Chapter 3
Andrew had no intention of witnessing the personal affairs of the new recruits. No intention at all, he just wanted a smoke, and he had been having one by the dumpster until the waitress from inside walked out. Pacing back and forth. She didn’t seem to see him.
She didn’t say anything, but kept pacing. Three steps right, five steps left, four steps right, three steps left, four steps right, five steps left, five steps right, five steps left. As her steps evened out, she seemed to calm down. Andrew took a long drag on his cigarette and tried to decide whether it would be more beneficial to make his presence known or not. He had just decided to clear his throat when the girl abruptly stopped moving. Interesting. Andrew decided to wait.
“South Carolina,” She said, in a dazed voice. “South. Carolina,” She said her voice a bit sterner this time. “South Carolina?” incredulous. “Okay, calm down, it's not that big. No, wait, yes it is. Well, they won't say yes. No, wait, top team in the league, of course they will. Alright, so Gansey? Gone. Adam? Gone. Henry? Can afford to go with them, so in the long run, gone. Ronan? Well, okay then. Ronan,” Andrew found that this girl's mental tally of allies amusing and uncannily similar to his own, not enough for him to care about her or what happened to her, but enough to decide that he likes her.
He had just put an end to this train of thought when he saw a blinking light flying towards the girl. It looked like an insect of some sort, a bee? The glowing bee landed on the waitress’s nose, instead of jerking back or trying to get away from it like someone else would, the girl leaned into the touch, like it was comforting. Andrew decided he had had enough of this.
“What the fuck,” he said “is that,” he said, pointing to the bee. The waitress jumped, and her head shot towards Andrew. He noticed that he was taller than her. He decided that he liked being taller than someone.
“It’s a Henrietta bee,” she said, quickly recovering from the scare “Bees glow here,” As she said that, the bee flew away into the distance.
“Uh huh,” Andrew said, not convinced but not willing to have a conversation with this strange shorter-than-him girl.
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to spy on people?” She asked
“No,” he responded, and left it at that. The girl nodded gravely like that explained everything.
“They often don’t,” she said. Andrew thought that his mother did a lot more than what other mothers ‘often’ did. He didn’t say anything
There was a long silence, Andrew took it to appreciate how nice it was to have someone he could look in the eye for once. He also decided to count how many times the girl blinked. The rule usually was that if they blinked at least four times before ending the silence, they were probably going to be tolerable. Five for almost likeable company. Aaron always waited six. Renee always waited seven. Betsy waited as long as he did, but she’d had practice, Neil usually only waited three, the little drama queen piece of shit. He was the one exception to the rule. One. Two. Three. Four. Okay. Five. Better. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. This was getting kind of strange. Contrary to popular belief, Andrew was not actually a big fan of long silences, his criteria for “long” was just a bit longer than other people’s.
“So, are you going to go in there and stop all your boys from leaving or are you just going to stand out here like an idiot and let them leave,” With all her rambling on about all her friends leaving her, Andrew’s interest had been piqued.
“What am I going to do? Just forbid them to leave,” Ah. She was giving up. Boring.
“Can you?”
“Ha-ha,” it hadn’t been a joke, but Andrew wasn’t going to tell her that. There was another long silence. Seven blinks long. Maybe Andrew was wrong, maybe this girl blinked more often than others. He counted the time between the fifth and sixth blink, no, fifteen seconds, same as Nicky (who usually waited three blinks)
“How am I going to pull this off?”
“What do I know, you’re the one who’s life depends on five boys who are going to leave you without a second thought,”
“They won’t,” she did not say that her life didn’t depend on them. Interesting.
“Alright then,”
Five-blink long silence.
“You have people you care about right?” The waitress said suddenly.
Faces flashed across Andrew’s mind. Renee, bruises forming on cheeks and a smile on her face anyway, Betsy drinking hot cocoa, Aaron slaving over a textbook, Nicky, phone between shoulder and head, chatting with Erik and scooping some scrambled eggs onto Andrew’s plate, Neil, cupping a cigarette on the roof.
