It is a tradition, really. Except Hunter doesn’t really believe in traditions, so perhaps he would call it a habit. As his friend Lottie is habitually failing math, he goes to her house on Thursday nights—her math teacher is fond of ‘pop’ quizzes on Fridays. Tonight, however, he is running late. He had been writing a poem, sitting at his rusty old desktop computer and clamouring away with the mechanical keyboard, when abruptly the screen had gone completely blank—the power in his house had gone out. Hunter makes a point to never be late, but a quick glance at his old Mickey Mouse wristwatch tells him that he’s actually fifty-eight minutes late. Yet he’s still dawdling.

                He can’t say that he’s dreading this encounter with Lottie; that would be a lie. But he also... He anticipates it. Hunter is not someone who likes to deal with emotions. Never has he claimed so to anyone, nor does he ever intend on making such claim. It is one of those things generally accepted as common truth. As surely as he will have perfect grades in math, Hunter will not have emotions.

                Emotions plague him now though. The dead computer screen hovers over his head, threatening to fall and crush him. He had been running late before the power had gone out, and staying to try and restart the computer had taken longer. Hunter reassures himself that when he gets home, the power button will jumpstart his old desktop, that all his files will be sitting there just as they had been two hours earlier.

                Unlike Hunter, Lottie lives in one of those obnoxiously large houses that should really be called a mansion. It has two stories and an attic. One story alone has twice as much floor space as Hunter’s entire house. Lottie, of course, has the entire attic to herself—if one could really call it an attic. With a full bathroom, kitchenette, and sitting room to complement her bedroom, it’s a wonder she doesn’t change her address to ‘40A’ and get her mail delivered directly upstairs.

                The door is relatively simple compared to the rest of the house. The only ornate piece decorating the dark wood slab is a silver knocker in the shape of a dragon’s head. Hunter always thinks that it represents Lottie’s personality candidly. She does rather well in simplicity. She appears fancy but readable until you get to the center, where her fiery personality fries anything and everything in its path. Or maybe he’s just a cynic.

                To the right of the door, a green frog made of clay—from Lottie’s ceramics class, actually—rests on the porch. Hunter looks around cautiously just in case a thief is watching him before tilting it slightly to the left and scooping out the old-fashioned key. He slips this into the lock below the handle and fumbles for a moment before turning it. He replaces the key before striding into the house, locking the door behind him.

                For a moment after he removes his shoes and socks, he rests, digging his bare toes dig deep into the velvety white carpet, allows the velvety feel envelop them. The silence of the looming house unnerves him after the outside world, and though he was almost too hot in his heavy jacket mere moments ago, he feels cold now. The only sound within the manor is the far off hum of the fridge. He knows that, in contrast, upstairs in Lottie’s living room, he will find mold growing on each window sill because she refuses to close them, preferring to be able to hear the chirping of the birds bright and early and the late night voices of anyone who cares to walk by.

                Nobody is home, on the first floor at least. This is apparent and unsurprising. Hunter can count the number of times he has met Lottie’s parents on his fingers, even though his weekly tutoring sessions with Lottie have been occurring for at least three and a half years, since the second month of high school, when the two were in the same math class. Since, he has jumped into the accelerated math program, but the tutoring sessions have stuck; now, they aren’t just because Hunter needs the money, but because they are a given, a part of their habitual life, a routine, a tradition.

                Checking his watch again—another seven minutes have passed—Hunter rolls past the kitchen to swipe an oatmeal cookie, which he guiltlessly chows down in a few seconds guiltlessly. He knows that more often than not, the food cooked for Lottie’s family gets donated to a nearby shelter. He’s continued multiple conversations with the household cleaner on certain days when he had arrived early and she had stayed late. The cleaner is a nice lady, amiable and always ready to gossip about the comings and goings of the Brenneman family.

                His feet make impolite little squeaks as he slides across the kitchen floor. They had been sweating in his shoes, but his heavy woollen socks had been the first he had found in his flight out the door. The family printer had broken again, and it had been hard enough for him to fix it in order to print out the poem he had been working on. Sometimes he wonders why he even spends countless hours weeding out the tiny scraps of paper that get caught inside his own when he tries to print two or more pages at once when he could just borrow Lottie’s family’s laser printer all the time. But somehow, though he’s fine accepting the donation of money for his time, he hates the idea of relying on her for things such as printing, services that he could handle himself. Well, that he can usually handle for himself. Even if the papers do just get given immediately to Lottie anyway.

                Stalling complete, he makes his way up the grand staircase, two at a time. He almost trips on the impeccable marble, but uses the iron wrought railing to catch himself. Despite his quick reflexes, he succeeds in knocking his leg and creating a nasty little gash. He wipes the blood away with a finger before it can stain the pristine carpet.

                The trapdoor at the top of the second spiralling flight of stairs is more for dramatic appearance than to actually keep people out. The wall curves around as the stairs continue through the wooden flap, designed specifically for the space to lift out of the way and become an extra padding for the wall. Both sides are decorated with geometric designs, one of which has been shaded in to somehow bear a resemblance to a swastika. Though Hunter has pointed this out multiple times, Lottie has never quite come to be of the same opinion. Still, she normally leaves it open to the slightly less offensive side. Tonight, however, it is closed, and Hunter has to carefully swing it up until he hears the click latching it into place.

                The stairs lead straight to the sitting room area on the far side of the attic. The roof tilts a little towards one edge of the room. There is a definite old fashioned royal theme to the entire room. The two couches are bold, an almost pinkish red, and the three oversized chairs are deep purple. The coffee table is made of glass and through it, one can see the blue carpet. The side adjacent to the tilting roof is filled with unusually arranged, almost like a partially see through patchwork quilt.

                Hunter sits down on the couch facing the windows and lets his bag fall to the ground with a thump. “Lots?” he calls out. “I’m here.”

Normally she’s waiting for him, sitting on the ground, painting her nails or reading a magazine. Normally he’s not late; he will walk in and roll his eyes at her. He can still remember the first time he came here as if it were merely a month ago. When she had first led him into the room, he had recoiled as if there was a skunk—he had found the unfamiliar smell of nail polish repulsive.

“Lottie?”

                A few moments pass but Hunter hears no reply from the rooms within. He scoots a few inches to the left so that he can stare down the hallway, but there’s no movement. Perhaps she didn’t hear him. He digs around in his bag to find his old cell phone. A few seconds later, he hears a familiar Madonna song playing from down the hallway, the volume intensifying and intensifying until all of a sudden it stops, and on his end, Lottie’s voice plays—“Hello, you’ve reached the voicemail of Carlotta Brenneman...”

                He hits a button to end the call and yells down the hallway another time. Lottie would not leave the house without her cell phone. Hell, she wouldn’t even go to the bathroom without it.

Wondering if she’s taking a nap, Hunter gets up and walks down the hallway, past the closed bathroom door and past the open entrance to the kitchenette. The door at the end of the hallway is closed. It’s always closed. Hunter has never been in there before. He hits redial on his cell phone, still clutched tightly in his hand, and listens again for Madonna’s voice. Sure enough, it comes from behind the closed door.

