Especially since they're talented and skilled and such enough, and Cass isn't quite old enough with enough perks, that there's a non-zero chance they mess up enough to pull her into trouble. Find somebody with a "invading peoples brains" spell, or a truth-telling spell, or whatever.
Companion Chronicles [Jumpchain/Multicross SI] [Currently visiting: INTERMISSION]
- Thread starter Tempestuous
- Start date
Especially since they're talented and skilled and such enough, and Cass isn't quite old enough with enough perks, that there's a non-zero chance they mess up enough to pull her into trouble. Find somebody with a "invading peoples brains" spell, or a truth-telling spell, or whatever.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I've completely lost track of where in the Jump we are, it's just a liminal space comprised entirely of baked goods.
BritishGrenadier
Summon The Elector Counts!
- Location
- Nova Scotia Halifax
Show him homura and madoka magica. its seems to exist in this world.
I think this would be a violation of Homura's privacy on some level, and Cass isn't ready to confront her own fictional existence so that's not an option either.
BagFullOfLizards
Some bag, mostly lizards
- Location
- A bag
Ooo, I want to go on that jump.
Pretty sure that Management wouldn't allow that to work. Probably would make the machine explode out something.
Chapter 118: Leisure Activities
Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
AN: Beta-read by Carbohydratos, Did I?, Gaia, Linedoffice, Zephyrosis, and Mizu.
"Have you given any more thought to where you want to go for Spring Break?" I asked Luke after dinner the following evening.
"Do we have to go somewhere?" he whined.
"No, but you will have to leave the apartment. Would you rather wander around town, or go somewhere you'll never have to deal with the people you meet again?"
Luke pouted. "When you put it like that…"
"Then where would you like to go?"
He shrugged, so I looked to Homura. "I have no preference," she said.
"No suggestions from anyone?"
"You are the one insisting we travel."
"Hey, it's winter in the southern hemisphere, right?" Luke asked. "Could we go skiing?"
"It's still spring, not summer," Homura said. "We don't have to go that far to ski."
"A ski vacation sounds fun," I said. "Though I suspect Luke just wants to bundle up."
"You don't know that," he whined. "Maybe I really like skiing!"
My teasing might have gone a little far; I didn't really care why he wanted to go skiing as long as he chose something.
"Sorry," I said. "Do you?"
Luke sighed. "I've never actually tried."
Or maybe I'd been right on the money.
"Do you want to?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Sure, I guess."
That was good enough for me. "Sounds good to me, then. Akemi?"
"No argument here," she said.
"Then it's settled," I declared. "We are going… skiing!"
Our Spring Break ski vacation went mostly without incident.
Mostly.
"Come on, Luke," I said as I knocked on his hotel room door. "Up and at 'em! Let's put that practice into… uh, practice?"
No response.
"You were the one who said you wanted to go skiing," I reminded him. "The lines are only gonna get longer."
"I'm coming!" he called back.
I waited.
"…eventually!"
"Ski classes?" Luke asked, giving the other teenagers in the room a suspicious look.
"Did you think you were just going to suddenly know how to ski the moment you put them on?"
"Well… no?"
"Do you want me to come with you?" I offered, pointing to a poster on the wall. "We could do a parent/child class—"
He practically shoved me out the door. "Nope! No, this sounds great, thanks, bye!"
I lay spread-eagle on the snow for a few seconds before Homura leaned into view, face silhouetted against the clear blue sky overhead.
"I thought you said you knew how to ski," she said.
"I did!"
"Ah. Past tense. I see."
"It's been a while, okay? Now stop gawking and help me up."
"How was the class?" I asked Luke over dinner.
He stopped shoving pasta into his face long enough to mutter, "It was fine."
"Just fine?" Homura asked.
"It was fun, I guess? I was getting real bored at the end. It's not that much different from ice-skating with, like, balance and stuff, so I'm learning faster than they're teaching."
"Ready to hit the slopes with us, then?" I asked.
"You bet!"
"Come on, Luke," I called through the door. "Once more unto the breach and all that! The earlier the better!"
"I don't want to move today," he whined.
"Why not? You said you had fun yesterday!"
"So-o-ore."
"Ah."
"You know," I said once the taxi dropped us off outside the bakery the following Saturday, "seeing that sign in this context makes me feel like it's mocking me."
"There is nothing mocking about it," Homura said. "This is, in fact, Home Sweet Home."
"I still don't see why we had to take a taxi at all," Luke complained as he shouldered his suitcase. "Why teleport airport to airport instead of just going straight here from the hotel?"
"It's part of the experience," I explained for what was probably the third or fourth time. "There's something about the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel—or home—that really lets the whole thing sink in. Vacation wouldn't be the same without it."
"Besides, airports are places of travel," Homura added as she picked up her bag. "Their nature makes them particularly suited for magical transportation."
"Really?" Luke asked.
"No, I made that up. Cassandra is just strange."
I huffed and hefted my own bag. "If you two cared about the specifics, you shouldn't have made me do all the planning myself."
"Don't worry," Homura replied. "We won't be making that mistake again."
Max caught me on my way out of the Warehouse gym the morning after we got back from vacation. I'd made a habit of using the front doors of anywhere I went when going from Jump to Warehouse and back—it just felt right compared to going from the middle of one building to the middle of another—so she'd been waiting for me on one of the chairs in the lobby.
"Hey, Cass." She waved. "Have a nice vacation?"
"Hi, Max. Yeah, we did. What're you up to?"
"Waiting for you, actually. I wanted to ask about your conversation with Tedd. You told him about the 'chain?"
I facepalmed. "I also told him not to tell anyone I told him."
"You know he hates keeping secrets—"
"I did not."
"Well, you do now?" Max shrugged. "It's not a problem, or I wouldn't've waited for you to get back. I was wondering 'why' and 'when'. You wanted to stay out of all the Moperville stuff, right?"
"That was the plan, but he and Grace drove all the way down to Strawfield over spring break to ask me about Zeke's disappearance."
"Ah." She sighed and put her hands on her hips. "Yeah."
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"Sorry," I said. "I know I could've just said nothing—"
"It's fine. Edward deduced—correctly—that everything you told Tedd was both unverifiable and unactionable, and thus not worth consideration. He did ask why I hadn't told him, but I said the same thing about unverifiability and that was that. Good thinking not naming names, by the way—it would've been messier if you'd told him we were part of Zeke's 'entourage' rather than just a couple recipients of the same tale."
"That's something, I guess." I sighed. "What about Tedd himself? Did spilling secrets do any good there?"
Max hesitated.
"I don't think so," she admitted. "I know some people say knowing is better than wondering, but I think Tedd was happier when he thought he could help, and Grace was happier when she had hope. If I thought they'd be happier knowing, I'd have told them myself."
"Oh."
He patted me on the shoulder consolingly. "Don't beat yourself up over it. You had good intentions."
"I keep hearing that," I muttered.
"From who?"
"Tess wasn't thrilled that I saved Myria."
"Oh," Max said. "I probably should've seen that coming."
"Mhm."
"She did credit you with 'good intentions', though."
"Yeah," I mumbled. "For whatever that's worth."
"Is she holding it against you?"
"No, nothing like that. It's just not a great record for me, is all."
The conversation died there, and we said our goodbyes. I opened the door back to the apartment, then closed it and opened the door normally into the town square. It was night in the Warehouse as well—which was more coincidence than anything else—but the artificial moonlight was strong enough to make the streetlights redundant as I headed towards the Library.
Talking about my run-in with Tedd and Grace had reminded me of the conversation I'd had with Luke shortly afterwards, and the question of whether I could get at any of the stuff I'd written back home. That was why I was going to the Library: it had, if I recalled correctly, every book ever written in every world the 'chain had visited. I wasn't sure if the amateur rambling of a backstory counted as a book, but I figured it couldn't hurt to check.
To that end, I headed over to the computer terminals tucked away in a corner near the door and searched 'Cassandra Rolins'. The results were a bunch of tie-in novels for my show, but the search tool helpfully provided a button labeled 'In-Universe Results Only', which I clicked. Now the top result was a book titled Cassandra Rolins: The Complete Biography, copyrighted 2068, which I was not going to touch with a ten-foot pole. I carefully avoided reading the description as I clicked Advanced and searched by author.
No results.
Wait, I hadn't been going by Cassandra when I'd written that backstory, had I? I entered my deadname and searched again.
Oh, lovely, the books I'd written and comb-bound in elementary school were here. The backstory I was looking for, however, was evidently not a book and thus absent. I was about to give up when I saw a link at the bottom of the search results window that read, "Can't find what you're looking for? Contact us!", so I clicked it.
"Hello, Miss Rolins," Management's voice sounded from the speakers. "What are you looking for?"
Of course it would be Management, what did I expect?
"Uh," I said, "I was wondering if the backstory I wrote for my D&D character a couple months before you picked me up would be in here."
A stack of papers far thicker than I'd expected thumped onto the desk next to the keyboard. "Anything else?"
"Can I have it in digital format?"
A thumbdrive landed on the pile. "Anything else?"
"Nope, that's it. Thanks!"
They didn't bother to say goodbye.
We were into April when Luke stuck his head into the living room one afternoon to ask if he could have some friends over.
"Absolutely," I replied, looking up from my book. "When, how many, and will they be staying for dinner?"
He was unprepared for my easy acceptance and faltered under the barrage of questions. "Uh, whenever we've got time, I guess, and, uh, two, and… I don't know, maybe?"
"Well, as long as you give me enough heads-up to tidy up the apartment and make extra food, you can invite your friends over whenever you want. Oh, uh, but one thing—"
I'm not sure what Luke was expecting, but from the way his face fell, it was obviously bad.
"—relax," I insisted. "I just want to know how I should refer to you while they're here."
"Oh." He let out a nervous laugh and ran a hand over his hair. "I was, uh, actually kind of planning to come out to them while they're here? So…"
When he didn't give me an answer, I offered, "I can just do my best to avoid referring to you at all until you get that done…?"
So that became the plan when Luke arrived home with two boys in tow a few days later.
"Welcome home," I said as the three kids reached the end of the hall. "Who're your friends?"
"This is Aaron and Kyle," Luke replied, introducing a stocky boy with glasses and a gangly one with curly hair, respectively. "Guys, this is Cassandra."
"You call your Mom by her first name?" Aaron asked. I gave him a disapproving stare; subjective age aside, I was pretty sure I didn't look old enough to have a teenage child.
"She's not my mom," Luke grumbled as he led the group out of the hall.
"Aunt?" Aaron guessed.
"Something like that." Luke slung his backpack onto the kitchen table with the customary thump, and the boys followed suit. I went into the kitchen and started slicing carrots and celery for dipping, keeping an ear out for trouble but generally trusting Luke to handle himself.
About ten minutes after I'd delivered snacks—store-bought pretzels, mixed nuts, and the aforementioned vegetables and dip—and returned to the couch, a burst of mocking laughter had me looking towards the table in concern. "That explains that!" Aaron had crowed before doubling over in laughter; from the confused and upset looks on Luke and Kyle's faces, respectively, it was at the latter's expense.
"What?" Luke asked.
"Don't," Kyle warned him.
Aaron was undeterred. "I was wondering why you were the only girl who doesn't make him clam up like a fish, and it's 'cause you're not one!"
Luke started laughing as well, which only made Kyle more upset. "I talk to girls!" Kyle yelled.
"Name one!"
Kyle looked at Luke, remembered he didn't count, then slugged Aaron in the shoulder. "Man, screw you guys. Dicks!" When he didn't stop after the second punch, Aaron started punching back, though his laughter interfered with his aim.
I brought the roughhousing to a stop with a pointed cough before someone spilled the ranch dressing. Kyle had the good manners to apologize. Aaron was still laughing.
After his guests settled down, Luke excused himself to change, returning not in a magically-granted 'male form' but just with different clothes, his binder on, and a bit of blue-hued makeup to suggest an approaching five-o'clock shadow. From the other boys' amazed reactions, he probably wouldn't have surprised them more if he'd just used the wand.
"So, do you like girls, then?" Kyle asked Luke.
"Dude," Aaron interjected.
"What? I'm just asking!"
"Do you like girls?" Luke shot back.
"I was just asking! Jeez!"
All in all, the excitement was quickly forgotten; by the time I served dinner, the boys had been talking about nothing but Dungeons and Dragons for more than two hours.
Maybe due to the experience of blending in as a guy over Spring Break, having some actual 'friends' rather than acquaintances, or some combination of the two, Luke had found the confidence to be a boy somewhere other than the apartment. I wasn't sure if he was out to everyone involved or trying his hand at 'stealth', but either way, he and Kyle were having dinner at Aaron's house today, leaving me free to get drinks with Lizzie, Suzie, and Zoe.
Mine were going to be non-alcoholic, obviously.
Our venue of choice was a sleepy little bar near the freeway side of town, a long, narrow space with the bar running down the length of one wall and booths set into the opposite wall. It smelled, unsurprisingly, like alcohol, though the cleaning agents were more distinct than the products on offer. It was also warm—or so I thought until I remembered that the last time I'd been in a hole-in-the-wall bar like this, the booths had been made out of literal ice.
"Cassie!"
Lizzie and Zoe had claimed the booth nearest the door, and the latter stood up to call me over when I walked in. She barely had to raise her voice to overpower the music—some classic rock song with the volume down at the edge of audibility—so the fact that she did raise her voice meant she was far too loud for such a tight space. Zoe flushed bright red and yell-whispered, "Sorry!" to the bartender and the two men sitting at the counter, who shrugged and went back to what they'd been doing without a second thought.
"It's just Cass," I said as I slipped into the booth next to Lizzie, who scooted in slightly to make room. "Hello, girls."
"Aw, come on," Zoe whined. "That doesn't fit the pattern!"
"I'd still rather be called Cass," I repeated. "'Cassie' reminds me too much of high school."
"You're no fun."
"Call the woman her name, Zo," Lizzie said, pronouncing the other woman's name 'Zoh' rather than 'Zo-ee'.
"Fiiine," Zoe whined. "Oh, hey, Suze!"
I wasn't surprised that glancing over my shoulder showed Suzie making her way to our booth. "Hey, girls," she said. "Hope I didn't keep you waiting! I would've left earlier, but my cat was on my lap."
"Fair," Lizzie said.
"Totally," I said.
"S'fine," Zoe said. "We're here to hang out and chat, so it's not like you're behind us on the drinking, even if you are late."
"I've only been here for two minutes, tops," I stage-whispered.
"Spoilsport."
"So, now that we're all settled in," Lizzie said. "Time to all get back up and grab some drinks!"
It was the work of a moment for the group of us to migrate to the empty bar and order three beers from the tap and a glass of water. Lizzie added an order of fried potatoes to the tab to buffer the alcohol, which I volunteered to pick up since I wasn't spending on drinks.
"Driving home?" Zoe asked me after we'd filed back into the booth, drinks in hand.
I shrugged. "Nah, I just don't drink."
"What, ever?" Suzie asked.
"Ever."
"You got a medication you can't mix with alcohol or something?" Zoe guessed.
"Nope. I just don't drink."
"Why not?"
"Personal choice," I said. "How are you three getting home?"
"Sharing a cab," Lizzie said. "We all live pretty close together."
"Where do you live, anyway?" Zoe asked me.
"You know where our shop is?" I asked.
"Yeah?"
"Upstairs."
"Huh," she said. "Living on top of your shop. That's some old fashioned shit, huh?"
"Is it?" Lizzie asked.
"Isn't it?" Zoe tilted her head. "I swear I got that idea from somewhere."
"What do you mean, 'personal choice'?" Suzie asked me.
