Susie awoke inside a dream, or as close to one as possible. In it, the walls were pitch black and covered in stars, sketched free-hand with blue lines. Above her, placed dangerously above her head, were shelves full of trophies that celebrated nothing of descript notice. They reflected a faint pink light which wasn’t actually there, and there was no way of saying what kind of metal they were. If they’d fallen in her sleep, Susie couldn’t be sure if they’d have bounced harmlessly away or crushed her skull like a pumpkin. She was in an idealized space – it wasn’t actually there, but felt and behaved mostly as if it were.

This wasn’t her world, though she’d fallen asleep here intentionally. She was lying in a place that existed only in her school’s utility closet, as insane as it sounded. A place where non-living objects sprang to life to make friends of themselves and to cherish your every breath. And this wasn’t her room, either. Kris, whose room it was, loomed over her like a motionless scarecrow. Their black hair fell sloppily all about their face, and they wore a vacant expression that must, in Susie’s estimation, have saved a lot of cumulative energy over the years by requiring very few muscles to form. If a frown requires more effort than a smile, Kris’s perpetual deadpan must have been storing up enough energy to power either a hundred frowns or a thousand smiles.

Susie sat up, stretching lazily as she yawned. Kris didn’t move, so Susie lowered one arm down in front of Kris, and then shoved them back by projecting her arm stiffly against Kris’s chest, pretending this was all part of a stretch. Kris gave way, allowing Susie to swing her legs out from under the striped sheets of the bed.

“Morning,” she said, leaning forward to get her boots on the floor.

She’d fallen asleep in all her clothing. She knew some people thought it was rude to put your shoes in the bed, but Kris never slept in their bed here. Still, Kris was standing idly by, as if waiting for something from her.

“I, uh,” she began, looking around, then patting the bed reassuringly, “I wanted to get some sleep, but I was having a hard time in my room. The spikes kick ass and everything, but they sort of stop kicking ass after laying on them for like an hour.”

Kris didn’t respond, but this was normal. Susie and Kris had quite a lot of one-sided conversations, because Kris barely ever said anything. It meant Susie had to do almost all of the work, which was tedious at times, but she felt like she’d been getting pretty good at guessing what Kris was thinking.

“I’d have asked, but you weren’t here,” Susie complained, frowning, “When I realized I wanted to switch beds, I mean. Besides, we called it really late, didn’t we?”

Susie knew this had to resonate. Kris looked tired, even more than usual. Inside this wonderful utility closet where magic flowed around them, which turned dust bunnies into their own unique beings with strong opinions on vacuum cleaners, colors were bent and distorted. Kris’s flesh went from its normal pallor to a ghastly blue, most notably, but even in spite of this Susie could see Kris was the wrong shade of robin’s egg. It was entirely too pale.

“Did you sleep?” she asked, concerned. “I couldn’t. I went to bed angry.” And Susie wanted to elaborate, but Kris looked away from her. She guessed she could have specified what she was angry about, or who at. Everyone, come to think. Everything. Susie hadn’t had time to piece it together yet, the anger was still a mess in her head, like a broken vase shattered into many, sharp shards. She still felt tired, like she hadn’t slept enough, or maybe had slept too much – then it hit her. “Wait, what time is it!?” She demanded, and she leapt out of bed.

She gripped Kris by the shoulder. They only looked back at her. At best, she could read traces of sullenness. Maybe some resentment? She was asking a stupid question, then. Of course she wouldn’t have woken up naturally in the morning, the closet was shut completely away from the world outside.

“Oh, there was no way to set an alarm!” She cried defensively. Then she slapped Kris on the shoulder. It might have been considered a gentle stroke by a lumberjack, but Susie was large. She was something like a tyrannosaurus rex, writ small. By the standards of her species, she was undernourished and scrawny, but in spite of that she was still like a gorilla against Kris’s small, human frame. Kris rocked slightly from the blow, wincing. “You could have woken me earlier!”

And only too late did the absurdity of all this catch up to her. Kris could have woken her if only Kris knew she was here. And she hadn’t meant to hit Kris quite so hard, either, so that had come across as far more harsh than it needed to. She felt the embarrassment creeping up her neck. Quickly, she forged ahead.

“But okay, let’s go. The festival goes all night, right? So let’s…” Susie took a mental inventory of the previous night, and the agenda for the day.

By all rights, the apocalypse was upon them. Or supposedly it was, because the details of how and when that was supposed to come about were almost self-indulgently muddy. There was the town storm shelter – another world like this one lay there, but inhabited by another person, or possibly persons. There were kidnappings and the victims ended up there. The shelter was digitally locked; which on reflection seemed like an extremely stupid thing to do to a storm shelter since it meant that nobody could use it in the event of a storm, but regardless, Susie had marked down getting into that shelter as her primary objective. She had no idea who was in there – the mayor, Kris’s dad, one of the local kids – it could be anyone, with only a few exceptions. Susie could tell someone else, but she wouldn’t know who to tell, or even what the apocalyptic threat was.

Then there was also one slightly more selfish thought lurking in the back of her mind, and it was creeping stealthily closer to her forebrain because it was an animal instinct, and stalking was what animals did. She’d said she would take Noelle to the festival, and the festival was today. And this animal came on such long, handsome legs. But…

Susie tried to shake it off. As Kris made to leave the room, Susie found her hair brush in her back pocket and fought it through the wild torrent of hair that ran past her shoulders. Immediately outside the door, Ralsei was waiting. He was a goat, bipedal and humanoid like Susie was, but as small as Kris and with fur as white as a cloud. Just like a cloud, Ralsei’s personality always gave the sense that his entire existence revolved around the threat of raining. He was one of the many objects given life by the magic of the utility closet, and he couldn’t exist as himself outside of these worlds, which made him especially keen to accommodate Kris and Susie, who could move between them.

Susie grinned, “Ralsei! Why didn’t you wake me up? You had to let Kris come in and do it for you?”

Ralsei blanched. “Because Susie, I didn’t know…” he trailed off. The threat of rain loomed ominously over his demeanor, but stayed off once again. “I didn’t know if you’d be… decent? I suppose.”

“So you thought you’d let Kris go in on their own?”

“I assumed. Rather – if – if Kris wanted…” Ralsei stammered for an explanation, but Susie knew full well he was a doormat in the best of times. Kris hadn’t asked, Ralsei hadn’t dared object. “It is Kris’s room, and I -”

“I would rather it was you,” and then an evil thought crossed Susie’s mind. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the kind of books Kris has in their house.”

Kris turned purple. Their skin was flushed, but in the maniac colors of the utility closet, it made them appear bruised and livid.

“Oh?” Ralsei replied, perplexed.

“Yeah,” Susie insisted, nodding vigorously. “Art books. For drawing,” she clarified quite accusingly.

Kris was now so all-around purple that Susie could have painted stars on them and they’d look like the night sky.

“That doesn’t sound so bad?” Ralsei suggested, clearly at a loss. He was trying to defend Kris but Ralsei had no idea what he was defending.

Susie laughed. It was a deep, wheezing laugh that came from far inside her chest. She knew, to start, Ralsei was only trying to get off the hook for some crime he didn’t commit. Kris, meanwhile, had likely committed a few crimes with that art book, but few people didn’t have that animal stalking around in their heads, after all. Besides, anything that motivated art couldn’t be all bad. Maybe one of these days, Susie might tolerate sitting for a portrait, if Kris wanted. Clothed, as Susie wanted.

“Though I’m not sure Kris has actually learned how to draw much,” Susie added, finishing that idea out loud.

“Oh, well. Keep at it, Kris, and I’m sure you’ll learn in no time!” Ralsei said encouragingly, “If you like, I think I could find more materials on the fundamentals. I understand it’s sometimes good to practice by drawing basic shapes.”

“Sure,” Susie agreed, “Basic shapes, like hourglasses, circles, maybe bigger circles.”

“I meant boxes?” Ralsei tried, clearly still outside the joke, “Though likely circles might be good for practicing shadows.”

Kris trudged down the hall and down the stairs. Their hair fell over their whole head as their neck bent at nearly ninety degrees in shame, giving them the appearance of a willow tree.

“Is Kris really bad at drawing?” Ralsei asked Susie quietly.

“Oh, the worst,” Susie said sagely.

“Maybe is there something more I could say?” Ralsei asked, wringing his hands anxiously.

Susie grinned wickedly, like the Cheshire Cat. She could keep going, but she was worried that there was so much blood rushing to Kris’s face already that Kris was going to spring a leak and drown if she kept it up. “Nah, I think they just need some breathing space to practice,” she replied, stopping Ralsei from murdering Kris with kindness.

Ralsei nodded, the case was solved! “Of course!” He said, cheerfully. “Art is such a painful process. Poor Kris.”

Susie went on smiling, it was impossible to tear it off her face now, and in less than a minute they were already outside the castle. These were the open streets the utility closet referred to as a “town”. Every loose object they stored in the closet had made lives here in these streets, and while it might have been nice if any of it felt orderly or purposeful, the truth was it was beginning to feel more and more chaotic. Jacks and rubber balls cavorted with plastic cups and pieces of a church organ. Computer programs had taken shape and worked together with women made from water to erect an obstacle course. It was a menagerie of insanity, but in spite of that, Susie cherished every inch of it. None of the creatures here needed food nor sleep, so they worked tirelessly at whatever deranged tasks took their fancy, and each day was something new. Only Ralsei ever seemed to stay completely on task, but of course, that was something that made him the most special among everything here.

Speaking of chaos, Kris was leading them in a straight line directly out of it, which was odd. Normally Kris had what Susie judged to be a bit of a compulsion to dither back and forth between everything, no matter where they were or what they were supposed to be doing. It made walking with Kris confusing, and she always did her best to stay a little behind Kris because they could change direction suddenly, without warning. Kris had the tendency to redouble and backtrack a lot, but usually with the excuse of further examining something. Susie got the impression, or had heard somewhere once, that people with compulsions got especially anxious if they weren’t allowed to carry them out, so she’d never tried to stop it, and to be honest, it normally worked out for the best, because Kris had an unusually keen eye for details during their erratic sweeps. Moving in a straight line was practically unheard of.

“Are you feeling alright, Kris?” Susie asked. “It’s just, we’re going straight for the exit.”

Kris stopped, whipping around to look impassively at Susie. There wasn’t really anything there, so much as expectation. It was up to her to fill in the conversation again.

“I just mean, did you already have a look around while I was sleeping?” She asked. She wasn’t really sure what she was getting at, she only knew Kris was acting off.

“I believe Kris has already, uh, secured the area,” Ralsei assured Susie. “I saw them in when they arrived. We spent quite a lot of time on the obstacle course.”

“Oh.” Susie replied, feeling a little crestfallen. She’d seen the obstacle course while it was a work in progress, and had thought they’d all try it out together. This was a minor betrayal, in fact. “Well was it any good?” She asked, trying not to sound too obviously bitter.

Kris paused. Sometimes when Susie asked a question, Kris would hesitate, apparently giving the question some meaningful thought, and these were the few times Kris would actually speak aloud. At last, Kris muttered, “It was alright,” but they didn’t sound as though they meant it.

“I wore a dress!” Ralsei explained, apparently pleased.

“To do the obstacle course?” Susie asked, bewildered.

“No! I was one of the prizes!” Ralsei replied, clapping his hands together.

“It was alright,” Kris repeated, with almost imperceptibly less enthusiasm.

Susie was about to ask if Ralsei had been a good prize, but from the sound of it, he wasn’t. She considered asking if Ralsei had been the prize for winning, or if there were any better prizes, but realized this would require entirely too much smoothing over, so she left it at that. Sometimes, she realized, she didn’t necessarily have to be there. Not that she didn’t feel sore about being left out, but at least she knew she hadn’t missed anything, exactly.

“I can try it out on my own later, I guess,” Susie grumbled.

“That’s wonderful, Susie!” Ralsei said, “I’ll see if I have a more fitting dress. I wore pink for Kris, because it seemed a fine color for a princess, but I really do feel that, well, green is more my color.”

“A princess?” Susie asked, not sure she wanted to know.

“Of course! It was part of the game.” Ralsei placed his hands behind his back. He often tried to collect himself when he got too excited about something. He had a habit of believing he was out of line.

Susie turned to Kris and gave them a penetrating gaze, but Kris refused. They turned and made for the exit – a beam of blinding light at the far end of town. Susie, who wanted Ralsei to fall out of line more often said, “Yeah, sure. Pick out a nice one.” She was far from a good judge of fashion, but she’d be shocked if Ralsei were any better.

“What do you think I ought to wear?” Ralsei asked.

“Green?” Susie replied, knitting her eyebrows. “A green dress, like you said?”

“Of course, but…” Ralsei sounded a little desperate. “Is there anything… how do I ask – a particular kind of style? Or jewelry recommendations? A tiara?”

“Green,” said Susie, firmly.

“But with purple trim? I’m sorry, it’s actually a bit of a complicated thing.”

“I’ll love whatever you wear! Just put it on!”

Susie was getting annoyed now, so she waved Ralsei off and tromped after Kris. Kris was waiting just at the edge of the light. When the two stepped into it, an invisible force gripped her whole body, at first lifting and then flinging her at some speed into the air. She squinted as the light burned at her retina and she braced herself for the landing as her vertical momentum became horizontal. She was hurled through the doors of the utility closet in a burst, butterflies in her stomach as she hung for a second in the air. It required a bit of a run to catch herself and bleed off the inertia, but by now both she and Kris were pretty good at the landing.

This left them standing in the hallway of a school, and this was the real world. Not a dream-like space or anything amazing, aside from the closet behind them. Merely the usual drop ceilings and buffered tiled floors. The halls were empty save the two of them because it was Sunday. Once Kris saw Susie was steady, Kris pressed on without a word, which was again odd. Normally Kris had to check on every room in the school before they left. There was a stack of chairs in the elementary room that Kris seemed especially worried by, because sometimes they would stand in front of it for long seconds at a time. It had become like a ritual, but this time, Kris made straight for the door, and at last Susie understood.

Through the windows, she could see Noelle. She was standing there at the foot of the patio, chewing her fingers and looking nervous. She had the look of a worried prey animal, her eyes darting about the bushes as if she expected something to leap out and drag her away. It might have had something to do with the fact that she was a reindeer, and some inner voice was telling her it was a bad idea to be out in the open. Susie grabbed Kris by the shoulders and shoved them away from view.

“Kris!” Susie cried, flabbergasted. “Did you know Noelle was waiting outside!?”

Kris nodded, and gave her a pleading look that said Susie was the one slowing things down now.

“How long has she been out there?” she demanded.

Kris gave this some careful thought. “I dunno,” they concluded with total finality.

“You don’t know!?” Susie whined. “Has she been out there since you got to the school?”

Kris nodded.

“Didn’t you do an obstacle course?”

Kris shrugged, then nodded again. Susie let go of Kris’s shoulders.

“You wanted to see how long she’d wait,” Susie accused, grimacing.

Kris smiled, ever faintly, though they were obviously trying not to. There were times, even in only the few short days she and Kris had been friends, that Susie could tell Kris was the worst monster in a forty mile area, in spite of being the only human.

“Idiot,” she muttered, not unkindly. She liked Kris’s wrongness too much to be angry with it. “She’s going to think I made her wait.”

