Summertime Saga

[Debbie's House — Morning — First Day Back]

A month.

That is how long it has been. Thirty-one days since the funeral, since the casseroles, since the neighbors stopped coming by with foil-covered dishes and started just waving from their driveways instead. The casserole smell is mostly gone from the house now but not entirely — it lives in the couch cushions, in the curtains, in that specific corner of the kitchen near the window where people kept setting things down. The pile of your father's mail on the kitchen table has not moved in thirty-one days. Nobody has touched it. Nobody is going to touch it. It has simply become part of the table, the way furniture eventually becomes part of a room, and you have learned to look slightly to the left of it when you come downstairs.

You have not been to school in a month.

This is the morning that changes.

You wake up before your alarm because some part of your body knows what today is and has decided that sleep is no longer an option. The ceiling of your room is white with the water stain in the upper left corner. The curtains are pale blue. The orange cargo shorts are on the chair where you left them and the white t-shirt is on the floor next to the chair and you sit on the edge of the bed for a while doing nothing in particular before you get dressed. White t-shirt. Orange cargo shorts. White socks pulled up to the ankle. Black sneakers, tied. You look like yourself. You have not looked particularly like yourself in a month.

The door opens onto the upstairs hallway and Jenny is already in it.

She is coming out of the bathroom — dark brown hair damp at the ends, loose past her shoulders, grey eyes not yet fully committed to the morning — wearing the light blue t-shirt, the thin one, and the purple panties, bare feet on the hardwood, and she stops when she sees you with the specific arrest of motion that means she was not expecting you to be upright and dressed at this hour. Her grey eyes travel from your face down to the orange cargo shorts and back up with the unhurried, assessing quality she applies to everything, and whatever she concludes from the inventory does not visibly impress her.

She leans one shoulder against the bathroom doorframe.

"You're dressed."

She says it neutrally, observationally, like a scientist noting a mildly unexpected result. Jenny Cummings is a 22-year-old young woman of Height 5 feet 7 inches and Weight 142lb with a tall, curvaceous, soft-yet-firm frame of moderate body fat, a narrow waist, slim hips, and a heavily prominent Bust size 30GG, her fair warm-toned skin smooth and even with a soft natural sheen; her head is crowned by long dark-brown hair of medium thickness and soft straight texture that falls past the shoulders to mid-back length, typically worn loose with a soft center or slight side part and gentle face-framing strands.

"Actual clothes and everything."

(Finally leaving the room.)

She tilts her head. A strand of damp hair falls across her collarbone and she does not move it.

"Where are you going?"

She watches your face while she waits for the answer, and when she gets it — or reads it, because she does not actually need you to say it — something moves across her expression that is not quite sympathy and not quite contempt and lands somewhere in between, a look that belongs specifically to Jenny and cannot be translated into anything simpler.

"School."

She says the word the way you might say an extremely optimistic plan.

"Right."

Her face is softly oval with high full cheekbones, a smooth moderately high forehead, and a gently rounded chin, her large grey eyes featuring clear sclera, defined limbal rings, mild natural upper-lid crease, and a confident, often smug or teasing expression, her eyebrows are medium-thick and gently arched in matching dark brown, her nose is straight with a soft rounded tip, and her full lips carry a natural soft pink tone; her neck is slender and graceful; her shoulders are softly rounded; her chest carries an extremely full, heavy 30GG bust of pronounced rounded shape and wide root that sits high with deep cleavage and natural soft movement, with large medium-pink areolas and prominent nipples that become more defined when exposed or aroused; her torso is soft with a gently flat-to-rounded lower belly, a shallow innie navel, and smooth flanks that taper into relatively slim hips.

Her arms cross over her chest, the t-shirt pulling taut across it with the movement, and she looks at you with those grey eyes in the particular way she has of making someone feel like they are being assessed for structural integrity.

"You know you don't actually live here, right."

She says it flatly, without particular cruelty, in the way of someone stating a fact they feel has been going insufficiently acknowledged.

"Like, I want to be clear that this was not my idea. You living here. The whole — arrangement. That was Debbie's thing."

Her back is softly curved; her hips are slim yet feminine leading into a firm, rounded, moderately full buttocks of good tone with smooth under-butt crease; her pubic region is completely smooth and hairless, revealing soft outer labia; her arms are soft and tapered with graceful hands; her thighs are full, soft, and smoothly tapered with a modest inner-thigh gap; her knees are softly defined; her calves are full and elongated; her ankles are narrow; and her feet are proportionately medium with soft arches and neat toes.

She gestures vaguely at the hallway, at the room behind your closed door, at the general concept of your continued residential presence.

"I don't have a problem with you personally."

A beat.

"I just have a problem with you being here. Specifically. In this house. Every day."

She looks at you steadily. The ring light in her room is already on, its orange-pink glow seeping under her door and into the hallway.

"You're a loser, by the way. A month of sitting in your room staring at the ceiling. Very inspiring."

