Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Freder still wasn’t sure how he’d ended up in Ms. Larson’s “Issues in Society” class - or just Issues as everyone in school called it, mainly as an excuse to tell their friends they’ve “got Issues” - but he did know he was completely out of his depth for the first time in his life. 

When he saw the class as a second-semester option, he’d tried signing up for it mainly as a joke; everyone knew it was for juniors and seniors or the very rare overachieving sophomore. A freshman had no chance. But Ms. Larson had a reputation as a funny teacher (a plus) who was easily sidetracked by ranting about current events (a bigger plus) and Freder had a lot of opinions about social issues. So why not try anyway?

But then he got in, and that’s how the whole mess started.

From the moment he walked in the first day every single thing he'd said in class discussions had been wildly wrong in a way he didn't understand. The textbook didn't make sense. It felt like everyone in the room spoke fluent German and all he knew was middle-school Spanish. And the expectant spotlight put on him as the first freshman to be let into Issues was only made worse by the fact that everyone in the room knew he was the younger brother of Joh Fredersen, who couldn't fail a class if he tried. So admitting defeat by dropping the class was not an option.

Freder was in deep Scheiße and he knew it.

But the worst thing of all - worse than being a disappointment, worse than the way his classmates snickered when he raised his hand, even worse than that look Ms. Larson got on her face every time he opened his dumbass mouth - was The Hot Chick. At least, that’s what he’d called her in his head when he saw her on the first day of class. He’d learned a few things about her since then, which he’d listed in his notebook:

1. She’s the overachieving sophomore
2. She can think circles around everyone else in the class (especially me)
3. Her name is Maria

In other words, the crush was immediate. However, a fourth thing he’d learned but couldn’t stand to write down was that Maria definitely knew he didn't belong in that class. The first day of the semester when the words “reverse racism” stumbled out of his mouth she'd looked at him like he was a dog eating its own puke - like he couldn’t help it and didn't know better but she still desperately wanted him to stop. 

In that moment he knew he'd ruined his chances of ever getting a date with her. He might as well die.

But the Fredersens never give up. So he tried harder, which naturally made things worse.

He read the textbook cover to cover twice but couldn’t make sense of it. He worked hard on his homework but got weak C's at best. He spoke up more in class but continued to say the wrong things. 

And with every increasingly incoherent statement he contributed, Maria's shoulders would rise and fall in a silent sigh and she'd raise her hand to gently correct him or try to steer the discussion in a new direction. In a few extreme cases - such as his disastrous “Why shouldn’t the guy have a say in whether or not his girlfriend takes birth control?” question, which had been painfully genuine - Maria had even brought up a recent news event to get Ms. Larson started on a rant, derailing the lesson entirely.

But he couldn’t help trying any more than he could help fucking up. He needed to change Maria's mind. She consumed his every waking thought and more than a few of the sleeping ones. Even during indoor track practice, when his mind had once gone blissfully blank as he ran, he kept imagining her waiting in the bleachers for him to be done so they could go to the mall or commit petty crimes or whatever the hell it was she liked to do. Commit petty crimes at the mall maybe? He’d be down if that’s what she wanted.

Freder knew he needed Maria like air. But he hadn’t realized how obvious his obsession was to everyone else. 

One day as Joh drove them home after practice, he finally tried to talk sense into Freder.

“Listen, Freddy-”

“I told you to stop calling me that.”

“Can you just shut up for a second?”

“Fine.”

Joh glanced up at the rearview mirror. Freder was staring out the window, arms folded across his chest. 

“What’s her name?” Joh asked.

“Who?” Freder asked, still looking out the window.

“That sophomore girl from Issues you’ve been losing your mind about.”

“What sophomore?” He slumped lower in his seat, but his voice cracked as he said it.

“Come on,” Joh sighed. “It's not like you've been subtle.” He switched on his turn signal, checked his side mirror and blind spot. “Besides, it's not a huge school and I'm your brother; I hear things. So?”

Freder hesitated, then mumbled, “Maria.”

“Which one?”

“Huh?”

“What's her last name?” Joh glanced at the rearview again, then flicked his eyes back to the road.

“Um…”

“ Bro. ”

“I don't know, she's the only Maria in the class!”

There was a slight pause as they went over a speedbump.

“Well that tracks,” Joh muttered under his breath.

Freder straightened up. “What's that supposed to mean?”

A light ahead turned red and the car rolled to a stop. Joh tapped the steering wheel. “I know you're not doing well in Issues.” His voice was tense. “But you're still slogging through it anyway when you could drop it for something else. I get that you're under pressure to succeed at it, but…”

“Like you'd know,” Freder muttered.

Joh's hands tightened on the wheel. “But you're still a freshman. People expect you to not have it all figured out yet. And you know it's better to quit now than it is to fail the class, screw up your GPA, and get kicked off the track team. Staying doesn't make sense." He glanced at the mirror again. "You're only ever this stupid when you're trying to impress a girl.”

Freder rolled his eyes. “Name one time I -”

“Last summer, Tasha, you hurt your ankle trying to do a backflip.” The light turned green, and Joh started holding up fingers on his left hand to keep count as he continued. “7th grade, Lily, the Ice Skating Incident. Three summers ago, Aggie, when you tried to win the Battle of the Bands with a kazoo. I could keep going without even mentioning the half-dozen injuries you got at various fast food playgrounds for a string of girls who never even told you their first names.”

“This is different,” Freder said. “I'm not some stupid kid anymore.”

Joh sighed again. “Fine. Just get a tutor or something to help, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Somebody besides this Maria girl.”

“Fine,” Freder muttered. He was pretty sure she would have said no anyway, but a small part of him still had hope.

The next day in class, hope came through when Ms. Larson assigned partners for the midterm project.

“Maria, you’ll be working with Freder.”

Freder’s heart did a backflip; luckily for him, it stuck the landing. He finally had his chance.

Maria, on the other hand, wore the painfully polite expression she always used when she knew someone was wrong. 

“Ms. Larson,” she said, “are you sure we’re the best match?”

“Can you think of a better one?” Ms. Larson asked.

Maria hesitated. There were scattered snickers around the room. Freder realized, with horror, that she wasn’t answering because calling anyone else in class a “better match” for him would be an insult to them. His heart sank. 

Maria finally shook her head and forced a smile. “Nevermind.”

At the end of class, Freder and Maria exchanged phone numbers and made a plan to meet up at the library after school to start the project. Freder said nothing on the car ride over; he’d never realized he could feel so defeated by getting exactly what he’d wanted.

“I'll be back for you at eight o’clock,” Joh said when they pulled up. “You’ll be fine. Just try not to be awkward.” Freder opened the car door and Joh added, “And don’t tell her you love her the first time you’re hanging out. It’s weird.”

“Bye.”

“I’m serious.”

“Bye!”

Freder slammed the door and trudged up the library steps.

Maria was waiting at a round blue table in the corner between the vending machines and the children’s area. There were kids swarming all around her and she hurriedly shooed them away. Freder walked over and sat down across from her, slinging his bag on the table.

“Sorry,” she said with an embarrassed smile, “it’s the only table that was left.”

“Do those kids know you or something?”

“Sort of - I do volunteer storytimes here on the weekends for service hours. They wanted me to read Pete the Cat to them again, but I kept telling them I had to meet somebody to do something for school. I don’t think they believed me until you walked in.” She laughed.

Freder mentally added to his list:

5. She likes kids
6. She volunteers at the library
7. She has a beautiful laugh

Maria launched into discussing the project. They had to give a short oral report about a specific issue at Metropolis High and propose a way to improve the situation.

“I was thinking we could talk about contract cheating and its underlying academic and socioeconomic causes,” she finished.

“Right.”

There was a long pause.

“Do you know what contract cheating is?” Maria finally asked.

Another pause.

“No,” Freder said.

“Plagiarism for hire,” she said.

Freder looked confused.

Maria took a deep breath. “Let me ask you something: has it ever seemed odd to you that the richest kids in this school also get the best grades, even though they’re spending all their time doing sports and clubs or just having lives instead of studying or doing homework?”

“I guess I hadn't really thought about it.”

“Well, how do you think they do that?” She spoke slowly and gently, like he was a wild animal she was trying not to scare away. “Do they have more time in the day than the rest of us?”

“No, but…” Freder was uncomfortable. He realized he’d never actually seen Joh doing his homework. “I mean, it's not like they can buy extra time, right?”

“Maybe not extra time, but extra work.”

“What do you mean?”

“They're buying their grades, Freder,” Maria said. Her voice was still gentle, but started picking up in speed and volume. “Not directly, of course, that would be too obvious. But they're buying the work for those grades. Exam answers, homework, essays, reports - as long as there’s a poorer, smarter kid who can provide those, there's a rich kid looking to buy. That's what contract cheating is.”

“That sounds… unlikely,” Freder said, though his tone was uncertain.

“I know a few of the kids who've done it,” Maria continued, lowering her voice, “but they won't tell me who they've sold work to, so I can't approach the school about it. But maybe a project like this can get them asking questions. I really think we should do it.”

Freder was torn. On the one hand, all of his friends were the same “rich kids” she was accusing of cheating. But on the other hand, Maria was so convinced there was something wrong, and so passionate about making it right, and he loved that about her. And right now she was talking to him like he could understand, looking at him like he was her equal instead of the dumbass freshman who shouldn’t have been let into the class at all.

“That makes sense,” he said, “but I really need to get a good grade on this to have any hope of passing this class. Shouldn’t we play it safe and pick something from the textbook, something Ms. Larson likes?"

“You won’t get an A by repeating whatever the teacher wants to hear.”

“Are you kidding me? Have you ever taken a literature class?”

“Freder-”

“And what if it doesn’t work?” His voice cracked again. “What if we get in trouble? Or what if we fail?”

“Failing is how you learn, Freder. You have to fail to grow. You can’t be perfect all the time.”

“But I have to!”

Maria looked surprised. He could see the wheels turning in her head as it all clicked into place - what it meant to always be Joh’s brother and never just Freder. To be expected to not do better than him, but disappoint everyone if he did worse. To be facing failure when he had no room to fail.

And the way she looked at him then, Freder knew she didn’t just understand - she knew from experience.

“The only way to really fail is to not try,” Maria said softly. “So what do you think? Should we try?”

Freder thought for a long moment - of Maria’s clear passion for this idea, of spending more time with her, of the way she finally seemed to respect him.

“You know what, sure,” he said. “Let’s try.”

Chapter Text

Eva hated everything about Metropolis High. 

She hated how the administrators told her they’d be “keeping a close eye” on her, as if they had a clue or gave a damn. She hated that they stuck her in the freshman classes midway through the year instead of letting her transfer her credits and be a sophomore like she deserved. She hated her clueless teachers and even more clueless classmates, and the way they all whispered about her when they thought she couldn’t hear them.

But there was nothing she hated more than the goddamn freshman gym class.

Eva was sitting on the sidelines of the court waiting to play badminton, seething with rage. She should be honing her craft right now. All her old friends - well, ex-friends - were in classes that mattered, cross-training in every aspect of performance in the hope to eventually have half of her natural talent and scramble for the roles that should have been hers. And here she was, reduced to waiting her turn to play the most useless sport known to man.

“Damn, you look angry enough to strangle a corpse.”

Eva startled and glanced at the person who’d just sat down on her left. White hair, crooked nose, unnecessarily intense eyes - shit, the Weird Guy was talking to her now. That’s all she needed.

“Piss off,” she said, turning her violet eyes back to the ongoing game. “Can’t you see I’m busy pretending to give a shit about this?”

Weird Guy laughed but didn’t move. “Right? At this point I’m just waiting for one of these idiot freshmen to pants one of their friends again. It’s only happened twice today, and I know they’ll never forgive themselves if they leave it at that.”

“I said piss off.” Eva couldn’t help glancing at him again, and was unnerved to see he was still staring at her. “Besides, aren’t you an ‘idiot freshman’ too?”

“Hell no,” he said, “I’m a senior - I’m only here because I need it to graduate. I don’t really belong here. And I know you don’t, either.”

Eva narrowed her eyes, wondering which batch of gossip he’d heard about her. “And yet, here we are.”

“Here we are,” he said.

The teacher blew the whistle and they both pushed themselves up to take their turns. When Eva sat down again, Weird Guy returned to her side. They sat in silence for a few moments.

“I fought a guy at a funeral once,” he said.

Eva thought that was a hell of a thing to say out of nowhere. Was he messing with her? Well, she was curious enough to see where this went.

“Whose funeral?” she asked.

“My girlfriend’s,” he said. “Well… ex-girlfriend’s.”

Sounded fake, but possibly interesting. “And who did you fight?”

“My ex-best friend.” There was something odd about the way he said it, like a kid in their first drama class who’d practiced the lines but wasn’t letting themselves feel them.

“Why?” Eva asked.

Weird Guy’s right hand clenched into a fist, and she noticed for the first time that he was wearing one of those ridiculous black faux-leather fingerless gloves on just that hand.

“Because he killed her,” he said.

Eva knew then that he was going to tell her the whole story whether she wanted to hear it or not. She hated that she wanted to.

But before he could continue, there was a burst of laughter and the teacher's whistle blew again. Eva turned towards the laughter. Sure enough, a third student had been pantsed.

“The prophecy has been fulfilled,” Eva said drily, and a jagged, unexpected laugh tore out of Weird Guy.

The teacher called, “All right everyone, we were about to wrap up anyway. Go get changed.”

Weird Guy stood up and held out a hand to Eva. She got up without taking it, but smiled at him.

“Guess we’ll have to pick this up tomorrow,” she said. As glad as she was to get out of her sweaty, awful gold-and-black gym uniform, part of her wanted to linger.

“Yeah?” he said.

He looked at her curiously, as if studying her. Eva suddenly wondered if she was the first person who hadn’t simply ended the conversation after that weirdly rehearsed opener. She still wasn’t sure if he was lying or not. That intrigued her.

“Yeah,” she said, letting some of that genuine interest slip into her tone. She began walking towards the locker room.

Weird Guy called after her, “I’m Conrad, by the way. What’s your name?”

She turned, tossed her black hair, and flashed him a smile, but kept walking. “You’ll find out tomorrow!”

It was only fair that she kept him guessing, too.

When his feelings got too loud, Conrad knew the only way to sort them out was to listen to something louder. So he put his headphones on, laid down on his unmade bed, and let music crash over him.

It wasn’t like it meant anything, he told himself. The girl was just interesting. That’s all. Pretty in a way, maybe, but it didn’t mean anything. He’d never stop loving Hel.

He turned over and stared at the top of his dresser, where he had a large photo of Hel. As if defying the somber black frame it was in, the picture was a riot of light and color. Hel was in the center, laughing, wearing a bright pink dress and holding a half-eaten puff of blue cotton candy on a paper cone. 

He’d taken it the night they went to the carnival the summer before junior year, about an hour before she started puking up bad funnel cake into a trash can. He’d held her hair out of the way and rubbed her back and that’s when she first said she loved him. And when she recovered and looked up at him and her pale blue eyes were sparkling from all the colored lights on the rides, he said he loved her too.

That was the Hel he chose to remember. Not the Hel who broke his heart at the end of the summer and turned up at school the first day of junior year on Joh Fredersen’s arm. Not the Hel who caved to Joh’s pressure to block Conrad’s number and ignored him in person. Not the Hel who he saw leave one night as junior prom queen and turn up the next morning as a photo in the newspaper under the headline “HONORS STUDENT KILLED IN CAR CRASH.” Not the Hel in the closed casket when he’d beaten the unscathed Joh half to death for being behind the wheel of that car and, it was rumored, drunk.

He’d never stop loving that Hel.

But he couldn’t get this girl, whatever her name was, out of his head. There was something almost familiar about her, though he was sure he would have remembered if he’d seen her before. She was so different from the other girls at the school. It was like she thought she was better than the people around her but actually had something to back it up. Conrad could relate.

More than that, she’d passed his test. She actually wanted to know more about him instead of bailing when he gave her an easy out. 

He wanted to know more about her, too. But it didn’t mean anything.

Eva and Conrad spent the next few days of gym class on the sidelines as much as possible, always talking yet rarely saying anything. But they still managed to learn more about each other. 

She made him guess that her first name was Eva by only giving him the clue that she shared her name with a historical figure who was also the subject of a classic musical. She was impressed he got it on the first try. 

He gave away his last name when the teacher called him “Rotwang” and, amidst the laughing of the idiot freshmen, Conrad shouted back that it was pronounced “ROHT-vang.” He was relieved she hadn't laughed too.

She said she wore color contacts at school since she couldn’t get away with dyeing her hair anymore, though he said she could if she was smart about it.

He insisted that his hair color was natural, but she knew a home bleach job when she saw it and told him so.

She corrected any gossip he’d heard about her by saying that yes, she’d transferred here after being expelled from the Metropolis School of Performing Arts, but no, it wasn’t her fault.

He set the record straight on any rumors she’d heard about him by saying that yes, he hadn’t taken the breakup with Hel well, but no, he hadn’t cut the brakes on her car on prom night.

They both found out they had a lot in common: shattered dreams, being misunderstood, and knowing they were meant for more than this.

Before long they were hanging out in the dead times right before and right after school in Eva’s solitary spot by the auditorium doors, laughing and crying and defacing fliers for the spring musical that Eva hadn’t been allowed to audition for because she was on mandatory academic probation.

Conrad never asked if they could spend time together outside school; he knew that was impossible the first day they hung out after the final bell and a girl who looked like a blonde version of Eva appeared in the doorway, glaring daggers at them and shaking her car keys.

“I’ve been waiting for ten minutes,” the girl said. “You know I have a project to work on.”

“Relax, Maria,” Eva said, “you would have spent it sitting in the parking lot waiting for the other cars to clear out anyway. I just need to finish telling my friend a story.”

Maria looked Conrad up and down and said, “You can finish it later, unless you want me to tell Mama and Papa you’ve been hanging out with a boy they don’t know.”

“Well, we can’t all hang out with strange boys at the library using a class project as an excuse,” Eva spat back.

Maria narrowed her eyes. “Two minutes,” she said, “or I’m telling them when we get home.” She glared at Conrad again and walked away.

“Older sister?” Conrad said.

“Twin sister,” Eva said, angrily zipping up her bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “Fuck’s sake, I’m the one who’s older by seven minutes.”

That explained why Eva looked familiar, Conrad thought. “Let me guess: she stayed on the ground like a good girl, just waiting for you to fly too close to the sun.”

“Yeah, basically.” Eva looked at Conrad for a long moment, struggling with what she didn’t want to say. What finally came out was, “I’m sorry.”

“No, I get it,” he said. “Go ahead. Who knows, maybe we can have a ‘class project’ soon too.”

“Yeah,” she said with a smile. “I’d like that.”

Conrad watched her go. It didn’t mean anything, he reminded himself. But he definitely liked knowing Eva.

Chapter Text

If Joh could be honest, he was tired of having to be okay. 

He'd been tired of it for at least seven years, since the moment he’d had to hold back his own tears to comfort Freder at the funeral because their dad was too withdrawn to notice him crying for Mommy to come back. Or when Dad threw himself into work to cope and left them with a string of increasingly incompetent nannies until Joh proved, at 14, that he could handle things himself. Or when he narrowed down his college aspirations to the three schools within an hour’s drive of home so Freder wouldn’t have to do the same.

He was glad that Freder was at the library most nights now, even if it was making him more obsessed with that girl Maria, because it gave Joh an hour or so when he could just drive aimlessly and stop being okay.

He glanced at the car’s clock. 7:34 PM.  He’d have time for one last detour if he made it quick. 

As his favorite song came on Joh cranked up the volume and started screaming along. He paused at the stop sign, checked both ways twice, and started to make a left. He slammed on the brakes again as a truck hurtled through the intersection, blaring its horn. Christ alive, it hadn’t been there two seconds ago. 

Joh closed his eyes and tried to steady his breath, turning the music way down. He reminded himself he was okay. It hadn’t hit him. Breathe in, 2, 3, 4. Hold. Don’t look at the passenger seat. Hel’s not there. Breathe out, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…

He opened his eyes and switched on his blinker to turn right instead. No more detours. If Joh got there early, well, Freder could just deal.

Joh pulled into the library parking lot and took out his phone.

Joh, 7:47 PM
Here

Freder, 7:48 PM
We’re not done yet

Joh, 7:48 PM
Gotta make dinner

Freder, 7:50 PM
Fine just a sec

Joh leaned his head back on the headrest and sighed. He needed to start teaching Freder how to cook, or else their days were only going to get longer once he started at New Babelsberg University next year. It was the best place he’d gotten into but, unfortunately, also the furthest away. And with their track practices not even starting until 6 PM, there was a good chance Freder would either starve or try to live off boxed macaroni and cheese for several months. 

Joh suddenly remembered the time Freder proudly showed that he’d made dinner for himself.

“It’s just mac and cheese,” Joh had said.

Then Freder snatched the bowl away and said, in the most offended tone possible, “Yeah, but I put vegetables in it!”

Joh laughed so hard at the memory that he didn’t even hear the car door open.

“What’s so funny?” Freder asked, sliding into the backseat. 

He looked so irritated that Joh started laughing harder, until tears started rolling down his cheeks. He wondered if that’s what he needed all along.

When he finally caught his breath, Joh just wiped his eyes and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. How’s the project going?”

“It’s all right,” Freder said as they drove off. “We’re supposed to be using stats to back up our report, but the school doesn’t keep stats on contract cheating so Maria thinks we should use anonymous student testimonies instead.”

“Contract cheating?” Joh said.

“Oh. Um, yeah.” Freder looked guilty. “Sorry, she didn’t want me talking about our topic until it’s done. She’s afraid somebody else might do it better.”

“I don’t see how anyone could do better than you two working together.”

Freder’s face brightened up at that. “You think so?”

“Hell yeah. You’re a smart kid already, and she’s really helped you a lot in that class.” He let some silence in before asking, “So what’s contract cheating anyway?”

“Oh, you know,” Freder said, looking out the window, “when kids give something to another kid in exchange for essays and homework and test answers and stuff. Usually money. She said the rich kids do it all the time at our school but I think she’s exaggerating, you know?”

“Yeah, probably. Maybe she’s just got a grudge against people like us.”

“Maybe, but…”

Joh looked at the rearview mirror. Freder avoided his gaze.

“She seems to keep implying that you do it too, but that’s ridiculous, right?” He finally looked up at the mirror but Joh’s eyes were back on the road. Freder’s voice was smaller now. “You’ve worked hard to get where you are. There’s no way you’d do something like that, right?”

Joh sighed slowly. “Freder, do you remember when you were eleven and Dad didn’t show up for Christmas like he said he would, and I promised you I’d never lie to you like that?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want me to break that promise, or do you want me to tell you something you don’t want to hear?”

Freder didn’t answer.

“Sometimes bad shit happens to you,” Joh continued, trying not to look over at the empty passenger seat. “That’s just how it goes. And when that bad shit happens everybody expects you to keep going like everything’s the same as it was, but it’s not. So you just push forward doing your best. And everybody says how you’re so ‘strong’ and ‘resilient’ because you kept going, even though they never gave you a choice.”

He glanced up at the mirror. Freder was staring blankly at it, still silent. Joh looked back down at the dark road ahead.

“And sometimes it's too much. Sometimes your best isn’t good enough. Sometimes you have to choose between taking care of your little brother and keeping your grades up.” He didn't mention shutting up the voice in your head that says you shouldn’t have survived the crash at all and probably should have just let your crazy ex-best-friend finish the job when he had the chance. “So you do what you have to do to make it all work. Understand?”

“But you’ve never cheated before,” Freder said. “You wouldn’t cheat in a race.”

“This isn’t cheating,” Joh said, “it’s economics. They have something I need and I pay them well for it. Everybody wins.”

