Technocracy: Terry/Ardo

Terry blinked, worrying he’d missed something. There had been a moment… just a moment, when he’d felt zoned out. It happened sometimes. He tuned in to the teacher’s statements.

“So we find that Azeria’s short story therefore speaks to us about inclusion and exclusion. Ingroups and outgroups. And it asks the fundamental question: how do you know who to trust?”Terry hastily wrote notes down on his desk.

A sharp, bright breath issued from off to his right. He glanced over. Ardo was fidgeting at his desk, as his writing hand alternated between taking notes and doodling. Terry’s copper eyes narrowed. Ardo seemed to never sit still. Every time Terry saw him, something was moving, whether it was a hand or a finger or a foot or an arm. Ardo boiled over with nervous energy; it poured out of him in a thousand fidgets and twitches.

And then the bell rang, and they shut down their desks, downloaded their notes, and packed up their bags. Ardo lingered, for a moment, over his doodles, seeming to regard them with that bright ruby red stare. Terry paused, pupils flicking to the edges of his eyes, waiting. At last Ardo hefted up his bag and vaulted forward. He saw Terry, and grinned. “Good class!” he said.

“Sure,” said Terry.

“I actually thought that short story was pretty cool,” said Ardo, leading the way out of the classroom. “The murder at the end was really well described.”

“It was a little macabre,” said Terry.

“What’s that mean?” asked Ardo. “That word.”

“It means—”

But Terry was interrupted, because a large, tall boy with pale skin and red hair came across their path. Terry stopped, but not in time, and he collided with the boy, who turned to glare down at Terry. The boy was a true giant; Terry was tall but this boy was taller, towering over him. He said, in a low, deep voice, “Back off, weirdo.”

“I—”

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going, shithead?” said Ardo, immediately pushing up against him. Ardo was shorter than Terry, which meant the tall redhead was even taller from his perspective.

He leered down at Ardo. “You got a problem, cocksucker?”

“I think the question is if you have a problem with me,” said Ardo, grabbing him suddenly by the bicep. “Do you want one?”

Terry, panicking, looked over his shoulder. The teacher hadn’t noticed yet, but that would change soon enough. “Come on,” he said, grabbing Ardo by the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Yeah, fuck off,” said the tall red-haired boy.

“What if I don’t want to?” said Ardo, red eyes flaring with sudden anger.

“Come on,” said Terry, jerking him harshly through the doorframe, out into the bustling hallways of the school.

“What was that?” asked Ardo.

“From me? What was that from you?” said Terry, whirling, field jacket billowing as he moved. “Did you want him to stomp your head in?”

“I could have taken him,” said Ardo.

“How many times have I seen you try to get into a fight?” said Terry. “That’s not even counting the rumors that you’ve been mixing it up with Jean-Baptiste and those guys past the fence.” Terry took a moment to glance at Ardo’s hands. His knuckles weren’t cut and bloody. Not today.

“Some things are worth fighting for,” said Ardo, jerking his arm out of Terry’s grip.

“Yeah, but not some random dude who bumps into you in the hallway!” said Terry. “You can’t just punch everyone who looks at you funny.”

“I could.”

“You’d get suspended.”

“So what?”

“You’d get expelled!” snapped Terry.

“What are you, my dad?” snarled Ardo, and now it was Terry who felt the heat, the blaze, of those red eyes. Ardo’s brown skin even seemed to shimmer, as though it were heated from within.

Yet Terry stood his ground, weathering the angry gaze like a stony rock face. He scowled to hear Ardo say what he said, but he stood firm. “I just don’t want you doing anything stupid, okay? You’re my friend. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. What’s wrong with that?” Ardo narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. Terry snorted from his nostrils and broke Ardo’s gaze. “See you at Lunch,” he said, walking off up the hall.

Ardo turned and watched him go. His heart was racing. His spine was crackling, tingling, as though lightning was arcing and sizzling up his backbone. It was not an unfamiliar feeling; he sometimes felt this, when he got angry.

And if he was honest with himself, it was not unpleasant. Yes, Ardo wasn’t stupid, and wasn’t naive, and wasn’t unaware. He’d been getting angry since he could remember anything at all. He remembered a teacher in first grade having to drag him away from another student that Ardo had angrily begun beating. Ardo had been getting angry for a long time. And he had learned to like it. Some of it. Sometimes it frightened him, startled him, made him sad, made him ashamed. Like when he couldn’t control his temper around the people he loved, like his aunts. But Ardo still liked to be angry. It helped him think clearly. It gave him motivation. It made things click and snap into place in his head. He wouldn’t be him if he didn’t get angry.

So Ardo watched Terry go, and wondered why the tall and brown-haired boy was so different from himself.

And this was a question that lingered, as Ardo let the week go on, as he sat at Lunch with Terry, as he saw Terry talk, in a good-natured way, with Saera and with Marin. It ate at the back of his mind. It lingered there, taunting him, making him wonder.

