Roll to Me

Chapter 10

Was this how the entire time in Sagiri was going to be? Moriko was making a valiant effort to not shrink away as Akemi's cabinmates hugged her, thrilled that she was back among them for the duration of the bonfire. They had welcomed her in like they were hailing a conquering hero.

"Oh my gosh, I thought you got kicked out of camp!" one of them wailed, flinging her arms around Moriko. "I'm so glad you didn't!"

"Someone said Nakime took you into the woods and fed you to the spiders," another girl was saying, her hands flying around as she spoke, "But I knew that couldn't be right."

"That's just a story, she doesn't sacrifice people."

"No, she just looks like a ghost lady."

The Camellia Cabin girls continued to babble around her as she kept Akemi's at-ease smile on her face. One of them, the one with the braid named Chiasa, looped her arm through Moriko's. She reminded herself that Akemi was find with physical contact, she actually initiated it often.

"Why did you dye your hair?" Chiasa asked. Her other hand came around and touched Moriko's ponytail. Somewhere in the flickering firelight, Akemi had her hair up in the same ponytail. They were actually in completely identical clothes right now. At the last minute, they had decided to see if they could get away with switching places in the middle of the bonfire without anyone noticing.

Moriko let her ponytail bounce. It felt so strange without her normal braid and its butterfly clip. Akemi was currently wearing it. "Oh, Nakime made me." No one would question that, and no one was going to ask Nakime if that was actually the case. Everyone avoided her if they could possibly do so.

"That's too bad, they were really cool," Chiasa said.

"Duuude, how do you survive having to live with Ms. Know-It-All?" another girl, Masa, asked.

Moriko blinked. Did Akane used to call her that? "Uh, she's not so bad. When did you start calling her that?"

Masa shrugged. "When you got put in camp prison with her," she said, tossing her wavy dark brown hair over her shoulder, "Seriously, Mimi, it's not fair, you should ask for them to let you move back to Camellia."

Inwardly, Moriko released the flash of tension that had caught her. At least Akemi hadn't called her that name, as far as she knew. However, they hadn't been friends before they had been forced into close proximity in the Cooperation Cabin. If Akemi had called her a know-it-all, that was in the past. Besides, the other students at school called her that all the time. She doubted if some of them knew her actual name.

"Is she totally awful? She seems so stuck up," Masa said, "It must be torture to have to be around her all the time."

Moriko felt her usually calm temper begin to flare. She forced herself to smile and then remembered that Akemi was actually very good at being honest. "Hey, can we talk about something else? Like this bonfire." She gestured toward the roaring blaze that they were approaching. "Or what you all have been doing while I've been away?"

"Sure, sure," Chiasa said, patting her arm, "Definitely understand."

Moriko reminded herself that when she went home with her father to Sagiri, this conversation about how awful Moriko was wouldn't be an issue. Instead, she would have to remember all of the details about Akemi's family that she was telling Moriko every day. She had a notebook dedicated to those details, but she was going to have to be so careful about where she hid it. If her father discovered it, he would certainly have questions, since it included details about inside jokes, fears, likes, dislikes, interests, and jobs that Akemi wouldn't have to write down.