2103:09:10:08:41:22

  I entered the classroom at the same time as usual and saw Millie was already here – also as usual – and so went to join her for a chat.

  Again, as usual.

  “Good morning Millie,” I said. She was looking at her tablet with her earbuds in, absorbed by whatever was playing on it. Since it was still early, our tablets would were yet to be locked to the learning environment, allowing early students to use them regularly until 8:45.

  Despite the earbuds, she still heard my call and put them away, turning her head to face me. “Hiya Sam, how- Oh my god, what happened to your face!”

  “I broke my nose,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” she said, rolling her eyes, “but how?”

  “I tripped and fell down the stairs Saturday night,” I said, then rethought the statement. “Or would it be Sunday night? It happened on a Sunday around three a.m., but it feels weird to call that Sunday.”

  She stared at me with her mouth open in surprise, then shook of her confusion and focused on the more important question. “I’d say Saturday night, because otherwise Sunday night would come before Sunday morning. Which would just be weird.”

  I nodded in agreement. That would be weird.

  While we were talking, I heard a voice from behind. “Hey Sam, Milie, what’s up?”

  I turned around. “Good mo-”

  “Goddamn!” Saga exclaimed. “What happened to your face?”

  “I broke my nose,” I said.

  “What? No, I mean how did that happen?” She then became angry. “Do I need to beat someone up? It wasn’t that Amber bitch, was it?” she growled.

  I opened my mouth to answer the question, then reconsidered. “Why would you think that?” I’d yet to see Amber do anything violent. She was standoffish, sure, but definitely not violent. Besides, the only time she could’ve hit me was on Friday, and my nose would’ve all but fully healed over the weekend if that was the case.

  Still carried by her anger, Saga opened her mouth to spill, until a voice cut her off. “Saga. Don’t.” It was Jolie, sounding uncharacteristically stern. Apparently, she had walked in while we were talking.

  “You know Jolie’s rules, Saga. No gossiping,” Millie said. “It says so right here in the constitution.” She pointed at her screen, which showed a picture of the… U.S. constitution? Why did she even have that open?

  “Why do you even have that open?” Saga echoed my thoughts.

  “Uh, hello, we’re in history class?” Millie said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which it wasn’t, since we had only just begun learning about the arrival of the first Europeans last week, meaning the Revolutionary War wouldn’t be discussed for some time.

  Saga rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said and turned her gaze back to me. “So, again, what happened?” Jolie looked to me for answers as well.

  I shrugged. “Just fell down the stairs Saturday night. Nothing special.”

  “You broke your nose falling down the stairs?” Saga said in a sort of bemused wonder. “I didn’t even know that could happen. Thought it was just the go-to excuse of battered housewives and stuff,” she finished with a smirk.

  Jolie swatted Saga’s shoulder at the comment, to which the lug cried foul. “Ow! What was that for? If anyone has the right to joke about it, it’s me!” Saga rubbed her shoulder with an exaggerated pout. Jolie just rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  I smiled at the interaction, while Millie laughed out loud.

  We made small talk until class began. Sometimes, a few other classmates that we – though mostly Millie – were more friendly with came by to ask what happened, but they didn’t question further. And once word spread, the rumor mill made sure everyone else was informed about why my nose had a by-now translucent, fading white shell around it.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I made my way to my seat as the bell rang and noticed Amber was still absent. A quick search through my memcordings – much easier with standard times and dates, like the start of class – confirmed my suspicion that this was the first time that had happened.

  Class was ongoing with Miss Sims talking about Magellan and other Portuguese explorers when Amber walked in, disrupting the lesson.

  “Have a seat Amber,” Miss Sims said, unsurprised by the intrusion. Although that might be a guess; as Millie put it, Miss Sims would still look the same even if a meteor suddenly crashed through the roof.

  Still, while Miss Sims continued on undisturbed, my attention was taken away by Amber. She looked tired, even more so than she usually did at the first day of school.

  As she sat down next to me, I opened my mouth reflexively, then hesitated. I always said a ‘good morning’ to her every school day – she never said it back, though lately she’d been acknowledging them with a nod – but I couldn’t say it today. Not with how quiet the class was being.

  Frustrating.

  Then, while I was looking at her, she shot me a glance while fetching the tablet from her backpack. It was from the corner of her eyes and she quickly looked away again, but when – I presumed – my injured nose registered, she looked back to face me fully.

  I mouthed a ‘good morning’ to her, feeling satisfied I could continue the streak I had going, when I noticed Amber tapping her nose while shooting me a look of concern.

  Thinking about how to explain it without words, I decided to just give up and shoot her a smile and a thumbs up instead. She accepted it and gave me a nod, then turned to focus on the lesson.

  I was really getting the hang of this social thing. I’d stopped needing to manually adjust my personality matrix a while ago since it had developed enough to connect things on its own, but social skills required a lot more finesse than ‘just’ building a personality from scratch. The latter build upon itself with practically everything I did, while the former required conscious effort on my part.

  But it was working. And I had a perfect test ready for it: asking Crowsong to be my mentor.

  I couldn’t wait for next Saturday. I’d send Crowsong a message on the phone she gave me to ask if we could train together sometime, and there I would ask her to commit to fully be my long-term teacher and mentor me into becoming the kind of hero she was.

