Day 1: In Which There Is A Thief
He had never met the boy in his dreams.
Lately Roxas had been having extremely vivid dreams, dreams so real it almost felt like he was living them more than imagining them, so he was quite certain about that. It was like he was seeing the dreams as a passive observer, inside someone else's body, someone else's head, trapped.
The dream filled him, and filled him, until his eyes snapped open.
Roxas raised a hand slowly to his forehead, nursing his aching head. He was disoriented, feeling almost like his skin had been stretched out... as if he hadn't woken up as much as reached the maximum amount of dreaming he could stand, and then simply rejected sleep.
Maybe he was coming down with something, he thought, and peered at the clock beside his bed.
"Roxas!"
His eyes widened at the sound of that voice, and he leaned in the other direction, pushing open the window. "Hey!" Roxas called, and then the orange sky caught his eye -- crap, it was already mid-afternoon. "Sorry-- I overslept!"
No wonder he felt so lousy, if he'd slept this long, Roxas told himself.
Far below on the ground, Hayner put his hands on his hips and smirked up at him. Pence waved from behind him, calling up, "Well, hurry! It's summer vacation -- we've got a lot of really important nothing to do!"
"Pence!" Olette said, sounding scandalized. "What about our homework?"
Hayner scowled at them both. "Make it fast, Roxas," he said direly.
In an effort to outrace homework, Roxas hopped out of bed and took a rushed shower, then thundered down the stairs and out of the house. No doubt his parents were already at work, no point in telling them where he was going -- he'd probably be back before they got home anyway.
"Hey-- sorry," he said breathlessly as he caught up with them, and took a punch to the shoulder for his trouble.
"You'd better be," was all Hayner said, and then turned to lead the way to the Usual Spot.
"Don't mind him," Olette said softly, glancing sidelong at Roxas. "He's been upset since yesterday."
Pence grunted. "You can't blame him, you'd think people around here were going to arrest us or something."
The blond tilted his head back thoughtfully, mostly ignoring Pence's usual exaggeration, and hastened his steps to fall in beside Hayner. "Wasn't yesterday your sister's -- thing?"
"Her recital?" Hayner's jaw tightened. "Yeah."
Hayner hated those stupid events he had to attend. Roxas said sympathetically, "I bet it was really boring, huh?"
"I wouldn't know. They didn't let me in!"
Roxas paused in his tracks, startled, and then laughed, trying to make a joke out of it. "You don't look nearly as happy as I'd have thought you'd be if that happened! What's wrong?"
The taller boy stomped his way up the street, not responding to the friendly teasing. "I guess they thought I might -- I don't know -- set fire to the audience hall or something."
"Oh, come on. You're not psychotic, just a little excitable." Although privately, Roxas thought Hayner looked about ready to burst into flames, so that might not surprise him at all.
Hayner was red with anger and the glare he turned on Roxas said as plainly as any words that this was deadly serious. "Yeah, well, thanks to Seifer and his gang--"
"Don't say that, we don't know that Seifer has anything to do with it!" Olette protested.
"With what?" Roxas asked dubiously, more to the other two than Hayner, who was clearly 'excitable' right now.
Pence sighed, and said, "Well, Hayner thinks--"
"It's the only explanation!!"
"--that Seifer's the one who spread that rumor about us."
"There's a rumor about us?" Roxas echoed, even though he was starting to sound like a broken record.
Hayner stared at him, the anger momentarily robbed from him. Even Olette and Pence looked surprised.
"...Roxas," the brunette girl said faintly, "you really haven't noticed?"
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Noticed what?" he said sheepishly, and ducked away from Hayner's attempt to clobber him.
"GAAAH, come on!! Our reputation is on the line! Pay attention!!"
Roxas had no idea what he'd missed that was so obvious to everyone else, but he held out his hands apologetically. "Sorry! I've been kind of busy trying to get some errands done, and -- stuff." Sleeping. He'd been getting so tired lately, and oversleeping every morning. "I'm out of the loop, help me out. What are we talking about? Be specific."
The three of them exchanged a look, and then Olette said gamely, "Well, lately, someone's been stealing the (( . . . . . . )) from the town--"
"What?" Pence said, wide-eyed.
Roxas was nodding, and it took Pence's question before he realized what was missing. He blinked, and frowned at Olette.
She looked as confused as any of them. "...(( . . . . . . )). You know--" She lifted her hands, holding her thumbs and forefingers at angles to indicate the approximate size and shape. "(( . . . . . . ))."
Hayner snapped, "Are you making fun of me?!"
Yeah, right; Olette? Roxas gave him a withering look and asked her, "You mean, (( . . . . . . )), right?"
It happened again, just silence where the word that he'd spoken should've been. Roxas put a hand to his throat, fascinated in spite of himself -- almost more fascinated than surprised.
