Wow. I can’t believe I’m actually attempting to update this…I’ll probably screw it up and take it in an entire different direction than it was going…but hey! I’ll try anyway.

And (a really late) thanks to everyone who reviewed. I really appreciate it, honestly.

--

--( 2 )--

It’s still awkward. Really, really awkward. But damned if I wasn’t sort of expecting it.

As I exit my first class, Keegan by my side, I get a lot of stares. Like, a—what’s a word that means a lot…damn my small vocabulary—a multitude. That’s a big word. I can hear the whispers; I don’t know if they think I’m deaf or dumb or just don’t care if I can hear or not, but they’re definitely talking about me. ‘Wow, he really doesn’t look like Brendan!’ ‘What’s he doing with Keegan?’ and ‘Oh my God…just oh my God’ fly through the air (the last one was actually a little offensive) and I continue to ignore them, just pretending to listen to Keegan talk. Instead of actually paying attention I just sort of space out, confused and alienated and a little…ugh, though I hate to say it—sad.

I don’t fit in. I definitely, really, honestly don’t fit in. This is California and it’s so different from everything I’ve ever known. Back home I knew everyone—the seniors were most likely your former babysitters, the juniors the kids that used to come talk to you while their parents visited with yours, the sophomores your best friends, and the freshman your prodigies. One big family, as cheesy as that sounds, but you knew everyone and everyone knew you and someone always had your back. Here I got the feeling that it was way different; and I can’t say I liked that too much. But a fresh start was always good, right?

And, on an aesthetic level, I was not nearly as tan as all these kids. I don’t know if it was the three-hundred-sixty-five days of sunshine or the tendency of the weather in Maine to be less…well, sunny, but I was definitely the palest kid to grace these hallways that I’d seen so far. Even the ones that I could tell were emo still lacked the stereotypical whiteness; they were just less tan. I had no idea if tan and Californian were just incorrect stereotypes and I was just seeing an exceptional amount of tan people, but it sure as hell seemed correct when I seemed to glow like a (white) lightbulb next to Keegan’s skin.

“…and that’s why pole dancing is banned at school—“ I blink as I catch the tail end of Keegan’s rant, slightly confused, and actually give him my attention.

“What?” I say, and he laughs.

“You spaced out on me, man. How else am I supposed to get your attention?” He laughs and I wince a little; he wasn’t supposed to notice my lack of interest. After all, I didn’t want to piss off one of the only people here who seemed to want to talk to my face instead of behind my back. Note to self: be nice to Keegan.

We enter the classroom and I’m greeted by the pleasant, buzzing roar that seems to be the fourth period environmental sciences class. The teacher, when I scan the room, is nowhere to be found; Keegan just grins and leads me towards a small group of people that look slightly odd, just like the friends he’d introduced me to earlier. Does he have interchangeable friends, just depending on what class he’s in? Jesus. The kid’s got personality, I’ll give him that.

“My brethren!” Keegan cries enthusiastically, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

Actually, I can’t hold it off. I might have disguised it as a weird twitch, though.

“This is Spence, fresh from Maine.” He gestures grandly. “Spencer! These are my brethren!”

“I…couldn’t tell,” I say, raising an eyebrow at him, and then turning to his…’brethren’. They seem just as weird and emanate the same damn Keeganish aura—is this how I’m going to tell all of his friends apart from everyone else? They all seem like freaks to me?

There’s a caramel-colored boy with dark hair, a girl with bright blue hair, and another girl with big brown eyes that are definitely unnerving. I’m sort of creeped out already and I’d just walked over here…not a good sign, I’m thinking.

“Adelle, Daine, Kyna,” he said, sweeping his hand over the brown-eyed creepy girl, the boy, and the blue-haired girl in turn. They all look at me silently.

There’s an odd silence in which none of them seem willing to say hi and I just kind of shift my weight awkwardly. Keegan just stands there obliviously, actually intent on his shirtsleeve and not just fucking around.

Dear Lord. “Hi,” I blurt out, so forcefully that it actually sort of surprises me. Kyna blinks, Daine remains still, and Adelle’s eyes widen further if that’s even possible. Really? She has the biggest damn eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. They look like they’re about to, like, pop out of her head or something. She reminds me of a deer. A DEER.

I don’t know why it’s so disturbing.

