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“Keli, we don’t have a budget. You can get that one if you want.”
The kid didn’t heed Jess, sizing up the absolute monstrosity of the bed she had singled out once more. It was glossy white and sleek, though without the wiry frames Keli decided she despised. Underneath the single bed, perched a decent five feet above the ground, was a spacious desk with various amenities, including a bookshelf and several drawers. A kid’s dream, if Jess had any say in it.
Keli turned, only to eye Jess in poorly concealed suspicion. “How you do you know I want it?”
“Because,” Jess said patiently, “you’ve come back to look at it five times now. We all told you you’re allowed to get whichever one you want. No shame in wanting the coolest one here.”
Jo grunted in agreement, stepping forward for the fifth time to check the price, as if it had changed in the last three minutes. “It’s good quality,” she offered. “Won’t fall in the middle of the night and it shouldn’t be too hard for us to build. We can get it assembled the day it’s delivered.”
“All of us?” Keli asked.
Shaking her head amusedly, Jo huffed. “Could you imagine? No, just us three. It’ll be a surprise for when the others come back.”
“Oh.” A spark flickered to life in the kid’s eyes. “I get to build it?”
“With us so you don’t get crushed by a falling panel,” Jess chirped. “Is that a yes? We buying this one?”
Still, Keli hesitated. She wouldn’t say anything, which was half of the problem, but she kept staring at the bed like she was willing it to change. Unfortunately, that wasn’t how anything worked, so Jo sighed and then knelt, eyelevel now and firm, though not sharp. “Keli, if there’s something wrong, you can tell us. No one’s gonna judge.”
“Right,” Jess added quickly. “We’ll talk to the attendants and see if there are other options but we can’t do anything until you tell us what’s up.”
She looked again at the bed and then back at Jo and Jess, chewing her lip between her teeth, her fingers tapping at her thigh before she got out, “It’s too plain.”
Jo blinked. “Huh.”
“Is that all? Good thing it’s an easy fix,” Jess said with a snort. “You remember who’s on our team, right? We have two artists and I’m sure at least one of them would be more than happy to help you decorate the bed. Kyle might even have some designs in mind already.”
Keli stared as if she hadn’t even considered the possibility that Kyle wouldn’t go rabid over the opportunity alone before nodded, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Okay. Will he say yes?”
“Are you kidding me?” Jo muttered. “You’ll have a harder time telling him not to.”
“Here, I’ll go call him and while you two buy the bed. He’ll probably say yes before I get the words out,” Jess offered, pulling her phone out pre-emptively.
Jo gave her a nod and a flash of teeth, guiding Keli with one gentle hand to her back as they wandered off to find someone. “Don’t get lost,” she called.
Jess only chuckled to herself and slipped into a quiet corner, squeezed between two model kitchens while trying to ignore the stares of one very curious child, no doubt wondering why Jess’s phone was glowing a gentle green. With the others in space, she had to use her ring to communicate with them but that would hardly be subtle in an Ikea, so she threaded the line through her phone. Less flashy but still weird.
The line connected in five seconds flat. Jess briefly wondered if Kyle was even working to begin with. “Hello?” he said, a little too loud to be comfortable. “You alright?”
“Fine,” Jess said quickly. “We’re actually furniture shopping right now. Keli’s got a bed, it’s confirmed.”
“Oh! Hey, Keli’s got a bed now!” A faint smattering of cheers from the other side. Jess suppressed a fond smile. “Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker. What’s up? Just calling to celebrate?”
“Slackin’ off, eh?” Guy asked, sounding both jubilant and smug. “Don’ worry, we are too.”
“Guy!” John hissed. “For the record, we’re not. Hal got poisoned in an assassination attempt so we’re laying low.”
Jess gaped, pressing the fingers of her other hand to her temple. “He what?”
“I’m fine,” came Hal’s unmistakable slur. “Would be better if Baz quit motherin’ me.”
“Lay still for five seconds you bastard. Hi Jess!”
“Hey, Si. Okay.” She rubbed her temple again and walked to another model kitchen because that kid from earlier was now talking to her parents and pointing at Jess which never boded well for anyone. “I’m just calling to ask if you’d be fine with taking on another project, Kyle. Keli likes the bed she got but she thinks it’s too plain. Would it be too mu—”
Kyle whooped, directly into Jess’s ear. “Tell her I’ve got it! Oh man, I’ve so got it! You think she’s a galaxy kid? Oh! Maybe a couple planets. Oa? Jupiter? Wait! Mogo. Tell her I can do stars and jungles and—would she like a city skyscape? Wait! Can you head to Bolivia and get me an exact map of their constellations right now? Oh and we gotta do a nebula while we’re at it, and a—does the bed have a slide? Jess, does the bed have a sli—”
“Okay!” she exclaimed. “Okay, your enthusiasm is noted but I’m still at Ikea, Kyle, and you’re blowing out my eardrums. I’ll pass the message on. You think you’ll be able to do your thing before or after we build the bed?”
“You haven’t built it, yeah?” Guy asked with something dangerously close to optimism in his voice.
Jess narrowed her eyes at the stainless steel tap. “…No. We’ve just ordered it and we’re going to assemble it the moment it gets to the house.”
“Oh, we can—”
“No,” Jess hissed, “I don’t think you understand. We are going to build it.”
A lull of quiet before Hal opened his big, fat, recently poisoned mouth. “We can just build it for you, Jess! You don’t even have to lift a finger.”
To her horror, they all started to agree. She should’ve just cut the call the moment Kyle gave her an affirmative but no, Jess stayed and now they were paying the price for it. “Sure can!” Guy said cheerfully. “We’ll be home in a bit so you don’t gotta worry ‘bout a thing!”
“Guy—” Jess started helplessly, bulldozed over by Simon anyway who sounded far too happy with this turn of events.
“Seriously! You two’ve been doing a great job so far probably—”
“Probably?”
“—and it won’t be a huge deal on our part.”
“Hal was just poisoned,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Not lethally! I could totally build a bed.”
I could totally kill you, Jess nearly said aloud. “John, tell him it’s a bad idea.” Quiet then, and Jess felt her heart sink all the way to her goddamn stomach. “John Stewart, I swear to—”
“I just feel like we could do it faster,” he said, almost a mumble and almost too fast for Jess to pick it up.
For one terrifying moment, Jess saw red. “What did you just say to me?”
