Library again.
There's Keye, frowning once again over English homework, practically sweating. He continually brushes his impossible hair back out of his eyes, because it is impairing his already-mucky vision, and his nose is pressed to the page, lips moving, finger moving, one foot tapping quickly and repeatedly on the floor. He looks all nerves, and pale as always under the faintly yellowish light. He hasn't been sleeping well, but that's not news, and nor is the fact that he's completely jazzed on caffiene. Still, it's a disconcerting sight, if you don't already know him.

Violet knows him, yet she still finds it slightly disconcerting.

She approaches slowly and quietly as a mouse, the very picture of timidity.
"Um. Hi," she says meekly, tapping him on the shoulder. Her sleeves are so long as to almost cover her hands entirely, but that's what she gets for wearing oversized sweaters. "How's it going?"

He jumps, but this time manages to avoid hitting himself in the face with the book. He puts it down with relief.
"Aw, it's all right. Kind of a tough read. What's up?"

"Not too much," she replies, giving an awkward shrug.

"...Listen, I'm really sorry about this weekend. I didn't think Arty would be so much trouble for you."
She'd thought he'd at least make an effort to be good for Keye. She thought Arty liked him enough for that.

"Nah." Keye gives a one-shouldered shrug, grinning with equal unevenness. "It wasn't bad. I had a good time."

"But..." she falters, "He ran off on you, and..."
And watched a movie he knew he wasn't supposed to, which caused him to be sick, and locked himself in Lex's room, which got him possessed...
Oh, and he was just generally a disobedient, obnoxious little brat.
"...and things," she finishes lamely.

"Well, yeah, but...I prob'ly woulda done the same, I mean, Lex just stuck himself inside the kid's head, he was freaked and I just grabbed him, and I mean, no wonder..."
And the movie was just as much Keye's fault. Really the only thing he faults Arty for is going into Alexander's room in the first place.
"It's no big deal, really."

Violet frowns worriedly.
"Are you sure?"

For her part, she'd be driven frantic by having all that happen in one night. She's lucky that when she was getting used to Arty, he was tiny and had to listen to her.

"Yeah." he makes a dismissive gesture. It was nothing. It got better later. "He's a great kid, you know."
I'm sure may would disagree, but there you have it.

She smiles at him, not altogether convinced but willing to pretend.

"He can be if he feels like it."
If he couldn't, she wouldn't be half so fond of him as she is.

"Nah, he always is." He grins. It's almost an I-know-something-you-don't grin. "He just doesn't always act that way."

"I don't know," Violet shrugs. "He can be nice enough. But he makes it so hard to deal with him sometimes."
Most of the time, she corrects mentally.
"Not that I don't like him. He's just... difficult."

"Some people are difficult."
Some people are liars.
Some people...
You know how it goes.
"It's no big deal, really. We had a good time after that little rough patch."

"That's good."

If the whole weekend had been like the first hours, she'd have been very, very worried.

"From what Arty said, it sounded like he had a good time."

"I did my best." his smile turns sheepish. "I was not prepared very well. And I, uh...well, that movie. I should never have let him watch that." Wince. "It made the poor kid sick."

"Yeah, so I heard."
Her face twists in a grimace for a second.

"You couldn't have known, though." Vi smiles. "It wasn't your fault. He knew perfectly well he wasn't supposed to watch it."

"Power of curiosity. Lotta kids that age don't have any restriction on what movies they watch, and I didn't think...I mean, that stuff completely doesn't bother me. I felt so bad."
He generally felt bad for quite a while after that, actually.
"He said he was sorry, y'know."

"Yeah,...well...there aren't really a lot of kids his age," she sighs, and grins.
Being ninety years old and twelve-to-fifteen at the same time must not be very easy.
(Vi's pet theory is that he got so old, he came out the other side of maturity and back into immaturity).

"Did he? That's - different."

"Told you so," he says rather enigmatically.
"I took him back piggyback 'cause he didn't have any shoes on."

"He mentioned that," Violet says, grinning. "What did you have to do to get him to agree to that?"

"Nothing at all."
Pause.
"Which was weird."

"Really?"

And now there's an utterly puzzled frown on her face.

"That is weird." Pause. "Maybe his feet were really cold or something."

It was also followed by hugging and crying and much apologizing, but Keye thinks he'll spare the kid the embarassment he's sure to feel.
"Maybe so." he taps his fingers against the table. "I think we had problems 'cause he was homesick."

"Huh."
In a way, that's news to her. Arty doesn't complain about having to live with them, but she's never gotten the feeling that he actually likes it.
"He didn't say anything about that. He said he forgot something at the apartment."

"Oh."
Geeze, he's not trying to give up all the kid's secrets.
"Well, uh, maybe that's what it was. He didn't really say."

Violet feels she should be suspicious, but she doesn't know what of and she doesn't know why, and so she lets it go.

"Oh. Okay. You didn't mind too much...?"

"Not a bit. I used to move around a lot, it's not like it was trouble."

Vi still feels like she's missing something, but she can't think of what it might be.

"Okay. Well... thanks again for watching him.You were a big help, you know."

His eyes crinkle at the corners. The compliment pleases him.
"Well, glad to be of help, always. Still not sure it was a good idea, but it worked out, so we're good."

"Heh...yeah. Yeah, it did."
She nods, smirking.
No one was physically or emotionally damaged very much, except for Keye getting scratched across the face (which Vi doesn't know about). The babysitting was therefore a success.

"Mmhm. So how's your life? Visit home go okay?"

"As well as can be expected," she replies, rolling her eyes.
Read; I'm so glad I don't have to go back there for a couple of months.

"Oh. Did I tell you-" Vi returns her eyes to a more normal position. "No. Wait. I didn't tell you. I found out something really strange the other day. Unbelievably strange."
And she grins, because it's pleasing as well as strange.
"Short story made shorter, I met this guy in a coffee shop who used to know my mother." Vi gives a nervous little giggle. "Apparently I have a half-brother."
That's not even the really strange part, either.

"Really."
Coming back from the dead and long-lost relatives are all the rage in Bayfield, someone should inform the magazines.
"That's cool, right? Have you met him? Who is he?"

"...Yes, I met him. He's actually a friend of Dave's. Um..."
She bites on her thumbnail, and mumbles over it.
"He's a faun."

"Stoppit." he taps her hand.
...
...?

"How the hell did that happen?"

She takes her hand away from her mouth, by a few inches (it's a start).

"Well. His dad is a faun. So Matteo-" she prefers using his name to calling him her half-brother "-is one too. I don't know exactly how that works, but. Anyway."
She reddens.
Her mother had sex with a faun. Her mother. Her ever-uptight, prim, cake-baking, PTA-obsessed mother.

"I think that makes sense." he frowns. "I don't think there are girl fauns, and the boy ones have got to come from someplace." It's probably rooted somewhere in mendelian genetics.
"I could look it up in one of Lex's books, if you want."

"I...nnno, that's okay. But thank you."
She's biting on her thumbnail again.

"...He was really shy. Matteo, I mean," she muses.
For Violet to call someone else shy... that's different.
"But he seemed nice enough."

"Hey." another tap.
"...you know, I actually...I think I might've met him, once or twice. He was...really quiet."

Again, she pulls her hand away, but reluctantly.

"Oh. Really?"
There can't be that many fauns around. It could easily be the same person.
"...Yeah, he was. Nothing like his dad. I don't think he knew the meaning of the word 'shy'."