by Non Pratt
This thought aroused something deep and precious within Daisy’s brain, and there was the briefest flicker of something . . . but as with so many of Daisy’s thoughts these days, it got sucked back into a formless fog.
“Come on.” Daisy marched across the room to where she’d spied a lovely big space for the three of them.
Just as she’d set her tray down, someone else did the same. Big, jovial, familiar.
“Poppy!”
“Jonathan.” Her response was a lot less enthused than his. “I’m afraid this seat’s taken.”
“Yes, by me and the lads. You’ll have to find somewhere else. Sorry and all that.”
He did not look sorry. But he would be. Jonathan’s lack of manners was just the last straw in the haystack piling up on Daisy’s back—Granny’s inquisition, her friends’ duplicity on the shopping front . . . the creeping fear that she no longer had a place waiting for her with Zoise.
Daisy had had enough.
“I will be sitting here.” Daisy leaned forward across the table, raising one hand high into the air and pressing all her fingers to the tip of her thumb to make an eye shape. Silently, from all around the room, people started standing up and walking over to where Daisy was, until a quiet, disparate herd gathered to stare at Jonathan.
“Please move,” Daisy said, and the Brethren whom she’d summoned crossed their arms and looked at Jonathan.
A minute later, he’d left the canteen entirely.
“What just happened?” Esther whispered to Susan as they watched a load of people they’d never seen Daisy talk to return to their seats.
“I don’t know, Esther, but let’s not anger them.”
The two of them walked meekly over and sat with Daisy.
Daisy’s behavior had awoken Susan’s dormant investigative instincts. What had happened at breakfast was not normal, and Susan had the uneasy sensation that she had taken her eye off the ball. First the McGraw-inspired insomnia, now Esther sucking up so much of her attention with the Vectra obsession . . . Susan realized with shame that it had been far too long since she’d last seen Daisy’s willowy figure standing in the doorway to number 13, offering a cup of tea and sitting on Susan’s bed, peaceably flipping through a magazine or reading up on something for her course or chatting gently and unobtrusively about her professors.
Almost as soon as she realized this, Susan realized that she missed it. Where Esther jostled, Daisy soothed. No wonder she was left feeling so prickly about the ridiculous Vectra situation . . .
Susan paused, a cushion of air between the knuckles of her raised fist and the door of number 11. Leaning in a little closer, she tried to catch the sounds beyond, which were murmured voices, pan pipes, and what was either whale song or the cry of a woman in labor.
Enya’s creative direction had certainly taken a turn for the worse.
Following updated protocol, Susan knocked three times, and the music stopped.
“What is it?” Daisy called.
“It’s Susan. I’m a who, not a what.” Susan twisted the handle. “Er . . . Daisy—have you locked your room?”
“I must have done it by accident.”
Susan found that hard to believe. The locks on J-block doors were so temperamental that it required careful alignment; a whispered prayer to Portunus, the Roman god of locks; and the precision of a master surgeon to get the key to work.
There were more muffled sounds behind the door, and Susan fervently hoped that she hadn’t just interrupted someone else’s masturbreak. Although doing that while listening to Enya seemed a bit . . . niche.
“I can go away if you want some private time?” Susan called through the door.
“No! It’s fine! Just doing some meditation . . .”
If that’s what she wants to call it . . . an imaginary Esther muttered, nudging Susan in the side and winking suggestively. Susan’s smile soured at the thought of Esther wasting all her terrible innuendos on someone as humorless as Vectra.
When Daisy finally opened the door, she was breathless and shifty.
“Hi . . .” Susan raised a wary eyebrow. “Meditating, you say?”
But when she tried to peer over Daisy’s shoulder, the door shifted to block her view.
“I’m meeting the Brethren later, so I was just getting in the zone . . .”
“You mean your yoga friends? All those people we saw at breakfast?” She leaned an elbow on the doorframe, fingers ruffling her hair as she studied Daisy intently, watching for a reaction that didn’t come. “Those Zoise guys see more of you than we do.”
