"Hey, um, Isis," Anzu knelt beside her on the floor, rocking a little on the balls of her feet. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave Isis a bright smile that quickly broke into a cringe. "I'm really sorry about what happened earlier…I mean, Mai is a little… but who knew she was going to react that way? But you have to get your mind off it! Come on!"

Anzu clutched Isis' wrist and sprung to her feet. She led Isis across the room and gently sat her down on the edge of her bed, where Shizuka was already curled up against a pile of flower-print pillows, hair in curlers, face buried in a magazine, waiting for her toenails to dry.

"We could do your hair! Or bake cookies and watch a movie! Or…" Her eyes lit up and she leaned in closer, mouth curling into a conspiratorial smile. "We could make flash cards for our bio test next week!"

Shizuka snorted and turned the page of her magazine very loudly.

Anzu frowned. "We could make cookies and then study for our bio test! It'll be fun!" She turned back and forth between Isis and Shizuka. "Shizuka? Come on, it'll be fun…you want Isis to have a fun time, right?" She continued in an undertone.

Shizuka wrinkled her nose. "Studying's no fun."

"Well…we can do both! Can't we? What do you think, Isis?"

Isis looked from Shizuka's stack of glossy magazines to Anzu's stack of unfinished flash cards and swallowed a sigh. She shook her head and quickly looked away. "I'm sorry–I feel like my heart's not quite in either at the moment…"

Anzu smiled and squeezed her shoulder. "No, it's okay–I get it," she paused. "You guys must have been pretty close, huh?"

"I had thought so." Her voice tightened the same way that her fingers clenched around the loose fabric of her skirt. She quickly snatched her hand away and tried to smooth out the fabric, but it was already wrinkled and damp. For a moment Anzu's room swam out of focus around the edges, and everything felt uncomfortably warm. But Isis blinked and turned back towards Anzu. "I'm sorry for being so melancholic. This probably isn't what you had in mind when you invited me over here tonight…"

Anzu brushed her concerns aside. "Don't worry about it! I know it must be hard just moving here and not knowing anyone. But–-well, maybe we're new friends, but we're still here for you."

Isis nodded. "Thank you."

Anzu leaned her cheek on her shoulder and kept her eyes on Isis' face. "So, what happened back there?"

–

"Nothing happened. I just saw her a couple times over the summer, that's all." Mai rolled her eyes and flung her head back against the headrest of Valon's car. Jounouchi caught her eye in the rearview mirror and winked.

"Sure…nothing happened…that's why she was so excited to see you…"

"Oh, drop it! It's none of your business anyway."

"I know that it's none of my business but that's not gonna stop me from wanting to know."

Mai snorted and crossed her arms. "Well tough luck."

"Ah, come on, Mai!" Valon whined. "How come this is such a big secret, anyway? We're just curious, that's all. We didn't know you had any friends besides us."

"Yeah, well right now I'm thinking I have about two friends too many."

Valon and Jounouchi snickered.

"You're crazy, Mai–you know that, right?" Valon asked. "That girl was hot. If she had come rushing up to me like–"

"Well she didn't." Mai snapped.

They all tensed as the car bounced over a pothole. Valon gave Jounouchi a sly smile and they snickered again.

Mai kicked the back of his seat. "Just focus on your driving. Idiot. You're going to get us all killed if you keep leering like that."

"I'm only going to get us killed if you keep kicking me!"

Mai grumbled and leaned back further into the small corner where the seatback met the inside of the car door. She stretched her legs out across the backseat and pressed the back of her head against the window. She tilted her head back just far enough to watch the street lights rush by. Each burst of light was like plunging headlong into the water. Just for a moment, she couldn't feel her own weight; she couldn't tell if she was too hot or too cold, but knew that she was too–-something.

"So then you wouldn't mind if I asked her out, right Mai?" Valon asked, snickering.

Mai sighed. "Go ahead. I'm sure you're just her type."

"Oh, yeah?" Valon peered at Mai out of the corner of his eye as he turned his head to pull a quick U-turn. "What else's she into? More girly stuff than you? Shopping and kittens and all that?"

Mai pressed the top of her head harder against the cold glass window and let out an exasperated sigh.

–

"The beach." Isis' eyes darted between Anzu and Shizuka–-whose magazine was now sitting forgotten on the floor-–before settling on the pattern of Anzu's lace curtains. Anzu hadn't closed the window all the way and they were fluttering slightly in the breeze, casting soft, delicate shadows on the wall. "We met at the beach. I had never seen so much water before! It was–" she hesitated. "I was a little overwhelmed."

She curled her toes into the carpet and remembered the way that the sand had coated her feet in dry, chalky dust. She had left her shoes behind on the edge of her towel and then ran as fast as she could–-the ground was so hot-–until she could feel the sand become cool and damp. Then she had walked more deliberately, pausing to look behind and watch the trail of footprints extending behind her.

"She taught me how to surf." Isis covered her mouth when she smiled and laughed softly. "I was terrified! I was sure that I was going to drown!"

She had laughed a little nervously when Mai had taken her hand and guided her into the water. "What do you mean you've never been to the ocean before? You said you were from Egypt, right? Don't they have beaches there?" Mai had a strong grip, and Isis almost didn't feel anything but Mai's cool fingers as all the water climbed past her calves, her knees, her thighs–and higher–until it hit her with a chill around her stomach.

