Chapter 42: Chapter 42: Happiness
Chapter 42: Happiness
By the time Cyrus returned to the group’s station, the others had already washed the plates, wiped down the folding table, and stacked the utensils near the outdoor sink.
Owen looked up first. "Did you find what you dropped?"
"I found it," Cyrus said.
Owen tilted his head and checked behind him. "Did you run into Faye? She went after you because she said she had something to ask."
Cyrus kept his tone flat. "I didn’t run into her."
The words had barely landed before Faye came back from the tree line.
Her school skirt moved lightly around her knees, and her heavy bangs cast their usual shadow over the thick lenses of her glasses. She looked exactly like the quiet, mousy girl who sat in front of Cyrus every day, the kind of girl most classmates forgot unless a teacher called on her.
Only Cyrus knew that look was a shell.
Only Cyrus also knew that, a little while earlier, she had almost walked straight into the biggest secret he had.
Faye’s attention rested on him for longer than usual.
Cyrus felt that small pause like a draft slipping under a door. His face did not change. He had checked himself before returning. He had smoothed his hair down, reset the dark color, fixed his sleeves, and brushed the dust from the cuffs of his pants where they had dragged across the ground while he was stuck in that smaller body.
There should not be a single trace left.
Faye had no reason to connect the strange white-haired child in the woods to him.
There was no reason for that connection to exist.
Audra watched the exchange from the other side of the table.
The pause had been small enough that most people would have missed it. Owen was already distracted by the cleaned dishes. Iris was looking through the activity handout. Even the teacher nearby was more interested in making sure no one had left the cooking station a disaster.
Audra did not miss it.
Cyrus had left first. Faye had followed. Both had come back separately. Now Faye was looking at him in a way that was not obvious, but also not completely casual.
Audra’s fingers tightened around the paper napkin she had been folding.
By any reasonable standard, Cyrus should have been paying attention to her.
She had cooked. She had helped make the curry. She had handled herself well the entire afternoon. She had even avoided drawing extra attention to him, which was considerate of her, whether he understood that or not.
Yet the person he seemed to have some private little thread with was Faye Larkin.
A girl who spent most of the school day hiding behind her hair and glasses.
A girl who looked like she had been built out of silence, old books, and the back row of a classroom.
Audra glanced at Faye again, then at Cyrus.
She could be patient.
She had never been the kind of person who quit because one problem refused to solve itself on the first try.
A sharp burst of feedback squealed from the portable speaker near the instructor’s table. Several students groaned and covered their ears.
The chef-instructor raised his megaphone and shouted across the pavilion. "Food scraps go in the compost bins, and all trash goes in the marked cans. Do not leave your station looking like raccoons had dinner here. Everybody heard that, right?"
A messy chorus of replies rose from the students.
Cyrus looked at the bags by their station and stood before anyone else could speak.
"I’ll take care of the trash."
He had eaten the food, run off halfway through cleanup, and returned after everyone else had finished washing dishes. If he did nothing now, he would look less like a classmate and more like a raccoon who had learned how to wear a uniform.
That felt unfair to raccoons, who at least had the excuse of being raccoons.
Cyrus picked up the heavier bag.
Beside him, Faye quietly took the smaller one.
She gave him a small nod, indicating that she would go too.
Cyrus looked at her, then at the crowded walkway leading toward the disposal area. Students were moving back and forth in groups, laughing, complaining, comparing food, and sneaking bites from whatever leftovers they had managed to protect.
There were too many witnesses for anything strange to happen.
He followed her.
Neither of them spoke at first.
They walked through the warm outdoor air, past a table where two girls were arguing over whether their pasta had been undercooked or "artistically firm," and past another group whose dish had somehow become a smoky pile of vegetables with one heroic sausage buried in the middle.
The compost and trash station stood near the edge of the pavilion, under a small roof. Three bins were lined up with bright labels taped to the lids.
Cyrus lifted his bag toward the nearest one.
Faye pointed to the bin beside it. "Food scraps go in that one."
