Note: I'm back. Told you I would be!
PREVIOUSLY ON THE CLASSIX: So the birthday breakfast has started. We had a prolonged discussion between Chemeray about a coffee theory. Don't you just love reading this when its a draft?
emeray
Despite being no different in grandeur to any other large meal I've attended in my time as a Famoux member, the setup of my birthday breakfast momentarily takes my breath away. It isn't necessarily the food that gets me, but the concentration that went into putting everything together.
Among brimming platters filled eggs of all styles, pancakes drizzled in colorful syrup, and several other staple breakfast foods, I notice red streamers and confetti pieces and little cakes with my name drawn out on them in elaborate icing. By my seat I even find a few notes from Famoux staff membersââmost of whom I haven't even personally met. Somehow, they still have something kind to say that's probably more genuine than half of the celebrities I meet at after-parties and events.
My eyes are scanning the other seats merrily when a realization washes over me. I count once, twice, and then one more time to be sure. There's a table setting for each of the four other members and I, and nothing else.
No spot for Norax.
As such a profound figure in my newer life, Norax's inability to be here to even greet me before running off stings quick and deep like a second abandonment. Half the time I dread coming downstairs to see her, and I've pondered her choices for my life plenty in those hours where I can't seem to find any sleep, but for a hint of moment I find myself deeply longing for her to be here. It doesn't have to be grand, just here, like usual, crisp in her blazer and modest heels and clipboard full of my daily obligations.
My mother always used to button my coat before I left for school and tell me that today was a new day, and that there was always a chance that today could be different. I'm sure she never realized that by routinely starting the morning by promising me that change is coming, her words were, in a way, always contradicting themselves. How were things supposed to change at school if they weren't changing at all in the morning at home?
But I didn't realize that either until now, and either way, I didn't mind. There's a part of me that has always been a big fan of taking part in routines, and seeing patterns, and viewing the world as a generally unchanging entity as a whole. The very nature of my existence was a shift from the routine Eldae citizen of my age's appearance, so I suppose a subconscious part of me wanted to work at falling into line as much as possible to make up for that. It even comforting, so comforting, to listen to my mom's pep talks about my potential to be loved as she made sure my scarf was settled just right around my neck. There's simply something about doing the same thing everyday that makes change seem all the more delightful and all the less daunting.
Looking back at it now, it is so clear to me how my mother must've known she was lying. We went on for years and years that very way, and I always came home crying about something. No change there. She was basically sending me off into a school where a one Carstan van Horne was patiently waiting to beat me up however he could. I should've just grown to expect it.
But someway, somehow, she always fooled me into thinking that today was going to be different. Someway, somehow, she always fooled me into walking right into the fire with higher hopes than the day before.
The way Norax regularly goes through my schedule, and even the way she greets me with a Good morning, lumerpa, can every so often make me feel a similar way. As I step out for my afternoon walks with Cartney, sometimes there are moments where I let Norax's routine get me like my mother's used to, and I start to believe that despite not even getting to live my life freely, maybe today will be the day Cartney and I break up, or the public changes their mind about something and sets me free.
It never happens, but it doesn't stop me from hoping.
That sort of realization scares me to think about. Norax is comforting at the cost of being controlling, and it seems I've always been a big buyer for comfort.
Disappointing as it is, I can't deny that her absence this morning has its perks. Whenever Norax isn't around the Metropolix, and the guards are feeling a little more lenient than usual, Chapter and I can actually sit next to each other sans the stern Don't Ruin The Famoux with Your Personal Feelings lecture. It's the same one we've been getting since the moment she gave us our contracts a few months ago, and it only gets worse as time goes by, and new additions start coming in. It becomes less Don't Ruin the Famoux with Your Personal Feelings, and more Here's a List of Every Time You Let Me Down This Week.
As we go to take our seats, he pulls back my chair before his own without any of the gusto and theatrics that go into Cartney's chivalrous acts. For Chapter, as it turns out, it's just thoughtless. When he looks over at me, eyes soft like usual, he doesn't seem to understand why I'm staring at him.
"Thank you," I say.
"What for?"
I shrug, unsure of how to put it to words. "Your concern, I guess."
This makes him brighten. "Of course, love." It's dizzying to me how easily Chapter Stones can improve a moment.
Across from me, Till furrows a brow, glancing over at the door. "Hey, is Norax not coming to breakfast?"
"It appears not," I say, voice flat.
"On your birthday?"
According to Angad, who's standing at the dining room entrance with a few of the other members' personal guards, Norax has been out since early this morning. "She was out of the Metropolix before sunrise," he says. "I'm pretty sure even the night shift guards were asleep when she left."
"Did she tell anybody where she was going?" asks Till.
"Said it was classified."
