i would beg to disagree

It was an easy question to answer, whether or not she had enjoyed the evening. She had, and there was no way around it. But Nastia didn’t know that she had enjoyed it because at any given moment she was thinking about smashing something, and she didn’t need to know. It wasn’t lying exactly, just omitting certain extraneous details. “How is that not your idea of a good time? I loved it. Nothing like a bit of aimless destruction to kick off the school year and keep everyone on their toes. This place needed livening up.”

Mira took the champagne as Nastia wobbled, simultaneously steadying her friend while being careful not to spill a drop of the alcohol. It was very expensive, after all. The compliment made her smile, but their differing levels of drunkenness was not going to make this a productive conversation. Besides, Mira had already had her budding friendship with Daniel ruined that evening (admittedly mostly due to him, but even so), she was not planning on ruining an already established friendship that had grown meaningful to her. As she’d said, her friendships were few and far between. Couldn’t let her libido ruin all of them.

“Hmm… Had a chat with your roommate on the way to the theatre, actually - she’s a strange one, by the way. Watched the second half of Midsummer and tried not to fall asleep. Poked around the crime scene with Kellan, stole you this –” She raised the bottle slightly. “And then sat here and drank red wine for half an hour waiting for you and thinking about… oh, life, I guess.” She took a long swig, happy to have moved on from the wine though the bubbles made it much harder to drink quickly. After placing the bottle between them, Mira awkwardly kicked off her shoes and lay back in the grass, one hand under her head. “What about you, what alibis do you have for the evening?”

Nastia snorted; she agreed that Astor could do with a shake-up, but had never fully shared Mira’s devil-may-care apathy toward aimless destruction. It was likely due to the fact that Nastia was incorrigibly preoccupied with aims; she had to concoct purpose and meaning where it perhaps didn’t even exist. Sure, she liked to turn the world on its head in a Twelfth Night reign of mischief, but always to highlight the underlying message: what is normal? Or, more accurately: this place isn’t. She was a little too tired to think, at this point in the evening; it was a rarity for her, but she felt too burnt-out to philosophise on anarchy with her friend. Better to simply drink.

“Strange doesn’t begin to cover it,” Nastia chuckled derisively. “There’s something going on there. Perhaps she ate her twin in the womb and has never recovered... who knows. And now that she’s -- one of us, I don’t know... she never struck me as the type. I mean, you remember the uh,” she chewed her lip, casting her eyes up to the stars, “the blood thing?” They’d never discussed their initiations so baldly. “Maybe I ought to check my arms for pin-pricks,” she muttered, a wolfish grin breaking across her face. 

Nastia shrugged again, turning about on her heel and kicking in the grass. She bent to pick up the bottle, hugging it to her chest as she sat down, legs crossed, looking down at Mira. There was something on her mind, she could tell. She debated whether to pry. “The ethics major, thinking about life? Take some time off,” she teased. Her eyes darkened when asked about her alibi -- the confidence she’d felt in her lie had waned a little, the memory of Andrew’s fury at the disarray gnawing at her a little. “Strange ones,” she said, “I ended up third-wheeling with Andrew Rose and Isla Kensington -- you know, one of the twins?” She frowned, taking another deep swig of champagne. “A minor run-in with Florian goddamn Deschamps, too,” Nastia scoffed, one hand touching her arm as she remembered his phony chivalry. “Guy thinks he’s a regular Edward Cullen. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a vampire -- blue blood, and all...”

“I’m fairly convinced the Headmaster thinks I’m their pseudo-inside manfor some unknown reason,” Kellan responded as he approached Nastia, chuckling. Thecountless times he was called in for a meeting,he’s deduced that the administration was doing it on purpose. A habit of sorts—he’sa senior, he practically knows everyone and the majority of the students, in andout, knows him, too. The issue was, Kellan was never one for policing hisfellow Astorians—unless it’s ice hockey—and while there might be a few he doesn’tparticularly see eye to eye, scores were settled differently.

