My mind is always clearer when I'm playing beam chasers. I can't remember when I first played. Or, well, I can, because I joined the junior leagues and you're basically wearing pillows all over your body so you don't get hurt as you waddle around the super wide beams. But anyways, beam chasers. It's great. I think my life is better when I have beam chasers. It's pretty awesome, actually. I don't think you could have a Kalei without her playing beam chasers. That, too, is very awesome.

I crumpled the paper up and tossed it across the room. I was trying to write an essay for my lit class about something that was 'vitally important to me,' because of this boring book about someone who's obsessed with basket weaving that we had to read (well, I was skimming it and reading the summary online). And duh, if I'm gonna write about something important to me, I'm gonna write about beam chasers. But actually putting that into words without sounding like a total dweeb was hard.

"That was quite the paper crumpling," Zeta said, looking up from her phone, where she was probably reading Raina Starlight fanfics.

"Almost hit the wall," I said. "Let me suck at writing another intro and I'll have another go."

"I like the idea that you can't throw the paper until you've had a failed draft on it," Zeta said.

"It feels less wasteful that way," I said.

Zeta's one of my roommates and one of my closest friends. She got her Cani fangs about the same time I did. She's always yelping and freaking out about everything, but given what she's gone through, I get why she's so high strung. She's always got my back, and I respect the hell out of her for that.

"Do you want any help with that?" Zeta asked.

"Eh, I dunno," I said. "I have to describe why I love beam chasers, I don't know if you could explain why I love something."

"I guess so," Zeta said. "Do you need some inspiration, maybe? Like going to the court and taking notes?"

"Hold on," I turned away from our dorm room's sole desk. "I should get some game time in, that's actually a good idea."

"You don't have to make it sound like such a shock that I came up with a good idea," Zeta said.

"Well, you threw in that bit about taking notes, I'm not doing that," I tapped my forehead. "Storing everything up here."

"Maybe not taking notes is why you're having trouble writing this essay," Zeta said.

"I doubt it, maybe you should, uh," I coughed. "Man, I'm off lately, normally I'd have something really good to jab back with."

"I'm kind of relieved you don't," Zeta said.

Having drawn a blank on insulting one of my best friends, I avoided making her cry, which meant I could convince her to come with me to the beam chasers court on campus. The compromise wasn't even much of a compromise, she just wanted to bring Oka and Lillia along. Which was fair, since she was dating Oka and all.

Oka was originally the third roommate joining me and Zates. She had her fangs way before I did, and grew up at one of those weird Cani schools where every detail is tragic. Sometimes I wondered how Oka went there and still ended up normal enough. The things I learned about those schools made me expect the students to come out cold blooded child soldier killing machines, and Oka ended up...well, she ended up a theater kid. Which is bad in its own right, but a bit less damaging to society or the world or herself than if she was all little killer monster student.

Oka makes the theater kid thing work, though. Lillia does, too. Lillia, the fourth in our close knit friend group, was Oka's current roommate. I have no idea when she got her fangs, but I never would have guessed we'd be friends. She's very teacher's pet and when I first met her, I didn't know if she knew what fun actually was. But getting to know her, I realized she's actually a huge softie, and she likes a lot of the same games I do, which is cool.

I texted our new other roommate, my new-ish friend Marmalade, hoping she could join us too. She was maybe joining the beam chasers team, which had me incredibly pumped. I didn't hear back from her right away, which stung, but I tried to brush that away. She had her own life, it was fine.