Chapter 17

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Hugs are science, dang it.

Zahra, deadpan and arms crossed, slips from the top to the bottom of one of the three slides that spill off the new playground. The second after her boots hit the wood chips, she states, "Zahra has found joy."

I sigh from where I'm sitting precariously on the rail of the pirate ship, legs tossed over the side. The thing is some ten feet off the ground. It has a captain's quarters. With a captain's desk. And a carved ocean map—complete with sea monsters. And, for the love of all things good in the world, there's a real sextant beside a telescope and compass on top of it.

The kids today went utterly ballistic when they saw their new playground.

Riley's scream is still shattering the sound barrier.

"The fae know what they're doing," Zahra notes as she gets a cookie from a container at the Taco Bell window. The food really needs to go inside the kitchen. Shame I can't move.

Gazing out at the roof of the school, and a gutter line packed with so many leaves it's criminal, I say, "Hm…?"

"They made it all adult-sized. They are smart."

"Right." I'm glad she's acting normal today. I hope she's okay on the inside, too. Sometimes, she puts on such a tough exterior, it's hard for me to tell if she needs help. And, if you try to ask, you get some comment about how it's not as bad as something that happened in her childhood.

Like, I don't know, that time her brother locked her in a closet for a few days because she offended him. No food. No water.

Sometimes, I want to murder people.

"Come down here and order some cookies," Zahra says.

I drag my attention toward her and feel as though I need to sew an assortment of Taco Bell uniforms. Multiple sizes. Embroidered purple and white bells with themed quotes. Aprons, too. Because beside the little food prep area tucked into the back of the drive through, there's an empty uniform closet. And I really, really need to get those cookies brought inside…

Swinging my legs back onto the deck, I take a slide off the pirate ship and make my way to the window.

Zahra beams. "Welcome to Girl Scout Cookies 'R' Us. What can I get started for you?"

"Whatever has chocolate."

Zahra meanders through the tubs and places four different cookies on one of the napkins I brought out earlier in a meager effort to keep some level of sanitation here. There is, after all, a carved sanitation rating with a comical 100 just to the left of the window.

It is my personal belief that the person who made it has either never met a child or accidentally added an extra zero.

Zahra presents the cookies with a blinding smile. "That will be five million dollars. I accept card, but there's a three dollar discount for cash."

I glance at the wooden register drawer, computer, and card reader. It's not real, like the freaking telescope and sextant, but the drawer does have compartments when you pull it out, and childhood imagination can go such a long way. "I left my card and cash at home."

Zahra pouts one hazard-green lip. "Oh no. In that case, you can always do the dishes for seventy million years."

"Fast food doesn't have dishes."

Zahra blinks, thinks, huhs. "Well, then I guess it's free."

I take a cookie and nibble, realizing about a full school day and seven seconds too late that I probably one thousand percent should not have allowed the kids to have any cookies that potentially came from cult members. In a tragic turn of mental illness, this realization doesn't stop me from my munching.

If we go down, at least we'll go down together.

Then I won't have to worry about Andromeda hating me.

"Shame the faeries forgot to add a little therapist office. Maybe you can lie on the map table in the pirate ship and I can ask questions from the captain desk?" Snatching a lemon cookie for the road, Zahra pops out the open wall of the drive-through and takes my hand. "That is an excellent idea. Come on. I'll move the sextant."

"I just don't understand how this is possible."

"Faeries are real, and they like you more than me. What's there to understand?"

My heart twists. "Zahr."

"What? It's true."

"Are you okay?"

"Okay is bad language according to faeries."

Monster-Pollux told me that just last night. Had I heard it before then?

Or is my reality mixing with my dreams and creating a fantasy chaos I'll never escape?

Zahra continues, "I am not well, if you're curious about that. But of course I'm not. I hear voices and dress up to play video games on camera three times a week. My mental health is abysmal. Nothing has changed in the last forty-eight hours. Apart from the fact I now have a playground slide that fits my—" She swears. "So, honestly, things are looking up. I am thriving." She bites into the lemon cookie and stares at me. "How 'bout you? You well?"

Well on my way to a breakdown, sure.

I massage my temple as a headache throbs up the back of my neck. "Faeries can't be real."

"Why not?"

"Because magic doesn't make any sense. There are rules and laws of nature."

"You know how people threw a fit over pasteurized milk, because it was new and scary? And how we add annatto to cheddar in order to keep it a consistent shade of yellow? Change, new ideas, differences, it's all unnerving, especially to people who plaster smiles on their faces and who train themselves to constantly walk delicate lines in order to keep the peace and be liked."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask.

