The others cheered and we all congratulated Lillia, who looked flustered at the praise. Kalei, Aira, and Oka braved the mess of the train wreck to look for some kind of completion trophy we were supposed to get from it. I sheepishly picked up my bloodsaber, my face red. The others returned holding a big crystal, which looked like the amber colored ones we got from our temple outing.

After a quick drive back to the center of the field of flowers, Laenie parked us next to some other minivan in a cans that were parked. It looked like everyone else from our class and other classes in our grade were back from their own mission, making me wonder if everyone got a goop train to destroy or if they each got a different goopy vehicle.

Caya Kilander was waiting to grade us.

“Excellent,” Caya said, swiping our pod off her checklist as Aira proudly held the crystal up. “Great work, girls. Make sure you write down your experience now, or at least take notes on it for later.”

Everyone else was working on writing on their assignment or chatting, and a lot of the good spots were taken, so we ended up by some big rocks.

“That’s one thing down,” Kalei said. “How much more before we can go back? I have Fang Moon Web stuff to do.”

“There’s still 3.7 pages of assignment,” Oka said, paging through her papers. “And it’s not officially done until we write it down. And none of us did that yet.”

“Well, I did.” Lillia said.

“How did you write so fast?” Aira asked. “That’s not fair.”

The rest of us tried our best to write down what we’d just done, with Kalei using the rock she was sitting on as a flat-ish surface to write on.

“Yay! One thing officially done!” Oka said as soon as she finished writing.

I got really happy seeing Oka cheer and got up instinctively and held my arms out, which kind of turned into a handshake attempt and then back to a hug attempt, but we were both holding stuff. We awkwardly almost hugged, looking like those times where one person tries to get past another, and they both just go the same way back and forth for a while.

“Sorry,” Oka said. “I should let Dr. Diast know we’re done. I’ll…be right back.”

I couldn’t help but let out a sigh as Oka left, feeling my face get redder.

“Uh, wow.” Kalei said. “What the hell was that?”

“Nothing, I dunno, what. Shut up.” I said.

“Got any more mumbled vague retorts?” Kalei said.

“No.” I said.

“I’ve seen it before,” Roux said, appearing behind Kalei. She tried to climb over one of the rocks next to Kalei and slowly rolled over it before standing between us.

“Hey Roux,” Kalei said. “Surprised you’d show your face near me after that ass beating you got in Talon last night.”

“Pfft,” Roux said. “Once I prove you were cheating, likely via hacks, then we’ll see whose ass was whooped.”

"Yours. It'll be yours, still." Kalei said.

Roux looked back to me, waiting for me to ask.

“What were you saying you’ve seen before?” I asked, knowing I’d regret it.

“What you and Oka are going through, that’s all,” Roux said. “As soon as a modicum of intimacy is obtained, maybe going a step farther than everyone involved is ready for, everything becomes super awkward and then wham, divorce.”

“You have not seen that before.” I said.

“Uh huh, that’s what happened to my parents.” Roux said.

After giving a few moments to wince at that in what I decided was an act of sympathy, Roux was still looking at me expectantly. I felt like she was trying to get a reaction out of me.

“Well, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.” I said.

“Didn’t this start after you guys saw each other naked?” Roux asked.

“Shh!” I said, looking around to make sure no one nearby from our class heard it. “Well, we didn’t…it was like our backs only. Like just our—how did you hear about that?”

“I mean, everyone heard about that hilarious incident.” Roux said. She put her hands in her pockets, apparently satisfied she got a rise out of me. “Well, see ya.”

Roux took off as I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Looks like the others are going to Diast,” Kalei said. “You done on your question?”

“Mrmh…” I muttered.

“You’re not taking that seriously, are you?” Kalei said. “It’s Roux. She lies all the time. Her parents probably never got divorced. She maybe doesn’t even have parents; I wouldn’t be surprised if she just came to be via some evil magic spell or something.”

I bit my lip as I nodded slightly. I didn’t want to believe Roux, but once my mind got on a tangent, it kept going. Maybe it was so awkward because we went too far and broke it. Kalei hopped off her rock and patted me on the back.

“You guys are just taking it slow,” Kalei said. She thought for a second. “…really slow.”

“Slow after going maybe too far.”

“Slow after you admitted to me you were scared of going further cuz of Jeans.” Kalei said. “Maybe not a bad thing to take things slow then.”

“I guess…”

“Pssh,” Kalei said. “Cmon, let’s go.”