                Politely, Hunter raps a few times, but doesn’t wait long before turning the door knob gently and letting himself in. He stays frozen in place for a second as he looks around the wallpaper—or rather, the lack thereof; whereas the rest of the house is pristine with perfectly painted walls, the only decoration huge paintings that must have cost millions, there isn’t a bare inch of wallpaper here. He’s never been in here to see this, not even last week.

                Images of Lottie’s friends are plastered everywhere. Photos of them and Lottie posing for a camera, candid shots of them blowing bubbles, pictures taken at sleepovers with them all wearing pajamas, separate senior portraits for about twenty people, dance pictures, middle school pictures—he even spies some baby photos hanging about.

                Various records hang all across the sloped ceiling. Not records of current music—does current music even come out on record anymore? he wonders—but old records, obscure records with labels advertising bands he hasn’t heard of. He wouldn’t call himself a musical person, but it still surprises him how little he recognises. The ones he does recognise are mostly Beatles albums, Pink Floyd albums, and other old sixties and seventies albums. He wonders how she got them; did she inherit them? Get them on eBay? Somehow, he just can’t picture her going into the local record store and coming out carrying a stack of dusty old sleeves. He can’t picture her listening to them, either, until he spies a record player next to the desk. Carlotta Brenneman may have some secrets after all.

                Where pictures and records are not, quotes are. Sheets of white printer paper are edged in between every few pictures on the wall, each with writing in bold black marker, all caps, quotes and phrases edged in curly quotation marks with curly lines in front of the name of the song from which each came. The closest quotes have by-lines crediting musicians and bands that he again has never listened to. Her bed, to his surprise, is no grand four poster bed, but a simple single bed tucked into the corner by the slanted roof, a small twin, more of an afterthought than a centrepiece. He thinks it’s a wonder he hasn’t seen a bump on her head from knocking it every time she sits up in bed. He walks over to see which records are above the bed, but none stick out except for one depicting a giant fly crouched on something he can’t make out. 

                There are four guitars in stands by the window. One is a battered looking maplewood acoustic; another is a solid black bass with wires sticking out of the handle; and there are two different electric guitars.

                Another surprise to him is the pile of soft animals heaped in the opposite corner. Hunter spies plush bears, tiny elephants, soft leopards, brightly coloured parrots... There has to be at least fifty. This room has to be the only in the house that doesn’t have the tickly soft carpet; instead, it is hardwood, polished to a gleam, and despite the toys, not at all dusty.

                To his astonishment, he notices quite a few pictures of himself as he looks around. He hadn’t known that she had pictures of him. His eyes rest for a moment on one of them both. He hadn’t known it existed, and can’t think of when someone had the opportunity to snap the shot on a Thursday night. Normally the housekeeper would be the only one around, and he doubted she owned a camera. The shot looks to be from freshman year—Hunter still has his ridiculous long hair and the two are both bent over a geometry book. Lottie is smiling, and Hunter looks comically serious.

                Missing from the room, however, is Lottie herself. He spies her math text and notebook piled together by the door haphazardly, as if she had been preparing for their session, and an outfit thrown languidly on her bed. He sees an open diet soda can sitting on the large desk and the purple Macbook sitting open to Lottie’s Facebook page and flashing chat icons at the bottom of the screen. He notices a paper sitting there with a pen on top, though he can’t make out the words. A fancy pen holder stands with a different gold pen sticking out of it. As he examines the room, a sudden beeping makes him jump, and he spies her phone lying in a fancy pink holder on the desk, plugged into its charger, merrily receiving texts. But no Lottie in sight. There is a huge cupboard, but no walk-in closet (as he had presumed) that she could be hiding in, no doors anywhere.

                The whole situation seems odd to Hunter. He’s slightly hurt that she would bail on their tutoring session (having temporarily forgotten he himself was the one who was late), not because of the twenty dollar note he always earned, but because he enjoys it. They’re fun. Lottie is one of those people that everyone has to like, because if you do something nice or commendable, she will give you a smile that makes it worth everything, a smile that tells you you’re the greatest person in the world. Hunter’s always admired her complete happiness with simple things like finally understanding logarithms or the sun being out. She’s normally overjoyed on Thursdays simply because the next day will be Friday.

                And so he stands there, feeling like a lost puppy dog. He could just leave and go home, he supposes. Or he could sit in the living room and wait, maybe get started on his own math homework... But that would be weird. Lottie’s house without Lottie is soulless, empty and foreboding. It’s too grand for his simple life. Although, passing a glance at her simple twin bed, he finds it ironic that, although it’s old, falling apart, and takes up nearly all the space in his tiny bedroom, he himself has a four poster bed.

                Finally, he walks back down the hallway to the living room and slings his backpack over one shoulder. He peers around the room once more. The sky is changing, not quite darkening yet, but changing through the windows. He wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t left the room, but the shadows are spread in a different formation across the ground now. The sun is shining its rays across the whole room and he can see the dust spirals through them. From looking outside, one couldn’t tell that the forecast is predicting snow.

                Deciding to use the toilet quickly before he leaves, Hunter returns down the hallway and opens the door to the bathroom—and slams it closed as ten times as quickly as he had opened it. The whole wall vibrates a little as he slams himself against it, heart beating far too fast in spite of his sudden paralysis.

                Taking a deep breath, Hunter runs his hand through his hair and laughs a shuddering laugh to himself. He is imagining things to spook himself now. Really, he needs some more sleep. He’s almost tempted to go and use a bathroom on a different floor to avoid his irrational vision, but he’s not entirely sure that what he saw was imagined.

                When opened, the door to the bathroom casts its dark shadow over the whole room; the upper half of one wall is all frosted window, and the rays of sunlight coming through have been transformed into sparkly diamonds soaring all over the room, bouncing off the mirrors that seem to be coming from every direction and reflecting themselves over and over and over.

                This time, Hunter remains deathly still for at least five seconds before he makes a move; these five seconds, however, seem like an eternity, seem like the time it takes for a soul to move to heaven, seem like the time it takes for a great puppeteer to grab and jerk his strings utterly taught and leave him dangling barely a micrometer above the ground, completely still.

                Never before has he quite absorbed the true colour of blood. Most people say that it is red; Lottie herself even once compared it to brick red nail polish. But in reality, it’s more of an auburn colour, more of a burgundy or amber. The phrase ‘bruised eggplant’ comes distantly to Hunter’s mind for some reason as he briskly walks forward to the sink, to the slumped over figure sitting there.

                Everything in the bathroom was white, or at least, some shade of such. Ivory or cream or beige or pearl or—Hunter has never designed a house; he cannot list fifty shades of white from the top of his head. Mirrors cover almost all the wall surfaces—the wall above the bath, the walls around the sink, the walls everywhere. The rest of the bathroom was white. But now everything has a slight tint of pink to it. If Hunter were to look to his right and pretend the sight in front of him was not there, it could almost be romantic. There are three red roses propped up in a vase on the corner of the bathtub. They look fresh; the buds are still open and the petals still look velvety. The light reflecting on them is pink. The light reflecting on the tiled floor is pink. The light reflecting off each and every mirror is pink. Everything is such a mix of shattering red and clean white, everything except for the image he sees slightly to the right of the figure slumped over at the basin, directly in front of him, a figure that wears his blue hoody and black khakis, an odd lump of dark standing in the shadows of the door, an image of himself.

