The ATV roared beneath her. She tightened her grip around Colton’s waist as she eyed the large drip in the trail. Her butt left the seat as they soared into the air, and crashed down with laughs. They swerved, two of the wheels inching off the trail, as Garrett swerved towards them with a whoop before speeding off.

“Challenge,” Colton declared over the engine. “Hold on!”

She readjusted her grip, tightened it again, and braced to stop her head from snapping back as the ATV shot forward. The familiar woods whipped by; the oaks and ash trees blurring together in a brown-gray and green monotony. Penny’s eyes widened as they zoomed straight at a large, rotting tree.

“Col—!”

She shut her eyes before impact, peeking when the crash didn’t come. Her breath caught.

Ivy covered everything in the sunlit clearing. It was so thick and green that it was difficult at first to see the browned path that cut though. It looked like a valley of all ivy as it blanketed the large trees and tangled together to create walls.

Her hands loosened as she soaked the scene in. This place needed a picture. She needed to revisit it, make sure she remembered each detail of it.

A movement near the farthest curtain of ivy drew her attention. Something was there, something extraordinary, but the ATV crashed back into the dark, typical woods seconds later.

They landed with a couple rough bumps right in front of Garrett, and sped off.

Back at Colton’s house, Penny sipped a soda while Garrett challenged Levi to the next race. (Colton’s parents accepted that their boys would ATV, the rule was Garraett had to always be on hand during the trail rides. Never having to share his ATV suited him fine.) Colton plopped next to her, took a swig of Coke, and pulled out his phone.

“Gage says his girlfriend is keeping him,” he said, rolling his eyes. He waved his drink at the disappearing ATVs. “Want me to show you how to drive?”

“Yeah… when we aren’t racing,” Penny said. 

She pulled out her new, sleek white smartphone courtesy of her new caseworker. It fit in her pocket well enough, but didn’t have the compactness of her old phone. It felt more breakable, and with the screen exposed and tapable to activate, it felt almost too simple after being used to a phone that flipped into a full keyboard. The camera was miles better, and it could take some video, although the quality of those were much less than the still pictures. She smirked at the little, sepia camera tucked in the corner of her screen.

“What was that place we drove through,” Penny asked. “The one with all the ivy? I’d love a few pictures for my Instagram.”

“I don’t get Instagram,” Colton muttered.

“You aren’t really the photographer type,” Penny teased. “So… all that ivy?”

He shrugged. “Just a shortcut. I never really noticed it was full of ivy.”

“...How? It was everywhere.”

He gave another shrug. “It was just green to me.” He laughed at his phone. “Suddenly, Gage’s girlfriend is too busy to come. There’s no way she’s real. I ain’t buying this other school bs.”

“If she’s close enough they’re dating, then she’ll be in our class once we hit junior high,” Penny said. “He won’t be able to say she goes somewhere else. It won’t make sense.”

“Watch that they break up before summer ends, and he's too angry to point her out in the hall,” Colton said. “I'll bet you anything; when school starts up next week, he'll mysteriously be single.”

Colton’s mom pulled up in her small SUV. She climbed out with her purse and a plastic bag of groceries. She ordered Colton to help with the other bags on her way in, giving Penny a polite but warm smile as she passed.

Penny held her phone, staring beyond it, going back to that ivy covered glade. There was something there. She couldn’t explain it, but there was something pulling her back there. Something had moved, she was positive. The scene had been too quick to register anything beyond that it definitely moved.

She checked her Instagram account, smiling at the stream of comments on her newest bigfoot footprint picture. Most expressed doubt, a few believed, but the general consensus was that it was a great shot.

She needed to get back to that glade.

---

Garratt dropped her off downtown after ATVing. Penny had decided against him taking her all the way back to her bus stop in the next town. She had a few bucks for an after lunch snack, and decided to upload some pictures in peace before returning to sheltering in her room.

She munched on a pastrami and rye sandwich while looking through her newest pictures. None of them had anything fantastical about them, but there were a few in the forest that had great shadows. It was a matter of picking which one served best as appeasement until she found a fairy or something else more interesting.

The chime above the diner door sounded. Penny straightened when she recognized the woman in the set as the mage she had met a few months earlier. There was a severe, dark-skinned man with her that gave off a distinctly foreign air from the way he walked, looked around, and wore his clothes.

