Periodical Cicadas – Chapter 14 (Patreon)

“School’s the other way, you know?” Audrey comments with characteristic concern for a newcomer getting twisted around in Lakewood’s urban jungle.

Or actual jungle.

Seriously, how do people stand all these trees just hanging around like teenagers in a convenience store’s parking lot? It’s quite clear they’re up to no good.

“She’s not going to school,” Noah, being Noah, explains to the audience.

“No shit, Sherlock. I just want her to tell us where we’re going before I let her keep dragging me around.”

“Ah. Sorry, I assumed a genuine worry, seeing as Broody’s new to the town and could’ve gotten lost—”

“I have perfect spatial awareness within a radius of two blocks. It’s almost impossible for me to get lost somewhere I’ve already been to,” I say, interrupting their mating ritual for no reason whatsoever.

None.

“That’s as impressive as it’s alarming,” Audrey comments. “Which is a sentence that fits you far too well, now that I think about it, but I can’t help but notice you still haven’t told me where we’re going.”

“To Emma’s house,” I say.

Which makes Audrey shut up immediately and—

Oh.

Yesterday.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid—

“Audrey, I’m sorry, I… do you… do you want to talk about it?” I tell the girl I last spoke to right before she fled from a pursuing Emma after Brooke’s misguided attempt at humor.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she says, rushing past me and straight to where we were headed.

“Hey!” I have to sprint to catch up to her and grab her shoulder—

And she smacks my hand off.

“Don’t. Don’t grab me from behind,” she says in a tone that’s utterly Audrey in how much barely restrained emotion there’s there, but not in what emotion is it, nor in it being directed at me, and I recoil, nursing my wrist, looking at her like…

Like I’m standing on the sidewalk of my best friend’s house, and she’s broken my world.

And… and her blue-green eyes are narrowed at me, and I just expect her to say something that will—

Thin arms wrap around my stomach, and a warm chest envelops my back.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Audrey’s always had anger issues. It’s not you, Taylor. It’s not you. You’re all right.”

His voice is… reassuring. Maybe reassuring enough for me not to panic at being held out of the blue, and Audrey’s looking at me with horror, and now she’s stepping forward, and…

And I’m trapped in a hug between two people.

And I want to be caustic about it. I want to joke about this not helping my bipanic in the slightest. I want to brush it off and pretend nothing that’s happening is at all important.

But… I’m being held.

By two people who say they care.

So I have to clench my eyes shut. I have to stop breathing. I have to recoil away from my swarm telling me precisely how Audrey and Noah’s arms are positioned around me, with his firm body behind me and Audrey’s softer one in front.

I have to then take in a single, shuddering breath that carries the comforting smell of warm leather and a hint of Audrey’s shampoo.

Blueberry.

I would’ve taken her for a ‘green apples’ scent girl.

“I’m all right,” I say.

“No, you aren’t. But it’s all right that you aren’t,” Noah says, being… both Noah and entirely un-Noah-like.

I can’t help but giggle, which, for some reason, makes Audrey give me an alarmed stare.

“I… I’m sorry,” she hesitatingly says. “I don’t like being touched when I’m… like that.”

She slowly pulls out of the hug, awkwardly patting my arms and looking at me with a sheepish, misshapen, apologetic smile that matches my own look of chastised embarrassment.

Then we just keep looking at one another, not knowing what to say or how to continue the conversation, and…

…

“You can let go already, Noah,” I say.

“Well, yes, I guess I could, but your hair smells very nice, and I don’t think I’ll have the chance to hug a girl from behind anytime in the near future, so I was hoping we could prolong a little bit this moment of emotional openness and physical intimacy.”

“… I’m going to guess you don’t realize just how creepy you just sounded.”

“He doesn’t,” Audrey points out with what I believe to be a relieved eye roll.

“Why would me holding a friend be creepy?” he asks. With actual confusion.

Because Noah.

“You’re a guy who, as you just pointed out, is hugging a girl from behind and not letting go at the slightest cue to do so after commenting on how her hair smells and his want of physical intimacy. This, to most, as you put it, ‘neurotypicals’ would imply something sexual in nature, as the clear implication is that you’re pressing my butt against your crotch after I’ve given you a hint about me maybe not wanting to do that in the middle of a street and in broad view of whoever happens to pass by.”

There’s a moment of distinctly un-Noah-like silence.

“Does this mean you’d be all right with doing this if there were no possible witnesses?” he asks.

And I bury my elbow into his soft, un-muscled stomach.

“See? See why I do it?” Audrey asks with a smug smile that shouldfill me with shame.

