[Sig – 13 years]

  "Whoa," Connor says as Xander's house comes into view.

  Connor, Sam, Isaac, and I decided to ride over to Xander's and see if he wanted to hang out. He wasn't responding to anything in the group chat and didn't respond to my direct texts, either. That part is weird because he's usually pretty fast to respond when I text him that way ever since Monday. At least, not if he isn't busy.

  And I know his fitness lesson for today is over because he now always texts me a picture of the smoothie Ms. Katie made for him after. Today's had the usual combo of peanut butter, milk, and a banana, with blueberries and strawberries for an additional boost.

  We'll all be heading back out to Autumn Hills after the dads get off work today and we want to spend the time until then playing. School starts in three days and we want to enjoy having all of this free time before it's limited to evenings and weekends. With tomorrow being the final stream for the augmented reality glasses, that means we really don't have much time left.

  So we really want to see if Xander wants to hang out. That's why we're going to his place directly.

  And as always, its size is impressive.

  "I know," I say. "Gets me every time."

  "You've only been here a couple of times more than us," Connor says. "But… I don't remember that building."

  There's a whole extra building off to the left of the main one. It's really large for most of it with a lower section on the right-hand side. A hall leads between it and the main building, and there are some flowers and bushes growing up against and around it.

  "I don't either," I say. "And I know I'd remember something like that! There wasn't a second building before!"

  It takes us another couple of minutes to reach the gate. The size of the properties in this neighborhood are ridiculous. When we arrive, we just stare at the property beyond it from here. Xander probably gets lost here a lot.

  "Yes," the guard says, and we all look over to find him on the phone. "Xander's friend group showed up, but I don't have any notice that they were coming."

  Right. They have security here and you can't even go up to the door without getting past them. That's something I think we all forgot, not just me.

  "Oh!" I say. "Sorry! Xander wasn't responding to our texts, and we wanted to see if he wanted to hang out."

  "They said they wanted to see if Xander wanted to hang out," the guard says. "Understood. I'll wait."

  That probably means we'll need to wait. After about two minutes, he lets us know we can head on up to the doors. There's no comment on what Xander himself says, which makes me feel like he might not be home and we're going to get a talking-to for showing up announced by someone. His dad seems friendly enough but I'm pretty sure he's also at work.

  Also, most of our encounters with him have been in a more casual setting, and an arranged one as well. Not us just showing up at their house. I'm not sure how rich people view that and I need to push down the nervous vibrations that well up in me.

  The gate opens up a little and we ride our bikes up to the front door, then hop off and debate on if we should knock or ring the bell.

  "Do you think the bell even works?" Connor asks. "A big house like this, the button's probably just for show."

  "The button works," a voice startles us. "It sends an alert to the security office inside, though we generally already know if someone's on their way up."

  It takes only a moment for us to spot the speaker they're speaking through. Just as we do, the front door opens and Ms. Katie greets us.

  "Hello, boys," she says. "Trey's already given permission for you to hang out if Xander's okay with it."

  "If Xander is?" I ask. "So Xander didn't say?"

  "I'm not entirely sure what he's doing," she tells me. "And he didn't respond when I tried texting him. He seemed pretty focused last I saw him so he might say no."

  "Alright," I say.

  "Come on in," she says. "He's in the athletics wing."

  "That classroom he does martial arts and stuff in?" I ask as we enter.

  "No," she chuckles. "The new addition to the property is the athletics wing. After his martial arts lesson ended, he came over for his smoothie, then went back over. He's not allowed to use the weights or pool without supervision so I'm not sure what he's doing at the moment. Could be practicing with a basketball, I know he mentioned struggling with that yesterday when he was eating lunch."

  "Yeah, he doesn't seem to like it," I say. "Never joins us if we're playing at the park."

  "Too much risk of physical contact for his liking," she says. "Come on, I'll take you over."

  Ms. Katie leads us through the recreational wing of the house and to the hall leading to the new building. The view outside is really nice, especially with the added flowers and bushes. When we reach the other end, we're let into a massive room with tucked-in bleachers on the wall the door is on.

