Page 10 of Sad Girl Hours
“Nah.” Nell sits up properly and shuffles over, pulling fairy lights out of the same box. “I’ll stay and help. I don’t want to interrupt whatever’s going on down there and, besides, when I tried to put my fairy lights up on my own I nearly garrotted myself.”
“Are you sure?” I frown.
“Did you not hear what I just said?Garrotted, Saffron. Yes, I’m sure.”
“Well … thank you. I was going to make a time-lapse of me decorating to post, though,” I add. “And I know you’re not a fan of all that.”
Nell grimaces. “Not exactly. I love watching your stuff but the idea of putting my own face on the internet makes me come out in hives.” She shakes her dark hair back, starting to unwind the lights from their cardboard. “I’ll survive, though. I may look like a goblin but if it’s a time-lapse then at least I’ll look like a speedy, productive goblin.”
“You always look lovely,” I insist. “I should be so lucky to be a goblin as pretty as you.”
“Weirdly, that’s very sweet, thank you. But I refuse to hear anything even resembling self-slander coming from you. You’re a perfect goblin lady too.”
I laugh, partly because Nell always makes me laugh with her particular brand of Nellness, partly because I’m thinkingif only she knew.
I lied and said that my grandma was dying when I had those two months off. Both my grandmothers are already dead, so it felt like a mostly harmless lie (except for the gnarled-gut sensation I get whenever I don’t tell my friends the truth). But I can’t do that again this year. Not only because I’m going to run out of fictional grandmas, but also because I literally cannot take more time off university. They onlyjustlet me stay on this year because in first year our grades don’t count towards our final degree, and I managed to catch up on enough stuff when I came back to scrape a pass. But this is second year now. There’s no getting round the fact that I will definitely be kicked out if I have any more time out and I can’t let that happen.
I need to get a good final grade for everything – I want to be taken on by the best astro research team I can, and I can’t expect to just slide in based on passion alone. And, even more importantly, I need to stay up here. If I have to go back home, and especially back homeindefinitelyas I would if I’m kicked out of uni, then I don’t know what I’d do. And not just in a pensive,I wonderkind of way. I’m genuinely scared of whatmight happen if my dreams have been dashed and the only people around me are my parents. My friends might not know all of me, but they at least like what I’ve shown them, and they make me happy. I’ve never had anything like that before.
I keep thinking over this, feeling the pressure tugging harder and harder, making me feel like a main sequence star rapidly running out of hydrogen and becoming more and more unstable.
My phone camera is set up on its tripod, documenting as Nell and I move round the room. We hang up my fairy lights, zigzagging them between the beams above my bed, put up my tapestries and posters. I arrange my clothes in colour order on my clothes rail, and we make a start on the gallery wall of postcards above my desk. The feelings of pressure don’t dissipate but I smile, I laugh, I make jokes with Nell, even though only the music and voiceover I edit over the top will be audible.
That’s the thing. I don’t want anyone to reallyseeme. So I make sure they’re only looking when I tell them to.
Chapter Five
Nell
“I have HUGE news!”
Jenna startles awake, bleary eyes blinking to focus on me as I burst into her room. “Can you knock?” she says grumpily.
“I’m not sure – let me check.” I knock twice on the wood of the door frame. “Yep, it would appear so.”
“I honestly despise you sometimes,” she says, shuffling over in her bed to make room for me to snuggle in next to her, rather ruining the sentiment of her words.
I tuck myself in under the duvet, wriggle my toes and wait.
There’s a lengthy pause before…
“OK, you woke me up from a dream about being the first Black woman in history to win a Tony for a show she both wrote and starred in – are you going to tell me this news or are you just going to enrage me further by preventing me from closing my eyes and making my acceptance speech?”
“As fun as enraging further sounds, I would like to tell you the news. LOOK.” I wriggle my butt slightly into the air in order to produce a pamphlet from my back pocket.
“Poetry Chapbook Competition, in affiliation with Stanza Press,” Jenna reads. “Neat.”
“Neat?” I say incredulously. “This is an excellent chance to begin my plan for world poetry domination. It’s more thanneat.”
“You’re going to enter?”
“I’m going towin,” I clarify. “I have to. Becks, my new tutor for my poetry modules, told us about it this afternoon and I didn’t hear a word she said afterwards. I’d be published,actually published, by a real publisher.”
“As opposed to a real fishmonger.”
“Correct. It’d be my first step to achieving poetry greatness. Ihave to win.”
“Respectfully, Nell, you’re giving real Amy March vibes right now.”
