"Do you love him?"

"What?" My head snapped up from the cherry cola I stared into, taken off guard by the question I should have expected to hear.

Paige Guthrie stared back at me from across the table, with blue eyes behind thick lenses. She was not the same girl who knew me as Psyche -- that she was even talking to me was proof enough of that. Gently, she pushed a misplaced strand of long blonde hair behind one ear and smiled sympathetically. "Do you love him?" she repeated, now placing one soft hand above my own.

"I - " I began. "Who? Jo--"

She shook her head. "No. Your ... friend. You know."

"Oh." The word fell flatly from my lips and I felt my head bow towards the table again. I didn't want to think about that, not now, although I knew I would eventually have to. "I don't know. I don't think so."

Paige was about to say something when she was interrupted by a bright, garishly colored Jubilee who brightly asked if the seat beside us was taken. Without another word, she fell into the chair -- turned backwards -- and asked, "Dude -- you don't look so good. What's up?"

The dim lighting of the cafe did not disguise Paige's words as she mouthed "No boyfriend" to the other girl, who caught on quickly. I thought I could have at least explained the situation myself.

"I don't know," I repeated. "I mean ... he was nicer before."

Jubilee put a hand on my shoulder, her voice softer now than it usually was, carrying with it a gentle undertone of understanding. "They all are," she explained.

How was it that such a young girl could seem as though she'd lived through so much more? She was barely fifteen, but she so often appeared much wiser, sager than her few years could make her.

"I mean," I continued, "I can't help it if he won't get a life. I can't help that. I can't make him quit his job. I can't make him graduate. I can't make him do any of those things -- those are all up to him, and he wasn't. Why wasn't he? I mean, I thought he would do anything for me."

"Are you sure you weren't abusing his feelings?" Jubilee asked quietly.

I turned to her, my eyes heavy and my heart just as leaden. "I don't know." A big part of me enjoyed the power I had over him. I could have done anything I wanted. And yet -- yet he still couldn't take the initiative to change the things that desperately needed changing. I didn't ask for flowers or gifts or phone calls. I didn't ask for that. I didn't need that. I only wanted it.

I needed something different.

Paige blinked at me in silence, silently reminding me of her presence, and her question I hadn't answered.

"No," I replied finally. "I didn't love him. And I didn't understand how he could have said he loved me."

"So what did you see?" Jubilee asked quietly.

A rueful chuckle bubbled beneath my lips. "I suppose I had to have seen something in him, right? Otherwise I'd never've been attracted to him in the first place ..." I knew what that something was ... I didn't know that either of the fictives seated around me would like the idea all that much -- and as a result, I didn't know that those parts of me would like the idea, either. "Truthfully?" I asked, glancing from Jubilee to Paige and then back into my cola.

I could feel Jubilee nodding as Paige replied, "Yeah."

I brought my eyes back up to Paige and stared solemnly into her, assuring her that I was one hundred percent honest. "He reminded me of Jono."

Paige's eyes widened in surprise for a moment and I could have sworn I heard Jubilee giggling -- but I didn't look in the younger girl's direction. I just kept talking. "I remember, it was like the second day of school -- he had a guitar with him, and he was all in black, and he simply radiated this ... I don't know, Jonoism. And I thought, wow, he kinda reminds me of Jono. In sort of the same way the chick in my Econ class reminded me of you." I indicated Paige, across the table, listening intently. "Anyway, he showed up one day at my friend's house. And he let me play his guitar. And we talked, and I thought this was pretty cool, and I don't know, he just ... it just sort of happened."

I didn't need to tell them this; they were my fictives and therefore residents of my poor backwards mind, and they knew my past just as well as I because they, as my fictives, had experienced it just as I had.

"But that fades," I said, at the same moment Jubilee muttered those very words. I nodded and looked up again. "It changes. I don't know ... I hate to say that that slut was right, but she was ..."

"Was she?" Paige asked. "She said that he'd hurt you. He didn't hurt you, did he?"

