Chapter 2 — Check

I won't lie, there was some anxiety. Trepidation, even. Pick whatever word you want that means nervous, I felt it as we walked off campus. At my old school, you did not skip out. Even disregarding my parents' reactions, the school was very proactive in making sure students were in their seats for every single bell. I couldn't say how effective it was at actually getting us to learn, but they had the attendance records to prove it worked.

Kyla practically skipped along herself as we walked, bright as the sunny day enveloping us. Her attitude kept me going. Without her, I absolutely would have turned around and rushed back to class, preparing every apology in my repertoire for when I burst into the classroom ten minutes late.

"Riposte isn't my favorite game," she was saying, after a long-winded exaltation of its many qualities, "but it's probably the best one to play at lunch. More people know how, plus you can usually finish a round in like, fifteen minutes. Tournaments usually do best-of-three, and sometimes best-of-five for the finals. I love tournaments, that's when things get real good."

"How many have you won?" I asked, trying to contribute something to the conversation.

"...Depends," said Kyla, hesitating for the first time since I'd met her. "Official games or unofficial?"

"...Official?" I shrugged.

"Well… just one. But it was a good one!" She pulled out the Captain Winter card, which she'd kept in her pocket instead of with the rest in the box. "The Captain and I made a real good showing that day. We won two-zero, the guy didn't stand a chance."

So… she wasn't very good. That much was obvious. On the bright side, that meant I could probably actually enjoy playing with her. Playing a game with somebody way better than me was just… painful. Either they crushed me without a thought, or they were obviously going easy on me. Neither felt very good.

"So how do you pick your character?" I asked, trying to shift away from winning and losing.

"You just pick!" said Kyla brightly. "Mirror matches are okay too, so if somebody else wants to play the same duelist, that's fine. They can get kinda weird though, especially with the really complicated duelists. I prefer when nobody else picks the Captain."

"Any suggestions on who I should play?"

"Oh, well, there's just so many. I mean, you should just look through them!" Kyla glanced over her shoulder at her backpack, inside which sat her decorated Riposte box. "A lot of characters are from other things, like books or games. Lots of more obscure stuff too, it's really fun to see the weird ones they picked up."

She stopped walking practically in the middle of crossing the street. I hesitated, confused, as Kyla twisted around and started digging through her bag.

"Uhh…" I started, as a car rounded the corner. The anxiety in my chest was mounting fast as it approached—and being Portland, I doubted we'd ever hear a horn. "Kyla, can we—"

"Oh, crap!" She looked up, suddenly aware of where we were again. Without a blink, Kyla darted across the road and back onto the sidewalk, me only a few steps behind. "Sorry. Anyway," she added as she pulled out the deck of cards. "Here's my duelist deck. I don't have all of them, since there's a few new ones that came out recently."

I started browsing through as we kept walking, keeping one eye on the road ahead—and on Kyla. For the most part, I didn't recognize a single name. There were the really obvious ones from the classics, but they made up just a tiny handful of the huge deck. Meanwhile, I saw names I only vaguely knew from the latest hot fantasy novels. They seemed to come from every fantasy and sci-fi genre out there. Winston Echerzcha, Kalleddor, Mo'Gar the Warrior, The Raven of Westhalm, Norad Kelso… who on earth could I possibly stick to in this massive list?

As we rounded a corner, with Kyla still talking non-stop about this match and that character. I was examining the art on a card more closely—Naeflin-something, looked like an elf huntress. Without warning, because of course Kyla wasn't paying the slightest attention to what was in front of us, I ran straight into somebody standing just around the corner… somebody huge.

"Sorry," I said hurriedly, taking a step back and dropping the card into my pocket. A second later, my eyes narrowed. I recognized him.

"It's cool," he said, as casual as could be. I could tell though, he was trying to make this seem like an accident. That I'd just "run into him". As if.

It was the giant from my math class, whom I'd later confirmed was indeed a lineman for the school varsity team. Reylon Young.

"Well… see ya," said Kyla, starting away. She hadn't noticed a thing.

I paused, staring at Reylon intently. Should I mention us both skipping class? Play it off as a joke? Pretend we didn't know each other? The odds we'd happen to both skip and head in the same direction to this random street corner were incredibly slim.

"That's a Riposte card, right?" he asked, nodding at the hand I'd stuffed into my jacket. "You a fan?" he added with a glare, a very distinct look on a dude built like a tank. I couldn't tell if he was actually mad at me, or that was just his default look.