Because, after all, the question was: who was normal, here? It raced up Ardo’s arms and made him itch. He sat in his room, facing a canvas, digital ink glimmering from a stylus in his hand. He traced a line of green across the canvas gleaming white. He drew one long straight line up, and bent it—to the right, and down, at an angle. He saw it, and he drew it further, back across itself, creating a kind of hourglass shape. Like the marker on a black widow. Or the beginnings of it.

“Ardo?”

“Hey, auntie,” he said, smiling as Martha came into the room.

“Hello, principe,” she said gently, smiling warmly at him. “I thought you might like a snack.” She had a platter in her hand, ‘twas filled with—

“Empanadas!” said Ardo, ruby eyes bulging happily.

“Fresh,” said Martha. “I know you’ve been busy.” She glanced at the nearby desk, with its books and its papers and its digital displays. “You’ve been doing your homework, haven’t you, Bernardo?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Ardo, swiping up an empanada and taking a big bite. His cheeks swished and bulged as he chewed.

“Don’t slack off, principe. It just means you’ll have more to do this weekend, and we won’t be able to go to the lake.”

“Yes, auntie,” said Ardo, who waved at her and smiled until she left the room. Then he grabbed another of the warm empanadas off the plate and took a bite. It was spicy pork—his favorite filling. He chewed, enjoying the texture and the taste, as he looked at his easel and thought.

Terry bothered him. Terry continued to bother him. The other boy was so passive and quiet. He just stood there—stood there, even when challenged, even when threatened. It made Ardo’s skin crawl. Terry was his friend, yet there was nobody who bothered him more. Not even Marin. At least he understood Marin, or thought he did. At least he could get at her, bother her, make her yell and scream. Terry didn’t do anything.

Ardo slashed a line of red ink across the canvas. Unlike Terry, he got angry easily. But Ardo wasn’t fooled. Terry had as much anger as Ardo, deep down. It was just buried, like it was sunken under layers of rock. But it was there. Ardo knew it. And, as he chewed another bite of the second empanada, Ardo realized that he wanted more than anything else to find it. To dig it up. He realized, with a bright swell in his heart, that he wanted to see Terry angry. Furious. As furious as Ardo was so often. He wanted to see Terry burn with rage.

“And I will.”

Terry walked down the steps of the bus on Tuesday morning, shouldering his pack more firmly on his body. He was wearing his green field jacket today, as always, over a brown button-up shirt and some dark blue pants. He drifted a little, here and there, allowing the people around him to pass him by. Then he walked forward, headed towards the welcoming white openings of the high school—

And suddenly he was knocked hard to the side. He caught his balance immediately, and whirled, keeping one hand firm around his back. “Ardo!” he snapped.

“What’s up, bro?” said Ardo, standing next to him, his satchel slung over his shoulder. He was wearing a white button-front shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and orange pants. His ruby eyes glinted in an unsettling way. “You feeling okay?”

Before Terry could respond, Ardo surged forward and clapped him hard on the shoulder, and then, for good measure, knocked him hard on the side. Terry surged backwards with one, two, three steps, his copper eyes alive and glinting. They narrowed.

“What are you doing?” Terry asked, calm but with the hint of something else below the surface.

“What’s wrong?” said Ardo, creeping forward, and before Terry could move in time Ardo had shoved him backward, forcing Terry once again to catch his feet. “You have a problem?”

“Um, yeah,” said Terry. “You’re attacking me. Why are you doing this?”

“Maybe I just feel like it,” said Ardo, and he leered at Terry, and bared his teeth. It was all to get a reaction.

And for a moment, there it was. Those eyes of Terry’s, they did that strange thing, that thing where they shifted between copper and bronze, that sifting of metals. Those eyes, those eyes that shifted in their metallic irises, shifted now, and glimmered at him, as he narrowed them, and glared. Terry, for just the barest of moments, squared his shoulders and tensed, and seemed as though he’d do… something.

But it passed like rain on a mountainside. Then Terry barked a laugh. “Whatever,” he said, walking off, shouldering Ardo aside as he did. Terry made his way towards the entrance of the school, leaving Ardo behind.

Ardo huffed a breath, and crossed his arms over his chest. He glanced off to the right, and he made an expression of surprise. Saera was standing not far away, wearing white corduroys and a blue blouse. She was staring at him intently. Ardo made a neutral expression and waved at her. Saera’s pale blonde eyebrow arched upwards. Ardo shrugged his shoulders. Saera turned from him and started to walk towards the school.