I adjust my messenger bag and very much do not acknowledge either the violent, possibly abusive not-quite-girlfriend, or the gasping boy bent over so low that his hair just brushed my butt.

…

Okay, now I’m bipanicking. This would’ve been a welcome distraction moments ago.

“Broody?” Audrey asks as I silently adjust my displaced messenger bag.

“I was going to ask you to have an open conversation about whether or not it’s okay for you to go to Emma’s place after I realized that I never learned how things ended yesterday. I was also going to apologize for not asking. Now I’m just going to walk ahead in silence and very much nottalk about Noah, if that’s all right with you,” I say before, without waiting for any answer, I do precisely what I said I would.

“Violence… is never the answer…” Noah gasps out.

“You’ve clearly never been on this side of the conversation, Virgin,” Bicurious—Audrey comments.

And I, very much focused on serious topics and goals and not the lingering feelings on my back and chest, march on.

***

“She’s inside. So’s Piper,” I comment.

“Maybe they haven’t heard the doorbell,” Audrey suggests.

“Yeah. Maybe,” I answer, trying to discern if there are any traces of blood slightly newer than the ones I walked in on in very recent memory.

“You could use your insects to look for emissions of carbon dioxide near their bodies to check whether they’re alive or paralyzed corpses,” Noah comments with alarming nonchalance for the possibility. “Isn’t that how mosquitoes locate prey?”

“Within a radius of thirty feet. Then individual odor comes into play,” I casually answer while making sure that, indeed, the clouds of carbon dioxide are thick and fresh enough that the actually moving girls in their kitchen must be very much alive and not elaborate displays of fleshy animatronics.

Of course, that discards the possibility that the killer has learned about my power and come up with some countermeasure for it.

“Just push it again, why don’t you—” Audrey, the pushiest one among us if we discount Noah and his demands for exhibitionistic behavior, reaches over my shoulder to do just that before I grab her wrist.

“Piper’s coming,” I say as the bigger of the two bodies moves toward the door.

“Huh. Didn’t know Emma had it in her,” Audrey answers.

To which both Noah and I tilt our heads in confusion—

“Oh! Wordplay. The insinuation of incest is hilarious due to the shock value of—ooph…”

My elbow slowly retracts from what clearly feels like a disappointing lack of a six-pack, and Audrey nods at me with approval that does fill me with shame.

“It’s too early for you three to pull out your routine,” Piper comments from the silently open door that would’ve made me jump out of my skin if I hadn’t been actively tracking her.

“It’s not my routine,” I say, going for a respectable jacket-lapel-straightening before I remember that Florida has robbed me of even that much basic human dignity as I’m forced to wear short sleeves. “It’s their routine; I’m just mingling with the locals.”

“Oh, I bet some mingling is definitely going on—”

“Careful there. Broody’s take on sexual harassment is slightly more violent than average. Not unwarranted, though.”

“I wasn’t sexually harassing her! We were both dressed!”

“… How you can be so smart and yet so dumb continues to astonish me, Virgin.”

“Isn’t calling him Virgin also sexual harassment?” Piper comments with what comes across as genuine curiosity.

I can feel the headache coming.

“Will the three of you stop being you?” I say in what’s definitely, very much warranted.

“And now you sound like my ex,” Piper mutters.

“What was that?” Emma says, coming from behind her older sister with a pensive look that seems more focused than the current interplay should warrant.

“Nothing! Your friends here came to offer you a veritable arsenal of weapons and information, and there are three of them, so you don’t even need to feel that awkward!”

“Piper, I’m going to put cayenne powder in your friggin’ lipstick—”

“Oh, feisty. I’m so proud of my adorable little sister!”

“Wait, how did you know about the weapons?” I ask.

And, suddenly, blessed silence assaults me on all fronts.

It’s a pity that it’s accompanied by four people staring at me in—in the following, alphabetical order—Audrey’s bafflement, Emma’s alarmed concern, Noah’s alarming enthusiasm, and Piper’s… let’s go with discombobulated blinking, but just because I’m feeling whimsical.

Seriously, do they coordinate these stunts or what?

***

“So. Weapons,” the older sister says after having dragged us all to a kitchen table that still holds the cooling remnants of the kind of breakfast Dad sometimes tries to cook.

“This is a somewhat bigger circle of trust than I envisioned,” I mutter.

“Circle of trust? You?” Audrey comments in astonishing rudeness.

“I’m a very trusting person, so far as you remain inside of my two-block murder radius,” I patiently explain to her.

