WHO: Kaden (and friends) WHEN: Early August till Sunday afternoon WHERE: Burlington WHAT: Teenagers navigating teenagers WARNINGS: None
Connie Lash had a little painted shark on her windowsill, sprouted with fat little succulents. She had posters cut from magazines all over one wall like she was trying to solve a horny murder, a Popstars: Don’t Stop Never Stopping poster above her bed to show she was funny too, and a faded poster of two deer on the back of her door that she’d had since she was ten years old because Connie loved deer best of all. On her window (near the shark) sat a sculpture she’d made of a cactus out of wired together energy drink cans – at least, most of the time it sat on her windowsill. Whenever Kaden sprawled on her windowseat he’d always pick it up and play with it. It was his favourite thing in her room.
Her room had smelled of scented candles the first moment he walked in, but mostly when he was hanging out in there, her room smelled like microwave popcorn.
Kaden had been hanging out in there a lot, because Connie’s room had two quality things going for it.
1, and this was the most important one: Connie did not have younger siblings, and both her parents worked all day. That meant that during the summer, there was no one else, older or younger, in Connie’s house, and this made it ideal for pretty much everything.
2, her room was huge. Not like… Ava and stupid Luna’s apartment big, not Aphrodite big, but bigger than any other bedroom of anyone normal he knew. Back home, all his friends had cramped apartments, families living on top of each other kind of thing. Connie had space for a dresser on both sides of her bed, and two bean bags, and a circular purple furry rug on the floor, and a wide cushioned windowseat, and having six teenagers in here didn’t feel crowded at all. The fact that the girls seemed happy to sprawl over the laps of the boys helped… really helped. Tara and Seb only ever took up one seat between them, and Connie used everyone as furniture.
Well – Connie used Adrian and Seb and Teeks and Tara as furniture. Not Kaden. He’d known her for three weeks now and not ever Kaden. She’d sit next to him – she sat next to him a lot, though sometimes it made her go as red as the tips of her hair – but she wouldn’t sit on him.
This gave Kaden a new thing to obsess about, at least. Something for his mind to do while his hands were playing with her can-cactus and his stomach felt like a storm was coming, the pressure dropping, something too-big-to-deal-with building in the distance.
Outside the window, on Connie's lawn, were the two topiary deer he’d seen on his aimless walks. Finding out that they belonged to her house had really stunned him out. Finding out that someone real had to help trim the deer as one of her chores, it was nuts. That revelation had come the day after they’d all met up at the basketball courts, when Adrian’s phone had blown up with messages while Adrian and Kaden had been playing Apex Legends for four solid hours (Kaden had got up before noon for it especially.)
“Tara says Connie says, we should all come over and watch movies. Wanna?” Adrian said, checking his phone after they’d both been killed on the island. Kaden thought about it for a second and shrugged and said “Sure,” which was partially cos he didn’t want to be left alone with his thoughts, partially because he’d run out of Animorphs books since last seeing Cathal, and partially because of the way Connie’s arm had pressed up against his in the Cinnabon the day before.
So he tagged along with Adrian (sticking his head into Marcie’s room, but she had gone out – maybe to the gym?) and they walked the two blocks to Connie’s place, and there they were: two deer, made out of hedge.
And there was Connie’s house, as big as Marcie’s but more full of teenagers. Bored Tara was there because she was Connie’s best friend, and even though she wasn’t as bored at Connie’s house as she’d been on the courts, she still acted like she was a bit bored by everything, except Seb. Her brother Teeks was a year older, a total nutter for cowboys so that’s what they ended up watching, old Western movies, completely decimating them (and Teeks) with scorn and laughter as afternoon turned into evening.
Connie’s parents made them all go home for dinner, though, but as Kaden was walking home with Adrian he got a notification – Teeks had added him to their group chat, suggested they all go down to the courts again tomorrow, and for the first time in a long, long time, Kaden found himself looking forward to something.
And after that… the six of them met up, almost every day. Kaden had tried to find some more Animorph parallels to start with, but the most reckless Connie got was her consumption of energy drinks, so she couldn’t be brash, bold Rachel, and she was allergic to cats, dogs and horses so could never be animal loving Cassie (Connie was also allergic to gluten, but that hadn’t been an issue the Animorphs had).
