ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-TWO: Plastic Wrapper and All

 

Alden’s head throbbed. His ears roared. Fury and flight speed were equally likely culprits.

He jumped off the nonagon, taking in the situation as well as he could in this mood. Jeffy—cheerful beside the grill. Jupiter—floating peppers and looking intrigued. Drones—hovering, two of them filming, one doing something else.

Maybe it performs some amazing spell that makes Winston seem like a likable human being to his fans.

A few people were going in and out of the entrance to the girls’ building, which was almost hidden from this spot here in the cookout area at the back of the garden. And Winston was all the way over there with them.

On his own interface, Alden could see himself in profile, standing a couple of steps away from Jeffy and the grill. He’d been watching Winston’s hideous…whatever the hell it was…on the way over here. He might have screamed at the speedster a few times. Hard to remember clearly. He’d definitely texted and been ignored.

Now, his fists were clenched. He wanted to scream some more. This was worse than when Hazel had forced his Peace of Mind debt to land. He was angry, embarrassed, sorry he hadn’t foreseen this somehow and headed it off.

“Are you here to pick up the food?” Jeffy asked again.

Alden pulled his eyes away from Winston.

He left the drones behind. It’s enough.

“No, Jeffy.” Alden stared at the main camera. “Since Winston refused to answer my messages, I flew all the way here to say that he was not correct about us needing more help for the Thanksgiving meal. If you’re on Anesidora and thinking of donating, thank you so much. But we have plenty of food and decorations lined up. Maybe consider having dinner with your friends tonight instead.

“I also wanted to ask Winston why he would do something like this.”

An artful revenge would probably have included a wounded look or an astonished tone. Something to tug on the heartstrings of the people watching. But Alden was too pissed off to even try it. What he really wanted to do was shove the whole pack of Arfdogs down Winston’s throat, plastic wrapper and all, while screaming, “SHUT UP! SHUT UP, you selfish piece of shit!”

So he looked irritated, and he sounded stressed. Maybe he was going to come across as a bad person. But he was talking now, and there probably wasn’t much time left before Winston realized he ought to shut off the cameras.

“Winston knows I don’t want to have much of a media presence right now. Focusing so much on me during this Q&A session, when I told him just a few days ago that I wasn’t ready to talk about myself online yet is…yeah. But I guess he’s still mad about me beating him in gy—”

The stream ended abruptly. Winston was suddenly there, yanking the little round camera drone out of the air and away from Alden.

“Don’t talk to my fans!” he said, in a tone of shock he had no right to. “I didn’t give you perm—”

“You’re over here now? Good.” Alden stepped toward him. “I have a question for you.”

“You can’t just say whatever you like to another person’s follow—!”

“Are you the most important man on Earth?” Alden asked. “That’s my question.”

Winston gaped at him.

“You,” said Alden, staring him down. “YOU. Are you, Winston Reginald Heelfeather, the most important man on Earth? Is that how you think of yourself? Like, if you wake up tomorrow and the internet has disappeared and nobody can ever again see your Win-Win whatever it is you do for hours every day with your obnoxious drones—will the planet we live on stop spinning?”

“You’re acting like a psycho!” Winston shouted.

“Yes or no?”

“No!”

Alden took another step closer to him. “Then why the fuck are you making up stories about Hn’tyon Esh-erdi? He’s busy cleaning up the ocean so that it doesn’t swallow the island we’re standing on, and you’re acting like he’s a toy you can play pretend with. In your twisted little brain, are your Arfdogs and the feud you’ve obviously decided the two of us are having really so serious that lying about someone the System calls ‘General’ seemed like a good idea to you?”

Winston looked worried for a few seconds. Before Alden could derive any satisfaction from it, though, the worry was replaced by a scoff. “I wasn’t lying. I was just sharing rumors. I said ‘probably’ and ‘maybe’ a lot. It’s not like that’s illegal. So I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Just sharing rumors,” Alden said flatly. “There’s a specific rumor about Hn’tyon Esh-erdi accepting my lengthy pleas to take me on as his ‘octagon waxer?’ There’s a rumor about me moving into his house on the Triplanets for literal years so that I don’t have time to finish school here with the rest of you? You heard those rumors somewhere?”