The pair took a seat in the booth behind hers with the mage sitting with her back to Penny. She thought of saying something, but the man’s deep, dark eyes bore into her a moment before continuing their surveying of the small diner. It was enough to get her back to her phone. It was highly likely that mage forgot about her anyway.

“Stop it,” the mage hissed. “You’ll make people nervous.”

He gave her a plain face that clearly indicated that he did not care, and continued looking around.

Penny didn’t bother looking up when the bell chimed again. She narrowed her choice down to two photos, and was having a tough time deciding if the fallen log or the shimmering stream was the better option.

She jumped at the sudden slamming of hands on the table behind her. The newcomers were a tall woman with brassy skin and dark hair, and a twitchy, petite woman that looked as if she decided to give herself a pixie cut. It was the tall woman who was bearing down at the mage and her companion, glaring daggers at them.

“You!”

“K-Keeper Yardley…,” her companion tried, her frail voice dying away.

“How dare you,” Yardley snarled, throwing off her companion’s touch before it fully landed on her elbow.

“Please, sit,” the mage said hastily. “We’ll explain—.”

“Explain? Explain!” Yardley laughed cruelly. “Why don’t you explain it outside. In private.”

The mage's colleague shrugged and started to stand.

“And give you a chance to attack us,” the mage said coolly. “I think not. Please, just… let me explain. And keep your voice low.”

The warning was unnecessary. Yardley had surprised several diners with her entrance, but she had been keeping her tone down, leaving them to quickly lose interest.

“You slaughtered a unicorn,” Yardley said in a low rumble. “Explain that.”

Penny froze, hardly daring to breathe. She couldn’t risk missing this explanation all while dealing with the excitement, and sadness, in learning that there had been a unicorn so close. Anger bubbled within her stomach. Yardley was justified in her fury.

“She wasn’t slaughtered,” the mage said. “We—.”

“Murdered her.”

“Alicorn,” the mage’s companion said thickly. “The alicorn.”

Yardley was visibly shaking. Her hands were so tight her bony knuckles were white, ready to cleave through the two sitting in increasing agitation in the booth.

“You harvested her,” Yardley seethed.

Penny was no longer pretending to be preoccupied with her phone. It sat on the table, the screen now black.

Alicorn had powerful healing properties. She learned that when she was young but it hadn’t occurred to her that getting alicorn was harmful to unicorns. She assumed the horns shedded the way antlers did.

“They must live during gather,” the mage’s companion said. “You know this.”

“She was on her last leg,” the mage said quickly. “We’d been observing her for months. She was so far gone that her colt hasn’t left her, and he must be nearing two judging by his color.”

“And so, you take it into your hands to end her life? Did you spare her colt, or force him to watch,” Yardley asked, her dark eyes slits.

“We had little choice,” the mage said. “That mare was too close to people. If we just waited for her to die, she could’ve been found. The Auctorita is protecting the Realm and the creature in it by humanely euthanizing—.”

“You play gods with creatures that walked the earth when we were still finger painting caves!”

“Should we have waited until she naturally died,” the mage asked, raising her voice. “The alicorn would be useless then!”

“Maybe we should all calm—,” Yardley’s companion tried.

“You boil down a life to a horn!”

“We need to calm down,” Yardley’s companion pleaded again. “Outside? Perhaps? Too many ears here."

Penny ducked her head towards her phone, turning slightly as the group passed. She left her crusts and cash on the table, grabbing her phone and hurrying after them.

They hadn’t walked far, just to the corner, only a building down. Their angry voices drifted among the buildings, still arguing over if it was right to harvest alicorn, and if it was, then was the Auctorita right in killing the unicorn rather than hovering until right before her last breath.

Yardley was immoveable. The mage plead the case the most, often hushing or clarifying her stern companion’s words. The second keeper simply appeared to want to evaporate on the spot.

Her ears caught the word “glade” and her mind shot back to ATVing with Colton. She saw the curtains of ivy, the shine of it in the dazzling sun.

The two members of the Auctorita and the keepers split in separate directions, neither party walking away relaxed or satisfied. Penny hesitated where she stood for too long as they both vanished from sight, forcing her to retreat to her bus stop. 

There were dozens, if not hundreds, of glades between her town, Colton’s, and the other more rural towns that neighbored them. But, Penny couldn’t shake that something was in that ivy glade. She knew it, and would prove it.