Cyrus adjusted without arguing. "Thanks for catching that."
"It’s easy to mix them up."
They threw the bags away and started back.
Faye walked half a step ahead of him, close enough to speak without raising her voice, far enough that they did not look too familiar. Her posture was careful. Her hands were folded lightly in front of her after she finished with the bag.
They were almost back within sight of their station when she finally spoke.
"Cyrus."
"What is it?"
She slowed and turned toward him.
The lenses of her glasses reflected the late-afternoon light, hiding her eyes for a breath. Then she angled her face down slightly, and he saw the hesitance there.
"Would you want to come over again when you have time?"
Cyrus did not answer right away.
Faye continued, softer this time. "Miles keeps asking if you can play games with him again. Lena mentioned you too. If it doesn’t bother you, you could stay for dinner."
That changed the calculation.
Playing games with Miles and getting dinner at Faye’s house were two separate benefits, and both were real.
Cyrus’s guard did not disappear, but it did shift to a more practical shelf in his mind. Faye’s house had a game console. Faye could cook. Faye had younger siblings, which meant the invitation had a believable excuse attached to it. Even if she wanted something, she did not seem to be moving with the same kind of pressure as the women who cornered him through keys, police authority, or food delivered to his apartment door.
Also, the food mattered.
"What do you usually eat at your place?" Cyrus asked.
Faye blinked behind the glasses, as if she had not expected that to be his first concern.
Then a small, genuine smile touched her mouth. "If Miles and Lena ask for something, I usually make it. I know a decent amount."
That answer carried confidence, not bragging.
Cyrus believed her.
"Then I don’t mind bothering you."
"You wouldn’t be bothering me."
The wind moved through the open field and tugged at Cyrus’s bangs. For a brief second, one of his eyes slipped into view beneath the dark strands.
Faye saw it.
She also heard him speak in a tone that was not warm in any obvious way, but was too sincere to be polite filler.
"If someone could eat your cooking every day, they would probably be very happy."
Faye stopped.
Cyrus had already turned his attention back toward the group, unaware of what the sentence had done.
To him, it was a practical statement.
A person who could eat good food every day was obviously living well. That person had solved one of life’s major problems. Rent, medicine, and sleep were still issues, but meals like today’s curry could make a person feel that survival had room for enjoyment.
Faye did not seem to hear it that way.
Her head dipped. Her fingers pressed lightly against the edge of her sleeve. By the time Cyrus glanced back, she had already returned to her usual quiet expression.
"Let’s head back," she said.
"We should."
When they returned, Audra’s attention moved between them again.
Faye looked calm.
Cyrus looked calm.
That was exactly the problem.
If nothing had happened, there should have been no reason for them both to look so carefully normal.
The ride back to St. Alder was noisier than the ride out.
Several students were still arguing over whose group had made the best food. Someone near the front claimed the chef-instructor had given their station an approving nod, which quickly turned into three other people insisting the nod had meant pity. Owen spent part of the ride explaining to Iris that their curry had been better than half the pavilion’s food because at least it had been edible on purpose.
Cyrus sat by the window and let the conversation pass around him.
Outside, Grayhaven rolled by in sunlit pieces. Trees, old stone walls, narrow roads, glimpses of houses set back behind hedges, then the edge of campus again. The afternoon heat pressed against the bus windows, but the interior air-conditioning worked well enough to keep him from wanting to melt into the seat.
His activity reflection was going to be difficult.
What had he actually done?
He had gathered firewood.
He had eaten a very good curry.
He had underestimated spicy food so badly that his body betrayed him in public.
He had almost exposed his Frostborn form in the woods.
He had escaped a teacher with terrible instincts, a classmate with normal instincts, and his own poor judgment.
None of those seemed like things Ms. Hart wanted written in a school reflection.
Even so, the activity itself had been good.
It had been better than good, as long as he ignored the part where his freedom had nearly collapsed because he refused to surrender to a bowl of curry. Outdoor cooking was more interesting than class. Games at Faye’s house were interesting. Food made by someone who knew what they were doing was extremely interesting.
