[Xander – 13 years]

"Morning, Xander," Carter greets me as he approaches. "Oh. Hey, Trenton."

I look over to see that he's pulled on a pair of shorts, but otherwise hasn't dressed. He kept to his wolfkin form during the night and didn't switch back. I've done the same so I'm still in wolfkin form, though I was already wearing my shorts as I didn't sleep in underwear like him.

Only the two of us are awake at the moment, so it's okay. He won't hurt me.

Though maybe I should make a rule that everyone has to sleep in at least shorts, not just underwear, for future sleepovers here. But it's what some of them find comfortable and they're not hurting anyone or being inappropriate.

Even if it makes me uncomfortable.

I think Nash was uncomfortable, too. He slept in shorts and a t-shirt, even if he was shirtless the last time I saw him before I went to bed. At least I'm not the only one uncomfortable this time, since that means it's not just me.

"Morning, Carter," I greet him back as I wave one of Trenton's paws. "I wasn't expecting anyone else to wake up yet."

"But you've got breakfast out?"

I'm still preparing breakfast. The donuts, icings, toppings, and fillings are on the table, as are the fruit platters and drinks. Right now, I'm also cooking up sausage links and eggs. Eggs aren't something I want to include for breakfast, but most of the others like them.

So I'm making a big batch of scrambled eggs with some milk, cheese, and diced veggies in them.

"The tables have stasis magic so that the food doesn't go bad," I remind him, my tail swishing a little. "So it's okay to put it out early. And I didn't know what else to do after I finished setting stuff up, so I decided to do this. Also, it's almost seven and that's breakfast time."

At least, for me. Making sure the food for breakfast is ready before seven is important. It means I can eat at seven.

"Ah," he says. "Forgot, yeah. Need any help?"

"No," I answer as I move the skillets of eggs off of the stove. "This is the last of the stuff."

The sausage are done cooking as well, though I had those cooking in the air with magic. They move over to the platter for them and plop down onto it, the excess grease gone from existence.

I dump the scrambled eggs with veggies into the big bowl for them, then use magic to clean all of the dishes I used for cooking.

"These are make-our-own donuts?" Carter asks.

"No," I tell him. "I already made the donuts. Y'all can just give them toppings. Or fillings, for the ones without centers. They can also be eaten plain, if someone wants to."

"That's what I was meaning," he tells me.

"Oh," I say. "Sorry."

"No worries!" He says. "Can I eat now, or do I gotta wait?"

"You can eat now if you want," I tell him. "I put the food out so people can eat as they want. Um. I wasn't sure how much would be eaten, since y'all used the transformation spells yesterday, so I made a bunch. If it's not enough, I'll make more."

I have more than enough extra ingredients to make more. It's important to plan extra, Dad told me. Mom agreed with him on that, and she's a professional chef.

"This should be plenty!" He tells me. "Are there any other plans for the day? There wasn't a listed time for the end of the party."

Oops. I meant to tell them what time I wanted it to be over by, but it seems I forgot to come up with the end time.

"Oh," I say. "Um. Well, I figured that some might want to do a snowball fight. I was setting up an area for that before making breakfast. There was almost exactly four and a quarter inches of snow before it stopped. There's other stuff I want to do, but I can delay it until this afternoon. Not a part of the party, I mean."

I want to walk through the mage district, since it's Saturday. That can also be delayed until tomorrow, if necessary.

"Alright," he says. "I'll try to make sure we're out in time for that."

"It's not super important," I tell him. "I can do it tomorrow, too. So if people end up still being here at lunchtime, that's fine."

We prepare our breakfasts, and I coat three donuts with blueberry icing, three with strawberry, and three with plain vanilla. Carter is disappointed there's no chocolate, then goes with strawberry on all of his ring donuts. For the ones which can be filled, he uses the piping bag to do one with vanilla cream, one with strawberry cream, one with blueberry cream, and one with banana cream. Those donuts get dusted with sugar.

