Page 9 of Witchlore
I hate that our last messages aren’t something to do with love. I flick back through my photos. I don’t have many with Elizabeth—she was the one who took the selfies and I reckon her mum hasprobably found and deleted every single one. The ones I do have are either in her bedroom or outside in the garden of her parents’ house in Alderley Edge, taken lying down on her massive trampoline that had been there since her childhood. I pause on one where the afternoon light is making her face glow so she looks sort of heavenly. I’m in my second form that she knew me in; my hair is dark and curly and long, my cheekbones higher, my eyes dark green, my mouth pouty, and my face round and cherubic but I’m wearing her earrings. I look at the picture of us and have a weird thought:Would Elizabeth still fancy me in my new form?It’s pathetic, but right now I worry she wouldn’t. Because she’s not here to tell me otherwise.
College doesn’t have a canteen or anything like that, just the frankly dangerous microwave and kettle in the upstairs common room and an outside space next to the car park where people can sit and smoke and eat takeaway on the wooden picnic tables. The surprising September sun has persisted into lunchtime and a few students are going so far as to roll up their T-shirt sleeves and lie on the patch of grass. People have pulled out sunglasses and I think someone’s got a bottle of cider and there’s a general air of lingering summertime, coconut-scented vape smoke in the air. I find an empty picnic table and pull out my lunch. That’s when I notice it. It’s down by the back stairs, leaning against the wall of college, slightly grubbed by the weather: a giant photograph surrounded by cheap bunches of flowers and balloons and grotty neon teddy bears. A picture of Elizabeth. It’s the photo from her social media, where her hair is at its longest so she looks like Rapunzel. I watch as someone, a second-year I’ve never spoken to, walks forwardand produces a tacky bunch of carnations from their backpack. They set them down and then twist their fingers in a sequence I recognize as one from a first-year craft module that helps flowers bloom. A first-year spell I still can’t do. I turn my back to the entire charade. I’m about to put my headphones on and listen to the next chapter ofCarrie(to maybe get some ideas) when someone sits down opposite me on the slightly damp bench.
“Hi there,” Bastian says. He’s got the same open, pleasant face, the same distressed denim jacket. I’m not sure what I expected to change in two days.
“Hi.”
I watch him take a box of salad out of his leather satchel and set it down on the table. I watch him take out a reusable bamboo fork and open the salad. I watch him spear a leaf and eat it. Then I watch him notice me staring.
“You all right?” he asks, glancing between me and my sandwich. “Not eating?”
“No, I am.”
“Okay.” He crunches down on his salad leaves and pulls out a book. It’s a copy ofBrideshead Revisited.I snort with laughter. He looks up at me. “What?”
“Bit on the nose, isn’t it?”
“What is?” He looks at the book cover. “You got a problem with Evelyn Waugh?”
“No, I just mean, like, you’re a Londoner, you’re queer, and you’re readingBrideshead Revisited?”
“What makes you think I’m a Londoner?” He wipes salad dressing off his chin. I notice he doesn’t say he’s not queer.
I don’t feel like admitting I asked my peer mentor to fact-check him, so I just say, “You’re not from the north, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, not like you.” He smiles. “Proper northern brogue.”
“Ta very much.”
“I’m from Cornwall.” He digs his fork into his salad. Now he’s said it, I can hear it, the slight roll in his accent that makes me think of the sea. “I just went to college in London.”
“Nowhere closer?”
He pauses, the bite on the end of his fork midway between the salad and his mouth.
“My parents thought London would be good for us,” he says quietly. It’s weird when you just know that someone has been through something shitty. Maybe there’s some kind of sonar for broken people, but I can hear it in his voice.
“What’s it like, London?” I ask. I don’t know why I’m trying to be nice to him. Just because he’s sad about something doesn’t mean I have to be.
“Never been?”
I shake my head. I don’t want to say I’ve never been anywhere.
“Seen it on TV, though,” I say. “Seemed… loud.”
“It is loud, and busy. Fun, though, and the libraries are good,” he says, eating again.
“That’s your thing, then?” I ask. “Libraries?”
“Yeah, basically.” He smiles. I can’t work out if he’s a nerd who happens to be a very handsome man or if he’s a very handsome man who pretends to be a nerd for the humblebrag cred. If he’s the second, then he’s probably a twat. If he’s the first, then he’s the last thing I need. However, I do wonder, as I slide the pickles out of my sandwich, if it’s not so bad to talk to him a bit. I’m about to ask him what his favorite book is, the question is literally forming on the edge of my tongue, when something drops onto the table between us. I stare at it. It’s a suicide hotline pamphlet with all thepeople’s eyes crossed out, crude doodles of various self-inflicted deaths scribbled around them. I look up. Carl Lord is grinning down at me. His ring isn’t glowing. He’s clearly taken the time to bring this in from home, like a serial killer.
“Just in case you get too depressed, shifter,” he says loudly, jerking his head toward Elizabeth’s photo. No one laughs. I’m aware of a siren somewhere in the city, of someone parking their car over the road, slamming the door shut. It’s like everyone is waiting for me to speak.
“Piss off,” I mutter, grabbing the pamphlet and scrunching it into my fist. I don’t look at Bastian.
“Aw, feeling guilty, shifter?” Carl laughs. “Well, you should, shouldn’t you? You’re the reason your girlfriend’s dead, mate!”
I don’t mean to blush, but I do, and I curse myself for it, as the best way to deal with Carl is to ignore him and then think of vengeful acts later. I accidentally catch Bastian’s eye. He is frowning. He’s working it out, I can tell, and now he’ll never talk to me again. That’s worse than Carl, somehow, and I berate myself for letting my guard down, even for a second, for being so bloody stupid to ever think I could have a normal conversation with someone in this hellhole. A bleak question from my days in the hospital comes back to me:What’s the fucking point?Avoiding Bastian’s curious gaze and Carl’s sneer, I grab my sandwich and leave.