  I think it's a basketball court – and Ms. Katie did mention one – but it looks… a lot different. The entire floor is covered in blue foam mats and there are padded boxes all over the place. Also some blocks and walls without pads, and some well-braced bars. That's just in what I can see, though. Some of the walls and blocks are bigger than I am and most of the gym is blocked from view.

  There's no discernible rhyme or reason to how everything is placed. It doesn't even seem like there's enough space to properly move around for many parts of what little I can see.

  While it could be that this was set up in a specific way for one of Xander's lessons, I doubt it. This feels like it's something which only makes sense to Xander's brain.

  "And there's definitely someone here because I heard the door close," Xander's mutterings are barely audible. "But I heard five pairs of feet. Who shows up in groups of fives? They can't be kidnappers 'cause the security guards would've stopped them. Unless they overpowered the guards? I doubt that, though. I think I would've sensed that kind of mana usage. They could be monsters, though. What if they're monsters? If Trenton were over here, he'd probably tell me. Should I teleport him over?"

  Xander has the bottom row of bleachers on this side barely stuck out, just enough that the seats have cleared the next row's seats. Trenton's sitting on it, watching Xander do… whatever it is he's doing.

  "No, you goof," I snicker. "It's us and Ms. Katie."

  "Us and Katie?" Xander mutters. "Who's 'us'? And who's 'Yagufe'? I've never heard that name before? Wait. Can they hear me?"

  Xander's confused mutters make all of us snicker. Well, us boys. Ms. Katie just sighs.

  "Xander," Ms. Katie says. "That was 'you goof'," she says this more slowly. "And S.G., Connor, Sam, and Isaac came with me. And yes, you're fairly close to us… wherever you are. And thinking out loud."

  "Oh," Xander's head pops up from behind the nearest block, his hair a little bit darkened from sweat and sticking to his head, his cheeks flushed a little. There's confusion on his face until he registers us, then it switches to a little bit of happiness before returning to confusion. "Did I forget about inviting you over? I'm so sorry!"

  "What?" I laugh. "No! We were planning on heading to the woods and wanted to know if you wanted to hang out! You didn't respond to our messages, so we figured we'd come over and see!"

  "Oh," he says. "Um. My phone's in my locker so I didn't see them."

  Xander comes out from behind the block as he stands, and whoa. His outfit is a little bit different than any I've seen him in before.

  Not too much different, but whoa. He's wearing black athletic pants from MountainStorm gear, a pair of thin, bright blue stripes down the outer sides of their legs. He's also wearing black and dark blue sneakers with neon blue accents and laces.

  I can tell he's got his bracelets on under his sleeves, and he's added a necklace to his outfit as well. The necklace is just a cord with a slender, 5" metal rod hanging from it. A series of purple and blue runes decorate it so I'm sure it's magic in some way.

  What's really different about his outfit is his medium blue shirt with the MountainStorm gear logo in dark blue, large and across his chest.

  It's still a long-sleeve, but it's an athletic shirt. And it's in his size instead of being one up. A properly-fitted athletic shirt fits snugly on someone who's well-built, and Xander isn't bulky but he's got muscle. He looks really good in that shirt.

  "Um…" Xander looks around, then back to us. "I don't think I can hang out until I put all of this away. And that'll take me awhile even if I used telekinesis. And lunch is soon. So I don't think I can hang out with y'all until at least after lunch. But I feel really weird right now."

  Really weird?

  I look around the room and realize what's going on. Xander's nervous about something and doesn't know what to do, so he's rearranging the gym. Or arranging the gym. He's doing whatever it is that he's doing. In addition to being a little flushed, he's also a little pale and he looks shaky.

  "What is this?" Sam asks. "I don't remember there being there being a gym here when we visited last time."

  "It was built on Wednesday."

  "Uh…" Isaac says. "You do know it takes longer than a day to build a gym, don't you?"

  "It was a big team of mage builders," Xander says.

  "This gives me an idea," I tell him. "Know how Carter uploads videos of him doing athletic stuff?"

  "Yeah," Xander nod. "He uploaded another one last night, of him climbing some trees and a cliff."

  "Wait, he did?" I didn't see that.

  "Yeah," Xander nods. "He started off with a smaller tree, then climbs a bigger one, then a bigger one, then the cliff. All barehanded. He titled it 'Climbing Bigger Things Until I Hit the Water'. At the very end of it, he jumps off into a pond that's by the cliff. It's apparently deep enough for that."

