May. It was just a school club p.4

Raven had woken up feeling more pissed off than she'd thought possible for a person to feel. The feeling occupied her whole awareness, became larger than she was, and left her no place to be scared about it, the way she would usually be scared of big feelings.

A big part of it was she was too hot. The sun wasn't high in the sky, but Raven had been laying under it for too long. A night, a day, and another night, and now the dawn once again. All through it, she'd felt the sun above her and the soil underneath her, until the earth, the leaves, and the roots were part of her.

She sat up. When she did, she wondered why she hadn't before now. It seemed to her the world had been ready to receive her back whenever she was.

She stood. As she started walking away from her resting place, fire sprouted around her feet and rose to the sky. Raven didn't worry much about it; she knew it would consume itself soon.

When she got out of the sun and into the shade, she still felt the fire inside her. The wrath she felt had a name. Terra. The emotion pumped new blood into her veins and pulled her body forward. She walked on hot heels to a gas station.

At that first post of civilization, where the sight of her made the patrons start and the woman at the counter start to call 911. Realizing her mistake, Raven washed the blood off her face and hair in the bathroom and turned her stained jacket inside out.

Outside, she talked the storekeeper down from calling an ambulance, and managed to get their current location out of her. She was told she was closer to Milford than Jump City.

A man sitting in one of the tables offered her a ride to Milford and she took it. Raven had known all her life that it was extremely dangerous to take a ride from a stranger –her mom especially liked to emphasize she was never to do something so reckless- but right now that concern sounded like echo of a past life. And just now she was aware of being utterly indestructible.

She convinced the man to leave her by the 'Welcome to Jump City!' sign. When he drove away, she went around the sign and touched the railing on the back. She was relieved to find a little paper stuck to it. Thank Azar, she thought.

'The Seabird' it said, 'Fresh catch of the day, every day'. The address was for 808 Walnut Street. There she would go.

The address led her to an utterly abandoned but still standing restaurant. Raven examined it with an expert eye, looking for the detail odd enough to turn heads, small enough to be ignored.

Around the painted The Seabird sign were two Victorian arrow-like decorations, but one had been painted slightly sideways, pointing towards the left. Raven turned in that direction. The buildings across the street looked normal enough, any of the doors could be it. She turned back to her current street. Nearby, there was a man sitting on his porch, looking so comfortable Raven wagered he'd lived in this town forever.

"Excuse me. Do you know if there's a charity around here? I was told to look on this street."

The man scratched his head. "A charity?" He pointed across the street. "Might be that house with the green door. I see odd folks coming in and out of that house all the time."

That's it, thought Raven.

She thanked the man and went across the street.

Her knock was answered quickly. The priestess on the other side wore the vacant expression they were taught to use on strangers. So Raven said,

"I'm Raven Roth, of the Azarath shelter in Jump City. I'm seeking shelter, and a ride back home."

After Hive had let him out of the barn, Gar had gone straight home, and never left his room again.

He'd explained it to Rita as well as he could—she was already awake when he'd arrived, and he'd had to offer an explanation for the black eye and the bruises, and the hay he hadn't thought to shake off his clothes. But Steve he had ignored when he'd yelled for him to go to school two mornings in a row, before finally leaving, late to work himself.

Right now it was the early afternoon, and Rita came to his door again, but instead of silently taking away his uneaten lunch, or softly goading for him to come out, she knocked nervously on his door.

"Gar, there's someone here who wants to talk to you. Um… Raven's aunt?"

Gar propped his head up from where it had been buried on his pillow. "What?"

He went out. Walking down the stairs, he saw Azar sitting in the living room. "Azar," he called, still squinting at the sunlight and trying to tidy his hair.

Azar looked up from when she was sitting on his couch, an untouched cup of tea before her. "Hello, Gar."

Gar thought she seemed calm as always, but that she looked different somehow. More material, more here, not so other-worldly. Not so ageless. He thought maybe it was her way of looking worried. He walked into the living room. "Hi. What's up?"

"I was hoping you would know where Raven was."

"Raven?" Gar felt awake for the first time in days. It was almost a sweet feeling—to have his brain forced to think about something other than Terra. It was a relief. "What do you mean? When was the last time you saw her?"

"Two days ago. Your mother told me what happened to all of you. But Raven never came back in the morning like you did."

