Rising Shards

“As I was saying before we were interrupted,” I started, grateful I hadn’t coughed up any of the dust Zeta kicked up, as that would have thrown off my questioning significantly. “I am just in the mood to get to know people better, and you seem like people I want to know better, so. What, uh, the stuff—the question about what stuff you like? What stuff do you like?”

“Oh, gosh,” Zeta said, showing mercy on me for my abysmal attempt at phrasing the question. “I like Raina Starlight, for sure. Anything she writes/acts/produces/sings, she’s just the best. Tower of Hate and Love is my favorite show and Raina plays by far my favorite character on it. If I had to pick between Raina Starlight as Arlit on Tower of Hate and Love versus her books…hmm…I’d have to go with her books by like a sliver. Raina Starlight books have my heart.”

I was doing it! Learning things about Zeta Faleur. Well, I knew the Raina thing already. But surely I would learn other things? I just had to soldier on.

“Which Raina Starlight book is your favorite?” I asked. Zeta may have told me this already, but I was blanking on it.

“Hm….” Zeta said. “That’s like asking me to pick between my babies! There’s so many good ones…I kind of want to say the collective of her adventure series just as one book? In my head that’s the first thing I think when I think ‘favorite book.’ How about you?”

“Me?” I almost asked her why, because surely I couldn’t be interesting enough to her to warrant asking anything about me. Right? I realized that would also be a thing my therapist would say I’m being too harsh on myself about. And that if I responded with mopey stuff to everything other people might be put off by it. So I decided then and there to not lose myself to mopey stuff. “Um, there was this book I used to check out at my library, well, the school library, but I lived there so it was kind of my library? Anyways, there’s a musical I like about street sweepers, and the book was like a making of. With like pictures of it, the writers saying how they made it, cool notes and stuff. It was really cool. I snuck it into my room a lot to keep it longer than the due date. I should get another copy of that…yeah. It’s not like a book with a story or anything, but that’s my favorite, I think.”

Zeta had proven to be a big fiction book buff in the few weeks I’d known her, so I didn’t know how she’d react to me liking something nonfiction.

“Wow, that sounds great!” Zeta said. “And it sounds like it does have a story though. About how they made it, that’s a story, right?”

“True!” I said. “And it did have parts of the script in there with lyrics.”

“Maybe it’s at the school library!” Zeta said. “We should go sometime and see.”

I giggled. I didn’t know what to say. I don’t want to spend a lot of time crying about Tesata, but getting raised in a place like that did mess me up in a lot of ways. It took me a long time to understand and even longer to admit that the way they treated us was abusive, and one of their tactics was to try and pit us all against each other in constant competition. I never felt right about being mad at my classmates all the time, so leaving that bubble clicked pretty easily for me. But I still expected everyone else to respond the way the other students and teachers at Tesata did. Needlessly combative and angry, with a goal of making me feel bad. Even though Zeta didn’t seem like the type to be combative and angry or actively try to make me feel bad, I still got fuzzy in my tummy at her kindness.

“See? We’re great at communicating!” Zeta said.

“Heh,” I said. “If we were aliens…we’d be all like. ‘meep morp.’ Or something.”

Not my best material. Certainly not my best performance either, which is a shame for someone who prides themselves on trying to perform well in any vaguely theatrical setting. I realize a conversation isn’t exactly theatrical on paper, but in way talking to someone is a kind of performance.

“Yeah, we’d be like…” Zeta said. “Yeah, like ‘meep beep borp.’ That’s kind of like a robot, I guess.”

“We could be robot aliens maybe?” I said. “’Beep.’”

Our conversation devolved into us just making weird noises at each other and laughing, but there’s a great joy in having a friend who you’re comfortable enough to make weird noises at each other.

I was riding the high of that brief little interaction for the rest of class, even though we were trying to find bug sized void monsters under rocks, taking notes on creepy crawlies wasn’t a great afternoon and there wasn’t any solo time with Zeta that lived up to the weird noises session.

I was looking forward to dinner, hoping I could continue my Zeta mission. I was ready for more investigating and more fun, excited for Zeta to arrive as I sat down with the others in the cafeteria. But unfortunately, Zeta didn’t show. I kept looking for her, waiting for her to stop by, but I was left looking to my side every few seconds. Our table didn’t have an agreement that we’d always eat every meal together, but losing out on a lunch with Zeta and a dinner with her in one day sucked.

“I think she, like all of us, carries a heavy burden,” Aira said after I mumbled some worry about Zeta’s absence out loud. “Something we all must be mindful of is the burdens others bear.”

“That’s really a lovely sentiment, Aira.” Laenie said.

After dinner, I went right back to the dorm room, hoping my roommate would be there at least. Maybe she just wanted to eat alone, or she needed a nap? I thought about bursting in with some ‘meep morp’ business, but Zeta was hunched over at the desk. Was there homework I forgot to do? Or maybe she just wanted study time, that was a thing. Those were the thoughts I used to rationalize the situation as I cautiously approached my bed, finding Zeta’s stillness a bit unnerving.

“Hey, Zeta, I—" I started.

“Tch.” Zeta said as she got up, her chair almost falling over as she rose, necessitating an awkward grab to keep it upright.

My heart pounded, not used to seeing an agitated Zeta Faleur. I tried to ask what was wrong, but the words caught in my throat.

Zeta sniffed as she walked past me. Her phone buzzed.

“What?” Zeta said as she answered her phone. “Stella, ugh. I’m not mad at you, ugh! No, it’s just…” She left the dorm room immediately, leaving me with a twisting, churning sensation in my stomach, the total opposite of the fuzziness from just a few hours earlier.