  "That's cool!" I say. "I might check it out later!"

  Or not, if Carter's climbing up tall cliffs. Climbing in trees is one thing for me, but cliffs still make me nervous if they're more than, like, five or so feet tall. Heights do that to me. I'm not sure why there's a difference between cliffs and trees, but there is. Even seeing someone else doing it makes me feel light-headed and shaky.

  "Anyway," I say. "I've wanted to do some uploads of stuff like that for me. We were actually talking about it after bowling, discussing what to do."

  Xander didn't join us for the post-bowling sleepover, so he wasn't there for the discussion. We were all a bit disappointed he didn't join us as I'd gotten a new zombie shooter for us to start. That's being saved for next time as we know there'll be others he'll join us for.

  "It'd also let us spend more time for stuff if we're doing it outside somewhere," I say. "If we streamed it somewhere and went for long enough, others might show up. Like, Nine Springs isn't all that far from here. And others crashing the stream wouldn't exactly be fun."

  "No, it wouldn't," Xander shakes his head. "It'd be really rude. Nobody tried that with me either of my streams over there."

  "That's because they're probably worried you'll just teleport them away," Isaac snickers, Connor, Sam, and I doing so as well.

  "I'd tell them to fuck off first."

  "I can see that," I say. "Back to my idea! You don't really know how to do rolls and falls properly, do you?"

  "Proper… falls?" Xander looks even more confused.

  "Yeah!" I say. "There's a right way and a wrong way to land if you fall. Do it right, and the chance of you getting hurt is pretty small. Even if it's from a taller height, you can reduce how much you get hurt. Even if you heal really fast, you'd rather not get hurt, right?"

  "Y-yeah," Xander gives me a shaky nod.

  "I've kind of taught these three a little," I tell him. "But not a ton. It wasn't even a proper tutorial. So I can teach all of you how to properly fall for a video. Then after, tumbles and stuff."

  "Tumbles?" Xander asks.

  "Yeah," I nod. "You've got it kind of crowded right here, is there a spot with more open space? I can show you then."

  "Um…" Xander looks around for a moment, then moves over to the nearest block.

  He grabs his necklace and touches the end of the rod to the block, and runes on the rod glow for a few moments. Then Xander lifts the block up as if it weighs nothing despite being three feet in length and height and two in width. They must be hollow, but why did he touch his necklace to it, and why did the runes glow?

  Xander moves the large block out of the way, then moves a few other objects. They're mostly set to the side or crammed into a path. Each time he picks one up, he touches the tip of the necklace to them.

  "Hey, Xander?" Connor asks. "What are you doing with the necklace when you move the blocks?"

  "Unlocking them," Xander answers. "The necklace is a sort of 'key'. If I use it, then a certain magic in the obstacles activate. It prevents them from being moved. The key is needed to unlock them again after so you can move this. This way, you don't have to fix them down to the floor to keep them from sliding around if people bump into them."

  "That's really cool!" I say. "Okay! Tumbles are basically flips. Well, that's how I call 'em, don't know if that's the proper way or not. Wait. Is it safe to wear shoes on the mats?"

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "They're made with really durable materials," Xander tells me. "From magic stuff. And enchanted as well. You can take a knife to them and they won't cut. And they've got good grip, too."

  "Cool!" I say. "Lemme show you a roll."

  I run forward a few steps, then bend forward as I lower my body to do a roll. Once the roll completes, I spring to my feet and turn around.

  "And that's a roll!" I say. "A really basic one. More advanced techniques come after. You wanna learn? It's nothing dangerous, and I do this stuff all the time. The falls part is something I think everyone should know. You never know when you might need it. Or decide to take a shorter path by jumping off of a retaining tall that's a little too high to just land on your feet with instead of walking twenty feet to the stairs."

  "I don't-I don't think I'd ever do that," Xander says. "But. Um. Yeah. I'd like to learn. Dad might not let us record it, though. I'll need to move more stuff, won't I?"

  "We can help!" I tell him. "Just let us know where to put everything!"

  "While you boys do that," Ms. Katie says, reminding us that she's here as well. "I'll fix lunch. Once you finish setting up the room how you want, come to the dining room, alright? You won't have to break from the lessons for lunch that way."

