'Stupid boy shit'

Madison slept in longer than usual on Sunday. She spent most of the day holed up in her room, only sneaking out once to get some food and take it back to her room. Even when her father knocked on the door and told her it was time for dinner, she refused to come out, telling him she wasn't hungry. He told her through the door that she was being silly, and she might have screamed at him until he went away and left her alone again.

Eventually, though, the cereal and grapes she had absconded with weren't enough to keep her stomach from rumbling. It was later in the evening, and she hoped maybe everyone would be busy with other things if she was to head down to the kitchen and try to find something more substantial to eat.

When she got there, however, David was already there, eating some chips and playing with his phone. Probably texting with Addie, she figured bitterly as she turned to go. Then she remembered what Lil had said about David and Noah and their 'stupid boy shit' and turned back. Maybe she could get some answers out of him. "Hey," she said, trying to sound calm and composed.

David looked up, somewhat surprised. Between texting and playing Candy Crush Saga, he hadn't even noticed Madison approaching. Based on her history of pouting he'd figured she wouldn't be emerging from her room at least until Monday morning. Possibly longer if she could convince dad that she was having "Girl problems" and couldn't go to school. The fact that she was out and, moreover, talking to him was either a good sign or a bad one. He wasn't sure yet which.

He set his phone down on the table where it was out of the way.

"Hey, kiddo. What's up?"

"Is there anything left over from supper?" she asked, heading over to the fridge. She could at least get some food while she was here, if nothing else.

David nodded.

"Yeah, dad saved you some pizza. Don't worry, it's real, not the casserole type. Although that's still in there too if you're feeling particularly brave."

"I doubt it's any better a week later," she said dryly. There were several slices of pepperoni pizza on a plate in the fridge, as he'd said, so she took them out and stuck them in the oven to heat up. She wanted to ask if he had heard anything from Noah today, but at the same time she didn't want to be the one to ask. Maybe he would tell her... surely if he had heard anything bad, at least, he would tell her?

"Is Addie doing okay?" she asked instead.

"Well, she's gonna have some scarring, but she should be fine. It could have been a lot worse."

David could see that there was something that Madison wanted to ask. He could guess it had to do with Noah, that much was obvious, but he wasn't sure what he could tell her that would make her feel any better.

"How are you doing?" he asked, finally.

She shrugged. "I've been better." That was a massive understatement, but she didn't know how to explain everything that was wrong, especially not to David. "I'm glad she's going to be okay, though. It looked pretty bad when I bandaged it up... but then she was at the dance, so I don't know."

"Yeah. She seemed fine at the dance. I think it looked a lot worse than it was."

David shrugged. He wasn't about to go into detail about the sewing and bandaging after he and Lil took her back to her house. There was a long pause as they looked at each other, neither sure where to go from there. Finally David looked down and spoke up.

"I'm... I'm really sorry about Noah not showing up."

Madison turned away, crossing her arms, blinking back tears again at the memory. "Yeah. That was... pretty shitty. Did he... did you talk to him at all today?"

David shook his head.

"No. I texted him earlier but he hasn't answered. Addie and Lil haven't heard from him either. No one's seen him since the park."

He sighed and ran a hand through his mop of curly blonde hair.

"Maybe he just needs some time, you know? I mean he did kill someone. Thing. Whatever it was, it had a human face. Well... one of them was human anyway. That's not the kind of thing you just shrug off, you know?"

"So if he needed time to deal with it, he could still have texted and let me know," she said grumpily. "We were all there, it's not like we wouldn't have understood... I mean, if he didn't want to go to the dance, we could have done something else, or whatever... at least I would have known."

She pulled the warmed-up pizza out of the oven. She was conflicted - worried for Noah, but also angry at him, and more than a little resentful. After all, she had killed a giant gnome that had kidnapped her brother, had some weird episode of possession or whatever it had been, and had fought just as hard against the thing Noah had killed, managing to free them both from its tentacles of hair, even lighting it on fire, and she hadn't ditched any of her friends or turned into a jerk because of all that, so she wasn't sure why he was getting a free pass for his behaviour. Mostly, though, she wanted to talk to him herself, but was afraid of being ignored or rejected. Maybe, some little part of her wondered, he had just gone off with some other girl last night instead...

