Blue Toast

Alan dipped his head as he entered the house, though he didn't notice the motion. He was used to it - the doors in the school here were just a little too short, or he was always just a little too tall. Taller than average, as the headmaster would say, tapping on his desk with his fist. Smarter, almost too smart. Maybe not even finished growing yet!

Not from around here. That was what he always meant.

Of course Alan could always reconfigure his headset, pretend to be shorter than he was, but it distorted things strangely. Instead he resorted to ducking through the virtual halls just as he would have done if he attended a real building.

Alan nodded at Sish's mum - who was trying on a new sari for his dad, showing off the pattern embroidered in silk up the skirt. She murmured back at him, something about love, and sorry, and Anishk - Sish - was upstairs in his room. Sish didn't ask her to repeat herself, too afraid that hearing what she actually said would result in the tears finally falling from his lashes.

The stairs up to Sish's room were new, but they still creaked as Alan made his way up. It was the first time he'd visited Sish's real house, which was nothing like his virtual mansion, but he still knew the way to Sish's room almost instinctively.

"Hey cuz!" Sish shouted when Alan knocked. The door was open, but Alan had been raised 'properly', as his father would say. Manners of the old world. "Come on in."

Sish hit pause on the controller and flung it onto the bed. "I'm so sorry man. You wanna talk, or you wanna shoot things?"

Alan hesitated outside the door. If he talked about it, he would cry, and he didn't want to cry. He hated the way his chest tightened and his eyes prickled, despised the way it took fifteen minutes to say one sentence between sobs. He didn't trust his voice, which had been giving way in odd squeaks and growls lately, not to be even worse with the emotion tightened around his neck, so he nodded at the controller and watched Sish pull another one out of the cupboard. This controller was older - "Retro!" Sish shouted, as he synced it to the unit - so Sish would offer Alan the newer, shinier one. He was polite, too. Brought up right.

Not that Alan's father would approve of Sish. Too boisterous, too loud.

He slid into the room, his bag falling from his shoulder to the floor with a quiet whomps."Always check if the bread is blue before you put it in the toaster."

Alan froze. Sish looked up from where he was fiddling with a menu in the system, trying to connect the controller to the wire mesh, and rolled his eyes. "Alright, Grandma. Will do."

Swinging around, Alan spotted the source of the strange comment - an old lady, smiling up at him, the hair braided over her shoulder ghostly white. "You are that young man, aren't you? Alan?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good, good."

She patted his hand softly, her skin papery, and Alan had to fight the urge to yank his hand back, tuck it under his elbow.