Kalei had been trying to hide her internal meltdown as Nikki clicked away at the club room’s sole puter. Somehow, she had ended up w with Nikki on music for the club’s ercial. Kalei kept expeg her hands to feel sweaty, causio cheuch if her hands were sweating. She hadn’t been able to say anything to Nikki ohey split from the rest of the group. Latte was there for a few minutes, which weirdly kind of helped the tension, but then she finished another pot of coffee and ohat was ohermos, she was out of the room quickly. Kalei was growing more anxious that she was being weird to Nikki with her extended awkward silence.

  “I’m torn on this,” Nikki said.

  “O-oh, yeah?” Kalei asked. “How e?”

  “Like, this club’s about us being zy, right?” Nikki said. “But this is doing musid that’s like the only thing I like doing. So I’m split between just finding some royalty free stuff and plopping that over whatever footage we end up with, or actually putting an effort in on this."

  “O-oh,” Kalei said.

  , we do better than that! Say something!

  “I…like music.” Kalei said. She pictured her mental voice spping her forehead in shame and disappoi. “I mean! Maybe for this we try a little? Since we’re doing the music?”

  “Yeah, that’s where I’m leaning,” Nikki said.

  She clicked a bit on the puter. That was a det save, but we seriously and should do better.

  “The music app on here isn’t great,” Nikki said. “But this is running on the Door OS and not Cheese.”

  Kalei panicked. She had Door OS on her puter at home. Cheese OS was always in fancier puters, and she had generally made fun of it, her and her gaming friends were loyal to Door OS and the eGame and goofed on Cheese OS and the ODGC (Odnegel Game sole). She wasn’t used to someoually preferring Cheese OS. Even more discerting was someone who was giving her such strange feelings like Nikki.

  “Is Lightnier for music?” Kalei asked. “I have Door faming.”

  “Oh yeah, Door is basically pointless for musiikki said, brushing her e hair with one hand. “But then Lightning is useless fames unless you just want to py like Raina Starlight’s Farm Adventure or whatever.”

  Kalei snorted. “That’s actually Zeta’s favorite game.”

  “Oh, nice,” Nikki said and ughed a bit.

  OK, you just made her ugh. That’s goht?

  Nikki got to work downloading a bunusis from some really sketchy looking sites, which Kalei found more cool than anything.

  “Alright, it’ll take a sec for this all to install,” Nikki said, leaning ba her chair.

  “Nice,” Kalei said.

  Another aause followed. Kalei straio think of something iing to say.

  “Hey, remember how I asked if you could teach me beam chasers?” Nikki asked.

  “Yeah, yes,” Kalei said. I’ve been thinking about it every night. She had to try really hard to not say her thought out loud. “Yep.”

  “Cool, I kinda fot until just now so at least you remembered,” Nikki said. “So if you teach me beam chasers, I’ll teach you how to make music. That sound like a good deal?”

  A sudden bst of emotions hit her. Nikki sounded like she was kind of joking with the first part, but her fetting gave the impression it wasn’t that big a deal to her. When it definitely was a big deal to Kalei. But oher hand, she just offered to teach her musid also still wao learn beam chasers.

  “Unless you know to make music already,” Nikki said. “Then I dunno, I’ll give you like something fair.”

  “I actually don’t know how to make anything in music,” Kalei said. “I like to listen, but I don’t really know about the…making…it…”

  She trailed off and tried not to wince, but Nikki wasn’t looking her way. Why is this girl making me react like this?

  “Yeah, cool,” Nikki said. “That motivates me to actually try on this ercial thing more. We start right now then, the main program we’ll use just finished installing.”

  Kalei tried not to squirm in her seat, but she couldn’t let Nikki see her disfort.

  “sider this your first lesson,” Nikki said, gesturing to the musi’s start s. “I guess I teach you like physical instrumeually, but I dunno where we’d record them in good enough quality to use here. So this program is OK. You pick your instrument and the yout’s pretty good for pg notes.”

  “Alright,” Kalei said. “Always good to have a good yout.”

  Luckily Nikki didn’t react badly for how dumb that lio Kalei. Even her ebacks felt weaker around Nikki. Instead, she scooted her rolling chair over aured for Kalei to take over.

  “So…what should I do?” Kalei asked.

  “For this lesson, just pe notes in and see how they sound,” Nikki said.

  Kalei clicked around on the program. It was weirdly really plicated, and she needed Nikki’s help to see even how to grab notes and pce them on the bar at the bottom of the s. Eventually though she had a full line of hat visually looked like it would sound good.

  “Now hit that green smiley guy button,” Nikki said, pointing at the top of the s. “That’s the preview thing."

  As soon as Kalei clicked it, she wao plug her ears. The notes all sounded so dumb and out of sync. It was intensely embarrassing even for a seven sed s.

  “Oh my god that sounds so terrible,” Kalei said. “I subsp;at this.”

  “Nah, that’s actually pretty good!” Nikki said.

  “Wait, what?” Kalei asked. “You’re joking.”

  “Nah, for a first time that’s pretty good,” Nikki said. “You’re a natural, dude.”

  Kalei didn’t know what to say to that. She had something to say to everybody when they said something. So why not Nikki?

  “Alright, but let me take over though, you just gave me an idea.” Nikki said.

  “Sure,” Kalei said.

  Kalei scooted her chair back so Nikki could take over. She watched as Nikki started putting notes over the ones Kalei id out, slightly reanizing while still using the base Kalei had put in. Turning her messy jumble of notes into something with form and purpose.

  Kalei couldn’t figure it out. She didn’t have good jokes around Nikki, she got quieter when she was always a chatterbox, she felt almost afraid to move. What was it about this girl that made her feel so defanged?