Two days later, when Hayley walked into the dorm at noon, she heard Miriam mutter, "I need some cash." Against her better judgment, Hayley turned and said, "What?"

Miriam was sitting on Hayley's bed, the way she always did when she wanted to get under Hayley's skin, and she was poking away at her phone. She glanced up through her overgrown bangs for just a second before looking back down at the screen. "I wasn't talking to you."

The fact that she'd said it just as Hayley entered the room, just loud enough for Hayley to hear, while sitting in the exact spot that would get Hayley's attention, suggested otherwise. But Hayley was done playing Miriam's games, so she pretended to believe her. She shrugged her shoulders and turned to her backpack, digging through it to find her swimsuit. Miriam's glare grew hotter and more tangible with each passing second, but Hayley ignored it. She'd gotten very good at ignoring being stared at. After nearly a minute of their stalemate, Miriam cracked first.

"I was just saying I'm out of cash," she grumbled. Hayley looked over her shoulder at her, and Miriam shifted her gaze to glower at the wall, the way she so often had during their first weeks bunking together in Rustboro. "The casino's a stupid rip-off."

"It's a casino, so, yeah," Hayley said. Miriam audibly ground her teeth. "I just came from the arena, so I can't help you. I'm broke too."

Miriam swiveled her head to stare at Hayley again. "Seriously? You didn't win any battles?"

"I won some, but I lost others. I have enough left on my card for like, two potions. That's it."

"Ugh." Miriam crossed her arms across her chest. "That's not enough—I mean, I wasn't even asking for money, but if I was, that's not enough."

"Sorry." Hayley's fingers finally closed around her swimsuit, and she pulled it out from the mess of supplies it had been shoved under when they'd packed to leave Dewford. She'd washed it the last time she'd worn it, but somehow grains of sand still sifted out from the liner and drifted to the floor. She wrinkled her nose.

"How are you losing to people here? It's all tourists and contesters."

"Go and see for yourself." She shook out her swimsuit and grimaced as more sand fell out. "Have you even battled since we got here? I'm sure Xena and Yuna don't want to sit around all day."

"There's no point. It's just a waste of time."

What did she mean by that? Hayley looked back at her, but Miriam had already returned to her phone. A waste of time. Compared to, what, time she could be spending getting a Porygon? Or, did she mean a waste of time in general? But Miriam liked battling—didn't she?

Had she soured on training just as quickly as she'd come to like it?

Hayley cleared her throat. "Um. If you don't want to go to the arena, then… I'm going to the beach with Connie and—"

"I hate the beach," Miriam said. "You know that."

She did know that. Hayley shook her head. "All right. I'll see you later, then."

----------------------------------------

Slateport had even more beaches than Dewford, and unlike Dewford, every single one was packed to the brim with people and Pokémon. Hayley had started to see the beach as an isolated place to train; she'd almost forgotten that normal people went to beaches to relax and have fun. They had to pick their way around blankets and umbrellas and sandcastles and chairs on their way to the water, dragging a canvas wagon full of supplies the whole way, and it took multiple passes back and forth before they found an open spot big enough for all five of them and their Pokémon. It didn't help that in lieu of an umbrella, Clarissa had brought an entire canopy, a sort of half-tent that could be set up to give protection from the sun on three sides. It took ten full minutes to set up, and in her struggle to help, Hayley accidentally kicked sand into the face of a sleeping woman nearby them. The look she gave them all was withering, and Hayley wanted to die of embarrassment when she grabbed her towel and bag and marched away, but Addison simply laid her own towel in the vacated spot and claimed the space for herself. Apparently, the beaches of Slateport were a battle royale with every person for themselves.

When the canopy was complete and all the chairs and towels had been set out, they released their Pokémon and settled in. Connie, Clarissa, Ceres, Marcie, and Ciel were under the canopy, with Clarissa on her phone, Connie and Marcie and Ceres dozing on a towel, and Ciel relaxing in a cooler full of water and ice. Addison had stretched out to sunbathe, while Nacho rolled around and play-fought with Sherbert on the sand. Sen was sitting in cross-legged meditation, while Barrett stalked back and forth and eyeballed every other Pokémon on the beach. Hayley had warned him that they weren't allowed to battle here, but that didn't stop him from visibly fantasizing about it. As for Skye, she was leaning forward on her elbows to interrogate Hayley.

