June 11th - "Jingle Jangle Jingle"

The little roulette wheel loading screen now reached its fifth minute. Regina sat in the gamer chair, Lucille standing behind her, dismay on both of their faces.

“I think we oughta restart,” Lucille supposed.

Regina could only nod. “Yeah, that’s the tough part about mods. Especially for a game that’s over a decade old.”

With a sigh, Lucille authorized Regina to hit CTRL + ALT + DEL and shut down the game. The computer whirred and groaned in protest, and when computer’s do that, Lucille knew the obvious solution was to hit the power button in punishment.

Bad computer. How dare you disobey me?

While her home computer booted up again, Lucille eyed the post-apocalyptic scene through her bedroom window, then glanced back at her room. She and the Miad cousins had occupied it for most of the day now; Jackie currently sat on Lucille’s bed, her tongue hanging out of the corner of her mouth in concentration. Her eyes narrowed as her thumbs flicked the sticks on the controller wildly.

“Lucille, the fuck you got a Wildcat controller for?” she barked out, not taking her eyes off the game. The thumbsticks - notoriously weak on the Xbox Wildcat controllers - were currently being beaten worse than a redheaded stepchild. When a zombie lunged at her character, Jackie let out a sharp gasp and wheeled her character in a wide arc. When she escaped her enemy, her hands hit the A button like a drum as she jumped across lava and retrieved the gun from the Pack-A-Punch machine.

Jackie let out an honest-to-god cackle as she mowed down zombies with the Mustang and Sally, their lasers tearing across the darkness of the game. Lucille squinted her eyes; Jackie played so hard that she was actually sweating despite already having a box fan on her (in addition to Lucille’s bedroom having air conditioning).

“Anyway,” Regina said as the computer turned back on. “That’s how you mod New Vegas. I already got you the basic ones like overhaul mods, the Bounties mod, and updated graphics.”

Lucille returned her attention to the game. “Nice. A game released without a sprint button is a war crime. I’m tired of doing that weird little half-job gait across the wasteland. How many mods can I get?”

Regina shrugged. “Don’t want to push it too much, but we got room for more.”

A twinkle ran through Lucille’s eye as she held up a thumb. “Let’s do more!”

When Regina pulled up an internet browser, Lucille’s search history appeared. She, fortunately, had nothing to hide, but the most recent search made Regina raise an eyebrow. “What the fuck is a Vtuber?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Lucille was saying. “You heard about that shit? You got these anime people doing livestreams and shit. And people pay money! That’s bananas.”

Another shrug. “They’re okay. I hang out on one of their discords.”

“You got a discord?” Lucille asked. “Are you a moderator?”

Regina started sweating.

“No way.” Lucille clutched her stomach. “No way! PFFFFFFFFTTT-”

She fell back on her bed and clutched her stomach as she laughed. “Jackie, you hear this-”

Jackie let the old controller fall from her surprised hands. It clanged against the floor; despite the hard landing, the thumbsticks cried out in relief now that they were free from Jackie’s rough handling.

“Fucking Teddy Bear in the Mystery Box,” she complained as the words GAME OVER flashed across the screen, accompanied by mocking laughter. Jackie just crossed her arms and fell back in the bed, laying next to Lucille. “What were you saying?”

“Regina’s a discord moderator.”

“PFFFFFFFTTTT-”

Both women rolled around on the bed and laughed their hearts out. Regina merely gave them a muted side-eye. “It’s not that bad. I’ve met a lot of people from around the world-”

“Oh, I’m sorry Regina,” Lucille cut in. “I guess we’re too old for you, huh?”

“No memes in general!” Jackie chided.

Another round of laughter erupting deep in the stomach.

“I met this one kid from Germany-”

“A femboy?” Lucille laughed so hard she wiped her eyes. “How are the discord kittens doing?”

“You know, that’s not really that funny-”

“What’s really funny is how high the age of consent is, amiright?” Jackie cut in.

The laughter lasted for a good two minutes. Regina opened her mouth, then just watched them laugh.