“I don’t mean offence! I’m just saying that there’s five of us and we’re all ready to do something normal when we get Earthside so…”
“Johnny agrees,” Guy crowed. “We’ll see ya in a couple days!”
Grinding her teeth together, Jess bit out, “Kyle, you—”
“Gotta go, Jess,” he said apologetically. “I’ll call if anything changes. Bye!”
Jess stood there staring at the laminated kitchen backsplash, the ugliest green she’d ever witnessed in her life, for ten miserable seconds while she debated the merits of tracking those assholes down and murdering each of them. Instead, she took five calming breaths, something that was supposed to help with her anxiety and not to quench bloodthirsty rage usually, before turning and calmly moving to find Jo.
Jo and Keli were sat in the restaurant section and Jess hovered before squaring her shoulders to walk over and join them at their table. “I ordered for you,” Jo said. “Hope you don’t mind.” Then she frowned. “What’s with that face?”
Jess grimaced. “You want the good news or bad news first?”
Looking between the two women, Keli said, “Both?”
“So. Kyle’s willing to paint your bed. I’d say he’s too willing but I’m not sure that’s possible for us. You can send him some ideas when we get back to the house.”
Jo raised an eyebrow. “And the bad news?”
Looking down at the table to trace the edge with her fingertip, Jess sighed and murmured, “Kyle put me on speaker and, long story short, we’ve been kicked off our own project.”
“Jess!”
“I’m sorry! I tried but—the reason? Efficiency, I guess? They’re all determined to build it themselves.”
“All five of them?” Keli hissed, leaning back. “And they won’t let us help?”
“Too many cooks in the kitchen,” Jess said grimly. “I don’t trust them to coordinate themselves in that room of yours without dropping a plank or a hammer on your head. It’s just not safe enough.”
“Agreed.” Jo sighed and kneaded her temples. “Jesus Christ, Jess, you were just supposed to talk to Kyle.”
“I’m sorry,” she moaned. “They wouldn’t shut up after Hal brought it up.”
“Of course it was Hal.”
“Can’t we…” Keli’s brows scrunched as their food came, eyeing it before her gaze flicked up to Jo. “Can’t we just build it before they come?”
A shake of her head. “No dice, kiddo. Bed probably won’t arrive until the weekend. They’ll be back by then and I know they’re not above kicking us out to work in peace. Or tying us up,” she added with a glower. “Ugh.”
With that, their attention turned momentarily onto the food which was, as expected, Ikea standard. Jess wasn’t paying much attention to anything she ate, half tempted to open up a channel again and John to convince the others to let this go, if only because Keli was staring down at her plate with the intensity of a kid who just had their spirit crushed.
They’d promised her to do it together, even if Keli could likely assemble the damn thing herself. It was supposed to be a fun thing for the three of them, a chance to give the kid sway over her own space in this house and now…
Ugh, the guilt was eating Jess alive at this point.
She shoved a meatball in her mouth and chewed robotically, tapping her ring against the table as she tried to think a way out of this sitch, although it was Jo who gave a full body jerk as she came to some sort of realisation and looked up, eyes brightening.
“What?” Jess asked after she swallowed her mouthful. “You’ve got vengeance in your eyes so I know it’s serious.”
Jo pushed her plate away and tapped Keli’s forehead to make her pay attention too. “Listen. You picked out a great bed, Keli. Looks complicated to build.” Her mouth twitched when neither of them made to reply, still trying to catch onto whatever the hell she was saying. “I’m just saying, even with the instructions it’ll take a while. I mean, you’ve got the desk, the cabinet, a bookshelf, the ladder. Not to mention the bed. It’s a lot right.”
“We already bought it,” Keli said, shoulders reaching her ears, which was really all it took to soften Jo who finally grinned.
“Oh I know. Not a single better choice in this entire building.”
“And it’s a bed,” Jess said. “We’re talking about John Stewart over here. Simon and Guy aren’t idiots either, even if they try to be. And Hal’s mostly useless unless it comes to planes but you still can’t count him out.”
Jo was still smiling. “I know. It’s just…hmph. You ever assemble any furniture without the instructions, Jess?”
“I…no,” Jess said cautiously. “Have you?”
“Once.” Jo’s grin was borderline blinding now, eyes crinkling at the corners with enough malice to make Jess a little excited too. “It was a dresser and it took three hours to give up. We found the instructions under the couch but if we hadn’t, I’m pretty sure my dad would’ve used the planks for firewood.”
Keli huffed. “I don’t get it. You did it anyway, didn’t you? And if this is about my bed, then it’s gonna be easy. There’s five of them, and they have the instructions.”
“But what if they didn’t?” Jo whispered conspiratorially. “What if—no, just hear me out—what if they just happened to get lost? You understand?”
“Oh.” Jess sat up straighter. “We just…I mean, things go missing in the mail all the time, right? Or maybe they forgot to pack them.” Her own lips spread wide, even as she fought the smile. “And it’s such a complicated build too.”
“Uh huh. Not like it’d be our fault or anything.”
Keli looked between them, eyes wide and sparkling with something menacing. “Are we hiding the instructions?”
“No,” Jo said immediately. “No, kid. We just also don’t know where they’ve gone off to, is all. We’re all at a loss for where they could be, okay?”
She nodded along, her curls bouncing with every movement, as she leaned forward to rest her head in her palm. “They might still finish it.”
“Without the instructions? Unlikely.”
“Even then,” Jess said quietly, “that’s five of the most stubborn people we know, locked in a small room with only the picture on the box to guide them. Even if they do miraculously build it, it’ll be the hardest thing they’ve ever done.”
Staring at the plate with her mouth twisted in thought, Keli murmured, “What if they try to look it up online?”
“Wi-Fi needs to be up by then,” Jo said airily. “If it is, we’ll delay it. And I’m sure we can remotely scramble their phone signals, but I’m pretty certain Guy and Hal don’t know what mobile data is.”
“You’ve thought this out,” Jess chuckled, taking a long gulp of water. “Have you always wanted to watch five grown men struggle over building furniture?”
Jo shrugged. “When the universe gives you the opportunity, you take it, right? Besides, this might end up being more fun than actually building the damn thing.”
“Okay, but,” Keli cut in, hands splayed across the table and pushing herself up to kneel on the chair, “what if we’re not being fair? They don’t even know we have the instructions.”
This threw Jo for a loop, even as Jess physically brightened when a bright, shining answer popped into her mind. “We’ll only give them the instructions back after they admit to us that they need the help. That sound fair to you, mija?”
