"God damn, I love the taste of cinnamon in the morning," Vic said around a mouthful of bagel. The rest of it was on a plate, covered in a crunchy cinnamon-sugar glaze, uncut and untoasted, right next to her empty hand. She was gnoshing at it furiously like an unfortunate animal continuing to eat at the end of a shotgun.

"Yeah, whatever," the other girl said, nearly huffing in all her annoyance. She sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on her shirt. Her cold, plain bagel (also untoasted) sat untouched on the unmade bed next to her. It was clear that she wasn't ever going to touch it. 

"What do you mean whatever? You know I love bagels--"

"Yeah, I know you love bagels and cinnamon, you talk about it every time we do... this."

"What, sex?" Vic bit off another piece of bagel. She nearly choked on it in her haste to swallow. "You got an issue with it?" 

"It's not the sex that's the problem."

"Hell yeah, it's not!" Vic held up her hand for a high-five she didn't get. 

"God, you're so bro-y sometimes. It's this goddamn routine," 2B griped. (Vic supposed she couldn't keep calling her that, even in her head, since geometry was long past now. It wasn't like she had another name for her, though.) 

2B stood so that she could wriggle into her once-discarded low-rise jeans. The ones that she wore on Thursdays. The ones without the holes in the knees or the paint stains or the ripped belt loops. The good ones, the ones that she looked good in. Truth be told, she looked good in everything. Vic was afraid to admit it, but she did. It was a Friday. She shouldn't have been wearing her Thursday jeans. But, then... it wasn't like she had gotten a chance to change last night. 

Vic didn't have a problem with the routine. She liked it. Routines like this one-- they kept things the same. And Vic liked it when things stayed the same. She disliked it when her friend got abducted by aliens. Things can't stay the same if you've been abducted by aliens, and she knew that more than anyone.

There was a reason she had no plans to move out of her mother's house, even after the summer was over and she moved on to her second year of college on that full scholarship she was able to swing. (Apparently, being smart and willing to dance like a monkey for those richer than you could open some doors. Well, if there was nothing else to do, Vic was more than willing to dance.) There was a reason nothing had really changed about her over the past few-- weeks? Months? How long had it been since graduation? A little over a year? 

Whatever she case, she liked things the way they were. She liked the way she was. She liked the Green Day and blink-182 posters staring at the two of them from the wall by the closet door. She liked the fact that she was using the same comforter she had used since she was twelve, even with all the frilly peach-colored flowers and white petals. She liked the trappings of a life where things never changed. In fact, Vic barely registered them anymore.

So she didn't say anything about it. She didn't object.

When the other girl (no, Vic decided, 2B was still a good name for her) turned to leave, not taking her bagel with her and paused at the door, and turned back to look at Vic, there was an odd look on her face. It was pity, maybe. Or sorrow. Or some obscure melancholy Vic had no idea how to read. She didn't say anything. She just gave Vic a disappointed half-smile, scooped up her shoes from the ground, and left. Vic caught her looking at the wall opposite Vic's bedroom window on her way out.

Vic knew what that meant. The conspiracy wall. The wall where she kept all her thoughts and theories and research about aliens and what took Scotty. It had gotten worse since the night of graduation. Even Vic knew that. She could track the changes in who she was, and how avidly she believed in this stuff. It had been kind of a joke and a sore subject before graduation. Now, it consumed all her free time, took up space in her mind that should have been reserved for 

It was hard to convince people of the truth of what was happening, especially when they had their minds made up about what they thought happened. Everyone had their minds made up about Scotty and where he went before he even went missing, it would seem. 

But Vic knew the truth. She eyed the wall where all her charts and research were. It was insane for people to think that Scotty ran off. He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't do that.

And, even if she hadn't seen the aliens come down and take him, she wouldn't believe that he ran off. Not without telling someone. Vic knows the truth. She knows the whole truth, and she's going to prove it to everyone.

First, though, there was a bagel to finish. 

VIc, still chewing, flopped back onto her bed. The blankets were uneven beneath her. They were bunched and twisted-- uncomfortable. She didn't mind all that much though. In all truth, she was more preoccupied with thoughts of what 2B had said. 

How could she be tired of all these routines? They agreed on things-- that this wasn't serious, that they wouldn't expect anything from each other, that they wouldn't talk about it outside of 2B's living room and the bathroom at the coffeeshop where 2B worked and Vic's bedroom. Why shouldn't the routine of what they do not fall under the purview of those uncodified agreements? 

Was it a little sad that Vic hadn't moved on from what happened after graduation? That it had been, what, a full year and then some since that party? That she was still working at it, looking for her best friend amonf the stars? Was it sad that she was working at Leo's family's diner just like she did when she was sixteen, and was it sad that she was the only one who ever did anything there? Was it pathetic that she still didn't know the name of the girl she had been hooking up with for just as long as Scotty had been missing? (The girl she wouldn't even allow herself to think of being in love with, since that would go against the agreement?) Was it sad that she had plans to live with her mother from birth to the ripe old age of whenever she died? 

