Chapter 301: [4.119] They Synchronize Their Harassment Schedules
I read it twice. Then a third time.
Then I folded the page carefully and tucked it into my wallet, behind the faded photo of Iris eating ice cream that I’d carried since she was ten years old.
Two items in my wallet now. Two people worth protecting.
The numbers were getting bigger. The old Isaiah would have found that terrifying.
The current Isaiah found it terrifying too.
But also, somehow, worth it.
Monday morning arrived with the particular cruelty that only November in Philadelphia could produce. Cold rain, gray skies, and a wind that found every gap in my jacket like a pickpocket with something to prove.
I dropped Iris at school, watched her disappear through the entrance with Gerald’s stuffed horn poking out of her backpack like a periscope, then pointed the Lexus toward Manhattan. The commute took two hours and twelve minutes, which was actually decent for a Monday. I used the time to review Vivienne’s notes through the car’s Bluetooth, her typed voice reading aloud the clinical breakdown of her own mother like a corporate autopsy.
At Hartwell, the usual Monday chaos greeted me. Students clustered in hallways comparing weekend stories, teachers shuffled toward classrooms with coffee cups the size of their heads, and Mr. Patterson’s voice echoed from the faculty lounge, still ranting about the festival’s profit margins to anyone who’d listen. The man had won his trophy. The engraved nameplate already sat on his desk, polished to a shine that bordered on religious devotion.
I made it to homeroom with four minutes to spare, which felt like a luxury. Felix materialized beside me almost immediately, carrying what appeared to be a breakfast burrito the size of his forearm.
"You look alive. Barely, but alive." He offered the burrito. "Sustenance?"
"I ate."
"You say that, but you always say that, and you’re always lying." He thrust the burrito closer. "Protein, Angelo. Brain fuel. You have a billionaire to fight on Thursday and your biceps look like they’ve given up on life."
I took the burrito. It was still warm.
"Also," Felix continued, sliding into his desk with the casual grace of someone who’d never worried about a bill in his life, "the Valentine sisters just pulled into the parking lot in a black Range Rover that I’m pretty sure costs more than this building, and they’re all wearing identical sunglasses, which makes them look like a K-pop group arriving at an airport. Students are already filming."
I bit into the burrito and said nothing.
"I’m just reporting facts. As your intelligence officer and emotional support friend."
"You’re neither of those things."
"I’ve self-appointed. It’s a done deal."
The homeroom door opened. Two of the four sisters entered with a kind of synchronized energy that made the room go quiet in stages, like a wave passing through the student body. Harlow came first, her hair in twin tails with tiny bat clips leftover from the festival, her expression so bright it practically required SPF protection. Behind her, Cassidy stalked in with her uniform in its usual state of creative destruction: skirt hiked, tie hanging like a noose that had given up on its purpose, shirt untucked on one side with the collar popped in a way that somehow looked deliberate rather than sloppy.
Harlow spotted me and her entire body language shifted, her trajectory bending toward my desk with gravitational inevitability. Cassidy’s eyes found me half a second later, her jaw doing that thing where it tightened and relaxed in rapid succession, the tell she didn’t know she had, the one that meant she was fighting the urge to say something she’d regret.
"ASSISTANT-KUN." Harlow slid into the empty desk beside mine with all the subtlety of a golden retriever discovering its owner had returned from a two-week vacation. "You’re alive! You’re here! You’re eating a real breakfast! This is the best Monday in recorded history!"
"It’s a burrito."
"I can see that. I have functional eyes." She leaned closer, her strawberry perfume filling the space between us, and lowered her voice to what she clearly believed was a whisper but what actually registered at a volume that three surrounding desks could comfortably hear. "Did you read Vivienne’s notes?"
"Yes."
"All of them? Even the appendix?"
"Even the appendix."
Harlow’s expression softened into something that made my chest do the inconvenient clenching thing that had become disturbingly familiar over the past month. She reached into her bag, an oversized tote covered in enamel pins and anime keychains, and produced a small container wrapped in pink tissue paper.
"Cookies. White chocolate macadamia. I won the argument with Cassidy." She placed the container on my desk with ceremonial gravity. "For your sister, too. I made extra."
I opened my mouth to thank her, but Cassidy appeared over Harlow’s shoulder like a thunderhead that had been personally offended by clear skies.
"Those cookies taste like sand mixed with optimism and I stand by that assessment." Cassidy dropped into a chair two desks over, propping her combat boots on the seat in front of her. Her purple eyes fixed on me with the intensity of a laser sight on a sniper rifle. "You look terrible."
"Good morning to you too."
"It’s not a good morning. It’s a Monday. Mondays don’t get to be good. That’s false advertising." She pulled out her phone, scrolled for approximately two seconds, then shoved it back into her pocket like the device had personally offended her. "Did you study for my test?"
"Your test isn’t until Wednesday."
"So you haven’t studied."
"Cassidy, it’s YOUR test. YOU study for it."
"I am studying." She jabbed a finger toward me. "You’re part of my study strategy. Your existence is a study aid. Deal with it."
Felix watched this exchange with the glazed expression of someone witnessing a car accident in slow motion, his half-eaten burrito suspended in midair.
"This," Felix whispered to me as Cassidy turned to argue with a classmate who’d accidentally brushed her backpack, "is what happens when you date four people who share a face. They synchronize their harassment schedules."
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