The kid sat back down and mulled it over, her smile growing with each slow blink. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Okay. That works.” There was a glint of green in those sharp, brown eyes when they turned to Jess. “We’re gonna destroy them.”
And then, quietly from Jo, “Wait, did Kyle tell you if he was gonna paint before or after they built the bed?”
The bed came the night before the others did. Keli knew this because there were several boxes in what would be her (!) room and they’d been there all night. What hadn’t been there all night, and what she was facing now, as she picked her way to the kitchen through a darkened living room for something to eat, were the bodies.
Keli knew this because there had originally not been a spare torso sprawled across the green rug. She only felt a little bad walking into it and tripped, her bare feet digging into a ribcage as her entire body shot forward with a short, sharp cry of, “Mierda!”
Before Keli could catch herself on her palms, something else did. Soft green seeped through her closed eyelids, and when she opened them, she found that she was being cradled by shapeless swathes of hard light.
“You okay?” asked a hoarse voice from her right somewhere.
Heart still in her throat, Keli nodded. “Yeah. Who did I—”
“Me.” Simon groaned from behind her and sat up, one hand pressed lightly to his side while he grinned at her sheepishly, white teeth gleaming in the dark. “Sorry about that. You can let her go now, Hal.”
She only got a grunt in response as the constructs dissipated with a shimmer. Someone reached up to tug the curtains apart so sunlight could flood the room and finally, Keli could see them all.
Firstly, John was the one who’d let the light in, lying on the armchair with his head tipped back and eyes still closed. He was the most normal one there, one eye cracking open to focus on Keli before he gave her a faint smile and a mumbled, “G’morning.”
She raised a hand in greeting before swinging her gaze to the sofa, occupied by Guy and Hal who were practically on top of each other with how close they were. She wasn’t going to touch that for her own safety. She’d seen Kyle get absorbed into those piles and nearly smothered with sleep.
Speaking of, Kyle was curled up on the coffee table which didn’t look very comfortable at all. He didn’t even have a blanket, and his neck was at an angle that made Keli cringe to just stare at. He twitched in his sleep and stretched so his legs dangled over the edge momentarily. Then, before long, he pulled them close to his chest again.
Finally, Simon was getting up from the rug rubbing the back of his neck and blinking owlishly at something behind Keli. “Morning, Jess.”
“You came back early,” Jess said, startling Keli a little as she stepped out of the shadows of the hall in her sleep clothes. “Thought Keli just got murdered with how loud she yelled just now.”
“I tripped over Simon because he was sleeping on the floor,” she said. A beat. “Why were you sleeping on the floor?”
“Can’t a man sleep wherever he wants in his own damn house?” Guy grumbled, slowly pulling himself free of Hal. “Morning, sunshine. You been okay?”
Keli shrugged. “Fine. How was the mission?”
“Still alive. No war. Great success.”
“None of you could be bothered making it to an actual bed?” Jess asked, sounding like she was trying not to laugh. “You scared the lights out of the poor kid and you’re setting a bad example.”
“She should get used to it,” John muttered. “Is the bed here?”
“Mhm.”
Kyle rolled onto his back and finally let his legs dangle off the edge of the table. “Time?” he asked through a yawn.
“8:04 am.”
“Mkay.” Simon scrubbed his eyes. “Coffee, carbs and then we get to work.”
Jess huffed. “Wasn’t Hal poisoned recently?”
“I got better.”
“He got an antidote,” John added. “He won’t keel over. Unless they lied to us about it.”
“Comforting.” Sighing, Jess stepped around Simon and headed to the kitchen. “C’mon Keli. They’ll get moving on their own time. Or maybe they’ll die.” She stopped dead in her tracks halfway and turned to face Simon, face set. “Remember, the goal is to have a bed that she can sleep in by tonight. You can handle that, can’t you?”
“Frankly, I’m insulted you’re even asking that,” John huffed as he got out of his armchair. Several bones cracked as he went, though he didn’t mind them at all. “I ran the Corps once, you know.”
“And I survived making a doctor’s appointment yesterday,” Jess shot back dryly. “We’ve all got our accomplishments.” She turned away and winked at Keli, heading to the fridge and opening it before chirping, “Oh! By the way, I forgot to mention that when the box came, we couldn’t find any instructions with it. Must’ve been lost in the mail or something.”
Silence. It stretched on so long that Keli had a glass of orange juice in her hands before Guy broke it. “You’re jokin’.”
“I wish I was.” Jess leaned on the counter to wave a vague hand. “It arrived yesterday so we took a look through and we found nothing. No pamphlet or booklet or anything. We called them up but they won’t be able to get us another copy for a few days and Keli shouldn’t have to go another day without an actual bed.”
“Oh.” Kyle was up now, cracking his neck with a terrifying sound. “That’s…yikes.”
Jess sighed. It was a very dramatic sigh. “You guys think you can build it without any guidance?”
“Yeah,” Simon said, so quickly his voice cracked a little. “Yeah, totally! How hard could it be, right?”
Keli piped up with, “And you don’t want any help from us?”
“You three relax,” Hal rasped as he slowly sat up. “We’ll take it from here, okay? How hard could it be? We’ll start in half an hour.”
“Sounds great,” Jess said warmly as she wandered towards the coffee maker. With a smile she shared only with Keli, she brought her ring to her lips and murmured, “They bought it hook, line and sinker.”
Hour 1
John laid all the screws down on the floor in neat rows, all in number order just to be sure. Keli watched as Hal kept accidentally kicking them astray as he and Guy laid out the panels. A muscle in John’s face kept twitching but he looked calm which was good. The room definitely wouldn’t survive a fight.
Simon was staring at the picture that came with the box so intensely, Keli figured he could will a bunkbed that looked exactly like the one they bought into existence out of thin air. He didn’t, even if he technically had the power to. Kyle was humming and flipping through a worn sketchbook at all sorts of designs that looked very scrawled on, like he rushed to do them.
Jo, standing next to Keli, still in her sleep bonnet, frowned. “So,” she said, breaking the easy quiet, “just to clarify, Kyle’s gonna paint and you’re all gonna build at the same time?”
“Uh huh,” Kyle muttered.
“That…that feels counterintuitive.”
“Your face is counterintuitive,” Simon grumbled. He froze then and blinked up at Jo with a sheepish smile. “I didn’t mean that.”
Jo only sighed in response. “And you’re all sure you can do this without any instructions? You don’t need our help at all?”
