Today 8:23 PM

Hi is this Christopher Alexander's
number

Yes. This is Christopher Alexander.
Who is this if I may ask?

My identity's not important now.
You and your friends should meet
me on Saturday 7 pm at old man
grump.. Ive got something
important to tell you

Wait. Hold on there. How do you
expect me and my friends to meet
up with you if we don't know who
you are? How are we supposed to
trust you?

You've probably heard about what
happened to my friends Lyn and
Max. Seems like the whole school's
heard about it. We can't risk falling
into another cruel prank

But thats the thing I want to talk
to you and your friends about

Today 8:47 PM

I know who did it..I know whos
behind all this

If you can give me a chance please

Today 9:06 PM

I'm not an enemy I swear

All I ask is a chance that's all

If you'll just let me.. PLEASE

Damien gave the messages another glance, reading them over one last time, before he handed the phone back to Sander. "So," Damien said, looking up at Sander from where he sat on the edge of his bed, "any idea who they are?"

    Sander shook his head, took his seat next to Damien. "No clue," he said. "Except whoever they are, they're probably someone from school. There's no way they could've known what happened to Max and Lyn if they weren't."

    Damien nodded, and said nothing more.

    "So," said Sander, after a moment's silence, "you think we should?"

"It's sketchy, I'll tell you that," Damien said, his leg bouncing up and down in thought. "But there's this fifty-fifty to it. What if it's another attack? What if we agree to meet up, then we end up cornered, and they get a good shot at us? But then what if it isn't? What if they're telling the truth?"

    Sander let out a sigh, taking off his glasses and dropping his phone onto the bed. He ran a hand down his face, and allowed his body to plummet down onto the mattress, next to Damien. Shaking his head, then lifting one hand to rub at his eyes, he said, "I want a break from all this. From whoever's out to get us in school, even from Crystalline and training with Mister Bato. Just a pause, just for a while—that would be healthy, I think . . . "

    Damien chuckled. "Don't we all?" Yet his chuckle was devoid of any real humor, Sander noticed, dying out as quickly as it left Damien's lips.

    For a beat too long, all was quiet. Too quiet, in Sander's opinion. He removed his forearm from where he rested it on his forehead, opened his eyes to look up at Damien who still sat on the edge of the bed, the look on his face serious, gazing absently at Sander's bed across the room, or perhaps staring straight at nothing at all. Damien's leg still moved up and down, the rhythm strangely noiseless that Sander could hear nothing, yet he could still feel the pattern of slight dips and rises of the mattress beneath his torso, and that's how he knew—

"You're thinking of something, aren't you?" Sander said, despite not needing to ask. Having befriended and lived with Damien these past months, he knew his roommate's habits by now.

"Mmhmm," Damien hummed in response. "Yeah . . . Lots of things." He glanced down at his leg, the heel of his foot tapping against the wooden floor, and said, "It's not just this mess we're in I'm thinking about—whoever's behind what happened to Max and Lyn, this thing with Mister Brighteyes and Crystalline. I mean, it isn't just those I'd want a break from."

Sander sat up, placed his glasses back on. "What did your dad do this time?" he asked, knowingly.

    "Not really my dad, or maybe it is—I mean, maybe it's his fault in the first place—I don't know," Damien said. He ran a hand down his face, let out a sigh. "So, um, one of my mom's friends saw my dad's Facebook post—you know, middle-aged women and Facebook—anyway, so my mom's friend took a screenshot of it, then sent it to my mom. It's this picture of my dad and his new girlfriend vacationing on some beach. She's as young as my sister and I thought she'd be—a few years older than we are, probably fresh out of high school. And so my mom looked her up online, and—this is where it gets real freaky—for some reason she's copying my mom—her hair color, the way she dresses herself. So my mom was ranting it out to me and my sister in our group chat, with pictures and all. And there's my dad still; since October, since the last time we went through the Crystalline simulation with Mister Brighteyes, he's been asking me for tips on how to impress this girl, so I pretty much have no choice but to go with it 'cause he's gonna be angry with me if I refuse and he might even threaten to stop giving me my allowance for a month or two, and I'm scared he's going to do the same with my mom's financial support. I mean, she has her own business now and all, but I know she needs it to keep us all living as comfortably as we do even if she doesn't want to admit it to me or my sister." He leaned forward, buried his face in his hands. "It sucks being forced to pick a side. They don't say it outright, but you know they're making me and my sister choose. So I try to appease them both in some ways, to keep the peace, but it still feels like being torn in two opposite directions, all on the justification that you've gotta love your parents 'cause they're your parents."

