Serena plucks the hanger from the peg on the wall, and the cream coat billows as she unhooks it. “There are better dressers out there, some more eager than others. If Lisa can’t follow repeated instructions, then she’s more of a hindrance than a help.” Serena turns her expectant look on me. “Are you ready?”
I am.
Dressed, anyway.
Not in a snowsuit, because unlike Asta, I’m not hitting the slopes before going down to VeVille this Saturday morning. She’s going with Landon and Mildred, a trio I didn’t knowexisted until Dray showed me the video of them in the Barlow’s vineyard over the winter break.
I’m not mad about it.
A better day for me is Asta and Mildred getting stuck out there on the slopes.
Maybe disappearing forever.
Of hopes and dreams, I have many. And none have come true.
It’s a bitter thought, like the taste of the stale coffee, and I stretch my arms out over my head.
“I’ll meet you in the atrium,” I tell her.
Serena’s preened eyebrow arches.
I slide a meaningful look to the curtained bed.
The one bed shuttered by drapes, silencing the noise of the dorm, and with a made witch hidden away.
Serena’s face tightens. “Fine. Five minutes. I should stop in at the bathroom anyway. The gondolas take so long.”
With that, she stalks out, the creamy coat billowing behind her like a cloak.
I slip off the bed and move for the curtains.
Asta is unbothered, as though I’m not here at all, and she digs through small wooden chests she’s unearthed from the bottom of the trunk.
I reach my hand into the gap between the drapes and click my fingers.
The only way to knock, really.
It works.
In just a moment, the curtain is tugged aside, and Courtney’s furrowed face is poking out. “What?”
An impatient huff juts me before I push her aside, then crawl onto the mattress.
The drapes slip shut behind me.
“Do you want to come to the village?”
She pushes her glasses up her slick nose. “Aren’t you going with your new friends?”
I shrug a shoulder, leaning all my weight onto my hand pressed into the mattress and crumpled sheets. “I’ll ditch them.”
Her glasses start to slip down her nose again. “I’m still working on the article. It’s nowhere near finished and… well… You know.”
“I know what?”
“It’s different.”
I sigh. “I don’t think my being busy then my life spiralling out of control over the break, and forgetting to write you back because of that, is a good enough reason for you to ice me out.”
