Will's quiet on Monday. I almost think he's going to turn into Suburbia and find his own way to school, some longer, more stubborn way to come around to the same thing, but he just watches his phone the whole way there instead. I have to stop him from getting run over a solid three times, which is standard fare for Major Tom over here, but usually he at least says "thank you", instead of looking at me like I've slapped him across the face.

He didn't even look at me like that years ago, when we were kids who would beat the crap out of each other for kicks. Everything was fair play then. I was potentially a little less fair, but well, when you're the bigger twin, you're the bigger twin.

The sky overhead has been gray ever since the afternoon on the couch with Megan and Evan. I feel an unseasonable warmth under my two layers of coats just thinking about it. I can still see their eyes in the half-dark. I can still sense something following me. I can see it snaking its way up and down the surrounding buildings, gashing dark holes in the surrounding gardens, a reminder. The looming silhouette of the school counters this with a subtle wave of chill as I pass under its shadow.

Will disappears somewhere in the middle of my mental preparation.

I look back for him in the empty hallways, but he's nowhere to be seen. I realize with a jolt that I don't even know where he sits in the mornings, and I couldn't go after him if I wanted to. There are so many things that don't come up in conversation unless you ask after them, but there's also the issue of not asking any questions at all.

Megan would know.

Meg, I text her. Where are you guys in the morning?

Asleep! she texts back. Amanda and I are on the bus. Is there a problem? Are you backing out of the confrontation with Serena? Need tips? Want me there?

everything is fine. calm down, I tell her. wondering if my brother was with your people.

I'm your people, dummy, Megan says. A rush of warmth surges through my chest again-- I didn't realize how much I could miss someone I see every six hours or so, excepting when I go to sleep. (I can only imagine. I can only imagine.) He's fine. You're fine. Breaaaaaathe. Serena can't kill you in public.

Fine. Fine. Going to deal with her now. See you soon.

Not soon enough! <3 XOXO

I smile. I press a finger against the heart emoji, then remove it. Too much? Too little? I send it to her anyways. I can imagine her face lighting up from a mile away, manic fangirl smile tracing across her lips and her hand pressed against one cheek.

I HOPE AMANDA DOESN'T SEE THIS SHE'D HAVE A FIT is the instant response.

I roll my eyes. I would personally lose no sleep over Amanda having a fit over the relationship she's not in. If she wants to be possessive, she's free to do what she wishes, but she doesn't know that it's three on one.

It's always three on one.

It would be great to get some moral support from Evan, too, but he doesn't want to deal with her anymore than I do. I might as well rip off the bandaid instead. I stroll through the halls to the cafeteria, to where Serena sits alone. She comes in at 7:30 each day with a different drink from Starbucks and works all the way to the bell for first class. No one else is ever there, and she looked drained the first few days, but today she looks like she didn't sleep at all.

"May I--" I ask.

She moves her chair over. It's unnecessary. There's another right there, which I move myself into. She has her head slouched atop a hand, and I notice a bulge in one of her almost skin-tight jackets, the kind most people only wear when they're working out.

"Tough few weeks?"

The bruise has healed nicely, as demonstrated when she finally looks my way and gives me the full headlight blast of her stare. "You already know," she says. "I figured you'd come around eventually. How are we doing?"
"About to lose the war of attrition. The Delegation's worked out how to turn people without DIosite shards, and once they have that operational, we're done for."

"So you've come to grovel," she says.

"I've come to ask you to come back before I'm not the one who's asking," I correct her.

She stirs her drink.

"Sorry about Evan."

"Do you get to be sorry for him now?" she asks, incredulous. "Next you're going to try to negotiate with me about times, remind me that the end of the world is top priority, et cetera, et cetera, why is Serena so selfish, why is she so privileged? I asked myself that a few dozen times while I was nursing my black eye."

"You come up with anything?" I ask.

She shoots me another glare. I've never been so personally wounded by eye contact.

"I'm not kidding," I say. "Look. A few days ago, I thought some things over, and I just... I need to know why you do what you do. Is it really worth the effort to do all the clubs, all the extracurriculars, how do you push yourself through it all? Do some people legitimately just enjoy it more? Are the rest of us just doomed to do work we don't care about? Is that it?"

"I do it. That's all," Serena says. "Look. People give you crap your whole life about taking care of yourself, balance, all that, slowing down... I know it seems like the right thing-- of course it does, it's all warm and fuzzy-- but they're wrong. That's what you tell yourself once you've already failed and you want to justify it to yourself. You don't get anywhere unless you work your ass off, and when it comes down to it, you either do or you don't. The work is done or it isn't. You're just a small human straddling that binary. I just decided I was going to be a doer, and then I became one. If anything's confusing, it's just how many people don't try. Like you. What are you good at, Adam?"

"This," I say.

"And what will that do for you as an adult?"

"Nothing." I would not let her throw me around like this if we didn't literally need her on our side.

She knits the ridge of her brow together with her fingers. "This is exactly what I'm talking about."

No. No, it really isn't. "Serena?"

"Yeah."

"You make me feel empty."

"We're not empty, Adam. Just because you can't make yourself care doesn't mean you don't have the capacity to."

"There's no 'we' here. I have Megan and Evan. I have--" I pause. Will's name is on the tip of my tongue. I exhale deeply, guilt creeping into my lungs and festering there like a mild pneumonia. "Ser. You know we need you. I think you want to come back, too. I'll keep Evan under wraps. Can you just-- can you just give us a little of your time?" I extend my hand.