“Nope!” Guy spoke before she even finished her sentence, flashing them both a blinding grin. “You go do your thing. Watch a movie. Put cucumbers on your eyes.”
“Not Keli,” Kyle chirped. “I need her to sign off on my ideas.” He turned around, eyes bright despite the shadows under them. “I spent the last week planning these and I’m not screwing up before my visions are realised.”
It took Keli no time to do the math as her brows furrowed and she countered with, “We asked you three days ago.”
“Uh huh. C’mere!”
With a backwards look at Jo, who only smiled and slipped away to pad back into the kitchen, Keli stepped forward hesitantly to peer at the sketchbooks. She was met with scribbles that she needed to crane her head and squint at to see. “What’s that one?” she asked, pointing at a squiggle that looked kinda like a circle. There were too many lines. Enough that she couldn’t possibly figure out what it was supposed to be.
Someone laughed from behind her before they cut themselves off with a cough. “It’s a planet,” Kyle said smoothly. “You ever been to Jupiter?”
“Not inside, but I’ve seen the outside before.”
“And you’ll never see the inside either,” John cut in. “None of us have any business exploring gas giants.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever John. You want me to paint Jupiter on your bed? There are other planets. I was also thinking of a few faces. Maybe some logos. How attached to are you to the Corps symbol? Hal probably won’t let me do any colour aside from green or blue.”
Kyle ducked out of the way before Hal’s construct ball could nail him on the head. He didn’t stop grinning. “You’re making me sound like a drill sergeant, Rayner.”
“Oh, so you wouldn’t mind the yellow—”
“Shut your goddamn—”
“Can I have a dragon?”
Kyle blinked and stared at Keli like she’d grown two heads. Then, he beamed. “God! I get to draw a dragon! She’s ours! This is our kid! You can have as many dragons as you want!”
Keli tried not to immediately squirm when he threw his arms around her. Simon met her eyes and shrugged, picking up a hammer to inspect it. “He’s a little tired,” is all he said as explanation.
A little tired didn’t explain why Kyle looked like he might cry. She hoped he didn’t, because she was sure she could make it worse. “We’re all tired,” Kyle shot back as he drew away and stared thoughtfully down at his pages. “You have any other requests or can I go wild for the rest of it?”
She hummed, shrugging and starting to back away before he could grab her again. Simon ruffled her hair as she went. “If you put holes in the wall,” Keli said, “Jess said she’ll kill you.”
Simon froze midmotion. Kyle’s smile dimmed a little bit. “Well,” Hal chimed in, fumbling with a panel twice as big as Keli was with a too-wide smile, “you can come by to watch us work and make sure that doesn’t happen, okay?”
“Every hour,” she promised.
There was laughter then, both Guy and John glancing at each other and cracking wide smiles, and Guy said “Nah, kiddo. We’ll be done in two. Come every twenty minutes, yeah?”
For a moment, Keli doubted. The five of them were good at being Lanterns. She’d seen them do impossible things, things that made other superheroes drop their jaw and gape in marvel. Sometimes, she wondered how they were still alive to tell the stories they did.
But then Hal’s hands twitched weirdly and he dropped a screwdriver onto his foot with a yelp and a hiss and Keli felt very assured that actually, things would work out in her favour after all.
Hour 3
Two hours came and went. Keli kept her word and checked in only every hour because there were other things to do, like watch Jo lose her mind over the mountains of paperwork she had stacked on the kitchen counter. When Keli grew bored of that, she wandered upstairs to the room that would be hers and basked in whatever the hell everyone else was doing.
“Rayner,” Hal said in a tone of voice that lightly suggested murder, “your paint.”
“Huh?”
Hal was right. There were paint tubes strewn everywhere across the floor, scattered in a sort of chaos that made Keli wonder how Kyle could so effortlessly tell them apart without looking. He was holding one tube now, his hands and arms streaked with green of all types, as he daubed at the white wood with so much concentration. “The paint, Kyle,” Hal said again, his eyes darting to Keli who hovered in the doorway. He looked like he wanted to say a lot worse.
“What about the paint?” Kyle asked without looking backwards. “If it’s in the way, just move it yourself.”
“You—you—” Hal sucked in a deep breath. And then another one and pivoted towards Keli with a wide grin. “Hey kid, you wanna head downstairs for a sec?”
Keli tilted her head. “If I go downstairs, will you kill Kyle? They’ll take away your ring if you try.”
Kyle looked like he was trying not to laugh, still laser focused on one plank of wood. “Yeah Hal. Straight to the Sciencells with you.”
“Kyle, stop aggravating him,” John called sharply from where he was studying a handful of silver screws. “And stop leaving paint tubes out. They’re tripping hazards.”
“We can literally fly, John. It’s not my fault Hal wants to use his legs.”
“Shithead,” Hal mumbled, loud enough for Keli to catch it and file it away for later. “Where’s the Allen key?”
“Right here.” Simon, in his own corner, had stacked up a bunch of wood parts to make a rough bookcase. Maybe. It looked pretty uneven from here. Still, he threw the little, grey tool right at Hal’s face and didn’t turn even after it made impact with Guy’s cheek.
“Watch it, Baz!”
“Sorry.” Simon didn’t sound very sorry at all.
Hal stooped to pick it up and paused. His body leaned forward, as if he was about to fall right over so Keli said, “Hal, I think you’re gonna hit the—”
His arms pinwheeled suddenly and he snapped straight, blinking with wide eyes. “Woah! Fell asleep standing up for a second there. What was I doing again?”
“Allen key,” Keli reminded him. “Weren’t you poisoned? Do you need milk? We have milk.”
“I’m good, kid.” Hal crouched to pick the tool up this time. “You need the milk more than me. Calcium and whatever.”
“And whatever, he says,” John grumbled. “Keli, you don’t mind waiting do you? This is taking longer than I thought it would.”
She nodded. “You said you’d be finished an hour ago. I don’t think you’ve made much progress.”
“You don’t gotta be mean about it,” Guy mumbled. “Rayner, get out of the—”
Kyle, furiously shaking a can of paint with that satisfying clicking sound from within, turned to Guy and held the nozzle up as if it was a weapon. “Don’t finish that sentence. If I wanted to hear people whining all the time, I’d go hang out with the Titans.” He put the can down and picked up a pencil instead.
“The Titans are actually nice,” Simon huffed with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Which you can’t say right now, Kyle.”
