Dinner was uneventful. Collin ate with an eye on Iris. The Weavers made plans for Iris' return to school in light voices, off in their own little glass world. Collin forced down forkful after forkful. He'd always found bullshit hard to swallow.

"You sure you're ready to go back?" Collin asked when the conversation lulled down to the tang of cutlery over plates.

The adults stared at him. Collin wondered if it was the question or the fact that he'd spoken. He'd been playing mute thus far. They might've forgotten he was there.

"I'm looking forward to it, actually," Iris said. Her good eye was damn near sparkling with glee. Her parents wiped at their own. Collin tried not to look at them too much. The moment felt way too private for the farce that Collin knew it was.

"You'll be in my grade?" he asked instead.

"Yup," Iris chirped.

"Same classes?"

Iris' grin grew. "Aha."

"I'm not taking any APs, 'cept Calc," Collin tried. He'd seen Iris's old report cards. Her sophomore schedule had been nearly all accelerated courses.

"That's fine. I'll take it slow this year," Iris said.

Collin narrowed his eyes. She'd put emphasis on slow, subtle enough that he'd wonder if he'd really heard it with anyone else. Collin didn't wonder with Iris. He damn well knew he was being played for a fool.

Mrs. Weaver pulled Collin aside after dinner, supposedly to help her with the dishes. Iris blew him a kiss on her way out. She knew what dishes were code for as well as Collin did.

"I'm so happy you are here," Mrs. Weaver started out. Which was nice and all, and Collin could tell the woman meant every word, but it didn't make up for what was to follow.

"Uh-huh." Collin dried the plate he was handed with undue care. There'd be no eye-contact if he could help it.

"Is it too much?" Mrs. Weaver asked. She puffed the question out all in one breath.

Collin winced internally. "What?"

"This. All of," Mrs. Weaver gestured with a wine glass. Collin leaned sideways to avoid its swing.

"We are happy. You, and now Iris. We are so happy, oh—" The woman broke off with a wet burble. Collin grabbed the tissue box that sat on the microwave and thrust it at her. Mrs. Weaver gave him a watery smile. "Thank you, dear. This must be so stressful for you. It's not fair, and I'm sorry."

"I don't mind," Collin said quickly. He didn't want to hear any more. The Weavers had nothing to apologize for. Fuck, the homes he'd been through – it sufficed to say life at the Weavers' was as nice as it had ever been for Collin. Iris included.

Mrs. Weaver laid a hand on Collin's arm, startling Collin into looking at her.

"If you don't feel comfortable with having Iris in your class, you have to tell me," the woman said, eyes wide and imploring. This was his chance to tell her about Iris, Collin realized. This was her asking.

"It's fine," he said instead.

Mrs. Weaver searched his face. There was something in her expression, something in the way she spoke that sat badly. Collin pretended not to notice. It grated, this forced nonchalance, but it beat the alternative. He wasn't getting in deeper than he had to.

"Thank you," Mrs. Weaver said at last.

They finished the dishes in silence broken only for mundane questions and rote answers.

Iris and her father were watching a movie in the living room. Some Disney flick about a fox and a dog. Collin caught the second half. He sat on the couch, in the seat farthest from the TV. The Weavers talked between themselves. Collin watched the movie, mostly so he wouldn't have to join the conversation. He felt eyes on him a few times. Collin kept his glued on the screen. He wasn't in mood to confront Iris, or fake cheer for her parents.

Mr. Weaver popped another movie in after The Fox and the Hound ended; Collin caught the title in the credits. Collin strategized about leaving the scene. He'd had enough family time to last him through the winter. His usual excuses weren't gonna cut it, however. Collin frowned. He was actually upset about not having school in the morning. What had his life become?

"You look beat, Cal," Iris said.

Collin started. Iris was looking at him with a worried expression that was soon replicated by her parents. Except their concern was genuine, and not a ploy to - whatever it was that Iris was no doubt plotting. There had to be something. No way was she being helpful out of the goodness of her heart. Collin didn't particularly like how easily she'd read him, either.

"It has been an eventful week. Collin, Iris, I know you're not kids and I shouldn't be sending you off to bed, but," Mr. Weaver trailed off with a dorky smile Collin'd never seen on him before.

In fact, Collin hadn't seen the man smile, period. He rubbed his palms over his jeans. Damn, but it was gonna suck when the Weavers found out Iris wasn't, well, Iris. The daughter they'd mourned, the girl they held onto in pictures and baby videos and high school report cards. Collin wondered if he'd be around by then. "Yeah," he said, and got up.

Iris did the same. "Night!" she called, and thundered up the stairs.

Collin made his own awkward byes. The Weavers beamed up at him, indulgent and completely unaware. Well, mostly unaware. Collin was fairly sure Mrs. Weaver knew there was something rotten. She held her nose, and Collin held his tongue. It'd work until it didn't. Collin was fine riding this out.

