Ryder was awoken by the sounds of conversation next to his room, a group of male voices speaking in hushed tones. It was not unusual in his house for there to be strange men huddled together, especially at this early of an hour, but his father had been doubling security recently. His paranoia was growing more intense as the election drew near.

Ryder swallowed, his throat dry. He reached for his phone on the nightstand, intending to check the time- before remembering that Jane had slipped it from his pocket the night before.

Jane.

Her pale face and tentative smile breezed through his mind like a lazy dream. Positively adorable. He grinned sleepily, already planning the best way to approach her at school today.

Yes, she’d taken his phone, and yes, she’d likely gone through everything on it already, but he wasn’t worried. She would find that he hid nothing from her. She would understand that, by the mere act of telling her the truth, he had turned his own life upside down, and that it was one push away from imploding entirely. He had truly hidden nothing from her.

Almost nothing, at the least. His father’s warning from the night before echoed in his ears. There was nowhere he couldn’t find Ryder, he’d said.

Ryder rolled onto his back, the covers tangling between his legs. Morning sunlight peeked through the blinds over his window, illuminating the trophies above his cabinet.

It was going to be a long day, he thought. A long day of reining in Beatrice’s destructive tendencies, all the more enabled by that group of hers. A long day of trying to read Jane’s carefully concealed expressions.

With a groan, he stretched, and pulled himself upright. The sheet fell away, pooling at his side. The sun blinded him momentarily as it beamed into his eyes.

It was going to be a long day.

Beatrice, as she always did, found him within moments. He still had no idea how she could seek him out with such accuracy, and it disturbed him greatly. The thought that someone like Beatrice could predict his movements so well was not a pleasant one.

“What’s the excuse this time, Ryd?” Beatrice asked, playfully bumping her shoulder into him.

Ryder glanced down at her, one hand smoothing his hair back. “Excuse?”

“You didn’t reply. Again. Busy with your new girl pal?” Beatrice could barely hide the jealousy and curiosity in her voice. It repulsed Ryder.

He remembered the way she had acted when they had been together. The way she hissed at any girl that came even remotely close to Ryder. Her insecurity, alongside how badly she’d tried to control him, had ultimately lead to the end of their relationship. Breaking up was one of the best things to ever happen to Ryder.

“Lost my phone,” Ryder said, pulling his arm away from her.

She frowned at the loss of contact, but changed the topic. “So. Your dad told me about the mole problem. He wants us to start asking around.”

Ryder had begun walking to his first class, bag slung over one shoulder. He shrugged the other, feigning disinterest. “My father’s always paranoid. You know that.”

Beatrice skipped in front of him, forcing him to stop. She was cornering him. It was a talent of hers, cornering people. “Why won’t you tell me about the girl you’re seeing?”

Ryder tried to step around her, but Beatrice simply matched his movement. She was far more agile than her feminine appearance showed, and unless Ryder wanted to knock over the most popular girl in the school, he wouldn’t be able to get past her.

“Because,” Ryder said, patiently, “nothing happened. It was one date.”

Beatrice was still staring up at him expectantly. Ryder hated that. Hated how she could read him like nobody else could. He had found it charming, once upon a time.

“… We did kiss.” He looked away from her, eyes resting on a drama club poster.

“Aha!” Beatrice exclaimed, as if she had discovered something monumentally important. Her teeth were bared in a sly smile, white bone concealing the emotional agony she was in. “Was she as good as me? Huh? Come on, tell me.”

Ryder’s eyes snapped back to Beatrice, his brow furrowing. “I’m not going to have this conversation with you.”

The impish smile grew stiff on Beatrice’s face, her expression turning cold. Ryder felt a sense of relief. At last, here were her true colors. She hid them so well that he often forgot they even existed.

“Alright, dude. Fine. All business it is,” she said. “You handle your groupies on the football team, I’ll start with that new girl with the ugly dye job. She’s up to something, I just know it.”

This marred Ryder’s sense of relief somewhat. “New girl? You mean Jane?”

Beatrice seemed surprised that Ryder knew her name. “Jane, huh? We call her beanstalk. Because she’s like-”

“Yeah. Skinny. Right.” Ryder’s patience with Beatrice was wearing thin. “I’ll talk to her instead. Leave it to me.”

She was searching his expression again, suspicious. Ryder glared back at her, refusing to yield. At last, she gave up with a dramatic sigh.

“Fi-i-i-ine. Do what you want, Ryd,” she said, throwing her hands up as she turned on her heel.

Ryder watched her walk away, a pair of girls seeming to materialize from thin air beside her. They followed her like bodyguards, one at each flank.

He needed to find Jane before Beatrice tried to corner her once more. He just didn’t know where to start.

In truth, he had been watching out for Jane since she had first enrolled in Alexander high. She was remarkably hard to find if she didn’t want to be, and she often cut classes, further solidifying her invisibility amongst the hordes of students, most of which wanted Ryder’s attention.