“Some of us haven’t hung out around enough asshole redheads.”
“Don’t talk about my nephew like that,” Hal said vaguely. “He probably meant well.”
Kyle stopped sketching to face Hal properly, mouth set and eyes narrowed in anger. “He bit me. Who does that? What kind of speedster bites someone?”
But Keli remembered that fight, because it definitely wasn’t one sided and Kyle definitely started it. Over the cooler colour, she thought. Red or green. “Kyle,” she said slowly, “you pulled his hair really hard. Like—" And she mimed with her own hair, bunching up a clump in her fist and tugging sharply enough to make Simon reach out to stop her. “You pulled his hair out.”
“Shhh!” Kyle made a face and tapped his lips with his finger. “Keli, you gotta promise me to never like him. You can’t like him more than me, okay? No matter how cool he thinks he is.”
Before Keli could inform Kyle that she liked him and Wally exactly the same amount, Guy snorted and shook his head. “I told Hal ‘n’ Barry to jus’ lock ‘em both in a closet and see what happened.”
“We’d kill each other, Guy.”
“Or you kiss ‘n’ make up an’ we’d finally be free. Lord knows we’d deserve it.”
“You deserve nothing, Guy,” Kyle snipped back. “Okay, what colour dragons, Keli?”
She blinked like it was obvious because it was. “Green? For…will?”
He didn’t move towards his paints, eyebrow raised as the corners of his mouth twitched. “I’m thinking of making one of them green but there is such a thing as too much green.”
“Blasphemy.”
“Don’t let Ganthet hear you say that.”
“Oh, Rayner’s really lost it now.”
Twisting her shirt through her fingers, Keli shrugged. “I like all the colours.”
“All the colours it is. Never too late to learn about the full spectrum.”
“Seven colours, right?” John straightened and turned with a glint in his eye. “That’s one for each of us. Eight if you wanna include white.”
“Cute,” Kyle muttered, “but don’t forget who actually mastered them all.”
“Here he goes again.”
Hour 5
The hours ticked on. The bed grew more colourful and didn’t do much else. Keli knew because she ducked in five minutes earlier and saw Hal and John staring at the same piece on the floor, leaning in until their heads bumped and they sprung away from one another.
Right now, she pushed the food around her plate on the kitchen counter and listened to Jo and Jess talk.
“You ever notice,” Jess said more into her mug, “how so many of these hero types marry reporters? And then they get confused over why their identities are found out so quickly?”
Jo nodded sagely. “I thought I was the only one who saw that. You ever met Lois Lane?”
“Mhm. She’s my hero. Apparently, she—”
Guy interrupted them, his footsteps heavy as he walked down the stairs. “Hey,” he said hoarsely. “We got any coffee left?”
Jess and Jo exchanged a look before Jess tipped the rest of her drink down her throat. Then, she slapped the mug down and said, face dead serious, “We’re fresh out.”
Guy blinked at them and then the empty mug before turning to Keli, frozen in her seat with one spoonful halfway to her mouth. “I—I feel like I’m…bein’ punished for somethin’.”
“I have no idea where you got that idea from. Did you get the frame up?”
“…No,” he said quietly, looking down at his feet.
Jo tilted her head. “You’re behind schedule then. If you need a break, we’ll take over. Just say the words.”
Keli jumped at his, “No!” He blinked then, like he was surprised too. “No,” Guy repeated. “No, we got this. We don’t need any help. You three jus’…keep doin’ whatever it is you’re doin’.”
He ran up those stairs. No coffee or anything, despite Keli having sworn they bought some the other day. She loved the smell, could recognise it anywhere. “
Watching the stairs even after he disappeared, Keli asked, “Why won’t they ask for help? They’re not even building anything anymore. They’re just—they’re being stupid.”
“Hubris, kid,” Jo said with a grin. “Pride is one of the seven deadly sins for a reason. Those fools are full of it.”
Tilting her head, Keli scrunched her brows and asked, “Hubris?”
“Like…” Jess waved a hand, setting her mug in the sink. “What Jo said. Pride. They’re really confident in themselves and that’s great sometimes because it means they won’t doubt themselves or get as scared easily but it also makes it really hard for them to ask for help. They’re convinced they can do it themselves and asking for help would mean they lose.”
“It’s—” Keli threw her hands up in the air with a huff of indignation, “It’s not a game! It’s a bed! And I need it to sleep!”
“And you’ll get it, mija. You’ll just have to be a little patient.” Jess stopped then, eyes wandering towards the stairs again. “I do feel kinda bad, though. They’ve been at this for a while.”
“Don’t be. It’s the best enrichment we could ever give them. They’ve saved the universe too many times for it to hit hard anymore. They needed something with actual stakes.” Jo smirked. “Like building Keli’s bed with no directions.”
“What are the stakes?”
“Disappointing you, kid.”
Her eyes widened. “Disappointing me?”
“Of course. Why else do you think they’re so set on this?”
Keli mulled it over, just long enough to make Jess snicker when she said, “They already have, though. We were supposed to do the bed and my room. They got in the way.”
Jo only reached over to pat her cheek, chuckling. “Exactly why we’re doing this. They needed a loss and we—”
Hal’s wail cut her off before she could even think of finishing. “Fuck! Oh my God, my fucking toe! Fuck me!”
“Sorry—sorry, oh my God, I’m so sorry. No-no-no, sit down—"
Jess’s shoulders shook and she crumpled onto the counter to bury her face in her arms. Jo shoved her knuckles in her mouth to muffle her laughter. Keli had already hopped off the stool to go upstairs and see if Hal had seriously broken something this time.
Hour 8
“Hal?”
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“Do you know you don’t have to do this? You can sit down if you want to.”
He looked at her, smile painful. “Why would I sit out on this?”
“I think you broke your foot.”
He was hobbling now, moving really slowly to account for the foot that was already starting to bruise. He should’ve worn shoes. Then again, John also wasn’t supposed to drop a hammer on his toes either.
“I think,” Hal said through a forced chuckle, “you’re underestimating me. I’m just fine, alright? A little bruised but who isn’t?”
“I dunno,” Kyle mumbled. “I heard something crack.”
John scowled. “I apologised.”
“And I heard it,” Hal ground out. “Loud and clear. So we’re moving on and building this kid her bed.” He still kept muttering under his breath, something like, "Build a house, he said. It would be fun, he said." John's hand twitched.