“No,” he told her. She looked at him like she could see right through him. People often thought they could. Boring.
Long pause, nine blinks long.
“What do you carry in those armbands?” Andrew had no idea how the girl had found out. Interesting.
“Knives,” Andrew said, seeing no reason to lie.
“No,” the girl said “You can’t just say that, carrying around knives is illegal here,” Boring.
“Show me yours and I’ll show you mine?” He had not meant it, but the girl raised an eyebrow and reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a tiny pink switchblade and flicked it out. The dim neon light of the Nino’s sign glinted off the blade and the girl’s hair, eyes, and skin, she looked like energy exuded from her very being. Andrew got the sense that he wasn’t supposed to be here, that he was breathing in different air than this girl, that she was made of something different than him. Interesting. He unsheathed his knife in return and held it in a place where no light would hit the blade, wanting to look just as absorbent as this girl did reflective. “What’s a girl in a nice town like this doing with a knife,”
“It was a gift,” she said, re-pocketing her knife.
“You got an illegal knife as a gift,” he said, sheathing his.
“Yes,”
“Uh-huh,” Andrew said, not convinced but not willing to question it.
Long silence. Six blinks long.
He didn’t know why, but something told him to help this girl. An infuriating little gut feeling that Andrew never wanted to listen to but always did anyway “Ask,”
“What?”
“You want something. So ask,”
“It’s not that simple,” borderline Boring.
“Make it that simple,”
“Alright,”
Long silence. Eight blinks long.
“Oh, by the way, the food’s done,” She said
Son of a bitch. Andrew promised himself that he’d kill Neil when he got the opportunity.
They took off towards the entrance. They heard into the two boys, Ronan Lynch and Richard Gansey in the middle of a conversation. The girl held up a hand to stop him, she intended to listen in on the conversation. Interesting.
“Look, Ronan, no one says you had to do it the whole time,” Gansey’s voice was pleading, it reminded Andrew of the girl’s tone outside as she recounted her friend’s names. Gone. Gone. Gone. Ronan. It seemed she was about to lose Ronan as well.
“I thought that I wouldn’t have to do ‘it’ at all,” Ronan’s tone was pure ice. “I thought that it would be one year and then done, I thought that you actually fucking believed that,”
“Ronan, I know that this situation isn’t exactly paramount, but if you would just give it a chance, I think that you co-,”
“No, Gansey. You keep throwing me at school, hoping that one of these days, I’m going to realize that I actually want to be there, well guess fucking what Gansey? I don’t. I never have and I never will. Just because you’re used to getting everything you want, doesn’t mean you can get it from me,” oh, they were talking about how Lynch didn’t want to go to college. Boring.
“Ronan I’m no-,”
“Oh you’re not? Left your parent’s home at age sixteen. Bought an abandoned factory to avoid living in the dorms. Started playing Exy just to prove you could juggle school and everything else,” These all seemed like typical rich-kid things to do. Andrew was getting more bored by the second, he was starting to question this girl’s taste.
“I’d watch my tongue if I were you,” Gansey said, his voice had gone stern. He seemed to be reluctant to say anything that would hurt Ronan, but absolutely capable of doing so.
Ronan let out a laugh, and oh Andrew knew that laugh, it was the laugh of someone who had already gone too far and did not mean any of the words they were saying, but would keep saying them in an effort to push away the person being spoken to.
“Hell, the whole motherfucking search for Glendower was just you trying to get closure for something that happened years ago,” The girl tensed up beside him. Strange. Andrew reviewed the words that had been said. Finding the dead body of a king that had died centuries ago was closure? Interesting.
“Stop it, Ronan,” Gansey ordered. He sounded tired. He knew exactly what Ronan was trying to do, Andrew would even wager that he had seen it before.
“Couldn’t choose between Cheng or the maggot, so you decided hey, why not have both?”