“But you’re saying it’s your work. You got into college using grades that somebody else worked for!”

Joh was getting a headache. He thought of last spring, when Dad called him from five time zones away about a B on his report card and told him to “quit moping” and get his shit together already. “That’s just how the world works, Freder.”

“Well, it shouldn’t!”

“Well, it does!”

Neither one of them spoke again for the rest of the car ride. When they got home, Joh finally remembered to ask Freder what he wanted for dinner.

“I’m not hungry,” Freder grumbled.

“I’ve got to make you something,” Joh said.

“Just pay somebody else to do it. That’s what Dad would do, right?” Freder slammed the door behind him.

Once he'd gone inside, Joh started swearing and beating his fists against the steering wheel until they hurt like hell, then sagged back into the seat again.

“Why can't you just be here?” he said. 

He wasn't sure if he was asking Dad, or Mom, or Hel.

Freder threw himself on his bed. He wanted to scream, but he pulled out his phone instead. There was only one person he knew would get how he felt.

Freder, 8:15 PM
You there?

Maria, 8:20 PM
Just got home. What’s up?

Freder, 8:20 PM
Joh admitted he bought 
classwork

Maria, 8:21 PM
He WHAT

Freder, 8:21 PM
Well not directly, but

It was clear what he meant

Maria, 8:22 PM
Holy crap

Freder, 8:22 PM
He was making all these 
excuses

Yeah

Maria, 8:23 PM
I had a feeling

You okay though? I know 
you look up to him

Freder, 8:23 PM
LOOKED up to him

Past tense

Maria, 8:24 PM
I’m sorry

Freder, 8:25 PM
All my life I’ve been trying to 
live up to these ridiculous 
standards just because I 
thought that if I worked hard 
I could be like him

But it was all a lie

Maria, 8:25 PM
I’m sorry

Freder, 8:26 PM
I’m so fucking stupid

Maria, 8:26 PM
You’re not stupid

He lied to you

He lied to everyone

That’s not your fault

Freder, 8:27 PM
I guess

Maria, 8:27 PM
It’s not

Maria, 8:28 PM
Does anyone else know?

Freder, 8:28 PM
You’re the first person I’ve 
told

Even my dad doesn’t know 
yet

Freder, 8:29 PM
Shit maybe he does, I 
wouldn’t be surprised

Maria, 8:29 PM
Don’t tell anyone yet

We have no proof

Freder, 8:30 PM
Ok

Maria, 8:30 PM
Promise?

Freder, 8:30 PM
Promise

Maria, 8:31 PM
Gotta go

Don’t forget tomorrow’s 
reading

Freder, 8:31 PM
Ok

Maria, 8:32 PM
Ttyt

Freder entered then deleted a heart emoji seven times without sending it. He desperately wanted to tell Maria how he felt - not to spite Joh, or at least, mostly not - but he didn’t want to get her in trouble with her parents if they saw her phone. He knew they were strict about meeting guys before she started dating them.

He’d just have to tell her in person.

Sometimes in Joh’s dreams, Hel wasn’t bloody and mangled-up in the passenger’s seat of his old car. In this one she was the way he wanted to remember her, smiling and laughing and looking forward to the future.

In the dream they were coming out of the cinema after watching that weird old movie she loved which starred her favorite actor, who played a child murderer. It wasn’t really a cozy date flick but it meant a lot to her.

"This is the movie that made me love movies," she'd said. In real life she’d shown it to him on their first date, watching it on a tiny laptop screen while sitting on her bed. It was an unspoken test that he passed.

And Dream Hel was so excited, babbling uncontrollably about how amazing it was on the big screen and its tense use of sound and leitmotif and the incredible mise-en-scène and all those other weird film nerd terms he never understood but loved to hear come out of her mouth.

Because he loved the bold and unapologetic way she loved movies. She'd loved them so much, she wanted to make them. Her eyes always sparkled with cinematic visions that he'd never get to see.

“Promise you'll stay like this forever,” Joh said, grabbing Dream Hel's hand.

“I can't,” she said. They were back in the dark cinema now, alone in the audience. 

He heard a projector start up somewhere and the screen flickered. "Why not?" he asked.

“I'm just a silver shadow on the film in your head,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

Her seat was empty.

She was on the screen, just a huge, mournful, black-and-white face with haunting eyes. She was mouthing words he couldn't hear.

Suddenly an intertitle cut in that read: “Film decays.”

Her face filled the screen again, but was slowly eaten away by black bubbles and film scratches until the image flickered out entirely.

Joh woke in the dark and let himself cry.

Chapter Text

“Can’t we just say we’re going to the library?” Conrad said, scribbling a small obscenity amongst the fine print at the bottom of the new spring musical flier by the auditorium doors. Someone had noticed his addition on the last one and replaced it too quickly.

“For the last time, no,” Eva said.

“But they let Little Miss Perfect do it.”

Eva sighed. “For someone who never shuts up about getting a perfect score on the SAT, you can be really dense, you know that?”

“Meaning what?” he said, capping his pen more forcefully than he needed to.

“Meaning that you’re assuming my parents don’t let Maria get away with murder just because she’s never fucked up,” she said. “If I asked to go to the library with a boy they’ve never met to do a class project I’ve never mentioned before, they’d say no or, worse, insist she go with me. The only way we can fool them is to be up-front about it and pretend to play by their rules.”

“But won’t it be more suspicious that you’re being so obedient all of a sudden?” Conrad leaned against the wall and pushed a hand through his white hair. “I’ve only known you a few weeks and even I can tell that taking orders isn’t your strong suit.” He smirked.

Eva rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I have a plan. Just memorize your lines and leave the rest to me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And if you try to improv, I'll set you on fire.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Although Eva had the plan and the details, Conrad had a few tricks up his sleeve as well. When he arrived at her house at the scheduled time on Saturday, he rang the doorbell instead of knocking like she’d instructed.

“No, Papa, I’ve got it!” he heard her yelling from inside, but a tall, stocky man with dark hair and glasses answered the door instead. He looked vaguely like some kind of government agent.

“Hello?” the man said, looking first at Conrad’s white hair, then his crooked nose, followed by his ill-fitting preppy outfit, and finally the lone fingerless glove which he’d flatly refused to take off for this stunt. Over the man’s shoulder, Conrad saw Eva standing halfway up the stairs, her unsettlingly-natural eyes glaring at him.

“SET YOU ON FIRE,” she mouthed silently.

Conrad looked back at the man and smiled. “Hello sir, is Miss Eee-va home?” he asked pleasantly, leaning hard on the mispronounced E like she’d told him to.

“Who wants to know?” the man said.

“Oh!” Conrad said. “I’m terribly sorry, where are my manners?” He started to lift his right hand, then remembered the glove and stuck out his left instead. “My name is Conrad Rotwang, I’m Miss Eee-va’s assigned student mentor. You must be her father.”

Eva’s father shook Conrad’s hand, but looked confused. “My apologies. Our Eva,” he said, emphasizing the correct pronunciation for Conrad’s benefit, “didn’t tell us anything about a student mentor.”

“Ahh, I see,” Conrad said, glancing back at Eva, who was standing behind her father with a mix of embarrassment and guilt on her face. He’d worried she might try too hard to sell this, but she was doing well. “Unfortunately that happens a lot with our student mentees, especially ones in…” He paused briefly as if trying to choose his words. “ Unusual situations like hers. But I’d be happy to explain. May I come in?”

He soon found himself seated in a small but tidy living room on a worn leather armchair next to a sturdy couch covered in textured harvest-gold fabric, where Eva and her father sat. The glass of water they’d offered him sat on an oddly-shaped wooden coffee table, sweating onto a chipped glass coaster. He smiled and braced himself for phase two.

“So,” the father began, “what’s all this about? And why am I just hearing about this now?”

“We sent a letter about this home with Eva a couple weeks ago,” Conrad said, watching Eva’s face flush as he deviated from the script again. “Did she forget to give it to you?”

The father turned to Eva, narrowing his eyes. “Well?”

“I… yes, I forgot. I’m sorry, Papa.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” Conrad said, pulling an envelope with the school’s seal on it out of his messenger bag, “they gave me a duplicate just in case.” He handed it to Eva’s father and saw Eva’s eyes flare ever so slightly with surprise. “You can read it now, if you like, but I’ll be happy to summarize the main points for you.”

Papa opened the envelope and skimmed the letter as Eva looked over his shoulder. She glanced quickly at Conrad, probably after noticing the official letterhead and admin signature. He smiled politely at her, knowing she couldn't retaliate yet.

“So you're a tutor?” Papa asked, folding the letter up and putting it back in the envelope.

“Yes and no,” Conrad replied. “Students on academic probation, like Eva, have the option of accepting a senior student volunteer, like myself, to give them guidance to both improve their academic performance and help them forge stronger social connections with their peers. All of the other mentors were taken by the beginning of the semester, so Mom - sorry, I mean Principal Klein - asked me personally to take your daughter under my wing.”

“You're the principal's son?” Papa asked, looking almost as surprised as Eva.

Conrad nodded, giving his best embarrassed smile. “We both try not to make a thing out of it, understandably - nothing says ‘bully me’ louder than being the school principal's son. Luckily she kept her maiden name, so nobody's caught on yet. I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything.”

“All right,” Papa said. “But what I still don't understand is why you came here. The letter said something about the sessions taking place at the library.”

“Yes, well…” Conrad sighed and looked pointedly at Eva. “I'm afraid I had no choice. You see, today was the second session your daughter missed with no explanation, so I had to come in person and make sure everything was all right.”

Papa turned to Eva, who stared sullenly down at the coffee table. “I suppose you ‘forgot’ those too?”

“No,” she said.

“Then why didn’t you go?”

“Because it’s embarrassing! ” Her voice broke as she said it, and when she looked up her eyes were brimming with angry tears. Conrad was impressed at how convincing it looked. 

She turned to Papa and continued, “I know you think I’m just looking for attention, but I don’t want to be a screw-up! I should be at my real school, learning how to be a real actress, not being some stranger’s pity-protegee at Metropolis High. That was bad enough, but to have to do it out in public, at the same place and same time that Maria’s doing her stupid volunteer work? Do you know how humiliating that is?” 

The tears were spilling out now, rolling down and down and down her flushed cheeks as she spoke. Conrad was riveted.

“The other kids already laugh and gossip about me, Papa. And if I did that, can you imagine what they’d… how they’d…”

And that’s when she broke down sobbing. Not big, over-the-top sobs either; they were small and ugly, the kind of sobs that someone desperately tries to hold back but all spill out anyway. She covered her face. “Sorry,” she said between sobs, “sorry, sorry…”

And though Conrad had no doubt that Eva had cried her way out of trouble many, many times before, Papa seemed moved. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said quiet, comforting words to her. 

Despite everything she'd told Conrad about how terrible her parents were and how much they hated her, Eva would always be her father’s little girl. And she not only knew it; she used it.

Conrad realized two things in that moment: Eva might be the most shamelessly manipulative person he’d ever met - and he had a crush on her.

Well, fuck.

Eva wiped her eyes and looked up at him. Damn it, he must have missed his cue.

Conrad cleared his throat and Papa looked up at him too. 

“If I may,” Conrad said, “I think I might have a possible solution.”

“Which is?” Papa said as Eva sniffled.

“Considering Eva’s situation, we could make an exception and do in-home sessions instead, with your permission.”

“In-home sessions?” Papa asked, brow furrowing.

“Yes,” Conrad said. “That would protect her privacy while ensuring she gets the help she needs. We could do a trial session here today if you like, then decide how to proceed.”

Papa narrowed his eyes at Conrad, but his expression softened again when he looked at the still-sniffling Eva. He sighed.

“Yes, I think that would be best,” Papa said. “Can you do the session here in the living room?”

“Are you sure we won't be in the way?” Conrad asked, knowing that they had to be as in the way as humanly possible to make this work.

“Absolutely, don't worry about me. Go ahead.”

Papa got up to get a box of tissues. As soon as he left the room, Eva winked at Conrad. His heart leapt.

Maybe it was more than a crush. Shit. Shit.

He tried to distract himself as best he could by going through the motions of phase three, acting out the mentorship session while cramming his feelings down as far as he could. They had to do this right if they wanted it to work.

Finally, he checked the time on his phone and said “Well, Miss Eva, I think we’ve made a good start today.” 

He turned to her father, who finally folded up the newspaper he’d been pretending to read a single page of for the past half hour, clearly relieved that they’d be leaving him alone soon.

“Now sir, I think we have two options moving forward,” Conrad said. “One would be to continue doing our mentorship sessions here. The other would be to hold the sessions at my home - I’m sure Principal Klein won’t mind, as she could help keep an eye on Miss Eva that way. Of course, the decision is entirely up to you.”

Papa looked at Conrad for a moment, then Eva, then sighed and smiled. “Go ahead and do the sessions at your house whenever you like.”

Eva squealed and hugged her father, then left the room to get her phone.

“Thanks for your hospitality,” Conrad said, standing up and putting his messenger bag back on.

Papa stood up too and shook Conrad's hand again. “You're welcome.” Then, lowering his voice, he leaned in and added, “Listen kid, when she goes to this much trouble, I know it’s better to play along rather than give her another excuse to rebel. But I saw the way you were looking at her. And if you ever hurt my daughter, they'll never find your body. Understand?”

They looked at each other for a long moment before Conrad gave a shaky, silent nod.

Eva returned with her phone just as Conrad heard the door open behind him. He turned to see Maria and a woman he assumed was her mother come in, their chatter abruptly stopping as they saw him.

Papa broke the silence. “Mama, Maria, this is Conrad Rotwang, Eva's new student mentor. He'll be helping her with schoolwork and adjusting to the school. They just finished their first session.”

Conrad politely shook Mama's hand and turned to Maria to do the same.

“It's nice to meet you, Conrad,” Maria said evenly, though he could see the anger in her eyes.

Conrad smiled. “I'm terribly sorry to go so soon, but I promised Mom I'd get some yardwork done today. I'm sure Eva and her father can fill you in on the details."

Eva began happily chattering to Mama as Conrad turned to go. Maria caught him by the arm.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

Conrad smirked. “I've got this.”

Maria glanced towards Eva then back at him. “No,” Maria said. “She's got this. She always makes sure of that. And she won't care if you get hurt.”

He turned to look at Eva, who smiled again. Definitely more than a crush. But what the hell, his heart was already shattered anyway.

Conrad shrugged his arm out of Maria's grasp.

“At least then I'd feel something,” he said.

Conrad wasn’t surprised when his phone buzzed later that night.

Eva, 9:04 PM
I told you not to improv

Asshole

Conrad, 9:04 PM
It worked didn’t it?

Eva, 9:04 PM
Still setting you on fire

Conrad, 9:05 PM
You’re welcome btw

Eva, 9:05 PM
How did you even get 
that letter?

And what was all that shit 
about being the principal’s 
son?

You know how easy that is 
to check right?

Conrad, 9:06 PM
Wasn’t lying

Principal Klein’s my mom

Eva, 9:06 PM
Bullshit

Conrad, 9:06 PM
Why would I lie to you?

Eva, 9:07 PM
And the letter?

Conrad, 9:07 PM
Worked in her office over the 
summer to get my volunteer 
hours

It’s amazing what you can save 
on a flash drive when people 
leave their computers
unlocked

Eva, 9:08 PM
Wow

So you can just forge 
whatever you want?

Conrad, 9:08 PM
Only things they won’t check

Eva, 9:08 PM
Not sure whether you’re a 
magnificent bastard or just 
a bastard

Conrad, 9:09 PM
You figure that out while I go 
shower

Ttyt

Eva, 9:09 PM
Goodnight, bastard

Conrad grinned. Falling for Eva would definitely end in disaster, but he knew it would be a fun disaster.

Chapter Text

Maria drummed her fingers on the library’s study room table. Waiting for people always made her anxious, though she wasn’t sure why.

As if reading her mind, Freder said, “He’ll be here. He promised.”

“Maybe he changed his mind.” It wouldn’t surprise her; everybody else she’d contacted for anonymous testimony so far had completely refused. She should have known the first person who agreed would get cold feet.

Freder shook his head. “Josaphat’s a loyal person, and he always keeps promises. He once gave expensive concert tickets to an ex-girlfriend for her birthday even after she dumped him, because he’d promised he would.”

Maria wondered what it must be like to have enough money to be that ridiculous. “Sounds more like he was still hung up on her.”

“Not even a little bit,” Freder said. “She dumped him when he came out, because she cared more about being a ‘gold-star lesbian’ than she did about him. And Josaphat told Joh, ‘She may be a transphobic harpy, but I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of saying I kept her from seeing her favorite band.’”

“Ah. Fair enough,” she said. She glanced up at the clock as a few more seconds ticked by. “So how long have you known Josaphat?”

“I - well, okay, so he and Joh have been friends for years, but…”

Maria didn’t like the sudden uncertainty in his tone. “But?”

“Like I’ve usually been around when they were hanging out, but I’m just the little brother, you know? So we didn’t exactly… have conversations. At least, not until this morning.”

Maria stared at Freder for a long moment. 

“This morning,” she repeated.

“Yeah.”

“So we’re…” Maria took a steadying breath to keep her voice calm, and forced a smile. Freder was a nice boy, if a bit clueless sometimes, and she’d learned she had to handle him very gently to keep from scaring him off. “Freder, this is a really important assignment. Ms. Larson said we’re going to be expanding it for our big final project.”

“I know.”

“Right. And I’m not angry, just…” She tapped the table again and looked at the clock. “I’m worried about pinning the outcome of it on the testimony of someone you barely know who may have flaked out on us.”

“Josaphat didn’t flake out, trust me,” Freder said. He looked a little anxious but his voice was firm. “If you’d talked to him this morning, you’d know. He was really upset with Joh about something related to all this, and seemed relieved when I told him what you and I were working on. He practically jumped at the chance to help.”

“He did?” 

That didn’t sound at all like Maria’s experience with trying to gather information, even when she promised people would stay anonymous. So either she was doing something wrong and Freder had magically stumbled into the right approach with the right person, or there was something suspicious going on. 

“Are you sure he isn't spying for Joh somehow?” she asked. It sounded a little silly coming out of her mouth - what kind of person would use someone to spy on their younger brother? - but she couldn't help asking it.

“Oh, no,” Freder replied casually, “Joh uses someone else for that.”

She blinked. “Huh?”

Freder leaned in closer and smiled. "Don't tell anyone - I want him to keep thinking I don't know. But it was really obvious after a while, because the guy he picked doesn't exactly blend in. He must be the skinniest kid in the whole school and he always wears all black clothes. He's out there right now, in the teen section, wearing a weird hat and pretending to read a newspaper.”

She started to turn towards the room's glass wall but he grabbed her hand and she froze. Why did her heart skip a beat when he did that?

“Don’t look, he’ll notice,” Freder hissed. “Just watch me.” Raising his voice back to a normal level, he stood up and said, “Maybe Josaphat doesn’t know we’re in the study room. I’ll go out and look for him.”

Maria followed him with her eyes as he walked out into the main part of the library and sure enough, she saw an unsettlingly-thin teen wearing a long black coat and black hat sitting in one of the armchairs in the teen section, holding up a newspaper but clearly watching Freder as he passed. Freder, she realized, was much less clueless than she’d thought. Maybe he wasn’t just another brainless, rich, cute jock.

Wait. “Cute”? Where had that come from?

Maria bit her lip as she watched Freder disappear between the tall bookshelves. Okay, she’d admit he was nice to look at, objectively speaking. But a lot of people at Metropolis High were attractive - boys, girls, and others - and it had never made any difference to her. 

Truthfully she’d never understood how her friends could just look at someone and fall in love with them or want to kiss them or whatever. It just seemed weird to her. That hadn’t stopped her from pretending she felt the same way for a long time, but after doing some reading she realized she was aromantic and asexual, which came as a huge relief. She still wondered if Eva might be the same way, despite the incident, but if so she was doing a much better job at faking the opposite than Maria ever had. 

Maria was glad she didn’t have to fake it anymore. She was happy being aro-ace.

That’s why she was so confused by all these weird little moments she kept having with Freder. He wasn’t trying to flirt with her - or at least, she didn’t think so, though she’d never been good at reading those kinds of situations - but he would do something absolutely normal like brush against her hand or say her name or smile and she’d feel… some kind of way. Were these the “sparks” and “butterflies” her friends kept talking about?

Freder emerged from the bookshelves again, then smiled and waved at her. Her heart leapt. But it wasn’t supposed to do that; it never used to do that anyway, not until they’d started working on the project together. Did she have a crush on him?

Her mind started racing as she watched him coming back to the study room. What if she did have a crush on him? She thought she should be happy about that, but instead she felt like the earth was crumbling away beneath her. Because if she had a crush, did that mean she wasn’t aro-ace after all? If not, what the hell was she? What else had she been wrong about? And why, after fourteen years of being confused over feeling nothing and two years of happily accepting it, was she suddenly feeling these things now? What the hell made Freder so special? Who did he think he was, upending her whole life like this?

She closed her eyes and took several deep, controlled breaths. She wasn’t going to get angry at him. He didn’t do anything wrong. This was her mess to sort out.

She heard the study room door click and she opened her eyes.

“I found him!” Freder said, grinning. He was holding the door open for the elusive Josaphat, who Maria must not have noticed following him. He was about Freder’s height but not as muscular - more of an academic type than a jock, she guessed. She wondered how he and Joh knew each other.

“Josaphat,” Freder said as the door shut behind them, “this is Maria.”

Josaphat’s round face looked like it had been specifically made to show anxiety. Although he was smiling, his eyes were unable to settle on her, darting from place to place in the room as if he was afraid he was being watched. Better not tell him he was.

“Hi, Josaphat,” she said gently, “it’s nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming to help us out.”

His eyes finally focused on her and he seemed to relax a little. “It’s nice to meet you too, Maria. Thank you for waiting - I had to make sure nobody followed me.”

As Josaphat put his bag on the table and started to sit down across from Maria, Freder looked at her with a guilty expression. She shook her head slightly. The last thing he needed to do was scare off their only volunteer by telling him about that thin weirdo in the teen section. Freder sighed and sat down next to her. His knee brushed against hers, and there were those damn butterflies again.

Stay focused, she told herself. There’d be plenty of time to have an identity crisis later.

“Do you mind if I record this?” Maria asked, taking out her phone. At Josaphat's panicked look she added, “No one else is going to hear it. I just need to make sure I get all the facts right.”

He relaxed and nodded, and she started recording. After some preliminaries she circled around to her first question.

“What experiences have you had with contract cheating?”

“It’s a little complicated,” he said. “I never sold or bought any assignments myself, but I helped connect the two.”

He went on to explain how it all started with just Joh asking him, as a friend, to hire some help on a couple assignments here and there. It seemed harmless, and he knew Joh was struggling, and he was getting paid well enough for his part to keep his mouth shut. But then some of Joh’s friends started asking for the same, then their friends and friends’ friends, and before he knew it he’d become the middle-man for a whole operation that had spiraled completely out of his control.

“I’m going out of my mind from stress,” Josaphat said. “I’ve only been getting an hour or two of sleep every night since last semester’s midterms. I knew if I didn’t do something I was going to have a breakdown. And I’ve known Joh since we were kids - hell, he was the first person to call me by the right name. So I thought he’d understand, but…”

Josaphat stopped and stared down at the table to avoid Freder’s eyes. Looking at Freder’s face, Maria was certain now that he’d had no idea any of this was going on.

“So you tried to talk to Joh and get out of the whole thing?” Maria asked gently.

Josaphat nodded.

“And what happened?”

“Joh was furious. He said I didn’t know what real stress was. And when I tried to explain, he just cut me off and said, ‘If you can’t take it, fine. There’s plenty of kids in this school who’d be happy to do this. And at least they won’t try to exploit my friendship for sympathy.’” Josaphat gave a shaky shrug and desperately tried to sound nonchalant. “So that’s that, I guess.”