I didn't want to do cream-filled donuts, but Mom told me that some of the other boys might prefer them. It seems Carter really likes them, even if he prepared himself four.

The rest of my breakfast consists of sausage links, fruit, berries, and milk. Carter gets some of those as well, but also eggs because he's a little weird like that.

Rather than eating at the tables, we eat in the sitting area we hung out at after my birthday party. He sits on the couch in the same spot as last time, and I sit on the same armchair as then, too. I move Trenton from my shoulder to right beside me so that I don't have to keep holding him up as I eat.

"This is really good," Carter tells me after taking a bite of a donut, his tail flicking a little. "Did you make them?"

"Earlier, yeah," I answer as my tail flicks a little on the seat. "Mom and I worked a little this week to make our own recipe. You really think it's good?"

I know he wasn't being honest, but it's still hard to believe. The donut recipe I used for today's donuts was the first which involved as much experimenting and testing from me as it did. I've made tweaks to other things before, but never strayed too far. Mom gave me some tips and stuff, but all of the tweaks for this were me coming up with what to do.

It really came out good?

"Yeah!" His tail taps the couch even more. "It's good!"

That's really great. I don't think I'm ready to try and make tweaks without advice from Mom for recipes yet, but I'll definitely keep trying to come up with my own recipes. At least, recipes that I like better.

"Carter?" I ask after we both finish eating and put our dishes in the dishwasher.

Everyone else is still asleep and there's a question I want to ask because I'm uncertain and I know my parents will just tell me it's fine. But they'll think differently than someone around my age so I want to ask someone my age. He's about a year older than me, but that's close enough.

"Yes?" He responds.

"Um… is it bad that I get nervous about kissing Sig?"

When Sig asked me if there was anything I wanted to do while we were in the opaque barrier, I wanted to kiss him. But then I didn't feel right, which is why I hugged him instead.

"Have you kissed him yet?"

"No."

"Hold on," he pulls out his phone and does something on it for a few moments before looking at me. "The average age for a first kiss is a little less than fifteen. You're thirteen. Sure, some have their first kiss at twelve or thirteen, but it's not necessary. Average doesn't even mean an age to have it by, either. So if it takes you longer than that, it's still fine, too."

"So it's not bad to get nervous like that?"

"Nope!" He puts his phone away. "It's okay to get nervous! And don't feel like you have to, alright? Do it at your own pace, okay? Even if it takes you until you're fifty, it's not a problem."

"I want to do it," I tell him. "I just get really nervous and feel like it's wrong and then I hug him instead. I hope I kiss him before I'm fifty."

"Well," Carter says. "Just remember not to force yourself, okay?"

"I'll try."

We're both quiet for a few moments.

"Did Sig make you feel like you had to?" He asks.

"No," I answer. "But I wanted to give him one last night. Several times. And then, while we were sleeping, I'm pretty sure he was dreaming about kissing me."

"You were in his dreams?"

"No," I answer. "But I accidentally turned off the thing that keeps my own dreams from being affected by the dreams of others. There was a devil's food cupcake with strawberry frosting and strawberry slices on top in some of my dreams and it kept wanting to kiss me. Obviously, I turned it down because it's chocolate."

Carter snorts.

"So Sig's a devil's food cupcake in your dreams?"

"With strawberry frosting and strawberry slices on top."

"I'm a chocolate-mint cheesecake, right?"

"Yeah."

"And your dad's onigiri?"

"Yeah."

"What's onigiri?"

"It's a type of Japanese rice ball," I tell him. "Dad apparently likes them a lot. Grandpa Caldwell says it was something they had sometimes when Dad was growing up."

"Ah."

"Austin woke up."

After about an hour, everyone has woken up and eaten breakfast, and a lot of the other boys are playing games in here. They might be wanting to go outside and play in the snow but don't know if they can or if they have to leave soon.

"Hey, everyone," I say. "Um. Can everyone come over here so I can say some stuff, please?"

Only a few of the other boys hear me. Mostly the ones close to me or who are in wolfkin or snow leopardkin form. Should I have spoken louder?