“That is enough,” Gansey’s voice was the darkest shadow on a new moon, Andrew had heard approximations of this kind of voice, imitations, crude forgeries that had once made Andrew pause to listen, but comparing this voice to those was like comparing black to navy blue. “You can say whatever you want about me Ronan, heaven knows you’ve done so in the past, but don’t, don’t you dare bring either of them into this,”
“Gansey, I-,” It was quite clear that Ronan knew he had overstepped his bounds and was trying to backtrack, but the damage had been done.
“No, Ronan you’ve said quite enough,” There was a pause so long that Andrew thought the conversation had ended, it wasn’t where he would have ended it, but if everyone did things the way that Andrew did them, the world would be much simpler. He was just about to push past the girl when Gansey said something else “I was just hoping that after everything that’s happened, you’d change your mind about this,”. Andrew heard footsteps, one pair sounding decidedly more defeated than the other
Andrew didn’t feel he’d heard nearly enough, but pushed past the girl anyway to his seat. He still hadn’t eaten. There would be other days to question the strange boys.
///////////
The last time the Gray Man had full control of his hands had been four days ago. He was just outside of a 24/7 drugstore in Utah at midnight, stocking up with food for the week. He had been just about to make his way to Oregon in his stolen white car when he had been greeted with
“Hey, Gray, long time no see,” and an ex-girlfriend with a bundle of rope and a wine bottle. A 1979 pinot grigio, it was a good choice, the green glass of the bottle made it unclear of whether the bottle was full or not
“Scarlet, always a pleasure,” Clad in a black leather jacket, shirt, leggings, and her signature red lipstick, she looked exactly like the last time he had seen her. (and, a little annoying part of his brain chimed in, a lot like a certain psychic)
“Still writing?” She remembered. A small part of his brain was happy that she did, a larger part was wondering why she was here.
“Yes, still singing?”
“Yeah, I have other hobbies though. Yo, I know we’re pretending to be all leisurely or whatever, but we don’t actually have that much time, I only have about three minutes to kidnap you, so tie this around your wrists and legs or I’ll knock you out and do it for you,” Ah, so that was what she was doing here, figures.
“Last time I checked, you weren’t in the business of kidnapping people,” He hadn’t really kept tabs on her since he left New York, but the fact still stood that kidnapping wasn’t something he remembered her doing.
“It’s been years, you don’t exactly have any authority on the matter. Great job of making an enemy of half the criminal organizations in the world by the way, we’re lucky the Moriyamas are under some new management otherwise you would have been dead already,” The Gray man did not know who she was referring to when she said ‘we’ but something told him that he was included.
“We’re a long way from New York,”
“We’re a long way from Virginia, what’s your point? You know what, doesn’t matter, are you taking the rope or am I knocking you out?” This statement told The Gray Man three things. One, that she had been watching him in Virginia, meaning that she had possibly been watching Blue and Maura and Fox Way, two, that she was impatient, meaning he did not have a lot of time to escape, and three, that if he did try to escape he had to try something that she had not yet planned for, which was almost impossible.
“What is this about?” Five openings, he could run. She was faster than him. He could incapacitate her. Yes, she never seemed to plan for a fight. He could surge towards her twist her arm around her back and-
“That’s a no then, sorry doll,” Then she very masterfully smashed the wine bottle over his head.
When he woke up again, he was in the backseat of the Mitsubishi, tied and gagged and without a seatbelt. This was decidedly not how he wanted to spend his morning. He smelled like 1979 pinot grigio.
He sat up in his seat, catching the attention of the driver. Scarlet looked at him and smiled like he was waking up from a nap rather than a wine-bottle-induced unconsciousness.
“Mornin’ sweetheart,”
“How long was I out?” He asked, or tried to ask, the gag in his mouth stopped him, Scarlet seemed to understand though.
“When my alarm goes off, it’ll be ten past two,” just as she said it, “Defying Gravity” blared from her phone. She silenced it. He had been unconscious for just under eight minutes, not enough for any serious damage to have occurred, okay, he was okay. It also meant that in eight minutes, Scarlet was able to set an alarm, gag him, tie his limbs, and shove him in the backseat of his car, meaning she was in a hurry.