    Damien dropped his hands onto his lap, and turned to Sander, who had kept his eyes on Damien the entire time he was talking. "Thanks for listening to my TED Talk," Damien said, giving off a short, feeble chuckle afterwards. He reached for Sander's phone on the bed, held it up toward his bespectacled roommate. "Family drama aside now," he continued, "we've got to decide what we're gonna do about this."

"Right," said Sander, unlocking his phone as soon as Damien handed it to him. "But, Damien," he said, shifting his eyes from the screen, from the series of messages, to his friend sitting next to him.

Damien quickly turned to Sander in response. "Yeah?"

"You know you can talk to me about what's going on with you and your family," said Sander. "I won't judge. I'll understand if you need someone to rant out to, and I'll be fine with being that person."

Damien nodded. "Yeah. Thanks, man," he said. "But as I said, family drama aside for the meantime, we're gonna have to call up a council meeting maybe right now. Besides, that"—he pointed at Sander's phone—"is more urgent, and probably more fixable than my dad and his stalker girlfriend."

Sander chuckled, despite Damien's obvious attempt to change subject. "That's true," he agreed. "You tell Lyn, I tell Jack."

Damien pulled out his phone from his pants pocket. "Right on it."

A long beat of silence, a stretched out moment of unuttered thought, followed after Sander read the messages and his replies to them. It was a little half past nine on a Thursday evening, and for once—despite the homework that piled up to be done, the tests needed to be studied for, set aside for this hopefully brief meeting—there was something good about a school day's night.

    After a week of his absence—with his phone in his father's possession, and his obedience to his dad's command to stay away from the company of his friends . . . until now—Max was with them, seated next to Jack, facing a screen as everyone else did. And beside Lyn, with the unanimous consent of everyone else, Talya was let in on the discussion; they thought the knowledge of all this, save all Crystalline business, was safe in her hands; she wouldn't tell a soul, they knew, they trusted her.

    "Sooo," said Sander, breaking the silence. He drummed his fingers on the desk, then stopped. "What do you think?"

Max raised a hand. "I'm thinking—you know, if you all decide to meet with whoever that is—with all my dad's restrictions—"

"Which you've decided to break tonight," Lyn interjected, smiling a lopsided grin.

"Yeah, I know, Lyn. Sheesh," Max said, laughing a little after feigning annoyance, as friends do. "Yeah, so with my dad pretty much grounding me, I won't be there to see what's gonna happen. But, dudes, I'm serious when I say you need a plan, 'cause as far as we've learned these past months, anything can happen, and most of the time that anything turns out pretty bad. And disclaimer here, I don't believe in luck, never really did, but we seem to be on some sort of bad luck streak since the school year started."

    "I think the bad luck streak started even before that," Jack remarked. "But Max has a point. There's a chance whoever that is is telling the truth, and there's a chance they aren't and they're out to get us. But as Damien said, it's more likely that what happened to Lyn was Cheryl and her friends' doing, but what happened to Max probably wasn't. Like he said, when you think about it, those girls don't really have anything against Max."

    "So you're saying?" said Damien, wanting to move past this conversation of Cheryl. Just the mere mention of her name made his stomach twist, his ears heat up; he wouldn't be surprised if Sander, or anyone on screen at the moment, pointed out how red he was.

He knew what she and her friends did was wrong, blatantly cruel even. But he couldn't help the guilt that rose within him when he had learned the Monday after Lyn's incident that she and her friends had been expelled for—more or less in the words of the latest school memo regarding the various incidents that had occurred within the first few months of the academic year—"putting a fellow student in grave, serious danger" and for "destroying school property" (the latter of which he still doubted was their doing).

    "What I'm saying is," Jack said, "what if we've got it all wrong. What if whoever was behind Max's locker bloodbath is also behind the school online hack against Lyn. And if we find out who they really are, that might put a stop to all these attacks against us."

    "And I get to hang out with you guys again," Max added, briefly showing a thumbs up a little too close to the camera. "I hope."

"All right, then," said Sander, clapping his hands together. "First thing's first—what's the plan, Max?"

