{December 25}

We’d all returned to cordiality relatively quickly, everyone except Benji, who played a few more hands in silence and then left for his office. We all knew why he was doing that, it couldn’t be more clear—but as soon as he was gone, Cygnus raised his bottle and said, “Fuck‘im—ain’t we here to have a good time?”

And once he said that, we did. Nobody spoke of my story again. The words were gone, lodged deep enough in everyone’s memory for them to lose the syllables and only feel the meaning.

They knew where I was from, and that was all they needed to know.

I somehow dodged being hungover the next morning. Right after my speech that night, Yoru made a point of getting up to drink water, and I realized that it was a good plan for me to do that too, so I’d asked him to get me some and he did.

That must have saved my life.

On Christmas morning I got up and had a cup of black coffee with Cygnus like I always did. Unlike myself, he hadn’t dodged the specter. He gripped his mug in loose, quietly-shaking hands, taking measured sips. Maybe from a distance he looked fine, but I knew better.

Cygnus said to me: “Look—I got you something, but—ah, fuck.” He rubbed his temples, mumbling something about “loud”. More quietly, he said, “I hid it somewhere so you wouldn’t dig it up before today and now I gotta remember where I put it.”

In the back of my mind I’d resigned what Yoru had said to me as just empty hope-raising; I hadn’t even entertained the thought that Cygnus actually did get me something.

All it really did was make me turn beet-red and mutter: “I didn’t get you anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said, shrugging. “I make my own gifts.”

He gestured vaguely to the newest pipe-sword he had on the wall, this one made of copper clean enough to shimmer in the fluorescent light the common room was bathed in.

Cygnus downed the rest of his coffee in one gulp. “They say black coffee is good for hangovers,” he said, staring down at the grinds in his mug. “They’d better be right.”

I took another sip, mug cupped in both hands. “My dad used to say that.”

Cygnus flinched, like he’d zapped his finger on a doorknob, and he said: “Oh—right, there was, ah, something I wanted to say to you.”

I looked up at him and waited.

“Look—I’m sure what you talked about last night was, um, hard for you to say in front of Benji. I know you guys don’t really get along.”

I grimaced. I think I was hoping that nobody remembered what I said—that the meaning just passed through them like osmosis, and they’d just know where and what I came from rather than remember what I said about it.

“Yeah,” was all I said, and I said it slowly, too.

But this was Cygnus talking, not Ava or Benji. I didn’t need to be defensive. I trusted him.

“I don’t really have a speech for you,” Cygnus said. “Or maybe I did, I don’t remember. I think I had something planned last night, but—well, you know. All I really wanted to say is that I’m willing to bet that was really hard for you.”

I wasn’t sure if it was. Alcohol helped somewhat, but I was getting nervous that I was going to start needing alcohol whenever I had to say anything important about myself, and I knew that was a slippery slope. I went to school, I saw the PSAs. I knew the drill.

None of that really seemed to apply to me, though. All of those warnings were for normal people, and I wasn’t normal people, so maybe I could just ignore them.

It was food for thought, nothing more. I just remember considering it.

As for Cygnus’s words—

I went with, “It was,” because it was easier than sorting through my feelings about alcohol; that part was hard, so saying that the whole thing was hard wasn’t technically a lie.

Right?

“I just wanted to say that I’m proud of you, that’s all,” Cygnus said. “We don’t have any secrets here. Well, except Bell, but—I mean, fuck, you’re more a part of the team than Bell is. Bell is barely a part of the fucking Radiant, let alone the unit.”

I went red again. Locked in place; hands locked around the mug, mug locked halfway from the table to my mouth, eyes locked on a spot on the floor between Cygnus and me, breath locked halfway up my throat, brain locked in whirring silence.

That was all I wanted, right?

All I wanted was to be a part of the team.

“Hey,” he said. “Look at me.”

All I had to do was move and I was clear. Home free.

No more pain.

I closed my eyes and reopened them, and when I did I was looking at Cygnus.

“I’m proud of you,” he said. “We all are. You’re doing fine, okay? Don’t worry about Benji, he’s just a shitter. He’s just salty that Prochazka overruled him to put you on the team. And, like—I think that was a good call, don’t you?”

I didn’t know what to say. This was the golden truth. It was all I ever wanted to hear.

“You’re doing fine,” he repeated. “Just—just keep it up, okay?”

I said, “Thank you.”

I really, honestly believed he was being truthful with me.

0 0 0

Later on, I went out into the hall to go and see if it was snowing. Christmas morning in the factory is the same as every other morning; there aren’t any windows in our room, so it’s a trek to see the weather.

On my way I passed by Ava, and for the first time in either of our lives, she stopped for me.

“Hey,” she said. “I was just looking for you.”

I paused. Ava was never looking for me.