The door to Iris' room was closed when Collin reached his own. The lights were out, too. Collin had been half-expecting an ambush. He sat on his bed, looked around the room. Booting on his laptop seemed like too much trouble suddenly. He lay back and closed his eyes. Sleep found him before he knew it.

Collin woke up several hours later, utterly disorientated. The room was dark. The alarm clock blinked three-ten at him in vivid red.

Something scratched against the wall outside.

Collin stumbled to the window. He peered out, blinked sleep out of his eyes, looked again.

"What the fuck," he muttered.

Outside, Iris's feet were just touching the ground. After scaling down the fucking wall. The girl glanced up, just once. A streetlight caught against her scar. Collin watched her disappear around the house, suddenly wide awake. His skin itched, uncomfortable.

Collin grabbed his jeans. A few minutes later, he was slipping out the window himself.

For someone who didn't run, Iris sure moved fast. Collin would've lost her trail had the neighborhood not been lit up like a Christmas tree. He followed her across the street and through half a dozen yards, keeping at a fair distance. Iris didn't seem overly concerned with getting caught. She didn't so much as throw a cautious glance over her shoulder, covering ground at a mad pace.

They carried on in this manner for longer than Collin'd hoped. His lungs were protesting pretty loudly by the time Iris slowed to a stop in front of a tall metal gate. Collin, crouching behind a parked car, watched her clear the fence with a numb sort of bewilderment. He thought about going back, but it felt too much like giving up.

So over the fence Collin went. One of the decorative spikes snagged his jeans, and he spent a frantic couple of seconds trying to disentangle himself without ripping the fabric or alerting anyone to his presence. He got free in time to spot Iris climbing a tree in what turned out to be a pretty swanky yard. Collin approached with great trepidation, ducking behind statues of cherubs in various forms of undress for cover as he went. The tree grew next to a mammoth of a house, its overgrown branches scratching at a row of windows on the second story. Iris banged on one of them. The glass rattled something awful; Collin froze, his heart in his throat.

The expected blare of an alarm never came. The house remained dark and still, its inhabitants either unaware or absent. Collin was betting on the latter, though he didn't get why anyone'd leave a house that nice unsecured. Then again, he was new to the whole gated community business. He'd once had a bike dismantled down to the frame in the time it'd taken him to buy milk, so maybe he was a little jaded. Rich people probably didn't get their stuff stolen as often.

"Iris," Collin hissed.

Iris didn't answer, because she was no longer there. The window gaped open upstairs; they were officially breaking and entering. Collin was so very sorry he had let curiosity blind him to the dangers of tailing someone like Iris in the dead of night. He pulled himself up the tree as fast as he could, in foolish hope that he could get Iris to come back before anything newsworthy happened.

The window led into a large bedroom. It was sterile-clean, no knickknacks or posters of any kind to be found, and for a moment Collin thought the room was a spare. The bed was unmade though, the covers all twisted, and the orange container of prescription pills on the nightstand was too personal a thing to leave lying around a guestroom.

Collin shuffled through the window to the door in record time, trying not to touch anything. It felt wrong to walk through someone else's space uninvited. He followed the murmur of a TV down a curving staircase. The house was painfully austere, devoid of clutter and lived-in comforts. Collin didn't spot a single family photograph, not one sock or shoe or toy lying out of place. The stairs were bracketed by naked walls, and opened to a spill of polished floorboards and an arched doorway that led into a spacious living room. Collin passed a petite table that bore a vase with no flowers, and saw Iris.

The TV washed the room in shades of neon, blues and yellows and reds. There was someone sleeping on the sofa, a girl with long, black hair. Collin could only make out the back of the chick's head from where he stood, and she obviously didn't know he was there at all, him or Iris, which was all sorts of fucked up.

Iris stepped up to the sofa. She had something in her hand; it caught the light and shone silver.

Collin's heart dropped. He lunged for Iris, but she already had the chick by the hair. Someone was yelling. Collin was pretty sure it was him. In any case, the screaming cut off once he got a good look at their host.

The poor light wasn't doing Derek any favors. The guy looked a wreck, puffy and pale and red-eyed. He didn't fight. He just stared at them, not blinking, as still as a corpse.

"I hate your hair," Iris told him.

Derek made a broken noise. Iris let go of him, and put away the scissors Collin'd taken for a switchblade in the dark. Derek had begun shaking, so badly that Collin worried the boy was having a seizure. He was laughing, too, a high wheezing sound that was the stuff of nightmares.

Iris reached over and patted Derek awkwardly on the head. "Stop that," she said flatly. Collin was shit at comforting people but damn, even he wasn't that bad.

Derek did calm down, though. His breath kept hitching in his chest and he looked about a blink away from bawling, but his eyes weren't so scared anymore. "Iris?" he asked in a small voice. Collin didn't know how a dude that tall managed to look like a kicked puppy, but he did, and it was fucking hard to watch.

"You're a mess," Iris said, because Iris had no soul.

Derek sniffled troublingly, but did not start crying, much to Collin's relief. "Sorry," he said.