"You really don't think I'd be able to beat Jin?" There was a poutiness to her voice, like she expected the answer to change if she just asked enough times. Hayley, though, shook her head again.

"Sherbert doesn't have any moves that can hurt his Magnemite. And his floor's made of steel, so you won't be able to dig."

"But for the first badge, though—it's supposed to be easy. Right? Especially since we've trained so much."

Hayley was unpleasantly reminded of Miriam asking "Isn't Roxanne supposed to be easy?" She put the thought out of her head. "Sherbert's definitely good enough for a first-badge fight, but the type disadvantage is too much. You'd be better off fighting Norman, or Brawly, or maybe Roxanne—" Wait. "Scratch that, not Roxanne. Her Pokémon can sense where yours are as long as they're touching the ground, and that counters substitute, double team, and dig."

"I guess you're right," Skye sighed. "But Jin's so close, I ought to at least try—"

"I already told you it's a bad idea," Addison said without turning her head. "Remember what he did to Corbin's Taillow? Even you can't have forgotten that already."

"Oh." Skye's face fell. "Yeah, true, that's… Well, Norman or Brawly could be fun."

"Probably Brawly, if you want to just use Sherbert," Hayley said. "If you fight Norman with one Pokémon, he'll think you're not taking him seriously and he'll battle twice as hard. But Brawly likes that kind of stuff."

"Brawly, huh?" Skye looked over at Addison again. "Hey, Addie, do you want to come with me to Dewford Island?"

"No," Addison shot back immediately. "That place is awful, there's no culture there. Besides, the school year's almost starting."

"Come on, you can miss a week of school. You're smart!"

"What makes you think you'll beat him in a week? Didn't it take Hayley, like, two months to get her first badge?"

It had been a month and a half, but even that was embarrassing to admit. Skye puffed out her cheeks. "It's not going to take me two months. Sherbert and I have been training really hard, and plus, she actually listens to me—um, no offense, Hayley—"

Thankfully, at that moment, Connie stirred and sat up, phone in hand. "Pop quiz! When you're training a fire-type, do you want to wear clothes made of cotton, polyester, acrylic, or wool?"

"Um." Hayley racked her brain for the answer, but couldn't find it, so she tried to go with common sense. "Probably cotton? Because it's the coolest."

"Nope! Cotton burns, and polyester and acrylic melt. But wool is super flame-resistant, remember?" Hayley rubbed her forehead and groaned. She had learned that—she'd learned it in the Taillow Scouts, even. But how was someone supposed to keep something like that in their head forever? "Okay, rank these metals by most conductive to least conductive: aluminum, copper, titanium, iron."

"That's… Copper…" Wires were made of copper, right? "Wait, do you mean conducting heat or conducting electricity?"

Connie tapped the screen and frowned. "It just says 'conductive.'"

Maybe it was the same? "Okay, then… Copper, because of wires. Then iron, because iron gets hot? And titanium is strong, so it probably doesn't get as hot, so… Copper, iron, aluminum, titanium."

Connie imitated a buzzer. "Close. Copper, aluminum, iron, titanium."

"Dammit!" Hayley groaned again. "I'm never going to get this."

"You will! You just need more practice." Connie gave her a reassuring grin—a grin that Hayley had come to realize, in the past few days, only ever showed up when she was consoling Hayley. Never when she was talking about herself. Hayley shifted uncomfortably.

"Yeah. Uh, do you want to go into the water? It's getting pretty hot."

"Probably because you're overworking your brain," Addison said, and Skye snorted. Clarissa just rolled her eyes. Connie, though, beamed and stood up.

"Sure! That sounds fun—"

"Don't stay out too long," Clarissa chided, finally deigning to speak. "The contest's in three days—you don't want a tan."

"Oh. Right." Connie's face fell for just a moment, but then her smile came back, and she grabbed a white cover-up wrap and a sunhat from her tote bag. "Thanks—I'll only go out for a bit."

Whenever they'd taken a day trip to the beach on Route 104, Connie had worn a basic two-piece swimsuit, the same as Hayley. Seeing her now in a bikini and a gauzy sarong was jarring and alien, and made Hayley feel like an underdeveloped kid in her tankini top and boy shorts. As Connie slipped her wrap onto her shoulders, she became the mirror image of Marcie—delicate, graceful, shrouded in white. Maybe that had been intentional. Coordinators, after all, were always "on."