"Classified," muses Race. "She must be up to something. Emeray, perhaps it's for your birthday or something."
But my hopes are already lowered. "I doubt that."
"Then it probably has to do with those new Famoux member's we're getting. Maybe she's rounding them up and bringing them right here to us."
The immediate mentioning of the new members makes my chest constrict so suddenly, I have to reach out for his hand from beneath the table. Between a cup of coffee and getting distracted by Norax's absence, I wasn't even thinking about DEFED's note from last night. How callow of me to forget about serious issues entirely in the presence of my own personal concerns.
Chapter squeezes my fingers, offering a look of consideration. Under his breath he whispers, "Everything okay?"
"It's justââ"
But the other members are already answering Race, and my window for mentioning DEFED's note comes and goes before I have a chance to open my mouth.
"Oh god." Till shakes her head. "Just thinking about it makes me feel sick. Have any of you chosen from your pictures?"
"I'm having trouble with it," says Kaytee. "It's weird to be picking somebody out like this . . . it sort of feels like I'm going against Foster somehow. Worst of all, we can't even be sure whether or not the person we pick even likes us. Any time I think I've chosen the right person, I imagine them secretly plotting against us."
Race murmurs, perhaps only to himself, "Sorta like DEFED."
I can't stop myself from wincing again. As the woman of the hourââof sortsââit doesn't go unnoticed.
"Em, what's wrong?" asks Till. I expect some kind of consolation on her face when I meet her gaze, but much to my surprise, that's not the case at all. She seems to be searching my eyes, as if fishing for something she wants me to say. My mouth clamps up immediately upon that sort of pressure.
"IââI guess it's just the whole birthday thing," I say, but it comes out as a question. Is this the answer Till is looking for?
"Are you sure?"
"I don't knowââare you?"
"What's going on?" Kaytee leans forward, glancing to us, then to the guards by the door, then back to us again, and finally to Race. He offers her a sort of nod I'm sure only the two of them can comprehend.
Just then, Kaytee starts digging into one of the platters set out on our table, clanking a serving spoon against the metal oatmeal pot in a slow rattle. She laughs, louder than usual, remarking about how clumsy she is. This makes my nose crinkle; if there's anything I know about Kaytee, it's that she isn't clumsy.
As she continues her racket, Race's voice drops low into a whisper. In this moment, I realize that the expression on my face isn't a lone one at this tableââthat it's the same expression he, and Till, and Kaytee have on their faces as well. When I look over at Chapter, he seems to have the same suspicion.
"Okay," starts Race. His words come out quick and curt with every clang of Kaytee's spoon. "Who got something yesterday?"
My lungs catch. "Like, DEFED?"
"Yes."
A weird mixture of white hot fear and cooling relief washes over me. So Cartney and I weren't the only ones who got a message from them. I'm not the bearer of bad news again, like I was the first time with the Volxsturm.
But DEFED's still back. For everyone.
Sudden and maladroit, Kaytee gets up from the table and proclaims that she needs to find brown sugar, but conveniently doesn't know which drawer in the kitchen has it. All of our personal guards eagerly retreat from the dining room to help her in finding it, which, in turn, buys the rest of us all more time to talk.
"Obviously, Kaytee and I already discussed this," starts Race.
Chapter gestures to the pot of oatmeal by Kaytee's empty seat. "Looks like you two planned some creative diversions so we could all discuss here."
"Glad you noticed. Looks like we weren't as incognito as we intended. We had some plans that involved getting Norax out of her chair, but I guess she made that much easier on us just opting out of breakfast all together." Race rubs his face, turning toward me with an apologetic frown. "I'm really sorry, Emeray. This is probably the last way you want to start your first Famoux birthday. Kaytee and I got our messages yesterday nightââcouldn't have asked for a more inconvenient time."
"It's actually really fine," I tell him, and it's true. "I got mine yesterday as well. I was going to bring it up sometime during this breakfast anyway."
"So we all got DEFED messages," says Chapter. He waits for us all to nod yes before remarking, "And here I was, willing to play it cool for twenty hour hours so Sticks wouldn't have to worry about it."
"I was going to do the same thing," agrees Till. "If it was only me, I didn't want to be the one to ruin the entire day."
"I guess I'd rather you ruin the day now instead of letting Cartney ruin it later," I joke. This helps lighten the freshly heightened sense of anxiety swirling around the room, if only for a few seconds. We return to normal as Race brings back the conversation, noting that Kaytee can only distract the guards for however long until they come back.
"Mine said something about how I got off easy," he reports. "Said if they were rule followers and actually used the Volx, I would've been dead. Kaytee's said something around the same thingââthat she would've lost me a few months ago, but they were generous and decided to spare me, even though the whole world wouldn't."