The boys who heard me gather the others over, and now I've got nineteen boys wearing nothing but shorts (and maybe accessories like bracelets and stuff) staring at me. I did not think this through.

"Time for us to go home?" Carter asks.

"Huh?" I ask. "Oh. No. There was a lot of snow last night, and it's okay if y'all want to go outside and play in it for a bit. I also set up a snowball fight area. I won't be participating, but I tried to make it look good. I… don't know what snowball fights are normally like, so it was mostly guessing. Oh. And I generated the snow I used to set it up, so there's plenty of snow still on the ground, since I didn't disturb that. And there was a lot of snow, so y'all've got plenty to play with. Oh. I also marked out the area you're limited to for playing in the snow. So yeah. Anyone who wants to go outside and play in the snow before they leave can."

"Snowball fight!" Sig puts his fists up in the air.

[Sig – 13 years]

Xander really doesn't understand snowball fights, and that just makes it funny. His created-snow setup is… a series of walls and small buildings. The buildings are more like mini-forts and aren't much taller than we are. They're really just a space that's mostly enclosed on the sides with an open top and one or two entrances on the sides. Some are circular and some are round, and entering is either through the wall or through the holes in the walls.

All of the structures are compacted snow, like if we were to put them into a container, press it down, then add more, rinse and repeat. They're all decorative, too.

Mostly with dragons and wolves. Xander might be practicing with sketching and drawing, but shaping with magic is apparently really different. The carvings he made on the walls and mini-forts are incredibly detailed.

That's not even including the random snow sculptures he's set up around the battlefield.

The dragon and wolf carvings and sculptures are split so that it's basically two teams. One side is the dragons, the other is the wolves. Odd that he'd put them at odds with each other but I guess he just wanted to make those more than anything.

Snowball fights aren't usually a team thing. At least, not with anyone I've ever played it with.

"Those are so cool," Connor's staring at one of the wolf sculptures, which looks scarily lifelike, as if it's a real wolf.

"I'm fairly certain," Carter says. "That Xander was practicing with the sculptures and using them as references when making the designs on the walls and forts."

"What makes you think that?" I ask.

"Look at the angles," Carter indicates a dragon sculpture. "See its position? Look at that dragon carving," he points at one on a nearby curved wall. "With the curve of the wall, you'd hide on the other side. This is the side your enemy would see… and if you stand between the wall and the dragon, then look between the two, they essentially mirror each other."

I look between the dragon and the wall and realize that he's right. Why in the heck would he make a sculpture to use as a reference for a carving?

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"That wolf doesn't have a matching carving, though," I say. "Also," I point at a dragon sculpture. "Why did Xander give it golden eyes? Isn't his favorite color green?"

"I know Xander says his grandma is a dragon," Tate quietly whispers as he leans over. "But how certain are we that he's right?"

"I'm fairly certain it's true," I say. "I've met someone who might be a dragon in human form… but I'll be honest, I haven't seen an actual dragon. Why?"

"That sculpture has a mind."

We all stare at the sculpture. It stares back. Then it blinks.

"It's alive!" Connor, Bo, and I exclaim as we all jump back.

The dragon sculpture flops onto the ground, rolling around laughing.

"A snow elemental, maybe?" Knox suggests. "It does look like it's made out of snow. Maybe it can refract light to change the color of its eyes?"

"Xander's friends with two," I say. "So… maybe?"

That would make a lot more sense than a creature which hides itself from public awareness randomly showing up and pretending to be a sculpture. It probably took on the form of a dragon just because it's one of the things Xander set up.

"Would also explain why the snow's not disturbed," Isaac says. "Look – there's no footprints despite Xander coming out and making all that stuff."

The snow creature finally stops rolling around, laughing, and sits up to face us. As it does, all of the snow it disturbed undisturbeds, now looking as if it hadn't just been rolled around in.

"That was probably Xander," Carter says.

"What do you mean?" Isaac asks.