“I think Alden’s mad at you, Winston.”

Winston and Alden both ignored Jeffy’s interjection.

Winston straightened. “How do you know if I heard them or not? People say all kinds of things about you.”

“Fine. Where did you hear those particular things?”

Winston Heelfeather rolled his eyes.

You childish bastard.

Alden unclenched his jaw with difficulty. “Well, those rumors are wrong,” he bit out. “Now you know. So go snuggle up to that camera and apologize to Hn’tyon Esh-erdi for letting unverified garbage fall out of your mouth over and over again. I counted you saying his name eighteen times on my way here from Matadero, and I was flying fast.”

“You don’t get to say what I talk about on my own channel! You’re not my boss or my mo—”

“No need to apologize to me!” Alden raised his voice. “Just him. You should probably apologize to your fans and the company that makes those hotdogs, too, but that’s up to you.”

“I’m not apologizing! Get your own fans if you want to say something. I know that’s your plan anyway. This too cool to care thing you do is so fake. Everyone’s sick of it!”

“What are you even talking about?!”

“We all know the truth. We can see through you!”

“You—”

Running footsteps cut Alden off. He turned his head in time to be face to face with Haoyu. “You have to come quick,” Haoyu said. “There’s a problem with some of the food.”

He glanced at Winston then back at Alden. “Sorry if I interrupted, but I do need you.”

Alden caught his breath, collected his thoughts.

Fuck. I’m just wasting my time with this idiot, aren’t I? “It’s fine. I’m coming.”

He started to follow Haoyu.

“You didn’t even beat me!” Winston called after him. “A trick isn’t the same as winning in fair combat!”

“Ignore him.” Haoyu grabbed the sleeve of Alden’s shirt like he was afraid Alden wouldn’t take the advice.

“I wanted him to apologize,” said Alden. “No. I wanted him not to be such a jackass in the first place.”

“That might be too much to ask for in his case.”

The automatic doors slid open. Haoyu glanced over his shoulder to make sure Winston wasn’t following them, then hurried over to one of the tables in the common area to grab a casserole dish with an envelope taped to the glass lid. The community kitchen was mostly full of students Alden didn’t know, but Mehdi was in the corner arguing with someone on the phone about whether raisins could be substituted for dates.

“What’s wrong with the food?” Alden asked, taking the stairs up two at a time, trying to put his mind back on the things that had to be dealt with this afternoon. “None of it’s actually poisoned, is it?”

“I lied a little bit,” said Haoyu. “Sorry. The food’s fine. I was just worried about you.”

“It’s not like I was going to fight him.”

“You were verbally fighting him. And I’m sure he deserved it. I don’t know what happened. But if he was extra horrible today, and took a swing at you…um…”

Alden sighed. As they approached their apartment, he saw that the door was open a crack. “Did you run out so fast you forgot to close it?”

Haoyu frowned. “No. I was already downstairs when you got here. Kon knocked and told me he talked to a lady who wanted to deliver this.” He lifted the casserole dish. “I don’t know why he couldn’t have just brought it up himself instead of telling her to leave it on the table down there.”

When Alden pushed the door open, the sight that greeted him took his mind off Winston at least.

The counter and the table were covered in food, like he’d expected. Less expected was Kon, lying on the fuzzy rug in front of the fireplace, wearing pink sunglasses, and moving his arms and legs like he was trying to make a snow angel.

Haoyu gasped in outrage and rushed past Alden to confront the villain. “Kon! You broke into our apartment!?”

“I can revert the doorknob’s lock as long as it’s been opened within my time limit,” said Kon, still flapping all four limbs. “When is Lexi coming back from the library? I need him to see me like this.”

Haoyu set the casserole dish down on the floor, and then dove on top of him.

“Ow! Man, I’m not a DuraBrute.”

“That’s right. You’re a <<scoundrel>>! Give Sunny back his glasses!”

“The polar bear has a name!”

