Finding Your People
And I’m Marching On To The Beat I Drum
I’m Not Scared To Be Seen
I Make No Apologies, This Is Me
By the time Willow and Tara reached the Courant Institute building, Willow had craned her neck upward three separate times like she expected the words
Future Genius Convention to appear glowing across the front of it.
“It still sounds fake,” she said as they crossed the lobby. “Math camp at
NYU when you’re twelve! That’s the plot of an inspirational coming-of-age movie. I wonder if we could sell the rights to Hollywood. I couldn’t sell my own rights. Always last to get the punchline. Left alone to think at lunchtime.”
“Got early admission to her dream school and every safety school she applied to…” Tara intoned in a soft sing-song voice.
Willow blushed and smiled softly.
“Abandoned it all for the girl of my dreams. Now there’s my true Hollywood story.”
Tara’s eyes creased affectionately, and she sighed as they walked through the glass doors.
“It feels a lot better picking her up than dropping her off.”
“Definitely less…fraught,” Willow agreed. “Look at this place! It’s like I can smell the mathematics being solved!”
As they closed behind them, the muted hum of Mercer Street was left outside for the bustle of the building. Even in the middle of the day during summer, there was an intensity to the place, as if every classroom and office contained someone trying to solve a problem nobody had solved before. Students of varying ages drifted through in loose clusters, and purple NYU banners and signs pointed toward lecture halls, elevators, and offices in every corner.
A security desk stood near the entrance, its monitors glowing quietly while visitors checked in and students flashed ID cards without breaking stride. They got visitor badges, which they clipped proudly on their belt loops.
Beyond the lobby, broad hallways branched toward classrooms and seminar rooms. Bulletin boards were crowded with flyers for research talks, programming workshops, mathematics colloquia, and graduate student events. Elevators opened and closed constantly, carrying professors, researchers, and students to the upper floors where offices and research groups were tucked away. Snatches of conversation floated through the air: fragments of code, equations, machine learning models, deadlines, proofs. Everywhere, there was a sense of people thinking hard about complicated things.
It smelled faintly of coffee, paper, and the recycled air of a building that never truly slept. Tara guessed this was the smell of math and noted it was very reminiscent of what Willow smelled like after a day of labs.
She smiled to herself as they approached the elevators and pressed the button to the floor Sally had told them she was on. Sally had kept in touch, but honestly seemed so busy that some days they only got a cursory text at bedtime.
Now, though, Tara could already hear familiar voices echoing down the hallway before the elevator doors had even fully opened.
“THEY’RE HERE!”
A blur in mismatched socks and an oversized Courant t-shirt came hurtling toward them. Azalea screeched to a stop at the last possible second, arms pinwheeling for balance before she caught herself against the wall.
“Hi,” she said, breathless, then, with complete seriousness. “Okay. We’ve organized the afternoon chronologically and intellectually.”
Willow blinked.
“I’m sorry?”
Sally appeared behind her, already changed out of her camp shirt and looking significantly more composed.
“She means we planned a route.”
Az nodded.
“Efficiency matters. We learned that here. I already knew, but now I REALLY know!”
Tara barely had time to open her arms before Sally stepped into the hug. Tara held her tightly, immediately noticing two things at once: Sally smelled faintly like the scented marker set Willow had gifted her, and somehow, in only three weeks, she seemed older.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“Hi.”
Sally leaned against her for an extra second before pulling away with a practiced sort of casualness, like she was trying to remember she was twelve and sophisticated now.
Az pointed dramatically down the hallway.
“Tour first. Emotional reunion second.”
“I just gave my sister a hug,” Sally argued.
“That was a preliminary emotional reunion,” Az argued back, pointing again. “We made
plans! You were there! You made most of them.”
Sally glanced at Willow and Tara and sighed.
“We did make plans.”
Willow grinned.
“Lead the way.”
The floor buzzed with end-of-camp energy. Students hauled suitcases down corridors while parents lingered awkwardly near whiteboards filled with equations none of them could understand. Every available surface seemed covered in notes, symbols, or half-finished proofs.
Willow looked ready to ascend into another plane of existence.
“Oh my god,” she whispered reverently. “This is incredible.”
Tara smiled fondly.
“You’re acting as if we brought you to Disney World.”
