Before Aida could respond to Ezra’s imposing finality, Lily dashed by, grabbing her and Ezra’s arms.

  “Come on, we have to go!”

  Allowing herself to be dragged after the tiny girl, Aida ran after her in a daze.

  If there was one thing Aida prided herself on, it was tenacity. It didn’t seem right for her to just accept Ezra’s proclamation at face value. She felt like she should fight - hand him a charm, have them take the time to hash out their true thoughts, figure out what the exact right move was. Not give up on them until they had exhausted all options.

  But the decisiveness with which Ezra stated his intention brooked no argument. He had already decided, and this time he left no openings - no weird, impossible-to-meet pie-in-the-sky milestone to be a scapegoat for why they couldn’t be together. He would rather “set me free” than fight for me.

  For some reason, that hurt a lot more than when he told her they should break up.

  And if he no longer wanted to fight for them, then why should she?

  The lump in Aida’s throat expanded. She focused on Lily’s blonde hair bouncing in front of her.

  “Ah!” Lily skidded to a stop, crashing into Edward’s back. Aida deftly skipped to the side, avoiding the pileup while Ezra skidded on the other side. “Vanita! Where’s Abedi?” Lily had suddenly adopted a perky, unbothered voice.

  “Hm? Oh, he’s in the bathroom.” Vanita smiled as she thumbed at the wooden outhouse behind her. Her eyes brightened as she took them all in. “You look like you’ve all been having fun! So many matching souvenirs!”

  “Yeah, Pritchard is really good at the scooping game! Anyway, how are you doing? How’s Abedi?” Lily asked, speaking quickly. Vanita tilted her head askance at Lily’s pressing questions.

  “He’s fine, I just…I asked him if he wanted to eat my candy, otherwise I was going to throw it away. He ate it all, but too quickly, so…” Vanita giggled awkwardly. “Anyway, that’s why we’re here!”

  “Are you two having fun?” Aida asked. She rolled the two pendants between her fingers, unwilling to part with them, yet…

  “We are!” Vanita smiled, looking so happy and free. “We have so much in common, surprisingly. It’s so easy to talk to him.”

  Vanita spoke with an energy Aida hadn’t seen in her before. She had always been the calm, reserved one, while Lily was the one who expressed all her feelings without fearing judgment. When the two of them were together, they had the mother-daughter dynamic, where Vanita would entreat Lily to slow down, think things through…and Lily was the one urging Vanita to think less, and just do.

  But right now, she was filled with the same sort of carefree light that seemed to drive Lily and Sue’s upbeat personalities. Her eyes were bright, her lips relaxed in a large smile that was in sharp contrast to her usual measured, ladylike smiles.

  Looking at Vanita speak so animatedly as she started spilling Abedi’s personal details (“He doesn’t want to go into the family business! He says his passion is to make fine jewelry! His older sister supports him, but his parents are a little more wary…”), Aida couldn’t help but smile ruefully.

  If this isn’t first love, I don’t know what is.

  “Here, I won this for you.” Aida pressed the two charms into Vanita’s hand, stalling Vanita’s prattling. “Love charms!”

  Vanita colored as Lily, Edward, and Aida beamed at her.

  “W-Why would you give me this?”

  Aida shrugged. “Things look like they’re going well with you, so I thought a little extra boost couldn’t hurt.” Aida winked, making Vanita blush a shade deeper. “And besides, this is how you know I’m rooting for you.”

  “We’re all rooting for you,” Edward said earnestly, mirroring Lily’s excitement.

  Vanita pulled Aida away from the group, lowering her voice urgently.

  “But - why wouldn’t you keep it for yourself?” Vanita’s eyes flicked meaningfully behind her.

  Aida lifted her chin, keeping her smile on her face.

  “I don’t need it.”

  Vanita’s eyes rounded as she glanced surreptitiously back at the group. Her sensitivity and social awareness made her aware that things weren’t as they seemed on the surface, but she had the grace to not comment.

  “Are you sure?” Vanita asked hesitantly, holding the charms out as if she was trying to return them. Aida nodded encouragingly.

  “I’m sure. You’ll get better use, if you decide to use them.”

  Vanita looked at Aida for a long moment, gauging her reaction as she bit her lip in concern. Finally, she pulled Aida forward into a tight hug.

  “Thank you. If you want to talk about it, I’ll be here.” Aida closed her eyes as she returned Vanita’s warm embrace, feeling the lump return to her throat. What is there to talk about? I already knew high school romances wouldn’t work out.

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  “Thanks for the offer,” Aida replied softly. With the way her chin was resting on the taller girl’s shoulder, she was looking up at the sky. Dusk was beginning to settle, making the cheerful clouds of the afternoon look ominous and looming. “You should get back to Abedi, though.”

  Vanita pulled back, giving Aida a tremulous smile. “I’ll go first, then.”

  Aida waved as Vanita jogged back to the outhouse where Abedi was emerging, shaking water off of his hands. Lily, Edward, and Ezra had already melted away, leaving Aida standing alone among the crowds of children and young parents strolling along the street.

  I should go look for them, Aida told herself as she turned away from Vanita’s gentle skip up to Abedi. They can’t have gone too far, not if they want to continue keeping tabs on Vanita.