In her typical attire she wears only a tight light-blue short-sleeve T-shirt that clings to and barely contains her heavy bust paired with simple purple panties, often going without pants or additional clothing around the house; when nude she displays the same long dark-brown hair, grey eyes, heavy soft 30GG breasts with large pink areolas, soft torso, firm rounded buttocks, and smooth hairless pubic area.

(Someone has to say it.)

She pushes off the doorframe, steps past you with the long-legged ease of someone who takes up exactly as much space as she decides to, and goes back into her room. The door does not slam. It closes with a quiet, definitive click that is somehow worse.

The hallway is still.

You go downstairs.

The kitchen is full of the smell of coffee and something cooking, something warm and eggy and real, and Debbie is at the stove with her back to you, moving between the pan and the counter with the practiced efficiency of someone who has been up for a while. She is in the purple robe — silk, white-trimmed, loosely knotted at the waist, the fabric swaying softly around her calves with every step. The lace of her lingerie is visible at the deep V of the robe's collar, the full, heavy weight of her 34GG chest pressing against the silk with each movement, natural and unguarded in the way she always is in her own kitchen in the morning. Her medium-length brown hair is down, sleep-soft and uncurled, catching the kitchen light where it falls across the back of the robe's collar. She has her small pearl earrings in already.

She hears you come in this time.

She turns around and her face opens — genuine, unmanufactured, the warmth of it coming up from somewhere real rather than being assembled — and her grey eyes go bright in a way that has nothing to do with performing okayness and everything to do with actually being glad to see you standing in her kitchen dressed and upright on a Tuesday morning.

"Hey."

She sets the spatula down on the counter and crosses the kitchen to you in three steps and she hugs you.

It is a full, real hug, both arms, her head ducking slightly to tuck against your shoulder, and the robe shifts with the movement, and her chest presses warm and soft and substantial against you — heavy, full, the silk of the robe between you — and she smells like coffee and the faint clean scent of whatever she uses on her hair in the morning. She is a few inches shorter than you and the hug puts the top of her head near your jaw and puts the rest of her directly, unavoidably present against you, and she holds it for a moment before she steps back and looks at your face with both hands light on your arms.

"You look good."

She says it like she means it, which she does, tilting her head slightly to get a better look at you the way she looks at things she is quietly relieved about.

A mature 45-year-old woman of Height 5 feet 7 inches and Weight 170lb with a soft, full-figured, curvaceous frame of moderate body fat, broad hips, a softly rounded midsection, and a heavy Bust size 34GG, her fair warm-toned skin smooth and even with a soft natural sheen and subtle mature texture; her head is crowned by medium-brown hair of medium thickness and soft straight-to-gently-wavy texture that falls to shoulder length, typically worn loose with a soft side part, gentle face-framing layers, and natural volume at the crown without visible graying or thinning.

"Orange shorts. Very you."

She squeezes your arms once and lets go and turns back to the stove, the robe swaying again, and picks up the spatula.

"Sit down. Eggs are almost done."

You sit. The mail is on the table in its pile. You look slightly to the left of it.

Her face is softly oval with high full cheekbones, a smooth moderately high forehead free of deep worry lines, and a gently rounded chin, her large grey eyes featuring clear sclera, defined limbal rings, mild natural upper-lid crease, and a warm, affectionate or softly smiling expression, her eyebrows are medium-thick and gently arched in matching medium brown, her nose is straight with a soft rounded tip, and her full lips carry a natural soft pink tone; her neck is soft and gracefully tapered with mild natural skin folds; her shoulders are softly rounded and broad.

"I know today is a big deal."

She says it to the pan, not making it heavy, just acknowledging it the way she acknowledges things — directly, without ceremony, as if naming something takes some of its power away.

"A month is a long time to be away from something. Going back is harder than people think."

She slides the eggs onto a plate and brings it to the table and sets it in front of you and then stands with one hand on the back of your chair, close, looking down at you with her grey eyes doing the thing where they are warm and steady and asking nothing from you in return.

"But you're ready. You got dressed. That's not nothing."

(It really isn't.)

She moves back to the counter and pours herself the coffee she will probably not drink and wraps both hands around the mug.

Her chest carries an extremely full, heavy 34GG bust of pronounced rounded teardrop shape and wide root that sits high yet shows natural soft ptosis and deep cleavage, with large medium-pink areolas and prominent nipples that become more defined when exposed or aroused; her torso is soft with a gently rounded lower belly, a shallow innie navel, and smooth flanks that flare into wide feminine hips; her back is softly curved with full soft contours; her hips are broad and rounded leading into a full, soft, high-volume buttocks of excellent roundness with deep under-butt crease and smooth skin; her pubic region features a neat dark triangular patch of hair above smooth soft outer labia.

"Erik's up. I saw his light on when I came down. You should walk with him — it'll be easier than going alone."