"This is stupid," Hayner said firmly, and stomped his foot sullenly. "(( . . . . . . ))." He tugged on his hair in disbelief, his eyes huge. "(( . . . . . . ))!! What the-- I can't say it!"
"It's like not just the (( . . . . . . )) were stolen... but the word (( . . . . . . )), too," Pence said, marveling, and his expression turned crafty. "What kind of thief could steal a word, I wonder..."
Roxas grimaced and cut him off. Not more talk about UFOs. "This wasn't happening earlier, was it?"
"No, this is-- this is new," Olette said, bewildered. "We could say -- it, just fine, earlier!"
Knowing Hayner, he'd probably been ranting all morning, so she would've noticed, too. Roxas frowned, glancing down at his feet.
"I bet it's a curse," Pence whispered.
Roxas's lips quirked up in spite of himself. He didn't usually humor Pence, but-- "Who would steal a bunch of (( . . . . . . )) and then curse the word?"
"Ghosts? Maybe one was killed in a freak accident with darkroom chemicals--"
"You mean Seifer's blaming us for ghosts?!" If anything, Hayner only looked more annoyed.
"Wait," Roxas said before he could stop himself, "Seifer's what?"
Hayner turns around quickly and grabs Roxas by the front of his shirt, hauling him in and shaking him. "Haven't you been listening to a word I've said?!"
"H, Hayner!"
But Roxas only flinched a little and raised his hands in futile self-defense. "I'm listening!" he protested. "But you're not talking, you're just kind of -- flailing."
Hayner's jaw dropped, and he gave Roxas another, smaller shake. "I don't flail!"
Roxas laughed and batted his hands away, clapping the taller boy on the shoulder in wordless consolation. All the same, he thought he'd ask someone more coherent for their opinion, and he glanced at Pence and Olette with a smile.
Olette was smiling too. "Like I was saying, someone has been stealing (( . . . . . . )) from around town--"
"A ghost has been stealing--"
"Thanks, Pence," she said, and went on quickly, "We don't know why, but it certainly seems like everyone thinks -- well, they think we did it."
Roxas frowned. "But why would they think we did it?"
"If aliens were involved--"
Hayner charged right in, talking over Pence's explanation as to why ghosts and aliens might be collaborating. "What do you mean, why?! Isn't it obvious? Seifer and his gang have it in for us, who else would spread a rumor like that?!"
Olette said mildly, "I just think it's too soon to say it's Seifer..."
"We're victims," Hayner said, obviously no more inclined to listen to her nonsense than Pence's. "The thief stole our (( . . . . . . )) too, and last time I checked, being stolen from? Kinda eliminated you from the suspect pool! Come on, let's go get him -- we can take him!!"
Olette started to disagree again, but Hayner was visibly psyching himself up, punching the air viciously, maybe imagining Seifer's face there. She gave Roxas a quick glance, somewhere between pained and hopeful.
Here we go again, Roxas thought, sighing. "Or, we could find out who really did it -- that way, everyone would have to admit it wasn't us. Right?"
Hayner paused, and relaxed. It kind of looked like he was deflating. "...well, we could do that too," he muttered.
Roxas put a hand on his shoulder. "Seifer will look like a total jackass in front of the whole town if we do."
That approach worked much better, and Hayner cheered up a bit, looking at him. "...you think?"
"Definitely," Roxas agreed, and took in Pence's obvious approval and Olette's grateful smile. That seemed like a better prospect all around.
He wasn't sure how much good it would do, though. Seifer couldn't really have stolen a word -- he was tough, and he was definitely enough of a jerk to steal things, but a word wasn't something you could just pluck off a desk. And could they really track down a thief so subtle as to not only steal a word, but to frame Hayner and his friends for it?
But now that his attention had been called to it, people had been acting unusually cold to him lately.
Olette fell in beside Roxas, smiling still. "Thanks, Roxas."
It took him a moment to tune back in, and then he slowed his own pace and offered her a small smile in return. "He'd run wild if we let him," he said sympathetically. He was used to being the mitigating influence, tempering Hayner's recklessness; Olette got tired of looking like the villain all the time, and Hayner was usually more responsive to Roxas's tactics.
"Wild is an exaggeration!" she said, exasperated in her own amused way, still grinning. "I'm sure he'd only... flunk out of school, spraypaint his name all over town..."
Roxas laughed. "He still comes pretty close. But I bet we'd all flunk out." He might do homework on his own, if he got really bored and had nothing better to do, but he'd definitely never try and get Pence and Hayner to do their work.
"Don't sell yourself short-- I think you'd be fine," the brunette assured him.
Roxas rubbed his fingers with his thumb, still smiling to himself. "I don't know -- I think I might never do anything without you guys. Probably just lie in bed and stare at the ceiling."
It was true, and he didn't think there was anything exceptionally odd about saying so. Roxas didn't notice the way Olette's good-natured expression slipped, replaced for just a few moments with worry.