Okay, now something was really up. This guy, who fits the role of a muscle-bound jock to a T, recognizes my friend's nerd-crossover-heaven dueling card game at a glance? The same day I find out it exists, I run into him?

You're paranoid, Noël. This is all coincidence. He's waiting for the light. Look, he's already starting to walk away. If this was some massive conspiracy, something else would have happened. Also, Kyla's about to lose you. Get going.

I might have agreed, except for Reylon calling out one last thing as he walked away. "Don't join the League."

The way he said it, I knew it was the name of something, not just some random league. Was it a Riposte league? Something else? Who knew? I wanted to ask him, force some detail out of the guy, but cars were already streaming across the street and he was long-gone. Meanwhile, Kyla was just about to round the corner, completely oblivious to my absence.

I ran after her. Reylon would have to wait.

***

Kyla led us to, of all the places I should have expected, a game shop. Drizzle Game Hut, to be specific, which I quickly learned everybody just called "Drizzle". The owner was a friendly-looking guy with the full massive wizard beard that trailed nearly down to his stomach. He waved to Kyla as we came in, but he was busy with a customer and left us to ourselves.

The place was packed, wall-to-wall, with games. Board games, card games, roleplaying games, dice games, miniatures games, wargames. There were others I couldn't even name the type, except for one common feature—not an electronic game in sight. Drizzle was one of those traditionalist shops.

Just like at school, Kyla seemed to have a table all to herself. In this case, it was in the open, but still tucked away in a cozy nook with a corner couch where we could sit without anybody behind us. I preferred that, and it seemed like she did as well. We took each side of the couch, leaving the two chairs empty.

I figured I may as well get it out of the way first, before we started on anything else. "Is there a Riposte league?"

"What?" Kyla looked puzzled. She stopped halfway through unpacking one of the boxes. One was a spare she'd grabbed from the shelf, a store copy I guess they provided for friends to use in exactly this kind of situation. "Not that I know of. I mean, there's tournaments. Drizzle holds 'em all the time. But like, nothing big. No card games get that big anymore." She cocked her head to the side. "Why?"

"No reason," I shrugged. "Just curious."

"Well, good!" said Kyla, grinning. "Questions are your path to success, my grasshopper!"

"Why a grasshopper?"

She stopped again, puzzled. "I mean, isn't it always grasshopper?"

"I guess so. Still…"

"If you don't like it, I can stop," said Kyla, suddenly subdued. She seemed genuinely upset. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"It's not that big a deal," I said quickly. "Call me whatever you like."

"Will do. Except for the forbidden name," intoned Kyla, smirking.

I laughed, which startled the both of us. I don't think Kyla was used to people laughing around her—in exasperation maybe, but not a genuine chuckle—while I just hadn't had much to laugh about since… yeah. The whole shop seemed to be getting warmer and more relaxed.

"So, pick your poison, grasshopper, and we'll get started."

I bent over the pile of duelists, but within minutes it was obvious—choice paralysis would be the death of me. There were just too many to choose between, and I didn't know enough about the game to even narrow it down. Kyla was no help at all, excitedly describing each one as I made a vague movement toward it. She seemed to have every single one memorized, down to its basic stats. If nothing else, her memory was remarkable.

"I give up," I said finally. "You pick for me."

"Are you sure?" she asked, hesitating again. "I mean, picking your duelist's a big deal. How can you fight without confidence in your choices?"

"I've got no clue what I'm doing. Confidence can come later."

Kyla shrugged. "Your funeral. All right, let's leave it to the gods of fate. Noël's duelist shall beeeeeeee…"

Without warning, she flung her hand down onto the table, slamming it so hard that the owner jumped all the way across the room. He glanced over, but seeing Kyla, only shrugged and turned away again. She lifted up her hand, eyes closed, a card dangling between her fingers. I plucked it out and read off the name.

"Check," I said, feeling a bit underwhelmed. The art looked interesting enough—a woman in a long duster jacket, a curved sword in one hand and a high-tech pistol in the other. She seemed to be wearing some kind of headset too, though it practically looked built into her skull. More practical in a fight, I guess, if it wasn't easy to come off.

"Check?" said Kyla, momentarily blank-faced. Somehow, it looked like we'd pulled one she didn't recognize. "Hang on… oh, that one's not mine." Kyla glanced around, but there wasn't anybody nearby. She plucked the card from my hand and rushed over to the counter, flagging down the owner of the shop. "Hey, Joey! I think somebody left a card at my table!"