“Should you go telling so many people about the limits on your power?” Noah asks with a concern that does some very weird things to the inside of my chest that I’m going to ruthlessly attribute to my wary stance on his approach to sexual harassment rather than to my memory of it and his firm chest against my back—

“Two blocks is not a specific distance. If the killer has kept an eye on me and discovered my powers, they pretty much already know my radius, as Emma already pointed out,” I say with a slight head tilt.

“That’s… true,” Emma hesitates to agree, a frown passing over a forehead so clear and smooth that each and every line of worry stands out like it was sculpted in marble.

…

Fuck you, bipanic.

“Endearing as the show of trust is, I’m guessing you just mean that the gathered people pretty much already know everything that you bring to the table?” Piper asks.

And… Well, yeah. That’s pretty much it.

“Nothing leaves this room. Nobody else—no Brooke, no Gustavo, no PRT agents—learns about me and my tricks,” I say as I plop my messenger back on top of a white-painted round table that has about as much rustic charm as their floral-themed sofa.

For a family who regularly puts down plastic tarps, they care quite a lot about the décor’s ambiance.

“Wait, did you go through my list—” Noah asks with a glint of dazzling enthusiasm that very much does not make me think about him handing me a sealed letter in a deserted school corridor—

“What did you do?” Audrey asks in a glacial tone.

“What? Why would I have done anything?” he answers with what’s most definitely not an endearing lack of self-awareness.

“Because Broody is blushing. You have the plague who walks blushing. Wait, is that a repeat of the Valentine’s incident—”

“We don’t talk about that! And, huh, now that you mention it—”

“As I was saying! Behold! The fruits of my unfettered sadism that I wouldn’t hesitate to inflict on anyone who pushed me too far too fast!” I say with a dramatic flourish just because I was feeling like it and not because I want to strangle a line of inquiry in its cradle like it was Baby Hitler and I was trying to solve an Empire-Eighty-Eight-themed moral dilemma.

“I somehow doubt it…” Piper mutters, showing without a shadow of a doubt that she knows nothing.

“Spice bottles? With sprayers?” Emma asks as she leans from the side of her sister to peer closer at the small things I’m arranging on her table by the side of a pottery jam funnel that I maybe shouldn’t be exposing to toxic substances.

“They’re filled with imported fire ants venom. It will cause excruciating pain and chemical burns. I don’t know how long it takes for it to lose potency after being exposed to open air, but it should last longer than formic acid, and I can offer refills on a regular basis—”

“How is this any better than mace?” Audrey asks.

“Because you won’t show up on a store’s camera buying mace, so, hopefully, the killer won’t come up with a countermeasure for a weapon she doesn’t know we have.”

“That’s… vicious,” Piper comments with what could be approval or wariness.

“Not the end of it, but this is the only thing I’ve come up with that you all can use without my powers helping out. Maybe I could plant weapons for me on your bodies, but that would only serve as a last resort attack of opportunity, so I’d rather focus on survivability, which is why thiscomes next,” I say, pulling out a square of fabric from the bag.

And ignoring all the looks I’m getting after my last comment about hiding weapons on people’s bodies, particularly the one coming from Noah.

At least work out! Give me something to justify my hormones going wild without having to get feelings involved!

Something other than piercing blue eyes, I mean. Those do not count.

For reasons.

“A square of—is that spider silk?!” he says, piercing blue eyes staring right at the piece of the thing whose reveal he just spoiled rather than, you know, deep into my own eyes.

… Stupid sexy Noah.

“Yes. Yes, it is. It should be more resilient than steel. I don’t know how that translates to stabbing, but the threads the killer uses should stop dead against this. I was hoping I could sneak into the PRT’s lab and check it just to be sure, but I also don’t know if the threads they recovered from the scene will have already deteriorated or something. Seems like something a Tinker would do.”

“I can visit Mom during her lunch break and test it for you,” Piper offers. “Set a degree of separation. If the killer’s focused on you, they may hack the cameras and see you checking their weapons, which would mean they would use other weapons, if they’re a typical Tinker at all.”

“I somehow doubt there’s anything typical about them. And… Yeah. It’s almost a certainty that they’ve hacked the PRT. They called my father yesterday,” I say, still feeling a bit unsure about trusting Pipper with this one job, no matter how much sense it makes for her to do so, because I wasn’t planning on her being a part of this conversation, and—

Four people are staring at me.

For once, the reactions are unanimous:

Sheer, unabated worry.

… I’m not feeling a warm thing on my chest at it. Really. It’s just heartburn.

Dad’s breakfasts are terrible like that.