“Hi,” they murmur at last, and I wrinkle my nose a little. Manners? I’m not one for them normally, but Jesus. A hello would be great.

“You’re so….white,” Kyna observes, tilting her head at me. I raise an eyebrow.

“Yeah. I’ve noticed,” I say, maybe a little snappishly. Sure, it was a bit odd to see someone as pale as I was around here, but she didn’t have to…point it out, I guess.

“Your eyes are pretty.” Four words and I am officially and intensely creeped out. Her voice has that slow, throaty, rapist sort of quality to it and it gives me chills.

“Uhh…” I’m lost for words completely, and perhaps Keegan senses this (or is just lucky) because he finally takes his attention away from his sleeve to fix it on me.

“We need to find you a chair! Preferably by me! The teachers don’t know if I’ll talk to you yet or not,” he says, grinning, and drags me away to a chair by the window. He sets his stuff down—okay, he throws it—into the chair next to the window seat, and points me towards that one.

“Do you sit back here normally?” I ask cautiously, noting the lack of active or awake people near this area. Situated ahead of Keegan and I are two nerdy-looking brunettes and to our right a sleeping blonde. I don’t think he was put here by accident.

“Yeah, I do,” he says cheerfully, smiling despite the apparent dullness of his seating arrangement. “I talk way, way, way too much so I got moved like every three days until I started sitting here. So now I normally just text or sleep but I can talk to you now!” He sounds so enthusiastic about it that I can’t help but smile back.

“That’s great,” I tell him, sliding into my window seat and turning my head. Outside it’s blue as all hell, and I can see some lithe-limbed tree swaying rhythmically in the faint breeze. Rather distracting, I’d say, seeing as I can see the sports field from here and the P.E. class was at play right now. Soccer.

I really wish I could do something intense or exciting. I mean, it wasn’t like I couldn’t do anything at all—I liked to play the piano (which I wasn’t going to admit to anyone) and pretend like I could play soccer, but outside of that I didn’t really excel in anything. That was only partially for lack of trying, though. I was mostly unmotivated by Brendan; he played lacrosse and soccer both, and swam just for the hell of it when he could do it competitively if he’d wanted to. On top of that he played the guitar, which was a hell of a lot manlier than piano. This and the fact that he was virtually perfect caused me to often conclude that Jesus really really liked him—and me, not so much. Or at least my parents decided to give all the good genes to him.

I strongly suspected that’s what had happened; Brendan had been born healthy on April seventeenth; I’d been born the same day, but I ended up in the hospital for three weeks because I, apparently, was one weak-ass baby. My father, who actually appreciated Brendan, didn’t even know I was born until my mom brought me home. That day had been made my makeshift birthday (since my dad refused to be wrong), and that was why I always felt almost a month younger than Brendan even though it was only a few minutes. I liked to keep that fact in reserve when we got into one of those inevitable sibling-authority fights.

Maybe I should start running or something. I used to run for fun when I was like—Jesus, it had been a while—fourteen, and I’d been on one of those little community soccer leagues. For not liking heat and exercise, I had more tolerance for running than I’d ever thought I would. And it helped with the whole soccer thing; I didn’t suck, per se, I just wasn’t amazing. I could get better…maybe…if I really tried.

“You’re gonna either like this class or hate it,” Keegan interrupted my thoughts by saying, leaning over towards my desk, eyes on the door. “We do like…next to nothing and it’s easy so you either think it’s a waste of time or it’s pointless fun. I’m more of the opinion of the pointless fun, if you ask me.”

“Really,” I say, like I hadn’t been expecting that. “Does this class…” I looked around, raising my eyebrows. “Does it even have a teacher?”

“Well, yeah,” Keegan said, shrugging. “Just he’s not here yet. Doesn’t get here until like…ten after class starts. He’s probably in the office getting a new roster, that’s my guess.”

“Oh.” I let my eyes wander as Keegan’s phone went off loudly, obviously not on vibrate. While he texted I observed.

This was a rather large class, the kind you’d expect to have a teacher and maybe another one just to help control the class. If I estimated—which I didn’t often, because I was bad at that—I’d say around forty kids were milling around, laughing, talking, yelling, hardly anyone in their own seat.