It was probably going to be twenty. Vic never had plans to survive this long, and she kept pushing that barrier back. Twenty seemed like a long enough time to have been alive. The way she calculated it, she had about a year to go. This was nineteen, this was the beginning of the end. If she made it through twenty, then she would recalculate. 

Was any of it sad? Pathetic? Detestable? Maybe it was to an outside observer. It didn't really bother Vic, though.

So she ate her bagel while getting ready for the day, sipped at the glass of ice water on her ring-stained nightstand, and tried not to listen in on the brief conversation 2B was getting into with Vic's mother downstairs. When she could hear 2B's car pulling out of the driveway, she finally went downstairs with the rest of her breakfast. What this bagel needed (or what was left of it, anyway) was some of that whipped cream cheese in the cheese drawer of the fridge downstairs. Now that she was thinking about it, she had a real hankering for the stuff.

Vic's mother was at the kitchen table, reading the news from a tattered, still-curled paper. The plastic bag it came in was next to her, still covered in morning dew from the parched front lawn. The sprinklers were still broken. It would cost money to get someone out here to fix it. It was easier to just incur the wrath of the HOA they weren't even a part of than to take care of it. (You can't be part of a homeowner's association if you don't own your home.) 

Vic's mother was smiling pure sunshine just like she always was at mid-morning, sipping at a glass of pulp-free orange juice.

"Good morning, Vicky!" she cooed. She made a gesture Vic knew well, signaling that she wanted a hug. Vic didn't want to give it, but, hey, that was her mother. What was she going to do? Say no? And risk crushing the woman's spirit? No way. 

Vic hugged her mother with one arm, then slouched over to the fridge. She reminded her, "I'm working until nine tonight, Ma. And I'll be out late after that."

She had been saying it every day that week, knowing full well her mother would inevitably forget that Vic was working until nine on Friday because she was training a new guy on the grill and she had plans to be out after that. The guys liked to go out on Fridays, and Vic had some research she had to do on the whole Scotty thing. Truth be told, Leo and Connor liked to go out on every other day of the week. Friday was the night, though. 

And she would do her goddamn job, unlike Leo and Connor, who would dip in and out as they desired, who would leave and try to drag her out with them. That was par for the course, though. The two of them never really cared, and Vic was trying her hardest not to. 

Judy McNamara required about a thousand reminders to remember one simple thing. Vic didn't blame her. Personally, she had the same issue. There was a reason her watch had a thousand alarms set on it. The McNamara women were a forgetful bunch. Who gave a shit? Not Vic.

Still, her mother got absolutely goddamn neurotic about it, and Vic didn't really want to deal with all of that this early on a Friday morning.

The reminder proved to be necessary, because Judy McNamara let out a scandalized noise like this was the first time she had ever heard of this. "Vicky? How could you forget to tell me until now? I thought we were going to have a movie night!"

"We never do movie night on Friday, Ma. We do movies on Thursdays, remember? We haven't done Fridays in years." Vic didn't look at her mother as she took the cream cheese in its plastic tub out of the fridge, set it on the counter, and set to work searching for a butterknife.

Her mother had a thing about knives. She was always hiding them from Vic, and Vic was never quite sure why. Even the cheese serving knife-- the kind that was meant for tubs of margarine and almond-covered cheese balls and didn't have a single sharp edge-- was missing. It was probably in one of the child-proofed cabinets. Vic had no patience for any of that. A spoon would work just as well anyway.

"Well, I just thought we would do it tonight since you were having that sleepover with your friend last night?"

"Ma, I have plans." 

"What's her name again?"

Vic shrugged. It wasn't like she needed to answer anyway, since her mother was instantly prattling on againg. 

"She's a nice girl. You need more nice friends like that, instead of those Leo and Connor guys, and that Scotty. Well, I suppose he's a good boy sometimes, even if all those piercings don't lead you to believe it. How's he doing again? I haven't seen him around here in a while."

Vic didn't freeze, even though she kind of wanted to. In the back of her mind, though there was the thought that she needed to stop bringing 2B over here. Her mother was going to have to take off the blinders eventually, and Vic didn't want to deal with the consequences of that. The poor woman was convinced she was going to get a biological grandchild sometime this century. It was easier if Vic didn't let her get into what was really going on.

"I have no clue how Scotty's doing, Ma," she answered, spreading the cream cheese without missing a beat, "since he's still missing and all. Remember? I think it was aliens, everyone else thinks he just ran off? Anyway, I've been going out with Leo and Connor on Fridays for years. We'll watch a movie tomorrow, okay? And you can pick."

Her mother seemed satisfied with that; she pouted, but didn't object.

Vic kissed her mother on the top of her head before she left. It was the least she could do.