“This Tragic Pizza of Exam Humiliations” (49.9)

A long while back, when I’d first started really trying the new me out, Stella had me come with her to work to say hello and see how things felt. I’d already grown my hair out, and I’d been at ‘she’ for a while at home but this was my first go round with actually communicating to people outside of home. I waited as Stella chatted with her coworker at the front desk. 

“And who have you brought with you today?” The librarian said, finally turning her attention to me.

“This is Zeta, my younger sister,” Stella said. 

I wasn’t sure what I thought Stella’s coworker would say. I was afraid of how crushing it’d feel if she laughed off my budding identity, but she grinned at me.

“Nice to meet you, Zeta!” She said. “Is this the one that…?”

“Yep, we’re trying out ‘she’ today!” Stella said. 

Despite my place hiding behind Stella, I nodded eagerly. 

“The one that…” The librarian repeated her own words. “I knew you only had one sibling, you’ve talked about that a ton of times!”

“No worries at all. She’s gonna help out at work today,” Stella said. “And I got it okayed with the director if anyone asks.”

“Always good to have some help around here,” the librarian said. “Zeta, do you want to help us shelve?”

“No…” I said.

“Ha! Well, she’s an honest sister at least.”

“Hehehe…”

I couldn’t deny the surge of excitement each time they got my gender right. I was used to it with Stella, but it was an immediate different feeling hearing it confidently said by a stranger. 

While I was 99.99999% certain about this, Stella was cautious about the process, making sure I was at 99.9999999999% or 99.999999999999999% before she got out of worrying that she was influencing me in any direction with this. 

I followed Stella to the back room. After introducing me to a few more coworkers who were all super nice and validating—I still hid behind my big sister the entire time—she brought me to a craft table with a bunch of rolls of stickers. There were metal storage shelves with plastic bins stacked around with toys in them. 

“How’re we feeling?” Stella asked, patting me on the back.

“Really really good,” I said, my joy equivalent to eating a bunch of peanut butter chocolate bars at once, with the same excited energy of a sugar rush.

“Now where’s the…” Stella said, peering into a bin, freezing when she almost knocked over the bin next to it, which would have spilled a bunch of old paperbacks all around. She handed me a pair of scissors. 

“We just need a bunch of these cut out so there’s one sticker per thing, you know the drill,” Stella said.

“I got it!” I said.

“Thanks, Zeta!” Stella said.

My work (technically my first job? Kinda?) proceeded without incident. Just trimming up stickers of books with smiley faces on them as a radio played old songs. Until I felt a sudden chill down my spine. In hindsight, maybe it was just the building’s old air conditioner being weird and giving a sudden drop in temperature, it was early summer. But to my anxious mind, a sudden chill meant something sinister, so I yelped and flinched and bumped the table, which bumped into the storage shelf, which knocked that old bin over. 

Nobody immediately came to my rescue, and I realized I’d just made a mess, so I cautiously approached the pile of books, speculating either aliens or ghosts were responsible for this. Because I’m a ginormous baby, the first book I turned over made me yelp again. Its title was “GLORBO’S BIG TRICKS FOR MAT BALL AB-801,” and it had a horrific design of apparently some kind of mascot named Glorbo, who looked like he belonged in a horror comic about sewer mutants. I felt a deep terror as I stared into the drawing. I chucked Glorbo into the bin first and hastily piled the rest in, returning to my seat. The rest of the day was fine, but I made sure to tell Stella that book was freaking scary looking and should stay in that bin away from easily scared people. It was a great experience overall, but that weird book cover stuck with me.

5th Period: Physical Training for Void Fields KRANGEL

“And that’s why it’s gonna loop back to me on the whole embarrassment cycle we’re on now,” I explained after relaying that story to my confidants as we sat in a classroom by the gymnasium.

Kalei stared at me like the time I told her about that fish transmogrification movie where the villain wouldn’t stop eating people’s jackets.

“The hell are you talking about?” She asked.

“It’s gonna loop back to me and I’m gonna be next on this wheel of social torment we find ourselves on,” I said. “This tragic pizza of exam humiliations!”

“How many more circular objects are you going to add?” Lillia asked.

“As many as it takes!” I said. “I saw that same Glorbo book, the same one! It’s on Krangel’s desk.”

“Krangel has a desk?” Kalei asked.

“The one in the front of this very classroom!” I said. “You can still kind of see it on the stack on the left.” I pointed the best I could, but we were sitting in the back corner of the room. “That Glorbo book that freaked me out as a kid, so it’s a sign.”

