Chapter 32: 32 Nowhere Shines, Part Three

In the cafeteria Tsuyoshi leaned back against his chair, and put his foot up on another chair, just to piss everyone off. Tabitha didn't react at all, but Sophie made a pitiful noise; across the room, Mackenzie Smith scowled at him. Excellent.

"I don't like this," Sophie said. "Why can't everyone be friends with everyone else?"

"You know why," Tabitha said. She idly shuffled her deck of cards again. Tsuyoshi didn't think they would ever get around to playing anything.

"Isn't it a little strange that you won't talk to so many people? Why are you drawing lines between yourself and other people?" Sophie asked.

Tsuyoshi raised an eyebrow.

Tabitha looked up. First at him, the tilt of her mouth faintly amused, conspiratorial. Then at Sophie as if it pained her to have this conversation. "I suffer through Jin's personality every time we meet on neutral territory. Which is all the time, because half this camp is neutral territory now. I'm not going to put up with that freak Mackenzie. I don't care that she doesn't like me."

Sophie put her hands over the table and curled over them a little. "It's just difficult for me to be torn between two groups."

"Put up with it," Tabitha said. "Angharad navigates the social obligations she's set herself with all the people here with ease. You could learn from that if you're so determined to be friends with all the people."

"It's not difficult for me," Tsuyoshi said, and started to laugh.

He wasn't convinced it would have been easier if Angharad was in the room. She was just better at pretending things were fine than Sophie was. At that moment, as far as he could tell, Angharad was searching every square metre of the place for something she wouldn't tell him about – not that he cared that much. If she wouldn't tell him, that probably meant it was something he'd find boring, like her futile quest to find a way out. He wasn't sure she bothered with keeping anything especially juicy from him, especially given he'd learned all her tells.

While Sophie worked herself up to say something else, Josephine and Eleanor came clumping into the room. There was something annoyingly inelegant about them. Something desperate in the way they clutched at each other's hands like they wanted to prove something that he found kind of embarrassing.

Sophie turned at the sound of their feet and watched them, her face going grey with worry.

Josephine and Eleanor stopped in front of the kitchen robots and said something to each other, complete with overlarge gestures that failed to compensate for anything. The robots took no notice. Not even Mr Party Hat, still dicing onions at the front.

Josephine laughed, annoyingly loud. Sophie turned back to look at her hands, face still grey.

He leaned over the table and put his hand over one of Sophie's, so she wouldn't get panicky again, the way she used to in the early days before everyone settled into the strange, still lives in captivity. Tabitha once told him she no longer heard Sophie crying in the night when she walked past her door any more, and Tsuyoshi didn't want her to start over again.

Sophie raised her mouth a little at the sides, and her eyes evened out into something almost like a smile. Her shoulders remained tense.

Josephine and Eleanor turned to face the rest of the room. Then Eleanor moved forward to talk to Gemma and Mackenzie, and Josephine stopped still and looked around the room like she was faced with a difficult decision. Oh? Doesn't she like her girlfriend's friends? Now that amused Tsuyoshi. He looked at Tabitha to see her biting her lip as if to stop the amusement that covered her face from flooding out her mouth as well.

"What is everyone so amused by?" Sophie said, sulky faced.

"What is life for if not to laugh?" Tsuyoshi said.

Eventually Josephine landed herself at their table. She slammed one hand on the table and said, "I am not here to eavesdrop on any private confidences! Please do not be alarmed." Then she dragged out a chair and sat.

It really was funny how nervous Josephine looked when she looked at him.

"We wouldn't be sharing all our secrets out here where anyone could hear," he said.

"I'd say that sort of thing is kept to people's bedrooms," Tabitha said, like she held other people's secrets and wanted you to know she wouldn't share.

"Or hospital hallways," Tsuyoshi said, and grinned.

"Ah, I'm so sad that nobody is sharing their secrets with me," Sophie said, then leaned her head on one hand then sighed.

Josephine's laugh was large and artificial. "Of course I have no secrets to share."

"That's because Josephine is very honest," Sophie said.

