Page 44 of Sad Girl Hours
The tea lights flicker inside carved faces.
I practise my own carving on my face
and try another door.”
Becks finishes reading the poem out loud, leaning back in her chair with a pensive expression. “This is powerful stuff, Nell.”
“Thank you.” I relax a little.
“I feel like this poem really sums up all the poems in the collection so far. You’ve got the autumn theme and the real sense of an identity in crisis.”
Hmph. I wouldn’t exactly saycrisis…
“I guess I’m just wondering.” She fiddles with her pen. “Is the collection building up to something? Because we could do with a few hints of whatever thatsomethingis threaded through early on. To help the poems feel more grounded in the uncertainty. If that makes sense?” she asks, like it wasn’t objectively a pretty nonsensical sentence.
I do sort of get what she means, though (annoyingly), but before I can answer, she carries on. “Have you had any thoughts about when that uncertainty will start to transition to clarity?”
“Lots,” I say, not lying. “I’m just … not exactly decided on when it will be.”
“That’s my task for you then, Nell. The poems are great, but try to get back to basics. What is the narrator uncertain about? We need to know exactly what the theme of the collection is beyond that sense of unease and the autumn setting. And we need some hints of incoming clarity in these initial poems.”
“OK,” I say, pushing through the thickness in my throat. “That’s really useful, thank you.”
I leave the office feeling somehow worse than I did when I went in. And that is saying something, given I get the sweats before every meeting. I have this fear that they’re going to tell me that my work is so barely a notch above garbage that they wouldn’t be surprised if a rat showed up to give it a little nibble, and then decided that it was too rancid even for them and spat it out of their little ratty cheeks. Just imposter-syndrome girlie things.
I just can’t believe that even my poetry collection about uncertainty needs more clarity. I thought I’d hacked the system but apparently not. How am I meant to sow hints of an incoming revelation when I couldn’t find a revelation of my own if it stood in front of me in the street wearing a sandwich board that readHello, Nell. This is a revelation especially for you.
I sit on the bench outside, and I suspect my feelings are written across my face more clearly than they ever will be in my poetry. I text Saffron to see if her lecture’s done and she still wants to go for lunch but, after half an hour kicking my legs back and forth and feeling a bit pathetic with still no reply, I give up and go back home.
That evening, while Jenna and I watch the Sanderson sisters plot evil schemes on the screen, I finally get a reply from Saffron.
But despite me sending it only two minutes after her message she doesn’t reply.
When the movie’s done, I head up to bed, opening TikTok while I sit and brush my teeth on the edge of the bath. Saffron posted a video an hour ago, another ‘day in the life of an astrophysics student’. I watch as she gets dressed, makes breakfast – a smoothie bowl with a crescent moon of fresh fruit and nuts on the top – goes to her lecture – with a time-lapse of her typing up notes about something called Rainbow Gravity Theory. Then she heads to the library, her smiling face appearing as she pulls books off the shelf, studies for a while and goes home. Next she’s joining Casper at Athletics Club, where she tests him on his space knowledge while they run, both ofthem impressively not out of breath, managing to run, laugh, joke around while discussing complex concepts and theories.
I know it’s great to have boundaries, and maybe she doesn’t want to be emotional on the internet, fair enough. But there’s also just … nothing. She comes across as a very lovely, charming person who’s really into space, but that’s all I would know from watching her page. And I do want to know more. I want to know how shefeelsabout things, in ways like I did at the party – even though she was still kind of closed off and restrained even as she opened up.
I realise the hypocrisy of this as I keep scrolling back through her page, rewatching a video she made the other day that features us taste-testing all of the new festive-themed drinks at our favourite coffee shop in town. Saffron claimed to like them all, but I called her out on her nose wrinkling when she tried the chilli hot chocolate – a special for Bonfire Night coming up – and teased her until she caved and admitted that one wasn’t for her.
My favourite was the chocolate-brownie mocha. Saffron teases me for getting the whipped cream on my nose when I go for a second chug (she wipes it off gently with a tissue) and for my incurably sweet tooth.
“It’s because I’m such a sweetheart,” I say, placing one hand alongside my face and pulling a hopefully adorable face.
“Ah, so that’s how it happened.” Saffron nods knowingly, turning to the camera. “You heard it here first, folks. If you want to be as sweet and wholesome as Nell, you just have to consume all the sugary beverages you can get your raccoon mitts on.”
I finger-gun the camera, nodding very seriously now. “SCIENCE.”
A laugh bursts from Saffron’s lips, and the video ends with her shaking her head as she reaches for the camera to turn it off.
I smile at the memory. I still don’t massively love being in front of the camera, but I don’t mind it so much when it’s just Saffron and me being me and Saffron. I flick open the comments, remembering that Casper left one asking us to bring him back a toffee-apple frappuccino. Sure enough, that comment is still there, but there are alsoseventy-fourothers. I forget sometimes that Saffron’s low-key TikTok famous.
I scroll absent-mindedly through the comments, curious as to what people are saying. They start off very run-of-the-mill:
Brownie mochas sound AMAZING, where can I get one?
Love your outfits – v autumnal xoxo
But I notice as I keep scrolling that there are some comments – alotof comments actually – saying things like:
