November. Instant friendship, just add adrenaline-fueled teamwork p.1

The most notable development time had brought was that Gar didn't seem to be afraid of Raven anymore. He'd used to steer clear of her, like everyone else did; he'd used to jump when she glared at him, and now he just… didn't. Like he'd developed an immunity. Victor thought he had never been in more danger.

"She didn't come to club yesterday," Gar was telling him now. "You think she's coming today?"

"Little dude, I don't know why she even joined," replied Victor. (Another thing that was new was, Victor had given up and condescended to talk to Gar. There was only so long a guy could talk at you before it became easier to just engage with him.)

Gar replied, "Oh, it's because she wanted a quiet place to read. I think her house is really noisy or something."

Victor peered at him. "And how do you know that?"

"I asked her," Gar said blithely.

Victor could just see the scene. Raven would have been strongly hinting at Gar that she wanted quiet from him, and he'd taken it to mean she was at the clubroom because her house was loud. He shook his head. "Well, see, that's your problem right there. You shouldn't be talking to her. You ever see how happy she looks when you're not bothering her?"

They looked across the hallway. Raven was calmly taking the books she needed out of her locker.

Gar made a face. "Raven never looks happy."

"Well, peaceful. Whatever. The point is, you should keep out of her hair. And you know this. It's just you're reckless and you got the memory of a goldfish."

"You know goldfish actually remember stuff up to five months, it's a myth that they have bad—oh look, she's leaving! Hey, Raven! Wait up!"

"Okay, please learn from the goldfish, then!" he shouted after Gar, who had already ran up to Raven.

Victor regretted openly talking to Gar in the hallway a moment later, when two of his friends came up to him. Thankfully, they didn't seem to notice Gar, or else they were letting Victor's transgression slide. Victor greeted his old friends and slipped into an easy normalcy—but when he was bumping fists with Jerry, he saw his own prosthetic arm, and the smile on his face was fake from that point on. Nowadays, at least, he didn't have to watch his strength lest he hurt a friend, like back when the arms were new. But he still had to see those ugly things all the time, and feel like the freak he was. Everything was at least a little bitter, since the accident.

Gar returned to Victor, unfortunately. "She says she's coming today. She says yesterday she went home early 'cause it was Diwali."

Victor uttered a sort of acknowledging grunt, turning away. He hoped Gar would take the hint.

Victor's friends didn't turn away from Gar, though. "Aw, this one of your new club buddies, Vic?" said Zach.

Victor's grunt had renounced Gar, so they considered him fair game for mocking.

"We were never that small as freshmen, were we?" said Jerry.

Zach made a show of kneeling down to Gar's height. "How much do you weigh, pipsqueak?"

"Uh…" Before Gar could answer, he was lifted clean off the ground from his backpack. "Hey! Let me go!"

The two laughed.

"Zach, come on," Victor said lowly, and it was like a magic phrase. Gar was dropped to the ground.

Victor caught a glimpse of a resentful look Gar shot him when he realized Victor wasn't going to actually stand up for him. Gar walked away without another word, and Victor realized something had just shifted. The boy hadn't held it against Victor all the other times in the past when he would stand by as the football players messed with him, because back then Victor was ignoring him all the time. But this –this being friendly in private and then turning around and disowning him in front of the others-, this he didn't seem willing to forgive.

He might just have to make it up to the little guy. Maybe. He'd see.

Kori was forced to notice the other girls made her target her at dodgeball ten times more often than they did the other girls. She didn't mind as much she perhaps should: she gave right back what they dished out, and she enjoyed the exercise. The other girls' scheme was a stupid one when Kori was worth ten players.

But when class was done and they were out of the field, though, she was fair game. The latest thing Jade and her posse were doing was make a show of steering wide of Kori when she passed by, shuddering away in fear in an over the top way. Kori understood the wisdom of such a strategy: Jade was still afraid of her, so she wouldn't outright provoke her—but an exaggerated show of fear turned the onus on Kori. It shone on a light on Kori being so savage she was to be feared.

