Maia watched as her friend Iris finally met up with her partners. From their body nguage, it was clear Zeta, Kalei, and Oka hadn’t doheir work on the presentatioher. One of Maia’s partners, Lillia ce, had her usual gre as she watched.

  “Are you ed about her?” Lillia asked.

  “A bit,” Maia said. “But Iris has that innate ability to get by in css even putting in zero effort.”

  “Ah,” Lillia said. “What an ability.”

  “So they’ll figure something out,” Maia said.

  “You’ve known her for a long time, then?” Lillia asked.

  “Uh huh,” Maia said. “We’ve been friends for a while now.”

  Lillia didn’t answer, which retty awkward.

  “Do…do you have a school you’ve been friends with for a long time?” Maia asked.

  “Not particurly,” Lillia said. “The only students I had any prior csses with were Aira Orbis and Laenie Aadris.”

  “Ah,” Maia said. “Your favorites.”

  “Exactly,” Lillia said.

  As another aause set in, Maia thought back to a year ago when she and Iris were w on a sce fair proje Sky Cy High’s puter b.

  Iris was zily tapping away at the translut e keyboard as Maia struggled to fill a page of text oranslut green station. Their project was on the differences between Kanibari and i, which Maia was hoping they’d have an advah the teachers on. After all, they could do a presentation about the differences without even writing about it, given how different a pre-fangs i looked in Iris pared to Maia’s full on Kanibari-ness.

  “Isn’t it weird that like i get the whole main focus of the schools?” Iris asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, they get fangs or whatever and everyone’s like ‘ohhh you gotta go to this school now that you’re sixteen and have fangs.’ But Kanibari, like, you just have to live with it until all the other i catch up to you.”

  “It’s not like I don’t get special treatment now, though,” Maia said. “I still get monitored pretty heavily in case I go all, y’know.”

  “But that’s the thing too," Iris said. "Outside of you having a cute fuzzy face, I’ve never seen you go berserk or anything. I’ve never even seen you use a power."

  “Don’t call my face that again please,” Maia said, happy Iris couldn’t see how much she was blushing. “And that’s because they gave me a stronger power blocker.”

  “I’m jealous that year you’ll get two rooms, too,” Iris said.

  “e again?”

  “ year, at Rising Shards,” Iris said. “They have a Kanibari dorm and a regur one. I heard you have to stay in both.”

  “It’s kinda just a precaution,” Maia said. “The Kanibari dorms are always for Kanibari retty stantly feral. Or Kanibari with Feral Flu, they’re pretty rough.”

  “OK, good,” Iris said. “Because I wanna be your roommate! And I don’t want anything interfering with my Maia time.”

  “Of course,” Maia said.

  In that moment, Maia lit between some really gushy feelings she tried to keep down and the bittersweet sadness Iris’ words brought to her. Usually whenever Iris talked like that, she’d promptly get a text or a call from her girlfriend Olive, or she’d actually show up in person. Maia didn’t hate Olive, but it was hard to hide her jealousy whenever Olive butted her way into a versatioween Iris and herself.

  “Would you mind taking the lead for a bit?” Iris asked. “And by take the lead, I mean do all of the project for a bit.”

  “Naturally,” Maia said. “How e, though?”

  “I’m really trying to win this sweepstakes. It’s all the haven fight video cart sets for AB-813, it’s a box set that has a little cardboard championship belt on it! I have to win this but the daily entry window is only like right now.”

  “Sure,” Maia said.

  Back then, Maia was just happy she could have little moments like that with Iris. If their friendship never became anything more than that, it’d hurt, but it’d be alright.