"I… choose not to drink."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to get drunk?"
"One beer isn't going to get you drunk," Suzie insisted, brandishing her one beer.
I rolled my eyes. "Sure, but what's the point of developing a taste for alcohol if you never want to get drunk?"
Suzie inspected the bubbles in her glass like it could answer my question.
"I guess that makes sense," she concluded. "So you're telling me you never drank as a kid? Like, ever?"
"Nope."
"God," Zoe said. "I bet you were the preppiest fucking kid."
"Guilty as charged."
Beside me, Lizzie rubbed her chin and hummed as she gave me a searching look.
"What?"
"Trying to picture you as a teenager," she said.
"Keep trying. If I showed you a picture of me as a teen, you couldn't pick me out of a lineup in ten tries." What made it especially funny to me was that it was true of all three of my teenage periods: at home I'd been the wrong gender, Kasey was the wrong race, and Lina had wings.
Our food hit the bar at that point, and I excused myself to bring it back to our table. It wasn't quite what I'd expected from the phrase 'fried potatoes'.
"Isn't battering potatoes kind of double-dipping on the starch?" I asked as I settled back into my seat.
"It's not batter," Lizzie said, holding up the potato she'd grabbed before I'd even set the plate down. "It's cheese."
"Oh. Nice." Hard to argue with cheese.
I broke one of the potatoes in half to make sure I wasn't about to burn my tongue off, then popped a piece into my mouth. It tasted like fat, salt, and cholesterol, and I immediately reached for another.
"Isn't deep-frying cheese kind of double-dipping on the fat?" Zoe asked, watching the three of us enjoy the potatoes with undisguised horror. "How the hell do you girls stay so thin?"
"Magic," I said.
"Exercise," Lizzie said.
"Stress," Suzie said.
"Aw, what're you stressed about, Suzie?" Zoe asked.
Suzie rolled her eyes and took a long pull from her beer. "We have a new manager and I swear to god this guy has zero clue what his job actually is."
"Flaky or incompetent?" Lizzie asked.
"Flaky, mostly, and just completely oblivious. Wouldn't notice smoke if he was on fire."
"Keep him out of the kitchen, then," Zoe said.
Suzie growled. "That would be funny if it wasn't an actual problem!"
"Wait," I said. "He actually set himself on fire?"
"No, him being in the kitchen. The place doesn't have room for a micromanager, figuratively or literally."
"You still at the Olive Garden?" Lizzie asked.
"No, Ino's."
"Oh, yeah, that kitchen is tiny even by restaurant standards."
Zoe hefted her glass for our attention. "Hey, Lizzie," she said. "You're working at Home Sweet Home, right? Doesn't that make Cass your manager?"
"Yes?" Lizzie replied, unsure why that was in question.
"Oh, lord," Zoe moaned. "I'm drinking with a manager."
"Shame on all of you," I agree. "I'm the only one here who's not. Uh—" I stopped my hand above the last fried potato, intending to ask before claiming it, only for Lizzie to snatch it out from under me.
"Mine!" she declared, triumphant.
"I was gonna ask!"
"Well, it's mine."
"Yes, I know." I looked around for a napkin to wipe the grease off my fingers, found none, and briefly considered magicking it away before remembering I could just ask, "Anyone have napkins in their purse?"
"Gotcha covered," Zoe said, presenting me with a single-wrapped wet-wipe.
"Thanks."
Suzie rapped a knuckle on the table. "Enough about shitty managers."
"Hey—"
"Present company excepted."
"Hey—"
"I want to hear about you," she declared, pointing a finger across the table at Lizzie.
"You want me to badmouth my manager while she's in elbow range?" Lizzie asked. "What do you have against my ribcage, woman?"
"Your boyfriend, you nut. You've been dating for three months now. How's it going?"
"Good!" Lizzie replied. "We had a rough start—"
"Details," Suzie interrupted.
"No."
"He asked her out while she was working," I chimed in.
"Caaass," Lizzie whined.
"Whaaat?" I whined back. "It's not like that reflects on you."
"The fact that I said 'yes' does!"
"Nah," Zoe said. "You get to say whatever you want. Like, 'fuck off, you twat.' I like that one."
Lizzie scoffed. "If any of us said that to a customer, we'd be out of a job so fast we'd get a speeding ticket on the way out."
Zoe finished a long pull from her beer and toasted her glass my way. "You think Cass would fire herself?"
"She wouldn't say that in the first place."
"I'd absolutely say that," I protested. "I'd just say it so politely they wouldn't notice."
"That's cheating," Lizzie said. "It doesn't count as 'saying' it if they don't hear it."
"Stop changing the subject," Suzie insisted. "Lizzie. Deets."
Lizzie threw up her hands in theatrical defeat before taking up her drink once more. "Fine. We started with a nice, simple coffee date—"
"Roasters?" Zoe guessed.
"No, Strawfield Coffee house. Near the Library?"
"That tiny place?" Suzie asked.
Lizzie nodded. "Yeah. We talked—"
"Did you explain why he shouldn't have asked you out while you were working?" Zoe interrupted again.
"Yes, thank you Zoe. He was apologetic, which is good, but people should just know this, you know? Schools need an etiquette class or something, swear to God."
"Think about who'd be setting the curriculum, though," I said. "Clueless men are bad, but men operating on social mores fifty years out of date aren't gonna be much of an improvement."
"Oof," Zoe said, and drank deep of her beer.
"Oof," Lizzie agreed, clinking her glass with mine and following suit.
"Well, you're still dating," Suzie said. "Or I think you're still dating?"
"Still dating, yeah."
"So how's that going?"
Lizzie appeared completely unaware of the lazy smile that spread across her face as she thought.
"It's good," she said. "He's sweet, but he doesn't try too hard. He makes a room more comfortable just by being in it. He—"
"He's just as much of a mess as she is," Zoe stage-whispered.
"Zoe!" Lizzie whined. "Why would you say something so hurtful, and yet so true?"
Zoe tilted her glass towards the other woman, grinning like a cat. "Because I'm your friend, of course!"
"Friend?" Lizzie repeated. "You are an ass is what you are. Cass, tell her she's an ass."
"What?" I asked. "No."
"Traitor!"
Zoe's smile went from 'cat' to 'shark'. "Turns out the price of loyalty was a single wet-wipe."
"Cheap," Lizzie grumbled.
I pouted. "Hey, I really hate having grime on my fingers, okay?"
"Doesn't that make baking kind of hard?" Suzie asked.
"I'd say it makes it 'less fun', at worst."
"But will your hands ever be clean after such treachery?" Lizzie asked me.
"Yes?" I waggled my fingers at her. "That's what the wet-wipe was for. Gets the spots right out."
"Spots?" Suzie asked.
"Macbeth? 'Out, damned spot'?"
"Ach, nerd."
Zoe polished off the last of her beer with a sigh of relish. "Anything else you want to share, Lizzie?"
"I dunno." Lizzie shrugged, one hand drawing circles on the tabletop. "I'm having a good time. We mesh well together."
Suzie waited until Lizzie took another drink to ask, "How's the sex?" Lizzie, alas, was made of sterner stuff, and merely rolled her eyes rather than giving Suzie the spit-take she expected.
"What do you want," she asked, "a play-by-play?"
"Please no," I piped up.
"Empty threat, Cass." Lizzie downed the last of her beer and thumped the glass on the table in toast. "It's good. He cuddles well."
"Aw, damn," Suzie muttered. "Now I'm jealous."
"What happened to that guy you were seeing?" Zoe asked her. "He seemed nice. Uh… Tyler?"
"Taylor," Suzie corrected. "And he is nice, but there's no spark. None. Zero. Less than zero." She planted both elbows on the table and pressed the heels of her palms together into a cup for her chin. "I like him, but I don't love him, and the only reason we're still together is that I don't want to be alone. Dating past forty is awful."
"Oh, honey," Lizzie said.
"No, stop, none of that," Zoe scolded them. "You two aren't drunk enough to go all sad drunk on us."
"We can fix that," Lizzie replied, then poked me in the ribs. "Scoot, Cass."
I scooted, and the four of us headed back to the bar once more. Suzie switched to wine, Lizzie stuck with beer, and Zoe quit drinking and ordered a coke. I switched from lemonade to pineapple juice—the juice that digests you!
"It does what?" Suzie asked.
"Just a joke," I reassured her. "You ever try to make pineapple jello?"
"No?"
"Well, don't. It won't work. There's an enzyme in pineapple juice that digests gelatin."
"Ew. I didn't need to know that, Cass."
I decided to be magnanimous and change the subject. "This place seems quiet."
"We picked a quiet time on purpose," Zoe said. "As quiet as 'happy hour' gets, anyway."
"Tuesdays are the quietest," the bartender agreed as he handed Lizzie her next beer. "Fridays are more lively."
I raised an eyebrow. "How lively is 'lively'?"
"Busy enough to run me ragged, not quite busy enough to hire more help."
"So it goes," Zoe said sagely.
"I am such a stereotype," Suzie mourned as she accepted her drink in turn. "Another spinster drowning her sorrows in wine."
"More like whine," Lizzie said.
"That's what I—oh. Clever… not."
"Two drinks isn't 'drowning your sorrows'," Zoe said. "It's barely even dampening them."
We were about to head back to our table when one of the two men drinking at the bar called out, "Say, don't you work at the bakery on Main Street?"
"We do," I said, indicated Lizzie and myself.
"I do," Lizzie corrected me. "She owns the place."
"And works there!"
The man laughed and toasted me with his beer—bottled, rather than from the tap like Lizzie's. "Oh, so it's your fault my wife threw out the coffee machine?"
"Uh…"
He chuckled self-consciously at my confusion. "Sorry, just a joke. We used to be a coffee household, but now it's tea, tea, tea, tea, all day."
"Ohhh," I said. "I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not."
"Oh, it's no skin off my nose. Just wanted to let you know you got a couple caffeine converts."
"Next thing you know you'll be calling everyone 'chap' and arguing about cricket," the bartender said.
"Britain called and it wants its colonies back," the other customer joked, which was definitely absurd humor and in no way a stroke of cosmic resonance with my not-future.
We left the men to their drinks (and roasting our neighbors across the pond) and congregated once more around our booth.
"What's the rudest you've ever been to a customer, Cass?" Zoe asked.
I made a show of thinking about it before asking Lizzie, "Does Andrew count?"
"Caaass," Lizzie whined. "What did you do to my boyfriend?"
"A, he wasn't your boyfriend yet. B, he wanted a 'second opinion' on your kicking him out that morning, so I gave him a free cookie and informed him that the shop was a bakery and not a couples councilor's office."
All three women laughed long and easily at that, though Lizzie kept trying to glare at me despite her laughter. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"It never came up?"
"Was he buying something at the time?" Zoe asked.
"Uh… no?"
"Then it doesn't count. Tell us another!"
I laughed and obliged. "Okay. So, one day, this woman comes in and wants a coffee—"
"From a bakery?" Suzie asked.
"Yes, from a bakery. She wants coffee. I tell her to go to Roaster's. She tells me I'm being rude and wants to talk to a manager."
"Oh my God," Zoe squealed. "You got to do the 'I am the manager' thing! That's the dream!"
"I did! But she doubles down and says, very slowly and clearly like I'm hard of hearing, that she wants to speak to my boss."
"And you did it again?" she asked, giggling at the idea.
I started laughing as well. "I could've, but I decided to be more obnoxious."
"Yes."
"How?" Lizzie asked.
"I went and got Akemi. And so the lady starts complaining about how rude I am for not serving her the coffee she wants despite, you know, there not being a coffee machine in the shop because I hate the smell—oh, I told her that, that's what set this all off. In her mind, a bakery needs to serve coffee and I was derelict of my duty by letting my personal dislike of coffee interfere with that. So she tries to tell Akemi that I've been a terrible service-person and Akemi, God bless her, listens and nods and regretfully informs her that she can't fire me because the owner has final say in hiring and firing workers."
"Oh my God," Zoe squeaked. "Absolute ten-of-ten quick thinking."
"So she says—"
"Then I want to speak to the owner!" all four of us chorused.
"And Akemi just points at me, and I ask—"
"Can I help you?" we chorused again before bursting into laughter.
"Fuuuck," Zoe gasped. "I would treasure that memory for the rest of my life!"
"When was this?" Lizzie demanded.
"About five years ago. Maybe a little less."
"Back when you two were running the shop alone, then?"
I nodded.
"Good," Lizzie said. "I'd have been really annoyed if this had happened after you hired me and never saw fit to share!"
"Same," Zoe agreed.
"You don't even work there!"
"I meant I would feel the same if I did, obviously!"
"Hey, Cass," Suzie said. "Since you brought her up, I have to ask: are you and Akemi, like, biological sisters? Because you look nothing alike."
"Step-sisters," I answered. "Our parents married when we were three."
"Your mom to her dad?" Zoe guessed. "Err, just based on your name…"
"Yeah, my mom to her dad. That's why my surname is Japanese."
"Gotcha."
Lizzie finished a long drink from her beer with a gasp. "Okay!" she announced. "Since last drink was all about interrogating my love life, it's you all's turn. Zoe, how's Frank?"
"He's good," Zoe replied. "Mostly. A little bent out of shape because his bosses passed him over for promotion again. He really wants to let me quit my job but we can't put Liv through college on his current salary."
"Isn't Liv, like, eight?" Lizzie asked.
"Yeah, so imagine how much college will cost in ten years and budget for that."
"Ouch."
"What's your husband do?" I asked her.
"Marketing."
"Ah."
"Who's looking after the little terror, anyway?" Lizzie asked.
Zoe grinned. "My sister's kid gets four bucks an hour to watch her watch TV."
"Nice."
There was a moment of silence as we all chose to drink at the same time.
"We've already covered my love life," Suzie said. "Or lack of love life. What's up with you, Cass? Another single woman seeking good man?"
I huffed and sipped my juice. "Yes to single, no to 'seeking good man'."
"Cass is a strong independent woman who don't need no man," Lizzie said. "Besides, she owns a store."
I shot Lizzie a look of betrayal. "Are you asserting that I'm married to my job?"
"I wasn't, but I am now."
"Are you, you know, not interested in dating?" Suzie asked. "As a 'thing'?"
"I'm not asexual or aromantic, no," I said. "I'm just not interested in dating men."
"Oh."
Zoe chuckled. "I'm not surprised, but mostly because I always thought you and Akemi were married and the sisters thing was a cover."
"You what?" Suzie gasped.
I laughed. "No, we are definitely sisters."
"Age three, you said?" Zoe asked. "You probably can't even remember not having her around."
"Yeah." Which wasn't exactly true, because I'd lived into my thirties before ever having met her, but was also totally true because Emily and Kasey were fraternal twins and it's hard to be closer to someone than that.
"Anyway," Zoe said. "Not surprised one bit. Oh, I bet you want to punch something every time you walk past Slice of Heaven."
"Can't believe there's a market for Christian pizza," Lizzie agreed.
"There's Christian chicken sandwiches," I said. "Why not pizza?"
"Catholic food," Zoe quipped. "Eh? Because it's Italian, and no you know what, forget it."
The joke might not have been funny, but Lizzie and I found ourselves laughing at her verbal faceplant.
"Shit," Suzie muttered. "Ugh. Cass, I want to be clear that I have no problem with gay people—"
That was not a good way to start a sentence.
"—but I'm not comfortable around them because my whole family are bigots and did their best to make me one too. And that's on me, right? It's a 'me' problem, not something anyone else needs to respect or accommodate. And to be clear, I don't hate gay people or lesbians or anyone my parents want me to, but I always remember they want me to, and that always puts me on edge even though it really shouldn't."