I shook my head. "Not exactly. He ... he dragged me down. I couldn't follow him there. And he wouldn't come back up with me. It wasn't working. It hadn't been working. All I did was make it official ... "

Through my clouds of worry I barely felt the soft presence whisper gracefully into the room and take a seat at our table. She was often silent, but given to moments of psychotic insight. Neither Jubilee nor Paige spoke to her -- I thought perhaps both were afraid of her, despite the former's tenacity in dealing with the deadly sort.

The aching moment of silence passed, and in some truly unusual turn of events, the silent, deadly woman known only as Kabuki removed her mask and set it on the hard wooden table of the cafe.

Her action -- one I would never expect from her; she never removed her mask to reveal the scars of raised kanji that lay beneath -- only showed me that I must be honest with myself. I could not go about, as she had, wearing some false, painted smile while I hurt inside. The scars would only engrave themselves deeper upon my psyche, if not visible on my face.

But that was why I was here -- to seek the counsel of friends.

"I know," I whispered softly, nodding. "I know that. I just need to know what to do next."

"Next?" Jubilee screeched. "You get on with your life! This is nothing! I've had to deal with worse than this! This is so -- this is so *high school*!" She spoke the last words with utter contempt dripping from her sparkling voice.

I turned to her with one cold eye. "Jubes ... I am in high school."

"Yah, but this is like, freshman or somethin'."

I did not point out that, if she were not a superhero or had she not been one, she would be a freshman herself, and attending some high school withering in the heat of SoCal.

"You do what you can," Paige advised.

"But --" I began, not really caring to tell them about the *other* guy.

"But what?" Jubilee prompted. I sincerely hoped her latent psionics would not flare up, I prayed, oh Light let that not happen ...

"There is someone else," Kabuki said, her silken voice slicing the air as though she were using one of her prized sickles to do so.

Her words held the three of us still -- I had to admit I was even afraid of her, to the point where I had made excuses not to write parts of her story -- things like it would be sacrilege to do append my own worthless notes to David Mack's beautiful story. In truth, it was more that I did not want to get anything wrong for fear Kabuki herself might do something horrid in return for my mediocre attempts at her character.

I did not bother to even query when Kabuki had developed telepathy. I simply let that matter slide, and nodded a silent affirmative to her suspicion.

"You don't even know him," Paige insisted at the same time Jubilee threw in her own opinion of, "It's too soon."

"It's not too soon!" I said, standing with the force of my words and calling attention of some random patrons of the cafe. "It can't be! I'm the one who dumped him!"

Kabuki's steel gaze brought me meekly back to my seat.

"You gotta know him," Jubilee informed me. "Wasn't that, like, one of your prime rules or somethin'? You gotta know the guy."

"But I do know him," I protested. "He's ... he's in music ... "

"But you don't know him," Paige repeated. "You know his name and face. You know that he knows you, at least. But you don't know who he really is."

I buried my head in my hands on the table. This was going nowhere.

"Look, Jen," Jubilee said, "I know that you're gonna do whatever you're gonna do, and that whatever we tell you isn't gonna fix the situation any 'cause we're just parts of you anyhow. Even her." She jabbed a thumb at the silent, exposed Kabuki, whose hair now fell straight over the scars on her face. "Point is this. Whatever you do's gonna be your problem, and ya can't come blamin' us when it goes wrong. And I don't know what the hell Paige did to make you go for the Jono-ish guy -- "

"I did not!"

" -- but another thing you gotta know is that we're still on your side. And we can help ya and stuff, but you really gotta remember that we -- dude, Jen, we are so not your therapists."

"No," I replied, taking the three of them in, admiring each of their individual qualities. "You're cheaper. And I get some darn good fic out of y'all."

"Dude, you did not just say 'y'all'. Hayseed's influencin' you."

Paige beamed and brushed aside Jubilee's comment with a laugh. "You're gonna be okay?" she asked me.

I nodded. "I guess so."

"Good," Jubilee replied, and stood up and went to the bar.

Paige kept her eyes on me a moment longer, squeezed my hand, smiling hopefully all the while, and stole across the room to meet with a Jono fictive she'd had her eye on prior to our chat.

Kabuki put her mask back on. As she stood from the table, her painted lips bade me farewell with a superficial smile -- and just a moment later, she thought better of it, removing the ceramic face she was so used to showing the outside world, letting her true countenance show.