White walls. Why are they alainted white? Sapphyra would have given anything t a bucket to work of something bright, fshy and unusual. Pink. Her favorite color. Not just any pink, pastel pink, the same as her hair aybe she should throw that on the wall as a st hoo-rah.

  She snickered. That’d show them. She could do that right, at least.

  As she sat in a shining steel chair outside her boss’s office, she could hear the argument ensuing. Was it the fifth ohis summer? Yeah, five sounds abht.

  There were maes breaking down in the engineeriion. That was an act on her part. A few beakers of experimental serums shattered against the ground when she bumped into a wall. They’d scrubbed her for what felt like hours after that one.

  It’s not her fault that she’s over six feet tall and a hefty girl. She works out for muscle, not fility. But of course, they didn’t care about that. Sapphyra was big, clumsy and slow, not just at the work but at solving basic equations. Well, basic for the eggheads around here, at least. She’d tried begging for just a janitor's job, but the boss wouldn’t hear of it.

  Potential. They said, she’s got plenty of potential, alright.

  The only potential she has is in breaking things. What she wouldn’t give for them to just aowledge it and move on.

  “You e in now.” The boss’s familiar voice called out from behind the door.

  Sighing, she staggered to her feet and trudged inside, ing face to face with her se chief. Bobby. Bobby was redder than a tomato, and the vein visibly throbbing on his forehead made her chuckle.

  “Have a seat, Sarah.” Bobby said, emphasizing her birth h a grin.

  Resisting the urge to reach across the desk he stood behind and rip his throat out, she plied. Everyone knew she had ged her o Sapphyra as soon as she turned 18 st year. Sarah was what her parents had named her. She loved them, but that hat godforsaken name was not for her.

  Her boss cleared his throat, adjusting his tie and b coat. His security badge said Charles P. His mahogany cheeks darkened underh the fluorest lights of this pristine office.

  “Sapphyra.” He adjusted his gsses as she prepared for a reaming that only he could give her. Where will he sehis time? With his cohort in the agricultural research department?

  “I screwed up. Again. I’m sorry.” She meant it every siime, but that didn’t stop bad things from happening.

  Charles nods. Bobby rolls his eyes and folds his arms across his chest.

  “She set us back weeks on those files. It’s like she causes as much chaos as she ! I’ve heard from the other se chiefs. I know you favor her, but she’s gotta go this time, Chuck.”

  Charles flinches. He hates the niame Chubsp;

  Sapphyra cleared her throat. There’s something that people always fet to mention whenever she gets called in front of Charles. It saves them some face for sure, but anything she do to defend herself? She’ll do it.

  “Yes, Sapphyra?”

  “I put those puters back together with better parts than before…or did he fet to tell you that?”

  Bobby squints. His vein throbs again.

  “You fixed the hardroblem. You did nothing for the software, which, I might add, is the most vital part! Decades of data, unsalvageable. This is more than a sce b. D2K is a world renown facility where people expect quality work. Quality that you have failed to deliver time and time again-”

  Charles raises his hand, cutting off Bobby. “That’s enough Bobby. I’ve heard enough. You leave now.”

  The lobster man's jaw tightened. As he rushed from the office, he made two distinct clig sounds with his tongue.

  Sapphyra gulped as she examihe wall opposite of Charles. She didn’t want to face him, not directly. Not that disappoi all ain.

  “Sapphyra. You know I love you, kiddo.” He starts.

  She nods. Her throat suddenly felt dry. This time felt different. The air, thicker tha-butter. When did it get so hot in here?

  “But.” She adds.

  “But…I’m gonna have to let you go this time.” He shuffled some papers, pulling out a stack to hand to me. “I put in a good word for you at another facility-”

  “Dad. Please. I ’t do this anymore.” The words crawled out of her throat, no matter how hard she tried t them back down. She hates to disappoint or even disagree with her father. Her parents were her cheerleaders. How do you tell them to stop rooting for your success?

  “Sapphyra, I know that this is hard for you to accept but-”

  “But you and mom are only looking out for me. I know.” She’d heard this a million times already.

  Why couldn’t they just ask her what she thought was best for her? She’s an adult now. Making your own decisions is a rite of passage at 19.

  Her father sighs, adjusting his rge-framed bck-rimmed gsses. His shoulders slump.

  “Do you want to go to college?” He offers.

  “So I flunk out again? e on dad. I barely got my GED. School just isn’t in the cards for me.” Not uhere was a school for breaking stuff. Demolition works? Maybe now that she was unemployed, she could focus on figuring that out.