"Xander said that he didn't disturb the snow," I tell him. "And he tends to be literal, remember? If he's conjuring snow already, he probably filled them in. Though if he didn't disturb the snow… he probably floated around instead."

"Oh," Isaac says. "That makes sense."

"Let's spread out," Ethan suggests. "Start once we're all in position?"

We all agree to that, so we all head off to different parts of the playing field. I hang out behind a wall with a dragon carving on it. There's also a pile of snowballs here, because Xander really doesn't understand snowball fights.

It's more fun when we have to make our own snowballs as we throw them at each other, but this works, too!

Once we're all in position, Carter calls out for the game to begin and we start throwing snowballs at each other. I don't stick behind my wall but run around and throw balls, making them as I need to. This is more fun than just hiding behind a wall or inside of a mini-fort, and it adds a little bit of an extra challenge.

Though some boys use their magic to create snowballs, whether conjured or scooped up from the ground.

The snow beast plays with us, conjuring snowballs on its own to magically toss at us. While he never tries to catch our own balls with his magic, I'm fairly certain he has the ability to. He's a snow beast who can conjure snow, there's no way he can't manipulate it, too.

By the time we're all ready to warm back up, we're all covered in snow and even the snow beast seems tired. He's splooted on the ground with his rather pink tongue hanging out.

Something tells me we might have been playing with an actual dragon.

"HOT COCOA!" Nash yells from where he and some of the other boys were having a snowman contest.

That sounds more like an announcement than a request.

"Oooh!" I exclaim, then head over towards where he is.

Xander's over there looking a little unhappy, but it wasn't him who brought it out, I don't think. Ms. Katie's out here, bundled up just as much as the rest of us.

Except for Luke. He was participating in the snowman contest with Parker and Tyler on his team, and I can only see the area around his eyes. Luke's scarf covers even his nose and his beanie's pulled down to his eyebrows. With his coat's hood on.

He must not like the cold.

They have a table set up with a large hot drink dispenser with hot milk in it. Cocoa powder, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon are on the side, allowing us to make our own mixtures.

"Hey, Xander!" I say as he gives me a hug.

"Did your team win?"

"We didn't play in teams!" I laugh. "We just threw snowballs at each other! You did a great job with the snow sculptures and carvings!"

"I cheated with magic."

"It's not cheating if there aren't any rules!" I tell him. "And you set the rules! Also, I think a snow dragon showed up. A dragon-looking creature joined us."

"Huh?" Xander looks past me. "Oh. That's not a dragon."

"It's not?" Knox asks as we all look over at the creature, which came over with us. "Sure looks like one to me."

"Yeah," Xander says. "Why do you look like a dragon? Oh. You liked my sculptures and wanted to pretend you were one? That's weird. No, the pretending part. Also you pretending to be a dragon."

"What's weird about that?"

"Because it was pretending," Xander says. "Also because he's a wolf."

"A… wolf?" I ask.

The snow creature shivers for a moment, then his form ripples and he becomes a wolf which looks made out of snow, his eyes still golden. He's smaller now, somewhere between pup and fully-grown, I think. Unless snow wolves (whatever their actual name is) are smaller by nature?

"He apparently asked a dragon if he could transform him into a dragon form so that he could pretend to be a snow sculpture," Xander tells us. "He can't actually transform on his own, that was the dragon's magic. There's hot chocolate if y'all want. Or just hot milk. Also, Nathan, your mom's here to pick you up. Make sure to grab a gift bag on your way out, okay?"

"There's gift bags?"

"For attending," Xander nods. "I put them on a table in the rec room. Your name is on the one for you."

How long did his parents try to let him know that party bags weren't required? Xander already provided so much for the party, then he made bags for us for attending.

"She is?" Ms. Katie asks.

"Yeah," Xander answers. "She just arrived."

The wolf's fur is so soft!

"Did you really just go and start petting the wild animal?" Connor asks.

"Feel his fur!" I exclaim. "It's so soft!"

