Fangirl

Never let another's treatment alter your view of yourself.
There will always be those who love and disdain you.
What matters is what you think of yourself.
And never let your feelings affect how you treat others.
Love and hate are tiring in equal measure.

Marina's dancing in place as they wait in line. Pearl elbows her. "We're almost at the front. What do you want?"

"Are the crabcakes here good? I haven't tried—oh, they're doing Calamari Inkantation!" She bounces on her toes and leans out into the plaza. "Um..."

Pearl bites back a laugh. Marina's so cute when she's excited. "You won the last match, I'm buying, get us a table. I'm gonna bring the food over and stack it high and stable."

"That one needs work, Pearlie." With that, Marina's off, and Pearl has to take a deep breath. Pearlie. Marina doesn't know her parents call her that-Marina's never met Pearl's parents-she doesn't know Pearl hates it.

And Marina doesn't make Pearl feel like a no-nothing kid when she says it, either, so it's fine. And she's off watching the Squid Sisters. By the time Pearl gets there, Marina'll be surrounded by other squids who chose fancy parties as better than costume parties. She won't want Pearl around when she has all those new friends; Pearl'll have to find someone else to hang out with for the rest of splatfest.

Which is fine. It's fine, it's fine, Marina deserves a million friends, and Pearl isn't jealous at all, which is why she orders enough food for a dozen people. So Marina and her friends'll have enough to share. And maybe let her stick around, even though she's on the other team.

But when Pearl finds Marina, Marina is alone, standing by a small square table that'd fit no more than four, bouncing on her toes and cheering on the Squid Sisters. Pearl shoulders her way over, trying to balance both overflowing trays. "Yo! You ready to eat or what?"

Marina ducks her head, but she's grinning. "So I'm eating with the enemy, now?"

Pearl rolls her eyes. "It's just a splatfest, Rina," she says, even though every squid she knows takes it serious as death. She drops into one seat and sets down both trays, overflowing with crabcakes and fries and cake and ice cream and drinks. She stuffs a fry in her mouth. "Nothing but an excuse for some fun!"

Marina stares at all the food and sits across from Pearl, leaving two sides free. "We're going to make ourselves sick."

"Worth it. Dig in."

Pearl eats another fry and watches Marina hesitate for just a second, her eyes going first to the crab cakes, then to her smoothie, before she pulls the massive bowl of ice cream closer and applies herself like it's the last thing she'll ever eat. Pearl eats some more fries, snags a crab cake, and glances at the stage. The squid sisters are on break; in a moment, they'll show up, food in hand, and go eat with people on their side.

When Pearl was younger, she'd sometimes dream about being the Inkopolis News Singer Host. This is the second year the Squid Sisters have hosted; before them was the Jelly Jam, and before them Clowning Choral. Most of the bands have broken up, and she knows she's never gonna get the spot now, not on merit instead of stinking connections, but... Pearl's train of thought breaks as she spots the squid sisters, together, walking towards her.

Towards them, members of two different teams eating together.

No way. There's no way.

But then Callie drops into one of the remaining seats. Pearl almost inhales her soda; Marina chokes on her crabcake. "Whew. Looks like you two know how to party!"

And then Marie's clearing her throat from the other side of the table. "Is this seat taken? We don't see squids from different teams eating together that often, and we'd love to spend our break chatting with you."

A squeak of excitement escapes Pearl, but it's nothing compared to how Marina's clearly having a fangirl-induced heart attack. "C'mon, siddown! You can totally eat with us!" And then, because Marina still looks like she's going to turn squid from excitement, she adds, "We're in a band too, ya know, and we're gonne be even better than you soon, so you'd better!"

That snaps Marina out of it. "Pearl!"

"What?" Pearl tries to act normal.

Marina reaches up and brushes her short tentacle out of her face. "You can't just-"

"Just did," says Pearl. She may be faking confidence, but no one knows that, and someone in their band needs it. "Face it, Rina, we're awesome."

