The First Step

Chapter 5.

 I had just twisted the knob of my dorm room open only to be greeted by Dustin with a huge smile on his face.

"Guess what I got at the store while you were out!" he said excitedly, deciding to stand in front of the doorway until I apparently answered his riddles three.

"Uh, food, I'm hoping?" I raised an eyebrow at him. I couldn't think of much else we really needed.

Except that when I said that, his eyes widened and I heard him take a sharp breath as he nodded slowly to himself in realization. "Um... what if you made a second guess, even better than that first?"

"So you forgot." I shook my head, reaching an arm to push him out of the way. I wasn't in the mood for games right now. All I wanted to do was come back and eat something, but there wasn't anything, which left me more inclined to lay on my bed than anything. I took about three steps in, when movement caught my eye, causing me to turn. There was something attached to the wall on the right end of the room. Dustin's side.

I squinted at it. "Dustin, are those–"

"Mhm!" He nodded eagerly, stepping forward to point at two, glass tanks shaped with half of a bubble hanging on the wall. Each of them was filled with water, and from there, two fish, one black and purple, the other a pink and blue, with elegant, wavy fins. "Meet our new roommates: Verbeta and Beta Version Two Point O."

My eyes landed on him, then the fish, then back to him. "Isn't there a no pet policy?"

"Well..." he stuck a hand under his hood to scratch at the back of the scruffy mop of his blond hair. "I just passed by them on the way to the store and bought them. But-"

He walked past me, leaning over to tug a sticky note from his wall. There were a few of them set up, I noticed, all with different little reminders in two different sets of handwriting. This one had a loopy, cursive script, the pen a bit smudged from him being a leftie. "I did a little research, and according to the bylaw here, anything in a tank is property, not a pet, so we're good!" Then he looked back at the black fish with a paper labeled: 'Beta v.2.0' taped to the front. "Not that I consider animals property. It's just..."

"Yeah, I got it," I told him, returning to my side quest of flopping onto my mattress, face down. Maybe on a different day I'd care more about betta fish with puns for names, but right now, I couldn't care less. All I'd wanted to do was eat, and with that out of the question, I just wanted to sleep. My body tumbled into it, sinking far more than I remember before I heard a snap, and the cushioning sunk even further under my weight. Wincing, I reached out and grabbed for my pillow, shoving my face into it to muffle the screaming I was about to do.

Moments later, there was another creak, gentler this time though, and sitting at the end of the bed. It was followed by a voice. "... are you okay? What happened?"

My face grew hot, although whether it was from embarrassment or frustration, I didn't know. I turn on my side to face Dustin, taking a deep breath. "You know how my phone was dying this morning?"

He nodded.

"Well I accidentally left it in class this morning, and when I went back to look for it, it was gone. I thought I'd lost it, and Odette tried to help me look for it but..." I let the breath drop down my shoulders with a sigh. "Turns out these two girls stole it and wanted to either use it to blackmail me, or sell it online because I'm famous or whatever."

His eyes shot wide with that before his face fell with a wince. "What? That's so crazy and awful. Why would they even do that?"

"I don't know!" I shot back, harsher than I'd meant. "Money, revenge for the Insurrection, who knows?"