Guilt gnawed at Gar. He'd assumed all his friends were okay… How could he not have checked? And what were the others doing?

"But… everyone was supposed to be out. Wait, let me grab my phone."

He ran upstairs and picked up his phone for the first time in the last two days. He took it out of airplane mode, and the messages and missed calls from his friends flew in. An eternity seemed to go by until all the random notifications calmed down, and he could verify he had nothing from Raven. He called her number as he walked downstairs. It went on and on with no one answering.

Halfway down the stairs he changed his mind. He went back to his room, threw his phone onto his bed as he changed his shirt, checked Raven still wasn't answering, and ended the call to run back downstairs.

"I'm going to school!" he announced to Rita on the way. He skidded to a stop before Azar. "I'm going to see if she's at school, and if not, I'm gonna see what the others know. We're gonna find her, Azar, don't worry."

And he flew out of the house.

Dick, Kori and Victor met at the gym after class. Unused in the basketball off-season, it was a reasonably quiet place to meet and hide from the rest of the school. Hive was still occupying their club—still illegally, though maybe not for long.

It was a silent, defeated atmosphere. The noise of the school died down as students went home. Being alone was a huge relief, as they didn't have to worry about the other kids glaring and jeering at them—but being alone also made it all the more stark how they were still three out of five, two days after the showdown.

To his credit, Dick had waited until this afternoon to tell them,

"Okay," started Dick, sitting on the bleachers. "This is what I know—every academic trial allows for an appeal. We just have to request one, then figure out how to prove our innocence."

But Vic started groaning as soon as he understood where this was going. "Honestly, man? Just leave it. Fully drop it, please."

"We have to ask for an appeal, Victor," stated Dick.

"No, we don't have to anything!" snapped Vic. "God, what don't you get? They won, we lost! Even if we could get the club back, what the fuck for? The whole school hates us! We're never gonna get a mission again! No one trusts us!"

"And they never will again if we keep waiting to file an appeal!" Dick protested.

"Dick, there's nothing to save here! We're done! Face it!"

Kori held her hands up. "Please do not fight. We are too few to be fighting among ourselves."

Victor turned to her. "Yeah, good point, Kori. We should be fighting to get our friends to come to school. Not trying to revive a club nobody wants anyway."

Dick paused. "No one?" he echoed. "I still want it."

"I don't," stated Vic.

So Dick turned to Kori. To his horror, she wasn't looking at him. That meant he really was on his own.

After a short spell of silence, Vic took the word. "Okay. Today's the day we said we'd bite the bullet and climb Gar and Raven's windows like Gar does. Kori, you still up for-?"

The door opened—they dreaded whatever external presence was about to enter for a split moment, until they saw it was Gar.

"I've been looking for you guys everywhere," he said.

"Gar!" Vic and Dick exclaimed, rising.

"Garfield!" Kori flew over to hug him first. "Oh, Gar! I have thought much of you!" When she pulled away and saw him, her smile fell. "Oh no, your face."

Gar had forgotten he'd fought Baran and Billy. "Never mind that, Kori. Guys, listen. Have any of you seen Raven since everything went down?"

"No, both of you dropped off the face of the earth," said Vic. "By the way, I'm glad to see you man."

Gar skirted over that—because he couldn't feel glad about anything right now, and also to go straight to business. "Azar was just at my house. She says Raven never came back home at all."

His three friends sobered immediately.

"Everyone was supposed to be out," said Dick.

"We thought she was just hiding in Azarath," said Kori.

"Do you think she went off somewhere else?" asked Vic.

"Without telling her family? That is most unlike her," opined Kori.

"So could she still be trapped?" asked Gar.

"Let's go talk to Hive right now," said Dick. On the way to the door, he said, "And Gar, I'm also glad you're here."

Gar grimaced. He himself felt unable to take any positive feelings; now the worry that led him here was communicated and spread among his friends, he was back to his miserable state, done with the temporary relief his concern for Raven had lent him. "Don't get me wrong, I was totally gonna mope for at least a few more days."

Dick laid a hand on his shoulder. "Well I'm glad you came back, if only for this."

Jen and Seymour were on the deserted hallway. Seymour was staring at Jen; Jen was staring at the phone in her hands.

"You know if you call the cops we're all screwed, right?" he asked her.

"What choice do I have?" she shot back.

"What if he's lying? What if she's fine? So she didn't come to school. Neither did Gar!"