Susie lurched the door open, and Noelle shrieked in terror, leaping back two steps as she threw her knee above her waist and her hands in front of her face.

“Oh, cheese! Fahaha!” Noelle snorted, doubling over as she realized it was only Susie and Kris. “Kris left me out here for so long, I was convinced you’d pop up anywhere but the front door!”

She laughed again at her own silliness, and Susie grinned after her, despite still feeling guilty, even though she had nothing to be guilty about.

“Yeah, Kris didn’t uh…” and Susie paused, because everything was fine, and it didn’t seem necessary to throw Kris under the bus.

“What are you doing at school anyway?” Noelle asked, aglow with honest curiosity. She was in fantastic spirits now.

Susie was hit with a jolt. She sought an answer, and landed on the quickest, dirtiest, but most elegant thing. “I was doing school,” she announced. And, that buying just enough time for her brain to figure out a better lie, she continued, “The project. The school project.”

“On Sunday? Why?” Noelle asked, smiling and brushing her long, blonde hair back into place with her fingers.

“It’s quiet,” Susie said lamely. “Nobody’s here so I can… you know. Take my shoes off and just, like, walk around and do…” Susie realized she was gilding the lily. “You know get pencils and things.”

“You walk around the school barefoot?” Noelle asked, looking at Susie’s feet.

“Well I have my feet on. Shoes on. Obviously, now,” Susie explained, following Noelle’s gaze.

“Okay, well I didn’t mean to bother you, but you said the other day that you’d take me to the festival.”

Susie, of course, remembered this. Except she hadn’t asked Noelle if she’d wanted to go to the festival so much as she’d threatened it as a way to intimidate Noelle’s mother. The look on Carol’s face had been something Susie would remember for years to come – she’d never known she could put such a mix of fear and indignation into a grown adult’s eyes at once, but powerful threat though it was, she hadn’t known if Noelle was on board to carry it out.

“I was hoping I could call you to ask about it, but I didn’t know your phone number,” Noelle pressed on.

“Yeah,” barked Susie, who didn’t own a phone. She hoped this fact would get glossed over.

“So I went to Kris’s house this morning,” Noelle went on, mercifully avoiding the phone issue for now. “I thought Kris must know your number, since you’ve been hanging out, but when I gave them a piece of paper to write your number on, they just rolled it up into like a war horn or something and blew into it.”

Susie looked to Kris, whose face was absolutely placid now. She wouldn’t get any help there right now, but she thought she understood the joke.

“Yeah, well,” Susie began, working into the stride, “Kris is an idiot. How many times did they blow the horn?”

“Twice, I think?” Noelle said. She looked concerned, but she was smiling as if she wanted to hear the explanation to this for all the world.

“Kris knows I only come if you blow the horn three times. Once means ghasts are coming, twice means open the gates, three times means run to my position!” Susie threw her hands to her hips. “Kris we’ve been over this!” she belted. Kris at once snapped into a mock salute. “Three times! I’ve been opening every door in the dang school because of you!”

Noelle laughed. Susie met eyes with Kris and gave them a thankful smile before turning back to Noelle. Susie shook her head in mock disgust. “But, wait,” she said, looking into the sky. “It’s the broad afternoon. You’ve been with Kris since morning?”

“Yep,” Noelle replied. There was something like a wince there, but not quite. Susie had a hard time reading it. “Kris wasn’t exactly direct, but we’ve been catching up a little. Or I guess more like watching everyone set up for the festival.”

Susie looked back to Kris, who was still saluting. True to the fashion of the pose, they were looking at some far off position in space. Susie couldn’t read anything in that, either. The report simply hung awkwardly in the air for a little bit, and Susie had no idea why.

“So um,” Noelle prodded, now sounding serious, “Are we? Did you still want to go to the festival together?”

“Yeah,” Susie replied, nodding eagerly, “Yeah, of course. I appreciate you coming to find me.”

“Great!” Noelle clapped once, and apparently the sound startled her, because she immediately pressed her hands down into her skirt afterward, “So, then, what do you want to do?”

“Uh…” Susie looked at Kris, who was still diligently holding a salute, “Kris, what do you want to do?”

“Kris?” Noelle asked, adding the question mark as delicately as she could.

Kris didn’t blink. Their discipline was immaculate. “At ease,” Susie needled, and Kris slouched back into their usual posture. “But yeah, Kris,” Susie went on, uncertainly, “Because Kris has got to hang with someone at the festival too, right?”

“I just thought that…” Noelle’s lips were stretched into a thin smile, “It seemed like, when you yelled at my mom, it implied that the festival was going to be a big deal?”

Susie’s eyes were wide, like a trapped beast. She really had done this without thinking. She’d promised to go to the festival with Kris. She’d promised to try to involve Ralsei somehow. She’d threatened to take Noelle to the festival in the same way she’d threaten to skip rope with someone’s intestines. She hadn’t really intended for today to have so many impending obligations, but everyone probably had a different interpretation of what festival day with Susie must have meant, and before the start of the week Susie wasn’t even sure if she was going.

She wasn’t sure how to articulate this, so instead Susie bobbled her head up and down in agreement.

“It just seemed like a lot. My mom was not happy,” Noelle stressed. “Fahaha,” she added, but it wasn’t a laugh that came through in the eyes. All it did was establish Susie was forgiven for it. For now.

“Right, well…” Susie reached for a diplomatic answer, “It is a big deal. But also, I don’t think Kris has anyone else to go with, so I’d feel like a bad friend if I ditched them. You know?”

Noelle bit her lip as she stared at Kris. Kris flicked their eyes down to the ground, deferentially. Noelle stayed locked on them, however, until Kris looked back again, at which point Noelle scowled and cocked her head. Kris looked away again, this time more deeply, turning their whole head at an angle away from her. Susie was used to one-sided conversations with Kris, but this was at some level above. It seemed like they were having an argument and Kris was losing, or possibly wasn’t even putting up a fight.

“Okay,” Noelle said, showing mercy to Kris, “Kris can come too.”

And when Kris looked back at her, she gave them an evil eye and a nod, and this one was clear. It meant, “You had better behave.”

Susie had seen this between Kris and Noelle before, but always further afar. She’d never been right in the middle of a non-verbal discussion like this, and she’d never known any other two people who communicated the way Kris and Noelle seemed to. It made her feel like a complete stranger looking through a glass window, and it came with a vague pain in her chest. She was getting pretty good at reading Kris, but she’d be damned if Noelle didn’t make her feel like an amateur.

Susie rallied. “Well let’s go! Noelle, you pick the first thing!” And Susie motioned for Noelle to walk ahead.

“I say we get lunch, in that case!” Noelle decided.

Noelle took the lead, and as soon as she got out of ear shot, Susie leaned down to Kris. “Hey, listen,” she whispered. “I wanna spend the day with you, but if you don’t mind. Please, just for a little bit, can you be on the lookout for something Noelle and I can do together? By ourselves, I mean.”

Kris avoided looking at Susie, and as soon as she let Kris go, they moved ahead after Noelle. Kris’s face had been hollowed, very deliberately lacking expression. Susie imagined Noelle probably knew exactly what that might have meant, but Susie had to guess through several possibilities. The most likely was, Kris was going to maliciously obey the request in the worst possible way. No telling what that would be like. Another possibility was that Kris didn’t like the request, and that took deeper thinking.

Susie followed along, bringing up the rear. Noelle kept looking behind her, like she was worried the other two were going to get lost. Kris walked straight ahead behind Noelle, head and shoulders upright, no sense of anything amiss. But what if Kris didn’t like what Susie had asked? Why not? Maybe because they didn’t like the idea of being left alone. Who would? She could imagine Kris just sitting on the sidelines, watching Susie and Noelle have fun, and that would be patently lame if it were her in Kris’s place. Maybe she could do one ride with Noelle and one ride with Kris, so that way Kris didn’t miss out. But then that made her realize Kris had gone and done the obstacle course in the closet without Susie, so being fair, Kris was being a bit of a hypocrite if they didn’t like being left out. That would force Noelle to sit on the sidelines while she was with Kris, to boot, so it wasn’t a good solution either.

But if Kris wasn’t that bothered about sharing the experiences and being together, that left some other troubling possibilities. Such as, Susie could guess too well, that Kris had feelings for Noelle. They might, because Noelle was beautiful, because it would be absurd to not have some feelings for Noelle. And that, Susie thought, would make today brazenly uncomfortable for everyone. She wanted to believe it was something else. Maybe… maybe…

And then Susie remembered she’d forgotten the end of the world. None of this mattered. You couldn’t date someone who’d died because the world was blanketed in cursed darkness for all eternity. That might not be what Kris was mad about. If they were mad – Susie had to admit she didn’t know anymore because she’d been in her own head too long already – but it was a good reason for Kris to be mad, if they were. She skipped up to Kris and leaned down next to them.

“Hey, I just want you to know, I’m not forgetting about our job,” she whispered, “I just think, maybe if we play our cards right, we know Noelle’s family has the password to the shelter, right?”

Kris rolled their eyes.

“Okay, don’t give me that!” she hissed. “I’m not gonna deny – maybe I’m gonna like playing cards. But -”

Kris rolled their eyes all the way to the back of their head and curled their lip in disgust.

“Oh, shut up!” she sneered, pinching Kris on the arm.

Susie caught Noelle’s gaze. This was probably the fourth or fifth time that Noelle had turned around to check they were still following, and this time she’d found Kris and Susie were whispering behind her back. Susie realized, she’d gotten so used to following at a safe distance behind Kris because of the erratic way Kris walked, it hadn’t occurred to her there was no reason to give Noelle such a wide berth. Noelle was walking directly towards a specific destination, they weren’t going to crash into each other. Susie ran ahead so she could walk beside Noelle and have a conversation like a well-adjusted person.

“Sorry, I was just telling Kris I don’t want them to feel left out,” Susie said.

Kris was still following from a measured distance behind. It felt unusual, since Kris was typically in the lead.

“It’s really nice of you to be a good friend,” Noelle said, sounding sweet yet neutral.

“Yeah,” replied Susie, and because she felt something more was expected, “We’ve been spending a lot of time together.”

“I know!” Noelle agreed.

And there was nothing wrong with the way Noelle had said it. Nothing wrong at all. It was such a perfectly normal acknowledgment of what Susie had said, that Susie began to worry she’d said something terribly wrong.

“So you and Kris have already done all the scouting and everything, right? Um…” Susie said, changing the subject. “Did you see anything you were really excited about? Anything you want to do?”

“You bet!” Noelle’s tone brightened. Sunshine appeared from behind the clouds, even though the clouds hadn’t been hiding the sun at all. “The ferris wheel for sure! And there’s a teacup ride, too, but maybe we should wait a while until after we’ve eaten for that!”

“Teacups here we come, then!” Susie grinned, but then a dreaded revelation struck. The grin smeared down her face as the bad news moved into her skull. “We might want to think about stuff that doesn’t cost a whole lot of money, though. Or like any, maybe.”

Susie felt the pang in her stomach now. She hadn’t eaten at all yet today, and the pain became more acute when she thought about pretending she was already “full” just because she had nothing to buy lunch with.

“Susie, I have money,” Noelle said, grabbing Susie’s hand and smiling.

Noelle gazed up at Susie, who was tall enough to look clear over Noelle’s head. It didn’t feel right to Susie. It was like being rescued by a dormouse.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Susie said, hating herself and feeling the bile churn in her empty gut.

“No, I mean, like, I brought a whole wad of cash,” Noelle insisted. “Kris never has any money on them either, so I’ll pay for both of you. I’m not going to have a good time if everyone is hungry and sad! Fahaha!”

Susie checked on Kris for reassurance, who shrugged mildly as if food had never registered as a concern to begin with. Then back to Noelle, who was still craning up at her. Susie had too many feelings about this to separate or make sense of any of them. Was it love, to feel this good about someone offering to buy you a hot dog? Susie didn’t know, but she really wanted a hot dog.

“Thanks,” Susie offered feebly.

But excitement turned to disdain when it became apparent that Noelle was leading them to the outside of the town grocery store, where the store owner had set up a food stall. Apparently he was selling groceries from his store in the open air. Susie wasn’t sure if that was illegal, but she already hated this guy enough to look for another excuse. He was a little skeleton man named Sans. He was maybe three feet tall, looked perpetually smug because his face was a horrible little skull, and the last time Susie had seen him, she was sure he was about to pork Kris’s drunk mom. In fact that had been just last night.

“Hiya,” Sans said as they approached, as though Susie didn’t know he was some kind of sex criminal.

“Gosh, what can we get?” Noelle asked, as she looked over the chalk billboard Sans had put up.

On it, Sans had listed virtually every good he had in the grocery store. Milk, eggs, cheese, sunscreen, bacon, dryer sheets, dish soap, and all the rest. The billboard ran on for ages, and was useless as a menu for all the items it listed.

“It’s all on the board,” Sans said, indolently.

“Do you have any hot dogs?” Noelle asked, giving up on trying to find the items she wanted.

“Nah, I don’t like to do the same bit twice,” Sans replied. He winked as he said this, as though he’d told a joke, but nobody laughed.

There was a pause to see if an explanation would arrive. When one didn’t, Noelle said, “Um, okay, how about hamburgers?”

“Oh, I’ve got burgers. But not ham burgers,” Sans said, to once again a completely dead audience.

Susie was trying not to let the hate fly out of her. This evil little guy with his evil little bald head – which, okay, Susie had to admit that because he was a skeleton, it should be natural to be bald. Yet in some way, she still felt he was being bald on purpose. Maliciously. Here he was doing a comedy routine and it was getting between her and food. She could feel her temper boiling and her stomach screaming.

“Not hamburgers?” Noelle asked, losing ground.

“No, not ham burgers,” Sans replied indifferently, without really putting too much more distance between “ham” and “burgers” as he said it. “I’ve got every other kind of burger. Beef burgers, chicken burgers, veggie burgers. Just not ham.”

“Do you even cook them?” Susie snapped. She was three seconds from ripping Sans’s arms off and eating the marrow in his bones.

“Nope,” Sans said, seemingly unaware of the impending danger to his life.

As if it had been on cue, Kris’s mother, Toriel, emerged from the front of the store. She had to duck under the door frame as she did, because she was an enormous goat woman. She looked like the plump, dumpling wife of Baphomet for all she loomed and imposed, yet she had the resigned demeanor blessed of a poor soul that raised difficult, teenage children. Today she was wearing a sun hat, moving slowly, because it was quite likely she was nursing a brutal hangover.

“That’d be her,” Sans explained, without actually looking at Toriel, “She cooks.”

“Oh, Kris,” Toriel said carefully. She sat down next to Sans at a glacial speed, doing her best not to disturb her headache. “I see you’ve located Susie.”

“The kids were just about to order some burgers,” Sans filled.

“Ah, burgers. Yes, we have those. Every kind except ham,” Toriel said, apparently rather more pleased with this joke than anyone else was.

“You said you wanted hot dogs earlier, and we don’t have them,” Sans said, “But we might have dog burgers, if you want any.”

“Dog burgers?” Susie goggled. She still wanted to kill Sans, but now that Kris’s mom was here, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be remembered as the girl who killed and ate the local grocer.

“Yeah, they’re made of a kind of mystery meat, wrapped up into a tube shape, and I guess somebody must have thought it looked like a dog,” Sans explained.