His eyes were darting every which way, searching for Jane’s shock of red hair. Much to his disappointment, he did not spot her.

But he knew someone who perhaps could.

The art room was divided into two halves, with the left side being filled from wall to wall by cabinets and other forms of containers, positively overflowing with various art supplies. The right side was dominated by several painting canvases set upon wooden stands, only one of which held a half-finished painting. It vaguely resembled some of the graffiti tagging Ryder had seen around the town.

“…she got it instead? That might make him suspicious. Yeah, I’ll do my best to smooth it over.” It seemed Victoria hadn’t heard him knocking, as he found her leaning out the window, deep in a conversation over the phone. Her hair shone under the sunlight as it  flooded the room, which was otherwise deep in shadow.

Ryder cleared his throat to alert her of his presence. He was examining the graffiti-painting with interest, eyes tracing the haphazard lines and exaggerated circles. It appeared to be some sort of message in a hard-to-read font, punctuated by a smiling pistol in one corner.

An artist’s signature, Ryder guessed.

Victoria’s piercing glinted while she turned, her thumb automatically ending the call. The red button on her screen returned to its original gray color as it disconnected.

“Hey there, superman,” she said. She flashed a lazy smile at Ryder, pocketing the phone.

“Hey,” Ryder replied, “haven’t seen you since the nurse’s office.”

Victoria blinked, appearing to have entirely forgotten about her injury only a few days prior. “What?”

“You know… the thing? With that guy in the street?” Ryder was surprised. It certainly hadn’t been a forgettable moment for him.

“Huh? Oh! Yeah! Right.” Victoria giggled, as if amused by her own forgetfulness. “Thanks again for saving us, by the way.”

“Well, I was there to check up on Jane anyway,” said Ryder, a humble shrug upon his shoulders.

Victoria’s phone was buzzing again, audible in the silence of the art room. She ignored it. The curtains around the open window shifted, a light breeze drifting through them.

“How’d the date go? With Jane?” Victoria approached the canvas next to Ryder, and he stepped out of the way obligingly.

“You know about that?”

She picked up a cardboard stencil, the hole in the shape of a misshapen letter ‘A’.

“Jane’s my best friend,” she said. “We tell each other everything. Well, almost everything.”

Ryder wasn’t sure what to make of that information. Victoria’s back was turned to him, and he could make out the outline of a tattoo stretching around her hip. It vaguely resembled the artist tag on the canvas.

“Which means, superman-” Victoria turned incrementally, meeting Ryder’s eye, “-if you hurt her, I’m gonna mess you up.”

Ryder raised one hand to smooth his hair. “Message received. I’m doing my best. I promise.”

Victoria narrowed her eyes in a comical display of suspiciousness, then broke into a grin. Ryder returned it in kind.

Even if they were from entirely different circles and backgrounds, Ryder found that he liked her. Victoria seemed above such things. She befriended who she befriended, and did what she wished.

Ryder could only imagine what he would do if he had that sort of freedom.

“That’s why I’m here, honestly. I’m looking for Jane.”

Victoria was pressing one paint-stained finger against the stencil, lining it up with the other letters on the canvas. “Wow, didn’t come to check on the girl you saved, huh? Does Jane know you’re looking for her?”

Ryder shrugged, though she couldn’t see him. Her eyes remained glued to the canvas. “I hope so. I just wanna see her again, that’s all.”

“Alright, I’ll shoot her a text, then. She’ll find you. If she wants to see you, that is,” Victoria said.

“What? Find me? How’s she gonna do that?” he asked.

Victoria didn’t reply. Off to her side, Ryder could see a small smile turning a corner of her lip up.

He paused, still curious, but sensed that she wouldn’t divulge any further information. All he could do was trust her.

Ryder turned on his heel, confused but resigned. “Well, thanks, Victoria. I guess I’ll just wait around for her.”

He had maneuvered around the easels and was half way out the door when Victoria called to him. “Ryder,” she said, back towards the canvas.

Ryder swiveled his head in her direction. The image of a sunlit Victoria, dressed in her daring clothes, surrounded by the white squares of canvas, left an impression on him. “Yeah?”

Her voice was different, he noticed. None of the air-headed nonchalance was audible in her tone. “Consider the consequences of the things you do. People feel real pain. It isn’t a joke.”

Ryder blinked, perplexed by the cryptic message. “Uh… what? If this is about Jane, I swear I’ll never-”

She laughed awkwardly, abruptly cutting him off. She had smeared paint on her forehead as she scratched it. “I know, I know. I got too real there for a sec’. Consider it just a BFF’s warning.”

Ryder nodded, slowly, though he still did not understand. “Okay, then. A BFF’s warning. I guess I’ll see you around, Victoria.”

“See ya’, superman,” she said, watching as he left.