Maria blinked in stunned silence, then glanced over at Freder. She’d expected him to look devastated. Instead, he looked like he'd made up his mind to punch the devil and live to tell about it.

“That son of a bitch,” Freder murmured.

She stopped the recording. “Thank you, Josaphat. You’ve been a big help.”

“Of course,” he said. “I just hope something good comes out of all this.”

“We’ll make sure of that,” Freder said.

Maria knew they couldn’t make promises like that, and was about to say so, when Freder grabbed Josaphat’s hand and Maria’s at the same time. Josaphat looked surprised. Maria felt some kind of way. Why did Freder always have to be so physical all the time?

“Listen to me,” he said. “The three of us, we’re going to work together to make sure this gets sorted out. Josaphat, do you know of any students who sold assignments who might be willing to talk to us?”

Josaphat looked uncertain. “Maybe, if Joh hasn’t turned them against me already…”

Freder nodded. “Good. If you can get them in touch with me, Maria and I will take care of the rest.” He looked at Maria and she felt sparks again. “I think we should hold off on including the anonymous student testimony until the final project. That way we won’t tip our hand too soon. Can you find stats from outside the school to use for the midterm project?”

“Of course.” Maria was a little mad at herself for not thinking of that earlier; it would buy them more time to do this right.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Josaphat asked, anxious again.

Maria certainly wasn’t sure.

But without hesitation, Freder said, “Absolutely.”

Freder squeezed both their hands. Maria looked at Josaphat, and he looked right back. He was blushing slightly. She wondered if a bit of his world was crumbling away, too.

Chapter Text

Waiting to go inside Conrad's room for the first time probably should have been more exciting for Eva, but instead she was just curious what was taking him so long. She peeked around the slightly-ajar door and had to bite back laughter as she saw him frantically stuffing something in the closet and kicking dirty laundry under the bed. 

“Should I just go?” she said.

“Just a sec!”

As he passed the dresser Conrad stopped, made a strangled noise of indecision, then grabbed a framed photo off the top and put it in a drawer. Eva pulled away just in time for him to open the door.

“Come in,” he said, in a forced casual tone made even more absurd by the fact that he was out of breath.

Eva stepped in to get a better look and was immediately overwhelmed by the indescribable scent known as “dude smell.” The bedroom walls were covered mostly by posters for pop-punk bands she'd heard of but never really cared for, except for the wall at the end of the bed, which had a giant poster for a film she'd especially never cared for. There were still a few stray pieces of laundry scattered around the floor, along with some dystopian books that had overflowed off of the small bookshelf by the desk in the corner.

Conrad sat on the bed. “Sorry for the, uh…” he said, gesturing vaguely to the rest of the room before closing with, “...me.”

Eva laughed. “Don’t worry, bastard,” she said cheerfully, plopping down beside him. He tensed up and she scooted away until he relaxed again. “I’m not about to judge you for your terrible taste in movies.”

Conrad looked at the poster then back at her, looking slightly offended. “Hey, it’s a good film!”

“For a flick about a literal sociopath, sure.”

“He’s not a sociopath exactly, just… misunderstood. Anyway, it's really about the way society controls us,” and he explained for a solid two minutes before he saw the way Eva was grinning.

“What?” he said, irritated.

“Nothing, I was just curious to see how far you'd go to defend it,” she replied. “I take it you've had this argument before?”

“A few times, all with the same person,” he muttered, looking away.

“Who?”

“Hel.”

“I'm sorry,” Eva said, and actually meant it.

“I said I could relate to him, and she said that wasn’t a good thing. Maybe she was right.” Conrad stared at the empty dresser top.

Eva didn’t like the sudden gloominess in his voice. This was not how she wanted their first real hangout to go.

“Hey, come on,” she said, “it’s just a movie you like. It’s not some deep indicator of who you are as a person.”

He shook his head. “Hel said our favorite movies say something important about us.”

“Oh yeah? And what was her favorite movie about?”

“Well…” he hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. “Okay, her favorite movie was about a weirdly sympathetic child murderer.”

Eva made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “And I’m betting she wasn’t a child murderer.”

“No, obviously, but she liked movies in a different way than I do. She liked to take apart the way they were made, and look at the talents of the people who made them. So she loved that movie because it was extremely well-made, and the lead actor’s performance was incredible. I’m not smart about watching movies the way she was,” he sighed, looking at the floor. “I just like movies that look cool and come up with interesting worlds that say something about our own.”

“Hey, look at me.” She nudged him with her elbow until he did. “It’s okay to like movies that way. There’s no ‘smart’ or ‘dumb’ way to enjoy them. You know that, right?”

“But Hel said-”

“I don’t care what Hel said.” 

Conrad looked shocked, but she pressed on.

“I don’t care what she said about movies, or which ones you should enjoy, or how you should enjoy them, or what they say about you as a person. Movies are art, and art is just a thing humans do because it’s part of being human, and art is weird and subjective and there’s no good or bad way to make it or enjoy it.” 

He started to protest, but Eva kept going, raising her voice. 

“And Hel was human too, and another part of being human is being wrong about things sometimes. So she was wrong about movies, and if she thought you were a bad person, then she was wrong about you too!”

Conrad stared at her, openmouthed, as the last phrase hung in the air between them. Eva guessed that nobody had dared challenge the saintly memory of the dead prom queen before. But that bitch had broken Conrad’s heart, so Eva was not sorry.

“You didn’t know Hel,” Conrad finally said, in a voice as tense and quiet as a plucked violin string. “And you barely know me. So what makes you so damn certain?”

Eva stood up, gritting her teeth. This was definitely not how she wanted their first real hangout to go.

“I know she hurt you,” she said, “and I know you're my friend, and it pisses me off when people hurt my friends. I don't care who they are.”

Conrad started to say something, then stopped, the anger on his face melting away. 

“I'm your friend?” he said.

“Of course you are, dumbass!” she said, almost laughing with relief. “You're the only person worth knowing in this hellhole!”

He smiled. “Same to you. I mean, it might be cool to be more than friends too, but…”

Eva felt her face getting hot. Shit, the situation was getting out of her control. She needed a distraction, and suddenly remembered what she saw before he let her in the room.

“All right,” she said, “if we're gonna be friends, we need to not keep secrets from each other. Right?”

“Sure.”

“And before you let me in, I saw you hiding something in the closet,” she said, walking over and grabbing the knob on the closet door. “So I'm just gonna see what it is, okay?”

His eyes went wide and he jumped up. “No, don’t-!”

But Eva opened the door anyway, and as she did, a large body pillow in a black pillowcase fell out with a soft thud. On the side facing up there was a printed image of a curvy, gold, anime-style robot in what could most generously be described as a “pin-up pose.” The pillowcase looked sticky.

Until that moment, Eva thought she knew what awkward silence was. But she hadn’t. The silence that fell between them now was so awkward and so absolute that it seemed to suck all the surrounding sound into it, like a black hole of embarrassment. This, she realized, was the goddamned Platonic ideal of awkward silence.

She looked at Conrad, who was standing frozen with his right hand outstretched in a clawlike gesture, as if he could have possibly gotten to the doorknob before she had. He was looking at the pillow the way a T-Rex must have looked at the incoming extinction meteor.

“Ah,” Eva said.

“Listen,” Conrad said.

“I’m listening.”

His outstretched hand grabbed helplessly at the air as he struggled to come up with something better than what he finally said, which was, “That’s not mine.”

“I… you know, I think that would actually be worse,” she said. “So you wanna try that again?”

“It's not what it looks like?” he tried.

“Right.” She decided to torture him with one more stretch of silence before she said, “Relax dude, it’s okay. I'm not gonna tell anyone.” 

He nearly collapsed on the bed with relief.

Then she added, “Just tell me one thing.”

He tensed again. “What?”

“What's its name?” Eva asked with a slight smirk.

“Futura,” he mumbled.

“Cool. Could you put Futura back now? I'm not touching that thing without a hazmat suit.”

Conrad had just gone out into the hallway to wash his hands (at Eva’s insistence) when the doorbell rang. He ignored it, continuing towards the bathroom, when it rang again. Shit, right, Mom wouldn’t be home until later. He turned with a sigh and went towards the stairs. 

“Gotta get that, be right back,” he said as he passed his bedroom door and went downstairs. Maybe it was those freaks from the evangelical church again; they were always fun to mess with. He pulled his inverted-pentagram necklace out from under his shirt just in case. He didn’t really believe in that stuff, but it was the perfect fuck-you accessory for occasions like this.

He yanked the door open with a flourish. “Sorry folks,” he began, “I already sold my soul to-”

He stopped cold. It was not the evangelicals. Instead, Joh Fredersen was standing on his doorstep, looking exactly as happy to be there as Conrad was to see him.

There were a few seconds of silence as they glared at each other.

“The fuck do you want?” Conrad finally asked.

“Is Principal Klein home?” Joh said.

Conrad considered lying, but Joh probably remembered that his mom was usually out on night duties. “No,” he finally said.

“Good, I need to talk to you.” 

Joh started to come in but Conrad blocked him. “Hands out of your pockets,” Conrad said, pointing at Joh’s letterman jacket.

Joh pulled his hands out and held them up, palms open, then started to move forward again.

“Pockets out,” Conrad said.

Joh rolled his eyes. “Come on, dude.”

“I’m serious. You’re not coming in until I see they’re empty.”

“Last time I checked, you were the one who attacked me, but whatever.” Joh held his arms out at his sides. “Go ahead and search. I can wait for you to get your metal-detector baton.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Conrad stepped back and let Joh in. “Whatever this is, make it quick. I have a friend over.”

“You have friends?”

Conrad gritted his teeth and slammed the door. He led Joh into the family room. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? A girlfriend to steal and murder?”

Joh narrowed his eyes at him as he sat down on the couch.

Conrad stood opposite him, crossing his arms tightly across his chest. “So, what brings King Jock to my humble home on a school night?”

“I need your help,” Joh muttered.

Conrad smirked and held his hand up to his ear. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I need your help, asshole,” Joh said icily.

Conrad brought his hand to his chest in mock-surprise. “My help? The school’s star pupil needs my help? Whatever for?” 

Joh balled his hands into fists and Conrad grinned. Eva could wait; he was going to enjoy every second of this. 

“Can it be,” he continued, “that Joh Fredersen’s finally found a problem he can’t buy his way out of? Is it possible that his new so-called friends turned out to be even more useless than the ‘pathetic weirdo’ he discarded just before junior year? Could the golden boy have been wrong?”

Joh clenched his jaw. “Cut the shit. Will you help me or not?”

“I’ll only consider it if you admit it. Now.” Conrad’s eyes blazed with green fire. “Say you were wrong.”

“Fucking… fine,” Joh said with a sigh. “I was wrong, Conrad.”

“And?”

“And I still need you,” Joh snapped. “Happy?”

Conrad snorted. “I’ll never be happy again; you made damn sure of that. But I’ll admit, this helps ease the pain a little.”

Joh rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to say something, but Conrad cut him off.

“You might want to keep the sarcasm to yourself, if you still want my help. Now,” he said, making a sweeping gesture with his right hand, “tell me what’s going on.”

“After… the accident last year,” Joh began, “I started having trouble keeping up with my classwork.”

“I’m shocked, shocked.”

Joh glared at him. “So I had to find other methods to keep my grades steady.”

“Paid methods, I assume.”

Joh’s eyes narrowed again and Conrad said with a bitter laugh, “Hey, you can’t call a guy your best friend for several years without him learning a few things about you. But please, continue.”

“I was smart about it, I had someone working as a go-between to keep my name out of it-”

“Who?”

“Are you going to let me talk or not?”

“I just want to know which one of your flunkies bailed on you.” He smiled. “At least that’s what I assume happened, if you came crawling to me.”

Joh hesitated, then sighed. “Josaphat.”

Conrad’s eyebrows rose; even he couldn’t have predicted this twist. Josaphat had been friends with Joh almost as long as Conrad had - ever since his mom started watching Joh and Conrad during after-school hours in second grade. And unlike Conrad, Josaphat had been deemed mindlessly loyal and useful enough to stay Joh’s friend.

"He bailed from stress,” Joh continued, staring at the floor, “and now he’s going to rat me out as part of some stupid sophomore girl’s class project about contract cheating at the school.” He looked up again. “And before you interrupt me again, I need to tell you the worst part.”

“Which is?”

“Her partner on the project is Freder.”

Conrad broke down laughing so hard he nearly choked. It was the hardest he'd laughed since before Hel left him.

“It's not funny,” Joh growled.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Conrad wheezed. “This Shakespearean clusterfuck of ironic betrayal happening to you? It's hilarious!” He tried to regain his composure, then lost it again when Eva appeared in the doorway.

“What’s going on?” she said, visibly confused.

All the color drained from Joh’s face. “What’s she doing here?” he said.

“I told you I had a friend over,” Conrad said, finally catching his breath.

“Of course,” Joh said coldly, standing up. “You knew the whole time and still made me beg for your help. Jesus Christ, Conrad. Hel said you were manipulative, but this is low even for you.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Conrad said, all traces of laughter disappearing with the mention of Hel’s name.

Joh pointed to Eva, who looked even more confused. “Maria,” he spat. “Freder’s partner on the class project. You’ve been working together this whole time.” He turned to Eva and added, “Freder’s going to hate the hair dye, by the way; he’s got a thing for blondes.”

“What are you… oh my god.” Conrad started laughing again. “Oh my god, dude. That’s not Maria.”

“Bullshit,” Joh said.

Eva started laughing too, which only made Joh angrier.

“Joh, this is Eva,” Conrad said, “Maria’s twin sister.”

“What?” Joh looked from Eva to him and back again. “But you look just like her.”

“That is generally how twins work, my good bitch,” she said, which made Conrad laugh harder.

Joh stared at her for a moment, then waved his hand dismissively and tried to move around her to leave. “Fuck this,” he said. “I don’t have time for any of this bullshit.”

Conrad grabbed Joh’s shoulder and turned him around.

“I know that honesty is a hard concept for you to grasp,” Conrad said, “so I’ll explain this to you slowly. We’re not fucking with you. Eva is Maria’s sister. In fact - where is Maria right now?” he asked Eva.

“The library,” Eva said. “Probably working on her stupid project.”

Conrad looked at Joh. “And since Freder can’t drive yet, I’m guessing you just dropped him off to work on his project? With Maria? At the library?”

“Yeah,” Joh said.

“Then how could she possibly have beaten you here?”

Joh scoffed. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe that Maria just happens to have an identical twin sister who nobody else at school seems to know about, including my obsessive kid brother, and that said twin sister is also, apparently, best friends with my ex-best-friend, who I came to for help getting Maria away from Freder.” He locked eyes with Conrad. “Like, you realize how stupid that sounds, right?”

Conrad nodded. “Exactly. It’s way too stupid to not be true.”

Joh blinked. “I… what?’

“Besides,” Conrad added, “the logical alternative is that she teleported here and somehow immediately dyed her hair, and even I’m not smart enough to make that happen yet.”

Joh looked at Conrad, then at Eva. “All right, whatever. I'll play along if you promise to help me.”

“That depends,” Eva said. “Will Maria get in trouble?”

“Probably,” Joh said with a shrug.

“Then count me in.”

Conrad smiled. He could admire that level of petty vindictiveness.

“What about you?” Joh said, turning to Conrad.

He paused as if considering, though he'd already decided. “All right,” he agreed, sticking out his hand to shake on it. 

Eva raised an eyebrow; she knew Conrad hadn't had a chance to wash that hand. Joh, however, did not, and he took it.

After Joh left, Eva followed Conrad back upstairs. “Who was that?” she said.

“Joh Fredersen - the guy I beat the shit out of at Hel's funeral.”

She gave a low whistle. “Holy shit dude, really? That guy looks like he could snap God in half.”

“Yeah, well, it was more about surprise than strength,” he said.

"So why did you agree to help him?”

“Because you did,” he said, holding the bedroom door open for her, “and I figured between the two of us we can think up a way to double-cross Joh while doing exactly what he asked for.”

Eva smiled. “Devious. I love it. Just one more thing though.”

“What?”

“Go wash your hands.”

Chapter Text

“I just don’t see why we’re still counted as part of Metropolis when our area’s much more like a weird little suburb,” Georgy said, opening his lunch bag and accidentally spilling the contents across the table.

Josaphat sighed and grabbed Georgy’s apple before it rolled off the edge. “Bold of you to assume there’s any logic to this,” he said, handing the apple back. “Metropolis has never made sense.”

“You can’t tell me it’s not weird,” Georgy said, setting the apple down and opening a little chip bag.

“It’s weird as hell, but that’s what happens when you draw an arbitrary box and decide whatever’s inside is Metropolis and whatever’s outside isn’t.” Josaphat used his fingers to draw an imaginary box on the table around his sandwich. “Besides, it’s not like there were any natural boundaries left to use. They paved over the river to make the Babel Falls Expressway.”

“Metropolis has a river?!” Georgy shouted through a mouthful of chips.

“I told you, they paved over it. It’s like… a tunnel river or something now, I guess.” He laughed. “What did you think ‘Babel Falls’ even referred to?”

Georgy shrugged. “I figured it was some weird biblical reference, or one of those ironic names like calling a flat coastal highway ‘Mountain Road.’”

Josaphat shook his head and smiled. He’d been sharing his lunch period with Georgy ever since he’d met the wide-eyed freshman at the year’s first Rainbow Alliance meeting back in the fall. Though Josaphat was a junior, he’d taken an instant liking to the newcomer who’d introduced himself with, “Hi, I’m Georgy, my pronouns are he/him and everybody calls me a ‘softboi.’ Maybe they’re trying to insult me but I’d rather be soft than cruel, even if the world hates me for it.” 

Between that introduction and little things he did throughout the meeting - like giving encouragement to people he didn’t even know yet or sharing his snacks with everyone around him - Georgy revealed a sweet, puppylike nature that made everyone in the club want to protect him. Especially Josaphat.

Since they happened to have the same lunch period Josaphat had invited Georgy to his small, empty cafeteria table the next day, and every lunch since then had been a minor adventure.

“It’s not like we get any benefits from being inside the imaginary Metropolis box,” Georgy said, handing half of his peanut butter sandwich to Josaphat, who handed back half of his egg-salad sandwich in their unspoken daily lunch trade. “Public transit is spotty in this area at best, and nothing interesting ever happens here. We might as well live out in the county.”

“Hey now,” Josaphat said. “We may be only one step up from the county, but damn it, it’s an important step.” He pounded the table with his fist for emphasis.

Georgy snorted. “Since when do you have city pride?”

“I don’t, but it’s better than having a cornfield as a backyard.”

“I’d settle for any backyard, honestly.”

Josaphat winced. He kept forgetting that Georgy and his parents were crammed into a tiny old apartment next to the expressway; he didn’t even have his own bedroom, let alone a backyard. Things like that mindlessly came out of Josaphat’s mouth all the time. He wished he could just stop and think before speaking for once in his life. But for now, all he could do was change the subject.

“Got any plans for the weekend?”

“Not really,” Georgy said, picking up his apple and tossing it from hand to hand. “I mean, I was going to work on that essay you gave me, but…”

Shit, right. He’d forgotten Georgy had just started taking on assignments from his buyers again. Who was even handling that now?

“Oh - I meant to tell you, um -”

“Don’t worry, Grot got in touch with me.”

“Ah… what did he say?”

“He said you’d ‘been compromised’ and he'd be my contact from now on.”

“I see.” Really? Joh was replacing him with Grot? That guy couldn’t keep a secret to save his life; Joh must be desperate. “Did he say anything else?”

“Yeah…” Georgy finally bit into the apple and kept talking around it. He was avoiding looking at Josaphat. “He said I had to stop talking to you or I could forget about the assignments I had and any future ones I might want.”

Josaphat's heart sank. “Oh.” He knew Georgy needed the money too badly to risk it for his sake. “I didn't know - I'll go, let me just-”

“No, don't worry about it.” He looked up at Josaphat again and smiled. “I already told him no, so… I guess my weekend's free now.”

Josaphat stared at him, struggling to process what he'd just heard. “You what?”

“I said I’m free this weekend. Wanna hang out?”

“You know that's not what I meant,” Josaphat said, anxiety-induced irritation creeping into his voice. “Why would you give all that up just to keep talking to me?”

Georgy stared at him. “Because I like hanging out with you more than I like working for Joh?”

Josaphat's eyes went wide. “How did you know he-”

Georgy sighed. “He may be rich, but he’s not subtle. Besides, I’d heard you two had a falling out the same day Grot called me, so…”

“Right.” Josaphat felt like such a fool; how many other people had known what was going on?

But his thoughts were interrupted when Georgy set a full package of cookies in front of him. He only got something like that once a week, at most. Josaphat looked up in surprise.

“I’m sorry, man,” Georgy said, pushing the cookies closer. “I know you’d been friends with him for half of forever.”

Josaphat smiled and took the cookies, though Joh's rejection still stung. “Not the first time I’ve been tossed aside by someone I cared about. Probably won’t be the last.”

“Hey,” Georgy said, picking up his sandwich, “don’t say that. You’re a good person and you deserve to have good friends.”

“I wish that’s how the world worked,” Josaphat said with a bitter laugh. “Almost nobody gets what they actually deserve.”

“Yeah, well, you still deserve good friends - much better than Joh at least. He’s an asshole.”

In spite of everything, Josaphat still needed to defend Joh. “He’s just under a lot of pressure and doesn’t know how to handle it well. I don’t think he ever learned how, honestly; he grew up in a world where the solution to every problem was to just throw money at it until it went away.”

“I don’t care. That’s no excuse to treat people like they’re disposable.” Georgy put down the sandwich half he was working on, probably so he could use his hands to emphasize his point without scattering even more crumbs everywhere. “Having a reason for being an asshole doesn’t make him any less of an asshole. You were a good friend to him for years but when it came down to it, he was a really shitty friend to you. You’re better off without someone like that.”

“I wish more of my friends felt that way,” Josaphat said. “But when Joh left me behind, everyone else followed him. You’re one of maybe three people I can still call a friend.”

Georgy’s eyes shone. “Really?”

“Of course.” He thought it had been obvious that the only other person he shared lunch with every day would be considered his friend. But now that he thought about it, Georgy never talked about his own friends; what if he didn't have any? The thought depressed and angered Josaphat. He wanted to protect this sweet boy from the assholes of the world.

“Who are the other two?”

Josaphat shook his head to clear his thoughts. “Hm?”

“Your other two friends who’ve stuck by you,” Georgy said. “Do I know them?”

“Oh! No, not yet - well, maybe you know one of them, he’s in your grade - but I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, actually.” Josaphat was relieved he hadn’t had to think up a way to ease into talking about the project; he’d never been especially great at indirect stuff like that. “Their names are Freder and Maria, and -”

“Freder Fredersen?” Georgy said with a confused frown. “Joh’s little brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would Joh’s brother stay friends with you if Joh didn’t?” He thought for a second and quickly added, “Like I’m glad he did, of course, but I always got the sense Freder had more family loyalty than brains.”

“He does - I mean, he did - I mean…” Josaphat stopped himself; he’d been talking without thinking again. “He’s a good guy, really, when you get to know him, and smarter than he lets on. He’s becoming his own person now, thanks in no small part to Maria. They’re in Issues together and have been working on a big class project that could maybe change things for the better at this school, but they need your help.”

“My help?” Georgy asked. “Why would they need my help?”

So Josaphat explained, in as low a voice as he could use while still being heard over the cafeteria chaos, about Freder and Maria’s contract cheating project and how he’d agreed to help them.

