Twelfth Knight

5. No Points for Neutrality

The moment the bell rings for sixth period, Kayla from the social committee accosts me. I’ve just sat down at one of the lab tables—Bowen, the leadership teacher, also teaches biology—not that she cares, and I only manage to wolf about three bites of peanut butter and jelly before she arrives on her usual cloud of smoke.

“Do you have the Aloha budget yet?” she demands.

There’s peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth, which affords me time to displace my urge to suggest where she can stick the budget. (Kayla is very good at her job, but her energy is extreme. And let’s just say we have very different priorities—for example, I’ve graciously left out the appropriative qualities of a welcome-back dance lined with tiki torches and empty references to indigenous Hawaii, because unselectively choosing my battles at this school can be a real drain on my peace.)

“You realize you could have been harassing someone else about this,” I inform Kayla after a sip from my water bottle.

“Okay, but like, how hard can it be?” she retorts, which is a very good question that, as I recall, I was very recently asking someone else.

We went through this exact song and dance last week in advance of the Pigskin Roast, which I did not even attend. “Lucky for you, Kayla, I live to serve,” I inform her drily, reaching into my bag. “Budget is now approved. Reimbursement check’s ready to be handed over as soon as you give me all your receipts.”

“Um, did I not say I’d need eight hundred dollars?” Kayla demands. Tragically she’s now flanked by Mackenzie, a usually reasonable person unless there are garish decorations on the line.

“Once again,” I reply with very little patience, “the administration requires receipts. You spend the money, I catalog the invoices and reimburse you. That’s how it works.”

“I could just get Ryan to do it,” Kayla snaps, as Mackenzie nods vigorously. “He’s the one who’s actually in charge of the budget.”

Oh yes, Ryan. The brilliantly uninvested point guard who ran for treasurer because… he lost a bet? Suffered a traumatic head wound? It’s a mystery. “You know, Kayla, you’re not the only one who wishes we lived in a world where treasurers did their jobs and people let you finish your sandwich,” I inform her, tossing what remains of my lunch into the various bins for compost and trash. I hardly even touched it, because in addition to cleaning up one of the lunch activities for spirit week, I also promised my brother I’d listen to him rehearse his monologue for the fall play, and on top of that I agreed to do an interview for the journalism staff about the proposed changes to the student guidebook, which (surprise!) Jack Orsino could not be available for, according to his lack of reply. Fortunately, his daily itinerary of driving me to madness remains scheduled to perfection.

“No offense, Vi, but you’re being, like, very bitchy,” observes Mackenzie, a small crease forming between her brows.

“None taken,” I assure her. “Get me the receipts and I’ll reimburse you. Same day, I promise.”

Kayla grumbles but seems to trust me on this. After all, I may be “like, very bitchy,” but I’m also very reliable.

“So, we’re good?” I ask them. “Because I have work to do.”

Part of me wants to point out once again that they could have easily bothered someone else about this. Like, say, Jack Orsino, who’s just now waltzing in from lunch. He sits clear across campus at the top of the quad with the other senior athletes and cheerleaders, though I did notice when I passed his table that Olivia Hadid was suspiciously absent.

Not that I normally care what Olivia Hadid does, much less Jack Orsino, but since I’ve been caught in the crossfire of Jack trying to hunt her down all day, I’m starting to think someone’s finally lost their taste for whatever hallucinogenic Jack puts in his aftershave. I always thought they were sort of an odd pairing. Not because of Olivia—she’s smart and famously not an asshole. What I fail to understand is what she sees in him.

“I think Olivia Hadid broke up with Jack Orsino,” I inform my brother that afternoon while we’re driving home. (Correction: I’m driving, because Bash should not be handling any large machinery unless absolutely necessary.)

“What? No way.” Bash sits up, delighted. “Before homecoming?”

“What?”

“They were basically a lock for king and queen.”

“So?”

“So???” he barks back at me.

“What do you care?”

“Viola, I’m an artist,” he sniffs. “The human condition is my muse.”

“I don’t think Jack and Olivia are prime examples of the human condition, Sebastian.”

“Aren’t they?” he barks again. “It’s honestly very Greek.”

“What?”

“His knee!”

“So?”

“He hurts his knee and she leaves him? It’s like Delilah cutting Samson’s hair and betraying him to the Philistines!”

“Delilah was essentially abducted by Samson,” I point out, and am unable to prevent myself from adding, “which gets left out in pretty much every adaptation—”

Bash groans. “It’s the spirit of the narrative—”

“The femme fatale myth is extremely misogynistic,” I remind him, since apparently he doesn’t read our mother’s columns like I do, “and more importantly, Olivia did not take out Jack’s knee.”