“That just sounds like a hot dog!” Susie accused.

“Except it goes in a burger bun, so it’s not,” Sans replied, blandly.

“We’ll just take two beef burgers and a veggie burger, thank you,” Noelle cut in, saving things from going any further.

Toriel climbed carefully to her feet, which was rather impressive given she had so far up to rise. “I’ll get on it. For you three? Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it.”

“Oh, that’s okay, Miss Toriel,” Noelle said, offering up her money. “I’ll cover it, please.”

“Are you sure?” Toriel asked. But she took the money anyway.

“Thank you!” said Noelle politely.

Toriel began to walk away with the money, stopped, pressed the bills into Sans’s hand, and then went back inside the store. It was clear she wasn’t in much state to be working, but beyond that, Susie couldn’t imagine what might have possessed Toriel to come out here and be with Sans during the festival. There was no way it was worth all the pain, and obviously Toriel couldn’t remember what had happened yesterday night. She glared down at Sans, who was sitting there in his chair with his hands folded together, grinning like an idiot. The sex had to have been terrible, Susie was convinced. There was no way Toriel would be here if she could remember it.

“Hey, what is your deal?” Susie demanded. “Making her do everything like this when she’s not feeling good!”

“Well, I’m the one dealing with the customers,” Sans said, as if it were self-evident how much worse this was, “And I have an air fryer, so she’s not doing that much.”

Susie tried to think of a good rebuttal. You couldn’t take a woman for drinks, make love to her, and then ask her to operate an air fryer the next afternoon. There was definitely something morally wrong about it, but Susie couldn’t think of how to put it together without sounding crazy. She didn’t have too much time to think of a theory in any case, because a truck rumbled up behind her. From out of it emerged a man so gargantuan it was like seeing a clown car routine performed by a single person: Kris’s father. Asgore, like Toriel, was a goat, but he was such a mountainous figure that the truck’s suspension groaned as he pulled himself out. He couldn’t have weighed less than a ton, and so much of it was natural muscle.

“Hello, Sans,” he said quietly, as if trying not to frighten a small child. In fairness, not a one of them were as tall as even Asgore’s shoulders. “And everyone,” Asgore added. “Hello, Kris.”

Kris screwed up their face as though they were expecting to be hit by something. Or… that wasn’t quite right, but there was definitely tension. Noelle was looking at Kris, seeming likewise as though she expected something unpleasant to happen soon. Susie barely knew the man and had no idea what they were expecting, but Asgore frowned. He looked like a sad puppy, if one could have accidentally killed you by sitting in your lap. Wordlessly, he went to the back of the tuck and picked up one of numerous flower arrangements stored in the bed. They were kept in pots, hung from macrame ropes, and though each pot was the size of Susie’s head, he lifted them effortlessly.

“Time to put up the flowers!” He announced. “I did the macrame myself. What do you think?”

“It’s macrame alright,” replied Sans.

“Yes,” Asgore agreed. He looked as though he was about to ask if Sans liked any part of the macrame, but gave up on himself.

“Thing is, I don’t remember asking for flowers. Or for macrame,” said Sans.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Asgore replied patiently, “The town pays for them, for the festival. You could say this is my biggest windfall of the year.”

Asgore lifted each pot up and hooked them to the facade of Sans’s store. He was so tall, it really was as simple as that. “There we are,” said Asgore, satisfied.

“That sounds kind of like, uh…” Sans hadn’t moved. “Like my tax money is paying for them.”

Asgore opened his mouth. He was smiling, but it drooped away as he must have imagined how this conversation could go. Eventually, he said, “Yes.”

“Just so long as I know where it’s going,” Sans said, unruffled. “Next year, can I pick what color flowers I get?”

Asgore’s smile returned. “Of course,” he said, relieved. “You can pick any color you like from the back of the truck. I have blue, pink, orange, purple. I try to be mindful of color theory, but – “

“Blue.”

“But that’s the color already there,” Asgore replied, pointing at the hanging flowers but losing the momentum in his voice.

“I know, buddy, I chose it.”

Sans sat there, smiling. Susie couldn’t tell if this was meant to be a joke, or if he was being intentionally cruel to Asgore, or if it was somehow something wrong with Asgore. Asgore himself looked for all the world as though he blamed himself. Kris was now staring at their shoes, and Noelle was alternating her attention between the conversation and Kris. Altogether, it was a bit embarrassing, but Susie didn’t see the need for the worried expression in her friends until Toriel emerged from the shop carrying a plate of burgers.

“Oh,” Asgore mumbled.

Toriel froze. Almost in slow motion, Susie could see the hangover taking over and the headache crawling up the back of her neck. Her eyelids drooped, the lack of restful sleep became evident. It wasn’t a grimace, but it was the furthest thing from happy. She said nothing at all, but pulled the plate towards her body as if she feared Asgore might ask for one. It was clear. “There is nothing for you.”

“Toriel,” Asgore spoke, quietly as a hunter. He didn’t seem to realize that everyone but Kris was staring at him. “Would – would you like to pick out some flowers?”

He held out his hands, motioning for her to wait as he stumbled towards his truck.

“No.” Toriel said.

Asgore halted, mid crab-walk. He smiled, but it was a pleading, piteous smile. Begging, hoping, screaming. “For the festival,” he explained. It was like a door creaking off its hinges, threatening to break.

“We have some,” Toriel replied. She wasn’t as tall as Asgore, but she was tall enough the flowers on the facade were at her eye level. She pointed at them.

“Maybe one more?” Asgore suggested.

“No.” Toriel said. It was so flat a tone you could have used it as a desk to write on.

Susie wished that Asgore would find an excuse to say his goodbye and deliver flowers somewhere else. He looked so miserable it was becoming contagious. Instead, he went on standing there, half turned towards his truck. He rubbed his knuckles anxiously. “You’re… helping Sans with his stall?” He asked.

“It’s not your business who I help with whose stall,” she replied.

“But…”

Another long silence settled. It hung there like a guillotine.

“Thanks for the uh…” Sans began conversationally. “Flowers.” He ended. He said it somehow like “goodbye”, as though there wasn’t really anything else to say about flowers.

Asgore, now fully aware of his own enormous body, turned away from the shop and towards his truck with great care as if he were worried he was going to step on his own feet. Using all of his power, he approached the passenger side door without looking back. He put his hand under the handle, hummed to himself once he realized that wasn’t where the steering wheel was, and then he shuffled to the driver’s side, all without looking over his shoulder. He opened the door, squeezed himself inside, then felt blindly around for his seat-belt without looking towards Sans or Toriel. Once he was buckled, he announced, “Thanks for the flowers!” to no one in particular.

He let himself digest this moment for another incredibly painful, horrible few seconds before he put his foot on the accelerator and drove mere several yards down the road to the next building, where they could still see him. As she watched him get out of the truck and walk backwards on his heels towards the bed so he could get the flowers without looking at Sans’s grocer, Susie realized her face was hot, probably because she was blushing on Asgore’s behalf.

Toriel handed Noelle the plate of burgers, and with a sigh Toriel went back inside.

“Cheese, that was pretty bad,” Noelle murmured as she took the veggie burger and offered Susie the plate.

Kris was now facing the other direction, head stooped, fists clenched. Susie and Noelle exchanged glances. Noelle shook her head and held up her hands, empty.

“Hey Kris, don’t worry about it,” Susie said, trying to help. “I bet your dad’s normally pretty cool.”

Noelle shot a tense roll of the eyes, implying this was not at all the truth.

“Or, like -” Susie tried to save it, “Better than this. Usually.”

It didn’t seem to have much effect. Still feeling responsible to save the day, Susie took the last burger off the plate and put it on top of Kris’s head. She made sure it would stay, and then left it there. Susie wasn’t always good with words, but a little comedy might help. That was usually good with Kris.

Or so she thought, but Kris reached up and dumped the burger directly into a trash can near the stall.

“Dude hey! You didn’t have to dump it!” Susie nearly shrieked as she rushed to save the burger.

She fished it out. Luckily the bag had been empty, but unfortunately that meant it took a deep dive into the thing to get the prize. When she emerged, Noelle was staring at her.

“It’s still good,” Susie assured her.

“I could buy you another,” Noelle suggested.

“No, it’s fine,” Susie doubled-down, slowly placing the burger in her pocket without breaking eye contact.

Noelle blinked first, ending the standoff. “Thank you for the burger!” She said to Sans before diving in.

Susie was ravenous, and her lizard face was well-designed for quick eating. She had her burger done in about three bites. Noelle saw she’d fallen behind and tried to eat more quickly, but there was just no keeping up. Kris wasn’t eating at all, so this left Susie and Kris staring at Noelle as she stuffed her face alone, an audience she withered under.

“I think I’m done,” she decided about half way through. “Should I throw it away, or did you want to keep it?”

Susie wanted the other half of that veggie burger more than anything, but after that last embarrassment she wasn’t ready to admit it.

“Nah, you keep it,” Susie said, doing her best to stay cool in the face of prior evidence. “In the garbage, I mean. You keep it in the garbage.”

Noelle dropped the burger into the black, plastic abyss. Susie watched it go, thinking about the bugs and whatever else would get to it that didn’t deserve it as much as Susie did. She contemplated the possibility of going back for it later, but it was likely the can would fill up again soon as more people came by. It was over. The burger was gone. Forever half eaten, forever not in Susie’s stomach.

Kris approached the trash can and gazed inside. This was their normal, compulsive curiosity, so at least Susie could surmise Kris was over the embarrassment between their mom and dad. They were, at least, acting like their usual self.

“Hey, I know what you’re thinking, but if you want a burger I’ve still got the one you threw away,” Susie reminded them.

“I could buy another, I really don’t mind,” Noelle said, this time dramatically placing both her hands on Susie’s arms to emphasize the charity.

“No, it’s cool,” Susie replied, tossing her hair back and doing her best to look well-handled.

She had her pride. Well, she had a burger in her pocket anyway, and she was going to swallow that burger later, shortly after swallowing her pride.

“I guess we oughta ride some tea cups,” Susie suggested.

Noelle checked her watch. “We still have about fifteen minutes before the rides open, but some of the other stalls might be opening!”

“What, do you mean the stalls weren’t even supposed to be open yet?” Susie asked, side-eying Sans.

“Technically, my grocery store has been allowed to sell stuff all day,” Sans replied. “And,” he added, “I wouldn’t have charged you anything if you hadn’t given me any money.”

“This is good!” Noelle said. “It means we haven’t missed anything!”

“But you did take her money!” Susie said, pointing at Sans.

Sans reached out, took Susie’s outstretched hand, unwrapped her fingers, and put the money into her palm. “You’re right,” Sans said. “That’d be illegal. You ought to take it.”

“But… that’s to pay for the burgers,” Noelle plied nervously.

“Yeah, which I said could be free,” Sans said. It was a tone that broached no argument, not because it was firm so much as because it did not care. “So keep the money.”

Susie was a little stunned. She hadn’t expect to get the money back. She offered it to Noelle, who shook her head.

“But it’s your money,” Susie insisted, feeling like she’d been the subject of a nasty trick.

“That’s okay. This way, I guess if you see anything you want…” Noelle tried to think about the situation. “Well, if you see anything that you want that’s just for you, that’s what that money is for. That’s okay.”

“Oh,” Susie said. She frowned at the small wad of cash. It made her feel guilty, and she wanted to argue, but if she turned it down then the next time she wanted something, she really would need to beg Noelle. “Thank you,” she added, not knowing what else to do.

Susie stuffed the money into her pocket and Noelle took the lead again. This time Susie kept pace next to her. Kris brought up the rear like before, which gave Susie the awkward sensation that she was being watched, because in fact Kris was watching them. Noelle seemed not to notice. The crowds were still pretty thin, but more people were beginning to turn up and they had to weave between other groups a little while they inspected various games on offer. Susie noted there was an air rifle range and would pointed it out, but Noelle just laughed.

“Fahaha! No! I don’t know what it is about guns, but they scare the heck out of me,” Noelle said.

There was probably some ancestral terror there, Susie imagined. Susie, however, came from a long line of omnivorous predators and would have liked to imagine she’d be innately good at shooting. The balloons wouldn’t know what hit them – and with a little bit of hot sauce maybe wouldn’t know what ate them, either. Susie figured it’d be like swallowing chewing gum, though it probably wasn’t a good idea, whatever it was like.

“How about that?” Noelle suggested, pointing to a tub full of ducks.

“Oh, bobbing for ducks!” Susie announced.

“Yeah, I like the little ducks. Sometimes they let you keep them,” Noelle agreed. “Last year I think I came home with like fifty of ducks! They’re all stuffed under my bed now.”

“Aw, the poor ducks,” Susie said, a little too sincerely.

“Yeah, I -” Noelle paused. She caught the slight edge there, but brushed it off. “It’s like a prison yard! A year in the hole!”

Susie was giving this some genuine contemplation. In the utility closet, and in fact in any world like it, objects came to life. A box of fifty ducks locked away under the bed for a year would have really experienced that, really have been imprisoned for all that time for crimes they couldn’t explain. Susie imagined them all, hanging out in the yard, pumping iron, forming gangs, stabbing each other to death over rivalries. It was obvious Susie was a little concerned, and Noelle was trying to figure out what she’d said wrong.

“You ought to let them out once in a while,” Susie suggested, trying to pass it off as a joke but still too awkwardly serious. “Or give them some books or something. To help them reform, I guess.”

“B’well yeah, I suppose I should,” Noelle blurted out. Then she laughed.

Susie smiled. She didn’t know how she’d gotten this far – which wasn’t that far, really, but it still felt way too far given all the good reasons for Noelle to quit – and she liked Noelle’s laugh. It felt very bouncy, and Noelle laughed often, which made Susie feel clever.

The woman behind the stall was herself a small, feathery duck, and she was only behind it at as far as to say she was managing it. She lay in an inter-tube floating in the tin basin that held the little rubber ducks. She was holding a tiki drink, which Susie suspected wasn’t a virgin from the pleased look on the woman’s face. “Step right up, one baby, one dollar!” She called to them.

Noelle handed her three dollars. “One for each of us!” She said.

The woman stashed the money in a jar by the basin. “You know the rules, right?” She asked.

“Of course I know how to bob for ducks!” Susie said, clearing everyone out of the way.

Susie closed her eyes, plunged her head into the basin and opened her mouth. The trick was to keep her jaws just barely closed enough the ducks couldn’t get out once she had them, but she could easily suck new ones in when they bumped her nose. She felt someone else splash into the basin next to her, which she guessed had to have been Kris. Susie managed to get four ducks into her mouth before she needed to surface for air. She came up, grinning, her teeth triumphantly full of squeaking ducklings.

Someone else was at Susie’s side, which she assumed was Noelle prepared to make her own dive, but she found herself face to bespectacled face with Berdly, the local nerd bluebird who quite recently discovered an unrequited affection for Susie. He was leaning on one blue wing, smirking up and down his beak in a way he likely thought was seductive.

“Salutations, Susie! I see you’re practicing,” Berdly announced, as proudly as a cock.

“Hey!” the duck woman slurred, “I said one baby, one dollar! What are you doing?”

“Huh?” Susie asked.