“And since you ‘provided’ a couple assignments for my buyers before,” he finished, “I hoped you’d be willing to talk to Freder and Maria about it. They promised everything would stay anonymous, so none of this would come back on you.”

“Are you sure?” Georgy said, looking doubtful. “What if admin pressures them to name names?”

“I won’t let them,” Josaphat said firmly. “If they even come close, I’ll go to the principal myself and tell her it was all just me.”

Georgy’s eyes widened. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Why?”

“Because it matters, dammit,” Josaphat said. “Exposing this shit matters. Protecting the students Joh exploited matters. And looking out for my friends matters.” He looked at Georgy. “You matter.”

Georgy was holding back tears like his life depended on it - and given what little he'd heard about Georgy's father, Josaphat wondered if it sometimes had. Damn, he just wanted to give this kid a hug and a bowl of soup. 

He wondered: is this what it’s like to have a little sibling? Josaphat was an only child, so he’d never had the big-brother experience, and he’d never minded that at all. But he imagined that if he had a little brother he’d want to protect him just like Georgy. He suddenly wanted to ask Joh if this is how he felt about Freder - then remembered with a pang of grief that Joh wasn’t his friend anymore.

Whatever. He didn’t need Joh’s help. Josaphat could be a good big brother all on his own.

“Okay,” Georgy said with a nod. “Just tell me when and where you need me, and I’ll be there!”

“Thank you,” Josaphat said, but what he meant was: I’ll do the same for you.

Chapter Text

“So,” Joh said, glancing into the rearview mirror, “You’re almost done with midterms too, huh?”

Freder responded with a shrug and noncommittal grunt.

“How’s the Issues project going?”

Freder wanted to say that Joh must know exactly how it’s going with that weird spy following him all the time, but he knew well enough not to let on yet. Instead, he shrugged again and said, “It’s going fine. We’ve basically got all the pieces finished, we’re just putting them together tonight and rehearsing as much as we can. After the presentation Friday we can start expanding it for the final project.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“Yeah, well,” Freder said, “Maria and I can handle doing our own work, even if you can’t.”

A long, frostbitten silence followed that. Freder stared out the window, wishing midterms were over already; he was dying to tell Maria how he felt about her, but knew he needed to wait until after the presentation stress was off.

“Got any plans for spring break next week?” Joh asked, interrupting Freder’s train of thought.

“Surprisingly enough for a high school freshman who can’t drive, no, I don’t have any spring break plans,” Freder snarked.

“Okay, but would you like to?”

“Sure, there’s a lot of things I’d like, but-”

“Dammit, Freder, could you quit being a jackass for like five seconds and let me invite you to come to the beach with my friends and I?”

Freder blinked in surprise. “Huh?”

Joh sighed. “Listen, I know you hate me right now, but we’re still family. We’ve both been under stress and need a vacation. And one of my friends on the varsity team invited me and some other seniors out to his family’s place on Brigitte Island. They said I could bring a guest if I wanted, and they probably meant a girlfriend or something, but…” Joh paused, then said, “Well, you know.”

“Yeah,” Freder said quietly. He knew the other guys on the varsity team had been pushing Joh to find someone new all year; they couldn’t seem to understand that losing someone to death was harder to get over than a bad breakup. It was strange to Freder that people older than him could somehow be much more childish.

“Anyway,” Joh said, turning his head slightly away from the passenger’s seat, “I want you to come with us. What do you think?”

Freder considered it, then realized something. “Wait, are you only asking me because you have to look after me, so you wouldn’t be able to go otherwise?”

“Don’t ruin this with logic, Freder.”

“But I’m right, aren’t I?”

Joh made an exasperated noise. “Okay, look, my friend’s place is right across from Dreamland amusement park. If you come with me, you can invite whoever you want to come out and spend a whole day there with you. My treat.”

“Whoever I want?” Freder repeated.

“Whoever you want.”

“Deal.”

As she waited in the study room with Josaphat, Maria weighed her options on how to pass the time. On the one hand, she’d never been good at making small talk, and she was still worried she might put Josaphat off somehow and make him bail on helping them. But on the other hand, he was probably much more likely to be put off if she seemed unfriendly, even though she was just a little awkward. She decided to attempt a conversation.

“So… do you come to the library often? Aside from this, I mean.”

Josaphat shook his head. “To be honest, I didn't even know we had a library this close by. I thought it was just the big one downtown.”

“Well, it's the same library, sort of.”

“It is?”

“Yeah,” Maria said, relaxing a little into a subject she knew something about. “It's all the same system. The big one downtown is the main one, but they have a bunch of little branch libraries around the city, like this. Metropolis was actually the first city in the country to have a library that started as a planned system.”

“Interesting,” Josaphat said, though his tone betrayed he felt the opposite.

"Sorry,” Maria said, feeling her face get hot. This is exactly why she hated small talk; she always got derailed onto a topic that she found interesting, but the other person didn’t.

“No, it’s okay. I’m guessing you come to the library a lot, right? Everyone here seems to know you.”

Maria nodded. “I volunteer here on the weekends, but they’ve known me for a long time anyway - my mom works as the children’s librarian here.”

“Oh,” Josaphat said, as if something was clicking into place.

“What?”

“Well, I sort of had the feeling that you read a lot - maybe even a little too much.” He quickly added, “Um, no offense.”

“No, I get it,” Maria said with a laugh. “Even my mom thinks I read too much, but I mean, it’s her fault. She started reading picture books to me when we were still in the hospital after my sister Eva and I were born!”

Josaphat looked surprised. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“She…” Maria hesitated, then said, “Well, we don’t really get along anymore. I think she’s kind of embarrassed because I’m fine with not being noticed, when she’s the exact opposite.”

Maria struggled with what to say next. She couldn’t just go telling someone she barely knew how they used to be so close, and how much harder things got after Eva went away to the Metropolis School of Performing Arts, how badly Maria missed her sister and wished she’d come home. And how when Eva finally came home over the summer, she was suddenly different. How Eva acted like she was so much bigger but clearly felt so much smaller, kept spacing out when she never had before, and would get angry or cry for no reason. How Maria kept trying to find out what was wrong but Eva kept shutting her out. And how much it hurt when the truth came out, when Eva got expelled, when Maria realized the sister she’d missed was never coming home.

“She wants to be a star,” Maria finally said. “But I just want her to be my sister.”

“I’m sorry,” Josaphat said. “I don’t have any siblings, but I’ve known Freder and Joh for a long time, and I’ve seen how hard their falling out has hit Freder, so… I mean I know it’s different, but it must be hard not to get along.”

“Yeah.” Maria looked down at the table. “I’ll be honest, I feel really bad about Freder and Joh. I know it’s all my fault.”

Josaphat shook his head. “No. It’s Joh’s fault. He dug this hole himself, and Freder was bound to stumble on it eventually.”

“Maybe, but it wouldn’t have blown up this bad if it wasn’t for me, right?”

“Well…”

“Yeah, exactly.” Maria sighed, rested her chin on her hand, and muttered, “Maybe it’s true that all I do is cause chaos.”

“Hey, that’s not true.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if anyone here causes chaos, it’s Freder,” Josaphat said. “He’s a good guy and all, but it’s like he just comes into things and sort of…” He gestured with both hands like he was casually flipping over the table between them. “You know?”

A laugh burst out of Maria. “You noticed that too?”

Josaphat nodded, laughing. “I don’t think he’s even aware that he’s doing it. He’s just clueless and attractive.” His eyes suddenly widened and he began to blush. “I mean - he attracts trouble, you know? Not that I’m - I mean I like guys too but - like he’s good-looking and all but…” Josaphat looked down, cheeks now bright red, and muttered, “Fuck.”

“Ah,” Maria said quietly. “So we’re both crushing on him, huh?”

Josaphat looked up at her. Maria looked right back.

“Oh,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Look,” Josaphat began awkwardly, “I know he’s got a huge crush on you, so like - I’m not stupid, I won’t get in the way. I promise.”

“I kind of wish you would get in the way, to be perfectly honest.”

Josaphat’s eyebrows shot up. “Why?”

Maria sighed; coming out to people was always such a hassle. But Josaphat seemed like a chill person, so maybe he wouldn’t be a dick about it. So she briefly explained realizing she was aromantic-asexual, and how she’d been perfectly comfortable knowing that, but how she was having these strange feelings around Freder now.

“It’s like you said,” she finished. “Freder just came into my life and…” She mimicked Josaphat’s table-flipping gesture.

“So you don’t want to have a crush on him, or be with him?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, things would be much simpler if I didn’t. But I don’t know.”

Maria was relieved when Josaphat nodded; maybe he did understand.

“Changing your understanding of yourself can be scary,” he said. “It’s natural to want things to stay simple. But simpler isn’t always better, you know?”

“I guess,” Maria said. But it wasn’t like she was still pretending to be allosexual like everybody else anymore. That would have been much simpler than any of this. And what if being with Freder meant she’d have to do that again?

“Look," Josaphat said, "You don’t need to figure all this out right now; we’ve got a project to work on anyway. Besides, it’s not like the two of you are going anywhere outside school anytime soon.”

Just then, Freder swept into the library’s study room like a whirlwind and threw his bag on the table. “Guess what guys, after we ace this project, we’re going to Dreamland!”

Maria glanced at Josaphat. Without a word, they both did the table-flipping motion. Freder looked confused.

“Inside joke,” Maria said, smiling a little. “Don’t worry about it. Now, let’s ‘ace this project.’”

Later that night, Eva’s phone rang.

“Hi bastard,” she answered, flopping down on her bed. “What’s so urgent?”

Conrad hesitated then said, “We’re on a three-way call with Joh.”

“Oh. Hi, other bastard.”

“Shit’s sake,” Joh muttered as Conrad failed to hold back a laugh. “I swear, if I didn’t need you two idiots…”

“But you do,” Conrad reminded him.

“Listen here you little shit-”

“Oh my god, either kiss or get to the fucking point,” Eva said. “I have a history test tomorrow.”

Joh sighed. “So some friends of mine invited me out to Brigitte Island over spring break next week, and I’m bringing Freder along because, well, I have to.”

“Okay,” Eva said. “So what do your rich-people vacation plans have to do with us?”

“I only got him to come by promising he could take anyone he wanted to Dreamland for a day and I’d pay for everything. I didn’t say who or how many, so now he’s invited Maria and Josaphat to go to Dreamland with him sometime next week.”

Eva huffed out a sigh. Of course her sister would get to go out to Dreamland with two boys while she stayed stuck at home. “Again, what does that have to do with us?”

“He wants us to go there too and ruin their day,” Conrad said.

“Basically, yeah,” Joh said, sounding annoyed that Conrad had stolen his thunder. “Or at the very least, start pulling Freder and Maria apart before they get any closer. Can you do that?”

Eva smirked and sat up. “Hell yeah. It’s showtime, folks.”

Chapter Text

The first few days of spring break passed quietly - perhaps a little too quietly for Joh’s taste. Brigitte Island had a well-earned reputation for being a wild party spot for the richest kids on spring break. But having Freder along meant that while his friends from the team went out and raised hell every night, Joh was stuck at the house playing board games and watching movies to keep his increasingly-moody younger brother out of trouble. Freder couldn’t handle that kind of trouble yet - but Joh desperately needed it, and for all he knew, that trip was his last chance.

So by the time Friday morning arrived - the day Freder had chosen to go to Dreamland - Joh practically pushed him out the door of his friend’s beach house.

“I already called a car to take you to the station to meet your friends,” Joh said, “It should be here soon. Do you have the shared credit card?”

Freder nodded. “Yeah, should I-”

“Just go ahead and use it for whatever you want - don’t worry about asking me first. In fact, I’m going to have my phone off today, so I’d rather you didn’t call.”

“What if it’s an emergency?” Freder asked helplessly as the rideshare car pulled up out front.

“Call 9-1-1 and let them sort it out; they’d get to you quicker anyway. Bye!”

Joh shut the door and watched through the peephole until the car drove away. He heaved a sigh of relief.

“Is the kid gone?” Alfred called across the house.

“Yeah,” Joh replied, making his way to the sprawling living room, which overlooked the beach.

“Then the pharmacy is open.” With two soft clicks, Alfred opened a small red suitcase packed to the brim with mind-bending pills, plants, and potions. “Most of these are legal,” Alfred assured him, “At least in the sense that the government doesn’t know they exist yet.”

Joh sat down on the third couch. “I don’t care - as long as it doesn’t get me kicked off the team.”

Alfred waved his hand dismissively. “None of these will show up on the cheap tests our school uses. So, what are you looking for?”

“I want the strongest thing you have.”

“I’m… going to need a bit more than that.”

“All right, then how about this,” Joh said. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, speaking clearly and carefully. “I want to fall out of reality. I want to forget my name, my responsibilities, and all the other dumb shit I came here with. I want a macrodose of trouble, and I want to be back in no more than twelve hours.”

“Gotcha,” Alfred said, pulling a tiny, emerald-green bottle of liquid out of the suitcase. “You want maohee.”

Joh rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to a rave, Alfred.”

“I’m not talking about the watered-down shit they sell at the clubs, Joh.” Alfred tapped the bottle emphatically. “This is a pure, 50x extract tincture designed specifically for solo trips, not parties. One drop of this under your tongue opens the door to another reality; three drops will kick you fifteen realities over.”

Joh took the bottle and squinted warily at it. “Will you stay by to make sure I don’t do anything stupid?”

“Sure.”

“And I’ll be sober in twelve hours?”

Alfred shrugged. “Sober enough.”

“All right, let’s do this.”

“Final stop, Brigitte Island,” the conductor said as he passed. “Ten minutes.”

Everyone around Josaphat and Maria started moving around, scrambling to get their bags down from the overhead racks before the other fifty people in the train car got theirs. The two teens had no luggage to scramble for; they were just here for the day.

“So how do we work this?” Josaphat asked her. He had to raise his voice more than he wanted, given the sudden activity around them. “I mean, I’m still not even sure why he invited both of us, if he’s just trying to spend more time with you.”

“He sees you as a friend, and I think he wanted to thank you for all your help on the project so far.”

Both teens flinched as a large wheeled suitcase crashed into the aisle between a pair of squabbling elderly men, one of whom shouted, “I told you we should have just gotten two smaller suitcases, ya cheap bastard!”

Josaphat grinned and Maria gave him a questioning look. “Couple’s spat,” he mouthed. He loved seeing queer couples grow old together - it gave him a strange kind of hope.

“Ah,” Maria said, smiling a little too.

Josaphat watched the old couple out of the corner of his eye another moment, then said, “Are you sure that’s all it is? You’re sure he’s not - I mean, I know there’s no way of knowing, but Freder has a bit of a bi vibe, right?”

“Oh, he definitely does,” Maria replied.

“Really?” Josaphat was relieved; he thought for sure he was just imagining things.

“Yeah,” Maria said, looking out the window. “But I don’t think even Freder knows who he is or what he wants.”

Josaphat looked at her in visible confusion. “How could he not know?”

She looked at Josaphat again. “Well, think about it. We both know when you’re expected to be ‘normal’ your whole life you sort of internalize it, and it usually takes some heavy self-reflection to realize you don’t fit those expectations and never will. Right?”

In his mind, Josaphat was suddenly back in his freshman year, pulled between the joy of realizing who he always was and the pain of missing who he’d never been. “Right.”

“And Freder’s a sweet boy, and smarter than he looks, but he’s not big on self-reflection. I don’t think he can afford it, given how obsessed his family’s been with fitting a certain definition of normal.”

“Oh, shit. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Maria nodded sadly. “So even if he likes both of us that way, he might be telling himself you’re just a really good friend. He might never realize it’s more than that.”

Josaphat thought of something. “Unless…”

Maria quirked an eyebrow. “Unless…?”

“Well, maybe Freder just needs a little push,” he said as the train started pulling into the station. “I mean, that’s how you got him to realize Joh was up to something.”

“I guess, but are you sure we should be interfering like that?” Maria looked doubtful as the train finally stopped and they both stood up and started making their way through the bustle of people.

“We won’t be interfering, just giving him the chance to reflect,” Josaphat said over the hubbub as they finally stepped onto the platform and started looking around. “Just follow my lead.”

“All right,” Maria said doubtfully, “But don’t be surprised if this ends in tears.”

“It won’t.” He spotted Freder first, waved, and started wading through the crowd towards him.

On the other end of the platform, Conrad was skulking behind a pillar with a pair of pocket binoculars. “They’re heading for the escalator.”

“Would you cut that shit out?” Eva hissed behind him. “You look suspicious as fuck. Besides, we know they’re going to Dreamland - we don’t have to keep tabs on them until they’re there.”

“You agreed to back me up on this,” he reminded her, watching Freder and his friends ride the escalator out of view.

“Yeah, but I didn’t agree to all this absurd cartoon villain bullshit,” she said.

Conrad finally lowered the binoculars and looked at her. “You’re the one who looks suspicious - stop touching your wig.”

“It itches,” she said through an obviously-forced smile as she pulled her hand away from her curly blonde hair. “And it won’t stay in place.”

“You went to a goddamn acting school; how could you not have gotten used to wearing a wig?”

“That school had good wigs,” she snapped. “The kind that fit right and felt good and were professionally styled and well cared for. I thought Joh Fredersen could afford something better than a heat-resistant synthetic blonde finger-wave wig that makes me look less like Maria and more like a drunk sorority girl at a ‘Great Gatsby’-themed bachelorette party.”

Conrad couldn’t help laughing before he replied, “Well, it’s the best we could get on such short notice. Just work with it, okay?” He motioned for her to follow him.

“I will, but it’s not going to work. Even Freder Fredersen isn’t dumb enough to mistake me for Maria in this. The dress isn’t exactly right either.”

“Maybe not up close,” he admitted. “But it might work at a distance.”

Eva scoffed, but didn’t say anything else as they moved through the dwindling crowd. Conrad couldn’t figure out why she was so negative all of a sudden; she’d been completely on board when they’d planned and rehearsed at his house that week, but ever since they got on the train she’d been poking holes in everything. Was she getting cold feet? Or was it stage fright? Hell, could Eva even get stage fright? It didn’t seem likely, but it was more likely than giving up her chance at petty revenge.

Well, whatever it was, Conrad had to help Eva get a grip. They had to stay sharp if they were going to carry out Joh’s vague instructions while also accomplishing what they wanted.

On the way out of the station, Conrad suddenly lost track of Eva. He spotted her standing by a wall of posters and flyers they’d passed, staring at one as if it would swallow her up.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked as he walked up next to her.

“Yeah,” she said in a small voice, as if she was very far away. She suddenly shook her head, grabbing at the wig to keep it from coming loose. She turned away, and said in her normal voice, “Yeah, let’s go.”

He glanced back at the flyer that had transfixed her; it was for a local school’s production of “The Crucible.” Why had that stopped her?

Conrad sighed and turned to follow her. He had a bad feeling this wasn’t just stage fright.

Joh looked at his watch again as he lay stretched out on the couch. “How long does this take to kick in?”

“You’ve got to give it time,” Alfred reassured him. “Tinctures take a little longer.”

“Give me two more drops,” Joh said, sitting up and reaching for the bottle on the table.

“Absolutely not!” Alfred grabbed the bottle first and put it back in the little red suitcase, snapping it shut while glaring at Joh. “I already gave you three; any more than that and you’re going to freak out.”

“Maybe it's not as strong as you think.”

“Said every person in the history of drugs who then took more and had a bad trip. These things take time. And as your sober sitter,” Alfred said, shaking his finger at Joh, “It is my responsibility to make sure you don’t make the same dumb mistakes everyone else makes.”

“Sober my ass,” Joh said. “You had an edible and smoked afterwards.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sober enough to know not to give you more.”

“But it’s not work-”

Suddenly, Joh was at his mother’s house. 

He paused in the doorway; his mother was alive? Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t she be? But it felt strange, somehow. All of it felt strange. 

He turned and looked behind him to the sunny garden outside and the rustling walnut tree overhead - both of which he’d moved, at great expense, to the top of a skyscraper along with the old house. He’d moved them all because she loved them, because she’d said she’d never leave that house or that tree or that garden behind to live in Metropolis - the city her son built. She hated that city and the man he’d become to create it, but he still loved her too much to force her to live without them. 

He’d grown up in this house, with this garden; so why did it feel like he was seeing everything here for the first time?

Joh shook his head and stepped into the house. He needed his mother’s advice. He needed to talk to her about his son - about Freder.

And somewhere fifteen realities over, Joh’s body got off the couch like a sleepwalker, opened the sliding door, and shambled out onto the beach.

Chapter Text

“I have lost Hel, mother,” Joh finished. “I can’t lose Freder too.”

For a moment, all he heard was the rustling of the walnut tree outside and the chaos of the city traffic far below. He finally lifted his head to look into his mother’s eyes, but saw no pity there. She simply sat in her wheelchair and watched him, looking for a change of heart that would never come.

“If what you’ve told me is true,” she finally said, “Then you have lost him already.”

Joh didn’t know what to say to that. Rotwang had told him the same thing.

“Freder is Hel’s son,” his mother continued. “But he’s your son too. That means he’s as hard-headed as he is soft-hearted. I only hope that means he's strong enough to not be crushed by your will like she was.”

Joh gritted his teeth but said nothing. His mother never missed a chance to blame him for his wife's death - as if he hadn't had the finest doctors in the world at her bedside, trying to save her. As if a part of him hadn't died with her. As if he wasn’t still haunted by Hel's face in her dying moments, looking at him with a mix of pity, love, and terror.

For an instant something else cut through his mind: screaming, the terrible crunch of metal and bone, glass shattering, and blood, so much blood, and Hel wasn't moving…

And suddenly his mother's voice brought him back from the unnerving false memory.

“Don’t you remember what you told me when I warned you to stop pursuing Hel?” she asked.

He shook his head, still wondering where that terrifying image had come from.

“You didn’t care what I had to say. You didn’t care that it would destroy the only friendship you ever had. You only cared about your own love for her. And you said, ‘If love is a sin, let me be damned.’”

“That was different,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady; he could never show weakness, especially to his mother. “I was a man then; I knew what I was doing. Freder's still just a boy.”

“He’s your son, Joh. What do you think he’d say to me if I told him to let go of the girl he loved?”

Joh slowly rose to his feet. “If you won’t help me bring my son back,” he said, “then I’ll find someone who will.”

He strode towards the door, then stopped on the threshold and turned back to tell her he wouldn’t be bothering her ever again. But his anger fell away when he saw the tears in her eyes.

“Are you crying for Freder, mother,” he asked, “Or for me?”

“For both of you,” she said.

Joh stared at her one last time, then turned and went out the door. 

Then he was on the square outside the crumbling cathedral, in the oldest part of Metropolis. It was the middle of the night; hadn’t it been sunny only a moment ago, at his mother’s house? No - what a stupid thought, his mother had died years ago. He didn’t have time for childish reminiscences now; his son Freder was here somewhere in this crowd, in the darkness, and Joh had to find him.

Maria grabbed the handle on the rideshare car’s ceiling as it sped around a corner and said, “It just seems weird to me that Joh would suddenly cut your leash like that, you know? There’s got to be a catch.”

“Well,” Freder said, “I haven’t seen that thin kid since we’ve come out to the island, so…”

“Slim,” Josaphat said, holding his stomach as they rocketed over a pothole. “His name’s Slim. I looked him up.”

“Where?” Maria asked.

“Everywhere. For someone pretending to be inconspicuous, he sure does have a lot of public social media profiles.”

Freder shrugged. “Anyway, maybe Slim’s on spring break from being a spy, too.”

Maria hummed doubtfully. “I just wouldn’t be surprised if Joh’s got him following us anyway - that’s the only way I could see him pretending to not care what you’re up to.”

“Whatever,” Josaphat said. “I’m tired of worrying about what Joh thinks.”

