Mathilda sat behind her desk with her reading glasses on and her hands folded, looking at the two of them across from her with the measured patience of someone who had been doing this job long enough to have had versions of this meeting before, just not with these specific people.
Lucas had a bandage on his head. The nurse had been clear that nothing had structurally occurred. He had fallen. The floor had caught him. That was the entire medical event. The bandage was either a formality or his own addition, because he was wearing it very visibly in the center of his forehead like it was making a statement.
"Lucas," Mathilda said.
"I didn't do anything," Lucas said immediately.
"You are going to apologize to Alice."
Lucas looked at Alice. Then back at her. "She hit me."
Mathilda did not correct that. Alice did not correct that. The sentence sat there perfectly normal and nobody touched it.
"You were being rude," Mathilda said. "Apologize."
"I thanked her. I said thanks or whatever---"
"Or whatever is not an apology, Lucas."
"I already---"
"Lucas."
He exhaled through his nose with the full weight of someone performing a task beneath them, turned to Alice with the expression of a person who had done the calculation and decided this was the faster option, and said flatly, "Fine. Sorry. For the comments."
"Thank you," Mathilda said. Then she looked at Alice, voice shifting into something softer. "And you. Sticks. Again."
"It was there," Alice said.
"They're always there with you somehow." The fond kind of sigh. "I'll need to note this, but I'll keep it from---"
"Please don't tell my mom," Alice said.
The corner of Lucas's mouth moved. "Mama's girl," he said. Not quite under his breath. Not quite far enough under.
Mathilda's hand came down on the back of his head before he'd finished the second word. Not hard, but squarely and without hesitation, with the efficiency of someone who had been doing exactly this to this specific person for a very long time.
Lucas grabbed the bandage. "That's the injury---"
"There is no injury, you brat."
"There is a bandage. Are you blind?"
"You put that there yourself!"
Alice watched this with genuine interest. He had known Aunt Mathilda his whole life and had seen her in many configurations, warm, worried, precise, occasionally immovable. But never like this, quick and completely unsentimental, dealing with Lucas with the rhythm of something long-established. It was a different gear than he'd known she had. He found, quietly, that he liked seeing it.
"Why are you even siding with her?" Lucas said, still holding the bandage. "You don't even know her that well."
Mathilda looked at him over the top of her glasses. "I have known Alice since he was born."
The word sat in the air for exactly one second.
Lucas went still. Not dramatically. He didn't flinch or make a face. He just stopped, the way a person stopped when something didn't match and their brain needed a moment to catch up with it. His eyes moved to Alice. Then back to Mathilda. Then to Alice again, slower this time, going over details he'd already seen but was now apparently looking at differently.
Alice looked back at him without any particular expression.
Mathilda continued in the same even tone, as if the word had been entirely ordinary, which to her it was. "He is one of the most well-behaved people I know, which right now is a higher bar than you are clearing." She let that land. "And I am going to suggest very strongly that you do not make anything else out of this. Not a comment, not a joke, not a question in a hallway. Are we clear? Because your grandfather will not be in a position to help you if you go down that road."
Lucas looked at her. He had the face of someone running a calculation, getting close to an answer, and then stepping back from it. He closed his mouth.
Mathilda held his gaze one more moment. Then she sat back. "Both of you. Out."
The hallway was quiet. Alice started walking. Lucas fell into step beside him without being invited.
A few seconds passed.
"So," Lucas said. "You're a guy."
Not a question. Alice kept walking.
"That's why she said he."
"My aunt says what she means," Alice said.
Lucas was quiet for a moment, which was unusual enough from him that Alice noticed it. Then: "So you're gay?"
"I dress like a girl, so obviously I must be," Alice said, with zero inflection.
Lucas opened his mouth. Closed it. Then: "Is that why you grab sticks?"
"Think whatever you want."
"I'm just asking."
"Okay."
"You have a short temper."
"With stupid people, yes."
A silence.
"Does anyone at school know?" Lucas asked. "Besides my aunt."
"My friends know," Alice said.
"The loud one and the calm one."
"Yes."
"And everyone else just thinks you're a girl."
"Everyone else thinks what they think. I don't correct them."
"That's weird."
"I know. I don't care."
Silence.
"So you're just," Lucas gestured vaguely, "walking around. And nobody knows."
"Correct."
"And you don't care."
"Correct."
Another silence. Then Lucas reached toward Alice's hair, apparently wondering something, and Alice's hand moved first.
The stick connected with the wall so hard it cracked the plaster. Lucas ducked at the last possible second, stumbled back, and stared at the mark in the wall and then at Alice, who had not lowered the stick and whose expression had gone very flat and very still.
"That's my hair," Alice said.
Lucas took a step back. Then another.
"Hey. Hey, I was just---" He turned and walked fast. Then faster. "Violent guy with a stick! I'm talking to you! Stop following me!"
Alice followed him.
It was not long before they were both back in the principal's office.
The room had transformed the way rooms transformed when Lucy had been left alone in one for any stretch of time.
She was at the billiard table with a cue, fully concentrated, lining up a shot while Steven stood beside her offering advice she was clearly not using. Xavier and Bryan were near the counter with drinks, talking with the easy calm of two people who had recognized something in each other and skipped the formalities. Ethan and Anna were on the sofa watching Lucy's game with the shared attention of people who had already placed silent bets.
Anna looked up when Alice came back in. Her eyes went briefly to Lucas, took in the bandage, and she asked nothing.
Lucy took her shot. The ball went somewhere creative. Steven made a pained sound. Ethan laughed. Bryan watched without expression and said something quiet to Xavier, who came close to smiling.
Alice stood in the doorway and looked at all of it.
Lucas stepped into the room behind him, making a wide arc to avoid being within arm's reach. He turned around.
"Leave. Take your friends and go."
Nobody looked at him. Lucy lined up her next shot. Steven offered more advice. Bryan and Xavier kept talking.
Alice walked in and sat down.
Lucas stared at the back of his head.
Alice was certain of one thing.
He hated that guy.