Page 8 of Hilarina and the Ogre

But Trenton was only the black sheep, the one no one ever spoke to except to make those stupid whale sounds whenever he passed. The boy looked shocked, his eyes wide. He hadn’t known.

And then suddenly Hilary was sick to death of it. He didn’t care to ask who the guy was, or even if it was a guy. It could have been an alien for all he knew. Or a real mermaid-vampire. He knelt and began to collect them, the pearls smooth and a little cold, shining a little. Luminescent. He began to laugh.

The other two were kneeling as well, collecting up the pearls. There were too few of them. Hilary couldn’t know that for sure. It wasn’t like he’d ever counted the things, but there just seemed too few. Not a full necklace’s worth. But what did that matter? It was ruined now. His mother’s favorite thing.

“I just didn’t want them to do it again.” Hilary’s words came on their own, falling from him like those scattering pearls. “Hilarina Ballerina. It was supposed to be safer if I wasn’t alone.” Pathetic. That’s what it was. So pathetic he could die. And it was all so obvious in retrospect, too. Of course, it had turned out like this. When you were a weenie who grabbed onto people for such a desperate reason. Naturally, it would turn into a joke.

“Give them to me,” Trenton said, his voice flat as always.

And what a relief it was to have the boy be the same. To be entirely unaffected. For a moment, Trenton was Hilary’s favorite person in the world. Separate. A pariah. A laughingstock even more than he was.

“The pearls,” Trenton said, his hand out for them. “Give them to me.”

Hilary didn’t think to question it. Just gave them over. “I think some are missing.”

Trenton said nothing about that, just took the pearls from Aspen as well, who was looking uncomfortable and trying not to show it.

Hilary stood and took a breath. Oddly, he felt good. Better than he had at the start of the evening, anyway. It was almost a comfort that it had all gone so badly. Like a justification of all the worrying he’d done.

They moved the tarp and found a couple more pearls, but even then there still seemed too few. “Do you want to check the hall?” Aspen asked. It was possible some had rolled away or been kicked out. But if that were the case, they could be anywhere. Down the stairs. Scattered in classrooms. A couple might have been with Varda too, caught in her dress, and Hilary realized he’d rather choke down his own liver than ask her to check.

“It’s late,” he said instead. “You need to lock up.”

She’d probably be in trouble already for how late they’d pushed it, but still Aspen hesitated. “I’d rather we found the missing ones first. If it was your mother’s…”

And then he knew Trenton had been right. That Aspen was the person he ought to have dated. Instead, he’d chosen what he hoped would make him liked, and now he was being punished for it. “No, I don’t think—I need to get home. My parents are probably worried I’m still out.”

They headed out together, and Hilary walked Aspen to her car, but the only other one in the lot was his. He turned to Trenton. “How did you get here?”

The boy pointed toward the school where a lonely bicycle was chained to the signpost marking the teachers’ spaces.

“Put it in the trunk,” Hilary said. “I’ll drive you back.”

But the bicycle didn’t fit in the trunk, and he could tell without having to measure. Trenton knew it too. “I’ll come early tomorrow,” the boy said, throwing a foot over the bike. “We can search again.” He’d already turned to go.

“I’ll drive you.” Hilary heard the thread of panic in the words and wondered if the others heard it there too.

The offer wasn’t selflessness. It wasn’t gratitude either, though it should have been. Hilary just didn’t want to be alone. He knew he’d think some really pathetic things if he were alone.

“Alright,” Trenton said with his reliable flatness.

Aspen said goodnight. Then she offered an apology.

“For what?” Hilary asked.

But Aspen said nothing, and Hilary knew why. She was sorry for not telling him about Varda. For letting the new kid just walk around the school like that, the loser being cheated on. But it wasn’t her fault he was in this mess.

“It wasn’t like that,” he said, feeling guilty about her guilt. “We weren’t—I was using her too.”

Trenton sniffed at the air once they were in the car together. The boy didn’t make it obvious, but Hilary had done the same things too many times himself to mistake it for what it was.

“Like an ashtray, right?” he said. “That’s one thing I won’t miss.”

Trenton said nothing to that. Just sat, oddly prim, his hands in his lap. It should have been awkward, but it wasn’t. Trenton didn’t speak enough for Hilary to find the lack of it weird. Maybe that was also why his headache had faded, though it could also have been because he’d stopped clenching his teeth. They might have ridden in silence the whole way, but he ended up breaking it himself.

“Have you tried stopping them?” Hilary asked. “The idiots with the Whale thing.”

Again, Trenton said nothing. But the silence felt different. The boy was considering how to answer him. “No,” he finally said.