Tillo Lando March 10th,20XX

The car was stiflingly quiet, and each minute crawled by like a three-legged turtle. It was an eight-seater van, with two in the front, three in the middle and three in the back. Joyce had recently brought a car seat for Eva, so she, Destia and Kaja took the middle seats, leaving Archer and me back.

Kaja and Eva had gotten a lot closer recently, but Archer and I still maintained a bit of a distance. It wasn't an uncomfortable one, but I couldn't help but feel lonely.

Ever since we'd had that fight, Kaja had taken care to make sure she didn't talk over me or force her way onto me, but the way she tried to do that was by leaving me alone. I didn't know how to tell her I wanted her to stick super close to me again without sounding lame.

But no. I was already sixteen. I couldn't keep holding up to the back of my sister's clothes like Eva. In a way, I was even worse than the eight-year-old because Kaja was the same age as I was.

Aaron drove the van calmly and casually talked with Joyce about one adult thing or the other.

I got a vague sense of Déjà vu as we exited the city and got onto the interstate road, but the feeling was broken by Joyce's voice that would occasionally float to the back to make sure we were okay, and Destia's awkward interactions with Kaja.

Kaja tried her best to break the ide with Destia, but the older girl was having a tough time adjusting to the sudden change in attitude.

I took a deep breath and turned to Archer, inspired by Kaja's actions. If Kaja had decided that we should get closer to the others, I should try my best to get along with Archer. I didn't think we would instantly become as close as Kaja and Eva were, but at least we could become close friends.

But what should I even talk about?

How he'd liked school for the few hours we'd been there before the terrorist attack? How he'd first met Joyce? What had his life been like before meeting Joyce?

All the potential questions ranged from bad to terrible.

I thought it through again and finally decided on something relatively neutral.

"Archer. You finished filming last yesterday. Did anything happen?"

He looked slightly startled by my sudden question and took out his earbuds. I felt awkward about randomly starting a conversation with someone that had been otherwise preoccupied, but I'd already committed.

"Huh?"

I repeated the question and tried to keep a neutral but interested expression on my face. While I was moderately awkward with things like this, Archer took it to another level. I'd barely seen him interact with others at school and at the filming site, but he mainly skated by letting others treat him like a kid and smiling when he didn't know how to respond. Both of those tactics relied on how young and good-looking he was.

He still had a few bandages on his face, one on his nose and a few others on his chin and cheeks. I belatedly realized I'd never seen him without band-aids on his face, and the thought gave me a chuckle.

"Ah, no, nothing happened. The guest that was supposed to appear on my channel ran a bit late, so we couldn't start filming until you guys started wrapping up."

"A guest?"

I didn't really know what he was doing for his channel, but I didn't think he had a guest. An awkward smile graced his face as he bought time to come up with an answer. I didn't think what I'd asked was so demanding of a question, but maybe I'd put him in a tough spot.

"Kaja and I had a guest as well, but it was just one of her friends. I didn't even know she had any until she started shoving them all into our cast."

He gave a courtesy chuckle at the non-joke I'd made and finally put his tablet down.

"Mr. Harvey got the idea to do a sort of epidural thing where I'd get a genre every week, and after learning about it, I'd have to make a song in that genre. The guest was an old rock star that I guess was pretty popular a while back, but he got into a car accident on the way here."

Archer saw the shocked expression on my face and quickly hurried to finish his spiel of information.

"Ah- he's okay. He's fine, but that's why he was so late."

I let out a relieved exhale for someone I'd never even met before and latched on to the first part of what he'd said.

"So you have to make a rock song?"

Rock was such an old genre that it was odd for it to be the first one they'd chosen. I was personally a big fan of the aesthetic, but I'd only heard a few choice songs that the school's janitor used to play after school.

"Yeah… I'm not too familiar with it, but that's why we needed the expert. He played a few songs for me and helped me pick out a couple of core elements to help me out."

"That's cool. Do you have anything yet?"

He looked awkward and slightly pulled his tablet closer to himself, which showed that he did. It wasn't like I needed to see his work, but seeing him be so blatantly wary toward me hurt a bit more than it should have.

"Ah, you don't have to show me if you don't want to. I was just curious."

"Sorry, but it's really not even close to being finished. I'm still just experimenting with the notes and instruments. There isn't much to listen to."

He sounded so apologetic that I felt terrible for pressuring him.

"Yeah, no, that's fine! Here, I can show you-"

I dug out my phone and clicked into a folder I kept hidden in other folders. I rarely showed others my designs, but I felt like it was a decent way to connect with Archer.

"This is one of my works that's almost complete. I couldn't have shown it to you before now, so I won't hold it against you."

He gingerly took the phone from my hand as if I'd given him a treasure and carefully looked over the sketch I'd given him.

It wasn't like I wanted to be a fashion designer or anything, but it was fun to come up with clothing ideas for Kaja and I. Unless she had a point to prove with her clothing, Kaja rarely, if ever, cared about what she wore. We both liked overalls, so she would push for them, but she would usually just wear whatever I made if I pushed back.

My powers had helped a lot since I didn't need to know how to sew to make what I wanted.

"Wow, this is really pretty, or should I say cool? How did you come up with this?"

Even though I knew he was mainly humouring me, I took the opportunity to talk about my sketches. Hopefully, he's responded in kind and talk about his music later.