She glances toward the window, the direction of next door, the yellow-roofed house visible past the fence.

"He's been asking about you. He doesn't say it like that but he has."

Her arms are soft and tapered with graceful hands; her thighs are full, soft, and smoothly tapered with mild natural softness and a modest inner-thigh gap; her knees are softly defined; her calves are full and elongated; her ankles are narrow; and her feet are proportionately medium with soft arches and neat toes. In her typical home attire she wears a loose purple bathrobe with white trim that often hangs open to reveal her heavy breasts and soft body, or a sheer black lace lingerie set.

She takes a small sip of the coffee and sets it back down and looks at you over the rim of the mug.

"Eat first. Then go knock on his door."

Upstairs, Jenny's floor creaks — a single footstep, then silence, then the faint sound of her chair rolling across the floor of her room as she settles back into her setup.

The kitchen is warm. The eggs are hot. The mail sits on the table in its pile, and outside the morning is grey and real and waiting, and next door Erik Loafer is probably already awake and probably already playing something and probably, in the way that Erik always does, just waiting to be asked.

Today you go back.

[Summerville School — Morning — First Day Back]

Erik is waiting on his front step when you knock, which means he was absolutely watching from the window, which means he is absolutely not going to acknowledge that. He has been ready for a while — the wavy chestnut hair is uncombed above the oversized round glasses sitting slightly crooked on the bridge of his nose the way they perpetually do, the green t-shirt is tucked unevenly into the blue pants that sit an inch too short at the ankle, and the backpack is already on both shoulders with the straps adjusted, the posture of someone who has been standing here for twenty minutes performing casualness. He is short and chubby and he carries himself with the easy, settled quality of someone who made peace with that specific fact a long time ago and has not thought about it since. He looks at you standing on his front path in the white t-shirt and the orange cargo shorts and the black sneakers and his face does something real and small and genuine before he pulls it back.

He looks at you for a second.

Then he looks at you like that second was a different kind of looking.

"You're actually coming."

He says it with a relief that he immediately covers with something brisker, adjusting the backpack straps and stepping off the front step.

"I knew you were coming. Debbie texted my mom."

He falls into step beside you on the front path, one hand hooked under a backpack strap, sneakers scuffing the pavement at an angle that suggests he has never once in his life walked in a perfectly straight line. He glances at you sideways through the thick lenses — the sidelong check, the not-quite-asking, the moving on.

"Okay so I need to tell you about the Fappening Trading Cards."

He says it with the particular suppressed energy of someone who has been keeping information in a sealed container for a month and has finally been handed permission to open it, words already picking up speed before the sentence is fully started.

"Series three dropped while you were home. And they released Orcette the Whoremonger as an ultra rare. I've been on every reseller site, every forum, I found a listing in eastern Europe for forty-seven dollars which sounds like a lot but the print run is supposedly limited and Karl thinks if we don't move on it in the next week the price doubles and—"

He stops himself.

(Too much. That was too much.)

He resettles the glasses with two fingers pushed against the bridge.

"The listing's still up if you want to split it."

He is quiet for a moment in the particular way Erik is quiet — not restful, not comfortable, just waiting for the next thing to say. Then he looks at you again sideways, the freckled face behind the lenses doing something more careful.

"It's good you're coming back."

He says it simply, plainly, the way he says the things that actually matter to him, without any of the performance he wraps around everything else.

"It's been weird without you."

Mia is at the school gate.

She is standing just inside the front entrance in her mauve-and-white polo and blue jeans, her small frame — 5'2", 108 pounds, neat and precisely put-together the way she always is — positioned slightly to one side of the entrance with her dark brown hair in its ponytail, the pink scrunchie sitting at the crown of the tail, the small pink drop earrings catching the grey morning light. She has textbooks already pressed against the front of her polo because she arrived early enough to collect them, which is the kind of thing Mia does as a matter of course, and she has her phone in her other hand with the small concentrated frown she gets when she is waiting for something she is not entirely certain is coming.

Then she looks up.

The frown disappears as if it was never there.

She crosses the space between you quickly, her brown eyes moving over your face and your clothes with a directness she is not trying to moderate, taking in the white t-shirt and the orange shorts and the black sneakers and then coming back up to your face with the particular attention of someone checking something they have been quietly worried about for thirty days and are only now getting to see for themselves.

"You're here."

Her body slender, petite, soft-yet-toned frame of low body fat, narrow shoulders, a narrow waist, and a modest Bust size 26B, her fair-to-light warm-toned skin smooth and even with a soft natural sheen and minimal freckling; her head is crowned by straight dark-brown hair of medium thickness that is typically pulled back into a neat medium-high ponytail secured with a pink scrunchie or bow, soft bangs or face-framing strands left loose around the forehead and temples, the ponytail falling to the mid-back.

She says it softly, stopping close, the textbooks pressed against the front of her polo. The full smile comes up — the real one, the unguarded one, the one that smooths out every careful thing about her expression and replaces it with something entirely open — and she adjusts the books against her chest and holds your gaze steadily with warm brown eyes.