“Disney World can kick rocks,” Willow replied in awe.
“Along with Goofy!” Sally agreed with a curt nod.
“You still never told me what happened with, um, him,” Tara said with a somewhat concerned crease in her brow.
Sally’s eyes narrowed almost cartoonishly.
“He knows. He knows.”
Az immediately latched onto Willow’s enthusiasm and pulled on her sleeve.
“Okay, come here, this room was for combinatorics lectures, and over there is where Sally annihilated a high school senior from Massachusetts.”
Sally groaned.
“Can you stop saying annihilated? It makes me sound like the Terminator.”
“He deserved it,” Az said as she lifted her nose defiantly.
“He was, like, sixteen,” Sally replied, shaking her head. “I think being beaten by a twelve-year-old girl broke his brain a little.”
Az huffed.
“He was
condescending.”
“That’s true,” Sally admitted, leaning into Tara for affection while trying to seem like she wasn’t. “Az thought every competition was like a West Side Story-style turf war. I also learned what West Side Story is because she puts it on to sleep every night.”
She paused.
“I thought of you every time I heard ‘I Feel Pretty.’ Especially the ‘pretty and witty and gay’ part.”
“That’s very sweet,” Tara whispered back.
Az spun around dramatically as they entered a classroom covered wall to wall with whiteboards.
“This,” she announced. “Was the site of my greatest triumph.”
“There are like six possible stories that could be,” Sally muttered.
Az puffed her chest proudly.
“I solved a problem none of the counselors could solve.”
Sally grinned.
“You also accidentally locked yourself in the study lounge for two hours afterward.”
Az waved a hand.
“That was a separate triumph. It was the only free time I got to update my fanfiction.”
Tara laughed as Willow wandered toward one of the whiteboards covered in formulas. She traced her fingers just above the marker lines without touching them, eyes bright.
“You guys worked all this out?”
Sally nodded, suddenly animated in a way she’d only begun to express since coming to live with Willow and Tara.
“This one was from team rounds,” she explained, stepping beside Willow. “The trick was realizing everybody else was approaching it geometrically when it worked way better algebraically.”
Az grabbed a marker off the tray beneath the board.
“No, no, the
real trick was reimagining the framework entirely.”
“You say that about everything,” Sally scoffed.
“Because everything benefits from framework reimagining,” Az said as she immediately started sketching wildly across an empty section of the board while talking at approximately triple normal speaking speed. “So if you stop thinking linearly and instead treat the variables like relational clusters–”
“She talks like this all the time now,” Sally told Willow quietly.
“And you understand her?” Willow asked with a raised eyebrow, because honestly, she only barely did.
Sally nodded slowly.
“Sadly, yes.”
Tara watched the two girls argue enthusiastically over equations that even Willow didn’t entirely follow.
She didn’t have the context, she told herself.
What struck Tara most wasn’t how smart they were. Tara already knew Sally was smart. Sometimes, she even suspected Sally was smarter than Willow, though she’d never say that aloud. But what really got her attention was how comfortable she looked.
Sally had spent so much of her life trying not to take up space. Trying not to sound too excited about things. Trying not to be ‘too much’ or ‘too noticed’ because being noticed meant being persecuted.
Here, surrounded by kids who debated number theory recreationally, she looked completely at ease, not just with the numbers but with herself.
Az finally capped the marker triumphantly.
“And
that is why symmetry is basically emotional.”
Willow stared at the board for a long moment.
“You know,” she said slowly. “I think I get that. At least 40% anyway.”
Az beamed.
“That’s honestly above average.”
Willow seemed a little affronted at that. Tara wrapped an arm around her waist.
“Don’t worry, honey. I know you’re extraordinary.”
Willow smiled and kissed Tara’s cheek. Sally rolled her eyes.
“Didn’t miss that.”
The tour continued through dorm lounges, lecture halls, cafeterias, and study rooms occupied by exhausted campers sprawled across beanbags with notebooks balanced on their knees.
Every few feet, one of the girls stopped to explain another story.
“That vending machine stole Az’s money four separate times.”
“It targeted me specifically,” Az nodded sagely, before pointing in another direction. “Sally stayed up until three a.m., proving a counselor wrong in that room.”
“He said it couldn’t be solved elegantly,” Sally argued. “I showed him I have elegance up my butt!”