---------------------

This one is pretty short, but I didn't want to end with Hodge (spoiler...I guess, lol). It felt like too much to jumo from 'oh pretty ivy' to 'there's the unicorn' with Penny being as restricted in her movements as she is right now.

Penny's new phone is a Moto G, probably first gen for the cheaper option. And she hasn't bought a colored shell since her home would be like ...why waste the money (~$15).

Ms. Beauchamp strained a smile at her before once more dropping her eyes back to her papers. Her smile fell further and further until it completely vanished. She flipped her page to see the one beneath.

“Your grades were good this year too,” she said. “You look ready for seventh grade. How do you feel about that?” Her brow knitted as Penny shrugged. “I was worried when your placement with the Lamberts ended how it did, but you’re doing so well in the group home.”

“Not like I have another choice,” Penny grumbled. “I didn’t exactly get a line of placements after they put that aggression notice in my file.”

“I’m working on getting that removed,” Ms. Beauchamp said. “It’s only….”

“Only I am aggressive,” Penny said, eyes narrowed. She leaned back in her seat. “It says so in my file. I keep getting in fights with the others at the home. I got in a few at my school over the last two years.”

Ms. Beauchamp let out an exhausted sigh.

Penny had been removed from the Lamberts the week following Brooke’s hospitalization. She was put in a group home a town over. The home was in a different district, so the last few weeks of fifth grade were finished in a completely different place. It didn’t bother her as much as she expected it to; there was a weight off, a relief, at having none of the whispers and rumors from the Mr. McBride and Brooke fallout following her.

The downside was that the group home offered no friendships. The Lamberts had told–with great relish–how she clawed Mr. Lambert’s hand and threw a table at Mrs. Lambert. They constantly feared for their daughter’s safety, and their own, and that landed Penny among a much rougher, and older, crowd.

Every girl was Aaliyah but with hair pulling. Every boy was more than willing to use his height and weight against her, and at times had used fists on some of the other girls. Penny’s solace was her classes where she went ignored, the library that cherished silence, and the woods where quiet sometimes led to fairies, a bigfoot, and various more common animals like deer and birds.

“Penny,” Ms. Beauchamp said, lowering her tone, “I want to hand over your file on a good note. Will you please consider placements that could lead to adoption?”

“No.”

“I had to try,” she said, sighing heavily. She gave Penny a weak smile. “It was so nice getting to know you. Please, give your new social worker a little grace, okay? She’s fresh from college.”

There was bitterness as she waited for the bus back to the home. Ms. Beauchamp had tried helping her when she wasn’t fraying at the edges. She’d spoken to the Lamberts about allowing her to go to church, not that anything came of it. She had gotten her a cellphone. Penny did believe she tried to get the aggressive label off her file, but guessed she only asked once or twice before calling the battle lost.

Ms. Beauchamp had brought up considering opening up to adoption possibilities ever since the Lamberts evicted her. Each mention unsettled her. It made her wonder what had changed. It didn’t occur to her before Aaliyah started rubbing it in her face shortly after she joined the Lambert home that she was not an adoption candidate, and since then the thought of her mother returning flitted in and out of her mind.

It contradicted her mother surrendering her at birth, but so did having Aisling–her mother’s younger sister–positioned to watch over her when she was very small, before the state stepped in and declared the nuns incompatible with whatever it was.

“Penny?”

She startled, looking around. Her eyes widened slightly as a smile spread over her face.

Colton was taller and had thinned just enough that it was noticeable. His round, cheerful face lit up when he saw it was indeed her, and that she was smiling back. He quickly took the seat next to her on the bus stop bench.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” he half-joked. He looked around. “Are you alone?”

“Yeah; I was catching up with my case worker,” Penny said. “You?”

“Garrett’s supposed to be around here somewhere,” Colton said. “He’s got a license now. Just circles the block when any of us need to run into a place to grab something.” He scuffed his feet on the cement. “I heard Brooke got sent over to Virginia. They wanted her in some special home with therapists to watch her after she got out of the hospital.”

“Have you talked to her?”

Colton shook his head ruefully. “Her number got disconnected. My mom says it was to give her a clean slate.” He twisted his hands in his lap. “And… she said what you did took a lot of guts, and that it was the right thing to do.” He snorted. “I got in trouble for not noticing something was off.”

