by Kayla Krantz
While Jack and Milo might be ruled by their hormones, Shawn wasn’t as eager to find himself a girlfriend. He found joy in different aspects of life. When the time was right, he would meet someone.
Penelope crossed the few steps between them to pull him into a hug. “I know,” she said when they broke apart. “And I appreciate you trying.”
She offered no more words as she went upstairs, leaving Shawn alone. He frowned as he watched her go and considered seeking out her boyfriend to see if he could tell him exactly what it was they were fighting about. As far as he knew, Penelope and Ethan didn’t fight much, and maybe that was why she was taking it so badly.
Briefly, Shawn thought about calling Nicole or Lottie but decided that would ultimately make things worse. Especially since Penelope was already willing to risk being in their good graces to let him go out and hang with his friends. He would leave the situation alone and hope that things would settle on their own.
Shawn listened to the floorboards creaking overhead as Penelope paced back and forth and decided against going upstairs. Instead, he sat down on the couch, scooping up the remote. With one eye on the window, nothing on the television really held his interest. Still, he stayed in place, waiting until the sky outside was pink with the setting sun. Excited at the night before him, he hopped up and grabbed his backpack, swapping out the school things inside for his D&D things instead and went out the door.
Milo, Jack, and Shawn had a designated meeting spot. When Shawn barreled into the tiny store, he realized he was the last one there. Jack and Milo were already in the candy aisle, choosing handfuls of sugary treats as if they were preparing for the apocalypse.
“Hey,” Shawn said, bending over to pant for breath.
“You actually ran here?” Jack asked with a laugh.
“Yeah, didn’t want to be late,” Shawn replied, standing up straight.
“Which you still were.”
Shawn smirked and grabbed his own handful of candy. “It’s the thought that counts, right?”
“So they say,” Milo replied.
With a pound or two of candy each, they went to the register. Each of them paid in turn before they left the store, mouths full. On the sidewalk outside, they stopped, pulling their backpacks off to add their candy collections to them.
“You’ve got the good bag, I see,” Shawn said, gesturing to the Jack’s black bag as he slung it back over his shoulder.
He winked, chewing the last bite of his candy bar before he said, “Only the very best for my friends on this special night.”
“I did what I could to add to the theme,” Milo said, gesturing to the skeleton pattern on his shirt, and shrugged.
By nature, Milo was a light-hearted person, but he didn’t like to talk about his albinism much. He wore brightly colored clothes to try and make himself look less pale, but ever since Shawn had met him, it was Milo’s running joke to dress as a skeleton for Halloween. He liked to say that with his skin and hair being as white as they were, he was already halfway there. In the darkness, Shawn could understand his thinking. His face nearly glowed above the line of the black collar.
“And how are you going to do your part, good sir?” Jack asked Shawn.
Smiling, Shawn uncinched his bag, digging through the tiny pocket in front. When he pulled his hand back out, he revealed two black and red dye, the engravings looking almost elvish in the fading light.
“Now that’s badass,” Jack said, clapping Shawn on the shoulder. “How long have you had those?”
“Thought you’d appreciate that,” Shawn said, dumping the dye back into their safe place before he righted his bag again. “And not long. Maybe a week?”
“You’ve had them a whole week and managed to not tell anyone about them? That’s discipline,” Jack said.
Shawn laughed, thinking of Penelope and his two Moms. They weren’t exactly D&D players so it wouldn’t have mattered much to them if he had told them. “If you say so. But, hey. Exactly where are we going? I don’t think you’ve said.”
“Scared?” Jack asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Hardly,” Milo said, rolling his eyes.
“Seems I have my work cut out for me tonight,” Jack said, holding a hand to his heart as if he were personally offended by the remark.
“Yes, but in all seriousness, I have to stay somewhat close to a payphone so I can call Penelope. If I don’t check in at least once, she’ll hunt me down,” Shawn said.
Jack and Milo bobbed their heads.
