddy and them had come up with a plan to make sure that, should Lucio try looking for her, he wasn’t going to find her. In truth, the first step of the plan wasn’t of their ideation, but surely came in their favor; the doctor in charge of Eve’s care had said that, just to be sure there wouldn’t have been other issues surfacing in later hours, he would have kept her under observation overnight. This would have given Eve the time to work up the courage to put the rest of the plan into action; the next day, in fact, after being released from the hospital, Eve was to tell her boyfriend that her parents had insisted that she’d move back to their home for the time being. But that would have only been the official story, since Eve was actually going to stay at Sharon’s parents’ apartment, since the couple had a spare room in the house now that their daughter was away for college. Although Sharon was closely connected to Freddy, in fact, she was still a stranger to Lucio’s circle of friends, and being unaware of her existence, he was far less likely to suspect her involvement in his girlfriend’s escape.

“But tell me… How are things going for you, instead?” Isabel then asked, changing the subject to try and salvage what little remained of the pleasant, carefree atmosphere that the other patrons of the cafe around them seemed to be basking in.
Now it was Gabriel’s turn to have his dark irises cloud. Ever since he got into trouble with the night guard, the young man explained after a sigh, his parents had started to get particularly controlling of him, resuming their daily evening phone calls to get a recap of his campus life. “And not only do they call me more often, asking me all sorts of things about my classes and whatnot; I’m pretty sure they’re even using Micky to keep a closer eye on me!” Gabriel exclaimed, exasperated. “You have no idea how much she’s been on my back these past few days! She brought up against me each time I was out with you and the others, saying that I’m spending way too much time with you guys, and that what happened that night with the fliers was the result of your bad influence!” Gabriel went on with his explanation, to which his friend Isabel responded with a grimace. “I’m pretty sure Micky was the one who told my parents about that night, before they could even be contacted by the school staff. I mean, when they called me up to scold me, they even knew about the black nail polish I wore at the sleepover! They surely didn’t hear about that from Crowley, and Micaela is the only other person here at school that my parents know, and that noticed I was wearing it before I went to Azzy to get it removed. How else would have my folks known, if not because of her? And my dad used that stupid nail polish to his advantage, saying that it’s further proof of how I’m starting to ‘dress and act like a hooligan’! Can you believe it?” Gabriel concluded, rolling his eyes.

As for the actual consequences to his actions, he then said, he got away with a small fine to be paid to the school, and a reprimand from the rector: if he was to commit another infraction, there would have been repercussions on his studies.
“I’m so sorry! It was all my fault; I’m the one who brought you into this. I wish I could explain it to the rector, too…” Isabel said, regretful. “I never meant to get you in trouble! Me and the guys never got caught, and I was sure that things would have gone smoothly this time around as well.”
“Bel, it’s okay.” Gabriel reassured them. “I’m the one who decided to help you. I’m not a child anymore; I’m responsible for my own actions.”
But the guilty look on Isabel’s face didn’t budge. “If anything good can be taken from this, is that, at least, it had me and the others reflect on the fact that we really need to change our strategy,” They told their friend. “We can’t keep putting our secret identities on the line like that every time we need to announce new dates for our gigs! We talked about it, and we decided that, from now on, we’re going to invest more on building a social media presence for our band. Deb is already on it; I asked her to create an official Instagram page for The Outcasts, where we’ll share our announcements.”

The two friends fell silent. Gabriel, who had long since finished his espresso, watched Isabel as they took a couple sips from their tea. They were staring off to somewhere beyond the cafe’s windows, watching the falling rain that had begun to dampen the street outside. “Hey.” Gabriel spoke softly, leaning towards them to place his hand on theirs. “Eve is going to be alright, I’m sure of it.”
That small physical contact made Isabel’s attention shift back to him. “I hope so.” They simply replied. Then, much to Gabriel’s surprise, they quickly withdrew their hand from underneath his.

Chapter 17: Horned headbands and sing-alongs

“All the lights hanging on,
feel it burn in our lungs.
We were born to scream louder,
louder echo.”
(‘Louder’ - Dotan)

“I can’t believe the Easter holidays are already rolling around!” Isabel exclaimed. “I really don’t want to go back to my mother’s house! For two whole weeks, no less!” They whined, throwing their head back onto the fabric of the beanbag they had sunk into.
“Don’t tell me about it…” Debbie grumbled as she kept tapping on her phone. “Having to work at my father’s fishmonger is literal torture - and I’m saying that with full knowledge of the facts.”
Isabel rolled their eyes affectionately. “You’re always so overdramatic…” They said to their friend. Then, their gaze shifted slightly to the right, to an Ezra who was sitting in a chair right next to Debbie’s with his lips pressed tightly as he looked down to some undefined spot of the concrete floor of the garage. “Is there something wrong, Ez?” Isabel asked him. “Come on, speak your mind!”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really.” The blond boy replied, in obvious embarrassment for having been caught getting lost in his thoughts. “I was just thinking that… before moving out for college, I always thought I would have been counting the days until I would be able to go back to my family for the holidays. And yet, for some reason, whenever it’s actually time to pack my bags, it’s like…” Ezra hesitated, his voice growing thinner. “... it’s like I don’t want to go. I’ve already felt like this last December, and I feel bad for not being as excited as I probably should be.”
“But you always talk so fondly about your folks!” Isabel replied, their eyebrows raising in surprise at the other’s words.
“I do love them - a great lot, too!” Ezra said. “But I hardly ever get any space for myself, at home, and I’ve been really liking my life here; being on my own, setting my own routines… having more time to think things through and to figure myself out…”
Gabriel noticed Ezra’s roommate, Muriel, nod slowly to his words.

Born in England to Latin American parents, Muriel, whose current outfit consisted in a beige pleated skirt, a candid white shirt with a pastel tie, and white knee-high socks, was a pure soul and a modest, old-fashioned girl. No, wait - not a girl; Isabel had told him about Ezra’s roommate, warning him that Muriel had recently started to ask everyone to be referred to as ‘they.’ “They’re testing out how it feels to them, and if those pronouns fit them better than the ones they grew up with.” Isabel had explained. “Half of the people here at school still choose to ignore that and refer to them with feminine ones, and since Muriel is way too shy and polite to correct anyone, they’ve started to say that both sets are fine, considering that, after all, they’ll have to switch back to the old ones as soon as they get home for Easter because their parents wouldn’t allow anything different. But of course, people only took that as a further excuse not to respect their request. Since you do seem to get it, though, try using this new set when you’re talking about them, okay?”
Gabriel was surprised by that, of course, because although neither of them identified as girls, Muriel looked nowhere near as androgynous as Isabel did; yes, their dark, curly hair was worn short, but other than that, they always dressed in a quite feminine fashion, even wearing hints of golden makeup around their eyes.

But anyway, judging from the way the light in Muriel’s dark brown irises seemed to fade, Gabriel deduced that they probably didn’t really feel too positively about going home either. Harry, on the other hand, even though he had been sitting there in silence with a bored look on his face, seemed to have taken the imminent trip back home quite better than his bandmates; he had even seemed happy about it, in fact, telling his friends about the pet frog he couldn’t wait to finally reunite with.
“Well, at least it will only be two weeks.” Crowley said, trying to console his friends. “But just like for Christmas break, I’ll sure miss having you little pests around.”
“Awe, I’ll miss you too!” Ezra replied, smiling softly at him. “Ehrm, uh... I- I mean you guys. All of you guys!” He then quickly rectified, stuttering. “And I’ll surely miss our weekly tuesday afternoon teas with our friends from the book club. Right, Muriel?” Ezra turned to look at his roommate, hoping to receive their help.
Muriel’s usual smile returned on their lips. “Of course! I can’t wait for the next meeting to come to discuss Jane Austen with the others!”
“And I can’t wait to resume our evenings at the pub, as soon as we get back from vacation!” Isabel exclaimed enthusiastically, sitting up straighter.
“Me too.” Harry replied from his corner of the garage. “And luckily for us, Jimmy said that he can’t wait to have us back either; he already reserved the usual room for us for wednesday 21st.”

“Since we’re talking about the band…” Debbie interjected. “Have you guys received a visit from a weird blonde girl?”
Harry frowned as he thought the question over for a moment before shaking his head with a shrug.
“I think she said her name was Alyssa, or something like that. She asked me all sorts of questions, like what major I’m in, what I like to do in my free time, and even what music genres I like to listen to. Then she complimented me for my hair, and left.” Debbie went on. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since, you know; what could be the reason behind such a weird interview? And eventually, I came to realize that, since I’m a natural redhead, I must have been inserted in the list!”
“What list?” Crowley asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.
“Some students at our school have put together a list of everyone who is physically compatible with what can be seen of The Outcasts underneath their masks.” Gabriel explained, pulling out his phone to show his brother the campus blog’s website. “I admit I didn’t study all four columns that extensively, but… Now that I think about it, I do remember seeing a ‘Deborah’ amongst the various names.” But merely a moment later, the young man frowned. “That’s weird; it looks like Debbie’s name is no longer there!”
“And I think I know why that is!” Debbie replied enthusiastically. “Hear me out, guys: remember that night at the sleepover when I dyed the tips of my hair teal? Well, when Alyssa came over, I still had some stain left from the dye…”
“I told you it wouldn’t have washed out in one shower.” Isabel intervened, but Debbie was too focused on her reasoning to mind their words: “That must have been what made her say it couldn’t be me! Because my hair wasn’t only red!”
“Well, if that’s true, thank God idiots still exist!” Crowley commented.

But at once, Isabel seemed to darken. “Alyssa showed up to my house as well, a few days ago.” They said, crossing their arms over their chest. “Apparently, I was on that list too; I’m short, black haired… one of my Econ classmates must have brought me up as a possible candidate.” But while they should have been happy for having been removed from the list of suspects, Isabel confessed, they couldn’t shake away the fact that, unfortunately, it wasn’t thanks to the same reason as Debbie: when Isabel went to open the door, in fact, Alyssa immediately showed herself to be very surprised by their physical appearance. “She was so surprised that she didn’t even bother putting up an act with me; she straight up confessed that she was there to ask me if I could be The Outcasts’ guitarist, but that - and I quote - ‘I look too much of a loser to be in the band’.” Isabel told their friends in a bitter hiss. “That bitch was lucky to get away before I could give her a proper lesson for her insolence!”
At first, none of the young people gathered in that garage seemed to be able to find words to comment on such a sad episode. “Like I said, she’s an idiot.” Crowley spoke. “People like her don’t even deserve you feeling bad about them.”
Isabel hummed, their arms still crossed over their chest, with a look in their eyes that let Gabriel know that they were probably still thinking about strangling Alyssa with their bare hands.

. . .

On their way back from Ezra’s house, Gabriel and Isabel spent the entire time talking about the popularity that The Outcasts were starting to obtain; the amount of comments on Freddy and Sharon’s forum was growing by the day, and a new appeal addressed to all students had appeared both digitally and on paper on the noticeboards across all campus, reading the message ‘Who are the Outcasts? Help us find out!’. In addition, then, dedicated hashtags were created by students to share on social media photos and videos taken during the band’s gigs at the pub.
Gabriel couldn’t help but marvel at how far the four musicians had come: over the past few weeks, as he kept attending the weekly musical evenings to support his brother and their friends, he noticed that a few students had even started attending the gigs wearing plastic demon horns headbands as a sort of homage to the band’s horned masks. “I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I have a rockstar for a best friend!” Gabriel exclaimed, giving their friend a bright, amazed smile.
But Isabel shook their head. “I’m no rockstar,” they replied. “I’m just a Mr. Nobody behind a mask. The same people that come to see us play and sing along to the lyrics I write are the ones that make fun of my scars any other day of the week, when they see me at school without my mask.”

Then, after several moments of silence: “By the way, the answer is music.” They said, out of the blue.
“What?” Gabriel blinked in confusion. The answer to what, exactly?
“That day, when you asked me if I had any dreams for my future… Well, my dream has always been music.” Isabel explained. “It’s the first thing I think of in the morning, and it’s with me all throughout the day until I go to bed at night. Ever since I was still a child, all I’ve ever known is that one day I would have found a way to turn music into my future career.”
“I’ve always thought you didn’t look like a future accountant!” Gabriel replied jokingly, thinking back to their old conversations. “But you do look like an aspiring musician - and an amazing one as well! But if you do know who you want to become in your future, and you seem so passionate about it, too… Why did you tell me you didn’t, that day?” The young man then asked.
There was a pause on Isabel’s side. “Because I’m no longer the delusional kid I used to be back then. I’ve come to learn how ruthless and competitive the music industry can really be, and how likely it is for artists to never make it big enough to be able to live off their music alone.” They replied. “And then, if we talk specifically about performing onstage, which is by far my favorite way of living my music, there’s also the other issue: I used to be able to picture myself rocking out with my guitar in front of millions of people, but now…”
Gabriel’s head dipped in a slow, pensive nod. “I don’t think I would ever be comfortable working in a place where people would stare at me the whole time,” Isabel had told him a long time ago. He could still remember it.

“Lucio has taken away from me every single good thing I had. I thought things were finally starting to look up, that I could still somehow live out my dreams here with my new friends…” Isabel went on. “Us Outcasts, we never wished to reach worldwide fame or anything like that. Keeping up with that kind of fame has ruined way too many lives; friendships and relationships can easily become fake, when it comes to stars, as well as their smiles for the cameras. We see it way too often, how many artists resort to drugs and alcohol to cope with the stress of always being under the spotlights, or to find the energy to keep up with their intense schedules and lifestyles... Crowley is a close friend of mine, and he’s already been through that kind of shit, and I would never want that to happen again to him - or to any of us.” Isabel explained. “We’re just four kids who are trying to make it through life with the support of our music to vent all the negative stuff that this world throws at us. But now even that is about to get taken away from me!”
“What makes you think that?” Gabriel asked, taken aback by the unforeseen depth that their conversation had reached. But then again, hadn’t most of their conversation so far ended up the same way - to the point that, by then, those difficult conversations, which he’d never really had with anyone else in his life, had almost become some sort of reassuring certainty?
“Sharon’s going to force us to the light.” Isabel answered. “Maybe it will be as soon as tomorrow, or in one month, or maybe by the end of the academic year… but it will happen. Every single soul at school will see the interview she’s expecting to receive from us. The entire school is going to see my face - our faces - and that will be the day everyone will realize Alyssa was right all along: that we’re just a bunch of losers, far from the mental image that everyone has of us. I’m sure that as soon as the aura of mystery we have around us fades out, no one will be interested in our music anymore.”
Gabriel could feel his heart ache once again for his friend. How could they think so little of themselves? - he marveled. Could they truly not see just how amazing what they had been building with their band was?
“But at least,” Isabel spoke again after a few moments, finally looking back up at him, “as long as our anonymity lasts, we will still be able to enjoy ourselves.”

- - - - -

Later that evening, as Gabriel scrolled on Instagram to try and get a little more familiar with the app, which he had to download and create a profile on in order to be able to follow the page that Debbie had created for The Outcasts, he noticed a red and orange circle had appeared at the top of the page around the band’s profile icon.
Upon opening the story, Gabriel was met by his brother’s unmistakable, fiery red hair. “We got word that some of you are desperately trying to figure out who we are,” the masked young man spoke, his voice and overall attitude composed and serious. “We’ve seen all the effort you’ve been putting into it, crossing names out of your little list of possible candidates… But the truth is that you will never find us, because you don’t even know where to look; first of all, one of us isn’t even enrolled in your university, so good luck finding them amongst your classmates!” Gabriel smiled in amusement at the way his older brother had just mocked Sharon, Freddy and all their Journalism classmates at once. “And then, I see none of you has understood the true reason we’ve been doing this for; that our masks were meant to be a way to show you that anyone can be an outcast with a lowercase ‘o’.” Crowley went on in the video: “You guys are looking for misfits, but you don’t even know what they look like: are we really the people who dress differently than you, with our dyed hair and flashy clothes? Or can the ‘cool kids’ - whatever that even means - feel like outcasts as well, pretending that everything is fine on the surface, but then crying in the privacy of their rooms because they might not consider themselves pretty enough, or thin enough, or popular enough, or complete enough? Take a look around you; aren’t we all outcasts deep down?”
In the blink of an eye, Crowley’s Instagram story began to garner more and more likes and shares.

Chapter 18: A girl on a mission

“We are all very lovely
‘til we get to know each other,
as we stop becoming friends
and we start becoming lovers.”
(‘Homewrecker’ - Marina and The Diamonds)

‘I took it upon myself to go grocery shopping at the supermarket today. No mask and no hoodie.’ Isabel’s new message to Gabriel read, continuing the exchange the two of them had been having about their respective days.
‘Woah! It’s incredible progress!’ The young man replied, adding a surprised emoji at the end of the sentence. ‘We should celebrate.’
‘Right? There were a lot of people and they all saw me, including the cashier.’ Isabel went on. ‘A few of them stared. I was actually dying a bit inside, but I tried to pay no mind.’
‘Maybe they were staring because they properly saw you for the first time in over two years.’ Gabriel offered, and as he kept writing a second message his friend reacted to that first part with a laughing emoji. ‘I’d say your stay in your hometown is going well, then?’
‘Meh. It could definitely be worse, but it could also be better. I haven't really been sleeping well lately. Occasional weird dreams.’
‘I think it might be that box you keep under your bed.’ Gabriel suggested. ‘It holds too many negative connotations to it. You could try to move it somewhere else, or to get rid of it altogether, and see if it helps to ease your sleep.’
‘Idk, this has been going on and off since before the break. Maybe it’s the stress caused by the midterms coming up or something.’ Isabel replied. ‘Also, don't tell me what I should do with my own stuff. I'm not throwing my box away. Yet.’
‘Here where I am, things have been going fine as well. But I have to admit, I’d forgotten how boring some of my relatives can be,’ Gabriel told his friend.
After a few moments, Isabel sent him an ‘I see…’ followed by a picture with the caption ‘But hey, as bad as they can get, at least our Easter breaks aren’t going like Deb’s!’. The photo in question showed their red-haired friend wearing an apron with the words ‘Fisherman’s finest catch’ written on it in light blue letters over the drawing of a wave, standing behind the counter with a dead fish in front of her, a large knife in her hand, and the deepest scowl Gabriel had ever seen on anyone’s face.

“Didn’t your parents teach you that it’s rude to be on your phone while you’re eating with your family?” The voice of Gabriel’s uncle, a retired soldier whose gruff appearance was made even more austere by the long, perfectly groomed gray beard that framed his face, suddenly steered the young man’s attention back to the present moment.
The amused smile that Debbie’s photograph had raised in Gabriel immediately faded. “You’re right, uncle Quentin. I apologize.” He said, embarrassed. Before he proceeded to put his phone away, Micaela, seated right next to him, had the time to glance at the device, quickly eyeing the chat that filled the screen, with its text boxes intertwining on both sides of the screen, along with the name written at the top of the screen on the header.
“So, Matthew, I heard you have a new case on your hands,” uncle Quentin then asked his brother, who was sitting at the head of the table. “A barely eighteen year old girl who wants to sue the son of the Torreses… and you being the one representing her! Since when have you become a defender of lost causes?” The man joked, underlining his words with a loud laugh. At the mention of the Torres family’s infamous last name, Micaela’s brooding temporarily took a back seat.
Matthew De Angelis shot his brother a glare. “You’re getting well ahead of yourself, Quentin.” He replied. “Yes, it is true, little Evelyne’s family intends to take legal actions against the Torres family, demanding justice and compensation for the instances in which Lucio hurt their daughter, but we are still in the preliminary stages of the whole ordeal, far from talking about an actual trial! In fact, I’d rather try and dialogue with the other party to see if the matter can be resolved without actually going to court: if an agreement is reached, the Bennett family could still get the money they need to take care of their daughter’s health, and it would cost everyone a lot less money, paperwork, energy and time.”
“But how did you even come to learn about her case?” Quentin asked. “Her family surely doesn’t look like the type of people that can afford your bills!”
“They can’t, in fact.” Matthew replied. “It was this young man right here who brought Evelyne Bennett to me, and insisted that I represent her!” He explained, pointing to his son almost as if he was the culprit of a misdemeanor. “I tried to warn the Bennetts that any action against people like those is almost certainly a lost case, as harsh and pessimistic as that may sound. The mother at least seemed to understand the entity of what they would have gotten themselves into by filing their lawsuit, and she herself acknowledged that they wouldn’t have had the money to carry out a legal proceeding… But then my son steps in, telling me that if I really wasn’t going to make things easy for the Bennetts by having them pay me the same fee I charge every other client of mine, he would have paid the sum himself. I’d much rather keep my money in the bank where it can keep maturing profit, than have my son withdraw it only to hand it back to me!”
Quentin nodded, impressed by the kindness his nephew had shown towards the Bennetts: “You’re going to make a great lawyer, son!” The man told him.

It should have been an honor for Gabriel to receive such a compliment from his uncle, who notoriously rarely ever uttered such heartfelt words. Yet, in that moment, with the eyes of all his family members glued on him, Quentin’s reassurance generated in him pressure, rather than relief; ‘Am I really going to?’ Gabriel thought as he nodded in reply to his uncle, pressing his lips together in a smile.
But luckily for him, soon enough his relatives began to dedicate themselves to new topics of conversation. Gabriel briefly observed his aunt and his two cousins as they engaged in some small talk about his oldest cousin’s medical residency, soon joined in conversation by his mother Francesca, while his uncle and his father reminisced about some of the most peculiar clients that the latter had represented in court. On the surface, it was a very lovely family scene. Yet, everyone at that table was well aware of the ghost that haunted their lives: the young man that the entire De Angelis family kept talking about, but that by then had been absent seven times in a row from those birthday parties that Francesca organized for her youngest son.
Even though things between them seemed to be slowly improving, Crowley - his own brother, who had known him for a lifetime and who had lived under his same roof for twelve years - didn’t even bother to wish him a happy birthday. Harry and Debbie hadn’t either, but Gabriel wasn’t really expecting them to anyway; after all, he still couldn’t say he knew either of them that well, and he had a feeling that Debbie didn’t really like him all that much to begin with. The only Outcast who took their time to actually remember his birthday, although they had been knowing each other for an amount of time relatively as short, was Isabel, who even went out of their way and got him a gift, a ‘The best of Mozart’ vinyl that they timidly handed him before they parted ways for the Easter break.
Although he was left disappointed by his brother’s lack of wishes that day at Ezra’s house, Gabriel had hoped that, at least, he would have reached out to him on the actual day of his birthday. Instead, although Gabriel had checked his phone time and again throughout the entire day, the only texts he received from his new friends were from Isabel.
“I met Raphael again, not long ago.” Gabriel heard his own voice say, before his brain could fully catch up. ‘Shoot.’ The young man thought, seeing the way everyone else had frozen in place at those words. He should have known better than to bring up the one subject that had been killing the mood of every single family gathering of the past six years of his life, especially since he himself never liked when his relatives did. But it was too late: he couldn’t unspeak what he had already said. “Can you guys believe it? We’ve been living in the same city for months, and I never even knew until recently! He seems to be doing alright; he no longer takes… well, you know. He said he even found a stable job as a gardener.” Gabriel told his family, but his words were only met by uncomfortable silence.

. . .

“How long ago did you and your brother meet again, exactly?” Micaela asked Gabriel, once the two of them finally had a chance to be alone after dinner.
“I don’t know for sure…”
“Is it one week? Two weeks?” The girl pressed, trying to obtain a less vague answer. But instead, Gabriel kept quiet. “Was it even further back in time?”
“A bit, yes.”
“And why didn’t you ever tell me, during all this time? I’m your girlfriend, for Heaven’s sake! I should have been the first to know, especially since you’ve told me in the past about how much you’ve been hurting because of the strained relationship between you and your brother! And instead, I had to find out last, as if I was one of those relatives you only see once a year!”
“I didn’t tell you about it right away because at first there wasn’t really much to say.”
“At first?” Micaela echoed. “Does that mean that the two of you have met more than once?”
Gabriel sighed. “Yes, we’ve met a few times.” He admitted. “The first time he saw me, he immediately turned and ran away.”
“I can’t believe it!” Micaela shook her head in disbelief, crossing her arms over her chest. “But I bet you told Isabel right away, didn’t you?” She then asked, her words coated in venom.
“Come on, not this story again!” Gabriel exclaimed, rolling his eyes.

Micaela had the chance to notice it time and again, throughout that first week of vacation, just how often he and Isabel were exchanging texts; every time she accidentally caught sight of her boyfriend’s phone, he always had that damned chat open. They texted, called each other over the phone, shared memes and even funny emojis back and forth…
That whole situation was unacceptable, Micaela came to realize as Gabriel told her once again that her jealousy was excessive and unfounded. She had to intervene and finally put Isabel back into place, and she had to do it as soon as possible; on the very same day that classes would have resumed at school, when she would have finally had that little pest within reach!

- - - - -

“Isabel.” Micaela called, coming to a stop a few steps behind her dark-haired despised rival.
The other turned around. “Micaela.” They greeted back with a plain, unimpressed tone.
“You have to stay away from my Gabriel. Have I made myself clear?”
But as firmly as that order was uttered, it seemed to have no effect whatsoever on Isabel: “I’m not going to give up a friendship just because a bully like you asked me to,” they replied. “You’re not nearly as threatening as you think you are; if anything, the only thing I can get away from the way you showed up here today is that you’re so pathetic that you need the emotional support of your little besties to even just talk to me! Or did you guys come here together to beat me up, two and a half of you against one?”
“Hey!” Sarah frowned, outraged by the fact that she had been defined as ‘a half’ just for being in a wheelchair.
Micaela hummed, with a smug little smile on her gloss-tinted lips. “I see you hold up to your reputation, huh? The rude troublesome teenager who once broke the nose of one of her classmates during a fight at school, and who liked to go around the city ruining other people’s property… I heard you even liked to steal!” The girl said, with exaggerated surprise. “Tell me, Izzy: what kind of things did you use to shoplift, back in the day? Was it lipsticks, maybe? No, you don’t really seem the type of girl to be stealing makeup. Was it keychains? Pens? Or maybe even bigger items, like t-shirts?”
“Don’t call me Izzy.” Isabel replied drily, crossing their arms over their chest. “And what I used to do in my past is none of your business.”
“Well, you see, it wouldn’t be if you truly did leave your bad habits in your past.” Micaela countered, that unnerving fake smile of hers still refusing to leave her lips. “But the problem is that you’re still all about taking what’s not yours. And it looks like over the years you’ve stepped up your game, and that now you’re even attempting to steal people’s boyfriends!”
“I haven’t stolen anyone’s boyfriend, nor do I have any intention of doing so.” Isabel replied. “If you really do want to see a leopard that never changes its spots, I’d suggest you look in the mirror: learning how to intimidate other people out of possibly becoming your opponents will surely come in handy for your future career as a politician!”

Micaela took a step closer to Isabel. “You really are an insidious little snake, aren’t you?” The girl said, crossing her arms over her chest. “But then again, no saint has ever ended up looking like that!”
Isabel felt something inside of them snap at those words. “How dare you!” They hissed between gritted teeth, giving Micaela a shove. “You have no idea what you’re talking about!”
Micaela yelped in surprise, but was quick to regain control and return Isabel’s attack. Ursula, who had been standing by her friend’s side the entire time, tried to step in to separate them and hence rescue her friend: “Sarah! Quick, go get help!” The girl exclaimed as she tried to take hold of Isabel.
Sarah promptly nodded, then turned around and sped off with her motorized wheelchair to look for someone.

The trap was set, and Isabel fell for it hook, line and sinker.
Next thing they knew, they were standing alongside Micaela and her two henchwomen in the office of the Coordinator of the Economics faculty. It was only then, as they stood there getting reprimanded by the Coordinator about how such aggressive behavior was unacceptable for a student of a respectable institute such as theirs, that Isabel finally understood the real reason why Micaela had brought her friends along, and her being pathetic had nothing to do with it: Ursula and Sarah’s only purpose was to reinforce Micaela’s version in front of the Coordinator, saying that it was Isabel who had approached Micaela first and attacked her without any real reason, backing their friend up by being direct witnesses of the fight.
Isabel felt themselves boiling with anger - first and foremost at Micaela for playing such an insidious trick on them, then at themselves for having failed to understand in time the other’s true intentions and for having given in like that to her provocations, and lastly getting mad at the Coordinator for his unfair accusations.
‘Why the fuck do these kinds of things only ever happen to me?’ Isabel thought to themselves, fighting with every bit of self-control they had in their body the urge to reach out and throw down to the ground all the stuff on the Coordinator’s desk.

. . .

The intense, energetic beats of the song ‘People = shit’ by Slipknot, whose records Isabel had been blasting at full volume in their room in hope to get all the anger and frustration out of their system through music, came to an abrupt end.
Isabel’s eyes shot open. Much to their surprise, when they turned around to check their record player in the opposite corner of the room, they found Gabriel standing right next to it, holding the cable he had just unplugged from the wall. Isabel’s surprised expression turned into a frown. “Who do you think you are to barge into my room and touch my stuff like that?” Isabel hastily walked over to him and grabbed the record player’s cable with the intention of snatching it away from their friend’s hands and plugging it back in.
But Gabriel didn’t let go. “You and I need to talk about what happened with Micaela.” He said instead.
“Then I’m not the one you have to talk to.”
“Yes you are, since you physically attacked her earlier this afternoon.”
Isabel gave up on their tug-of-war with the record player’s cable and stepped away from Gabriel, turning their back to him. “How the fuck do I keep finging myself in these kinds of situations?” They grumbled to themselves, lifting both hands to their forehead.
“Well?” Gabriel insisted. “I’m still waiting for an explanation.”

