—
DAY COMPOSED an answer that centered on the evening she’d met Hilde and Willa. She’d got on at Kings Cross with Pepper, Luca, and Thalia, all four of them covered in sweat and glitter—they’d had their Friday night out in London town and now they were ready to get back to Day’s room and crash. Hilde and Willa sat opposite them sharing a red velvet cupcake. Day remembered trying not to fret about two whole girls afraid to eat a whole cupcake each. She didn’t know them or their fears. She noticed Willa’s long chestnut hair and Hilde’s eyes, which were like big blue almonds. She’d never seen them before but nodded at them, and they nodded back and continued their conversation, which seemed to be a comparison between medieval and modern logistics of kidnapping. Pepper and Luca were attempting to address Thalia’s complaints about art school, and Day was about to throw in her own tuppence worth when five boys who looked about the same age as them came swaying through the carriage singing rugby songs. Actually Day didn’t know anything about rugby so they might not have been rugby songs per se, but the men definitely had rugby player builds. They stared as they passed Day and her friends; Day felt a twanging in her stomach when they walked back a few paces and their song died away. She could see them thinking about starting something, or saying something. If these boys said something Luca would fight, and so would Pepper, and then what were Day and Thalia supposed to do—broker peace? Hardly. Day could punch . . . her parents had only been called into school for emergency meetings about her twice, and both times had been about the punching. Not necessarily the fact of her having punched someone, no, it was the style of it. Day punched hard, and when she did so she gave little to no warning. She punched veins. Aside from being disturbing to witness, the vein punching was extremely distressing for Day’s target; the link between heart, lungs, and brain fizzed and then seemed to snap, then the target’s limbs twitched haphazardly as they tried to recover some notion of gravity. Every now and again Day’s sister requested punching instruction from her, but this wasn’t something Day could teach. She just knew how to do it, that was all. She thought it might be connected to anxiety and the need to be absolutely certain that it was shared. And she really didn’t feel like punching anybody that night. She’d had a good time and just wanted to keep having one . . .
—
A COUPLE of the rugby boys were black. They both caught Pepper’s eye, and all three looked apologetic for staring. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t going to be a fight. So Day, T, Pepper, and Luca tensed up. Day saw something interesting: Chestnut Hair and Blue Almond Eyes were no longer eating cake and had tensed up too. Not the way you tense up when you’re about to run away, but the way you tense up when you’re not about to have any nonsense. And actually, looking around, Day saw that Chestnut Hair and Blue Almond Eyes weren’t the only ones. Others scattered across the carriage had become alert too, looking up from the screens of their phones, some even rolling their sleeves up. “Jog on, lads,” a barrel-chested man advised, and the boys seemed to reflect on numbers, then left and took their thoughts of starting something with them. When they’d gone Chestnut Hair leaned across the table and said, “I’m Willa.” Blue Almond Eyes introduced herself as Hilde and said, apropos of nothing: “When we were little we had chicken pox together.”
“Ah,” Luca said, sagely. “So you two are close.”
Willa rubbed her nose. “Oh, but we didn’t do it on purpose . . .”
Willa was seriously posh. She tried to sound estuary but couldn’t go all the way. At the station Hilde turned to them and asked: “Are you students here?”
T, Pepper, and Luca talked over each other: As if! Yeah right . . . and all three pointed at Day: “There she is, Miss Establishment . . .”
“Please just live your hate-filled lives happily, guys,” Day said.
Willa took Day’s e-mail address and said she’d be in touch. “We should all cotch sometime.”
Cotch? Pepper thought that sounded sexual. Luca said: “Maybe something to do with horse riding? That one blatantly rides horses.” Thalia just giggled.