                His shoulder seems to almost blend into Lottie’s raven hair in all the images staring at him throughout the room. The light shining on it gives it a bloody tint, not the normal highlights of orange she gets while out in the sun, but a maroon red, reflecting off all of the glossy waves, still perfectly arranged from the back.

Red runs down the rim of the basin, tiny red rivulets all over the place, thicker at the top, and curving to the ground, growing thinner and thinner as if the drop had run out of life, leaving only a memory of colour. Red simmers in the air; the mirror reflects the red in the basin, the sticky clots of blood being reflected all across the room. The rational side of his brain observes calmly that there are only a few tiny streams of blood running down the light brown skin of her arm, but the irrational side is going crazy with all the colours streaming around, reflections bouncing across the multitude of mirrors.

                Red runs down the rim of the basin, tiny red rivulets all over the place, starting thicker at the top, and curving down to the ground, growing thinner and thinner as if the drop had run out of life, leaving only a memory of colour. Red simmers in the air; the mirror reflects the red in the basin, the sticky clots of blood being reflected all across the room. The rational side of his brain observes calmly that there are only a few tiny streams of blood running down the light brown skin of her arm, but the irrational side is going crazy with all the colours streaming around, reflections bouncing across the multitude of mirrors.

                His first instinct propels him towards Lottie in a rush as his own blood starts beating overtime, his heart going into overdrive. His hand, normally so pale in comparison to her tanned, half Hispanic arm, looks almost natural for once, as it reaches out to shake her on the shoulder. Her skin is so pale. There’s none of the normal rosiness in her cheeks, and her red lipstick looks comical, clownish, and does nothing for her features except emphasize the colour of her blood. The abrupt motion dislodges her, and for a moment, he almost stumbles and collapses under her weight, but manages to push her back against the basin, balancing precariously with her bottom on a white stool and her chest leaning against the sill, head lopped forward unnaturally.

                He grabs for her wrist. He needs to find a pulse, needs to know she’s okay. But as he does so, he dislodges the piece of metal her open palm had held. He jumps again as it drops down, instinctively catching it to spare his toe. His fingers are all of a sudden sticky and cold as if he had just stuck his hand into a pot of hair gel. Hunter recoils backwards, dropping her cold arm but still clutching the razor in his own. There is a cut in the arm closest to him, a cut that shakily traces a relatively shallow two inch cut down the flesh. A quick glance at the other arm makes him feel momentarily dizzy; the damage is much more precise and much neater on this arm. There’s a hacking cut in the middle of her palm, as if she had tried and failed to cut there, but a longer cut extends up from the edge of her wrist and goes literally from palm to elbow. His eyes settle for a moment on the razor itself—it looks to be some expensive straight razor, with a solid wooden handle and the initials “A. B.” neatly carved into the wood.

                There’s no way he’s getting a pulse from those arms unless—no, he can’t bear to look at that blood, can’t bear to see if the heart could be making it come out more, let alone actually touch it—he jumps as he hears another drip, sounding. He looks away, looks to the window and the rays of sun that continue to come through, as he presses his own hand to her neck, smearing her own blood on to the delicate, unscarred skin there, as he gently lifts her head up and tilts it back, feeling frantically for a pulse.

                She must be fine; there seems to be so much blood but there still really isn’t very much; there must be enough left to keep her going; if she was gone, there would be streams of blood, fountains of blood, not just little drops running down the side of the sink; the whole room would be bathed in red, not just tinted pink from a weird combination of the sun and the mirrors; it can’t be real...

                For a moment, Hunter manages to stand frozen still again. He tries to make his own heart stop beating, stop thumping so heavily, since it’s filling up the whole room with its obnoxious noise. He just wants to hear Lottie’s beating back, wants to know that she’s—

                He can’t bear to think it. He hears the crash as he suddenly jolts back, lets her fall, as he sprints out of the room, nearly slipping on the droplets of blood his bare feet had acquired. His backpack is still over one shoulder, thankfully, since he would not have thought to grab it as he sprints down the stairs, leaving little red splotches, echoes of blood from his foot and his own hand.

                Once again, he almost trips on the flight of stairs between the second and first floors. This time, however, when he grabs the stair rail to keep his balance, the razor he had forgotten he was holding slides deep into his skin, slicing it in such a motion that he barely even feels it. Blood all of a sudden, is coming from his hand, and he just can’t get away from the blood, and he stumbles more and rolls down the stairs, bonking his head as he lands at the foot. Completely panicked and not really thinking, he readjusts his backpack and keeps walking, a little bit slower this time, but putting more force into every foot step until he’s slamming the door shut behind him and running off, running, running, running...

                The [R1] swing squeaks with every back and forth motion, at the exact same position every time, when the chain is exactly twenty degrees away from being perpendicular to the ground. It squeaks, emitting a shrill noise that seems to rattle down Hunter’s spine. He wonders if having an oil can would help it at all. It’s starting to get to him, like the way fingernails on a chalk board cause people to cover their ears. Instead though, he just pumps up his music on his player louder, louder and louder. He wants to test the limits of her ear drums, to see how much they could possibly handle in one go. However, even with his volume a good twenty decibels higher than it normally should be, he can still hear the squeak, growing more intense and strained as she swings harder and harder.

                He hadn’t ever swung this high before, not even when he was a small child growing up, not even when he used to try and fly. He would always jump off the swing at the peak of his height, when he felt like it wasn’t possible to go any higher. It was always those moments that made him truly believe in life, that made him truly believe that success was waiting around the corner and that he would grow up one day, he would make it to that magical adulthood phase where he could make his own decisions.

                As a teenager, Hunter has realized that adulthood isn’t exactly the perfection his younger self had imagined. Adulthood still requires a job, requires work and a schedule, people to remember and appointments to maintain. But adulthood is still better than being a teenager or a young child. It’s not really clear, though, Hunter thinks, where the line between adulthood and teenagerhood lays; technically, he could leave home now at eighteen. He thinks of Lottie. She could have gotten a job—or at least tried to—at one of the local fast food restaurants and taken classes at a night college and rented an apartment. Or she could have remained at home and relied on her parents; though they thought she had slacked off throughout high school, he was fairly sure she could get into a fancy private university, even if she’d have to rely on her parents further for four years of tuition. But even then where would she be? Where would he be relatively?

                Would she be any closer to meeting success in life? But what is success in life? Hunter’s swing is slowing since he has stopped pumping her legs, too overwhelmed to keep the motion going. When he was younger, it was being an adult and having fun. Nowadays, it’s getting into college and getting a seven figure salary. But does it make any difference if he’s happy? Was she happy?

                Angrily, he draws her foot back and forth in the mud, creating a shallow rut and a pile of snow. He gathers together a snowball in his cupped palms and rolls it around her red fingers, forming it into a delicate icicle, about the shape of a square. He slams it into the ground as the swing comes to a halt, jiggling back and forth to the side as if trying not to give up before heaving a back and forth sigh.

