A Return to the Beginning

Finals fast approaching, I felt it only fair to bring things back to the beginning. Especially after yesterday. I don’t know, but I think I’mma avoid any League meetings these next couple days. I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t see something coming down the line, but still, this isn’t the something I was expecting. A couple day cooldown would be good for everyone. As I walk into the Smoking Trail and enjoy some pregaming gummies, I shoot a quick text Ter-ward. ‘Free for a study sesh real quick? I’ll pay for the booze and waffles’

It’s mid afternoon on a weekend. The Smoking Trail is far from uninhabited. But they are generally milling about and almost entirely avoiding my bench. See, Lissette’s already sitting down, enjoying getting nice and faded, and to everyone else, she’s one of them scary Maestros important now. I know better. Walking right over, I plop down next to her. She doesn’t even look over at me. “You gotta stop telling everyone that joints killed my parents,” she states as she exhales, “I think a few of them actually believe it.”

I chuckle a little. It’s a good bit. I pull out my small tin and open it. “Well, now you know the dumb ones.” Holding my forefinger and thumb close together, I mutter the words and watch as a small spark begins to flit one to the other. Pulling out a new joint from the tin, I hold the end between those two fingers until it lights.

“Mark literally apologized and ran away when he accidentally wandered too close while smoking his.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Mark? I haven’t even gotten around to telling Mark yet,” I reply, “You know what that means?”

She groans. She definitely knows what that means. “Great, now even after you’re gone, I’ll be dealing with your nonsense,” she mutters.

I smile. “Everything going smooth for you?” I ask, “Any rough bits? Any good plans or whatever?”

She sighs, leaning back. “Well, I’m behind grading my papers for half my classes, haven’t had a good night’s sleep since break - and just to cut that off, not in a fun way - and now that I’m a Maestro, you’re basically the only person left in the Villa who’ll talk to me freely and non-professionally so next year I’ll be missing out on all the gossip.” She sighs. “There are definitely days I miss being the fun, laid back Magister,” she adds, looking at all the freshmen and sophomores conspicuously avoiding the bench by the pond. Even though it objectively has the best view in the park.

My phone buzzes, so I look at it. ‘Sure. Give me an hour. Tell Lisette I said hello and my offer still stands.’ A perfectly normal Ter text. Correct grammar, full punctuation, an uncanny understanding of what I’m doing in the moment, intentional vagueness. Really just 10/10 most Ter text to be texted this week. Thus far. I shouldn’t guarantee most Ter text, just in case she texts something that has all that and is also just a little murdery. I turn to Lisette. “Don’t know why but Therese says hello. Also ‘her offer still stands’, whatever that means.”

Lisette chuckles. “It means your kind-of friend has a habit of knowing what people want and getting it to them, but only on her terms. Tell her I say hello, and with love she can go fuck herself. For the moment.”

“I don’t think that’s her jam,” I joke, then, after leaning in, I add in a stage whisper, “And not to sound paranoid, but she’s definitely watching us right now. I mean, she knew we were talking without me telling her.”

Lisette looks down at me. “I’m stressed and procrastinating, and you’re, well quite frankly, you. I think it’d be pretty easy to guess that we’re both here.”

I think about it for a moment, on the verge of replying. But my reply’d only serve to reinforce her point and give the Maestro even more to stress about, so I hold back. Wiping my brow exaggeratedly, I instead reply, “Phew. I was worried because I didn’t brush my teeth this morning, and when we meet for waffles and studying, I really don’t want her to chastise me about that.”

Lisette chuckles. “Don’t get me wrong,” she replies, “She’s definitely watching us right now. I’m just saying that knowing we’re talking right now, given everything else that’s going on, not a big leap.”

I giggle as I scan the pond. Sure enough, there it sits. My arch nemesis. “Of course she’s watching us,” I say offhandedly, “I’m like seventy-percent sure Patty’s one of her sources.”

“As are you,” Lisette points out.

I laugh as I blink my eyes repeatedly, readying myself and my eyes for the trial ahead. “Of course I am too, but that’s almost entirely accidental. And I only inform on myself accidentally like half the time we chat.”

“Really?” she muses, “Because I never even try to get information out of you, and yet you tell me shit pretty much every time we talk.”

I shake my head and zone in. I take a drag as I focus in on my arch-enemy, the bane of all in the universe. The duck, slowly drifting through the water, glides over to face me. With great furious focus, I lock gaze with the duck as it drifts through the water. It keeps its eyes locked on me as well. I can hear in the background, “Are you really staring at a random duck again?” But this isn’t a random duck. We both know it. This is The Duck. The stare lasts an eternity. Then a fly lands on my nose and I am forced to blink. Triumphant, the duck begins to flap its wings and take off. “That’s cheating,” I inform it, “Telling one of your fly buddies to distract me like that.”

Lisette laughs. “You lost? Again?”

