"€3 for a bag of chips?" Thierry stared at the sign in shock for a moment, his jaw hanging slightly open, before glancing down the aisle at the other bags to check their prices. "At the store next to my apartment, this same bag is €1.50!"

Adil raised an eyebrow at Thierry in annoyance. "We don't have to have this picnic, you know," he pointed out acidly. "You could just… head back to your neighborhood with your lower-priced junk food and do your thing there."

Thierry looked away. "No – it's not that. I'm glad we're having a picnic, considering that we won't get to see each other hardly at all next year. It's just… I didn't expect the prices to be so much higher here. If I'd realized the difference, I would have picked stuff up at home to bring."

"Well in our neighborhood, the prices for practically everything have gone up lately," Adil informed him, his jaw clenched. "Half the stores had to close because of all the looting after the Tarasque blew through, and then as if that wasn't enough, two more got torched the other week – the night the whole city seemed to be going crazy."

Thierry let out a breath. The night when Killer Bee had tried to break out of Paris still remained seared into his memory. He had only arrived at M. Damocles' apartment building after the gangs of thugs had tried to hurt M. Damocles and King Monkey's fiancée; afterward, he and Impact had spent half the night trying to fend off roving bands of thugs who kept coming near the neighborhood. His own neighborhood had seen a couple of small fires – a billboard had been knocked down on the next block – but his parents had escaped the chaos largely unscathed. All the other Heroes of Paris had been involved in trying to keep the city safe: dozens of families had been threatened, a few of the Heroes had been targeted specifically. To some degree, Thierry had known that the chaos had not been contained to a few blocks or just the Heroes of Paris. But he hadn't realized just how much damage there had been in the neighborhood where Leïla and Adil lived.

Adil was still talking. "After Mom got last week's groceries, my dad started talking about taking another shift at work since things are suddenly so much more expensive."

Thierry's eyes widened, and he shook his head in disbelief.

"It's kind of been like that everywhere, though," Amalia pointed out, poking her head around the aisle, her arms full of soda bottles. Thierry's stomach lurched. She pursed her lips, looking down at the sodas. "Ever since the Tarasque destroyed half the city, it seems like prices for everything have been a little crazy. My mom says our grocery bill is at least 25% higher than it was before it happened."

Thierry hummed, his brows furrowed in thought. "Haven't the prices been going back to normal lately, though?"

Amalia shrugged. "Maybe a little," she allowed, holding up one of the bottles. "But not back to where it was before. Over the winter, one of these cost €1.25; right after things got back to normal, it was €1.75. Now, it's €1.50… though they're charging €2 here."

"Why is it so much more expensive here?" Thierry demanded.

"M. Nebbou says it's because of the price of goods – supply and demand," Adil explained with a sour expression. "But it wasn't like this two months ago. Right after everything started to settle down, it seemed like things were going just fine. The prices were high, but not too bad. But a couple weeks ago, suddenly things started going up."

Thierry raised an eyebrow. "'A couple weeks ago'? You mean after the Night of Flames?"

"That's the one."

"Is that why it's so pricey here?"

Adil shrugged. "Not a clue. The fact that both Matjar and Firouzja's had to close afterward probably hasn't helped matters Although my dad thinks it might actually have something to do with the elections coming up."

Amalia quirked an eyebrow at them. "Seriously? What would that have to do with expensive chips?"

"One of the podcasts Dad listens to," began Adil. "The host said it was part of a conspiracy to stop the immigrant population from voting. If people like my dad have to work a lot more just to eat, then they don't have time for anything else."

Thierry gave him a confused look. "That doesn't make much sense, though, does it?"

"I know, right?" agreed Amalia. "Why would that matter to the election, one way or the other?"

"I don't know one way or the other," Adil replied. "But it definitely isn't doing anyone any favors."

"Politics." Amalia made a face.

With a sidelong glance at Amalia, Thierry rolled his eyes and refocused his attention on the bags of chips displayed in front of him. "So, are we getting the chips or not?"

"Why not?" Adil shrugged. "As long as we have the money for it."

"I can cover the chips," Thierry offered, suppressing a wince as he counted out the money. Still, this was the first time all summer that he actually had money to spend while he was out with his friends; so often, he had had to rely on Laurent or Jacques to cover him – always planning to pay them back later. But over last two weekends, he had spent close to twenty hours working for M. Damocles and Kim, cleaning up all the damage from the Night of Flames. The thugs had smashed furniture, crashed through windows, broken plates… M. Damocles had even knocked a bookcase over on top of one of them. The landlord had replaced the bloodstained carpet, but there had still been far too much work left to do. Not that Thierry could really complain; without his odd jobs from M. Damocles, he would never have had spending money this summer. Counting the bills and doing some quick math in his head, he nodded: he had enough for three bags, with a few euros left over. "Yeah, I can buy the chips, and maybe some dip to go with them."

Adil gave him a surprised look. "I guess I'll pay for candy, then, if you're okay with that."

"I've got the sodas!" Amalia told them cheerily, shifting them in her arms and checking her phone. "And just in time: it looks like Marie and Laurent have the sandwiches."

Thierry glanced at Adil, who shrugged, grabbing a couple bags of candy and leading the way up to the register. A dozen signs were plastered to the convenience store's door and around the counter, most of them in Arabic, though a few were in both Arabic and French. The younger man at the counter quickly checked out the two people ahead of them in line before reaching the three of them. Thierry's stomach flipped as they stood in line, their conversation switching from politics to lycée. He frowned: attending collège with all his friends had been so nice… but now it seemed like almost everyone was going in different directions. He had taken for granted that they would stay together until graduation… but now it wasn't going to happen. He and Adil would be in the same lycée… but half Thierry's friends were going somewhere entirely different. Would they still remain friends when they weren't all at the same school together? Amalia was going to attend a lycée with a better sports program – how often would he actually see here once school started?

After paying for the chips, Thierry hung back by the door, waiting for Amalia to purchase the sodas. Adil paused halfway down the block, looking in either direction for the others. Finally, however, he started and left, moving quickly in the direction of the new community garden where they were going to meet up with Laurent and Marie and the others. After another minute, Amalia joined Thierry at the door, groaning in annoyance.

"Everything okay?" he asked her, eyeing her in concern.

She shook her head. "He wasn't going to give me any bags to carry these in," she complained, rolling her eyes. "Said it was 'wasteful'." She made a face.

Gesturing to the bags, Thierry asked, "Do you need a hand with those?"

"If you're offering, I'm not going to complain," she replied, passing him two of her bags and taking one of the bags of chips from him. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

"So where did Adil go?" she wondered, looking down the street curiously.

Thierry sighed. "I think he might've seen the others and gone to meet them."

She hummed, muttering something under her breath. Thierry hummed, glancing at her with a question in his eyes, but she shook her head.

As they fell into step together, he swallowed. "So…" She turned toward him, quirking an eyebrow. His stomach fluttered nervously. "Um, I was wondering…"

"Yeah…?" she prompted, raising an eyebrow and stifling a laugh, the corners of her mouth quirking up in amusement. "What's up?"

"Um… so there's that fair in the Champ de Mars next week…"

She nodded. "I know. Crafts, games, food… what about it?"

"So, um, do you… want to go there? With me?"

"You mean with a group?" she asked, giving him a knowing look. "Or do you mean just the two of us?"

"Uh, just the two of us," he clarified, heat rising in his cheeks. "Like… a date."

She smiled, her cheeks turning a light pink. "Sure: I'd love to go on a date with you."