“I like yoga.”
“Obviously.” Something was wrong here, but it was hard to know what. “I was wondering if you had time for a cuppa and catch up? Esther’s driving me nuts with this whole Vectra thing—”
“Who?”
“Vectra. The goth girl Esther hasn’t shut up about for the last two weeks.” Susan faltered. “You’ve . . . talked to Esther in the last two weeks, though. Right? I mean, about more than what she’s having for breakfast.”
“Of course! I’ve just been busy with—”
“Yoga. Right.” Susan tapped a fingernail on the jamb. Click, click, click. “Say, why don’t I come to your next session? Find my inner calm.”
But instead of the wide-eyed enthusiasm she’d been expecting, the shutters came down, and Daisy shook her head rapidly.
“No! That’s not good. Jasper said I’m not to recruit any more members.”
“Recruiting?” Susan pounced, her fingernail tapping more insistently on the wood of the frame.
“New members drive. That’s all.” Daisy had grasped too quickly for something that sounded plausible, something inconsistent with her original story. The kind of error the naturally truthful made.
“Except, presumably, the opposite of that? Since you don’t want me to come along . . .” It wasn’t like Daisy to make so little sense. She seemed ruffled and unfocused and a little dazed, her gaze darting around, looking for an escape.
“We’re oversubscribed.”
Click, click, click!
As Susan watched, Daisy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, all the haziness was gone, and in a firm, final tone, she said, “You missed the chance to join, I’m afraid. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go, or I’ll be late for my session.”
Daisy reached back into the room for a bag and slipped out to join Susan in the corridor before waving cheerily and walking off rapidly. Once she was out of sight, Susan eyed the door to Daisy’s room thoughtfully.
“Who have you been recruiting, Daisy Wooton . . . and why?”
As a result of her brush with Ptolemy P.I., Daisy had been so flustered that she’d practically run all the way to the House of Zoise and arrived half an hour early to the drop-in session. Someone Daisy had never seen before opened the door—Jasper’s older brother, judging by the family resemblance—and led her into the hall. He stuck his head into the lounge and called, “Jasper? El? One of your acolytes is here.”
It was strange, sitting in the kitchen with just Elise and Jasper, neither of whom was dressed for a session. Out of his billowing black robe, Jasper looked somewhat unremarkable, a typical boy next door. Still, the way he was standing by the sink, arms crossed and chin tipped back, gave him an air of authority.
Sitting in the chair that Elise had pulled out for her, hands warming on a standard brew of English Breakfast, Daisy did her best to get a grip.
“I think one of my friends is suspicious,” she said.
“Of what?” Elise said calmly.
“The Brethren.”
“We’re just a yoga club. There’s nothing to be suspicious about.” Elise forced out a breathless laugh that didn’t quite mask the look she shared with Jasper.
“Is this about what happened in the dining hall this morning?” Jasper stepped forward and took a seat next to Elise so that Daisy felt a lot like she might be in an interview. Jasper took his phone out of his pocket
, setting it face up to play a video of Daisy calling the Brethren to arms. When the video finished, Daisy kept staring at the screen.
“The Zummoning isn’t something for someone of your level to attempt on their own.” Elise’s voice was gentle, and she patted Daisy’s hand consolingly. “We all make mistakes, Daisy.”
“And we all face the consequences,” Jasper added.
Daisy looked up in horror at Jasper. “What consequences?”
“Maybe it’s time you reconsidered your place within the group.”
“But I’ve been to every meeting and mastered all the moves—I’ve recruited new members! You can’t punish me for this!”
All the while, Jasper merely watched her, leaning casually back in his seat, still wearing his disarmingly baffled grin as if it was Daisy who was being unreasonable.
“There’s no need to get worked up,” Elise said. “No one’s saying you have to leave.”
Weren’t they? Surely it wasn’t just Daisy’s anxiety at work here.
“It just . . . it feels like you’re trying to get rid of me.”