“That might just be the gym teacher desk,” Kalei said. "There are lots of gym teachers here, after all."

“It’s Krangel’s, I’m sure of it.” I said.

“Why?”

“I…don’t know!” I said.

“Zates has lost it,” Kalei shook her head. “She put in a good fight over all these tests, but gym was too much for her, much like I predicted in my newsletter.”

“Maybe let’s take a deep breath or two,” Oka said. “Or five. Even just a good ten minute stretch of breathing exercises.”

I did my best to heed Oka’s request, trying to chill out even a little bit.

“While you’re breathing, I just wanna say that story’s really cute,” Marmalade said. “You should seriously post that on the Dynne chat, the talking to your sister's coworkers thing, they’ll love it.”

“Maybe once I’ve settled down,” I said. “After finals are done maybe. If I make it through them. Have you shared any cute transition stories on there?”

Marmalade blinked. “Right. Cute transition stories.”

“That wasn’t a question that opened up a sad can of worms, was it?” I asked.

“No, I mean, I have cute ones. I just also have. Some less cute…” Marmalade coughed. “Anyways, go back to the stuff about this curse or whatever.”

“It’s not a curse,” Lillia said. “It’s a series of coincidences brought on by carelessness. They’re barely even linked.”

“If anything, Marms would be next,” Kalei said. “Or Iris and Maia if the curse is only going by our pod.”

“I embarrass myself plenty all the time, I’m ready for it if it’s me,” Marmalade said.

We had a small test to take in Krangel’s class about what we’d learned over the semester. After that, we’d have to run a mile. Krangel handed out our exams, and something possessed me to ask.

“Mr. Krangel, is that, erm, that Glorbo book yours?” I asked.

“Hm? Why, yes it is,” Krangel said. “I’ve been nostalgic for the beefiest season of mat ball, as one gets, you know?”

“I, heh, uh,” My voice was quivering as I babbled without thinking, really needing to get this out, apparently. “I saw that book once as a kid and it really scared me! I was like, bleehhhhh! Ha…ha…” I felt like everyone was staring at me, ready to laugh.

“Glorbo is a quite terrifying creature,” Krangel nodded solemnly, then continued on.

I spent the entire final screaming internally. I did my best to run off the latest humiliating incident, but jogging a mile was really hard and I was sweaty and gross afterwards. I didn’t bring it up until lunch that day after the in school portion of gym class was totally wrapped up and showered off of me. 

“It wasn’t even that embarrassing,” Kalei said. “And that’s coming from me, I so would jump on at least some goofs if you said something really stupid.”

“I sounded really stupid!” I said.

“You didn’t!” Oka said.

“Really, nobody even noticed.” Marmalade said.

Kalei and Marmalade made it a few minutes before opting out of this conversation entirely, leaving me in a debate with Lillia with Oka on the sidelines.

“That is five of these in a row!” I said. “And I was right that it’d be me this time!”

“Self-fulfilling prophecy,” Lillia said. “You decided it’d be you and decided that your question to Mr. Krangel was embarrassing.”

“It was!”

“You’re getting worked up over nothing. You’ve decided that there’s some kind of cosmic force embarrassing us—”

“I’m thinking curse. Someone definitely cursed us. Five in a row, Lillia!”

“This one wasn’t even during the exam,” Lillia said. “It’s nonsense.”

“I was all red in the face blushing from it!”

“Because we had to run a mile.” Lillia said. 

“But, like, before that.” I crossed my arms.

Oka sweetly interjected. “Now, Zeta, you’re my girlfriend, and Lillia, you’re probably my best friend that isn’t my girlfriend. I mean, not probably, you are.”

“Likewise.”

“But I’d really like you two to…stop fighting?” Oka asked. “I know we’re all tense from tests and junk, and Lillia and I had a little blow up a few days ago, but we could also…chill? Can we come to an agreement, please?”

I pouted, but knew Oka was right.

Lillia gripped her sleeves, turning her nose up a bit. “I will admit the number of incidents could lead one to think there is some kind of connection between them, even if I don’t find the most recent embarrassing in the slightest.”

“Lillia, you are really smart so I could take your advice a little bit. I guess I could try…maybe not being so paranoid and weird for the next one.”

“Thank you.”

“Conflict resolution!” Oka cheered. She made us shake on it. As a girl who takes handshakes seriously, I was glad my girlfriend shared the sentiment. 

And so we proceeded on with finals, with me trying my best not to think we were cursed.