There was a car parked in front of the house.
Alice stopped walking.
It was a decent car. Not flashy, but clearly new, clean enough that the morning light was bouncing off the hood. Alice looked at it, then at Bryan, then back at the car.
"You have a car now?"
Bryan's mouth did the thing where it wasn't quite a smile but was definitely smug. "Got my license three months ago. Dad got me the car last week."
"Hm." Alice looked it over. Black. Bryan's favorite color. That was about as far as his car knowledge went.
"That's it? Hm?"
"It's a nice car."
"Thank you," Bryan said, with the dignity of someone accepting an award.
"I call shotgun," Lucy announced from behind them, already moving past Alice at a light jog. "I called it, it counts, I'm getting in."
She made it about two steps before Bryan reached out and picked her up. Not gently. He lifted her the way you'd grab a cat making a break for it.
"Hey!" She kicked at nothing. "Bryan!"
"Last time you were in the front seat," he said, carrying her toward the back door, "you changed the song eleven times in four minutes, spilled your water bottle, and tried to grab the wheel because you wanted to, quote, see what would happen."
"That was one time."
"It was all in the same ride." He opened the back door and put her in with very little ceremony. "On the way here."
"I cleaned it up. And I am a passenger princess. You are treating me like cargo."
"Passenger princesses don't grab steering wheels."
"I was curious!"
Alice got in the front without comment.
Bryan came around, settled into the driver's seat, and adjusted the mirror with the calm of someone who had fully accepted what his life was. Lucy was still muttering something in the back. Alice buckled his seatbelt and looked out the window.
"She's not even fighting it," Lucy said, pointing at Alice. "This is rigged."
"He always gets the front seat," Bryan said, pulling out of the driveway. "That's just how it is."
"Why?"
"Because he doesn't cause problems."
"I don't cause problems. I cause experiences."
Alice smiled at the window.
Yeah. Near-death experiences.
Bryan took the longer route, which Alice figured was on purpose. Less traffic. Bryan didn't like starting his morning tense. The radio was on low. Lucy had gone quiet in the back, legs curled up sideways, cheek against the window, fully resigned.
"Okay," Bryan said, in the tone he used when he wanted to sound like he was just mentioning something. "New school. New people." He glanced at the mirror, then at Alice. "If anyone gives either of you a hard time, tell me."
Lucy raised her hand from the back. "Same."
Alice exhaled. "Your mom will call the school?"
Bryan's mouth twitched. "My mom won't be there."
"Mine will be," Alice said. "If she finds out there was trouble on the first day, she will show up to campus personally, speak to the dean, and probably also leave a review somewhere. She left one for the dry cleaner last year."
Quiet.
"One star," Alice added.
"For what?" Lucy asked.
"They took five minutes longer than they said they would."
More quiet.
"Okay," Bryan said. "I'll handle it quietly if it comes up." He paused. "But tell me."
"I'll tell you immediately," Lucy said. "And I'll help. I know self-defense."
Alice turned to look at her.
"I have elbows," she said, completely serious.
"Please don't elbow anyone," Bryan said.
"They're surprisingly effective."
"Lucy."
"I'm just saying I bring something to the table."
Alice looked back out the window. Same as always. He didn't mind.
The arguing somehow looped them back to a memory, the way it usually did when the three of them were stuck in a car together long enough.
"Okay, can we talk about the stick?" Lucy said.
Bryan made a sound like he'd been bracing for this.
"What stick," Alice said flatly.
"You know what stick." Lucy leaned forward between the two front seats. "Primary school. The kids who were picking on Bryan. You picked up a stick."
Bryan kept his eyes on the road. His ears had gone a little pink.
"Off the ground," Lucy continued, already fighting a smile. "Just a random stick. And you walked over there completely calm and just started hitting them with it."
"It was close by."
"Alice. It was a twig."
"It was a stick."
"There were four of them," Bryan said.
"There were four of them," Lucy repeated, turning back to Alice. Then she lost it. Fully. Laughing hard enough that she had to grab the headrest. "And you hit them with something that still had leaves on it."
"It did the job."
"It looked like an exorcism! Nobody expects the leafy stick!" She flopped back in her seat, still laughing. "Your mom was so mad."
Alice said nothing. He remembered his mother's face when the school called. The specific expression that was angry and also somewhere close to delighted and trying very hard to be neither.
"She said you were being unladylike," Lucy said, wiping her eyes.
"She wasn't wrong."
"You were seven."
"Sticks are everywhere."
Bryan let out the laugh he'd been sitting on, the quiet one he usually kept to himself. It went around the car and Lucy laughed harder and Alice's expression shifted just slightly, almost a smile but not quite committing to it.
He'd known Lucy since they were three. So much time at each other's houses that their parents had stopped keeping track of whose kitchen they were eating in. And then when they were five, there had been a kid sitting alone on the playground with a bloody knee and a bruise near his eye, very deliberately not crying. Alice had walked over with no real plan and just sat down next to him.
That had been Bryan.
And two years later, when four older kids picked up where they left off, Alice had picked up a stick. It was thin and it had leaves. He was aware of both of these facts. But nobody else was moving and the stick was right there.
"I still have a slight fear of twigs," Bryan said.
"Good," Alice said. "Keep it."
Lucy made a sound of pure joy from the backseat.
Bryan shook his head, still smiling, and flicked the turn signal on as the school came into view, big and unfamiliar and full of people none of them knew yet. He glanced at Alice as he pulled in. Quick, easy, the kind of look that didn't need anything attached to it.
Alice looked back.
That was enough.