The Marvels

Ep. 35 | Ready or Not

It was Amber's birthday. She was kneeling at her locker, shoving in the cupcakes she'd brought to eat during lunch, and after school, she would start repainting her wall. Vidya was supposed to be there; she'd been there every year since they were eight, but today, she would have to break that tradition.

Vidya stood behind her, nervous. It took everything in her not to chicken out and run away. This was supposed to be the easy part. If she felt this guilty now, then the hard part was going to kill her.

Amber glanced up. "I think you accidentally blocked me," she said, waving her phone around. "My texts aren't going through."

"It wasn't an accident, and happy birthday!"

Amber stood up and raised an eyebrow. "What?"

And, right on time, the homeroom bell rang. "I'll tell you at lunch," Vidya said, already backpedaling away.

Amber just shrugged, nodded, and left. Vidya turned to hurry to homeroom, her heart pounding. The events were set in motion: she couldn't chicken out now that Amber was expecting to be told something serious. That fact was the only thing keeping her from faking sick and leaving school entirely to avoid the inevitable.

Lunch period came too slowly. Vidya thought it would come too quickly, but some part of her must've understood that this needed to be done, and the sooner, the better. Once this was all over—however long it would take—things would go back to normal.

Except the hard part. That was going to be permanent.

When Amber set down her lunch tray and the cupcakes, Vidya handed over her present: a Canada candle and a bracelet. Amber accepted them graciously but not without a questioning twist of her face. They never gave birthday gifts in the school cafeteria, it was always at one of their houses or at a restaurant or something.

Amber cleared her throat. "So, what's going on?"

"You know those friends of mine?" Vidya asked, peeling the wrapper off her cupcake. "The heroes with the greenhouse?"

"David and Aisha?"

Vidya nodded. "Mm hmm." She took a deep breath and said, "Aisha's dead."

Amber made a noise, and her cheeks inflated like she was about to spit out all the food in her mouth. She spent half a minute chewing and swallowing with a cough before managing to ask, "What? Are you serious?"

"Check the Huntington Prep website." Vidya distracted herself with the cupcake as she waited.

Amber pulled up the website on her phone and scrolled down their front page. "We mourn the loss of our brilliant student, Aisha Hadid," she read aloud. She scrolled through the page three more times and then looked up. "It doesn't say how she died. What happened?"

"She was murdered," Vidya whispered, "right in front of me."

Amber turned a little green and leaned in, resting her chin on her hands. "By who?"

Vidya was suddenly back in the alley, watching as her friend was cut into pieces and left behind. The cafeteria noise muddled into one faraway, unidentifiable sound, and it took her a moment to return to the present and shake away the memory.

"I shouldn't tell you that," Vidya said. "Not yet."

Amber opened her mouth to protest, but she sighed and nodded.

"I learned something about Celestro," Vidya said quietly. "I knew they weren't the good guys everything thinks they are, but, it turns out...they might even be the bad guys. David and I are trying to do something about it, and it could be dangerous. For your own safety, I think it's best that we keep our distance. I don't call you, you don't call me, we don't go to each other's houses, and we don't even talk in school. As far as anyone can tell, we're just not friends."