After that we hit one of the food courts, where the boys grabbed their burgers and I found some good General Tso's chicken. Pinky and Brain grabbed tacos and pizza. After we ate, going over the three games with Pinky getting a few last digs in on Brian, I told everyone I needed to grab some boots and accessorize. Brain said her father was due to pick her up and Pinky volunteered to hang with her until he showed, and that broke up the party. But after the boys gathered up and threw away our trash, Papa startled me into freezing when he gently threaded his fingers through mine and told the guys he’d see them Monday.
Pinky gave me the broadest wink in the world and he just laughed at her as, swinging our hands between us, he walked us away from the others. When he got us a good distance away, he laughed again. “Pinky’s a pill, isn’t she?”
I shot him a look, but it didn’t sound mocking. “She doesn’t know why I asked you out. I didn’t set this up.”
“I know. She called Brian and told him to grab two more knowing he’d drag me in and I’d tap a cohort brother.”
“And you didn’t call Lizard?”
Throwing his head back he laughed again. He laughed a lot, and dammit it was doing things to me. “No. But I hoped we’d have more time to talk about what you told me yesterday?”
Looking around, I found a bench off the main thoroughfare and tugged him towards it. Sitting, I dropped his hand, clearing my throat. “I do too. Want to talk more. About it, I mean.” Fucking focus. Instead, my mind chased a wayward thought. “You did something, in the game.”
He lost his smile. “You could tell?”
I nodded. “It’s like you had eyes in the back of your head, but I only noticed it in the second game.”
“I didn’t cheat—” Stopping, he sighed. It’s something I can’t really control, part of my telekinesis? I kind of feel everything around me. Not tactilely, or only sort of. It’s like, there’s this invisible fog around everything and I feel all the shapes in the fog, the way they shape it and move through it. I can ignore it most of the time, but when my adrenalin’s up and I’m paying attention, I’m just hyper-aware of everything around me. Nothing surprises me.”
“Oh.” Now it made sense. “That’s why it didn’t work with the bugs. They weren’t really there.”
“Yup. And what were you doing? That first game, I mean. It seemed every time I came around a corner or over a barrier you were looking right at me and blasting away at us.”
I flushed. “My alien sense. I knew you were out there gunning for us and I couldn’t ignore it, I always knew right where you were. Pinky and I moved to intercept you every time you two ventured into our base zone.” My big sister had been so caught up in the joy of repeatedly shooting Brian she’d never thought to question it. And Papa's “area-mapping sense” explained why he wasn’t paying any attention to the traffic around us but confident nobody was close enough to overhear our quiet conversation.
He chuckled. “Aren’t we a pair?”
“About that . . .” I sighed.
He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret and suddenly I wished I was already more empathically sensitive. “I know. You only asked me out to talk about our mutual thing. I appreciate it. Do you like me? Just, like me?”
I blinked at the sudden straightforward question. That was one approach—the best one. “I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean—”
“No, I get it,” he stopped me, his smile back. “We share a secret, and we don’t dislike each other. That’s good. So, what do you want them to think?”
I blinked again, totally at a loss. Them?
“Pinky,” he said, “puts up with my attitude only because I hang with Brian, but she seems to think we’d be a great pair.”
“What’s—” No, it wasn’t fair to Pinky for me to ask Papa if it was Brian she’d gone down on Lizard practicing for. “She vetted you for me, gave you a good report.”
“So she asked around and everyone’ll know that.”
I groaned. “Sorry. I needed the excuse, but—”
“Hey, no. It’s fine. As excuses for hanging together it’s pretty good if— Do you want to hang out? We’ve both got a secret we can really only talk about with each other. Well except for my parents.”
“Mine, too—I mean, Carl and May.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“That’s right, your family thing. Something else you can’t talk to anyone about. Any more secrets?”
I laughed and it wasn’t funny. “Always. So many.”
He chuckled. “Stupid question, we barely know each other. But I do want to know you. Fake-dating would be—”
“Just the stupidest fucking high school sitcom trope imagin—” I slapped my hand over my mouth. Fuck.
But he just laughed. “Isn’t it? Which is why it would work. We talk a lot, hang on the weekends, who’d think we’re two changelings getting together to discuss? And it’ll be easy to pull off, right? With your experience?”
My experience. “I— I’ve never—” I could feel the flush rising.
The easy humor dropped from his face. “Hey, I didn’t mean to— Uh, you do like boys, men, right? I’m sorry, the way you act I assumed— Sorry.”
I nodded, shoving loose hair behind my ear and looking everywhere else, trying to get control of myself. “Yeah, well, that would be affirmative. I just—” Fuck. “I wasn’t just rejuvenated, I used to look a lot different. I haven’t, um. I haven’t had a boyfriend before.”
I could see the questions piling up behind his dark blue eyes, and his face changed in ways I still couldn’t read. “Okay. Well, I can be an easy first. And this is high school, nothing’s supposed to be serious yet so we can drop it just as easy and nobody’ll care.”
