Micah and I sit at an otherwise empty table in the mess with breakfast in front of us. The room is loud, filled with people from four different planets. Though despite the crowdedness of the area, nobody chooses to sit with us. The pissed off look that seems to be cemented onto Micah's face probably isn't helping.

"You're awfully happy this morning." I spoon a mouthful of cereal between my lips and snort when Micah glares at me, having to put my fist against my lips to keep from spitting everywhere.

"Well, sorry that I'm used to actually sleeping at night." I roll my eyes and set my spoon down.

"It's not like you had to stay in my room last night." Sipping on my coffee, I wash down my food. "Besides, three hours is plenty of sleep."

"I'm used to at least nine hours a night." Micah stirs his cereal repeatedly, hardly eating anything in his irritated state.

"As I said, you didn't have to stay." I pick up my spoon again and point it at him, noticing a small bit of milk go flying and land on his shoulder. "And may I remind you that it was you that kept me up, wanting to skip down memory lane together. You could've left at a fully reasonable time last night to go back to your room and sleep."

"You seemed lonely and sad..." Micah sits hunched as he mumbles.

"News flash, I wasn't." I push aside the remainder of my cereal because the flakes had become soggy and wrap my hands around the paper cup with my coffee. "And that doesn't mean you had to sleep with me last night."

A figure hesitates in front us, seeming to have been thinking about sitting with us. But after hearing my second statement, they decided against sitting with us and walk away, in search of lucid people to surround themselves with.

"Look what you did, Serina. Now you're scaring people away."

"Me?! You've been turning people away all morning with your I'm-brooding-and-don't-want-to-be-bothered look!"

"I am not brooding!"

"My God, would you guys just get a room?" A wispy brunette sits down across us, a cup in hand. "Though, from what I hear, it sounds like you already have."

I raise my eyebrows and she glances between the two of us. "I'll have you know; I didn't sleep with her! I would never sleep with her."

I look at him and narrow my eyes. "Wow, harsh. Although, you are more of an unwanted brother to me too." I pat his cheek, a little on the harder side and he grunts, holding his cheek.

Moving my gaze back to the girl, I look over her features. The Aorian-blue moon dress she's wearing hugs her almost-non-existent-curves and accents her small bust, making it seem larger than it is. She has a slender oval shaped face with very sharp cheekbones. Part of her hair is plaited and pinned in a braid that crosses her forehead and behind her head. This is what lights the bulb in my head. "Catalina?"

She smiles at me and the resemblance rattles my brain. "I'm glad to see you haven't forgotten about me. It's been awhile."

"Yeah, something like six years." I glance at Micah and he shrugs. Neither of us had seen Catalina since we were fifteen. It was our last year of school and her family had moved just before graduation, taking their daughter somewhere more fit for her...passion.

Catalina had missed the majority of our final year, spending her time looking for her next mark. She searched for girls to terrorize, to whisper in their ear about the five pounds they had to lose, to push them to starve themselves while she did what she wanted for she was gifted with a speedy metabolism. Nobody but those of us that grew up with her knew of her intentions. Everyone around us saw her spending time with those typically segregated from the rest of the crowd and assumed it was to care and nurture them, when in reality, she was the beautiful angel of death, scouting for victims.

"Yes, well, it's wonderful to see you both." She sips from her cup and looks at Micah with hooded eyes. "My, how you've both grown up."

She focuses on Micah while speaking in terms of us both, but I have to say, she wasn't wrong on Micah's account. Micah had been a rounder boy, seeking comfort from sweets when Kieran died. Many of those we went to school with will always remember him as the pudgy kid in the back with sad eyes. But, when we hit sixteen, he finally hit his growth spurt and everything that made him round, then made him tall. He now stands roughly thirteen centimeters taller than I with and lean build and broad shoulders.

"I—uh, well, the same could be said for you, Cat." Micah sends me a panicked look, seeming to have noticed that her focus rested on him.

Catalina giggles and dips her head behind her cup, feigning shyness. "It has been an eventful six years."

I roll my eyes and take a big swig of my coffee, holding it in my mouth for a pause to feel the burn of its high temperature. While the act isn't one a sane person would typically make, the pain is a welcomed distraction to keep me from gagging at her façade.

I swallow down the now ambient coffee and grab my tray. "Listen Cat-Cutter, as wonderful I'm sure it is to mentally undress my friend here, I'm going to need to steal him."

Micah pales, seeming shocked that I used the name we had given her in all those years ago. "I—yeah—we—"

I grab his tray, stacking everything so it's easier to carry, then pull Micah up by his shoulder. "Excuse me! What did you just call me?!"

Now that we're both standing, I look down at the school nightmare with raised brows. "What? Cat-Cutter?" I chuckle and shoot her a smirk. "It's just something we all came up with when we were fourteen. You know, the first part of your name and then what you turned victimized girls into. I always thought it was pretty brilliant despite being on the nose."

I simply turn after that, pulling Micah along with me and leaving Catalina to sit there with her mouth agape. I finally release Micah when I step up to the trash receptacle, needing both hands to dump the garbage and set the trays on top. Our feet then move us out of the mess, freeing us of the eyes that follow our every step.