“That would be exciting, though,” Bash says enthusiastically. “Sort of like a Tonya Harding thing but in more of a vengeful, Tarantino-ed style?”

“The Tonya Harding thing’s not vengeful enough as it is? That other skater’s knee got bashed in with a steel baton. What were you hoping for, gunshots?”

“Well, fine,” he concedes. “The point is you should add something like that into one of your quests.”

“Oh.” Normally I’d point out that gratuitous gun violence in this political climate is ethically untenable and aesthetically disruptive, but the energy’s just not there when I reach for it. Instead, I vigorously tap the steering wheel. “Yeah, I’m not doing quests anymore.”

“What? Why not?” I can tell there’s a look of concern on his face, but for all intents and purposes, my eyes are on the road.

“I don’t know, I’m busy.”

We pull into the driveway and I know—I just know—he’s going to talk to my mom about this. The two of them are always commiserating about my blood pressure, convinced I’m going to explode a vessel in my brain or something. Which, admittedly, I might. People are extremely irritating.

“What’s wrong?” my mom asks immediately when we walk in. She writes for most of the day but makes a point to stop working and hover in the kitchen during the hours when everyone’s floating around the house: before school, after school, dinnertime.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I say when Bash announces, “Vi fought with her nerd friends.”

“Again?” my mom says.

Perfect. The ideal reaction.

“These are the ConQuest nerds,” Bash clarifies, because last year I had an ideological divergence with my AP US History study group, who are also nerds but in a very distinctive way.

Bash slips onto the stool by the counter. “She says she’s over it.”

“I am over it,” I say, though nobody’s listening.

“Aw, honey.” My mom turns to me with a longing sigh, going full Cinderella for a second. “They didn’t like the story you wrote?”

“It’s not a story, it’s—” I break off, frustrated. “Never mind. And no, they didn’t, but it’s fine. I can’t stand them anyway.”

“You can’t stand anyone,” Bash says, so I backhand him in the gut. He coughs, then reaches up to tug my braid.

“Oh my god, stop it—”

“Hang on.” Bash reaches into his pocket, his phone buzzing. “What?” he shouts cheerfully into the phone, walking away to take a call. “Oh yeah, hang on, I’ve got the scene pages right here—though, brief sidebar?” he adds, thundering up the stairs. “Jack Orsino and Olivia Hadid—”

“BASH, I NEVER SAID THAT WAS—and he’s gone,” I conclude under my breath with a sigh, belatedly registering that I’ve been left alone with our mother’s look of plaintive concern. “Stop,” I tell her, groaning. She does this: worries. It’s sweet but unnecessary. “I’m fine,” I assure her, and add, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She purses her lips, knowing better than to press me. After all, I take after her. When she and I don’t want to be bothered, we do not want to be bothered, and there’s no point pushing it. This is something a lot of her exes have learned the hard way.

“Fine. How was school?” she asks, pushing a plate of hummus and raw vegetables across the counter to me. I reach for a carrot, shrugging.

“Fine,” I say, taking a bite.

“Just fine?”

I chew, very slowly, and swallow.

“How was your date?” I counter. “You never told us.”

She does a mirror version of the slow-chew-for-deliberation.

“I’m seeing someone,” she says.

“Duh.”

“No, not… not for work.” She tilts her head.

“For… pleasure?” I offer, like an airport customs officer.

“Let’s just say it’s going well.” She plucks up another carrot, takes a bite. “Yes,” she says mysteriously. “Very well.”

“You’re in an actual relationship,” I realize, blinking. As I’ve hopefully made clear by now, my mom is not the relationship type.

“Relationship is a strong word,” she says, predictably. She likes her own space, like I do. We are not the sort of women designed to pick a mate and settle down.

“Where’d you meet them?”

“Oh, you know.”

“Of course I don’t know, Mother, I’m seventeen. Are you trying to tell me you met your latest paramour on The Apps?” Normally she’s not very withholding about these sorts of things. She prizes authenticity, as she says.

“No, actually.” She tilts her head. “I met him at the grocery store.”

“Your eyes locked over the deli counter or something?”

“Something like that.”

I was joking. “Ew, Mom, are you dating the butcher?”

“No, no.” She shakes her head. “He’s… a community organizer,” she says eventually, which sounds like a lie.

“So he’s unemployed?”