“The explanation is that I hate this goddamned school, and my mother for sending me here!” Isabel snapped, turning once again towards him. “I hate the teachers, especially that idiotic Coordinator of my department, and I hate the classmates who make fun of me. But above everyone else, I hate that bitch you have for a girlfriend!”
“Hey. Watch your mouth, Bel!” Gabriel warned them sternly.
The way he was defending Micaela only made Isabel resent the girl even more. “Don’t come at me about watching my mouth: you’re the one that can never keep theirs shut!” They countered without hesitation. “You’ve told Micaela every single thing I’ve told you about me, time after time: she knew what I like or don’t like being called by, she knew about the times I shoplifted when I was a teen, and even about the anger issues I’ve been working to overcome!” They listed, counting each point on their fingers. “She knew about every aspect of my life despite only having talked with me once, and she used every single piece of information you gave her to piss me off and make me go against her!”
“No, that’s not possible.” Gabriel replied, his words coming out of his mouth less firmly than what he’d probably thought they would have. “Micaela would never do something like that!”
“Oh, but she just did. And let me tell you the most important part of this whole ordeal: do you see these?” Isabel continued, pointing to their own face. “That bitch had the audacity to say I deserved them! That’s the meanest thing anyone’s ever said to me - and for your information, my hometown is full of mean people who surely had a field day talking behind my back as much as they wanted after the trial! But even they had the decency not to come and tell me such things in person!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“So your ‘it would only take people one look at you to know that you’re saying the truth about them’ only applies to the people you’re not personally involved with?” Isabel’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “You’re just like the rest of your lot!” They said with a shake of their head, one corner of their lips curled up in disgust.
“I get it, you’re angry. You always seem to have something to be angry about!” Gabriel frowned, irked by his friend’s hostility. “But I won’t let you take it out on me, nor on Micaela!”
“What part of ‘she set up a fight to have the Coordinator punish me’ do you not understand?” Isabel inquired, raising their voice. “And I have every reason to be mad at you too, because this is also your fault! Just because people tell you something about them, it doesn’t mean you can go straight to repeat it to someone else! I want to hear it from you: what else did you tell Micaela? Did you tell her about my story with Lucio - the one single thing about my life that I only ever disclose to people when I’m ready? Did you tell her about The Outcasts?”
“I would never!”

Isabel held his gaze for a moment. “And how am I supposed to know it’s true?” They wondered, shaking their head with a wounded look in their eyes. “Get out of my room.” They then said, turning away.

Notes:

Uncle Quentin is based on a canon G.O. character as well! He’s actually the Quartermaster angel that Aziraphale meets in season one when everyone is preparing for the upcoming Armageddon (as well as being one of my favorite characters design-wise)!

Chapter 19: Of love and other such troubles

“And you’ve got a smile
that could light up this whole town.
I haven’t seen it in a while
since she brought you down.”
(‘You belong with me’ - Taylor Swift)

“Before you tell me once again to leave… I just came here to tell you I’m sorry for the way I doubted your word, yesterday.” Gabriel said. “I should have learned by now that you only get so fired up when people are being unfair, especially to you. Yours was too genuine of a reaction to be just an act, and that’s why I immediately went back to Micaela, after leaving your house. I confronted her about the fight the two of you had, because now I had a completely different version of the facts, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.”
At first, Micaela stubbornly denied everything, outraged by the fact that her own boyfriend would rather believe Isabel’s version rather than hers. But eventually, Gabriel got her to drop the act. “I told her she had to go back to the Coordinator to set the record straight, to tell him that she was actually the one who started the fight. I personally went with her to his office, to make sure she’d actually do it.” Gabriel went on. “Unfortunately, the Coordinator said that you’re still under his observation. He said that you being provoked doesn’t justify the way you reacted and attacked Micaela. But I’m sure that, now that he knows the real reasons that pushed you to act, at least he will be a little less strict with you.”
“I doubt it.” Isabel simply replied. “But thank you for trying, I guess.”

“There is something else I would like to apologize for.” Gabriel said. “You were right: I did open up a little too much with Micaela about what I happen to see or hear throughout the day. I never noticed, but it’s true. I guess it’s because of all those years when I came home from school and I never had anyone to tell about my day, or the things that were happening around me at school; both of my parents have always been quite busy with their jobs, and without Crowley around, well…”
“What about your friends?” Isabel asked him, finally looking up at him for the first time since he sat down next to them. “Why couldn’t you go and tell them about your daily life?”
“I, well…” Gabriel hesitated. “I didn’t really have any friends before coming here.” He confessed after a sigh, his gaze low. “I guess it’s why I ended up overcompensating with Micaela.”
“I have a few things to apologize for, as well; yesterday I said some things I didn’t actually mean, in the heat of the moment.” Isabel admitted. “You’re not ‘like the rest of your lot.’ I’m not even sure if I meant that to be about lawyers and such or about men in general, but in either case it’s not true. I’ve had more than a few people that I used to consider to be my friends turn their back on me, over the years, and I guess that comment came out of that kind of thought…”
“I would never.” Gabriel promised. “I swear, I truly didn’t tell Micaela about Lucio. Those awful things she said to you… it makes me think that she simply deduced on her own what caused your scars, and made her own assumptions about the rest.” He said, grimacing at what his girlfriend had said. “And I also swear I never told her about The Outcasts. Hell, the reason I never told her about Crowley is that he’s in the band as well, and I didn’t know if it was safe enough for me to say I’d met him again or if it would have given something away!” He went on. After studying Isabel’s reaction for a couple moments, “Are we still friends?” He asked them, a hint of an hopeful smile returning on his lips.
When Isabel nodded in reply, Gabriel reached out to wrap his arms around them for a hug. But when he felt them stiffen in his arms, only half-heartedly reciprocating the gesture, Gabriel couldn't help but sadden; they were still partly mad at him, and he couldn’t really blame them for it.

. . .

After grabbing his beer at the counter of the pub, Gabriel took a sip of the drink and entered the next room, mentally preparing himself for what by now had become the weekly struggle of pushish his way through the crowd in the next room to slowly earn himself a spot close enough to the band.
By that time, between all the times he had attended those musical evenings at the pub and the afternoons he had spent hanging out with the four friends in Ezra’s garage for their rehearsals, Gabriel had come enough familiar with The Outcasts’ lyrics as to memorize a good amount of it by heart. And so, with his voice drowned out by the general noise, the young man had recently taken to singing along to his brother’s voice.
At some point, Gabriel’s eyes met Isabel’s. How easy it had become for him to recognize their familiar blue eyes underneath the mask, and the worn out, faded t-shirts they wore to their gigs, always paired with long-sleeved turtlenecks underneath them. His friend gave him a nod before turning again to look somewhere to his right. Following their gaze, Gabriel turned to his right to find Ezra, all intent on filming the band with his phone. Pretty soon, however, the blond boy seemed to acknowledge Gabriel’s eyes being fixed on him, and he turned briefly to greet him with a nod of his head and a half smile before devolving his attention back to his phone.

During the evening, the band introduced a new song of theirs, titled ‘Becky’s Secret,’ which told the story of a teenage girl named Rebecca who felt ashamed at her deepest, darkest secret; unlike the rest of the girls in her class, she didn’t like boys. ‘Becky wishes she was Victoria; her secrets are no big deal,’ the lyrics stated over and over throughout the various choruses, and even if it did take a while for Gabriel to fully understand that play on words, he had to admit that the song’s lyrics really did a great job in conveying young Rebecca’s discomfort; just like the products made by Victoria’s Secret’s brand, lingerie and sex in general were now considered normal and well accepted in modern society, but only if enjoyed with someone of the opposite gender.
Isabel really had a way with words, when it came to their lyrics.
After introducing Rebecca’s situation to the public, however, the song ended on a more optimistic note - stating that, when Becky was with her crush Sarah, all of her worries took a back seat.
As the evening came to a close, Crowley announced that, starting from the following wednesday the band would no longer play there at the pub. When a buzz of complaints arose from the small crowd of students, the masked singer proceeded to reveal the name of the new venue that was going to host their musical evenings for the next few weeks - and for three nights a week, no less! That information seemed to lift the spirits of the people in the room noticeably, and several enthusiastic shouts and whistles filled the air.

- - - - -

“Look, there’s an empty one over there!” Isabel said to their friend, pointing to somewhere in the distance. By the looks of it, most of their fellow students on campus had decided to do like them and take advantage of that lovely sunny tuesday by spending their lunch break outside, and were now occupying every space available on benches, staircases and even on the grass. Luckily for Gabriel, who was already dreading the thought of having to get dirt stains all over his freshly cleaned pants, there was still a vacant seat.
After sitting down on the coveted bench, Isabel took two packs of sandwiches out of their backpack. “I hit the jackpot at the vending machine today; there was already one stuck, so when I put my money in, they both fell down!” They explained. “Do you want one?” They then asked, handing one of the sandwiches to Gabriel.
Gabriel thought back to the takeaway box of salad he had just bought for himself at the cafe. Micaela had openly told him that she didn’t want to have lunch with him, and since he didn’t want to go to the cafeteria alone for fear of running into her and finding her once again in a bad mood, he had opted for a different solution. But a sandwich surely looked more inviting and nutritious than a meager mixed salad. And so, Gabriel gladly accepted his friend’s offer.

As Gabriel and Isabel ate their lunch, they spotted Freddy and Sharon’s familiar figures in the distance. Pretty soon, the two future journalists seemed to notice them as well; Freddy raised a hand to wave at them, then stood up and walked over to their bench, followed in tail by his partner. “Look who we have here!” Freddy greeted them. “How are you guys doing?”
“Pretty good, I’d say. How about you?” Gabriel answered.
“Let’s just say we could have been better off without all the inconveniences that your ‘mission’ has been giving us.” Sharon huffed.
“Ronnie…”
“Okay, okay…! That was a bit overdramatic of me!” Sharon admitted with a sigh. “But still, I would have preferred not to have to share my room with Eve and give her my bed for two whole weeks! I’m an only child, I’ve never had to share my things with a sister!” She then went on, sulking.
“At least it was for a good cause.” Freddy tried to reassure her, giving her a little pat on the shoulder. “And then, now Eve is finally back with her parents, hopefully safe and sound in her home. Any news on the dirtbag she’s running from?”
“My father tried to talk to the Torreses and their lawyer,” Gabriel answered. “But of course, Lucio himself denied any possible compromise, saying that not only he owes Eve nothing - but that she’s the one to owe him for all the things he’s done for her. This only made the Bennetts even more resentful, and more convinced of the actions they wanted to take against him.”
Freddy nodded. “They’re taking him to court, then?”
“For domestic violence on Eve, yes.”
“This means our mission is over, right?” Sharon intervened. “You asked us to help you guys find something useful to use against him, and we did. What fair is fair, and I’d say it’s time to discuss our payment. In particular, I’d like to share with you some ideas I had for that second video interview we agreed upon.” Sharon said to Isabel.
“Ah! There you are!” Another voice exclaimed at that moment, and the four students turned to find Micaela, who was walking briskly towards them. “I have been looking for you. You and I need to talk!” The girl said to Gabriel, not even bothering to say hello. Then, Micaela grabbed her boyfriend by his arm, turning briefly to give Isabel an irritated look as the two of them walked away together.
“Okay…” Sharon said, perplexed by what had just taken place. “So, as I was saying-” But before she could say anything else, her phone rang. “Hello? Ah, yes. Of course.” And with that, the girl excused herself.

“So…” Isabel began to say, once they and Freddy found themselves momentarily alone. “I’ve never had the chance to ask you, but... Do you know that Sharon has an obvious crush on you?” They asked, giving the boy a knowing smile.
“I know, yes.”
“And does she know that you couldn’t love her back even if you wanted to?” Isabel then asked, pointing to the colorful bracelet around Freddy’s wrist.
“So you know what these colors mean, huh?” The other wondered, instinctively covering the bracelet in question with his other hand. For a moment, the two friends remained silent. Freddy sighed, his light-colored eyes clouding. “Yes, Ronnie knows. She was the first person I came out to, actually.” He answered. “She was understandably quite upset. But we talked things through, she shot all of her questions, and she was incredibly patient. She promised me she’ll always be by my side, one way or the other… I hope she means it, and that we’ll always be as close to each other as we are now.” Freddy concluded with a hopeful smile.
“You and I are in the same boat, dear Freddy.”
“How so?”
“My best friend recently confessed she has a crush on me. She’s into girls, and I’m not.” Isabel explained, to which Freddy nodded slowly in reply. “We both know she’ll eventually move on from it, one day - they say the sea is full of fish, and Deb is the most beautiful mermaid I know. Although I have a feeling that, right now, in her mind she’s sworn me eternal devotion or something like that.”
“You and I are lucky, then: we have people by our side who care for us so dearly!” Freddy said with a smile.
Isabel’s own expression softened. “Yeah. We really are.”

Pretty soon, however, their smile faded: “But it still sucks that those who aren’t reciprocated have to suffer like this… Love is really the worst, huh?” Isabel wondered, wrapping their arms around their body.
Freddy twisted his bracelet back and forth, observing briefly the colors of its threads. “I like to think it’s not.” He said. “Are you saying such a thing because of Sharon and that friend of yours, or because you have to watch your new crush suffer because of a girl who isn’t right for him?”
Isabel’s eyes widened. “What- How do you know?”
Freddy tilted his head to one side, giving them a skeptical look. “Please, just because I can’t feel romantic attraction doesn’t mean I don’t know how to recognize it in the people around me!” He replied. Then, his gaze shifted to the point where, in the distance, Gabriel was talking rather animatedly with Micaela, who looked equally as angry. “There are days when I can only see love as a hassle, and I wonder why people are so willing to put up with it.” Freddy went on, pensive. “But then I’m always reminded that, despite the hardships that may come along the way, love can be such a powerful, beautiful thing. That’s why I always try to help couples around me, whenever I can.”
Freddy and Isabel watched Micaela walk away while Gabriel stood there with his arms crossed over his chest and his head hanging forwards in defeat. “What I’m trying to say is… You shouldn’t see your feelings as a burden, even if right now you may not want to have them.” Freddy spoke again, turning back to Isabel. “You’ve got the incredible luck to be born with the ability to fall in love, something that a lot of people spend their whole life wishing they had. And, maybe, your situation is not as hopeless as you might think it is!”

“I-” Isabel attempted to reply, but before they could go on, Sharon was once again by their side; “It was Alyssa, she called me to have me approve her list of articles to upload.” The girl told her co-editor. “Out of all the far better pieces that we were sent, she chose to insert Rick’s! He should go back to middle school to finally learn some proper English grammar, let alone have an article published on my blog!” Sharon scoffed, rolling her eyes. Then, turning to Isabel: “Speaking of which… Where were we, dear?”

. . .

“What’s wrong?” Gabriel asked Isabel, once they flopped back down next to him, hiding their face in their hands.
“Sharon is demanding her interview. Rightfully so, I’d add.” Isabel replied. “The problem is, I have yet to tell the other Outcasts about this whole thing, and I have no idea how they will take it… I just hope they won’t be too mad at me for keeping them in the dark for so long!”
“I don’t think they will.” Gabriel reassured them. “You guys are friends. If you tell them the reasons that led you to agree to Sharon’s deal, I’m sure they will understand.”
Isabel dipped their head in a small, unconvinced nod. “How are you, instead?” They then asked their friend. But the other’s only reply was a tired sigh. “What was Micaela going off about, this time?” Isabel asked him.
Gabriel thought back to the argument he had just had with his girlfriend. By then, Micaela had been giving him the cold shoulder for a week straight, ever since the two of them set foot out of the office of Isabel’s faculty’s Coordinator. As it turned out, Micaela had spent that entire time convinced that Gabriel would have been the first one to give in and break the silence, going back to her to apologize for his behavior. But when they finally met again that afternoon, annoyed by the fact that he wasn’t doing anything about their situation, the girl decided to confront him and ask him if he’d finally come to realize how unfair he had been to her. But Gabriel, appalled by Micaela’s behavior and by her refusal to take accountability for her actions, reminded her that she was the one in the wrong and that needed to make amends, first and foremost to Isabel. Needless to say, such words only made Micaela even more mad at him.
He didn’t really feel like bringing all of that question up once again. So: “The usual drama, I guess.” Gabriel replied instead with a shrug.

“Me and the guys will be hanging out off campus this afternoon. We’re just going to get some ice cream, and maybe stop by the city park. Liam will be joining us too.” Isabel said. “You could come with us as well, if you want.”
But Gabriel shook his head. “Sorry, Bel, but I don’t really feel like it.” He replied. “I don’t think I’d be good company, especially after today.”
“I understand.”
“I thought you said you guys don’t really get along that well with Liam?” Gabriel asked.
Isabel raised their shoulders. “We’re not super close, but we still hang out. Liam never knew, but he and I have known each other for longer than he thinks.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Crowley, Deb and I decided to start a band, we realized we needed at least another musician to join us, so we held a sort of audition.” Isabel explained. Harry and his friend Liam both tried their shot, but in the end Crowley and his friends decided to take in only one of the two. “Liam is undoubtedly a good musician, but he’s not an Outcast. There are some things that I look for in the people that I play with; before being a band, we're a group of friends that look out for one another.” Isabel went on with their explanation. “Liam acts all tough like he was raised in the streets, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. He’s just a rich kid from an old-money family, no matter how hard he tries to hide it; every time he has a problem, he calls up mommy and daddy, and every party he throws is at their mansion, so that he can flex his family’s money in front of his friends. It’s not his upbringing per se, though; after all, all four of us were raised in very different ways. It’s Liam’s overall attitude that didn’t click with the rest of us: underneath his appearance, he’s just as stuck up as his sister is. If you want to see the perfect portrait of everything the Myers family is, she’s the one you have to look at.”
“His sister?” Gabriel echoed. “Who is she?”
“Ursula Myers.” Isabel announced in a mockingly ceremonious tone. “Does that ring a bell?”

. . .

The steady flow of rap music that had been playing from Liam’s phone came to an abrupt stop. “I’m going to take a few drags.” The boy announced, standing up. Debbie, who was laying down next to him, opened her eyes to glance up at him. “I’d have no problem smoking here, but I know full well that Crowley’s not fine with that. Are you guys coming with me?”
“I am!” Isabel said, standing up in turn.
Debbie watched the two of them walk away, then closed once again her eyes, ready to fall back into the blissful feeling of that lazy afternoon under the sun. Pretty soon, however, the phone that Liam had left there on the grass began to buzz, each new incoming message accompanied by the screen lighting up. At first, neither of the three remaining friends paid much attention to it - after all, throughout the entire afternoon, Liam had been doing nothing but texting and sending audio messages to various other acquaintances of his even while he was supposed to be enjoying his time with them. But at the fourth consecutive notification, Debbie, annoyed by the continuous noises, decided to go and give the phone back to her friend.
When she reached for the phone, the girl caught a glimpse of the various unread messages notifications crowding the screen; the majority of them were by…
Debbie’s eyes widened. ‘Uh oh!’

Notes:

I’ve always tried to stick to a pacing of one new chapter uploaded every two weeks, but this one is coming to you guys after a whole month because I got stuck at some point while I was working on it, and so I decided to take some time to work on a different fic to refresh a bit and ease out of the writing block. But now I'm finally back!

Chapter 20: Micaela's Betrayal

Notes:

Do you guys remember that one scene in season one where Gabriel and Michael talk about the existence of ‘backchannels’ between Heaven and Hell (or rather, about Gabriel’s unawareness of such communications) 👀?

“The story of us
looks a lot like a tragedy now.
(‘The story of us’ - Taylor Swift)

“We have a problem, Bel!” Debbie said to her friend, grabbing them by their shoulders. It was really hard for her to wait until the end of the afternoon, when the friend group finally split up to go back to their homes or dorm rooms, but it was a necessary precaution to take if she wanted to avoid having Liam possibly overhearing them. “We have a huge problem!” Debbie repeated, emphasizing her previous statement.
“What’s wrong?” Isabel asked, worried by the urgency in the other’s voice.
“Liam is receiving texts from Micaela. I saw the notifications on the screen of his phone this afternoon, when the two of you were away for a smoke.”
“Okay?” Isabel replied, perplexed by what they were just told. “Ursula is one of Micaela’s besties, we both know that. It makes sense for Liam to know his sister’s friends as well!”
“No, you don’t get it!” Debbie insisted, even more agitatedly. “I read those message previews: Micaela was asking him to meet her in private. She said she’s finally made her decision about something he had previously asked her!”
Isabel’s brow furrowed even further. “You think the two of them are seeing each other?” They asked, realizing where their friend was heading. Debbie simply answered with a nod, a serious look in her aquamarine eyes.

“Please, let that not be true!” Isabel whined, throwing their head back. As much as they hoped that dreadful hypothesis to turn out to be false, they could definitely see Micaela being capable of such vile behaviors. “Okay, tell you what: before jumping to any conclusion, we should look for proof.” Isabel told Debbie, trying to remain rational - at least one of them had to be, after all.
“Damn, you’re spending so much time with Gabriel that you’re starting to speak like a true law school kid!” Debbie joked, earning herself an unamused ‘Deb!’ from their friend. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry…” The girl apologized.
“Now, as I was saying… If Liam and Micaela are really acting behind Gabriel’s back, we should be able to find some evidence in their chats, right?” Isabel went on, resuming their reasoning.
“Well, yes. There definitely should be.”
“Then I’m going to need you to put your special talents in action!”

- - - - -

“Oh. It’s you.” Ursula greeted Isabel upon opening the door, her words and overall attitude reflecting ill-concealed annoyance. “Micaela’s not here.”
“Oh, I know full well she isn’t.” Isabel replied. “You’re the one I want to talk to.”
“Me?” The other echoed, brows furrowing lightly in confusion. “What for?”
“You were willing to get yourself in trouble for Micaela, knowingly breaking the school’s regulations by reinforcing the lies she was spewing to my faculty’s Coordinator.” Isabel said. “I have to admit that, to some degree, I’m amazed at how loyal you are to a friend that has already stolen the position you wanted in your group.”
Ursula rolled her eyes. “Becoming president of my own club would have been amazing, yeah, but I’ll get plenty more chances to win other elections in the future.” She replied, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned against the doorway.
Isabel hummed. For someone who claimed to have accepted defeat so sportingly, Ursula surely looked like she was still quite bitter about her second place. “Keep telling yourself whatever you want about that. In any case, I think you should invest all of that loyalty of yours on someone who actually deserves it.” Isabel said. Then, they pulled out a few folded paper sheets from the pocket of their jacket and handed them to Ursula. “This is what your bestie is really like.”
Isabel turned around, walking away as the other began to scan through the content of those crumpled up papers; screenshots of conversations between Micaela and Liam that ranged from the day the two of them first met at one of Liam’s parties, to their most recent text exchanges that testified black on white how, despite Liam had always circled around her, Micaela had only just recently decided to accept his advances, telling him about how she felt neglected by her current boyfriend.
Isabel surely didn’t have to see Ursula’s face to imagine how indignant she must have been in realizing that her own best friend was using her brother to get a petty revenge.

On their way back, Isabel, feeling they needed a moment to themselves to think, stopped by one of the trees that lined the avenue, leaning against its trunk. The next thing to do was painfully obvious; poor Gabriel had to be informed of everything that had been happening behind his back. He had every right of knowing. And yet, the sole thought of having to be the one to break the news couldn’t help but feel unbearable.
Isabel pulled out their phone and dialed Debbie’s number on the keypad. “So… It’s decided then?” Debbie asked after the initial greetings.
“Yeah.” Isabel said quietly.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be the one to do this? I mean, you’re a lot closer to Gabriel than I am!”
“No.” Isabel shook their head. “You’re the one who found Liam out, and you’re the one who hacked his phone to get access to his messages.” And what a genius move it was, for Debbie to send Liam a seemingly innocuous photo behind which she had hidden a code that allowed her to sneak into his private chats and gather the evidence they needed of his involvement with Micaela. But then again, they had always known Debbie to be amazing.
“Okay, then.” The latter said from the other end of the phone call, even if not completely convinced by that reasoning of theirs.

No - Isabel thought after hanging up the call. They had no intention of being the one to bring even more negativity into what for Gabriel were already tough, tense days. But they were sure as Hell going to be there by his side to try and help him through the storm that was about to break loose.

- - - - -

“Any news on the Legal Research grades?” Matthew asked his son. “It’s already been four days since you took the exam, after all! How long is your teacher going to take?”
Right. The exam. “The grades are already out, actually; the list was published yesterday.” Gabriel said. “I forgot to tell you guys right away, I’m sorry.”
“Well? How did it go?”
“I got a B. The Professor said that my essay was good, but some points could have been further delved into.”
“Merely a B?” Matthew exclaimed. “That’s not at all like you, son! What happened in order for you to get such a low grade? Was the test difficult, maybe?”
“A bit, yes.”
“What did Alphonse get?”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed to thin slits. “I don’t see how Alphonse’s grades would be relevant to you, dad.” Gabriel replied. He’d always tried to avoid being rude or disrespectful towards his parents, but sometimes their comments could be so inappropriate; that day had been pretty darn awful already without the two of them reminding him of a low grade - the lowest mark he’d gotten in years, to be exact - he already felt bad about.
“You always say he spends a lot less time on his books than you do.” Matthew argued. “So, if the Professor was as hard on all of his students as he was on you, I wonder what grade he got-”
“Alphonse got a higher score than me. There, I said it!” Gabriel cut his father off. “Look, I studied, of course I did. I studied as hard as I’ve always done for any other exam. It’s just that… I had a lot on my mind lately!”
“What’s wrong, son?” Francesca asked him, worried by the tiredness in his voice.

“Micaela and I broke up today.” Gabriel confessed.
Such news was followed by an initial silence in which, on the other end of the call, Mr. and Mrs. De Angelis exchanged a surprised look. “I don’t understand. The two of you have always gotten along so well!” Francesca said. “What could have possibly happened to make you want to end your relationship?”
“She’s done some things that I really didn’t like, from trying to put a friend of mine in a bad light when the blame wasn’t theirs, to hitting on another guy behind my back.”
“How can this be?” Francesca wondered, baffled by what she’d just been told. “Micaela has always been such a sweet, nice girl!”
“I used to think that as well,” Gabriel replied, bitterly. “But it looks like people aren’t always what they seem to be…”
“I’m really sorry to hear that. You’d never expect that sort of behavior from someone from a family as respectable as hers!” His mother said, growing sad. “You two seemed like a really nice couple.”
“Actually, things between me and Micaela haven’t been the greatest for a while now.” Gabriel countered. “We’ve been arguing about pretty much everything for weeks, because she always seemed to have something to say about every smallest thing I do! And maybe, the reason you never noticed is that your phone calls and your questions are only ever about my classes and my grades!” Gabriel took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. “Look, this is not a good moment for me. I’ll call you guys tomorrow, okay?”
And with that, he hung up the call, shaking his head.

Not a long time had gone by when he heard a knock on his bedroom’s door. Upon opening it, Gabriel was met by Isabel, who was carrying a grocery bag in one hand and the case of their guitar behind their shoulders. “Bel!” Was all that Gabriel could think of saying, surprised by that unexpected visit.
“Azzy told me you and Micaela broke up.” Isabel said.
“Yeah, I…” Gabriel began to say. “Wait a minute. How does Azzy know what happened?”
“She was told by Alphonse, who personally witnessed the two of you arguing heatedly.” Isabel explained. “As soon as she told me, I went to the convenience store to get some ice cream and I came here. Usually, when I’m feeling down, I cheer myself up with some junk food, or with music - or with both things at once. If you prefer to try the other method that I’ve occasionally resorted to for coping, instead, I know a place where we’ll be able to smash and tear apart as much stuff as we want!”
At first, Gabriel couldn’t find words to say, surprised by the care his friend was showing towards him. “Thank you so much for the thought, Bel,” the young man finally replied, “but I’d rather be on my own for a while.”
Isabel nodded slowly. “Got it.” They said. “That’s… totally understandable.” The way the light in their eyes dulled at his refusal only made Gabriel’s heart somehow even heavier. Isabel lingered there in the doorway for a few more moments. Then, they held out the grocery bag for Gabriel to take. “You can keep the ice cream; I don’t really know what to do with it, anyway.” They said. “If you change your mind, or if you need anything, hit me up.”

After watching Isabel walk away down the hall, Gabriel closed the door and slowly walked over to his bed and flopped down onto the blanket, lying there staring at the ceiling for several long moments. When he finally sat up again, his gaze fell on the label of the ice cream container, which he had absentmindedly placed in a corner of his desk.
Isabel had even gotten him his favorite flavor. He was pretty sure he had only mentioned it once, during one of those early conversations of theirs when they were still strangers figuring each other out, and yet they remembered.
Had it been a different day or a different situation, he would have never declined his friend’s offer; without a doubt, Isabel would have been able to find a way to make him feel better, even with something as simple as those silly jokes that only the two of them could understand, and bring a moment of light to such a dark, sad day. And yet, for some reason, despite how innocuous and legitimate it might have sounded, the thought of ​​having them there with him that night - sitting right next to him on his bed as they ate ice cream together, perhaps scrolling online searching for silly videos to laugh at - couldn’t help but feel wrong to him
Almost inappropriate, even, especially after the things Micaela had said to him.

Chapter 21: Raven black feathers

“Someone explain to me
what do I feel when you talk to me
and you fill my heart with signals.”
(Translated from ‘Qué más da’ - Karol Sevilla, Ruggero Pasquarelli)

“Where are you taking me?” Gabriel asked Isabel as they gently but impatiently nudged his hand, urging him to follow them.
“It’s a surprise!” The other replied, turning briefly to give him an excited smile.
No matter how hard he tried, Gabriel couldn’t quite recognize his surroundings; mere moments ago, they were still surrounded by the familiar brick walls of their campus’ old buildings, but all he could see if he looked around himself now was a lush green meadow, with the cold beams of the street lights replaced by the soft, dim glow of a full moon shining in the sky above them. But as long as Isabel was the one leading the way, he had no reason to be worried.
They were wearing their usual dark, baggy clothes and their usual spiked jewelry. The only exceptional thing about their appearance was a pair of wings peeking out from their back, that earlier that night had allowed them to leap down from the roof of the dormitory and gracefully land in front of him. Such wings were covered in raven black feathers that gently brushed against one another as Isabel moved.

