Lisa sat across from me, absorbed in reading through my current set of notes. Like we'd agreed last time, we'd met again for breakfast at the same place. It had been a rainy morning, and a sopping-wet umbrella leaned against her chair. She muttered something to herself, scratched a note in the margins, and tugged at the sleeve of the forest-green spring jacket she wore.
"So, how'd the lecture go?" she said, without looking up from my notes.
I swallowed a mouthful of waffle. "Pretty well, I think," I said. "At least, the patrol block members seemed to like it. I incorporated some of your suggestions, so thanks for that."
Lisa tsk'd and wagged a finger. "You should be using all of them," she said. "I'm giving you great stuff, here."
"You're a reviewer, not a lecturer. If you want that, do your own lectures."
She looked up at me and waggled her eyebrows, smiling deviously. "Maybe I will," she said. "Are you sure you want to encourage me, hon?"
"Don't forget what you told me about my penchant for wanting to drop heavy things from great heights onto people who upset me," I said.
"Brute-classification tendencies," she said, shaking her head sadly as she returned her gaze to the pages on the table in front of her. "You're barely better than an ape."
We continued bickering back and forth as she finished making her notes.
"There you go," she said, sliding the folder back across to me. "More of my keen insight."
"Thanks, really," I said. I took the folder and stuffed it back in my backpack. "So, why did you help send Amy away?" I asked casually.
She stiffened and looked at me, her gaze sharp.
"Huh?" she asked, as if she hadn't heard me.
"Amy going to that hospital halfway across the world," I said. "I know you were a big part of making it happen. Why did you help with that?"
"Who told you that?" Lisa demanded. "Vista? No, your cousin. Do you seriously think that she actually knows what's going on with me? Get real, Victoria. Yes, I helped get that head case sent away, but sorry, I didn't do it to help you. I did it because I need to stay in the Wardens' good graces after not taking the dreaming death, or I'll end up getting tossed into one of your fascist extradimensional prison worlds. I know this is a shock, but like I told you before, the whole world doesn't revolve around Victoria Dallon-"
"Oh my god, are you blushing?" I said, interrupting her increasingly frantic rant.
"What?" Lisa snapped. "Don't be ridiculous-"
Seemingly despite herself, her hand flew up to her cheeks. In a remarkably un-Tattletale display, they were flushing scarlet.
"Holy shit, Crystal was right," I said. I learned forward, both of my hands on the table."You did do it to help me, didn't you? Is this for real?"
Lisa seemed to be floundering for words. "I-obviously that's not why, are you kidding me? Why would I want to help you with that shit?"
"I don't know!" I said. "I have no idea why you would want to help me with that. But your face looks like a freaking fire engine right now, and you can barely string a sentence together, so you tell me. Why did you do it? Why didn't you say anything? You never shut up about things like that. Why weren't you talking about how big a favor I owed you?"
Lisa looked around frantically, like she was seriously considering throwing herself through one of the large non-boarded windows if it'd help her escape this conversation.
"Tell me," I said. "Why?"
Lisa slumped back in her chair, burying her face in her palm.
"Okay, fine, fuck," she said. "I did it for you, happy? I wanted to help you. I heard that there were a bunch of obstacles to getting her sent away, and I helped smooth them over."
She looked miserable.
"Why?" I asked. "You don't owe me anything. We're not friends."
"You don't need to remind me," she said, her tone sharp. "I don't know, okay? I must not have been thinking."
As explanations went, it wasn't particularly convincing, especially coming from her.
"And you decided 'you know what, this is the one time in my life I'm not going to lord things over Victoria'?" I asked. "That is so unlike you that it's difficult to even begin to comprehend it."
"What, would you rather I had?" she said. She shot an annoyed glare at me. "Now I'm a bitch if I don't give you a hard time about that fucking nutcase?"
"I'm just trying to understand things, here," I said. "I feel like I'm in a Shardspace dream or something right now."
"Needling you about her isn't fun anymore, alright?" Lisa said. "It's just-I don't feel like doing it anymore." Her voice got softer. "I didn't want to lord it over you, so I didn't. Is that so hard to understand?"
I found myself at a loss for words, now.
"Uh, kind of, yeah," I said. Great response, Victoria.
Well, what was I supposed to say in reply to that?
"Are you…being nice to me?" I asked.
Honestly, it felt bizarre. Not bad, but definitely bizarre.
Lisa shifted back, her posture defensive. "As if. I've said enough about her to you already. I'm moving on."
"Thank you," I said. "You helping with that, it means a lot to me."
"I didn't do it for your gratitude, Victoria."
"Still, I owe you."