She swallowed roughly, nodding as words failed her. No one other than that old priest had told her what she did was right. It felt more real and sincere coming from someone her age than an adult who betrayed her trust.

“Oh, and, my dad said you were probably right about the bigfoot,” Colton said lightheartedly, “so, there’s that too. Guess he swears he’s found hair out bow hunting.”

She laughed as a wave of relief crashed over her.

They caught up a bit. Colton filled her in on their small group; Whitney and Destiny had gotten good enough at crochet that they had a booth during Spring Break. Levi had a growth spurt that somehow erased most of his fear of everything. Gage had a girlfriend, or said he did. No one saw her yet. Aaliyah, apparently, was now fostered by the Sizemores after a six month gap elsewhere. She was still mean, but left them well enough alone. Colton suspected she had started to like having Brooke as a flunky, and was giving them a break out of some twisted sense of respect.

Penny was not as forthcoming about what she’d been up to. Playing over her life after the Lamberts caused her to see how upsetting it would sound to someone else, between the bullying and neglect. Her highlights centered too much on studying what she could of the Realm and searching for creatures to get pictures of, both things were very off limits especially with how Colton and the others reacted when she tried to show them she wasn’t lying about the bigfoot.

A dark red car with a slightly dented hood abruptly stopped in the bus stop lane. The window slid down, and Garrett gave them a superior smirk.

“Jump in, teeny, tiny, baby bro!” He squinted at Penny. “Hey, ain’t you one of his friends from school? Want a ride? I can give you a ride.”

“She can see that,” Colton said dryly. He shrugged at Penny. “He could though.”

Reluctantly, she accepted the offer and climbed into the backseat with Colton. They continued talking about their group of friends, and made tentative plans to get together that weekend. Garrett readily agreed to act as chauffeur for the group.

She had them drop her off a block from the home, near the bus stop. It would’ve been too much of a headache if the administrators or the other kids saw her with friends. Outside connections were treated suspiciously, and Penny was not about to open herself up to ridicule or interrogation.

She walked with her nose in her phone, smiling as she scrolled her updated contact list. Her steps slowed, and smirk waned as she rounded the corner. The hairs on her neck stood, stopping her still. Her eyes darted but all she saw was a woman in her thirties looking at a paper map with an annoyed frown.

Penny carefully approached, the odd pressure building up on her chest as she did so. She stood quietly next to this woman, looking her over–especially her sleeve cuffs–before clearing her throat.

“Are you lost,” Penny asked.

“Oh. Yes.” She gave a small, embarrassed laugh as she looked at the map in her hands. “Obvious, isn’t it. You couldn’t point me in the direction of the nearest rental car place, could you? I thought my colleague said it was on Vineyard Avenue, but I can’t find it. …Or where I am.”

Penny warily moved closer, still feeling the pressure from the woman and finding an odd sense of comfort in it at the same time. She was able to show her where they were, and guessed the road was really called Vine and not Vineyard.

“Vine… That makes more sense. Looks like a tree slash plant naming theme for about half of them.” The woman gave another embarrassed laugh. “My colleague has a thick accent.”

“No smartphone,” Penny asked, watching her fold the map away.

“Oh… No…. I’m not a fan. I guess.” She tucked the map into her pocket with difficulty. “Thanks for the help.”

She stepped in front of the woman, startling her enough to cause her to take a couple of steps back.

“Are you a mage,” Penny asked. The word got a visible reaction, stiffening posture and widening eyes. “My aunt is a mage.”

“Oh.” She laughed, nervous and relieved. “I was about to say, I wasn’t sure where that was going.” She smiled proudly. “I am. So, you can sense magic? Well, I guess that makes sense if you have magic in the family.”

“Are you with the Holy Cor? I was looking for the embroidery.” She tilted her head. “I guess you’re not a nun though…. The Order of Ferblanc doesn’t accept mages, right? A keeper?”

“I don’t… You’re so informed. But, no, not any of that.” She puffed herself up again. “I’m with the Auctorita.”

“The what?”

“The… the Auctorita,” she said, deflating.