The wolf lets out a pleased rumble as I ruffle his neck and head fur, then flops onto his back as I start rubbing his stomach.

Some of the others rub the wolf as well, and I eventually fix myself a mug of hot chocolate. The mugs are enchanted so that they'll keep the drinks warm even with it being cold outside. Otherwise, they just look like plain white mugs.

I start building a snowman after petting the blizzard wolf (what Xander lets us know its species is called), and people start getting picked up. By the time Aunt Rachel arrives, it's only Xander and me left. He's turned me back to human by this point, so that I could get ready to go properly and not have to call him up to get turned back at some point. Or to suddenly revert back to human.

Xander's not sure how long his transformation spell lasts if he casts it, just that it'll last up to a week at most depending on the skill of the caster. That's apparently a hard limit to the spell, which is kind of a shame.

Being able to permanently transform would be amazing!

"Bye, Xander!" I tell him as he gives me a hug. "Have a good afternoon!"

"Bye," Xander tells me as I return the hug. "Thanks for coming. I liked having you here."

"Thanks for inviting me," I tell him. "It was fun! And the donuts were awesome!"

With our goodbyes given, I leave with Aunt Rachel.

"How'd it go?" Aunt Rachel asks as she drives us home.

"Great!" I answer. "There was a lot of different stuff! The guys from Autumn Hills made a surprise visit out here, so the group was waaaaaaaaay bigger than I expected! They even joined us for the zoo trip!"

I tell Aunt Rachel about the field trip and the party, though she gets a little concerned about the transformation spell. Only because it was Xander who did it and he was given permission by Adrian King does she relax a little.

There's zero chance his great-grandfather would allow him to use it on someone else unless it was safe to do so. Xander also wouldn't lie about being allowed to use it on others.

When we arrive at the house, I head down to the basement. It's time for me to do my laundry so I don't just put my dirty clothes from yesterday and the sleepover away, I get a load in the washer and turn it on. Before doing that, though, I put the magic lamp on the shelf with my animal skulls.

It's the first enchanted item I ever made. There's no way I'm not going to display it!

With the magic lamp set up and a load in the washer, I return to the rec room and open up the party bag from Xander. It has a bag of stained glass cookies, a bracelet with a bunch of wooden beads on it, each one decorated with a different animal (probably something he bought or commissioned but still cool), a hard-sided water bottle, a small box with frosted sugar cookie bars, and a bag with gummy bears.

I snicker upon seeing the gummy bears. They're all green ones, which is totally like Xander to do. When I give one a try, it's lime-flavored, so they're all probably lime-flavored. Xander tends to be pretty uniform.

The bracelet is added to my left wrist as soon as I see it, and I snack on the cookies as I heat up leftover wings from Thursday. Aunt Rachel ordered wings then because she didn't feel like cooking. Why that mattered, I don't know as I'm the one who normally cooks now.

Maybe she was just craving wings?

Once they're ready, I start to head to my room to play the MMO. Jack's the only teammate online right now.

"Hey, man!" He greets me once I join. "Was getting ready to harvest some hides for an upgrade to my bear, wanna join?"

"Sure!" I say. "No Sara or Grace?"

"Sara was on a little bit ago," he tells me. "But there was a family emergency, so she had to run. As for Grace… well, she ain't been around much lately. Ain't sure what's been up with her."

Sara said the same thing last time I talked with her. It has us all a little concerned, but Grace hasn't said anything to us. She could just be busy with life, even more so than me. I'm apparently the only thirteen-year-old in the group – they're all around sixteen or so.

Which is not what I was expecting. Until I met Jack in-person, I thought he was close to my age. Then I found out they were all about the same age, they just happened to start playing this game at around the same time as me.

"Alright," I say as he messages the location to head to. "I'll join up with you! I've got a few things I need we can probably do at the same time."

"Cool!" He says. "How'd the hangout go? Bo said you weren't gonna know he was comin' 'till he showed up."

"It was fun!" I answer. "And yeah, Xander actually hit me with that surprise! It was evident he wasn't happy about surprising me, but it was still cool!"