Az dragged them into the student lounge, where several campers were saying emotional goodbyes.
A tall boy waved from across the room.
“Hey, Sally!”
Sally waved back.
“Hey, Tray!”
“You still sending the proof?” he asked, giving her finger guns.
“After we get home!” Sally promised. “I want to look over it one more time.”
The boy gave her the thumbs up and pointed accusingly at Az.
“And you still owe me twenty bucks!”
Az gasped.
“That bet was made under emotional duress.”
Tray arched an eyebrow.
“YOU LOST.”
She waved dismissively.
“Details.”
As they moved on, Willow leaned toward Tara.
“They have little math camp social lives.”
“I know,” Tara smiled back.
“It’s adorable,” Willow grinned. “Was band camp like this?”
Tara’s eyes widened.
“I sincerely hope this was nothing like band camp.”
By the time they finally collected luggage and headed outside, both girls were talking over each other at full speed.
“And then on Saturday, we went to Chinatown. This kid from Topeka didn’t know how to use chopsticks, and Sally tried to convince him you used your nose–”
“And Washington Square Park had this guy playing jazz on upside-down buckets–”
“And we saw a pigeon steal an entire hot dog–”
“I swear I heard him say ‘I’m eating over here’,” Sally said seriously. “Then we went to the Strand bookstore and Az bought six books.”
“They were necessary,” Azalea nodded.
Sally’s brow lifted.
“One of them was literally called Topology for Fun.”
Azalea grinned as she skipped ahead.
“It WAS fun.”
Willow looked deeply impressed by this and shot Tara a look.
“You know, we walk right past it on the way back…”
Tara was unable to deny her love anything.
“Should we stop on the way to check it out?”
It was the least she could give back after Willow’s wonderful morning.
“YAY!” Azalea started to run ahead, only slowed down by the bag bouncing on its wheels behind her.
Willow had to speed up to keep up with her, but it wasn’t really a hardship as her excitement was close to the same level.
The giant red awning stretched across the corner storefront like some kind of holy site.
“Eighteen miles of books,” Willow whispered in awe.
Tara laughed through a labored breath.
“Why does that sound like our credit card is about to be raided?”
The four of them crossed with the crowd as taxis surged past in noisy yellow blurs.
The second the bookstore doors opened, cool air and the smell of old books wrapped around them.
Willow froze.
Not metaphorically, she actually stopped moving mid-step.
“Oh,” she breathed.
Az looked smug.
“That was basically my reaction too.”
Willow turned in a slow circle beneath the handwritten recommendation signs and towering shelves.
“I need everyone to understand that if you lose me in here, I live here now. I don’t need to be rescued.”
“You can’t legally abandon us for a bookstore,” Tara said with an amused smile.
“Can’t I?” Willow asked, for one of the rare times her affection was being pulled somewhere other than Tara. “I mean, I won’t but…”
Az had already wandered ten feet away toward a calculus display table titled: ‘Mathematics: Nature’s Beauty’.
“Found my people,” she announced.
Sally immediately followed after her while Tara and Willow drifted more slowly through the front section.
The store felt alive in a way only old bookstores did. Narrow aisles twisted unexpectedly into tiny alcoves. Shelves stretched so high they required rolling ladders. Every available space overflowed with stacked books and handwritten staff notes.
Willow picked up a copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach and smiled immediately.
“Oh, wow, I haven’t seen this edition in years.”
“You say that like you found a childhood friend,” Tara said gently, inviting Willow to explain at her own pace.
Willow lifted the book just under her nose and inhaled deeply. The smell of old books would only be overtaken by the newborn smell of her own children, but until then, it reigned supreme, as long as any smell belonging to Tara was taken out of the equation.
“I kind of did. It was my babysitter for a whole summer. First book to truly blow my mind.”
A few aisles over, Az had begun constructing a dangerously tall stack in her arms.
“You do not need six
more books,” Sally told her.
Azalea nodded.
“You’re right. I need at least eight.”
Sally raised an eyebrow.
“You can’t even fit those in your suitcase.”
Az looked genuinely offended.
“I brought an empty duffel bag for a reason.”
“You planned for bookstore overflow?” Sally questioned, but regretted it almost immediately.
“I planned for all outcomes,” Azalea nodded seriously.
