Camille snorted. “Gabriel? No. High-five, probably.”
Jul smiled. “You’re lucky.”
Camille shrugged. Luckier if he’d let me in on his plans. But if Jul hadn’t burst in, Umino’s punishment might have been much worse...
Camille looked at the other girl and inclined her head down the hall. “Coming?”
“Oh! Yes,” Jul said. “I guess algebra happens no matter what.”
“Too bad,” Camille agreed, as they walked.
“I mean, if we’re going to get sentenced to trash detail, you’d think they’d have the decency to cancel classes. You caused a riot.”
Camille snorted a laugh again.
“Oh, excuse me, I mean you retaliated against an act of terrorism. Which inadvertently caused a riot.”
“A riot,” Camille said, trying out the word. “Me. A riot. Badass.”
“A food fight is a riot with edible projectiles,” Jul maintained. “We could advance warfare by decades if we could convince all sides to just use leftovers as ammunition.”
Camille shook her head, smiling. “Good plan.” Jul was pretty clever when she wasn’t apologizing.
They turned a corner, and Jul put a hand over her mouth, stifling a gasp. Rhys Ryan stood in the hallway, expectant.
“I just wanted to remind you about the display for the festival,” he said pushing his dark hair out of icy cold eyes. “You’re both responsible for it, remember?”
Jul was looking anywhere but at Ryan, paling.
“Your paper?” Camille returned.
Ryan’s attention slid to her, briefly. “Finished,” he stated, then held out a folded scrap of paper to Jul. “Some suggestions.”
Camille went to take it, but Ryan held it out of her reach. “Suggestions for someone who can actually read them,” he said, and Jul reluctantly took the paper, a light tremor in her fingers.
“As you were,” he said dryly, and left.
“Teme,” Camille muttered under her breath, then looked up at Jul. The guy had her spooked, alright. It was none of her business. She should leave well enough alone. “He did what?” she asked.
“I just don’t...um...he scares me,” Jul said quietly. “We, uh...” she coughed. “He’s right, we really should start putting the display together.”
Camille nodded. Might as well get it over with.
“Do you know a good place we could meet?”
She considered. “The cafe. It’s near.”
“Oh, that one down the street? They don’t mind people working on stuff in there?”
“I live there,” Camille said.
Jul blinked slowly, processing the idea. “Oh. Oh! That’s...kind of awesome.”
Camille shrugged. Maybe. She didn’t have a lot to compare it to. It was bigger than her old flat and it always smelled like frosting and coffee. If you were into that kind of thing.
“How about this weekend?” Jul said.
“Friday,” Camille said. “Closes at 6.”
“Cool,” Jul said. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”
Or you could explain what’s really going on... Camille thought, but they continued on to class in silence.
Later that night, Camille heard a knock on her open door. “What do you want?” she asked, sitting on her bed, bent over her homework.
“I’m looking for ice,” Gabriel said, sounding unsteady. “Do we have ice?”
“Have you checked the freezer?” Camille asked with sarcasm.
“I think I used all that...” he said.
Camille looked up; Gabriel was standing in her doorway, glancing forlornly at a dark liquid he was swirling in a glass.
“I had the loveliest time, catching up with an old friend,” Gabriel said. “My oldest friend in the world. You wouldn’t know her, don’t ask.”
Camille’s eyebrows raised. “Are you drunk?”
“Please, I used to drink a whole bottle of whiskey in one sitting,” he said, dropping into the chair by her dresser with less than his usual grace. “Granted, that’s been...” he blinked, eyes unfocused for a moment. “King’s blood, almost a decade. Alright, maybe my tolerance isn’t what it used to be.”
Camille shook her head. Sometimes, he did not seem like a responsible adult. “You should just go to sleep, old man.”
“No, no, no. We survived another night, we should celebrate.” Gabriel took another swig of his drink. “How about a story? I haven’t told you a story in forever. You used to love them.”
“I used to be able to order off the kids menu,” Camille said dryly.
“You don’t have to be a kid to order off the kids menu,” Gabriel stated loftily. “That’s where all restaurants hide their chocolate milk. You’ve got to give up this idea that you can be too old for things. Now. Once upon a time, there were seven heroes.”
Camille groaned. “They became too proud of their gifts, an old witch cursed them, they transformed into monsters and became what they’d hunted. Pride goeth before the fall. The end.”
“You’re no fun,” he frowned. “Alright, once upon a time, there was a man with three sons - ”
She rolled her eyes. “He couldn’t afford to keep them, they apprenticed to three different masters, they each nearly lost their gifts to a crafty innkeeper until the youngest son won it all back. Use your opponents strengths against them. The end.”
“Your memory is a little too good,” Gabriel complained.
“You tell the same stories over and over,” Camille pointed out. “After a few years, the twists stop surprising you.”
“You want a new story, is that it?”
“If I have to sit here and listen to you slur through a fairy tale,” she said, “at least make it one I haven’t heard.” Why was he being so weird?
He regarded her blearily. “Have it your way. Once upon a time,” he murmured, “there was a horrible, selfish man who had only ever caused problems for anyone he met. His gifts brought pain and misery for others, and he was convinced that it was the only way he could live. That it was just part of his DNA, and that the only way to be happy was to continually feed his avarice. Then one day, an angry little girl kicked him in the shins and he was forced to take her home and feed her.”
Camille sighed. “I think I know this story.”
“But you haven’t heard it. So shut up. The girl was a monster. She broke his valuable things he’d spent years hoarding, drew on his walls, refused to take baths, put pins in his shoes, wouldn’t speak English, insisted on eating things that smelled horrible, and the only way to calm her down was to tell her long, complicated stories. He figured this was karma, getting him back.
“He had never spent long amounts of time with anyone, you see, much less a child. He had developed obsessions with certain people before, but obsessing is very different from truly knowing someone, living with them and learning to take the good with the bad. He had no inkling of what ‘camaraderie’ or ‘family’ really meant. But with each passing bedtime story, with every begrudging trek to a ramen shop, things changed. They changed so slowly, at such an imperceptible gradation, that he didn’t notice. They became accustomed to one another, the angry girl and the selfish man. He began to think of her less and less as a temporary nuisance, and more and more as a permanent fixture. But he didn’t fully understand the extent of the change until the day he was sent a letter.”
He leaned back in the chair, staring up at the ceiling. “It was written by a powerful woman, from an even more powerful family. She demanded the girl’s presence in a faraway school. She offered him a great deal of money and priceless artifacts if he would relinquish guardianship of the girl. The man was affronted - offended - that she would assume he’d turn her over for things. But then he remembered that things were all he’d cared for in his long life; how could someone expect differently of him? He told the woman no, but unfortunately it only made her assume the girl was that much more of a prize. She began to make threats, questioning the validity of his guardianship, insinuating the man was hiding from something, making accusations the girl was too dangerous to be ‘loose’ in the world. Still he refused. He decided instead that it was time to make a new plan.”