by Non Pratt
Of course. Daisy had said something about that at breakfast and—now that she was here—Esther considered trying to find her. It might be fun to sign up for something safe. Something that didn’t involve the words Black or Metal. Or a tattoo gun. Maybe something like tiddlywinks or origami . . . Who knew? Maybe she’d find Goth Girl queuing up for a bit of Minecraft action.
That made her smile.
As if someone that cool would go to an Activities Fair.
As if Esther would. Turning away, she went in pursuit of hot food.
Elise was as easy to talk to as she was hard to look at, a confusing combination that left Daisy flustered and jittery. Once the two of them had collected all Daisy’s things, they walked together down the next aisle. This time, Daisy found herself so distracted by Elise that she barely noticed any of the booths they passed.
“. . . it’s not that I’m looking for new friends, it’s just . . .” Daisy paused, not quite sure how she’d stumbled into this line of conversation.
“Of course not,” Elise said, her offhand smile warming Daisy’s cheeks and easing her conversational anxieties. Daisy watched as Elise drew a strand of glossy black hair behind her ear, painted nails smoothing it into place before she said, “But it’s natural to want to belong somewhere—and you don’t feel that way yet.”
“I don’t?” Daisy hadn’t realized she’d said that. She’d been too distracted by the perfect shell of Elise’s ear, wondering how everything about her managed to look so neat and precise and finished. Like she knew exactly who she was and what she was doing.
When Elise laughed, it was low and husky and made Daisy’s skin prickle with excitement.
“If you did, would you be here?” Elise waved at the booths around them. “Your friends didn’t come with you because they’ve found their groove already.”
Daisy wasn’t so convinced. She had the distinct impression that Esther was a skipping record, the needle not yet aligned with the right track, and Susan . . . well, she wasn’t someone who found grooves so much as carved her own path without worrying about whatever was in her way, like a plow churning through a football field.
“I’m mostly here because Granny said I should get out and try new things.” Daisy took her glasses off to polish a smudge that wasn’t there, thinking of the rainbow letters of her LGBTQA badge lodged in the bottom of her tote.
She wasn’t sure what Granny would make of that.
She wasn’t sure what she made of that.
All Daisy knew was that this was the first time she’d been exposed to so many people her own age, and it wasn’t the boys who drew her attention. It wasn’t exactly that many of the girls did, either . . . just one who sat across from Daisy during Information and Information Studies and drew on her hand for most of the lecture while still managing to ask the most incisive question at the end of it.
And Elise. Maybe.
Elise, who had laid a hand on Daisy’s shoulder and was now giving it a gentle, sympathetic squeeze.
“Don’t worry, I remember what it was like when I first started.” Elise registered the question in the way Daisy’s eyebrows shot up and added, “Third-year Philosophy student. I know exactly where I belong.”
“Oh. So, um . . . How come you’re here?”
“To meet people like you,” Elise said. She drew to a halt by one of the stands and said, “You know you’ve missed out on the best society going, don’t you?”
“Are you going to try to get me to sign up for rugby?” Daisy’s eyes narrowed warily.
Elise let out another one of those inside-twisting husky laughs and shook her head. “Quite the opposite. I was going to ask if you like yoga.”
She stepped aside to give Daisy a better view of the yoga mats that were laid out on the floor next to them. There was a bedsheet backdrop with a hand-drawn image of a lotus flower. All the overlapping leaves had been painted in different colors and made to look like eyes. There were a couple of people there already, sitting in casual Hero poses and sipping tea from fancy clay cups.
“I love yoga!” Daisy’s voice was squeaky with enthusiasm as she took it all in.
“Well, this is something a little different. We’re the Brethren of Zoise.” Elise took a small card from the pocket of the sports top she was wearing. On one side was the lotus flower symbol, on the other, an address and the times and dates of when there were meetings. “It’s a new form of yoga. Holistic. There’s a big focus on community, in case you couldn’t guess that by the ‘brethren’ thing. I think it’s what you came here looking for.”
Daisy thought she might be right.