“But don’t you—”
“It's cool. I’ve never had a girlfriend, we can practice on each other while we do this. Do as much or as little as you want. It’s cool.” And fuck, his easy confidence wasn’t helping, and it made no sense, but I nodded.
“Okay,” he nodded back seriously. “And when you meet someone you like that way and are ready for someone real—”
“Wait, what?”
He grinned at that, like he knew something I didn’t. “Hemingway, you might not have— Well, if you say guys didn’t pay attention to you before I’ll believe you. But you’re going to have to get used to it. Didn’t you notice all those boys on your team practically falling all over themselves when you or Pinky or Brain talked to them? Those two, yeah, but especially when you, Miss Kim Possible, gave them marching orders?” He laughed.
“. . . Who?”
“Really? You don’t know?” When I shook my head, he pulled out his cell and did a quick search before holding it up to me and I was staring at a cartoon redhead in a dramatic martial arts pose wearing a tight black midriff-baring top, loose cargo pants with a military-style belt . . . I looked down at myself and groaned. Not the same color-scheme at all, but . . .
“Those dark dramatic eyes of yours are different than hers,” he was saying, still chuckling, “but yeah, there you go. But seriously, you’re fun, you’re smart, you’re not hideous at all, you’re getting attention at school, too. You’ll get more after I tell everyone how much fun I had. Well, I’d make up something else if you wanted, but I did have fun, not going to lie. You’re good people.”
Fuck. I swallowed rising panic at just the thought of getting approached by some tenth- or eleventh-year boy I didn’t even know. “We’re doing it! I mean, okay, fake-dating. Right.”
“As you wish. So, boots? Gotta say, I like those stompers you’re wearing—gives you real shit-kicking authority.”
*******************************
“So, how did it go?” Mom asked from the living room when I came in the front door. I’d taken the rail back, not bothering to call anyone.
“We’re dating.” I didn’t even stop to watch her face do interesting things, stomping up the stairs to my bedroom. Throwing myself on my bed, I rolled over and pulled my cell out.
I’d thought maybe I could handle it. Which was stupid; just this morning before the “old business” had distracted me I’d realized the rollercoaster ride had begun. But I’d thought maybe this time I could handle it, this time it wouldn’t be too bad. And then at Dangerzone I’d barely even noticed Brad though he was the first boy I’d ever drooled over (getting hot from the voice of some unseen furniture-mover didn’t count), my every thought hyper-focused on Papa whenever he was near and half the time he wasn’t. And now just holding hands bypassed my pussy entirely to do something deeply wrong to my brain.
I’d been lying to myself. The memories had dimmed, but it was all coming back to me now and I knew what was in store.
It was limerence, my old foe. Limerence, the scientific word I’d learned long ago that applied to my rollercoaster ride. Fixated romantic attraction to the limerent object; deep preoccupation with thoughts of them; intense sensitivity to every sign of interest from them even if invented by my desperate brain; helpless longing for reciprocation of feelings. More commonly known as “Being in love,” very much an alteration of brain chemistry, and guaranteed to last at least two or three months if not reciprocated. Longer if it was or you thought it was, but ending sooner or later for everybody. The human brain just wasn’t designed to sustain that kind of euphoric attachment. Thank God.
People were different; I’d read that while everyone not on the sociopathy spectrum was capable of love, lots of people never felt real limerence and thought it was made up by romance novelists. Others might experience it only once in their lives if lucky. If luckier and reciprocated by the limerent object, it could eventually lead to a less intense but sustainable pair-bond. Like Carl and Mom had. Love.
And then there were unlucky people like me who were unlovable but fell into limerence repeatedly with the least little attraction and positive engagement for a trigger, like every day my stupid fucking brain was on that fucking suspension bridge Mom had talked about, waiting to latch on to its next limerent object.
Throwing the pillow off, I stared at my bedroom ceiling. I hadn’t felt like this in decades; probably dropping hormone levels had made the trigger less sensitive. But something in me was broken, my changeling transformation hadn’t fixed it, and now my brain had latched on to poor unsuspecting Papa.
And from repeated experience I knew there was no way to avoid this, and that it was going to hurt.
There was a knock on the door but I already knew who was out there. Enter, entrer, Komm rein, I thought hard and Mom opened the door, lips quirked in a half-smile.
“Entrer? Komm rein?”
I sat up and back against my headboard. Talk about déjà vu; hadn’t we been here just this morning? “Yeah, French and German for ‘enter’.”
Mom didn’t wait for an invitation, climbing onto the bed to sit beside me and putting her arm around my shoulders.
“Oh, honey.” Because of course she’d uncovered at my stupid declaration downstairs, and she knew.
“S’okay,” I whispered. “I’ll live. How waterproof is this stuff?” Not that it mattered now if I destroyed my makeup. Leaning my head against her shoulder, I sniffled and felt the first wet tracks.
We didn’t move for a long time.