Sally shook her head and picked up another book.
“The Joy of x,” she read like she knew it was a pun but couldn’t quite figure out why.
Az snatched it immediately.
“OH, MY GOD.”
“That was not an endorsement!” Sally protested.
Azalea was already flicking through it.
“Too late.”
Willow appeared beside them like she’d been summoned psychically by the phrase.
“Oh! Steven Strogatz!” she pointed excitedly at the cover. “This book is amazing.”
Az looked delighted that an adult understood what she was talking about.
For the next several minutes, the two of them disappeared into rapid-fire discussion while Sally and Tara watched with helpless amusement.
“…because recreational math is really about curiosity more than difficulty-”
“Exactly! And people think math has to be rigid when actually the fun part is experimentation-”
“And puzzles!”
“And paradoxes!”
“And impossible geometry!”
Tara leaned toward Sally quietly, realizing something.
“They’re the same person.”
“Little and large,” Sally muttered back. “I didn’t realize it ‘til just now.”
“Me either,” Tara replied and didn’t think Willow would be too grateful for the comparison.
Though she thought Sally was correct about a few things she’d mentioned over the three weeks: Azalea was ‘calmer’, just still in her unique, high-energy kind of way.
Her wildness was now confidence, and with that, she seemed better able to control it. Before, she might have been pacing in circles around the room while having three conversations at once. Now, while still overflowing with excitement and energy, it was focused on the topic at hand, and her body moved with her, not twitching inordinately like it didn’t know where to go.
Tara wasn’t sure exactly what had changed. Az was still Az. Still energetic, still excited. But that energy seemed focused now, and happier in the process.
Eventually, the girls dragged them upstairs, where the rare books floor sat quieter and dimmer than the bustling main level below.
While Tara was tempted by a section of artist biographies, Sally slowed near a shelf of antique mathematics texts displayed behind glass.
“Look at this. They wouldn’t let us get too close when we came here before. There was a grabby guy from Greensboro.”
Even Az lowered her voice instinctively.
One enormous leather-bound volume sat open beneath soft lights, pages yellowed with age and covered in delicate handwritten notation.
Willow stepped closer carefully.
“People figured all this stuff out without computers,” she murmured, sounding genuinely awed. “Just… brains and stubbornness.”
Az scrunched her nose and grinned.
“Hardcore.”
Tara glanced over and smiled at the three of them standing there shoulder-to-shoulder, staring at centuries-old equations like museum artifacts.
There was something oddly emotional about it.
Downstairs again, they eventually migrated toward the fiction section. Az immediately became distracted by science fiction covers, Sally wandered toward fantasy, and Willow disappeared entirely.
Tara found her twenty minutes later, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside a lower shelf, reading the first page of a used novel.
“You got distracted.”
Willow looked up sheepishly.
“I’m book shopping.”
“You’re actively reading,” Tara replied, bending down so they were eye-level.
Willow turned her nose up indignantly.
“Those are related activities.”
Tara smiled and offered her a hand up.
By the time they reached the checkout counter, Az’s stack had become genuinely alarming.
The cashier raised an eyebrow.
“Starting a library?”
“She kind of already has one,” Sally said.
Az carefully placed another book onto the pile at the last second.
“Okay, but this one was fifty percent off.”
“You said that about the last four,” Sally shook her head, but with affection. “You can’t keep using math as a justification for more books.”
Azalea looked at Sally like she was crazy.
“I can use math as a justification for EVERYTHING!”
Willow’s purchases weren’t much better.
Tara stared at the total while Willow avoided eye contact.
“We can never come back here,” Tara informed her.
“Yes, we can,” Willow argued defensively.
Tara raised an eyebrow.
“No, because you’ll bankrupt us.”
Willow grinned.
“It’ll be worth it. We can decorate a cute box to live in. You did tell me you’d follow me anywhere…”
Tara just raised an eyebrow.
Outside again, the late afternoon sun painted the sidewalks gold and cast a golden glimmer over each of them.
Az hugged her paper shopping bags to her chest like treasure.
“I’m genuinely happier than I’ve ever been.”
“You say that every fifteen minutes,” Sally pointed out.
Az just skipped ahead.
“Yes, but this time I’m holding calculus, which is basically my bible, so you know I really mean it.”