That was an okay way to finish a sentence.
Suzie suffered a sudden bout of post-ramble shame and did her best to drown it in wine, while Zoe drew a sharp intake of breath through her teeth as though expecting an outburst. Lizzie knew me better than that and so settled in for an essay.
"I, uh," I began, stumbling over my words. "I… it's not my place to 'forgive you' or whatever, but I don't blame you for it. As long as you're there between your thoughts and actions, you're not doing anyone any harm, and that's the important thing."
"You can't change your reactions," Zoe said. "You only control your actions."
"I disagree, actually," I said. "You can change your reactions. There are a lot of gays and lesbians who were raised the same way and have to unlearn it."
"Wait, really?" Suzie asked. "That sounds awful!"
"It is," I agreed. "But honestly, I don't think you 'need' to change? Props to you if you want to, but I think not wanting to be a bigot is good enough for most situations as long as you don't, you know, let it all out after a couple drinks."
"Ouch," Lizzie said.
"I'd say you get catty when you drink," Zoe told me, "but you aren't drinking."
"I am consistently sarcastic," I said, "which will inevitably manifest as cattiness under the right conditions."
"Sorry," Suzie mumbled. "But, uh, to be honest? I don't have a filter when I'm not drinking, so I can't even blame the alcohol for that one."
"She has less filter than Lizzie," Zoe said.
"Hey!" Lizzie said. "I have plenty of filter! I just don't have a volume control."
"She's got you there," I told Zoe.
Chapter 118: Leisure Activities
"Have you given any more thought to where you want to go for Spring Break?" I asked Luke after dinner the following evening.
"Do we have to go somewhere?" he whined.
"No, but you will have to leave the apartment. Would you rather wander around town, or go somewhere you'll never have to deal with the people you meet again?"
Luke pouted. "When you put it like that…"
"Then where would you like to go?"
He shrugged, so I looked to Homura. "I have no preference," she said.
"No suggestions from anyone?"
"You are the one insisting we travel."
"Hey, it's winter in the southern hemisphere, right?" Luke asked. "Could we go skiing?"
"It's still spring, not summer," Homura said. "We don't have to go that far to ski."
"A ski vacation sounds fun," I said. "Though I suspect Luke just wants to bundle up."
"You don't know that," he whined. "Maybe I really like skiing!"
My teasing might have gone a little far; I didn't really care why he wanted to go skiing as long as he chose something.
"Sorry," I said. "Do you?"
Luke sighed. "I've never actually tried."
Or maybe I'd been right on the money.
"Do you want to?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Sure, I guess."
That was good enough for me. "Sounds good to me, then. Akemi?"
"No argument here," she said.
"Then it's settled," I declared. "We are going… skiing!"
———X==X==X———
Our Spring Break ski vacation went mostly without incident.
Mostly.
———X==X==X———
"Come on, Luke," I said as I knocked on his hotel room door. "Up and at 'em! Let's put that practice into… uh, practice?"
No response.
"You were the one who said you wanted to go skiing," I reminded him. "The lines are only gonna get longer."
"I'm coming!" he called back.
I waited.
"…eventually!"
———X==X==X———
"Ski classes?" Luke asked, giving the other teenagers in the room a suspicious look.
"Did you think you were just going to suddenly know how to ski the moment you put them on?"
"Well… no?"
"Do you want me to come with you?" I offered, pointing to a poster on the wall. "We could do a parent/child class—"
He practically shoved me out the door. "Nope! No, this sounds great, thanks, bye!"
———X==X==X———
I lay spread-eagle on the snow for a few seconds before Homura leaned into view, face silhouetted against the clear blue sky overhead.
"I thought you said you knew how to ski," she said.
"I did!"
"Ah. Past tense. I see."
"It's been a while, okay? Now stop gawking and help me up."
———X==X==X———
"How was the class?" I asked Luke over dinner.
He stopped shoving pasta into his face long enough to mutter, "It was fine."
"Just fine?" Homura asked.
"It was fun, I guess? I was getting real bored at the end. It's not that much different from ice-skating with, like, balance and stuff, so I'm learning faster than they're teaching."
"Ready to hit the slopes with us, then?" I asked.
"You bet!"
———X==X==X———
"Come on, Luke," I called through the door. "Once more unto the breach and all that! The earlier the better!"
"I don't want to move today," he whined.
"Why not? You said you had fun yesterday!"
"So-o-ore."
"Ah."
———X==X==X———
"You know," I said once the taxi dropped us off outside the bakery the following Saturday, "seeing that sign in this context makes me feel like it's mocking me."
"There is nothing mocking about it," Homura said. "This is, in fact, Home Sweet Home."
"I still don't see why we had to take a taxi at all," Luke complained as he shouldered his suitcase. "Why teleport airport to airport instead of just going straight here from the hotel?"
"It's part of the experience," I explained for what was probably the third or fourth time. "There's something about the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel—or home—that really lets the whole thing sink in. Vacation wouldn't be the same without it."
"Besides, airports are places of travel," Homura added as she picked up her bag. "Their nature makes them particularly suited for magical transportation."
"Really?" Luke asked.
"No, I made that up. Cassandra is just strange."
I huffed and hefted my own bag. "If you two cared about the specifics, you shouldn't have made me do all the planning myself."
"Don't worry," Homura replied. "We won't be making that mistake again."
———X==X==X———
Max caught me on my way out of the Warehouse gym the morning after we got back from vacation. I'd made a habit of using the front doors of anywhere I went when going from Jump to Warehouse and back—it just felt right compared to going from the middle of one building to the middle of another—so she'd been waiting for me on one of the chairs in the lobby.
"Hey, Cass." She waved. "Have a nice vacation?"
"Hi, Max. Yeah, we did. What're you up to?"
"Waiting for you, actually. I wanted to ask about your conversation with Tedd. You told him about the 'chain?"
I facepalmed. "I also told him not to tell anyone I told him."
"You know he hates keeping secrets—"
"I did not."
"Well, you do now?" Max shrugged. "It's not a problem, or I wouldn't've waited for you to get back. I was wondering 'why' and 'when'. You wanted to stay out of all the Moperville stuff, right?"
"That was the plan, but he and Grace drove all the way down to Strawfield over spring break to ask me about Zeke's disappearance."
"Ah." She sighed and put her hands on her hips. "Yeah."
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"Sorry," I said. "I know I could've just said nothing—"
"It's fine. Edward deduced—correctly—that everything you told Tedd was both unverifiable and unactionable, and thus not worth consideration. He did ask why I hadn't told him, but I said the same thing about unverifiability and that was that. Good thinking not naming names, by the way—it would've been messier if you'd told him we were part of Zeke's 'entourage' rather than just a couple recipients of the same tale."
"That's something, I guess." I sighed. "What about Tedd himself? Did spilling secrets do any good there?"
Max hesitated.
"I don't think so," she admitted. "I know some people say knowing is better than wondering, but I think Tedd was happier when he thought he could help, and Grace was happier when she had hope. If I thought they'd be happier knowing, I'd have told them myself."
"Oh."
He patted me on the shoulder consolingly. "Don't beat yourself up over it. You had good intentions."
"I keep hearing that," I muttered.
"From who?"
"Tess wasn't thrilled that I saved Myria."
"Oh," Max said. "I probably should've seen that coming."
"Mhm."
"She did credit you with 'good intentions', though."
"Yeah," I mumbled. "For whatever that's worth."
"Is she holding it against you?"
"No, nothing like that. It's just not a great record for me, is all."
The conversation died there, and we said our goodbyes. I opened the door back to the apartment, then closed it and opened the door normally into the town square. It was night in the Warehouse as well—which was more coincidence than anything else—but the artificial moonlight was strong enough to make the streetlights redundant as I headed towards the Library.
Talking about my run-in with Tedd and Grace had reminded me of the conversation I'd had with Luke shortly afterwards, and the question of whether I could get at any of the stuff I'd written back home. That was why I was going to the Library: it had, if I recalled correctly, every book ever written in every world the 'chain had visited. I wasn't sure if the amateur rambling of a backstory counted as a book, but I figured it couldn't hurt to check.
To that end, I headed over to the computer terminals tucked away in a corner near the door and searched 'Cassandra Rolins'. The results were a bunch of tie-in novels for my show, but the search tool helpfully provided a button labeled 'In-Universe Results Only', which I clicked. Now the top result was a book titled Cassandra Rolins: The Complete Biography, copyrighted 2068, which I was not going to touch with a ten-foot pole. I carefully avoided reading the description as I clicked Advanced and searched by author.
No results.
Wait, I hadn't been going by Cassandra when I'd written that backstory, had I? I entered my deadname and searched again.
Oh, lovely, the books I'd written and comb-bound in elementary school were here. The backstory I was looking for, however, was evidently not a book and thus absent. I was about to give up when I saw a link at the bottom of the search results window that read, "Can't find what you're looking for? Contact us!", so I clicked it.
"Hello, Miss Rolins," Management's voice sounded from the speakers. "What are you looking for?"
Of course it would be Management, what did I expect?
"Uh," I said, "I was wondering if the backstory I wrote for my D&D character a couple months before you picked me up would be in here."
A stack of papers far thicker than I'd expected thumped onto the desk next to the keyboard. "Anything else?"
"Can I have it in digital format?"
A thumbdrive landed on the pile. "Anything else?"
"Nope, that's it. Thanks!"
They didn't bother to say goodbye.
———X==X==X———
We were into April when Luke stuck his head into the living room one afternoon to ask if he could have some friends over.
"Absolutely," I replied, looking up from my book. "When, how many, and will they be staying for dinner?"
He was unprepared for my easy acceptance and faltered under the barrage of questions. "Uh, whenever we've got time, I guess, and, uh, two, and… I don't know, maybe?"
"Well, as long as you give me enough heads-up to tidy up the apartment and make extra food, you can invite your friends over whenever you want. Oh, uh, but one thing—"
I'm not sure what Luke was expecting, but from the way his face fell, it was obviously bad.
"—relax," I insisted. "I just want to know how I should refer to you while they're here."
"Oh." He let out a nervous laugh and ran a hand over his hair. "I was, uh, actually kind of planning to come out to them while they're here? So…"
When he didn't give me an answer, I offered, "I can just do my best to avoid referring to you at all until you get that done…?"
So that became the plan when Luke arrived home with two boys in tow a few days later.
"Welcome home," I said as the three kids reached the end of the hall. "Who're your friends?"
"This is Aaron and Kyle," Luke replied, introducing a stocky boy with glasses and a gangly one with curly hair, respectively. "Guys, this is Cassandra."
"You call your Mom by her first name?" Aaron asked. I gave him a disapproving stare; subjective age aside, I was pretty sure I didn't look old enough to have a teenage child.
"She's not my mom," Luke grumbled as he led the group out of the hall.
"Aunt?" Aaron guessed.
"Something like that." Luke slung his backpack onto the kitchen table with the customary thump, and the boys followed suit. I went into the kitchen and started slicing carrots and celery for dipping, keeping an ear out for trouble but generally trusting Luke to handle himself.
About ten minutes after I'd delivered snacks—store-bought pretzels, mixed nuts, and the aforementioned vegetables and dip—and returned to the couch, a burst of mocking laughter had me looking towards the table in concern. "That explains that!" Aaron had crowed before doubling over in laughter; from the confused and upset looks on Luke and Kyle's faces, respectively, it was at the latter's expense.
"What?" Luke asked.
"Don't," Kyle warned him.
Aaron was undeterred. "I was wondering why you were the only girl who doesn't make him clam up like a fish, and it's 'cause you're not one!"
Luke started laughing as well, which only made Kyle more upset. "I talk to girls!" Kyle yelled.
"Name one!"
Kyle looked at Luke, remembered he didn't count, then slugged Aaron in the shoulder. "Man, screw you guys. Dicks!" When he didn't stop after the second punch, Aaron started punching back, though his laughter interfered with his aim.
I brought the roughhousing to a stop with a pointed cough before someone spilled the ranch dressing. Kyle had the good manners to apologize. Aaron was still laughing.
After his guests settled down, Luke excused himself to change, returning not in a magically-granted 'male form' but just with different clothes, his binder on, and a bit of blue-hued makeup to suggest an approaching five-o'clock shadow. From the other boys' amazed reactions, he probably wouldn't have surprised them more if he'd just used the wand.
"So, do you like girls, then?" Kyle asked Luke.
"Dude," Aaron interjected.
"What? I'm just asking!"
"Do you like girls?" Luke shot back.
"I was just asking! Jeez!"
All in all, the excitement was quickly forgotten; by the time I served dinner, the boys had been talking about nothing but Dungeons and Dragons for more than two hours.
———X==X==X———
Maybe due to the experience of blending in as a guy over Spring Break, having some actual 'friends' rather than acquaintances, or some combination of the two, Luke had found the confidence to be a boy somewhere other than the apartment. I wasn't sure if he was out to everyone involved or trying his hand at 'stealth', but either way, he and Kyle were having dinner at Aaron's house today, leaving me free to get drinks with Lizzie, Suzie, and Zoe.
Mine were going to be non-alcoholic, obviously.
Our venue of choice was a sleepy little bar near the freeway side of town, a long, narrow space with the bar running down the length of one wall and booths set into the opposite wall. It smelled, unsurprisingly, like alcohol, though the cleaning agents were more distinct than the products on offer. It was also warm—or so I thought until I remembered that the last time I'd been in a hole-in-the-wall bar like this, the booths had been made out of literal ice.
"Cassie!"
Lizzie and Zoe had claimed the booth nearest the door, and the latter stood up to call me over when I walked in. She barely had to raise her voice to overpower the music—some classic rock song with the volume down at the edge of audibility—so the fact that she did raise her voice meant she was far too loud for such a tight space. Zoe flushed bright red and yell-whispered, "Sorry!" to the bartender and the two men sitting at the counter, who shrugged and went back to what they'd been doing without a second thought.
"It's just Cass," I said as I slipped into the booth next to Lizzie, who scooted in slightly to make room. "Hello, girls."
"Aw, come on," Zoe whined. "That doesn't fit the pattern!"
"I'd still rather be called Cass," I repeated. "'Cassie' reminds me too much of high school."
"You're no fun."
"Call the woman her name, Zo," Lizzie said, pronouncing the other woman's name 'Zoh' rather than 'Zo-ee'.
"Fiiine," Zoe whined. "Oh, hey, Suze!"
I wasn't surprised that glancing over my shoulder showed Suzie making her way to our booth. "Hey, girls," she said. "Hope I didn't keep you waiting! I would've left earlier, but my cat was on my lap."
"Fair," Lizzie said.
"Totally," I said.
"S'fine," Zoe said. "We're here to hang out and chat, so it's not like you're behind us on the drinking, even if you are late."
"I've only been here for two minutes, tops," I stage-whispered.
"Spoilsport."
"So, now that we're all settled in," Lizzie said. "Time to all get back up and grab some drinks!"
It was the work of a moment for the group of us to migrate to the empty bar and order three beers from the tap and a glass of water. Lizzie added an order of fried potatoes to the tab to buffer the alcohol, which I volunteered to pick up since I wasn't spending on drinks.
"Driving home?" Zoe asked me after we'd filed back into the booth, drinks in hand.
I shrugged. "Nah, I just don't drink."
"What, ever?" Suzie asked.
"Ever."
"You got a medication you can't mix with alcohol or something?" Zoe guessed.
"Nope. I just don't drink."
"Why not?"
"Personal choice," I said. "How are you three getting home?"
"Sharing a cab," Lizzie said. "We all live pretty close together."
"Where do you live, anyway?" Zoe asked me.
