Chapter Summary: For Rachel's second summoning, Chloe decides to take her out somewhere nice. 'Nice' in Arcadia Bay ends up being a 7-Eleven, a windy hill, and a pothead's bedroom.

It was summer before Chloe decided to summon Rachel again. Once she had gotten through the first few days of resisting the urge to conjure up her new friend, she quickly found herself swamped in earning that last-minute grade bump that she promised her parents. Thanks to a last-minute D in History and some excellent test scores, she managed to make it out of the year with a rock-solid 2.2 GPA, which meant that she would be admitted to Blackwell the following year.

One more year, that was all it was going to take to get her out of this dead-end town. She'd be eighteen, have her own car (hopefully), and nothing would keep her here a day after graduation.

Except, of course, for cash, which she was expected to provide for things constantly. Take the car out, needs gas? Cash. Need weed? Cash. Need ritual supplies? Cash. Need to keep this flesh prison from overheating with an endless supply of tank tops? Well, actually, her mom usually paid for that, but fucking cash .

And that led her to the sort of job she had never expected to have. One of her dad's old friends from college ran a medical supply company that packaged and distributed sterile screws, which led to her spending 24 hours a week at a desk with a face mask and gloves on, neatly packaging screws with tweezers. It was mind-boggling dull work, with the blindingly bright yellow lamp at her desk seeming to pull her into a space devoid of time or thought as the hours wore on. But still, sooner or later, her six hours would be done, somebody would tap her on the shoulder, and she'd get 48 hours at $12.00/hour every two weeks.

Cha-ching.

After her first paycheck, she was confident enough that Rachel wouldn't think she was poor if they went out, so she purchased all of the ritual supplies she'd expended to conjure her again. This time, there was nothing she could do about David being home, but there wasn't much sound to the whole thing, and she had a plan.

Chloe cracked a smile once her candles extinguished and the room darkened. She was nervous again, yes, but there was nothing intense to anticipate in this summoning. It was like calling a friend on the phone. The friend just had a really, really hard to remember phone number and lived on the other side of the world.

"Hey you," Rachel said, appearing on Chloe's desk as if she'd been there the whole time. She wasn't shape-shifted as far as Chloe could tell, still just a tiny teenage girl with golden hair, but she was wearing much more casual clothes. She was wearing a black tank top and jean shorts, and her whole face looked warmer, brighter, tanner - she had been enjoying her summer too, from what it looked like. And she was ready for more of it.

"Hey!" Chloe replied, standing up immediately. "Thanks for coming - I was worried I'd get someone else."

Rachel promptly waved away the thought. "Nah, since you said you'd want to summon me again, I've been keeping my eye on your summoning circle." She leaned forward on the desk, her fingers wrapping around the edge to keep her from falling forward. Chloe couldn't help but smile a little at the mischievous look in her eye, "So, what's the plan for today?"

Chloe smirked, then held out her thumb as she started a list, "One, you're going to give me an activity you'd like to try. You know, gals being pals sort of stuff. Two, we're going to get you laid-"

Rachel quirked up an eyebrow, her whole face tilting away to pose a silent question.

"- I mean, it's like your food , right? I'm not going to be rude about summoning you."

Unexpectedly, Rachel suddenly threw her head back and began to absolutely cackle, but Chloe was quick to raise her hands with a 'sshh, sshh, sshh'. Rachel quieted immediately, her eyes opening wide and looking around for whatever was the reason she couldn't laugh out loud.

Chloe pointed downstairs, "Yeah, and that's part number three. I'm going to introduce you to my family so they won't find it weird if they find you in here."

Now Rachel looked puzzled, and Chloe was amazed, having never seen someone convey their feelings quite so well in their expressions. "Well, aren't they going to find it weird when I . . . go downstairs?"

Chloe shook her head with a "No, no, no." But did not immediately elaborate. The continued puzzlement on Rachel's face led her to explain her solution - "You see that window?"

