Page 50 of The Sun Will Rise
“Thursdays and Mondays.” Amie nods, taking a delicate bite from the corner of a neon orange tortilla chip.
“Oh, mine are Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons.”
“Bummer,” Amie sighs. “Would’ve been nice to see you in class. Everyone in mine is boring as fuck. I’m doing psychology, Spanish, French and mixed language and literature.”
“What about you, Katy?”
I can feel my heart pounding, rattling against my ribcage. I’m surprised Amie and Katy can’t hear it. I’ve never had such a casual a conversation with the popular girls before, and honestly, they unnerve me a little bit. I wasn’t wildly unpopular in high school, but I’ve always been the good girl, the straight-A student who loved learning. I’ve never been the pretty one or the one with lots of friends. But here I am, sitting around a table with Amie and Katy, sharing Doritos like we’ve been friends for years.
“Oh, I’m taking PE and English literature too.”
“What’s PE like in college?”
Amie snorts a laugh as she leans forward to snag another chip. Katy rolls her eyes.
“Not nearly as much fun as I’d hoped,” she complains lightly. “Too much physiology. Not enough running and netball.”
I shudder.
“I hated PE in school. Can’t even run for a bus. No good at physical stuff.”
“Me and Amie met doing cross-country running in year seven,” Katy explains, before snapping a chip in two and shoving one piece into her mouth. She chews thoughtfully before continuing. “It’s basically the only thing I am good at.”
“Don’t be silly.” Amie flicks a Dorito at Katy, who, quite impressively, catches it in her mouth and chomps with a grin. “You’re good at plenty of things.”
“Yeah,” Katy agrees after swallowing. “Just not school. I’m great at drinking tea.”
“And braiding my hair,” Amie adds. “If you ever want fancy braids, just ask K. She’s got wizard fingers.”
The pair collapse into another fit of giggles, and I find myself laughing along with them. It’s easy. It’s nice.
“It’s true,” Katy agrees after she recovers. “I could braid your hair if you want. I bet it would look lovely braided, it’s so pretty and shiny.”
“I wish my hair could be that shiny,” Amie sighs wistfully, eyeing my hair. Hers is a similar shade to mine, just a little warmer and redder, with wild curls that hang halfway down her back. I’ve never really thought about my hair before. It’s always been the same boring dark brown shade, and right now, it’s long overdue a trim. My parting is right down the middle of my head, just as it’s always been, and my hair hangs straight to a point a little below my shoulders, where it ends in a blunt line. I rarely do much with it beyond tying it in a ponytail.
“It’s just hair.” I shrug. “I don’t really do anything with it. You can do whatever you want,” I tell Katy, whose eyes light up. She rushes over to the sink in the corner to wash Dorito dust from her fingers before drying them on her jeans and coming to stand beside me.
“Oh, it’s really soft, too!” She exclaims, brushing a hand over it before picking up a section from the front. She begins to weave it around her fingers, the sensation of the light pull on my scalp lulling me into a daze as Amie fills us both in on some gossip from her Spanish class.
“You should come out with us this weekend,” Katy announces after Amie has finished. “We’re just going shopping, nothing fancy. But I need new trainers, and Amie wants a dress.”
“I have a date,” Amie explains. “And I have nothing to wear.”
“Please.” Katy scoffs. “You have your wardrobeandmine to choose from, A. You have plenty to wear.”
“Your dresses are too short for me, Little Legs. And I don’t have enough boob to fill them out.”
“Bitch. I can’t help it if all my growth happened in the chest.” Katy pauses her braiding to push her chest forward and shake it in Amie’s direction. Amie, for her part, just laughs.
“You’re lucky,” I say with a sigh. “I don’t have much boob either.”
I glance between Amie and Katy, committing them to memory. Amie is the taller of the two, slender and athletic with a small chest and barely-there curves. The curves she does have are hidden beneath a pair of boyfriend jeans and layered, loose-fitting plum and black tank tops. Katy is shorter, still slim and clearly athletic, but with a defined, hourglass figure and a much larger chest which she shows off with a tight-fitting white V-neck beneath a light pink, chunky-knit cardigan with large plastic buttons in the shape of bows. I imagine I fit somewhere between the two of them: taller than Katy, small-chested, but a little curvier than Amie; slim, but hardly athletic.
“The tiny titty committee,” Amie laughs, snapping the KitKat in two and offering me one of the fingers. I take it, and she holds hers in the air to nudge against mine like we’re making a toast. “Come with us. We can look for tiny bras together.”
“Okay. That sounds good.”
Three days later, I shift my weight nervously from foot to foot as I wait for Amie and Katy just outside the shopping centre, at the bus station. We exchanged phone numbers before we left the common room theother day, and almost immediately, I was added into a group message thread with instructions to meet here for our shopping trip. I’m still not entirely sure I’m not being punked, though. I tug my coat tighter around my torso as a cold gust of wind barrels between the bus shelters and the side of the building.