Kris came up out of the basin with only one duck in their mouth. It didn’t look like they could have fit more in, but not from lack of trying. Kris’s long hair was now plastered completely down their face. Susie let the ducks dribble out of her mouth and into her arms.

“You’re getting prepared for the real thing, is what I mean,” Berdly said, puckering his beak into a kiss.

“What are you talking about?” Susie snarled, getting frustrated. The question worked for either party.

“You paid three dollars, but now you have four ducks and he got one too. That’s five ducks!” the duck woman whined.

“Yeah, lady, I’m a pro!” Susie snapped.

“Oh, Susie!” Berdly yowled. “Can it be the case that you don’t know the rules for the duckling game.”

“Wha -” Susie began. She had no idea what was going on now, but there was no way she was going to admit that to Berdly. “Look at how many I got.”

“Your ignorance is charming,” Berdly informed her, “And the privilege of seeing your hair wet is entirely worth two dollars. Not to worry, I’ll clear up the misunderstanding!”

With that, Berdly furnished two dollars and handed them off to the duck woman, who took the money. “Alright, that’s uh…” she did her best to get a good look at the ducks in Susie’s arms. “That’s twenty points, enough for one inflatable hammer. Now put the ducks back and take your hammer.”

“Berdly, I can pay for it,” Noelle suggested.

“Not at all my dear Noelle!” Berdly waved his wing in her face.

“We don’t get to keep the ducks?” Susie asked, disgusted.

“You get a hammer! What do you need the ducks for?” the duck woman demanded. “What’s the saying? When the whole world’s a hammer, you gotta be the nail. Now put back my ducks!”

Defeated, Susie cast the ducks back into the basin. They splashed into it, making four little bloop sounds before resurfacing. Kris grabbed an inflatable hammer down from the stall and clutched it to their body. No one had any idea what to do with it. Susie peered into the basin, and counted up dozens of the things at a guess. Each one a dollar. No wonder the lady wanted them back, the real prize, the real money, was simply buoying there in the water. Next year, maybe, if Susie could find the cash to afford a tin basin and fifty rubber ducks, she’d be the one winning this game.

“We ought to run a stall next year, huh?” she asked Kris.

Kris gave this some thought. “Could be fun,” they said, as though Kris didn’t think it would happen, but it could be fun.

“Yeah, you say it like we never will,” Susie said, but chewed on reality. “But I guess we’d have to get a business license or something. I guess maybe we won’t.”

“Well that was fun!” Noelle said, trying to spin the conversation in a positive direction. “I thought you did really good, Susie!”

“Why did you go in?” Susie asked.

“I didn’t want to get my hair wet!” Noelle protested.

“Ah, and shame that is!” Berdly cut in. “I’d gladly pay another two dollars to see that!”

Susie spun on Berdly. “Hey, could you fuck yourself off to another planet?” Susie asked, tapping his chest.

“But I’ve been looking for you all day!” Berdly whinged, as if this mattered. “Because I know for a fact, one of you doesn’t have a date!”

Susie looked at Kris before her synapses could tell her not to. She snapped back, but now it was lost.

“Is it Kris?” Berdly chimed. “Kris, you sly dog! You playful kitten! I knew you’d save yourself for me.”

“No,” Susie lied. “Kris is dating the hammer.”

She managed to say it without almost skipping a beat. Kris had been hugging the thing so close, it looked downright romantic, and it had just clicked. To sell the bit, Kris hugged the hammer tighter and gave it a little peck-kiss.

“The hammer!?” Berdly denounced.

“Yes, and it’s serious,” Susie said, crossing her arms.

“Oh, speaking of serious things and other planets! Noelle!” Berdly pushed past Susie. “Just the other night, I had a fantastic dream! It was so vivid, that I believe I have to write it down! I may be a genius of the story-telling persuasion.”

Susie winced as the dread flew up her spine. Only a few days ago, Berdly and Noelle had both been cast together into a magic world. Kris and Susie had saved the two, then managed to convince them the entire thing was only a dream, which was fairly plausible so long as Berdly didn’t reveal that the both of them had the exact same dream at the exact same time. Susie wasn’t sure what Noelle might do if she found out, and she could only guess at Berdly, but all the possibilities seemed frustrating.

She grabbed Berdly by the collar and yanked him away, back in front of her so she was between him and Noelle.

“Ack!” Berdly choked.

“Hold on, you didn’t tell me you were a genius,” Susie said.

“Actually Susan -” Berdly began.

“My name is Susie.”

“I believe I have kept you amply informed of my genius. I have an online newsletter, even. I’m looking for subscribers if you’re interested. So far Noelle is my only one.”

“Well you didn’t tell me you were a creative genius,” Susie was trying to smile. It was coming across more like a bearing of fangs, but she was trying.

“Oh! That’s because I didn’t know! Until the other day, that is, when I was struck by creative vision! I’d often heard that creatives could be struck by such muses, but until just then I had no idea I was a creative genius. I’d considered myself more of a hard math and science type before, but I suppose there’s no reason that several types of genius must be mutually incompatible.”

“Okay,” Susie said, pushing Berdly a little further away from Noelle. “I’m gonna need you to wait right here. And shut up, because now Kris and I have to figure out who’s going to date you.”

Berdly gasped. He looked so happy now he may have been near to tears. “You mean all this time I just needed to be creative?”

“Yeah,” Susie said grimly.

“But wait,” Berdly said, realizing there might be some dishonesty here. “I’ve tried writing poetry for Kris, but they never seemed, um…” Berdly snapped his wings as he looked for the word. “Receptive? Or maybe impressed, is what I mean.”

“Well that’s ‘cuz…” Susie decided to go for broke. “Poetry’s not sexy. It’s a, you know, nerd’s game, I guess. Like Edgar Allen Poe? Nerd. That’s why his poems were all about being sad and dying and stuff. Couldn’t get any girls. Fiction, though, that’s like…”

Susie contemplated telling Berdly that fiction was a real pantie-dropper, but she wasn’t sure if the universe could forgive her for it.

“It’s a real pantie-dropper,” Berdly filled it in for her, and Susie was so mad that the two of them had somehow managed to be on the same wavelength. She wanted to pantie-drop Berdly off a cliff.

Instead, Susie nodded. Slowly. Very slowly. Until Berdly no longer appeared pleased about the thing he’d just said. She kept eye contact until she was sure he couldn’t be happy anymore – never again if she could have wished it on him – then went to Kris.

“Okay, listen, we can’t have Berdly talking to Noelle about Dark Worlds, so one of us has to hang out with him and keep him separate from her,” Susie said.

Kris scowled.

“What? Don’t give me that look! You think it should be me?”

Kris folded their arms. The scowl became more of a glower.

“But Noelle wanted me to take her to the Festival! You think that’s fair if I just ditch her!”

Kris cocked their head and widened their eyes as if they could not believe what they were hearing.

“Oh…” Susie said as it dawned on her, “But I did also say I was going to hang out with you, right?”

Kris unfolded their arms and softened. Well – that was reasonable enough! Susie had promised that, almost emphatically, and she really did want to hang out together.

“Look…” Susie began, trying to figure out how to work through this.

Kris scoffed and looked away. There was no “looking”.

“We have to,” she pleaded. “How about we do shifts. You cover Berdly for a little while now, and then we’ll tag out and I’ll take over for a little bit and…” Susie searched for an idea to make it right. “And you look for rides or games you want to play, just you and me, and we’ll do them before the festival is over if we find time.”

Kris looked back. They didn’t seem happy, but it was some kind of middle ground. Kris’s feelings were being considered and it was a form of compromise.

“I bet Noelle’s mom keeps Noelle on a pretty short leash, so there’s no way she can stay out as late as you and me. We’ll do something, I promise.”

Kris seemed to be rolling this thought around in their mouth. Finally they said, “I bet Berdly and I could have fun,” in a tone that clearly indicated they wouldn’t.

“Don’t try to make it sound that amazing dude. Just tag out as soon as you can’t take it,” Susie said.

She held up her fist, and Kris gave her a bump, though it wasn’t very energetic. Susie returned to Berdly and offered Kris forward.

“Alright, so I’ve got good news for some of us and bad news for others, but Kris and I talked it out and it looks like I lost, so Kris is your date for the festival,” Susie announced, waving her hands at Kris like they were the grand prize.

“Ah, well,” said Berdly, thinking it over. “If it was a competition between the two of you, I’d like to be honest, I’d rather have you, my dear Susie.”

Susie tried not to lose her temper, but here she was offering up her friend to this ungrateful bird and she was being told Berdly thought he could trade up. Never mind that he thought the trade up was Susie, it was still looking a gift horse in the mouth and it was more than Berdly deserved. Susie grabbed him and pulled him aside, squeezing perhaps a bit too hard.

“Listen,” Susie hissed, her voice issuing venom, “How about you shut up and date my friend, and I will not force-feed you into one of the funnel cake ovens, or whatever it is they use to make funnel cakes. I don’t actually know but I’m going to find out, and if you push me, I am going to find out violently.”

“They’re fried in hot oil, I believe,” Berdly surmised helpfully.

“That sounds like the type of thing that -” Susie pointed to some kids on the other side of the street, “Those kids, you see them? They’ll hear your screams in their sleep every time they go to bed. So if you don’t want to be that for them, you will shut your beak and have a wonderful time at the fair.”

“I think I understand.”

“Good, because -”

“You’ve lost the fight, and the very idea that you’d renege on a fair competition was an insult on your honor. For that, I’m truly sorry. You’re an even better woman than I initially thought.”

Susie opened her mouth. She wanted to say one more thing, to get the last word, but really and truly she didn’t want there to be any more words.

“Okay,” She said, and let him go.

Berdly recovered like lightning. “Kris my sweet!” He shouted, drawing the attention of several passerbys. “The festival awaits! You take the lead!”

Then, as simply as that, Kris began doing what they normally did. They zigzagged back and forth across the street, checking every stall, trash can, and person there, as if Kris were a child who had only been born a few days ago, who could only wonder at the marvels around them. Berdly stayed behind at a safe distance, offering noisy commentary on whatever Kris was looking at. Susie felt uncertain which of them she’d cursed more by pairing them up. The inflatable hammer, Kris, and Berdly vanished into the crowds.

“Kris didn’t seem very happy about that,” Noelle mused.

“Oh, you could tell that?” Susie asked as she tried to wring out her still wet hair.

“I could tell you were trying to talk them into going with Berdly, since that’s the end result, and I can tell you must have set up a deal with Kris because otherwise you’d already be in a lot more trouble.”

“You’re pretty sharp,” Susie observed. She’d squeezed out about as much water as she could. The sun would have to do the rest. “You must be some kind of Kris whisper with how you can tell what they’re thinking so easily.”

“A Kris whisperer implies that I could control them, which I have to tell you, I can’t! Fahaha!” This came with a hard laugh, rather than the usual bubbles. “You must have really wanted to hang out just the two of us.”

“Mostly I really wanted Berdly to go away.”

Noelle frowned.

“Uh, but I mean, so that we could be alone,” Susie scrambled, realizing she’d missed the easiest layup in history. “Or just the two of us. Together in a crowd or wherever.”

“I think I get what you mean.”

Susie still wanted to save it. “Like it’s more intimate this way,” she rambled.

“Yeah.”

“Or not intimate. What is it? Um…”

Noelle grabbed Susie by the hand and began to pull. “Do you want to go ride the ferris wheel?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure, I’m good for cool.” Susie had accidentally mashed up the phrases I’m good for that and I’m cool and hoped it had sounded intentional.

“It’s kinda intimate,” Noelle said teasingly.

It was, by all rights, not the world’s most amazing ferris wheel. It was cheap carnival fare. An open two-seater that cost entirely too much per ticket for what it was, but Noelle paid for both tickets anyhow. They didn’t have to wait in line long, but the ride consisted of going up a few feet, letting a set of passengers off, letting another set of passengers on, then traveling another few feet before stopping again. Sometimes it kept going, and the ride picked up a little momentum, but the ride manager was obviously more concerned with who should be on or off than they were with a fun time.

After they got a little ways off the ground, Noelle turned to Susie. “You remember at my house yesterday I was telling you about my dream?” She asked. She put it carefully, like she really wanted to talk about it, but didn’t want to force it.

“Yeah, you said it was a great, magical place, and we rode a ferris wheel together.”

This thing had really happened, and Susie knew it. It had been an ordeal, part of an escape plan from a mad queen. The moment had been romantic from a bird’s eye, but neither of them seemed to know what to do with each other at the time.

“That’s right, but it was huge.” Noelle went on. “It didn’t stop, and it almost didn’t roll, so we stayed at the top of the ride the whole time. You showed up to rescue me, and the wheel was this easy way out. Like it was waiting, and of course we used it, because otherwise we’d have had to go backwards, fighting out the hard way.”

The ride lurched to a halt as another passenger was loaded off, another passenger was loaded on.

“It must have been a lot better than this,” Susie observed as she leered at the new passengers stopping the ride. She would have liked to make a more relevant comment, but couldn’t remember now what Noelle hadn’t already told her about it.

“It was a dream,” Noelle said airily.

“Well maybe, you know,” Susie thought about this. It was possible to introduce Noelle to the utility closet. Perhaps in some fashion that didn’t imply hanky-pank, when she realized what it’d seem like she’d be suggesting, but more to the tune of a life changing experience or… the introduction still needed work-shopping. Susie wasn’t sure it was a good idea, regardless. “Maybe you’ll have other dreams like that.” She concluded, trying to sound cryptic.

“Ha! Sure,” Noelle replied, shaking her long hair, “But what I meant is, yeah, a dream is better than real life because it happens in your head, right?”

“Yeah,” Susie said, looking down at her shoes. Her heart began to sink.

This was the real deal. This was Susie. Her jeans were ripped, her shoelaces were frayed. She was taking up entirely too much space on the ride. Her hair and shirt were still wet, and the breeze was making her cold. Noelle smelled like peppermint shampoo. Susie smelled like Susie. The ride lurched to a stop again. Passengers got off, passengers got on.

“But I wanted that dream to be real, right? Because it was so nice. So here I am,” Noelle said. She was smiling faintly, and tried to duck her head to catch Susie’s face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to put you down.”

“Oh… I wasn’t.” Susie lied.

“After you yelled at my mom, I got in a lot of trouble, you know,” Noelle accused, firmness suddenly out of nowhere.

“Okay, hey!” Susie threw her hands up in defense. “I didn’t know you were going to trap me up here to put me on trial!”

“Oh, I’m not mad at you. You know what she told me? She said she didn’t like having a girl like you in the house. She said I had no idea who you are or what you’re like. She said you’re dirty. She said you probably have pinworms.”

Susie gritted her teeth. The world began to close in around her. Susie sucked in her breath. What? “She -” Susie choked out, “I don’t have pinworms!” This was too much coming from Noelle, who Susie had always thought of as being one of the most considerate people she’d ever met. She was looking at Noelle’s face now, and it felt like Susie was falling forward, though that wasn’t it. It was the motion of the ferris wheel, moving again.

“I believe you, I don’t think you do,” Noelle said, holding Susie’s shoulder.

Susie realized she was visibly coming undone. She didn’t want to be mad at Noelle, but she was. Even if Noelle was just repeating things her mom had said, how could she say that? The ride stopped. Passengers got off, passengers got on.

