#silver string

“Maybe we should read the instructions before you just start pouring dye all over your head,” Quinn says, watching you dump the contents of the cheapest box of blue hair dye at the beauty supply store on your bathroom counter. A pair of plastic gloves topples out of the cardboard, along with two packets of shampoo and conditioner, a paper leaflet, and a nozzled bottle that must contain the dye.

“It’ll be okay,” you say, but you snatch up the paper leaflet anyway, then angle it so she can read it. Well, read isn’t really the word, since there’s just pictures. Three, to be exact - one showing how to open the bottle, one of a cartoon character applying the dye to their hair, and one showing the same character washing the colour out. 

“How long do you reckon I have to leave it in?” you say, head cocked to the side as you consider the instructions. “It doesn’t say. Do you think all my hair will fry off if I leave it on for too long?”

“I don’t know? I thought you said you’ve done this before.”

“Yeah, with like, semi-permanent colour. This is the real deal.” You put the piece of paper down. “Ah well. It’ll be fine. I’ll either end up with blue hair or really, really short hair. Either way, I wanted a change.”

You’re being very blasé about the possibility of leaving this bathroom bald. You’ve been very blasé about this whole thing, actually; four hours ago, you’d sat up from where you’d been lying on your bedroom floor playing Mario Kart with her (and losing, she’s proud to say) and had declared that you were going to dye your hair blue, and would she please help you do the back?

She’d agreed, of course. You’re going to do it either way. At least she can help make sure the colour’s even.

Since the instructions are a bust, she moves onto the next best thing, because even if you’re fine with the idea of looking like a plucked chicken, she’s not. “Let’s just find a video, then.”

You concede with a nod, thankfully putting the bottle of dye down. After a quick search, the two of you sit side-by-side on the edge of your bathtub, leaning over your phone. Your shoulder and arm, mostly bare in your ratty t-shirt you use as pyjamas, is warm against her. The bathroom fan is on, but she feels almost too-hot, like the air is thicker than usual. 

“So we should section the hair out,” you say, following along with the video, “and do the middle of the strands first?”

Quinn watches the girl in the video applying the dye to her hair. She’s using a little brush - which you don’t have - and has a bunch of clips separating her hair - which you also don’t have - so she can see exactly where she’s putting the dye. She’s also using a natural brown colour, not blue, and she’s a proper adult, not a sixteen year old girl standing in her mom and dad’s bathroom on a school night. 

Unnatural hair colouring is definitely against dress code, and it’s Sunday night. Whatever happens in this bathroom - you’re going to have to go to school in the morning regardless.

Quinn hopes you have a beanie stashed away somewhere, just in case. 

“Then the ends, and then the roots,” she says, parroting the video. She gives you a sidelong glance. Your eyes are still trained on the phone. You’re biting your lip in concentration. You smell like the cookies the two of you baked (and ate, a whole tray’s worth) a few hours ago. “Are you a hundred percent sure you want to do this?”

You pause the video, then put down your phone. “Why, don’t you think I can pull off the blue?”

You wink, and even though she knows you’re joking, because of course you are, she feels stupid, pathetic heat in her cheeks. “No! No, that’s not - you’ll look great, obviously. It’s just - won’t your parents be mad?”

She hasn’t actually seen either of your parents this afternoon, which is unusual. The four of you normally have dinner together when she sleeps over (which is often), but tonight,  you’d just ordered a pizza to share with her. It’s close to nine now, and the house is still silent, save your combined chatter and the hum of the various appliances. 

“Nah,” you say, waving a careless hand. “As long as I don’t stain any of mom’s good towels, they won’t give a shit. We’ll be able to clean everything up before they even notice, anyway - dad’s working late at the hospital tonight and mom’s shoulder has been really bad all day, so she took her pain meds and went to bed hours ago. They’re super strong; she won’t wake up until the morning.”

“If you’re sure,” she says, still worried. Your bathroom is all clean, white tile, colour-coordinated towels and bathmat, a shower with a glass door, not a curtain. And the hair dye - it’s so fucking blue. There’s no way you’ll avoid making a mess. 

“I am,” you say, and then you smile at her in the way she likes best, the way that makes her feel like she’s the only person you’ve ever smiled at, ever, braces and scrunched-up eyes, and Quinn thinks fuck the white tiles, fuck the towels, and fuck the bathmat, too. You want blue hair, and if having it will keep you smiling like that, she’ll make this place look like a poor impression of a Pollock painting. 