She pointed to the window immediately behind Rachel, and Rachel craned her neck around to get a look at it.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, you're going to climb out that, wait for me outside, and I'll be out in a second. I'm not going to introduce you to just-David. That could be a nightmare."

It took Rachel a few seconds, but she slowly lowered her fingers into pointers at Chloe. "And David is . . . step-douche, right?"

"Right," Chloe replied, nodding with approval in much the way teachers did when she answered something correctly. Like there was a hidden, mental note of Unexpected recall, subject may be purposefully under performing, will investigate further.

"Step-douche, step-dildo, whatever you call him, he's no good without a woman around, so we're going to steer clear until my mom's off work."

Rachel grimaced at Chloe's joke, but apparently decided not to confront it. Instead, she held out her own hand, and re-started the list. "So, one was an activity I'd like to try, right?"

Chloe nodded, "Yeah, I mean, within reason. Arcadia Bay is a pretty small town, but we'll make do."

Rachel sat with her head down, a fingertip in her mouth while she mulled it over. Chloe was just on the verge of providing some suggestions when Rachel finally looked up and said, "How about skateboarding? That sounds fun."

And Chloe beamed. "I always knew we were meant to be together."

Rachel snorted but, luckily, didn't break into cackles.

Chloe hadn't even considered the possibility that Rachel might not be able to digest slurpees until she had already paid for them. Thus, she was super relieved when Rachel pointed to one of the gigantic cups, and then to herself.

"For me?"

Chloe almost laughed at the level of surprise on Rachel's face. "Yeah, totally. They're both just sort of a mix of everything, here ya go."

"Perfect," Rachel replied, snatching the cup gracelessly.

They sat just outside of the gas station Trevor said he'd grab them from, as apparently he needed to refuel if they were going skating. Although Arcadia Bay was on the beach, the cool breeze didn't permeate far into the town, and a stifling heat left Chloe's clothes sticking to her. She probably should have put deodorant on her thighs much earlier rather than as she was leaving the house, as it was positively useless now and the skating would chafe, but, well, she dug this grave.

"What's his car look like?" Rachel asked, her head slightly sideways so the slurpee would pool in her cheek before she swallowed it. It was childish and silly-looking, but that only cut a smile into Chloe's face.

"It's, uh, well, it's a van. Grayish I guess. And there's four dudes in it who look like they've watched Dazed and Confused about forty too many times."

That comment only seemed to leave Rachel's eyes wide with confusion, and it took Chloe a second to realize her mistake. She cut off a slurp halfway to exclaim: "Oh, holy shit! - you probably don't get pop culture references, do you?"

Rachel shook her head, but it took her another second to realize she had to stop drinking to actually answer. "Nope, not really. I mean, my workplace plays a lot of classical music, and I've started watching this show called The New Romantics ? But that's about it."

That struck Chloe as both totally weird, and yet the only thing she could really imagine. "Really? Classical music? Why?"

Rachel lowered the drink down from her face, pivoting to look Chloe dead in the face. "You don't know?" Rachel asked.

"Uhh?" Chloe asked, wondering what she could possibly know.

"It's got the chord of evil," Rachel said, so spookily that Chloe couldn't help but laugh. She had no idea what that meant, but it sure seemed like a silly idea to her.

Rachel looked slightly put off that Chloe was not impressed by her knowledge of musical history.

"Oh hey look, that's them," Chloe said, nodding towards a van that just rolled in. As soon as it was parked, a sliding door on the passenger's side pulled open, and Chloe caught a glimpse of the guys in the back seat. "C'mon, let's go."

As Chloe climbed into the back, she started, "Hey guys, this is my friend-"

And then she saw through the window as Rachel rounded the van, meeting Trevor outside while he was swiping his card. She had thought Rachel was right behind her.
"Hi! Trevor, right? I'm Rachel, Chloe's friend."