Keli glanced between the two of them, trying not to smile as they danced around each other. “We can help. We really want to.”
“And we really want you to enjoy yourselves.” Simon frowned at the half-built structure. It was haphazard and kinda looked like the desk that it was supposed to be. No one had actually made anything that resembled a bed yet, which Keli considered to be the most important part. Still, Kyle’s dragons slinked around each panel in a variety of different colours and shapes. A long one like a worm, a few with wings, some without. The purple one was splashed across the surface of the desk. When she went to look at it a little better, it wobbled. She hadn’t even touched it.
“Goddamn right.” Guy was looking really tired too. “You’ve been dealin’ with the League this long. Now you get a chance to chill. Ain’t that nice of us?”
She blinked. “It was our project,”
“And we’re gonna do right by you.”
“You aren’t.”
“Okay. Harsh and untrue.”
Keli opened her mouth to tell them that that wasn’t true either but stopped when she heard the laughter from the doorway. “You don’t have to keep bullying them, Keli,” Jess said. “They already know how badly they’re doing.”
“We are not—”
“It’s been eight hours,” Jo pointed, fighting a grin. “And you said you’d get it done in two.”
“We were told you could build a bed.” Jess pointed at the half finished, wobbly desk in the corner that Kyle kept gravitating to for last minute touch-ups. “What exactly is that? Not a bed.”
“Words…” Hal put his hands on his hips and leaned forward, glaring. “Words can hurt, you know?”
“Sure. How close are you to finishing, exactly?”
All five of them exchanged glances. “Does it matter?” John asked. “We’ll get it done. You know we will.”
Raising an eyebrow, Jo huffed, “Oh sure you will. Just looks like it’s taking a while. Apparently you don’t need help—”
“We don’t.”
“The evidence suggests the contrary.”
“Ooh,” Simon scoffed, “I’m Jo and I use fancy words because I went to Princeton.”
Jo crossed her arms over her chest and walked in, boots clicking dangerously. “Okay, hotshot. How much time do you think this is gonna take? Dunno if you’ve noticed yet but we’ve got a kid here who needs a bed of her own to sleep in.”
“We’ll be done within the hour,” John declared. “So you don’t have to keep worrying about anything. Just let us build in peace.”
“You’re all delusional,” Jess said dryly, stepping backwards out of the room. “And idiots.”
John’s answering glare was practically molten. “Say that again after we’ve won.”
“Then win. Quit standing around and do something.” Jo tilted her head. “Unless you need help?”
They were quiet then, glancing between each other. Keli watched a single bead of sweat trail down Hal’s temple when Guy started talking quietly, squinting at Jess and Jo like he’d never seen them before. “Hey. You ever read Macbeth?”
“Sure.”
“At least once.”
“Uh huh.” He cleared his throat and stood taller. There was a lot of paint on his cheeks. Keli wondered how it got there. “Funny thing ‘bout it is that it’s pretty unclear if Macbeth woulda done the things he did if his wife hadn’t egged him on. Says a lot about ambition. ‘Specially when it wasn’t his own.”
Jess blinked. Jo’s lips twisted like she was trying not to laugh. Keli wondered if all those pills Guy took were making him crazy. “Macbeth also killed a bunch of people after that without his wife’s input at all. And anyway, building a bunk bed is hardly committing regicide. I think you’re being a little dramatic.”
“And it is your ambition,” Jess chirped as she turned to leave. “We’ve given you a hundred outs by now and you haven’t taken a single one. So, chop-chop.”
Guy’s gaze fell on Keli, equal parts pleading and hopeful. So, Keli crossed her arms and said, “I need the bed tonight so I can actually sleep on it.”
Those words did the job. They picked up the pace.
Hour 10
Kyle was singing now. It wasn’t a very long song, nor was it good. Keli didn’t even think he knew he was singing to begin with. But he did, quietly, under his breath. He had been singing, as he laid the finishing touches to his haphazard paintings across multiple panels, for an hour. Or, close to it. He wouldn’t stop either.
“Da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da, bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao,” he mumbled to the very audible sighs of Hal and Simon. John’s eyes hadn’t stopped twitching in the last ten minutes.
“What song is that?” Keli asked, because it sounded familiar like she’d heard it in a dream somewhere. “It’s not English.”
“No.” Hal’s face did a funny thing when Kyle started singing the repeating part again, where his lips and cheeks flinched like he was about to start yelling but chose not to. “It’s Italian. And the chorus is the only part of the song he knows.”
“What’s it about?”
Simon blinked at her from where he was comparing two, identical looking screws. Keli was pretty sure they were identical, anyway, but didn’t comment because she was absolutely certain he might start crying if she did. “Fascism,” he muttered.
That threw her for a loop. “What’s that?”
“You remember that pink guy with the weird moustache and—”
“Hal!” John snapped. “Focus! We’re getting the bed frame up now even if it kills us.”
“It won’t kill us.”
“Maybe not,” Simon said darkly. “But I might kill Kyle.”
Still singing, still lost in his own little world, Kyle leaned back and admired his work. It was good. He was really good. But Keli thought, privately, he’d gone a little overboard with the dragons. They were on every possible surface he could even attempt to paint and half of them, she thought, wouldn’t even be visible when the bed was fully assembled.
Which it wasn’t. Not even close.
“Do you need help yet?” she asked. “We can help.”
Guy rubbed a rough hand over his face, his other one braced against the wall like it was the only thing keeping him upright. “When did we agree your bedtime was again?” he grumbled.
Keli grinned. “Whatever time the bed was finished at.”
“Walked right into that one, dumbass.”
“I’m gonna fry your ass, Jordan.”
John’s hands visibly shook from how tightly he held the wrench. Keli didn’t know why he needed the wrench but, judging by the way his gaze kept flicking to Hal and Guy and back, it probably wasn’t for a very good reason. “Get your shit together,” he whispered, “so we can win.”
“You can’t win,” Keli pointed out patiently.
His head whipped up. “Huh?”
“You can’t win. It’s a bed, not a person. You can’t win against a bed unless you’re fighting it, and you’re not. You’re building it. Not very well, either.”
He slowly put the wrench down, staring at her with huge, watery eyes. “Thank you, Keli,” John said, though it sounded weird. “Why don’t you go downstairs and eat something?”
“Already did!” she beamed. “Jess told me I was supposed to keep an eye on you for the rest of this.”
“Uh huh. Awesome. Thanks, kid.”
