.

.

Outside, it's dark. Champ and I are huddled under the covers. I've been petting him the last hour and he's so relaxed he sprawls out on the bed like pudding.

"I know we had a plan," I say. "It's a good plan. It's so good. I mean, we've got 2,000 poke already. 2,346. That's more than Dad gets in a week. But –"

I bite my lip and pull at the covers. "It just. It just makes me feel sick. Not like in my stommy or anything, just bad. Us fighting all those losers we can beat."

"Tat."

"I want to try, Champ. I want to try fighting the better noobs, the Ones. Maybe even the gym. Because we're not bad! We're not so much more badder than they are."

"Tat ratta-ratta-tat!" His eyes are bright in the dimly lit room.

"I'm so proud of you," I say. I realize I'm crying a bit. "I want to do this so much only I feel like it's stupid, that we'd fail, and I hate feeling like that. Or that I'm letting down Mom. Cause if we start fighting the real trainers, we'll lose sometimes. We won't make all the money we could make."

I wonder if maybe I've gotten selfish out here on my own. I don't have to think about my food or my bed or what's going to happen tomorrow here. Mom and Dad do. Sammy does. Everyone does back at home.

I sit quiet, thinking hard. "If, if we're going to do this, like the other trainers do, we've got to be smart." Then a yawn hits me and I notice how heavy my eyes feel. "Maybe I'll be smart in the morning," I tell Champ.

"Rattata," he chitters at me, and curls up right on my stomach.

–

At the cafeteria, I run into the waiting-boy again. Or he runs into me, I guess. He plunks down his tray at my table and says hi, looking like I'm going to bite him. Well, I won't. Champ might.

"I'm Walter," he says. "I never got your name?"

"Lena," I say, through a spoonful of porridge.

He fiddles with the berries on his plate. "Have you been here long?" he asks.

"Been a few weeks, I think." It hits me for the first time then, I guess. I've never been away so long. "It's the longest I've ever been from home," I find myself telling him, and then I want to smack myself. What a stupid thing for a trainer to say. So nooby. So dumb.

"That's rough," he says. "I'm pretty new to the training thing, but I'm used to being away from home. That's probably the least scary part of it for me. The battling, though – " He laughs a little, but sounding sad. "That's another thing."

"It's not the fighting I mind," I tell him. I feel less stupid, now that he's called it scary.

He nods. "I get that. You seem tough."

"Tough?"

He shrugs. "Yeah."

I like how that sounds. It would be cool to be tough. "I'm not really," I say. "Like, my mom. I miss her so much. I just want to talk to her."

"Why not call?"

I stare at him for a moment. "We don't have a phone at home," I say. I don't know why he's stupid suddenly.

"You don't." He frowns like I'm the one not making sense.

Unsure suddenly, I say, "Do you?"

"Well, yeah. Most people do."

Most people don't, I think. Sammy didn't have a phone. And neither did the dancing boys. All the businesspeople in the streets – I knew they had phones, but real people didn't. Right?

"We don't have a phone," I say again.

He does this thing where he jerks his mouth open and shut and moves his hands around. "It's just strange for me to think of any house not having a phone," he says finally.

"What would we use a phone for?"

"Um, calling people who aren't there? Like, family?"

"Well, all my family's in Castelia."

"Then I guess," he tries to smile, but messes it up, "you don't need a phone."

I frown at him. "Phones are expensive," I say. "That's why we don't have one." I don't want to act like we chose not to buy a phone, or something stupid like that.

"Oh," he says.

I know he's a rich kid. I can smell the money on his clothes. But he said being a trainer is scary and that I'm tough, so I guess he's not so bad.

I take a large spoonful of my food, suddenly hungry. "Hey, you know how you asked me what Champ and I were going to do?"

"Yeah."

"Well, we're going to get stronger."

He nods. "You told me, I think," he says, all polite. All etiquette.

Yeah, but I was lying when I told you, I think. Now I'm not.