Music playing and the smell of spiced pickled cucumber filled Rom’s dorm room which had unneeded and unwanted yammering.

“James! Please be quiet. I need to communicate with Shade which memory to look for.”

”Sorry. I am just a little nervous since I never had someone put a false memory in me before. Also who is Shade? Wait, did you name your quill? Why did—”

Both Rom and Shade who was fluttering in the air shot a look towards James causing him to swallow his remaining words.

“He talks more than Suke,” Shade mentioned, followed by “Yeah he does,” from Rom.

“Just tell me the memory again and make sure to not leave any detail out,” Rom explained sitting on her bed with a pad and pen in hand and her legs crossed.

“Were you always wearing glasses?” James asked, which was quickly met with “Focus,” from Rom.

“It was a warm spring afternoon and I was walking home from my middle school. I was twelve at the time and I didn’t have many friends. Actually that is an overstatement. I had zero friends. Probably because the other kids were so busy making fun of the way I spoke.”

“More like how much she spoke…right?…Shade?”

Rom could hear sniffling in her mind.

“Are you crying?”

“He had no friends,” Shade uttered in low spirits.

Rom unknowingly rolled her eyes at what Shade said which was also seen by James.

“Is my story annoying you?”

Rom quickly shook her head. “No, not at all. Please continue.”

James sat down in the chair by Rom’s desk and went on with her story. “The other kids would make fun of my lisp and that afternoon, a few of them decided to follow me and tease me the entire way home.”

“You got that Shade?”

“Yup.”

Rom got up from the bed and walked up to James. “Ok. Now I want you to close your eyes.”

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“Why I have to close my eyes?”

“Well you don’t need to but while Shade is in your memory, I just don’t want you awkwardly looking at me in silence with those blue eyes of yours.”

“But I like his blue eyes,” Shade professed.

“Good for you but we have a task, remember?”

“True, true,” Shade said while fluttering onto the back of James’s neck followed by a few passing seconds, “found the memory.”

“Ok great. Now try to change the mean things the kids were saying to James into something nice.”

“Like what?”

“Something to make him smile or something.”

“Wow. Thanks for narrowing it down.”

Rom furrowed her eyebrows at what Shade said before closing her eyes to help imagine James’s memory so she could figure out what exactly to say. “Ok I think I got it,” and upon opening her eyes, neighboring homes with white picket fences, and a group of kids walking in front of her in the daylight.

“What the!” To Rom’s surprise, her shout didn’t cause any of the kids to turn around as if they didn’t hear her.

“Why are you so loud?”

Rom turned to her right seeing Shade fluttering in the air. “Where are we?”

“This is the memory of James but you being here is new and it's kinda cramping my style.”

“Your style? You only manipulated memories twice and it was for the same person.”

Shade was silent for a moment before muttering “Hater.”

Rom rolled her eyes and ran to catch up to the group of kids. Dozens of insults could be heard with a few being slights towards glooms which irritated Rom but she wasn’t the intended target. The boy they were following was.

“Damn, these little shits have a colorful vocabulary and why are they walking so fast?” Rom said and then everything paused. A dog that was barking across the street, a man mowing his front lawn, and even the birds flying in the sky. All just froze as if time had stopped.

“What happened? Did I do something wrong?” While Rom was worrying that she might have broken the memory, Shade was fluttering around, observing the frozen kids. “I don't know exactly but I think I did it. When I heard you talk about the kids walking fast, I figured it would be better if the memory just paused and here we are.”

A thought came to Rom’s mind. “Oh you may be right! I’ll try it now,” Shade said.

The group of kids started moving again but backwards. As if they were retracing their steps. Even the line of cut grass from the lawn being mowed was undone as the man went back over it in reverse.

“It’s working!”

“I know! Great thinking of trying to rewind the memory like a video. Also look who I found,” Shade said pointing to one of the kids.

“Those blue eyes. That is definitely James. Ok Shade, let’s keep rewinding this memory back to the beginning and see what we are working with.”

Upon an hour passing, Suke walked into the room seeing James sitting down and Rom standing in front of him with closed eyes.

“What is happening?”

“I am helping Rom with her assignment.”

Suke walked up to the stilled Rom. “Why isn’t she moving? It’s like she is in a trance,” and just as she reached out to touch her roommate, her hand was caught by another.

“Were you about to touch my hair?”

“What? No, no. Of course not.”

“She totally was about to touch your hair.”

Shade fluttered over to Rom’s shoulder and they both gave a quick scowl towards Suke before turning to James. “What do you remember one warm spring afternoon when you were twelve, walking home from school, and some other kids decided to follow you home?”

James' face turned to a frown. “You mean the other kids who tricked me into believing they were my friend so during the next day of school their bullying can be that much sweeter.”

James got up from the chair pushing Rom aside and started to leave the room until he was stopped by Suke.

“Just hold on there. I have a feeling my roommate has done something really reckless.”

If not for the angry glare James gave her, Suke would have never dodged the kick that came to the left side of her head.

“Feeling confirmed,” Suke said under her breath, rolling over to Rom.

“Oh hey gurl hey,” Rom said with a forced smile.

Suke shook her head in discontent.