The bell rang. The classroom came alive all at once, chairs scraping, books closing, voices rising over each other as lunch boxes appeared from bags. Eris closed her textbook and placed it aside. Tyler put his pen into his pencil case. She took a breath.
"About yesterday..."
"Hey, Tyler." Chris had swiveled around before the sentence could go anywhere further. "Did you hear about Besiege 2?"
Noah's head came up from his lunch box. "Oh, you're talking about that?"
Chris nodded. "Yeah."
"I bought it yesterday," Noah said, grinning.
Chris's eyes went wide. "Seriously? How is it?"
"Pretty good."
"It lagged," Kai said, from beside him, with the tone of a man who had sat through a long evening of it.
Noah looked at him. "On my console."
"Exactly."
"That's why I came to your house."
Kai's expression carried the particular exhaustion of someone who had agreed to something under reasonable pretenses and then watched it expand beyond all control. "You came over because your console was lagging. And then you stayed until nine."
"We were testing the game."
"You played the game."
"We were testing it."
Kai stared. Noah smiled. Chris started laughing. "You spent the whole evening playing?"
Kai pointed at Noah.
"He was supposed to leave after an hour."
"You kept playing too."
"Because you kept saying 'one more round.'"
"That sounds like both of us having fun."
Luna covered her mouth. "That sounds like Noah refusing to leave."
Noah ignored her.
Chris looked at Noah.
"So, if you guys are done with it, give me the CD."
Noah looked at him.
"Sure."
Chris blinked.
"Really?"
"Why not?"
Chris grinned. "Perfect."
"Yeah. But don't lose it."
Chris waved a hand.
"And don't scratch it," Noah added, and Chris looked offended, and Kai quietly noted that Chris had once broken a game case by throwing his bag, and Chris said that was an accident, and the whole thing dissolved into cheerful disagreement.
Noah looked toward Tyler. "You should try it too."
Tyler shook his head. "Nah. I'm fine."
"Why?"
Tyler shrugged.
"Not really interested."
I didn't even have a console to begin with. What am I supposed to do with a game CD?
Tyler had never been the type to ask his parents for something simply because his friends had it. The family had other things to spend money on, and he had never felt the need to bring it up.
Chris gave him a doubtful look. "You're missing out."
"Apparently."
Noah laughed.
"You're going to regret it."
Tyler gave him a small smile.
"I'll survive."
Chris looked at him for another second before saying, "You should connect with the online world too."
Tyler raised an eyebrow.
"The online world?"
"Yeah."
Luna immediately understood what Chris meant.
"He's talking about making a social handle."
Tyler looked at her.
"What for?"
"So we can stay connected."
"We already see each other every day."
"That's school."
"And?"
Luna sighed.
"Tyler, you're impossible sometimes."
Chris laughed.
"Anyway, Eris, you should create one too."
Eris, who had been quietly listening, looked toward Luna.
"Why would I?"
Luna turned to her.
"So you can stay connected with everyone outside school."
Eris frowned slightly.
"I can call you."
"That means calling my house."
"Yes."
"On the landline."
"Yes."
Luna stared at her.
Eris stared back.
Chris started laughing.
Luna shook her head.
"Fine. Forget I said anything."
"No, I'm asking seriously."
Luna looked at Eris.
"You can meet new people. Talk to friends after school. Share pictures. See what everyone is doing. You know, normal stuff."
Eris considered that.
"And what does that actually give me?"
Luna paused.
"Nothing particular."
Eris blinked.
"Then why would I make one?"
"Because it's fun."
"That still isn't an answer."
Luna thought for a moment.
"Just try it. If you don't like it, I'll change my name."
Eris's eyebrow lifted.
"Oh, really?"
"Really."
Chris shook his head.
"That's a terrible bet."
Luna looked at him.
"Why?"
"Because she'll probably use it for two days and then forget about it."
Eris smiled slightly as Luna glared at Chris.
Chris turned back toward Tyler.
"Seriously, though. It'll be amazing. Once we start high school, we can stay connected even when we're not here."
Tyler looked at him.
Chris continued, "Anytime. We won't have to keep calling everyone's home just to ask if they're free."
Tyler gave him a dry look.
"So you're going to annoy everyone after school as well."
Luna laughed.
"Exactly."
Chris pointed at Tyler.
"See? You understand."
Tyler shook his head.
"Oh, apparently they're going to let students carry phones in high school this year." Chris dropped another piece of information.
Luna stopped eating. "Really?"
"Yeah."
"So it's finally time to get one."
Chris laughed. "You still have to convince your parents."
She sighed. "That part is going to be difficult."
Noah nodded. "Mine already told me they'd get me one if I scored well on the final exam."
"That's every parent," Chris said.
He glanced around the group and his eyes landed on Eris and Tyler. "Except you two. You don't have to worry about that. You're good at everything anyway."
Eris looked at him flatly.
Luna nodded. "Exactly. Some of us actually have to study hard if we want our parents to agree. For you two it's basically Monday morning."
Eris's glare became sharper.
Tyler smirked. "You should study harder instead of gossiping."
Luna looked offended. "I don't gossip anymore."
"Yesterday," Chris said, "you were gossiping with Aria about me."
"That was different."
"How?"
She folded her arms. "If you didn't do stupid things, there'd be nothing to talk about. You're providing content."
Chris put a hand against his chest. "Heeey." Noah laughed. Even Kai's expression broke slightly.