“Hey, it cheated differently this time. I was ready for it to cheat in its normal way, but calling on the animals to distract me wasn’t something I prepared for. Physically or mentally.” It’s not my fault. I was ready for the whole it doesn’t really blink thing. I could get locked in, and my eyes were wet enough to keep from needing to blink for a bit. I even waited until it started to seem restless. But to no avail. I just hadn’t expected the duck to be friends with the fly. I muse, but maybe they weren’t friends. Maybe they just had a common enemy. “Do ducks eat frogs, I wonder?” Lisette shakes her head in my general direction. Clearly she doesn’t know either. I sigh. “Oh well.” Then, realizing why I wanted to chat with Lisette in the first place, I add, “By the by, a friend of a friend told me both the Laurences and the Andersons are out of town until next Saturday. You know, if someone who wants more people to gossip with them wants to use said knowledge to throw a hypothetical party or something. Just make sure you don’t do something that’ll piss off Sierra any more than I normally do, I don’t want to get myself murdered so soon before I graduate, you feel me?”

She shakes her head. “Of all your friends and sort of friends, I’m really not one of the ones you need to worry about in that regard.”

I nod at that. “Trust me, I know. And they’re all doing their best to piss her off. But none of it’s my fault yet, so I’m in the clear from the real upsetti spaghetti feelings. You do something, though…” I trail off. She gets my drift. Unlike every other one of my friends, Sierra can’t take her anger out on Lisette, as technically Lisette’s her boss. Which would make me, being a known friend of the Maestro, the prime candidate for transference of anger-thoughts. And that’s not something I want to be.

“I’ll try my best,” Lisette says, kinda uncertain. Or very high. I can’t really tell, because by showing up here late I have no clue how long or much she’s been smoking.

“Just a thought. Throwing it out there as an option,” I offer. Then, seeing the time, I add, “Sorry, I need to head out. I gotta buy a bottle of whiskey so another of the women I regularly interact with who always seems on the verge of murder won’t be upset with me.”

“You really gotta get better taste in people you hang out with,” she jokes.

I laugh. “But where do you find your fun, if not in wondering whether today is the day you’ll get murdered by a friend?”

“Board games?” Lisette jokes back.

I keep on laughing as I head down the rest of the smoking trail, weaving through the dozens of high college-aged kids, only half of whom actually are members of the Villa. The Smoking Trail does not discriminate. All are welcome, if they want to get high. I finish off most of my joint, carefully placing the roach back into my tin before I leave the woods. As much as everyone knows what the woods are for, the cops around here still feel a sort of way about it. And given the Trail leads directly to a highway, it’s generally best to finish up before leaving the forested area. At least, that’s the knowledge that was passed down to me years ago, and that I have passed down to the youths, and hopefully that they will one day pass down to the even youthiers. Because if all my Cult Magic classes have taught me anything, it’s that keeping and preserving the oral history and traditions of an area is important and valuable. Which is why I know I definitely need to study for my finals. Because I should probably remember a lot more than that from all those classes. I mean, it’s my major, for god’s sake. I laugh at my own thoughts as I head into the liquor store.

Leaving with a bottle that was probably far nicer than I needed to get for the twenty-year-old alcoholic, I headed over to the Waffle House. It’s familiar, comfortable. Even though I don’t come here near as often as I used to. Ter’s already there, of course, because my trip through the liquor store made me run a few seconds late. She won’t acknowledge it though. As long as I’m within like a minute, she’s generally good. The employees, however, look relieved when I show up. They’ve had to deal with Ter, alone, for like, minutes probably. Rough on them. “Therese,” I say as I sit down in the booth across from her, “Everything alright?”

She looks up from her waffles and through my eyes. Even when I’m sober, that stare into my soul can give me the heebeegeebees. “Adequate,” she says, her face barely flinching. Something real rough’s going down. Or real complex. It’s hard to tell sometimes, the face twisting for those two emotions are really similar on Ter. “I take it from the text that Alina and you have finally spoken.”

“We talk a lot,” I shoot back, just a little too quickly. She continues to stare at me. I know what she means, of course. “Wait, you’re you. Of course you already knew,” I say, shaking my head. The waitress comes over with my waffles. “Thank you kindly,” I say with a smile. She nods and quickly walks off, knowing better than to stay around us when we’re talking all serious-like.

“And you feel?” she wonders.

I slide the nice bottle over to her, not even bothering to hide the handoff anymore. She looks at it and nods. I sigh. “I don’t even really know how to explain it,” I admit, “Because, if we’re really honest, I was readying myself for a very different conversation, you know?”

“I see,” Ter says. And I know her. She definitely does see.

“And so the fact that it’s this whole big plan for the two of us, both short term and longer, I’m just, I don’t know. It’s weird.” Ter looks through me. She knows me too well. She knows everyone too well. I sigh. “Okay, I do know. But it’s not that I’m not happy about it. I definitely am. I just wish she’d come to me sooner. Actually told me about it anytime before now. Planned it with me. All those things would’ve made it so much easier for me to be happy about it without all these, ugh, I don’t know, conflicting feelings, you know?”

Ter does know. She doesn’t react. “So, do you want to actually start studying?”