The first few days after the disastrous Ward introductions, Taylor found herself unconsciously waiting for the consequences. Embarrassment had a way of lingering after all, especially when the people who witnessed it would continue seeing you several times a week. So for the first few mornings after returning to Arcadia High, she instinctively braced whenever she caught sight of one of the Wards walking through the corridors.
But the expected reactions never came.
That wasn’t to say everything suddenly became effortless. Far from it. The Wards were still careful, and they had to be.
All of them attended Arcadia under civilian identities, and while the school was hardly short on rumours, there was no sense in creating more. If every Ward suddenly started orbiting Taylor, people would notice. Teenagers might not always pay attention in class, but they were exceptionally talented at spotting changes in the school’s social circles. It would only take one observant student wondering why a handful of otherwise unrelated classmates always seemed to know one another before uncomfortable questions began circulating.
And besides, several of them already had established social circles that predated their recruitment. Abruptly abandoning those friendships to spend every lunch break with Taylor would have attracted far more attention than quietly exchanging greetings in passing ever would.
So they kept their distance, at least publicly. Whenever they crossed paths in the corridors, there would usually be a smile or a nod. Sometimes one of them would pause long enough to exchange a few words before continuing to their next lesson.
“Morning, Taylor.”
“Morning.”
“How’d your chemistry mock quiz go?”
“I don’t think I failed.”
“So… a success?”
“Barely.”
“Still counts.”
The conversations rarely lasted more than a minute, but that was enough. They acknowledged her, treated her normally, and, maybe more importantly, they never behaved as though what had happened during her introduction defined her.
It was a small kindness, one that Taylor appreciated more than she ever admitted aloud.
There were exceptions, however.
If anyone had asked her a week earlier which of the Wards she expected to spend the most time with, Dean would not have been anywhere near the top of the list. She had assumed he would be friendly, certainly. He had struck her as the sort of person who could hold a conversation with almost anyone. She had not realised he also possessed the persistence of someone who viewed the word “no” as the beginning of a dialogue rather than the end of one.
He simply appeared almost as if by magic whenever she was alone, whether at lunch, between classes, or outside the library. If Taylor happened to be walking towards the bus stop after school, there was a reasonable chance Dean would somehow materialise beside her halfway there, smiling as though their meeting had been a remarkable coincidence instead of something he’d very obviously engineered.
“You know,” Taylor observed one afternoon as they left English together, “I’m beginning to think you do this intentionally.”
Dean looked suitably offended. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You somehow keep ending up wherever I am.”
“Maybe we just have similar schedules.”
“Our schedules are different.”
“Then fate is working overtime.”
Taylor gave him a flat look. “You actually expected that to work.”
“I hoped.”
“It didn’t.”
“Worth a try.”
She shook her head, unable to suppress the slight smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
Dean noticed, but he wisely chose not to comment on it.
Victoria was different.
If Dean approached people like water flowing around obstacles, Victoria preferred to remove the obstacle entirely. She had apparently decided, somewhere between their first meeting and their next, that the two of them were going to be friends.
Taylor’s opinion on the matter seemed largely irrelevant.
“You’re coming with us.”
Taylor looked up from the book she’d been reading in the Wards’ common room. “…Us?”
Victoria nodded. “Dean and me.”
“I wasn’t invited.”
“I just invited you.”
“I don’t—” Taylor stopped herself halfway through. “I haven’t said yes.”
“You were about to.”
Taylor blinked. “I really wasn’t.”
Victoria crossed her arms, affecting a petulant expression. “You’ve spent the last twenty minutes pretending to read the same page.”
Taylor glanced down.
Admittedly, she had. But she was sure as hell not saying that out loud. “I was thinking.”
“I know.”
“I like thinking.”
“I know.”
“I can think perfectly well by myself.”
Victoria smiled. “I know.”
Taylor stared at her for several seconds before letting out a long, drawn-out sigh. “You are incredibly difficult to argue with.”
“I get that a lot.”
“No,” a familiar voice muttered from behind Victoria. “You get told that a lot. There’s a difference.”
Amy stepped into the room carrying a medical textbook under one arm, looking as though she’d rather have been almost anywhere else.
Victoria brightened immediately. “There you are.”
“I tried hiding in the infirmary.”
“I found you.”
“I noticed.”
Victoria slipped an arm around Amy’s shoulders before the younger girl could sidestep away. “Come on. We’re all going.”
Amy looked at Taylor with the exhausted expression of someone silently asking whether either of them knew how to stop this.
Taylor, after a moment’s consideration, offered the smallest of shrugs. Apparently, she did not.
Amy sighed through her nose. “I wasn’t asked either.”
“Of course you were.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I was always going to ask.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is… in spirit,” Victoria said. “Now, let’s go get Dean.”
Amy muttered something under her breath that Taylor didn't quite catch, though Victoria, being so close, either failed to hear it or wisely chose to ignore it.
Watching the pair leave, or rather Victoria carry Amy out of the room, Taylor relaxed a little.
Dean was persistent, Victoria was relentless, and Amy looked perpetually one conversation away from giving up on both of them entirely. It was an unusual dynamic, yet somehow it worked. Taylor couldn’t have explained why. She only knew that, somewhere over the past week, she’d stopped expecting them to give up on her after the awkwardness of that first day.
Instead, they had simply… kept showing up.
That consistency meant more than she was ready to admit.