Peter Clark was one damn lucky kid.

                That was what he’d been telling himself almost every morning for the past two months since he’d first locked lips with Lisa in her basement, their faces stained with tears amidst a heartfelt promise to stick together in the face of the numerous obstacles, but it was more than that, even.

                Every morning, as he awoke to his younger sister plucking out tiny outfit options for him from the dresser, he just rolled over and reminded himself that he was going to school. To take classes, where he was actually landing mostly A’s and B’s, with hardly more than a glare from Sharon or Mandy. To rehearse for a Grimm-a-Palooza where, tonight, he would make his high school stage debut. To see and interact with those he could call, dare he think it, friends.

                Like some kind of person.

                “Stop smiling, twerp. It’s making me more tired,” Erica groaned as she slumped back in the faux-leather bus seat, cupping her tiny brother in her palm laid atop her stomach. Her eyes fluttered half-shut as she raised her to-go mug toward her lips and slurped down another gulp of coffee.

                “Sorry. Good mood. Nothing I can do about it,” Peter shrugged, the sly grin on his lips refusing to part. He wrapped the sleeves of his jacket together around his wrists.

                “Uh-huh. We’ll see about that.”

                “Up too late?”

                “No. Just this stupid school and its eight o’clock bell.”

                “Riiight. Whatever you say,” Peter chuckled. He leaned back against his sister’s thumb, using it as an armrest, which she didn’t seem to mind. “So, are you coming to the show tonight?”

                “No,” she groused, her jaws widening for a yawn. Sleepily, she pawed at her dirty blonde locks she’d knocked askew the deeper she sunk into the seat.

                “So… tomorrow?”

                “Duh.”

                “Oh! Okay, great.”

                “You thought I wasn’t coming?”

                “Um, I kind of assumed Mom would make you go, but-”

                “It’s not just Mom, okay? I’ve been driving you back and forth for two months like you’re Miss Daisy. I’m going to be there to make sure you haven’t been just screwing around that whole time.”

                “True, true. Keep me honest,” Peter agreed. He patted his sister’s  finger.

                “Something like that,” she murmured, taking another sip from her steaming mug. “By the way, you owe me big, so just wait until after Friday night, cuz then it’ll be payday.”

                “You can have any flowers and chocolate they throw on stage for me, how about that?”

                “That’ll do. For a start.”

                “Whatever,” the boy snorted, leaning further forward in her hand as he watched her lips close around the rim of the mug again. He clambered over the rise in her wrist, stepping down onto the fabric of her top. “Can I have some?”

                “Hey, stay put,” she ordered softly, pinching the back of his shirt in her fingertips. She plucked him up, dangling him an inch above her stomach for a semi-stern address. “You heard Mom all eighty times she said it. If we turn suddenly, you’re going splat.”

                “Pssh. I’ve got it under control,” Peter joked back as he hung like a Christmas ornament from his sibling’s slender fingers. As she set him down, though, he willingly backpedaled anyway, letting her collect him back into her palm. “But can I? Please? Please? Just a drop. Please?”

                “Okay, but if you say please one more time, you’re getting nothing,” she snapped, rolling her eyes. Eyeing the safety lid of the mug and furrowing her brow, the teen finally unscrewed the top as she braced it against her chest, allowing the roasted bean aroma to waft out and into Peter’s area beneath.

                Next, keeping the mug wedged against her opposite hand, she dipped a finger into the warm joe and drew it out. The milky-brown liquid dribbled down the length of her digit and into the crevice between.

                “Hold out your hands,” she said steadily, screwing the lid back on top and hovering the coffee-dipped finger above her brother. A smirk on his face, Peter cupped both hands beneath his sister’s nearing palm and collected a couple of droplets as they descended the spire of her finger.

                He drew the pooled liquid to his chin and sucked it down before it could have a chance to seep between his fingers.

                “Ugh. God, I don’t know how you drink this,” Peter wretched, flapping his lips and wiping his coffee-stained hands on his jeaned knees.

                “Why’d you want it in the first place?” she groaned between sips.

                “I don’t know, it’s opening night! I could use a boost.”

                The bus pulled into the school parking lot, sliding into its designated space between the other transports amidst a crowd of disembarking teenagers.

                “Load up,” Erica mumbled. She looped her arm through a strap of her backpack and wrapped her fingers around her brother as she shuffled into the aisle, following after the line.

                “Hi, Peter!” The voice came from a cluster of seniors stepping down from the bus adjacent to them. He turned his head, squinting into the mass. Peter recognized the speaker as a girl named Beth who worked the stage crew. “Good luck tonight!”

                “That’s not what you’re supposed to say for theater, dummy,” a boy beside her responded. He elbowed her and gave Peter a smile. “It’s break a leg. You tell him to break a leg.”

                “Oh! Sorry!” she gasped, giggling on the end. “Break a leg, Peter!”