It didn’t take long before the two of them reached a point where the meadow cleared into a sandy shore. Gabriel took a look around, marveling at how beautiful that coastal scenery looked with the reflections of the moonlight on the sea’s calm water. Next to him, Isabel looked just as mesmerized by the view as he was. “Dance with me, Gabe!” They said, turning to look at him. It was so nice seeing them this happy, how could Gabriel say no to their invitation? And so, the young man took the hand that his friend was holding out for him.
Gabriel and Isabel danced on the shoreline, right where the placid waves gently caressed the sand before drawing back, both of them smiling as they swayed and swirled to a song that couldn’t be heard, Gabriel’s hands on Isabel’s waist, and their arms linked around his neck. When their dancing slowed down to a stop, Isabel cupped Gabriel’s cheeks in their hands and, giving him the softest, warmest smile he’d ever seen on their face, they closed the distance that remained between them and gently pressed their lips to his.

Gabriel stared wide-eyed at the ceiling above him. It took him a few solid seconds to fully register that he was still in his dorm room, that the sky outside of the window was still dark, and that he had just dreamt about kissing his best friend.
The very same person that Micaela had accused him of neglecting her for and emotionally cheating on her with. ‘Lord, help me…!’ The young man thought to himself, his grip around the hem of his bedding still refusing to loosen.
What was that dream even coming from? - Gabriel wondered. Was it perhaps the result of the fact that, after Micaela had tried to put the blame on him for her unfaithfulness by saying that he had cheated first, he had spent the past few days sifting through every memory of the most recent months of his life - taking apart each and every interaction he’d had with Isabel to analyze the various emotions he’d felt on each occasion? Yes, that must have been it. But why had his subconscious decided to come up with a demonic version of his friend, with those black wings and the mark on their skin being even more evident than they already were in real life? Was he to consider that dream to be a nightmare, given his friend’s grotesque appearance?
But the most important thing, the one single thought that instantly pushed any other to the back of his mind, was that he had just dreamed of kissing Isabel! At the mere thought of it, Gabriel’s heart started beating a little bit faster. The two of them had kissed - well, not in actual real life, but still… - and nothing about that kiss had felt weird, or awkward, or even unwanted like you’d expect it to get when you try picturing a friend in a romantic light. It was an incontrovertible sign that he liked them, right?

He really needed to talk to someone, as early as he possibly could. Gabriel reached for his alarm clock on the nightstand, only to discover from the glow-in-the-dark hands of the clock that it wasn’t even five a.m. yet.
Gabriel sighed. ‘Way too early.’
And so, rolling onto his side, he prepared to go back to sleep, which he already knew was going to be difficult after such strong emotions. What if once he fell back asleep, his mind would try to continue the same dream as before? - He wondered, feeling a sudden wave of heat spread through his chest.
To try and distract himself, Gabriel made a mental list of possible people he could have turned to later that morning, once everyone else would be up and awake for school. The very frist name that came to his mind was the co-protagonist of his dream, hence the one single person he absolutely could not speak about it with. Then, perhaps in order of proximity, came Alphonse, but Gabriel wasn’t that close to his neighbor next door as to discuss love issues with him. Plus, there was the complication that Alphonse was a direct witness of his breakup with Micaela. What was he going to think of him if, not even a week later, he went and knocked on his door to tell him that maybe he already had someone new on his mind?
Maybe he could turn to Azzy, Gabriel then thought. Based on what Isabel had told him about her, Azzy, who never seemed to have trouble getting dates from boys and girls alike, seemed quite knowledgeable about crushes and romance. But what if Azzy, being her usual chatty self, was then going to immediately report to Isabel what she just was told about them?
No. There was only one person Gabriel really trusted to get advice in such a delicate moment. He just had to hope he would have been willing to listen.

. . .

“…and that’s about it.” Gabriel finished his story. “So, what do you think it means?”
Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Well, it seems pretty obvious.” He simply said.
“Does it mean I like Bel?”
“It would seem so. Not so much for the scene you dreamt itself, though - I don’t really believe in all that stuff about subconscious symbolisms and whatnot. No, I’d be inclined to say that because of the reaction you say you had to such a dream; you kept thinking about it, you replayed the scene over and over in your head… that’s not something I personally would do with someone I know don’t like that way, for example. It would be embarrassing. I think I’d more likely try my hardest to push that image away, you know?” Crowley explained, and judging by the way his lip had curled up in disgust, Gabriel deduced that his brother had actually tried to picture such a scenario in his mind. “Also, there’s what you said about trying to figure out whether you might have a crush by scanning your day to day life.” Crowley went on. “The first time I had a crush, I tried to find a list online of the physical signs that come with being in love, to see if I related to any of them. And do you know what the internet told me? That the first sign that you really like someone is the questioning in itself; you would have no reason to wonder if you have a crush on a friend unless you have already sensed that something had changed between the two of you, or within yourself.”
Gabriel nodded slowly as he ruminated on his brother’s words. That last observation was something he would have ever even considered, but he had to admit it made sense. ‘Micaela was right, then…’ Gabriel thought to himself; some kind of shift must have actually taken place, between him and Isabel, and Micaela was able to notice it long before he could.

“If this is true, if I do like Bel in a romantic way… would it make me a bad person?” Gabriel found himself asking his brother, his voice made thinner by the guilt that was suddenly filling his heart.
“What do you mean?”
“My… ex-girlfriend accused me of having my mind elsewhere while I was still with her.” Gabriel explained.
“Where was your mind, according to her?” Crowley asked, not quite sure of what those words meant.
“Well, with… Bel.” Gabriel answered. “Micaela insisted that the two of us have gotten a bit too close, and especially after last night’s dream, well… I can’t help but wonder if I’m actually the cheater she thinks I am.”
Crowley took his time to think his brother’s situation through. “I don’t think it means anything,” he eventually said. “For whatever it’s worth, I’ve never seen you and Bel acting as anything more than friends. And even if your mind was actually ‘somewhere else’ like your girlfriend said, it was unknowingly. Judging by the way you’re speaking of something as small and inconspicuous as a dream - which, let me remind you, only happened after your breakup - I seriously doubt you ever did things like intentionally hiding texts from her, or physically cheating on her in any shape or form.”
But Gabriel was still unconvinced. “But what if one day I’ll go and do the same thing all over again - unknowingly thinking of someone else while I’m…?” With Bel? “I don’t want to be that kind of person!”
“Then you won’t be.”
“But what if-”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Gabe!” Crowley exclaimed. “Love isn’t perfect, and people aren’t perfect. Congrats for finally joining the real world! No one really knows what they’re doing when it comes to love, especially if it’s the first time around. Stop believing all that bullshit that our parents have been drilling into our brains: a single small mistake won’t lead you straight to eternal damnation!”

Silence momentarily fell between the De Angelis siblings. “All of this is just so incredible!” Gabriel spoke after a while, shaking his head in disbelief. “I mean, me and Bel… I never thought that one day I would be attracted to someone like them!”
“Because of the way they look?”
“No, of course not!” Gabriel quickly countered, offended by that hypothesis. “Do you really think I’m that shallow?”
But much to his surprise and displeasure, his brother’s only reply was an embarrassed shrug; “You always seconded our mother when she criticized people for the way they dress, so…” Crowley said.
“I can’t believe it!” Gabriel said, rolling his eyes. “We’ll get back to this,” he went on, pointing his finger towards Crowley. “But right now do not distract me, please! This is important! What I was trying to say is… I never thought I would like Bel that way because of how different they are from me. I thought I liked Micaela because we were exactly alike.”
“But you weren’t, isn’t that so?”
Gabriel’s eyes saddened. “Yeah, it looks like we weren’t.”
“I have my doubts about what I’m about to say, but… maybe you're more like Bel, then - like the rest of us. Maybe that's why you like them?”

Crowley’s question ignited a chain reaction of thoughts inside Gabriel’s mind: maybe, opposed to his brother’s insinuations about him considering Isabel as less-than, it was actually the other way around. Maybe, with the undeniable allure of a rock musician whose band pretty much ruled their entire campus, and having lived and survived so many traumatic life experiences which made them sound and behave way older than they actually were, Isabel was way out of his league. What could someone as cool and strong and incredible as them find in him, an almost straight A’s kid who barely ever set foot outside of his house without his parents holding his hands?
Was his lack of teenage life experiences and milestones the same reason that had led Micaela to think he wasn’t enough for her?
But if he wasn’t like Micaela, and he surely couldn’t say he shared his brother’s and his friend’s tastes in fashion and in music subcultures… who was he like? Was he like anyone at all? Was that the reason why he always had such a hard time relating to his peers in school?
Gabriel rubbed his face with his hands. “Right now I feel like I no longer know anything at all…” He said with a sigh. “I mean, I’m not even a hundred percent sure of what I feel, yet! And what am I supposed I do, if I do like Bel? They’re my first real friend, and I don’t want to risk ruining what we have by making a wrong move with them!”
“Well, you better get your head straight, then!” Crowley admonished his younger brother. “The last thing Bel needs is to be played on by someone who’s not made up their mind yet. They’ve gone three years without dating, and they plainly said it wouldn’t be an issue for them to remain on their own for the rest of their life. They got hurt pretty bad, the first and only time they gave love a try.”
Gabriel was saddened to hear those words. “Yeah, I know that much,” he said with a nod.

But in addition to the usual pity he felt for his friend whenever he thought about the terrible things that happened to them, this time there was also a different kind of pain weighing down his chest: “So, are you telling me that even if I tried to get closer to them, it would be in vain?” Gabriel asked.
“I don’t know, I would need to further investigate what Bel really thinks of love and relationships, and of you.”
“Would you do that for me?” Gabriel asked, a spark of hope lighting up his dark brown irises.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t think too much of it.” Crowley dismissed him with a huff. “I’m no longer your big bro who does favors for you. And I want you to remember that the person you’re talking about is one of the most important people in my life, and I have no intention of letting you or anyone else hurt them again. Understood?”
Gabriel nodded firmly. Romantic feelings or not, hurting Isabel was something he absolutely had no intention of doing.

“By the way, how did you get so good at listening and giving advice?” Gabriel wondered, after a short moment of silence in which his brother kept his gaze locked on him with a stern glare.
“The rehab clinic.” Crowley replied matter-of-factly. “You remember about that place, right? You guys were the ones who locked me up in there. Well, it was a place full of shrinks who asked all sorts of deep, personal questions, and of poor lost souls who were so desperate to finally vent with someone about their problems that they sometimes even clung to the first stranger they came across in the corridor.”
Gabriel wasn’t sure how to reply, first and foremost due to the spiteful tone with which Crowley was putting on him the blame of a decision that wasn’t even his to begin with, and that their parents had made with his own good in mind so that he could get clean. He already had too much on his mind to also play Minesweeper with his brother, who was likely going to attack him at every slightest wrong word.
The ‘ding’ produced by an incoming notification on Gabriel’s phone broke the stalemate, pulling the boy out of his own head and reminding him that he had arranged to meet that afternoon with…
‘Oh dear!’
Gabriel quickly checked the time on his watch. “I have to go.” He said to his brother, who made an annoyed grimace at his umpteenth attempt to ignore the elephant that was still sitting with them in Crowley’s small living room, taking up most of the available space.

- - - - -

“Hey! You finally made it!” Isabel greeted him with a smile. “We better get going; the others must be already at Ezra’s waiting for us.” They began to say. Pretty soon, however, the expression on their face shifted. “Is everything alright? You’re looking a bit weird.” They asked their friend.
“I… had a weird dream last night. That’s all.” Gabriel replied, trying to shrug the matter away. Was he really that easy to read through?
“Ah!” Isabel nodded. “I’m not really that good at interpreting dreams. My nightmares usually don’t need too deep an analysis to figure out who or what caused them… But maybe, if you tell me what it was about, I can help you figure it out.” They offered.
“Well, I dreamt of a demon,” Gabriel began to explain, carefully picking what information to give Isabel in order to allow them to have a clear picture of it but without giving too much away. “They were dancing with me. I think they were trying to tempt me or something.”
“Did it work?”
“I don’t know, I… I woke up before I could find out.”
Isabel nodded again. “I think your subconscious is trying to tell you to stop making those dumb jokes about demons,” they told him, the amusement in their voice reaching all the way up to their eyes.
At once, the smile Isabel was giving him overlapped with the mental image of the one that the dark-haired demon from his dream gave him right before closing the gap between them, and it was enough to dispel any remaining doubt: ‘They did tempt me alright,’ Gabriel thought to himself, acknowledging the presence of an unprecedented thought at the back of his mind - ‘What would happen if we kissed right now like we did in my dream?’ - and by the small thrill of anticipation that such a question brought with itself.

Isabel gradually stopped smiling. “You’re still feeling down, aren’t you?” They asked their friend. “I can always tell when you zone out like that and get lost in your thoughts.”
Gabriel blinked, taken aback by that question. “Feeling down?”
“Yeah, well, you know… for your breakup with Micaela?” Isabel reminded him, somewhat puzzled by his reaction. “I mean, she was a real scumbag for acting behind your back the way she did, but I’m well aware that your partner being the one in the wrong doesn’t make the breakup any easier.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess I am.” Gabriel said. After a couple moments, however, the spark of a new idea replaced the clouds in his eyes. “Say, when you offered me to try and use music as a way to cheer myself up… Is that still up?” The young man asked.
“Of course.”
“Perfect, because there’s something I would like to try out.” Gabriel said. “See you directly at Ezra’s. I need to stop by my room first!” He then announced, waving goodbye to Isabel leaving them to wonder the cause of such a sudden burst of enthusiasm.

Chapter 22: New harmonies

“Could it be: you were right here beside me
and I never knew?
Could it be that it’s true that it’s you?”
(‘Could it be’ - Christy Carlson Romano)

“Gabriel says he’ll be here soon.” Isabel announced, standing at the center of the garage in front of the other three members of their band. “While we wait for him, I have something important to tell you guys.” Isabel took a deep breath, preparing themselves to tell their friends about their deal with Sharon and Freddy, and about the interview that was going to put an end once and for all to their anonymity.
“You guys have decided to try and go at Lucio through legal ways once again, then?” Debbie asked her friend once they were done explaining. “Is that why we’re no longer trying to summon some big bad creature from the underworld to give him what he deserves?”
Isabel’s only reply was a nod.
Debbie briefly turned to Crowley and Harry, to make sure that her friends were on her same wavelength. And from the looks on their faces, they were. “There was no reason for you to be so afraid to tell us, Bel.” Debbie said, standing up from her seat behind her drums to take Isabel’s hands in hers. “Having people find out our identities doesn’t really change anything for us. I mean, it’s been amazing to have this aura of mystery around us, but with or without masks we’re still the coolest band this city has ever seen! The only thing that matters is if you’re okay with coming unmasked.” Debbie reassured her friend.

Luckily, before Isabel could unintentionally end up exposing the fact that, in reality, they were not fine with that prospect at all, someone knocked on the garage’s door. The four members of The Outcasts fell in attentive silence, listening carefully until the very last knock of the sequence to make sure that it was indeed their code word.
When this proved to be correct, Isabel went to activate the garage’s shutter door for Gabriel. “What’s that?” Isabel exclaimed in surprise upon noticing the hard-shell case that the boy was carrying with him. “You mean that, all this time, you knew how to play a musical instrument and you never told me?”
“It’s just that… Music is you guys’ thing and, well, I didn’t want to intrude.”
“Don't be ridiculous, music is everyone’s!” Isabel countered. “Come on, now: show us what you’ve got in there!” When the other followed their instructions, opening the case to reveal a violin, Isabel hummed. “Fair enough. You never looked like you would be the type for drums or electric guitar.”
“Mama raised us on classics…” Crowley chimed in. “One of us just didn’t grow out of it.”

“Say, dude…” Harry said to Gabriel, ignoring Crowley’s comment. There was a pause, in which the rest of the group wondered what the boy could possibly be about to say. “Is it true that you can make mosquito noises with that thing?” Harry finally spoke, making Debbie facepalm at such a silly question.
Gabriel chuckled in amusement. Then, taking position with his violin, he slid the bow along the strings to produce a high-pitched, ungraceful sound that resembled very closely the buzzing of a mosquito. Harry seemed very pleased with that result, laughing at the impression.
“Okay, okay. Animal impressions are a cool perk. I’ll admit that much. But now, an even more important question is…” Isabel spoke, reaching for their guitar and securing the instrument’s strap across their body. “Does your instrument also serve as a useful weapon?” Isabel asked, shifting the position of their guitar and aiming it at Crowley like it was some sort of shotgun.
The other seemed to take being held at gunpoint fairly well; “Oh-oh! You’re so going to regret this!” Crowley said, quickly standing up from his chair to grab his bass and wear it in a similar fashion. Mimicking with their mouths the sound of projectiles being fired, Isabel and Crowley kept aiming at one another, occasionally ducking or stepping aside to dodge the invisible bullets.

Amused by their play and eager to try and take part in the fun, Gabriel looked down at his violin. What kind of weapon could his instrument be turned into? It was surely too small to serve as a shotgun like his brother’s, but at the same time way too big and of the wrong shape to be held like a handgun, and the wooden belly of the violin made it too large to be a sword.
Eventually, an idea finally flashed in his mind.
Gabriel lifted the violin up to his neck, but holding it so that the instrument’s bout be facing outwards. Then, aiming at Isabel, the young man slowly moved the violin’s bow back towards him, to then rapidly slide it towards his friend as if it was an arrow shot by a crossbow.
Isabel immediately stopped in their tracks, bringing a hand up to their chest. Letting out a whine, they took a couple of wobbly steps backwards before dramatically collapsing on the beanbag. “Ugh! I wasn’t expecting a crossbow!” Isabel spoke after playing dead for a couple seconds, lifting themselves back up to a seated position. “Phenomenal one, Gabe!”
A smile formed on Gabriel’s lips. ‘You have such a wonderful laugh,’ he found himself acknowledging as he watched the amused expression on Isabel’s face. ‘I’ll do everything I can to always make you this happy.’
“Come on, now, guys; let’s get serious.” Isabel stood up. “Play us something, Gabe.”

When the latter got ready and began to play, it only took a few bars for Isabel to recognize the very familiar rhythm of the song Gabriel had chosen; “John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’? Really?” Isabel asked.
“It’s the first song I was taught in music school,” Gabriel said, almost apologetically, raising his shoulders just enough to shrug without unbalancing the violin. “Rather than some piece of classical music, I thought this might be something you guys could be more familiar with.”
But it didn’t take long before Isabel’s confused smile softened, and soon enough they were joining him without a missed beat. Then Harry joined in as well, and then Debbie, and eventually even Crowley.
“We sound like a bunch of middle schoolers in music class!” Debbie exclaimed once the song was over, throwing her head back as she laughed.
“This is surely not the kind of music we’re used to rock out to,” Isabel conceded, “but we do make a nice harmony together!” Then, the young musician reached down to grab something from their backpack. “Here,” they said, handing Gabriel a few music sheets stapled together. “Let’s see how you do with one of our songs. I’ll play my part like usual, it’s the one underlined in orange marker. Try to keep up and play the same bars, and we’ll see how it sounds. Okay?”

. . .

“Good thing we’re starting to get some decent money from our gigs!” Isabel told Debbie as they all walked towards campus. “Just a couple more evenings at the bar, and then I’ll finally have enough cash to get a new laptop. That damned old wreck kicked the bucket for good, this time! I even lost some stuff that I needed for school!”
“Let me take a look at it, maybe I can find a way to recover your data.” Debbie offered.
But Isabel shook their head. “It just won’t turn on anymore. Maybe it’s just like what happened that time with my phone; the tech guy I brought it to said it was the motherboard, and that there’s nothing that can be done in those cases.”
“I’m very happy to hear you guys are getting called more and more often to play! Gabriel, who had been walking in silence behind his friends, desperately trying to find something to latch on to finally take part in their conversation, spoke. “I heard you were even hired for a private birthday party by someone here on campus!”
“Yeah,” Isabel smiled. “It was pretty rad. I hope we’ll get to be called for more parties in the future!”
“I hope so as well! In the meantime, don’t forget that, aside from your musical engagements, you also have to focus on your upcoming exams! Specifically, in a few days you’ll be having-”
“Math. I know.” Isabel finished the sentence for him, annoyed by yet another reminder.
‘Agh! No, I didn’t mean to make you mad!’ Gabriel grimaced, very glad that Isabel couldn’t see it. But before he could find a way to recover from that mistake, Isabel went on: “I already told you…”
This time it was Gabriel’s turn to interrupt them: “... that Debbie is going to take care of it. Yeah, yeah, alright.” He said. ”I just… I hope you guys have already started to prepare, at least! I don’t want you to fail your exam again!” There! - Gabriel thought to himself, satisfied at his own reply: voicing how much he cared about Isabel was surely going to make it right by them. Hopefully.
In fact, Isabel briefly turned towards him, a much gentler gaze in their light blue eyes. “I won’t.” They reassured him.

The slightest hint of a smile formed on Gabriel’ lips, and the boy held Isabel’s gaze until they turned back to their friend. “Oh!” Gabriel said, suddenly remembering the other thing he’d been wanting to say. “Debbie, there is something I would like to ask you about the private lessons you give.”
The red-haired girl stopped in her tracks, causing her friends to stop walking as well. “The… what?” She echoed, frowning in confusion.
“Well, the help you’re giving Bel with their courses. They told me you’ve also helped many other students pass their exams well. I think that’s a really nice thing of you to do!” Gabriel flashed her a polite smile.
Debbie turned briefly to look at Isabel, then back to him. “Oh. Thanks?”
“You must be very smart, to be able to help other people with topics you’ve never studied!” Gabriel complimented Debbie, impressed by her skills.
“Well, it’s not really about the subject itself; it’s only a matter of seeing if I can crack the code or not.” The other explained. “Once I have that figured out, the whole process is rather easy.”
Gabriel nodded. It was truly just a matter of finding the most effective study method. Just like he thought. “How much do you charge for tutoring?” The young man asked Debbie.
“You, out of all people, are interested in my services?” the other wondered in surprise, and her reaction made Gabriel regret having uttered those words out loud.

If someone had told his middle school or even high school self that one day he was going to find himself asking other students for tutoring just like those classmates of his who struggled to maintain a passing grade did, young Gabriel, who always deemed himself to be smart enough to make it on his own, would have surely been horrified.
Yet, at the big age of nineteen, now he was finally ready to admit that it was a necessary humiliation; after the results of the Legal Research exam, as he looked back on his first few months of his college life, Gabriel had come to realize that, perhaps, the study method he had always used wasn’t really the right one for him. All of his relatives, as well as several family friends, had always complimented him on his impeccable grades, but no one ever stopped to acknowledge the fact that, in order to obtain them, Gabriel sacrificed so many hours each day that he was barely able to have a life outside of studying.

But when he opened his mouth to answer, what came out of it was Isabel’s voice: “No, he’s not!” They answered Debbie’s question firmly. “Gabe is having some sort of existential crisis because for the first time in his life he didn’t get an A in a test, but he’s surely not in a bad enough place as to need tutoring - especially from you!”
“Oh. Okay, then.” Debbie shrugged, the expression on her face revealing she was just as perplexed as Gabriel was by Isabel’s reaction.

Chapter 23: Special delivery for Bel Maxwell

“Everyone is asleep,
it seems like you’re the only one
awake in the whole world.
But you’re not alone,
although you’re the only one for me.”
(Translated from ‘Occhi rossi’ - Coez)

Looking back on it, that month of May had started off pretty well for Gabriel.
First of all, there were his newfound feelings for Isabel, something which existence he was more certain of with each passing day, and that brought a breath of fresh air in his life: Gabriel now woke up every morning feeling a little happier than usual, knowing that he would see his friend again in a matter of hours, and he even began to acknowledge the presence of those renowned ‘butterflies’ flapping their wings and taking flight inside of him every time he was around Isabel.
The sudden arrival of those little winged insects inside of his stomach led Gabriel to a not very pleasant reflection: why did their presence feel so foreign to him? Shouldn’t have he recognized that sensation as familiar, considering that he had already dated someone before? Were those few months that had gone by since he first met Micaela long enough to make him forget what he used to feel like in those early days, or was he unable to recognize that fluttering inside of him because it was never there in the first place?

The more time he spent analyzing himself and the physical responses that Isabel caused in him, the more Gabriel realized that, while his relationship with Micaela had unfolded exactly the way love stories were always described to him - a boy meets a girl who he finds good looking and attractive, she asks him out to have coffee together, and through conversation they discover that they have interests in common that then lead them to get even closer - the sensations that should have come with that first, most exciting phase of a blossoming love weren’t as intense as what he now felt for his new crush. Another thing that lacked, now that he noticed, was that quite literal electric spark that ran through him whenever his and Isabel’s hands accidentally touched.
Accompanied by a sting of an unpleasant feeling, one more question hence crept in Gabriel’s mind: could the truth be that he started dating Micaela for no other reason than the fact that she was the first girl to notice him, to pick him amongst all the people that were there that day at their campus’ fundraising event, and to make him feel seen and special?

He was so shocked by all those reflections that, one day, he made the dangerous mistake of confessing them to Isabel themselves; he had come to realize that things with Micaela hadn’t felt the same, he told them, only to then instantly bit his tongue, mentally scolding himself for the way he had almost given himself away.
“The same?” Isabel echoed, confused by those words. “The same as what?”
“Well, you know… those sensations that everyone talks about.” Gabriel explained awkwardly. “Butterflies in your stomach, getting chills when you touch the other person… things like that.”
Isabel nodded, falling silent for a long moment as they seemed to ponder those words. Then: “Yeah, well… For me it wasn’t the same either, with Lucio.”

- - - - -

Rather providentially, four days before Isabel would take their repair exam, thanks to a conversation he casually overheard between some of his classmates that were talking about the ‘superheroine’ who was going to save them from failing their classes, Gabriel suddenly came to understand the true nature of the help that Debbie offered to her peers; hacking her way into the personal files of the teachers of the various students who turned to her, she would then steal the lists of answers to quizzes. Gabriel couldn’t absolutely allow Isabel to use the same subterfuge to pass their exam; his friend was already under close observation by their Coordinator, and another violation of the school’s regulations - one as serious as academic dishonesty, no less - was almost certainly going to cost them the rest of the semester.
Eventually, after a little bit of pestering, Gabriel was able to persuade Isabel to face the issue, offering them his help to prepare for the exam with the erroneous conviction that it would have been an easy task. But the kind of functions that his friend needed to learn for their course were nothing like the integrals and logarithms he had grown so familiar with in high school.
During one particularly intense study session, both Isabel and Gabriel ended up raising their voices, shouting confused instructions at one another on how to solve the various exercises as neither of them really knew what to do. But then, at once, they both fell silent, staring at each other for a moment before bursting into laughter. Once the stress had eased a bit, the two of them were able to resume their calculations more calmly.

All of their efforts eventually paid off; Isabel passed their math exam with a decent, although perhaps not beautiful, C.

- - - - -

Throughout the month, The Outcasts kept actively involving Gabriel in their rehearsals, gradually working out new arrangements for a few of their songs.
Between one take and the other, the four friends taught him new ways to play around, such as communicating exclusively through their musical instruments by finding the notes that best matched the sounds of each syllable of the actual words they wanted to speak. Gabriel had to admit that such a language was everything but easy to decipher, but once he eventually managed to get the hang of it, he felt like he had just been given the key to an even stronger bond with the rest of the group.

One day, Isabel showed up to band practice wearing a rather unusual outfit: the bottom of their dark t-shirt, this time a Green Day one that featured the iconic heart-shaped grenade from the cover of one of the band’s most famous albums, was tucked underneath the waistline of a pleated black skirt adorned with a chunky-looking belt and a chain. The skirt stopped just above Isabel’s knees, leaving their skinny legs, which for the day were covered by fishnet tights, exposed. Lastly, to complete the outfit, the young guitarist was wearing a pair of calf-high boots covered in so many buckled straps that it looked like they would have been nearly impossible to get into, had it not been for the long zippers on the inner side of the shoes.
“You in a skirt? I thought Hell would freeze over before the rest of us would see this day!” Gabriel joked.
Isabel seemed to appreciate the joke; “Wait, you’re right! I forgot to check if those guys down there with their pointy horns and their pitchforks have already opened their first ice skating rink!” They played along. “I’m itching, right now! I really hate how this thing feels and swishes and moves around,” they then went on, moving their hips to make the skirt swing and demonstrate their point, “and I’m already counting down the minutes until I can get back home and change into my comfy old boy clothes. But today we’ll have an amazing sister joining our rehearsals and, since I know damn well how hard it is to be a girl, she needs all the support I can offer her.”
At first, Gabriel couldn’t understand who Isabel could be referring to: hadn’t they all pledged secrecy, in order to only disclose The Outcasts’ real identities when strictly necessary? Did Isabel invite Eve over?