“Do you have a mailing list I can sign up for?”
3
A LEISURELY SATURDAY
Susan’s room was not one in which to step lightly. Or, indeed, heavily. Or at all, if you wanted to avoid breaking your neck. The floor was carpeted in clothes, and Daisy secretly held the theory that Susan simply rolled out of bed and across the floor and emerged in whatever wrapped itself around her before she got to the door. It was the room of someone whose brain was too busy to bother with something as frivolous as hygiene.
However, Daisy found herself there because someone had hacked into her university e-mail account and sent disturbing e-mails to everyone in her contacts list. (It was a toss-up as to which was worse: sending her grandmother a ransom demand or the Vice Chancellor a link to some NSFW fan fiction.) There was only one person Daisy could turn to.
“Does your skeleton have a name?” Without moving from the safe spot on the bed, Daisy knelt so she was level with the skull, squinting into its eye sockets as it leered out of the wardrobe.
“If you can guess, it’ll spin straw into gold for you.”
“Rumple-skeleton!”
“Nope.”
Daisy looked crestfallen for a moment, then brightened up. “The Duke of Skellington?”
“Wrong again.”
Daisy opened her mouth, then shut it. “I’m going to think about this.”
“You do that”—without looking up, Susan cocked her finger at Daisy—“or the skeleton will eat your firstborn.”
Daisy side-eyed the skeleton and whispered, “You wouldn’t do that to a friend.”
Her gaze drifted around the room and settled on the jar of teeth Susan used as a paperweight, an item that Esther coveted with overwhelming intensity.
“Where did you get—”
Susan turned abruptly, cutting her off. “Daisy, I love you, but this kind of work needs silence. I’m going to give you a golden five-minute window of opportunity, and then you’re going to leave me in peace.”
“Oh.” Daisy drooped.
“Don’t look so downhearted. Esther would do literally anything for an offer like this, and I’m giving it to you.” Susan held up the timer on her phone and pressed start. “Five minutes. Go.”
“Name the skeleton.”
“Indiana Bones. A fellow archaeologist.”
Daisy’s expression darkened. “Indiana Jones is a very bad archaeologist. You’re not meant to meddle with mystical objects like that.”
Susan’s attention drifted to the jar of teeth. “Probably best you don’t ask me about those, then.”
Since that had been her next question, Daisy cast around the room for another prompt. She’d never been good under pressure.
“Tick-tock, Wooton.” Susan waggled her phone.
In desperation, Daisy just started pointing at things, Susan firing back the source. The reading lamp had been purloined from the British Library; a fraudulent mystic had been using that blanket as a tablecloth . . . everything had an origin story worthy of a two-hour superhero film.
“The fairy lights!” Daisy wasn’t sure what possessed her to point at those.
“Elmswood Garden Center,” Susan replied. A surprisingly mundane answer for someone so interesting, only then she added, “They were strung across the entrance to Santa’s grotto. I had a man on the inside help me extract them.”
There was something about the guilty flicker of her gaze that looked familiar. It was the same shifty look she got whenever McGraw’s name came up. The golden five minutes were nearly up, but Daisy had to ask.
“Was that inside man McGraw?”
Susan nodded.
“So . . . you were friends?”
There was a moment in which Susan appeared to wrestle with herself, ingrained secrecy battling with honoring a promise to answer Daisy’s questions.
“We were best friends. Secondary school. McGraw was . . . well, we were a team. A good one.”
“What happened?”
“I made a mistake.”
Daisy waited.
“I . . . I thought maybe we could be something more. And he didn’t.”
“Oh, Susan . . .”
“Yeah, well . . .” Susan picked at a loose thread on the hem of her T-shirt. “It didn’t have to be the end, but it was.”
“I’m sorry.” When Daisy reached out a comforting hand, Susan didn’t flinch but, rather, let Daisy’s hand settle on hers and give a gentle squeeze.
“These things happen to the best of us. You know that.” The smile Susan gave her was small and rueful and yet managed to speak volumes. “How’s Information and Information Studies been this week?”