Kori knew she couldn't compete with them in words or subtle social was good at the technical side of languages. Grammar and spelling? Check and check. Vocabulary was trickier. Idioms were impossible. Pronunciation wasn't her strong suit either, and she plain didn't like contractions; they sounded off to her, like she wasn't actually pronouncing the word, and was in fact missing verbs. And even if she could be eloquent, they had the sway of the crowd. They were a group, and she was only one girl.

Raven would know what to do. She too was just one girl, but she was a host unto herself.

Kori had been in the vicinity when Kitty Moth had directed some words at the dark-haired girl. "Some people here go around threatening perfectly respectable teachers out of their jobs and shouldn't be let out with the rest of us civilized people," the blonde had said, as all the girls sat on the bleachers, in the space of time while Miss Mae was getting the volleyballs from the closet, and no one could escape.

And it would have seemed impossible to Kori that one could win an argument by staying quiet, but that was exactly what Raven had done. When Kitty had looked at her to see how her insult landed, Raven had glared at her. Kitty had broken first, and looked away with a small 'hmph!', like she was the one who'd been crossed somehow.

Speaking of Raven—Kori took her mind away from her miserable social state and looked to see where Raven was in her after-gym routine; seeing she was already putting her clothes back on, Kori sped up. Following Raven was a full-time job; Kori had to catch her before she slipped out of the gym. That girl moved like water.

Out of her new group of friends –which was what Kori had immediately decided the Project Club was- Raven was the one Kori was most afraid of, and not for the reasons everyone else feared her. Kori had a feeling the somberly dressed but decidedly cooler girl would, like most other girls, shake her head at Kori and abandon her at the first social misstep. But she wasn't cruel like other girls. She didn't go out of her way to push herself above Kori: she just existed, and she seemed comfortable in her just existing.

Growing up as an outsider, either because she didn't get a certain language much or simply because she was shy, Kori had acquired a specific way of judging people. Because Kori never had social clout, because there were no consequences to being mean to her, there were always people who openly mocked her in front of everyone, and then there were people who were nice to her in front of others and promptly ignored her when they were alone. For her, neither of those types of people were nice. Only the people who acted the same in a group as when they were alone with just Kori were worth anything to her. Raven was one of those people. So Kori had chosen her.

Plus, she was the only other girl in the Club. Kori had decided Raven was her destiny, roughly in the same way Gar had decided as much about Dick earlier in the year. She would win her over. One way or another.

Across the school in the outer field, Gar got hit in the head with a football and went down hard on the ground. The reason the impact toppled him was that gym class was already over—he hadn't been expecting that.

He started to get up and was pushed down again, this time by a human hand. The boys that walked past him called, "Tell your dad not to be such a dick, Logan!"

Ah. That's right. He'd seen Steve give a bunch of junior boys extra laps for some reason. When that happened, sometimes they took it out on Gar afterwards. So much for not letting people at school know Gar lived with the Daytons. Gar chose to stay on the ground until the juniors moved on to the locker rooms.

As he lay on the ground, Dick came into his field of view. "You okay?" he asked.

Gar replied, "Sure. I'm used to it." He sat up. "Uh, you go ahead if you want. I'm just gonna hang out here until they leave the locker room."

But Dick wasn't having it. He said, "Come on," reached out his hand and pulled Gar to his feet.

Once in the locker rooms, the three juniors did hurl some insults at Gar, and Dick talked back at them, effectively succeeding in making the older boys back off. This was nothing short of a miracle to Gar—but it was a magic Dick could work. It was probably something you could do when you knew you could back up your words with your fists if needed be, like Dick could. On some level, thought Gar, it was evident Dick was a good fighter in a way the bullies could perceive.

The juniors had forgotten all about them by the time Dick and Gar left the locker room. Perhaps because Dick's gesture made Gar feel more secure in their relationship, he found himself unburdening some thoughts that had been nagging at him.