“Hey do you think the gag was overkill? I mean, I know I had to tie you up, or you would have gotten away, but I wasn’t sure if I should’ve gagged you or not because, as you mentioned before, I don’t have much experience with so I thought ‘why not do it anyway? If it’s too much, I can take it off later, but if I don’t, then he’ll scream and I’ll get caught anyway’ and I ain’t try’na get caught you know? And it’s all for appearances, I’ve got to make them think this is against your will so they don’t come after me too, I’m going to untie you at the next stop anyway, after I tell you what I’ve got planned, you’re not going to want to leave,” Gray man doubted that any plan Scarlet came up with could make him want to stay under these conditions (even if she claimed he wouldn’t be for much longer). They usually contained some very gruesome, tedious, meticulously timed bits that no one liked performing, her least of all. They always proved necessary after they happened, but they were all ridiculously complicated.
As she rambled, The Gray Man’s eyes scanned the scene, she had locked the doors. She wasn’t driving. Yet. They were still parked in front of the drug store. “Look, Gray, if you’re looking for an exit, then I suggest you stop, I spent months planning this thing, ever since I caught wind that you shot Lomonier, good job of making a royal mess of things by the way,” That seemed like her, to spend months planning something pointless. “So I suggest you get some sleep, in exactly five minutes, we’re going to take off to North Carolina, and if everything goes to plan, then we’re heading down to South Carolina, and then, we’re going to end this grand clusterfuck,”
The Gray Man was not sure what she meant and tried to convey that. The gag and rope made it kind of hard. “Are you really that slow? Keep up, Gray, we’re ending the war,” Oh. Oh.
The Gray Man sat up and settled in for the ride.
///////////
The henrietta crew, when hearing that the foxes planned to stay in a hotel for the night, insisted that, oh no you can’t (Gansey), you should come stay with us for the night (Blue), please, we insist (Henry), that hotel is trash (Ronan). Adam hadn’t said a thing, but looked comforting and apologetic like a good southern boy. Upon the foxes’s agreement, they had split up the foxes into smaller, easier to manage portions, Dan, Neil, and Andrew had gone with Blue and Gansey to 300 Fox Way, where they lived at the moment, Ronan and Adam were going to some place called ‘St. Agnes’. Dan didn’t know what it was, (she guessed a church) but it had been agreed upon that it wouldn’t fit more than two. Kevin and Coach would be spending the night at Litchfield House, where Henry lived. He had long since disappeared with Kevin and coach (into a sleek black mercedes that had Dan practically drooling) with a shout of “Koh! You’re going to love me for this!”
As the rented mini-van followed the Camaro to a tiny, run down looking church, Dan found herself thinking that no one could live here, it could barely fit a child, much less two teenage boys. And yet, they got out of the Camaro and headed up the stairs to a tiny little apartment. Ronan slid his hands back across his shaved scalp and looked at Adam like he had hung the moon. Adam looked right back like Ronan had scattered the stars. Right before they walked into the room, Dan saw Adam grab Ronan’s hand and give it a comforting squeeze before leading him into the small apartment. In spite of herself, Dan caught a small smile spreading across her face.
They followed the bright orange car to a small, rickety looking house with a sign for what looked like a psychic business’s rates and hours. She made eye contact with Neil. This should be interesting.
When they entered, they were immediately greeted with a shout of “BLUE, GANSEY, BLUE’S GUESTS, DID YOU KILL ANYONE, OR GO THROUGH SOME MAJOR SOUL-BONDING?” Dan guessed these folk were pretty insistent on keeping the “psychic” brand up, they must have seen them come in from one of the windows.
“NEITHER,’” the girl in question hollered back.
“THEN WHY ARE Y’ALL SO DAMN LOUD ALL OF A SUDDEN,”
“WE HAVE GUESTS, CALLA,”
“I KNOW,”
“THEN COME DOWN AND GREET THEM AND FIND OUT,”
“You could stop being so loud, thats a completely viable option too,” Drawled a Henrietta accent from a ridiculously bright green couch.
