Val's POV

"But how?" I ask.

"Simple..." Parker looks away from me, deep in thought. I guess it's not as simple as he thinks it is.

"Let's just sleep on i-"

"Oh wait no!" Parker's head pops up and faces back towards me. "I actually have an idea now. We'll find Crystal her soulmate!"

"Huh?" I ask.

"We'll design a machine that'll tell you who you're supposed to be with," Parker explains.

That makes sense. So much sense, actually. Suddenly, a bunch of ideas start to flood into my brain.

"How about we make them in the shape of rings?" my brain gets going. "And... you have to put one of them your finger and one on someone else's and it'll tell you what relationship you're supposed to have?" 

"Wow... that's actually a really good idea," Parker rubs his hand behind his neck.

"What? Are you sorry you didn't think about it?" I tease.

"Yeah. Kind of. You just kind of came up with that super quickly and I barely did anything," he admits, embarrassed.

"Well, you're the one that planted the idea in my head. Anyways, let's get to it!"

Parker and I head to the room that's down the hallway from our and Crystal's room. You know, that personal lab that hasn't been used until this moment?

We get to work. It take us a very long time to design the rings and get the coding into it, but after six or seven long hours, we're finally almost done.

"Almost done?" I ask Parker, who's putting some finishing touches on the coding.

"Yep," he continues to type but looks up at me and smiles for a moment. Then he looks at the door with a surprised look on his face. I look up and see Crystal standing at the doorway.

The room goes silent except for Parker's typing. Now would be the time to stop, Parker!

"Crystal? What are you doing here?" Parker asks.

"I thought I would get some work done to distract myself from everything, but it turns out being around everyone else is the exact opposite of what I need right now," Crystal explains. The whole room goes awkwardly silent (without the typing sound this time) once again.

"Are you guys, perhaps, working in here because you want to avoid me?" Crystal asks shyly.

Parker and I look wide-eyed at each other before answering, "No! That's not why!"

"We were working on a project that could maybe help you," Parker explains quickly.

Crystal looks at us like we're crazy.

"We made rings that can tell you and another person what type of relationship you should have," I elaborate further.

"Right now the results are Enemies, Rivals, Frenemies, Friends, Bestfriends, Relationship, In-Like With Eachother, and Soulmates. We'll add more once we keep going but it's mostly meant to just be for you," Parker says.

Crystal looks at us like she's gonna cry and says, "Thank you guys. I really appreciate this. Could I look at the coding for a few seconds?"

Parker taps a few more keys before moving out of the way for her, "No problem."

Crystal walks over and starts to scroll through the coding. After pressing a few more buttons here and there, she says, "This looks ready!"

"Great! Then let's test it out on the three of us first," I grab one ring and place it on my ring finger. Then I give the other one to Parker.

He puts the ring on his finger and we stare at the top, waiting for the results. The colors stop waving around and it suddenly stops at... Enemies?!

"What?" I ask.

"There must be a mistake," Parker takes off his ring and hands it to Crystal. "Let's just see what it says for you two."

Crystal puts it on and the colors come back. Then the words stop at Soulmates.

Crystal looks down at her ring with disbelief and hands it back over to Parker, "I... I don't know what to say."

Parker suddenly takes the ring angrily and intimidatingly says, "What did you do?"

Is he seriously blaming her for this?

"Parker, it was probably just a mistake in the cod-"

"What did you do?!" Parker interrupts me. "I'm sure it was a mistake in the coding. Something that she did when she was messing around with it before we put the rings on!"

"I was just correcting some mistakes that I saw-"

"Oh please, mistakes? Yeah right. You just wanted to trick Val into thinking you two were soulmates so that you could steal her from me!"

He yells the last part at empty air as Crystal's already running off crying. What is he doing? She probably didn't do anything.

I walk over to the computer and take a look at the coding. I scroll past lots of numbers and letters and finally the word "opposite" sticks out to me. Did she really do this?

"Parker, come take a look," I motion him over. He walks over and reads where I was reading. His eyes go wide.

"Maybe she really did tamper with this," I mumble.

"No. That was the part that I typed out. She only changed numbers and letters here and there, not whole words," Parker realizes.

"But why would you type 'opposite'?"

"I guess while she was talking, I was typing without looking at what I was typing. I must've typed it in when she said it was the 'opposite' of what she needed."

Parker and I look at each other and bolt out the door. We look around everywhere until we finally see Crystal crying just outside of the breakfast bar.

"Crystal, I am so so sorry," Parker says softly, "I was the one that made the mistake. Not you."

She looks at him teary-eyed so that he's riddled with guilt, "I know! I wouldn't try to tamper with your device, and definitely not so obviously. You guys made it to help me."

"I know. And I'm sorry for assuming the worst," Parker says.

"Listen, I'm trying, ok? I'm trying to be better to you guys than I was before. I feel so guilty for bringing all this drama into your life and I just want to be able to leave you guys alone," Crystal confesses.

"I know that now. So let's just go back into our lab, fix the coding, and find someone who will make you happy, ok?"

Crystal hesitates, "Ok."