“Well done.”

It was the next morning, and we had all met for lunch as usual. Of course, word had spread about our little blow-up, and against all odds, the rumors stopped. Apparently all we needed to do was yell a little bit, just like Gibson suggested. That said, I didn’t see myself listening to Gibson for advice in the future, in spite of the flash in the wisdom pan he provided.

Iris, of course, was impressed with our little miracle, and no less grateful. We had basically cleared her name of being a slut, a rumor that I still didn’t know the origin of. In addition, the three of us had gained a bit of notoriety as a proper “friend group” on campus, and one that was not to be messed with.

“It was nothing,” I downplayed, “It was against my better judgement, if anything.”

Iris shook her head, not having my humility.

“Are you kidding? You stood up for your friend when he was being slandered by others. No way that’s nothing.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Cap interrupted, “Are we just going to ignore that I did the same thing for him?”

Iris smirked at him in response.

“What, jealous?”

Cap shrugged, frowning.

“I don’t know, it just feels like he’s getting all the credit for a group effort.”

“Can we agree on a 60/40 split, then?” Iris proposed, “He did start it. You probably wouldn’t have jumped in yourself if he hadn’t blown up first.”

“Blown up is right,” I murmured.

“Hush, you,” Iris scolded back, “So, how about it?”

“Why can’t we both just have 100 percent?” Cap responded, “I mean, you’re not wrong about me jumping in after he did, but it wouldn’t have worked at all if I hadn’t joined too.”

“I’m starting to see how you barely passed math last year,” Iris deadpanned.

“Anyway,” I interjected, “It doesn’t matter to me who gets the credit. Let’s move on.”

The two of them looked at me for a moment, before acquiescing. We took another minute or so to eat, before Cap spoke up.

“So now that we’re officially a group, we need a name.”

I responded with a blank look.

“What?” Cap defended, “It’s not like we can just be called ‘Cap’s group’ or ‘Ret’s group’, right? We need a cool name that people can refer to us by.”

“Why, exactly?” I replied.

“Why not?” Iris said, “Sounds fine to me.”

Outvoted, I sighed and tried to think of a name. I wasn’t the most creative person in the world, and in times like these it really came back to bite me. My mind was completely blank, and I found myself just zoning out until someone said something.

“Say, how about ‘Team Ret’?” Cap pitched.

“What?” I asked, snapping back to reality.

“‘Team Ret’,” Cap repeated, “You’re basically our leader, right? So we’re your teammates.”

“Since when was I the leader?” I questioned, “I thought we were just three people who ate together and talked.”

“I agree, I think Ret would be the leader,” Iris added, “He’s the one who started everything. He was the first person to sit here, he was the one who did the most work fixing the rumors initially, and he was the one who put the successful plan into action.”

She wasn’t wrong, but something felt off about taking the position of leader. I wasn’t particularly skilled as a leader, and I lacked a lot of the qualities that would help me in that department. For one, Cap was far more outgoing than either of us, making him better if we had to discuss things with other groups on behalf of all of us. On the other hand, Iris was more composed, leading her to be a better peacemaker for the group when we were in fights. If we needed a leader at all, which I still doubted, one of them would be much more suited for the job.

And yet, for whatever reason, when I looked at the confidence they had in their faces, I just couldn’t say no. Maybe I was growing soft due to my growing acceptance of them as friends, but I didn’t want to betray their trust.

“Fine, I’ll be the leader,” I conceded, “But my name won’t be in the team name.”

“An effective compromise,” Iris noted.

Cap was unhappy with the arrangement, but figured it was best not to push me right now considering my initial reluctance to even take the role of leader.

“How about ‘Red Team’?” Iris pitched in response to Cap’s silence, “It still references Ret, but not directly. And I think everyone will figure out the meaning pretty fast.”

“Please don’t bring my eyes into this,” I pleaded.

Iris shook her head.