She shrugged, completely at a loss. Aisling never mentioned this group, assuming they were a group. She had been told the basics of the Realm, and about the Holy Cor; the Order of Ferblanc acted as knights for the Realm and protectors of the Holy Cor, including protecting mages from others and others from mages if need be. She knew the least about keepers as they were reclusive and dealt more with fantastical critters, arguably the more interesting part of the Realm as far as Penny was concerned. They at least made for more interesting photos than people.

“Is the Auctorita like the Order of Ferlanc?”

“No, no, we’re so much more than that,” she said, regaining some pep. “We’re all over the world now. In different companies, and governments, and just… everywhere!”

“Like spies?”

“No,” she said, horrified. “No, not at all. We’re more like…” she frowned as she searched for a more flattering word, “liasons. We bridge the Realm and the rest of the world. So, if, say, a bigfoot destroys a campsite, we’re more likely to have an agent nearby ready to help instead of waiting for news to get to keepers or a Knight. And, we can smooth it over faster and come up with some kind of cover story instead of just take the beast away and let rumors fly.”

“Then… you guys work directly with the king,” Penny asked.

The mage’s smile fell again. “No…. No, we have a different leader.” She stepped away. “I shouldn’t keep my colleague waiting. It was so nice to bump into someone who knows about my world.”

Penny gave a lackluster wave as the mage disappeared around a corner.

There were parts of this Auctorita that sounded good; having agents ready on hand and all over would be helpful for keeping the Realm secret and protecting who and what needed protection quicker. But, there was something off-putting about how the mage said they had a leader independent from the king. That, coupled with how the Auctorita was inside of big businesses and governments, came across more like the Auctorita was in competition with the Protector of the Realm.

Aisling and Mother Mary Clare had made zero mentions of the Autorita. Either it was a newer organization, or they had such negative views that they planned on telling her when she was older. If that was the case, the Auctorita might be more aligned with bad than good.

A thought popped into her head as she crossed the threshold into the group home. Her mother was sensitive to magic, like she was, but had no ties to the Holy Cor, keepers, or the Order of Ferblanc. There was a chance this Auctorita was never mentioned by Aisling because Keena joined up. Perhaps their brother had too, and his death was somehow the fault of the Auctorita, and that was the cause of the friction between them.

She was pulled from her thoughts upon entering the room she shared with a couple of older girls. They were holding up a smartphone and making facings, clicking away.

“What are you doing,” Penny asked.

“Making profile pics. You wouldn’t get it. You’re not online.”

“Oooh, this one looks good! Zoom in on me. I’ll use that for my Instagram.”

“Instagram? Is that like FaceBook,” Penny asked. She cringed when they laughed at her.

“It’s cooler. There’s too many old people getting on FaceBook now. What do I care about your daughter-in-law’s house rules?”

“Instagram is all pictures. Like it should be. Oooh, we should do food pictures next! Those seem popular.”

Penny jumped aside to avoid the girls bowling her over in their haste to find a plate of food. She pulled out her trusty, lime green phone and went into her photos. She had quite the collection of gnomes, haunts, fairies, and massive footprints. There were so many that she had started needing to choose which to keep. It would be nice to preserve as many as she could.

------------------------------

Twoish year jump, so Penny should be around 12. I'm getting really confused on if she was born in 2002 or 2003, and it's partly because I keep forgetting if she and Ira are the same age or she's a year older. I think they're the same age (she was described as younger in the Nellie story, but Ira's more mature/subdued so reads older, especially to a younger kid).

I keep plugging in questions about if Instagram was wide spread at ____ year, and then remember that yes, this is ~2014, lol. I didn't join until shortly before my move to Japan in 2019 (and hardly use it now), so I just completely forget it was a thing.

Penny woke the following morning in part to her aching stomach and in part to some type of commotion outside. The reason for her stomach was a simple solve; she had stormed upstairs without dinner and never returned downstairs. She spent her night growling her misery and frustration, throwing everything out of her drawers and off her desk.

The commotion stayed a mystery as she lay in bed, blinking the low-grade headache out of her eyes. She dragged herself from bed, stumbled to her window, and pulled down one of the cheap, plastic blinds to peer through.

Her stomach dropped.

She was downstairs minutes later, still wearing her clothes that she’d fallen asleep in the night before. She sprinted across the front yard, only stopping when she collided with the hedge.

The Wilcoxes were standing on their front step speaking to an officer. An ambulance was pulling out of the driveway with lights flashing.