Willow laughed so hard a small wheeze came out, and they had to stop for a water break.
After leaving all of the bags and luggage back in the hotel room, which the girls seemed excited about despite it not being all that different from a dorm room, they headed toward the theater district.
The streets buzzed with tourists and traffic and neon signs beginning to glow against the darkening sky. Tara had suggested lunch, but apparently, Willow had pre-ordered special snacks and drinks to have during the show, so they each just grabbed a pretzel to eat on the way.
Sally walked between Willow and Tara while Az zigzagged unpredictably around them like an excitable satellite, but notably, she never went out of their sight, and it was less chaotic than both Willow and Tara were expecting with her.
“Why does it smell like pee everywhere anyway? I kept asking, but no one would answer me.”
The questions, however, were as inquisitive as ever.
Sally rolled her eyes.
“It’s not pee, it’s weed,” she said as if she hadn’t just been informed of that a day or two ago herself by an older kid.
Willow and Tara exchanged alarmed looks.
“Let’s stick with pee,” Willow said as she brought her hand down on Sally’s shoulder.
They did not need Azalea’s mom hounding them for informing her daughter that.
It was odd enough that they hadn’t had their phones blow up already from her.
“My mom says the poppies outside our house are like weeds,” Azalea replied, rather naïve for a girl who was so smart.
“Nuh uh, it’s like…dandelions, I guess?” Sally continued with undue confidence. “And people put them in like…brownies and stuff?”
The older kid hadn’t been very explicit.
This time, the looks Willow and Tara shot each other were a mix of relief and slight amusement.
“I don’t know why anyone would want to eat them, though!” Sally shook her head like she had the wisdom of the universe in her brain.
“Yeah, no…no idea,” Willow said, clearing her throat silently and checking her watch. “Hey, um, we need to hurry up a bit.”
“We’re not late, are we?” Tara asked as they picked up pace.
Willow put her hand on Tara’s back and gently pushed her forward.
“Just, um…come on.”
As they turned into Times Square, Willow suddenly stopped them all.
“Here! Hang on a minute.”
They all stopped, but the kids got antsy quickly and were distracted by all the hubbub.
“Willow, what’s going on?” Tara asked when Willow continued, just looking up.
“Just…one minute!” Willow replied in frustration.
The other three exchanged confused looks while the minute passed until Willow started jumping up and down, pointedly excited.
“There, there! Look! Quick!”
There, in the middle of Times Square, a giant billboard displayed a picture of Azalea and Sally beneath a large banner that said ‘Well Done!’
Azalea grabbed Sally, and they shared in shock before looking at each other and jumping up and down, screaming.
Tara looked at Willow in utter surprise.
“How the hell did you organize that?”
“I got a few tricks up my sleeve,” Willow grinned back, then scrunched her nose sheepishly. “It’s surprisingly cheap to rent a billboard for a minute. I just thought it might be something they didn’t do already. I booked it three weeks ago and spent the last two days panicking we’d miss the time slot.”
Tara wanted to sweep Willow up right there and then, but settled for putting their hands together and squeezing tightly.
The billboard was all Sally and Az could talk about as they made their way to the theater, figuring out who they could brag about it to and who looked best fifty feet in the air.
“There it is!” Willow pointed dramatically the second the Lyric Theatre came into view.
“You’re more excited than we are,” Sally said.
“Who wouldn’t be?” Willow replied breathlessly.
She stopped dead in front of the giant Harry Potter and the Cursed Child sign.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “We’re actually here.”
Az tilted her head.
“I thought adulthood meant pretending not to care about things.”
Tara laughed.
“Not in this family.”
Inside the theater, Willow immediately collected her souvenir program, commemorative cup, and something involving a glowing golden snitch that Tara wasn’t sure had a purpose.
“It lights up,” Willow defended against the look she got.
“You say that like it explains anything,” Tara returned with a shake of her head.
“It explains
everything,” Az said as she rolled her own snitch between her palms.
Willow just looked smug.
Their seats were incredible. Perfect view of the stage with no obstruction and leg room to boot. They each settled with their snacks around them, and Willow unwrapped her chocolate frog.
“These things are doing a lot to redeem the frog community,” she said through a mouthful of chocolate.
As the theater dimmed, Willow physically bounced once in her chair.