And Ardo, reluctantly, turned and began to walk that way, as well. Indeed, he quickened his pace, and he wanted to catch Terry. His attempt had failed. Terry had shrugged him off. But that flicker, that glimmer in those copper eyes—copper, or bronze?—spurred him on. His disappointment was burning away, melting into a molten desire that glimmered and shone in his chest. He’d do it again! He could fire Terry into a rage. He’d keep on trying. He glanced, again, off to his right, and saw Saera staring at him, eyebrows raised and silver eyes bulging. He could sense the emotions she was giving off. He shook his head, and did not look her way again.

Instead, he followed Terry inside, but at a distance, warily keeping several students between Terry’s back and his own front. Like a panther in the grass, he prowled between students, red eyes keen and sharp. And stalking, moving, he waited for the moment when he’d strike.

Suddenly, his tennis shoes carried him forward, and he darted up to Terry. They were inside by now, and the halls were crowded, but with a rush and a twist Ardo was beside Terry.

“Ow!” snapped Terry as Ardo clapped him sharply on the bicep. This was followed up instantly by a jab to Terry’s abdomen. “What’s your problem?” snarled Terry, copper eyes glinting in the light.

Ardo’s ruby red gaze was bright, and flickered. He gave a growling smile and he said to Terry: “What if I just feel like it?”

By now, a small crowd had gathered, and they had parted around the two boys, leaving an empty space where they were, in the center, alone.

“I want you to stop,” said Terry.

“Why don’t you make me?” said Ardo.

There, again, just for a moment, was that glimmer of wrath. That twitch of anger in Terry’s eyes, the shift from copper to bronze and back again that marked his changing moods. Like watching a dust storm billow up. Watching a sand dune stir.

But it was, again, only for a moment. Then the eyes grew calm, and Terry’s face evened, and he shook his head. “I’ll get a teacher if you keep bugging me,” he said, and turned, and headed back down the bend in the hall that would take him to his locker.

“Tough break, man,” said a brown-haired boy who came up next to Ardo.

“Fuck off,” snarled Ardo o’er his shoulder, sending the boy scampering away in fright. Ardo turned around and headed back the way he’d come, the way his own locker was located. But his mind was churning, and he kept on thinking. He’d seen it twice now. He’d see more of it before he gave up.

The rest of the day was quiet. Terry rode home on the bus, grateful for the silence, but a nagging concern twinged in the back of his skull. What was Ardo’s point? Why? What was he aiming at by attacking him the way he had?

It made the bottom of Terry’s stomach churn. Ardo had been friendly up to now. Terry sometimes couldn’t believe the luck, the blessing, that had befallen him since the beginning of the school year. He’d only ever made one friend, maybe two, over the course of a whole school year before. And they’d all ultimately meant nothing. His friends from fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade had forgotten him the moment the final bell had rung on their final classes. They’d ghosted him, not returning his calls or his texts.

But now? Now he had three friends. Ardo and Saera and Marin brimmed with energy, passion, and love, and they actually reached out to him, smiled at him, bothered to talk to him first, rather than him having to talk to them. Marin’s coming to his doorstep that night a few weeks ago almost didn’t seem real, because he’d never had a friend who he’d let into his hidden world before. And she had met his care with a care of her own. He knew she would have told the other two; at the least, he knew she would have told Saera by now, and he doubted Saera would have kept it from Ardo, since he’d noticed the two of them bonding as well. Saera had spent a few moments at the start of History last week gently, softly hinting that if Terry ever needed anything, he should ask her.

So why this change by Ardo? It was something he would have to puzzle out. Terry could generally figure out a person’s motivations, if given enough time and opportunity with which to observe them. And of course he had to face the possibility that frightened him: that Ardo had grown tired of his friendship, like so many fake friends before him. It made Terry’s stomach churn, more than perhaps it should have. But—no. It did bother him. He thought again about all three of them, looking down at his hands in his lap. He’d thought they were different. But if Ardo was going to turn against him—if Ardo was going to behave like one of the old fake friends he’d made before—then Terry wasn’t sure how he could react to that.

And yet he sat up straighter, and something he could not explain made him feel that Ardo was not a fraud. Something in the pricking of his backbone. The twinges in his chest. He knew beyond knowing: Ardo was not a fraud. But all this did was make Terry more confused. If Ardo was as great a friend as he seemed to be, why did he act the way he did this day? Terry did not understand.

Ardo growled and spun in his chair at his desk. Again he’d seen hints, but the hints weren’t enough! He’d seen it, those glimmers in the copper eyes. He’d seen it, but he wanted more, he couldn’t stand—

“Ardo?”

“Oh,” said Ardo, spinning in his chair again. “Hey, Minny.”

Minerva slowly, cautiously pushed the door open. The little girl crept into Ardo’s room with a patter of feet: a soft step, like a mouse. But she did so under the full gaze of her cousin, and Ardo smiled at the creeping she did. She knew he could see her, but she crept anyway. It was funny, but Minerva was a funny girl.

“Watcha doing?” asked Minerva.