He glanced up, rubbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. "Oh, that was for you. On the house."

"Really?" Kyla frowned. "But I haven't won any tournaments. I haven't even placed. Why am I getting free cards?"

"We got a bunch of promo cards with the new set. I'm giving them to all my best customers."

"Oh…"

Kyla didn't sound very excited, which struck me as a bit off. I'd have expected her to be overjoyed by a new card for her favorite game, but she wandered back to the table practically lethargic. As she sat down, she thrust the card over the table, barely looking at it.

Gently, I fished it out of her hand. "...You okay?" I asked cautiously. I hadn't known her very long, but this was clearly already out of character for her.

"Yeah…" She sighed. "I'm gonna go use the restroom. Watch my stuff, okay?"

"Sure."

As she vanished, I started digging through the cards… and stopped. With Kyla's sudden change of attitude, my heart just wasn't in it anymore. I was only learning the game to hang out with her. It looked a little interesting, but not enough to invest my time in blindly. Instead, I decided I'd take the opportunity—and Joey's lack of customers—to get some answers.

"Hey," I started, moving up to the counter just as he was putting away some figures under the glass casing.

"Oh, are you Kyla's friend?" Joey smiled. "Good to see she's doing better."

"...Yeah, I guess," I shrugged. "I… haven't known her that long."

He nodded. "She makes friends fast, doesn't she? Not usually with people her own age though… always worried about that kid. I don't know you, but do me a favor anyway?"

I stared. Well, this guy was forward. In a way, I appreciated it, just like I did Kyla's up-front nature. I'd gotten enough of people dancing around the subject after the years of pitying looks and hushed whispers about who I was and what I'd gone through.

"Watch out for her. She's too generous for her own good. Loves to give everything away at the drop of a hat."

"Like playing cards?"

Joey laughed. "Way more than that, but you got the gist. She'd do anything for her friends. Just… make sure she doesn't get taken advantage of, yeah?" He glanced at the card still clutched between my fingers. "Check's one of the newest cards, straight out of Silicon and Silence. She's not the main character, but damn if she isn't the coolest one. You should check it out if you get the chance."

"Is that a TV show?" I guessed.

"Nah, it's a book." He shook his head in exasperation. "Everybody wants a damn TV show now, no faith in the written word anymore…"

Joey kept muttering to himself as he walked away. I rolled my eyes. Thankfully, Kyla returned at that moment, and she was back to her energetic, excitable self. I hurried back to join her.

"Okay," I said pointedly as I set Check down on the table in front of me, just as I'd seen her do with Captain Winter before. "Teach me, sensei."

Kyla cocked her head to the side again. I'd lost her. "...Sensei?"

Are you kidding me… I sighed. "You're calling me grasshopper and you don't even… nevermind. Teach me how to play."

***

Kyla laid out the rules, and to be honest, I was expecting something much worse. To my relief, the game was relatively simple. If you really boiled it down, it might as well have been rock-paper-scissors. Very in-depth and complicated rock paper scissors, but at the end of the day, we both played a card at the same time, then figured out what to do about it. That's it.

Of course, Kyla went into a lot more depth than that.

"So, Riposte is a game all about dueling," she said excitedly, dealing out the cards. From what I could tell, there were three or four types. "You're playing a single character, your duelist, against mine. Whoever knocks out the other first wins a round, but I get back up and we keep going. Once either of us gets KOed for a third time, that's the end of the game."

"And then in a tournament, best of three games wins a match, right?"

Kyla nodded, obviously pleased to have somebody actually paying attention. I still wasn't sure I was actually going to enjoy this game, but I'd give it a try. Didn't have anything better to do, since I definitely wasn't going to let Carolyn know I skipped class. There was a timer on my phone to remind me to text her right after school let out, let her know I was hanging out with a friend.

That'd make her happy, I hoped.

"There's your HP," Kyla added, pointing at the number 120 set into the corner of Check's card. I noticed that while the other cards in the game all shared most of their design, each duelist had unique artwork. In my case, the framing and background were sleek and high-tech, so I assumed they matched the stories each character came from. "It goes from fifty to two hundred, or at least, that's what I've seen. You can go higher than that during a game, but that's where it starts."

"And every duelist has a different starting health," I concluded, and she nodded happily. "So how do we fight?"

