Plasma Cat

Ch. 8: The Yellow Rose of Texas

Second grade was not going according to plan for Will.

His mother had told him over and over again that he surely wouldn't be the only new kid in the class. She was right. But it didn't matter.

Everyone else just seemed to know what to do. The weird handshakes. The strange slang. Even the new kids were "locals", they seemed to know how to do the dance. But Will? He may have been a Texan, but he was an El Paso Texan. Never in a million years would he have thought that Wichita Falls would be such an alien place to him.

By lunchtime, Will was ready to give up. He still didn't have any friends. And the horror of the lunch benches was upon him. He thought about just sitting down and praying that someone would sit next to him. At least near him. But eventually, he chickened out and just started strolling around the playground, pretending that he was going somewhere. Hopefully, no one would notice that he was walking around in circles.

But then he saw a kid, sitting alone behind the swings. Like he was hiding.

He was one of the new kids. But he was really new. He had a strange name that everyone had a difficult time pronouncing. But Will didn't care. Will was desperate.

"Howdy," he said to the kid.

"What do you want?" the kid replied in his thick accent. He didn't look up.

"You're... Tush... Tushar..."

The kid sighed. "Just call me Tyler."

Will wasn't sure how to do the dance, and so he just asked a random question. The first one that popped into his head.

"Where are you from?"

The kid looked up.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm from El Paso," Will began. "I'm a Texan. What about you?"

"I'm from India."

"Wow!" Will said, excitement building in his voice. "You're an Indian? A real life Indian?"

"Yeah," Tyler replied.

Two months later, Will and Tyler went out trick-or-treating together. Will was dressed as a cowboy, Tyler was dressed as a Comanche Chief. Tyler's parents thought the costume was racist and insensitive, but he had insisted on it.

They really didn't care if it was racist or not. Their son had made a friend. That's all that really mattered.

____^._.^____

"How the hell are there three thousand six hundred and forty-seven different fondue flavors?" Tyler cried. "How is that even possible?"

"Most of them are different kinds of cheeses," Gordon explained. "Fondue actually refers to the melted cheeses, the other flavors are recent additions invented by..."

"Gordon, just stop," Tyler spat. "It's bad enough you actually went and bought all this crap."

Tyler angrily paced around the New Wichita Falls conference room. The moon base had once been the launch point for the New Texas colony ships. Nowadays, it mainly served as storage space since the Lunar mass driver at Armstrong had made its launch pads redundant. It was usually near empty, but now it was filled to the brim with boxes and boxes of fondue flavors.

"I'm sorry, boss," Gordon apologized, "I was just..."

"No, stop right there, Gordon!" Tyler interrupted. "Don't say you were just doing what I told you to do! You're the general manager of New Wichita Falls! You're the key link between New Texas and Earth! You need to apply some logic every once and awhile! Did I tell you to get your hands on as many flavors as possible? Yes. Why? Because I wanted a split fondue fountain! How are you going to split a fondue fountain into three thousand six hundred and forty-seven different sections? You're an engineer for Christ's sake!"