"I'm really glad you're back."

(Don't make it into a thing. Just be normal. Just be his friend.)

She tilts her head and the ponytail shifts, the pink scrunchie bright in the grey morning.

"Are you okay? You don't have to say yes."

Her face is softly oval with high delicate cheekbones, a smooth moderately high forehead, and a gently rounded chin, her large warm brown eyes featuring clear sclera, defined limbal rings, mild natural upper-lid crease, and a gentle, often shy or softly smiling expression, her eyebrows are medium-thick and gently arched in matching dark brown, her nose is straight and refined with a soft tip, and she wears small pink hoop or stud earrings; her neck is slender and graceful; her shoulders are narrow and softly rounded.

She asks it the way people ask when they genuinely mean both options and will not penalize either answer.

"I kept notes from everything you missed. All the classes. Organized by date. I can give them to you whenever you want."

Her chest carries a soft, pert 26B bust of gentle rounded shape and narrow-to-medium root that sits high, with small-to-medium light-pink areolas and modest nipples that become more defined when exposed or aroused; her torso is lean and flat with a shallow innie navel, soft subtle curves at the waist, and smooth flanks; her back is slender with gentle spinal contour; her hips are softly curved and feminine leading into a compact, rounded, firm-yet-soft buttocks of modest volume with smooth under-butt crease; her pubic region is completely smooth and hairless, revealing soft outer labia; her arms are slender and gracefully tapered with neat hands often holding books or textbooks; her thighs are smoothly tapered with a clear inner-thigh gap and light natural tone; her knees are delicately defined; her calves are slender and elongated; her ankles are narrow; and her feet are proportionately small with soft arches and neat toes.

Erik looks at Mia.

Then at you.

Then back at Mia with the specific expression he uses when he has decided to contribute something.

"She made color-coded tabs."

"They are not color-coded tabs."

"The tabs are different colors."

"That is an organizational system, it is not—"

She stops. Looks at you with the brief exasperated expression she reserves for Erik.

"They are slightly color-coded."

In her usual attire she wears a mauve-and-white collared polo shirt with short sleeves that fits neatly over her modest bust, blue jeans, pink earrings, and the pink scrunchie in her ponytail, often carrying textbooks; when nude she displays the same dark-brown ponytail with pink accessory, warm brown eyes, soft 26B breasts, lean torso, compact rounded buttocks, and smooth hairless pubic area, consistently showing the same gentle, slightly shy expression and petite soft proportions.

The three of you go inside.

The school hallway hits you in a specific way — the particular social weather of a place full of people who have heard something about you and are performing various degrees of not having heard it, the small recalibrations, the heads that turn a fraction and adjust and return to their original positions, the quality of attention that is dressed up as its opposite. You feel it from the first step through the doors, pressing at you from multiple directions at once, the month-long absence making it worse rather than better. Erik moves a half-step closer to your left shoulder without saying anything about it. Mia walks on your right with the textbooks pressed to her chest and her chin level.

You are fifteen feet down the main corridor when Dexter's laugh finds you.

It carries the way it always does — wide, self-satisfied, built for projection, the laugh of someone performing for a crowd whether or not a crowd is technically present. It moves through the hallway with the ease of something that has never once been told to be quieter.

He is at the lockers with Roxxy.

You process them both in pieces the way you always do.

Roxxy first, because Roxxy is always first in any room she is in. The golden-blonde hair is long and straight and loose past her shoulders, clean and deliberate in the way of hair that has been managed and then allowed to look unmanaged, catching the overhead fluorescent lights at every strand. Her blue eyes are already moving — she monitors the hallway the way people do when they have decided they are responsible for knowing what happens in it, and they find you and Erik within two seconds of your entering her line of sight. She is in the tight pink tank top, the thin fabric pulled flush across her chest — the dark purple bra visible at the deep scoop of the neckline, the generous 28FF weight of her pressing against the cotton in a way the tank top does not bother to conceal, the hem ending above the waistband of the grey hot pants that sit low on her narrow hips. The silver earrings, the navel piercing catching the light above the waistband, the red bracelet on her wrist, the nail polish matching the purple of the bra with practiced exactness. She is in the middle of saying something to Dexter and she stops mid-sentence when she sees you.

Dexter is beside her — a full head taller than anyone nearby, broad across the shoulders and built with the large, solid, entirely decorative muscle of someone who has never had to use it for anything structural, the blond military cut above blue eyes that are not particularly quick in any direction, the black tank top and the blue-and-white basketball shorts and the expensive sneakers. He is laughing about something with the carrying quality of someone who has decided the hallway is his acoustic space.

"—Becca just picked it up and dropped it straight in and I'm like, alright, that's honestly kind of—"

He laughs again. Roxxy's expression is the faintly disgusted-but-tolerating-it look she uses for Dexter's worst material.