“And I don’t have anyone to talk to about it,” Noelle leaned forward. Her voice sounded strained, her eyes were pinched. “Can it be you? Can I talk to you about it, please?”

Susie tried to steady her breathing. She swallowed. Her throat was now very dry. “I don’t have worms,” was all Susie could think to say.

“Okay, I’m sorry I told you that,” Noelle said, soothingly, “But even if you did, I looked it up, and it turns out you can get worm medicine over the counter and it tastes like bananas, so it wouldn’t even be a big deal.”

Susie threw her hands out and groaned. She nearly laughed. This girl. The sheer nerve of it. The mind-bending audacity!The ride stopped. Passengers got off, passengers got on.

“It didn’t look like there were a lot of manufacturers so banana is the only flavor. I don’t know if that’s a problem,” Noelle was trying to make it sound helpful.

Susie was struggling to hold in the tears. “I don’t – I’ll eat fucking… bananas! I don’t care about the banana flavor. What is wrong with you?”

“What my mom said – it made me mad, and it made me worry for you. I didn’t think, oh my mom’s right. I thought, maybe I can help. Sorry. I really shouldn’t have opened with the pinworm thing.”

“I really wish you hadn’t.” Susie choked.

“I’m so sorry, I had this whole conversation planned in my head, and it went a whole lot better when I imagined it. I had meant to… ease into it better, and I really wish I hadn’t brought up the worms.”

“Yeah, but you did, and here we are.”

Tears were starting to stream down Susie’s face. Normally, she’d have fought this by grabbing on to the anger. She’d have threatened to rip Noelle’s face off and make her eat her own skin. But this was like a punch to the stomach, and she couldn’t get to that place yet. She still couldn’t breathe.

“Maybe, can we start this over? I want to try again, this wasn’t what I meant to say.”

The wheel had finally come down, and it was their turn at the bottom. Susie covered her face with her hands so no one would see her crying, and planned to leap out and run away as soon as they raised the bar on their laps, but the wheel didn’t stop. It just kept moving.

“Why didn’t they stop!?” Susie howled.

“I bought tickets for two whole turns,” Noelle said.

And Noelle was now also crying. Not as much as Susie, who had transitioned into full ugly cry complete with sniffles, and heavy breathing.

“What I wanted to say was -” Noelle stuttered, eyes glistening, “What I meant to say was, my mom can be a real… um, b-word. And I was hoping, maybe, if I did get to know you, that I could talk to you about that. If we got to know each other, I could go and talk to you about things, and I wouldn’t have to lay in bed just being mad. And if you… had something wrong. You could talk to me, and it’d be okay if something is wrong, because I can be there. Susie, I’m so sorry.”

The wheel stopped. Someone else was getting off, someone else was getting on. Susie pinched her eyes and tried to stop crying. “Oh my god, Noelle,” she bellowed. “That was so stupid! You’re so stupid!”

“I know, I know,” Noelle warbled. She set her head into her hands and was now going through silent, heaving sobs.

The wheel stopped. Someone got off, someone got on.

“You could have – you could have told me you wanted me to try this cool banana drink, and I never would have known!” And it came out as a snarl, because Susie couldn’t not be mad, but it wasn’t all there was, because it was hard to really hold Noelle under a fire when she was being so damp over there. It simply put the fires out, even if it left the coals simmering.

Now Noelle was laughing in between the sobs. She was sitting there, a wreck, having screwed it all up. Just completely destroyed everything. And Susie had a cold hamburger in her pocket. And her hair was wet because she’d dunked her head in a basin full of rubber ducks. And Susie began to laugh too. A thin, wheezing, crying laugh. It was so stupid, too stupid. Damnit, stupid, stupid Noelle. Stupid Susie. Stupid ferris wheel. It stopped again as someone got off and someone else got on.

“The fuck,” Susie said with finality, knifing her hand down for emphasis. “Are you sure the dream ferris wheel wasn’t better?”

Noelle shook her head. “It was the whole reason I had to do this!” She almost screamed it, like she was trying to get it out over her own feelings. “I can’t just -” she waved her hands around. “I swear I really meant the worms stuff to be a beautiful sentiment, and I meant it like everybody’s got problems, and if you have them, and I’m not saying you do, but if there’s anything -”

“Okay, shut up about the worms,” Susie was beginning to regain control of herself. “I get it. Okay.”

The wheel stopped. Someone got off, someone got on.

“Do you have any goddamn worms I should know about?” Susie asked sarcastically.

Noelle heaved a painful looking laugh from the chest. “No!”

“Okay, you gotta tell me, though, if you wanna be talking about each other’s worms.”

Noelle was trying to wipe her face down now, but was struggling. “I don’t want to talk about the worms anymore!”

“No, okay, because I have to confess to you now, I do have worms.”

Noelle froze. She could only look at Susie from the corner of her eye. She looked terrified for the other shoe to drop.

“But I don’t want to get rid of them,” Susie explained, waving her hand, “I’ve named them. I have three,” she said, holding up three fingers. “Albert, Douglas, and Stefan. Stefan is my favorite, and if we’re going to have any relationship at all, I need you to accept Stefan.”

Noelle stared. The wheel stopped. Someone got off, someone got on. The grin crept up Susie’s face, and Noelle began to laugh. She bent over double laughing, and went on laughing until it hurt.

“Oh cheese! Oh cheese!” Noelle wheezed. “Do – do they play fetch?”

“Only Stefan, that’s why he’s the favorite. The other two are kinda slow, but we try to be nice to them anyway.”

Noelle finally had herself recomposed, although anyone who had seen either girl up close could probably tell they’d both been crying. The wheel reached the bottom again, and this time, they got off. Someone else got on.

At the ride exit, Susie stopped. This was where, if they wanted, they could both walk away.

“I gotta say,” Susie said, not sure where they stood now, “That this is the first date I’ve ever had in my life, and so far, this is the worst date I’ve ever had in my life.”

“It’s my first date too,” Noelle said, weakly.

“I would not have guessed, because you aced it. Casanova could not have bagged a girl better.”

“Sorry,” Noelle looked at the ground. “But at least I tried, you know?”

“Yeah, well,” Susie tried to see Noelle from her side of things. Susie was still a little upset, in spite of it all, but she could see, even though Noelle had made things deeply, uncomfortably, horrendously personal, that, frankly, she’d been trying to make it personal. Just not in the way she delivered it. “I normally get pretty angry when someone digs on me like that.”

“It wasn’t a dig,” Noelle pleaded.

“I know. I know, because uh, I’ve gotten to realize you sometimes have to, like…” Susie didn’t want to sound like a self-help book. “Not be an asshole, I guess. Not get mad. Or you can be mad, but I dunno.” She offered out her arm. “Do you wanna go do the teacups or something?”

“Are you mad?” Noelle asked, taking Susie’s arm.

“Yes,” Susie hissed. “Damn, girl.”

Noelle put her head on Susie’s chest, a gesture of apology.

“I’m not that mad,” Susie lied. If it had been anyone else, anyone else at all, that person likely would have come down from the ferris wheel with a busted lip. “But you planned that out? In what world do you ask a girl if she has pinworms and it becomes a bonding experience?”

Noelle leaned back. She looked miserable, but she dipped into some inner well of confidence and spread her fingers out, as if to set a stage. “Okay, so. I had a whole speech planned out. I even practiced in the mirror.”

“You actually looked in the mirror and said, ‘girl you got pinworms’, and thought you were on to something?” Susie snickered. She could just imagine Noelle repeating the line over and over to get it just right.

“No! There was a whole thing! I was going to work into all this stuff about how I want to get to know you, and even though my mom has a lot of opinions, well, I have opinions too. And I don’t exist just to accept what my mom thinks. In hindsight I guess it was kinda centered around me…” Noelle paused. She flushed, now embarrassing herself. “And then I started my speech and forgot the whole middle part. I got the opening, the dream, and then I couldn’t remember, so I rushed to the finale.”

“Next time just buy me flowers, jeez!” Susie whined, stretching her head to the sky in protest.

“It was going to be beautiful, you would have loved it!” Noelle insisted, slapping against Susie.

“It’d have to be the first time in history two women fell in love after a conversation about butt worms. This is the smartest girl in school?” Susie shrugged. She felt entitled to give a little back at this point.

“Well you would know all about butt worms because you’re being an asshole!” Noelle was still red in the face. She was joking, but also becoming defensive, and waved her finger in Susie’s face.

More than anything, Susie was shocked to hear Noelle swear. She had to process it.

“Sorry!” Noelle said, hurriedly putting her finger away.

“Oh, it’s okay. I just don’t think I’ve ever heard you say the word ‘ass’ before,” Susie replied, nonplussed.

“Yeah, well…” Noelle waved her hands around desperately, indicating all this, “I fart sometimes, too. But if you tell anyone I’ll kill you.”

It was too much. Susie belted out a deep, wheezing laugh. “You’re just letting it all out there!” She declared. “Noelle, when you go on a date, you bring a gun to a knife fight!”

Noelle ran her fingers through her own hair, patting herself down and getting herself back into order. “I didn’t mean to be stupid, I was just really nervous about…” And she glared at Susie, looking her up and down.

“About me?” Susie asked, pointing to herself. “What about me?”

“You stood up to my mom,” Noelle announced in awe. “You must be some kind of iron woman. I’ve known only two or three people my entire life who could look her right in the eyes like that.”

“Oh. Well I mean -” And Susie stopped.

The truth was, she’d put absolutely no thought into what she was doing or saying at the time. She’d seen Noelle’s mom, Carol, and she’d just been an enemy. Something for Susie to run down. Of course you looked that in the eyes, but now that she really gave it thought, there still was a Carol. It was Noelle’s mom. Susie had given Carol a verbal black eye, then left the house and Noelle alone with that to deal with the fallout.

“And you didn’t think I could swear, but I never thought I’d make you cry,” Noelle carried on. “It didn’t even cross my mind when I was, you know, planning my speech.”

“I don’t usually,” Susie muttered.

Noelle was looking at her, and Susie looked back at Noelle, examining her up close, for what was perhaps the first, honest time. Her front teeth were too large and she needed braces. Her face was a little too long. Her eyes were big, and Susie previously thought they made her look sweet and innocent, but now realized they could be construed as looking a bit dopey. Her hair, however, was luxurious and completely beyond reproach. None of this was to say that Susie suddenly saw Noelle as unattractive. Just that Noelle wasn’t entirely perfect. And Noel did fart, allegedly, probably among a lot of other things they didn’t need to talk about.

“I think we’re cool,” Susie said quietly, and she began to mosey with Noelle attached to her arm.

“Are you sure?” Noelle asked.

“Yeah, we’re cool,” Susie said with more confidence now.

They walked, but without much urgency, and with nowhere special in mind. Susie must have been leering at the food stalls because Noelle pointed at a funnel cake stall. “Do you want to split one, as an apology? I could still eat a little.”

The stall was covered in fancy pictures of funnel cakes covered in elaborate desert toppings. Ice cream, sprinkles, candies, fudge – it looks like a party had exploded into a bunch of fried dough. Susie’s mouth watered from staring at the offerings. “Yeah,” she agreed.

Noelle approached the stall keeper, who appeared to be some kind of onion with a wide, overly stretched out smile. His head balanced precariously on a cartoonishly thin neck. “What can I get you?” He asked.

“I think just about your sorriest funnel cake, please,” Noelle replied kindly.

The man look troubled. His grand smile went to pieces. “My sorriest funnel cake?” He repeated.

“Ah, well…” Noelle stuttered, “It’s… for…”

“I understand,” the man said solemnly, beginning to sweat, “Oh dear me, oh heavens.” He went to the back of his cart. When he returned, he was carrying a plate with a simple funnel cake on it, plain and without adornments. His pupils were small, and the sweat was forming in great beads now.

“Oh, that is really sorry,” Susie observed.

“It gets worse,” the man informed her. It sounded like he was trying to not to scream. He pulled a tin from a shelf, then came up with an ice cream scoop of pure lard. He let it drop sloppily onto the cake. “My sorriest funnel cake.” he whispered, as though he’d committed a sin.

“Thank you,” Noelle said, even though she shouldn’t have.

She handed the man his money, and once they’d taken the plate away, the man slammed his stall shut and turned off the lights.

Noelle and Susie, finding nowhere else to sit, flopped down on the curb together. Noelle handed Susie the plate and said, “I don’t know what to do with this, actually.”

Susie looked it over. Yes, it was just lard. A whole lot of lard, slowly melting into a plate of fried dough. Glistening, calorie-filled pig fat. Shiny, like precious gems, and indeed rich with vitamin D. It wasn’t every day someone handed you a scoop of lard for nothing. Susie was used to eating almost anything just to keep the feeling of hunger away, and she’d eaten worse things.

“You don’t like all this?” Susie asked, pointing at the lard.

Noelle stuck out her tongue. “No, it looks like someone sneezed on it,” she complained squeamishly.

Susie grabbed the entire scoop with her hand and stuffed it in her maw. Noelle watched on in abject horror until Susie swallowed it.

“Susie, that was an entire ice cream scoop of lard” Noelle admonished, as if Susie didn’t know.

“Yup,” Susie admitted. “But now the lard’s gone. You want some?”

“Fahaha! They had a cinnamon and nutmeg cake. Did you see it?” Noelle asked.

Admittedly, it was all a blur in Susie’s head now. She didn’t remember what was on offer. She’d have taken any of it, so Susie nodded along anyway, trusting it had been there. Noelle picked some dry funnel cake from the plate and ate it.

“I should have ordered that!” she mused. “Man…”

Noelle sighed and sank into herself. Susie did her best to eat as little of the funnel cake as she could, to make sure she only took as much as Noelle did at any one time, but Noelle picked at it like a small bird.

“What are you thinking about?” Noelle asked.

Susie had spent a little too much time staring at Noelle’s fingers, and she’d lapsed into a silence while she focused on when and if she could scarf down the rest of the food in front of her. “Oh,” Susie mumbled, trying to think of something more appetizing than the truth. “Just that. Before, you said you wanted to talk to me about things that were bothering you.”

“Yeah,” Noelle replied, curling up to her knees. “Now that I’ve said it, I’m not sure what I want to talk about.”

Noelle had obviously lost all interest in the funnel cake. This meant she wasn’t touching it, and per Susie’s self-imposed challenge, Susie wasn’t allowed to eat any more either. She tried to will Noelle to pay attention to the plate again, but in no time at all things were lapsing into further awkward silence.

“Well, you said you didn’t have anyone else to talk to. That’s not really true, right?” Susie suggested, hoping the encouragement would give Noelle more of an appetite. But this appeared to make it worse. Noelle frowned and squinted away into the distance. “I just mean that everybody likes you. Everyone in school is your friend.” Susie plied.

Noelle shook her head. “Not really,” she said.

Susie set the plate down between them, trying to forget what was on it. “I mean there’s Berdly,” she said, “But there’s also Catti, and Jockington, and Monster Kid, and I dunno. Everybody. I see you talk to everybody.”

“Yeah, but not about, like…” she rolled her head to Susie. “Not about my mom. Because I don’t -” Noelle threw her hands out helplessly, seeking answers and an explanation from herself, but found none.

Susie realized they probably weren’t going to get back to the funnel cake any time soon. She tried to scoot it away behind them, where she could still keep an eye on it in case someone tried to steal it, but where she wouldn’t able to look directly at it.