"Hey, uh, about the club," he started. "Have you noticed how we don't hang out at all? I mean it's like we're all in this club, but we're not really… friends."

Dick looked at him like he'd spoken in another language. "Well… we're all so different, Gar. And this is high school." Truth be told, Dick had too much on his mind right then to really absorb what Gar was talking about.

"So you think we'll never be friends?" Gar asked point black, and it was the closest he'd ever come to asking Dick, specifically, if he saw him as a friend now.

Dick didn't look up from working his locker combination. "Frankly, I don't think we stand much of a chance."

"…Okay, well… see you around."

After Gar walked away, a girl immediately occupied the space next to Dick's locker.

"Hey, Grayson. What's up with your weird club?"

"What about it?" he returned.

"Well, what do you actually do? 'Cause the weird girl told me it was a preparing the leaders of tomorrow kind of thing, but my friend heard you were like training to overthrow the hall monitors?"

This girl treated him like she knew him from before. Dick didn't remember half the people he'd gone to middle school with, but he had to assume this girl was one of them.

"Well, there you go," he said.

"What?" she replied. "Which one?"

"Both. Look, it makes sense when you're in it," Dick said. "And hey, thanks for the interest." He put a hand on the girl's shoulder, ignoring her frowning at him, and bolted. He couldn't think of an explanation for her. He didn't have the context of what she'd heard. Besides, she'd said 'weird girl', and Dick never knew if that meant Kori or Raven.

This was the thing that had been on his mind. Gar's worries were a blip in Dick's radar compared to the phenomenon he was seeing.

This week alone he'd had people come up to him to tell him several theories as to what their club was. The hall monitors thing was the weirdest take he'd heard so far, but not the only adventurous one.

He'd also heard people say the club was obviously an art club—as in art projects. He'd heard the name was so vague because it secretly offered therapy to students. Chris Folinsky, an overweight freshman boy with stringy ginger hair, had cornered Dick and insisted that he knew that club was about them trying to contact the Team Titans. It had even gotten back to him that some people thought they did dancing in there. At least he knew who to blame for that one: Gar said he'd panicked.

He knew his fellow club members were out giving different answers to people. He'd found out pretty early on that every single one of those kids were wild cards, and he'd sat back and let it be. He thought uncontrolled chaos was the best way to mislead people.

But before, he and Gar would give stupid eluding answers, and people would leave them alone. Now, people were left staring at him, trying to devise something behind his words. What was going on? Why did people suddenly care?

He stopped before he got to the clubroom and observed. From this vantage point, he watched Gar go into the clubroom first. He saw Kori follow Raven in, holding a unilateral conversation. Then Victor arrived, early for once. And Dick saw things clearly.

Because, he answered himself, it's not just you and Gar anymore. It's you and Gar and the former jock star, and the mysterious exchange student, and a suspected cult-belonging witch delinquent. The lineup is weird. People want to know how that happened.

With that worked out, he joined the others in the clubroom. Then he couldn't think anymore, because he walked straight into chaos.

"This is not a request!" Victor was shouting. "I need to charge, and I need both the sockets!"

"I get that!" returned Gar, matching his tone. "But there's better ways to go about it! You storm in here, unplug my game, unplug Kori's stove-"

"I can wait for my glorg," Kori said, trying for peace.

"That's not the point!" Gar told her.

Raven was moved to intervene from her window seat. "Just do one thing and then do the other. It's not that hard."

"Oh, look! She talks!" Victor retorted.

That was enough to make Raven regret intervening; she rolled her eyes and returned to her book.

Dick closed the door behind him. "Whoa, whoa, what's going on here?"

"Victor walked in and unplugged everything to plug his arms on the wall!" Gar accused.

"Oh, I'm sorry if I put a damp on everything with my prosthetics," Victor stated, his voice turned bitter.