There were some interesting-looking people, though; more kids with multi-colored hair, a few muscular boys laughing loudly amongst themselves, the select group of pretty girls perched atop their desk, the quieter kids near the front chatting softly, the nerds comparing homework. All in all I’d say it was oddly stereotypical.

And of course half of them were either sneaking glances at me and laughing or just…glancing at me. I’m guessing this is what those weird exotic tigers feel like in zoos, except I wasn’t exotic and rare. Or a tiger.

“Am I weird?” I murmur to Keegan, who took a second to look up, look down, and look up at me again.

“Huh?”

I rolled my eyes at his confused-deer-in-the-headlights look and said, “Is my shirt on backwards or something? Am I still bleeding, drooling…you know, weird?”

“Uh, no…?” Keegan raised an eyebrow, still confused. “Why, what’s wrong?”

“Everyone’s looking at me.”

“Oh—“ Keegan twisted, looking around as if to clarify my statement. Like he hadn’t noticed…well, actually, I could believe that. “Oh! Oh.”

“Oh..” I prompted, widening my eyes a little. Keegan bit his lip, looking deep in thought.

“Okay. So first of all you’re Brendan’s brother, which would automatically interest everyone—“

“Of course,” I snorted, rolling my eyes. Keegan waved a hand dismissively, continuing.

“—And then you’re new, which is again automatic interest.” He nodded, like he was waiting for me to understand. I nodded back and he went on. “And you look different too, since you’re all pale and short and they’re probably wondering why you’re not like a carbon copy of Brendan. Aaaand you’re cute apparently, so the guys are checking out the competition and the girls are just checking you out.”

“What?” I choked out, staring at Keegan. Did I just hear him call me cute? Or was that some freak like, audial accident and I heard the wrong thing—

“Apparently!” he cried, holding up his hands. “Jeez. Apparently, I said. Brendan had a few pictures of you somewhere that Shea got into after she tried to rape him and she said you were cute and told a few of her friends. And of course then I had to hear about it, since, y’know.”

“Oh. Okay.” I bobbed my head, a little less perturbed until Keegan’s words actually sank in.

“Brendan has pictures of me?” I exclaim, a little louder than I’d meant to, and the group of slowly-growing nerdy kids in front of us turned to look at me. I blushed bright pink and turned my head more towards Keegan, who looked a little surprised. “He has pictures of me?” I hissed again, narrowing my eyes. “Are you fucking with my head?”

“No?” Keegan said, shaking his head. “Why? I think they’re in his wallet or something, Shea showed me like two—three?—two…maybe four…two of them. One of you and him and then one of just you, I think.”

We were both silent for a second, my eyes locked on his, and then something in me just sort of died and I burst into laughter.

“That is probably—“ I had to stop for air “—the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while—oh my Jesus—“

Keegan was half frowning, half pouting. “I was being serious,” He muttered, looking at me like I was being mean to him or something.

“No, it’s just like—hah, wow—the idea that he would do that is like…wow.” I shook my head, incredulous. That was probably the one thing I’d never expect of Brendan, ever. For the most part he liked to either pretend we weren’t related or show up the hell out of me. It was a thoroughly ridiculous idea, and Keegan was probably wrong.

Way wrong.

“…Okay,” Keegan said slowly, eyeballing me and then shrugging the weirdness off in favor of turning his pencil on his desk. My levity receding, I took a deep breath and continued my surveying.

The pretty girls were gigging loudly, the quiet kids were…quiet, and the jocks were torn between watching the pretty girls and taking scrutinizing glances at me. I would have flinched if I was a complete pansy, but it’s not like I posed much of a threat to them. I was roughly about half their size, maybe a third in some cases. And then off in the corner a group I hadn’t noticed yet; a few girls and a few boys who looked like the exact opposite of the muscled boys still eyeing the girls, but still managed to leak self-confidence. Sort of like they ran the school; sort of like Brendan. That was enough to make me mistrust them immediately.

My eyes wandered over each of them individually until they came to the guy who seemed to be the epicenter of the group; a regal-looking dark brunette, tan with eyes that couldn’t be anything but gold, lounging atop a desk and casually directing the conversation. A condescending, almost disdainful air stained his posture, his face. He looked like something out of a picture, really, but despite all this I still ended up looking away.

But not for long.

“Who’s that?” I ask, wrinkling my nose just the slightest when my eyes landed on him again. He looked like a creeper, or at least an asshole. You know the sort of negative vibe you get from people? That’s what I was getting. From all the way across the room.