                “Thanks!” he called after them as Erica stepped up onto the sidewalk and joined the throng of entering students.

                “Good morning, Peter! And… Peter’s sister!” This time the gentler voice came from behind Erica’s shoulder. Peter crept over her fingers, peering as far as he could until he could make out Alita’s flowing black hair around the corner of his sister’s arm.

                “Hey, morning!” he called out as a pair of bodies slid between Erica and his art class guardian, rushing to reach their lockers ahead of time.

                “I’ll see you in three periods!” she promised before fading back into the crowd with a wave.

                “Can’t even teach people my name,” Erica grunted sarcastically.

                “It never came up,” Peter retorted back.

                “Fourth period algebra, represent!” A new greeting peeled through the clatter of anonymous voices. Peter swiveled around in his sister’s hand in time to see the face of Jason, a classmate from Tritter’s math class looming above.

                “Yeah! Um, rep… represent!” Peter said clunkily.

                Jason shook his head, his face frozen in seriousness, but quickly softened as he broke into laughter. “Nah, I’m just playing, Pete. You’re getting it. See you later for some good ol’ fashioned teacher-watching.”

                “How about I just watch you watch her,” Peter muttered, cheeks flushing at the thought of his bombshell of a teacher and secondhand confidante.

                “Whatever works, dog, whatever works. Later.” Jason, too, slipped back into the flow of students.

                As the pair turned a corner in the carpeted hallway, he caught sight of Bluebell leaning against a wall, white earbud wires hanging from her ears. Her head bobbed to the tune as her eyes locked to the floor by the bounce of her leg, clad in knee-high purple socks and birkenstocks. She looked up just in time to see Peter moving by. A slow smile crossed her lips. Her fingers waggled out of tandem in his direction, which he answered with an emphatic wave of his own.

                “Looks like somebody’s famous,” Erica said.

                “You could say that,” he laughed. “Hey, Calvin!”

                “Oh, for God’s sake…”

                “Peter! Dude, are you ready for this tonight?” the boy chirped, face lighting up at the sight of his co-star. He approached the pair, dwarfed by Erica by nearly a full head. His eyes rose briefly to her level. “Hi!”

                “Hey,” she droned, clearly disinterested in being involved. The coffee mug made its way to her mouth again for a long pull.

                “Are you kidding? I’m ready to do it right now,” Peter answered.

                “Well, let’s see it!” Calvin challenged, waving his arms like a circus ringleader. “C’mon, start up that monologue you have to give while Blue runs around in circles yelling at you.”

                “Right, like I’d spoil it for everybody ahead of time.”

                “Good thinking,” Calvin snickered. He extended his fist just above Erica’s cupped palm, which Peter smacked back with his own tiny hand right in the center of his friend’s knuckle. “Catch ya later, man, I’ve gotta get to my locker.”

                “Right on,” Peter said, nodding as the young actor folded back into the crowd.

                “Right on? Do you know how many decades ago that went out of style?” Erica remarked as they finally turned the corner into the history class hallway, sidling between bodies still unpacking their bags in front of lockers.

                “I’m bringing it back,” Peter insisted. He scanned the horizon, eyes darting between the cotton canyons formed by endless torsos ducking between one another as his sister carried him just below chest level. Arms swung, jackets dangled over shoulders, bursts of laughter and hushed whispers zinged among the chattering fray.

                As they reached the halfway point toward Mr. Browning’s classroom on the end of the pod, a pair of unknown seniors separated, and suddenly Peter’s view was granted a full ten feet ahead through the empty space and at the end, in front of a wall of unoccupied crimson lockers, was a sight he didn’t particularly want to have to see so early in the morning.

                Four girls, all standing together. The nearest was hard to make out, with her back turned, but Peter’s eyes were drawn instantly to one particular face.

                Sharon, with her snow-white arms crossed, a thigh-hugging skirt folded between her legs as they crossed over one another to maintain an easy balance. Uniquely for her, that silver-blonde hair was tied back in a pair of twin ponytails. Her lips smacked gently with what Peter assumed to be from her perpetual resources of hot, sticky cinnamon gum. Those lunar irises were, thankfully, not pointed at him, but on the face of the girl he couldn’t see. On either side of Sharon stood Amy, towering above most heads in the hall with her volleyball-star frame, and Kimmy on the opposite hand, spinning a mechanical pencil around her stubby fingers.

                The mystery girl in front of the three had her back to Peter and Erica, so her face wasn’t visible, but as she twirled a finger through the auburn mess of split ends, the miniature boy didn’t have to take many guesses before he realized it was Mandy, standing before the trio. As if their court of four possessed its own magnetic poles, students provided them all with wide berth, passing no closer than a few paces away. Just as Erica stepped parallel with the group in the hallway, Sharon’s quicksilver eyes flashed from Mandy’s face to Peter’s, her imperious gaze snagging him between the bodies.

                Peter swallowed. He couldn’t help but stare back.