Then she sees you and Erik.

Roxxy Belle is an 18-year-old young woman of Height 5 feet 4 inches and Weight 119lb with a soft, curvaceous, slightly plump frame of moderate body fat, full hips, a narrow-to-medium waist, and a generous Bust size 28FF, her fair warm-toned skin smooth and even with a soft natural sheen; her head is crowned by long golden-blond hair of medium thickness that falls in soft straight-to-gently-wavy strands past the shoulders and mid-back, often worn loose with subtle volume at the crown and occasional side-parting, the ends slightly tapered.

Her face is softly oval with high full cheekbones, a smooth moderately high forehead, and a gently rounded chin, her large bright blue eyes featuring clear sclera, defined limbal rings, mild natural upper-lid crease, and a confident, often smug or teasing expression, her eyebrows are medium-thick and gently arched in matching golden blond, her nose is straight with a soft rounded tip, and she wears large silver hoop earrings; her neck is slender and graceful; her shoulders are softly rounded; her chest carries a heavy, full 28FF bust of pronounced rounded projection and wide root that sits high yet shows natural soft movement and mild cleavage even when supported, with large light-pink areolas and prominent nipples that become more defined when exposed or aroused; her torso is soft with a gently rounded lower belly, a shallow innie navel accented by a small silver navel piercing, and smooth flanks that flare into full feminine hips.

Her back is softly curved; her hips are wide and rounded leading into a full, soft, high-volume buttocks of excellent roundness with deep under-butt crease and smooth skin; her pubic region is completely smooth and hairless, revealing soft full outer labia; her arms are soft and tapered with hands tipped in dark-purple nail polish matching her underwear; her thighs are full, soft, and smoothly tapered with a modest inner-thigh gap; her knees are softly defined; her calves are full and elongated; her ankles are narrow; and her feet are proportionately medium with soft arches and neat toes.

She was In her daily wardrobe she wears a tight pink tank top that barely covers a dark-purple bra, grey hot pants or short shorts that sit low on the hips, large silver hoop earrings, a red beaded bracelet on one wrist, dark-purple nail polish, and the navel piercing; when nude she displays the same long golden-blond hair, bright blue eyes, heavy soft 28FF breasts with large light-pink areolas, soft rounded belly with navel piercing, full rounded buttocks, and smooth hairless pubic area.

The expression shifts. The tolerating-it quality disappears and something sharper and more deliberate comes into the blue eyes — selecting, aiming, the look of someone who has just found a better target than the one they had.

Dexter follows her gaze. His laugh settles into something lower and more purposeful.

Erik adjusts his glasses.

"Combined IQ of two, those two."

He says it at a volume that is technically aimed only at you. The hallway is not quite loud enough.

Roxxy's blue eyes move to Erik with a speed that would be impressive under different circumstances.

"What did you just say."

She says it flatly, with the absolute confidence of someone who heard it clearly and is asking for an entirely different reason.

Dexter peels off from the locker he has been leaning on. He is significantly taller than Erik and considerably wider and he appears to genuinely believe that these are the relevant facts to introduce into the situation by simply taking up more of the space between them.

"Yeah. What'd he say."

Roxxy turns to look at Dexter with the brief, patient expression she uses when explanation is required.

"He called us stupid."

Dexter looks at Erik. His jaw works. Behind the blue eyes, the processing happens at its own speed.

"Oh."

The shoulders roll back, the black tank top pulling taut across the width of them, and he takes one step toward Erik. Erik, to his genuine credit, does not run. His body, however, produces a completely sincere impression of wanting to, every part of him going slightly rigid.

"Say that again."

Erik's mouth opens.

Mia's hand moves to his arm.

(Don't. Please, Erik, do not.)

Roxxy is not watching Dexter. She is watching you. Her blue eyes are on your face with the particular, deliberate quality of someone who has chosen an angle and is committing to it, the pink tank top shifting as she crosses her arms beneath the pronounced curve of her chest, her head tilting slightly with a look that is selecting exactly where to land.

"Didn't your dad like kill himself or something loser?"

The hallway does something around the sentence. Sound does not stop but it dims slightly, the specific half-second of social weather shifting when something crosses a line that most people in the space acknowledge without naming, the students near enough to hear doing the small instinctive pull of stepping a fraction back.

Mia's breath catches.

Erik goes completely still.

It lasts one full second.

Then:

"At least he had one."

Erik says it quietly. It is the quietest thing Erik Loafer has said in a school hallway in living memory, no performance, no preamble, just the flat, level truth of it delivered without flinching from behind the oversized glasses, the freckled face absolutely steady.

"At least he's not from a trailer."

The color that moves across Roxxy's face is not a single simple thing. It begins at the jaw and moves upward through the high cheekbones and it is not purely embarrassment and not purely rage, it is both of those things sitting underneath something that goes very cold very quickly, and the blue eyes go flat and certain, and she turns to Dexter and her voice when she uses it is completely, dangerously level.