“I can’t tell my friends in track about my mom. I joined track because of my mom,” Noelle found the words. “They’re my friends because of my mom. If she hadn’t made me join, I wouldn’t be spending time with them. Does that make sense?” And she asked Susie with all due sincerity, it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“So you’re saying,” Susie cupped her hands together and pointed at the ground with both fingers, “Your mom busts your ass, but she busts your ass to make friends and stuff, so you can’t tell those guys you’re tired of busting your ass being their friend.”

“Yeah,” Noelle agreed, scratching her head. “And it’s more than that,” and she repeated herself but more thoughtfully this time, “It’s more than that.”

“You don’t want to be their friends,” Susie surmised.

“I wanna be their friends,” Noelle insisted, smiling thinly. “Of course I do. I love them. So I want to say, I hate going, I hate going, but I don’t want them to think I actually hate them or hate being there. I just hate it all, is all.”

Susie was doing her best to keep the threads straight in her mind. “Uhh…” she ventured, helpless.

“Fahaha!” Noelle laughed out of nowhere. “Sorry, that was a really stupid way to phrase that!”

“No…” Susie lied, trailing away. “You’re speaking from the heart. It’s all feeling, right? The point is to get it sorted out.”

“Yeah.” Noelle was smiling again, but like a doll, looking up at Susie with her bright, begging eyes. “What about you? Is there anything going on with you that you want to talk about?”

Susie took a brief second to look over Noelle’s face. There was a sense of something there – a hunger, of sorts. Noelle wasn’t satisfied with just venting about her track meets. Susie looked away and thought about the question. There were a lot of things bothering Susie, always. More, now than ever, but there were only so many good options. First and foremost, she was frustrated about the funnel cake; she wanted to look behind her to check on it, but now was not the time, and it wasn’t the right subject either.

Her thoughts drifted to Catti, a girl from school that Susie knew to be one of Noelle’s closer friends. Just the other day, she’d been with Kris. Kris had started up a conversation with Catti in the odd, mostly silent way Kris always did, and then Catti had complained about Kris hanging out with Susie. Susie hadn’t been doing anything to deserve that, especially didn’t deserve it to her face, and frankly she didn’t know what Catti’s problem was with her. At this point, it was just as likely that Catti had a beef with Susie because Susie had a beef with Catti over the beef that Catti had with Susie. There was no telling where it started, but Susie had a feeling it had begun in Catti’s own head, and it kind of pissed Susie off.

But that wasn’t the right topic, because Susie could see Noelle eagerly hugging herself, watching Susie like a patient hawk. Little, delicate snaps at their friend groups wasn’t enough. Susie thought of something else.

“So something that’s been bother me is, just last night, I went to walk Kris home, right?” Susie began. Noelle nodded, frowning, likely because this story started with Kris, and Susie couldn’t help but note Noelle did seem especially attentive to Kris. Regardless, she pressed on. “We couldn’t get in earlier because the door was locked, and we thought maybe his mom was at church stuff, but that was canceled and there was a whole thing.” Susie sighed and twirled her hand about her wrist. It was a hell of a thing. There had been magic, disaster, and a lot more than Susie could have told Noelle about.

“Long story short, it rained, we stayed out of the rain, Kris couldn’t get a hold of their mom, and we were worried. I thought, you know, Miss Toriel is the kindergarten teacher. She’s the lady that picks you up and kisses your scrapes. If she’s not there for Kris, for her own kid, well then obviously something happened. It gets to be well past midnight, and we try to go back to Kris’s house. This time the door is unlocked, and it turns out, all along, she’d been drinking with that guy who owns the grocery store, Sans.”

“Oh,” Noelle offered, realization dawning.

“Yeah, and she was obliterated. Like rolling on the floor drunk. And there’s worse kinds of drunk, don’t get me wrong, she seemed a happy sort of drunk, but still, she was the dead useless, can’t help anybody, no good sort of drunk.”

Susie had to pause. There was a lump forming in her throat and she had to fight it back.

“So that’s been bothering me. I don’t know that Sans guy. I want to think he encouraged her to get like that and took advantage of her somehow. It wasn’t her.”

Noelle had pressed her lips tight. She looked like she was about the tell Susie that Santa had died and there would be no more Christmas. Instead she asked, as innocently as she could, “Why do you want to believe that?”

“Because otherwise why do people do that!?” Susie demanded, feeling anger burning upward. “There must – there can’t -!” Susie grunted and sighed, pulling on her own hair to try to regain control of herself.

Noelle chewed her nails nervously. Susie tried to distract herself from her feelings, but it was hard. “Until just last night, I had all the respect in the world for Miss Toriel. It’s Kris’s mom, so I want to think maybe I still got that right.”

“Well,” Noelle was anxiously smoothing out her own hair. “I think she is a very respectable lady, but when I was little she and Mister Asgore used to come over for Christmas parties.”

Susie groaned as she felt the knife go through her heart. She winced and turned away. “No!” She protested, “But that means your mom and dad, too!”

“Just sometimes,” said Noelle, grinning with dread, “Christmas is a special occasion, and our mansion is huge so the Dreemurr’s would just spend the night. But yeah, I’ll be honest, by a certain time us kids were kind of on our own.” Noelle looked down at the street and a small, gremlin-like giggle escaped her throat. “I don’t think we were all that bothered by it though because…” her face was the picture of mischief, “My sister and Kris’s brother did wind up dating, after all.”

Susie snorted. Noelle snorted too, but hers came out all stopped up and awkward until it garbled into a knowing chuckle.

“Okay, so that left you and Kris to go and do what?” Susie asked suspiciously.

“We found stuff to do,” Noelle replied, betraying nothing.

Susie let out a large sigh and leaned back on her palms, “Well there dies another one of my heroes, I guess.”

“Oh, she doesn’t get drunk that often,” Noelle scolded. “For one, it’s too expensive. Have you seen the size of that woman? My dad used to complain that the Dreemurrs had to drink like whales just to get tipsy, and he had to stock the whole fridge with rum to last a single evening. Miss Toriel can’t afford to be an alcoholic.”

Susie turned this logic over. Too poor to be an alcoholic? It seemed a naive leap on Noelle’s part, because in Susie’s estimation, the fact it costed more only meant a person wasted that much more money doing it. It didn’t stop the problem at all, so much as made it worse. In fact, though Susie was the furthest thing from a good student, she had remembered learning that when they tried to make alcohol illegal, people shot each other and broke the law to get it anyway. When people wanted to drink, they drank.

Noelle seemed to take Susie’s quiet reflection as a show of disbelief. “As far as I know, she really only drank on special occasions,” Noelle said, trying to drive the point, but she hesitated. “Or, I guess my dad has a few college stories he likes to tell, but honestly I don’t think my dad’s favorite part of those stories is the drinking.” Noelle tittered nervously. “That’s um, never the part he emphasizes,” She clarified, avoiding eye contact. “But truth is, I can’t imagine Miss Toriel drinks that much because I can’t imagine there being that many special occasions for it anymore. She and Mister Asgore are separated, they never come to our house together anymore, and I guess maybe she let herself go with Mister Sans because she hasn’t in such a long time.” Noelle rested her chin on her knees again. “Spending time with someone new is a kind of special occasion. And I think it has to be that she gets lonely.” Noelle let this sink. “It gets lonely,” she repeated with certainty.

Noelle glanced back at Susie, and Susie wasn’t sure what to say. She accepted that people had reasons to drink that weren’t necessarily all bad, but at the same time, she knew Toriel really had gone too far. The whole scene had made her feel just a little ill, and while she wasn’t going to press the attack to insist it made Toriel a bad person, Susie wasn’t prepared to accept any kind of excuse for it. Susie searched herself for anything to say that wasn’t some kind of argument, but was finding nothing. The thought of deflecting blame to Sans again, to make this about him, was gradually creeping up her brain stem, but Noelle cut it off before it got there.

“It’s good for her, maybe,” Noelle suggested. “She’s already gone through the divorce. She’s had time, she’s been able to heal, and now something is changing for her. But if you look at my family.” Noelle was weighing the two subjects on her hands. She let the subject of her family drop away to the street. “My family. My dad is sick, and has been for a long time. He isn’t getting better, but nobody wants him to get any worse. He always tells me he’s getting better, and I always act like I believe it, but I know he isn’t. And my mom avoids it, or says the same things my dad always says, but I know she doesn’t believe it either. She works, instead of thinking about it.”

Noelle went mute. Susie waited to see if Noelle would take these thoughts any further, but now she seemed to be wrapped up in herself.

“And this is the kind of stuff you can’t talk to your track friends about,” Susie said.

Noelle looked from the corner of her eye and smiled. “This and other things,” she said whimsically. “I got distracted from what I was saying. My point is, I don’t think you should look down on Miss Toriel. Things have really got to change, Susie.” And she said this last bit with just a glint of metal in her voice. Like a vow.

The prior night, Kris and Susie had been in the church. In the magical worlds where the inanimate came to life, they learned that the same rule proved true of the dead. A man’s ashes, for example, could become the man again, if only temporarily, and such a man had spent that gave him talking to Susie. He’d called her “the white pen of hope”, and had told her to make her own changes to the world. Erase the things that didn’t work and replace them with something better. It was all, perhaps, the sentimentality of the dead, who no longer had the ability to do those things on their own, but Susie had really, deeply wanted to be that pen. The man had the chance to live again to tell Susie that, and only a little more, and if nothing else Susie wanted to make the singular opportunity matter. More than anything.

“You kind of want me to be that change?” Susie asked. She wasn’t sure exactly what kind of response to expect.

“You don’t have to be,” replied Noelle. “But maybe you could be.” Noelle picked her head up and laughed. “Fahaha! You’re definitely different, anyway! You ate a whole ball of lard!”

“Okay,” Susie said, grinning. “You can’t knock it until you try it. Have you ever eaten a whole ball of lard before?”

“No,” Noelle said pointedly. “There are some things I don’t have to do to know I don’t want to do.”

“How do you know you don’t want to if you never try!” Susie insisted.

“I know I couldn’t keep it down! It must be like eating an oyster, but -!” Noelle stuck out her tongue and faked a gag.

Susie, perhaps a little too happy the subject had returned to food, turned around and grabbed the funnel cake. She ripped in half, and held Noelle’s end out to her. No more pecking around at the edges. This way they both knew where they stood and what they were getting.

“Anyway, here,” Susie said.

Noelle took it, but ripped it further into quarters, handing the other quarter back to Susie.

“That’s alright, you can have more of it,” Noelle said. “It’s fine once in a while, but too much of this stuff can’t be good for you, and I can’t see me tolerating it for long without a little sugar!”

Susie took the quarter piece and snapped it down. Well, at least they still both knew where they stood on the funnel cake, anyway. For Susie’s part, she’d have suffered any amount of it.

“But okay! That’s enough,” Noelle said. “Let’s go do a ride, or something. I feel better. Do you?”

“Yeah,” Susie agreed. She didn’t feel good, exactly, but it wasn’t bad, either.

Except for the knot in her stomach. It was probably the scoop of lard she’d swallowed now sitting vengefully in her guts. That had, in hindsight, probably been a terrible idea, but Susie finished off the rest of the funnel cake anyway. She still had a food craving, but felt disgustingly, uncomfortably full enough to set aside the hamburger in her pocket for a little longer. She wondered if she was eating so much she might make herself throw up – she didn’t usually get the opportunity to do something like that.

It wasn’t a far walk to the teacups, but by the time Susie could see them spinning around, she was sure it wasn’t a good idea for her to get on them. It was barely a good idea to not lie down here in the street. It had been worth it to come this way, however, because Noelle and Susie were treated to the sight of Berdly, Kris, and the inflatable hammer spinning wildly around in circles at a blur that really shouldn’t have been possible. It was as if some otherworldly force had reached down and spun the thing as hard as they could. Neither Berdly nor Kris looked actually happy about it, but they were both gripping the central wheel, gritting their teeth and pulling with all their might. The inflatable hammer flapped about helplessly and looked like it was having the least amount of fun of any of them.

“Wow, look at Kris go,” Noelle breathed. “I didn’t know those things could go that fast.”

“Yeah, I’ve read that if you take too many g-forces it does brain damage,” Susie observed warily. “That can’t be good for them. They don’t need that. Neither of them do.”

“No,” agreed Noelle.

The ride came to a stop, causing the internal breaks on the teacup to grip the thing and wind down its momentum. Berdly let go and laid back in his seat with relief, while Kris continued to try to spin the thing with a manic pressure, as though they hadn’t felt the resistance of the breaks kick in. When the teacup stopped completely, at last Kris gave up. The two of them exited the ride to find Susie and Noelle waiting for them.

“Wow, you guys were going so fast you looked like you were gonna die,” Susie told them, dryly.

“I told Kris that we couldn’t make the teacup any faster!” Berdly shouted, pointing accusingly at Kris. “And they… and they… they proved me wrong!”

Kris nodded and held up two fingers.

“Twice!” Berdly angrily corrected himself, “But I’m telling you, we can’t make it any faster!” Berdly sounded sure of this, but also like he was begging not to have it proven.

Kris waved Berdly off, then grabbed Susie’s hand. Kris was holding the inflatable hammer in the other arm, so Kris motioned towards the tea cups with their head.

“Oh, you think she can spin them faster,” Berdly whined.

“I bet I could, dude,” Susie proclaimed with pride. “I bet me and Kris could twist that thing right off the platform.”

Kris nodded eagerly and tugged Susie towards the ride entrance.

“But, uh, sorry dude,” Susie broke the news, “I ate an entire ice cream scoop of lard, and I’m about to throw up.”

Kris didn’t protest. They dropped Susie’s hand by letting Kris’s own arm go limp. They weren’t being overly showy about it, but it gave her the impression Kris was already prepared for her to excuse her way out of it. Probably because she’d already let Kris down once today, and Kris was ready for more blows to come.

“Fahaha! I told you it was a bad idea!” Noelle teased.

“Clearly,” said Berdly indignantly, “It seems everyone ignores the higher intellects around here.”

“I’d have split it with you if you were there, dude,” Susie said, feeling guilty. “I had too much funnel cake, too. I could’a really used you.”

Susie began to seriously contemplate going on the teacup ride anyway. They’d wrench the thing right into a hospital visit, and then Susie would puke all her guts out afterward. It would probably be fun for a very short amount of time, and then in every way terrible for a much longer time. On the other hand, she wouldn’t feel like she’d eaten a scoop of lard if she threw it all up, so maybe it was better. If Kris made one more move to indicate they wanted the teacups right this instant, Susie would have gone for it, but they didn’t.

Instead, Kris pointed at Susie and themselves, then swapped fingers, implying they’d like to switch places.

“Oh, you want to trade, and I take Berdly for a while?” Susie asked.

Kris nodded.

“Well…” Susie looked back at Noelle, who was silently observing the whole exchange. She was wearing a polite smile. “You think I can maybe have a little more time with her?”

Susie and Noelle had just been through a near miss. They’d talked it out, and gotten more on each others’ levels, but it didn’t feel finished. Susie knew, deep down, that she and Noelle still needed to do something fun. Something that said, hey, we like each other, and not just as a sorry, but Kris couldn’t have known this. Their face folded into a frown. Traitor, it said.

