ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN: Twinkle, Twinkle, Gokoratch

116   The rooftop-to-rooftop coaster in F-city was part sightseeing experience, part thrill ride, part ode to magical engineering. It was also very popular. Even though they bought tickets the second Alden expressed an interest, they still ended up with time slots staggered over the course of two hours. People rode the coaster in pairs, and before they left the apartment, Lute tried to establish elaborate social plans to ensure that he could ride with Emilija without it seeming ‘unnatural.’ “Don’t you think this Hadiza would rather ride with one of her friends instead of me?” Haoyu protested. “It’ll be weird to walk up to them with established boy-girl roller coaster partners in mind already. Like we’re trying hard to make it a date.” “I agree,” Alden said. “Why don’t I ride with Haoyu? Natalie and Hadiza can ride together. And then you and Emilija can still pair up.” Lute, who was leaning toward the bathroom mirror and doing things to his hair with pomade, said, “Fine. But I don’t think it sounded that strange.” Apparently, neither did the girls. Almost as soon as they met up and Lute explained about the roller coaster, they suggested dividing the group exactly as he had hoped with zero prompting. He kept shooting knowing looks at Alden and Haoyu as if to say, “See. I understand these things.” The building where people boarded the coaster had ground floor shops to browse while they waited for everyone to have their turn. “Your friend likes Emilija,” Hadiza observed as she, Alden, Haoyu, and Natalie wandered the aisles of a store that sold mostly paper and art supplies. Alden hastily messaged Haoyu, [What are we supposed to say?] Haoyu gave him a blank look, then pointed at the shelf and said, “Ryeh-b’t wrapping paper! You don’t see that every day.” Good idea. Distraction. “I’ve held a ryeh-b’t before,” Alden announced. “She was awesome.” “Lute talked to her in Lithuanian,” Natalie said, giggling. Hadiza was nodding. “He said she was beautiful.” “Emilija said his pronunciation was pretty good!”   Well, all right then, thought Alden, trying not to feel offended on Other Alden’s behalf. Apparently I’m the only one who thinks holding a miniature dragon is a more noteworthy conversation topic. Haoyu’s mouth had dropped open.   [Lute did do that,] Alden confirmed via text. [He’d performed a self-confidence wordchain. I told him not to try it again today. What if he thought he could ride the coaster without a safety harness?] Just then, he spotted a pack of dark, jewel-toned origami paper. “Are you buying that?” Natalie asked when he picked it up. He flipped it over to check the price. The back of the paper was gold. “Yeah, I think I will.” “If you learn to make things out of it, make me something!” she said brightly. “Sure. What do you want?” “Surprise me.” Their turn to ride came not long after that. They boarded their car on the roof of the building after receiving a brief safety lecture about how they’d probably explode, fall, and die if they tried to zap the ride vehicle with their powers. “So much for trying to make a roller coaster taste delicious,” Natalie joked as the oddly large and squishy lap bar lowered. Alden was about to ask her if she’d ever actually tried to cook something inedible before when the lap bar and the seat distracted him by melting slightly and molding themselves around him. Natalie was blinking down at her legs. “Are the seats hugging us?” “They are huggers,” Alden confirmed. “That wasn’t in the safety lect—” Without so much as a countdown or a green light in warning, the car shot forward and over the edge of the roof. They plummeted straight down ten stories, Natalie shrieking and Alden gripping the lap bar, which molded helpfully around his hands when he placed them on top. Then they slowed, to a float rather than a stop. Heart racing, it took Alden a second to appreciate the fact that he was hanging off the side of a sky scraper. They were facing forward, the back of their car having caught the track during the vertical drop, and he felt nearly weightless thanks to some magical effect. Laughing excitedly, Natalie nudged him with an elbow. “Your hair!” “Your hair,” Alden replied. The blond strands were drifting around in the air over her head. A second later, they dropped again, and then they shot forward along a completely invisible section of track that Alden assumed existed since it still sounded like they