Rising Shards

Ko offered to be the one to beg forgiveness from Mahina Koridia for the table they broke so they could be granted access inside, but Kai figured she should probably apologize with her as well. While they knocked on the front door, I stood awkwardly with Latte and Roux, unsure of what to say. They presented their gas station findings to Lillia, claiming they’d followed her list very closely. I kept checking the sidewalk, hoping Kalei was able to find Oka. I hadn’t received any texts, which had me concerned. But I didn’t have long to feel that way, as the two arrived, both smiling. I ran over to them.

“Hi Zeta,” Oka said sheepishly.

“Hey, are you alright?” I said.

Oka took a deep breath. I thought for a second she was going to get upset again, but she suddenly yelled out, “ZETA! I’m in it!”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but before I could even form an “I, uh—” Oka screamed again.

“I will fight for you! I’ll fight for us!”

Kalei and Oka high fived. The others turned to look our way, but went back to what they were doing.

“Just like we practiced,” Kalei said.

“Well, that was the first time I said it all shouting-y…” Oka said. “I thought about maybe saying it a little quieter, but Kalei said I need to show I really care, and if I did it quietly that wouldn’t show that, but I was a bit worried since I kind of very much yelled at you earlier and I feel so bad about that and…yeah.”

Oka looked like she was a flower that would instantly wilt if I didn’t react positively right away, so I held my hands out to high five her and Kalei. “I’ll…fight for you too!”

“Yes!” Kalei said, smacking my hand.

Oka high fived me as well, not with as much intensity as Kalei, but more than she usually did.

“Kalei…got you really pumped up.” I said.

“Yeah, I got her coached up pretty good.” Kalei said.

 “Kalei’s a good listener, too,” Oka said, which made Kalei look very proud. “And she said something about you being the main…event help? Or something?”

“I uh maybe said something of the sort…” I said. I was mostly just relieved to see her looking like herself again and not so anxious.

“If you guys want a good place to talk in private, you can sit in the gym, my mom’s gotta be done by now.” Kalei looked to the front of her house. “Oh my god, are they trying to apologize?”

The Matora sisters were practically on their knees begging Mahina to forgive them for the table.

“Kai wants pizza,” I said.

“The Matora sisters will do anything for food.” Kalei said. “I’ll try to smooth things over so we can get out of the freaking cold.”

“Ask if we can join your party as well.” Roux demanded. “I too want pizza for the suffering I’ve endured here.”

“What suffering have you endured?” Kalei asked, rolling her eyes.

“I have been without coffee for fifteen minutes,” Latte said. She took a sip of coffee from her thermos. “Ah, much better.”

As a group, we all approached the front door.

“OK, I just looked up that exact table, it’s way less than five hundred dollars.” Ko said, holding up her phone.

“Let me see,” Mahina said. “Mmm, no, that’s not the same one.”

“Ma, just let em in, Ko will argue all night until she gets pizza.” Kalei said.

“Fine, Big Mama Mahina decrees that the twins can enter my house on a temporary basis, but they cannot spend the night.” Mahina said.

“Ask about uuuuus.” Roux said, tugging at Kalei’s shirt.

“Can Latte and Roux stay too?” Kalei asked. “Please also say they cannot spend the night.”

“Depends,” Mahina said, sniffing the air. She patted Latte’s head. “If this one can pour me a cup of whatever kind of coffee she wields. Oh! Are you looking for another coffee maker? I had a buy one, get one free and it’s just been sitting there…”

We were finally back inside. It felt like the train of the sleepover had taken a massive detour after getting switched to the wrong track, but we were finally looping around to the right one.

“I will never understand teenage girls. How long were you out there in the cold?” Mahina said.

“We had some stuff to take care of.” Kalei said.

“Well, I hope it’s taken care of, then,” Mahina said. “I guess as they say, the rain always ends. And that’s good.”

There was one more thing we had to take care of. Kalei showed Oka and I over to the gym and told us to take all the time we needed.

“Whoaaaa,” Oka said, looking at the fancy machines. “I think this is nicer than the gyms at Rising Shards.”

“They have more machines, but I don’t think they have any this high tech.” I said.

We weren’t sure where to sit, so we found a spot that had mats and exercise balls and set up shop there, so to speak. I could tell talking to me about what happened was making Oka’s anxiousness start to creep back in.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked.