Lucille knew, of course, that she was one big hypocrite. She spent her Friday nights on a Mongolian basket-weaving forum debating over which fourteen-year-old girl in Evangelion was better (and hotter (the answer was Rei for both)). Maybe the cabin fever was making her unruly. They had been stuck inside the entire day, waiting for the thick layer of smoke to leave East Eden.

It arrived earlier in the week without warning. One day, it was primetime summer, blue skies and yellow sunshine. The next day, the temperature dropped to the fifties and the sun had been completely blotted out of existence. Perhaps this was what a solar eclipse felt like - the sun should’ve been there, it ought've been there, it definitely was still there, except it wasn’t. When Lucille looked up, all she saw was an endless sea of gray that seemed to get closer and closer down to Earth. Was it possible for the sky to get lower in elevation? It certainly felt that way.

The two cousins joined her in wistfully staring out of the window. “Fucking Californians,” Jackie mumbled. “Only they could be next to an ocean and not be able to put out a wildfire with it.”

“It was the Canadians this time,” Lucille corrected.

Jackie gave her a confused look. “The Canadiens? What did their fans do, burn down Montreal?”

Lucille didn’t understand her, so she decided to give a little grunt, that kind of low noise that indicates “yeah buddy, I definitely understood that” (she didn’t). Jackie felt satisfied with it, but then her stomach rumbled.

“We probably should get some snacks,” Jackie proposed. “We’ll be staying here like another six hours or so.”

Regina pointed at the window. “And go out there? No thank you.”

Jackie rubbed her chin in thought. “Well, only one of us has to do it.”

The cousins immediately stared at Lucille. She crossed her arms and shook her head, the motion sending her brown hair bobbing along. “No way. The doctor already said I have the blood pressure of a middle-aged woman. Can’t hurt my lungs anymore than I already do.”

The women reached an impasse. The time slowly slipped away on their phones.

“We could get delivery,” Regina said.

“In this economy?” Lucille questioned. “I got an idea. We need to make this fair. In anime, whenever a group of high school girls needs to send someone to get juice or some shit for them, they always play rock-paper-scissors to choose who goes.”

Jackie, upon hearing about a game of chance, immediately rubbed her hands together. “I’m in.”

With two votes for, Regina sighed and nodded in acceptance. She spun the chair around to face Lucille and Jackie in a Mexican standoff. Imaginary harmonicas, whistles, and banjos flooded the room, with the hardwood floor giving away to redrock, sand, and dust. Cacti sprouted out of the ground, the townspeople stopped to see the commotion in the middle of town. A tumbleweed rolled by between them; the three shifted their eyes toward one another, putting on their best poker faces. The sleight of Lucille’s hand was now a quick pull trigger; she chomped on the rolled up tobacco hanging loosely from the side of her mouth.

From where Jackie and Regina were sitting, it might have seemed like a 18-karat run of bad luck. But truth is - the game was rigged from the start.

Lucille wouldn’t have proposed this game without an ace in the hole. She, of course, had seen the hit anime Lycoris Recoil, and now knew the secret to rock-paper-scissors. By default, everybody had their fists clenched and therefore in rock. When they threw down, if the muscles on their finger twitched, they would either be throwing paper or scissors. If they didn’t, they would still be using rock. With knowledge like that, all Lucille needed to do was stay focused, stay alive, and detect their finger movements.

She couldn’t. When the fists came down, Lucille realized real life didn’t work like that at all, so she fumbled her way into throwing rock.

Regina threw rock.

Jackie threw scissors.

“Oooooh,” Jackie groaned. “Alright, fine. What do you guys want?”

That’s when Lucille realized a second reason as to why rock-paper-scissors was a terrible idea.

“I’ll go with you,” she immediately offered. She slipped off the bed before Jackie could even answer.

Jackie raised her hands. “It’s okay. I lost, after all.”

“I’m hosting,” Lucille countered. “And besides, we’re best friends, aren't we?”