Gar winced. "Oh, come on, that's not…"

"Can we not bring an extender?" Dick cut him off. "Why is this even a problem? Come on, shake hands, and stop yelling."

Gar just turned his back on Victor. Victor made no move to shake hands either.

Dick ignored them ignoring him. He had more important things to think of. "Listen, who here said the club was for overthrowing the hall monitors?"

Gar snickered, so Dick looked at him. "Hey, it wasn't me," said Gar.

"No, it was me," Victor admitted, smirking. "You should've seen their faces."

"Remember what we agreed," Dick told him. "Whatever explanation you give for this club has to be boring."

"Aw, I couldn't resist. Lighten up, man."

"Well, you're playing with the club's livelihood," Dick returned. "Does everyone like having a place to hang out? To play video games, cook, and read, and chill?" He didn't wait for a reply. "Then stick to the rules."

"Spoilsport," Victor said under his breath.

Dick pretended he hadn't heard that. He took his seat and pulled on his headphones, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. If another fight started, he wouldn't have to know.

He had peace for a while longer, until Gar pulled on one of his headphones.

"What?" snapped Dick, taking them off fully.

"Someone's knocking at the door."

Dick looked at the door. "Well… I don't know, answer."

"Me?" asked Gar.

"Yeah. You're… vice-president or something."

"Okay, cool." Gar jumped to answer the door.

"He's VP?" asked Victor. "Who's treasurer?"

Dick looked around. "Raven."

Raven looked up, having only heard the part where he said her name.

"Wanna be treasurer?"

"What do I have to do?" she asked.

"Nothing. We don't have money."

"Then yes."

"What am I?" asked Victor.

"Nothing. You came fourth, you get nothing." Dick was smirking.

Victor actually looked upset. "That's not how it works."

"It's how it works here."

"You skipped secretary," said Victor. "You don't even know how to…-"

Gar came back into the room. "Okay. Problem. There's a girl here asking us to help her find some lost exams."

"What? Why?" reacted Dick.

"Apparently she thinks that's what we do? Like, that's our projects in the Project Club?"

Dick decided to go deal with it himself.

The girl outside the door was small, with painstakingly straightened black hair. She was pouting slightly.

"Hi," he greeted her. "I'm sorry for the wait. What was it you needed and what exactly have you heard about us?"

Moments later, Dick was back inside the clubroom.

"Who here said the P in Project stood for Patrol and that we're a Titans knockoff group that keeps the halls safe?" Silence answered him. "Okay, then someone's making rumors for us now."

The four club members were paying a previously unseen amount of attention. Gar had put down the game on his phone and Kori had saved her magazine. Raven was looking up.

"The P in… It's not even an acronym," breathed Gar. "What're we gonna do?"

"Tell her to go away," said Victor. "We're not errand boys."

"I have another idea," said Dick. Maybe he'd had that idea all the while he was talking with the girl. It took him until he was facing the others to realize it. "We have to take the job."

"We what?" went Victor. "Have to?"

"Okay, look," Dick started. "This club is standing on shaky ground. No one knows what we do, and people are asking questions. How long till teachers start asking too?"

"But I thought we were hiding what the club is," said Gar.

"That isn't working anymore. And, I mean, there's worse things we could do than this. Think about it. It's a… an advice and help club." Dick looked at them one by one. All four still looked unconvinced. "Guys, this situation?" He pointed at the door. "This is a one-off. Who the hell else would come to us for help?"

"But letting people think we would might stop the rumors," Victor sighed, sounding resigned.

"Exactly," said Dick, who had previously thought Victor would be the hardest to turn. "The one thing we all have in common is we want this club to keep existing. I think this is what it takes." He was relieved to see the four look more convinced now. "Everyone agrees? Okay, we're doing this."

Dick opened the door.

"Sorry for the delay, you're our first, uh, client."

The girl stopped at the word 'client'. "Wait, you guys charge?"

