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The Liberty School had quite a nice cafeteria for lunchtimes: of course, on nice days, pretty much nobody hung around the cafeteria, especially the pool of kids who pretty much wanted to be out and about and running around until forced back in again. The Cafeteria was awesome simply because it was also open to the public and you felt a little chic sitting among strangers: but on that fairly sunny, amenable day, everyone bought their food and abandoned it promptly.

The Liberty School was changing in chemistry anyway. There was now a small, exclusive group of teenagers, not just Riley being long-legged and looming over the heads of everyone but Christian Deakon, and as of late Antony had joined their ranks.

A shadow fell over him outside -- arms crossed tightly over the girl's chest, though in her singlet and jeans she definitely looked more like a boy -- she had a cut on her eyebrow which had been butterflied up, and looked as menacing as a ten-year-old kid could be. Which was. Well. Not totally menacing, but Jace did her damndest.

"So," she said. Elsewhere, the Liberty kids screamed and shouted in their various lunchtime games. "You grew up."

"When?" There was no 'nice to see you again,' or 'how are things', or 'so I'm back': then again, it was Jace Darnell, whose vocab consisted entirely of challenge words. She looked him over critically, as though she didn't like what she saw: Antony's fine-boned features, long blue hair, all having shifted from the slightly rounder ones of his childhood to definite teenager. He had graduated from nice child to grotesque prettyboy. "Prince Prettyass," she added, mainly to show her disgust with how he was turning out.

"No. Seriously. What the hell." She reached into her bag and dropped a parcel in front of him; she did this mainly with the delicacy of handling a dead rat, not explaining it. It was shaped like a book and something else that was a little lumpy. "You look like a chick."

Jace's hackles raised up like an angry dog: she looked fuzzy and pissed-off, like an aggrieved hedgehog. "That's yours," she said, offhandedly, "from M.B., I don't care." (Usually if one did not care they did not have to qualify it with 'I don't care'.) "And so what if I don't want to look like Malibu Funtime Ken?"

His lack of getting mad or responding was pretty much just making her madder. Obviously something was up: she was even more pissy than usual.

"I heard what you did at Harper's funeral."

That wasn't mad: it sounded neutral. "You're glad he's gone, aren't you?" And strangely enough, that didn't sound mad either -- just curious, as though confirming an expectation. "You two hated each other."

"Oh, lay off the his memory crap," she said impatiently. "You'd totally disrespect his memory if you didn't think people everywhere would be all 'Antony is an a*****e' rather than 'Antony is the most perfectest person ever' like what M.B. thinks. I don't care that you're glad. I'm saying don't think things are going to be easy now, because I decided that what Harper would want me to do was take over where he left off. So when I grow up, I'm going to be your rival, and I'm going to be way better at it than he ever was."

She paused. "Actually, he probably would have wanted a golden statue of himself in the park and you buried inside it, but that's Harper. Kind of gay and retarded."

"You just said blaze," said Jace, sort of half-awed, half-aghast. "You just said blaze of glory. You a*****e."

She hadn't realised that being a rival also meant academically. She stuck out her chin. "Of course he was your damn rival," he said, "you think that the first time you got a girlfriend, he wasn't going to try to steal her? He was totally. And I'll -- I'll get better grades than you! And I'll be able to kick the s**t out of you, even if Shade's your dad, I'm going to get better! And I'm going to make sure you never ever get a girlfriend!"

This didn't sound so much like a threat as a challenge. "I know you better than lots of people do," she said, "I know you're totally a secret jerk who's, like, just as bad as me. You think you're punk." The arms were unfolded and her hands jammed in her pockets. "So don't get..."

What was the word? M.B. used it all the time. Jace blossomed into a grin.

"Complacent." He could stick that in his academic pipe and smoke it.

"C O M," she said. "P L A C E. N T." (Thank god for sounding out and not being Wisp Darnell, who could not spell if a dictionary was set in front of her. Also 'complacent' wasn't that difficult -- no hard bits.) "So there. And you've never been sorry in your life and you're not going to start with me, 'cause I'm not one of your little twinkly princesses. You watch out for me -- and watch out for Irelia, too."