There was a slight tinge of crimson on Jackie’s face. She busied herself by pushing away a few strands of strawberry blonde hair off her face, then put on her war face. “Alright, let’s do this.”

“Have fun, kids,” Regina told them as they departed. When Lucille and Jackie went down the stairs and through the kitchen, Lucille’s mother sat at the kitchen table. Her hair was a lighter shade of Lucille’s brown, her face more crisp and angled and wrinkled than Lucille’s smooth and acne-ridden in her temples.

“Lucille,” her mother said, not looking up from the pile of bills. “Can you mow the lawn?”

With a raised eyebrow, Lucille scratched her head. “Sure…but have you seen the conditions outside?”

Her mother took a look through the kitchen window. Her expression didn’t change. “When you get the chance, then.”

Lucille filed the order away in the back of her mind, then brought Jackie to the garage. The new Audi sitting there emphasized the antiquity of Lucille’s beater alongside it. Apparently, cars had touch screens and heated seats nowadays - the line between science fiction and reality was increasingly getting blurred. Lucille slipped in the driver seat and put the key into the ignition (apparently, you could just push a start button on some cars now). But before she could use the fob to open the garage door behind them, Jackie suddenly gasped.

No sound immediately followed. When Lucille glanced over, Jackie stared daggers at her.

“This is about the pizza, isn’t it?”

Lucille chuckled. “Dude, what?”

“You saying all that shit about us being friends and all. That’s a lie. A no-good, rotten, damn dirty-dog lie. You only said that to hide the real reason for coming with me.” Jackie jabbed a finger at her torso. “This is about the pizza.”

“What?” Lucille repeated. “That was five years ago.”

Jackie wouldn't budge. “It’s about the pizza-”

“So what if it is?!” Lucille exploded. “I always the order the pizza, and I ask you one goddamn time to do it because I’m working a double shift that day! So I get to your house and what happens? You forgot to do it!”

Jackie beat a hand against her chest. “I said I was sorry! And you could’ve just gotten your own dinner that day instead of mooching off of me-”

“You said you’d buy it and I could swing by after work to share, so I didn’t buy anything that day! I can’t trust you for anything!” Lucille counted down on her fingers. “The finger flaying incident, the canned air abuse!”

“And I can’t go back to at least four different restaurants because you refused to tip them!” Jackie countered. “And you got the audacity to complain about the economy when you don’t even vote!”

Lucille punched the steering wheel. “You don’t vote either! Because you forget!”

“Yeah, but I’m not such a melancholic bitch about it! You’re always like ‘oh man, I was born at the end of the world, woe is me.’ We all were! But you don’t see me complain about it. ‘Oh man, I worked so hard, but things didn’t work out.’ That’s just life! Life’s unfair, and you always make a big stink about feeling old, yet you still need to grow up!”

Lucille stared at her for a moment. “Yeah, well, you’re stupid.”

“You’re stupid!”

Some time later.

Lucille and Jackie had slumped deep into their seats. Their hair was now sweaty and messy and black spots ate into the corner of Lucille’s vision. Her head throbbed and she didn’t understand why she was in the car in the first place. But she did remember one thing.

“Jackie.” She struggled to find the right words after that, but the answer was simple. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Lucille’s eyelids grew heavy. There was a slight creak beyond their windshield; barely able to raise her head, she could just make out the outlines of Regina and her mother as they entered the garage. With a deep sigh, her mother flicked the switch on the wall to open the garage door behind them.

“Wait a second.” Lucille eyed her ignition. “We’ve been sitting in a running car with the garage door closed this whole time.”

It took Jackie a second to process that; the hamster ball powering her brain spun as hard as it could until a microwave dinged.

“That’s funny.”

The two women let out stupid laughs.

“Is this karma for making fun of Regina?” Jackie asked.

Lucille shook her head. “I think there’s a different lesson here. That forcing a friend to go solo to get juice from the vending machine is fucked up. Shame on Japan. Things like that should be a group effort.”

“Agreed.”

The two women slumped further into their seats.

“I’m glad we’re friends,” they said in unison.