When Star finally caught up to Sky again, it was to find him back in the car, obviously still more than a bit distraught. Star looked around and quickly yanked the passenger door open to take a seat, “what the hell, Sky?” she greeted him, breathlessly.

“Just figured you might not really want to be near me anymore.”

“Are you high?” Star scoffed, “if you hadn’t been near me, I’d be getting raped right now... by Curt” she quickly added when she saw him flinch.

“Good thing you felt the need to clarify” Sky scoffed, trying to force back tears and more than thankful that the car had tinted windows right then.

“Sky, why are you even saying shit like this?” she asked, choking back her own tears.

“Saying what? The truth? Figured it was due; after spending the last five months trying to pretend that wasn’t what it was” he added, sniffling again, not able to meet her eyes for even a second.

“It wasn’t!” she denied vehemently.

“You didn’t wanna have sex, and I had sex with you anyway... over and over and over again. I’m pretty sure that’s the very fucking definition of rape” he forced the words out, the black streaks continuing down his cheeks.

“Sky... they made us do that! Both of us! You know this already. You know it wasn’t like you’re trying to say” she sniffled, wanting to reach out to comfort him, but thinking better of it right then. “You didn’t want to either. Gonna say I raped you?”

“Well, I was hard, wasn’t I?” he scoffed.

“Yeah, cause when you couldn’t get that way... which was most of the time that we were there” she reminded, “they injected you with their fucking liquid Viagra or whatever the fuck it was. I mean, come on. You’re a teenage boy and you couldn’t get hard most of those times we were together until they did that to you. You can’t possibly believe you actually forced yourself on me just cause you wanted to fuck me; like what the asshole back there was trying to do!”

Sky swallowed hard at another reminder of just one the methods they had been subjected to over that horrible year. His voice finally softened from anger at himself to just plain despair, “but it was worse for you.”

“What does that even mean?” Star shook her head.

“They didn’t give you something to make you wet when you couldn’t get that way. Which was most of the time. But I put it in anyway. I know how bad it had to have hurt you. And I’m the one who hurt you like that... over and over” he repeated.

Forcing back more tears at the memory of the pain he spoke of, she made herself form more words, “they forced you to, Sky” she sniffled again, “I’m not blaming you. So why are you blaming you?”

“Because, I already spent five months trying to deny it to myself and even forget how bad I had to have hurt you. And when he said that, about me raping you...” he just let out another sob. It was obvious that all that trauma from the past year was only buried, and nowhere near gone at all. And all it took was the right trigger to bring it all flooding to the surface once more. “I would never want to hurt anyone like that. Let alone the one person...” he just shook his head again.

“Exactly. You didn’t want to. That’s what I’ve been saying. You think my pain was worse? Look at the pain you’re in right now... Just because it isn’t physical pain.... It doesn’t mean that it’s not just as horrible for you. Maybe more, because you have this terrible guilt that you shouldn’t feel. And they made you feel it. How fucked up is that?” Star sniffled again.

“They really did deserve to die, all of them” Sky whispered after another long tear-filled moment.

“They did” Star agreed as she moved across the seat to gently wrap him in her arms, proving how much she still didn’t want to be away from him at all, not ever.

Several more long minutes passed with the two of them sitting there in the lot, trying to find some way to once again push past the trauma and get through just one more day. Ironically though, the trauma they were trying to get past never even happened to them in this new world they had created. Problem being, that they forgot to erase their own memories of that other world, as if that were even a possibility.

Finally finding his voice again, Sky spoke once more, “how did he even know? How do any of them know?”

“Know what?” Star asked as she attempted to wipe the streaked eyeliner from her cheeks.

“That you and I have some kind of... thing for each other?”

Star shook her head, “Curt had some twisted fantasy about us being together in the other world. Maybe he has one here too, and he was just accusing us of it in some demented version of wishful thinking?” she offered the only guess she had.

After all, neither of them had any clue what had happened in this version of their lives. Maybe the whole school saw some video of that innocent kiss she thought she had made up. Maybe they all knew. All that she knew for sure was that they knew nothing of this world they were now living in. And that fact made it even harder to have any clue how to deal with any of it at all.

Another long moment of silence as the warning bell for their next class rang. Sky then spoke again, “maybe we need to magic up another alternate reality. Only we could try actually putting the right memories in our own heads this time.”

“Sounds nice” Star sighed, “but I unfortunately don’t even know how we did it this time. This wasn’t what we were trying to do. We were trying to change memories. And apparently we just changed the whole fucking world to fit those memories. But of course, as stated, we forgot to put them in our own heads first” she added wryly.

“So” Sky sighed, “we skipping sixth to read through the last decade of our Facebook and twitter posts? Might give us some fuckin idea who we even are... here.”

Star smiled, “you’re apparently capable of coming up with some pretty good ideas here.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a ninth grade drop out this time” he returned wryly. Star just shook her head and smiled as they both reached for their phones, deeming that as their new assignment for the day.

When students started pouring out of the school at the end of the day, Star and Sky both looked up from their phones. Star was the one who bit her lip and spoke, “well, we might not be ninth grade drop outs in this world, but we may fail twelfth if we don’t actually go to all our classes tomorrow.”