Together, you pull your hair into sections, then stand in front of the mirror, you in front of her. There’s only two gloves in the packet, so you each take one, sliding it over your dominant hands. 

Unceremoniously, you take the bottle to your hair and squirt a generous amount of dye into one of the sections and god, it’s so blue. 

“It’s so blue,” you say, grinning. “It’s gonna look so cool. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

Privately, Quinn thinks that you do care, very much, actually, but she’s not about to tell you that. 

The bathroom fills with the smell of ammonia as both of you work the dye into your hair. She’s never really touched you like this before, which is probably a weird thing to think about a friend; it’s not like people go around giving their besties head massages, after all. Still, it’s nice; you’re warm and your hair feels and smells good, despite the chemicals. You give a pleased shiver when she accidentally scrapes her nails over your scalp and she needs to duck her head behind yours to hide her blush from the mirror. 

The bottle of dye is soon emptied and your head is drenched with the colour. The dye isn’t just contained to your hair; it’s all over your forehead, your cheeks, your ears, your neck. It’s even gotten on your t-shirt. Quinn’s too; luckily, it’s an old hand-me-down she doesn’t care about, one that belonged to her sister that probably belonged to one of their cousins before that. It’s so stretched and faded that the design on it is illegible.

She sets a timer on her phone for twenty minutes, as suggested by the lady in the video, then helps you secure your head beneath a shower cap to stop the dye from going everywhere. The twenty minutes passes quickly - the two of you finish your game of Mario Kart to pass the time and after a dicey moment with a blue shell, Quinn emerges victorious - and then she’s waiting in your bedroom, listening to the shower run as you rinse off the dye. The whirl of a hairdryer follows, and then silence. 

“I’m ready!” you eventually call. “You can come in.”

She re-enters the bathroom to find you standing in front of the mirror. Your hair - it’s blue, of course, she knew it was going to be blue, but she finds herself breathless all the same. You’ve given yourself a trim too; there’s a pair of haircutting shears on the sink and the tiles below you are littered with blue dust. You’ve put on a new set of pyjamas, your old, dye-stained ones tossed in a careless ball in the corner. Your skin is clean, makeup-free, still faintly wet. Your cheeks are flushed from the shower, your eyes bright.

When you see her reflection in the mirror, stopped dead at the door frame, you whirl around, beaming. You run a hand over your head. “It’s so bright!” You turn your head left, then right, like a bird admiring itself in its tiny mirror. Your forehead is dotted with blue stains and so are your ears, she realises, their tips looking almost frostbitten. You look like a fucking fairy. “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” she breathes. Your face lights up. Teasingly, she adds, “Why? I thought you don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

“You’re different,” you say. “You’re my best friend. You’re you. Of course I care what you think.”

Her stomach squirms. How does she even reply to that? Best friend. Has she ever had a best friend before? She doesn’t think so. Maybe that’s why she feels so strange around you sometimes; perhaps this is just how girls feel around their best friends. 

… Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch, and she knows it. It doesn’t matter, though; if this is all she ever gets to have of you - clean, bare skin, hair dye, baking cookies, your smiles, honest, unguarded, just for her - she’ll still be satisfied. 

“You look really pretty,” she says, suddenly not shy at all. “This was a good idea.”

If you pick up on any of the emotion in her voice, the way the words come out too steady, too seriously, you don’t show it. You just smile again, that same grin, the one you always give when someone compliments you. “Thanks for helping me. Hey, you know, I have leftover dye,” you say, like you haven’t been trying to convince her to do something with her hair ever since you decided on a whim that you wanted to dye yours. “We could give you a streak? Or maybe highlights? I think I have bleach and developer somewhere. Oh, oh, what about a haircut?”

Quinn has never had a proper, professional haircut. Her mom cuts the whole family’s at home with a pair of kitchen scissors. As a kid, she’d had the classic bowl cut, but now that she’s older, it’s just all one length and long enough that it gets caught whenever she sits on a particularly high-backed seat. 

It’s fine, she supposes. It’s her hair. It’s always been long and red. That’s just what it looks like. She’s never put much thought into how she feels about it, outside of some teasing from other kids in elementary school. She’s certainly never considered changing it. Her mom never asks if she wants to do anything different with it; she just tells Quinn to sit down at the kitchen table underneath the big light and to remember to sweep the hair up afterwards.

Two years ago, her mom cut her own hair short - not even a pixie cut or anything, just around chin length, because the summer had been unusually hot and she’d wanted to keep her neck cool. It looked really nice, actually. Different. 

