"I want to tell her."

Riley looked up from the tray of mashed potatoes and peas she was devouring faster than the value of a rug-pulled cryptocurrency. She wiped any leftover food from her mouth with the back of her hand, and responded simply. "What?"

"My mother, about…"

I scanned the room for any unexpected listeners.

"About… my personal stuff."

Riley raised her eyebrows. "Are you sure about that? With what you told me about your encounter with the grim reaper last night, she doesn’t seem to be in the best mood right now."

Just like earlier this morning, all the terrible scenarios of what my mother could say or do shot through my head. My left knee bobbed up and down repeatedly as my body tried to relieve some of the stress.

"I don’t know, it’s just…" I glanced down at my boring jeans and the shapeless hoodie draped over my uncomfortable body. "I feel stuck."

Riley put her fork to her chin in contemplation. "Hmmm, yeah, I can imagine. Didn’t you say she took away your computer already?"

"Yup."

She shrugged as she rested her arm back on the table. "Well, I guess it can’t get much worse in that case."

Mentioning the fact that my mother took my computer away sparked a realization in my brain. "Oh yeah, about that, I need to come over and use your computer tonight."

"What makes you think we haven’t moved it over to the new house already?"

"Shit! For real?" I yelped, with a slight hint of panic in my voice.

"Nope," Riley grinned.

Was she kidding or not? It would make sense; she barely used the thing ever since she gave up on getting into games. It's generally something pretty heavy, valuable, and needs to be transported carefully. You don’t want your graphics card breaking while…

"-Hey, doofus. It was a joke. Of course, you can come over tonight. I’m guessing you’ve got some scrims planned with the team?"

"Yup," I nodded. Thinking about the team; I considered the fact that, even though we kind of made up this morning, we never actually talked about what sparked the fight in the first place. Her and Rachel. "About that, what's the situation now between you and-"

"-Rachel? It’s… Developing…"

"Developing?"

Riley put down her fork and pushed her now-empty tray away. "So… Me and my parents went over to Battingham to move some stuff into the new house, do some painting, stuff like that."

"Sure, sounds fun."

Riley slumped and started shaking her head, "It isn’t. Having to hear their arguments about the living room’s color harmony needing to be either complementary or compound is incredibly boring." She straightened out her posture and settled into an upright position before continuing. "That’s why I anticipated hanging out at Rachel's place all weekend and seeing how far we could take this whole… thing we have together."

I rolled my eyes.

Riley continued rambling. "It’s weird though. Even though we had been to her place before, last weekend I wasn’t even allowed to set foot near the place. Our whole weekend of hanging out ended up being 2 hours at a Starbucks on Saturday evening and 3 hours in the park on Sunday morning."

"So, it didn’t go well between you two?"

"Oh no, those few hours were hecking fun. She’s great! Funny, confident, and even in the physical sense, there is definitely something there." She winked and a cheeky grin appeared on her face.

"Just… be careful?” I said, concerned. “As I understood from Arthur, she and her family can be pretty difficult sometimes. And I don’t want you getting into the same pit of despair that Bree brought you into."

I don’t think she heard half of the sentence I just spoke. Just hearing the name Arthur somehow caused her eyes to light up with devilish glee.

Riley put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her knuckles. "Arthur? Who is Arthur?" She lowered her voice while showing off a big smile. "Does our little Emily have a suitor already?"

"Huh? No, it’s nothing like that at all. He’s the captain of the last team we played against during our Battingham Bootcamp." My eyes fell towards the ground for a second. "He’s also Rachel’s ex."

"Oh! Arthur, yeah, Rachel mentioned him a few times." She shifted her posture again, now resting her head on only a single fist. "Weird fellow, or that’s what Rachel told me at least. But I'm guessing they're both not the most reliable sources if it comes to them talking about each other. Lots of history getting in the way of the truth. You just spoke with him in Battingham or…?"

"Initially, yes,” I shrugged. “But afterwards, he added me on Discord, and we started playing some games together here and there. Chatted a bunch outside of that too,”

“Can I read it?” Riley’s face still looked like that of a zookeeper witnessing a couple of endangered animals having their first baby.

“Uhm… Sure?” I fished my phone out of my hoodie's front pocket, unlocked it, and handed it to her. Normally, giving your unlocked phone to anybody would seem like a terrible idea, but there was nothing Riley could find on there that she didn’t already know.