"Why would he lie?" Jen replied.

"And why would he tell the truth?" Seymour argued. "Also, how come we didn't find her? I think he's playing a prank."

Jen stared at her phone. She had 911 dialed and her finger hovered over Send. She knew in her heart this was her responsibility. This wasn't a game anymore.

Seymour nudged her shoulder to warn her. When she looked up, Grant was walking towards her with purpose.

"So?" he asked.

Jen pocketed her phone and looked defensive. "So what?"

"Did you find her? You ran out to go looking for her that day, didn't you?"

Jen didn't have a lot of time to study his face or decide what to reply. From the other end of the hallway, came the Five—no, four of them. The Four, now.

Dick was interrogating her before he'd walked up to her. "Okay, fess up. Where's Raven?"

He was surprised to see Jen look at him in horror. She looked at Seymour in askance.

Grant grabbed her arm and made her face him. "Think about this, Jennifer. Think really well about what you're gonna do next."

Vic stepped forward. "Jenny," he called. "Come on." He wasn't even angry anymore. He was just scared about whatever was going on.

Dick seemed to feel the shift too. "Jen, look, we won't press charges or anything if you just tell us what happened with her. Forget what I said about getting even, too. Just tell us where she is and it's all in the past."

Jen wrangled free from Grant and walked a few steps farther into the school, away from all of them. She looked back at the crowd she'd left behind, all staring at her. Raven's four friends, anxious and worried. Grant, looking menacing, fists balled up. Kidd, who she hadn't noticed before, and who looked sick to his stomach. She focused on Seymour, who just looked supportive now—he'd go with whatever she thought was best.

Jen closed her eyes and breathed. "Alright…" she began. She looked up, and the seven staring at her got to see when her face changed—from the uncharacteristic horror, to complete relief.

"Oh…" she let out. She held onto her knees, and laughed humorlessly. "Oh, my God. You almost made me… Grant, you stupid idiot."

"What!?" demanded Grant.

Jen stood upright, looking like her usual self, and simply pointed behind them. The others turned.

At the end of the hall was Raven.

Her friends all let out 'Raven!' at the same time, and ran to her as one. Raven found herself enveloped in a group hug.

"Cute moment," said Jen, glad to hear her own voice go back to its normal airy carelessness. She walked up to Grant and hit him upside the head with her bag. "You monster! You distasteful piece of crap! I bet you made it all up 'cause you were embarrassed she scratched you up, and you didn't get a single hit at her." She turned to Kidd. "And you! You're not nice! You're just quiet!"

With that she stalked away, Seymour gladly following her, leaving Grant staring dumb-founded at Raven. He had barely felt Jen smack him.

"Raven, what happened? Where have you been?" asked Dick.

He couldn't stop looking at her. She'd come in in a simple blue hoodie and jeans, clothes that didn't look quite hers. But maybe he thought she looked odd because she had no makeup on, or her normal jewelry. Without them, she looked younger, and somewhat vulnerable. Like without the usual things weighing her down, she might blow away in the wind.

Raven looked away from her friends to set her eyes on Grant from across the hall. Ten feet away, Grant felt struck by cold.

"Grant here drove me out of town. It took me a while to get back."

"He what?" Vic reacted, going up to Grant.

"He didn't leave me my phone, so I couldn't call you guys," Raven went on explaining plainly.

Vic grabbed him by the collar. "You left her on the road, in the middle of nowhere, with no phone?"

Grant was still staring past Vic's shoulder at Raven. He was such an inane opponent that Vic felt it unfair and let him go. When Vic did that, Grant stumbled. "You… but I… but you were…"

Raven walked forward. "I was what, Grant?" she challenged.

He looked at her up and down, like he couldn't comprehend what he was seeing.

…He had hit her so many times. He'd washed off the blood off his hands later that night. But there wasn't so much as a scratch on her. How could she be in one piece?

Kori looked between both of them. She felt disturbed for some reason. When Grant walked past them and out of the school, she grabbed Raven protectively by the shoulders, hardly knowing why.

The old clubroom didn't last long in the hands of Hive. A week after the coup, its members had long stopped occupying the room to hang out. Perhaps there wasn't even a Hive anymore—Kitty didn't look happy, as judged by the way she treated Jade and Angel. Jen was nearly down to her original two friends; of the extended roster, she'd only kept Seymour. Billy and Kidd seemed to go back into obscurity. Grant had taken to skipping school, and didn't seem to be talking to any of them.