"First, we gotta pick our dueling ground." She drew a set of six cards from one deck, laying them out face-up. They were locations, with a name across the top and a "type" below, with some brief text explaining what the type meant. "There's only a few types, so don't worry about how big the grounds deck is. It's just an excuse to include more fandoms, and I'm very okay with that."

"So in these six… Open, Indoor, Urban, Nature, Aerial, and Dangerous," I read off, one by one.

"Yup! No need to re-draw, either. You're supposed to have at least as many types as the number of games you're playing. If you don't, then you ditch 'em and try again. We'll just play three today, so we've got more than enough."

Open was The Outskirts of Candir, a wide plain outside a medieval wall. Indoor showed the Skyldr Tavern, roaring fire and boisterous waitress as expected. Urban, meanwhile, was a stark contrast, showing a bleak high-tech Downtown Seattle in 2084. Next was a snow-covered forest, the Wandorn Woods. For aerial, the Deck of the Resplendent Canary, with a clockwork airship as overwrought and intricate as the name implied. Finally, the dangerous dueling ground was the town of Westhalm, a fantasy city mid-siege or under some other kind of horrible attack.

I glanced across them, but the text at the bottom was still meaningless to me—something about evasion and support bonuses or penalties. Shrugging, I sat back as Kyla rolled on.

Four basic types of duelist—Neutral, Aggressive, Evasive, and Ranged. Check was considered evasive, while Captain Winter was ranged, the Nightblade was aggressive, and Kalleddor was neutral. Their type represented an idea of how they played and what kind of moves were available, plus some bonuses to certain things. Evasive moves were stronger in the Nature type but worse in the Open type, as one example I managed to pick up.

To be honest, though, after only five minutes, I was already starting to lose focus. Kyla wasn't exactly the best teacher, as she kept launching off into tangents about the source material behind the characters, or old games she'd played, or anything really. It was all I could do to keep up.

"So after they've been fighting over the same forest for like, a week, Captain Winter finally realizes the trick. She doesn't actually have to go into the forest! They don't care about anything inside, and there's a mountain right there. So then they—" Kyla drummed her fingers excitedly on the tabletop. "They fire an artillery shell at the mountain, and the avalanche wipes out everybody!"

"Nice," I said noncommittally, glancing over at the counter. I could pretend I was looking at the games over there, but in reality, I was checking the clock. It wasn't quite time for school to let out, but we were very close. I'd need to decide if I wanted to use Carolyn as an excuse to leave without hurting Kyla's feelings, or stick around.

"Oh…" said Kyla, suddenly subdued. "I should teach you how to play. Kinda got distracted, sorry."

"It's fine." Better than the whispers about me or the uncomfortable conversations with Lloyd, for sure. I'd rather listen to Kyla any day. "Why don't we just start, and I'll learn as I go?"

"Okay!" Kyla flung half the cards off the table. I started, but she'd actually managed to still get them to land in her box despite the wild motion. I assumed she must have practiced that, it was too perfect. "Captain Winter versus Check in the duel of the century!" She grinned. "You ready?"

"As I'll ever be," I shrugged.

"Okay, first, we gotta decide on our dueling ground. Normally, whoever lost the last game gets to pick, but for the first, we both ban grounds until there's only one left. Since it's your first game, I'll let you have the extra ban."

For all that was worth… I barely know what any of them did. Check was supposed to be an evasive character, which meant Nature grounds were good for me. From the text on her card, I saw she also got an abnormal bonus to evasion on Urban grounds too—probably the whole cyberpunk thing. Picking a Nature was the obvious choice, and since it was a new card, I doubted Kyla'd had a chance to read the bonuses yet.

It was my first game. I needed every advantage I could get. I banned the Outskirts of Candir and pulled it off the table. Kyla, muttering to herself, pulled the snow-covered forest off the table, exactly as I'd hoped. Next was the burning town—I didn't feel like figuring out what a "dangerous" ground was yet—followed by the tavern. Finally, I knocked out the airship deck, leaving us with Downtown Seattle in 2084.

"On your own home turf, too!" said Kyla excitedly. "Oh, this is going to be fun!" I matched her smile, but her own turned wicked in an instant. "The best place for you to die!"

I raised my eyebrows, and she giggled.

"Okay, so we start with cards from our moves deck." She drew five of those, and I matched her. All of mine looked pretty generic—things like Strike, Block, Evade, and Charge, with what seemed to be damage numbers listed across them.

"Who goes first?"