“Yeah, let Slim follow us if he wants,” Freder agreed. “I’m not letting anyone ruin my day with you two.” He grabbed Maria’s and Josaphat’s hands at the same time. “Right?”

Sparks erupted in Maria’s chest. She glanced at Josaphat; he looked the way she felt.

“Right,” Maria said.

“Yeah,” said Josaphat.

Maria looked out the window, desperately trying to slow her heartbeat, but Freder still had his hand wrapped around hers. It felt like she was going to explode into a bunch of confetti if he didn’t let go. She wondered if this was how allo people felt all the time; no wonder they did so many ridiculous things. She hoped this was just a phase.

When the car finally screeched to a halt outside Dreamland, Maria broke free of Freder's loose grip and sighed with relief as she stepped out of the car. But when Freder stepped out and smiled at her, she felt the sparks again and swallowed hard.

It had to be a phase. It had to. It's not like she could spend the rest of her life with some silly boy she met in high school anyway.

But part of her wished she could, and she hated it.

Eva cursed under her breath as she followed Conrad through the entryway at Dreamland. There were way too many people here for her comfort; she only liked crowds if there was a stage involved somehow. It gave people a place to focus. Being part of an unfocused crowd combined the awkwardness of being in everybody’s way with the terror of anyone - or everyone - watching her at any given time without her knowledge. And that was without even going into the noise and smells and chaos of being so close to so many people.

“This is hell,” she muttered. “I’m in hell. And I’m dressed like my sister.” 

She scratched at the wig again and watched her reflection as she passed a store window. At least the itchiness sometimes distracted her from the thoughts she couldn’t silence - and it meant she didn’t have to watch her real reflection judge her for having those thoughts.

Conrad was pulling ahead of her in the crowd and she struggled to keep up. Finally he glanced back, saw how far behind she was, and ran back. He grabbed her hand and a shock ran through her whole body.

“Come on, we have to get ahead of them,” he said.

She nodded and let him pull her along, trying to ignore the way her heart was pounding. She reminded herself she had a job to do, a role to play, and she was nothing if not professional when it came to acting. She’d crammed bigger feelings into a smaller box before. And she’d do it again, and again, and again.

“So what do you think?” Conrad asked.

“Huh?”

He was staring at her. She must have missed something. 

He pointed at the ice cream shop across the fairway. “So do you think they’ll go in there today?”

“Oh - probably?” she said with a shrug. “Couldn’t hurt.”

“Then unleash some chaos,” Conrad said with a smirk.

Eva nodded and cracked her knuckles. Showtime.

She threw open the door of the ice cream shop, and despite how early it was, there were still a half-dozen people inside plus the lone, disinterested older teen working the register. Eva strode up to the counter and knocked on it completely unnecessarily. “Hello!” she said.

“Welcome to Ice Dreams Ice Cream,” the teen behind the counter said through a forced smile, “My name is Gustav; how can I help you today?”

“Got any free samples, Gustav?” Eva asked, moving towards the glass case displaying a wide array of labeled ice cream cartons.

The teen’s smile forced wider. “What would you like to try?”

“Pineapple whip,” she replied, tapping the glass of the case.

He dipped a tiny wooden sampler spoon into the carton and handed it to her. Eva licked it clean then dropped the used spoon on the counter.

“Actually,” she said, “Could I try the strawberry cheesecake instead?”

Gustav hesitated, then dipped another spoon in another carton and handed it to Eva, who licked it clean then dropped it on the counter next to the first one. This continued for seven more flavors before the teen finally objected.

“Miss, can you please make a decision or let me serve the customers behind you?” Gustav asked, the politeness in his voice stretched to its limit. “There’s a line forming.”

“How can I decide which one to pick without trying them all first?” Eva asked innocently.

Just then, the door jingled as Conrad strode in. “Maria, there you are! Where have you been?”

“I was just getting some ice cream,” she said as he came up to join her. “But I can't decide yet.”

Conrad sighed and turned to the irritated teen. “I'm sorry about her; this is Maria's first outing since she got to reform school, and I promised I'd get her ice cream. But only if she was well-behaved,” he finished, glaring at Eva, “Which she clearly is not, so I’ll get her out of your hair.”

“But you promised!” she whined.

Conrad grabbed her by the arm and steered her towards the door. But as they passed one of the tables, Eva grabbed a young woman's ice cream cone out of her hand and started eating it.

“Hey!” the woman and Conrad shouted at the same time. Eva ate faster. 

As Conrad reached towards the ice cream, Eva broke free of his grasp and, in a single fluid motion, turned around and whipped the stolen ice cream cone at the glass front of the ice cream case. It splattered everywhere, including on Gustav and a few customers who were unlucky enough to be looking at the case at the time. Eva started laughing, held up both middle fingers, and ran towards the door.

“Maria, what the shit!” Conrad shouted in a decent approximation of shocked anger.

The still-laughing Eva ran out the door, pursued by Conrad.

They continued running until they ducked off the fairway between two rides and caught their breath. No one had come after them.

“Good job,” Conrad said.

“I know,” Eva replied with a smile.

Conrad smiled back, and Eva felt something tighten in her chest. It felt like an iron hand was closing around her heart, trying to crush it between its fingers. It had been a long time since she last felt it, but she knew the feeling too well. And she couldn't be feeling this again - not now, not here, not with her best friend.

“Where to next?” she said, trying to get her breath back.

He considered a moment. “We'll keep quiet for a bit, so wherever you like.”

“No, you pick - I don't care as long as we can hang out.”

Conrad laughed, and Eva felt her heart squeeze again. She pushed down the panic rising in her chest.

She couldn't do this again. She couldn't let herself fall in love.

Chapter Text

In the cathedral square, something was on fire, and Joh saw a human figure at the center of the blaze. His heart stopped. Freder…?

But as he squinted in the glare of the flames, he saw it wasn’t a person at all - it was Rotwang’s mechanical girl. Relief washed over Joh, and he began scanning the crowd. It was impossible to see anyone clearly, and he began to call: “Freder? Freder!” But his voice was lost in the chaos.

Suddenly a woman nearby screamed and pointed at the roof of the old cathedral, and others began to cry out as they turned to look. In the firelight, he could faintly see two figures locked in a struggle, and realized with horror that it was Freder and Rotwang. He fell to his knees and watched as they fought, too far away to do anything - truly helpless for the first time in his life. 

Around him he started to hear rumblings in the crowd of workers, and was faintly aware that Josaphat and Slim were struggling to keep them at bay. He didn’t care if they tore him apart. Maybe he deserved it. The only thing he ever should have cared about, his son, was fighting for his life up there. And suddenly both figures were falling, tumbling down the sloped roof onto the crumbling stone walkway, and somebody cried out-

“CUT!”

And everything stopped. 

Of course it did - it was his film, after all. It may be his wife’s story, but it was his job to bring it to life. And in the end it would be his name emblazoned across it: “METROPOLIS: A Fritz Lang Film.”

When Freder and his friends got chased out of Dreamland’s ice cream shop early in the day - or more accurately a very confused Maria, who was quickly joined by Freder and Josaphat outside - he laughed it off as a misunderstanding.

“He knew my name, Freder,” Maria pointed out. She was still a little shaken up; it wasn’t every day she got chased out of a store by an angry teenager wielding a wet mop like a spear.

“Yeah,” Josaphat agreed, “That was weird.”

“Mistaken identity, then,” Freder said with a shrug. “I’m not worried about it. We’re going to have a good day.”

“Are you sure?” Maria said.

Freder smiled. “I’m better than sure: I’m determined. A Fredersen’s nothing without determination.”

But as the day wore on, other weird things kept happening. Even worse, they were happening at random. Things would go fine for a while and then suddenly, out of nowhere, they’d get kicked out of a store or a ride line with no explanation when an angry staff member saw Maria.

But every time, Freder just said, “Don’t worry; we’re going to have a good day.”

By the second time they waited through a long rollercoaster line only to get kicked out just before boarding, Josaphat had given up.

“It’s like this whole park hates us,” he said.

“No,” Maria said quietly. “This whole park hates me. And they won’t even tell me why.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Freder said, putting a hand on Maria’s shoulder and squeezing gently. “We’ll just keep going. We’re going to have a good day.”

Josaphat sighed and shook his head. “Face it, Freder, somebody’s making damn sure we have the worst day ever. We should just cut our losses and go.”

“No!” Freder said, almost shouting. 

Maria and Josaphat startled and glanced at each other. Freder took a deep breath and dropped his voice back to a normal volume. 

“Look, okay, clearly something weird is going on, but it can’t be that bad,” he said. “So somebody who looks like Maria has been acting like a dick. It’s not the end of the world. Hell, I don’t care if she has some - some evil robot clone running around specifically designed to destroy her reputation. Whatever’s happening, I know it’s not her fault. And I’m not going to let it ruin my day with you two.”

“You’re not ‘letting’ it ruin anything,” Josaphat said gently. “Sometimes shit just happens.”

Freder shook his head vehemently. “Not today. Not to us. You’re my friends; I love you guys.”

Josaphat and Maria shared a look that Freder didn’t understand. He pressed on.

“I’ve been looking forward to today ever since Joh offered to let me do this. We never get to hang out except when we’re working on the project, and it sucks. But today’s not going to suck. You know what Principal Klein always says at the end of morning announcements?”

“‘Make it a great day or not; the choice is yours’?” Maria quoted.

Josaphat rolled his eyes, as every other student in school did when Principal Klein said that.

Freder nodded. “Right, and like - yeah, it’s cheesy, but it’s also kind of true, right? We can choose whether or not to let this ruin our day. And I’m choosing not to. I’m determined not to. We’re going to have a good day. Right?”

They both stared at him but didn’t respond.

“Right? ”

“Right,” Maria said, a little frightened. “We’re going to have a good day.”

“Right,” Josaphat agreed, also a bit intimidated.

“Okay then.” Freder spun around and pointed at a random dark ride across the way. “We’re going to ride that next, and we’re going to have fun, damn it.”

A few moments later they stood outside the ride queue, staring up at a giant beckoning skeleton with a scythe next to a sign welcoming them to “THE END OF THE WORLD.”

“Are you sure this is the one you want to ride?” Maria asked.

“Yep,” Freder said, pushing through the turnstile into the queue.

Maria looked helplessly at Josaphat. He shrugged. They both followed Freder in, and a few minutes later, they were all crammed into a little ride vehicle meant for two people, with Freder in the middle. It jerked forward into the darkness.

For the first minute they were subjected to several spooky jump scares centered, bizarrely, around figures representing the Seven Deadly Sins. Then the designer seemed to have suddenly remembered the theme of the ride, and their car entered a large open room depicting the end of the world. Mostly this consisted of everything being on fire, for some reason, while skeletons danced around.

A cheerful little song started blasting out of a tiny speaker inside the ride vehicle, and Maria said, “It has a speaker?” at the same time that Freder and Josaphat both said, “It has a theme song? ”

As the skeletons danced around them, a children’s choir sang through the speaker:

“When the oceans rise
And the world burns down
They won’t let you cry
And won’t let you frown
So we’ll laugh, dance, and sing
But remember one thing:
We’re all going to die someday!

We’re all going to die someday!
We’re all going to die someday!
We’re all going to die someday,
And the world will end!”

Maria said, “Well, it’s kinda cute.”

“As long as you don’t listen to the lyrics,” Josaphat said.

Freder said nothing; the song annoyed him, but he figured it wouldn’t last much longer. They were having a good time. They were going to have a good day.

Suddenly, the ride ground to a halt. 

“Oh no,” Maria said.

Josaphat tried to lift the ride vehicle bar so they could climb out. It wouldn’t budge.

“Oh shit,” Josaphat said.

The song did not stop.

“Oh fuck,” Freder said.

“They just got kicked out of the Verbolten coaster line,” Conrad said quietly as he and Eva lurked near the carousel across the way.

“Good,” she said, “Now put down those damn binoculars, some of the kids are staring.”

“No.” He tightened his grip on the binoculars and watched them for another moment. “I wish I could read lips.”

She rolled her eyes. “You can read mine: put the binoculars down. You look like a fool.”

“You both look like fools,” a voice behind them said.

They both startled and turned to see an unsettlingly-skinny teen wearing all black clothes and a weird hat.

“Who the hell are you?” Eva asked.

Conrad stared at the kid and something clicked into place in his brain. “He’s that weirdo Joh hired to spy on Freder.”

The kid nodded his head in acknowledgement as he looked Eva up and down, making her visibly uncomfortable. Conrad tried to move between them, and the kid laughed.

“Relax,” he said, “Just evaluating the disguise - decent enough, I guess. The whole evil twin routine is cute and all, but I’m gonna need you two to cut this shit out. You’re getting in my way.”

Conrad narrowed his eyes. “Joh asked us to do this, Slim.”

“Oh, really? Well, that’s news to me,” Slim replied coolly. “Should we call him to check?”

“He’s not answering his phone today,” Eva said. “He told us we shouldn’t even bother trying.”

Slim smiled. “How convenient for both of you. But I’m afraid I’m not buying it.” He glanced across to the Verbolten exit and smiled. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a job to do. If you get in my way again I’ll kick both your asses.” He touched the brim of his hat and pushed them both aside, following Freder towards “The End of the World.”

Eva glared after him. “I’d like to see him try. You could take him.”

“Probably,” Conrad said, “But I’d rather not find out in the middle of a park where we’ve pissed off half the staff members.” He pocketed the binoculars. “C’mon, let’s get something to eat. No mischief this time though - I’m hungry.”

“Noted,” Eva said, following him towards the boardwalk along the beach at the edge of the park. He bought a large cup of french fries and they sat down on the first open bench they could find.

“Watch out for the seagulls,” Conrad said, pulling a fry out of the cup. “They’ll steal the whole cup if you look away for even a second.”

He lifted the fry up, but before it reached his mouth, a seagull brazenly swooped down and snatched it from his fingers. Eva burst out laughing. Conrad glared at her, then started laughing too. They each grabbed a handful of fries and tried to eat them as quickly as possible, but more seagulls began harassing them.

“ABANDON THE FRIES!” Eva cried, dropping the cup and grabbing Conrad’s hand. As the seagulls swarmed over the spilled fries, the pair ran down the boardwalk, laughing. 

Outside an arcade they collided with a middle-aged man.

“Watch where you’re going!” the man shouted. 

Conrad kept laughing, but Eva froze. All the color drained from her face. She looked like she was struggling to breathe.

“Eva?” Conrad asked. “Are you okay?”

She covered her face and walked away, mumbling under her breath. Conrad followed her, ignoring the man’s continued yelling.

He finally caught up with her when she stopped and leaned against the boardwalk railing, breathing rapidly but deeply while murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s not him, it’s not him, you’re okay…”

Conrad gently put his hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

After a moment she said, “I’m fine. There’s just… a lot of people out here.”

“Well,” he said, rubbing her shoulder, “Let’s get away from the people then. Okay?”

She nodded. 

He pulled her down the boardwalk and into the first place he saw. It turned out to be a weird little tea bar of some kind, dark but clean in the way only expensive places are. Well, Joh had agreed to pay for their food anyway. 

Conrad got a booth in the back corner, ordered the most expensive tea on the menu, and waited for Eva to recover from whatever that was.

“So,” he said when their order arrived and her breathing finally slowed down, “Are you okay?”

Eva took a sip of her tea. “Oh, this is good!” she said, in a brittle, bright voice. Her cup shook slightly. “I'm not really big on tea, but-”

“Eva.”

“Conrad.” She set her cup down with a soft clink. “Let's not, okay? He just looked like… someone I knew at my old school. Don't worry about it.”

“See, the thing is, that's how it usually goes with you,” he said. “Something upsets you and you tell me not to worry, so I drop it. But I don't want to drop it, because I care about you. I worry about you. Can't you just let me worry about you?”

She looked down at her cup and sighed. “I'm not worth worrying about.”

“I'm the one who gets to decide that.”

He stared at Eva, who continued to avoid his gaze. She usually occupied any space in the world like it was made for her. But now she was slumping down in her seat and speaking so quietly, like she deserved to shrink until she disappeared.

“Hey, look at me,” Conrad said, nudging her foot under the table until she did. “I don't know what happened to you that made you react like that. But I know it hurt you, and I know you're my friend, and it pisses me off when something hurts my friends.”

She smiled a little. “How dare you use my own words against me.”

“I'm your friend, dammit,” he said, smiling too. “And you said friends don't keep secrets from each other, right? And then you literally dragged my most embarrassing secret out in the open without revealing anything about yourself.”

She sighed. “This is different.”

“I sure hope so, or else Futura has some explaining to do.”

Eva's face scrunched into a disgusted look, but she was laughing. He loved that sound. 

Conrad reached forward and laid his hand on hers. Eva's laughter died out as her cheeks flushed pink.

“You don't have to tell me what's going on,” he said gently, “but I wish you would, because I'd like to be able to help you.”

She shook her head. “Nobody can help with this. Anyway, you'd hate me if you knew.”

“My hate list only has room for one person at a time, and that spot's taken,” he said with a smile. “At worst I'd hold a petty grudge against you, but that's damn unlikely.”

Eva looked at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Fine. But don't say I didn't warn you.”

Chapter Text

When Eva first got accepted into the Metropolis School of Performing Arts, she knew she was going to realize her dream of being a theatre actress. She had the talent, the looks, and the grit to survive. And now she was on the formal education track she needed to get into a good drama program in college. More importantly, the school's teachers were well-known and respected in the theatrical community; it was said a good word from any of them could make all the difference when it came to getting a callback in the real world. She was sure she'd blow them all away.

And then she'd started Mr. Freund's acting class.

In spite of being the head of the drama department, Mr. Freund insisted on teaching the beginner-level acting classes himself, because he didn't trust anyone else to “weed out the failures before it's too late.” He took great pride in the fact that no students made it through his intro class unbroken.

On the first day he came into the classroom only after all the students had already sat down, and stood silently at the front until their chatter died out on its own.

“Congratulations. Very few students make it to this classroom,” he said, surveying the students coldly. His face was impassive and unremarkable, except for his eyes, which were an almost electric shade of blue.

Those eyes briefly settled on her as he continued, starting to pace back and forth. “Every year this school receives thousands of applicants from all over the country, but only accepts the two hundred it decides are most worthy for its incoming freshman class. A quarter of them are selected for the drama track, and half of those students want to be actors. All twenty-five of those would-be actors end up in this class.”

He stopped pacing.

“So,” he said, “how many of you think you'll become professional actors? Raise your hands.”

Every student's hand went up, including Eva's.

Mr. Freund laughed. “Put your hands down, all of you. You want to know the truth that your coddling parents and teachers wouldn't tell you? None of you are special.” He leaned forward. “Of the twenty-five students in this room, maybe five have a chance of making a living as a professional actor one day. And if one of them is extremely lucky, a handful of audience members will remember their name.”

“Yes,” a boy in the front row said, “and that's going to be me.”

“Oh?” Mr. Freund crossed the room until he was standing over the boy's desk. “So you want to be famous?”

“I don't want to; I will.”

“Charming. And is that why you want to act?”

“Yes,” the boy said.

“Get out.”

The boy sputtered. “What? I paid good money to be here.”

Mr. Freund shrugged. “You may come back to class tomorrow, if you like, but I doubt you'll learn anything. In any case, I’m done with you for today.”

The boy left in the loudest huff he could muster, threatening to have his parents call the school. Mr. Freund ignored him. When the door shut again, the room was dead silent.

“So,” he said, “the rest of you aren't stupid enough to tell on yourselves. That's good. But just know you're not going to make it through this class - let alone make it in an acting career - if you're not doing it for the right reasons.”

He pointed at Eva, seemingly picking her at random. “Why do you want to act?”

“I don't want to act,” she replied instantly. “I just act.”

A few students laughed.

“Hmm.” She couldn’t figure out whether he was impressed or annoyed, which unnerved her. “Why do you act, then?” he asked.

“Because I must.”

One of his eyebrows rose. “You must?”

“It's like breathing. If I didn't do it, I'd die.”

She blinked, surprised at her own words. She'd never thought about why she wanted to be an actress before, but she was telling the truth. And he must have been able to tell, because he just nodded and turned to put another unsuspecting student on the spot.

At the end of class, Mr. Freund pulled her aside. “You, girl. What’s your name?”

“Eva.” 

His gaze was a little too intense, but she held it. She made a point of not showing weakness to bullies.

“Do you have a last name, Eva?” 

“Do you care?” she said. “You said none of us were special anyway.”

He laughed. “Fair enough. But I have a good feeling about you, Eva. You actually seem to give a damn about acting for its own sake. If there’s anyone in this class who does turn out to be special and prove me wrong, well, I’d be happiest if it were you.”

And even though she’d suspected he was trying to flatter her - though she hadn’t known why he would want to flatter her - what he said stuck with her.

The class was rough and Mr. Freund was unforgiving, yet whenever he spoke to Eva, he only had praise to share. Mild praise, sure, but when it came to Mr. Freund, anything more positive than, “Wrong; do it again,” might as well be a glowing review. 

The ranks of the class started thinning as time went on and students decided they had to draw the line somewhere. Eva had never been good at that. Perhaps that was what Mr. Freund had really liked about her.

Because Eva’s scholarship had covered housing as well, she'd opted to stay in the school's dorms full-time, which allowed her to make friends a bit easier - or at least it would have, if all those rich assholes hadn't looked down their noses at her. Instead of bonding with her peers, she ended up with a lot of time on her hands and no one to spend it with.

So when Mr. Freund pulled her aside after class one day and asked if she'd be interested in private tutoring in the evenings, she'd said yes.

Everything was normal for the first few sessions, but as they went on he seemed to be asking Eva more and more about herself rather than teaching her anything. In turn, he started sharing with her too. And she came to realize that the teacher she'd initially taken for a heartless control freak was actually a funny, sensitive man who'd been beaten down by the world, forced to retire early from acting due to poor health, and was misunderstood by his unfaithful wife.

A couple nights a week quickly turned into every night. Eva didn't mind. In fact, she'd never been happier. She looked forward to spending time with Mr. Freund - it was the only thing she looked forward to, really. The few friends she’d managed to make at the school were all commuter students, so she couldn’t spend time with them outside of classes and lunch. Her other classes were hard to keep up with and all her other teachers treated her like a child. Mr. Freund was the only person in her life who really cared about her thoughts, her dreams, or who she was. She liked him a lot.

Eva reached for her teacup and took a sip to cover her sudden silence, but spat it out immediately; it had gone cold. She swore and set the cup down again.

Conrad watched her in silence. She was staring into the tea with a strange look on her face, like she wished she could drown herself in it and end the conversation.

“You didn’t just like Mr. Freund, did you,” Conrad finally said.

Eva didn’t answer, but he noticed her blinking rapidly, like she always did when she was trying not to cry for real.

“It’s okay,” he continued. “That’s normal. Hell, I’ve had crushes on my teachers too, it’s not like-”

Eva shook her head, still avoiding looking at him. “This wasn’t a schoolgirl crush, Conrad. I was in love with him. Real, true, honest-to-god in love with this married man. But I knew he’d never love me back, and it hurt.” She hurriedly brushed away an escaped tear. “So I tried to just keep my feelings hidden, but then he made it impossible.”

A sick feeling of dread started rising up in Conrad’s stomach. “What do you mean?”

“Something weird happened, and I just… lost control.”

One night, as they'd sat on his office couch laughing at one of his crazy stories from his professional theater days, he'd laid his hand on her arm and said, “I'm so glad I've gotten to know you, Eva. You really get me in a way nobody else does.”

Eva’s heart leapt at his touch. She smiled and said, “Thanks, Mr. Freund.”

He rolled his eyes. “I told you, don't be so formal.”