“Do we have to?” Sky said with a tiresome sigh as he set aside his phone at last and reached for a cigarette.

“Hey, look. You still smoke in this world” Star stated, obviously clinging to whatever similarities she could find.

Sky shook his head as he lit the cigarette, “yay, that solves all the mysteries” he responded sarcastically.

Star sighed then too as she continued to watch their peers get onto the buses or into cars around them, “so I’m guessing the phone didn’t tell you much about our lives here either?”

Sky blew some smoke through his lips, “nothing important. I mean, there’s not one damn post pertaining to you and I and ...the whole ‘us’ of it all.”

Star scoffed, “in our old world, did you make a lotta posts about how much you wanted your so-called twin?”

Sky just sighed in concession, “there’s nothing in there that tells me anything though. I still don’t have a clue how we’re supposed to act in this world.”

“I guess, the same way we acted in our world. Except without all the distrust of our parents and guilt about how we feel about each other” Star offered with a somewhat defeated shrug.

Sky scoffed, “well that’s pretty much all I felt twenty-four-seven. So, not sure what else that leaves” another sigh, “and I have no fucking clue how I’m supposed to even interact with you, or them. Before it was ‘hide the way you feel at all costs.’ Now, at least the parents know we’re not really related, and that we’re attracted to each other. But, we’re still their kids. They still don’t wanna see us making out at the dinner table or in our bedrooms together. So what do we even do about that shit? I mean, when we go home, now they’re gonna just be looking at us; wondering if we were making out in the car or if they have to put padlocks on our doors... This is too fuckin hard” he added with his own bit of defeat.

“Plus, we don’t even know what...” she then changed her sentence midway through, “after what we’ve been through, how does anything at all still seem hard compared to that?” she shook her head.

Narrowing his eyes a bit at what her original sentence had been, Sky responded, “and we haven’t actually been through what we’ve been through. Let’s not forget that little mind-fuck.”

“Maybe we should try to make another new reality after all” Star mumbled.

“Or, we could just try to make them forget that we told them we liked each other, that way” Sky offered thoughtfully.

“And go back to hiding the way we feel all the time?” Star asked sadly.

“At least, I knew how to do that” he sighed.

“You’re right. This is too fuckin hard” Star agreed as she laid her head back against the seat in defeat, closing her eyes against the headache just trying to figure out her new life was now giving her, never mind the other factors that day had brought with it as well.

They weren’t sure if it was a good or a bad thing when they did make their way home and it was Brie who had already decided how their interactions would go that evening. She sat them both down, wearing an expression like she was about to tell them their dog died; even though they’d never even owned a dog. At least they didn’t think they had, at any rate.

“So, your father and I have had all day to think about what you told us, and we need to find some sort of way of dealing with this new... development” she decided on.

Star narrowed her eyes over at where Brie sat stiffly in the recliner, “which development are we talking about?”

“The kiss” Brie told them, though she practically swallowed the words rather than speaking them.

The two just sighed as they looked over at each other. Star then found her voice again, “it’s not like seventeen year olds aren’t doing a lot more than kissing” she scoffed, “we don’t have to make it into an entire summit meeting.”

Brie then looked back at them with more worry, “so is that your way of telling me that you have done more than that?”

Star blushed slightly as she looked to Sky for support. He simply shrugged over at her, “you’re the one who decided to tell her about this kiss.”

“Thanks Sky” Star scoffed before turning back to Brie, “and when you ask if we’ve done more... Are you asking about with each other or with other people, or... “ Star just shook her head, trying to buy time.

“You keep digging that hole and you’re gonna break the shovel” Sky muttered.

“Well, you’re not helping” Star complained back to him.

“Maybe because discussing my sex life with my mom isn’t really a thing I’m into” he scoffed, causing Star to just glare back at him.

That was when Brie interjected, “so...you have a sex life? Is that more about this bisexual thing?” she stammered.

Sky just scoffed, looking back at Star, “and that’s exactly why.”

Star shook her head in frustration, trying to find words to cover not only her nervousness, but also the fact that she honestly had no clue what either of their sex lives even were in this world. She took a deep breath before trying to speak again, “mom, you’ve gotta realize that seventeen year olds are usually...” she just shook her head again, “and discussing it with their parents isn’t really... comfortable” she decided on.

Brie then scoffed, “well I’m not comfortable with it either. I mean, your beds are literally like twenty feet apart. And then you tell me you like each other, like that. And then you imply that other stuff has happened, and you won’t even say if it’s with each other or...” Brie shook her head, “I mean, put yourself in my place. How the hell would you deal with this?”

Star sighed heavily, “well, I’d like to think that I’d treat us like adults, and trust us to be responsible and not act... impulsively; if for no other reason than to preserve the stress levels in the house” and with that attempt to end the conversation, she stood, “and now, I’m going to my room to hide for the rest of the night” she added in a mumble as she started toward the stairs.

Sky sighed as well, “sounds like a good plan” he agreed as he also stood, “I’ll be hiding in my room too.”

“Separate rooms, got it?” Brie called after them, causing them both to shake their heads as they disappeared up the stairs.