"We both do!" Kyla smiled, practically bouncing in her seat. "That's the best part of Riposte, we go at the same time. Makes it feel more like a real duel! You pick a card from your hand, and I pick one. We put them face-down in the middle of the table, then we both flip them at the same time. Then, we figure out what happened."

Simple enough. Without any better context to work with, I decided to play it safe. Check was good at evasion, and I wasn't sure what all the cards did yet, so I put down one of my evade cards. Kyra, meanwhile, was biting her lip, thumbing through her cards with a great deal more consideration than I'd expected. After what felt like minutes, she laid hers down.

"Annnnnnd go!" she cried.

I flipped mine, while Kyra practically slammed hers back onto the table with gusto. She'd played charge. I glanced over at the helpful quick chart of all the basic moves—to my dismay, charge beat evade.

"Hah-ha!" Kyla smirked. "I knew you'd evade. Pew pew, ten damage to you."

Shrugging, I moved the marker on my side. A hundred and ten. Not really in danger yet, thankfully.

"Since your move failed and mine was a charge, we don't really have anything else to do yet. Normally, after a bout—every turn is a bout—you could play support cards or power up. I'm committed though, cuz of how my character works, so I can't." Kyla pulled a card off the top of her deck. "Finally, you draw one card and that's the end of our turn."

"So there's six basic cards, then." I was reading off the quick reference Kyla had slid across to my side of the table. "Strike beats Charge and Prepare, Evade beats Strike and… you get to play an extra card?"

"Yeah. Evading lets you do a follow-up, so you can do cool combos," said Kyla, nodding. "Or you can use the extra move on Prepare or Recovery too, whatever makes sense. Charge beats Evade though, and it beats Recovery too. Block beats Strike mostly and Charge completely, so it's the best way to totally avoid an attack if you really need to. If you win with a Block, you get a free basic. It's not foolproof though."

"But what if you play Strike and I play Recovery?" I asked, trying to follow along. There were a few gaps in the rock-paper-scissors triangle here—rock-paper-scissors hexagon, more like. Six basic cards that made up most of my deck, and I was already getting lost.

"My strike goes through, but you didn't 'lose' the bout, so you can still do end-of-turn stuff," said Kyla, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. I was beginning to see why she didn't end up with too many people to play with. It didn't bother me that much, but I could see how her smug memorization of the rules might rub people the wrong way.

Especially if she wasn't very good.

"We'll play without supports today," said Kyla as she thumbed through her cards, eyes screwed up with concentration. "It's called Single Combat, or some people call it loner mode. Special rules that pit duelist against duelist mano a mano." She laid down her next card, eyeing me as her lips sprouted another smirk. "What's it gonna be, grasshopper?"

I wanted to wipe the smirk off her face—in a friendly way! She was getting on my competitive nerves and I wanted more. To my surprise, I was already having a little fun. There was a delicious tension and release to each bout, wondering if I'd outsmarted her this time or vice versa. She certainly wasn't terrible, beating me as often as not, but I managed to get a few solid hits in.

The game stretched out longer than Kyla's original promise, but given how often I paused to doublecheck the rules and make sure I understood the hexagon, I didn't hold it against her. It'd speed up as I figured the whole thing out. As we continued, I dug out my phone and dashed off a quick text to Carolyn, letting her know where I was and that I'd be hanging out with a friend for a while. She'd pick me up whenever I was ready.

Finally, after ten bouts, we were both at 50 health. Sounds impressive until you remember that I started at 120, while Captain Winter only started with 80. I was taking more hits than her by far, and not capitalizing on the ones I landed nearly enough. As I laid down my next card—a Strike, trusting that she'd Charge as she usually preferred—I felt something was off.

Something about the way Kyla was eyeing my cards seemed wrong. She was up to something, but I didn't know enough about the game to guess at what.

Kyla laid hers down. After a few seconds, we both flipped—it became second-nature to know when to flip after only a few bouts, an unspoken agreement between the two of us that we'd committed to that card.

She'd played a strike as well. I sighed with relief, figuring we'd just trade equal blows and move on, but Kyla was suddenly laying down two more cards. She'd added another strike, along with a prepare card. I raised an eyebrow.

Kyla grinned and held up Captain Winter. "Two strikes and a prepare, I get to play a combo."

Combos. All right then. Would've been nice to know about those ahead of time… "...So how's that work?"

"If I can land the first card in my combo—" she pointed out a line on Captain Winter's card, spelling out her combo, "—then I can throw down the others from my hand. I landed a strike and it wasn't beaten. So Captain Winter gets to call in her armor—that's a tank, grasshopper."

