Author's Note: Readers, I have a bit of sad news to share. My father's cousin—let's call him "Larry"—the one who served as the partial inspiration for Trunks' mischief-making ways in this story, passed away suddenly a couple of weeks ago.

Larry, who lived in London, was a truly ridiculous human being, one of the most terrifyingly charming jesters this side of Shakespeare's Feste. He was also the kind of guy who could con a starving man out of his last quarter—he was that good. While most of the antics Trunks has gotten up to in this story have been of my creation, some of them were taken straight out of Larry's very long playbook. Several years back, for instance, he decided—for reasons that still elude us—to lace some birdseed with ground-up sleeping pills, go down to Trafalgar Square, and strew large handfuls of birdseed along the ground. Minutes later, dozens of the square's infamous pigeon population were lying unconscious before Horatio Nelson's statue.

Like I said, Larry was a ridiculous, ridiculous person.

Don't worry—this doesn't mean I'm going on hiatus. But considering that you all have gotten to know Larry a little bit through Trunks' character, I thought I should let you in on the news.

For what it's worth, everyone laughed their way through the funeral.

Larry, the world is a slightly less interesting place without you.

Wednesday 4 November

As of 12:25 pm today, I am not speaking to Nao, and I am speaking to Ava.

Seriously, how the fuck did that happen?

Maybe I should start at the beginning of the day. Trunks drove me to school, barely-on-time as usual, and I pushed my way though the hallway and into class. I slipped into my seat with just enough time to scribble down a few more bullshit answers on my calc homework . . . and enough time to catch Nao staring me down out of the corner of his eye.

I huffed, dropped my pencil onto my desk, and spun in my seat to face him. "What?"

Nao responded with the ever brilliant, "What, what?"

I rolled my eyes at him. "Clever."

He sighed a bit. "Look," he said, in that condescending-Nao tone, "something is obviously not okay—"

I stopped him right there. "Give the man a prize."

He glowered at me and dropped the look of probably-feigned sympathy on his face. "Okay, can you turn off the jackass switch for about five seconds?"

I had some choice words for him—words that probably aren't fit to reprint here—but I got cut off by the bell ringing. So I just muttered to myself until Mori picked up his lecture from where he left it off yesterday. At least, I assume he picked up where he left off; I zoned out and spent class doodling dead pterodactyls.

Again. I'm not bitter. Really.

I shouldn't have been surprised when Nao started following after me at the end of class. I guess some people just can't take a hint. The frustrating thing is that I should have been able to slip away from him—I'm obviously a thousand times faster than him, but I can't just super-speed my way down the hallway.

I'm so sick of hiding my powers. It's such bullshit.

And so, because I was in public, and because there were throngs of people in the hallway, and because I couldn't use my fucking super-speed, Nao managed to catch up to me before I could make my way into literature.

"Goten, man," he said, slipping in between me and the door to my lit class. "Come on, you've been out of it all week. What's going on?"

Maybe I should have just ignored him and gone to class. But I was pissed, and Nao was . . . well, he was there. So I said: "Damnit, Nao, don't you have any other friends to annoy?"

Even I have to admit, that was a pretty awful thing to say. He apparently agreed—he looked like he'd been slapped. Which I guess is why he said: "Look, if you want to isolate yourself from everyone except your jerk of a boyfriend—"

What can I say? Given how much I've been relying on Trunks lately—given how he's pretty much been the only one I've been able to talk to this past week—well, Nao touched a nerve. So instead of calmly defending Trunks, my response went something like, "Shut the fuck up, Nao." I growled at him. "You don't know shit."

"You're right, I don't. So I don't really have anything useful to add, do I?" And he turned around and started walking down to the other end of the school.

Again, probably should have taken the chance to just walk into class. Instead, I yelled after him: "Fine, just walk away, you antisocial little fuck!"

He made a quarter turn, just enough for me to see him narrow his eyes at me. "Classy, Goten." And he kept walking away.

Great way to start the day, right?

Fast forward to lunch. I went to meet Trunks for lunch in the hallway, right outside the music room. It was, as usual, abandoned, and practically silent save for the sound of bad flute playing filtering into the hallway. Trunks was already sitting down, leaning against one of the lockers, when I got there. I joined him, and we were both picking quietly at our lunches—I was still thinking about my stupid fight with Nao, I couldn't tell you what was on Trunks' mind—when his mobile phone started to buzz.

As soon as he flipped open his mobile, his eyes grew to twice their size. I asked him what was up; he said, "It's Addo." He snapped his phone close with one hand. "He, uh, wants to meet up for lunch. And talk." Alone, Trunks didn't say.

"Go for it," I shrugged out. "I'll see you after school."

"Are you sure?" He did that nervous lower-lip-biting thing, looked down at his phone, and looked up at me. "I mean, I don't want to just you alone in—"

I cut him off with a kiss. "I'm a big boy, Trunks," I said with what I'm pretty sure was the first genuine laugh I've had all week. "I think I can handle finishing my lunch without help."

"Right," he said, shoving his stuff, including his half-eaten lunch, back into his backpack. "Uh, later." And he scrambled down the hallway, looking more nervous than I'd seen him in ages.

Guess Addo doesn't need so much "space" anymore.

So it was just me. Sitting in the hallway, alone, picking at my lunch, feeling zero appetite despite the fact that my stomach was quite loudly growling at me. I could almost hear it say, "Screw your issues. Just feed me, you asshole!"

. . . maybe I'm the one who needs more friends.

As if on cue, I heard a very particular pair of red high heels clicking against the tile of the hallway. They stopped a few feet in front of me. I didn't have to look up to know who they belonged to.

"What's up, Ava?" I kept poking at my sandwich.