Back to Nastia, Kellan shook his head and motioned at the bench. Parkinghis ass on it, he sits down cross-legged and fished out a small tin ofwintergreen mints. “No, unless it’s running in my bloodstream like nanites,” hepopped two mints and offered the tin to Nastia. “And if so,” he continued,placing an unlit herbal cigarette between then corner of his lips, “we’ll haveto scan me or cut me open.” Plucking a match on his matchbook, he scratched iton the bench and lit up. Inhaling, he idly looked to the side. “I recorded theconversation,” Kellan added, bounding his hair up with a hairtie before takingout his mobile phone from his jeans pocket. He’s not worried being seen withNastia, never did. Although the first time they were spotted together, someolder students then, seemingly haughty at that, asked him why he’s friends with the shrew. He had laughed,quoting well ta’en, and like a buzzard,which garnered baffled looks followed by the embarrassed shuffling of expensiveoxford shoes. Of course, he was called into the Headmaster’s office that day,surprise surprise, and later on, he and Nastia bumped into one another oncemore at a party being hosted in the Genghis house.

“Here it is.” He tapped on the screen of his phone, setting the devicedown on the bench after pressing play. “Andy was on the list,” he added midway,rubbing a spot above his eyebrow. They have that in common, Andrew Rose—andhearing Andy’s name slightly caught him off guard. “Wasn’t he with you?” Or isit like the lottery to the administration? Draw a few names, interrogate them,see if anyone will break.

“What’s your favorite ice cream flavor, Anya?”

“Inside man, huh?” Nastia repeated, eyeing Kellan shrewdly. She supposed it made sense -- he was pretty popular, from what she could tell, comfortably hanging out with a wide cross-section of the Astor student body. There was also a chance he played a sport: football? Hockey? She wasn’t sure. Spirit Week had always been the time she dreaded most at school; seeing the quarterback and his cronies hoisted onto shoulders of their juvenile devotees... She wasn’t one for sports, in any case, but knew Kellan was an athletic type. Perhaps the Academy were hoping to tame him into being their golden boy. 

“I’m afraid I left my bioscanner on charge,” she smirked, “but I do have a pocket-knife...” Nastia’s father had bought it for her prior to her trip around Europe, alongside enough pepper spray to blind a Cyclops. She’d never used the latter, and the former had served her better as a bottle-opener, but she kept it in her jacket pocket nonetheless. 

Nastia took a mint, murmuring her thanks, and set it upon her knee for the time being; she’d prefer it after her cigarette, which was looking dangerously stout. At Kellan’s next admission, though, she jerked her body to face him in such a way that the mint wobbled dangerously and slid right off her lap. She retrieved it from the stone bench, ashing her cigarette, and blew on it before popping it in her mouth. “Damn, Kel,” she chuckled, eyes wide, “turns out you’re the bug...” Nastia listened quietly then, smirking at the moments that her friend made a dry joke, tensing up at each question in case he let something slip. 

Thankfully, she was safe. He hadn’t breathed a word; she appreciated that. “Yeah,” she nodded absent-mindedly, scratching the back of her neck, “I heard that. He won’t be pleased. He was pissed, when he saw... I told him I was stoned.” She ran her tongue across her teeth and shrugged, remembering how unconvinced he’d seemed. “I doubt he’d say anything about it. If he did...” she shook her head.

Anya. The nickname made her wince, but not entirely from discomfort. It’d just been a while since she’d heard anyone use it. “Pistachio,” she said, staring at him in bewildered amusement. She cocked an eyebrow, as if to say, You?

A smirk appeared on Andrew’s face as the girl laughed. He didn’t want to praise himself but he has always been quite good at making them laugh without playing clown and being the loudest kid in the room. He was quite the opposite, actually. His mysterious aura and tortured eyes had always drawn the girls to Andrew. In high school, he could easily get any girl he wanted. (Now, the boys were a different story.) When he left high school, he thought he would be maybe even more successful with his conquests. But turns out, you focus on your studies and you get attached to one person, and the conquests are no longer in mind. Without telling it himself, if he had met Nastia a few years earlier, he would’ve probably tried to get in her bed. But they were not in high school anymore and that type of thinking has gone far off Andrew’s mind.

The comparison she made to Aristotle was interesting. He kind of guessed that Nastia didn’t have a low self-esteem, but maybe she was closer to megalomania than he thought. “Perhaps not Aristotle, but if you think of Copernicus… I think he has been offered more than juste a beating for his ideas.” How both man contributed to human knowledge, it always impressed Andrew to think about such great minds that had to think against every that was already established. How can we do that now without being irrelevant ? He took a look at the environment they were in. “Mmh” he shrugged, “democracy requires that everything has to be public.” 