"Uh…" Dick thought about it. "No. No, of course not. Please, sit down. Your name?" Dick was glad he'd brought in an extra chair backwhen Kori joined them, in case a sixth contingency waltzed in. He motioned for the girl to sit down and moved to the other side of the table. Kori, Gar and Victor flocked around him, drawing chairs with them.

"Clara," she replied. "Thank you guys for doing this."

"Of course," said Dick. "That's why we have a club. Otherwise we'd just be in other clubs. Or at home, without a reading spot next to a window," Dick said, progressively turning to look at Raven.

Raven returned the glare he was giving her.

Then she closed her book with a snap, left it on the window sill, and drew her chair to join the rest of the group.

"Okay, Clara," Dick said. "Now tell us your problem. Start from the beginning."

"So my dad is an SAT officiator," she began. "He had the graded tests here at school in a desk in an empty classroom. Well, someone went and stole them."

"I heard the date to get scores back was postponed," said Victor. "That's what happened?"

"He was supposed to keep them safe. He's the one who's gonna get in trouble if the tests don't show up. Can you help?"

Dick was aware that everyone was awaiting his lead. "I don't see how…"

"I know who took them," said Clara. "This guy is selling them. They're gonna make the exchange today at five. If you go to Lincoln Road 4011, you'll see it happening."

Dick nodded at her. "We'll do what we can," he said.

Clara looked heartened as Dick led her to the door. Dick was floored as to how well the pantomime had gone. Everyone had kept up the charade. If he didn't know better, he himself might have been fooled.

"Okay, first things first. We need to organize," said Dick. He took a piece of paper and began scribbling a double-entry table including all their names. "I want you guys to write down your contact info so we're all in touch."

A part of himself wondered what on earth he was doing. Most likely he was just trying to regain some sense of control over things.

The form was passed around. When it got back to him, he saw gaps in Raven's part. "Raven, you didn't write down your phone number."

"I don't have a phone," she replied.

Dick gave her a look.

"I really don't," insisted Raven.

"Okay, your house's landline then."

Raven said, "I'm not allowed to give it out."

Silence took over. During that silence, all of them remembered the rumors perpetually surrounding her. They were mostly ridiculous, but Raven's odd remark had just fed them, and Dick frankly didn't want to dig too deep.

"Okay, but no email?" he asked.

"No."

"No social media at all?"

She sighed. "My house doesn't have an internet connection."

"Are you serious?" Gar piped up. "You don't have a computer? Wait, how do you do homework?"

"Before the internet, Gar, there was a thing called books," said Raven.

"I know," he replied, peeved. "But doesn't that take you forever?"

"Okay, never mind," muttered Dick, since Raven looked pissed off and Gar wasn't taking a hint. "We don't… need to be in contact, I guess. Let's just go."

The Project Club took a bus and then walked five blocks to get to the address. Dick went a little ahead, checked the door number was correct, and returned to the others. "Well, this is the place."

"So, now what? Do we stay out here and wait?" asked Raven.

Dick looked at the bunch of them. Gar was currently wearing a tie-dye shirt, baggy jeans and a green and red cap. Even if Kori hadn't been wearing a bright pink skirt and a yellow top, her furiously red cloud of hair made it hard for her to go unseen. Victor was just a huge guy—tall and wide; even though he always wore his hood pulled up when he was outside and you couldn't see most of the prosthetics, he was still noticeable. Raven, contrary to what one may think, was not dressed for camouflage despite being forever in dark clothes: she was a solid black smudge in a suburban background that was rather grey. And the contrast created between the five of them wasn't helping, either.

Dick didn't think he could put together a more conspicuous group for spying if he tried.

"Let's go watch from the other street," he said.

Across the street there was a park. They settled behind some bushes and waited. And waited. Enough time passed that all of them grew self-conscious. They felt too much like children playing spies to properly pretend they were teenagers loitering, as they should have been.

Finally Victor sighed. "This is dumb. What are we even doing here?" He sounded annoyed he even had to whisper. "I bet that girl was playing a prank on us."