Tabitha looked more amused than ever.

"Ah, in that case, I would honestly like to know if there may be a reason Jin could have for hiding from me?" Josephine said.

Tabitha rolled her eyes. "He's running some errand for the doctor. Why are you looking at me like that? I keep tabs on my enemy. It's a survival skill."

"Um, actually, I think that maybe Jin is just avoiding being in places Mac might be," Sophie said, "because he thinks she was mean to Angharad."

"I knew I hated her," burst out of Tsuyoshi's mouth before he could stop it. "That snide bitch."

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The laughter finally spilled out of Tabitha's mouth.

"Uh, well, actually, I don't think Mac was trying to be mean to Angharad," Sophie said. She bit at the nails of one hand. Tsuyoshi was tempted to slap her hand away from her mouth so she wouldn't chew up her fingers. "I think that maybe sometimes when Mac tries to be friendly she's a little, uh... a little bit too much. She's not clever like Angharad is. She doesn't really, uh..."

"I don't care about her reasons," Tsuyoshi said. "It's not an excuse that she's socially clumsy. At least when I'm mean people know it's on purpose."

"Ah, well," Josephine said, then cleared her throat with a cough into one balled up hand. "I do think that Mac doesn't think through the consequences of her actions. It is, perhaps, something she should change."

A rare moment of sense from Josephine. Tsuyoshi usually thought 90% of what came out of her mouth was bizarre and baffling.

Tabitha slid her amused look Josephine's way. "She did spend four months trying to flirt with your girlfriend before trying to hit on someone else's boyfriend. Maybe she's just an arsehole."

Sophie sank further into the table. "Ah, I think that, it's possible that... Well, Mac has never been popular with people and she hasn't dated a lot, and..."

"Sophie, she's 24, not 14. I'm not going to give her an excuse just because she's a sad virgin," Tabitha said.

So forthright, Tsuyoshi couldn't help but laugh.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course," Josephine said, looking anywhere but at them.

"It's fine," Tsuyoshi said. "Tabitha and I love sad virgins. As long as they're Sophie."

"Or Angharad," Tabitha said.

"You know, I just don't think she's sad about it," he said.

"I'm not sad about being a virgin!" Sophie said.

"You're sad about other things. It's cool. We don't mind. We're also totally fucking miserable," he said.

Tabitha laughed, loud and dissonant against the quiet, miserable conversations happening elsewhere in the room, and then he did, too. The whole thing seemed so pathetic in that moment that it was hard to stop.

Poor sheltered Josephine looked shocked. Sophie looked more nervous than ever.

He breathed in deep enough to get himself under control.

"Ah, would any of you happen to know where Angharad is?" Josephine asked.

The laughter slid off Tabitha's face, and then she smiled, bitter and sharp. "She's alone somewhere, Josephine, but she doesn't want to be alone with you."

As he stood, he couldn't help but wonder what about that made Josephine lean back, like she was avoiding a hit.

"I think I'd like to take a walk and leave these kids to themselves. What do you think, Tabitha?" he asked.

"Sure, and then they can all be at one table and not worry about who's drawing lines where." She stood up to meet him.

*

Outside the air was cold, but dry. He dragged his scarf higher up his face so it wouldn't suck the moisture straight out of his skin.

"I know something you don't know~!" Tabitha said.

"Oh, I could tell. You always look so satisfied when you have a secret."

"There truly is very little more satisfying than having information other people don't have."

"I can think of things I'd find more satisfying." He thought of Zelko, who he could only touch so much and not a little more if he wanted to live, and his fists started to clench.

She scoffed. "Anyway, that's why I'm not sympathetic to Mac's whole sad, dateless in prison camp sob story. Why is anybody supposed to care? We're all stuck here." She carelessly kicked at the ground and risked the patent finish of her red shoes. "I've only ever been with Thanh and he's... dead. It's not like I get to be happier than she does. In fact, the whole thing is overrated. Who needs to date boys? They're useless."

He wound one arm around her, and pulled her into the warmth of his scarf.

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