"Hit them."

Dexter's knuckles crack. His blue eyes fix on Erik with the expression of someone who has just been given formal permission for something he was already inclined toward, and he shifts his weight forward.

Then his eyes move.

Over your shoulder. Down the hallway. To something behind you.

His expression changes.

"Uh.... now babe?

Roxxy reads his face immediately. She follows the line of his gaze.

She turns.

Mrs. Smith is coming down the hallway.

She is not difficult to miss. She moves at 5'8 in the viridian office dress, the fabric pulled tight across the enormous swell of her 44M chest, straining at the front with every step, the deep neckline doing nothing whatsoever to minimize the considerable flesh pressed against it, the hemline sitting at the knee and the whole thing worn one deliberate size too small in a way that reads less like an oversight and more like a position statement. The short dark grey hair is perfectly in place above the green-framed glasses sitting precisely on her nose, the pearl necklace sitting precisely at her collar, the matching green earrings, every component of her appearance coordinated with the deliberate precision of someone who considers how she looks an extension of how much authority she carries. The ruler is in her right hand, resting against her palm, tapping once with each measured step, slow, metronomic, the sound of it reaching you a moment before she does.

She walks the way someone walks when they have decided the hallway belongs to them and are giving it the opportunity to dispute this.

Roxxy and Dexter drift apart by eighteen practiced inches simultaneously, without discussion or eye contact, the specific choreography of people who have done this before.

Roxxy looks at you one last time. Her blue eyes are flat and absolutely certain.

"This isn't over."

She says it quietly. Then she turns away, her blonde hair swinging with the movement, and she arranges her face back into its default hallway expression as she goes. Dexter points two fingers at Erik, holds them there for a moment, and follows.

Mrs. Smith stops in front of you.

She is imposing up close in a way that is partly physical and partly something else, a quality of compressed authority that seems to make the air around her slightly denser. She is large-framed and substantial, the viridian dress straining at the front and sitting snugly across the wide curve of her hips, the pearl necklace resting above the deep neckline of it, the green glasses catching the overhead light as she looks down at you over their rims. The ruler comes to rest against her open palm. Once. The sound of it is very deliberate.

"Well."

She says it with the weight of an entire sentiment compressed into a single syllable.

"Look who has finally decided to grace this institution with his presence."

Her grey eyes move over you, the white t-shirt, the orange cargo shorts, the black sneakers, the general presentation of a person who got dressed this morning without expecting to be evaluated, with the slow, structural assessment of someone deciding what category of problem they are dealing with.

"A month, young man."

The ruler taps again against her palm.

"A full calendar month. Do you have any idea what a month does to a transcript? Any working understanding of that at all?"

Erik raises his hand.

He raises it with the specific, slightly desperate energy of someone who feels a situation can still be de-escalated if the right information is introduced quickly enough.

"Mrs. Smith... he was dealing with a family situation. A significant one. His father-"

"I am aware of his father, Mr. Loafer."

She does not look at Erik. She keeps her grey eyes on you with the fixed, patient quality of someone who has decided where this conversation is going and is simply waiting for the other parties to catch up.

"The entire school is aware. I sent a card."

(A tasteful card. Appropriate weight cardstock.)

The ruler taps.

She looks at Erik for the first time, briefly, the way someone glances at a piece of furniture that has started talking.

"Class."

"But I was just trying to—"

"Class, Mr. Loafer."

Erik looks at you.

His mouth does the thing, the compressed, reluctant thing of someone who has things left to say and has correctly identified that saying them will make the situation measurably worse. He pushes his glasses up. He looks at you for one more second.

(I'll be right outside. Relatively right outside.)

He goes.

Mia lingers for a half-second longer than Erik does. She stands beside you with her textbooks pressed to her chest and her brown eyes doing the quiet, steady, careful thing, and she gives you a single small nod that carries something real in it before she turns and follows Erik down the hallway.

Mrs. Smith watches them both go.

Then she looks back at you, and the ruler comes to rest one final time against her palm, and she tilts her chin in the direction of the stairwell at the far end of the corridor.

"Third floor."

"My office. You remember where it is."

She says it the way she says everything as the conclusion of a conversation rather than its beginning, the matter already settled, the remaining steps purely procedural.

She turns and begins walking, the viridian dress moving with her, the heels deliberate on the hallway floor, the ruler still in her hand. She does not look back.

[Summerville Streets — After School — The Collection]

A week back.

That is how long it has taken for school to go from unbearable to merely difficult, which is probably progress by some measure. The hallway still does the thing where people recalibrate when you walk past, but the recalibrations are getting smaller, the looking-away faster, the whole machinery of it winding down as the gossip finds fresher material elsewhere. You have been to every class. You have turned in three assignments. You have eaten lunch in the cafeteria twice without anything notable happening. By the standards of the last month this constitutes a remarkable comeback.