“No.” She rolls her eyes at me. “You’re such a cynic.”

“You raised me,” I remind her.

“No way. You came out this way, fully formed.” She reaches for a cucumber slice. “So,” she says, which is obviously the start of a lecture. “About your friends.”

I take a last swipe of hummus, sighing. “They’re not my friends, okay? Friends would respect my ideas. Or, I don’t know, care.”

“Antonia does, doesn’t she?”

I feel a little prickle of doubt. I may be avoiding Antonia, but she’s not exactly rushing to talk to me, either. “Antonia’s just one person.”

“Sometimes I think you need to start seeing why that matters.” Mom gives me a long look as Bash bounds down the stairs.

“I see it,” I tell her, reaching for my bag. “I’m fine. And I’ve got homework.”

“You ate all the hummus,” Bash whines.

“You snooze, you lose,” I tell him, poking him in the ribs and escaping the retaliatory swipe at the back of my head to make my way up the stairs.

I may have stayed up too late last night playing Twelfth Knight. In my defense, I got at least four hundred texts from Kayla after I told her that the invoices she sent me only added up to about seven hundred and fifteen dollars. do you think I would lie???? she demanded. do you honestly think I’m some kind of human ponzi scheme or something??????

So yeah. I had to spend a couple of hours atop the arena leaderboards. Plus I watched a new concept trailer for War of Thornsseason four and fell down a rabbit hole of fan-made videos. And fine, I may have logged on to my fan fiction account to read a few modern AUs, but that’s between me and my emotional support villain, okay? It’s called self-care. Anyway, I knew it was time to go to bed when I hallucinated the username DukeOrsino12, which I can only assume was my halfway comatose brain mixing up some other less annoying person with an email from Jack. (It was an impressively psychotic “lmao k” at three in the morning in response to my email about needing to actually go paperless if we plan to adhere to last year’s ASB Student Carbon Footprint Initiative, which is now—mazel tov!—my problem.)

I settle in my desk before class, ready to zone out until the bell rings, but my temporary serenity is disturbed by the sound of whispers from the two dingalings behind me.

“—heard she dumped him. Isn’t that wild?”

“Do you think he cheated on her or something?”

“Why else would she break up with him?”

“Wonder if she’s looking for a rebound.”

I blink when I realize they’re talking about Olivia, who walked in and took her seat in silence as she always does. There aren’t many girls in AP Calculus, so naturally she’s a fixture of the disgusting nerdboi imagination.

“Good luck with that,” I scoff to the guy behind me. It’s Jason Lee, who’d have no shot with Olivia Hadid even if he magically produced Jack’s facial features, a sense of humor, and a trust fund, and Murph, for whom I spare exactly none of my attention. Big as the school is, there are only about twenty of us who have almost every class together: the AP kids, as we unofficially call ourselves. Jason is one of them, as is Murph and also famed Nice Guy Matt Das, who is very pointedly not speaking to me. Olivia’s technically an AP kid as well, though nobody includes her in that group. She spends most of the year in her cheer uniform and rarely talks in class, so her presence is more like a blinding anomaly that we’ve all collectively gotten used to.

Until now, that is, since apparently there’s a rumor about her that I can’t help but suspect I might have started.

I’m feeling plenty guilty about my comments to Bash by the time we get to AP Lit, because clearly people won’t stop talking about Olivia and she either doesn’t know it or is very successfully pretending not to hear. I don’t really care if Jack’s reputation loses a little shine over this, but Olivia’s nice, she keeps to herself, and it sucks that people think they have a right to her personal life. I mean, how many times does the girl somehow get all the blame for a breakup? According to them, either Jack cheated and it’s her fault for not keeping him interested, or she dumped him because she’s evil and also probably stupid (depending on who you ask). Teenagers have no imagination.

“Okay, kids, it’s that time of year again,” says Mr. Meehan, a noted Shakespeare kook. “For our next assignment, we’re all going to be performing scenes from the Bard’s oeuvre.”

Mr. Meehan is also the drama teacher, in case that wasn’t immediately obvious.

“Let’s see, for the Romeo and Juliet farewell—‘Wilt thou be gone?’ so on and so forth, as Romeo sets off a fugitive… Ah, Miss Hadid,” he says, scanning the room and landing on Olivia, “I believe you enjoyed this one. How about you take Juliet?”

Olivia nods, and immediately five boys’ heads swivel, exorcist style, to the front of the room.

“And for Romeo—”

Five hands shoot up.

