It doesn’t take long for them to join me, each with their own bowl of soup and starch.

  Rice has almost completely filled hers with gnocchi, whereas Holly has made the cardinal mistake of letting her piece of bread lounge half-dipped in the soup. This means that when she goes to eat it, it will be all soggy, and maybe it’ll even fall apart into her soup, leaving the whole bowl filled with kernels of grainy bread-goop. The mere thought brings a shudder to me, severe enough for her to notice.

  “What are you looking at?” she asks, almost accusingly.

  “No, no, nothing. It’s just that, your bread…” But I can tell she doesn’t care. If it was on purpose, then mentioning it will do nothing. And if it was simply by apathy that she let it happen, then she clearly doesn’t care enough about the texture of the soup and bread for my criticism to have any power. It would just be me telling her why I disagree, without either of us learning or changing in any way. In other words, completely pointless. I force myself to smile reassuringly at her. “It’s nothing.”

  “Um, okay…?” she says, sticking her spoon into her soup to bisect a piece from the bread. Mushy bread-crumbles taint her soup, but she isn’t even looking at it. She doesn't even care.

  “So, um…” I say, trying to distract myself from the war crime taking place before me, “how come Glyph left in such a hurry? Was there something she had to do?”

  Holly’s spoon pauses inches before her lips. Slowly, she puts the spoonful back down into the soup, tainting it further, to my stark horror. “No, there wasn’t,” she says as she absently stirs her soup. The wet bread crumbs are getting everywhere now. Pieces of bread, pulled from the whole, transformed into a dance of horrific goopy starch and loose gluten. As I stare into the swirling soup, every strand of hair I have on edge, her eyes pierce into me. “She can’t stand you. Honestly, it’s amazing she hasn’t attacked you again. It must be to avoid scaring the kids. If they saw her tearing you limb from limb, I doubt they’d look at her in the same way. Since her quest is to serve here for a full semester, being feared by the kids would make things much more difficult.”

  “I can imagine,” I say, my mind swirling with goop and starch and grain. The texture, the taste… The wetness of the soup and the dryness of the bread…

  “Was that sarcasm?” she asks, abruptly halting her noxious stir.

  “Sorry?” I say, looking away from her soup and up at her face.

  She groans and looks away. “Nothing. Don’t bother.”

  Mouth stuffed with gnocchi, Rice pipes up, only barely intelligible through the half-chewed pasta, saying, “Was id weawwy dad bawd?”

  Holly frowns at her. “...What?”

  “Oh, sowwey,” Rice says, quickly swallowing down the pasta, clearing her mouth with a few gulps of beer. She coughs into her hand. “What I was trying to say is, was it really that bad?”

  Holly bristles. “What do you mean by that?”

  “The tournament, that is.” Absently, Rice fiddles with her soup, picking up a gnocchi to balance at the end of her spoon before dropping, picking up another. “I saw the match, you know. The first one, when everyone ganged up on Prince… Pretty grisly! Him tearing everyone apart, and then you tearing him apart…” Her eyes on her bowl, she dissects a piece of gnocchi in two. Taking half, she brings it to her mouth, chews it up, and swallows. “A sight to remember, to be sure!” When she grins, I can practically count the pieces of pasta stuck between her teeth. “And then, the second match, just her and him… What was so horrible about that? I really can’t see it. It’s not like she actually died. Even the first time… Prince died too, you know. Heck, he died twice in the tournament! And still, unlike that girl, he can look his killer in the eye like a proper man.”

  Rearing back in her chair, Holly seems to almost be on the verge of an outburst. And still, impressively, she contains herself. “What are you trying to say, Angel?”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “That girl is overreacting,” Rice says, as plain as can be. “If she had guts, she’d face Prince and overcome what happened, instead of running away like a headless chicken.”

  Silently, I gape at her. There was no anger in her voice, no pity… Nothing but her pure opinion, untainted by any sort of emotional bias. Somehow, that only makes it worse.

  On the other side of the table, Holly makes a sound that I can only really describe as the scraping of metal against bone. A single look at her informs me that it is only the presence of the children that is keeping her from leaping across the room to strangle Rice. Her fingernails scrape against the table as she pulls her hands into white-knuckled fists. “Are you saying,” Holly snarls, “that she should forgive him?”