She crowed her victory as I reluctantly slid my health marker down a huge chunk. I was running low, and while my strike had landed, I was on the ropes. Looking for an out, I looked down at Check's card to see my own special. With a block and a prepare card, I could create a lockdown, preventing Kyla from playing prepare or recover cards for a few turns, or her own special. Useful, for sure, but I was already nearly dead. Besides that, I didn't have a block to play.

If you just keep throwing yourself at her, you'll die before she does. She's gotten too many good hits in. You need to make your own space.

No kidding, but how was I supposed to do that… evasion. Check had a bonus to evading attacks, and we were on a dueling ground that favored it. I'd totally forgotten about that mechanic. Too much going on for my first game, and we weren't even playing with support cards or blitzes yet.

"Can I buy that one, please?"

My head snapped around. I knew that voice. I'd heard it in the back of math class that morning. It was the footballer's friend, with the pretty headscarf and the eyes like starlight. I twisted slightly, trying to catch a glimpse of her at the counter.

Joey handed her a card I recognized even from this distance—a Riposte card for sure. Now I knew something was up.

Or this game just happens to be well-known at this school. Kyla sure seems capable of spreading it around to every person there like a plague. Paranoid again, Noël.

"Just the one today, Rana?" asked Joey, as he fiddled with the receipt machine, which appeared to be jammed. He cursed under his breath as it made a loud whirring noise—and spat out a totally black strip of paper. "Ugh… sorry."

"Just the one, please," said Rana softly. "I need the receipt," she added, with a twinge of embarrassment.

"I know. Gimme a sec," said Joey apologetically as he started digging through a drawer of tools.

"Noël…?" said Kyla impatiently, but I waved her off. This was as good an excuse as any.

I hurried over, pulling the small screwdriver I always kept in my bag. Living with Lloyd and his endless array of technology, new and old, gave me a certain affinity for anything silicon. I just got computers and most of the things attached, something I'd barely been interested in back with my parents. Didn't help that we couldn't afford anything, but still, I always had my eye on other things.

Not so much anymore. Even a printer wasn't out of my wheelhouse.

While Joey dug through the drawer with his back turned, I popped open the receipt printer and unscrewed the spooler. It was thermal, and sure enough, the print head had gotten stuck down, causing the entire tape to get heated at once. I fiddled with it until the armature sprung free, snapping back where it was supposed to be. As I closed the machine and hit the reprint button, Rana's proper receipt spat out—right as Joey turned around ready with his own set of screwdrivers.

"Wha—?" he spluttered, glancing between the two of us.

I shrugged. "Armature got stuck."

Rana was watching me curiously, even as she gently tugged her receipt out of the machine. "Noël, right?"

"Yeah. Rana?"

"Yes." Rana nodded to Joey. "Thank you, sir."

Joey scratched his head. "You don't gotta call me sir, you know."

"I know." She smiled, before turning back to me. "Thank you for your help, Noël. I hope you're feeling better."

"Huh?"

"From missing English class." She smiled slightly wider. "I told Mrs. Strama that you weren't feeling well and had to miss the final period."

Well, never trusting Kyla again… "Thanks."

"I don't blame you," she added. "Every bit of practice helps. I might ask to join you one day, if you'd have me. Assuming you could trust one of your competitors, of course." Rana sighed, turning to leave. "Please excuse me, I have a match to attend. It was good to meet you, Noël Súileabhán."

The door jingled on her way out. I stared, utterly perplexed by her words. Joey, too, seemed a bit confused. He put away his tools and leaned on the counter, staring out the door along with me.

"You two in a club or something?" he asked, scratching his chin.

"It's literally my first day…" I shook my head. "I have no clue what she was talking about."

"Rana's a smart cookie," Joey added, starting to polish a pair of decorative dice he kept atop the register. "Probably another good friend for you, if you're looking. Don't mind me though, I'm just a humble shopkeep who likes meddling in you kids' lives."

"...Hey, Kyla!" I called. She looked up, halfway through building a house of cards with her deck of basics.

"Are we gonna finish or what?"

I shook my head. She started to groan, but I cut her off. I wanted backup, in case my paranoia turned out to be right, and I already trusted Kyla more than anybody else in the world—barring Carolyn of course, and maybe Lloyd.

Just needed to entice her. "We've got a new mission."

Kyla's eyes lit up. Bingo.