When their dad had seen her that night, he hadn’t been happy. It wasn’t about the hair, he’d said. It was because she hadn’t asked his permission. She was his wife, after all. She should’ve asked. 

Her mom’s hair is back below her shoulders now, and still growing. Long and red, just like Quinn’s. She’s forever tying it back, pinned away from the heat of the stove and the oven. Soon, it’ll look just like it did before. Like her haircut, that small, accidental moment of rebellion, never happened.

“A haircut,” Quinn says. “I want a haircut.”

You look surprised. “Wait, really? You were so against it before. I haven’t peer pressured you, have I?” 

“No, no, you haven’t, I promise. I just - I just wanna go shorter. I think it’d be a nice change. Something different.”

“Okay,” you say slowly. Your mouth looks nice around the sound, all wide around the oh, like you’re blowing a kiss, before relaxing on the kay into an adorable almost-smile. “How short?”

Oh, right, the haircut. 

“Uh, like, around shoulder-length, maybe? Like this.” She takes the hair elastic off of her wrist and ties her hair in front of her chest at the desired length. The elastic sits just above her shoulder, just long enough that she’ll be able to tie it back once it’s cut. There’s so much hair left below it. Looking at it makes her chest go tight, like she’s going to laugh or puke, or maybe both. It’s the same way she feels when she looks at your lips for too long. “Here. Cut here. We can fix it up afterwards to make it straight and stuff, but this is how short I want it.”

For a moment, she’s afraid that you’re going to question her. Ask her if she’s really sure, if this is a good idea. Tell her that in the morning, she’ll have nothing but regrets. You’d be right. There’s going to be hell to pay at home, once her parents see what she’s done. You should second guess her. 

Quinn drives to the apartment without the radio on. The roads are empty, the streetlights lit up in a long line of sickly-yellow spotlights just for her. It makes sense; it’s four thirty-six in the morning on a Wednesday. Everyone else is tucked away in bed.

Not her, though. Even before getting the four twenty-two text, she’d been awake, folded up on the couch watching late-night infomercials. Her phone had been held loosely in her hand and when it’d buzzed, she’d almost dropped it in her haste to see if it was an ‘on my way home’ message from you.

She pulls up outside of James’ apartment building, her beaten-up sedan looking right at home in front of it. The air is cool and the world outside is almost as silent as her car had been. This far into the city, there are no birds, no buzzing cicadas, no ponds to be populated with the growls and croaks of frogs, to echo through the night like the fading din of a church bell. She is so very far away from home. Not home, actually, not anymore, and that’s a good thing.

Quinn’s buzzed into the building and then takes the stairs two at a time, one hand on the rail to keep herself steady and the other keeping her cardigan wrapped securely around herself. Once outside of apartment 303, she knocks and waits.

The door open and light spills out onto her, bright like the first rays of dawn cracking over the skyline.

“Come in, Quinnie,” James says, ushering her in. His pupils are huge, black pools swallowing blue. His jaw ticks. “Sorry for texting you so late. You weren’t asleep, were you?”

“It’s okay,” she says. “I was up anyway.”

Her nose wrinkles as she tip-toes into his apartment. The place smells like old alcohol and older smoke, the kind that gets embedded in the carpets and stains the drywall yellow. He’s got incense burning on his coffee table, which just adds to the whole unpleasant affair, rather than covering anything up.

She doesn’t like James; hadn’t in high school, even when you’d done your best to make everyone get along. She likes him even less now. She’s not sure if you’re the bad influence on him or if it’s the other way around, or if you’re both just as bad as each other.

She doesn’t like the other people in his apartment, either. Ollie is splashed like watered-down paint over the couch, her eyelids closed. Her fingers twitch as Quinn passes by, but she doesn’t otherwise react.

“Hey, it’s carrot top,” says Buck, the other occupant of the room, his beady eyes trained on the television. “Thank the stars. Clean up in aisle seven, otherwise known as James’ bathroom.”

Mortification burns in her belly, and she wraps her cardigan around herself tighter.

“Shut up,” James says, flipping Buck the bird. He turns back to Quinn and does his best impression of an apologetic look. “But he’s kinda right. Your girl’s a bit of a mess.”

James takes her to the bathroom. The door is open, ceiling light pale yellow and fan humming. You’re kneeling on the grimy tile, between the wall and the toilet. You look barely awake.