“Thank you, William,” she said, feeling her cheeks get hot. She glanced down at where his hand lay on her arm and, though she didn’t want to, she tried to scoot away from him. But he held onto her arm and she froze. She looked up at him, wanting to laugh it off, but when she saw the confusion in his eyes, her mind filled with a blast of static.

“What's wrong?” he said.

She swallowed and turned away from his too-blue eyes. She reminded herself to breathe normally. “Nothing. It's just late - I should go.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But…?”

She hesitated too long, trying to keep in the feelings that were flooding up. 

He turned her chin back to face him. “Eva, talk to me.”

She kissed him instead.

Almost immediately she pulled away and said, “I love you.” Then she burst into tears. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ve ruined everything, I-”

He pulled her close and kissed her again. Then he whispered, “My sweet Evita, don't you know I love you too?”

She cried harder. “But we can't. Your wife…”

“She stopped loving me a long time ago,” he said. “She won't care - but the school will. So we have to be careful, that's all.”

“Careful?” she sniffed. “How?”

“Our love for each other can never leave this room. It only exists here. Everywhere else, we have to pretend nothing’s changed.” He tilted her chin up to look into her eyes again and smiled. “You’re a good actress, Eva. I know you can do it.”

She smiled and nodded.

The last thing he asked later that night was, “Have you ever done this before?” She shook her head and he said, “Don't worry; I'll teach you.”

Conrad stared at Eva, who stared at her cold tea.

“How long did that go on?” he finally asked, feeling sick.

“Until the end of the school year. We broke things off - he was afraid someone would find out if we tried to stay in contact over the summer, and I felt guilty for making him cheat on his wife, so-”

“You weren't-”

“Christ, Conrad, let someone finish what they're saying for once!”

“Sorry,” he said. “But you weren't making him do anything.”

She sighed. “Can I just finish?”

Conrad gestured for her to continue.

“So we ended it, and the summer was awful. But shit hit the fan when I came back in the fall.”

Every year, the Metropolis School of Performing Arts did two big theatrical productions: a musical in the spring, and a non-musical play in the fall. Mr. Freund directed the fall production Eva’s sophomore year, and for that year he chose Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” - a classic play about a witch-hunt, a metaphor for the anti-Communist paranoia of 1950s America.

“Now that things are over between us,” Mr. Freund told Eva in his office the night before auditions, “I can help make you the star you deserve to be.”

Eva nodded. She didn’t want to be a star anymore; she only wanted to be his. But even she knew better than to say that, so instead she asked, “What role do you want me for?”

“The best female role in the play: Abigail Williams,” he said, pacing back and forth. “On the surface, she’s a straightforward villain: a jilted teenage femme fatale hell-bent on revenge against her married ex-lover at any cost. But she has layers, and I know you can bring those layers out better than any other girl in this school.” 

He stopped and looked straight into her eyes for the first time since they'd ended things. Eva felt an iron hand clench around her heart.

“Will you do it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He smiled and patted her cheek. “I knew I could count on my Evita.” 

It was the last time he ever used his pet name for her.

Rumors started flying the moment the cast list was posted. The exact details of each one differed, but the core was always the same: Eva had seduced Mr. Freund for the part. After all, the junior and senior women of the school reasoned, how else could anyone explain some sophomore bitch who hadn’t paid her dues landing the best female role in the play?

Eva did her best to ignore this infectious, vicious gossip and focus on the play, but for the first time, she found no comfort getting inside a character’s head. Instead of offering an escape, becoming Abigail Williams tore Eva apart from the inside out. Everything about the character held a mirror up to the worst things Eva had started seeing in herself: jealousy, clinginess, insecurity, wrath, and above all else, an inability to let go of the man she’d desperately tried to stop loving. The very dialogue of the play itself kept reminding her what she’d realized when Mr. Freund ended things: she was a seductress, an adulterer, a whore. 

She realized she hadn’t become Abigail Williams; Eva had always been her.

Between the rumors and the way Eva withdrew into herself, her few friends at the school drifted away one by one. Eventually there was nothing left that she cared about but rehearsals for the play; the rest of the time, she shambled through life like a smiling zombie.

One week out from opening night, as she went over her lines again after rehearsal, Eva broke down crying and couldn’t stop for a half hour. She realized that she had to choose between herself and the play. And for the first time in a life spent choosing the theatre above everything else, Eva chose herself.

She went to Mr. Freund’s office to tell him her decision in person, but when she knocked she got no response. She saw a strip of light under the door and kept knocking; this couldn’t wait. Finally, a breathless and disheveled Mr. Freund opened the door just a crack.

“I told you not to come here,” he whispered.

“I have to talk to you,” she said.

“Can’t it wait until rehearsal tomorrow?”

“No,” she said. “Let me in.”

She pushed the door open and saw a wide-eyed and equally-disheveled freshman girl sitting on the couch in the office. The heaviest silence of Eva’s whole life fell across the room.

Eva felt sick. She felt betrayed. But the worst thing of all was this: she didn’t feel surprised.

She finally looked up at Mr. Freund, who said, “I can expla-”

“I’m quitting the play,” Eva said in a hollow voice. She glanced over at the girl and said to her, “Don’t feel bad. I guess he does this every year.”

With that, she turned and exited the office. Mr. Freund did not follow her.

“Fuck,” Conrad said.

“Yeah.”

“So what did you do?”

“What do you think? I went to the school’s administrators and told them the whole thing. But nothing happened.” She picked up a spoon and stirred her cold tea.

He stared at her openmouthed. “What do you mean ‘nothing happened’?” he finally asked.

Eva sighed. “Remember what I said about how all the drama teachers at the school were well-known and well-respected names in the theatrical community?”

“Yeah, but…”

“But nothing, Conrad,” she said, staring at the tea. “It came down to the word of the great William Freund against the word of one teenage girl who was clearly having a nervous breakdown. So nothing happened, aside from the rumors getting worse and me gaining a new reputation as a flake who wouldn’t cut it as an actress in the real world.” 

She pulled out the spoon and dropped it on the tablecloth with a light thunk. 

“I was fucking done for at that school, and I knew it. So I did what I do best.”

She looked up at Conrad again. The tears were flowing freely now, but she smirked as she finished.

“I went out like the overdramatic bitch that I am.”

On opening night, Eva did her hair and makeup like she'd practiced, put on the little red dress Mr. Freund had always liked, and snuck backstage at the school's auditorium before anyone else had arrived. She went straight up to the girls’ dressing room and hid in the far back corner, among all the old props and furniture the school couldn’t use but also couldn’t throw away. For hours she crouched there, staring blankly at a broken armchair and listening to her former castmates occasionally talking shit about her. She was past the point of caring about petty shit like that; she had something more important to do.

Her purse was heavy, and she knew she should be nervous, that any decent person would be nervous - but the stage fright wouldn’t come. She had to do this.

When the play began she settled into something like a trance, silently mouthing along the lines she knew by heart. When the final curtain fell she emerged and went down to the stage as the cast took their bows, waiting in the wings for her cue. Finally, Mr. Freund came out to receive his applause and say a few words as the director.

And that’s when she walked onstage, pistol in hand.

There were rumblings of confusion in the darkness. But Mr. Freund was the only audience member she cared about that night, and she waited until she saw his too-blue eyes fall on her.

“Eva?” His eyes moved from her face to her body, then her hand, and the confusion on his face turned to horror.

She raised the gun, arm steady, and clearly delivered another character’s line that had seared itself into her brain: “This is a whore’s revenge.”

Then she fired.

Screams erupted around the auditorium. Mr. Freund staggered back, clutching his chest. But when he pulled his hand away, there was no blood, no wound, no bullet. It took a few moments for him to realize she was holding a starter pistol.

Then Eva began to laugh. It was a ragged, ugly, horrible laugh, and it echoed around the auditorium in the confusion that followed the shot. She made no attempt to escape. She just stood there, laughing like the damned.

“Holy shit, Eva,” Conrad whispered.

“Yeah.”

“So then what happened?”

She shrugged. “What do you think? They expelled me. Christ’s sake, Conrad, I brought a gun onto school property and fired it at a teacher - it didn’t matter if there were bullets in it or not.”

The next question tumbled out of Conrad's mouth before he could stop it: "Why didn't you use a real gun?"

"Well," Eva said slowly, "I figured the only thing that would pierce his fake heart would be a fake bullet." She paused and added, "I know that's ridiculous, but I wasn't exactly thinking clearly at the time. Also, I knew where to find a starter pistol, which is more than I could say for a real gun." She picked up the spoon again and absentmindedly tapped it against the teacup. “Mr. Freund and the school didn’t take it any further than that of course, because then the reason why I did it would have gotten out.”

“But what about him?” he asked. When she didn’t respond he added, “They had to have done something to him after all that, right?”

She said nothing.

“Right? ”

“Last I heard,” she finally said, “He’s still teaching there. Directing the spring musical too, actually.”

She stared off at some point far behind him. The tears were subsiding, but the blankness on her face was somehow so much worse to Conrad.

He still couldn’t process what she’d said. “That’s - look, I’m the last person who’d ever say ‘call the cops’ for anything, but-”

“My family tried that,” she said quietly. “They investigated, found nothing, case closed.”

“But you said there were others, that he must do that every year,” he said desperately. “You have to do something or he’ll-”

“God damn it, what?” Eva’s eyes snapped back into focus and she banged her fist on the table, clattering the teacups and drawing the attention of the other few people in the tea bar. “What the fuck am I supposed to do, Conrad? I have no proof that anything happened. My family can’t afford to pursue a civil case. If I even said what he did, he could sue me for defamation. It’s over, Conrad. He won.”

In her eyes, Conrad finally saw what she’d kept hidden from him: her helplessness, her pain, and her despair. He’d always thought a broken heart was the worst thing that could happen to someone, and it had happened to him. But he realized then that something worse could happen: someone could reach inside your mind, destroy part of who you are, and get away with it. And that had happened to Eva.

Rage began bubbling up inside him. He thought he’d been enraged when he attacked Joh at Hel’s funeral - the angriest he’d ever been, the angriest he ever could be. But what he felt in this moment was so much stronger, and colder, and more dangerous. His old rage had been impulsive. But this rage could plan.

“I’m sorry,” Eva said. “I know you must hate me.”

“No, of course not,” he said softly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She opened her mouth to disagree, but he put both his hands over her still balled-up fist.

“Listen to me: it wasn’t your fault,” he said. “He abused you, Eva. It wasn’t your fault.”

She sighed. “Well, that’s where you and Maria disagree.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know what she said to me when I came home after being expelled?” she asked.

Conrad shook his head.

“She hugged me and said, ‘It’s okay; everybody makes mistakes.’”

“Wow,” he said. “Wow, fuck that.”

“Yeah. I told her it wasn't a mistake I'd ever make again.” Eva suddenly startled and reached for her phone. “Shit, how long have we been here?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

She looked at her phone and made an exasperated noise. “A whole hour? Damn it!” She wiped her face with her napkin and started gathering her things. “Ask for the check, we’ve wasted too much time. Joh’s going to kill us.”

“Fuck Joh,” he said quietly.

“Come on, Conrad, we’ve got to-”

“Fuck. Joh.” 

He put his hand on Eva’s arm to stop her from getting up. She stared at him.

“Fuck Joh, fuck Freder, fuck Maria, fuck all their petty little family drama,” he said. “I’m sick of it. We did the bare minimum that Joh asked; fuck the rest. Let’s just enjoy what’s left of our day at Dreamland.”

“What are we even supposed to do?” she asked doubtfully. “We’ve made a scene at pretty much every spot in this park worth a damn.”

“We haven’t been to the Bilbao Moon yet. I saw that a band’s playing there tonight - we should go.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s a bar, Conrad. How are two teenagers supposed to get in?”

“I’ll figure something out,” he said. “You know I always do.”

She smiled a little. “Okay, that’s true.”

He smiled back. “So how about we get into some real trouble for a change?”

Eva nodded. “Yes. Hell yes. Hell fucking yes.”

Chapter Text

Josaphat generally wasn't the kind of person to dwell on the idea of death. 

He knew, of course, that it would happen to him and everyone else eventually. But “eventually” was too far away to worry about when you have homework due in the morning. Besides, he’d never known anyone personally who died, except Hel of course - and that was so sudden and tragic that it felt more like a cosmic mistake than a reminder that it would happen to him, too.

But now, trapped beside his secret crush and his secret crush’s not-so-secret crush on this broken ride for what must have been either two hours or two thousand years, a recorded children's choir sang for the 127th time:

“We’re all going to die someday!
We’re all going to die someday!
We’re all going to die someday,
And the world will end!”

And suddenly the thin ice of denial beneath him broke, and he was drowning in thoughts of death.

Josaphat was going to die. And so was Freder. And Maria. And what’s worse was that nobody knew when they would die. So everyone went on making their little plans for the future as if it all wouldn’t just stop someday. After all, Hel had mapped out her future more carefully than anyone else Josaphat had ever known, starting with exactly which film school to attend and what she needed to get in. But instead, someone she’d never even met blew through a stop sign on prom night, and it was all over.

That could happen to him, too. 

And if it did, what would Josaphat have to show for it? He didn't have any grand plans for his life. The only noteworthy thing he'd done in school was secretly help a bunch of rich kids cheat, but he'd even failed at that - and lost his closest friend over it. He didn't have a lot of friends left. And romantically all he had were a couple shitty exes and one clueless crush who might not know his own orientation.

Josaphat glanced over at Freder to see how he was holding up, and instantly knew the answer was “not well.” The freshman's fierce determination to wrestle fun out of an objectively shitty day had clearly drained out of him over the past two hours. He was muttering to himself and staring at the ride vehicle's speaker with a completely blank look which seemed unnerving on his usually-expressive face. 

Maybe Freder's mind had gone to a dark place, too. After all, he'd actually seen death before - maybe not the same way Joh had last year, but he'd still been there when their mom died. Josaphat kept forgetting that, because Freder was good at pretending to have forgotten it. As much as Freder seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve he was still a Fredersen, and from what Joh had said about their father, Josaphat knew that meant never showing “weaknesses” like sadness or grief.

Josaphat's heart twisted into a knot. Damn, what he wouldn't give to see Freder smile again right now - even if the smile wasn’t for him. Hell, after all those years of seeing (and treating) Freder like nothing more than Joh’s annoying little brother, maybe Josaphat didn’t deserve it. But he wanted it anyway.

He looked up and saw Maria watching Freder too, looking just as concerned as Josaphat felt. He caught her gaze and they stared at each other for a moment as he tried to figure out how to communicate with her. They’d all long ago given up on talking normally, because it couldn’t be heard over the irritating song, and Freder was stuck between them too. Josaphat wished he’d learned sign language. He wondered: could he just look his thoughts at her, the way people did in those old silent movies?

Maria shrugged as if to say, It’s worth a try.

Josaphat startled a little, then glanced down at Freder and back up at her. We gotta do something.

Maria nodded, but she had a painfully helpless expression: I know, but what?

Josaphat looked around, his mouth tightening into a straight line. When the ride first stopped, each of them had pulled out their phones, but none of them could get a signal in here. Next, they’d all tried to force the bar up multiple times, and tried to climb over, under, and through it to get out, with no luck. Then they’d tried reaching out to grab any part of the ride they could possibly use as a tool to get out or get the ride operator’s attention; again, no luck. Then they’d tried screaming for help, but only heard a garbled pre-recorded response over a nearby loudspeaker that assured them staff would help them soon and to not attempt to leave the ride themselves. After that they fell into the bad ideas phase, followed by the arguing over increasingly bad ideas phase, and finally they’d given up.

He turned back to Maria and frowned a little. I don’t know. We’ve tried everything. He glanced down at Freder and back again. But we gotta snap him out of this.

Maria cocked her head to the side, looking off into the distance as she thought. Then her eyebrows shot up and she looked back at Josaphat, smiling.

Josaphat looked confused.

Tell him how you feel, she finally mouthed silently.

Josaphat shook his head vigorously as his heart rate sped up at the thought. He felt his face getting hot. Not a good time, he mouthed back.

Maria nodded and tapped the bar, smile widening: What’s he going to do, run away?

He sighed. How could he explain without words that not being able to leave would make it worse? That Freder might feel trapped and scared, especially if he didn't - or couldn't - feel the same way about him?

“It's not a good time, damn it!” Josaphat finally shouted at her in frustration.

Freder's head snapped up as he looked at Josaphat, bewildered. “Huh?”

“I…” Josaphat felt his face flush even more and glared at Maria.

Freder turned to her, confused. “What's wrong?”

“Josaphat’s got something to tell you,” she said.

“No I don’t,” he said quickly. “I mean - well, not right now. It’s not a good time.”

“Huh?” Freder asked.

“It’s not a good time,” Josaphat repeated, raising his voice to be heard over the music. “I’ll tell you later.”

Freder frowned. “Why can’t you tell me now?”

“I can, I just - I shouldn’t. Don’t worry about it.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Josaphat said quickly. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Freder looked anxious. “Then what is it?” When Josaphat didn’t respond, he added, “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

Josaphat looked helplessly at Maria, who raised her eyebrows as if to say: If you don’t tell him, I will.

He made a strangled, frustrated noise. She was acting like it was all so damn simple, as if this wouldn’t ruin everything if Freder didn’t feel the same way. But there was no backing down now, and he knew it. He looked back at Freder then closed his eyes to make it easier to force the words out.

“Look, I know it’s not a good time to say this. But maybe there’ll never be a good time. Maybe we’ll be stuck on this ride forever, or - or maybe the dancing skeletons are right, and one of us could just die at any time, like Hel did, and… and I don’t want that to happen without being honest with you. Okay?”

“Okay…” Freder said. “Honest about what?”

Josaphat held in a sigh; Freder’s sweet cluelessness wasn’t making this any easier. “I have a crush on you, okay?” he muttered.

“Huh?”

“I have a crush on you!” Josaphat shouted as the song abruptly cut out.

For a moment, all he could hear was the mechanical sounds of the dancing skeletons. He opened his eyes and looked at Freder, who was blushing slightly.

“Oh,” Freder said.

Back towards the entrance to the dancing skeleton room, Slim sat up in his ride car and leaned forward. Finally, things were getting interesting. He had a clear view of the trio stuck in the middle of the room and, now that the song had finally stopped, he could hear their conversation as well.

Freder seemed flustered, but not unhappy about Josaphat’s confession. If anything, he seemed almost pleasantly confused. Slim had never seen him like this before. Could it be that even Freder didn’t know…?

“I… um…” Freder smiled awkwardly and looked away. “Josaphat, I’m flattered. Really, really flattered. But I…”

“Oh god ,” Josaphat groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Fuck, sorry, just forget it.”

“No! I don’t - I don’t want to forget it,” Freder said, apparently surprising himself. He laid a hand on Josaphat’s shoulder, and Josaphat uncovered his face. They looked into each other’s eyes.

Slim sighed. He knew he shouldn’t get emotionally invested in someone he was being paid to spy on, but he had practically no free time left anymore. Freder’s life was Slim’s life now - or at least, it was Slim’s soap opera.

“Come on, kiss him,” Slim whispered under his breath. “Just kiss him, you stupid jock.”

But the stupid jock just smiled and said, “You’re wonderful, Josaphat. You’re the best friend I could ever have.”

Slim had to clap a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming in frustration. Don’t interfere, he reminded himself; Joh always said to just watch and never interfere. But damn was it hard not to. 

Over the past few weeks he’d seen Freder flirt just as much with Josaphat as with Maria - if anything, he had flirted with Josaphat more, because Freder’s intense crush had made him overly-aware of how he interacted with Maria. And now this dumb freshman was trying to convince himself that this was just how friends were with each other. It was unbearable to watch.

At the word “friend,” Josaphat’s face fell. 

Freder must have noticed, because he quickly added, “I mean, it’s not that you’re not attractive and amazing, it’s just that…”

“It’s just that you’re not into guys,” Josaphat finished.

“What?” Realization dawned on Freder’s face. “Oh - no, it’s just that I have a crush on… somebody else.”

Josaphat looked confused. “So you do like guys?”

“I’d never really thought about it,” Freder replied with a shrug. “But, yeah, I guess I do.”

“I KNEW IT!” Maria shouted. 

Slim was relieved that she did it before he had.

Freder’s face reddened; had he forgotten Maria was there? “I - um - yeah, but I like girls too. In fact, I… um… Maria, I should tell you…”

“You have a crush on me,” she said.

He looked shocked. “You knew?”

“Everybody knows, dude,” Josaphat said with a laugh as Freder’s blush deepened. “You’re good at a lot of things, but keeping your feelings hidden isn’t one of them.”

“They’re just so big,” Freder said defensively.

Maria laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “We know. I think it’s one of the things I love about you.”

Freder’s eyes widened. “L-love?”

Maria blushed and nodded. “It’s kind of complicated, being asexual and I guess some kind of gray-romantic maybe, I still haven’t quite pinned it down but… yeah. There’s something there. I’d be willing to give a relationship a try if you are.”

“Yes!” Freder almost shouted. “I mean, yeah, that’s cool.”

Slim was about to heave a silent, disappointed sigh - how predictable, boy gets girl - when Maria said, “But I don’t see why that means you can’t be in a relationship with Josaphat, too.”

Freder and Josaphat looked at each other in visible confusion, then both turned to Maria.

“I mean, look,” she continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “It doesn’t make sense - at least, not to me - to keep Freder all to myself if somebody else can make him happy, right?”

“I guess,” Freder said, still confused, “But it’s not like I can just date both of you at the same time, right?”

“Why not?” Maria said.

Josaphat sighed. “You can’t just solve a love triangle with polyamory, Maria.”

“Why, of course you can,” she said firmly. “I mean, I’m okay with it if both of you are.”

“I mean, I’m not against the idea, but this stuff’s complicated,” Josaphat said. “We’d all have to talk about it before anyone agrees to anything.”

“What are you talking about?” Freder said, looking from one to the other. “What are we agreeing to?”

Josaphat gestured to Freder. “See, Maria? He doesn’t even know.”

In that moment, Slim realized that he wasn’t being paid enough for all this. Screw non-intervention; these dumbasses needed a push.

“JUST KISS ALREADY!” he shouted.

The trio all jumped in their seats and turned to see Slim in the other ride car, across the room. 

“What the hell?!” Freder said.

Josaphat’s eyes widened as he recognized Slim. “Has he been here the whole-”

“THE WHOLE TIME, YEAH,” Slim called back. “JUST SHUT UP AND KISS SOMEONE, FREDER.”

Freder’s face reddened even more as he looked between Josaphat and Maria. “I mean, you’re both great, but…”

“HUH?” Slim called.

“I CAN’T PICK ONE, OKAY?” Freder yelled back.

Slim slammed his fist on the ride bar in front of him and hollered, “THEN KISS THEM BOTH, YOU COWARD!”

Freder turned to Maria and said, “Look, I can’t just-”

Then she kissed him, very gently, and pulled away.

“Go on,” she said.

He nodded silently and turned to Josaphat.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Josaphat muttered.

Freder smiled and said, “I want to.” Then Freder kissed him too.

From where he sat Slim started clapping. Without saying anything else he effortlessly stood up, slid out of his ride vehicle, and walked out. The other three watched, speechless, and their ride car finally jerked forward to take them out of The End of the World.

Slim adjusted his definitely very cool black hat as he walked out past a group of park staff who were clustered around the ride operations panel, arguing about who had fixed it. The day was nearly over and Slim decided it was time to clock out. For once, he’d done a good job.

Chapter Text

“We're going to need to be creative, since I don't have a fake ID,” Conrad said. He was being chattier than normal on their way to the Bilbao Moon; Eva wasn't sure if he was thinking aloud or just trying to distract her from bad memories.

“I can't believe that you of all people don't have a fake ID,” Eva said. Her eyes settled on a man walking several feet ahead of them who was limping very slightly. 

