Girls On Fire {an RWBY Novel}

Chapter Four: Pink Triangle

Nora

In the best of words, Clover was pissed. It was the second time this month that the band had cancelled on him, and I was pretty sure he would be less welcoming whenever we tried to book his venue again. I'd had to call him over the phone to let him know that Jaune and Ren were "not doing well," and wouldn't be able to play their parts, so we wouldn't be able to play for him. He said that he'd have hired Funky, our rival band, if he wanted somebody to cancel on him last minute. Then, he hang up, and I set my phone down.

I was lying in bed, and Pyrrha was beside me, her head tucked into my shoulder. She'd been crying for hours, and finally she had fallen asleep. I wanted to get up and change into pajamas, but was far too scared to wake her and have to watch her cry again. It always worried me whenever Pyrrha cried, because she only cried when things were really, really wrong.

And they were, of course. Really, really wrong.

Jaune and Ren had gone missing about ten days ago, just disappeared without a trace. At first we had thought they'd taken some weekend trip and forgot to tell us, but after a week had passed, we knew we had to start looking for answers. Pyrrha was extremely torn up about it. Her and Jaune had been dating for more than two years, and they'd been living together for at least four months now. It wasn't like Jaune to just leave without telling anyone, and she knew it better than I did. Ever since he'd left she'd been spending nights in my apartment, crying and talking to me, sleeping in my bed at night because she wasn't used to sleeping alone.

I hated that I liked it.

Having her to myself, that is. I didn't like worrying about Ren and Jaune - and I was worrying. But each night Pyrrha would wrap her arms around me and fall asleep with her body pressed against mine, and I would breath in and smell her Old Spice body wash. And I would think, as I had every day since we'd met in 7th grade, that I could fall in love with her. That maybe I already had. Now the nights would pass as I lied with her, thinking about a reality where she loved me, that we shared a bed because we were more than friends. But morning would come and she would wake up early, and by the time I was up, she was gone, and the bed was empty and cold.

Pyrrha had been spending the past four or five days trying to find out where Jaune and Ren had disappeared to, to no avail. We'd considered going to the police, but had yet to decide whether or not the situation was really that serious. She'd driven to visit their parents, and then went to talk to their other friends and teachers. She tried to get into Ren's phone, which we found lying on a table when we'd looked for him at his house, but Ren had a set a lock on his phone, and neither of us had known it. Pyrrha had yelled at me that day, asking why I didn't know his passcode, insisting that we were close enough that I must have had at least a guess. And I'd wished I did know it, that me and Ren were as close as Pyrrha thought we were, when in reality we'd been drifting apart since high school, when I told him I was gay, and unable to reciprocate his feelings for me. I didn't know what he could have set as his passcode, and Pyrrha had broken down. I knew the stress was just getting to her, that her and Jaune were always so close and that she was missing him. But some part of me just couldn't... connect. I was worried too, but just not as much as she was.

Now, lying with her, I was really only worried about how we'd make money if Clover stopped hiring us. He was one of our biggest venue's, and he always booked us when we asked for it. If we lost him, we'd probably have to start looking for part-time jobs, and eventually everyone would have too busy a schedule to work on music. The band would fall apart.

But it was out of my hands. I leaned my chin against the top of Pyrrha's head, and let myself fall asleep.

—-

We were walking to the library today. She had her hand in mine, the way best friends hold hands. Pyrrha was in sweatpants and one of Jaune's t-shirts that she'd stolen at some point. Her red hair was tied up in a ponytail, messy and unbrushed. As a child, Pyrrha had been an actress, a job she retired from after high school because she felt that the industry was too obsessed with beauty. But remnants of the job had stuck with her, one of which being the practiced, expressive-but-not-too expressive way she moved. Our hands swung, but only lightly, and she walked with a straight back and slightly raised chin, looking to the world like a woman with a purpose. Which she had, of course.

We reached the library just pass noon, and Pyrrha rushed me to the computers. As of yesterday, she'd heard from one of the students that an old gang from the city was gaining power after nearly a decade of hiding in the shadows. I'd told her that there was no way Jaune and Ren were involved, but she'd wanted to be sure, wanted to check the records of both of their families.

"You sit here, Nora, and look up stuff about Ren's family."

"Adopted family, he's an orphan, remember?"

"Why would that matter?"

"I don't know, aren't you supposed to have, like, a super-clean record to be able to adopt a child? I'm pretty sure an ex-gang member wouldn't be able to make it past all the checks they do."

"Then maybe it has something to do with his birth family."

"They didn't even live in Atlas, Pyrrha, they lived in Mistral. How could they be connected?"

"I don't know, Nora, just please look."

"Okay, okay," I brushed her worried look away with the wave of my hand, and she disappeared to talk to the librarian about Jaune, who'd used to hang out here on weekends before he disappeared.

I do wish I had found something on the computers, but I didn't. I didn't know anything about Ren's birth family, and looking up his adoptive father and mother's names only brought up an old newspaper article about a Girl Scouts project and a magazine covering student's with exceptional athletic abilities. It was a little frustrating, but mostly I didn't mind. Maybe something was wrong, that I was so relaxed about all of this. Sure, there was a surface level layer of worry, but once I got past that, what was there? Nothing. It felt like nothing.

"Hey, Nora." I looked up unto the face of Neon, standing at my right. She was the drummer for our rival band, Funky, and she was -admittedly- very talented.

"Hi Neon."

"I heard you cancelled of Clover last night."

"Ren and Jaune aren't feeling well right now, they couldn't play."

"That's too bad. Flint says he's not surprised that you didn't show, he thinks you guys are going to burn out."

"That jerk," I felt heat rush to my cheeks. Flint was always looking for ways to get a jab in about our band.

"Yeah, I know. I've gotta go, can't be caught 'conspiring with the enemy,'" she made little quotation marks with her fingers, "Bye, I guess. I liked your pin." With that, she turned and stalked away.

The denim jacket I'd been wearing had a small pin on the collar, a pink triangle.

I smiled, and went back to work on the computers.