“I’ll do it,” I say without thinking. Like, literally zero thought, which is unfortunate, because I’ve just agreed to do a love scene as performed by a horny idiot. (I’m not convinced by the Romeo and Juliet story, sorry.)

“Miss Reyes?” Mr. Meehan echoes, looking entirely too delighted. “You do know it’s a male part.”

No, Mr. Meehan, I had no idea. Romeo, you say? “Shakespeare routinely had men playing female parts,” I point out.

“As per the conventions at the time.” He’s just being Socratic, which is tiresome.

“Mr. Meehan, unless you have an issue with me playing Romeo—which,” I add, “I think we can both agree would be a problem given our progressive student body—”

“The part is yours, Miss Reyes,” Mr. Meehan says immediately. “Moving on to the play that shall not be named—”

Thank you,Olivia mouths to me from across the room, which startles me. After all, it’s my fault people are talking about her.

So in response I shrug, she half smiles, and we both turn back to our desks.

“Thanks again for doing this,” says Olivia when the bell signifies the end of AP Lit later that week. Meehan gave us a few minutes to work on our scenes at the end of class, so we’re vacating the same corner of the classroom at the same time.

“It’s no big deal,” I offer distractedly, still furious about at least four different things. High on the list? Kayla, who’s already sent around an email about homecoming despite the Aloha Dance being tonight. Jack, who I’m just assuming did not read it. Antonia, who’s now cheerily bombarding me via the ConQuest group chat like nothing’s changed, meaning I may have to actually attend the Aloha Dance in order to avoid it. And Matt Das, because he’s shuffling out behind us with the audacity to still exist.

“The last thing I need right now is to have to do a love scene with one of those idiots,” clarifies Olivia in a low voice, which is a refreshing level of snark from her. “Not that they’re all idiots,” she adds in apparent penance.

“No, they absolutely are,” I assure her, holding the door open as she follows me through it. “Though you could have just said no when Meehan offered you the scene.”

“I know.” It appears we’ll both be walking down the corridor together, which is a first. “It’s just… a really gorgeous scene, though,” she says wistfully.

“Kind of corny, don’t you think?”

“Oh, come on. ‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea / my love as deep; the more I give to thee / the more I have, for both are infinite,’” Olivia recites to me, a little breathless.

“Is that One Direction?”

She groans. “Ohmygod.”

“Personally I think Mercutio’s in love with Romeo,” I add, and she laughs.

“Maybe he is! The point is the sentiment. The words. The meaning—”

“That quote is from the balcony scene, not this one,” I point out.

“Still,” she sighs. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who thinks something can’t be taken seriously if it’s about love. I mean, what else is the point of being human, right? It’s not just romantic love,” she adds. “You know the Greeks had five? Platonic love, playful love…”

“I don’t have a problem with love stories,” I assure her, which is true. After all, I do fervently ship Liliana and Cesario on War of Thorns. “But the Greeks had six kinds of love, one of which is sex, and that’s what this,” I say with a nudge to her Romeo and Juliet script, “is about. It’s like how Titanic’s not a love story so much as a cautionary tale about a dude who has sex with a rich girl on a boat and then immediately dies. If anything,” I conclude, “it’s about the dangers of capitalism.”

“Wowwww,” Olivia says.

“I know. Huge con.”

“So this is you having no problem with love stories?” she says, arching a brow. We’ve reached the corner where we’d typically part ways for lunch, though she seems in no hurry to leave.

“No problem whatsoever. This just isn’t one.”

“But what about the tragedy?” she prods me, still lingering despite the people pushing past us in the hall. “Fate? Star-crossed love?”

“Miscommunication is a classic comedy of errors trope. And didn’t you notice the dick jokes?” I point out, and Olivia laughs.

“Comedy and tragedy both depend on disorder,” Olivia agrees. “But the resolution? Pure tragedy.”

“Okay, so does tragedy make a love story? Because if Romeo had just waited a few minutes before plunging a dagger into his chest, there’d be a laugh track and an off-screen divorce five years later.”

“Oh, great,” she groans, “you somehow managed to make Romeo and Juliet even more depressing.”

I’m about to tell her it’s one of my special talents when a sudden cacophony of crutches materializes on my left. It’s Jack Orsino, of course, fruitlessly chasing Olivia as usual. He gets a few lingering looks that he apparently doesn’t notice—this school, honestly. Pick a god who reads his emails, that’s all I ask.

“Oh, hey,” says Jack, sweating a little despite obviously pretending not to. “Olivia,” he adds, turning to her after a sparse nod in my direction. “On your way to lunch?”

