"Oh, and just when I thought a dorm room couldn't get messier than Kai and Jay's one last year," Nya said, her face involuntarily wrinkling with disgust as she looked around.

Lloyd nodded solemnly. "Kai and Cole are an even worse pair when it comes to keeping things clean."

"I mean, we're not that bad?" Kai said, his hesitation clear in the uncharacteristic softness of his voice.

Skylor choked on a laugh that she tried to disguise as a hacking cough, just a little too late to be convincing.

Lloyd, on the other hand, flat-out laughed.

"Kai, if I didn't know better, I'd say your science project here was a full-on intentional biohazard," Nya said.

Kai frowned. "My science project?"

Nya swept a hand out toward a plate balancing on the edge of a chair, indicating its contents, a moldy… Thing. Of some kind. Based on the vague shape underneath the jagged puffs of mold, it probably used to be some sort of bread, Nya figured.

Kai's face lit up and he stood, reaching out. "Oh! That's where my sandwich went!"

"Oh, uh-uh," Nya said immediately, slapping Kai's hand out of the air and away from the plate. "You are so not eating that."

"I wasn't going to eat it," Kai said, drawing the words out at a sluggish but not quite sheepish pace. "I was going to…"

"You were going to eat it," Lloyd finished.

"Actually, I was going to save it and see if I could get Jay or Pix to eat it," Kai admitted.

"Jay because he wouldn't pay enough attention to see how bad it was, Pix because she would do it if you dared her to?" Skylor asked knowingly.

Kai shrugged. "Maybe."

Nya groaned. "Seriously? Just throw it out."

Kai sighed, but he grabbed the plate and dumped the mold-thing into a nearby trash bag. He stared at the plate thoughtfully for a moment, then dumped that into the trash bag too, saying, "Yeah, that's probably too far gone to be saved."

"Just like my grade in Survey of Ancient History," Pix said, stepping into the room with Jay a few paces behind her.

"That bad, huh?" Lloyd asked sympathetically.

Pix wobbled her head from side to side, not exactly shaking it, but also kind of shaking it. "Actually, not really. It's just not as good as I would like it to be."

"Speaking of good, anything good to eat here?" Jay asked. "I came right from my late class, and I am starved!"

Kai smirked.

"No," Nya and Lloyd said in unison.

Kai pouted.

Jay paused. "Do I want to know what that's about?"

"No," Nya, Lloyd, and Skylor all said in unison.

"Probably not," Kai agreed, plopping back down on his chair.

Jay snorted. "Okay then. Let's get started if… No, wait, where's Cole?"

"He went out to meet that Zane guy and show him the way here," Skylor said.

Jay squinted. "What?"

"He said Zane wasn't sure exactly how to get to the Mahogany Dorm," Skylor said.

"Huh. He didn't strike me as a freshman," Jay said.

"Yeah, I thought he looked at least a little older than that," Kai said.

"Not everyone starts college at the same time, or completes it at the same rate," Pix pointed out.

"But speaking of time, we are getting more than a little past when we said we'd start," Nya said. "Maybe we should start without them?"

"I thought you wanted all the help we could get?" Kai asked.

"Well, I do," Nya said, drawing the words out, trying to find what to say next.

"Then we should wait," Kai said.

Nya hesitated, but before she could come up with a reason for just getting started, or at least before she could come up with a good enough reason for just getting started, heavy footsteps came thundering along in the outside hall.

"There we go," Kai said. "Hey, Cole, buddy!"

A moment later, Cole popped his head through the doorframe. "Coming, coming! Give us a second!"

Then he disappeared back out into the hall, the heavy footsteps heading a bit away before pausing.

Nya could just barely pick up a low murmuring sound, something like pressured whispering, coming from out there. She looked around, rather confused.

Pix looked thoughtful, and Lloyd looked a bit concerned. Thankfully, Skylor, Kai, and Jay looked about as confused as she was.

After a few seconds, Cole strode into the room with a smile. "Okay, we're here!"

A few steps behind him came the stranger, the mystery guy, the figure skater named Zane. He seemed nervous, one hand twirling some small object around and around at his side, eyes darting about the room and not really landing on anyone or anything in particular. (The hesitancy was kind of an adorable look on him, Nya thought bitterly.)

"Everybody, this is Zane, my figure-skating friend," Cole said brightly. "Zane, this is, well, everybody. That's Kai there, here are Pix and Jay, that's Skylor, and Lloyd and Nya are over-"

"We've actually met," Nya interrupted, her tone coming out a little more icy than she intended it to. She winced at the startled look Cole gave her and immediately softened her voice. "I mean, a little bit."

"Hey, yeah!" Lloyd said in realization. "Now that Nya's said it, I think I recognize you. But when did we meet you?"

Still mostly in the doorway, Zane turned sideways toward Cole, as if Cole had the answer to that question.

"When you were moving in," Nya said to Lloyd. "He helped you with the website stuff to figure out when Nelson was moving in, before you'd met him."

"Oh, I remember that. Cool. Thanks again," Lloyd said.

Zane nodded. "You're… Welcome. I-"

"What's with that face?" Kai asked, speaking over Zane's quiet voice.