                In the far off distance, he can hear voices, the rowdy laughter and chatter of her fellow teenagers having a bit too much fun for eleven o’clock on a school night. Hunter doesn’t want to encounter people right now. He’s having too much fun tuning out the world, tuning into his own little world of philosophical ponderings.

                The window sticks when he tries to open it again. He had to close it; otherwise her mother would notice the cold air floating in. He fumbles in the pockets of his raggedy old coat for money, but only comes up with an old crumpled bus ticket. Now would be a perfect time to walk over to the hardware store and buy a can of oil and to return and fix both his window and the swing. It’s not like he has anything better to do.

                But hearing the voices again, closer now, he climbs carefully over the sill and lands with a soft plod onto the carpet. Dealing with stoned boys is never fun, especially not in the middle of the night. Amusing, maybe, vaguely amusing, but with the line his mouth is set in now, it’s easy to tell that even Hunter himself isn’t sure if he’ll ever smile again.

                He removes the coat and hangs it carefully over the chair by his desk. The torn silk lining is as cool to the touch as it was when he put it on. His own skin is icy to the touch, but his mind isn’t warmed up enough to care. His mind has checked out for the night, is already in the mode of sleep, even as he slides out of his track pants and carefully spreads his duvet across the bed. His eyes don’t take in much of it. Although it was exciting when he first got it at a rummage sale for a mere forty dollars, the four poster bed has lost its elegance and history. Hunter found the idea that the bed had been in use for over two centuries mysterious and fascinating when it had first been moved into her room, but now it smells like his own dirt cheap cologne, it has a red nail polish stain from his sister’s sleepover long ago, there is a small tear in the fabric of the canopy, and many other tiny things that would mean nothing to someone else but hold multiple memories for Hunter.

                Though he can feel his own exhaustion creeping, he’s almost scared to fall asleep. And so he sits upon the purple sheets, comforter turned back at his toes, and wraps her arms around his legs, rocking herself back and forth, just like he’s back on the swing again, except without the feeling of possibly flying and without the obnoxious squeaking in his ear every second. It’s not the same, but if it can keep him from dreaming, he will not complain.

                He’s dreaming of a department store. It’s a big white department store, one of those atypical department stores that seem to have too much empty space, too many little patches of space between glass displays of shoes and handbags and signs for other floors. But every time he looks into one of the glass displays he sees red snow piled up to the top, the little crystals pressed into the side of the glass like a little kid looking into a candy window. And he can’t help but keep walking through the store aimlessly, to keep trying to find out where he could find what he’s missing...

                The memory of the dream disappears in an instant and he’s left with a fleeting glimpse of the feeling of wondering forever when he awakes, being shaken on the shoulder. “Hunter, you overslept, hon, you’ll be late for school.”

                Immediately, Hunter bolts upright. He never oversleeps. He always gets up at six on the dot in time to make breakfast for his three younger sisters and to help his mother with the housework before he takes the girls to school. His watch informs him that it is already seven o’clock. Springing out of bed, he grabs the pants he had haphazardly dropped to the ground the night before. “Sorry mama,” he groans. “Are the girls up?”

                “They’re up,” his mother replies, the opposite of him in tranquillity. She wears a long pink dress with sleeves and mother-of=pearl buttons and her greying hair is rolled into a bun at the nape of her neck. “It’s okay, dear, we decided you should get to sleep in for once—after all, don’t you remember what day it is?”

                Behind her, three girls come tearing in. The seven-year-old twins, Ashlyn and Clary carry a tray between them, which they slam down on the bed beside Hunter. The impact causes the plate of French toast (burnt) to start toppling, but Hunter catches it just in time, saving his bed from a pile of sticky syrup that would have taken a couple of washes to get out. Behind them, at a much more dignified pace, twelve-year-old Sophia bears a pot of coffee, looking like an angel in her white smock. The smell is enough to make Hunter forgive the younger ones, and he gratefully takes the mug his mother offers.

                As Sophia pours the cup, however, their mother’s eyes fall to the pants Hunter clutches. “You have a nasty stain, dear,” she says. “Here, let me take those for the wash.”

                The sight of the pitch black spot, making the faded black of the fabric look more worn than it is, makes Hunter recoil and nearly drop the mug. He remembers dreaming, remembers that he had gone to Lottie’s in his dream, but everything was weird and wrong and she wasn’t there waiting for him like she always was. He shudders, a full body shudder that ripples through him, and Sophia gives him a weird look. “Happy birthday, bro,” she says in her high voice. She grins up at him, and he takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He can’t let a dream get to him like that. He mentally calculates the time and figures he can allow himself ten minutes sitting with them and eating breakfast if he can brush his teeth and get dressed in another ten.

                But his mind clears as the morning progresses, and once he’s dropped the girls off at their school, he’s left with a fifteen minute walk to his school. It’s foggy and cold, with his every breath turning into a white wisp of fog to join the cool mist in the air. It had snowed the night before and his feet are crunching into the fresh snow on the pavement. Only about three or four other people have walked along the street this morning, and Hunter finds it interesting to see where their footsteps correspond.

                He’s trying to weed through the night before in his head. He remembers exactly what he saw. The twin dark lines running down Lottie’s arms are dark scars in his mind, and he can’t think of any real explanation. But now, he kicks himself for running away so abruptly. She was probably still alive, just unconscious. So she has some personal habits he hadn’t known about. There could be far worse situations he could have found her in. Hell, he’s lucky he hadn’t walked in on her and Rob Steely having sex. There were rumours they still were...

                This matter settled in his mind, Hunter pulls his mind back to reality and stops indulging himself in the weird matters of life. He needs to focus now on school, on the day ahead of him. He silently hates himself for thinking in such an adultish manner, as if he is some old counsellor being far too optimistic.

                Since he and Lottie have no classes together and, well, don’t exactly run in the same social circles, he tries to tell himself that it’s not unusual that he doesn’t see her around school.

                His friends and he have eaten under a big willow tree a few yards away from the parking lot since the second week of school, another habit Hunter fell into taking for granted. He gets along with a rather hodgepodge group of friends, one that is actually grouped together for differences instead of similarities. Quite often, Hunter finds (while cynically observing life) that people group around some common factor. The football team rallies together; the cheerleaders compare nails; the members of the math club do long division. He thinks the cliques so atypically found in high schools form purely due to this, some sort of survival mechanism that causes groups.

                But even amongst his own group of friends, he notices that people change depending on who they’re talking to. Though his own computer doesn’t have the processing capabilities to play more than spider solitaire, he will find himself liking computer games a lot more if he is talking to his friend Scott, who is an addict, than if he is talking to his friend Cody, who runs track.

                When he reaches the tree, carrying his advanced placement biology book under one arm and the school lunch in the other, he is extremely shocked to see not a soul in sight. He walks around the tree, but no one is there. Reaching back through his memory, Hunter can’t think of a reason why any one of them wouldn’t be there—the school newspaper didn’t come out today, so Mandy isn’t in the journ room; there isn’t a meeting of ping pong club, so Jesse should be there; the radio isn’t recording today so Philip isn’t in the studio...