“Am I feeling better?” Oka asked. “Don’t you want to yell at me and tell me how dumb I was being?”

“No? Why does everyone want me to be mad at them tonight?” I asked. “I’d like if we can just talk this out now, though.”

“I…don’t even know where to start.” Oka said.

I moved to sit in front of her, holding her now trembling hands.

“Is it starting again?” I asked.

“No, I think I’m good, but…” Oka said. “How could you tell…?”

“Earlier, you looked like I felt when…when I got all scared like that.” I said. “The first time was when I had my memory trial. Do you need a water, or—” Oka gripped tighter to me as I moved, looking for the nearest water source. I sat back down.

“Just don’t leave me,” Oka said. “I just…gotta breathe it out again…”

I stayed with Oka as she took deep breaths. I rubbed her wrists gently, unsure of what else to do. When I had a panic attack and she was there, just having her close helped. When I had one in the void alone and managed to call Stella, she had me take slow, deep breaths as it was at its worst.

“It’s been like an hour since the panic attack and I’m still shaking,” Oka said. “I already talked it out with Kalei, why am I still…? What’s wrong with me? I’m so pathetic…”

“Shhh,” I said. “You’re not pathetic.”

Oka shivered. For a while she took deep breaths, just like Stella had me do. I sat beside her and rubbed her back a bit.

“Sorry.” Oka said.

“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “It’s alright for you to struggle, you know.”

Oka took another deep breath. She seemed to be settling more.

I remembered a while back when after I learned the truth about Ovie and Jeans’ relationship and my part in it, I’d let everything fester so long it blew up. Dr. Diast found me crying by a fountain and brought me to her office to talk it out. And then that sort of happened on fast forward after the fight with Jeans. Maybe Oka had just hit that point of her own. But what thoughts were she specifically letting fester? I tried to work it out backwards.

“So the stuff Ko said made you scared about…us?” I asked.

“It’s not just what she said,” Oka said. “I didn’t really believe Ko. I was sure it was something she got wrong because she has a brain the size of a kiwi fruit. Still, thinking about you having feelings for someone else probably didn’t help everything else.”

“Everything else…like what?” I asked.

“Like…I had a bad few weeks.” Oka said. “Which feels so selfish to say after what you went through.”

“It’s not, you’re allowed to have bad weeks too.” I said.

I let Oka explain her whole awful time the last few days, which was heartbreaking as she was so giddy a week earlier. She told me about this girl named Clover who was pushing some show on Oka, only for the show to take a depressing turn and for Clover to tell Oka that it was realistic for all relationships, and that she should watch out for me. I could only assume Clover was a friend of Ovie’s or someone who’d heard the rumors about my specific involvement in the whole mess between Ovie, Jeans, and myself. The whole thing made Oka grow a stress tail that fell off right away.

“With the show,” Oka said. “I kind of…pasted us onto them. Them getting together was sort of like us getting together, so it was nice to relive it in a way. But then, right as they got together, one had their past love show up. And the other got asked out by someone else. And they were like immediately tempted. And then they also immediately cheated on each other. And the next episode was about them breaking up.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Just like really casually and bluntly and horribly. And I dunno, I sleepily got too invested in them and it felt like it was happening to me.”

“That show…was it Teensly Street?” I asked.

“Oh my god,” Oka said.

“What?”

“Yes? How did you know?” Oka asked.

“Dude, that show is misery writing, nothing good ever happens on it, and if it does, it’s just to lure you in for something even worse to happen because they got you thinking things would be alright. I even saw some headlines about how badly they handled a gay couple, and I bet it was that one you were talking about.”

“Kalei called it misery…something. I don’t need to repeat the other half.” Oka said. “It’s so not fair, I watched two whole seasons watching them get together. And then like an episode later they started cheating on each other or dating other people and broke up! And then Evonne got hit by a bus!  That’s just…cruel.”

“I say no more of it,” I said. “Unless I’m there to make fun of it to ease the misery of it. Oh man, no wonder…and all the other stuff too, but. That show’s a lot. OK, actually, that sounds kind of controlling. Watch it if you want to, but just make sure it doesn't hurt.”

“No, I think you're right." Oka said. "Plus, it might take some of the sting out of it if we goof on it together."

Oka was now holding my tail. Her hands didn’t feel like they were shaking as much.

“What was it like growing a stress tail?” I asked.