"What?" Lloyd asked, turning toward Kai.

Kai gestured toward Nya. "That face. What's with it?"

"I'm not making a face," Nya said, trying to stop whatever face she'd been making.

"Well, you were," Kai said. "And it wasn't a good face, either."

"I wasn't making a face," Nya said.

Kai frowned. "Nya. What's bugging you?"

"Nothing is bugging me. Let's get started, finally," Nya said.

"There it is again, that face," Kai said.

"Yeah, I see it," Lloyd said.

"I'm not making any faces!" Nya insisted. "I just want to get this over with!"

"But you love planning missions," Kai said.

"Kai's got a point," Jay said, butting in. "And you love the ice rink."

"She does. Why would she want to get it over with?" Skylor said slowly.

"I meant, let's get going, let's get started," Nya said. "I just really want to do this, it's important, you know?"

"That's not what your face was saying," Kai said.

"Yeah, well, your face will be saying a lot fewer words and a lot more painful noises if we don't get into it," Nya said pointedly.

"And your face is saying you're hiding something," Kai said, raising his voice a little.

"But your face is saying too much," Nya said, raising her voice back.

"Your face is saying no way!" Kai said.

"That doesn't make any sense!" Nya said.

"Your face doesn't make any sense!" Kai said.

"Oh, come on!" Cole said, his voice coming out even more loudly and urgently than either of theirs had been.

Startled, Kai and Nya turned toward him in unison.

Cole had taken a step toward the door, one hand reaching out to-

The empty space where Zane had been standing a minute before.

Oh.

Uh-oh.

"Seriously?" Cole asked, raising his eyebrows as he turned back toward the room as a whole. "What was that?"

"Yeah, what was that, Kai?" Nya said.

"Okay, yeah, some from Kai, but mostly you, Nya," Cole said. "What was that? Usually you're all for some help with missions."

"I am for it," Nya said.

"You were frowning at Zane, and talking in a kind of a mean way, and just not really being welcoming," Cole said. "Do you even realize how much I had to tell him that this was going to be a good thing for him to come to?"

A thread of shame tried to curl up in Nya's stomach, but she resisted it. "Well, he didn't have to be a jerk."

"He barely even did anything! He just got here," Cole said, bewildered.

"Not tonight. When we first met," Nya said. "He was a jerk to me, and he was creepy to Lloyd, and-"

"No, he really wasn't creepy, really not," Lloyd said.

"Well, he was a jerk to me, then," Nya said.

"That's not a reason to be a jerk back," Cole said, his tone level in a mild way that sounded almost disappointed. "Besides, was he really a jerk? I might have a hard time believing that. Zane Julien, acting like a jerk? Really?"

"Wait, that's his last name? Julien?" Kai asked, sitting up straighter.

Cole paused. "Yeah? I mean, that's what the figure-skating programs always call him."

"Julien? J-u-l-i-e-n?" Kai asked.

"It might be J-u-l-i-a-n, I'm not sure," Cole said slowly. "But yeah. Julien."

"Nya, Lloyd, remember my freshman year?" Kai asked.

Lloyd and Nya traded a long-suffering glance.

"Who could forget that chaos?" Skylor muttered.

Cole and Jay snorted.

"No, really. Remember what my roommate was like?" Kai asked.

"Kai, you didn't have a roommate your freshman year," Lloyd said slowly.

Kai pointed at Lloyd emphatically. "Yeah. I didn't."

Nya and Lloyd traded another long-suffering glance, this one more confused.

"I didn't have a roommate, but I was supposed to," Kai said. "Remember? I was all set up to have a two-person room, with a guy who seemed nice enough when I reached out to get to know him a bit, a little before the start of the year. But when I got there for orientation, I was put in a one-person room. Nobody said anything about my roommate, and eventually, I mostly forgot about Zane Julien."

"Wait, Zane was supposed to be our year?" Cole asked.

"Uh-huh," Kai said. "I mean, unless you think there's two very blond, very awkward guys about our age going to NNCU by the name Zane Julien."

Cole hummed. "Okay. But Zane's not in our year. He's a year behind us, Jay and Pix and Nya's year."

Kai spread his hands wide in front of him, raising his eyebrows. "So why was he going to be my roommate in freshman year?"

Cole shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe he took a gap year or something. Or maybe he went somewhere else instead, and then decided to come back here, but didn't have the right credits to transfer in for the right year. Doesn't matter."

"Yeah, I guess," Kai said slowly.

"Or maybe it does," Nya said, frowning thoughtfully, already trying to come up with a theory that explained everything.

"If you're going to try to tell me that Zane's suspicious because he changed his mind in some way about this college, don't even try," Cole said. "Zane's a good guy. Really. He might be a little quiet and a lot busy, but he's actually very cool if you actually try to get to know him. And you should try. I think all of us should try."

"It could be helpful with saving the ice rink," Nya said slowly.

"Or it could be just a nice thing to do, especially after inviting him to come around and then pretty much chasing him out with a weird yelling match," Cole said pointedly. "You should definitely try."

Nya sighed. "Yeah. Okay. Fair. I'll try."

But she didn't say she'd succeed.