  "Okay," Xander says. "Let's do that, then."

  Ms. Katie leaves and we put our backpacks on the bleachers, then start moving the obstacles. Xander has to unlock them all for us but that just lets us move everything. The storage room for them is really huge and I'm willing to bet that Xander's behind the enchantment on it. There's no way the actual room itself is bigger than the gym. It's large enough that we can't even see everything that's in it without walking around.

  He has a trampoline in here?

  "You've got a trampoline?" I ask as Xander comes in with another obstacle, this one a polygonal wooden block with a couple of sloped sides and two straight sides.

  As it turns out, everything is really light, which comes from an enchantment on them. Xander told us about that and how if they didn't have them, most of the stuff here would be too heavy for one person to move. One regular person, that is. I'm fairly strong, and I know Xander's even stronger than me due to his mana capacity.

  I'm betting even the trampoline is designed that way, though it's still a team lift. Other than Xander, we're all moving objects in pairs. Being light doesn't make it not awkward to carry. Xander is probably using telekinesis to assist himself.

  "Yeah," Xander says. "There are several. Small ones and big ones and different-sized ones. The bigger ones don't have nets like you see on the ones in peoples' yards. So there's no siding. Instead, there's magic that acts as a net to keep people from falling off. It even knows the difference between someone falling off and someone trying to get down, which is really cool."

  "That sounds cool!" I nod. "Wouldn't that take mana, though? Like, active mana? So you've gotta stock them with mana crystals?"

  "My backpack doesn't need that," Xander says. "It depends on the type of magic and how it works. The enchantments for the trampolines' nets doesn't need it, either. The net enchantment should last about the same amount of time as the trampoline, so up to a decade."

  "Oh," I say. "I didn't think about that."

  "I saw something else while we were looking around," Connor says. "Just a bunch of foam blocks? They were in net bags."

  "Yeah," Xander nods. "That's for doing a foam pit with. There's also stuff for a ball pit, for some reason."

  That's not "for some reason", that's "for awesome fun"!

  "That's cool!" I say. "Let's get the rest of the stuff put away."

  Not all of the obstacles are put away. I have us set up half of the gym with some of them so that we can do some other stuff when we're done with the falls and flips. There's enough space that I also set up part of the gym to have a foam pit. The walls for it are nine feet in height, and the pit can be set up to be different widths. I choose twelve feet on each side for it, then Xander makes sure it's secure before Connor and I begin filling it with foam blocks.

  Xander also creates a pretty large platform with some of the obstacle blocks for jumping off of it. The platform stretches the entire length of one side of it and almost that much away from it. He really must want to make sure we can't accidentally fall off of it… but that actually creates a good spot for practicing falls from!

  By the time we finish setting things up, we're all hungry and ready for lunch so we head to the dining room. Xander gives Trenton the key necklace as we leave and lets the bear stay in the gym during our lunch break.

  Apparently, Trenton is guarding it today.

  Ms. Katie has a build-your-own sandwich station set up on the table. A plate with bread slices and roll halves, several meat choices, a few cheese choices, some condiments, and vegetables for toppings. Several bowls with fruit chunks and berries are set out, and we're given a choice of lemonade, tea, water, and soda to drink from. The first three are in pitchers while the different sodas are in quart-sized bottles. A bowl of plain potato chips and another of rippled chips with cheese flavoring are also set out for sides.

  It's an impressive amount of food, but there's none left by the time we're done eating. Xander ate most of it and damn. How much he eats at the bowling alley is nothing compared to what he eats at home, huh? The rest of us ate a lighter amount rather than filling up so that we can get to the exercises faster, but he just stuffed himself.

  "Dad said it's okay to do the recording," Xander says once we finish eating and help Ms. Katie clean up the table. "Um. Are you guys ready, or should we wait a few minutes for our food to digest?"

  "It might take you long," I say. "You ate a lot."

  "That's not a concern for me," Xander says. "My body can handle both."

  Ms. Katie doesn't look concerned at all, so I'm guessing it's okay. She'd probably try to stop him if he'd get sick or something from doing physical stuff right after eating so much. She might be just the personal chef of his father (and him), but she does seem to care about him a lot.