Max opened his mouth, closed it after a second of a heartbeat, blue eyes looking up at the ceiling as though the answer were hopefully written there in large legible letters. Finally, he shifted his eyes back to the screen, and said, "Hang on. Give me a sec—or a few minutes. I—We've got to think this through really, really well. Make it as foolproof as possible. But if anyone's got any bright ideas, we're all ears, and maybe we can brainstorm from there."

A moment's silence followed, everyone not quite knowing what to say, everyone deep in thought and in careful consideration of options, until Talya said, "Old Man Grump probably has Wi-Fi, doesn't it? I mean most establishments probably do at this point. And in case the connection isn't any good, at least one of you has data, right? Or maybe enough minutes for an hour-long call?"

Sander leaned closer to the screen, eyebrows furrowed yet eyes glowing with interest. "What do you have in mind, Talya?"

The clock above the whiteboard ticked closer and closer to four o'clock that Friday afternoon.

    While Mrs. Chase droned on with her lecture, turning to glance at the class every once in a while as she wrote important key terms and examples onto the smooth white surface of the board, neat black letters flowing from the tip of her marker, Sander stared ahead, taking notes, mind split between what was happening right before him and what was to happen tomorrow night.

    When he and his friends had pieced together the bones to the skeleton of their plan—still subject to modifications, of course, via group chat for the next couple of days, for the hour was late and there was still schoolwork to be done—he had replied to the mysterious sender of the message, agreeing that he and his friends meet him at seven on Saturday evening.

    Sander let out a sigh, a quiet exhale, hoping no one else seated around him had heard the exhaustion and frustration in it, all expressed in a single breath. If he were to be honest about how he felt than having to go through all this with as little complaint as he usually did, he would say he was sick of it all.

    The pressure from academics was hard enough. (He jotted down Mrs. Chase's words quickly—he needed to focus, keep his grades up; he needed his scholarship for next semester. For one thing, his brother was now in college, and, although with an athletic scholarship and a job on campus to help him and his mother afford his pre-med degree, his mom was still struggling to pay off all her debts that have kept their family somewhat afloat for years, through all the minimum wage jobs and some stretches of unemployment. Sander didn't want to add another expense to the list.)

And there was this whole Crystalline business. If fate had been kind enough to leave him out of this, if those creeps hadn't taken notice of him, if they hadn't decided to specifically hunt him and his friends down for reasons they still didn't know—(What had happened to those guys, though? he wondered. They hadn't seen any sign of them for quite a while now. And that was a good thing, it really was. But what if—Focus! What did Mrs. Chase say again, about the thesis statement in a paragraph? Oh, hang on, the keywords are right up on the board. Oh, yeah, right, I remember now! Focus, Sander. Focus.—He scribbled down quickly onto his notebook, jotting down all points he found important to take note of, copying the example of a short paragraph Mrs. Chase was writing on the board, underlining the thesis statement, drawing arrows that led to smaller scribbles along the margins.)

    Yet he realized that if all that hadn't happened, if it hadn't forced its way into their lives as it did—from the creeps' southeastern-based colleagues attacking Max and his family in Florida to the Slender Men duo themselves hunting down Damien and Jack that one summer night in the city to the night of the graveyard party, when they chased him and his friends through the woods until Mr. Brighteyes came to his aid . . . Sander realized then that if it weren't for all that, he wouldn't have the friends he had now, or even if they did come together somehow, maybe they wouldn't be as close as they had become. And if his friends were the only ones involved in all this, if he'd been spared from this otherworldly dilemma, they might as well had decided collectively, albeit via an unspoken agreement, to ignore him, to leave him alone as they dealt with what they were dealing with now. They'd have to keep the whole Crystalline thing a secret from him, just as he kept it a secret from Talya . . .

    He tried to shake the thought out of mind—tried to focus on Mrs. Chase's discussion, tried to focus on jotting down the points she was emphasizing on this particular lesson, her marker gliding upon the smooth white surface of the board as the clock overhead ticked, ticked, ticked . . .

But Sander felt it—a pang in his heart that blossomed in his chest, a warm feeling pervading his system. His cheeks and ears seemed to burn from the heat that rose within him, and he was sure—and he hoped, and he prayed, no one had or would notice—that his face, light in complexion, had turned crimson. No, don't think about it. Focus! Focus!