“Understandable,” Jack said at last. “We’re not going far. Just to the woods by the old cemetery. Your sister knows the place.”
Shawn winced. The woods by the cemetery were a popular makeout spot. He had never been there himself, but all three boys had heard stories of classmates going out there to drink and party. It didn’t surprise Shawn at all that Penelope would frequent the spot. She might play innocent for the Moms, but she was anything but.
“C’mon on, man,” Shawn said.
Jack smiled and held his hands up. “That was my one and only sister joke for the night, I promise.”
“I’m gonna hold you to it.”
By the time they reached the woods, the sun was just beginning to dip beneath the horizon line, the faint hue of purple pushing away the pink.
Jack looked up at the colors, breathed in deep through his nose, and clapped his hands together. “I was hoping it would be completely dark out already by the time we got here, but I suppose this will do.”
“By the time we get set up, it’ll be dark enough,” Milo conceded.
Jack bobbed his head. “Oh, for sure.”
Shawn was the one to lead the way into the trees. Even if this particular patch of forest wasn’t very familiar to him, but he had an idea of the trees and forests as a whole. Shawn’s Moms had insisted he go out for fresh air every day. As a kid, he had hated it, but now he appreciated the time he had put into it. There was something freeing about the outdoors, about being disconnected from the world around him for just a little while.
It didn’t take long for Jack to surpass him, taking his place at the head of the pack. Shawn fell back a step with Milo. The boy’s eyes were trained on the ground to watch every step with uncertainty. Unlike Jack and Shawn, Milo hadn’t spent as much time outside. With his condition, he was suspectable to damage from the sun so he and his parents had conditioned him into leaving at earlier or later times of the day when the sunlight wasn’t as harsh.
When a clearing came into view, Jack began to slow and turned toward the rest of his group with a wide smile on his face. “Well, mates, this is it.”
Shawn surveyed the surroundings. He had expected Halloween decorations or at the very least a fog machine. He couldn’t see anything from his initial survey and gave Jack a questioning stare.
“It’s the woods,” Shawn said pointedly.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Yes, it’s the woods. And I know what you’re thinking. It’s boring, we could’ve done this at my house...blah, blah, blah. Well, I’m not showing you what I’ve got up front. Otherwise that kind of takes away some of the surprise. I think a huge part of the point of Halloween is fear. How can you be scared of what you know is coming?”
“Okay, now I’m sure you’re crazy,” Milo said, playfully punching Jack on the arm.
Jack smiled, looking pleased. “Okay, help me get this set up.” He thrust his black bag to the ground beside a huge smooth tree stump.
Milo and Shawn made it to his side when a voice cut across the clearing. “Room for one more?”
Tensing, Shawn turned and made eye contact with Rhys Rivera.
4.
“RHYS?” SHAWN ASKED more out of confusion than anything.
He had never seen him anywhere besides the school before. The town they lived in was relatively small so it wasn’t uncommon to see his classmates at the park, mall, or café, but Rhys? It was as if the boy vanished at the end of the school day and reappeared in the morning.
&n
bsp; “What are you doing here?” Jack asked, more in charge of the situation than Shawn had hoped to be. He rose up, approaching him from his place beside the stump as if he thought that if Rhys even got anywhere near it that he would ruin it somehow.
Rhys didn’t seem deterred by the three sets of eyes glaring at him. He picked his way through the foliage, taking his first official steps into the clearing before he stopped, meeting Jack’s eyes. “I overheard you guys talking, at school, and thought maybe I could....”
“Join?” Jack asked, cutting him off.
Rhys bobbed his head, sticking his hands in his pockets. He peered up sheepishly as if he was afraid any words he might say would erupt something negative, something that his presence hadn’t been able to summon.
“What makes you think we’d allow it?” Jack demanded, folding his arms over his chest.
