There was a car parked in front of the house.
Alice stopped walking.
It was a decent car, not flashy, but clearly new. Clean enough that the morning light was bouncing off the hood. Alice looked at it, then looked at Bryan, then looked back at the car.
"You have a car now?"
Bryan's mouth curved into something between a grin and the expression of a person who had been waiting to look smug about this specific thing. "Got my license three months ago. Dad got me the car last week."
"Hm." Alice nodded as he observed the car. Black, Bryan's favorite color. That's all he looked at, after all, he didn't know much about cars.
"That's it? Hm?"
"It's a nice car." Alice added.
"Thank you," Bryan said, with the dignity of someone receiving an award. "It really is."
"I call shotgun," Lucy announced from behind them, already moving past Alice at a light jog. "I called it, it counts, I'm getting in."
She made it approximately two steps before Bryan reached out and picked her up. Not gently, either. He lifted her the way you'd pick up a cat that is trying to sneak away.
"Hey!" She kicked the air. "Bryan!"
"Last time you were in the front seat," he said, carrying her toward the back door, "you changed the song eleven times in four minutes, you spilled your water bottle, and you tried to grab the wheel because you, quote, wanted to see what would happen."
"That was one time."
"It was all in the same ride," He opened the back door and deposited her inside with very little fanfare. "On the way here."
"Hey! I cleaned it all up. Besides, I am a passenger princess, and you are treating me like cargo," she said from the backseat, deeply offended.
"Passenger princesses don't grab steering wheels."
"I was curious!"
Alice got in the front seat without comment.
Bryan walked around, settled into the driver's seat, and adjusted the mirror with the calm of someone who had already made peace with the chaos in the back. Lucy was still muttering something under her breath about injustice. Alice buckled his seatbelt and looked out the window.
"She's not even putting up a real fight," Lucy said, gesturing at Alice. "This is rigged."
"He always gets the front seat," Bryan said, pulling out of the driveway. "That's just how it is."
"Why?"
"Because he doesn't cause problems."
"I don't cause problems. I cause experiences."
Alice silently chuckles.
Yeah, near death experience.
* * *
The drive was easy. Bryan took the longer route, which Alice suspected was on purpose because the longer route had less traffic and Bryan was the kind of person who didn't like starting his morning tense. The radio was on low. Lucy had settled into the backseat like a cat that had grudgingly accepted its situation, legs curled up sideways, cheek resting against the window.
"Okay," Bryan said after a few minutes, in the tone he used when he was about to say something he wanted to sound casual. "New school. New people. So I'll just say it once." He glanced at the rearview mirror, then at Alice. "If anyone gives either of you a hard time, tell me."
Lucy raised her hand from the backseat. "Definitely."
Alice exhaled slowly. "Your mom will call the school?"
Bryan's mouth twitched. "My mom won't be there."
"Mine will be." Alice looked at him. "If she finds out there was trouble on the first day, she will show up to campus personally, talk to the dean, and also probably leave a bad review somewhere. She left one for the dry cleaner last year."
Silence from the front.
"A one star," Alice added.
"Over what?" Lucy asked from the back.
"They took too long. Only took 5 minutes past the said time."
More silence.
"Okay," Bryan said. "Fair point. I'll handle it quietly if it comes up." He paused. "But tell me."
"I'll tell you," Lucy said immediately. "And, I'll help too!"
Alice turned to look at her.
"It might not look like it but I know self-defense," she said in fact, very seriously. "Also, I have elbows."
"Please don't use your elbows on anyone," Bryan said.
"They're surprisingly effective."
"Lucy."
"I'm just saying I bring something to the table."
Alice looked back out the window. The usual banter as always but he didn't mind at all. Alice smiled as the two continued to argue.
* * *
While the two are arguing, it somehow pointed in another direction.
Lucy, apparently had a flashback of their childhood, "Okay can we talk about the stick?"
Bryan made a sound like he'd been waiting for this. Lucy loved bringing that particular memory back again and again.
"What stick," Alice said flatly refusing to acknowledge it.
"You know what stick." Lucy turned to face him from the back seat, leaning between the two front seats with the enthusiasm of someone bringing up their favorite story. "I always have been thinking about this I don't know why. The stick. Primary school. The kids who were picking on Bryan."
Lucy is already holding back her laughter.
Bryan kept his eyes on the road but his ears had gone a little pink.
"You picked up a stick," Lucy said slowly inhaling and exhaling. "Off the ground. Just a random stick."
"It was close."
"Alice. It was a twig."
"It was a stick."
"There were four of them," Bryan said from the driver's seat.
"There were four of them," Lucy repeated, turning back to Alice, her expression already betraying the fact that she wanted to laugh so hard. "And you walked over there, completely calm, and you just. Started. Hitting." Lucy starts to laugh that she's practically rolling in the backseat "HAHAHAHAHAHA. With a stick. That had leaves on it still."
"It does its job," Alice said simply.
"It's like you were exorcising them," Lucy added as her laughter fills the car. "Nobody expects to get hit with a leafy stick."
"It worked."
"It absolutely worked and it was so hilarious!" She flopped back in her seat. "Your mom was so mad."
Alice said nothing. He had a very clear memory of his mother's face when the school called. The particular kind of expression that was angry and also somehow delighted and also trying very hard to be neither of those things.
"She said you were being unladylike." Lucy said tears were already coming out of her eyes. "Who beats someone with a stick?"
"She wasn't wrong."
"You were seven."
"... Sticks are everywhere."
Bryan apparently has been holding a laugh too, the one he tried to keep quiet in general company. It filled up the car as Lucy and Bryan are laughing wholeheartedly and even Alice's expression shifted just slightly, almost a smile exactly.
He'd known Lucy since they were three. They'd spent so much time at each other's houses growing up that their parents had stopped keeping track of whose kitchen they were eating in. And then when they were five, there had been a kid on the playground sitting by himself with a bloody knee and a bruise forming near his eye, very determinedly not crying, and Alice had walked over with no particular plan and just sat down next to him.
That had been Bryan.
And two years later when four older kids had decided to pick up where they left off, Alice had picked up a stick.
It was a thin stick with leaves. He was aware it was a thin stick. But nobody else had been moving and the stick was right there.
"I still have a slight fear of twigs," Bryan said jokingly.
"Good," Alice said. "I might use it on you someday."
Lucy made a sound of pure delight from the backseat.
Bryan shook his head, still smiling, and turned the signal on as the school came into view ahead of them, big and unfamiliar and full of people none of them knew yet. He glanced at Alice once as he pulled in, a quick look, the kind that said something without saying it out loud.
Alice looked back.
That was enough.