David shrugged.

"Yeah... it was still pretty dickish. I just mean... he probably has his reasons."

He sighed and spun his phone on the table for a moment.

"He really likes you. You know that right?"

"Yeah, well, he likes lots of girls," she muttered, picking the toppings off her pizza.

David shrugged.

"Yeah. Maybe. But this is different. When you were missing... I've never seen him like that before. And I've known him pretty much all my life."

She eyed David skeptically, but then, Lil had also said something similar... But if she mattered that much to Noah, why hadn't he said anything? They'd never even kissed, or even so much as held hands, except for that one time in the cave for about 5 seconds. Maybe it was more dumb boy stuff. Speaking of which...

"Is he acting weird with me because of you? Did you say something to him, something about me? Or is he just doing it all on his own?"

David's glanced up at his sister briefly.

"Why would you think that?"

"Because you're his best friend, and I'm your sister," she frowned. "And I know you didn't want us to go out. Not that we're going out," she added quickly.

"I never said anything about you. I may have... tried to steer him on a different course, but it wasn't you I distrusted. Regardless, that got settled well before the dance. I didn't have anything to do with that."

"Steer him how?" Madison asked, eyes narrowing dangerously.

David didn't like the look in his sister's eyes. It reminded him of the look a cat gets before it kills a bird.

"Nothing. I just... I tried to provide him an alternative. You know... nothing bad."

Madison could see how this must have gone, given what Lil had told her in the bathroom the night before. "You asked him to go with Lil, didn't you! Oh my god, I can't believe you would do that! I knew you guys were stupid but that's really stupid!"

Oh shit. How could she possibly know that? Did that necklace give her telepathy in addition to her prophecy dreams? If so, David could see that not boding well for him.

"No, see what I... so I didn't actually... ok, yeah. Preeetty much that's exactly what happened. BUT! It wasn't even really my idea! I mean, Addie wanted Lil to have a date, and It wasn't like he'd actually ASKED you yet..."

David felt it was in his best interests not to mention that he had known that Noah WANTED to ask Maddison... that, in fact, the reason why he hadn't was that he was waiting for David's okay. He felt it was a possibility that she would pick up on that with her knew-found psychic powers, but that was a chance he was going to have to take.

"So you made a deal with him that, what? He'd ask her just so Addie would be happy? Ugh!" Madison grabbed up her food, ready to storm off to her room again. "Next time, just stay out of it!"

"Oh for fu..." David said, standing up and raising his voice somewhat.

"I told him to ask her because I wanted to protect you! I know what he's like, Maddie! He treats girls like video games. He plays them for a while and after he hits all the right buttons he dumps them and moves on! I didn't want that for you! I didn't want him to end up hurting you like... well exactly like he did."

He sat back down and sighed in defeat.

"So if you want to be mad at me, then fine. But all I was trying to do was avoid exactly what ended up happening anyway."

For a moment it was silent as they both stared at each other.

"Just, please don't kill me with mind bullets," he said finally.

"I... what the hell are you talking about?" Madison looked utterly confused.

In the relative silence, their father yelled in from the living room, where he was engrossed in the Denver - Indianapolis game (or at least, trying to be). "Quit yelling at each other or I'll have to come in there, and god help you if you make me miss this play!"

Madison frowned, but lowered her voice to an angry tone just above a whisper. "I have no idea what you're talking about. He didn't get a chance to... to 'play' me, or push any buttons, or... anything!" She made a disgusted face, hardly able to believe she was talking about this with her brother. "But if we both wanted to.. to do that, and I'm not even saying I do, it's none of your business anyway! I'm 16, I can decide stuff for myself, you don't have to always look out for me."