The bench is uncomfortable. Unsurprising: no furniture at this school has ever been comfortable. Even the beds feel like something they’ve kept around since Clavell’s graduation. And that was, what? A billion years ago?
More uncomfortable, though, is the silence. Nemona and Juliana had run off toward the battlefield over half an hour ago; knowing them, they’ll be at it for a while. The sandwiches Arven had packed them disappeared soon after, and now he’s absent-mindedly petting Mabosstiff lying next to the bench and vaguely watching them train. And Penny’s staring down at her phone, the screen open to the Team Star groupchat.
No one’s responded to the meme she sent yet. Is it a bad meme? Do they suddenly hate her? No. She quickly reminds herself that if they stuck with her after all her underhanded shenanigans, then they wouldn’t leave her because of a meme. And her memes are great .
(Wouldn’t they, though? If they had the chance? If they didn’t feel obligated to stay? They’re all wonderful, insanely talented people. Surely they’d prefer the company of someone less… her.)
She finally slips her phone back in her sweater’s kangaroo pocket and follows Arven’s gaze toward the center of the schoolyard. Nemona’s pitting her Skeledirge against Juliana’s Quaquaval—a completely lopsided match-up, but Nemona’s holding her own like the Champion she is. And, more importantly—she’s having an absolute blast. Penny can see it all over her face, even from this distance—the joy of honing her skills with an equal. Of spending time with someone she cares about.
Penny shifts her weight on the bench. Next to her, Arven does the same. She glances at him, but she isn’t quick enough to look away before he unintentionally meets her eyes.
“What?” he asks, his eyebrow going up.
“Wh—nothing! Nothing,” she says. She turns away, but it’s too late—there’s a pit of dread opening in her stomach.
She’s gonna have to socialize.
Not that talking to Arven is a struggle. He’s easy to talk to. But they’ve never hung out one-on-one, and it seems like even he isn’t fully prepared to get into a conversation, either. She watches him gesture out toward the field with a stilted movement of his hand.
“They, uh… they’re good,” he says. “Aren’t they?”
“Y-yeah,” she replies. “The best.”
The conversation fades back into silence. But now it’s worse. Now that words have entered the space between them, their absence feels unbearable . But what do they talk about? She’s let the silence linger too long; it’s too late to bring up Nemona and Juliana’s training again. But that still leaves an infinite number of things to talk about! Literally an entire human experience’s worth of things to discuss! Quick—what’s something she knows about Arven? What can she latch onto here?
They both turn to each other and say, “Uh—”
“Sorry, go ahead,” Arven quickly says.
“N-no, it’s okay,” Penny replies just as fast. “What were you gonna say?”
“No, what were you gonna say?”
“You can go first.”
“No, you can. I really don’t mind.”
“Arven—”
“I don’t even remember what I was gonna say, anyway,” Arven states with a laugh. “Seriously, what were you gonna say, Penny?”
“I—okay.” No running from this encounter now, as Ms. Dendra might put it. “So. Um. Do you… do you miss him?”
Arven’s eyebrow shoots straight up to his hairline. “Wha—who? My dad? ” he exclaims, and his tone’s the one that Penny has learned over the years means That Is An Absolutely Wild Thing To Say, Penny, Where Did That Even Come From. She tries to shrink into her sweater.
“Sorry! I-I shouldn’t have asked that.”
To her surprise, Arven’s laughter is soft. “No, that’s okay,” he says. He grins, almost shy, and rubs the back of his neck. “I, uh… I just wasn’t expecting that is all.”
Penny feels herself relax. “Oh.”
“To answer your question,” Arven says, and she turns to look at him, “maybe? It’s hard to say. I feel like I’d been grieving him before I found out he was actually gone. Like… it made sense when I found out what happened. It’s not like it didn’t hurt, of course, but… it made sense.” He pauses, his hand automatically moving back to Mabosstiff. “But I don’t know. I think I miss what we could’ve had more than anything. You know, if he’d decided to be a parent instead of just a researcher? And besides, I… I barely knew him, anyway, in the end. Not a lot to miss when he wasn’t really there in the first place.”
“… Oh,” Penny says again.
Arven snorts lightly. “Yeah. I know. It’s a lot.”
“No, that’s…” Penny pauses to find her words. “That’s not a bad thing.”
Arven’s smile, though small, is warm. “Hmm. Yeah.” He turns to Mabosstiff and pats its head. “Isn’t that right, buddy?”
Mabosstiff, dozing, just grunts in its sleep.
“Yeah.” He looks back at Penny. “Honestly, though… the worst part is that when I think about my dad—like, how I want to remember him—I think about his AI copy. Even though he tried to, you know, kill us and everything. I just felt like he… cared about me. More than my actual dad ever did.” His grin becomes a grimace. “That probably counts as irony. I don’t know. I never pay enough attention in Mr. Salvatore’s class.”
Penny’s inner pedantic nerd wants to say something, but she wills herself to swallow it down. Instead, she just nods and says, “Yeah.”
“Yeah,” he also says. “Is, uh. Is there anything that you miss?”
Penny feels herself blush; she guesses this is what she gets for asking such a personal question in the first place. And, well—maybe there’s something embarrassing in the fact that she can think of an answer so quickly.
“Honestly?” she says, her fingers itching for her phone. “I… I miss Team Star. I miss talking to them for hours every night. I miss seeing them hang out and grow and learn to like themselves. I even miss the bases! Just—having that space for ourselves. To be ourselves.” She sighs and hugs her knees to her chest. “We’re all so busy now. Making new friends… I don’t know if we’ll ever have that back.”
It’s nowhere near as big as Arven’s burden. It even sounds silly now that she’s said it out loud. But he hums and nods. “It happens,” he replies. “ Things change, you know? But, Penny—I really don’t think it means they’d want to lose you, either.”
Penny chews on her lip. On the one hand, hearing the reassurances that sound so weak in her own mind aloud helps more than she expects. On the other hand…
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Positive,” Arven replies with a smile.
She grins back, a small thing, and turns back to Nemona and Juliana’s training. They’re still going at it—now pitting their Pawmots against each other. (It honestly sounds borderline cruel—but the Pawmots seem to be having a good time. Juliana’s shoots off a Grass-type move. Interesting.)
Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She quickly pulls it out, and it lights up with a notification from the Team Star groupchat. A message from Giacomo: LMAOOOOOO GOOD SHIT!!!!!
She smiles; she sees it reflect back at her when the screen darkens again. She puts her phone in her pocket again and leans back, her shoulders hitting the backrest of the bench, and lets the sounds of her newest friends’ training carry her away.