Marina buries her face in her hands, and Pearl shoves out the last chair for Marie to sit down. This is... exciting, okay, but she has to hold it together. Marina sings Squid Sisters songs when she's building sand castles, turns on her phone to watch the news every two hours to see them, can recite any facts about them without a second of hesitation. One of them can't fangirl about it. Besides, Pearl hates how people treat her differently all the time for being rich. The squid sisters probably have a similar thought to people's freak-outs all the time.

Sure enough, Marie laughs. "Fellow musicians, even. This is going to be a good meal. Callie, stop stealing their chips.

Pearl bites back laughter as Callie takes another off Marina's plate. Marina's stuttering, her face ink-blushed and she keeps playing with her malformed tentacle, and Pearl can't just let her off easy when she's being this adorable-er, flustered. If she doesn't learn how to handle it, how will she handle their fans? Fans ask all sorts of awkward questions.

So when they introduce themselves, Pearl adds, "Marina's your biggest fan."

"Pearl!" Marina crushes the crab cake she was holding.

But Callie's smiling at Pearl, grinning in that infectious way she has, and Pearl's heart flip-flops. She's got a signed Squid Sisters CD, their first album, and had posters up around her room for over a year and spent the first three months they were on the news watching the way Marina does, all because of Callie's smile.

If someone had bragged about her to Callie when she was seventeen, she would've been flustered as shit but glowing and bragging about it even now, at the ripe old age of almost-twenty. She'd probably brag about it until the Squid Sisters were as much old news as Turf War veterans.

So Pearl turns straight to Marina and says, "You can sing Calamari Inkantation backwards," because Marina did, for the shock of it, when Pearl would've toppled their sandcastles unless Marina convinced her otherwise. "You told me it changed your life."

"Because it did," Marina cries, her shyness over, and the Squid Sisters take it from there, and before Pearl knows it she's learning how Marina stopped putting seaweed in her hair and ran away after hearing the Squid Sisters concert and her goggles broke.

Pearl shudders at the thought of seaweed as a hair accessory-seriously, Marina's squidhood was wack-and Callie steals a fry from Pearl's plate and asks, "So how'd you two become bandmates?"

"Pearl has the most amazing voice," Marina says, and Pearl's mouth drops open. "We met by chance, on a hike, and then I went back there every day for a week after hearing her hum, because it's just-it's got something really, um, really..." Pearl stares at Marina as she looks at the table and fiddles with the straw in her smoothie. "Special," Marina finishes at last.

Marina thinks-wha?

"And the next time I went up there, she was singing, and, cod, I-I mean-she's just really good, is all," Marina finishes, still fiddling with her straw.

Pearl's got her breath (and brain) back now, so she waves her arms. "Me? You're the one with the killer voice, Rina. I've got rapping bars, but you've got everything else. Cept-" money, Pearl almost said, but her brain catches up to her mouth and she coughs. "Cept you still act like a little squidling at splatfests," she finishes instead. That won't embarrass either of them.

"Don't listen to her, she's better than me," Marina says. "At almost everything."

"I'm also the idiot who tries to use a snowboard and duct tape to surf waterfalls," Pearl mutters.

Marie giggles and covers her mouth with one hand. Callie winks at Pearl. "Sounds like you two have a great partnership. Maybe you'll even rival us someday."

Pearl chokes on her milkshake. Marina waves her hands, her eyes wide. "No, no, never!" she babbles as Pearl coughs. "I don't think anyone will ever be as good as you two! You wrote Calamari Inkantation!"

"We are totally gonna be better than them some day, Rina," Pearl says once she can breathe again.

"That's not-"

"Sounds like we've got rivals, Cal," says Marie. "We'll have to keep an eye on these two."

"Sounds like a plan," says Callie. She reaches out and grabs Marina's hand, pumping it in an enthusiastic handshake. "It was super meeting you," she says, releasing Marina and grabbing Pearl's hand. "But we've gotta get back on stage."

And then the two of them get up and leave, leaving Pearl and Marina staring at each other, all the fries eaten and Pearl has no idea what to do after that. That was-Callie, her childhood crush, her-Pearl's gonna need a few minutes.