  At least, based on how Xander talks about her when he does.

  "Alright!" I say. "Let's head back to the gym!"

  We should probably wait a little longer, but I've never puked from this before.

  Back in the gym, I look around for a moment as I try to decide how to start the lesson. I probably should've done this while we were setting things up but I can't be smart all the time.

  "Oh, right!" I head over to my backpack. "Lemme put an SD card in my phone so we can record it to that. That'll let me just move it to the computer once I get home."

  "Actually," Connor hurries over to his backpack. "I used some of the money from the testing sessions to buy a couple of cameras and cards. We can record with better quality that way."

  He bought stuff with his money to help with my streams? That's surprising, really cool, but also a little odd.

  "Oh, cool!" I say. "You didn't have to do that!"

  "I know," he grins. "But I like being your camera guy. We can set one camera up to watch from something, and I can hold the other when I'm not the one practicing."

  Oh, that makes sense. Connor is the one who goes for being the camera guy when we do the magic training progress streams.

  "That's a good idea," I nod. "Let's do that!"

  Connor pulls both cameras out of his backpack, checks to make sure their batteries are good, and inserts memory cards into them.

  "Hey, Xander?" I ask as an idea comes to me. "Would you be willing to wear earplugs so you can't hear me during my introduction? I promise it's nothing bad, it's just that I want to say something during my opening that I want to be a surprise to you. Oh, and I'm gonna try a few different versions of the opening, in case I don't like one later. I looked it up and they said to do that."

  Since this is a recording rather than live, I can do several takes for the opening. This gives me room for messing up and it not being seen by the fans. It also lets me pick the one I like the best, or the one which fits the best.

  Though I did see some creators say they sometimes or always do the recording for their opening after they do the rest of the recordings. That it lets them tailor it to their video better.

  Personally, I think that's dumb unless things go wildly different from the expectations and plans at the start.

  "Okay," Xander looks a bit worried, but being able to tell that I'm honest helps him a little.

  A small box appears in his left hand, and he opens it up and pulls out a pair of red earplugs, which he then puts into his ears. Once they're in, he gives me a hesitant thumbs-up.

  "Alright!" I look at Connor. "Let's get a shot with the course in the background."

  I turn so that the obstacles are behind me, and Connor moves so he's standing in front of me. Once he's there, he aims his camera at me.

  "Ready?" He asks.

  "Ready when you are!" I say.

  "Filming in three…" Connor begins counting down, holding three fingers up as he does. "Two… one… go!"

  "Hi, everybody!" I say. "I-" I pause without meaning. "Let's try that again. Three, two, go! Hi, everybody! I'm Seb and we'll crap."

  My brain short-circuited and I forgot what I was going to say as I was saying it, causing me to pause by accident.

  "Not right now," Sam snickers.

  "Three, two, go!" I say. "Hi, everybody! I'm Seb, and I decided to do a video instead of a stream this time! We'll be-" another accidental pause. "Ah, crap. Okay, again! Three, two, go! Hi, everybody! I'm Seb, and today, I'll be teaching my friends how to properly land when they fall or jump off of something that's a little bit higher up, and also how to do some flips! I'm here with Xander, Connor, Sam, and Isaac! A rare time for Xander to be in one of my things when he's not also streaming! Be nice in the comments or the bogeyman will come for you!

  "The first thing we're gonna do," I say as my friends snicker at my comment. "Is teach them how to properly fall. After that is when we'll be doing the flips! I'm the only one of my friends who can actually do flips without a trampoline, and some of them can't even with one!"

  I pause for a few moments, then nod.

  "That was a good one!" I say.

  "What was in it that you didn't want Xander to hear?" Sam asks.

  "Not that one," I say. "Gonna do another with the comment. We'll go with that one only if it's relevant to the video. If not, then we'll do the first one. Let's do this!"

  It takes me seven tries to manage to not trip myself up in the first ten seconds.

  "Hi, everybody!" I say. "I'm Seb, and today, I'll be teaching my friends how to fall properly and do flips! We're in a secure location guarded by two thousand gummy bear mages who won't hesitate to do to you what you do to gummy bears if you aren't nice in the comments. Joining me for this today are Xander, Connor, Sam, and Isaac. That's right, we've got Xander in this video!