“Hi mom, come meet the foxes,” A tall, dark, slender woman made her way across the room from the couch. Dan did not believe in psychics, she didn’t think the future could be predicted, but this woman was exactly what Dan’s mental image of a psychic looked like. Though the cocktail in her hand threw off the image. A screwdriver.
Blue also caught sight of it “You didn’t make that yourself did you? Because I don’t want to call the emergency room today,”
Blue’s mother gave a “Ha ha,” without any humor. “No, Calla made it for me, she went up when she finished hers,”
Blue gave a nod and unknowingly tangled her hand through Gansey’s. Dan wasn’t sure who that boy was dating, she was leaning towards Henry, but it seemed like it could be Blue as well. “Is it any good?” Blue asked.
Her mother sighed as if disappointed, but then she said “Yes, very good, just the right amount of vodka,” Blue dropped Gansey’s hand to give her mother’s hand a comforting squeeze before dropping that as well. “Hello there, I’m Blue’s mother, Maura Sargent. Who might y’all be?” Her mother said, addressing them. Dan stepped forward to introduce them all.
“Hi, I’m Dan Wilds, this is Neil Josten, and the surly blonde is Andrew Minyard,” that earned her a glare. She looked over at Andrew with a smile and the glare increased tenfold. If looks could kill…
“Yes, my niece is a very big fan of yours,” Maura turned to look at Blue “Try to keep Orla away from them for at least five minutes, she's on a call right now but we're not sure if it's with a client or a boyfriend,”
“Gotcha,” Blue said. “Let's show y'all to your rooms before she realizes who's here and swarms you. Gansey?”
“Right,” said the boy. “Follow me folks,” Gansey led them up the stairs, it was a small dimly lit stairway, with lots of doors opening into different little rooms, Dan peeked inside into vastly different rooms to find vastly different rooms. A room containing about 3 women all looking into a dark bowl filled in with grape juice, not speaking to each other. A room painted black and decorated with millions of silver shining stars, they were placed with unnatural accuracy to the sky. She was notified by Gansey that this room belonged to Calla, the woman who had yelled at them when they walked in. A room painted bright pink, and decorated with pictures of half naked boys and girls, and fully-clothed exy players, she caught Matt and Renee among them and wondered if there was a picture of herself, when she caught sight of it.
A big poster, the biggest one in the room, framed with pink, construction paper hearts and captioned with things like ‘goals’ and ‘my queen’ and featuring a (quite flattering) picture of her leaping into the air and yelling in victory. It was the first game that she had ever won, her freshman year of college. Dan was quite flattered. She felt herself go a little red. She guessed this was Orla’s room. She avoided looking in any other rooms from that point on.
When they got to their own little room, Dan was struck by how normal it was compared to the others. It was painted a neutral blue-gray, and a bunk bed was pressed against the back wall. A small mattress had been hastily shoved to the opposite wall as if someone knew that there would be three of them. These people were really big on this psychic thing. Gansey stood by the door like a watchman awaiting a coming army.
They settled in and dropped their things by their own beds. Neil rather childishly claimed the top bunk. Dan sighed. This kid was going to be the death of her. She and Andrew looked at each other for a few seconds. They both wanted bottom bunk. They didn't blink. Dan felt her eyes start to water. No, keep it together girl. Finally she gave in and blinked. She resigned herself to the mattress where she would be spending the rest of the night.
“No no, Orla you can’t-,”
There was a loud crash my the doorway. Gansey collapsed to the ground Then a girl who reminded Dan an awful lot of Allison rushed in. Her black hair cascaded down her back and shoulders, with a pucker of bright red (Dan had to find out what lipstick she wore, it never came out that pigmented on her) she looked like a girl who always had something to say. Her hands held three baskets. Dan prepared herself for the usual response to fans. Orla opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, but no sound came out. She tried again a few times to no avail. Finally she gave up and held up the three baskets in front of her. She gave one to Dan and the other two to Andrew, who took a look at them and handed the less colorful of the two to Neil. The girl turned 180 degrees and made her way to the door where Gansey was looking at them with a mixture of shock and smugness.
