<strong>Characters:</strong>BC; Maple's immediate family (Flannery, Elsinore and Willow MacAlistair)<br/><strong>Who:</strong>Maple<br/><strong>Where:</strong>From West Tower to Woodside, Queens, NYC<br/><strong>When:</strong>start of 6th Arrangement (6:30 PM) to start of study hall (8:30 PM)<br/><br/>Maple pulls her phone out as she heads down the hallway. The text from BC says,<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"Dude what is going on? I had the weirdest text from Morgan and then I heard an ambulance came for Park Min-joon because he OD'd on antidepressants. Is there, like, anything to it?"</span>(BC is one of the few people in existence who bothers to type out a meaningless "like" in the middle of a texted sentence.)<br/><br/>Maple texts back,<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"Probably shouldn't text, let me know when you're good to space out for a few minutes and I'll tell you everything that happened."</span><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"OK"</span>Moments later:<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;"> "Not, like, OK to space out now. OK I will tell you. OK?"</span><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"Gotcha"</span>Maple returns to her dorm room. Kennedy isn't there, since class is starting; Maple has the room to herself.<br/><br/>Maple shoves a change of clothes into a spare bag, writes Kennedy a brief note saying she's headed home for the night and she has a pass so there shouldn't be any trouble, then opens up her sketchbook and disappears.<br/><br/>Maple's younger sister Willow is lying prone on the upper bunk of the bunkbed she shares with Maple, propped on her elbows, reading a magazine and listening to something on her earbuds. The lower bunk is covered with unfolded laundry. She is facing the wrong way and does not notice Maple's arrival.<br/><br/>Maple creeps quietly over to the end of the bed, staying hidden below the bedframe—not difficult, given her short stature. She waits for a few moments so she's sure she hasn't been spotted, then suddenly pulls herself up into view, hissing<em>"Trespasser!"</em><br/><br/>The reaction is everything Maple could have hoped for. Willow practically levitates, banging her head on the ceiling, and flops sideways with a high-pitched yelp. Her phone slides off the bed, pulling loose one of her earbuds and dangling by the cord of the other one. She goes pale, then red in the face, and yanks out her other earbud. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Maple, you scared me half to death!"<br/><br/>Maple dissolves into a fit of giggles, doubling over so she drops out of view again, but pulls herself back together relatively quickly. "Sorry," she says, climbing up to the second step of the bunkbeds' ladder so she's high enough to lean on her mattress. "That was perfect though, I couldn't help myself. Is your head okay?"<br/><br/>"Yeah. Are you? You don't usually trip home in the middle of the week."<br/><br/>"Had a long day, needed a change of scenery," Maple says.<br/><br/>With either unusual perceptiveness of Maple's mood, or an utter lack of perceptiveness that there's anything untrue about what Maple said, Willow nods, scoops up her phone and turns sideways to hop off the middle of Maple's bunk without using the ladder. Though nearly three and a half years younger than Maple, she's already taller; between that and her blonde hair in a family of short redheads, one might think her adopted, but in fact she's just some sort of genetic anomaly. Their mother Elsinore blames the fact that Willow was conceived in New York rather than in Michigan like her older sisters.<br/><br/>"Dinner's soon," she says. "You're in luck, it's veggie jambalaya." She jams her earbuds back in and commences folding laundry.<br/><br/>Maple dismounts the ladder and circles around to give Willow a tight hug from behind, then heads out to find her parents.<br/><br/>Her father Flannery is in the kitchen, cooking dinner, while her mother is going through mail at the dining table. Elsinore glances up and smiles when she sees Maple come through the door. "Maple! Flann, look!"<br/><br/>"I guess you smelled my cooking all the way from Manhattan," Flannery says gravely, then smiles as well.<br/><br/>"Yup, the wispy scent trail literally lifted me off my feet and carried me all the way here, like in those old cartoons~"<br/><br/>"Will you be staying overnight?" Elsinore asks.<br/><br/>"Yeah, if that's okay. I got a pass."<br/><br/>"Of course it's OK, honey." Elsinore sets aside her work and stands up to wrap Maple in a vigorous hug. That done, she holds Maple at arm's length by her shoulders. "Go wash your face, honey, you look a fright." She doesn't ask why Maple's makeup shows the aftermath of heavy tears; older and wiser than Maple, she's learned to keep her curiosity leashed for hours at a time.