The conversation kept moving, sliding from phones to exams to high school and back again, nothing particularly important being decided. Tyler listened and ate, and the phone discussion stayed somewhere in the back of his mind the way anything that signaled a shift in how people would live their lives tended to do. He knew better than most what it meant for something like easy personal communication to become ordinary. He had already seen what came after. For now, though, it was just his friends arguing about game discs and parental negotiations, and he let it stay exactly that.
Sunday sat quietly beneath everything else, patient.
His family would be in Gulmerg. His classmates would be at the farewell party. The same day, which had never been the same day before.
"Tyler?"
He looked up. Chris was holding something toward him. "Want some?"
He glanced at the food. "No."
"Your loss." Chris ate it himself.
Tyler lowered his eyes to his own lunch. Beside him, Eris had gone quiet, and he could feel the shape of whatever she had been trying to say all morning still sitting there, unfinished. She had started twice and stopped herself both times, and he'd been too far inside his own thoughts to reach back.
Eris turned slightly toward him. He looked at her before she had fully decided whether to speak.
"What?"
The question seemed to arrive a moment too early, and she froze. Every thread she'd been holding came back at once: why did you leave yesterday, why were you angry, why did you say you shouldn't have come, why haven't you said a single word to me. She had been waiting all morning to ask any one of them.
"Nothing," she said.
"Alright."
The moment the word left her mouth, she regretted it.
Nothing?
That was the best she could come up with?
She stared down at her lunch box.
She wanted to talk to him. She really did.
She wanted an explanation, or at least some understanding of what had happened yesterday.
But every time she finally got the chance, the words seemed to disappear.
Tyler gave a small nod and returned to eating.
Eris pressed her lips together.
She felt irritated.
Not at him this time.
At herself.
Why did she keep doing that?
She had already decided she was going to talk to him. She had even prepared what she wanted to say.
And when he finally looked at her, she had just said nothing.
She poked at the food in her lunch box.
Stupid.
She glanced at Tyler again.
He was eating quietly, apparently unaware of the argument happening inside her head.
Eris sighed softly.
Fine.
Maybe I should try again later.
Lunch ended, but Eris never found the courage to try again.
The rest of the school day moved normally: classes came and went, teachers progressed through lessons, the clock made its slow way toward the final bell. Eris thought about saying something several times, and each time found a reason not to. During one period she almost leaned over, and then the teacher moved to the next topic and the moment passed. During another Tyler was writing in his notebook, and she decided to wait until he stopped. He stopped, and someone else started talking to him.
By the time she realized what she was doing, the day was over.
The final bell rang. Ms. Hart looked up from the papers on her desk. "Tyler."
He stopped putting his books away. "Yes?"
"Mr. David from Faculty Management wants to speak with you before you leave."
Tyler paused for a moment, and something in his expression shifted so briefly that no one else would have caught it. "Okay." He closed his bag and stood.
Another deviation.
He sighed quietly as he stood.
I hope this deviation is within my reach to control.
He wasn't sure yet how large it was, whether it was something he could manage or something that had already set something else in motion. He simply didn't know, and he disliked not knowing.
Chris looked over as Tyler passed his desk.
"Should we wait?"
Tyler shook his head.
"Nah. You guys go. I don't know how long Mr. David is going to take."
Chris nodded.
"Alright."
Tyler adjusted his bag over his shoulder and looked around at the others.
"See you tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow," Chris and a few others replied.
Tyler gave them a small nod and headed for the door.
Eris watched him go.
For a moment, she thought he might turn around.
He didn't.
He stopped near Clara for a few seconds and said something to her that Eris couldn't hear. Clara nodded, and Tyler continued toward the door.
Eris remained still, her hands resting on the edge of her desk.
She had spent the entire day thinking about talking to him. She had told herself that she would do it at lunch, then after class, then whenever they had a quiet moment.
And now he was leaving.
She could still call him.
"Tyler."
The name almost escaped her.
But she stopped herself.
He reached the door, stepped through it, and it closed behind him.
Eris lowered her eyes.
Clara walked over eventually and stopped beside her desk. "You're staying, right? We still have things to finalize."
Eris nodded. "Right." She hesitated. "Did you ask him what time he's leaving?"
"He said we should continue without him. He doesn't know how long Mr. David will take."
"Oh."
She exhaled slowly.
Clara looked at her for a moment and understood.
Eris still hadn't managed to talk to him, but with people still moving around them, Clara didn't press. She pulled a chair up beside Eris's desk.
"He also said to collect 315
"Come on. We have a few things to finish."
Eris nodded and pulled the papers closer.
"Right."
Clara picked up the first sheet.
"We should probably decide how we're collecting the money."
"Tomorrow," Eris answered.
Clara looked at her.
"Tomorrow?"
Eris blinked and glanced down at the paper.
"Yeah. Tomorrow is fine."
Clara nodded slowly.
"Okay. Then we need to confirm the final number of people."
"Right."
Eris reached for her pen, but stopped halfway.
Her eyes had drifted toward the classroom door again.
It was still closed.
Tyler was already gone.
She looked back at the papers and forced herself to read the first line.
Clara waited a moment before speaking again.
"Eris?"
"Hm?"
"The number of people."
"Oh."
Eris looked at the list.
"Thirty-two."
Clara gave her a small look.
"We already know that."
Eris stared at the page for a second before letting out a quiet breath.
"Right."
Clara didn't tease her.
She simply turned the paper toward herself and started writing.
Eris watched the pen move across the page, but her attention kept slipping back to the door.