Andrew followed her gaze, looked at his sketchbook. “Oh, that was a riddle ?” he asked, half sincere, half sarcastic. “I supposed you were just plain weird.” She was approaching, and he could guess her intentions. He didn’t fight against her theft. Anyway, she was quick and acted when he didn’t really expected it. What this book contained, Andrew was proud of and didn’t have an excuse to hide it from the world. He wasn’t shy about his work because he trained for a long time to come to that result. After all, a drawing was made to be seen and appreciated. 

Nastia seemed surprised about what she found in it. Even if Andrew would handle his sketchbook to anyone asking to see what he’s been doing, it is true that she has never seen his work before. “Why are you so surprised ? Usually people say they’re great, or at least very good…” jokingly complained the artist. He looked over her shoulder to see what drawing she was admiring. “Yeah, I draw in the library after studying. It’s convenient because nobody really moves and they stay in the same position for hours.” Art kid hacks.

Nastia made a noise of assent in response to Andrew’s Copernicus comment. “It was Galileo who really suffered for subscribing to cher Nicolaus’ ideas. You know he was held by the Pope for heresy?” Her lips curved in a wry smile at the last word, though she knew it would mean nothing to Andrew. After she’d been dubbed the name of Heresy by their glorious leader, she’d done a little reading, naturally; she felt that she was in pretty good company among the lists of martyrs she studied. She smirked as he called her weird, brushing it off as water from a duck’s back.

His cockiness amused her. “Don’t worry,” she said, “all the greats were misunderstood in their time.” It was a facile belief that Nastia had woven into her outer armour since realising that she herself was misunderstood; it let her believe that she, too, could be great. “Very cunning,” she murmured, flicking through the book to see more studies. One or two of the faces looked familiar, though she couldn’t place their likeness exactly. A thought occurred to her, and she jerked her head up, looking at him with a sly glitter in her eye: “Have you ever sketched me?”

Lancelot du lac, Kingston couldn’t help his lips from quirking in amusement, although his face was facing directly in front of it and allowed for his reaction to go unnoticed. He kept walking, and at that moment, he wasn’t completely bothered by her following him. He snickered at the latter part of her response, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants as he walked. “King Arthur must have everything handed to him, I suppose.” he commented as they walked further into the woods. He wasn’t heading directly towards the Genghis dorms. Originally, he was going to find another spot to ponder in, sit by himself for a moment and breath, but now, he seemed to be walking through the more convoluted path for a reason. “Is there a reason why you’re saving Excalibur for him, Lady of the Lake, other than his prophecy?” He asked, a slight lift in his voice as they walked through the woods He may have slowed down his step for her, he was a fast walker, but he it wasn’t much to make the action apparent. He just found her comments…amusing. “Or do you usually reserve and protect things for other people?” He paused his chess match for a second. 

Nastia hadn’t expected this unforthcoming kid to play along with her bit about Arthurian legend, but, to her pleasant surprise, he ran with it. She ran her tongue over her teeth, relishing her instincts proven right -- that he was interesting; that he was different. “You aren’t wrong,” she chuckled drily, “almost as though some omnipotent author out there wants him to win. Unfair, really.”

She tailed him into the woods, curious about his quick pace. Thankfully, at five-feet-ten Nastia had gangly enough legs to keep up, though she was usually one for a more casual stroll. “If you’re asking whether I’m a hoarder...” she began, tilting her head to one side and raising her eyebrows in a sardonic fashion. “Perhaps I’ve taken a shining to him. Or, perhaps, I’m hoping he’ll give me something in return.” She cast a sideways glance at her companion. This was an allusion to the myth, whereupon the Lady of the Lake summoned Arthur’s fealty years after her gift, but it didn’t stray too far from her actual worldview. 

“Nothing comes without its strings, invisible though they may be.” This lesson she imparted with a pucker in her brow. Nastia had learned a long time ago that it was foolish to give without expecting anything in return. It was ‘good’, sure, ‘the right thing’, maybe. But unwise, nonetheless. She let the statement hang, wondering what his philosophy would be. She realised she didn't yet know his name, but refused to be the first to introduce herself.

Relief flooded Mira as her friend shouted back, seemingly her usual self. She wasn’t really worried about her per se, but Nastia had been a little tense before the commotion in the dining hall, and she wasn’t sure how long the feeling would have lingered for. All seemed well. “Had to, I was dying of boredom and alcohol is the only known cure. Don’t worry though,” she added, “I’m enamoured of no ass.” Her mind flickered briefly to the uncomfortable conversation she’d had with Daniel earlier, but the final dregs of the red wine drowned the thought, flooding it well out of her mind by the time she neatly set down the empty bottle. This was much too happy an occasion for her to be bothered by a thing as minor as guilt.