  To this, Rice looks genuinely surprised. She puts the spoon down, brows knitted. “No, of course not. Why would she?”

  And not for the first time today, I can’t tell whose side Rice is on.

  Since Holly seems just about ready to explode into a million tiny pieces in the hopes that she might take Rice down with her, I decide to interject as a sober third party. “Um, if I could just…” They turn to me, one as cool as the arctic, the other as blazing as the sun. “Does it really matter how bad what I did was? Isn’t it ultimately only she who can say how badly I hurt her?”

  Equally partial to the subject, they both start speaking over the other, all at once, without any heed towards the other.

  “No—”

  “Yes—”

  “The context also—”

  “Her pain is hers—”

  “We have to decide whether—”

  “Our opinions don’t change what she—”

  They turn to each other, Holly fuming, and Rice—for the second time since I’ve known her—showing genuine irritation.

  Holly snaps first, saying, “Would you mind letting me—”

  “I’m only trying to—”

  “Could you just—”

  They glare at each other. The soup is going cold. The kids, having finished their food, are beginning to mill out, leaving their well-licked bowls and spoons at the table. I’m getting flashbacks to the political discussions my sister and father used to share.

  Rice opens her mouth. “I—”

  Holly interrupts. “You—”

  I silence them both by standing up, the scraping of my chair keeping them mute. “If you don’t calm down,” I say, very softly, “I’m going to show you the thumb-removing-trick, but for real. Okay? Got it?”

  They both stare at me. Soon, Holly leans back in her chair. Rice adjusts her hat and folds her hands neatly across the table. Neither of them say anything. Sighing, I sit back down. “Good. Great. We are, after all, adults here. Yes, even me. So, I need you to act like it.” Holly grumbles something while Rice reluctantly nods. Good enough. “So, just to clarify…” I point at Rice. “You think Glyph is overreacting and should face her fears, a.k.a. me in order to overcome it.”

  She shrugs. “Basically, I guess.”

  I point another finger at Holly. “You think that…” I draw a blank. Huh. She really didn’t get to say much of anything, huh? Well, in that case… “What is your opinion, in brief?”

  “Like any sane, empathetic person would,” Holly says, shooting a few not-so-subtle stink-eyes at Rice, “I think Glyph has a right to react to what happened in whatever way fits her. Even if my experience doesn’t match how she took it, that doesn’t mean what she feels isn’t real to her.”

  “You’re calling reality subjective?” Rice asks, very nastily.

  “I’m saying—”

  I pause her by holding up my hand. “Let’s keep calm here, okay? I understand what you mean. Please, continue.”

  It takes a moment for Holly to gather herself again. Drumming her fingers against the table, she continues, saying, “To her, meeting Kitty was a nightmare come true. Do you know how many times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night only to find her standing at the window with a candle in hand? Peering out like a dementia-ridden grandma afraid of the postman? And all because she was afraid that this thing would return to finish the job. Or do you think she’s faking that?”

  Rice’s eyes sharpen, but I’m able to speak before she can worsen things, saying, “There’s no need to put words in her mouth. Clearly, Glyph has been very… troubled by what happened.”

  “You speak as though you had no fault in it, fiend,” Holly says.

  “That wasn’t my intention, and I’m sorry for making it sound like it,” I say diplomatically. “Now, all and all…” This is going to be the difficult one. Neither of them seem too keen on dropping the subject. But I want to eat my food while it’s hot, so… “I don’t think we have any say in whether she has reason or not to act this way. Being avoidant like this is probably not sustainable, but we can’t force her to confront anything. So, if you’ll let me, I really think we should maybe talk about something else, and, um… Enjoy our food? Would that be okay?”

  Rice is frigid. Holly is smouldering.

  “It’s going cold,” I say, in a very small voice. “I’m… I’m hungry. Please?”

  Scoffing, Holly looks away. “Whatever. I should have known his companion would be just as bad as him.”

  “Are you insulting me, girlie?” Rice asks, in the same voice I’d expect a shark to have. “Are you insulting Prince?”

  “Food,” I squeak. “Please. Food?”

  Without tearing her eyes from Holly, Rice dips her spoon in her soup, and slurps it, purposefully loud.

  Holly turns away, refusing to touch her bowl.

  What did I do wrong…?