“Oh, um. Yeah, in a sec? But I’m kind of finishing my chat with Vi about our AP Lit scene,” Olivia says, gesturing to me.

“Vi?” Jack says, shifting his furrowed glance to me like I’m a concept somebody recently invented. His eyes are a deep brown that’s both intense and unnerving, because of course they are. Athletic abilities can’t account for everything without conventional attraction as an added plus, though he looks… oddly exhausted?

Before I finish the thought, though, he looks away.

“You can go ahead without me,” Olivia offers to him.

“Oh no, it’s fine,” Jack replies too quickly. “I can wait.”

Good god, Jack. Even I’m cringing.

“Oh… um. Okay. Does tomorrow work?” Olivia asks, turning to me.

“Tomorrow?” I echo blankly, having gotten caught up in whatever this is.

“Yeah. To rehearse? After school,” she says, Jack still staring between us like he’s trying to solve a math equation. In fairness, I don’t know what Olivia’s talking about either, but if it causes Jack Orsino this much distress, so be it.

“Sure,” I say. “That works. My house?”

“Great.” Olivia beams. “I’ll text you.”

She doesn’t have my number. Not that it wouldn’t be easy to DM me on basically any platform, but still. Interesting enough to commit to the bit. “Sounds good! Bye, Jack,” I add gratuitously, delighting in my opportunity to mess with him until I unintentionally meet his eye.

Yikes, he does look awful—like he hasn’t slept in days. Something pricks in my chest, though thankfully it doesn’t last.

“Bye,” Jack says faintly, angling his crutches after Olivia with a crease of confusion still caught between his brows.

“Morning, sunshine,” my mother jokingly singsongs when I stumble upright from the sofa. I nearly launch my teeth into the edge of the coffee table, tripping over my pile of textbooks on the floor. “You haven’t been staying up too late, have you?”

She glances pointedly at my laptop, which is shoved into the sofa cushions. I put it there somewhere around three or four, or whenever it was that I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.

Twelfth Knightis a weird game, complicated and a little bit like getting lost in some bizarro fantasy world that has its own language and rules, but I’m getting the hang of it. I’ve always seen the football field as a war zone in some way or another, and this really isn’t that different. More important, I find myself thinking a lot about the game when I’m not playing it—new skills I’ve acquired and how to use them in combat, places in the realms I could go if I could beat certain levels or opponents, that sort of thing.

It’s definitely not football. No crowd is ever going to applaud me for the things I achieve in this game, or anywhere off the field. But considering all the other things I could be thinking about—the way my teammates avoid looking at my knee, for example, or the way my dad no longer seems to know what to say to me at dinner—this is… pretty much ideal, even if it does keep me up most of the night.

“You know me, Mom. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, like always.” I rub my eyes blearily, reaching for my crutches. “What are you doing here?”

She gives me a hurt look that I’m going to tell myself is only playful. “Can’t a mother come by to visit her injured son?” she jokes, which is only further evidence I’ve upset her.

“I just meant—” I wave a hand. Doesn’t matter what I meant. “Breakfast?”

“Already on the table.”

“Great.” I follow her into the kitchen, where she’s set an enormous plate of eggs and bacon and enough slabs of toast to feed a small army. “Whoa.”

“I figured you’d be hungry,” she says, catching my eye. “I do happen to recall how you eat, Jack, even if I don’t live here anymore.”

I manage to drag out the stool and lift myself onto it, one of my crutches tumbling to the ground in the meantime. “At this rate there’s about to be a permanent imprint of my ass in the couch cushions.”

“You’re healing,” she says, “and don’t say ‘ass.’”

Seems poor form to argue with her first thing in the morning, so I don’t. “Well, thanks, Mom.” I lift a piece of toast to my mouth, listening to how she’ll be doing breakfast with me every Sunday before physical therapy while my dad watches game film with the other coaches at school.

“I’m glad you’re going to have a chance to rest,” she comments idly. “Better you focus on other things besides football for now. Your college applications, for one thing.”

My stomach drops. “I’m going to Illyria,” I remind her.

She nods quickly. “Right, of course, but just in case—”

“And it’s still my team,” I add, the toast going dry in my mouth as I force a swallow. “I still need to be there.”

“Oh, I know that, baby,” she says, cooing at me a little too sympathetically. Like maybe she, too, feels sorry for me, clinging to an old dream even after all hope is gone. I heard her say that to my dad once, and even though I’m sure she regrets it now, it has a stain of truth to it.