  “Sapphyra, the amount of potential you have is insurmountable. Your mother and I…we just wish you could see what we see every time we look at you.” His smile raised his ears and broke her heart. There was that wain.

  Her hands ball up into fists, but she quickly straightens them out against her bck jeans.

  “Dad. I’m never gonna be you or mom.” She raises her head and eyes him, a frown heavier than a freight train dragging the ers of her mouth down. She stands up and dusts herself off. There was no dust in here, but she desperately o do something with her hands.

  Otherwise, another wall would have her fist through it soon.

  Her father stood, a hand reached towards her. It might as well have been a life raft thrown out to a drowning woman.

  “Sapphyra please! It’s not that we want you to be us, we just want you to see how incredible you are.” He moves away from his desk. He reaches a hand up to p her shoulder.

  She flinches. Charles' hand recoils like he’d been burned and his eyes grow wider than saucer ptes. Her parents have never been abusive. The love they show her? That goddamn support that they think push her to be exceptional like them? That’s the part that burns.

  She will never live up to their expectations. She would never be exceptional or smart raceful. Never be able to pour a sample without spshing something on herself. Never able to walk by a mae without some part of her bumping against it and sending it scattering to the floor in a million pieces.

  “Dad. I’m sorry. I gotta go.” She softly calls over her shoulder. Her long legs carried her faster than his disappoi.

  Three security doors ter, she walks out of D2K, the most teologically advanced facility on the p. If you think of anything, tech, sce, finance, D2K has their hands in it. But they don’t have their hands in Sapphyra, not anymore.

  It hurts. Each step away from her parents hurts her worse than any broken bone she’s ever had. Yet, somehow, this is the first time she’s ever felt like she was in trol of her owiny…whatever that meant. Her screw-ups would forever now, only fall on her.

  She sighs, staring up at the bright yellow full-moon. The number of stars in the sky was one of the few things she enjoyed ting, even though it was fully impossible.

  Tonight there was a roviy in the sky that almost seems to slow down as it passes over her: a shooting star.

  She sits on a benearby, biting on her bottom lip. She k was cliche, but she couldn’t help herself. What’s otle wish going to hurt, anyway?

  I wish I was actually worth something to someone. No, I wish I could live up to my parents' expectations, hell, exceed them even.

  She repeated the wish over and over in her head, eyes on the shooting star as it hangs up in the os. Getting on her ade hot pink a bck motorcycle, she speeds off from the facility, unaware that her security badge still hangs around her neck.

  Big Brick city, the city where you build your dreams up piece by piece, is the slogan sign she passed on the way out of city bounds. Supposedly, you could e from nothing and make a proper life for yourself here. And as she passed the looming skyscrapers and mom and pop stores led within big dirty alleyways, she had to agree. Everyone could make something of themselves…except her.

  Sapphyra goes where she feels wele, the clubhouse she and her friends from high sade years ago. Really, it was an abandoned basement of a torn down house out in the snds outside of town. Whoever lived there before kept up a shoddy house, but they put a hell of a lot of money into the basement.

  Steel walls–painted pink, yellow, blue and red via her and her friends–o high-teputers…if they were in the early 90s, that is. Sapphyra hadn’t seen such blocky things since she went dumpster-diving that year when puberty hit her. Oh boy, did it hit her. Growing from 5’2 to 6’5 and gaining 150lbs in a single summer? God must have had a sense of humiving her all that on top of her other double set problem?

  She felt like a freak. Being born a hermaphrodite was bad enough, but this growth spurt? If it weren’t for her friends and her parents…there were dark days that sometimes felt like there was no light in sight.

  But her support system was that light, and she would do anything to make them happy–including taking on work she knew she was ill-suited for.

  “Hey big-head! What’s got you down in the dumps?” A young woman with twin braids tinged blue at the tips called out to her. She sits on a beanbag chair, one Japanese ianga–in her hands. Pearl was beautiful, her warm brown skin was clearer than an o ke. She licked her perfectly pouty lips as she turned a page. She used to be a petitive swimmer in high school, and almost went to the Olympics too.

  Unfortunately, it all went downhill when she pickpocketed a rich guy. The same rich guy who’d killed her parents in a car crash in the rain. He didn’t press any charges, but if her depression didn’t kill her drive to succeed, the threat of the justice system did.

  Maybe one day she’d tell her how she really felt about her. For noh was just happy to have her as a best friend.

  “I quit.” Sapphyra proudly said, jutting out her .