"You know where our shop is?" I asked.
"Yeah?"
"Upstairs."
"Huh," she said. "Living on top of your shop. That's some old fashioned shit, huh?"
"Is it?" Lizzie asked.
"Isn't it?" Zoe tilted her head. "I swear I got that idea from somewhere."
"What do you mean, 'personal choice'?" Suzie asked me.
"I… choose not to drink."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to get drunk?"
"One beer isn't going to get you drunk," Suzie insisted, brandishing her one beer.
I rolled my eyes. "Sure, but what's the point of developing a taste for alcohol if you never want to get drunk?"
Suzie inspected the bubbles in her glass like it could answer my question.
"I guess that makes sense," she concluded. "So you're telling me you never drank as a kid? Like, ever?"
"Nope."
"God," Zoe said. "I bet you were the preppiest fucking kid."
"Guilty as charged."
Beside me, Lizzie rubbed her chin and hummed as she gave me a searching look.
"What?"
"Trying to picture you as a teenager," she said.
"Keep trying. If I showed you a picture of me as a teen, you couldn't pick me out of a lineup in ten tries." What made it especially funny to me was that it was true of all three of my teenage periods: at home I'd been the wrong gender, Kasey was the wrong race, and Lina had wings.
Our food hit the bar at that point, and I excused myself to bring it back to our table. It wasn't quite what I'd expected from the phrase 'fried potatoes'.
"Isn't battering potatoes kind of double-dipping on the starch?" I asked as I settled back into my seat.
"It's not batter," Lizzie said, holding up the potato she'd grabbed before I'd even set the plate down. "It's cheese."
"Oh. Nice." Hard to argue with cheese.
I broke one of the potatoes in half to make sure I wasn't about to burn my tongue off, then popped a piece into my mouth. It tasted like fat, salt, and cholesterol, and I immediately reached for another.
"Isn't deep-frying cheese kind of double-dipping on the fat?" Zoe asked, watching the three of us enjoy the potatoes with undisguised horror. "How the hell do you girls stay so thin?"
"Magic," I said.
"Exercise," Lizzie said.
"Stress," Suzie said.
"Aw, what're you stressed about, Suzie?" Zoe asked.
Suzie rolled her eyes and took a long pull from her beer. "We have a new manager and I swear to god this guy has zero clue what his job actually is."
"Flaky or incompetent?" Lizzie asked.
"Flaky, mostly, and just completely oblivious. Wouldn't notice smoke if he was on fire."
"Keep him out of the kitchen, then," Zoe said.
Suzie growled. "That would be funny if it wasn't an actual problem!"
"Wait," I said. "He actually set himself on fire?"
"No, him being in the kitchen. The place doesn't have room for a micromanager, figuratively or literally."
"You still at the Olive Garden?" Lizzie asked.
"No, Ino's."
"Oh, yeah, that kitchen is tiny even by restaurant standards."
Zoe hefted her glass for our attention. "Hey, Lizzie," she said. "You're working at Home Sweet Home, right? Doesn't that make Cass your manager?"
"Yes?" Lizzie replied, unsure why that was in question.
"Oh, lord," Zoe moaned. "I'm drinking with a manager."
"Shame on all of you," I agree. "I'm the only one here who's not. Uh—" I stopped my hand above the last fried potato, intending to ask before claiming it, only for Lizzie to snatch it out from under me.
"Mine!" she declared, triumphant.
"I was gonna ask!"
"Well, it's mine."
"Yes, I know." I looked around for a napkin to wipe the grease off my fingers, found none, and briefly considered magicking it away before remembering I could just ask, "Anyone have napkins in their purse?"
"Gotcha covered," Zoe said, presenting me with a single-wrapped wet-wipe.
"Thanks."
Suzie rapped a knuckle on the table. "Enough about shitty managers."
"Hey—"
"Present company excepted."
"Hey—"
"I want to hear about you," she declared, pointing a finger across the table at Lizzie.
"You want me to badmouth my manager while she's in elbow range?" Lizzie asked. "What do you have against my ribcage, woman?"
"Your boyfriend, you nut. You've been dating for three months now. How's it going?"
"Good!" Lizzie replied. "We had a rough start—"
"Details," Suzie interrupted.
"No."
"He asked her out while she was working," I chimed in.
"Caaass," Lizzie whined.
"Whaaat?" I whined back. "It's not like that reflects on you."
"The fact that I said 'yes' does!"
"Nah," Zoe said. "You get to say whatever you want. Like, 'fuck off, you twat.' I like that one."
Lizzie scoffed. "If any of us said that to a customer, we'd be out of a job so fast we'd get a speeding ticket on the way out."
Zoe finished a long pull from her beer and toasted her glass my way. "You think Cass would fire herself?"
"She wouldn't say that in the first place."
"I'd absolutely say that," I protested. "I'd just say it so politely they wouldn't notice."
"That's cheating," Lizzie said. "It doesn't count as 'saying' it if they don't hear it."
"Stop changing the subject," Suzie insisted. "Lizzie. Deets."
Lizzie threw up her hands in theatrical defeat before taking up her drink once more. "Fine. We started with a nice, simple coffee date—"
"Roasters?" Zoe guessed.
"No, Strawfield Coffee house. Near the Library?"
"That tiny place?" Suzie asked.
Lizzie nodded. "Yeah. We talked—"
"Did you explain why he shouldn't have asked you out while you were working?" Zoe interrupted again.
"Yes, thank you Zoe. He was apologetic, which is good, but people should just know this, you know? Schools need an etiquette class or something, swear to God."
"Think about who'd be setting the curriculum, though," I said. "Clueless men are bad, but men operating on social mores fifty years out of date aren't gonna be much of an improvement."
"Oof," Zoe said, and drank deep of her beer.
"Oof," Lizzie agreed, clinking her glass with mine and following suit.
"Well, you're still dating," Suzie said. "Or I think you're still dating?"
"Still dating, yeah."
"So how's that going?"
Lizzie appeared completely unaware of the lazy smile that spread across her face as she thought.
"It's good," she said. "He's sweet, but he doesn't try too hard. He makes a room more comfortable just by being in it. He—"
"He's just as much of a mess as she is," Zoe stage-whispered.
"Zoe!" Lizzie whined. "Why would you say something so hurtful, and yet so true?"
Zoe tilted her glass towards the other woman, grinning like a cat. "Because I'm your friend, of course!"
"Friend?" Lizzie repeated. "You are an ass is what you are. Cass, tell her she's an ass."
"What?" I asked. "No."
"Traitor!"
Zoe's smile went from 'cat' to 'shark'. "Turns out the price of loyalty was a single wet-wipe."
"Cheap," Lizzie grumbled.
I pouted. "Hey, I really hate having grime on my fingers, okay?"
"Doesn't that make baking kind of hard?" Suzie asked.
"I'd say it makes it 'less fun', at worst."
"But will your hands ever be clean after such treachery?" Lizzie asked me.
"Yes?" I waggled my fingers at her. "That's what the wet-wipe was for. Gets the spots right out."
"Spots?" Suzie asked.
"Macbeth? 'Out, damned spot'?"
"Ach, nerd."
Zoe polished off the last of her beer with a sigh of relish. "Anything else you want to share, Lizzie?"
"I dunno." Lizzie shrugged, one hand drawing circles on the tabletop. "I'm having a good time. We mesh well together."
Suzie waited until Lizzie took another drink to ask, "How's the sex?" Lizzie, alas, was made of sterner stuff, and merely rolled her eyes rather than giving Suzie the spit-take she expected.
"What do you want," she asked, "a play-by-play?"
"Please no," I piped up.
"Empty threat, Cass." Lizzie downed the last of her beer and thumped the glass on the table in toast. "It's good. He cuddles well."
"Aw, damn," Suzie muttered. "Now I'm jealous."
"What happened to that guy you were seeing?" Zoe asked her. "He seemed nice. Uh… Tyler?"
"Taylor," Suzie corrected. "And he is nice, but there's no spark. None. Zero. Less than zero." She planted both elbows on the table and pressed the heels of her palms together into a cup for her chin. "I like him, but I don't love him, and the only reason we're still together is that I don't want to be alone. Dating past forty is awful."
"Oh, honey," Lizzie said.
"No, stop, none of that," Zoe scolded them. "You two aren't drunk enough to go all sad drunk on us."
"We can fix that," Lizzie replied, then poked me in the ribs. "Scoot, Cass."
I scooted, and the four of us headed back to the bar once more. Suzie switched to wine, Lizzie stuck with beer, and Zoe quit drinking and ordered a coke. I switched from lemonade to pineapple juice—the juice that digests you!
"It does what?" Suzie asked.
"Just a joke," I reassured her. "You ever try to make pineapple jello?"
"No?"
"Well, don't. It won't work. There's an enzyme in pineapple juice that digests gelatin."
"Ew. I didn't need to know that, Cass."
I decided to be magnanimous and change the subject. "This place seems quiet."
"We picked a quiet time on purpose," Zoe said. "As quiet as 'happy hour' gets, anyway."
"Tuesdays are the quietest," the bartender agreed as he handed Lizzie her next beer. "Fridays are more lively."
I raised an eyebrow. "How lively is 'lively'?"
"Busy enough to run me ragged, not quite busy enough to hire more help."
"So it goes," Zoe said sagely.
"I am such a stereotype," Suzie mourned as she accepted her drink in turn. "Another spinster drowning her sorrows in wine."
"More like whine," Lizzie said.
"That's what I—oh. Clever… not."
"Two drinks isn't 'drowning your sorrows'," Zoe said. "It's barely even dampening them."
We were about to head back to our table when one of the two men drinking at the bar called out, "Say, don't you work at the bakery on Main Street?"
"We do," I said, indicated Lizzie and myself.
"I do," Lizzie corrected me. "She owns the place."
"And works there!"
The man laughed and toasted me with his beer—bottled, rather than from the tap like Lizzie's. "Oh, so it's your fault my wife threw out the coffee machine?"
"Uh…"
He chuckled self-consciously at my confusion. "Sorry, just a joke. We used to be a coffee household, but now it's tea, tea, tea, tea, all day."
"Ohhh," I said. "I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not."
"Oh, it's no skin off my nose. Just wanted to let you know you got a couple caffeine converts."
"Next thing you know you'll be calling everyone 'chap' and arguing about cricket," the bartender said.
"Britain called and it wants its colonies back," the other customer joked, which was definitely absurd humor and in no way a stroke of cosmic resonance with my not-future.
We left the men to their drinks (and roasting our neighbors across the pond) and congregated once more around our booth.
"What's the rudest you've ever been to a customer, Cass?" Zoe asked.
I made a show of thinking about it before asking Lizzie, "Does Andrew count?"
"Caaass," Lizzie whined. "What did you do to my boyfriend?"
"A, he wasn't your boyfriend yet. B, he wanted a 'second opinion' on your kicking him out that morning, so I gave him a free cookie and informed him that the shop was a bakery and not a couples councilor's office."
All three women laughed long and easily at that, though Lizzie kept trying to glare at me despite her laughter. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"It never came up?"
"Was he buying something at the time?" Zoe asked.
"Uh… no?"
"Then it doesn't count. Tell us another!"
I laughed and obliged. "Okay. So, one day, this woman comes in and wants a coffee—"
"From a bakery?" Suzie asked.
"Yes, from a bakery. She wants coffee. I tell her to go to Roaster's. She tells me I'm being rude and wants to talk to a manager."
"Oh my God," Zoe squealed. "You got to do the 'I am the manager' thing! That's the dream!"
"I did! But she doubles down and says, very slowly and clearly like I'm hard of hearing, that she wants to speak to my boss."
"And you did it again?" she asked, giggling at the idea.
I started laughing as well. "I could've, but I decided to be more obnoxious."
"Yes."
"How?" Lizzie asked.
"I went and got Akemi. And so the lady starts complaining about how rude I am for not serving her the coffee she wants despite, you know, there not being a coffee machine in the shop because I hate the smell—oh, I told her that, that's what set this all off. In her mind, a bakery needs to serve coffee and I was derelict of my duty by letting my personal dislike of coffee interfere with that. So she tries to tell Akemi that I've been a terrible service-person and Akemi, God bless her, listens and nods and regretfully informs her that she can't fire me because the owner has final say in hiring and firing workers."
"Oh my God," Zoe squeaked. "Absolute ten-of-ten quick thinking."
"So she says—"
"Then I want to speak to the owner!" all four of us chorused.
"And Akemi just points at me, and I ask—"
"Can I help you?" we chorused again before bursting into laughter.
"Fuuuck," Zoe gasped. "I would treasure that memory for the rest of my life!"
"When was this?" Lizzie demanded.
"About five years ago. Maybe a little less."
"Back when you two were running the shop alone, then?"
I nodded.
"Good," Lizzie said. "I'd have been really annoyed if this had happened after you hired me and never saw fit to share!"
"Same," Zoe agreed.
"You don't even work there!"
"I meant I would feel the same if I did, obviously!"
"Hey, Cass," Suzie said. "Since you brought her up, I have to ask: are you and Akemi, like, biological sisters? Because you look nothing alike."
"Step-sisters," I answered. "Our parents married when we were three."
"Your mom to her dad?" Zoe guessed. "Err, just based on your name…"
"Yeah, my mom to her dad. That's why my surname is Japanese."
"Gotcha."
Lizzie finished a long drink from her beer with a gasp. "Okay!" she announced. "Since last drink was all about interrogating my love life, it's you all's turn. Zoe, how's Frank?"
"He's good," Zoe replied. "Mostly. A little bent out of shape because his bosses passed him over for promotion again. He really wants to let me quit my job but we can't put Liv through college on his current salary."
"Isn't Liv, like, eight?" Lizzie asked.
"Yeah, so imagine how much college will cost in ten years and budget for that."
"Ouch."
"What's your husband do?" I asked her.
"Marketing."
"Ah."
"Who's looking after the little terror, anyway?" Lizzie asked.
Zoe grinned. "My sister's kid gets four bucks an hour to watch her watch TV."
"Nice."
There was a moment of silence as we all chose to drink at the same time.
"We've already covered my love life," Suzie said. "Or lack of love life. What's up with you, Cass? Another single woman seeking good man?"
I huffed and sipped my juice. "Yes to single, no to 'seeking good man'."
"Cass is a strong independent woman who don't need no man," Lizzie said. "Besides, she owns a store."
I shot Lizzie a look of betrayal. "Are you asserting that I'm married to my job?"
"I wasn't, but I am now."
"Are you, you know, not interested in dating?" Suzie asked. "As a 'thing'?"
"I'm not asexual or aromantic, no," I said. "I'm just not interested in dating men."
"Oh."
Zoe chuckled. "I'm not surprised, but mostly because I always thought you and Akemi were married and the sisters thing was a cover."
"You what?" Suzie gasped.
I laughed. "No, we are definitely sisters."
"Age three, you said?" Zoe asked. "You probably can't even remember not having her around."
"Yeah." Which wasn't exactly true, because I'd lived into my thirties before ever having met her, but was also totally true because Emily and Kasey were fraternal twins and it's hard to be closer to someone than that.
"Anyway," Zoe said. "Not surprised one bit. Oh, I bet you want to punch something every time you walk past Slice of Heaven."
"Can't believe there's a market for Christian pizza," Lizzie agreed.
"There's Christian chicken sandwiches," I said. "Why not pizza?"
"Catholic food," Zoe quipped. "Eh? Because it's Italian, and no you know what, forget it."
The joke might not have been funny, but Lizzie and I found ourselves laughing at her verbal faceplant.
