He moved quickly, following her. He reached out and touched her hair. Raiya flinched, and that was when I decided I’d had enough.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing, Mike?” I called out.
“Shut up, Dinger, and leave us alone.” Mikey’s eyes, no longer friendly, glittered with enmity.
I raced over to them. “You don’t need to be here bothering Raiya.” I reached out and grabbed his arm, putting myself between them.
To this day, I’m pretty sure he was the one who threw the first punch. Either way, I really only blinked, and seconds later found my fist drizzled in blood as my eye stung with sharp pain.
“Augh!” Mikey cried. I pushed him, and he ducked and tackled me. He grabbed my waist, and we went down and skidded across the floor.
“What are you doing?” I cried, as we managed to get up and move around some. “You shouldn’t be using Raiya like this, just because Gwen doesn’t like you.”
Mikey shoved me against the telescope in reply. “Shut up!” he screamed again.
“I’m serious,” I insisted. “Be as mad as you want at me. But leave her out of it.” I nodded toward Raiya. “She’s not part of this at all.”
“You don’t think I’m actually going to believe that, do you?” Mikey shouted, his lip bloody. “I trust my source more than I do you.”
He lashed out another punch. I managed to dodge it, but he managed to kick me soundly in the stomach.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. I blanched as he took aim for another blow.
“Stop, Mikey. He doesn’t know,” Raiya called out.
Mikey faltered, and I followed him into a confused silence.
Finally, after the longest moment of silence in my life, Mikey hollered, “You’re lying!”
“Doesn’t know what?” I asked, but Mikey’s scream managed to drown me out.
Whipping around, he drew back his fist once more. I squeezed my eyes shut.
The blow never came. I felt the blaze of power strike. My eyes opened just in time to see Mikey tumble over, as an all-too-familiar arrow of light pierced through his fist.
As Mikey collapsed over to the side, my eyes fell to Raiya. I looked at her, with her hand outstretched, and watched as the last of her power fizzled out and retreated inside of her. Her fist closed and she straightened as she squarely met my gaze.
“That I’m Starry Knight,” she said, her words soft and light, even as they soundly struck me to the core.
☼
21 ☼
Apprehension
I don’t know how long I stood there, mouth open, my feet the only things propping up my body against the control board behind me, just watching Raiya.
She was the one who made the first move, coming over and stopping at Mikey, who began moaning on the floor, writhing around as he gripped his injured hand. “There’s no need to be that surprised, Humdinger,” she snipped, no doubt trying to make me snap back into character.
I appreciated her effort. Goodness knows I needed it.
“I told you before you’d seen me, but you’d never really looked at me.”
My shock drew the line at actually hearing the slight edge of hurt in her voice. How could she be disappointed in me? She was the one who apparently knew who I was.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why tell me now?” Why did you tell me now? Why not earlier? Why did you tell me at all?
She shrugged. “It’s better that I admit it, isn’t it? Especially now that Mikey apparently knows. It wouldn’t have been long before you figured it out from him.”
Even though it’d already taken me a long time as it was, I thought to myself. Millions of tumultuous thoughts, varying from shock to anger to self-anger to self-hatred, all pressed into me. How could I have missed something as big as this?
“How?”
I didn’t realize I’d asked the question aloud until Raiya answered with one of her own.
“How what?” Raiya reached down and gripped Mikey’s shoulder. She scowled down at him as her healing power seeped into him, as though to warn him not to make her any angrier.
I swallowed. “How long have you known about me?”
“Since the beginning.” Her eyes met mine and, for the first time, I truly looked into them. The dark blue rimming the bright violet irises captivated me. I searched the rest of her face, still having trouble reconciling the fact Starry Knight was the same person as Raiya.
She pushed back her loosened hair, fully revealing her face, as though I subconsciously asked her to help me reconcile her conflicting identities.
“You mean since Orpheus showed up at Central?” I asked. “You knew me way back then?”
“Before that, actually,” Raiya told me. “I recognized you after seeing you at the play practice. After you tripped over the backboard to the set I’d been working on. I didn’t believe it, of course, until much later.” She reached down and touched my cheek.
I felt her healing power come over me as I just sat there, staring at her. I felt like saying something; I just didn’t know what. There were too many questions to ask.
Before I could stop them, my treacherous eyes fell to her lips, as if my heart was answering the most important one for me.
Mikey groaned, interrupting my internal impasse. His eyes opened up and focused on me. “You didn’t have to punch me.”
“I’m glad he did,” Raiya said, dropping her hand from my face and standing up. “You weren’t being very nice.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Why were you arguing with her to begin with?” Talking with Mikey was much more normal than talking to Raiya all of a sudden.
Which made her revelation all the worse. I’d been talking with her for months, never thinking to censor myself or be suspicious of her. Or at least, suspicious of her on anything more than a superficial, social-status type of level. My face burned over red as I realized Raiya knew how I felt, too. All those moments in the coffeehouse came back to me, rushing at me, making me feel rage, and shame. Maybe more at my own inattention than at her deception. But still.
“He was trying to convince me he was dating material,” Raiya said.
