Rising Shards

Marmalade wasn’t sure if she should say anything as Kalei loudly groaned. Or when she shut the book she was reading and almost slammed it on the desk. Or when she repeated those over and over. 

“Finals prep that bad?” Marmalade asked.

“Kinda…” Kalei said. “This is more a finals project than prep. It’s like doing finals. But this book sucks, but that shouldn’t be a surprise coming from Soleri even if his pompous ass is never around. ‘Ohhh, I’m so important now that I’m the vice principal but you must still read your books, they’re sooo interesting, and by interesting I mean painfully boring.’”

Marmalade laughed. “That’s a pretty good impression of him.”

“You think so?” Kalei asked. “This book is about this kid planting a seed. Like that’s all that’s happened for like 200 pages. He hasn’t even planted it yet; he’s just been talking about how he’s gonna plant it. And it’s really about like. Emotions? Maybe?”

“Have you thought about skimming it?” Marmalade asked.

“I am skimming it and it’s still the most sleep-inducing thing I’ve ever read. And yet, I can’t sleep. It’s like a horror movie here.”

“Have you…looked up a summary online?” Marmalade suggested.

“Yeah,” Kalei said. “Right when Lillia was walking by. She caught me and made me stop, and I wasn’t even able to find a site that had anything about this piece of trash.” Kalei picked up her book and dropped it on the desk again.

“Does beating up the book kinda help?”

“Kinda,” Kalei said. “But I probably shouldn’t beat it up too bad, then the library folks will get mad. I might have to pay for a book I despise…”

“Doesn’t Zeta’s sister work at the library? Maybe she could give you a freebie and tell you the gist of it.”

“I’m gonna bet she wouldn’t,” Kalei said. “I just have that vibe.” She tried to get back to her book report, but all her momentum was drained. “Do you have anything more fun to do? Anything to save me from this?”

“Um,” Marmalade said. “You wanna try TFIVN?”

Marmalade had picked up an old favorite as a gift to Kalei when they were on a mall trip. And now that Marmalade’s parents had brought her game console over, they could actually play it. She wasn’t sure if Kalei would want to, though. I’ve been in plenty of situations where I wanna show someone a game and they just put it off forever, and then it takes me even longer to realize they didn’t want to see it. For some reason, the thought of Kalei rejecting her game gave Marmalade the feeling like she’d been ejected from a spaceship with no tether.

“Yeah, today’s a great day for it!” Kalei said, inadvertently offering Marmalade a rope back to her metaphorical spaceship. “My reward for trying to understand this dumb seed boy.”

“Nice!” Marmalade said. She had already gotten her eGame 1.7X set up days earlier for her own gaming, but partially because she was so excited to show Kalei this particular one.

Kalei sat down right by Marmalade, prompting the latest episode of the hit series taking place entirely in Marmalade’s mind, “Does Kalei Koridia sit this close to everyone?” Not that Marmalade disliked being close to Kalei in any way. But she couldn’t deny that when her athletic roommate sat so close, Marmalade’s heart started pounding immediately. She distracted herself from her internal debates and such by focusing on the game, knowing Kalei would love this.

“You want me to play it or do you want to since you know it best?” Kalei asked.

“Ahhh,” Marmalade said, pretending like she hadn’t already spent plenty of time figuring this out. “I think you should play it. I’ve played it before so I know all the…well. Let’s just say the tricks the game will pull.”

“Sweet, sweet,” Kalei said. “I’ve been looking forward to this one.”

“Heh, me too,” Marmalade said.

And pretty much from the moments after Kalei hit new game (well, maybe a minute or so after, the loading times in TFIVN weren’t the best), she was enthralled.

“Oh, sick!” Kalei said, immediately very excited by the crime scene in the opening part of the game. “That dude got messed up. How many pieces is he in?”

“Just wait, there’s more to it than just the mangling,” Marmalade said.

“Awesome,” She grinned widely, showing off her fangs. “So this is a murder mystery?”

“Uh huh!” Marmalade said. “The game’s all about this mystery, and you will not see any of it coming, trust me.”

The game started with some pretty long cutscenes, so Kalei set her controller down and leaned back on her hands. Marmalade couldn’t help but get some glances in at the hand closest to her.

What would she do if I held her hand right now? Just like, hypothetically. Not that I actually really want to hold her hand. Plus, if I really did hold her hand, then how would she play the game? She needs both hands for the controller, right? Then when this cutscene ends, we’d be holding hands and she’d have to let go right away. So this probably wouldn’t be a great time for hand holding. Again, not that I want to hold her hand. Again. Hypothetical.

“Ahhh, I hate to pause right away,” Kalei said. “But this feels like a perfect snack game. I want snacks with this. Is it cool if I go on a snack run? We can actually pause this, right?”

“Of course?” Marmalade said.

“Had to ask, I’ve played games you can’t pause.” Kalei said.

“Oh yeah, true,” Marmalade said. “Yeah, you can pause this.”

“Sick,” Kalei said. “Kay, I’ll be right back.”

“Right on.” Without thinking, Marmalade held her arms out, realizing halfway through that she had no idea what she was doing and now was reaching out for Kalei. She winced as she gave a half hug to Kalei who was halfway to her feet, resulting in one of the most awkward moments of her life as she kind of hugged Kalei’s legs. It took Marmalade a few seconds to realize at some point Kalei patted her back as she got up in whatever they just experienced that maybe technically qualified as a hug. Kalei didn’t look mad or anything? They kept talking like nothing had happened as Kalei walked away, but that in itself was maybe awkward. Marmalade waited about a minute after Kalei left for the dorm lounge before flopping onto her back and rolling around with her head in her hands.

“What was that? I’m so weird! She’s gonna think I’m so weird! Ugh, she’s so cool! It’s not fair!”