My name is Layla Bostwick, and for the moment, you only need to know three things to get along with me: One, don't talk to me about my boyfriend. Especially not in past tense. Two, don't talk to me about what is and isn't healthy for me; 'cause frankly, you don't know. Finally, if there is even the remotest of chances you'll flub up either of the above, I'd strongly recommend that you just. don't. talk to me. At all.





It was hot. Then again, it was late afternoon in Yellow Desert, so hot was pretty much a given. It was a welcome change from the coastal humidity of Emerald Town, nonetheless, and honestly, I liked the distraction. I took a perfunctory swig from my now nearly empty water bottle as I had done every fifteen minutes on the dot whether I actually wanted it or not. I blotted my sweaty face with a dirty grease rag, again, more for habit than anything else, and looked around the desolate hangar I stood in feeling unacceptably fatigued, wobbling numbly for a moment in deliberation of what to do.

If I were to be perfectly level with myself, I'd done everything I could have reasonably done until Caruso made it back with the spoils of my little shopping list. God knows how or where he managed to find the stuff, but damned if the man didn't come through every time. Really, it was just a matter of waiting. And I sucked at waiting.

I entertained the idea of comparing my wiring to Tau's schematics printouts for a fifth time, but as they'd already been checked and double-checked by the technical genius members of my inorganic pit crew, I figured I'd just muck somethin' up fooling with it for fooling with its sake. I pulled off my work gloves, and dragged a somehow still oil-smudged hand through my hair before trudging back toward my baby. Sandwiching my lips between my teeth as I stared it down, I felt a brief surge of pride; I was sure Rock would be proud. Not that I hadn't had a buttload of help (and help of the hax, robot-y persuasion, to boot), but building a space-worthy aircraft isn't exactly something your average schmuck could do, even with illustrated diagrams and instructions. I was even reasonably certain that it wouldn't explode once I was airborne.

I set both hands on the sides of a step ladder parked alongside the cockpit, and lunged up the first few feet in a single bound. The sound of resonant footsteps drew my attention as if I'd been sitting in a chair staring at the open bay door for hours.

I called out to Green with a voice that, for once, actually sounded like mine.

"I wasn' expecting you back so--"

But that stopped as soon as I peered over my shoulder, and found a skinny purple monkey standing where I'd expected my very solid anchor to sanity.

"Lola," I said with what was probably undue coldness.

Lola stared at me wordlessly for a moment; there was a subtle shade of pain and pity to her expression, and she wasn't the only person to look at me that way these days. I hated it. She stood with her feet together, her hands folded in front of her, and generally looking very small and delicate. She was dressed entirely in black. I had a decent guess as to why she was there, and would have bet money on why she looked so damned uncomfortable, but frankly, it just pissed me off more, so I may or may not have been a little curt when I asked,

"What're you doing here?"

She started when I asked, as though she hadn't expected me to cut so succinctly to the chase, and something horrible in me felt a savage satisfaction at her alarm.

"I... I took a cab," she stammered evasively, irritating me further.

"Not how," I corrected. "Why?"

Lola licked her lips, and fidgeted, and fussed with her pencil-straight, waist-length hair, but she knew better than to delay me any more. With a steeling gulp, she lifted her chin and looked me square in the eyes as she said,

"Lazarus' memorial service was this morning."

I didn't say anything. I gave her a long hard look just to let her see I heard her, then grabbed a nearby tool -- In my rage, I didn't even see what; a socket wrench, maybe -- and busied myself with things that really didn't need busied with. There was a moment of loaded silence, populated only with the clicking of the wrench, and my kid sister's pounding heart. She was nervous. Good.

"Mom's upset you weren't there," she pressed, as though that wouldn't just make me madder. "Auntie Kara and Uncle Jared were too, I think..."

That might. I stopped working for a second, directing my obstinate stare at the half-removed panel in front of me, taking a deep, steadying breath. "Kara and Jared know what I'm doing," I said dismissively.

"Layla," she pleaded, in that same cautious, simpering tone everyone used when they talked to me lately. My blood pressure instantaneously ramped a few hundred psi.

"Of course we know what you're doing," (She either pointedly ignored, or couldn't hear my emphatic, "Bulls**t," and continued talking over me.)

"You're grieving; you're in denial; we all understand, but you need to stop. Whatever this is," Pausing, she waved a vague hand around the hangar, and out toward Laz' repurposed control tower of a house. "It's gone too far. I think you really believe yourself, and it-- at first, I didn't think it was hurting anyone if it helped you get your mind off of it, but it's not good for--"

"No, you don't F***ING GET TO BE CONCERNED," I suddenly exploded, the corrugated metal walls ringing with my outburst, as I hurled my sparking, spitting tool across the room. I was nowhere near her, and Lola flinched away from me. Good.

"I am so damn sick and tired of you and everyone else acting like I'm some sort of emotionally unstable, delusional sadsack that just can't cope with reality. Laz is alive, okay, and I and the only other two people who know that are working on getting him back while the rest of you are all so content to cut your losses, hold memorial services, and feel sorry for yourselves -- but all the more for his first-stage, crazy-ass girlfriend, cooped up in the haunted hangar 24/7 building a space ship to go pluck him out of the sky."

Lola visibly winced, as though I'd stumbled upon the precise phrasing someone had used to describe me. Probably mom.

"Don't you think I know what it sounds like?!" I ranted with apexing momentum. "I don't need this s**t. Not from you. Not from anybody. So you can tell Mel and anyone else pissed off at my actually doing something to take their indignation or their pity, or whatever the hell else that isn't either supporting me or ignoring me, and shove it.

"I have work to do."

With a resounding clatter, and absolutely nothing else but the clap of my boots against the concrete floor, I leapt off the top of my ladder, and began to rummage (angrily, I should say) in the tool chest for a replacement for the ratchet I hadn't needed in the first place. I'd gone too far, and I knew it. Lola wasn't blameless in feeding the snarling beast that was my flimsily caged anger, but she hadn't come with a padded van and a special jacket, either; she really was worried, even if she was wrong. I heard retreating footsteps, and God help me, I had absolutely no desire to stop them. I had nothing else to say. My resentment was still extolling a job well done, and honestly, I was feeling a little better for letting it out. Yeah, I know I'm horrible, shut up.

I hadn't even realized that my swirling vortex of inner conflict and ire had dominated my attention; I'd stopped digging through the tools ages ago, staring absently and unmoving at a mostly unraveled spool of soldering wire. So I nearly jumped when my dismissed socket wrench reentered my periphery from Lola's extended hand. She smiled sheepishly, timidly... apologetically. It failed to mask her lingering concern, or her budding sympathy, and a muddled bunch of other stuff I didn't want to see on anyone's face when they looked at me, but I took a deep, head-clearing breath in through my nose, and took the hand tool from my little sister's grasp.

"Spooks'll be out soon," I told her, at which she cast a glance of poorly-contained horror outside to the setting sun, looking acutely ill.

"You won't get a ride back until morning. Go inside the house; I'll be in in a minute, and start dinner."

If she grimaced as she should have, I didn't see it. Instead, she nodded and turned to go, but stopped short as she did. "Thanks, Layla," she said, "And, I'm sorry."

I mulled over the many ways people say and mean that in situations like this, and felt my face start to heat again. Be decent, I heard my conscience beg. Please be decent. For once?

And with a deflating sigh, I heard myself say, "I'm sorry too, Lols."