“Those eyes aren’t something to be ashamed of, Ret,” she lectured, “I’m sure there are plenty of people who want badges of honor like that.”

“Iris is right,” Cap finally spoke up, “Your eyes are special, Ret.”

“You know what’s happened to me because of these things?” I responded, “I don’t think anyone wants that.”

“Let’s change that attitude of yours, then,” Iris concluded, “We’ll be the ‘Red Team’.”

“I agree,” Cap added.

Seeing I was outvoted, I hung my head. I wasn’t looking forward to my red eyes being the subject of more talk in the school.

Sure enough, it didn’t take one class period to start hearing things. However, it was more direct than I imagined.

“So, Red-Eyes,” a voice approached after the next class ended, “Is it true?”

I looked up to see Judge, who had approached my desk with his eyes narrowed and arms crossed.

“I’m not sure what ‘it’ is supposed to be, but if it’s about my theoretical investment in an underground dog-fighting ring, I’m sorry to say that it’s full of crap.”

Judge groaned, clearly exasperated with me.

“Why do I even bother,” I heard him murmur, before directly addressing me, “Are you and Cap officially forming a ‘Red Team’ of some kind?”

My eyebrows raised.

“Well, news spreads faster than I realized,” I admitted, “That’s nothing new, though. We just came up with a name for our lunch group. We thought ‘Red Team’ would be appropriate.”

He closed his eyes, staying silent for a moment.

“You know, Red-Eyes?” he said, “Thanks for fixing whatever was wrong with him.”

I tilted my head, confused.

“You’re welcome?” I asked, “But why are you thanking me.”

“I told you before, he’s my lab partner. It sucks to see him out of whack like that.”

“Didn’t know you cared,” I snarked.

His eyes widened, and his face turned red.

“No, no, it’s just about my grades,” he sputtered, “When he’s not performing well, that reflects badly on me, you know?”

It was my turn to widen my eyes. This was the first time in the two years I’d known Judge that I’d seen him on the defensive for whatever reason. I had clearly hit a touchy subject, but I couldn’t quite tell why. After all, Judge always took pride in his status as number one at Northwest Creek, so it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to see Cap as a means to an end, to some extent. He had certainly seen me that way whenever we were forced to work together in class.

“Anyway, is that all?” I asked, standing up.

Still slightly red, he nodded, before walking off. I noticed as he turned around that he was slouching more than usual, likely a result of discomfort when talking to me.

For better or worse, that wasn’t even the last time I got bugged about the new group name that day. After the final class, while I was gathering my things, another visitor came to my desk. I looked up to see that it was Viridia, the girl I had talked to when I was looking for friendship advice.

“Need something?” I asked, startling her.

“Uh, yeah,” she replied very quietly, “But it can’t look like I’m being nice to you, okay?”

I sighed, seeing where this was going.

“Do your worst,” I whispered back.

I saw her straighten up, beginning to act out her role.

“Excuse me, Red-Eyes,” she haughtily commanded, “Help me find something.”

In the spur of the moment, I decided to challenge her a little.

“Why should I?” I shot, “What did I do?”

She didn’t miss a beat, of course.

“You were the one who lost it, idiot,” she declared, “So help me.”

I looked around to see a number of disapproving glares toward my direction, and I decided at that point to ‘give in’.

“Fine, fine,” I conceded, “I’ll help you.”

She nodded and smiled triumphantly. I followed her out the door, and we made our way down to the courtyard, where I normally sat for lunch.

I sat on the bench, while she stood there.

“Quite a roundabout way to get me to talk to you, huh?” I commented.

“I told you, I don’t hate you,” she insisted, “But my friends do, and if I associate with you beyond what they consider acceptable, they’ll dump me.”

“They don’t sound like friends to me,” I replied.

“What do you know?” she looked away, turning a little red, “It’s not like you know what friendship is, either.”

“Actually,” I contradicted, “I fixed that yesterday.”