“Oh,” said Ardo, somewhat guiltily reflecting on just where his thoughts had been trending. “I was just thinking about a friend of mine.”

“Aunt Maria says you’ve got tons of new friends!”

“Not… tons,” said Ardo, ruby eyes catching the hint of light from the late October sunshine. “Um, really, I just have three. Or, maybe two. One girl kind of pisses me off.”

“But you’re nice to her, right?”

“Um,” said Ardo, eyes twitching towards the ceiling as he thought of the many, many insults he’d hurled at Marin since the school year had started. The many he’d hurled at her just in the last week. “Well, yeah, I am, mostly.”

Minerva came prancing and gallivanting up to him. She twitched in place, swinging her tiny hips. “But you’re nice to everyone else, riiiight?”

“Kind of,” said Ardo, painfully reminded of what had transpired between him and Terry today.

“Kiiiind of?” said Minerva, and she danced a little closer, her big brown eyes open far too wide. Ardo had learned that Minerva was old enough, and self-aware enough, to know how cute she was, and how to put this to her advantage when she wanted something. It had started to get annoying some time last year.

But not so annoying that he did anything about it. He was too good a cousin for that. He smiled. “Well, there’s a guy I’m friends with, but…”

“What?”

“He’s different from me.” Ardo turned away from her and put his hands on the desk. “He’s different from me in ways I don’t understand.”

“So?”

“So, it bugs me. It freaks me out. And I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Why don’t you just talk to him?”

“Talk…” Ardo furrowed his black brows. Then they rose. “Talk! That’s it!”

“Huh?” said Minerva, arching her own black eyebrow.

Ardo vaulted from the desk. He stopped and stooped and kissed Minerva on the forehead. “Thanks a ton, princesa! That’s a perfect idea!” Ardo ran from his room, ruby eyes aglint. “Talk to him! Duh!”

Minerva stood where she was for a moment. “What?” she said, confusion in her voice.

Terry again got off the bus, as he had done since the beginning of the school year. This morning, he did the same thing he’d been doing for the past few days: glancing from side to side, looking out for Ardo.

But he looked, copper eyes twitching from side to side, and this day, the red-eyed boy did not confront him at the steps of the bus, as he had for multiple days in the past week. Terry shouldered his pack, and fingered an edge of his field jacket. He stood there, as the other students piled off the school bus around him. He stood there, and he waited, frightened and nervous, ill at ease and out of sorts. Yet Ardo did not manifest. And, at length, Terry sighed, and made his way to the entrance of the school.

Whatever Ardo had been up to, this past week, perhaps he’d finally banished it from his mind. Terry noticed that the other boy often lost interest in things if he was forced to focus on them for any length of time. Terry could sit and wait on a thought, squatting on it in his heart, for quite a while. But in his observations of the boy, he’d found that Ardo could not focus on things to such an extent, over such a long term. His attention span seemed to be short.

“But what do I know?” Terry said to himself, slamming the door shut on his locker. He could not, after all, read the other boy’s mind. He walked down the hallways to Homeroom, musing on the fact that he probably did not know the boy so well after all. Maybe he—

“If it isn’t the freak.”

Terry stiffened in his spine and turned about upon his heel. Ardo was there, glowering at the doorframe, unmoved and unperturbed by the stream of students entering their Homeroom. His ruby red eyes were especially low and burning.

“Excuse me?” Terry said, feeling his pulse quicken and his jaw clench despite himself.

“You heard me,” said Ardo, a strain in his voice, but his eyes blazed with heat. “The guy with no friends, no life, and no reality.”

“Um, I have you as a friend,” said Terry. “I have you, and Saera, and Marin.”

“Um,” said Ardo, and Terry would have been a liar if he’d said he wasn’t satisfied to see Ardo’s eyes waver in uncertainty. But they blazed with heat soon enough. “Maybe we just put up with you. Maybe we just pity you. Maybe we talk about you behind your back.”

And now it was Terry’s turn to flinch, because Ardo’s words slithered up his spine and pricked fears buried deep in his mind. His copper eyes glinted and flexed, doing that strange bronze-shift they did, and Ardo, for his part, knew that these last words had hit their mark. Talk to him. Indeed.

“Y-You don’t—”

“You don’t know that. Maybe we’re all in it together?” Ardo pressed the point, leaned forward, and now his incisors were bared and looked like fangs. “Maybe we’re all playing one big, huge prank on you, and some day we’re going to dump you and you’ll be the biggest fool of all.”

That bronze-copper twitch came hard and Terry stepped once, twice, thrice until he was directly in front of Ardo, taller than him by half a head. Terry glared down right into Ardo’s eyes, the brown meeting the red, and that lean face of Terry’s, pale with those sharp cheekbones and that angular jaw, was starkly sharp and shocking, as though Terry were a statue that had been carved from marble rock, but which radiated malice like the depths of the earth.