"My little bro wasn't too much of a pain in the ass, was he?"

"Nah," I answer. "He's pretty cool. We were playing in the pool and he was using water magics to launch me a few times, which was awesome! Then Carter went and started showing off his own water magics…"

We talk for awhile as we meet up and hang out, and Bo apparently gets home during that time as I can hear him talking in the background. Jack must not have turned on the filter to block out other sounds, since I already know about his brother.

Once Bo finishes saying whatever it was he was telling Jack, we return to playing until there's a knock on my bedroom door.

"Hold on," I say. "Aunt Rachel just knocked."

Which is weird, because she usually texts me, but… oh, my phone's on the coffee table in the rec room, isn't it?

"Alright!"

I mute my mic and move my headphones back.

"Yes?" I say loudly enough for her to hear.

"Hey, S.G.," Mr. Fuller says through the door. "They finally had your stuff ready for pickup at the processing facility so I brought it over. Rachel and I are heading to get something eat in a few as well, if you want to come along."

I pull off my headphones and head to my door and open it. Mr. Fuller's holding a large box in his hands, which I'm assuming is the non-perishable stuff I'm keeping from the hunt.

"I won't get paid again for about a week," I tell him. "So I'll just fix something. We've got stuff for sandwiches, I think."

"On me," he offers me the box. "The pelts, skulls, and antlers you wanted to keep are in here."

"Cool!" I accept the box. "And you'll pay for me?"

"Of course," he reaches over and ruffles my hair. "If I'm paying for my girlfriend, I'm paying for her nephew as well, if he comes with us."

"Do you have any idea how long it took me to get my hair to look perfect?"

"Considering its state before I touched it?" He snorts. "You didn't even run your fingers through it after pulling off your hat."

"Shh!"

Mr. Fuller laughs.

"Can I put this stuff up before getting ready?" I ask.

"Want some help?" He asks.

"Uh…" I look at the shelf for my hunting loot. "Sure. Oh. I might not have enough space."

"No worries," he says. "We can work on that after taking you get the meat put away."

"Alright!" I set the box down. "Is the jerky here?"

"Of course," he chuckles. "Come on."

I put the box down, then let Jack know I'm heading out before I head to a safe place to leave the game.

Mr. Fuller and I move over to my freezer, where a cooler with two boxes on top of it wait for us. One of those boxes…

"I didn't order a shelf?"

"I figured you might need a new one," he chuckles. "Those antlers are fairly large on their own. We can set it up after taking care of the meat."

"Alright!"

The top box has the jerky in it, the hare jerky and deer jerky I asked for from the hunts. There's a package of plain of each, as well as one seasoned hare jerky package and a few seasoned deer jerky pages. The deer jerky has a few different flavors I picked based on the recommendations at the shop. Those are the flavors they said would taste best for gemstream deer jerky.

They all taste good.

The rest of the meat gets put into my freezer. There's some of the fowl, some from the hares, and some from the deer. I did sell most of the stuff from my shares, but there's still plenty of meat. This should last a month or so, especially if Mr. Fuller helps me with learning how to cook it like he did the antelope meat.

"I'll do my best," he chuckles. "Though I may need some help as I've been informed that meat from animals with magic can have different flavor profiles even normal people can detect. Cooking them can be a little bit different."

We discovered they didn't taste the same for the lightstep hares as normal hares (according to Mr. Fuller) and he said he'd ask one of his buddies who hunts magic beasts if he knew why. I guess that's it.

It doesn't "taste super good", as Xander would say, since I don't have a high amount of mana. The ordinary flavor of a magic beast differing slightly from an ordinary beast makes sense. I mean, chickens and turkeys are both birds but they taste different, so why wouldn't a chicken which can summon fire?

"Alright!" I say. "Do you wanna try some of the jerky?"

"I got some from the hunt shares," he chuckles. "Thanks, though. Let's get your new shelf put in."