"You're sorry? We broke into your house," Collin said, because it needed saying, apparently.

Derek looked at him like he'd only now noticed Collin was even there. "Who is he?" he asked Iris.

"My brother, Cal," Iris said.

"My name is Collin," Collin told them both.

"Since when do you have a brother?" Derek asked.

"He's new," Iris said.

Collin gave up on trying to have a normal conversation. "You know me," he told Derek, "Remember? You vomited on my shoes."

Iris raised her brows. "Why did you vomit on Cal's shoes?"

"Umm," Derek replied.

"I asked him if he knew you," Collin said, because he could be a little shit, too.

Derek flushed so badly it was obvious even in the dark. Collin felt a tiny bit bad.

"I have episodes, sometimes," Derek mumbled. "Got pills for it."

Alright, Collin felt a lot bad.

"Do you take them on time?" Iris asked.

"Umm," Derek said, very eloquently. Collin darted a look at Iris, but couldn't tell if she looked mad or not, the room being too dark and Iris too fucking hard to read.

"Are you cutting again?" Iris asked, and Collin almost smacked her for lacking any semblance of tact.

"I promised I wouldn't!" Derek snapped, with more vehemence and affront than he had said anything all night.

"You promised you'd be fine without me, too," Iris said.

"I thought you were dead, Iris!" Derek cried.

"Cal," Iris said after a short pause, "the kitchen's down the hall. Get us something to eat."

Collin debated arguing for about half a second. He really didn't want to stick around, though, so he took the out.

"There're takeout menus by the toaster," Derek called after him, sounding much more subdued.

Collin took that to mean there was no food to be found in the house. A quick check through the cupboards and a peek in the fridge confirmed his suspicions, and made him a hell lot more worried about Derek than he wanted to be.

By the time he got off the phone with the Happy Dragon, Iris and Derek had come to some sort of understanding. That, or Iris had murdered the boy and fled the premises. Either way, the noise level was noticeably down. Collin dragged his feet. He had no pressing desire to join the wacky duo.

Derek wasn't dead. He was however wearing a bed sheet like a cape, while Iris hacked his hair short with great glee. Collin didn't know whether it was poor depth perception or lack of care on Iris' part, but Derek was starting to look like a troubled hedgehog.

"He's going to a barber tomorrow," Iris said, possibly in response to Collin's grimace.

"People still go to barbers?" Collin asked.

"I do," Derek said, which struck Collin as funny, since it implied Derek wasn't technically people.

"I ordered Chinese," Collin said. The room looked much larger with the lights on. It opened to the rest of the floor on all sides, which made Collin a tad bit paranoid. The furniture was all white, big sprawling sofas and chaises and a plush carpet that was probably hell to clean.

Iris waved the scissors, pointing to a spot next to her on the sofa. "Sit."

"Maybe I want to stand," Collin shot back, and then sat down anyway.

The TV was off, the large screen reflecting the room like a circus mirror. Iris carried on mauling Derek's hair. No one spoke until the food arrived, and then the conversation revolved mainly around passing dishes around. Collin pushed the steamed vegetables Derek's way from the get-go, and then stared at the other boy until he gave in and had some broccoli. Iris ignored them both in favor of the steamed dumplings, of which she ate half and would have likely eaten the rest had Collin not stolen the box away.

"We're going," Iris announced once most of the food was demolished, startling Collin out of his light doze.

"'bout time," he said around a yawn.

Derek kept darting Collin wary glances on the way to the door. Collin took that to mean that he wanted to tell Iris something in private, so he went on ahead. Some of the neighboring houses were lit up. He wondered what could possibly be worth getting up at four-thirty on a Saturday morning, and couldn't think of a single thing.

"Sweet of you to wait," Iris said.

Collin pretended he'd heard her approach, and that his heart wasn't currently beating the Mambo. "Come on," he said, and took off, ignoring Iris's eyes on him the whole way home.

They went in through the back door, for which Iris turned out to have the key. "Give me your shoes and go in the kitchen," she whispered.

"What? No," Collin hissed back.

A door creaked open upstairs. Collin took off his shoes, and did not chuck them at Iris, though her smug expression didn't make him want to any less.

"Make me coffee," the girl threw over her shoulder.

Collin flipped her off. He sat down at the table and yawned hard enough to crack his jaw.

Iris padded back. She got a pot of coffee going and handed Collin the frying pan. It was on the tip of Collin's tongue to tell her where she could stick it, but Mr. Weaver walked into the kitchen, so he got the eggs out instead and tried not to make too much eye contact.

"What's this?" Mr. Weaver asked, and not suspiciously, as the situation in fact demanded.

Subterfuge, Collin didn't say.

"We wanted to make breakfast for the family," Iris said, and accepted Mr. Weaver's gratitude without a hint of remorse.

The play repeated several minutes later with Mrs. Weaver. Collin kept his back to the room and his eyes on the eggs, and very carefully didn't think about how fake Iris's smile was, or how much more comfortable she'd looked at Derek's place, terrorizing his hair.