“Simon,” Kyle mumbled, turning to show everyone just how much paint had accumulated on his face, “what do you think limbo is like? If it’s this, I think I’d pass.”
“I think,” Simon ground out, “you need to lock in right now before I make you a vegetable.”
“I think that’d be better than this.”
“Why limbo?” Hal asked, hobbling around the teetering, colourful structure in the middle of the room to get closer to Kyle. “You don’t think you’d be good enough for heaven?”
Kyle blinked at him owlishly and then glanced at the brush in his hands like he’d forgotten what it was. “I think this is worse than limbo,” he said again. Hal’s face creased in confusion, although not for long, as the brush slipped from Kyle’s limp fingers and dropped it right on Hal’s bad foot.
The resulting shriek was sharp and then brutally cut off when Simon slapped a hand over his mouth. Hal twitched while Kyle’s eyes finally began to flicker in fear. “Hey Keli,” Simon whispered with a hollow grin, “why don’t you step outside for a little bit? Just for a second.”
Hal’s face was slowly getting redder, so she slipped out of the door and gently closed it behind her, but did not budge an inch. A quiet followed, full of ragged breaths. And then—
“What the fuck is your problem Rayner?”
Hour 12
“They’ve hit depression, I think,” Jess mused, glancing in. “I don’t even remember the last time they’ve failed this monumentally.”
She had a stemmed glass full of wine. Keli had a smaller one full of grape juice. Both of them watched the scene in Keli’s bedroom like it was a telenovela. “Hal’s slouching,” Keli whispered back. “I’ve never seen him slouch.”
“It’s because his spirit’s broken. Also, his foot. His foot is definitely broken.” She sighed. “And poor Simon. I’ve never seen him look so lost. Those are screw caps he’s holding but you’d think they’re uranium from the way he’s handling them.”
Keli nodded. “Kyle’s stopped singing, though. I think John tried to kill him earlier and that scared him straight. And how many times has Guy bumped into the wall now? It has to hurt.”
“I don’t think he can hurt anymore. He’s too numb to feel it. Oh well. They were good teammates while they lasted—"
“We can hear you two!” Guy snapped. “If you got somethin’ to say, then goddamn say it!”
“Okay.” Jess swirled her glass and took a sip, smirking at them. “I think you all need to admit defeat and take a break.”
“No!” they all chorused at the same time. Almost like they rehearsed it.
Keli wasn’t sure why. Hal was leaning against a wall, not even helping anymore. There was paint on his shirt and pants and he wasn’t even pretending to not be in pain anymore. Next to him, John pressed his back to the wall and stared at the panels they had just dismantled for the seventh time that day. They were all a mismatch of colour and glitter and beauty and completely not functional as a bed. Simon and Guy stood together, but didn’t talk strategy anymore. They just hovered and kept making aborted movements as if they wanted to do something but didn’t know what. And Kyle had finally finished painting but his version of trying to help with the building had only landed him in more trouble.
Now they all looked like they either cry or collapse if Keli even breathed in their direction. This was not how she thought her day would go at all. “You’re allowed to have help, you know,” Keli said.
“As you’ve said, kiddo,” Hal rasped, “multiple times. And that’s real important to keep in mind. However, there are five of us and we’ve all done way harder things than build Ikea furniture. So we’ve got this.”
Jo peeked in with her own glass of wine and a dangerously sharp grin. “Are they still being delusional?”
“Extremely.”
Simon groaned. “Great. Regina George has graced us with her presence.”
“And you’re well within your rights to be in awe of me,” Jo shot back. “How goes denial? I’ve heard we hit depression but I’m not seeing it.”
“Kyle nearly started crying earlier,” Keli informed her. “When John yelled. That’s depression.”
“I see.”
Hal threw up his hands, though he didn’t make any move to come after them. He couldn’t. Not with his probably-broken foot. “Is there a point to this? Or are you just here to laugh at us?”
“I’m here to remind you all that this was completely optional. Hell, we didn’t even give you this option to begin with. That’s all.” Jo took a long gulp of her drink and smacked her lips, tilting her head down to smile at them smugly. “Not too late to back out,” she sang.
“You know we can’t,” John said, physically pained. “We have to win.”
Jo snorted and then quickly took another sip to cover the rest of her laughter as Jess silently lost it next to her. “Uh huh,” she whispered. “Makes sense.”
John’s eyes were broken. “You’re laughing at me. I’m doing this for this family and you’re laughing at me.”
“I would—I would never,” Jo gasped out. “Never. How could—” She spun and tucked her face into her shoulder to giggle so her next words were muffled. “How could you even think that, John?”
He only gave Keli a look of pure, undiluted misery. “Keli, did they really lose the instructions in the mail?”
She nodded, as seriously as she could. “We can’t find them anywhere. Do you need help yet?”
“No,” Guy said, though it was faint. “No, c’mon. One last push. We do this now an’ then we can sleep forever, yeah? One last push.”
“We’re Lanterns,” Simon whispered. “We’re Lanterns and we’ve faced worse. So much worse.”
“Much worse,” Hal hissed. “Okay. Up and at ‘em, guys. We’re not letting the bed win.” It was all they needed to slowly amble to their feet and start picking up planks again. It was all the hope they needed to finally get moving again.
Keli slipped back, just behind Jess and mumbled, only loud enough for her and Jo to hear, “I think they might die before they win.”
Hour 14
“Five of the universe’s strongest protectors,” Jo mused, staring at the pile, “and this is what they’ve been reduced to.”
Jess shook her head, kneeling by Simon’s position in the human tangle to inspect him better. “Hal became willpower. John lead the Corps. Guy’s won fights he shouldn’t have. Simon’s done impossible things with that ring and Kyle’s got so many titles, I’ve forgotten half of them. And this is what finally gets them.”
“Are they dead?” Keli asked, only a little fearful that her prediction had come true.
Jo snorted. “They wish. They’ll probably be unconscious for the next twelve hours or so.”
Keli was the first to notice them collapsing, with how Hal basically crumpled like a soda can in a hydraulic press. He fell and didn’t really seem to realise that he had fallen. Instead, he kinda just lay there until his eyes closed and he drifted off.
Then, Guy tripped over him and went down too, half over Hal’s legs, who didn’t stir. Then went Kyle, who sat next to the pile and fell sideways into it. Then Simon, who tucked himself into it like a sack of defeat and misery. And finally, John landed on top of them all, asleep before he even hit the ground.