were riding a coaster and not a coaster car that had turned into an aerial vehicle. “This is the best!” Natalie shouted, throwing her hands up into the air. It really was. The ride took them up, down, and across from rooftop to rooftop. It was lengthened by a couple of slow spots—another pause to take in the city skyline and a journey over a particularly gorgeous series of climate-controlled gardens where they could wave at the people below them. And it was enhanced in ways that regular roller coasters couldn’t hope to mimic. At one point, the car seemed to jump from one building to the next in a tall arc. Like a frog leaping between lily pads. Alden had no idea if they really had hopped or if it was some illusory effect set into the track. When they made it back to the start and climbed from the car, he said, “They need to do this to all the roofs in the city.” “A whole rooftop theme park,” she agreed. Back downstairs, they found everyone in a fast fashion shop. Emilija and Hadiza were discussing something by a dressing room door, and when Natalie went over to see what they were talking about, Haoyu caught Alden’s eye. “Lute’s letting them pick outfits for him,” Haoyu said, gesturing toward the girls. “They’re taking it very seriously. They’re trying so hard to get him things that will fit him without looking too out-there.” “They clearly haven’t seen his closet. Should we tell them he’s making a vest for himself out of tape?” “I think we should just throw the most unusual clothes we can find in there and see if he can make it work.” “I like that plan,” said Alden, eyeing a pair of pants that had been decoratively splattered with a substance that looked like grape jelly. ****** Alden made it back to campus just in time to attend the B-list gym session. Instructor Plim, sitting in the center of the floor in her yellow raincoat just like last time, listened to his questions about what he should be focused on for the next few weeks while other B-ranks who were hoping to talk to the club advisor hovered at Alden’s back, eager for their turns. “I can’t believe they are limiting you to a single type of tool when there are so many fascinating things we could do with you! Not that I’m criticizing them. Have they no curiosity!? Not that you growing in competency with a tool type isn’t important, too.” Ding. Ding. “She wants to take you to her lab and make you preserve every material in the known universe,” Francis the Sway whispered. Instructor Plim waved him away. “If you must use rope-type things and you have only a few weeks before the end of term, then I think you should research similar tools and weapons and come up with ways your skill can shore up their weaknesses or take advantage of their unique properties. Take, for example, the sling…” After a brief practice period, Alden carried his gym suit to the on-site laundry. There were a couple of normal washers and dryers, but they were almost never used. The cleaning cabinets set into the walls, on the other hand, were in use all the time. Max was there, dressing one of the headless, shiny silver humanoid torsos that emerged from the cabinets when you told them you wanted to start a cleaning cycle. “Someone’s suit is on the floor,” Alden noted, pausing for a moment to examine the dark gray fabric before he stepped around it. There was a rule about not doing anything at all with or to suits that didn’t belong to you, and while he thought picking it up and setting it on a table wouldn’t count, he wasn’t completely sure. He couldn’t forget the warning he’d been given during assessment day about Principal Saleh phasing through the wall of someone’s bedroom in the dead of night to recover a missing suit. “It’s Jeffy’s,” Max said in an annoyed tone. “How can you tell?” Do you have our body sizes memorized that precisely? Have you been spying on Jeffy today? Alden thought it would be amusing to say these things, but Max looked kind of tired, so he refrained. “Because the second I saw a valuable piece of magical equipment lying on the floor, I wondered who would be that big of an idiot. And for some reason, my roommate’s face immediately sprang to mind. So I texted him and asked if, perchance, he knew where his suit was.” “You’re the first person I’ve ever heard use the word perchance in real life. I respect that.” Max sealed his suit around the silver torso as Alden summoned a dress-up body of his own from a cabinet nearby. It emerged from the wall with a set of pegs. He hung his