“I’ve wanted you to be mine since I saw you,” Mikey said, his voice somehow even more pathetic than my silence.
“I told you before, I’m not meant for you.” Raiya shook her head. “And you’ve seen me enough that I know better than to believe you when you say things like that.”
“It was still worth a shot.”
“Coercing me into dating you is not an ideal situation in any case,” Raiya retorted.
“Coercion?” I repeated. “You were going to blackmail her into dating you?” I frowned. “That’s just incredibly stupid.”
“Gwen managed to get you to agree to things,” Mikey pointed out, “and it worked, because she knew about how you’re Wingdinger.”
“Gwen knows about you?” Raiya asked me.
“It’s no big deal,” I assured her.
Raiya frowned. “Of course it matters. She could be in danger.”
“Believe me, that’s the only reason she’s keeping her mouth shut about it.”
Her scowl was immediately replaced by surprise. “We can’t trust her?”
I felt a sting at her query, but it was more directed at myself than at Raiya. I should’ve known earlier, I thought, that dating Gwen was risky. Especially when I realized I wasn’t going to tell her the truth about who I was, or that I’d been lying about maybe loving her one day. “No, not exactly. We sort of broke up.”
Mikey snorted. “Not by her choice.”
“It was amicable,” I shot back. “We agreed on that at least.”
“If you have to agree on it, it really doesn’t seem that amicable,” Raiya pointed out.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “She’ll keep quiet. If for no other reason than I won’t exactly protect her if a Sinister comes after her.” I turned ba
ck to Mikey. “The same thing goes for you, of course.”
Some of my frustration transferred over to him. I still felt like punching Mikey a few more times. Trying to get the love of my life to date him, even after she told him no—yes, I wanted to punch him. If not burn him up, like I had done to Orpheus.
“I might not be stupid enough to turn you over to your mother, but I am definitely not stupid enough to try to be friends with you again,” Mikey said, derailing my train of thought. He rubbed his head as he stood up. “I’m outta here.”
Raiya and I watched as he limped off. We waited until he was gone before we exchanged glances.
“I did heal him,” she insisted, as soon as the door closed behind him. “I’m not sure why he was limping.”
I smiled. I might have laughed, if I wasn’t so overwhelmed by everything.
It was time to focus on business, and my brain screamed at me. It was the only thing I could do that I thought would help. “Mike’s got his blog up,” I reminded her. “All he needs to do is make sure the right clues are there and someone will find us.”
“It took you long enough to find out,” Raiya replied. “And even then, you wouldn’t have found out if I hadn’t saved you from him.”
“Whoa, you did not ‘save me,’” I argued. “He was just going to punch me. You could have let him.”
“Oh, Hamilton,” she said with a sigh. She seemed to age centuries as she looked at me. “I see you get hurt enough.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. Don’t use that as your excuse. I still think you’re just a glory hog who has to have the last word on things when it comes to protecting me.”
She smirked despite the insult. “That does sound better,” she agreed. Raiya glanced back at the door where Mikey had left. “Maybe you should make sure he gets home okay.”
“I don’t want to be anywhere near him,” I sneered. I glanced at the clock. “Besides, now I’m super late in meeting up with Aleia and Elysian. I was supposed to meet them back at Aleia’s place.”
“You’re the one who’s concerned he’ll go rat us out,” Raiya said. “Go and try to make peace with him. I’ll go tell Elysian and Aleia what happened.”
I put my forehead in my hands.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice soft again.
“This is just so complicated,” I said.
“No it’s not.” Raiya sighed. “At least, it’s not that bad.” She held up her arm, pulling back the bracelet on her wrist. A familiar-looking, silver, four-point star—the Emblem of the Prince—shone on her skin.
A flash of light later, Starry Knight was standing where she had stood, with her perfect hair and graceful warrior armor ready for battle.
“We’ll talk later,” she told me as she headed out.
I said nothing, the shock still lingering inside of me. I didn’t even know if I wanted to talk to her.
I pushed it aside. I had to worry about Mikey at that moment. I’d worry about it some other time, I decided.
Rather than transforming, I ran out and caught up with him as he was heading down toward the city, where his grandmother’s house was.
“Mikey!” I called.
He pretended not to hear me and kept walking on.
“Come on, Mike,” I said, pulling on his arm.
He reached around and punched me again, making me let go of him. “I don’t want to talk to you,” he said.
“Look at the bright side,” I said. “Now you can have Gwen.”
He appeared stupefied for a moment, before he found his voice. “I’m not talking about that with you.”
“Look, Mikey, I need you to stop writing your blog,” I said. “You can’t keep writing about us. It’s too dangerous anymore.”
“You’ve never even read it,” he accused, and rightfully so.
“Plenty of others have, though, and if you really like Starry Knight, you wouldn’t want her to get tied up with all the bad press and the debt and everything. Cheryl would be able to take her to court.”
“I’m not going to feel sorry for you,” Mikey asserted. “I promised you I wouldn’t tell, and for better or worse, I’ll keep it. But I want you to stay away from me.”