"What was that about not getting a tan?" Hayley asked, as they and their Pokémon made their way to the water. Connie gave an awkward laugh.

"Clarissa says that for my aesthetic, I should stay as light as possible. She's right, I look a lot better on camera with lighter skin. Plus, if my skin tone changes, I'll have to rework my makeup at the last minute, and it's just—blegh." She waved a hand over her face and laughed again.

"Does it really matter that much? I think you look great either way."

"Thanks, but the judges do not agree with you. And I've got to do whatever I can to get ahead."

They reached the water, and Hayley waded in up to her waist, then stopped when she saw Connie was only going in up to her knees. She had to keep an eye on her team, too—this wasn't Dewford, and she couldn't let them run around freely. After quickly dunking her head under the waves, she came back out to the water's edge. Ceres was already busying herself with clearing away shells from a patch of sand, which she would then proceed to settle down on and slowly burrow herself into. The feeling of being half-encased in sand while the waves crashed over her was, apparently, very relaxing. Marcie skittered along the damp sand just shy of the breaking waves, hiking up her dress and darting away whenever the water got close to her feet. Sen watched all of them with a judgmental eye, visibly annoyed at having had his meditation interrupted for this, while Barrett hopped from one foot to another, trying to have as little contact as possible with the cold, wet sand.

"Do the two of you want to train?" she asked, and they both perked up. She withdrew a tennis ball from the waterproof bag buckled around her waist that also held their Pokéballs. "Here's what we'll do—I'll throw this ball, and the two of you will try to grab it and bring it back to me. Whoever brings it back gets a point. You can fight each other for it, but no fire and no force palms, and if you hit anyone else on the beach, you lose five points. Okay?" Barrett scoffed. Sen didn't, but she could see in his eyes that he wanted to. "And just to make it interesting—Sen, you can't use your hands. You can only grab the ball with telekinesis. But remember, you can't throw the ball back to me, you have to carry it back. With telekinesis. Got it?"

Both of them nodded. Hayley drew her hand back for the first throw. "Okay. Whoever gets the most points gets to fight the first battle in the arena tomorrow. Go!"

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She threw the ball, and Barrett and Sen scurried after it. Sen reached it first, but as he struggled to pick it up with his mind, Barrett swooped in and grabbed it. Sen body-checked him down to the sand and tried to grab the ball back, but Barrett held on for dear life, and as the ball came back to Sen, Barrett came with it. Barrett used the opportunity to kick Sen with his clawed feet, breaking Sen's concentration and sending both Magby and ball crashing back down. Barrett recovered and blinked forward with detect as Sen tried to hit him again, then made a mad dash to the water. Sen grunted and blasted Barrett with a confusion attack—which, fair, Hayley hadn't said he couldn't do that—but it only knocked Barrett further ahead, sending him tumbling into the goal line marked by the water. Barrett hissed in disgust as a wave crashed over him, but the discomfort and anger was tempered by the knowledge that he knew he'd won. He handed the ball back to Hayley with a smug sneer plastered across his face.

"Great job," she said. "You recovered from Sen's attacks really well, and that was an amazing detect. Ready for round two?"

Connie looked on in something between amusement and awe as Hayley threw the ball again and again. "They have so much energy," she finally said. "I don't know how you deal with them every single day."

"It's tough sometimes," Hayley admitted, since Sen and Barrett were brawling several feet away and wouldn't hear her over the waves and their own squabbling. "But it's a good thing, too. It means they're always ready to train and battle."

"Yeah, but that means you always have to train and battle," Connie said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, Marcie and I practice a lot, but do you ever do something that isn't training?"

"I'm at the beach right now," Hayley began—and stopped, because she was training, right now, at the beach. "Um. I have dinner with you guys, and stuff. And I'm going to your contest—that's not training." Connie didn't look convinced, so she added, "Plus, when you think about all the research and social media stuff coordinators do, you spend just as much time on coordinating as I do on training."

"True," Connie said. "Honestly, I should be practicing right now too—our routine isn't anywhere near ready for this week's contest."

Hayley turned and stared at Connie—just for a moment, before having to turn her attention back to Barrett and Sen. "Are you kidding? I've seen your routine; it's amazing."