Conrad waved his gloved hand dismissively. “More hassle than they're worth, at least for me. I can't buy my way out of trouble like Joh. If you get caught with one it's a whole big thing, especially for a high school principal's son.”

“I don't see why that makes any difference,” she said, still watching the limping man. He was wearing a long black coat, black boots, and a black fedora with a blood-red hatband; he seemed to be going in the same direction they were. There was something almost comically suspicious and out-of-place about him, especially in the bright beach town crowd.

“You wouldn't understand,” Conrad sighed.

“Try me.”

“Well…” Conrad began, seeming to consider his words. “Because of her job, my mom knows a ton of teachers and cops on a first-name basis. So if I ever get caught doing something wrong or just dumb, she'll hear about it directly from them before I even get a chance to lie to her. Learned that in kindergarten.”

Eva glanced up at Conrad, but he was looking ahead now. She felt sorry for him; at least she'd had the chance to properly screw up before her parents stopped trusting her. “Shit, that sucks.”

“Yeah, well, it's not like it stopped me. I just had to figure out how to do dumb shit without getting caught.” He looked at the weird man ahead of them and frowned a little, as if Conrad knew him but couldn't place him. “Anyway, we'll figure something out. I’d actually really like to see this band - Hel talked about them a lot.”

“What are they called again?”

“The Pandemonium Shadow Show.”

“Sounds pretentious,” she said. “What do they play?”

“She called them ‘anti-fascist cabaret punk,’ whatever the hell that-”

Suddenly, the man with the limp turned his head to glance back at them, and Conrad grabbed Eva's shoulder.

“Oh shit!” Conrad said, recognition flashing across his face. “That’s Jack Dark!”

“Am I supposed to know who that is?” Eva asked, with an edge of annoyance in her voice.

But Conrad wasn’t listening. “Hey, Jack!” he called to the man. “My dead girlfriend loved you!”

The man turned back again and stopped until the two teens caught up with him, then started walking alongside them. 

Up close, he looked even more absurd to Eva. Under the long black coat he was wearing an old-fashioned black suit with a tie, and heavy steel-toed black boots that thudded on the boardwalk beneath them. His graying hair was cut very short and he was wearing heavy stage makeup that made him look vaguely like a corpse in eyeliner. Everything about him reminded Eva of the kids in the “alternative” clique from the performing arts school: edgy, pretentious, and deliberately anachronistic. She'd despised them.

“So,” he said to Conrad, “do you always begin conversations by bringing up your dead girlfriend?”

“Usually, yes,” Eva answered before Conrad could.

The man laughed, flashing a set of crooked teeth. “So what does that make you?”

Eva felt blood rush to her cheeks and she avoided looking at Conrad. “Not dead, obviously - and not your fangirl, either. What’s your name again?”

“Jack Dark,” he said with a grin. “Lead singer of The Pandemonium Shadow Show.” He looked over at Conrad. “I couldn’t help overhearing that you two are coming to see us?”

“Yeah,” Conrad replied, “but we’re not exactly old enough to get into a bar.”

Jack laughed. “No shit, kid. And good luck sneaking in on your own - the Bilbao Moon is locked up tighter than a federal facility thanks to the new owner, Bill. Back when his dad ran the place, everything was an all-ages show whether the flier said so or not; but Bill’s sunk all this money into ‘cleaning the place up’ to appeal to the business types who come to conventions here, so…”

“Well, fuck,” Conrad sighed.

“It’s okay, Conrad,” Eva said, masking her relief with fake disappointment. “We’ll think of something else to do.”

“Now hang on,” Jack said, holding up a hand. “I just said ‘on your own.’ But you’re not on your own; you’re with me. And they can’t refuse you entry if you’re part of the band, right?”

Conrad’s eyebrows rose. “You’re going to sneak us in?”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re just a couple of dumb kids you ran into,” Eva said. “Why should you risk getting into trouble for us?”

Jack smiled. “Because I was just a dumb kid once, too. And we’re not going to get into trouble, because we’re not going to get caught. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Conrad said, grinning.

Eva sighed. “Sure, why the hell not.”

The rest of the way to the Bilbao Moon, Conrad told Jack all about Hel, and how she’d discovered Pandemonium after hearing their concept album about the star of her favorite film. About halfway through the conversation Conrad realized this was the first time he’d been able to talk about her since prom night without feeling sad or angry; for a moment, he’d almost forgotten that she was gone. 

“Is this it?” Eva asked as they approached a boardwalk bar with a bunch of lightbulb-studded crescent moons over the entrance.

“Yeah,” Jack murmured, eyeing the long line of twenty-somethings with varying shades of neon hair wearing thrift-store formalwear who were waiting on the boardwalk. “I'll take you two around back.”

As they crept through the narrow alley alongside the bar, they passed two other people in similar formalwear sharing a flask. One of them laughed and said, “Picked up a couple more strays, Jack?”

“You were a ‘stray’ once too, Felix,” Jack said without breaking his stride. They exited the alley and he flashed a crooked grin as he approached the bouncer at the back entrance and said, “Hey, Big Jim! I thought they had you screening IDs tonight?”

“Bill put me here until you decided to turn up,” Big Jim said, squinting suspiciously at Conrad and Eva. “He didn’t say anything about anyone else.”

“I had to go grab our newest band members back at the hotel,” Jack replied smoothly, clapping a hand on each of their shoulders. “They got stuck in traffic. Now, if you’ll excuse us-”

“Oh, really?” Big Jim asked. “Because the contract said Pandemonium has six members, and the other five are already here.”

Jack chuckled. “They joined right after we booked the show.” His smile tightened at the corners. “Come on, Jim, has this band ever had the exact same lineup twice in all the years we’ve come here? Besides, you know me.”

“Yeah,” Big Jim said, “I do know you; that’s the problem.” He lowered his voice. “Look, you know I couldn’t care less about this stuff, but the guy who signs my checks now does, so-”

“Where the hell have you been?” A pale woman with long dark hair appeared just inside the doorway behind the bouncer. She glanced at Conrad, then Eva, then locked eyes with Jack, who gave a slight nod, and she forced a smile. “Oh good, you found the stragglers. Let them in, Jim, we’re already running behind.”

The green room, if it could be called that, was cramped and sweaty. Two women - other members of Pandemonium and probably a couple, Conrad assumed, based on how they were bickering - were struggling to use a dingy and poorly-lit mirror on the wall to apply their makeup simultaneously. Jack stepped behind them and used what reflection was left to adjust his tie.

“Jenny and Sally, we have two new band members tonight that I'd like you to meet,” he said.

“Oh boy,” Jenny muttered.

“This shit again,” said Sally.

Jack motioned the teens forward, but only Conrad stepped up; Jack introduced them as “Peter and Wendy.” Sally and Jenny were unimpressed, as were the other bandmates they were introduced to over the next half hour - especially Frida, who’d gotten them past the bouncer.

Finally, Conrad sat down on a broken-down couch in the corner next to Eva and nudged her with his elbow. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Eva said, staring at the ceiling. She sounded exhausted.

Conrad frowned; he’d hoped at least sneaking in would lift her spirits a little. “You all right?”

She shrugged. “Sure. It's just…”

“Just…?”

“I guess I was hoping this would be just you and me having fun, and not… whatever this is,” she said, gesturing to the strangers packed in the green room with them.

Conrad suddenly realized that he'd been so focused on making this adventure happen that he hadn't checked to see if it was still what Eva wanted. “Hey, listen-”

“All right, kids, we're about to go on,” Jack said, apparently unaware he was interrupting. “What are you going to do onstage?”

“Do?” Conrad echoed, confused.

“Onstage?” Eva asked, eyes suddenly lighting up.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Since you're in the band, you have to perform with us. So unless you're hiding instruments somewhere, you’d better think of a talent quick.”

“I could sing backup, I guess,” Conrad said, uncertain if he could back that up. “I know some of the words.”

“Good enough,” Jack said with a nod, and turned to Eva. “What about you? Can you sing?”

“Hell yes I can,” Eva said. “But I’ll be honest, I've never heard you before, so it might be better if I danced.”

Conrad felt his mouth drop open. “I didn't know you could dance, too!”

“Of course I can. I'm a goddamned triple threat, and don't you forget it!” The way she laughed made Conrad's heart flutter; she was starting to sound like her old self again.

“All right then, Miss Triple Threat,” Jack said, extending a hand to help her up. “Let's do this.”

From her spot offstage, Eva watched the crowd. The place was surprisingly packed for a band she’d never heard of before today. Everyone was buzzing with anticipation and, given the strong smell of cheap wine and liquor, more than a little buzzed as well. Some were pointing at the various oversized fake food items hanging from wires on the ceiling. Others, less alert, were already leaning against the front of the stage, clearly too drunk to stand on their own anymore.

“If any of these pretentious fuckers pukes on me, I swear…” she muttered.

Then it happened: house lights down, stage lights up. A brief hush fell over the audience. 

Eva would never admit it, but her favorite part of any performance wasn’t the applause. It was this moment. She loved the unspoken magic of it, when the outside world and its stupid rules suddenly fell away and a new world was born - just for a little while - and everyone in the room agreed to bring it to life together.

This wasn’t just a moment of quiet; it was a moment of peace.

Eva slowly let out her breath.

Showtime.

Conrad grabbed her hand and she looked over at him. He was even paler than usual.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered, staring at the crowd, “This is really happening.”

“I mean, yeah,” Eva said.

“Yeah, but…” he swallowed and looked into her eyes, terrified. “I’ve never been on stage before. Everyone will be looking at me. What do I do?”

Oh shit, she realized, he doesn’t know how to deal with stage fright.

She smiled gently and squeezed his hand as the other band members started going out. “Don’t worry, bastard. I’ll make sure they’re looking at me instead. Okay?”

He gave a shaky nod and squeezed back. “Okay.”

Then she put on her stage smile, pulled him out to the spot that Jack had pointed out to them - downstage left, between the keyboard and the monitors - and waited.

When everybody but Jack was onstage, Sally set a floor tom in front of Jenny’s drum kit. Sally looked at Frida, who glanced offstage then nodded. Sally raised a drumstick high over her head and brought it down on the tom.

BOOM. BOOM.

Those first two beats reverberated in Eva’s chest, shaking out the heaviness that had been there since the tea bar. Jenny picked up the beat and quickly built on it as Jack made his entrance. The crowd surged forward, all reaching towards him as the other instruments came in - bass, guitar, keyboard, and violin. 

Conrad stepped back from the reaching hands in surprise, almost hitting the keyboard, but Eva pulled him back into place. 

Jack, unfazed, grabbed the mic and started to sing. The whole crowd screamed along. They knew every single word.

Though he seemed intimidated at first, Conrad quickly picked up the song lyrics and by the second chorus was scream-singing them along with Jack. And though she tried to stay focused on her improvised dance routine, Eva couldn’t help smiling to herself. She knew he could do it.

By the time the first song ended in a burst of cheering from the crowd and stage banter from Jack, Eva had to admit she could see the appeal of all this. But it wasn’t until halfway through the third song, when Conrad pulled her to the mic and they were scream-singing in each other’s faces about the joys of shoplifting, that she really started to like it. 

She’d needed this kind of chaos, she realized. She’d needed a place to just scream out her sorrow, and rage, and joy. She’d needed it for a long time.

So when the man who’d been glaring at them from offstage finally caught Jack’s eye after the song and motioned him over, Eva muttered, “Shit, here we go.”

“You gotta calm those stupid kids down,” she heard him telling Jack.

“Bill, I told you, they’re in the-”

“Not those kids,” Bill growled, glaring at Conrad and Eva as he pointed to the crowd. “ Those kids. They’re tearing my fucking club apart!”

He wasn’t wrong. Half the ceiling decorations had been pulled down over the course of three songs - including the giant waffle, which people had been taking turns crowdsurfing on while evading the bouncers. Eva was almost impressed.

“I see,” Jack said.

“Either tell them to cut that shit out,” Bill said, pointing a finger in Jack’s face, “or I’ll cut the power and hold you responsible for the damages.”

Jack considered this, nodded seriously, then returned to the stage and grabbed the mic with a crooked grin.

“This next one’s called ‘Let’s Break Everything!’” he shouted. “I COMMAND YOU TO DESTROY THE BILBAO MOON!”

And all hell broke loose.

A lot of “allegedlies” followed.

Allegedly, the crowd gathered in the Bilbao Moon to see The Pandemonium Shadow Show began to riot, tearing down everything left on the ceiling and breaking everything else in the room.

Allegedly, the two unknown teenagers that Simon Campanella (stage name “Jack Dark”) had allegedly snuck in as fake band members dove off the stage onto a giant foam waffle which was rapidly carried across the crowd, pursued by a bouncer. 

Allegedly, one of said teenagers - a girl, blonde, about 16 years old - held up both middle fingers at said bouncer while screaming, “Come and get me, motherfucker!”

Allegedly, when club owner Bill Zanelli cut the power to the stage, Simon “Jack Dark” Campanella led the other band members and the crowd out to the boardwalk to finish their set.

Allegedly, when the cops arrived to break up the “riot,” all they found were a bunch of twenty-something punks in ragged formalwear peacefully waltzing on the boardwalk, accompanied by the band’s violinist, Sally Havoc.

Conrad could, in fact, confirm all these allegations. But he was too busy waltzing with Eva to answer any questions.

“So, how’s that for real trouble?” Conrad said, smirking down at Eva.

“Good enough,” she said with a shrug, but smiled back. “Now quit distracting me - I’m not used to leading someone who doesn’t know how to waltz.”

“What’s there to know? Nobody here is doing it right anyway.”

She laughed. “That’s true.”

As they continued, Conrad glanced into a nearby tropical-themed bar that opened onto the boardwalk, where he spotted Jack drinking a piña colada as casually as if he was just an innocent businessman from a weekend convention. Jack caught him looking and raised the drink with a wink and a smile. Conrad nodded back.

“Thank you, bastard,” Eva murmured.

When Conrad looked back at her, she was smiling - a warm, genuine smile that made his heart skip a beat.

“For what?” he asked.

“For tonight,” she said. “I know it must have been hard to do this with me.”

Conrad frowned. “Why?”

She stared at him. “You said Hel loved this band, right?”

“So?”

“So wouldn’t you rather have done all this with her instead?”

“No,” he said immediately. 

Conrad realized, to his own surprise, that he hadn’t even thought about Hel since before the show started.

He shook his head and said, “No, I wouldn’t. Honestly, Hel would have just been anxious from the moment Jack snuck us in.” 

He laughed suddenly at the mental image of Hel in that situation, torn between her fear of getting caught and her fangirl need to impress Jack Dark.

“She hated getting into trouble,” he continued, “and never would have taken that kind of risk. She wanted to be perfect.” 

He paused, and realized something. 

“When she dumped me, she said we were too different. That she wanted to make something of her life, while I just wanted to be a petty miscreant. Maybe… maybe she was right.” 

He squeezed Eva’s hand and smiled. 

“So, no,” he finished. "I’d rather be a miscreant with you.”

“I…” She swallowed hard and looked down, blinking rapidly.

“Hey, you two,” a voice nearby said.

Conrad turned to see an approaching policeman. “Is there a problem, officer?” Conrad asked, continuing to dance.

“Where were you tonight?” the officer said in his best cop voice.

“At that tea bar by Dreamland, what’s it called-”

“Really. Because we have a witness over there who said you were at his bar, the Bilbao Moon.”

Conrad tilted his head, putting on an expression of shocked innocence. “We’re just two high schoolers visiting from Metropolis. What kind of irresponsible maniac would let us into his bar?”

The officer narrowed his eyes. “I’m asking the questions here.”

“Are we being detained, officer?” Conrad asked.

The officer sputtered, “Well - no, but-”

“Then are we free to go?”

The officer sighed and said, “Yes.”

“All right then.”

As the officer left, grumbling under his breath, Eva said, “Thanks again.”

“Of course,” Conrad said, lowering his voice. “I’d lie to the cops for you any day.”

Sally stopped playing, but Eva and Conrad waltzed on. And though she continued looking everywhere but at him, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Conrad had meant what he’d said: if he had the choice, he’d rather be a miscreant with Eva than stay out of trouble with Hel.

“I love you,” he murmured.

Eva stopped mid-step. “Conrad, I…”

“It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything. Just listen, okay?”

“Okay.”

He still didn’t know how to waltz, but led anyway. “I know things are chaotic and stupid right now,” he said, “and I know when we go home we’ll have to start giving a damn about Joh’s family melodrama again, and I know we’ll get into some kind of trouble because of it. But that’s okay, because I love you, and I have your back.”

She squeezed his hand silently.

“I don’t need you to love me,” he said, and meant it. “I don’t even need you to trust me. I just need you to know that I’ll always be your alibi.”

Eva leaned her head against Conrad’s chest, and he felt her tears soaking into his shirt. “Thank you, bastard.”

And the miscreants waltzed on.

Chapter Text

Meanwhile, back at the beach house, Alfred the street pharmacist was reaching a comfortable part in the peak of his edible when he suddenly realized Joh was gone.

“Oh shit,” he said, jumping up from the second couch.

He looked around frantically, hoping Joh might have crawled under a coffee table or something, then noticed the sliding door facing the beach was standing open.

“Oh shit!” he said, running outside.

The beach stretched far away in either direction in the evening twilight. Joh was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh SHIT!”

He tried to force himself to stay calm, with limited success. He was way too high for this situation, he realized, but what was he supposed to do? Try to reach their teammates and admit he’d given something mind-melting to their star runner then lost him? Ask the cops to look for his friend, who was even higher than he was?

High Alfred is not the best choice for this problem, he thought, but he’s the only one who can handle it.

He covered his face and tried to force logic on himself. Okay, Joh was gone. But he couldn’t be far - Brigitte Island was only a mile long and half a mile across, and the only ways off of it required transportation too complex for someone on a maohee 50x extract to successfully navigate. So Joh was definitely still there, and he was on foot. And if he hadn’t been found and arrested by now, he was most likely on the beach, away from people. There was a finite amount of beach on this island, right? Yeah, yeah, that sounded right. Alfred may have been the shittiest sprinter they had, but he was still on the team. He could catch up to an extremely high Joh Fredersen. Probably.

So Alfred picked a direction and started to run.

Joh's body was running on the beach, but his mind was fifteen realities away.

And there, as he left the set just before dawn, eyes stinging and body shutting down, Fritz Lang wished he had just one day when he could be anyone else but the director of Metropolis.

Everything about the production felt cursed from the beginning - cursed with money, as all things in the film business are. Ever since the UFA studio had struck the Parufamet distribution deal, they’d been betting on Metropolis to be their first international megahit, and invested their budget accordingly.

Fritz had been assured the influx of cash would give him the freedom he’d always wanted as a director. He was free to bring the film to life exactly the way he pictured it in his head, no matter what it cost. He was free to do as many rehearsals and retakes as he needed, no matter how long it took. He was free to take charge on set, free to take credit for his vision - and, as he now bitterly realized, free to take blame for everything that was going wrong.

They’d been filming and refilming for months now with no end in sight. In that time he’d somehow alienated half of his crew, most of his cast, and all of his extras. Every production meeting was a vicious battle, every shoot an endless nightmare. And Fritz didn’t dare to think about how long editing would take, given how much footage they’d already shot; what if he was still doing it on the night of the premiere? What if it was Die Nibelungen all over again?

But worst of all was the publicity. Metropolis wasn’t even finished yet, but the studio still made sure it was everywhere, publicizing every detail of its production to build anticipation for the film. “Look at all the money we’re spending on Metropolis,” the studio seemed to be saying. “Look at our star director, Fritz Lang, and the challenges he’s overcome to make this film.”

But he knew what they were really saying was: “Look at the man who’ll be responsible for wasting all this money if his film fails.”

Because if the film failed, it wouldn’t be the studio’s greatest failure; it would be his. They’d made damn sure of that. And if it succeeded, Fritz would be chained to it forever; he’d always be remembered as the director of Metropolis and nothing else.

He didn’t know which possibility was worse.

As he climbed into the back of the car waiting to take him and his wife Thea back home, Fritz briefly considered a third possibility. Maybe he’d be lucky, he thought. Maybe the car would crash on the way and that would be the end of it. No success, no failure, and no responsibility.

But as he settled into the seat and let his eyes fall closed, he saw a flash of that possibility in horrific, full-colored detail - blood and broken glass and a young woman’s mangled body in the seat beside him - and jerked awake again.

“Are you all right?”

His eyes darted to the seat to his right, but instead of the mangled body he saw Thea, alive and exhausted and concerned.

“Just tired,” he said hoarsely, unnerved by how disoriented he suddenly felt in his own body. As if he hadn’t just been somewhere else, he’d been someone else.

She saw through the lie immediately, he knew. Thea had gotten very good at that over the years they’d been married; he’d given her plenty of practice. But she decided to ignore it. She’d unfortunately gotten very good at that too, which was probably the main reason they were still married.

“I know it's been hard,” she said gently, “but you’ll get through this. I promise you, there’s life after Metropolis. Our next film will be even better.”

“What if there is no next film?” he asked.

“There’s always a next film.”

He scoffed. “How do you know?”

Thea sighed very slowly, and for a moment he felt bad. On even long days like these she seemed to have endless patience and energy on set, using them to do whatever thankless task was necessary to keep the peace. But he somehow always managed to use up the very last shred of that patience on the ride home.

“Because I know you,” she said. “You’re too tough to give up and too stubborn to shut up. You’ll keep on making films no matter what - and I’ll be there writing them as long as you can put up with me.”

He tried to laugh softly, but his tired throat made it sound rough and harsh. “If anything, I’m the one who needs ‘putting up with,’” he said, turning to look out the window. “At the end of this shoot it felt like the extras wanted to tear me apart instead of Joh Fredersen. And to hear the crew tell it, I’m just as callous as he is.”

“Well, then they don’t understand you - or him,” Thea said. “They’re only seeing the shadow.”

“How so?” His eyes closed again - blood, glass, screams then terrible stillness - and immediately flew open. When he turned back to Thea, she was watching him carefully.

“Where there’s a lot of light around,” she said, “there’s bound to be a lot of shadows, too.”

“Meaning?”

She sighed again and rubbed her temple with her fingers. “You are like Joh Fredersen, in some ways. You’re both men with a singular vision - for him it’s his city, for you it’s your films - and it shines like the sun. It’s beautiful and illuminating, but also dazzling, almost blinding. And when it hits an obstacle, it casts a shadow behind it. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.” 

She fiddled with her knitting-bag, which was her constant companion on set; knitting kept her focused while she dictated her latest story to her secretary. Fritz envied that focus. He always felt pulled in a hundred different directions at once, attending to every last detail to try and put the picture in his head on the screen.

“We’ve hit a lot of obstacles bringing Metropolis to life,” she continued. “But you do have something Joh doesn’t.”

“An itemized list of my mistakes if I fail?” he asked bitterly.

She laid her hand on his. “You have someone to spot the shadows and make them more bearable for the people in them,” she said. “You have me.”

He stared at Thea, and a strange feeling of loss washed over him. He knew he should feel comforted by her words, but instead he felt like she was gone somehow, like they were worlds apart.

“Get some rest,” she said.

Hesitantly, he closed his eyes - but instead of a wrecked car, he found himself in a strange bedroom decorated with posters for his own films. 

No, not his films, Joh realized; Fritz Lang’s films. He was in Hel’s bedroom, sitting next to her on her bed, watching her favorite movie on her laptop. Their first date.

“It’s sad, really,” Hel was saying. “Film scholars hate to admit it, but Thea von Harbou wrote all of Fritz Lang’s greatest films - including this one. Nothing he made in Hollywood ever came close. He never had that kind of freedom there.”

“What happened to them?” Joh asked.

