“We came here for an errand,” Lisa answered her, “Up to ‘locker girl’ here to decide if you can tag along.”

Good. I don’t think Taylor would appreciate if you made that decision for her.

“You can’t- you can’t leave me here,” the girl said, eyes widening.  She looked to me, pleading.

If she does come along, it becomes a question of whether they make a detour to the exit first. And even then, the exit is not actually safe for the girl, so the detour would end up with them going significantly outside the building, then coming back, which is a bit impractical and could cause them to lose track of Bryce. (Come to think of it, that’s probably what Jaw is doing, keeping track of Bryce while Brooks went to get Lisa & co.)

I guess maybe they could send the girl off to the exit with Minor (as much as she doesn’t like the girl right now, I think Taylor would object to sending her with Senegal, and Brooks is the one here who knows where Bryce is), while the rest of them go to rescue Bryce.

I sighed.  “She can come.”

“More dead weight,” Brooks frowned.

…alright, in this particular case, I’ll accept that assessment.

“Emma Barnes what?” I asked the girl, trying to bring her focus back to the conversation we’d been having.

It says a lot that Taylor is pissed off enough to continue this even with the news that Bryce has been located.

She looked from Brooks to me, and I could see how lost she was.

“Found who?”

“Nevermind,” I cut her off before she started stumbling over her words again.

Yeah, that’s fair. Anything she’d say would probably just piss you off even more.

“What’s going on?”  the girl asked.

Time to decide whether you can trust this girl with the real reason you’re here.

And more importantly, whether you actually want to.

They already found Bryce and we haven’t even found out what sort of bloodshed is being planned yet.

This won’t be a straightforward rescue, will it.

“No, that’s not…” there were tears in her eyes, and she was having trouble stringing words together.  I should have felt bad, for going off on someone who was probably in a pretty delicate emotional state, but I wasn’t feeling particularly gentle.

That much is becoming clear.

It’s also another example of how much Taylor has changed over the story. Sure, she always had the capacity for pure rage, but she’s gotten much more willing to actually show it. She’s become a lot more assertive, for better and worse.

“You obviously heard the story about me being hospitalized, you probably helped spread it.”

That could very well be the case, given how eager she was to recount it in no hushed tones just now and how she didn’t think of how it would make Taylor feel.

“You don’t understand,” she said.  She startled as Brooks passed Minor and Senegal and approached us with a brisk stride.  It threw her off her stride, and she stumbled over her words as she tried to pull her excuse together.  “Um.  It, um.  It was Emma Barnes, she-”

Of course it was.

Also, hi, Brooks. What’s up? Where’s your “boyfriend”?

Brooks had reached Lisa’s side and informed her, “Found him.”

Oh shit.

Seeing my burst of anger, the girl did a complete one-eighty, from awe and surprise to desperate apologies.  That didn’t necessarily improve things.  “Oh god, I’m sorry.  You know, I didn’t think about how it would bother you, saying that.  I really did want to help, you know, to do something back then, but-”

And now you’re reminding her of the fact that you didn’t. Nobody did.

At least she realizes what she just did wrong.

“But you didn’t,” I growled at her.  “Just like everyone else, you left me in that locker.  You didn’t go get help.  You didn’t report the people who did it, not even anonymously.  You felt bad?  You wanted to help?  Is that supposed to mean something to me?  Is it supposed to be some consolation? You were too lazy or cowardly to step up and do anything about it, but hey, at least your heart was in the right fucking place, huh?”

Yeeeah. You just fucked up, miss rescued girl.

The juxtaposition here between the girl falling into bystander syndrome during the locker incident and Taylor having just rescued this girl when she could’ve left her alone is very, very good.

On top of highlighting the commentary on bystander syndrome even more, it also reminds the reader, or at least me, that the locker experience would be a major reason why Taylor is so prone to guilt over the idea of being a bystander herself in the first place. As she put it, she wouldn’t fucking sleep if they didn’t do something here, and this being brought up reminds us that she knows very personally what it’s like to get bystandered.

“You’re thinking of the wrong person,” I said, with a note of irritation in my voice.

Hm.

I don’t think this is going to work, even if we did recently establish that you look visibly different now.

“No, I’m almost positive.  You were that girl that got shoved in that rank locker with all that stuff they carted away in biohazard bags.  The girl who went so mental they had to have a group of cops and paramedics haul you away for the first month of the semester.”

Yeah, rub it in, why don’tcha.

“Enough!” I shouted, suprised at my own temper.

Yeah, that ain’t gonna dissuade her from thinking you’re that girl.

The group of teenagers who were having drinks by the bathroom turned to look at us.

Aaand you’ve drawn more attention. Great!

I totally called the potential for Taylor to get recognized here 🙂

It was the girl we’d rescued, staring at me.

Oh, okay. No Madison here, which is probably a very good thing for Taylor…

Can you imagine, though?

“What?”

So what prompted this? Did the rescued girl recognize Taylor from somewhere, or notice something about her, or…?

“You go- you went to Winslow High.”

She did recognize her!

Man, what if this girl was one of the lower-level Harpies, blindly following along with the Trio in hating on Taylor…

“No,” I stepped back, pulling my shoulders out from beneath her hands.

…y’know, on one hand this would be a perfect moment to reveal this girl to be Madison. On another hand, I figured Taylor would’ve immediately recognized her. But on a third hand, she was established to be wearing a ridiculous amount of makeup…

“Yes.  You’re the locker girl.  I almost didn’t recognize you without the glasses, but everyone at school knows who you are.  You’re with the Merchants now?”

Okay, yeah, this isn’t Madison. But Taylor’s apparently more well-known than I think she was aware of.

Also, funny she should mention the locker incident. That’s kind of a major cause for Taylor’s presence here.

But yeah, what is she supposed to say? Either word makes it back to Winslow and maybe Danny that Taylor’s with the Merchants (unless she can get this girl to keep her mouth shut about it), or she has to reveal that she’s undercover, which is a line of discussion that very quickly leads to “I’m a cape”.

“Thank you,” the girl sobbed into my shoulder.

“You’re welcome,” the shoulder replied.

I hugged her back, reflexively, a little shaken.  Why had it taken this long for someone to say that simple thing to me?  I’d wanted to be a hero, once upon a time.

Oh, huh. That’s a good point. All this time, she hasn’t really had that said to her – not in this way, at least.

So in keeping with the current larger plot of Taylor beginning to get pulled in the other direction, back to heroics, we’re now dealing with the issue of gratitude and thanklessness towards heroes and villains, respectively, and the idea that Taylor may want to be the kind of person people would want to so genuinely thank like this.

I like this.

“I didn’t do anything,” I managed to get the words out.

I mean, besides the initiative, which is what’s important here, you did get in a sweet kick on the knife guy.

“Thank you,” she repeated.

I stood, letting the girl rest her hands on my shoulders to get to a standing position herself.  I glanced at Senegal and Minor.  No problems there.

Yeah, you’re not going to be able to easily convince this girl to not be grateful to you for a very long time. Not without betraying all your principles, at least.

“Oh my god.”  I wasn’t sure who it was. 

…

It sounds like someone recognized Taylor (or one of the others here) and for some reason I have a freaky feeling it’s Madison Clements.