She offered out her hand, and even Chloe was impressed with her dazzling smile. Nobody was even immediately saying 'hey' back to Chloe, which was a little unnerving.

A grin broke quickly on Trevor's face, and he grabbed her hand with enthusiasm. "Yeah, it's Trevor, you can just call me Trev or whatever. Nice to meet you Rachel."

Chloe coughed into her shoulder, "Target spotted," and finally one of the guys seemed to take notice - the one who was always wearing super tight pants, and was a year older along with Justin. Greg? Greg. He was the only one who seemed seriously interested in skating, and he'd been showing Chloe how to pivot on her hands last week.

"Hey Chloe," he said, turning in his second-row seat to wave hi. Everyone else's eyes seemed glued to the driver's side, which Chloe attempted pointedly to ignore.

"Sup," Chloe greeted, leaning forward to offer her hand for a slide and bump. He smirked as they completed the gesture.

He leaned his head out towards Rachel. "Got another newbie to teach or . . .?"

Chloe rolled her eyes, then stuck her thumb out towards the driver's side. "I think she's chosen her teacher already."

Greg just gave a squinty grimace in reply. "Well, whatever. We'll each have our protégés and mine will be the one with hella sweet moves by the time she can ollie."

This . . . turned out not to be the case. They started out on some flat streets not far from Chloe's house to get Rachel started, though everyone pretty much just milled about, waiting for her to learn. Everything Chloe had been learning was about using hills, so there was nothing much to go over with Greg, so she instead watched Rachel and Trevor.

For the first few minutes, Chloe thought that the way Rachel kept stumbling and losing her balance, leaning on Trevor as she messed up over and over was genuine. However, as soon as Trevor stepped back to let her start going by herself, she picked it up perfectly. She even hopped off after a little bit, stopping the board as she came down with a holler of victory.

Chloe was crouched down next to Greg in the shade, as he was pretty disinterested in travel-skating. While he just seemed a little zoned out, though, Chloe was zeroed in on what was going on between Trevor and Rachel.

When Trevor went to congratulate Rachel on her sudden improvement, Chloe leaned over towards Greg, slapped his shoulder with the back of her hand, and said, "She's playing him like a fiddle."

He just gave a shrug in response. "It's not like that's hard. Nobody wants to be played with harder than Trevor."

Chloe snorted, but didn't have much of a response. It never really occurred to her how much these guys saw her as a guy until she brought Rachel around. Other than her longer hair, though, she had no idea why they would see Rachel that way. Was it how she giggled? Was it how she pulled her hair back and her eyes got squinty whenever someone was trying to show off, how amazed she acted every time Trevor showed her a less-than-impressive trick? Was that it? Was it because she flattered something they wanted to assume about her femininity?

Greg was just looking at his phone at this point, but she figured he was still alert enough that she wouldn't have to hit him again.

"Do you see me as a girl?" Chloe asked. It's exactly the sort of question she would never allow with Trevor or Justin - it would open up the door for them to treat her like one - but there was something comforting about how little Greg seemed to care about the little show between Rachel and Trevor.

Greg looked up from his phone, squinting over at Chloe, the bright light behind her a little too much. After a few seconds, he gave another noncommittal shrug and said, "I mean, I guess? I'm just really here more for like, the skating and the weed and the 80s movies. If you're here, I'm guessing you are, too. These guys are my bros, not my wingmen."

There was an edge of spite to 'wingmen', and Chloe felt a twinge of guilt. She never really considered anybody would be annoyed. Maybe it was just because Rachel's attention was on Trevor instead?

Then, Rachel skated past them, going so slowly that she could fire a smug look down at them, sitting on the sidewalk. "Sup noobs," she said. However, she ran the board into the sidewalk before hopping off, rounding behind Chloe to muss with her hair.

"Trev wants to hit up some hills, you ready?"

Chloe leaned back against Rachel's legs, letting her hands fall to her sides as she let out a very loud groan. "Finally. Yes, please, thank you."

