Anarchy

V

CHAPTER 5,
"A TEAR."

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❝In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.❞

— Sir Francis Bacon

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"Okay... It says that we still need one tear," Mal tapped her finger on the left page in her spell book. "But I never cry," she sighed dramatically.

"Easy. Let's just chop up this onion," Carlos plucked an onion out of the crate next to him and held it up.

"No!" Mal threw her hands up in the air.

Talk about an over-reaction, Anna thought dismissively. Maybe she's on her period.

The delinquents were in the school's student kitchen, fixated on making a cookie for Prince Ben to eat. One bite, and he would be head-over-heels for Mal, whose job it was to rip the wand from Fairy Godmother's coddling grip while her friends distracted the room.

"This potion says we need one sad tear, and this potion gets the best review, so we have to follow it exactly," she continued to stir the spoon around the bowl, despite the fact that it was already thoroughly mixed.

"A tear's a tear," Jay shrugged.

"That's not true, Jay," Evie began listing off some scientific fact, and Anna rolled her dark eyes.

It was then that Loni strolled in, long curls brushing her chest and her face illumined with that pesky, eternal optimism, "There you are, Mal! All the girls want you to do their hair."

Mal quickly covered up her spell book with a dish towel and chortled.

"Midnight snack, huh?" she walked up to the counter and dipped her finger into the cookie batter, tasting it.

"Do you — uh — feel any different?" Mal asked her, nervous that her internal protest was showing.

"No," Loni shrugged, "but it could use some chips."

"Chips?" she asked in confusion.

Anna's brows furrowed, and she cast a questioning gaze on Evie, whose shrug sent a wave of nerves through her friend. Some of the ingredients for that batter weren't easy to find, and the werewolf worried that Loni might mess it up and they would have to start over.

"Only the most important food group," Loni grabbed some chocolate chips and sprinkled them in, "Didn't your moms ever teach you this when you were a kid? You never baked cookies with her?" She continued, "Like, when you were sad and she'd pull them right from the oven with a big old glass of milk and put everything into perspective?"

Anna's jawline hardened with this ripple of sadness. She wasn't used to these emotions, at least not these emotions being so incredibly intense. Wolf genes suck, she thought.

She had grown up without a word from her mother. Whenever she asked her father, he would overreact, yelling about how she was a spoiled cretin for thinking he wasn't enough for her. Amongst other more physically violent responses. Eventually, Anna'd just stopped asking, more to her own safety than lack of curiosity. She looked back up at Loni with glossy, pained eyes, and apparently, so did everyone else.

"Why are you all looking at me like that?"

Mal's lips rested heavy in a frown as she stirred the chocolate chips. "It's just different where we're from," she declared.

"Yeah, I know," she nodded, turning her head toward the ground as if to stow this new information inside of her shoes. "I just thought even villains love their kids."

All Anna could smell was the low-hanging cloud of sad fog in the kitchen as she saw something glisten on Loni's cheek.

"Oh..." the girl whimpered. "How terrible."

A tear.

Anna slid from her place on the counter and walked over, wrapping the girl in a hug. She was perfectly fine with taking one to her reputation for the team, if it meant that could get this over with and her father would spare her sister. It took everything she had not to feel it as she squeezed Loni.

She'd never relieved someone of a tear before, as that was never something she was interested in — or knew it was possible to pick-pocket. But one, swift hand brushed up and caught it on one glossy fingernail. Mal held the bowl under Anna's hand, and the tear rolled off and into the bowl.

As soon as Mal went back to her original position, Anna pulled back and returned to the other side of the room, sliding back onto the counter and looking at her lap as her dark hair fell into her face. She sniffed, pretending to cry, when in reality, she was grinning behind the curtain of hair. Her laughs racked her like they were sobs, and as Loni left the room, Anna looked up with a gleam in her eye that would make The Devil and Daniel Webster both stop in their tracks. She went around and high-fived everyone before throwing the cookies into the oven and plopping back down to wait.

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