It was a subtle nod to Daisy’s first—disastrous—attempt at addressing her feelings for the girl she’d been crushing on since the start of term. One wild night out as friends hadn’t turned into anything more, despite Daisy’s having plucked up the courage to ask. Fortune did not always favor the bold.
“I’ve not been,” Daisy said, ducking her head. She hadn’t intended on telling her friends this, but when she managed to drag her gaze up to meet Susan’s, all she saw was sympathy.
“You do what you need to survive, Daisy. That’s all any of us can do.” The alarm on Susan’s phone sounded, and she sat up, patting Daisy’s hand dismissively. “Now leave me alone—there’s a dear.”
It took Susan another hour and a half before she was satisfied that Daisy’s account was secure, any unopened e-mails recalled, and the mystery hacker identified and neutralized. For good. As often happened when she was singularly focused on something worthy of her skill set, Susan had been oblivious to what was going on around her. She’d missed a call from one of her six older sisters (not the good one, so it wasn’t like she had to return it) and several messages from her friends back home. Shrugging, Susan popped her phone into her pocket and went to return Daisy’s laptop. She watched over her friend’s shoulder as Daisy turned it on and checked her e-mails, just in case something unimaginable had happened.
It hadn’t, but Daisy was frowning at the screen nonetheless.
“Umm . . . Susan? Why does it say I have 203 e-mails in my spam folder?”
“Because you have 203 e-mails in your spam folder. Just a wild guess.”
“And that’s nothing to do with the hacker?”
“Nope.” Susan met Daisy’s glance of trepidation with a reassuring smile and watched as her friend reached out a trembling finger to open her spam folder.
Dedicated follower of fashion? Calling all catwalkers, FASHION FIRST will be meeting in Catterick bar at 7:30 P.M. Friday for vogue-ing and vodka . . .
CIRCUS SOC NEEDS YOU! Drawing from all levels of the talent pool, from trapeze-walking fire-breathers to anyone who can make a passable shadow puppet, Sheffield Circus Soc invites *you* . . .
Ever feel like the world would be better if speech bubbles emerged from your mouth and someone else had control over your facial expression? Here at Comic Club we appreciate the magic that happens when words and illustrations collide . . .
DEBATING: for or against? . . .
“It’s all the clubs I signed up for at the Activities Fair!” Daisy squeaked, darting a guilty glance in the direction of her desk, which was littered with candy wrappers, a miniature croquet set, pin badges, and a Student Union–branded mug overflowing with promotional pens and pencils, rulers, and what looked like a magic wand.
Susan’s phone buzzed again, and she slipped it out of her pocket to check. Yet another message from her friend Beebz. A picture . . .
“What do I do?” Daisy asked, scrolling in panic through her spam folder. “There’s so many of them!”
Had Daisy looked up, she would have been one of only seven (living) people to witness Susan Ptolemy having her own brand of server meltdown.
“So many what?” Susan looked up, the screen of her phone pressed to her chest in case Daisy was tempted to look.
“Clubs . . .”
“Excellent. You should try some of them.”
“Really?” Daisy’s voice rose in surprise. “I thought they were ‘enforced fun for people who don’t have anything better to do with their lives’?”
“Yes, well . . . what are you doing with your life? Today, I mean. It’s a Saturday. Day of leisure. Go . . . be leisurely.” Susan backed hurriedly out the door. “Right now, in fact. You’ll have a great time. Send me a postcard. Bye. Love you. Take a packed lunch.”
Slamming the door shut, Susan collapsed back against the wall and stared down at her phone in abject terror.
Esther was restless. She’d been sitting at her desk for more than an hour, and she’d barely managed a chapter of The Moonstone. Or rather, the York Notes on The Moonstone. They couldn’t possibly expect her to actually read all these books. That’d take forever.
Maybe if she’d still been with The Boy, she could have wasted time sending him sexy messages—or, wasn’t it the weekend? Not bothering with lectures meant that it was hard to tell what day it was sometimes. Esther checked her phone.