“Who?” Keegan turned his head like a satellite dish that’d lost its radio signal until I finally gestured. “Oh, that’s Easy.”

When he didn’t clarify, I prompted him further. “So what’s his name?”

“I just told you.” Keegan’s face was blank. “His name is Easy.”

“…” I blink, raising an eyebrow. I guess I hadn’t heard the capital ‘E’. “…His name is Easy?”

“Well no not really, he’s from New Orleans which I’m pretty sure is also called the Big Easy, right, so people started calling him Easy but his name is actually Remy which I’m relatively sure may be short for something like...Remington? Some weird family name, but his full name is like…like, Remington Alexander Taynon-Teague.” Keegan nodded, clucking his tongue, approving of his summary. “He’s a badass.”

“…you don’t say,” I say skeptically. I’ve never heard of a badass with such an eloquent, traditional-sounding name, but there’s a first time for everything I guess. “What is it with these names here? Do you all get off on giving kids long, complicated names?”

Keegan shrugged. “Keegan Lowell Price-Orewing was not made hyphenated by choice, mind you!”

“Whatever happened to having just three names? Why four…” I shook my head. Maybe Californians liked hyphens like Keegan seemed to. Or they just liked long names. Or…there was a lot of divorce and remarriage. That could be it.

“Or maybe they’re just cool,” Keegan suggested, nodding emphatically.

“Whatever,” I snort at him, half turning my attention back to this Easy—Remy—what’s-his-ass over there. “Do you know like—do you know everything around here? Or does it just seem like it cause I don’t know anything?”

“No, I know everything,” Keegan said, grinning and tapping his temple. “I’m either psychic or just reeeally good.”

“…not gonna say anything,” I said, putting my hands up. Keegan laughed.

“I really am! Good, I’m thinking, and maybe a little psychic but good too. I’m like a fountain of knowledge,” he said, attempting to back up his claim.

“Like what?” I asked, glancing back out over the soccer field. Some idiot with orange hair that looked like a candle flame in the sun caught my eye, and I was distracted for a few seconds before turning back to Keegan. Why was my inner child so out of control?

“Like…that…” Keegan grasped at something, searching his brain for a random splash of knowledge. And he was clearly finding nothing.

“Like that,” I repeated, nodding. “I’m guessing the fountain is backed up.”

“Shut up, Spence,” Keegan said, sticking his tongue out at me. I rolled my eyes, tempted to stick mine out too but deciding that no, that would be…perfectly acceptable and yet at the same time really dumb. “Ugh—give me a name and I’ll give you a fact.”

“Uh..” Let’s see…who would I not mind hearing random facts about?

But that left too small of a selection so I’d just go with whoever I thought of first. “What about that Easy kid?”

“Oh, that’s easy—not literally, but—hah, okay, he’s sort of like…the antichrist of the school. Like, not the actual antichrist—“

“I guessed that much,” I muttered sarcastically, ducking away from Keegan when he swung his arm at me.

“But he’s like, the anti-cool, I guess. He’s cool but he only has a few close friends and he like…eh, it’s weird. Another one.”

“What’s-his-ass—uh, Colby-Reade? Was that—oh, fuck him, Lindell.” I made a face. I was good with names, normally, but all this hyphenation was fucking with my head. “What about him?”

“He’s like the opposite of Easy. Knows everyone, generally a nice guy, but he’s kind of the same at the same time—okay, not them anymore. Someone else!”

Who else did I actually want to know about…

“Tell me about Brendan.”

“Oh, jeez. I should have known you were gonna ask about him eventually…Uh, is he always such a…”

“Socially gifted asshole?” I suggested, drawing from my bank of pre-prepared (that’s how far in advance I thought) phrases. Keegan laughed.

“You could say that. He’s definitely got a lot of friends in a lot of places, if you know what I mean, and he certainly knows how to climb the social ladder. But he’s chill for the most part, I suppose. He’s in with Lindell and, to some extent, Easy too. It’s odd. He’s odd. But not in a weird way. Do you get—what—I’m—saying?” Keegan punctuated his words with emphatic hand motions, and I just nodded. Don’t upset the natives, Spencer, just smile and nod and smile and nod…you don’t want to be eaten.