Tara leaned closer and rested her head on Willow’s shoulder.
The opening music began.
Willow went absolutely still. Tara wasn’t entirely sure whether she’d done that or the orchestra had.
For the next several hours, Willow reacted to every effect with complete sincerity and delight. She gasped at scene changes. She whispered theories. She clutched Tara’s arm every time stage magic happened.
At one point, an actor appeared to vanish in front of them.
Willow’s jaw dropped open.
“How?”
“Special effects,” Sally whispered.
“No,” Willow said firmly. “Wizardry.”
Sally rolled her eyes but appeared to be enjoying the show anyway.
By intermission, the girls were openly making fun of her.
Az sipped her (diet) soda thoughtfully.
“You know, statistically speaking, Willow is currently outperforming us in visible excitement.”
“By a lot,” Sally agreed.
Willow looked smug about this accusation.
“I’m embracing wonder.”
“You almost stood up during the duel scene,” Sally countered.
“I was being SUPPORTIVE!” Willow defended.
Tara laughed so hard she nearly spilled her drink. She had missed this banter.
The second act somehow made Willow even more emotional.
By the curtain call, she was applauding with the intensity of someone personally invested in the continued success of theater as an art form and a force for good in the world.
“That,” she announced as they exited onto the street. “Was AMAZING.”
Tara bumped her shoulder gently.
“Better than you expected?”
“So much better,” Willow said, clutching her heart.
Az nodded seriously.
“The time-turner staging alone was worth detailed analysis.”
Willow immediately pointed at her.
“See? This is why I love you.”
Tara didn’t mention the names she’d called her just a couple of weeks ago in private.
Tribeca was quieter than Midtown by the time they arrived after a ride on the subway.
The city had settled into nighttime rhythms, storefront lights glowing warmly against the sidewalks. Willow spotted the Ghostbusters firehouse before anyone else.
“There!” she yelped.
She took off down the sidewalk with such enthusiasm that Tara actually stumbled back.
“She’s running.”
“She’s absolutely running,” Sally added, deadpan.
“It’s a historical landmark,” Willow called back defensively.
“It’s a garage door,” Sally called to her.
Willow stopped in front of the firehouse and stared upward with genuine joy.
The familiar red sign hung over the building exactly like every photograph and movie shot she’d ever seen. She’d been in New York more than once with her parents, but something like this had always been considered too frivolous for her to see. Ghostbusters had been one of the movies she and Xander and Jesse had watched together as kids, and her enjoyment of it had made her ‘one of the guys’ with them, a position important to her growing up.
Short of seeing an actual mermaid from her and Tara’s connection to The Little Mermaid, this was probably the most magical childhood artifact she could witness.
“Oh, wow.”
Az squinted critically.
“You know, architecturally speaking, it’s smaller than I expected.”
Willow glanced over at Az like she suddenly remembered all of those names.
“You are ruining this experience for me.”
“Surely spatial realism can only enhance it,” Az challenged.
Tara pulled out her phone quickly to diffuse.
“Okay, picture time.”
Willow immediately grabbed Sally and Az around the shoulders.
“No, wait, everybody has to look serious. Like we’re paranormal investigators.”
“Why can’t I have a normal sister?” Sally groaned automatically.
Tara smiled softly at the word even as Willow gasped dramatically.
“You called me your sister!”
Sally groaned.
“I take it back.”
“Nope,” Willow replied, popping the p. “Too late. Canon now.”
Az raised one hand solemnly.
“I believe in ghosts but only mathematically.”
Tara looked deeply confused, but that wasn’t unusual with their little family. She stepped in front of them and crouched down, lifting her phone high above her head.
“Everyone say Ghostbusters!”
The picture captured Willow and Az grinning with joy, Sally giving them side-eye, and Tara wearing her usual expression of polite bewilderment in the front.
Eventually, hunger drove them toward a tiny pizza place that was crowded but had a perfect booth for them by the window.
The smell hit them before they even got inside: cheese, garlic, warm dough, and grease.
“Now,” Willow announced as they slid into the booth. “THIS is the authentic New York experience.”
“We already had New York pizza,” Sally said, bored.
“Not with us, you didn’t!” Willow retorted, then glanced toward the entrance. “Oh, hey, Buffy! You found us!”