"No, it kind of sucks." Connie's voice was bright and cheerful, like she was joking, but her rigid smile said that she wasn't. "We're definitely not going to place this week. We'll be lucky if we even make it to the battle round." Marcie, picking up on her trainer's shift in mood, stuttered to a stop and tilted her head towards Connie with a soft cry. Connie broadened her already-too-wide smile and bent down to scoop Marcie into her arms. "Somebody," she said, poking Marcie's stomach with a pointer finger playfully, "needs to work on getting their magical leaves to show up better on camera. And somebody," she turned her finger to herself, "needs to figure out how to pull off their grand adage without tipping over. Or else we're just going to embarrass ourselves again." Marcie squirmed, and Connie quickly added, "Oh, you're not going to embarrass yourself, Marcie. Just me. I'm the coordinator, so it's my fault when we don't look good."

Sen was delivering Hayley the ball now, which was hovering an inch in front of him and shaking like it wanted to fly off into the sun. Hayley grabbed the ball, nodded at Sen, and threw it again. "I still think your routine's great," she said. Her words bounced off Connie's hollow smile, but they were the only words she could think to say. "Remember when I was waiting to hear back from the Birch lab, and you told me that the League is a bunch of old geezers? The judges are a bunch of geezers, too. They can't tell you if you're good or not."

Connie gave a short, sharp laugh. Marcie squirmed again, and Connie put her down. "Thanks. Again. But, they kind of can tell me whether I'm good or not. That's sort of the point of contests."

----------------------------------------

Hayley had to talk to someone who wasn't Connie, about Connie. Ideally, it would be Clarissa. Everything revolved around her—she was the one who led their entire group, and she was the one Connie kept looking to for advice. Hayley wanted to get Clarissa alone, to corner her in a room and press her for answers about how things had gotten to where they were now. But she couldn't. Clarissa was never alone, and as long as she had Addison or Skye or Connie at her side to back her up, Hayley would never get anywhere. So, that plan was a bust.

But what she could do was get Addison and Skye in a room without Clarissa and Connie.

The next day, under the guise of giving Skye advice on gym battles, Hayley got herself invited to lunch. Thankfully, Skye volunteered to pay, since Hayley was still broke. The contest was in two days, so like she'd hoped, Clarissa and Connie were too busy practicing to come along themselves. They sat in a trendy café near the edge of the trainers' district, Ceres scrunched awkwardly into a chair next Hayley's, and Sherbert and Nacho sitting on their trainers' laps. Hayley ordered a breakfast sandwich for herself and a berry salad for Ceres, Skye ordered crepes to share with Sherbert, and Addison stuck to coffee for herself and a bowl of vanilla ice cream for Nacho. When the business of ordering food was over, it was finally time to talk.

"So—why are the two of you leaving the coordinator track, anyway? If you don't mind me asking."

"I'm not leaving it," Addison corrected her. "I'm just taking a break. My scores aren't good enough to justify taking a year off school, so I'm going to try again next summer—maybe do a contest here and there until then." She sighed. "It's more about networking and exposure for me, in any case. I'm not deluding myself—I plan to make my name as a model and fashion designer, not as a top coordinator."

"And me? I want to be a champion." Skye grinned, and Addison scoffed.

"She's deluding herself."

"No, seriously! I think I can do it. People underestimate Sherbert because she's so cute—I want to become the first champion who specializes in cute Pokémon."

It wasn't the soundest plan Hayley had ever heard, but honestly, she didn't have a leg to stand on—not when her own championship team seemed to be getting built out of Pokémon that were difficult to work with. "But what made you decide you were done with contests? Was there something in particular?"

"Not really." Their food came, and Skye stuffed her mouth with a forkful of crepe before continuing: "I just kind of bite at coordinating. The judges' ideas of what's cute or tough or cool makes no sense, and I hate having to change up my routine to keep them happy. Half the time I just lose in appeals because they don't give her enough cool points, even though wild charge is a totally cool move—"

"I keep telling you that wild charge gets graded in the tough category."

"But every other electric type move gets graded as cool! See?" She nodded at Hayley, who nodded back, because the move classification system that contests used had never made any sense to her. "And then when you lose, people get so mean about it. And finally I was like, I know I can beat all you idiots in an actual battle, so why don't I just do that?" She flashed a grin. "And I did. And it was great. And that's why I'm going to start going for badges. Because then if people get rude, I can just shove my badges in their stupid faces."