“Quinn,” you say. Your voice is thick, like your nose is blocked. Which it is, Quinn guesses, going by the blood on the lower half of your face. Your nose – it doesn’t look broken, she thinks, but what does she know?

“Had a bit of a run-in with the edge of the table, didn’t we?” says James. He looks at her again, still apologetic. His handsome face looks wan beneath the stark bathroom light. “She, ah, went a little too hard and then added alcohol to the mix.”

“’M fine,” you slur, then promptly lean back over the toilet to wretch. Nothing comes out, which bodes poorly for you.

She kneels down next to you, the floor cold through the thin fabric of her pyjama pants. She brushes your sweaty hair away from your forehead and strokes your back with long, gentle brushes, until the gagging subsides. Your whole body shakes and she can feel the individual nodes of your spine through your skin.

“Should I take her to -.”

“No hospitals,” you say. You look at her with glazed, teary eyes. “No hospitals.”

“Okay,” she says.

You sigh and then close your eyes, leaning against her. Your skin burns. She gathers a wad of toilet paper and presses it under your nose, holding it there.

“You gonna be right to get her home?” James asks. He sniffs and rubs at his nose.

“I’ll be fine,” she says. What else can she say? There is no other option.

“Listen, babe…” James sighs. He steps out of the bathroom and beckons her to join him. She’s loath to leave you alone – she hates to think how long it’s been already, how long you’ve been by yourself, so sick, so lost to yourself – but she follows him all the same.

James shuts the door. “I don’t think – Look. This is awkward, but she can’t come around here anymore, okay? We’ve all talked about it. It’s nothing personal, but no one likes to see her like this. Kinda puts a damper on the whole evening, you know?”

She stares at him. Something fizzles in her chest, a cold, numbing ache. It makes her fingertips tingle. “You’ve known each other for years. She’s your friend.”

“Yeah, of course she is! We’ve always had fun together. It’s just. Well.” He clears his throat.

“She’s not fun anymore.” Her voice rings in her ears.

“Exactly,” James says, satisfied. “You get it. No hard feelings, right?”

You have known James forever. Known all of them for years. You would die for these people.

“Right.” Quinn swallows the chill down. It feels like swallowing nails, or a tooth. Sharp. Like it’ll bore through her insides and cut her open.

“Great. I’ll help you get her into the car.”

Getting you downstairs is a process. It’s a two-person job, so James comes down to the car with her, making sure that you don’t tumble down the stairs. Once you’re at the car he passes you over to Quinn and you collapse into her, hugging her tightly, your face buried into the crook of her shoulder. Your blood is sticky on her neck.

“Sorry,” you say, the point of your nose cold against her skin. “Sorry, sorry.”

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” she soothes, running a hand over your hair. She needs to unpick her fingers from the tangles.

You mumble something into her neck. For a moment, she thinks you’re going to vomit again and wonders if she should redirect you to the gutter, but then you sigh, thin and high. “Are you mad at me?” you ask, voice like a kicked dog.

“No. No, of course not. C’mon, get in the car, I’ll get you home and into bed, and we’ll have a look at your nose.”

You tumble into the car and it takes you a few tries to get your seatbelt to click.

“One more thing, Quinnie,” says James. He stares at you, curled up in the passenger seat. “Has she told you about Jesse?”

“I think so?” She hates that it sounds like a question. Hates that she knows so little about your comings-and-goings that she can’t keep track of all of your friends now. “Um, you all met him at Rendezvous a few months back, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” James rubs at the back of his neck, then looks around, almost covertly. For an absurd moment, Quinn feels like she’s part of some cheesy spy movie, alone in an empty street save the streetlights. “Look, you didn’t hear it from me, but the dude’s bad news. He’s into some shady shit and he really likes your girl.”

“She wouldn’t cheat on me,” Quinn snaps, the words whip-quick and firm with her resolve.

James screws up his face. “That’s not what I mean. ‘M just saying that – I don’t know if he just deals or something else, but he’s not a nice guy. I saw him –.” He cuts himself off and then sighs again. “It doesn’t matter. Just try and keep him away from her, yeah? Just some friendly advice.”

“Okay, thanks,” she says, feeling queasy. She’s met Jesse, only once, and he hadn’t made much of an impression. Just another one of your friends who circle like sharks around you, all wandering hands and hungry eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

James leaves and then it’s just you and her, the way it should be.

Quinn gets in and starts the car. The sound of the engine rouses you from whatever stupor you’d been in – you blink blearily at her, wiping a flake of dried blood away from your nose.