Buffy looked over at the sound of her name and waved, plenty of shopping bags shaking on her wrist.
Tara frowned just slightly. Money was already tight for the Summers family, which made the designer logos swinging from Buffy’s wrist difficult to ignore. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was part of her ‘going wild’. Still, it wasn’t her place to judge Buffy’s spending habits, and she quickly replaced her frown with a smile.
“Did you have a nice day, Buffy?”
Buffy lifted her sunglasses above her head and revealed weary eyes, but she did smile.
“I certainly experienced New York.”
The slices arrived, bigger than the paper plates they were served on.
Az stared at hers in awe.
“This is structurally unsound.”
“That’s part of the charm,” Willow said, expertly folding hers in half.
Sally copied her immediately.
Tara shook her head.
“Good god that’s a lot of pizza.”
Az took a massive bite and immediately hissed in pain.
“Hot-hot-hot-hot.”
“Slow down,” Sally laughed.
“Worth it,” Az mumbled through molten cheese.
The restaurant buzzed around them with overlapping conversations, clattering dishes, and music playing faintly somewhere near the kitchen.
Outside, taxis streaked past the windows in blurred yellow flashes. They decided to get one of those back to the hotel since they’d all done the subway already, plus it was another experience under their belt. Willow offered to grab a second cab for Buffy since they wouldn’t all fit in one, but she said she wanted to experience the energy of the city for as long as possible.
Arriving back at the hotel room, Sally looked exhausted.
Not unhappy or annoyed, just full of pizza and life.
Three weeks of learning, excitement, and independence sat softly around her shoulders.
With Azalea in the shower, Tara reached over and brushed a strand of hair back from Sally’s face.
“So,” she asked gently. “Was camp everything you hoped?”
Sally looked down at her lap for a second before a smile tugged at her mouth.
“More. There were people who actually understood what we were talking about.”
“There are people who understand what you’re talking about here, too,” Willow pointed out.
“Yeah, but usually after explanations and diagrams,” Sally replied with a soft shrug.
She leaned back against the bed.
“I didn’t feel weird here.”
That a year ago, they could barely convince her to attend her new school wasn’t lost on anyone.
The words landed quietly between them.
Tara’s chest tightened.
Because Sally wasn’t weird. Neither was Az. They were brilliant and passionate and enthusiastic and occasionally overwhelming in the way bright people often were.
But the world had a way of making girls like them feel like too much.
Willow reached across and squeezed Sally’s hand.
“You know,” she said softly. “Finding your people changes everything.”
Sally smiled a little wider.
“Also, we learned enough advanced math to become supervillains.”
“So you think you want to come to NYU to go to college?” Willow asked with an approving grin.
Sally surprised them both with the speed of her answer.
“Nah.”
Tara raised an eyebrow.
“You seemed like you really loved it.”
“I did,” Sally answered with a quick nod. “But it’s not my whole life like it is for Az.
She should definitely come here. I don’t even know if I wanna go to college. And if I do, I don’t know if it’d be here. I’m only 12. I mean, I like math, but I don’t want it to be everything I do.”
Tara leaned in and kissed the side of Sally’s head.
“Yes, you are. You don’t have to know anything yet.”
Willow nodded quickly.
“If I were where I thought I would be at your age, I’d be married to Xander, and we’d still be holding weekly meetings of the I hate Cordelia club.”
Sally looked utterly befuddled.
“Huh?”
Willow blushed.
“Never mind. What I’m saying is, nothing is set in stone. The truth about life, kid, is that you never stop solving for x.”
Sally slowly nodded and smiled.
“Please don’t tell Az that. I have to sleep next to her all night.”
Willow and Tara laughed.
“We’re proud of you,” Tara said, squeezing Sally’s hand before standing. “And not because of what you’ve achieved. But because of who you are.”
Sally wrapped her arms around a pillow and buried her head into it for a moment before lifting her gaze.
“Can we play D&D when we get home?”
Willow nodded keenly.
“Yeah, I’ll talk to Fred and see if she wants to get a campaign going.”
“Cool,” Sally smiled.
“Cool,” Willow agreed.
Tara caught Willow’s eye and gave her a sly wink, which Willow returned.
Now the only problem was how the hell to get all those books into their luggage?
by taranwillow4ever » Wed Jun 10, 2026 7:08 pm 
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