The walk home from school takes twelve minutes on the route you have always taken — down the main road past the park, left at the corner with the busted streetlight that the city has been meaning to fix since before you can remember, along the residential stretch where the houses get quieter and the sidewalk gets narrower and the trees come in closer from both sides. It is late afternoon and the light is coming through the trees at a low angle, everything going gold and long-shadowed the way it does in the hour before the day commits to being over.

You are at the corner.

The man is already there.

He is leaning against the brick wall of the corner building with his hands in his jacket pockets and the specific quality of stillness that belongs to someone who has been waiting for a particular person and is not surprised to see them. He is broad across the shoulders and dressed in a dark suit jacket over a grey shirt, the jacket not quite managing to contain the width of him, and his face is a broad, flat, weathered thing — not old exactly, just used, the kind of face that has absorbed a number of experiences it did not enjoy and has not particularly processed any of them. His eyes are a flat, unremarkable brown, tracking you without any particular expression, the way eyes track something they have already categorized.

Behind him and slightly to the right there is a second man. Bigger. Less constructed, more simply large — wide through the neck and shoulders in the way of someone whose body arrived at its current dimensions through some combination of genetics and consistent, joyless effort. He is bald, the skull smooth and round, a thick neck disappearing into the collar of his shirt, a gold ring on one hand that looks small on his finger. He has the patient, ambient quality of a person who is present at a situation in a support capacity and is waiting for the support to be required.

You try to walk past.

The broad man steps away from the wall.

He does not move fast. He moves with the unhurried certainty of someone who knows that the speed is not the point. One step, slightly to the left, enough to make the sidewalk feel like a decision rather than a path. His hands come out of his jacket pockets.

"Hey."

He says it the way people say it when they are not greeting you.

"Walk with us a second."

It is not a question. His accent is thick and Eastern European, the vowels compressed, every consonant landing with more weight than English usually gives them. He falls into step beside you — or rather, he moves in such a way that you are walking beside him whether or not you intended to, the second man having materialized on your other side with the quiet efficiency of someone who has done this specific spatial arrangement many times.

The three of you walk half a block.

Then the broad man stops.

His hand comes out and takes the strap of your backpack — not snatching it, not violent about it, just taking it with the casual authority of someone picking up something that belongs to them — and lifts it off your shoulder with a single easy pull. You are carrying it and then you are not. He holds it in one hand and his other hand is already unzipping the main pocket with the practiced efficiency of someone who has looked through a lot of backpacks in a lot of alleys.

He finds what cash is in there.

He counts it.

He pockets it.

He holds the backpack out toward you and waits for you to take it back.

"This is how it goes now."

He says it pleasantly. The pleasantness is the worst part — there is no heat in it, no performance of menace, just the flat, conversational delivery of someone explaining a standing arrangement.

"Every week. Whatever you have. We come to you, you don't make us look for you, nobody has a bad day."

He tilts his head slightly, the flat brown eyes on your face with the same absence of heat.

"We just visited your house. The woman — Debbie. She understands. She is very understanding."

He says the word understanding with a very specific intonation, the careful pronunciation of someone using it to mean something adjacent to afraid.

"Debts don't go away."

He holds the eye contact for a moment longer.

"They just — move. From one person to the next."

He adjusts his jacket.

"Your father understood this eventually."

He says the last sentence the way you might say the weather is cold — a statement of fact, delivered without emphasis, which is precisely what makes it land the way it does.

The second man, who has said nothing throughout any of this, shifts his weight from one foot to the other in a way that is not threatening and does not need to be.

"Next week."

The broad man reaches out and puts one hand briefly on your shoulder — a pat, almost paternal, two quick pats — and then he turns and walks away down the side street without hurrying, without looking back. The second man follows him, unhurried, the gold ring catching the afternoon light as his hand swings at his side.

And then they are just two men walking away.

And then they are gone.

You stand on the sidewalk with your backpack in your hand.

The trees are still doing the thing with the late light. A car passes on the main road. Somewhere a block over a dog is barking at something that has already moved on.

You go home.

You go home fast.

You are running before you have consciously decided to run, the backpack banging against your side, the residential street telescoping under your feet, the busted streetlight corner and then the park and then your street and then the house on Elm which has two police cars parked in front of it in the way that police cars parked in front of a house always look worse than they probably are and also exactly as bad as they are.

A uniformed officer is on the front path.

He is a middle-aged man, average height, dark brown receding hair and a bushy mustache above a chin with a day or two of stubble grown in, grey eyes behind the slightly tired expression of someone who has been a police officer long enough to have absorbed a certain amount of the world's worse moments without quite processing all of them. His blue uniform is neat, the gold badge catching the light, the peaked cap tucked under one arm. He has a notepad out and he is putting it away.

Beside him, slightly to his right, is his partner.