"I don't know. You deal with the entitled parents of kids who can afford a cute little private school with a cap of eight-to-one student-teacher ratios, not me. I'm just the lovable guard dog who assures said entitled parents that their kids won't grow up to be utter—" She swears. "—to people who look different. You know. Like Jesus wants. I'm here to take bullets and guilt parents with fragile religious beliefs who somehow think the whole love one another thingmeans shame the ones who don't have your same convictions into heaven because that's how it—" She swears. "—works."Her voice rises. "That's my job."

I wince. "Zahra…"

"What?" she states.

I don't know what to say.

Turning away, she takes a breath and angles her face upward. "Sorry. I shouldn't be yelling at you. It's not your fault. I'm used to neglect. Why should it be any different with the fae?"

Closing my eyes, I swallow a lump forming in my throat. "Maybe…they aren't really allowed to talk to humans."

A bitter laugh bursts from her. "Right. That's why Meda talks to us all the time."

"I mean, maybe the other faeries in Prince Cael's domain aren't allowed to interact with humans. Maybe they're charged with responsible interaction, which may mostly mean not interacting with anyone they're not familiar with. What if Meda and her father are allowed because they've already gone through whatever legal processes let them live in the human world to begin with? Also, how can we forget, there's some kind of evil faerie prince drama happening right now. Pollux and Meda seem closer to the faerie prince than most in an entire kingdom logically would be. Maybe they know more about the situation, but everyone else has been warned against interacting with unfamiliar people until things are sorted."

Zahra's eyes roll as she glares at me. "Oh look who's suddenly a believer."

"I'm not. I'm just trying to find reasons for this, for your thing, for everything. Okay?" And now my voice is pitching. And I want to cry. And maybe scream.

Without warning, Zahra stuffs the rest of her cookie in her mouth, marches up to me, grabs me, and crushes me in a bear hug.

I don't know how long it lasts—just two women standing under a playground set in front of a mock Taco Bell drive-through window, hugging and trying not to cry—but when Zahra sniffles and pulls away, I feel marginally better.

"Science," she says. "Hugs are science."

My lips part, but all I can come up with is, "It's true."

"I am going to cry under my bike helmet on my way home now. I appreciate your friendship. If I call in sick tomorrow, it's because I broke into a lab and contracted a plague. Please don't cancel school. No one needs to know you're breaking the law by not having two adults present."

I gape a moment, then say, "Please don't contract a plague. I will have to cancel school."

Zahra heaves a sigh. "You're such a goody-two-shoes. Fine. Catching up missed school days around the holidays is annoying. In that case, I request that we watch educational movies all day and assign nothing that needs to be graded. I recommend The Ritual. It's a comprehensive guide of what not to do when hiking. After that, The Forest, which teaches us that when our family members go to Japan without us, we should abandon them if they go missing because they aren't good people if they didn't invite us in the first place."

"I don't even think I want you to summarize those lessons for the kids."

"Darn."

"I love you, Zahr." Tangling my fingers in front of my dress, I try to force at least half a smile. "If my love counts toward anything at all."

Her eyes narrow. "Stupid. Of course it counts." Sniffing, she marches past me. "Idiot. I don't have my helmet on yet." Her voice wobbles with the onset of tears. "You suck. Goodbye. Be good. I love you. You're the best." She swears and disappears beyond the school building.

I give the playground a final look before I take myself inside.

The last thing I expect to see after I've closed things down for the day and dragged myself out to my car is Pollux and Andromeda sitting on the sidewalk in front of the school.

The sight alone stops me in my tracks, but when Pollux turns and his eyes meet mine, I lose all my air. My mind paints the whites black and the deep browns red. It threads veins of ink across his pale skin and tips each finger with a claw.

He rises and dusts off the seat of his jeans—not that I'm watching or anything. For the record, I'm actually looking at my shoes. My feet are very interesting.

And.

Like.

Kissable.

Apparently.

Red explodes over my cheeks.

"Kassandra," he states.

Smile. Smile. Smile. Smile.

I can't do it. Not after this morning. Not after forcing myself to in front of the kids all day. Not after the conversation I just had with Zahra.

I can't do it.

So I just lift my attention to his face and hope I don't look quite as hopeless as I feel.

Making matters so much worse, he says, "Can we talk? The three of us?"

Because I don't have the energy for anything else, I simply nod.