Dick hadn't given up about filing an appeal, but he knew -and his friends knew too, from the way he wasn't talking about it anymore- that proving anything would be a long shot. Hive had still never let themselves be seen in school together as a group at any point. Terra wasn't even around to blame or be forced to confess. Not to mention the entire case sounded crazy even to the Five.

Dick didn't have to try hard to see their prospects were dismal. Jade's anonymous call to Dick had come from a private phone. The text that had led Kori to the music shop, as it should've let Gar and Raven, had come from Victor's phone. And Vic had been trapped in his own house.

The most they had in the way of evidence were the takeout bags from Kyd's family's restaurant, and Jen's cryptic handwritten note for Silas, which Vic had noted wasn't in her usual style. Gar taking Vic's car right before also muddled the issue: what kept the Hive boys from saying Gar hadn't taken them all on a joy ride?

As for Raven, Dick didn't dare interrogate her about what she'd been through just yet. Perhaps he might not even go there: it might come back to bite them that Grant was visibly hurt when she wasn't.

So soon all that was left of the whole fiasco was the announcement of an assembly about Morality and Ethics coming soon. The Five didn't even talk about it: each individually knew it was due to them allegedly abusing their power and cheating the school. They were dreading it, but really, at this point it was just one more installment in a long horror show.

At first it had seemed intolerable for the Five: to go to school and go to their classes after what happened. After the brave and morbidly curious need to face the school and see how badly Hive had screwed them over, after the joy of seeing Gar again and then finding Raven was okay, what settled in was a hollow disappointment, as they found themselves the victims in a story no one else would believe. It had seemed impossible, those first few days, to believe they were expected to come back to school day after day, like it was nothing.

But, and Vic had thought this before, high school taught you nothing if not that life goes on even after unthinkable tragedy, by the sheer fact that no matter what happened over the weekend, no matter what life-altering situations took place or how much you felt like the world had ended, Monday came back around and you had to go to class.

That's how Vic had already felt after his accident: everything in his life felt different, but the world around him was unchanged and uncaring. Now he felt it again, with the important distinction that this time he wasn't alone in feeling it. It wasn't as lonely, and he even had the chance to lead his friends through it.

And that was the other thing: they were still together. This disaster could have broken them up, but it didn't. Perhaps all of them had had that question in the back of their heads, before: would they be friends without the club? Now the club had been taken from them, and yet no one was edging away or thinking of stepping out. They still came together like they had when they'd had a common goal and life looked hopeful.

Vic looked at his friends -he'd taken to watching over them a lot these days- and knew they would get through this. He could plainly see Dick hadn't given up on getting the club back. As much as Victor didn't agree, the goal was keeping him focused; wasn't worried about him yet

As for Kori, Vic saw her walk through school straight-backed and stately through the stares in the hallway, taking up exactly as much space as before. Vic thought he couldn't pull that off if he tried; she'd be fine too.

Gar was the one he was most worried about, naturally. The boy was all heart, and he'd just gotten it broken. It was a small miracle whenever he made it to school; mostly he'd taken to skipping a lot.

As for Raven… Vic didn't know what she was feeling. She'd been keeping to herself, and Vic never knew which way that would go. He hoped she was just working through things in her own time.

The afternoon she'd come back to them, as soon as Gar was out of earshot, she'd asked them, 'Where is Terra?' with a look in her eyes murderous enough to frighten Vic.

When they'd told her they didn't know, she'd looked aimless for a second. Like she'd dragged herself all the way from the countryside with the express objective of confronting Terra, and now she couldn't do that, she didn't know where to go. Vic had been almost glad they didn't know where Terra was.

Outside of Raven's question, they weren't talking about Terra yet. Victor had been there when Dick went to tactfully find out whether Gar knew what had become of her. On getting that he didn't know, Dick had immediately left the subject alone. Vic also saw Gar ignore the papers still cropping up on the school here and there, so he gathered he'd opened the posts at some point.

Really, Gar had opened the post the morning after Raven returned -right before school, so that he'd have privacy, but he'd also be with friends really soon.

It was plain to see his post was the weakest one. The allegation against him was that he was a frequent shoplifter. It came with a creep-shot of him in the cafeteria wearing the earphones he'd gotten for his birthday, as all evidence that he had stolen stuff. He guessed the made-up story was validated by all the evidence in his friends' pages.

