While having two roommates had a lot of bes, Kalei quickly learned of the downsides. Our room was a little cramped with all of us in there. Kalei hated every arm I had on my phone, and it took a while to download ohat she didn’t despise. Making matters worse, my arms teo wake her up a lot soohan they woke me up.

  We were also still w on syng our sleep schedules. Oka liked to read at night, but her reading light kept Kalei up, which threw her off when she had a m workout. When she missed workouts, she got really frustrated with herself, and even more frustrated when I apologized too much eve wasn't my fault. A few weeks into csses it got me worried she’d want to swits, or worst-case sario stop talking to Oka airely.

  Kalei huffed as we got into Diast’s css. I could tell she was both tired and antsy to move around, and a loure didn’t help either need.

  “The toy dough lecture!” Oka said when she saw the balls of toy each of our spots in the room. Kalei was already nodding off by the time css started, not even mustering up a snarky respoo Oka's excmation like she'd normally do.

  “OK, so with us going into Node 509,” Dr. Diast said. “The question es up like, ‘wait a minute, you said the void was all warbly and this pce is only partially warbly’, ‘does this pce have like real people in it and a history’, ‘if there are people are they like for real real people or I hit them and they turn to void goo?’ and so on and so forth.”

  Diast brought up a diagram showing different blotchy looking things. Some looked more faded and others were clearer.

  “So there are strictly void dimensions like the imagination one where stuff from here shows up there, but that doesn’t work in Node 509 and others like it. So why is that?”

  Oka was rog bad forth excitedly about the dough.

  “Get out those marbles and put em on your table. Those are faulty realities. For whatever reason, they didn’t make it, unlike our stable ohey float out iher space outside of all dimensions. I’ll try to not get too like super high sce here because you’re high schoolers, but faulty dimensioher fold in on themselves in some quantum space business et mushed with something else.”

  I raised my hand. Usually I was too socially frighteo ask questions in css but Diast didn’t have that scary teacher effee.

  “ our...like dimension bee faulty?” I asked.

  “No,” Diast said. “Or probably not. I hope not. Most of the leading stists say there’s pretty muo way it’d happen to us. Kno woht? But these faulty realities get broken from other means, like energies beyond our prehension ripping em up at the seams. Then the ripped up, barely runniies either blink away into nothing or end up in the void.”

  Diast picked up a ball of the toy her desk.

  “So the void is the case you haven’t figured it out,” Diast said. “And the marbles are the faulty realities. It rolls up all these faulty realities and stuff and keeps em going in its body, for ck of a better term.”

  “Much like the sperm that don’t ect with the egg duriilization!” A really creepy girl said in a really creepy way, unprompted.

  “Well...kinda, I guess.” Diast said. “Not…really. I mean. Anyways, we have a worksheet and an experiment to do! Use your own d record your results…”

  Kalei was using her cy as a pillow, but luckily not sn. Dr. Diast didn’t wake her up but I think she noticed.

  “Problem: we’re not sure if any of this is right,” Diast said as we started rolling our toy cy around. “We know we get to the void dimension and that it does have these nodes in it, but this is mostly just accepted theories on how it works. As I’ve said before we ’t even measure the shape of the void because it’s so big and so always moving and rippling and ging.”

  After css, Kalei slumped away without saying much to us. I stopped by Dr. Diast, thinking about our trip to the void the day before.

  “Hey, are you sure my bloodsaber not being too sparky is cool?” I asked. “Caya said it’s cool. But I was hoping for more like sparks. Or weather or whatever. The Benta thing said I o be in trol of my powers. And I ain’t.”

  Diast was mushing all the css’s to one big cy ball in a clear tub.

  “You did just start css,” Diast said. “It’s gonna take a while.”

  “But I wanna be in tuuuUUUune like Caya said.” I said, mangling h a high note I couldn’t hit and then my voice cracked.

  “You will never be in tune if you hit that note around me again.” Diast said. “I’ll cel your future in-tuneness with my...teacher...powers.”

  “Uh huh. Is there anything I or should be doing then to get more in tuh my bloodsaber then?” I asked.

  “Well, an easy boost is staying active,” Diast said. “Do you exercise a lot?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Maybe try exerg a little bit and see if that has any effect. Don’t overdo it, obviously. There’s this idea of three pilrs of i powers, Atria, the sed one whose name I’m bnking on, and Havena. Havena is measuring your physical wellbeing, but also how in tune you are to your body.” Caya said. “Also the name of the i wrestling league for some reason. Mr. Krangel was a champion there, actually.”

  “Yeah, he talks about that a lot,” I said. A lot of gym csses with Krangel were just watg old i fights. “What does in tune mean, anyways?”

  “Soleri always says, ‘Like the way a bloodsaber’s veins sound like a string being plucked, so is the retionship with us fanged ones and our physical selves.” Diast quoted with a pretty good impression of Soleri’s voice. “Ugh, why does he talk like that?”

  “Oh, I see.” I said.

  I didn’t see. I didn’t really get it at all.

  “Fet I said that thing about Soleri there,” Diast said. “It’s against school policy to be rude about teachers to students. And it's pretty rude of me. Oh! Calestia was the sed one of the three. Some other teacher will probably say it too so act surprised when they say it. Or don’t, why would that matter? Anyways, you’re doing fine, now shoo.”

  At dinner, Kalei stared bnkly into her food.

  “Kalei, how do I get in shape like you?” I asked.

  “It depends a lot on yenes…yeics, I mean.” Kalei said.

  I wi “genes” because it sounded like “Jeans." Kalei didn't notice though (why would she?) and sighed.

  “I’m sorry I’m in such a bad mood tely,” Kalei said.

  “I’m the one who should apologize,” I said.

  “Me too…” Oka said.

  “For what?” Kalei asked. “You two didn’t close the beam chasers court until spring.”

  “It’s closed?” I asked.

  “el won’t let me practi it,” Kalei said. “I don’t know how rusty I’m going to be when it starts up again. If I could just get a regur workout going it’d be nice.”

  “I could maybe work out with you until then?” I asked. “I probably ’t keep up but if I get on your schedule it’d definitely help. Like not just me, but…”

  “Yeah, I got it.” Kalei said.

  Kalei was too o say how annoying we were to her schedule.

  “Me too!” Oka said. “I’m probably out of shape after all the snacks here. They’re just so good though...”

  “You handle diets on your own,” Kalei said. “Want to head over to the tracks after this?”