She is Vietnamese, in her thirties, dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, dark-brown eyes, the same blue uniform with the same badge, standing with her hands clasped behind her back in the specific posture of someone who is trying to be reassuring through physical stillness.

The man looks at you when you come up the front path.

"You live here?"

He asks it with the gentle, slightly careful tone police officers use when they are managing a situation and have assessed the new person entering it.

"Harold Potter. Officer, Summerville PD."

He nods at his partner.

"Officer Yumi Tran."

She gives you a small, professional nod.

"Your — Debbie, inside? She's alright. Nobody's hurt."

He says it quickly, in the practiced way of someone who has learned to lead with that specific information because it is the one everyone is most urgently waiting for.

"We got a call about a disturbance. We've taken a report. We're just wrapping up."

He looks at you for a moment, the grey eyes doing a quiet, slightly sad assessment.

"You should go inside. She could use the company."

Yumi produces a card from her breast pocket — plain, white, the SVPD logo in the corner — and holds it out toward you.

"If anything else happens. Anything at all. That's a direct line."

You take the card.

Harold looks at the house.

"We'll drive by a few more times tonight."

He says it without the inflection of a promise, because it is not quite a promise, but it is also not nothing.

The two of them walk back to the nearest car. Harold opens the driver's door and pauses.

"Lock your doors."

He gets in.

Both cars pull away from the curb in the unhurried, deflating way that official vehicles do when the immediate crisis has passed but the underlying situation has not resolved, and then the street is just a street again, early evening quiet, the trees going darker as the light drops.

You go inside.

The house is still. The kitchen light is on — that specific warm yellow that the kitchen always has in the evening, the only light on in the whole downstairs. You find Debbie at the table.

She is sitting in the chair at the far end, not the chair she usually sits in, and she is in the purple robe with her hands flat on the table on either side of a mug she has not been drinking from, and she does not look up immediately when you come in. Her medium-length brown hair is down, not arranged, sitting across her shoulders in the slightly disheveled way of someone who has been touched or grabbed or who has been running her own hands through it. Her grey eyes are doing something very controlled and very steady when she finally looks at you, and the warmth is there but it is underneath something else tonight, something more stripped down, and she does not perform the shift the way she usually does.

She looks at you.

She looks at the card in your hand.

"They gave you one too."

She says it quietly.

"Sit down."

You sit. She wraps both hands around the mug. The kitchen is very quiet.

"There were two of them."

She says it to the table, then corrects herself, looks at you.

"Here. At the house. They knocked on the door and I — I thought it was the neighbors, I thought it was someone from the school about you going back, I didn't—"

She stops.

She takes a breath.

"They came inside. They didn't — they were very polite about it, which is its own kind of terrifying, they just came in and they sat in the living room like they were here for coffee and the one with the glasses did the talking and he was very — he was very clear."

She sets the mug down. Her hands stay wrapped around it.

"Your father borrowed money."

She says it simply, the way someone says a thing they have known for a while and have been deciding how to say.

"A lot of money. From people who are not — they're not a bank. They're not — they don't have paperwork that goes to a mediator. They have people who come to your house."

She looks at the mug.

"I knew there was debt. After he died, I found some of it in his papers. I knew it was bad. I didn't know how bad, or who exactly it was with, until tonight."

She is quiet for a moment.

"I took out a loan. Against this house. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

She says the number plainly, without apology, without asking you to react to it in any particular way.

"I thought it would — I thought if I showed I was making arrangements, if I showed them there was a plan, they would give us time. And they will. They said they will. They were very—"

The pause.

"Polite."

(Don't fall apart in front of him. He's had enough.)

She lifts the mug. Sets it back down without drinking.

"They'll be back. They said every week, someone will come, and we make a payment, and it goes like that until it's done. And if we miss—"

She does not finish the sentence.

"They mentioned you. The one doing the talking. He said they knew you were back at school. He said—"

She stops again.

"He said your father was a good man who made bad choices."

She says it very carefully, the words placed one at a time, and the thing behind her eyes while she says it is not something she is going to name right now.

"I don't know if that's true. I think it probably is. I think he probably was and probably did and I think he probably didn't have a good way out of it and I think—"

She stops.

She looks at you across the table.

"I'm sorry."

She says it simply, directly, her grey eyes on your face with the full, stripped-down quality of a person who is not performing anything right now.

"You came here because you lost your father and I was supposed to be — I wanted this to be safe for you. I wanted to be the person who made it safe."

She reaches across the table.

Her hand covers yours, warm and solid.

"We're going to be okay."

She says it.

She says it again, quietly, the second time less like something she is telling you and more like something she is telling herself.

"We're going to be okay."

The kitchen light hums. The mug sits between her hands. Outside through the window the backyard is fully dark now, the fence just visible at the edge of the light, and somewhere out there beyond it the rest of Summerville is doing its ordinary evening things, entirely unaware. The card from Officer Yumi sits on the table between you. Neither of you touches it yet.

[Choose Your Own Scenario]