“Of course not.” Again, it was Elise who was the one to soothe. “But we need to find a way of dealing with this—Jasper? A word.” Elise jabbed a thumb in the direction of the hallway. “We’ll be back in a minute.”
Jasper’s air of cool, calm confidence disappeared as Elise dragged him by the collar of his polo shirt out into the hall, pulling the door shut behind them.
Daisy blew across the surface of her tea. The situation didn’t look good. Her Zummoning of the Brethren had backfired horribly, and instead of drawing her closer into the group, she was looking at being expelled. Was this what had happened with the other retired members? All the people who’d been there to welcome Daisy into the group had faded away and been replaced by new members. She’d thought it was because they weren’t really committed to yoga, but now . . .
The creak of the door being opened interrupted her thoughts as Elise and Jasper came to sit back down.
“Every acolyte reaches a crossroad, and we think you’ve arrived at yours.” Elise was very businesslike in her delivery as she drew a line on the tabletop from where Daisy was sitting and paused in the middle. “Many of our Brethren have chosen to leave the fold.” Elise’s finger swerved off to one side. “They feel they’ve realized their full potential, and they leave because, um . . . they have . . . er . . .” She glanced at Jasper for an answer.
“Zoise has bestowed upon them the confidence of knowing that they have outgrown the place where they once belonged, that they are ready to set root in the wider world.”
“You really are good at this,” murmured Elise.
Jasper shrugged off the compliment and directed Elise’s attention to Daisy.
“Oh. Right. Yes. Well. There’s the other path.” Elise swooped her finger back toward where she and Jasper were and stubbed it meaningfully on the wood. “There is the option of staying. Here.”
“Here?”
This time it was Jasper who answered. “Your enthusiasm is a powerful force. It’s time you harnessed that energy for the greater good. Come and stay with us for a few days, Daisy. Help run the house.”
Although Daisy was intrigued by the promise of spending more time in the house—perhaps getting to know Elise on a more personal level—as a friend, even—something had always held her back from actually offering her time. There was still a part of Daisy that worried she’d be missed.
“Could I still go back to my room at night?”
“We wouldn’t force you to stay!” Jasper said with a laugh. “But . . .”
“As experienced instructors, we’d suggest time away from other worldly distractions,” Elise said. “Like a yoga retreat.”
Daisy’s doubts must have been writ clearly across her face, because Elise leaned forward then, her expression as gentle and persuasive as her voice. “Remember, Daisy, the world will turn without you. Sometimes we need to walk away from our responsibilities to truly discover what matters.”
“You want to commit, Daisy? Then commit. If you don’t want to . . .” Jasper splayed his hands open, and Daisy watched her last shreds of hope evaporate into thin air. “Maybe your path leads elsewhere.”
Susan needed a break. There was only so much time she could spend reading up on vascular supply to the stomach before the words swam together and she started playing vertical word searches within the text. Daisy’s door was shut, and when Susan knocked, there was no response. Again.
Susan hadn’t seen her after she’d gone to yoga the night before, and today, despite Daisy’s insistence that they all breakfast together, there had been no sign of her.
How healthy was it to spend all your time with your body in someone else’s basement and your mind on another plane?
Susan could hear the music even before she opened Esther’s door.
“Ah.” Susan stared at the scene before her.
Opening the door had pushed an arc of clear space on a floor covered with clothes. Esther was sitting on the bed wearing a camisole, her long white limbs and chest giving the impression of an albatross hunting above a sea of black silk. Treading carefully, Susan made it the short distance from door to desk without anything coming at her from within the depths. Since the chair was otherwise occupied as a display rack for an assortment of tights, Susan nudged the laptop over and shimmied up onto the desktop.
“And what prompted this?” she asked, eyeing the empty hangers dangling forlornly in the wardrobe and wondering how Esther had ever managed to fit everything in there.
“I’m trying to work out what to wear.”
“To what?”
“Vectra’s gig. Tomorrow.”