"Shit," Suzie muttered. "Ugh. Cass, I want to be clear that I have no problem with gay people—"
That was not a good way to start a sentence.
"—but I'm not comfortable around them because my whole family are bigots and did their best to make me one too. And that's on me, right? It's a 'me' problem, not something anyone else needs to respect or accommodate. And to be clear, I don't hate gay people or lesbians or anyone my parents want me to, but I always remember they want me to, and that always puts me on edge even though it really shouldn't."
That was an okay way to finish a sentence.
Suzie suffered a sudden bout of post-ramble shame and did her best to drown it in wine, while Zoe drew a sharp intake of breath through her teeth as though expecting an outburst. Lizzie knew me better than that and so settled in for an essay.
"I, uh," I began, stumbling over my words. "I… it's not my place to 'forgive you' or whatever, but I don't blame you for it. As long as you're there between your thoughts and actions, you're not doing anyone any harm, and that's the important thing."
"You can't change your reactions," Zoe said. "You only control your actions."
"I disagree, actually," I said. "You can change your reactions. There are a lot of gays and lesbians who were raised the same way and have to unlearn it."
"Wait, really?" Suzie asked. "That sounds awful!"
"It is," I agreed. "But honestly, I don't think you 'need' to change? Props to you if you want to, but I think not wanting to be a bigot is good enough for most situations as long as you don't, you know, let it all out after a couple drinks."
"Ouch," Lizzie said.
"I'd say you get catty when you drink," Zoe told me, "but you aren't drinking."
"I am consistently sarcastic," I said, "which will inevitably manifest as cattiness under the right conditions."
"Sorry," Suzie mumbled. "But, uh, to be honest? I don't have a filter when I'm not drinking, so I can't even blame the alcohol for that one."
"She has less filter than Lizzie," Zoe said.
"Hey!" Lizzie said. "I have plenty of filter! I just don't have a volume control."
"She's got you there," I told Zoe.
———X==X==X———
Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
AN: Cassandra has developed some very strange ideas about modern (in)conveniences.
- Location
- England
You can use pineapple in jello, but it has to be canned pineapple. Some would say that is punishment enough. Canned pineapple is heated which destroys the enzyme in question.
BagFullOfLizards
Some bag, mostly lizards
- Location
- A bag
This chapter was a lot of fun. I love the way you write conversations.
Code Geass?
Hell yeah, I'm down to reading about a horrible person kick podiums.
ExNihilo
SPACE!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In this case, a reference to the world Cass comes from (and I guess we're in now?) Featuring an Angelo-American Fascist Union taking over the United States causing a second American civil war, before alt-Cass helps defeat them. I forget if it's been named, but Cass has avoided watching it, so we don't know much about it.
dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Revolution Drive. Pretty good show, got eight seasons. Solid humor and thankfully little fan service. There was a so-so tie in video game, but more impressively, fans made a total conversion mod for Battletech and actually got some of the official voice actors to record lines for it.
Last edited:
Chapter 119: Coming Out
Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
AN: Beta-read by Carbohydratos, Did I?, Gaia, Linedoffice, Zephyrosis, and Mizu.
And then it was summer, or nearly so.
"Ugh," Luke groaned as he dropped his backpack onto the kitchen table. "I can't wait for school to be over."
I looked up from the potatoes I was peeling and sniped, "Apparently."
He paled, his face assuming what I could only describe as a 'hand in the cookie jar' expression.
"Uh oh."
"Yes, 'uh oh'. I got a call from the school today." I rinsed my hands and put them on my hips. "You've been skipping class. Again."
At least he had the sense to look guilty.
"Only a little?"
"You said it was a one-time thing, Luke. Now I hear you've skipped three out of four Physics periods this week."
"So what?" Luke folded his arms and returned my frown with a scowl of his own. "It's right before lunch, and it's not like we obey physics in this house anyway!"
"And we don't speak with perfect grammar, either, but that doesn't mean you get to skip English class."
"Yeah, but—"
He stopped as my argument registered.
"Wait, are you saying I need to know the laws of physics so I know when it's okay to break them?"
"Uh." I really hadn't thought that one through. "Yeah, I guess that is what I said, isn't it?"
"I think so."
I sighed. "I suppose if nothing else, knowing the laws of physics would let you know when magic is breaking them. It doesn't really matter, though. I can't let you keep skipping class."
Luke rolled his eyes and took his seat. "What happens if I don't?"
"What do you want me to say, Luke? That I'm going to ground you? Dock your allowance? I'm not going to threaten you with an 'or else' because that makes it a choice, and I know you are stubborn enough to take the 'else' if you see fit."
"You think I'm going to be more discouraged by a lack of consequences?"
I glowered. "I'll find some if I have to."
"Like what? Gonna take away my 'boy privileges'?"
"Oh, Luke, no. You know me better than that! I will never mess with you that way. Ever." Just the thought of using bodily autonomy as leverage made me shudder.
Luke's bluster faltered when I didn't react as expected, and he slumped down his chair in a sulk.
"Look," I said as I walked over to pat him on the shoulder, "I get that school is terrible for a dozen different reasons, but it's not something I can let you just blow off."
Luke harrumphed.
What would be helpful here? On the one hand, I'd probably hated high school for different reasons than Luke did, so I wasn't sure how well I could claim to understand his feelings. On the other, I could definitely empathize with the desire to skip class, for all that I'd been too 'preppy', as Zoe would say, to act on it. Even when my mom offered to call me out sick if the stress ever got to be just too much, I couldn't remember having ever taken her up on that.
It wasn't a bad idea, though.
"How about this," I said. "If you ever really, really need a day off, tell me, and I'll call you out sick."
Luke gave me a skeptical look. "What, really? Weren't you just saying I absolutely, definitely needed to go to class?"
I gave him a conspiratorial smile in return. "No, I said you need to stop 'skipping' class."
"Because this way I won't get punished?" he guessed. "Or so you can tell me off for shirking too often?"
"Yes."
Luke rolled his eyes. "Great."
"Better than getting caught, right?"
"Hmph."
I gave him another pat on the shoulder, and was about to head back to the kitchen when he muttered, "But I'd still have to go back to school the next day like this."
Ah.
I pulled out a chair and sat down next to him.
"The 'no dysphoria' spell isn't enough, huh?" I asked.
"No."
I kept quiet, letting him lead the conversation. Luke took a moment to think—or just sulk—then blew out a heavy sigh and explained, "Pretending I'm a girl doesn't hurt like it used to, but the fact that I am pretending does. Does that make sense?"
"It's not the action that's painful, it's the necessity?"
"Yeah. Exactly."
"That makes a lot of sense," I told him.
Luke hm'd, which seemed to put the ball in my court.
"You know you don't have to go to school looking like that, right?" I said as gently as I could. "We can figure something out."
"Like what?"
"If coming out is too scary, you can go stealth in another school. Do you want to go to school in Apoapolis again?"
"No, I get it. It's too far."
"It's not too far at all. We'd have to wake up earlier, that's all. I'd have time before my shift—"
"No, I don't… I told you, I don't want to change schools again." Luke groaned and rested his head on his arms. "Would it be too fast if I just showed up as a guy next fall?"
"'Too fast' how?"
"Like, faster than possible for non-magical transition."
I rubbed my chin. "I mean, it would be a bit fast, but you could always claim you started earlier and just hid the signs. Besides, who would call you on it?"
"Ha. Yeah. Who'd even know?" He shifted himself around into a more comfortable slump. "Though I'd have to come out to the whole town…"
"It's either that, changing schools, or waiting until you move away to college."
"All those options suck."
I could relate.
"You might be able to test out of school," I said, "but I'm not sure how that affects your college prospects. You'd probably have to go to community college for a couple years…"
Luke sat up with a start, energy rushing back. "Could I really?"
"It's a possibility. We'd need find you a tutor to prep for the test, and I'd want you to find an activity outside the house so you don't become a shut-in—it's a hard habit to break."
From the way he wilted, that last bit was a deal-breaker. "But then I'd still have to go out as a girl!" he whined.
"You wouldn't have to go out as a girl—"
"I would if I don't want to run into extremely awkward situations with people recognizing me," Luke insisted. "This stupid town is just small enough that I can't avoid people I know. And even if they don't recognize me, it'll still be weird."
I knew the mood he was in well: one where all he could see were problems and no solution would be good enough. I'd offered the alternatives I could think of; it was up to him, once he was in a better headspace, to decide if any of them would be an improvement.
Conversation effectively over, I got up and went back to preparing dinner, only to drop the potato into the sink the moment the peeler bit into the skin. Tension had made me clumsy, and I had to step back and relax before I could go back to cooking with any sense of competence.
Our little talk had left me feeling as trapped as Luke no doubt did; there were no easy answers when a sizable part of society didn't want you to exist.
Neither of us spoke until I was halfway done with the 'slicing' step of mashed potato preparation.
"Do you think they'd make a scene if I just showed up as a guy next fall?" Luke asked.
I stopped sliding the potato against the mandoline so I could address him with my full attention.
"If that's what you want to do, I am fully prepared to browbeat anyone and everyone who makes an issue of it," I promised. "You have my word."
"Then…" He took a deep breath. "I think I just want to make the change over the summer."
"By 'the change', you mean to your, ah, 'public' gender?"
Luke snorted. "That's one way to put it."
"Well, if that's what you want, I'll support you. You don't have to commit to it now—"
"I know," he interrupted, "but it's easier to commit now than at the end of summer."
"If it helps you psych yourself up, that's fine, but you can always reconsider."
"Don't tempt me."
I returned to my slicing, and a moment later, Luke hauled himself to his feet with a groan. "Three more weeks."
"Three more weeks," I agreed. "And you'll be there for every class unless I've called you out. Right?"
"Shaddup."
"Luke," I scolded him, "I know you may not see me as a parent, but I am your acting guardian and I will not be told to 'shut up', especially not when I tell you to attend class like you should be doing anyway."
"Sorry," he said. "And yeah, fine, I'll go."
"Every day."
"Every freakin' day, yes, sheesh."
"Good." I gave him a knowing smile. "I'll hold you to that."
And if that sounded a little like a threat, well, maybe it was.
"Anything you want to do this summer?" I asked Luke on the cusp of said summer two and a half weeks later.
He didn't look up from his study material. "I dunno."
"What'd you do last year?"
"Got a summer job."
"Really?"
Now Luke looked up at me across the table. "Why are you surprised?" he whined.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I guess I just figured your Dad wouldn't let you."
"He encouraged it—but yeah, getting out of the house was like half the reason I got a job at all."
"I'd've done the same in your place."
He grabbed his graphing calculator and checked his work, then flipped to the next chapter to practice another set of problems.
"Your birthday's coming up, too," I said. "End of summer, right?"
"Bleh."
"Bleh?"
"Bleh," Luke repeated.
"Do you not want to celebrate?"
"No, it's the 'end of summer' bit."
"Ah." I could understand that. "Do you want to have a birthday party?"
He shrugged and gave the apartment a speculative glance, as though struggling to imagine it as the site of a party. "I guess?"
"We could throw your party in the shop downstairs if you want."
"When it's open?"
"I was thinking 'on a Sunday', if you don't mind it not being on the same day."
"No, that makes sense," he agreed. "Kind of a big space for three people, though."
"Are you not inviting your friends, or not inviting me?"
"Six people, then. Or seven, if Miss Akemi comes too."
"What about Megan and her group?" I asked. "They're your friends too, right?"
Luke hummed in thought. "I guess they're all right. I'll be out to everyone soon enough, so I might as well tell them."
"It was just a suggestion—"
"No, no," he cut off my attempt to walk back my words. "It's a good idea. They put up with me being a moody bitch for a whole year, and I appreciate that."
I gave his self-deprecation a polite chuckle.
"Do you want to tell them ahead of time?" I asked.
"About me? Yeah. No reason to surprise them that day." Luke cleared his throat to emphasize the changing subject. "Uh, back to summer jobs: you think I could work at the bakery?"
I couldn't think of any deal-breaking issues. "Probably. Any particular reason you'd want to work here?"
"'Cause I could do it like this." Luke tapped his (flat) chest. "Anywhere else, they'd need to see my ID and stuff, right? And I know a bunch of places 'round here are kinda jerks about LGBT rights and stuff. But if I work for you, I could work like this, right?"
"Yeah, of course," I agreed. "What were you thinking?"
"Like, I could clean up and stuff? Run stuff from the kitchen to the store. Or help Akemi bake, whatever."
"She doesn't trust me to help her bake."
He wilted and muttered, "It was just a suggestion."
"Sorry!" I said. "That wasn't a jab at you, it was a joke about her perfectionism."
"Oh. Okay."
Luke paused.
"So…?"
"I have no objection," I said, "but you'll have to ask her, too."
"Oh." He suddenly looked a lot less eager. "Uh, no offense, but your sister's a little scary. Maybe you could, you know…"
"Hey, it was your idea."
"Aw, man."
Luke went back to work as I thought through the practicalities. We paid out almost all our profit in wages, so adding a new employee would normally take either hours or wages from somewhere else. For a summer job, we could probably get away with paying him from the cut that went into the general 'rainy day' fund if he was willing to take a reduced wage. I could also split my hours with him and balance the books that way, though that made the most sense if he was only working during my shifts. A little nepotistic subcontracting never hurt anyone, right?
"Okay," Luke said, interrupting my (mostly concluded) train of thought. "I think I'm good for the math final tomorrow. Then again, I'm a guy right now, so…"
"Oh, don't start with that," I chided him. "All that 'girls are bad at math' crap is nonsense."
"I know. Sorry."
"No, it's fine. I'm just prickly about gender stereotypes."
"Valid." He shut the math textbook and pushed it towards the center of the table with a sigh. "Only two finals left."
"Good luck."
"I'm not gonna rely on luck."
"'Attaboy."
After consulting with Homura, we decided 'Plan A' would be to call an Employee meeting and ask if anyone objected to taking on an extra employee. I introduced Luke, at his urging, as a 'friend's' kid who wanted a summer job, and he made a good enough impression that the Home Sweet Home staff gave their unanimous approval. Thus, the answer to 'How do we pay Luke?' was 'Normally', which made things nice and easy.
That wasn't our only summer activity, of course; Luke would soon be entering his senior year of high school, which made this the summer of college tours. Homura and I traded off 'escorting' him on various campus tours, expedited by magical transportation there and back. I did not insist on teleporting airport to airport, to Luke's relief.
We weren't vacationing, after all.
"What did you study in college, anyway?" Luke asked me while we waited for our tour group at Dartmouth to assemble.
The question drew a sigh from yours truly. "I never got through my GE's."
"Really?"
I shrugged. "In hindsight, it was inevitable; I was kind of a wreck at that point in my life, mentally speaking."
"Oh." Luke spent a moment trying to decide whether he ought to apologize for asking, but in the end he realized the question hadn't bothered me overmuch.
"Do you know what you want to study?" I asked.
He shrugged. "No idea. I'm probably gonna just choose my favorite campus and figure it out later."
Said 'favorite campus' turned out to be Johns Hopkins University. It had been one of Homura's turns at chauffeuring, so I had to experience the tour vicariously through Luke's enthusiastic description that evening.
"It's not going to be easy to get in," Homura warned him. "The admission rate is around ten percent."
"I figured you'd care more about the money," Luke said.
"Money isn't a problem."
He looked like he wanted to ask about that, but decided not to pry. "I have good grades," he said instead. "And I test really well, so I'll have no problem on the SATs either."
"You'll have to keep those good grades," Homura observed.
"I know! Don't worry, I've got this."
"No more skipping physics?" I asked.
Luke pouted at me. "I stopped when you told me to, yeah?"