“Barely seen you all evening, did you have fun?” She watched Nastia struggle with the champagne, smiling with the warmth that the alcohol and the company brought. “You look hot, by the way. Almost hot enough for me to consider ruining our friendship.” With an impish grin that wouldn’t cross her face were she sober, she finished her cigarette and dropped the butt into the empty wine bottle. “Unfortunately for you,” she continued, “I don’t have many friends, so you’ll have to get me much drunker if you want to seduce me.”

Nastia uncorked the magnum of champagne with a satisfying pop; a rush of foam spurted over the top and she tipped the bottle to catch the spray on the tip of her tongue. “Uh-huh!” she intoned, the laugh she was trying to hold back making her cough. “Fun isn’t how I’d describe it -- having to go incognito and act shocked isn’t my first idea of a good time. But yeah,” she brought a hand to the back of her neck, “Fighting the good fight, et cetera. You enjoy it? You were certainly smashing those plates with panache.”

She lurched a little as she reached to pass Mira the bottle, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder to steady herself. Fizzy wine always went to her head, and none more quickly than champagne. Besides, she hadn’t eaten; nor, she realised, had Mira, which perhaps explained her next remarks. Nastia ducked her head in what veered dangerously close to bashfulness, taking her hand from Mira’s shoulder to touch the purposely-undone bow tie at her neck. Her hair had come loose a while ago, and gathered at her back.  “Why, thank you,” she purred, performing a debonair whirl of the hand. “You look finer than all the maidens of Athens and the fairy realm combined.” Nastia smiled, feeling the need to slip back into borrowed idiom to deflect from her actual compliment. 

She’d always found Mira attractive, but their friendship had never gone there. Besides, the idea of turning a friendship into something else only made her think of Giulietta; she couldn’t go through that again. “Drink up, then, and regale me with your dark deeds of the night. What did you do after -- well, after I last saw you?”

“Christ,” Nastia muttered to herself, cigarette between her lips, as she shut her eyes against the late September sun. She rolled her neck about its socket, feeling a satisfying crack, then opened her eyes and lit the cigarette. The ‘interrogation’ -- a word she could only use ironically, since it was perhaps the benign interview one could imagine -- had gone reasonably well, she thought. No doubt she’d have irritated the professors, but that was her usual modus operandi. Consistency, after all, was the key to a lie: Nastia was consistently antagonistic; thus, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for her to antagonise.

She stomped across the lawn to a nearby bench, checking her wristwatch. Through clandestine texts, the Arsonists had been able to work out who amongst their number had been called in: thankfully, Nastia hadn’t been alone in raising suspicions. She was gladly and loudly crying martyr to anyone who crossed her path, though: perhaps the lady doth protest too much, but it was only right that she should complain, even if she were innocent. After all, appearing sheepish and cowed felt more like an admission of guilt than baldly deriding the mere thought of her getting involved with any kind of group extracurricular, no matter how nefarious. 

Kellan should have had his interview already; they’d texted and arranged to meet afterwards, to smoke and debrief. Perhaps it would raise suspicions further, the two of them meeting on a bench Soviet-style; at the same time, they were friendly enough, and had sat on a dozen different benches and smoked a hundred different cigarettes together in their time at Astor. Again, Nastia felt that her hiding would only be the more suspicious, since it simply wasn’t her.

She spotted the familiar figure of Kellan cutting across the lawn towards her, and raised a hand in greeting. “You out on bail too?” Her laugh glittered. “You're not bugged, are you?”

“MS ANASTASIA FITZGERALD,” the email began, “Please report to the Bromeliad Meeting Room at 10AM tomorrow morning for a disciplinary hearing...”

Date: 20th September Time: 9:45pm (ish) Location: Grounds

@nastiafitzgerald·

After surveying the damage they had caused with Kellan, Mira had taken off on her own for a while. It had been a long evening of socialising, and she wanted some quiet before she got to speak to the only person she actually liked socialising with. As per their agreement, she hadn’t touched the bottle of champagne that she had so carefully stolen from the scene of the crime, but thanks to a convenient diversion caused by one student slipping and falling into a puddle of she had also managed to smuggle out a half-drunk bottle of red wine. A little disgusting, perhaps, but it had been a long and stressful evening, and growing up with brothers had caused her to have very little regard for the germs of others. She sipped steadily as she made herself comfortable in some long grass, sending a text to Nastia to let her know where she was.

