Kallai, with Lexis' help, lifted the last two legs of the final gazebo, locked them in place, and lowered them to the floor. A moment later, the white flip-out table was up underneath. The edge of Lexis' mouth rose in the beginnings of a grin which was mirrored in her eyes. Kallai loved the way the girl of ice could warm without melting. There was nothing weak about the small joys she allowed herself.

Since she had let him in on Sage's secret, even without the details, he had forcefully subdued his angry streak when around Minion. It was still too early for him to drop the nickname, though. After learning their real names, he'd tried calling Lexis by Lexis, but he could tell she preferred Shadow, the name that seemed to roll of his tongue more naturally anyway.

Kallai grinned right back at her. He'd been doing a lot more if that lately for some reason. He would never change himself for someone else, but he was unable to stop her from changing him. It all happened so naturally that he couldn't remember what it felt like not to know her. Of course, he continued to be his incredibly realistic and blunt self - just a little happier. And he saw in her the same change, too.

It was different with Tallie and Sage, though. With them, it was all business. He never enjoyed their company so much as worked with it. Which meant that they mostly knew him to be a miserable Black boy looking for a fight. Just like everyone else.

Still, any glaring match with Lexis was a good one, a true challenge of will. And he demanded of the heavens that Shadow's mocking smirks of victory would never stop until he won.

Now that they shared Sage's secret, even if it didn't belong to them, they seemed to have found a common respect.

One he most certainly didn't share with Minion herself. Sad pasts were one thing, but letting it turn you into an arrogant dictator was another. As far as Kallai was aware, she had done nothing other than make sure everyone else was doing something. And that something, was of course, what she had told them to do. It wasn't that he disagreed with her job distribution, but the way she went about it. He'd told her as much too. Her answer? "If I don't take charge, nothing gets done." Luckily, Kailani had been there to take his hand before it formed a fist.

Fortunately, he had managed to convince her to help Tallie carry over the boxes of products from his house. Once the girls had done just that, it was time to set them out on the tables.

"Everyone has a gazebo to themselves for this bit, Shadow," Kallai smirked. "Besides, you're not my shadow, remember?"

Lexis shook her head at him, "And here I thought we made a good team."

He grinned. "We could team up again, I suppose." He looked at the other girls each carefully arranging their stalls with precision - in other words, slowly. "I bet we could finish in half the time they do." Fuelling his grin, she rolled his eyes and promptly nodded.

Reaching for the closest box, Kallai's fingertips had barely stroked the bead of a necklace half falling over the side before Lexis' hand was atop his, stopping it where it hovered. A scowl more familiar to him than his own palms attacked her from where it sat on his face. Momentarily stopping the question in his eyes, she smirked at him. She picked up the box of cakes and biscuits instead and headed back to their table.

She made as if it could be ignored, handing him a stack of gingerbread men from the box, and arranging a few cakes of her own. He wondered what could have come over her to elicit such a reaction. Perhaps she just hated jewellery, though he'd never have associated her with something so trivial. When he looked back, he could see it in her eyes, as she grabbed another fruit cake from the box, that Lexis was simply waiting out the seconds until he asked the unavoidable question. "Why not the bracelets and necklaces?" His voice was rough and accusatory, all remnants of the grin gone. But the overriding sense of confusion wouldn't go undetected.

"I can't always let you have what you want, can I?" Lexis smirked, keeping her eyes on the table and the bracelets, away from his analytical eyes that wanted to tear her secrets down one by one.

"You and the rest of the White population," Kallai seethed, slamming his hands down on the table.

The withering look she gave him told him that this wasn't as straightforward as he had first thought. He'd failed to piece together vital information. Whatever it was, he wanted to hear it, for more reasons than one. First off, she wouldn't have to carry it round with her any longer and their fights could go back to mockery and exaggerations. Secondly, he'd be able to understand her that little bit better.

In that moment, she slammed her gaze into his and spoke in a low, warning voice, "My parents are both Black." She waited for a moment until he visibly retreated. He didn't know what he was supposed to say, so he kept silent, allowing her the space she needed to shout at him and get it out. "I'm albino. And in the culture you speak so defensively of, that we were both supposed to be part of, they kill the people like me. They call us bad luck; they call us cursed." And in her eyes, he glimpsed the unfortunate child she had once been. "And maybe I am cursed. But I sure as Hell know I'm not going to be killed for it."

It was the most he had ever heard Lexis say at one time, and neither spoke again afterwards. They put as many food items as possible on top of the table and left the remaining ones beneath, cushioning the tub they'd set aside for collecting money - ready with change because no one was likely to have the exact cash.

Finishing both gazebos before the others had finished their one, Kallai and Lexis moved on to set up the games. All it took was placing a few cones and signs down around the box of balls, which meant even more time focusing on not speaking. Even as people came, played, played again, and left, neither uttered a word to the other.