Goddamn, I am weird sometimes.

“Uh, yeah,” I say, blinking myself back to reality. “Yeah, I get it.”

My blank expression was apparently not what Keegan was expecting as a response, because he asked, “Were you expecting something different?”

“Maybe for you to call him a degenerate slut or something, but that was good enough.” Keegan shook his head, grinning, and looked towards the front of the classroom.

“Ten after,” he said, gesturing to the clock. You tell time from the clock, Keegan, really? I thought you’d been looking at the “Learning Is Good” posters and figured it out from there. “Garrison should be here soon.”

And, as if on cue, the door swung open and the guy I was presuming to be the teacher stepped in. Slumped shoulders, plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, dingy shoes somewhat disguised by khaki pants. He was balding and only accentuated that fact by putting the rest of his hair in a ponytail, curling a good inch below the nape of his neck; the only other hair he had was one of those connected beardstache things.

All in all, he looked sort of like a pedophile.

“Doesn’t he, though,” Keegan commented, and I guessed either I’d spoken aloud or he’d interpreted the look on my face. Probably the former unless he really was psychic. “He sorta acts like one too. Like the kid who would perv on you but it would be okay cause he’d be a kid…except he’s not a kid.”

Keegan waited until I nodded, catching his drift. “Yeah, sure, I get what you’re talking about…I think.”

“You probably understand,” Keegan said dismissively, waving a hand. “Point is you don’t wanna be in here with Garrison alone. And extra credit…uh, let’s just say you might wanna be careful about that.”

“Are you for real?” I had to ask, slightly disgusted. I mean, it wasn’t unheard of for teachers to be a little weird, but it had never happened back home. I’d lived in a pretty wholesome town, for the most part; not one of those places where everyone was the same religion and had the same opinions, but not a town where you didn’t know anything about anyone either. It was one of the places where you sure knew a hell of a lot about the people there, and most of them you’d grown up with since early childhood. Everyone had the same set of morals, almost, and shared a lot of the same general opinions on things. Like if a party happened, most of the parents knew about it and simply chose to give us our freedom, which was probably what kept the teenagers there from starting some sort of anti-societal-conforming riot.

“Sorta. Not really. But it seems like that’s what would happen and a lot of them kids have had him be sorta weird…but he’s a good teacher for the most part, when we actually do have to learn stuff. Not very often in here, I’ll tell you.”

I leaned back in my chair, my head turning again. There was a game in full swing now; someone was getting tackled on the field, the soccer ball nowhere near them anyway, and I had to laugh. That had been my favorite part of soccer; kicking people in various places and being able to blame it on the game. Totally legal and totally fun.

A voice from the front of the room called my name and I turned, looking to the teacher. He beckoned me forward and I complied, rising from my seat to navigate through the desks towards the front. The room hushed, going from a roar to a whisper so fast it pressed painfully on my ears. As I passed by Keegan’s friends, the ones he’d introduced me to earlier, I could practically feel them staring.

Especially Adelle with her big-ass eyes.

Damn.

I reached the front of the room and the teacher pointed to a spot where I supposed he wanted me to stand. Except I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to stand there exactly because he hadn’t really said anything so I ignored the pointing finger and faced him from where I was.

“You’re Spencer, right?” He looked me over, his expression a little off-put.

“Yeah,” I said, wanting to squirm because he was weird as hell.

“Spencer Orewing?”

“…Yeah,” I repeated, nodding.

His tone was skeptical this time. “Brendan’s brother?”

That didn’t even get a reply, just a look.

“Okay, I’m guessing you are. Kids,” he said, turning to the class and heightening his voice, “this is Spencer Orewing. Now, Spencer, we have a little bit of a tradition; you can choose whether you want to do charades for the kids to guess a little bit more about you, or you can sing a song for us all. Which will it be?”

Oh, hell no.

There was a silence in the entire room for a few moments.

I don’t know if my expression was that of “you are out of your fucking mind” or just a blank stare that reminded him of how stupid and unlikely to happen that was, but he blinked quickly a few times and rescinded.

“Okay, let’s not do that. Why don’t you just…tell us all a little bit more about yourself?” He looked at me meekly, I guess waiting to see if I’d glare at him again, but I just shrugged and turned back to the class. A few of them were giggling, at my glaring at the teacher most likely, but I ignored it.