"All I know for certain is that you stopped getting caught."
The old Home Sweet Home group came back for summer, of course, but they didn't drop by the shop all at once until Luke's birthday party in early August. That time, they even all arrived at once because they were carpooling in a minivan Natalie had probably borrowed from one of her innumerable extended family.
"Hello, everyone!" I called as I let them into the shuttered shop. "It's been a long time!"
The group chorused agreement. They looked more or less the same as the last time I'd seen them, just slightly older; they'd barely even changed hairstyles.
"Is that cake for us?" Ashley asked, already locked onto the cake sitting on one of the tables.
"Only if the birthday boy feels like sharing," I replied. "Luke! Your sister and friends are here!"
Luke looked up from his phone and visibly considered fleeing to the backroom, which was not the reaction I'd expected.
"Luke?"
He grimaced and approached the group cautiously, clearly unsure of how people would react. In the end, he'd overestimated people's ability to recognize him; only Megan had any idea who he was.
"Luke! You look great!" She hurried over to give him a hug, adding, "Happy birthday!" as she did.
The others did a double-take.
"Wait," Ashley declared. "Wait. Holy crap, really? Wow. Nice glow-up, dude."
"Wow," Natalie agreed. "Uh, congratulations?"
"Congratulations," Kaitlyn echoed.
Mike was once again out in the cold; Nick had to lean over and whisper in his ear.
"Does this count as you outing him?" Ashley asked me. "Because if so: not cool."
"When I asked him last week," I grumbled, shooting an accusing look at the man in question, "he said he'd already told you."
"I was gonna!" Luke insisted. "But, uh, you know, I never figured out a good way to bring it up, 'cause we don't really talk that much and the only things you girls post are obscure memes…"
"You could've asked me to do it," Megan said. "Or to break the ice, or something."
"You could've just admitted you hadn't gotten around to it," I added. "We could've done it now—properly, I mean, not with me acting like everyone already knew. Which I'm sorry about—"
"Oh, shut up," Luke grumbled. "It's fine. Whatever. Don't make a big deal out of it."
"Okay."
He paused.
"Not going to tell me off for telling you to shut up?" he asked.
"Not this time. Don't do it again."
"Congratulations," Nick said, bringing us back on track.
"Congratulations," Chloe agreed. "And Megan's right. You look great!"
"Thanks," Luke said. "But, uh, I don't really want congratulations? Can we just, like, pretend you already knew and move on?"
The group was happy to agree. Megan gave him another quick hug, then looked up at Luke and added, "It's weird that I'm shorter than you now."
"It's great."
Ashley laughed and poked Megan in the shoulder. "You know," she said, "even with the whole 'I forgot to come out to people' thing, I think this is still the most excited he's ever been to see us."
The siblings grumbled, "Be quiet, Ash," in perfect sync.
The group spent the time before Luke's friends arrived talking about their plans for the upcoming year.
"—and we're moving in together next month," Chloe finished. Kaitlyn grinned and scooted her chair close enough to throw an arm around her girlfriend.
"Now it's your turn to get congratulations," Luke said, shooting them a thumbs-up. "Do you parents know?"
Kaitlyn laughed. "Hard for them not to, considering they're on the lease."
"That's not what I meant. I was wondering if they knew you were, like, together."
"Of course they know."
"And they're okay with that?" Mike asked. "Like, living together?"
"Yeah. We've been together for, like, two years—"
"Twenty-two months," Chloe cut in.
"Thanks, hon. Point is, we're together, we're serious, and we're gonna stay that way."
The pair received another round of congratulations.
"You guys decide on majors yet?" Kaitlyn asked, moving the conversation away from herself.
"Civil engineering," Mike said.
"No way," Natalie said. "That's what I'm doing!"
"I thought you were studying math."
"I was, but now I'm thinking CE with a minor in math."
"Isn't CE Computer Engineering?" Ashley asked.
"Whatever. What are you doing, Ash?"
"Medicine."
"No way," half the table gasped.
"You want to be a doctor?" Mike asked. "You?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded. "You think I'm dumb?"
"No, I think you're mean."
"Only when I want to be!"
"Which is always?"
Ashley pouted and gave him the cold shoulder.
"What about you, Nick?" Natalie asked the quiet member of her group.
"Astrophysics," Nick said.
The table mulled that over.
"Yeah," Mike decided, "that sounds right."
"Sure."
"Totally."
"Right up his alley."
"It's not rocket science—ow!" Ashley rubbed her arm where Chloe'd punched her. "Jeez."
"I'm still studying magic," Megan said. "I hope it's a real major by the time I graduate."
"What if it's not?" Luke asked.
"Then I'll graduate with no major. It'll look weird on paper, but I've cleared it with the school. I'm probably going to be working in a magic-related field anyway, so whoever hires me will know what's up."
"Where are you going to apply, dude?" Mike asked Luke.
"I think Johns Hopkins is my first choice, but I'm gonna need some safety schools. I wouldn't mind going to MVU with Meg, but I'd rather be farther away."
"How have you been doing?" Megan asked her brother. "Like, generally?"
"I've been doing okay."
"Are you out? Cassandra said you were working, like, you know…"
"Like this, yeah," Luke agreed. "But no one recognizes me."
"We did," Ashley said.
"No we didn't," Chloe said.
"I did."
"Liar."
Luke ignored them and continued, "So, uh, yeah. I've been practicing being like this in public, but I haven't come out out."
"Stealth," Kaitlyn said.
"Yeah. But…" He paused for effect. "I'm gonna be going to school like this next year."
There was a general murmur of surprised approval at his announcement.
"How were you going to school last year, then?" Ashley asked.
"Looking like I used to?"
"You grew, like, six inches."
"Magic," Megan said.
"Ah," Ashley said. "So your friends know about magic too?"
Luke blinked, then turned to me in alarm. I shrugged. "It's fine. Unless you flat out tell them it's magic, they'll probably just assume you're wearing platform shoes."
"People encounter weird stuff every day," Megan agreed. "Ninety-nine percent of it has a perfectly reasonable explanation, so they assume the last percent does, too."
Luke was less than convinced. "If you say so," he muttered. "What time are they coming?"
I checked my watch. "They should have been here five minutes ago, but I guess they're fashionably late."
But not too late; Luke's four school friends—Aaron, Kyle, and a recently added Tyler —trickled in over the next ten minutes, and I withdrew to 'chaperon' distance as the party got underway. After the teens had demolished most of the cake (strawberry cheesecake, at Luke's request), the presents came out. Aaron got him a set of nice metal dice. Kyle got him a 6'x4' rubber mat with a hex grid on one side and square on the other, dry-erasable so one could draw directly on it while playing (with an admission that "this is more of a gift for 'us' than you," since it would surely be used for the group's D&D game). Tom got him a diorama kit containing fake trees, grass, rocks, and similar supplies (for miniature bases, he explained, since Luke had expressed frustration at decorating them in the past). And Tyler got him a door-stopper of a book on historical European heraldry and livery. ("Is this your way of saying my painting skills need work?" Luke joked, then clarified that he was very pleased with the gift).
As for the older folks: from Natalie, Kaitlyn, Ashley, Chloe, Mike, and Nick, Luke received a large box of miniature-painting supplies; I'd coordinated with the six of them to fill the remaining holes in his collection. From Megan, he received a dozen new miniatures to use those paints on. And from me, he got a fancy climate-controlled display case to show them off in. "It's UV-proof and climate controlled," I explained. "It's a consumer-grade version of a museum display case, and it'll fit on your desk just fine."
"Wow." Luke looked over the presents, which now occupied a sizable portion of the table. "Thanks, guys. Really."
"Want to go play with your toys?" Ashley asked.
"They're not toys! They're art supplies!"
That evening, Homura gave Luke one more present: a new laptop. Not 'magical' or 'super-tech', just a straightforward modern laptop that was nonetheless miles better than the one he'd been using.
"Your old laptop is, well, old," she explained as he stared at the item in question. "We thought you could use an upgrade."
"It still runs well enough, though," Luke said. "It's not like I use it for much besides browsing the internet and doing schoolwork."
"Well, now you can."
"Nice? I mean, uh, thanks." He sent another look at the laptop and added, "It just feels like a lot, is all."
"You'll need it for college," Homura pointed out.
"Ah. Right." Luke paused, then opened his mouth with an, "Uh…"
"Don't worry about the cost," I told him. "Just enjoy it as much as you can."
"Are we talking about the laptop or college?"
"Yes."
Soon enough, the last days of summer approached, and the time came to tell the school that Luke was now a young man. He, Homura, and I had taken up battlestations around the kitchen table.
"Just so you know," I told Luke as I navigated the contacts list on my phone. "You can back out any time, okay?"
He grimaced. "You think I should?"
"No, of course not. I think you're going to be happier going to school as a guy, but it's your decision, and you can always change your mind."
"Do it, then."
I pressed the call button and switched the phone to speaker so Luke could hear both sides of the conversation—which, to my surprise, went very quickly and without a hint of pushback.
"Just like that?" Luke asked once I'd hung up.
"I guess so," I agreed. "That was easy enough."
"Don't jinx it."
I grinned and rapped my knuckles on the wooden tabletop. "Well, that's that. You're going to have to deal with your fellow students yourself."
"Yeah," Luke murmured. "I knew that when we started."
It would be a lie to say that Luke's 'coming out' went smoothly. The school administration were outwardly cooperative and understanding, but there were still problems. Some of the staff made their displeasure clear by skirting as close to discriminatory behavior as possible without violating the letter of the rules. Reactions from his fellow students ran the gamut from overbearing support through insensitive curiosity all the way to outright hostility. Stares and whispers from the whole reaction spectrum followed him through the halls. And Luke was forced to change in a classroom rather than the boy's locker room (though he insisted this was an advantage).
To my frustration, there wasn't much I could do to help; my tool-set was limited to strongly worded phone calls, a sympathetic ear, and humor.
"I keep hearing people trying to figure out how I pass so well," Luke told us one evening. "Someone started a rumor that I've been a guy all along, and my parents made me act like a girl because they didn't want a son. How dumb is that?"
"Wow," I said. "It's amazing how they can get so much right while still getting everything wrong."
That joke went over well.
Regardless, Luke had to handle most of it on his own, and as far as I could tell he did so with aplomb. He looked happier heading off to school each day than he had last year, so presumably the problems weren't as bad as having to be a girl had been.
Everyone got distracted once Christmas rolled around anyway.
Riiiiii—"Vahn residence."
"Hey, Max," I said. "Sorry for calling so late—"
"Don't worry about it! I haven't needed sleep for decades." The sound of a television somewhere in the background cut off as she spoke. "What can I do for you?"
"Uh, well, this is kind of embarrassing…" I wound a strand of hair around my finger while I put the words together. "The thing is, Thanksgiving is coming up fast and I don't think I'm equal to the task…"
Max laughed. "Worried about providing a proper feast for your kid?"
"He'd object to the wording, but, uh… yes."
She laughed again "Of course you can come over. It'll give me a reason to cook this year."
Oh, crap.
"You weren't planning on celebrating Thanksgiving this year?"
"Of course we were! I just wasn't planning a big meal."
"Well then say that, then! Don't just let me invite myself to a party you weren't even planning!"
"Relax, Cass," Max said. "I'm serious; it'll be nice to have company to cook for."
"But—"
My protest fell on deaf ears; she'd pulled the phone away from her mouth, though I could still clearly hear the words as she told someone, "Cassandra wants to come by for Thanksgiving again."
"Oh, that'll be fun," I could hear Gary say. "She'll be bringing that kid she adopted, I assume."
"Obviously."
"What was his name?"
"Last time I checked, he hadn't decided."
"I guess I'll get to ask him myself."
Max put the phone back to her ear. "It's a plan then. Come by around three in the afternoon?"
"I feel like I'm imposing—"
"Cass, I am perfectly capable of telling you 'no' if I so choose."
"If you say so."
"I do!" she said. "I look forward to seeing you. Three in the afternoon or a whole lot of food's going to go to waste."
So that was all set… but before Thanksgiving came my birthday. It fell on a weekend this year, so rather than waking up early to make breakfast, I got to sleep in until someone knocked on my bedroom door.
"Who's there?" I called.
"It's me," Luke replied. "Can I come in?"
That was unusual; without school to worry about, he usually slept in later than I did.
"Uh, sure. Come on in."
The door opened to reveal Luke, wearing an apron and carrying a tray, and I felt something in my chest melt at the sight of… not my kid, he was clear on that, but someone I was looking after getting up early to serve me breakfast in bed. He'd made pancakes, perhaps with Homura's help, and a pot of what I'd bet was breakfast tea as well.
"Happy birthday!" Luke called. "I made you break…fast…?"
"Oh, thank you!" I turned my attention from the tray to its bearer and found him frozen on the threshold, mouth half-open.
"Is… something wrong?"
"You're a fox!" he screeched.
Ah, heck.
"Oops." I facepawed. "Sorry, I kind of forgot you hadn't seen me do this before."
"You forgot?"
Foxes couldn't really 'shrug' the way humans did, but I tried anyway. "This is a regular thing for me."
"You turn into a fox at night?" he asked, voice still screechy from surprise. "How?"
"Magic."
"Why?"
"It's comfortable." To demonstrate, I curled back up like I was going back to sleep, nose to tail. "Cozy."
"Oh."
Luke took a moment to get his surprise fully under control, then added, "So it's not, like, a curse or anything?"
I let out a snort of amusement. "No, it's not a curse. It's quite nice, actually."
"Good. Uh, I guess."
"Right. Uh, I'm really touched that you made breakfast, but could you step out for a second? I'm not going to be wearing any clothes when I change back."
Luke complied with some haste, and a minute later, I enjoyed a delicious breakfast in bed.
Breakfast delivered, Luke excused himself to enjoy his own weekend, and I waved goodbye in high spirits. Now that he was going to school as a boy, he had no compunctions against leaving the house for other reasons, which I considered a good thing all around.
For my part, I enjoyed a nice, leisurely birthday, relaxing in the living room with the laptop that had gone from my hands to Luke's and back.
"Hello," Luke called as he walked into the kitchen.
"Hey, Luke," I replied. "Lunchtime?"
"Yup."
"Where've you been?"
"Hobby shop," he replied.
"Get anything good?"
"Nah, just browsing. What're you up to?"
"Reading."
"Fiction?" Luke asked, rummaging through the fridge for peanut butter and jelly.
"Research papers, actually."
I could tell from his 'oh' that he wasn't interested, so I went back to reading the paper—a technically-secret one penned by Redding, Verres, et al.—without further commentary. A couple minutes later, Luke finished making his sandwich and joined me around the coffee table in the living room, taking the armchair with its back to the windows.
"So," he said. "You turn into a fox."
"Sometimes."
"You have a spell for that?"
"Not exactly," I said. "I'm a shape-shifter."
"Wow."
I glanced up from the paper; surprise, I'd expected, but not the hint of awe that came with it. "What?"
"That's, like, the trans jackpot," Luke said, shrugging. "What kind? Like, can you do other animals? Change your height and stuff?"
"Fox was my first, but I've learned to do others." I went back to skimming the paper as I continued, "I can mix and match any forms I've used, and I have a spell that lets me copy people and animals' forms, so by now I can do just about whatever I want with my appearance."
"So you choose to look like that?"
I shot him a look through the upper-right corner of my field of view. "You have a problem with how I look?"
"No, you look fine! I mean, I might cheat more if I had free-form shape-shifting—not that I'm not already cheating, but… ah, you get the idea."
"I'm not wearing makeup."
Luke leaned in to give my face a closer look.
