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[Transcript]

        “Hyperlinks! Megabytes! Emails galore! The wonders of the internet ABOUND upon the internet! With just one ‘click,’ children, you can open up a ‘new window’ in your ‘house page’ and squeeze through it into CYBERSPACE, where fundamentally trustworthy information waits in ambush!” 

        Mr. Starchman was twirling from one table of students to the next, hijacking their keyboards to type inspiring quotes into their search bars and occasionally pressing the computers’ power buttons, leaving their users scrambling to save their documents before they could shut down.

        “Remember to only ‘Ask Jeeves’ about your assigned research topics, lest you stray into the Dark Web and go viral with a malware!”

        Despite Mr. Starchman’s antics, Suzy’s attention wasn’t focused on her mortifying father. She scowled instead at Isabel as she slid back into her seat. UGH! Why did she INSIST on sitting THIS close to her?! Isabel should have gotten up and left once Suzy sat down second and right next to her! Technically she HAD done that, to hang out with her eighth-grader Activity Club friend, but Suzy was also mad at Isabel for leaving for some reason! And now she was back! Suzy was definitely mad about that, too!

        “Sneaking off for a secret rendezvous with an older man?” hissed Suzy, glancing spitefully from Isabel to Isaac. “How TYPICAL! Of a MINX! Who leads the hearts of BOYS ASTRAY!”

        Isabel blinked at her, arrested halfway through sliding her chair in. 

        “...What?” she asked, more bewildered than offended.

        “NEVERMIND!!” Suzy growled, squeezing her voice like playdough through clenched teeth.

        Isaac was similarly stunned by the g-force of her statement’s spin, and his brief consideration of correcting Suzy’s error gave Mr. Starchman plenty of time to spin Isaac like a ballerina and then plop him in a seat.

        “Welcome back to seventh grade, Mr. O’Connor!” Starchman sang. He plucked the hall pass from Isaac’s hand. “You won’t be needing THIS where YOU’RE going!” he laughed, turning Isaac to face a computer. “Just three double-yoos, a dot, and a digital dream!”

        “Thank you, sir,” said Isaac, largely going with the flow. He was glad to miss more gym class with Coach Oop, who’d spent the first few minutes of his lesson staring blankly at a wall. Isaac wiggled his fingers over his computer’s keyboard, preparing to test which fansub sites were not blocked—much like the raptors in Jurassic Park had tested the electric fence of their secure enclosure.

        “Hey, Suzy,” said Isabel, startling the Journalism Club’s president with her entirely reasonable proximity. “You’re still mad about Dimitri, right?”

        “I’m—I’m not MAD about ANYONE, least of all HIM, or—or YOU!! I’m an independent woman,” Suzy sputtered. “An independent journalist! An independent woman journalist!”

        “...You should probably stop suggesting I’m a floozy or whatever like it’s nineteen-twenty-five, then,” Isabel sighed. “I hate that sort of thing. Shouldn’t girls know better and, like, be a little nicer to each other?”

        “YES???” squeaked a mortified Suzy. “I’M SORRY??? I AGREE??? I’M A FEMINIST??? DON’T HATE ME???” While her mouth ran on autopilot, Suzy scoffed inside her head. Knowing her better?! Being nicer to each other?! Who did Isabel Guerra think she WAS?! Who did she wish she was, to Suzy?! A journalist was normal to consider all these things!! Ohh, how badly Suzy wished that she could very lightly slap that stuck-up frown off of her face, to free her smile, and remind herself how much she DIDN’T LIKE IT—

        “I didn’t say I hate you. I don’t! And I don’t know how you got that impression in the first place. Don’t I make a point of, like, saying hi to you like almost every morning?”

        “DO YOU?”

        “Don’t I?”

        “...YES.”

        “Did you not... notice that?”

        “...DID YOU WANT ME TO?”

        “I mean... I guess?”

        “I NOTICED.”

        “Okay, well... good. Look,” said Isabel, a command that Suzy found she had preemptively obeyed. “I read your newspaper, so I can guess how much you care about it—”

        “............You what?” Suzy blinked, then harrumphed and tossed her hair back. “Of course you do. Of course I do. Care. About it. The school paper.”

        “That’s your exception to not being much of a reader, Isabel?” an incredulous Isaac asked, accidentally playing wingman while perusing “anime4every9 dot gov dot ru slash awesomevirus dot exe”.

        “Well, yeah,” Isabel shrugged. The Journalism Club’s newspaper was much, much shorter than a book, and there were pictures, and its schoolyard gossip felt more relevant than whatever drama they were dealing with in Narnia. “It’s the exception.”

        Suzy stared at her with eyes the size of frisbees.

        “...My point was just that, since I know you’re passionate about your Journalism Club stuff, I’m sure that what Dimitri said... probably really hurt your feelings,” Isabel said, “but it started with YOUR misunderstanding—uh, actually, I dunno about that mushy stuff with Eddy, at least from Dimitri’s side of things, but I meant, like, you were wrong about Dimitri and ME—so if you’d talk to him and maybe, like... give him another chance...?” She trailed off, sighing and letting her eyes fall to the carpet. “He’s going through a lot.”