“Shut up Gansey,” Orla said as tromped down the stairs.
“I didn’t say a thing,” Gansey replied, and followed her down.
Dan took a look at her basket, it was split into sections with woven strips of orange and white construction paper ,each containing a little trinket. A plastic ring painted silver with a bright orange gem in the middle, a mini-book the size of Dan’s thumb entitled ‘most successful Exy plays’, another mini-book entitled ‘advice for the month of September’, a red candy rosebud, a new tube of red lipstick (how had she known?), and two bottles of nail polish, one white and one fox orange. Andrew unearthed another mini-book (though Dan couldn’t see what the title was) and a basket load of candy. Neil unearthed twelve mini-books and a red candy rosebud.
“Wow, you got a lot of stuff Dan,” Neil noticed, Andrew only acknowledged with a grunt.
“We’ll thank her in the morning, let’s get some sleep now,” Dan said. They got under their own covers, and they slept.
////////////
Back in South Carolina, a certain 6’4 exy player was trying to sleep as well. Matt Boyd had just gotten to the stage where he knew sleep was imminent, but hadn’t quite gotten there yet, when a familiar face called his phone. Matt, too asleep to read the screen, just answered.
“Hey, Dan?” he said.
“Call your girlfriend another time Boyd, we have work to do,” Matt was awake.
“Jiang?”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Matt had no Idea why Jiang would be calling his phone, he sent a quick glance to his calendar and it became clear.
“Tell Kavinsky that I don’t want to come to his fourth party, I told you last year, stop calling me,” Matt growled. This had happened last year too, except it had been Kavinsky calling. It had been the summer after he quit, the summer Neil came to them, the summer of the year they had won the championships. Matt took it as a sign that quitting had given him a lot of good things.
There was a sound on the other end, like Jiang had dropped the phone, then a scuffle. Then Swan picked it up and said
“Right, we’ll… we’ll let him know you said that, but that’s not why we called,” If Matt had known Swan better, he would have asked about the pause in his voice, but Matt did not, and so, he didn’t ask.
“Then why did you call,” Matt had always liked Swan, he was the most fun to be around.
“We just wanted to let you know there was trouble coming your way, the new recruits you’re picking up,”
“What? How’d you know about that?”
“Small town. News travels fast,”
Matt suspected there was more to it than that, but he did not ask.
“Right,”
“Oh, and there’s a woman coming too, got long dark hair, always somehow wearing red lipstick, new york accent, she’s coming too, steer clear,”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because we know you, and you’ve made it good. Quit and won the league and all that. No offense, but we don’t want you back here next summer,”
“None taken. Swan, what’s going on?” Matt was getting scared.
“If you don’t know anything about it, then we’re doing our job. Just focus on winning this year, you won us a fortune last year when you won. We were the only ones betting on you,” Matt doubted that, he couldn’t have made them more than they already had, but the sentiment was there, and with people like Swan, it was the only thing that mattered. Matt felt oddly nostalgic. Which was strange, he had never been all that close to Swan, and you couldn’t be nostalgic for something you didn’t have.
“And kiss that babe you’ve got next time you see her!,” Skov piped up from the other end “That honey needs some love!” Matt tried to restrain the urge to punch something that somehow always happened to show up when Skov said something.
“Right, okay,”
“Hey,” said Jiang, sounding much angrier and much darker than he had before. “Ask the new recruits what happened to Kavinsky when you see them- no, Prokopenko, ask them what happened to Proko, preferably Lynch, if you can, make him as un-fucking-comfortable as possible, he deserves it,” Matt was not sure what these people had against the new recruits, and he did not want to know.
“Alright, I’ll try,” he said to appease them. “Bye,”
“Bye, Boyd,” said Swan softly. Swan hardly ever did anything loudly. There was a pause. “Call more often, okay? It wouldn’t kill us to know how you are.
“I’ll keep that in mind,”
“Have a good night Boyd,”
“Good night Swan,”
They hung up. On both sides, the boys breathed a sigh of relief.