Just like that, my appetite is gone.

“I should probably brush my teeth and get going,” I tell her, nudging the unfinished plate in her direction. “Breakfast was great though, thanks.”

She sort of half frowns at me. “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Not great. But at least I don’t have to think about it while I’m sawing some computer avatar in half with a broadsword. “Everything’s fine, Mom, I promise.”

“Mm.” She eyes me for a second. “How’s Nick doing?”

After he left last weekend, he made me promise to finish binging War of Thorns so I can catch up with the new season, which he claims is going to be the best one so far. It’s not a bad show—I assumed it would be, thanks to all the special effects and weird costumes and, again, the critically suspect endorsement of one Viola Reyes, but you do kind of get invested in the story, so I’ll probably do that this weekend after the away game.

The one I won’t be playing in.

“Nick’s good,” I say, clearing my throat.

“And how’s Olivia?” Mom adds, picking up one of my pieces of bacon.

“Oh, uh.” Honestly? I’d like to know the same thing. “She’s a little stressed.”

“Makes sense. She’s got a difficult course load this year, doesn’t she?”

“I guess.” It feels a little bit like I don’t know anything about Olivia anymore. Like I’m not that special to her, or maybe I never was. Sounds stupid, probably, but it seems like we’ve both talked more to Vi Reyes in the past week than to each other, which—

Hm. Vi Reyes again.

Very belatedly, something switches on like a light bulb. I’ve been thinking of Vi all morning, and it finally occurs to me why that might be.

Could Vi be the key to fixing things with Olivia?

Vi’s little scowl materializes in my head, sudden and unavoidable and mildly less annoying than before. I wanted an answer, and conveniently, here she is.

“I really gotta get going,” I remind my mom, shoveling a sudden, enthusiastic forkful of eggs into my mouth and beating her to my crutches. “Thanks again, though!”

“Hon? I figured I’d be driving you,” my mom calls after me, gesturing to my knee.

“Oh.” Right. “Yeah, thanks. Cool if we leave in five minutes?”

“Sure,” she says, bemused, as I put aside thoughts of knights, away games, and mysterious sort-of girlfriends just long enough to start formulating a plan.

My first attempts at sorting out the best way to persuade Vi to help me are… not very fruitful.

“Vi? She’s a bitch,” says Tom Murphy. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, total bitch” is Marco Klein’s take. “Don’t even bother.”

“She’s not a bitch,” Rob Kato says hesitantly, looking startled that I’ve chosen to talk to him at all, “but like, she kind of has no soul, you know what I mean? So, like, yeah.”

Even Nick’s sister gives me a vague answer.

“Vi?” Antonia echoes, frowning at me. “I don’t know, honestly. She’s been… weird lately. What did you want to ask her?”

“It’s more like I need a favor,” I explain. “And I’m wondering if she’s ever normal, you know what I mean?”

Antonia sighs, considering it. “Two weeks ago I’d have said Vi’s not at all what people think she is,” she tells me, slamming her locker shut. “Now?” She shrugs. “Good luck.”

Oh good, great. Ideal. At this point I’ll have to ask Olivia how she manages to have a civil conversation with Vi in order to get Vi to ask what the hell’s going on with Olivia.

“Everything okay?” Antonia asks, frowning up at me.

“Huh? Yeah. Just a school thing,” I lie quickly. “I need her to help me with something. Curricularly,” I add, in case she suspects anything weird. Or worse, personal.

“Oh. Well that’s not happening.” Antonia gives a sharp laugh. “She already thinks you don’t do any work. Not that that’s true,” she adds quickly. “I mean, you obviously know that. And I always tell her she just doesn’t understand the pressure you’re under. Or were under, but…” She, like everyone these days, glances briefly down at my knee, then looks hastily away. “I just meant—”

“It’s fine. Sorry, gotta go,” I say, realizing that lunch is over, which means I’m late for leadership class, which is not a good start. By the time I make it to the classroom, Vi’s already got a meeting going at her usual lab table.

“—told you that would look tacky,” Kayla is saying, and Mackenzie, beside her, nods vigorously. “Don’t you want homecoming to be, like, the best dance ever?”

“Like, no, I do not,” answers Vi in a snotty voice.

“But this is our legacy,” Mackenzie insists.

“I thought junior prom last year was your legacy?” Vi counters.

“That too!” Kayla snaps, while Mackenzie gives a vigorous nod. “It’s about our oeuvre, okay?”