While Riley was completely focused on my phone, and all the text chains it contained, I looked up towards the giant clock hanging in the school cafeteria. Just as I registered that it was 1 minute from the end of lunchtime, the clock ticked over, and the bells started ringing. My next class was physics, and it was all the way on the other side of the school. If I wanted to get there on time, I needed to leave right now. There was no way I was giving Ms. Shepard any extra opportunities to sic my mother on me.

Instinctively, I checked if everything I needed was in my bag, and strapped it on my back. Before I took off to my class, however, I also did the standard pat-down to see if my phone was still on me. But of course, Riley still had it and seemed totally engrossed in it.

“Hey, I need to get to Physics, can I have my phone back?”

“Huh?” Instead of the glee from earlier, her face had changed slightly, her brow furrowed in concentration, like she was trying to solve a difficult math problem. “Oh, your phone. I’m not done, sorry. You'll get it back at History after the next period.”

I clenched my fists as I was about to start an argument, but I needed to leave right now. I just let it go and sighed. “Fine, but don’t start chatting pretending to be me!” I yelled back at her as I walked off

Just before exiting the cafeteria, I could hear Riley give a disinterested response. “Yeah, Yeah, of course.”

***

“Did you really need to keep it for the entire afternoon?” I said, as I spotted Riley standing next to her locker.

Our lockers were located close to the changing rooms for PE. At this time of the day, the smell of sweaty teenage hormones had already built up, so hanging around here was not on the table. I quickly swapped out my books, and as I closed the locker, I revealed Riley who was now standing right next to me.

“There was a lot to read, and I almost needed to skip class to do so,” she responded, the scent of exaggeration drifting through the air.

We had about five minutes before the next bus would leave, so we quickly got moving into a walk and talk. “Real funny. Was it at least interesting?”

“Very interesting, actually,” Riley motioned towards me with her index finger before continuing. “That Arthur guy…what do you think about him?”

“I don’t know. He’s nice, he’s good at Dota, and he’s fun to play with. I just needed somebody to vent to when I felt like everything was going to shit, you know?”

Riley let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah…Be careful with him.”

My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“The way he is acting, the things he’s saying? It’s all red flags buddy.”

Red flags? What was she talking about? He was just a friend. One that happened to at least care about me when I felt everybody else in my life didn’t. She hadn’t even met the guy. What did she know? Why did she always have to step in and meddle with everything?

I scowled. “You don’t have to protect me from an imaginary boogeyman. He’s just a guy I play games with sometimes. Nothing more, nothing less.”

We had just got outside, and I could see part of the bus already waiting around the corner. But as soon as it appeared, it also disappeared again due to Riley stepping in front of me, blocking my sight.

Her expression was intense. She looked me directly in the eyes, and she used my phone to point at me before saying, “If he is ‘just some guy’, why did you tell him you’re blowing off your team during the tournament they have been working towards for months, just so you can hang out with ‘some guy’?”

Unable to move forward, I stopped and exhaled through my nose. “I wasn’t actually going to do that.”

“So, you lied to him?”

“What? No!” I swiped the phone out of her hands and looked towards the ground, trying to avoid Riley’s gaze. “Not really, at least. I meant to at the time, but now I’m…”

“-going to tell him you don’t want to see him again,” Riley’s voice sounded forceful. And I was growing antsy, as I didn’t want to miss the bus due to whatever…this…was.

I tried to look past Riley to see if the bus was still there, but she noticed and immediately shifted her posture to block me out again.

“Hey!” Riley raised her voice. “I’m being serious here! I get that you were just blowing off your frustrations, but you need to shut this down as soon as possible.”

“Can we talk about this later?” I tried to push myself forward to get past her, but she immediately pushed back by putting her hand against my shoulder.

“Not if you don’t start actually listening to me.”

“Yeah, Yeah, I get it, I just want us to catch this bus-”

The sound of the bus’s hydraulic doors closing suddenly entered my ear.

“Really?!” I locked eyes with Riley again. “Now we have to wait, like, twenty minutes for the next one!”

She opened both of her hands dramatically, and responded, “Who cares!? We have bigger issues to solve, like the fact that you are steering yourself in a straight line towards an emotional cliff that you are not seeing for some reason.”

I rolled my eyes. “My gosh, stop being so dramatic, Riley. You are seeing ghosts.”

“I’m not seeing ghosts. I’m seeing my friend being unable to understand how to behave in a new social context from the one they are used to.”

I furrowed my brows and shook my head. “What new social context?”

“Your new social context!” Riley stabbed me in the chest with her index finger. “Emily’s social context.”