Bridget looked at Derrick now, really looked. Was there any chance that he knew who she was? Had he read that one fan publication she’d let interview her? But it was nearly a zine, one step up from being photocopied at Kinko’s. Besides, she’d only used her first name.

Then Ajay motioned to her from the hall, and every other thought vanished. “I’m sorry,” she said to Derrick, no longer really seeing him, “but I need to get to lunch.”

DERRICK

The Dark Side

Derrick didn’t let himself chuckle until Bridget was out in the hall. She clearly had no idea, none, of what was happening to Bob. She hadn’t been concerned at all. Her face had been as placid as a pail of milk.

He had figured out who Bridget really was in late September. His mom had repeated an offhand comment Bob once made about his researcher, and that had been enough to start Derrick digging.

He’d initially pictured the researcher as a female version of Bob: an overweight woman in her sixties. It was a shock when he realized she was really the quiet redhead in his physics class. While he had never spoken to her before today, the last few months he had watched her from the back of the room. Sometimes he daydreamed about how she would make an excellent Cascadian elf. It was so easy to imagine her clad in a short green dress, laced tightly at the bodice and worn with black tights, black leather greaves, and over-the-knee black boots, with the tips of fake ears just poking out through her hair.

And now he had dared to walk right up to the line. To dance on the knife’s edge. Yet it was clear she was none the wiser. In the past, Derrick had pulled off a few similar tricks in Cascadia, convinced others he was friend instead of foe or vice versa, but this was a new level of sophistication.

Now he watched Bridget go off with that Ajay. When he’d seen Bridget slip King of Swords to Ajay, jealousy had pinched him. Wasting a book on someone like Ajay. At least he wasn’t a sports guy, but even though he got good grades, he definitely wasn’t a book guy. He more liked to talk about something boring. So boring Derrick couldn’t remember it at first. Cooking, that was it. Another activity, like LARPing, that mostly interested adults, yet no one made fun of Ajay for it.

Derrick told himself he didn’t care. And in a few hours he would be reading something even Bridget hadn’t.