After putting off seeing his post for days, after dreading seeing what Terra had revealed about him, finally seeing it had filled him with hope.

Gar hadn't shoplifted in years, but he'd used to. After the boys in the house in Dover had forced him to it, he'd started doing it for himself. And Terra knew that; he'd shown her the little box he kept of silly tokens he'd kept long after he kicked the habit. The box of key chains and little toys and animal figurines was much more damning than the picture Hive had gone with, and Terra knew exactly where it was.

And though he felt selfish for it, this was a much-needed solace for him. Terra had dug out Kori's album. She had listened to Vic's dad's stories in captive attention with the express intent of hearing something she could use against him. Who knew what else she'd done with the goal of destroying them. But it hadn't been like that with Gar. She had betrayed everyone's secrets—except his. That was why Hive had to make up lies: because Terra had never spilled the beans about him.

And not just that—the fact that Terra's own pages papered the school along theirs was evidence that she'd betrayed Hive in the end. It was enough for Gar to forgive her. He kept going back to the moment he'd told her to go away; the guilt kept him up at night.

The day he'd come back to school, Vic had handed him his backpack along with Terra's, as they were both in the car when Hive returned it. Gar had taken Terra's bag back to his house, and it lived on a chair next to his bed for almost a week. He thought one day she had to return to school. But after a week of taking two bags to school, he gave up, and went to her foster house. When he asked if he could see her, he was told she wouldn't see anyone.

"Is she gonna come back to school?" he'd asked the woman at the door.

"According to her, she's never going back to a school in this town," the woman returned, looking exhausted. He could hear small kids in the background, running around inside the house. "Between you and me, I don't think we're gonna keep her with us much longer."

Gar didn't need an explanation why. If her foster family couldn't make sure she went to school, she'd bounce back to the state and get moved to a new family. That was probably exactly Terra's plan. His heart shriveled; he hated the possibility that he may never see her again.

"Can you tell her something from me?" he asked her foster mother. "Tell her all is forgiven. Tell her there's no hard feelings. Please."

The woman made a noncommittal gesture, and Gar never knew if she planned to deliver the message.

Raven would still sometimes stare at her hands, hardly knowing what she was looking for anymore. She still felt like something had fundamentally changed—like she'd woken up from a dream into another life, and the vessel she was occupying now just happened to resemble her old body due to some lazy reflex of nature.

She remembered the time after Grant attacked her like she'd been looking at it from the outside. Everything had come quite natural to her in the moment: events had lined up one after the other like a story she was reading. It had seemed normal that she'd got up from a day and a half-long nap without any of the injuries she'd suffered, and that she'd strolled back home to terrify Grant, to show him he hadn't managed to kill her. At the time, she had known exactly what to do. She'd felt justice was served and as she stared down Grant and he sank, petrified.

Stupid, she chided herself now. Charges is what she should have pressed.

But on what? There was no evidence of anything anywhere. There were only her memories, and Grant's, which contradicted everything observable on Raven's body.

Because none of it had seemed strange at the moment, because she'd never doubted she would rise again, it had taken her a few days to realize the magnitude of what had happened—and that the boy who attacked her needed to be in jail.

But how could she ever explain what had happened? She had told Azar the same thing she told her friends—that Grant had driven her out of town and left her to make her own way back. Only she and Grant knew the truth, and by the look of him, he was losing it trying to figure out how she'd come back unscathed.

…Raven herself wasn't too far behind as she tried to figure out how she'd managed that.

"Rae?"

She looked up to see Vic looking at her. That's when she remembered she was in Mr. Mod's homeroom classroom, and still staring at her hands—probably had been for way too long.

"What's up?" her friend asked.

She set her hands down on the table. "I think I lost a ring… back when Grant took me out of town."

Vic looked like he didn't quite believe it was just that. "That sucks," he offered. "But now I know what to get you for your birthday."

He turned back ahead, and Raven vowed not to let her mind go where it had gone while at school anymore.

There was a Raven before Grant happened and a Raven after; there was a Raven who didn't know she could get hurt like that and shrug it off, and there was Raven now. It was just one more thing about herself she didn't understand, and she had many of those. She'd just have to deal with one more.

All's well that ends well right? (This is not the end :D)

~The Lighthouse