The answer to that question, however, couldn't be farther from what Gabriel expected; it wasn’t long, in fact, before Crowley appeared into the garage, dressed entirely in women’s clothing from head to toe, going as far as to include high-heeled shoes, jewelry and even a touch of makeup.
Debbie’s snickering was the first sound to break the silence that had come to blanket the garage; “Look at his face!” The girl said, giving Harry a light nudge to draw his attention to the shocked expression on Gabriel’s face. “I’m telling you, he’s about to have a heart attack!”
It was only when he noticed his older brother staring right back at him, seemingly hurt by his open-mouthed reaction, that Gabriel snapped out of his momentary trance: “Wow! You- you look… amazing, dressed like this!” He stammered, trying to sound as genuine and encouraging as possible. “I- I mean it! Amazing outfit! So… from now on I should start referring to you as… as my sister?”
“You can just use the term ‘sibling’, if it’s so much of a bother to you. That one’s neutral, at least.” Crowley replied. “But whatever is fine, I guess. I’m used to people not respecting what I say anyway.”
“But I want to.” Gabriel quickly countered, determined to prove once and for all to his brother that he was nothing like the opinion of him he had been so stubbornly clinging to. “So tell me what you prefer, and I promise that I will go by that.”
Crowley held his gaze for a moment. Then: “Well, in that case, yes: until I’ll tell you otherwise, I’ll be your sister.”

- - - - -

“For me it wasn’t the same either, with Lucio.”
Gabriel let those words run through his mind at least ten times in a row, the day in which Isabel uttered them, and then some more times as he got ready to sleep later that night.
The average of repetitions, then, lowered to five times per day all throughout the following week.

Had Isabel simply meant to say that things between them and Lucio didn’t feel the same as the start of average love stories told by other people? Most likely.
Yet, a faint hope grew and spread like wildfire inside Gabriel’s mind: what if Isabel had actually used that ‘it wasn’t the same’ to compare their feelings for their ex with a new, more recent crush just like he had done with Micaela?
There was only one way to find out: he had to observe his friend more closely, and try to pay attention to all those small details that dating advice websites always seemed to lay stress on. But Isabel was everything but easy to read: if one day they were their usual playful self and they would sit leaning against his side with their head on his shoulder or stand around when it was time to part as if they didn’t want to leave, the next they would shun even the smallest instance of physical contact and keep their distance. Like that one time Gabriel had noticed a small annotation of a bunch of musical notes in a corner of Isabel’s notebook, for example: with the intention of starting conversation, Gabriel had asked them about it, wondering if it was a new song they were writing for the band, but Isabel had snapped their notebook shut, saying that it was nothing with the same panicked face of a kid who was caught red-handed eating chocolates behind their parents’ backs.
While those instances of standoffishness left Gabriel with an unpleasant ache in his chest, the young man wasn’t sure whether to take Isabel’s oscillating behavior as a sign of a lack of interest in him, or if it was rather just the product of the stressful times his friend had been facing.

That joyful atmosphere of those sunny first days of May, in fact, pretty soon gave way to progressively bigger and darker clouds that, towards the end of the month, came to cover the entire surface of the sky above their heads.
It all started on a specific day, when Isabel went up to Gabriel with an envelope in their hands, holding it up in front of him as if it was some kind of trophy. “It’s a summons.” They told him, noticing the perplexed look in his eyes. The proud smile they had greeted him with mere moments prior was now quickly beginning to crack, betraying nervousness behind apparent excitement. “Your father wants me as a witness for the trial.”
After receiving a motion from the Torres family’s lawyer to prevent him from making any mention to the first case in which Lucio was involved, since his young client was declared not guilty of that charge, and talking about the old trial could have lead the new jurors to develop prejudices against him, Matthew De Angelis had decided to still try and have Isabel in his list of witnesses to have them talk about the controlling and manipulative nature of the young man as his former partner. Luckily, this time the judge had nothing to object.

- - - - -

“It was a mistake.” That was the first thing Isabel said to him when they met, dropping their backpack unceremoniously on the ground to then sit down next to him and hide their face in their hands.
“What are you talking about?” Gabriel asked in confusion, taken aback by such an entrance. “Did something happen?”
Isabel remained motionless for a couple more moments, then, finally, their face peeked out from their hands. “I had another nightmare last night.” They said.
Gabriel was saddened to hear that. He had lost count of how many his poor friend had reported having over the past month or so. They never went too much into detail with him when it came to the frightening images that haunted their sleep, but the effect that those nightmares had on them was always quite obvious in their wake time.
“It was probably the worst one I’ve had in a very long while, and it was enough to finally open my eyes.” Isabel continued. “Everything we’ve been doing was nothing but a mistake; I shouldn’t have let your enthusiasm persuade me, I shouldn’t have let my hopes up about finally getting some kind of justice against that asshole. We shouldn’t have asked Freddy to snoop around on him, because we did, and look at where it led us: to a new trial which I should have refused to testify in!”
“What, you would have preferred for Lucio to keep abusing his new partners for the rest of his life without ever facing any consequences for it?” Gabriel asked in surprise.
“No, of course not!” Isabel countered. “It’s just… you weren’t supposed to get involved in all of this! This is my life, my own problems, you should have let me keep trying with my own methods! Maybe you should have never learned about all of this in the first place…”

Gabriel couldn’t help but feel hurt by those words; there they were, trying to shut him out once again. “Stop fighting everyone who tries to do something for you!” The young man said to his friend. “You’ve spent half of your life thinking you’re one against the whole world, but you’re not. I’m here, and I really care about you, and this means that if I see you suffer I can’t just… stay put and do nothing about it!”
“I don’t want your help if it means putting yourself in danger!” Isabel objected, agitated. “The nightmare I had last night, I... I saw everything happen right before my eyes again.” They then said, and it didn’t take long for Gabriel to realize what event they might be referring to. “It’s not by far the first time I’ve had this dream, but what truly scared me was that, for the first time, it wasn’t me!” The fearful look in Isabel’s eyes was enough to make Gabriel’s heart sink; were they trying to say that he was the victim of such a terrible dream? “How many times do we hear about criminals who, after serving their sentences, took their revenge on the lawyers and the witnesses who caused their conviction?” Isabel went on. “You’re the son of the prosecuting attorney, and I don’t want you to risk getting hurt because of me!”

Next thing Gabriel knew was the feeling of Isabel’s body pressed against his, their head against his chest and their arms tightly wrapped around his torso. “It won’t happen,” the young man said, taken aback by that sudden burst of affection.
“How do you know?”
Gabriel opened his mouth to reply, but no sound came out from his parted lips. He didn’t, that was the truth. How could he?
His silence was a loud enough answer to Isabel’s question, and it only fueled their pre-existing worries. “We’ll get ourselves in so much trouble…” They whined feebly, as a first tear slid down their cheek.
“Everything’s going to be okay, I can feel it,” Gabriel tried to reassure them, running a hand gently up and down their back. All he could do was pray for that to actually turn out to be true and, for the time being, offer Isabel a desperately needed chance to lay their armor down and to vent their pent up emotions.
For a brief moment, Gabriel felt an instinctive urge to lean down and place a kiss on the top of their head, though he eventually decided it was best not to attempt such a bold move, in order not to cross boundaries that they might have not wanted him to move past.

Instead, he kept gently stroking Isabel’s back as he listened to the half-coherent sentences that they were managing to say between their sobs, each hitch in their breath only reinforcing his desire to finally see their former partner get what he deserved in the upcoming trial.
The two of them remained like that for a long time, until Isabel’s breathing slowly went back to a more regular rhythm.

Notes:

Hey look! These guys know how to speak music too!

Chapter 24: The trial

“It’d be so easy just to run,
it’d be so easy to just give up.
But I’m not that girl who gon’ turn my back,
there’s no turning back.”
(‘Don’t look down’ - Ross Lynch, Laura Marano)

The feeling of a warm hand closing around theirs snapped Isabel out of their thoughts, peeling their attention away from the imposing building of the courthouse that they had been staring at. Turning sharply, Isabel’s gaze was met by Gabriel’s warm, deep brown irises. “Are you ready?” He asked them.
“If I have to be honest, I really wish I could just turn around and drive back home,” Isabel admitted.
Gabriel pressed his lips together. He hated seeing them so wrought up.
The previous afternoon, his friend told him that they had tried to contact their father in preparation for the trial. To answer the unspoken questions in Gabriel’s perplexed frown, Isabel then proceeded to explain that, ever since their father passed away, they had often attended séances in order to get a word of comfort or advice from him that could help them get through some of the toughest moments of their life.
That day’s séance, hosted by a rather eccentric medium known as Madame Tracy, was no different. But even though Isabel's father used the medium’s voice to reassure his child that everything was going to turn out alright, for the first time in their life Isabel found themselves unable to believe his word.

Gabriel scanned through the drawers of his mind to try and find something that could ease Isabel out of their worried state. “Remember, Belz: there is nothing out there that can scare someone as powerful as the Lord of the Flies.” He eventually said.
At first, Isabel seemed rather puzzled by such a sentence of his. Then, the look on their face shifted upon recognizing their old inner joke; “I think he’s likely scared of holy water, if anything,” they said, a hint of an uncertain smile forming on their lips. “But I think I get what you’re trying to say.”
It was only then that the two friends acknowledged the fact that their fingers were still intertwined. Isabel lowered their gaze towards their joined hands, drawing Gabriel’s attention towards it as well. For a moment, he feared that Isabel was going to withdraw their hand, but they didn’t.
But while he would have loved to linger in that moment forever, Gabriel could already see the Bennett family getting closer to where the rest of them were standing as they waited for the trial to start. So, after giving his friend’s hand a gentle squeeze for encouragement, he begrudgingly untangled his fingers from theirs.

Gabriel watched Isabel walk over to their mother, and then Mr. and Mrs. Bennett as they walked up to his father to greet the lawyer with a smile and a handshake.
Eve, instead, came to stand right next to him. The two exchanged a few brief words about what was about to take place in the courthouse. Then, at once, Eve changed the subject of the conversation: “You and Bel look really cute together,” the girl said, smiling at Gabriel before briefly glancing over to his dark-haired friend. “Seeing that they were eventually able to move on and start dating again is almost enough to make me hope that one day I might be able to do the same. Everyone says that this world does have more to offer than what happened to me and Bel - than what happens to so many of us women all over the world - and that there are plenty of men out there that don’t see their partners as mere objects that they can do everything they want to… But as of right now, I don’t think I want to try and find out if it’s true.” Eve went on, sadness clouding her dark brown irises as she kept her arms wrapped around her body. “No offense, of course.” The girl added after a moment of tense, heavy silence between them, smiling awkwardly.
But how could Gabriel ever blame poor Evelyne for having such a negative opinion of men after everything she’d been through? “Of course!” Gabriel reassured the girl.

He was about to correct her about the fact that he and Isabel were actually just friends, when Crowley’s words echoed once again in his mind; “They’ve gone three years without dating, and they plainly said it wouldn’t be an issue for them to remain on their own for the rest of their life.”
He just couldn’t break Eve’s feeble hopes even further in such a delicate moment by revealing that he wasn’t even sure Isabel had actually moved on quite yet.
Instead, hoping in his heart that Eve’s misperception could turn out to be propitiatory for his and Isabel’s relationship, Gabriel remained silent.

. . .

Gabriel took a look around, scanning one more time the courtroom’s layout; Eve and his father were sitting right in the front row in the prosecution’s desk, with Eve’s parents sitting in the row of benches right behind them. In a similar fashion, on the left side of the room, there were Lucio Torres and his lawyer, backed up by Mauricio and his wife Angela in the row behind them alongside a tall, muscular man - presumably a bodyguard working for the family.
A few rows behind, well outside the main focus of the legal procedure that was about to take place, were Gabriel and Isabel, who had chosen that particular seat saying that it would have prevented Lucio from noticing their presence until strictly necessary. In order to avoid any attention, in fact, Isabel had even made sure to be the last person to enter the room, their face partially hidden by the hood of a jacket that they then removed as soon as they took their seat. The courtroom overall seemed to be quite crowded, the heavy-looking wooden benches occupied for the most part by unfamiliar faces that neither Gabriel nor Isabel had ever met before. Clearly, the negative reputation around the Torreses had attracted quite a few onlookers, so much so that the family had expressly denied access to the courtroom to the various press representatives who had gathered that morning outside of the building.

Gabriel’s gaze wandered over to the side of the room where the jury, twelve strangers of all ages and sizes, was seated. The number of female jurors exceeded the males by one. His father had kept him in the dark about most of the decisions he’d made regarding the preparation of the trial, but Gabriel was sure that having more women in the jury was a ploy on his part to try and have a higher chance of the jury sympathizing with Eve. Gabriel’s gaze lingered for a moment on one of the jurors, a skinny boy with a lush mop of blond curls on his head who was looking around himself boredly as they all waited, and he couldn’t help but marvel at how young he looked; the two of them might have even been of the same age.

Finally, the judge entered the courtroom, and with a firm bang of his gavel, the trial against Lucio Torres began.
Gabriel listened intently to his father’s opening statement, and found himself heartened by the confidence in his voice; he sounded prepared and professional, just like Gabriel had always seen him. Everything was going to be okay.
Once the Torres family’s attorney delivered his own opening statement, Matthew De Angelis began to present the evidence that the police had collected throughout their investigation on Lucio; firstly, Matthew ran through the transcripts of the chats between him and Eve, from which the lawyer read some excerpts - such as the time when Lucio sent his girlfriend dozens and dozens of consecutive messages worrying about why she wasn’t online simply because she wasn’t replying to him right away, or the day when, having learned that Eve was with some girl friends of hers he didn’t approve of, he ordered her to go back home to him immediately.
After reading those concerning text exchanges, Mr. De Angelis called Evelyne Bennett to the witness stand. The lawyer began his examination by asking his young client a few questions about herself, so that all present in the room could get to know her as an almost nineteen years old girl of fairly humble origins, who had recently graduated from high school after a lot of efforts and hard work, and whose dream in life was to become an esthetician. The Torreses’ lawyer objected, asking what relevance such information about Eve’s private life could have for their case, but Matthew replied without missing a beat that it would have shed light on the evident social, cultural and economic differences between Eve and her boyfriend, and the power imbalance originated by such factors.
The objection got overruled.

Throughout the rest of Eve’s examination, Matthew De Angelis went over the next pieces of evidence, the medical records of the instances in which Eve had ended up needing medical assistance because of her boyfriend’s anger outbursts, pausing the reads to ask Eve to explain what happened on each of those occasions. The entire time, Eve kept her gaze locked down on her hands that she kept on her lap, answering her lawyer’s questions with a voice so feeble that it was barely audible to the rest of the people in the room. Having to talk about such personal matters in front of a crowd of complete strangers was no easy task, especially for a girl that had never even confessed to her own parents a good number of the things she had to go through.
When he was done examining his client, Matthew De Angelis called to the stand two more people whose testimonies contributed further details about the situation: firstly, a friend of Eve’s talked about the girl’s negative mental state in later stages of her relationship with Lucio, and about the fact that, having picked up on some of the young man’s unhealthy behaviours long before Eve did, she had tried to help her notice in time the bad turn that things between them were starting to take. But no matter how hard she tried to open her friend’s eyes, Eve wouldn’t listen to reason, strenuously defending her boyfriend saying that it was just a particularly stressful period for him, and that that angered, more violent version of himself wasn’t the real him.
Then, the audience listened to the doctor who took care of Eve when in March she ended up in the hospital after a suspicious fall down the stairs; when he talked to his young patient, the doctor recalled, the girl seemed rather nervous. And while he knew that it could be understandable for someone who had just gotten injured, he couldn’t help but notice that Eve seemed just as tense, if not even more, around her boyfriend, when the young man visited her later that afternoon. An objection raised from the defense that the doctor was making assumptions on the dynamics between them, and this time it got sustained by the judge.

Eventually, came Isabel’s turn to be called to the stand. Gabriel turned to his friend, whispering to them “You can do this” with an encouraging smile.
Although unconvinced, Isabel nodded before standing up. With hesitant steps, they moved forward down the aisle between the rows of benches, slowing down to brush a hand on their mother’s shoulder for a moment as they walked past the bench where the woman was seated. As Isabel sat down in the witness stand, they briefly glanced over to Lucio. From his seat, Gabriel couldn’t see the expression on Torres’s face, but judging by Isabel’s reaction to it, it must have been some kind of hostile glare. Isabel’s gaze quickly shifted away from their former partner, focusing on Matthew’s far less threatening presence instead.
It was a shame, Gabriel thought to himself, that the rest of the people in the room couldn’t see just how ironic it was for them to swear to tell the truth on the Bible like they were instructed to do, when he knew full well that such a gesture had no relevance whatsoever for a fierce non-believer like they were.
Matthew De Angelis opened his examination with a set of questions not unlike the ones he had already made to Eve, asking Isabel how old they were when they first started dating Lucio Torres - eighteen years just celebrated - how old he was instead - almost twenty-three and a half - and whether they’d had other relationships before him, to which Isabel answered that they hadn’t. Then, he asked them how it felt to be surrounded only by people that were older than them when they hung out with Lucio and his friends. Isabel handled each of those questions with a composed and serious tone in their voice, and a neutral, almost expressionless gaze in their light blue eyes that they kept fixed on Mr. De Angelis.

The hardest part of the whole ordeal, however, was only about to come.
With his next set of questions, Matthew began to delve into Isabel’s relationship with Lucio, asking his witness about all sorts of details about their daily lives as a cohabitant couple. All present people in the room hence came to learn about some of their most heated arguments - which were all but infrequent and which often ended with objects being thrown at one another and with worried neighbors knocking on their door - and about the lies and subterfuges with which Lucio had deceived Isabel on more than one occasion. One time, for example, they had opened up to him about their dream of making it big in the music scene, and about their plan of showing their music to a recording company; perhaps, the numerous connections that his family seemed to have in all sorts of fields could have come in handy.
At first, Lucio seemed to be willing to help, offering to take the CD with the songs that his partner wanted to show the producer and saying that he would take care of everything. But when time passed and no answers were coming in, Isabel decided to take the matter into their own hands. So, they personally went to the recording studio and asked to talk with the producer, only to find out that the latter had no idea of what they were even talking about. The CD with the demos had disappeared into thin air. Lucio had never handed it over, for fear that the producer would discover Isabel’s potential and steal them away from him.
An objection raised from the defense attorney: even if the disappearance of that CD could actually be proven to be intentional, how could Isabel know Lucio’s true intentions behind such a gesture? It was nothing more than a mere assumption.
But before Matthew or the judge could respond, Isabel spoke, addressing the lawyer directly. What they just said wasn’t an assumption, they countered; Lucio himself had told them as much, when later that afternoon the two of them fought about the demos’ disappearance. Nor was it an isolated incident: all throughout their relationship, they had to renounce parties, events, and even friendships - every time because Lucio didn’t want them to part from him.
Saying that it was enough, the judge overruled the objection, to then remind Isabel that they were only supposed to speak when directly questioned.

Once he was granted permission to continue with his examination, just as he had done with Eve, Matthew De Angelis then asked Isabel if their ex ever raised his hands against them. Isabel hesitated, their eyes briefly searching for Gabriel’s before they lowered their head and quietly uttered a single, small ‘yes’.
Luckily, Mr. De Angelis didn’t ask them to go into detail, since Eve had already done so and it could have come out as redundant. Gabriel, whose heart had already clenched at the sight of Isabel’s dejected demeanor, was sure he wouldn’t have been able to bear it. Instead, after that question, his father sat back down next to his young client.
The Torreses’ lawyer prepared to start the cross-examination. Isabel followed him with their gaze as he stood up and walked closer to the stand, giving him a barely hinted glare. Two strangers who simply disliked each other at first sight, in the eyes of everyone who didn’t know their history. A victim who was still holding a grudge against the attorney who sunk their case, for the few people in the room that actually knew.
The first thing the defense attorney asked them was whether they were truly telling the truth, insinuating that they might have agreed to testify against Lucio solely because of the spite they felt towards him after their rough breakup. Harsh insinuations, but Isabel was able to handle them with dignity and professionalism thanks to the advice that Matthew had given them during their preparation.
When Isabel returned to their seat, Gabriel offered them a comforting smile, complimenting them on how well they’d just done, to which the other responded with a tight smile.

. . .

“Does the prosecution have any other testimony or evidence to examine?” The judge asked Mr. De Angelis.
“No, your honor. We’re done.”
“In that case, this session is adjourned until tomorrow morning when the defense will start going over their own witnesses.” The judge announced, banging his gavel once to add a metaphoric full stop at the end of the sentence.

The first people to pour into the hallway outside were the curious onlookers who had come to watch the trial, chatting in pairs or small groups as they exited the courthouse’s building, relieved at the idea of finally ​​being able to return to their usual activities after the long day.
The two lawyers, instead, took their time to gather their papers and their suitcases before leaving the courtroom to catch up with their clients; “I have to say, I’m pretty satisfied with how things went today,” Matthew commented, coming to join the Bennett and Maxwell families who had been waiting for him alongside his son outside of the courthouse. “Great job, you two. You both did really well, up there in the stand.” The lawyer then added, turning to Eve and Isabel.
As his father kept commenting the events of that first day of session, sharing to the rest of the group his predictions on what the following day was going to reserve for them, Gabriel noticed that they weren’t alone; several meters away from them, in fact, there were Mr. and Mrs. Torres, once again accompanied by their bodyguard. Just like the rest of them, Mauricio and Angela were talking to their lawyer.
Gabriel moved closer to Isabel, coming to stand behind them and placing his hands on their arms. “Don’t turn to look now…” He said to his friend, who seemed to stiffen under his touch as he leaned in to whisper in their ear. “… but Mrs. Torres is staring right at you.”

Chapter 25: Angela Torres

“Whatever you’re facing,
if your heart is breaking,
there’s a promise for the ones who just hold on.
Lift up your eyes and see:
the sun is rising.”
(‘The sun is rising’ - Britt Nicole)

Gabriel sat down next to Isabel in the same seats as the previous day. Despite the reassurances that Mr. De Angelis had given to all of them the evening prior, it wasn’t hard for him to see that Isabel was still pretty nervous about the possible outcome of the trial. And if he had to be honest, in light of what he had just come to learn, so was he; “My mother told me that she and my father received a rather unusual visit at their house last night.” Gabriel told his friend in a whisper. “You’d never guess from who.”
Isabel stared at him for a moment, before shrugging with a shake of their head.
Gabriel glanced around to make sure he wasn’t being heard by the person whose name he was about to utter, even though he knew that he was out of her earshot. “Angela Torres herself.” The young man said, in an even quieter voice. “She asked rather urgently to speak to my father. My mother said that those two spent quite a long time in his office.”
Isabel was very surprised by that information. “What did she want from him?”
Gabriel pressed his lips together for a moment. “I don’t know. My mother didn’t seem to know either.” He answered, shaking his head. “Apparently, my father kept her in the dark as well.”
“Do you think Mrs. Torres tried to buy off your father to have him renounce Eve’s case and withdraw the charges against her son?” Isabel speculated. “It wouldn’t be unlikely, for someone like her.”
Gabriel opened his mouth to reply that he had no idea, but right at that moment the judge entered the courtroom for the start of that second day of trial, inviting everyone to silence for the start of the session.

Just as the judge had anticipated the previous afternoon, the ball was now in the defense’s court.
First, the defense attorney called to the stand a couple of friends of Lucio’s, the same thugs that Freddy had probably met as well on his undercover mission, to testify about the young man’s good deeds; the first boy talked about how Lucio had rescued him from the bullies who were picking on him, and how he grew to become his first real friend in school with whom he ate lunch together every day at the cafeteria, sitting in the same table as the popular kids. Lucio’s other friend, on the other hand, told the emotional story of how Torres had helped him out when his family was going through very tough financial times by lending him money and never asking for it back.
Then, the defense lawyer called his own client to the stand. ‘How odd,’ Gabriel thought, his brow furrowing; even his professors had always said that having the defendant testify in their own trial can be a dangerous move for the defense. What was Torres’ lawyer aiming to achieve?
The answer to that question was not long in coming: through his lawyer’s questions, Lucio proceeded to deny and dismantle every single thing that both of his exes said of him, especially what Eve said about the injuries he had allegedly caused her, providing an alternative version of the events for each and every incident in which the fault always laid on clumsiness or distraction on Eve’s part.
A sense of smugness and defiance transpired unmistakably from Lucio’s overall stance, just as evidently as it was to Gabriel and Isabel that every word of what he was saying was false. They could only hope that the jury was going to realize that as well.

Right from the first question of his cross-examination, Matthew De Angelis’ tactic was to provoke Lucio, hoping for him to snap out of his cold and composed facade and betray himself with his own words. First, the lawyer stressed once again on the notion of Eve’s age, pointing out the fact that all the girls he had reportedly dated, even the ones he had more casual sexual relationships with, adhered to a specific profile: younger than him, barely over the threshold of legal age, and, most importantly, it was coincidentally always girls who had little to no previous experiences with romantic relationships.
Then, Matthew asked the young defendant for further details about his circle of friends, structuring his questions carefully so that the cases and situations presented by Lucio’s answers would subtly show the jury that, deep down, all of his relationships shared a common pattern in which the other person was in a position of debt or inferiority to him.
Unfortunately, the prosecution attorney’s attempts of getting on the defendant’s nerves didn’t bring the desired results, as Lucio managed to keep relatively calm in spite of those insinuations, but at least Eve, Gabriel and Isabel could still count on the likelihood of Matthew’s questions getting his point across successfully.

“Your honor, the prosecution would like to examine one additional witness.” Matthew De Angelis suddenly announced, once Lucio went back to his seat next to his lawyer.
The judge did not look at all pleased to hear those words: “I’ve never been a fan of surprises, Mr. De Angelis,” the man said, leaning forward on his desk. “A lawyer with a career as long and honorable as yours should know that any evidence and witnesses that will be relevant for the trial must be declared well in advance of the start of the trial itself.”
“I am sorry, your honor.” Matthew apologized. “I am well aware that what I am asking you falls outside the standard procedure, but this person reached out to me of their own accord only last evening, well after the session was adjourned, urging me to let them testify.”
Gabriel and Isabel exchanged a questioning look before turning back towards the judge, who, after pondering the matter for a couple moments, instructed the two lawyers to follow him to discuss the issue in private.

The three men made their return inside the courtroom a few minutes later, each taking once again their assigned seat. “Prosecution is now calling Mrs. Angela Torres to the stand.” Matthew De Angelis announced, having obtained permission from the judge to examine his mysterious witness.
A buzz of murmurs arose in the courtroom, and the judge again invited once again everyone to silence. Gabriel noticed Lucio shift nervously in his chair, and then his lawyer turn towards him to say something that couldn’t be heard.
Followed closely by the stares of her family members and entourage, Mrs. Torres stood up from her seat, approaching the witness stand with a gait well fitting for someone as elegant as she was. Once she was seated, the woman moved one of her voluminous blond curls away from her face with a sway of her head, remaining silent as she waited for the first question of the examination.

“Mrs. Torres, I have to admit I was really surprised by your request to cooperate with the prosecution.” Matthew began. “Are you aware that, by doing this, you will be going directly against your son’s interest?”
“I am aware of that, yes.”
“Then why did you decide to testify against him?”
Mrs. Torres studied the lawyer for a moment. Then: “You see, Mr. De Angelis, I am well aware of the kinds of preconceptions that society has about women like me - those of us who marry men who went down a path of crime. Everyone thinks that we must be okay with everything our husbands do, as long as such activities lead to our men earning plenty of money for us to spend in frivolous ways. That we will always be prepared to protect our family members at any cost because criminal families must be some sort of tight-knit, untouchable clan. But that’s not always the case.” The woman said. “I only found out about my husband’s trafficking when the police knocked on our door to arrest him, and there are some things I am definitely not willing to turn a blind eye to.”
“What kind of things are you referring to?”
“My son, well… he’s not quite like his father. Mauricio is admittedly not a saint, but Lucio has been showing signs of a temperament far more dangerous than his father’s ever since he was still a child.” Mrs. Torres answered. “This is the second time I‘ve had to watch my son getting tried for charges related to assaults and violence. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that, if one day I’ll have to set foot again in a courtroom, it won’t be to see him processed for a case of murder.”
“Traitor,” Lucio hissed at his mother, his voice coated in venom.
“Remind your client to be quiet, sir.” The judge said to his lawyer, annoyed by the young man’s uncalled-for intervention.

When silence was restored, latching onto Mrs. Torres’ previous answer, Matthew asked her to talk about what her son was like as a child. Angela proceeded to tell him that, as early as when he was still in elementary school, Lucio had always had trouble getting along with his peers, even occasionally coming to shove or hit other children around him as a reaction to behaviours he didn’t like; the scar that ran across his left eyebrow, for example, was the result of a fight with a classmate of his who dared to embarrass him in front of his peers by pulling a prank on him. Those fights only became more frequent and intense with the arrival of adolescence, when his interest in girls had started to develop; his ‘rivals’ who had it best ended up with a black eye and a few scratches. But if he really decided he hated someone, Lucio could use his influence of the popular rich kid and turn all his peers against his poor victim.
Mr. De Angelis then asked Angela if she had ever met Eve prior to the day her family filed a lawsuit against her son, to which the woman answered with a no; her son left the family nest as soon as he turned eighteen, and had been living an independent lifestyle which he very rarely shared anything about with her. Unfortunately, Mrs. Torres explained with a sad look in her brown eyes, she was never all that close to her son, who always preferred his father’s company growing up. But even though she never got to know Eve personally, when she listened to her testimony the day prior, she instantly felt that the girl was being truthful. The lawyer asked her what had made her think so, and the woman replied that she had personally witnessed some of the situations the girl described.
There had been times, in fact, when Lucio even took his anger out on his own mother, raising his voice back at her when she tried to oppose him and saying that her opinion counted for nothing to him, since the only person he would ever listen to was his father Mauricio. Yet, despite the constant disrespect, Angela never stopped caring about her son, and it was precisely because of her motherly love that she was currently sitting there in the witness stand; her son needed to finally be faced by the consequences of his mistakes, and reconsider the wrong path he had taken.