Yes. It was the weekend. Which meant he could have caught the train down from Tackleford for a little sexy realtime—
Only he wouldn’t have, would he? That had been the problem.
There were no traces of him in her room. The same day that they’d broken up, someone had put up a poster in the stairwell advertising a swap shop, and Esther had gone there to trade a laundry basket’s worth of memories for a set of six different-sized scissors, a secondhand collection of York Notes, and a funky notebook that said, You’re weird. I like it.
No regrets. The notebook was cool, the scissors sharp, and, well, she’d just read half a chapter about The Moonstone.
Emotional baggage, on the other hand, wasn’t so easily swapped, and Esther had decided to drop hers on the floor and run as far away from it as she could.
Maybe if she hadn’t run quite so far, quite so fast, then she could have tried giving one of her friends from home a call to catch up, but she’d left it too long now.
A message from Daisy or Susan, even from Ed Gemmell, got answered within the hour, but the last message from Sarah Grote, her best friend back home, had come in six days ago. It was the sort of heartfelt, kind message that demanded a more meaningful reply than a silly selfie or a blithely chirpy emoji.
So she hadn’t sent any reply at all.
Before she could plummet any further into the abyss, Esther yanked herself up with the thought of an impromptu night out. A cheap one—the end of the month was fast approaching, and Esther was running on fumes. Raking through her brain, she recalled something about a rock night down at the S.U.—that would do. All she needed now was to rally the troops. Skipping across the corridor, Esther rapped a jaunty rhythm on Daisy’s door just as it started to open.
“Daisy!” She flung her arms open and enveloped Daisy in a hug, only to get tangled up in the yoga mat hitched over Daisy’s shoulder. “I didn’t know you did yoga on Saturdays.”
“You know what day it is!”
Ignoring Daisy’s delight, Esther spun her around and bundled her back into her room so she could get changed into something more lively. “Exactly. It’s the weekend. Time for a bit of fun.”
“Yoga is fun!”
“Not as fun as a wild night out. Me, you, Susan—”
“I have plans!” Daisy slipped out of Esther’s grasp and laid a
firm hand on the door, preventing further ministrations.
This was unexpected. Daisy was supposed to be the compliant one.
“Couldn’t you change those plans?”
Daisy’s frown was not of the familiar confused variety, and it took Esther a moment to understand it was because she’d annoyed her. “No. I can’t.”
“Not even for me? Please?” Esther dropped to her knees, eyes widening into pools of pure hope, hands clasped in supplication. “I’d cancel my plans for you . . .”
It was supposed to be persuasive, but, judging by the look Daisy was giving her, it was anything but. Esther rose to her feet, awkward and uncomfortable under Daisy’s stern stare.
“Being a good friend isn’t just about canceling your plans when someone needs you—it’s about respecting plans that have already been made. I’m going to yoga, and you’re welcome to come with me—”
Esther’s derisory snort was reflexive, and she regretted it instantly.
“You don’t like yoga. I understand.” Daisy laid a hand on Esther’s shoulder, and her voice wasn’t without kindness when she added, “But you need to understand that I don’t like crowded dance floors and loud music.”
After giving Esther a reassuringly affectionate squeeze, Daisy left. Never one to be deterred, Esther decided to try her luck with Susan, thumping insistently on the door to number 13 before trying the handle.
Locked. Getting her phone out, Esther dialed Susan’s number, ear pressed to the door, but when the call connected, the room remained silent.
One ring . . . two . . . three? No answer. Esther hammered out a message.
Where are you???
Out, came the reply.
You’re never out!
Fake news, gothy. Daisy’s birthday? Last week? She attached a photo of the three of them, taken in the pub the week before, their faces aglow from the candles on Daisy’s cake.
Stop whatever you’re doing. There’s a rock night down at the S.U. You’re coming with me.
Not interested.
Please . . .
Begging is undignified.
I WANT A NIGHT OUT, AND NO ONE WANTS TO COME WITH ME!!!!!!!!!