"They tried to get you to love them too?" Till asks. "Putting up the whole benevolent giver act? My note said that I've been really neutral lately, and they want to reward me for never getting into any big trouble besides a few recent rumors."
Chapter nods along. "They asked me for forgiveness. They actually admitted that the rumors about me using drugs were something they made upââjust to see if anybody would hate me. When people were only really concerned about my health, they realized that it didn't go as they planned."
"And they wanted you to accept their apology?"
"Yeah. They were basically pleading about it."
They're all agreeing softly, so as not to speak so loud people outside the dining room hear it, but they may as well blaring sirens in my head. The pressure that hits my forehead feels like a hundred pounds of lead, its aftershocks rippling through my skin in goose-bumps down my arms and my neck. None of this makes sense. DEFED is asking the other members for forgiveness. They're trying to give the others a reason to be thankfulââto acknowledge how even though what they've done is malicious, it could've been worse. They were spared. They were neutral. They were too good to be brought down.
The other members don't seem to have been warned about the new members we're getting in a way that suggests they're from DEFED. The other members don't seem to have gotten some sort of cryptic, malign nursery rhyme like Doctor Foster from a few months ago, or the threatening lyrics they changed for the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song in Cartney's and my note yesterday. Rather, the other members seem to believe that DEFED is making an attempt to changeââto turn a new leaf and approach the Famoux in a harmless way.
"I mean, what else could it be?" asks Till. "They kept saying before the Fishbowl that they needed us. If they still need us after everything they've done, I guess they don't want us to be scared. Do you think they even regret killing Foster?"
"After that happened, the major backlash against all of us started," Race says. "We've all been through the ringer since Foster died. Maybe DEFED is trying to help us, somehow, to make the public like us again."
Again they agree, and it's like all the clean air in the room is making a beeline away from me. DEFED put an engagement ring in Cartney's necklace boxââat a time when the world is getting sick of how we're moving too fast, and on a day when my young age is prominently being broadcasted. It's one thing for some that I'm even dating someone six years older than me. (Chapter, at twenty one, is a little less than four.) It'd be a whole hailstorm of controversy to have Cartney pop the question on my seventeenth birthday.
And why are they doing this? They made it very clear:
"Not only did you succeed in annoying the entire world with your mourning processââthe all-black clothes for months, the perpetual sad face in photographsââbut you also annoyed us."
"You could say you're not our favorite anymore."
"We took it upon ourselves to shake up your birthday celebration in a way that will make everyone as sick of you as we are."
"Sticks?" Chapter squeezes my hand like he did when I first hastily grabbed it. "You look like you're going to be sick. Is everything all right?"
I answer honestly before I can think twice. "No."
"What's wrong?"
Till leans forward, reaching out to me. "What did DEFED say in your letter? I found mine a little disturbing too. Even if they want to be friendly, I don't think we should be quick to jump and trust them so easily.."
DEFED may want to make amends with the Famoux, and they may be making it very clear in their letters to Kaytee, and Race, and Chapter, and Till, but if there's one thing I know, it's that they have absolutely no interest in making any amends with me.
"No, no, mine's not like yours," I stammer, raking a hand through my hair. "All of your notes are positive. But theyââthey told me they don't like me anymore."
"They don't like you?"
"They threatened me and everything." I gesture to the ceiling. "The note's in my room upstairs. A nursery rhyme. It came with a package at Cartney's place. They're even involving him in it. And the new membersââthey mentioned them too."
There's a second where nobody says anything. Whatever bubble they built up, believing maybe DEFED wasn't at it again, has been inevitably burst. It's visible like streaks all over their faceââstreaks of disappointment, of fear. I blink back ridiculous tears. I caused their disappointment and their fear because I was too annoying. Because DEFED decided they didn't like me anymore.
Kaytee returns with her entourage of guards, holding in her hands a huge jar of brown sugar which must've been buried in the back of the cupboard. She's all smiles and massive thank you's to Angad and the others until she takes her seat and realizes how solemn everything's gotten.
"Uh, oh, what did I miss?" she asks. "What happened?"
Race blinks slowly. "I'm not really sure. All I can tell is that it's nothing good."
xxx
Oooooooo what's this? The melodrama never subsides. I hope you're getting excited about what's to come.
Thank you for sticking with me and everything. And thank you for commenting your name on that part of my wisdom teeth followup, so I can start using it! If you ignored my followup (I get it, my authors notes aren't especially riveting) please comment your name right here! Even if you did read the followup and commented, comment again. It's like adding your name to the reaping a few extra times.
I'm cracking myself up over here with these GIFS.
I hope you're having a wonderful day. Remember:
Sticks and Stones may break your bones, but haters make you famoux. Stay classy, stay classix.