"Okay, that's definitely unfair," he confirmed. "But what I was actually wondering is if you deliberately look like Doctor Rolins now, or…?"
I closed my eyes and managed, with great effort, to avoid facepalming.
"You saw what I looked like as a guy," I pointed out. "This is just 'me, but a girl'. Slightly idealized, sure, but it's not that different, right?"
"Maybe not—that's why I said I'd cheat more—but it's a pretty weird coincidence when your name is also Cassandra, which you said wasn't on purpose either, right?"
Coincidence. Right.
"Yeah," I lied. "The world is like that sometimes."
Chapter 119: Coming Out
And then it was summer, or nearly so.
"Ugh," Luke groaned as he dropped his backpack onto the kitchen table. "I can't wait for school to be over."
I looked up from the potatoes I was peeling and sniped, "Apparently."
He paled, his face assuming what I could only describe as a 'hand in the cookie jar' expression.
"Uh oh."
"Yes, 'uh oh'. I got a call from the school today." I rinsed my hands and put them on my hips. "You've been skipping class. Again."
At least he had the sense to look guilty.
"Only a little?"
"You said it was a one-time thing, Luke. Now I hear you've skipped three out of four Physics periods this week."
"So what?" Luke folded his arms and returned my frown with a scowl of his own. "It's right before lunch, and it's not like we obey physics in this house anyway!"
"And we don't speak with perfect grammar, either, but that doesn't mean you get to skip English class."
"Yeah, but—"
He stopped as my argument registered.
"Wait, are you saying I need to know the laws of physics so I know when it's okay to break them?"
"Uh." I really hadn't thought that one through. "Yeah, I guess that is what I said, isn't it?"
"I think so."
I sighed. "I suppose if nothing else, knowing the laws of physics would let you know when magic is breaking them. It doesn't really matter, though. I can't let you keep skipping class."
Luke rolled his eyes and took his seat. "What happens if I don't?"
"What do you want me to say, Luke? That I'm going to ground you? Dock your allowance? I'm not going to threaten you with an 'or else' because that makes it a choice, and I know you are stubborn enough to take the 'else' if you see fit."
"You think I'm going to be more discouraged by a lack of consequences?"
I glowered. "I'll find some if I have to."
"Like what? Gonna take away my 'boy privileges'?"
"Oh, Luke, no. You know me better than that! I will never mess with you that way. Ever." Just the thought of using bodily autonomy as leverage made me shudder.
Luke's bluster faltered when I didn't react as expected, and he slumped down his chair in a sulk.
"Look," I said as I walked over to pat him on the shoulder, "I get that school is terrible for a dozen different reasons, but it's not something I can let you just blow off."
Luke harrumphed.
What would be helpful here? On the one hand, I'd probably hated high school for different reasons than Luke did, so I wasn't sure how well I could claim to understand his feelings. On the other, I could definitely empathize with the desire to skip class, for all that I'd been too 'preppy', as Zoe would say, to act on it. Even when my mom offered to call me out sick if the stress ever got to be just too much, I couldn't remember having ever taken her up on that.
It wasn't a bad idea, though.
"How about this," I said. "If you ever really, really need a day off, tell me, and I'll call you out sick."
Luke gave me a skeptical look. "What, really? Weren't you just saying I absolutely, definitely needed to go to class?"
I gave him a conspiratorial smile in return. "No, I said you need to stop 'skipping' class."
"Because this way I won't get punished?" he guessed. "Or so you can tell me off for shirking too often?"
"Yes."
Luke rolled his eyes. "Great."
"Better than getting caught, right?"
"Hmph."
I gave him another pat on the shoulder, and was about to head back to the kitchen when he muttered, "But I'd still have to go back to school the next day like this."
Ah.
I pulled out a chair and sat down next to him.
"The 'no dysphoria' spell isn't enough, huh?" I asked.
"No."
I kept quiet, letting him lead the conversation. Luke took a moment to think—or just sulk—then blew out a heavy sigh and explained, "Pretending I'm a girl doesn't hurt like it used to, but the fact that I am pretending does. Does that make sense?"
"It's not the action that's painful, it's the necessity?"
"Yeah. Exactly."
"That makes a lot of sense," I told him.
Luke hm'd, which seemed to put the ball in my court.
"You know you don't have to go to school looking like that, right?" I said as gently as I could. "We can figure something out."
"Like what?"
"If coming out is too scary, you can go stealth in another school. Do you want to go to school in Apoapolis again?"
"No, I get it. It's too far."
"It's not too far at all. We'd have to wake up earlier, that's all. I'd have time before my shift—"
"No, I don't… I told you, I don't want to change schools again." Luke groaned and rested his head on his arms. "Would it be too fast if I just showed up as a guy next fall?"
"'Too fast' how?"
"Like, faster than possible for non-magical transition."
I rubbed my chin. "I mean, it would be a bit fast, but you could always claim you started earlier and just hid the signs. Besides, who would call you on it?"
"Ha. Yeah. Who'd even know?" He shifted himself around into a more comfortable slump. "Though I'd have to come out to the whole town…"
"It's either that, changing schools, or waiting until you move away to college."
"All those options suck."
I could relate.
"You might be able to test out of school," I said, "but I'm not sure how that affects your college prospects. You'd probably have to go to community college for a couple years…"
Luke sat up with a start, energy rushing back. "Could I really?"
"It's a possibility. We'd need find you a tutor to prep for the test, and I'd want you to find an activity outside the house so you don't become a shut-in—it's a hard habit to break."
From the way he wilted, that last bit was a deal-breaker. "But then I'd still have to go out as a girl!" he whined.
"You wouldn't have to go out as a girl—"
"I would if I don't want to run into extremely awkward situations with people recognizing me," Luke insisted. "This stupid town is just small enough that I can't avoid people I know. And even if they don't recognize me, it'll still be weird."
I knew the mood he was in well: one where all he could see were problems and no solution would be good enough. I'd offered the alternatives I could think of; it was up to him, once he was in a better headspace, to decide if any of them would be an improvement.
Conversation effectively over, I got up and went back to preparing dinner, only to drop the potato into the sink the moment the peeler bit into the skin. Tension had made me clumsy, and I had to step back and relax before I could go back to cooking with any sense of competence.
Our little talk had left me feeling as trapped as Luke no doubt did; there were no easy answers when a sizable part of society didn't want you to exist.
Neither of us spoke until I was halfway done with the 'slicing' step of mashed potato preparation.
"Do you think they'd make a scene if I just showed up as a guy next fall?" Luke asked.
I stopped sliding the potato against the mandoline so I could address him with my full attention.
"If that's what you want to do, I am fully prepared to browbeat anyone and everyone who makes an issue of it," I promised. "You have my word."
"Then…" He took a deep breath. "I think I just want to make the change over the summer."
"By 'the change', you mean to your, ah, 'public' gender?"
Luke snorted. "That's one way to put it."
"Well, if that's what you want, I'll support you. You don't have to commit to it now—"
"I know," he interrupted, "but it's easier to commit now than at the end of summer."
"If it helps you psych yourself up, that's fine, but you can always reconsider."
"Don't tempt me."
I returned to my slicing, and a moment later, Luke hauled himself to his feet with a groan. "Three more weeks."
"Three more weeks," I agreed. "And you'll be there for every class unless I've called you out. Right?"
"Shaddup."
"Luke," I scolded him, "I know you may not see me as a parent, but I am your acting guardian and I will not be told to 'shut up', especially not when I tell you to attend class like you should be doing anyway."
"Sorry," he said. "And yeah, fine, I'll go."
"Every day."
"Every freakin' day, yes, sheesh."
"Good." I gave him a knowing smile. "I'll hold you to that."
And if that sounded a little like a threat, well, maybe it was.
———X==X==X———
"Anything you want to do this summer?" I asked Luke on the cusp of said summer two and a half weeks later.
He didn't look up from his study material. "I dunno."
"What'd you do last year?"
"Got a summer job."
"Really?"
Now Luke looked up at me across the table. "Why are you surprised?" he whined.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I guess I just figured your Dad wouldn't let you."
"He encouraged it—but yeah, getting out of the house was like half the reason I got a job at all."
"I'd've done the same in your place."
He grabbed his graphing calculator and checked his work, then flipped to the next chapter to practice another set of problems.
"Your birthday's coming up, too," I said. "End of summer, right?"
"Bleh."
"Bleh?"
"Bleh," Luke repeated.
"Do you not want to celebrate?"
"No, it's the 'end of summer' bit."
"Ah." I could understand that. "Do you want to have a birthday party?"
He shrugged and gave the apartment a speculative glance, as though struggling to imagine it as the site of a party. "I guess?"
"We could throw your party in the shop downstairs if you want."
"When it's open?"
"I was thinking 'on a Sunday', if you don't mind it not being on the same day."
"No, that makes sense," he agreed. "Kind of a big space for three people, though."
"Are you not inviting your friends, or not inviting me?"
"Six people, then. Or seven, if Miss Akemi comes too."
"What about Megan and her group?" I asked. "They're your friends too, right?"
Luke hummed in thought. "I guess they're all right. I'll be out to everyone soon enough, so I might as well tell them."
"It was just a suggestion—"
"No, no," he cut off my attempt to walk back my words. "It's a good idea. They put up with me being a moody bitch for a whole year, and I appreciate that."
I gave his self-deprecation a polite chuckle.
"Do you want to tell them ahead of time?" I asked.
"About me? Yeah. No reason to surprise them that day." Luke cleared his throat to emphasize the changing subject. "Uh, back to summer jobs: you think I could work at the bakery?"
I couldn't think of any deal-breaking issues. "Probably. Any particular reason you'd want to work here?"
"'Cause I could do it like this." Luke tapped his (flat) chest. "Anywhere else, they'd need to see my ID and stuff, right? And I know a bunch of places 'round here are kinda jerks about LGBT rights and stuff. But if I work for you, I could work like this, right?"
"Yeah, of course," I agreed. "What were you thinking?"
"Like, I could clean up and stuff? Run stuff from the kitchen to the store. Or help Akemi bake, whatever."
"She doesn't trust me to help her bake."
He wilted and muttered, "It was just a suggestion."
"Sorry!" I said. "That wasn't a jab at you, it was a joke about her perfectionism."
"Oh. Okay."
Luke paused.
"So…?"
"I have no objection," I said, "but you'll have to ask her, too."
"Oh." He suddenly looked a lot less eager. "Uh, no offense, but your sister's a little scary. Maybe you could, you know…"
"Hey, it was your idea."
"Aw, man."
Luke went back to work as I thought through the practicalities. We paid out almost all our profit in wages, so adding a new employee would normally take either hours or wages from somewhere else. For a summer job, we could probably get away with paying him from the cut that went into the general 'rainy day' fund if he was willing to take a reduced wage. I could also split my hours with him and balance the books that way, though that made the most sense if he was only working during my shifts. A little nepotistic subcontracting never hurt anyone, right?
"Okay," Luke said, interrupting my (mostly concluded) train of thought. "I think I'm good for the math final tomorrow. Then again, I'm a guy right now, so…"
"Oh, don't start with that," I chided him. "All that 'girls are bad at math' crap is nonsense."
"I know. Sorry."
"No, it's fine. I'm just prickly about gender stereotypes."
"Valid." He shut the math textbook and pushed it towards the center of the table with a sigh. "Only two finals left."
"Good luck."
"I'm not gonna rely on luck."
"'Attaboy."
———X==X==X———
After consulting with Homura, we decided 'Plan A' would be to call an Employee meeting and ask if anyone objected to taking on an extra employee. I introduced Luke, at his urging, as a 'friend's' kid who wanted a summer job, and he made a good enough impression that the Home Sweet Home staff gave their unanimous approval. Thus, the answer to 'How do we pay Luke?' was 'Normally', which made things nice and easy.
That wasn't our only summer activity, of course; Luke would soon be entering his senior year of high school, which made this the summer of college tours. Homura and I traded off 'escorting' him on various campus tours, expedited by magical transportation there and back. I did not insist on teleporting airport to airport, to Luke's relief.
We weren't vacationing, after all.
"What did you study in college, anyway?" Luke asked me while we waited for our tour group at Dartmouth to assemble.
The question drew a sigh from yours truly. "I never got through my GE's."
"Really?"
I shrugged. "In hindsight, it was inevitable; I was kind of a wreck at that point in my life, mentally speaking."
"Oh." Luke spent a moment trying to decide whether he ought to apologize for asking, but in the end he realized the question hadn't bothered me overmuch.
"Do you know what you want to study?" I asked.
He shrugged. "No idea. I'm probably gonna just choose my favorite campus and figure it out later."
Said 'favorite campus' turned out to be Johns Hopkins University. It had been one of Homura's turns at chauffeuring, so I had to experience the tour vicariously through Luke's enthusiastic description that evening.
"It's not going to be easy to get in," Homura warned him. "The admission rate is around ten percent."
"I figured you'd care more about the money," Luke said.
"Money isn't a problem."
He looked like he wanted to ask about that, but decided not to pry. "I have good grades," he said instead. "And I test really well, so I'll have no problem on the SATs either."
"You'll have to keep those good grades," Homura observed.
"I know! Don't worry, I've got this."
"No more skipping physics?" I asked.
Luke pouted at me. "I stopped when you told me to, yeah?"
"All I know for certain is that you stopped getting caught."
———X==X==X———
The old Home Sweet Home group came back for summer, of course, but they didn't drop by the shop all at once until Luke's birthday party in early August. That time, they even all arrived at once because they were carpooling in a minivan Natalie had probably borrowed from one of her innumerable extended family.
"Hello, everyone!" I called as I let them into the shuttered shop. "It's been a long time!"
The group chorused agreement. They looked more or less the same as the last time I'd seen them, just slightly older; they'd barely even changed hairstyles.
"Is that cake for us?" Ashley asked, already locked onto the cake sitting on one of the tables.
"Only if the birthday boy feels like sharing," I replied. "Luke! Your sister and friends are here!"
Luke looked up from his phone and visibly considered fleeing to the backroom, which was not the reaction I'd expected.
"Luke?"
He grimaced and approached the group cautiously, clearly unsure of how people would react. In the end, he'd overestimated people's ability to recognize him; only Megan had any idea who he was.
"Luke! You look great!" She hurried over to give him a hug, adding, "Happy birthday!" as she did.
The others did a double-take.
"Wait," Ashley declared. "Wait. Holy crap, really? Wow. Nice glow-up, dude."
"Wow," Natalie agreed. "Uh, congratulations?"
"Congratulations," Kaitlyn echoed.
Mike was once again out in the cold; Nick had to lean over and whisper in his ear.
"Does this count as you outing him?" Ashley asked me. "Because if so: not cool."
"When I asked him last week," I grumbled, shooting an accusing look at the man in question, "he said he'd already told you."
"I was gonna!" Luke insisted. "But, uh, you know, I never figured out a good way to bring it up, 'cause we don't really talk that much and the only things you girls post are obscure memes…"
"You could've asked me to do it," Megan said. "Or to break the ice, or something."
"You could've just admitted you hadn't gotten around to it," I added. "We could've done it now—properly, I mean, not with me acting like everyone already knew. Which I'm sorry about—"
"Oh, shut up," Luke grumbled. "It's fine. Whatever. Don't make a big deal out of it."
"Okay."
He paused.
"Not going to tell me off for telling you to shut up?" he asked.
"Not this time. Don't do it again."
"Congratulations," Nick said, bringing us back on track.
"Congratulations," Chloe agreed. "And Megan's right. You look great!"
"Thanks," Luke said. "But, uh, I don't really want congratulations? Can we just, like, pretend you already knew and move on?"