  "If you don't know," I say. "Xander is super hesitant about some stuff. He actually only wants to learn how to fall properly, to avoid getting hurt if he trips off of something. The odds of him doing any of the handless flips is pretty close to zero. Connor, Sam, Isaac and I are gonna try to get him comfortable enough and happy enough while we do this that he does a backflip into the foam pit behind us."

  I pause for a few seconds, then nod.

  "That's a good one!" I say.

  "That's what you didn't want Xander to hear?" Isaac asks. "Why not?"

  "Knowing we want him to try will only make him more stressed," I say. "This way, we keep him from thinking about it until it's time! It avoids him backing out even before we get to those."

  "Oooh, right!" He says. "Yeah, that's a good idea."

  I turn to face Xander and mimic pulling earplugs out of my ears. Xander pulls his out and their case reappears. After putting them back inside of it, the case vanishes. Having enough mana to just casually teleport things must be amazing.

  One day, I'll be able to do that. Not on the level Xander can, but I'll manage it. Learning lightning magics comes first.

  Baby steps are important.

  "Alright!" I say. "Let's start with proper falls! Watch this!"

  I climb up to the platform at the foam pit, then walk to the edge and jump off. Rather than landing on my feet, I land on my side in a roll. At the end of the roll, I spring to my feet and pump my fists up into the air with a cheer.

  Connor walked over with me and recorded the fall from a closer distance, and he steps back as he aims the camera back at my face.

  "And that's a proper fall!" I say. "Sort of! So there are a few different ones depending on the direction you're falling. Backwards, forwards, and to the side are basically it. You don't want to land on your feet if falling from height because that'll just send all of the force into your feet and probably break your bones. And your joints.

  "The more surface area of your body that hits the ground," I continue. "The more that force is distributed throughout your body, reducing the effect of the impact. And if you noticed, I didn't try to catch my fall with my hands – that's a one-way ticket to breaking your wrists!"

  I switch to showing the others how to do a proper fall, though they practice from lower down and go until they land properly five times in a row. Sam takes his turn, then Isaac, then Isaac takes the camera from Connor so Connor can try. I work with each of them until they get it down, then it's Xander's turn.

  Unlike the others, Xander doesn't just immediately fall off of the short obstacle. It's clear it's a struggle for him to work up the courage for it even though he's not even standing a foot and a half off of the ground.

  "Come on, Xander!" I say. "You can do it!"

  "That's right!" Isaac calls out. "You can do it, Xander!"

  We all cheer him on for about a minute before he braves through his fear and lets himself fall off of the block. A small yelp escapes him and he definitely lands wrong, and it takes a lot of effort to talk him into trying again. Only on his fifth try does Xander manage to properly land when he falls.

  He wants to stop there, but we manage to talk him into doing it until he's managed it five times in a row, just like the others.

  "Awesome job, Xander!" I say once he finish his fifth consecutive proper fall. "That was great! Okay! Let's move on to the next one!"

  Xander relaxes a little bit more by the time I finish them each of the proper ways to land or roll when falling, though it still takes a little bit of encouragement from us. The same goes for with the flips, though the rest of us have a lot of fun doing them. We all smack or knee our faces a few times when trying to do them quickly, but it's still pretty fun to do flips with my friends.

  I'm definitely going to keep in some of the more embarrassing ones we have for the final video. It just wouldn't be the same if I removed them all because they're a part of the learning experience. Also because they're pretty funny.

  Xander is really hesitant to do backflips, just as I expected, but we manage to convince him to after a few minutes of reassurances. Each failure seems to discourage him more than the last did and he starts to get frustrated.

  "You've almost got it!" I tell him. "Just remember to grab your knees and tuck in your chin!"

  Xander takes a few big breaths and tries again. It's a failure, but he was super close to landing properly.

  "Almost had it!" I say. "You can try and land with your hands, too! But the goal is to land with only your feet! Try again!"

  It takes him a few more tries before he manages to land semi-properly, his hands coming into contact with the ground. But seven tries after that, Xander manages to land without using his hands.

  "Yes!" I pump my fists up into the air as Connor starts shouting while Sam and Isaac cheer. "That was perfect!"