“Okay, okay, but it’s complicated,” Susie tried to explain.

“That’s alright,” Noelle said, cutting in. “It’s been nice talking to you, Susie, but if you and Kris made a deal, you better honor it. Last thing you want is Kris on your bad side! Fahaha!”

It was a bit funny to imagine that not hanging out with Kris was something Noelle viewed as a way to get on the bad end of Kris. About a week ago, Susie had still been bullying Kris, threatening to eat their face, or vowing to throw them in the garbage. Though it oddly often involved Kris sniggering at her – Susie suspected it was because Kris realized how stupid she was being, and she hadn’t at the time. She could have beaten the daylights out of Kris and not gotten much of a reaction from Noelle or Kris, but only now she had become capable of being the bad guy. It was so surreal.

Not that beating up Kris would have made her good, either. Susie had no idea who she was hurting, then. She didn’t want to be the bad guy now.

“You got me. I said you could tag out any time, so tag me,” Susie said, holding out her hand.

Kris reached out and put the inflatable hammer into Susie’s palm. It was hers now, the Inflatable Hammer of Responsibility. Kris walked on.

“I guess we’re leaving now! Fahaha! Bye, Susie!” Noelle announced, and then she skipped off after Kris.

“Wait, are the two of you trading?” Berdly asked, “Oh, thank the Angel! I don’t think I could handle another teacup ride!”

Kris and Noelle vanished into the crowds just as Kris had done with Berdly before, but in under perhaps less than a minute Susie heard Noelle cackling. It was amazing how fast Kris could do it, they seemed to know exactly Noelle’s sense of humor, though Susie had to admit as well that if Kris were alive when silent films were popular they’d have become a world-renown film comedian. Still, it was something to make a girl cry like Susie had, and a far, far different thing to make her laugh so easily like that. Susie could feel an icy little crystal of resentment over it, especially knowing Kris had developed this sense over many unsupervised holidays, and she tried to tell herself that she felt it for herself, for not being clever enough to do it too. It wasn’t fair to point that feeling at anyone else, it had entirely too many fangs.

Susie realized, now much beyond her power to do anything about it, that she wanted to tell Noelle they’d catch up again, and that she wanted to spend more time together. All she could now was hope Noelle understood that without Susie saying it.

“Well, I suppose it’s now you and me, Susan,” Berdly said.

“Susie,” Susie belted.

“So I was wondering if I might indulge you in a bit my personal genius?” Berdly asked, ignoring that Susie had yet to make eye contact with him.

“What? I don’t want that! I don’t know where it’s been!” Susie snapped, knowing after she’d said it she was probably leaving herself open to a pretty obvious rebuttal.

And though Berdly could have taken a jab about Susie’s own cleanliness and states of being, he didn’t. Instead he said, “I thought it seemed you were excited about my creativity, and well,” he padded his wings together, “I rather hoped that I might… justify you being charmed with me? I know I’ve spoken with some manner of bravado before, but I am convinced you’ll find this tale eminently intriguing!”

Susie knew exactly what the story entailed, because she’d been there. She hadn’t known what Berdly had been up to the entire time, because they’d gotten separated while Berdly had been working for their enemies for a while, but she did know plently.

“Alright, I want to hear this story,” Susie said, turning completely to him, “But first of all, I want to warn you. I don’t like stories with roller coasters in them.”

The look on Berdly’s face was priceless. His eyebrows rose in shock as he began performing multiple calculations. “Ah! Not to worry, I – I -”

“Second thing, queens freak me out.” Susie said, holding up two fingers, “Royalty in general, actually. It’s because I have a problem with classism. I think because of school. I don’t like being in class so I don’t like needing to be class aware. I especially don’t like upper classes. It reminds me of calculus.”

Berdly held up his feathered hands and stared between them, as if watching all his potential slipping between his fingers. “You – okay. What if the queen were a bad guy? And -”

“Yeah, obviously calculus sucks and is bad, dude. I don’t want to hear about it,” Susie replied, looming over Berdly menacingly.

“Yes, but suppose that – okay, well there is no – luckily there is no, um, queen. Or any member of royalty, or high society,” Berdly was desperately trying to improvise a new narrative on fly inside his own head.

“Going back on that roller coaster thing, I hate them because there’s too much math. All the gravity and stuff freaks me out,” Susie was now enjoying herself, and realized she had a chance to connect the second lie to the first one.

“You must find life somewhat frustrating, in that case,” Berdly whined peevishly.

“Yeah, I hate real life, that’s why I’m attracted to story tellers, because they don’t do all that math junk. Okay, now third thing,” Susie held up a third finger, “I don’t like computers and I don’t like mysteries.”

“Susie that’s three things!”

“It isn’t,” Susie was doing her best not to laugh. She felt like she really had him, here, and it was hard not to get swept up in the moment. “Computers. Solve. Mysteries.”

“So you don’t -” Berdly put his fingers to his temples, “You don’t – is it that you think the computer makes the mystery too easy!?”

“No, I just hate the idea of them! Like think, you’re wondering how long it’s safe to eat a hamburger that’s been in your pocket, then you get on a computer and it spoils the hamburger.”

“You mean the answer? It spoils the answer?”

“It spoils the hamburger, dude! The hamburger was fine in your pocket, everything’s great, until you check the computer, and now the hamburger is spoiled because the computer says it’s been in your pocket too long!”

Berdly pressed his fingers to his beak and inhaled deeply. “Susie,” he began, “I must press upon you, I would like more than anything to write a tale that you would think is divinely inspired. So I’d just like to establish where we are, presently. You want a story with no math, and thereby nothing like a roller coaster or -”

“Just try not to bring up gravity, actually.”

“Or any gravity-assisted mode of locomotion. It would also be your preference if the setting were low-tech enough to preclude computers.”

Susie nodded. “Yeah. I got a lot of do’s and don’ts, but I love a good story and a creative person. Once you get started writing, just run it by me and I can let you know if anything else is bugging me.”

Berdly drummed his fingers along his beak, his eyes darting back and forth as he attempted to calculate his next move. Susie waited, smugly assured in her victory. Until, strangely, Berdly’s face began to light like the rising sun.

“So you’re saying, you’d help me through the difficult process of writing my book?” He asked, joy cracking through.

“Uh, yeah,” Susie agreed. This still seemed like a good idea. It’d prevent Berdly from talking too much about his dream world with Noelle or anyone else.

“So you’d be willing to be my muse!” he exclaimed, delight ascending.

Oh no. Susie saw what she’d done now. “Uh, muse is a strong word,” she tried to temper.

“But this is what a muse is! A true muse! It’s not just a woman whose beauty inspires you to make art, but rather, a woman who equally partakes of the process! A partner who takes you seriously, who helps forge your inspirations into reality! You’d really read my writing? And help me make a masterpiece?”

Susie sought a way out, but Berdly’s face was now so alight, if she told him she wasn’t interested now it’d be like kicking a puppy. If she went along with it, what was the worst that could happen? She’d have to read a story? No, she’d have to critique a story, which wouldn’t be something she’d feel good about trying even if she’d wanted to. Maybe that was the exit.

“Oh, man, I dunno actually,” Susie said, sucking air through her teeth. “I don’t know if I’m seriously good at writing anything down. Have you ever read my book reports? I know you haven’t because I haven’t actually done any.”

“Susie, it doesn’t matter,” Berdly said, grasping her by the hand. “All I need to know is how my writing makes you feel. That’s all that’s important to me.”

Susie was speechless. She didn’t expect this from Berdly. He put that much stock in her opinion that he’d actually write a whole book just based on how it made her feel to read it?

“After all, there’s no reason to be ashamed. Even if you are something of a simpleton, so is most of the world compared to myself, and I need a layman’s eyes to know how a layman would perceive my writing.”

That little nerd. Oh, he almost had her. Almost! For all of one second!

“Okay. Fourth thing,” Susie said, leaning forward, her humor gone. “I don’t want to read it or even hear about it until it’s completely written. That’s the problem with so many creative types, they start going around asking for praise just because they had an idea. No.” And she thumped him on the chest. “You finish it. You finish that book or you’re nothing. Got it? And if I hear you talked to anybody else about your ideas before the whole thing is written, I’ll kick your ass and eat your manuscript.”

A silence spread out between them.

“You’re a compelling muse,” Berdly conceded.

That was one problem solved, Susie hoped. She looked around, seeing the festival was now into full swing and the crowds had really turned out, at least as much as they could in Hometown. Susie wasn’t with Kris, she wasn’t with Noelle, and she didn’t know what she wanted to do. Truth be told, if she couldn’t have gone with her friends, she wouldn’t have even gone outside today. Berdly might be marginally better than nothing, though he put that assumption to the test with a liberal amount of gusto, but Susie really would have preferred another option. Then, come to think, she did have one other option.

“Hey, let’s go get ice cream,” Susie commanded.

“If you like, my dearest muse,” Berdly replied. “But be warned, my cash reserves are already running low! Kris, you see, didn’t bring their own money, and because it was a date, I gallantly offered to buy tickets to all the rides and games with my personal stockpile!”

Susie nearly had a chance to thank Berdly for this, but he thanked himself too quickly.

“I almost am too good to be true!” He sighed.

The pavement was too good to have Berdly’s face smeared across it. Luckily, Susie didn’t need Berdly’s money. She felt in her pocket for the cash Sans had given her and was relieved it was still there. It might have been just her luck to lose it. She took Berdly with her on a fact-finding mission to each ice cream stall at the festival, and they were spoiled for choice between that and funnel cake. Once satisfied that Susie knew the options at each spot, she settled on a stall selling the biggest, most ambitious ice cream sundae anyone had the guts to offer. She ordered one, then asked for everything on it: peanuts, sprinkles, cherries, hazelnut butter, almonds, bananas, paper umbrellas, dragon fruit, pineapples, everything. The stall keeper handed the concoction off to Susie, hands trembling.

When Berdly saw what Susie was holding, he balked. “Susan,” he whispered, “There should be limits.”

“Why do you keep calling me Susan?” Susie complained. “I never call you by… whatever Berdly is short for.”

“Berdirigard,” Berdly informed her.

“What kind of name is that?”

“I believe you’ve elucidated why everyone calls me Berdly,” Berdly said, as if a magician revealing a fine trick.

Susie rolled her eyes. She tucked the inflatable hammer underneath her arm and held the ice cream container as close to her body as she could without touching it to herself.

“Alright, we need to get to the school,” she ordered Berdly. “So try to walk a little ahead of me, and get me some space.”

“The school? Why the school?” Berdly asked.

“Because it’s…” Susie hadn’t thought of a lie for this in advance, “It’s air conditioned!” She said quickly. “If there’s any place in town I can finish this whole thing without it melting, it’s the school!”

“Of course!” Berdly agreed, surprisingly easily. “Why didn’t I think of it? We’ll have to make it to the school at once!”

To his credit, Berdly took his job seriously, almost embarrassingly. He walked ahead of Susie, thrusting his arms out while shouting warnings about the festival’s most indulgent sundae making its way across the grounds. People spun and whispered in awe as they saw the thing in Susie’s hands, and soon the crowds were parting naturally of their own accord. She was worried someone might try to follow her to see what she was going to do with it, but it was either slightly too cursed of a thing or entirely too sacred. The people let them pass undisturbed.

There weren’t any stalls or rides set up on school property, so the area was fortunately pretty empty.

“Okay, Berdly, I need you to stay out here and stand guard,” Susie ordered as she approached the front doors.

“You’re going in alone?” Berdly asked, alarmed.

“Uh, well…” Susie didn’t fully understand what Berdly saw in this.

Berdly, who could clearly see Susie didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation explained, “You should want someone to bear witness to you eating that sundae, so another person can say you’ve done it.”

“Oh, okay,” Susie replied, “You may think that, but I feel like it’s an experience better savored alone, you know?”

“I simply must put my feet down, Susan!”

“Susie.”

“This isn’t a moment to be taken lightly. Not a soul would believe that you’ve eaten an ice cream that powerful if no one were there to vouch for the event.”

“Okay, look,” Susie said, frowning. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna go in the girl’s bathroom and eat as much as I can, okay? And that’s probably going to make me throw up, noisily. Then I’m going to finish this thing, just as noisily. I don’t need anybody to hear that, so I need you to stand guard out here and make sure nobody comes in to hear it.”

This seemed a good argument. Berdly crept up on his response. “Yes, I can see… how in fact a delicate member of the fairer sex might be embarrassed of her natural body functions.” And with confidence, “I’ll remain here and guard your sense of dignity, Susie! Not to worry!”

At that, Berdly puffed out his chest and stood vigilant before the door. Susie pushed inside, leaving Berdly behind. One day Berdly would be able to meet someone who could look past everything that was wrong with him and appreciate the kernel of goodness that was inside. It wouldn’t be today, since he was hanging around with Susie and she couldn’t get past the obnoxious exterior, but maybe some day.

Susie went straight for the utility closet. She made sure the inflatable hammer was secure under her arm and reset her grip on the ice cream container. She stepped into the closet, and then came the drop. It was always long – the darkness rushed past her into blind space, then rapidly reformed into shapes until the town was visible below her. She slowed rapidly, ending the descent by planting her feet so hard into the ground that she had to squat her legs to absorb some of the momentum, but she made it, and the ice cream was still intact.

The inflatable hammer squirmed out from underneath her arm pit, nearly knocking her prize straight to the floor.

“Hey, watch it!” Susie shouted, holding the ice cream over her head.

The hammer, now a living creature with arms and legs and two, ridiculously huge eyes threw itself to the floor, kowtowing before Susie. “Please, please, please!” It begged. “Don’t make me go back out there! I can’t do the teacups anymore! I can’t do anything! I wasn’t built for this much excitement! They’re going to take my head off! I can’t do it!”

“Whatever dude, you’re free now. Go nuts,” Susie said dismissively, swatting towards the town.

“Thank you! Thank you!”

The hammer stumbled to its feet, flopping about under the motion of its own body as it did. It fell over once, but recovered in less than a beat and was gone. Susie didn’t know what an inflatable hammer got up to when it was unsupervised, or where it would try to fit in. It had to stay away from anything sharp, at least.

Susie carried the ice cream carefully towards the castle at the far end of town. She didn’t get very far before she spotted Ralsei jogging towards her, his white ears flapping. “Susie!” he cried in surprise.

“Hey, dude,” Susie said, grinning. She wasn’t sure how to unveil the ice cream to him, so she went on holding it, waiting for the right moment. It was starting to make her hands cold.

“Susie, why aren’t you at the festival? Where’s Kris? Did the two of you get into a fight?” Ralsei asked, all worries.

“Nah, nah, it’s fine. Kris is with, uh… Noelle,” Susie replied, not wanting to elaborate on that if she could avoid it.

“Noelle? But I thought the two of you agreed to go together,” Ralsei seemed hurt on Kris’s behalf.

“We did, but I was thinking about you,” Susie said, flipping the subject. “You know how I said I wished you could come too? And you said to order an extra ice cream, so I could describe it for you?”

“Yes…” Ralsei said hesitantly. “I remember something to that effect. And I appreciate you miss me, but I didn’t mean that you should give up on the festival just to tell me about it.”

“Well I’m not just telling you about it!” Susie said, holding out the sundae. “I realized, I can bring you an ice cream! And I got this for you!”