Keli prodded John’s arm with her foot. He didn’t even twitch. “They must’ve been really tired,” she whispered.
“Mhm.” Jo had already dug out the instructions and unfolded them, reading through while Jess went about and carefully dismantled what they had built, which was a weird little thing that looked like a deformed box. A lot of haphazard screws too, sticking out all over the place. “Shame. I would’ve loved to see another hour.”
“Come on, Jo. Fun’s over and Keli still needs a bed.” Jess pried apart two panels, screwed together so badly they weren’t even aligned well. “At least the art looks nice.”
“Yeah. He should’ve waited until after it was built, though. None of it’s coherent.”
Jess raised an eyebrow. “Do you like it, Keli?”
Keli didn’t hesitate to nod, still trying to figure out just what the two women were doing. Jo was going through the room and plucking all of the screws into a construct container with little compartments for sorting. Jess was laying all the panels down and flicked her ring to push the Lantern-pile closer to the corner so she’d have more space. No one stirred.
“Well, if the kid likes it, no harm no foul. Alright. Ready, Keli?”
Keli balked. “For what?”
At this, Jess and Jo glanced at each other and grinned as Jo waved the instructions with a flourish. “You still need a bed, mija. And you wanted to build it with us in the first place, didn’t you? Here’s our chance.”
Oh.
Slowly, Keli turned to stare at the Lantern-pile. Then the panels and the screws and all of the little things laid out on the floor. Then Jess and Jo and finally, the instructions, a little creased but no worse for wear. And—
“You knew this would happen,” Keli breathed. “You knew we’d get to do it anyway because they wouldn’t build it in time.”
Jo raised her shoulder in a single-sided shrug, one corner of her lips quirked up. “The stars aligned and my visions were realised. Don’t tell anyone. This is our little secret.”
“You’re an evil genius.”
She laughed. “I’ll take it. C’mon, Miss Quintela. Pick up a tool and get busy. We’ve got a long couple hours ahead of us.”
John blinked awake to the sensation of his head splitting in two. Also, he might be suffocating which was entirely unpleasant and only added to his growing list of woes. Light bled from the curtains, pulled wide to let in as much of the sun as possible. He didn’t know how he landed in this fresh hell but he couldn’t move enough to get out of it. Was he dead? He might be dead.
“Did we…win?” asked a voice faintly from his right.
John used a monumental amount of effort to turn his head and face whoever it was that just spoke. His eyebrows raised when he found himself staring directly into Guy’s eyes, half-lidded and filled with despair. “Win what?” he rasped.
“Th’…the bed.”
“The bed?” John turned. His breath caught in his throat.
It was magnificent.
Streaked in golden sunlight which set the colours aflame and gave the dragons actual fire to breathe as fell across the beautifully assembled structure, now pushed against the opposite wall. And sure, the paint job wasn’t perfect but it was unmistakably Kyle’s and John could cry, strangely enough, over how brilliant it was to behold.
“We won,” he breathed. “We did it. We won!”
“Morning!”
He flinched immediately at the voice, bright and loud and accompanied by a flutter of deliberately loud steps. Keli skipped in and sat on the desk chair, spinning around with a wide grin. “Morning,” John croaked out. “Do you like your bed?”
“It’s great. We did a really good job.”
That had him snapping upright, even though his skull nearly split in two with the movement. “We? Keli—kid, do you mean us?”
The grin on Keli’s face told him the exact opposite. “You didn’t build anything, John,” she chirped. “Jess and Jo and I finished it by ourselves. It took an hour.”
Each word was like a carefully calibrated punch to the gut. The others had stirred too, all silent in the face of this shame. John swallowed thickly and picked through his words to settle on, “You three built it in an hour?”
“Teamwork!” she said through a beaming smile, unaware of the way John felt like he’d just been shot.
“Teamwork?” Hal repeated incredulously. “That…you—teamwork?”
“Please stop yelling,” Kyle moaned from somewhere within the pile. “I’m starting to hear colours.”
“Keli,” Simon hissed, “did you really finish that in an hour? Just the three of you? No instructions or anything?”
She tilted her head at them, still smiling like she knew far more than she let on. John realised then that they’d been duped. That there was nothing anyone could do to recovery their lost sanity and dignity now. He’d been outmanoeuvred on a biblical scale. “Maybe we’re just better at this than you are.”
“Don’ say that,” Guy said, sounding genuinely heartbroken. “Don’t do that to me.”
“It was our project,” the kid went on, dark eyes glinting. “You just got in the way.”
Another set of footsteps. Maybe two. John couldn’t keep anything straight anymore. Jess came in, Jo trailing in after with her hands in her pockets and a smug air about her. “Morning!” Jess said cheerfully. “You look well-rested.”
John pointed at her with all the strength left in his body. “You knew.”
“Uh huh. The whole time.” She shrugged. “We kept asking if you needed help but you insisted you were fine, so…”
“You know better than to listen to us,” Hal mumbled. His voice cracked down the middle. “No one should listen to us.”
“You’re saying that with the power of hindsight,” Jo cut in tartly. “Last night, you all seemed pretty damn sure of yourselves.”
“Do you still want to be helpful?” Jess asked and John knew it was a trap immediately because she didn’t make it sound like a suggestion.
Kyle took the bait, now half upright, and gave a single, miserable nod. “Anything.”
Jo flashed them a sharp smile. “We’re all going out for lunch so we’ll be back in about an hour. If, by the time we get back, this room isn’t spotless, it’ll be your heads on pikes outside. Understand?”
“Cleanup?” Guy croaked.
Keli giggled. “There’s paint on the ceiling. I don’t know how you did that but I don’t want it there.”
All five of them exchanged glances. It was shame that got John moving. “Whatever the little miss desires,” he said in defeat. “Up and at ‘em. We’ve got a room to clean.”
“Get me a sandwich, Jess,” Kyle begged, clambering slowly to his feet. “Get me something to eat that isn’t paint.”
Jess sucked on her teeth, face spasming as she stopped herself from laughing outright. “When we get back, we’re taking all of you to get medical attention.”
They turned to leave, almost out before Jo stiffened and turned back just enough to catch a glimpse of the steady twinkle in her eyes. “Oh, and Wally called by the way. He wants you all over to build the cabinet he ordered the other week. Said his kids’ve been wanting the circus to come around for ages.”
Kyle sobbed out loud as they left. Simon slumped. John stared blankly at the bed in front of him and wondered if it was too late to quit the Corps.