                It doesn’t feel right again. Hunter is a creature of habit and he is not afraid to admit it. He always stretches the exact same muscles in the morning and somehow takes the exact same amount of time in the shower. Even on weekends, he wakes up at 5:58 AM, which is two minutes before his alarm clock goes off on weekdays. So since there are normally between eight and fifteen people under the tree, it’s understandable that he would be a little freaked out.

                Sliding one leg down the tree to sit without using his hands, he resigns himself to a lunch date with his homework. Which is probably what he would have done, anyway, but it’s nicer doing homework while conversing than doing it utterly alone. Even the school lunch seems slightly less appetizing than normal. Unlike most people, he actually usually likes the rice and vegetable option the cafeteria offers.

                A moment later, however, he feels something drop onto his head. His eyebrows furrow and he puts a hand up. It comes back carrying something light and white. He turns his head up again, and ends up with the same substance in his mouth. Quickly, he stands up, getting angry, but as he spits the mouthful out, he gets the taste and instantly identifies it—whipped cream. He hears the familiar whizz of compressed air; someone is spurting out more from a can.

                Cautiously, he takes a few steps away from the tree in time for the hidden person to throw a handful of whipped cream at him. Then he hears a chorus of giggles and chuckles from close by, as well as a loud “Shhhh.” There’s a prolonged moment of silence in which Hunter looks around, his eyes darting in every direction, then—

                “Happy birthday!” From about ten yards away, all of his missing friends come marching out, having been hiding behind the corner of the building. Lindsay is the first to reach him, and all of a sudden he finds himself in the middle of a gigantic bear hug from about ten different people at once. He feels like a rugby player in the middle of a scrimmage, but finds it sweet. It’s not often he feels loved and appreciated.

                When the crowd dissipates a little, his friends retrieving their backpacks and dumping themselves down onto the ground beside him, he finds Brooke holding a gigantic plate with a two layer cake on top—it looks to be some form of chocolate cheese cake, and has some glaze on top spelling out in old fashioned letters, “Happy Birthday Hunter!”

                Touched, he looks up at her in awe. “Did you make this just for me?”

                She grins, and shrugs. “I expect I’ll get a piece.”

                Brett produces a stack of paper plates and plastic forks, and Hunter finds it a miracle that he gets any cake whatsoever with his group of friends who have the stomachs of pigs. As they eat, the general run of conversation goes back and forth, through discussions of a history project, gossip, an upcoming softball match...

                “Yeah, but Brenneman probably won’t show,” Lindsay is saying to Taylor.

                “What do you mean, won’t show?” he responds.

                “She wasn’t in study hall,” says Lindsay, examining a nail.

                “Everyone skips study hall,” Taylor says, casting Hunter a look. He smiles lazily; he has the reputation of being a straight-A student who would never cut.

                “But I overheard Alice and Tammy in the girls’ room,” Lindsay continues, unperturbed. “Alice says that she isn’t at school at all since she wasn’t in homeroom, and Tammy says she isn’t answering her phone.”

                “No biggie,” Taylor says. “That girl wouldn’t miss a softball game if the world was collapsing and she had pneumonia.”

                But would she miss it if she had two vertical gashes down her arms? Hunter wonders. Lindsay catches his expression and says, “Hey, Hunter, you still tutor her in math, yeah?”

                “Lots? You mean Lottie Brenneman?” Hunter asks casually, pretending that he hadn’t been paying attention.

                “Yeah, her,” says Lindsay, running a hand through her hair.

                “I do, yeah.”

                “When?”

                “Thursday nights.” His whole body tenses, as if he’s about to take off on a race.

                “Last night?”

                There’s a pause. Hunter won’t look at anyone, and he can feel Taylor and Linday’s eyes on him, though everyone else is continuing on with their conversations obliviously. “No,” he says, his voice low. “I didn’t... We didn’t have a session last night.”

                “Why not?” asks Taylor. “She’s in Sobal’s with me and we have a test today.”

                Hunter shrugs, stuffing a huge bite of cheesecake into his mouth and pretending to savour the mango glaze.

                “And besides,” he continues, mischievously glancing at Lindsay, “She’s hot. Why wouldn’t you want to tutor her?”

                Hunter mumbles something about a test that even he himself finds unintelligible and opens his biology book to the genomes of fish, something he had studied last semester.

                “Hunter!” Lindsay gasps. “Ohmygod. Did you have a date or something last night?”

                “With who?!” Taylor picks up.

                “Shut up!” Hunter growls as Brett’s curious eyes turn towards them. “What are you on?”

                “Well, why else would any red blooded male miss an opportunity to tutor Lottie Brenneman?” Lindsay asks. “God, I’m as straight as they get ‘em, and even I think she’s beautiful.”

                “I don’t understand,” says Hunter, feeling uncomfortable, “why everyone at this school is so obsessed with Lottie.”

                Taylor makes a hacking noise, but Lindsay tilts her head thoughtfully. “It’s kind of true though. She’s like the queen.”

                “She was the queen,” Brett buts in. “She was prom queen last year, and she was only a junior then.”

                “Is that even legal according to school rules?” Lindsay says, crossing her arms.

                “I heard she was wearing a red dress with a really long slit,” Brett says, “And she told all the guys that she’d sleep with them if they voted for her.”

                “Did you not see the photos on Facebook?” Taylor asks. “Damn.”

                They lapse into a discussion about who’s the hottest, and Lindsay gets angrier and angrier until Hunter abruptly breaks in again. “But seriously, guys...”

                Brett turns to look at him. Hunter spies a piece of cake attached to the lower corner of his lip. “Yeah, seriously guys,” he says. “Why didn’t Hunter Juneau tutor Lottie Brenneman last night?”

                “Because it was the night before his birthday,” Brooke interrupts, apparently having been listening to the conversation as well. “He had to eat dinner with his mother and make sure Sophia was doing her homework correctly.”

                Hunter shoots the kind hearted girl a thankful look, and for the time being at least, the subject is closed.

                After lunch, Hunter has biology with Brooke, and they walk to class together. She’s carrying the plate that the cake was on, some fancy contraption with a fitted lid and handle, and they’re talking about a lab report that’s due the following Monday when she all of a sudden changes the topic again. “Hunter,” she says, and he’s surprised—normally, she avoids names, he’s noticed.

                “Mhm?”

                “Can I ask you a question?” She’s in choir, but she doesn’t perform solos or any vivacious parts, and Hunter wonders why. She has an incredibly sweet, clear voice.

                “Of course,” he says, looking a little nervous. This, too, is out of their normal routine of strictly topics that do not involve permission to ask questions.

                “Did you and Lottie ever... you know?” she asks.

                Hunter snickers. “Whatever you mean, no,” he says. “She’s Lottie Brenneman. She could have any guy she wanted with the snap of her fingers and a seductive smile. What would she be doing with me?”

                Brooke smiles, and he looks over and meets her eyes, comparing her to Lottie mentally. She’s tiny, standing just at his shoulder, and has a quiet personality, whereas Lottie, though physically not much taller, has the heels and personality to make her seem taller than the tallest man. Brooke has wispy blonde hair, while Lottie has wild black curls with lots of volume. But he can’t help but find Brooke more like a doll, precious and there to take care of, whereas Lottie is more like a wild horse, content only to roam the plains. “You’d be surprised, Hunter Juneau,” says Brooke, with a bit of spirit. “She asked me about you, once.”