“Hey,” you say, voice still thick.

“Hey,” she replies. Her tone is flat, even to her own ears. She starts the car, ignoring the way her hands shake as she changes gears.

“I’m sorry,” you say again after a few minutes of driving. You’ve opened your window and have been staring into the inky night with almost preternatural stillness.

“I know.”

There’s a moment of quiet. Quinn wonders if she should put some music on, if having something to focus on will make you feel less sick.

“What are you thinking about?” you ask. The wind from the open window makes your voice sound like it’s coming through a poorly tuned radio.

“I’m thinking that you could’ve died tonight,” she says, and it’s not what she’d been thinking at all, but now that she’s spoken the words aloud the thought consumes her. You could’ve died tonight. So easily. Blow to the head, an overdose, drowning in your own vomit.

And you didn’t, but you could very well die tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, the day after that. So on, so forth. How many more texts is she going to wait up for? How many more times will you come home to her?

“I’m okay. I’m alive, see?” You grab her hand with your clammy one, ripping it from the steering wheel, and bring it up to your throat. Your pulse jumps against her feeble grip.

You’re right; you feel so very alive and there is so little keeping your blood where it should be, just a thin layer of skin.

She tears her hand away and places it back on the steering wheel. The road ahead is dark and she needs to focus.  

You’ve wasted enough of your life and you don’t want to squander a second more. 

After tucking your brand new licence safely in your back pocket, you leave the DMV, still smiling, and make your way to the bus stop. You’ll miss catching it; all the drivers are lovely and it’s nice to be driven around the city, like your own personal tour. 

You’ve got time to kill until the bus arrives, so you open your phone and start scrolling through hundreds of second hand car listings. 

You’re not picky; you have a tight budget and will probably hit your fair share of curbs in it anyway, but it’s nice to look at the fancier ones and dream. A convertible sounds nice; there’s a bright red one for sale, way outside of your budget. You imagine the wind in your hair, the sheer cool factor of rolling down the street with the top down. Oh, or maybe a motorbike; you had loved your stupid, ugly little scooter, and a motorbike would be even better. And you’d get to wear all the sexy leather gear. Double win. 

“Oh my stars, do my eyes deceive me?”

The cold hand of panic twists through your ribcage and wraps around your heart, fingers taking hold and squeezing. 

You know that voice. 

You turn around.

On the sidewalk are two people staring at you with equally ecstatic expressions and you only recognise one of them. 

Izzy looks… well, she looks good, you suppose, clothes fashionable and scales polished to a sheen, though you can see a few of them are missing. The spines on her head are droopy, a little paler in colour than what you remember, and there’s a beadiness to her eyes that you never noticed before. 

You haven’t seen her in months but from how unfamiliar she looks, it feels more like years. 

“Damn, you’re looking good!” says the man you don’t recognise. 

And you know that you knew this person once, can hear the echo of his voice through the fog of your memory, even recognise his hands for the way they’d felt on your skin, but there’s something missing, something your stupid, ruined, useless brain is unable to grasp.

“Hey,” you say, affecting your brightest party-girl smile. “Long time no see.”

“Fucking hell, no shit!” the man laughs. He’s handsome, tall and very blond. “How’ve you been? You look so different.”

With each month you add to your sobriety, you’re told that with increasing frequency. You don’t really see it yourself - you feel like the exact same person most of the time. Worse, even. You’re horrible to be around when you’re in pain. 

“Good, really good,” you say. “How have –”

“Dude, I thought you were dead!” Izzy crows, looking delighted. “You just disappeared, like that.” She snaps her fingers, a jarring scrape of scale-on-claw. 

“Yeah, we all thought that Jesse threw the bunny out with the bath water,” the man says. His tone is light, like it’s a fucking joke or something. 

This person is a stranger to you. You couldn’t even guess his name if you tried. And yet he knows about that —

You tense. Pull a smile to your face. Do your best to shake off the phantom feeling of ice crystallising on the tip of your nose. “Nah, I’m not that easy to get rid of.”

And he laughs and so does Izzy and you laugh too, even though it feels like glass in your throat, because what else can you do?

“Well, I’m glad,” says Izzy and then she sweeps you up into a hug. She smells like old perfume clinging to unwashed clothes and you can feel a faint tremble in her hands as they grip your back. 

You hug back, even though you suddenly feel strange and unwieldy, like your arms aren’t your own. 

