“Your nails look amazing today, Julia,” Martyna said, unprompted.

Ewa quickened her chewing and swallowed in hurry to make a comment herself:

“They’re incredible, aren’t they? I noticed them too when Julia was doing the exercise on the chalkboard. Is that a world map?”

“Aww, thank you, girls.” Julia was happy to become the center of attention, having waited the whole day for someone to ask her about her nails. “Yes, it is. There’s a different continent on each, see? I have Asia on my thumb; here’s Europe; and this is Africa; and the Americas on my ring and pinkie - with the same set on my other hand.”

Julia splayed her fingers and put her on display on the cafeteria table. Her friends all leaned forward to take a good and very close look, with Zosia taking off her glasses and Martyna scrambling to open her smartphone’s camera and get it to focus.

“Holy crap, these are so intricate. I feel like I could see my own house if I squint hard enough.”

“Look, the land parts are sticking out a bit, like on a tiny raised-relief map.”

“Is it like a hybrid manicure? Where did you have it done?” Ewa finally asked.

"It's kind of a special thing. My mom bought this box online; this device. Very state of the art, very high-tech stuff, got my dad quite upset when he learned how expensive it was, but who cares, right? It’s her own money, from the inheritance. Anyway, you put your hand in there and it uses these tiny robots to paint your nails; and they’re insanely fast, I mean these,” she held her hands up, palms facing inwards, “these took them like five seconds or so. Some physics stuff, apparently; they move really, really quick - it sort of tickles - and you can change the resolution of the art they print on you if you want by having them go even faster, but it eats up the battery charge and--”

Julia was really excited to share the news with her friends and turned into quite the chatterbox. She realized that she might have fed them too much information all at once and skipped to the conclusion:

“It’s really cool. You should give it a try if you ever have the chance.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Martyna complained.

“What?”

“You’re really not going to let us have a go?”

“Absolutely not. It’s my mom’s; you know how hard it is for me to invite someone over, let alone give them access to my parents’ stuff.”

“Maybe you could bring it to the school? Just for a day?"

“No. What if we break it? Or lose it? If my mom notices that it’s gone, she’s going to freak out. No way I’m risking my ass like that!”

As it turned out, there was a way; it involved some old debts and girly favors, but in the end, Julia agreed to wait until her parents were out of town and bring the device in secret to the school, where its services could be enjoyed by the whole squad.