Serena looks at my hand like I've offered her a dead animal. "I need you to side with me against her if anything terrible happens."

"Anthem?"

She nods.

"I'll do what I can."

"Good," She grabs my hand and hoists herself up onto her feet. "I haven't slept since Thursday. Anyways. I have homework to do. I'll be in the library."

That was by far the least reassuring "yes, I'd be happy to help" I've ever received in my life. I guess it doesn't matter where our morale is when we're down in the Delegation. I watch her thunder around the corner, all light and fury and sharp angles, and I wonder, not for the first time, what Anthem was looking for when she picked the people who she thought could save the world. I can't tell you one thing that ropes us all together.

I think about it all day, though.

Schoolwork has lost a lot of its luster this far through the year. I have friends in most of my classes, but after several months of the cold shoulder, friend is a generous term. I'm not ignoring anyone. I'm just busy. On the back of all my schoolpapers are diagrams. They look like something someone a few steps from a counsellor's office would draw, complex past anything my stick-figure drawing ass could imagine, descending in torrents of black and red ink into the dark.

Everyone in the school's in danger and they don't know it.

Will's little group in their corner, they've got parents who might be in on it if they're anything like their kids, destined for jobs that don't gel well with their free-spirit artist personalities. The teachers and I share longer glances these days. When Ms. Adana rambles for half the class about what 'free will' truly means in the play we're reading, I try to imagine the curve of her face fitted to a mask. It's not nice. I'm really not great at being nice when I'm tired.

No mission today.
I technically have TSA club today, not that I've been going. The twice-weekly meetings have been a once-or-twice monthly venture for me, with the excuse that schoolwork is really getting me down. I'm in advanced enough classes that everyone swallows it. When you decide to push free of the system and do what you want, you find out, quicker than you'd like, that no one actually cares what you're doing a solid 90 percent of the time. If you fall, no one is there to go after you. There is no floor unless you think one's under your feet.

The room that hosts TSA is filled with computers. They're hard to look at, now, as are the drones strung up around the room. The teacher, with his shock of dark hair and familiar squared glasses, is more of an adversary than an authority figure. I don't like the way he looks at the machines, like he trusts them. I don't like the doors in the room that lead to the workshop. They're shinier and sharper than anything else in this building, no windows, all metal.

Jack sits at a table, browsing his phone. He hasn't looked up yet.

Before he might notice me, and before I can regret my decision, I begin turning around. I walk back down the hall, faster than I entered, as if I have somewhere to be, then I walk out under the gray sky towards home. Suburban houses pass at an astounding rate, colors bleached out by the sky, and when I reach mine and enter quietly, I'm almost up to my room when I see my father standing in his office.

At 3 pm?

"You're home early," I say.

"So are you," he says. He smiles, but something about the gesture is unnerving rather than welcoming. I enter the room, backpack still on, shoulders slack, and stand next to him. He still has a few inches on me, making him one of the only people I still feel like a child next to.

"No club today," I lie.

He's not really looking in the window at all. "Adam, if there's anything I prize above all else, it's honesty."
"Sorry," I say.

He's still staring off into nothingness, beer can in hand.

"I can honestly say I'm glad you're home," I offer.

"I'm glad to be here too. It turns out one of my sons is lying about club attendance and the other has surrounded himself in an impenetrable fortress of lesbians who will try to seduce him into going to an art college, but besides that, I'm glad." He sips his beer. Nothing has changed.

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

Don't you dare. "Do you..." I pause and close my eyes. "Do you ever get really empty? Like you feel," I pause, choking on my own breath. I manage to swallow and continue, thankful that his eyes still haven't met mine. "You feel like someone turned a switch off in your brain, and you're groping around in the dark for the light."

"As in you're unhappy."
"Hypothetically."

Don't laugh at me. Please. I don't think I can take it if you're going to laugh at me. I can take yelling. I can take disapproval. I might even be able to stomach silence, but if he laughs now, I'm going to shrivel up like Will does. "Some people can't make themselves happy, Adam," my dad says, leaning against the window with one elbow. I follow his gaze out to the church across the road, and to the red sky above it. The car's out in the front lot. The trees are barren, and we're deep enough into winter that there's no chance of seeing another leaf for months.

He doesn't seem to be looking at any of it.

"Do you want therapy?"

"No," I say.

"Good. It's expensive," he says, with a laugh.

I laugh back. "Yeah, I know. Don't worry, it's just a hypothetical kind of thing-- well, more like something my friends are dealing with. I'm trying to be supportive, but they can be really overdramatic, and I don't get it at all."

My dad raises an eyebrow. "Don't let those people drag you down with them, Adam."

I nod. "Nah, I get it. I'm good."

He puts a hand on my shoulder. "That's good. Your mom told you about the promotion, didn't she?"

I nod again. "I've heard about it."

"Things are looking up for us," he says.

I know why he seems so worn out.

How could I not have realized when I was staring at the reflection of faces I get to see every few days? Light ripples on the edge of my vision, insisting on a presence besides my own in the room. My father's right hand is in his pocket, rolling over something small, hard, and cold as death. I pretend I can't see it. I pretend Anthem isn't bursting with light at the back of my head. I pretend my father isn't one of them. I try not to imagine seeing him on the floors of the Delegation, with Evan's burning fingers inches from his face.

Instead, I laugh along. The hand on my shoulder, just caressing the edge of my neck, feels like a noose one bad movement away from drawing taut.