She sighed. "No, you really don't," she said. "I helped light the fuse. I had the chance to intervene, fix things before she went even further off the rails, and I didn't. Now, I can, so I am. That's it."
I knew Lisa well enough now to tell that this was, in her own, extremely stubborn, never-actually-say-sorry way, an apology.
I felt…kind of touched. By something Tattletale had done. What was happening here?
"Please don't make this even more uncomfortable for either of us than it is already," Lisa muttered. She prodded at the remains of her eggs with her fork, then set it down and looked at me.
"She's staying there," she said. "You knew that already, but take that as the Tattletale guarantee. You know I'll play dirty, if I need to. I don't have red tape. She is not coming back here, ever, even if she wants to. You won't see her again."
For whatever reason, upon hearing Lisa say that, the fragments of doubts and anxiety still clinging to me finally fell away. I hadn't fully believed it before, but Amy was really, truly gone.
"Thank you," I said. "I won't forget this. I mean it."
Lisa made a face. "I'd prefer it if you did forget," she said. "In fact, we both should, as quickly as possible. This conversation never happened, capeesh?"
"Best you'll get out of me is that I won't tell anybody else," I said. "I won't be forgetting. "
"Fine," she said, some of the tension slipping out of her posture. "Just, no feelings fest, alright?"
"I promise you, I'm not spending my days thinking about ways to psychoanalyze you. And if you hadn't decided to help me out without my asking in the first place, we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now."
Lisa groaned. "Stop reminding me, okay? I seriously have no idea why I did that. I must be losing my fucking mind."
"I think it might be called 'growing as a person', if you're familiar with the concept," I said. By this point, I understood pretty well that Lisa could only tolerate so much genuine emotional communication at a time; better not to push her on it.
"Very funny, Victoria," she said. "You might want to consider a career as a stand-up comic instead of an academic. You'd have them howling."
"Is stand-up even a thing here anymore?" I asked. "I'd figure the whole 'second end of the world' situation might have killed off that scene."
"Hon, it would be difficult for me to understate how little I care," Lisa drawled. "Do I look like I went to comedy shows? Wouldn't have been much fun with my power feeding me the fucked-up real-life shit behind each part of the routine, would it?"
"I guess not," I allowed. "That seems like it would suck the fun out of it pretty quick."
"You think? Welcome to my life. I can't do anything without having that shit thrown in my face. And yeah, it gets old pretty fast."
"I thought you didn't want 'therapy feelings hour'?" I said, stirring my coffee. "Because this sounds a lot like 'Lisa talks about her problems.'"
"Fuck off, Vicky."
I took a deliberate sip, conspicuously silent.
"Oh, please," Lisa scowled. "Don't be so smug."
"What?" I arched an eyebrow. "I didn't say anything."
Lisa's power might be annoying a lot of the time, but I was beginning to enjoy learning how to use it against her.
"That's not clever, Victoria," she said. "Nothing you're doing right now is clever, actually."
"Who said anything about being clever? I'm just drinking my coffee. I think you might be projecting a little bit, here."
She over-exaggeratedly rolled her eyes. "You're insufferable."
Yes, if I was being honest, I was definitely enjoying myself.
"Maybe you've rubbed off on me too much, after spending all that time together," I said. "I have a pretty good understanding of how to annoy you now, and honestly, it is very fun to do."
"You are irritatingly good at reading people," she said. "And coming from an expert, that should mean a lot."
"I was always smarter than you thought I was," I said. "Still can't believe that you thought you could bullshit me that your power was mind-reading. Some mastermind."
"Can you blame me for trying?" she said. "Blonde princess, Norman Rockwell painting family, flying brick powers, it wasn't exactly the 'secret geek' profile."
"A lot of people made that mistake," I said. "But I guess you're probably familiar with how it can be useful for people to underestimate you."
"Tell me about it."
Lisa grew quiet for a moment, then looked at me, not quite meeting my eyes.
"When we first ran into each other again, back in Hollow Point, or Cedar Point, or whatever you want to call it, you asked me if I regretted my part in what happened with your sister," she said. "Just so you know, I'm not proud of it."
I'd spent so long hating Tattletale for her role in what had happened to me that it was a surprise to reach for that feeling and just…not find it there anymore. I wasn't sure when it had disappeared, exactly, but it had.
"I've done a lot of stuff I'm not proud of," I said. "That you helped now, it means a lot. Thank you."
"Please stop thanking me," she said, wriggling uncomfortably in her seat. "It's incredibly awkward. I prefer when you're trying to bite my head off."
"Okay, fine. But at least let me treat you to an extra donut."
Lisa stretched, and smiled. "I can work with that, hon."