"What if she wasn't?" asked Dick, patiently. He'd been ready for dissent.

"Don't use that tone with me, man."

Gar intervened. "Hey, Dick's right, we should do all we can to keep the club going."

"We really don't," said Raven. "If the club's meant to fall apart, it will."

"I think," said Kori, "even if we did not have the objective, the day is nice to be outside and just… do the hanging out, correct?"

"If you wanna leave," Dick said to Raven and Victor, "just leave. You're good at that anyway, Victor."

"Fine! I-"

Kori interrupted them. "Dick, Victor, look."

A car had stopped in front of the house. The five shushed, and watched with a degree of impatience, fully expecting a disappointment.

A teenage boy with brown skin and cropped blonde hair got out of the car. The door was answered by a hulking man with an ashen face and spiky grey hair. Across the street, the five watched with growing interest. The man let the boy in and closed the door without a single word exchanged between them.

"That… could have been a number of things," said Victor.

Dick slowly nodded. "Yeah… it could." He should have brought his binoculars.

Victor only noticed Dick had climbed up the tree next to them when his voice suddenly came from above. "I can see better up here," he explained. He followed the movement of the two inside the house. "There's the tests!"

"What? You sure?" Gar said, choking on his excitement.

"They just passed by that window with the blue curtain carrying a bunch of papers!"

The five of them focused on that window. When the papers were left on a table by the window, they all could see it.

Victor cried, "That window's open, let's get go grab them!"

"Wait," said Dick, jumping down in front of Victor and putting a hand on his chest.

"What's your problem?"

"We can't just break and enter a house," said Dick.

"They won't catch us if we move now," Vic argued.

"I said no. No way."

Across the street, the door opened again. The boy was carrying the papers and put them in his car.

"Look, you made us miss our chance," Vic accused.

Dick didn't hear Victor continue to disparage. He was busy watching how the boy turned around to keep talking to the man—and didn't lock his car again.

Dick didn't hesitate. He skulked across the street and came to squat next to the car. The others watched breathlessly. Vic jumped out of hiding. He crossed the street drawing a wide circle, walked up to the men from the sidewalk and caught their attention. "Hi! Excuse me! I'm looking for Park Ave, where is that?"

Meanwhile, Dick opened the car door soundlessly, slipped a hand in the backseat, grabbed the papers, and inched the door closed, which meant it didn't lock. When he got into his car, the boy would notice the back door was open, and then he'd notice the papers weren't there; by then Dick would have to be gone. He dashed back across the street.

Once he got to the mini-park, Raven took the papers from him and hid them under her jacket, as she was the only one of them wearing a second layer.

"Run," Dick hissed to the three of them. "Run, run, run."

They went through the park to the next street's bus stop and tried to look like normal kids who weren't hyperventilating. Raven put her hood up. Victor rounded up the corner from the opposite way, having pretended to follow the directions the men had given him.

"So? You got them?" he asked.

Getting told yes, he sat next to them and no one said another word.

Only once they got on the bus Raven took out the papers to look at them. "It's definitely the SAT's," she whispered to the others.

"Why would an adult sell the tests?" wondered Kori, sitting next to her. "Is it that much the need of money?"

"Yeah, I thought we'd find a kid," said Gar, sitting in front of the girls next to Vic.

"It's people trying to get an edge however they can by playing the system," said Dick, wisely, standing next to where the girls were sitting.

"He probably tried to sell them to kids from other schools," said Vic. "And almost made an entire batch of kids to retake their SATs in the process."

"Dude, let's photocopy them, right?" said Gar, looking at Raven through the gap between the seats. "You know, for future reference."

Raven gave him a disapproving look and put the papers back in her jacket.

"We're giving them back," ruled Dick. "And then mission's over."

He chuckled despite himself. This had been fun.

Things are definitely happening!

Miss geek: Right!? I was like, this is absolutely what would happen.