Ralsei looked over the confection with awe. He looked like he wanted to cry, but was stopping himself. “Oh, Susie,” he hummed wistfully, “I… I can’t really eat this.”

“No, it’s yours, dude,” Susie said, offering it to him.

“No, I mean, I can’t,” Ralsei said, putting his hands up kindly in refusal. “I’m not able to. You should have it.”

“But I bought it for you!” Susie insisted. This was Ralsei’s greatest problem – everything was always about deferments and limitations, and it was hard to tell where the actual, hard limits were. “You mean it’s impossible to put it in your mouth and taste it? Or you can’t digest it? What?”

“Well I can’t…” Ralsei was trying to please her again. It could be frustrating to Susie at the best of times. “I suppose I can taste it. But…”

“Well then try it, okay?” Susie said, dropping it into his palms. She handed him a plastic spoon.

Ralsei obediently collected the ice cream into the spoon, gathering up the kaleidoscope of ingredients before depositing one bite into his mouth.

“It’s…” Ralsei hesitated, “Sweet.” He said flatly.

“Yeah, that’d be the ice cream. And the chocolate sauce. And the hazelnut butter, probably. There’s some strawberry sauce on there too.”

“Wow,” Ralsei replied, trying not betray his almost palpable disappointment. “Also tart?”

“Pineapples and black cherries.”

“I think there’s some bitterness here, too,” he went on, amazed at the number of conflicting sensations.

“Almonds, I guess? I think there might also be some coffee flavoring.”

“And it’s cold,” Ralsei no longer seemed to know what to do with this.

“That’s the ice cream again.”

“Wow, Susie, this is um. A truly amazing… sensation.”

“Yeah, I might have gone a little overboard,” Susie said, resigning to the revelation that she could have started with something a tad more introductory. “I just really wanted you to get the experience, so I grabbed you the whole experience.”

“Oh, thank you,” Ralsei said, small tears forming in the corner of his eyes. “I can’t finish this, but thank you.” He handed the ice cream back to Susie and wiped the tears away. “Well, now that’s done, I couldn’t be happy if I kept you away from Kris any longer. Please go and enjoy the rest of the festival for me, so you can tell me all about it when you’re done!”

“Well what am I supposed to do with all this?” Susie protested, indicating the ice cream.

“You could share it with Kris,” Ralsei suggested. “I’m sure they’d love it!”

“Ugh, okay,” Susie said, disappointed Ralsei couldn’t get more out of it, “It’s yours, so I’ll tell Kris it’s a gift from you.”

“Oh, thank you, Susie, that means a lot,” Ralsei said feebly.

Susie said her goodbye and left through the exit of the utility closet, doing her best not to lose the ice cream as the magic of the world tossed her out. Feeling proud for thinking of this for Ralsei, but defeated that it hadn’t work, she trudged past the front door of the school and was only mildly surprised to see Berdly was still there with his chest puffed. He hadn’t dropped his guard, but was shocked to see Susie return.

“What happened?” he asked, pointing at the ice cream. “It looks like you barely touched it!”

“I couldn’t do it, it just wasn’t in me,” Susie replied glumly, shrugging. It was easy to use her real disappointment about Ralsei as a mask to fake her disappointment about the ice cream.

“That’s alright, Susie,” Berdly said, putting his hand on Susie’s shoulder. “We all get the better of ourselves sometimes. It was just too many flavors. No one can blame you.”

“Yeah.” Susie agreed, lifting Berdly’s hand away. “Let’s get some help. We can split this thing with Noelle and Kris.”

Susie led the two of them back into the crowds of the festival, searching high and low for signs of either Kris or Noelle. She kept an ear out for Noelle’s laughter, and felt a small blackness churning inside herself to know it was probably the most likely way to find the two of them together. Instead, she was surprised when she nearly bumped into Noelle by herself while turning a corner.

“Oh!” Noelle yelped as Susie narrowly avoided dumping an entire container of sundae onto Noelle’s chest.

Susie was glad Noelle snuck up on her. She had to admit to herself, it was because it meant that even Kris had limits and couldn’t keep Noelle laughing non-stop around the clock. However, Kris also wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

“I was just looking for you guys,” Noelle said.

“Where’s Kris?” Susie asked, looking around anxiously. “If they leap out of a bush, I’m going to dump this entire sundae down their shirt!”

“Fahaha. They ditched me,” Noelle replied, trying to sound more joking than offended, but not covering it well.

“Ditched you? When? Where?”

“About a minute ago,” Noelle said, pointing back the way she’d come. “We went by their dad’s flower shop, and when I turned around, Kris was gone. I thought maybe they’d jump out at me too, but the timing kind of came and left.”

“Typical Kris,” Berdly complained, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah…” Noelle said. And it came out a little too sadly, like she was nursing some old wound. The weight on it stirred feelings in Susie that were hard to put a finger on, but none of them were good.

“Well maybe Kris just went into the shop to talk to their dad,” Susie said bravely, trying to fend off negativity itself, in general.

“Maybe,” Noelle agreed uncertainly. “I didn’t check. I know how Mister Asgore can get excited about visitors and I didn’t want to wander in looking for a Kris who wasn’t there.”

“Well forget that, we’ll all go in. Kris’s dad will understand. Let’s go,” Susie urged them.

“You’re taking your mission with this sundae in admirable seriousness, Susie,” Berdly observed.

“Huh?” then Susie remembered what she was carrying. “Oh, yeah. Hey Noelle, when we find Kris, we’re all going to try to eat this thing.”

Noelle eyed it suspiciously. “What is all that?” she asked.

“It’s everything all at once.” Susie explained. “You up for it?”

“Maybe not all at once! Fahaha!”

Susie shrugged and led the group to Asgore’s flower shop. She halted so fast the others had to circle back a step or two.

“Gosh. He must have closed up. The windows look dark,” Noelle said, biting at her finger.

They did look dark. As black as velvet pitch, in fact. Too dark to be possible with the sun still sitting low in the sky. Susie knew to dead certainty exactly what this was. On the other side of the door would be a magical world full of esoteric whimsy. “Dark Worlds,” Ralsei called them. It wasn’t dangerous to be in one, exactly. You never knew what might be in one, but most creatures you’d run into weren’t out to hurt anyone, barring a few notable and very concerning exceptions. It was more the person who made them that worried Susie, and what they might have had in mind for Asgore, if he was in there.

Susie handed the sundae off to Berdly. “Hold this,” she instructed.

“You’re trusting me with this?” Berdly said in a panic.

“Yes,” Susie snapped, annoyed. “You, uh, are the one who seems most able to understand what a big deal it is. Now wait here, I’m going to check to see if Kris is hiding in the bushes.”

“Susie, don’t do that,” Noelle said, holding out a hand.

“Why not?” Susie asked, truly baffled. Truthfully, she wasn’t even checking for Kris, but rather the whole perimeter of the building for its own security.

“Because as soon as we’re all watching you look for Kris over there, Kris is going to leap out from somewhere behind us over here,” Noelle said, with utter confidence.

“I swear, I’m not working with Kris on this,” Susie promised. “Berdly, can you keep an eye behind Noelle?”

“Of course!” Berdly announced.

He spun around, peering dubiously into the shadows and other places Kris could be hiding, though Susie was sure Kris wouldn’t be there. Either Kris had gone off to find Susie to tell her about the Dark World in the shop, or Kris was already inside handling the problem independently. With all likelihood, this had been why Noelle had been unceremoniously ditched. It was just poor luck that Noelle found Susie before Kris had. Noelle, meanwhile, was now chewing on her fingers even more nervously than before.

“What’s the matter now?” Susie asked her.

“Well now that Berdly is watching my back, we have no idea where Kris could leap out from!” She said fitfully.

There was a Dark World in the shop, which meant someone nefarious was likely at work, and Susie was now using all her mental faculties gird against the possibility of Kris showing up. Kris showing up was what Susie wanted. This was absurd.

“Kris isn’t going to drop out of the sky!” Susie began. “They -!”

Susie wheeled about, and primed as she was for a large, dark figure to attack at any moment, she wasn’t prepared at all to collide hard into Kris as they came around the back corner of the shop.

“Gah!” Susie yelled. “Kris! You maniac, you startled me!”

“I told you!” Noelle shouted triumphantly. “Got us with the old double fake-out! Fahaha! I should have known!”

Susie frowned, but now wasn’t the time to fool around. She wrapped an arm around Kris and pulled the two of them close together, so half their torsos fit together like a comfortable jigsaw. She brushed aside Kris’s hair and leaned down close to Kris’s ear, so the others wouldn’t be able to see or make our what she was saying.

“Were you checking the back of the shop for the Knight?” Susie whispered.

Kris nodded. They hung loosely at Susie’s side, not really giving back to this embrace, but not pulling away from it either.

“Do you think it’s safe?” Susie asked.

Kris nodded again. She held here like this while she thought about her options. She could smell Kris’s apple shampoo. Their breathing seemed a little fast.

“Last time we tried to fight the Knight, we got thrashed pretty hard,” Susie said, squeezing Kris’s arm. “But don’t be scared, we’ll get them this time. We could just wait here for them to come out…”

Kris’s back went rigid and they recoiled away about an inch.

“Okay, inside then,” Susie changed her mind.

Kris relaxed, fading back towards her. Their cheeks touched. But why, though? Oh, but of course, it was obvious. Susie cursed herself for not realizing.

“You’re worried about your dad,” She said.

Kris didn’t nod right away, but reluctantly they did. Susie could understand. Asgore was, as fathers went, embarrassing, but he was still Kris’s dad. If Asgore was in danger, they had a responsibility to go in and see him out. Susie poked her head out above the embrace, then had an idea. She returned, and Kris made way for her.

“What if… what if we got help?” Susie asked.

Kris shook their head.

“Hear me out,” Susie said, rubbing Kris’s arm reassuringly. “We tried to fight it out ourselves, and we lost, so what if we got two more. Noelle and Berdly are both here, and they’ve both in a Dark World before. Berdly, as much as I hate it, really wasn’t too bad by himself, even.”

Kris shook their head again.

“You’re worried about them,” Susie suggested.

A brief hesitation, then an uncertain nod. Susie breathed in, taking a deep lung full of apples, then exhaled. The hesitation meant that wasn’t entirely correct.

“Okay, we keep one outside, on the lookout. Back door, hiding in the trees where they won’t get spotted. We ask them not to do anything, and all they have to do is tell us who they saw if they see someone other than us.”

A longer hesitation. Then, very unsure, a nod. Susie felt she had the shape of it now. Kris didn’t want one of the two in the dark world with them, and Susie had a pretty obvious sense of why. She didn’t want to put up with all the work and babysitting herself. She gave Kris’s hand a squeeze and turned back to Berdly and Noelle. Her heart gave a little jump when she saw the kind of look Noelle was giving the two of them – she had the same look in her eyes a cat does just before it kills a baby bird. Susie felt goosebumps rise across her body as her instincts told her she was in an indescribable amount of trouble.

“Plotting something?” Noelle asked, cutting into the hesitation. Then she laughed. “Fahaha.”

The laugh washed the moment of fear away, but Susie couldn’t quite shake the feeling that, for some reason, she’d been looking death right in the face.

“Yeah… actually,” Susie said, recovering. “Berdly, I need you to do something for us, and listen carefully. Take your ice cream and go around back. Watch the back door for anyone other than us or Asgore, and don’t move until we come get you.”

“What? Why?” Berdly asked, looking down at the sundae and then at Susie.

“Because we think someone might be in there that isn’t supposed to be. We’re going to flush them out, pincer-style. Don’t wander if we take a while, because we’re likely to take a while. That ice cream is your payment for a good job.”

“The whole thing? Me?” Berdly asked, lifting the ice cream up and gazing it from the underside.

“This is a prank. You can’t fool me!” Noelle said, crossing her arms.

“Actually, you,” Susie walked forward and plucked up one of Noelle’s hands, “I need.”

Leading Noelle, she walked towards the door of the shop. Kris was standing beside the building, their face as straight as a stone. They were trying to stay as blank as possible. Kris must have been worried. Susie tried to give a surreptitious, reassuring thumbs up. It garnered no response from Kris, but Noelle spotted it.

“Oh, no, I see what this is!” Noelle accused, digging her heels in. “I should have realized! You guys planed this whole thing! You’re going to walk me in there and I’m going to get attacked by a whole bag of plastic spiders! Aren’t I? Or Kris is going to pretend they cut their own leg off with a pair of garden sheers! I don’t know what it is, but if the two of you are working together, that means it has to be twice as bad as anything Kris could do alone! At least! Assuming you guys don’t have some sort of crazy synergy!”

Kris didn’t move. Not a muscle in the face. Not even a blink.

“See that proves it!” Noelle shouted, pointing. “Kris trying not to react! This whole thing is an evil plot! I know a Kris plot when I see one!”

“Kris isn’t plotting anything,” Susie insisted.

“That’s exactly what you’d say if you were plotting something!” Noelle said, grinning smugly. She tilted her head back. “I don’t know how you are during a prank, Susie, but Kris just gave away everything. Whatever is going on, Kris planned it all! Look, Kris getting worse.”

She was pointing at Kris as if it were obvious, but they were a statue. Nothing had changed. Kris hadn’t moved. Susie had no idea what she was looking for.

“So, am I going around the back of the shop or is this a prank?” Berdly asked.

“Go!” Susie said, waving Berdly along.

Thankfully, Berdly cooperated, taking the ice cream to the back side of the flower shop. Susie just hoped he wouldn’t get bored and wander off, or worse, try to go in the front way. There was a risk here, but they needed a change in tact. The Knight was stronger and faster than they were, which meant they needed more teamwork, more coordination. It would be stupid not to change something before a third encounter – they’d really have to have learned nothing, and they’d be such fools for it. Susie just had to hope the Knight took their past victories as meaning the Knight didn’t need to adapt as well.

“Or maybe you’re being tricked,” Noelle wondered to Susie. “You know, there’s a classic set up to these kinds of things where you sucker your accomplice into the scam. You think you’re helping Kris this whole time, that you’re the one who’s in on the big secret, and then the reveal is that you were the mark from the very beginning. You’ll walk me in there, and then you’ll be the one covered in fake spiders.”

“Only one way to find out,” Susie begged her.

Noelle was smiling, wryly. “I have books on scam artists. Magicians. Comedians. I know the tricks, I learned the tricks, but Kris knows I’ve learned the tricks. Fahaha! One of us is about to get tricked, I just know it. If you’re going to keep hanging out with Kris you better borrow my books, Susie.”

Susie grinned. It was part frustration, but also genuine happiness that Noelle was offering to loan Susie something. Susie wasn’t much of a reader, but it was flattering that Noelle, the smartest girl Susie knew, thought Susie might be one. She might just take Noelle up on that offer and try to muddle through a few pages to say she tried. But not now.

“Come with me?” Susie asked.

“Alright,” Noelle replied, giving in.

As they walked past, Noelle squinted at Kris, giving them eyes that said I know you’re up to no good, but they were playful. Maybe even a little excited. This changed when Susie opened the front door of the shop. Black, viscous smoke billowed out from the entryway. Not a thing could be seen within the interior.

“W- what?” Noelle stammered.

“You’ll see,” Susie told her, tugging gently.

And Susie led her past the threshold, into the void.