Yet he couldn't deny that it was guilt that he felt. Guilt—that by not telling Talya about it, he was in some way lying to her, his best friend, his most trusted friend—what a lie that had become—who had been with him through peaks and troughs longer than Damien, Jack, Max, and Lyn ever had.

But telling her about it, he realized quickly, would be dragging her into this otherworldly dilemma she wasn't even involved in, and need not be involved in—for her safety, maybe even for her sanity.

It's for the best, he told himself. You're not lying to her; you're protecting her from all this—

"Mister Alexander?"

Sander almost dropped his pen at the sudden call, flitted his gaze away from the notes he had been absently staring at, looking up at Mrs. Chase who stood waiting—waiting for what? His mouth hung open for a moment; he had become aware of the eyes that had turned to him, the people around him waiting as Mrs. Chase did, waiting for the same thing—but for what?

    "Sorry. I, um—come again, Mrs. Chase?" Sander felt his face burn up more than it already did.

    For a fraction of a moment, a questioning look crossed Mrs. Chase's face—and even a slight look of concern, if Sander's eyes weren't tricking him. She turned back to the board, pointed with the end of her marker pen to a new concise paragraph, one Sander had not noticed her write despite his best efforts to keep focus. Then she said, "What is the thesis statement of this particular paragraph?"

Sander had just trained his eyes upon the block of text, reading the first few words as quickly as he could, when a shrill sound reverberated through the room, through the entire school, the bell signaling the end of class and the end of the school day. All eyes averted Sander in an instant, the class gathering their things off their tables, stuffing them into their bags, grabbing their textbooks as they stood and made for the door.

Over the noise, Mrs. Chase announced, "Expect exercises and a graded activity on this topic next meeting. See you all next week."

Sander whipped his phone out of his pocket, ignored the notifications that began to pop up on his screen, took a quick yet clear shot of the paragraph he had missed out before Mrs. Chase turned to erase everything she had written on the board.

Somewhere behind him, as he slid his phone back into his pocket and went on to collect his things off his desk, Sander heard successive thuds pound heavily against the floor, the clatter of what he assumed to be pens, perhaps the contents of a pencil case. A voice, deep and masculine, then said, "You guys just go ahead. I'll follow. I'm gonna have to go to the restroom after I clean all this up. Gotta take a piss real bad."

Jonathan Hewet-Elliot, Sander recognized his voice almost immediately. Jones, as Ronny and his friends would call him. The less ugly big guy, as Damien and Jack would put it, in comparison to Howard Paley, another one of Ronny's posse, and his gigantic stature and boar-like features—a label Sander would actually agree with. When Sander was in their company, eons ago, he noted Jones to be the kindest of them. Perhaps more corrupted now, as expected from years being around Ronny and his gang, but hopefully still with a trace of that old kindness.

With that in mind, and with all his things stowed neatly into his crossbody backpack, Sander made his way over to Jones, who was kneeling on the floor. Picked up the loose sheets that had drifted under chairs nearby, picked up a couple mechanical pencils that had rolled farther away from Jones' immediate reach.

"Thanks," Jones said, as Sander handed him the papers and pencils.

    Sander nodded, without quite meeting Jones' eyes—the kindest of their school enemies, but still nowhere near being on good terms. "No prob," Sander said, before he turned and walked over to the door, ignoring his phone vibrating in his pocket, one notification coming after another, after another, after another . . . That could wait till later, he decided, catching sight of the chaos of after-school hallway traffic, the noise spilling in through the open door, swimming through his ears.

"Hey, Sander. Wait up a sec."

    Just as he was about to take a step out the door, Sander felt a hand, huge and calloused, on his shoulder. Mr. Bato had told them before to move quick upon the touch of an enemy—to not look back, to waste no time. In this case, when one isn't sure of another's intention, to push that hand away and step forward, away from his reach. But there was a tremble to Jones' touch, Sander noticed. A tremble not stemming from anger or vengeance, but the kind of tremble from nerves, from uncertainty.

"I just want to talk," said Jones, with the same tremble in his voice. The way he would start mumbling when he wanted to disagree with Ronny, but couldn't—Sander had heard him talk this way before, long ago. "Just a few words with you. If you've got a minute, or a few seconds," he added.

    Sander turned to face him. "Sure," he said.

Jones drew in a breath. "So I heard about your friends. I mean the whole school pretty much knows about it by now, but yeah—Just wanted to ask how Mister Gascarth's kid and, um, your girl-space-friend, I mean, you know, one-of-the-guys—"

"Lyn," Sander supplied. "Max and Lyn."