I want to go home, you think. Another thing you’d be able to do if you just had a fucking car and hadn’t lost your fucking licence in the first place. 

Izzy pulls back but then the man swoops in to take her place. You’re pressed to the line of his body, and though you’ve probably seen it naked, touched it all over, the feel of it is foreign to you. 

You let go first. 

“What’re you doing in New Ebott, anyway?” Izzy asks. 

“Just passing through,” you lie, because fuck if you’re letting her know that you live here now. “What about you guys?”

“Same thing,” Izzy says. “We’re crashing with Palyso at the moment, remember him?”

Nope. 

“Oh, yeah, totally.”

“Yeah, good guy, really funny. Hey, he’s actually having a party tonight, you should come! Just like old times.” The stranger waggles his eyebrows at you. 

You don’t need to remember the specifics to work out what he means. 

“Yeah, come with us,” Izzy begs. “Everyone’ll be so happy to see you. I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.”

The itch you’re not allowed to scratch burns. It’d be so easy, so fucking easy, to say yes. What’s one night? You don’t even need to use; who says you can’t have fun sober?

The word yes sits in your mouth like a hot coal and then the memory of water, cracking with thin shards of ice, washes over it. 

The desire is gutted out. Not even smoke remains. 

“I’ll sit this one out,” you say. 

“Aw, c’mon, bunny! You’ve gotta—“

The sound of an engine rumbles behind you and your soul sings with relief. 

Thank you, timely public transportation of New Ebott. 

“This is me,” you say, hoping you sound apologetic. “It was nice seeing you guys!”

You don’t wait for a reply, practically flinging yourself onto the bus. The driver gives you a concerned look - you’re a regular and most of them know you by name  - but you just give her a reassuring grin, because you’re fine. You’re fine. You’re completely, one hundred per cent fine. 

You take a seat near the front and stare down at your hands. You think of the way Izzy's shook. The way yours had once. The way they don’t anymore. You hadn’t noticed that until now. 

God fucking damnit. 

Stupid, unwarranted tears prickle hot at your eyes and worse, there’s something sharp poking you in the butt. 

Fearing that you’ve sat in something that’ll rip a hole in your pants - wouldn’t that be your fucking luck - you lift your hips and grope blindly at your ass. 

Oh, right. 

You forgot that you wedged it in your pocket after leaving the DMV. 

You look down at your brand new licence, turning the shiny plastic card around in your hands. Your own face stares back up at you. 

You dig around in your purse and from the very bottom, unearth the remains of your old licence, kept purely for sentimental reasons. It’s cut clean down the middle, made unusable the moment you’d lost it, but the image of your face is still intact. 

You compare the two, side-by-side. In the new one, your face is fuller and your skin smoother. Your lips have colour to them and your eyes are bright and awake, the whites white rather than bloodshot yellow. 

In the new one, you’re smiling. 

Huh. You see it, now. 

She sits and watches with increasing trepidation as the seats around her begin to fill, though the one directly next to her stays empty. Each new face through the door sends a new thrill of anxiety surging in her chest. Will her partner be James McKinnon, the guy who egged the Principal’s car over the summer? He probably doesn’t even know who she is.

Maybe it’s Brittany S (not to be confused with Brittany C, who is actually quite a nice girl), who spends all of her time giggling in the back of the classroom and going to the bathroom every ten minutes. Quinn’s going to be forced to do all of the work if she’s stuck with her.

Or, worse, what if it’s Anna Haas? The thought makes nausea roil in her belly. Anna probably doesn’t remember but in fourth grade she’d called Quinn firecrotch and Quinn had cried about it for a day straight, even though she hadn’t really even known what it meant. And then she’d gone home and asked her mom to explain, and that had caused a whole new world of trouble.

But James, Brittany S, and Anna all end up sitting elsewhere to her relief and soon, the entire classroom is full, save for the seat next to her.

Disquiet prickles at the back of her neck. She knows it’s ridiculous and they’re all literally in their assigned seats, but it feels like everyone’s purposely giving her a wide berth, like she smells bad or something. And she definitely doesn’t; she’d woken up super early this morning to shower and get ready before her dad woke up. She smells like jasmine and vanilla, if the description on her bottle of Dollar Store shampoo is to be believed.

Her Casio shows nine on the dot and Mr Ward stands up, right on que. “Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to English Literature. I have very low hopes that all of you have actually finished your assigned readings, but-.”

The room to the classroom flies open and someone stumbles through, their chest heaving as if they’d sprinted from the other side of Brookside High. Their left shoe is untied and their hair is in disarray, but they’re smiling, lips curling around the puffs of their panting breaths.