- - - - -

“Has the jury reached a verdict?”
“Yes, your honor.” The juror with the lush golden curls answered, standing up from his seat. As Gabriel had learned from his father, the boy was a certain Mr. Young - in name and in nature, given the fact that he was chosen to serve as a juror as soon as he turned the legal age.
Gabriel felt Isabel’s thin hand search for his, to then hold it tightly once they’d found it. He turned to look at them: their gaze was locked on the young juror, perhaps they weren’t even aware of the physical contact they had just initiated. So, after a moment of initial surprise, Gabriel’s own gaze shifted back toward that same point.
“Very well, then.” The judge said. “For the charge of domestic violence, how do you find the defendant?”
“Guilty.”
It took a couple moments for that verdict and its implications to fully reach Gabriel’s brain, as if each letter spread in slow motion through the air that divided their bench and the judge’s seat, muffled by the buzz that suddenly arose from the people that crowded the courtroom. What reached him immediately, instead, was the feeling of Isabel tugging at his arm, then the sight of the smile on their face - beautiful, and big, and bright like he had never seen - and, lastly, the tight hug that his friend gave him. Gabriel reciprocated Isabel’s embrace, his heart filled by their same happiness for the favorable verdict.

As it turned out, however, that moment of celebration was bound to be short-lived.
While the judge was still speaking, in fact, enouncing the sentence Lucio would have had to serve, the young defendant began to raise his voice, cussing out his mother for testifying against him. The judge ordered him to keep quiet, but he didn’t even seem to acknowledge his presence: “Isabel!” Lucio roared, causing every head in the room to turn toward the point where he was looking. “You’re a goddamn bitch! This is all your fault!”
“Order!” The judge exclaimed again, before asking the officers to lead the young man out of the room, since he was trying his hardest to break free from their grip and get closer to the benches. “You were the one to convince Eve to go against me, isn’t that so? Confess! I know damn well she would never have had the backbone to sue me on her own!” Lucio kept shouting. “No one messes up with me without paying for it! But apparently, burning you down like the witch you are wasn’t enough for you to get the memo. I should have killed you when I had the chance to!”
Terrified by their ex partner’s rage, Isabel clung to Gabriel, who instinctively pulled them closer to him protectively. But luckily, the officers managed to drag Lucio out of the room before he could get any closer to them.
Shocked murmuring rose even louder from several people in the room. Eve looked like she was on the verge of tears, more from sadness and fear at yet another anger outburst by her boyfriend than from happiness for the favorable verdict she had just received against him. A little farther away, Mr. and Mrs. Torres looked like they would have by far preferred to sink into the ground right then and there, embarrassed by their son’s behavior; Angela was hiding half of her face with her hand, while her husband kept shaking his head, a grimace of disdain on his face.
Gabriel tried to reassure and calm Isabel down as best as he could, running a hand up and down their arm while he held them close to him.

Notes:

As you may have noticed, the story now finally has a definite number of total chapters instead of a ‘?’.
Can you guys believe we’ve already been following our friends here for a whole entire year?! In fact, the story just turned one years old (I published the first chapter on February 24th of 2024), and it’s still pretty unbelievable for me to see just how far we’ve gotten! I can't wait for you guys to see what still lies in store for our beloveds in the remaining chapters of the fic! ✨️

Chapter 26: 22

“We’re happy, free, confused and lonely in the best way.
It’s miserable and magical, oh yeah.
Tonight’s the night when we forget
about the heartbreaks.”
(‘22’ - Taylor Swift)

The following morning, after preparing for the day ahead, Gabriel turned on his phone and tapped on the search engine app’s icon for his usual daily news check. As soon as the page loaded, the young man was greeted by a surprise; not one, but various online articles and posts about the trial against Lucio Torres and its recent conclusion had already started popping up all over the web. One post, for example, opened with a photo collage that placed Isabel, Eve and Angela next to one another, and a title that praised the all-female line of attack the prosecuting attorney had used in court.
‘Bel absolutely has to see this!’ - Gabriel thought to himself.

. . .

When Gabriel joined his friend later that morning, he found them sitting on the steps of the building where they had scheduled to meet to go for a walk, a pensive expression on their face. “Hey! How are you doing?” He greeted them. “Is everything okay?”
Isabel stood up and flung their tote bag over their shoulder. “I think so…” they said. “I mean, I’m happy for the trial’s verdict, I really am, but… I can’t help but think about what Lucio said.” They went on, their light blue eyes darkening. “I spent almost three years believing that he did what he did to me because, in some sick, possessive way, he still loved me so much as to not want to share me with anyone else. And instead, yesterday I came to find out that love had nothing to do with it; he simply hated me that much and he wanted to see me hurt, and I don’t know which version is worse.”
Gabriel pressed his lips together. Perhaps selfishly, in the course of the past few weeks he had found himself fantasizing time and again about a perfect world in which the two of them were able to enjoy each other’s company for a much longer time by being each other’s first relationship. In this parallel world, they were now in their fourth year together, and he had been showering Isabel with love and attention and thoughtful gifts all throughout that time. In such a perfect universe, they never had to suffer everything they had been through.
But even in this imperfect reality, he could still be there for them and try his best to ease that pain. “Speaking of the things that were said… I’ve got something to show you!” Gabriel said, pulling out his phone and opening Google to the same page he’d visited that morning.
Isabel’s first reaction to that first article was an embarrassed grimace at the photo collage they had been inserted in; “This whole thing was supposed to be about Eve,” they said. “I didn’t think my photo would be included as well!”

But when they closed the article in question to go back to the list of Google search results, the title of another post caught their attention, causing the expression on their face to change drastically; ‘Lucio Torres arrested for domestic violence, admits to alleged acid attack on previous partner.’
Isabel raptly read the contents of the article, which gave its readers a summary of the trial much more precise and detailed than the previous post. In the final paragraph of the report, was a transcription of the threats that Lucio made to Eve and Isabel before the police took him outside, associating the terrible sentence ‘burning you down like the witch you are’ to the first charge for which Lucio was acquitted three years earlier and raising the doubt that, perhaps, in light of those new events, that old verdict might have been incorrect.
Isabel brought a hand to their mouth. Tears dampened their eyes, gathering in the corners until they began sliding down their cheeks. After three years worth of suffering, they were finally able to see the name of their ex associated with what he did to them.
“See? You dad was right all along.” Gabriel said to his friend, giving them a soft smile. “You should go and tell him about these articles; I bet he will be thrilled to know his child finally got justice!”
Isabel leaned against his side, wrapping their arms weakly around his waist, smiling as they kept crying. Gabriel’s smile only grew bigger, his friend’s joy tugging at his heartstrings.

“I heard Torres finally got what he deserved.” A different voice spoke at that moment, catching both friends’ attention.
“Freddy!” Isabel exclaimed upon seeing him. “Freddy, look! We made it!” They then said, pointing the phone’s screen towards him.
“I already read the news,” Freddy replied. The raw emotions in the other’s voice and composure made him smile in turn. “By the way, Lucio’s was a horrifying villain monologue if I’ve ever seen one! I’m sorry you had to deal with such an awful guy. But at least, now we can be sure that any girl will think more than twice before approaching him.”
“I’m still surprised at how fast the word spread.” Gabriel stepped in. “Whoever wrote this article quoted word by word what was said, too! They must have been waiting outside the courthouse, ready to interview the people who came to watch the trial.”
“They did even better than that, actually.” Freddy replied. “I don’t know if you guys know, but Ronnie has an uncle who is a journalist. He’s the reason she chose this major to begin with. Well… Ronnie’s uncle was there in that courtroom alongside the rest of you.”
“But how did he manage to get inside, if the Torres family specifically denied access to the press?”
“The Torreses might have asked their gorilla to block anyone who showed up to the courthouse bringing microphones or cameras with lenses of the same length as a gun’s barrel, sure. But an average-looking guy who simply happened to have a tape recorder tucked deep into his pocket? He must have been way harder to detect!” Freddy smirked.
Isabel smiled too, moving closer to Freddy to hug him. “Thank you so much to both of you!” They said, pulling away from Freddy just enough to glance at Gabriel, who smiled back at them just as fondly.

“Now that all of this is over, it’s finally time for me to step back from my double life as a gangster,” Freddy announced. “Enrolling in a gang of thugs was surely a fascinating experience that in all likelihood I would have never had in my life otherwise, but it’s not a career I really see myself pursuing in my future.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You were still in the gang this whole time?”
“If I left the group right after Eve broke up with Lucio, it could have come off as a very suspicious coincidence. So I stayed, waiting for the right time to pull out.” Freddy explained. “And it looks like that moment has finally come; as you guys can probably imagine, all Hell has been breaking loose among Lucio’s circle. His friends have been bickering with one another for a good while now, about which of them would be the best leader in case something was to happen to their boss. Now that Lucio is behind bars, I bet such fights will only get even more serious, especially considering that everyone now can aim to become Mauricio’s right hand man.” At that thought, Freddy let out a pensive huff. “No wonder the old man didn’t want his son to take the reins of his family’s business; a hot-headed temper like his makes for a terrible mob leader. In any case, if I play my cards right I’m sure I’ll be able to leave that circus without repercussions.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about a possible career change for myself.” Freddy added after a couple moments, this time turning to Isabel.
“How come?” The other asked.
“The way I’ve been living these past months, all the lies I’ve had to come up with, the thrill of being a mole among a gang of criminals portraying myself as someone I’ve never been… It made me think about my future. Not all journalists end up writing Pulitzer-worthy pieces that have an actual impact on the world; a good number of us spend their entire careers chasing some random stars to dig up their secrets for a tabloid. And I came to realize that, maybe, instead of risking falling along that path, I’d rather become a private investigator. Ronnie will probably not be thrilled to hear it, the two of us have often fantasized of working side by side as colleagues for the same newspapers someday, but…” Freddy shrugged, a lopsided smile forming on his lips. “… I thought that, maybe, being a private eye will give me more opportunities to help other people like you to get their justice.”
Isabel brought a hand to their chest, moved by those words.

Freddy turned to leave. But after taking merely a couple steps, he turned back again to his friends; “Oh! I almost forgot!” He said, pressing a hand to his forehead. “About the interview for our blog: Ronnie and I are just barely coming out of an incredibly stressful period. We would have taken care of it a lot sooner, hadn’t it been for the exam session. I hate how every single professor gives out an amount of assignments and pages to study as if theirs was the only subject on our curriculum. But as it turns out, maybe having to wait a little longer was actually for the best: we’ve received some very interesting new pieces of information, these past few days.”
“What do you mean?” Isabel asked, puzzled by those words.
Freddy flashed them an enigmatic smile. “Ronnie will call you tomorrow. She’ll give you all the details.”

- - - - -

Isabel clicked their own copy of the keys inside the lock of the garage door. Silence followed that first sound, as they bent down to pull the handle of the shutter to raise it manually.
Isabel took a couple slow, unsure steps into the garage, confusion evident on their face as they acknowledged that the lights were still off. They were the first one to show up for band practice that day, despite being ten whole minutes late beyond the scheduled time.
Suddenly, the door that led to the house swung open, revealing four smiling people who exclaimed “Happy Birthday!” in unison. Gabriel and the rest of the band poured into the garage to wrap their friend in a group hug.
“Thanks, guys!” Isabel smiled, pleasantly taken aback by their friends’ affection.
Then, Harry, Debbie and the De Angelis siblings took their places at their instruments to play their own rock version of the song ‘Happy Birthday to you’ for them.

Leaning against the doorframe, Ezra Fell watched their performance, to then invite the five musicians to come inside the house, where a delicious-looking cake with colorful candles on its top awaited them in the kitchen.
“Look at what kind of message Deb had the nerve to send me this morning,” Isabel said to the others at some point as the group of friends sat at a kitchen table who clearly wasn’t made to fit six people. When they pressed play on a video icon on their phone’s screen, Taylor Swift’s cheerful and energetic voice began to sing out loud something about being twenty-two.
“Give me a break, Bel!” Debbie leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed over her chest, giving his friend an affectionate eye roll. “I’ve never had older siblings, or friends that were the right age to send that song to!”
“This girl right here is a big fan of pop music. She even refers to herself as a Swiftie, no less! A true lost case, if you ask me.” Isabel explained to Gabriel. “I tried to convert her to the good stuff, but the most I could obtain was her taking a liking to a couple pop-punk artists.”
“Oh, but I’ve been working just as hard to convert you, too!” Debbie countered, leaning forward. “One day I’ll get you to a pop concert with me, you’ll see! Maybe it’ll even be a concert by someone like Justin Bieber. And when you’ll be there in the stadium listening to those songs, you’ll suddenly realize that you like it!” The girl said, pointing a challenging finger at her friend.
“It will be over my dead body!” The other replied, such hard words softened considerably by a hearty laugh.
Gabriel smiled, amused by their bickering. By then, he had witnessed several instances of those playful fights breaking out among all four Outcasts. It was fascinating, the ease with which his friends could say to each other things that would have been considered an insult by anyone else outside of the group. And yet, not only did they laugh at those slights as if they were nothing, but the bickering itself even seemed to make them closer than ever.
Then, another thought hit him: he had always thought that the four friends all shared the same musical preferences, given the fact that they spent so many hours every week practicing the same genre of songs for their band. But it turned out that, at least for Debbie, that wasn’t the case.

The cake disappeared entirely as quickly as if it was attacked by a school of hungry piranhas. Ezra collected the paper plates from the table, freeing up space to allow Isabel some room to open the presents their friends had gotten for them.
When his turn came, Gabriel handed Isabel a small gift bag. From it, his friend took out a greeting card, a smile slowly growing on their lips as they read its contents; ‘To my favourite little pest: may your voice always be heard like a fly buzzing in society’s ears.’
Gabriel felt the worry in his chest ease at Isabel’s positive reaction to his card’s dedication. He had spent the previous few days thinking and reworking the content of that sentence over and over, as well as second-guessing the idea he had for his gift, worried that his friend might have not appreciated yet another repetition of that old joke.
Isabel’s smile caught Debbie’s attention: “What does it say?” The girl asked her friend, who handed her the card to then dedicate themselves to the other object in the gift bag; a squared box, of the kind that typically contained jewelry. And in fact, opening the box, Isabel found a necklace: hanging from the thin golden chain was a pendant in the shape of a fly, in which three grayish black stones were set to form the body and wings of the insect, topped by a smaller stone for the head. Isabel looked back up at Gabriel, and the expression on their face - amusement that reached all the way up to their light blue eyes mixed with a hint of confusion and affectionate mocking - made his heart flutter once again.
“Weirdos, both of you.” Debbie declared, eyeing the jewelled fly with a raised eyebrow. “A true match made in Heaven.”
The rest of the group seemed just as perplexed by such a peculiar gift. “It’s beautiful, thank you so much.” Isabel said instead, their gaze still locked on the boy who had gotten it for them. “You didn’t need to go and get me something. What you’ve done for me is already a far greater present than I could have ever hoped for.”

The loveful gaze in his friend’s eyes momentarily took Gabriel’s breath. Time seemed to stretch, making that moment last an eternity and way too little at the same time. Then, Isabel lowered their head to fasten the necklace around their neck.
“Would you like me to help you?” Gabriel asked them, after their second failed attempt to close the clasp around the chain. Isabel didn’t answer, stubbornly continuing to try and make it themselves, and so Gabriel stood up, walking over to their chair and positioning himself behind them to then gently take the ends of the necklace from their hands in order to fasten it for them.
“Thank you,” Isabel said softly, smiling up at him as he walked back to his chair. Before parting from them, Gabriel brushed his hand across their shoulders in a last, conscious attempt to retain that closeness.

That magical moment, sadly, was abruptly interrupted by the rather energetic ringtone of Isabel’s phone. The aforementioned took the device out of their pocket, briefly glancing at the name written on the screen before accepting the call and placing the phone down at the center of the table in speakerphone mode.
“Hi! Is there any chance The Outcasts are there with you?” Sharon’s voice came out of the phone’s speaker. “There is something I need to say to the whole group.”
“We’re here, and we’re all ears, babe.” Debbie said.
“Oh! Yours is a voice I’ve never had the pleasure to hear! Let’s see… If I’m not mistaken, you must be the drummer of the band?”
“You bet I am, darling!” Debbie answered, with a smug grin on her freckled face.
“Can I get a sound check from the rest of you as well?” Sharon asked the group of friends.
“Keyboards, check.” Harry spoke, leaning closer to the phone.
“Bass and vocals, check.” Crowley said in turn.
Silence fell amongst the group of friends. “What’s the matter? Isn’t your guitarist there with the rest of you?” Sharon asked with a tone of feigned innocence. “Or are they worried I might find out a little too soon that they’re the owner of the very phone I’m calling?”
Surprised glances bounced back and forth across the table. “How did you know it’s me?” Isabel asked.
“Please, me and Freddy found you out right from the first day you came looking for us. ‘I personally know all four members of the band’ struck me as pretty suspicious, especially if paired with the worried glance your friend shot you as soon as you said that.”
“Damn, she’s good!” Debbie let out in awe.
“Of course I am, darling!” Sharon replied. Even though Gabriel and his friends couldn’t see her, the smug smile the girl likely had on her face at that moment was also reflecting in her voice. “That’s why I don't fear competition from the other wannabe journalists in my class - especially if said competition is people like Alyssa.”

“But anyway,” Sharon went on after a brief pause, “I’m calling you today because I have some big news for you guys.”
Everyone’s interest was immediately piqued. Gabriel and Isabel had spent all that time wondering what Freddy could have possibly meant to say the previous day.
“Yesterday morning the dean came to our office to tell us that he received an email from none other than the mayor,” Sharon began to tell the group. “He told him that he and the whole city council are impressed by how popular you guys have gotten online, and that they wanted to try and get in contact with you. But not knowing your names, the mayor reached out to our dean since three of you guys are students of this university. In turn, the dean reached out to me and Freddy to ask us to spread the news: the mayor wants to hire The Outcasts as the main performers of a city musical event, to be held on June fourteenth!”
A series of excited exclamations arose from all the members of the band, who could hardly believe the incredible news that they had just been given. “What do you say, guys? Are you up for it?” Sharon asked the band from the other end of the phone call.
“Of course we are!” Isabel exclaimed enthusiastically, turning around to glance at their friends.
“I thought so. That’s why I took the liberty to reply on your behalf and tell them you’re interested.” Sharon replied. “We would have called you right away, but Freddy told me to wait to make it a surprise for your birthday.”
Since the concert date had already been established - Sharon went on after another round of cheers from The Outcasts - now they could all finally dedicate themselves to that still unresolved question of theirs: the interview would be filmed the day before the concert, so that she and Freddy could have the time to edit it in order to publish it on the campus’ blog the morning after the event.

“Did you guys hear that? We’re on our way to become actual rockstars!” Debbie exclaimed after Sharon hung up the call, throwing her arms up in the air in triumph.
“What are we waiting for, y’all?” Isabel asked the rest of the group, placing both hands down on the table. “There’s still so much to do before the concert. Let’s get to work!”

Notes:

Fellow IB fans (but also any GO fan who would just like to see something fly- themed instead of only having bee-themed jewelry pieces), rejoice! For the fly necklace Gabe gives Bel in this chapter is an actual thing!
A brand called PD Paola launched a whole fly-themed collection (which they named “Zaza”) a few years ago. I personally got myself a ring from that line, but there were also bracelets and necklaces!
I thiiiink this line might no longer be for sale on their website, tho… :/

Chapter 27: The fifth Outcast

“This dream we’re facing is so amazing,
and I want to fit in.
My whole life I wanted to be a part of something,
I’m reaching out my hand,
I’ll show you that I can!”
(‘The me that you don’t see’ - Laura Marano)

“... and I think that’s it.” Isabel concluded. “What do you guys think?”
“Why is ‘Riot’ at the top of the list?” Debbie asked, leaning closer to her friend to point a finger at something written on the crumpled up piece of paper they had been working on, a work in progress of the setlist for the band’s upcoming concert that already featured multiple crossed-out and rewritten lines.
“We’ll likely have a good number of new faces amongst those who will come to see the show. We need an opener that will give everyone a clear idea of who we are from the get-go.” Isabel explained. “And what better song for this purpose than ‘Riot’?”
Gabriel nodded. A song about brave kids who weren’t afraid to call out the wrongs committed by modern society and to protest for what was right was a very good way for the band to introduce themselves, he agreed.
“But the beat in that one is too fast and intense for it to be an opening song!” Debbie objected. “We could potentially end up scaring some people away - especially if they’re older and they’ve never heard of us. No, I think we should start with ‘The skin I’m in’, instead; it’s a very good, emotional song about the pain of feeling different from anyone else and being left out, but it’s slower and more contemplative. It could make for a good introduction, since all of us are lowercase ‘o’ outcasts.”
Isabel and Debbie kept debating for a while, bringing up the pros and cons of each other’s song picks, until eventually the other members of the band joined in as well. At the end of that long back and forth of opinions, the setlist’s order was changed once again; ‘Riot’ was moved down to become the fourth song of the concert, and ‘The skin I’m in’ was elected to become the song that would lead to the clou moment of the night. The now vacant spot of the opening piece was filled by an entirely different song, one that was casually brought up in conversation but that ended up convincing all five musicians.

Isabel then discussed with their friends whether they should insert in the setlist a couple of covers to alternate them with their own original pieces like they used to do in their first gigs at the pub; perhaps, that way, those in the audience who weren’t familiar with their music and their way of expressing themselves would at least be able to resonate with the more familiar tunes of songs that were already well established in the music scene.
But that was an idea that no one, not even Isabel themselves, seemed to be too fond of; “Remind me, did the mayor give us any indications on that?” Harry asked. “Cause I personally wouldn’t insert covers, if he didn’t mandatorily ask us to.”
Two days earlier, in fact, the band had had a first meeting with the mayor and the rest of the city council, where the young musicians were given some general information on how the musical event was going to unfold, as well as a few instructions on the things they had to do in preparation for their concert.
“No,” Isabel answered. “He said that as far as the setlist is concerned, we’re free to choose as we please. Although I think he and his colleagues still want to retain some level of control over the situation, since we were asked to send them the list once we’ll have it completed.”
“Do you think it’s because they’ll try to censor us, and that if we include something that they don’t like they will force us to remove it?” Debbie asked, suspicious.
“Don’t be silly,” Crowley stepped in. “I’m sure they were perfectly aware of who we are and what we stand for, when they decided to hire us. I don’t think they’ll be so stupid as to reject our setlist just because there are some swear words in some of our lyrics, if those songs make very good numbers online. After all, the mayor aims to secure the favors of as many citizens as possible, in the hope that they will then vote to re-elect him when time is due. And if people want us and our music for what we are, then that’s exactly what the mayor will want to give them.” Crowley argued. “No, they’re only asking us for that list because, like we were already told in the meeting, they need to get familiar with the contents of the songs we chose so that they’ll know what the graphic effects that they will project behind us onstage should be about.”
“Ah, yeah, you’re right. I forgot about the videos.” Isabel nodded. “I just hope we don’t end up performing in front of poorly cropped PNGs of flames or things like that. Not to be mean, but the guy who’s in charge of making those backgrounds looks the right age to have a Facebook page filled with boomer posts!”
“You’ve got to have faith, guys,” Ezra said to his friends in his usual calm tone. He had joined the rest of the friend group a few moments prior to bring them some snacks, and he was currently standing right by Crowley’s chair, intrigued by the conversation they were having. “Besides, what other choices do you have? It’s not like you can go and tell that man ‘thank you sir, but we’ll take care of it since we’re more capable than you’!”
Picturing that scenario made Isabel smile in amusement. “Still, I’d feel a lot better if Deb was the one taking care of it.” They said, turning to look at their friend and giving her a smile that the other immediately returned.

“By the way,” Isabel then said to their red-haired friend. “Is the new mask ready?”
It was only then that the other seemed to remember about the task she had been assigned. Getting up from her seat, Debbie walked over to where everyone had dropped their bags and jackets and took out of her bag a 3D printed, horned demon mask just like the ones that she, Harry and Isabel wore during their gigs.
Gabriel stared raptly at the mask that Debbie had just placed in his hands, slowly running a finger along its surface almost unable to believe its tangibility. But the feeling of the smoothed out plastic underneath his fingertip was a confirmation that it was real.
All of it was.
After so many years spent in complete solitude trying to convince himself that his beloved books were a far better company than those classmates who never gave him a chance to prove that he could be more than just a studious kid, he had finally found a group of friends - of real ones at that - who he genuinely looked forward to spending his days with, and who wanted to spend time with him in turn. He had finally become part of someone else’s life, and not only as a mere stranger who just happened to sit in the same class for a few hours before parting ways again, but as an active member of a project that meant so much to all the people involved in it.

As he looked more closely at the surface of his mask, however, Gabriel realized that there was something off about it. Unlike the ones that his fellow bandmates wore, in fact, the plastic material that his mask was made of was of an uniform shade of red: the pointy fangs peeking out from the demon’s mouth were not white, for example, and there was no trace of the dark, arched eyebrows on the forehead area.
“We painted ours by hand as well, back then,” Debbie told him when he expressed such doubts aloud. “For the first test, I tried setting up the file so that it would come out with the various different colors already applied, but when we saw the printed result we realized that we didn’t like the plasticky, artificial look that the polymers gave to it. Painting the details by hand makes each mask more personal. More imperfect and human, if you will.”
“Oh.” Gabriel let out in reply. “Well, in that case, I promise I’ll try my absolute best. I really hope I won’t mess anything up… I don’t have much experience with painting.”
“That won’t be a problem.” Isabel quickly stepped in. “Crowley is the one who has the most manual skills, amongst us. I’m sure she’ll be happy to help you paint your mask. Right, Crowley?” They went on, turning to their aforementioned friend with a little, innocent smile on their lips.

- - - - -

The notes of the last few bars of ‘Riot’ filled the garage, the intense rhythm of the melody dropping abruptly to give the song a powerful close.
“Very good, everyone.” Isabel complimented their bandmates. “Just one thing I have to point out: Harry, you missed a beat in the second verse of the last chorus.” They then added, turning towards the aforementioned blond boy. “Let’s run through it once more.”
“I think we should be moving to something else instead,” Debbie interjected. “There are pieces we have rehearsed way less than this one. How about we give those some attention as well, before coming back to this one?”
“Debbie’s right, Bel.” Crowley agreed. “‘Riot’ has already been smoothed out to perfection, and this is the first mistake Harry has made in a mighty long while. It’s clearly not the case of a recurring issue that we need to act on. What we really need to start focusing on is ‘Hellfire’; we have less than two weeks left until our show, and we haven’t even started working out the new arrangement of that one yet.”
“That’s because we don’t need one.” Isabel simply replied, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. “‘Hellfire’ is already solid the way it is.”
“We do need a new arrangement, actually,” Crowley objected. “We have to find a way to include Gabe just like we did with the rest of our songs.”
“Not every instrument has to be included in every song,” Isabel countered. “Having musicians temporarily inactive on stage is something that happens even in bigger concerts held by professional singers.”
“Not if it’s just for one single song in the whole concert, though.” Debbie stepped in to back Crowley up. “Wouldn’t it be awkward to have Gabriel simply standing there without anything to do for three minutes straight in the middle of the concert? Give him at least a little part, even if it’s only a few bars here and there. We’ve been working so hard in order to perfect everything for this concert, you can’t throw away all of our efforts just because of one song!”

Isabel frowned, irritated by their friends’ insistence. “I’d rather by far remove it from the setlist entirely, then!”
“You can’t be for real!” Debbie exclaimed at those words. “It’s one of the pieces that people like the most! We get requests to play it at every single gig we’ve held across campus, and it’s the video that got the most shares and comments online!”
But Isabel just wouldn’t hear of it. “I’m the one who wrote both the base and the lyrics to our songs, which means I am the one who gets to decide what to do with them!”
“Oh, now I see what this is truly about!” Debbie frowned in turn. “But let me tell you: you don’t get to be given special treatment just because it’s you. All of us have been through our fair share of shit, and you know that very well because that shit is what makes up a good half of our songs. And if my song can be rearranged without batting an eye, then the same goes for yours.”
“I’ve had enough!” Isabel announced. They hastily reached out for their music sheets, piling them back together and shoving them unceremoniously into their backpack. Then, unbuckling the strap of their guitar, they proceeded to put the instrument back in its case. “We’ll resume our rehearsals once you guys will have become more reasonable!”
The rest of the band watched them in silence as they stormed out of the garage. Gabriel made to follow them, but Crowley halted him by putting a hand on his arm; “There’s no need for it.”
“Yeah. It’s not the first time our dear rockstar throws a tantrum.” Harry explained, clearly unamused by the behaviour his friend had just displayed. “They’ll come back, eventually, but they need some time to lick their wounded ego first. And it’s better to leave them be, when they act like this.”

. . .

“I just wanted to ask you how you’re doing,” Gabriel said to his friend over the phone later that evening. Despite Harry’s advice, in fact, he just couldn’t find it in himself to leave Isabel like that, knowing they were in such a negative mood, without checking up on them. “You seemed pretty upset today, at Ezra’s.”
“Yeah, I…” Isabel began to say, but their words trailed out into a tired sigh. “I guess I made a childish fool of myself, by lashing out like that. It’s just… The others, they don’t understand what it means. Naturally, I care very much about all of the songs I’ve written, but there are some that are just that much personal to me.”
“You’re not forced to rework ‘Hellfire’, if it’s something that makes you unhappy.” Gabriel tried to reassure them.
“No.” Was Isabel’s unexpected reply. “I’ve been listening to the recording that Ezra made of the song on repeat, all throughout this afternoon. I reflected on how drastically different everything around me has become in the span of merely a few months. I’m coming to realize that my music can’t remain the same as it used to be either; my songs need to adapt to these changing times, even those pieces I wouldn’t have really wanted to touch.” There was a pause. “I have to go now. See you tomorrow at the bus station, okay?”