                “What on earth?” Hunter asks. That was not something he had expected to hear.

The girl smiles sweetly, and looks down as she climbs the stairs up to their classroom. “Yeah.”

Hunter opens his mouth, unsure how to question her further, but she’s darted lithely over to her seat beside Melissa Ankan, who, coincidentally, is one of Lottie’s group of cheerleading friends.  He takes his seat behind her, setting down the heavy biology textbook and opening it to the previous night’s reading in preparation for the lecture.

Normally, Hunter is a star student in this class. It is not his favourite subject—that privilege will always be reserved for his English classes—but he loves it all the same. Though college admissions letters will not come out for another month, he is hoping that he can get scholarship to the local university to study biology or chemistry in the hopes of becoming a pharmacist.

Whereas normally he has the ability to recall minute details that interest him from the previous night’s reading and answer them in class, today when he is called on, he can’t quite seem to remember what’s going on. The constant vibrating of Melissa’s phone adds to his tension, and he can’t fathom why Mr. Villa never calls her out on it. Melissa just sends picture messages back and forth with someone, and sitting diagonally behind her, Hunter gets a perfect view.

It may be only paranoia that makes Hunter pay such close attention, or it may be the first photo that he sees across the relatively large screen—an image of red, something he can’t quite make out, but definitely coated in red that reminds him of light shining on blood. Another shot shows the softball team standing alongside the cheerleading squad. He can’t tell from the distance, but he assumes that the figure bridging the space between the two teams is Lottie. She is the only part time cheerleader—she is on the squad in the fall semester, but come spring, she is the captain of the school’s softball team. He can still remember the controversy her decision to play caused back in his freshman year. No one ever left the cheerleading team, partially or otherwise.

The structure of a bird’s wing simply can’t hold Hunter’s interest, and it’s obvious to Mr. Villa, who has apparently decided that if Hunter was going to do well in his class, he must do well every day. Hunter is forced to continuously scan the text book for the answers to the questions his teacher is haphazardly making up, meaning he can’t concentrate on eavesdropping on Melissa’s text conversation... Which he should be glad for; he is not normally one to do such things, nor does he intend on starting. This whole Lottie thing is distracting him far too much.

                The swing squeaks with every back and forth motion, at the exact same position every time, when the chain is exactly twenty degrees away from being perpendicular to the ground. It squeaks, emitting a shrill noise that seems to rattle down Hunter’s spine. He wonders if having an oil can would help it at all. It’s starting to get to him, like the way fingernails on a chalk board cause people to cover their ears. Instead though, he just pumps up his music on his player louder, louder and louder. He wants to test the limits of her ear drums, to see how much they could possibly handle in one go. However, even with his volume a good twenty decibels higher than it normally should be, he can still hear the squeak, growing more intense and strained as she swings harder and harder.

                He hadn’t ever swung this high before, not even when he was a small child growing up, not even when he used to try and fly. He would always jump off the swing at the peak of his height, when he felt like it wasn’t possible to go any higher. It was always those moments that made him truly believe in life, that made him truly believe that success was waiting around the corner and that he would grow up one day, he would make it to that magical adulthood phase where he could make his own decisions.

                As a teenager, Hunter has realized that adulthood isn’t exactly the perfection his younger self had imagined. Adulthood still requires a job, requires work and a schedule, people to remember and appointments to maintain. But adulthood is still better than being a teenager or a young child. It’s not really clear, though, Hunter thinks, where the line between adulthood and teenagerhood lays; technically, he could leave home now at eighteen. He thinks of Lottie. She could have gotten a job—or at least tried to—at one of the local fast food restaurants and taken classes at a night college and rented an apartment. Or she could have remained at home and relied on her parents; though they thought she had slacked off throughout high school, he was fairly sure she could get into a fancy private university, even if she’d have to rely on her parents further for four years of tuition. But even then where would she be? Where would he be relatively?

                Would she be any closer to meeting success in life? But what is success in life? Hunter’s swing is slowing since he has stopped pumping her legs, too overwhelmed to keep the motion going. When he was younger, it was being an adult and having fun. Nowadays, it’s getting into college and getting a seven figure salary. But does it make any difference if he’s happy? Was she happy?

                Angrily, he draws her foot back and forth in the mud, creating a shallow rut and a pile of snow. He gathers together a snowball in his cupped palms and rolls it around her red fingers, forming it into a delicate icicle, about the shape of a square. He slams it into the ground as the swing comes to a halt, jiggling back and forth to the side as if trying not to give up before heaving a back and forth sigh.

                In the far off distance, he can hear voices, the rowdy laughter and chatter of her fellow teenagers having a bit too much fun for eleven o’clock on a school night. Hunter doesn’t want to encounter people right now. He’s having too much fun tuning out the world, tuning into his own little world of philosophical ponderings.

                The window sticks when he tries to open it again. He had to close it; otherwise her mother would notice the cold air floating in. He fumbles in the pockets of his raggedy old coat for money, but only comes up with an old crumpled bus ticket. Now would be a perfect time to walk over to the hardware store and buy a can of oil and to return and fix both his window and the swing. It’s not like he has anything better to do.

                But hearing the voices again, closer now, he climbs carefully over the sill and lands with a soft plod onto the carpet. Dealing with stoned boys is never fun, especially not in the middle of the night. Amusing, maybe, vaguely amusing, but with the line his mouth is set in now, it’s easy to tell that even Hunter himself isn’t sure if he’ll ever smile again.

                He removes the coat and hangs it carefully over the chair by his desk. The torn silk lining is as cool to the touch as it was when he put it on. His own skin is icy to the touch, but his mind isn’t warmed up enough to care. His mind has checked out for the night, is already in the mode of sleep, even as he slides out of his track pants and carefully spreads his duvet across the bed. His eyes don’t take in much of it. Although it was exciting when he first got it at a rummage sale for a mere forty dollars, the four poster bed has lost its elegance and history. Hunter found the idea that the bed had been in use for over two centuries mysterious and fascinating when it had first been moved into her room, but now it smells like his own dirt cheap cologne, it has a red nail polish stain from his sister’s sleepover long ago, there is a small tear in the fabric of the canopy, and many other tiny things that would mean nothing to someone else but hold multiple memories for Hunter.

                Though he can feel his own exhaustion creeping, he’s almost scared to fall asleep. And so he sits upon the purple sheets, comforter turned back at his toes, and wraps her arms around his legs, rocking herself back and forth, just like he’s back on the swing again, except without the feeling of possibly flying and without the obnoxious squeaking in his ear every second. It’s not the same, but if it can keep him from dreaming, he will not complain.

                He’s dreaming of a department store. It’s a big white department store, one of those atypical department stores that seem to have too much empty space, too many little patches of space between glass displays of shoes and handbags and signs for other floors. But every time he looks into one of the glass displays he sees red snow piled up to the top, the little crystals pressed into the side of the glass like a little kid looking into a candy window. And he can’t help but keep walking through the store aimlessly, to keep trying to find out where he could find what he’s missing...