Haoyu liberated the sunglasses from Kon’s laughing face. “You get his feet, Alden. We’ll throw him down the stairs.”

“Alden wouldn’t do that to me. He’s a good person.”

“I almost dropped the nonagon on Winston’s head,” said Alden. “So I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Crap! The nonagon! I left it down there where people could play with it.”

He ran over to the living room window, shoving a bromeliad leaf out of the way to unlatch it, and leaned out until he could see the grill. Winston was gone. Jeffy seemed to be studying the pack of hotdogs. And the nonagon had an unauthorized passenger already.

“Jupiter!” Alden shouted. “Jupiter, I’m going to move it now! Get off of it!”

She waved, but she didn’t get off.

Does that mean she wants me to move it with her on it or what?

“I’m going to park it on the roof!” he clarified. “The roof!”

“She can just climb down if she doesn’t like it up there,” said Kon from behind him. “Have you guys seen that thing she’s making for the wizards? She says it represents thooomf—!”

Alden looked around and saw Haoyu walloping Konstantin with a sofa pillow, then he turned his attention back to the nonagon. He directed it up slowly and then toward him.

When Jupiter arrived at the window, she was stringing peppers on what looked like a vine that had been stripped of its leaves. She was also wearing sandals and a long flowy skirt with her uniform top, which made for a strange combo.

“You need to get off,” Alden said. “I’m going to put it on the roof.”

She was staring at the bromeliad. “Where’d you get that? Can I—”

“You can’t have it!” shouted Haoyu. “You kill half the plants you use anyway!”

Jupiter sighed and got onto her knees. She held the pepper string out toward Alden. He took it so that she could climb through their window.

<<Hello, beautiful,>> she said to the bromeliad as she passed. Then she looked around. “Your room has very handsome furniture. You need to get rid of the people in the room above you, so you can raise the ceiling and have the exposed beam look.”

“We’ll get right on that,” said Alden.

“The cornucopia’s almost finished.” She looked at him. “I really wanted to know what Matadero smells like. But it’s hard to pick it up because you smell so much like crab, garlic, and truffles.”

“I spilled some kind of seafood broth on me earlier.” He had also crushed the life out of a truffle.

“That’s him?” Kon asked. “I thought it was whatever was in this dish Haoyu set down. You do smell a lot. It’s not bad, but it’s powerful.”

“Jupiter, help us throw Kon down the stairs,” said Haoyu.

She looked at Kon. “But the window’s closer.”

“Jupiter, how could you? We were teammates. Team Konstantly Awesome went through so much togeth—what are you guys doing?”

He seemed very surprised when they actually did stuff him out the window onto the nonagon.

Alden parked him on the roof.

When Haoyu shut the door on Jupiter, Alden said, “Thanks for giving me an excuse to get away from Winston. I needed it.”

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“What’d he do?”

“I’m not sure how it started, since he was already spewing random bullshit when I tuned in. But by the time it ended, he’d made up fictional versions of me and a knight and as good as promised his followers that I’d be leaving the program any day now to pursue my higher priority dream of living in Esh-erdi’s garage.”

Haoyu pursed his lips. “He’s imploding, then. Earlier this week, he was making digs about Finlay ‘running away’ from The Span, but they were subtle.”

“If he’s going to implode, why does he have to drag others down with him?” Alden bent and picked up the casserole dish.

“Him saying stuff that’s easily proved wrong will only make him look bad in the long run,” Haoyu said.

“I know.” Alden set the dish on the table, and untaped the envelope from the top.

The food under the lid was green. Creamed spinach, he was guessing. When he opened the envelope to see who it was from, he found a short letter addressed to “the Generals and wizards at Matadero.”

“We will never be able to thank you enough for helping our children,” it said. “Liam, Tina, and Royce are the most important people in the world to us…”

This is the kind of thing I hoped we’d get for the potluck. He carefully folded the note back up and re-taped it to the dish.

“I’m not sure what to do now,” he said. “My schedule’s completely off. I think there’s an air traffic monitor who’s mad at me. And I still have so much Thanksgiving left.”

“You should get rid of the crab smell before anything else,” said Haoyu.