Besides, Connie and Tara and Teeks and Seb and Adrian… there weren’t really any other parallels. They’d all lived all their lives in Burlington (although Seb had been born in Milwaukee), they’d all gone to school every day with the same people for the last ten years, they'd all been sunburned swimming in the same creek every summer, they all knew everything about each other and there wasn’t any hint of… gods, ghosts, magic, and Kaden hadn’t even been able to pick up any of the telltale hints that any of them were fighting for survival in the more usual ways. Connie had her gluten allergy and Teeks and Tara had a stepmother they didn’t always get on with, but their mom only lived twenty minutes away in Elkhorn, so it wasn’t like anyone had actual lost a mom.
They were, of course, all fascinated with Kaden. Someone new! Someone with an edge of mystery and a different accent! His New York stories were a hit, every time, and Kaden mined his life for the funniest ones, or the grossest ones, to make them laugh. Even Tara paid attention when he was talking about New York, because she wanted to move there and work in fashion one day. The attention from them all was totally seductive; all the things that had happened to him recently hadn’t been able to kill the need to be a celebrity (he missed seeing the likes go up on his TikToks so much.)
But, like…
There were things that didn’t change. His days had started to, but just cos there was more things cramming into his head every day it didn’t make living in the world any easier. Sometimes it made it harder – sometimes he’d be thinking about something like… like why Connie refused to sit on him when she’d sit on Teeks even though she called Teeks ‘the last bastion of poor taste’, and ‘a walking HPV infection’ and he’d get this pressure in his chest that made it hard to breath, and he didn’t know why wanting something like that would make him silently, awfully panic but it did.
And on Friday, on Friday they’d been messing about with Seb’s hair gel and Connie had taken a handful and very deliberately sat down in front of Kaden and turned the front of his hair into a big spike, and he could smell her – chapstick and sunblock and popcorn – and watched her warm brown eyes as she concentrated on getting as much product in his hair as possible, watched the way golden cross necklace moved against her sunburned collarbones as she breathed, and then he’d chased her down the hall trying to spike her with his hair like he was a rhino and everyone had been shrieking about it. But then later that night when he was washing the gel out of his hair, he’d melted in the shower as fast as the gel had, and he’d sat in the bottom as the water poured down on him, and he couldn’t stop crying. And crying and crying, grief pouring out of him harder than the shower was pouring onto him.
Then Saturday they did movies again (todays theme: killer sharks) and Kaden sat on her windowseat and played with her cactus and felt hollowed out and vacant and barely said a word, to anyone, and especially not to her.
“What is with you and Connie, man?” Adrian asked, on Sunday when they were back to playing Apex Legends, doing a battle royal as a duo at the Bellini’s house, but on the same murder island as Teeks and Tara who were playing from their place.
“What,” Kaden said, not taking his eyes off the screen for a second. Part of him still felt off, wrong, broken. Like he'd cried something out of himself on Friday and it still hadn't found its way back.
“You know.”
“What? Aah shitshit, there’s a valkyrie – fuck-”
“Dude, mom’s home, don’t swear," Adrian warned, and then, after a couple of minutes of struggling to get their characters to higher ground: "Seb says Tara says I gotta ask you if you like her or not.”
“Who, Tara?”
“No you idiot, Connie.”
Kaden focused on the screen a bit harder, and after a moment, shrugged. “Why’s she askin’ that?”
“Iunno. Maybe cos you’re such a freak about her cactus.”
“I’m not a freak about her cactus.”
“Dude, you’re a freak about her cactus.”
“I’m fucking not!” Kaden insisted, stretching out to kick Adrian in the leg.
“Stop swearing,” Adrian kicked right back. “You’re gonna make her pull the plug!”
“Stop calling me a freak then.”
“I’ll stop calling you a freak when you stop asking like a freak – HEY!” Adrian protested, because Kaden had just whipped the pillow out from under his butt to throw at him. “You’re gonna get us killed!”
“Stop distracting me then, shithead!”
“Will you boys watch your language!” Celeste called from the other room.
“IT WAS KADEN!”
“I don’t care who it was! Cut it OUT!” Celeste replied, and both the boys descended into silence (apart from the sounds of death on the screen.)
“Narc,” muttered Kaden, after a minute, and Adrian reached out and kicked him again.
It was weird.
It was really weird, Kaden thought, how being kicked by someone made him feel like he actually inhabited his body again. Weird how Adrien muttering insults back at him under his breath where Celeste couldn't hear made Kaden feel like... he didn't quite know what it made him feel like.
Like he'd punch anyone in the face who tried to hurt Adrien, kinda.
Maybe.
Kaden didn't know.
But luckily, Kaden and Adrian had an island of other people to kill, so it wasn't like anyone was actually gonna ask.