“Is there a problem here?” The words flowed and bubbled between the boys. They turned. Marin arched a black eyebrow at both of them, standing there in the doorway, making three of their four.

“No.”

Terry spoke the one word, and the heat, the sharpness, in his eyes was instantly gone, just as it had been countless times before. The copper, warm and round and shiny, again glinted in its metallic brown from below his pale brow. And Ardo knew the chance he’d found, the opening he’d seen, was gone. For now. Terry shouldered up his pack again and moved inside the classroom.

“What?” said Marin. Ardo faced her, and Marin was easy to make angry. Those blue eyes were like the stormy sea, sparkling, crackling with wrath and malice.

“None of your fucking business, fatass,” growled Ardo, shouldering past her as he walked into the classroom himself.

Though Terry had bridled his anger, the tension between him and Ardo was so thick it could have been cut with a knife. Marin sensed it, and was an accessory to it, her intervention between the boys both heightening their angst and making her part of it. This all left Saera very confused, drifting on the breezes at the edge of the drama.

So it was a few periods later—it was right at lunchtime. Ardo was making his way to the cafeteria. He stopped at a drinking fountain. Twisting the knob, he guzzled up the cold, clear water, slurping it into his pulsing throat.

“What are you doing?”

That voice. Ardo knew it. He kept drinking for a moment more, then released the knob and roes back up to his full height. “What do you mean, fatass?”

Marin crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are you picking on Terry? I thought you were friends. I thought we were friends. All four of us.”

“We are,” said Ardo. “But—that’s why—”

“Why what?”

“I want to get to know him better!” snapped Ardo. “I want to know why he’s so fucking calm all the time. I want to see what it takes to get him angry!” Ardo’s spine raced with chills as he realized he’d let all his plans out into the open.

Marin arched a black eyebrow. “So you’re wondering why he’s not a moody asshole like you? People are different, you know.”

“You have no room to talk, fatass.”

“I don’t—!” Marin’s sapphire blue eyes gleamed with irritation. “Look, leave him alone! Don’t you dare mess with him any more! You know how hard he has it.”

“Yeah, I know his dad’s a shithead. You told—”

“I told you how awful things are for him at home! Things with us at school are one of the ways he feels better. He likes when we’re all together, hanging out! Don’t you dare ruin that.”

“What are you, his mother?”

“He doesn’t have a mother, remember?” said Marin. “His mother died when he was young.”

Then a slow and dawning moment crept all over Ardo’s face. A smile, an awful smile, curled his lips, and his red eyes sparkled low and deep, like the bloody embers of a dying fire.

“What?” said Marin. She saw the look on Ardo’s face. It made her catch her breath. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said. He turned and walked away, down the hall. “See you later, fatass.”

Terry laid back on his bed in his room. His stomach churned. Marin had come to him after school and told him about her encounter with Ardo.

“So I guess he’s… testing me?” Terry groaned. This was exactly the kind of stupid half-cocked thing Ardo would do. If Ardo was puzzled about some aspect of Terry’s behavior, why didn’t he just ask him? He was probably going to keep it up, too, until he finally got a rise out of Terry.

His eyes sharpened. He wasn’t going to rise to the bait. Doubly so, triply so now that he realized that it was bait. It was actually a huge relief, knowing that Ardo did not truly hate him. This was just Ardo being his dumb hotheaded self.

“No matter what he says…” Terry clenched a fist. No matter what he said, or did, Terry would not let himself be perturbed by Ardo any more. In fact, the next time Ardo tried to get a rise out of him, Terry would just talk to him. He was going to get to the bottom of this.

Which might, in fact, necessitate being hard.

This made Terry curl his lip. Hackles raised all up and down his back. All of a sudden he was confronted with the possibility that he’d have to give Ardo what he wanted for him to stop. He didn’t want, he didn’t want to lose his temper, which was what Marin had said Ardo was aiming at. But to be firm with Ardo, to make him realize how stupid this whole endeavor was… would perhaps entail the raising of his voice.

His stomach churned. Terry rolled over on his side. He felt frightened and nauseous. He wasn’t brave. He’d never been brave. Ardo was stupid. Ardo was brave. Ardo was brave, so brave he was a stupid moron who got into fights and got into trouble and almost burned down everything he came into contact with. Ardo was a fucking idiot in so many ways. But he was brave. Ardo was absolutely brave. Not like him. Ardo was going to get himself killed one day. But he was brave—and Terry was not.

He stared up at the ceiling. The fan turned slowly overhead. His father was passed out in his room; Terry had already been to check on him, make sure he was breathing and had a pulse. He had already finished his homework for the evening. This left him with nothing to do but think, as the orange light of the gathering dusk stretched its long fingertips across the ceiling. Orange. Somehow, it made him think of Ardo. Especially as the orange slowly changed, deepening and darkening into red, like Ardo’s red eyes.