"We–well, it's a bit of a long story…"

"Mm-hm. Well, you'll have to tell me about it some time." Mai was guiding the surfboard with her other hand. She walked slowly, stopping every few steps to watch the waves. She rubbed her lips together as she did it, squinted at the sunlight bouncing off the water. A few faint lines appeared between her eyebrows. "I'm trying to find somewhere we can start where the waves won't be too rough, but it's so windy today…"

"Oh–um…"

Isis must have made a move to pull away, because Mai turned back to her and smiled, tugging a little on her hand.

"You're not scared, are you? It'll be fun–I promise!"

Isis struggled with her words when Mai smiled at her, and for a moment they just stood together, smiling a little wider whenever a wave briefly lifted them off their feet.

"I'd like to keep going."

"Great! We'll start off with something easy-–just get used to sitting on the board and see how you like it."

Isis nodded and pulled herself onto the board as Mai held it steady for her. Even with Mai's steady hands the board bobbed on the water and Isis had to clench the edges very hard to keep from slipping off-until her knuckles were nearly white.

"Hold on!" Mai laughed as she hopped on behind Isis. The entire board tipped backwards and Isis had to cling tighter to keep from sliding into her. Even after the board steadied and Mai's giggles subsided, Isis could still feel her weight behind her, gradually pulling her back.

"It's okay if you are," Mai spoke warm and soft behind her ear. "Scared, I mean. Just let me know. I'll be right here."

Isis nodded and released a breath that made her tremble from the center of her chest to her fingertips. "Thank you."

They sat together in silence for several moments. Isis watched their feet sway in the water and tried not to shy away when a strand of Mai's hair brushed against her shoulder. Slowly, she released the tension in her arms and in her back and learned to let the water move through her.

"Hey–-I think you're getting the hang of it!" Mai said. "So, how do you feel about standing?"

Mai taught her how to stand–clumsily, at first. She showed her how to find balance, when to rush with the water and when to remain still. It made her arms ache and her legs sore, but she would lie in bed each night and still feel the water rushing through them and would take hours to fully fall asleep. It would be just the two of them out there on the water, and they would laugh about the sun sparkling on the crests of the waves and the giddy foam and how the horizon seemed so impossibly far away. And they would stagger back to the shore together each day, sand caked half-way up their calves and hair a tangled mess.

Until they didn't.

Isis shrugged. "One day, she just didn't come. I thought it might be a one-off thing, perhaps, but…we never exchanged numbers either–-and I didn't know what school she went to! I had just thought that maybe she was gone forever…"

Shizuka and Anzu exchanged a sympathetic glance, and Anzu put her arm around Isis' shoulders.

"That's so sad…"

Isis stared at her lap and squeezed her fingers together. "It's…fine."

"So what did you do?"

She had gone home, thrown her towel in the wash. But she could never manage to shake all of the sand out of her shoes, and even days later she would take a step and suddenly feel it rushing between her toes again.

"What could I have done?"

–

"Well, what was I supposed to do? It's not like we're friends."

Valon shrugged his bag over his shoulder. "She sure seemed to think you were."

Mai scowled at him, at the hallway, at the inside of her locker. She pulled her hair out its bun then furiously re-tied it. "She's–" she slammed her locker door and refused to turn her head even a fraction of an inch, to watch Isis retreat back down the hallway. "She's no one."

"Didn't look like no one."

"Let's just go, alright? Jounouchi's waiting."

–

"Wait–-Mai?"

Mai felt Isis' voice like a jolt at the back of her neck. She didn't turn around to face her, but she didn't keep walking, either.

"Mai, is that you?" Isis caught up with her, rounded on her, eyes searching her face. She stood perfectly still, even though the hallway was packed and she kept getting knocked in the shoulder by kids who couldn't bother to look to see where they were going. "I thought I recognized you…Do you go here?"

Mai shrugged. She could hear Valon calling her from down the hall and flinched. "What do you want."

"You never came back…"

"So what?"

"I just thought–" she bit her lip and her eyes fell to the floor.

"Hey, Isis, are you okay?" Anzu appeared at Isis' side. She cast a quick glance in Mai's direction. "She's not bothering you, is she?"

Isis shook her head. "No, I'm fine thank you," she said quietly.

"Buzz off, Mazaki."

Anzu scowled at her and began to stalk off, but whispered quickly to Isis, "Don't let her push you around, okay? I'll just be at my locker." Isis nodded at her and smiled, but her eyes–-her entire face–-looked like it had been washed in gray.

Mai snorted and flicked a curl behind her shoulder. "What do you want."

Isis turned back to her and her eyes were blue now–-bright blue-green and watery. "What happened to you?"

–

Mai had arrived fifteen minutes late and ducked behind a scrub bush at the other end of the beach. She had watched Isis wander out into the water alone, turn her head from side to side and scan the shoreline, shivering a little and hugging her chest as a gust of wind whipped across the water. Mai had crouched there, hot and prickly, until a couple walking by gave her a funny look.

And she had gone home and scrubbed the sand and the salt off her scalp. She had spent the final days of summer staring at herself in the mirror, peeling off her sunburned skin. But the delicate, stinging, burning feeling didn't go away.

And she hadn't gone back. She had bought school clothes and pretended not to notice the sun setting a little earlier each day.

Mai rolled down the car window and shivered at the icy wind blasting her face. A few strands of hair blew out of her bun and stuck to her lipgloss. Somewhere along the way the rest of Jounouchi and Valon's conversation got lost in rumbling of the traffic and the whistling wind. She closed her eyes, but could still feel the alternating bands of light and shadow passing over her face, crossing over the entire car, lifting it up and laying it back down, as if it were riding a wave.