It was several hours later when the last of the 'extra' bros left Trevor's house to head home for dinner. They all lived pretty close to each other, and with their boards it was a non-issue for everyone to get home except for Chloe (and thus, Rachel). Everyone had pretty quickly gotten over Trevor and Rachel's incessant flirting, and did their best to ignore it while they watched stuff through Netflix. Although they'd been hopping around at first, Rachel had voted for The New Romantics and it'd been left auto-playing since that point.

Chloe and Greg sat on opposite ends of a sofa. Greg was back to spending his time on his phone while Chloe did her best to get interested in the drama. It basically seemed like the amped-up version of Gilmore Girls, which meant that it fit somewhere distinctly under Chloe's minimum action requirement.

Rachel had been whispering into Trevor's ear intermittently for the past hour, so nothing in particular alerted Chloe when she did it again, and an ear-to-ear grin broke out on his face. However, after another second, Rachel stood up from the sofa arm she'd been on, and Trevor got up a few seconds after her.

Chloe and Greg both looked up at them, but didn't ask anything.

"We're . . ." Trevor started, but the long draw made it pretty clear he hadn't thought this far. Then he just shrugged and gave a flat smile. "We're going to go have sex. I couldn't think of anything clever."

"Cool," Chloe said, and Greg shrugged dismissively.

Trevor pointed at Greg with his free hand as Rachel grabbed the other. "G-man, want me to set up Skyrim or something?"
"Nah, I'm good," Greg replied, pulling one of his legs over the other, really settling into looking at his phone.

"See you in a bit, Chloe," Rachel said, tugging Trevor along. Chloe was pretty sure she'd never seen such a stupid grin on somebody as was on Trevor's face in that instant, and Chloe snorted, giving him a small thumbs-up before disappearing into his room.

Once the door was closed, Greg finally said without looking up from his phone, "I fucking hate this show."
"Oh thank God," Chloe said, immediately falling from the couch into a crouch so she could launch herself over to the DVDs. A second later, Greg joined her, sorting through them.

As they were checking them out, though, Chloe asked, "If you hate it, why didn't you say anything?"

Greg shrugged, which seemed to be the default way he emoted in response to anything. "Rachel's new, she seems cool, I don't want to be rude."

Chloe guessed that was fair, and returned to the task of finding something to watch. However, it was rapidly becoming apparent that Trevor was not the person in the family who purchased DVDs, as a fair number seemed to be movie adaptations of Nicholas Sparks books, and the rest looked like a pile of 90s and 2000s action movies. Almost everything after the eighties was trash in Chloe's opinion, so this assortment was pretty disappointing to her.

Was this going to just be part of summoning Rachel? She has sex while Chloe watches movies she only has mild interest in? That sounded . . . desperately unappealing.

"Hey," Chloe opened, a few DVDs still in her hand, although mostly just to keep her looking casual. Greg looked over, his brows quirked in question.

"Do you wanna make out or something?

He took a few seconds to mull it over, then (fucking) shrugged (again!).

"Sure," he replied.

About twenty-five minutes later, they sat on opposite sides of the couch, pretty firmly avoiding looking at each other. Unfortunately, this meant that Chloe's eyes were dead on the door to Trevor's room, but at least Greg had the privacy of the corner between the couch and the mounted TV.

Shame and agitation had Chloe biting her nails, her leg shaking as she placed too much weight on it. She wanted to get up, go to a sink to wash the stale taste from her mouth, but she was dancing on the edge of hurting his feelings more, and she had no desire to do that. She felt like she owed him an apology, but what could she possibly say?

She lowered her head into her hands, running her fingers through her hair. She felt disgusted. She wanted to feel disgusted with him, but it just seemed to rebound back, pouring into her stomach and leaving her nauseated.

"I . . . I'm sorry. I don't know why that happened."

She didn't want to hear it. "Look, don't worry about it, dude."