Shawn waved a hand at him, stepping in to pull Rhys’ attention. He wasn’t exactly thrilled about the idea of Rhys joining them either, but Jack’s hostility wasn’t required as far as he was concerned. “I didn’t know you played.”
“I have for a while,” Rhys replied.
“That’s uh...neat, but why try to be cool with us now? If I remember correctly, when I tried to talk to you a week ago, you blew me off as if you didn’t want to be my friend,” Jack said.
Shawn tilted his head to the side, reaching up to scratch the back of the neck when Rhys’ gaze came back to rest on him again. “Hate to say it, but you did the same to me.”
“I’m not...good...with making friends,” Rhys admitted, mouth puckering into an expression that was somewhere between a frown and grimace.
“Yeah, no, we got that,” Jack said, slowly, carefully, as if he wanted to make sure each word were punctuated by silence.
“We’re just trying to understand,” Milo piped up. “I mean, think about this from our point of view. One day you want nothing to do with us, then the next you want to join our game? It’s strange.”
“Exactly,” Jack said. “Instead of just talking to us like a normal person, and maybe asking if you can come with us, you followed us out to the middle of the woods like a stalker.”
Rhys looked down at the ground, and a surge of guilt sliced through Shawn. He knew what it was like to be an outcast, and that was a feeling he didn’t wish on anybody...even someone like Rhys who gave him the chills.
Shawn cut Jack a sideways look. “Hey, lighten up a little, guys. I mean, this plays into our theme, I think. You did say there were plenty of surprises in store for us tonight.”
Jack sighed, shoulders slumping. “I suppose that’s true.” He turned to the other member of their group. “Milo, what do you think?”
Milo’s deep eyes hadn’t left Rhys, but he blinked and held them shut for a second as if he were trying to make up his mind without looking at Rhys as he did so. “What makes you want to join us?” he asked at last.
Shawn’s eyes volleyed from Milo to Rhys. It was a good question.
“You said you wanted creepy for Halloween, and I think I can help with that,” Rhys said.
He looked from Shawn, to Milo, to Jack, and Shawn had a moment there where he admired this strange boy. It couldn’t have been easy to stay knowing full well that all of them wanted him to go, but he did anyway, pleading his case and making eye contact. Shawn wasn’t sure if he would’ve been able to do the same if he were in Rhys’ place.
“You’ve already done that much, haven’t you?” Jack said, grinning wide enough to show off his teeth though it wasn’t a happy expression. It was almost frightening.
Shawn smiled too, but it came more from nervousness than anything else. In the moment, he was still caught between that feeling that told him to get far away from Rhys and the one telling him that this was someone who desperately needed and wanted friends, someone who didn’t deserve to be laughed at for wanting to fit in. He had to remind himself that even if Rhys had been rude to him during their last encounter, he didn’t want to make fun of him. He knew what it felt like, to feel as if you didn’t belong, and he never wanted to make anyone feel like that. Even if that person was an oddball.
“You can play,” Shawn said at last.
Jack turned to look at him with wide-eyed betrayal but said nothing.
“I want to be Game Master,” Rhys said, a moment later.
Jack’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. “No way, man. I’ve been planning this for weeks. You can’t just swoop in and—”
Shawn held his hand out. “Why not give him a shot? We know we’ll love your game, and we will play it eventually, but aren’t you curious to see what he’s got for us?”
Jack pursed his lips, frowning. “No, I’m not. I’m curious as to how long he’s been following us. Was it just a one-time thing or has it been going on for a while?”
Shawn directed his gaze to Milo. “You’re the tiebreaker.”
Milo held his hands up. “Look, I don’t want anyone to be angry,” he said with a nod to Jack before his gaze swiveled to Rhys, “but I don’t want anyone to feel left out either. With that, I’m sorry, Jack, but I say we give Rhys a shot.”
Jack sighed. “Alright, fine, but you guys owe me. It takes a lot of time to set up a game, and y’all never seem to appreciate that.”