                The memory of the dream disappears in an instant and he’s left with a fleeting glimpse of the feeling of wondering forever when he awakes, being shaken on the shoulder. “Hunter, you overslept, hon, you’ll be late for school.”

                Immediately, Hunter bolts upright. He never oversleeps. He always gets up at six on the dot in time to make breakfast for his three younger sisters and to help his mother with the housework before he takes the girls to school. His watch informs him that it is already seven o’clock. Springing out of bed, he grabs the pants he had haphazardly dropped to the ground the night before. “Sorry mama,” he groans. “Are the girls up?”

                “They’re up,” his mother replies, the opposite of him in tranquillity. She wears a long pink dress with sleeves and mother-of=pearl buttons and her greying hair is rolled into a bun at the nape of her neck. “It’s okay, dear, we decided you should get to sleep in for once—after all, don’t you remember what day it is?”

                Behind her, three girls come tearing in. The seven-year-old twins, Ashlyn and Clary carry a tray between them, which they slam down on the bed beside Hunter. The impact causes the plate of French toast (burnt) to start toppling, but Hunter catches it just in time, saving his bed from a pile of sticky syrup that would have taken a couple of washes to get out. Behind them, at a much more dignified pace, twelve-year-old Sophia bears a pot of coffee, looking like an angel in her white smock. The smell is enough to make Hunter forgive the younger ones, and he gratefully takes the mug his mother offers.

                As Sophia pours the cup, however, their mother’s eyes fall to the pants Hunter clutches. “You have a nasty stain, dear,” she says. “Here, let me take those for the wash.”

                The sight of the pitch black spot, making the faded black of the fabric look more worn than it is, makes Hunter recoil and nearly drop the mug. He remembers dreaming, remembers that he had gone to Lottie’s in his dream, but everything was weird and wrong and she wasn’t there waiting for him like she always was. He shudders, a full body shudder that ripples through him, and Sophia gives him a weird look. “Happy birthday, bro,” she says in her high voice. She grins up at him, and he takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He can’t let a dream get to him like that. He mentally calculates the time and figures he can allow himself ten minutes sitting with them and eating breakfast if he can brush his teeth and get dressed in another ten.

                But his mind clears as the morning progresses, and once he’s dropped the girls off at their school, he’s left with a fifteen minute walk to his school. It’s foggy and cold, with his every breath turning into a white wisp of fog to join the cool mist in the air. It had snowed the night before and his feet are crunching into the fresh snow on the pavement. Only about three or four other people have walked along the street this morning, and Hunter finds it interesting to see where their footsteps correspond.

                He’s trying to weed through the night before in his head. He remembers exactly what he saw. The twin dark lines running down Lottie’s arms are dark scars in his mind, and he can’t think of any real explanation. But now, he kicks himself for running away so abruptly. She was probably still alive, just unconscious. So she has some personal habits he hadn’t known about. There could be far worse situations he could have found her in. Hell, he’s lucky he hadn’t walked in on her and Rob Steely having sex. There were rumours they still were...

                This matter settled in his mind, Hunter pulls his mind back to reality and stops indulging himself in the weird matters of life. He needs to focus now on school, on the day ahead of him. He silently hates himself for thinking in such an adultish manner, as if he is some old counsellor being far too optimistic.

                Since he and Lottie have no classes together and, well, don’t exactly run in the same social circles, he tries to tell himself that it’s not unusual that he doesn’t see her around school.

                His friends and he have eaten under a big willow tree a few yards away from the parking lot since the second week of school, another habit Hunter fell into taking for granted. He gets along with a rather hodgepodge group of friends, one that is actually grouped together for differences instead of similarities. Quite often, Hunter finds (while cynically observing life) that people group around some common factor. The football team rallies together; the cheerleaders compare nails; the members of the math club do long division. He thinks the cliques so atypically found in high schools form purely due to this, some sort of survival mechanism that causes groups.

                But even amongst his own group of friends, he notices that people change depending on who they’re talking to. Though his own computer doesn’t have the processing capabilities to play more than spider solitaire, he will find himself liking computer games a lot more if he is talking to his friend Scott, who is an addict, than if he is talking to his friend Cody, who runs track.

                When he reaches the tree, carrying his advanced placement biology book under one arm and the school lunch in the other, he is extremely shocked to see not a soul in sight. He walks around the tree, but no one is there. Reaching back through his memory, Hunter can’t think of a reason why any one of them wouldn’t be there—the school newspaper didn’t come out today, so Mandy isn’t in the journ room; there isn’t a meeting of ping pong club, so Jesse should be there; the radio isn’t recording today so Philip isn’t in the studio...

                It doesn’t feel right again. Hunter is a creature of habit and he is not afraid to admit it. He always stretches the exact same muscles in the morning and somehow takes the exact same amount of time in the shower. Even on weekends, he wakes up at 5:58 AM, which is two minutes before his alarm clock goes off on weekdays. So since there are normally between eight and fifteen people under the tree, it’s understandable that he would be a little freaked out.

                Sliding one leg down the tree to sit without using his hands, he resigns himself to a lunch date with his homework. Which is probably what he would have done, anyway, but it’s nicer doing homework while conversing than doing it utterly alone. Even the school lunch seems slightly less appetizing than normal. Unlike most people, he actually usually likes the rice and vegetable option the cafeteria offers.

                A moment later, however, he feels something drop onto his head. His eyebrows furrow and he puts a hand up. It comes back carrying something light and white. He turns his head up again, and ends up with the same substance in his mouth. Quickly, he stands up, getting angry, but as he spits the mouthful out, he gets the taste and instantly identifies it—whipped cream. He hears the familiar whizz of compressed air; someone is spurting out more from a can.

                Cautiously, he takes a few steps away from the tree in time for the hidden person to throw a handful of whipped cream at him. Then he hears a chorus of giggles and chuckles from close by, as well as a loud “Shhhh.” There’s a prolonged moment of silence in which Hunter looks around, his eyes darting in every direction, then—

                “Happy birthday!” From about ten yards away, all of his missing friends come marching out, having been hiding behind the corner of the building. Lindsay is the first to reach him, and all of a sudden he finds himself in the middle of a gigantic bear hug from about ten different people at once. He feels like a rugby player in the middle of a scrimmage, but finds it sweet. It’s not often he feels loved and appreciated.

                When the crowd dissipates a little, his friends retrieving their backpacks and dumping themselves down onto the ground beside him, he finds Brooke holding a gigantic plate with a two layer cake on top—it looks to be some form of chocolate cheese cake, and has some glaze on top spelling out in old fashioned letters, “Happy Birthday Hunter!”

                Touched, he looks up at her in awe. “Did you make this just for me?”

                She grins, and shrugs. “I expect I’ll get a piece.”

                Brett produces a stack of paper plates and plastic forks, and Hunter finds it a miracle that he gets any cake whatsoever with his group of friends who have the stomachs of pigs. As they eat, the general run of conversation goes back and forth, through discussions of a history project, gossip, an upcoming softball match...