She heard a long sigh from him, but at this point it only got on her nerves. Her leg shook harder, as if it could create enough white noise to stop her thoughts from bouncing around.

"I . . ." he started again, but she could hear him deflate as he struggled to figure out what it was.

Chloe turned her head enough around to see his profile. "What is it, dude?"

His mouth was cupped in his hands, dragging the skin of his face down so that his eyes were suddenly in high relief. He was the only one of them that didn't still look like a kid to Chloe. That was one of the reasons why she'd even been able to imagine herself . . .

"I think I'm gay," he said.

And although that wasn't a surprise after what just happened, Chloe still winced. It made total sense, sure. But the fact that she'd tried to blow a gay guy was, at least in the moment, pretty high up on her list of mistakes. Had it really taken her for him to realize it? Or was he already sure, and had just gone along with her?

Chloe rubbed her knuckles against her forehead just enough for it to hurt, as if the pain would make her thoughts slow down.

"Fuck, dude," she replied.

After another short pause, he said, "Look, um," and the scraping fabric sound let her know he had turned towards her, so she did the same thing, "don't tell Trevor, please? I don't think he'd care but-"

"Yeah, sure," Chloe quickly replied, just wanting the conversation to be over, to get out. She wished Rachel would hurry up so they could get out of here, so she could maybe be home for dinner. Maybe food would help the nausea subside.

Amazingly, the door of Trevor's room cracked open just a few seconds later, before Greg could intensify the discomfort of the situation any further.

Rachel emerged, shiny and happy, practically bouncing as she made her way over to the living room, where Netflix was paused halfway through an episode. Trevor came a few seconds later; his expression was weakly pleased, he stumbled out, eyes unfocused like he'd taken the biggest hit of his life.

Chloe was immediately unsettled by that look, and she wondered if she should have told him about Rachel ahead of time.

"Hey Chlo! You ready to go?"

Chloe sprang to her feet immediately. Meanwhile, Trevor's eyes slid over to Greg. "Yo, G-man, I'm going to take the girls home. You want me to take you, too?"

Greg looked up slowly, face pinched in thought, but then he waved Trevor off. "Nah, man, I'll just skate home."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"All right, see ya."

A question had been rolling over and over in Chloe's mind during the quiet drive home, but she waited until they were finally out of the van to bring it up. However, they had only just slid the passenger's side door closed when Chloe could not contain it anymore.

"So like, do you need to eat to live, what's the deal?"

"Nah," Rachel replied, more of a 'not really' than a solid 'no.' "I'm pretty sure I just subsist off my sin or whatever. I really like food, though - is there food?" She gestured at the door.

Chloe paused just before entering the door, turning towards Rachel, surprised and confused. "Sub-sist off your sin? What the fuck does that mean?"

Rachel shrugged as she raised her arms, bunching her hair together to drop it all behind her back. For the first time, Chloe realized that she had a tattoo on the inside of her left wrist: a black spiral as wide as a golf ball.

"Well, for me it's sex, right? I mean, supposedly succubi cover all sorts of lust, but everyone I've met has been all about sexual energy."

It wasn't like this was a total revelation, exactly. The biological how and what of demons hadn't come up much online - there was a lot more about conjuring and controlling them. The attitude online seemed to regard them as hostile, predatory things, secretive and powerful. None of this matched up with Rachel.

"So . . ." Chloe had a lot of questions and no idea if she was about to step on any toes "how much do you need?" She scratched the back of her head, a little embarrassed for not 'feeding' her the first time she summoned her.

That gave Rachel a lot more pause than Chloe thought it would. "Well, I don't really know. I don't think it works that way. I don't have like, a sex stomach . . . but I do have a food stomach," she said, eyeing the door again.

And that was enough to make Chloe chuckle. "All right, all right, I'll feed you, come on."

Chloe reached for the door handle, but Rachel's hand shot and grabbed her wrist before she could open it. Chloe looked up, perplexed, to find Rachel staring right into her eyes with an . . . uncomfortable intensity.