“Really?” she asked, “After the thing with Cap?”

I nodded. She, on the other hand, blushed deeply.

“That was pretty cool, what he did,” she admitted.

“He?” I replied, before sensing the mood, “Don’t tell me-“

“No!” she immediately shouted, covering up my mouth, “Don’t say it!”

I could tell she was about to break down, so I didn’t push the line of questioning any more. Instead, I decided to ask what she wanted to hear, since she had been the one to approach me.

“I wanted to hear about this ‘Red Team’ that people are talking about,” she said, “Is it true that you and Cap are both in it?”

“Yup,” I nodded, “Me, Cap, and a girl named Iris. She’s in our grade.”

“A girl, huh?” she murmured, looking away, “Does Cap like her?”

“Seems like it,” I replied nonchalantly, failing to pick up on the hint, “They get along pretty well. Why do you ask?”

As a result of my failure, though, she began to tear up a little bit. I was confused in response. I didn’t say anything particularly demoralizing, but she was responding quite negatively anyway.

“Are you okay?” I asked, waving my hand in front of her face.

Her eyes widened, and she wiped her tears.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, “Just had a moment there, you know?”

I nodded.

“Anyway, I need to go,” I waved, “I’ll tell Cap you say hello.”

Adding a smirk at the end, I could see her babbling in embarrassment as I made my way out of the courtyard.

In spite of my callous attitude, I was beginning to feel a hint of pride around the growing acceptance of our little lunch group, While Miles had shown very outward resistance to the idea, everyone else had mostly left Cap alone about it, and now they were even taking it for granted that he interacted with me in a friendly way. Of course, nobody else besides Viridia had any interest in acting courteously around me, and even she could only do so out of sight of all of her friends. Still, it didn’t change the recognition that I could only have dreamed of just a short year ago.

Of course, I still needed to thank Mr. MacArthur for all his help through this process, so I decided after that to make my way toward his office. Unlike the other day, thankfully, Gibson was nowhere to be seen, and he was sitting in his office like usual.

“How are things going, Retter?” he asked me once I sat down.

“The rumors are dissipating,” I confirmed.

“I heard that you had quite the explosive speech yesterday,” he commented, “Does it have anything to do with that?”

I shrugged and nodded.

“I suppose. No reason it wouldn’t be, given the timing.”

“And what’s this ‘Red Team’ I’ve been hearing students talking about this afternoon?”

I blinked.

“I’m surprised you’ve already heard about it,” I mentioned, “We only decided on the name at lunch today.”

“Retter, you should know better than anybody not to underestimate how fast rumors spread in this school.”

I nodded.

“You’re probably right. Anyway, ‘Red Team’ is simply our group’s official name. They wanted to name it after me, but I forced them to compromise on something a bit more subtle, if uncomfortable for me.”

“I’m impressed you were willing to compromise, Retter,” he praised, “You really are changing.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

I didn’t really think anything had significantly changed other than the fact that I had friends now. It didn’t really seem like I was doing anything differently than I used to outside of the circle, and I didn’t really think that was a bad thing, either. I was who I was, and that wasn’t going to change, right?

“Don’t sell yourself short, okay?” Mr. MacArthur advised, “You’re capable of much more than you think.”

“Am I, now?” I smartly replied.

“There’s no need for the attitude, Retter.”

I shrugged, backing down for now.

“By the way, I want you to thank Gibson for me. It was his idea for me to yell at the class,” I requested.

“I’m not sure that’s something I want him hearing. Wouldn’t do for him to think it’s perfectly appropriate for high school kids to scream at their classmates all day long.”

“That’s a toddler for you,” I commented, “Anyway, thank you for your time, as always.”

After that, I finally made my way home after what was a much more tumultuous day than I had previously expected. The thought of being a member of the newly formed Red Team, while foreign, put a smile on my face. I was moving into a new phase of my life, one that would hopefully be better than the last.