Mr. Fuller and I do that, setting it below the first one. The stuff from the top shelf is moved down to the bottom shelf, and I display the antlers and gemstream buck skull on the center of the upper shelf. The other bones I kept from the buck are placed around it, and I add the two hare skulls and sole bird skull to the lower shelf.

"That's a neat light," Mr. Fuller says. "Where'd you get it? Since it says 'Sig', I'm assuming you got it custom-made?"

"Made it myself!" I thump my chest. "It was something we all did at the sleepover! Xander taught us how to do a super simple magic lamp! And he had a pen we could use to write on the cubes which would be visible through the glow but not affect it otherwise!"

"Can I see it?"

"Sure!" I answer.

Mr. Fuller picks up the lamp and examines it, turning it over in his hands.

"So it's on at all times?"

"No," I answer. "Only if I tell it to be. And any part of it which is covered by a solid object – liquids and normal inks don't count – doesn't glow. It's an enchantment, but I can use it like a magitech lamp, sort of. Taps turn it on and off, and I can even turn on or off specific sides instead of the whole thing."

"Neat," he returns it to the shelf, and I adjust it so the signature is facing my computer. "You coming with us?"

"Yeah!" I answer. "Lemme get dressed real quick!"

"Don't rush," he chuckles. "Make sure your shirt's on right."

"Aye-aye, Captain!"

[Luke – 13 years]

Parker and I are alone in the theater right now. Xavier took Seph home (Parker still doesn't know Seph's poor) and Tyler's dad wanted him at the hotel for awhile. Chances are good his dad was wanting to make sure the sleepover with a bunch of others was fine since it's probably Tyler's first time at something like that. He'll be back this evening, so I know it's nothing serious.

Since it's just Parker and me and we have some private time, there's something I want to ask my sort-of friend. There wasn't a chance I was going to ruin the mood of the party after I looked something up online, but that's not a concern right now.

Parker and I are sort-of friends again, but not enough I don't mind dampening the mood for something like this. If he has an issue with the questions, he can leave.

"Hey, Parker?" I pause the game after saving at an obvious pre-boss save point.

"Yeah?"

"Something Xander said last night was weird."

"He says a lot of weird things," Parker rolls his eyes. "Don't we just roll with it?"

"Usually," I say. "But it was about the care packages."

Parker's playful smile fades a little.

"Luke-"

"I looked up what kind of sickness would make someone not be allowed to receive things with springs in them," I tell him. "And everything I found said it wasn't a sickness."

"Luke…"

"It said that's a restriction for someone under suicide watch," I say. "They can use the spring to cut themselves so it's not allowed. You weren't just sick, were you?"

"No," he mumbles, his gaze focused downward. "Look… it was my fault. I understand that. I just… didn't know how to handle getting dumped as a friend. You were my first real friend. And I was still dealing with shit from Greg and some of the others. And I just… didn't handle things well. It was a hospital, I guess Xander just didn't look up what kind. They kept me for a couple of months and put me through a lot of therapy. Not medicated. And I have to see a therapist every week for awhile, and open up and be honest with them. It's one of the conditions for me being out. They're still concerned but… I don't feel like I'll try again."

"Wait," I feel my eyes widen. "You didn't just feel suicidal, you tried it?"

"And not in the way that would get me noticed," he sinks down in his seat a little. "Not the kind where someone could just… walk in. The only reason I got caught was 'cause Dad came home early to surprise me and see about tossing a ball around or something."

Whatever god was looking out for Parker that day, thank you. No wonder his parents are being more strict with him right now, but accept things if I ask. They don't know what he's really planning if he asks to go out and do stuff. If I ask, though, they know that he'll be with me.

"Well," I reach over and put an arm across his shoulders, pulling him closer to me. "I'm glad you failed."

"Me, too," his voice is really quiet.

"If you ever feel that way again," I tell him. "Just come over, alright? I know things that'll really make you feel alive."

"Like what?"

"Let's hope you never find out!" I grin at him. "Let's get back to playing! How many tries do you think it'll take for me to beat the boss?"

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