  Aida realized something was off after ten minutes of fruitless searching. Vanita and Abedi were long gone, and she couldn’t find Lily, Edward, and Ezra in the crowd. The crowd’s energy was high, everyone in a good mood, letting themselves relax for the event during a time that had been weighed down by caution and fear of what was happening outside the gates of civilization, though the older adults continued to cast wary gazes towards Shale Port’s village limits.

  She couldn’t even use her mana sense to find her friends, with how many people there were interfering with her senses.

  Exasperated, Aida turned once more on the spot as she scanned the crowd, trying to find any familiar face. Finally, she saw a flash of unnaturally pale hair in the crowd.

  There they are!

  Forging her way through the crowded street, which had become steadily more packed as the sun set, Aida reached out and grabbed blindly at the sleeve of the silver-haired boy.

  “Found you! Why did you—“ Aida cut off as she realized she hadn’t grabbed Ezra’s sleeve, but instead the last person she wanted to see.

  Light blue eyes blinked down at her.

  “Good to see you.”

  Quickly releasing Dev’s sleeve, Aida scrambled back several steps while waving her hands apologetically in front of her.

  “Sorry, I thought you were Ezra,” Aida said awkwardly, trying to conceal her embarrassment with a high-pitched laugh.

  “Where are your friends?” Dev seemed genuinely curious, looking over the heads of the crowd, as if he still expected them to pop out of the crowd behind her.

  “I don’t know,” Aida confessed. “We found Vanita and Abedi near the restrooms, and then all of a sudden Lily, Edward, and Ezra disappeared. What about you guys?”

  Dev sighed, crossing his arms. “We went the wrong way, apparently, if you guys found them. How are the two of them getting along?”

  “Well enough,” Aida said, latching on to the change in topic. “I gave Vanita the set of charms, since she seems to like Abedi a lot. What she does with them is up to her, it’s all completely out of my hands.”

  Dev nodded, smiling. “If Vanita is having a good time, then that means Abedi likes her, too. He’s very good at icing people out if he doesn’t like them.”

  The conversation lapsed into silence as Aida looked beyond Dev to see what Shon, Pritchard, and Myk were up to. They were gathered around a booth, with Pritchard painstakingly stacking oddly shaped stones into a tower. Shon and Myk were encouraging him - shouting at him, it looked like - in his endeavor as the stall proprietor watched in delight.

  “It’s almost time for the fireworks,” Dev finally said. He had continued monitoring the crowd for her. “You’re welcome to watch with us, if you’d like.”

  Aida opened her mouth to politely reject his invitation, intending to find the original group of friends she came with, but her answer was drowned out by exuberant cheers and hoarse shouts as Pritchard placed the last rock on his tower.

  “Excellent work!” the attendant clapped. “That’s the record for the tallest tower this evening! I present to you your prize: a seashell flute!”

  “What was that?” Dev had leaned closer to her, turning his ear towards her to better hear her.

  Aida looked uncertainly back the way she had come, feeling like she was standing on another precipice. Ezra’s voice echoed in her mind, reminding her to “act on her heart’s desire.”

  If she walked away now, she could just find a quiet location to watch the fireworks herself. It wouldn’t be embarrassing at all. On the other hand, there was a small part of her that was curious about what would happen if she accepted Dev’s invitation.

  It would be a platonic setting, Aida reminded herself. After all, the invitation was for her to watch with the group. She had little to fear about romance rearing its disquieting head.

  “Sure,” Aida said, turning back to Dev with a smile. “Thanks for adopting me into your group.”

  Dev grinned. “It’s a bit odd to be missing a fifth in our group, so you’re just helping us restore the balance. Anyway, if you find your friends feel free to join them instead.”

  Aida nodded, feeling much more at ease as Dev laid out her possible escape routes. Pritchard, Myk, and Shon bounded over, seeming surprised and not unhappy to see her. She followed the rambunctious group of boys back down to the pebble beach, where everyone else was gathering. The stalls that had been set up on the beach were in the midst of being packed away in order to make room for everyone. Based on the orientation of the families that had already laid out blankets on the smooth stones, it appeared that fireworks would be launched from the ocean.

  “Is it going to be safe? Setting off fireworks that far out at sea?” Aida asked no one in particular, remembering the ghostly manifestation of an eel face.

  “It should be fine,” Shon said thoughtfully. “There are so many guards already, and they’re not that far from shore to begin with.”

  “Come on everybody, take a seat before someone else does,” Pritchard said briskly, growing five lumps in a circle out of the ground.

  Aida took a seat on the makeshift stool nearest to her, looking expectantly around her; part of her wished she could spot her friends, to give her an excuse to escape Dev’s presence, but no luck. Just several children, as well as a few pairs of adolescents who had the nervous air of being on a first date.

  She couldn’t help but sympathize with their nerves.

  “It’s starting!” a child cried gleefully, before her parents shushed her. Looking back out on the ocean, Aida saw a spark of light fly up into the sky, fizzling out before it could explode.

  A moment later, another spark flew up. This one did manage to explode, raining tinier sparks down over the ocean, though it didn’t fly as far as Aida would have expected from fireworks and the boom was muted.

  Maybe their firework technology isn’t that refined, Aida thought doubtfully as she watched several more sparks begin shooting into the sky. All around her, people were ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the lackluster display.

  Glancing over at her companions, Aida noted some thoughtful frowns on Shon and Myk’s faces, though she couldn’t see Pritchard and Dev’s. Almost as if he felt her gaze, Myk turned to her, flashing a smirk.

  “These fireworks sure feel different from the ones we saw as kids, huh?”