"Are people that mean to contesters?" Hayley asked. Her mind flashed back to the conversation they'd had a few nights before. "You mentioned, um, videos…?"

Skye's expression turned gloomy. "So many videos."

When Skye failed to elaborate, Addison cut in. "Here's the thing about being a coordinator. Your performance at contests is only half the game, and the other half is all about your social media presence. And when it comes to your socials, you can get views and followers one of two ways. The first is by making good content, which is hard. The second is finding someone who screwed up and calling them out." She slid her phone across the table to Hayley. The browser was open to a TrainerTV search for "coordinator fail," and the results showed a list of videos that grew longer and longer the more Hayley scrolled down.

"Stuck-up coordinator gets PUT IN HER PLACE by judges!"

"Verdanturf Compilation #46 – try not to cringe (impossible)"

"Reacting to this week's worst performances (August 23-30)"

"Coordinators need to stop pretending to be trainers"

"Wait, that's Connie." Skye and Addison both jumped out of their seats and hunched like Mandibuzz over Hayley's shoulder. The thumbnail for the last video had a guy pulling an exaggeratedly disgusted face while behind him was an image of Connie. Hayley recognized it as a still of the video she'd put up of Marcie fighting Ceres.

"Oof. Yeah, that's Evrard. He's got a real bug up his ass about Connie in particular, I don't know why." Addison tapped the video, and it began playing. It was muted, so Hayley couldn't hear what he was saying, but it involved a lot of slowed-down clips from Connie's video cut with shots of Evrard waving his hands and rolling his eyes. "He's not even a coordinator. I think he just hates women."

"Addie," Skye groaned, but Addison waved her off.

"I'm serious. That's the other thing about being in contests, the audience is full of creeps. It's good practice for me, since I want to be a model and all, but—"

"Name one time somebody creeped on you after a contest. One."

"That guy in Verdanturf, after Nacho messed up his fairy wind."

"He wasn't creeping! He was giving you advice."

"Oh yeah, totally. 'Hello, thirteen year old girl, I'm just going to totally, without any agendas, say that somebody could've seen up your skirt if it went a little higher—'"

"Well, somebody could've."

"Only if they were looking. And if they were looking, it means they're a perv."

Skye threw up her hands and went back to her chair to poke at her cooling crepe. "You're so paranoid about everything."

"And you're so naïve. It's a wonder you haven't been abducted and imprisoned in someone's basement yet."

"If they tried, I'd just kick their ass with Sherbert," Skye answered smoothly. To Hayley, she said, "So, yeah. Anyway. That's a big part of why I don't want to be a coordinator anymore. The culture just sucks."

----------------------------------------

Hayley watched the video afterwards. It wasn't pretty. Every single thing Connie did in her battle against Hayley, Evrard tore down. He said that Connie's moves were flashy with no power behind them, that she'd clearly picked an opponent she would have an easy time beating, that she would never win in a real battle, that she had no right to be proud of herself, and in fact, she ought to be ashamed of herself. He went on to talk about how he hated coordinators, and that this video was an example of everything that was wrong with them, and that Connie had no right to even own Pokémon if she was going to use them as "accessories" to "pretend" to be a trainer, and at that point, Hayley had had enough. She turned the video off.

Despite Evrard's video having been posted two days ago, it had an absurd amount of views. Hayley tried to see how many views Connie's original video had had by comparison, but she couldn't—Connie had taken the video down. And she'd never said anything to Hayley about any of this.

Hayley had to talk to her. She knew she had to. But Connie's next contest was the day after tomorrow, and she talked so much about needing to be "in the zone" that Hayley knew bringing it up now would ruin her focus and her scores. So, she put everything she'd learned in her back pocket and vowed she would talk about it later. After the contest would be a good time. Hopefully Connie would score well and would be in a good mood, and that would make her open to conversation.

In the meantime, because life had become one complicated mess after another, there was one more problem Hayley had to deal with, and that problem was named Miriam. That night, she went to the Lucky Lairon Gaming Corner and hunted her down.

The gaming floor was huge, but Hayley was drawn to the lights and sounds of the slot machines, and apparently Miriam had been drawn there too. She was seated at a row of machines labeled Vermillion Revue, whose screens flashed with cartoon images of the Kantonian gym leader Lieutenant Surge. The seats to either side of Miriam were empty, probably because Miriam kept pounding the machine and growling after every spin. Gingerly, Hayley sat in the seat to her right.