- - - - -

Gabriel looked around, his gaze darting from one shop sign and window to another, back and forth between the two sides of that unfamiliar street. In all those months that had gone by since he moved there at the beginning of the academic year, the days in which he decided to take the bus to leave campus grounds and venture downtown had been fairly seldom; after all, the school’s grounds were already big enough to have all the physical exercise one might need, be it his usual early morning runs or a nice bicycle ride, and offered plenty of hangout spots like cafes or student lounges. There were a few stores and services he did occasionally head downtown for, but none of them were in that same area he and Isabel were visiting that day.
All Gabriel could do was follow his friend’s lead, since they seemed far more familiar with the streets the two of them had been roaming.
“Here we are! It’s that one over there.” Isabel said at that moment, pointing to the sign of a music store a little further ahead.

When the two students arrived in front of the shop, Gabriel stopped briefly to read a sign that was taped to the glass door just above the handle; ‘Shop assistant wanted,’ the sign announced in bigger letters, to then provide contacts and information on how to send in the resume.
Isabel was the first to step inside, the little bell hanging from the door ringing to signal their arrival. Judging from the way the shop owner, a man with graying hair and a friendly smile on his round face, greeted them, it was immediately clear to Gabriel that it wasn’t the first time his friend had entered that store; “What brings you here today, kid? New strings for your guitar, maybe?” The man asked them.
“Not this time, Charlie.” Isabel replied, reciprocating his cordial smile. “We’re here for the special violin I phoned you last week about.”
Charlie nodded, and stood up from his chair behind the counter to lead his young clients towards the back of the shop. The man disappeared briefly into the back room, to then reappear holding a violin unlike any Gabriel had ever seen; the bout of the instrument, of an undoubtedly modern cut, was completely transparent, revealing a series of what seemed to be small LEDs applied inside. “This beauty right here is only worthy of the best musicians!” Charlie enthusiastically stated after listing some technical information about the instrument.
“And I’ve definitely got the right person in mind!” Isabel replied. “Can we give it a try?” They then asked, nodding to Gabriel next to them. When Charlie dipped his head in agreement, Isabel laid their guitar case down on the floor of the store. Once both instruments were set up and ready to play, Isabel took out their phone, pressing play on a recording of one of their band’s songs that only featured drums and keyboard.
The first few notes took Gabriel aback, since the sound of the electric violin was more energetic and intense than what he was used to, but soon enough he recovered from the initial surprise and eased up, interacting with Isabel exactly like they’d always done during rehearsals.

The closing bars of the song were immediately followed by a round of applause from Charlie, who bobbed his head to the beat all throughout their performance. “That was amazing!” The man complimented the two young musicians. “You two make a very good harmony together!”
Gabriel and Isabel exchanged a glance and a smile. “We know!” Isabel replied, faster than their friend could.

- - - - -

“Color the main area with that brush, and then use this one for the edges,” Crowley instructed.
Gabriel pressed his lips in concentration, carefully running the tip of the brush - already quite thin, but not remotely as thin as the one his older sister had just placed next to him on the table - along the central part of the area that was going to become the left eyebrow of the mask. Crowley had been looming over his shoulder from the moment they both sat down at the kitchen’s table in front of a good number of paint tubes, brushes, and other supplies like a cup full of water and some tissues. His sister hadn’t peeled her gaze off him for a moment, observing his every movement with the air of a stern professor. It was making him even more nervous than he already was.
He was starting to suspect that she was doing it on purpose.
She was still mad at him, he was sure of it. On the surface, it looked like the two of them were once again fully on good terms; they laughed and joked around with the rest of their friends, they played music together, and most importantly, they hung out almost every day. But there was still something unresolved between them, and it became painfully clear whenever Gabriel tried to have a deeper conversation with his sister; on those occasions, the mood in the room changed drastically, and Crowley became distant and hostile.

Gabriel took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry.” He spoke, breaking the unbearable silence. His sister stared at him, confusion evident on her face. “I know you’ve been waiting months for me to say it, and I really wish it didn’t take me this long but… I’m sorry. I was a coward, and not only for the way I kept changing the subject with you these past few months, but also for the way I never came to visit you when you were staying at the rehab center six years ago. I swear, I wanted to - you have no idea how hard I wanted to! I often stopped by the clinic, after school, and I stood there by the gate, trying to find the courage to reach out and ring the intercom… But then I always thought back to our parents’ disappointed faces, and the disdain in dad’s voice when he talked about what you’d done, and I always ended up running away in fear of being caught by him.” Gabriel told his sister. He could feel his eyes begin to tingle. “I know you think that the reason why I never took your side when you argued with mom and dad is because I agree with their every judgement, but it’s not true; the truth is that I was terrified of turning them against me because I had no one else. I had no friends at school, and I was progressively losing you as well, since you were spending more and more time locked inside your room, and that when you did come out you looked like a zombie. Maybe, if only I had had the courage to speak my mind with them, you would never have started doing drugs in the first place, and we would have remained as close as we were when we were kids…!”
Crowley opened her mouth to reply, but Gabriel halted her: “Let me finish, please, before you’ll start criticizing what I’m saying!” He said. Crowley raised her hands in surrender, and Gabriel took a moment to steady himself before resuming talking; “Eventually, one day I finally made it. I gathered the courage to ring the intercom of the rehab center, only to find out that you no longer lived there.” He said. “I tried to have someone give me an address to find you, but one of the nurses explicitly told me you’d left instructions not to give your contacts to any of your relatives. I’ve spent the last few years thinking about you, and about everything we used to do together, praying to God you were okay, and that you hadn’t gone back to doing drugs.”

“Okay, first of all, I just wanted to point out that no child should ever feel the need to stand up for an older sibling against other family members, and that everything you’ve just told me is further proof that our parents are truly a pair of assholes.” Crowley began to say when her younger brother fell silent again. “That said… I can see now that I’ve always judged you and your actions incorrectly. You’ve already proven yourself to be far more accepting than our parents ever were - of people like me, like Bel, and of all the various different realities that can exist out there. I can see that sometimes you still don’t fully understand it, but you’re willing to try, and it means a lot. I have something to apologize for, as well, especially when it comes to the way I’ve been treating you since we met again.” Silence momentarily fell over the two siblings. “Come here,” Crowley said, standing up from her chair.
Brother and sister held each other tightly in a hug that, to Gabriel, felt like a lifelong dream finally coming true. “I missed you…” He murmured, his grip around the other’s body tightening slightly.
“I know. You’ve already told me.” His sister said. “I missed you too.”
At some point, Crowley’s gaze fell on the demon mask that still sat half-unpainted on the table in front of them. “Bel did it on purpose, didn’t they?” She wondered. “Making us work together, I mean.”
Gabriel broke the hug to turn towards the point where his sister’s gaze was still lingering. Lost as he was in that moment, he had completely forgotten about the existence of that mask. “I think they did, yeah.” He replied, smiling softly.

- - - - -

“Now you just have to decide what you’re going to wear on stage and then you’re all set up.” Isabel said to Gabriel when the De Angelis siblings showed them the product of their joint artistic efforts. “I know what I’m about to tell you may seem contradictory, given that our philosophy has always been to embrace and celebrate everyone’s individuality, since there is no right way to be yourself, but… Your everyday clothes don’t really match the rest of the band’s.” They explained. “Coming up with a stage outfit is something we’ve asked Harry as well, when he first joined the band. It’s not just about looking visually uniform when we perform; your everyday clothes are very recognizable, and we need to keep the mystery around our identities until the end of the concert. I hope it’s not a problem for you.”
Gabriel nodded. “Don’t worry, I totally understand.”
“Thank you,” Isabel smiled. “Do you already have an idea for your stage outfit?”
Gabriel hummed as his mind scanned through every possible piece of clothing that he currently owned; surely there was something that could have done their trick, among the ones he didn’t bring with himself when he moved into his dorm room. “I have a black suit I wore to my oldest cousin’s graduation.” Gabriel eventually recalled. “I could wear that, and buy a black shirt to put underneath the jacket. That way it would still be my usual style, but it could match you guys’ colors.”
“No, that won’t do.” Isabel spoke their verdict after pondering the idea for a couple moments, their words accompanied by a shake of their head.
“It’s not rock enough, is it?” Gabriel asked them, partially disappointed by having his idea turned down so firmly.
“No, it’s not that,” Isabel replied; “the devil all dressed up in a suit and tie is way too close to the mental image I’ve been associating to my ex.”
Gabriel’s expression dropped. ‘Oh.’
Isabel remained in focused silence for a long moment, their hands on their hips. “Say, Crow…” They finally spoke. “... by any chance, do you and your brother wear the same sizes?”

Those were the events that, later that afternoon, led Gabriel to the rather unique experience of holding the gaze of an unfamiliar young man who was staring back at him from the reflection of the mirror of the small bathroom inside Crowley’s house. That alternate Gabriel, who seemed just as bewildered as he was to find himself in a parallel dimension that wasn’t his, sported a pair of black ripped jeans with chains hanging from one side of the belt, boots that were almost certainly going to boil his feet since they were too heavy for the current weather, and a fishnet t-shirt covered partially - but unfortunately not completely - by a leather jacket with studs on its shoulder area.
“Are you done yet, Gabe?” A voice, Isabel’s to be exact, came from outside of the room, muffled by the closed door.
“Yeah, dude. Come on, we want to see!” Another voice, this time Harry’s, agreed.
Gabriel took a deep breath, trying to work up the courage to exit the bathroom and present himself to his friends, who had been waiting for him in the living room.

“Now we’re talking!” Isabel exclaimed enthusiastically when Gabriel finally peeked out from the bathroom, coming to stand in front of his friends and turning around in full circle a couple of times so that the group could have a full view of his outfit. “Try it with the mask too, now!” Isabel encouraged him, and Gabriel obliged, fetching his horned mask from his backpack and holding it in front of his face. “It’s perfect! You’re an Outcast in heart, music, and even in looks, now!” Isabel commented, clapping their hands a couple of times with a bright smile on their lips.
Such a positive reaction from his friend was enough to relieve some of the uneasiness Gabriel felt about the new outfit he had yet to get used to. The fleeting feeling of reassurement, however, pretty soon gave once again way to the worry that had been weighing on his chest since the moment his sister pulled those clothes out of her closet. His gaze shifted towards Crowley - specifically, to the golden snake earrings dangling from her ears, and to the flower-patterned, definitely feminine, shirt she was wearing. “Our parents will kill us both when they see us…” Gabriel said, a look of genuine fear in his dark brown eyes.
“Good thing they’re never going to, then.” Crowley shrugged. “Two boring, strict blokes like them wouldn’t attend a concert of a band like ours even if they were held at gunpoint.”
“Yeah, uhm… About that…” Gabriel hesitantly began to say, fidgeting with his hands. His sister stared at him in alarmed silence, waiting for him to go on. “…I personally invited them to our concert.” Gabriel confessed, his voice growing even smaller than it already was.

Notes:

Sorry for this unplanned month-and-a-half-long hiatus, but I started a new job in mid march, and getting back to a full-time shift has drastically reduced the amount of free time I can dedicate to writing my fics… But we’re finally here, now!

Chapter 28: Teenage dreaming by the beach

“When the sun’s going down
we’ll be raising our cups,
singing: here’s to never growing up!”
(‘Here’s to never growing up’ - Avril Lavigne)

“Last chance, Crow.” Isabel said, holding their phone raised up so that the others could hear as well. “We already packed our stuff inside Deb’s car, but we haven’t left yet. You’re still in time to change your mind about coming along with the rest of us. We can still come pick you up at your place.”
“I already told you: it’s not that I don’t want to come with you guys, but I have to work today. I can’t bail at the last minute without a warning. Bill is too old to do the kind of tasks he usually leaves to me.” Crowley explained from the other end of the phone.
“Awe… Bummer.” Isabel complained in reply.
“It’s okay,” Crowley reassured them. “We tried our hardest to find a day that could work for everyone, but it’s really hard to coordinate five different people with five different schedules. If you guys were to wait any longer, you could have ended up not being able to go at all.”
All of the four friends in the car voiced their agreement to that last point. The various weather apps on their phones all seemed to agree that, starting from the following day, their area was going to be hit by a long string of rather rainy days.
“Besides, we intended this day out as a way to celebrate all the good news we’ve received recently, from the fact that Torres is finally behind bars for what he’s done, to the fact that the mayor himself hired our band.” Crowley went on. “So go and have fun, guys, and don’t worry about me. Summer is only about to start, there will be plenty more occasions for me to come along to the beach with the rest of you!”
When Crowley hung up the call, Debbie turned the keys to start the engine of the car.

All throughout the trip, when she wasn’t cussing out other drivers for their incorrect use of blinkers or complaining about the traffic, Debbie sang along to the upbeat pop songs that were playing on the radio, without worrying in the slightest about the fact that she was hitting almost every note out of tune. From time to time, Isabel would join in, humming a few undistinguishable words here and there given their unfamiliarity with the songs in question. Harry took part in the fun in his own way, mumbling the lyrics to himself as he kept his eyes glued to the mobile game he was playing on his phone.
The traffic eventually eased, allowing the four friends to have a far smoother and more enjoyable ride. Gabriel’s attention was drawn towards the wide landscapes that opened up on either side of the highway. When he finally turned back to the inside of the car, he saw Isabel playfully moving their right hand in the air, lost in a world of their own in which their fingers were playing the cables of the electricity pylons in the distance as if they were guitar strings.

. . .

After miraculously finding a vacant parking spot - by the looks of it, the sunny weather had inspired many, many other people to spend the day at the seaside as well - Debbie opened the trunk of her car, lifting up the door covered in colorful bumper stickers. Each of the four friends retrieved their own bag, and then split up the extra luggage to carry such as the umbrella and the mini fridge that contained their packed lunches and beverages for the day.
Once at the beach, Debbie was the first to undress, taking off her turquoise tank top, her jean shorts and the rather peculiar necklace she had chosen for the occasion - a black cord from which a large, silver pendant in the shape of a fishbone dangled.
Harry followed suit, taking off his own clothes. “Aren’t you going to change, Bel?” Gabriel heard him say as he began to undress as well.
“Yeah, I bet you must be hot in all those dark clothes!” Debbie agreed. But her friend seemed to hesitate. “There’s no need to be shy! I promise you, people around us aren’t going to stare at you like you think they will.” Debbie said to reassure them. “And if someone does, we’ll flip them off and tell them to mind their own business.”
After another long moment of hesitation, Isabel finally took off their black shirt and cargo shorts to remain in a set of matching binder top and swim shorts. It was the first time he saw them with so little clothes on, Gabriel couldn’t help but think, and such an observation brought a wave of heat all the way up to his cheeks, adding to the warmth that the sun was already radiating.
Isabel stood there looking at him in silence, with one hand on their other arm and the slightest hint of a smile on their lips veiled by what seemed to be embarrassment. Gabriel briefly reflected on how unfortunate it was that the dysphoria that they felt towards their body didn’t allow them to see just how beautiful they truly were, with every mole and imperfection of their skin, with the body hair they deliberately left to grow, and even with those marks that should have never been impressed on their skin in the first place. But before he could voice those thoughts of his and give them a compliment, Debbie spoke: “Do you want to give that to me? I can put it away with mine.” The girl asked Isabel.
“What?” The other asked in reply, blinking in confusion.
“Your necklace,” Debbie specified, pointing to the golden chain around her friend’s neck. “It could tarnish, with the sunscreen and salt water. I can keep it in my bag for you, if you want.”
“Oh.” Isabel brought a hand up to the small, fly-shaped pendant. They had been wearing it every single day since he gave it to them, and that thought did nothing to ease the heat wave inside Gabriel’s chest either. “Yeah, maybe it’s a good idea.”

As the air began to get drier and the sand ever more unpleasantly hot under their feet, Harry, Debbie and Isabel took turns to get some relief from the heat by going for a swim in the sea. “Come on, Gabe, give it a try! The water feels very nice.” Isabel called him, still knee-deep into the water.
The other finally lifted his nose from the book he had brought with him. “Someone has to stay here to watch the bags,” he said, pointing to the bags piled up next to him under the umbrella and hoping it would be enough of an excuse. He had no intention of getting wet to then have sand stick to him and turn him into a human-sized breaded cutlet.
“Don’t worry about that, Harry’s got you covered!” Isabel insisted, and Gabriel tried his best to hide a grimace of displeasure as he watched the aforementioned blond boy walk out from the water with his wet hair glued to his forehead.
He had no more excuses.

As he came to discover in the following fifteen minutes as he and Isabel engaged in a playful fight splashing water at each other, however, giving in to their enthusiasm and allowing them to run up to him to take his hand and pull him toward the waves was actually the best choice he could have made that morning.

. . .

Hours flew by in the blink of an eye, and after some card games and a contest of who could tell the lamest dad joke, it was already lunchtime.
While the group of friends were enjoying their paninis, Isabel sneaked around Debbie’s towel until they were right behind her. “Madison, huh? Is that who you’ve been texting all morning?” They asked, glancing down at the phone that the other was holding in her hands. Taken aback by the ambush, Debbie jumped on the spot. “Ooh! Look at all the heart emojis the two of you have been exchanging!” Isabel went on with a spark of excitement in their eyes, leaning closer to their friend to get a better view of the chat. “Is she your new crush? Do I know her? What is she like?”
“Mind your own business, will you?” Debbie replied, trying to shoo Isabel away. But judging from the smile she had on her lips as she texted, Isabel’s guess must have been correct.

Around four-thirty p.m., the group of friends moved to the beach bar to enjoy some small talk over a snack. Debbie picked up a teaspoon and began tapping it along the empty glasses of the drinks they had ordered while hitting the palm of her free hand down on the table in a steady rhythm.
The sudden multitude of sounds piqued the attention of the people sitting in the tables nearby as well as the barkeeper’s. “Ah! I know a drummer when I see one!” The man said to Debbie, walking over to their table with a smile on his lips. “My son is exactly like you; he just started taking drum lessons, but he spends every minute he’s awake drumming on each and every surface he can find around our house to experiment with the different sounds. His mother swears he’ll make her go crazy, one of these days!” He told his young customers with a chuckle. “But what can we do, huh? If kids have an interest in something, the least we can do is to support them… Say, do you play in a band?”
“I do.”
“Are all of you a band, perhaps?” The barkeeper wondered, his glance shifting from one face to the other of the four kids in front of him.
“We are!” Isabel replied, smiling proudly up at the man while the rest of the group nodded. “We’re five, actually, but sadly our bassist-slash-vocalist couldn’t come along with the rest of us today.”
The barkeeper’s eyes lit up with fascination. “Tell me, what kind of music do you play? Do you already have something out that I could listen to?”
Harry took out his phone, opening their Instagram page to select a video that Ezra Fell had recorded at one of their gigs on campus.
“Oh, wow!” The barkeeper let out merely a few seconds into the video. The surprise on his face was also accompanied by a barely minted grimace that told Gabriel and his friends that they weren’t exactly his favourite genre. And in fact: “No offense, kids, but I’m afraid I’m a little bit too old for this sort of beats.” The man went on, offering his young customers an awkward smile. “I bet my son would love you, though!”
When the video ended, Harry drew his hand back, tapping a couple times on his phone before putting it back down on the table.

“You guys surely have a unique style to yourselves!” The barkeeper said. “If I may ask, why are you wearing masks?”
“My friends did it for me,” Isabel admitted. “When we felt we were finally ready to bring our music to other people around us, we decided to start by trying to get hired to play in pubs and bars. I did like the idea of playing live, but the thought of being seen by strangers was pretty terrifying to me. I was way too self-conscious about the way I look, so we came up with a different solution.”
The barkeeper nodded with a slow, deep motion of his head, and Isabel looked relieved that he didn’t ask any further questions about what they had just told him.
“The cool thing is that the fact that no one knows who we are has made people even more interested in our band,” Harry stepped in. “I’d call that a win-win!”
At that moment, someone called the barkeeper’s name from inside the bar. “I’m on it, right away!” The man shouted back. “You know what? I’ll tell my son about you guys.” He then said, turning briefly to his customers before disappearing back inside the building. “Who knows, maybe you’ll even find a new fan in him!”

. . .

Throughout his childhood, whenever his parents took him and Crowley to the seaside, they always insisted that eating directly on the beach where sand could easily get in their food was highly unhygienic.
However, that day, but especially that evening as he and his friends were sitting in a circle around pizza boxes and cans of soda and beer, Gabriel quickly found out that it actually mattered very little to him whether eating pizza cross-legged on a beach towel was hygienic or not; all he could really care about was all the colors in which the sunsets had been painting the shore, and the calming sound of the placid waves coming to crash on the sand accompanying and blending with the sounds of their conversations and their laughters.
Isabel pulled out a small instrument out of their bag - an ukulele, which all of their friends seemed rather surprised to see. “This is probably the least rock ‘n’ roll thing you’ll ever see me doing,” Isabel said to introduce their little performance, laughing in embarrassment as if knowing how to play such a gentle instrument was some sort of scandal to be kept secret.
For Gabriel, instead, that additional contrast of theirs was just another point of the ever-growing list of things and characteristics that made them the most unique and amazing person he had ever met.

As they made their way back from the beach to Debbie’s car, the group of friends walked by a supermarket. Being well past its closing time, the lights inside the building were all turned off.
Isabel motioned for the others to stop. “Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking?” They asked, their gaze locked on the shopping cart corral located near the entrance of the building. A couple moments went by, in which their friends simply stared at them in confusion without saying a word. “Cart race, cart race…!” Isabel chanted with an excited smile on their lips, stating their idea more explicitly.
“Sounds fun, I’m down!” Harry was the first to reply, giving them a fist bump before heading off to the corral. Debbie and Isabel followed him in tail.
“Wait!” Gabriel shouted after his friends. “We could get in trouble! We shouldn’t-”
“Relax, for once, dude!” Debbie interrupted him, hardly even turning to look at him as she grabbed the cart Harry was pushing towards her. Now that his hands were free, the blond boy inserted another coin in a second cart’s slot. “It’s not like we’re stealing them! We’re just going to have some fun before putting them back in the rack.”
Once the second cart was released from the corral as well, Isabel and Debbie climbed into their makeshift vehicles, which were then pushed respectively by Gabriel and Harry back and forth across the large, deserted parking lot of the supermarket. Gabriel and Isabel won the first set of matches, their exultations followed by a complaint from Harry about how it wasn’t fair since Isabel, given their minute stature, was likely a lighter weight to push. “You’re just jealous because we’re the best team in the world!” The aforementioned exclaimed in reply, to then turn around and high-five their partner.

The four friends then decided to switch teams, so that Gabriel, who had openly admitted to having never taken part in that sort of game, could get a chance to be driven around as well. Debbie took her place behind Isabel’s cart, and Harry behind the one that Gabriel clumsily managed to climb into.
Despite the initial fear of the cart tripping into something and causing him to fall down and get hurt, Gabriel had to admit that speeding like that across a parking lot in a squeaky-wheeled shopping cart was way more fun than he would have imagined.

. . .

“Hey, this one’s good!” Debbie exclaimed, bobbing her head to the beat of the song that was currently playing on the radio. With the intention of turning up the volume, the girl took one hand off the steering wheel.
“Wait!” Harry whispered urgently, intercepting her hand before she could reach the knob. “Bel’s asleep!” He explained, nodding his head toward the backseats. Debbie let out a quiet “Oh!”, allowing Harry to instead turn the volume of the radio even lower while she focused on the road.
Gabriel’s heart began to beat a little faster as he felt Isabel’s weight press against his side. Shifting position very carefully in order not to wake them up, he turned to look at the head of messy jet-black hair that was now resting on his shoulder. “Sweet dreams, Bel.” He whispered, smiling fondly at them. Then, spurred by a sudden rush of courage, Gabriel took his friend’s hand in his, running his thumb across their skin with a featherly touch.
When he finally looked back up at the rest of the world around them, Gabriel was met by the yellowed plastic of Harry’s phone case. The blond boy was holding the device pointed directly at him and Isabel, looking as focused as a movie director intent on finding the right angle for his scene.
Locking eyes with him without saying a word, Harry slid the thumb of his free hand back and forth along his index and middle finger. Gabriel’s eyes reduced to slits. ‘I see you’re also an expert at blackmailing, huh?’ He thought towards Harry, who in the meantime had turned away from him and was now looking down at the precious video he had just captured with a smirk on his lips.
But getting mad at him was the very last thing Gabriel currently had on his mind.

Struggling to keep at bay the butterflies that were whirling in his stomach, in fact, Gabriel spent the entire trip back home thinking about Isabel as they kept sleeping against him, their hand still intertwined with his.
He absolutely had to talk to them.
He had to finally put an end to all of that uncertainty, and to all the doubts that he was never quite able to silence for good. As scary and risky as it was, he absolutely had to try and take his chance with them to find out once and for all if they liked him back.
If his calculations were correct - and, goodness, he really hoped they were! - there was a good chance that they would give him a positive answer. They had been a lot warmer to him lately, never once fighting him away if he tried to get closer to them like they had done in the weeks prior to the trial, and the times in which they were the one to initiate physical contact had become increasingly more frequent. And then there were those glances that they occasionally gave him, especially when they thought he wouldn’t notice… Those glances took him out every single time!
Yes, Gabriel thought to himself. He only had to endure a few more days of waiting, and then he was finally going to confess his feelings for them on the night of the upcoming school dance.

. . .

“Hey, can I talk with you for a minute?” Gabriel asked Debbie once they were back on campus grounds. “There is something I’d need to ask you.”
The other, who was already about to get back in her car after dropping her friends off, stopped in her tracks. “Sure, what is it?”
“I’ve been liking Bel for a while now and, well…” Gabriel began to say, fidgeting with his hands. “... I want to finally try and shoot my shot with them.”
“I see. And what do I have to do with it, exactly?” Debbie with a raised eyebrow once he was done explaining. For some reason, her voice was now coated by an underlying irritation that Gabriel couldn’t quite figure out what was caused by.
“Well, you‘re Bel’s closest friend, and you’ve known them for longer than I have. Maybe you know something that they haven’t told the rest of us. A gift, or a romantic gesture that will help me win them over for good.”
But in response, Debbie rolled her eyes with a huff.
Gabriel frowned. “Okay, I can understand the fact that playing in the same band doesn’t necessarily mean that all the members have to be one another’s best friends, but you’ve done nothing but roll your eyes at me ever since we met! Could you please finally tell me what I did to make you dislike me so much?”
“Crowley really got all the brain cells of the family, huh, Sherlock?” Debbie asked sarcastically. “Say, if someone was hitting on the person you’re in love with, could you be all nice and friendly with them?”
“Wait. You mean that you…?” Gabriel exclaimed in surprise. “Oh!” He let out when his brain caught up with the notion that Debbie didn’t just like girls, something she had always been rather open about, but that she liked Bel. “I’m so sorry, it wasn’t my intention to rub your situation in your face, I…” He said, raising his hands in front of him. “I mean, I wouldn’t be here asking you for this sort of advice, if I had known that you…!”
Debbie shook her head. “I got it, don’t worry.” She said, in a much calmer, almost resigned tone. “I know that I shouldn’t see you as an enemy, and I’m sorry that I treated you as such. The battle I’ve been fighting against you in my mind is completely pointless… Unrequited crushes happen, and I should have known better; I can’t be mad at Bel just because their nature is different from mine, and I can’t be mad at you for being in their life.”

Debbie wrapped her arms around her body. “Even a blind man could see that the two of you like each other a lot.” She went on. “It took me a while to get a clear idea of you, but I can tell that you never had ill intentions towards Bel. If anything - and please don’t let what I’m about to say get to your head - I’d say you even have a positive effect on them. It’s not hard for me to notice that light they have in their eyes, or the way they’ve been smiling a lot more frequently… They’re a lot happier than when I first met them, more hopeful, and it’s even starting to reflect in the new lyrics they have been writing. And if they finally found someone who makes them feel this good, then I guess I can only be happy for them. But there is one thing I want you to keep in mind.”
“What is it?”
At once, the expression on Debbie’s face grew a lot colder. “When I told you that I won’t let anyone hurt the people I love, I meant it. The second you won’t do right by Bel, it’ll be over for you; last summer I worked as a guide at a torture museum, so I’d know exactly how to make you pay for it in the most painful way possible. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am!” Gabriel answered in a high-pitched voice, his eyes wide in fear at that threat.
Debbie, who had inched closer and closer to him to the point where he instinctively took a step back, held his gaze for another interminable moment, the frown on her face telling him she was dreadfully serious. Then, suddenly, she was smiling again as if that entire exchange hadn’t just taken place; “Perfect!” She said, giving Gabriel a light punch on the arm to lighten up the mood. “As for the issue of the romantic gesture you’re looking for… I think I have an idea.”

Notes:

Errata corrige for chapter 26: The correct date for The Outcasts’ city concert is June 13th instead of the 14th. Turns out I miscalculated some days on the lil calendar I built for this story. Oopsies.
Also, as an heads up, I think that the remaining chapters for this fic will come out one per month instead of two, as I'm quickly finding out that I can no longer keep up with that rhythm due to new weekly IRL commitments/appointments that have taken even more time away from my days.

Chapter 29: Freshmen Formal

“When you said you looked a mess,
I whispered underneath my breath
but you heard it
‘Darling, you look perfect tonight’.”
(‘Perfect’ - Ed Sheeran)

At seven-thirty p.m, Gabriel was trying for the fourth time in a row to tie his sky blue bow tie in front of the mirror in his room. By the looks of it, he was also going to need a fifth attempt, the young man realized as he stared at the messy knot that was poking out from underneath the collar of his ruffled white shirt. With a resigned sigh, Gabriel untangled the bow tie and prepared to redo the whole process once again from the top.
Why on Earth had he let the clothing shop’s clerk convince him to opt for a bow tie to go with the new suit he was about to buy, instead of following his instinct and choosing a good old regular tie? - Gabriel thought to himself, unnerved by all those failed attempts. He had always gotten ties right in just one attempt. Now, instead, in addition to the whirlwind of thoughts in his head that were distracting him from the task at hand, he also had to struggle with a type of accessory he wasn’t familiar with.
He risked getting late to his appointment with Isabel, and it was something that he absolutely didn’t want to happen. Not only because he firmly believed that showing up late to any kind of appointment was a sign of disrespect, but also and especially because he knew how much that night meant to his friend.

