“Yes!” It was almost a shriek. “Scorn! Nothing but years and years of scorn! Is it so surprising that I would finally turn elsewhere? Somewhere where it isn’t always ‘Do me a favor, Vik!’ Or ‘Take notes for me in class, Vik, while I go do whatever!’ Or ‘Why don’t you have a girlfriend, Vik, you’re such a nice guy!’ Or ‘Maybe girls would like you, Vik, if you played a macho sport instead of yoga!’ ” He turned from me, and began to pace in a tight circle like a caged Bengal tiger. He seemed to address the surrounding shadows as much as me.

“Or ‘We’re just so close, Vik, I love you like a brother!’ A brother! Or how about ‘You’re such a nice guy, Vik, but oh that Riley is so dreamy and mysterious, Vik!’ ‘I’m completely and utterly and deliberately blind to your feelings, Vik!’ Well, Andi, being a nice guy never got me anywhere—”

He stomped back up to me, putting his face right in mine. For a moment, I thought he was going to hit me. Instead, he hissed, low and cold:

“So no more Mr. Nice Guy.”

The effect was worse than if he’d hit me. For a long moment he just stared at me, breathing as though he’d fled from a bear, as if he were ready to tear down some great structure, brick by brick. Looking at him then, from my position of utter helplessness, it was impossible not to realize how strong Vik’s taut and muscular body must be. For the first time in my life, he appeared to me as something other than just my childhood best friend, my confidante, my surefire source for complete-yet-concise notes from skipped classes. Somehow along the way… Vik had become a man. And I had missed it. I couldn’t let him get swallowed up by Epistola.

“Vik, please!” I gasped. “You have to see through this! She has you under some kind of spell! Look around you!”

I gestured as best I could with my head, indicating the darkness, the robes, the candles, Epistola’s general quality of absurd overcompensation.

“You’ve been tricked, or brainwashed, or hypnotized, or something! You would never say any of these things to me in your right mind! Please, you have to remember!” I stared at him, trying to make him feel all my own raging emotions, trying to break through the wall that had risen between us, the poison that had turned my Vik against me.

He remained silent, unblinking… but, did I detect a softening around his eyes, a twitching at the corner of his mouth?

“Enough of this adolescent prattle!” interrupted Epistola. Whatever real or imagined clarity had hinted in Vik’s face immediately disappeared. He once again took on the slack expression of total passivity. He pulled his hood back up over his hair and rejoined the formation of zombies around their floozy queen.