Living in this house brought a great boon to my capabilities. My speech abilities, which were of critical importance, kept improving. I had planned to go to the library that day, but I needed breakfast first.
I was enjoying the sound of raindrops hitting the roof when Elizabeth approached me.
"Hi, Steve!" She seemed to be rather excited.
"Hello, Elizabeth!" I responded. I turned back to my plate,
"Do you like your food? I made it myself." She giggled. To gather my thoughts, I took a large bite and focused hard on its taste. It looked and tasted like oatmeal, but with the distinct acidic taste of raspberry added. It occasionally had the texture of shaved ice, with audible crunching sounds whenever I encountered certain portions of it.
"Yes, I do." I turned back up to face her, giving her the cue to continue.
"Good to hear, uh… what are your thoughts on… the house?" It was obvious from the way she looked around for something to bring up that she wanted to say something important but was finding distractions to push it back. Nevertheless, I played along.
"It's a nice place, at least it's not crumbling, right?" I placed my head on top of my paw, propping it up. She ignored my response and took a deep breath,
"Oh! And uh…" she awkwardly paused and switched to talking in my head. "do you like me?"
I froze. The exact expression that she used meant that she was asking me out on a date. When I hesitated, she continued.
"It's just that… With Diana, I saw what you really are… You're brave. I know it. I wish I could see more of that." I blushed.
"I've always been me," I lied, and started struggling to maintain eye contact. "Elizabeth, I don't know. I just think there's a lot happening right now, a- and I… just don't know…" I paused for a moment, rubbing my face and thinking about how to continue. "Elizabeth, I like you, but I don't know if I'm ready for something like this, please come again later."
She stared at me in silence, and I knew I made a mistake somewhere, but by the time I figured out that my way of inviting her to talk later was wrong, she was already leaving. She gave me a final disappointing glance before she disappeared around the corner. She looked… frustrated. I didn't tell her that I had never even considered the possibility that someone would already like me enough to do something like that. Part of me thinks that maybe she understood what I was trying to say, but didn't like the answer. I had long since realized that I felt no attraction to pokemon, and I wanted to tell her that before our conversation was cut short.
I slowly finished eating and went back upstairs and into my room. I reached for the journal, but I had left it open, so I was forced to walk over and close it before I could pick it up. I loudly announced my departure for the library through the walls before heading out the back door.
My plans were short-lived, and the sound of me slamming the door shut got muffled by the heavy downpour of rain going on outside. Somehow, I forgot about that, and getting soaked wasn't part of my daily routine. I climbed the staircase and went back into my room.
There wasn't much to do at home besides reading and writing, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I felt tired from how much I was working, and I realized that the reason I forgot about the rain was that I didn't want to believe it. I wanted out; I wanted to have an excuse to not do this. I needed to take a break from studying for once, so I started drawing funny things on the pages, completely ignoring any thoughts about studying.
I was filling in a checkerboard pattern when I knew I had to head back downstairs for some lunch. I heard everybody going downstairs just a minute ago, so I thought I might as well join them. That idea was interrupted, as I just barely heard someone mention my name downstairs. Being curious, I put my ear down to the ground, and I was sure to avoid every creaky part of the floor. I couldn't really distinguish the voices from each other through the floor, but I made a conversation.
"Yeah, what does Steve do?"
"More importantly, what is it in his journal?"
"Is it our place to ask? It is his life, after all."
"I can't read anything he's thinking, and his journal is even more nonsense!"
"What do you mean?"
"I saw his journal open, so I looked through the pages, and it all just read like absolute nonsense!"
"Yeah, but what do you mean?"
"The letters were all scrambled around as if it was an encrypted message."
"Should we try to decode it?"
There was a pause, as nobody wanted to answer.
"Hang on Elizabeth, wasn't one of your arguments for kicking out Diana that she looked through Steve's journal? How are you exempt from that?"
"I- ... Shut up!"
Having heard something I shouldn't have, I lifted my head up. It felt like a punch in the gut. It was nice to know that Elizabeth couldn't understand anything, but the fact that she tried was what mattered. At least… At least I knew someone was on my side.
I hatched a plan to make it seem like I never heard a thing. I grabbed my journal and tip-toed my way down the stairs, and to the backdoor from which I "left". I waited for an opportunity before I opened it, and I walked outside, intentionally getting myself wet. I walked back in quickly and slammed the door shut very loudly to give them a chance to stop talking.
As I approached the Kitchen, I gripped my journal tighter than ever before. I mumbled something to them about rain, and my voice croaked from the lump in my throat. I looked around the kitchen, and "noticed" that everyone was sitting down, despite there being no food. Everybody started looking around awkwardly, and then Mark broke the silence.
"I know this looks weird, but we're just down here because it's cold upstairs." I knew it was a lie. Tony got up and stoked the fire in the furnace.
Teasing them, I slammed down my journal, and dramatically tore out the latest page, setting it down on the table. I knew it was the checkerboard, and I asked if they had ever used it before.
Nobody understood me, so I asked them to grab me "twelve identical black things and twelve identical white things"
Everyone started searching around, and they eventually came back with a pile of oats and a pile of heavily rusted coins. I arranged the board and began demonstrating the different moves, and how to play. I asked for a challenger, and Grey came up first, and while on the first move, he tried to move his piece 12 times. I moved his pieces back and told him that he only had one move. After that, he didn't break any more rules, but one of my pieces reached the end, and I forgot to tell them about the kinging rule. and I kinged it by adding a second oat to the tile. He didn't understand. The game would have been an absolute roll no matter what, but thanks to that mistake, Mark wanted a rematch on Grey's behalf. I beat him fair and square, no bullshit. After that game, everybody else wanted to join in, so I got forced out and was relegated to just watching.
While everyone else laughed, I still had the feeling of being punched in the gut from earlier. I left the room to be left alone and not a single one of them noticed.