“First of all, I don’t think a bunch of school dances qualifies as an oeuvre,” Vi says with a low growl, “nor do I think there’s any reason to spend that much money on chairs when we already own a full set of—”

“Hi,” I cut in, as Vi groans and Kayla and Mackenzie whip around, instantly flushed.

“Jack,” Mackenzie exhales. “We were just—”

“Chairs?” I prompt in my most charming voice.

“For the tables,” Kayla informs me.

“For the tables,” I agree. “Which we… need?”

“Well, people need a place to rest,” Mackenzie says vigorously. “You know, when they’re tired from dancing.”

“Don’t we have tables and chairs we usually use?” I’m not actually sure. By the look on Vi’s face, though, the answer is yes, and whatever else is unquestionably wrong with Vi, she usually has the right answer.

“Well, technically, but—”

“The budget is pretty limited,” I point out, which I assume is true, since I’ve never heard of a budget that was unlimited. “So maybe we could, you know, table this discussion?” I joke, nudging a slightly sour-faced Kayla. “If there’s money left over then we can revisit it.”

“You signed off on their budget,” Vi reminds me under her breath, digging something out of her backpack.

Huh, okay then. “Well, listen, you’re smart,” I tell Kayla and Mackenzie. “I’m sure you can find some, uh, you know. Money that’s like… stuff we don’t need to spend?”

“Redundancies,” Vi says, pretending to be looking over a page in a book that she definitely pulled out as a prop for this conversation.

“Those,” I agree, with another smile in Kayla’s direction. “The point is, it’s not in the budget. Which isn’t Vi’s fault.”

Vi looks up, half frowning at me.

“But I’m happy to help if I can,” I conclude, and Kayla finally smiles back, relenting.

“Thanks, Jack. See that, Vi? There’s a nice way to handle things,” Kayla shoots over her shoulder at Vi, who gestures back in a way that Kayla thankfully misses before turning to me. “By the way, so sorry to hear about Olivia,” Kayla murmurs, her hand lingering on my forearm.

“What about Olivia?” I say, as if I have no idea.

“Oh, just that you two were, you know—”

“We’re fine,” I assure her. “Better than ever, in fact.”

“Oh.” Kayla blinks, withdrawing her hand. “Well… great!” she says brightly, before wandering away with Mackenzie at her heels, the two of them launching into whispers the moment they’re out of earshot.

“Liar,” remarks Vi in a low voice.

“Beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.” She flips another page in her book, which I slide away from her. She looks up with a glare, eyes narrowing. “What?”

“I’m not lying.”

“About Olivia? You certainly are. Either that or you’re even more oblivious than I thought.”

As much as it pains me to have this particular conversation with Vi, it is clearly my opening. I glance around before shifting closer. “Did she say something to you?”

“She doesn’t have to,” Vi informs me in the most obnoxious way possible. “I have eyes.”

“It’s… complicated,” I admit in an undertone.

“Is it?” she replies in a doubtful singsong, tugging her book back from me. “Seems simple to me.”

“Well, it’s not.” Not that you’d know anything about relationships, I want to add, given how few of her own friends seem to like her, but antagonizing her right now seems like the wrong move. “Do you…?” I clear my throat. “Do you think you could talk to her about it?”

“About what?”

“About—” I glance around again, but no one’s listening. One of the rare benefits of Viola Reyes’s personality: nobody wants to be within range of whatever’s pissed her off today. “About me,” I admit.

“Um. What?” She looks up, and to my complete dismay, she’s… laughing. Or something that looks like laughter, which is definitely at my expense. “You want me to ask her about you? Out of curiosity,” she begins, in a tone that I can already tell will take a hard turn for the mocking, “how many conversations about you do you think the average person has per day? I’m genuinely desperate to hear your answer.”

God, she’s unbearable. “Look,” I grumble, “if you’d just do me this one favor, it could be mutually beneficial, all right? I could make sure it was.”

Her dark eyes flick sideways to mine. “You’d have to be capable of something that actually benefits me,” she points out, which is true.

Though, given the conversation I just interrupted, that’s not entirely out of the question.

“I just did,” I inform her.

“Did what?” She’s barely listening.

“I helped you. Defended you.” I gesture metaphorically to Kayla and Mackenzie.

“Did your job, you mean?”

I inhale, controlling the urge to snap. “Can you give me some credit here, Reyes? I’m trying to help you out.”

She flips a page in her book. “By offering to do exactly what you were elected to do?”