                “Yeah, but Brenneman probably won’t show,” Lindsay is saying to Taylor.

                “What do you mean, won’t show?” he responds.

                “She wasn’t in study hall,” says Lindsay, examining a nail.

                “Everyone skips study hall,” Taylor says, casting Hunter a look. He smiles lazily; he has the reputation of being a straight-A student who would never cut.

                “But I overheard Alice and Tammy in the girls’ room,” Lindsay continues, unperturbed. “Alice says that she isn’t at school at all since she wasn’t in homeroom, and Tammy says she isn’t answering her phone.”

                “No biggie,” Taylor says. “That girl wouldn’t miss a softball game if the world was collapsing and she had pneumonia.”

                But would she miss it if she had two vertical gashes down her arms? Hunter wonders. Lindsay catches his expression and says, “Hey, Hunter, you still tutor her in math, yeah?”

                “Lots? You mean Lottie Brenneman?” Hunter asks casually, pretending that he hadn’t been paying attention.

                “Yeah, her,” says Lindsay, running a hand through her hair.

                “I do, yeah.”

                “When?”

                “Thursday nights.” His whole body tenses, as if he’s about to take off on a race.

                “Last night?”

                There’s a pause. Hunter won’t look at anyone, and he can feel Taylor and Linday’s eyes on him, though everyone else is continuing on with their conversations obliviously. “No,” he says, his voice low. “I didn’t... We didn’t have a session last night.”

                “Why not?” asks Taylor. “She’s in Sobal’s with me and we have a test today.”

                Hunter shrugs, stuffing a huge bite of cheesecake into his mouth and pretending to savour the mango glaze.

                “And besides,” he continues, mischievously glancing at Lindsay, “She’s hot. Why wouldn’t you want to tutor her?”

                Hunter mumbles something about a test that even he himself finds unintelligible and opens his biology book to the genomes of fish, something he had studied last semester.

                “Hunter!” Lindsay gasps. “Ohmygod. Did you have a date or something last night?”

                “With who?!” Taylor picks up.

                “Shut up!” Hunter growls as Brett’s curious eyes turn towards them. “What are you on?”

                “Well, why else would any red blooded male miss an opportunity to tutor Lottie Brenneman?” Lindsay asks. “God, I’m as straight as they get ‘em, and even I think she’s beautiful.”

                “I don’t understand,” says Hunter, feeling uncomfortable, “why everyone at this school is so obsessed with Lottie.”

                Taylor makes a hacking noise, but Lindsay tilts her head thoughtfully. “It’s kind of true though. She’s like the queen.”

                “She was the queen,” Brett buts in. “She was prom queen last year, and she was only a junior then.”

                “Is that even legal according to school rules?” Lindsay says, crossing her arms.

                “I heard she was wearing a red dress with a really long slit,” Brett says, “And she told all the guys that she’d sleep with them if they voted for her.”

                “Did you not see the photos on Facebook?” Taylor asks. “Damn.”

                They lapse into a discussion about who’s the hottest, and Lindsay gets angrier and angrier until Hunter abruptly breaks in again. “But seriously, guys...”

                Brett turns to look at him. Hunter spies a piece of cake attached to the lower corner of his lip. “Yeah, seriously guys,” he says. “Why didn’t Hunter Juneau tutor Lottie Brenneman last night?”

                “Because it was the night before his birthday,” Brooke interrupts, apparently having been listening to the conversation as well. “He had to eat dinner with his mother and make sure Sophia was doing her homework correctly.”

                Hunter shoots the kind hearted girl a thankful look, and for the time being at least, the subject is closed.

                After lunch, Hunter has biology with Brooke, and they walk to class together. She’s carrying the plate that the cake was on, some fancy contraption with a fitted lid and handle, and they’re talking about a lab report that’s due the following Monday when she all of a sudden changes the topic again. “Hunter,” she says, and he’s surprised—normally, she avoids names, he’s noticed.

                “Mhm?”

                “Can I ask you a question?” She’s in choir, but she doesn’t perform solos or any vivacious parts, and Hunter wonders why. She has an incredibly sweet, clear voice.

                “Of course,” he says, looking a little nervous. This, too, is out of their normal routine of strictly topics that do not involve permission to ask questions.

                “Did you and Lottie ever... you know?” she asks.

                Hunter snickers. “Whatever you mean, no,” he says. “She’s Lottie Brenneman. She could have any guy she wanted with the snap of her fingers and a seductive smile. What would she be doing with me?”

                Brooke smiles, and he looks over and meets her eyes, comparing her to Lottie mentally. She’s tiny, standing just at his shoulder, and has a quiet personality, whereas Lottie, though physically not much taller, has the heels and personality to make her seem taller than the tallest man. Brooke has wispy blonde hair, while Lottie has wild black curls with lots of volume. But he can’t help but find Brooke more like a doll, precious and there to take care of, whereas Lottie is more like a wild horse, content only to roam the plains. “You’d be surprised, Hunter Juneau,” says Brooke, with a bit of spirit. “She asked me about you, once.”

                “What on earth?” Hunter asks. That was not something he had expected to hear.

The girl smiles sweetly, and looks down as she climbs the stairs up to their classroom. “Yeah.”

Hunter opens his mouth, unsure how to question her further, but she’s darted lithely over to her seat beside Melissa Ankan, who, coincidentally, is one of Lottie’s group of cheerleading friends.  He takes his seat behind her, setting down the heavy biology textbook and opening it to the previous night’s reading in preparation for the lecture.

Normally, Hunter is a star student in this class. It is not his favourite subject—that privilege will always be reserved for his English classes—but he loves it all the same. Though college admissions letters will not come out for another month, he is hoping that he can get scholarship to the local university to study biology or chemistry in the hopes of becoming a pharmacist.

Whereas normally he has the ability to recall minute details that interest him from the previous night’s reading and answer them in class, today when he is called on, he can’t quite seem to remember what’s going on. The constant vibrating of Melissa’s phone adds to his tension, and he can’t fathom why Mr. Villa never calls her out on it. Melissa just sends picture messages back and forth with someone, and sitting diagonally behind her, Hunter gets a perfect view.

It may be only paranoia that makes Hunter pay such close attention, or it may be the first photo that he sees across the relatively large screen—an image of red, something he can’t quite make out, but definitely coated in red that reminds him of light shining on blood. Another shot shows the softball team standing alongside the cheerleading squad. He can’t tell from the distance, but he assumes that the figure bridging the space between the two teams is Lottie. She is the only part time cheerleader—she is on the squad in the fall semester, but come spring, she is the captain of the school’s softball team. He can still remember the controversy her decision to play caused back in his freshman year. No one ever left the cheerleading team, partially or otherwise.

The structure of a bird’s wing simply can’t hold Hunter’s interest, and it’s obvious to Mr. Villa, who has apparently decided that if Hunter was going to do well in his class, he must do well every day. Hunter is forced to continuously scan the text book for the answers to the questions his teacher is haphazardly making up, meaning he can’t concentrate on eavesdropping on Melissa’s text conversation... Which he should be glad for; he is not normally one to do such things, nor does he intend on starting. This whole Lottie thing is distracting him far too much.