“I didn’t really feel it,” Oka said. “Just noticed it right before it fell off.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know how bad you always wanted a regular Cani tail.”

“I know! So not fair!” Oka said. “At least I still have your tail to hold.”

Oka continued petting my tail.

“If it needs to be said again, I’ve never had any feelings like that for Lillia past like, her being a cool-yet-scary friend.” I said.

“I know, and Ko said the stuff about Ovie which was all wrong too. But I was in Teensly Street mode, and I totally…freaked out, ugh.” She buried her face in her hands. “I suck.”

“You don’t suck.” I said. “Anxiety and panic attacks happen. We just have to go easy on ourselves after them. I had a big blow up a few days after Fang Moon Web, I think I mentioned it in our texts, but Stella just wrapped me in blankets. And on that note.”

I had Oka sit up for a second so I could wrap a blanket around us. But I couldn’t find a blanket, so I settled for a towel instead. I of course made sure it was a clean fresh towel, not one of the used ones which were clearly put away in a used towel bin. I actually got her to laugh for a second by draping a towel around her shoulders.

“It’s what Stella did for me,” I said. “She put on good comfort TV, so we’ll have to put on some SpyYasmey later. She told me that it hits everyone differently, and when it hits, you have to let yourself recover.”

“Stella is very wise…” Oka said. “Also, I wouldn’t ever date Lillia either, sorry. She’s my best not-you friend but she’s very much not my type romantically, and she’s just a friend!”

“And she’s into Ko Matora.” I said.

“Yeah, her and Naomi.” Oka said.

“Lillia told me! Prefect Naomi? Ew.”

“Yep.” Oka said. “Honestly ew to both, but I’m not gonna question her taste. She probably wouldn’t like me saying that, but I think it’s alright. We deserve some payback after she watched us make out on the Fang Moon Web trip.”

“Fair.” I said. “If it makes you feel better too, I wouldn’t date my best not-you friend, either. Kalei's too mean even when she’s just joking, and she’s like more of a sister type-friend so it’d feel Three Hill Sunrise Z-ending-y. Plus she’s still figuring her stuff out, so it’d feel like manipulative to do anything there, especially for someone I’m not into romantically?”

“True, yeah.” Oka said.

“And it’d break poor Nikki’s heart if she did all that for Kalei and when we get her back it turns out Kalei’s dating someone else.”

“I don’t wanna see someone so spacy have any heartbreak.” Oka said.

"Yeah..." I said. Oka bit the inside of her cheek. “Are you…still in Teensly Street mode?”

“I dunno,” Oka said. “I’m kinda still unwinding from it? Like it got all tied up in the anxiety I was feeling already, I guess. Since the me-alike on the show randomly chose someone new over the you-alike, can I just say I especially wouldn’t cheat on you with her, or anyone else? Well, I guess we can’t know the future, but I very much would like to have a future where I don’t ever cheat on you.”

“Right back at you,” I said. “I…I’ve been having a lot of feelings about cheating lately.”

“Huh?” Oka said. “Oh, oh! Not like thinking about doing it, like. Because of…”

“Yeah, since I was technically…someone who was the…is there a good word for it? For being the other person in an affair unknowingly?” I asked.

“Probably, but I can’t think of it.” Oka said. “Unwitting mistress, maybe?”

“I just think about what I accidentally did to Ovie there and it kind of breaks my heart. So I really don’t want to ever cheat, especially on you.” I said.

“Man, with your Jeans and Ovie stuff, Kitty, Berin, all my family stuff, losing our friends to Wildfire Hearts, the whole void trip, the play, your club, choir, having to move out…we have a lot going on, don’t we?” Oka asked. She counted each thing by gently dotting the tip of my tail on the ground.

“And that’s not even all the school stuff we have to do!” I said. “I’d say we’re taking things pretty well, all that considered.” I remembered something Diast told me when she was helping with my emotional eruption that made me feel a lot better. “In spite of all that, it’s really impressive. Pat yourself on the back for that at least, girl.”

“I like the way you think, Zeta.”

I thought about Lillia’s intervention in the Exumi village, and how my worry was her suggesting we break up.

“We’re both really worried about breaking up so soon, aren’t we?” I asked.

“It’s really scary.” Oka said, eyes welling up with tears. “We only just started, but all I can think of when we’re not together is all the ways it could go wrong.”