“My name’s Spencer. Just moved from Maine yesterday. And…that’s about it.” I shrugged, deciding that that was all anyone really should need me to tell them about myself.

A hand in the back of the room raised and I raised my eyebrow along with it. What was this, question time? I sure as hell wasn’t gonna call on anyone.

But apparently Garrison had a different idea because he called the student out by name. “Patrick?”

“Are you actually Brendan’s brother?” He asked, and a chorus of ‘yeah, are you?’ followed him. God damn. I really wished I wasn’t Brendan’s brother some—okay, most of the time. Like, ninety-eight percent of the time.

“Unfortunately,” I said, shrugging.

“You don’t look anything alike,” a blonde girl spoke up from the front row, looking me up and down. “At all.”

“Shouldn’t brothers look alike at least a little bit?” That Patrick kid spoke again. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like him. “Do you have the same dad? Brendan looks a lot different from you.”

“Obviously he looks like he gives a damn about that,” I snapped. Yeah, I definitely didn’t like him. “Yes, we have the same dad, we’re the same age, is there any other incredibly superficial comment you’d like to make? I’ll wait if you want to think one up.”

The only person I heard was Keegan giggling to himself.

“Okay, then…” Garrison nodded, forcing a smile. I think I’d scared him, though only God knew how; I wasn’t very threatening at all. Scrawny little five-foot-three boy? I was practically made to be beaten up. Or at least that’s what my dad thought. I wouldn’t guess anyone else thought different. “Why don’t you just go sit down, Spencer…”

“Gladly,” I mumbled, and made my way back to my seat. I could see Patrick glaring at me from the other side of the classroom and honestly, I couldn’t give a damn if he didn’t like me now. He’d lit my perpetually short fuse; it was his own fault.

Keegan just grinned as I sat down beside him and offered me a high-five. I took it unenthusiastically.

“Way to go, Spence. Patrick needs to be put in his place more often, it’s really satisfying to see.” He laughed again, looking at me. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking back out the window. All I could see now was a darkening sky, grass rippling as wind skated over it. The field was empty. “I’m fine.”

---

My phone vibrated in my pocket and I looked away from my notes in the dimly lit classroom, taking my gaze from the bright projector. The chemistry teacher was speaking smoothly about something or the other that soothed me somehow, and it was almost a shame that my phone had gone off.

Checking to make sure Miss Kennedy wasn’t looking in my general direction, I pulled my phone from my pocket. One New Text Message, the screen told me, like I didn’t know that already. Easy, read the line beneath it, and I pressed ‘view now’.

Your brother’s quite the spitfire.

I frowned a little. Spencer was being an ass already? You’d think he could wait until he’d gotten to know some people, but no…

Ugh. I flipped the phone to the keyboard and glancing up again at Kennedy, wrote back. Already? What’s he doing?

I sent it and went back to taking notes, my left hand remaining beneath my desk. The phone buzzed again in about a minute; I’d caught up on the notes already and was listening to Kennedy explain.

Sitting in his chair.

I rolled my eyes. Easy took everything too literally; either that or he just skipped around questions to be annoying.

What was he doing, then? I rephrased, a little irked, and sent it.

Kennedy was still talking when I got the next one. That was one of my favorite things about Easy; he was a fast texter and didn’t make me wait ages for a reply. That irritated me like anything.

He just yelled at Patrick and Avery, basically. He’s quick with the snappy insults.

I rolled my eyes. Yeah, he always is. Damn, I know someone told him to be nice and stay out of trouble. He never listens.

A moment later: And he’s cute.

That gave me pause. That’s my brother, Easy. Don’t go there.

You two don’t act like brothers at all. He seems like he doesn’t like you very much.

Easy was starting to make me angry. Sure, I may not like Spencer very much, but he still was my brother. No matter how well we didn’t get along. Don’t go there.

Waiting for Easy to reply made me slightly anxious. I wouldn’t have him perving on my brother; simply because he was my brother and it would be…bad. And awkward. Very much so both of those things.

As you wish.

I didn’t reply.

---

In case you couldn’t tell, that last bit was from Brendan’s perspective. You’ll get a little of that every other chapter, most likely, just for a different angle on the story.

Hopefully you all liked this chapter; took me long enough to roll it out, huh?

Reviews are like new needles to a heroin addict.