Timely Trials

Chapter 12: Friends and Stars

LOVINO POV

It surprised me how much I hated leaving Antonio's house that day.

I thought about it on the walk back, and eventually realized that I just liked spending time with Antonio, and he was more fun to hang out with when he was at his house, compared to when at his workplace. Whether or not he liked spending time with me was something I wondered and maybe even worried about on the way back. But even if I had wanted to tell him I liked going to his house, I wouldn't have had an opportunity. His chattering during the whole walk was one reason why. The other was that, unsurprisingly, Toris asked for me almost as soon as he saw me.

"Today," he muttered to himself. "It's today... I better not make any mistakes this time..."

Luckily this time, after the whole useless process of pinning back my hair, taking a pill, sitting in the chair in the middle of that creepy, white room, and losing consciousness, I didn't have any weird dreams like I had had before. I didn't wake up in a different room, either. That was nice.

"Mr. Vargas," said Toris, "will you remind Amelia and Antonio that it's tomorrow morning?"

"That what's tomorrow morning?"

"Just something. You don't need to worry about it. They should know what it is when you remind them when it is. And you can make your way back this time for real, right?"

I blushed, remembering the first time I'd said that I could make it back and then got lost in the hall. And then I ran right into Antonio.

"Yes, I can make it this time." I had been trying to memorize my way around the halls. I only ever went through a couple of them anyway, so it wasn't too hard to do once I tried.

At the end of the walk through those halls, Amelia met me. I told her Toris's message and she nodded before starting, "Hey, Lovino, I want to ask you something."

"Yeah?"

"What would you do if-- Actually, no, wait, let me start over. Will you trust me?"

Trust? I didn't really trust her. I was going to say so, but something stopped me. She had started to ask something else, but decided it was better to find out if I trusted her first. And she looked serious about whatever it was. What really stopped me was that she didn't ask if I already trusted her, but if I would start trusting her. I still didn't know if I did. I wasn't sure I trusted a lot of people. Even if Amelia was crazy as hell sometimes, and even though she didn't like me and I had the same feeling for her, she seemed like she might be able to be trusted. Antonio, Yao, Toris... They all trusted her, it seemed. So I told her that I would.

She crossed her arms. "Okay, good. I'll trust you, too, then. Back to the first question. What would you do if one of your friends might be in huge trouble, but you weren't sure?" I didn't give an intelligible answer and she kept going. "Like, what if your best friend could be in really big trouble and might even get hurt, but he won't tell you anything and keeps brushing the problem off like it's nothing? Would you trust someone you weren't sure of before? Would you ask that person for help? Because I would."

It clicked that she was talking about the situation we were in then. Her friend was in trouble? So?

"Why should I care if one of your friends is in trouble?" I said. "I probably don't know her, and anyway, I can't do much being stuck here all the time."

She sighed. "You should care because he's your friend, too, stupid. I never said it was a girl. It's Antonio. I think he might be getting himself into trouble, and he keeps going places with you instead of being around where I can keep an eye on him, so I'm asking you for help here."