St. Alder should arrange more activities like this.
The next one would be better with less heat.
By the time the buses returned to campus, most students were sun-tired, full, and ready to leave. Ms. Hart stood at the front of the classroom anyway, refusing to release them until she had finished a long reminder about behavior, safety, cleanup, teamwork, and representing the school properly off campus.
Then she added the final blow.
"Your reflection on today’s activity is due next class. One page minimum. I want specifics, not three vague sentences about teamwork."
The room filled with immediate suffering.
Cyrus lowered his eyes to his desk.
One page about teamwork.
He could not write that freedom tasted like curry, even though that was the most accurate conclusion.
When the bell finally released them, bags snapped shut across the room. Chairs scraped. Students poured into the hallway with the particular urgency of people escaping an unexpected assignment.
Faye did not leave right away.
She turned in the seat in front of Cyrus and held up her phone. A contact QR code filled the screen. The avatar was a purple hydrangea.
"Do you want to add me?" she asked. "If you want to come over, text me first. That way I can make sure it’s a good time."
"That works for me."
Cyrus took out his phone.
It was old enough that the screen lagged before the camera focused. Recently, too many people had seen this phone. Audra had seen it. Faye was seeing it now. If this kept happening, his poor phone might become more memorable than he was.
That was not worth spending money to fix, but it was worth noticing.
He scanned the code and saved her under Faye Larkin.
Faye accepted the request almost immediately.
"Then I’ll see you later," she said.
"I’ll see you later."
After leaving the classroom, Cyrus headed to the fourth floor.
Audra was already waiting in Room 405.
She sat by the window with a book open in one hand. The late sunlight had done excellent work on her behalf. It slipped through the glass in a warm sheet, caught in her dark hair, and softened the clean line of her profile. When the breeze moved in through the open window, she lifted one hand and tucked loose strands behind her ear with the kind of natural grace most people would have needed a mirror and three attempts to imitate.
It was an unfairly beautiful scene.
Cyrus walked in, pulled out the chair across from her, sat down, and opened his notebook.
He did not look twice.
Audra’s expression did not change.
Under the desk, her hand slowly curled into a fist.
Every time she expected even a small reaction, Cyrus gave her nothing. He gave no embarrassment. He showed no stiffness. He did not slip into the dazed silence other boys fell into when she stood too close. He did not even have the irritating overconfidence of someone pretending not to care.
He simply moved past her beauty like it was a chair, a window, or a page number.
Was he into men?
The thought arrived so abruptly that Audra nearly pressed her pen through the paper.
She let the suspicion sit there, then rejected the easy answer.
If Cyrus were only indifferent to her, that would be one thing. The problem was Faye. The problem was the way he had spoken to Faye near the disposal bins. The problem was Faye turning around after class with her phone already ready, as if asking for his contact information had been planned.
Audra began the tutoring session.
Her voice stayed even. Her explanations stayed precise. Cyrus followed the lesson with the same serious attention he gave every problem he actually wanted to solve. That was another annoying part. He was not lazy when he cared. He listened, corrected mistakes, asked direct questions, and wrote down what mattered.
He was difficult in exactly the way that made effort feel possible.
Halfway through the session, Audra turned a page in the practice packet and asked, as if the thought had only just occurred to her, "Did you enjoy the activity today?"
"It was pretty fun," Cyrus said.
"Then what about the food?"
His pencil paused.
Audra watched him carefully.
"The curry you and Faye made was really good."
Audra’s smile remained where it was supposed to be.
Inside, something small and sharp tapped against her patience.
She had asked about the food she made.
He had answered by putting Faye beside her.
He had brought Faye into it again.
Was he doing that on purpose, or was he truly that unaware?
Audra lowered her gaze to the worksheet and turned to the next problem. Her voice stayed calm when she resumed the explanation, but her thoughts were no longer on the numbers.
Cyrus and Faye.
The quiet girl who hid her face. The boy who hid his.
They could not seriously be dating, could they?