It wasn’t something they had explicitly voiced - not at first, at least. In fact, when they first received the news about the formal party titled ‘Freshmen Formal’ that the dean had decided to organize for all the students who were enrolled in the first year of courses, they even went as far as to mock the idea; ‘We’ll be having a prom night?’ they said, huffing out a laugh as they studied the flyer that announced the upcoming event on the noticeboard. ‘What are we, in high school?’
But Gabriel didn’t fail to notice the way their eyes clouded shortly after that snarky remark; ‘Not that I ever got to attend my high school’s prom either, for that matter…’ Isabel added almost to themselves, their gaze still locked on the stock photo of a happy dancing couple printed on the flyer. Then, they told Gabriel about their senior year of high school, which final months roughly coincided with the last period of their relationship with their ex-boyfriend. When he learned about the upcoming prom night, Lucio, who wouldn’t have been able to attend the event since he wasn’t part of the student body of the institute, fought fiercely to prevent his partner from going to the party for fear that they might get stolen away from him by some other guy while he wasn't around.
The choice that followed was taken in less than a second:‘Would you like to go to Freshmen Formal with me?’ Gabriel’s mouth uttered long before his brain could catch up on the notion that he would have had to spend the entire evening surrounded by a crowd of loud, likely drunk students all pressed up against one another on the dancefloor.

‘Now we’re talking!’ Gabriel thought, smiling in satisfaction upon seeing the tidy bow that the fifth attempt finally brought him.

. . .

Gabriel shifted his weight from one leg to the other, impatiently waiting for someone to finally come and open the rusty gate for him. After what felt to be an interminable amount of time, the door of the house finally opened.
Just as Gabriel had imagined based on their renowned aversion for skirts, the outfit that Isabel had chosen for the party was nothing like those tulle ball gowns covered in rhinestones that girls always wore to their school dances in movies and tv shows alike. Isabel’s formal attire, in fact, consisted of black suit jacket and pants that, for once, fit their body just right, and a black tie adorning the white shirt they were wearing underneath. On the lapel of the jacket, then, Isabel had pinned a silver brooch in the shape of a guitar.
For the special occasion, Isabel had even put on a little bit of makeup; a layer of foundation that, while it could do nothing about the discrepancy of texture of the patches of scarred skin, at least uniformed their color to that of the rest of their face, and dark eyeshadow that framed and highlighted their blue eyes, below which they had painted four long lines of eyeliner per side.
“You look amazing,” Gabriel complimented them.
“You’re only saying that because of the makeup…” Isabel replied, looking down at their feet with a barely hinted smile on their lips. Lord, he didn’t think it would be possible, but they were even more adorable when they were flustered.
“No,” Gabriel shook his head. “It’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for the longest time, now.” He admitted, a fond smile forming on his lips. “Long before I first saw you with makeup on tonight, and long before you showed me pictures of when you were younger.”
Isabel finally looked back up at him, initial surprise softening into an expression that matched his own. “Thank you,” they said. “You look really good as well. I like how this color looks on you.”
That particular hue of light blue was a color that Gabriel probably would never have chosen on his own; in his mind, the go-to colors for formal wear were darker shades like black, or dark gray. If he really had to pick a lighter color, he would have probably gone for light gray. But now that he knew that Isabel approved of such a bold choice, he was glad he had let himself get influenced by the persuasive ways of that overly-friendly shop clerk.

“I have something for you!” Gabriel announced, finally revealing the hand he had been keeping behind his back.
“A black rose?” Isabel asked in surprise, looking down at the flower they were just given.
“The florist I went to told me that each color has its own meaning,” Gabriel explained. “She said that black roses in particular were only considered to be a symbol of sadness and grievance for the longest time, but that recently people are also starting to associate them with rebirth, strength and resilience, and, well… It made me think of you, of all the things you had to go through in your life, and of the way you never allowed any of them to defeat you. I already eyed that rose as soon as I walked into the shop because of the fact that you like the color black so much, but knowing the meanings behind it made it even more perfect a gift for one of the strongest people I’ve ever known.”
Isabel’s gaze had shot up from the delicate black velvet petals of the rose while he was still speaking, and was now locked into his own. “This is… I…” They began to say, seemingly struggling to find the words to express themselves. “I don’t know what to say, Gabe. Thank you so much for-”

“Hey, lovebirds!” Another voice called for them at that moment. Gabriel sighed, recognizing Azzy’s ever cheerful chirping. So much for the romantic movie scene he had pictured in his mind…
Dressed in a pink set of short pajamas and a pair of hot pink flip-flops, Azzy stood by the doorway of the house, motioning for them to come closer. “I like this outfit of yours. It’s really as purr-fect as they state it to be!” Gabriel joked once he and Isabel joined her, latching onto the word printed on Azzy’s pajama top just above a drawing of a gray cat’s face.
“Please, don’t add salt to my wounds. I’m already miserable enough about not being able to leave the house!” The girl replied, unamused. “Not only did I wake up this morning to the horrifying discovery that my period decided to arrive early this month out of all the possible months of the year, but it’s also one of those times when it hurts like a bitch! I tried taking some medication, but even that isn’t doing much against these damned cramps!”
“Don’t worry, Az…” Isabel said, moving closer to their roommate to run a comforting hand along her shoulders. “I’m sure there will be plenty of other parties for you to go to in the future.”
“Yeah, but this was a formal ball. That the dean organized specifically for freshmen! We won’t be freshmen anymore, next year, and I’ll have to settle for the average house parties that people here on campus throw all year round!” Azzy whined, pushing out her lower lip. All of a sudden, struck by another cramp, the girl brought a hand to her abdomen with a pained grimace on her face. “I can’t be standing up for too long. Quick, let me take a picture of you guys before I’ll have to go lay back down in bed!” Azzy said to her friends in an urgent tone.
Isabel and Gabriel quickly obliged to such exhortation, moving closer to one another to pose right by the door while Azzy opened the camera app on her phone. “And… perfect!” The girl announced once the device emitted a loud click to signal that the photo had been taken. “Do you want to leave that here at home? You don’t have a bag on you, you would have to carry it in your hands like that all evening.” She then said to Isabel, pointing to the rose in their hands. “Leave it to me, I’ll put it in a jar with some water so that it won’t wither right away.”
Isabel looked down at the flower, pondering the issue for a couple of moments. Then, under Gabriel’s alarmed gaze, they proceeded to snap the flower’s stem with their bare hands. They must have not liked his gift at all, if they were so ready to break it apart, Gabriel worried. But much to his surprise, after getting rid of the excessive length of the stem, Isabel unfastened their guitar-shaped brooch and used it to pin the rose to their jacket as a makeshift boutonniere.

. . .

Upon arriving in front of the campus’ gymnasium, which for the occasion was dressed to the nines and transformed into a dancefloor, Isabel and Gabriel found a good number of students in formal attire hanging around outside of the building, some of them chatting in pairs or in small groups while others took a smoke. Music could be heard playing inside the gymnasium, the sound muffled by the brick walls of the structure, and a multitude of colorful beams of light were peeking out from the building’s windows. Clear signs that the party was already in full swing.
In the distance, a very familiar red-haired girl in a knee-length turquoise dress, having acknowledged their presence, began to vigorously wave a hand in the air to grab their attention. “Guys, this is Madison.” Debbie said to her friends once they were close enough. “Madison, these are my friends Bel and Gabriel.” She then said, turning towards the brown-haired girl who was standing right next to her.
“Nice to meet you, guys,” Madison greeted them. “Hey, nice suit!”
“Thank you,” Isabel replied with a smile. “I really like your hair!” They then said, referring to the side shave that the other was sporting.
Madison reacted to that compliment with a dip of her head and another bright smile. “Were you girls inside yet? How are things going in there?” Gabriel asked Debbie and her date, nodding his head towards the building of the gymnasium.
“No, we’ve just been hanging out here for now.” Madison replied, turning for a moment to glance at the half-open door that led to the improvised ballroom. “From what I can hear from here, I’d say the DJ that was hired for the party is doing alright. Although, if I can be honest, he could never be as cool as having The Outcasts here tonight would have been.”
Isabel and Debbie briefly exchanged a look that Madison didn’t seem to notice. And to think that, in preparation for the party, the dean of the institute himself contacted Sharon Xander to have her tell the band that he wanted to hire them to perform at the party! But since Debbie, Isabel and Gabriel had already voiced their wish to attend the school dance as their true identities, the band chose to take a step back and tell the dean that, unfortunately, they couldn’t accept the offer, saying that Crowley’s voice needed some rest in preparation for the city concert that would be held merely two days after the date that was chosen for the ‘Freshmen Formal’.
When the news reached the ears and the screens of everyone across campus, a downpour of sad emojis and of disappointed comments flooded both Freddy and Sharon’s blog and the band’s announcement post on Instagram. But the decision had already been made, and the rest of the student body had no other choice but to settle for having their musical entertainment provided by an ordinary DJ.

As soon as he and Isabel entered the gymnasium, Gabriel was hit by a flow of uptempo music blaring from the speakers.
Unsure how he was supposed to dance along to those unfamiliar beats, remixed versions that wildly distorted the original pace of those few songs he actually knew, Gabriel opted for simply swaying slightly in place and nodding his head to the beat. Isabel, on the other hand, despite clearly not knowing how to dance, let loose into a series of uncoordinated moves disregarding what people around them might have thought of their performance. Following their example, Gabriel finally loosened up a bit and allowed himself more wide movements.
When a remix of the song ‘The rhythm of the night’ came to a close, the first notes of a slow song filled the air. Isabel and Gabriel took a look around; most of the students around them were already forming pairs, each stepping closer to their date and wrapping their arms around them. Turning back towards one another, Isabel and Gabriel hesitated, seemingly unsure of what to do next as they stood there looking at each other awkwardly. Someone behind Gabriel bumped into him and made him lose his balance, causing him to take a step forward towards Isabel to steady himself. Gabriel turned around just in time to see Debbie, already wrapped in Madison’s arms, giving him a smile of encouragement before devolving her attention back to her date.
“Can I have this dance?” Gabriel asked Isabel, holding out a hand for them. The other gladly accepted the invitation with a nod, placing their own hand on his.
As the two of them swayed together to the music - which Gabriel eventually recognized to be sung by that famous red-haired singer whose songs were always on the radio - time seemed to slow down, and the multitude of students crowding the ballroom all around them faded into the background. After a while, Isabel closed the remaining distance that separated them, taking a step closer to Gabriel to lean against him.

Such a magical moment, however, was destined to be short-lived; barely halfway into the song, the music abruptly stopped playing, and the sudden silence caused all presents in the room to stop in their tracks as they began to voice their bewilderment to one another. As everyone soon came to find out, the cause of such an abrupt interruption was a visibly drunk young man who had stumbled over to the DJ’s console and forcibly cut the song that was currently playing, before inviting not at all kindly the DJ to put on a livelier, less boring piece. Perhaps out of fear of possible physical repercussions from the guy, who was quite more muscular than him, the DJ consented to his request, apologizing to his audience and reassuring everyone that they were still going to get their slow dance later on in the evening.
“Come on,” Isabel said to Gabriel, taking his hand to guide him towards the buffet table. “Let’s go get something to drink!”
For the second time that night, a moment of closeness between them had been ruined by unpredictable factors, Gabriel thought sadly to himself as he followed them. But at least, there was still hope for him to be able to follow through with the rest of his plan.

. . .

As the night went on, all the sensory stimulation of the loud music overlapping with the cacophony of voices and laughter of people all around him, along with the discomfort of being stuck inside a room that was starting to smell like sweat, began to weigh more and more inside of him. Luckily for him, it wasn’t long before Isabel started to look just as tired and uneasy as he was. And as the two of them finally stepped outside of the gymnasium, the chaos of the party and the stale air were immediately replaced by some much-needed silence and by a pleasant, fresh evening breeze.
From there, according to what he had planned for that night, Gabriel was supposed to invite his friend over in his dorm room, where he would surprise them by playing a cover of ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ for them, since Debbie had informed him that ‘Mamma mia’ was one of their absolute favourite movies from their childhood - an information that Isabel had always kept as secret as their ukulele. Gabriel had spent the past few days practicing that song to perfection on his violin just for them.
However, the alcohol contained in the cups of punch he had at the party, surely one too many for someone who rarely ever touched alcoholic beverages, ended up getting the better of his mental readiness and reflexes. So, when Isabel offered him to hang out at their place, he wasn’t quick enough to reply with something other than a “Sure.”

Up in Isabel’s room, Gabriel made to sit down on the chair by the small desk, but he miscalculated the motion and sat too close to the edge of the seat. The chair’s wheels slid backwards, causing him to lose his balance and fall down to the floor.
“Are you okay?” Isabel asked him, amused by what had just happened. The only reply Gabriel could muster was a nod, laughter momentarily taking away his ability to form coherent words. Before he could regain his composure and get up from the floor, Isabel lowered themselves to lie down next to him.

They talked about the party, about that drunk guy and how rude it was of him to cut the music like that, and about other things that had very little relevance to Gabriel in that moment; the only thing he could truly focus on was Isabel’s face, and how nice it felt to have them so close to him.
“You’ve been silent again… Is something on your mind?” Isabel asked him at some point, turning on their side to face him.
“I’m tracing the outline of America.” Gabriel replied, his gaze still focused on them.
A moment passed. Then: “You’re doing what, sorry?” Isabel asked, a confused smile forming on their lips.
Gabriel reached out to gently trace with his fingertips the edges of the large patch of damaged skin that covered a good part of their left cheek.
Isabel’s first reaction was to simply look at him in silence, flustered by the closeness between them. Then, a smile slowly formed on their lips. “I’m afraid you drank a little too much tonight, Gabe.” They said with a chuckle. “I’ve stared at my scars in the mirror every single day for the past three years, and I’m more than sure that none of them look even remotely close to the shape of America!”
“Mh…” Gabriel hummed. Maybe they weren’t entirely wrong. “Then they’re all brand new continents. We need to find names for them.” He decided. Then, he began to mutter to himself a few first possible names for those yet to be identified lands.

“We could call them ‘Bel Islands’,” Gabriel suggested once he finally found a name he liked the sound of. “All parts of the same archipelago. I can see them being a republic, rather than a monarchy. A beautiful and happy country with sandy beaches and crystal clear sea. Over there, the laws are truly made to respect all citizens; people are free to be who they want, marry who they want…” He went on with his tale. His fingers moved away from the coasts of what had now become the central island of his imaginary archipelago, reaching out for Isabel’s hair to gently comb through the dark locks. “Their president is a smart, strong, and determined person who earned the respect of everyone in their country. But it’s not like people respect them out of fear, no. It’s quite the opposite, actually; as soon as people learn a little more about them, about what they stand for, and about everything they’ve done for others, they simply cannot help but love them.”
The gravitational force of that universe of their own in which they were both floating, whose constant value was ​​considerably different from planet Earth’s, did the rest; slowly but surely, Isabel and Gabriel inched closer and closer to each other until their noses brushed.
It was actually happening - Gabriel thought, his heart fluttering in anticipation at the idea of ​​finally being about to live out the best dream his mind had ever presented him with in his sleep.

Yet, all of a sudden, after taking a shaky breath in, Isabel drew back. “It’s getting late, Gabe.” They said, sitting up. “You should head back to your dorm.”
Gabriel felt his heart break in two. Having gotten the rug pulled so abruptly from underneath his feet by that sudden turn of events, all he found himself able to do was to just sit there in silence, hoping that Isabel would add something, anything that could enlighten him on what could be possibly causing them to react like that. Had he perhaps crossed a line he shouldn’t have, leaning so close to them? But then again, hadn’t Isabel leaned in just as much as he did? Maybe it was something he said, he then thought, mentally scolding himself for not having prepared a better speech beforehand and for having chosen to rely solely on what his feelings would guide him to say on the spot.
A long moment passed, but Isabel did nothing but sit there with their arms wrapped around their body and their head intentionally turned away from him. So, even though every part of him screamed for him to stay and try to talk things through, he weakly got up to his feet and dragged himself out of the room.
“Where are you going?” Azzy’s voice called him from inside the apartment’s kitchen as he walked past the room.
Gabriel stopped in his tracks, taking a deep breath as he walked back towards her. “It’s getting late.” He said, repeating the version that Isabel had given him of whatever had just happened upstairs. “I’m going back to my room.”
Azzy followed him with her gaze until he was out of sight, her thin eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Disregarding the cup of herbal tea that she had gone downstairs to prepare, the girl walked out into the corridor and glanced up towards Isabel’s room.

Notes:

Fun fact: the first draft of the dialogues for the scene in Bel's room date all the way back to the 22nd of October 2023, which makes it one of the earliest scenes I ever wrote for this entire fic.
Now that I finally got around to write this chapter, I had an absolute blast working on the entirety of it! 🥰

Chapter 30: No safety nets

“If you had only gotten to me first,
if I could write a book on how this hurts,
if you could see the way your smile
looks to me…”
(‘Wait for me’ - Taylor Swift)

“Bel?” Azzy called, knocking lightly on the bathroom’s door.
“It’s occupied,” Isabel’s voice answered from inside. “Go to the other bathroom if you need to use the toilet.”
“No, I don’t need to use the toilet. May I come in?” When a few seconds passed and it became clear that she wasn’t going to receive a reply, Azzy slowly opened the door.
“I didn’t give you the permission to enter.” Was the first thing Isabel said to her when she stepped inside. Exception made for the suit jacket, which Azzy had spotted laying abandoned on their bed as she walked past their room, Isabel was still fully dressed in their party outfit. They were standing in front of the mirror, firmly gripping the edge of the sink as they stood there with their head hanging low, their dark locks of hair falling in front of their face and hence preventing Azzy from having a clear view of it.
“You didn’t say I couldn’t, either.” The girl objected. “I just saw Gabriel leaving the house. I heard the two of you come home from the party not long ago, how come he’s already going back to his place? Did something happen between you?”
“No, it’s all good.”
“Are you sure? You don’t exactly look like someone who’s all good.” Azzy pointed out. “Did he try to force you into something you didn’t want to do, perhaps?”
“What? No!” Isabel exclaimed, sharply turning to look at their roommate offended by such an outrageous hypothesis. “How can you even think of something like that? No! It’s just…” A sigh interrupted their words. “You don’t know anything about my problems, Az.” They said in a quieter voice, shaking their head.

“You’re right, I have no idea what you might be going through,” Azzy agreed. “How could I, if you never tell me anything about what’s on your mind?”
Moving away from the doorway, Azzy walked over to the opposite end of the room to sit down on the closed lid of the toilet. She had always respected her roommate’s personal space - the personal spaces of all her roommates, of course, but especially Isabel’s since they had always defended theirs so fiercely. But after all those months of cohabitation spent considering them as a sibling and a friend she could always count on, Azzy found it truly unacceptable that she still knew so little about so many aspects of their life. “Would you like to talk about it?” The girl asked gently, hoping it would be enough for Isabel to finally open for her that door to their soul that they always kept locked shut.
The other took their time to consider their options. “Okay.” They eventually said with a nod, and took a deep breath to prepare themselves.

. . .

“Oh my… goodness!” Azzy exclaimed, once Isabel was finished telling her their truth.
She thought back to her first meeting with her roommate; Eric wouldn’t move in with the rest of them until the following week, and Josh, the first student to rent a room in the house, was out to run some errands. Hence, Azzy was the only person present at home when Isabel and their mother rang the doorbell. She remembered being quite surprised by the appearance and by the manners of the dark-haired young person she was met by when she went to open the door; while Mrs. Maxwell introduced herself with a warm smile and a cordial tone in her voice, Isabel spent the whole time with their gaze glued to the ground, trying their hardest to disappear beneath the hood of the jacket they were wearing.
‘It’s the result of a skin condition I had a couple years ago. Yes, I did get it seen by a doctor. No, the medications I was given didn’t work - if anything, they ended up making the whole issue even worse. It healed as best as it could, but I doubt it will get much better than this.’ Isabel told Azzy when, once their mother left, the girl tried to ask them about the nature of the irregular patches on their skin. The tone in their voice was enough to make Azzy understand that they weren’t going to accept any other question concerning that topic. She obviously felt sorry for them, but she remembered also thinking that the two of them had barely just met and they already had something in common: siblings not by blood but by skin, Isabel with those uneven patches on their face, and her with the myriad of freckles that covered every inch of her body. Two poor souls who had been made fun of by their peers because of something they had no control over.
She would have never imagined.

“A few minutes ago, in my room, Gabe and I were about to kiss.” Isabel told their roommate. “But it wasn’t something I was forced into, like you assumed. Not at all: I wanted it just as much as he did, I swear, it’s just… When we got so close to each other, I panicked. A kiss is something serious, there is no going back from it! Do you know what I mean?” They went on, but from the look on Azzy’s face it was clear that she was, in fact, not understanding. “What I’m trying to say is… Until you actually shoot your shot with someone, you don’t really know if the other person feels the same for you. Right? A kiss that both people lean in for, on the other hand, is a clear sign that the attraction is mutual. If we were to actually kiss, Gabe would have found out that I do like him, and I wouldn’t have had…” There was a short moment of hesitation. “I wouldn’t have had any more chances to pretend that what I feel isn’t actually there.”
“I don’t get it: if you already know you‘re reciprocated, why would you still feel the need to deny your feelings?”
“Because I promised myself I would never let love fool me again. Not when I’ve already lost so much because of it.”
“Oh, Bel!” Azzy let out, her brows arching up into a sympathetic frown. “I see now where you’re coming from, but you have no reason to be worried when it comes to someone like Gabriel! I’ve had several chances to talk with him and to get to know him a little better throughout this semester, and he never gave me any reason to think he’s anything but a sweet, good-hearted guy.”

As opposed to the beneficial effect that Azzy hoped her words of reassurance would have on her roommate, however, Isabel only seemed to get even more upset: “It’s not as easy as you make it seem!” They frowned. “I can’t just base myself on the way things are right now to make what could potentially be the most important decision of my life; it’s what could happen in a month. In six months. In five years from now, even!”
“Okay. I know you don’t have much experience with it, but I assure you that being in a relationship is not at all as drastic as you think it is.” Azzy replied, raising her hands to motion for them to slow down. “Dating someone doesn’t mean you’ll have to mandatorily be with them for the rest of your life! Relationships can also last only a few months, even as little as a single day. You have to take it one step at a time, see where things go day to day without jumping ahead as much as you’re doing right now, and keep in mind that, at any stage of the relationship, you still have the power to say no to your partner and to take a step back from things, should you ever feel the need to.”
“I didn’t have that power at all, the first time around.”
“Bel…” Azzy tried to object, but Isabel didn’t give her the chance to add any more words: “You, Debbie, even people like Freddy who barely even know me… It’s easy to tell someone else what they should do even though you didn’t personally go through what they have, isn’t it? It’s not your life that will get ruined in case your advice turns out to be wrong!” They spit out.
“Respectfully, Bel, I do know what I’m talking about.” Azzy said, hurt by their harsh words. “You’re not the only one who had to deal with an abusive partner; it’s something that, unfortunately, many, many people all over the world face, and I sadly had someone very close to me go through that shit as well. My aunt. She endured her husband’s mistreatments for years, and things between them degenerated to the point where, to this day, whenever she talks about it, she always thanks divine providence for the sudden heart attack that struck him dead and spared her from ever spending another day fearing for her life because of his possible outbursts.” Azzy told Isabel. “A few years after my uncle died, my aunt met the man she’s currently with. And I swear, Bel, her new partner is one of the kindest and most caring people I know!”

After several long moments in which Isabel stood there holding her gaze without saying a word, Azzy sighed. “Alright. I give up. This is a decision only you can make.” She said, shaking her head. “But no matter how awful it was, I think you shouldn’t let one single negative experience influence your relationship with love for the rest of your life.”

When Azzy left the bathroom and closed the door behind herself, Isabel turned back towards the mirror.
‘We could call them ‘Bel Islands’. All parts of the same archipelago.’ - Gabriel’s words echoed in their mind as their gaze traced once again along the edges of their scars. ‘A beautiful and happy country with sandy beaches and crystal clear sea.’
Isabel’s breaths grew shorter, their dark eyebrows arching into an angered frown. “What’s wrong with you?” They shouted at their reflection. “Can’t you just enjoy a good thing when you finally have it? No, instead you had to go and make a run for it like a fucking coward!” They went on, the last few words coming out in the form of a hiss through their gritted teeth. Glancing down at the sink, Isabel quickly reached out for the first item they could find, which happened to be a ceramic toothbrush holder, and prepared to throw.
Only to then stop with their arm still in mid air. “What am I doing?” They muttered to themselves with a grimace, setting their improvised weapon back down on the edge of the sink. The flame of anger in their chest died out as quickly and abruptly as it had ignited, leaving them to feel tired. “I should be better than this…”
After all of the deconstructing and the processing they had done with their therapist, shouldn’t they have finally become strong enough to finally leave their past behind and move on to new life experiences?
And yet, as they stood there in front of that mirror, Isabel was quickly realizing that, unfortunately, the road to a full recovery was still long ahead of them; even if he was no longer physically there next to them, Lucio’s ghost still dictated who they could or couldn’t get closer to.

Isabel searched once again for the support of the sink, leaning against it with their head hung low in defeat as they took a few deep breaths to try and calm themselves down.

- - - - -

“I really like this one!”
The harmonious flow of the notes Isabel was playing on their guitar died out abruptly in an ungraceful screech. Looking up from the music sheets in front of them, the young musician found Ezra on the doorway to the garage: “It’s a new song, right? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you guys rehearse it before. ” The boy asked.
“Yeah, it’s a new piece. So new that I’m still finishing writing it, actually.”
“It’s turning out amazing already.” Ezra complimented Isabel. “I’m sure it’ll be a hit, just like the rest of The Outcasts’ songs!”
“This one isn’t for the band.” The other shook their head. “It’s just mine, for now. I don’t even know if I’ll ever be able to show it to the person I’m writing it for…”
“Oh!” Ezra nodded, his eyes lighting up in realization. “Of course! I should have figured it out by the lyrics; such sweet words are supposed to be uttered in private to a special someone, rather than to an audience from a stage! Oh, how I wish someone would dedicate a love song to me, someday!” He exclaimed, bringing his hands to his chest with a dreamy gaze in his eyes. “I hope Gabriel knows how much of a lucky guy he is.” Ezra went on, still too lost in his rosy thoughts to notice the way Isabel’s eyes clouded at the mention of that name. “Okay. I’ll let you focus on your special song, now. If you need anything, you know where to find me.”

But right as he was about to leave the garage: “Hey, Ezra…” Isabel called for him.
“Yes?”
Isabel hesitated, glancing briefly at the music sheets they had been working on. “I’d really need to talk with you, actually.”
“With me?” Ezra echoed, raising his eyebrows. Such a reaction didn’t surprise Isabel all that much; out of the five Outcasts, Crowley was the only one Ezra had truly gotten close to. After all, even if from the outside they might have looked like they came from two different planets, they were kindred souls, both of them preferring to spend their free time in the collected calm and quietness of their hobbies - tending to plants in Crowley’s specific case, and reading in Ezra’s - over going out and being surrounded by big circles of friends. It was only natural for the two of them to bond as quickly and deeply as they did.
The rest of the members of the band, on the other hand, were still pretty much only acquaintances to him. And acquaintances don’t usually go around requesting to have deep conversations with one another.
Isabel invited Ezra to take a seat by patting their hand a couple of times down on a plastic chair that was positioned close to their beanbag. “I made a mess, last night.” They told him when he finally sat down next to them. Ezra seemed to be growing more and more worried by the second, and Isabel couldn’t help but find it amusing; even despite the constant reassurances he received from the people around him, he kept being apprehensive about even the smallest of things. “There’s no need to be so nervous! It's not like I’m asking you to help me bury a dead body!” Isabel joked, their words accompanied by a chuckle. Ezra tried to laugh as well, but he only managed a stiff imitation of the sound. “I just need some advice, and I think that only you can give me the right one.”
“Oh.” Ezra let out. “I see. Then tell me, what happened?”

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Isabel found themselves opening up with someone about the troubled story they had always guarded so jealously; “I used to date a manipulative, cruel guy, a few years ago. I came out of that relationship by the skin of my teeth… All I ever got from it was wounds that I’m still fighting to heal, and scars that, instead, never will.” They confessed.
Ezra nodded slowly. “I saw a photo of you in an online article, not long ago. It was about a girl who got her boyfriend sentenced for what he’d done to her. The guy who wrote it briefly talked about your case as well.” He said to his companion. “It’s always disheartening to hear about this kind of news, but it’s especially tough when it’s someone you personally know who had to go through something so awful…”
Isabel studied him for a moment. So, he knew. Well, at least it would have made the whole explanation that much quicker to get through. “It was my first attempt at giving love a chance, and I really hoped it would also be my last. Turns out, I wasn’t so lucky as to never catch feelings for someone else again.” They went on, skipping right to the core of the issue. “Everyone I’ve spoken to told me that love can also be positive - the most beautiful thing in the world, even - and that there is so much more to it than what I experienced. But I just can’t help being afraid: if my first love left me with first and second degree burns, how can I be sure that a second relationship wouldn’t straight up kill me?”
“Uhm… well, I… I guess you can’t.”
Isabel broke into a laugh, a crystalline sound that managed to partially lighten up the weight of their conversation. “Finally, someone who isn’t stubbornly positive as everyone else! I knew you were the right person to talk to!”
“You keep saying that, but I don’t understand why,” Ezra said in genuine confusion. “I mean, I’m the least suitable person to give love advice, especially in such a delicate case as yours is! If you need book recommendations, or some tutoring when it comes to History or English Literature, then I’m definitely your guy, but I don’t have nearly enough experience when it comes to relationships. I’ve never even had a b-” Ezra stopped talking abruptly, acknowledging in horror what he had just risked admitting to.
But he had shut himself up one second too late; “What? You’ve never had a boyfriend?” Isabel finished for him, amused by his reaction.
“No! I- I meant to say girlfriend!” Ezra quickly rectified, his eyes wide in a panicked expression. “I don’t like boys, I don’t-” But then he stopped again, taking a deep breath which he then exhaled in the form of a sigh so long and deep that it deflated him like a balloon, making his shoulders hunch forward. “Okay… I guess it’s useless to keep denying it now, especially since I know you’re the least likely to judge me. It’s true, I am gay.” Ezra confessed. “There, I finally said it aloud.”