“The end of the world - their world anyway. Hitler came to power. Thea stayed in Germany and joined the Nazis; Fritz didn’t. They divorced, and I don’t think he saw her again before she died.”

The word stirred a sudden awareness in Joh. The body in the car hadn’t been Thea; it had been Hel. She was dead, too.

“This isn’t real,” he said, stunned. “Why does it feel so real?”

She paused the film and looked at him with a sad smile. “This is just a movie in your mind, Joh. You took a powerful drug and have been falling in and out of visions of other lives you could have lived.”

“So this is just a hallucination?” he asked.

“Or a visionary experience, if you learn from it,” she said. “What have you learned?”

He thought for a long moment, trying to piece together impressions from lives he’d already half forgotten. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe that I’m just a worse person without you.”

She shook her head. “You’re getting lucid now, Joh; that means you need to take control. You made the choices that brought you here - not fate. Look at those choices. Can you honestly say they were the right ones?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated, getting frustrated. “When you died it felt like - like nothing else mattered. That I was just expected to keep going. So that’s all I did.”

“There must be something in your life that matters, Joh,” Hel said.

“Then tell me what it is!” he shouted. “You’re my fucking vision, so you tell me!”

He grabbed her hand, and she crumbled away beneath his touch. When he opened his hand, there was nothing there but sand.

When his not-so-sober sitter Alfred finally caught up with him, Joh was kneeling on the beach, sobbing, staring at sand flowing between his fingers.

“Jesus Christ, Joh,” Alfred said, struggling to catch his breath. “You are too damn high to be running that fast.”

“Where the fuck am I?” Joh said, wiping a hand across his tear-streaked face, leaving a smudge of sand behind.

“Brigitte Island. On the beach.”

He squinted up at Alfred. “Why is it night already?”

“There’s this thing called ‘time,’ Joh, and it passes whether you’re high or not.” Alfred looked him over. “You’re still clothed at least, and I’m a little impressed you haven’t hit the purge stage yet.”

“The wha-” Joh started to say, then instantly leaned forward and started vomiting onto the sand.

“Ah,” Alfred said, “there it is.”

The maohee “purge” was violent and ugly, and Alfred had never known how to coach someone through it; he wasn’t used to being a sitter, sober or otherwise. So he squatted down as close as he dared to get and gently patted Joh on the back a few times, murmuring “It’s okay, just let it all out.”

Finally, after a few final dry heaves, Joh sat back, shaking from sickness and the cold night air.

“This is so fucking embarrassing,” he said. “I must look like a damn fool.”

“There, there,” Alfred said, helping him up. “The boardwalk here is pretty deserted. And besides, I guarantee you’re not the first intoxicated person to throw up on the beach at Brigitte Island.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes, as Joh tried to wipe the sand and vomit off himself.

“So,” Alfred finally asked, “how was your trip?”

“Fucking awful,” Joh muttered. “It feels like I lived three other lives and all of them were shitty.”

Alfred nodded. “Sounds about right. Did you meet a vision guide at least?”

Joh nodded silently, his mouth pulling into a tight line.

“What did they say?”

“They said you’re not my fucking therapist, Alfred.”

Thank god for that, he thought, then said aloud, “All right. Let’s get you home.”

Chapter Text

As Josaphat finally emerged from “The End of the World” with Freder and Maria, all three of their phones started pinging with the notifications they’d missed while stuck without reception on the ride. He thought all of his could be ignored, until he saw a string of texts from Georgy:

Georgy, 6:37 PM
So how’s the trip going?

Did you tell him?

Georgy, 6:40 PM
?

Georgy, 6:50 PM
??

Georgy, 7:35 PM
???

Josaphat fell a few steps behind as he texted back, grinning.

Josaphat, 8:11 PM
!!!

Georgy, 8:11 PM
?!

Josaphat, 8:12 PM
He kissed me!!!!!

Georgy, 8:12 PM
OMG YESSSS

Josaphat, 8:13 PM
And he kissed Maria too

Josaphat, 8:14 PM
I think we’re all in a
polycule now?

Idk it was Maria’s idea

Still figuring it out

Georgy, 8:15 PM
Oh okay!

Congrats though that’s
awesome!!!

Josaphat, 8:15 PM
Thanks!

I’ll tell you all about it
at lunch Monday okay?

Georgy, 8:16 PM
Okay have fun!

“Who are you talking to?” Freder asked.

“My friend Georgy,” Josaphat said, pocketing the phone and running ahead to catch up. “I think you’ll like him.”

Freder smiled and shyly slipped his hand into Josaphat’s. “If he’s a friend of yours, I’m sure I will.”

Maria smiled and took Freder’s other hand in hers. Josaphat swallowed and looked around, feeling his face getting hot. He was certain everyone was staring at them.

“What’s wrong?” Freder asked in a low voice.

“I’m…” Josaphat swallowed again, perfectly aware of how ridiculous he was being. “Well, what if somebody sees you holding both our hands?”

Freder squeezed his hand gently. “Let them see. I don’t care about anyone but you two.”

“Yeah,” Maria agreed. “Don’t worry about them, Josaphat. It’s none of their business.”

Josaphat nodded, but at the back of his mind, he was already wondering how he’d explain this whole thing to his mom. She still messed his name up half the time; how would she react to him telling her he was dating a boy who was also dating a girl? And what if it didn’t work out? What would she say then?

He shook the thoughts out of his head. He was tired of worrying about what would happen if things went wrong all the time. Just this once, he wanted to enjoy the moment.

“Do you think we have time to get dinner together before the train leaves?” Maria asked, looking at her phone.

“Oh hell,” Freder sighed, “I forgot about the train – the day’s already over.”

“That’s okay,” Josaphat said, squeezing his hand. “It was a good day.”

Conrad led Eva back up the boardwalk, sweaty and ragged but grinning like a fool. He hadn’t felt this stupid and giddy and alive since Hel broke up with him. All this time, he’d thought nobody would ever care about him again – and that he couldn’t let himself be vulnerable enough to care about anyone else. He’d never been happier to be wrong.

His chest was so full of fireworks that it took him a moment to realize Eva had let go of his hand. When he turned he saw her stopped a few feet back, frowning at her phone.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“Looks like my mom’s been calling me,” she said, holding the phone up to her ear. “I’d better see what’s up.”

Conrad felt his own phone vibrate and pulled it out of his pocket, frowning too. “That’s weird – now my mom’s calling.” He picked up. “Hey, mom, what’s go-”

“The other shoe just dropped,” Conrad’s mom said.

Conrad froze, but kept his voice steady. “What?”

The voice on the other end sighed. He could clearly picture the face she must be making; he’d seen it often enough. “Where are you?”

“I told you, I went to Brigitte Island to hang out with a friend.”

“Really? Because I just got a call from Mrs. Babylon asking to speak to her daughter Eva, who she insisted you were having a ‘student mentorship’ session with at our house.”

Conrad glanced over at Eva, whose face had gone pale. He could faintly hear her mother screaming through the phone. Shit.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said as evenly as he could.

His mom sighed again. “You know,” she said, “I don’t care about the lying as much as I care about how stupid you seem to think the rest of us are.” She paused and inhaled slowly, letting her voice slip into full Principal Mode. “How long did you expect to get away with this?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he repeated. “Who the hell is Eva Babylon?”

“Just bring her home on the next train, Conrad. We’ll discuss the rest when I pick you up at the station.”

With that, she hung up. Conrad pocketed the phone and looked at Eva again, who was shaking and crying. He rushed over and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tightly into his chest.

“Fuck,” she sobbed, her words muffled against him. “Fuck!”

“Yeah,” he agreed, gently stroking her hair and trying to ignore the sudden, all-too-familiar hollow feeling in his chest. “Fuck.”

While the new polycule debated cute group nicknames over dinner, the conversation was interrupted by Maria’s ringtone.

“It’s Mama,” she said apologetically, “I’d better get this. Hello?”

“Maria, I’m sorry to bother you on your big day out with your friends, but could you take the next train home?”

“What’s wrong?” Maria asked. “Is everything okay?”

Freder frowned and put down his hot dog. Josaphat did too.

“It’s Eva,” Mama explained. “That so-called ‘student mentor’ of hers was a fraud. We think he took her out to Brigitte Island with him, but his mother’s going to make sure he brings her back right now. We’re hoping you can find her on the train to make sure she doesn’t do anything foolish. Is that okay?”

Maria sighed but tried to hide her disappointment. “Of course, Mama. I’ll head to the station now.”

“What’s wrong?” Josaphat asked anxiously as she hung up.

“It’s my sister, Eva,” she said, putting her phone back in her bag. “Apparently she lied to them and followed us to Brigitte Island with some boy, which honestly would explain a lot about what happened today. I have to make sure she gets home safe.”

“You have a sister?” Freder asked, surprised.

Maria stared at him. “Yeah, Eva’s my twin. Didn’t I tell you that?”

“No!” he almost shouted.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it. “I really thought I’d mentioned her.”

Josaphat looked from Maria to Freder and back. “Listen, it sounds like we need to get going. We’ll discuss this in the group text, okay?”

“Okay,” Freder said, cramming the rest of his hot dog in his mouth and standing up.

As he took her hand and Josaphat’s and started walking towards the park entrance, Maria suddenly got a sinking feeling in her stomach. She hadn't been sure how to explain this new romantic situation to her parents before the call, but hoped that she could just introduce Freder and Josaphat to her parents and explain everything then. But now that Eva was in trouble again, she wasn’t sure if even that would be possible - at least, not for a long while.

She sighed but squeezed Freder’s hand gently and smiled at him. He smiled back, and her heart leapt. No matter what happened after she got on the train, she was going to enjoy whatever time she had until then.

When Freder came into the beach house and slammed the front door behind him, Joh finally forced himself up from the living room’s third couch, holding an ice pack to his aching head.

“How was your day?” Joh called, wincing at the volume of his own voice. 

“Ask your fucking spy!” Freder yelled back, stomping up the stairs to his temporary bedroom.

Well, that wasn’t good, Joh thought. He finally turned his phone back on and started looking through all the notifications that had built up since that morning.

The first one that gave him pause was a string of texts from Slim that ended with: “Honestly, I quit. Do your own dirty work.”

That definitely wasn’t good. But he could deal with it tomorrow. 

He decided to check his texts from Conrad. There was just one, from about 20 minutes earlier.

Conrad, 7:54 PM
I fucked up.

Goddammit. Joh hurriedly texted back:

Joh, 8:15 PM
What happened?

Conrad, 8:15 PM
On the train home now

With Eva

Her mom found out what was 
going on

Joh, 8:16 PM
What?

Conrad, 8:16 PM 
Maria’s sitting nearby

I think her mom told her to
make sure Eva didn’t leave

Conrad, 8:17 PM
My mom is pissed too

Joh, 8:17 PM
What did you idiots do?

Conrad, 8:17 PM
What you told us

Anyway mom will probably
take my phone so

Don’t expect to hear from 
me for a while

Joh, 8:18 PM
Did you at least break the
kids up?

Conrad, 8:18 PM
Not exactly

Joh, 8:18 PM
Goddammit

You had ONE JOB

Conrad, 8:19 PM
Fuck off, we did what we
could okay

I’m not exactly in a good
place emotionally

Gotta go, will text when I
can

Joh stared at his phone for another few seconds, then laid back down on the couch. He’d figure this out tomorrow, he decided. He had to. For now, he just needed to sleep.

When he closed his eyes and started to drift off, he faintly heard Hel’s voice from the vision again.

“There must be something in your life that matters, Joh,” she said.

He had to just keep going, he decided. That must have been what she meant.

Chapter Text

To Freder, the week of radio silence from Maria after spring break felt like years of torture. He knew her parents were monitoring her texts – she’d explained that to him after Issues on their first day back – but why did that mean she couldn’t text him at all? She didn’t even say anything when they got a high grade on their midterm project. Were her parents really so suspicious that she couldn’t even talk about class with him?

When one week turned into two, his thoughts began to spiral. Had he scared her off by telling her about his crush? She’d seemed to reciprocate, but what if that was just her way of getting through the day without making him feel bad? What if she didn’t really like him at all?

Finally, when he was moping in his room on a Wednesday night, Freder texted Josaphat outside their groupchat with Maria.

Freder, 7:36 PM
I’m losing my mind dude

Josaphat, 7:36 PM
What’s wrong?

Are you okay?

Freder, 7:37 PM
Maria won’t talk to me
outside of class

Maybe she was lying on
the ride

Maybe she doesn’t really
like me

Josaphat, 7:38 PM
You know that’s not true

The whole polycule was her
idea

She’s probably just afraid
her parents wouldn’t
understand

Freder, 7:38 PM
Yeah but like

Ugh I don’t know

I’m just so worried

Josaphat, 7:39 PM
Relax

Freder, 7:39 PM
LOL

You of all people telling me
to relax

You’re like made of anxiety

Josaphat, 7:39 PM
So I should know, right?

Josaphat, 7:40 PM
Just stay calm

It’s not like she’s been 
kidnapped or anything

Freder, 7:40 PM
Okay, you’re right

Thanks Jo-Jo

Josaphat, 7:41 PM
Still not sure about that pet
name tbh

But you’re welcome

Freder put his phone down, then grabbed it again when it buzzed almost immediately. It was a notification from the groupchat – from Maria. His heart leapt.

Maria, 7:42 PM
I miss you two

Freder, 7:42 PM
Are you okay???

Maria, 7:42 PM
Yeah

Finally out of Phone Jail

Josaphat, 7:43 PM
Yay!

Maria, 7:43 PM
What’s been going on the
past couple weeks?

Josaphat, 7:43 PM
Babygirl’s been freaking out

But not much else

Freder, 7:44 PM
HEY

Maria, 7:44 PM
Babygirl?

Josaphat, 7:44 PM
Freder

Freder, 7:44 PM
COME ON

Maria, 7:45 PM
Ohhhh

Yeah there is something 
kinda “babygirl” about him, 
LOL

Freder, 7:45 PM
Ugggghhhhh

Josaphat, 7:45 PM
Right?

He’s just got babygirl 
energy

Freder, 7:46 PM
Dammit

I finally get to talk to my 
girlfriend

But she and my boyfriend
are making fun of me

So unfair

Maria, 7:46 PM
I’ve been told that’s a key
part of polyamory

That and scheduling stuff

Josaphat, 7:47 PM
LOL

Freder, 7:47 PM
I didn’t sign up for this

Maria, 7:47 PM
Sorry babygirl

Gotta go now 

I miss you <3

Josaphat, 7:48 PM
Hang in there

I should go too, bye <3

Freder, 7:48 PM
Bye guys 

<3 <3 <3

Freder sighed and started to put his phone down when it buzzed again. It was Josaphat, but not in the groupchat.

Josaphat, 7:49 PM
Hey random question

Have you heard about
prom this year?

Freder, 7:49 PM
No?

Josaphat, 7:50 PM
They’re combining junior 
and senior proms

It’s gonna be on a boat

Like a cruise in the harbor
or something

Freder, 7:50 PM
Oh, weird

Sounds fun though

Why’d you ask?

Josaphat, 7:51 PM
Just trying to figure
something out I guess

Don’t worry about it

Gotta go for real, bye <3

Freder finally put his phone down, puzzled. Josaphat had been acting a little strange ever since that day at Dreamland, like he wanted to ask Freder something but didn’t know how. What was on his mind? And why wouldn’t he just ask in the groupchat? Maybe Freder could ask Maria. But if Josaphat didn’t want her to know, did Freder have the right to drag her into it? It wasn’t her relationship, but she was part of the polycule thing, so…

“Why is this so complicated?” he groaned, covering his face with his hands. “Why is polyamory so hard?”

Conrad squinted at his phone as he scrolled through the results for “William S. Freund.” It was the sixth address lookup site he’d tried so far with no luck. He’d have to dig deeper.

“Connie, come on.” His mother tapped on the kitchen table.

“Hm?” Conrad said, finally looking up from his screen.

“I know you just got it back, but please, no phones at dinner,” she sighed. “I only ask for a half-hour of your time a couple of nights a week. Let me have it.”

He grumbled and pocketed the phone, making a mental note to adjust his search settings. “Sorry.” 

There were currently only two people in the world he’d say that word to and mean it. She was one of them.

“What were you saying?” he asked, digging his fork into the tuna noodle casserole on his plate.

“It’s about that girl, Eva Babylon,” his mom said. Her voice was slipping into what Conrad thought of as Friendly Principal Klein Mode: firm and authoritative, but trying to stay warm. She always used it when she thought she could derail a fuckup-in-progress. “I know you care about her, but even if her parents let her date you – which I doubt, given the stunt you two pulled – you have to be realistic about it.”

He narrowed his eyes as he chewed. “Realistic how?”

“Well…” She paused to consider her words, like he was an angry parent in her office who she had to placate. “Think about it, Connie: she’s a freshman and you’re a senior. In a few months you’ll be going off to college; what did you expect to happen then?”

“We’ll make it work,” he said, dropping his gaze to his plate again. “MIT isn’t far–”

“Met-IT,” his mom corrected, annoyed. She still hadn’t forgiven him for intentionally misidentifying it when he told her about his acceptance letter. But he didn’t care; the Metropolis Institute of Technology was still a great school, and the look on her face when she thought he meant the other MIT had been priceless.

“So I can see her on weekends,” he finished.

“Mmm.” His mother looked doubtful. “You’d be happy to spend your weekends with your high-schooler girlfriend instead of your new college friends?”

Conrad laughed bitterly. “Oh, so I’ll magically start making new friends? And keeping them, too?” He speared another forkful of noodles. “Face it, Mom; I’m social poison. College won’t change that.”

She shook her head. “It’s not like high school. You’ll be with other people your age who are just as smart as you are, people who’ll understand you. But it’s going to be hard to get to know them if you’re spending all your free time somewhere else.”

Though he knew she was trying to reassure him, the idea of being understood filled him with a strange kind of dread. Conrad slowly chewed on the thought of not being the smartest person in the room anymore. It was terrifying. Who the hell would he even be then?

“And it’s not fair to Eva, either,” she continued. “It would isolate her even more. She’d always be the weird girl bringing her college-age boyfriend to everything. Parties. Dances. Homecoming. Prom. She wouldn’t even be able to take you to her senior prom – you’d be over the age limit. Do you really want to put her through that?”

Conrad stared at his plate. His mother sighed. 

“I’m not saying no, Connie,” she said softly. “I’m just saying you should really think about this first. Okay?”

“Okay, Mom” he said.

She was right, he realized, but not in the way she meant. He and Eva wouldn’t be in the same school for much longer. Time was running out.

He had to make what was left count.

Trying and failing to calm his nerves, Josaphat stepped up to the ticket table in the school lobby and looked his worst ex-girlfriend in the eye. “Three tickets to prom, please.”

Kay grinned and leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. “Well. Nice to see you too, Josaphat.”

He gritted his teeth; somehow, the tone she used when she said his name almost sounded worse than when she would “accidentally” deadname him. Almost.

“Three tickets, please,” he repeated, holding out his cash.

She picked up a pen, but made no move to actually write on the list of names in front of her. “For you and…?”

“Two guests.”

“Two?” One of her eyebrows rose. “Aww, are you polyamorous now? How cute.”

He wanted to say it was better than her version of monogamy – discarding partners the moment they became too boring or “complicated” – but held his tongue. He needed to make this work; even if Freder said yes to coming, Josaphat knew he’d be sad if Maria wasn’t there too.

He let out his breath slowly. “It’s hard to explain.”

“I see.” Kay set the pen down. “Are they underclassmen?”

“Does it matter?” It was none of her damn business.

She hummed. “Well, if they’re not, can’t they buy their own tickets?”

“If they could,” he finally snapped, “I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

Her grin widened and she made a noise of false sympathy. “Well I’m sorry, Josaphat, but there’s a strict limit of one guest per attendee. So you’ll just have to disappoint one of your dates.”

“Fine, forget it then,” Josaphat muttered, stuffing the cash back into his pocket. Just as he was about to step away, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning to look, he almost jumped in shock. It was Slim.

“Move,” he said, pushing Josaphat aside and thrusting a handful of money towards Kay. “Two tickets, please. One for a guest.”

She wrote his name down. “And what’s the name of your guest?”

Slim looked at Josaphat and said, “Well?”

Josaphat blinked, struggling to process what was happening. “Oh! Uh, Maria Babylon?”

“Maria Babylon,” Slim repeated, turning back to Kay and giving her a sharp nod.

Kay glanced between him and Josaphat and narrowed her eyes. After a pause, she wrote the name down and handed Slim two tickets.

“Your turn,” Slim said, shoving one ticket into Josaphat’s hand and walking away.

“...Two tickets,” Josaphat said, stunned.

Kay glared at Slim as he left, then sighed. “Guest’s name?” she asked through a forced smile.

“Freder Fredersen.”

Snatching the tickets from Kay’s hand, Josaphat ran after Slim.

“Wait!” he called.

Without breaking his quick stride, Slim said over his shoulder, “This never happened.”

“Okay,” Josaphat said. “But–”

“Just be cute together, dammit!”

“Um… sure?”

“Good. Don’t fuck this up.” And then Slim disappeared into the crowded hallway.

Josaphat slowed to a stop and looked at the three tickets in his hand. He’d never been more happily confused in his life. Well, whatever. Pulling out his phone, he opened up the groupchat.

Josaphat, 12:14 PM
Hey, would you both like
to go to prom with me?

Eva had expected the lecture her parents gave her the night she came back from Brigitte Island. She’d expected the anger about all the lies she and Conrad had told them. She’d expected being grounded and having her phone taken away for a while.

What she hadn’t expected was how frightened they were – Mama crying at the station, and Papa squeezing her tightly and whispering, “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

“No,” she’d said, watching Conrad follow his mother out of the train station. “No, he didn’t.”

“It’s okay,” Papa said. “It’s okay, you can tell me.”

“He’d never do that,” she insisted.

Papa sighed shakily. “You barely know him. His mother was telling us about him, about issues he’s had in the past–”

“Conrad wouldn’t hurt me!”

But he didn’t believe her, Eva realized. Neither did Mama. They didn’t trust her. And that stung more than the lecture, the anger, or the punishment.

She still saw Conrad a few times during the school day during the weeks that followed. But there was something different about him. Even when they were together, his mind seemed to be somewhere else.

“What are you looking at?” she finally asked one day as they hung out in the auditorium entryway, after watching him staring at his phone in deep concentration for a solid two minutes.

He startled, as if he hadn’t even realized she was there.

“Nothing,” he said. “Sorry. Just figuring something out.”

“Can I help?” She leaned in and tried to look at the screen, but he pulled back and quickly shut it off.

“No. Sorry. Don’t worry about it.” Slipping the phone in his pocket, he started picking at one of the flyers on the bulletin board behind them. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something, though.”

“Then ask me,” she said. Why was he being so weird?

“Well… I know things are really complicated right now, and even if they weren’t you’d probably say no anyway, and you’re not exactly the type of girl who gets excited about stupid things like prom, but–”

“Are you asking me to go to prom with you?” she asked, cutting him off.

Eva looked at his face and realized, with shock, that he was blushing. She didn’t know he was even capable of doing that.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “Like, I know it’s dumb, so feel free to say no.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Shit, man, you’re bad at this. But yes. I’ll go to prom with you.”

“Really?” He looked surprised.

“Yeah. Like, hell, I don’t know how we’ll pull it off given how much my parents hate you, but I’m curious to find out.”

“There it is,” he laughed. “But yeah, we’ll figure something out.”

She smiled. This was the Conrad she knew. But somewhere at the back of her mind, a doubtful voice echoed Papa’s words at the station: “You barely know him.”

Eva thought about how distracted he’d been, and the way he’d locked the phone when she tried to look at it. He was definitely hiding something.

She hated how much that scared her.