"Oh, um, nothing." She shuffled her feet against the tile. "Just, uh, going to chemistry."

I rolled my eyes and looked up at her. "Ava, our chem classroom is on the other side of the school."

"Oh yeah. Um." She started wringing her hands. "I was. Um. Going to the bathroom?"

I couldn't help it—I smirked. "As opposed to the one right by the cafeteria?"

". . . Yeah. Right."

I laughed at her—I don't think it came out nasty, but she did turn a little red. "You want to sit down?" I gestured at the spot on the floor next to me, where Trunks had been sitting.

She nodded. "Sure." And she slid down next to me. How she managed to sit down on the floor in those heels and that skirt without flashing me, I will never understand.

"So," she said, adjusting her top, "uh, you got a haircut."

I bit back a mean comment about her command of the obvious. "Yeah."

"It looks good."

"Thanks." And, because it was getting pretty hard to ignore the fifty-ton dinosaur in the room, I said, "I thought you weren't speaking to me."

"I'm not," she said, looking profoundly uncomfortable. "You've just seemed really down the last couple of days."

Guess she's more perceptive than I've given her credit for.

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes. "Look," I finally said, "I am really sorry about blowing up at you last week."

"Yeah," she nodded. "That sucked."

"Not so much for what I said as how I said it, though." I sighed. "Yelling at you in public, that was a really, really shitty thing to do. But you . . . you've been keeping this up for almost a year now."

She gave me a look that was halfway between a pout and a scowl. "I know."

"I've kind of run out of ways to say no."

It was her turn to sigh. "Don't worry, I'm done." She shook her head. "I should've known it wouldn't have worked, you know?"

"Probably."

"It's just. Well, you know. I. Um. I've got kind of a big crush—"

I cut her off. "Yeah, I've noticed."

And then she said:

". . . on Dia."

There was a long, long pause as I picked the pieces of my brain off the floor.

And, because I couldn't think of one other goddamn thing to say, I shouted: "What the everloving fuck?"

"Shh!" She held up her hands. "Keep it down, okay?"

"Dia. Dia Aki. Short, skinny, multicolored hair, spoiled, female."

"Yes, yes, that Dia."

I shook my head very quickly, as if it would somehow jolt the world back into making sense. "What the fuck," I repeated. "You . . . I didn't even think you liked girls."

"I don't," she sighed. "Dia's just . . . different, I guess. She's, I dunno, special." She looked down at the floor. "And I guess I started hitting on you because, well, you were cute. And you were there. And maybe I was hoping you would help me get my mind off of her, you know?" She looked back up at me. "Pretty stupid, huh?"

And there it was. All along, it wasn't even me Ava wanted. It was Dia.

It's just a fucking revelation conga line lately.

I leaned back against one of the lockers. And I thought about it. Really thought about it. About how Ava started hitting on me literally minutes after Dia and Kato outed themselves as a couple. About the way Ava would always go out of her way for Dia, whether it was helping dye her hair to reassuring her about her less-than-ample busom. About the fact that Dia was the only one that was ever able to get Ava off my back.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it made sense. It actually made fucking sense.

I tapped the back of my head against the locker. "So you decided to hit on me. To help you get over Dia."

"Mm hmm."

I sat in silence for another minute. And thought. And kept thinking. And thought some more. And then, I smiled at her and said: "I call bullshit."

A confused, slightly hurt look crossed her face. "What do you mean?"

"If you really wanted to get over Dia," I started, "you would have gone for one of the hundred boys at this school you'd actually have a shot with. Sure as hell wouldn't have gone for a guy who's gay and taken." I paused for a second, finally making eye contact with her. "You just figured that maybe, if you could turn me, you could turn Dia too."

Her look of confusion quickly became one of panic. Yeah, she was found out.

More silence. And then, without breaking eye contact, I said: "You're an idiot."

She blinked and startled back a little. "Excuse me?"

"Look . . . " I tried to put it as gently as a could, but I think I failed. "I've got a boyfriend. And even if I didn't, I'd still be gay. What made you think chasing after me for so long would do anything other than piss me off?"

She looked back down, this time at her very bright red fingernails. "I don't know," she said quietly.

I shook my head. "You're cute, Ava, but you're not that cute."

She looked up again, smiling this time. "You think I'm cute?"

"Objectively." I couldn't help smirking again. "Sorry, still no attraction."

"Right." She frowned. And after a few seconds, she started, "If you were straight, you think, maybe . . . "

"Probably not." She started to pout again. "But I've got weird tastes. I like prank-pulling mad geniuses with poor impulse control."'

She let out a nervous giggle. "You just described Dia."

"Yeah, well, Dia'd probably be my type if I were straight."

"I can't blame you." And she turned away from me, looking . . . well, she looked crushed.

I guess I'm not the only one with problems in this freakshow of a school.

"It was pretty dumb," she said. "Thinking I could turn you straight."

"Or turn Dia gay."

"Yeah." She turned back to me. "I really am sorry. I didn't know it bothered you so much."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry too. I should have been more straightforward about it. You know, before screaming at you in the hallways."

The bell rang for the end of lunch. I grabbed my picked over lunch and put it back in my backpack. I stood, and helped Ava off the floor; she grabbed her bag and started walking with me toward chemistry.

As the halls started to fill up again, a completely random thought occurred to me. "You could have gone for Addo, you know."

"Oh, god no." Ava looked aghast. "Gay or not, I can't date a boy who's shorter than me. I could never wear heels!" And she was so serious about it, I couldn't help but laugh.

She stopped still in the hallway. I turned around to see her folding her arms, frowning at me, obviously annoyed that I was laughing at her again. I stopped laughing; she kept pouting.

But when I shook my head and smiled at her—sincerely, this time—she smiled back.