The group was happy to agree. Megan gave him another quick hug, then looked up at Luke and added, "It's weird that I'm shorter than you now."
"It's great."
Ashley laughed and poked Megan in the shoulder. "You know," she said, "even with the whole 'I forgot to come out to people' thing, I think this is still the most excited he's ever been to see us."
The siblings grumbled, "Be quiet, Ash," in perfect sync.
———X==X==X———
The group spent the time before Luke's friends arrived talking about their plans for the upcoming year.
"—and we're moving in together next month," Chloe finished. Kaitlyn grinned and scooted her chair close enough to throw an arm around her girlfriend.
"Now it's your turn to get congratulations," Luke said, shooting them a thumbs-up. "Do you parents know?"
Kaitlyn laughed. "Hard for them not to, considering they're on the lease."
"That's not what I meant. I was wondering if they knew you were, like, together."
"Of course they know."
"And they're okay with that?" Mike asked. "Like, living together?"
"Yeah. We've been together for, like, two years—"
"Twenty-two months," Chloe cut in.
"Thanks, hon. Point is, we're together, we're serious, and we're gonna stay that way."
The pair received another round of congratulations.
"You guys decide on majors yet?" Kaitlyn asked, moving the conversation away from herself.
"Civil engineering," Mike said.
"No way," Natalie said. "That's what I'm doing!"
"I thought you were studying math."
"I was, but now I'm thinking CE with a minor in math."
"Isn't CE Computer Engineering?" Ashley asked.
"Whatever. What are you doing, Ash?"
"Medicine."
"No way," half the table gasped.
"You want to be a doctor?" Mike asked. "You?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded. "You think I'm dumb?"
"No, I think you're mean."
"Only when I want to be!"
"Which is always?"
Ashley pouted and gave him the cold shoulder.
"What about you, Nick?" Natalie asked the quiet member of her group.
"Astrophysics," Nick said.
The table mulled that over.
"Yeah," Mike decided, "that sounds right."
"Sure."
"Totally."
"Right up his alley."
"It's not rocket science—ow!" Ashley rubbed her arm where Chloe'd punched her. "Jeez."
"I'm still studying magic," Megan said. "I hope it's a real major by the time I graduate."
"What if it's not?" Luke asked.
"Then I'll graduate with no major. It'll look weird on paper, but I've cleared it with the school. I'm probably going to be working in a magic-related field anyway, so whoever hires me will know what's up."
"Where are you going to apply, dude?" Mike asked Luke.
"I think Johns Hopkins is my first choice, but I'm gonna need some safety schools. I wouldn't mind going to MVU with Meg, but I'd rather be farther away."
"How have you been doing?" Megan asked her brother. "Like, generally?"
"I've been doing okay."
"Are you out? Cassandra said you were working, like, you know…"
"Like this, yeah," Luke agreed. "But no one recognizes me."
"We did," Ashley said.
"No we didn't," Chloe said.
"I did."
"Liar."
Luke ignored them and continued, "So, uh, yeah. I've been practicing being like this in public, but I haven't come out out."
"Stealth," Kaitlyn said.
"Yeah. But…" He paused for effect. "I'm gonna be going to school like this next year."
There was a general murmur of surprised approval at his announcement.
"How were you going to school last year, then?" Ashley asked.
"Looking like I used to?"
"You grew, like, six inches."
"Magic," Megan said.
"Ah," Ashley said. "So your friends know about magic too?"
Luke blinked, then turned to me in alarm. I shrugged. "It's fine. Unless you flat out tell them it's magic, they'll probably just assume you're wearing platform shoes."
"People encounter weird stuff every day," Megan agreed. "Ninety-nine percent of it has a perfectly reasonable explanation, so they assume the last percent does, too."
Luke was less than convinced. "If you say so," he muttered. "What time are they coming?"
I checked my watch. "They should have been here five minutes ago, but I guess they're fashionably late."
But not too late; Luke's four school friends—Aaron, Kyle, and a recently added Tyler —trickled in over the next ten minutes, and I withdrew to 'chaperon' distance as the party got underway. After the teens had demolished most of the cake (strawberry cheesecake, at Luke's request), the presents came out. Aaron got him a set of nice metal dice. Kyle got him a 6'x4' rubber mat with a hex grid on one side and square on the other, dry-erasable so one could draw directly on it while playing (with an admission that "this is more of a gift for 'us' than you," since it would surely be used for the group's D&D game). Tom got him a diorama kit containing fake trees, grass, rocks, and similar supplies (for miniature bases, he explained, since Luke had expressed frustration at decorating them in the past). And Tyler got him a door-stopper of a book on historical European heraldry and livery. ("Is this your way of saying my painting skills need work?" Luke joked, then clarified that he was very pleased with the gift).
As for the older folks: from Natalie, Kaitlyn, Ashley, Chloe, Mike, and Nick, Luke received a large box of miniature-painting supplies; I'd coordinated with the six of them to fill the remaining holes in his collection. From Megan, he received a dozen new miniatures to use those paints on. And from me, he got a fancy climate-controlled display case to show them off in. "It's UV-proof and climate controlled," I explained. "It's a consumer-grade version of a museum display case, and it'll fit on your desk just fine."
"Wow." Luke looked over the presents, which now occupied a sizable portion of the table. "Thanks, guys. Really."
"Want to go play with your toys?" Ashley asked.
"They're not toys! They're art supplies!"
———X==X==X———
That evening, Homura gave Luke one more present: a new laptop. Not 'magical' or 'super-tech', just a straightforward modern laptop that was nonetheless miles better than the one he'd been using.
"Your old laptop is, well, old," she explained as he stared at the item in question. "We thought you could use an upgrade."
"It still runs well enough, though," Luke said. "It's not like I use it for much besides browsing the internet and doing schoolwork."
"Well, now you can."
"Nice? I mean, uh, thanks." He sent another look at the laptop and added, "It just feels like a lot, is all."
"You'll need it for college," Homura pointed out.
"Ah. Right." Luke paused, then opened his mouth with an, "Uh…"
"Don't worry about the cost," I told him. "Just enjoy it as much as you can."
"Are we talking about the laptop or college?"
"Yes."
———X==X==X———
Soon enough, the last days of summer approached, and the time came to tell the school that Luke was now a young man. He, Homura, and I had taken up battlestations around the kitchen table.
"Just so you know," I told Luke as I navigated the contacts list on my phone. "You can back out any time, okay?"
He grimaced. "You think I should?"
"No, of course not. I think you're going to be happier going to school as a guy, but it's your decision, and you can always change your mind."
"Do it, then."
I pressed the call button and switched the phone to speaker so Luke could hear both sides of the conversation—which, to my surprise, went very quickly and without a hint of pushback.
"Just like that?" Luke asked once I'd hung up.
"I guess so," I agreed. "That was easy enough."
"Don't jinx it."
I grinned and rapped my knuckles on the wooden tabletop. "Well, that's that. You're going to have to deal with your fellow students yourself."
"Yeah," Luke murmured. "I knew that when we started."
———X==X==X———
It would be a lie to say that Luke's 'coming out' went smoothly. The school administration were outwardly cooperative and understanding, but there were still problems. Some of the staff made their displeasure clear by skirting as close to discriminatory behavior as possible without violating the letter of the rules. Reactions from his fellow students ran the gamut from overbearing support through insensitive curiosity all the way to outright hostility. Stares and whispers from the whole reaction spectrum followed him through the halls. And Luke was forced to change in a classroom rather than the boy's locker room (though he insisted this was an advantage).
To my frustration, there wasn't much I could do to help; my tool-set was limited to strongly worded phone calls, a sympathetic ear, and humor.
"I keep hearing people trying to figure out how I pass so well," Luke told us one evening. "Someone started a rumor that I've been a guy all along, and my parents made me act like a girl because they didn't want a son. How dumb is that?"
"Wow," I said. "It's amazing how they can get so much right while still getting everything wrong."
That joke went over well.
Regardless, Luke had to handle most of it on his own, and as far as I could tell he did so with aplomb. He looked happier heading off to school each day than he had last year, so presumably the problems weren't as bad as having to be a girl had been.
Everyone got distracted once Christmas rolled around anyway.
———X==X==X———
Riiiiii—"Vahn residence."
"Hey, Max," I said. "Sorry for calling so late—"
"Don't worry about it! I haven't needed sleep for decades." The sound of a television somewhere in the background cut off as she spoke. "What can I do for you?"
"Uh, well, this is kind of embarrassing…" I wound a strand of hair around my finger while I put the words together. "The thing is, Thanksgiving is coming up fast and I don't think I'm equal to the task…"
Max laughed. "Worried about providing a proper feast for your kid?"
"He'd object to the wording, but, uh… yes."
She laughed again "Of course you can come over. It'll give me a reason to cook this year."
Oh, crap.
"You weren't planning on celebrating Thanksgiving this year?"
"Of course we were! I just wasn't planning a big meal."
"Well then say that, then! Don't just let me invite myself to a party you weren't even planning!"
"Relax, Cass," Max said. "I'm serious; it'll be nice to have company to cook for."
"But—"
My protest fell on deaf ears; she'd pulled the phone away from her mouth, though I could still clearly hear the words as she told someone, "Cassandra wants to come by for Thanksgiving again."
"Oh, that'll be fun," I could hear Gary say. "She'll be bringing that kid she adopted, I assume."
"Obviously."
"What was his name?"
"Last time I checked, he hadn't decided."
"I guess I'll get to ask him myself."
Max put the phone back to her ear. "It's a plan then. Come by around three in the afternoon?"
"I feel like I'm imposing—"
"Cass, I am perfectly capable of telling you 'no' if I so choose."
"If you say so."
"I do!" she said. "I look forward to seeing you. Three in the afternoon or a whole lot of food's going to go to waste."
———X==X==X———
So that was all set… but before Thanksgiving came my birthday. It fell on a weekend this year, so rather than waking up early to make breakfast, I got to sleep in until someone knocked on my bedroom door.
"Who's there?" I called.
"It's me," Luke replied. "Can I come in?"
That was unusual; without school to worry about, he usually slept in later than I did.
"Uh, sure. Come on in."
The door opened to reveal Luke, wearing an apron and carrying a tray, and I felt something in my chest melt at the sight of… not my kid, he was clear on that, but someone I was looking after getting up early to serve me breakfast in bed. He'd made pancakes, perhaps with Homura's help, and a pot of what I'd bet was breakfast tea as well.
"Happy birthday!" Luke called. "I made you break…fast…?"
"Oh, thank you!" I turned my attention from the tray to its bearer and found him frozen on the threshold, mouth half-open.
"Is… something wrong?"
"You're a fox!" he screeched.
Ah, heck.
"Oops." I facepawed. "Sorry, I kind of forgot you hadn't seen me do this before."
"You forgot?"
Foxes couldn't really 'shrug' the way humans did, but I tried anyway. "This is a regular thing for me."
"You turn into a fox at night?" he asked, voice still screechy from surprise. "How?"
"Magic."
"Why?"
"It's comfortable." To demonstrate, I curled back up like I was going back to sleep, nose to tail. "Cozy."
"Oh."
Luke took a moment to get his surprise fully under control, then added, "So it's not, like, a curse or anything?"
I let out a snort of amusement. "No, it's not a curse. It's quite nice, actually."
"Good. Uh, I guess."
"Right. Uh, I'm really touched that you made breakfast, but could you step out for a second? I'm not going to be wearing any clothes when I change back."
Luke complied with some haste, and a minute later, I enjoyed a delicious breakfast in bed.
———X==X==X———
Breakfast delivered, Luke excused himself to enjoy his own weekend, and I waved goodbye in high spirits. Now that he was going to school as a boy, he had no compunctions against leaving the house for other reasons, which I considered a good thing all around.
For my part, I enjoyed a nice, leisurely birthday, relaxing in the living room with the laptop that had gone from my hands to Luke's and back.
"Hello," Luke called as he walked into the kitchen.
"Hey, Luke," I replied. "Lunchtime?"
"Yup."
"Where've you been?"
"Hobby shop," he replied.
"Get anything good?"
"Nah, just browsing. What're you up to?"
"Reading."
"Fiction?" Luke asked, rummaging through the fridge for peanut butter and jelly.
"Research papers, actually."
I could tell from his 'oh' that he wasn't interested, so I went back to reading the paper—a technically-secret one penned by Redding, Verres, et al.—without further commentary. A couple minutes later, Luke finished making his sandwich and joined me around the coffee table in the living room, taking the armchair with its back to the windows.
"So," he said. "You turn into a fox."
"Sometimes."
"You have a spell for that?"
"Not exactly," I said. "I'm a shape-shifter."
"Wow."
I glanced up from the paper; surprise, I'd expected, but not the hint of awe that came with it. "What?"
"That's, like, the trans jackpot," Luke said, shrugging. "What kind? Like, can you do other animals? Change your height and stuff?"
"Fox was my first, but I've learned to do others." I went back to skimming the paper as I continued, "I can mix and match any forms I've used, and I have a spell that lets me copy people and animals' forms, so by now I can do just about whatever I want with my appearance."
"So you choose to look like that?"
I shot him a look through the upper-right corner of my field of view. "You have a problem with how I look?"
"No, you look fine! I mean, I might cheat more if I had free-form shape-shifting—not that I'm not already cheating, but… ah, you get the idea."
"I'm not wearing makeup."
Luke leaned in to give my face a closer look.
"Okay, that's definitely unfair," he confirmed. "But what I was actually wondering is if you deliberately look like Doctor Rolins now, or…?"
I closed my eyes and managed, with great effort, to avoid facepalming.
"You saw what I looked like as a guy," I pointed out. "This is just 'me, but a girl'. Slightly idealized, sure, but it's not that different, right?"
"Maybe not—that's why I said I'd cheat more—but it's a pretty weird coincidence when your name is also Cassandra, which you said wasn't on purpose either, right?"
Coincidence. Right.
"Yeah," I lied. "The world is like that sometimes."
———X==X==X———
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Death_Sheep
Cat Owned
- Location
- Wisconsin
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Unless this is a divergence in the EGS universe, the correct name of the university is Johns Hopkins University.
Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
AN: Cass does not know how to parent, but it's not like anyone else does, either. I think she's doing okay.
Alas, she cannot escape her 'fame'.
Alas, she cannot escape her 'fame'.
- Location
- Elsewhere
Or rather, some worlds are like that all the time.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
The campus itself looks nice but the surrounding neighborhood...less so. Go three blocks in the wrong direction and you're in some not so great places, which is hilarious as that's where some upperclassmen get pushed when they need to go to off-campus housing and miss getting into the premium buildings.
Also Baltimore's weather is surprisingly pretty iffy, with a decent amount of rain and a modest amount of snow.
They removed legacy considerations, at least, so it would be ever so slightly easier to get into than other comparative schools.
No, no, this is the wrong attitude. Apply to a slate of schools such that Hopkins was your safety instead. :3
How do we get from three to seven here?
If Luke was inviting Aaron and Kyle that would be three, but then the addition of Cass and Akemi makes five, not seven.
If Luke was inviting his four school friends, then how does he get "three people"? Or was he originally thinking of inviting Cass and Akemi but not his friends?
Who is the fourth friend?
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Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
...I counted Luke twice. 😓
Wait, no.
Luke counted himself twice.
Definitely.
Edit to add: He was originally thinking of just Cass and Akemi because the prospect of a birthday party he gets a say in is a novel concept.
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BagFullOfLizards
Some bag, mostly lizards
- Location
- A bag
We've been told that people can have hidden perks from their native jump. I'm guessing hidden flaws exist too. Because "hey, you look like..." certainly seems like one 😂