By the time her friend arrived, Mira was a few swigs away from the bottom of the bottle, had sent twelve messages, and was on her third cigarette. Somewhat tipsy, she waved her hands above her head, cig wedged firmly between her lips, though dangerously close to dropping ash on herself. “My Oberon, what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamored of an ass,” she cried by way of greeting, quoting the only line of that evening’s play that she could remember.

Having found only Florian in the dining hall, Nastia was grateful to feel her phone buzz with a text from Mira. Many students had cleared off by this point, but there were still clusters of rubberneckers lingering in the corridor. Drat. She'd been hoping to swipe a bottle from the wreckage. Nastia fished in her trouser pockets for her phone, intending to send a follow-up text to Mira to check she had booze -- and save herself the trip to her dorm for the medicine flask of gin she kept there. It buzzed in her hand as her fingers curled around it, then buzzed again. The chain of petulantly impatient, heavily autocorrected messages Mira sent her answered her question. Nastia chuckled to herself. Started without me? she fired back. 5 minutes.

She left through a small stone courtyard which gave on to a gravel path which ultimately forked at the lake and the woods. Thankfully, her and Mira's usual grassy knoll wasn't so far along it; she picked her way along quickly in the fading light, her pace keeping her warm in lieu of alcohol. Nastia threw up her arms in response to Mira's shout, the relief coursing through her body akin to that of a sailor finally spotting land. "Hast thou started without me, my fair Titania?" She grinned, adding, "Who're you calling an ass?" Upon nearing Mira, Nastia had the urge to hug her -- something they'd never done. She refrained, nearly stumbling over a rock, and instead contented herself to swiping the corked champagne from where it lay among the cool grass. "Mind if I do the honours? I'm gagging for a drink," she said, already twisting the bottle.

He had made his flippant comment without much consideration, and so faced Nastia Fitzgerald’s biting remark with genuine confusion. But his features did not betray him for too long, shifting from one of puzzlement to something softer in a heartbeat, and he raised both arms with palms held up, feigning apologetic surrender. “Fair enough. You know, most people have the good grace to say thank you when they’ve just been shown some beneficence.” He spared her a guileless sideways glance, corners of lips tilted upwards in the slightest. “But if that’s not your style, I get it.”

Almost with every encounter he had with Nastia, the devil-may-care Florian grew a particular consciousness for his actions and words. The result of being constantly under someone’s disapproving gaze. This response was not one that naturally came to him, yet it was unpleasantly familiar to how young Florian felt among his formidable pubescent friends. “You make me sound callous, Nastia,” he said teasingly. He looked down at the fragmented glass. “I just think it would be best if everyone was a little more careful right now. From the looks of things, it’s lucky there weren’t any casualties. And I would hate for the first one to be you.” He looked at her through his lashes, eyes twinkling.

Florian’s gentle charm and batting lashes were charming, sure, but only heightened Nastia’s ire: he was too smooth, too slick, for it not to have been bred into him. Being chastised for her lack of manners didn’t sway her, either. Beneficence? What was he, a fifteenth-century grandee? She, a serf he’d decided not to trample with his horse? Nastia scoffed, and performed an ironic curtsy. “My apologies, my lord,” she drawled, patting her suit pockets, “I’m afraid I left all the tokens of my gratitude in my dorm. Perhaps I can offer you my firstborn, instead?” She rolled her eyes. It was a cheap shot, but she didn’t care.

If she’d merely scoffed before, she outright cackled at his following remarks. “Would you really? Tell me, Flo, would you have escorted me to the hospital wing in your arms? My hero,” Nastia batted her lashes right back and raised a hand to her forehead, mimicking the damsel-in-distress, aflutter. Then she clicked her tongue, surveying the carnage once more. “Whoever did this must’ve botched the job,” she said drily, “if they wanted to tear Astor apart. After all, it’s got us talking together.”