  X

  It was lunchtime and we sat down in our by-now usual spot in the cafeteria. Jolie sat beside me while Millie was on the opposite side of the table, keeping a seat free for Saga as she bought lunch.

  “Your remedials are ending soon, right?” Millie asked out of the blue.

  I blinked at that, stopping a moment before I took my delicious ham-and-cheese sandwich. “It’s only been two weeks,” I said.

  “Yeah, but that’s like, twenty hours of extra lessons, plus your extra homework and whatever you did before school began. That’s got to be, like, close to enough right?” Millie pleaded. “I wanna hangout after school and stuff.”

  I smiled a bit at her behavior, then proceeded to crush her dreams. “Miss Sims said I’ve got to do a month at least before reevaluating.” I had talks with her every Friday during our free sixth period before remedial lessons started, and while impressed with my progress, she’d said nothing that could indicate remedials would end soon.

  “But I want to go to the beach,” Millie complained with an overexaggerated pout. “I wanna go sunbathing, swimming, eating ice cream. Do hot girl shit, you know.” She took a big slurp through the straw of her juice box.

  “It’s barely fifteen degrees outside,” Jolie said. “The sun isn’t even shining, and now you want to go swimming? You could’ve asked last weekend when it was still hot out.”

  “We can still go to the beach without the sun,” Millie countered. “Besides, you know I have work on weekends.”

  But Jolie wasn’t feeling merciful today. “Then either get a better job or stop complaining, you baby,” she lectured. “Can’t you take a day off or something?”

  Millie moved to deny, but then got a glint in her eye. “You know, I might know a way to extract some… concessions from my manager. Maybe even a full weekend.” She wrung her hands together and smiled all evilly. Jolie rolled her eyes, while I just smiled without really knowing what was going on.

  Saga plopped down beside Millie with her plastic tray hitting the table hard, rattling the plate and cutlery. She looked at Millie with a look of – presumably feigned – distaste as Millie intensified her handwringing and scheming look.

  “Ew, stop that,” Saga said, then turned to Jolie. “What’s gotten into the goblin?”

  “She’s thought up some kind of scheme to hang out on a weekend. At least, if Millie isn’t completely delusional,” Jolie replied.

  “Cool,” Saga said. “Will probably be easy to get permission; my house mother likes Millie and you well enough, so no reason to prevent me from hanging with a ‘bad crowd’,” she finished with a scoff.

  “Speaking of,” Millie said, turning to me. “How’re your efforts going with miss tall, dark and broody over there.” She nodded towards somewhere behind me.

  I turned around and spotted Amber eating lunch by herself in a corner, though failed to see the connection to Saga’s comment. She was neither a crowd nor did she seem particularly bad. “Good, I think. She hasn’t said good morning back yet, but she did seem concerned about my nose.”

  “Oooo, nice going,” Millie jokingly complimented. “At this pace, you’ll have her reveal her dark, mysterious past before we turn ninety.”

  They were still avoiding mentioning anything surrounding Amber’s circumstances to me, per my request and their own aversion to rumormongering.

  Didn’t stop them from making snide comments though. Well, it didn’t stop Saga and Millie; Jolie was much more supportive.

  “Why’re you even trying with that bitch,” Saga grumbled.

  “Saga,” Jolie warned. “Let Sam make up her own mind about this.”

  Saga opened her mouth to complain, but was interrupted by Millie saying, “Cease your slander and surrender, villain,” Millie lifted the straw from her juice box and pointed it at Saga like a sword. “You’re outnumbered three to one.”

  Sage lifted knife and fork in response, taking on a dual-wielding sword stance. “I might be outnumbered,” she drawled. “But it seems to me you’re outgunned.”

  “So doth one might think that, wouldn’t you,” Millie said, looking just as confused as the rest of us at the nonsense coming out of her mouth. She quickly shook off her confusion and glared at Saga. “Have at you!” She jabbed the straw forward and the duel began in earnest.

  Jolie ignored their antics and said with an affronted sniff, “Well, I think what you're doing is very kind.”

  I shrugged nonchalantly, though my heart warmed at her words.

  “Yeah well, you better watch out,” Saga warned, turning to look at me. “When I tried helping her, she all but attacked me, the ungrateful cu-uugh.”

  Saga’s voice cut off into a choke as Millie spotted a gap in her opponent’s defense and shoved a straw in Saga’s mouth. In response, Saga dropped her cutlery and went in for the grapple, easily putting the smaller girl into a headlock.

  As the two duked it out and Jolie and I enjoyed the spectacle, I wondered what had happened between Amber and Saga to have the latter try to dissuade me from becoming friends. It was especially strange because Saga had seemed so dead-set against discussing rumors in general – much like Jolie and Millie – and had called those gossiping about me ‘cowards’. Then again, if what she said was true, Saga was less ‘attempting to gossip’ than trying to share her own experience with Amber.

  Whatever it was, it must be personal, but also not bad enough for my other two friends to join in on dissuading me. Or well, stop Jolie from supporting me and Millie from telling harmless jokes about it. Which I took as an indication that whatever happened hadn’t been that bad.

  Well, whatever. As long as I held firm, I’ll find out sooner or later.