The next morning, Terry woke early, as he always did. He always showered in the morning. He actually showered twice, once in the morning and once in the evening; his father rarely showered, so Terry allowed himself this luxury knowing it would not seriously inflate their water bill. So the water ran over his lean, pale form. He was not particularly hairy, at least not yet, except in the crotch. His arms and legs were still quite bare, with only wisps of brown hair along their lengths.

So Terry dressed, and had a simple breakfast of toast and jam and creamed cheese. Then he brushed his teeth, and went to check on his father: making sure he was awake, making sure he had food to eat when he finally came into the living room, combing his hair. His father was his usual grouchy self. Then, when Terry had seen to it that all was in order, he’d said a “Bye, Dad,” over his shoulder, and left the house, locking the front door behind him.

The wait at the bus stop, and the bus ride to school, passed in a silence that crept, inch by slow inch, up his back and up his spine and up his neck into his mind. He felt strangely blank. His impending encounter with Ardo, rather than making him excessively nervous or frightened, seemed to have rendered him incapable of feeling anything at all, beyond a kind of mental numbness. As though his words to himself last night had seeped into his brain. His chest felt like it was damp and dark.

The bus arrived at the school. Terry was one of the last off, copper brown eyes seeing the familiar broad white arches of the entrance. He glanced left. Then right. No sign of Ardo, so far.

He strode into the school. The crowds seemed to part around him, like he was a rock in the middle of a stream. He had to stop by his locker before Homeroom; he’d left a book there overnight, and he needed it for English class today. Still he went, silent, head tilted slightly down, through the halls, amid the idle, quiet talk of students in the early morning. He turned one way, and then another, then one more third way. And down the hall he went, until he reached his locker. So far, so good—

“You.”

Terry spun. “Not now, Ardo,” he snarled. The dampness in his chest stirred just a little.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to mess with you any more,” said Ardo. He was wearing a red shirt that sharply matched with his ruby red eyes, and olive green pants. His brown skin and black hair glinted faintly under the soft white lights of the hall.

Terry twitched a brown eyebrow. “Why not?”

“Because I realize it’s just a waste of my time. You just don’t have any fight in you.”

“O-Of course not,” he stammered. “I’m not going to fight you, Ardo.” The word ‘fight’ poked itself into the air and, like a bright streamer, caught the attention of nearby teens. Several of them turned to glance at the two boys.

“I mean, your mom probably taught you to control your temper,” said Ardo. “That’s why you’re so chill.”

Terry stood bolt upright. The dampness in his chest flickered, sparks glinting there beneath his ribs.

“Although, wait,” said Ardo. He grinned, a savage, ferocious expression that bared all his teeth. “You don’t have a mom, right?”

“Ardo,” said Terry, voice very low.

“She’s gone. She’s been gone forever. She didn’t even stick around long enough to see you walk, did she?”

“Ardo!” barked Terry. Now his chest was hot, and his eyes did that shift from copper to bronze more sharply and immediately than Ardo had ever seen it. Now he felt like he was catching on fire.

Ardo grinned broader. Paydirt. “Maybe the reason you’re such a coward is her. Maybe the whole reason you’re weak is because she was weak. She was so weak she couldn’t even survive—”

Terry’s backpack was flung behind him as he vaulted at Ardo much too fast for Ardo to react. Terry grabbed Ardo by the collar of his shirt and drove a fist into Ardo’s stomach. Ardo doubled over, Terry grabbed his shirt collar with both hands and swung him round and flung him into the bank of lockers where Terry’s own was. Ardo’s own eyes flared like gas lamps and he gave a guttural snarl and leapt at Terry, swinging his fists. One flying fist caught Terry on the cheek, but he dodged the other, and he threw out a sharp bent elbow that caught Ardo in the side of the head. This dizzied Ardo; he staggered, and Terry grabbed him by the hair and rammed his knee into Ardo’s chest. Ardo staggered back, slumping against the lockers as Terry came at him, eyes huge and brimming with light and sharpness—

“Stop!”

Terry whirled around. Ardo weakly toppled forward, catching himself on his hands and looking up, his hair a mess around his head, bleeding from his lip.

Mr. Simeon, their Homeroom teacher, was standing there in the hall, the students parted round him like he was some totem. He pointed at one of them, then the other. “Ortiz. Phillips. Principal’s office. Now.”

Ardo glanced towards Terry, at the same moment as Terry glanced down at him. Their eyes met. Each one was surprised at what he saw in the gaze of the other.