In her left hand she held a little plastic bag, weighed down by something soft inside.

“Did you want something?” I asked. Cordiality was the name of the game; we were always formal with each other. It kept our interaction time to a minimum.

“I—yeah, I guess I did,” she said.

Ava looked at the floor. “I wanted to apologize.”

I didn’t know how to react to that, so I chose not to. All I could do was wait for her to explain.

“We’re all nuts here,” she said. “I shouldn’t be faulting you for being a different brand of nuts than me. I—I don’t know, I guess for a while I was nervous you were infringing on my space, like…like I was the dealer for blackjack before you showed up, and last night I found out you could deal poker and make drinks, and I was like—fuck, you know? Like I’m nine and a half years older than you, why do you know more about this stuff than I do? And you look like me and I—I was weirded out, I guess. But I’m not going anywhere and you’re not going anywhere, and I realized that—well—after blackjack last night I went up to the room I grow my weed in, and just sort of sat there and thought about everything you said. I’m not going to say I was wrong about you, because I don’t think anything I thought about you before has changed. But I am going to say that I shouldn’t be faulting you for it. You’ve had a weird life, and I don’t really understand what it did to you, and if I don’t understand what it did to you then I guess I can’t really fault you for being the way you are.

She paused, took a breath. “Some of that probably sounds insulting, but I swear I’m not trying to do that. Just trying to be honest. We all benefit from honesty, right? You went through all that trouble to be honest last night. I’m trying to do the same here.”

At some point during that talk, she’d started looking at me, but I didn’t notice when she started; I only noticed when she looked at the floor again.

“I got this for my weed room as a decoration, but I realized it was kind of backhanded to buy this when you liked it so much. You’ll probably get more joy out of it than I will.”

She held the back out to me—softly, I reached out and took it; but I didn’t look inside. Right then I was split between this being a cruel joke and a genuine apology, even if she hadn’t explicitly said she was sorry yet, and some of her words were sticking in my head in an unpleasant way.

I wasn’t cut out to process things like that.

The bag could’ve held anything, but I supposed the only thing it held for sure was the answer to my question.

Ava looked up at me again, bit her lip. I was looking at the bag now in my hand with some level of apprehension; and it must’ve been obvious to her because she added: “Look, it’s not a bomb. I’m—”

She stopped herself, let out a deep breath. “I’m holding things against you that are beyond your control. I came here to apologize for doing that and here I am, still fucking doing it. God dammit.”

She folded her hands in front of her. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t trust me, and—well—we’ll work through that later, I guess, because I don’t really trust you yet either. I’ve been drinking a lot more lately, trying to work through all of this. Keep putting in a request for a full bar somewhere in this building and they won’t listen to me.”

She gave an awkward chuckle that I didn’t return, although the idea of a full bar jived with me. Another place for me to show off that I was good at something, assuming everyone was okay with a twelve-year-old bartender.

Ava continued: “I can’t guarantee we’ll be friends or anything, but glaring at you out of the corner of my eye isn’t going to do either of us any good. We’re here until one of us dies, and—and it’s my responsibility to be the better woman here, so…so I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I don’t mean to antagonize you. I really don’t. I mean—I did, before, but I’m going to stop. It’s not worth it. None of the hate is. I was thinking about what I said to you when we were out stopping that trafficking ring and—and I was just sitting there thinking, God, I really said that stuff to another human being. And at the end of the day, well, the world’s just not kind to crazy people like us. I don’t really know what would’ve happened to you if you didn’t end up here, and I don’t really want to think about it, and frankly, I—I don’t really want you to think about it either. Because half the time I look at you and see a bruiser like Cygnus who’s capable of unbelievable strength and brutality, who’ll take out anyone and anything with a snap, and the other half of the time I see—I see you. I see someone who really could, almost, be my little sister. And last night I saw you for longer than I ever have, and…and it made me realize that…um…that I was wrong. Wrong about a lot.”

She pursed her lips. “So in the bag is my peace offering, I guess.”

That was enough to convince me. I’m generally easy to sway. It’s a personal weakness of mine—easily swayed and easily lied to.

No amount of power would change that.

But I was willing to accept Ava’s apology, and I was willing to take it in stride because I felt so good from what Cygnus had told me a little while before. Everyone was going to be genuine with me now. I was a part of the team, and team members always told the truth to each other.

So this too, was the truth. Even if it wasn’t, it was. It had to be.

I opened the bag and looked inside.

In there, curled up on the bottom, was the stuffed frog we saw on the counter in the bodega, some five months ago.

My vision went blurry.

I reached in, took the frog in my hands. Dropped the bag in my haste.

It was nothing—a tiny gesture, a five-dollar stuffed frog, and yet—

It was the world. It was the last piece; a piece I didn’t know I was missing until I held it.

Ava asked me, “Are you crying?”

I was.