  “You mean your parents finally wised up a you go and you walked out all sad like the Incredible Hulk in those old shows?” Topaz offered, sitting behind a minibar ter turned into a chef's table.

  Topaz, with her olive skin and ass-length pristine dirty blonde hair, eyed Sapphyra, silently judging her with a raised brow. If there was a role for the grandma of the group, it would be Topaz.

  Teically, she’s richer than dirt, but her parents travel the world and never che her, so she might as well be dead. When she was younger, on a css trip to the zoo, Topaz had fallen into a lion's pit and was about to be mauled by ohat is, until Sapphyra, Pearl and Onyx foolishly jumped in to save her. The lions moved away from them. If Sapphyra hadn't knower, she’d have thought she saw a lion bow its head to her.

  But it was really the guard throwing in a raw steak towards the other end of the pen.

  That was the day the trio became a quad.

  “I…I hate it when you do that ‘Paz. Yeah, okay. I got ed, like officially this time. Anyway, whatcha making?” Sapphyra asks, her mouth watering at the tantalizing smells of cooki o Topaz.

  Topaz rolls her eyes. “Braised Rib-Eye steak. I made ara se just for you and your monstrous appetite.” Topaz could cook with the best of 'em.

  As Sapphyra went over to her se of the basement, a workout area full of gym equipment and various hal ons, she id down on the bench. Her hands reach up and encircle the thick bar above her chest. A pair of red thighs came into view. Her spotter, Onyx.

  “I don’t know why you bother with this. You already bench 350. That’s like, literally the most a human being could ever do. You’re just wasting energy.” Onyx says this while multitasking. She has her eyes on Sapphyra, one hand at the ready, a hand whipping s on a target dispy several yards away. Onyx sips soda from a straw iween her breasts.

  Sapph rolls her eyes as she pumps. Onyx was always the oo do the most, despite telling her friends to do otherwise. It’s why she meshes so well with them. When they all met, Onyx was w two part-time jobs after school to support her mom’s bad alcohol habit and make sure there was food oable. She always thought she could handle anything, but when Sapphyra and Pearl found her amid a mental breakdown in a closet, they both stepped up to help her, no questions asked.

  It’s okay to ask for help. Though you would never hear Onyx say those words out-loud.

  “Okay. Is that your third or fourth of some off-brand energy drink?”

  “Volte 1 is not an off-brand energy drink. It’s one of the most popur drinks around and guarao give you ara 4 hours in a 24 hour day. Haven’t you seen the ercials?”

  Twenty-owenty-two. “No, I usually skip those ads along with the male enha ones. If I wanted more time in a day I’d per. Simple as that.”

  Onyx scowls and sips. “Suit yourself. When you’re looking ba your life years from now, don’t look at me and say: I should have done more with my youth.” She wiggles her neck.

  The girls ugh a back to their activities. Eventually Pearl stretches, having finished her manga for the night. She g the clobsp;

  “Damn, how time flies by when you’re having fun. Another day, another successful Hobbies club meetup.” She stands up and grabs a pte of steak to go, though she lingers longer, watg Sapph sit up and stretch.

  Topaz didn’t miss Pearl's blush. her did Onyx, though ?it made her squint at Pearl.

  “Night guys. Anyone need a ride home?” Sapph called out, grabbing her own massive to-go box of steak.

  “Um…” Pearl opened her mouth, but she shook her head. “Nope. I took my uncle's old car. I’m good. Have a good night!” She hurried up the stairs as if someone had lit a fire under her butt.

  Sapphyra raises a brow but shrugs, pag up to go.

  Topaz smacks her palm against her face.

  Onyx bites into her whip, holding back a scream.

  Sapphyra said her goodbyes a, hopping bato her ade cycle. She needed a shower whe home. No doubt her parents would be still at the b tonight. That’s fine. She didn’t want to face them again, anyway.

  Cheg her phone before she kicks off, she saw a missed call from her mother. She shrugs and pockets her phone. Reception is terrible down in the clubhouse. She’d check it once she got home.

  She heads bato the city, enjoying the lights from afar…although something was different tonight. The lights were out…every single one of them. Was there a power outage she didn’t know about? Was that what the call from her mother was about? These thoughts race through her head as she hits the city limits once more.

  It’s then that she sees it or rather, drives into. The mist. It is so thick that you ot see more than your hand in front of you. If Sapph did not know aer, she’d say the mist was the color of su e. What a specific color for mist. Where did it e from? There was nothing about that in the forecast today.

  Those thoughts are the st thing Sapphyra thinks before she es face to face with a pair of headlights.