“What happened,” Penny yelled at the adults. “Where’s Brooke?”

“Penny!” Mr. Lambert stormed across the yard. “Inside!”

“Where’s Brooke?”

“Inside, now!”

Penny dug her nails into Mr. Lambert’s hand as he grabbed her arm. She tore off his grip and ran back into the house. She shoved Aaliyah aside on her way to her room, jumping onto her bed, and hitting Brooke’s number in her phone.

There was no answer. The second call also went unanswered. She sent a text, waited, and nothing.

Mrs. Lambert arrived in her doorway, hands on hips. “You’re going to be late for school! Change your clothes. Get downstairs—.”

Penny shoved by her and raced down the stairs. She stared at Emily and Aaliyah–both pausing in their cereal intake–breathing heavily.

“Did you hear anything,” she asked frantically. “Where’s Brooke?”

She ran from the house as they silently stared at her.

The police were gone, and the Wilcox car was leaving the driveway. She ran into the street and forced them to hit the breaks.

“You crazy—,” Mr. Wilcox started angrily. 

“What happened to Brooke,” Penny demanded. She circled to the driver's side since his window was down. “Is she okay?”

“We don't have time for this,” Mrs. Wilcox snapped. “Her case worker can't get there before us, David; just drive.”

She was forced to jump back as the car crept forward, and then picked up speed. She screamed an expletive after them from the middle of the street.

---

School was buzzing like a mass of hornets. No one could focus with Mr. McBride leaving in a police car yesterday and an ambulance leaving the Wilcox house that morning. There were several rumors about them dating, about a lover’s pact, about them staging everything to run off together. Some whispers hissed that Mr. McBride escaped jail and hurt Brooke. Some rumors said she was dead.

Penny was frazzled by lunch. She stared unseeingling at her disappointing tray of beige food, sitting on the very edge of the hard, plastic bench of her usual table (there being nowhere else for her to sit, there was an invisible wall between her and the others since Spring Break ended).

“Penny,” Colton hissed at her. He looked around to make sure the others were not out of line yet. “Hey, Penny, psst! You okay?”

She shook her head, her throat too dry to speak. Her eyes stung.

“She’s probably not dead,” Colton said, trying to sound reassuring. “It’s a misunderstanding.”

“It’s my fault,” Penny croaked.

“...How?”

“I… I told someone about Mr. McBride….” She sniffed. “I d-didn’t think it’d spread around. I d-didn’t think B-Brooke….”

“Penny?” Destiny sat, concern all over her tearstained face. “It-it’s going to be okay. It’s just rum—.”

She ran from the table. The others were starting to sit, all upset and willing to pull her into their grief. They’d hate her worse once they learned she was responsible. This was much more serious than scaring Levi.

She sat in a bathroom stall until long after the bell to return to class sounded. She waited until the sounds in the hall died out before slipping out. The low-grade headache flared after her sobbing session and she could feel the hot, burning anger starting to fill her stomach as it did yesterday. She started to tremble with rage as she headed from the school.

---

The parish office looked like every other stereotypical, sterile cubicle setting. There were glass walls to give it a more open appearance beyond just boxes and half-open doors. There was a large desk built from the wall and floor, the kind found in dentist or doctor offices that was immediate when the door was opened.

The receptionist smiled at her with a slight puzzled expression.

“I want to talk to the priest,” Penny said coolly.

“I think he’s in a meeting right now…” Her eyes darted to the clock. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Where’s the priest,” Penny asked. “It’s urgent.”

“Let me check if he’s finished,” she said, eyeing Penny warily. 

She picked up her phone, forced a smile, and turned away.

The anger was still simmering, now creeping towards her chest. Penny took deep breaths and leaned against the desk. She stared through the clear walls, watching random employees going to and from their cubicles. She perked up as the priest appeared with, she guessed, a deacon.

She went around the desk, ignoring the receptionist ordering her to stop and come back. She snaked through the cubicles until she arrived behind the priest and deacon.

“I trusted you,” Penny snapped.

The priest froze. The deacon froze. A few heads popped out of their cubicles to find the source of the commotion.

“Penny?” The priest patted the deacon on the shoulder, murmuring to him to continue on and wait. “Shouldn’t you be—?”

“I trusted you,” Penny repeated, growling. Hot tears cut down her face. “I told you all that in confession! It was private!”