Susan’s face contorted in confusion with such force that she pulled a muscle. “What? You’re actually going to that?”
“Of course! I’m someone who supports my friends.”
“Undeniably true. You are relentlessly supportive. Like a sexy bra that surprises you by actually being functional.” Susan paused. “But Vectra. Does she really fall into the friend category? Isn’t she more of a . . .” Susan wanted to say “noxious arsehole,” but if Esther really was delusional about Vectra being her friend, that might not go down so well. “. . . course buddy? You know, like—”
“You and Kully?” Esther said brightly.
“No!” Susan was faintly insulted on Kully’s behalf. “Like, umm . . . I don’t know, me and someone I’ve never spoken to who sits in the same lecture as me sometimes.”
“What are you getting at?” Esther lowered the top she’d been holding up to stare at Susan in suspicion. “Me and Vectra talk all the time.”
“Really? Because you’ve been so-called ‘friends’ for weeks, and she didn’t even tell you she was in a band. Friends tell friends things.”
“You don’t.” Esther looked smug, like she’d scored a point in a playful debate.
“I—” Susan floundered for a moment; it was as if Esther had just pushed her off a diving board, not realizing that there were sharks circling below, and Susan had forgotten how to swim. “Well. But, I will. I do. I told you about McGraw.”
“Eventually.” Esther was concentrating on folding her clothes, lips pursed primly, eyes down, so that there was no way she could see the effect her words were having.
“Opening up . . . emotionally”—the word tasted so strange, Susan had to spit it out—“is not the same as not even bothering to tell you about my hobbies.”
“You don’t talk to me about those, either.”
“Because I don’t have any!” The desperate edge that had crept into Susan’s voice finally caught Esther’s attention. “I talk to you about important things. I let you take me shopping, and I carry you back from Halloween parties, and I make sure you don’t run out of birth control. Those are friend things. Things that someone who cares about you would do.”
Susan didn’t do those things for just anyone. She did them for Esther, and she’d do them for Daisy.
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“Vectra would do those things!”
“You unwholesome loaf! Vectra wouldn’t. You wanted independent verification of whether or not Vectra likes you. Well, she doesn’t. She doesn’t like anyone or anything—the woman is awful. She’s mean to everyone around her, she calls you ‘Grooty,’ and I’ve never heard her say so much as one single nice thing to you.”
“You’re one to talk!”
Neither of them said anything then. Something screamy and sad was playing in the background, and there was a creak from the floorboards of the room above. The lacy purple top in Esther’s hand was scrunched into a tight little ball, her eyes blazing angrily across the room at Susan.
“What was that supposed to—” Susan began before knowing that she didn’t want to hear the answer. “No. Actually. Don’t say anything.”
Susan slid from the desk and stepped carefully back to the door.
“I’ve Anatomy to be studying, anyway. Did you want anything from the kitchen?”
“No, thank you.” Esther’s voice was cold and hard, each word a rock dropped in Susan’s stomach, making every movement that much heavier.
“Right. Well, if you wanted someone to come to the gig with you . . .”
“I think Ed Gemmell’s going.”
Out in the corridor, Susan stared at Esther’s door, then at Daisy’s, before retiring back to the safety of solitude and a sarcastic skeleton.
Hey, EG. I need to ask a favor.
Anything.
Would you come with me to Vectra’s gig tomorrow?
Well, I did say “anything” . . . but can we please not call it “Vectra’s gig”? With 13 bands, that seems like a bit of a misnomer.
Sure. You’re a good friend, Ed.
That’s very nice of you to say.
11
BARRY MANILOW SINGS
“Did you see that Grace is back?” Kully asked when he and Susan were coming out of Anatomy.
“Hadn’t noticed she’d gone.” Susan’s stride was heavy, heart so leaden, that it felt as if she was trying to drag an unconscious rhinoceros around. In a lecture, or a tutorial, or dissecting a pancreas, there was something to focus on. It was during this dead time, after one session was over and another about to start, that discontent leaked in.