"You got the money to keep playing?" she asked. Miriam's head shot up, and she glared at Hayley with flashing eyes and bared teeth. A moment later, though, she dropped her gaze and returned to the machine.

"Yeah. Hustled a rich kid who didn't check how many badges I had." She pulled the lever, and the slots filled with an image of a Voltorb, a cheri berry, and a coin. The Lieutenant surge on the screen crossed his arms and shook his head. Miriam grumbled and pulled the lever again. "Why're you here? You want a Porygon too?"

"No. I wanted to talk to you."

"Figured." Pikachu, Voltorb, Pikachu. Another grunt, another spin. "Did your friends kick you out?"

"Connie's my friend. The other three are just… there." Magnemite, coin, berry. "That's what I wanted to talk about, though." She took a deep breath as Miriam readied another spin. "Miriam, after this week, when the partner program is over—what do you plan on doing? Are you going to keep challenging gyms, or are you going to go back home?"

"Gyms, duh. I'm not going back to school." Berry, berry, coin. There was a sound effect of clattering coins, and her coin total on the screen ticked up slightly. Lieutenant Surge gave a thumbs-up.

"Okay, so, if you're going to keep going on the gym circuit, is that something you'll be doing alone? Or… do you want to keep traveling with me?"

Miriam's hand froze on the lever, and she stared at Hayley out of the corner of her eye. "Why are you asking me that?"

"I just think—"

"Will Connie be there with you?"

"Sometimes."

"Will Clarissa be there with you?"

"I don't know. Probably sometimes."

Miriam looked away from Hayley and pulled the lever again. "Then I don't want to. Clarissa's a bitch—"

"Well, so are you."

Voltorb, Voltorb, Voltorb. Hayley expected that to be good, but apparently it wasn't, because a massive explosion lit up the screen and Miriam's coin total shot down. Miriam screamed and pounded the screen, then leapt out of her chair to stare Hayley down. "What did you say to me?"

Despite the blood rushing in her ears, Hayley stayed seated. "If Clarissa's a bitch, then so are you."

Miriam's face flushed so deeply that she almost matched the plum-colored carpet. "I am nothing like Clarissa. If you knew the shit she's said to me—"

"I don't know what she's said to you, but I know what you've said to me. And I know that I've tried to be nice to you for three months, and you're still—you're still rude, and you call me a stupid jock, and you talk badly about Connie and everyone else—"

"No I don't!"

"You do, and I know Clarissa's mean too, but that doesn't mean you get to be—"

"It's different!"

"Why is it different?"

"Because Clarissa has friends!" Miriam shouted. "She's popular, and she's, she's got these stupid friends, and they back her up whenever she says things, and I don't have anyone to help me! It's just me—"

"Miriam, I have been trying to be friends with you for three months." Miriam froze mid-rant, jaw hanging half-open. "And, if you just don't like me, if you don't want to be friends with me, that's fine. But I think the reason you don't have any friends is that you act like an asshole to every single person who talks to you."

Miriam opened and shut her mouth a few times, but nothing came out. Finally, she slumped down into her chair again, but instead of reaching for the lever again, she wrapped her arms around herself. "You don't want to be friends with me," she muttered. "I suck."

"You don't—okay, sometimes you do," Hayley admitted. "But sometimes I do too, and… I don't know." They sat together in a long, uncomfortable silence until Hayley spoke up again. "I guess what I'm saying is… If you want to travel alone from now on, that's fine. And if you want to travel together, that's fine too. But if we travel together, I don't want it to be because you're stuck with me, or because you don't have any better choices, or because—because you're just looking for someone to hate. I want it to be because we're friends, and if we're friends, I want us both to act like it. Okay?"

Miriam didn't answer. Hayley tried to look her in the eye, but Miriam swiveled her chair to put her back to Hayley. After a long, painful minute, she said, "Okay." Her voice was so thick that Hayley barely understood her.

"You want to… to try being friends, then?"

"Yeah." She turned at last to face Hayley again, and Hayley saw with relief that she wasn't crying, though her eyes were threateningly red. "But I'm not going to be friends with Clarissa, and… I don't know if I can be friends with Connie—she might not even like me—"

"We can start smaller," Hayley said. "How about next time we check into a Pokémon Center, you give me the top bunk?"