        “What exactly is he going through that I don’t know about?” Suzy pouted. Even though his newly revealed connection to the Activity Club had proven there was plenty that she didn’t know about her friend Dimitri, there was still a strange sense, at the back of Suzy’s mind, that she should have already known her question’s answer. She remembered hugging Dimitri, and crying, and getting a bunch of snot on him, but she couldn’t quite remember why. It was probably his sister Dana’s fault for throwing books at her—she likely had amnesia. 

        “I... I don’t actually know, but... it’s just a sense I get, I guess,” said Isabel. She’d been trying to pay more attention to her friends’ feelings after Eightfold’s parting words. She wasn’t sure, though, how to parse her quiet ex-clubmate’s gloom. Dimitri had been distant when she’d warned him about Bayview’s looming doom the other day. He’d seemed upset even before that, but in the end, he hadn’t told her what was bothering him...

        “...Well, YOU can field this latest secret grievance, if my absence left a void! You’re his secret best friend, after all... and I didn’t like his last SINCERE CONFESSION!” Suzy crossed her arms and turned away in a frustrated huff. “He HAD a friend to talk to, if he really wanted one,” she muttered, making sure her eyes were out of sight. “I thought Dimitri told me everything, and I thought I helped, and I thought he liked me back. But APPARENTLY I’m just some kind of charity case to him!” 

        Suzy sniffed. That big jerk. She’d always felt she’d liked Dimitri more than he could possibly like her, and had always known she’d dragged him into being friends and clubmates, but she’d thought that he at least didn’t resent her. She’d thought that they’d been having fun, working on the newspaper and hanging out together. Suzy had enjoyed his company easily and honestly—she wanted more than to be tolerated by Dimitri in return, even if she knew she sometimes could be bossy and annoying. She didn’t want the sort of kindness that was paid for by taxing Dimitri’s patience, no matter how long it had lasted before he finally told the truth: that he was only placating her when he put time into their shared passion project, and that their hours of teamwork had only produced an unliked and unreadable rag.

        “You don’t have to tell me to let him apologize, Isabel. Don’t you think that’s what I want, too? He really—” Suzy’s voice hitched, and she stopped short.

        After a moment, Isabel set an awkward hand on Suzy’s shoulder. Her touch made Suzy feel as though she’d been shot with an arrow—fired, no doubt, by some cruel Roman god of HATE, and not some puckish cherub in a diaper who might govern some less relevant emotion.

        “...I’m sorry,” Isabel said.

        “I don’t want an apology from YOU,” Suzy scoffed, pulling away.

        “I just meant... for setting all this off. I’m sure he didn’t mean what he said, Suzy. Dimitri definitely likes you.” Isabel tilted her head and frowned at Suzy’s glare of utter skepticism. Then she smiled reassuringly. “I mean... what’s not to like?”

        Suzy’s sunglasses slipped slowly down her forehead, which was growing still more sweaty by the second. Behind Isabel, Isaac’s computer screen was glowing bright pink, tinnily emanating heartfelt electronica; there were also two elf guys with dragon wings fighting while crying, but Suzy only saw them as the butterflies she felt inside her chest.

        “...I keep an ever-growing record if you really want to know,” a new voice answered Isabel.

        “C-Collin!” Suzy sputtered, flushing red. She looked her flunkie up and down. “You—! Don’t you own multiple watches?! Why do you have the WORST timing?!”

        “...Why? Did I interrupt something?” Collin droned, looking between Isabel and Suzy.

        “I... I meant because you’re LATE! I don’t pay you to not be nearby at all times!”

        “That is a very true statement, Suzy. When I avoid you, it’s an edifying, voluntary act.” The Journalism Club’s second and now-final member set his books down on the table. “Today, though, I was busy.”

        “Busy with what?” Suzy scoffed.

        “None of your business.”

        “Yeah, that’s the PROBLEM, Collin—”

        “Sorry,” Collin said, turning to the Activity Club. “She gets fussy like this before lunch. I’m supposed to be there for her scheduled snack—to feed Suzy yogurt and nuts, like a gorilla at the zoo.”

        “SORRY,” Suzy growled, turning to the Activity Club. “This is my IGOR. I’ve been telling him to GET A LIFE for YEARS, but he keeps delivering STALE BITS that are DEAD UPON ARRIVAL!!”

        “...Are you guys, like, okay?” Isabel asked, feeling slightly better about the current state of the Activity Club.

        “I don’t think they feed gorillas yogurt,” Isaac said.

        Collin looked over his shoulder, then back at his club’s scowling president. He seemed entirely unfazed by their previous bickering; this sort of banter was clearly their everyday like-language.

        “Suzy, I wanted to warn you,” Collin said matter-of-factly. “There’s a rumor going around that—”