<br/><br/>Maple nods and heads off to the bathroom, where she cleans up in the familiarly tacky shell-shaped pink sink, a remnant of the last renovation the bathroom underwent, back in the '70s or so. Her face is a little red by the time she's done washing up but she turns sharply and heads back to the kitchen before she has time to think too much about how the apartment feels a tiny bit less like home every time she spends half the year at school. "Hey, um…" she says, standing in the threshold to the kitchen. "I know this is a little last minute, but could a friend of mine stay with us over Spring Break maybe?"<br/><br/>Elsinore and Flannery exchange a glance of marital telepathy, a power beyond Rev. Foley's ability to teach or even explain. "Is this a boy or a girl friend," Elsinore asks, "and are they a friend friend or a<em>friend</em>friend?"<br/><br/>"Girl, and a regular no-repetitive-emphasis friend."<br/><br/>"Sure, then, your friend can stay with us," Flannery says, and Elsinore nods.<br/><br/>"Thank you~!" Maple says, bounding over to hug each of them in turn. "Do you need help with dinner or anything?"<br/><br/>"Set the table, if you would?" Flannery asks.<br/><br/>"Dear, I'm working on the table," Elsinore says.<br/><br/>"Wait impatiently for your mother to finish, then set the table, if you would?" Flannery says.<br/><br/>Elsinore sighs and begins to stack the mail she's sorting back together in clusters. Maple sets the table, working around her mother until she's gotten her paperwork taken care of.<br/><br/>Once the table is set and the various items of mail have been stashed in the master bedroom temporarily, shredded, or consigned to the recycling bin, Elsinore looks around to make sure Willow hasn't emerged from the bedroom. "Honey, is there anything you want to talk about?" she quietly asks Maple.<br/><br/>Maple sighs, slips into one of the chairs, and slumps against the table. "Something…weird happened to a guy at school. Magic weird. And I was trying to help and things seemed to be going okay but then some other students got involved and…"<br/><br/>Elsinore reaches over and strokes her daughter's hair. She doesn't say anything, figuring Maple will finish her sentence when she's ready.<br/><br/>"And everything went bad. Really really bad. The guy I was trying to help is in a coma now bad," she continues. Her voice is sad but largely drained of energy after all the crying she did in Penn's dorm room. "And I'm mad at myself for involving them and I'm mad at my classmates but I know they didn't mean for it to happen and they obviously feel awful too so then I feel bad for being mad at them<em>and it's my birthday</em>and everything is awful." Maple sits up when something thuds gently against her ankle, then reaches down to scoop up Patches.<br/><br/>"Oh, honey," Elsinore says. "Oh, Maple, darling, that's awful."<br/><br/>The elderly black-and-white domestic shorthair known as Patches arranges himself on Maple's lap, purring and treading. In Patches' worldview, every human in the MacAlistair household has a role to play: Flannery is Feeder Person, Elsinore is Litter Box and Backup Feeder Person, and Maple and Magnolia (when they are home) are Petters-in-Chief. Willow is an acceptable second-tier petter, at best. Familiarity breeds contempt.<br/><br/>Maple expertly scritches Patches around the ears and under the chin, re-cementing her place as High Queen of Really Good Scritches, at least until Maggie comes home to contest the title. "Also I'm tired? It's been like a billion years since I've been<em>really</em>tired, I forgot how much it sucks."<br/><br/>Patches luxuriates in Maple's scritching. Elsinore says, "Honey, I know it's a dumb thing to say, but if there's anything I can do, you know I will."<br/><br/>"Both of us," adds Flannery as he places a couple of trivets on the table.<br/><br/>"I know. Thanks for saying though," Maple says with a little smile.<br/><br/>Flannery puts a big pot on one of the trivets. "Fetch your sister, please?" he says.<br/><br/>Maple nods, hefts Patches onto her shoulder, and goes to fetch Willow. Patches is not usually pleased to be thus hoisted, but today he allows it with good grace, as if he realizes that Maple needs his comfort right now. He tries to find a comfortable way to be carried. Willow has finished folding and storing laundry and is on her own bunk in the same posture in which Maple found her; she has to be waved at several times before she takes her earbuds out and understands that she's being called to dinner.