"Yeah. Just wanted to ask how Max and Lyn are doing after all that's happened." Jones shrugged, glanced down at his shoes, and shifted his eyes up to meet Sander's. "Just wanted to ask, is all," he added, his voice gone strangely quieter.

Sander still felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, heard the unending hum of the device. Yet nothing at that moment could take his attention away from Jones, who looked more like a nervous giant than the massive football jock who with one tackle could send anyone flying a few good meters away from where they once stood.

"Well, so far they're all right," Sander replied. "Shaken after their respective incidents. Lyn, more so,"—Though Lyn, being Lyn, refuses to admit that despite how obvious it is to me and Talya, he thought to himself—"with, you know, all these rumors of her being a witch or some sort of devil-worshiper still spreading around the school, and after her getting that close to carbon-monoxide poisoning . . . I mean, who wouldn't, right?"

Jones nodded, taking another glance at his shoes. "Yeah, of course," he said, looking up. "Who wouldn't?"

Sander looked him straight in the eye, trying to find any deceit in them, or even the slightest glint of amusement from a job well done.

"Might be too late to say this," Jones went on. "I mean it's been almost two weeks since, um, Lyn was—you know what happened—and even longer since the blood-in-the-locker thing happened to Mister Gascarth's—Max—I mean, it's been longer since that happened to Max." He shook his head, as if to shake away the awkwardness in his demeanor. "So, anyway, I'm sorry to hear about what happened. And I just wanted to tell you I hope none of that happens to you or your friends again."

Nothing, Sander concluded. No deceit, no amusement. Nothing but genuine concern in Jones' bluish gray eyes.

Jones opened his mouth, only to close it again. "I gotta get going," he said after a moment's pause, pointing a thumb toward the open door. "Got football practice in a few minutes."

They were the only people left in the classroom; the traffic outside had thinned since the bell rang, the noise reduced to the soft cacophony of mumbling voices.

"Yeah. I've got to go, too," Sander said, nodding.

With that, Jones turned on his heel and walked briskly out the classroom and down the hallway.

    Sander proceeded to exit as well, to tread down the almost deserted corridor, to pull out his phone from his pocket, and glance down at the notifications that had been flooding it since the bell rang. A string of messages from the group chat between him, Damien, Jack, Lyn, and Talya:

Operation Anon (upon Max's insistence that we need a code name)

4:03 PM

Adelina
Just thought of something a while
back. You guys remember when I
overheard TJ talking to someone
on the phone? It seemed like
whoever he was talking to knew
about what happened to Max.
So I'm thinking, what if he was
the one who messaged Sander?
It's possible, don't you think?

Damien
Could be
But why couldn't he just tell it to
us straight?
Just text Sander that he knows
who did it
That he could just meet us outside
the Raven's Nest if he doesn't want
anyone else to overhear

Jack
Gotta agree with Damien there.
Doesn't sound like TJ to me..Bruh's
too nice imo for him not to tell us
right away if something's up
And I've known him for years now
Besides I don't think he even
knows we've got suspicions about
him..So this whole mystery thing
wouldn't make sense if he was the
one behind the text

Adelina
But I overheard that phone
conversation. And I did hear our
names in it—"Damien and his
friends"; "what happened to Max
that Monday". I'm pretty sure he's
hiding something from us. He
knows something we don't.

Taylor Leann
is this tj we're talking about tj perazzo?
mr. perazzo's son? ravenwood alumni,
works in the raven's nest tj?

Damien
Home economics teacher's son
Parents own the Raven's Nest
Yes
That TJ

Taylor Leann
so you overheard him talking
on the phone and think he might
know something about what
happened to max and that he
might possibly come clean
about it tomorrow night? 😮

Adelina
Pretty much. I'll elaborate on it
when we get back to our room,
if you have any more questions.

Jack
Hey, Max here
@Sander Alexander was the
one who got the text, right?
Do any of you have TJ's
number by any chance?
I'm thinking of comparing
the numbers. And if they
match- BINGO xD

Taylor Leann
thats a good idea, max. 😮
@Sander Alexander what
about it?

