an;; thanks to darkmoonrise312 for reviewing, i appreciate it.
on another note, i'm kind of experimenting with POVs and tenses, so yeah, this one's in first person, present tense.
Six Ways to Sunday
no seriously. it's an actual saying.
You should never underestimate how far a simple gesture of kindness will take you. Then again, you shouldn't overestimate it, either.
- Spinda Express fortune cookie variation no. 144
[ 3: in which i help harbor a fugitive ]
"- and ... that's it!" my roommate cheers.
I pull the pillow down farther over my ears. Of course my roommate was the redhead, the grape-lover, miss sunshine and rainbow rapidash herself. She doesn't seem to take the hint and continues to babble on about nothing.
You know, when she falls asleep, we could put that pillow to better use, Enzo suggested hopefully.
What do you mean "we"? Sitting up, I look for something to glare at and finally settle on the row of nail polish bottles lined up inside an open drawer on Delilah's side of the room, the very project she'd been neurotically working on for the past ten minutes.
"I can't believe that's what you chose to bring," I sigh, looking at my own bag of memoirs. Mostly family pictures, souvenirs, a stuffed eevee toy that Brett had won for me when I was little.
Delilah shrugs and gets up on a chair to start stringing up the lights that she's brought to decorate the room with. She arranges every. single. lightbulb. In my head, she accidentally shocks herself, and her red hair explodes into a ginger afro. In reality, she keeps talking. "Well they said that they'd provide clothes but I didn't think they'd have nail polish, too."
"This one is fluorescent yellow," I tell her warily, leaning on my elbows to get a better look at all of them. "Why would you ever need something that ... yellow?"
"What if I catch a bright yellow pokemon? Then they'd match," she says, matter-of-fact.
I consider telling her that she should catch a lot of bright neon-colored pokemon and then keep switching them out whenever she battles someone.
Challenger in the blue corner is unable to continue due to the seizure-inducing lights. Challenger in the red corner wins by default.
Then I feel guilty for thinking that because Grandpa Johnny is prone to seizures.
To be fair, though, the lights do look nice once they're all strung up, and I grudgingly tell her that.
"They are sparkly, aren't they," Delilah says dreamily, but her tone contradicts her critical frown.
"Al-right then."
She doesn't seem to notice my apprehensive tone and rearranges a lightbulb that moved out of place. Then, as slowly as possible so she doesn't accidentally knock any of the others askew, she gets off the chair.
"So ... we could go for a wa-"
"No don't-!"
"-lk," I finish, confused.
An excited bundle of fur squirms out of Delilah's duffel bag and bounces in circles around her legs, making soft whining yips. She picks it up and sets it in her lap and it blinks up at me with wide blue eyes.
It sniffs my fingers when I hold my hand under its nose. "You, um, you're not allowed to bring pokemon with you," I say stupidly, but I'm already petting the puppy's tiger-striped fur.
It's the first time I've seen her without a smiling. It's kind of weird. "I know, I know. But Maya - that's her name - she's just a baby, she gets anxious when I'm not around, and I didn't know what else to do. If I left her at home my mom might've made her into a fur coat."
If she's anything to go by, I don't doubt that statement.
Crazy breeds crazy, Enzo says sagely.
Your mom must've been a piece of work then.
"M'sorry, what?" I've seen Delilah's mouth moving the whole time but I don't read lips well.
"Oh. I said, could you please just keep it a secret for now? Just until I figure out what to do," the redhead bargains.
I stammer, "But how did you miss it, it was in big red capital letters."
Don't do it. Don't sell your soul to the ginger devil with her ginger monster puppy.
Maya chooses that moment to yawn cutely and I know I'm screwed.
See you in hell, Enzo cackles smugly.
"Sure," I sigh in resignation.
Delilah's eyes literally shine. "Oh wonderful! We're going to best friends, we're already keeping each others' secrets!"
I'm back to hiding under the pillow.
iflinebreakingwereasporti'dbeawinner
Our group meets in the common room on our floor for our first group meeting. It really isn't anything we don't know, just introductions and ground rules for the dorms and for the academy itself. I don't learn anything from it except that Xandra is a hard name to match with a fruit that starts with the same letter.
Naturally, our RA also emphasizes how we're not allowed to have brought pokemon from home as it "disrupts the learning experience".
It's only at night that we actually see how far they're willing to enforce it.
The first knock scares the crap out of both of us because we're just in the middle of throwing gummy bears up into the air for Maya to catch. The second one has us trying to stuff Maya back into Delilah's duffel bag. On the third one, I open the door, smile, and invite Tara in.