"Uh . . . Rach-el?"

"Chloe." Rachel took a second, wetting her lips while something bounced around in her mind. Then, "You know, I'm not pissed that you just want to hang out. I appreciate having friends, too. And I appreciate that you don't just want to be friends with me as a pretext."

God, Rachel was like a salve. Chloe wanted to doubt it, and if a person had said it, she absolutely would have. But Rachel had nothing to gain soothing her.

"Yeah . . . it's cool," Chloe said with a nod, and she felt Rachel let go of her wrist.

She opened the door before Rachel could pull anything more from her.

Mom and David were sitting down at the couch in front of the television, though they turned to look as the door opened. Rachel crept in cautiously after Chloe, giving a little wave as Joyce's eyes passed on over to her. While her eyes widened in surprise at the unfamiliar girl, David's narrowed, or so Chloe thought. She only caught a glimpse of him before Mom was on her feet.

"Hey," Chloe called, waving a second after Rachel did. "This is Rachel. Is there any dinner?"

Joyce was in the hallway with only the speed the parent of a lonely child could muster for a sudden friend. "Why hi there Rachel. I heard Chloe was out with her skater friends, but I don't think we've met. I'm Joyce, Chloe's mom."

Rachel returned her the dazzling smile that Chloe was quickly recognizing as characteristic. "Hi there Joyce!" Rachel offered out her hand and shook with Joyce - by this point, David was coming to meet them in the hall. "Chloe just introduced me to her other friends today."

"Oh?" Joyce looked surprised to a degree that quickly felt insulting. "Where do you two know each other from? School?"

David's eyes were trained on Rachel so intently Chloe could only describe it as 'studying', a look reserved for disapproving faculty. His voice was even gruffer than usual as he asked, "You're not a Blackwell student, are you Rachel?"

Rachel's eyes went a little wide at the sudden pop quiz, but she at least got the cue to say, "Oh, no, I'm . . ." but that was about as far as she managed.

So Chloe stepped in quickly to save her, "She's just a high school student - we met in my online history class."

"Arcadia Bay Public High School?" David asked, absolutely failing at sounding innocently curious.
There was a slight delay before Rachel gave a hesitant, "Yep."

Joyce rolled her eyes. "Now, come on David, don't interrogate her."

Even Chloe thought Joyce's standards for 'interrogation' were pretty low - she figured her mother must just be happy that she was bringing home another girl instead of a bunch of smelly hippies in saggy pants (minus Greg).

Joyce looked to her right, as if she had X-ray vision and could see right into the kitchen. "Now, Rachel, have you eaten? We just had spaghetti about thirty minutes ago but I can heat it back up."

"Well, um, I'm a vegetarian."

The entire household turned to stare at her, if for very different reasons.

David just snorted and rolled his eyes;
Chloe's voice shot up as she asked, "Seriously?", not expecting a demon to care one way or another;
Joyce seemed surprised, but just said, "Oh? Well, Chloe's just come off a vegetarian phase herself, so I'm sure I can make you something while she has spaghetti."

Surprise quickly colored Rachel's face, much like the sudden blush of embarrassment. "Is that okay? I can eat later if it's a-"

"Oh nonsense, I'll make you something."

Joyce and David quickly scattered - him back to the television and Joyce into the kitchen.

Meanwhile, Chloe leaned close to Rachel and asked, "You're a vegetarian?"
The high-brow look Rachel gave her in response was half the message, but she also replied, "Well I'm not just going to eat it after seeing the horrors of the chicken industry."

Of course. The demon didn't get pop culture references, but she was familiar with animal rights documentaries. Because why not.

"How about waffles for dinner?!" Joyce called from the kitchen.

Chloe's eyes went wide, but before she could even say anything, Rachel responded with a, "Sounds great!", and Chloe's dreams were fulfilled.

She whispered, "That's my favorite," and Rachel giggled.