When she'd finally told him she was albino, when she'd shouted at him, Kallai had just taken every word, filing them away in his heart - another scar for another survivor. With all the thoughts running wild in his head, it was that one in particular that kept coming back to the surface. Stealing the spotlight was perhaps a better way of describing it, because it never left centre stage.

Lexis was albino.

He should have known, though, and he hated himself for not seeing it before. There was likely some western heritage in there, but he wasn't going to study her DNA. She'd already told him enough. It shouldn't have mattered, but it did. A thousand times over, it did. She was Black, just like him, and his parents would have no leg to stand on if they ever tried to force them away from one another.

Though, if things kept going as they were doing, they'd move away from each other all on their own.

﹌﹌﹌

That afternoon, Sage asked them all if they were willing to ask their parents to help them the next day - just to take over at lunch because eating while working had been so difficult. Or, it had been for those who'd spoken.

It hadn't been difficult to convince her that his and Kailani's parents would be working. After all, so was Sage's own mum. Lexis was also adamant that her parents wouldn't be helping. Luckily, Tallie's parents were more than happy to lend a hand, as was Amelia who had bribed a couple of her other friends into doing the same.

What had struck him about Lexis' response was the similarity between it and his own. He left the topic alone until the end of the day, though, when there was no one within hearing distance. "Is everything okay with your parents?"

"Perfect." She tossed the comment at him and folded away the table she had been leaning on. What the words wouldn't explain, her eyes did - to some degree. It was amazing how well hidden she could keep such dark truths in clear crystal balls. She must have trusted him not to break them if she was willing to show him even that much, and that had meant something to him. More than he'd expected it to. Maybe the kids at school were wrong, and his heart wasn't as dark as his skin.

Later, once darkness had already fallen and Kailani had gone up to her room, he heard a single solid knock on his living room window. His parents weren't due back till much later, so he almost convinced himself he'd dreamt it. When it happened a second time, he pushed the curtains back.

Lexis was staring at him with hard eyes, her fist falling from where it had been floating, ready to pound again on the glass. He opened the window and listened as she asked him not to tell anyone what he'd seen in her eyes earlier. "You tell anyone, and you're dead," Lexis said, her voice intense and lethal. She gave him that testing glare that used to render him defenceless in a much different way than it did when he looked at her then.

All he could think to do was grin. She hardened her glare so much he almost a headache.

The trusting light was fading rather rapidly, and he found himself unwilling to let it go out. "I won't," he replied strongly, a little more bitter than he'd intended. Though he didn't know why, if she was that worried about it, she'd even told him to begin with. After all, they weren't friends... were they?

Seconds later, Lexis took her arms away from where they were leaning on the windowpane, standing to leave. It was only then that Kallai was reminded of the darkness behind her and asked, "How come you're not at home? Though it's obvious you don't care much for your beauty sleep." His laugh was taunting but more joking than rude, and he couldn't pinpoint exactly when that change had happened.

Lexis sat on the bench outside his window, strong and unshakeable, a white statue that seemed to glow in the blackness of night. Silence. Kallai wondered what would bring the words from her, relaxing into his too-well-trained glower and furrowing his eyebrows. "Tell me something about you, first," she said, arms crossed over her chest defensively. "If it's not two way, it's blackmail material." So that was it, then. She was worried he would use this information against her? Perhaps two and a half weeks ago, he'd have called her smart for it, but now it only made him want to scream about how wrong she was. But he also knew that part of what she said was right. This needed to be a two-way thing.

So, it was then that Kallai truly opened his eyes to her. No walls, no secrets. Anything that didn't need words had suddenly been left wide open between them. The thickness of the past-filled air threatened to suffocate him, force the glass of the windows to explode outwards and shower them all in pinpricks of pain. Every emotion he'd ever felt, the suppressed and hidden, the obvious and exposed. And the whole time, he stared at Lexis to show her it all and tell her that he would not hold back. Only then did he admit to himself that what he felt for her was not something of enemies, but of friends, and that word no longer sounded so pathetic. There was an overhanging feeling, however, that travellingfurther down that line of thinking would bring something else entirely.

And then the whole house felt like it had blown away, because she threw her own past into the mix. All of it.

Emotions swarmed them both, a storm of memories that neither could read from words but could feel in every bone in their body. Kallai was still none the wiser as to what she'd lived through, but he knew the pain and hopelessness that had come from it, the same pain and hopelessness that she had moulded into physical strength.

Lexis still hadn't said why she'd never gone home when, ultimately, she left his company for her own. And even though he was sure she wouldn't yet go home still, he didn't need an answer.

As he watched her walk away, the gentle swaying of her ponytail a beacon in the night, he remembered having used her real name for the first time. He hadn't used it since, despite having seen it enough times above angry texts, and neither had he commented on it. Mustering up his classic mocking laugh, taunting on almost every undertone and a smirk on his lips, he said to the breeze, "Lexis is a pretty name."

"Then it's a good thing my name's Shadow."