The principal’s office was stark and white. A dark brown desk, so dark that it was nearly black, stood in the middle of the room. A dark black chair with a high back was settled behind the desk, which was mostly bare. There were three chairs in front of the desk. Behind those three chairs, upon the wall above, was a rarity in Atlanta these days: an analog clock. It ticked, very loudly, in the silence of the room. The second hand went on its endless path, around, around, around the rounded face again, again, again, as the minute hand chugged, so slowly, and the hour hand barely moved—but did move, in a way that seemed surprising. One could see the hour hand barely moving at all, and forget about it; but when one looked at it again, it had moved a great deal, and one would wonder how that movement had been missed.

Terry sat in the far left chair, of the three in front of the principal’s desk. Ardo sat next to him. The blood had dried on Ardo’s lip and chin, darkening to a very blackish red. He was, otherwise, not too worse for wear. Yet his eyes stared straight ahead. Terry glanced to the side, at Ardo. He did not blink. Terry blinked, his own brown copper eyes gentle and warm. His heart hammered in his chest.

“Hey,” Terry said, gently, to Ardo. “Hey, I’m sorry.” Silence. Ardo wasn’t even looking at anything in particular. His ruby eyes were hazy. Indistinct. Terry turned more fully towards him. “I’m sorry about—”

“Sometimes I get so angry I can’t think straight.”

Terry drew in a breath. “Huh?”

“I get angry,” said Ardo, and Terry was not even sure Ardo was speaking directly to him. “I get angry a lot. I don’t always mean to. It happens. But sometimes I get so angry I just kind of… stop thinking. It’s like there’s this wall… this cloud… in my head. In my eyes. And I just want everything around me to blow up and tear down. I just want everything…” He drew his legs up into the chair. “I just feel like my entire brain empties out. And there’s nothing there but me feeling mad.”

“I can imagine what that’s like,” said Terry. Then he drew in a sharp breath. “Or, I guess… I can’t. Not really. I’ve never been angry like that. I have no idea what that’s like.”

“I know,” said Ardo. “I know. I know that now.”

“You didn’t—”

“Listen!” said Ardo, raising his voice in the quiet of the room. “I wanted to make you angry. I’m sorry. I should have told you something. I should have done better. I’m sorry!”

“Hey,” said Terry. “Listen. I understand. Marin already told me about what you were trying to do.” But Terry suddenly gritted his teeth, and said, “But you should have told me something! You should have just asked me! If you wanted to know about how I feel, you should have just said something!”

“I didn’t trust it!” said Ardo. Now he turned, and his red eyes fixed on Terry. “I had to know how you really felt, what you really believed, and I knew you’d never tell me! You don’t tell me things. You don’t tell us things, me or Marin or Saera. I know you don’t! You keep things quiet. That’s you. You wouldn’t have ever even told us about what your home is like, what your dad is like, if Marin hadn’t forced you to do it.”

“I don’t—”

“It’s true! Don’t deny it!”

Ardo bored into him with that gaze of ruby red. It was so intense; Terry flinched back from it. It was easy to believe that Ardo got so angry he lost rational thought, when he could so casually, so effortlessly, bring such intensity to bear on others. Terry cracked, like dry dirt. He sighed. “I guess I do. Maybe.”

“You do,” said Ardo, still staring at him. “So I had to know. I had to find out just how you are, really. I had to find out if you’re like me. I always thought most people are like me, deep down. Everyone’s angry. People are just better at hiding it than me.”

Terry sighed, and his shoulders sagged, and even with Ardo accusing him he knew they’d turned a corner in their talk. “But I’m not that way, Ardo.”

Ardo turned away from him again, staring at the wall behind the principal’s desk. “No. You’re not. You get angry, but it’s not… the same. You don’t get so angry you can’t see straight.”

“No. I don’t.”

“I wish you did.” Ardo kept staring straight ahead. “I wish you did, because it would mean I was right, and I was normal. But…” Ardo now stared at the ground. “What if you’re not weird? I thought you were weird. What if you’re not?” Ardo gripped the edges of his seat with the curl of his fingertips. “I’m a freak. Right? I’m just some crazy person. My aunts tell me I frighten them. I got written up in middle school, a couple of times. I’m too angry. It’s not normal to get angry like I do. You’re the normal one. I’m not.”

“Ngh,” grunted Terry, sliding back in his chair.

Silence.

The clock ticked on.

“Nobody’s normal,” said Terry.

“Hmm?” said Ardo.

“I’m a freak, too. I’m not like other people. Nobody’s like other people. There aren’t normal people. Everyone’s different. So everyone’s a freak. Period. That’s it, right? Everybody’s different.”

“But I’m super different. I am weird.”

“Yeah, so what?” Terry looked towards him again, and their eyes met. “Everybody’s weird. Everybody’s got their weird twists and quirks. We know that about Marin and Saera, right?”

“Yeah… I guess so.”

“So it’s true for us, too. I’m not like my dad. I’m not like you, either. You’re not like me. We’re just… ourselves.”

“Okay.”

“We don’t have to be like each other. We can just be ourselves, and if we need something different… we have friends.”