“Fashionably late as ever, I see,” Mr Ward says wryly, regarding the student with a raised brow. “I thought we were turning over a new leaf this semester?”

“Sorry, Mr W,” you say, wiping your hair from your forehead. “Consider my leaves turned, I swear, it won’t happen again.”

Quinn’s heart does a terrifying flip in her chest. It does another few loops as Mr Ward gestures towards her desk, like it’s on the world’s most terrifying rollercoaster.

“You’re lucky I’ve already got a headache and don’t feel like filling out the paperwork to give you a late slip. Go, sit, and keep your mouth shut until I say you can open it.” Mr Ward’s trying for stern, but there’s the hint of a smirk pulling at his moustached upper lip.

You mime zipping your lips and then half-walk, half-jog to the back of the classroom, waving at a few other students as you do. Quinn’s heart is beating staccato in her chest and when you pull out the chair next to her, she’s worried that it’s so loud that you’ll be able to hear it.

You offer her a little wave too, as if you’re friends, despite the fact that the two of you have never even spoken before. Quinn goes to wave back, an aborted flutter of the hand, and feels heat in her cheeks at the awkwardness of the motion.

Mr Ward continues to talk and normally she’d be listening, even taking notes, but the thud of books and rattle of pens as you get comfortable is extremely distracting. You’re still breathing a little heavy from your grand entrance, too, and Quinn is hyper aware of the rhythmic whistle of your exhales. You’re sitting next to her, a sizeable gap between your bodies, but for some reason, she feels like you’re in her freaking lap. Her skin feels itchy, something funny settling in her stomach. She shifts a little in her chair, hoping to dispel it.

She forces herself to pay attention to the teacher and, through a combination of tuning in to the end of his explanation and flicking through the packet on her desk, she gathers that they’re doing a project about the Great Gatsby, the book that they had read over the break. In their assigned pairs, they need to pick a topic from the list provided by Mr Ward and then write an essay about it. That sounds fine to her; she likes the book, had enjoyed reading it over the break, and scanning through the topics, there’s several that she finds compelling.

She hopes that you’ve read the book. It’s not long, so surely you have. Worst case, Quinn’s pretty sure that there’s a movie based on it, so she can always ask you to watch that just to get a sense of the story.

Mr Ward finishes speaking, and the entire class erupts into noise, students turning to their assigned partners. That means that she needs to talk to you now, too. Anxiety skitters up her spine, forcing her back ramrod straight.

She turns to you, a slow motion of the head, her fingers tapping a nervous beat against the desk. You’re already looking at her. Your cheeks are still flushed and there’s mascara smudged on your eyelids.

“Hey, Quinn, right?” you say, leaning back in your chair at such a degree that Quinn’s shocked you don’t teeter over. “Nice to meet you.”

You introduce yourself, as if she doesn’t know who you are. Of course she knows who you are; you’re not one of the popular girls, necessarily, but you go between different friendship groups like a party yacht in the Mediterranean Sea, welcome wherever you dock. Quinn hasn’t been to many parties, but you’ve always been at the ones she has, laughing, smiling, in the middle of the group. Your mother is a retired athlete of middling talent, a tennis player, the closest thing that Brookside has to a celebrity even though she’d last competed over a decade ago. Quinn’s dad says that she had quit to get married and have kids, like all career women inevitably end up doing, even though your mom’s career-ending shoulder injury is common knowledge in Brookside.

“Nice to meet you,” Quinn says. It suddenly occurs to her that she might be able to make a friend here. You seem to be friends with half of the freaking school, after all; befriending you must be easy if everyone else has managed it.

Sound reasoning, but shit, what do people say to make friends?

All prior knowledge and instinct on how to interact with others like a normal person flies from Quinn’s brain with the grace and disastrous potential of an airplane on fire. All of her friends, the few that she has, have been her friends since preschool and she doubts that pointing at the sandpit and asking you if you want to play dinosaurs will win her any favour.

Compliments! She can give you a compliment. “I like your -.” She scans your upper half frantically, looking for something to comment on. “Bracelet! I like your bracelet! It’s cute.”

Said bracelet is a pretty, delicate golden chain, dotted with tiny purple stones. It drapes over your wrist in a way that she’d normally find benign but for some reason, she’s drawn to the way it sits on your skin, how it slides down your forearm when you lift your hand.

