I took my seat, giving my hand to Sveta, as she collapsed into the chair on the other side of me. Now that she wasn’t bear-hugging me, I could see that a lot of the color on her was that the prosthetic body she wore had been painted. Bumps and collisions had chipped some of the paint, but from the neck down, everything that wasn’t covered in clothing was painted in rolling waves, in sea serpents, birds and reptiles. The colors were bright and bold, like graffiti, the living things hot orange, the background cool blues and greens. Her clothes were relatively plain, a black top and brown pants, and looked to be relatively thick and durable, but the plain-ness was marred by the small streaks and smudges of paint that she’d gotten on it, most of it in long, thin slashes.

The seating arrangement put me between her and Kenzie. Kenzie, for the time being, was leaning over to the new addition to the group, the boy with braces. She seemed to be filling him in on what he’d missed.

“Tristan,” the magenta-haired boy said, approaching. He extended a hand. I shook it.

“Victoria.”

“Will your brother be joining us today?” Mrs. Yamada asked.

“I asked, he didn’t reply,” Tristan said.

“Brother?” I asked.

“Twin,” Tristan said. He pointed at his hair. “Part of the reason I make myself so easily identifiable. He’s Byron, he used to have blue-green hair to match me, but he quit doing that.”

“Good to know,” I said.

Blue hair.

I thought of my youngest cousin. Where Crystal had always had the red-magenta look, Eric had gone with the blue, dying his hair. It was a sad, wistful thought. With so many losses in recent memory, so much tumult, it felt very distant. That distance didn’t make it feel any less painful. If I’d been burned on an hourly, daily or weekly basis for the last four years, the death of Eric and Uncle Neil would have been the very first time my hand was shoved down and held to the oven ring.

Alarming and hard to process in how devastating and raw it had been, important, but still a very long time ago.

I changed up my focus, “You all came in together. Are you friends?”

“No. Or kind of?” Tristan asked.

“Kind of,” Sveta said.

Tristan explained, “I ran into Weld and Sveta on the way into the first session. He dropped her off at the front door because he had a place to be, and I offered my arm. Sveta and I geeked out together over Weld.”

“He’s geek-out worthy,” I said.

Tristan smiled. “Does the impromptu Weld fan club have another member?”

“Nah,” I said. “No, I’m just a fan in a very mundane way. I think he’s a good guy.”

Sveta nodded emphatically.