“What? No!” the Slayer exclaims. “I’m trying to set the scene for what happened, okay? Because my parents are divorced—due to problems that had nothing to do with me, thank you very much—I have to spend summers in Los Angeles with my dad. And while I was gone, this girl started hanging around with my friends. She’s our age and just moved to town, so Willow and Xander sort of adopted her. The same way they’d adopted me when I was the new kid. I think Xander had a bit of a crush on her. Which was kind of nice, actually, because it distracted him from his crush on me and that is just never going to happen. Even if I weren’t sort of with Angel—”

Anya groans, eyes rolling back in her head. “This recitation of your tangled love life is intolerable. You are all hormonal children who want to have sex with each other. I get it.”

The Slayer shifts her weight, uncomfortable. She doesn’t know anyone who speaks so directly. It’s not unpleasant, just odd. “So, when the school year started, Xander and Willow bring the new girl to everything. And I mean everything. Not only study sessions and the movies or whatever. Like, the secret stuff. Researching baddies in the library and my Slayer training sessions with my Watcher and patrols of the cemetery for the newly risen. This girl is just there. Things were pretty quiet in town, so it wasn’t terrible. But this girl kept asking when the real monsters are going to come out. And if I’m bored. All kinds of things that I should have realized were. . .well, not normal questions. I thought she was trying to alpha me. Prove she was even tougher than the Slayer. It happens when people find out about the whole Chosen One thing.” Mortification creeps across her skin as she remembers what happened next, how easily she was outwitted. “One night, she’s like, ‘Don’t you think you’re strong enough to take down more than one monster a week?’ And I stupidly said yes. I told her that I wished I could get all of the monsters of Sunnydale to come out and fight, just to be done with it instead of waiting for them to attack me one at a time.”

“Tricking you into wishing for something you didn’t want.” Anya laughs. “A classic maneuver. What was the name this girl was going by?”

“Hallie.”

“Pretty blue eyes? Curly hair?” Batting her lashes, Anya mimes spirals sprouting from her head.

The Slayer nods, inwardly cringing as she pictures Hallie the new girl sitting in this very quad. Flicking her perfect frizz-free curls over her shoulder. Sharing Willow’s sliced apples. Laughing at Xander’s terrible jokes. Supplanting the Slayer in her own life as the normal girl she could never be.