"Serina Marie Barringer!"

"That's my name, very good Micah."

He stomps after me and I can all but feel the mortification that he gives off behind me. "You did not just call Catalina Fistu 'Cat-Cutter' to her face!"

I frown and glance back at him. "I'm pretty sure that I did. Though, I guess that we could've imagined it all." I smirk and look forward just in time to avoid running smack-dab into a GTA officer. "That would be pretty impressive, yeah? Imagining the same thing?"

"What am I going to do with you?" Micah sighs under his breath and I shrug.

"I'm not sure. You can start with pronouncing my middle name correctly."

"Huh?" Micah steps to my side and pins me with a pointed look.

"My middle name, it's pronounced 'Ma-rie', but you've always said 'Mar-ie'."

"Does that really matter right now?"

"Of course, it does. If you're going to call out my name like that, the least you could do is say it right."

"Rina." My back hits the wall, sending an ache through my shoulders. I'm forced to blink a few times to focus, then I glance around to see if anybody had seen the action. I sigh when I see that we're alone and thank God. Had anybody seen that, they probably would've taken his roughness as rude or even abusive when in reality, it's the only way to truly get my attention. I guess growing up with three boys can do that to a girl.

I cross my arms and look up at him, ignoring how his chest rises too close to mine with each breath. "Back up, you have my attention."

Micah steps back and fumes. His posture is stiff, face more twisted with each second that goes by. "I don't get what made you so callous and rude, but I thought that I had actually seen the girl that built sandcastles with me, last night."

"Micah," I shake my head and pinch the bridge of my nose. "You know exactly what made me this way. My parents died and my brother left."

"And my brother died!" He yells and I can feel his voice bounce off the walls and down the hall. "But you don't see me doing what you just did!"

"That's because you're soft!" I match his volume, needing to escape the trap he's set for me. "This world, scratch that, this galaxy is shit! Life is shit! People hurt people and we all die. If you're soft, you get eaten. It's that simple, Micah!"

"So you get hurt, that's a part of living!"

"Which is why you can't let it hurt, because if you let it hurt, eventually, you won't recover."

"That's not true!"

"Well, I'm not going to let myself find out the hard way." My hands rest on my hips and I take a deep breath. "Listen, I think all this time together, all of a sudden, is making us irritable. We'll talk later, once we've had time to cool off."

I walk away, not trusting him nor myself to keep from saying something that we'll regret later. The walk back to my room is quick, walls blurring by as I all but run from Micah. I ignore the concerned and confused gazes around me and simply wave my Link over the lock on the door, breezing into the small space without a second glance.

I collapse on my bed, arms extended at my sides. A groan passes my lips and I stare up at the ceiling. I want to rekindle my friendship with Micah, I really do, but I can't even hold a real conversation with him without one of us getting pissed off at the other. Or worse, both pissed off at each other.

I start to spin my ring with the same hand it's on, the cool metal kissing my skin. I grit my teeth, my ring usually enough to calm my nerves, but this time not doing its job of extinguishing the strokes of irritation. I grab the pillow above me on the bed and cover my face.

"Fucking Hell!" I scream into the pillow and curse my own stubbornness. I continue to scream like a toddler until my throat is sore and my voice raspy.

I remove the pillow from my face and sit up. Despite sleeping just fine, I'm suddenly exhausted and feel as if I could sleep for years. I wish I could talk to Astrid.

I glance at my Link, it sits abandoned on the corner of my bed where I threw it as I walked in. Waking the display, I look at the time. It's about twenty to ten-hundred, Astrid should be in the testing center, waiting to be called back for her test. I open our private chat room and shoot her a quick message.

Honey: Good luck, A. You'll do great sister.

I close the chat down and open a local GTA newsfeed on the Galactic Net. As expected, more footage of Otrerth is playing. The whole situation shakes me to the core. Such a terrible thing has happened to those people, and rather than covering the efforts being made to help them, the newscasters only focus on the carnage.

"—as we can see, the damage to this one school alone was in the tens of thousands of GTA dollars. Otrerth's recovery will be one of the greatest support efforts made in history."

After talking to Shawn, I know for a fact that some of the fellow mining colonies, ones closer to Otrerth, are sending supplies in addition to what the GTA is giving them, but have the work those miners put in been acknowledged? Not even once.

I flip to a different news feed and similar pictures greet me. "—this Otretic family's home was swept away in one of the first tsunamis that hit this sector, they have been living in a GTA shelter for the past two weeks while they wait for the planet to stabilize."

My heart goes out to the family for a moment but then I still shut the feed down and stare at the Galactic Net logo. I purse my lips, bored as all get-out. I chew at my lip and am about to open the Link version of Pong when I get a notification with a high-pitched ping.

No Brain: thx sis wish i could talk but i will b called in any min

My eyebrows raise and I hum at that. I wasn't expecting to hear from her.

Honey: Wishing you all good vibes. <3

I wait a short moment and another ping sounds around the room.

No Brain: <3

After exiting out of the chat, I return to staring at the screen of my Link. My shoulders slump and I briefly consider taking a nap because now it's just the boring part. Now it's the waiting game.