Date: Friday, 20th September; 9PM Location: Main Dining Hall, East Wing Availability: open

Florian was among the mass of students who stood in astonishment at the sorry state of the dining hall. The tables were upturned and shards of multicoloured glass and what he guessed was china covered the floors. It was a challenge to decipher what was food and what wasn’t. Wine bottles, some still in one piece, lay corkless and empty; Florian expected the carpeting must be soaked. He hadn’t realized he was looking forward to the dinner. It only struck him now that he was deprived of it. Everyone was deprived of it, really. A cacophony of bewildered and crestfallen exclamations rose from the people around him, with a lawless few hooting their approval. Florian felt something akin to annoyance bubble up inside him at the latter. 

Even though they hadn’t gotten far from the doors, the destruction was so great that very little of the floors were bare. His eyes caught the motion of his neighbouring student, and Florian swiftly grasped their arm before they could take another step forward. “Be careful, there’s glass everywhere. And from the looks of it, puddles of wine, too. Wouldn’t want your shoes to lose their shine.”

Nastia had meant to leave once she’d feigned her shock to Drew and Isla. She didn’t need to linger, after all; she’d laid down her alibi, and set an excuse for her aberrant behaviour, and felt relatively calm upon actually seeing the fruits of their labour, so that it wasn’t too hard to look shocked. Besides, no one would be surprised to hear that the renegade scholar wasn’t rushing to fling herself upon the pyre weeping for the sake of Arthur Astor; equally, she presumed, no one would think her partial enough to have helped gather the wood for it. Her trademark was cool indifference, and she wasn’t one to hang around. 

But she wanted to find Mira, who had suggested earlier that they rendezvous over a bottle somewhere once the pandemonium subsided. Nastia was certain that she’d glimpsed her friend before, perhaps with Kellan, over by... A sudden grip on her arm wrenched Nastia from her search. She jerked around, recognising Florian Deschamps, and shot him a searing stare. “God forbid,” she said, “that in all this, I might muddy my shoes.” Typical, of course, for the boy of gilded privilege to worry about that. She wrested herself from his grasp and folded her arms, in half a mind to step on the glass that he’d correctly identified at her feet simply out of spite. She refrained. “What would you care, anyway?”

date: friday 20th september time: 9.42pm availability: @andidrewrose & @its-isla

Nastia couldn’t keep her leg from bobbing up and down all throughout the last act; her shoulders were rigid against the back of the seat she’d managed to find, all the way at the back of the theatre. The resulting view wasn’t much, but she was barely paying any attention; her mind was on the previous two hours. She’d stayed focused, at first -- taken Mira’s blood-red lipstick and written in large, gory lettering a choice quote from Puck’s last monologue upon the wall. It dominated the entire right side of the dining hall, the lines -- lighthearted and self-deprecating in the play -- taking on ominous significance in the context of chaos over which they shouted. 

Indeed, the only time Nastia’s leg stopped bouncing -- her whole body silent, not daring even to breathe -- was when the Grandstreet actor playing Puck recited the very lines she’d written. “If we shadows have offended / Think but this, and all is mended— That you have but slumbered here / While these visions did appear.” Nastia’s stomach lurched, and she was half-tempted to rise from her seat and leave the theatre. But she glanced across the hall to where Andrew was sitting, and remembered the plans she’d made with him during the interval: that they walk together to the dining hall. She knew her absence -- being a known fan of Shakespeare -- would be conspicuous; besides, she didn’t want to be alone.

Nastia kept her eyes on Andrew throughout the applause, but ducked out of the back during the bows. She had half a mind to light a cigarette. She must’ve smoked half a dozen already: after her writing job was done, she’d collapsed into a chair, observing now Mira’s grin, now Kellan’s uncorking of champagne, now Soren smashing plates; now chaos, everywhere. She’d sat in her chair and called out smart retorts to those around her, poking fun at their ideas and sardonically chastising some of the zanier ones. She’d tossed her cigarette butts into the uncovered serving-bowls of the chilled soup starter, and gulped down a lot of wine, but remained mostly aloof to the pandemonium. Once their arms had grown tired and their heads too foggy from drink, Nastia took her cue to slip out, ambling to the theatre.

She’d spotted Andrew, at that minute, by himself at the refreshment table, and cornered him for a chat. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” she’d quoted, hoping that that line had already been said -- thankfully, it had; the interval broke after Act Three -- and tapped his arm. “Walk with me to dinner, I’ll meet you here. I’d like to hear your thoughts on the play,” she’d said. Now, back in that spot -- the refreshment table long cleared away -- she touched a hand to her red cheeks and waited impatiently. Dribbles of students began to leave the theatre; she tried to look nonchalant, and kept her eyes out for Drew.