“Then you should quit writing your blog,” I said. “If you stop writing it, you won’t have to bother with me ever again.”
“Maybe I will,” Mikey admitted. “I don’t want to have anything to do with you or my dad anymore.”
“Your dad?” I recalled how Mikey mentioned he had a “source” for information. Someone had to have told him about Raiya being Starry Knight.
“Yeah, he’s running around trying to catch you and the other demon monsters, or whatever, and you’re just running around. It’s better if I just let it go, so I can get rid of all the disappointments in my life all at once.”
“It seems you’ve convinced yourself that’s the best thing to do.”
“Maybe it is,” Mikey said, glaring at me. His hatred of me was intense and awful, and as his grandmother’s house came into sight, I could only sigh.
“I never thought our friendship would go down like this,” I admitted.
“Well, you were a jerk,” Mikey declared. But then he frowned. “You were a jerk even before you got your powers, too, you know. Maybe this isn’t all your fault. Maybe I’ve just finally been disappointed enough to see you only really look out for yourself.”
“That’s not true,” I replied. “I’m protecting other people. Including you.”
He snorted. “It’d be more believable if I didn’t feel like you were using that as an excuse to reward yourself. First with Gwen, and now with Raiya. Especially after you knew how I felt about both of them.”
I bit my lip and said nothing to that as he walked up to his home and opened the door. It wasn’t worth it, I thought. He didn’t know how “rewarding” myself by falling in love was not as grandiose and exciting as it sounded. If anything, it was more work, more worry, and more everything. Just more.
“I’ll see you in school on Monday,” I called. “Maybe Gwen’ll agree to go out with you then, right?”
No response came back, and I wasn’t expecting one.
“We can fix this,” I yelled, even though I myself had to wonder if that was possible.
I thought about going in the house and following him, as I’d done many times before, but something stopped me. It was almost as if a pair of eyes were on me, and I decided I didn’t like it.
There are moments in life where drudgery just seems to be a way of life. Where you want to spend your days lavishing in all the terribleness that is your reality. Where you just want to fall asleep and sleep for hours at a time, because pain is too subtle and strong to make you cry or make you crumble. Where you just want to blame all the right people (or even all the wrong people) and want things to be better.
As Mikey walked away from me, and our friendship of the last several years and innumerable moments died a quiet death, I wished that I would have allowed myself to fall over right there.
I didn’t. I turned and walked away, and kept walking, not sure of any particular destination.
☼
22 ☼
At Last
I didn’t remember walking into Rachel’s, but later on I would think it did make sense for me to wind up where coffee and comfort were essentially synonymous and simultaneously essential.
“Hey, Hamilton,” Rachel called, giving me a smile and holding up a coffee pot. “Give me a sec and I’ll be there. Mom’s here tonight; go sit beside her, and I’ll get your usual.”
Letty, Rachel’s mother, could be a pain, but I didn’t seem to have the energy to care. Or maybe I was still dazed from all the shock the universe had dumped into my lap in the last hour.
Raiya wasn’t around. I noticed it as I sat down at the front. She was either here or not here, and I knew the difference almost immediately. She must still be with Aleia and Elysian, I recalled, forcing myself to see Starry Knight and Raiya as one person. It was h
arder than I expected.
Letty huffed beside me. “I don’t need your company,” she greeted me.
It was as warm a greeting I could expect from her. Rachel told me that her mother had been divorced several times, and her brother often caused her to lose control of her finances, too, thanks to a spectacular amount of bad life choices. Letty had been quite rich back in the day, but struggling to adapt to middle-to-lower class life proved to be a constant battle in her life.
Loneliness was, too, of course. Rachel didn’t have to tell me that. I could see it on her face.
“I don’t need your company either,” I told her. “But I’m more worried about Rachel’s thoughts on the matter, seeing as how she’s going to be making me some coffee. I’d rather keep to her good side.”
Letty’s mouth quirked into a small smile. “Always looking out for yourself, are you?”
I said nothing. Mikey had more or less accused me of the same thing earlier. Maybe he was right.
“Either way,” I said, “good coffee is worth the price.”
She laughed, which surprised me. It was a bitter laugh, though, and that wasn’t as surprising. “If you can count the cost,” she agreed. “Some things aren’t worth it.”
“Like living with your father?” I asked jokingly, referring to Grandpa Odd. “I imagine the free entertainment Grandpa Odd provides might get old pretty fast.”
“Oh, he’s not my father,” she said. “He’s Rachel’s grandfather, on her father’s side. But that’s not what I was referring to.”
“Inside jokes are better when they’re actually shared,” I informed her. “Or so I’ve heard.”
“And sometimes the joke is too real to really be considered a joke,” Letty said with a sniff. She picked up her coffee cup and said, “I’m going to go smoke.”
That’s probably what she was talking about—having to go outside in the colder weather to get her cigarette fix.
I watched her as she walked outside, and despite myself I almost smiled. Letty was predictable. It was nice. As she left, my eyes caught sight of the painting Rachel had up on the wall. The two lovers, the Weaver Girl and the Herder Boy, seemed only to mock me as I sat there.