neck, wrist, and ankle cuffs on those. “The Superlatives had their own club gym time this morning,” Max said. “Jeffy says he left his suit in one of the cabinets afterward because he didn’t want to wait through the cleaning cycle. He thought he’d just pick it up tomorrow before our class.” “Tomorrow night?” “Apparently.” “Someone got mad about him hogging the cabinet,” Alden concluded. “People in the larger classes and clubs sometimes stand around for half an hour or more waiting their turn, so I’m sure seeing a cabinet permanently occupied annoyed them. But whoever did it is an even bigger idiot than Jeffy. If one of the faculty walks in and sees it there before he gets over here to pick it up, the hothead who actually messed with it will be in more trouble than the asshole who left it in the cleaner.” Max lifted his hand like he was going to slap the button that would start the cleaning cycle, then he paused and pressed it gently instead. He stalked over to sit down on one of the benches by the door. Alden started his own cleaning cycle, then went to join him. “You seem tense,” he noted. Max was staring at the gym suit on the floor. “Jeffy’s a nice enough guy,” he said. “He just doesn’t think. Or he thinks so hard about all the wrong things, it leaves no room in his skull for anything else. And it’s annoying to be reminded that he can screw up in so many ways, so many times and still be the right kind of person for this school on the first try when I had to spend half a year turning myself inside out to become interesting enough for them to let me in.” At that moment, Jeffy sprinted into the laundry room wearing a short bathrobe and sneakers without socks. His hair had shampoo bubbles in it. Max sighed. ****** When they woke up on Monday morning, Lexi was back. He was drinking black coffee and cracking an egg into a bowl of Haoyu’s latest attempt at oatmeal. “Is that good?” Alden asked, watching him whisk the raw egg into the steaming oats with a fork. “I like it.” “There’s an animal cafe that just opened in F. They have chickens that wander around under the tables.” Astrid had told Alden about it. “You can hold them.” Lexi squinted at him. “I’m going to go,” Alden said, spooning nutritional yeast into his own oatmeal bowl. “Soon.” “Why are you telling me this?” “Obviously because he’s inviting you to go to the animal cafe with him.” Lute was yawning as he entered the room. “He thinks time spent with woodland creatures would be good for you.” “The egg just reminded me of it. But you can come. Everyone can come. And if one of the chickens looks like it wants to be held, let me know so that I can hold it.” Chickens laid eggs. If a chicken came to Alden and happened to lay an egg, it would be like he’d been given the egg. He could then eat it and prove once and for all that eggs should be on his menu. Whether the cafe allowed you to take home souvenirs from their chickens or not was irrelevant; if he got his hands on an edible egg, it was going to be his even if he had to buy the whole restaurant. “Lexi!” Haoyu said as he bounced in. “You’re back! Let me invite you to our group chat.” “I’m already in the roommate chat.” “This is a separate one! For business.” Lute gave Haoyu a thumbs-up. “Operation Odin’s Revenge.” Since Alden had originally created the chat, he had to approve the invite. Wondering how this was going to go over, he did. [Lexi Roberts has joined A Group Chat for Insane Things Nobody Else Ever Needs to Know About.] [Lute: I get to make up your codename.] [Haoyu: Lute thinks there will probably be something for his Uncle Benjamin’s birthday this week. He’s going to invite himself to that. At least one of us should go for backup.] Lexi frowned and started scrolling back to see what all of this was about. “Why does Alden keep insisting that he’ll only be a socializer instead of someone who breaks into locked rooms?” Lexi asked. “What is this…” His frown deepened. He looked at Lute, then Haoyu, then Alden. [Lexi Roberts has left A Group Chat for Insane Things Nobody Else Ever Needs to Know About.] “Hey!” said Haoyu. “Your codename is Betrayer,” said Lute. “Are you really not going to help?” Haoyu asked. “It’s important.” “I don’t see how it could be.” “We’re doing it to help Lute and better our homeland. And nothing illegal is happening! We’ve agreed. Nothing’s going to blow up. Nobody’s getting hit with cars. This is mostly about roommate solidarity,” Haoyu insisted. “I’m inviting you again.” “While I was gone...