4:12 PM

Sander
@Jack Forster / Max I have
TJ's number. I used to text him
our orders in advance, remember?
A lot quicker than contacting the
Raven's Nest itself xD
Anyway the numbers don't
match so I'm sure it isn't TJ's.
My phone would have shown
it if it was his

Adelina
Jack's off to practice now. But
I found Lyn, so now I'm using her
phone. xD
This is Max by the way xD
It's also possible he used someone
else's number to send that text tho

Sander
Yeah, that's another possibility

"You're thinking of something, aren't you?" Max said, interrupting Lyn's prolonged silence.

Lyn looked up at him. "What makes you say that?"

They were seated on the curb, beneath the vast pale sky; by some miracle, it hadn't rained yet, and for that they were grateful.

"That look on your face," he said, lifting a finger and drawing a circle in the air, around the outline of Lyn's face. "And you being really quiet and staring blankly at the ground and your eyebrows drawn together. That look."

Lyn let out a soft sigh. "No one seems to believe me," she said, "that TJ might be the one who texted Sander last night." She looked back at the ground, only to quickly glance up at Max. "Isn't your dad going to fetch you any time now?"

"He's going to pick me up at six, after he finishes some stuff at work." He glanced down at Lyn's phone in his hand to check the time, to check for any new messages. "Still got an hour and a half," Max said, showing Lyn her phone screen. "I've already packed most of my things for the weekend, anyway."

Lyn simply nodded at that, stared back down at the ground in thought.

    A moment's silence, a moment's hesitation, before Lyn gave in to this urge to vent and, before she could stop herself, said, "I don't think there's anything we could do other than to wait and have them see for themselves whether it's TJ who shows up tomorrow night or not. And it sucks I can't join the guys when they get to see who it really is who sent Sander that message."

    Max's eyes widened at this. "What do you mean you can't join them? Aren't you going to be there with them at Old Man Grump tomorrow night? Wasn't that the plan?"

Lyn let out a sigh. "I, um"—she glanced at Max, only to turn her eyes back to the asphalt, feeling her cheeks flush—"I'm kinda grounded. Not really grounded, more like . . . discouraged from hanging out with you guys too much. So I made up some excuse and told everyone in the chat I've got so much to do for school that I can't make it tomorrow night at Old Man Grump. Lame, I know. And I know I'm a total coward for pulling out, but I just don't have it within me to lie to my parents like that. Sneaking off with Damien and Jack and Sander to confront this person who might know or even have something to do with the incidents, and the risk of the meeting being a complete trap, and doing that behind my parents' backs—I'm sorry, but I just can't do it. It's too much, my conscience will haunt me to the grave."

    A look of understanding pervaded Max's face. "So your parents heard about it, too, huh?"

"Of course they did. The school called them up and told them about it. So my parents called me up, and I had to explain the best I could. And"—she sighed—"when it comes to my parents, explaining isn't easy, so I had to stand my ground, keep a straight face, sound as levelheaded and as reasonable as possible, and tell them what really happened, but at the same time try my best not to piss them off even by the smallest bit."

    But this time, Max noticed, Lyn sounded a little pissed off herself.

    "So," Max said, "our parents came up with the same conclusion that hanging out with our friends isn't doing us any good." In an attempt to lighten the mood, which he felt Lyn needed at the moment, he added, "Talk about telepathic communication. I'm not surprised if our parents are secretly Jedis."

    Lyn rolled her eyes playfully at that, not finding Max's quip as hilarious as he intended it to, but appreciating the effort nonetheless. "Despite you being some cool musician kid in your old school—as far as your stories tell, coupled with the impression you exude—you're actually really, really nerdy, you know that?"

    "Who ever said being a musician and being with the popular crowd are exclusive to being nerdy? Besides, I like my sci-fi pop culture references; they're the little things that make life a little brighter on not-so-good days."

    Lyn chuckled a bit, fought a smile that managed in the end to creep onto her face. "Thanks, Max. Made me feel a bit better in spite of . . . all this."

He nudged her with his elbow. "Hey, it's what friends do, being there for each other."

And just then an idea struck Max; he glanced down at Lyn's phone still in his hand, turned to her, and said, "I've got something to tell them in the group chat. Mind giving me your passcode?"

Lyn held her hand out; Max handed her her phone. After a quick tap upon the screen, she gave her phone back to him, and he typed in his message, as quickly as he could, with a few glances up in front of him as he thought of how to phrase his words, to weave them into a clearly written course of action, a proposal that their friends would agree with.