  Rather than looking happy, Xander looks startled. Oh, crap. We got really noisy when he managed it, didn't we?

  "That was awesome, Xander!" I tell him. "Want to do it again, to make sure you've got it down?"

  Xander shakes his head but before I can respond to that, he tries another backflip. He messes up a few more times as he tries to do five in a row without failing. Once he manages that, I go to give him a chest bump. I catch myself right before it's too late and hold out a fist for him.

  "Great job, Xander!" I say, and he bumps my fist with his own. "Okay, everyone! Okay, let's go up to the-okay, let's go up there and do backflips into the foam! Xander, you don't have to if you don't want to."

  Xander nods and follows us up to the top; Connor grabs the resting camera before joining us up here. He sets both cameras down, one on the platform itself and one on a block up here. He must've put the block up here while someone else was doing flips so that he'd get a good camera angle for this part.

  "I'll go first!" I move to the edge of the platform and turn around, then salute to my friends before doing a backflip into the foam, letting out a whoop as I do.

  Once I've landed, I move to the edge and climb out, then stand on the edge, gripping the net that was set up to border the three sides not touching the platform.

  Connor moves to the edge and flips in, bouncing a little in the foam. He cheers when he lands, kicking his legs into the air as he pumps his fists up. Once he's moved to the edge, Sam takes his turn, then it's Isaac's.

  Before any of us can say anything to Xander, he's moving to the edge. He takes a few deep breaths, then does a backflip into the foam pit, though he looks pale when he lands.

  After flailing for a moment in the pit, Xander manages to right himself and move to one of the sides and climbs up.

  "Let's get back down to the ground!" I say. "I wanna do a closing! You guys up for doing a group flip for it?"

  They are, so we move back down to the mats, and Connor sets one of his cameras up on a block to record us while the other one is turned off so that we can all stand together for this.

  "Thanks for watching, everyone!" I say. "I had a lot of fun teaching my friends how to do flips, and I think they all did, too."

  The others confirm that they did, though Xander mostly just gives a hesitant nod for his answer.

  "If you enjoyed it," I say. "Let me know what you thought in the comments and if you've got any suggestions for similar things! I'm planning on doing more videos like this – not necessarily things like teaching friends how to do stuff, but more active stuff. The gaming streams I've been doing, where I'm just chilling at home, is mostly just me relaxing in the evenings and having fun with my gaming friends. These are my real-life friends and we're a pretty active group, even during the school year. You might've already seen my magic progress videos with them, and I'm going to keep doing those even with everyone learning magic now. Before we end this video, we're gonna do one last backflip! Alright, everyone line up!"

  We get into a line with me in the center, Xander to my left, Connor to my right, and Isaac and Sam on their other sides, respectively.

  "Three… two… one!" I count down.

  We all do a backflip, landing solidly on our feet.

  That ends the recording for this, so Connor turns off his camera and I turn to Xander.

  "Thanks for letting us borrow your gym," I tell him. "This was really fun! And thanks for joining us for the video, too!"

  "T-thanks for inviting me," his face flushes a little. "It was fun."

  Yes! He had fun!

  "Cool!" I say. "I'm glad you did! By the way, is that a new shirt?"

  "Yeah," he looks down, his cheeks turning a little bit redder. "I got some proper athletic shirts the other day, for when I'm doing athletic and fitness stuff. They're comfy."

  "It looks good on you," I tell him, and his face reddens even more. "Can I hug you?"

  If it were someone else who I'm dating right now, I'd probably just give him a hug. But Xander can be really touch averse and I don't know how well he'd handle that. I really do like him so I want to avoid making him upset with me over stuff like randomly hugging him when I feel like it.

  "No," he answers.

  Aw…

  "Maybe later?" I ask.

  "After we get cleaned up," Xander says. "We're all sweaty and gross and need showers."

  That is the reason he doesn't want to hug? Well, me being shirtless probably isn't helping that, he probably just doesn't way to say it.

  "Also," he adds. "Katie might make smoothies for us. She always has a smoothie with a lot of protein in it ready for me after I do fitness stuff. And I'm feeling hungry, so I'm gonna go shower now."

  Just like that, he's off to the showers.

  "Alright," I chuckle and look at the others. "Let's go wash up."