“That’s exactly the reason why I came to you for advice,” Isabel said, their amused smile now replaced by a far more serious expression; “you’re the only person I know who’s as scared to death of falling in love as I am.”
Ezra’s face scrunched up into a pained grimace. “When I first realized that what I felt for Crowley was more than simple affection between friends, it was like the entire world suddenly came crashing down on my head. I thought: ‘God, please, not me out of all possible people!’,” the blond boy told his companion. “I can’t turn out gay, I… I’d become a disgrace in the eyes of my entire family, if they ever were to find out! All of my siblings are straight, and my father is already disappointed in me for having chosen a Literature major instead of, in his own words, ‘a useful degree like Medicine or Law’ or some other subject of that sort! I love my family, I really do, but it’s been increasingly harder to listen to the awful remarks they make about homosexuals and queer people in general. I can’t fathom the idea of having to spend the rest of my life lying to them to hide who I truly am, but I can’t possibly tell my parents that, while I was away to attend a course they never wished for me to enroll in, I happened to find out that I’m a sinner who goes against nature and God’s own words by wanting to sleep with men instead of women!” Ezra took a breath to try and calm himself down. “All I ever wanted was to become someone my family could be proud of, and not someone they will shake their head in disappointment at when they talk to friends and other relatives…” He added, in a quieter voice.
“I know the feeling,” Isabel simply said in reply, saddened to hear the tale of yet another family at risk of being torn apart by stubbornness and prejudice.
“Really?”
Isabel nodded. “Disappointing our families is a fear that, sadly, most queer people have to face at some point of their lives. All parents have big dreams for the future lives of their children, and I guess that’s perfectly normal. The problem is that, often, they aren’t willing to compromise on even the slightest change that we may present to what they envisioned.” They explained. “It’s the same thing that happened the day I went up to my mother and told her that the daughter she loved to dress up like a Barbie doll actually hated the feeling of the bows, and of the pastel glittery tops and the puffy skirts she always insisted on buying, and that I would have enjoyed clothes from the boy section a whole lot better since I wasn’t even a girl to begin with.”
“How did she react?”
“We fought, obviously, and she got mad at me for ruining her dreams, but she eventually swallowed the pill.”
“Yeah, well…” Ezra looked away, glancing down to his hands he had been fidgeting with. “I doubt my family ever would.”

Silence fell over the garage.
Isabel resumed playing their guitar, going once again through what they had written so far of their new song. Connecting the first verse to the chorus was a short sequence of notes consisting of a Sol, a La, a Ti, and finally, a Mi - the same four notes that, in recent times, had come to decorate every available corner of their school notebooks.
“What are you thinking about?” Ezra asked them, noticing the soft smile that was slowly forming on their lips.
“About how easy it would all be,” Isabel answered, playing the Sol-La-Ti-Mi sequence once more. “A future in which you and I are both in our fifties and we’re siblings-in-law. Hopefully, we’d still all be living in the same area, and I’d come visit you every sunday for a cup of tea. We’d talk about our respective partners, about all the little things they do that make us mad, like the way one always wants everything to be tidy and in place when the other likes their home a little more messier… I’m actually very curious to find out what older couples behave like. I’ve always heard people use the phrase ‘bickering like an old married couple’, but I have no idea what that looks like. My mother didn’t get to be married to my dad long enough for the two of them to enter that stage.”
“I like to think I would never stay mad at Crowley for too long, though.” Ezra replied with a smile. “I’m sure we would make up by the end of the very same day, and then as we’d go to bed at night, I’d lay there in his arms and I’d think about how lucky I am to have him in my life.”
“I like to think it would be the same for me with Gabriel.” Isabel said. “See? Wouldn’t that be so easy?” They wondered with a shake of their head, after a brief moment of silence in which the two hypothetical siblings-in-law-to-be lingered in the visions they had built for their future.
At that question, Ezra’s lovestruck smile quickly disappeared from his lips, and his gaze lowered once again to his hands.

‘Wouldn’t it be so easy?’ Isabel thought once again to themselves, their own gaze shifting downwards, to the spot right next to the beanbag where their phone was resting on the concrete floor of the garage.
In fact, it would have been as easy as reaching out for the device and typing a reply to that message they had been leaving on read; a simple, dreadful ‘I think we should talk about what happened last night’ - the very first thing they had read that morning after waking up, and that instantly grounded them back to a reality they wished they could flee from, at least for the time being.

“You and I have got the same choice to make, my dear Ezra; either we take this leap of faith, with the chance of possibly losing everything we have or even ending up dead when we hit the ground, or we’ll spend the rest of our lives wondering what could have happened if we took it.” Isabel spoke, turning to look at their companion. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of living a life of regret.”
Ezra remained silent, pondering those words with his brows knitted and his lips pressed tightly into a thin line.
“Here’s the plan: the first one of us who takes their leap of faith has to make sure the other will take theirs as well.” Isabel offered, holding a hand out for the boy to shake.
But Ezra didn’t move, staring at that hand with a torn look in his eyes. “What if either one of us does end up losing everything, in the end? What if we even die, like you said?” He asked, his gaze shifting back up to their face to look them in the eyes.
Now it was Isabel’s turn to hesitate, the confidence they had placed in that reckless plan of theirs suddenly mined by the very rational, very plausible objection that Ezra just raised. “Then their ghost will haunt the other for the rest of their life.” They joked, and it was enough to finally make a vague hint of a smile appear on Ezra’s lips. “Deal?” Isabel asked him.
“Deal.” Ezra simply said in reply, taking their hand to then give it a shake.

Notes:

Happy birthday to meee! 🥳
Since I left you guys hanging with that turn of event at the end of the previous chapter, I tried to bring you another part as soon as I could.

Chapter 31: Gadgets, stakeouts and unspoken feelings

“This is our big night,
friendship survived
now we’ll start it out right.”
(‘This is our big night’ - from the show My Little Pony)

“Woah! This stage is huge!” Isabel exclaimed in wide-eyed fascination as soon as they set foot on the stage that had been set up in preparation for that evening's concert. “It’s easily… what? Two? Three times the amount of space we used to have in Jimmy’s pub?” They went on, taking a short run in circles across the wooden flooring to emphasize the spaciousness the band had been provided with. Then, they turned around to study the square that the stage overlooked. “How many people do you guys think will come to see us play tonight?” Isabel asked their friends, who were walking back and forth all around them as they took trips from and to the van to unpack their instruments and belongings from the vehicle’s trunk. But before anyone could even have the time to formulate a reply: “I bet there are going to be way more than we’ve ever gotten so far!” They answered themselves, a wide, enthusiastic smile still on their lips.
The young musician raised their head, their eyes running along the intricate net of metal bars of the scaffolding that towered above them and bridged across the stage to host speakers and spotlights. But the dreamy expression on Isabel’s face vanished at once when, after tracing the entire arc of the scaffolding’s structure down to the point where the metal bars anchored to the floorboards in the opposite corner of the stage, their gaze found Gabriel’s.
The other immediately looked away, picking up the first object he could find - an amplifier cable already neatly rolled up into a small coil - and setting it back down on a box merely a few steps away to make himself look busy.

Isabel briefly turned to glance at the remaining three members of their band; Harry and Crowley’s attention seemed to be absorbed by the various parts of Debbie’s drums, which the two of them were helping her set up. From the looks of it, they would be busy for a while.
“Gabe,” Isabel called, walking over to him. “Do you have a moment? I’m up for talking, if you want.”
The other set aside yet another unnecessary task he had assigned himself and finally looked up at them. “You didn’t seem up for talking when you left my messages on read for a whole day, yesterday.”
“Okay, I admit that it wasn’t the kindest thing for me to do,” Isabel conceded, “but it’s not like I meant to never talk to you ever again!”
“Really?” Gabriel asked in reply, raising his eyebrows. “Then why were you acting like nothing happened when we met in Sharon’s office to record the interview in the afternoon?”
“Because it wasn’t the time nor the place to have such a conversation!” Isabel objected.
“Then I say that, for me, it’s not the place nor the time to have it now either.” Gabriel sentenced.
“Hey, you two.” Crowley called for them, coming to stand right between them. Isabel rolled their eyes in frustration at yet another interruption. “I don’t know what’s going on between you, but please keep it off this stage.” Crowley said firmly. “We’ve worked so hard to prepare for this concert, and I have no intention of letting a backstage fight throw everything away just mere hours before our big night! Have I made myself clear?”

“Are you guys alright?” Debbie asked, joining the three of them. Her gaze shifted from Isabel’s face to Gabriel’s and lastly to Crowley’s, studying each of them. “You seem so serious… Did something happen?”
“No,” Isabel was the first to reply, after a momentary hesitation. Maybe Gabriel was right, after all. Between the rest of the band and the various stagehands working around them, there was little to no privacy at all, and they surely didn’t want such an intimate conversation between them to be so public.
“Well, my back is hurting from all the stuff we had to carry, and I’m pretty sure Harry is tired as well. I think we could all use a little break, mh?” Debbie suggested. “Santa came earlier, this year, and I want to show you all the amazing gifts he brought us for our show!”
The rest of the band watched their drummer as she retrieved a bag she had previously placed in a sheltered spot on the stage in order to keep it safe in spite of all the commotions that were taking place. From it, she took out the electric violin that Gabriel had purchased with Isabel from Charlie’s music store almost two weeks prior. “It took me quite a few failed attempts, but it’s finally ready,” Debbie said after handing Gabriel the instrument. “I'm sure the whole process would have been so much quicker if only I had violin available at all times instead of having to give it back to you after each individual test of the software… But I guess there was just no way for me to keep it, since you needed it in order to keep practicing on it. Enough talking, now! Come on, give it a try!”
As soon as Gabriel slid the bow along the strings, the LEDs installed in the violin’s bout responded to the touch, making the instrument light up with hues of blues and purples.
“Yo! This is so cool!” Harry exclaimed, mesmerized by the ever changing colors that the LEDs were emitting as Gabriel kept playing. “Incredible job, Debbie!”
“Thank you, thank you,” The girl replied with a proud smile on her lips as she watched the result of her programming efforts. “And that’s just the first of the surprises I have in store for you guys!”
The next items to be pulled out from the bag were two small boxes. “What are these?” Isabel asked, studying the item they were just handed.
“Picks, for you and Crowley.” Debbie answered. “ These also have lights, they work in the same way as the violin.”
“You really thought of everything!” Isabel smiled as they searched the surface of the pick for the button that activated the lights. As soon as they pressed it, the three corners of the pick lit up with a reddish glow.

“Harry, don’t take it personally, but the last present Santa brought us is for me. He must have found out about the stink bombs you set off in the gym’s locker room and decided it was bad enough of a prank to put you on his naughty list.” Debbie went on. Harry clearly didn’t seem to agree with Santa’s judgement, since he crossed his arms over his chest and nodded with an accomplished smirk on his lips as he thought back to the smelly vials he unleashed against his unlucky fellow schoolmates.
Debbie extracted from her bag a rolled up sheet of paper, which she then proceeded to open ceremoniously to reveal a vinyl print of the words ‘The Outcasts’ written in a bold, sharp font that made the band’s name seem hand-painted in black ink. The capital ‘O’, noticeably bigger than the rest of the letters, was decorated with a five-pointed star that transformed it into a pentagram, another nod to the kind of imagery that their demon masks already evoked.
The rest of the band watched as Debbie knelt in front of the main drum of her kit and carefully pressed the sticker on its surface. “Can you guys believe it? Now we even have branded drums!” Isabel exclaimed in excitement, jumping up and down a couple times on the spot. “We’re really starting to look like pros!”

The band’s exultations for the new gadgets they had just received, however, were interrupted abruptly by a noise, a sound similar to the thud produced by a phone falling down and hitting the ground. All five Outcasts froze in place, lending an ear as they took a look around themselves. Someone else was there in that square, even if none of them could see where exactly. “Guys, maybe we’re overreacting; between the stagehands and those guys over there who are setting up the drinks kiosk, there are a lot of people who could have dropped something.” Debbie speculated when several moments passed and nothing happened.
“No, it didn’t come from this area. It came from over there.” Isabel shook their head, their eyes scanning the area in search of any possible hiding spots. Eventually, they noticed a slight movement behind a thick bush that was in dire need of pruning: the tip of a feminine shoe retracted behind the leaves, its owner likely hoping she could still go unnoticed. Bingo. “Sharon, I know it’s you!” Isabel called aloud. “Show yourself!”
The bush let out a “Damn it!” muttered in frustration. Shortly after, a head of dark curls adorned by unmistakable red streaks peeked out from behind the overgrown plant. “Ugh, I can't believe I managed to get myself caught like a novice at her first stakeout!” Sharon complained to herself as she walked closer to the stage. “Well, at least my camera didn’t get damaged…” She added with a sigh, turning the object a couple times in her hands to examine it closely.
“The concert won’t be until tonight, why are you here so early?” Gabriel asked her, frowning in puzzlement.
“To take some backstage photos of your rehearsals, now that I finally knew where I would find you, duh!” Sharon answered him, rolling her eyes with a smile. “You guys should be more careful, you know? Being out here on the stage, in plain sight without your masks… You’re lucky it was me behind that bush and not any of your fans, otherwise photos of your pretty faces would already be bouncing back and forth across every corner of the internet.”
The Outcasts remained silent for a couple moments, glancing at one another. “She’s not wrong. Maybe it would be better for us to run our soundchecks with our masks on.” Crowley said. His fellow band members nodded in approval to that suggestion of his. “You can stay here if you want, just make sure you don’t get in our way while we work.” Crowley then went on, now addressing their unexpected onlooker.
Sharon’s lips curved up into a little smile. “Oh, don’t worry, you guys won’t even notice me - for real, this time!”

Notes:

Hi, guys! You may have noticed that the total number of chapters has shifted from 34 to 35. This is because I originally intended this chapter right here and the next one to be two halves of just one chapter, but it ended up becoming way too long and full of stuff and I eventually decided to split it in order to give every topic the space it needed.

Chapter 32: The concert

“Some legends are told,
some turn to dust or to gold,
but you will remember me,
remember me for centuries.”
(‘Centuries’ - Fall Out Boy)

As they waited to be announced onstage to begin their show, the Outcasts were all pressed against one another backstage, trying to peek through the closed curtain to see if they could spot any familiar faces of friends and classmates amongst the multitude of people that had gathered to attend their concert.
“I still can’t believe you had the brilliant idea of inviting them here!” Crowley complained, his gaze fixed on the point where Matthew and Francesca De Angelis were exchanging some small talk as they waited for the show to start.
“I just wanted them to have a chance to change their minds about you and to see how amazing you truly are.” Gabriel, who was standing right by his older sibling’s side, replied apologetically.
Those words caught Crowley off guard and he turned to his brother, staring at him in silence for a couple moments, surprised by such a compliment. “Yeah, right...” He then grumbled, his gaze shifting once again towards the shapes of their parents in the distance. “We both know damn well nothing of that sort will ever happen.”
“Say, dude: weren’t you the one who said that we should leave our personal issues at home until after the concert?” Harry stepped in, earning himself a glare from Crowley for having turned his own words against him.
“Harry is right, Crow,” Isabel said, coming to stand alongside the three of them. “Woah! Look at all these people!” They then exclaimed, looking out at the now almost completely crowded square in front of them.
“Don’t tell me you’ve developed stage fright out of the blue?” Harry joked with an arched eyebrow, noticing the worried, almost frightened expression that had formed on the young guitarist’s face.
“Something along those lines, yeah…” The other mumbled, almost to themselves.
“You have nothing to worry about, Bel!” Harry reassured them, giving them a pat on the shoulder. “We’ll bring the house down like we always do!”

While the five young musicians were engaging in such conversations, on the opposite side of the square, in a far enough spot from the area where hundreds of young people were all pressed up against one another in front of the stage, Matthew De Angelis was voicing to his wife all the disappointment he felt towards the grim spectacle their son had forced him to witness; “Look at all these young men and women walking around like praising the devil was no big deal!” Matthew said with a grimace of displeasure, eyeing a young couple who was walking by, both with a beer in their hands and those awful horned headbands in their hair. “The churches are emptying, and the streets are filling up with kids like these, who incite people to further distance themselves from God!” He went on, gesturing towards the band’s logo, which towered over the square from the big screen placed on the rear end of the currently empty stage. “I’m telling you: the world is truly heading in a terrible direction, my dear Francesca.”
“Mr. De Angelis!” Someone called at that moment, preventing Matthew from lamenting any further about the decay of modern day society. Turning their heads, the De Angelis spouses were met by a blonde woman with a bright smile on her lips. Realizing that she and Mrs. De Angelis hadn’t actually had the pleasure to meet yet, Jessica Maxwell introduced herself to the woman, offering her a hand which the other shook cordially. “I would like to thank you once again for everything you did for me and my child Bel; meeting you and your son was truly a blessing for us!” Jessica said to the couple. “Gabriel is such a good kid, and I can see clear as day the positive influence he’s had on my Bel. You must be proud of him!”
“We are.” Francesca smiled, glad to hear such praises about her youngest son. Her husband, however, didn’t seem to share her same joy; Matthew’s only reaction to Mrs. Maxwell’s words, in fact, was an unconvinced nod.
While the three of them were still conversing, the host of the event took the microphone and officially kicked off the evening. The band made their entrance onstage, and the five masked musicians were immediately met by loud cheers and applause from their audience.

. . .

Lost as she was in her thoughts, Micaela was barely paying any mind to the chaos produced by the crowd around her, to the point where she only acknowledged the ungraceful singing of the girl standing immediately to her right when she accidentally bumped into her.
Embarrassed for the collision she had just caused, the girl quickly apologized. Then, she fixed back in place her horned headband, which had almost fallen off of her head as she kept jumping up and down to the music that the band was playing, before devolving her attention back to her idols. Micaela briefly gave her a tight smile and a nod of her head to let her know it was okay, before following the other’s example and turning back to the stage.
A few days earlier, as she was checking her social media, divine providence had led her to come across the Instagram post in which The Outcasts announced their upcoming concert. She had never followed the band’s page, nor had she ever interacted with any of their posts - if anything, in fact, she had always purposefully kept her distance from anything that revolved around that group of noisy rascals. Still, that post somehow managed to appear on her feed, giving her the chance to see a photo in which, for the first time, the mysterious masked students were no longer four but five.
To really pique Micaela’s attention wasn’t so much the fact that the band had apparently enrolled a new member, but the musical instrument that this new ‘demon’ was posing with in the photo. A violin.
Micaela thought back to the time when Mrs. Francesca De Angelis proudly showed her photos and videos of the music recitals her youngest son used to attend as a child. No, she surely didn’t have to see the mysterious violinist without his mask to guess who he might be. Micaela immediately forwarded the post to Sarah, who, much to her surprise, replied that both she and Ursula already knew, and that they were going to attend the concert. ‘If you want to go, you're free to do so,’ Sarah wrote in her reply. ‘Just make sure you don’t ruin the evening for me and Ursula.’

Those were the events that, on that sunday night, led Micaela to get dressed and leave her dorm room, take an unusually crowded bus heading downtown, and lastly to push her way through the multitude of people that had come to see The Outcasts play, careful to cut for herself a corner in a far enough spot from where Ursula and Sarah were positioned as to not be noticed by them. For the first time in her life, Micaela, who had always been surrounded by large groups of acquaintances to share every life experience with, felt truly and utterly alone, separated from her closest friends due to a series of mistakes that she herself had made, and seemingly the only person in that crowd who wasn’t familiar with any of the songs the band was playing.
But even more than feeling out of place at a concert of a band she didn’t quite enjoy to listen to, what veiled her face with sadness was the scene she was witnessing: the band’s guitarist, who hadn’t stopped jumping and moving back and forth and all around their bandmates ever since they set foot on stage, leaned with their back pressed against the violinist’s for a couple moments, to then turn back to face him and ‘talk’ with him through gestures and body language.
It was a painful confirmation to her suspects on the true identities of both musicians: even with their facial expressions completely hidden by their masks, Micaela thought with a pained grimace, it was clear as day that Gabriel was much more in tune with Isabel than he had ever been with her.

When the current song came to an end, the band’s singer sat down with his legs dangling from the stage. “More than a few of you will probably be less familiar with our next song; it’s one of our most recent pieces, and so far we’ve only posted an official audio of it on our page but we’ve never performed it live yet.” He told his audience. “And yet, I’m sure that as soon as I start singing, all of you will know exactly what I’m talking about. This song, in fact, is dedicated to a certain cheeky angel who loves to mess up our lives with his arrows.” The masked singer went on. Laughter arose from a few different spots of the audience as some of the band’s most dedicated fans began to understand what song he might be referring to. “Unrequited crushes, unhappy relationships, getting cheated on... We’ve all had our reasons to want to flip the little pest off at some point of our lives. Well, our next song is a chance to do exactly that.” The singer of The Outcasts concluded his introduction, standing up to his feet to get back to his own corner of the stage. “This, ladies and gents and everyone else, is ‘Fuck you, Cupid’!”
Right from the very first verses of the song, the irreverent yet relatable lyrics earned a warm response from the audience, and the band further encouraged the crowd’s reactions by turning the song into an interactive experience: when, by the end of the chorus, the moment came to deliver the line that made up the title of the song, the masked singer pointed his microphone toward the audience.
From their privileged spots in the front row, Freddy and Sharon, who were respectively taking photos of the event and livestreaming the concert on her Instagram page ‘@Sha.X’, exchanged an amused glance. “Fuck you, Cupid!” Freddy shouted, joining the loud cacophony of voices that erupted at that moment, and such a whole-hearted exclamation of his made his dark-haired friend break into a laugh. When the moment came for everyone to raise their voice again at the end of the second chorus, Sharon briefly turned to glance at Freddy, whose attention was entirely drawn to the stage, taking in the look of genuine happiness he had on his face as he watched the concert. And then she joined in as well.
‘I have to break a lance for you’ The first line of the bridge stated, veering the song towards a slightly more positive view of love; even though Cupid often makes a mess with his arrows, the rest of the bridge said, there are times in which he does get things right. For example, the love he ignited between the narrating voice’s parents, without which they wouldn’t be here today.
In the audience, Jessica Maxwell, who by then had recognized across the various songs a few precise autobiographical references that led her to realize that the lyricist of the band was none other than her own child, was deeply moved upon hearing those words, and brought a hand to her chest as she thought of her late husband.

. . .

As they performed ‘The skin I’m in’, accompanied by close-ups of their faces appearing on the screen behind them and by a multitude of surprised exclamations arising from the audience, one by one the members of The Outcasts removed their demon masks, revealing their true selves; Harry… then Debbie… Crowley…
When the music slowed down in preparation for the song’s bridge, Isabel walked over to Crowley’s microphone with slow, measured steps. The young guitarist unfastened and removed their mask and, much to Gabriel’s surprise, they proceeded to sing the focal line of the bridge themselves; ‘You don’t know how hard it is, to live in the skin I’m in.’
In the audience, Azzy, who was attending the concert with her boyfriend Alphonse, gasped in surprise upon seeing Isabel’s name and face appearing on the stage’s screen; “That’s my roommate!” She exclaimed, shaking Alphonse’s shoulder as she jumped excitedly up and down on the spot. “Go, Bel!” She then shouted even louder, hoping it would be enough for Isabel to hear her above the noises of the crowd.
Onstage and on the screen, a hint of a smile formed on Isabel’s lips. They had heard her indeed, and her reaction, as well as her words of encouragement, were enough to finally ease their worries.
As Isabel raised a hand to wave back at Azzy, Gabriel finally snapped out of the trance that had temporarily taken hold of him. Unfortunately, there was no time for him to linger in the emotion of the moment: the first notes of the last chorus of the song, the cue he and the rest of the band had planned for him to come unmasked as well, were already rolling around. He was the one to suggest he’d be the last of the group, so that he could divert the crowd’s attention from Isabel in case they felt uncomfortable during their own reveal.
Something which, luckily, didn’t happen.

. . .

After performing a very warmly requested encore of ‘Hellfire’, the five Outcasts, relieved and partially a little bit incredulous to see that their fans were cheering them on with even more passion now that they knew who they were, gathered at the center of the stage and, joining their hands, bowed to thank their audience.
As he smiled for the crowd just like his bandmates were doing, Gabriel tried without success to ignore the fact that, perhaps by some cruelly ironic trick of the universe, his hand was intertwined with Isabel’s.

When the five musicians left the stage, Isabel found their mother waiting for them. “Honey, you and your friends did truly amazing! You’ve gotten even better since the last time I heard you play. Your father would be so proud of you!” Mrs. Maxwell complimented her child, who smiled in reaction to such compliments. Jessica pulled them in for a hug - a gesture which, for once, Isabel not only did not oppose themselves to, but even welcomed. “Our home has become so quiet since you moved out for college… I never thought one day I would find myself saying this, but I’m really starting to miss your noisy loud music echoing through the rooms!” Mrs. Maxwell confessed when the two of them split from their embrace, shaking her head in disbelief with a smile still on her lips. “Awe, I can’t believe how much you’ve grown this past year!” She then said, cupping her child’s face in her hands. “You moved with so much confidence, up there on that stage, with your head held high like a royal speaking to their people from the balcony of their palace!”
“Okay, mom, that’s enough now.” Isabel mumbled in embarrassment through their teeth, “Most of my classmates are here, and they’re watching us!”
To their relief, their mother took a step back from them without opposing further resistance. “Oh. Of course, sorry. I always forget my baby is all grown up now…”
“Don’t call me a baby; that’s part of the-”
-Problem, they were going to add, but before they could even finish their sentence Jessica’s eyes were caught by Debbie walking by. Isabel rolled their eyes as they hurried after their mother, who in the meantime had already stopped Debbie to introduce herself to her and express in a painfully honest way just how happy she was that her child had finally made themselves some friends.

A little further away from where Mrs. Maxwell was asking Debbie to take a picture of her and Isabel, Gabriel and Crowley were receiving a drastically different greeting from their parents: “Six years without seeing you, and look at what you’ve turned into!” Matthew exclaimed, his gaze darting up and down along every piece of Crowley’s outfit, from his bright red dyed hair down to his spiked boots, as he and his brother came close. Gabriel wasn’t sure of which individual piece must have looked the most outrageous to his eyes. “The scandal you’ve already caused because of the stuff you used to take wasn’t enough, huh? No, first you dragged our family’s good name and reputation into the dirt, and then you went and corrupted your brother as well.” Matthew went on with his verbal attack. “He was always such a well-mannered, respectable kid before he started hanging out with you again, and now look at him - dressed in drag and getting in trouble at school for vandalizing the property with flyers advertising the noise you call music!”
It wasn’t fair - Gabriel thought to himself, as irritation began to spread inside his chest and altered his expression into a frown. No, it wasn’t fair at all. That night was supposed to be his and the rest of his band’s personal moment of glory, and his father had ruined that time of joy and celebration by turning it into yet another lecture that he and Crowley had done nothing to earn.

Gabriel took a step forward, coming to place himself right between his brother and their father. “That’s enough!” He said firmly. “First of all, Crowley didn’t ‘corrupt me’ or anything of that sort. I have a mind of my own, you know? I chose to do everything I’ve done, and even if you don’t want to accept it, this band has been the best thing that could have happened to me.” Gabriel went on. “And second, I’m so tired of the way you treat him - the way you’ve always treated both of us! It took me and Crowley six entire years to finally find each other, and I have no intention of giving him a reason to leave again!”
Outraged by the way his son was opposing him, Matthew opened his mouth to fire back a reply when his wife halted him by placing a hand on his arm: “Gabriel is right, my love.” Francesca said to her husband.
“A son should not address his elders in such a respectless way! How can you endorse such a behaviour from-”
“Matthew.” Francesca halted him again, this time more firmly. “You’ve already said and done enough.”
Although begrudgingly, Matthew gave up the fight, shaking his head as he looked away.
Now Francesca’s attention was back on her sons. “He’ll get over it, sooner or later, don’t worry.” She reassured them. “Now, Raphael… Crowley… Let me take a look at you, my child!” The woman smiled as she stepped closer to her eldest child with her arms wide open. Mrs. De Angelis reached out for Crowley’s face with the intent of caressing his cheek, but the young man tilted his head to avoid the contact. Such a reaction left Francesca visibly saddened. “We’re so sorry for the way your father and I treated you, honey.” The woman apologized. “We never wanted anything but the best for both of you, but it looks like we unfortunately ended up taking the wrong approach on more than one occasion , over the years.”
Francesca reached out for Crowley again, and this time, despite keeping a skeptical eye on her the whole time, he allowed her to take his hands in hers. “Many things will be changing in our family, from now on - right, Matthew?” Mrs. De Angelis said, punctuating that question with a stern look shot at her husband, who crossed his arms over his chest.
And even though it sounded like an almost impossible prospect, Gabriel hoped with all his heart that it would be true.

Notes:

Nota: Rumor has it that there’s a reference to a song hidden somewhere in this chapter 👀