You grin at her. You have a pretty smile, she thinks, even though you have a mouthful of braces. “Aw, thanks! My dad got it for me for my birthday. Hey, you’re good at this class, right? I remember reading a poem you wrote in the Brookside Verse last year; it was really good.”

A mixture of mortification and hot, sticky pride fills her belly. Mr Ward had insisted that she submit the poem to the school’s arts magazine: had she known that they’d actually pick hers to be published, she never would’ve agreed. The idea of anyone, but especially you, reading it, makes her want to throw up.

“I don’t know if I’d say I’m good,” she mumbles, praying for the blush that’s turned her face red to recede. You’re going to think she’s such a loser!

“Well, I would,” you say. “I really liked it. Will you have anything in the next one?”

“I’m not sure yet. I didn’t know you read the Brookside Verse?” she blurts out and damn, that sounds like she’s calling you an idiot, as if your interest in the art’s magazine is something wildly out of character, worthy of being questioned, and what is wrong with her?

“I had an in-school three-day suspension in the library,” you say, “and I wasn’t allowed to like, read any books or anything, and they obviously took my phone, but there were heaps of copies of the Verse around, so I read it then. I liked the bit that compared the girl’s lips to fruit.”

“Oh,” she says, a little lost for words. She likes that line too, the bit about lips like an overripe fruit, ready to split and spill. “Thank you. I’m happy you liked it.”

“So, wordsmith,” you say, and your words are teasing but in a fun way, not a cruel one, said like it’s a secret only the two of you share. If Quinn had been blushing before, she’s outright on fire now. “Do you have any preference on what topic we do? I like the sound of one or four, but I’m happy to do whatever.”

“Four sounds good.” The words come out more like a squeak.

“Cool!”

The next ten minutes are spent working out the specifics of the assignment and she’s pleased by the way the two of you split up the work; you seem more than happy to do your fair share.

“We’ll probably need to talk outside of class to work on this,” you say, tapping your pen against your lips. You both have notebooks open in front of you and whilst Quinn’s been taking detailed notes, you’ve been aimlessly doodling in the margins. She does think she can see Gatsby’s green light scribbled in one corner, though, and a little jotted car that may be his Rolls Royce, so at least you’re on-task.

“Yeah, probably,” Quinn agrees. The assignment is extensive and you’re going to have to work pretty closely together.

“I’ll add you on Facebook so we can message each other,” you suggest. Quinn does her best to hide a wince.

“I don’t have it, sorry,” she replies apologetically. Social media is a big no-no in her house; her parents barely allow her to have her own cell phone and even then, she has to give the device up once a month for her mom to go through it.

“All good. Can I borrow your phone?” you ask.

Helplessly, hopelessly, Quinn pulls out her cell phone and passes it across to you. It’s an older model, a hand-me-down from her older brother, the screen cracked despite her best efforts. There’s no code on the phone; she isn’t allowed to have one.

She watches your fingers fly over the screen and then jumps a little when she hears a ding come from your pocket. You pass her phone back, looking pleased with yourself.

“I just texted myself, so you’ve got my number,” you clarify. “So we can organise a time to work together. We can meet at my house? Or yours, if you’d prefer. I’m easy.”

“Yours is good,” she replies, too quick, the words tripping over themselves on their way out of her mouth. Let hell she’ll ever let anyone over to hers.

You brighten. “Awesome! Any afternoon works for me. If we end up working late enough you can have dinner at mine too; mom and dad always make enough food to feed like, a million people.”

You laugh and Quinn laughs with you as if that’s an entirely relatable sentiment, when in reality, she’s almost certain that her own cupboards are bare and that she’ll be scraping the sides of the peanut butter jar tonight to hopefully scrounge together a single sandwich.

Does all of this laughing mean that you’re friends now? She has no idea. Do people invite not-friends over to their houses for schoolwork and dinner? You’re probably just this outwardly friendly to everyone; you’ve probably got a rotating roster of friends barrelling through your door each afternoon, eager to spend time with you after school.

“How does Wednesday sound?” you ask her.

“Wednesday works great.” Lord knows that she hasn’t got anything else on.

“Great,” you say. “It’s a date. I’ll text you my address now.”

Your head ducks down to your phone, no doubt to send her your address. You therefore aren’t privy to the flush that overtakes her at those words, burning red-hot from her ears all the way down to her chest.

It’s a date. She tells herself to calm down and stop being so weird, because obviously you don’t mean it like that, but the blush doesn’t get the memo.