“Penny, let’s go to my office,” the priest said, firmly but gently. He gestured. “Come on.”

She begrudgingly complied, glaring at any adult that dared to look their way during the short walk to the priest’s office. She dropped into an overstuffed leather chair with her arms crossed tight. She bristled at the calm in which he took his own seat.

“I heard about that English teacher,” the priest said. “I assume that’s what you’re upset over?” He held up his hand as Penny opened her mouth. “Confession is strictly private and confidential unless there is something criminal said. What that man was doing was wrong, and I was obligated to say something.”

“Brooke….” Her lip shook.

“Your friend is upset,” the priest said. “Yes, I can understand that, but you did nothing wrong.” He ducked to catch her gaze. “Penny. You did the right thing. You hold onto that. And, I’m sure, eventually, your friend will see this and things will—.”

“They took her away this morning!” Penny choked on a sob. “Th-the ambulance was there, and t-took her away!” She lowered her head in a completely useless attempt to hide her rapidly falling tears. “Some kids at school said she’s d-dead. No one will t-tell me anything…”

The priest was visibly paler. His mouth was slack, which he tried to cover by clearing his throat. He struggled up from his chair.

“Wait here,” he said. “I will make some calls—.”

“No!” She shot up, the heat rising through her again. “No! I should’ve never said anything to you!”

“Penny—.”

“No!” She backed towards the door. “You’re no different than any of the others. You let me think I should trust you, and that was wrong! Brooke might be dead, and it’s because I thought I could trust you!”

“Penny, please, calm–Penny!”

She flung open the door, shoved aside some adult that had been approaching, and ran from the building.

---

Unable to stomach going back to school, Penny hung out in the woods until the sun started setting. She tried calling Brooke twice more; it now went straight to voicemail. She sent another text that also went unanswered.

She dragged herself back to the Lambert house. The car the Wilcoxes had left in that morning was still missing. Everything was eerily still in the cul-de-sac.

The Lamberts were also eerily quiet during dinner. Aaliyah ate little, mostly moving food around on her plate. Penny, surprisingly, was able to eat all her food and even snuck extra from the fridge when she put her plate in the sink. She didn’t know if it was because she had eaten so little for the last twenty-four hours, or if the anger still smouldering in her stomach required fuel.

She didn’t bother closing her door after changing into her pajamas. She lay still, starting at the streetlight streak across the dark ceiling, listening to Mr. and Mrs. Lambert murmuring downstairs. They were uncharacteristically subdued, making specifics impossible to hear.

“They’re taking a break from fostering,” Aaliyah said quietly from the doorway.

“I don’t care," Penny said.

“You should,” Aaliyah spat. “They’re returning us. Like we’re nothing but an ugly sweater.”

“I don’t care,” Penny repeated more firmly. She sat up. “Go away.”

“You should care,” Aaliyah said icily. “You ain’t going to stay little and cute, Penny. You’re creeping towards teen, and no one wants those around.” She faked a look of dawning. “Oh, right, you aren’t even an adoption candidate. You still think that aunt of yours is coming for you. Aww, or is it your mommy?”

She glowered. “At least mine loves me.”

The smirk was instantly dropped from Aaliyah’s face. The space between them was charged, full of static that nearly crackled audibly in the air.

Aaliyah tossed her beaded braids. She left the doorway, pausing.

“Brooke ain’t dead,” she said. “I heard them saying she’s fine. She’s just locked in the psych ward until the Wilcoxes send her back into the system.”

Penny leapt out of bed. She hurried to Aaliyah and hugged her tight, immediately getting shoved hard to the ground. They glared at each other—Aaliyah disgusted and Penny irritated—before going off to their separate rooms.

She shut the door this time, no longer needing to eavesdrop to know what happened to Brooke. She watched the shadows on her ceiling, heard Emily sneak into Aaliyah’s room, heard their near-nightly murmurings start up.

The two teens cried a few times, specifically about Brooke or about Aaliyah’s impending departure was not clear. Penny didn’t strain to listen. She was busy fighting relieved sobs, trying not to choke on the stream of tears falling into her ears.

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Shorter, but too long to include with the previous chapter. It's always way choppy because it worked better with Penny's emotional state verses a few random transition sentences. But, whew, this was a fast turn around on chapters, lol. Don't get used to that.