"School?" Elina asks, voice quiet in the ringing silence of the room.
She's sitting next to Khemu, with Elijah on the other side of him, facing her dad, Khemu's dad, and Elijah's grandpa, across a table.
"How is that supposed to work?" Elijah asks. "I thought we were supposed to be hiding here, right? But if the three of us show up at school together, people are going to see how weird we are and realize something's going on."
"It's a small risk," his grandfather says, and Elina half rolls her eyes as he and Elijah stare at each other in stubborn, wordless silence. They've started doing that sometimes, because they're both really stubborn and don't like to back down. Elina asked him once if it bothers him that his grandfather is always mad at him, but Elijah had said that he isn't always mad. He said that's just how they understand each other, which doesn't make sense to Elina, but seems to just be how Elijah understands the world.
The rest of them waste an awkward couple of seconds waiting for one of them to blink and back down, but then Elina's dad clears his throat and just continues the conversation without them.
"He's right," he says. "It is only a small risk. No one is looking for the three of you, and you need an education."
"But Pappa…"
"Khemu doesn't even speak English," her dad says, and gestures to where Khemu's whining in Egyptian next to her. "If you ask me, that's more suspicious than anything else. He needs an education, and he needs you and—Elijah with him, to cover for what he doesn't know." He spits out the name with so much venom that Elijah stops staring at his grandpa and squirms. Khemu scoots over and leans against Elijah.
Once, Elina would have been jealous of that, but not anymore. Sometimes it's still frustratingly hard to be friends with Elijah, sometimes it's like he's purposefully cutting himself off from everyone else, and sometimes Elina will even wonder why she's even friends with him in the first place. Then she'll see something like this, someone else hurting him, and she remembers all over again that he shouldn't have to be alone. He doesn't fight Khemu when he gets close, the way he fights Elina or anyone else.
"Elina."
She stops staring at Elijah and Khemu and looks back up at her dad. "Yea?"
"I need you to go to school," he says. "It won't be so different from the school you went to back home. I need you to do that for me."
And Elina has always been raised to believe that Duty and Honor are important, so when her dad asks her to do something, there's no way she's ever really going to say no. She nods at him.
"I can't go," Elijah says, in a very tiny voice. He's quiet, but not (as far as Elina can tell) ashamed or afraid. Or maybe he is. It's hard to be sure.
"Oh," Khemu says, a few seconds later. His dad, who has that translator thing that Khemu's ears are still too small for, has been interpreting for Khemu, but it means he ends up a few seconds behind everyone else in the conversation most of the time. He whispers a question to Elijah, who nods.
Khemu groans.
"I… went into town a few days ago," Khemu says at last. "And I had an argument with a police officer there. I said something to him that—well, he's not going to forget me any time soon."
"What did you do?" Elina asks, because she hasn't heard this story yet.
Elijah doesn't answer, but the way he looks down at his hands and just stares means that he'd said something bad.
"Did you do something that's going to put us in danger?" Elijah's grandpa asks, leaning across the table, hands clasped.
Elijah shakes his head. "No," he says. "It's just going to get me in trouble."
"Then you'll go to school," his grandpa says. "And you will put up with the consequences, and you will not do it again."
Khemu is having a whole side conversation with his dad, and Elina (as usual) has no idea what the two of them are saying to each other, but the upshot of it is that as Elijah is quietly nodding his head that yes, he'll go to school if that's what he has to do, Khemu is making faces but nodding too. Elina's not going to be the only one that doesn't go, so she inches closer to Khemu as her dad nods in approval.
And just like that, they're going to school.
-/-
Khemu still doesn't have an entirely clear idea of school is going to be like. His dad can only give him the vaguest explanation, because he's never done this either. Layla has a lot of stories about her time at school, but most of those seem to end with Layla getting in trouble for something. Elijah clearly doesn't like school because he doesn't talk answer any of Khemu's questions when he asks. And no one else knows enough Egyptian to help him figure out what to expect.
So Khemu mostly worries quiet about this School Thing that both of his friends seem so upset about, until the night before their first day finally comes. Khemu is supposed to have extra help until he gets a handle on English (if he gets a handle on English, he hasn't so far, and it's been a whole month), but what if it's not enough, or someone notices he's speaking a dead language, or…
He's sitting next to the upstairs window with his knees drawn up to his chest, worrying and thinking that he's never going to get to sleep tonight, when Elijah comes over lugging a big paper bag. He plops down next to Khemu and starts pulling things out. Notebooks and pencils and piles of colored folders.
"Me and Grandpa went out to get supplies" he says, with the air of slightly surprised pride he usually has when mentioning his grandpa, like he still can't get over the fact that he has family that exists, and cares about him. Khemu has no idea how he's going to react when he finally gets to meet his actual dad. "You get some too."
So he and Khemu silently split the new supplies between them, and then when they're done, Elijah asks, "So are you ready for school?"
Khemu shifts nervously, but doesn't ask Khemu not to just know things about him. Khemu can't help it. "I'm scared," he says.
Elijah doesn't answer for a second. He's busy stacking up his folders, perfectly lining the corners up. But at last he looks at Khemu, and nods. "Me too," he says. "I always got bullied in school, you know? But at least now I have you and I have Elina and I never had friends before. So I don't care what anyone else says about me, and neither should you."
"But I won't know what anyone says," Khemu tells him, staring at the stack of supplies. "It's not going to be like it is here, 'cuz no one's going to know what I'm saying, and I'm just going to be weird because I grew up in the past, and—"
"Why did you agree to go, then?" Elijah asks. "If you hate it so much?"
"Because you're going," Khemu says. "You and Elina."
Elijah looks surprised for a second, then grins, a genuine expression that makes him seem more human than normal. "Yea we are," he says. "And we're going to help you, and soon you'll know exactly what's going on and you're going to fit in just fine."
Khemu's not sure that he believes it, but Elijah's reassurance makes him feel a little bit better anyway.
-/-
Pretty sure my favorite part of this chapter is the idea that William and Elijah bond by staring at each other until one of them stops being stubborn and gives in on whatever they're arguing about :p Also, yes, I finally get them into school! I've been aiming for this since the first chapter, but there was always other stuff to talk about, so I'm very happy this is finally here!
Also, semi-important announcement: I am taking a brief break from updating Bayek of Nowhere, because I'm at a point where this chapter where I basically sit down to write, get a few hundred words in, then scrap it all and start over to take it in a different direction. So far, I've been ok with just a very vague outline of where this is going, but I'm at the point now where I really need to sit down and figure out the plot.
I already have a few general ideas, so I don't think this will take too long (hopefully). In the meantime, I'll keep updating this fic, and hopefully I'll be back to writing both fics within a week. :) Sorry to anyone that's waiting for updates, but I think it's going to be better if I take the time to sit down and really get this right instead of rushing something out just to get it out.