“We appreciate it just fine. That’s why I give you permission to personally make it difficult for me next time you’re GM,” Shawn assured him before he turned to Rhys. “You bring your own supplies?”
Rhys brought himself into the clearing. Shawn hadn’t noticed the navy-blue drawstring backpack until then. Rhys had no expression as he approached the smooth tree stump and set his bag to the grass. Kneeling down, he pulled out a bundle of papers and seven different dye. They were beige and black, the numbers engraved into the small surfaces along with runes and designs around every corner.
They put every collector’s set that Shawn had to shame. “Badass,” he said.
Rhys peered up through the shadows cast by his hood and smiled. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
5.
JACK WAS THE first to grab a character sheet, doing so with such ferocity that the paper was a crinkled half-hazard mess in his hands. He stared at it, eyebrows knitted together and mouth straight as if he had never smiled in his entire life.
“Is this your idea of a joke?” he asked, thrusting the paper in front of Rhys’ face.
Rhys smiled but didn’t take the paper. He peered at Jack over the top of it, and Shawn picked up his own paper. Shawn Randall, it said at the top. Race: Human Alignment: Paladin. There were skills and attributes corresponding to Shawn’s personality. Blinking, he looked up at Jack and Milo. His friends didn’t even know his birthname. He had never told them much about any of this time before his adoption so how could it be that a stranger knew this much about him?
“I told you this game will be unlike any other you’ve ever played,” Rhys said coolly.
“Apparently creepy is just the entire theme you’re going with,” Jack retorted.
“What does yours say?” Shawn asked, showing his paper to Jack.
“Says I’m a Rogue,” Jack said, eyes narrowing at Rhys. “You know, if you’ve got something to say, you should just say it.
During the argument, Milo slowly approached the table, scooping up his own sheet. He didn’t say anything as his eyes scanned it over. When the argument stopped, Shawn and Jack turned to him expectantly.
“I’m a Ranger?” Milo asked at last.
Rhys bobbed his head, looking pleased. “Those are the character sheets that I drafted for you because I feel you know how to play them best based on your personalities.”
Shawn and Jack exchanged a glance before Jack looked back to Rhys. “Are you trying to be funny?”
“Not at all,” Rhys said, voice devoid of emotion.
“How long have you planned on doing this?” Jack demanded and from the look in his eyes, Shawn thought he would ball up his sheet and throw it right at Rhys’ face.
“This is scary accurate,” Milo said, blinking as he took a step closer.
Rhys closed his eyes for a minute before he opened them, gaze moving around the three boys. “Are you going to let me play or not?”
Jack and Shawn exchanged another glance. Shawn had been the one to agree, but something sat wrong in his gut now. Jack’s face was just as sharp as if he sensed that Shawn was backing down now.
“What happens if we say no?” Jack asked. “You take out a gun and shoot us?”
Rhys laughed. “Of course not.” A pause. “There’s no tact in that.”
“I don’t want to play,” Jack said, slapping his paper to the tree stump beside the others.
Shawn looked to Milo. “Thoughts?”
Milo scanned over his sheet, his skin looking somehow whiter as he sat beside the tree stump. “Let’s give him a shot. This might be weird, but this is probably one of the better made character sheets I’ve seen. Let’s see where this goes.”
“Fine, we’ll play,” Jack said, plopping down next to Milo. He grabbed a handful of the other papers scattered across the stump, flipping through them rapidly before he came to a stop. “Banshee? Is this one of your monsters?”
Rhys snatched the paper away, setting it down before he looked back up at Jack pointedly. “I don’t play D&D like anyone else,” he said. “I don’t use the typical monsters. Your dragons and giants and orcs. My game features a different quest. One that deals with demons, truth, and redemption.”
Jack frowned. “My games have all that too sometimes. What you’re outlining sounds like a terrible teen movie involving a Ouija board. If there’s no magic or monsters, how can you even call it D&D?”