Ardo’s black eyebrows shot up. He twisted his head sharply towards Terry. “You really still want to be my friend? After all the shit I did to you?”

“I never wanted to stop.” Terry smiled. “I get it. You’re angry and I’m not. I’m quiet and you’re not. We’re different and we don’t match up. But we’re friends. Period. Okay?”

Ardo drew in a sparkling, delighted breath. All of a sudden it felt like bright sunshine had broken into his chest. “Yeah,” he said. He beamed a smile. “Yeah!” He thrust himself at Terry, tapping him on the bicep. “Man, I’m so sorry. I am! You’re right, I should have just… just said something!”

“I know,” said Terry. He chuckled. “You’re a really huge idiot, you know that?”

“Yeah,” said Ardo, laughing under his breath. “I’m not smart like you.”

“Well, yeah, you’re not. Just let me do the thinking for you from now on.”

“Aye, captain,” said Ardo, flashing a salute with two fingers. But his eyes widened again. “And let me do the feeling, okay?” Terry arched an eyebrow. Ardo thumped his chest. “You put up with a lot of bullshit, man. You should get angry more often. But if you can’t… let me do it for you, okay?”

Now it was Terry’s turn to feel strange, as though he were filled with some brightness. He grinned. He nodded. “Deal.” He tapped Ardo affectionately on the shoulder.

The two boys turned as one to the back wall. Immediately, both of them broke into laughter.

“Man, where did you learn to fight like that?” said Ardo, chuckling. “You kicked my ass.”

“Videos,” said Terry. “From the internet.”

“Cool!”

“I could teach you some time, if you’re interested.”

“Sounds neat.”

“All right, boys,” said Mr. Gideon, the school principal, coming into the room. He quickly moved to his desk and sat behind it. “Let’s see… Terrance Phillips, Bernardo Ortiz…” He glanced down at his phone, flipping through digital forms. “Fighting in the hallway.”

“Yes, sir,” said Terry.

“Who started it?”

“I did,” said Ardo.

“No, I did,” said Terry.

“No you didn’t man.”

“I did technically punch you first.”

“But I was the one who worked you up. You wouldn’t have punched me if I didn’t say anything.”

Mr. Gideon glanced from one boy to the other. “It seems you two have already made up.”

“Yeah!” said Ardo sharply.

“Yes, sir,” said Terry.

“Well, that means this won’t be a long-term problem, which is good,” said Mr. Gideon. “And this is a first offense for both of you. So, I see no reason to give either of you a particularly harsh punishment.” He tapped a few buttons on his phone. Terry and Ardo’s own phones vibrated sharply. The boys pulled them out of their pockets. “Three days’ detention for both of you. Also, you’ll have to bring these forms to your parents or guardians for them to review and sign. Bring them back to the front office by tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, sir,” said Terry.

“All right, that’s all. You can go back to class now.” Mr. Gideon then rose from his desk, and he exited his office, leaving the door open behind him.

Ardo and Terry exchanged glances.

“That was easy,” said Terry.

“He seems like a cool dude,” said Ardo.

They rose from their seats and walked out the door of the office, out into the reception area and through it into the hall.

“So, hey,” said Ardo, “since your dad is a drunk shithead, what are you going to do about the signature?”

“I’ll just forge it. Won’t be the first time.”

“Lucky,” said Ardo. “My aunts are going to blow their stack when they find out about this.”

“Honestly, I’d love it if I had aunts that really cared about me.”

“Oh!” said Ardo, flinching. “Oh, sorry, man.”

“Nah, it’s no big deal.”

“Hey, come over some time! You can hang out. We can have lunch or something, on the weekend! My aunts will cook.”

“Hmm,” said Terry. “I guess you want to learn to fight.”

“Yeah! Teach me!”

“You sure your aunts won’t mind?”

“Nah. You’re a friend. That means you can come over!”

Terry smiled, and barked a laugh. “Sure. I’ll text you.”

“Let’s do it.”

With that, the two boys turned, and parted. Homeroom and English class had passed, so they were now on their way to separate classes. Ardo felt better than he had in weeks. All his worries, all his fears, were gone, and his chest was bright and clean inside. He smiled. He laughed under his breath, eyes sparkling. He—

“Hey.”

He turned. Terry was standing right beside him. He was briefly worried. But Terry did not look unkind.

“Hey,” said Terry. “You ever have any more worries, you tell me, okay? We’ll figure it out together, whenever it happens.”

Ardo felt even better than he had moments before. “No problem,” he said. In a surge of decision, he stuck his arm out, and opened his brown hand. “Friends no matter what?”

Terry smiled, flashing white teeth. His pale hand came out and clasped Ardo’s. “No matter what.”

They shook.

Bonds that would not e’er be broken passed between them then,

As their eyes met—fiery red and bright metallic brown.