Rising Shards

It was really cold out, but not unbearably. In a way, the cold helped calm my warm everything down a little. I sat on Kalei’s patio steps with her beside me, handing me tissues.

“You good?” Kalei asked.

I blew my nose into another tissue. “In a second.”

“Just…yell at me already, please.” Kalei said. “I know you’re mad.”

I thought about calling Stella and asking for a ride to just spend the night at the apartment. But that would suck and would ruin my weekend even more. And I didn't need two terrible weekends in a row. Plus, I’d have to explain what was going on to Diast too, which would be super awkward, and I’d probably cry a bunch.

Thinking about Stella made me think about what she said earlier in the day. “My life advice for you today is that talking it out may be hard, but in the long run it’s a lot better than keeping a secret even if you’re trying to protect someone.”

I didn’t really have any secret I was keeping, but it did give me an idea.

“I’m not going to,” I said. “If I yell at you, the night’s just gonna get stupider, and it’s already pretty stupid. But if we stop and take a breath here, we can maybe save this and get things better.”

“OK, but you should be mad at me.” Kalei said.

“Do you want me to yell at you or something? Because I don’t really want to.”

“I just ruined this whole night, and made Lillia get all scary and leave and made Oka freak out at you.” Kalei said. “And that made you cry.”

“But you said you did it so things wouldn’t get worse with Ko…so in that way I’m kinda glad?” I said. “I think we can figure all this out. I don’t know if I could figure out Ko trying to take Oka from me.”

“Hrrgh, I hate drama.” Kalei said.

“Me too. Which is why we’re gonna fix this and have a fun night after!” I said.

“Maybe we should just call it, Zates,” Kalei sighed. “It’s pretty late.”

“It’s not super late, we can fix this.” I said. “We still have to have your late-night figuring stuff out talk, right?”

“You seriously still wanna help me with that after this?” Kalei asked.

“Kalei, I’m not like suddenly not your friend, I said I’d help you with it,” I said. “And I want to! And I’m sure Oka and Lillia will also once we get this taken care of.”

I picked up all the tissues and headed for the door to throw them out inside.

“Hold on, let’s throw those out in the garbage can out here,” Kalei said. “My mom can’t find out about this, or she’ll call someone to start looking for them. Or go look for them herself. She'd absolutely start looking herself, we don't need her to do that.”

“We can be discreet,” I said. “Next we have to figure out where they ended up.”

Kalei showed me where her outdoor garbage can was, and I chucked the tissues.

“You wanna throw me in here, too?” Kalei asked. “Cuz I’m garbage and all?”

“Quit that,” I said. “That doesn’t help anything.”

“Right, sorry…” Kalei said. “I do feel really bad about all this.”

“Then put that energy into fixing this!” I said.

“OK…where do you want to start there?” Kalei asked.

“Worst case they called home, and their parents are on the way.” I said. “But I can’t see Oka doing that."

“If I got like that, I’d want to go somewhere that feels safe. I always want to go outside.” Kalei said. “And she did go outside. So maybe we do a quick scan around the block?”

“That sounds good to me,” I said. “Do the Matora sisters stop by here a lot?” I asked. “Any idea where they’d be?”

“Usually, Kai parks a bit away so they’re probably all over there around the bend of the street. Ko always gets Kai to drive her around, so I bet they’re parked around here somewhere. Lillia’s probably there. Should I go get them?”

I thought about it very carefully. “I think…you should talk with Oka first. Explain what happened and then you can apologize. I can check in on Lillia first.”

“Wait, why? Don’t you wanna make sure your girlfriend is alright?” Kalei asked.

I didn’t want to see Ko again so soon, but I wanted to confirm to Lillia I wasn’t into her like that so that wouldn’t loom over our friendship.

“I…think it would work best if I go to Lillia and Ko first.” I said.

“That isn’t very confident,” Kalei said. “You’re good with Ko there?”

“I’ve dealt with worse.” I said. “My parents forcibly turned me into a monster to try and awaken Endora or whatever, and I got out of that. So Ko’s nothing compared to them.”

“Damn. I’m…really sorry.” Kalei said.

“Yeah…” I said. “But if that mess taught me one thing, it’s that I don’t want to be a doormat anymore. And the doormat thing to do would be to just let everyone leave and to end this night on a sad and crappy note. So we’re not going to do that.”

Kalei nodded, and we went over our plan once more.

“I’ll go run around the block and see if I can find Oka,” Kalei said. “And you’re seriously cool with checking in with Lillia first while I get her?”

“Yep,” I said. “I can be the main event for Oka help tonight.”

“…kay.”

“I’m not mad at you.” I said.

“Are you sure? You can yell at me quick.” Kalei said.

“No.” I said and patted her head. “This all sucks, but it’d be infinitely worse if you told Ko I had feelings for Oka, and she went after her right away or me or something. Thank you for that.”

Kalei let me pat her head a bit longer.

“Zeta?” Kalei said.

“Yeah?”

“You’re a good friend.” Kalei said.

“You are too.” I said.