“Uh, Viola,” I inform her, leaning toward her in a move that never misses, “I think we both know that what I was elected to do was stand here and look pretty.”

She snorts.

“Okay, hang on,” I say, because I don’t annoy that easily, but she’s got the magic touch; she finds my buttons and pushes, even without a word. “In case it’s escaped your attention, you’re not exactly a walk in the park,” I point out to her. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people really don’t like you.”

At first I kick myself for letting that slip when I’m supposed to be charming her—a task that may or may not be impossible—but she merely shrugs like she’s heard it before.

“Nobody likes the person who does the shitty parts of the job,” she says. “I don’t expect to be liked.”

“You don’t want to be?” I challenge her.

She sets the book aside, twisting until she faces me.

“No,” she says, and gets up to leave, only I nudge a crutch into her path to pause her.

“Come on. Everyone wants to be liked.”

She shrugs me off. “Some people need it. I don’t.”

She probably means that, which is something I’ll have to ponder another time. “Still. I could… make things easier for you.”

“Oh yeah?” She looks up at me, skeptical, and about as annoyed with me as I am with her. “You’ll smile my problems away?”

“I—” It’s frustrating for a second, but then it occurs to me that just because Vi thinks that’s a small thing doesn’t mean it is. “Yes,” I realize slowly. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

She blinks. “Excuse me?”

Aside from being a great running back, I’m also extremely talented at having zero enemies. Minus the Padua cornerback—an offense for which retribution was painfully swift—I had to learn early on that when you look like me, it’s best if you never lose your temper, ever. For better or worse, likability is kind of my jam.

“I’ll deliver the bad news,” I say. “I’ll cut the budgets. With a smile,” I add, just to taunt her a little. Just so she’s as prickly as I currently feel. “All the so-called ‘shitty parts’ you hate.”

She folds her arms over her chest. “So, again, your job.”

She’s exhausting. But I smile.

“The point is: if you help me with Olivia, I’ll help you in return. Take it or leave it,” I remind her, because she still seems determined to piss me off. “All I’m asking for is one little conversation. And either I can make things easier for you around here—”

“By doing your job,” she supplies flatly.

“—or nothing changes,” I finish. “Your call.”

Another glare. Does she ever do anything else?

“This is the lamest form of blackmail I’ve ever seen,” she mutters.

“It’s mutual opportunism,” I correct her. “A beneficial symbiosis, if you will.”

“Uh, yeah. Don’t think so,” she tells me, trotting away.

Well, there goes that idea. I shift against the lab table, tired of standing on one leg.

Cool. Cool, cool, cool. God, I can’t wait to go home and duel some bad guys. If Past Me heard me say that he’d probably check for a concussion, but today, it’s never been more true. Wish I carried around a sword in real life. Not that it would solve my Olivia problem, but at least I’d have a sword. Before my injury, it was my reputation I carried around with me; the idea that I was the best at something, that I was popular and respected for what I could do. Without that, I feel naked. Unarmed.

Not that anyone is likely to uncover my depressing double life, but if they were to ask, I’d say I’m this invested in Twelfth Knight because I’m bored. Because I’ve got a one-track mind and I like to win. Because I’m the obsessive type, the kind who needs something to fixate on. My life used to be football, but now it’s whatever form of competition I can give myself without leaving the couch.

But honestly, I think it might be more than that. I think I like the game because it’s… an escape. Because it’s somewhere that isn’t my life or my problems. I can push buttons and kill monsters. I’m just as strong there as I used to be here, in real life. Without my speed, without my future at Illyria—without my future, period—I’m just—

“Homecoming,” Vi says, doubling back, and I jump, lost in my thoughts.

“What?” Jesus, my heart is pounding. This girl is terrifying.

“You’re in charge of homecoming,” she says. “All the extra hours of setup. Wrangling all the volunteers. I don’t want to do it. I’m tired of being in charge of everyone.”

“Oh please, Viola. You love bossing people around,” I mutter reflexively.

“Take it or leave it,” Vi says, blandly echoing my words back to me. “You take over homecoming and I’ll talk to Olivia for you. But that’s it,” she warns. “I’m not actually going to put the two of you back together or whatever. This isn’t The Parent Trap. Got it?”

“I just want answers,” I tell her, which is both mortifying and true, though thankfully she doesn’t linger on it.

“Fine. Deal?”

She holds out a hand.

I’m not happy. I definitely still want to kill some bad guys when I get home. But at least there’s something like progress on the horizon—so fine, Viola. You win.

“Deal,” I agree, and take it.