My Romance Life System

After everyone left, the apartment felt different. Not empty—charged. Like the air before a storm.

Kofi found himself pacing. Thea sat at the table, sketchbook open but pencil unmoving.

"They meant it," she said finally. "About helping."

"Yeah."

"That's..." She trailed off, looking for the word. "Weird?"

"Very weird."

His phone buzzed. Group text from Nina: Emergency strategy meeting. My house. Twenty minutes. Bring Thea.

He showed Thea the message. She looked like she might throw up.

"We don't have to go," he said.

She stared at the phone for a long moment. "No. Let's... let's go."

Nina's basement looked like a craft store had exploded. Poster boards covered every surface. Markers were sorted by color in old coffee cans. A laminating machine sat on a card table, looking vaguely threatening.

"Welcome to headquarters," Nina announced when they arrived. Jake was already there, laptop open, typing furiously. Ruby sat cross-legged on the floor, organizing what looked like paint samples.

"This is excessive," Kofi said.

"This is prepared," Nina corrected. She grabbed a piece of poster board and wrote 'THE PLAN' at the top in dramatic letters. "Okay, so I've been thinking—"

"Dangerous," Jake muttered.

"—and Jessica's totally going to try something if Thea enters the art show. So we need a plan."

"I already looked up the submission rules," Jake said, turning his laptop around. "Entries are due Friday at 3 PM. They display them in the gym on Saturday morning, and the festival runs Saturday afternoon through evening."

Ruby looked up from her paint samples. "My mom's running the PTA booth. She'll be there all day."

"Perfect," Nina said, writing 'RUBY'S MOM = ADULT SUPERVISION' on the board. "What else?"

Kofi watched Thea shrink into herself as they discussed her like she wasn't there. "Guys," he said. "Maybe we should ask Thea what she wants?"

They all turned to look at her. She clutched her sketchbook tighter.

"I just..." She took a breath. "I don't want her to ruin them. The drawings."

"She won't," Nina said fiercely. "We won't let her."

"How?"

Nina grinned. "Jake, tell her about your Jessica spreadsheet."

Jake's face went red. "It's not a spreadsheet about Jessica. It's a schedule optimization matrix that happens to include—"

"He knows where she'll be during the festival," Nina interrupted. "Based on what clubs she's in and what booths she signed up for."

"That's deeply creepy," Kofi said.

"It's publicly available information!" Jake protested. "The volunteer schedule is posted outside the main office!"

"Still creepy."

"But useful," Ruby added quietly. "If we know where she is..."

"We can keep Thea away from her," Nina finished. She turned back to the board. "Okay, new plan. We submit the art together, as a group. Safety in numbers."

"I can laminate them," Ruby offered. "To protect them. My mom has a machine at home too."

"Won't that look weird?" Thea asked, her voice small.

"Who cares?" Nina said. "It's practical. Plus, laminated stuff looks professional."

Jake was typing again. "According to the rules, all submissions need to include an artist statement. Fifty words or less."

"An artist what?" Thea looked panicked.

"Just a little thing about why you drew them," Ruby explained. "It doesn't have to be fancy."

"I can't write about—" Thea stopped, her face flushing.

"I'll help," Kofi said. "We all will."

Nina grabbed another poster board. "Okay, let's be real about this. What's Jessica actually going to do? Call you names? Big deal. She does that anyway."

"She could—" Thea's voice dropped. "She could tell everyone about... things."

The basement went quiet. They all knew what 'things' meant. The rumors. The counselor visits. The medication Thea took every morning that she thought nobody noticed.

"So what?" Jake said suddenly.

Everyone stared at him.

His face was red, but he kept talking. "I mean it. So what if she tells people? Half the school is on something. I take stuff for ADHD. Ruby has anxiety meds. Nina—"

"Has rage issues that definitely need pharmaceutical intervention," Nina finished cheerfully. "The point is, she can't shame you for something that isn't shameful."

"Easy for you to say," Thea whispered.

"No," Ruby said, surprising everyone with the firmness in her voice. "It's not easy. But it's true."

Kofi watched his sister process this. These weird, medicated, anxious kids telling her she wasn't alone. It was messy and imperfect, but it was real.

"We need code names," Jake announced suddenly, clearly trying to change the subject. "For the operation."

"Absolutely not," Kofi said.

"I'm Eagle Eye," Jake continued, ignoring him.

"That's terrible," Nina said. "If we're doing code names, I'm obviously Phoenix."

"Why are you obviously Phoenix?"

"Because I rise from the ashes of your terrible ideas."

They devolved into arguing about code names, which somehow turned into a debate about whether phoenixes were technically birds, which led to Ruby pulling up etymology websites on her phone.

Thea leaned over to Kofi. "Are they always like this?"

"Pretty much."

"It's..." She paused, watching Nina try to wrestle Jake's laptop away while he yelled about password protection. "Kind of nice?"

"Yeah," he agreed. "Kind of nice."

By the time they left Nina's house, they had a plan. It wasn't military-precise or strategy-perfect. It was held together with laminating sheets, Ruby's mom's PTA connections, and Jake's creepy-but-useful Jessica schedule.

But it was theirs.

That night, Thea spread her drawings across the dining table. Five pieces. Five birds. Five parts of herself she was getting ready to show the world.

"Which ones?" Kofi asked, looking over her shoulder.

She pointed to each one. The mountain hawk. The resilient sparrow. The bright blue jay. The common robin. And the last one—a wing, still unfinished, reaching toward something beyond the paper's edge.

"That one's not done."

"I know." She picked up her pencil. "I have until Friday."

He watched her start drawing, adding feathers to the wing with careful, deliberate strokes. No erasing this time. Just forward motion.

His phone buzzed. Nina again: Forgot to mention - I'm making team t-shirts.

He showed Thea. She actually laughed—small, but real.

"We're going to look ridiculous," she said.

"Completely ridiculous," he agreed.

She kept drawing. Outside, the world was still full of Jessicas and judgment and things that could go wrong. But inside, with her weird new guard squad texting increasingly absurd t-shirt designs, Thea was creating something beautiful.

One feather at a time.