Girl tossed her hair over her shoulder only for it slap wet against the back of her blouse. "That's disgusting. It's disgusting. Don't think about it," she chanted, largely to herself, Virgo thought. "Just don't think about where it's been. Think shampoo. Resonate parabens and sylicates. It'll all be gone soon."

"Mind shampoo?"

"The new brainwashing. Big deal on YouTube. Gotta get that ASMR. I live for it."

They stopped in front of Virgo's locker. "Okay, you just started speaking in tongues. Should I get the school nurse? Do we even have one of those? Were the budget cuts too steep after we got that Coke machine twins I saw in the cafeteria?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Virgo spun the dial on her combination lock. "Same. Not good at the comforting small talk thing. Work with me here."

Girl gave a minute shrug. She must have had the world's narrowest shoulders. That made some kind of sense; she was only fifteen, even if she was a tall fifteen. She was still growing. There was the kicker.

"Come on, don't look at me like that. I don't look that bad, do I? It's just water."

Virgo didn't really care about that. She'd smelled worse anyway. Some of her cell mates used to refuse to bathe on principle. They sat in their own filth until they were thrown into the communal bath and forcibly showered under observation of a doctor, a nurse, a psychiatrist, and two orderlies. Virgo had been all kinds of enraged before; she'd never been angry enough or lonely enough for attention to go out like that.

"Hate to break it to you, but you look like you got your head dunked in a toilet." Smelled a bit like it, too. Toilets used by too many bodies tended to take on a recognizable smell, no matter how well they were cleaned. The water smelled...funny, to put it mildly and so did Girlfriend.

"That's not what happened?" The uptick at the end was a dead giveaway.

"You got your head dunked in a toilet, real or not real?"

Girl found a sliver of attitude to pull: "Not your business, real or not real?"

Virgo's lock popped open with a click.

"Awesome. I love sarcasm, too. Look, we're friends." She grabbed a pack of wipes out of her locker and tossed them at the younger girl. "Wipe your face. If you can find your way, I need to talk to some idiots about bouncing their rude faces off the pavement."

"Violence isn't the answer," she parroted like there was a scowling teacher standing over her shoulder taking a grade for participation.

"That depends who's asking the question." If Girl was going to play pacifist after almost having her scalp peeled off by the Future Female Murderers of America, far be it for Virgo to come save her ass next time. She had grades to keep up and her reputation as a hardass who gave no shits was going to go up in flames if she kept saving dumb girls from their pride.

"I'm not—look, I'm grateful, but I don't like owing people debts. Letting you take care of me means I owe you one."

"It doesn't, though. I wasn't trying to get you in my books. You sounded like you were getting your throat cut."

"You can't hear it when somebody gets their throat cut unless they're already screaming. It's just whistling after the first...and you meant that as a figure of speech."

"I did, but now I have this new and disturbing information to share with unsuspecting strangers, so that's a plus. Are you ever not the weirdest thing on two legs?"

"Nah, sometimes I'm the weirdest thing on my knees. Which...don't make the obvious joke, please. I have to face my foster mom tonight."

"No judgments." Virgo looked around. She was so late that actually showing up to class seemed pointless. "You gonna show me where the gym is now, because I promise I don't remember."

"You could still go to class."

"Somebody's gotta keep the creepers out the locker room while you get cleaned up."

"You could be a creeper."

"Not that kind of creeper. I'm the Olivia Benson of creepers; I fight 'em off." Virgo nodded toward the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall that was free of burnouts and the smell of clandestine rolled cigarettes. "Come on already. We're gonna get detention if we get caught out here."

Virgo may have been stretching the truth when she said she didn't know where the gym was. The school was only so big. Once you figured out where the main stuff was, everything else was plain logic.

Girl trotted after Virgo, her much longer legs eating the distance between them like it was no big thang. "I'm Taurus. What's your name?"

All the names Girl could have and she had that. Virgo gave the stars a great big flying finger. They were going to stop fucking her around one day. Not today, though.

"You're actually named Taurus?"

Girl—Taurus played with her hair. She had nervous fingers or she was doing a damned fine impression of somebody who did.

"Yeah, that's what I said."

"I don't believe you."

She rolled her eyes. "I get that all the time. I like it, though. A good name stands out."

"There are better names. Are you even a Taurus?"

A hesitation.

"Well?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Cool. When's your birthday?"

"Whenever I say it is."

"I've never met anybody who got defensive over their birthday." A complete lie. Disciples got into fist fights over times of birth. Taurus should have lived at her house.

"You try being younger than everybody in your year and see how you like being reminded."

"Touchy subject. I won't bring it up again." But she couldn't let it go. Virgos were like that and that was what made them Virgo's favorite sign. Besides the fact that it was her own. Everybody at home favored their own sign, or the sign of their Father. You might even say Virgo was protective of it. They were her stars. "Except it'd be kind of dumb to have that sign for a name if it isn't your name. Your parents wouldn't do that, would they?"

"Don't know. Never met 'em."

"Oh."

"Yeah, that's what everybody says."

"I know. Same here."

"No parents either?"

"Just the foster units."

"About as good as having nothing, huh?"

"I get a sweet place to sleep and the fridge isn't locked. It's not too bad on my end. Yours?"

Taurus sucked her teeth. "Not too bad. Could be worse."

"My new foster brother called me a paycheck with a face. What's yours call you?"

"A warm body."

Virgo stiffened.

Taurus paled. That should have been impossible since her skin tone was wheat germ a la mode already but she got paler.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Forget I said it. I'm just being dramatic."

"I meant what I said."

"Which part? The part about fighting for my honor or the part where you stunned my bullies into letting me walk away from getting my face shoved down a toilet for the second time this week?"

"All of it."

"Don't tell me, you don't like bullies."

"I don't. I don't like watching sunshine-y people go dark."

"I'm not sunshine-y!"

Virgo pointed at her nails. They were painted orange with swirls of glittery gold and, yes, her thumb had a meticulously drawn Aztec sun goddess etched on the nail. Questions of cultural appropriation aside, the girl was sunshine and buttercups with a razor's edge. But even titanium blades could break when the pressure was applied wrong.