<br/><br/>At the table, Flannery says Grace, and the food is served. Vegetarian jambalaya, as promised, served over brown rice. Vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce to celebrate Maple's birthday—no cake, since she wasn't expected home, but Willow sticks a single birthday candle into Maple's scoop of ice cream. Elsinore waves the ice cream scoop at her threateningly to deter her from lighting it and getting wax all over Maple's dessert. Maple eats and laughs at Flannery's terrible dad-jokes and teases Willow, all in all feeling much less awful when everything is said and done.<br/><br/>It's about 7:30 and dinner's being cleared away when Maple gets a text from William asking her to coordinate getting the Nine (though he doesn't use that capitalized word) to Rev. Foley's office at 8:30 for an important meeting. Moments later, she gets a text from BC saying<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"OK now dude. That is to say, available to space out."</span><br/><br/>Maple excuses herself and heads to her old bedroom, closing the door behind her, and climbs up into the top bunk after retrieving her sketchbook. "Hey," she says after BC and the familiar rainbow aura swim into view. "Sorry for making you wait, but this sorta seemed like the kind of thing that shouldn't be discussed on, um, potentially insecure lines."<br/><br/>"So there's, like, shenanigans?" BC answers. Judging by the dim lighting and the tree-trunk behind him, he's in a secluded corner of the rooftop garden.<br/><br/>Maple spends 15 minutes or so describing the sequence of events in detail and answering BC's questions. When she's done, he shakes his head. "Dude, you, like, harsh yourself out sometimes, and this is one of those times. He was a crazy freakazoid possessed by monsters or something, he tried to do who-knows-what to Penn, you did a little thing you had no reason to think would hurt him. It was a perfect storm, dude. Like, meditate and ground and stuff. OK?"<br/><br/>Maple sighs, shoulders slumping a little. "I know, I know… It's still fucked up though. I'll feel better if I manage to make, like,<em>any</em>progress on figuring out what happened to him."<br/><br/>"Dude," BC agrees.<br/><br/>"Yeah…oh, hey while I have you here, William wants everyone in Assembly to meet him in Foley's office at 8:30. Didn't say why."<br/><br/>"William? Dude."<br/><br/>"Yeah, he's…yeah."<br/><br/>"I'll totally be there just to find out what the fuck."<br/><br/>Maple grins crookedly. "It'd be nice to know what the fuck, huh~?"<br/><br/>"Yeah. See you at dinner?"<br/><br/>"Oh, I actually just ate. I kinda skipped all my afternoon classes and got a pass to go home for the night from the Headmaster."<br/><br/>"Dude, say hi to the sapling for me. And the 'rents too."<br/><br/>"Will do~"<br/><br/>And then assuming that's the end of that conversation, Maple sends a group text to everyone else in Assembly whose number she has, and tries to get ahold of Penn through her shady chat app.<br/><br/>Maple has all the other students' numbers, naturally; this isn't the first time she's been appointed coordinator of a group project. Usually it's something like a birthday card and present for Rev. Foley, though. Penn responds to Maple's chat request and replies to her message with<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"Yes, I will be there."</span><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"Oh hey good news! Got the seal of approval from the parental units re: you staying here over spring break."</span><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"Lovely. Should I pack anything special?"</span><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"Not that I can think of. We just live over in Queens."</span><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"OK. I will see you in Rev. Foley's office then."</span><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"Bye!"</span><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">"Bye."</span><br/><br/>Maple hops down from the bed and heads to the living room, where her parents are sitting on the couch—or rather, Elsinore is sitting on the couch; Flannery is lying down with his head in her lap. Both are watching TV. "Hey," Maple says, "I have to head back to school for a little bit. Class meeting thingy. Can I take Emperor Grumplefluff~?"<br/><br/>Flannery and Elsinore look at each other. Elsinore shrugs. "I suppose. Be careful, honey."<br/><br/>And Maple scurries off to fetch a cat, teleport into Foley's office/classroom near the chapel and set up for the meeting (which mostly just consists of moving chairs around). Patches allows her to carry him through the Trump, but his hair bristles, and he hops down as soon as there's somewhere convenient for him to hop.