"There," he said, as he tapped the icon designed in the shape of a paper airplane, and the message was sent, read almost immediately by Talya, then Damien, then Sander.

    Max returned Lyn's phone back to her; he stood from his seat on the pavement, picked up his backpack off the concrete floor, as he watched Lyn read the message he had sent, watched her read directly below it Damien's immediate response of approval, which Max himself had read with quick eyes before he gave Lyn her phone back.

Adelina
Max here again
I have an idea. What if Lyn and I
can keep an eye on TJ while you
dudes wait for whoever sent that
message to Sander at Old Man
Grump? We'll be at the Raven's
Nest earlier to see for ourselves
if TJ's on the move to your meeting
place.. And Lyn can do her
schoolwork while we're at it.
She said she's feeling guilty about
not joining you tomorrow night xD
And dad doesn't see her as a
threat anyway. No offense Damien
and Jack xD So I'm confident dad
will allow this
So how about it?
It's a win-win

Damien
Ok

Lyn turned her eyes away from the screen, and gaped up at Max, who stood with his backpack slung over his shoulder, his eyes fixed on her, the expression on his face a mingle of excitement and uncertainty with a sliver of fear, only to break into a smile upon Lyn's dumbfounded look.

"Are you gonna kill me now?" he asked, a blatant grin stretched across his face, displaying the kind of smile that reached his eyes. "Should I make a run for it?" He took a step back away from her, jokingly preparing himself for a sprint, laughing as he did so.

Both questions were met with nothing but Lyn's stunned silence. The astonishment in her features had faded; her mouth had closed a little, yet her jaw still hung slightly open, and her hazel eyes stared up at Max, pensive and solemn.

Max was afraid he would catch a tear well up in her eye and slide down her cheek any moment, and so the excitement vanished within him, wiped itself clean off his face, and all he felt was fear.

"Oh. I—I'm sorry, Lyn. I'm really sorry. I should've asked first. Sometimes I talk too much, and—and you should tell me if I do, that would really help. I tend to get carried away with an idea, and—"

"Max, thank you."

    Now was Max's turn to gape at her, eyes wide, mouth open as if to speak but not finding the words. He stuttered out a few incomprehensible syllables. Passed a moment in silence as thoughts raced through his head, words colliding into each other, attempting to arrange and rearrange themselves into a proper sensible sentence. Then he said at last, "You're—you're not pissed?"

    Lyn shook her head, never stopping to think of her response. "For someone to actually believe in me," she said, "for someone to take my thoughts seriously . . . I mean, this theory I feel strongly about . . . " She breathed out a sigh, as though the air exhaled were tension released from within. She looked up at him again. "That means a lot to me, Max. So thank you—thank you for believing in me."

    Max shrugged, smiling a close-mouthed smile, his blue eyes glinting with genuine joy. "We're friends. It's the least I can do. Besides, I want to help, too. I can't just sit around and do nothing about this."

    Lyn nodded at that. But the soft gentle smile soon faded from her face, replaced with a look of worry as a thought struck her then and there. "But how are you going to convince your dad?" she asked. "You think he'll really allow us to hang out tomorrow night at the Raven's Nest?"

    "Relax, Lyn. I'm confident he'll be fine with it." Max shifted his eyes over to the sky above them. "I don't believe in luck, but I think the sky agrees with my optimism."

And it was only then Lyn noticed that the clouds, though still filling up most of the expanse, had given way to the firmament beneath—a tapestry of orange and yellow and pink, the colors spilling out onto the clouds that remained, as the sun sank unseen in the horizon.

"My dad's probably still in the faculty room," said Max. "So"—he held out a hand—"wanna go with me to ask for his permission?"

"Sure." Lyn slung her backpack over her shoulder, grasped Max's hand—ignoring the warm tingle spreading through her palm and her fingers as his large hand closed around hers—and, with Max's aid, pulled herself up till she stood upright before him. "But I won't be going in with you to ask," she said, pulling her hand out of his grip. "I'll wait outside. Moral support."

Max chuckled. "Okay, introvert," he said, ruffling the top of Lyn's head to her slight annoyance. "Won't force you to do anything you don't want to do."

"At least I'm accompanying you on this," she retorted, smoothing down the mess Max had made of her hair; in turn Max laughed, a loud vivacious sound, and together they started their way back to the academic building.