She's a short woman, probably fresh out of college, with long and curly light brown hair and an annoying habit of snapping her gum. Delilah is perched primly on her bed as our RA gives our room a once over, but her knuckles are turning white.
It looks like she's about to leave, but then she takes a long sniff of the air, not unlike the damn growlithe we're illegally harboring, and suddenly she makes a beeline towards the duffel bag.
"Once I check your bag I can give you the all clear," Tara explains.
Can't you just mess with her head, make her hallucinate or something so she thinks the bag is empty? I try, resorting to reasoning with Enzo.
I'm allergic to dogs, he states, like that has anything to do with anything.
But he's adamantly useless, and so Tara raises an eyebrow at us when she discovers our uninvited plus one. Maya's giving her her best puppy dog eyes and the whole sweet-tail-wagging-thumb-chewing thing package, but Tara isn't buying it.
She fixes both of us with a frosty look. "What part of "not being allowed to bring pokemon from home" was unclear? You know the consequences for breaking that particular rule is expulsion."
Delilah looks helpless, and her eyes are teary like she's about to cry. Tara's holding Maya a little too tightly and the blind growlithe puppy begins to whine and squirm nervously, sniffing for her owner.
No.
Don't do it.
Keep your mouth shut.
"It - she's mine," I blurt out.
What the hell.
I've always had a bit of a hero-complex, which is alright but it has the shittiest timing. Once, when I was seven, I tried to stop a drunk man from shooting his raichu. I'm lucky he was so drunk he forgot to load up his shotgun with bullets. Yeah. That kind of shit timing. My mom hoped I would grow out of it, gain a little impulse control, some sense of self-preservation, or something. Nope.
But Delilah looks at me like I'm a gift sent from Arceus and that gaze is so, so hopeful. For a minute it feels like I've done the right thing. And then I look over at Tara, asshole Tara, and the expression on her face makes me wonder how she hides the snakes that she must have for hair.
"Well. Then it looks like you're going home," she says with finality. "The Headmaster will send a message to your pokeGear with the location of your teleport home and your parents will be notified.
"That's not f-" Delilah exclaims, heat rising to her face as that Medusa-esque look Tara was giving me now becomes directed at her. Then Tara stalks out of the room.
Delilah turns to me with an indiscernible frown. Neither of us say anything for a while. Then, "why'd you say that?"
I groan and fall backwards onto my bed. That's not a question I want to answer right now, especially when I'm confused about it myself, angry that I'm getting expelled instead of her, and exhausted when I try to think of my family's reaction. It's not even the first Arceus-damned day. Shit.
For once the redhead seems to recognize personal boundaries and keeps quiet for the rest of the day.
I play snake on my pokeGear while I wait for the message.
It never comes.
At 11:35 PM, I'm still awake, staring at the holographic screen. Does he expect me to teleport myself home? Maybe, if I were a gardevoir.
My throat feels dry. Delilah's already asleep, and, I hate her for being able to fall asleep so easily after today. I know that I'm the one who spoke up when I didn't have to, but still. Soulless gingers.
Even Enzo knows to leave me alone; he hasn't said a single word in my head and I haven't had any impulses to consume bizarre objects recently so I assume that it means that he's taking a break.
Then my stomach growls.
One of the rules is not to leave your dorm after lights-out, which is 11, but really.
I walk on the balls of my feet. The carpet muffles most of the sound anyways, and I find my way to the common room, where there's a stocked mini-fridge.
"-y not?"
It's Tara's voice. I freeze, about to round the corner. Then, I backpedal and put to use one of my favorite talents, eavesdropping. There's shuffling, then the sound of the couch springs relaxing as someone relieves it of their weight.
"It's none of your business. Just tell her she's been let off with a warning."
That voice is clipped and dismissive, male, and definitely belongs to someone much older than Tara. I want to crane my head around the wall, but I don't know which direction they're facing.
There's a long silence. Then, in an accusing tone, Tara says, "You wouldn't do this for anyone else."
The man doesn't say anything and now I really wish I could see their faces. But I hear footsteps, like he's getting ready to leave, so I flee down the hallway back to my room. He says something, but I don't quite catch it because it's quiet and I'm too far away.
By the time I wake up, the memory kind of feels like a dream, and I remember the vaguest details, like going to get a yogurt, but all the specifics are like sand in a sieve. Tara? Or something?
It doesn't seem important so I accept Delilah's profuse thanks and go to get a yogurt.